Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Ebook Version of "Theory and History of Ontology"

What's New: Last Update: February 10th, 2025.

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This version of "Theory and History of Ontology" can be downloaded as an ebook that can be read offline, stored on a pen drive, sent to a friend by e-mail, etc.

Pages can be read in sequence, starting from the beginning or end of the website, or by consulting the table of contents at the beginning (menu "Contents"), the detailed indexes at the end (menu "Last"), or the chapter index (menu "Section"); a "Search" option is also available.

I will update the e-book every time that the main website will change.

The e-book version does not contain the Essays in PDF format (that can be downloaded separately: see the Index of PDF Essays) and the external links that are available on the main version.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

What's New on This Site: Recently Modified Pages

Last updates

February 10th, 2025: Updated Aristotle's Categories: Annotated bibliography of the studies in English; updated also the bibliographies in French, Italian, German, Spanish and Portuguese.

December 10th 2024: Added Alexander of Aphrodisias' metaphysics: Annotated bibliography of the studies in English.

November 7th 2024: Updated the Annotated bibliography on the Debate about the Subject Matter of First Philosophy.

October, 28th 2024: Updated the Bibliography of the studies in English on Stanisław Leśniewski.

July 22nd, 2024: Updated the Bibliography on the history of fundamentality and grounding.

July 1st, 2024: Updated Parmenides of Elea. Annotated bibliography of the studies in English and the bibliographies on Parmenides in French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

December 8th, 2023: Updated the Bibliography on Boethius' metaphysics.

December 6th, 2023: Updated the Bibliography on Diogenes Laertius.

July 9th, 2023: Updated the Bibliography on Franz Brentano.

May 17th, 2023: Updated the Bibliography on Roman Ingarden.

May 17th, 2023: Updated the Bibliography on the Catalogues of Aristotle's Writings.

April 5th, 2023: Updated the Annotated Bibliography of Joseph S. Freedman.

January 26th, 2023: Added three new pages with the list of the Proceedings of:

Symposium Platonicum

Symposium Aristotelicum

Symposium Hellenisticum

.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

General Index

Index of the Sections

Contents of the Website

History of Ontology from Antiquity to Twentieth Century

Theory of Ontology: Contemporary Views

Ontologists of the 19th and 20th Centuries

History of Truth in Western Philosophy

History of the Doctrine of Categories

The Problem of Universals: Ancient and Modern

Resources on Comparative Philosophy

Annotated Bibliographies of Historians of Philosophy

Index of the Philosophers

A - C

D - H

I - O

P - R

S - Z

Index of the Bibliographies

Index of the Bibliographies on Selected Authors (A - K)

Index of the Bibliographies on Selected Authors (L - Z)

Index of the Bibliographies on Selected Arguments

Annotated Bibliographies of Historians of Philosophy

Pages in languages other than English

Pages in French and Italian

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Table of Contents

For ease of reading, I made the following index (the function "Search" can be used to find a particular Author or Subject).

This is the list of the pages; "Ontologists" is a table with links to pages on the most important philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries working on Ontology.

History of Ontology

Heraclitus and Parmenides

Heraclitus and the Question of the One and the Many (under construction)

Parmenides and the Question of Being in Greek Thought

The Philosophy of Plato

Plato's Parmenides and the Dilemma of Participation

Semantics, Predication, Truth and Falsehood in Plato's Sophist

Platonism Established: The “Genera of Being” in Plato' Sophist (under construction)

Plato's Cratylus and the Problem of the “Correctness of Names” (under construction)

The Philosophy of Aristotle

Aristotle's Categories

See the section on the History of the Categories

Aristotle about the Subject Matter of Metaphyics

Aristotle's Definition of a Science of Being qua Being

The Birth of Aristotelianism

Aristotle: Bibliographical Resources on His Logical and Metaphysical Works

The Rediscovery of the Corpus Aristotelicum

Ancient Catalogues of Aristotle's Works:

Diogenes Laertius, Lives, V 22-27

Hesychius and Ptolemy al-Garib

Listes Anciennes des Ouvrages d'Aristote :

Diogène Laërce, Vies V, 22-27

Hésychius de Milet et Ptolémée el-Garib

Hellenistic Philosophy

Theophrastus of Eresus

Theophrastus's Metaphysics: Debating with Aristotle

Ancient Divisions of Philosophy

Early Stoicism

The Stoic Doctrine of "Something" as Supreme Genus

Plotinus and the Beginning of Neoplatonism

Plotinus: the One and the Hierarchy of Being (under construction)

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius: Selected bibliography of the studies in English (A-Lea)

Diogenes Laertius: Selected bibliography of the studies in English (Lew-Z)

Proceedings of the Symposia on Ancient Philosophy

Proceedings of the Symposium Platonicum

Proceedings of the Symposium Aristotelicum

Proceedings of the Symposium Hellenisticum

The Neoplatonic Commentators

The Neoplatonic Commentators on Aristotle's Metaphysics

Alexander of Aphrodisias' metaphysics: Annotated bibliography

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

Boethius' Metaphysics of Being and Goodness

Eriugena and the Neoplatonic Metaphysics in the Early Middle Ages

Eriugena: Dialectic and Ontology in the Periphyseon

The Arabic Rediscovery of Aristotle's Metaphysics

Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages: the Theology of Aristotle

Al-Kindi's Metaphysics: First Philosophy as the Study of God

Al-Farabi on the Scopes of the Aristotelian Metaphysics

Ibn Sina (Avicenna) on the Subject and the Object of Metaphysics

Averroes (Ibn Rushd) on the Divine as the Subject of Metaphysics

The 'Second Beginning' of Metaphysics

Introducing Aristotle in Middle Ages: the Latin Translations of the Metaphysics

A Neoplatonic Metaphysics: the Liber de Causis

The Place of Metaphysics in the Medieval Classification of Sciences

Thomas Aquinas Doctrine of the Act of Being (Actus Essendi)

Duns Scotus: Univocity of Being and the Subject of Metaphysics

Properties of Being: the Medieval Doctrine of the Transcendentals

Metaphysics or Ontology? The Debate about the Subject-Matter of First Philosophy

Ontology in Modern Philosophy

Birth of a New Science: the History of Ontology from Suárez to Kant

Jacob Lorhard (1561-1609): The Creator of the Term "Ontologia"

I. From Fonseca to Poinsot (1560 - 1644)

II. From Scheibler to Lambert (1645 - 1777)

Bibliography of the Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries:

Francisco Suárez on Metaphysics as the Science of Real Beings

The Philosophy of René Descartes

René Descartes. Bibliographie Chronologique et Annotée (Première Partie: 1616-1640)

René Descartes. Bibliographie Chronologique et Annotée (Deuxième Partie: 1641-1650)

Descartes' Ontology: From the Rules for the Direction of the Mind to the Meditations on First Philosophy

Bibliographie des études sur les Regulae ad directionem ingenii et la recherche de la mathesis universalis

Ontology from Wolff to Kant

Christian Wolff's Ontology: Existence as "Complement of Possibility"

Kant from the Critique of Metaphysics to Transcendental Philosophy

The Rediscovery of Ontology in Contemporary Thought

(under construction)

Index of the Section Historians of Philosophy

Annotated Bibliographies of historians of Philosophy

Theory of Ontology

Definitions of Ontology by Leading Philosophers

What is Ontology? - First Part (From Christian Wolff to Edmund Husserl)

What is Ontology? - Second Part (From Nicolai Hartmann to the Present Time)

Key Terms in Ontology

Introductory remarks (Origin and development of some fundamental concepts with a selection of the most relevant texts)

Being (Linguistic and philosophical perspectives)

Existence (Definitions from some leading philosophers)

The Problem of Nonexistent Objects

Substance (The evolution of the concept from Ancient Greeks to Modern Times)

Mathesis Universalis: the Search for a Universal Science

Metaphysical Explanation

Annotated bibliographies:

Metaphysical fundamentality

Metaphysical grounding

History of metaphysical fundamentality and grounding

Ontological dependence

History of ontological dependence

For the contributions of Kit Fine see His Annotated bibliography in the Section Ontologists

Language and Ontology

Linguistic Relativism (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) vs. Universal Grammar

Universal Ontology vs. Ontological Relativity

Semiotics and Ontology

The Rediscovery of John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas)

John Deely. An Annotated bibliography

Modern Theories of Predication

The Frege-Russell 'Is' Ambiguity Thesis

Language as Calculus vs. Language as Universal Medium (two traditions in 20th century philosophy)

Ontologists of the 19th and 20th Centuries

Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848) Contributions to Logic and Ontology Critical judgments, excerpts from his works, bibliography of critical studies

Franz Brentano (1838-1917) Ontology and His Immanent Realism. Annotated bibliography of his works, of the English translations and of the most relevant critical studies

Franz Brentano: Editions and translations

Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) Bibliography on His Theory of Categories

Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) Ontology: Being, Existence, and Truth Excerpts from texts, studies and bibliography on his conceptions of being, existence and truth

Alexius Meinong (1853-1920) Theory of Objects Bibliography of his works (original edition and English translations) and of the most relevant critical studies

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) Formal Ontology and Transcendental Logic Editions of the works in German and English, bibliography on formal ontology

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)

Kazimierz Twardowski (1866-1938) The Content and Object of Presentations Bibliography of his works and of the most relevant critical studies

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) His Ontological Development Bibliography of studies on his ontological development

Nicolai Hartmann (1882-1950) Levels of Reality and Ontology) Bibliography of his works and of the most relevant critical studies

Adolf Reinach (1883-1917) States of Affairs (Sachverhalt) and Negative Judgments Bibliography of the works and translations; selection of the most relevant critical studies

Stanislaw Lesniewski (1886-1939) Logical Systems: Protothetic, Ontology, Mereology Bibliography of his works and of the most relevant critical studies

Tadeusz Kotarbinski (1886-1981) From Reism to Pansomatism Bibliography of his works and of the most relevant critical studies

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) The Ontology of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Bibliography and critical judgments about the ontology of the Tractatus

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works) List of the works in the German edition

Truth (Alethéia) as Unconcealment. Selected bibliography

The History of Metaphysics as Ontotheology. Selected bibliography

Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970)

Roman Ingarden (1893-1970) The Realism / Idealism Debate Bibliography of the works in German and of the translations; selection of the most relevant critical studies

Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000)

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972)

Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989)

Gustav Bergmann (1906-1987). Selected bibliography with abstracts

Nelson Goodman (1906-1998)

Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000)

Arthur Norman Prior (1914-1969)

Annotated bibliography of the works by Justus Buchler (1914-1991)

Roman Suszko (1919-1979) The non-Fregean Logics Selected bibliography with abstracts (only the publications in English)

Mario Bunge (1919-2020). Selected bibliography

Fred Sommers (1923-2004) on the Logic of Natural Language

Hector-Neri Castañeda (1924-1991)

Selected bibliography of (David Malet) Armstrong (1926-2014)

Bogusław Wolniewicz on the Formal Ontology of Situations (1927) Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Warsaw University

Reinhardt Grossmann (1931-2010) The Ontology of Categories

Selected bibliography of Panayot Butchvarov (1933) Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Iowa

The Conceptual Realism of Nino Cocchiarella (1933) Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Indiana University

Richard Sylvan [born Richard Routley] (1935-1996) Nonexistent Objects Selected bibliography with abstracts

Selected bibliography of George Englebretsen Professor Emeritus at Bishop's University, Canada

Jon Barwise (1942-2000)

Jerzy Perzanowski (1943-2009) Modal Logics, Ontology and Ontologics Complete bibliography of the works in English with abstracts

Annotated bibliography of Kit Fine (1946) Silver Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics, New York University

Annotated bibliography of Liliana Albertazzi (1947) (1947) Principal Investigator at the University of Trento Centre for the Mind and Brain (CIMeC)

Selected bibliography of Brian Cantwell Smith Professor of information, computer science, and philosophy at University of Toronto

History of Truth in Western Philosophy

Aletheia in the Ancient Greek Thought. General Introduction

Pre-Philosophical Concepts of Truth

Aletheia dans la Pensée Grecque d'Homère à l'Âge Hellenistique

Veritas in the Middle Ages from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Martin Heidegger on Aletheia (Truth) as Unconcealment

Pages under construction:

Parmenides

Sophists

Plato's Doctrine of Truth

Aristotle's Definition of Truth

Epicureanism

Stoicism

Skepticism

Neoplatonism

Theories of Truth in Modern Era from Descartes to Kant

History of the Doctrine of Categories

The Doctrine of Categories from an Historical Perspective

Semantics and Ontological Analysis in Aristotle's Categories

The Stoic Doctrine of Supreme Genera (Categories)

Plotinus' Criticism of the Doctrine of Categories (Enneads VI, 1-3)

Ancient Greek Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Eriugena, Periphyseon Book I: Aristotelian Logic and Categories

Latin Medieval Commentators on Aristotle's Categories

The Problem of Universals from the Antiquity to Middle Ages

Universals in Antiquity and Middle Ages

Peter Abelard and the Rise of Nominalism

The Realist Ontology of John Duns Scotus

The Nominalist Ontology of William of Ockham

Comparative Philosophy

Intercultural and Comparative Philosophy: An Overview

African Philosophy. A Survey of Contemporary Studies

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Ontology: Its Role in Modern Philosophy

Introduction: A Working Definition

Ontology is the theory of objects and their ties. It provides criteria for distinguishing different types of objects (concrete and abstract, existent and nonexistent, real and ideal, independent and dependent) and their ties (relations, dependencies and predication).

We can distinguish: a) formal, b) descriptive and c) formalized ontologies.

a) Formal ontology was introduced by Edmund Husserl in his Logical Investigations (1): according to Husserl, its object is the study of the genera of being, the leading regional concepts, i.e., the categories; its true method is the eidetic reduction coupled with the method of categorial intuition. The phenomenological ontology is divided into two: (I) Formal, and (II) Regional, or Material, Ontologies.

The former investigates the problem of truth on three basic levels: (a) Formal Apophantics, or formal logic of judgments, where the a priori conditions for the possibility of the doxic certainty of reason are to be sought, along with (b) the synthetic forms for the possibility of the axiological, and (c) "practical" truths. In other words it is divided into formal logic, formal axiology, and formal praxis.

In contemporary philosophy, formal ontology has been developed in two principal ways. The first approach has been to study formal ontology as a part of ontology, and to analyze it using the tools and approach of formal logic: from this point of view formal ontology examines the logical features of predication and of the various theories of universals. The use of the specific paradigm of the set theory applied to predication, moreover, conditions its interpretation.

This approach is best exemplified by Nino Cocchiarella; according to whom "Formal Ontology is the result of combining the intuitive, informal method of classical ontology with the formal, mathematical method of modern symbolic logic, and ultimately of identifying them as different aspects of one and the same science. That is, where the method of ontology is the intuitive study of the fundamental properties, modes, and aspects of being, or of entities in general, and the method of modern symbolic logic is the rigorous construction of formal, axiomatic systems, formal ontology, the result of combining these two methods, is the systematic, formal, axiomatic development of the logic of all forms of being. As such, formal ontology is a science prior to all others in which particular forms, modes, or kinds of being are studied." (2)

The second line of development returns to its Husserlian origins and analyses the fundamental categories of object, state of affairs, part, whole, and so forth, as well as the relations between parts and the whole and their laws of dependence -- once all material concepts have been replaced by their correlative form concepts relative to the pure 'something'. This kind of analysis does not deal with the problem of the relationship between formal ontology and material ontology." (3).

b) Descriptive ontology concerns the collection of information about the list of objects that can be dependent or independent items (real or ideal).

c) Formalized ontology attempts to constructs a formal codification for the results descriptively acquired at the preceding levels.

Notes

(1) "To the best of my knowledge, the idea of a formal ontology makes its first literary appearance in Volume I of my Logische Untersuchungen (1900), [Chapter 11, The Idea of Pure Logic] in connexion with the attempt to explicate systematically the idea of a pure logic -- but not yet does it appear there under the name of formal ontology, which was introduced by me only later. The Logische Untersuchungen as a whole and, above all, the investigations in Volume II ventured to take up in a new form the old idea of an a priori ontology -- so strongly interdicted by Kantianism and empiricism -- and attempted to establish it, in respect of concretely executed portions, as an idea necessary to philosophy." E. Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic (1929), English translation: The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969, 27, p. 86.

(2) Formal Ontology, in: Barry Smith, Hans Burkhardt (eds.), Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 1991 p. 640.

(3) Liliana Albertazzi, Formal and Material Ontology, in: Roberto Poli, Peter Simons (eds.), Formal Ontology, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996 p. 199 (notes omitted).

Major Ontologists

The main intellectual links from the major ontologists of Nineteenth century: Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848), Franz Brentano (1838-1917), and Gottlob Frege (1848-9125) to contemporary thinkers are traced in the "Table of Ontologists":

For details see Table of Ontologists of 19th and 20th Centuries

Detailed information (bibliographies, abstract of relevant publications, and selections of critical judgments) for the thinkers mentioned in the Table of Ontologists are partly available and will be completed in the near future; I will publish also pages in French and Italian with selections of critical studies available in these languages, but not translated in English.

An important feature of this site will be the bibliographies about the history of ontology, selected authors and ontological topics that have not yet been covered in such detail; bibliographical entries will not only include the most relevant books, but also a selection of articles from about one hundred philosophical reviews; attention will be paid to the relations with logic, semantics and semiotics, in particular to the theories of predication and reference and to the relation between thought, language and the world.

The completion of this job will require some years; more than 15,000 bibliographic references are already available in the following languages, in decreasing order of frequency: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese; the Bibliographies will be constantly expanded and updated, and new abstracts of existing entries will be added.

I wish to apologize to readers of other languages, not included only because of my limited knowledge of foreign languages (my mother tongue is Italian), but I hope that students and researchers will find sufficient material for a more thorough study and will enjoy discovering many philosophical treasures, some little known, but in no way less significant.

Metaphysics and Theory of Objects

Metaphysics is the science that studies being qua being (Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Gamma), in other words it considers reality, which is to say existent or actual objects; according to Alexius Meinong, the theory of objects is an a priori science which concerns the whole of what is given, existent or nonexistent. Existent objects must be distinguished from subsistent or ideal objects, such as identity, diversity, or number. Existence and subsistence are the two forms of being, whereas the 'pure object' considered in the theory of objects is beyond being and nonbeing ( On the Theory of Objects, 1904).

Before Meinong, the Polish philosopher Twardowski developed, according to Ingarden, in his On the Content and Object of Presentations. A Psychological Investigation (1894), "the first consistently constructed theory of objects manifesting a certain theoretical unity since the times of Scholasticism and the ' Ontologia' of Christian Wolff [1730]." (4)

"The relationship between Husserl's conception of ontology and the 'theory of objects' of Meinong has long been misunderstood. As conceived in the Logical Investigations [1900], the idea of ontology is not eidetic science of objects. The mathesis universalis is accordingly an ontology (only the word is avoided in the first edition). It is characterized as the a priori science of objects in general, and correlatively of meanings in general, i.e., of meanings which refer to objects in general. Inasmuch as that is brought out clearly in both volumes, Husserl observes that no one is justified in trying to instruct him with regard to the 'object-theoretical' character of formal logic and mathematics. Indeed, the third investigation is explicitly declared to belong to the 'a priori theory of objects as such,' and Husserl suggests that it is this passage that led to the formation of the undesirable expression ' Gegenstandstheorie [Theory of objects].' Ontology, or the theory of objects in the present sense, not only comprises all that relates to the field of the pure mathesis universalis, but includes the first volume as well as the third and fourth investigations of the second volume." (5)

Notes

(4) Roman Ingarden, The Scientific Activity of Kazimierz Twardowski, Studia Philosophica, 1947 pp. 23.

(5) Marvin Farber, The Foundation of Phenomenology. Edmund Husserl and the Quest for a Rigorous Science of Philosophy, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1943; reprint: Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2006 pp. 205-206.

Formal Ontology as a Characteristica Universalis

"A system of logic can be constructed under two quite different aspects. On the one hand, it can be developed as a formal calculus and studied independently of whatever content it might be used to represent. Such a formal system in that case is only a calculus ratiocinator. On the other hand, a system of logic can be constructed somewhat along the lines of what Leibniz, called a characteristica universalis. Such a system, according to Leibniz, was to serve three main purposes. The first was that of an international auxiliary language that would enable the people of different countries to speak and communicate with one another. Apparently, because Latin was no longer a "living" language and new trade routes were opening up to lands with many different local languages, the possibility of such an international auxiliary language was widely considered and discussed in the 17th and 18th centuries. (...)

In any case notwithstanding its visionary goal, the idea of an international auxiliary language is not the purpose of a formal ontology. The second and third purposes Leibniz set for his characteristica universalis are what distinguish it from its precursors and give his program its formal or logistic methodology. The second purpose that the universal character is to be based upon an ars combinatoria, i.e. an ideography or system of symbolization, that would enable it to provide a logical analysis of all of the actual and possible concepts that might arise in science. Such an ars combinatoria would contain both a theory of logical form, i.e., a theory of all the possible forms that a meaningful expression might have in such a language, and a theory of definitional forms, i.e., a theory of the operations whereby one could construct new concepts on the basis of already given concepts. The third purpose was that the universal character must contain a calculus ratiocinator, and in particular a complete system of deduction and valid argument forms, by which, through a study of the consequences, or implications, of what was already known, it could serve as an instrument of knowledge. These two purposes are central to the notion of a formal ontology." (6).

Notes

(6) Nino Cocchiarella, Formal Ontology and Conceptual Realism, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2007 pp. 4-5.

Different Approaches

Two definitions from philosophers of the Analytic tradition:

"Ontology is intimately related to metaphysics, the theory of ultimate categories of things. Andronicus of Rhodes coined meta ta physica as meaning the writings coming "after the physics" in his collation of Aristotle, but metaphysics is really the study with which those writings deal. Some might say that the categories are ultimate differentiations of being and that ontology is the study of undifferentiated being. Now insofar as metaphysics is the study of the nature and existence of broad categories of things, ontology is a branch of metaphysics by logical courtesy. It deals, paradoxically, with the nature and existence of the "category" of undifferentiated being. But strictly speaking, ontology is transcategorial. Of course, if we say, "To be is to be material," we do equate the study of being with the study of matter. But the equation is transcategorial in its very elimination of all categories other than matter. Of course, some ontologists admit different kinds or degrees of being. But even if every metaphysical category is also a kind of being and viceversa, so that the words "metaphysics" and " ontology" are coextensive, those words are still not synonymous. Certainly when they are used as I have explained them, they are not intersubstitutable salva veritate in every context of discussion.

What does the objective world include? Common-sensically, it divides into many objects: the Sun, the Moon, stars, trees, people, and so on. We also speak and think about thoughts, smiles, numbers, and many other things. There are many similarities and differences among all these things, and this makes hierarchies of classifications possible. Leo the lion and Felix the cat are both feline, and so on. Insofar as our classificatory purposes may vary, the genera of one system may be the differentia of another. Humans compared to cats are generically animal and differentially rational; humans compared to angels are generically rational and differentially animal. (...)

Any system of classifications, on pain of admitting an infinite series of classifications, will end with summa genera or ultimate classifications. This is the level of metaphysical categories. Where change consists of something of a given kind losing old properties and acquiring new ones, nothing can conceivably change in its metaphysical category. It is conceivable that Socrates can fall asleep, learn things, or even change into a rock or tree. But it is not conceivable that Socrates can change into time or into a number. We are not able to describe such transitions because we find nothing generically underlying them to persist through or undergo the transition. Perhaps that is only because such logic-metaphysical substrata have not been found yet in any plausible classificatory system. But I suspect the reason is that our most fundamental classifications are, at least in part, correct." (7).

"The word "ontology" has four established meanings in philosophy. There are two intersecting sets of distinctions. Pure philosophical ontology is different from applied scientific ontology, and ontology in the applied scientific sense can be understood either as a discipline or a domain.

Ontology as a discipline is a method or activity of enquiry into philosophical problems about the concept or facts of existence. Ontology as a domain is the outcome or subject matter of ontology as a discipline. Applied scientific ontology construed as an existence domain can be further subdivided as the theoretical commitment to a preferred choice of existent entities, or to the real existent entities themselves, including the actual world considered as a whole, also known as the extant domain. Ontology as a theoretical domain is thus a description or inventory of the things that are supposed to exist according to a particular theory, which might but need not be true. Ontology as the extant domain, in contrast, is the actual world of all real existent entities, whatever these turn out to be, identified by a true complete applied ontological theory. As a result, we must be careful in reading philosophical works on ontology, when an author speaks of "ontology" without qualification, not to confuse the intended sense of the word with any of the alternatives." (8).

In: A Short Glossary of Metaphysics by Peter Simons with additional entries by Ross P. Cameron (*), the following definition is given:

"ONTOLOGY. From onto-logos, the science of being. A surprisingly late coinage. The Latin term ontologia was felicitously invented in 1613, independently, by two German philosophers, Rudolf Gockel (Goclenius) in his Lexicon Philosophicum and Jacob Lorhard (Lorhardus), in his Theatrum Philosophicum, but first entered general circulation when popularized by Christian Wolff in his Latin writings, especially his Philosophia Prima sive Ontologia of 1730. The first known English use of the term "ontology" is 1720. (1) General as distinct from special metaphysics. (2) More limitedly, the list or table of basic kinds of entities. (3) Attributively, as in "Quine's ontology," the basic kinds of entities assumed by a given philosopher. (4) In Ingarden's philosophy, the study of all possible general arrangements of the world, by comparison with metaphysics which concerns only what actually exists. (5) Recently and loosely, in computer science, a set of categories for programming and data representation which is independent of particular hardware, software or implementations."

This definition is historically inaccurate: the Latin word ontologia was created in 1606 by Lorhard (seven years before Gockel) and the first occurrence of "ontology" in English can be found in a work by Gideon Harvey of 1663 (see "Birth of a New Science: the History of Ontology from Suárez to Kant").

(*) Appendix to: The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics. Edited by Robin Le Poidevin Robin et al. New York: Routledge 2009, pp. 590-591.

Notes

(7) Jan Dejnožka, The Ontology of the Analytic Tradition and Its Origins. Realism and Identity in Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein and Quine, New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996, p. 7.

(8) Dale Jacquette, Ontology, Montreal: Mc-Gill-Queens's University Press, 2002, pp. 2-3.

Main Currents in Contemporary Philosophy

After Kant's rejection of the possibility of a general ontology (1), Bernard Bolzano was the first philosopher who contributed to the new ontological turn, but is work was rediscovered only in the Twentieth century by Husserl (2).

Bolzano's work influenced both Husserl (a disciple of Franz Brentano) and Frege, that are at the origins of the main traditions of contemporary ontology: the Phenomenological, the Analytical, and the Austro-Polish (Brentano was also the teacher of Twardowski, the founder of the Lvov-Warsaw School); the first work of Brentano On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle (1862) and the Logical Investigations (1900) by Husserl were at the origin of the interest in philosophy of the most authoritative exponent of Continental ontology, Martin Heidegger (3).

Phenomenological

Bolzano and Brentano can be considered the forerunners of this School, founded by Edmund Husserl; the main exponents are Adolf Reinach, Roman Ingarden and Nicolai Hartmann.

Analytical

After C. S. Peirce and the classical works by Frege, Russell and the early Wittgenstein, at least Rudolf Carnap, Gustav Bergmann, Nelson Goodman and W.V.O. Quine should be mentioned.

Austro-Polish

The father of Polish philosophy was Twardowski; Kotarbinski and Lesniewski are ontologists of the first Polish generation (the Lvov-Warsaw School) and Roman Suszko and Jerzy Perzanowski of the most recent times.

Continental

After Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Deleuze and Foucault, just to mention a few names, are the most debated thinkers; other prominent ontologists are listed in the Table of Formal and Descriptive Ontologists.

Notes

(1) "The Transcendental Analytic accordingly has this important result: That the understanding can never accomplish a priori anything more than to anticipate the form of a possible experience in general, and, since that which is not appearance cannot be an object of experience, it can never overstep the limits of sensibility, within which alone objects are given to us. Its principles are merely principles e of the exposition of appearances, and the proud name of an ontology, which presumes to offer synthetic a priori cognition of things in general in a systematic doctrine (e.g., the principle of causality), must give way to the modest one of a mere analytic of the pure understanding." I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (A247/B304), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 358-359.

(2) "With such illogicality did things happen in the history of logic which we are pursuing here that this great, born logician fell prey to a fate which beats the fate of Joachim Jungius. For the latter at least was read, and read by a Leibniz; but that cannot even be said of Bolzano. Hence we cannot even maintain in his case that he was forgotten. All the greater is the merit of Edmund Husserl who discovered Bolzano." Hermes Scholz, Concise History of Logic (1931), English translation: New York: Philosophical Library, 1961, p. 47.

(3) "The first philosophical text through which I worked my way, again and again from 1907 on, was Franz Brentano's dissertation: On the Manifold Sense of Being in Aristotle." Martin Heidegger, Preface to: William Richardson, Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to Thought, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963. p. X.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Index of the section "History of Ontology"

Ancient Greek Ontology: Heraclitus, Parmenides and Plato

Heraclitus and Parmenides

Heraclitus and the Question of the One and the Many

Parmenides and the Question of Being in Greek Thought

Critical Editions and Translations

Selected and annotated Bibliography of studies on Parmenides in English:

A - B

C - De L

De R - Grae

Grah - Ion

Jac - Lou

Mac - Mou

Mou - Rav

Rei - Sor

Spa - Vol

Wac - Z

Bibliographies on Parmenides in other languages:

Bibliographie des études en Français A - Cor

Bibliographie des études en Français Cou - Luc

Bibliographie des études en Français Mal - Z

Bibliografia degli studi in Italiano

Indici dei volumi della collana Eleatica

Bibliographie der Studien auf Deutsch

Bibliografía de estudios en Español

Bibliografía de estudos em Português

Critical Notes on His Fragments (Diels Kranz fr. 1-3)

The Philosophy of Plato

Plato: Bibliographical Resources on Selected Dialogues

Plato's Parmenides and the Dilemma of Participation

Selected Bibliography on Plato's Parmenides

Semantics, Predication, Truth and Falsehood in Plato's Sophist

Platonism Established: The “Genera of Being” in Plato' Sophist (under construction)

Selected and Annotated bibliography of studies on Plato's Sophist in English:

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (A - Buc)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Can - Fos)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Fra - Kah)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Kal - Mig)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Mil - Pec)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Pel - San)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Say - Zuc)

Bibliographies on Plato's Sophist in other languages:

Platon: Sophiste. Bibliographie des études en Français (A - L)

Platon: Sophiste. Bibliographie des études en Français (M - Z)

Platon: Sophistes. Ausgewählte Studien in Deutsch

Platone: Sofista. Bibliografia degli studi in Italiano

Platón: Sofista. Bibliografía de estudios en Español

Platão: Sofista. Bibliografía dos estudos em Portugués

Plato's Cratylus and the Problem of the “Correctness of Names” (under construction)

The Philosophy of Aristotle

For Aristotle's "Categories" see the section on the History of the Categories

Aristotle's Definition of a Science of Being qua Being

Selected Bibliography on Aristotle's Concept of Metaphysics

The Origins of Aristotelianism

Aristotle: Bibliographical Resources on His Logical and Metaphysical Works

The Rediscovery of the Corpus Aristotelicum and the Beginning of the Commentary Tradition

Ancient Catalogues of Aristotle's Works:

Diogenes Laertius, Lives, V 22-27

Hesychius and Ptolemy al-Garib

Listes Anciennes des Ouvrages d'Aristote :

Diogène Laërce, Vies V, 22-27

Hésychius de Milet et Ptolémée el-Garib

Bibliography on the Recovery of Aristotle's Works

Bibliography on the origins of the Corpus Aristotelicum

Studies in English: A-Gra

Studies in English: Gut-Z

Studies in German, French, Italian and Latin

Hellenistic Philosophy

Theophrastus of Eresus

Theophrastus's Metaphysics: Debating with Aristotle

Selected Bibliography on the Philosophical Work of Theophrastus

Ancient Divisions of Philosophy

Early Stoicism

The Stoic Doctrine of "Something" as Supreme Genus

Selected Bibliography on Stoic Ontology

Plotinus and the Beginning of Neoplatonism

Plotinus: the One and the Hierarchy of Being (under construction)

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius: Selected bibliography of the studies in English (A-Lea)

Diogenes Laertius: Selected bibliography of the studies in English (Lew-Z)

Bibliografia degli studi in italiano su Diogene Laerzio

Bibliographie des études en Français sur Diogène Laërce

Bibliographie der deutschsprachigen Studien zu Diogenes Laertios

Diogenes Laertius: Selected bibliography of the editions and translations in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Latin

Proceedings of the Symposia on Ancient Philosophy

Proceedings of the Symposium Platonicum

Proceedings of the Symposium Aristotelicum

Proceedings of the Symposium Hellenisticum

The Neoplatonic Commentators

The Neoplatonic Commentators on Aristotle's Metaphysics

General Bibliography on the Neoplatonic Commentators

Bibliography on the Neoplatonic Commentaries to Aristotle's Metaphysics

Alexander of Aphrodisias' metaphysics: Annotated bibliography of the studies in English:

A - Faz

Fla - Kra

Kup - Sch

Sha - Z

Alexandre d'Aphrodise: bibliographie annotée des études en français:

A - Guy

Has - Z

Alessandro di Afrodisia: bibliografia annotata degli studi in italiano

Alexander von Aphrodisias: bibliographie der deutschen Studien

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

Boethius' Metaphysics of Being and Goodness

Boethius' Metaphysics. Studies in English: First Part: A - Gib

Boethius' Metaphysics. Studies in English: Second Part: Gra - Mez

Boethius' Metaphysics. Studies in English: Third Part: Mic - Z

Boèce: Bibliographie sélective des traductions et des études en français

Boezio: traduzioni italiane e Bibliografia degli studi sulla sua filosofia

Boethius: Übersetzungen und Studien in Deutsch

Eriugena and the Neoplatonic Metaphysics in the Early Middle Ages

Eriugena: Dialectic and Ontology in the Periphyseon

The Works of Eriugena: Editions and Translations

Bibliography on the Philosophical Work of Eriugena:

Eriugena A - Mad

Eriugena Mai - McG

Eriugena McK - Z

The Arabic Rediscovery of Aristotle's Metaphysics

The Arabic Rediscovery of Aristotle's Metaphysics

Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages: the Theology of Aristotle

Al-Kindi's Metaphysics: First Philosophy as the Study of God

Al-Farabi on the Scopes of the Aristotelian Metaphysics

Ibn Sina (Avicenna) on the Subject and the Object of Metaphysics

Translations of the Philosophical Works of Avicenna

Selected Bibliography on Avicenna' Logic and Metaphysics:

Avicenna A - G

Avicenna H - Z

Averroes (Ibn Rushd) on the Divine as the Subject of Metaphysics

The 'Second Beginning' of Metaphysics

Introducing Aristotle in Middle Ages: the Latin Translations of the Metaphysics

A Neoplatonic Metaphysics: the Liber de Causis

The Place of Metaphysics in the Medieval Classification of Sciences

Thomas Aquinas Doctrine of the Act of Being (Actus Essendi)

Duns Scotus: Univocity of Being and the Subject of Metaphysics

Properties of Being: the Medieval Doctrine of the Transcendentals

Metaphysics or Ontology? The Debate about the Subject-Matter of First Philosophy

Selected Bibliography on the Subject Matter of First Philosophy

Ontology in Modern and Contemporary philosophy

Birth of a New Science: the History of Ontology from Suarez to Kant

Selected Bibliography on the History of Continental Ontology from Suarez to Kant

Jacob Lorhard (1561-1609): The Creator of the Term "Ontologia"

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries:

I. From Fonseca to Poinsot (1560 - 1644)

II. From Scheibler to Lambert (1645 - 1777)

Francisco Suárez on Metaphysics as the Science of Real Beings

Selected Bibliography on Suárez' Metaphysics:

Editions and Translations of the Metaphysical Works of Francisco Suárez

Suárez A - F

Suárez G - Z

The Philosophy of René Descartes

René Descartes. Bibliographie Chronologique et Annotée (Première Partie: 1616-1640)

René Descartes. Bibliographie Chronologique et Annotée (Deuxième Partie: 1641-1650)

Descartes: Biographies, Bibliographies, Dictionnaires, Lexiques

Descartes. Bibliographies, Concordances, Dictionaries, Lexica

Bibliographie des études en Français sur la philosophie de Descartes

Bibliography of the studies in English on Descartes' philosophy

Descartes' Ontology: From the Rules for the Direction of the Mind to the Meditations on First Philosophy

Bibliographie des études sur les Regulae ad directionem ingenii et la recherche de la mathesis universalis

Ontology from Wolff to Kant

Christian Wolff's Ontology: Existence as "Complement of Possibility"

Selected Bibliography on the Metaphysics of Christian Wolff

Kant from the Critique of Metaphysics to Transcendental Philosophy

The Rediscovery of Ontology in Contemporary Thought

(under construction)

Index of the Section Historians of Philosophy

Annotated Bibliographies of historians of Philosophy

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Index of the pages on "Ancient Philosophy"

Presocratics

Aletheia in the Ancient Greek Thought. General Introduction

Pre-Philosophical Concepts of Truth

Bibliography on the Theories of Truth in Ancient Greek Philosophy

History of Truth. Bibliography on Greek Authors

Parmenides and the Question of Being in Greek Thought

Critical Notes on His Fragments (Diels Kranz fr. 1-3)

Critical Editions and Translations

Selected and annotated Bibliography of studies on Parmenides in English:

A - B

C - De L

De R - Grae

Grah - Ion

Jac - Lou

Mac - Mou

Mou - Rav

Rei - Sor

Spa - Vol

Wac - Z

Bibliographies on Parmenides in other languages:

Bibliographie des études en Français A - Cor

Bibliographie des études en Français Cou - Luc

Bibliographie des études en Français Mal - Z

Bibliografia degli studi in Italiano

Indici dei volumi della collana Eleatica

Bibliographie der Studien auf Deutsch

Bibliografía de estudios en Español

Bibliografía de estudos em Português

Plato

Plato: Bibliographical Resources on Selected Dialogues

Plato's Parmenides and the Dilemma of Participation

Selected Bibliography on Plato's Parmenides

Semantics, Predication, Truth and Falsehood in Plato's Sophist

Selected Bibliography on Plato's Sophist in English:

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (A - Buc)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Can - Fos)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Fra - Kah)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Kal - Mig)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Mil - Pec)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Pel - San)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Say - Zuc)

Bibliographies on Plato's Sophist in other languages:

Platon: Sophiste. Bibliographie des études en Français (A - L)

Platon: Sophiste. Bibliographie des études en Français (M - Z)

Platon: Sophistes. Ausgewählte Studien in Deutsch

Platone: Sofista. Bibliografia degli studi in Italiano

Platón: Sofista. Bibliografía de estudios en Español

Platão: Sofista. Bibliografía dos estudos em Portugués

Aristotle

Aristotle: Bibliographical Resources on Selected Philosophical Works

Aristotle's Definition of a Science of Being qua Being

Selected Bibliography on Aristotle's Concept of Metaphysics

The Doctrine of Categories of Aristotle:

Semantics and Ontological Analysis in Aristotle's Categories

Aristotle's Categories. Annotated Bibliography of the studies in English:

First part: A - C

Second part: D - Het

Third part: Hin - N

Fourth part: O - Z

Bibliographie der deutschen Studien zur Aristoteles Kategorien

Bibliographie des études en français sur les Catégories d'Aristote

Bibliografia degli studi italiani sulle Categorie di Aristotele

The Origins of the Corpus Aristotelicum

The Rediscovery of the Corpus Aristotelicum and the Beginning of the Commentary Tradition

Bibliography on the Ancient Catalogues of Aristotle's Writings and the Origin of the Corpus Aristotelicum

Studies in English on the Corpus Aristotelicum

Ancient Catalogues of Aristotle's Works:

Diogenes Laertius, Lives, V 22-27

Hesychius and Ptolemy al-Garib

Listes Anciennes des Ouvrages d'Aristote :

Diogène Laërce, Vies V, 22-27

Hésychius de Milet et Ptolémée el-Garib

Eudemus, Theophrastus

Theophrastus's Metaphysics: Debating with Aristotle

Selected Bibliography on the Philosophical Work of Theophrastus

Stoicism

The Stoic Doctrine of Supreme Genera (Categories)

Selected Bibliography on The Stoic Doctrine of Supreme Genera (Categories)

Stoic Ontology: the Doctrine of "Something" as Supreme Genus (under construction)

Selected Bibliography on Stoic Ontology

Plotinus

Plotinus' Criticism of Aristotle's Categories (Enneads VI, 1-3)

Bibliography on Plotinus' Criticism of Aristotle's Categories

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius: Selected bibliography of the studies in English (A-Lea)

Diogenes Laertius: Selected bibliography of the studies in English (Lew-Z)

Bibliografia degli studi in italiano su Diogene Laerzio

Bibliographie des études en Français sur Diogène Laërce

Bibliographie der deutschsprachigen Studien zu Diogenes Laertios

Diogenes Laertius: Selected bibliography of the editions and translations in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Latin

Boethius

Boethius' Metaphysics of Being and Goodness

Boethius' Metaphysics. Studies in English: First Part: A - Gib

Boethius' Metaphysics. Studies in English: Second Part: Gra - Mez

Boethius' Metaphysics. Studies in English: Third Part: Mic - Z

Proceedings of the Symposia on Ancient Philosophy

Proceedings of the Symposium Platonicum

Proceedings of the Symposium Aristotelicum

Proceedings of the Symposium Hellenisticum

Neoplatonic Commentators of Aristotle

Ancient Greek Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Bibliography on the Greek Commentators of Aristotle's Categories

The Neoplatonic Commentators on Aristotle's Metaphysics

Selected Bibliography on The Neoplatonic Commentators on Aristotle

Alexander of Aphrodisias' metaphysics: Annotated bibliography of the studies in English:

A - Faz

Fla - Kra

Kup - Sch

Sha - Z

Alexandre d'Aphrodise: bibliographie annotée des études en français:

A - Guy

Has - Z

Alessandro di Afrodisia: bibliografia annotata degli studi in italiano

Alexander von Aphrodisias: bibliographie der deutschen Studien

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Parmenides and the Question of Being in Greek Thought

Introduction

"Parmenides began Philosophy proper." G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Vol. I Greek Philosophy to Plato, (1825), Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1995, p. 254

"In the beginning of Western thinking, the saying of Parmenides speaks to us for the first time of what is called thinking." Martin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking? (1954), New York: Harper & Row 1967, p. 196

This page is dedicated to an analysis of the first section of Parmenides' Poem, the Way of Truth, with a selection of critical judgments by the most important commentators and critics.

In the Annotated Bibliography (see the links at the end of the page) I list the main critical editions (from the first printed edition of 1573 to present days) and the translations in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, and I give a selection of recent studies on Parmenides; in future, a section will be dedicated to an examination of some critical variants of the Greek text, with particular attention to corrections to the Diels-Kranz (abbreviated DK) edition of the Fragmente der Vorsokratiker.

The fragments of Parmenides' Poem are cited according to Diels-Kranz numbering system as adopted in the 6th edition, Berlin 1952; the Poem is divided into three parts: the Proem fr. I, 1-32; the Way of Truth (Alethéia) from fr. II to VIII, 49, and the Way of Mortal Opinion (Doxa) fr. VIII, 50 to XIX, 3.

Complete references of the texts cited are given in the Annotated Bibliography.

The Question of Being in Parmenides' Poem

"The problem of being was first posed in the West by the Greek Parmenides in the fifth century B.C. (...)

Parmenides flourished in Elea, a Greek colony on the west coast of Italy, south of the Gulf of Salerno. The colony had been founded about 540 B.C. by Greeks from Ionia, who evidently brought with them the Ionian interest in the origin and development of the visible universe. At any rate, some fifty years after the foundation of the colony, a philosophical poem composed by Parmenides handed down the first recorded Western attempt to account for the universe in terms of being, instead of through the Ionian way of change and growth. This poem of Parmenides had far-reaching effects on subsequent philosophic development, as is amply attested in later Greek writings. It continued to be read for about a thousand years, and its tenets were discussed penetratingly by thinkers of the stature of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus. Its influence on the thought of lesser figures is apparent. By the time the last copy of the complete poem had disappeared it had been quoted so abundantly by other writers that the sections and verses copied allow the general structure of the poem to be reestablished and permit the characteristic tenets attributed in tradition to Parmenides to be studied in the fragments themselves.

The poem had three parts, which formed a unified whole. The fragments that remain show how the second part followed in express sequence upon the first, and the third in express sequence upon the second. The first part was an introduction or proem, the second dealt with being, and the third with the way things appear to men. The composition fits into a recognized literary genre of the time. Somewhat as in Hesiod's Theogony (1-108) the goddesses appear to the poet at the foot of their sacred mountain and impart to him the truth about the way the immortal gods came into being, so Parmenides in the proem of his work introduces himself as being borne along in a chariot guided by sun maidens who 'leaving behind the dwellings of night, sped me toward light' (Fr. 1.9-10; DK, 28 B). There Parmenides is warmly welcomed by a goddess into her home. She tells him he is to learn from her 'all things, both the unwavering heart of well-rounded truth, and the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true assurance.' (4) The two other sections of the poem go on then to show him first what the truth is, and second how things appear as they do to mortal men.

The tenses used by Parmenides in the proem indicate clearly enough that he was describing a journey made regularly, quite as a philosopher repeatedly journeys into the regions of his thought.(5) In consequence the poem is meant to describe the travel of the philosopher in his own proper world. The road traveled is characterized as "far away from the wandering of men. (6) On it Parmenides is to learn first the truth about all things, and then how the contrasted appearances are able to penetrate all in a way that makes them so readily acceptable to human cognition.(7) The contrast is clear between truth and appearance. Things are considered to appear to men in a way radically different from what the truth about them reveals. In this framework the second section of the poem intends to explain the truth, while the third section will explain how things are able to appear to men in a way different from the truth about them. The proem envisages truth as something unwavering, something firm and stable. The way men ordinarily think is, on the contrary, wandering,' unstable. Appearance -- the ordinary thinking of mortals -- is in this manner sharply contrasted with the inspired teaching of the goddess.

The fragment accepted as second in order, listed immediately after the proem and consequently as the first statement in our record of the poem's section on being, states that only two ways of inquiry can be thought of. One is that (it) is and that (for it) not to be is impossible. This is the way that follows truth. The other is that (it) is not and that (for it) not to be is of necessity. This path offers no possibility whatever for inquiry, since non-being cannot possibly be known or expressed (Fr. 2). The fragment accepted as third then gives the reason in a rather cryptic statement that translated word for word reads "For the same thing is to think and to be" (Fr. 3).

These assertions maintain that being follows upon or accompanies truth. Truth, as envisaged in the proem, is accordingly to be given in terms of being. The stability or firmness required by the proem is here couched in the necessity involved by being. Being necessarily excludes non-being. No stronger type of stability could be found. This necessity is seen extended to everything that can be thought of or expressed. All that remains outside it is non-being, which likewise involves its own impossibility and in consequence is a path of inquiry that cannot even be entered. The basic reason given in the fragment is that non-being cannot possibly be known or expressed. If the third fragment followed immediately, it would confirm this reason with a positive statement: what is able to be known and what is able to be are the same thing.(8) That is the minimal bearing of the fragment, and seems entirely appropriate at this initial stage of the reasoning. So understood it appeals to an immediate evidence, namely, that whatever is known is known as a being. If you try to represent non-being you find it impossible.

Translated as "For thinking and being are the same," Fragment 3 gives a maximal sense that may well turn out to be in accord with Parmenides' overall thought. But can it be regarded as an immediate evidence?

Is it not rather part of a conclusion that being is a whole and is identified with all things, including thought? If that is its meaning, should not the fragment be located later in the poem, and not at the beginning of the

second section? Located immediately after Fragment 2, it should express a basic evidence that shows why the path of non-being cannot even be entered. This evidence is the immediate experience that whatever is thought of is necessarily thought of and expressed in terms of being. In consequence the alleged path of non-being cannot offer any possibility for inquiry.

However, mortals do in fact travel a path different from that of truth. It is readily observable. It seems to wander back and forth between being and non-being. It seems to assess them as the same yet not the same

(Fr. 6). Ordinary custom is regarded as urging men toward it. Yet it as well as the path of non-being is forbidden to Parmenides. Instead, he is told by the goddess to judge by reason (logos) the controversial argument

given in her words (Fr. 7). The way of being is then sketched (Fr. 8). It shows that what exists cannot be engendered or destroyed and that it cannot change or be subject to differentiation, for any of these would

require the presence of non-being. Being is accordingly whole and entire, held firmly within its limits, neither more nor less in any direction. For it all things will be a name (or, in regard to it all things are named),(9) "whatever mortals have established believing that they are true, that they come to be and perish, that they are and are not, that they change in place and vary through range of bright color" (Fr. 8.39-41).

What is the notion of being that is offered under this rather difficult phrasing? It is something that necessarily excludes non-being from its range, and on the other hand includes everything that is or exists. Any

distinction between "is" and "exists" is bound to prove futile in this context. There are only two sides to the division. One is utter nothingness, and cannot even be thought of. All else, whether expressed in terms of being or in terms of existence, falls on the other side.

But precisely what is it that is or exists? In most cases no subject at all is expressed in the Greek. In those cases in which it is expressed, the participial or infinitive form of the verb "to be" is used. Nothing other than being seems envisaged as the subject. The question accordingly returns to the original formulation: What is the notion of being that is intended in the phrases of Parmenides? Modern views differ widely.(10) However, the text does not give any subject other than being, and usually does not feel any necessity to express even that. This indicates plainly that Parmenides is seeing no distinction in fact between being and the subject that is or exists. They are regarded by him as one and the same. He writes as though this is a matter of immediate intuition. If this analysis of the beginning of the section on being is correct, Parmenides is immediately intuiting being as something necessarily different from non-being. It is a matter of just looking and seeing. You see at once that you think in terms of being, and cannot think or express non-being. Under intense philosophical scrutiny, being seems intuited after the manner in which the ordinary mortal considers himself to be intuiting color or extension or movement.

But precisely what is this being that is so intuited? Is it something corporeal or something incorporeal, something ideal or something real? The historical background against which Parmenides did his thinking would tend to limit it to the corporeal and the real. The Ionian as well as the Pythagorean thought which Parmenides could be expected to have absorbed as he grew up could hardly have directed his attention to anything beyond the visible and extended world. It was that world that his predecessors had been striving to understand and explain. It is that world that Parmenides expressly endeavors to understand and explain in the final section of his poem. He offers, it is true, an unexpected and utterly original explanation of it. But nothing else in all the poem seems indicated as the object of his study. In the setting in which Parmenides thought and wrote, anything other than the visible and tangible universe would seem incongruous as a subject for philosophizing. In the composition of the poem, moreover, the proem envisages Parmenides as located in a world of change and highly differentiated objects, and using them as a means to rise to light. The starting point of the philosophical journey seems in this way to be represented as a world of plurality and change, a world already known in the opinions of mortals but now to be explained from the viewpoint of truth." (pp. 17-21)

Notes

(4) Fr. 1.28-30 See Tarán, Parmenides, on the controversies about the meaning of these lines (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965) pp. 210-216.

(5) See Tarán pp. 9-13.

(6) Fr. 1.27 translated by Tarán p. 9; cfr. p. 16

(7) Fr. 1.31-32. On the problems in these two lines, see Tarán, pp. 211-15; and Alexander P.D. Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), pp. 194-219.

(8) On the translations of the fragment, see Tarán, pp. 41-44; also Mourelatos, pp. 165-80, on the parallel statement at Fr. 8.34-36.

(9) See Leonard Woodbury, "Parmenides on Names,"Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 63 (1958) : 145-6o; reprinted, with slight revisions, in Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy, ed. John P. Anton and George L. Kustas (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1971), pp. 145-62. Tarán's views are discussed in the revised version, p. 161, n. 29a; cf. p. ,6o, n. 18a. A coverage of the topic at about the same time may be found in Mourelatos, pp. 181-91.

(10) For a survey and discussion, see Tarán, pp. 33-36; Mourelatos, pp. 269– 76; Leo Sweeney, Infinity in the Presocratics (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973), pp. 93-110. In solidarity with proem, Charles H. Kahn, "The Thesis of Parmenides,"Review of Metaphysics 22 (1969) : 71o, views the subject as "the knowable."

From: Joseph Owens, Being in Early Western Tradition, in: Mervyn Sprung (ed.), The Question of Being. East-West Perspectives, University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press 1995.

"Parmenides of Elea, a revolutionary and enigmatic Greek philosophical poet, was the earliest defender of Eleatic metaphysics. He argued for the essential homogeneity and changelessness of being, rejecting as spurious the world's apparent variation over space and time. His one poem, whose first half largely survives, opens with the allegory of an intellectual journey by which Parmenides has succeeded in standing back from the empirical world. He learns, from the mouth of an unnamed goddess, a dramatically new perspective on being. The goddess's disquisition, which fills the remainder of the poem, is divided into two parts; the Way of Truth and the Way of Seeming. The Way of Truth is the earliest known passage of sustained argument in Western philosophy. First a purportedly exhaustive choice is offered between two 'paths' - that of being, and that of not-being. Next the not-being path is closed off the predicate expression '... is not' could never be supplied with a subject, since only that-which-is can be spoken of and thought of. Nor, on pain of self-contradiction, can a third path be entertained, one which would conflate being with not-being - despite the fact that just such a path is implicit in the ordinary human acceptance of an empirical world bearing a variety of shifting predicates. All references, open or covert, to not-being must be outlawed. Only '... is' (or perhaps '... is ... ') can he coherently said of anything.

The next move is to seek the characteristics of that-which-is. The total exclusion of not-being leaves us with something radically unlike the empirical world. It must lack generation, destruction, change, distinct parts, movement and an asymmetric shape, all of which would require some not-being to occur. That-which-is must, in short, be a changeless and undifferentiated sphere.

In the second part of the poem the goddess offers a cosmology - a physical explanation of the very world which the first half of the poems has banished as incoherent. This is based on a pair of ultimate principles or elements, the one light and fiery, the other heavy and dark. It is presented as convening the 'opinions of mortals'. It is deceitful, but the goddess nevertheless recommends learning it, 'so that no opinion of mortals may outstrip you'." (p. 229)

The motive for the radical split between the two halves of the poem has been much debated in modern times. In antiquity the Way of Truth was taken by some as a challenge to the notion of change, which physics must answer, by others as the statement of a profound metaphysical truth, while the Way of Seeming was widely treated as in some sense Parmenides' own bona fide physical system." (Vol. VII, p. 229)

From: David Sedley, Parmenides (early to mid 5th century B.C.) in: Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York: Routledge 1998.

"Parmenides expressed his ideas in a poem, but his work has been irreparably lost for at least fifteen centuries. Nothing remains of Parmenides' original Poem. The work was probably written at the end of the sixth or beginning of the fifth century B.C. Without any doubt, it was copied and recopied (always by hand) over the course of many years, but all traces of it were lost in the sixth century of our era, that is, practically a millennium after it was written by Parmenides. The last concrete reference to the book appears in the neo-Platonic philosopher Simplicius (who is known to have left Athens in 526 A.D. because the Platonic Academy was closed down).

After quoting some lines from the Poem, Simplicius explains that he is taking that liberty 'because of the rarity (dià ten spânin) of Parmenides' book' (Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, p. 144) From then on, nothing is known about Parmenides' work. (...) Attempts to reconstruct Parmenides' Poem began shortly after the Renaissance, but although they were very praiseworthy, there were classical texts still unknown at that time, and the quotations from Parmenides contained in them were not discovered until several centuries later. These attempts at reconstruction go from Henri Estienne (Poesis philosophica, 1573) to Hermann Diels (Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 1903). Thanks to their work, which went on over many centuries, today we can read a good part of Parmenides' Poem. Nineteen different quotations were found (one of them translated into Latin!). These were unfortunately labeled 'fragments,' which is why, for the sake of convenience, works on Parmenides speak about 'fragment 3' or 'fragment 5'. As each fragment includes a number of lines, it is customary to write 'fr. 8.34', for example, when quoting line 34 of 'fragment' 8.

From what I have said, it can be seen that the version of Parmenides' Poem we possess is not complete. Passages that weren't quoted by anybody will remain unknown forever. Of course, the authors we use today as sources (perhaps abusively, because these authors were writing to express their own ideas, rather than to leave testimonies of other thinkers, except in the case of historians' of thought such as Theophrastus) quoted only those passages that interested them. There is nothing more subjective than a scholar's interest. A paradigmatic case is the vital Parmenides text, our present fragment 2, which postulates the existence of being, quoted for the first time by Proclus (In Tim. 1.345) a thousand years after it was written. Probably the discovery of the fact of being by Parmenides seemed so 'obvious' that nobody thought to quote it. Perhaps the same thing happened with other passages of the Poem; we will never know. Even so, today we possess nearly 152 lines of Parmenides, and these are an inexhaustible source of reflection. So let us take advantage of them." (pp. 12-14 notes omitted)

From: Néstor-Luis Cordero, By Being, It Is. The Thesis of Parmenides, Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing 2004.

"Sextus Empiricus and Simplicius have preserved to us the most important fragments from the poems of Parmenides; for Parmenides also propounded his philosophy as a poem.

The first long fragment in Sextus (adv. Mat. VII, 111) is an allegorical preface to his poem on Nature. This preface is majestic; it is written after the manner of the times, and in it all there is an energetic, impetuous soul which strives with being to grasp and to express it." (Vol. I, p. 250)

(...)

Since in this an advance into the region of the ideal is observable, Parmenides began Philosophy proper. A man now constitutes himself free from all ideas and opinions, denies their truth, and says necessity alone, Being, is the truth. This beginning is certainly still dim and indefinite, and we cannot say much of what it involves; but to take up this position certainly is to develop Philosophy proper, which has not hitherto existed. The dialectic that the transient has no truth, is implied in it, for if the determinations are taken as they are usually understood, contradictions ensue." (Vol. I, p. 254)

From: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1968 (reprint of 1892 edition).

Relative chronology of Parmenides and Heraclitus

External evidence.

Most of what is needful to say on this subject has been said recently with exemplary clarity by M. Marcovich.(1) Once the workings of the mind of the Hellenistic chronological versifier Apollodorus are understood, the ancient external evidence for the date of Heraclitus is seen to be mere fabrication, with no visible foundation in fact. It follows that it cannot be used to date Heraclitus before Parmenides, any more than it can be used to date Heraclitus absolutely. The date of Heraclitus must rest purely on conjecture, and his relative chronology must rest on internal evidence, for whatever such evidence may turn out to be worth. Few oddities in the history of scholarship have so piquant an irony as the still all-too-frequent reliance on the external evidence to date Parmenides after Heraclitus.

Apollodorus dated Heraclitus in the sixty-ninth Olympiad, placing his άκμή at that time. Evidence for this is to be found in Diogenes Laertius, the Suda, and (possibly with less accuracy) in Eusebius' Canon.(2) The form it takes in the Suda has apparently been responsible for some unwary theorizing. The Suda says, after giving Heraclitus' Olympiad, that this was in the time of Darius the son of Hystaspes. So far as I can see, it is on this basis and on no other that Jacoby, discussing this part of Apollodorus, supposed the chronologer to have derived Heraclitus' date not only from a well-known synchronism with Parmenides but also from good evidence that connected Heraclitus with this particular king of Persia. Jacoby supposed that Apollodorus for this reason fixed Heraclitus in the middle of Darius' reign. All this is baseless. No one has ever shown that any tradition of Heraclitus' connection with Darius ever existed before the forged Letters of Heraclitus or that these Letters rested on a genuine tradition of such a connection. Jacoby apparently relied upon a passage of Clement of Alexandria(3) to show the existence of such an independent tradition, but there is no reason, chronological or other, to doubt that the very learned Clement had access to the Letters or to some intermediary source. What the Suda's source was, we can only guess, but there is no need to postulate one earlier than, or independent of, the Letters. The Letters themselves could easily be explained as reflecting not a tradition but a forger's romantic notion, the choice of Persian king being based on—of course, the Apollodoran chronology of Heraclitus and (doubtless) of Darius the Great. The Hellenistic age sometimes (not unnaturally) expected its philosophers to be so unworldly as to refuse royal invitations and readily projected its notions into the past; the biographies of the philosophers are full of romances of this sort.

This being so, there is no shadow of a reason for supposing Apollodorus to have been motivated in his dating of Heraclitus by anything but the above-mentioned synchronism with Parmenides. Placing Xenophanes' floruit at the foundation date of Elea, Apollodorus no doubt recognized not only Parmenides but also Heraclitus as pupils of Xenophanes (4) and therefore placed the birth of each in the year of their master's floruit, giving them a floruit forty years later. Heraclitus was sometimes regarded as a pupil of Xenophanes, and the interval between them is duly ten Olympiads, if the majority of our sources have the correct numbering. There is no good reason to doubt that such was Apollodorus' motivation: it would be entirely consistent with what else we know of his work.

But the majority of scholars now cast doubt, and rightly so, on the Apollodoran dating of Parmenides.(5) The evidence of Plato's Parmenides shows pretty conclusively that, in the fourth century at least, Parmenides was thought to have been born about a generation later than Apollodorus reckoned; Kirk and Raven plausibly suggest a date of birth for Parmenides of "about 515-51o."(6) The normal acceptance of this doctrine shows how little value is normally placed on the constructions of Apollodorus.

Yet it is still that same chronology of Apollodorus that is invoked to place Heraclitus before Parmenides. We are confronted with the ironic truth that a dating originally designed with the purpose of making these two philosophers contemporaries is now used to put one many years before the other. It has not been sufficiently observed that, if Apollodorus could be wrong by twenty-five years on Parmenides, he could be equally

wrong on Heraclitus. It has not been sufficiently observed that references by Heraclitus to other writers do not serve to date him exactly and certainly do not allow us to choose between. (say) 490 and (say) 485 for the composition or first dissemination of his work.(7) Nor is there any good evidence to show at what time of his life Parmenides first wrote or recited his poem.(8) For this also we cannot tell whether (say) 485 or (say) 480 is the date on which it would be safest to bet. Scholarly guessing in this particular case is worthless. So far as the external evidence goes, we do not know, and should freely admit that we do not know, whether Heraclitus wrote before Parmenides and, if he did, whether it was sufficiently before Parmenides' composition to have had any effect on him. If we are to be told these things, it will have to be on the basis of internal evidence alone.

Furthermore, that internal evidence will have to be taken from the extant remains of Parmenides and Heraclitus themselves, and of them alone. The references to Heraclitus by other writers and the imitations of Parmenides by later thinkers offer us no useful dating for the philosophical activity of either. Epicharmus? If we knew the date of the plays in question, were sure that the fragments were authentic, and also knew how long it would take Heraclitus' work to become known in Sicily and Italy, we should be able to use the evidence of Epicharmus; but we are sure of none of these things, and, if we were, we should still have to show that Epicharmus' jokes were not sufficiently comprehensible without any reference to Heraclitus—a point on which the learned differ and will no doubt continue to differ.(9) All in all, it will be more profitable to discuss the actual argument of Parmenides and see if at any point it clearly reflects a knowledge of Heraclitus' work or doctrine.(10)" (pp. 109-111)

Notes

(1) Marcovich s.v. Herakleitos, cols. 247ff.

(2) D. L. 9.1, Suda s.v. Ήράκλειτος', Euseb. Chron. s. Ol. 70.1 (for variants see Jacoby, Apollodors Chronik, Berlin 1902, p. 229 n. 4).

(3) Clem. Al., Strom. 1.65.4 (p. 41 Stahlin-Fruchtel), see Jacoby, Apollodors Chronik, p. 228 n. 3. Jacoby himself demolishes Bernays' contentions that Epictetus referred to Heraclitus' connection with Darius at Ench. 21 W., that Eudemus referred to it also, and that it was probably in any case historical. Most of what Bernays said on this topic (Die Heraklitischen Briefe, Berlin 1869, pp. 13f) is uncharacteristically in the air. Zeller (Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, I Teil, Leipzig, 1919-20, p. 914 n. 2), admitting that Bernays' remarks did not make the Persian invitation to Heraclitus more than a possibility, suggested that the forged letters proved the story known beforehand to their author. A clear non sequitur, surprisingly accepted by Kirk, Heraclitus, The Cosmic Fragments, Cambridge 1954 p. 1. Heinemann at RE Suppl. 5 col. 229 plausibly suggested that the tale of Darius' invitation to Heraclitus was an imitation of the late story concerning Diogenes and Alexander the Great, for which the first extant source is Cicero (see Natorp at RE 5 col. 767)."

(4) Cf Sotion ap. D. L. 9.5. and Suda s.v. Ήράκλειτος (cited by Jacoby).

(5) To take only English examples, see Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 4th edition, London 1930 pp. 169f; Kirk and Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers 2nd impression, Cambridge 1960 (much more cautiously) pp. 263 f.; Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, Cambridge 1962, vol. II pp. If.

(6) See last note; Jacoby was prepared (Apollodors Chronik, p. 233) to stretch the limit for Parmenides' birth as far back as 52o; I know nothing solid against this.

(7) Marcovich (s.v. Herakleitos, cols. 248f) remarks with justice that Ion of Chios and the vaticinium post eventum of Letter 4 supply termini ante quem to place Heraclitus at any rate in the first half of the fifth century. But whether Heraclitus' interest in Pythagoras and Hecataeus is sufficient to place his activity around 490 is doubtful: both these thinkers were the object of much interest later in the century, and we are in no position on this account to rule out a date for Heraclitus' writing as late as (say) 480.

(8) The suggestion (e.g., Kirk and Raven p. 268) that the goddess' address to Parmenides as κουρε dates the poem in Parmenides' youth is rash; see Taran, Parmenides, Princeton 1965, p. 16.

(9) For bibliography see Marcovich s.v. Herakleitos, col. 249.

(10) This procedure is in effect followed by Calogero, Eraclito, at Giornale Critico della Filosofia Italiana 4 (1936) 195, who accepts that Heraclitus and Parmenides were contemporaries, if not coevals.

From: Michael C. Stokes, One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy, Washington, D.C., Center for Hellenic Studies 1971.

Ontological questions in Parmenides' Poem

"If we are to examine Parmenides' reasoning profitably, an indispensable preliminary is to establish at least a provisional reading for the Greek words translated "is" or "it is" (esti), "what is" or "being" (on, to on), "to be" (einai). For while it is evident enough that in his poem Parmenides purports to be delivering an insight of the utmost significance concerning to eon (as he calls it), still the construction which he puts upon the term and its cognates, and the understanding which he expects of his listener, are not so clear and have been topics of dispute.

Especially notable, and often noted, is the fact that Parmenides' discussion of 'being' shows no sign of the conceptual distinction considered elementary nowadays, between the "is" linking subject and predicate and the "is" of existence; and in fact it needs no documentation here that this distinction was not reflected in either ordinary or philosophical Greek idiom until, at least, a much later date than his, the word esti expressing both concepts. Also highly visible in the poem is the abundance of occurrences of esti used absolutely, unaccompanied by any predicate expression. As a result of this last, the poem can create in the contemporary reader the impression that to eon is being used to mean 'what is' in the existential sense only, to mean what there is; indeed some students of the poem conclude not only that Parmenides is unwittingly confining himself to the existential meaning, but even that his confusion on this score is responsible for his entire doctrine. (2)

Such scant basis as there is for the latter idea will be adequately treated below; (3) but it is important to understand from the outset that the notion of 'being' studied by Parmenides and by early Greek philosophy in general, is not 'confined' to either of our two distinct concepts, that of existence and that of being something-or-other in the sense of having such-and-such properties (being a man, being green); rather, these notions are impacted or fused in the early Greek concept of being. A result is that a Greek inquiry ti to on, 'what is being?', frequently must be interpreted as concerned simultaneously with the concepts of being = existence and of 'being Φ ' for variable Φ. To approach a Greek thinker, even as late as Aristotle, without keeping this in mind is to risk serious misunderstanding of his concerns.

This fusion of the ideas of existence and of being-of-a-certain-sort does not merely show itself in the early use of the word esti, but seems to be part of a more general situation having other manifestations also; these have such close bearings on the interpretation of Parmenides that the matter should be explored a little further. First let us recall -- what has often been pointed out -- tendency in ancient philosophy, (a) to take as the ideal or paradigm form of fact-stating assertion the ascription of a property to an object, and the further tendency (b) to take as the ideal or paradigm form of ascription of a property to an object the use of a subject-predicate sentence with subject and predicate linked by the copula. (5) In this way the predicative use of esti can come to be thought of as paradigmatic for asserting that anything at all is the case, or obtains. And once we see this we can discern a considerable variety of assimilations at points where nowadays it is customary to make distinctions; thus, a running together of

1a) being-the case (on) with (1b) existence (on),

2a) facts (pragmata, tynchanonta, etc.) with (2b) objects (pragmata, tynchanonta, etc.)

3a) coming-to-be (the case) (gigenesthai) with (3b) coming-to-be (= coming to exist) (gignesthai).

Parallel to the fusion of the notions of fact and object as items of the world, is a tendency at the semantical level to run together properties of sentences with properties of singular and general terms. Here the common element is an expression's 'corresponding (or failing to correspond) to something that is' in the two senses of "is"; thus truth for sentences, describing what is (the case), can tend to fuse with applying to something for singular and general terms, denoting something that is (= exists), and conversely falsehood for sentences tends to merge with failure to apply to anything for terms. In this case the assimilation is rather conceptual than fully visible in the vocabulary; for example, terms (onomata) that apply to or denote something are not for this reason (6) called "true" (alethe); the fusion is evidenced when the notions are being explained: thus truth as 'saying, indicating in speech, that which is,' and falsehood as 'saying, indicating in speech, that which is not.' In these terms we can put the assimilation in this way:

4a) saying, indicating in speech, that which is (= stating truly) with (4b) saying, indicating in speech, that which is (designating something that exists),

5a) saying, indicating in speech, that which is not (= stating falsely) with (5b) saying, indicating in speech, that which is not ( = designating something that does not exist)." (pp. 112-114, notes omitted)

From: Montgomery Furth, "Elements of Eleatic Ontology,"Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1968, pp. 111-132.

The uniqueness of Being according to Parmenides

"Having pursued Parmenides' argument to the end, we may now pause to consider the function within it of the predicate ἐν applied to Being at the opening of the argument. We have observed that it is not a predicate that is formally announced as requiring proof. The nearest Parmenides comes to putting this predicate in the programme is to say that (8.4) the subject is μουνoγενἠς, unique of its kind, οr (quite simply) unique, single. But he nowhere devotes a separate paragraph to the proof of its μουνoγενἠς nature alone. So much there is to be said for Cornford's assertion that Parmenides does not prove his Being to be one. (115) Where Parmenides does, however, prove it is in the middle of a paragraph (8.34ff) ostensibly aimed at proving that the only thought is the thought of the subject's existence, and it is the immediate premiss from which that conclusion is deduced. The subject's singleness is proved from another predicate (ούλον) in its turn derivable from the original decision to speak or think of nothing save one thing, namely, what is. The assertion that Being is one is for Parmenides the statement that it is alone and single. This statement he bases on the assumption that one can think of nothing else, which in turn is based on the assertion that there is nothing else there to be thought of. Parmenides recognizes that the oneness of Being in this sense is an intermediate stage in his argument when he summarizes the thought of his opening denial of becoming by saying that "it was once" and "it will be" are inapplicable, since it is now all together, one and continuous, and when he goes on to argue at 8.22ff, as a necessary supplement to the argument against becoming, that it is indivisible and continuous. That Being is single follows from the fact that it is ούλον and συνεχες, that there is nothing else. That it will remain single and unique is the result of its being unchanging and unmoving; but it must be unchanging and unmoving because there is nothing else for it to change into and no other place for it to move to. The singleness of Being is central to the argument and depends in its turn directly on the original disjunction έστιν ἡ οὐκ έστιν. It depends on the doctrine that you cannot talk or think about the non-existent and therefore cannot discourse about anything other than the existent. The only place where the impossibility of anything other than the existent is explicit is at 8.36ff, but it is nevertheless an important, indeed a cardinal, point.

Nowhere in the poem does Parmenides start from "what is one" and deduce anything about its nature; he appears to be doing so in the opening demolition of becoming and perishing, but this is illusory, in that Being's singleness is dependent in turn on the negation of nonexistence. Further, Parmenides has nothing to say about "plurality" arising from unity. He would agree (or indeed argue) that his subject is one and cannot become many, but it is not in virtue of its unity that it cannot become many. It cannot become many, he would agree, because there never will be more than one thing; and there never will be more than one thing because that would infringe the rule that only Being can be thought of, and nothing else, either now or at any other time. Even if at Β8.22 the denial of divisibility were a denial that the subject can become many, the reason given is not that it is one but that it is, all in a like degree. To say this is not to state that Parmenides would have agreed that what is one can become man-- he would have excluded this or any other kind of becoming. It needs still to be said that Parmenides is concerned with becoming in general and that there is no reason in his text to suppose that the specific kind of becoming in which a unity gives rise to a plurality ever entered his head. Previous thought might have given him the idea, but his poem shows, and in logic need show, no trace of it whatever.

Nor does Parmenides show that what is one cannot be many.116 For again, if ούλον, σννεχες, εν, μουνογενες, οὐ διαιρετον, ταύτον, and so forth constitute a denial of plurality, as they do, it is still not in virtue of its initial unity that Parmenides' subject has these predicates hung on it but in virtue of its own existence, as being the only thing that can be talked or thought about. It is not so much that what is one cannot be many (though Parmenides would certainly have agreed, if pressed, that it cannot) as that what is must be one, single, continuous whole. Again, Parmenides does not start from unity. As long as in παν ἐστιν ὀμοιον the word ὀμοιον was taken adjectivally, there was some sort of case for supposing that line to infer the negation of plurality from the assertion of unity. But the case even then was not strong; for, though ὀμοιον is in Aristotle a kind of ἐν, the two words are not interchangeable in Presocratic thought. Further, if ὀμοιον be adjectival and equivalent here in Parmenides' mind to ἐν, one would still have to search for the argument that led Parmenides to postulate the unity (in this sense) of his subject. Parmenides would then be found guilty of proceeding from the proposition that the subject all is (παμπαν line 11) to the statement that it is all alike. The basis for this could of course be the original κρίσις; the abolition of difference being equated with the abolition of not-Being. But this interpretation, apart from ignoring the stylistic difficulties of taking ὀμοιον adjectivally, would have the philosophical disadvantage of making Parmenides less explicit and harder to follow. And, even if one followed it, one would still, it seems, be compelled to admit that unity was not an assumption for Parmenides but something he thought he had proved. One would also have to admit that Parmenides was not specially concerned to prove that what was one in general could not be many but was rather seeking to show that his subject in particular, since it was one, could not be many. There should therefore be no more heard of the hypothesis that Parmenides proved that what was one (in the sense of being homogeneous) could not have gaps in it and thus be many. It will be observed in subsequent chapters that, if Parmenides' successors did find such a proof in his text, at any rate they ignored it.

It is important in this context to notice that Parmenides did not have to prove in particular that what was one could not become many, or that homogeneity could not give rise to a varied multiplicity, in order to invalidate cosmogonies of the type produced by his Ionian predecessors. There is no reason to suppose that he had them specially in mind; but, even if he had, his general argument refutes them along with the rest of mankind. For, to make a varied world arise from a substantially homogeneous beginning, clearly something must change, or homogeneity will be the only result. So that, quite apart from the Parmenidean wholesale rejection of the world perceived by the senses, a cosmogony of the Ionian kind was impossible. If becoming and perishing went, this sort of cosmogony went with them. Parmenides, even if he were specially concerned with his Milesian predecessors, and even if they had enunciated the principle that one thing could be or become many things, did not have to oppose them on that particular ground." (pp. 141-143)

From: Michael Stokes, One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy, Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1971.

Aristotle's criticism of Eleatic philosophy

"The criticism of the Eleatic unity of Being is highly instructive for the study of the method by which Aristotle built up his own doctrine of matter; and the very inclusion of the critique in the Physics shows that he was conscious of the logical character of the origin of his theory.

He first attacks the concept of Being from the point of view of the categories, (259) showing that, if it is substance, quality, and quantity, it is many and, if it be all quantity or quality, the axiom that only substance is separable is violated. The truth of this principle is indicated by the fact that everything is predicated of substance as subject, an example of the grammatical orientation of Aristotle's thought which determines the whole passage.

Since Melissus called Being infinite, he must have considered it to be a quantity since this is the category in which infinity occurs; (260) and, if it is both substantial and quantitative, it is two, not one; while, if it is substantial alone, it cannot be infinite or have any magnitude.

Since the notion of the unity of Being collides with the doctrine of the categories, Aristotle next examines the possible meaning of " one " as applied to Being.(261) Of the three possible interpretations of Eleatic unity-continuity, indivisibility, unity of definition or essence-the first would result in multiplicity since the continuous is infinitely divisible and would also raise the question concerning the part and the whole, for discontinuous parts taken in themselves, if identical with the whole, would be identical with one another. If this unity be that of indivisibility, there will be no quantity or quality and Being will be neither infinite with Melissus nor finite with Parmenides. And, if the unity is unity of definition, the Eleatics will arrive at the conclusion of Heraclitus that all things are identical, and their theory will be concerned not with the unity of Being but with its non-existence and the identity of quality and quantity. (pp. 63-64)

(...)

The general critique of the Eleatics is followed by a special refutation of Melissus and Parmenides (p. 67)

(...)

At the beginning of the specific criticism of Parmenides (296) Aristotle says that the same type of argument is valid against him, a statement which confutes the notion that Aristotle supposed the " Being " of Parmenides and Melissus to have been differently conceived.(297) Parmenides falsely assumed that " Being" is an absolute concept whereas it really is ambiguous; he then argued falsely because he did not see that even an inseparable predicate is essentially different from the subject of which it is predicated. This explanation of the error of Parmenides is equivalent to the logical critique of Plato's Sophist; but here the language of Aristotle's correction is accommodated to his own physical terminology, and the way is prepared for a transition from the theory of predication, which is the result of the Eleatic criticism in the Sophist, to the doctrine of substrate and inhering accident. Aristotle implies that ignorance of the logic of predication led Parmenides to a mistaken notion of the physical world. The concept of Being as held by Parmenides is then subjected to a criticism which, by the process of showing that it will not fit into a logical proposition, is intended to prove that it cannot represent anything. If this Parmenidean Being is substantial Being and substantial Unity, it cannot be predicated of any subject since such a subject would be non-existent if " Being " were not an equivocal term; but neither can it act as subject, for, if anything else were predicated of it, the predicated attribute would have to be non-Being and non-Being would then be predicated of Being. Aristotle tacitly assumes that Parmenides would have to think of Being as an element in a proposition; he fails to consider the possibility that Parmenides may have fallen into error just because, having envisaged the concept of transcendental Being, he denied the possibility of existence on any lower scale. Aristotle, in trying to press the Parmenidean " Being " into service in the physical world and in rejecting its possibility because it cannot fulfil such service, is guilty of the same kind of error as Parmenides was, for he too assumes that the concept of Being must be fitted to one scale only. But his conclusion is the contrary of that of Parmenides in that he holds to the exclusive reality of phenomenal Being which Parmenides completely rejected.(298)

When Aristotle proceeds to the objection that substantial Being cannot have magnitude because as magnitude it would have parts which must then be essentially different from one another, he is using an argument resting finally on his doctrine of categories and considering the Eleatic Being as a spatial continuum equivalent to the substantial infinity which he attributes to the Pythagoreans and against which he uses the same argument.(299) The same doctrine derived from the categories forms the transition from the refutation of the possibility of the Eleatic Being as spatially continuous unity to that of its interpretation as essential and indivisible unity. Being, as substantial, must consist of parts which are themselves substantial, as is proved by the definition of such a thing.(300) That the elements of the definition cannot be accidental attributes rests upon the axiom that substance itself cannot be an attribute of any subject; and this axiom depends finally upon the exclusive character of the categories. The implication for the Eleatics is that, whatever is meant by their Being, it must, as a substantial existence, be defined by other substances which fact destroys its presumed unity.(301) But here again Being for Aristotle is conceivable only as phenomenal, for substance and propositional subject are treated as equivalent and exhaustive.'' The Eleatic argument (302) seemed cogent to some people who felt constrained thereby to admit the necessity for the existence of non-Being and to posit atomic magnitudes.(303) But, Aristotle says, even if Being is unequivocal, nothing prevents non-Being from existing, not as absolute non-Being but as "not being a particular thing." For Being in and for itself is simply substantial Being which may be manifold.

There is throughout this critique an apparent confusion of logical and physical concepts which is due to the dependence of Aristotle's physics upon his logic. At one time he said that the Eleatic error was due to the ignorance of the meaning of relative or accidental non-Being,(304) that is of logical privation which is the essence of the negative proposition; but such a concept, which in its Platonic origin was simply logical, is at once transformed into a physical doctrine by Aristotle, so that he can say shortly thereafter that an understanding of the nature of substrate would have solved the difficulties of the Eleatics.(305) Privation is, in effect, the immediate material of generation (306) and the logical subject of privation is transmuted by means of the concomitant potentiality into the physical substrate.(307) The notion that privation of a quality requires in the substrate the potential presence of that quality is a rule of logic (308) transferred to descriptive physics. It is this connection of the matter of generation and of thought, this equivalence of the proposition of logic and the description of physical change which makes Aristotle think the Physics an appropriate place to discuss the Eleatic doctrine which on his own reckoning falls outside the sphere of physics." (pp. 72-76)

Notes

(259) Physics 185 A 20-B 5.

(260) Cf. page 23, note 85, 2 supra.

(261) Physics 185 B 5.186 A 3. Cf. for the different meanings of " things called one in and for themselves,"Metaphysics 1015 B 36-1017 A 2.

(296) Physics 186 A 22-B 35.

(297) Ross in his commentary on the Metaphysics, 986 B 19, Vol. I, p. 153, supposes that Aristotle made a distinction with regard to the subject-matter and treatment of Parmenides and Melissus (cf. page 67, note 273 supra) ; such a distinction, however, occurs only in the Metaphysics and for a particular purpose (cf. page 220, note 15 infra),

(298) It is not necessary to assume that Parmenides had clearly conceived transcendental Being in itself; Aristotle himself had an inkling that Parmenides was trying to get at something essentially different from phenomenal existence (cf. page 66, note 270 supra), and Plato's frequently expressed respect for the Eleatic doctrine seems to be due to his feeling that it really aimed at the static certainty of the super-phenomenal world (e.g. Theaeteus 183 E 3 ff.). It is enough, for fhe moment, to understand that the Eleatics were stressing the immutable reality which is manifested in thought and the objects of thought as opposed to the instability of physical phenomena, and that, in the manner of those who make a startling discovery, they reserved to the new concept the sole right to consideration. But it is not impossible that they should still have considered this transcendental Being as somehow physical, though they certainly held it to be different from anything perceptible.

(299) See pages 24-25 supra.

(300) Aristotle's own solution is that no universal term has substantial existence, cf. Metaphysics 1041 A 3-5. But the argument only proves that the Eleatic Being is indefinable and transcendent; not that there is no transcendent Being. The Eleatics might well have used Aristotle's own admission that Being " runs through all the categories" (Metaphysics Gamma, chap. 2) to prove that merely because the concept will not fit into any one of the categories one cannot argue that it does not exist or that it is meaningless.

(301) The origin of Aristotle's criticism is clearly Plato, Sophist 245 B-D; but the presumption of the doctrine of categories has restricted the application of the critique to physical existence. It is strange that Aristotle failed to see the similarity of the Eleatic Being and his own God in respect of the problems of existence. Reflection upon this similarity should have made it apparent that any attempt to apply the categories to Eleatic Being must miss the fundamental motive of the conception.

(302) Physics 187 A 1-10.

(303) The Greek commentators, Simplicius, Themistius, Philoponus, Alexander, understood the sentence to refer to Plato and Xenocrates, the first of whom is then charged with positing non-Being in answer to Parmenides, the second with setting up indivisible lines. Further, the two Eleatic arguments are divided, the first being given to Parmenides, the second (by Simplicius, Themistius, Philoponus) being identified with Zeno's first paradox. But since Plato posits absolute non-Being no more than does Aristotle (cf. Plato, Sophist 258 A 11B 3; D 7-E 3; E 6 ff.), since Aristotle does not use ατομα μεγεθη specifically for Xenocrates' ατομοι γραμμαι, and since he represents the two Eleatic arguments as the incentives to the Atomic theory of Leucippus (cf. De Generatione 325 A 2 ff., especially 26-29), it seems certain that the ενιοι of the present passage are the Atomists. (For the other view see Robin, La Théorie Platonicienne des Idées et des Nombres, note 272, IV, pp. 300 ff.)

The second Eleatic argument here mentioned, the dichotomy, was referred by Porphyry to Parmenides; since the simple term is used by Aristotle of Zeno's first paradox (Physics 239 B 22), it is most likely to refer to the same argument here, although it has not previously been mentioned in this passage.

In Metaphysics 1089 A 2-6 Aristotle refers to some who made the " indeterminate dyad" an element in the generation of things, influenced by the argument of Parmenides to prove that non-Being exists. Ross suggests that he has in mind such passages as Sophist 237 A, 256 E, 241 D. In that case he overlooks the limitations η θατερου φυσις, κατα τι, πη in these passages which make the sense equivalent to his own ον τι ειναι το μη ον.

(304) Physics 191 B 13-16.

(305) Physics 191 B 33-34.

(306) Physics 191 B 15-16. Yet 191 B 35 ff. he reproaches the Platonists for making matter " non-Being " and claims himself to differentiate privation and matter.

(307) The transformation is carried so far that στερηρεσις becomes, instead of simple negation of form, a positive reality, a kind of form itself (Physics 193 B 19-20). Cf. Baeumker, Problem der Materie, pp. 218-219.

(308) Cf. its use in Topics 148 A 3-9. It is a mistake to define a thing by privation of that which is not potentially predicable of it. The logical basis of the physical doctrine, as well as some of the difficulties involved in the development, is to be seen in Metaphysics 1055 A 33-B 29.

From: Harold Cherniss, Aristotle's Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy, Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press 1935 (reprint: New York: Octagon Books, 1964).

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Parmenides of Elea: Critical Editions and Translations

Ancient Editions

1. Estienne, Henri (Henricus Stephanus). 1573. Poesis philosophica, sed saltem, Reliquiae poesis philosophicae, Empedoclis, Parmenidis, Xenophanis, Cleanthis, Timonis, Epicharmi. Adiunta sunt Orphei illius carmina qui a suis appellatus fui o theologos. Item, Heracliti et Democriti loci quidam, et eorum epistolae. Genève.

The first printed edition; see pp. 41-46, with notes of J. J. Scaliger, p. 217.

Contains citations from texts by Sextus, Clement of Alexandria, Plutarch, Proclus and Theophrastus, with the following fragments: I, 1-30 (two times I, 29-30), II, 1-8, II, 1-4, VII, 2-6, VIII. 1-2a, VIII. 3-4, VIII, 43-45, X, 1-4, XIII, 1,. XIV, 1, XV, 1 and XVI, 1-4 (sixty-seventh verses).

(Nestor-Luis Cordero, L'histoire du texte de Parménide, in In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 3-24. Paris: Vrin 1987, p. 6).

"Estienne's reconstitution (composed of sixty-seven verses) comprised, according to the present numbers, the fragments 1 (Sextus), 7 (Sextus), 10 (Clement), 4 (Clement), 8.3-4 (Clement and Plutarch), 8.43-5 (Plato), 13 (Plato), 15 (Plutarch), 14 (Plutarch), 2 (Proclus version) and 16 (Theophrastus version)." Cordero, The "Doxa of Parmenides" Dismantled, Ancient Philosophy. no. 30, 2010, pp. 231-246)

2. Scaliger, Justus Joseph. 1597-1600. MS Scal. 25.

"The first attempt of reconstitution of the poem was made by Henri Estienne(7). This was further pursued few years (about 1600) by Joseph Scaliger. Unfortunately, his version was never published; and it remained little known until 1982, when I published a report of its readings that differ from those in Diels-Kranz(8). Both Estienne ans Scaliger had grouped the quotations according to their source (for example, "ex Sexto", "ex Clemente", "ex Platone", "ex eodem", etc.)."

(7) H. Estienne, Poesis Philosophica, Genevae, 1573.

(8) N. L. Cordero, "La version de Joseph Scaliger du Poème de Parménide", Hermes, 110 (1982), pp. 391-398.

"Scaliger’s Arrangement. Scaliger’s text of the poem is considerably more involved, and more coherent, than Estienne’s. Unfortunately, Cordero’s report of it, “1 (Sextus), 7 (Sextus), 8 (Simplicius), 2 (Proclus and Simplicius), 6 (Simplicius), 13 (Plutarch and Simplicius), 15 (Plutarch), 14 (Plutarch), 7.1-2 (Plato), 17 (Galen), 4 (Clement), 10 (Clement), 16 (Aristotle version) and 18 (Caelius Aurelianus)”, inadvertently leaves out DK 9 and 12. (21) Fragments 9 and 12 (both from Simplicius) should also be included, in that order, between fragments 8 and 2. (22)." (Christopher Kurfess, "Restoring Parmenides' Poem: Essays toward a New Arrangement of the Fragments Based on a Reassessment of the Original Sources", University of Pittsburgh, 2012. Unpublished Ph. D. thesis available at https://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/16704/

(21) 21 Cordero (2010 [“The ‘Doxa of Parmenides’ Dismantled”. Ancient Philosophy 30: 231-246. ) p. 233. At first glance, it even appears as though Cordero is mysteriously giving the order of Brandis’ 1813 edition rather than Scaliger’s. In praise of Scaliger’s accomplishment, Cordero introduces Brandis’ book as the first work, after about two centuries during which Scaliger’s work was unknown or ignored, “to return to the level of Scaliger’s work”. (This too might be slightly misleading, since Fülleborn, whose work preceded Brandis’ by almost 20 years, gives a comparably full collection of fragments (though without DK 17). It would be more accurate to say that it was not until Brandis’ work, which included additional material from Simplicius’ in Cael., that the completeness of Scaliger’s work was surpassed.) Next, Cordero recounts the order quoted above, in a sentence beginning, “Brandis’ book followed this order:”, from which the reader might easily conclude that the order that follows is that found in Brandis’ work, and may or may not be repeating the order of Scaliger. In fact, the list given does not match the order in Brandis’ edition, and Brandis’ arrangement differs markedly from Scaliger’s.

In an earlier article bringing attention to Scaliger’s work, Cordero listed the order of his arrangement as follows: DK 1 (1-30), 7 (2-6), 8, 9, 12, 2, 6, 13, 15, 14, 7 (1-2), 17, 4, 10, 16, 18 (see Cordero (1982) p. 398). The order in the 2010 article, quoted above, thus appears to omit fragments 9 and 12. The order in Brandis’ edition, according to the numeration of DK, is: 1, 7.2-7a, 2, 6, 7.1-2, 8.1-15, 4, 8.16-61, 9, 12, 13, 10, 11, 15, 14, 16, 18, 22, 19 (see Brandis (1813)). The most significant difference from Scaliger, in addition to the material added from Simplicius’ de Caelo commentary, is the placement of fragment 8 after 2 and 6, which reflects an improved appreciation of the testimony of Simplicius about the placement of the fragments, as shall be discussed later.

(22) See the preceding footnote. An overview of the different early arrangements of the fragments is given in the appendix to this chapter, Synopsis A, page 190 below.

3. Fülleborn, Georg Gustav. 1795. Parmenidou tou Eleatou leipsana. Fragmente des Parmenides. Gesammelt, übersetzt und erläutert von Georg Gustav Fülleborn. Zûllichau: F. Frommann.

Greek text and German translation (102 pages).

Contains 147 verses; v. I 31-32; III, 1; V, 1-2; XI,1-4; XVII, 1; XIX, 1-3 are lacking (13 verses)

(Nestor-Luis Cordero, L'histoire du texte de Parménide, in In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 3-24. Paris: Vrin 1987, p. 13).

"In 1795, G.G. Fülleborn published a work on Parmenides, which for the first time proposed an arrangement of the fragments of the Poem into two “parts”: Alétheia (fr. 1 to 8.50 DK) and Dóxa (fr. 8.51 to 18 DK). The author was inspired by Simplicius, and this division became canonical. However, the criterion used by Simplicius is a consequence of the “platonization” of Parmenides already made by Aristotle, who found in the Eleatic a dichotomy between the sensible and the intelligible. Consequently, the Poem would be characterized by a theory on seeming and being. It is enough to look at what Parmenides himself considered to be “truth” and “dóxa” to refute this interpretation and to find in the Poem a place for the “physical” texts outside of the “dóxa,” provided that they are neither misleading nor deceiving." (N.-L. Cordero, La place de la « physique » de Parménide dans une nouvelle reconstitution du Poème, Revue de philosophie ancienne, 2017/1 (Tome XXXV), p. 3-13. English abstract)

"We need to ask two questions regarding the "canon" that has been accepted almost unanimously: (a) did Parmenides arrange himself this sequence of forty-nine verses? Moreover, (b), if "Not", from what point in time did this group of verses start being called "Doxa" ?" (N.-L- Cordero, The "Doxa of Parmenides" Dismantled, Ancient Philosophy, 2010, 30, pp. 231-246, pp. 231-232)

(...)

"Let us now examine the forty-nine verses of the Doxa, in order to answer question (b). At what point in time did this set of verses begin to be called "The Doxa"? Answer: from 1795, when Georg Gustav Fülleborn published his book Fragmente des Parmenides (Züllichau). In this edition, the poem was divided into three parts: a Prologue (fragment 1); a section Fülleborn titled "περὶ τοῦ νοητοῦ ἢ τὰ πρὸς ἀλὴθειαν"; and one he titled "τὰ πρὸς δόξαν" (fragment 8.52 to fragment 18; fragment 19 was unknown at the time). Here we have the birth certificate of Parmenidean Doxa.

What was the communis opinio before 1795? Except for the prologue (fragment 1, today) we do not know in which order the other eighteen passages actually were in the original text. The ancient quotations' sources are not precise, and in most cases their authors limit themselves to affirming, before each purported quotation, that "then Parmenides said X", or that "in another place he said Y", but they never point out any kind of "parts" in the Poem. There is no doubt that Parmenides presented his theory about "truth", and that he had also taken care to expound the "doxai of mortals" (indeed, we can even verify this today, because the word "doxa" appears on three occasions in the preserved texts). Nevertheless, we are truly ignorant as to which place and which importance "the doxai" of mortals" held in the poem." (p. 233)

"The common notion of Parmenides’ Doxa as a presentation of Parmenidean ‘physics’ or natural science, Cordero claims, involves just such an accident. It just so happened, he says, that in the early attempts of Henri Estienne (in 1573) and Joseph Scaliger (c. 1600), in which lines drawn from the same ancient author were grouped together, fragments of a more ‘physical’ character were placed at the end of their collections. In time, this chance concatenation received the misleading title Doxa, a designation that Cordero dates to G.G. Fülleborn’s 1795 Fragmente des Parmenides. That presentation would prove decisive for how Parmenides would be read thereafter: ‘the poem was divided into three parts: A Prologue (fragment 1); a section Fülleborn titled περὶ τοῦ νοητοῦ ἢ τὰ πρὸς ἀλήθειαν; and one he titled τὰ πρὸς δόξαν (fragment 8.52 to fragment 18; fragment 19 was unknown at the time). Here we have the birth certificate of Parmenidean Doxa’ (2010, 233).

That is not to say that the familiar division of the poem into a Proem, a Way of Truth, and a Way of Seeming was Fülleborn’s invention. Cordero recognizes that the division between an Aletheia and a Doxa is an ancient and genuine one. What he disputes is that fragments that appear to be concerned with ‘physics’ belong in the Doxa, claiming about the distribution of fragments, ‘we simply do not know today which verses belong to which section’ (233). Still, Cordero’s story might mislead his readers, for neither did Fülleborn invent the names that serve as titles for the sections in his edition, nor were the earlier editors, in their arrangements, simply grouping together fragments preserved by the same author. In fact, both Fülleborn, in applying the titles, and the earlier editors, in arranging the fragments as they did, were guided by the evidence they found in the authors who quoted the fragments." (Christopher Kurfess, 2016. "The truth about Parmenides’ « Doxa »." Ancient Philosophy:13-45.)

4. Peyron, Amedeo. 1810. Empedoclis et Parmenidis fragmenta ex codice Taurinensis Bibliothecae restituta et illustrata ab Amedeo Peyron. Simul agitur de genuino graeco textu Commentarii Simplicii in Aristotelem de coelo et mundo. Leipzig: August Gottlieb Weigel.

The text of Parmenides is at pp. 55-61.

This edition contains for the first time the verses found in the codex Taurinens of Simplicius' Commentary on De caelo: I , 31-32; III, 1; V, 1-2; XI, 1-4; XVII, 1; XIX 1-3).

(Nestor-Luis Cordero, L'histoire du texte de Parménide, in In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 3-24. Paris: Vrin 1987, p. 13).

5. Brandis, Christian August. 1813. Commentationum Eleaticarum. Altona: J. F. Hammerich.

Pars prima: Xenophanis, Parmenidis, et Melisii doctrina et propria philosophorum reliquis veterumque auctorum testimoniis exposita.

Sectio secunda: De Parmenide pp. 85-182.

This edition contains all the fragments with the exception of the followings: III; V, 1-2; XVII (five verses). (Nestor-Luis Cordero, L'histoire du texte de Parménide, in In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 3-24. Paris: Vrin 1987, p. 14).

"Brandis’ book followed this order: 1 (Sextus), 7 (Sextus), 8 (Simplicius), 2 (Proclus and Simplicius), 6 (Simplicius), 13 (Plutarch and Simplicius), 15 (Plutarch), 14 (Plutarch), 7.1-2 (Plato), 17 (Galen), 4 (Clement), 10 (Clement), 16 (Aristotle version) and 18 (Caelius Aurelianus)." (N.-L- Cordero, The "Doxa of Parmenides" Dismantled, Ancient Philosophy, 2010, 30, p. 233)

6. Karsten, Simon. 1835. Parmenidis Eleatae Carminis reliquiae. De vita ejus et studiis disseruit, fragmenta explicuit, philosophiam illustravit Simon Karsten. Amsterdam: J. Müller.

Series: Philosophorum graecorum veterum praesertim qui ante Platonem floruerunt operum reliquiae,Volumen primum, pars altera.

This is the first edition that contain all the 19 fragments of Parmenides' Poem.

7. Mullach, Friedrich Wilhelm August. 1845. Aristotelis De Melisso, Xenophane et Gorgia disputationes, cum Eleaticorum Philosophorum fragmentis et Ocelli lucani, qui fertur, De universi natura libello. Berlin: W. Besser.

Greek text and Latin translation, pp. 111-121.

8. Diels, Hans. 1879. Doxographi Graeci. Berlin: G. Reimer.

This work identifies the transmitters of the philosophical opinions in Antiquity.

Italian translation by Luigi Torraca, I Dossografi greci, Catania, A. Milani, 1961.

9. ———. 1882. Simplicii in Aristotelis Physicorum Libros quattuor priores Commentaria.

First volume of the critical edition of Simplicius Commentary to Aristotle's Physics, the most important source for the text of Parmenides' Poem.

The second volume, Simplicii in Aristotelis Physicorum Libros quattuor posteriores Commentaria, was published by H. Diels in 1895 (Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, voll. IX and X).

10. ———. 1897. Parmenides Lehrgedicht mit einem Anhang über griechische Thûren und Schlöser. Berlin: Georg Reimer.

Greek text, German translation with introduction and commentary.

Second edition with a new Preface by Walter Burkert and a revised bibliography by Daniela De Cecco, Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag 2003.

The Greek text of the Poem was reprinted in the Fragmente der Vorsokatriker.

Inhalt: Vorwort im Namen der Herausgeber VII; Vorwort zur 2. Auflage, von Walter Burkert IX; Reprint 1; Einleitung durch Hermann Diels 3; Lehrgedicht 28; Kommentare 46; Über griechische Thüren und Schlösser 117; Nachtrag 152; Sachregister 154; Vergleichung der Ausgaben 164; Revidierte Bibliographie 165; Anhang 177-178.

11. ———. 1901. Poetarum Philosophorum Fragmenta. Berlin: Weidmann.

First edition of the Poet-Philosophers; will serve as a basis for Diels (1903).

12. Diels, Hans, and Walther, Kranz. 1903. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Berlin: Weidmann.

Second edition 1906; third 1912; fourth 1922; fifth by Walther Kranz 1934; sixth 1952 (many reprints).

Parmenides is the author number 28, pp. 217-246 of the sixth edition.

English translations

1. Cornford, Francis Macdonald. 1939. Plato and Parmenides. Parmenides' Way of truth and Plato's Parmenides Translated, with an Introduction and a Running Commentary. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & co. Ltd.

Reprinted by Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.

Contents: Preface V; List of abbreviations XI; Introduction. Chapter I. The earliest Pythagorean cosmogony 1; Chapter II. Parmenides' Way of Truth 28; Chapter III. Zeno and Pythagorean Atomism 53; The Parmenides 63; Index 247.

"This book was undertaken with the hope that a close study of the whole chain of argument [of Plato's Parmenides] would bring to light some method of interpretation that would give the dialogue a serious significance, worthy of its author and consistent with its position in the history of Greek thought. I could find not the faintest sign of any theological revelation. On the other hand there were innumerable features whose presence could not be accounted for in a mere parody or light-hearted polemic. The conclusion reached was that the second part of the dialogue is an extremely subtle and masterly analysis, dealing with problems of the sort we call logical, which we know to have been much in Plato's mind in his later period. The assumptions required to yield this conclusion will be set out in the commentary introducing the dialectical exercise.

As a general rule, Plato's predecessors and contemporaries (including Aristotle) throw a surer light upon his meaning than his remote successors, whose systems betray the influence of many centuries of religious and philosophical development. Accordingly, in a somewhat long introduction I have tried to fill in the historical background. The conversation in the dialogue arises out of a reading of Zeno's controversial treatise, directed against critics who had derided what seemed to them the absurd consequences of Parmenides' reasoning. It is necessary to form some picture of the position held by these critics themselves and of the nature of Zeno's counter-attack. Behind this controversy, again, lay Parmenides' own system; and this, in its turn, had involved the rejection of the Pythagorean doctrine he had learnt in his youth.

I have therefore begun with an attempt to reconstruct the earliest Pythagorean cosmogony. The second chapter gives an account of Parmenides' Way of Truth and of its relation to the rest of his poem. The third deals with Zeno and his opponents. All these topics are relevant to the understanding of the dialectical exercise, which not only includes a searching criticism of Eleatic dogma, but indicates the lines on which Plato would remodel the Pythagorean system." (Preface, IX-X)

2. Freeman, Kathleen. 1946. Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A Companion to Diels 'Fragmente der Vorsokratiker'. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

A complete English translation of the 'B' passages (the 'Fragments') from Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Fifth edition).

Reprinted in 1983 by Cambridge University Press.

3. Tarán, Leonardo. 1965. Parmenides. A Text with Translation, Commentary and Critical Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Contents: Foreword VII-IX; List of bibliographical abbreviations X-XIV; Part I: Parmenides' life 1; Fragments I-XIX: Text, translation, and commentary 7; Part I: Critical essays 173; Chapter One: Parmenides concept of Being 175; Chapter Two: Aletheia and Doxa 202; Chapter Three: The world of appearance described in the Doxa 231; Chapter Four: Parmenides in the ancient philosophical tradition 269; Appendix I 296; Appendix II 299; Index of Fragments of Parmenides 303; Index of passages 305; Index of proper names 309-314.

"Parmenides' doctrine represents a turning-point in Greek philosophy, one that can truly be said to determine the course of Greek thought until the time of Aristotle. Not only Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists but also Plato and Aristotle tried to answer the dilemma put forward by Parmenides, namely, that since any difference from Being is absolute non-Being, and as such unthinkable, no account of the world of difference and change can be valid. But this doctrine not only invalidates any explanation of the sensible world, it asserts that this world insofar as it is different from Being is non-existent. Because it seems of fundamental importance for the understanding of Greek philosophy to determine exactly what Parmenides thought, I decided to study all available evidence about his work. My decision was based on the conviction that only such a study can be of value today, for Parmenides' philosophy is one in which all is in all and any interpretation of part of it risks, by not taking into consideration other aspects of his thought, being contradicted by the results of another partial study.

I have devoted the first part of the book to a line by line commentary on the fragments. I have edited the text only to facilitate reference and to complete in part the critical apparatus given by Diels-Kranz. I have made use of the best available editions of the ancient authors who quote Parmenides' text. A fresh study of the manuscripts of Simplicius' commentaries to Aristotle's Physics and De Caelo may still add to our knowledge, but I am convinced that even such a study would not drastically change the status of the text of Parmenides. The variant readings given in the critical apparatus and sometimes in the commentary are selective and are especially meant to illustrate the places where a variant reading may be of importance for the interpretation of the text.

The translation has no pretension to literary value and has been added as a complement to the commentary, to reduce as much as possible the number of ambiguities in the construction of the Greek. Each fragment is followed by its commentary, but in a few places discussion of the text is postponed till the second part of the book to preserve the unity of the first three chapters. These chapters deal with more general aspects of Parmenides' thought: his notion of Being, the relation of Aletheia to Doxa, and the content of the second part of the poem. The fourth chapter attempts to determine what the ancients took Parmenides' philosophy to be and what value this testimony has for the historical reconstruction of Parmenides' thought.

Since such a study as the present is by its very nature largely polemical, I wish to emphasize here my indebtedness to the scholars who have devoted themselves to the study of Parmenides and not least to those with whose interpretations I happen to disagree. In particular I would like to mention the pioneering work of H. Diels, E. Zeller, W. A. Heidel, and H. Frankel. The book, with some changes of form and content, is a doctoral dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Princeton University in September 1962. But I have taken into consideration studies on Parmenides that reached me up to December 1963." (from the Preface)

4. Lombardo, Stanley. 1982. Parmenides and Empedocles: The Fragments in Verse Translation. San Francisco: Grey Fox Press.

Contents; Preface VII; Parmenides. Introduction 1; The Fragments 11; Empedocles. Introduction 23; On Nature 31; Purifications 57-65.

"The interpretation of Parmenides’ poem implicit in-my translation differs from Mourelatos’ interpretation (and most others) in important respects. But interpretation of a text such as Parmenides’ is primarily a matter of emphasis. My hope is simply that the poem which I, as an added artificer, have made out of Parmenides’ Greek will contribute to the reinstatement of his text as poetry.

In making over the twenty fragments of Parmenides’ philosophical epic the translator is assisted by the contemporary poetic convention that fragments take on an enhanced significance by their very fragmentary nature.

Everyone who works with Parmenides in any way must be tempted to alter the arrangement of the fragments provided by Diels in his standard edition. I certainly tried to do so. In the end I was impressed with the poetic sense of Diels’ order and retained it for that reason. This also facilitates comparison with the Greek text and with the standard prose translations. It would be interesting to experiment with versions that run the fragments together, reassemble them or imbed them in the matrix of another poem, but I have not done any of these things here. Parmenides’ fragments very happily constitute a poem for us in their traditional scholarly arrangement." (pp. 1-2)

5. Kirk, Geoffrey Stephen, Raven, George Earle, and Schofield, Malcolm. 1983. The Presocratic Philosophers. A Critical History with a Selection of Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Second revised edition by M. Schofield; first edition 1957 by K. G. Kirk and J. E. Raven.

See Chapter VIII - Parmenides of Elea - pp. 239-262.

"This book is designed primarily for those who have more than a casual interest in the history of early Greek thought; but by translating all Greek passages, and confining some of the more detailed discussion to small-type notes at the end of paragraphs, we have also aimed to make the book useful for those students of the history of philosophy or science who have no previous acquaintance with this important and fascinating field.

Two points should be emphasized. First, we have limited our scope to the chief Presocratic `physicists' and their forerunners, whose main preoccupation was with the nature (physis) and coherence of things as a whole. More specialized scientific interests were simultaneously developing throughout the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., especially in mathematics, astronomy, geography, medicine and biology; but for lack of space, and to some extent of evidence, we have not pursued these topics beyond the interests of the chief physicists. We have also extruded the Sophists, whose positive philosophical contribution, often exaggerated, lay mainly in the fields of epistemology and semantics. Secondly, we have not set out to produce a necessarily orthodox exposition (if, indeed, such a thing is conceivable in a field where opinion is changing so rapidly), but have preferred in many places to put forward our own interpretations. At the same time we have usually mentioned other interpretations of disputed points, and have always tried to present the reader with the main materials for the formation of his own judgement.

(...)

Where the evidence is fuller and clearer - particularly where considerable fragments survive, as for example in the case of Parmenides the commentary can naturally be shorter; where the evidence is sparser and more confusing, as for example in the case of Anaximander or the Pythagoreans, our own explanations must be longer and more involved. Chapter 1 in particular, which deals with a part of the subject which is often neglected, is perhaps more detailed in parts than its ultimate importance demands, and nonspecialists are advised to leave it until last.

Only the most important texts have been quoted, and those in an inevitably personal selection. For a nearly complete collection of fragments and testimonies the reader should turn to H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (5th and later editions, Berlin, 1934-54, edited by W. Kranz)." (from the Preface to the First edition)

"It is now more than twenty-five years since The Presocratic Philosophers first appeared; it has been through many printings since, with minor corrections until 1963 and subsequently without change. (...)

There are major and important changes in this new edition. M. Schofield has completely rewritten the chapters on the Eleatics and Pythagoreans, principally because of work by analytic philosophers on the former and by Walter Burkert (in particular) on the latter -- work which has called for some reassessment of the Cornford-Raven view on the interrelations between the two schools. Alcmaeon has been incorporated in these chapters." (From the Preface to the 1983 revised edition).

6. Gallop, David. 1984. Parmenides of Elea. Fragments. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments VII; Preface IX; Abbreviations XI; Introduction 3; Glossary 41; Text and translation of the Fragments 45; Fragment contexts 95; Testimonia on Parmenides' life and teaching 104; Sources and authorities 124; Bibliographical note 133; Select bibliography 135; Index 141-144.

"This volume contains a text and a new translation of the extant fragments of Parmenides' philosophical poem. It also offers the first complete translation into English of the contexts in which the fragments have come down to us, and of the ancient testimonia concerning Parmenides' life and thought. All of these secondary materials are collected in the comprehensive work of Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (6th edition, Berlin 1951), hereafter referred to as D-K, and all have been included here.

The purpose of the translation is to provide an English version that will be of service to modern readers who wish to explore the poem in detail. All the fragments have been translated in full, and appear in the order that has become canonical since the fifth edition of Diels-Kranz. References to the fragments are given in the conventional style derived from this order. thus, 8.50 refers to line 50 of fragment 8.

As far as differences of word-order allow, the translation of the poem has been arranged in lines corresponding to those of the Greek text. This style has been adopted purely for ease of reference, and not with the aim of producing a poetic version. No attempt has been made to capture the literary qualities of Parmenides' verse or the archaism of his language.

Richard Robinson, in the introduction to his translation of Aristotle's Politics Ill-IV (Oxford 1962, p. XXX), has characterized a translation as 'a shameful form of book.' For by offering a translation of each sentence in his original, the translator 'implies that he knows that this is what the original sentence means. But sometimes he does not know what it means, and is only guessing as well as he can.' In publishing a fresh version of Parmenides' poem the present translator makes no claim to know what every sentence in the original means. To signal the worst uncertainties, alternative renderings have been appended for passages whose meaning is disputed, or where major questions of interpretation hinge upon the text or translation adopted. In these places the reader will find it instructive to compare alternatives. He will then quickly discover how completely he puts himself at the translator's mercy, if he relies entirely upon any single version. He may also find it useful, especially if he is wholly dependent upon translation, to consult the short glossary of terms that present special problems of translation or interpretation.

The introduction advocates one plausible, modern interpretation of Parmenides. It also tries to bring out the more important points still in dispute, and some major philosophical questions raised by the poem. It has seemed better to write an extended essay, cross-referenced to the translation, than to provide a separate series of exegetic and critical notes. This arrangement, regrettably, has made it necessary to skate all too lightly over much significant detail. But it also avoids dispersing editorial comment too widely for convenient use; and by allowing a more continuous exposition of the poem than is possible in separate notes, it may better help the explorer to find his bearings in the Eleatic jungle.

The notes to the introduction occasionally qualify or enlarge upon points made in the text. Their main purpose, however, is to provide guidance to the secondary literature, supportive either of views adopted in the text without argument or of defensible alternatives. Almost every line of Parmenides is controversial, and it is not possible, in the space available, to discuss every problem, let alone to argue for definitive solutions. Although the present exposition is thus unavoidably 'partisan,' it attempts to air disagreements sufficiently to provide some awareness of what is at issue. Given this limited aim, the use of secondary sources is necessarily selective. Fuller treatment of the literature would have incurred the risk of producing a work impenetrable to all but specialists. And of such works Parmenides has perhaps received his due share already.

Discussion has therefore been confined mainly to a small number of leading studies in English. All sources used, together with others readily accessible, have been listed in the Bibliography." (from the Preface)

7. Coxon, Allan Hartley. 1986. The Fragments of Parmenides. A Critical Text with Introduction, Translation, the Ancient Testimonia and a Commentary. Assen: Van Gorcum.

Contents: Preface V-VI; Introduction 1; Text and translation of the Fragments 41; The ancient Testimonia 95; Commentary 156; Appendix 257; Index 267-277.

"The text of the fragments of Parmenides was placed on a firm foundation by Diels (Simplicii in Aristotelis Physicorum Libros quattuor priores Cornmentaria, 1882; Parmenides Lehrgedicht, 1897; Poetarum Philosophorum Fragmenta, 1901). Since the latest editions of Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker depart in several places from Diels' own text, it seemed desirable to re-examine the tradition, and the following pages were originally planned as a simple text with fuller critical apparatus than has appeared since Poetarum Philosophorum Fragmenta and with epic parallels. A revised collection of testimonia was then added, incorporating the Platonic, Aristotelian and Neoplatonic discussions, mostly written with knowledge of the complete text and essential for understanding the fragments, but in the main omitted by Diels. Finally it seemed inescapable to complete the work with an introduction and commentary.

(...)

The inclusion among the testimonia of philosophical as well as of purely doxographical material necessitated the substitution of a broadly chronological order for the analytical order adopted by Diels. I have made use of the standard printed editions, but have modified the text in numerous places, particularly in Proclus' commentary on the Parmenides, where the readings are based on my own collations. Textual notes are added only where clarity demands it. In citing the text of Aetius after Doxographi Graeci I have included short forms of the chapter-headings, which formulate the questions which the information extracted from the original works has been adapted to answer, and apart from which it cannot be evaluated." (from the Preface)

See the Review of the first edition of the book by Malcolm Schofield in Phronesis 32, 1987, pp. 349-359.

8. Sider, David, and Johnstone Jr., Henry. 1986. The Fragments of Parmenides. Bryn Mawr: Thomas Library, Bryn Mawr College.

"This Bryn Mawr Commentary differs from most in that the text has been prepared especially for this edition (by D.S.) and the commentary has had to take account of the fact that there are major disagreements among scholars over the manuscript readings, the meanings, and even the syntax of many passages crucial for an understanding of Parmenides' meaning. Hence, the number of places where we offer several possibilities (tending to put our preferred interpretation first)." (From the Preface)

"Metrical Note

Parmenides wrote in dactylic hexameter, the meter of Homer and Hesiod, whom he followed also in matters of dialect and morphology. Each line of this verse scheme consists of six feet, each either a dactyl (a long syllable followed by two short syllables, _ ‿ ‿ ) or a spondee (two long syllables, _ _). The sixth foot is always treated as a spondee; the first five are more often dactyls than spondees, especially the fifth foot, where spondees are rare (cf. 1.7).

A syllable is long if it contains a diphthong or long vowel, η and ω are always long; α, ι, and υ are either long or short (check LSJ [Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek-English Lexicon]); ε and ο are always short. A syllable containing a short vowel is long if the vowel is followed by two consonants (including the double consonants ζ, ξ, and ψ). Thus, in 1.1, although Ἵπποι contains a short iota, the first syllable is long. Exception: a plosive (ηβφ κγχ τδθ) followed by a liquid (λρ) or nasal (μν) need not produce a long syllable; examples are at 8.3, 8.46, 16.1.

Note the two following provisos with the above rules. (1) If a word ends in a naturally long syllable or diphthong and is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, the final vowel or diphthong may be shortened (e.g., 1.26 ἐπεὶ οὔτι). This process is called correption and may also occur within a word. (2) Two vowels in succession not forming one of the usual diphthongs may be read as one long syllable (e.g., 1.17 πυλέων). This process is called synizesis."

9. Henn, Martin. 2003. Parmenides of Elea. A Verse Translation with Interpretative Essays and Commentary to the Text. Westport: Praeger Publishers.

Contents: 1. Parmenides and his Predecessors 1; 2. Translation of the Diels B-Fragments 23; 3. The Question of Being: a dialectic of alternative paths 31; 4. Fragment B3: the metaphysical unity of Thinking and Being 51; 5. Parmenides' closed-loop concept of time and the illusion of linear time-consciousness 67; 6. Necessity, possibility, and contingency 85; 7. The teachings of the Goddess 101; 8. The Diels and Kranz Greek text in the order translated 109; 9. Commentary on the Greek 115; Select bibliography 143; Index locorum: the Diels B-Fragments of Parmenides 145-147.

"Parmenides recounts a dream voyage through the stars in a chariot drawn by swift chargers and beautiful attending maidens. Traveling through profound darkness the train arrives at the gates of the ways of Night and Day. Avenging Justice holds the keys; yet the maidens persuade her to open the gates to insure safe passage to the palace of the Goddess, who teaches Parmenides the Truth of Being.

The Goddess instructs Parmenides on two ways of thinking inquiry: The one, that Being is, and must always be; the other, that Being is not, and cannot ever be. She then counsels him not to follow the second path, the Way of Opinion, as it represents the errant path of mortal minds, which do not recognize the eternal Essence of all that is. But by following the Way of Truth, Thinking and Being are found to be the same; while the unlimited source of all there is is ungenerable, indestructible, systematic, and whole, subsisting in one eternally present "now" which transcends the passage of time. The circumference of the cosmos holds the clue to Being's unified simplicity. The Goddess then tells Parmenides to learn the opinions of mortals, so that he may never be outmatched in argument. Finally, the Goddess speaks of Destiny who rules sexual intercourse and painful birth. She warns that everything contained in the mortal cosmology is bound by Necessity to inevitable decay; but Being shall never cease to be.

The following translation recognizes Hermann Diels' original numbering of the B-fragments from Parmenides Lehrgedicht (1897), which are listed on the left in parentheses. But Diels' original ordering of the B- Fragments has been modified to register a coherent flow of ideas and images." (p. 23)

10. Geldard, Richard G. 2007. Parmenides and the Way of Truth. Rhinebeck: Monkfish Book Publishing Company.

Table of Contents: Introduction VII-XI; Chapter 1. Parmenides of Elea 1; Chapter 2. The Fragments 20; Chapter 3. Wrestling with Parmenides 52; Chapter 4. The Way of Truth 92; Chapter 5. From Being to Consciousness 109: Glossary 127; Suggested reading 128; Endnotes 129-131.

"Parmenides wrote a long poem entitled "On Nature." We have several fragments of the poem, preserved by later historians, philosophers and commentators.

Two-thirds, possibly more, is lost. We know a little more about the whole, fortunately, from Plato's dialogue "Parmenides," which describes a visit by the aging philosopher to Athens, where he meets with interested intellectuals, including a young Socrates. A small industry of interpretation has evolved out of the complexity of Plato's dialogue, leading to varied conclusions about the missing sections. But, more of that below.

The "Nature" of the title is the Greek physis [foo-sis], a term that expresses a visionary concern for "the nature of things," not just the tangible facts of physical nature. It appears, in fact, that most Presocratic truth-seekers expressed their views in a similar way, entitling their work "On Nature" as a sign that they were not writing a poem entitled "On the Gods." Physis was the general topic, and each thinker made a contribution, some in more abstract language than others. That Parmenides chose the verse form was also an accepted means of expression, following Hesiod and, to some extent, Homer. Verse was the language of revelation. The rhythm and sound of the hexameters' elevated thought above ordinary discourse. In more recent times, we have the example of Shakespeare, who employed prose in his plays only for fools and madmen. Iambic pentameter was reserved for rational (albeit sometimes brutal) discourse.

It is also useful to remember that the Greeks spoke their verse aloud. Silent reading was unknown until the Roman era. The eye followed the unbroken line of letters, the words rolled off the tongue, were caught by the ear, and only then could meaning be grasped by the understanding. Since Greek is an inflected language, word order depends on sound, how the words flow together, how vowels and consonants combine to produce a smooth, harmonic measure. As a result, the hard consonants do not bump into one another. A vowel invariably intercedes to smooth the way. Word order then, is based on auditory effect, not grammar, and meaning arises as much from this effect as from the vocabulary, making translation into English a challenge, especially from poetry to poetry. Poetic licence is required, even encouraged.

As flawed as the following transliterated verse is, it is a serious attempt to capture both the sound and sense of Parmenidean revelation, which is what his poem was meant to be. The result, hopefully, is revealed truth, arrived at in communion with divine communion, at least insofar as Parmenides experienced it. The poem emerges from the force of Persuasion, the goddess who keeps company with Justice, whose task it is to guard the gates giving access to the realm of higher knowledge. The youth, or kouros, gains admittance to this realm through his desire for truth and comes from the strength of eros in his soul. It is access that anyone who is worthy and who deeply desires such communion can attain. On the basis of what is traditionally called the 'proem,' his journey into the cosmos to the goddess, we are asked to accept that Parmenides was granted admittance to a special realm and once in the presence of divinity, received the Way of 'Truth." (pp. 20-21)

11. Coxon, Allan Hartley. 2009. The Fragments of Parmenides: A Critical Text with Introduction and Translation, the Ancient Testimonia and a Commentary. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Revised and expanded edition edited with new translations by Richard McKirahan and a new Preface by Malcolm Schofield.

Contents: Preface to the revised and expanded edition by Malcolm Schofield VII; Editor's Note by Richard McKirahan XI; Preface XIII-XIV; Introduction 1; Text and translation of the Fragments 45; The ancient Testimonia with English translation 99; Commentary 269; Appendix 389; Concordance 400; Indexes & Glossary 403-461.

"The book's other major contribution to scholarship is its collection of testimonia. Coxon's is a much fuller selection than was provided by Diels and Kranz in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. It is ordered not thematically (as in Diels-Kranz), but in chronological sequence of the writers who transmit the information: whether in their own extant texts (as with Plato or Aristotle), or -- where those texts do not survive -- as recorded in later authors (e.g. for Eudemus, in Simplicius; for Posidonius, in Strabo: though here Coxon usefully refers in the first instance to a standard modern collection of fragments and testimonia of the cited author wherever possible). To enhance the accessibility of the new edition, an English translation facing the original Greek or (occasionally) Latin has been prepared by Richard McKirahan.

Coxon himself indicated -- in handwritten notes on two copies of the book -- where he thought revisions or corrections were needed to the first edition. In this second edition any such instance amounting to more than correction of a typographical error is pointed out in a corresponding footnote (above Richard McKirahan's initials). One extra testimonium is added: Xenocrates, T16a. Really substantial revisions are in fact few and far between. The most significant comes in the commentary on lines 34-41 of Fragment 8, where Coxon had revised his understanding of Parmenides' grammatical construction at lines 35-36, and had rethought the overall purpose of the passage. Here as elsewhere the text of the first edition is preserved in a footnote.

Richard McKirahan's translation of the testimonia is not the only extra help offered to the reader. There are also English translations of all Greek words and phrases throughout the Introduction, Commentary and Appendix, and line numbers have been inserted in the testimonia themselves to enhance ease of reference. Highly abbreviated forms of names of ancient authors and works have been spelled out more fully. New supplementary material includes the Greek-English Index and an English-Greek glossary to the translations of the testimonia. Finally, as a way of enabling the looking up of page references based on the pagination of the first edition, the original page numbers are provided here in square brackets inside the margins." (pp. VIII-IX)

12. Palmer, John. 2009. Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Appendix: The Fragments of Parmenides' Poem. Introduction 350; Text and translation of the Fragments 362; Textual notes 376-387.

"The notes that follow discuss those places in the fragments where any real uncertainty remains about what Parmenides wrote. Since their aim is merely to explain why the readings printed above have been adopted (in places where this has not already been made clear in the appendix's introduction), I have tried to keep these notes as brief as possible. For the most part, readings reflecting the emergence of scholarly consensus have been printed without comment. Since, for reasons already indicated, it has not been possible to furnish an apparatus criticus, manuscript variants are recorded here when necessary and as reported in recent editions. Instances where the manuscripts preserve viable alternatives, or even readings genuinely useful for determining what Parmenides himself wrote, are less numerous than one might suppose." (p. 376)

13. Graham, Daniel W., ed. 2010. The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Translated and edited in two volumes by D. W. Graham.

Vol. I, Chapter 6 Parmenides pp. 203-244.

14. Mckirahan, Richard. 2011. Philosophy before Socrates. An Introduction with Texts and Commentary. Indianapolis: Hackett.

Second revised edition (first edition 1994).

See Chapter 11, Parmenides of Elea, pp. 145-173.

Concluding remarks: "Parmenides' Truth left a lasting mark on philosophy. The present account has been generous in its assessment of this section of his poem. It would be easy to fault him for making our task more difficult than it need be. His language is frequently obscure, as is his argumentation. It is frequently an uphill battle to discern how his train of thought proceeds. There are gaps in the reasoning and extensive use both of terms that may (or may not) be intended as near-synonyms (but how near?) and of figurative, even metaphorical language that needs to be interpreted. Objections can be raised against the arrangement of the arguments, since it is not always clear where one topic leaves off and another begins. In general, it requires a great deal of sympathy to find a way for the arguments go through. My reason for interpreting Parmenides charitably is that only in this way can we appreciate the interest, the potential, and the challenge of his ideas and arguments. Only if we make the effort to unravel his tortuous reasoning and fill in the gaps in ways congenial to his point of view can we hope to understand his enormous influence on philosophy,(57) And enormous it was. With Parmenides Greek philosophy began to become more systematic. Argument played an increasingly important role in the exposition of theories. The subsequent history of Presocratic philosophy is often seen in terms of responses to Parmenides: Zeno and Melissus developed his ideas, while Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and the Atomists (to name only the most important figures) accepted that there is no generation from or perishing into nothing and composed their cosmologies on this basis, even while disagreeing on other points of Eleatic doctrine." (p. 173)

(57) One of Melissus's virtues is that he presents his numerical monism in a clearer and more systematic way. See Ch. 15. [Melussus of Samo, pp. 293-302]

15. Campbell, Edward H. 2011. The Poem of Parmenides. A new translation with text and commentary. Bozeman, MT: Inopibus Press.

Preface: "For those who are concerned with such matters, in English, no good translation of the Poem of Parmenides has been produced; the John Burnet (1892) translation being incomplete, and, from what was done, is not even close to good enough for the contemporary student. I have, therefore, produced one. I will not reiterate the biography of Parmenides, whereas it is available elsewhere in many places, and will not interpret his philosophy, which has been done poorly, with meager knowledge of it; since a good translation has, until now, been non-extant. I have rendered only his poem, in translating it putting in enough of myself by translating. The student should note, moreover, that, of his poem, what is extant comes to us in fragments; the enumeration of those fragments in the table of contents to this work is a supposed logical order handed over to us by the textual critics of the 19th century. We accept as correct their text as an article of faith; if they did their work right, and we believe they have, then what we do have is the best text we shall ever have. Keep in mind, however, each part of the poem is a fragment. We cannot, therefore, know what went before or what came after each of them, leaving context to conjecture. Like all things mortal, my translation and commentary are flawed; I must confess my philological powers often failed me. To the best of my knowledge, nevertheless, is the best English translation, ad hoc, you will find. In view of the foregoing, let it, then, be a spring-board for a new study of this worthy author. For my part, I shall rely on my readers to supply the necessary corrections when needed."

16. Laks, André, and Most, Glenn W. 2016. Early Greek Philosophy, Volume V: Western Greek Thinkers, Part 2. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

19. Parmenides, pp. 3-151.

"Parmenides is the author of a single poem in dactylic hexameters. Its text was preserved in its entirety at least until the time of Simplicius (sixth century AD), who seems to have recognized that he was making more probable its survival, at least in part, by citing large extracts from it. One hundred sixty-one lines have reached us, the vast majority of these thanks to him. We possess almost the entirety of the introduction (or “proem”), a very large part (90 percent, according to Diels) of the first of the two grand sections announced at the end of this introduction, and a small fraction (barely 10 percent, again according to Diels) of the second part. It is probable that the whole poem did not exceed the length of one of the shorter books of Homer’s epics, between three hundred and four hundred lines." (pp. 3-4)

(...)

"Although we possess only few verses originally belonging to the second part of the poem, two programmatic passages (D8, D9) and the doxographic reports give us a fairly precise idea of its contents. This part was in any case Parmenides’ attempt to improve on his predecessors’ attempts to explain the world. His starting point is constituted by two principles, which he calls “forms” (morphai), Fire (or Light) and Night, which mortals are said to have posited (this implies a certain arbitrariness). Each principle is in a relation of identity to itself, in the image of being, but it is also opposed to the other one: the fire of day is mild and light, the night is dense and heavy. Their mixture, out of which the world has progressively issued, is the work of a divinity with a demiurgic function. The domain covered by the explanations given was broad, reaching from the nature of the stars and their trajectories to the reproduction of living beings. It is understandable that antiquity could have considered Parmenides as a full-fledged “natural philosopher,” despite the Platonic-Aristotelian tendency to consider only the first part of his poem and to treat his cosmophysiology as being at best secondary. It is true that Parmenides’ immediate disciples, Zeno and Melissus, renounced all explanation bearing on the world, which they considered simply inconsequential from the point of view of the doctrine of being." (p. 6)

17. McKim, Richard. 2019. "Parmenides: The Road to Reality. A New Verse Translation." Arion no. 27:105-118.

"parmenides divided his poem into two parts, traditionally called “The Way of Truth” and “The Way of Seeming”. The first, presenting his vision of being, has almost entirely survived.

It begins by describing a magical airborne chariot ride that transports the poet to the home of a nameless goddess who reveals the vision to him. It concludes as she introduces her cosmological account of the sensory world. This cosmology of illusion occupied the second, much longer part of the poem, but the ancients were apparently too bedazzled by the first to take much notice, and so the second is almost entirely lost.

Many commentators feel baffled as to why the goddess bothered with such an elaborate account of a world she disparages as unreal, but she supplies the answer herself at the end of part one: “in order that none among mortals shall ever surpass you in knowledge.” Parmenides has anticipated the objection that his theory of being leaves the sensory world unexplained, and responds in effect: “I can explain it better than anyone—by explaining why you think it exists when it doesn’t!” Ancient Greek culture was nothing if not competitive.

Nevertheless, I bow to the indifference of antiquity by omitting the few tattered remnants of part two. My translation consists of all the major fragments of part one, which I’ve retitled “The Road to Reality” and which, with a bit of arranging, can be read as a continuous text that’s pretty much complete." (pp. 107-108)

French translations

1. Riaux, Francis. 1840. Éssai sur Parménide d'Élée suivi du texte et de la traduction des fragments. Paris: Librairie De Joubert.

Texte et traduction pp. 206-230.

2. Beaufret, Jean. 1955. Parménide. Le Poème. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Reprint 1966: Table. Avertissement de l'éditeur V; Avant-propod VII-VIII; Introduction è al lecture du Poème de Parménide 1; Fragments 75-93.

Avant-propos (1955) "L'origine du présent travail est une traduction du Poème de Parménide laissée par Jean-Jacques Riniéri, lorsqu'en août 1950 il quitta Paris pour le voyage en Hollande dont il ne devait pas nous revenir.

La traduction de Riniéri, relevée par Olivier Revault d'Allones, me fut remise en 1951 par Roger Stéphane, qui me demanda d'écrire quelques pages d'introduction.

Le projet d'introduction convenu au départ se transforma, au cours des années qui suivirent, en une méditation presque incessante et souvent découragée des difficultés de plus en plus redoutables du texte parménidien. Cette méditation m'amena à reprendre d'un bout à l'autre la traduction de Riniéri. Il semblait d'abord qu'il y avait lieu surtout de la compléter. N'étaient pas traduits en effet les Fragments IX, X, XI et XVIII. Mais la traduction des vers 30 et 35 du Fragment I et des vers 60 et 61 du Fragment VIII manquait également. Or l'interprétation de ces vers a été historiquement décisive poux l'ensemble, car c'est en eux que se concentre toute la difficulté du texte dont ils déterminent l'ajointenient. C'est ainsi qu'un travail qui voulait n'être d'abord que la mise au net d'une traduction a finalement abouti à une autre traduction, caractérisée par une situation différente de la doxa par rapport à l'aletheia et du noein par rapport à l'einai..

Cette traduction nouvelle est une aventure qui n'aurait sana doute jamais été tentée sans l'entreprise initiale de Riniéri. Elle a été menée à son état actuel avec le concours de Michel Gourinat, Francis Olivier, André Wormser.

Plusieurs entretiens avee Martin Heidegger ont été d'une aide inestimable en ce qui concerne l'essentiel.

Jean-Jacques Riniéri avait suivi le texte que proposait Diels (Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, t. I, 1912). Les Fragments sont présentés ici selon l'ordre adopté par Walther Kranz dans la récente réédition du même ouvrage (1952). Le texte grec est celui de Kranz, sauf quelques modifications (vers 7, 12, 19, 36, du Fragment VIII ; cf. notes aux passages indiqués).

Qu'il me soit permis de penser que l'interprétation proposée dans les pages qui suivent demeure fidèle à l'initiative, à la passion qui portaient Jean-Jacques Riniéri à la découverte de Parménide."

3. Cordero, Néstor-Luis. 1984. Les deux chemins de Parménide. Paris: Vrin.

Édition critique, traduction, études et bibliographie.

Deuxième édition corrigée et augmentée 1997.

Table des matières: Introduction IX-XIV; Introduction à la deuxième edition 1; Partie I: Le poème de Parménide 17; Partie II: Études critiques. Chapitre I: Analyse de la présentation des deux chemins de la recherche dans le fr. 2 45; Chapitre II: Le contenu des deux thèses du fr. 2 73; Chapitre III: Les deux chemins dans les fragments 6,7 et 8,34-78 110; Chapitre IV: L'Alétheia, la Doxa, et la portée de l'enseignement parménidien 176; AppendiceI: La significatin du verbe einai dans la littérature pré-prménidienne. La racine indoeuropéenne. Le Lexikon d'Ebeling. La thèse de Ch. H. Kahn. Les trois nuances d'einai exemplifiées par trois utilisations différentes 215; Appendice II: La tradition manuscrite du vers 6,3. Liste de manuscripts qui contiennent le vers 6,3. Les variations du texte 234; Partie III: Bibliographie parménidienne 237-272; Table thématique 273; Supplément de la bibliographie 276; Oridre chronologique du Supplément de la bibliographie 288: Ouvrages cités 289; Auteurs cités 294; Passages cités 298-300.

"Notre propos n'est pas d'embrasser la totalité de la pensée de Parménide. Les fragments de son Poème qui ont été conservés offrent un champ propice à l'orientation de la recherche dans des directions très diverses: c'est d'ailleurs ce qui fait la richesse de Parménide. La preuve la plus convaincante de la pérennité d'un système philosophique est le fait qu'il est inépuisable. Là où l'exégète a cru trouver le noyau de l'enseignement d'un penseur déterminé, une analyse effectuée dans une autre direction découvre de nouveaux éléments sur lesquels se fonderont de nouvelles théories. Dans ce sens, le cas de Parménide est particulièrement représentatif. Pour l'antiquité classique, sa place a été assurée par sa défense véhémente de l'unité de l'Être (4), grâce à laquelle le philosophe d'Élée est devenu "vénérable et redoutable" (5). Plusieurs siècles plus tard, en revanche, la philosophie idéaliste a cru trouver dans l'identification de l'être et de la pensée le noyau central de la philosophie parménidienne, et, avec lui, un antécédent illustre de son propre système. Enfin, dans les dernières années, ainsi que l'a observé Ch. H. Kahn, on préfère faire de Parménide soit "un philosophe du langage au sens de Frege ou Wittgenstein", soit "un métaphysicien de l'Être, à la manière de Hegel ou de Heidegger" (6).

Nous ne prétendons pas avoir trouvé la solution, c'est-à dire le point de vue à partir duquel la philosophie de Parménide révélera la clé de sa fertilité. L'état fragmentaire dans lequel nous est parvenu son Poème nous place en état d'infériorité par rapport aux penseurs classiques pour émettre un jugement sur la totalité de son oeuvre. C'est pour cela que nous avons préféré limiter notre étude à un seul problème. Toutefois, nous avons choisi un problème qui, à notre avis, occupe une place de choix dans les fragments du Poème que nous possédons actuellement: le problème des chemins de la connaissance, des voies de la recherche. Ces odoi dizhsios; sont de véritables thèses que la Déesse révèle au poète (et que le poète, à savoir Parménide, révèle au lecteur-auditeur), le long desquelles la pensée peut s'acheminer pour obtenir soit une explication cohérente de la réalité, soit une "trompeuse série de paroles" (fr. 8,52). C'est dans cette alternative, présentée sous forme de thèses contradictoires, que réside l'enseignement parménidien; et c'est précisément cet aspect dichotomique de la présentation des problèmes de la part de Parménide que nous tenterons de mettre en relief dans notre travail.

Pour atteindre cet objectif, nous proposons d'analyser certains éléments généralement admis dans la pensée de Parménide, mais qui, dans la plupart des cas, ne sont pas poursuivis jusqu'à leurs conséquences extrêmes. Dans ce sens, nous pouvons affirmer que nous allons tenter de donner une version 'extrémiste' de Parménide, même au risque de tomber sous le coup de la critique de R. Kent Sprague, pour laquelle les érudits qui étudient la philosophie éléatique sont généralement plus éléates que les philosophes en question (7). La quasi totalité des chercheurs qui se sont intéressés à la philosophie de Parménide s'accordent sur le fait que sa pensée est structurée autour du principe de la non - contradiction (8). Nous n'affirmons pas ni ne nions pour autant que Parménide ait "inventé" ce principe, ni qu'il ait eu conscience de son utilisation, mais il ne faut pas oublier que le principe du tiers exclu apparaît également chez Parménide (9) -- principe qui renforce celui de la non-contradiction et rend contradictoires toutes les oppositions que nous rencontrons tout au long de son Poème. Sur la base de cette constatation, dont nous fournirons des exemples tout au long de notre travail, nous trouvons chez Parménide un dualisme méthodologique rigoureux qui sépare, "comme d'un coup de hache", l'espace conceptuel, ainsi que l'a remarqué P.M. Schuhl à juste titre (10), en deux régions opposées. Cette dichotome, véritable transposition sur le plan philosophique de la bifurcation mystique que nous trouvons dans les récits orphiques et pythagoriciens (11), constitue, à notre avis, la structure primordiale du raisonnement parménidien. C'est à cette dichotomie qu' obéit la présentation de son enseignement sous la forme de deux thèses contradictoires: les deux chemins de la recherche.

Notre analyse cherchera à établir le contenu de ces thèses contradictoires ainsi que leur portée, c'est-à-dire le domaine auquel elles s'appliquent et les conséquences qui dérivent de leur acceptation rigoureuse (12). Nous partirons pour cela du fr. 2, où apparaît la première énonciation des "deux seuls chemins de la recherche", et, une fois établie la valeur des deux thèses, nous étudierons leur réapparition (reliée à des problèmes différents) dans les fr. 6, 7 et 8. Ensuite, nous tenterons de découvrir quelques correspondances possibles entre ces chemins de la recherche et le récit mythique du voyage entrepris par le poète-philosophe, tel qu'il figure dans le fr. 1. Enfin, nous analyserons la nouveauté que présente le système de Parménide par rapport à la pensée de ses prédécesseurs." (pp. X-XIII).

(4) Cf. Idem, Soph. 244e, Parm. 128a; Aristote, Met. A,3,984a.

(5) Platon, Théet. 183e.

(6) CH. H. Kahn, More on Parmenides, p. 333.

(7) Cf. R. Kent Sprague, Compte rendue de Tarán, Parmenides (1965), [Classical Philology, 61, 1966] p. 262.

(8) Cf. K. Reinhardt (1916), p. 56, et J. Mansfeld (1964), p. 57, n. 3.

(9) Cf. notamment 8, 16 et 8, 36-7.

(10) P.M. Scuhl, Essai sur la formation de la pensée grecque, Paris, 1949, p. 284.

(11) Cf. Idem, p. 285.

(12) Parmi ces conséquences, la principale est le rejet, en tant que "chemin de recherche", du prétendu "troisième chemin" du fr. 6.

4. O'Brien, Denis. 1987. Études sur Parménide. Le Poème de Parménide. Paris: Vrin.

Tome I: Texte, traduction, essai critique par Denis O'Brien en collaboration avec Jean Frère pour la traduction française. Avant-propos de Pierre Aubenque.

Index: Avant-propos de Pierre Aubenque; Le Poème de Parménide. Text et traduction. Sources des fragments, Texte grec. Traduction en français et en anglais. Notes sur la traduction, Index des mots grecs.

Essai critique: Introduction à la lecture de Parménide: les deux Voies de l'être et du non-être, pp. 137-302; Indices 305-310.

English summary. The Poem of Parmenides. Parmenides on existence and non-existence: an introduction to a reading of the fragments pp. 311-319.

5. Conche, Marcel. 1996. Parménide. Le Poème: Fragments. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Table des matières: Introduction 5; Abréviations bibliographiques. Bibliographie 9; Présentation. Les deux gestes de Parménide 23; I. L'allégories 41; II. La vérité 75: III. Le mythe 187; Conclusion 269; Index des sources 273; Index des mots grecs 277; Index des padsages d'auteurs anciens 283-288.

"Pourquoi un poème? Sens doute parce que le poème, plus que la prose, est bâti pour s'inscrire dans les mémoires et pour durer: le support de l'affirmation l'être éternel doit, autant que possible, échapper à la puissance dissolvante du temps. De ce Poème ne subsistent que des fragments, dont l'un, conservé par Sextus Empiricus, a toutefois trente vers, un autre, que l'on doit à Simplicius, plus de soixante.

Avec eux, les deux premières parties de l'ouvrage ont été préservées, semble-t-il, pour l'essentiel: d'abord le prooemium, le prélude, à teneur allégorique; ensuite la partie pros Alethéia, ou la révélation, par la seule voie du discours (logo), de la vérité de l'être. De la troisième partie de l'ouvrage, où était exposée la genèse mythique (au sens du Timée) du monde sensible, ne restent que des bribes. Notre travail, qui tient compte des éditions essentielles de Karsten (1835) et de Diels (1897), mais aussi de nombre d'autres travaux, vise à donner une interprétation philosophique de l'ensemble. Dans le Sophiste, en 217c, Socrate déclare, disions-nous, avoir entendu Parménide "procéder par interrogations". C'est pourquoi, en 237a, Parménide est dit s'exprimer "aussi bien en prose qu'en vers: le mot prose renvoie aux discussions orales auxquelles il a été fait allusion dans ce même dialogue. Il n'a pas valeur de témoignage quant à une oeuvre écrite de Parménide autre que son Poème (même si l'auteur byzantin de la Suda, s.v. "Parmenides", a cru le contraire)." (pp. 7-8)

6. Cassin, Barbara. 1998. Parménide. Sur la nature ou sur l'étant. La langue de l'être? Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

Table: Présentation 9; Parménide, Sur la nature ou sur l'étant. Texte et traduction 69; Glossaire 119 Dossier 252; Bibliographie 295; Index des mots grecs 305; Index des passages cités de Parménide 313-317; Remerciements 318.

"Pour nous modernes, c'est la grande philologie allemande du xixe siècle qui est le maître d' oeuvre de cette restauration créatrice de Parménide, en particulier grâce à Hermann Diels. Car Diels opère à toutes les étapes requises pour bâtir. En amont : il édite les textes des principaux citateurs, essentiellement Simplicius qui, au vie siècle apr. J.-C., soit dix siècles après Parménide, a transmis dans son commentaire à la Physique d'Aristote et au Ciel dix des dix-neuf fragments du Poème, dont le plus long de tous (une séquence de 52 vers composant le fragment VIII) ; assez pour reconstruire un tout différencié, avec une première partie, sous le signe de la "vérité", qui décrit la route de l'être et sa distinction d'avec celle du non-être [fr.II à VIII, 51], et une seconde partie, sous le signe de l' "opinion", qui expose les erreurs des mortels, sous forme d'une physique, d'une cosmogonie ou d'une cosmologie [VIII, 51-XIX]. Mais Diels a d'abord plus largement, dans les Doxographes grecs, élaboré une perception d'ensemble de la doxographie, c'est-à-dire des voies de la transmission des textes et des doctrines à travers toute l'Antiquité, ayant pour but de situer les sources, d'évaluer leur fiabilité et les types de déformation auxquels s'attendre. Puis il travaille au tissage même du texte : il recense et découpe les fragments en les distinguant des témoignages, les établit en comparant d'abord les sources, puis les manuscrits et les leçons, décide de leur ordre, les traduit aussi, en décidant des archaïsmes recevables. Il en produit pour finir une interprétation plus ou moins standard ou stabilisée, qui aboutit à la Bible toujours inégalée, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, élaborée en 1903 et dont la sixième édition, améliorée par Walther Kranz en 1951-1952, n'a cessé d'être rééditée, traduite et adaptée en toutes les langues (1).

Mais toutes ces étapes constitutives, qui s'entourent d'un maximum de précautions réellement scientifiques, sont liées dans des enchaînements de procédures codouteuses et co-fictives d'une légitimité, au moins aussi, auto-proclamée. D'autant qu'elles sont, à la base même, bâties sur les pratiques doxographiques de la citation, qui travaillent le sens en ayant l'air de livrer la lettre ou le fait. C'est tout cet ensemble de pratiques et de procédures qui se trouve stratégiquement oublié et approprié dans les interprétations philosophiques ultérieures du Poème de Parménide, qui viennent ajouter leurs cartes à ce château.

Pour aborder un objet si redoutable et si construit, il me semble pourtant que la méthode est simple. Il faut aller aux points névralgiques, là où se partagent les interprétations. Et tenter d'en comprendre l'ancrage dans le texte: comprendre comment la phrase grecque de Parménide, et peut-être la langue grecque elle-même, est prise dans ce partage. Mon projet n'est pas, ou le moins possible, d'ajouter une auto-proclamation de plus: je voudrais plutôt faire percevoir sur quelques paradigmes à enjeux lourds le degré d'ouverture maximal dans la fabrication du texte et du sens. Le plus facile, le plus utile peut-être aussi, même si de très nettes évolutions se font sentir qui disqualifient ces taxinomies à la serpe, est d'instruire l'antagonisme entre interprétations dites analytiques (anglo-saxonnes, avec Owen et Barnes par exemple) et herméneutiques (plutôt allemandes, ou germano-françaises, avec Heidegger et Beaufret (2). On verra que les points de partage des interprétations reconduisent effectivement à l'idée qu'on se fait de la langue : d'abord une langue naturelle, le grec, qui se mesure à une rationalité, donc à un formalisme, d avaà la fois universels et perfectibles; ou d'abord une langue pensante, le grec, qui se mesure à l'historialité de la pensée." (pp. 12-14)

(1) De H. Diels: Doxographi Graeci (1879), Simplicii in Aristotelis Physicorum Libros quatuor priores Commentaria (1882), Parmenides Lehrgedicht (1897), Poetarum Philosophorum Fragmenta (1901). Le Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Dublin-Zürich, Weidmann), a été traduit et "édité" très tardivement en français, et de manière souvent fort peu satisfaisante, par J.-P. Dumont, avec la collaboration de D. Delattre et J.-L. Poirier, Paris, Gallimard, 1988. Sur la construction dielsienne, voir mon Si Parménide, Paris-Lille, 1980, p. 105-121.

(2) Voir en particulier, sur l'exemple du fr. III, l'entrée ANALYTIQUE/ HERMÉNEUTIQUE dans le Glossaire.

7. Bollack, Jean. 2006. Parménide: de l'étant au monde. Lagrasse: Verdier.

Table des matières: Avant-propos 7; Introduction 11; Notice 65; De l'étant au monde 69; Bibliographie 331-339; Réperoire des Fragments discutés 340; Index thématique 341-344.

"Ce livre-ci repose sur une lecture de ce que son auteur, Parménide, a considéré en premier lieu comme un livre, un ouvrage composé pour être déchiffré, suivant un plan d'ensemble très élaboré. Nous n'avons pas le livre, pas le tout. Une totalité mi-présente (à déchiffrer), mi-absente (à construire) se précise progressivement au cours du travail d'élucidation des phrases. La composition de l'ensemble a sa logique. La matière de cet ensemble est finalement assez étendue pour faire voir dans le détail ce qu'était le projet, et donc suffisante pour découvrir la signification de l'oeuvre, pour son auteur, en son temps, dans la situation historique où elle a été conçue. Elle a visiblement été travaillée pour servir à une pratique savante de la lecture, se mettant elle- même livresquement en scène comme les oeuvres savent le faire partout d'elles-mêmes. Sinon, nous ne disposerions pas de ce réseau dense d'interrelations verbales, qui permet de relier un noyau à une fin, et d'arriver au bout du compte à faire parler une cohérence, malgré les lacunes.

On part de ce que nous avons, mais il faut y inclure, en dépit de sa fragmentation, l'idée que l'on se fait de ce que fut le livre quand il a été écrit; il importe de le dépouiller de tout prophétisme. Les textes que l'on lit, les fameux "fragments", cités par Plutarque (Ier-IIe siècles), Sextus (II siècle) ou Simplicius (Ve-VIe siècles), y aident. Les résumés anciens de la doctrine (la doxographie) les complètent tant bien que mal. On regrette d'autant plus ce qu'on n'a pas qu'on en soupçonne le contenu, sinon la façon. Nous avons les magnifiques résumés, les doxai (opinions), qui forment le corpus de ce que les spécialistes antiques et modernes appellent doxographie. Ces "opinions" répondent à une interrogation, appelée par les problèmes que l'on s'est posés sur la nature et sur l'homme, deux siècles plus tard.

Théophraste, le disciple d'Aristote, les a réunies dans un ouvrage perdu, intitulé Les Opinions des physiciens, largement utilisé dans l'Antiquité et assez merveilleusement reconstitué sur la base de ces utilisations stratifiées par Ia science moderne. L'ouvrage de Hermann Diels, qui les a éditées, est largement à l'origine de l'intérêt accru manifesté pour les "présocratiques" au début du XXe siècle, il y a maintenant plus d'une centaine d'années (les Doxographi Graeci sont de 1879). Le nom d'Aétius, qui signale le recueil le plus cohérent (100 ap. J.-C.), est celui d'un compilateur obscur (choisi par Diels), utilisateur d'une autre compilation, les Anciennes Opinions (Vetusta Placita, autour de 50 ap. J.-C.). La doxographie informe; parfois elle reproduit ses sources, mais elle condense, elle aménage et elle simplifie aussi. Il faut tenir compte du point de vue de l'interrogateur. N'empêche que l'auteur du recueil, dont nous n'avons, encore une fois, que des fragments, avait, à la suite de Platon et d'Aristote, le maître de ces aperçus, un sens du résumé et des systèmes, et qu'il nous aide à les approcher. Parménide y tenait une place évidente, même si elle est moins importante que celle d'Empédocle et des atomistes. "Le Monde" (à savoir la cosmologie) lui doit ici pour une bonne part sa reconstitution. Son système était différent des autres, plus éloigné et autrement orienté, pouvant servir de contrepoint. Dans le meilleur des cas, par exemple dans celui de la genèse, les résumés reproduisent une lecture précise, un degré second qui nous ramène à l'oeuvre. L'accès à la chose même, serait- il indirect, nous arrache à l'idée que, souvent inconsciemment, on prête à l'auteur.

Le texte impose une lecture neuve. Il apprend ce qui s'est dit dans l'histoire, à l'époque de Parménide, avant qu'il ne figure dans une histoire de la philosophie. L'histoire existe pour nous, mais elle existait aussi pour l'auteur. Parménide s'est situé par rapport à elle. Il s'est séparé des philosophes ioniens, prouvant en même temps qu'il s'y rattachait en profondeur. L'invective (fr. 6 et 7) prend son sens. La coupure, ou la rupture, ne se comprend que si on la pose dans ces termes. Si la lecture critique tient un rôle essentiel, c'est d'abord que le poème s'est écrit d'une certaine façon, pour être lu de cette façon-là. L'écrit répond à une attente, et la suscite. Ce n'est pas seulement la communication d'un savoir, mais une initiation poétique, qui, pour libre et éclairée qu'elle soit, reproduit, dans leur style, les pratiques religieuses dont elle s'est détachée. Mais la poésie ne retraduit aucune pensée; c'est plutôt la pensée qui se dégage de la poésie." (pp. 12-15)

8. Parménide. 2011. Le Poème. Paris: Hermann.

Traduction nouvelle par Arnaud Villani avec la collaboration de Pierre Holzerny suivi de Parménide ou la dénomination par Arnaud Villani.

Préface de Gilbert Romeyer-Dherbey.

9. Parménide d'Élée. 2011. Le Chant de Vérité. Paris: Orizons.

Traduction de Riccardo Di Giuseppe et Jean-Hugo Tisin.

10. Année, Magali. 2012. Fragments. Poème. Paris: Vrin.

Texte et traduction de Magali Année; précedé de Énoncer le verbe être (pp. 9-146).

"Ce qui est proposé, dans ce bref ouvrage, est avant toute chose un commentaire linguistique du poème de Parménide. Aussi est-ce pourquoi c'est par lui qu'il commence. Comme on peut s'y attendre, c'est le fragment 8 DK qui y est le plus sollicité. Il ne fait pas, cependant, l'exclusivité.

Le texte des fragments, que l'on trouve à la suite du commentaire, n'est pas une édition critique. Consciente de la complexité d'une tradition où les variantes peuvent être imputables non seulement à l'inadvertance de quelques copistes, mais aussi, "dans le cas de Parménide, à des manipulations tendancieuses", à l'origine de "téléscopages" (1) bien connus des historiens de la philosophie, je me suis fiée pour l'essentiel à la dernière édition Diels-Kranz, toujours de référence, préférant cependant, comme d'autres, revenir parfois aux manuscrits.

Quant à la traduction, elle est nouvelle, comme peut l'être l'une des multiples traductions grammaticalement possibles, d'une langue poétique souvent linguistiquement ambigüe. Elle ne prétend donc à rien autre qu'à découler du commentaire, c'est-à-dire à laisser transparaître çà et là les rouages linguistiques du poème, révélé par celui-ci. C'est une traduction-substrat, en quelque sorte, qui courrait en deçà, sous, ou avec, les autres traductions possibles." (p. 7).

(1) Denis O'Brien, Problèmes d'établissement du texte: la transmission du Poème dans l'Antiquité, dans: P. Aubenque (éd.), Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation, Paris, Vrin, 1987, p. 314-315 et 348.

11. Parménide. 2018. Parménide, au-delà de l'existence. Paris: Almora.

Nouvelle traduction et commentaires par Jean Bouchart d'Orval.

German translations

1. Riezler, Kurt. 1934. Parmenides. Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann.

Zweite Edition: Text, Einführung und Interpretation von Kurt Riezler; bearbeitet und mit einem Nachwort versehen von Hans-Georg Gadamer., Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann 2001.

2. Hölscher, Uvo. 1969. Parmenides. Vom Wesen des Seienden. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Greek text with German translation of the fragments and some testimonia; reprinted with a new Nachwort 1986.

3. Bormann, Karl. 1971. Parmenides. Untersuchungen zu den Fragmenten. Hamburg: Meiner.

Inhalt: Vorwort VII-VIII; Kapitel I. Der Stand der Parmenides-Forschung. Ziel und Methode der Untescuchung 1; Kapitel II. Die Fragmente. Text 28; Übersetzung 29; Kapitel III: Interpretation 56; Schluss 183; Anmerkungen 185; Quellen und Literatur 253; Namenregister 260-263.

4. Heitsch, Ernst. 1974. Parmenides. Die Anfange der Ontologie, Logik und Naturwissenschaft. München: Heimeran.

With introduction and critical studies.

Second revised edition: Parmenides - Fragmente: griechisch-deutsch - München, Artemis Verlag, 1991.

5. Mansfeld, Jaap. 1981. Parmenides. Über das Sein. Griechisch-Deutsch. Stuttgart: Reclam.

Fragmente des Lehrgedichts - Gliederung und Übersetzung aus dem Griechischen von Jaap Mansfeld / Testimonia - Auswahl und Übersetzung aus dem Griechischen von Rüdiger Leimbach / Auszüge aus der neueren Literatur - ausgewählt von Hans von Steuben / Hans von Steuben: Wahrheit und Gesetz - Die Offenbarung des Parmenides.

6. Gemelli Marciano, Maria Laura, ed. 2009. Die Vorsokratiker. Band II: Parmenides Zenon Empedokles. Griechisch-lateinisch-deutsch. Auswahl der Fragmente und Zeugnisse. Düsseldorf: Artemis & Winkler Verlag.

Übersetzung und Erläuterungen von M. L. Gemelli Marciano.

7. Parmenides. 2016. Sein und Welt. Freiburg: Karl Alber.

Die Fragmente neu übersetzt und kommentiert von Helmuth Vetter.

Italian translations

1. l

2. Albertelli, Pilo. 1939. Gli Eleati. Bari: Laterza.

Indice: Avvertenza 7; Senofane 11; Parmenide 81; Zenone 161; Melisso: 211; Indice delle cose notevoli 247-250.

La sezione su Paremenide è stata tradotta in inglese: Albertelli’s Parmenides: A Translation of Pilo Albertelli’s Annotated Italian Version of Diels-Kranz, Lrwiston: Edwin Mellen Press 2016.

3. Untersteiner, Mario. 1958. Parmenide. Testimonianze e frammenti. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

Edizione, introduzione, traduzione e commento di Mario Untersteiner.

Ristampa 1977; Nuova edizione nel volume: Eleati. Parmenide - Zenone - Melisso, a cura di Mario Untersteiner e Giovanni Reale, Milano: Bompiani, 2011 (pp. 19-412).

4. Vitali, Renzo. 1977. Parmenide di Elea. Περί Φύσεως. Una ricostruzione del poema. Faenza: Fratelli Lega Editori.

5. Trabattoni, Franco. 1985. Parmenide. I frammenti con testo greco a fronte. Milano: Marcos y Marcos.

6. Reale, Giovanni, and Ruggiu, Luigi. 1991. Parmenide. Poema sulla natura. I frammenti e le testimonianze indirette. Milano: Rusconi.

Indice generale: Un Parmenide nuovo. Presentazione di Giovanni Reale 7; L'altro Parmenide. Saggio introduttivo di Luigi Ruggiu 19; Nota editiorale 81; I Frammenti del poema di Parmenide "Sulla Natura", traduzione con testo greco a fronte e note di Giovanni Reale 83; Le testimonianze antiche sulla vita, sulla poesia e sulla dottrina di Parmenide, traduzione e note di Giovanni Reale 121; Commentario filosofico al poema di Parmenide "Sulla Natura", di Luigi Ruggiu 153; Bibliografia generale su parmenide di Giovanni Reale e Luigi Ruggiu con la collaborazione di Roberto Radice 381-423; Sommari 427-433.

"Il Poema di Parmenide, insieme ai frammenti di Eraclito, costituisce un testo base di riferimento del pensiero occidentale. In particolare, il Poema di Parmenide apre quelle vie che il pensiero greco ha seguito in tutto il suo corso: la problematica dell'Essere e anche la problematica dell'Uno, sia pure con la preminenza della prima. I filosofi pluralisti immediatamente posteriori a Parmenide dipendono strutturalmente dall'Eleatismo. Platone e Aristotele, come ho già sopra ricordato, guadagnano i punti chiave del loro pensiero proprio nel tentativo di superare le aporie di Parmenide. Le due forme di metafisica in cui si esprime il pensiero greco, ontologia e benologia, hanno in Parmenide la loro fonte.

Dunque, il Poema di Parmenide si impone, in tutti i sensi, come uno dei testi-base per eccellenza del pensiero occidentale.

La traduzione del Poema che qui presento, è stata da me fatta e rifatta più volte nel corso di un ventennio, in parte già pubblicata in altri miei scritti, ma qui per la prima volta per intero. Alcuni punti sono anche stati da me ripensati e corretti, in seguito alle discussioni fatte con Ruggiu.

Tenga presente il lettore che tradurre Parmenide è una delle operazioni più difficili. E la ragione sta nel fatto che linguaggio e concetto, immagine e pensiero, per i motivi che sopra ho già chiarito, in lui sono inscindibilmente connessi. Parmenide lo si può tradurre solo se lo si capisce, o, meglio, la traduzione del Poema Sulla natura dipende in toto dal modo in cui se ne intende il messaggio filosofico. Il puro filologo, anche se è un conoscitore eccelso della lingua greca, non lo rende mai bene. In altri termini: nella misura in cui si approfondisce la comprensione filosofica del Poema, si riesce a tradurre anche la parola parmenidea. La traduzione dei suoi termini non può essere se non anche eo ipso la traduzione dei suol concetti.

Naturalmente, e proprio per tale motivo, avere accanto alla traduzione anche il testo greco è essenziale. E per questo lo abbiamo riprodotto a fronte della traduzione.

La temperie spirituale originaria si intende a fondo solo calandosi nel linguaggio originario.

Delle testimonianze indirette non è stato invece riportato il testo greco, perché questa necessità non si presentava."

7. Cerri, Giovanni. 1999. Parmenide di Elea. Poema sulla natura. Milano: Rizzoli.

Sommario: Premessa 1; Introduzione: la riscoperta del vero Parmenide 11; Pagine scelte di critica moderna 111; Bibliografia 127; Poema sulla Natura - Frammenti (testom greco e traduzione italiana) 145; Commento 163-292.

"Pervenuto, dopo anni di studi e di ricerche, alla convinzione o alla presunzione (questo lo giudicherà il lettore) di aver compreso il senso generale del pensiero di Parmenide e, nel suo quadro, il significato preciso di quasi ogni frammento e verso, mi sono dedicato in maniera esclusiva all'illustrazione diretta di questa mia ricostruzione, documentandola punto per punto con gli argomenti necessari, di ordine sia interno che esterno, mostrandone cioè la congruenza con quanto sappiamo del poema e delle sue singole parti, della cultura e del linguaggio poetico dal cui seno il poema è nato.

Mi sono viceversa volontariamente preclusa la strada più usuale soprattutto nel campo della filologia classica, da me stesso seguita in tante altre occasioni, consistente nel costruire il proprio discorso sull'esposizione e la disamina di quelli proposti dalla critica precedente. Nel caso specifico ciò mi avrebbe portato a scrivere centinaia e centinaia, se non migliaia di pagine, con il bel risultato di contraddire nei fatti lo scopo che mi ero prefisso: offrire finalmente una lettura di Parmenide piana e persuasiva, perché filologicamente fondata." (p. 7)

8. Zucchello, Dario. 2015. Parmenide. Sulla natura. Monza: Limina Mentis.

9. Parmenide. 2023. Dell'origine. Milano: Feltrinelli.

Test greco e traduzione italiana di Angelo Tonelli.

"Non si può decifrare Parmenide con occhiali meramente filosofici, senza obliterarne l’essenza, perché Parmenide non era un filosofo, ma molto di più.

Era un sacerdote di Apollo Oúlios, l'Apollo delle Guarigioni, iatromante e maestro-sciamano di sacralità alla maniera dei corrispettivi d'Oriente, induisti, taoisti, buddhisti: per questo non lo si può intendere se non si riannoda il filo che già nell’epoca della sapienza tramandata oralmente connetteva la sophia d’Occidente con quella orientale. E insieme era politico illuminato, alla maniera dei Pitagorici, e raffinatissimo indagatore della Natura, e fu il primo, emergendo dallo sfondo della tenzone dialettica originaria, a fornire un modello per l’articolazione razionale del pensiero, attraverso l’uso del principio di non contraddizione, terzo escluso, e altro. Ma per lui la ratio c la “scienza” erano ancelle della conoscenza che si ottiene per visione e contatto, il culmine conoscitivo e frutto del noùs, l’intuizione metafisica, che è il vero centro: il resto, pur significativo, è periferia." (Introduzione)

Spanish translations

1. Parmenides. 1975. "Sobre la naturaleza." Revista de Filosofía de la Universidad de Costa Rica no. 13:1-55.

Traducción, introducción y paráfrasis de Constantino Láscaris.

2. Parménides, Zenón, and Meliso. 1981. Escuela de Elea. Fragmentos. Buens Aires: Aguilar.

3. Posada, María Cecilia. 1982. "Canto de Parménides a la Physis." Escritos no. 7:1-71.

Edición bilingüe griego-español.

4. Gómez Lobo, Alfonso. 1985. Parménides. Buenos Aires: Editorial Charcas.

Texto griego, traducción y cornentario

Segunda edicion: El Poema de Parménides, Santiago, Editorial Universitaria, 1999.

"La presente edición ha sido concebida para dos tipos distintos de lectores. A quien se inicia en la filosofía o se siente simplemente atraído por una obra importante de la cultura griega le ofrece una traducción completa de los fragmentos junto con un comentario en que se expone lo que a juicio de este traductor es el sentido de cada uno de ellos.

Al lector más especializado le ofrece, además, una edición revisada del texto griego y una sección de notas críticas en que se alude a otros estudios y se proponen argumentos que avalan la interpretación defendida en el comentario. La bibliografía, por último, está al servicio de cualquier lector que quiera adentrarse en el hoy exuberante bosque de los estudios parmenídeos." (p. 12)

5. Calvo, Agustín García. 2001. Lectura presocráticas I. Zamora: Editorial Lucina.

3° edición con el Parménides renovado (primera edición 1981).

Indice: Presentacion 9; Primera parte. Tentativa de redacción escrita 19; Segunda parte. Otros registros de lectura 133; Tercera parte. Edición crítica y versión rítmica de los Fragmentos de Parménides 183; Nota para le nueva edición 184; Apéndice 221-230.

"En fin, la tercera parte es una edición crítica de todos los fragmentos del poema de Parménides, con aparato bastante numeroso, noticia en español sobre las fuentes de cada fragmento y ocasionalmente introducción de su cita por los trasmisores, y una versión rítmica en castellano. Con loable esfuerzo por parte de 'Lucina' y de los tipógrafos, se ha procurado una presentación nítida y digna, en que aparecen enfrentados en una página el texto del poema con el aparato crítico y en la otra la noticia sobre las fuentes seguida de la versión.

Para el conocimiento de la tradición del texto y su estado en la práctica editorial hasta el momento, he tenido presentes sobre todo, junto a los Vorsokratische Denker de Diels-Kranz (3. ed. Berlín 1964), las ediciones de M. Untersteiner, Florencia 1958, L. Tarán, Princeton 1965, y E. Heitsch, Munich 1974: de otras, como las viejas de Brandis, Karsten y Stein, o las más recientes de Covotti y Hölscher, sólo he recogido noticias indirectas. Agradezco especialmente a Aníbal González la amistosa diligencia y docto escrúpulo con que ha compulsado para mí las ediciones más autorizadas de Simplicio, Sexto, Proclo y los otros citadores principales a quienes debemos los versos conservados del poema, permitiéndome enriquecer y corregir en varios puntos la anotación crítica y aun en un par de ocasiones el texto mismo.

Este texto que ofrezco se aparta en una buena docena de sitios del recibido en el Diels-Kranz, el Kirk-Raven y las ediciones anteriores, y tengo cierta confianza en que la mayor parte de esos cambios sean para bien de la fidelidad; y así también las alteraciones en la ordenación de los fragmentos, que en tres o cuatro puntos se aparta de la seguida en las ediciones habituales. En todo caso, a la cabeza de cada fragmento, junto al número de esta edición, he colocado el correspondiente de la de Diels-Kranz.

En cuanto a la versión rítmica, que es fruto de muchas redacciones sucesivas, me he permitido esperar que, leída con igual cuidado y detenimiento, pueda dispensarme por ahora de prolijos comentarios interpretativos." (pp. 15-16)

6. Parménides. 2007. Poema: fragmentos y tradición textual. Madrid: Itsmos.

Traducción y notas al texto griego, Alberto Bernabé. Introducción, notas y comentarios, Jorge Pérez de Tudela. Epílogo, Néstor-Luis Cordero.

"Para la conciencia crítica actual, en cambio, son pocas ya las convicciones de ese jaez que aún pueden mantenerse en pie. Y es que se impone progresivamente la urgencia de revisar, por venerable que nos parezca, ese cúmulo enorme de decisiones, voluntarias o involuntarias, que marcan inevitablemente las apuestas de cada editor. Fue así como vino a producirse, recientemente, ese auténtico terremoto en los estudios presocráticos que fue el ataque lanzado por Néstor-Luis Cordero, epiloguista de este volumen, contra la fiabilidad de la propia compilación Diels-Kranz (unánimemente considerada, recordamos, como la Biblia del especialista(2); ataque a raíz del cual todo estudio responsable y nos sirven el tenor de tales obras secundarias (secundarias con respecto al objeto de nuestro estudio, no por lo que hace a su valor

particular) se presentaran ante nosotros con todas las garantías y la simple fe que pudiéramos depositar en una tarea crítica impecable, inatacable, firme. Quienquiera que se asome, sin embargo, a la historia de la confección de tales ediciones críticas -y hasta de ediciones universalmente tenidas por «canónicas»- tendrá pronto motivos para despertar, si alguna vez cayó bajo su influjo, de semejante sueño dogmático." (pp. 5-6)

(2) 2 Circunstancia que explica muy bien por qué Denis O’Brien y Jean Frére, firmantes de la traducción del Poema de Parniénides incluida en la mayor (y mejor) obra colectiva sobre Parménides producida en Francia en los últimos años (los Etudes sur Parménide [1987] dirigidos por Pierre Aubenque), se creen en la obligación de disculparse expresamente (tomo I, p. XVI, nota 3), señalando que la falta de tiempo les ha impedido preparar una auténtica edición crítica, que supondría consultar personalmente los manuscritos. (Las críticas de Cordero a la compilación Diels-Kranz* [D.-K.], basadas en un nuevo examen atento de los

manuscritos colacionados en Berlín, se encuentran en su ya clásica obra sobre Parménides: «Les deux chemins de Parménide dans les fragments 6 et 7». [1979])

7. Parménides, and Heràclito. 2007. Poema. Parménides - Fragmentos. Heràclito. Barcelona: Folio.

8. Parménides. 2011. El origen de las cosas: Fragmentos. Madrid: Gredos.

Presentación y traducción de Conrado Eggers Lan y Victoria E. Juliá.

9. Padilla Gálvez, Jesús. 2015. Parménides, ΠΕΡΙ ΦΥΣΕΩΣ - Sobre la naturaleza. El desarrollo de una gramática metafísica. Madrid: Ápeiron Ediciones.

"Este libro desarrolla una lectura analítica del poema de Parmenides titulado «Sobre la naturaleza» (ΠΕΡΙ ΦΥΣΕΩΣ). Consta de tres partes. En la primera parte, se edita el texto original y presenta un aparato crítico. Pretendemos reunir los pasajes existentes de la obra, compararlos con otras citas y recuperar su estado primitivo para producir una edición acorde con los criterios modernos. En la segunda parte, se traduce el texto al castellano componiendo un poema análogo al original reproduciendo su sentido e indicando la transformación que se produce en el idioma original. La tercera parte consta de un estudio titulado «El desarrollo de una gramática metafísica» en la que se propone una nueva lectura del texto original basándose en la metodología analítica. Con este fin se pone especial énfasis en el estudio del lenguaje usado por Parmenides y en presentar las estructuras lógicas de los conceptos que usa en su obra. En dicha lectura ponemos especial atención en la introducción y uso de nuevas estructuras gramaticales que tendrán especial relevancia para el desarrollo de las propuestas metafísicas. El libro muestra que los instrumentos analíticos permiten presentar una variedad de lecturas diferentes sobre las que se asienta la discusión contemporánea."

10. Zubiria, Martin. 2016. El poema doctrinal de Parménides. Mendoza (Argentina): Universidad Nacional de Cuyo Facultad de Filosofía y Letras.

Texto griego, traducción y notas por Martín Zubiria. Con la colaboración de Juan José Moral.

"La presente edición no pretende competir con las ya muy meritorias que existen en español: Gómez Lobo, Bernabé, Cordero. El fin que persigue no es el de introducir al lector en los entresijos de la discusión filológica y se aparta deliberadamente de aquel modo de proceder que consiste en añadir, después de cada afirmación o pregunta, en materia textual o doctrinal, las afirmaciones o preguntas que al respecto formularon fulano, mengano, zutano y perengano, para dejar luego al lector librado a su desconcierto. Hemos procurado evitar, en la medida de lo razonable, la erudición farragosa. En nuestro caso hemos creído que era posible tomar decisiones y cuando, después del debido cotejo de las muchas ediciones y comentarios existentes, hemos hallado una explicación o interpretación persuasiva, la hemos hecho nuestra, consignando entre paréntesis el nombre del autor de quien procede, para tratar de ofrecer al lector antes un texto de cuya luz pueda nutrirse el pensamiento, que una palestra para el ejercicio de la discusión erudita. Quisiéramos contribuir así a mantener viva la verdad, la bondad e incluso la belleza de la intelección parmenídea. Porque si el comienzo histórico del mundo griego está representado por algo pleno, maduro y, en su género, perfecto: los poemas homéricos, así también el comienzo de la Historia de la Metafísica nos descubre algo no menos pleno, maduro y perfecto, “asombroso de ver” (θαῦμα ἰδέσθαι!): “lo que es”, el ente parmenídeo." (p. 8)

11. Parménides. 2018. Parménides. Zamora: Lucina.

Edición critica, versión ritmica y paráfrasas del poema por Augustin García Calvo.

Editadas con prolegómenos, comentario y textos de las fuentes y los testimonios indirectos por Luis-Andrés Bredlow.

"El Parménides que aquí ofrecemos se aparta, en muchos puntos de interpretación y aun de la constitución del propio texto griego, de otras ediciones del mismo texto que el lector podrá encontrar (entre las cuales, por otra parte, no habrá apenas dos que no discrepen entre sí en algún que otro detalle más o menos importante) y aun de las versiones previamente publicadas en las sucesivas ediciones de las Lecturas presocráticas." (p. 13)

(...)

"El II libro que aquí presentamos consta, en su parte principal, de la edición crítica y versión rítmica de los fragmentos del poema hechas por Agustín García Calvo, versión corregida y mejorada en muchos puntos de las tres anteriores que vieron la luz en las ediciones sucesivas de las Lecturas presocráticas (1981, 1992 y 2001), con el añadido de una «Paráfrasis a la moderna» que trata de hacer sonar las razones de la diosa en lenguaje corriente de nuestros días.

Para ello, Agustín García Calvo me ha invitado a contribuir con estos Prolegómenos y un Comentario, con noticia (y, donde procedía, traducción) de los contextos de cita, razonamiento de las variantes del texto y discusión de las interpretaciones: invitación que agradezco y a la que he tratado de corresponder lo mejor que he podido. He aprovechado para ello, con bastante libertad, lo que podía servir de mi tesis doctoral (2000), aunque prescindiendo —espero que para alivio del lector— de la mayor parte del aparato de referencias a las incon-tables interpretaciones modernas del texto, que he tratado de limitar a lo más sucinto e indispensable.

Por lo demás, este libro se ha hecho siguiendo más o menos los mismos criterios editoriales que se habían utilizado ya para la edición de los fragmentos de Heraclito {Razón común, 1985), y que allí se habían razonado y expuesto {ib.. Prolegómenos», pp. 25-28): esto es, ante todo, la división en dos partes destinarlas principalmente a dos públicos distintos: una, a los filólogos, que incluye el texto de los fragmentos del poema con su aparato crítico (a lo que he añadido titta trascripción de los contextos de cita, testimonios y posibles ecos del poema en otros autores —en general, los mismos que se encuentran traducidos en el comentario—, con las anotaciones de crítica textual que hacían falta), y otra que se dirige también y sobre todo a los lectores no familiarizados con el griego antiguo, y que comprende la versión rítmica, paráfrasis y comentario (en el cual, por consiguiente, las palabras o trozos de texto que era indispensable citar en su griego original se encuentran trasliterados)." (p. 41)

Portuguese translations

1. Eleia, Parménides de. 1999. Sobre a natureza. Lisboa: Lisboa editora.

Introduçao e anàlise de António Monteiro e Miguel Real.

2. Parmênides. 2000. Da natureza. Brasilia: Thesaurus Editora.

Tradução, notas e comentários de José Trindade Santos.

"A última parte do texto é integralmente dedicada ao comentário do poema. Começa por uma curta introdução que descreve sucintamente as vicissitudes pelas quais o texto passou até atingir a forma com

que é hoje apresentado ao público. A entrada no poema é assinalada pela paragrafação numérica, inserida à margem, de forma a salientar a integração dos tópicos, na ordem pela qual são abordados.

Estes são quatro: as três partes em que consensualmente se divide o poema, seguidas de um comentário ao modo como este foi recebido pelós filósofos e pelos sofistas gregos - 1. O proêmio; 2. A via da

Verdade; 3. A via da opinião; 4. Parmênides e a herança eleática (cada um deles articulado e subdividido em parãgrafos distintos). A repetição dos algarismos iniciais significa que o parágrafo seguinte faz parte

do anterior enquanto a mudança indica a passagem à outra questão. A inclusão de notas com titulação centrada quer dizer que estas devem ser lidas como apêndices ao que se disse na seção em que se acham,

mas que a sua relevância para o argumento é marginal." (p. 14)

3. Santoro, Fernando. 2008. O Poema de Parmênides. Da natureza. Rio de Jameiro: Azougue.

Edição do texto grego, tradução, notas e comentários.

4. ———. 2011. Filósofos Épicos I. Parmênides e Xenófanes fragmentos. Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Biblioteca Nacional.

Edição do texto grego, revisão e comentários Fernando Santoro.

Revisão Científica Néstor Cordero.

Parmênides de Eléia: Introduçao aos Fragmentos do Poema de Parmênides 55; Fragmentos 77; Fragmentos duvidosos 119; Tábua de concordância124; Fontes dos Fragments e suas ediçoes 127-137.

O Poema de Parmênides traduzido por Gerardo Mello Mourão 143-146.

"Na maior parte das vezes, seguimos a edição Diels-Kranz, e apontamos em notas seja as diversas opções, quando as nossas diferem daquela, seja ainda outras variantes, quando nos apresentam algum interesse especial. Não foi, de modo algum, nossa intenção repertoriar todas as variantes que encontramos nas edições críticas consultadas. Nossas notas ao texto grego procuram ser ao mesmo tempo sucintas e claras; todas as siglas e abreviações são esclarecidas na tábua de abreviações (p. X). Indicamos sempre a proveniência das variantes, de fontes e edições críticas. Como a pontuação moderna é sempre uma escolha do editor, optamos por seguir os interesses de nossa interpretação.

Junto a cada fragmento, apontamos as fontes. A lista completa de fontes e suas edições, segundo as edições críticas consultadas, encontra-se nas páginas 127 a 137. Algumas edições das fontes foram diretamente tratadas, e constam na bibliografia.

A maioria de nossas referências a manuscritos das fontes são indiretas, segundo as edições críticas, estas serão creditadas quando divergentes. Pudemos consultar alguns códices, como o de Sexto Empírico, mas nada foi usado que já não tivesse sido repertoriado em alguma edição moderna.

Para facilitar o cotejo da tradução, mantivemos o texto grego na página esquerda." (p. 60)

5. Barbieri, Pedro. 2020. "Sobre a natureza, de Parménide de Eleia." Classica no. 33:311-325.

"No caso dos fragmentos de Parmênides, como temos originalmente um texto poético, e não unicamente expositivo no sentido da tradição filosófica que tem início em Aristóteles, considero haver um ganho em uma tradução também poética. É de se imaginar que o modo de escrita escolhido por Parmênides não teria sido apenas um capricho, mas um componente necessário de sua equação, o que é passível de não ser contemplado, caso o nosso foco seja uma abordagem mais conteudista. No fim das contas, o risco é acabarmos perdendo de vista alguma substância atualizável do texto (se é que ela de fato existe) em favor das

palavras sobre o texto. A justificativa de buscar fazer uma tradução poética se funda nessa perspectiva de possibilitar um tipo diferente de experiência com relação ao que sobreviveuda obra. Embora possamos já estar acostumados com Parmênides, isso ocorre em geral por um ângulo relativamente prosaico: estamos acostumados com as ideias reportadas, com a interpretação de sua especulação, com o manejo instrumental de sua terminologia e estrutura discursiva (o proêmio, a via da verdade, a via da opinião). Proponho aqui apenas retornar ao texto original e experimentá-lo enquanto é: um poema. Tão somente o texto de Parmênides e os ecos de sua leitura individual, sem recorrer aos mais de dois mil anos de erudição que se impõem entre nós e os versos." (p. 313, omiti uma nota)

6. Messina, Gaetano. 1987. Index Parmenideus. Auctore qui Parmenidis fragment tradunt. Fontium conceptus. Index verborum. Genova: Bozzi Editore.

Provides the Greek text of the Parmenidean fragments and testimonies (based on the Diels-Kranz edition), an account of the sources, and an exhaustive textual index.

Index Parmenideus

1. Messina, Gaetano. 1987. Index Parmenideus. Auctore qui Parmenidis fragment tradunt. Fontium conceptus. Index verborum. Genova: Bozzi Editore.

Provides the Greek text of the Parmenidean fragments and testimonies (based on the Diels-Kranz edition), an account of the sources, and an exhaustive textual index.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Parmenides of Elea. Annotated Bibliography of the studies in English: A - B

Bibliography

1. "Parmenides Studies Today." 1979. The Monist no. 62:3-106.

Contents: Alexander P. D. Mourelatos: Some Alternatives in Interpreting Parmenides 3; Joseph Owens: Knowledge and Katabasis in Parmenides 15; Karl Bormann: The Interpretation of Parmenides by the Neoplatonist Simplicius 30; Leonardo Tarán: Perpetual Duration and Atemporai Eternity in Parmenides and Plato 43; Thomas M. Robinson: Parmenides on the Real in its Totality 54; David Gallop: 'Is' or 'Is Not'? 61; Peter B. Manchester: Parmenides and the Need for Eternity 81-106.

2. Adluri, Vishwa. 2011. Parmenides, Plato and Mortal Philosophy: Return from Transcendence. London: Continuum.

Contents: Foreword by Luc Brisson XIII; Acknowledgments XVII; Introduction: Parmenides and Renewing the Beginning 1; Part I: Beginnings: Arkhai. Chapter 1: Radical Individuality: Time, Mortal Soul, and Journey 11; Chapter 2: Parmenides and His Importance as a Beginner 33; Part II: Parmenides. Chapter 3: The Mortal Journey: Thumos (The Mortal Soul) and Its Limits 45; Chapter 4: In the Realm of the Goddess: Logos and Its Limits 64; Chapter 5: At Home in the Kosmos: The Return 78; Part III: Plato the Pre-Socratic. Chapter 6: Reading Plato’s Phaedrus: Socrates the Mortal 93; Part IV: Forewording. Conclusion: Returning to Parmenides 129; Appendix: Translation and Textual Notes of Parmenides' Peri Phuseos 137; Section I: The Journey 137; Section II: The Goddess 139; Section III: The Kosmos 148; Notes 157; Bibliography 186; Index 205-212.

"Dr. Adluri argues for a “mortal philosophy,” that is, a philosophy that is aware of and maintains the tension between the mortal desire for transcendence, whether understood as eternity or as the timeless truths of metaphysical propositions, and the irreducibly tragic “mortal condition” which implies a return from transcendence to our finitude. In my view, Dr. Adluri holds together these opposing elements admirably in his book and, in doing so, provides a thought-provoking and brilliantly original analysis of Parmenides' poem with extensive notes, written in a fresh and lucid style. His work, which is very interesting on the level of scholarly work, provides new insight into Parmenides' poem that goes well beyond the logical analyses to which one has attempted to reduce it over the most recent decades. Above all, he proposes a description of Parmenides' approach that does not reduce him to being the philosopher of Being and of Eternity. Parmenides speaks of the universe, and confronts not only immortality, but mortality as well. The importance of argumentation in the poem is considerable, and continues to be admitted by all, but the role played in it by myth is decisive in it." (From the Foreword by Luc Brisson, XIII)

3. Agassi, Joseph, and Bar-Am, Nimrod. 2014. "Meaning: from Parmenides to Wittgenstein: Philosophy as “Footnotes to Parmenides”." Conceptus no. 41:1-21.

Abstract: "This is a comment on G. E. M. Anscombe’s suggestion that Wittgenstein consistently confronted the challenging Parmenidean idea that uttering false statements is (or should be) impossible. His work thus springs from the theory that meaning presupposes reference. Since we do not learn to communicate by mystically, instantly, projecting ourselves into a fully knowable world, as all traditional theories of meaning permit, any future alternative theory of meaning and of learning to communicate, we propose, should begin by accounting for the fact that learning to communicate is gradual."

4. Albertelli, Pilo. 2016. Albertelli’s Parmenides: A Translation of Pilo Albertelli’s Annotated Italian Version of Diels-Kranz. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press.

Translated, with additional commentary and notes by Stuart B. Martin.

5. Alcocer Urueta, Ricardo. 2023. "The Verb εἰμί and Its Benefits for Parmenides’ Philosophy." Rhizomata no. 11:140-188.

Abstract: "Parmenides believed that he had found the most reliable way of theorizing about ultimate reality. While natural philosophers conceptualized phenomena differences to explain cosmic change, Parmenides used the least meaningful but most versatile verb in Ancient Greek to engage in a purely intellectual exploration of reality – one that transcended synchronous and asynchronous differences. In this article I explain how the verb εἰμί was useful to Parmenides in his attempt to overcome natural philosophy. First, I argue that the Eleatic philosopher regarded νοεῖν and εἶναι as equivalent because εἰμί-clauses enabled him to express arguably any conceivable content without providing significant additional meaning. I then show that Parmenides’ concept of being implies the present tense and the imperfective aspect but is grounded in the lexical content of the verb εἰμί, which entails no inherent temporal limits. This explains why ἔστι, ἐόν, and εἶναι could be used to indicate unbounded actuality, regardless of whether these forms represented lexical predicates or auxiliaries for predication. Finally, I maintain that the suitability of εἰμί for talking about all kinds of things without introducing temporal limits allowed Parmenides to avoid what he saw as two mistakes made by natural philosophers: identifying ultimate reality with something that cannot cover the full extent of thought and confusing actuality with present occurrence."

6. Altman, William Henry Furness. 2015. "Parmenides' Fragment B3 Revisited." Hypnos (São Paulo) no. 35:197-230.

"Abstract: The justification for placing Parmenides fr. 3 (DK 28 B3) in “Truth” is weak, and both its ambiguity and capacity to generate radically different interpretations suggest that it belongs to “Doxa.” The paper analyzes the fragment’s sources (Clement, Plotinus, and Proclus), the circumstances of its belated entry into any collection (1835), and argues that the ongoing debate between the reading of Diels and the reading of it introduced by Zeller arises from the presupposition—heretofore unquestioned—that it belongs in “Truth.”

The paper’s principal purpose is not to settle this famous interpretive dilemma nor to reinterpret B3 within “Doxa,” but rather to destabilize the currently unquestioned view that it belongs in “Truth,” and to call into question any global interpretations of Parmenides that make B3 a central component."

7. Anagnostopoulos, Andreas. 2013. "Aristotle’s Parmenidean Dilemma." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 95:245-274.

Abstract: "Aristotle’s treatment, in Physics 1.8, of a dilemma purporting to show that change is impossible, aims in the first instance to defend not the existence of change, but the explicability of change, a presupposition of his natural science.

The opponent fails to recognize that causal explanation is sensitive to the differences between merely coinciding beings. This formal principle of explanation is implicit in Aristotle’s theory that change involves a third, ‘underlying’ principle, in addition to the two opposites, form and privation, and it allows him to avoid the two horns of the dilemma. Aristotle’s treatment of the dilemma does not address the issues of persistence through change or generation ex nihilo, as is often thought."

8. Andriopolous, D. Z. 1975. "Parmenides' fragment B16 and his theory of perceiving and knowing." In Actes de la XIIᵉ Conférence internationale d'Études classiques Eirene, Cluj-Napoca, 2-7 octobre 1972, edited by Fischer, Iancu, 553-561. Bucuresti: Ed. Academiei Române.

9. Angioni, Lucas. 2021. "Aristotle’s solution for Parmenides’ inconclusive argument in Physics I. 3." Peitho, Examina Antiqua no. 12:41-67.

Abstract: "I discuss the argument which Aristotle ascribes to Parmenides at Physics 186a23–32. I examine (i) the reasons why Aristotle considers it to be eristic and inconclusive and (ii) the solution (lusis) that he proposes against it."

10. Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret. 1968. "Parmenides, Mystery and Contradiction." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 69:125-132.

Reprinted in: The Collected Philosophical Papers, vol. I: From Parmenides to Wittgenstein, Oxford: Blackwell, 1981, pp. 3-8.

"If' we take Parmenides as simply warning us off the path of thinking there are things that do not exist, then he seems no more than good sense. But when we combine this with the idea that being is an object, we get his wilder results. However, we should not move slickly here: “being” might be an abstract noun, equivalent to the infinitive “to be”. But Parmenides does not treat to be as an object, but rather being, i.e. something being or some being thing. It is difficult to use the participle in English in the required way, and we might get closer to the sense by saying “what is”.

There is a similar difficulty about Parmenides' description of the two paths for thought: “is, and cannot not be”, and “is not and needs must not be”. In English the lack of a subject may be found disturbing. But the Greek does not need a subject-expression. The subject - he, she, it, or they - is built into the verb, which therefore does not seem incomplete without a separate word for a subject. Therefore it is often translated “It is”. But there is no indication in the Greek that “it” is the right subject. Therefore I would rather not give a subject word. “These are the only ways of enquiry for thought: one ‘is and cannot not be', . . . the other ‘is not, and needs must not be'.” That is: Whatever enquiry one is making, one’s thoughts can only go two ways, saying ‘is, and must be', or ‘is not, and can’t be'.

The noteworthy thing about this is not so much the ungiven subject, as the combination of “is” with “cannot not be” and of “is not” with “cannot be”. This needs argument. We have seen what the argument is: what is not is nothing, and it is not possible for what is nothing to be; and so both whatever can be must be, and what can be thought of must be; for it is the same as what can be." (from the Introduction to the reprint, p. X)

(...)

"It was left to the moderns to deduce what could be from what could hold of thought, as we see Hume to have done. This trend is still strong. But the ancients had the better approach, arguing only that a thought was impossible because the thing was impossible, or, as the Tractatus puts it. “Was man nicht denken kann, das kann man nicht denken”: an impossible thought is an impossible thought.

At the present day we are often perplexed with enquiries about what makes true, or what something’s being thus or so consists in; and the answer to this is thought to be an explanation of meaning. If there is no external answer, we are apparently committed to a kind of idealism.

Whitehead’s remark about Plato might, somewhat narrowly, be applied to his great predecessor:

Subsequent philosophy is footnotes on Parmenides." (from the Introduction to the reprint, pp.X-XI)

11. Attfield, Robin. 2016. "Popper's Parmenides." In Global Ethics and Politics in Relation to ecological Philosophy, edited by Adam, Maria, 1-38. Athens: Ionia Press.

Abstract: "Karl Popper composed a sequence of essays to explain how Parmenides came to hold two incompatible philosophies. In one of these philosophies reality is one, undifferentiated and unchanging, while in the other the world includes a plurality of earthly and heavenly bodies, for some of which, such as the phases of the moon, he supplied original explanations. Popper produced a hypothesis about Parmenides’ development and the intellectual influences that shaped it, an account of his eventual epistemology, and a theory of why his empirically-based cosmology was not discarded but included in the otherwise monistic revelation from his goddess. Some of Popper’s theories, such as how Parmenides could have moved from scepticism about what our senses tell us about the moon to scepticism about sensory information in general, encounter formidable objections, some stemming from the work of G.E.L. Owen, but his overall account of Parmenides’ development, and of how his reasoning led to its refutation by the first atomists, and thus to atomism, contribute significantly to the histories of both physics and philosophy, as do some strands of his theory of why Parmenides’ empirical cosmology was included alongside his rationalist metaphysics in the revelation that he claimed to have received and transmitted."

12. Austin, Scott. 1983. "Genesis and Motion in Parmenides: B8.12-13." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology no. 87:151-168.

"The emendation τού for μη in Parmenides, fragment 8, line 12, proposed by Karsten, (1) has been adopted by (among others) Reinhardt, Tarán, Stokes, and, most recently, Barnes. (2) And yet, while there is no compelling reason to make the emendation, there are several good reasons why one should not make it. I want to claim that the unemended poem already does what the emendation is supposed to allow it to do. I also should like to venture some observations on Parmenidean method and on his use of the key concepts of change and motion." (p. 151)

(1) S. Karsten, Parmenidis Eleatae Carminis Reliquiae (Amsterdam 1835).

(2) K. Reinhardt, Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie (Bonn 1916) 40 ff. Leonardo Tarán, Parmenides: A Text with Translation, Commentary, and Critical Essays (Princeton 1965) 95-102. Michael C. Stokes, One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass. 1971). Jonathan Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, I, Thales to Zeno 188-190 (London 1979).

13. ———. 1986. Parmenides. Being, Bounds, and Logic. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments IX-XI; Introduction 1; Chapter 1. Why not "is not"? 11; Chapter 2. Terms 44; Chapter 3. Modals, the Other, and Method 96; Chapter 5. Context and contradiction 116; Chapter 6. The bounded and the unbounded 136; Appendix. Parmenides' On Nature 155; Notes 175; Bibliography 193; Index 199-203.

"In chapter 1, I attempt to describe what exactly the goddess requires and prohibits. One scholarly issue arises from the puzzling fact that, though the goddess prohibits discourse about what-is-not, her own discourse is full of negative words and expressions, thus seeming inconsistent. I try to arrive at an interpretation of her prohibition which does not make her rule out the language that she herself uses, which clears her of some inconsistencies by allowing her to mean what she says, negatively as well as positively. In the process I attempt to determine what Parmenides thought were the ultimate relationships among ontology, sentence structure, and logic. I also claim that Parmenides' attitude towards contextual relativity determines what is right about "Truth" and wrong about "Opinion." This claim, if correct, allows us to make connections between Parmenides, the Sophists, Plato, and Aristotle, connections which are taken up again and historically amplified in chapter 5. This first chapter is the most controversial in its claims. Chapter 2, taking as its premise the goddess's use of different sorts of positive and negative language, tries to determine just how many sorts of language there are, how comprehensive the coverage of them is, and why certain sorts occur in specific places in the poem. (...)

Chapters 3 and 4 make the same claim about comprehensiveness and determinacy for Parmenides' treatment of contraries, for his proof that there is nothing besides being, and for his use of metaphorical modal language. Here the method of elimination of alternatives has the same ontological outcome: a single, non contrary necessary being is rendered determinate and, to use Parmenides' own metaphor, is bounded by being the object of a discourse which operates by systematically examining the spectrum of possibilities. In chapters 2-4, then, logic and a comprehensive method of enumeration and variation appear intimately intertwined with ontology in a combination originated by Parmenides and (as chapters 5 and 6 try to show) decisive in subsequent philosophy and in its own right. Chapter 5 attempts to trace the history, from Thales through Parmenides to Aristotle, of the Parmenidean logic of contextual variability, of the method of variation, and of the theory of negative language attributed to Parmenides in the first four chapters, thus to situate his thought in its immediate historical context while showing that later developments can be predicated retroactively in his terms. The concluding chapter meditates on the philosophical and theological significance of the views attributed here to Parmenides, especially in light of his identification of the transcendent with the determinate or bounded rather than with the unbounded, and in connection with the methodology and theory associated with that identification in earlier chapters." (pp. 7-8)

14. ———. 1990. "Parmenides' Reference." Classical Quarterly no. 40:266-267.

"The unity of morning and evening stars (one thing under two descriptions) has become a familiar example in abstract philosophical discussion. Here, however, I shall be concerned with this unity as a concrete feature of Parmenides' sketch of mortal opinions. It is a commonplace that opposites (e.g. fire and night, B8.56-9) predominate in the opinions of mortals, but what we learn from the morning and evening stars is that these opposites can be judged to be one."

(...)

"The moon, receiving light from the sun, is its contrary, but is also one with it because of the sharing of the sunlight. Thus this example, along with the morning and evening stars, shows how mortal thinking bifurcates unities into contraries.

One is accustomed to thinking of Parmenidean Being as beyond all opposites.

These fragments fill in a corner of the story. The opposites have different meanings, but both inadequately point to Being even though these meanings exile them from the possession of full reality." (p. 267)

15. ———. 2002. "Parmenides, double-negation, and dialectic." In Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos, edited by Caston, Victor and Graham, Daniel W., 95-100. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"I claim in this paper that Parmenides chose to negate as part of the most basic skeleton of his proof-structure: each predicate true of Being is not only proved, but also has its contradictory denied modally. And all sorts of negations (privations, denials, double-negations) have a necessary place in these proofs. Thus Parmenides' speech - a monistic speech - was already meaningfully negative, and the pluralism in philosophy that begins later on and culminates in the argument against Parmenides in the Sophist is unnecessary, at least on those grounds. In particular, I wish to show that Parmenides, like Plato's Parmenides, domesticates negation in a way that Plato and the subsequent tradition do not positively give him credit for. For Plato articulated the line of criticism which has been dominant ever since: Parmenides' discourse cannot be uttered without undercutting the goddess's own conditions for the intelligibility of meaningful speech; moreover, even if we could hear her speech and retain it for a moment, it would be useless to us. The criticism continues: a pure monism is, divorced from the needs of life, dialogue, or a path to goodness and beauty.

Parmenides' intention to speak negatively is visible from the beginning of the goddess' remarks about the canons for truth. Fragment 2 tells us that we are to say not only how or that being is, but also how it is not possible for it to be otherwise. This prescription in fragment 2 gets expanded into the list of signposts in fr. 8: 'how it is' in fr. 8.2, directly repeating the 'how it is' in fr. 2.3, is at once amplified into 'how it is ungenerable and unperishing, a whole of a single kind, unmoving, and perfect' - this amplification, along with the reading of Parmenides as an ironist, will remain one of Mourelatos' own most decisive contributions - and each signpost is then proved in fragment 8 in sequence by proving the impossibility of its contradictory in a manner I shall describe below. There is no such thing as a bare 'is' in Parmenides; the copula is always either explicitly predicational or implicitly so (Austin, 1986, pp. 11-43). It is always a mistake to isolate the `is' from the surrounding discourse and then attempt to guess at its significance." (p. 95)

16. ———. 2007. Parmenides and the History of Dialectic: Three Essays. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Contents: Introduction IX; Acknowledgements XIII; Essay one: Parmenidean dialectic 1; Essay two: Parmenidean metaphysics 29; Essay three: Parmenides and the history of dialectic 51; Bibliography 85; Index 91-98.

"In [the] second essay, I would like to attempt a reconstruction of Parmenides in philosophical terms, not in methodological terms, as was tried in the first essay. But the philosophical issues will, I hope, be not only central, but also perennial. I shall set these out partly on the basis of the conclusions of the first essay, and partly on the basis of conclusions for which I have argued elsewhere. The attempt in this essay will, however, necessarily be incomplete, for the ramifications of Parmenides extend even into our own day. I shall attempt a study of this extension in the third essay.

I urge to begin with, as I urged in the first essay, that we abandon the attempt to figure out the motivations of Parmenides' argument by looking to fragment 2 first and then making conjectures about what the Parmenidean esti in that fragment means or could mean. No amount of research, amplification, or surgery is going to make this fragment specific enough. Instead, we should look to fragment 8 as an example of the discourse which fragment 2 makes both possible and necessary, and reason backwards instead of forwards. This may fail, but it is high time that it was tried." (p. 31)

17. ———. 2011. "Existence and Essence in Parmenides." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 1-8. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "Parmenides' absolute monism puts existence and essence into an absolutely monistic Being as it joins levels in an ontological hierarchy that other philosophers, from the Neoplatonists through Hegel, were later to separate. The result is a fusion of presentation and representation, a fusion not teased apart until the twentieth century."

18. ———. 2014. "Some Eleatic Features of Platonic and Neoplatonic Method." Ancient Philosophy no. 34:65-74.

"I have earlier tried to show that there is a determinate sequence of positives and negatives in the 'Truh' section of Parmenides' fragment 8, that the sequence correlates with elements in the structure of the second half of Plato's Parmenides, and that both sequences can be called ' dialectical' in the sense demanded by Republic VI (Austin, [Parmenides and the History of Dialectic. Three Essays] 2007). I shall here investigate the use of the notions of one and many in the poem and in the dialogue, and attempt to look forward to similar uses in the Plotincan hypostases and in Proclus' commentary on the dialogue. My aim is to expand and make more precise our understanding of ancient dialectic. A cursory survey of Google will reveal dozens of results for the joint keywords 'Parmenides dialectic'. But it is never clear just what this 'dialectic' is to consist in, nor how it was interpreted by those who thought themselves to be Plato's successors in our Western tradition. Here I shall attempt to show that alternations and jugglings of one and many turn out to be as important as those of positive and negative in this tradition at its outset."

19. Backman, Jussi. 2015. "Towards a Genealogy of the Metaphysics of Sight: Seeing, Hearing, and Thinking in Heraclitus and Parmenides " In Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of Sight, edited by Cimino, Antonio and Kontos, Pavlov, 11-34. Leiden: Brill.

"In this essay, we will first take a look at the background and the key theses of the Heideggerian account of Greek “metaphysics of sight” as it is manifested in Platonic thought; we will use the Heideggerian readings as a guideline and source of inspiration without concurring with all of their interpretive theses.(6)

On this basis, we can proceed to investigate the extent to which this account applies to the pre-Platonic texts, particularly to the fragments of Heraclitus and Parmenides. Is there a primacy of vision and the visual, or of any of the other senses, before Plato? What is the relationship between thinking and the senses in pre-Platonic philosophy? Considering these questions will enable us to trace the initial context and function of the visualization of thinking and to thus draft a provisional genealogy of ocular metaphysics." (p. 12)

(6) One particularly problematic facet of Heidegger’s readings of Heraclitus and Parmenides, and one that we will not discuss here, is his notion of φύσις, in the sense of “appearing” and “emerging into presence,” as their basic word, even though the term is very sparsely attested in either thinker. Martin Heidegger, Metaphysik und Nihilismus, ed. Hans-Joachim Friedrich (Frankfurt am Main, 1999), p. 89: “[T]he thinking of Heraclitus and Parmenides is a ‘physics’ in the sense of a conceiving of the essence of φύσις as the being of beings.”

20. ———. 2018. "Being Itself and the Being of Beings: Reading Aristotle’s Critique of Parmenides (Physics 1.3) after Metaphysics." Epoché. A Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 22:271-291.

Abstract "The essay studies Aristotle’s critique of Parmenides (Physics 1.3) in the light of the Heideggerian account of Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics as an approach to being (Sein) in terms of beings (das Seiende). Aristotle’s critique focuses on the presuppositions of the Parmenidean thesis of the unity of being. It is argued that a close study of the presuppositions of Aristotle’s own critique reveals an important difference between the Aristotelian metaphysical framework and the Parmenidean “protometaphysical” approach. The Parmenides fragments indicate being as such in the sense of the pure, undifferentiated “is there” (τὸ ἐόν)—as the intelligible accessibility of meaningful reality to thinking, prior to its articulation into determinate beings. For Aristotle, by contrast, “being itself” (αὐτὸ τὸ ὄν) has no other plausible meaning than “being-something-determinate as such” (τὸ ὅπερ ὄν τι), which itself remains equivocal. In this sense, Aristotle can indeed be said to conceive being in terms of beings, as the being-ness of determinate beings."

21. Badiou, Alain. 2015. "Heidegger ’s Parmenides." In Division III of Heidegger ’s Being and Time: The Unanswered Question of Being, edited by Braver, Lee. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

"The thesis I maintain is as follows. First, I think, like Heidegger, that there is a Greek foundation of philosophy, and it is, indeed, a regime of Western discourse. So I will expose myself in a considered way to the charge of Western-centrism. A corollary of this thesis is that there are regimes of discourse and of thought, even some concerning being and nonbeing, that are not philosophical. This in no way detracts from their greatness and dignity: they are simply something else. This leads to the second major claim: strictly speaking, the philosophical decision does not exhaust the proclamation on being and nonbeing, since in some regimes this decision is not taken as philosophical. The third claim follows: a supplementary condition is required. Philosophy is conditional on something other than the decision regarding the path of being and of nonbeing. Fourth and last, I maintain that Parmenides is in fact the founder of philosophy, but not for the reasons that led Heidegger to assign him this role." (pp. 34-35)

This chapter was adapted from the lecture transcript of the October 29, 1985, session of a seminar on Parmenides.

22. Baldwin, Barry. 1990. "Parmenides in Byzantium." Liverpool classical monthly no. 15:115-116.

23. Ballew, Lynn. 1974. "Straight and Circular in Parmenides and the "Timaeus"." Phronesis. A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 19:189-209.

"For both Parmenides and Plato true thought pertains to "Being", and opinion and sensation pertain to "appearance."(3) In the present discussion I shall attempt to show generally that (1) in Parmenides' poem and in the Timaeus, both cosmology and epistemology are dealt with schematically, i.e. in terms of shapes - that the notions of straight and circular are applied both to the universe and to men's thought about it; and that (2) both philosophers make extensive use of the principle that "like knows like." More specifically I intend to suggest, through an analysis of the language and imagery of the texts in question, that the following points hold good for both works: (1) Being, which is "spherical," is apprehended by mind whose motion is circular. (For Parmenides, Being is stationary; "well-circled Truth" is its circumference, along which νοῦς which thinks truly proceeds. In the Timaeus, the universe as a whole rotates uponits axis, and the mind which thinks truly not only moves forward in a circular path but also revolves upon itself in imitation of the universal motion.)

(2) Appearances, which shoot about in straight lines, are perceived by processes of opinion and sense perception which themselves consist of motion along straight paths." (pp. 189-190)

(3) For Parmenides opinion and sensation are eventually identified (in Fr. 8) with the way of not-being, and appearances, the things that seem, are shown simply "not to be."

24. Baracchi, Claudia. 2024. "Drifting to the Periphery of the Ancient Greek World on Images, Visions, and Dreams." Research in Phenomenology no. 54:31-51.

Abstract: "The essay articulates a rhapsodic reflection on the place of images, their surfacing, and the invisible that sustains them. By way of introduction, it focuses on (1) the initial scenes of Pasolini’s Medea (1969). Following this spellbinding sequence, it addresses (2) the abiding philosophical attraction to the phenomenon of dreams and visions. This will lead to (3) the story of a momentous flight from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Western coast of Italy, sometime during the VI century BCE. One of the outcomes of this event was the founding of Velia, Elea in Attic Greek. These meanderings take us to the periphery of the region “we” call “the West.” More precisely, they point to the periphery of a certain received way of thinking and may contribute to unsettle it. For what begins to emerge from this rhapsody is an unusual profile of the most celebrated pre-classical thinker: Parmenides."

25. Bárány, István. 2006. "From Protagoras to Parmenides: a Platonic History of Philosophy." In La costruzione del discorso filosofico nell'età dei Presocratici = The Construction of Philosophical Discourse in the Aage of the Presocratics, edited by Sassi, Maria Michela, 305-327. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale.

26. Barnes, Jonathan. 1979. "Parmenides and the Eleatic One." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 61:1-21.

Reprinted in: J. Barnes, Method and Metaphysics. Essays in Ancient Philosophy I, edited by Maddalena Bonelli, New York: Oxford University Press 2011, pp. 262-287.

" 'Exactly one thing exists'. That is the intoxicating thesis of 'real' monism. It is, of course, utterly distinct from its milksop homonym, 'material' monism, which maintains that everything is made of some single matter or stuff. As a philosophico-scientific thesis it is at best absurd and at worst unintelligible; yet beyond all doubt it was propounded by Melissus.

Almost to a man, scholars deny Melissus any monistic originality: he inherited real monism, together with most of the rest of his philosophy, from father Parmenides; and it was the uncouth verses of the Way of Truth which placed tò en at the centre of Eleatic metaphysics. A few heterodox students have quarrelled with that ascription, doubting the presence - or at least questioning the importance - of The One in Parmenides' thought; but their scruples have been unconvincingly expressed, and they have failed to shake the orthodoxy. And indeed, the orthodoxy has reason for complacency: the history of fifth century thought is often seen to hinge on Parmenidean monism; a luxuriant doxography is pretty well unanimous in ascribing tò en to Parmenidean; and the thesis of real monism is apparently both stated and argued for in the surviving fragments of Parmenides' poem.

In this paper, I shall argue that we have in reality no reason to make Parmenides a monist. My approach is negative and serial: I shall simply consider one by one the texts and suppositions which have been or might be adduced in the quest for monism, and I shall endeavour to show that their adduction is of no avail. My aim is to prick the hide of orthodoxy: even the most sagacious elephant may benefit from the occasional gad-fly's sting." (pp. 2-3, notes omitted)

27. ———. 1979. The Presocratic Philosophers. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Two volumes; revised edition in one volume 1989.

See Chapter IX: Parmenides and the Objects of Inquiry, pp. 122-138 and X: Being and Becoming, pp. 139-157.

"Parmenides of Elea marks a turning-point in the history of philosophy: his investigations, supported and supplemented by those of his two followers [Zeno and Melissus], seemed to reveal deep logical flaws in the very foundations of earlier thought. Science, it appeared, was marred by subtle but profound contradictions; and the great enterprise undertaken by the Milesians, by Xenophanes and by Heraclitus, lacked all pith and moment. The age of innocence was ended, and when science was taken up again by the fifth-century philosophers, their first and most arduous task was to defend their discipline against the arguments of Elea. If their defense was often frail and unconvincing, and if it was Plato who first fully appreciated the strength and complexity of Parmenides' position, it remains true that Parmenides' influence on later Presocratic thought was all-pervasive. Historically, Parmenides is a giant figure; what is more, he introduced into Presocratic thought a number of issues belonging to the very heart of philosophy. Parmenides' thoughts were divulged in a single hexameter poem (Diogenes Laertius, 1.16 = 28 A 13) which survived intact to the time of Simplicius (A 21). Observing that copies of the poem were scarce, Simplicius transcribed extensive extracts; and thanks to his efforts we possess some [B 6] lines of the work, including two substantial passages." (p. 122)

28. Barrett, James. 2004. "Struggling with Parmenides." Ancient Philosophy no. 24:267-291.

"... Parmenides' poem contains syntactical puzzles of extraordinary difficulty. (3) And yet, in spite of the fact that every student of the poem has experienced a form of vertigo in coming to terms with this remarkable text, few have pursued this disorientation as anything other than a difficulty to be surmounted.

I argue, however, that the poem reaps benefits from the opacity we all confront and that our experience of vertigo is in fact consistent with the commentary of the fragments more broadly. I do not contend that the text presents unresolvable opacity as yet one more gesture toward inescapable aporia, or that none of the possible meanings necessarily have a greater or lesser claim to validity. Rather, I suggest that the poem offers its own difficulty—particularly in the ‘Aletheia' (4) as a key part of its purpose and that the text’s strong interest in epistemological method appears not only in the substance of its commentary, but also in its mode of expression." (p. 267)

(3) By 'poem' I mean the fragments as we know them.

(4) I follow convention in dividing the poem into three sections: proem (B1); 'Aletheia' B2-8: and Doxa' B9-19. For convenience I refer to the Aletheia' as the poem's ‘first part' and to the ‘Doxa' as the 'second'. I intend no judgments either by this terminology or by these divisions.

29. Basson, Anthony Henry. 1961. "The Way of Truth." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 61:73-86.

"More generally, almost all commentators assume (1) that there is just one premiss, (2) that the poem presents a single continuous chain of argument. If this were so, a single false step would suffice to destroy the whole. In fact, analysis does not support either of these assumptions.

The object of this paper is simply logical analysis, and this means ascertaining (1) which statements in fact function as premisses, and which as conclusions, (2) whether the conclusions are in fact validly deduced from the premisses. For this purpose I use Raven’s (*)excellent English rendering, referring to the Greek text only where this is essential. I shall assume that Fragments 2 and 8 contain the whole argument, the remainder being repetitious or rhetorical; and further, that propositions not proved in the extant fragments were not proved in those parts of the poem which have perished.

I first reproduce Fragments 2 and 8, arranged so as to show their logical structure. Thus Fragment 2 consists of five assertions, numbered 01-05, which form a single argument. But Fragment 8 consists of a sequence of forty-two assertions, and divides into no less than nine distinct arguments, numbered 11-13, 21-26, 31-36, 41-44, 51-55, 61-62, 71-74, 81-85, 91-97. Some preliminary observations are made on the articulation of each of these ten arguments, and their relations to one another. In Part III the principal conclusions are listed, which Parmenides seems to wish to draw. Then the various arguments for these are reconstructed, additional premisses being inserted where these are required for validity. It is found that two of these arguments (the proofs of assertions 22 and 72) are fundamental. In Part IV the argument of Fragment 2 (01-05) is examined in connexion with the proof of 22, and an interpretation of the former is offered. The outcome of this examination is that 71-74 is the fundamental argument, rather than 01-05." (pp. 74-75)

(*) [Kirk, Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers. A Critical History with a Selection of Texts, 1957]

30. Beaufret, Jean. 2006. "Heraclitus and Parmenides." In Dialogue with Heidegger, 21-31. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

First French edition: Botteghe oscure, 25, 1960, pp. 31-37; revised reprint in J. Beaufret, Dialogue avec Heidegger. Philosophie grecque, Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1973.

"If the world that is said to be pre-Socratic is rich in original historical figures, Heraclitus and Parmenides are the most radiantly central figures of this world. With Heraclitus and Parmenides the very foundation of occidental thought is accomplished. It is to them that what is still alive and vivacious at the bottom of our thinking goes back, as if to the secret of its source. It can be said that it is through them that we think, even if we do not think of them, for they are the light in which the depth of our world is originally revealed—a depth which we always and already are and which remains all the more enigmatic for us, and thus all the more concealed, in that we belong to it in the heart of the history that has come to us and that is still to come." (p. 21)

(...)

"If Parmenides is the thinker of being, we can understand now that this thinking of being overshadows change no more than a thinking of change, such as Heraclitus conceives it, destabilizes a fundamental permanence. Movement appears to Heraclitus only upon a background of permanence, and when Parmenides thinks the permanence of being against non-being, it is as an unmovable horizon of presence-absence that is the essence of all change. Far from rising from the dawn against each other like the champions of an inaugural polemic, Heraclitus and Parmenides are perhaps both, despite the difference of their words, listening to the same λόγος, to which they both lend the same ear at the origin of occidental thought. At bottom, there is perhaps no more immobilism in Parmenides' Poem than there is mobilism in the fragments of Heraclitus, or rather permanence and change are to be found to the same degree in both. In this way the two languages diverge without, however, contradicting each other. Both expose the Greek knowledge of being, a knowing of being that unfolds in the element of presence without forcing or tormenting anything, without shying away or becoming strained, without compromise or excess." (pp. 30-31)

31. ———. 2006. "Reading Parmenides." In Dialogue with Heidegger, 32-63. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

French edition: Lecture de Parménide, in J. Beaufret, Dialogue avec Heidegger. Philosophie grecque, Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1973.

"But in 1916 Karl Reinhardt, who taught at Frankfurt and whom I once had the chance to meet on the shores of Lake Maggiore just after the Second World War, dismisses the interpretations of both Diels and Wilamowitz. This is neither a polemical refutation nor a concessive hypothesis; what Parmenides explains, after having opposed truth to error, is quite simply how it would be impossible for error not to seize the minds of men from the very beginning. The power of error over men responds, as Reinhardt says, “to a sort of original sin” of pre-history. (5) The site of this error, that is, opinion or δόξα, ceases to be, therefore, a mere adventitious juxtaposition to true knowledge, ἀλήθεια, in the Poem; it becomes an integral part of a whole to whose unity it belongs as that to which true knowledge is contrasted." (p. 33)

(...)

"The argument that there is a tripartition where a bimillenary tradition has only been able to see a bipartition, is, I believe, the veritable acquisition of Reinhardt’s study. Yet whether this tripartition is exactly as Reinhardt determines it remains as questionable.

It falls to Heidegger to have raised such a question eleven years after the publication of Reinhardt’s book, on page 223 of Sein und Zeit (1927), that is, four pages before the incomplete French translation published in 1964 by Gallimard as a supposed first volume of the text mysteriously comes to a halt. Heidegger says in a note: “Karl Reinhardt was the first to conceptualize and solve the hackneyed problem of how the two parts of Parmenides' poem are connected, though he did not explicitly point out the ontological foundation for the connection between ἀλήθεια and δόξα, or of the necessity of this connection." (p. 34)

(...)

"Is it a question, as Reinhardt thought, of the tripartition: truth, error, and truth of error as original sin? Is it a question of something other? But of what exactly? Can we draw it out from a simple translation? Yes, but on condition that this translation is not simply a movement of the text to us, but rather a movement on our part to Parmenides' words. Not, of course, in order to burden them with presuppositions that have come from elsewhere, but to attempt to hear in them the simplicity of what they say. And here philology, as erudite as it may be, remains insufficient. For it is above all philology that is far from being exempt from philosophical presuppositions." (p. 35)

32. Beets, Muus Gerrit Jan. 1986. The Coherence of Reality: Experiments in Philosophical Interpretations: Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato. Delft: Eburon.

33. Benardete, Seth. 1998. "«Night and day,...»: Parmenides." Mètis. Anthropologie des mondes grecs anciens no. 13:193-225.

Reprinted in S. Benardete, The Archaeology of the Soul: Platonic Readings of Ancient Poetry and Philosophy, Edited by Ronna Burger and Michael Davis,l South BHend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 2012, pp. 200-228.

"Three things are conspicuously absent from Parmenides' poem, and a fourth is just as surprising for its presence. The goddess never ascribes eternity (αίεί) to being or falsehood (ψευδός) to nonbeing; nonbeing disappears as soon as the goddess turns to Opinion, even though ‘to be not' is as much a mortal name as ‘to be' (8. 40), and the goddess promises that Parmenides will know (εϊση, ειδήσεις [10. 1, 5]) and learn (μαθήσεαι [8.31]) mortal opinions, but she herself never uses such verbs about Truth.

Parmenides is, to be sure, fated to hear of everything (πάντα πυθέσθαι) (1.28), but only he says that he was on a road that carries the man who knows (είδότα φώτα) (1. 3). The goddess says that mortals know nothing είδότες ούδέν) (6. 4). That the goddess never speaks of the parts that should presumably constitute the whole of being might be thought a fifth cause of astonishment, but not if ‘whole' means no more than ‘one', and the likeness of being to a sphere does not grant it anything more than arbitrarily sliced homogeneous sections, and the difference between the surface and center of a sphere fails to apply to being. If being is also bereft of any magnitude, despite the equal measures the goddess assigns to it (8. 44, 49), being is no more than a point and as hypothetical as any other geometric entity. It is one thing for the goddess to speak of an articulated order (διάκοσμος) of opinions no less plausible (είκώς) than imagistic (είκώς) (8. 60); it is quite another for being to transgress its own boundaries through an image (3).

Deception (άπατηλός κόσμος) should be an exclusive property of Opinion (8. 32). Plato’s Eleatic Stranger, in believing that Parmenides' whole case collapses if phantom speeches (είδωλα λεγάμενα) and the arts that produce them can be shown to exist, seems to be unaware that Parmenides had anticipated his counter-proof in the phantom speech his own poem was, despite the fact that the lines he himself quotes from it lodged the image within the account of being (4). The patricide he is about to commit and for which he asks Theaetetus’s pardon is itself a phantoms." (p. 194)

(3) The double meaning of είκώς, which controls the account that Timaeus gives, first shows up in the Odyssey, where Nestor, in speaking of Telemachus, juxtaposes its two senses: ή τοι γάρ μΰθοί γε έοικότες, ουδέ κε φαίης/νεώτερον ώδε έοικότα μυθήσασθαι (Odyssey, 3. 124-5).

(4) Sophist, 241 d 10-e 6; 244 e 2-7.

34. Benzi, Nicolò. 2016. "Noos and Mortal Enquiry in the Poetry of Xenophanes and Parmenides." Methodos. Savoirs et Textes no. 16:1-18.

Abstract: "Noos, noein and their derivatives are of central importance to the development of epistemological conceptions in Presocratic philosophy. Already in Homer the terms indicate a special form of cognition, resembling sense perception in its non-inferential nature, which consists in discovering the truth beyond mere appearance. In this article, I focus on the role which noos and noein play in the poetry of Xenophanes and Parmenides, whose characterizations of noetic cognition, I argue, depend on their response to the problems stemming from the contrast between humans' epistemic limitations and divine omniscience, as traditionally depicted in Archaic Greek poetry. In particular, I consider Hesiod's poems and the implications of his claim to be able to “speak the mind (noos) of Zeus” (Op. 661), which hints at the universal truth he wants to convey through his poetry. However, Hesiod's dependence on the Muses, who can speak both false and true things (Th. 27-28), renders his poetry inevitably ambiguous, as he and his audience cannot know whether what they learn from the divinity is actually true.

Xenophanes appropriates the motif of humans' epistemic limitedness by describing mortals as inevitably confined to opinion, and contrasting their condition with the all-powerful noetic capacities of the greatest god. However, I argue, despite mortals' belief-formation ultimately relies on divine disclosure, humans are not condemned to complete ambiguity as in the past poetic tradition, since Xenophanes' very conception of god's noos provides a reliable basis for mortal enquiry which guarantees the actual improvement of humans' opinions over time.

Even in Parmenides' poem human noos is repeatedly described as wandering astray, but error is not conceived as an ineluctable human condition. In fact, by stipulating that the correct path of enquiry which mortals' noos ought to follow to attain truth consists in the logical deduction of the attributes of What-Is, Parmenides allows for the actual possibility that humans achieve that universal and absolute truth to which traditionally they could not have access.

Thus, by introducing innovations to the traditional notion of divine and mortal noos, Xenophanes and Parmenides respectively assigned to critical enquiry and logical argumentation that essential role which they maintained in the following development of philosophy."

35. ———. 2021. "In Quest for Authority: Parmenides and the Tradition of Katabasis Narratives." In Aspects of Death and the Afterlife in Greek Literature, edited by Gazis, George Alexande and Hooper, Anthony, 89-104. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

"In this chapter I will focus on the use of the motifs belonging to katabasis narratives in early Greek philosophy, with special attention devoted to Parmenides’ proem and the ways in which the philosopher appropriates the tradition of afterlife journeys therein as an authoritative framework for his work.

(...)

As I argue, Parmenides’ adoption of the afterlife motif represents an original take on the tradition. For, by strikingly contrasting the narrative of the proem with the rigorous deduction contained in the Truth, Parmenides not only emphasises the unreliability of katabasis narratives as a ground for authority but also replaces them with a truth based on logical argumentation.

In the following analysis I will focus less on the actual content of such narratives – namely, what they tell us about the Greeks’ beliefs about the Underworld – and more on the issues concerning their reliability and truth value. Indeed, the problem of truth is particularly relevant in didactic–philosophical contexts in which philosophers/sages claim to be in possession of it and thereby able to teach it. I will start by providing an overview of the use of katabasis narratives as a way to substantiate professions of wisdom in Archaic thought. Next, I will focus on Odysseus’ katabasis as narrated in the Nekyia in order to illustrate the problem of such accounts’ reliability and how it impacts on their use as sources of authority. Finally, I will consider Parmenides’ appropriation of the katabasis model and show how it differs from that of his predecessors and eventually challenges the significance of the model itself." (pp. 89-90).

36. Berka, Karel. 1981. "Was there an eleatic background to pre-euclidean mathematics?" In The Change, Ancient Axiomatrics, and Galileo's Methodology: Proceedings of the 1978 Pisa Conference on the History and Philosophy of Science. Volume I, edited by Hintikka, Jaakko, Gruender, David and Agazzi, Evandro. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"The basic ideas of a recent reconstruction concerned with the origin of deductive mathematics in the 6th and 5th centuries (cp. [9]-[12]) can be summarized briefly as follows: In its very beginning, there existed in Greece only a purely practical, empirical mathematics. The transformation of this empirical mathematics into theoretical mathematics, developed already in the pre-Euclidean period, could be achieved only by means of extra-mathematical reasons. This change, which resulted in the elaboration of Euclid's Elements, was, in its principal features, determined by the philosophy of two Eleatics: Parmenides and Zeno. Mathematics was, therefore, at least initially, a branch or an inherent part of dialectics.

These ideas are supported by various arguments. Some of them, because of the lack of sufficient historical sources, are a matter of iscussion, whereas others, as I shall attempt to show, are implausible or wrong. From what will follow, one might, of course, conclude that my approach is too destructive. However, taking into account that the known historical sources do not give us enough information about the development of mathematics in the discussed period, it seems to me to be more appropriate to abstain from any polished explanation than to suggest an unwarranted theory." (p. 125)

[9) Szabo, A.: 1954, Zur Geschichte der Dialektik des Denkens', Acta Antiqua 2, pp. 17-62.

[10) Szabo, A.: 1954, 'Zum Verstiindniss der Eleaten?' Acta Antiqua 2, pp. 243-289.

[11) Szabo, A.: 1956, 'Wie ist die Mathematik zu einer deduktiven Wissenschaft geworden?' Acta Antiqua 4, pp. 109-152.

[12) Szabo, A.: 1969, Anfänge der griechischen Mathematik, Akadimiai Kiado, Budapest.

37. Berruecos Frank, Bernardo. 2020. "Parmenides and Heraclitus revisited. Palintropic Metaphysics, Polymathy and Multiple Experience." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 27:37-70.

Abstract: "Some scholars have supposed an influence of Heraclitus’ philosophy in Parmenides’ Poem, based on the correlations between their fragments in terms of lexicon, images, word-plays, and expression modes. This relationship has been analyzed through certain textual and historical evidences of uneven and undetermined value, and the focus of its comparison has been mainly the interpretation of both thinkers as essential parts of a tradition, the philosophical one, that was founded after their time, and that insisted in opposing them, and a prior, and shared tradition, the poetical one, that both appropriated as a means to convey a radically new message.

The comparative study of fragments 5, 6, and 7 of Parmenides’ Poem and some of Heraclitus’ fragments reveals that a great part of the criticisms the Eleatic allegedly addressed to the Ephesian are traces of poetical tradition, through whose diverse appropriation both thinkers show similar epistemological and ontological conceptions (Nehamas, 2002), among which one can recognize a relationship of tension and partial rejection of the intellectual and discursive phenomenon of ἱστορίη. By using the word παλίντροπος, Parmenides does not criticize the doctrinal nucleus of Heraclitus’ ontology nor he characterizes negatively the goddess’ forbidden path, but instead he shapes a spatial metaphor of Being, and of the method to arrive to its knowledge.

At the same time, παλίντροπος operates as an image of the Poem within the poem, a sort of mirror that reflects its content and configuration."

References

Nehamas, A., ‘Parmenidean Being / Heraclitean Fire’, in V. Caston & D. Graham (eds.), Presocratic Philosophy. Essays in Honor of Alexander Mourelatos (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 45-64.

38. Bicknell, Peter J. 1966. "Dating the Elatics." In For Service to Classical Studies: Essays in Honour of Francis Letters, edited by Kelly, Maurice, 5-14. Melbourne: F. C. Cheshire.

"Painfully little is known of the dates and life of most of the Pre- socratics. Such knowledge would often help to disprove or to confirm theoretical reconstructions of the influences of ancient thinkers upon each other. In the following an attempt will be made to assign dates to Parmenides and Zeno. The ancient evidence is used and some speculation added. Without the latter any attempt to deal with the Presocratics must be virtually hamstrung.

It is notorious that Apollodorus fixed the date of a philosopher by some outstanding event in his life and that he reckoned him forty years old at that date. Parmenides’ ‘floruit’ is given as 504-500 b.c.1 that of Zeno as 464-460 b.c.2 It may be significant that the difference is forty years." (p. 5)

39. ———. 1967. "Parmenides' Refutation of Motion and an Implication." Phronesis no. 12:1-5.

"It is commonly maintained that Melissus was the major forerunner of atomism. This has been argued on a number of grounds, one of these being that Leucippus reacted to a Melissean rather than a Parmenidean refutation of locomotion. In the following short paper I shall challenge this view and point out that not only is one other argument for Melissus' influence on atomism insecure, but that Theophrastus (*), our most important witness, unequivocally states that Leucippus opposed a pre-Melissean eleaticism.

Discussion is preceded by quotation of the two relevant texts." [Parmenides DK 28 B8 and Melissus DK 30 B7.7] (p. 1)

"To return to motion and the void, it seems to me most likely that Leucippus in replying to Parmenides made explicit τό κενόν implicit in Parmenides' gaps of what is not in what is and that Melissus attempted to refute Leucippus using atomism’s own physical terminology." (p. 5)

(*) [The crucial passage is the following: Simplicius Phys. 28.4ff (a virtual transcript of Theophrastus, either direct or through Alexander of Aphrodisias), (p. 4)]

40. ———. 1968. "A new arrangement of some Parmenidean verses." Symbolae Osloensis no. 42:44-50.

"Preface. There have been two important attempts at setting the extant fragments of Parmenides' poem in order; that by H. Diels in his 'Poetarum Philosophorum Fragmenta' and in the earlier editions of 'Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker'; and that by W. Kranz in the later editions of the latter work. In many respects, the sequence proposed by Diels was followed by his successor, but the respective fragments 1 and 7 differ significantly. With the important exception of C. J. de Vogel, (1) scholars appear unanimous in their approval of the Kranzian ordering. In the present paper, I intend to review the difference between Diels' and Kranz' constructions of fragments 1 and 7, and to suggest a new combination of verses which involves adding a line to fragment 1 as Diels constructed it and uniting three other fragments, namely fragment 6 (Diels and Kranz), fragment 2 (Diels) = fragment 4 (Kranz), and fragment 8 (Diels and Kranz)." (p. 44)

(1) C. J. de Vogel, Greek Philosophy, Vol. I, Leiden, 1957, pp. 37-38.

41. ———. 1968. "Parmenides, Fragment 10." Hermes.Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie no. 96:629-631.

"Diels and Kranz assign these two fragments [B10 and B11] to Parmenides' Way of Seeming and evidently suppose that they belong to the same context. It would be strange however if Parmenides had felt it necessary to juxtapose two lists of contents of the second part of his poem." (p. 629)

(...)

"There is, I submit, only one plausible location. B10 belonged to the prologue where it immediately followed line 32 of B1. Having promised first to reveal to Parmenides the steady heart of Truth (B1 lines 28-9), the goddess adds that she will also give an account of the opinions of mortals in whose view it is necessary for mere appearances to be truly existent (lines 30-32). She quite naturally goes on to give a brief synopsis of the topics which the opinions of men embrace." (p. 631)

42. ———. 1979. "Parmenides, DK 28 B4." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 13:115.

"None of the citators gives any clue as to the location of the lines in Parmenides poem and Taran(1) pessimistically concluded that its context cannot be reconstructed.

It is certainly difficult to find room for the lines in the Way of Truth, where they are inserted in the latest editions of Diels-Kranz. There can be little doubt that 86 follows immediately after B3 which itself is to be dovetailed into B2. I have argued elsewhere(2) that B5 is to be located immediately before B1. B7 comes straight after B6 and dovetails into B8 which takes us into the Way of Seeming.

My suggestion is that B4 is to be located at the end of Parmealdes poem and that it follows immediately upon B19."

(1) See L. Taran, Parmenides (Princeton, 1965, p. 50.

(2) "Parmenides, DK 28 85". Apeiron 13 (1979), pp. 9-11.

43. ———. 1979. "Parmenides, DK 28 B5." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 13:9-11.

According to the common view, represented by Raven (1) and endorsed with little hesitation by Guthrie, (2) this fragment, whose context within Parmenides' poem is not evident from its only citation, (3) is to be interpreted in conjunction with B1.28—29. In these lines from the prologue the goddess undertakes to reveal to the poet-seer Άληθειής εϋκυκλεος (4) or εύγίεγγέος (5) or ενττειέθος (6) τ?τορ. Accepting the reading eUKiwXeoc, Raven explains that truth is described as well-rounded because wherever you pick up the chain of Parmenides' reasoning, you can follow it round in a circle, passing through each of the links in turn back to your starting point. At B5, Raven holds, the goddess spells out this feature of her subsequent argumentation. He translates "it is all one to me where I begin, for I shall come back there again in time".

Together with others this interpretation is rightly rejected in Tarán's (7) modern doxography. It is incompatible, Tarán claims, with the structure of B8. Only a brief scrutiny of the Way of Truth is required to appreciate that this is in fact the case. Five characteristics, ά·γένητον, άνωληθρον,ούλον μουιχτγενές, άτρεμές, άτελεστον, (8) of its subject are established in that order. (9) Only in the demonstration of the fourth, in one of its senses, (10) is the proof of others invoked. (11) None of the theorems of B8 leads back into the primary argument which occupies B2, B3 and B6 1-2. It apparently did not occur to Tarán, however, to contemplate an alternative translation for B5. Rendering "It is indifferent to me where I make a beginning; for there I come back again", he declare himself agnostic as to the reason for, if not the authenticity of, (12) the goddess' observation." (p. 9)

(1) See G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge 1954, pp. 268-269.

(2) See W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. ii, Cambridge 1965, p. 97 note 1.

(3) By Proclus (in Parm. 1. 708. 16-17) who almost certainly found the lines, which he mistakenly referred to Being, in an anthology.

(4) So Simplicius at de caelo 557. 27 ff.

(5) So Proclus, in Tim. 1. 345. 15-16.

(6) Thus Clement, Strom. 2. 336. 16-17; Diogenes Laertius 9.22; Plutarch, adv. Colot. 1114 d-e; and Sextus Empiricus, adv. math. 7. Ill and 114.

(7) See L. Tarán, Parmenides, Princeton 1965, pp. 51-53.

(8) See B8.9-11.

(9) άγένητου together with, conversely, άνωλεθρον, B8. 5-21; ουλών μοννoγενές, B8. 22— 25; άτρεμές, B8. 26-41; άτέλετον, B8. 42-49.1 leave elaboration for a future occasion.

(10) I stand by my central contention at Phronesis 12 (1967) pp. 1-5 that Parmenides separately disposed of movement qua transformation, growth and diminution, and qualitative change (all ruled out proximately by the impossibility of genesis and olethros) on the one hand (B8.26-28) and qua change of position, i.e. locomotion, on the other (B8. 29-33).

(11) See B8. 27-28.

(12) Doubted by Jameson, for reference see note 16 below.

(16) C.J. Jameson, "Well-rounded Truth" and Circular Thought in Parmenides", Phronesis 3 (1958), pp. 15-30.

44. Blachowicz, James. 2012. Essential Difference: Toward a Metaphysics of Emergence. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Chapter 2: Parmenides' Challenge: Truth or Seeming, pp. 23-39.

"In recent decades, there has been new growth in metaphysical inquiry within the analytic tradition – a surprising development for those who have associated that tradition with its older anti-metaphysical precursors." (p. 2)

(...)

"What counts as another contemporary development in metaphysics is the growth of theories of emergence, mostly within philosophy of science and concentrated, understandably, in philosophy of biology and philosophy of mind. Given that this area of inquiry has focused on explaining the nature of physical entities and what might be the distinctive causal conceptions that complex structure involves, it is surprising that it too is seldom examined in analytic metaphysics." (p. 3)

(...)

"I also offer in-depth analyses of major historical figures: Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel.

I have found no recent books in metaphysics that discuss in any detail the reductionist issue that is the focus of my treatment here. Yet I would argue that an appreciation of this issue is essential, not only for a comprehension of the fundamental problem that lay at the bottom of the metaphysical explorations of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel, but also for an understanding of the nature of metaphysics itself." (p. 3)

(...)

"In my treatment of this problem, I will construct a logical parallel between its ancient and modern forms. While the “crisis” of the possibility of metaphysics is often taken as originating with Hume’s criticism, I will argue that much the same crisis occurred in ancient Greece, and in a remarkably similar form.

Parmenides and Hume each formulated a “fork” of two exclusive choices that presented a challenge for their respective successors: (a) analytic truths that are known as necessary (the Parmenidean identity “What Is is What Is” in his Way of Truth, and Hume’s “relations of ideas”), but which were, because of their formality, devoid of material content; and (b) synthetic truths rich in such material content (the Parmenidean Way of Seeming, which was the way of the Sophists, and Hume’s “matters of fact”), but which were only ever contingent. Could there be no knowledge with both necessity and material content, that is, no “essential difference”?" (p. 4)

45. Blank, David L. 1982. "Faith and Persuasion in Parmenides." Classical Antiquity no. 1:167-177.

"The debate between those who recognize a religious, mystical Parmenides and those who see Parmenides as a rationalist has had a long history, even when one begins its examination with Diels's shaman- and Reinhardt's logician Parmenides.(1)" (p. 167)

(...)

"This essay attempts to show not only that certain elements of the proem's imagery make sense in a religious light but that they go someway toward clarifying the purpose of the proem and its relation to the remainder of Parmenides' poem. The analysis centers on the motifs of faith and persuasion, πιστις and Πειθώ. I shall argue that these motifs are used to stress the importance of Parmenides' message to his disciples by putting forward a claim to urgency on the level of his competition, the mystery religions and Pythagorean teachings to which the disciples were constantly exposed in southern Italy. Establishment of this claim is the ultimate goal of Parmenides' proem." (p. 168)

(...)

"If Parmenides wanted his philosophical project to be taken seriously or even to be heard at all over the confused frenzy of the pious, he was well advised to borrow some of their techniques. Thus, Parmenides begins by making his set of alternatives, Truth and Seeming, as crucially important to the audience as the alternatives of the competing groups. Once he has gained the audience's attention and has got the audience to trust him, he demonstrates the method of persuasion by argument. "ἐστί, says Parmenides, is the Way of true faith; and although he argues for this logically, he begins by using the seductive power of persuasion and implies that those who hold the true faith will be happy, while those who do not are doomed to ignorance by their απιστία." (p. 177)

46. Bodnár, István M. 1985. "Contrasting Images Notes on Parmenides Β 5." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 19:52-59.

"A fragment, deprived of its context and so short as B 5 is, can pose notorious difficulties to those trying to interpret it. Tarán’s verdict (which he formulates while elucidating the basic" meaning of this fragment) that "... while some of these conjectures go beyond the evidence so that there is no good reason to support one against the others, other conjectures are based on premisses that may be proved wrong” seems to suggest that we do not possess any criterion so as to choose among the interpretations which cannot be rejected: after all a certain amount of incertainty is inevitable or even inherent in this fragment.

In the following sections I will try to show that in much the same way as in the case of, for example, Parmenides B 3 we are able to contrast and rank different interpretations of this fragment. This does not lead up to pure certainty in fact, and supposing we happen to find some longer quotations from Parmenides some day embedding B 5 in a continuous context, it is clear that such a development might be disastrous for the wealth of accumulated labours of scholastically on this fragment. But in principle this holds good in the case of the vast majority of the Presocratic authors, let alone some of the other fragments of Parmenides." (p. 52)

47. Bogaczyk-Vormayr, Małgorzata. 2016. "Parmenides’ Poem: Riddle from B 5." Ethics in Progress no. 7:95-103.

"In this short essay I attempt to examine the poem of Parmenides from Elea – the text of unusual beauty which fascinates many scholars. The poem is full of unsolved mysteries and yet is capable of clarifying certain moments of Greek philosophical thought, or of enchanting us with a single piece in which we find something of utmost importance: a sentence, metaphor or an expression that becomes some kind of recurrent phrase when we reread the text. In my interpretation of the poem I give special attention to fragment B5." (p. 95)

(...)

"It seems plausible that the correct interpretation of Parmenides’ poem should be taken from the perspective provided by the thesis of fragment B5, so we could intuitively capture “all things” announced in a presumed whole as referring to the circular, inner Way of Truth.(5) It is from this way that the reliable verification of discovery begins and so also begins the reflection upon any human experience." (p. 103)

(5) 5 Hermann Diels seems to present the interpretation which is the closest (cf. Bodnár [“Contrasting Image. Notes On Parmenides B5“, Apeiron 19: 52-59] 1985, 58-59).

48. Bollack, Jean. 2011. "From Being to the World and Vice Versa." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 9-20. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "The importance of the δόξα is accepted today by scholars; the problem is now the relation between the two parts of the poem. The most satisfactory solution is to consider the whole and to show that one part, the definition of Being, is made in reference to the other, as the projection of an organization of the world, and that both terms correspond perfectly to each other. This perspective allows us to reread the introduction as an initiation from a man who “already knows” better than anyone else, but lets himself be told everything by an honored authority: she discloses the truth of language and transmits, for the δόξα, the vision, in accord with Being, of a rigorous opposition."

49. Boodin, J. E. 1943. "The Vision of Parmenides." The Philosophical Review no. 52:578-589.

"The evidence is conclusive that Parmenides'contrast is that of fire and earth.That Parmenides means earth we need no more evidence than we have in the extant fragment: "The other is just opposite to it, dark night, a compact and heavy body. "That would be Anaximenes' way of characterizing the earth. But why did Parmenides choose earth to stand for the whole realm of what is not? We learn from Theophrastus that Parmenides "was the first to declare that the earth is spheroidal and situated in the middle of the universe".(19) The discovery of the spheroidal shape of the earth was capital.We find also that Parmenides observed that the moon shines with reflected light and revolves round the earth.Theophrastus does not seem to regard that observation as first "declared" by Parmenides, though it bears evidence of Parmenides being an observer and not merely a logician.If we can reconstruct Parmenides' discovery of the spheroidal shape of the earth, it would throw light upon his dualism of fire and earth.

I think that it is highly probable that Parmenides discovered the spheroidal shape of the earth from watching the shadow which the earth casts upon the heavens at twilight.

We can now conclude our argument,which we believe to be Parmenides'argument.The fire of heaven is the It, the truly existent, as it is also the truth of existence. At twilight we can see for ourselves how the earth darkens the sky, shuts off the fire of heaven. The earth which is the cause of the darkness -- and is in fact the darkness -- included for Parmenides, as it does for us who watch the same phenomenon, all that is part of the earth not only the solid core but water and mist. It is all the earth's shadow or darkness. We have here the key to Parmenides' dualism of fire and earth. The white, homogeneous light of heaven is It.

Color and all other variety is excluded by Parmenides, because he requires the unity of It in order to think It,and unity for him must be physical continuum such as white light seems to be.

(Newton first discovered that white light is composite.)" (pp. 587-588)

(19) [Hermann Diels, Doxographi graeci, Berlin: G. Reimer 1879, Theophrastus] Fr. 6a, Fairbanks'translation, quoted by Nahm.

[References: Arthur Fairbanks, The First Philosophers of Greece, London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. 1898; Milton Charles Nahm (ed.), Selections from Early Greek Philosophy, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1934.]

50. Bormann, Karl. 1979. "The Interpretation of Parmenides by the Neoplatonist Simplicius." The Monist no. 62:30-42.

"The doctrines of Parmenides of the one being and of the world of seeming were -- as is well known -- interpreted in different ways in the course of the history of philosophy, and even in twentieth-century historic-philosophical research, there is no agreement on the meaning of the two parts of the poem.

Regarding the one being there are four attempts of explanation to be distinguished: (1) The being is material; (2) the being is immaterial; (3) it is the esse copulae or must be seen as a modal category; (4) it is the entity of being ("Sein des Seienden"). This latter interpretation, if we can call it an interpretation, is chiefly influenced by Heidegger. The Doxa-part, however, is seen as (1) a more or less critical doxography; (2) a second-best, hypothetic explanation of phenomena which is not truth but verisimilitude; (3) a systematic unit together with the first part, the αληθβια.We do not have to discuss the differences between the outlined explanations separately;(*) in the following, we shall show that some modern interpretations were already expressed in a similar way in antiquity. With this, we shall concentrate especially on the Neoplatonist Simplicius who in his commentary on Aristotle's Physics expounds the first part of the Parmenidean poem completely and, in addition, the most important doctrines of the second part." (p. 30)

"The interpretation of the Parmenidean doctrines by Simplicius has the following result: Parmenides distinguished two large regions, the sensible and the non-sensible.(133) The sensible is the region of coming-to-be and perishing.(134) The non-sensible is divided into the levels of soul, intellectual, and intelligible. The ἕν is not discussed on the occasion of the Parmenides interpretation. The Parmenidean being is identical with the intelligible.

In view of the high esteem that Simplicius shows for Plato and Aristotle, we now have to ask how he interprets their criticism of Parmenides. The answer is: Plato and Aristotle want to prevent misunderstandings.(135)

Therefore, Plato’s criticism aims at the level of the intellectual, in which a plurality of beings is found together with the otherness.(136) Aristotle, however, shows by his criticism of Parmenides that the Parmenidean being is not identical with the sensible.(137) Parmenides was not convinced — as we could read by mistake from Aristotle, De Caelo 298 b 21— that the sensible and only the sensible would exist.(138) With all criticism of Parmenides given by Aristotle, we always have to consider that Parmenides in Aristotle’s opinion “ is obviously speaking with insight.” (139)." (p. 38)

(*) To this, see K. Bormann, Parmenides, Hamburg 1971, p. 1-22.

(133) See In Phys. 79, 29-80, 4.

(134) See In Phys. 80, 3— 4; In De caelo 556, 12— 14; 559, 14-27.

(135) Simplicius, In Phys. 148, 11-13; In De caelo 557, 19.

(136) Simplicius, In Phys. 147, 17 sqq.

(137) Ibid., 148, 7 sqq.; 86, 19 sqq.; 107, 29.

(138) Simplicius, In De caelo 558, 12; 559, 14.

(139) Simplicius, In De caelo 560, 1-4; see Aristotle, Met. 986 b 27.

51. Bosley, Richard. 1976. "Monistic argumentation." In New Essays on Plato and the Pre-Socratics, edited by Shiner, Roger and King-Farlow, John, 23-44. Guelph: Canadian Association for Publishing in Philosophy.

"I seek to give an interpretation which is rich enough to disclose the springs of monism. I am primarily concerned to show how we may understand those arguments which leave us with the conclusion that there is only one thing to know.

We may be assured at the outset that to give an argument whose conclusion is as startling as is that of monism it is necessary either to forge or to use a certain way of arguing. Doing so, in turn, depends upon putting to philosophical or dialectical use words which were not before drawn into the service of philosophical argumentation. I shall argue that the Greek word translated as "way" is put to new service, its use making it possible to undertake an inquiry as to WHAT something is; I shall argue, in short, that Parmenides put the word “way" to the same kind of use to which Plato put “ousia" or“form”, a use sustained by Aristotle in his use of “genos”. These words help make it possible for a philosopher to put a What-question."

(...)

"My first task (section 1) is to give an interpretation; my second one (section 2) is to review some of what Simplicius says, my third one (section 3) is to reconstruct monistic argumentation; I do so to facilitate diagnosis and criticism. My final task (section 4) is to

comment briefly or the responses of Plato and Aristotle. In their responses we find additional tests of the adequacy of my interpretation and reconstruction." (pp. 23-24)

52. Bossi, Beatriz. 2015. "What Heraclitus and Parmenides have in common on reality and deception." Logos (Madrid) no. 48:21-34.

Abstract: "It is usually assumed that Heraclitus is, exclusively, the philosopher of flux, diversity and opposition while Parmenides puts the case for unity and changelessness. However, there is a significant common understanding of things (though in differing contexts), not simply an accidental similarity of understanding. Both philosophers, critically, distinguish two realms: on the one hand, there is the one, common realm, identical for all, which is grasped by the ‘logos that is common'(Heraclitus) or the steady nous (Parmenides) that follows a right method in order to interpret the real. On the other hand, the realm of multiplicity seen and heard by the senses, when interpreted by ‘barbarian souls', is not understood in its common unity. Analogously, when grasped by the wandering weak nous it does not comprehend the real’s basic unity. In this paper I attempt to defend the thesis that both thinkers claim that the common logos (to put it in Heraclitean terms) or the steady intellect (to say it with Parmenides) grasp and affirm the unity of the real."

53. Bostock, David. 2006. Space, Time, Matter, and Form: Essays on Aristotle’s Physics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Chapter 6: Aristotle on the Eleatics in Physics I. 2–3, pp. 103-115.

"In the first half of chapter 2 of Physics I Aristotle explains why a work on physics should pay no attention to the thesis of Parmenides and Melissus that ‘what is is one and unchangeable’ (184b25–6). But he nevertheless goes on to pay it some attention. The discussions that follow in chapter 2 offer no difficulty in interpretation or in evaluation, so I treat them very briefly in my Section 1. But chapter 3 begins with a criticism of Melissus (186a10–22) that is certainly puzzling at first reading, so I treat this in Section 2. I argue that in this case Aristotle’s reasoning can be elucidated in an entirely satisfying way. Then at 186a22 ff. we find a criticism of Parmenides that makes use of the obscure phrase τὸ ὅπερ ὅν, and this certainly continues until at least b12. I treat of this in Section 3, and I argue that we can find good sense in his discussion, even if at times he does not say quite what he should have done. Finally, the overall structure of the discussion from there to the end of the chapter is obscure, and it is not altogether clear what Aristotle means to be attacking. I discuss this in Section 4, but without reaching any very useful conclusion." (p. 103)

54. Bowra, Cecil. 1937. "The Proem of Parmenides." Classical Philology no. 32:97-112.

Reprinted in: C. Bowra, Problems in Greek Poetry, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953 pp. 38-53.

"The origins of his method have been studied, but a knowledge of them does not explain either what he meant to say or what his contemporaries would see in his words. If we can understand what the Proem meant in the thought of his time, we may perhaps understand better how Parmenides viewed his calling as a philosopher." (p. 97)

"It may, then, be admitted that in his Proem Parmenides uses certain ideas and images which were familiar to his time, but he used them for a new purpose, and especially he narrowed their application to his own sphere of the search for knowledge. His Proem serves a purpose in making the reader feel that he is not embarking on something entirely outside his experience. But it also serves another purpose. It shows that Parmenides views his task in a religious or mystical spirit. His choice of imagery, his mention of a daimon and a thea, his use for new purposes of old elements in myths, his description of himself as an eidota psota, and, above all, his account of the celestial journey -- all give the impression that he writes not as a mere logician but as one who has had a very special experience like that of men who have consorted with the gods. His attitude to his subject is far from that of the physiologos, and we can understand why Plato, whose combination of gifts was not unlike his, held him in high reverence. Parmenides regarded the search for truth as something akin to the experience of mystics, and he wrote of it with symbols taken from religion because he felt that it was itself a religious activity." (p. 112)

55. Bredlow, Luis Andrés. 2011. "Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Parmenides' Theory of Cognition (B 16)." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 44:219-263.

Abstract: "This paper proposes a new interpretation of Parmenides B 16. After a short review of the status quaestionis (section 1), I will proceed to a detailed examination of the context of quotation in Aristotle (section 2) and Theophrastus, whose report will be shown to disclose some new possibilities for our understanding of the fragment. I shall argue that B 16 is not a theory of sense-perception, but a fragment of a comprehensive theory of cognition (section 3). This theory is consistent with Parmenides' own claims to genuine knowledge of Being (section 4), once we recognize that neither a dualism of ontological domains (“intelligible” vs. “sensible”) nor of cognitive faculties (“reason” vs. “the senses”) can be consistently ascribed to Parmenides. Moreover, our discussion will provide some elements for a reappraisal of Aristotle and Theophrastus as interpreters of their predecessors."

56. ———. 2012. "Parmenides and the Grammar of Being." Classical Philology no. 106:283-298.

"The aim of this paper is to explore some grammatical and logical aspects of the word “is” (ἔστιν) in the fragments of Parmenides. I will argue that Parmenides' “is” is to be taken most plausibly, in its first and most immediate sense, as a copula of definitional identity, expressing the essence or nature of something. This definitional use implies both the absolute and the veridical sense of “is.” This account will permit us to overcome some central difficulties inherent in other predicative interpretations of Parmenides' “is,” such as those proposed by Alexander Mourelatos, Richard Ketchum, and Patricia Curd." (p. 283)

"So the two routes of inquiry of B2 (“It is, and cannot not be,” and “It is not, and it is necessary for it not to be”) form an exhaustive alternative, once we understand the argument as concerned with essential or definitional predication alone (where “x is F” is equivalent to “x is x”): either x is x, or x is not x, which is absurd. The other two modal forms of predication (“x is F, but can be not-F”, and “x is not F, but can be F”) are intentionally left aside as irrelevant to the issue of essential or definitional predication." (p. 295)

(...)

"In addition, this interpretation explains an apparent inconsistency of the goddess' wording. At B2.2 she presents the route of “is not” as one of the routes of inquiry that can be conceived (εἰσι νοῆσαι). Later on, however, she insists that “is not” cannot be conceived (B8.8–9), and the route of “is not” is explicitly marked as “inconceivable” (B8.16). This is easily explained if “is not” stands for self-contradiction and hence logical impossibility. We cannot conceive, of course, that x is not x; but we surely can—and must—conceive the impossibility of x not being x. Evidently, the recognition that a statement is self-contradictory entails the certainty that this statement is false. Thus the route of “is not” is indeed in a certain sense a legitimate way of inquiry: in logical terms, it is the method of reductio ad absurdum. But it is a route that ends as soon as it begins: once it is recognized as such, there is nothing more to find out on this route. So there remains only one route to talk about, namely, that of “it is” (B8.1–2). (49)" (p. 295-296)

(49) Moreover, if this interpretation is right, another often-stated problem can be dispensed with as well: if Parmenides does not rule out negative predication as such, but only negations of definitional predications (i.e., self-contradictory statements), then there will be no need to seek for justifications for the abundance of negative predicates in his own arguments.

57. Brémond, Mathilde. 2020. "How did Xenophanes Become an Eleatic Philosopher?" Elenchos no. 41:1-26.

Abstract: "In this paper, I investigate how Xenophanes was ‘eleaticised’, i.e. attributed theses and arguments that belong to Parmenides and Melissus. I examine texts of Plato, Aristotle and Theophrastus in order to determine if they considered Xenophanes as a philosopher and a monist. I show that neither Plato nor Aristotle regarded him as a philosopher, but rather as a pantheist poet who claimed, in a vague way, that everything is one. But Theophrastus interpreted too literally Aristotle’s claims and was the first to make Xenophanes a proper monist philosopher."

58. Bronstein, David, and Mié, Fabián. 2021. "Eleatic Ontology in Aristotle: Introduction." Peitho, Examina Antiqua no. 12:13-17.

Abstract: "The introduction summarizes the six new papers collected in Volume 1, Tome 5: Eleatic Ontology and Aristotle. The papers take a fresh look at virtually every aspect of Aristotle’s engagement with Eleaticism. They are particularly concerned with Aristotle’s responses to Parmenidean monism, the Eleatic rejection of change, and Zeno’s paradoxes. The contributions also focus on the ways in which Aristotle developed several of his own theories in metaphysics and natural science partly in reaction to Eleatic puzzles and arguments."

59. Brown, Lesley. 1994. "The Verb 'To Be' in Greek Philosophy: Some Remarks." In Language: Companions to Ancient Thought. Vol. 3, edited by Everson, Stephen, 212-236. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"I examine key uses of 'to be' in Parmenides, Plato (especially Republic V and Sophist) and Aristotle. I argue against imposing modern distinctions (into predicative, existential or identity uses) on to the texts, showing that while Greek uses of einai may be partitioned into syntactically complete and incomplete (noted by Aristotle and perhaps at Sophist 255cd) the distinction was neither clear-cut nor perceived as philosophically important. I examine how these authors treated the inference from 'X is F' to 'X is' (compare that from 'X teaches French' to 'X teaches') and, more problematically (as Plato Sophist saw, correcting Parmenides and Republic V) from 'X is not F' to 'X is not'. "

60. Bruss, Jon Steffen. 2004. "Parmenides, Plato's Symposium, and the Narrative of Intellectual Activity." Aevum Antiquum no. 4:467-485.

61. Bryan, Jenny. 2012. Likeness and Likelihood in the Presocratics and Plato. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Acknowledgements VI; Abbreviations VIII; introduction 1; 1. Xenophanes' fallibilism 6; 2. Parmenides' allusive ambiguity 58; 3. Plato's Timaeus 114; 4. Imitation and limitation in Timaeus' proemium 161; Conclusion 192; Bibliography 196; Index locorum 205; General index 208.

"Many interpretations have been offered for Parmenides’ εἰκὼς.

Some see it as a qualified endorsement, others as a warning that the cosmology to follow is specious. I will offer a summary of the four main types of interpretation and argue that the best reading is that which incorporates elements of each. I will go on to present two aspects of Parmenides' use of this term that deserve closer attention than they have previously been afforded. The first is the possibility that Parmenides’ vocabulary is influenced by forensic terminology. Several of Parmenides’ key terms (σήματα; κρίσις; ἔλεγχος; πίστις) carry forensic connotations. I will argue that this juridical background should inform our understanding of Parmenides’ εἰκὼς. It is evidence in favour of taking one aspect of its meaning to be something like the notion of ‘plausibility’ widely employed in the second half of the fifth century BC. The second is the possibility that Parmenides B8.60 alludes to Xenophanes B35.

There is good evidence, in both the doxography and the verbatim fragments, that Parmenides was familiar with Xenophanes’ poetry.

I will argue that B8.60 is a conscious allusion to Xenophanes and that, as with Xenophanes' allusion to Homer and Hesiod at B35, the significance of the allusion lies in the way that Parmenides alters Xenophanes’ formula.

Parmenides’ use of εἰκὼς can be usefully compared to his choice of the term πίστις at B1.30 and B8.28. I will argue that, when the goddess claims that her cosmology is εἰκὼς, she is attributing to her account a kind of persuasiveness that is subjectively convincing but ultimately false. This is in opposition to the true, objective cogency attributed to the Aletheia via the term πίστις.

I will conclude with some suggestions as to how such a reading can inform our understanding of the relation between the Aletheia and the Doxa. Here, my conclusions are necessarily limited by the fact that I will not be offering a detailed interpretation of either part. My interest is primarily in the characterization of the Doxa as εἰκὼς and what this implies about its relation to the Aletheia.

The question of the precise import of, in particular, the Aletheia would take me far beyond the scope of this book. I will, so far as is possible, be attempting to sidestep many of the issues that have dominated recent scholarship on Parmenides. Most notably, I will not be engaging with the question whether or in what way Parmenides is a monist. I will, of course, be looking at some of the details of the Aletheia and offering interpretative suggestions but, in the end, my commitments here do not, I think, go far beyond reading it as an account of ‘the unmoving heart of persuasive truth’ (B1.29). (pp. 61-62)

62. ———. 2018. "Reconsidering the Authority of Parmenides’ Doxa." In Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, edited by Bryan, Jenny, Wardy, Robert and Warren, James, 20-40. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"This chapter considers the possibility of reading Parmenides’ Doxa both as significant to his poem, and thus to his philosophy, as a whole, and as representative of Parmenides’ own cosmological doctrine (in keeping with the overwhelming ancient tradition). It is, I think, possible to draw a useful distinction between ‘argumentative authority’ and ‘doctrinal authority’ within Parmenides’ poem. The former can be attributed to the conclusions to which the goddess leads us in the Aletheia. The latter has a broader scope, in that it

identifies the content of the revelation, including its description of the cosmos (and presumably the fact of the revelation itself), as teachings to which Parmenides is committed as their author.(1) The Doxa’s doctrinal authority lies primarily in what it demonstrates about the way that mortals think about and explain the world and what this indicates about their own implicit attitudes towards plurality. This is compatible with its having a role to play in supporting the authority of the Aletheia’s arguments. It is also compatible with the possibility that Parmenides offered the Doxa as a genuine attempt at an explanation of sense experience. In fact, the Doxa’s cosmology can be seen to be more authoritative in its analysis of mortal thinking and in its support of the Aletheia precisely because

Parmenides, as a mortal, strives to provide a plausible account of the physical world." (p. 20)

(1) The goddess herself indicates an authority beyond that of reasoning as endorsed in B7.

63. ———. 2020. "The Non-Divinity of Parmenides’ What-is." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 27:71-95.

Abstract: "It is often assumed that Parmenides what-is is, in some sense, divine.

This chapter considers the further assumptions that tend to underly such readings. It argues that neither appeals to a broader philosophical tradition nor the possible attribution of intelligence to what-is justify the assumption that what-is is divine. The divinities within Parmenides’ poem are anthropomorphic agents and subjects of change. What-is, in excluding change, also excludes divinity. Divinity is not a relevant or necessary property of what-is."

64. Burkert, Walter. 2013. "Parmenides’ Proem and Pythagoras’ Descent (*)." In Philosophy and Salvation in Greek Religion, edited by Adluri, Vishwa, 85-116. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Translated by Joydeep Bagchee.

(*) This chapter is a translation of Walter Burkert’s 1969 article “Das Proömium des Parmenides und die Katabasis des Pythagoras” (Phronesis 14: 1–30). It includes a new preface added by Prof. Burkert, who also updated some of the citations, citing literature that has appeared since the original article. I thank Prof. Burkert for his corrections and suggestions; all errors of course are my own.

"To summarize: Parmenides' journey is neither a transition from night to light nor an ascent; it is also not a collection of heterogeneous symbols, which would only be comprehensible in relation to the theoretical content, and still less a purely literary device without deeper meaning. Parmenides travels on the path of the Daimon to the edge of the world, where at the boundary between heaven and earth a towering gateway divides this world from the beyond. The Heliades approach him from the house of Night, they accompany him through the gate into the great “open,” where the Goddess receives him. Everything falls into place as soon as one resolutely discards the path upward and the path to the light, those Platonic-Christian symbols. The journey might rather—with Morrison—be called a katabasis. More correct is to leave aside completely the vertical aspects, the above and below. The Beyond, in what is probably the oldest concept, is neither above nor below, but simply very, very far away. Odysseus too, in the Neykia, journeys neither skyward nor earthward, but simply into the distance. Something similar is true of Sumerian myth.(64)" (pp. 101-102)

(64) Cf. S. N. Kramer, “Death and Nether World according to the Sumerian Literary Texts,” Iraq 22 (1960): 67, on the myth of Enlil, Ninlil, and the Underworld: “the word ‘descent' is not used in this myth, only such words as ‘come,' ‘follow,' ‘enter.'”

65. Burnet, John. 1930. Early Greek Philosophy. London: Adam & Charles Black.

Third edition (first edition 1892).

Chapter 4: Parmenides of Elea, pp. 169-196.

"In the First Part of his poem, we find Parmenides chiefly interested to prove that it is; but it is not quite obviouslit first sight what it is precisely that is. He says simply, What is, is. There can be no real doubt that this

is what we call body. It is certainly regarded as spatially extended; for it is quite seriously spoken of as a sphere (fr. 8, 43). Moreover, Aristotle tells us that Parmenides believed in none but a sensible reality. Parmenides does not say a word about "Being" anywhere,4 and it is remarkable that he avoids the term " god," which was so freely used by earlier and later thinkers. The assertion that it is amounts just to this, that the universe is a plenum; and that there is no such thing as empty space, either inside or outside the world. From this it follows that there can be no such thing as motion. Instead of endowing the One with an impulse to change, as Herakleitos had done, and thus making it capable of explaining the world, Parmenides dismissed change as an illusion. He showed once for all that if you take the One seriously you are bound to deny everything else. All previous solutions of the question, therefore, had missed the point. Anaximenes, who thought to save the unity of the primary substance by his theory of rarefaction and condensation, did not observe that, by assuming there was less of what is in one place than another, he virtually affirmed the existence of what is not (fr. 8, 45). The Pythagorean explanation implied that empty space or air existed outside the world, and that it entered into it to separate the units (8 53).

It, too, assumes the existence of what is not. Nor is the theory of Herakleitos any more satisfactory; for it is based on the contradiction that fire both is and is not (fr. 6)." (pp. 178-179, a note omitted)

(4) We must not render τὸ ἐόν by "Being," das Sein or l'être. It is "what is," das Seiende, ce qui est. As to (τὸ) εἶναι it does not occur, and hardly could occur at this date.

66. Bussotti, Paolo. 2023. "Parmenides, the Founder of Abstract Geometry: Enriques Interpreter of the Eleatic Thought." Foundations of Science no. 28:947-975.

Abstract: "The interpretation of Parmenides’ Περί Φύσεως is a fascinating topic to which philosophers, historians of philosophy and scientists have dedicated many studies along the history of Western thought. The aim of this paper is to present the reading of Parmenides’s work offered by Federigo Enriques. It is based on several original theses: (1) Parmenides was the discoverer of abstract geometry; (2) his critics was addressed against the Pythagoreans rather than against Heraclitus; (3) Parmenides discovered and applied the contradiction and the third excluded principles in the context of his research on foundation of geometry; (4) Parmenides’s metaphysical and physical conceptions have their bases in his speculation on geometry; (5) Parmenides used the principle of sufficient reason. Enriques’s reading is worth being expounded and discussed within the historical, philosophical and scientific context in which it is inserted. Since Enriques’s ideas are not widely known and discussed, my research has the purpose to fill this gap. The article also aims to provide elements to illustrate the discussion on Parmenides in the first half of the last century."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Parmenides of Elea. Annotated bibliography of the studies in English: C - De L

Bibliography

1. Calenda, Guido. 2020. "Epistemological Relevance of Parmenides’ Ontology." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 27:96-120.

Abstract: "It is possible to understand Parmenides’ being as the ‘totality of what exists’. Parmenides’ insight is that being is a compact continuum (fr. 4), and he gives a logical demonstration of this insight recognizing that non-being, which only could divide being in a plurality of beings, does not exist.

Therefore, knowledge of being could only be the holistic appraisal of the totality of being – a form of knowledge unconceivable for men.

Human knowledge is always articulated in concepts, images, relations…, expressed by their names. Men do not catch being itself, but, at best, some limited features of a minimal part of it, as they appear from human and personal perspectives. Thus, Parmenides’ calls mortals ‘two-headed’ who claim that their truths represent the reality of being, since their pretense would imply the existence both of being and of non-being. This epistemological conception is the only relevant result of Parmenides ’ ontology. Parmenides ’ epistemology solves many of the philosophical riddles of his time, it shows that the so-called Zeno’s paradoxes are sound arguments, and foreshadows the doctrines of Protagoras and Gorgias."

2. ———. 2023. "Parmenides’ Structure of the Earth." Peitho, Examina Antiqua no. 14:13-28.

This paper is an updated English translation of the central chapter of my book Un universo aperto [La cosmologia di Parmenide e la struttura della terra, Bologna.] (Calenda 2017).

Abstract: "It is generally accepted that the enigmatic fragment 12 of Parmenides, supplemented by the first part of Aëtius II 7.1, represents an unlikely cosmos which comprises alternating spherical crowns of fire and night, surrounding the earth. A comparison of the fragment and Aëtius’ text shows that the latter adds nothing substantial to the fragment. Thus, fragment 12 can actually represent the structure of the earth, which consists of a core of fire, is surrounded by the layers of the earth’s crust, into which heat is transmitted from within, and on which the goddess of life dwells."

3. Calvo, Martinez Tomas. 1977. "Truth and Doxa in Parmenides." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 59:245-260.

"It has been widely held, both by ancient and by modern commentators on Parmenides, that the distinction between Truth (αλήθεια) and Opinion (δόξα) which dominates the structure of his poem, can be properly interpreted as an opposition between two forms of cognition: pure thought or conceptual knowledge, on the one hand, and sense-perception, on the other, where the latter is understood as including images as well as perceptions.

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In the first part of this paper Ι will try to show that this traditional interpretation of Parmenides fundamentally misrepresents the language and intention of his poem. In the second section I will propose an alternative interpretation based upon an opposition not between two epistemic states or faculties (intellectual knowledge versus sense-perception) but between two contrasting forms of language, as represented in the poem by the contrast between λόγος and ἔπος (or ἔπεα). Finally, I will sketch some lines in the post-Parmenidean evolution of the two conceptual systems that oppose Aletheia to Doxa and Logos to Epos." (pp. 245-246)

4. Capizzi, Antonio. 1984. "Opsis akoe. The sources of the problem of sensations in Heraclitus and Parmenides." Museum Philologum Londiniense no. 6:9-35.

5. Casertano, Giovanni. 2011. "Parmenides -- Scholar of Nature." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 21-58. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "Aristotle’s influence on what we could name the philosophical historiography of pre-Aristotelian times and the one still felt up to present times is huge. We can safely argue that the work of freeing pre-Aristotelian thinkers from Aristotelian interpretation has only been developing since last century, and it is an ongoing process. I personally believe that this is the historiographic direction to be followed and that much has still to be made clear and explained in this very direction. This kind of research does not just better “historically contextualize” the thought of any pre-Aristotelian, Parmenides in our case, by setting its roots in a real world of debates, quarrels, and stand-takings on different philosophical and scientific questions, but it also better underlines its originality and speculative strengths. My paper will thus be divided into two parts. Since I just aim to discuss the special stand of Parmenides' thought in the history of scientific thought, I will try and show first of all Parmenides' complete belonging in the very lively world of scientific debates and discussions of the fifth century. Then I will try to show how Parmenides, like the other great Sicilian Magna Graecia native, Empedocles, has foreshadowed concepts and doctrines of contemporary science and physics, even if just in the shape of ingenious intuitions."

6. Cassin, Barbara. 2011. "Parmenides Lost in Translation." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 59-79. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "I would like to show in this text the successive difficulties to be overcome when one tries to translate Parmenides. Translation is the extreme degree of interpretation. For that purpose, one needs to triumph over the impossibility of confronting the original “venerable and awesome” as well as of confronting “historial” language such as Greek. Then, one must sort out the alternatives that make it possible to select and fix a fragmentary text. Finally it is necessary to explore all the connections permitted by semantics and syntax. My study is focused on the play of “θυμὸς ὁδοῖο / μῦθος ὁδοῖο,” and on possible interpretations of the text traditionally retained since the 5th edition of Diels, between the heroism of being, described as Odysseus, and the storytelling of language."

7. ———. 2017. "The Muses and Philosophy: Elements for a History of the Pseudos [1991]." In Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Metaphysics, edited by Greenstine, Abraham Jacob and Johnson, Ryan J., 13-29. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Unversity Press.

Translated from the French "Les Muses et la philosophie. Eléments. pour une histoire du 'pseudos',” in Pierre Aubenque (éd.), Études sur le “Sophiste” de Platon, Napoli: Biblipolis 1991, pp. 292-316.

"The philosopher, guard-dog of the truth and of the desire for truth, is committed to aletheia. The sophist, this wolf for as long as there have been philosophers, is committed to the pseudos. Pseudos names, from its origin, and indissolubly, the "false" and the "lie" - the "falsehood," therefore, of one who deceives and/or deceives himself. It is the ethico-logical concept par excellence.

The Sophist of Plato explicitly marks this double bind, which joins the sophistic and pseudos in the eyes of philosophy: the sophist is an imitation, a feral counterfeit of the philosopher,(2) because the sophist chooses the domain of the false, the semblance, the phenomenon, opinion - in a word, all that is not.

Philosophy of appearances and appearance of philosophy: sophist simulator/dissimulator.

I would like to attempt to pinpoint the pseudos, primarily through Parmenides and Hesiod, in order to determine the manner in which the sophistic lodges itself there, so as to understand, through Plato, how philosophy at its beginnings domesticates the very idea of pseudos, and organizes the place of the sophistic." (p. 13)

8. Cerri, Giovanni. 2011. "The Astronomical Section in Parmenides’ Poem." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 80-94. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "I have collected all the data (testimonia and fragmenta), which demonstrate that in Parmenides' poem On Nature there was a long section concerning astronomy, where he described the heavens and also illustrated recent, astonishing discoveries accomplished by astronomical research of his time. Such a section, which is very important in the history of ancient science, could not be a mere digression, not related to his general theory of nature. Therefore, every modern interpretation of his philosophical thought based on the removal of this aspect should certainly be considered inadequate to explain the whole doctrine in its very essence."

9. Chalmers, W. R. 1960. "Parmenides and the Beliefs of Mortals." Phronesis no. 5:5-22.

"The three main parts of Parmenides' poem are apt to receive rather unequal treatment at the hands of many historians of Ancient Philosophy. From early times there has been a tendency to concentrate attention upon the Way of Truth and rather to neglect the Prologue and the Beliefs of Mortals. The Prologue is frequently explained as an interesting example of archaic imagination intruding into a philosophical work, while the last part has been interpreted in a variety of ways. Some scholars have suggested that in it Parmenides is merely representing the views of other thinkers, while others believe that it does in some way describe Parmenides' own thought. There is as yet no general agreement about what the relationship is between the Beliefs of Mortals and the Way of Truth. Both are however parts of the same poem, and it is reasonable to infer that a solution of this problem of their inter-relationship will throw light on the correct interpretation of the whole work. It is the purpose of this paper to consider in particular the last part of the poem and to try to establish what its status is in the context of the whole work." (p. 5)

10. Cherniss, Harold. 1935. Aristotle's Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.

Volume I (only published). Reprint New York: Octagon Books, 1964.

On Aristotle's criticism of Eleatic philosophy see in particular the First Chapter, The Principles, pp. 61-76.

"The Eleatic thesis so far as the physicist is concerned is refuted by experience, and it is not the business of a treatise on any particular science to refute those who deny the principles or axioms of that science. (257) With this exposition and the remark that Parmenides and Melissus proceed from false premises to argue illogically Aristotle has really excluded a discussion of their doctrine from the Physics. Yet he immediately introduces a long refutation of the Eleatic thesis on the ground that, although it is not concerned with physics, it results in difficulties which are physical.(258)

The criticism of the Eleatic unity of Being is highly instructive for the study of the method by which Aristotle built up his own doctrine of matter; and the very inclusion of the critique in the Physics shows that he was conscious of the logical character of the origin of his theory." (p. 62)

(...)

"The general critique of the Eleatics (273) is followed by a special refutation of Melissus and Parmenides." (p. 67)

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"There is throughout this critique an apparent confusion of logical and physical concepts which is due to the dependence of Aristotle's physics upon his logic. At one time he said that the Eleatic error was due to the ignorance of the meaning of relative or accidental non-Being, (304) that is of logical privation which is the essence of the negative proposition; but such a concept, which in its Platonic origin is simply logical, is at once transformed into a physical doctrine by Aristotle, so that he can say shortly thereafter that an understanding of the nature of substrate would have solved the difficulties of the Eleatics. (305) Privation is, in effect, the immediate material of generation (306) and the logical subject of privation is transmuted by means of the concomitant potentiality into the physical substrate. (307) The notion that privation of a quality requires in the substrate the potential presence of that quality is a rule of logic (308) transferred to descriptive physics. It is this connection of the matter of generation and of thought, this equivalence of the proposition of logic and the description of physical change which makes Aristotle think the Physics an appropriate place to discuss the Eleatic doctrine which on his own reckoning falls outside the sphere of physics." (pp. 75-76)

(257) Physics 184 B 25-185 A 14.

(258) Physics 185 A 17-20. a. De Caelo 298 B 14-24 where the Eleatic doctrine is rejected as unphysical. But the origin is differently explained. The Eleatics were the first to see that knowledge requires the existence of immutable substances; but, thinking that sensible objects alone existed, they applied to them the arguments concerning objects of thought. Aristotle derives this account by a literal interpretation of Plato, Parmenides 135 B-C. But cf. Sophist 249 B-D.

(273) Ross in his note on Metaphysics 986 B 19 implies that " the One as continuous and indivisible " refers to Melissus, "the One as unity of definition " refers to Parmenides. The appearance of συνεχές and ον διαιρετόν in Parmenides, the argument of "the part and the whole " in Plato's Sophist directed against Parmenides, and the express words of Physics 185 B 17-18, as well as the αύτοίς of 185 B 21 and 24 show that no division of the arguments can be made between Parmenides and Melissus.

(304) Physics 191 B 13-16.

(305) Physics 191 B 33-34.

(306) Physics 191 B 15-16. Yet 191 B 35 ff. he reproaches the Platonists for making matter "non-Being" and claims himself to differentiate privation and matter.

(307) The transformation is carried so far that ατέρησις becomes, instead of simple negation of form, a positive reality, a kind of form itself (Physics 193 B 19-20). Cf. Clemens Baeumker, Das problem der materie in der griechischen philosophie, Münster, 1890, pp. 218-219.

(308) Cf. its use in Topics 148 A 3-9. It is a mistake to define a thing by privation of that which is not potentially predicable of it. The logical basis of the physical doctrine, as well as some of the difficulties involved in the development, is to be seen in Metaphysics 1055 A 33-B 29.

11. Cherubin, Rose Mathilde. 2001. "Λέγειν, Νοεῖν and Τὸ Ἐόν in Parmenides." Ancient Philosophy no. 21:277-303.

"What does Parmenides tell us about τὸ ἐόν? Commentators have understood Parmenides' fragments as attempting to provide an account of the nature of being, or of the nature of what is.

Recently, Parmenides and his goddess (θεά, B1.22) character have been interpreted as making a variety of conflicting claims: that being or what is is one; that it is dual; that it is identical to thought or to mind or to the contents of thought; that at least some of it is independent of our thought or awareness; and that all strictly human claims about what is rest on convention or agreement. In what follows, I will attempt to show that the fragments not only fail to support such views, but actually subvert them. Rather than provide unconditional assertions about τὸ ἐόν, I will argue, the fragments explore the conditions of the possibility of inquiry itself, conditions whose acceptance poses paradoxes." (p. 277)

(...)

"I do not assert here that all is assumption. Rather, I have argued that on the θεά's account of what is, we do not seem to be able to know whether all is assumption. I do propose that to acknowledge the conditions of inquiry includes recognizing that such an acknowledgment, like the conditions themselves, is made within the framework given us by our θέμις (literally, that which is laid down). Acknowledging the conditions of inquiry also includes recognizing (νοεῖν) that the possibility of identification and the possibility of meaning appear to depend on contradictions or paradoxes." (p. 303)

12. ———. 2003. "Inquiry and What Is: Eleatics and Monisms." Epoché no. 8:1-26.

Abstract: "While Melissus argues for a numerical monism, Parmenides and Zeno undermine claims to unconditional or transcendental knowledge. Yet the work of Parmenides and Zeno is not merely critical or eristic, and does not imply that philosophical inquiry is futile. Instead it shows the importance of reflection on the way the requisites of inquiry are represented in its results, and entrains an axiological investigation to every ontological one."

"The earliest Greek philosophers sought understanding that went beyond what was given by the beliefs, customs, and ways of thinking familiar to their contemporaries. So Aristotle tells us, and since his time students of philosophy have generally agreed with this broad description.(1) But what were the earliest Greeks called philosophers trying to understand, and what kinds of understanding were they seeking? As we try to be more specific about the projects and nature of the earliest Greek philosophy, we encounter more difficulty and less agreement." (p. 1)

(...)

"The goddess in Parmenides' poem represents that which her pupil is not: she is female, and more crucially for purposes of this paper, she is immortal and as such does not need to inquire or seek. Our sense of lack, our mortality, is the spur and indeed the

substance of inquiry. We must make choices and we must seek, in order to supply our needs and desires. This is why we require consistency, in some things at least. A Greek goddess does not have such limitations; she is self-sufficient. Such a symbol of what we conceive ourselves to lack is a most appropriate vehicle to convey to us the consequences of that lack, the fundamental conflicts in our conception of what is." (p. 16)

(1) Metaphysics A 1-2.

13. ———. 2004. "Parmenides’ Poetic Frame." International Studies in Philosophy no. 36:7-38.

"Two difficulties confront the beginning of an interpretation of the fragments of Parmenides: how to understand the structure of the fragments taken together, and how to deal with the apparent contradictions and incongruities in the fragments.

The first is the question of what to make of the structure of the extant parts of Parmenides' poem." (p. 7)

(...)

"The second difficulty is the problem of how to handle the many apparent contradictions and incongruities within the fragments." (p. 8)

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"I propose to look at the Goddess’s discussions of eon or to eon (what is, being, what is so) in the contexts in which they appear in the fragments. This means that I will first consider the significance of the fact that the remarks about what is appear within discussions of roads of inquiry (Sections I and II). In these discussions of roads of inquiry the Goddess supports her claims about the characteristics of what is (with respect to certain roads) not only with deductive reasoning but also with explanatory assertions about Dikē, Anankē, and Moira. Once we understand the basic sense of these assertions (Section III), we can turn to contemplate the meaning and the significance of the narrative frame, the tale of the journey (Section IV). The larger meaning of the fragments taken together, that which we can properly call the philosophy of Parmenides, will emerge from reflection on the juxtaposition of the narrative, mythic, and argumentative elements. By taking into due account the contexts in which the discussions of eon appear, we will find that both the seemingly incompatible implications of the claims about eon and also the mixture of narrative, mythic, and argumentative elements are philosophically meaningful and illuminating." (pp. 9-10)

14. ———. 2005. "Light, Night, and the Opinions of Mortals: Parmenides B8.51-61 and B9." Ancient Philosophy no. 25:1-23.

"Recent studies of this passage have focused largely on two issues: what the goddess or Parmenides thinks is erroneous in mortals' beliefs concerning Light and Night, and what if any merit Parmenides finds in a cosmology based on the account of Light and Night in the fragments.

My main concern will be instead with two questions that have seen less attention: First, what would be ἀπατηλός in what the κοῦρος is to learn?5 Second, what could be ἐοικώς in the Light-Night conceptual scheme that the goddess presents? Or, what would suggest that mortals do in fact find the scheme acceptable or useful?" (p. 3)

15. ———. 2009. "Ἀλήθεια from poetry into philosophy: Homer to Parmenides." In Logos and Muthos. Philosophical Essays in Greek Literature, edited by Wians, William, 51-72. Albany: State University of New York Press.

"The every features I have cited as Parmenides' best-known and most consequential contributions to philosophy—the central role of deductive argument and the thematic exploration of to eon—grow from his engagement with poetry.

Specifically, they are intimately connected to his view of alētheia as the orientation of a road of inquiry. Poets in and before Parmenides' time saw the apprehension and promulgation of alētheia as a central duty of poetry. Parmenides, I will show, significantly extended and developed the notion of alētheia. It is precisely this development that issues in his thematic exploration of to eon and in his use (and, conceivably, introduction) of explicit deductive inference.

Let us begin by opening the questions of the meaning and the role of alētheia in the fragments of Parmenides. Asking these questions is crucial not only for our understanding of Parmenides, but also for our understanding of those ways of thinking today that claim him as a predecessor, and for our understanding of the possibilities of philosophy itself. In his references to alētheia, might Parmenides have intended something in addition to, or instead of, what has been attributed to him so far? If so, as I will argue here, then Parmenides will have shown us a road of inquiry to which we have been oblivious." (p. 52)

16. ———. 2018. "Parmenides, Liars, and Mortal Incompleteness." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy no. 33:1-21.

Abstract: "On the road of inquiry that Parmenides’ goddess recommends, one is to say and conceive that what-is is one, unmoving, continuous, ungenerated, undestroyed, complete, and undivided. Yet the goddess’s arguments in favor of this road use negations, distinctions, divisions, and references to generation and destruction. The requisites of inquiry that she outlines are both defined on and at odds with other features that inquiry appears to require. This essay argues that the goddess’s arguments manifest something like a liar paradox: She demonstrates on the basis of the opinions of mortals that mortals’ opinions are flawed. If so, then the goddess’s arguments do not establish that what is is one and unchanging. What they show is that what inquiry and inference seem to require, given the opinions of mortals, is at odds with itself. To refer to what-is is to make aletheia impossible to reach. To be mortal, for Parmenides, is to journey through that incompleteness."

17. ———. 2019. "Sex, gender, and class in the poem of Parmenides: difference without dualism?" American Journal of Philology no. 140:29-66.

Abstract: "Abstract: Parmenides has been criticized as denying and disparaging human diversity; anathematizing sex, reproduction, and bodies; supporting the suppression of women and others outside the Greek ruling classes; and silencing important concerns by excluding certain kinds of thought and reasoning from philosophical and civil discourse. I argue that the fragments do not support these charges, and that instead Parmenides provides ideas and ways of thinking that subvert the kinds of doctrine and ways of philosophizing he is accused of promoting."

18. ———. 2020. "The Eleatics and the Projects of Ontology." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 27:146-175.

Abstract: "Parmenides provides the earliest surviving Greek example of a thematic reflection on to eon, being or what-is; and on mē eon, not-being or what-is-not. His work was crucial to the framing of ontological questions and statements in later work.

Zeno and Melissus made what-is or being (to on or to eon) a central focus and engaged directly with Parmenides’ reasoning and concerns.

Within philosophy, the term ‘ontology’ may signify a study of the nature of being, or of what it is to be. Another important use of ‘ontology’ signifies a set of claims about the nature and number of being or what is, a kind of cataloguing. How best can we characterize what the Eleatics’ work has to do with ontology? In what if any ways, and in what if any contexts, can Parmenides, Zeno, or Melissus be said to study the nature of being or of what is? In what if any senses can Parmenides, Zeno, or Melissus be said to provide an account of the nature or number of being or of what is? Does any of the three espouse such an account; or do they engage with that kind of account in some other way?

I will argue that we find in the Eleatics three distinct approaches to ontological questions. I will suggest that Parmenides and Zeno, and likely Melissus, investigated the possibility of research into the nature and number of being as a problem; and cautioned against espousing direct unconditional accounts of the nature of what-is."

19. ———. 2020. "Comments on Livio Rossetti, Verso la filosofia. Nuove prospettive su Parmenide, Zenone e Melisso." In Eleatica Vol. 8: Verso la filosofia: Nuove prospettive su Parmenide, Zenone e Melisso, edited by Galgano, Nicola S., Giombini, Stefania and Marcacci, Flavia, 183-194. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlsg.

"It is an honor and a privilege to have this opportunity to offer a response to Dr. Rossetti’s magisterial Eleatica lectures of 2017. I hope this will show my deep appreciation of this work, both for its discoveries and for its courageous opening of questions: its roads of inquiry. Much of what I will offer here is questions, meant in a spirit of respect and gratitude.

The questions address the following topics: Parmenides’ fragments in/as “virtual philosophy” and the role of inquiry therein (1. below); non-hierarchical distinctions in both the structure and the content of the fragments (with special attention to the account of sex, gender, and reproduction) (2.); and what if any relationships we might be able to show between Parmenides’ astronomical and biological accounts, the Light and Night that the goddess says mortals “lay down” as fundamental, and the errant and untrustworthy opinions she also attributes to them (3.)." (p. 183)

20. ———. 2021. "Poetry, Argument, and Decolonizing Hellenic Philosophy: The Case of Parmenides’s Fragments." In The Poetry in Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Christos C. Evangeliou, edited by Mitsis, Philip and Reid, Heather L., 33-56. Fonte Aretusa: Parnassos Press.

"In what follows I propose to show how Parmenides’s verse supports inquiry and argument, and thus how inquiry, argument, and poetic creation work together in his fragments.

Many interpretations of Parmenides’s fragments read the goddess’s speech as containing a series of arguments without asking whether any other elements of the fragments—the tale of a chariot journey that leads up to that speech, the goddess’s interactions with the young man of the chariot, the verse form, the references to divine forces, the verbal echoes of earlier poets—have any implications for the speech’s meaning and thus for the apparent arguments within it. Some interpreters have challenged this mode of interpretation, holding instead that the poetic form and narrative are definitive with respect to content, and that features of the framing imply that if Parmenides used what look like arguments, he did not use them to support, explain, or prove what he wished to convey." (pp. 35-36)

(...)

"The present essay will provide further support for the view that the passages that appear to be arguments really do argue. It will also endeavor to show that what might appear to be gaps are instead reasoned connections. These connections become visible only if we pay attention to the poetry and the epic references. That is, the very elements that are adduced in support of the position that Parmenides does not offer arguments, in fact show that he does offer arguments and reasoned inferences. At the same time, the poetic form, structure, references, and framework operate to support and illuminate the inferences." (p. 36)

21. Cherubin, Rose Mathilde, Galgano, Nicola, Pulpito, Massimo, and Santoro, Fernando. 2020. "Eleatic Ontology: origin and reception. Introductions." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 27:1-18.

Abstract: "The first volume of the project Eleatic Ontology: Origin and Reception focuses its gaze on ancient philosophy, where the main characteristics of a prospective Eleatic ontology have been forged. In ancient Greek thought, we find the origin of this theoretical perspective, in the work of Parmenides and the other Eleatics, who in their own way testify to a first reception of Parmenideanism. Thereafter, ancient philosophy has repeatedly shown examples of reception of this standpoint, and it was this Nachleben that was, in turn, the origin of the notion of Eleatic ontology in the following centuries."

22. Clark, Raymond J. 1969. "Parmenides and Sense-perception." Revue des Études Grecques no. 82:14-32.

Abstract: "What did Parmenides understand by the terms ἀλήθεια, ἐόν and νοεῖν, δοκοῦντα and δόξα ? After reviewing past interpretations of Β 1.28-32 (Diels-Kranz), the author suggests that these lines are part of the revelation by the goddess who offers to differentiate between the levels of existence of ἐόν and δοκοῦντα and to assess the status of their resultant states of knowledge ἀλήθεια and δόξα. The conclusion, tested against other fragments, is that ἀλήθεια arises from contemplation (νόος) about being (ἐόν) : δοκοῦντα corresponds to ούκ ἔστιν in Β 8 but is « non-existent » only in the technical sense that this is not the object of thought. Δόξα is ἀπατηλὸν only in a technical sense, and there can be right δόξα (first « false » path) which is based exclusively on sensory reality, or wrong δόξα (second « false » path) if sensory objects are confused with being.

Parmenides' Theory of Knowledge is then summarised and his cosmology is found to be consistent with it."

23. Clarke, Timothy. 2019. Aristotle and the Eleatic One. New York: Oxford University Press.

"This book is a study of Aristotle's engagement with Eleatic monism, the theory of Parmenides of Elea and his followers that reality is 'one'." (p. 1)

(...)

"At the beginning of the Physics, one of the first items on Aristotle's agenda is to examine the Eleatic theory. (He does not explicitly include Zeno as one of the proponents of this theory, perhaps because he leans towards seeing Zeno's aims as purely negative. Aristotle starts by telling us that the task of responding to the Eleatics is not in fact a task for the physicist or natural philosopher. But then he goes on to criticize their theory anyway, as a sort of prolegomenon to his philosophy of nature. So Physics 1 contains an extensive treatment of the Eleatics, with Aristotle responding at length to their arguments for monism and against the possibility of change.

My topic in this book is Aristotle's engagement with the first aspect of the Eleatics' theory, their monism. Aristotle discusses Eleatic monism in several places in the corpus, but the main text is Physics 1.2-3. This section of the Physics is extremely opaque and has received relatively little attention from scholars, despite its historical and philosophical interest. In what follows I offer a detailed reconstruction of the argument of these chapters. My aim is to explain how Aristotle understands the Eleatics' monistic position and its motivation, how he attempts to refute their position, and how he thinks their arguments should be resisted." (pp. 3-4, notes omitted)

24. Clements, Ashley. 2014. Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae: Philosophizing Theatre and the Politics of Perception in Late Fifth-Century Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge Universaity Press.

"In the following pages I shall argue that by appropriating both Parmenidean strictures and the intrinsically satirical imagery by which Parmenides enacts the fallaciousness of mortal doxa, and by employing an Eleaticizing sophistic interlocutor of the sort Plato pictures in the Euthydemus or Sophist, the prologue of our Thesmophoriazusae stages a comic transposition to theatre of Parmenides’ revelations about reality and illusion.

In fact, the sophistic exchange of our opening lines transforms the physical path of its journeying protagonists into an Aristophanic version of the wandering metaphysical path trodden by all Parmenidean mortals as they characteristically fail to differentiate

clearly between what-is and what-is-not. And as its ludicrous steps are revealed, as we shall see, it not only casts Euripides as exemplar and perpetuator of the typical mortal predicament of intellectual ἀμηχανίη (‘helplessness’) that belongs to those who flounder about on that confused Parmenidean way (now known as the Doxa) but also thereby lays the grounds quite precisely for a revelatory philosophizing of theatre as the very progenitor of the seductive illusions that hold tragic mortals fast in their helplessness, later encountered in the climactic comic epiphany of the ‘Agathon scene’ (101–209)." (pp. 47-48)

25. Conte, Bruno. 2020. "Doxa, Diakosmêsis and Being in Parmenides’ Poem." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 14:176-197.

Abstract: "The modern edition of Parmenides’ poem (from Fülleborn’s 1795 work onwards) consolidated the well-known dichotomical scheme according to which its fragments are established and understood, i. e., attributing them to either one of two main “parts”, following the Proem, that is, to Truth (Alêtheia) or Opinion (Doxa). A careful review of the doxographical testimonies, however, reveals sufficient indications to cast doubt over this well-accepted representation. In this paper, I analyze some of these testimonials – particularly those found in Simplicius – aiming to show the evidence for an important distinction between what the Ancients called a section “On Opinion” (ta pros doxan) and the Parmenidean Cosmogony properly. We shall see that this hypothesis implies a “deflationary” view of the Doxa, limited to verses 53-61 of fragment 8, in addition to the four verses of fragment 9. The cosmogonical account, moreover, as we would like to show, should not be simply understood as any collection of “mortal opinions” – in the sense of their devaluation in the first part of the poem (cf. B1,30; B6,4-9; B7,3-5) – but instead as importing epistemological features into the description of the origins of the present state of the universe. Finally, we extract from this picture some consequences for the understanding of the role of the argument on Being and the limits of Parmenidean “ontology”."

26. Conte, Bruno Loureiro. 2023. "The gap between Parmenides’ argument on Being and his cosmology in the Aristotelian account." Archæus. Studies in the History of Religions no. 33:1-28.

Abstract: "In some of the Aristotelian accounts, Parmenides’ thesis is construed in opposition to the philosophy of nature; on the other hand, he is also depicted, in a different context, as a cosmologist, to whom the Stagirite (and a long tradition afterwards, ending with Simplicius) ascribes a theory of becoming and its principles. In this paper, I exhibit and analyse the relevant passages from Physics I 1-3, Metaphysics I 3 and 5 and On generation and corruption I 3, providing an interpretation that aims to solve the apparent paradox, making sense of the information we can gather from Aristotle’s and Simplicius’ testimonies. Eventually, I propose a construal of the Two Ways of fr. 2 with an emphasis on the predicative reading of einai, which could hint at the Parmenidean approach to cosmology that runs in parallel with the argument on Being."

27. Cordero, Néstor-Luis. 2004. By Being, It Is:. The Thesis of Parmenides. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Contents: Prologue IX; Acknowledgments XIII; 1. Introduction to Parmenides 3; 2. Prolegomena to Parmenides' Thesis 19; 3. Parmenides thesis and its negation 37; 4. The meaning of Parmenides's thesis (and of its negation) 59; 5. Parmenides' thesis, thinking, and speaking 83; 6. Presentation of the thesis and its negation in Fragment 6 and 7 97; 7. The negation of the thesis, "opinions" and the nonexistent third way 125; 8. The meaning of the "opinions of mortals" 151; 9. The foundation of the thesis: the Way of Truth 154; Epilogue 181; Appendix 1: Parmenides' Poem 185; Appendix 2: Note on the transliteration of the Greek alphabet 197; Bibliography 199; List of ancient authors cited 211; List of modern authors cited 213.

"Any new interpretation of Parmenides' philosophy, or any criticism of previous interpretations, must be based on a text that is as close as possible to the lost original. The titanic task carried out over centuries by philologists and codicologists offered us a firm starting point, but much still remained to be done. Passages of the Poem remained inexplicably obscure. (For example, why does the Goddess order withdrawal from a true way in line 6.3? How can it be said that thought is expressed in being, as line 8.35 appears to say?) For this reason, since my presence in Europe made it possible, I decided to check the manuscript tradition of citations (wrongly called "fragments") of the Poem, in order to propose a new version of it, purified of certain errors that had accumulated over the centuries. A first result of my search was presented in 1971 as a doctoral thesis. Some years later, my book, Les deux chemins de Parménide (1984, second edition, augmented and corrected, 1997) completed my work. New research on the manuscript sources of the first editions of the Poem, as well as a change of view in my assessment of "the two ways," allow me to present this new version of Parmenides' "thesis" today. In this work, I also take into account comments and criticism that my previous studies on Parmenides have raised, and when appropriate, (a) I defend myself, or (b) I accept and make certain corrections.

It is impossible to go into Parmenides' philosophy without being "bitten by the bug." I hope that readers of this book will feel the same." (pp. X-XI)

28. ———. 2010. "The 'Doxa of Parmenides' Dismantled." Ancient Philosophy no. 30:231-246.

"In most civilizations, fictional entities are the creations of anonymous popular imagination, or even of some special wise men. Greek civilization was not an exception: Centaurs, Sirens, Cyclops, and other such creatures can be found everywhere in Greek mythology. These imaginary creatures were put together out of elements that taken separately are real enough: human being and horse, as in the case of Centaur, woman and bird, in the case of the Siren. Philosophers, or rather, historians of philosophy, followed this creative example, and invented imaginary notions. ‘The Doxa of Parmenides' is one of these imaginary notions.

It has never existed ‘as such': for, even though it was constructed from elements that are real, the combination of these elements was illegitimate.

These mythological examples are useful as we seek to understand the capricious mixing that took place in the assemblage of ‘Parmenides' Doxa'. It is true that the Doxa is present in Parmenides' poem, it is also true that Parmenides is a real entity and not an imaginary being; but ‘the Doxa of Parmenides', the unification of these two terms (Doxa and Parmenides), is an invention of the historians of philosophy. That Parmenides presented some ‘doxai' does not imply that these ‘opinions', which comprise the Doxa, are his ‘doxai', the ‘doxai' of Parmenides.

This article aims to expose this combination as arbitrary and false." (p. 231)

29. ———, ed. 2011. Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e). Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Proceedings of the International Symposium (Buenos Aires, October 29 - November 2, 2007).

Contents: Foreword VII; About the Contributors XIII-XVI.

Part I: On Parmenides.

Scott Austin: Existence and Essence in Parmenides 1; Jean Bollack: From Being to the World and Vice Versa 9; Giovanni Casertano: Parmenides-Scholar of Nature 21; Barbara Cassin: Parmenides Lost in Translation 59; Giovanni Cerri: The Astronomical Section in Parmenides' Poem 81; Nestor-Luis Cordero: Parmenidean "Physics" is not Part of what Parmenides calls "doxa" 95; Patricia Curd: Thought and Body in Parmenides 115; Jean Frère: Mortals (Brotoi) According to Parmenides 135; Arnold Hermann: Parricide or Heir? Plato's Uncertain Relationship to Parmenides 147; Alexander P. D. Mourelatos: Parmenides, Early Greek Astronomy, and Modern Scientific Realism 167; Massimo Pulpito: Parmenides and the Forms 191; Chiara Robbiano: What is Parmenides' Being? 213; Fernando Santoro: Ta Semata: On a Genealogy of the Idea of Ontological Categories 233; José Trindade Santos: The Role of "Thought" in the Argument of Parmenides' Poem 251; José Solana Dueso: Parmenides: Logic and Ontology 271; Panagiotis Thanassas: Parmenidean Dualisms 289-308.

Part II: Parmenides in the Tradition and Cognate Themes.

Esteban Bieda: Persuasion and Deception in Gorgias' Encomium to Helen. About the Powers and Limits of doxa 311; Maria Elena Diaz: Thought as Perception: Aristotle's Criticism of Parmenides in Metaphysics IV, 5 319; Gabriel Livov: The Father and the Sophist: Platonic Parricide in the Statesman 331; Ezequiel Ludueña: "Thinking That I Did Something . . .": Apollodorus and Diotima's Teaching 345; Claudia T. Marsico: Megaric Philosophy Between Socrates' Influence and Parmenides' Ghost 353; Fabián Mié: Plato's Sophist on Negation and Not-Being 363; Lucas Soares: Parmenides and His Precursors: A Borgesian Reading of Cordero's Parmenides 373; Pilar Spangenberg: Aristotle on the Semantic Unity of the Parmenidean Being 383; Index Locorum 393; General Index 403; Index of Greek Terms Discussed 413-414.

"Part I of the present volume gathers together the set of papers presented at the Symposium, whose topics were divided up based on the “traditional” structure of the Poem: one section dedicated to the exposition of the way of truth, and the other to the description of the “opinions (δόξαι) of mortals.”

(...)

"Other papers went deeply into the part of the Poem concerning the “opinions of mortals.”

(...)

"The organizers of the meeting, which was open to the public, offered eight young and high-level Argentine researchers (graduate students, professors, or advanced students) the opportunity to present a short paper in front of the prestigious assembly of foreign authors. The exchange of ideas between them and their “teachers” was a very enriching experience. These eight papers are included in Part II of the present volume." (From the Foreword by Néstor-Luis Cordero, pp. IX-XI)

30. ———. 2011. "Parmenidean “Physics” is not Part of what Parmenides calls “δόξα”." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 95-113. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "Parmenides, as were all the philosophers of his time, was certainly interested in “physical” questions, even if the response to these questions was necessarily conditioned by his big “discovery”: that there is being. But the only way to respect the value of his “physical” theories is by keeping them out of the so-called “δόξα” because, for Parmenides, opinions are deceitful and not true. The hazardous reconstruction of Parmenides' text invites the researcher to find the “δόξαι” between the end of fr. 8 and fr. 18. This prejudice, together with the anachronistic idea according to which Parmenides spoke of “appearances” (and the δόξαι would be their description), leads to the exaggerated place the δόξαι occupy in the present reconstruction of the Poem. Parmenides exposes—and criticizes—the δόξαι of “others.” There are no Parmenidean δόξαι."

31. ———. 2013. A tragic interpretative prejudice the parts of Parmenides Poem.

English translation avaible on Academia.edu of Las «partes» del Poema de Parménides: un prejuicio interpretativo trágico (2013).

32. ———. 2013. The "parts" of Parmenides' Poem: a tragic interpretative prejudice.

Englis translaiton of "Las “partes” del Poema de Parménides: un prejuicio interpretativo trágico", in Μαθήματα. Ecos de Filosofía Antigua, ed. R. Gutiérrez, Perú, 2013, pp. 15-26.

33. ———. 2016. Concerning a suggested new arrangement of Parmenides' fragments.

Available on Academia.edu.

"As we know, an arrangement of recovered quotations of Parmenides was proposed in 1795 by Georg G. Fülleborn, the first author who devoted a (short) book(1) entirely to the thought of the philosopher. Only minimal corrections were made to the order he proposed(2) and for that reason we can understandably speak today of an "orthodox" or "canonical" version (that which is an exception among the pre-Socratics, whose texts are readable ad libitum by the researcher).

However, a detailed (or even superficial) reading of Parmenides' quotations would show that the order proposed by Fülleborn is completely arbitrary, even if it may be clearly justified by Fülleborn’s own philosophy that adopts the Kantian(3)

gnoseological separation of the senses and reason. Fülleborn divides the Poem (apart from a Proemium) in two “parts”: the Truth and the Doxa, taking his cues from Simplicius’ interpretation. As we know, this organization resulted from Aristotle erroneously attributing to Parmenides a “physics” that he himself criticizes as the opinions of “men who know nothing.” This version of the Poem, while coherent if following the line of Kantian criticism, is anachronistic and inappropriate in regards to Parmenides himself." (p. 1)

(1) Die Fragmente des Parmenides, Zullichau, 101 pages.

(2) In 1810, it was necessary to add three new verses, the current fr. 19.

(3) We can even trace Fülleborn’s Kantian ties back to a book he wrote on Kant’s philosophy: Immanuel Kant. Nebst einigen Bemerkungen über die Kantische Philosophie (1880).

34. ———. 2018. Some examples of the authentic Parmenides' "physics": the Parmenides "ontologist" is the Parmenides phusikós.

English translation of Quelques exemples de la "physique" contestataire de Parménide: le Parménide "ontologue" est le Parménide phusikós, Anais de Filosofia Classica, vol. 12 n° 24, 2018, pp. 88-109.

"It is undeniable that Parmenides' philosophy, even if it implies problems of understanding for our post-modernity, shares the atmosphere of his presocratic colleagues. A careful reading of the fragments of his Poem -without taking into account the "citators" and commentators- shows us that distinguishing a "Parmenides ontologist" from a "Parmenides phusikós" is meaningless. There is "only one" Parmenides who explained reality (phúsis) first according to a very original principle (which supposes the rejection of "opinions", of what is "said" about things), and who then incited his disciple to carry out an explanation in a way that we today call "physical" but which, in his time, belonged also to a research on phúsis, that is, to the fact of being. We have just used the verb "to incite" because there remains almost nothing of the answers that Parmenides was able to give. In the recovered fragments of Parmenides we have found, alas, only four answers, which we will analyze towards the end of this work, because the avatars of the transmission of the Poem, starting already from Aristotle, have unfortunately mixed up what Parmenides criticized and what he affirmed. However, it is interesting to discover that an authentic "Parmenidean physics" arose naturally from his discovery of the fact of being." (p. 1)

35. ———. 2020. "Parmenides by himself." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 27:200-223.

Abstract: "In order to know the thought of a philosopher the surest method is to read what he wrote. In the case of the Presocratics, however, a direct unmediated reading of the texts is almost impossible, because the vast majority of works of this period have disappeared. We propose the following methodological procedure concerning the Presocratics in general, and Parmenides in particular: Once a recovered citation (“fragment”) is confirmed as authentic, one must first attach oneself to it and try to pull from it the richest possible meaning. Only by this procedure can one understand the author on his own. The second step is to search for whether there are in a commentator some elements in accordance with the original text that are capable of enriching it.

We first consider Parmenides in his philosophical milieu, then outline the contents of the recovered fragments of his Poem. A Parmenides emerges who differs in many fundamental respects from that portrayed by Aristotle and his school. From an analysis of these fragments unburdened by Aristotelico-Simplician assumptions, we propose a new reading order for the fragments."

36. ———. 2020. Gianfrancesco d'Asola, the creator of the third way of Parmenides.

English translation available on Academia.edu of: Gianfrancesco d’Asola, el “creador” de la tercera vía parmenídea.

37. ———. 2020. Parmenides phusikós, yes, but...

English translation of Parmenides phusikós, oui mais..., commentary to "lezioni" of Livio Rossetti, Sulla filosofia virtuale di Parmenide, published as Verso la filosofia: Nuove prospettive su Parmenide, Zenone e Melisso, in N. S. Galgano, S. Giombini, F. Marcacci (ed.), ELEATICA 8, Academia, 2020, pp. 195-198.

"Livio Rossetti finds in Parmenides "molti insegnamenti in cui si articola il sapere su cielo, terra e organismi viventi" (p. 70), and this "other" Parmenides would be found in the "part" of the poem known as 'the Doxa'. In fact, the Goddess "ha apertamente assimilato alle 'doxai'" the "sub-trattazioni naturalistiche" (p. 74). And he says once again that "l'annuncio della trattazione perì phúseos era fatta in termini di discorso sulle dóxai" (p. 73). Consequentely, the natural phenomena that are treated from 8.50 onwards would be samples of the dóxai.

Obviously, the notion of dóxa is very important in Parmenides and already in the Introduction of the Poem (fr.1) the listener of the Goddess is supposed to know it, as well as the heart of the truth: "You must (kréo) be aware...". But -important detail- the Goddess already announces that in the dóxai brotôn there is no true trust (fr. 1.30). However, as Rossetti, forcefully points out, Parmenides "dopo i settantacinque esametri sull'essere", and despite its devalued character, he deals with "opinions".

In fact, it is precisely in his interpretation of the notion of dóxa, fundamental to Rossetti's analysis, where the weakest point of his excellent work lies, which, despite his efforts, is literally a "virtual" work: it is a very beautiful building, didactic, convincing, but built on something that does not exist; therefore, it collapses." (p. 1)

38. ———. 2020. Why Simplicius quoted the fr. 7.2 (DK) of Parmenides after the fr. 1.30 (DK)?

Available on Academia.edu.

Abstract: "Sextus is the only source of verses 1 to 28a of Parmenides fr.1. His quotation continues until verse 1.30, but from verse 1.28b the passage is also quoted by Simplicius, who adds at the end the verses 1.31-32, absent in Sextus. Instead of these two verses, Sextus copies five verses from fr.7 (7.2-6). How to explain this discrepancy? One could say that Sextus literally copied the text of the Poem. However, this explanation would be erroneous. Parmenides is the first philosopher who presents his ideas in a certain order, which obliges us to place some quotations before or after others. All the assertions of fr.7 presuppose a preliminary explanation: the notion of the "path of research" (fr.7.2) as a path leading to truth or opinions had appeared before, in fr.2; the description of the authors of the rejected path (fr.7.1), and in particular their inability to see and listen (fr.7.4-5) had also been presented before, in fr.6, and, finally, no polúderin élegkhos (fr.7.5) "already pronounced" (rhethenta) can be found in the set fr.1.1-30. However, placing fr.2 and 6 after fr.7 is impossible. The explanation of the Sextus quotation is to be found in his interpretation of fr.1. As his exegesis of the images of the Proem shows, Sextus wants to show that Parmenides rejects sensations, the source of opinions, and privileges reason. Once presented the need to be aware of both truth and opinions (1.29-30) Sextus makes a collage: he does not quote verses 1.31-32, which would justify the study of opinions ("...and yet, all'empes) and adds a text that explicitly says that thought must be discarded from "this path of research" (fr.7.2), and that lógos must be used as a criterion (logo krinai, fr.7.5)."

39. ———. 2021. The unfortunate lacuna of Parmenides' verse 6.3 DK.

Available at Academia.edu.

Summary: "After having written that "it is possible to be; nothingness, on the other hand, does not exist" (fr. 6.1b-2a), which is an almost literal allusion to the "path of persuasion, which is accompanied by truth" (already presented in fr. 2, verse 3), Parmenides describes the path of "the opinions of mortals who know nothing" (fr. 6.4ff.), and, concerning both paths, gives his disciple some advice. Unfortunately, we do not know what he advises, because instead of a verb that would describe an activity, there is a lacuna in Simplicius' Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, which copies a text, alas, already mutilated,: the verse 6.3. When the Commentary was edited in Venice in 1526, the person in charge of the edition proposed the verb "to remove", and this hypothesis was reinforced in 1892 by H. Diels. However, this verb is incompatible with Parmenides' dichotomous method, because, if it suggests that one must move away from two paths, a third path naturally emerges: the one to which one must cling. We present an analysis of the context that allows us to propose a different verb, consistent with Parmenides' dichotomous thinking."

"The version proposed by us was this one:

πρώτης γάρ τ' ἀφ' ὁδοῦ ταύτης διζήσιος <ἄρξει>(35)

"Because you'll <start> by this first path of research....."

(35) Cf. more precise details, as well as other examples, in N. L. Cordero op. cit. in Note 5 [Les deux chemins de Parménide, 1997², Vrin/Ousia, Paris/Brussels], pp. 168-175.

40. ———. 2021. The "opinions of mortals" of Parmenides and a possible eleatic pythagoreanism.

English translation of "Les 'opinions des mortels' de Parménide et un éventuel pythagorisme éléatique", Archai, 31, 2021, pp.1-24, available on Academia.edu.

Abstract:"The Goddess of Parmenides always announces that the δόξαι are a human product. But there is one point that has not generally been noticed in the studies devoted to the study of the δόξαι: they describe a human activity that consists in explaining reality by the presence of opposite principles, and that is always related to "nomination" (see fr. 8.51, fr. 8.38-41, fr 9, fr. 19.3). Was there a school in Parmenides' time which corresponded to this sketch, or is it a collage of Parmenides'? In any case, it is attested the presence of a branch of Pythagorism which was characterized, precisely, by "placing" names on things."

41. ———. 2022. The "opinions" in Parmenides and his ignorance of the unbearable weight of being.

Traduction of "Las 'opiniones' en Parménides y su desconocimiento del insoportable peso del ser" (Hypnos, 48, 2022, pp. 1-22).

Abstract: "The Greek language uses, to refer to things, the expression τὰ όντα, “things that are”. Everyday language already establishes a relation between “something that is” and the fact of being. Parmenides’ philosophy can be explained as a philosophical reflection on this linguistic fact. A non-philosophical view of language ignores this and explains reality in terms of “the way things seem to be”, or “opinions”. As Parmenides demonstrates in his Poem, only a relativizing of the fact of being can justify an explanation of reality based on opinions."

42. Cornford, Francis Macdonald. 1933. "Parmenides' Two Ways." Classical Quarterly no. 1933:97-111.

"The object of this paper is to determine the relations between the two parts of Parmenides' poem: the Way of Truth, which deduces the necessary properties of a One Being, and the False Way, which contains a cosmogony based on 'what seems to mortals, in which there is no true belief.'

The poem presents two problems. First, why does the appearance of the world belie its real nature? To Parmenides himself, as to any other mortal, diversity in time and space, change and motion, seem to exist; what is the source of error here?

This is a philosophical question; and it may be doubted whether Parmenides could have given an answer that would satisfy us. The second is an historical question: Whose is the cosmogony in the second part of the poem ? Is it Parmenides' own construction or a list of errors that he rejects ? To this there must be one right answer, which Parmenides, if we could summon him, could give us in a moment.

This is the problem I propose to discuss. The solution may throw some light on the other problem." (p. 97)

43. ———. 1935. "A New Fragment of Parmenides." Classical Review no. 49:122-123.

"Plato, Theaet. I80D: ὀλίγου δὲ ἐπελαθόμην, ὦ Θεόδωρε, ὅτι ἄλλοι αὖ τἀναντία τούτοις ἀπεφήναντο,

οἷον ἀκίνητον τελέθει τῷ παντὶ ὄνομ᾽ εἶναι

If we punctuate (with Diels at Simplicius, Phys. 143, 10)

οἷον, ἀκίνητον τελέθει. τῷ παντὶ ὄνομ᾽ εἶναι

it can be translated: 'It is sole, immovable. The All has the name " Being." So Plato, and so Simplicius after him, must have understood it. If they found this line in Parmenides, they might well accept it as a line that Parmenides might have written. It is no odder than several verses now accepted without question. The sense is good and relevant." (p. 122)

44. ———. 1939. Plato and Parmenides. Parmenides' Way of truth and Plato's Parmenides. Translated, with an Introduction and a Running Commentary. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.

Reprinted by Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.

Chapter II: Parmenides Way of Truth, pp. 28-52. ("This chapter is partly based on an article, Parmenides' Two Ways, Classical Quarterly, xxvii (1933), 97-111, where some of the points are discussed at greater length.").

"Parmenides' premiss states in a more abstract form the first assumption common to all his predecessors, Milesian or Pythagorean: ultimately there exists a One Being. His thought is really at work upon this abstract concept ; he considers what further attributes can, or cannot, logically belong to a being that is one.

At the same time, this One Being is not a mere abstraction; it proves to be a single continuous and homogeneous substance filling the whole of space. So far, as it seemed to him, reason will carry us, but no farther. Such a being cannot become or cease to be or change; such a unity cannot also be a plurality. There is no possible transition from the One Being to the manifold and changing world which our senses seem to reveal. His work is accordingly divided, after the proem, into two parts. The Way of Truth deduces the nature of the one reality from premisses asserted as irrefragably true. It ends with a clear warning that the Way of Seeming, which follows, is not true or consistent with the truth.

This second part, accordingly, is not in the form of logical deduction, but gives a cosmogony in the traditional narrative manner. The starting-point is the false belief of mortals, who trust their senses and accept the appearance of two opposite powers contending in the world. Unfortunately very few fragments of the second part survive ; but it is probable that we possess nearly the whole of the Way of Truth, thanks to Simplicius, who copied it out in his commentary on the Physics because the book had become very rare.

And it is with the Way of Truth that we are chiefly concerned." (pp. 29-30)

45. Cosgrove, Matthew R. 1974. "The KOYPOΣ Motif in Parmenides: B 1.24." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 19:81-94.

"Why does the goddess of Parmenides' poem address her mortal guest ω κουρέ (B 1.24)? The interpretations that have been proposed in answer to this question may be grouped generally under two opposed points of view. One finds in the goddess' address an autobiographical statement from the poet and a means of dating the poem's composition; the other takes it in some sense to contrast the humanity and/or discipleship of the κούρος with the divinity and/or teaching role of the goddess. Several other more recent and less widely noted suggestions have also appeared, but I think no satisfactory explanation of why the recipient of the goddess' discourse is presented as a κούρος has yet been found. The interpretation which I shall offer through an examination of previous answers to this question seeks for the goddess' address a more intrinsic meaning and coherent place within the proem and the whole of Parmenides' work." (p. 81)

46. ———. 2011. "The Unknown 'Knowing Man' : Parmenides, B1.3." Classical Quarterly no. 61:28-47.

"Commentators on Parmenides' poem have long read the words of B1.3, εἰδότα φῶτα, with the secure assurance that this phrase must identify and praise the recipient of the divine discourse that is shortly to come. The journeying speaker of line 1, whom the goddess will greet in B1.24 as a κοῦρος, is assumed to be the ‘knowing man'; or, more precisely, it is anticipated that the goddess is about to make him so by revealing to him the heart of truth (B1.29). This ‘knowing man' (so the received view goes) is the goddess’s initiate,2 in contrast to whom are the ‘know-nothings', the βροτοὶ εἰδότες οὐδέν (B6.4).

But I argue here that this is all a mistake, and one that undermines at every turn our ability to understand what is going on in the proem."

(...)

"I do not claim to break new ground on all or even any one of these details save by providing a consistent and coherent framework for choosing among answers to them. For I submit that only the correct identification of the φὼς εἰδώς and of the two separate journeys, as proposed here, in which the speaker of line 1 becomes involved, ties those details together, makes sense of them, and unifies the opening of the poem. In what follows I first develop this interpretation without defensive interruptions, as though it were obvious, so that readers may envision from the outset the picture of the proem I have in mind. Of course, I am aware that my interpretation is very far from being incontrovertible.

Accordingly, after the initial exposition, I shall circle back into the eristic thicket." (p. 28)

47. ———. 2014. "What are 'True' Doxai Worth to Parmenides? Essaying a Fresh Look at his Cosmology." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 46:1-31.

"In recent years the preserved portions of Parmenides' poem traditionally labelled 'Doxa' 1 have received more nuanced attention, focusing on their content and not just on their presumed role as some kind of foil or supplement to 'Aletheia', 'Truth'. While the age-old question of the relation between these two parts of the poem has been neither settled nor abandoned, some scholars have put this and related issues to one side and concentrated instead on assessing the sometimes startling scientific innovations introduced in the context of the Doxa." (p. 1)

(...)

"These approaches pose various problems, which this paper intends to explore.

(...)

As posed explicitly by Cordero, but bearing implicitly on Graham's, Kahn's, Mourelatos's, and Sedley's views, is the question in what sense, if any, these innovations in physical matters might be 'true', in Parmenidean terms. If they are 'true' for brotoi, possibly including us latter-day mortals, are they also 'true' for the goddess, but only in some 'lesser' sense, which she does not define? And what could that be? Or do they just simply and finally fail to follow her semata for what-is, as much as do any of the merest falsehoods of mortals' world? And if so, what are they then worth to her? And, perhaps more tantalizingly, what are they then worth to Parmenides? Could he really have been 'enthralled' by such fatally flawed 'truths'? And if so, to what end?

With this last query we are firmly back in the midst of the dilemma that has bedevilled commentators on Parmenides since antiquity, concerning not just Parmenides' own attitude towards the possibly revolutionary and astronomically accurate, or 'true', portions of the Doxa but the overall question of the philosophical relation between Truth and Doxa. These are questions not just of historical/biographical psychology but, at least as posed here, they have another import, one related to and calling for explication of Parmenides' proper philosophical concerns. In effect, as I hope to show, asking 'What are true doxai worth to Parmenides?' is an especially useful and revealing way of posing anew the timeworn problem of the relation between the two parts of Parmenides' poem, and in particular that of the philosophical status of the cosmology propounded by the goddess." (p. 4, notes omitted)

48. Coxon, Allan H. 1934. "The Philosophy of Parmenides." Classical Quarterly no. 28:134-144.

"In the Classical Quarterly for April, 1933, Professor Cornford maintains that the Two Ways' of Parmenides are not meant as alternatives: "The Way of Truth and the Way of Seeming are no more parallel and alternative systems of cosmology, each complete in itself, than are Plato's accounts of the intellectual and sensible worlds. (1)

I wish here to try to support his general view, which seems to me to be indisputably correct, while differing from Professor Cornford in some important details." (p. 134)

(1) p. 102.

(...)

"The unity of the whole poem should now be clear. It opens with Parmenides realization of the difference between knowledge and belief, symbolized by his entry into the realm of Day. There he is welcomed by Justice, or Destiny,(1) who narrates to him, first the features of the world he has just entered, then the nature of the world he has left. The former narrative he has himself to test of λόγος, the possession of which has gained him admission. The latter, she warns him, is a myth.(2) True, even those to whom the door remains shut can produce such; the point is that anyone who knows that this dark world is not the real world is likely to produce a better myth about it than those who believe it to be the only reality and their myth to be truth.

The thesis of this paper has been that Parmenides was, and was conscious of being, the first genuine philosopher in the Greek world. It follows that he was the founder of European philosophy; that, while his predecessors discovered the main principle of what we know as science, Parmenides was the first metaphysician. If that is true, it is a splendid achievement; and he deserves considerably more recognition than he has usually, since Plato, been given." (p. 144)

(1) On this vide Fränkel, [Parmenidesstudien, Berlin, 1930] p. 158 sq.

(2) Just as Plato's Timaeus is a myth.

49. ———. 1969. "The Text of Parmenides fr. 1.3." Classical Quarterly no. 18:69.

"In all texts of the fragments of Parmenides printed in the last fifty years he begins his poem by speaking of "the way which" (or, according to some, "the goddess who") "carries through all towns the man who knows"

(...)

"In fact ἄστη, which is alleged to be the reading of the best manuscript of Sextus' books Adversus Dogmaticos, has no manuscript authority at all. ἄστη first appeared in the text of the third edition of Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker published in 1912, where it is attributed to the Ms. N (= Laur.85.19), so called by Mutschmann".

(...)

The "countless attempts at emendation" of [the readings of L and E et al., πάντὰ τε and πάντα τὴ respectively] did not include aste. Variants from N were first published in 1911 by A. Kochalsky in his dissertation,...but his professedly complete list of new readings from N for these books of Sextus includes no reference to Parmenides 1.3. It follows that aste can hardly have appeared among the variants which he says he had already communicated to Diels. The word aste appears, however, as the reading of N in vol. II of Mutschmann's text of Sextus, which was published in 1914. It would seem, therefore, that Diels got the reading privately from Mutschmann, who collated N in 1909 and 1911. . . . In any case, the word is a simple misreading of the manuscript, which has pant' ate." (p. 69)

50. ———. 1969. "The Manuscript Tradition of Simplicius' Commentary on Aristotle's Physics I-IV." Classical Quarterly no. 18:70-75.

Abstract: "The following discussion' of the manuscript tradition of Simplicius' commentary on Aristotle's Physics I-IV originated in an examination of the tradition of the fragments of Parmenides. It is therefore illustrated not only from Simplicius but particularly from the texts of Parmenides quoted by him. This will not be misleading, since, though many of these texts are quoted by Simplicius more than once, there is little or no sign in any manuscript of interpolation from one passage to another and it is not likely that any scribe could have interpolated the text from an independent manuscript of Parmenides."

51. ———. 2003. "Parmenides on Thinking and Being." Mnemosyne no. 56:210-212.

"The incomplete verse which constitutes Fragment B3 of Parmenides τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι is of central importance for the interpretation of his argument. Since what may be called the traditional understanding of the phrase, as opposed to that proposed by Zeller,(2) has been recently revived in The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy(3) (CC) and elsewhere, it seems worthwhile to recapitulate the evidence on either side.

The sentence is cited only by Clement, Plotinus and Proclus, by all isolation from its context, and by all as asserting the identity of thinking with being. The English translation, 'For it is the same to think and be', is said to be "the only natural reading of the Greek" (CC, 120). is at least questionable, since it postulates a substantival use with no article, which would be unparalleled in the first half of the fifth century, and even later, and which its assumption by Clement and the Neoplatonists does nothing to guarantee." (p. 211)

(2) E. Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen, I, i, ed. Nestle (Leipzig 1923), 678 1).

(3) [A. A. Long ed.,] The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy (Cambridge 1999).

52. ———. 2009. The Fragments of Parmenides: A Critical Text with Introduction and Translation, the Ancient Testimonia and a Commentary. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Revised and expanded edition edited with new translations by Richard McKirahan and a new Preface by Malcolm Schofield (First edition Gorcum: Van Assen 1986).

"Parmenides' poem is dominated by his conviction that human beings can attain knowledge of reality or understanding (nóos). This faith is expressed in the apocalyptic form of the poem, which at the same time offers an analysis of its presuppositions, and which may be regarded as an attempt to answer the questions, 'what must reality be, if it is knowable by the human mind, and what is the nature of human experience?

The ontological part of the work comprises an account of two intellectually conceivable ways of discovering reality (aletheín), followed by a summary analysis of its character as revealed by pursuing the only way allowed to be genuine. The ways are defined respectively by the formulae 'is and is not for not being', and 'is not and must needs not be', and the recognition that they are mutually exclusive and exhaustive is represented (in opposition to the evidence of the senses) as itself constituting the only criterion (fr. 7, 5) for determining what is real: nothing is to be so considered, unless it either is intrinsically something, or of necessity is not anything. Since the second way is argued to be concerned with nothing and to lead nowhere, reality is to he identified by pursuing the first, i.e. by asking what can and must be made the subject of an unconditional 'is'.

Although Parmenides defines his conception of philosophy in terms of the expressions 'is' and 'is not', he gives no explicit indication of the sense which he conceives these expressions to bear. Modern exegesis has in consequence saddled him with, most generally, an existential understanding of the verb, or else with an archaic failure to distinguish between its existential and copulative uses. It is better to recognise that his approach is purely formal or dialectical, i.e. that, so far from positing any given sense of the verb, he is concerned to determine what sense attaches to it, given its essential role in 'asserting and thinking'. In the prologue and in the cosmological part of the poem he uses the verb `to be' either with an adverbial qualification or with a further predicate (e.g. frr. 1, 32; 8, 39, 57; 20, 1), but in defining 'the only ways of enquiry which can be thought' (fr. 3, 2), he isolates the expressions 'is' and 'is not' deliberately both from any determinate subject and from any further completion. In so doing he assigns to them no restricted sense but treats them as the marks of 'asserting and thinking', with the possibility and presuppositions of which he is concerned throughout (cf. fr. 3, 8n.). His aim in defining the 'genuine way of enquiry' as the expression 'is' is to discover (I) what, if anything, can be said and thought `to be' something without the possibility of denial that it is that thing, and (ii) what this subject can further be said 'to be', i.e. what further predicates can be asserted of it. He answers these questions by converting the verb 'is' to the noun-expression 'Being' (eon) and then arguing for the nature of what this name must denote. The 'is' which constitutes the definition of the way is thus reformulated as the copula with 'Being' as its subject: 'Being is ungenerated and imperishable, complete, unique, unvarying' etc. (fr. 8, 3-5). Initially the nature and number of 'Being', like the sense of 'is', remain wholly undetermined except as what 'is and is not for not being'. Its further determination, culminating in its characterisation as non-physical, is argued in the account in fr. 8 of the many landmarks or monuments on the authentic way of enquiry, i.e. of the terms which can be asserted of the subject, and the question arises, 'how does Parmenides envisage the relation between the subject, 'Being', and the terms joined with it by the copula?'

Among the landmarks on the authentic way are the unity or indivisibility of Being and its uniqueness. If what is is one and unique, Parmenides cannot well suppose that the terms which he predicates of it are the names of distinct attributes, which would have their own being and so be eonta. He must therefore regard them as alternative names of Being. This was Plato's understanding of his meaning (cf. Sections 7 and 8 below), which is confirmed by Eudemus' assertion that it was Plato himself who first introduced two senses of the verb `to be' by discriminating between its substantial and attributive uses (cf. Sect. 8). It is confirmed also by the Megarian view of predication as identification (cf. Sect. 6 ad fin.), for the Megarians were regarded as latter days (tt. 102, 132). Aristotle likewise insists (tt. 19, 21, 27) that Parmenides ascribed to 'being' only a single sense, whence he was led to suppose that what is other than Being itself has no being at all. Thus both the text and the Platonic and Peripatetic exegesis of it indicate that Parmenides' copulative use of 'is' in his account of the authentic way signifies an identity which is the direct expression of the perfect identity of substantial Being." (pp. 19-21)

53. Crubellier, Michel. 2019. "Looking for a Starting Point—The Eleatic Paradox Put to Good Use." In Aristotle’s Physics Alpha: Symposium Aristotelicum, edited by Ierodiakonou, Katerina, Kalligas, Paul and Karasmanis, Vassilis, 53-88. New York: Oxford University Press.

"After the general epistemological reflections in chapter 1, the opening lines of chapter 2 seem to mark the beginning of the inquiry of book I. The rest of the book shows an indisputable continuity; indeed, it consists mainly in one long argument in which an accurate and consistent model of natural change is built up step by step.

I have divided the chapter into five sections, which correspond to the paragraphs in Ross’s edition except that in the last paragraph I take 185b5–25 and 185b25–186a3 to be two distinct units (that is, I do not see a particularly close relation between the mention of ‘the more recent of the Ancients’ and the part of the discussion preceding it immediately, about the many senses of ‘one’).

Actually, chapter 2, as it stands (i.e. as it has been articulated by Renaissance editors), is not a well-individuated unity. Its first section is linked to the subsequent chapters at least until I 5; the second is an introduction to the discussion of the immobilist monistic (‘Eleatic’) position, i.e. to chapters 2 and 3 taken together.

Only the last three sections form a distinct unity (which nevertheless is closely related to chapter 3).

I will spend much more time on the first two sections than on the rest, on account of their strategical importance."

54. Crystal, Ian. 2002. "The Scope of Thought in Parmenides." Classical Quarterly no. 52:207-219.

"Much has been written recently about the relation between thinking and what is thought in Parmenides.(1) Long has recently argued that the relation between the cognitive act and its object is a weak form of identity in which thinking and being are coextensively related.(2) Curd in her recent study of Parmenides argued for a weaker relation in which being constituted a necessary condition for thinking.3 In this paper, I want to argue that Parmenides offers a different account of the relation between thinking and what is thought. I shall argue that Parmenides puts forth a monistic thesis which entails the strict identification of the epistemic subject and object. I am not the first to posit the strict identity of thinking and being. Vlastos and, more recently, Sedley also attribute this view to Parmenides.4 However, the argument of this paper will be that the identity relation, pace Vlastos and Sedley, does not emerge until Parmenides' account of qualitative homogeneity in Fragment 8. As a result, we cannot attribute this position to Parmenides prior to Fragment 8.

My argument will proceed in two main stages. First (Section I), I shall argue that Fragments 1-7 do not establish the strong identity thesis. I shall do this by canvassing two possible interpretations of how it is that thinking relates to what can be thought in Fragments 1-7. These readings I shall refer to as ‘realist' and ‘idealist' respectively. Secondly (Section II), I shall turn to the Parmenidean account of what ‘is' in Fragment 8 in order to show (Section III) how this does establish the strict identity between the thinker and that which is thought." (p. 207)

(1) To cite just a few recent examples on this subject matter, sec A. A. Long, ‘Parmenides on thinking being', in J. Cleary (ed.), Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 12. (New York, 1996), 125-51; D. Sedley. 'Parmenides and Melissus'. in A. A. Long (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, 1999), 113-33; P. Curd. The Legacy of Parmenides (Princeton. 1998), chs. 1 and 2.

(2) Long (n. 1), 140-6. .See n. 38 below.

(38) Long (n. 1), 140-6, I think, wrongly attributes a weak identity-relation between thinking and being in which, although identical, they are coextensively related. He maintains that thinking and being do not connote the same thing or are different in semantic value just as the other attributes such as being ungenerated and everlasting are different in semantic value However, even allowing for these differences in connotation or semantic value one nonetheless cannot avoid the problem that thinking cannot be treated like the other attributes in that it requires the differentiation outlined above; the sort of differentiation which Parmenides appears to rule out when he offers his complete account of being in Fragment 8. Moreover, as I have argued elsewhere, it would seem that Plato picked up on this point when setting out his account of mental faculties and their objects in Republic 5. That is. in the midst of a backdrop couched in allusions to Parmenides' Proem. Plato sets out an account of thinking and its objects which is based upon the sort of differentiation that Long talks about, namely as coextensive relata. But more to the point, it would seem that Plato is setting out his account in this manner in contrast to the Parmenidean account. See I. Crystal, ‘Parmenidean allusions in Republic V', Ancient Philosophy 16 (1996), 351-63.

55. Curd, Patricia. 1991. "Parmenidean Monism." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 36:241-264.

"Is Parmenides indeed a monist? If so, what sort of monist is he? This paper undertakes a re-thinking of these issues." (p. 242)

(...)

"I shall argue that Parmenides adopts neither material nor numerical monism; but that his arguments about the only true account of being show him to be committed to predicational monism.(10) Whatever is must be a predicational unity; but this is consistent with there being many ones. I begin by considering the esti and its subject in B2, and by giving some attention to the setting and context of Parmenides' philosophical project. I next consider a number of the arguments of the Alêtheia section of the poem, and then turn to the relation to Parmenides of philosophers who came after him, especially the atomists and the pluralists." (p. 243)

(10) Barnes, for instance, is thus correct in denying that Parmenides adopts numerical monism (in "Eleatic One"). But because Barnes insists on an existential 'is' in Parmenides he does not give full weight to the metaphysical and methodological force of Parmenides' arguments; and so he does not see that Parmenides is indeed committed to a kind of monism. Parmenides himself speaks of the unity of being and argues that being is both suneches and mounogenes; my argument is that these claims are equivalent to predicational monism. I do not mean that Parmenides formulated a theory to which he gave the name 'predicational monism.' Rather, given that the three types of monism can be distinguished, it is crucial in understanding Parmenides to attribute this view to him.

56. ———. 1992. "Deception and Belief in Parmenides' "Doxa"." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 25:109-134.

"In this paper I examine the problem of the Doxa, and offer an account of it that is consistent with the claims of Aletheia and explains why Parmenides included it in the poem.(6) I shall argue that, while there is deception in the Doxa (though not in the goddess' account of it), nonetheless the Doxa does not in principle renounce all human belief. For, although Parmenides argues that the sensible world alone cannot be the source of knowledge of what is, he does not reject it completely. Moreover, I propose that, while Parmenides himself does not give such an account, a story about the sensible world that is consistent with the metaphysical and epistemological claims of Aletheia can be told. Thus, while I agree with those who argue that the particular account given in the Doxa fails, I also agree with those who see the Doxa as having something positive to say about mortal belief. But I go further, arguing that Parmenides supposes that a trustworthy cosmology may be possible and discloses what such a theory might be like and how it would be tested. I begin by considering some of the difficulties faced by interpretations of Parmenides' Doxa; I then consider the problems of deception and mortal belief." (pp. 110-111, two notes omitted)

(6) For a summary of views concerning the Doxa held earlier in the century, see W.J. Verdenius, Parmenides: Some Comments on his Poem (Groningen/Batavia 1942), 45-9.

57. ———. 1998. "Eleatic Arguments." In Method in Ancient Philosophy, edited by Gentzler, Jyl, 1-28. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In this essay I shall limit my discussion of philosophical method to issues connected with presenting and arguing for philosophical theories or with appraising the adequacy of theories. I shall suggest that there are three stages in the development of pre-Socratic method. First, there is the mere assertion of one's theory; second, there is the giving of arguments for first principles or against other theories. Finally, in the third stage, there are the development and application of criteria for acceptable theories, combined with using these criteria to rule out whole classes of competing theories. I shall argue that the second stage appears in a rough form in Xenophanes and Heraclitus (for they reject, but do not actually argue against, the views of others), but that the full-blown philosophical method of the second and third stages together first appears in Parmenides; it is he who first uses arguments directly in support of his philosophical position (and against the positions of others) and who first stresses the criteria for the acceptability of arguments about nature. But, as I shall also argue, since in Parmenides there is also the reliance on assertion as opposed to argument that characterizes nearly all pre-Eleatic philosophy, Parmenides himself is a transitional figure. I begin with a survey of pre-Eleatic pre-Socratic theories. I then examine the various roles played by assertion, argument, and theory evaluation in Parmenides' thought. Finally, I discuss some of the argumentative strategies in Parmenides' Eleatic followers, Zeno and Melissus." (p. 2)

58. ———. 1998. The Legacy of Parmenides: Eleatic Monism and Later Presocratic Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Second edition with a new Introduction to the Paperback Version (pp. XVII-XXIX), Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2004.

Contents: Preface: IX; Acknowledgments XI; A note on texts and translations XIII; Abbreviations XV; Introduction 3; I. Parmenides and the inquiry into Nature 24; II. Parmenides' Monism and the argument of B8 64; III. Doxa and deception 98; IV. Pluralism after Parmenides 127; V. Atoms, void, and rearrangement 180, VI. Final remarks 217; Bibliography 243; Index locorum 257; Index nominum 264; General index 269-280.

"This book offers an alternative account of the views of Parmenides and his influence on later Presocratic thought, especially Pluralism and Atomism, in the period immediately preceding Plato's Theory of Forms. It challenges what has become the standard account of the development of Pluralism (in the theories of Empedocles and Anaxagoras) and Atomism (adopted by Leucippus and Democritus). This alternative interpretation places Parmenides firmly in the tradition of physical inquiry in Presocratic thought, arguing that Parmenides was concerned with the same problems that had occupied his predecessors (although his concern took a different form). Further, this account explains how Parmenides' metaphysical and cosmological doctrines had a positive influence on his successors, and how they were used and modified by the later Eleatics Zeno and Melissus.

In the course of this book, I shall argue against both the prevailing interpretation of Parmenides' monism and the usual explanation of the "is" in Parmenides. Instead, I shall claim that Parmenides' subject is what it is to be the genuine nature of something, thus linking Parmenides with the inquiries into nature of his philosophical predecessors. On the view for which I shall argue, the "is" that concerns Parmenides is a predicational "is" of a particularly strong sort rather than an existential "is." I accept that Parmenides is a monist, but I deny that he is a numerical monist. Rather, I claim that Parmenides is committed to what I call predicational monism. (5)

Numerical monism asserts that there exists only one thing: a complete list of entities in the universe would have only one entry. This is the kind of monism that has traditionally been attributed to Parmenides and (rightly) to Melissus. Predicational monism is the claim that each thing that is can be only one thing; and must be that in a particularly strong way. To be a genuine entity, something that is metaphysically basic, a thing must be a predicational unity, a being of a single kind (mounogenes, as Parmenides says in B8.4), with a single account of what it is; but it need not be the case that there exists only one such thing. What must be the case is that the thing itself must be a unified whole. If it is, say F (whatever F turns out to be), it must be all, only, and completely F. On predicational monism, a numerical plurality of such one-beings (as we might call them) is possible. (6) The interpretation of Parmenides' "is" becomes relevant here, for I argue that to be for Parmenides is to be the nature of a thing, what a thing genuinely is, and thus metaphysically basic. The arguments of Parmenides' fragment B8 concern the criteria for what-is, that is, for being the nature of something, where such a nature is what a thing really is. Those arguments purport to show that what-is must be whole, complete, unchanging, and of a single kind. Each thing that is can have only one nature, but there may be many such things that satisfy Parmenides' criteria.' These issues are the subjects of Chapters I and II." (pp. 4-5)

(5) Mourelatos (in Route) and Barnes ("Eleatic One") have also questioned the predominant view that Parmenides is a numerical monist; Barnes denies any sort of monism to Parmenides, and Mourelatos emphasizes Parmenides' anti-dualism.

(6)Thus, the failure of later Presocratic thinkers to argue for their pluralistic theories, while working within a Parmenidean framework and stressing the reality and predicational unity of their basic entities, is evidence for my view that it is possible for there to be a numerical plurality of entities each of which is predicationally one.

(7) In later terminology we might say that Parmenides is searching for an account of what it is to be the essence of something, although I have avoided the word essence because it is an anachronistic term in Presocratic thought. There is, however, a connection between Parmenides' search for what-is and Aristotle's accounts of ousia and to ti en einai; the connection runs through Plato's Theory of Forms, which itself has Parmenidean roots.

59. ———. 2006. "Parmenides and After: Unity and Plurality." In A Companion to Ancient Philosophy, edited by Louise, Gill Mary and Pierre, Pellegrin, 34-55. Oxford: Blackwell.

"A helpful way to approach the question of Parmenides' importance for Greek philosophy is to examine questions of unity and plurality in pre-Socratic thought. seeing how these questions dovetail with those about the possibility of genuine knowledge and its object.(2) In this chapter, I shall argue that Parmenides' criticisms of his predecessors rest on the principle that what can be genuinely known must be a unity of a particular sort, which I call a predicational unity. On this view, anything that genuinely is (that truly can be said to be). and so can be known, must be of a single, wholly unified kind. Parmenides drew confusions from this that later philosophers took very seriously. One consequence is that what is genuinely real cannot come to be, pass away, or after, thus posing the problems of change and knowledge: How can we account for the appearance of change that we see in the world around us? And how can we have knowledge of such a changing world? An advantage of viewing Parmenides in this way is that it makes sense of the cosmological theorizing of post-Parmenidean figures such as Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and Democritus. All these philosophers were (in their different ways) pluralists, holding that there is a numerical plurality of metaphysically basic entities: and yet, I shall argue, all were working in the Parmenidean tradition because they all accepted Parmenides' criteria for what is genuinely real." (p. 34)

(2) [Stokes (1971) provides a comprehensive treatment of unity and plurality in early Greek thought in English. [M. C. Stokes, One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy, Washington, DC: The Center for Hellenic Studies 1971]

60. ———. 2011. "Thought and Body in Parmenides." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 115-134. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "Parmenides' fragment B16 is a puzzle: it seems to be about thought, but Theophrastus uses it in his account of Parmenides' views on perception.

Scholars have disagreed about its proper place in Parmenides' poem: does it belong to Alētheia or to Doxa? I suggest that the fragment indeed belongs to Doxa, and in it Parmenides claims that mortals, who fail to use noos correctly, mistake the passive experiences of sense perception for genuine thought about what-is, and hence fail to understand the true nature of what-is. I argue that genuine thought (the correct use of noos) must go beyond sense experience and grasp what is truly intelligible; in doing so I explore the question of immateriality in Presocratic thinking."

61. ———. 2015. "Thinking, supposing, and « physis » in Parmenides." Études platoniciennes no. 12.

Abstract: "What could justify the Presocratic conviction that human beings can have knowledge? The answer that I am exploring in a larger project is that most Presocratic thinkers share a commitment to the possibility of a “natural fit” between the world and human understanding. Two claims underlie this commitment: the first is the basic intelligibility of the cosmos. The second is that human beings can come to know things beyond their limited sensory experience, for in properly exercising their capacities for perception, thought, and understanding, they can come to have the knowledge that earlier Greeks thought was reserved for the gods. Here I explore a small part of one chapter of the story I want to tell: Parmenides' accounts of what-is and of thinking and the implications of these views for the possibility of human knowledge about the world around us. The paper concentrates on Parmenides, beginning with a few comments about Heraclitus."

62. ———. 2023. "Aristotle, Parmenides, Melissus (and Plato?)." In Eleatica Vol. 9: Aristotle and the Eleatics = Aristotele e gli Eleati, edited by Pulpito, Massimo and Berruecos Frank, Bernardo, 147-156. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlsg.

"While Aristotle is often praised as the first critical historian of philosophy, he is almost as often chided for his high-handed and almost frivolous accounts of his predecessors’ views. Indeed, one might at times wonder who it is that Aristotle is actually discussing, given what we think we know of his philosophical elders.(1) In his lectures, “Aristotle and the Eleatics,” Richard McKirahan gives (and defends) lively, evenhanded, and convincing accounts of the Eleatic thinkers and of Aristotle’s interpretation of them. In thinking about how to respond to these lectures, my first inclination was to say, “yes, of course,” and leave it that. While that would make for a (perhaps blessedly) short article from me, I think that I should expand upon those three words. So, there are two parts to this response. First, I say a few things about Richard’s “Aristotelianizing Parmenides,” and then I go on to make some suggestions about “Aristotle’s Melissus:” I think that in Aristotle’s account of Melissus we can see the shadow of Plato’s Parmenides." (p. 147)

(1) These claims, of course, are not made merely about Aristotle.

63. Dahlstrom, Daniel O. 2017. "Heidegger's initial interpretation of Parmenides: an excursus in the 1922 Lectures on aristotelian texts." The Review of Metaphysics no. 70:507-527.

Abstract: "In lectures and writings during the 1920s, Heidegger appropriates what he takes to be the basic insights expressed in Parmenides’ Poem, even as he criticizes other decisive and fateful aspects of it. He gives his most ample, early account of major parts of Parmenides’ Poem in 1922 lectures on Aristotle. The aim of this study is to review Heidegger’s account in those lectures, with a view to showing how Heidegger’s reading of Parmenides contributes to thinking that culminates in the project of fundamental ontology. To this end, following the detailed review of that account, the article addresses the significance of Heidegger’s references to Parmenides in Sein und Zeit."

References

64. de Jáuregui, Migule Herrero. 2018. "Protreptic and Poetry. Hesiod, Parmenides, Empedocles." In When Wisdom Calls: Philosophical Protreptic in Antiquity, edited by Alieva, Olga, Kotzé, Annemaré and Van der Meeren, Sophie, 49-69. Turnhout: Brepols.

"However, the idea of conversion is prominent in some of the early poets, and not only those who are usually called, with assumed anachronism, ‘philosophers’, like Parmenides or Empedocles, but also in some key passages of Hesiod’s Works and Days. To locate these passages and identify the literary elements that characterize them is the purpose of this chapter." (p. 50)

(...)

"Our three poets fabricate the first elaborations of an idea of salvation that is valid in any circumstance, and that therefore demands a general conversion to it.

Nock’s sharp distinction between philosophy and religion, therefore, is useless in these authors, since the divine authority is as essential as human argumentation in their presentation of an objective salvation.

For Hesiod such ideal is justice, for Parmenides a certain kind of knowledge, and for Empedocles a specific self-conscious behaviour.

Their proposals, notwithstanding the many formal parallels, are very different, and it is clear that being κακός, for instance, has a very different meaning in Hesiod or Empedocles. However, what they all have in common is that they turned the formulas and loose topoi of a didactic tradition into specific calls for conversion by elaborating a new idea towards which men should turn their lives. The divine was their source of legitimacy and traditional poetry was their vehicle for creating these first protreptic works. The first Greek ideas about an objective salvation that transcends the realm of physical security and requires a complete change of thinking did not originate in the cabinet of bookish philosophers and rhetoricians. The first προτρεπτικοὶ λόγοι were pronounced by the Muses." (p. 69)

References

Arthur D. Nock, Conversion. The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933).

65. De Long, Jeremy. 2017. "From Ionian Speculation to Eleatic Deduction: Parmenides’s Xenophanean-Based Theism." In Politics and Performance in Western Greece: Essays on the Hellenic Heritage of Sicily and Southern Italy, edited by Reid, Heather L., Tanasi, Davide and Kimbell, Susi, 217-231. Fonte Aretusa: Parnassus Press.

"This essay aims to challenge the skeptical position, and establish a direct link disseminating Ionian philosophy to Magna Graecia via Xenophanes and Parmenides.

The argument is straightforward. First, the ancient geographical and temporal evidence is noted, establishing that it was possible for Parmenides to have been influenced and/or taught by Xenophanes. Next, the metaphysical and epistemological parallels between these thinkers are considered. Despite notable differences, on balance, these close parallels suggest against the skeptical view, making it quite plausible to impute a direct intellectual link between these thinkers. Third, I consider ancient claims that both thinkers were engaging with religious topics, offering a sort of “rational theology.” This evidence for a close intellectual relationship between these thinkers has been entirely ignored by modern scholars, and orthodox interpretative models cannot readily provide a charitable explanation for them. However, by reconsidering the theistic content in Parmenides’s poem, a new interpretative approach is revealed which can. Once this evidence is considered in its totality, the case for imputing a close and direct intellectual heritage from Xenophanes to Parmenides proves quite substantial." (p. 217)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Parmenides of Elea. Annotated Bibliography of the studies in English: De R - Grae

Bibliography

1. de Rijk, Lambertus Marie. 1983. "Did Parmenides Reject the Sensible World?" In Graceful Reason: Essays in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy Presented to Joseph Owens, CSSR on the Occasion of his Seventy-Fifth Birthday and the Fiftieth Anniversary of his Ordination, edited by Lloyd, Gerson, 29-53. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

"Two camps of scholars interpreting Parmenides' poem have recently been distinguished and labeled as the Majority and the Minority. The former holds that, unlike the Alêtheia part, the Doxa part presents an altogether untrue account of things that properly speaking have no real existence. According to the Minority, however, the Doxa was put forward as possessing some kind or degree of cognitive validity. I shall try to show that both these two positions are ambiguous and accordingly fail in giving a clear insight into what Parmenides intends to tell us. They both seem to need correction to the extent that Parmenides does distinguish the Alêtheia route from the Doxa route(s), but there is nothing in the text to tell us that he makes a distinction between two separate domains. one true and the other untrue. As any genuine philosopher he was concerned about the sensible world, our world and it was that which he wanted to truly understand." (pp. 29-30)

(...)

One cannot deny that Heraclitus faced the primitive approach of the physicists in a radical way. So Parmenides in defending another steady inner nature ('Be-ing') sees in him his most dangerous rival. No wonder that his offences against Heraclitus are the most bitter. And indeed he tries to bring Heraclitus into the company of those who, two-headed as they are, are not able to make the great decision.

Subsequent thinkers had to take into account Parmenides' doctrine and in fact could not help digesting its rigidity. Plato was the first to take the big decision so seriously that he left the idea of one world as approached by mortals along two different Routes and settled on the assumption of two separate worlds, one of Unshakable Being, the other of Unreliable Becoming. Aristotle, for his part, thought it possible to dispose of Plato's chorismos and find the inner nature of things right in themselves. No doubt it is Parmenides, cited by Fr. Owens as 'one of the truly great philosophic geniuses in the history of Western thought,' (*) who was the catalyst of all subsequent metaphysics." (p. 53)

(*) Joseph Owens, A History of Ancient Western Philosophy (New York 1959) p. 76.

2. de Vivar, Carlos Montemayor Romo. 2006. Time and Necessity in Parmenides Astoria NY: Seaburn.

"This essay is not an exhaustive academic interpretation of Parmenides’ work. Rather, it is an informal presentation of some his most important ideas, intended to reach readers that have no previous philosophical training. One of the main goals of this text is to introduce the reader to Greek philosophy by focusing on one of philosophy’s earliest expressions, which influenced thinkers from all times. The reason for choosing Parmenides’ poem is that it was and still is considered a fundamental philosophical text, in spite of being highly controversial." (p. 9)

(...)

"Finally, it is important to acknowledge that although Parmenides’ poem departs from previous philosophical texts in its argumentative structure, it is continuous with these texts because it forms part of a tradition of thinking universally, without endorsing a particular political or theological agenda. This tradition, which started with Thales, is what we call today ancient Greek philosophy, and it is, without doubt, one of the most important events in our intellectual history.

I hus. thanks to these thinkers who called themselves philosophers (this term is reputedly coined by Pythagoras) because of their love of wisdom, knowledge was independent from any particular religion. For the first time, mankind’s wisdom could be explored for its own sake because such wisdom depended exclusively on the permanent and necessary conditions of truth and reality. For the first time, knowledge was truly universal. In the remainder of this text I will present the contributions of one of the first and most important exponents of this way of thinking: Parmenides of Elea.

This book is structured in four chapters. The first is a presentation of pre-Parmenidean notions of time. Chapter 2 presents Parmenides’ contributions to the relation between time and necessity. Finally, chapter 3 and 4 portrays some of Parmenides’ influence in philosophy and science respectively." (p. 12)

3. Decker, Jessica Elbert, and Mayock, Matthew 2016. "Parmenides and Empedocles." In The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism, edited by Magee, Glenn Alexander, 26-37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 3: Parmendies and Empedocles, pp. 26-37.

"There is no dialectical process of methodically arriving at the pure singularity of “what is.” The interpretation that Parmenides intends us to “judge by reason” reflects a program of reading him that insists on limiting his focus.

Beyond the fact that there was no such conception of “reason” in Parmenides’s time and that reason only operates through a dialectic of “is” and “is not” that defies the logic Parmenides advances, this reading asserts that he consigns appearances to the category of “is not,” an unacceptable outcome as it would eliminate the world of experiences in which we live and move. Nevertheless, the classical depiction of Parmenides’s radical monism makes this assertion and can be traced back to Plato’s reading in Sophist, which set the precedent of exclusively focusing on “Truth” without the surrounding context that would allow it to be recognized as the endpoint of irony. Having artificially banished appearances from Parmenides’s account of what is, Plato retroactively generates the need to restore them to a role in philosophical inquiry, which he accomplishes by asserting them to be a mixture of “is” and “is not.” The irony in all this is that Plato ostensibly “saves” the appearances from Parmenides when it is the latter, in actuality, who gives them a higher ontological status by weaving them into his account of the eon. It would be absurd for Parmenides to say that sense experience “is not,” while maintaining that what “is not” cannot be experienced, recognized, or pointed out. But Plato’s interpretation prevailed, ensuring that the scope of what counted as a reading of Parmenides was all but permanently narrowed, and additionally that Empedocles could now only be seen as someone who tried – and failed – to resolve the problem generated by the Platonic reading of Parmenides." (pp. 31-32)

4. Della Rocca, Michael. 2020. The Parmenidean Ascent. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Throughout this book, you will see me engage with Parmenides and other historical figures in significant detail. You will also see me engage in deep explorations of contemporary and recent philosophy. This combination of pursuits may lead you to ask whether this is a book on the history of philosophy or in contemporary philosophy. And my playful but serious answer is: “Yes.” In other words, I reject the question, and this is precisely because I see the book as supporting a Parmenidean denial of the distinction between philosophy and the study of its history. In chapter 7, I will argue for this denial explicitly, but the book as a whole is meant to exhibit its truth.

I begin my Parmenidean journey in chapter 1 with what I take to be a strong case for a reading of Parmenides as what I (following others) will call a strict monism. Parmenides is, I contend, a strict monist in the sense that he rejects any kind of distinction or multiplicity whatsoever. On my reading, Parmenides affirms simply the reality of being; he does not affirm the reality of any individual being or beings and does not affirm any distinctions within being. (Proem, pp. XIII-XiV)

5. ———. 2022. " Parmenides' insight and the possibility of logic." European Journal of Philosophy no. 30:565–577.

Abstract: "The purpose of this paper is twofold: to explain and render more accessible the arguments in a recent, important, and already famously difficult book and, on the basis of this appreciation and illumination, to level a criticism of the book that cuts deep and thereby opens up a new and powerful path to a paradoxical Parmenideanism. The book in question is Irad Kimhi's Thinking and Being. Kimhi is to be applauded for taking seriously Parmenidean challenges to negation and to nonbeing and for offering devastating criticisms of a Fregean (and Cartesian) distinction between the force and content of judgments, a distinction that Kimhi rightly shows to trade on unintelligible primitives. Nonetheless, in his response to the Parmenidean challenges, Kimhi is guilty of reliance on a number of similarly unintelligible primitives of his own. This failure on Kimhi's part leads the way to a radical Parmenidean view according to which distinctions, in general, are rejected."

6. DeLong, Jeremy C. 2015. "Rearranging Parmenides: B1: 31-32 and a Case for an Entirely Negative Doxa (Opinion)." Southwest Philosophy Review no. 31:177-186.

Abstract: "This essay explicates the primary interpretative import of B1: 31-32 in Parmenides poem (On Nature)—lines which have radical implications for the overall argument, and which the traditional arrangement forces into an irreconcilable dilemma. I argue that the “negative” reading of lines 31-32 is preferable, even on the traditional arrangement.

This negative reading denies that a third thing is to be taught to the reader by the goddess—a positive account of how the apparent world is to be “acceptably” understood. I then suggest that a rearrangement of the fragments would make more sense overall, while further supporting the “negative” reading as more natural and coherent. In particular, the rearrangement dispels the objection that, “if mortal opinions were not true, why would Parmenides include such a lengthy false account of the apparent world--an account which explicitly denies the conclusions of the earlier section, Truth?”

7. ———. 2018. "Parmenides, Plato, and Mίμησις." In The Many Faces of Mimesis. Selected Essays from the 2017 Symposium on the Hellenic Heritage of Western Greece, edited by Reid, Heather L. and deLong, Jeremy C., 61-74. Sioux City, Iowa: Parnassos Press - Fonte Aretusa.

"Evidence for a Parmenidean influence on Plato’s Republic typically focuses on content from Bks. V-VI, and the development of Plato’s Theory of Forms. This essay aims to suggest that Plato’s censorship of poetic content in Bks. II-III—particularly the rules for portraying divine nature (376e-383c)—also draw heavily upon the Eleatic tradition, particularly Parmenides.(3) Identifying this further Eleatic influence will be enhanced by my own reading of Parmenides.(4) This reading advocates understanding Parmenides in a more Xenophanean-vein—i.e. by taking What-Is to be an explication of the essential qualities of divine nature, and the overall poem as rejecting traditional, mythopoetic accounts of divinity." (p. 61)

(3) Cf. John A Palmer, Plato's Reception of Parmenides (Oxford University Press, 1999); Ian Crystal, "Parmenidean Allusions in Republic V," Ancient Philosophy 16, no. 2 (1996).

(4) Jeremy DeLong, "From Ionian Speculation to Eleatic Deduction: Parmenides' Xenophanean-Based Theism," in Politics and Performance in Western Greece: Essays on the Hellenic Heritage of Sicily and Southern Italy, ed. Heather Reid; Davide Tanasi, The Heritage of Western Greece (Sioux City: Parnassos Press, 2017), 221-236.

8. Di Iulio, Erminia. 2020. "Identity’s Sustainability. Parmenides on Einai and Noein." In The Sustainability of Thought: An Itinerary through th History ofg Philosophy, edited by Giovannetti, Lorenzo, 19-43. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

"This paper deals with the problematic relationship between “being” and “thinking” – εἶναι and νοεῖν – in Parmenides’ Poem.

Roughly, two main interpretative approaches are to be distinguished: one that argues for the “identity of thinking and being”, the other, on the contrary, for their “non-identity”.

Broadly speaking, one of the main reasons for the “identity thesis” is Eleatic monism: some of the most important identity scholars, such as Gregory Vlastos, Charles Kahn, Anthony Long and David Sedley, actually maintain that the identity between “being” and “thinking” is a necessary consequence of the Eleatic system: if it were not the case that thinking coincides with being, they argue, it would follow that thinking is nothing at all. Conversely, many others, including Francesco Fronterotta and Michael Wedin, prefer to attribute to Parmenides a mere correspondence relation between the ontological and the logical-linguistic levels in order to avoid what they consider unpleasant yet necessary consequences of the identity thesis: it seems, they argue, that it is not really possible to ascribe to Parmenides the “identity between being and thinking” without committing Parmenides himself either to some kind of idealism or to a neo-platonic conception of being. Accordingly, it seems more reasonable to conclude that the fundamental concern arising from the Poem is to establish that it is not possible to conceive of a “thinking” that is not a “thought of something that exists”.

In the light of this, my proposal aims to answer those who reject the “identity thesis” in order to escape the idealistic and neo-platonic conclusions, by suggesting an alternative conception of “identity” and, thus, an alternative “identity thesis”.

Therefore, my paper will be structured as follows: in Section 1 those passages of the Poem where Parmenides seems to take a stand on this question will be examined; in Section 2 a specific account of the “identity thesis”, namely that proposed by Anthony Long, will be briefly discussed, since it is one of the most sophisticated opinions on this matter; in Section 3 a brief description of the contemporary “identity theories of truth” will be provided, because they are a useful instrument to highlight the difference between “identity between being and thinking” and “idealism”; finally, in Section 4 I will go back to the Eleatic perspective in order to provide a new account of the “identity thesis”. (pp. 19-20)

9. ———. 2021. "Parmenides on ‘naming’ and ‘meaning’: a disjunctivist reading of the Poem." Philosophy no. 96:205-227.

Abstract: "A well-established tradition has argued that it is not legitimate to attribute to Parmenides a Fregean semantics, i.e. the distinction between ‘naming’ and ‘meaning’. Nonetheless, Parmenides claims more than once (B 8.53, B 9.1) that mortals do name reality, although incorrectly. As many scholars have emphasised, because it is fair neither to conclude that mortals’ names are ‘empty names’ nor dismiss Opinion's account (i.e., broadly speaking, the mortals’ account of reality) itself as meaningless, it seems that Parmenides is suggesting that some kind of distinction between what names refer to and what names mean must be drawn. In view of this, what is Parmenides’ account of names?

My suggestion is that in order to explain the Eleatic philosophy of language (and the Eleatic account of names) a step back is required. More specifically, Parmenides’ epistemology has to be taken into account. Indeed, if we assume that Parmenides is arguing for an ‘epistemological disjunctivism’ – such that the veridical and truthful state and the erroneous and deceptive state are essentially different – it will be clear that he is further arguing for what could be defined as a ‘semantic disjunctivism’, so that true speech and false speech are essentially different as well."

10. Diaz, María Elena. 2011. "Thought as perception: Aristotle's criticism of Parmenides in Metaphysics IV, 5." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 319-330. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "This article analyzes the reasons for the inclusion of Parmenides inthe list of physicists who strayed away from the conception of phenomena contemplated in Aristotle’s support of the principle of non-contradiction in Metaphysics IV, 5, and the partial appropriation of the perceptual model of thinking present in Parmenidean developments. In this passage of Metaphysics, Aristotle mentions the verses that form part of fragment B16, where thought is explained in terms of a perception understood as a physical alteration. Aristotelian opposition to such conception of perception and thought is radical. In B3, however, there also appears a thinking scheme which involves capturing processes similar to perception, only that in this case, Aristotle appears to act both as critic and as heir of the Eleatic philosopher in his explanation of the capturing process of the simple objects of thought."

11. Dilcher, Roman. 2006. "Parmenides on the Place of Mind." In Common to Body and Soul: Philosophical Approaches to Explaining Living Behaviour in Greco-Roman Antiquity, edited by King, R. A. H., 31-48. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Parmenides seems to have no place in the history of the philosophical problems that are indicated by the phrase "common to body and soul".

While in Heraclitus we do find for the very first time a concept of soul as something distinct from the body that is responsible for thought, action and feeling, there is a basic dichotomy in Parmenides' thought that also has a bearing on the question of a possible relation of "body" and "soul": on the one hand the account of Being which involves the exercise of mind; on the other hand a theory of the physical world on the basis of the two elements Light and Night. The coherence of these two parts of Parmenides' poem has been much debated in terms of the possible relation of Being to Doxa. Fr.16, however, provides an account of mind in relation to the two elements of the doxastic world, and so it might contribute in a different way to a better understanding of how the two parts cohere." (p. 31)

12. Dolin Jr., Edwin F. 1962. "Parmenides and Hesiod." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology:93-98.

"It should be said at once, of course, that the power and brilliance are Parmenides' own and not borrowed from anyone. To assume, as this paper does, that the tradition from which Parmenides drew was the main poetic tradition of Homer and Hesiod is not to imply that hexameter poetry by itself somehow accounts for Parmenides. Rather, the assumption is that the tradition was there, pervasively and ineluctably, in the cultural atmosphere, that Parmenides used its motifs and imagery as freely and naturally as he breathed, counting them as allies in his poetic communication with Hellas, and that he criticized this cultural donnée whenever he saw fit, which was not seldom, by the very manner in which he made use of what he liked of it." (p. 93)

(...)

"This article seeks to extend the comparison with the Theogony by suggesting a specific parallel between Parmenides' daughters of the sun and the Theogony's Muses and by commenting on the parallel between Parmenides' gates of night and day and those of the Theogony.(3)

Its hypothesis is that Parmenides was deliberately attacking the archaic thought processes represented by Hesiod and wished to present himself as the exponent of a new intellectual approach which would be associated in its spirit with the Homeric ideal of the heroic individual." (p. 94)

(3) Theogony 736-57; Parmenides B. 1.11.

13. Domanski, Andrew. 2006. "The Journey of the Soul in Parmenides and the Katha Upanishad." Phronimon no. 7:47-59.

Abstract: "In the terse and compressed language of poetry, the Presocratic philosopher Parmenides of Elea expressed, for the first time in the West, the deepest ideas of nondualistic metaphysics. These ideas bear a close resemblance to, but are not necessarily derived from, the Vedantic philosophy which informs the Upanishads and other metaphysical texts of ancient India. The prooemium to the poem of Parmenides contains a graphic metaphor in which the soul’s progress towards ultimate truth is represented by the journey of a chariot. In developing his metaphor, Parmenides shows how it is Justice which determines the progress of the soul. His vision of Justice is both individual and universal.

This atricle examines Parmenides’s parable of the chariot in comparison with a remarkably similar image which occurs in the Katha Upanishad."

14. Drozdek, Adam. 2001. "Eleatic being: finite or infinite?" Hermes.Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie no. 129:306-313.

Abstract: "The extant fragments indicate that there is a fundamental agreement between the two Eleatic philosophers, Melissus and Parmenides concerning characteristics of Being. Like Parmenides Melissus asserts that Being is eternal (30B1, B2, B4), immovable (B7.7-10, B10). complete (82), and unique (B5, B6). The physical world is unreal because it is characterized by "change, multiplicity, temporal succession and imperfection" (B8). Being cannot be known through sensory perception because senses indicate that things are constantly changing, which directly contradicts the immutability of Being (B7). However, as commonly assumed, there is at least one fundamental difference between them. Melissus considers Being infinite, whereas for Parmenides Being is finite because it is held in limits (28B8.26,31,42) and is compared to a sphere (B8.42-43). Does the limited/unlimited difference signify the modification introduced by Melissus to the Eleatic philosophy?"

15. ———. 2001. "Parmenides' Theology." Eranos.Acta Philologica Suecana no. 99:4-15.

Reprinted as Chapter 4 in: A. Drozdek, Greek Philosophers as Theologians. The Divine Arche, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. pp. 43-52.

Abstract: "Parmenides' system has always been an inexhaustible source of fascination because of the grandeur and, at the same time, paradoxical character of the ontological vision.

Even after centuries of interpretations, there is little agreement on the meaning of the system and its particular components. However, there seems to be a common slant in these interpretations, at least in the last hundred years, starting with the groundbreaking publication of Hermann Diels on Parmenides' poem,(1) which deemphasizes the religious and theological components of Parmenidean ontology and epistemology. These theological components are very often glossed over – sometimes they are barely mentioned, sometimes discounted as a mere metaphor (beginning with Diels), sometimes treated as mere embellishments.(2) One reason is that Parmenides nowhere calls Being, which he discusses in particular in fr. B8, God, and the Olympian personae he mentions are discounted as a bow toward traditional mythology with very little religious significance. It seems, however, that such an approach is unjustified, that the main concern of Parmenides in his poem is with theological issues, and that the poem is an attempt to show the way of truth, which is the way of acquiring true religious knowledge about God."

(1) Hermann Diels, Parmenides Lehrgedicht (Berlin: Reimer, 1897).

(2) It is said, for instance, that “the fact that the goddess remains anonymous shows that she represents no religious figure at all … Parmenides could not have attributed any reality to the goddess because for him there exists only one thing, the unique and homogenous Being,” Leonardo Tarán, Parmenides (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 31.

16. Duman, Musa. 2012. "Reflections on Parmenides’ Monism." Kaygı: Uludağ Üniversitesi Fen Edebiyat Fakültesi Felsefe Dergisi no. 19:105-121.

Abstract: "In this article, I attempt at exploring Parmenides’ understanding of Being, that is, the notion of esti, and the basic function of esti in his overall monistic vision. I also discuss, in this context, the identity of einai and noein, the internal connections between esti and aletheia as well as what he means by the concept of logos. I argue in detail that Parmenides’ monism has a very peculiar character in that he does not speak about one big single entity, but about the uniqueness of Being itself as the ground of all things in the cosmos. In that sense, one can qualify it as non-material monism and, at the same time, as non-ontical monism. But it also contains an identity philosophy, that is, the view that Being can only be spoken of in terms of identity statements. I try to develop the thesis that it is possible to interpret Parmenides’ reflections on esti with respect to the difference between Being itself and a being, (the ontological difference) which, arguably, corresponds to the way Parmenides contrasts esti vis-à-vis plurality and change, while identifying the former with pure being (to eon) and the latter with non-being (to me eon)."

17. Dunham, Jeremy, Gran, Iain Hamilton, and Watson, Sean. 2011. Idealism: The History of a Philosophy. New York: Routledge.

Chapter 1. Parmenides and the birth of ancient idealism, pp. 10-18.

"Thus Parmenides’ axioms outline a problem for any systematic, monistic philosophy. If all is one, as the Way of Truth claims, then all that is must be accounted for in its terms. Parmenides does this by negation: the one is uncreated, indestructible, does not come into being, has no parts, and so on.

The problem is, if being and thinking are the same, and yet what- is- not cannot be thought, how is negation thinkable? If the goddess’s test is solely logical, then there must be a divide between the logical (what can be thought) and the ontological (what is), marring the consistency of the system. If, as Kahn has it, the logical laws of thought constitute the very structure of reality, then “what is not” must be. One solution to this is to argue that the difference lies in the content of thought: the thought of what is, that is, has an object, whereas the thought of what is not has none whatsoever. Would it then remain true, however, that “thinking and being are the same”, or would a better translation run “for it is the same thing that can be thought and can be” (Cornford [Plato and Parmenides. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul] 1939: 31; Burnet [Early Greek Philosophy, 4th edn. London: Adam & Charles Black] 1930: 173), since this would allow that “what is not” cannot be thought, without sacrificing consistency?

The problem of negation continues to play a major role in the development of idealism, most especially in Hegel’s dialectic (see ch. 8). Plato’s attempted accommodation of not-being, against Parmenidean strictures, is crucial in the subsequent development of idealism, and we turn to it in Chapter 2. Yet Parmenides’ renown is equally due to his advocacy of this direct contact between thought and reality. There are accordingly many realist accounts of the same identity in subsequent idealists. Bosanquet, for example, argues that “It is all but impossible to distinguish nature from mind; to separate them is impossible” (1912 [The Principle of Individuality and Value: The Gifford Lectures for 1911. London: Macmillan] 367); Whitehead, that “No entity can be conceived in complete abstraction from the system of the universe” (PR [Process and Reality. London: Macmillan. 1929] 3). As a simultaneous testament to the range of Parmenides’ identity thesis, and warning against an oversimplified account of idealism as inherently anti-naturalistic, both retain their idealism within a naturalistic framework." (pp. 17-18)

18. English, Robert B. 1912. "Parmenides' indebtedness to the Pythagoreans." Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association no. 43:81-94.

"A close examination of all the "opinions" shows that they, even more than his statements of "truth," relate to the doctrines ascribed to the Pythagoreans. There is scarcely a tenet set forth in the " opinions" which may not be referred directly or indirectly to them as they are represented in Aristotle. Not more than ten different propositions exist in this part of his work. Of these, two deal with first principles, three deal with astronomical truths, three have an astrophysical significance, one deals with procreation, and one with the nature of thought. The six dealing with astronomical or astrophysical theories undoubtedly have reference to the Pythagoreans. Of the two referring to first principles one seems to have resemblance to Anaximander, and the other to the dual principle of the Pythagoreans. To the theory of right and left in pro- creation corresponds indirectly the Pythagorean idea of right and left as two first principles. To the postulate that "that which thinks is the nature of mingled parts in man and the excess is thought" there is no parallel in the Pythagorean doctrine. But Parmenides' own postulate on this point that "thinking will not be found without being, in which it is expressed" corresponds in substance to the belief of the Pythagoreans that soul and mind are properties of number (being), though Parmenides makes no mention of this Pythagorean symbol." (pp. 92-93)

(...)

"It seems evident, then, from this study (1) that the " opinions" of Parmenides refer in large part to the doctrines of the early Pythagoreans; (2) that his treatise on "truth" is largely concerned with a refutation of their arguments; (3) that not only his astronomical views but also his cosmological and ontological views generally were affected by the Pythagorean system; (4) that no violence to fact is done in setting the elementary metaphysical number theory of the Pythagoreans as early in time as the ascendency of Parmenides." (p. 94)

19. Evans, Matthew. 2021. "The Work of Justice in Parmenides B 8 " Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 60:1-44.

Abstract: "Near the end of an early argument in Parmenides B8, the figure of ‘Justice’ is said to hold ‘what-is’ within shackles, so as to prevent it from being either generated or destroyed. Interpreters standardly assume that this claim is to be understood, not as a premise of that argument, but as a picturesque expression of the logical or rational necessity that binds the truth (or the acceptance) of its premises to the truth (or the acceptance) of its conclusion. The aim of this paper will be to cast doubt on this interpretation, and to develop an alternative to it. If this is right, then the work of Justice, both in B8 and in the poem as a whole, is far more robust than we have often been led to believe. The implications of this discovery for our understanding of Parmenides in particular, and of European thought in general, are both momentous and unsettling."

20. Ferella, Chiara. 2018. "‘A Path for Understanding’: Journey Metaphors in (Three) Early Greek Philosophers." In Paths of Knowledge. Interconnection(s) between Knowledge and Journey in the Greco-Roman World, edited by Ferella, Chiara and Breytenbach, Cilliers, 47-73. Berlin: Topoi.

Summary: "This paper analyzes the use of journey metaphors by three early Greek philosophers, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Empedocles. My investigation emphasizes the powerful, malleable and polyvalent nature of this metaphor cluster both with reference to diverse authors and in the same text. It highlights, moreover, the relationship between metaphor, imagination and philosophical argumentation, above all when a fresh metaphorical stratum is introduced within an already established metaphor. Finally, it investigates to what extent the introduction of a fresh metaphorical stratum contributes to creative thinking and, by structuring and organizing new insights, to theoretical argumentation."

21. ———. 2019. "Ζεὺς μοῦνος and Parmenides’ What-is." In The Derveni Papyrus: Unearthing Ancient Mysteries, edited by Santamaría Álvarez, Marco Antonio, 65-75. Leiden: Brill.

"In this paper I attempt to analyse one particular echo, in Parmenides' poem, of the ancient Orphic poem quoted in the Derveni Papyrus: one of the attributes of Parmenides' what-is, i .e. μονογενής (fr. 8-4 DK}, might hint at a line of this poem quoted in column XVI of the Derveni Papyrus: αὐτὸς δ᾽ ἄρα μοῦνος ἔγεντο (OF [Albertus Bernabé (ed.), Orphicorum Et Orphicis Similium Testimonia Et Fragmenta]12.4).(3) This line concludes a passage that recounts the result of an extraordinary swallowing by Zeus, at the climax of his power over the cosmos and his predecessors. My aim here is to enquire into this particular echo with reference to its implications for Parrnenides' philosophy. I will argue that this parallel is not a mere rhetorical device connected to the epic form, like, say, a literary topos, but has a function on a philosophical level. Consequently, I will first analyse whether an intentional echo of this Orphic myth may make sense in Parmenides' philosophical system and, if this is the case, I shall deduce from this evidence both Parmenides' intention behind his reference to this myth, which is philosophically meaningful in the Orphic theogonic plot, and the implications it has for Parrnenides' account of what-is." (p. 65)

(3) This echo has been already highlighted by scholars of Orphism, such as Burkert 1999: 79-80, 2005, 2008, Bernabé 2002b, and 2004b: 130-1. It seems, however, completely overlooked by scholars of Parmenides'

philosophy of whom, as far as I know, only S. Ranzato 2015: 160-1 noticed and registered it.

References

Burkert, W. 1999. Da Omero ai Magi. La tradizione orientale nella cultura greca, Venezia.

Burkert, W. 2005. "La teogonia originale di Orfeo secondo ii Papiro di Derveni," in G. Guidorizzi - M. Melotti (eds.), Orfeo e le sue metamorfosi. Mito, arte, poesia, Roma, 46-64 (=Burkert 2006, 95-111).

Burkert, W. 2006. Kleine Schriften III: Mystica, Orphica, Pythagorica, ed. by F. Graf, Gottingen.

Burkert, W. 2008. "El dios solitario. Orfeo, fr. 12 Bernabé, en contexto," in A. Bernabé - F. Casadesus (eds.), Orfeo y la tradicion órfica: un reencuentro, Madrid, 579-89.

Ranzato, S. 2015. Il kouros e la verità. Polivalenza delle immagini nel poema di Parmenide, Pisa.

22. Ferreira, Fernando. 1999. "On the Parmenidean Misconception." History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis no. 2:37-49.

"Plato wrestled with the problem of falsehood on several occasions. His mature position on this issue appears in the Sophist. In this paper, I do not propose to analyse Plato’s work on the problem of falsity. However, I do find that Plato’s Sophist is an important tool, even a reasonably accurate guide, for understanding Parmenides and the sources of his misconception. I make two main claims in this paper. Firstly, I claim that Parmenides had an erroneous conception of the meaning of sentences, a conception that in Parmenides’ hands took the strong form not only of being unable to make sense of falsehoods but also of being unable to make sense of true negative predications. I call such a conception a referential theory of the meaning of sentences (henceforth, an RTMS). Secondly, I claim that Plato’s double-theory of “limited mixing” plus “negation as otherness” – as expounded in the Sophist (251a–259d) – is still a form of an RTMS, even though of a weaker kind than that of Parmenides.

This paper is organized as follows. In the next section, I focus on the weaker gradation of an RTMS and I argue that this gradation, while still unable to make sense of falsehoods, nevertheless enlarges greatly the scope of significant sentences (albeit at an ontological price) and is able to make sense of true negative predications. The relation between a weak RTMS and Plato’s above mentioned double-theory is suggested in the text via what I call Plato’s maneuver. However, this relation is not fully discussed in this article since I believe that a proper treatment of such an issue requires a discussion that is beyond the scope of the present paper. In my view, this discussion must include an account of the finale of the Sophist (after 259e), in which Plato tries to make sense of falsehoods.

I plan such an undertaking at a latter date. In the third section, I discuss the first part of Parmenides’ poem in light of a strong RTMS. In the course of this discussion, I propose a rather strong correlation between verses 3–4 and verses 40–41 of fragment 8 of the poem. This correlation is, to my knowledge, new in the literature. Finally, in the last section, I briefly consider an objection to the interpretation of the poem of Parmenides proposed in this article." (p. 38)

23. Finkelberg, Aryeh. 1986. "The Cosmology of Parmenides." American Journal of Philology no. 107:303-317.

"Our main source of information about the cosmological component of Parmenides' doctrine of Opinion - apart from the first three and a half abstruse lines of fr. 12 - is Aëtius' account. This, however, is generally regarded as confused, garbled and incompatible with fr. 12.

The reconstruction of Parmenides' cosmology is thus considered a hopeless task, for "it must inevitably be based on many conjectures."'

I, however, cannot accept this conclusion, for, as I argue below, it is possible to provide a reasonably intelligible account of Aëtius' report (except for the corrupt sentence about the goddess) which is also compatible with fr. 12, provided, of course, that we are not bent upon proving our sources incompatible, but rather seek to reconcile them." (p. 303)

"Aëtius' report reads as follows:(2)

"Parmenides says that there are rings wound one around the other, one made of the rare, the other of the dense, and between them there are others mixed of light and darkness. What surrounds them all like a wall is solid, beneath which there is a fiery ring, and what is in the middle of all rings is ˂solid>: around which there is again a fiery [sc. ring]. The middlemost of the mixed rings is for them all the ˂origin> and ˂cause> of motion and coming into being which he calls steering goddess, and key-holder, and Justice, and Necessity. Air has been separated off from the earth vaporized because of the latter's stronger compression; the sun is an exhalation of fire and such is the Milky Way. The moon is a mixture of both air and fire. Aether is topmost, surrounding all; beneath it there is that fire-like part which we call sky; beneath it is what surrounds the earth." (p. 304, notes omitted)

(2) Aët. II 1, 7 (DK 28 A 37):

24. ———. 1986. "'Like by Like’ and Two Reflections of Reality in Parmenides." Hermes.Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie no. 114:405-412.

"The main problem confronting the student of Parmenides' doctrine is the nature of the relation between the two pictures of reality posited in his poem: reality as Being and reality as a mixture of the two 'forms', light and night.

To characterize the Parmenidean doctrine as ontological dualism explains nothing - the question is, what is the motivation for this dualism? Moreover, the Parmenidean teaching is epistemological rather than ontological dualism, for what is described in the Way of Seeming is not a different reality from that described in the Way of Truth, but a different knowledge of the same reality - the universe(1) - a knowledge declared inferior. On the assumption that the Parmenidean dualism is epistemological, we must therefore examine how man cognizes reality, with a view to isolating the conditions which determine the cognition of reality as Being or as a mixture of the 'forms'." (p. 405)

(1) That Parmenides conceived of Being as the unity of all things is the view of Plato (e.g. Parm. 128 A, 152 E), Aristotle (e.g. Met. 986b 27), and Theophrastus (e.g. ap. Hippol. Ref. I 11).

25. ———. 1988. "Parmenides: Between Material and Logical Monism." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 70:1-14.

"To recapitulate. The problem of the monistic conception of reality, insoluble when approached on physical terms, was solved by Parmenides by inventing the notion of Being. When translated into terms of the doctrine of Being, monism became the logical necessity to conceive Being as the only thing that exists, while pluralism, that is, the assumption of the existence of something beside Being, revealed itself as the fallacy of admitting the existence of such a thing as not-Being. However, it was not the problem of Ionian monism to which Parmenides' thought was committed: the idea of cosmic Fire underlying the notion of Being shows that it was the failure of his own vision of reality as a material unity, a vision which he shared with the Ionians, to be truly monistic, that prompted Parmenides to a thorough examination of the pattern of current monism, resulting in a new idea of unity and a revision of the standing of cosmology in the monistic doctrine. In its genesis, the Parmenidean teaching is then a material monistic doctrine in which the material principle, Fire, is replaced by Being, while the cosmology is reinterpreted as a pluralistic misconception and demonstrated to be untenable on the application of true names as they are established in the ἀλήθεια.

However the underlying material monistic pattern still remains operative: Fire persists as a visualisation of Being, thus providing the rationale for the cosmology and determining its specific profile, while the cosmology remains - not a true but nevertheless to some degree a valid account. The Parmenidean system is thus not self-contained, for the formative conception of Fire, the vision which mediates the transition from Being to the cosmology, thus making the teaching into a coherent whole, remains outside the formally posited doctrine." (pp. 12-13)

26. ———. 1988. "Parmenides' Foundation of the Way of Truth." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 6:39-67.

"The problem of the subject of estin and ouk estin in B 2.3 and 5 is one of the most controversial issues in Parmenides scholarship. The usual approach is that estin and ouk estin have a subject, which, however, remains unexpressed. Now by unexpressed subject one may mean that (a) a given utterance has a logical subject which is not expressed grammatically but is supplied by the immediate context, or (b) a given utterance has a logical subject which is neither expressed by means of a grammatical subject nor supplied by the immediate context. The case (a) is an instance of an ordinary linguistic phenomenon called ellipsis; the case (b) is either grammatically nonsensical or an example of unintelligible speech." (p. 39)

(...)

"Below I argue that einai is the only subject that meets this requirement. Proceeding from this assumption, I argue that einai should be distinguished from eon and that the 'ways' of B 2 are not so much ontological statements as logical-linguistic patterns whose truth and falsehood are self-evident.

These patterns serve in Parmenides as the basis of the subsequent deduction of true existential assertions about Being and not-Being, and I try to show that, if taken in this perspective, all the extant fragments preceding B 8, from B 2 to B 7, constitute a single argument whose detailed reconstruction I propose in the second section of the article. Finally, in the third section, I examine, proceeding from the conclusions arrived at, the question of truth and falsehood in Parmenides in a more general context, which helps to shed light on the respective logical standing of the two parts of Parmenides' poem, the Aletheia and the Doxa." (p. 42)

27. ———. 1997. "Xenophanes' Physics, Parmenides Doxa and Empedocles Theory of Cosmogonical Mixture." Hermes.Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie no. 125:1-16.

Abstract: "Although the resemblances between Empedocles' and Parmenides' physical theories are commonly recognized, in speaking of the former's philosophical debt to the latter commentators usually focus on theἀλήθεια, paying much less attention, if any, to the δόξα (1). To me, this approach suggests that the role of the δόξαin fashioning Empedocles' physical doctrine is not sufficiently appreciated and calls for further discussion; consequently I propose a brief survey of Parmenides' δόξα with a view to elucidating systematic correlations between his and Empedocles' physical theories. Further, I intend to argue that Empedocles' physical doctrine is the final stage of a development which can be traced through Parmenides' δόξα back to Xenophanes' 'physics'. I believe that the novelty of

Xenophanes' 'physics' has not been duly appraised and its role as a forerunner of Parmenides' δόξα largely overlooked."

(1) Thus, for example, in speaking of Parmenides' influence in the 'Conclusion' to his investigation of Empedocles' thought, D. O'Brien, Empedocles' Cosmic Cycle, Cambridge 1969, 237-249, does not even mention the δόξα; similarly, B. Inwoord, The Poem of Empedocles, Toronto 1992, 22-28, addresses only theἀλήθεια.

28. ———. 1999. "Being, Truth and Opinion in Parmenides." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 81:233-248.

"The traditional premise of Parmenidean scholarship is that the theory of Being renders the phenomenal world merely apparent and the account of this world in the Doxa fallacious. Accordingly, commentators find themselves reckoning with the tantalizing question of the rationale of Parmenides' supplementing a true theory with a false one. In what follows, I propose to consider the thesis that Parmenides' Being is consistent with material heterogeneity and that, accordingly, the two parts of the poem combine to yield an exhaustive account of reality." (p. 233)

(...)

"This construal of Parmenides' thought enables an understanding of his poem as a unified philosophical project in which the Doxa has its rightful place, and extricates us from the hopeless dilemma that either Parmenides' acceptance of his own conclusions was qualified for the upheld their truth unqualifiedly and was mad.(37)" (p. 248)

(37) As stated by M. Furth, "Elements of Eleatic Ontology," in A. P. D. Mourelatos (ed.), The Pre-Socratics, Princeton, 1993, 268; cf. C. H. Kahn, "The Thesis of Parmenides," Review of Metaphysics 22, 1969, 715.

29. Floyd, Edwin. 1992. "Why Parmenides Wrote in Verse." Ancient Philosophy no. 12:251-265.

"Parmenides chose verse (instead of prose) for its many resonances highlighting deception. Prophron at 1.22, for example, has an apparently straightforward meaning "kindly", but in Homer it is used in contexts of divine disguise. Later on in Parmenides' poem, the focus on the immobility of Being (8.37-38) recalls Athena's fateful deception of Hektor in Iliad, book 22. Even more clearly, Doxa shows the pattern too, since the transition from Aletheia at 8.52 parallels a context (Solon, fr l.2, ed. West) in which feigned madness brings about the Athenians's regaining Salamis."

30. Folit-Weinberg, Benjamin. 2022. Homer, Parmenides, and the Road to Demonstration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Parmenides the Late Archaic Poet, pp. 65-116.

"Parmenides’ many other astonishing achievements do not, however, eclipse the fact that his confection of these three features – (i) proceeding from a starting point that has to be accepted (ii) by strict deductive arguments (iii) to establish an inescapable conclusion – marks a fundamental inflection point in the history of Western thought. The clarity with which we may state this is matched only by the intractable obscurity surrounding the development and fusion of these three features in Parmenides’ poem.

This remains so despite agreement about Parmenides’ importance, and despite the quantity (and quality) of recent scholarship devoted to understanding Parmenides in relation to his Presocratic predecessors and successors. Exploring the origins of this complex of features (i–iii) and providing an account of their emergence, both as individual items and as a complex formed from them (viz. a ‘demonstration’), forms the central task of this book." (pp. 2-3, a note omitted)

(...)

"First: archaic Greek roads were not at all like our own. The physical nature and social function of archaic Greek roads (to be discussed in Chapter 1.1) have been neglected by analysts of Parmenides, but have a crucial bearing on our understanding of Fragment 8." (p. 12)

(...)

"Second: the semantics of the word hodos and its neighbours in the Homeric semantic field impose a distinctive shape upon the overarching contours of Parmenides’ hodos dizēsios. The semantic analysis conducted in Chapter 1.2 will suggest a conceptual footprint whose outlines are defined by the fact that in the Homeric semantic field, a hodos is always a hodos to somewhere, a journey oriented towards, and undertaken with reference to, a fixed, stable final destination, to an end.(54) The thematic use of the word hodos thus inscribes the endeavour denoted by the phrase hodos dizēsios within a distinctively teleological framework." (p. 12, a note omitted)

(54) This is part of a larger study of the semantics of road words in Homer; see Folit-Weinberg (forthcoming, 2022). ["The Language of Roads and Travel in Homer: hodos and keleuthos." Classical Quarterly, 72(1):1-24]

31. ———. 2023. "Parmenides’ hodos dizēsios, Models, and the Emergence of to eon." Gaia. Revue interdisciplinaire sur la Grèce archaïque no. 26:1-15.

Abstract: "Parmenides is widely credited with inventing the concept of to eon, “being” or “what-is”; in this article, I argue that Parmenides’ use of the image and model of the hodos—of the “road”, “route”, or “journey”—played an important role in this invention. I begin by exploring the genealogical model that forms the intellectual backdrop to Parmenides’ poem. Next, I introduce the discussion of models developed by the historians and philosophers of science Mary Hesse and Mary Morgan; this section identifies three roles that models can play in the development of new concepts.

Finally, I explore which of these options best describes the relationship between Parmenides’ use of the model of the hodos and the emergence of the concept of to eon in his poem."

32. Frank, Luanne T. 2012. "Nietzsche is Said in Many Ways: Nietzsche's Presences in Heidegger's Parmenides." In Heidegger & Nietzsche, edited by Babich, Babette, Denker, Alfred and Zaborowski, Holger, 247-262. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"My intent in what follows is to show that Heidegger's Parmenides is suffused with Nietzsche, making it essential, if this work is to be apprehended as a whole, that Nietzsche be accorded a recognition there that he typically fails to receive. I also wish to show how and to what ends he appears there. But first: since much of what is to be said here will depend for its point on an awareness of given aspects of the work, it will be necessary to review certain of them preliminarily.

The Parmenides is a lecture course of Winter Semester l942-43 that saw print only in 1982. Page for page, it is thematically one of Heidegger's richest,(2) and one of his most intricately constructed. It also marks crucial philosophical and political developments in his thought. Nietzsche figures prominently in these developments and among Heidegger's primary themes, as we shall see." (p. 247, a note omitted)

(2) Agnes Heller, "Parmenides and the Battle of Stalingrad", Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 19, no. 2 (1996), and 20, no. 1 (1997), 247, lists for the work thirty-one themes, acknowledging the list to be incomplete. One would want to add to her list at least an additional twenty.

33. Fränkel, Hermann Ferdinand. 1962. Early Greek Poetry and Philosophy. A history of Greek epic, lyric, and prose to the middle of the fifth century. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovic.

Translated from the German Dichtung und Philosophie des frühen Griechentums (second revised edition 1962) by Moses Hadas and James Willis.

Chapter VII Philosophy and Empirical Science at the end of the Archaic Period: (c) Parmenides, pp. 349-370.

"The core of Parmenides' philosophy is metaphysical in its nature.

To come face to face with that reality beyond the senses which had disclosed to him, the poet had to mount in spirit beyond this world in which we live. Whenever he reflected upon his lofty ideas, he felt himself' carried away into a realm of light beyond all earthly things. In the introduction to his poem he describes this experience, and since ordinary words are incapable of conveying anything so far beyond the ordinary, he conveys it in images and symbols.(2) (pp. 350-351)

(...)

"We have now in all essential points come to the end of our information about the philosophy of Parmenides. It unites grandeur of intuition with strictness of logic. He had gazed upon Being in all its plenitude and glory, but also in all its austerity and exclusiveness.

Just as Xenophanes had chosen to believe in god as god and as nothing else, so Parmenides worked out his notion of Being as pure Being and nothing else; and he used his razor-edged dialectic to defend it against all common-sense doubts as the unique and perfect actuality, The metaphysical spirit here rules supreme.

This metaphysical spirit (cf. 1, 1 θυμός) is most completely expressed in the opening, in which the philosopher describes his own ascent into pure and inerrant reason in dramatic and vigorous images. There is a sequence of three scenes: the furious journey from night into day; the passing of a gate that opens to one man only; the gracious reception on the other side. The autobiographical 'I' at first appears quite openly; then it is latent and implied in the horses, chariot, maidens, etc.; then directly again in the address (1, 22ff.), where it is ennobled by the goddess' hand-clasp, to be replaced by 'you' on the lips of the divine speaker. This 'you' has a personal character as long as it is denoting (as in 24-32) the recipient of an exclusive favour, one who has raised himself above the fluctuations of humanity. But when the 'you' recurs later, as it sometimes does, it denotes only the audience of the lecture-in one instance Parmenides particularly (8, 61), elsewhere anyone who through his intermediacy will hear or read the poem." (p. 365)

(2) Probably this was why Parmenides chose verse: fr. 1 could not have been expressed in the Greek prose of his time.

34. ———. 1975. "Studies in Parmenides." In Studies in Presocratic Philosophy. Vol. II: The Eleatics and Pluralists, edited by Furley, David J. and Allen, R. E., 1-47. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Partial English translation of Parmenidesstudien (Nachrichten der Göttinger Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften 1930, 153-192).

"My intention in the following studies is to correct and extend certain essential aspects of our present knowledge of the system of Parmenides by criticism and interpretation of original fragments and testimonia. In so doing, I shall take particular care to keep dose to the wording of the original text, as is done as a matter of course in the interpretation of 'pure' literature, but is easily neglected in the case of a strictly philosophical text, where the content appears to speak for itself, quite independently of the words which happen to be used. And yet much will be radically misunderstood, and many of the best, liveliest and most characteristic features of the doctrine will be missed, if one fails to read the work as an epic poem which belongs to its own period, and to approach it as a historical document, through its language.

These studies are presented in such a way that only Diels-Kranz is required as a companion." ( p. 1)

"As Parmenides himself says (B 3), his thought runs in a circle; it proves itself by itself, just as Being rests in itself: For equal to itself symmetrically on all sides, symmetrically it meets its πείρατα (104) to translate more exactly the vivdly empirical έγκύρειe: 'it happens everywhere upon its final forms.' Being has reached its formation symmetrically in every direction.

So has the theory of Reality; and with these words it is concluded." (p. 36)

35. Fratticci, Walter. 2020. "« Apeonta », « pareonta » : on fragment B4 DK " Anais de Filosofia Clássica de Rio de Janeiro no. 14:246-270.

Abstract: "The hermeneutical horizon of my work is provided by the extent of the discussion of the relationship between the doctrine of the truth and the doctrine of opinion as are dealt with in Parmenidean thought and work. Rejecting the vision of any separation or opposition between the two parts in which the Parmenidean poem has traditionally been divided, I argue in favour of its theoretical unity. In this way, the ontology lays the foundations for an innovative explanation of natural phenomena. After having highlighted how this unity is required by the general structure of Parmenides' thought, I show how the B4 DK fragment represents the place where Parmenides constructs the passage from ontology to the explanation of natural phenomena."

36. Frère, Jean. 2011. "Mortals (βροτοί) According to Parmenides." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 135-146. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "It is a common opinion that when Parmenides refers to “mortals,” he is referring to all human beings. But in fact, when he talks of “mortals,” he implies only a limited fraction of humanity: those thinkers who have elaborated clever but nevertheless insufficient or misleading theories about the origin of things and the cosmos. This can be observed in fragment 6, where the formula “mortals who know nothing,” far from implying all humanity, refers only to Heraclitus and his disciples. In the same way, in fragment 8.53–61, “mortals” who acknowledge two separate types of light and night to apprehend the structure of the cosmos are only the Pythagoreans, not all humans."

37. Frings, Manfred. 1988. "Parmenides: Heidegger's 1942-1943 Lecture Held at Freiburg University." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 19:15-33.

"In what follows, I wish to present a number of essentials of Heidegger's lecture, originally entitled, "Heraclitus and Parmenides," which he delivered at Freiburg University in the Winter Semester of 1942/1943. This was at a time when the odds of World War II had turned sharply against the Nazi regime in Germany. Stalingrad held out and the Germans failed to cross the Volga that winter. Talk of an impending "invasion" kept people in suspense. Cities were open to rapidly increasing and intensifying air raids. There wasn't much food left.

It is amazing that any thinker could have been able to concentrate on pre-Socratic thought at that time. In the lecture, there are no remarks made against the allies; nor are there any to be found that would even remotely support the then German cause. But Communism is hit hard once by Heidegger, who says that it represents an awesome organization-mind in our time.

There are two factors that somewhat impeded my endeavor of presenting the contents of this lecture:

1. Heidegger had originally entitled the lecture "Heraclitus and Parmenides." The 1942/43 lecture was followed in 1943 and 1944 by two more lectures on Heraclitus. 2 When I read the manuscripts of the 1942/43 lecture for the first time, I was stunned that Heraclitus was mentioned just five times, and, even then, in more or less loose contexts. I decided that the title of the lecture should be reduced to just "Parmenides" in order to accommodate the initial expectations of the reader and his own thought pursuant to having read and studied it.

2. While reading the lecture-manuscripts for the first time, another troubling technicality came to my attention: long stretches of the lecture hardly even deal with Parmenides himself, and Heidegger seems to get lost in a number of areas that do, prima facie, appear to be irrelevant to Parmenides. And Heidegger was rather strongly criticized for this in the prestigious literary section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to the effect that it was suggested that I could have done even better had I given the lecture an altogether different title and omitted the name Parmenides." (p. 15, notes omitted).

38. ———. 1991. "Heidegger's Lectures on Parmenides and Heraclitus (1942-1944)." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 22:197-199.

"This is a discussion of the coverage of three Lectures Heidegger held on Parmenides and Heraclitus from 1942 to 1944. It is designed on the background of his personal experience during the trip he made to Greece in 1962 as recorded in his diary. The question is raised whether his 1943 arrangement of 10 Heraclitus fragments could be extended by "refitting transformations" of other fragments. The three Lectures are seen as tethered to Heidegger's 1966/67 Heraclitus Seminar. Central to his trip was the island of Delos where he seemingly experienced the free region of Aletheia. A "fragment" in his diary is suggested as a motto for all three Lectures."

39. Fritz, Kurt von. 1945. "Νοῦς, νοεῖν, and Their Derivatives in the Pre-Socratic Philosophy (Excluding Anaxagoras). Part I. From the Beginnings to Parmenides." Classical Philology no. 40:223-242.

Reprinted (with the second part) in: Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays, New York: Anchor Press, 1974; second revised edition, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 23-52 (on Parmenides see pp. 43-52).

"In an earlier article (1) I tried to analyze the meaning or meanings of the words noos and noein in the Homeric poems, in preparation for an analysis of the importance of these terms in early Greek philosophy. The present article will attempt to cope with this second and somewhat more difficult problem, but to the exclusion of the nous of Anaxagoras, since this very complicated concept requires a separate investigation." p. 23 of the reprint.

So far it might seem as if Parmenides' concept of noos is still essentially the same as that of his predecessors, including his contemporary Heraclitus. In fact, however, Parmenides brings in an entirely new and heterogeneous element. It is a rather remarkable fact that Heraclitus uses the particle gar only where he explains the ignorance of the common crowd. There is absolutely no gar or any other particle of the same sense in any of the passages in which he explains his own view of the truth. He or his noos sees or grasps the truth and sets it forth. There is neither need nor room for arguments. Homer and Hesiod, likewise, when using the term noos, never imply that someone comes to a conclusion concerning a situation so that the statement could be followed up with a sentence beginning with "for" or "because." A person realizes the situation. That is all. In contrast to this, Parmenides in the central part of his poem has a gar, an épei, oun, eineka, ouneka in almost every sentence. He argues, deduces, tries to prove the truth of his statements by logical reasoning. What is the relation of this reasoning to the noos?

The answer is given by those passages in which the goddess tells Parmenides which "road of inquiry" he should follow with his noos and from which roads he must keep away his noema.

These roads, as the majority of the fragments clearly show, are roads or lines of discursive thinking, expressing itself in judgments, arguments, and conclusions. Since the noos is to follow one of the three possible roads of inquiry and to stay away from the others, there can be no doubt that discursive thinking is part of the function of the noos. Yet -- and this is just as important -- noein is not identical with a process of logical deduction pure and simple in the sense of formal logic, a process which through a syllogistic mechanism leads from any set of related premises to conclusions which follow with necessity from those premises, but also a process which in itself is completely unconcerned with, and indifferent to, the truth or untruth of the original premises. It is still the primary function of the noos to be in direct touch with ultimate reality. It reaches this ultimate reality not only at the end and as a result of the logical process, but in a way is in touch with it from the very beginning, since, as Parmenides again and again points out, there is no noos without the eon, in which it unfolds itself. In so far as Parmenides' difficult thought can be explained, the logical process seems to have merely the function of clarifying and confirming what, in a way, has been in the noos from the very beginning and of cleansing it of all foreign elements.

So for Parmenides himself, what, for lack of a better word, may be called the intuitional element in the noos is still most important. Yet it was not through his "vision" but through the truly or seemingly compelling force of his logical reasoning that he acquired the dominating position in the philosophy of the following century. At the same time, his work marks the most decisive turning-point in the history of the terms noos, noein, etc.; for he was the first consciously to include logical reasoning in the functions of the noos. The notion of noos underwent many other changes in the further history of Greek philosophy, but none as decisive as this. The intuitional element is still present in Plato's and Aristotle's concepts of noos and later again in that of the Neoplatonists. But the term never returned completely to its pre-Parmenidean meaning." (pp. 51-52 notes omitted)

(1) "Noos and Noein in the Homeric Poems," Classical Philology, 38 (1943), 79-93.

40. ———. 1946. "Νοῦς, νοεῖν, and Their Derivatives in the Pre-Socratic Philosophy (Excluding Anaxagoras). Part II. The Post-Parmenidean period." Classical Philology no. 40:12-34.

Reprinted (with the first part) in: Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays, New York: Anchor Press, 1974; second revised edition, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 52-85.

41. Fronterotta, Francesco. 2007. "Some Remarks on Noein in Parmenides." In Reading Ancient Texts. Volume I: Presocratics and Plato. Essays in Honour of Denis O'Brien, edited by Stern-Gillet, Suzanne and Corrigan, Kevin, 3-19. Leiden: Brill.

"In this paper I will confine myself to O’Brien’s works on Parmenides. I refer in particular to the two volumes of Études sur Parménide, to which he contributed so substantially. In the first volume we find his magisterial version of Parmenides’s fragments, with French and English translations and commentary, and a critical examination of the main interpretative and philosophical questions that they pose. The second volume includes two essays by him. One of these looks at a number of textual problems, and it aims to elucidate the “ideological” background which often conditions the study of texts because of a pre-existing historico-philosophical understanding of their contents.(1) O’Brien shows that many variants of the texts of frr. 1 and 8 DK reveal a Neoplatonic origin — very likely because Neoplatonic commentators felt the need to establish a convergence between the meaning and the spirit of the Parmenidean text and their own doctrinal positions. O’Brien’s essay is a model of its kind, both as a reading of and commentary on the Parmenidean fragments (and on pre-Platonic thinkers in general) and for my more modest objective here, that of reflecting upon the significance of νοείν.

I shall look at translations of the verb νοείν, and, more especially, the species of activity to which this verb, according to Parmenides, refers us." (p. 3)

(1) See P. Aubenque (ed.), vols. 1 (Le poème de Parménide) and 2 (Problèmes d’interprétation).

The essay I am now referring to is in vol. 2: Problèmes d’établissement du texte, pp. 314–50.

42. Furley, David J. 1967. "Parmenides of Elea." In Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edwards, Paul, 47-51. New York: Macmillan.

Reprinted in Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Second Edition, edited by Donald M. Borchert, New York: Thomson-Gale, 2006, pp. 122-127, with an Addendum by Patricia Curd, pp. 127-129.

"David Furley's original entry remains an exemplary introduction to Parmenides' thought. Since its publication, philosophers have focused on the character of the routes of inquiry that the goddess lays out in the poem, suggesting different interpretations of the subjectless is (or esti), and of the nature of to eon, the subject of inquiry. In addition, scholars have continued to study the Proem (the opening lines of the poem) and the Doxa (the goddesses' statement of mortal opinion), but there is no consensus about either." (p. 127)

43. ———. 1973. "Notes on Parmenides." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy:1-15.

Supplementary vol. I: E. N. Lee, A. P. D. Mourelatos, R. M. Rorty (eds.), Exegesis and Argument. Studies in Greek Philosophy presented to Gregory Vlastos, Assen: Van Gorcum.

Reprinted in: D. J. Furley, Cosmic Problems: Essays on Greek and Roman Philosophy of Nature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989 pp. 27-37.

"There is a set of problems, much discussed in the literature, concerning the nature of the journey described in B1 of Parmenides, its destination, the revelation made to him by the goddess, and the connection between the symbolism of B1 and the two forms, Light and Night, which are the principles of the cosmology of the Way of Doxa. Some of these problems, I believe, have now been solved. The solution, which is mainly the work of scholars writing in German, (1) has been either overlooked or rejected by the English-speaking community, (2) and it seems worthwhile drawing attention to it and developing it." (p. 27 of the reprint)

(1) The essential suggestion was made, without much argument, by Morrison [Parmenides and Er] (1955). For detailed arguments, see Mansfeld [Die Offenbarung des Parmenides und die menschliche Welt] (1964) 222-61, and Burkert [Das Proömium des Parmenides und die Katabasis des Pythagoras] (1969).

(2) For example, by Guthrie [A History of Greek Philosophy] (1965) II, Tarán [Parmenides] (1965), myself [Parmenides of Elea] (1967), Kahn [The Thesis of Parmenides] (1969), and Mourelatos [The Route of Parmenides] (1970), 15 and n. 19.

44. ———. 1976. "Anaxagoras in Response to Parmenides." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. Supplementary volume II:61-85.

Reprinted in John P. Anton, Anthony Preus (eds.), Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy, Vol. II, Albany: State University of New York Press 1983, pp. 70-92.

45. ———. 1987. The Greek Cosmologists: Volume I: The Formation of the Atomic Theory and Its Earliest Critics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 4: Two philosophical critics: Heraclitus and Parmenides, pp. 31-48; Chapter 5: Pythagoras, Parmenides, and later cosmology, pp. 49-60.

"If we are to inquire into something, or seek for it (the nature of the cosmos, for example, or its archê - but initially at least Parmenides leaves the object quite open), then we can envisage at once two possibilities concerning the object of our inquiry: that there is and must be such an object, and that there is not and cannot be such an object. But the second of these ways can be dismissed almost as soon as it is articulated. Nothing (a thing that is not) cannot be; hence it cannot be recognized or spoken of; hence it

cannot be an object of inquiry.(11) Parmenides then sets out an argument to show by elimination that only the first way remains: he calls it the Way of Persuasion, but it is usually referred to as the Way of Truth.

What then can be said about the object of inquiry, if we take the Way of Truth? Parmenides discusses the properties that it must have in the long fragment 8. First, what is is ungenerated and indestructible. The only thing that it could be generated from or destroyed into is what is not, and so we could not describe its generation or destruction without using this now forbidden notion. Secondly, it is one and indivisible, because the only thing that could divide it is something other than itself, and that could

only be what is not(12) Thirdly, it is motionless and unchanging, since there is nothing other than itself into which it could move or change. Fourthly, it is complete, or perfect, without defect: or as he expresses it, 'like the mass of a well rounded ball, equally balanced from the center everywhere,' since it contains no element of what is not, which alone might constitute a variation in its texture.(13)" (p. 38)

(11) The argument is complicated by the modal verbs, 'cannot' and 'must.' Jonathan Barnes has set out a clever and plausible analysis of the structure of this argument in his recent book The Presocratic Philosophers, pp. 163—5.

(12) Barnes, ibid., and in his article, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 61 (1979), has raised doubts about whether Parmenides produced any argument to show that what is is all one. I believe it is to be found in fr. 8.22-5, where he aims to show that what is is undivided and continuous. Barnes thinks that this shows only that if a thing exists then it is undivided and continuous. It seems to me to work just as well if we take the expression 'what is' to mean 'all that is'; in that case the conclusion means that there is just one thing in existence.

(13) I have more to say about the fourth of these properties of what is: see below, pp. 54-7.

46. ———. 1989. "Truth as What survives the elenchos. An idea in Parmenides." In The Criterion of Truth. Essays Written in Honour of George Kerferd, together with a Text and Translation (With Annotations) of Ptolemy's on the Kriterion and Hegemonikon, edited by Huby, Pamela and Neal.Stephen, 1-12. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Reprinted in D. J. Furley, Cosmic Problems: Essays on Greek and Roman Philosophy of Nature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1989, pp. 38-46.

"My starting point in this paper is a couple of lines from Parmenides' poem. There is some reason to claim that they are the most remarkable lines in that astonishing document:

κρίνοι δε λόγφ πολύδηριν ελεγχον έξ έμεθεν ρηθεντα, μόνος δ' ετι μύθος οδοιο λειπεται ώς εατιν.

Judge by logos the hard-hitting refutation ( elenchos ) that I have uttered. Only one single account of a way is left: that it is. (DK 2SB7.5-8.2)

The paradox of Parmenides is presented in the strongest outline here.

It is a goddess who speaks these lines, revealing the way of Truth to the initiate. Instead of standing on authority or using the persuasive power of religious ritual, she tells him to take away her message and subject it to criticism: judge by logos. Moreover, the revelation itself takes the form of a criticism: what she first offers Parmenides on his arrival , when he has passed through the gates of which Justice holds the key, is described as an έλεγχος (elenchos). This is the aspect of Parmenides' vision that I want to elaborate on this occasion. I am aiming to do two things: to improve the case for thinking that ελεγχος does indeed mean 'refutation ' here, rather than 'proof'; (1) and to see what this tells us about the underlying conception of truth." (p. 1)

(1) I argued briefly for this thesis in 'Notes on Parmenides' in Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy presented to Gregory Vlastos, ed. E. N. Lee, A. P. D. Mourelatos, and R. M. Rorty, Phronesis suppl. vol . I ( Assen 1973), 1 -15. I was stimulated to more about it by some contrary arguments in a paper by Mr. James Lesher , which he was kind enough to send me in typescript.

A year or so later I was invited to present a paper at a conference on "Truth" at Brown University, and without again looking at Mr. Lesher's paper I wrote the present article. Shortly afterwards I sent it to the Editors of this volume, being very happy to have the opportunity to join in honouring my old and admired friend, George Kerferd.

Some time later, Mr. Lesher published his article ("Parmenides' Critique of Thinking: the poluderis elenchos of Fragment 7", Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 2 (1984), 1-30.

On re-reading it, I see that although we come to different conclusions, we cover much of the same ground. To take proper notice of Mr. Lesher's arguments now would mean rewriting my paper and expanding it quite a lot. But since we worked independently of each other, I think it best to leave the reader to make the comparisons.

47. Furth, Montgomery. 1968. "Elements of Eleatic Ontology." Journal of the History of Philosophy:111-132.

Reprinted in: Alexander Mourelatos (ed.), The Pre-Socratics. A Collection of Critical Essays, Garden City: Anchor Press, 1974; second revised edition: Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 241-270.

"The task of an interpreter of Parmenides is to find the simplest, historically most plausible, and philosophically most comprehensible set of assumptions that imply (in a suitably loose sense) the doctrine of `being' set out in Parmenides' poem.' In what follows I offer an interpretation that certainly is simple and that I think should be found comprehensible. Historically, only more cautious claims are possible, for several portions of the general view from which I 'deduce the poem' are not clearly stated in the poem itself; my explanation of this is that they are operating as tacit assumptions, and indeed that the poem is best thought of as an attempt to force these very assumptions to the surface for formulation and criticism-that the poem is a challenge. To be sure, there are dangers in pretending, as for dramatic purposes I shall, that ideas are definite and explicit which for Parmenides himself must have been tacit or vague-that Parmenides knew what he was doing as clearly as I represent him; I try to avoid them, but the risk must be taken. I even believe that not to take it, in the name of preserving his thought pure from anachronous contamination, actually prevents us from seeing the extent to which he, pioneer, was ahead of his time-the argument works both ways. So let me hedge my historical claim in this way: the view I shall discuss could have been an active- indeed a controlling-element of Eleaticism; to suppose that Parmenides held it not only explains the poem, but also helps explain the subsequent reactions to Eleaticism of Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Plato (though there is not space to elaborate this here). In addition, it brings his thought astonishingly close to some contemporary philosophical preoccupations.

In the first of the following sections, I lay down some sketchy but necessary groundwork concerning the early Greek concept of 'being.' Then in Section 2 an interpretation is given of what I take to be the central Parmenidean doctrine, that 'it cannot be said that anything is not.' This section is the lengthiest and most involved, but it also contains all the moves that appear to be important. Of the remaining sections, Section 3 explains the principle: 'of what is, all that can be said is: it is,' Section 4 deals briefly with the remaining cosmology of "The Way of Truth," and Section 5 considers the question whether Parmenides himself believed the fantastic conclusions of his argument. There is a short postscript on a point of methodology." ( pp. 111-112)

48. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1998. The Beginning of Philosophy. New York: Continuum.

See chapter 9: Parmenides and the Opinions of Mortals pp. 94-106 and chapter 10: Parmenides on Being, pp. 107-125.

"The last line of the second fragment says that it is not possible to formulate that which is not (7) (me eon), for this can neither be investigated nor communicated.

It is possible that the third fragment forms the continuation of this text: to gar auto noein estin to kai einai. (8) In the meantime, Agostino Marsoner has convinced me that fragment 3 is not a Parmenides quotation at all but a formulation stemming from Plato himself, which I believe I have correctly interpreted and which Clement of Alexandria has ascribed to Parmenides. In order to interpret this fragment, we must confirm that estin does not serve here as a copula but instead means existence (9) and, in fact, not just in the sense that something is there but also in the characteristic classical Greek sense that it is possible, that it has the power to be. Here, of course, "that it is possible" includes that it is. Secondly, we must be clear about what is meant by "the same" (to auto). Since this expression stands at the beginning of the text, it is generally understood as the main point and therefore as the subject. On the contrary, in Parmenides "the same" is always a predicate, hence that which is stated of something. Admittedly, it can also stand as the main point of a sentence, but not in the function of the subject, about which something is stated, but in the function of the predicate that is stated of something. This something in the sentence analyzed here is the relationship between "estin noein" and "estin einai," between "[is] perceiving/thinking" and "[is] being." These two are the same, or, better yet: the two are bound together by an indissoluble unity. (Furthermore, it should be added that the article "to" does not refer to "einai" but to "auto." In the sixth century, an article was not yet placed in front of a verb. In Parmenides' didactic poem, where the necessity arises of expressing what we render with the infinitive of a verb together with a preceding article, a different construction is used.

This interpretation, the one I am proposing for the third fragment, was, as I recall, the object of a dispute with Heidegger. He disagreed altogether with my view of the evident meaning of the poem. I can well understand why Heidegger wanted to hold onto the idea that Parmenides' main theme was identity (to auto). In Heidegger's eyes, this would have meant that Parmenides himself would have gone beyond every metaphysical way of seeing and would thereby have anticipated a thesis that is later interpreted metaphysically in Western philosophy and has only come into its own in Heidegger's philosophy. Nevertheless, in his last essays Heidegger himself realized that this was an error and that his thesis that Parmenides had to some extent anticipated his own philosophy could not be maintained." (pp. 110-111)

(7) das Nichtseiende.

(8) 'For the same thing exists [or, is there) for thinking and for being' (Gadamer will argue against this reading; see below); alternatively, "For thinking and being are the same."

(9) Existenz.

49. Galgano, Nicola. 2020. "Non-being in Parmenides, DK B2." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 28:1-34.

Abstract: "In fragment DK 28 B 2 of his poem, Parmenides presents his method for distinguishing true persuasion from the lack of true persuasion. The famous two ways for thought that he suggests are the enunciation of a complex system which aims to assure the assertions’ truthfulness and finally a credible discourse, the only one capable of real persuasion. The present article tries to show the central role attributed to non-being in the Parmenidean argumentation. The entire fragment is interpreted from this central notion, surely attained by a reflection on the impossibility of negating being, shedding light on Parmenides’ discovery of that impossibility, which we currently call “contradiction”. He enunciates that the way to avoid contradiction in thought and discourse is through a rule that we call a principle of non-contradiction. The study featured here makes a detailed inquiry into the notion of non-being in fr. 2, finally offering a new translation. "

50. Galgano, Nicola Stefano. 2016. "Amēkhaníē in Parmenides DK 28 B 6.5." Journal of Ancient Philosophy no. 10:1-12.

Abstract: "The paper examines closer the notion expressed by the word amēkhaníē in DK 6.5. In his analysis of problematic of knowledge Parmenides alerts about amekhaníē of mortals, a word generally translated with 'lack of resources' or 'perplexity', a kind of problem that drives the thinking astray. Scholars point out in many passages of the poem the opposition between imperfect mortals and the eidóta phōta of DK 1.3, the wise man. However, as much as I know, nobody noticed that, if mortals have a lack of resources, the goddess is teaching exactly how to fix it with a kind of method given through her precepts, which are an authentic mēchané. The paper shows that this is the genuine didactic aim of Parmenides, as he says in 1.28-30, i.e., to point out where is the error of mortals and how the wise man fixes it. Starting from a reinterpretation of 1.29 and following with the analysis of fr. 6, the paper shows that the method of fr. 2 is indeed the mēchané that can do that. Although the word is not present in the poem, it is one of its main topics. It seems (by the extant fragments) Parmenides had no clear word to call his mēchané, a psychological cognitive tool we call today principle of non-contradiction."

51. ———. 2017. "Parmenides as Psychologist - Part One: Fragment DK 1 and 2." Archai. Revista de Estudos sobre as Origens do Pensamento Ocidental no. 19:167-205.

"The aim of this essay is to examine an aspect of Parmenides' poem which is often overlooked: the psychological grounds Parmenides uses to construct his view. While it is widely recognized by scholars that following Parmenides' view requires addressing mental activity, i.e. both the possibility of thinking the truth, as well as thinking along the wrong path that mortals follow, a closer examination of the psychological assumptions involved have, to my knowledge, not yet been attempted.

I argue that by identifying and analyzing the psychological vocabulary in his poem, it is revealed that Parmenides was a keen observer of human mental behavior. Through these psychological (perhaps “cognitivist,” following some recent categories) observations of thought processes, Parmenides gains insight into the structure of thought itself. The outcome of this inquiry reveals three notable conclusions: First, the poem contains a remarkably extensive use of strictly psychological vocabulary.

Second, the presence of this psychological material and the lack of scholarly attention to it means there is a significant aspect of Parmenides intellectual legacy that remains unexplored — Parmenides as psychologist, keen observer of human mental behavior. Furthermore, the recognition of this material helps shed important light on Parmenides' philosophical message.

Ultimately, I intend to provide an exhaustive treatment of Parmenides' psychological language, which requires close examination of DK B 1, 2, 6, and 7. Due to spatial constraints, I have divided the inquiry into two parts, and will only address DK 1-2 below." (pp. 167-168)

52. ———. 2017. "Parmenides as Psychologist - Part Two: Fragment DK 6 and 7." Archai. Revista de Estudos sobre as Origens do Pensamento Ocidental no. 20:39-76.

For the abstract, see part One.

53. Gallop, David. 1979. "'Is or 'Is Not'?" The Monist no. 62:61-80.

"In this article I reopen some basic problems in the interpretation of Parmenides' 'Way of Truth' familiar to anyone who has wrestled with his poem. The hub of my discussion is fr. B2, in which the goddess formulates two 'routes of inquiry', an affirmative one — 'is', and a negative one — 'is not'. The former she commends, while the latter she rejects as 'wholly unlearnable', on the ground that 'thou couldst not know what is not, nor couldst thou point it out' (B2.7-8). What is the meaning of 'is' and 'is not' in these two routes? Is it existential, predicative, or veridical? Or should we suppose a fused notion of 'being', in which various uses of the verb είναι are somehow combined? These questions are clearly fundamental for determining the nature of the two routes, upon which everything else in the Way of Truth depends. The answer that I wish to defend is the classical interpretation of 'is' as existential. This reading of it, adopted by Professor G. E. L. Owen in his influential study, 'Eleatic Questions', (2) remains preferable, in my view, to various alternatives that have been canvassed before and since his article appeared. I shall therefore first review and criticize those alternatives. I shall then reconstruct the argument of B2-3 and B6.1-2, putting forward a modified version of Owen's account. Finally, I shall defend this version against its rivals by considering Parmenides' disproof of coming-to-be and perishing in B8.6-21." (p. 61)

(2) Classical Quarterly N.S. 10 (1960), 84-102.

54. Gemelli Marciano, Maria Laura. 2008. "Images and Experience: at the Roots of Parmenides' Aletheia." Ancient Philosophy no. 28:21-48.

"Another argument against the thesis that the proem is to be interpreted as an ecstatic journey lies in its connection with the rest of the poem. Kingsley 2003 has recently solved this problem, too, by linking the ecstatic experience of the proem with the goddess' teaching in the central Aletheia section of the poem so as to produce a single, coherent picture (see Gemelli Marciano 2006b [Review of Kingsley 2003 in Gnomon 78: 657-671]). Parmenides' poem is, for Kingsley, neither a purely literary 'didactic' text nor a purely philosophical one. It is an esoteric poem that describes a mystical experience and above all aims through the power of language to induce this same experience in its listeners.

In what follows I develop this approach further and show that if Parmenides' poem is interpreted in this way his enigmatic language, his curious images, and also his so-called logical arguments take on a new meaning.(14) Parmenides' language is performative (it accomplishes what it says). 'Alienation' and 'binding, are the most powerful means to remove listeners from the ordinary, everyday dimension and way of thinking and put them into a different state of consciousness.

Images, repetitions, sequences of words and sounds, supposedly 'logical' arguments all contribute to this end and have a particular meaning and function that surpass conventional human language and ordinary syntactical and semantic relationships.

Here I will draw attention especially to the proem and to fragments 2 and 8. I refer to Kingsley 2002 and 2003 for treatment of the other fragments and the problems relating to them." (pp. 26-27; note 15 omitted)

(14) I formulated some of the observations contained in this article, concerning the divine epiphanies in the proem and the images in fr. DK 28B8, some years ago independently of Kingsley 1999 and 2003, while preparing my forthcoming edition of the Presocratics (Gemelli Marciano 2008 [Die Vorsokratiker. Band II: Parmenides, Zenon, Empedokles. Düsseldorf: Artemis & Winkler.]). However, in Kingsley's books I have found the answers to questions and textual problems that have enabled me to organize my earlier unsystematic intuitions into a coherent picture.

55. Gershenson, Daniel E., and Greeberg, Daniel A. 1962. "Aristotle confronts the Eleatics: two arguments on 'the One'." Phronesis no. 7:137-151.

"In our review of Aristotle's two arguments against the Eleatics we have pointed out several features which mark off one from the other. The two sections are different primarily in the point of view from which each proceeds, and in the terminology each employs. Further evidence for the independence of the two passages is the following: [Physics] lines 186A34- 186B1 repeat in Eleatic jargon what lines 185A27-32 say in common Aristotelian parlance, namely, that if being is an attribute, then the subject will not be; lines 186B1 2-13 repeat the argument in lines 185A32-185B5, that if being is a magnitude, it will no longer be one, because all magnitudes are continua, and all continua by definition are divisible; lines 185B25-1 86A3 present a historical survey of Eleatic thought similar to that in lines 187A1-10, although the two passages accentuate different aspects of its later development. The evidence taken together makes it clear that we are dealing here with two independent written accounts of two separate Aristotelian attacks against Parmenides and the Eleatics. One need only compare the second argument, where the competence of the Eleatics as philosophers is not denied, and where, indeed, the fact that Aristotle carries on a dialogue with them lends them a certain respectability, with the first argument, where he spares the Eleatics no abuse and evinces contempt for their reputation as physicists and logicians, to see that this is so. Each account displays within itself a coherent organization and a consistent point of view. The two together make up Aristotle's main case against Eleatic philosophy." (pp. 150-151; notes omitted)

56. Giancola, Donna. 2001. "Towards a Radical Reinterpretation of Parmenides' B3." Journal of Philosophical Research no. 26:635-653.

Abstract: "It is generally agreed that Parmenides' fragment B3 posits some type of relation between "thinking" and "Being." I critically examine the modern interpretations of this relation. Beginning with the ancient sources and proceeding into modern times, I try to show that the modern rationalist reading of fragment B3 conflicts with its grammatical syntax and the context of the poem as a whole. In my critique, I suggest that rather than a statement about epistemological relations, it is, as it was originally understood, a religious assertion of metaphysical identity."

57. Girle, Roderic A. 2007. "Parmenides Demythologised." Logique et Analyse no. 199:253-268.

"The impression is often given that the metaphysics of Parmenides is absurd.

This impression is often reinforced with a warning that if philosophers resort to an "extreme" view then they are bound to finish with an absurd view, "like Parmenides". But all this is far too swift. I will argue that there is a way of looking at Parmenides which brings his views very much into line with the views of a substantial number of modern philosophers who are not taken to be putting forward absurd views. They might be somewhat discomforted to be grouped with Parmenides, but if they are, then that in itself should give cause to pause and consider both the issue of Parmenides' alleged absurdity and to what extent they have inherited Parmenides' problems.

So let us first reprise the views of Parmenides. Then we consider some modern doctrines which have consequences of a quite Parmenidean kind.

This will lead us to considering a contrast in the Philosophy of Time of considerable interest to Prior." (p. 253)

58. Glowienka, Emerine. 1988. "Exorcising the Ghost of Parmenides." Southwest Philosophical Studies no. 10:37-47.

"Yet this paper is not an attempt to offer a scholarly .analysis of Parmenides' own metaphysics; rather, it is a chronology and analysis of the subsequent history of some metaphysicians in dealing with this legacy bequeathed to them by Parmenides. This legacy, which I am calling the "ghost of Parmenides," is the confusion of our concept of "absolute being" ("abstract being") with, and/or the disengagement of this concept from, the objects of our experience. You doubtless recognize this confusion as a move from the mental to the extra-mental, which has been also named the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness" according to Whitehead.(3) For to equate being with unity is really only to describe what a concept of being must be in order for it to be intelligible to human understanding; it does not describe being as found outside that concept." (p. 37)

(3) Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (Glencoe: Free Press, 1967) 51.

59. Göbel, Christian. 2002. "Mysticism and Knowledge in Parmenides." The Downside Review no. 120:157-174.

"Nowadays, mysticism and knowledge are often considered opposites. It does not seem possible chat the concepts of experiencing God and rational insight can exist together. But on the other hand, there are many testimonies of ancient authors who

consider reason and divine experience to be related.

(...)

This is the case in the speculative system of Plato, but it is also valid for the man who stands at the beginning of metaphysical thinking: Parmenides of Elea (fl. c.5 00 BC).

Modern consciousness, however, has lost an immediate understanding of traditional symbols. It is therefore important to decipher the meaning of the ancient texts and make the - often very clear - ideas behind the mythic and symbolic speech visible again.

Such an attempt will be made in the following, focusing on Parmenides' poem 'On Nature'. Our interpretation will be restricted to some explanations of the symbolic speech of the Eleatic philosopher in so far as it is relevant to the context of knowledge and

mysticism. It will become clear how and why the ancient thinker could express knowledge as mysticism, and it will be shown that ancient wisdom contains assertions about human knowledge that may still be valid today, especially in a Christian context, once mystical and mythical elements of Greek philosophy are understood - and 'translated' - as symbolic language." (pp. 157-158, a note omitted)

60. Goldin, Owen. 1993. "Parmenides on Possibility and Thought." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 26:19-35.

"Given the evidence and the nature of Parmenides' writing, it seems that Mourelatos (1979,5) is right in his suggestion that it is time for a 'tolerant pluralism' in Parmenidean scholarship. But if a definitive interpretation is beyond our reach, we may yet make progress in understanding what is to be gained or lost in the depth, cogency, and clarity of our interpretation of the whole poem when we interpret a line or an argument in one manner rather than another.

For this reason, I do not here defend a complete interpretation of what remains of Parmenides' poem. In most important respects I pursue the interpretive path taken by G.E.L. Owen ([Eleatic Questions, reprinted in] 1987a) in his highly influential interpretation of the poem. But I take issue with Owen's claim that Parmenides' argument for the existence of any object of reference or thought rests on fallacious modal logic. I also take issue with the view of Tugwell (1964) that Parmenides' argument rests on a naive and philosophically unsatisfactory blurring of the distinction between the potential and existential uses of είναι. I suggest that Parmenides' argument for the being of the object of thought and speech takes a different course. On my view, Parmenides explicitly denies that there are unreal but possible things or states of affairs, on the grounds that possible beings can be understood only as beings and hence as real. Since any object of thought or speech is a possible thing or state of affairs, any object of thought or speech is. On my view, Parmenides thus draws attention to what has come to be a perennial metaphysical problem: what status is to be given to possible beings?" (p. 19)

61. Gomes, Henrique. 2020. "Back to Parmenides." In Beyond Spacetime: The Foundations of Quantum Gravity, edited by Huggett, Nick, Matsubara, ‎Keizo and Wüthrich, ‎Christian, 176-205. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Abstract: "After a brief introduction to issues that plague the realization of a theory of quantum gravity, I suggest that the main one concerns a quantization of the principle of relative simultaneity. This leads me to a distinction between time and space, to a further degree than that present in the canonical approach to general relativity. With this distinction, one can make sense of superpositions as interference between alternative paths in the relational confguration space of the entire Universe.

But the full use of relationalism brings us to a timeless picture of Nature, as it does in the canonical approach (which culminates in the Wheeler-DeWitt equation). After a discussion of Parmenides and the Eleatics' rejection of time, I show that there is middle ground between their view of absolute timelessness and a view of physics taking place in timeless configuration space. In this middle ground, even though change does not fundamentally exist, the illusion of change can be recovered in a way not permitted by Parmenides. It is recovered through a particular density distribution over configuration space which gives rise to `records'. Incidentally, this distribution seems to have the potential to dissolve further aspects of the measurement problem that can still be argued to haunt the application of decoherence to Many-Worlds quantum mechanics. I end with a discussion indicating that the conflict between the conclusions of this paper and our view of the continuity of the self may still intuitively bother us. Nonetheless, those conclusions should be no more challenging to our intuition than Derek Parfit's thought experiments on the subject."

62. Graeser, Andreas. 2000. "Parmenides in Plato’s Parmenides." Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter no. 5:1-14.

Abstract: "This essay examines the role of Parmenides in Plato’s dialogue of the same name.

Over against the widely held view that this literary figure exemplifies the philosopher par excellence of an all-encompassing systematic of Eleatic provenience, it is maintained that Parmenides represents a particular frame of mind about certain philosophical matters, namely one which regards forms in a reified manner. It is suggested that by means of the literary figure of Parmenides, Plato is addressing in his dialogue inner-Academic debates about the theory of forms, especially Speusippus' conception of Unity, which betrays a kind of naive metaphysics of things, as can be seen especially in the first three deductions of the second half of the dialogue."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Parmenides of Elea. Annotated Bibliography of the studies in English: Grah - Ion

Bibliography

1. Graham, Daniel W. 1999. "Empedocles and Anaxagoras: Responses to Parmenides." In The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, edited by Long, Anthony Arthur, 159-180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"There is no question that Parmenides' poem was a watershed in the history of early Greek philosophy. No serious thinker could ignore his work. And yet it seems to pose insuperable problems for cosmology and scientific inquiry. The first generation to follow Parmenides

includes thinkers who wished to continue the tradition of Ionian speculation. But how would they confront Parmenides? What would they make of him and what effect would his arguments have on their work? The first neo-Ionians(1), as they have been called, were Empedocles and Anaxagoras.(2) Despite some salient differences, the two philosophers have much in common in their approach. They are near contemporaries,3 and as we shall see, they make similar moves in their approach to scientific speculation. Let us first examine

the systems of Empedocles and Anaxagoras, and then discuss their responses to Parmenides." (p. 159)

(1) 1 The term is from Barnes [The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd ed. [1st ed. 1979 in 2 vols.] (London, 1982)] ch. 15, who stresses the continuity of their project with that of early Ionian philosophers. The term aptly allows us to class philosophers of Italy and Sicily, such as Philolaus and Empedocles, with later philosophers from Ionia such as Anaxagoras.

(2) These two philosophers seem to have been active about a generation earlier than Philolaus, Archelaus, Diogenes of Apollonia, and Leucippus, and perhaps a couple of generations earlier than Democritus.

2. ———. 2002. "Heraclitus and Parmenides." In Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos, edited by Caston, Victor and Graham, Daniel W., 27-44. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"The two most philosophical Presocratics propound the two most radically different philosophies: Heraclitus the philosopher of flux and Parmenides the philosopher of changelessness. Clearly they occupy opposite extremes of the philosophical spectrum. But what is their historical relation? For systematic reasons, Hegel held that Parmenides preceded Heraclitus. But in a footnote of an article published in 1850, Jacob Bernays noticed that in the passage we now know as DK 28 B 6 Parmenides could be seen as criticizing Heraclitus.(*) Bernays' insight had already been widely recognized as the key to the historical relationship between the two philosophers when Alois Patin strongly advocated the Bernays view in a monograph published in 1899. But in 1916 Karl Reinhardt reasserted the view that Heraclitus was reacting to Parmenides. Others argued that no connection. was provable. The Reinhardt view was never popular, while the Bernays-Patin view gradually came to be widely accepted. Twenty-five years ago Michael C. Stokes (One and many in Presocratic philosophy, 1971) launched a devastating attack on the view that Parmenides was replying to Heraclitus. That attack has never been answered and the Bernays-Patin thesis at present remains undefended.

In this chapter I wish to argue that the Bernays-Patin thesis is true after all. And in the process of defending it, I hope to show that accepting the thesis has some value for understanding Parmenides beyond the external question of his relation to Heraclitus. Minimally, appreciating Heraclitus' influence on Parmenides will help us understand Parmenides' argument better; but beyond that, it may help us put the whole course of early Greek philosophy in perspective. I shall first review the evidence for a connection between the philosophers (section I), then analyze the evidence for a connection (II), consider the role of historical influences in philosophical exegesis (III), and finally try to reconstruct Parmenides' dialectical opponent from his argument (IV)." (p. 27 notes omitted)

(*) In his Kleine Schriften (1885), vol. 1, pp. 62-3, n. 1.

3. ———. 2006. Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientific Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Chapter 6: Parmenides' Criticism of Ionian Philosophy, pp. 148-185.

"What connection, if any, there is between Heraclitus and Parmenides has long been disputed(1). Of the four a priori possibilities: (a) that Parmenides influenced Heraclitus, (b) that Heraclitus influenced Parmenides, (c) that the two did not know or acknowledge each other, and (d) that they are influenced by a common source, only (b) and (c) seem likely. For, contra (a), Heraclitus likes to abuse his predecessors(2), and, contra (d), he tends to radically rework the material he inherits(3). There have been, and continue to be, proponents of both (b) and (c).(4) While it seems attractive in some ways to dodge the question and thus deal only with textual certainties rather than historical contingencies, I believe that textual evidence is adequate to decide the question in favor of (b), and, moreover, to help determine the philosophical relationship between the two most philosophical Presocratics—and the two most ideologically opposed." (p. 148)

(1) The argument in this section is drawn from a longer study (Graham 2002a). The results are disputed by Nehamas 2002.

(2) Heraclitus B40, B42, B57, B81a, B106, B129. “Dieses bleiben die Ecksteine der Geschichte der Vorsokratiker: Heraklit zitiert und bekämpft Pythagoras, Xenophanes und Hekataios, nicht Parmenides; dieser zitiert und bekämpft Heraklit” (Kranz 1916, 1174).

(3) E.g., he is at pains to deny the possibility of cosmogony at B30, the one doctrine common to all his philosophical forebears.

(4) Arguments for (a) start with Hegel 1971, 319ff., followed by Zeller, and revived by Reinhardt 1916; this view has mostly been abandoned, but see Hölscher 1968, 161–65. The argument for (b) was first made by Bernays 1885, 1: 2.62, n. 1, and defended vigorously by Patin 1899; this view was accepted by Baeumker 1890, 54; Windelband 1894, 39, n. 2; Diels 1897, 68ff.; Ueberweg 1920, 1st Part: 95, 97, 99; Kranz 1916, 1934; Burnet 1930, 179-80, 183-84; Calogero 1977, 44-45; Cherniss 1935, 382–83; Vlastos 1955a, 341, n.

11, KR (tentatively) 183, 264, 272, Guthrie 1962-1981, 2.23–24; Tarán 1965; Coxon 1986; Giannantoni 1988, 218-20, and others. Diels 1897, 68, says of Bernays: “[S]eine Ansicht is fast allgemein durchgedrungen,” noting that only Zeller has resisted the interpretation; but in his revised edition of Zeller, 1919–1920, 684, n. 1, and 687, n. 1, Nestle abandons Zeller’s view as obsolete. For (c) are Gigon 1935, 31-34; Verdenius 1942; Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1959, 2.208-9; Mansfeld 1964, ch. 11; Marcovich 1965, col. 249;

Stokes 1971, 111-27.

Bibliography

Baeumker, Clemens. 1890. Das Problem der Materie in der griechischen Philosophie: Eine historisch-kritische Untersuchung. Munster: Aschendorff.

Bernays, Jacob. 1885 [1850]. “Heraclitea.” In Gesammelte Abhandlungen. Edited by H. Usener. Vol. 1, 1-108. Berlin: Wilhelm Herz.

Burnet, John. 1930 [1892]. Early Greek Philosophy. 4th ed. London: Adam & Charles Black.

Calogero, Guido. 1977 [1932]. Studi sull’Eleatismo. New ed. Florence: "La Nuova Italia" Editrice.

Cherniss, Harold. 1935. Aristotle’s Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Coxon, A. H. 1986. The Fragments of Parmenides. Assen: Van Gorcum.

Diels, Hermann. 1897. Parmenides Lehrgedicht. Berlin: Georg Reimer.

Giannantoni, Gabriele. 1988. “Le Due ‘Vie' di Parmenide.” La Parola del Passato 43: 207–21.

Gigon, Olof. 1935. Untersuchungen zu Heraklit. Leipzig.

Graham, Daniel W. 2002a. “Heraclitus and Parmenides.” In Caston and Graham 2002, 27-44.

Guthrie, W.K.C. 1962–1981. A History of Greek Philosophy. 6 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hegel, G.W.F. 1971. Werke. Edited by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel. Vol. 18, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Hölscher, Uvo. 1968. Anfänglisches Fragen. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht.

KR = Kirk, G. S., and J. E. Raven. The Presocratic Philosophers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957.

Kranz, Walther. 1916. "Über Aufbau und Bedeutung des parmenideischen Gedichtes.” Sitzungsberichte der königlichen preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1148-76.

Mansfeld, Jaap. 1964. Die Offenbarung des Parmenides und die menschlichen Welt. Assen: Van Gorcum.

Marcovich, Miroslav. 1965. “Herakleitos.” In Paulys Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Edited by G. Wissowa et al., Supplementband 10. Stuttgart: Druckenmüller.

Nehamas, Alexander 2002. “Parmenidean Being/Heraclitean Fire.” In Caston and Graham 2002, 45-64.

Patin, Alois. 1899. Parmenides im Kampfe gegen Heraklit. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner.

Reinhardt, Karl. 1916. Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie. Bonn: Friedrich Cohen.

Stokes, Michael C. 1971. One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy. Washington: Center for Hellenic Studies.

Tarán, Leonardo. 1965. Parmenides. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Ueberweg, Friedrich. 1920. Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie. Edited by Karl Praechter. 1st Part. 11th ed. Berlin: Ernst Friedrich Siegfried und Sohn.

Verdenius, W. J. 1942. Parmenides: Some Comments on His Poem. Groningen: J. B. Wolters.

Vlastos, Gregory. 1955a. “On Heraclitus.” American Journal of Philology 76: 337-78.

Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von. 1959 [1931–1932]. Der Glaube der Hellenen. 2 vols. 3rd ed. Basel: Benno Schwabe.

Windelband, Wilhelm. 1894. Geschichte der alten Philosophie. Munich: C. H. Beck.

Zeller, Eduard. 1919–1920. Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtliche Entwicklung. Edited by Wilhelm Nestle. Part 1, Vorsokratische Philosophie. 2 vols. Leipzig: O. R. Reisland.

4. ———. 2013. Science before Socrates: Parmenides, Anaxagoras, and the New Astronomy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 3: Borrowed Light: The Insights of Parmenides, pp. 85-108.

"We began by asking a series of questions about early Greek astronomy:

1. Who discovered the theories in question first?

2. What led him to this discovery?

3. Did the two philosophers (Anaxagoras and Empedocles) have good evidence for the theories?

4. Did the community of philosophers accept the theories?

5. Did they develop the theory on their own, or did they borrow it from another source (Thales, Pythagoras, the Babylonians)?

We have at present provided at least a partial answer to two of these questions. The remarkable chain of events that began theoretical astronomy as we know probably started with the recognition of heliophotism.

This theory, or insight, derives, as far as we can tell, from Parmenides of Elea, who, writing in the early fifth century, saw that the moon's phases could be explained on the basis of the moon's position relative to the sun, supposing that the sun was the moon's source of light-just as, perhaps, it is for clouds. It is plausible to suppose that Parmenides came to this insight by himself, unaided by earlier speculations on the moon, which were unhelpful, or Babylonian data and theories, which were most likely unknown to him, and which did not, in any case, derive the moon's light from the sun. The supposition that he had a Pythagorean informant seems gratuitous.

Thus in answer to question (2): Parmenides paved the way. In partial answer to question (5): Parmenides seems to be original in his contribution to the beginnings of astronomy. As to the further development of the theory of eclipses, there is no record that Parmenides had anything to say about eclipses, even if both his predecessors and his successors did. The students of astronomy and doxographers who canvassed early studies for new theories seem to have found nothing on this topic from Parmenides. We can say in answer to ( 1) that Parmenides (and not either Anaxagoras or Empedocles) discovered the source of the moon's light; as to the explanation of eclipses, question (1) must remain open, as well as questions (3) and (4). Moreover, we will have to see what role Parmenides' insights played in the further development of early Greek astronomy. What difference does it make to know that the moon gets its light from the sun?" (pp. 107-108)

5. ———. 2013. "Two Stages of Early Greek Cosmology." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy no. 28:41-63.

Abstract: "It is generally held that Presocratic cosmologies are sui generis and unique to their authors. If, however, a division is made between sixth-century and fifth-century BC cosmologies, some salient differences emerge. For instance, heavenly bodies in sixth-century cosmologies tend to be light, ephemeral, fed by vapors, and located above the earth; those in fifth-century cosmologies tend to be heavy, permanent, heated by friction, and to travel below the earth. The earlier cosmologies seem to embody a meteorological model of astronomy, the latter a lithic model. The change in models can be accounted for on the basis of Parmenides’ discovery that the moon is illuminated by the sun and hence is a spherical, permanent, opaque or earthy body. This insight generated empirical evidence to confirm itself and rendered obsolete earlier cosmologies."

6. ———. 2020. "The Metaphysics of Parmenides' Doxa and its Influence." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 14:35-58.

Abstract: "Parmenides’ Aletheia receives the lion’s share of philosophical scrutiny. His Doxa, focusing on the explanation of natural phenomena, by contrast, is often neglected, especially in studies focusing on metaphysics.

But it is the latter that occupied most of Parmenides’ poem and which had, arguably, a more profound influence on later philosophy.

The Doxa seems to embody the Eleatic properties Parmenides attributes to the proper object of understanding, at least as far as possible in a theory designed to account for change. Apparently for the first time, it attempts to explain changeable phenomena in terms of changeless principles. The principles of the Doxa offered a model for subsequent philosophies of nature, and provided the basis for theories of elements from the fifth century BC until today."

7. Granger, Herbert. 2002. "The Cosmology of Mortals." In Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos, edited by Caston, Victor and Graham, Daniel W., 101-116. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"But why could not Parmenides take up a position of the sort his successors among the pluralists adopt(49) and introduce Light and Night as primal, eternal entities, each fully real, different and underived from one another, without their being just a denser or more rarefied version of something more fundamental? This is impossible for Parmenides and the goddess as long as they take the word ‘being' to be a univocal predicate and to be what expresses the very nature of its subject. Parmenides' successors can conceive of Being as coming in a variety of forms, but not because they take ‘being' to be equivocal or believe it to be something other than a qualitative term. On these points they would be in fundamental agreement with Parmenides and the goddess. Plausibly it may be argued that the pluralists who follow Parmenides are in a position to recognize the possibility of a qualitative heterogeneity within an existential homogeneity, because they take ‘being' to be more like a generic than a specific term in its descriptive role, and thus they may take Being to be more like a determinable than a determinate in its nature. This would then put them in a position to maintain that Being may come in a variety of different sorts within a single conception of what it is to be.

The pathway to a cosmology of the post-Parmenidean sort is closed to the goddess and her disciple Parmenides. The goddess holds out no hope for any sort of cosmology, and she is in no position to appreciate or to anticipate the pluralism of the successors of Parmenides. The goddess should be taken, then, at her word when she warns that the order of her words on mortal opinions is deceptive. The cosmology of mortals is nothing more than a deception, which deceives by giving the appearance of reality without yielding its substance, and there is no reason to search for something more than mere deception in the deceptive words of the goddess upon the cosmos." (pp. 114-115)

(49) For example, Anaxagoras (B 5, B 17); Empedocles (B 17.27-35, B 6, B 8, B 9). On both of them, see Aristotle, Ph. 1.4, 187a22-b7. It is commonly held that Parmenides' successors presume a plurality without any argument. For example, Malcolm observes this of Empedocles and Anaxagoras, ["On avoiding the void", Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 9, 75-94] 1991, pp. 92-3, and Curd of the atomists as well, [Parmenidean monism] 1991, p. 261, and Curd [The Legacy of Parmenides], 1998, pp. 64-5, 129-31. Curd takes their lack of an argument to indicate that none was needed because Parmenides did not deny a plurality, since he was not a ‘numerical monist' who held that a single entity constitutes reality. Curd charges that Parmenides' successors would have been remiss in their philosophical duty if they had presumed a plurality in the face of any argument by Parmenides against it. Yet even if the successors of Parmenides offered no argument for plurality, this need not indicate that Parmenides did not argue against plurality and that his successors in their presumption of plurality were not philosophically responsible. Parmenides' successors may have understood their charge to be the development of a compromise between the demands of his argument and those of common sense, in which the demands of these two extremes must be satisfied as much as possible without any hope that all of them would receive satisfaction.

8. ———. 2008. "The Proem of Parmenides' Poem." Ancient Philosophy no. 28:1-20.

"The paper defends the view that the Proem of Parmenides' poem is a secular allegory. At the allegory's center is the unnamed goddess who in the body of the poem instructs the unnamed youth, through her use of a priori argumentation, about the nature of reality. The goddess provides the very symbol for a priori reason, and a central feature of Parmenides' expression of this symbolic value for the goddess is his confused presentation of her in the Proem. His presentation is intentionally vague, and it defies any definitive interpretation that clearly identifies the classification of the goddess and her circumstances within traditional or unconventional Greek religious belief. Instead, she recalls in an confusing fashion traditional revelatory goddesses, of whom the Muses and cult goddesses provide paradigm instances. Hence the youth's journey in the Proem to the unnamed goddess leads to no clearly identifiable circumstances, yet what it arrives at is still bound up within the medium of the standard epic style. Parmenides uses the old idea of the revelatory goddess in this unexpected way to try to show how it harbors something like the exercise of a priori reason. The reflection of the a priori does not reside merely in the similarity that the Muses bestow knowledge, which lies beyond the limited powers of human observation, about past, present, and future. The similarity is stronger and more significant when the Muses grant knowledge that lies beyond their own powers of observation in the form of insights into events they could not have possibly witnessed, such as the birth of the gods. Parmenides picks his unnamed goddess for his symbol for a priori reason because he takes himself to be demythologizing the philosophical truth reflected in a distorted fashion within the tradition of divine revelation. By placing a priori reason in the garb of the revelatory goddess who appears in a puzzling form, Parmenides indicates to his audience that this use of the power of reason has its antecedents in traditional practices that did not recognize this power for its true nature. There is a value in the tradition of divine revelation, which transcends the fictions of the poets in their story-telling, but revelatory deities must now step aside for the clear expression of the power of a priori reason. Hence the goddess abdicates her authority when she demands that the youth judge her words by his logos. Parmenides' verse conforms with his symbolic use of the goddess. It helps him mark his difference from his competitors among the new intellectuals, the so-called `natural philosophers', who generally favor prose over verse. These intellectuals abandoned the Muses and their gift of verse, and they aspire to cosmologies that depend for their justification upon observation and inductive arguments that appeal to analogies and inferences to the best explanation. Verse as the medium of the Muses allows Parmenides to stress in a literary fashion how he adheres to a mode of thinking that does not rely upon the power of observation for the truth." (p. 1)

9. ———. 2010. "Parmenides of Elea: rationalist or dogmatist?" Ancient Philosophy no. 30:15-38.

"Parmenides of Elea is often lauded as a major figure of Western philosophy because he is the first to give an extensive role in his speculation to a priori argumentation.

In his poem we find for the first time in history sustained rational argumentation for the establishment of a complex metaphysical doctrine. Parmenides does not merely dictate to his audience a set of doctrines about reality, but, instead, undertakes to support his doctrines by means of logical inferences based on premises that have some claim to plausibility or self-evidence or a priori justification. This evaluation of PParmenides'accomplishment is not without its detractors, however. Kingsley has mounted a vigorous challenge to the presumption that Parmenides relies on argument for his opinions about reality, and recently Gemelli Marciano has significantly buttressed Kingsley's case by furthering his ideas in her detailed comments on Parmenides' poem. Kingsley and Gemelli Marciano maintain that Parmenides is a dogmatic mystic who depends for his dogmas entirely upon what he learns from divine revelation and that he makes no serious effort 10 defend his mystical beliefs by genuine argumentation.

In fact, reasoned argument not only cannot discover the truth, it provides an impediment that muse be transcended or suppressed." (p. 15; notes omitted)

10. Greenstine, Abraham Jacob. 2017. "Diverging Ways: On the Trajectories of Ontology in Parmenides, Aristotle, and Deleuze." In Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Metaphysics, edited by Greenstine, Abraham Jacob and Johnson, Ryan J., 202-223. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Unversity Press.

"Presently there is a flood of ontologies, an uproar over being. Not only is metaphysics permitted, it has become, perhaps, expected. Not that continental philosophy has returned to some sort of Wolffian systematic science of ontology.

Rather, we now find ourselves inundated by a variety of ontological styles:

it seems that every philosopher and scholar has their own theory of being. To make our way through this torrent, we might ask: what is ontology? How can we speak of being? Can it be narrated, accounted for, expressed?

In this essay I explore three philosophically and historically decisive answers to these questions: those of Parmenides, Aristotle, and Gilles Deleuze.

I examine not only what each thinker says about being, but also how they say it, that is, what the project of ontology is for each. Rather than proposing so many different hypotheses in a single pre-established discourse on being, each of them endeavors to create a new ontology. Parmenides inaugurates ontology, leading us on a journey to the truth through the path of what is. Aristotle, rejecting Parmenides' way of truth, instead proposes a knowledge of being, a science of ontology, which leads in turn to knowledge of the divine as the first causes of things. Deleuze, denying both the truth of Parmenides and the first causes of Aristotle, instead contends that there is only one proposition about being, just a single voice of ontology. Path, knowledge, and proposition: each philosopher institutes his own ontological style. Each defends an ontology apparently unassimilable to the others." (p. 202)

11. Gregory, Andrew. 2014. "Parmenides, Cosmology and Sufficient Reason." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 47:16-47.

Abstract: "Why Parmenides had a cosmology is a perennial puzzle, if, as the ‘truth' part of his poem appears to claim, what exists is one, undifferentiated, timeless and unchanging.1 Indeed, not only does the cosmological part of the poem tell us how the cosmos is arranged, it also tells us how the cosmos, humans and animals all came into being. Although more of the truth has survived, the cosmology originally made up some 2/3 to 3/4 of the poem. The poem claims it will give the ‘complete ordering' and Parmenides is perceived to have ‘completed all the phenomena'.3 Parmenides also seems to have made some important original contributions to cosmology. These I take to be important facts which any explanation of the nature of this cosmology must account for. The aim of this paper is to explore a new suggestion for the status of the cosmology, that it may be equalled but not surpassed by other cosmologies which are capable of accounting for all of the phenomena. Its function, I argue, is to raise sufficient reason issues about some fundamental questions in cosmogony and cosmology. I will also argue that we can find sufficient reason considerations relating to cosmogony and cosmology in the truth part of the poem. This opens the possibility that it is at least in part issues of sufficient reason that link the two parts of the poem. Finally I will argue that by paying close attention to what Parmenides has to say about signs, σήματα, we can see how he leaves open the possibility of making positive contributions to cosmology.

I believe this gives us a richer account of Parmenides, places him more firmly in the debates of presocratic cosmology and cosmogony and gives him interesting relations to his predecessors and successors. These sufficient reason considerations may work both as a critique of contemporary cosmogony and cosmology and a challenge to any future cosmogony and cosmology." (pp. 16-17; notes omitted)

12. Groarke, Leo. 1985. "Parmenides' Timeless Universe." Dialogue no. 24:535-541.

"In his recent collection of Parmenides' fragments,(1) David Gallop joins a number of commentators ( among them, Tarán(2) and Stokes(3) ) who argue against the view that fragment 8 contains a commitment to a reality which is "timeless" or "atemporal". His arguments seem to me convincing if one adopts Owen's view(4) that timelessness is a result of indistinguishable phases of existence. Gallop's arguments could decide the issue if this was, as Tarán suggests, "the only reason to maintain that Being is a non-temporal entity".(5) There is, however, an alternative way to defend the atemporal interpretation, though it has not been elaborated in any detail.(6) If I am not mistaken, it can elude Gallop's criticisms and provide a more plausible account of Parmenides' philosophy.(7)"

(1) Parmenides of Elea, Fragments, a Text and Translation with an Introduction by David Gallop (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 13-16. For good reason, the book is sure to become the standard reference for years to come.

(2) Leonardo Tarán, Parmenides: A Text with Translation, Commentary, and Critical Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), 175-181.

(3) Michael C. Stokes, One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy (Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, 1971), 127-137.

(4) See G. E. L. Owen, "Plato and Parmenides on the Timeless Present", in A. P. D. Mourelatos. ed. The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, 1974). I cannot discuss Owen's views in detail here.

(5) Tarán, Parmenides. 181.

(6) For interpretations of Parmenides' similar to the one that I suggest, see the following: W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 29: Felix M. Cleve, The Giants of Pre-Sophistic Greek Philosophy: An Attempt to Reconstruct their Thought (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 1965), 531; and Peter Geach, Providence and Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 53-54. None of these authors develops a detailed interpretation.

(7) The question of Parmenides' view of time (exemplified by disputes over fragment 8.5) is a thorny one. In G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers (2nd ed.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), Schofield writes, for

example, that "Probably what Parmenides means to ascribe to what is is existence in an eternal present not subject to temporal distinctions of any sort. It is very unclear how he hoped to ground this conclusion in the arguments of [fragment 8]... ." If the account

I suggest is correct, this conclusion is neither surprising nor difficult to understand.

13. ———. 1987. "Parmenides' Timeless Universe, Again." Dialogue no. 26:549-552.

"In a recent discussion note,(1) Mohan Matthen criticizes my claim that Parmenides is committed to an atemporal reality. I shall argue that his critique misrepresents by views , misunderstands Parmenides , and is founded on a capricious view of h1stoncal interpretation."

(...)

"The key to my account is the suggestion that Parmenides rejection of what does not exist entails the rejection of the past and future, for they do not exist (because the past no longer exists and the future does not yet exist). This is, I think, the most plausible interpretation of Parmenides claim that what is "neither was ... once nor will be, since it is now" (8.5, cf. my previous discussion of 8.19-20). It follows that sentences cannot meaningfully refer to the past and future, for we cannot refer to what is not (8.8)."

(1) Mohan Matthen, "A Note on Parmenides' Denial of Past and Future ", Dialogue 25/3 (1986), 553-557.

14. Grondin, Jean. 2012. Introduction to Metaphysics: From Parmenides to Levinas. New York: Columbia University Press.

Translated from Introduction a la métaphysique, Québec: Les Presses de l’Universite de Montreal 2004 by Lukas Soderstrom.

Chapter 1. Parmenides: The Evidence of Being, pp. 1-20.

"Can we really identify Parmenides with the Presocratic physiological tradition?

Some modern interpreters,(9) influenced by Aristotle (but then, who is not?), and by the modern scientific explanation of nature as well, have read Parmenides as a philosopher attempting to understand the structure of the universe. But one must recognize that he probably also opposed the Milesian physiological tradition by arguing against their attempts at a genetic explanation of nature. According to Parmenides’ Poem, there is no becoming because this would imply a passage from Nonbeing to Being and therefore the existence of Nonbeing. And since Nonbeing is unthinkable, there can only be Being and therefore no becoming. Thus, briefly summarized, is the doxographical content of Parmenides’ disconcerting Poem." (p. 6)

(...)

"Although using the term “ metaphysics” here may be premature, we may perhaps allow the use of the term “ ontology” to characterize the inextricable relation the Poem urges us to think, despite the fact that it would be extremely anachronistic since the term ontologia did not appear before the seventeenth century. Here, the word ontology simply means that the true, or rational, discourse— that is, the logos, is dedicated to Being in its most basic sense— that is, imperishable and incorruptible. And it would be accordingly an overestimation of the mortals’ linguistic capacities to believe there actually are such things as birth and death, change and becoming. Since then, philosophy or Western science has been enraptured by a stable and permanent Being, and enthralled to the rigors of “ thought,” which did not really exist prior to Parmenides." (p. 15)

(9) The most influential reading of this type, which is also a classic introduction to Presocratic thought, is John Burnett’s Early Greek Philosophy (Cleveland, NY: Meridian, 1957 [1930]) 169-196.-

15. Groth, Miles. 2017. Translating Heidegger. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Chapter Four: Paratactic Method: Transtlating Parmenides, Fragment VI, pp. 165-193.

"Heidegger’s efforts to translate the Greek thinkers are the source of his philosophy of translation, which I have summarized from a review of his published writings. In his 1951–52 translation of Parmenides’s Fragment VI, Heidegger brings to bear a half-century-long conversation with ancient Greek and demonstrates his practice of translating in full stride. Until now, Heidegger’s philosophy of translation is part of what has been left unspoken of Heidegger’s thought. It will have become clear that in my review of the early critical literature and the first English translations of Heidegger, I have had the principles of Heidegger’s philosophy of translation in mind, and in my critique, I have countered the interpretatii of his early readers with Auslegungen of his fundamental words. In this chapter, I will present an account of Heidegger at work in an Auslegung of a fragment of pre-Socratic thought." (p. 165)

"In this chapter, I will focus on the Parmenides translation which he presented during the second semester of the lecture course “Was heißt Denken?,” Heidegger’s last series of lectures as a regular professor

at the University of Freiburg. Fragment VI is introduced in the transition (Stundenübergang) between Session Five and Session Six of the Spring 1952 semester when Heidegger begins the translation itself. He devotes the last six hours of the course to the task. The background of the translation is the presiding question: What is it that we call thinking?" (p. 166, notes omitted)

16. Guetter, David Lloyd. 2011. "« Opposition » in Parmenides B12.5." Euphrosyne no. 39:227-246.

Abstract: "This paper argues that Parmenides distinguished between the kinds of opposition signaled by anti- and enanti-, then chose the latter deliberately to make a point about the ambivalence, perhaps even perversity, deeply characteristic of human existence. This ambivalence is reflected intra-personally (reason and passion), inter-personally (male and female), and even theologically (the goddess of Truth and the god of Love), suggesting that human Love untethered from Truth constitutes human cruelty. If so, it is little wonder that as far as our records go he refused to propagate it any further himself."

17. Guthrie, William Keith Chambers. 1965. A History of Greek Philosophy. Vol. II: The Presocratic Tradition from Parmenides to Democritus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

See the First Chapter: The Eleatics. Parmenides - pp. 1-79.

"Presocratic philosophy is divided into two halves by the name of Parmenides. His exceptional powers of reasoning brought speculation about the origin and constitution of the universe to a halt, and caused it to make a fresh start on different lines. Consequently his chronological position relative to other early philosophers is comparatively easy to determine. Whether or not he directly attacked Heraclitus, (1) had Heraclitus known of Parmenides it is incredible that he would not have denounced him along with Xenophanes and others. Even if ignorance of an Elean on the part of an Ephesian is no sure evidence of date, philosophically Heraclitus must be regarded as pre-Parmenidean, whereas Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus and Democritus are equally certainly post-Parmenidean." (p. 1)

(1) See vol. 1, 408 n. 2 and pp. 23 ff., 32 below.

"The poem of Parmenides raises peculiar problems, and it will be as well to approach the text with the chief of these already in mind. In the prologue he receives from a goddess the promise that she will reveal to him two sorts of information: first the truth about reality, then the opinions of mortals, which are unambiguously said to be false. 'Nevertheless these too shall thou learn' (fr. 1.31). In conformity with this, the first part of the poem deduces the nature of reality from premises asserted to be wholly true, and leads among other things to the conclusion that the world as perceived by the senses is unreal. At this point (fr. 8.50) the goddess solemnly declares that she ceases to speak the truth, and the remainder of the instruction will be 'deceitful'; yet she will impart it all 'that no judgment of men may outstrip thee'. Then follows the second part of the poem consisting of a cosmology on traditional lines. Starting from the assumption of a pair of opposites, 'fire' and 'night' or light and darkness, it proceeds as a narrative of an evolutionary process in time. The 'true way', on the other hand, had asserted that reality was, and must be, a unity in the strictest sense and that any change in it was impossible: there is no before or after, and the exposition unfolds as a timeless series of logical deductions.

Here is the crux. Why should Parmenides take the trouble to narrate a detailed cosmogony when he has already proved that opposites cannot exist and there can be no cosmogony because plurality and change are inadmissible conceptions? Has it in his eyes no merit or validity whatsoever, so that his purpose in composing it is only to show it up, together with all such attempts at cosmogony, for the hollow shams that they are? If so, the further question arises: what is it? Some have thought it to be based on a particular cosmic system of which he disapproved, for instance that of Heraclitus or the Pythagoreans. Others have suggested, following up the goddess's own words about the 'opinions of mortals' in general, that it is partly or wholly intended as a synthesis of what the ordinary man believed about the world; others again that it is an original production, indeed the best that Parmenides could devise, but still intended to show that even the most plausible account of the origin and nature of the sensible world is utterly false. These critics point to the motive expressed by the goddess, 'that no judgment of mortals may outstrip (or get the better of) thee'.

An alternative is to suppose that Parmenides is doing his best for the sensible world, perhaps on practical grounds, by giving as coherent an account of it as he can, saying in effect: I have told you the truth, so that if I go on to speak about the world in which we apparently live you will know it is unreal and not be taken in. But after all, this is how it does appear to us; however misleading our senses may be, we must eat and drink and talk, avoid putting our hand in the fire or falling over a precipice, live in short as if their information were genuine. Being ourselves mortals we must come to terms with this deceitful show, and I can at least help you to understand it better than other people.

These are the most baffling problems which Parmenides presents: the nature of the 'Way of Seeming' and the relation between it and the 'Way of Truth'. Yet the essence of his remarkable achievement lies, as might be expected, within the Way of Truth itself. " (pp. 4-6)

18. Hankinson, R. Jim. 2002. "Parmenides and the Metaphysics of Changelessness." In Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos, edited by Caston, Victor and Graham, Daniel W., 65-80. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"Conclusions.

Parmenides seeks to demonstrate the impossibility of generation (and hence change) dilemmatically: on the one hand the notion of caused generation turns out to be incoherent, while the supposition of uncaused generation, on the other, makes it inexplicable. Neither arm of the dilemma is successful. One cannot simply invoke PSR [Principle of Sufficient Reason] in order to rule out uncaused change, since PSR is at best an empirical hypothesis and not some Leibnizian a priori law of thought; (53) and a suitably sophisticated analysis of the logical form of change, one which recognizes the ambiguity of 'from' in propositions such as 'x comes to be from y,' will dispose of Parmenides' bomb. But it needed an Aristotle to disarm it.

The basic principle involved, namely:

P1 Nothing comes to be from nothing,

is not original to Parmenides (it first occurs in a fragment of the sixth-century lyric poet Alcaeus, although we do not know in what context; (54) its early history has been ably traced by Alex Mourelatos (55) but its use in destructive argument certainly is. P1 is ambiguous between the causal principle

P1a Nothing comes to be causelessly,

and the conservation principle

P1b Nothing comes to be except from pre-existing matter;

and that ambiguity is not always patent. Indeed, distinguishing (P1a) from (P1b) is the first step towards solving the Eleatic puzzle, as Aristotle (certainly: Ph. I.7, 190a14-31; cf. Metaph. V.24; GA 1.18, 724a20-34) and Plato (possibly: Phd. 103b) realized. Moreover, as Hume was to show, neither version can be accepted as an a priori truth: both the causal principle and the conservation principle (at any rate crudely interpreted as asserting the conservation of matter) are rejected by the standard interpretation of quantum physics; and whatever else may be true of quantum physics, it is not logically incoherent." (p. 80)

(53) Cf. Leibniz, Monadology §32; on the status of the principle, see Kant, Prolegomena §4.

(54) Alcaeus, fr. 76 Bergk; Mourelatos 1981 [Pre-socratics Origins of the Principle that there are No Origins of Nothing, (Journal of Philosophy, 78, 1981, pp. 649-665] pp. 132-3 discusses this text.

(55) Mourelatos, 1981.

19. Havelock, Eric A. 1958. "Parmenides and Odysseus." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology no. 63:133-143.

"It is commonly supposed that Parmenides' statement of his philosophical principles is preceded by a "proem" of an allegorical nature (the precise symbolism of the allegory being in dispute) which describes the philosopher's inspired journey from darkness to light.

(...)

The first question to ask is whether it is proper to identify such a "proem" at all, as a separate entity in the poem. Would the author himself have recognized it as such?

(...)

If, however, the motive in Sextus for first identifying and then explaining this allegory in Parmenides was itself unhistorical, modern criticism has two resources with which to correct him. It can supply a better interpretation of the "proem"; or it can conclude that the original identification of the " proem" as such was a mistake. It is in part to this more radical view that the present article addresses itself." (p. 133)

(...)

"The foreground of Parmenides' imagination is occupied by Circe on Aeaea and the nymphs on Thrinacia all of them daughters of the sun. The latter he has converted from herdsmen into outriders, perhaps assisted therein by the common image of the sun's chariot. Both Teiresias and Circe forewarned him concerning Thrinacia, the sun's island. But Circe's warning held also a hint of promise: "You will come to the isle Thrinacia where feed many herds of the sun; and there is no birth of them nor do they pass away. Their herdsmen are nymphs . . . daughters of the sun."(56) In short, the island is involved with some implication of immortality; it holds a mystery which can be approached but not violated. The centrality of this episode in the memory of the philosopher and his audience was guaranteed by the fact that Homer had selected it from among all others for dramatization in the preface(57) to his epic as central to Odysseus' experience in the nostos. So Parmenides remembered how on that island coming to be and perishing had been banished. This provided his climatic poetic excuse for linking the daughters of the sun with the marvels of a mental journey which had taken the traveller into an absolute, where there is no coming to be and no passing away.(58) For the philosopher, this was where the nostos ended. The journey of his mind and thought had reached the mansions of home.(59)" (p. 140)

(56) Od. 12. 130.

(57) Od. 1. 7-9.

(58) Frag. 8. 21.

(59) The Odysseus theme may persist even into the "second part" of Parmenides' poem. The Homeric hero, so Circe had told him, while his ship "bypassed" the Sirens, was to be allowed the pleasure of hearing their song (Od. 12. 47 and 52; cf. also 10. 109). When they sing, they admonish him that to "bypass" without listening is impossible and that to listen is to learn of all things that happened at Troy and of "all that is born on the earth" (12. 186-190). So Odysseus listens, while the ship "bypasses" them (12. 197).

Correspondingly, Parmenides comes to the end of his "reliable discourse and thought" (Frag. 8, line 5o, equivalent to the "true" directives of Teiresias and Circe) and then allows his listener to hear a "deceitful composition of my epic tale" (Frag. 8, line 52), a story of how all things " are born and end" (Frag. 19).

This story is told so that his audience may not be "bypassed" by any mortal type of intelligence (Frag. 8, sub fin.). Is the verb παρέλασση which he here uses a reminiscence of the corresponding verb which Homer had used four times? If so, the philosopher's poetic memory has transposed it in application.

20. Heidegger, Martin. 1975. "'Moira' (Parmenides, fr. 8,34-41)." In Early Greek Thinking, edited by Krell, David Farrell and Capuzzi, Frank A., 79-101. New York: Harper & Row.

"The topic under discussion is the relation between thinking and Being. In the first place we ought to observe that the text (VIII, 34-41) which ponders this relation more thoroughly speaks of eon and not -- as in Fragment III -- about einai. Immediately, and with some justification, one concludes from this that Fragment VIII concerns beings rather than Being. But in saying eon Parmenides is in no way thinking "beings in themselves," understood as the whole to which thinking, insofar as it is some kind of entity, also belongs. Just as little does eon mean einai in the sense of "Being for itself," as though it were incumbent upon the thinker to set the non sensible essential nature of Being apart from, and in opposition to, beings which are sensible. Rather eon, being, is thought here in its duality as Being and beings, and is participially expressed -- although the grammatical concept has not yet come explicitly into the grasp of linguistic science. This duality is at least intimated by such nuances of phrasing as "the Being of beings" and "beings in Being." In its essence, however, what unfolds is obscured more than clarified through the "in" and the "of " These expressions are far from thinking the duality as such, or from seriously questioning its unfolding.

"Being itself," so frequently invoked, is held to be true so long as it is experienced as Being, consistently understood as the Being of beings. Meanwhile the beginning of Western thinking was fated to catch an appropriate glimpse of what the word einai, to be, says -- in Physis, Logos, En. Since the gathering that reigns within Being unites all beings, an inevitable and continually more stubborn semblance arises from the contemplation of this gathering, namely, the illusion that Being (of beings) is not only identical with the totality of beings, but that, as identical, it is at the same time that which unifies and is even most in being [das Seiendste]. For representational thinking everything comes to be a being.

The duality of Being and beings, as something twofold, seems to melt away into nonexistence, albeit thinking, from its Greek beginnings onward, has moved within the unfolding of this duality, though without considering its situation or at all taking note of the unfolding of the twofold. What takes place at the beginning of Western thought is the unobserved decline of the duality. But this decline is not nothing. Indeed it imparts to Greek thinking the character of a beginning, in that the lighting of the Being of beings, as a lighting, is concealed. The hiddenness of this decline of the duality reigns in essentially the same way as that into which the duality itself falls. Into what does it fall? Into oblivion, whose lasting dominance conceals itself as Lethe to which Aletheia belongs so immediately that the former can withdraw in its favor and can relinquish to it pure disclosure in the modes of Physis, Logos, and En as though this had no need of concealment.

But the apparently futile lighting is riddled with darkness. In it the unfolding of the twofold remains as concealed as its decline for beginning thought. However, we must be alert to the duality of Being and beings in the eon in order to follow the discussion Parmenides devotes to the relation between thinking and Being." (pp. 86-87)

21. ———. 1992. Parmenides (Lecture course 1942-43). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Gesamtausgabe Vol. 54. Lecture course from the winter semester 1942-43, first published in 1982; translated by André Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz.

"We are attempting to follow the path of thought of two thinkers, Parmenides and Heraclitus. Both belong, historiographically calculated, to the early period of Western thought. With regard to this early thinking in the Occident, among the Greeks, we are distinguishing between outset and beginning. Outset refers to the coming forth of this thinking at a definite "time." Thinking does not mean here the course of psychologically represented acts of thought but the historical process in which a thinker arises, says his word, and so provides to truth a place within a historical humanity. As for time, it signifies here less the point of time calculated according to year and day than it means "age," the situation of human things and man's dwelling place therein. "Outset" has to do with the debut and the emergence of thinking. But we are using "beginning" in a quite different sense. The "beginning" is what, in his early thinking, is to be thought and what is thought. Here we are still leaving unclarified the essence of this thought. But supposing that the thinking of a thinker is distinct from the knowledge of the "sciences" and from every kind of practical cognition in all respects, shell we have to say that the relation of thinking to its thought is essentially other than the relation of ordinary "technical-practical" and "moral-practical" thinking to what it thinks.

Ordinary thinking, whether scientific or prescientific or unscientific, thinks beings, and does so in every case according to their individual regions, separate strata, and circumscribed aspects. This thinking is an acquaintance with beings, a knowledge that masters and dominates beings in various ways. In distinction from the mastering of beings, the thinking of thinkers is the thinking of Being. Their thinking is a retreating in face of Being. We name what is thought in the thinking of the thinkers the beginning. Which hence now means: Being is the beginning. Nevertheless, not every thinker, who has to think Being, thinks the beginning. Not every thinker, not even every one at the outset of Western thought, is a primordial thinker, i.e., a thinker who expressly thinks the beginning.

Anaximander, Parmenides, and Heraclitus are the only primordial thinkers. They are this, however, not because they open up Western thought and initiate it. Already before them there were thinkers. They are primordial thinkers because they think the beginning. The beginning is what is thought in their thinking. This sounds as if "the beginning" were something like an "object" the thinkers take up for themselves in order to think it through. But we have already said in general about the thinking of thinkers that it is a retreating in face of Being. If, within truly thoughtful thinking, the primordial thinking is the highest one, then there must occur here a retreating of a special kind. For these thinkers do not "take up" the beginning in the way a scientist "attacks" something. Neither do these thinkers come up with the beginning as a self-produced construction of thought. The beginning is not something dependent on the favor of these thinkers, where they are active in such and such a way, but, rather, the reverse: the beginning is that which begins something with these thinkers -- by laying a claim on them in such a way that from them is demanded an extreme retreating in the face of Being. The thinkers are begun by the beginning, "in-cepted" [An-gefangenen] by the in-ception [An-fang]; they are taken up by it and are gathered into it.

It is already a wrong-headed idea that leads us to speak of the "work" of these thinkers. But if for the moment, and for the lack of a better expression, we do talk that way, then we must note that their "work," even if it had been preserved for us intact, would be quite small in "bulk" compared with the "work" of Plato or Aristotle and especially in comparison with the "work" of a modern thinker. Plato and Aristotle and subsequent thinkers have thought far "more," have traversed more regions and strata of thinking, and have questioned out of a richer knowledge of things and man. And yet all these thinkers think "less" than the primordial thinkers." (pp. 7-8)

22. ———. 1999. "The Last, Undelivered Lecture (XII) from Summer Semester 1952." In The Presocratics after Heidegger, edited by Jacobs, David C., 171-184. Albany: State University of New Yoek Press.

"Translator's Introduction

The following text presents for the first time a translation of the final lecture prepared by Heidegger for the second part of his 1951-1952 course Was heisst Denken? (What is Called Thinking?). Although included in the original handwritten manuscript, this lecture was not delivered as part of the course, apparently because there was insufficient time at the end of the summer semester. The published version of the course likewise omits the final lecture. Heidegger did, however, read the text of lecture XII as part of a subsequent “Colloquium on Dialectic," which took place in Muggenbrunn on 15 September 1952. Both the protocol of the “Colloquium" and the lecture are published in Hegel-Studien, Band 25 (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1990). The text of the lecture is significant not only because it belongs to the original manuscript of Was heisst Denken? , but also because it represents an early version of the essay that appeared in revised form under the title “Moira" in Vorträge und Aufsätze.

In preparing this translation I have had reference to the translation of "Moira," by Frank A. Capuzzi, which appears in Early Greek Thinking (New York: Harper Collins, 1984). The English reader should note that the German text—in particular the introduction—has a somewhat stilted style, and that this is reflected in the translation. The numbers in square brackets indicate the original manuscript pagination, and facilitate cross-reference to the German text.

Will McNeill"

23. ———. 2003. "Seminar in Zähringen 1973." In Four Seminars, 64-84. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

"In the silence that follows, Jean Beaufret notes: The text we just heard completes, as it were, the long meditation in which you have turned first towards Parmenides and then Heraclitus. One could even say that your thinking has engaged differently with Heraclitus and Parmenides. Indeed, in Vorträge and Aufsätze, the primacy seemed to be given to Heraclitus. Today what place would Heraclitus take with respect to Parmenides?

Heidegger: From a mere historical perspective, Heraclitus signified the first step towards dialectic. From this perspective, then, Parmenides is more profound and essential (if it is the case that dialectic, as is said in Being and Time, is "a genuine philosophic embarrassment") In this regard, we must thoroughly recognize that tautology is the only possibility for thinking what dialectic can only veil.

However, if one is able to read Heraclitus on the basis of the Parmenidean tautology, he himself then appears in the closest vicinity to that same tautology, he himself then appears in the course of an exclusive approach presenting access to being." (p. 81)

24. ———. 2015. The Beginning of Western Philosophy: Interpretation of Anaximander and Parmenides. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Translated by Richard Rojcewicz; this is a translation of a lecture course Martin Heidegger offered in the summer semester of 1932 at the University of Freiburg. The German original appeared posthumously in 2012 as volume 35 of the philosopher’s Gesamtausgabe (“Complete Works”).

Contents: Part One: The dictum of Anaximander of Miletus, 6th–5th century 1-26; Part Two: Interposed considerations 27-77; Part Three: The “didactic poem” of Parmenides of Elea, 6th–5th century 79; §18. Introduction 79;§19. Interpretation of fragment 1. Preparation for the question of Being 81; §20. Interpretation of fragments 4 and 5 86; §21. Interpretation of fragments 6 and 7 92; §22. Interpretation of fragment 8 103; §23. The δόξα-fragments 9, 12, 13, 10, 11, 14, 16, 19 (in the order of their interpretation) 144< Conclusion. §24. The inceptual question of Being; the law of philosophy 152.

"We will start at once with the interpretation of Parmenides’s didactic poem. What the previous endeavors at interpreting Parmenides have accomplished will be mentioned when discussing the respective issues. For the rest, however, those works will not be presented in more detail. Not because they are insignificant but because they are so unavoidable that one cannot speak about them at first. Our concern is primarily with securing a philosophical understanding of the beginning of Western philosophy and only secondarily with initiating ourselves into the procedure of appropriating an earlier philosophy, i.e., into the method of interpretation.

With respect to all previous interpretive attempts, even Hegel’s, it should be said that they made their work philosophically too easy, in part by invoking as a highest explanatory principle the view that the beginning is precisely the primitive and therefore is crude and raw—the illusion of progress! (In this regard, nothing further to say about the previous attempts.)

The interpretation of Parmenides is closely coupled to the question of his relation to Heraclitus, who presupposed Parmenides and contests against him. The notion that in essentials they are in the sharpest opposition is thereby presupposed as valid. In the end, however, this presupposition is precisely an error. In the end, Parmenides and Heraclitus are in the utmost agreement—as are all actual philosophers—not because they renounce battling, but precisely on account of their own respective ultimate originality.

For nonphilosophers, who adhere only to works, opinions, schools, names, and claims, the history of philosophy and of philosophers does of course present the appearance of a madhouse. But that can quietly remain as it is." (p. 77)

25. Heller, Agnes. 1997. "Parmenides and the Battle of Stalingrad." Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal no. 19:247-262.

Abstract: "For the winter semester of 1942-1943, Heidegger announced a lecture course at the University of Freiburg on Parmenides and Heraclitus. In Heidegger’s collected works, volume 54, the lecture course was published under the title Parmenides, since Heidegger never actually discussed Heraclitus in the course. I may add that he barely discussed Parmenides either. The lecture course proceeds in circles. The lecturer seems to introduce new themes again and again, quickly digressing from each, only to return to some, but not all, of them. Allow me to list the main themes in order of their appearance in the lecture notes: originary thinking, aletheia, goddess, translation, conflict, the Greek word pseudos and its translations, how the Romans mistranslated the Greeks, the Greek word methodos and its misunderstanding, lethe, the translation of zoon logon ekhon, the word, pragma, techne, physis and how it is not natura, unconcealing and concealing, the history of being, the polis, the daimon, the essence of the Greek gods, politeia, adike, what philosophy is, to think on something or about something, metaphysics, the subject/object relation, I-ness, egoism, metaphysics as the essence of technology, to think being, the essence of truth, the fate of the Occident, to rethink originary thinking, the foundation/less and so on. As one can see from this brief, and by no means full enumeration, Heidegger’s lecture course on Parmenides contains a small encyclopedia of the so called “basic words” of his philosophical turn. There is nothing in his famous Letter on Humanism that was not already present during the Parmenides course in the winter semester of 1942-1943."

26. Helmig, Christoph. 2022. "Interpreting Parmenides of Elea in Antiquity: From Plato’s Parmenides to Simplicius’ Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics." In Received Opinions: Doxography in Antiquity and the Islamic World, edited by Lammer, Andreas and Jas, Mareike, 175-206. Leiden: Brill.

"In Antiquity, the reception of Parmenides starts with Plato’s Eleatic dialogues, especially with the Parmenides and the Sophist, and concludes almost 900 years later with Simplicius’ Commentary on the Physics and, to a lesser extent, his Commentary on the De Caelo. It is well known that the Neoplatonist played an eminent role in the transmission of Presocratic philosophy. Leonardo Tarán estimated that “in the case of the Presocratics Simplicius alone has preserved at least two thirds of all the verbatim quotations.” (p. 176)

(...)

"Because of its eminent role in the transmission and interpretation of Parmenides, it is worthwhile looking a bit closer at how Simplicius dealt with the material he quotes from the poem. Since our volume has a special focus on doxography, I shall, in what follows, try to situate Simplicius in the broader doxographical context of Parmenides’ philosophy and raise the question as to how the Parmenidean doxographical tradition can best be characterised and delineated. What is the role of Simplicius within the doxographical tradition of Parmenides and how can he be characterised compared to his predecessors (esp. Plato and the Platonic tradition after him)?" (p. 178)

(6) Tarán, “The Text of Simplicius’ Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics,” 246 f. The full quote is given right below,

27. Hermann, Arnold. 2004. To Think Like God: Pythagoras and Parmenides, the Origins of Philosophy. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Contents: Preface XIII; Acknowledgments XXI; A Note on References, Translations, Citations, Notes, Bibliography, and Some Idiosyncrasies XXV; Abbreviations XXIX;

Introduction 1; I. Pythagoras15; II. The Pythagoreans 31; III. In Want of a Mathematics for the Soul 93; IV. Pythagorizing versus Philosophizing 115; V. Parmenides 127; VI. The Poem of Parmenides 151; VII. The Poem's Most Difficult Points Explained 163; VIII. Guidelines for an Evidential Account 211; IX. Methods of Proof and Disproof 225; X. Irrationals and the Perfect Premise 251; CI. Mind and Universe: Two Realms, Two Separate Approaches 267; Appendix 279; Subdivided Bibliography 297; Index Locorum 341; General Index 353-374.

"What is the Poem about? As I have indicated—and contrary to out-of-date interpretations and the cursory definitions which typify the average works of reference—the Poem is not about the universe, existence, or the oneness-of-it-all. All of these rather lofty objectives are later inventions, even if they have been repeated ad nauseam for the last 2,500 years. Yet the verses themselves bear no evidence that such matters belong to Parmenides' actual concerns. They show, rather, that Parmenides' inquiries were

less esoteric, without being less exciting, considering their fundamental ramifications for the integrity of human knowledge and communication, which indeed may also include our knowledge of the universe, existence, and so forth, and the mode we choose to explain them. Thus Parmenides focused on reasoning and speaking, and how to make both dependable, regardless of what in the end their object may be (as long as it is an expressible object). I like A. A. Long’s comment on this issue: “What Parmenides says is a continuous provocation to our own thinking about thinking.”(450)

There is a fine but very crucial difference to be made between the advancement of a cosmological theory and the demonstration of techniques of how to make an account reliable. Naturally, such an account may also be used to express a variety of things, including the universe and everything in it, but it is only reliable when such matters are addressed in their capacity as objects of thought (see frs. 4 and 7.3–6), and in a form that does not lead to self-contradiction (see fr. 8). In a nutshell, Parmenides' central problem was how to ensure the reliability of discourse. Statements had to be defended against self-contradiction as well as against the misleading plausibility of vagueness—regardless, ultimately, of what said statements were about. For both of these vulnerabilities, Parmenides introduces examples and methods to extricate the truth." (pp. 151-152)

(450) Long [‘Parmenides on Thinking Being'] expands on Heidegger’s remark about Parmenides' Poem that it “continually deserves more thought.” p. 127.

28. ———. 2008. "Negative Proof and Circular Reasoning." In Eleatica 2006: Parmenide scienziato?, edited by Rossetti, Livio and Marcacci, Flavia, 103-112. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

"In Cordero’s work By Being It Is, chapter VI, p. 123, parallels are drawn between Parmenides' Poem and Plato’s Parmenides. Cordero focuses on the use of Ί begin' [arxomai] by the Eleatic thinker - found in B5 and also B8, when the Goddess announces a new beginning before commencing with the Doxa (8.50) - comparing it to how the argumentative exercises are introduced in the second part of the Parmenides (137a-b). Plato, in this latter work, is having his own Parmenides - the dialogues' protagonist - also state that he will 'begin' the demonstration that will follow, the one that addresses his hypothesis ‘that one is'. Cordero speculates that this allusion is not coincidental in Plato, suggesting that Plato was not only aware of the Parmenidean principle of circularity in argumentative proving, but that he used it deliberately in the Parmenides.

While working on the Parmenides, particularly on its translation, I had come to similar conclusions. The idea of returning to one’s initial premise by way of a challenge or test is at the heart of the Parmenidean method, an approach also used exhaustively by Plato in his Parmenidean dialogue. However, in Cordero’s presentation of this approach, one particular point has remained somewhat unclear or unaddressed, namely whether the circulatory proving has to be taken as germane to the whole account, or only to specific parts. That is, must the whole account of the Goddess return to its beginning, or is this only required of the individual arguments that compose it? Personally, I hold the latter view, as this can be fairly easily demonstrated both by the Poem and the Platonic dialogue." (p. 103)

29. ———. 2009. "Parmenides versus Heraclitus?" In Nuevos Ensayos sobre Heráclito. Actas del Segundo Symposium Heracliteum, edited by Hülsz Piccone, Enrique, 261-284. México: U.N.A.M.

"Five years ago, at the annual Arizona Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, Daniel Graham gave a first draft of a paper titled ‘Heraclitus and Parmenides.' He was investigating the possibility of a Parmenidean response to the Ephesian, and he defended the idea quite vigorously.

Graham’s paper was a response to Michael Stokes, who, years ago, in his work One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy, had debunked this theory rather convincingly. I, of course, was very much in Stokes' camp, and as an avid and sometimes excessive student of Parmenides, had strong reservations. But Graham, very graciously, entrusted me with a copy of this early draft. Years passed and although I investigated other things, Graham’s paper, and in a way his challenge, was always at the back of my mind. So it is only fitting that now, after all these years, I’ve thought to complete the circle, in a truly Parmenidean fashion, and devote this paper to Graham’s observations.

A few brief remarks about Daniel Graham’s study: the paper has remained the last word on the subject of a Parmenidean response. The work is well-researched and detailed, each argument meticulously worked out; particularly the final or published version which has some substantial improvements on the original draft.(1) Graham has dug up parallels between Parmenides and Heraclitus that, to my knowledge, have remained largely unnoticed, and I have benefited greatly from this thoughtful study. All in all, Daniel has offered us an excellent defense of the “Parmenides answers to Heraclitus” theory (subsequently acronymed to “PATH theory”). Nevertheless, I have remained unconvinced.

To establish a link between the two thinkers, certain criteria have to be met:

1. The question of chronology.

2. The textual correspondence, parallels or similarities of both works.

3. The question of an equivalent subject-matter: is there a shared object of inquiry or discourse in the teachings of both thinkers?

4. The testimonia of subsequent commentators, their criticisms, interpretations of teachings, and general opinions on Heraclitus and Parmenides.

5. And finally, if the chronological question cannot be resolved, and if no thinker mentions the other by name, and if the testimonia let us down, but if nonetheless textual agreement or parallels can be found, we must find some other means of determining who influenced whom. Perhaps, in this case, we should also consider the possibility that neither thinker influenced the other, but that they both were responding to a third party. My modest survey indicates that this may indeed be the case, a possibility that took me

quite by surprise, considering that in the beginning I was aiming to show that Parmenides was an entirely original thinker, and if in fact he answered to anyone, then only to Xenophanes' epistemological challenge (B 34), (but certainly not to his theology).(2)" (pp. 261-262)

(1) Graham, “Heraclitus and Parmenides”, Presocratic Philosophy. Ed. Caston and Graham, Ashgate, 27–44.

(2) I am aware of the Homeric, Hesiodic and Orphic echoes in the Proem, but I dont consider this a response in the same vein as Parmenides is said to have answered to Heraclitus. It is rather a utilization of familiar or popular themes, which allowed him to evoke a mythical atmosphere.

30. ———. 2011. "Parricide or Heir? Plato’s Uncertain Relationship to Parmenides." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 147-165. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "Most scholars view Plato’s critique of Parmenides in the Sophist, particularly the observations surrounding the “parricide” remark, as quite apt and justified. The theory is that Parmenides deserves to be rebuked for failing to recognize that “What Is Not” can be understood in more ways than one, namely, not only in an existential sense, but also predicatively or, in the language of the Sophist, as indicating “difference.” I aim to show, nevertheless, that Plato’s indictment of Parmenides misses the mark in significant ways, allowing Parmenides to escape the so-called threat of parricide not once but twice.

For example, Parmenides' abundant use of alpha-privatives (e.g., ἀγένητον)—as well as the negative οὐ (or οὐκ) when there is no a-privative form available—indicates that he was well aware of the difference between indicating “is not” predicatively versus existentially. Moreover, the Poem nowhere suggests that his strictures regarding the use of What Is Not are to be taken in the broadest possible sense, disallowing, in effect, the discrimination between the existential and the predicative case. Only when sought after as a “way of inquiry” does What Is Not—in contrast to the Way of What Is—fail to provide us with a graspable, expressible object. After all, the “Way of What Is Not,” lacks any sort of sēmata, or signs, that can be used to navigate it. As a “way of inquiry for thinking” (B2), it leads nowhere, lacking any sort of expressible or knowable object or goal. The complete absence of an object or result, however, does not hinder us from making statements to this effect, nor from uttering the words “What Is Not” or “Not Being.” Yet this fine distinction is lost to many who have criticized Parmenides for being inconsistent, careless, or simply ignorant. The move from the intellectual unavailability of an object that marks a defunct way of inquiry, to the claim that to even speak of such a “way” is both illegitimate and impossible—all the while insisting that Parmenides himself is to be blamed for such a monstrous fallacy—seems an egregious gloss-over, even if the perpetrator is someone of Plato’s stature. If my arguments prove sound, then Parmenides should be absolved of the charges leveled against him."

31. Hershbell, Jackson P. 1970. "Parmenides' Way of Truth and B16." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 4:1-23.

Reprinted in: J. P. Anton, A. Preus (eds.), Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy. Vol. Two, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983, pp. 41-58.

"At least three interpretations have been given to B16 of Parmenides' poem. It has been taken for a fragment of his theory of knowledge, of his doctrine of sense perception, and of his views on sensing and knowing.(1) Evidence for these interpretations is taken from Aristotle's Metaphysics and Theophrastus' De Sensibus. The fragment is usually assigned to the second part of the poem, the Way of Seeming or Opinion.

In this study it will be argued that B16 comes from the first part of the poem, the Way of Truth, and that it is a statement neither of a theory of knowledge nor of sense perception, but an affirmation of the close relationship between thought and Being:(2) there can be no thought without that which is, or in Parmenides' words, ". . . neither can you recognize that which is not (that is impossible) nor can you speak about it" (B2, 78).(3)" (p. 1)

(1) According to Burnet, "this fragment of the theory of knowledge which was expounded in the second part of the poem of Parmenides must be taken in connection with what we are told by Theophrastus in the 'Fragment on Sensation.' " J. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (reprint, New York, 1957) p. 178, note 1. Many interpreters of Parmenides' poem follow Burnet in assigning B16 to the second part. See also W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1965), p. 67; L. Tarán, Parmenides (Princeton, 1965), pp. 253-63; J. Mansfeld, Die Offenbarung des Parmenides und die menschliche Welt (Assen, 1964), p. 175 ff.; and U. Hölscher, Anfängliches Fragen (Göttingen, 1968), p. 112 f.; G. Vlastos, "Parmenides" Theory of Knowledge," Transactions of the American Philological Association 77 (1949): 66-77, argued that B 16 is part of Parmenides' doctrine of sense perception, not of his theory of knowledge.

Finally, an interpretation of this fragment as Parmenides' views on sensing and knowing has been offered by H. Fränkel, "Parmenidesstudien," Göttinger Nachrichten (1930): 153-92, especially 170 and 174. See also H. Fränkel, Wege und Formen frühgriechischen Denkens (Munich, 1955): 173-79.

In Anfängliches Fragen, Hölscher also maintains (p. 113) that Parmenides' teaching in B16 concerns ". . . Erkenntnis im allgemeinsten Sinne . . . . , ohne zwischen Wahrnehmung und Denken, zwischen Trug und Wahrheit zu unterscheiden."

(2) This thesis is not wholly new. It is proposed, for example, by J. H. M. Loenen in Parmenides, Melissus, Gorgias (Assen, 1959). He writes (p. 58): "As to the place of fr. 16 we can by no means be sure that this really formed part of the doxa. On the contrary, there are good reasons for holding that fr. 16 belonged to the first part." My reasons for assigning B16 to the first part are, however, different. Moreover, we do not agree concerning particular details or the interpretation of Parmenides' poem as a whole.

(3) The expressions "that which is," "Being," and "existence" are used interchangeably in this study without any attempt to give them a more precise meaning. "That which is" is a translation of the substantive participle used occasionally in the fragments, e.g., B4, 2 and B8, 35. The most convincing interpretation of Parmenides' thought is that of G. E. L. Owen, "Eleatic Questions,'' CQ 54 (1960): 84-102.

According to him, the subject of Parmenides' poem is "what can be talked or thought about" (pp. 94-95).

I have accepted Owen's general interpretation for the purpose of this study.

32. ———. 1972. "Plutarch and Parmenides." Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies no. 13:193-208.

"Although Plutarch is not a major source for interpretation of Parmenides' poem, he preserves several fragments: B1.29-30; B8.4; B13, B14 and B15, the last two of which would otherwise be lost.(1) He also makes observations on Parmenides' style and thought, and relates one biographical incident.(2) Scholars of Plutarch and Parmenides are divided, however, on at least two problems: (I) What was the extent of Plutarch's knowledge ofParmenides, e.g. did he possess a copy of the complete poem, or was he working with second-hand sources such as compendia ?(3) (II) How reliable and worthwhile is his interpretation of Parmenides?" (p. 193)

(...)

"A summation of Plutarch's treatment of Parmenides is now in order. First, Plutarch shows interest in Parmenides' biography, relating one incident possibly derived from Speusippus' Περι φιλοσόφων.

Secondly, he shows interest in Parmenides' poem, and his observations are probably based on first-hand acquaintance with it. This seems especially so since Parmenides is mentioned with other ancient authors whom Plutarch knew well, and in his travels and study at some major cities of the ancient world, e.g. Athens, Plutarch could easily have had access to a copy of the poem. Further support for attributing to Plutarch direct knowledge of Parmenides' text is found in his discussion of B13 at Amat. 756E-F and his quotation of B14 and B15, not found in other sources. Thirdly, Plutarch seems familiar with both parts of Parmenides' poem. Although his discussion is Platonic in emphasis, his interpretation is not wholly unwarranted by the evidence.

Parmenides does seem to have been the first thinker to make some kind of distinction between the 'sensible' and 'intelligible' worlds, even though the terminology is not his. At least the things perceived by mortals do not have the characteristics Parmenides ascribed to τό εον. Fourthly, there are no clear indications that Plutarch's quotations are inaccurate. Some difficulties, especially in connection with B8.4, can be explained by a copyist's carelessness or Plutarch's tendency to paraphrase Parmenides, possibly from memory. In any case, rather than positing a use of compendia by Plutarch (for which there is no evidence), it seems more plausible to maintain Plutarch's reliance on notebooks based on his direct acquaintance with the poem.

Last, and perhaps most important, it would be erroneous to presume that Plutarch's quotations from and references to Parmenides are wholly disinterested. Several are found in anti-Epicurean and anti-Stoic contexts, a phenomenon which suggests, if nothing more, that Plutarch considered Parmenides an ally of the Academy." (pp. 207-208)

(1) The list of quotations in W. C. Helmbold and E. N. O'Neil, Plutarch's Quotations (Baltimore 1959) 53-54, is incomplete: B1.29-30 at 1114D-E and B8.4 at 1114c are not included.

(2) The Adv. Colot. has extended discussion of Parmenides' philosophy, and the biographical note is at 1126B. Remarks on Parmenides' style are at Quomodo adul. 16c-D, De rect. rat. aud. 45A-B, and De Pyth. or. 402F.

(3) Discussing the doxography on the moon in De fac. orb. lun. 929A-F which includes Parmenides, A. Fairbanks wrote: "it is quite possible that Plutarch was using some Stoic compendium which quoted freely from the earlier philosophers." See "On Plutarch's Quotations from the Early Greek Philosophers," TAPA 28 (1897) 82.

33. ———. 1972-1973. "Parmenides and outis in Odyssey 9." The Classical Journal no. 68:178-180.

"At the end of his "Odyssey 9: symmetry and paradox in outis" (CJ [Classical Journal] 6 [1972] 22-25), M. Simpson draws attention (n. 10, 25) to the possible relevance of Parmenides' thought to the outis passage (Od. 9.366-460), remarking that "the paradox appears to contradict Parmenides' premise, 'That which is, is, that which is not, is not.' "

He also states that his note would be an "unnecessary digression if Eric A. Havelock, in 'Parmenides and Odysseus,' HSCP [Harvard Studies in Classical Philology] 63 (1958) 133-143, had not argued the importance of the Odyssey to Parmenides." Thus Simpson queries Havelock: "... what would Parmenides have made of the central episode in Odysseus' narration of his adventures, the one which at once reveals the hero at his most Odyssean, and contradicts the major premise of Parmenides' philosophy?"

My purpose is, not to reply on behalf of Havelock, but to argue: (a) that Simpson has probably misinterpreted Parmenides, and (b) that the Polyphemus episode does not appear to contradict Parmenides' philosophy; on the contrary, it may illustrate it.

In any case, nothing in the fragments of Parmenides' poem evokes or recalls this adventure of Odysseus, though Parmenides' familiarity with it need not be doubted.!1)" (p. 178)

(1) 1 Parmenides' poem clearly belongs in the epic tradition; there are also motifs common to it and the Odyssey, as well as many formulaic parallels noted by H. Diels in his Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker^8 I (Berlin 1956). See Havelock, "Parmenidesa nd Odysseus," and A. Mourelatos, The route of Parmenides (New Haven 1970), p. 1-46, esp. 17-25.

34. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1980. "Parmenides' Cogito Argument." Ancient Philosophy no. 1:5-16.

"Parmenides held that the only thing we can truly say in philosophy is "is" or, in a more idiomatic but also more misleading English, "it is," éstin. Even though this main thesis of Parmenides turns out to have more consequences and more interesting consequences than it might at first seem to promise, our first reaction to it is likely to be one of puzzlement. How can a major philosopher hold such an incredible, paradoxical view? The purpose of this paper is to make Parmenides' thesis understandable. I shall argue that, notwithstanding the paradoxical appearance of Parmenides' thesis, it is in reality an eminently natural consequence of certain assumptions which are all understandable and which can all be shown to have been actually subscribed to by Parmenides. Furthermore, Parmenides' assumptions are arguably not incorrect, either, with one exception. They are all of considerable historical and systematic interest."

(...)

"Parmenides' first and foremost assumption is easier to formulate in terms of conceptual models or paradigms than in the form of an explicit premise. This model amounts to conceiving of thinking as a goal-directed process that "comes off'' or "realizes itself" in its objects.

I shall first show how this conceptual model explains Parmenides' conclusion, and only afterwards return to my grounds for ascribing it to Parmenides and also return to its background and its corollaries in his work." (p. 5)

35. Hoffmann, Herbert. 2001-2002. "Symbol and essence in Parmenides' teaching of the two ways." Hephaistos no. 19-20:131-139.

36. Hoy, Ronald C. 1994. "Parmenides' Complete Rejection of Time." Journal of Philosophy no. 9:573-598.

"Parmenides is often credited with discovering the category of timeless truths, and he is sometimes praised or blamed (along with Plato) for asserting that what is real can transcend time.(1)

But besides positing a timeless reality for eternal truths to be about, Parmenides finds fault with beliefs about time and argues that time is not real: if temporal thoughts are inherently contradictory then reality cannot be temporal. In claiming time to be contradictory,

Parmenides stands first in a line of philosophers (including Plato, Kant, andJ.M. McTaggart) who find something unreal about time.

(...)

In this paper, I shall suggest it is wrong to interpret Parmenides' position as hinging mainly on semantic issues centered on reference.

I shall show how commentators who do so fail to do justice to his complaints about time. Instead, I shall reconstruct Parmenides' worries in terms of the recent conflict between "tensed" and "tenseless" views of time. From this perspective, Parmenides offers an early proscription on the contradictory beliefs that dog any metaphysics based on temporal becoming. It will also become clear how complete Parmenides' rejection of time was: why, for other reasons, he could not accept even the tenseless view, and why he should be suspicious of attempts to read him as discovering a new kind of "eternity." (pp. 573-574)

(1) See, for example, G.E.L. Owen, "Plato and Parmenides on the Timeless Present," in A. Mourelatos, ed., The Pre-Socratics, Gaarden City: Anchor/Doubleday, (1974), pp. 271-92.

37. ———. 2013. "Heraclitus and Parmenides." In A Companion to the Philosophy of Time, edited by Dyke, Heather and Bardon, Adrian, 9-29. Malden: Wiley-Blackwewll.

"Once upon a time, two giants of the ancient Greek world expressed contrary views of time – views so fundamental and provocative that they continue to resonate in contemporary debates about the nature of time. Neither Heraclitus nor Parmenides wrote explicit theories of time. Instead, they wrestled with a basic philosophical problem: do our ordinary, “common sense” beliefs accurately represent reality, or do they distort it for the convenience or flattery of mere mortals? Both rejected in harsh terms many common beliefs. Both put forward alternative radical metaphysical views. What makes their claims important for later students of time is that Heraclitus and Parmenides each fastened upon some problematic aspect of the temporality of the world, and they each made what bothered them central to their dramatic rejection of common beliefs. Importantly, they focused on different features of the human experience of time as the source of metaphysical error. In their different ways, they articulated views of time so different and provocative that philosophers and scientists can fi nd themselves still wrestling with the same issues, and, in effect, taking sides. Or so the story has been going for about 2500 years." (p. 9)

(...)

"Parmenides ’ rejection of time is complete. Using the admonitions of the goddess he can reject Heraclitus ’ fl ux – what is given in perception harbors contradictions. And the common mortal belief that there is a metaphysical distinction between past, present, and future – plus passage between them – is also exposed as two-headed and backward turning." (p. 21)

38. Hrachovec, Herbert. 2011. "“... goaded perhaps by Parmenides” – Preliminaries to a Platonic Problem." Coceptus no. 40:53-69.

Summary: "Donald Davidson, in his Truth and Predication, suggests that Plato’s concern with “gluing together” subject and predicate in assertive sentences might be traced back to Parmenides. Taking his lead this paper discusses the connection, proceeding in three steps.

A short overview of the literature on Parmenides’ fragment B2 will be given and a Davidsonian move to reduce the complexity of the hermeneutical situation will be proposed. Secondly, given this reduction, a Parmenideian tableaux will be put forward and compared to our present understanding of elementary propositional and predicate logic. This will provide the basis for the concluding discussion of Plato’s characteristic transformation of Parmenides’ dictum into the bundle of arguments that give rise to the problem of the unity of propositions."

39. Hubert Jr., Maritn. 1969. "Amatorius, 756 E-F: Plutarch's Citation of Parmenides and Hesiod." The American Journal of Philology no. 90:183-200.

"The Parmenides verse [Fr. 13] and the Hesiod passage [Theogony, 116-22)] were previously paired by Phaedrus in Plato's Symposium (178B) and by Aristotle in the Metaphysics (I, 4, 984b 23-30), and in this paper my primary concern will be to demonstrate that when Plutarch composed his appeal to Parmenides and Hesiod he was under the influence of both Plato and Aristotle but that he was slavishly bound to neither." (p. 184, a note omitted)

40. Huffman, Carl A. 2011. "A New Mode of Being for Parmenides: A Discussion of John Palmer, Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 41:289-305.

41. Hülsz Piccone, Enrique. 2013. "Some comments on L. Gemelli Marciano's 'Lezioni eleatiche'." In Eleatica Vol. 3: Parmenide. Suoni, immagini, esperienza, edited by Rossetti, Livio and Pulpito, Massimo, 149-158. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

42. Hummel, Ralph P. . 2004. "A Once and Future Politics: Heidegger's Recovery of the Political in "Parmenides"." Administrative Theory & Praxis no. 26:279-303.

Abstract: "Can it be that the modern perspective on politics, policy-making, and administration is so inbred that we are disabled from envi sioning alternatives? Martin Heidegger thought so. The present au thor attempts to give an initial insight into what may be the controversial German philosopher's hidden opus on "Politics" as it revives the relationship between the polis and truth."

The science of politics studies necessities; the philosophy of politics studies freedom." (p. 279)

(...)

"By looking at Greek politics, we are offered a way of looking at politics that transcends the bare ruined practices of our day. Because the Greeks were in the modem sense "unpolitical," Heidegger warns that "No modem concept of 'the political' reaches far enough for us to grasp the essence of the polis" (1982, p. 135; 1992, p. 91).(15) We can focus in two statements for a summary of his findings on the polis. These, however, are no more than an obligato to the permanent theme: The Greek polis is the place where what is, things and beings as they are (Seiendes), can be seen as emerging from the relation with Being (Sein), as that which grounds existence, and human existence (Dasein). The two statements: "Polis is the polos, the pole, the place around which turns, in a peculiar way, all that appears as what exists for the Greeks" (1982, p. 132; 1992, p. 89). And:

The polis is the place of the essence of the historical human being, the where wherein the human being as zoon logon echon [the being that has the word(16)] belongs, the where from where only he is fitted with the fittingness into which he is fitted.(17) (1982, p. 141; 1992, p. 95" (p. 288)

(15) Ibid., "Kein moderner Begriff 'des Politischen' reicht zu, um das Wesen der polis zu fassen." (Heidegger uses the Greek alphabet for polis and other terms to remind us that they must be thought not in modem but in Greek.)

(16) Heidegger, in this characterization of the living being that blossoms into itself through possession of the word, rejects later translations of zoon = animal. He argues this neglects the nature of living being as the blossoming and self-revealing associated with physis. He rejects as well logos= ratio; zoon logon exon = animal rationale. Similarly, logon = word only if seen from a peculiar Roman point of view (1982, p. 100 and pp. 103, 113, 115; 1992, p. 68 and pp. 69, 77, 78). For Heidegger's discussion of the unfolding of physis: his "Vom Wesen und Begriff der physis -- Aristoteles, Physik B, 1" in Wegmarken, 2nd edition (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1978), pp. 237-299.

(17) " .. . das Wo, von woher allein ihm zugefuegt wird der Fug, in den er gefuegt ist." Heidegger develops the concept here translated as fittingness, that which becomes or befits Man, in a German neologism "Fug" and out of the Greek dike, usually rendered as justice (1982 and 1992, C § 6 b).

References

Heidegger, M. (1982). Parmenides (Vol. 54). Gesamtausgabe, IL Abteilung: Vorlesungen 1923-1944. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.

Heidegger, M. (1992). Parmenides. (A. Schuwer & R. Rojcewicz, Trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

43. Husain, Martha. 1983. "The Hybris of Parmenides." Dialogue no. 22:451-460.

"To speak of hybris in the case of Parmenides seems hardly justified. He is addressed by the unnamed goddess to whose abode he journeys as Koupe, "youth" or "initiate", hardly a term of great respect in Greek usage. He is guided on his path, i.e., he has not found it by himself, and he receives a truth he never claims as his own. Could a mortal show greater awareness of his limitations? Yet, in an oddly disturbing way the distinction between the divine and the human is obliterated—the worst kind of hybris for Greek thought and feeling.

To charge Parmenides with hybris is paradoxical, to say the least, and yet perhaps illuminating. The philosopher's hybris has none of the traditional connotations of doing violence or injury to somebody out of wanton insolence and overreaching. On the contrary. His quest for enlightenment is sanctioned by divine power, by righteousness (θέμις) and justice δική(), and marked by almost complete self-effacement. And yet it contains features that would be clearly recognizable as hybris to traditional Greek thinking, and some of its results may well be seen as destructive. The Greek notion of hybris, overweening pride, connotes above all a failure of man to maintain its opposite, proper pride, i.e., to understand and occupy his proper and rightful place in the cosmos. That place is defined for man most significantly in terms of his relationship with the divine, and therefore the Greek awareness of hybris points to the ever-present danger of a disturbance in this relationship. To charge Parmenides with hybris is then to charge philosophy with being double edged, a new source of enlightenment but also a new source of danger.

Transposing this notion from traditional Greek culture to philosophy may illumine how all ways of being human are perilous." (p. 451)

44. Hussey, Edward. 1972. The Presocratics. London: Duckworth.

Contents: Preface VIII; 1 Introduction 1; 2The Milesians 11; 3 Heraclitus 32; 4 Pythagoras and the Greek West 60; 5 Parmenides and Zeno 78; 6 The Age of the Sophists107; 7 Cosmology from Parmenides to Democritus 127; 8 Conclusion: the Study of the Presocratics 149; Notes156; Maps: Black Sea, Aegean, Levant VI; Ionia 12; Magna Graecia 62; Index 165-168.

On Parmenides see pp. 78-99 and 128-130.

"Parmenides is the first Presocratic of whose thought we still have a nearly complete and continuos exposition in his own words. That this is so is due entirely to one man, the Neoplatonist scholar Simplicius. In his commentary on the Physics of Aristotle, written early in the sixth century A.D., Simplicius quotes large extracts from the poem of Parmenides, in illustration of Aristotle’s remarks on it, expressly because, as he says, the book had become scarce. It is therefore almost possible to approach Parmenides in the way intended by Parmenides himself; this chapter will follow that way as far as it can be established.

It is worth noticing that Parmenides expressed his thought in hexameter verses. This was not an odd or ridiculous thing to do, as it would be if a modem philosopher wrote in verse. Verse was still appropriate, and felt to be appropriate, for any pronouncement intended to be particularly memorable. Written books existed, and many states displayed their laws and decrees publicly in writing; yet the habit of relying on the written word was not widespread or of long standing. An educated man was one who had things by heart, and verse is more easily memorised than prose." (p. 78)

45. ———. 2006. "Parmenides on Thinking." In Common to Body and Soul: Philosophical Approaches to Explaining Living Behaviour in Greco-Roman Antiquity, edited by King, R. A. H., 13-30. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Parmenides fr. 16 Diels-Kranz, notoriously, presents a tangle of textual and syntactic problems. This paper starts by by-passing these problems (though it eventually returns to them). The aim is to explore the possibility of a certain kind of reading of Parmenides' account of "mind" and "thinking" (νοός, νόημα, φρονέειν) here.

In the rest of section 1, I consider the archaic (principally Homeric) usage of the words for "thinking" and "mind". Section 2 outlines the proposed reading of Parmenides' theory in the light of these linguistic considerations.

Section 3 grapples with the greatest problem for that reading: the apparently contradictory testimony of Aristotle. Here it is necessary to use the rather different testimony of Theophrastus, and a general hypothesis about Aristotle's reading of the "materialistic" psychology of his predecessors.

Section 4 considers the earlier theories of "perception of like by like", of which Parmenides' is one. I aim to show that these can be understood as involving an "inner model". Finally, section 5 returns to Parmenides fr. 16, and shows how it may be read as an example of an "inner model" theory of mental activity." (p. 13)

46. Hutchinson, Gregory O. 2020. Motion in classical literature: Homer, Parmenides, Sophocles, Ovid, Seneca, Tacitus, Art. New York Oxford University Press.

Chapter 6: Parmenides, On nature, pp. 191-214.

"Parmenides’ creation is an extraordinary adventure in philosophy, but it is also a poem. The poetry is not regrettable ornamentation: it is a potent means to the compelling expression of the thought.

(...)

The poem consisted of: a an account of the narrator’s chariot ride and meeting with a goddess; b and c her speech, an account of the whole cosmos, as it is in reality (b), and as it is in mortal opinion (c). It is a striking aspect of the poem that a presents a metaphorical journey by chariot with remarkable vigour; b presents the process of arriving at truth through roads that are eliminated and followed (similarly the introduction of (b + c)); b presents reality as unmoving; c offers a world full of motion.

The idea that motion is unreal, that reality is immobile, is not a passing detail in the exposition of b. Parmenides is drawing on important ideas of Xenophanes about god, as the language shows: so Xenoph. B 26.1 = D19.1 αἰεὶ δ᾿ ἐν ταὐτῶι μίμνει κινούμενοϲ οὐδέν, ‘he always remains in the same place, entirely unmoved’, cf. A 28.977b8–20 = R6.9–11, A 31.6–7 = R4 last para. Parmenides seems to be pointedly contradicting Anaximander and Anaximenes, who are said to have spoken of eternal motion. His followers Zeno and Melissus took his thought up with energy." (p. 1919, two notes omitted)

47. Hyland, Drew A. 1998. "Reiner Schürmann's Parmenides: Of Unbroken Non-Hegemonies " Research in Phenomenology no. 28:243-258.

"Shortly before his death, Reiner Schurmann [1941-1993] brought to completion his remarkable magnum opus, Des Hégémonies brisées,(1) “Broken Hegemonies.”

(...)

"Because the book is only recently published, as yet only in French, and because it is almost 800 pages long, I shall take rather more time than usual in setting out as accurately as I can the fundaments of Schurmann’s interpretation of Parmenides before turning to some remarks on the philosophic issues raised by that interpretation. Accordingly, the structure of this article will be as follows: after some introductory remarks, I shall, in part I, set out as best I can Schurmann’s interpretation of Parmenides. I shall from time to time make comments on very specific textual issues as they arise, but I shall limit my comments to the specifics of those texts. Then, in part II, I shall raise and discuss some of the broader philosophic issues raised by Schurmann’s thought-provoking interpretation.

I might best prepare the reader for the striking originality of Schurmann’s interpretation of Parmenides by beginning with a word of clarification about my title. If we were to take as our standard some version of the orthodox interpretation of Parmenides (Parmenides as advocating a changeless, eternal, perfect, one Being and that alone, thereby denying all change, becoming, motion, or time; thus the father of the notion of a changeless, eternal Being of some sort), then indeed, Parmenides may have established a hegemony which has been, or perhaps still needs to be, broken. Or perhaps, Schurmann himself breaks that hegemony through his radical deconstruction of that orthodox interpretation. For in any case, the Parmenides that Schurmann reads is certainly no broken hegemony, because it is not a hegemony at all, at least not in the sense of establishing a single, exclusive, dominant and domineering law. As a final prefatory remark, let me indicate in advance how much I appreciate the originality of Schurmann’s interpretation. Unorthodox interpretations of a thinker that leave that thinker far behind by straying again and again from the text or by focusing only on a few lines of the text, those that suit one’s interpretation, are easy; unorthodox interpretations such as Schurmann’s that are accomplished by the most faithful adherence to the text as a whole and its spirit are always the most thought-provoking and challenging." (pp. 243-244)

(1) Reiner Schurmann, Des Hégémonies Brisées (Mauvezin: Trans-Europ-Repress, 1996) [English translation: Broken Hegemonies, Bllomington: Indiana University Press, 2003].

48. Ionescu, Cristina. 2019. On the Good Life: Thinking through the Intermediaries in Plato's Philebus. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Appendix: The Philebus's Response to the Aporiai of Participation from the Parmenides, pp. 145-156.

"As indicated already in chapter I, there is some overlap between the concerns raised in the three puzzles of the Philebus 15b–c and the aporiai of participation spelled out in the first part of the Parmenides. Just as I suggested in the closing of that chapter that the Philebus implicitly addresses the three puzzles regarding the intelligible monads, I want now to suggest that the Philebus addresses also implicitly the aporiai regarding participation that are mentioned in Parmenides 128e–130a. A comprehensive

treatment of either the aporiai of participation themselves or of the ways in which the Philebus implicitly addresses them is beyond the boundaries of this Appendix. I only aim to sketch here some hints for the direction that a study dedicated to these issues could take. In what follows, I discuss briefly each one of the six aporiai and then suggest what I envision to be the direction of a response based on the Philebus." (p. 145)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Parmenides of Elea. Annotated Bibliography of the studies in English: Jac - Lou

Bibliography

1. Jackson Rova, Peter. 2021. "The Secret of the Untrembling Heart: A Cryptological Reading of Parmenides’ Proem (EGP D4.29/DK B1.29)." Mnemosyne no. 74:737-756.

Abstract: "The poem by Parmenides is widely recognized as having a decisive influence on Greek philosophy. The text is also notorious for its interpretative problems owing to its obscure poetic style. Among the discordant quotes from the proem, Simplicius uniquely preserves a verse with the unparalleled genitive εὐκυκλέος (literally ‘of [the] well-wheeled’). Contrary to a recent editorial trend in opting for the lectio facilior εὐπειθέος (‘of [the] well-persuasive’), I argue in this paper that the lectio difficilior is genuine testimony to a poetic device designed by Parmenides to perform a pivotal role in the proemial structure as a whole, and to redeploy a key concept in archaic verbal art by means of paronomasia: the ‘glory’ (κλέος) conveyed through the costly medium of song. The proem thus gives characteristic voice to the experimental spirit of inquiry in which Parmenides variously challenged and took his cue from the conceptual framework of encomiastic performance."

DK = Diels, H., and Kranz, W., eds. (1952). Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. 6th ed. Berlin.

EGP = Laks, A., and Most, G.W., eds. (2016). Early Greek Philosophy. Cambridge, MA.

2. Jacobs, David C. 1999. "The ontological education of Parmenides " In The Presocratics after Heidegger, edited by Jacobs, David C., 185-202. Albany: State University of New Yoek Press.

"In the history of philosophical reflection, Parmenides' pronouncement about the relationship between being and thinking stands as his pinnacle achievement. In his thinking, τό αύτό links being and thinking in their relationship as a belonging together and not as an identity.(1) Even with this novel reading of τό αύτό opened up by Heidegger and others, much still remains enigmatic about the relationship between being and thinking—and, since this relationship is the center of Parmenides' thinking, much still deserves careful attention in his thought. His Poem can be characterized as a depiction of a goddess instructing a youth on how to think τό έόν and mortal opinions. Focusing on this education on how to think τό έόν, we can see how the instruction moves or turns the youth's thought to think τό έόν in its presence with thought. However, if being and thinking belong together and are together in some sort of presence, which we will hold here, then a simple question arises: How are we to make sense of the fact that the Poem is an instruction that attempts to bring thought to being if being and thought always already belong together? We can think through this aporetic character of Parmenides' thought if we consider three things: first, we will examine what is said by Parmenides about the relationship between being and thinking; second, we will lay out the ontological education that Parmenides portrays as occurring between the goddess and the youth; and, third, we will re-think the relationship between being and thinking with the portrayal of the dispensation of τό έόν."

(1) Reading τό αύτό as a belonging together has also been pointed out by Heidegger in EGT, 87, and by T. M. Robinson, "Parmenides on Ascertainment of the Real," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 4, no. 4 (June 1975), 627.

References

EGT = Early Greek Thinking, trans. David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1975).

3. Jameson, G. 1958. "'Well-Rounded Truth' and Circular Thought in Parmenides." Phronesis no. 3:15-30.

"Sufficient remains of Parmenides' poem for its general pattern to be evident. It falls into four sections:

1. The Proem (DK6 28 B 1).

2. A discussion of principles, which lays down certain axioms and traces their implications (B 2, 3, 6, 7).

3. A delineation of the properties of reality, from the starting-point dictated by Section 2 and according to the principles there stated (B 8. 1 -49).

4. A cosmogony (B 8.50-61, 9 ff.).

There are two fragments whose position is uncertain: B 4 and 5. I shall be discussing frg. 5 at length in a moment. Frg. 4 has no implications disruptive of any conclusions that can be drawn from the other fragments, nor is its presence inconsistent with the general scheme of the poem. Its location is a problem, but one which, for the present, can be left on one side." (p. 15)

(...)

"It is my purpose to discuss two passages in the fragments from which conclusions are usually drawn which conflict with the general pattern of Parmenides' thought and argument. They appear in DK as:

B 1. 29: Ἀληθείης εὐκυκλέος ἀτρεμὲς ἦτορ

and B 5: Ξυνὸν δὲ μοί ἐστιν, ὁππόθεν ἄρξωμαι· τόθι γὰρ πάλιν ἵξομαι αὖθις.

These passages have received various interpretations, sometimes separately, sometimes in combination. I shall suggest that frg. 5 should be treated as a doubtful fragment and that at 1.29 the correct reading is ευπειθεος not ευκυκλεως." (p. 16)

4. Janko, Richard. 2016. "Parmenides in the Derveni Papyrus: New Images for a New Edition." Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik no. 200:3-23.

5. Johansen, Thomas Kjeller 2016. "Parmenides' Likely Story." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 50:1-29.

Abstract: "This paper reassesses the relationship between the way of Truth and the way of Opinion (doxa) in Parmenides’ poem. Parmenides’ criteria or ‘signs’ of intelligible inquiry are paradigmatically met by

being; however, by fulfilling those criteria, albeit partially and in a different manner from being, the cosmos comes to resemble being and achieve a degree of intelligibility and reality. Being and the cosmos appear in this way to be related as model to likeness. The paper argues on this basis that Parmenides’ cosmology anticipates the likely story of Plato’s Timaeus. Already Proclus in his commentary on the Timaeus had made a similar suggestion, but this paper is the first to attempt to spell out and assess it."

6. Jones, Barrington. 1973. "Parmenides 'The Way of Truth'." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 11:287-298.

"Recent years have produced a number of distinct interpretations of Parmenides' philosophical poem. Of these, one of the most interesting is that of Montgomery Furth's "Elements of Eleatic Ontology,"(1) and I shall use his treatment of the poem as the basis for the development of a different interpretation, an interpretation which, hopefully, can preserve the explanatory power of Furth's exposition while avoiding certain of its difficulties.

Furth suggests that, at the start of his argument, Parmenides is concerned to show the meaninglessness of negative "is" statements, whether "is" be taken in an existential or a predicative sense. One cannot say "Unicorns do not exist" meaningfully; for, in order for the word "unicorns" to be meaningful, there must be unicorns for the word to refer to. Therefore, negative existential statements are self-defeating, because they purport to deny a necessary condition of their own meaningfulness. Parallel considerations apply to the predicative sense of "is".

If "John is tall" is meaningful only if John is tall, or the fact of John's being tall exists, or the like, then the statement "John is not tall" would be meaningful only if, for instance, the fact of John's being tall did not exist, but if it did not exist, then, again, there is nothing for the sentence to refer to, and therefore the sentence must be meaningless." (p. 287)

(1) Journal of the History of Philosophy, VI (1968), 111-132.

"To summarize the course of the discussion, then. We have seen that, if we do not take Parmenides as postulating monism, the argument proceeds with considerable force to the conclusions that Parmenides claims, and does so without involving him in any direct fallacy, such as a failure to distinguish between an 'existential' and a 'predicative' sense of "is." For just as I can think of something, so I can think of something's being the case, and the same considerations will apply. Nor does he impose impossibly stringent restrictions on meaningfulness; if anything, he is over-liberal in his admissions of existence and being. Given acceptance of the claim that what can be thought of must be, his argument has force.(26)" (p. 298)

(26) Throughout I have assumed that νόείν is to be taken in its customary sense of "to think." C. H. Kahn ["The Thesis of Parmenides," The Review of Metaphysics, XXII (1969)], (pp. 703-711), however, has maintained that it is to be taken in the stronger sense of "to know." This can hardly be so in view of the fact that Parmenides does ascribe νόος to deluded mankind, who, he claims, are totally enmeshed in δόξα, opinion (B 6.6; 16.2). Furthermore, he uses the expression "wandering νόον," and, had he meant "knowledge," this would be a striking 'contradictio in adiecto' (B 6.6)."

7. Kahn, Charles H. 1966. "The Greek Verb 'To Be' and the Concept of Being." Foundations of Language no. 2:245-265.

Reprinted in C. H. Kahn, Essays on Being, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 16-40.

"I am concerned in this paper with the philological basis for Greek ontology; that is to say, with the raw material which was provided for philosophical analysis by the ordinary use and meaning of the verb einai, ‘to be'. Roughly stated, my question is: How were the Greek philosophers guided, or influenced, in their formulation of doctrines of Being, by the prephilosophical use of this verb which (together with its nominal derivatives on and ousia) serves to express the concept of Being in Greek?" (p. 16)

8. ———. 1969. "The Thesis of Parmenides." The Review of Metaphysics no. 22:700-724.

Reprinted in C. H. Kahn, Essays on Being, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 143-166.

"If we except Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, Parmenides is perhaps the most important and influential of all the Greek philosophers. And considered as a metaphysician, he is perhaps the most original figure in the western tradition. At any rate, if ontology is the study of Being, or what there is, and metaphysics the study of ultimate Reality, or what there is in the most fundamental way, then Parmenides may reasonably be regarded as the founder of ontology and metaphysics at once. For he is the first to have articulated the concept of Being or Reality as a distinct topic for philosophic discussion.

The poem of Parmenides is the earliest philosophic text which is preserved with sufficient completeness and continuity to permit us to follow a sustained line of argument. It is surely one of the most interesting arguments in the history of philosophy, and we are lucky to have this early text, perhaps a whole century older than the first dialogues of Plato. But the price we must pay for our good fortune is to face up to a vipers' nest of problems, concerning details of the text and the archaic language but also concerning major questions of philosophic interpretation. These problems are so fundamental that, unless we solve them correctly, we cannot even be clear as to what Parmenides is arguing for, or why. And they are so knotted that we can scarcely unravel a single problem without finding the whole nest on our hands.

I am primarily concerned here to elucidate Parmenides' thesis: to see what he meant by the philosophic claim which is compressed into the one-word sentence "it is." I take this to be the premiss (or one of them), from which lie derives his famous denial of all change and plurality. I shall thus consider the nature of this premiss, and why he thought it plausible or self-evident. I shall also look briefly at the structure of his argument which concludes that change is impossible, in order to see a bit more clearly how such a paradoxical conclusion might also seem plausible to Parmenides, and how it could be taken seriously by his successors. Finally, I shall say a word about the Parmenidean identification of Thinking and Being." (pp. 700-701)

9. ———. 1969. "More on Parmenides. A Response to Stein and Mourelatos." The Review of Metaphysics no. 23:333-340.

A Reply to Stein (1969) and Mourelatos (1969).

"For Burnet and for many scholars of his generation, Parmenides was essentially a critic of earlier physical theories and the author of a challenge which provoked the atomist theory of matter as a response. Commentators today are more inclined to see him either as a philosopher of language in the style of Frege or Wittgenstein or, in the Continental tradition, as a metaphysician of Being in the manner of Hegel or Heidegger. It seems to me that Burnet was closer to the truth (even if his interpretation in detail is absurdly narrow) , and that he and Meyerson were faithful to the deeper spirit of Eleatic philosophy in insisting upon a close connection between Parmenides' argument and the physical science of his day and ours. At all events, any interpretation must. take account of the fact that his doctrine seems permanently relevant not only to speculative metaphysics and abstract ontology but also to critical reflection on the structure of natural science.

Hence I am happy that Howard Stein was willing to publish his comments on the poem, since his unusual command of modern physical theory makes it possible for him to formulate a plausible reinterpretation of Eleatic doctrine within the framework of post-Newtonian or Einsteinian physics. I fully agree with him as to the historical and philosophical value of such a reconstruction, even if it cannot square with every facet of the archaic text under discussion. Simply as a commentary on the text, however, a one-sided interpretation fully worked out will often he more illuminating than a carefully balanced synthesis of different points of view.

Once such an interpretation has been presented, it is the ungrateful task of the interlocutor to insist upon the appropriate qualifications. Stein's reconstruction gains in coherence by taking Parmenides' Being as "truth" rather than "thing," as "discernible structure in the world" or alles, was der Fall ist: the unique Sachverhalt but not the unique Gegenstand. But Parmenides himself is not so coherent, and part of the creative influence of his theory was due precisely to the fact that it can also he understood-and was presumably also intended-as an account of the only thing or entity or object that can be rationally understood. Hence it was that, the atomists could define the concept of indestructible solid body as their new version of Being (on), and empty space as the new form of Non-being (ouk on or oudén). In general, the Greek philosophers never succeeded in formulating a systematic distinction between thing and fact, between individual object and structure (although Plato's self-criticism and later development of the theory of Forms may involve a conscious shift, from one category to the, other)." (pp. 333-334)

"I am grateful to Alexander Mourelatos for having tried to formulate my interpretation more precisely, and if he has not entirely succeeded that no doubt. shows that my own exposition was not clear enough. I confess that. 1 do not recognize my view in the complicated reduction sentences which he offers as a semi-formalization of my version of thesis and antithesis in fragment 2. I agree with him that any reading of the first and second Ways must construe them as contradictory, so that "the reason which compels rejection of the second route is the reason which enjoins strict and faithful adherence to the first route" (p. 736). I think my view can he shown to satisfy this condition, and to this end I shall indulge in a hit of rudimentary formalization." (p. 335)

10. ———. 1970. "Die Offenbarung des Parmenides und die menschliche Welt by Jaap Mansfeld (Review)." Gnomon:113-119.

Review of Jaap Mansfeld, Die Offenbarung des Parmenides und die menschliche Welt, Assen: Van Gorcum 1964.

"Mansfeld has given us one of the most penetrating and original discussions of Parmenides' poem since Frankel's Parmenidesstudien in 1930. The book consists of four chapters, each one of which might stand alone as an independent essay, but which together aim at a unified view of Parmenides' thought. Mansfeld develops his interpretation with a wealth of detail, a careful, nearly complete, and on the whole judicious discussion of other views, which makes his book at once a commentary on the poem and a valuable survey of earlier scholarship." (p. 113)

"Thus Maansfeld does justice to the positive side of the Doxa, in the analogies with Being, and also to the negative side, in the original sin of positing two forms instead of rejecting the other as the non-existent. He goes farther than other interpreters in suggesting an epistemic or pedagogic function of the Doxa as a theory which permits the initiate (i. e. the philosopher) to find his way back to the origins of the manifold of experience in the positing of two basic forms." (p. 118)

11. ———. 1973. The Verb 'Be' in ancient Greek. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Volume 6 of: John W. M. Verhhar (ed.), The Verb 'Be' and its Synonims: Philosophical and Grammatical Studies, Dordrecht: Reidel.

Reprinted by Hackett Publishing, 2003 with new introduction and discussion of relation between predicative and existential uses of the verb einai.

"First of all, a word of clarification on the nature of the enterprise. My original aim was to provide a kind of grammatical prolegomenon to Greek ontology. First of all, a word of clarification on the nature of the enterprise. My original aim was to provide a kind of grammatical prolegomenon to Greek ontology.

The notion of Being, as formulated by Parmenides, seems to come from nowhere, like a philosophical meteor with no historical antecedents but profound historical consequences. It would be difficult to overstate the influence of this new conception. On the one hand, Plato's doctrine of the eternal being of the Forms as well as his struggle with Not-Being both clearly derive from Parmenides' account of to on. On the other hand, not only Aristotle's doctrine of categories as "the many ways that things are said to be" but also his definition of metaphysics as the study of "being qua being" provide deliberate alternatives to Parmenides' monolithic conception of what is." (Introduction (2003), p. VII)

12. ———. 1988. "Being in Parmenides and Plato." La Parola del passato no. 43:237-261.

Reprinted in C. H. Kahn, Essays on Being, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 167-191.

"Despite the silence of Aristotle, there can be little doubt of the importance of Parmenides as an influence on Plato's thought. If it was the encounter with Socrates that made Plato a philosopher, it was the poem of Parmenides that made him a metaphysician. In the first place it was Parmenides' distinction between Being and Becoming that provided Plato with the ontological basis for his theory of Forms. When he decided to submit this theory to searching criticism, he chose as critic no other than Parmenides himself. And when the time came for Socrates to be replaced as principal speaker in the dialogues, Plato introduced as his new spokesman a visitor from Elea. Even in the Timaeus, where the chief speaker is neither Socrates nor the Eleatic Stranger, the exposition takes as its starting-point the Parmenidean dichotomy. (1) From the Symposium and Phaedo to the Sophist and Timaeus, the language of Platonic metaphysics is largely the language of Parmenides.

One imagines that Plato had studied the poem of Parmenides with considerable care. He had the advantage of a complete text, an immediate knowledge of the language, and perhaps even an Eleatic tradition of oral commentary. So he was in a better position than we are to understand what Parmenides had in mind. Since Plato has given us a much fuller and more explicit statement of his own conception of Being, this conception, if used with care, may help us interpret the more lapidary and puzzling utterances of Parmenides himself."

(1) Timaeus 27D 5: 'The first distinction to be made is this: what is the Being that is forever and has no becoming, and what is that which is always becoming but never being?'. (p. 237)

13. ———. 2002. "Parmenides and Plato." In Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos, edited by Caston, Victor and Graham, Daniel W., 81-94. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Reprinted in C. H. Kahn, Essays on Being, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 192-206.

"This seems a happy occasion to return to Parmenides, in order both to clarify my own interpretation of Parmenidean Being and also to emphasize the affinity between what I have called the veridical reading and the account in terms of predication that Alex Mourelatos gave in his monumental The Route of Parmenides.) It is good to have this opportunity to acknowledge how much our views have in common, even if they do not coincide. And perhaps I may indulge here in a moment of nostalgia, since Alex and I are both old Parmenideans. My article 'The Thesis of Parmenides' was published in 1969, just a year before Alex's book appeared. That was nearly thirty years ago, and it was not the beginning of the story for either of us. My own Eleatic obsession had taken hold even earlier, with an unpublished Master's dissertation on Parmenides, just as Alex had begun with a doctoral dissertation on the same subject. So, for both of us, returning to Parmenides may have some of the charm of returning to the days of our youth." (p. 81)

"I want to defend Parmenides' positive account of Being as a coherent, unified vision.

And I think his refutation of coming-to-be if formally impeccable, once one accepts the premise (which Plato will deny) that esti and ouk esti are mutually exclusive, like p and not-p. And it is precisely this assimilation of the 'is or is-not' dichotomy to the law of non-contradiction -- to p or not-p' - that accounts for the extraordinary effectiveness of Parmenides' argument, its acceptance by the fifth-century cosmologists, and the difficulty that Plato encountered in answering it.

However, if the rich, positive account of Being that results from Parmenides' amalgamation of the entire range of uses and meanings of einai turns out to be a long-term success (as the fruitful ancestor of ancient atomism, Platonic Forms, and the metaphysics of eternal Being in western theology), the corresponding negation in Not-Being is a conceptual nightmare. Depending on which function of einai is being denied, to mê on can represent either negative predication, falsehood, non-identity, non-existence, or non-entity, that is to say, nothing at all. The fallacy in Parmenides' argument lies not in the cumulation of positive attributes for Being but in the confused union of these various modes of negation in the single conception of 'what-is-not.' That is why Plato saw fit to criticize his great predecessor in respect to the notion of Not-Being, while making positive use of the Parmenidean notion of Being." (pp. 89-90)

14. ———. 2005. "Parmenides and Being." In Frühgriechisches Denken, edited by Rechenauer, Georg, 217-226. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

15. ———. 2007. "Some disputed questions in the interpretation of Parmenides." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:33-45.

"It is always a pleasure to have an opportunity to return to Parmenides, a philosopher I fell in love with when I was a graduate student. Over the years I have published more than once on Parmenides' conception of Being and its impact on Plato. So my views on this subject are well known, and I shall not repeat them here. But I will at least refer to Parmenides' concept of Being, and I would be happy to discuss this in the question period.

But I want to start by situating Parmenides in relation to the tradition of natural philosophy that begins in Miletus, and I will then proceed to discuss a few disputed points, first concerning the interpretation of crucial passages and finally concerning the direction of the chariot ride in the proem." (p. 33)

16. ———. 2009. "Postscript on Parmenides." In Essays on Being, 207-217. New York: Oxford University Press.

Postscript on Parmenides (2008): 1. Parmenides and physics; 2. The direction of the chariot ride in the proem; 3. The epistemic preference for Fire.

"Parmenides was my first love in philosophy. I had once thought to write a book on Parmenides, but there always seemed to be too many unsolved problems. I conclude these essays by returning to three problems that do seem soluble, and that do not involve the concept of Being: Parmenides' relation to natural philosophy, the direction of the chariot ride in his proem, and the epistemic preference for Fire." (p. 207)

17. Kember, Owen. 1971. "Right and Left in the Sexual Theories of Parmenides." The Journal of Hellenic Studies no. 91:92-106.

Abstract: "G. E. R. Lloyd (1) has argued that Parmenides 'probably held that the sex of the child is determined by its place on the right or left of the mother's womb (right for males, left for females)'. It is the purpose of this paper to challenge this assertion by re-examining the primary evidence of fragments 17 and r8 of Parmenides as well as the tangled mass of testimony of the doxographers, Censorinus, Aetius and Lactantius. In so doing I shall consciously observe a sharp distinction between theories of sex differentiation and theories

of heredity since I shall argue that the confusion of the two subjects has led to distortion of Parmenides' doctrines."

(1) G. E. R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy (Cambridge, 1966) 17 and 50. It is interesting to note the change in wording from Lloyd's article in JHS lxxxii (1962) 60 where he uses the word 'apparently' instead of 'probably'. Other discussions on the problem of Parmenides' sexual theories within the last ten years include that of W. K. C. Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. ii (Cambridge, 1965) 78 ff. and L. Tarán, Parmenides (Princeton, 1965) 263-6.

Tarán indeed asserts (264, note 98) 'sex, according to Parmenides, was determined by the female and not by the male'. Earlier work of importance in this field has been done by E. Lesky, "Die Zeugungs- und Vererbungslehren der Antike und ihr Nachwirken", Akademie

der Wissenscheften und der Literatur, Mainz, Abhandlungen der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse, Jahrgang 1950, Nr. 19, 1272 ff.

18. Kerferd, George. 1991. "Aristotle's Treatment of the Doctrine of Parmenides." In Aristotle and the Later Tradition, edited by Blumenthal, Henry and Robinson, Howard, 1-7. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In his De caelo (3. 1, 298bi4~24 = 28 A 25 DK) Aristotle makes a strange and puzzling statement about Parmenides and the Eleatics." [follow the translation of the passage] (p. 1)

(...)

"What I want rather to do is to suggest a way in which we can make sense both of Aristotle’s remark in the De caelo and of Simplicius’ comments.

This can be done, I would argue, in the following way. Let us begin by assuming that all we have is the world of seeming. This, however, is seen to be defective in that it combines ‘is’ and ‘is not’, and we can know on the basis of the logical insight developed with devastating effect by Parmenides that only that which is can exist. We must accordingly proceed to a fresh analysis of the world of seeming. If we take this world at its own level, which is that of seeming, we can see that it contains, and so can be analysed into, combinations that change between two shapes or principles, light and darkness (Parmenides 28 B 8. 41, 53-9 DK). Thus, any physical object can be found both in the daytime and at night, and further it can be seen at any one time as combining what we might call reflectivity and light-absorption. We have thus the first step in a reductionist analysis. These two principles, however, can next be reduced to one—darkness is what is not light, and on the principles of Parmenidean logic what is not cannot exist. We need not ask whether the negative in ‘is not light’ is negating a copula or negating an existential sense of the verb ‘to be’—in either case it is plausible enough to treat darkness as a negative principle. We are left then with the one principle only, that which is. This principle can be regarded as something which is itself inside or within the world of seeming. But it will be better understood, I would suggest, as being not within the world of seeming but rather in a sense the world of seeming as such when this world is correctly understood and is stripped by the application of Parmenidean logic and cleansed of the plurality of names which mortals assign to it. For Simplicius this whole approach is to be seen as a mistake because it involves a denial of the dualism essential to Platonism, the dualism between the intelligible world and the (derived) world of appearances. But it may well have seemed to him to be a mistake which Parmenides was actually making." (pp. 6-7)

19. Ketchum, Richard. 1990. "Parmenides on What There Is." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 20:167-190.

Abstract: "There is an interpretation of Parmenides' poem which has not yet had, but deserves, a hearing. It reconciles two of the most prominent views of the meaning of the verb 'to be' ('εἶναι') as it occurs in the poem. It agrees with the spirit of those who interpret 'εἶναι' as 'existence.' It agrees with the letter of those who interpret 'εἶναι' as the copula. The basic idea is to treat relevant syntactically incomplete occurrences of the verb 'to be' as meaning 'to be something or other.(1) In section I, I will explain and clarify the interpretation. In section II, I will dialectically support the interpretation by comparing it with other major interpretations.

Weaknesses will also appear." (p. 167)

(1) To my knowledge the idea that such uses of the verb εἶναι' in Greek philosophy might be profitably interpreted in this way was introduced by G.E.L. Owen ('A Metaphysical Paradox' in Rendord Bambrough, ed., New Essays On Plato and Aristotle New York: Humanities Press 1965 71, n. 1). He originally suggested that for Plato to be is to be something or other but later ('Plato on Not-Being') in Gregory Vlastos, ed., Plato, I Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1971 266) he recants.

As for the equation "to be is to be something," the negation of "to be something" is "not to be anything" or "to be nothing," which Plato holds to be unintelligible; and then it would follow from the equation that "not to be" makes no sense. But Plato recognizes no use of the verb in which it cannot be directly negated.

The fact that Parmenides not only recognizes but demands a use of the verb 'to be' which cannot be meaningfully negated is a reason to attempt to understand his use of 'to be' as 'to be something other.'

As is well known, Owen himself interprets Parmenides' syntactically incomplete uses of 'eivai' as 'to exist?' ('Eleatic Questions',) Classical Quarterly 10 1960, 94).

20. ———. 1993. "A Note on Barnes' Parmenides." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 38:95-97.

"In The Presocratic Philosophers Vol. I: Thales to Zeno (London, 1979, pp. 155-175) Jonathan Barnes presents a formalization of an argument he finds in Fragments B2, B3 and B6 (148, 149 and 150 in Barnes' numbering). I am sympathetic to the enterprise but I think the execution is confused. After explaining the confusion, I present an alternative which I think preserves most of Barnes' interpretation." (p. 95)

21. Kimhi, Irad. 2018. Thinking and Being. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

"This book proceeds from the conviction that philosophical logic can make progress only by working through certain puzzles—such as those that come into view only once one is struck by that which is most puzzling in the pronouncements of the goddess who stands at the outset, the gate, of Parmenides’s poem.

It has become difficult, in our time, to be struck by that which is most puzzling in these pronouncements. For we are apt to think that we have already put the difficulty behind us. Our misplaced confidence stems from our present conceptions of logic and language. We fail to see that, for all of their technical and mathematical sophistication, these conceptions are inadequate to the task of philosophical logic indicated above." (p. 2)

22. Kingaley, K. Scarlett. 2024. Herodotus and the Presocratics: Inquiry and Intellectual Culture in the Fifth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 6: Historical Inquiry and Presocratic Epistemology, pp. 167-189.

"Nearly all subsequent Presocratic philosophers commented on truth and the difficulty of attaining it. Alcmaeon’s philosophical treatise began with the admonition that the gods alone had “certainty,” σαφήνειαν, while mortals “inferred from signs,” τεκμαίρεσθαι (DK 24 B 1). Heraclitus yields some evidence for a pessimistic view of man’s ability to identify truth with the forensic metaphor that “men are poor defendants of the true” (ἄνθρωποι κακοὶ ἀληθινῶν ἀντίδικοι).(18) But it is Parmenides’ On Nature, contemporaneous with Heraclitus’ work, that is the most comprehensive meditation on second-order concerns about truth, falsehood, and seeming. In the nearly 150 lines of the hexameter poem that survive, a philosophical treatise unfolds in the form of a meeting of two individuals, an unnamed Youth, who begins the narration, and a female divinity, whose two-part discourse constitutes nearly all of the fragments we possess." (pp. 171-172, a note omitted)

(...)

"A key innovation in the discussion of truth is Parmenides’ elevation of the participle of the verb “to be,” eon, “what-is,” as an avenue for epistemological discussion. The first part of the goddess’ revelation in the treatise is fixed squarely on eon. Its meaning as either an absolute “what-is” or a complement in the sense of “what is x” continues to inspire fierce debate in modern scholarship.(52) The goddess explicitly rejects the consideration of τό γε μὴ ἐόν (B2.7); she avers that τὸ ἐόν cannot be cut from holding onto τὸ ἐόν (B 4); what-is (ἐόν) is ungenerated, indestructible, complete, singleborn, stable, without end (B 8). This discussion as a whole constitutes “thought about truth” (B8.50-1: νόημα | ἀμφὶς ἀληθείης), as opposed to opinion." (p. 181, a note omitted)

(18) DK 22 B 133. For a discussion of the epistemological vocabulary used by Heraclitus, see Lesher (1983), passim.

(52) Gallop (1984), 42.

References

Gallop, D. (1984), Parmenides of Elea: Fragments: A Text and Translation with an Introduction (Phoenix Supplementary no. 147) (Toronto, University of Toronto Press).

Lesher, J. H. (1984), “Parmenides’ critique of thinking: The Poludêris Elenchos of Fragment ,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 2: 1-30.

23. Kingsley, Peter. 1999. In the Dark Places of Wisdom. Inverness: Golden Sufi Center.

"What is to be done when the scholarly author of a book is also a believer and writes in a style that seeks to convert the reader in two different senses of that word?

Firstly, to convert the academic reader to the argument expressed, and secondly to convert the reader more generally to the belief system expressed in the book – in this case a wider mystical approach to life. Whilst doing this, Kingsley also suggests that the current point-of-view of the scholar may be nothing more than a dogmatic and faith-tinged position anyway – so how should we read all this? These questions should be at the forefront of any reader’s response to In the Dark Places of Wisdom.

Kingsley is a lauded academic and also a self-admitted mystic and this book is framed as a journey into a new take on reality." p. 118 (Christopher Hartney, Book Review of Peter Kingsley: In the Dark Places of Wisdom, "Alternative Spirituality and Religion=, 9, 2018, pp. 118-121)

"And that’s the purpose of this book: to awaken something we’ve forgotten, something we’ve been made to forget by the passing of time and by those who’ve misunderstood or—for reasons of their own—have wanted us to forget.

It could be said that this process of awakening is profoundly healing. It is. The only trouble with saying this is that we’ve come to have such a superficial idea of healing. For most of us, healing is what makes us comfortable and eases the pain. It’s what softens, protects us. And yet what we want to be healed of is often what will heal us if we can stand the discomfort and the pain." (p. 4)

"You might be tempted to describe the way that Parmeneides and the people close to him have been treated in the last two thousand years as a conspiracy, a conspiracy of silence. And in a very basic sense you’d be right.

But at the same time all these dramas of misrepresentation, of misuse and abuse, are nothing compared with what’s been done to the central part of his teachings- or the writings of his successors. And the dramas fade away almost into insignificance compared with the extraordinary power of those teachings as they still survive: a power that’s waiting to be understood again and used, not just talked about or pushed aside. This is what we ll need to explore next, and start rediscovering step by step.

So everything that’s been mentioned so far Parmeneides’ opening account of his journey to another world, the traditions about him, the finds at Velia—may seem a story in itself or even a story within a story. But the story is far from finished, and this book that you’ve come to the end of is only the beginning: the first chapter." (p. 231)

24. ———. 2003. Reality. Inverness: Golden Sufi Center.

"The writings of Parmenides, and other people like him, survive in fragments. Scholars have played all sorts of games with them. For centuries they have experimented with distorting them and torturing them until they seem to yield a sense exactly the opposite of their original meaning. Then they argue about their significance and put them on show like exhibits in a museum.

And no one understands quite how important they are. Even though they only survive in bits and pieces, they are far less fragmentary than we are. And they are much more than dead words. They are like the mythological treasure—the invaluable object that has been lost and misused and has to be rediscovered at all costs.

But this is not mythology, or fiction. It’s reality. Fiction is like sitting on a goldmine and dreaming about gold; it’s everything that happens when you forget this.

There is absolutely nothing mystical in what I am saying. It's very simple, completely down-to-earth and practical. We tend to imagine we have our feet on the ground when we are dealing with facts. And yet facts are of absolutely no significance in themselves: it’s just as easy to get lost in facts as it is to get lost in fictions.

They have their value, and we have to use them—but use them to go beyond them. Facts on their own are like sitting on top of a goldmine and scratching at the dust around our feet with a little stick." (p. 21)

25. Kirk, Geoffrey S., Raven, John E., and Schofield, Malcolm. 1983. The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Second revised edition; first edition (by Kirk and Raven) 1957.

Chapter VIII - Parmenides of Elea, pp. 239-262.

"Parmenides is credited with a single 'treatise' (Diog. L. 1, 16, DK 28a 13). Substantial fragments of this work, a hexameter poem, survive, thanks largely to Sextus Empiricus (who preserved the proem) and Simplicius (who transcribed further extracts into his commentaries on Aristotle’s de caelo and Physics ‘because of the scarceness of the treatise’). Ancients and moderns alike are agreed upon a low estimation of Parmenides’ gifts as a writer. He has little facility in diction, and the struggle to force novel, difficult and highly abstract philosophical ideas into metrical form frequently results in ineradicable obscurity, especially syntactic obscurity. On the other hand, in the less argumentative passages of the poem he achieves a kind of clumsy grandeur.

After the proem, the poem falls into two parts. The first expounds ‘the tremorless heart of well-rounded Truth’ (288, 29). Its argument is radical and powerful. Parmenides claims that in any enquiry there are two and only two logically coherent possibilities, which are exclusive — that the subject of the enquiry exists or that it does not exist. On epistemological grounds he rules out the second alternative as unintelligible. He then turns to abuse of ordinary mortals for showing by their beliefs that they never make the choice between the two ways ‘is’ and ‘is not’, but follow both without discrimination. In the final section of this first part he explores the one secure path, ‘is’, and proves in an astonishing deductive tour de force that if something exists, it cannot come to be or perish, change or move, nor be subject to any imperfection. Parmenides’ arguments and his paradoxical conclusions had an enormous influence on later Greek philosophy; his method and his impact alike have rightly been compared to those of Descartes’ cogito." (p. 241)

26. Kirk, Geoffrey S. , and Stokes, Michael C. 1960. "Parmenides' refutation of motion." Phronesis no. 5:1-4.

"Since Burnet at least (Early Greek Philosophy [third edition], 1920) pp. 179 and 181) it has been common to attribute to Parmenides the argument against motion described by Melissus in his fragment 7.

(...)

It had occurred independently to the authors of this short paper that the matter deserved further clarification, and, having discovered in conversation that their views were closely similar, they submit them jointly." (p. 1)

"Thus the fragments of Parmenides contain not the slightest hint of the physical argument that motion is impossible because it entails the existence of a void to move in. But this physical argument is stated in Melissus fr. 7 § 7, after the assertion that void, as not-being, does not exist: 'Nor does it [sc. Being] move; for it has nowhere to withdraw to, but is full. For if there had been void, it would have withdrawn into the void; but since there is no void it does not have anywhere to withdraw to'. If it had not been for Plato Theaetetus 180 E 3-4, the attribution of this kind of argument to Parmenides, not merely to Melissus, would presumably never have been made." (p. 2)

"This whole field of possibilities deserves further exploration, but is shut off by the unjustified interpretation of those who attribute to Parmenides an argument invented probably by Melissus." (p. 4)

27. Klibansky, Raymond. 1943. "The Rock of Parmenides. Mediaeval Accounts of the Origins of Dialectic." Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies no. 1:171-186.

28. Knight, Thomas S. 1959. "Parmenides and the Void." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research:524-528.

"Unless Parmenides' One Being is considered a corporeal unit, he cannot be said to have denied the existence of a void. And whether or not his monism can be regarded as materialistic is a matter of dispute." (p. 524)

"Descartes rejected the proposition that there can be a space in which there is no body only after he had demonstrated "The grounds on which the existence of material things may be known with certainty."(10) The Pythagoreans, after viewing their numbers as discontinuous, postulated a void to separate them."(11) Void appears then to be posterior to: some kind of phenomenalism, some kind of materialism, and some kind of pluralism.

The point here is that Parmenides' One Being excludes all of these.

It seems, therefore, purely arbitrary to say that Parmenides denied the existence of void. The only way to answer Parmenides is to find some reasonable relation between Being and non-Being. Taking body as "what is" and void as "what is not" merely rejects the more original and more fundamental problem, How can non-Being be?" (pp. 527-528)

29. Kočandrle, Radim. 2018. "Explaining Earth’s Stability by Uniformity: Origins of the Argument." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 51:459-482.

Abstract: "Aristotle ascribes to Anaximander a conception according to which the Earth remains in its place due to uniformity. Plato shows that this argument’s validity is based on both the Earth and the universe being spherical. Anaximander, however, believed the Earth to be flat. Since Aetius ascribes the abovementioned reasoning also to Parmenides, in whose work we find hits to spherical shapes, the argument might be based on Parmenides’ thoughts."

30. Kohlschitter, Silke. 1991. "Parmenides and Empedocles in Porphyry's History of Philosophy." Hermatena no. 150:43-53.

"In a kind of history of philosophy Shahrastani(1) draws up a list of seven philosophers(2) - Empedocles among them - whom he calls the "pillars of wisdom".(3) He approaches them with an unambiguous concern regarding the creator, namely to show his unity, and clearly formulated questions with regard to the creation of the world, namely "what and how many the primary principles are, and what the έσκατα are and when they come to happen".(4) As Franz Altheim and Ruth Stiehl convincingly show, Shahrastani took over the canon of the seven philosophers, as well as the problems he brings to them, from Porphyry.(5) The work that is to be considered in this context is his ¨φίλοσοφος ιστορία, of which fragments are preserved.(6)"

(...)

"Parmenides is the thinker who exclusively argues on the basis of the conditions of thinking itself." (p. 43)

"The central term in the Parmenidean philosophy of history is Dike.

All, by being unchangeable and motionless only as a whole, is actually unified and held together by her. One must therefore conceive of Dike as the supreme deity in Parmenides. Here the question arises, in what relationship to each other she and history, or rather eternal being and the world of seeming have to be seen." (p. 44)

(1) Muhammad B. 'Abd al-Karim Shahrastani was the principal historian in the oriental Middle Ages (1076-1153). The work that is relevant for the present paper is his Kitab al-Mital wa'I-Nihal, a treatise on religions and sects.

(2) Thales, Anaxagoras ( = Anaximander), Anaximenes, Empedocles, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato.

(3) Shahrastani; 253, 13.

(4) F. Altheim and R. Stiehl, Porphyrios und Empedokles, Tübingen, 1954, p. 9.

(5) Cf. Altheim/Stiehl, pp. 8-19.

(6) See Porphyrii philosophi Platonici opuscula tria, recog. A. Nauck, Lipsiae 1860.

Shahrastani, Kitab al-Mital wan Nihal, ed. Cureton, London 1846, transl. by Haarbriicker, Halle 1850-51 (=Shahrastani). [See also the French translation: Livre des religions et des sectes, translated by Daniel Gimaret, Guy Monnot, Jean Jolivet, Louvain, Peeters, 1986-1993 (two volumes)]

31. Korab-Karpowicz, W. Julian. 2017. The Presocratics in the Thought of Martin Heidegger. Bern: Peter Lang.

Contents: Preface 11; Abbreviations 13; Introduction 15; Chapter One: Philosophy, History and the Presocratics 23; Chapter Two: The Anaximander Fragment 63; Chapter Three: Heraclitus: Physis and the Logos 109; Chapter Four: Being and Thinking in Parmenides 119; Chapter Five: The Presocratics and the History of Being 219; Bibliography 247.

"Chapter Four is a consideration of Parmenides' fragments 1, 2, 3, 6 and 8 in Heidegger's interpretation, which comes from different works of the middle and later period of his thought. Since for Heidegger all primordial thinkers speak essentially the same, in his reading of Parmenides, I encounter the same issues with which we are already familiar from earlier chapters. He does not set up any opposition between Heraclitus and Parmenides.

Nevertheless, if in the study of Heraclitus his focus was on λόγος, and φύσις, now the foremost attention is given to Αλήθεια. In Heidegger's view, ἀλήθεια is a basic character of beings, as well as the horizon within which the manifestation of what is present occurs. He claims that in the tradition of Western philosophy, the original Greek experience of ἀλήθεια has been misinterpreted and forced into oblivion. Consequently, for Heidegger, ἀλήθεια is what is most worthy of thought. Its question is, for him, inseparably bound up with the question of being. Heidegger's inquiry into ἀλήθεια in the Parmenidean poem takes us beyond the Greek experience of being, namely, to ἀλήθεια in the no longer Greek but Heideggerian sense as the openness of being. Further, since the openness of being refers to a situation with in history, the context of his interpretation of Parmenides becomes the history of being. Only in this context, I conclude, can we fully understand and appreciate the interpretation of Presocratic thinkers in his later works." (p. 21)

32. Kraus, Manfred. 2019. "William of Moerbeke' translation of Simplicius On de caelo and the costitution of the text of Parmenides." In ὁδοὶ νοῆσαι. Ways to Think. Essays in Honour of Néstor-Luis Cordero, edited by Pulpito, Massimo and Spangenberg, Pilar, 213-230. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia.

Abstract: "Although Simplicius’ commentary on Aristotle’s treatise De caelo is one of the most valuable sources, in a number of cases even our only source, for the transmission of particular fragments of Parmenides, compared to the commentary on the Physics it has for specific reasons been sorely neglected in the past. When in 1894 J. L. Heiberg edited the text of this commentary, he ound its Latin translation by William of Moerbeke (1271) to be a highly valuable secondary textual witness despite its coarse and inelegant style. However, while Heiberg only knew this translation from a faulty 16th-century printing, we are now in possession of reliable critical editions of the books most relevant for the Parmenides text. Recent studies have further yielded that the Greek manuscript of In De Caelo Moerbeke translated from was definitely superior to all manuscripts extant today. All the more, this not only make possible, but also advises an employment of Moerbeke’s translation for the purposes of textual criticism. This essay gives a brief survey of the complex editorial history of both Simplicius’ commentary and Moerbeke’s translation as well of the current status of their texts. It undertakes a close comparative reading of Moerbeke’s renderings of the seven direct quotations of passages Irom Parmenides exhibited in In De Caelo. It will be shown that by taking recourse to this valuable tool fundamental textual decisions can be confirmed, supported or challenged in a number of crucial passages."

33. Kreitner, L. B. 1968. "A Greek arch and Parmenides' head. A report on Velia-Elea." History To-day no. 18:129-131.

34. Kurfess, Christopher. 2012. Restoring Parmenides' Poem: Essays toward a New Arrangement of the Fragments Based on a Reassessment of the Original Sources, University of Pittsburgh.

Unpublished Ph. D. thesis available at https://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/16704/

Abstract: "The history of philosophy proper, claimed Hegel, began with the poem of the Presocratic Greek philosopher Parmenides. Today, that poem is extant only in fragmentary form, the various fragments surviving as quotations, translations, or paraphrases in the works of better-preserved authors of antiquity. These range from Plato, writing within a century after Parmenides' death, to the sixth-century C.E. commentator Simplicius of Cilicia, the latest figure known to have had access to the compete poem. Since the Renaissance, students of Parmenides have relied on collections of fragments compiled by classical scholars, and since the turn of the twentieth century, Hermann Diels' Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, through a number of editions, has remained the standard collection for Presocratic material generally and for the arrangement of Parmenides' fragments in particular.

This dissertation is an extended critique of that arrangement. I argue that the reconstructions of Parmenides' poem in the last two centuries suffer from a number of mistakes. Those errors stem from a general failure to appreciate the peculiar literary character of his work as well as the mishandling, in particular instances, of the various sources that preserve what remains of his verse. By reconsidering a number of rarely questioned assumptions underlying the standard presentations and by revisiting the source material with greater care, a number of scholarly impasses that have beset the discussion of this difficult text are resolved, and the foundations for a more faithful and fuller reconstruction of Parmenides' work are established."

35. ———. 2014. "Verity’s Intrepid Heart: The Variants in Parmenides, DK B 1.29 (and 8.4)." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 47:81-93.

Abstract: "Abstract: This paper argues that the widespread impression of Parmenides as a poor poet has led to consequential errors in the reconstruction of his poem. A reconsideration of the sources behind two of the more disputed lines in the standard arrangement of the fragments leads to the suggestion that modern editors have mistakenly treated what were similar but separate lines in the original poem as variants of a single verse. Seeing through that confusion allows us to see Parmenides in a better poetic light, and gives potential insight into how his manner of exposition relates to his philosophic message."

36. ———. 2016. "The truth about Parmenides’ « Doxa »." Ancient Philosophy:13-45.

"In a recent article in this journal, Néstor-Luis Cordero has offered an interesting account of how scholars may have been misreading Parmenides' poem for centuries, as well as some provocative suggestions on how to correct that misreading.(1)

(...)

Cordero’s essay is a valuable reminder that the arrangements of the fragments that we encounter today are reconstructions by modern editors, a fact too easily and too frequently overlooked. However, his account of the history of scholarship on the Doxa calls for correction on some points, and his own proposed rearrangement of the fragments strikes me as at least as chimerical a production as the more familiar presentation that Cordero likens to the fantastic creatures of Greek myth. Thus, while I share with him a conviction that the orthodoxy about the Doxa is incorrect, my own view of where it goes wrong is rather different. In what follows, I begin by discussing several matters raised by Cordero that, though often neglected, are necessary preliminaries for a responsible reconstruction

of Parmenides' poem. As we proceed, attending more closely to the ancient sources for the fragments and venturing into what might seem like alien terrain, a different way of viewing the Doxa, including a ‘new' fragment, will emerge."

(1) ‘The “Doxa of Parmenides” Dismantled', hereafter ‘Cordero 2010'. See also Cordero 2008, [Eleatica 2006: Parmenide scienziato? Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag] 78-80 and Cordero 2011b [Parmenidean “Physics” is not Part of what Parmenides calls “δόξα”]. References to Cordero 2010 in the main body of the text are by page number(s) alone, given in parentheses. The abbreviation ‘DK' refers to Diels and Kranz 1951. Items such as ‘DK 10' or ‘DK 7.5' are shorthand for referring to the ‘B' fragments (and line numbers, if given) in the chapter in DK on Parmenides.

37. ———. 2018. "An Overlooked Fragment of Parmenides in Proclus?" Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 51:245-257.

Abstract: "I propose that a quotation appearing in Proclus’ commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, and attributed by Proclus to Parmenides, preserves an independent fragment of Parmenides’ poem. Because the verses quoted share language familiar from other Parmenidean and Empedoclean lines, scholars have regarded Proclus’ quotation as a conflation of lines by Parmenides and Empedocles, but when due allowance is made for the repetitiousness of Parmenides’ poetry and for Empedocles’ borrowings from Parmenides, there is no reason to assume any confusion on Proclus’ part."

38. La Croce, Ernesto. 1980-1981. "Empedocles' sphairos and Parmenidean legacy." Platon no. 31-32:114-122.

39. Laks, André. 1990. "'The More' and 'The Full': on the reconstruction of Parmenides' theory of sensation in Theophrastus' De sensibus, 3-4." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy:1-18.

Already published in French as: "Parménide dans Théophraste", in "La Parola del passato. Rivista di studi antichi", 43, 1988, pp. 262-280.

"Under the aegis of this physicist, and pre-Empedoclean, Parmenides of the second part of the poem, I propose to analyse here the context of the quotation of fr. 16 DK in Theophrastus' Treatise on Sensations.(9) My aim is to show how Theophrastus, by the use which he makes of the term συμμετρία in his critical summary of Parmenides' theory of sensations, would have authorized the doxographical tradition (of which he is one of the primary sources) to rank Parmenides, no less than Empedocles and Epicurus, under the banner of a physics which respected the integrity of being, that is, in the terms of Aetius' report, of a physics of quantity and of aggregates. This demonstration analyses the way in which Theophrastus interprets fr. 16 and rereads closely the first part of Theophrastus' report, which presents itself in part as its exegesis." (p. 3-4)

(9) J. P. Hershbell, 'Parmenides' Way of Truth and B 16', Apeiron, 4 (1970), 1-23, has suggested that the fragment ought rather to belong to the first part of the poem; but it is hard to see how, if it is true that the duality of the elements, which the fragment certainly presupposes (cf. the beginning of Theophrastus' report: δυοίν οντοιν στοιχείοιν) has no place there.

40. ———. 2013. "Phenomenon and Reference: Revisiting Parmenides, Empedocles, and the Problem of Rationalization." In Modernity's Classics, edited by Humphreys, Sarah C. and Wagner, Rudolf G., 165-186. Berlin-Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.

Summary: "This paper deals with the state of affairs arising when philosophy, which already had many of the characteristics of a modern discipline, became subject in the modern period to historicism (raising questions about its ‘origins’) and to new conceptions of rationality and the irrational. The term ‘rationalization’, used for describing some kind of process leading from an ‘irrational’ to a ‘rational’ state of affairs, takes two opposed values, depending on whether this process is considered as objective or subjective, legitimate or not. The development of a new form of rationality in Archaic Greece (philosophy) and its later historiography often display interesting tensions between the two options. Have we to deal with the ‘original’ phenomenon, which should not be explained away, or with transpositions, which ‘refer’ to traditional claims or patterns of thought? The article confronts in this respect Parmenides’ fantastic description of his journey to the Goddess, in the proem of his poem, and Empedocles’ self-portrait as a sorcerer andmagician, in some of his fragments, and suggests that both of them are liable to the second approach.(1)"

(1) Revised version (responding to observations and requests for clarification from S. Humphreys) of Laks 2003; bibliography updated.

Many thanks to her for the translation and for the further suggestions she made while doing it. R. Wagner, whom I also thank for his reading, tells me that there are Sinological parallels to the role of shamanism in the interpretations of Greek philosophy analysed here,

for example in comments on the voyage of Qu Yuan in the Chu ci (see Hawkes 1985), or in the “mystical” conception of Chinese thought current in the Tel Quel group (cf. Saussy 2002, Chap. 8).

References

Hawkes, David. 1985. Ch’u tz’u. The Songs of the South: an Ancient Chinese Anthology. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Laks, Andr. 2003. “Phénomènes et références: éléments pour une réflexion sur la rationalisation de l’irrationel.” Methodos 3: 9–33.

Saussy, Haun. 2002. Great Walls of Discourse and Other Adventures in Cultural China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

41. Latona, Max J. 2008. "Reining in the Passions: the Allegorical Interpretation of Parmenides B Fragment 1." American Journal of Philology no. 129:199-230.

"Abstract. This article attempts to determine whether Parmenides intended the chariot imagery of his poem to be construed allegorically, as argued by Sextus Empiricus. Modern interpreters have rejected the allegorical reading, arguing that Sextus was biased by Plato, the allegory’s true author. There are, however, reasons to believe that a tradition (either native or imported) of employing the chariot image allegorically preexisted Plato and Parmenides. This article argues that Parmenides was drawing upon such a tradition and did portray mind as a charioteer upon a path of knowledge, and impulse as the horses, requiring guidance in order to reach the destination." (p. 199)

42. Lebedev, Andrei V. 2017. "Parmenides, ΑΝΗΡ ΠΥΘΑΓΟΡΕΙΟΣ. Monistic Idealism (Mentalism) in Archaic Greek Metaphysics." Indo-European Linguistics and Classical Philology no. 21:495-536.

Proceedings of the 21st Conference in Memory of Professor Joseph M. Tronsky.

"In our view there is only one possibility to make philosophical sense of Parmenides' poem: to take seriously the ancient tradition on his Pythagorean background and to interpret his metaphysics as monistic idealism or immaterialism. The sphere of Being described in the Aletheia is not a lump of dead matter, but the divine Sphairos of the Western Greek philosophical theology known from Xenophanes and Empedocles, conceived as pure Nous (Mind) which is the only true reality. The identity of Being and Mind is explicitly stated by Parmenides in fr. B 3, Zeller's and Burnet's interpretation is grammatically impossible and never occurred to any ancient reader. «What-is», conceived as a sphere of divine light endowed with consciousness, is also the invisible «Sun of Justice» (the Sun that «never sets»), an archaic idea known to Heraclitus and imitated by Plato in the allegory of the Sun in the Republic. Night (the symbol of body and corporeal matter) does not exist, it is an empty name resulting from a linguistic mistake of mortals who misnamed the absence of light as a separate substance. The Kouros of the Proem is not Parmenides himself, but an Apollonian image of his venerated teacher Pythagoras whose soul ascended to the celestial temple (oracle) of gods in a winged chariot and received there an oracular revelation from Aletheia herself, a great gift to humanity that liberated men from the veil of ignorance and fear of death. The first part of Parmenides' poem was not just an exercise in speculative metaphysics concerned with problems of motion and plurality, but a handbook of philosophical theology and practical psychology with ethical and political implications: the attributes of the divine absolute are paradigmatic for the personality of an ideal citizen abiding to law (Dike) and a warrior who has no fear of death and pain, since he knows that his soul is immortal and his body is just a «shadow of smoke» (σκιὰ καπνοῦ). The immobility of the divine Sphere is not a physical theory, but an image for meditation, a psychological paradigm of the ataraxia and tranquility (hesychia) of the wise who has eradicated all passions and has assimilated his psyche to god following Pythagoras’command ἕπου θεῶι." (pp. 497-498)

43. ———. 2019. "Idealism (mentalism) in Early Greek metaphysics and philosophical theology: Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Xenophanes and others (with some remarks on the «Gigantomachia about being» in Plato's Sophist)." In Indo-European Linguistics and Classical Philology - XXIII - Proceedings of the 23rd Conference in Memory of Professor Joseph M. Tronsky, 651-704. Sankt-Peterburgurg: Hayka.

"Abstract and table of contents:

(1) Preliminary criticism of the presuppositions of the denial of existence of idealism in early Greek thought: pseudohistorical evolutionism, Platonocentrism that ignores the archaic features of Plato’s metaphysics and psychology, and the modern stereotype of «Presocratics» as physicalists, a product of the late 19th century (excessive) positivist reaction against Hegelianism and German idealism in the English-speaking historiography of Greek philosophy.

(..)

(7) The identity of Being and Mind in Parmenides. A refutation of the grammatically impossible anti-idealist interpretation of fr. B 3 by Zeller, Burnet and their followers. Parmenides’ Kouros is a poetic image of Pythagoras as the originator of the Western Greek monotheistic theology of the noetic One, conceived as a Sphere of immutable thinking divine light (the conceptual metaphor of the Invisible Sun of Justice that «never sets»).

(8) The psychological and ethical dimensions of the Eleatic doctrine of Being, almost totally neglected in the mainstream of the post-Burnetean literature. The Pythagorean doctrine of the indestructible soul serves as a practical tool of military psychological engineering: the education of fearless warriors. Strabo’s commonly neglected report on invincible Eleatic warriors, educated by Parmenides’ nomoi, is to be taken seriously.

(9) The «battle of gods and giants over being» (Gigantomachia peri tes ousias) in Plato’s Sophist 246a as a testimony on the Preplatonic metaphysical idealism (mentalism). It is argued that the two warring camps should not be confined to contemporary atomists and academics only: the whole Ionian (naturalism) and Italian (idealism) traditions, mentioned in Plato’s context, are meant, i.e. the whole history of Greek philosophy.

(10) Some clarifications on the use of the terms idealism, naturalism, dualism etc."

44. Lecznar, Adam. 2020. "Parmenides at his Typewriter: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Media of Philosophy." In Classics and Media Theory, edited by Michelakis, Pantelis. New York: Oxford University Press.

Abstract: "This chapter seeks to explore two writers who are crucial to the history of media theory, Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, and to show how their appeals to the Presocratic philosophers regularly touched on issues of deep importance to understanding the connections between philosophy and materiality. Drawing on the seminal work of Friedrich Kittler, the chapter traces the constellation of the central mediating symbols of the body, the hand, and the typewriter in Nietzsche and Heidegger,

and argues that both writers stage their returns to the Presocratics in order to reflect on the correct media of philosophy."

45. Lee, Harold N. 1953. "Father Parmenides; or, Further Concerning Negative Facts." The Journal of Philosophy no. 50:70-74.

"The doctrine that there are negative facts is well supported in a recent article in this JOURNAL,(1) even though the author does not unqualifiedly espouse the position. He argues that the same reasons which show that there are any facts at all operate to show that there are negative facts. Nevertheless, he does not seem to be wholly convinced by his own argument. Neither am I convinced.

The thing to do with an argument that appears sound but does not produce conviction is to examine its premises with some care.

Mr. Taylor states on page 435 (and again on page 436): "Something surely seems wrong here, and one feels that a bit of analysis should clear it all up." I think that a bit of analysis does clear it up. What is called for is the analysis of the meaning of the

term "fact" in both his premises and argument. I shall endeavor to show that such analysis sheds a good deal of light on the problem." (p. 70)

(1) Richard Taylor, "Negative Things," this JOURNAL, Vol. XLIX (June 19, 1952), pp. 433-449.

46. Lesher, James H. 1984. "Parmenides' Critique of Thinking: the poludêris elenchos of Fragment 7." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 2:1-30.

"It is reasonable to suppose that Parmenides' primary objective in writing his famous poem was to provide a correct account of what exists. Much of the long argument of Fragment 8 is aimed at establishing the attributes of 'the real' (to eon), and it is the teaching of Fragment 6 that all thinking and speaking must be about the real. Yet we should remember that the goddess who delivers Parmenides' message announces in Fragment 1 that we will learn also about 'mortal beliefs' (brotôn doxas) and `the things believed' (ta dokounta). The argument of Fragment 2 begins by listing the ways of enquiry that are 'available for thinking' (noesai). Parmenides' poem is therefore both an enquiry into being and an enquiry into thinking, and his positive theory is both about being and about thinking. In what follows, I offer an account of Parmenides' critique of human thinking, focusing on the crucial, but largely misunderstood, idea of thepoludêris elenchos mentioned briefly at the end of Fragment 7. I shall argue that in the motif of the deris Parmenides expressed a view of the human capacities for independent thinking that departed from an older and derogatory view, and that by adapting the older idea of the elenchos to a new, philosophical, use, he introduced an influential decision procedure into philosophical enquiry." (p. 1)

47. ———. 1994. "The Significance of κατά πάντ΄ ά<σ>τη in Parmenides Fr. 1.3." Ancient Philosophy no. 14:1-20.

"Few of the problematic aspects of Parmenides' poem have proven more resistant to solution than the famous crux contained in the first sentence of his Fr. 1 (following our best MS, N= Laur. 85.19, of Sextus' adversus Mathematicos vii 111)"

(...)

"For more than fifty years, from the publication in 1912 of the third edition of DK [Diels-Kranz, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker] until 1968, it was widely supposed that N actually contained the phrase κατά πάντ΄ άστη -- 'down to, along, on, or among all cities', but A.H. Coxon disposed of that idea when he reported that DK's άστη was actually a misreading of the MS, caused perhaps by a passing glance at the αστι in the πολύφραστοι in the adjacent line. Coxon' s claim that N contained άτη and not άστη was subsequently corroborated by Tarán

1977; a photocopy of Laur. 85.19. f. 124v. clearly showing the άτη has since been published in Coxon's 1986. (pp. 1-2)

"Nevertheless, I believe, and will proceed to argue, that a good case can be made for restoring άστη by emendation as the original text of Parmenides' Fr. 1.3. The case will consist of showing how, when viewed in the larger context of early Greek poetry, κατά πάντ΄ άστη can be seen to possess an entirely natural meaning and, in concert with virtually every other feature in the opening lines of Fr. 1, contribute to a single, appropriate objective for the proem as a whole. The immediate question, then, is essentially a philological matter, but to answer it we must consider how Parmenides' views, aims, and methods might have been shaped by the artistic and intellectual traditions of his time and place." (p. 2)

48. ———. 1994. "The Emergence of Philosophical Interest in Cognition." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 12:1-34.

See § 4: Parmenides' way of knowing, pp. 24-34.

"To the list of Parmenides' contributions to Greek philosophy we should, therefore, add what might best be described as an adaptation of a familiar 'peirastic' paradigm of knowledge for use in the context of philosophical enquiry and reflection. But, having recognized this, we might also want to view Socrates' denial of any involvement with Presocratic ideas about knowledge with some scepticism. At least when the Socrates of Plato's early dialogues sets out to discover the nature of the virtues by putting a series of rival definitions to the test-hoping to find a λόγος that will remain steadfast throughout the entire process of examination his approach represents not a repudiation of earlier views of knowledge, but rather a continuation and extension of them." (p. 34, notes omotted)

49. ———. 2002. "Parmenidean Elenchos." In Does Socrates Have a Method? Rethinking the Elenchus in Plato's Dialogues and Beyond, edited by Scott, Gary Alan, 19-35. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

This paper is a revised version of Lesher 1984.

"The present account differs from the 1984 paper in (1) omitting any discussion of the novelty of Parmenides' view of thought as subject to the control of the individual and (2) offering a different analysis of the structure of Parmenides' main argument. My view of the development of the meaning of elenchos from Homer to the fourth century and its meaning in Parmenides' poem remains unchanged. In the sixteen years since to Oxford Studies paper appeared, the has been relatively little discussion of the meaning of elenchos in Parmenides' proem (and a great deal about the Socratic elenchus), but the view of elenchos as a "test" or "examination" has been endorsed in several accounts: A. H. Coxon, The Fragments of Parmenides (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1986); David J. Furley, Cosmic Problems: Essays in Greek and Roman Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); and Patricia Curd, The Legacy of Parmenides (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998)." (p. 19)

"The upshot of the present analysis is that Parmenides' polude¯ris elenchos was a "controversial but forceful testing" of the possible ways of thinking and speaking about what is. By adapting the older idea of an elenchos or dokimasia of a person’s qualifications or a thing’s true nature to consider the merits of alternative conceptions of the nature of what is, Parmenides succeeded in mounting an effective presentation of his view in the face of competing accounts and a well-entrenched common sense." (p. 34)

50. ———. 2020. "Parmenides on Knowing What-is and What-is-not." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 28:59-80.

Abstract: "Parmenides presented himself to his audiences as one who had achieved a profound insight into the nature of to eon or “what-is.” In support of this claim he conducted an elenchos or “testing” of the ways of inquiry available for thinking, in the process revealing a set of informative sêmata or “signs.” In this respect Parmenides was speaking the language of discovery heard elsewhere in early Greek poetry. Similarly, his claim that we can neither learn nor know about what-is-not (hence must not say or think “it is not”) was justified by the ordinary meaning of the ancient Greek verbs for learning and knowing. Strikingly, Parmenides’ revisionary metaphysics rested in large measure on a widely shared view of what can be learned, known, and made known to others."

51. Lewis, Frank A. 2009. "Parmenides' Modal Fallacy." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 54:1-8.

Abstract: "In his great poem, Parmenides uses an argument by elimination to select the correct "way of inquiry" from a pool of two, the ways of is and of is not, joined later by a third, "mixed" way of is and is not. Parmenides' first two ways are soon given modal upgrades - is becomes cannot not be, and is not becomes necessarily is not (B2, 3-6) - and these are no longer contradictories of one another. And is the common view right, that Parmenides rejects the "mixed" way because it is a contradiction? I argue that the modal upgrades are the product of an illicit modal shift. This same shift, built into two Exclusion Arguments, gives Parmenides a novel argument to show that the "mixed" way fails. Given the independent failure of the way of is not, Parmenides' argument by elimination is complete." (p. 1)

52. Liu, Qinmeng. 2023. "Preliminary Study on Parmenides and the Origin of Greek Dialectic." In Proceedings of the 2022 5th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2022), edited by Holl, Augustin, Chen, ‎Jun and Guan, Guiyun, 2174-2178. Paris: Atlantis Press.

Abstract: "The thesis is a discussion on Parmenides and the origin of Greek dialectic.

By reviewing the main opinions on the discoverer of dialectic, we confirm that Parmenides is the discoverer of dialectic, both Plato and Aristotle provide us with potent evidences, and from their reports we can also find a line of development of Greek dialectic from Parmenides to Aristotle. In addition, we also observe the background of Parmenides’ dialectical philosophy, it has a wide range of sources from previous philosophies. Through dialectic, Parmenides thoroughly changed the whole trend of Greek philosophy, and instilled new subjects and method into it."

53. Livingston, Paul M. 2024. "Unity and Predication in Plato’s Parmenides and Nāgārjuna’s Root Verses " In Crossing the Stream, Leaving the Cave: Buddhist-Platonist Philosophical Inquiries, edited by Carpenter, Amber D. and Harter, Pierre-Julien, 96-116. New York: Oxford University Press.

Abstract: " I consider in parallel some main argumentative strategies of Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā [MMK] and the “dialectical exercise” of the second part of Plato’s Parmenides. I argue that both can usefully be seen as critically targeting the kind of unity that is attributed to entities in treating them as coherent and individual subjects of predication. Both tend to show, moreover, that it is ultimately incoherent to suppose, with respect to any such subject of predication, either that it i) has the relevant kind of intrinsic unity or ii) lacking such a unity, does not exist at all. This suggests that (as I argue with reference to Plato’s Sophist and Plotinus’s Enneads) the philosopher’s attempt to identify and define an unconditional and ultimately consistent logical structure underlying predication in general cannot succeed. Nevertheless, I suggest that by understanding language and ordinary usage as themselves conditioned phenomena, we may see the results of such attempts as delimiting the more restricted domain of what Nāgārjuna calls “conventional” or “ordinary” (saṁvṛiti) truth in such a way as simultaneously to evince the “ultimate” (paramārtha) truth of the emptiness of all phenomena. Specifically, we may see the contradictory conclusions of both Plato’s analysis in the Parmenides and Nāgārjuna’s analysis in the MMK as pointing, not toward a superior and more consistent regulative structure of categories or of logical forms, but rather to a possible overcoming of the “habit” of reifying conceptualization that is deep-seated in ordinary language and practice, and thereby to the soteriological benefits often associated, in Buddhist contexts, with such an overcoming."

54. Llewelyn, John. 2015. Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Spell of John Duns Scotus. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Chapter 3: Parsing the Poem of Parmenides, pp. 19-29.

"If we use the word ‘Being’ to translate Parmenides’ tò έόν as that English word was used at the time when while an undergraduate at Oxford Hopkins wrote his piece on that thinker’s poem, we should heed John Burnet’s observation that ‘Parmenides does not say a word about “Being” anywhere . . . We must not render τò έόν by “Being”, das Sein or l’être. It is “What is”, das Seiende, ce qui est. As (τò) εîναi it does not occur, and hardly could occur at this date.’(1)" (p. 19)

(...)

"To foredraw is to think or perceive, noein.(7) This is to grasp not only universals or essences (essentia) in their anticipative, predelineative or ‘foredrawing’ capacity. It is also to posit entities (entia) in the undistributable singularity of their momentary or continuant real existence. As Hopkins is encouraged to say by Parmenides and, we shall see, by Scotus, without the entitivity of entia, and with a nounhood isolated from a verbhood centred on the verb ‘to be’, thinking would fall short of metaphysical and natural scientia, because thinking would fall short of sameness in difference – thinking would fall short of itself.(8)" (p. 20)

(1) The Note-Books and Papers of Gerard Manley Hopkins, [House, H. (ed.) (1937), London: Oxford University Press] p. 362

(7) Ibid. p. 100.

(8) Incidentally, a typographical dash is called in Danish a tankestreg, a think-stroke.

55. Lloyd, Geoffrey Ernest Richard. 1962. "Right and Left in Greek Philosophy." The Journal of Hellenic Studies no. 82:56-66.

"The purpose of this article is to consider how the symbolic associations which right and left had for the ancient Greeks influenced various theories and explanations in Greek philosophy of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. The fact that certain manifest natural oppositions (e.g. right and left, male and female, light and darkness, up and down) often acquire powerful symbolic associations, standing for religious categories such as pure and impure, blessed and accursed, is well attested by anthropologists for many present-day societies. Robert Hertz, in particular, has considered the significance of the widespread belief in the superiority of the right hand, in his essay 'La préeminence de la main droite: étude sur la polarité religieuse' [Revue Philosophique lxviii (1909), 553 ff., recently translated into English by R. and C. Needham in Death and the Right Hand (London, 1960) 89 ff.).

It is, of course, well known that the ancient Greeks shared some similar beliefs, associating right and left with lucky and unlucky, respectively, and light and darkness with safety, for example, and death. Yet the survival of certain such associations in Greek philosophy has

not, I think, received the attention it deserves. I wish to document this aspect of the use of opposites in Greek philosophy in this paper, concentrating in the main upon the most interesting pair of opposites, right and left. Before I turn to the evidence in the philosophers

themselves, two introductory notes are necessary. In the first, I shall consider briefly some of the evidence in anthropology which indicates how certain pairs of opposites are associated with, and symbolise, religious categories in many present-day societies. The second

contains a general summary of the evidence for similar associations and beliefs in prephilosophical Greek thought." (p. 56)

56. ———. 1964. "The Hot and the Cold, the Dry and the Wet in Greek Philosophy." The Journal of Hellenic Studies no. 84:92-106.

"In a previous article ([Right and Left in Greek Philosophy] JHS lxxxii ( I 962) 56 ff.) I examined some of the theories and explanations which appear in Greek philosophy and medicine in the period down to Aristotle, in which reference is made to right and left or certain other pairs of opposites (light and darkness, male and female, up and down, front and back), and I argued that several of these theories are influenced by the symbolic associations which these opposites possessed for the ancient Greeks. In the present paper I wish to consider the use of the two pairs of opposites which are most prominent of all in early Greek speculative thought, the hot and the cold, and the dry and the wet. My discussion is divided into two parts.

In the first I shall examine the question of the origin of the use of these opposites in Greek philosophy. How far back can we trace their use in various fields of speculative thought, and what was the significance of their introduction into cosmology in particular? And then in the second part of my paper I shall consider to what extent theories based on these opposites may have been influenced by assumptions concerning the values of the opposed terms. Are these opposites, too, like right and left, or inale and female, sometimes conceived as consisting of on the one hand a positive, or superior pole, and on the other a negative, or inferior one?· How far do we find that arbitrary correlations were made between these and other pairs of terms, that is to say correlations that correspond to preconceived notions of value, rather than to any empirically verifiable data?" (p. 92)

57. ———. 1966. Polarity and Analogy, Two Types of Argumentation in Early Greek Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge Unviersity Press.

"The aims of this study are to describe and analyse two main types of argument and methods of explanation as they are used in early Greek thought from the earliest times down to and including Aristotle, and to consider them, in particular, in relation to the larger problem of the development of logic and scientific method in this period." (p. 1)

"In Fr. 2 Parmenides puts a choice between two alternatives as if these were the only alternatives conceivable.

But even if we disregard the vagueness or ambiguity of έστι, the ‘propositions' which Parmenides expresses are not contradictories (of which one must be true and the other false), but contraries, both of which it is possible to deny simultaneously, and it is clear that from the point of view of strict logic they are not exhaustive alternatives.

Fr. 8 throws more light on Parmenides' conception of the choice between ‘it is' and ‘it is not'. The addition of the word πάμπαν in Fr. 8 11 should be noted. What he means by the word ‘wholly' in the sentence 'thus it needs must be either that it is wholly or that it is not' becomes clear when we consider the remainder of Fr. 8 where he argues that ‘what is' is ungenerated and indestructible (vv. 6-21), immovable and unchangeable.(1) ‘What is not', conversely, is said to be inconceivable (8 f., 17, 34 ff.), and we are told that nothing can ever come to be from what is not (7 ff., 12 f.). The two alternatives between which Parmenides wishes a choice to be made might, then, be expressed, in this context, as unalterable existence on the one hand, and unalterable non-existence on the other. But if this is so, Parmenides' alternatives, stated in the form of propositions, are again a pair of contrary, not contradictory, assertions, for the contradictory of 'it exists unalterably' is 'it does not exist unalterably' and not 'it is unalterably non-existent' . By taking 'it is' and 'it is not' in this sense(2) as exhaustive alternatives in Fr. 8 11 and again in 16 (‘it is or it is not'), Parmenides forces an issue. Physical objects, subject to change, cannot be said to 'be' in the sense of 'exist unalterably' which Parmenides evidently demands: but since he allows no other alternative besides unalterable existence and unalterable non-existence, then, according to this argument, physical objects must be said not to exist at all, indeed to be quite inconceivable." (pp. 104-105)

(1) See ακίνητον at Fr. 8 26, and the denial of all sorts of change at 38 ff.

(2) Even if we take έστι in a predicative, rather than an existential, sense, Parmenides’ choice again seems to lie between a pair of contrary assertions, i.e. between 'it is wholly so-and-so' (e.g. black) and 'it is wholly not-so-and-so' (not black), rather than between contradictories ('it is wholly so-and-so' and 'it is not wholly so-and-so').

58. ———. 1972. "Parmenides' Sexual Theories. A Reply to Mr Kember." The Journal of Hellenic Studies no. 92:178-179.

Abstract: "In an article entitled ‘Right and left in the sexual theories of Parmenides' (Journal of Hellenic Studies XCI [1971] 70–79) Mr. Owen Kember challenges my statement (Polarity and Analogy [1966] 17) that ‘Parmenides probably held that the sex of the child is determined by its place on the right or left of the mother's womb (right for males, left for females)'. In his article Kember draws attention, usefully, to the confusions and contradictions of the doxographic tradition. He has, however, in my view, misinterpreted one crucial piece of evidence. This is the testimony of Galen, who quotes Parmenides Fragment 17 (δεξιτεροῖσιν μὲν κούρους, λαιοῖσι δὲ κούρας) in the course of his commentary on [Hippocrates] Epidemics vi ch. 48. Kember notes, correctly, that the meaning of the fragment by itself is quite unclear: 'the only deduction which can be safely made from the actual fragment is that Parmenides thought right and left were somehow connected with sex, and even here we must rely on Galen's judgement that the passage did in fact refer to sex in the first place' (op. cit. 76)."

59. Loenen, Johannes Hubertus. 1959. Parmenides, Melissus, Gorgias: A Reinterpretation of Eleatic Philosophy. Assen: Van Gorcum.

Part I: Parmenides Περί Φύσεως, pp. 6-124.

"The philosophy of the Eleatics has at all times aroused interest, not only in historians of philosophy, but also in wide circles of philosophers who realize that the theories of important thinkers of the past belong to philosophical speculation itself. Since the present study, though based primarily on a philological method, proposes an interpretation of Eleaticism which puts the development of pre-Socratic philosophy as a whole in a new light, it seemed desirable to the author to try to make it accessible to non-specialists as well. This might at the same time help to bridge the gulf actually existing in the field of ancient philosophy between philologists and philosophers. But if one wants to interest the philosophers without failing to satisfy the just demands on the part of the philologists, the only possible method would appear to be to discuss philological points as far as possible in notes. In spite of the drawbacks involved in this method I have followed it wherever possible. Consequently I would draw the attention of philologists particularly to the notes. Meanwhile the fact must not be disguised that the present study is essentially an interpretation of texts, so that the reader will constantly be referred to the “Fragmente der Vorsokratiker.” Philosophers will thus have to go through a much larger amount of philological detail than they are used to, but they too will sometimes find indispensable explanations in the notes." (Preface, p. 1)

"Having come to the end of the first part of my inquiry, I feel bound to express my great admiration of this philosopher, who possessed intellectual powers that are almost incredible at so early a stage of the history of philosophy. In conclusion I would say that he must not be looked upon as the father either of materialism or of idealism, but that he may indeed be considered the first representative of dualistic metaphysics and of a realistic form of epistemological rationalism. He discovered the unity and invariability of the concept, though only as regards the idea of being (he was struck by its transcendental character, in the pre-Kantian sense of the word) and at the same time he was the first to surmise the existence of an extra-spatial and extra¬ temporal metaphysical reality, which to him still formed an insepa¬ rable unity with its idea. Even though the appreciation of philosophical opponents of the school of thought of which Parmenides is the first representative may be a little more moderate than mine, I think no one will venture to deny the truth of Plato’s statement that he possessed a βάθος (...) παντάπασι γενναῖον (Theaet. 183 e)." (p. 124)

60. Long, Anthony Arthur. 1963. "The Principles of Parmenides' Cosmogony." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 8:90-107.

Reprinted in: D. J. Furley and R. E. Allen (eds.), Studies in Presocratic Philosophy. Vol. II: The Eleatic and the Pluralists, London,: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975, pp. 82-101.

"The significance claimed by Parmenides for the cosmogony which forms the second half of his poem continues to be highly controversial. The interpretations offered by Owen and Chalmers, to name two recent criticisms, are so widely divergent that one might despair of arriving at any measure of agreement. (2) But since the significance of The Way of Truth must itself remain in some doubt until the status of the cosmogony is determined, further examinations of the evidence are justified. The purpose of this article is to discuss the passages throughout the poem which are concerned with mortal beliefs, and to suggest an interpretation of the fundamental lines 50-61 of B 8. (3) In this way the function of the cosmogony may, I believe, become clearer.

Of the solutions to the problem suggested by ancient and modern critics, four main trends can be discerned:

I. The cosmogony is not Parmenides' own but a systematized account of contemporary beliefs.

2. The cosmogony is an extension of The Way of Truth.

3. The cosmogony has relative validity as a second-best explanation of the world.

4. Parmenides claims no truth for the cosmogony.

The first view, canvassed by Zeller and modified by Burnet to a 'sketch of contemporary Pythagorean cosmology', finds few adherents among modern scholars. (4) It has never been explained, on this interpretation, why the goddess should be made to expound in detail a critique of fallacious theories. Bowra (5) has taught us to see the poem as demonstrably apocalyptic, and Parmenides needed no goddess's patronage to set forth his contemporaries' cosmological systems. Moreover, there is nothing in the later part of the poem which can be explicitly attributed to any attested philosopher. The doxographers in general, from Aristotle, assign the cosmogony to Parmenides himself.

The second and third views above have received much support. It is argued, following Aristotle, (6) that Parmenides cannot have countenanced absolute denial of phenomena. Such an explanation, however, fails entirely to account for the later activity of the Eleatics, and is quite at variance with the evidence of the poem. It belittles the achievement of Parmenides, and fails to take into account the evidence in favour of 4., even when this is equivocal. I shall argue that the cosmogony gives a totally false picture of reality; that it is the detailed exposition of the false way mentioned in The Way of Truth (B 6.4-9) and promised by the goddess in the proem (B 1. 30-32); that it takes its starting point from the premise of that false way, the admission of Not-being alongside Being, not from the introduction of two opposites, Fire and Night; and finally, that its function is entirely ancillary to the Way of Truth, in the sense of offering the exemplar, par excellence, of all erroneous systems, as a criterion for future measurement."

(2) G. E. L. Owen, 'Eleatic Questions', Classical Quarterly NS X (1960), pp. 84-102, above, pp. 48-81; W. R. Chalmers, 'Parmenides and the Beliefs of Mortals', Phronesis V (1960), pp. 5-22.

(3) All fragments of Parmenides are quoted from Diels-Kranz, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin 1951).

(4) J. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (London 1930), p. 185.

(5) C. M. Bowra, 'The Proem of Parmenides', Classical Philology XXXII, 2 (1937), pp. 97-112.

(6) Cf. Aristotle, Met. A5 986 b 18.

61. ———. 1996. "Parmenides on Thinking Being." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy no. 12:125-151.

With a commentary by Stanley Rosen, pp. 152-162.

Reprinted in: G. Reschnauer (ed.), Frügriechisches Denken, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005, pp. 227-251.

"At the end of one of his studies of Parmenides Heidegger wrote: "The dialogue with Parmenides never comes to an end, not only because so much in the preserved fragments of his 'Didactic Poem' still remains obscure, but also because what is said there continually deserves more thought."(1) Heidegger's diagnosis of the reasons for "this unending dialogue" is instructive-Parmenides' obscurity, on the one hand, and secondly, the merit of his words as a provocation of thought." (p. 125)

(...)

"In this paper I want to elucidate Parmenides' project on the assumption that we should approach him as a philosopher whose primary concern was to explore the activity of veridical thinking, and to identify its subject and object." (p. 126)

(...)

"Drawing upon his own philosophy, Heidegger offered a number of suggestions—some of them challenging, others perverse— about the way Parmenides took thinking to relate to Being. If I understand Heidegger, he tried to get inside the mind at work in Parmenides' poem, with a view to showing what it is like to think Being with Parmenides. My paper, though it is totally different from Heidegger's in method and findings, has that much in common with his.(5) I propose that Parmenides' first call on us is not to think about Being but to think about thinking Being (6). In modern jargon, Parmenides' project is a second-order inquiry. He is not purely or primarily a metaphysician. He is investigating mind, from the starting point that something is there—Being or truth—for mind to think." (p. 127)

62. ———. 2019. "Poets as philosophers and philosophers as poets : Parmenides, Plato, Lucretius, and Wordsworth." In Logoi and Muthoi: Further Essays in Greek Philosophy and Literature, edited by Wians, William, 319-334. Albany: State University of New York Press.

"I cannot prove that Parmenides, my earliest philosopher poet, was already familiar with the Greek use of poiesis for poetry specifically. But we can confidently assume that his poem was designed to strike his hearers as a supremely creative production, inspired by the unnamed goddess who instructs “the man who knows” in the respective “ways” of Truth and Opinion. It is often assumed that Parmenides wrote in verse because prose at this date (about 500 BCE) was not yet an established form of composition, but I find this proposal unconvincing. Heraclitus and other early “scientific” writers composed in prose. Parmenides’s choice of verse was clearly deliberate and not continued by his Eleatic successor Zeno. Diogenes Laertius (9.22) couples Parmenides as a philosophical poet with Hesiod, Xenophanes, and Empedocles, but the association obscures big differences between these four authors. Hesiod, whether or not we call him a philosopher, was an epic poet at a time when epic poetry was the only literary genre. Xenophanes was a professional rhapsode, who recited his poems at symposia. Empedocles’s hexameter poetry alludes to Parmenides, but, unlike Parmenides, Empedocles also wrote poems on non-philosophical themes; and his choice of verse for his great poem on nature may well have been influenced by his strong sympathies with Orphism and Orphism’s use of hexameter poetry. We need to explain Parmenides’s choice of verse through his particular intention and message.

I propose to examine his work as a philosopher poet by reference to four criteria—speculative creativity, cultural authority, emotional intensity, and memorable phraseology. Once I have done that, I shall proceed to apply these criteria to my other three philosopher poets." (p. 324)

63. Loux, Michael J. 1992. "Aristotle and Parmenides: An Interpretation of Physics A.8." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy no. 8:281-319.

With a commentary by Arthur Madigan, pp. 320-326.

"Parmenides' argument for the impossibility of change so dominated Greek thinking that we can expect it to loom large in Aristotle's discussion of coming to be in Physics A, and we are not disappointed. After presenting his own analysis of coming to be in Physics A.7, Aristotle devotes all of A.8 to the argument.(1)" (p. 281)

(1) In attempting to understand Aristotle's response to the Parmenidean argument, one is struck by the fact that recent literature on A.8 seldom attempts to work through the difficult text of A.8. Those writing on the chapter typically provide inferential reconstructions of Aristotle's reply to Parmenides. As philosophically interesting as those reconstructions are, they tend to leave large chunks of the text unexplained. This paper is an attempt to identify the line of argument Aristotle actually employs in A.8. Its method is unabashedly that of extended philosophical commentary. I do not claim to have explanations of every line of the chapter, but I hope the paper goes some distance towards delineating the main contours of the argument of A.8. I make no apologies for my somewhat tedious attention to the details of Aristotle's response to Parmenides since I believe that clarity on the text of A.8 is a prerequisite to more general philosophical reflection of the sort that has typified recent literature on this chapter.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Parmenides of Elea. Annotated Bibliography of the studies in English: Mac - Mou

Bibliography

1. Macé, Arnaud. 2019. "Ordering the Universe in Speech. Kosmos and Diakosmos in Parmenides’ Poem." In Cosmos in the Ancient World, edited by Horky, Phillip Sidney, 42-61. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"My hypothesis is that Parmenides, who chose to express himself in the verse, vocabulary, and images ofHomer, can be chiefly credited with making the categories of Archaic poetry available for cosmology,

so that the universe could start to openly be described as another κόσμος that resulted from the process described by the verbs κοσμέω and διακοσμέω.

Only such a daring move could have opened the way to call the universe simply a ‘kosmos’, or even the kosmos.

My further claim is that Parmenides is able to bring the universe into the list of items that a poet would call well-ordered precisely because he exposes and criticises the traditional epic relation of word to reality: a well-ordered song is one that tells the truth about what actually happened, its order fitting the order of reality itself. I would like to suggest that the way Parmenides weaves κόσμος and διακόσμος together at the end of B 8 both exposes and denounces the claim that a combination of verses, a κόσμος ἐπέων, should be expected to turn into the disclosure of a διάκοσμος. Only this time the great ordering is not the catalogue of ships ready for battle, but the division of the great principles according to which the universe is organised by mortals. Parmenides exposes the delusion of a song claiming to disclose the organisation of the whole of reality, ordered like the armies of the Achaeans. Such an approach changes the way we look at the status of cosmology and cosmogony in Parmenides: we usually think it should either be true and consistent or false and inconsistent. Parmenides shows us how human words, projecting human practices and institutions on the universe, make it a very consistent order – and all the more deceitful because of its consistency." (pp. 42-43, notes omitted)

2. Mackenzie, Mary Margaret. 1982. "Parmenides' Dilemma." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 27:1-12.

Reprinted in M. M. McCabe, Platonic Conversations, New York Oxford University Press 2015, pp. 73-82.

Abstract: "Parmenides the Eleatic wrote a treatise which intrigued, puzzled and confounded the later philosophical tradition.(2) In it, he argued for a strong monism: what there is, is eternal, complete, immoveable and unvarying, one and homogeneous (DK 28B 8.3-6).(3) All the rest, the world of perceptible things, is contradictory - or an illusion.

Strong monism is frighteningly radical. So Parmenides left a series of problems in his wake, some of which have proved so recalcitrant as to be dismissed with that counsel of despair 'it's a dialectical device'.(4) This paper addresses two of those problems, and recasts the dialectical device in a mood of optimism."

(2) The secondary literature on Parmenides is extensive: cf. bibliographies in J. Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, Vol.1 (London: 1979) (PP) and A.P.D. Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides (New Haven: 1970). Like many students of ancient philosophy, I have benefited most of all from the work of G.E.L. Owen; see, for example, his classic 'Eleatic Questions' (EQ) in R.E. Allen and D.J. Furley eds. Studies in Presocratic Philosophy, Vol.II (London: 1975), 48-81: or 'Plato and Parmenides on the Timeless Present' in A.P.D. Mourelatos, ed, The Presocratics (New York: 1974). 271-292.

(3) All references to H. Diels and W. Kranz, eds. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Zurich: 1968) (DK).

(4) Cf. Owen, EQ, 54.

3. Mackenzie, Tom. 2017. "Parmenides and early Greek Allegory." Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici no. 79:31-59.

Abstract: "This article offers a new approach to the question of the alle- gorical status of Parmenides' poem, and suggests a new interpretation of the problematic line B8.53. It is argued that disagreements over whether Parmenides uses allegory arise from scholars using the term in different senses. An overview of the early Greek understanding of allegory sug- gests that Parmenides' poem can tentatively be seen as the most extended instance of allegorical composition in early Greek literature."

4. ———. 2021. Poetry and Poetics in the Presocratic philosophers: Reading Xenophanes, Parmenides and Empedocles as Literature Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 2 Parmenides, pp. 65-101.

"Since Xenophanes, Parmenides and Empedocles are retrospectively categorised as philosophers, there has often been an implicit assumption that they cannot be poets in any more essential sense than that they

happen to use verse. Consequently, they are relatively neglected by scholars of Greek poetry.

In light of this neglect, the present study applies methods from modern literary criticism of ancient poetry to the texts of these three authors, whilst also remaining sensitive to their philosophical significance, in an attempt to explain what sorts of experiences they could provide to the attentive listener and by what methods. In the following chapters, I enlist a range of historical and archaeological evidence that might seem superfluous for the history of philosophy to help reconstruct the wider cultural norms that could affect an audience’s response." (p.4, notes omitted)

(...)

"Chapter 2 offers a reading of Parmenides’ proem within the context of other ancient accounts of supernatural journeys to places beyond the usual mortal realm, including some Near Eastern examples from outside the Greek tradition. Although these examples were almost certainly unfamiliar to Parmenides and his audiences, they originated from an ancient literary culture which was broadly similar to, and had at least some points of contact with, that of the Greeks. They are therefore taken as evidence for the sorts of narratives which could have been familiar and so can elucidate the connotations and particularities of Parmenides’ text." (p. 5, a note omitted)

5. Maddox, Graham. 2011. "The spell of Parmenides and the paradox of the commonwealth." History of Political Thought no. 32:253-279.

Abstract: "Given the dominance of the United States' constitutional tradition, the modern world has inherited a widespread conservatism that holds constitutional 'reform' to be risky and change to mean decline. This attitude has ancient roots. Atavism in politics may be traced to movements that draw (however remotely) upon the legacy of the presocratic philosopher, Parmenides, who promoted a monist view of the world and graphically represented a radical rejection of all change as mere illusion. As one of the forerunners of the immeasurably influential Plato and Aristotle, he helped to shape a philosophical worldview in which the ultimate reality was locked in a realm of disembodied and unchanging Forms. Despite his 'new modes and orders', archaism is apparent in Machiavelli's constitutional inheritance from Polybius, who sought to arrest change through a blending of the 'given' forms of government. This mixed constitution is inherently not conducive to democratic development."

6. Makin, Stephen. 2014. "Parmenides, Zeno, and Melissus." In The Routledge Companion to Ancient Philosophy, edited by Warren, James and Sheffield, Frisbee, 126-158. New York: Routledge.

Abstract: "Parmenides, Zeno and Melissus, philosophers of the fifth century BC, are often grouped together by scholars. They are sometimes referred to collectively as the Eleatics, after Elea in southern Italy, the home city of both Parmenides and Zeno (Melissus came from

the Greek island of Samos). The connection between them is generally taken to turn on an opaque set of views enunciated by the earliest of the three, Parmenides. Each of the three can be taken as representative of a distinct philosophical strategy. Parmenides was an innovator, in that he offered positive arguments for a novel and provocative set of views about the nature of reality. Zeno was a defender, in that he attacked those who thought Parmenides’ ideas sufficiently absurd that they could be rejected out of hand. Melissus developed Parmenides’ thought by arguing, often in fresh ways, for views which, while fundamentally Parmenidean, differed in some details from those originally set out by Parmenides. I will accept this framework in what follows, although this account of the relation between Parmenides, Zeno and Melissus is not universally accepted. (See Plato’s Parmenides 126b–129a for the source of the view of Zeno as a defender of Parmenides; for critical discussion see Solmsen 1971, Vlastos 1975, Barnes 1982: 234–237; on Parmenides and Melissus see Palmer 2004; for a treatment of all three see Palmer 2009: Chapter 5.)" (p. 34)

Bibliography

Barnes, J. (1982), The Presocratic Philosophers (revised single volume edition), London: Routledge

Solmsen, F. (1971), “The Tradition about Zeno of Elea Re-examined”, Phronesis 16: 116–141

Palmer, J. (2004), “Melissus and Parmenides”, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 26: 19–54

Palmer, J. (2009), Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Vlastos, G. (1975), “Plato’s Testimony Concerning Zeno of Elea”, Journal of Hellenic Studies 95: 136–163

7. Malcolm, John. 1991. "On Avoiding the Void." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 19:75-94.

"Several prominent scholars have maintained that a denial of empty space, or the void, is crucial to Parmenides' rejection of plurality and locomotion.' Plurality, for example, implies divisibility but there is no what is not (or void) to separate one supposed portion of what is from another. Hence what is is one. Locomotion, also, might well appear to need some (empty) room for manoeuvre, but such is precluded by the proclaimed 'fullness' of what is.

Recently, however, interpreters of Parmenides have not been convinced that an appeal to the non-existence of a void plays a role in his denial of locomotion and plurality. The void is in fact never explicitly mentioned in his poem. More importantly, to introduce the void weakens Parmenides' position, for a plenum may he regarded as permitting both locomotion and plurality -- a situation adopted by his successors Empedocles and Anaxagoras. Moreover, at B 8. 22 Parmenides asserts that there cannot be any distinctions within what is and this principle is strong enough to preclude any locomotion or plurality. This renders an appeal to the absence of the void unnecessary as well as insufficient.

Let me expand on this latter point with regard to both locomotion and plurality. In so doing I shall accept certain assumptions which shall require (and receive) subsequent identification and defence." (pp. 75-76, notes omitted)

8. ———. 2006. "Some Cautionary Remarks on the 'Is'/'Teaches' Analogy." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 31:281-296.

"Parmenides says that ‘what is not’ cannot be thought of or expressed (fragments 2, 3, 6). Though there is no explicit filling after the forms of einai, let us not read them as ‘exists’, but let us see how far we can get without committing Parmenides to the view that we cannot think of, or refer in speech to, what does not exist.(10) If we understand an ellipsis and take the traditional alternative, the copula, Parmenides’ dictum seems obviously true. If we cannot ascribe attributes to something, we cannot conceive of it (but see n. 7 above).

By excluding not being Parmenides (fragment 8) derives an impressive(11) series of characteristics of Being. Most of these, i.e. one, unchanging, continuous, indivisible, and homogeneous, follow directly from the denial of di·erentiation. I shall urge that this key move is best read as taking being as incomplete, not as existence." (p. 284)

(7) Kahn, ‘Return’, 386, quotes Plotinus as denying being to the One. He reads this as removing all predicative being, but not existence, from that sublime entity. It is unclear tome how this interpretation harmonizes with the view, which he champions, that the ancients did not (implicitly) distinguish existence from predication.

(10) As against e.g. D. Gallop, Parmenides of Elea: Fragments (Toronto, 1984), 8.

Brown (217–18) clearly presents the paradoxical results of limiting esti to ‘exists’.

(11) For Brown, ‘startling’ (216).

Works cited:

Brown, L., ‘Being in the Sophist: A Syntactical Enquiry’ [‘Enquiry’], Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 4 (1986), 49–70.

‘The Verb “to be” in Greek Philosophy: Some Remarks’ [‘Verb’], in S. Everson (ed.), Language (Companions to Ancient Thought, 3; Cambridge, 1994), 212–236.

Kahn, C., ‘A Return to the Theory of the Verb be and the Concept of Being’ [‘Return’], Ancient Philosophy, 24 (2004), 381–405.

9. Maly, Kenneth. 1985. "Parmenides: Circle of Disclosure, Circle of Possibility." Heidegger Studies / Heidegger Studien no. 1:5-23.

"In order to follow up on these questions that move from Heidegger's thinking to the word of Parmenides, this essay will first take up the questions raised here - metaphysics, Greek thinking, our return to original Greek thinking, and the task of dismantling - by tending to the word of Parmenides in more recent texts of Heidegger's - specifically by tending to a certain reverberation of Heidegger's lecture "The End of Philosophy and the Task for Thinking" in the text Vier Seminare (Part I). Then this essay will take up the issue of ἀλήθεια/Unverborgenheit/disclosure as a Parmenidean image of possibility by tending to the word of Parmenides in Heidegger's lecture course of 1942-43 - specifically by a careful reading of the published text of that course, Volume 54 of the Gesamtausgabe , entitled Parmenides (Part II)." (p. 6)

10. Manchester, Peter. 1979. "Parmenides and the Need for Eternity." The Monist no. 62:81-106.

"Greek ontology eventually developed a notion variously described as 'timeless', 'atemporal', or 'non-durational' eternity. In Proclus and Simplicius it is already a school-commonplace, with a stable vocabulary in which aion (eternity) is sharply distinguished from what is merely aidios (everlasting, occupying all times). Plotinus had perfected this notion beforehand, believing not only that he found it in Plato, but that Plato had developed it on Parmenidean grounds.

Until the last twenty years or so historians generally shared that view, on the ground of verbal agreement among familiar texts from Parmenides, Plato and the Neoplatonists.

(...)

But the criticism which distrusts the retrojection, via verbal agreement, of later conceptions into earlier argumentation has had this whole 'tradition' under intense scrutiny lately, and it has not held up uniformly well. It is no longer always conceded that the aion of Timaeus or the aei on of more common Platonic usage are nondurational, and there is increasingly frequent unwillingness to read an argument against duration in the Parmenides of our fragments.(1)" (P. 81)

"Parmenides contrived a discourse that had a different means of surviving verbatim than that of Heraclitan epigram, but survive it has. The proposal of this paper is that its treatment of time stabilizes it, provides the 'negative feedback' that holds the text homeostatic against millennia of emenders.

But what about eternity? Not the theological eternity, connected with divine omniscience and with theodicy, but the Greek ontological notion. Eternity, the Now of the All One, is not 'non-time' but the paradigm for the timelikeness of numbered time." (pp. 99-100)

(1) W. Kneale, "Time and Eternity in Theology," Aristotelian Society, Proceedings (NS) 61 (1960-61), pp. 87-108.

11. ———. 2005. The Syntax of Time: The Phenomenology of Time in Greek Physics and Speculative Logic from Iamblichus to Anaximander. Leiden: Brill.

Chapter Four: Parmenides: time as the now, pp. 106-135; Appendix 2; The Poem of Parmendies, Fragment 8, pp. 170-173.

"The best place to look for how Parmenides thinks about time is the passage in which he actually refers to it:

34 The same: to think, and wherefore is the thought-upon

35 For not apart from being, in which it is what has been uttered,

36 will you find thinking, as little as if time is or is going to be

37 other outside of being, since fate has shackled it

38a whole and quiescent to be.(1)

This text is not regularly taken into consideration as concerns the theme of ‘time in Parmenides’ because the inclusion of the Greek word for time, χρόνος, in line 36 is judged to be impossible. Still, it is is exactly what we expect and need.

These lines are the first half of what I refer to as Signpost 3, the third of four blocks of text that answer to a four line programmatic summary."

(1) 1 The construction of the passage is part of my translation of the whole of Fragment 8, presented along with the Greek from Simplicius in Appendix 2. It is defended in what follows. Line numbers are those of Fr. 8 (DK). The Greek for groups of lines will not be cited in this chapter, since it can be consulted in the appendix. The structure of the fragment for which I argue is also made apparent there.

12. Mansfeld, Jaap. 1981. "Hesiod and Parmenides in Nag Hammadi." Vigiliae Christianae no. 35:174-182.

"We have noticed that, in Plutarch, Parmenides' cosmogonic Eros plays an important part and that he also says that Parmenides spoke of a cosmogonic Aphrodite. This is Plutarch's name for the anonymous goddess who in Parmenides creates Eros (Vorsokr. Fr. 28B13, quoted Amat. 756 F29). The activities of this goddess are described in some detail in a fragment of Parmenides preserved by Simplicius only (Vorsokr. Fr. 28B12), and in a non-verbal quotation by the same Simplicius (In Phys., p. 39, 20-1, cf. Vorsokr. ad Fr. 28B13).

Surprisingly, a substantial portion of the hymnic description of Eros in NHC 11, 5, is strikingly parallel to these Parmenidean passages:

NHC II [Nag Hammadi Codex II], 5, 109, 16ff. - Parmenides B12, 1-3; 4-5." (p. 179, notes omitted)

"Yet I am not going to argue that the author of NHC 11, 5 had read Parmenides, any more than he had read Hesiod. Above, I have suggested that the person responsible for the Gnostic treatise in the form in which it has come down to us was influenced by Greek literature

comparable as to its contents to passages in Plutarch." (p. 180)

13. ———. 1981. "Bad world and demiurge. A «gnostic» motif from Parmenides and Empedocles to Lucretius and Philo." In Studies in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions Presented to Gilles Quispel on the occasion of His 65th Birthday, edited by Van den Broek, Roelof and Vermaseren, Maarten J., 261-314. Leiden: Brill.

"Consequently, what I propose to do in the present paper is to open up the following question: is it possible, in Greek philosophy before the Christian era, to indicate elements or features which even a slight

familiarity with the main tenets of Gnosticism may help us to understand somewhat better?" (pp. 262-263)

(...)

"Helped by 'Gnostic' hindsight, one may reconsider the thought of the great Parmenides.

(...)

"This raises a very difficult problem - one which, without overstatement, may be called the conundrum of the interpretation of Parmenides. If the inviolability of Being is vouchsafed by divine powers and if, indeed, according to Parmenides, it is absolutely unthinkable that this should not be the case, in what way, then, is a confusion - both ontic and epistemic - between Being and not-Being possible? If Parmenides had remained silent about the universe, our exegetic problem would be minimal, but he gives us, in the second part of his poem, a cosmogony and cosmology which constitute a serious, original, and even influential theory of 'nature' in the Presocratic sense of the world (cf. also the goddess' announcement, Fr. 28B1, 28-32)." (pp. 263-264)

14. ———. 1994. "The Rhetoric in the Poem of Parmenides." In Filosofia, politica, retorica. Intersezioni possibili, edited by Bertelli, Lucio and Donini, Pierluigi, 1-11. Milano: Franco Angeli.

"In the present paper, I wish to argue that Parmenides not only uses means we may call logical, but also avails himself of means we may call rhetorical. His logic is not a formal logic or logica docens, but a logica utens. In the same way, his rhetoric is not a rhetorica docens (not yet a τέχνη, as Aristotle would say) but a rhetorica utens. Aristotle, at the beginning of his Rhetoric, actually uses the concept of a rhetorica utens, for he points out that rhetoric and dialectic are very closely related and that all men, more or less, make use of both, either at random or from practice or acquired habit. It is this natural endowment which forms the basis of the art (1)." (p. 1)

(...)

"We may safely conclude that Parmenides wanted to convince his audience in every way possible not only by means of argument, but also by using every possible rhetorical effect. This explains why the concept of ‘conviction’ (and a number of words relating to this concept) occupies a key position in the poem (epanodos again); actually, the word for conviction and its relatives are even used as a means of conviction (41).

The maidens «knowingly persuade» the watcher at the Gate by using «blandishing arguments» (B1. 15-6): they know how to argue and to get their way (42). Truth is most persuasive (ευπειθεος), whereas there is no true πιστις (43) in the views of men (B1.29-30). The way of ‘what there is’ is the way of conviction (πετθους B2.4). It is the power of niorig which prevents something to come to be from what is not there (B8.12 ff.). True πιστις has driven away coming to be and passing away (B8.28-9). What mortals believe (πεποιθοτες) to be true is not so (B8.39b ff., cf. B1.30). The account of truth provided by the goddess and its comprehension is πιστος (B8.50-1).

This πιστις, one should point out, is brought about by rigorous argument; it is caused by proof. True. It does make a difference whether one is convinced by rhetorical means, or is so by logical means. But, as Aristotle says, a rhetorical proof (nioTu;) is a kind of proof, and we are most fully persuaded when we assume that something has been proved (44). Often enough, the proofs in the poem involving πιστις are addressed ad hominem, that is to say are expressed in contexts containing the personal pronouns you and me (45), or verbs in the second or first person. The goddess is addressing her one-man public; the greater part of the poem is a formal logos (in verse) pronounced by her. What we would call logical proof is her most important instrument of conviction in the Way of Truth, but it is again and again presented as precisely such an instrument. In Parmenides’ day, logica and rhetorica were still in their pre-technical stage of development and, in Aristotle’s words, existed only as interrelated natural endowments. Parmenides of course knows what he is doing. Yet I would argue that for him the difference between rhetoric and logic was not as important as it would become in later times. Today, rhetorical and informal means of argument and of bringing about conviction have again become the object of serious study. But this is not my subject.*

(1) Arist, Rhet. A 1,1354a1 ff.

(41) I have learned much from A.P.D. Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides (New Haven and London 1970), 136 ff., but prefer an interpretation that is a bit more superficial.

(42) Cf. my paper cited above, n. 17, 274. [Cf. J. Mansfeld, "Bad World and Demiurge: A 'gnostic' Motif from Parmenides and Empedocles to Lucretius and Philo", in M. J. Vermaseren and Roel B. Broek (eds.), Studies in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions Presented to Gilles Quispel on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, Leiden 1981, repr. as Study XIV in Id., Studies in Later Greek Philosophy and Gnosticism, CS 292, London 1989), 273 n. 29.]

(43) Although I am as a rule opposed to Wortphilologie, I wish to remined the reader of the importance of this term in Aristotle’s Rhetoric.

(44) Rhet. 1.1.1355a4-6, Since it is evident that artistic method is concerned with pisteis and since pistis is a sort of demonstration [apodeixis] (*)

(45) See above, n. 27.

(*) Translation by George A. Kennedy; Mansfeld cite the Greek text.

15. ———. 2005. "Minima Parmenidea." Mnemosyne no. 58:554-560.

Reprinted in J. Mansfeld, Studies in Early Greek Philosophy: A Collection of Papers and One Review, Leiden: Brill 2018, pp. 177-184.

Critical and exegetical notes on on the following Fragments from Hermann Diels, Walther Kranz (eds.), Fragmente der Vorsokratiker:

1. A Handicap Fr. B1.22-3a; 2. A Subject Fr. B2 1-5; 3. A Way B6.3; 4. Changing Place and Colour B 8.38-41.

16. ———. 2008. "A crux in Parmenides fr. B 1.3 DK." In In pursuit of "Wissenschaft". Festschrift für William M. Calder III zum 75. Geburtstag, edited by Heilen, Stephan [et al.], 299-301. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Jaap Mansfeld proposes to read διὰ παντός in the fragment 1.3 DK instead of πάντ' ἄστη.

17. ———. 2015. "Parmenides from Right to Left." Études platoniciennes no. 12:1-14.

Reprinted in J. Mansfeld, Studies in Early Greek Philosophy: A Collection of Papers and One Review, Leiden: Brill 2018, pp. 185-202.

Abstract: "Parmenides devotes considerable attention to human physiology in an entirely original way, by appealing to the behaviour and effects of his two physical elements when explaining subjects such as sex differentiation in the womb, aspects of heredity, and sleep and old age. Unlike his general cosmology and account of the origin of mankind, this topos, or part of philosophy, is not anticipated in his Presocratic predecessors. What follows is that the second part of the Poem, whatever its relation to the first part may be believed to be, is meant as a serious account of the world and man from a physicist point of view."

"The first to place the relation between the two parts of the Poem explicitly on the agenda was Aristotle, who says that Parmenides on the one hand placed himself beyond physics by postulating that there is only one immobile Being — but that, on the other hand,

constrained to follow the phenomena, he introduced two physical elements, the hot and the cold or fire and earth in order to construct the world, and in this way designed a theory of nature. A remarkable divergence, but not, it appears, a fatal one. Aristotle even provides a link between the two parts of the Poem by adding that Parmenides classified the hot as Being and the cold as non-Being.(4) That this particular link is most unlikely matters much less than that he endeavoured to find one.

(...)

In the present paper I shall be concerned with a substantial part of the history of this reception, and use it to try and draw some conclusions. Though for the sake of simplicity the evidence will not always actually be discussed from right to left, a fair amount of

backshadowing underlies most of the following inquiry." (pp. 1-2)

(4) Arist. Met. Α.5 986b14–987a2 (= 28A24, in part). Cf. Phys. 1.2 184b26–185a1.

18. ———. 2019. "Parmenides on sense perception in Theophrastus and elsewhere." In ὁδοὶ νοῆσαι. Ways to Think. Essays in Honour of Néstor-Luis Cordero, edited by Pulpito, Massimo and Spangenberg, Pilar, 177-191. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia.

Reprinted in J. Mansfeld, Studies in Early Greek Philosophy: A Collection of Papers and One Review, Leiden: Brill 2018, pp. 203-217.

Abstract: "Theophrastus' account at De sensibus 3–4 shows (1) that he did not find evidence for a detailed theory of sense perception in Parmenides and (2) that he did not include our fr. 28B7 in his overview. The tradition followed by Sextus Empiricus and Diogenes Laertius concluded from 28B7 that Parmenides rejected the evidence of the senses in favour of that of reason (logos). But logos in Parmenides means 'argument', and glôssa is not the organ of taste but of speech. If Theophrastus had interpreted the evidence of 28B7 in the manner of Sextus and Diogenes he would have been obliged to discuss Parmenides’ triad of purported senses between Plato’s two and Empedocles' five."

19. ———. 2021. "An Early Greek Epic: Narrative Structures in Parmenides’ Poem and the Relation between Its Main Parts." Mnemosyne no. 74:200-237.

Abstract: "The question (once again) is in what cognitively acceptable way the Alētheia and Doxa sections of the epic should be connected, that is to say in what way Parmenides himself may have envisaged the relation between ontological Truth and mistaken

human Opinions. An important distinction is found to obtain between the common run of humankind, ignorant and helpless, and an enlightened human elite. The views of this elite serve as an intermediate between the cognitive condition of humanity in general and the arcane knowledge and ontology of the Alētheia section and help to attenuate the dualism by bridging the gap between ignorance and absolute Truth.

There is a significant and crucial interplay between the two sections which works both ways, forward from the Alētheia to the Doxa section and backwards from the Doxa to the Alētheia section. Defining characteristics of the elements per se and of their

compounds in the Doxa section are reflections of defining properties of Being in the Alētheia section. Conversely, recognition of these elemental characteristics may point the way back to properties of Being. The argument of the epic from fr. B1 to fr. B19

DK is strictly organized by means of reiterated theses and type-scenes, which lend an overarching unity to the poem. This technique itself is not new, but the contents of these reiterated motifs (such as the mention of humans, of the distinction between Being and not-Being, of name-giving, or of defining properties and characteristics) are original. The reiterated motifs which secure the proofs of the main thesis function as hidden persuaders. The story of the extraordinary journey of the anonymous author to the dwelling of his nameless goddess and the revelation he receives from her have been carefully authenticated and stage-managed to provide divine backing for the stunning doctrines put forward and are also aimed at convincing the audience."

20. Marcacci, Flavia. 2020. "Argumentation and counterfactual reasoning in Parmenides and Melissus." Archai. Revista de Estudos sobre as Origens do Pensamento Ocidental no. 30:1-30.

Abstract: "Parmenides and Melissus employ different deductive styles for their different kinds of argumentation. The former’s poem flows in an interesting sequence of passages: contents foreword, methodological premises, krisis, conclusions and corollaries. The latter, however, organizes an extensive process of deduction to show the characteristics of what is. In both cases, the strength of their argument rests on their deductive form, on the syntactical level of their texts: the formal structure of their reasonings help to identify the features and logical intersections of their thoughts. On the one hand, Parmenides uses modal reasoning, enforcing the employment of the principle of the excluded middle. On the other hand, Melissus radicalizes the use of modal reasoning and employs counterfactual statements in order to develop his doctrine of what is. Despite their differences, both deserve a place in the Stone Age of logic and theory of argumentation due to their common ambition to demonstrate what is."

21. Marsico, Claudia. 2022. "From Filiar Love to the Parricide. Parmenides among the Socratics." In Supplementa Eleatica Vol. 3: Le vie dell'essere. Studi sulla ricezione antica di Parmenide, edited by Volpe, Enrico, 131-150. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

"As in a cascade effect, if the views about Parmenides change, it also changes what is to be considered Eleatic. Hence, the understanding of the horizon of ideas that impact the classica! period becomes more complex. lt is necessary to establish which were Parmenides' ideas and what were their links with Eleatism, which were the changes introduced in the Athenian environment, and what kind of impact they produced on the Socratic realm, considering that ltaly occupies a vital position in the history and the thought of the group members with Parmenides as the central figure. In this framework, we will highlight relevant aspects of a program oriented to connect Eleatic and Socratic studies by outlining three cases strongly related to re-readings of Parmenides' philosophy, focusing on his authorship of a metaphysical exercise oriented to offer an experience of certainty and truth." (p. 132)

22. Martin, Stuart B. 2016. Parmenides’ Vision: A Study of Parmenides’ Poem. Lanham: University Press of America.

"Sifting through the various interpretations of Parmenides’ poem from ancient times to the present-day, one might easily get the impression that there were two philosophers who went by the name “Parmenides.” The first and much the older “Parmenides” was a religious seer warning about the danger of settling for a superficial reading of human experience. His visionary poem proclaims that Reality, although it may appear multiple, is as the mystics disclose, an all-comprehending One.1 This Parmenides is credited with insights into the nature and meaning of the universe beyond that which reason alone can discover. This view of Parmenides might well be called, the “religious-mystical” view. However, for many if not most 20th century Western scholars, Parmenides was a protomodern philosopher weighing in against the naive religiosity of his time with a series of brilliant but flawed arguments which perhaps led him to conclude that being is one, but whose method in later, more skillful hands, has come to underpin the scientific (and naturalistic) outlook of the modern world. In short, many modern philosophers relying primarily on analytical procedures would claim Parmenides for themselves. Their interpretation of Parmenides, for want of a better name, could be called the “rationalist” view. The “religious-mystical” interpretation is firmly grounded in the belief that Parmenides’ poem is precisely what it presents itself to be in its opening verses: a vision in which God appears to Parmenides and proclaims to him the way to that one-whole Truth which lies hidden behind the veil of appearances. However, the modern student of philosophy may never encounter any serious consideration of this view, for the pervasive opinion of modern specialists, usually followed uncritically by the textbook expositors, is that Parmenides is first and foremost a rationalist, and the opening scenario is merely a literary device." (p. 1)

23. Mason, Richard. 1988. "Parmenides and Language." Ancient Philosophy no. 8:149-166.

Abstract: "Parmenides says very little about language. Yet what he says is important, both in the interpretation of his philosophy and more widely. This paper will aim to fit together a coherent understanding and to explain why his views have a wider interest. Four themes will be considered: the nature and extent of his critique of the use of language by mortals; his alleged position as a primordial philosopher of reference; the status of the utterances he puts into the mouth of his Goddess; and his apparent identification of speaking with existing or being."

24. Matson, Wallace I. 1980. "Parmenides unbound." Philosophical Inquiry no. 2:345-360.

Abstract: "One may doubt whether any two scholars interpret Parmenides in exactly the same way. Nevertheless on one fundamental point they divide naturally and sharply into two camps, which I shall call the Majority and the Minority.

The Majority hold that Parmenides intended the Aletheia part of his poem to be taken as expounding the absolute truth about το εόν, in complete contrast to the Doxa part which presents an altogether untrue account of things that have no real existence. According to the Minority view, on the other hand, the Doxa was put forward as possessing some kind or degree of cognitive validity.

In this paper I shall argue in advocacy of the Minority position."

25. Matthen, Mohan. 1983. "Greek Ontology and the 'Is' of Truth." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 28:113-135.

Abstract: "This is an essay about the ontological presuppositions of a certain use of 'is' in Greek philosophy - I shall describe it in the first part and present a hypothesis about its semantics in the second. I believe that my study has more than esoteric interest. First, it provides an alternative semantic account of what Charles Kahn has called the 'is' of truth, thereby shedding light on a number of issues in Greek ontology, including an Eleatic paradox of change and Aristotle's response to it. Second, it finds in the semantics of Greek a basis for admitting what have been called 'non-substantial individuals' or 'immanent characters' into accounts of Greek ontology. Third, it yields an interpretation of Aristotle's talk of 'unities' which is crucial to his treatment of substance in the central books of the Metaphysics."

26. ———. 1986. "A Note on Parmenides' Denial of Past and Future." Dialogue no. 25:553-557.

"In a recent issue of Dialogue, Leo Groarke attempts to defend the claim that Parmenides was committed to an atemporal reality.(*)

He argues like this:

(1) In the Parmenidean dictum "[It] is and cannot not be" (B2.4), "is" means "exists", and is in the present tense (536).

(2) (According to Parmenides) there is nothing that fails to exist (536).

(3) It follows from (1) and (2) that "the past is not" and "the future is not" (537).

(4) If the past and future are not, then the present is not. "All three tenses go down the drain together" (538), and so reality is atemporal." (p. 553)

"The point that I have tried to make in this short discussion note is that one cannot be careless about the ontology that one attributes to Parmenides in order to make his ban on non-existence yield other results such as the ban on change, or the abolition of time. Groarke is not the only person to have done this: there are others who have thought that an ontology of facts is adequate to explaining Parmenides' denial of change.(6) Groarke, however, is in special trouble because his account demands, and does not just permit, facts." (p. 557)

(6) For example, Montgomery Furth, "Elements of Eleatic Ontology", in Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, ed., The Pre-Socratics (New York: Anchor Press, 1974), 260.

(*) Leo Groarke, "Parmenides' Timeless Universe", Dialogue 24/3 (Autumn 1985), 535-541.

27. McKim, Richard. 2019. "Parmenides: The Road to Reality: A New Verse Translation." Arion: A Journal of the Humanities and the Classics no. 27:105-118.

"Parmenides has not, however, been well served by his English translators. He wrote poetry and yet is almost alwaystranslated into prose. His poem describes a divinely inspired revelation and yet is persistently translated as if it were an exercise in deductive logic. His Greek can be strange and difficult but is never unintelligible, which is more than can be said for the Anglo-gibberish his translators too often force him to speak. Too many subscribe to the misguided notion that a “literal” translation, as close as possible to word-forword, best represents the original. In fact, the painful English that results, so far from being faithful to the Greek, actually betrays it, creating the obscurities it purports to reflect. Parmenides’ reputation for being hard to understand is largely

his translators’ fault, not his.

I’ve undertaken to make amends by translating his poem as a poem, in a loose English approximation of the same meter. My goal is to capture some of what gets lost in prose—to mirror, however dimly, the vital role of poetic form in shaping Parmenides’ vision. The demands of meter make literal translation impossible—not at all a bad thing— while paradoxically freeing the translator to be more faithful. I’ve tried to use this freedom to demonstrate that Parmenides is not the obscurantist would-be logician of so many other translations but a philosopher who thinks in poetry, and whose thought is as clear and accessible as it is astonishing." (pp. 105-106)

(...)

"My translation consists of all the major fragments of part one, which I’ve retitled “The Road to Reality” and which, with a bit of arranging, can be read as a continuous text that’s pretty much complete." (p. 108)

28. Mckirahan, Richard. 2005. "Assertion and argument in Empedocles’ cosmology or, what did Empedocles learn from Parmenides?" In The Empedoclean Κόσμος: Structure, process and the question of cyclicity: Proceedings of the Symposium Philosophiae Antiquae Tertium Myconense July 6th-July 13th, 2003. Vol.1: Papers, 163-188. Patras: Institute for Philosophical Research.

29. ———. 2008. "Signs and Arguments in Parmenides B8." In The Oxford Handbook of Presocratic Philosophy, edited by Curd, Patricia and Graham, Daniel W., 189-229. New York: Oxford University Press.

"David Sedley recently complained (1) that despite the enormous amount of work on Parmenides in the past generation, the details of Parmenides' arguments have received insufficient attention. (2) It is universally recognized that Parmenides' introduction of argument into philosophy was a move of paramount importance. It is also recognized that the arguments of fragment B8 are closely related. At the beginning of B8, Parmenides asserts that what-is (3) has several attributes; he offers a series of proofs that what-is indeed has those attributes. Some (4) hold that the proofs form a deductive chain in which the conclusion of one argument or series of arguments forms a premise of the next. Others (5) hold that the series of inferences is so tightly connected that their conclusions are logically equivalent, a feature supposedly announced in B5: "For me it is the same where I am to begin from: for that is where I will arrive back again." In act, close study of the fragments reveals that neither claim is correct. Here I offer a new translation of B8, lines 2-51, with an analysis of the arguments, their structure, their success, and their importance.(6)

I begin with a caution. Many of Parmenides' arguments are hard to make out: even on the best arrangement of the available sentences and clauses they are incomplete. Since Parmenides lived before canons of deductive inference had been formalized, he may not have thought that there is need to supply what we regard as missing premises. The interpreter's job is not to aim for formal validity, but to attempt a reconstruction of Parmenides' train of thought, showing how he might have supposed that the conclusion follows from premises he gives. This is a matter of sensitivity and sympathy as much as of logic, depending on how we understand other arguments of his as well, and requires willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt -- up to a certain point." (p. 189)

(1) Sedley, "Parmenides and Melissus," 113. Sedley's complaint applies to antiquity as well.

(2) Jonathan Barnes is a notable exception to this tendency. I am indebted to his analysis in Presocratic Philosophers, chaps. 9-11.

(3) So far as possible, I translate to eon by "what-is"; I avoid "being." The expression denotes anything that is (see note 18 here).

(4) Notably Kirk & Raven 268

(5) Owen, "Eleatic Questions."

(6) In some places my discussion depends on interpretations of B2, B6, and B7 that are not presented here for want of space. I sketch my justification for controversial views in the notes.

(18) Parmenides argues here that the second road of investigation, "is not," cannot be pursued, on the grounds that you cannot succeed in knowing or declaring what-is-not. The minimal complete thought characteristic of the first road is eon (or to eon) estin ("what-is is"), with "what-is" being a blank subject with no definite reference: anything that is, whatever it may turn out to be and however it may be appropriate to describe it or refer to it. Likewise for the second road: the blank subject of ouk estin ("is not") is to me eon (or mé eon) ("what-is-not"), and the minimal complete thought characteristic of the second road is to me eon ouk estin ("what-is-not is not"). The argument is not a refutation of "is not" as such. Nor is it a refutation of "what-is-not is not" in the sense of proving that that claim or thought is false. Instead Parmenides undermines "what-is-not is not" as a possible claim or thought. Since what-is-not cannot be known or declared, then a fortiori no claim about what-is-not can be known or declared (for instance, that it is not). Therefore, not even the theoretically minimum thought or assertion about the second road is coherent; no one can manage to think (much less know) it or declare it. On Owen's view ("Eleatic Questions"), the second road is eliminated not at 2.7-8 but at 6.1-2, which establishes the subject of "is" to be not the blank subject I am proposing but whatever can be spoken and thought of. In my view, the second part of 6.1 (esti gar einai: "for it is the case that it is," which Owen translates "for it is possible for it to be") repeats the content of the first road (2.3), while the first part of 6.2 (meden d' ouk estin: "but nothing is not," which Owen translates "but it is not possible for nothing to be") repeats the content of the second road (2.5). with the appropriate "minimal" subjects supplied. Given these premises, it follows that it is false (and therefore not right) to think that what-is-not is or that what-is is not, but true (right) to do what the first part of line 6.1 says: "it is right both to say and to think that it [namely, the subject of "is"I is what-is." The importance of 6.1-2 thus consists in the introduction of minimal subjects for "is" and "is not" together with the associated truisms that what-is is and what-is-not (namely, nothing) is not. This prepares the way for the discussion of the first road in B8, exploring the nature of what-is. (p. 222)

30. ———. 2010. "Parmenides B8.38 and Cornford's Fragment." Ancient Philosophy no. 30:1-14.

"Having established the attributes of τό έον in a series of arguments that end at B8.33, in the following eight lines Parmenides goes on to explore implications of his earlier claim that 'you cannot know what is not ... nor can you declare it' (B2.7-8) in the light of the results obtained so far in B8.

(...)

One of the principal issues in dispute is the relation between a line quoted in two ancient sources (Plato's Theaetetus and a commentary on that work by an unknown author) and B8.38. Do those sources contain the true version of B8.38, an incorrect version of that line -- a misquotation of the true version, or an allogether different line? B8.38 is a pivotal line in the passage B8.34-41; as indicated above, I believe that it contains the end of the first part of the passage and the beginning of the second, although it is commonly understood differently." (p. 1)

31. Meijer, Pieter Ane. 1997. Parmenides Beyond the Gates: the Divine Revelation on Being, Thinking and the Doxa. Amsterdam: Gieben.

Contents: Part I: Being and Thinking; Chapter I. The relation of Being and Thinking 3; Chapter II. Being and temporality 15; Chapter III. Being and spatiality 29; Chapter IV. Being and Matter 44; Chapter V. Tensions of a spatial and material Being and of Thinking within the identity of Being and Thinking 47; Chapter IV. Fragment 4 of the identity of Being and Thinking 54; Appendix: Parmenides and the previous history of the concept of Being 85; Part II. Being and Logic; Chapter I. The logical circle:98; Chapter II. The subject of estin 114; Chapter III. The logical procedure again 123; Part III. Doxa and Mortals; Chapter I. Ways and 'Doxa? 144; Chapter II. Scholarly views of the 'Doxa' 166; Chapter III. The basic error of fr. 8, 53,54 190; Chapter IV. Negative qualifications of the Doxa 208; Chapter V. A plea for the existence of the Doxa 217; Part IV. A panoramic survey of results 234; Bibliography 252-257; Indices 258-274.

"Crucial will also be the discussion of the ways of inquiry Parmenides offers. Their detailed examination and delineation will appear to be of vital importance for the understanding of both Being and the Doxa. Anticipating my results, I would like to present as my view that die Doxa is not at all a way of inquiry, but that it must be seen as an optimalized description of Parmenides’ view on this world. It embeds many theorems of predecessors to give an accomplished, overall and insuperable picture of this world, which is radically separated from "the world” of Being.

In Part I of this book the problems which arise from the identification of Being and thinking are examined. In Part II it is the issue of the relation of logic and Being that comes to the fore. In Part III I attempt to catalogue and assess the scholarly explanations given of the Doxa sofar in order to clarify the problems and arrive at a view of my own. Many publications in this field are lacking in confrontation with other already existing opinions. In presenting my own views I confront the views of other scholars. Therefore, a panoramic survey of my results may facilitate the reading of this book. This is the reason why I added Part IV to provide a summary of my views and conclusions." (Preface, P. XV)

32. Miller, Ed. 1968. "Parmenides the prophet?" Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 6:67-69.

"The latest word on Parmenides comes from a recent and exhaustive study by Leonardo Tarán. (1) Among other illuminating and novel interpretations, Tarán argues that Parmenides was not, after all, guilty of the confusion between the existential and copulative senses of " to be," that he did not identify thinking with Being, and that he had no conception of atemporal reality.(2) In these and other respects Tarán's volume makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of Parmenides. One might judge, however, that Tarán work is unusually insensitive to the religious element in Parmenides' poem, and in this respect his analysis seems to echo Reinhardt's unfortunate judgment which calls Parmenides "einen Denker, der keinen Wunsch kennt als Erkenntnis, keine Fessel fühlt als Logik, den Gott und Gefhül gleichgültig lassen." (3) This inadequacy of Tarán's approach to Parmenides is evident in his treatment of the poem in general, and especially the prologue." (p. 67)

(1) Parmenides: A Text with Translation, Commentary, and Critical Essays (Princeton, 1965).

(2) See my review of this work in The Classical Journal, LXII (1967), 232ff.

(3) Parmenides und die Geschiehtc der griechischen Philosophie (Bonn, 1916), p. 256.

33. Miller, Fred Dycus. 1977. "Parmenides on Mortal Belief." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 15:253-265.

"I shall argue here that we, also, ought to accept Plato's judgment as to the philosophical merit of Parmenides' work. At the core of Parmenides' logic, I believe, we find neither a crude equivocation on the Greek word " to be" nor a crude confusion between meaning and reference or between meaning and truth, nor a bundle of modal fallacies. What we do discover is an important insight concerning the nature of thought and discourse, expressed in such a subtly (but disastrously) confused way that the valuable was not completely disentangled from the nonsensical until Plato wrote the Sophist.

The repudiation of the beliefs of mortals at the outset of "The Way of Seeming" is founded upon the "strife-encompassed proof" which is developed in "The Way of Truth." I will endeavor to clarify his reasoning, considering Parmenides' attack on naming and the repudiation of mortals' beliefs (Section I) and later his principle or dictum that "you cannot think or say what is not" (Section lII). In trying to assess the strengths and weaknesses of Parmenides' reasoning, I will also make use of two arguments that were intentionally directed against Eleatic teachings: Leucippus's defense of the void (Section II) and Plato's defense of falsity (Section IV)." (p. 253)

34. Miller, Mitchell H. 1979. "Parmenides and the Disclosure of Being." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 13:12-35.

"The aim of this discussion is to offer an interpretation of the sense and intent of Parmenides' ἔστι. As the plethora and variety of excellent analysis attests, the problem is a perplexing one. The interpreter is faced with an intentionally fragmentary utterance - the ἔστι appears to stand alone, with its subject (and, possibly, predicate) ellipted - embedded in a collection of fragments from a lost whole poem which, in turn, is itself one of the few pieces of philosophical writing to survive from the sixth century B.C. I will argue in this essay, nonetheless, that the original context of the ton can be recovered and that, once this context is established, its sense can be fixed.

The key to my interpretation is a close reading of the proem. As it is, this passage is generally ignored in analyses of the argumentative substance of the poem." (p. 12)

"If this interpretation is correct, then Parmenides did not regard the contraries as mere illusion. 53 It is true that he does not provide any explicit ontological characterization of their secondary status or domain. That will be the work of Plato and Aristotle.

Nonetheless, in their accounts they are not overcoming a one-sided monism but, rather, completing a task for which Parmenides has established the starting-point and direction." (p. 28, note omitted)

35. ———. 2006. "Ambiguity and Transport: Reflections on the Proem to Parmenides' Poem." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 30:1-47.

"Let me begin by distinguishing an ultimate and a proximate task for these reflections. The ultimate task, a perennial one for students of Greek philosophy, is to understand just what Parmenides lays open for thinking and speaking when, in the so-called Truth section of his poem, fragments 2 through 8. 49, he isolates the ‘is’ (έστι) that is ‘the steadfast heart of . . . truth’ (1. 29). The proximate task is to explore the context Parmenides gives us for this ultimate task, the proem’s account of the transformative journey to and through ‘the gates of the paths of Night and Day’ that brings the traveller into the presence of the truth-speaking goddess.' We modern-day philosophers have generally been reluctant to pursue this exploration too closely, not only because we are accustomed to draw a sharp distinction between poetry and philosophy, a distinction that, arguably, did not take hold in the Greek world until Aristotle, but also, more to the point at present, because Parmenides’ proem seems riddled with ambiguity. This is not wrong; indeed, as I shall try to show, its ambiguity is both more extensive and more central than has been recognized heretofore. But I shall also try to show that it is a resource, not a liability; by the close of these reflections I hope to have made compelling that and why bringing the ambiguity of the proem into good focus is key to a well-oriented turn to our ultimate task, understanding the ‘is’." (p. 1)

36. Minar Jr, Edwin L. 1949. "Parmenides and the World of Seeming." American Journal of Philology no. 70:41-55.

"In summary, the legislative activity of Parmenides and his association with the politically-minded Pythagoreans show him to be capable of taking interest in practical affairs. The very fact of his writing a didactic poem, the rhetorical warmth of its style, the elaboration of the second part as a socially valuable doctrine, all show that his philosophy is not alien to this interest.

And the appropriateness of his intellectual position to his position in life and the correlation of his views with those of other thinkers, opposing and agreeing, which are sometimes expressed in social terms, make it seem not unlikely that he was influenced in their formation by his reaction to the problems of the " world of seeming."

In so far as he had an immediate aim of conviction and conversion, it is questionable how successful he can have been in it.

Certainly he attracted a number of brilliant and devoted disciples, but it was naive to expect many to follow the severe, logical development of his thoughts, and a type of theory which almost everyone must regard as absurd-or to expect many to be influenced strongly by a system frankly presented as truly false and only second-best. Yet his greatness, as was said at the outset, is as a thinker, not as a statesman, and his important influence was not upon his contemporaries but upon later philosophers." (p. 55)

37. Mitchell, Morse J. 1991. "Parmenides as parody." Hellas: a Journal of Poetry and the Humanities no. 2:11-32.

38. Mogyoródi, Emese. 2006. "Xenophanes' Epistemology and Parmenides' Quest for Knowledge." In La costruzione del discorso filosofico nell'età dei Presocratici = The construction of philosophical discourse in the age of the Presocratics, edited by Sassi, Maria Michela, 123-160. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale.

Abstract: "The purpose of this essay is to explore the role Xenophanes' theory of knowledge might have played in the formation of Parmenides' central metaphysical concerns. It provides a detailed study of Xenophanes' epistemic tenets clarified within the context of his theology and cosmology. It argues that although Xenophanes' epistemic ideas were formulated within the intellectual historical context of traditional 'poetic pessimism', an examination of his theology and cosmology indicates that inasmuch as he radically departed from the traditional notion of the divine and the divine-human relationship, his epistemology created an ambiguous epistemic setting chat proved provoking for the new paradigm of knowledge philosophical speculation introduced in early Greece. Parmenides responded to this crisis by a metaphysical inquiry into the rationale of 'the quest' and the nature of reality in a way by which he brought about a fundamental breakthrough toward a new methodology to attain scientific certainty.

Since Xenophanes' epistemology was essentially related to his theology, Parmenides' response necessarily entailed a new conception of the divine-human relationship."

39. ———. 2020. "Materialism and Immaterialism, Compatibility and Incompatibility in Parmenides." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 28:81-106.

Abstract: "The article provides a critical assessment of the viability of a materialist interpretation of Parmenides’ ontology, discussing it in the context of the notorious issue of the compatibility of what-is in Alētheia and the cosmic constituents (light and night) in Doxa. It makes a case for a strictly incompatibilist view and, on this basis, concludes that a materialist interpretation of what-is is wanting. Clarifying Parmenides’ own notion of the material, it makes the proposal that, whereas the mind vs. body/matter

contradistinction was not available for Parmenides, he did distinguish between the natural and the supernatural. Finally, it suggests that a special kind of duality reminiscent of the contradistinction could have featured in his philosophy, which might have influenced Plato."

40. ———. 2024. "Light, Knowledge, Incorporeality, and the Feminine in Parmenides." In Soul, Body, and Gender in Late Antiquity: Essays on Embodiment and Disembodiment, edited by Panayotov, Stanimir, Jugănaru, Andra, Theologou, Anastasia and Perczel, István, 33-56. New York: Routledge.

"The bulk of the volume consists of five thematic and disciplinary sections. The first one, “Gender and the Self in Greek Philosophy,” begins with five studies dealing mostly with late antique philosophy and problems of gender and femininity. Here, the opening text by Emese Mogyoródi (University of Szeged) sets the stage, with some important consequences, for some of the next chapters and for scholarship dealing with the long legacy of both Parmenides and Plato’s eponymous dialogue. Parmenides’ usual modern interpretations acclaim him as a paragon of reason and hence as a pioneer in the foundations of Western science, as we conceive of it today. While this account is not fundamentally flawed, some crucial features of Parmenides’ poem suggest that it might be misleading to present it as a paragon of “logic” of a masculinist type. The poetic ego of the poem is a young man (kouros) who, after a mythical journey on a chariot to the heavens, encounters an anonymous goddess who initiates him into some profound knowledge about both “Truth” and “Appearance.” Further striking details of the poem suggest that Parmenides might have put a great premium on the fact that the knowledge conveyed by his poem is presented as revealed by a female figure, and the poem is thronged with traditional goddesses or female powers, persistently featuring in all three sections (Proem, Alētheia, Doxa), which suggest that they play some explanatory role both in the arguments (Peithō) and the metaphysical (Alētheia) and natural philosophical (Doxa) conclusions. Hence, the question is raised from substantially revised premises: what is the role of the feminine in Parmenides’ poem and philosophy? This chapter also analyzes the role and the symbolism of light and night, connects

them with the poem’s metaphysical and natural philosophical theses and argues that, in contrast to traditional Greek notions, as well as to mainstream modern accounts on the poem, Parmenides not only associated positive qualities with the feminine, but also accorded to it an ontological and cosmological status that is higher than that of the male gender" (pp. 5-6)

41. Møller, Vigdis Songe. 2002. Philosophy Without Women: The Birth of Sexism in Western Thought. London: Continuum.

Chapter 2: Thought and Sexuality: A Troubled Relationship. An analysis of Hesiod and Parmenides, pp. 21-48; Chapter 3: The Logic of Exclusion and the Free Men's Democracy. An analysis of the notions of equality and balance in Anaximander and Parmenides, pp. 49-75.

"The central philosophers in this book are Parmenides and Plato. It is in the works of these two thinkers that the ideals of unity, identity and unchangeability are developed with the greatest clarity. These ideals can however be traced back to the poet Hesiod, who serves as the starting point of my study.

In Hesiod's texts, these ideals and their opposites are related to sexual difference; whereas unity, identity and unchangeability tend to be symbols of the man and the masculine, plurality and death are seen as representing the woman and femininity. Parmenides and Plato significantly augment this picture: since the unity of existence can only be grasped by means of thought, this too becomes associated with the man and the masculine. This view is unambiguously developed in Plato's Symposium, to which one of my chapters is devoted. In that dialogue, Plato depicts the philosopher as a man whose love of ideas allows him to aspire to a higher form of reality than that attained by the woman in giving birth. By means of his thought the philosopher immortalizes himself, thereby gaining independence of women and indeed heterosexuality in any form. Masculine spiritual love and creativity is contrasted here with female sexuality and the process of giving birth." (Introduction, p. XIV)

"To prepare the ground for what will be a fairly detailed analysis of Parmenides' work, I shall begin by taking a close look at the Theogony. It will become clear that Hesiod's genealogical account of reality runs into serious theoretical difficulties, something which Parmenides takes into account in his own work. Parmenides' concern is to find an alternative to the genealogical perspective. He attempts to grasp the peculiarity of existence without reference to the question of origins. But his intense refutation of everything connected with birth and becoming also results in a rejection of the female and the postulation of an ideal of existence correspondingly remote from sexuality, a type of existence which is in many ways purely masculine; only once we get beyond sexuality can we glimpse immortality. I am aware that it is unusual to attribute such thoughts to Parmenides, who has often been called 'the father of logic'. But in emphasizing the Hesiodic tradition to which he so obviously belongs, I hope to throw this aspect of his thought into clear relief and thereby expose his philosophy in an unfamiliar shape.(4)" (pp. 22-23)

(4) The account of Parmenides' philosophy offered here differs significantly from prevailing interpretations on a number of points. Firstly, the research tradition has not been commonly concerned with the issue of gender and sexuality in relation to Parmenides. It is only in the course of the last ten years that such themes have received any attention whatsoever, and evidently they still belong on the fringe of Parmenidean research, to put it mildly.(...)

42. Morgan, Kathryn. 2000. Myth and Philosophy from Presocratics to Plato. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

On Parmenides see pp. 67-86.

"A study of the fragments of Parmenides' philosophical poem concerning the possible types of human enquiry provides an opportunity for an in-depth analysis of one suggestive use of myth in Presocratic philosophy. We have argued that Xenophanes defined his philosophical aspirations by excluding poetic/mythological practice. Herakleitos appropriated and transformed mythological elements in order to draw attention to the failings of traditional myth as an adequate system of signification. Both philosophers are concerned with the problematic relationship of language and reality. Yet in both cases poetry and mythology, although important, even crucial targets, are not structuring principles in their philosophy. When one moves to the fragments of Parmenides, one is in a different world. Although Parmenides' mythology is non-traditional, his search for knowledge is communicated to the reader through familiar motifs of quest and revelation and is attended by divine mythological beings. His wisdom is expressed in epic hexameters, which, although commonly stigmatised as clumsy and pedestrian, transport us back to the poetic and mythological realm of Homer and Hesiod. (1) What on earth was Parmenides about?

In this section, I shall characterise the ways in which Parmenides chooses to talk about his insight into the problems of being. Treatments of Parmenides sometimes imply that the mythological framework of the poem is a veneer that can be stripped away to reveal pure philosophical argument. On the contrary, mythological elements are integrated into the argument, and interpreting their status is one of the crucial philosophical problems in the poem. Separating Parmenides' mythos from logos he speaks the same tendency we saw in the interpretation of Xenophanes' literary ethics and theology: the desire to tidy up philosophy (separate mythos from logos) so that it conforms to modern perceptions of its subject matter and method. The idea that literary presentation might have philosophical import is ignored. There is, however, no dichotomy between logic on the one hand, and metaphor and myth on the other. This is to argue in terms which would have been foreign to Parmenides. Problems of mythological style and philosophical content are not only parallel, they are expressions of the same difficulty, the relationship between thought and its expression. Here Parmenides follows in the footsteps of his predecessors as he focuses on the problems of myth as a way of symbolising the difficulties inherent in all language.

Parmenides wishes to make his audience aware of the non-referentiality of what-is-not. He does this through logical argument and by developing mythological figures of presentation that transgress the conclusions of his argument. Both argument and literary presentation problematise the status of the audience; there is a paradoxical incoherence between the world in which we live and the uniqueness and homogeneity of what-is. These difficulties are mirrored in the uncertain relationship of the narrator of the poem (the kouros), Parmenides the author, and the goddess who reveals the truth. The goddess replaces the Muse, but the source of inspiration is uncertain. Let us first survey the main features of the revelation, emphasising the dose connection between thought and being, along with the key themes of narrative persuasion and conviction. We will then engage in a dose reading of the mythological framework of the proem to show how it structures and elaborates the key themes of the rest of the poem. Finally we shall consider the poem as a series of nested fictions that draw attention to problems in the relationship of language and reality, problems of which the mythological framework is paradigmatic." (pp. 67-68)

(1) Parmenides may also have included Orphic elements, which would again contribute to a sense of comfortable orientation in a tradition (Mourelatos 1970: 42). For a recent, but unconvincing, attempt to find Orphism in Parmenides, see Böhme 1986.

43. ———. 2022. "Parmenides and the Language of Constraint." In Hesiod and the Beginnings of Greek Philosophy, edited by Iribarren, Leopoldo and Koning, Hugo, 221-238. Leiden: Brill.

"I shall suggest that Parmenides’ language of constraint is appropriated from the Theogony, and that the triumphalism of Parmenides’ establishment of the logical primacy of Being has its roots in the victory of the Olympian gods over the Titans and their

imprisonment in Tartarus. I shall start by outlining the topographical similarities between Hesiod’s underworld and the locale of the revelation narrated in Parmenides’ proem, and then pause to reflect on the interpretative constraints placed (or not placed) on our analysis by these similarities. The analysis will then focus specifically on the language of imprisonment shared by Hesiod and Parmenides, as well as the motif of returning to the light, arguing that it is necessary to move beyond interpretative strategies based on imposing Hesiodic topography on Parmenides. We shall see that Parmenides gives the language of binding a paradoxically positive significance, creatively transforming this Hesiodic motif." (pp. 221-222)

44. Morrison, J.S. 1955. "Parmenides and Er." Journal of Hellenic Studies no. 75:59-68.

Abstract: "The aim of this paper is to explore the suggestion that Parmenides's poem, or at any rate some of it, has light to throw on the difficulties of the myth of Er in the Republic. Parmenides descends to the underworld as a shaman-poet in search of knowledge, Er goes there by the fortuitous circumstance of his death-like trance; but both katabaseis share a common setting, and in both the hero is shown a glimpse of the real shape and mechanism of the universe. In the case of Parmenides the exhibit is two-fold, both 'the unshakeable heart of rounded truth' and 'the opinions of men in which there is no true belief'. Interest has been mainly concentrated on the former, metaphysical, section, from which the greater part of our fragments derive; but the latter contained, in the system of stephanai (*), an account of the appearance of the universe, which is interesting, both on its own account and in view of the light it throws on the difficulties of Er's myth. I shall consider first (I) the setting of Parmenides's poem as it appears in the opening lines, then (II) propose an interpretation of the system of stephanai, and (III) seek support for some of its main features in the general tradition of cosmological speculation from Homer downwards. Finally (IV), I shall proceed to examine the myth of Er and offer an interpretation of some of its difficulties which will take account of this body of earlier thought."

[(*) "Parmenides, on the other hand, in fact [proposes] a fabrication. He makes up something like a wreath—he calls it a stephanē-—a continuous blazing circle of light which encircles the heaven, and he calls it god." Cicero On the Nature of the Gods i, 11, 28 (Dox. 534, 14–535, 8) cited by A. H. Coxon, The Fragments of Parmenides, Revised and Expanded Edition, Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing 2009, Testimonia 54, p. 144.]

45. Mosimann, Robert. 2001. "Parmenides. An Ontological Interpretation." Philosophical Inquiry no. 23:87-101.

"Presocratic scholarship is a rare phenomenon and even when it occurs, often commences from misguided tenets. Anglo-American philosophy has been much preoccupied by linguistic analysis and logical concerns. Regretfully these concerns of the day have been foisted upon Parmcnides as if he too were a shadow of today's illusions in philosophy.

This paper has several objectives, however, the principal one will be to provide an Ontological interpretation of Parmenides in replacement of the Logical Ones which have come to dominate Anglo American scholarship.

The second concern of this paper will be to correctly interpret "estai" and "that which is" in Parmcnides as well as to determine the existential status of the objects of everyday experience.

Finally, we will discuss Parmenides conception of time and whether "that which is" is atemporal, eternal or neither." (p. 87)

46. Mosquera Rodas, Jhon Jairo. 2024. "A Different Perspective on the Polemic Between Heraclitus and Parmenides Concerning the Inner World and the Outer World in the Unity." SSRN:1-15.

Abstract: "The research presents the relationship between movement and staticity as an essential polemic presented by the ideas of Heraclitus and Parmenides, naturalist philosophers, in correspondence with the solution presented from the perspective of the macrouniverse and the contributions of Einstein and Rajinder, Singh, for the solution of this.

The paper presents the analysis of motion and staticity as the centre of the essential polemic between the two philosophers, and then makes an in-depth comparison between the most important fragments of Heraclitus and some key aspects of Parmenides' poem of nature, to finally present a complex solution to the polemic using aspects of cosmology and philosophy in permanent relation to unity."

47. Mourelatos, Alexander P. D. 1965. "Φράζω and Its Derivatives in Parmenides." Classical Philology no. 60:261-262.

"Ever since Villoison's 1788 (*) publication of the Venetus scholia to Homer, classical philologists have been alert to the fact that φράζω may not (and usually does not) carry the meaning dico in early Greek poetry. It has rather a concrete sense, the core or root of which is "to point out," "to show," "to indicate with a gesture," "to appoint," "to instruct."

(...)

I would like to suggest here that the early, concrete sense of φράζω will improve the translation of 2. 6-8 and will also give us the key to the translation of that puzzling adjective πολύφραστοι applied to the horses in 1. 4." (p. 261)

[*] Jean-Baptiste-Gaspard d'Ansse de Villoison, Homeri Ilias ad veteris codicis Veneti fidem recensita. Scholia in eam antiquissima, Venetiis, 1788.

48. ———. 1969. "Comments on 'The thesis of Parmenides'." The Review of Metaphysics no. 22:735-744.

About the paper by Charles Kahn (1969).

"The first of the two routes outlined by the Parmenidean goddess in fr. 2 is given this interpretive formulation in Kahn's paper: "It (whatever we can know, or whatever there is to be known) is a definite fact, an actual state of affairs." (1) Kahn explains that Parmenides intends to assert "not only the reality but the determinate being-so of the knowable object," in other words, that he posits existence both "for the subject entity" and "for the fact or situation which characterizes this entity in a determinate way" (pp. 712-713) .

As indicated by Kahn's use of the pronoun "whatever," the thesis has the force of universality. (2) Let me condense the formulation into a single proposition:

(1) For all p, if p is known, then p is true iff (3) there actually exists a certain F and a certain x such that Fx.

What should count as the denial of (1) P Presumably either:

(2) It is not the case that for all p, etc. [as in (1)];

or, more explicitly,

(3) There is a p such that: p is known, and p is true even though a certain x does not exist, or a certain F does not obtain.

If (1) is an adequate formulation of Parmenides' first route (which according to Kahn it is), then (3) ought to be the correct formulation of the second route. But Kahn's own formulation is significantly different. The first of the two "partial aspects" he distinguishes, the aspect of nonexistence of the subject, he formulates as the claim "that an object for cognition does not exist, that there is no real entity for us to know, describe, or refer to." The second aspect, nonexistence of a certain state of affairs, he expresses as the claim "that there is . . . no fact given as object for knowledge and true statement: whatever we might wish to cognize or describe is simply not the case" (p. 713). Either aspect could be condensed in either of the following formulations:

(4) There is no p such that: p is known, and p is true iff there actually exists a certain F and a certain x such that Fx.

(5) For all p, if p is known, then p is true if a certain x does not exist or a certain F does not obtain.

It should be noticed immediately that (4) and (5) are alternative formulations not of the contradictory of (1) but of its contrary. If anything is clear about the argument in Parmenides' poem, it is that he intends the two routes as exclusive alternatives, the one a contradiction of the other.' Kahn's analysis thus appears to involve an imprecise formulation of the opposition between the two Parmenidean routes."

(1) Charles H. Kahn, "The Thesis of Parmenides," pp. 711-712. References to the paper will hereafter be given mostly in the text and by page number only.

(2) The formulation of p. 714 has similar scope: "esti" claims only that something must he the case in the world for there to be any knowledge or any truth." The deflating expressions "only" and "something" should not mislead; the governing universal quantifier is in the pronoun "any."

(3) The usual abbreviation for "if and only if."

(4) But Kahn says (p. 713) that Parmenides' second route "would deny both assertions" (i.e., both the ascription of existence to x and the ascription of actuality to F). The "both" seems to be an over-statement not required by Kahn's interpretation.

(5) Kahn recognizes this (p. 706). The point I am making has nothing to do with the fact. that. the modal clauses in the two routes of fr. 2 are related as contraries. Propositions (1)-(5) are formulations of the nonmodal clauses of the routes.

49. ———. 1970. The Route of Parmenides: a Study of Word, Image, and Argument in the Fragments. New Haven: Yale University Press.

New, revised edition including a new introduction, three additional essays and a previously unpublished paper by Gregory Vlastos, Names of Being in Parmenides, Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2008.

Reprint of the pages 222-263 (abridged and slightly revised) wit the title: "The Deceptive Words of Parmenides' 'Doxa' " in: Alexander Mourelatos (ed.), The Pre-Socratics. A Collection of Critical Essays, Garden City: Anchor Press, 1974; second revised edition: Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. 312-349.

Contents: Returning to Elea: Preface and Afterword to the revised and expanded edition (2008) XI-L; Part I. The route of Parmenides: a study of word, image, and argument in the Fragments: Use of Greek and treatment of philological and specialized topics LIII; Abbreviations used in Part I LVII-LIX; 1. Epic form 1; 2. Cognitive quest and the Route 47; 3. The vagueness of What-is-not 74; 4. Signposts 94; 5. The bound of reality 115; 6. Persuasion and fidelity 136; 7. Mind's commitment to reality 164; 8. Doxa as acceptance 194; 9. Deceptive words 222; Appendix I. Parmenides' hexameter 264; Appendix II. Interpretations of the Subjectless esti 269; Appendix III. The meaning of kré and cognates 277; Appendix IV. Text of the Fragments 279; Supplementary list of works cited in Part I. 285; Part II. Thee supplemental essays; Abbreviations used in Part II 297; 10. Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the naive metaphysics of things 299; 11. Determinacy and indeterminacy, Being and Non-Being in the Fragments of Parmenides 333; 12. Some alternatives in interpreting Parmenides 350; Part III. The scope of naming: Gregory Vlastos (1907-1991) on B.38 and related issues (Essay not previously published: "Names" of being in Parmenides, by Gregory Vlastos 367; Indexes to Parts I-III 391-408.

"My own aim has been to steer a middle course, keeping three points in sight: (a) Parmenides' relation to the epic tradition; (b) the deep and central involvement of his thought in the sequence of Greek philosophy from Thales to Plato; (c) the supra-historical dimension of the concepts, problems, and arguments in the poem.

The book is not intended as a commentary on the fragments. For this one must still turn to Hermann Diels' Parmenides' L.ehrgedicht (Berlin, 1897) and to the two more recent commentaries: Mario Untersteiner’s Parmenide: testimonianze e frammenti (Florence, 1958) and Leonardo Taran’s Parmenides: Λ Text with Translation, Commentary and Critical Essays (Princeton, 1965). The most up-to-date, comprehensive account of the various interpretations of individual lines and passages will be found in the Italian revision of Zeller’s history of Greek philosophy: E. Zeller-R. Mondolfo, La filosofia dei Greci nel suo sviluppo storico, Part I, 3, “Eleati,” ed. G. Reale (Florence, 1967), pp. 165-335.

As the subtitle of the present study indicates, I have concentrated on the actual language of the fragments: on analyzing the meaning of key words, on articulating arguments, and on exploring the context and morphology of images in the poem. These three aspects I see as congruent. The study of Parmenides' vocabulary reveals that the key terms are embedded in certain paradigms involving analyzable logical structures. They provide trace lines for the argumentation—the logical grammar of the words channels the course of the argument. A similar point can be made with reference to the second aspect mentioned in the subtitle. The imagery introduced in the narrative prelude (B1) is preserved, to an important extent, through verbal echoes in the rest of the poem. But the images do not function evocatively, to suggest a mood, or to point to a symbolic value. Rather, they come in certain configurations of motifs or themes, familiar from Homer (especially the Odyssey) and from Hesiod. The imagery can thus provide a sort of logical calculus for the argument, as well as paradigms or-models for the radically new concepts of knowledge and reality which Parmenides strives to formulate.

I might best summarize all this in saying that I have tried to do justice to the fact that Parmenides composed a philosophical argument in the form of an epic poem. In accordance with this approach, I have also tried to show in the concluding chapter that the poem’s dramatic setting, rudimentary as it is (an all-knowing goddess in a double relation to “ignorant mortals” and to a privileged youth, who is entrusted with a revelation to be subsequently communicated to his fellow men), interacts in important ways with the rhetoric and the argument of the poem as a whole. (The comparison with Plato is, once again, apposite.)" (from the Preface to the first edition, 1970, pp. XIV-XV)

"In the nearly four decades that have passed since the Yale University Press edition, the volume of literature on Parmenides, both books and essays, has exploded. Accordingly, a thorough and fully updated revision is out of the question. It could only be a total re-writing of the book.

Let me, then, clarify at the outset the scope of "revised and expanded." On its subject, The Route of Parmenides inevitably reflects the status quaestionis of the mid- and late- 1960s. The revisions in the present reissue of the Yale Press book (Part I of this volume) are modest: mostly corrections of misprints; altering or adjusting some misleading formulations; editing some egregiously dated phrases, such as "X has recently argued," or "in this [twentieth] century"; and the like. All this was done with care not to change the arabic-number pagination (except for the Indexes) of the Yale Press edition; for it was my concern not only to keep costs of production low but also to ward off the emergence of inconsistencies in citations of the book in the literature.

(...)

If the revisions are delicate and unobtrusive, the expansion is substantial and obvious. Part II reprints three essays of mine, composed in the mid- and late- 1970s, in which I sought to supplement, to strengthen, and in some respects also to modify theses that were advanced in the original edition of the book (theses that are still represented here in Part I). As in the case of the text in Part I, slight adjustments and corrections have been made for the reprinting of the three essays. But the type-setting and pagination in Part II are, of course, new. Part III consists of a previously unpublished essay by Gregory Vlastos. The rationale of publishing posthumously this essay by Vlastos, as well as that of reprinting my own three previously published essays, is perhaps best given in the course of a narrative, which immediately follows here, of my engagement with the thought of Parmenides over the years. Additional comments and afterthoughts, ones that reflect my present views on crucial points of interpretation, will be presented in the course of the narrative and in the closing sections of this Preface." (from the Preface to the Revised and Expanded Edition, 2008, pp. XI-XIII)

50. ———. 1971. "Mind's Commitment to the Real: Parmenides B8 34-41." In Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy, edited by Anton, John P. and Kustas, George L., 59-80. Albany: State University of New York Press.

"An expanded version of this paper appears as chapter 7 of my book, The Route of Parmenides" (p. 59)

"In proposing to undertake here yet another argument on the analysis of the passage, I do not aim for anything like certainty or finality of exegesis. This would be too much to hope for, when we are working at such small scale, and all the more so in the case of pre-Socratic

studies, where the evidence itself is limited and fragmentary and our controls over language and background only too imperfect. Rather it is through an analysis of this passage that I can explain most clearly and directly a certain conception of the relation of mind to reality for which I also find evidence in other texts, in some of the characteristic aspects and themes of Parmenides' poem, and which I consider philosophically and historically important. So let me proceed directly to the analysis, not pausing to review or to formulate the status quaestionis, but taking up points of controversy as they arise." (pp. 59-60)

51. ———. 1973. "Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Naive Metaphysics of Being." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy:16-48.

Supplementary vol. I: E. N. Lee, A. P. D. Mourelatos, R. M. Rorty (eds.), Exegesis and Argument. Studies in Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos, Assen: Van Gorcum.

Already published as chapter 10 of The Route of Parmenides: a Study of Word, Image, and Argument in the Fragments.

"The world we know is not a mere thing or an aggregate of things but a whole that is conceptual!y articulated. It is pervaded by abstract entities, such as qualities, kinds, and relations-entities we can only explain to ourselves indirectly, by saying they are what in the world corresponds to expressions of such-and-such form. Let me refer to this conception by the phrase "the world as logos-textured." The great revolutionary is, of course, Plato; and rhe great moment of the revolution is in the doctrine of the communion of forms in the Sophist, with perhaps an initial, programmatic thrust in this direction already made by the Socrates of Phaedo, who "takes refuge in λόγος." Aristotle feels so much ar home in rhe new logos-textured world that he takes it for granted that his early predecessors, too, must have thought in terms of substance-attribute, quality, privation, and like abstractions.

My purpose in rhis paper is to look into the pre-history of this revolution. Two thinkers, Heraclitus and Parmenides, played decisive, though contrasting roles. I will also try to show what was the genuine and compelling attractiveness of what I shall here call "the naive metaphysics of things." For I do not wish to suggest that Heraclirus and Parmenides sought to correct a parochial, or merely primitive error.

The allure of this naive metaphysics would thus also help explain why for Plato the movement toward the logos-textured world involved so much soul-searching and self-criticism." (The Route of Parmenides, pp. 299-300 of the 2008 edition; two notes omitted)

52. ———. 1975. "Determinacy and indeterminacy as the key contrasts in Parmenides." Lampas no. 8:334-343.

53. ———. 1976. "Determinacy and Indeterminacy, Being and non-Being in the Fragments of Parmenides." In New Essays on Plato and the Pre-Socratics, edited by Shiner, Roger and King-Farlow, John, 45-60. Guelph: Canadian Association for Publishing in Philosophy.

"The main argument in Parmenides' didactic poem begins with these remarks by the unnamed goddess who delivers the revelation (B2 in Diels-Kranz Die Fragmente dec Vorsokratiker): [follow a translation of B2-B8, here omitted]

Modern students of Parmenides have agonized over the question as to how precisely we are to construe the first esti and the einai of the positive "route,” and the ouk esti and me einai of the negative "route". The older solution was to attempt to guess the identity of the suppressed subject from the context, and then to supply it in the translation (e.g., "Being exists . . . or “Something exists," or "Truth exists...," or "The route (hodos) exists...," and the like). In more recent years a certain consensus has developed, at least in

English-language literature, that Parmenides' argument depends on suppressing the subject initially; that it is his intention to allow the subject to become gradually specified as one ponders the logic and implications of the two routes. Within that wider consensus, my own argument has been (2) that Parmenides' subjectless esti in B2 is best understood as {syntactically) a bare copula,with both its subject and its predicate complement deliberately suppressed. The route esti would thus represent not a proposition or premise but the mere form or frame of propositions that characterize their subject in positive terms, "___is___" or "x is F" r for variable x and F; the route ouk esti, correspondingly, would represent the form of propositions that characterize their subject in negative terms, "___is not___" or (x is not-F,” for variable x and F.

Of the arguments which, I believe, justify this construction, I shall restate here only those that can be presented most briefly; I shall also present some fresh considerations and additional evidence; and, on certain points, l shall qualify or attempt to elucidate my earlier account." (pp. 46-47 some notes omitted)

(2) The Route of Parmenides (New Haven and London. 1970.1. pp. 51-55. 70. 269-76; "Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Naive Meiaphysics of Things"' in Exegeses and Argument, pp, 40-46; "Comments on ‘The Thesis of Parmenides.' " The Review of Metaphysics, 22 (1969>, 742-44.

54. ———. 1979. "Some Alternatives in Interpreting Parmenides." The Monist no. 62:3-14.

"In the work of interpreting Parmenides we have witnessed in the 'sixties and 'seventies, in English language scholarship, that rarest of phenomena in the study of ancient philosophy, the emergence of a consensus. Four interpretive theses now seem quite widely shared: (a) Parmenides deliberately suppresses the subject of esti, "is," or einai, "to be," in his statement of the two "routes" in B2, his intention being to allow the subject to become gradually specified as the argument unfolds. (b) The negative route, ouk esti, "is not," or me einai, "not to be," is banned because sentences that adhere to it fail to refer (semantically speaking) to actual entities - the latter to be understood broadly, as will shortly be stated in thesis (d). (c) The argument does not depend on a confusion between the "is" of predication and the "is" of existence. (d) In the relevant contexts, esti and einai involve a "fused" or "veridical" use of the verb "to be"; in other words, esti or einai have the force of "is actual" or "obtains," or "is the case," envisaging a variable subject x that ranges over states-of-affairs. (1)

I formulate the four theses as abstractly and schematically as I can to do justice to the considerable variation of scholarly opinion that obtains within the consensus. It is clear, nevertheless, that the four theses concern fundamental points, and so one may even speak of the emergence of a standard Anglo-American interpretation of Parmenides-let me refer to it as "SI," for short." (p. 3)

"In several respects, which correspond to the criteria of adequacy just cited, SI falls short. I detail these shortfalls in the next five paragraphs. The considerations I offer do not amount-I hasten to emphasize - to a refutation of SI. But they do provide pointers of the directions in which Feyerabendian alternatives might be sought." (p. 5)

(1) See G.E.L. Owen, "Eleatic Questions," (1960), W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy: Vol. II, The Presocratic Tradition from Parmenides to Democritus, pp. 6-57; Montgomery Furth, "Elements of Eleatic Ontology," (1968) Charles H. Kahn, "The Thesis of Parmenides" (1969); Michael C. Stokes, One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy (1971), pp. 127-148; David J. Furley, "Notes on Parmenides" (1973); Edward Hussey, The Presocratics (1972), pp. 78-99; T. M. Robinson, "Parmenides on Ascertainment of the Real" (1975) [references abbreviated].

My formulation both of the consensus and of alternatives fails, unfortunately, to take into account a major new interpretation of Parmenides: Jonathan Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), vol. 1, pp. 155-230, which appeared after the present paper had already gone to print.

55. ———. 1979. "'Nothing' as 'not-Being': some literary contexts that bear to Plato." In Arktouros. Hellenic Studies Presented to Bernard M. W. Knox on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, edited by Bowersock, Glen W., Burkert, Walter and Putnam, Michael C.J., 319-329. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Reprinted in: John P. Anton, Anthony Preus (eds.), Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy. Vol. II: Plato, Albany: State University of New York Press 1983, pp. 59-69; in A. P. D. Mourelatos, After Parmenides: Studies on Language and Metaphysics in Early Greek Philosophy, Baden-Baden: Acadedmia Verlag 2022, pp. 36-45 and in A. P. D. Mourelatos, After Parmenides: Studies on Language and Metaphysics in Early Greek Philosophy, edited by Massimo Pulpito, Supplementa Eleatica 2, Baden Baden: Academia Verlg 2022, pp. 36-45.

"It has often been noticed that Plato, and before him Parmenides, assimilates "what is not" (μηδέν or ουδέν). (1) Given that the central use of "nothing" has important ties with the existential quantifier (''Nothing is here" = "It is not the case that there is anything here"), it has widely been assumed that contexts that document this assimilation also count as evidence that both within them and in cognate ontological contexts the relevant sense of "being" or "to be" is that of existence. That this assumption is not to be granted easily, has been compellingly argued by G. E. L. Owen. (2) His main concern was to show that the assumption is particularly mischievous in the interpretation of the Sophist, where he found it totally unwarranted. My own concern is to attack the assumption on a broader plane. "Nothing" in English has uses that do not depend on a tie with the existential quantifier. So too in Greek: meden or ouden can be glossed as "what does not exist," but it can also be glossed as "not a something," or in Owen's formulation, "'what is not anything, what not in anyway is': a subject with all the being knocked out of it and so unindentifiable, no subject." (3) In effect, the assimilation of "what is not" to "nothing" may—in certain contexts—work in the opposite direction: not from "nothing" to "non-being" in the sense of non-existence; rather from "non-being" as negative specification or negative determination to "nothing" as the extreme of negativity or indeterminacy. To convey the sense involved in this reverse assimilation I borrow Owen's suggestive translation "not-being" for μέ ον, a rendering which makes use of an incomplete participle, rather than the complete gerund, of the verb "to be." (p. 319)

(1) See Parmenides B 6.2, cf. B 7.1, B 8.7-13, B 9.4; Plato Rep. 478 B 12-C 1, Tht. 189 A 10, Soph. 237 C7-E 2. Cf. G. E. L. Owen, "Plato on Not-Being," in Plato, I, Metaphysics and Epistemology, ed. G. Vlastos (Garden City, N.Y., 1971), pp. 225-227.

(2) Owen, "Plato on NotBeing," pp. 241-248 and passim. For use of this assumption in interpreting Parmenides, see D. J. Furley, "Notes on Parmenides," in Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos, Phronesis, suppl. vol. 1 (Assen and New York, 1973) 12.

56. ———. 1981. "Pre-Socratic Origins of the Principle that There are No Origins from Nothing." Journal of Philosophy no. 78:649-665.

"Even those who might question the truth of the ex nihilo nihil principle would readily concede that this principle itself could not have sprung from nothing. The origins are in pre-Socratic philosophy.

(...)

But the earliest text with a recognizable version of the ex nihilo nihil (henceforth ENN) is Parmenides B8.7-10.

Now since a concern with relations between Being and Not-Being (or Nothing)3 is saliently characteristic of Elea, the question arises whether Aristotle's attribution of ENN to philosophers before Parmenides may not be anachronistic. The suspicion of anachronism is reinforced when we consider the rationale for ENN Aristotle projects to his predecessors, all the way back to Thales. They held, Aristotle says, that "from what-is-not nothing could have come to be, because something must be present as a substratum" (Phys. I.8.191a30-31). The "because" clause here blatantly invokes Aristotle's own triadic ontology of matter-privation-form. If that is why Aristotle declares ENN to be pre-Eleatic in its origins and archaion, "ancient" (Metaph. I.984a27-984bl), why should we believe him? " (p. 649)

(...)

"This will not be a complete story of the origins of ENN, but I hope enough will be said to clear the way for renewed appreciation of the tenor of Aristotle's thesis.(*) My concern is not to vindicate Aristotle but to bring out conceptual connections and implications in pre-Socratic fragments." (p. 651)

(*) "from what-is-not nothing could have come to be, because something must be present as a substratum" (Phys. I.8.191a30-31).

57. ———, ed. 1993. The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

V. Parmenides

11. Montgomery Furth: Elements of Eleatic Ontology 241; 12. G. E. L. Owen: Plato and Parmenides on the Timeless Present 271; 13. Karl Reinhardt: The Relation between the Two Parts of Parmenides’ Poem 293; 14. Alexander P. D. Mourelatos: The Deceptive Words of Parmenides’ "Doxa" 312-349.

58. ———. 1993. "The Deceptive Words of Parmenides’ "Doxa"." In The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Mourelatos, Alexander P. D., 312-349. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

From The Route of Parmenides: A Study of Word, Image, and Argument in the Fragments (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970), pp. 222-63; abridged and slightly revised in the present version.

"My aim in this study will be to show that two related concepts, drawn from the field of literary criticism, can serve to interpret faithfully both the facts of contrast and the facts of similarity. It will then appear that what is reflected in scholarly literature as controversy is actually a tension built into the argument and language of "Doxa," and that this tension is intrinsic to the philosophical message of this part of Parmenides' poem.

I have in mind the twin concepts of ambiguity and irony. It is actually surprising, considering that the goddess is impersonating a spokesman for mortal doxai, "opinions," and warns that her words are "deceptive," that these important analytical tools of the literary critic have been neglected in discussions of the second part of the poem.(6) Under "ambiguity" we should be prepared to allow any of the several types distinguished by modern literary critics,(7) although, as one would expect, only a smaller number can be illustrated in the rhetorical and poetic effects of the "Doxa." I will not pause over questions of classification

here; the type will become clear in the analysis of individual passages." (p. 313)

(6) I note, however, that Charles H. Kahn has remarked: "The ambiguity of Parmenides' style is intentional" (Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology [New York, 1960], p. 227).

(7) See William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity, 3d ed. (New York, 1955),pp. v-vi; also William Bedell Stanford, Ambiguity in Greek Literature: Studies in Theory and Practice (Oxford, 1939), chs. 3, 4, and pp. 91-96.

59. ———. 1999. "Parmenides and the Pluralists." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 32:117-129.

The article discusses Patricia Curd's The Legacy of Parmenides (1998).

"Curd does not read Parmenides as a philosopher of the One. Her view is that Parmenides sought to establish formal criteria for what should properly count as 'what-is' or 'the real' (the physis or 'nature' of things) in a rationally constructed cosmology. Such an entity - or such entities - should indeed be unborn, imperishable, unchanging, and inherently complete." (pp. 117-118)

(,,,)

"In offering my own critical comments on the book, let me start by posing this question: Given that the basis for Curd's larger narrative is her interpretation of Parmenides, what exactly is that basis and how secure is it? Since half of the book is devoted to Parmenides, let me take up separately and at some length four salient theses in Curd's interpretation of Parmenides." (p. 120)

60. ———. 2011. "Parmenides, Early Greek Astronomy, and Modern Scientific Realism." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 167-189. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Reprinted in Joe McCoy (ed.), Early Greek Philosophy. The Presocratics and the Emergence of Reason, Washington: The Catholic University Press 2013, pp. 91-112.

Summary: " “Doxa,” the second part of Parmenides' poem, is expressly disparaged by Parmenides himself as “off-track,” “deceptive,” and “lacking genuinecredence.” Nonetheless, there is good evidence that “Doxa” included some astronomical breakthroughs. The study presented here dwells on fragments B10, B14, and B15 from the “Doxa,” and especially on the term aidēla, interpreted as “causing disappearance,” in B10.3. The aim is to bring out the full astronomical import of Parmenides' realization of four related and conceptually fundamental facts: (i) that it is the sun’s reflected light on the moon that explains lunar phases; (ii) that it is the sun’s glare which, as the sun moves in its annual circuit, causes the gradual seasonal disappearance of stars and constellations, and that the absence of such glare explains their seasonal reappearance; (iii) that it is likewise the sun’s glare which causes the periodic disappearance, alternately, of the Morning Star and the Evening Star, and it is the absence of such glare that allows, alternately and respectively, for the reappearance of each of these stars; and (iv), a ready inference from (iii), the realization that the latter supposedly two stars are an identical planet.

In seeking to make sense of the paradoxical antithesis of “Truth” vs. a disparaged yet scientifically informed “Doxa,” the present study explores two modern analogues: Kant’s doctrine of the antithesis of “things-in-themselves” (or “noumena”) vs. “appearances” (Erscheinungen or “phaenomena”); and the twentieth-century doctrine of scientific realism, notably propounded by Wilfrid Sellars. The latter model is judged as more apt and conceptually more fruitful in providing an analogue for the relation between “Truth” and “Doxa.” "

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Parmenides of Elea. Annotated Bibliography of the studies in English: Mou - Rav

Bibliography

1. Mourelatos, Alexander P. D. 2012. "“The Light of Day by Night”: nukti phaos, Said of the Moon in Parmenides B14." In Presocratics and Plato. Festschrift at Delphi in Honor of Charles Kahn, edited by Patterson, Richard, Karasmanis, Vassilis and Hermann, Arnold, 25-58. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

"The earliest securely attested record of the discovery that the moon gets its light from the sun is in the second part of Parmenides’ poem, the “Doxa”: in the one-line fragments B14 and B15.(1) In an earlier study, I have used the term “heliophotism” as a succinct reference to the correct explanation of lunar light;(2) and for convenience I shall use the neologism again here. Daniel W. Graham has made a strong case in favor of the claim that the two fragments present heliophotism as a discovery made by Parmenides himself.(3)

(...)

My concern in this study is not with the issue of attribution of the discovery but quite narrowly with the correct reading of the text in B14. Nonetheless, as I hope to establish, once the correct reading is determined, the deflationary position will be decisively undercut. Moreover, the correct reading will give us a statement that is semantically more nuanced, superior in astronomical accuracy, and rhetorically and poetically more expressive.

B15 will come up for supporting quotation later in the present essay. But the important amplification it provides for B14 needs to be kept in mind throughout." (pp. 25-27)

(1) See Daniel W. Graham, “La Lumière de la lune dans la pensée grecque archaïque,” in Qu’est-ce que la Philosophie Présocratique, eds. André Laks and Claire Louguet (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2002), 351–380, esp. 363–378; see also Graham’s Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientific Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 179–182.

(2) “Xenophanes’ Contribution to the Explanation of the Moon’s Light,” Philosophia (Athens), 32 (2002), 47–59. In that publication, as well as in The Route of Parmenides (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970. 2nd ed. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2008), 224–225, I had uncritically accepted the emendation nuktiphaes, which is what I dispute in the present essay.

(3) See references to Graham in note 1 above.

2. ———. 2013. "Commentary on Graham." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy no. 28:64-73.

Commentary on Daniel W. Graham, Two Stages of Early Greek Cosmology.

Abstract: "The comment endorses and reinforces Daniel W. Graham’s highly original and attractive proposal that early Greek cosmology develops in two stages. In what Graham calls the “meteorological stage” of the sixth century BCE, celestial objects are explained as formations either from fire or from watery exhalations in a roughly planar model of the cosmos. In the “lithic stage” of the mid- and late fifth century introduced by Anaxagoras, the model is that of a central earth around which solid stone-like celestial objects revolve held aloft in a vortex.

The change to the lithic stage comes about, according to Graham, as the implications of Parmenides’ epoch-making discovery that the moon is illuminated by the sun (heliophotism) come to be understood and are then theoretically exploited. The present comment also proposes that the false explanations of lunar phases and lunar and solar eclipses in the meteorological-stage cosmologies, respectively, of Xenophanes and of Heraclitus may have played a helpful heuristic role in the theoretical breakthrough to heliophotism."

3. ———. 2013. "Sounds, Images, Mysticism, and Logic in Parmenides." In Eleatica Vol. 3: Parmenide. Suoni, immagini, esperienza, edited by Rossetti, Livio and Pulpito, Massimo, 159-177. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

"These notes are only a first and short reaction to the rich and dense text by Laura Gemelli Marciano (hereafter abbreviated ‘LGM’), which collects her lectures in Velia towards the end of 2007." (p. 149)

(...)

"In the following comments, I take for granted that our primary object is the fragmented text that tradition has kept for us under the name of Parmenides. LGM’s approach is full of interesting observations, the critical worth of which undoubtedly reaches beyond her own preferred framework. It’s outstanding the care and detail with which she deals with fragment Bl, which she seems to identify with the Proem. Since there is no reference to the internal distinction of three parts(3), one can wonder where exactly the so-called ‘Way of truth’ actually begins. If the Proem is B1 as such and the Way of Truth is the same as B8 1-50, the series B2-B7 (plagued with vexed problems of its own) doesn’t seem to belong to one on the other. On the other hand, paying attention to the three voices that the poet uses, one might want to limit the Proem stricto sensu to the first twenty-three verses, and locate the beginning of the Way of truth already in B1, 24. Verses 24-27 seem designed to look backwards, whereas verses 28-32 are programmatic and look forward. The nine verses together seem to constitute a balanced and tight exordium of the whole discourse of the goddess - so there would be, in a sense, two proems at play in B1.

About LGM’s rich approach to the Proem, I keep only a few of the themes and motifs that seem the most important to me." (p. 150)

(3) This is, of course, a construct that comes from commentators and interpreters that has become a widespread current convention, but it’s well grounded in the text itself.

4. ———. 2014. "The conception of eoikōs/eikōs as epistemic standard in Xenophanes, Parmenides, and in Plato’s « Timaeus »." Ancient Philosophy no. 34:169-191.

"There are books on the pre-Socratics, and there are books on Plato.[*] Except in general histories of ancient Greek philosophy, the border that marks off Plato's philosophy of the cosmos and of nature from the thematic domain of corresponding accounts offered by the pre-Socratics is not crossed very often. Among exceptions to this pattern, one that is both well known and distinguished is Gregory Vlastos' 1975 book, Plato's Universe. And now Jenny Bryan's Likeness and likelihood in the Presocratics and in Plato is a welcome addition to the genre, and indeed a specially worthy complement to Plato's Universe inasmuch as Bryan deals with topics that had not been central in Vlastos' account.

The book's project is announced by Bryan ('JB' henceforth) as one of developing 'an intertextual reading of [Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Plato's] use of eoikōs/eikōs. Her narrative of intertextuality is engaging, and it is elegantly told in well-organized sections and sub-sections. Ir comprises careful and sensitive analyses of the target Greek texts; and ii reflects wide and searching reading of the relevant studies in the secondary literature. She shows herself well-trained and adroit in the deployment of the twin methods her topic calls for: the conscientious philologist's scrupulous examination of words in their context and in their history; 1he analytic philosopher's probing of concepts and the dialectical canvassing of issues and of candidates for solutions. The entire narrative involves four stages. which I summarize in what immediately follows." (p. 169 notes omitted)

[* Discussion of Jenny Bryan, Likeness and Likelihood in the Presocratics and Plato]

5. ———. 2016. "Two Neo-Analytic Approaches to Parmenides’ Metaphysical-Cosmological Poem." Rhizomata no. 6:257-268.

Critical Discussion of John Palmer, Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); and Michael V. Wedin, Parmenides’ Grand Deduction: A Logical Reconstruction of the Way of Truth (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

"The obvious limitation of Wedin’s book comes from its unswerving concentration on the “Truth” part. There are occasional glances to the other major part, the Doxa, “Way of Opinion”, but only on secondary issues. Wedin adheres to Owen’s position, which is that Parmenides appends the Doxa only exempli gratia, so as to identify and memorialize the sort of Ionian project of natural philosophy Parmenides’ austere ontology aims to abandon or to discredit.

Over the preceding two decades, however, a consensus has been emerging among students of Parmenides that the Doxa contains important scientific discoveries, especially in astronomy. Since at least some of these discoveries are likely to have been made by Parmenides himself, it is hard to imagine that Parmenides would have cited them merely as instances of misguided belief. Accordingly, the issue of the relation between “Truth” and Doxa is one that is currently undergoing thorough re-examination. Unfortunately, Wedin does not engage at all with these more recent developments in Parmenidean scholarship." (p. 260)

(...)

"I have raised some fundamental difficulties and objections to the accounts offered in the two books. And yet there is no denying that these are works of high quality and of singular interest – arguably among the best that have been produced on any of the Eleatics in recent decades. The rigor and logical precision in Wedin’s formal reconstruction of “Truth” is totally admirable. But equally admirable is Palmer’s close-grain analysis of scores of philosophical and philological issues, and also his masterly command of the daunting volume of Parmenidean and pre-Socratic scholarship, with all the twists and turns in disputes and ephemeral resolutions over more than a century. My semantic objections notwithstanding, Palmer’s “modal reading” offers an interpretative option that is imaginative and even enthralling." (p. 268, a note omitted)

6. ———. 2020. "Elements of Natural Science in the Second Part of Parmenides’ Poem: Comment on Livio Rossetti’s Lezione I at Eleatica 2017." In Eleatica Vol. 8: Verso la filosofia: Nuove prospettive su Parmenide, Zenone e Melisso, edited by Galgano, Nicola S., Giombini, Stefania and Marcacci, Flavia, 244-250. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlsg.

"In sum, I find that – except for the elements of astronomy – there is some hyperbole in Rossetti’s estimate of Parmenides as a “tenace e creativo investigatore della natura” (p. 56). Nonetheless, I judge Rossetti has done a major service to Parmenidean scholarship by strongly urging us to consider that in Parmenides we have “un intellettuale molto versatile, cui si devono insegnamenti diversissimi” (p. 63). The communis opinio – that in the second part of the poem we have nothing more than an exempli gratia display of wrong views of “mortals” – cannot be right.

How, then, should we think of the relation between the ontological doctrine of the first part of the poem and the natural philosophy of the second? Here too I agree with the critique Rossetti offers in sections 2.4 and 2.5 of Lezione I of recent attempts to “bridge” the difference between the two parts. And yet his own solution, viz., of “[m]era giustapposizione”, leaves us frustratingly hoping and looking for something more. Dare we hope that (as in the case of Epicurus) archaeology might some day bring to light more texts from Parmenides’ poem? I, for one, derive more comfort from Rossetti‘s suggestion, at the end of Lezione I, that “le virtualità sistemiche di questo superbo insegnamento sull’essere non si sono manifestate e non sono arrivate a prendere forma” (p. 90). Yes, a lot of science, and notably of good empirical science (witness the case of observational astronomy), can be pursued and indeed achieved within the ambit of empirical observation. But the ontology of the first part points prophetically to a future predominantly theoretical account of reality, one that will be free of the comforting anthropocentric familiarities provided by the (mainly) visual approach to things (“Light” and “Night”)." (pp. 249-250)

7. ———. 2022. "Parmenides of Elea and Xenophanes of Colophon: the conceptually deeper connections." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 34:1-23.

Abstract: "According to the influential Plato-Aristotle account, Parmenides advocates holistic monism (‘all things are one’), and Xenophanes anticipated him by advocating some version of monotheism. Over the last half-century or so, Parmenides studies have disputed this vulgate by arguing that Parmenides’ focus is on the nature of ‘what is’ (to eon), rather than on ‘the One’. Correspondingly, there has developed a tendency to minimize the philosophical importance of Xenophanes, by viewing him primarily as a reformer of Greek religious beliefs and as social critic. I argue that a close study of Xenophanes shows that he had developed a coherent naturalist or physicalist world-view. And this also allows us to gain deeper insights into Parmenides, by viewing the latter as generalizing Xenophanes’ critique of peculiarly ‘anthropist’ (or anthropomorphist) bias in our approach to the universe."

8. Mourelatos, Alexander P. D., and Pulpito, Massimo. 2019. "Parmenides and the Principle of Sufficient Reason." In ὁδοὶ νοῆσαι. Ways to Think. Essays in Honour of Néstor-Luis Cordero, edited by Pulpito, Massimo and Spangenberg, Pilar, 121-141. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia.

Abstract: "The subtle and well-structured argument from B8.6 to B8.10 of Parmenides’ "Trut" culminates at B8.9-10 in what has long been recognized as at least Implied recourse to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR): “Why genesis at a later rather than an earlier time?”. But the widely used translation for B8.9 of chreos as “need” and of ôrsen an as “might have driven” entail oddities that have been overlooked. The authors argue that chreos in Parmenides is essentially a nominalization of the expressions chrē and chreōn esti, which, running through Parmenides’ poem, convey the sense of ‘"right and reasonable necessity” (not necessity simpliciter). It emerges that Parmenides’ awareness of PSR is not just intuitive but rather thematized and reflective. And that is why, after PSR is first invoked with reference to alternative points in time at B8.9-10, it is redeployed at B8.44-45 (in the “sphere” passage) with reference to alternatives of extension in space."

9. Nehamas, Alexander. 1981. "On Parmenides Three Ways of Inquiry." Deucalion no. 33/34:97-111.

Reprinted in: A. Nehamas, Virtues of Authenticity. Essays on Plato and Socrates, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999, pp. 125-137.

"We often take Parmenides to distinguish three "ways of inquiry" in his poem: the way of being, that of not being, and the way which combines being and not being; and to hold that of these only the first is to be followed.

This approach, originating in Reinhardt, (1) is now canonical (2). G.E.L. Owen, for example, writes that Parmenides aims to rule out two wrong roads which, together with the remaining right road, make up an exhaustive set of possible answers to the question estin e ouk estin;... The right path is an unqualified yes. The first wrong path is an equally unqualified no... There is no suggestion that anyone ever takes the first wrong road... It is the second, the blind alley described in... B6, that is followed by 'mortals'. . To take this well-trodden path... is to say, very naturally, that the question estin e ouk estin; can be answered either yes or no (3).

The text of B6. 1-5 (...) can be translated as:

What is for saying and for thinking must be; (4) for it can be,

while nothing cannot; I ask you to consider this.

For, first, I hold you back from this way of inquiry,

and then again from that, on which mortals, knowing nothing, wander aimlessly, two headed...

Simplicius' manuscript, where this fragment is found, contains a lacuna after dizesis in line 3. Diels supplied eirgo and took lines 4ff. to follow directly afterwards. (5) Thus, the goddess scents to proscribe two ways of inquiring into being. This text, however, exhibits certain peculiarities which suggest that this view awes serious difficulties. The purpose of this paper is to present these peculiarities, discuss the difficulties, and to suggest, if cautiously, an alternative to the text and to the view it engenders." (pp. 97-98)

(1) Karl Reinhardt, Parmenides and die Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophie, (reps. Frankfurt A.M., 1959) pp. 18-32.

(2) David J. Furley, "Notes on Parmenides", in E.M. Lee et al., Exegesis and Argument: Studies in. Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos (Assen, 1973), pp. 1 - 15; W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. II (Cambridge, 1965); G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1957); A.P.D. Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides (New Haven, 1970); G.E.L. Owen, "Eleatic Oiteslions", Classical Quarterly, N.S. vol. 10 (1960), pp. 85 - 102; Michael C. Stokes, One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., I 971.

(3) Owen, pp. 90-91.

(4) For this construction, see Furley, p. 11.

(5) See Diels' comment in his apparatus to the Prussian Academy edition of Simplicius' commentary on Aristotle's Physics (Berlin, 1882), p. 117.

10. ———. 2002. "Parmenidean Being / Heraclitean Fire." In Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos, edited by Caston, Victor and Graham, Daniel W., 45-64. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"The facts are these.

Parmenides and Heraclitus lived at about the same time, at opposite ends of the Greek- speaking world. Parmenides constructed a rigorously abstract logical argument in vivid verse. Heraclitus composed a series of striking paradoxes in obscure prose. They are both difficult to understand. They are both arrogantly contemptuous of their predecessors as well as their contemporaries, to whom they usually refer as 'the many' or 'mortals.(1) They have been taken to stand at opposite philosophical extremes: Parmenides is the philosopher of unchanging stability; Heraclitus, the philosopher of unceasing change.

The rest is speculation.

That is not a criticism. Most of the speculation is not idle: it is interpretation, based partly on the texts and partly on a general sense of the development of early Greek philosophy. But interpretation it is and, as such, each of its aspects affects and is, in turn, affected by every other. One of these is the idea that, though close contemporaries, Heraclitus and Parmenides wrote successively and that whoever wrote later criticizes the other: either Heraclitus denounces Parmenides (2) or Parmenides attacks Heraclitus.(3) Testimony to the continuing influence of the ancient diadoche-writers, that assumption bears directly on the interpretation of both philosophers. In particular, if, as most people today believe, Parmenides is answering Heraclitus, we need to find in Heraclitus views that Parmenides, in turn, explicitly rejects in his poem.(4)

I want to question this assumption - not necessarily to reject it, but to show exactly how it affects our interpretation of both Parmenides and Heraclitus.(5) I would also like to outline, in barest form, an alternative understanding of their thought which takes them to write in parallel and not in reaction to one another. (6)" (pp. 45-46)

(1) Heraclitus also names some of the targets of his criticisms (for example, B 40, B 42, B 56, B 57, B 81, B 106, B 129).

(2) That is the view of Reinhardt, [Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie] 1916.

(3) A notable exception is Stokes [One and Many in the Presocratic Philosophy], 1971, pp. 109-23, who believes that each can be understood quite independently of the other. For full references to the debate, see Daniel W. Graham, 'Heraclitus and Parmenides' (in this volume, pp. 27-44). Graham offers a strong defense of Patin's thesis to the effect that Parmenides is directly concerned with criticizing Heraclitus in his poem.

(4) More cautiously, we need to assume that Heraclitus must at least have appeared to have held views which Parmenides rejects in his poem.

(5) It is an assumption that is important to two of the best recent studies of Parmenides and Heraclitus: Curd [The Legacy of Parmenides], 1998 and Graham [Heraclitus' Critcism of Ionian Philosophy], 1997, as well as to the latter's 'Heraclitus and Parmenides.' Both, not incidentally, are as deeply indebted to A. P. D. Mourelatos as I am in my own inadequate celebration of his work, which this essay constitutes.

6 My view of the relationship between Parmenides and Heraclitus is similar to that of Stokes 1971, though the implication I draw from it for my interpretation of their views differ from his in many ways.

11. Newell, John F. 2022. "Finding Ithaca, and sense in Parmenides B1.3 : the Homeric meaning of εἰδώς " Classical Quarterly no. 72:53-68.

Abstract: "A close reading of the contexts of several Homeric passages reveals that Homer often uses εἰδώς with ironic force. This realization sheds light on several passages discussed herein, including: 1) Homer’s description of the location of Ithaca, which is shown to be Odysseus’ strategic lie that directs the Phaeacians to the local stronghold (nearby Dulichium), and 2) the manuscript reading of Parmenides B1.3, which is shown to harbour no internal conflict even if its εἰδότα φῶτα (‘one who knows’) is in a state of confusion (ἄτῃ), because εἰδότα can signal incomplete or confused knowledge, or even a lack of it. Other literary clues in Parmenides B1 are shown to support this reading."

12. Northrup, Mark D. 1980. "Hesiodic personifications in Parmenides A 37." Transactions of the American Philological Association no. 110:223-232.

"At De Natura Deorum 1.11.28 (= DK 28 A 37), Cicero's speaker Velleius first describes that deity who presides over, then identifies several other divine inhabitants of, Parmenides' World of Seeming"

(...)

"Developing an idea of Karl Reinhardt, Karl Deichgraber took these words as evidence that Parmenides populated his world of doxa with personified abstracts arranged in antithetical pairs. (2)"

(....)

"In his book on Parmenides, Leonardo Tarán rejected this theory of contrary potencies, asserting that ultimately there was "no evidence" to support it.(7) That such evidence does, however, exist (although considered by neither Reinhardt nor Deichgraber) I hope to show in what follows. I hope to do so, moreover, in a way which will shed a measure of new light not only on Parmenides' poem but also on an important aspect of the Theogony, viz., Hesiod's use of personification. (pp. 223-225)

(7) L. Tarán, Parmenides (Princeton 1965) 250. The Reinhardt-Deichgraber position is supported by H. Schwabl, "Zur Theogonie bei Parmenides und Empedokles," WS [Wiener Studien] 70 (1957) 278-289.

13. O'Brien, Denis. 1993. "Non-Being in Parmenides, Plato and Plotinus: a Prospectus for the Study of Ancient Greek Philosophy." In Modern Thinkers and Ancient Thinkers, edited by Sharples, Robert W., 1-26. London: University College London Press.

English version of "Le non-être dans la philosophie grecque: Parménide, Platon, Plotin", in Pierre Aubenque (ed.), Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, Napoli: Bibliopolis 1991, pp. 317-364.

"Here I must omit detailed argument (which I have published elsewhere) (11) and limit myself to a simple outline of the structure of the whole.

Esti does not mean "being is" (Cornford's emendation) at the beginning of the poem. But the esti of the first path does acquire a subject in the course of the argument. For the goddess does later claim as a development of the first way the proposition eon emmenai (fr. 6.1): "it is necessary to say this, and to think this, namely that being is", or ". . . that there is being".(12)

That is not the case however for the path which is opposed to the path of persuasion, a path "from which we can learn nothing" (fr. 2.5-8). This path is expressed by the negation of esti (fr. 2.5): " 'is not' and it is necessary not to be". This path has no subject and never acquires one, for the substantivized participle, "what is not" (to me eon, fr. 2.7-8), proves to be as unknowable as the simple indicative statement: "is not".

Hence a crucial difference between the first and second way.

"Being" or "what is" (eon) can be added as a development of the first way (esti) whereas "is not" (auk esti) and "what is not" (to me eon) are never joined to form a proposition; both expressions are equally impossible and equally unknowable statements of the second way.

It is true that, in the course of the poem, the goddess does produce a composite statement where the negative participle is added to the positive verb (einai me eonta, fr. 7.1): "things that are not, are". That composite statement does not represent either of the two paths introduced at the beginning of the argument. It is, instead, an impossible combination of the two ways, a combination which is not only false, but contradictory (cf. fr. 6).

The false and contradictory combination of "is" and "is not" (fr. 7.1: "things that are not, are") represents the "opinions of mortals in which there is no true conviction" (fr. 1.30; cf. fr. 8.38-41).

Thus the whole poem turns upon the opposition between "is" and "is not" (fr. 2), on the development of "is" into "being is" (fr. 6.1-2) and the recognition which this will bring of a being that is "unborn" and "imperishable" (fr. 8.1-21), and finally on the impossible conjunction of "is" and "is not" which underlies the whole of our belief in a world where things are not unborn and are not imperishable, the world where "things that are not, are" (fr. 7.1).

An impossibly rapid survey of an unconventional interpretation of Parmenides, but one which will allow me to turn to the criticism made of Parmenides by Plato in the Sophist."

(11) Mainly in my contributions to the two volumes of the work quoted in n. 2 above. [Études sur Parménide, Paris: Vrin 1987]

(12) Fr. 6.1: khre to legein to noein t' eon emmenai. This text is not the same as that printed in Diels-Kranz (d. n. 1 above). For the repetition of the article (to), see Etudes sur Parménide, vol. I, p. 24.

14. ———. 2000. "Parmenides and Plato on What is Not." In The Winged Chariot: Collected Essays on Plato and Platonism in Honour of L.M. de Rijk, edited by Kardaun, Maria and Spruyt, Joke, 19-104. Leiden: Brill.

"Plato, in writing the Sophist, "did not consider it beneath his dignity to return to the great Parmenides" . Any reader of Plato's dialogue must therefore do likewise. But whose Parmenides should we return to? If modern interpretations of the Sophist are legion, so too are the reconstructions that are currently on offer, from modern scholars, of the fragments of Parmenides.

Which one should we take on board?

Two names in particular stand out. Miss G. E. M. Anscombe was a close associate of Wittgenstein, and is generally acknowledged as one of the leading philosophers of her day. Professor W. K. C. Guthrie was a pupil of F. M. Cornford, and is the only historian of ancient philosophy who has had both the knowledge and the ambition to undertake a history of Greek philosophy that would rival the great work of Eduard Zeller.(2) Both scholars therefore have impeccable credentials. Both have written on Parmenides.(3)

One or other or both, one might surely think, will have been able to recover from the extant fragments ideas that will make sense of the criticisms of Parmenides that loom so large in Plato's Sophist." (p. 19)

(2) See Guthrie (1962-1981). Sadly, Guthrie did not live to complete his majestic enterprise; the last volume takes us only as far as Aristotle. Cf. Zeller (1844) and (1919-1920). Gomperz (1896-1909) is too chatty to be a serious rival.

(3) Guthrie (1965) 1-80. Anscombe (1969), reprinted in Anscombe (1981) 3-8. Cf O'Brien (1987) 206 n. 25. Miss Anscombe goes so far as to entitle the first volume of her Collected papers (1981) From Parmenides to Wittgenstein. Obviously therefore she does not consider her contribution on Parmenides to be a mere πáρπεργον."

Works cited

Anscombe, G. EM. (1969) 'Parmenides, Mystery and Contradiction', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society n.s. 69 (1968-9): 125-132.

-- (1981) The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe, vol. I, From Parmenides to Wittgenstein (Minneapolis) 3-8.

Gomperz, T. (1896-1909) Griechische Denker, Eine Geschichte der Antiken Philosophie, 3 vols (Leipzig).

Guthrie, W. K. C. (1962-1981) A History of Greek Philosophy, 6 vols (Cambridge).

--- (1965) A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. ii, The Presocratic Tradition from Parmenides to Democritus (Cambridge).

O'Brien, D. (1987) Études sur Parménide, sous la direction de Pierre Aubenque, tome I, Le Poeme de Parménide, Texte, Traduction, Essai Critique "en collaboration avec Jean Frère pour la traduction française" (Paris).

Zeller, E. (1844) Die Philosophie der Griechen, Eine Untersuchung iiber Charackter, Gang und Hauptmomente ihrer Entwicklung. (Leipzig).

-- ( 1919-1920) Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, ed. W. Nestle, 3 Teile, 6 Abteilungen (Leipzig).

15. ———. 2013. "Does Plato refute Parmenides?" In Plato’s Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 117-155. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"I have a couple of times ventured to suggest that in the Sophist Plato does not refute Parmenides.(2) The reaction has been, to say the least, hostile.(3) Hostile, with more than a touch of disapproval. You might have thought I had suggested that the Queen of England was a man.

The suggestion was not only false, but foolish. A mere eye-catcher. Absurd, and unseemly." (p. 117)

(...)

"Both Empedocles and Parmenides are understandably chary, though for different reasons, of the ‘names' commonly applied to the phenomena of the visible world by those who know no better. Names commonly in use do not at all match what Empedocles believes to be the true explanation of such phenomena, the explanation inspired by his ‘white-armed Muse' (cf. fr. 3.3). Still less do they match the message of Parmenides' goddess, dwelling beyond the Gates of Night and Day (fr. 1.11) and claiming to disprove the very possibility of anything whatever coming-into-being or passing-away (fr. 8.26 –28). All the many things that we mortals think to see, ‘coming into being and passing away, being and not being, changing place and altering their bright colour', so Parmenides would have us believe, are ‘no more than a name' (cf. fr. 8.38 –41)." (p. 155)

(2) O’Brien (Le Non-Être, Deux études sur le ‘Sophiste' de Platon, Sankt Augustin 1995) 87 – 88, (‘Parmenides and Plato on What is Not', in M. Kardaun and J.Spruyt (eds.), The Winged Chariot, Collected essays on Plato and Platonism in honour of L. M. de Rijk, Leiden, Boston, Köln 2000) 94-98.

(3)Monique Dixsaut, Platon et la question de la pensée, Paris (2000) 269 n. 2. Notomi, N., "Plato against Parmenides: Sophist 236D-242B", in S. Stern-Gillet and K. Corrigan (eds.), Reading Ancient Texts, vol. I: Presocratics and Plato, Essays in honour of Denis O’Brien, Leiden-Boston (2007) 167-187.

16. Osborne, Catherine. 1998. "Response by Catherine Osborne: Was verse the default form for Presocratic Philosophy?" In Form and Content in Didactic Poetry, edited by Atherton, Catherine, 23-35. Bari: Levante.

Response to M. R. Wright, Philosopher poets: Parmenides and Empedocles.

"In tltis short rejoinder to Professor Wright's paper I shall attempt to do two things: first, to raise two fundamental questions not directly discussed by Wright, but which nevertheless seem to me to bear on our present topic, that is the 'didactic poetry', so called, of Parmenides and Empedocles; and second, briefly to explore a theme of my own relating to the structure and content of the poems. In the course of developing these themes of my own, I shall also respond to some of the claims in Wright's paper where they bear on the same issue.

1. Poetry or prose: a real choice?

My two fundamental questions are these:

1.1. Is the notion of 'didactic poetry' appropriate or helpful in relation to this period and these tltinkers?

1.2. Was poetry the default form for the Presocratics and if so, why does not every philosopher write in verse?" (p. 23)

(...)

"In conclusion, then, I would suggest that in both Parmenides and Empedocles we find that the structure of the poem itself expresses the message conveyed in it. Parmenides' journey in verse matches the journey he describes, which in turn expresses the logical structure of the argument it represents, and reveals that the contrast between the mortal confusion and the true logic is not that one is straight and the other crooked, but that one is internally consistent and circular and the other inconsistent and wayward. Empedocles' formulaic and cyclical poetry, in which words and lines are recycled for new uses and new tellings of old tales, accurately recaptures his formulaic world in which events recur in cycles as time recycles forces and elements to create new worlds and retell old stories. Though we may not ask why they wrote in verse we may ask what form the verse takes in each case. What I hope to have shown is that in both cases form and content are so closely matched that the medium is itself indispensable to the message, and indeed, once we take that relation seriously, we can start to discover just what the message is." (pp. 34-35)

17. ———. 2006. "Was there an Eleatic revolution in philosophy?" In Rethinking Revolutions Through Ancient Greece, edited by Goldhill, Simon and Osborne, Robin, 218-245. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"My concern in this chapter is with Parmenides' effect on the immediately subsequent generation of philosophers, the fifth-century Presocratics. Of course, there is no question that Parmenides was important for Plato. He figures prominently in the late dialogues, and arguably instigated, through Plato, a metaphysical trend that was indeed revolutionary, at least from the perspective of modern philosophy. But such delayed responses are not my focus here.(5) I am simply asking whether we should detect a radical change in the way cosmology was pursued and defended immediately after Parmenides' poem hit the public domain." (p. 219)

"On the orthodox story, Parmenides was targeting the group of sixth-century predecessors whom we classify as the first philosophers, particularly the Ionian cosmologists, Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes. Each of these, so we are told, tried to derive a plural world - the world as we know it now - from a single stuff (water for Thales, air for Anaximenes and so on). They thought that the many could be explained in terms of the one from which it was ultimately derived. By contrast, so the story goes, Parmenides was succeeded by a generation of pluralists, in particular Empedocles, Anaxagoras and the atomists (Leucippus and Democritus). Their choice of plural principles was motivated, so we are told, by their recognition of the force of Parmenides' criticisms.

Scholars differ as to whether these so-called pluralists were attacking Parmenides' conclusions or endorsing and incorporating them. Some read them as rejecting the Eleat.ic doctrines, both monism and the prohibition on change: hence the pluralists aimed to refute Parmenides or at least to reduce the significance of his claims, Others read the pluralists as warm towards Parmenides' outlook. On this view the 'Eleatic pluralists'6 adjusted their cosmology to meet Parmenidean criteria; they appealed to fundamental principles, atoms for instance, that were indeed indivisible and unchanging, as Parmenides' arguments had demanded.

Nothing hangs on which variant we prefer, The pattern is the same: anti-cosmological motives for Parmenicles' intervention, and a subsequent attempt to rehabilitate cosmology in dialogue with Parmenidean principles.

\Xlhether the later thinkers were pro- or anti- Parmenides is insignificant to the structure of this reconstruction." (p. 220)

(5) For a full treatment of Plato's reading of Parmenides see Palmer (1999).

(6) This title (originally applied to the atomists by Wardy (1988)) is adopted by Graham (1999) 176, to apply to Empedocles and Anaxagoras. Wardy challenges the reader, at page 129, to choose between ditching the traditional account of a post-Parmenidean response by the atomists, or improving on the traditional version of how atomism is a response. My chapter (unlike his) favours the former solution, though my target is not actually atomism (for which there is good evidence of a post-Parmenidean motivation).

18. Owen, Gwilym Ellis Lane. 1960. "Eleatic Questions." Classical Quarterly:84-102.

Reprinted with additions in: D. J. Furley and R. E. Allen, Studies in Presocratic Philosophy. Vol. II: The Eleatics and Pluralists, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975 pp. 48-81 and in: G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science, and Dialectic. Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986 pp. 3-26.

"The following suggestions for the interpretation of Parmenides and Melissus can be grouped for convenience about one problem. This is the problem whether, as Aristotle thought and as most commentators still assume, Parmenides wrote his poem in the broad tradition of Ionian and Italian cosmology. The details of Aristotle's interpretation have been challenged over and again, but those who agree with his general assumptions take comfort from some or all of the following major arguments. First, the cosmogony which formed the last part of Parmenides' poem is expressly claimed by the goddess who expounds it to have some measure of truth or reliability in its own right, and indeed the very greatest measure possible for such an attempt. Second, the earlier arguments of the goddess prepare the ground for such a cosmogony in two ways. For in the first place these arguments themselves start from assumptions derived from earlier cosmologists, and are concerned merely to work out the implications of this traditional material. And, in the second place, they end by establishing the existence of a spherical universe: the framework of the physical world can be secured by logic even if the subsequent introduction of sensible qualities or 'powers' into this world marks some decline in logical rigour.

These views seem to me demonstrably false. As long as they are allowed to stand they obscure the structure and the originality of Parmenides' argument." (p. 84)

19. ———. 1966. "Plato and Parmenides on the Timeless Present." The Monist:317-340.

Reprinted in: Alexander Mourelatos (ed.), The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays, Garden City: Anchor Press, 1974 and in: G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science, and Dialectic. Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986 pp. 27-44.

Some statements couched in the present tense have no reference to time. They are, if you like, grammatically tensed but logically tenseless. Mathematical statements such as "twice two is four" or "there is a prime number between 125 and 128" are of this sort. So is the statement I have just made. To ask in good faith whether there is still the prime number there used to be between 125 and 128 would be to show that one did not understand the use of such statements, and so would any attempt to answer the question. It is tempting to take another step and talk of such timeless statements as statements about timeless entities. If the number 4 neither continues nor ceases to be twice two, this is, surely, because the number 4 has no history of any kind, not even the being a day older today than yesterday. Other timeless statements might shake our confidence in this inference: "Clocks are devices for measuring time" is a timeless statement, but it is not about a class of timeless clocks. But, given a preoccupation with a favored set of examples and a stage of thought at which men did not distinguish the properties of statements from the properties of the things they are about, we can expect timeless entities to appear as the natural proxies of timeless statements.

Now the fact that a grammatical tense can be detached from its tense-affiliations and put to a tenseless use is something that must be discovered at some time by somebody or some set of people. So far as I know it was discovered by the Greeks. It is commonly credited to one Greek in particular, a pioneer from whose arguments most subsequent Greek troubles over time were to flow: Parmenides the Eleatic. Sometimes it is suggested that Parmenides took a hint from his alleged mentors, the Pythagoreans. "We may assume" says one writer "that he knew of the timeless present in mathematical statements." 2 But what Aristotle tells us of Pythagorean mathematics is enough to undermine this assumption. According to him (esp. Metaph. 1091a12-22) they confused the construction of the series of natural numbers with the generation of the world. So Parmenides is our earliest candidate. His claim too has been disputed, and I shall try to clear up this dispute as I go, but not before I have done what I can to sharpen it and widen the issues at stake." (pp. 317-318)

20. Owens, Joseph. 1974. "The Physical World of Parmenides." In Essays in Honour of Anton Charles Pegis, edited by O'Donnell, Reginald J., 378-395. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

21. ———. 1975. "Naming in Parmenides." In Kephalaion. Studies in Greek Philosophy and Its Continuation Offered to Professor C. J. de Vogel, edited by Mansfeld, Jaap and Rijk, Lambertus Marie de, 16-25. Assen: Van Gorcum.

"Naming for Parmenides, the texts show, is basically the conventional process by which a word or expression is established to designate a thing. Metaphorically it is extended, in one reading of Fr. B 8,38, to cover the conventional establishing of perceptible things as expressions or names for the unique immobile being. It may be either right or wrong. It is right when, either by words or by perceptible constructs it designates being, the only thing positively there to be named. Accordingly the thinking out and writing and reciting of Parmenides' poem is perfectly legitimate.

Naming, however, has always to be based on a positive characteristic or distinguishing mark. It is therefore illegitimate when conventionally applied to not-being. Not-being, having no characteristics at all, cannot be known and cannot be expressed in speech. But mortals do in fact mistakenly name not-being, on the basis of the characteristics of night, darkness, ignorance, earth, thickness, heaviness. They obtain these distinguishing marks by dividing bodily appearance -- for the corporeal is the only kind of being recognized by Parmenides -- into these characteristics and their opposites. This whole process is wrong, for there is no not-being to be named, and the characteristics assigned to it, though appearing positive, are in reality negations. But with the second basic form so named and its characteristics so established, and with equal force given to both, the differentiations and changes in the perceptible universe may be explained. To understand them and treat of them as in this way human conventions, is truth. To believe that the differentiations and changes are the true situation, is the doxa.

Naming is accordingly for Parmenides a conventional process throughout which being remains sole and sovereign both in the perceptible world and in human thought and speech. Every sensible thing and every human thought and word is being. To understand that, is to be on the road of the goddess while thinking and speaking. Recognized clearly as naming the one immobile being, human thought and language and living are thoroughly legitimate. Parmenides may legitimately continue in them, even though according to doxa they and all perceptible things are differentiated and are engendered and perish, and "for they inert have established a name distinctive of each" (Fr. B 19,3). The important philosophical consequence is that for Parmenides perceptible things can retain all the reality and beauty they have in ordinary estimation, and still function as names for the one whole and unchangeable being." (pp. 23-24)

22. ———. 1979. "Knowledge and 'Katabasis' in Parmenides." The Monist no. 62:15-29.

"The relation between imagery and philosophy in the poem of Parmenides has occasioned much discussion in recent years. One item of particular import has been the direction taken by the journey that was so inspiringly pictured in the opening section. Is the travel upwards? Or is it downwards? Or is it rather cross-country, either aloft, or on the earth's surface, or in the depths of the nether world? Further, if there is cross travel on any of these three levels, is the direction from east to west, or from west to east?

Readily acceptable is the stand that the text itself does not explicitly specify either upward or downward direction.(1)" (p. 15)

"Yet one guiding principle seems obligatory from the start. If correct historical and literary exegesis of the proem should run counter to any particular interpretation of the philosophy, the interpretation can hardly be considered acceptable. Parmenides' introduction, if even ordinary literary skill is accredited to him, has to be in harmony with what it is meant to introduce.

The effects of a katabasis norm in assessing Parmenides' conception of human knowledge could be especially devastating. A study of the problem in the global context of the various directions found in the proem by commentators is accordingly indicated. The reasons for the ascent, the descent, and the surface journey need to be probed from the viewpoints of their weight and their reciprocal exclusiveness. In a panoramic survey of this kind the salient thrusts that bear upon the philosophic interpretation of the poem should become manifest." (p. 17)

(1) For critiques of alleged indications of an ascent, see infra, nn. 11-12. Towards the end of the nineteenth century Hermann Diels, Parmenides: Lehrgedicht (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1897), p. 8, had observed: [Nor does the way to God become us vividly described. We do not even hear if it goes down or up.] This warning was approved by Walter Burkert, "Das Proomium des Parmenides und die Katabasis des Pythagoras," Phronesis, 14 (1969), p. 2, n. 3, maintaining "[It is more correct, however, to omit the vertical, the top and the bottom at all]" (p.15). Burkert, however, defends a katabasis rather than an Auffahrt. A bibliography on the topic may be found in Maja E. Pellikaan-Engel, Hesiod and Parmenides: A New View on Their Cosmologies and on Parmenides' Proem (Amsterdam: Adolph M. Hakkert, 1974), pp. 104-109.

Note: I give the English translation of the texts by Diels and Burkert, cited in the original German by Owens.

23. Palmer, John. 1999. Plato's Reception of Parmenides. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

"Before proceeding, then, I want to say something about how I believe we must approach the question of Parmenides' influence on Plato.

I have already noted the principal error vitiating most appraisals of this influence, namely the assumption that one can base an appraisal upon an interpretation of Parmenides developed independently of the actual Platonic reception. Such attempts at assessing this specific case of intellectual influence are particularly unfortunate, since many modern treatments of Parmenides have, either implicitly or explicitly, endeavoured to avoid any interpretation of his philosophy that might appear too 'Platonic', afraid that attributing to him anything like Plato's own distinction between the sensible world of becoming and the intelligible realm of being would be anachronistic. The paradox involved in then addressing Parmenides' influence on Plato, based on a view of Parmenides that deliberately avoids seeing him as Plato might have done, should be apparent. Now, those who avoid a 'Platonic' reading of Parmenides tacitly recognize that it is indeed possible to understand Parmenides as articulating the type of epistemological and ontological categories fundamental to Platonism-as well they should, since such an understanding was fairly common among later Platonists in antiquity. Therefore, even if one were unwilling to accept an interpretation along these lines as representing a proper understanding of Parmenides himself, one would nevertheless have to admit that the 'Platonic' understanding had its historical effect and, as such, deserves attention. One might even believe that Plato himself would have subscribed to the 'Platonic' understanding of Parmenides." (p. 8)

24. ———. 2004. "Melissus and Parmenides." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 26:19-54.

"Detailed consideration of Plato's representations and uses of Parmenides shows that he would not have subscribed to the contemporary view of Parmenides that makes it possible to see Melissus as faithfully replicating the essential features of his thought. In fact, the view

of Parmenides as a strict monist seems to have been something of a minority interpretation in antiquity."

(...)

"... I shall try to avoid presuming at the outset any particular interpretation of Parmenides. Although I do want to argue that Melissus is more original than he has previously been taken to be, it would be improper to do so by simply adopting an understanding of Parmenides that differs from those presumed by previous assessments. Instead, I shall begin by focusing on the unquestionable adaptations of Parmenides and the equally unquestionable departures from him in Melissus' conception of what is and in his argumentation for the various attributes of what is. While the majority of these departures have been recognized by others, I believe that the full impact of their collective weight has yet to be realized.

The differences between Parmenides' and Melissus' conceptions of what is and the structures of their argument are extensive enough to prompt reconsideration of the view that the 'overall structure' and the 'general intellectual nisus' of Parmenides' and Melissus' philosophy 'are one and the same'." (pp. 21-22)

25. ———. 2009. Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Contents: 1. Parmnides' place in Histories of Presocratic Philosophy 1; 2. Parmenides' Three Ways 51; 3. The way of the Goddess and the Way of Mortals 106; 4. What Must Be and What Is and Is Not 137; 5. Zeno, Melissus and Parmenides 189; 6. Anassagors and Parmenides 225; 7. Empedocles' Element Theory and Parmenides 260; 8. Parmenides' Place in Presocratic Philosophy 318; Appendix: The Fragments of Parmenides' Poem 350; Bibliography 388; Index locorum 405; General index 422-428.

"Parmenides of Elea is the most brilliant and controversial of the Presocratic philosophers.

This book aims to achieve a better understanding of his thought and of his place in the history of early Greek philosophy. To this end, I here develop and defend a modal interpretation of the ways of inquiry that define Parmenides’ philosophical outlook. He was, on this view, the first to have distinguished in a rigorous manner the modalities of necessary being, necessary nonbeing or impossibility, and contingent being. He himself specifies these modalities as what is and cannot not be, what is not and must not be, and what is and is not. Accompanying this fundamental ontological distinction is a set of epistemological distinctions that associates a distinct form of cognition with each mode of being. With this framework in place, Parmenides proceeds to consider what what must be will have to be like just in virtue of its mode of being and then to present an account of the origins and operation of the world’s mutable population." (Preface, VI)

26. ———. 2016. "The early tradition on Melissus and Parmenides." In Eleatica Vol. 5: Melissus between Miletus and Elea, edited by Pulpito, Massimo, 150-156. Sank Augustin: Academia Verlag.

"Prof. Mansfeld provides a masterfully concise overview of Melissus’s argument and its ancient reception before identifying a number of outstanding problems.[*] My comments here will be concerned in the first place with gleaning more about what Prof. Mansfeld thinks we can learn about Melissus and his relation to Parmenides from some of the significant features of the earlier reception. Prof. Mansfeld adopts a sound strategy in the first of his lectures by treating Melissus himself as belonging to the early reception of Parmenides and by thus attempting to view Parmenides through the eyes of Melissus. Caution is in order, however, when it comes to assessing Melissus’s relation to Parmenides because Melissus’s neo-Eleatic argumentation unfortunately distorted understanding of Parmenides already in antiquity and has done so even more in the modem era. Thus grouping Melissus with Parmenides and Zeno as members of an ‘Eleatic school’ is problematic on a number of counts, both historiographically and philosophically. It tends to obscure the question of Melissus’s relation to Parmenides by encouraging us to see Melissus as a broadly faithful, if sometimes innovative, student developing the doctrines of his master. Both Plato and Aristotle give us good grounds for questioning this view." (p. 150)

[*] Jappa Mansfeld, Melissus between Miletus and Elea, same volume, pp. 71-112.

27. Panchenko, Dmitri. 2008. "Parmenides, the Nile and the Circumnavigation of Africa by the Phoenicians." In Libyae Lustrare Estrema. Realidad y literatura en la visión grecorromana de África. Homenaje al Prof. Jehan Desanges, edited by Candau Morón, José María, González Ponce, Francisco José and Chávez Reino, Antonio Luis. Sevilla: Universida de Sevilla.

"We are told that the division of the earth into zones originated with Parmenides(1), whose floruit is dated by Apollodorus to the 69ᵗʰ Olympiad (504/3-501/0 BC)(2). Moreover, according to a testimony that ultimately goes back to Theophrastus, “Parmenides was the first to locate inhabitable parts of the earth on each side of the two tropical zones”(3).

Must we suppose that Parmenides simply assumed, quite arbitrarily, a southern inhabited zone? My answer is: no. In general, we may think that Parmenides would have done his best to avoid being accused of inventing “facts”. More specifically, we have no evidence that his doctrine of zones had any explanatory function in his system, and therefore we have no reason to assume that it was advanced as ad hoc support for some thesis of his own. We should further take into consideration that Parmenides was also the first to maintain that the earth is spherical(4)."

(...)

"I conclude that Parmenides’ doctrine of an inhabited southern zone was based on some kind of actual information. Now, Herodotus specifically addresses the issue of the circumnavigation of Libya. He cites the successful circumnavigation performed by the Phoenicians, the failed attempt of Sataspes, and the problematic claim of the Carthaginians (the expedition of Hanno is apparently meant) that they too circumnavigated the continent (IV 42-43). One has the definite impression that Herodotus has mentioned all the remarkable expeditions in Libyan waters of which he was aware. There is no good reason to assume that Sataspes went as far as the southern temperate zone(5), and in all probability he is later than Parmenides(6). The preserved account of Hanno’s voyage makes it clear that Hanno, who is likely to be an older contemporary of Parmenides, did not go that far. What could be then the source of Parmenides’ awareness of the southern inhabited zone if not the reports of the Phoenician mariners who had circumnavigated Africa?" (pp. 189-190)

(1) Posidonius, fr. 49 Edelstein–Kidd = STR. II 2, 2: “Posidonius says that Parmenides was the originator of the division into five zones, but that Parmenides represents the torrid zone as almost double its real breadth” (H. L. Jones’ transl.); cf. fr. 209 Edelstein–Kidd = ACH. TAT., Intr. Arat. 31 (Parm., 28 A 44a Diels–Kranz). We need not discuss here the difficult issue of the relative size of particular zones according to Parmenides.

(2) D. L., IX 23. The chronology of Parmenides (as is the case with nearly all the Presocratics) is in fact a difficult matter. For the present purpose it is enough to assume that Apollodorus’ dating does not deviate much from the truth.

(3) Parm., 28 A 44a Diels–Kranz = Placit. (AËT. [PS.-PLU.], III 11, 4), p. 377 Diels: Παρµενίδη̋ πρῶτο̋ ἀφώρισε τῆ̋ γῆ̋ τοὺ̋ οἰκουµένου̋ τόπου̋ ὑπὸ ταῖ̋ δυσὶ ζώναι̋ ταῖ̋ τροπικαῖ̋. The phrasing is characteristic for Theophrastus.(...)

(4) So Theophrastus apud D. L., VIII 48; IX 21.

(5) His account of the voyage did not apparently remove the ground for disbelief in the claim of the Phoenicians that in sailing round Libya they had the sun on the right hand (HDT., IV 42). This claim is equivalent to an assertion that the midday sun was seen north of an observer, which is invariably the case in the “southern inhabited zone”, that is, south of the winter tropic.

(6) Sataspes was sent by Xerxes, whose reign began in 486 BC and began with troubles, while the circumnavigation of Libya was clearly not of primary concern for the king.

28. Papadis, Dimitris. 2005. "The Concept of Truth in Parmenides." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 23:77-96.

"In this paper I shall endeavor to define the concept of truth, which is very closely related to the βροτων δοξαι, and to the so-called δοκούντα. Truth in Parmenides manifests itself as divine revelation bestowed upon a chosen individual, namely Parmenides himself. No doubt, this revelation is no more than a poetic-mythical-religious model of teaching, which does not substantially affect the content thereof." (p. 77)

"The word ἀλήθεια occurs in three fragments, namely B 1.29, B 2.3, and B 8 .51. Its meaning is not defined in any of them. This is to say that Parmenides has not attempted a systematic theoretical approach to the problem(6)." (p. 78)

"In conclusion, we have in Parmenides a tripartite scheme, as far as the cognitive approach to things is concerned: a) doxa, true or false, b) ta dokounta = true doxai, mainly of universal reference, and c) aletheia. Doxa and dokounta refer to the perceptible aspect of the

world, whereas aletheia refers to the inner Being of the world. Access to the truth is, according to the poem, a preserve of Parmenides. Still, it is understood that this is also possible for everyone possessed of his exceptional spirituality." (p. 95)

29. Pelletier, Francis. 1990. Parmenides, Plato and the Semantics of Not-Being. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments IX; Introduction XI-XXI; 1. Methodological preliminaries 1; 2. Parmenides' problem 8; 3. Plato's problems 22; 4. Some interpretations of the symploke eidon 45; 5. The Philosopher's language 94; Works cited 149; Index locorum 155; Name index 159; Subject index 163-166.

"As the title indicates, this is a book about Plato's response to Parmenides, as put forward in Plato's dialogue, the Sophist. But it would be a mistake to think that the difficulties raised by Parmenides and Plato's response are merely of antiquarian interest, for many of the same problems emerge in modern discussions of predication and (especially) of mental representation of natural-language statements. The intricacies and difficulties involved in giving a coherent account of Plato's position will be familiar to scholars in the field of ancient Greek philosophy, as will be the general philosophic difficulty to which Plato is responding- the Parmenidean problem of not-being.

This introduction is written to show to philosophers interested more in natural-language understanding and knowledge-representation than in ancient philosophy that the issues being grappled with by Plato remain crucial to these modern enterprises, and to show classical philosophers that many of the interpretive choices they face have modern analogues in the choices that researchers in cognitive science make in giving an adequate account of the relations that must hold among language, the mind, and reality." (from the Introduction).

30. Pelliccia, Hayden. 1988. "The Text of Parmenides B 1,3 (D-K)." American Journal of Philology no. 109:513-522.

"With the removal (1) of all manuscript authority from ἄστη, [from the Fragment B 1.3] editors may resort to defense of the transmitted text or to conjectural restoration based upon "palaeographical likelihood." I believe they should do neither." (p. 507)

(...)

"By way of conclusion, some general remarks on το ἐον will be in order. Parmenides' use throughout the poem of the singular (το ἐον) is an innovation the purpose of which is not far to seek. In earlier writers there is found only the plural (τα ἐοντα), used, usually τα τ' εσσομενα προ τ' εοντα, to describe reality in terms of its constituent elements.(24) This tendency to use the plural to designate reality is evident in Heraclitus (whom some have thought to be a special target of Parmenides' argument (25) ), both in the famous παντα ῥει and especially B7 D-K εἰ πάντα τὰ ὄντα καπνὸς γένοιτο, ῥῖνες ἂν διαγνοῖεν: as clear an assertion of the enduring multiplicity of real entities as can be found anywhere. Parmenides, in denying multiplicity, would have been required, for the sake of logical consistency, to shun the established use of the plural παντα τὰ ὀντα and to adopt the singular παν τὸ ἐον. (26)" (p. 512)

(1) The results of Coxon's re-examination of N have been corroborated by L. Tarán, Gnomon 49 (1977) 656, n. 15, [review article of Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides] who has himself inspected the Ms.

(24) In most of these passages (for example, in all the instances of the formula listed by West on Hes. Th. 32) the plural participles designate the objects of knowledge; this point should be of interest to those who maintain that the subject of ἐστί throughout Parmenides is "the objects of discourse or inquiry" (e .g., J. Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers [London 1982) 163; G. E. L. Owen, "Eleatic Questions," CQ n.s. 10 [1960] 84-102 = D. J. Furley and R. E. Allen, Studies in Presocratic Philosophy II [London 1975] 48-8 I). If my restoration of παν τὸ ἐον is accepted at B 1.3, it can be resupplied as object of εἰδότα: 'the road which bears the man who knows [all that exists] over all that exists'.

(25) See Guthrie, Hist. Gk. Phil. I, 408, n. 2 , and II, 23f.

(26) I wish to thank Professors A. T . Cole, R. L. Fowler, D. R. Shackleton Bailey, and R. J. Tarrant for their criticisms and suggestions.

31. Pellikaan-Engel, Maja. 1974. Hesiod and Parmenides: A New View of Their Cosmologies and on Parmenides Proem. Amsterdam: Adolf Hakkert.

Contents: Chapter I: Why an approach to Parmenides from Hesiod 1; Chapter II: Hesiod's cosmology, Theogony 116-33 11; Chapter III: Hesiod, Theogony 736-66 19; Chapter IV: Hesiod's Truth 39; Chapter V: Some substitutions of certain Hesiodic concepts in the proem of Parmenides. The route of Parmenides 51; Chapter VI: Excursus of the other interpretations of the route of Parmenides 63; Chapter VII: Parmenides's Truth 79; Chapter VIII: Parmenides' cosmology 87; Summary 101; Bibliography 104; Curriculum vitae 110.

"Summary. Research is made into the texts of Parmenides and Hesiod. Points of comparison between the proem of Parmenides and Hesiod Theogony 736-66 lead to attach similar meanings to the similar terms "chaos" and "house of Night" (Chapt. I). An analysis of the contents of the texts leads to the conclusion that the image in Parmenides' proem with regard to the Heliades, who have left the house of Night, taking with them the poet as a chosen person, is parallel to the alternate cyclic journey of the goddesses Day and Night c.s. from the subterranean house of Night, via the East to the region above the earth and via the West down and back again to the point of departure, as is written in Hesiod Theogony 746-66; in this the taking with them of the chosen person from the earth is parallel to Theogony 765, 6, where Death, son and companion of Night, takes with him his victims of men (Chapt. III and V).

An analysis of Hesiod's cosmological views leads to the conclusion, that Hesiod imagined the sky to be a metallic and revolving sphere, the earth at its centre (Chapt. II) and that he imagined chaos in its first phase to be of unbounded extension, presumably consisting of air at rest, and later on to be the region above as well as beneath the earth, limited by the spherical sky, consisting of air in motion (Chapt. IV).

The result of Chapt. V and an analysis of Parmenides' cosmological views leads to the conclusion that Parmenides imagined the earth to be a hollow sphere (Chapt. VII) and that the problem concerning what was in the midst in his cosmological system, either the goddess or the earth, can be solved by supposing the goddess to be in the midst in the absolute sense, i.e. at the centre of his cosmos and the earth to be in the midst in the relative sense, i.e. as a hollow sphere in the midst between the centre of his cosmos, viz. the goddess, and the outer limitation of his cosmos, viz. the spherical sky (Chapt. VIII)." (p. 101)

32. Perl, Eric D. 2014. Thinking Being: Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition Leiden: Brill.

Chapter 1: Parmenides, pp. 11-17.

"In the fall semester of 2008 I taught a course in the graduate program at Loyola Marymount University called “Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition.”

Originally conceived primarily as an advanced survey of the most significant figures in classical metaphysics,(1) the course as it proceeded developed into something far richer and deeper: an articulation of the thematic continuity in the thinking of being from Parmenides to Thomas Aquinas, centered on the two fundamental questions, ‘What is being?’ and ‘Why are there beings, rather than nothing?’ The first of these questions is formulated by Aristotle but stated by him to have been asked “from of old” (Met. Ζ.1, 1028b3–5); the second, although not expressly formulated in antiquity,(2) is touched on by Plato in his account of the good as “beyond reality” and as the source of being itself (Rep. 509b6–10), and is central to the thought of both Plotinus and Aquinas. The result of remaining attentive to these two questions was a thematic understanding of the tradition that is liable to be lost in more specialized examinations of individual thinkers and remains altogether unthought in ‘histories of philosophy’ that are merely historical rather than truly philosophical.

The present study, aiming to set forth that understanding, is thus intended neither as a survey nor as a history but as a properly philosophical exposition of the fundamental insights of classical metaphysics." (p. 1)

(...)

"To dismiss the world as illusion does not account for the occurrence of the illusion itself. It is not being, and yet it somehow is.

As we shall see, Plato and Aristotle will grapple with this problem. But they will do so, not in simple repudiation of Parmenides but rather in continuity with him, for they will remain within the Parmenidean framework in which being is that which is intelligible, and, just insofar as it is intelligible, is timeless, changeless, “ungenerated and incorruptible, whole, of one kind and unshaken and complete” (B 8.3–4)." (p. 17)

(1) The term ‘classical’ is used here, for want of a better, to refer to ancient and medieval philosophy as a continuous tradition.

(2) This question, in the form “Why is being at all and not rather nothing?” is identified by Heidegger as the fundamental question of metaphysics: Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik, 4th ed. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1976), 3.

33. Perry, Bruce Millard. 1983. Simplicius as a Source for and an Interpreter of Parmenides, Washington University.

Ph.D thesis available at ProQuest Dissertation Express, order number: 8319442.

Contents: Acknowledgments IV; Special Abbreviations V; Introduction 1; Chapter I. Plato and Parmenides 11; Chapter II. Aristotle and Parmenides 33; Chapter III. Parmenides in the Later Tradition 52; Chapter IV. Simplicius on Parmenides 87; Conclusion 257; Bibliography 271; Appendix A. Translations 278; Appendix B. Quotations from Parmenides 409; Appendix C. Verses, Variant Readings 416; Appendix D. Index Locorum 440-442.

"A systematic study of Simplicius's interpretations of all the Presocratics is not feasible here.

(...)

I have chosen to study his interpretation of Parmenides because he is perhaps the most important, if also the most problematic, of the Presocratics. Simplicius quotes 101 out of the 154 extant Greek verses of Parmenides, and devotes considerable space in his commentary on Physics I, augmented by several passages from his De Caelo commentary, to interpreting Parmenides.

There is thus considerable material for study.

Because Simplicius's interpretation does not arise ex nihilo, some consideration must be taken of the formative influences on and the possible sources for his interpretation. More specifically, Simplicius rejects the criticisms of Parmenides by Plato in the Sophist and by Aristotle in the Physics and argues that his own interpretation silences both ciiticisms. Chapter I comprises a sketch of Parmenides's influence on Plato (Republic V 476e6-480a13), and an examination of Plato's criticism in the Sophist (244b6-245e2). Similarly, Chapter II considers Aristotle's treatment of Parmenides in Metaphysics A (986b27-987a2) and Physics I (184b15-187all). The other possible influences or sources are considered in Chapter III: the doxographical tradition, Sextus Empiricus, Plutarch, and the Neoplatonists.

The large amount of material on Parmenides in Simplicius necessitates a division into manageable topics or sections. While such a division is by nature arbitrary, the nine sections I have decided upon in Chapter IV represent reasonably discrete subjects: I. Biographical Information; II. Obscurity of Doctrine, Poetry; III. Overall Discussions of Parmenides; IV. The Aletheia; V. The Doxa; VI. Parmenides's Argument for the Unity of Being; VII. Plato on Parmenides; VIII. Aristotle on Parmenides; IX. Others on Parmenides.

Each section contains at least two parts: a detailed list of the relevant passages (A), and a summary of their contents (B). For the first five sections commentary is provided (C); particularly detailed commentary is devoted to the Aletheia (IV) and the Doxa (V). A summary of Simplicius' s interpretation is found at the beginning of Chapter IV, and a set of conclusions follows Chapter IV.

Appendix A contains English translations of all the passages which bear on Parmenides in Simplicius. A detailed list of Simplicius's quotations from Parmenides forms Appendix B. The verses with variant readings from CAG [Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca] VII and IX are collected in Appendix C. Appendix D is a skeletal Index Locorum." (pp. 6-8)

34. ———. 1989. "On the Cornford-fragment (28 B 8,38)." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 71:1-9.

"In "A New Fragment of Parmenides" CR 49 (1935) 122—123, F. M. Cornford argued for the authenticity of the verse found at Theaetetus 180e1 and in Simplicius in Ph. 29.18, 143.10:

οίον άκίνητον τελέθει τφ τταντι δνομ* είναι.

Though editors from Diels onward have rejected the verse as a misquotation of Β 8.38, Cornford has persuaded some scholars to accept it as a genuine fragment. The cogency of some of these arguments will be challenged in this article. While the fragment does not stand or fall solely with Cornford's arguments, fresh doubts as to its authenticity will be raised incidentally." (p. 1, notes omitted)

"Cornford's argument for the accuracy of Simplicius's quotation of the verse rests on the claims that he quotes the verse directly from his MS of Parmenides and that he does not explicitly mention the Theaetetus when he quotes it. Both claims are open to objection. Simplicius does not invariably quote Parmenides from his MS; in fact, he often quotes him from Plato. There is also good reason to believe that Simplieius has the Theaetetus in mind when he quotes the verse at in Phys. 143.10." (p. 5)

"It is reasonable to conclude that Simplicius did quote the verse from Plato, and not from his MS of Parmenides." (p. 9)

35. Perzanowski, Jerzy. 1996. "The Way of Truth." In Formal Ontology, edited by Poli, Roberto and Simons, Peter, 61-130. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Contents: Index 61; 1. Introduction 62; 2.Beings, the Being and Being 64; 3. Ontological connection 65; 4. Towards a theory of ontological connection 67; 5. Some classical ontological questions 73 ; 6. A linguistic intemezzo 76; 7. An outline of a Primitve Theory of Being - PTB 86; 8. Towards a Extended Theory of Being - ETB 102; 9. Parmenidean statements reconsidered and classical questions answered 122; 10. Summary 127; Acknowldgements 128; References 128-130.

"1.8 In what follows a very general theory of ontological connection is provided.

In spite of its generality this theory enables us, as we shall see, to reconsider the classical ontological claims of Parmenides and to refute an anti-ontological claim that the notion of being is syncategorematic.

Also certain ontological theorems will be proved, including: Being is and Nonbeing is (sic!). A being is, whereas a nonbeing is not. Also: Whatever is, is - which is shown to be equivalent to Whatever is not, is not.

1.9 The paper is organized as follows: I start with general remarks concerning ontology and different approaches to the notion of being. Next, several classical questions of traditional ontology are discussed. After making our problems clear, I will introduce a formalism enabling us to study them in their full generality. Finally, the results of the paper are discussed in a manner introducing perpectives for a subsequent theory of qualities." (p. 63)

36. Philip, J. A. 1958. "Parmenides' Theory of Knowledge." Phoenix.Journal of the Classical Association of Canada no. 12:63-66.

"But Parmenides is only incidentally concerned with any theory of knowledge. He is telling the tale of his journey, in search of both knowledge and true opinion. It takes him away from the paths of men, beyond the gates of day and night, into the light. There the goddess reveals to him the secrets of true being which alone is the object of knowledge; but she also reveals true opinion concerning our physical world. In his poem Parmenides is passing on that revelation, but he nowhere suggests that that revelation is accessible to intellectual

effort without revelation. For that reason it seems to me that no interpretation which makes Nous a product of physical constitution can be acceptable, and that in spite of its difficulties it is preferable to understand Nous as a harmony, in the Universe and in the mind of

man." (pp. 65-66 a note omitted)

37. Phillips, E.D. 1955. "Parmenides on Thought and Being." Philosophical Review no. 64:546-560.

"Professor Erwin Schrödinger, in the second chapter of his recent book, Nature and the Greeks (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1954) discusses for a few pages (ibid. 24-28) the Parmenidean doctrine of Being. The whole book is of peculiar interest because it is the work, not of a professional Hellenist or even philosopher, but of a famous physicist, who has his own reasons for studying Greek thought; and this chapter has the added piquancy of presenting a view of Parmenides which was once respectable but is now widely reprobated. I propose first to examine this view, as Schrödinger puts it, and then, having necessarily reached some conclusions of my own about Parmenides, to examine the Parmenidean doctrine itself, so determined, from the point of view of modern philosophy, at any rate in the matter of logic. The precise nature of this amalgam of logical, illogical, and nonlogical thinking may then become clearer for those who are interested in the history of philosophy and the temperaments of philosophers." (p. 546)

38. Picht, Georg. 2022. "The Epiphany of the Eternal Present – Truth, Being and Appearance in Parmenides (1960)." In Georg Picht. A Pioneer in Philosophy, Politics and the Arts, edited by Enno, Rudolph and Picht, Johannes, 7-42. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Originally published as: ‘Die Epiphanie der ewigen Gegenwart: Wahrheit, Sein und Erscheinung bei Parmenides’. In: H. Höfling (ed.), Beiträge zu Philosophie und Wissenschaft: Wilhelm Szilasi zum 70. Geburtstag. München: Franke 1960. Also in: G. Picht, Wahrheit – Vernunft – Verantwortung: Philosophische Studien. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag 1969, pp. 36–86.

"In the study ‘The Experience of History’[*], the assertion that truth appeared to the Greeks as the epiphany of eternal presence was reached via an interpretation of Aristotle’s definition of the human being as a z¯oon logon echon – a creature that possesses the logos. The form of knowledge in which truth discloses itself as truth, namely nous, was ‘consciously omitted’ there because it did not belong in an investigation that sought to gain access to the experience of history by following the history of the concept of experience. The result of this omission was that the origin of the Aristotelian logos remained obscure, and that in the analysis of Kant, the shared ontological foundation of the concept of time and the concept of pure reason could be hinted at, but not revealed. The ontological foundations of Kant’s thought are the ontological foundations of objective science. We cannot expect to attain the status of freedom in relation to this science and its effects on the shaping of the technological world if the foundation on which it rests remains hidden from us. That is why the question of the original sense of the ‘epiphany of eternal presence’ is one we must no longer avoid.

The following investigation does not actually seek to pose this question, only to prepare it. It will show that the epiphany of truth that determined the fate of European thought took place, in a sense that can be precisely defined, in the poem by Parmenides. In order to reach an understanding of Parmenides, the first part of the text will trace the path that leads from Homer via Hesiod to Xenophanes, whose concept of nous will be interpreted. The second part will attempt to build on this by examining some fragments from the poem. The method of our approach can only develop through a philological interpretation of difficult texts that have survived as fragments; there is no ‘royal road’ to the insights we seek. If we seriously mean to speak of the ‘history of truth’, we can no longer view the ‘historical’ as the ‘relative’ or the ‘contingent’, which indifferently circles a timeless truth. The well-worn distinction between ‘historical’ and ‘systematic’ work is then revealed as a naïve prejudice. We will only be able to explore and experience the history of truth if the great patience of philology is combined with the great patience of fundamental questioning." (p. 8)

[*] Georg Picht, Die Erfahrung der Geschichte, Frankfurt am Main, Vittorio Klostermann, 1958.

39. Popa, Tiberiu M. 1998-2000. "The reception of Parmenides' poetry in antiquity " Studii Clasice no. 34-36:5-27.

40. Popper, Karl Raimund. 1992. "How the Moon Might Throw Some of Her Light Upon the Two Ways of Parmenides." Classical Quarterly no. 86:12-19.

An improved and expanded version in: K. R. Popper, The World of Parmenides. Essays on the Presocratic Enlightenment, Essay 3, pp. 68-78.

"Parmenides was an important philosopher of nature (in the sense of Newton's philosophia naturalis). A whole series of important astronomical discoveries is credited to him: that the morning star and the evening star are one and the same; that the earth has the shape of a sphere (rather than of a column, as Anaximander thought). About equally important is his discovery that the phases of the moon are due to the changing way in which the illuminated half-sphere of the moon is seen from the earth." (p. 14)

"But a great discoverer is bound to try to generalize his discovery. Selene does not truly possess those movements that she exhibits to us. Perhaps we can generalize this?

And then came the great intellectual illumination, the revelation: in one flash Parmenides saw not only that reality was a dark sphere of dense matter (like the moon), but that he could prove it! And that movement was, indeed, impossible.

The proof was (more or less simplified):

(1) Only Being is (Only what is, is).

(2) The Nothing, the Non-Being, cannot be.

(3) The Non-Being would be Absence of Being, or Void.

(4) There can be no Void.

(5) The World is Full: a Block.

(6) Movement is impossible." (pp. 14-15)

41. ———. 1998. The World of Parmenides: Essays on the Presocratic Enlightenment. New York: Routledge.

Contents: Preface VIII; List of abbreviations X; Introduction: Aristotle's invention of induction and the eclipse of Presocratic cosmology 1; Essay 1. Back to the Presocratics 7; Addendum 1: A historical note on verisimilitude; Addendum 2: Some further hints on verisimilitude;

Essay 2. The unknown Xenophanes: an attempt to establish his greatness 33; Essay 3. How the Moon might shed some of her light upon the Two Ways of Parmenides (I) 68; Essay 4. How the Moon might throw some of her light upon the Two Ways of Parmenides (1989) 79; Addendum with a note on a possible emendation affecting the relation between the two parts of Parmenides' poem; Essay 5. Can the Moon throw light on Parmenides' Ways? (1988); Essay 6. The world of Parmenides: notes on Parmenides' poem and its origin in early Greek cosmology 105; Essay 7. Beyond the search for invariants 146; Essay 8. Comments on the prehistoric discovery of the self and on the mind-body problem in ancient Greek philosophy 223; Essay 9. Plato and geometry 251; Essay 10. Concluding remarks on support and countersupport: how induction becomes counterinduction, and the epagoge returns to the elenchus 271; Appendix: Popper's late fragments on Greek philosophy 280; Index 307-328.

"When as a 16-year-old student I first read Parmenides' wonderful poem.

I learnt to look at Selene (the Moon) and Helios (the Sun) with new eyes - with eyes enlightened by his poetry, Parmenides opened my eyes to the poetic beauty of the Earth and the starry heavens, and he taught me to look at them with a new searching look: searching to determine, as does Selene herself, the position of Helios below the Earth's horizon, by following the direction of her 'eager look'. None of my friends whom I told about my rediscovery of Parmenides' discovery had looked for this before, and I hoped that some of them liked it as much as I did. It was, however, only some seventy years later that I realized the full significance of Parmenides' discovery, and this made me realize what it must have meant for him, the original discoverer. I have tried since to understand and explain the importance of this discovery for the world of Parmenides, for his Two Ways, and its great role in the history of science, and especially of epistemology and of theoretical physics." (Preface, VIII-IX)

42. Prier, Raymond. 1976. Archaic Logic: Symbol and Structure in Heraclitus, Parmenides and Empedocles. The Hague: Mouton & Co.

Contents: Preface VII; I The Archaic Configuration of Mind 1; II The Homeric Hymns and Hesiod 27; III Heraclitus 57; IV Parmenides 90; V Empedocles 120; VI Language, Time, and Form 149; Bibliography 154; Index of Ancient Passages 159-163.

"The following study represents an attempt not only to explicate in some small way a mode of thought significantly different from much of our own, but also to suggest a new criterion of judgment for Classical Philology. These two purposes merge into one insofar as both come about from my own sharp disagreement with certain prevailing critical attitudes towards the so-called pre-Socratics. These essentially ungrounded attitudes are characterized, as I see them, by strong relativistic and materialistic premises which, although hidden for the most part, result in awkward misunderstandings of the pre-Platonic corpus in general and an uneven, if not castrating, criticism of specific authors in particular. These modern critical stances did not exist in the pre-Aristotelian Greek world in any predominant form, but Classical Philology in the later half of the twentieth century maintains otherwise and has, consequently, severely limited itself and very probably its future by adopting a narrow and unnecessarily rigid criterion of judgment that largely misrepresents the literary evidence at hand. Beyond the by no means unanimous acknowledgment that Aristotle revealed little of the real worth of the pre-Socratics, modern Classical Philology has not even suggested the need of a method — let alone the method itself - that might grasp the period between

Homer and the Platonic revolution. I offer this study as an attempt to supply this critical tool." (Preface, VII)

"Three men, Carl Jung, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Ernst Cassirer have contributed greatly to the elucidation of the mode of thought whose influences we shall trace in the ensuing pages. Each, working from a different professional point of view and actually for very different

purposes, has opened the serious investigation of the archaic configuration of mind." (p. 2)

"I substantially agree with the basic comparative approach of Reinhardt, Frankel, Mansfeld, and Mourelatos, although I should not place as much emphasis on the innovative quality of Parmenides' insight as does the last. My own particular method, however, is symbolic and structural, and in these respects little has been done with the text of Parmenides with the partial exception of the vocabulary and motif study of Mourelatos. Tarán, for instance, denies a recourse to symbolism in Parmenides.(32) Havelock points to definite symbols in the proem of the work but does not develop their meaning qua symbols.(33) It was left to Jung to detect the psychological and cultural symbolism inherent in the work of Parmenides. He indicated that the στεφάνη Cicero discusses in his De Natura Deorum is in fact an archetypal representation of the divine.(34) Cicero's "unbroken ring of glowing lights encircling the sky which he [Parmenides] entitles god" is surely the phenomenon described in fragment 12. Jung also connects it with the "circular motion of the mind which everywhere returns into itself' (5).(35) The symbolic nature of Parmenidian thought represents an observable phenomenon that in my opinion should be examined thoroughly. It is in the proem to his work that this nature is most easily detected." (p. 95)

(32) Tarán, op. cit. [Parmenides (Princeton 1965)] p. 30.

(33) E.A. Havelock, "Parmenides and Odysseus", HSCP [Harvard Studies in Classical Philology] 63 (1958), p. 133. Cf. fn. 49 of the present chapter.

(34) C.G. Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, p. 325-326.

(35) Ibid. p. 325.

43. Prier, Raymond A. 1979. "The critics on light and Parmenides." Platon no. 31:268-274.

44. Priou, Alex. 2018. "Parmenides on Reason and Revelation." Epoché no. 22:177-202.

Abstract: "In this paper, the author argues that the revelatory form Parmenides gives his poem poses considerable problems for the account of being contained therein. The poem moves through a series of problems, each building on the last: the problem of particularity, the cause of human wandering that the goddess would have us ascend beyond (B1); the problem of speech, whose heterogeneity evinces its tie to experience’s particularity (B2–B7); the problem of justice, which motivates man’s ascent from his “insecure” place in being, only ultimately to undermine it (B8.1–49); and finally the question of the good, the necessary consequence of man’s place in being as being out of place in being (B8.50–B19). What emerges is a Socratic reading of Parmenides’s poem, a view that Plato appears to have shared by using Parmenides and his Eleatic stranger to frame the bulk of Socrates’s philosophic activity."

45. Pulpito, Massimo. 2011. "Parmenides and the Forms." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 191-210. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "Historians of Greek thought have often described the Parmenidean doctrine as a sort of philosophical exception, hostile to the prevalent naturalist interests of earlier philosophers. The structure of the Parmenidean poem itself, juxtaposing a section on Truth, concerned with an entity displaying characteristics incompatible with those of Nature, to a section on Opinion, concerned with physical theories, seems to support that interpretation. A re-examination of the relationship between these two sections, however, and their authentic internal articulation, can help to understand the Parmenidean position on physics, thus restoring him to his historical-philosophical context. The alleged tension between the two sections is contained mainly in verse B8.53. The verse is traditionally

understood as referring to the decision of mortals to name two forms (μορφάς) corresponding to Fire and Night. However, a more careful reading of the verse (as proposed by some scholars) leads us to the conclusion that the “two” are not the forms but the mortal points of view (γνώμας). So what are the forms then? A reading of verse B9.1 allows us to stipulate that, for Parmenides, the forms are all the visible things and thus the physical objects. If we identify these exterior forms with τὰ δοκοῦντα from verse B1.31 (translated as “the objects of opinion”) it becomes possible to recompose the poem’s structure. We can recognize three sections: the first, on Truth, dedicated to existence in oneness and homogeneity; the third, on physical forms, providing a description of the world from a morphological standpoint. Between these two lies the second section, dedicated to mortal Opinions which, like the cosmogonies, confuse the ontological status of Everything with the morphological and mereological status of particular objects. Nonetheless, in the section on correct physical theories (the third one) Parmenides attempts to recuperate the two principles recognized by mortals, accepting their δυνάμεις (most likely identified with Hot and Cold) as elements of which the cosmos consists. This reading allows us to place Parmenides inside the development of Pre-Socratic thought, connecting him to earlier thinkers and, more importantly, to the later ones. The idea that the physical world consists of forms both visible and mutable, as manifestations of a reality fundamentally invisible and immutable, perceivable only through reason, will become a cliché of natural philosophy after Parmenides; at least until Plato, who will go on to recognize in the invisible and immutable forms the paradigm of the world."

46. ———. 2023. "Metaphysics of an Instant: A Dialogue with McKirahan on his “Aristotelianizing Parmenides”." In Eleatica Vol. 9: Aristotle and the Eleatics = Aristotele e gli Eleati, edited by Pulpito, Massimo and Berruecos Frank, Bernardo, 189-202. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlsg.

"Likewise, I agree with quite a few non-trivial points among those presented by RM [Richard McKirahan], sharing with him, for example, the idea that Parmenides was not at all (as a long tradition of interpretation holds) a numerical (or strict) monist, and therefore not a proponent of a single unchanging entity or that the manifold changing things we believe in do not exist. I also agree with RM that there are not ‘two worlds’ in the thought of Parmenides, that the two parts that follow the proem (there are three, in my estimation, but that is another matter) deal with different objects, and that the distinction between the parts can be placed on a level approximately analogous to that which distinguishes metaphysics from physics. It is precisely this reference – the distinction between metaphysics and physics – that induces RM to present his nterpretation as having as its object an ‘Aristotelianizing Parmenides.’ What separates me from him are the details of his interpretation – although they are important details." (p. 190)

47. Pulpito, Massimo, and Spangenberg, Pilar, eds. 2019. ὁδοὶ νοῆσαι. Ways to Think. Essays in Honour of Néstor-Luis Cordero. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia.

Contents of the First Section, "Parmenides":

1. Enrique Hülsz – Bernardo Berruecos: Parménides B1.3: una nueva enmienda 31; 2. Serge Mouraviev: Ersatz de vérité et de réalité? ou Comment Parménide (B 1, 28-32) a sauvé les apparences (avec la collaboration épistolaire de Scott Austin †2014) 61; 3. José Solana Dueso: Mito y logos en Parménides 87; 4. Nicola Stefano Galgano: Parmenide B 2.3: dall’esperienza immediata del non essere alla doppia negazione 101; 5. Michel Fattal: Raison critique et crise chez Parménide d’Élée 113; 6. Alexander P. D. Mourelatos – Massimo Pulpito: Parmenides and the Principle of Sufficient Reason 121; 7. Livio Rossetti: Mondo vero e mondo falso in Parmenide 143; 8. Fernando Santoro: A Lua, Vênus e as Estrelas de Parmênides 155; 9. Chiara Robbiano: Just being: un-individualized. An interpretation of Parmenides DKB16 and a glance at empirical research 167; 10. Jaap Mansfeld: Parmenides on Sense Perception in Theophrastus and Elsewhere 177; 11. Lambros Couloubaritsis: Réinterprétation de l’eon de Parménide dans l’éclairage du Papyrus de Derveni 193; 12. Giovanni Cerri: Parmenide in Lucrezio (Parm. B 12, 3-6 - Lucr. 1, 19-21) 207; 13. Manfred Kraus: William of Moerbeke’s Translation of Simplicius’ On De Caelo and the Constitution of the Text of Parmenides 213-231.

48. Quarantotto, Diana. 2016. "Aristotle’s Way away from Parmenides’ Way. A Case of Scientific Controversy and Ancient Humour." Elenchos no. 37:209-228.

Abstract: "In Physics Α, Aristotle introduces his science of nature and devotes a substantial part of the investigation to refuting the Eleatics' theses, and to resolving their arguments, against plurality and change. In so doing, Aristotle also dusts off Parmenides' metaphor of the routes of inquiry and uses it as one of the main schemes of his book. Aristotle's goal, I argue, is to present his own physical investigation as the only correct route, and to show that Parmenides' “way of truth” is instead both wrong and a sidetrack. By revisiting Parmenides' metaphor of the route, Aristotle twists it against him, distorts it and uses this distortion as a source of fun and of some mockery of Parmenides himself. Thereby, Physics Α gives us a taste of Aristotle's biting humour and of his practice of the “virtue” of wit (eutrapelia)."

49. ———. 2019. "Towards the Principles—Resolving the Eleatics’ Arguments for Absolute Monism." In Aristotle’s Physics Alpha: Symposium Aristotelicum, edited by Ierodiakonou, Katerina, Kalligas, Paul and Karasmanis, Vassilis, 89-123. New York: Oxford University Press.

"1. The Role of Chapter 3 in Physics I:

An Introduction

In the second and third chapters of Physics I Aristotle provides a criticism of Eleatic monism. Chapter 2 contains a refutation (ἔλεγχος) of the Eleatics’ view that ‘all things are one’, whereas chapter 3 gives a resolution (λύσις)(1) of some of their arguments, most of which concern the unity of the things that are.(2)

In the first two sections of chapter 3 (186a4–22, 22–32) Aristotle resolves some arguments by Melissus and one argument by Parmenides, which he describes as eristic: they assume some falsity and their conclusions do not follow (185a8–10, 186a6–8). In the third section (186a32–b14) Aristotle puts forward a strengthened version of Parmenides’ argument and criticizes it. Then (186b14–35), building on this criticism, he formulates an argument for the internal division of what is (conceived of as what is just being). Lastly, he tackles the view of some post-Eleatic philosophers who gave in to two Eleatic arguments. The whole criticism of Eleatic monism is concluded in chapter 3 with the following words: ‘[i]t is therefore clear that it is impossible that what is is one in this way’ (187a10–11)." (pp. 89-90)

(1) Cf. Top. VIII 10, 160b33–4, SE 16. On Aristotle’s distinction between the refutation of a thesis (ἔλεγχος) and the resolution of an argument (λύσις), cf. Rossi 2014.

(2) The focus of chapter 3 is clearly on Eleatic monism. Eleatic immobilism is dealt with in chapter 8.

However, in chapter 3 Aristotle also tackles some arguments by Melissus for the immobility of what is, arguments that he describes as lacking ἀπορία (185a10–12).

References

Rossi, G. (2014). ‘Aristotle on Untying Arguments’. In Zur modernen Deutung der aristotelischen Logik, eds N. Öffenberger and A. Vigo, Bd. XI, 105–40. Hildesheim.

50. R., Laceym A. 1965. "The Eleatics and Aristotle on Some Problems of Change." Journal of the History of Ideas no. 26:451-468.

"Where Parmenides demands that anything real must be eternal, Aristotle substitutes the demand that anything which changes must have an unchanging factor, which, however, turns out to be purely notional in one type of change (genesis) and rather hard to identify in another (growth). To this extent I think the hand of Parmenides can still be felt on Aristotle's shoulder. I have already agreed with King [*] that prime matter is not as prominent and explicit in Aristotle as has usually been thought, and it is probable that here as elsewhere Aristotle was making heroic efforts to free himself from his Platonic and Parmenidean heritage while only partly succeeding. Further evidence of these efforts can be seen in another feature of Aristotle's doctrine of change, his insistence that change must be between contraries, which are in the same genus (324a2, 188a35). This is not entirely adequate.

An object can become black from being white or gray, but also from being red or transparent. Aristotle allows for change from intermediate points on the scale, but sometimes only "intermediate" points are available (his attempt to say that the contraries in the case of growth are the original size and the "proper" size to which the object is growing [201a7] seems rather factitious); and sometimes, as with red and transparent, the scale itself is not very obvious. The important point is that the terms of a change must be inconsistent (hence a sweet object can only become black incidentally, not qua sweet).

But this, though necessary, is not sufficient. Nothing can be at the same time both black and prime (in the sense in which numbers can be prime), but an object cannot change from being black to being prime." (pp. 467-468)

[*] Hugh R. King, "Aristotle without Prima Materia", Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Jun., 1956), pp. 370-389.

51. Raven, John Earle. 1948. Pythagoreans and Eleatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

An Account of the Interaction Between the Two Opposed Schools During the Fifth and Early Fourth Centuries B.C.

Contents: Preface VII-VIII; Part I. I. Introduction 1; II. Aristotle's evidence 9; III. Parmenides 21; IV: Pythagoreanism before Parmenides 43; V. Zeno of Elea 66; VI. Melissus 78; Part II. VII. Post-Zenonian Pythagoreanism 93; VIII. The nature of matter 101; IX. The One 112; X: The One and numbers 126; XI. Cosmology (a) Analysis 146; (b) Synthesis 164; XII: Conclusion 175; Appendix 188; Index 195-196.

"As Dr C. M. Bowra has pointed out in a paper in Classical Philology (XXXII [1937], p. 106), 'it is clear that this Proem is intended to have the importance and seriousness of a religious revelation'. Not only the passage from darkness into light but many minor details throughout the poem suggest that Parmenides desired, particularly in the Proem, to arm himself in advance, by stressing the religious and ethical nature of his revelation, with an answer to his potential critics. There seems no reason to doubt Dr Bowra's assumption (loc. cit. p. 108) that these potential critics were 'his fellow-Pythagoreans'.

Parmenides is indeed, in Cornford's phrase, 'a curious blend of prophet and logician'. The Proem, though its details are of no importance to our present inquiry, at least serves the useful purpose of stressing the prophetic strain. The Way of Truth, on the other hand, is an entirely unprecedented exercise of the logical faculty, and as such it is usually and naturally taken to be devoid of any emotion. In its outward form it certainly is so; but it must be remembered that the concept on which Parmenides' logic is at work is that of unity, and there is no reason to suppose that the concept of unity is incapable of arousing emotion. If two of the conclusions that I have already reached are justified, that Parmenides was a dissident Pythagorean, and that in the Pythagoreanism from which he was seceding there was a fundamental dualism between the principle of unity and goodness and another and eternally opposed principle, then is it not permissible to imagine that Parmenides, swayed perhaps by a deeper respect for the good principle than his `fellow-Pythagoreans' revealed, may have been driven along the road from darkness into light by a basically religious desire to vindicate the good principle against the bad? Such a supposition would help to explain the fervour that almost succeeds in illuminating the uninspired poetry of the Proem; and the ultimate triumph of his logical faculty over his emotion should not blind us to the possibility that an emotional impulse underlay his unemotional reasoning.

But the only convincing test of such a hypothesis must obviously be sought in the poem itself. I propose to examine the Way of Truth in considerable detail, adopting for the purpose the method employed by Cornford in his chapter on the same subject. Indeed, on occasions I shall be merely paraphrasing that chapter; but a measure of such repetition is inevitable for the sake of continuity." (pp. 23-24).

"We are now at last, therefore, in a position to counter the only apparently grave objection that might be brought against the contention that Parmenides wrote his poem with an eye especially upon the Pythagoreanism from which he had seceded. If that contention is indeed true, then why is it, it might reasonably be asked, that neither of the two ways from which the goddess sees fit to debar Parmenides represents Pythagoreanism? Our examination of the purpose of the poem should by now have suggested a complete answer to such an apparently damaging objection. The first forbidden way, that it is NOT or NOTHING IS, is to this extent, as Parmenides claimed, άνόητον ανώνυμον, that at any rate nobody had attempted to tread it. It is introduced into the poem partly for the sake of logical completeness but especially because it was combined with the true way to form the way which foolish two-headed mortals tread, the way of custom. So far as we are entitled to judge, therefore, from our reading of the Way of Truth alone, the third way, namely that it is and it is not, will include any combination whatever of the true way and the way of falsehood, or in other words any known cosmology whatever. But Pythagoreanism, with its ultimate dualism and its consequent employment, not of the characteristics of Being only nor of those of Not-being only, but of the two simultaneously, is undeniably a particularly glaring example of such a combination— more glaring, indeed, than any other early system simply because, as Aristotle suggests in his own way, it admits more of those νοητά which Parmenides accepted as the only truth. It might, therefore, be not unreasonably expected, until we actually pass to it, that the Way of Seeming will at least bear a closer resemblance to the Pythagorean than to any other way. But fortunately, almost as soon as we come to the Way of Seeming, Parmenides himself gives us the explanation of why that need hot necessarily be so. The Way of Seeming presents the best cosmology that Parmenides was capable of inventing, ώς ού μή ποτέ τίξ σε βροτών γνώμη παρελάσση ; and in consequence, so far from imitating the Pythagorean cosmology, it is, at some points at least, in direct conflict with it. This part of the poem too, and for much the same reason as the earlier part, is in fact especially damaging to the Pythagorean system; for that system was undeniably more guilty than any other of confusing the illusory objects of perception with the eternally existent objects of thought. To look, in short, for an explicit representation of any known system whatever in either of the two forbidden ways is to demand that the poem should be rewritten in quite another form and with quite another object. But that is no valid argument against my contention that throughout the poem we can repeatedly detect a special (even if, as I have all along admitted, a secondary) anti-Pythagorean validity." (pp. 41-42)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Parmenides of Elea. Annotated Bibliography of the studies in English: Rei - Sor

Bibliography

1. Reilly, Thomas J. 1976. "Parmenides Fragment 8,4: a Correction." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 58:57.

Malcolm Schofield in Did Parmenides Discover Eternity? read in the fragment B8.4 ἐστι γὰρ οὐλομελές τε καὶ ἀτρεμὲς ἠδ' ἀτάλαντον (instead of ἀτέλεστον): an emendation proposed by M. F. Burnyeat who in an unpublished paper recommends the conjecture of G. M. Hopkins (see Notebook and Papers of Gerald Manley Hopkins, Oxford: 1937, p. 99; Reilly notes that the emendation was already proposed by Ludwig Preller in his Historia philosophiae Graecae et Romanae ex fontium locis contexta, (co-author Heinrich Ritter), Hamburg 1838 p. 92.

2. Reinhardt, Karl. 1974. "The Relation between the Two Parts of Parmenides’ Poem." In The Pre-Socratics. A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Mourelatos, Alexander P. D., 293-311. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Partial translation of Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie, Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1916 (the following pages are translated: 18-23, 29-32, 64-71, 74-82, 88 with omissions as indicated. (Translation by Matthew E. Cosgrove with A. P. D. Mourelatos).

"Whoever takes the trouble to understand Parmenides in all his boldness as well as in his restraint, and at the same time in terms of his historical situation, must first of all realize that the one great defect from which the "Doxa" suffers in our eyes-namely, that it is unable to take hold of the knowing subject and must turn for help to the things themselves-was not very perceptible to Parmenides, and was perhaps not perceived by him at all. He understood the proposition that like can only be known by like so literally, so close to the level of visual imagery, that he could not but think that the organ of perception and its object were made up of the same constituents, and were even subject to the same forms and laws. Thought processes in the soul appeared to him not as corresponding with, but as exactly repeating the external world. What was a law for thought had to have unqualified validity for things also. If nature were shown contradicting the principle of non-contradiction itself, then nature was ipso facto false and precisely not existent: "For you could not come to know that which is not (for it is not feasible), nor could you declare it; for it is the same to think and to be" (B2.7-8, B3). Conversely, every character of the external world led directly to a conclusion concerning human knowledge.

No matter how hard one looks, one will not find the slightest hint of a separation between thinking and being (or representation and appearance) in the fragments. Parmenides begins the "Doxa" by relating (B8.53) that men have agreed to designate a twofold form with names, but he does not elaborate, as one would expect, on how they fashioned their world-picture from both forms. Instead, the object of their thought straightaway achieves an independent life: Dark and light unite and produce the world; and to our surprise a cosmogony springs from the epistemology. What had been no more than a name, a convention, an onoma, enters into physical combinations, and finally generates even man himself and his cognitive states. To our way of thinking, that is certainly hard to take. Our only recourse, if we are to grasp it, is to recite to ourselves once again the rule that was the lifeblood of Parmenidean conviction: "For it is the same to think and to be" (B3). Because this world is composed throughout of light and darkness, and is pervasively the same and then again not the same (B8.58, B6.8), because contradiction is the essence of all doxa, this entire world must be false, that is to say, subjective, or as the Greeks would have said, it can only exist nomoi, "by convention," and not physei, "in reality."

To be sure, this conclusion is not repeated in every sentence. Now and then it even seems as though the critic and nay-sayer had let himself be carried along for a while on the broad stream of human opinions; indeed, as though his critique were itself the repository of discoveries in which he took pride. For since appearance by no means lacks all reason and consistency, it can actually be explored. Yet its character as appearance does not mitigate its contradicting the highest law of thought, the sole guarantee of truth. This is said twice, briefly but sharply, at decisive points: the beginning and the end of the second part. Whether between these passages there were originally additional reminders of the same fundamental idea, we do not know. The two that we do know are sufficiently complete. As though separated from the rest by a thick tallying stroke, at the conclusion of the whole stand the words that give the sum of all that has been said (B19):

And so, according to appearances (kata doxan) these things came to be, and now are, and later than now will come to an end, having matured; and to these things did men attach a name, a mark to each." (pp. 295-297)

3. Rickert, Thomas. 2014. "Parmenides, Ontological Enaction, and the Prehistory of Rhetoric." Philosophy & Rhetoric no. 47:472-493.

Abstract: "The Presocratic thinker Parmenides is portrayed in philosophy and rhetoric as a philosopher of static monism anticipating reason’s triumph over myth. Such a portrayal is narrow and ill fits the evidence. Parmenides was associated with a cult of priest-healers (iatromantis) of Apollo who practiced incubation, usually in caves, in order to receive wisdom and truth. Parmenides’s famous poem “On Being” (“Peri Phuseōs”) reflects these practices. The poem directly invokes altered states of consciousness, revelations from the gods, and an underworld descent (katabasis).

Further, the poem is of strong rhetorical interest because it directly discusses rhetorical themes of persuasion, truth, and knowledge. Additionally, the poem suggests that rationality alone cannot suffice to liberate human beings from worldly illusions; rather, reason must be accompanied by a combination of divine inspiration and mêtis (cunning wisdom)."

4. ———. 2017. "Parmenides: Philosopher, Rhetorician, Skywalker." In Logos without Rhetoric. The Arts of Language before Plato, edited by Reames, Robin, 47-62. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

"Currently, Parmenides is peripheral at best in rhetorical studies, but I claim that he merits a significant place in rhetorical history—or, better, prehistory, since he predates the group we call the sophists, and, further, it is likely that rhētorikē is a coinage of Plato’s, and hence, not quite applicable to Parmenides.(3)" (p. 49)

"It is only recently that a different picture of Parmenides has begun to emerge that allows us to see that he does not fit the narrow frame philosophy has created for him. To see this, it is necessary to take the introductory proem seriously. While the proem has frequently been dismissed as a literary device introducing the poem’s philosophical core, a variety of evidence indicates that the proem frames all that follows, performing acts of initiation and revelation in line with other ritualistic practices in the ancient Greek world. Further,

taking the proem seriously resonates with the above evidence concerning Zeno’s death and Parmenides’ bust. In short, Parmenides should now be understood as someone with wide-ranging interests, including teachings that involve not just cosmology but theurgy, healing, life-training, and rhetoric. Our understanding of Parmenides’ use of reason should be thought within this broader scope. Instead of being a precursor to Plato’s escape from the cave of ignorance to the light of reason, on the traditional philosophical read, Parmenides is engaged in katabasis, a descent into the cave, to receive knowledge." (p. 52)

(3) Edward Schiappa (“Did Plato Coin Rhētorikē?” American Journal of Philology 111 (4): 457–470, 1990, 457; Protagoras and Logos: A Study in Greek Philosophy and Rhetoric. 2nd ed. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003, 40–41) argues compellingly that the term rhētorikē is Plato’s, or at the least a fourth-century and not fifth-century b.c.e. usage (although the root term, in various formulations, is older). The term “sophist” is also contested, but I cannot delve into that issue here.

5. ———. 2017. "Technique–Technology–Transcendence: Machination and Amēchania in Burke, Nietzsche, and Parmenides." In Kenneth Burke + The Posthuman, edited by Mays, Chris, Rivers, Nathaniel A. and Sharp-Hopkins, Kellie, 98-123. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

"In what follows, I put a trio of thinkers—Parmenides, Nietzsche, and Burke—into conversation about the posthuman issue of human and nonhuman relations, specifi cally their relations to technology. ." (p. 100)

(...)

"I begin with Parmenides, who may seem an unusual figure to explore in this context. Technology, in the common understanding as externalized artifact, is not an issue for Parmenides. However, if we engage with his use of spiritual and intellectual techniques, we will see that Parmenides has much to offer us about technology. Parmenides is one of the first to ask why things are the way they are in a way that sets us on the road to theoretical knowledge. Parmenides marks where technique steps into rational account and thereby gets its - logy (although this is simply a disclosure of a primordial technological attitude). However, there have been recent challenges, most notably by Peter Kingsley, to the philosophical picture of Parmenides as a protophilosopher who off ered one of the fi rst rational accounts of the cosmos. These challenges open up other aspects of his surviving poem, Peri Phuseos (On Being), demonstrating that Parmenides was interested in truth as persuasion; that metaphysical, revelatory elements are

integral to his thinking; and that he was interested in teaching mêtis, which is understood as a form of cunning, worldly wisdom, a polymorphous intelligence open to fluid, evolving situations (Detienne and Vernant 2–5)." (p. 103, a note omitted)

References

Detienne, Marcel, and Jean- Pierre Vernant. Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.

6. Robbiano, Chiara. 2006. Becoming Being: On Parmenides' Transformative Philosophy. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Text and translation of the Poem, pp. 212-223.

"The aim of this study is the investigation of Parmenides' method in guiding a human being towards understanding. Parmenides' words operate as a travel guide that leads the audience on a journey that will educate them, transform them, and make them philosophically mature. I will analyse various literary, rhetorical, polemical, and argumentative features of Parmenides' Poem which, I submit, bring the audience a step further towards the kind(s) of knowledge that Parmenides has in store for them.

Many scholars have concentrated on the arguments of fragment B8,3 and on their conclusions -- that Being is without birth, undifferentiated, changeless and complete.

In general, one may be inclined to think that, once a goal has been reached, the journey that brought one there is not relevant anymore. Accordingly, the student of Parmenides' Poem may be tempted to concentrate his or her interpretative energy on Being: the goal of the journey made under the guidance of the goddess of whom the Poem tells us. The scholar who is looking for the philosophical message of the Poem may try to reduce all the questions, pieces of advice and encouragements of the speech of the goddess (B1,24 onwards) to a description of Being: the true and knowable reality.

But it may be asked whether this approach, which looks only for a description of Being in the fragments, does not neglect the complex journey that the mind has to make through myths, images, encouragements and warnings, before it will be able to grasp Being: the philosophical itinerary through which Parmenides guides his audience throughout the Poem. The question how, according to Parmenides, we can achieve insight into Being seems no less important for a better understanding of the Poem than the content of this insight. The doubt about traditional certainties, the rejection of certain mental behaviours and the process of building new perspectives significantly precede the search for the characteristics of Being.

Once we resist the temptation of detaching a description of Being from the conditions for the achievement of understanding that the goddess sets out, and from the human being who attempts to understand Being, we will become sensitive to the fact that the Poem works upon its audience and helps them to achieve understanding. I will try to analyse the progress towards understanding from the very beginning. The study of this progress, which, I believe, constitutes the main subject matter of Parmenides' Poem, will turn out to be fundamental to the study of Parmenides' philosophy.

A study of a philosopher's method will have to concentrate not only on the words and phrases that the philosopher uses to describe the right method, but also on the words and phrases that the philosopher uses in order to transform his or her audience: i.e. to persuade them to adopt a new way of looking that will change them.

This will be a systematic study of the rhetorical and linguistic features of Parmenides' Poem that hopes to shed light on his philosophy. Such a study will have to pay attention to the effect of such features on the audience who is gradually guided towards insight. Only by looking at the transformative effect of such features of our Poem on the audience will we be able to give a coherent interpretation of the fragments.

We will find their coherence by studying the goal they have in common: to help the audience to acquire insight into Being.

What happens when one's journey towards Being is accomplished? Is there room for a differentiation between oneself and one's goal in a monistic reality? In order to answer these questions, we will look at the hints the goddess gives about the effects of the journey on the way of Truth, i.e. the hints about the transformation of the knowing subject when the journey has reached its goal. We will also be able to find out more about Parmenides' monism by investigating the place of the knowing subject in a monistic reality. I will argue that there are hints throughout the Poem that it is possible for the knowing subject to leave one's status of mortal who can have only opinions, and become one with Being." (pp. 9-10, notes omitted)

7. ———. 2011. "What is Parmenides’ Being?" In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 231-231. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "Nobody could know what ἐόν meant before listening to the Poem: even native speakers of Ancient Greek needed to acquire new mental categories and form this new concept, ἐόν, which is usually translated as “Being.” Throughout his Poem, Parmenides teaches his audience to form this concept. One of the means he uses are the signs (σήματα) given by the goddess to the traveler in fr. B8. I focus here on the fourth σῆμα, where Parmenides gives hints about the special relation between Being

and those who understand Being. I will show that Being is the fundamental unity of what-is (what is stable, without differences, development, needs) and what-understands. This perfect unity is what the audience is encouraged to understand. This unity is also the condition of the possibility of human understanding. Human beings can, in fact, understand this unity, directly, with an act of νοεῖν, since νοεῖν and Being are not separate but are one."

8. ———. 2016. "Parmenides’ and Śankara’s Nondual Being without Not-being." Philosophy East and West no. 66:290-327.

"In the first section I will sketch what I call ‘the fashionable Parmenides interpretations,’ which regard being as the result of laws of logic or of predication. I will mention the common practice of scholars of trying to understand Parmenides’ meaning of ‘is’ and ‘being’ by looking for the subject of the verb ‘is,’ that is, the alleged entity or object that ‘is.’ An alternative to this practice is to try and understand both the omission of a subject of the verb ‘is’ and the journey metaphors in fragment DK B2 as suggestions that being is not a thing but rather the activity, state, or fact of being. By means of a comparison with Śaṅkara, I will use the category of nondual experience to understand being, which is not a thing. In section 2, I will present a short overview of the existing comparisons between Parmenides and Śaṅkara. I will then (section 3) look at pointers in Śaṅkara’s work that might help us grasp what is meant by nondual experience, which is knowing that is not different from being (and Self/Ātman, which is reality/Brahman), which might well be regarded as the goal that both philosophers want to help their audience reach. In section 4, I will show how both philosophers express the need on the part of human beings not only to become aware of the nondual essence of reality but also to make sense of reality by means of concepts and words that help them see order in reality. However, Parmenides and Śaṅkara regard “opinions” and “lower level of knowledge,” respectively, as only acceptable if they are not used as instruments to understand reality as it is. Both philosophers offer a method for testing what mortals (i.e., we) believe to be real.

In section 5, we will look at the first step of this method, taken by Parmenides in DK B2 and by Śaṅkara in Brahmasūtra-bhāṣya I, 1, 1.

(...)

In section 6, I will mention the second step their methods have in common: the application of a test of what, according to common sense, are the fundamental characteristics of reality: birth, movement, differentiation, development, and relations of cause and effect. I will concentrate on the passage in DK B8 where Parmenides tests the reality of birth (which does not pass the test and is proved to be unreal). We will then look (section 7) at Śaṅkara’s use of negative dialectic in Brahmasūtra-bhāṣya II, 1, 18, where he refutes the reality of two distinct entities called cause and effect." (pp. 290-291)

9. ———. 2016. "Being is not an object: an interpretation of Parmenides’ fragment DK B2 and a reflection on assumptions." Ancient Philosophy no. 36:263-301.

"Is Parmenides' being a thing, discovered by reason and expressible in well-formed sentences? Or is it rather the same as knowing, which is the trustworthy aspect of our experience, pointed at by Parmenides by means of coherent reasoning?

In this introduction, I make explicit the main assumptions that the majority of scholars apply to the interpretation of DK B2 and of the rest of Parmenides' poem. In sections 1 and 2, I show what role these assumptions play in the interpretation of Parmenides' poem. Then, I show what other assumptions could be used to interpret Parmenides. In section 3, I argue that Parmenides' being (το έόν, εἶναι) could be something other than a special 'object'. By 'object' I mean some entity distinct from a subject observing it. I suggest what question being could be an answer to and review some answers given by philosophers of various backgrounds to that question. In section 4, I look at what being could be, by focussing on the role played by the notion of trust throughout the poem. In section 5, I analyse fragment B2 and delve into the category of experience. In the conclusion, I compare the repercussions, for the interpretation of B2 and Parmenides' philosophy at large, of applying the two different sets of assumptions" (p. 263)

10. ———. 2016. "Self or being without boundaries: on Śaṅkara and Parmenides." In Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought, edited by Seaford, Richard, 134-148. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

"This chapter focuses on a similar argument made by Parmenides(2) and Śaṅkara(3) involving the claim that boundaries between everyday entities are superimposed and not real. I hereby continue my exploration of the similarity of the arguments of the two philosophers, who, so far, have been compared only either as adherents of monism, or in order to show historical dependence, mostly of Greek thought on the Veda.(4) I will show how Parmenides and Śaṅkara argue that any boundary that we believe to be real and capable of separating the many individuals and things can be proven to be superimposed by humans on being rather than being real." (p. 134)

(2) Parmenides was a Greek philosopher of the early fifth century bce, i.e. before Socrates and Plato. He wrote a poem in which he describes a journey that takes him first beyond the Gates of Night and Day and then beyond what can be seen as all opposites and dualities, the duality of knowing and being or subject and object included. Of this poem only quotations by other authors survive.

(3) Śaṅkara was an Indian philosopher of the eighth century ce; his school was called Vedānta, meaning the last part of the Veda. He wrote commentaries on the Vedānta or Upaniṣads and on other important texts like the Brahmā Sūtra. He is an exponent of Advaita Vedānta, i.e. non-dual Vedānta, which signals that he interprets literally the Upaniṣadic claim that ātman, or our Self, is the same as brahman, i.e. the essence of reality.

(4) For a comparison between Śaṅkara’s and Parmenides’ arguments based on separation or discrimination, see Robbiano (2016). In this paper I also offer an extensive review of the existing comparisons between these two philosophers.

11. ———. 2016. "Parmenide's and Melissus' being without not-being." In Eleatica Vol. 5: Melissus between Miletus and Elea, edited by Pulpito, Massimo, 165-174. Sank Augustin: Academia Verlag.

"My paper is an elaboration of Mansfeld’s claim: ‘This core ingredient of Parmenides’ distinction between Being and non-Being still determines the argument in the later paragraphs of Melissus’ exposition’ (76). What Jaap refers to as a ‘distinction’ I interpret as a complete absence of not-being from Parmenides’ ontology. I will argue that Parmenides and Melissus point to the same being, which does not allow for anything else, i.e. for any ‘not-being’, next to it. I will show that Melissus’ signs should be seen as different pointers to the same being. In order to justify my claim, I will show that Melissus’ semata' (just like Parmenides’) are securely founded on the absence of not-being. The absence of not-being is not argued by Melissus who can rely on Parmenides’ argument (especially B2.5-8). I will suggest that being without not-being is not a product of logic: in fact, the certainty of the absence of not-being next to being comes from experience, i.e. it comes from the assumption that it is impossible to know not-being, defended in B2.5-8 by an appeal to experience." (p. 165)

12. ———. 2019. "Just being: un-individualized. An interpretation of Parmenides DKB16 and a glance at empirical research." In ὁδοὶ νοῆσαι. Ways to Think. Essays in Honour of Néstor-Luis Cordero, edited by Pulpito, Massimo and Spangenberg, Pilar, 167-176. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia.

Abstract: "In this paper I build on my interpretation of Parmenides: being or awareness -which is continuous, undifferentiated, and unchanging - is what is really there, and thus, what we, humans, really are. It is only conventionally (according to the human doxai, B19) that there are many things that are born and die, and that we are separate individuals. I present here the following interpretation of DKB16: what keeps all limbs of one individual together is awareness; awareness - the unifying factor, which is what perceives and knows in all of us - is the same for all individuals: there is no way to differentiate one unifying factor from the next: at the fundamental level, there is no differentiation, no separation and no individuals. I suggest that the unifying awareness of B16 resembles wlial contemporary cognitive scientists and phenomenologists refer to as the unitary, continuous, and ubiquitous structure, which accompanies and unifies all our experiences. They refer to it as pre-reflective self-awareness, ‘sense of I’, and 'minimal self’, and distinguish it from reflective awareness, or sense of ‘Me’, that enables one to construct one’s narrative identity. I also refer to empirical research that has been interpreted as pointing to the experience of the dissociation between pre-reflective self-awareness and sense of‘Me’. The subjects who experienced this un-individualized self-awareness report it to be an experience of integration a loss of time and space, and profound relaxation (in other words, unshakenness) - which closely resemble Parmenides’ signs of being (B8)."

13. Robinson, Thomas M. 1975. "Parmenides on the Ascertainment of the Real." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 4:623-633.

"In this paper I want to suggest that, while the argued philosophical distinction between logic, epistemology and ontology is one of the many achievements of Aristotle, his predecessor Parmenides was in fact already operating with a theory of knowledge and an elementary propositional logic that are of abiding philosophical interest. As part of the thesis I shall be obliged to reject a number of interpretations of particular passages in his poem, including one or two currently fashionable ones. Since so much turns on points of translation, I note for purposes of comparison what seem to be significant alternatives to my own in any particular instance." (p. 623)

14. ———. 1979. "Parmenides on the Real in Its Totality." The Monist no. 62:54-60.

Reprinted in Thomas M. Robinson, Logos and Cosmos: Studies in Greek Philosophy, Sankt Augustin: Academa Verlag 2010, pp. 53-60.

"In the long term Parmenides’ doctrine has two further major implications for logical and linguistic theory: (a) by extrapolation it can be argued that the logic of wholes and the logic of parts are different from one another whatever the philosophical topic under discussion, and knowledge of this fact will prove to be one of the greatest safeguards against two of the commonest fallacies in philosophy, namely those of Composition and Division; and (b) “what is the case” can no more be said to have a temporal mode of existence than can “what is real”. In suggesting that genuine ascertainment is of what will later be called the eternally existent Parmenides has come to the very verge of the understanding that a true existential proposition is atemporally such. A hint of this, it seems to me, can be found at 8.34–36: the present tense of the participial phrase “the real (= apparently “the true”: see above, note 1), like the present tense used of the phrase “the real” in the sense of “the unique entity”, is the best that grammar can do to convey the notion of that which is, in Owen’s phrase ([2] 271), logically tenseless. It is, as need hardly be pointed out, at best a hint and very possibly not something sensed by Parmenides himself; but with such inspired gropings does serious philosophical progress begin." (p. 59 of the reprint)

note 1: “Parmenides on Ascertainment of the Real”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 4.4 (1975) 623–633.

[2] “Plato and Parmenides on the Timeless Present”, in The Pre-Socratics, ed. A. P. D. Mourelatos (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1974) 271–292 (= The Monist 50 [1966] 317–340).

15. ———. 1989. "Parmenides and Heraclitus on What Can Be Known." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 7:157-167.

Reprinted in Thomas M. Robinson, Logos and Cosmos: Studies in Greek Philosophy, Sankt Augustin: Academa Verlag 2010, pp. 32-40.

"In this paper I wish to argue that Parmenides and Heraclitus, despite significant differences in other respects, agreed on the following fundamentals:

1) Knowledge in the strictest sense is possible, but it is always of the general or universal. As a consequence the only true object of knowledge can be the real as a whole.

2) This real-as-a-whole is co-extensive with what is normally referred to as the world, in the sense of all that exists and/or all that is the case.

3) The real as a whole is eternal (Parmenides) or everlasting (Heraclitus), and unchanging; in respect of its parts it is subject to temporal process and change.

4) What the senses can tell us about the real in respect of its parts is not always reliable; but their role can still be a valuable one.

5) Reality, knowledge and a rational account (logos) go hand in hand; this is true both for our own account of the real and for the real’s account of itself.

6) The relationship between knowledge and the real, and between a number of supposedly opposing features of the real, is one of necessary interconnectedness, boldly described by both philosophers in terms of identity." (p. 32 of the reprint)

16. ———. 2010. "Parmenides on Coming-to-Know the Real." In Logos and Cosmos, edited by Robinson, Thomas M., 61-72. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Originally published in Japanese in Academic Proceedings of the St. Andrew’s University Press, Osaka, 1996, pp. 27–36.

"By common consent, Parmenides is the key philosophical figure in Greece antecedent to Socrates. Yet the exact nature of his claims continues to be a matter of great dispute and puzzlement. To survey the vast literature on the matter would be the subject of a book in itself.

For the moment I shall simply offer the thoughts that I myself have had on his poem over the past two decades. Appended to the paper are set of my translations of various sections of Parmenides’ poem. These I shall examine in turn. During the examination it will become clear where I stand on what I think Parmenides is trying to say. After that I shall attempt to draw some conclusions on the effect, as I see it, of Parmenides’ thought on the development of western philosophical thinking in the realms of logic, epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of science. (p. 61)

17. Rockmore, Tom. 2021. After Parmenides: Idealism, Realism, Epistemic Constructivism Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Chapter 1 On Reading Parmenides in the Twenty-First Century 9; Chapter 2 Some Ancient Greek Reactions to Parmenides 19-34.

"This book is intended neither as a study of Parmenides, nor as a recapitulation of his reception, nor even as a history of a particular concept, such as A. O. Lovejoy’s account of being. Rather, it is intended to examine the ancient Parmenidean thesis that knowing and being are the same in the context of the Western philosophical tradition." (p. 19)

(...)

"Parmenides’s ontological distinction enables him to understand “truth” in relation to “being.” Truth is not, as is sometimes said, the truth of being; but being is truth or true. What is, is true; and what is not is not true. In a widely known, influential passage, Parmenides writes: to gar auto noein estin te kai einai.(33)

This passage is translated and interpreted in different ways—for instance, by Diels and Kranz as “The same thing is for thinking and being,”(34) by John Burnet as “For it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be”(35) and by Coxon as “for the same thing is for conceiving as is for being.”(36) In F. M. Cornford’s translation, the passage reads: “For it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be.”(37)

(...)

According to Phillips, Cornford and Burnet both go astray, since “Parmenides can be called an idealist, who believes that what can be thought must be real.”(41) This can be decided only when we have agreed on the meaning of “idealism.”

But Phillips is helpful in noting that the simplest translation of this passage is: “For thinking and being are the same.”(42)

We can expand this thesis as follows: (1) there is being; (2) being can be known; (3) when being is known, thought and being—that is, the thought of being and the being of the thought—are known as the same, or identical; (4) if nonbeing cannot exist, it cannot be known; and (5) since thought and being are the same, nonbeing, which cannot be known, also cannot be or exist." (p. 18)

(...)

"The preceding chapter sketched a description of Parmenides’s claim that thought and being are the same as a claim to know the real, reality, or the world.

This chapter will describe selected ancient Greek reactions to Parmenides—more precisely, to the thesis about the sameness of thought and being, with special attention to Plato and Aristotle." (Chapter 2, p. 19)

(34)H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Berlin: Weidmann, 1951, DK 28 B3, p. 231.

(35) John Burnet, trans., Fragments of Parmenides, 1920, frag. 4.

(36) Coxon, The Fragments of Parmenides, p. 58.

(37) F. M. Cornford, “Parmenides’ Two Ways,” Classical Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 2, April 1933, p. 99.

(41) D. Z. Phillips, “Parmenides on Thought and Being,” Philosophical Review, vol. 64, no. 4, 1955, p. 556.

(42) Phillips, “Parmenides on Thought and Being,” p. 553.

18. Roecklein, Robert J. 2011. Plato versus Parmenides. The Debate over Coming-into-Being in Greek Philosophy. Lanham: Lexington Books.

Contents: Acknowledgments IX-X; Introduction 1; 1. Parmenides' Argument 13; 2. Parmenides and the Milesian Philosophies: "Nothing Comes from Nothing" --- Physics or Logic? 37; 3. Parmenides' Influence of Empedocles and Anaxagoras 57; 4. Plato's Socrates and His Theory of Causation 83; 5. The Parmenides: Plato's Proof of Coming to Be 121; 6. The Theaetetus: Plato's Proof That the Objects of Knowledge Are Indivisible 159; Bibliography 187; Index 195-199.

"The estimation of Parmenides' argument has risen to such high levels in our scholarship, that Plato's very reputation as a thinker has begun to fade into somewhat of a derivative status. Plato, it is held by more than a few influential scholars, could not even have arrived at his theory of forms if he had not had the good fortune to be influenced by Parmenides' doctrine about motionless, eternal "Being." In the view of recent commentators, it is not an exaggeration to suggest that Parmenides is now often portrayed as the seminal thinker of classical Greek philosophy.(10) It is increasingly a standard view among commentators, that Plato's Socrates himself is overcome by the power of the Eleatic legacy, which, they say, he willingly embraces.

The most spectacular evidence of this movement in the status of Plato in our scholarship can be seen in the commentary on the dialogue Parmenides itself. A large number of scholars are now convinced that in this dialogue, Plato has commissioned the character of Parmenides to deliver a telling, if not a fatal blow against Plato's own theory of forms.(11) We will investigate this matter in some depth in chapter 5; for the moment, it must suffice to indicate the following points. In fact, it is Parmenides' argument which is put to the test in the dialogue that Plato named after the great Eleatic; so far from treating Parmenides with reverence or deference, Plato actually assigns a very humbling role to Parmenides in the dialogue named for him. The role assigned to Parmenides there is nothing other than to utter the effectual refutation of his own entire argument. In the fifth chapter, a case will be made that Plato refutes Parmenides' indictment of the reality of coming-into being, and so concludes, rather than sustains, the legacy of Parmenides' argument.

We will also be challenged, in this study, to rebut a claim that has by now been very powerfully established in the scholarly literature: this claim is that Parmenides created a philosophical interpretation of the notion of Being which even Plato's Socrates has in some measure been shaped by, or come to adopt. Plato's theory of forms, as those forms are hypothesized to be eternal and ungenerated, is linked by a number of scholars to the theory of being that Parmenides developed.

This view is confused. In the first place, the forms are originally known to human beings in those very perishable objects which the Eleatics wish to wholly exclude from all evidentiary matters concerning truth of fact. Plato's Socrates, it can be noted, arrived at his famous profession of ignorance precisely as a rhetorical method for summoning forth from interlocutors a base of knowledge which all hold in common: namely recognition of the various forms in perishable bodies.

This common intelligence on display in the ordinary individual's effortless assignment of name to object is certainly not science, in Plato's view; however, the theory of scientific definition which Plato advances does indeed depend on this recognition-knowledge as the ultimate evidence for its own investigations. The ordinary and spontaneous ability of unphilosophic human beings to assign name to object is, in Plato's view, itself evidence of a distinct intelligence operative in the ordinary opinions. One could hardly formulate a proposition more at loggerheads with the Eleatic philosophy.

That which the memory recognizes in the patterns that recur (and all of the patterns, as Plato argues throughout his work, appear innumerable times in the perishable objects), is not a knowledge that has the power of full consciousness and comprehension such as the power possessed by logos or more deliberate investigation. Yet Plato insists that these opinions are nevertheless the port from which philosophy must embark. When argument finally reaches for an intellectual comprehension in speech-as opposed to an inarticulate recognition of the individual forms-Plato's philosophy will attach a scientific hypothesis to the ordinary views. Yet this hypothesis itself, that the forms exist separately in nature for the sake of intellectual investigation, remains dependent on the common familiarity with the forms as they recur in the common objects. "And in respect of the just and the unjust, the good and the bad, and all the ideas or forms, the same statement holds, that in itself each is one, but that by virtue of their communion with actions and bodies and with one another they present themselves everywhere, each as a multiplicity of aspects" (Republic 476a). Yet it is the building block upon which Plato's entire science of definition rests, and he never fails to fight for the integrity of this recognition-knowledge in his major debates with rival philosophers such as Protagoras and Parmenides." (pp. 10-11)

(10) Charles Kahn, "Being in Parmenides and Plato," La Parola del Passato 43 (1988): "If it was the encounter with Socrates that made Plato a philosopher, it was the poem of Parmenides that made him a metaphysician. In the first place it was Parmenides' distinction between being and becoming that provided Plato with an ontological basis for his theory of forms. When he decides to submit this theory to searching criticism, he chose as critic no other than Parmenides himself' (237). Cf. Taran, Parmenides, vii; Patricia Curd, The Legacy of Parmenides: Eleatic Monism and Later Presocratic Thought (Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2004), 231-32, 238.

(11) Gregory Vlastos, "The Third Man Argument in the Parmenides," Philosophical Review 63 (1954): 329, 342. Kenneth M. Sayre, Parmenides' Lesson (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), 60, 62, 95. Robert Turnbull, The Parmenides and Plato 's Late Philosophy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 19, 23, 39. Kelsey Wood, Troubling Play: Meaning and Entity in Plato's Parmenides (Albany: SUNY, 2005), 1-2, 74, 85.

19. Rohatyn, Dennis Anthony. 1971. "A Note on Parmenides B 19." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 5:20-23.

"Hershbell (1) presents compelling evidence combined with sound reasoning for his contention that Fr. 16 does not belong in 'The Way of Opinion (or Seeming)' but rather in 'The Way of Truth' portion of Parmenides' poem. With as much justice I think it is possible to reassign Fr. 19 to the first part of the poem as well. For it is here that Parmenides introduces the concept of name (onoma, B19 1.3), and utilizes it to explain mortal belief (doxa, B19 1.1) in coming-to-be and in passing-away. (2) It seems natural to place this after the concluding words of Fr. 8, 11. 60-61, in which Parmenides advises or promises a full account (3) so that no "mortal wisdom may ever outstrip" that of the reader or initiate. It is only proper to regard Parmenides' theory of names, if it is as full-blown as all that, as belonging to his metaphysical apparatus and thus as having nothin g to do, in and of itself, with the erroneous picture of the world which it is expressly designed to account for." (p. 20)

(1) J.P. Hershbell, "Parmenides' way of Truth and B16" , Apeiron 4, No. 2 (August 1970), 1-23.

(2) The source is Simplicius' commentary on Aristotle, de Caelo 558.9-11.

(3) Of "appearances", "phenomena" and "empirical data", all pace Aristotle, Metaphysica A 986b31.

20. Romero, Gustavo E. 2012. "Parmenides Relaoaded." Foundations of Science no. 17:291-299.

Abstract: "I argue for a four dimensional, non-dynamical view of space-time, where becoming is not an intrinsic property of reality. This view has many features in common with the Parmenidean conception of the universe. I discuss some recent objections to this position and I offer a comparison of the Parmenidean space-time with an interpretation of Heraclitus’ thought that presents no major antagonism."

21. Rosen, Stanley. 1996. "Commentary on Long [Parmenides on Thinking Being]." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy no. 12:152-160.

"As a result of reading Long's excellent paper and reviewing some of the scholarship, it occurs to me that Parmenides is something of a Hegelian. I do not need to emphasize that Hegel would not have approved of this assertion without elaborate qualification. But that is

not decisive. To begin with, Hegel did believe that the end is somehow contained, even prefigured within, the beginning. In this connection, the spherical character of Parmenides' being is a striking prototype of the circularity of the Hegelian concept and even of Nietzsche's eternal return of the same. And Long's excellent emphasis on the fact that Parmenides is inquiring into the thinking of being, not into being as independent of thought, is also quite Hegelian. The lynch-pin of this somewhat but not entirely playful Hegelian reading is the translation and interpretation of fragment 3 offered in various contexts by Heidegger, Couloubaritsis, Long, and myself. What is "the same" that serves as the subject of the two infinitives "to think" and "to be?" It must be the same as each yet other than either. If it is not the same as each, then obviously neither will be the same as the other. But if it is not other than each, then the two will not only be "the same" but will be one and the same or a homogeneous unit. The only remaining possibility is that the two are both same and other, or as Hegel would say, that "the same" stands here for "the identity" in the expression "the identity of identity and difference."

(...)

"I do not need to emphasize too strongly that it was not my intention to present a new and comprehensive interpretation of Parmenides in a short commentary on someone else's paper. My main purpose was to signal my partial adherence to Long's central thesis and to make one or two suggestions for strengthening it." (pp. 157-159)

22. Rossetti, Livio. 2020. "Parmenides Misinterpreted." Φιλοσοφία no. 49:43-59.

"Parmenides is universally known as «the philosopher of Being» but, as it is becoming more and more clear, he specialized in ontology as well as in a umber of other «sciences». Therefore, if he was the father of what in much more recent times begun to be called «ontology», he was at the same time an equally creative and penetrating student of our earth, living creatures, the stars, as well as the formal organization of arguments(1). Moreover, no unified body of doctrines and no «guiding idea» surfaces from what we know about his teachings. Indeed, not even a philosophy surfaces from his surviving fragments." (p. 43)

(1) 1. On the latter topic, see L. Rossetti, Un altro Parmenide, I-II, Bologna, Diogene Multimedia, 2017, chapter 10

23. Ruzsa, Ferenc. 2002. "Parmenides’ road to India." Acta Antiqua. Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae no. 49:29-49.

Summary: "Parmenides‘ philosophy is unique in the history of ideas in Europe, but it has a striking parallel in India, from about the same age. The unchanging Absolute, called 'Being‘ or 'Existent‘; the depreciation of everyday objects as mere 'names‘;

and the construction of the empirical world out of elements called 'forms‘ are all found in the first text of the Sadvidyā (Chāndogya Upaniṣad VI. 1-7). Comparing details and taking into consideration other old Indian material this paper tries to prove that convergence of thought or parallel development is out of the question – there must have been actual contact. Also it suggests that the most probable scenario is that Parmenides travelled to India, learned the language and some important philosophical texts, and brought them back to Greece."

24. Sanders, Kirk R. 2002. "Much Ado About 'Nothing': μηδέν and τò μὴ έόν in Parmenides." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 35:87-104.

"It is, to my knowledge, a universally accepted assumption among contemporary commentators that μδεν το εν αιων, 'nothing', and 'toμ~ Mv, 'what-isnot', function as synonyms in Parmenides' poem.(1) In this paper, I focus primarily on the central role this supposed semantic equivalence plays in arguments supporting an emendation in line 12 of fragment B8.

Despite this scholarly unanimity regarding the synonymy of these two Greek terms and the popularity of the emendation, I contend that we can make the best sense of Parmenides' argument in this and the surrounding lines precisely by retaining the manuscript reading and recognizing the difference in meaning between 'nothing' and 'what-is-not'. This claim, of course, also has broader implications for the interpretation of Parmenides' poem generally." (p. 87)

Cf. Karl Reinhardt, Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie (second edition) Frankfurt 1959), 39-42; Leonardo Taran, Parmenides: A Text with Translation, Commentary, and Critical Essays (Princeton 1965), 95-7; Montgomery Furth, 'Elements of Eleatic Ontology', Journal of the History of Philosophy 6 (1968), 119; A.P.D. Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides (New Haven 1970), 100-2; G.E.L. Owen, 'Plato on Not-Being', in Gregory Vlastos, ed., Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays I, Metaphysics and Epistemology (Garden City, NY 1971), 225-6; Michael C. Stokes, One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy (Washington 1971), 131; David Furley, 'Notes on Parmenides, in E.N. Lee, A.P.D. Mourelatos, and R.M. Rorty, eds., Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos (New York 1973), 12-14; Jonathan Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers (London 1982), 166; David Gallop, Parmenides of Elea: Fragments (Toronto 1984), 23-8; Scott Austin, Parmenides: Being, Bounds, and Logic (New Haven 1986), 97; A.H. Coxon, The Fragments of Parmenides (Assen 1986), 198-200; Richard J. Ketchum, 'Parmenides on What There Is', Canadian Journal of Philosophy 20 (1990), 171-3 and 184-6; Richard D. McKirahan, Jr., Philosophy Before Socrates (Indianapolis 1994), 167; and Patricia Curd, The Legacy of Parmenides: Eleatic Monism and Later Presocratic Thought (Princeton 1998), 76-7.

25. Santillana, Giorgio de. 1970. "Prologue to Parmenides." In Reflections of Men and Ideas, 82-119. Cambridge: M.I.T. University Press.

Originally published in Lectures in Memory of Louise Taft Semple, First Series 1961-1965, Princeton Princeton University Press, 1967.

"These, in sketchy outline, are the reasons that I suggest for restoring Parmenides to the world of science without removing him from metaphysics. There would be much more to say before the ground can be considered clear. I have concentrated on the specifically geometrical fragments. I have not attempted to establish the link of Parmenides with Melissus, nor, further, the filiation of thought which makes of the Eleatics the fountainhead of Sophistic logic. That a new concern with the possibilities of pure reasoning runs through this line is undeniable. The word play of Zeno is the fateful point when words begin to veer away from the central concern with the kosmos, and to live a life of their own. Inside the Eleatic school itself, there is evidence that some very reckless experimenting went on with the possibilities of the newly discovered verbal instrument, and here we might find the legitimate source of Plato’s Parmenides. But if the enterprise wandered off into eristics, it also led to Bryson. It was the most adventurous moment of Greek thought, the freest adventure, and it would seem the greatest hope. What the men of those generations saw in the promise of the Goddess is surely incommunicable. All true metaphysical experiences are. By linking the realm of geometry with that of the “logos that is spoken,” Parmenides provided a complex of meanings as rich as that of Herakleitos, but lending itself to rigorous deduction at all levels. Nothing in modern thought can provide more than a pale image of that wealth of living meaning: only Plato can show us what a contemporary could hope of it, and in that sense, if in that sense only, his exegesis is valid. For us, dealing with the autopsy of what is no longer an overwhelming truth, the anatomy of logic shows a clear distinction. The logic of the Eleatics is so guided by their object of contemplation as to remain scientifically impeccable; that of their successors is not, and we must assume that the object has changed. On this we rest our case." (pp. 103-104)

26. Santoro, Fernando. 2011. "Ta Sēmata: On a Genealogy of the Idea of Ontological Categories." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 233-250. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "My hypothesis is that some figures of speech, like catalogs, present in the sapient epics of Hesiod and Homer, as well as figures emerging from a discursive field of veracity belonging to the newborn fifth century forensic rhetoric, helped build the originality of Parmenides' categorical ontological language. Especially for the characteristics of Being, presented in fragment B8 as signals: σήματα. I would also like to add to these elements of language, the early physicists' (φυσικῶν) interest in limits (περάτων). With these genealogic views, we can speculate about some important parameters of ontological categories such as subordination, attribution, and opposition."

27. ———. 2020. "Venus and the Erotics of Parmenides." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 28:165-189.

Abstract: "The twenty-first century begins with many interpretive turns towards the pre-Socratic thinkers, among them Parmenides of Elea. I investigate how the cosmological contents contained in the fragments of the Poem can be integrated into the Parmenidean program of knowledge of the truth, achieved by thought.

In this way, scientific discoveries concerning the Moon, Venus and others are glimpsed. I also propose that an old way of integrating the knowledge of astronomical contents to the knowledge of contents related to generation and sex, which compose the physical subjects of the Poem, takes the form of an Erotic interpretation of the world, ruled by Eros and Aphrodite."

28. Santos, José Gabriel Trindade. 2011. "The Role of “Thought” in the Argument of Parmenides’ Poem." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 251-270. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "It is my aim in this paper to analyze the role played by “thought” in the argument of Parmenides' Poem. The relevance of the “thought” theme in Greek philosophical tradition has long been recognized. In Parmenides it implies approaching the study of reality through the experience of thought in language. As knowledge is to the known, thought is to being. Their identity dominates Parmenides' argument in the Way of Truth, persisting in later relevant conceptions as Platonic ἐπιστήμη and Aristotelian “active intellect.” "

29. ———. 2013. "For a non-predicative reading of « esti » in Parmenides, the Sophists and Plato." Méthexis.International Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 26:39-50.

Abstract: "The absence of grammatical subject and object in Parmenides' "it is/it is not" allows the reading of the verbal forms not as copulas but as names, with no implicit subject nor elided predicate. Once there are two only alternatives, contrary and excluding each other, sustaining that a 'no-name' does not grant knowledge implies identifying its opposite – "it is" – as the only name conducive to knowledge in itself, denouncing the 'inconceivability of a knowledge that does not know. If "it is" is the only [name] "which can be thought/known", and "what is" is the way in which 'thought/knowledge' can be accomplished, there is no need to postulate the existence of 'anything' that is, nor of anything that can be said of "what is". Being the only name which "can be thought of/known", the unifying synthesis of "knowledge, knowing and known" in one infallible cognitive state, it is unthinkable that "what is" does not exist."

30. Sassi, Maria Michela. 2016. "Parmenides and Empedocles on Krasis and Knowledge." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 49:451-469.

Abstract: "Making mental phenomena to depend on certain elements or organs of the body is famously recognized as a distinctive feature of physiologia both in the so-called “autobiography” of Socrates in the Phaedo and in a further “doxographic” passage in the dialogue, where Simmias develops the argument that the soul is like “a blending and an attunement” of the bodily elements.

While no earlier thinker is mentioned here, one can easily identify Parmenides and Empedocles as two of the main supporters of the notion that thought and perception depend on the various blendings of the physical constituents of the body. That they had such a view is indeed well known thanks to a few fragments, for whose discussion Aristotle’s and Theophrastus’ comments prove to be particularly helpful. What neither Plato nor Aristotle acknowledge, though, is that no such specific bearer of mental functions as psyche is needed in this kind of account. As a matter of fact, both Parmenides and Empedocles share with the epic and lyric tradition the idea of the precariousness of human knowledge, due to the constant exposure of human beings to change. Yet they “translate” the topos of human existence and thought subjected to the divine into a vision where the physical krasis of the body (not by chance, a medical notion) is all that matters."

31. Sattler, Barbara M. 2012. "Parmenides’ System: The Logical Origins of his Monism." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy no. 26:25-90.

Abstract: "This paper aims to demonstrate that it is Parmenides‘ criteria for philosophy in conjunction with his understanding of the available logical operators and their holistic connection that lead to what we can call a logical monism—only the one Being can be conceived and hence known. Being the first to explicate criteria for philosophy, Parmenides will be shown to establish not only consistency as a criterion for philosophy, but also what I call rational admissibility, i.e., giving an account of some x that is based on rational analysis and can thus withstand rational scrutiny. As for logical operators, Parmenides employs a basic operator for connection, identity, and one for separation, negation. His negation operator, expressing an extreme negation that negates the argument completely, corresponds to his identity operator, expressing identification with no exception. But not only are these two basic operators tailored to each other, also Parmenides‘ basic notion of Being is such that it fits these operators as well as his criteria for philosophy. Accordingly, a kind of holism, a systematic character, underlies Parmenides‘ philosophy such that that any changes in one concept would necessitate changes in the others. Given the restrictions of Parmenides‘ criteria for philosophy and the logical operators available to him, what can be a possible object of philosophical investigation is nothing but something absolutely simple, the one Being as the logical content of a thought."

32. ———. 2020. The Concept of Motion in Ancient Greek Thought: . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 2: Parmenides’ Account of the Object of Philosophy, pp. 80-123.

"This chapter spells out the challenge that Parmenides’ philosophy poses fornatural philosophy. This challenge arises not so much from explicit reflections on natural philosophy and on earlier cosmologies as from what we can call Parmenides’ logical, metaphysical, and methodological reflections: it derives from the criteria Parmenides establishes, in part implicitly, for any rational or scientific investigation in conjunction with the logical operators available to him. The field of investigation that is thus methodologically prepared excludes natural philosophy, since what is subject to change and motion – the object of natural philosophy – cannot be rationally grasped with the help of Parmenides’ criteria and operators." (p. 80)

(...)

"In order to reconstruct Parmenides’ challenge, in this chapter I first show that he establishes clear criteria for rigorous philosophical inquiry and then analyse the logical operators with which Parmenides works. These criteria and the logical operators are systematically tied to each other in such a way that, as becomes clear in the next step, Parmenides’ monism and his exclusion of natural philosophy follow naturally. The final section spells out in detail the challenges natural philosophy thus faces." (p. 83)

33. Scapin, Nuria. 2020. The Flower of Suffering: Theology, Justice, and the Cosmos in Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Presocratic Thought. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Chspter 5: Cosmic Justice and the Metaphysics of Opposites: Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides. 117-145; Chapter 8: Persuasive Dikê: from violence to kindness, 204-213.

"Next I shall examine the development of the notion of cosmic justice and its specific application in the thought of three Presocratic philosophers: Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides." (p. 123)

(...)

"In Parmenides’ poem about truth, Being, and mortal opinions, Dikê plays indeed a cosmic role, but her familiar universal function is exploited within the space of innovative thought. An important role is assigned to her in each of the three parts into which the poem is traditionally divided: not only does she feature in the Proem, where the most dense stock of allusions to the traditional corpus of poetic phraseology and religious imagery is concentrated, but she also plays an important role in the two remaining sections. Dikê’s traditional role is bent to aid Parmenides’ abstract logic and metaphysical arguments in the central philosophical part of the poem, and she is bestowed an important role in the final section dedicated to cosmological speculations." (p. 137)

(...)

"My study of justice in the Oresteia follows the slow unfolding of the workings of dikê in the three plays. In the present chapter I show how the notion of an inherent limitations in the nature of the universe is profoundly rooted in this text: I predominantly focus on dikê in its associations to notions of time and necessity.

In the following chapter, I focus on the notion of retributive justice (δίκη as ποινή) and discuss how, in moments of dramatic climax, justice is brought into the awareness of characters as a due process rather than a single act. In the penultimate chapter, I focus on the association between justice and persuasion in the Oresteia and Parmenides’ Poem."(p. 150)

34. Schick, Thomas. 1965. "Check and Spur: Parmenides' Concept of (What) Is." Classical Journal:170-173.

"So far Parmenides has told us that (what) is not does not exist, and we cannot know it: (what) is exists; and now we seek to know its characteristics, its nature.

How is (what) is described? What can we know of it? It is generally agreed that all the predicates attributed by Parmenides to (what) is are contained in Fr. 8; but how are they contained there? Are they proved there? One opinion says "yes": "It [Fr. 8) opens (like a theorem in geometry) with an enunciation of the attributes, positive and negative, that will be proved to belong to the Real. ... These attributes are then established by a series of astonishingly brief and penetrating arguments."(16) But a heavy and well-founded "no" is sounded by Loenen. [*] He argues that de facto many of the predicates are not proved; and he thus supports one of his main theses, that a lacuna in the text contained analytic proofs of most of the predicates.

"Fr. 8 thus contains the deduction of a small number of additional attributes, viz. those which could not be arrived at by an analytical description of the idea of being."(17) This seems most plausible; and, though I am slow to accept many of Loenen's conclusions and interpretations, I use his divisions for the following description.

I identify and explain the attributes merely mentioned; I then discuss the deduced attributes and give their arguments and proofs; and finally I discuss briefly a characteristic which is not explicity mentioned in the fragment, but which must be predicated of (what) is." (pp. 171-172)

[*] J. H. M. M. Loenen, Parmenides, Melissus, Gorgias; a reinterpretation of Eleatic philosophy (Assen 1959),

(16) F. M. Cornford, "Parmenides' two ways" Classical quarterly 27 (1933) 103.

(17) 17 Loenen, p. 99.

35. Schofield, Malcolm. 1970. "Did Parmenides Discover Eternity?" Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie:113-135.

"Mr. J. E. Raven ascribes to Parmenides the-doctrine that 'past and future are alike meaningless, the only time is a perpetual present time'(1). And this is the orthodox view(2).

(...)

But in recent years a dissenting point of view has been expressed.

First Professor Hermann Fränkel (6), then Professor Taran (7) has maintained (I quote Taran's expression of the point):

There is nothing in the text to substantiate the claim of those who assert that Parmenides maintains that past and future cannot be predicated of Being to which only the present 'is' truly belongs. Parmenides is only denying that Being ever perished or ever will come to be(8).

The arguments adduced by Fränkel and Taran in support of this opinion have met with vigorous opposition, deservedly so for the most part(9). But I believe that their case is a stronger one than they have been able to establish, and that the majority opinion rests on

rather flimsier supports than has yet been generally appreciated.

These claims I attempt to substantiate in this paper.

The lines of Parmenides' poem which are chiefly responsible the controversy are B 8.5-6a." (pp. 113-114, a note omitted)

(1) G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1960: corrected Impression of the first edition), p. 274.

(2) L. Taran, Parmenides. (Princeton, 1965), p. 175, n. 1, gives a list of some who have held this view of Parmenides. They include Diels, Calogero, Mondolfo, Cornford, Gigon, Deichgräber, Owen. One may now add the names of W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy Vol. II (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 27-31, and C. H. Kahn, in a review of Taran's book in Gnomon 40 (1968), pp, 127-129.

(6) H. Fränkel, Wege und Formen frühgriechischen Denkens, second edition (Munich, 1960), p. 191, n. 1.

(7) Taran, Parmenides, pp. 175-188.

(8) Op. cit., p. 177. Zeller, in Die Philosophie der Griechen, Vol. I, Pt. I, ed. by W. Nestle (Leipzig, 1923), pp. 689-692, seems to give the same Interpretation äs Fränkel and Taran in bis text, but in a note (p. 690, n. 1) he mentions what appears to him to be a possible ground for adopting the view which has become traditional.

(9) Fränkel's arguments have been effectively rebutted by G. E. L. Owen, The Monist 60 (1966), pp. 320-322, and Taran's by C. H. Kahn, Gnomon 40 (1968), pp. 127-129.

36. ———. 1987. "Coxon's Parmenides." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 32:349-359.

"A.H. Coxon has a remarkable record of publications on ancient philosophy.

In CQ [=Classical Quarterly]1934 there appeared the early and much respected article "The Philosophy of Parmenides". Then in CQ 1968 came a brief note reporting Coxon's shaming discovery that the puzzling άστη usually printed in Fr. 1, 3 has no manuscript authority, coupled with a report on his re-examination of those portions of the manuscripts of Simplicius which bear on the establishment of Parmenides' text. Now in 1986 we have a full critical edition of the fragments, with introduction, translation, a much fuller selection of the ancient testimonia than in Diels-Kranz, and a commentary(1). So far as I know these are Coxon's only published writings on our subject." (p. 349)

"Perhaps the most interesting and important general conclusion Coxon draws from his study of the manuscript tradition of Parmenides is the proposition (contra Diels) that Parmenides' diction is uniformly epic and Ionic." (P. 350)

(1) A.H. Coxon: The Fragments of Parmenides, Van Gorcum: Assen/Maastricht, 1986 (Phronesis Supplementary Volume III). Pp. viii + 277.

37. ———. 2019. "Diakosmêsis." In Cosmos in the Ancient World, edited by Horky, Phillip Sidney, 62-73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Summary: "Deployment of the notion of kosmos has been much discussed in the scholarship on Presocratic philosophy. But diakosmos and diakosmêsis have been almost entirely neglected. This chapter argues that in describing the business of articulating ‘mortal belief’ as diakosmos, Parmenides bequeathed to his successors among the Presocratics a question – intended as deflationary – about the main agenda for physics and physical explanation: how the universe is arranged. He coined a concept designed to articulate it. Diakosmos was a concept his successors were determined to reinflate, but only at the price of contestation between believers in a single world produced by design and proponents of infinite undesigned worlds. And in Aristotle, diakosmêsis is re-invested with a hint of the deflationary."

38. Schürmann, Reiner. 1988. "Tragic Differing: The Law of the One and the Law of Contraries in Parmenides." Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal no. 13:3-20.

"There is probably no greater beginner in the history of philosophy than Parmenides. If it is true that in their compactness beginnings already contain the essential insights that the subsequent tradition only spins out in ever new threads, then coming to terms with

Parmenides is a task that has to be undertaken ever again. Most of his sayings are hapax legomena which yield clear answers only to clearly put questions. But the questions we bring to him remain ours, dictated by the preponderances of the day.

The question I put to him concerns ultimate foundations. In a sense, it is the very issue for which he has been granted the status of fatherhood ever since antiquity. Common opinion holds that he drafted once and for all, as it were, the job description of the philosopher: namely, to secure principles—reference points on which every thinking agent can rely both in his thinking and in his acting. Husserl still echoes and accepts that assignment when he counts himself among "the functionaries of mankind". From the time Parmenides wrote that being is one, and perhaps until Wittgenstein taught that grammars are many, this public function invested in philosophers has on the whole gone unchallenged.

Their foundational expertise has made them the civil servants par excellence in as much as they felt called upon, and in many quarters still feel called upon today, to secure a ground guaranteeing knowledge its truth and life, its meaning. As professionals, philosophers must point out—not set—reliable standards. They provide evidential moorage for the sake of consoling the soul and consolidating the city: some single first law governing all regional laws, be they cognitive, practical, or even positive.

Parmenides calls that law the One (capitalized for mere conventional purposes). For an age that has grown more aware than any other of fragmentations and dispersals in the order of things, can the One as Parmenides argues it assure a non-fractured foundation? If it turned out that his originative, compact insight also contains a conceptual strategy that counters his foundational gesture from within, it might follow that in and after Parmenides philosophy has had a more humble mission to fulfill than satisfying man's quest for ultimacy. Accustomed to the Many, our century may then not amount to the mere barbarism bent on destroying the entire noble tradition devoted to the One. Philosophy may have consisted all along in the attempt to think explicitly and with some rigor about matters that everyone knows, ad though rather implicitly and poorly. And what is it that we all know firsthand, yet poorly? Of our own coming-into-being, our birth, we know only indirectly; just as we know only indirectly of our own ceasing-to-be, our death. We know, but dimly, that we stand in the double-bind of life and its contrary. The clear knowledge of that double-bind in which the law of contraries places us is tragic knowledge." (pp. 3-4)

(1) Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy, transl. David Carr (Evanston, 1970) p. 17.

39. ———. 2003. Broken Hegemonies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Translated by Reginald Lilly from the French: Des Hégémonies brisées, Mauvenzin, Trans Europe Repress, 1996.

See Part One: In the Name of the One. The Greek Hegemonic Fantasm. I: Its Institution: The One That Holds Together (Parmenides) pp. 51-135.

"The pages that follow are meant to be read as a contribution to the age old "doctrine of principles." Philosophers have never stopped speculating about this principal Greek legacy. Today the business of principal principles seems to have been robbed of its heritage. What can be learned from its loss? May it actually represent a gain for us? These are good enough reasons to examine the operations that have been carried out on this legacy." (p. 3)

"In what way is being one? As cumulative and “re-cumulative,” as constantly recurring. The one that being is, is thinkable only as the crystallization of beings (which has nothing to do with atomism), a crystallization thought not in terms of beings, but as an occurrence, hence in terms of time. The one is what occurs through an aggregation. Beings and being are articulated in the henological difference.

How does this difference make law? Our analysis of contraries has shown that they essentially conjoin and disjoin with one another. There fore we cannot think of being as arrival without also thinking of it as leaving. There is no centripetal aggregation without a centrifugal disaggregation. To use Heideggerʼs words once again: no appropriation without expropriation.(119) In the idiom of an analytic of ultimates—no universalization without singularization. In terms of the law—no legislation with out transgression immanent within it. In one fell swoop, and necessarily, the henological difference makes the law by binding us both to the dissolution of the phenomena of the world and to their consolidation that is underway. As soon as he understands the one as a process, Parmenides has to establish both at traction and withdrawal as equally normative. This double bind is embedded in our condition as mortals. We can call it the henological differend." (P. 134)

(119 M. Heidegger, “Protocole,” [Martin Heidegger, “Protocole dʼun séminaire,” trans. Jean Lauxerois and Claude Roël, in Questions IV, Paris, 1976], p. 77.

40. Seaford, Richard. 2004. Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"This book argues that the monetisation of the Greek polis in the sixth and fifth centuries bc contributed to a radical transformation in thought that is, in a sense, still with us. Academics – perhaps because they are more interested in texts than in money – have emphasised rather the role of alphabetic literacy in the radical intellectual changes of this period. They are often also emotionally invested in the autonomy of their various specialisms, an investment encouraged by the institutional division of academic labour.

For most presocratic scholars, to allow that any kind of social process might illuminate their texts would threaten their control of their subject and the autonomy of ‘doing philosophy’. The consequent subconscious policing of the boundaries can be simultaneously sincere and brutal. For embarking on such a fundamental question I make no apology, and hope that others will be inspired to remedy the inadequacies of my answers." (Preface, P. XI)

(...)

"We have identified, as factors in the genesis of the Parmenidean One, mystery cult (11b), the historical development of monetary abstraction, reaction to Heraclitus, and the unconscious imperative to separate self-sufficient true value from the uncertain and vulgar monetary circulation of precious metal. Although this imperative was not confined to aristocrats, it may not be coincidental that the two thinkers who reflect the progress of this separation were apparently both, as was Plato, of aristocratic origin.

Heraclitus, for whom permanent unity and abstract logos are both embodied in permanent physical circulation, was said to have resigned the ‘kingship’ in favour of his brother and to have been isolated from politics by his intellectual contempt for humankind.(138) Parmenides, for whom permanent abstract unity is finally explicitly separated from the transformation believed in by ‘ignorant mortals . . . undiscriminating hordes’ (b6), was said to have been ‘of illustrious family and of wealth’,(139) but also, in contrast to Heraclitus, a lawgiver (9b)." (p. 262)

(138) D. L. 9.6; 9.3; Guthrie [A History of Greek Philosophy. Volume I], Cambridge U. P. 1962, 410–13.

(139) Sotion ap. D. L. 1.21 (DK. 28a1). It is of course conceivable that this is an inference from b6.

41. ———. 2020. The Origins of Philosophy in Ancient Greece and Ancient India: A Historical Comparison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Summary: This book is devoted to a unitary argument, but over such a wide range of material that I offer the reader preliminary guidance in this chapter, beginning with an overview.

The next chapter (concluding Part A) presents explanations of the similarity between the earliest philosophy in India and Greece.

Part B describes the polytheist reciprocity that, among an elite, was replaced in both cultures by monism. Part C centres on the main factors behind this replacement in India: the individual interiorisation of what I call the cosmic rite of passage, and monetisation. Part D describes the similar factors behind the similar development of ideas in Greece. The conclusion (Part E) summarises and explores the variety of factors behind the new imagining of universe and inner self.

Although Part C focuses mainly on India and Part D mainly on Greece, I have made frequent attempts throughout the book to explain the similarities and differences between the intellectual transformations in the two cultures. Some references to the Greek material in Part C will be fully appreciated only after the analogy between the Greek and the Indian intellectual transformations has become clear in Part D. Possible early misgivings about my position on monetisation as an important factor behind the intellectual transformations are addressed in Part E." (p. 3)

(..)

"In Part D the main focus moves from India to Greece. Chapter 11 compares the interiorisation of the cosmic rite of passage in India (sacrifice) and Greece (mystic initiation) (11§A), identifies the importance of the soul (psuchē) in mystic initiation (11§B), which is interiorised in Herakleitos (12§B), in Parmenides (11§C) and in Plato (11§D). This Greek interiorisation promoted ideas akin to the coalescence of mental with abstract monism promoted by the interiorisation of the cosmic rite of passage in India." (p. 5)

42. ———. 2020. "Aristocracy and Monetization: Plato, Parmenides, Herakleitos, and Pindar." Greece & Rome no. 67:54-70.

"Numerous further examples could be given of the Greek reaction to monetization.(25) But our focus here is specifically on the effect of monetization on ‘aristocracy’. I will, in what remains of this article, introduce into the historical discussion of aristocratic ideology something that is generally kept entirely separate from it: the development – simultaneously with monetization and in the very same cities – of philosophy, specifically of three philosophers with impeccable aristocratic credentials,(26) whom we will discuss in reverse chronological order (Plato, Parmenides, Herakleitos), before ending with the most obviously aristocratic writer of the classical period, Pindar." (p. 60)

(...)

"The ontological privileging of unchanging abstract Being (the ‘One’, all that exists) by Parmenides is – somewhat like the Platonic form of the good – a metaphysical projection of the unchanging, all-pervasive abstract Being of money. I realize that such a proposal may seem counterintuitive, and certainly outside what is generally considered legitimate in the study of the Presocratics. But unfortunately I have here nothing like the considerable space needed for the detailed, cumulative argumentation on which it is based, and which is laid out in my Money and the Early Greek Mind.(38)" (p. 63)

(25) Seaford [Money and the Early Greek Mind (Cambridge, 2004], 147–337

(26) Herakleitos: DK22 A1(6), A2; Parmenides a wealthy aristocrat: DK28 A1(21) = Diog. Laert. 9.21; Plato: e.g. Diog. Laert. 3.1.

43. Sedley, David. 1999. "Parmenides and Melissus." In The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, edited by Long, Anthony Arthur, 113-133. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Abstract: "Parmenides and Melissus were bracketed in antiquity as the two great exponents of the Eleatic world-view which denies change and plurality. (1) In modern times their treatment has been curiously unequal.

Too much has been written on Parmenides - albeit the greater thinker of the two - too little on Melissus. Too much has been said about Parmenides' use of the verb "be," while too little has been said about his detailed arguments for the individual characteristics of what-is. However, neither these nor other anomalies should disguise the immense wealth of scholarship that has furthered the reconstruction of their Eleaticism." (p. 113)

"How, then, does the cosmology complement the Way of Truth?

Above all by showing how to bridge the gap between truth and cosmic appearance. The entire range of cosmic phenomena can be generated by allowing the intrusion of just one additional item - by starting out with two instead of one. This makes immediate sense of the frequently noticed fact that the detailed descriptions of the cosmos mimic the language of the Way of Truth. For example, in B10 the "encircling heaven" is "bound down by Necessity to hold the limits of the stars," immediately recalling the description of what-is as held motionless by Necessity in the bonds of a limit (B8.30-31). This tends to confirm that the very same sphere is being first correctly described, then, in the cosmology, incorrectly redescribed." (p. 124)

(1) Most of the interpretations proposed in this chapter can also be found in my two articles, "Melissus" and "Parmenides," in Craig, E. General editor Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (London, 1998).

44. Sentesy, Mark. 2022. "Being, Identity, and Difference in Heraclitus and Parmenides." Dialogoi: Ancient Philosophy Today no. 8:1-31.

Abstract: "Are all forms of difference contained in what is, or is there some form of difference that escapes, negates, or constitutes what is? Parmenides and Heraclitus may have had the greatest effect on how philosophy has answered this question. This paper shows that Heraclitus is not a partisan of difference: identity and difference are mutually generative and equally fundamental. For his part, Parmenides both makes an argument against opposing being and non‐being in the False Road Story, and then uses precisely this opposition to put up signs on the Way of Truth. The paper responds to this impasse by making the case that the poem’s philosophical character is didactic, rhetorical, and mythological, which is why both these signs, and the opposition between non‐being and being, are presented as names created by mortals."

45. Sider, David. 1979. "Confirmation of Two "Conjectures" in the Presocratics: Parmenides B 12 and Anaxagoras B 15." Phoenix.Journal of the Classical Association of Canada no. 33:67-69.

"In each of the two passages discussed below, the indisputably correct reading is given by Diels as editorial conjecture, when in fact for each there is manuscript authority." (p. 33)

[The text of Parmenides is B12.4]

46. ———. 1985. "Textual Notes on Parmenides' Poem." Hermes.Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie no. 113:362-366.

Philological remarks on the following fragments: 1,10, 1,24, 1,30, 2,3f; 6,4f; 6,5-6; 8,1, 8,28, 8,38, 12,2, 12,3.

47. Siegel, Rudolph E. 1962. "Parmenides and the Void. Some Comments on the Paper of Thomas S. Knight " Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 22:264-266.

"In his paper, T. S. Knight came to the conclusion that Parmenides did not simply deny the existence of a void, a physical vacuum, but also questioned the existence, the reality of the sensible world.

It might be open for discussion if the poem of Parmenides can be considered as a treatise on such highly abstract thinking as discussed by T. S. Knight.(1) One may rather assume, as others have done, that Parmenides and other pre-Socratic philosophers expressed with the Greek word 'To Hen,' the 'one,' a more concrete astronomical idea, the cosmos. In a paper on 'The Paradoxes of Zeno' (2) I tried to explain that the word 'one' might express: the mathematical point, the atom, and even the cosmos.

Its respective meaning should be taken from the entire context."

(1) Thomas S. Knight, "Parmenides and the Void," Philosophy and Phenormenological Research, Vol. XIX, No. 4 (June 1959), pp. 524-528.

(2) Rudolph E. Siegel, "The Paradoxes of Zeno; Some Similarities to Modern Thought," Janus, XLVIII 1-2, 1959, pp. 24-47.

48. Sisko, John E. 2003. "Anaxagoras' Parmenidean Cosmology: Worlds within Worlds within the One." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 36:87-114.

"The aim of this paper is to suggest a limited solution to a long-standing puzzle regarding the history of Pre-Socratic philosophical cosmology.

The puzzle concerns the development of post-Parmenidean pluralism.

Specifically, it concerns the relationship between Parmenides' account of existence and the physical theories advanced by Democritus, Empedocles and Anaxagoras." (p. 88)

(...)

"I wish to propose a limited solution to this puzzle. My solution concerns only the relationship between Anaxagoras' physical theory and Parmenides' arguments. I suggest that Anaxagoras has little need to argue against Parmenides, because Anaxagoras' own cosmology begins right where Parmenides' cosmology leaves off. Anaxagoras accepts the basic tenets that Parmenides draws from the critique of negation, but he then proceeds to show how a specific sort of plurality might be brought to light within Parmenides' One.(3) That is, Anaxagoras develops a pluralistic cosmology which is consistent with Parmenides' foundational claims about the One." (p. 90)

(3) In this paper, I follow the practice of calling the numerical unity, which constitutes all that exists on Parmenides' account, 'the One'. However, it should be noted that, while Parmenides attributes unity to that which exists (see DK 28 B 8.6), he does not

explicitly call this unitary being 'the One',

49. ———. 2010. "Anaxagoras Betwixt Parmenides and Plato." Philosophy Compass no. 5/6:432-442.

50. ———. 2014. "Anaxagoras and Empedocles in the shadow of Elea." In The Routledge Companion to Ancient Philosophy, edited by Warren, James and Sheffield, Frisbee, 49-64. New York: Routledge.

"If Anaxagoras and Empedocles advance their theories in response to Parmenides, then it is quite unlikely that they consider Parmenides to be a predicational monist.

(...)

Whether Parmenides is a numerical monist or a generous monist, his alleged monad is motionless and phenomenally homogeneous. Also, on either interpretation, it is reasonable to consider Parmenides’ monad both to be either a finite sphere or an infinitely extended expanse and to be either predicationally simple or predicationally saturated.

(...)

In light of their shared supposition that the cosmos develops from Parmenides’ monad, it is unlikely that Anaxagoras and Empedocles consider Parmenides to be a generous monist.

(...)

It is not implausible to suppose that Anaxagoras and Empedocles consider Parmenides to be a numerical monist.

(...)

Thus, it is possible that Anaxagoras and Empedocles consider Parmenides to be a numerical monist, concerning the initial state of the universe, and a numerical pluralist, concerning subsequent states. This interpretation constitutes a fourth alternative for assessing Parmenides’ philosophy. Nevertheless, the interpretation does not appear to be consistent with specific claims offered in the Way of Truth (as those claims are commonly understood). So, it remains credible to affirm that Parmenides is a numerical monist and both Anaxagoras and Empedocles understand him to be a numerical monist." (pp. 62-63)

51. Sisko, John E., and Weiss, Yale. 2015. "A Fourth Alternative in Interpreting Parmenides." Phronesis no. 60:40-59.

Abstract: "According to current interpretations of Parmenides, he either embraces a token-monism of things, or a type-monism of the nature of each kind of thing, or a generous monism, accepting a token-monism of things of a specific type, necessary being. These interpretations share a common flaw: they fail to secure commensurability between Parmenides' alētheia and doxa. We effect this by arguing that Parmenides champions a metaphysically refined form of material monism, a type-monism of things; that light and night are allomorphs of what-is (to eon); and that the key features of what-is are entailed by the theory of material monism."

52. Skirry, Justin. 2001. "The Numerical Monist Interpretation of Parmenides." Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 39:403-417.

Abstract: "The doctrine of numerical monism, as it is traditionally attributed to Parmenides, is the claim that there is only one thing that is genuinely or truly real - that is, is not generated, not perishable, immutable, indivisible, whole, complete, and continuous.(1) In this paper I argue that this interpretation is mistaken because it entails a claim that Parmenides does not accept, namely that Being and not-Being are both the same and not the same. This paper begins with a discussion of the central thesis of the Numerical Monist Interpretation of Parmenides (NMIP). (2) Next, I argue that any consistent version of this interpretation must also hold that Parmenides is committed to the identification of thinking with Being. In the following section, I argue that if Parmenides is committed to this identification, then he must also think that Being and not-Being are both the same and not the same. However, fragment B6 provides evidence for the claim that Parmenides would not accept this conclusion. Finally, these considerations provide the three main premises of an argument, which concludes that Parmenides does not accept numerical monism as traditionally attributed to him by commentators. We now turn to a discussion of NMIP's central thesis."

(1) Other commentators use different terms to refer to what I call "numerical monism." For example, Jonathan Barnes uses "real monism" (Jonathan Barnes, "Parmenides and the Eleatic One" Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie 61 [1979]: 1-21), and Mary Margaret MacKenzie uses the term "strong monism" (Mary Margaret MacKenzie, "Parmenides' Dilemma," Phronesis 27 [1982]: 1-12).

(2) Numerical monism is one of at least three varieties of monism found in early Greek philosophy. The other two types are material and predicational monism. The former asserts that all reality is made of the same stuff: For example, on the traditional interpretation, Anaximenes believed that all things are really air in different stages of condensation and rarefaction. Notice that material monism does not designate a number of existents. "Predicational Monism" is the term used by Patricia Curd to describe her position. According to Curd a real thing for Parmenides is a predicational unity holding only one predicate, which indicates what it is. Notice that this does not preclude the existence of a plurality of predicates (see Patricia Curd The Legacy of Parmenides (Princeton: Princeton University Press:

19980, 65-66). This paper is concerned with the attribution of numerical monism to Parmenides. Whether or not Parmenides is committed to one of these other sorts of monism is not at issue here.

53. Slaveva-Griffin, Svetla. 2003. "Of Gods, Philosophers, and Charioteers: Content and Form in Parmenides' Proem and Plato's Phaedrus." Transactions of the American Philological Association no. 133:227-253.

Summary: "This article examines the ways in which Parmenides and Plato avail themselves of the literary motif of the charioteer’s journey for philosophical discourse. I argue that the Phaedrus’ myth of the soul as a charioteer exemplifies Plato’s literary and philosophic appropriation of the charioteer allegory in Parmenides’ proem and of Parmenides’ concept of being, showing how the literary study of intertexts can be applied to questions of both content and form in philosophy."

"The allegory of the charioteer's journey in Parmenides’ proem and Plato’s Phaedrus deserves the attention of both philosophers and literary critics.

Regarding content, Plato bases his concept of the immortality of the soul upon Parmenides’ concept of true being: the soul is a self-moving first principle that cannot be destroyed or come into being (Phdr. 245c5–e1) and is therefore kindred to Parmenides’ ungenerated, imperishable, whole, steadfast, and complete being (B8.3–4).1 Regarding form, Plato employs the allegory of the charioteer’s journey to illustrate the immortal nature of the soul (Phdr. 246a6–b4), alluding thereby to Parmenides’ account of the chariot journey of a young philosopher beyond sense-perceptible reality to the realm of eternal existence (B1.1–5). I shall examine the close relationship between Plato’s myth of the soul as a charioteer in the Phaedrus and the charioteer’s journey in Parmenides. I shall also draw attention to the literary tradition of the theme prior to Parmenides, and particularly to its presence in Homer, in order to situate the interconnection of the two philosophical texts in the context of their generic differences and similarities. The current examination entails the study of (a) Parmenides’ adoption and adaptation of the Homeric theme of a charioteer’s journey in the allegory of a philosopher’s search for true knowledge; and (b) Plato’s literary and philosophical use of Parmenides’ allegory in the account of the immortality of the soul (Phdr. 245c5–47a2)." (p. 227)

54. Soares, Lucas. 2011. "Parmenides and his precursors: a Borgesian reading of Cordero's Parmenides." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 373-382. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "In this paper I focus primarily on Cordero’s Parmenides and the basic nucleus of the reading in his most recent book—By Being, It is (2004)—on Parmenides’ “venerable,” “profound,” and “enigmatic” philosophical thesis.

Secondly, I undertake a Borgesian reading of the Parmenides that arises from this book. In other words, a reading of a reading."

55. Solana, José Dueso. 2011. "Parmenides: Logic and Ontology." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 271-288. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "Many scholars (especially Calogero) affirm that in the age of Parmenides, a theoretical treatment of logic and ontology was not clearly differentiated. Accepting this thesis, valid as well for Plato and Aristotle to some extent, this paper provides arguments for a primarily logical and only secondarily ontological interpretation of the ἀλήθεια of Parmenides (fr. 2–fr. 8.50). An interpretation of this type allows us to solve the arduous problem of the relationship between both parts of the poem, the ἀλήθεια and the δόξα, in a satisfactory way. Besides the internal arguments from Parmenides' own text, there are two external references that support the proposed interpretation: firstly, some data of the philosophical-poetic context, and secondly, an insistent thesis of Aristotle according to which some Presocratic philosophers (Parmenides among them) supposed that reality is confined to sensible things."

56. Solmsen, Friedrich. 1971. "Parmenides and the description of perfect beauty in Plato's Symposium." The American Journal of Philology no. 92:62-70.

"Normally when the question of Plato's relation to Parmenides or to the Eleatics in general arises, scholars tend to the Theaetetus, the Sophistes, and the Parmenides, dialogues all probability close to one another in point of chronology all three of them embodying extensive discussions tenets. Doubtless Plato is in them intent on clarifying he agrees with central doctrines of this school; while mental sympathy with their outlook, he yet finds it necessary move beyond them and in particular to rehabilitate some of the μὴ ὄν, which Parmenides and after him Melissus banished from philosophical discourse." (p. 61, a note omitted)

(...)

"It seemed desirable to emphasize the significance as well as the paradoxical quality of this much neglected development; yet my intention is not to indulge in speculations regarding its causes, but to draw attention to a section of the Symposium as testifying to Eleatic influence in an early stage of this development. The section in question is a part of Diotima's final revelation, the τέλεα and εποπτικά." (p. 64)

(...)

"Finally after we have recorded so many points of detail in which the two descriptions agree fully, agree in part, or do not agree, a basic similarity of their conception should not go unnoticed. Both sections form a part-perhaps even both the climax-of a revelation.(24) This has its reason; for with Parmenides listen to the goddess or with Diotima, what the goddess says at the beginning the one message as much as to the other: ἦ γὰρ ἀπ' ἀνθρώπων ἐκτὸς πάτου ἐστίν (B1, 27)," (pp. 69-70)

(24) 24 The revelations differ not so much in style (although at first we may think so) as in method. Both are encomiastic but the Parmenidean has at the same time logical rigor; its ἀπόδειξις is so strict that, as far as we can tell, it sets a new standard in Greek thought. In the Symposium the hymnic tone excludes demonstration.(...)

57. ———. 1977. "Light from Aristotle's Physics on the Text of Parmenides B 8 D-K." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 22:10-12.

"Students of Parmenides are familiar with a problem regarding his text and thought in the beginning of the passage where Being is elevated to an unheard-of grandeur and sublimity. Does Parmenides in B 8.6-15 disprove only genesis from not-Being or does his refutation dispose of genesis from Being as well as from not-Being?

(...)

Exegetes who consider a dilemmatic structure of the argument necessary have not failed to avail themselves of the strong support afforded them by Simplicius' comments on vv. 3-14

(...)

What seems to have gone unnoticed is that Aristotle too bears witness to the truth of their position. For although he does not name him, he must have Parmenides in mind at Physics I 8, 191 a 23-33." (pp. 10-11)

"Throughout a large part of Physics I, Parmenides' (and Melissus') position presents the great obstacle to Aristotle's efforts at treating genesis as a reality.(6) The monolithic, unchanging on deprives physics of the principles (archai) without which it cannot build. Aristotle launches attack after attack against the fortress that had so long been considered impregnable.

Having conquered it he constructs his own theory of genesis." (p. 12)

(6) See esp. I 1-3 (184 b 15 ff., 25 ff. etc.). Cf. my Aristotle's System of the Physical World (Ithaca, 1961) 74 ff.

58. Solomon, J. H. M. 1978. "Parmenides and the Gurus." Platon no. 30:157-173.

59. Songe-Møller, Vigdis. 2020. "The Goddess and Diotima: Their Role in Parmenides’ Poem and Plato’s Symposium." In Methodological Reflections on Women’s Contribution and Influence in the History of Philosophy, edited by Thorgeirsdottir, Sigridur and Hagengruber, Ruth Edith, 67-81. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "While female characters play a central part in Greek comedies and tragedies, this is not the case in Greek philosophical texts. There are, however, two important exceptions: in Parmenides’ poem and Plato’s Symposium female characters—an unnamed goddess and the priestess Diotima—have unique access to philosophical truth, which they convey to their male pupils. This chapter poses the following question: Why did Plato and Parmenides choose female characters as a precondition for the philosophical quest for knowledge? It is argued that both the goddess and Diotima tell a truth that is beyond the reach of ordinary human knowledge, from a perspective of the Other. While Parmenides uses a female nonhuman character to expel everything female from true thinking, Plato uses Diotima to destabilize the notions of male and female and thus to point towards a non-gendered subject of philosophy."

60. Sorabji, Richard. 1983. Time, Creation and the Continuum: theories in antiquity and the early middle ages. London: Duckworth.

Chapter 8: Is Eternity Timelessness?; Parmenides, pp. 99-107.

"The concept of eternity appears very early in Western thought in one of the first Presocratic philosophers, Parmenides of Elea (born c. 515 B.C). It is taken up by Plato and the Platonists and this is the route by which it comes to influence Christian thought. Eternity is standardly contrasted with time and is said by the Christians I shall be discussing to be a characteristic of God. To the question raised in the chapter heading, whether eternity is timelessness, I shall answer with a qualified 'yes', after explaining what I mean. But the case will need arguing, for there are plenty of rival interpretations which have been ably supported." (pp. 98-99)

"In his poem The Way of Truth, Parmenides discusses an unspecified subject 'it'. I favour the suggestion that the subject is whatever can be spoken and thought of, or alternatively whatever we inquire into. (3) The crucial sentence for our purposes comes in fr. 8 DK, 1. 5 and the first half of 6:

Nor was it ever (pot'), nor will it be, since it now is, all together, one, continuous.

It is the denial of 'was' and 'will be' which expresses some concept of eternity - but what concept?

I shall distinguish eight main interpretations." (p. 99)

"I conclude provisionally that the 'timeless' interpretation fits Parmenides best, and I should now like to see what happened to the concept of eternity after Parmenides. To put it briefly, my suggestion will be that Plato clouded the issue by placing alongside the implications of timelessness more phrases implying everlasting duration than can conveniently be explained away. This made it necessary for Plotinus to make a decision and his decision was in favour of timelessness." (p. 108)

(3) The first is the suggestion of G.E.L. Owen, the second that of Jonathan Barnes. G.E.L. Owen, 'Eleatic questions', CQn.s.10, 1960, 84-102 (repr. in D.J. Furley and R.E. Allen, Studies in Presocratic Philosophy vol.2, London, 1975), and 'Plato and Parmenides on the timeless present', Monist 50, 1966, 317-40 (repr. in A.P.D. Mourelatos (ed.) The Pre-Socratics, Garden City N.Y., 1974 ). Jonathan Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, London 1979, vol. 1, 163.

61. Sorensen, Roy. 2003. A Brief History of the Paradox: Philosophy and the Labyrinths of the Mind. New York: Oxford University Press.

"The natural objection to Parmenides is that his reasoning is refuted by experience. Our senses tell us that there are many things. These things come in various sizes. They are sometimes in motion. They undergo qualitative changes such as when milk sours.

(...)

Only with Parmenides do we see an attempt to completely veto the senses. Parmenides heartily agreed that his arguments conflicted with experience. But he insisted on the supremacy of the intellect over the senses.

Parmenides stresses the principle that one should follow the argument wherever it leads. Previous philosophers had assumed the senses place an important check on one’s reasoning.

But they had trouble resisting Parmenides’ suggestion that reason is king. After all, the testimony of the senses must be judged by reason. What is the alternative? Any method that purports to be better than reason would have to be adopted and applied by reason. This gives reason an almost despotic dominion over all methods of inquiry.

Although Parmenides thinks the senses convey a grand illusion, he recognizes a practical necessity for dealing with this realm of appearances. To that end, he proposes a physical theory more or less in the tradition of Anaximander. He tidies up his predecessors by expunging references to voids and privations (such as the view that darkness is merely the absence of light). But even after purging nothingness from traditional physics, Parmenides only offers a theory that aims to be like the truth. His real truth is an uncompromising monism." (pp. 33-34)

62. ———. 2022. Nothing: A Philosophical History. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 6: Parmenides: Absence of Absence, pp. 77-89.

"After applying his revolutionary principle to the things in space and time, Parmenides extends it to the framework of space and time itself.

Time has three parts: past, present, and future. They cannot overlap. But any difference from one time to another would involve some earlier state of affairs going out of existence, and some later state coming into existence. But Parmenides has already shown that such transitions cannot take place, so time is unreal.

Change requires time because there must be a before and after. So change is also an illusion.

This includes motion as a special case involving change over space.

Parmenides derives some special difficulties from his corollaries about space and time. Motion requires that the mover penetrate empty space.

But emptiness is a kind of nonbeing. Motion also requires temporal differences. And those have already been obliterated.

Parmenides’s objections to motion derive from his discoveries about negation. His disciples bred a second flock of arguments based on infinity, now known as Zeno’s paradoxes." (pp. 87-88)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Parmenides of Elea. Annotated bibliography of the studies in English: Spa - Vol

Bibliography

1. Spangenberg, Pilar. 2011. "Aristotle on the Semantic Unity of Parmenidean Being." In Parmenides, Venerable and Awesome (Plato, Theaetetus 183e): Proceedings of the International Symposium (Buenos Aires, October 29-November 2, 2007), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 383-392. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "This article presents a reading of Aristotle’s criticism of the Parmenidean thesis about the unity of being at Physics I, 2–3. I intend to show that Aristotle reduces the Parmenidean denial of the multiplicity of beings to the denial of the categories, and that this reading of Parmenidean monism determines the logical character of the strategy Aristotle utilizes against it. I argue that Metaphysics G represents a clue for understanding this strategy against Parmenides: in both cases the refutation must be radical in order to preserve the very possibility of science and language."

2. Spangler, G.A. 1979. "Aristotle's Criticism of Parmenides in Physics I." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 13:92-103.

"Aristotle's aim in the Physics is to discover those principles which make it possible to have systematic knowledge of nature. He does not say that this is his aim, however, but only implies that it is. The text of the Physics opens with the following remarks:

In all disciplines in which there is systematic knowledge of things with principles, causes, or elements, it arises from a grasp of those: we think we have knowledge of a thing when we have found its primary causes and principles, and followed it back to its elements. Clearly, then, systematic knowledge of nature must start with an attempt to settle questions about principles (184a 10-15).

These remarks put Aristotle's Physics squarely into the tradition of "natural philosophy," which is usually said to have originated with Thales. But just as one is rightly wary of saying that natural philosophy was originated by any one man, so it is incautious to suppose that one could easily label what Aristotle is doing in a work so complex as his Physics. His own words suggest that he is writing with a scientific interest at stake, but even so one must remember that the lover of truth was then little concerned with marking out territories on the intellectual landscape. In any event, Aristotle quickly moves on to a discussion of Parmenides and Melissus, a discussion which, as he says, offers scope for philosophy." (P. 92)

3. Spanos, William V. 2001. "Heidegger's Parmenides: Greek Modernity and the Classical Legacy." Journal of Modern Greek Studies no. 19:89-115.

Abstract: "One of Heidegger’s most insistent assertions about the identity of modern Europe is that its origins are not Greek, as has been assumed in discourses of Western modernity since the Englightenment, but Roman, the epochal consequence of the Roman reduction of the classical Greek understanding of truth, as a-letheia (un-concealment), to veritas (the correspondence of mind and thing). In the Parmenides lectures of 1942–43, Heidegger amplifies this genealogy of European identity by showing that this Roman concept of truth—and thus the very idea of Europe—is also indissolubly imperial. Heidegger’s genealogy has been virtually neglected by Western historical scholarship, including classical. Even though restricted to the generalized site of language,

this genealogy is persuasive and bears significantly on the conflicted national identity of modern, post-Ottoman Greece. It suggests that the obsessive pursuit of the unitary cultural ideals of the European Enlightenment, in the name of this movement’s assumed origins in classical Greece, constitutes a misguided effort to accommodate Greek identity to the polyvalent, imperial, Roman model of the polity that informs European colonial practice. Put positively, Heidegger’s genealogy suggests a radically different way of dealing with the question of Greek national identity, one more consonant with the actual philosophical, cultural, ethnic, and political heterogeneity of ancient Greece (what Martin Bernal has called the “Ancient Model”) and, thus, one less susceptible to colonization by “Europe”."

4. Spitzer, D. M. 2020. "Figures of Motion, Figures of Being. On the Textualization of the Parmenidean Poem." Ancient Philosophy no. 40:1-18.

"For the most part, editors of the Parmenidean poem are silent about the conditions of orality and performance in which it took shape. How can contemporary readers of the Parmenidean poem listen for and hear-if only as an echo-resonances of the oral-performance culture of archaic Greek culture? What implications for philosophic interpretation are generated by the conditions of orality?

Two root assumptions underlie and animate the editorial presentation and philosophic interpretation of the Parmenidean poem. The first is that the song was principally a text to be read,(2) while the second is the implicit view of a single, authoritative original text of the poem. Each of these suppositions bears on and informs critical engagement with the poem. Specifically, these two assumptions reinforce the conventional interpretation that the poem presents a twofold ontological doctrine of stasis and unity. The conventional, doctrinal interpretation as expressed, for example, by Taran 1965, 181, holds that the poem's first part establishes 'the eternity of identity and the impossibility of difference' and takes this to be the 'most important doctrine' advanced by Parmenides. Making visible the poem's connection to a tradition and culture of oralcy, in terms of both performance contexts of poetry and the ancient practices of reading, discloses important tensions within the poem's articulation of that twofold." (p. 1)

(2) This follow Havelock 1982, 225 in his assessment of the assumption among twentieth century philologists that 'Greek literature by definition had to be a written literature composed for readers.'

References

Eric A. Havelock, Preface to Plato, Cambridge , MA: The Belknap Press 1982.

Leonardo Taran, Parmenides: A Text with Translation, Commentary, and Critical Essays, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1965.

5. Sprague, Rosamond Kent. 1955. "Parmenides: A Suggested Rearrangement of Fragments in the "Way of Truth"." Classical Philology no. 50:124-126.

"The proposed alteration of Diels's ordering of the fragments of Parmenides will, I believe, eliminate from the poem two difficulties in thought which result from the present sequence.(1) The fragments with which I am concerned are the following: 6. 1-9; 7. 1-5; 8.1-2 [Greek text omitted]" (p. 123)

"My rearrangement of the fragments would be as follows: (1) I should detach the first two lines of Fragment 6, thus leaving a gap between lines 2 and 3 in the present sequence. (2) I should then place 7. 1-2 in the gap created between 6. 2 and 6. 3." (p. 124)

"The entire rearrangement may be summarized as follows: ( 1) 7. 1 follows 6. 2; (2) 7. 2 is dropped on the assumption that it is really another version of 6. 3; (3) 6. 3-9 are as before, but, with the removal of 7. 1-2, 7. 3 follows 6. 9. The rest of the ordering remains the same." (p. 125)

(1) All textual references are to Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin, 1951), Vol. I.

6. ———. 1967. "Parmenides, Plato, and I Corinthians 12." Journal of Biblical Literature no. 86:211-213.

"To the student of ancient philosophy, St. Paul's discourse on the body of Christ in I Corinthians 12 has an extremely familiar ring. In vss. 12-21 in particular, he is quite clearly dealing with a philosophical problem familiar to students of Greek thought as the problem of the One and the Many.' Furthermore he is dealing with it in a manner which shows him to be quite conscious of the traditional difficulties. In this brief paper I shall try to place his remarks in this setting." (p. 211)

7. ———. 1971. "Symposium 211A and Parmenides Frag. 8." Classical Philology no. 66:261.

"The terms in which Plato describes the Form of Beauty in the Symposium (21 1A ff.) are strikingly similar to those in which Parmenides describes s Being in the Way of Truth (Frag. 8 D.-K. passim)."(p. 261)

8. Stannard, Jerry. 1960. "Parmenidean Logic." The Philosophical Review no. 69:526-533.

"That Parmenides introduced a significant change in the method of Greek philosophic thinking is admitted on all hands, though there is, naturally, considerable disagreement about the nature of that change as well as its significance." (p. 526)

"I am not at all convinced that the famous dictum "It is impossible that Being and Not-Being are and are not the same" (B6 D-K) is evidence that Parmenides recognized that the formal structure of his argument was a special case of the more general principle of contradiction. Exactly what method Parmenides used in cataloguing the characteristics of Being doubtless remains a problem.

My own feeling is that he was simply and intuitively following the syntactical structure of the only language known to him. Thus I would suggest that the principal criterion followed by Parmenides in this process was essentially a negative one: avoidance of any open violation of the rules of Greek syntax.(18)" (pp. 530-531)

(18) For this reason, I am inclined to agree with von Fritz (loc. cit., ["NOYZ, NOEIN, and their Derivates in Pre-Socratic Philosophy," Classical Philology, XL, 1945] p. 241) that Parmenides' method was largely an "intuitive" one. Whether or not, in addition to this, Parmenides' exposition of the Way of Truth was akin to a religious or mystical revelation, as Bowra (op. cit. [Problems in Greek Poetry, Oxford, 1953]) convincingly argues, is a matter that does not affect the present paper.

9. Steele, Laura D. 2002. "Mesopotamian Elements in the Proem of Parmenides? Correspondences between the Sun-Gods Helios and Shamash." Classical Quarterly no. 52:583-588.

"This paper will examine the striking similarities between the journey of Parmenides' narrator and that of the Babylonian sun-god Shamash (Sumerian UTU),(3) similarities that confirm previous scholarly attempts to discern attributes of Helios and/or Apollo in the proem.(4) While the metaphors of a horse-drawn chariot and 'daughters of the sun' are attested Greek associations with the sun-god Helios, three elements of Parmenides' proem are explained more readily with reference to Shamash: the downward passage(5) through gates that are described in great structural detail; the association between these gates and the figure of Justice; and the identification of Parmenides' narrator as Greek κούρος, a word that covers the semantic range of a common epithet of Shamash (and of his disciple Gilgamesh), Akkadian etlu.

Whether or not Parmenides invoked Babylonian antecedents intentionally, his choice of images indicates a certain degree of Babylonian influence on Greek deities and literary culture more generally." (p. 584)

(3) For general information, see 'Utu' in J. Black and A. Green, Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia (Austin, 1992), 182-4.

(4) For arguments in favour of the solar trajectory of Parmenides' journey, see W Burkert, 'Das Proomium des Parmenides und die Katabasis des Pythagoras', Phronesis 14 (1969), 1-30, following W. Kranz, 'Uber Aufbau und Bedeutung des Parmenideischen Gedichtes', Sitzungberichte der Konig/ichen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 47 (1916), 1158-76. For a semantic rebuttal of Kranz's hypothesis, see Tarán, Parmenides (Princeton, 1965), 23.

(5) Or katabasis; see the thorough discussions in Burkert (n. 4) and in P. Kingsley, In the Dark Places of Wisdom (Shaftesbury, 1999), 58ff.

10. Steiger, Kornél. 1980. "The Cosmology of Parmenides and Empedocles." Homonoia no. 2:159-165.

11. Stein, Howard. 1969. "Comments on 'The thesis of Parmenides'." The Review of Metaphysics no. 22:725-734.

About the paper by Charles Kahn (1969).

"I want to suggest that the conclusions of your beautiful paper on the Greek verb "to be," which you apply in what seems to me a very convincing way to the analysis of Parmenides, can be exploited further than you have done, with a gain of coherence for the doctrine. I offer my suggestions diffidently: they are rather speculative, and I have no scholarship in the language and little in the period.

The principal question I want to raise is that of the interpretation of what you call Parmenides' "wildly paradoxical conclusions about the impossibility of plurality and change." An argument that leads to a truly paradoxical conclusion is always open (if it escapes conviction for fallacy) to construction as a reductio ad absurdum. And the (meager) biographical tradition represents Parmenides - quite unlike Heraclitus, Heraclitus, for instance - as a reasonable and even practically effective man, not at all a fanatic. It therefore seems natural to ask, if he maintained a paradoxical doctrine, whether it did not possess for him (and perhaps for his successors who took him seriously) an interpretation that made some sense. Further, setting aside this not very weighty prima facie argument, I think the search for plausible interpretations is worthwhile in any case: for (1) to make a rational assessment of the historical evidence one needs the widest possible survey of hypotheses to choose among; (2) since conclusions in such matters are always uncertain, a list of possibilities may retain a kind of permanent (not just heuristic) value, as the best we can do; and (3) readings which are even dismissed as unsound on adequate critical grounds may still be of interest, both for the understanding of historical influence - I have in mind in the present case especially Parmenides' influence on Plato-and for our own philosophical edification." (p. 725)

These remarks are a revised version of comments made in correspondence concerning an earlier redaction of Kahn's paper. It has seemed, on the whole, least stilted to retain the informality of second person address. I wish to record my gratitude to Kahn for suggesting that these comments be published with his paper.

12. Stekeler-Weithofer, Pirmin. 2001. "The Way of Truth. Parmenides' Seminal Reflections on Logic, Semantics and Methodology of Science." In Audiator vox sapientiae. A Festschrift for Arnim von Stechow, edited by Féry, Caroline and Sternefeld, Wolfgang, 450-472. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

"In the following, I try to present a new perspective on Parmenides, the father of Plato's logical semantics, or rather, on his famous and difficult poem. I do so without presenting sufficient philological arguments for the proposed reading. I just claim that the poem is a most influential text in the history of logic, semantics and methodology of science. Usually, some kind of metaphysical ontology stands in the focus of attention. I believe, instead, that later shifts of interest and understanding lost the original context and project out of sight.

Parmenides asks what truth and reliable knowledge is. He seems to be the first philosopher who did not just tell allegedly true stories about the structure of the world as, for example, the Ionians did. Parmenides begins with a metalevel reflection on method, on the right road (hodos) to knowledge and truth. He presents an ideal explanation of what absolute truth and knowledge is. Only after this does he give a presentation of best possible knowledge. This main part of the poem is almost totally lost. It consisted of a collections of claims about the real causes of some phenomena. Therefore, the book had the title On Nature in antiquity." (p. 450)

13. ———. 2003. "Plato and Parmenides on Ideal Truth, Invariant Meaning, and Participation." In Ideal and Culture of Knowledge in Plato. Akten der IV. Tagung der Karl-und-Gertrud-Abel-Stiftung vom 1-3 September 2000 in Frankfurt, edited by Wolfgang, Detel, Becker, Alexander and Scholz, Peter, 115-132. Stuttgart: F. Steiner.

"For Parmenides, representation ‘by the mind’, by memory, or ‘to the mind’, by words, is the basic method of overcoming the cognitive limits of sheer presence.(3) Parmenides defends the peculiar role of presence and claims that it is conceptually the same to say that something is real and that it can be known: Existing (einai) and being the object of possible knowledge (noein) are the same. But he seems to work with a double meaning of “noiein”: The core meaning is to notice or to realise something in a present situation.

Hence, there is an obvious need to ‘enlarge’ the concept of knowing from the narrow sense of immediate 'realisation' to general knowledge and, by the same token, of the parochial concept of actual being here to universal reality. By this move, the concept of immediate knowledge, i. e. perception, widens to possible knowledge. Truth and reality is what can be known. It is not defined by what actually is known or, even worse, what only seems to be known. But how do we conceptually proceed from what can be realised here and now to what can or could be known?" (p. 116)

(3) It is not clear how Parmenides, fragment 4,1 must be translated, perhaps both readings are right.

14. Stewart, Donald. 1980. "Contradiction and the Ways of Truth and Seeming." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 14:1-14.

"The central problem concerning Parmenides' poem is to provide the rationale for the relationship between the two major parts of the poem, The Way of Truth and The Way of Seeming." (p. 1)

"Very briefly my argument is this; though the Greeks individuated objects on the basis of sensation just as we do, they had, at the time of Heraclitus, no satisfactory way of grounding this sensory individuation in ontology.

(...)

This, in turn, led Heraclitus to a belief in, if not a formulation of, what we may call the principle of contradiction, for it was evident that all things were One and yet still different things at the same time, and thus that paradox was the only true method of thought.

Parmenides, in a reference seemingly clearly to Heraclitus,(4) formulates this principle for the first time when he refers to those by whom "To be and Not To be are regarded as the same and not the same, and (for whom) in everything there is a way of opposing stress." (fr.6) It is this principle which is the key, I believe, to the relation of the Way of Seeming to the Way of Truth. If we take "To be" as a description of the One and "Not to be" as its negation then it is relatively easy to discern the relation between the two Ways. The Way of Truth gives us a description of the One from the point of view of the One while allowing, at the same time, for a description of the many, but only from the point of view of the many. Each is totally different from the other, and yet if we take Heraclitus seriously, as I think Parmenides did, they are the same as well as not the same. It is this sameness of the two opposites, the One and all the things that are the One, which provides the link between the two Ways. The Way of Seeming, though it is the Way of Truth, is that Way only from the point of view of Seeming. Similarly, the Way of Truth, though it is the Way of Seeming, is so only from the point of view of the truth, the One." (p. 2)

(4) Stokes disagrees and claims that there is no compelling reason to believe that Parmenides was aware of Heraclitus' writings at all.

15. Stokes, Michael C. 1960. "Parmenides Fr. 6." Classical Review no. 10:193-194.

I give the text and punctuation of Diels-Kranz for lines 3 ff.:

Πρώτης γάρ σ' ἀφ' ὁδοῦ ταύτης διζήσιος <εἴργω>,

αὐτὰρ ἔπειτ' ἀπὸ τῆς, ἣν δὴ βροτοὶ εἰδότες οὐδὲν

πλάττονται, δίκρανοι· ἀμηχανίη γὰρ ἐν αὐτῶν

στήθεσιν ἰθύνει πλακτὸν νόον· οἱ δὲ φοροῦνται

κωφοὶ ὁμῶς τυφλοί τε, τεθηπότες, ἄκριτα φῦλα,

οἷς τὸ πέλειν τε καὶ οὐκ εἶναι ταὐτὸν νενόμισται

κοὐ ταὐτόν, πάντων δὲ παλίντροπός ἐστι κέλευθος.

"There has been much controversy over the question whether or not this fragment refers to the philosophy or Heraclitus; much less discussion of the construction and meaning or these singularly difficult lines. The crucial point concerns the gender of πάντων in I. 9. Kirk-Raven, p. 271, translate as if it were neuter, while admitting, p. 272 n. 1, that it is possible that it is masculine. This is fair enough; but the word 'possible' is perhaps an understatement." (p. 193)

"I suggest that the most satisfactory way out of the problem is to punctuate with a colon after κοὐ ταὐτόν, taking πάντων δὲ... as syntactically parallel to οἱ δὲ... in I. 6 of this fragmcnL The last clause of the fragment would then be a separate sta1atement of the goddess, introduced by an explanatory δὲ.(1) It would follow. of course, that πάντων should be taken as masculine, since the goddess could hardly say that the way of all things was backward-turning. The conclusion is that in all probability the phrase πάντων ... κέλευθος and the path of all (mortals) is backward-tuming'. The abruptness resulting from this punctuation need arouse no suspicion; for abruptness is not uncharacteristic of Parmenides." (p. 194)

(1) See Denniston, Greek Particles [second edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1954], p. 169.

16. ———. 1971. One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy. Washington: Center for Hellenic Studies.

Reprint: Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1986.

Preface V-VI; Contents: I. Aristotle and the Analysis of Unity and Plurality 1; II. The Milesians 24; III. Xenophanes 66; IV. Heraclitus 86; V. Parmenides and Melissus 109; VI. Empedocles 153; VII: Zeno of Elea 175; VIII. One-Many Problem in Atomism 218; IX. Miscellaneous Presocratic Contexts 237; X. Conclusion 249; Appendix: Parmenides B8.7-12 253; Abbreviations 258; Bibliography 259; Notes 267; Index of Passages 341; General Index 347-355.

"Having decided to treat of Parmenides separately from Heraclitus, we must turn to consider the role of unity, and of the one-many antithesis, in Parmenides' thought, and the kind(s) of unity and plurality that he had in mind. We must also consider whether a question of "what is one" being or becoming many arises in Parmenides' argument. It seems clear that the function of the one-many antithesis in this, the first extant European piece of consecutive metaphysical reasoning, has been greatly exaggerated in some quarters; though the exaggeration has been somewhat diminished in successive works of recent years,(65) it still remains an obstacle to the understanding and appreciation of a great philosopher and needs therefore still to be pointed out and criticized.

If any single antithesis occupied a high place in Parmenides' thought, it was that between Being and not-Being. The word "one" appears in only two extant places in Parmenides' poem, and the phrase "the one" appears in Melissus apparently for the first time, in conscious reference back to that Being which has been proved to be one; the phrase "the One Being," beloved alike of Cornford and of the Neoplatonist Simplicius, is not to be found in the extant remains of Presocratic Eleaticism. Once more the questions at issue can be decided only on the basis of close textual analysis; and again we have to deal with a thinker recognized even by the ancients as obscure. (66)" (p. 127)

(65) Untersteiner's thesis (Parmenide, [Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1958] passim) eliminating the One altogether from Parmenides is adequately dealt with by Schwabl, Anzeiger fur Altertumswissenschaft 9 (1956) 150f. F. Solmsen's important analysis, reducing the significance of unity in Eleatic thought perhaps too drastically, came into my hands as this book was going to press, too late for detailed criticism: see "The 'Eleatic One' in Melissus," Mededelingen der koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks, Deel 32, No. 8 (1969) 221-233.

(66) See Proclus in Tim. 1.345.12f (Diehl) and Simpl. in Phys., e.g., 7.1ff, 21.16ff.

17. Stough, Charlotte. 1968. "Parmenides' "Way of Truth", B 8. 12-13." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 13:91-107.

"The consistency with which fragment 8 of the Way of Truth has occupied the attention of commentators is evidence of its importance for an understanding of Parmenides' thought. Yet the many efforts to elucidate this passage have issued in diverse and mutually incompatible conclusions, with the result that the meaning of significant portions of the text remains in doubt. Lines 12-13, in particular, have been the subject of protracted but inconclusive debate and are still interpreted variously in the context of the fragment.(2)

οὐδὲ ποτ' ἐκ μὴ ἐόντος (3) ἐφήσει πίστιος ἰσχύς

γίγνεσθαί τι παρ' αὐτό.

The chief difficulty in interpreting these lines, and the source of the divergency of opinion as to their meaning, concerns the reference of αὐτό in line 13. The pronoun seems to point most naturally to μὴ ἐόντος in the preceding line as its grammatical antecedent. If the Greek is construed in this way, the lines can be rendered, "Nor will the force of conviction allow anything to arise out of what is not besides itself" (viz., what is not). Reading the passage accordingly, a number of scholars have translated it in some such fashion as the above.(4)" (p. 91)

"The main concern of this paper is to defend the meaningfulness of lines 12-13 as translated above and to clarify the function of that assertion in the context of Parmenides' argument. The first section deals with the claim that the lines so rendered are meaningless or

inappropriate in their content; the second section concerns the structure of the argument in which the statement occurs; and the third section discusses very briefly variant interpretations of the text." (p. 92)

(2) For three different interpretations in the recent literature see Kirk and Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (1963), pp. 273-275; W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. II (1965), pp. 27-29; L. Tarán, Parmenides (1965), pp. 85, 95ff.

(3) Reading along with Diels and others ἐόντος for όντως in the MSS of Simplicius.

(49 Among them Diels (Parmenides Lehrgedicht, p. 37), Burnet (Early Greek Philosophy, p. 175), and most recently Guthrie (op. cit., p. 26).

18. Swindler, James Kenneth. 1980. "Parmenides' Paradox: Negative Reference and Negative Existentials." The Review of Metaphysics no. 33:727-744.

"In the beginning Parmenides sought to deny the void. But he found himself trapped by his language and his thought into admitting what he sought to deny. Wisely, he counseled others to avoid the whole region in which the problem arises, lest they too be unwarily ensnared. Plato, being less easily intimidated and grasping for the first time the urgency of the paradox, unearthed each snare in turn until he felt he had found a safe path through the forbidden terrain in a new conception of being and the derivation of its linguistic consequences in the Sophist. Aristotle evidently took Parmenides' advice; and save for a few groping scholastics, perhaps Leibniz, Brentano, and Meinong, and Frege only in passing, no one else attempted the crossing before Russell made his spectacular dash through the posted ground from the completely new direction of linguistic reference. Again the problem lay dormant for half a century until Strawson constructed a new low road through ordinary language and Quine improved Russell's high algebraic pass. Refinements of these routes have been forthcoming, especially from Searle and Kripke, until today it might appear that there are two super highways through Parmenides' forbidden country of nonbeing. In this essay I will first argue that these new linguistic highways are no more than flimsy camouflage hiding but not resolving the old paradoxes. I will then show how Plato's ontological way out, though more difficult, is the straight and narrow path." (p. 727)

19. Tallis, Raymond. 2007. The Enduring Significance of Parmenides: Unthinkable Thought. New York: Continuum.

Contents: Autobiographical Prelude IX; Preface: The once and future philosopher XII-XVI; Chapter 1. The strange dawn of Western thought 1; Chapter 2. The existence of What-Is-Not 27; Chapter 3. Propositional awareness encounters itself 50; Chapter 4. Why Parmenides happened 88; Chapter 5. Parmenides' footnotes: Plato and Aristotle 130; Chapter 6. Parmenides today 158; Works cited 189; Notes 195; Index 230-240.

"In Chapter 2, I shall examine Parmenides' central claim - that what-is-not is not - and discuss how what-is-not comes to have such a pervasive presence in the human world. The key to this, I shall argue, is possibility - which may or may not be actualized, as a result of which what-is exists explicitly and corresponds to `truth', and what-is-not can be individuated and be an explicit falsehood. Chapter 3 looks further into the origin of negation and possibility, finding it in the Propositional Awareness (knowledge, thought and discourse) that characterizes distinctively human consciousness. Parmenides' poem, I shall argue, is the first fully fledged encounter of Propositional Awareness with itself. Chapter 4 examines in what sense Parmenides was unique among the Presocratic thinkers and then why he and, indeed, Presocratic thought arose when they did. It is obvious that philosophy must have had non-philosophical origins. I try to dig deeper than the usual explanations and in doing so examine many factors - politics, trade, exile, the alphabet, different linguistic codes - that made seventh-century Greeks conscious of their consciousness in a way that had no precedent in the hundreds of thousands of years of human consciousness prior to this. Parmenides may be seen as the resultant of the factors that led to Presocratic thought plus his reaction to his predecessors. Chapter 5 examines the most important response to Parmenides - Plato's Parmenides - which did more than any other post-Parmenidean event to amplify Parmenides' influence kind, at the same time, to conceal him behind the Platonic ideas he is supposed to have provoked. I examine not only Plato's response to Parmenides but also Aristotle's response to Plato.

In the final chapter, I look at the possible meaning that Parmenides might have today. His present relevance resides in the fact that we may have reached the end of the cognitive road upon which he, pre-eminent amongst the early Greek philosophers, set mankind. Parmenides dismissed ordinary wakefulness as if it were a kind of sleep, in the hope of goading us to another kind of wakefulness. While the present book cannot match that ambition, I would very much hope that, by returning to the philosophical and historical hinterland of Parmenides' cataclysmic idea, I might start the process by which we return to the place from which Parmenides set out and journey in another direction in a world unimaginably different from his." (pp. 25-26)

20. ———. 2012. In Defence of Wonder and Other Philosophical Reflections. Durham: Acumen.

Coda: Parmenides: The Great Awakening, pp. 225-238.

"In a much-quoted, and perhaps somewhat dispiriting, passage, Alfred North Whitehead described the European philosophical tradition as “a series of footnotes to Plato”.[*] Whether or not this is fair to the thinkers who followed Plato, it is a gross injustice to the philosophers who preceded him. Pre-eminent among these giants was Parmenides. Elizabeth Anscombe’s slightly tongue-in-cheek suggestion that Plato might be characterized as “Parmenides’ footnote”[**] is not as perverse as it seems. While Plato’s dialogues are among the supreme philosophical works of the Western tradition, it was Parmenides who established the implicit framework of their debates and laid down the rules of engagement. And he did so with remarkably little fuss." (p. 225)

[* ] Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, New York: Free Press 1979, p. 39: "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."

[**] From Parmenides to Wittgenstein, Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1981. p. XI: "Whitehead's remark about Plato might, somewhat narrowly, be applied to his great predecessor: Subsequent philosophy is footnotes on Parmenides."

21. Tarán, Leonardo. 1967. "Proclus In Parm. 1152.33 (Cousin) and Parmenides 28 B 3 (Diels-Kranz)." Classical Philology no. 62:194-195.

Reprinted in L. Tarán, Collected Papers (1962-1999), Leiden: Brill, 2001, pp. 623-624.

In a recent study on Parmenides, Dr. Mansfeld takes Proclus in Parm. 1152. 33, ταύτόν δ έστίν εκεί νοέειν τε καί είναι to be a quotation of Parmenides 28 B 3; and he maintains that, however imperfect that quotation may be, there is no justification for the failure on the part of Diels and Kranz to mention that this fragment was known to Proclus.(1)" (p. 623)

"In short, although absolute certainty is impossible, Proclus in Parm. 1152. 33 is more likely to be a paraphrase of 28 B 8.34 than of 28 B 3 and, whether this was the reason that decided Diels and Kranz to exclude Proclus as a source of 28 B 3 or not, Dr. Mansfeld should have considered this possibility before blaming Diels and Kranz for what he takes to be their failure to mention an important source." (p. 624)

(1) J. Mansfeld, Die Offenbarung des Parmenides und die menschliche Welt (Assen 1964), pp. 69, 73, and esp. 79 f.

22. ———. 1974. "Parmenides of Elea." In Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 10, edited by Gillispie, Charles C., 324-325. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Reprinted in L. Tarán, Collected Papers (1962-1999), Leiden: Brill, 2001, pp. 168-170.

"Parmenides' basic mistake is his misapplication of the law of the excluded middle to the disjunction being::notbeing.

Otherwise his reasoning is flawless, and none of the philosophers who came immediately after him was able to refute him. The refutation was reserved for Plato, especially in his Sophist; but Plato recognized the importance of Parmenides' attempt to apply the exigencies of logical proofs to thought and its object." (p 169 of the reprint)

23. ———. 1977. "Concerning a New Interpretation of Parmenides." Gnomon no. 49:651-666.

Reprinted in L. Tarán, Collected Papers (1962-1999), Leiden: Brill, 2001, pp. 171-192.

Review-Article of A.P.D. Mourelatos, The Route ofParmenides. A Study of Word, Image, and Argument in the Fragments (New Haven-London 1970).

"In this work, where a new and revolutionary interpretation of Parmenides is put forward, M. does not discuss all the verbatim quotations from that philosopher, nor analyze the indirect evidence about him; he decided instead to concentrate his efforts on those Parmenidean texts that seem to him to provide the clue to Parmenides' thought.

The book consists of nine chapters and four appendices: Ch. I (Epic Form) deals with the relation of Parmenides' poem to the epic tradition, and is supplemented by app. I, which is devoted to Parmenides' use of the hexameter; ch. 2 (Cognitive Quest and the Route) is on the two routes of B 2,(1) and is itself complemented by app. II, on the different interpretations given to ἐστῐν in B 2, 3; in chs. 3 (The Vagueness of What-Is-Not), 4 (Signposts), 5 (The Bounds of Reality), and 7 (Mind's Commitment to Reality) M. discusses B 8 and B 9; ch. 6 (Persuasion and Fidelity) is devoted to the meaning of πείθειν and cognate words, ch. 8 (Doxa as Acceptance) mostly to an analysis of B I, 31-32, while ch. 9 (Deceptive Words) is an attempt to demonstrate Parmenides' purposeful use of ambiguity. App. III is on the meaning of χρή and cognate words, and app. IV contains the text of the fragments, but without a critical apparatus, for which the author refers to this reviewer's edition. (2)" (p. 171 of the reprint)

(1) I shall hereafter refer to Parmenides' fragments merely by the use of B followed by the number of the fragment in Diels-Kranz, Fragm. d. Vorsokr.6 (Berlin 1951-2).

(2) Cf. L. Taran, Parmenides (Princeton 1965).

24. ———. 1979. "Perpetual Duration and Atemporal Eternity in Parmenides and Plato." The Monist no. 62:43-53.

Reprinted in L. Tarán, Collected Papers (1962-1999), Leiden: Brill, 2001, pp. 204-217.

"The purpose of this paper is less ambitious than its title might suggest, since it does not deal with everything that Plato has said on time and on eternity. Rather, it attempts to clarify some issues which have arisen in the controversy as to whether Parmenides or Plato was the first Western philosopher to grasp the notion of atemporal eternity. It is particularly concerned with some publications on the subject that have appeared within the last twelve years or so. G.E.L. Owen, in a paper published in this journal, has defended his earlier interpretation that Parmenides discovered the notion of atemporal eternity. (1) J. Whittaker for his part has contended that both Parmenides and Plato failed to grasp it, and would ascribe its discovery to some later thinker. (2) Yet another scholar, G. Reale, (3) believes that there is no essential difference between the position of Parmenides as reconstructed by Owen and others and that of Melissus. For Reale maintains that Melissus' formula "it is and always was and always will be" does not exclude atemporality, that it means the same thing as the alleged tenseless "is" predicated of Parmenicles' Being.

Most scholars, however, do agree -- and rightly so, I believe -- that in the Timaeus Plato has clearly grasped the notion of atemporal eternity. It is therefore best to begin the discussion with him, since it will then become apparent what an ancient philosopher meant by atemporal eternity and by the tenseless "is" that expresses it." (pp. 43-44)

(1) "Plato and Parmenides on the Timeless Present," The Monist 50 (1966), pp. 317-40. For references to earlier scholars who have defended this interpretation cf. my Parmenides (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1965), p. 175, n. 1.

(2) "The 'Eternity' of the Platonic Forms," Phronesis 13, (1968), 131-44 and God Time Being (Oslo 1970, Symbolae Osloenses. Fasc. Supplet. 23).

(3) Melisso, Testimonianze e frammenti (Firenze: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1970), PP. 45-59, esp. 56-57 and 58-59.

(4) Cf. Melissus 30 B 2. The fragments of the presocratics are cited from H. Diels-W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin: Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1951-52).

25. ———. 1993. " Review: Etudes sur Parmenide I and II." Ancient Philosophy no. 13:152-156.

Reprinted in L. Tarán, Collected Papers (1962-1999), Leiden: Brill, 2001, pp. 193-198.

Review of Etudes sur Parménide. Published under the direction of P. Aubenque. Tome I: Le poème de Parménide, Tome II: Problèmes d'interpretation (Paris 1987).

"This voluminous work originated in the travaux of the Centre Leon-Robin, Centre de Recherches sur la Pensée antique de l'université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris-IV) et laboratoire associé au C.N.R.S. No. 107, held in 1980 and 1981. These "travaux" resulted in the papers contained in vol. 2. (An additional paper by J. Wiesner, originating in a Berlin seminar with P. Moraux, is also included.) The publisher having asked for an edition and translation of Parmenides' poem, the assignment was given to D. O'Brien.

The first volume, then, consists (apart from the preliminary material) of a text of the poem with an apparatus of sources and notes where the variant readings are given. The Greek text (and the Latin text of Fr. 18 preserved by Caelius Aurelianus) is accompanied by an English translation by O'Brien and a French one by J. Frere. This is followed by these sections by O'Brien: a list of ancient authors, with editions and, sometimes, manuscripts; a supplementary note on Coxon's edition, which is severely criticized; an index of Greek words; a critical essay "Introduction à la lecture de Parménide: Les deux voies de l'ètre et du non-ètre" (137-252), supplemented by "Notes complementaires" (253-302). The volume ends with two indices, followed by an English summary of the contents of Parmenides' poem.

The second volume is divided into two parts, the first on Parmenides, the second on the tradition (or influence) of Parmenides on later Greek philosophy." (p. 193 of the reprint)

26. Tarrant, Harold. 1976. "Parmenides B1.3: Text, Context and Interpretation." Antichthon no. 10:1-7.

Abstract: "It is an almost universal principle that texts should not receive emendation until the reading of the MSS. has received careful consideration. An initial awkwardness may, after reflection, prove to be a poet's sacrifice of style to achieve some higher end – an allusion to traditional literature, a word-order reflecting the structure of his ideas, or the accurate expression of ideas which are not easily put into verse. The last reason is usually held responsible for the short-comings of Parmenides' poetry, while in his prologue, with which I am here concerned, sacrifices of the first kind may also be expected, as literary allusions have been proved plentiful and significant. In a previous publication I have also argued for a carefully contrived word-order at B8.53, hinting that this may also be the case at B1.3. If my hunch were correct, then it would involve restoring the manuscript reading in that line."

27. ———. 1983. "The Conclusion of Parmenides' Poem." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 17:73-84.

"In Apeiron 13 (1979) p. 115 P. J. Bicknell assigns Parmenides B4 to the closing lines of the work, following the illusory account of the physical world; he relates its references to processes of separation and combination (lines 3-4) to some kind of 'cosmic cycle' which allegedly featured in the Doxa. Since I have long supposed that the Doxa did make use of opposite, if not cyclical, cosmic processes,(1) I am attracted by Bicknell's attempt to relocate this fragment." (p. 73)

"But placing B4 at the conclusion of the poem must be dependent upon one's overall view of the conclusion. If one regards B19 as the conclusion (and Simplicius' words make it quite clear that B19 closed the account of the physical world) (9) then B4 must be squeezed into the Way of Truth in spite the difficulty in finding a context for it and in spite of the fact that it refers to a cosmos (B4.3). To me it seems fairly clear that B19 did not conclude the poem, and that there was a short final section which commented further on the relation of Being to the world of phenomena. The considerations which bring me to this conclusion are independent of the attempt to place B4 there." (p. 74)

(1) See my "Parmenides and the Narrative of Not-Being", Proceedings and Papers of AULLA XVI (Adelaide, 1974) 90-109, particularly p. 103.

28. Tegtmeier, Erwin. 1999. "Parmenides' Problem of Becoming and Its Solution." Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy no. 2:51-65.

Abstract: "Parmenides advances four arguments against becoming. Two of these are sound. Plato's and Aristotle's attempt to refute them fail. They react to Parmenides' challenge by differentiating and grading being and existence. Thus they deviate from Parmenides' strict concept of existence which is the only reasonable one. What's wrong with Parmenides' train of thought is a decisive premise: that becoming is a transition from non-existence to existence. The reality of becoming can be maintained if (and only if) this premise is given up. One has to see that becoming is a purely temporal affair not involving existence and that existence is timeless. Time and existence are independent of each other."

29. Tejera, Victorino. 1997. Rewriting the History of Ancient Greek Philosophy. Westport: Greenwood Press.

Contents: Preface VII; 1. Aristotle versus the Peripatos: Consequences of the Conditions under Which the Aristotelian Corpus Came into Being1; 2. A New Look at the Sources19; 3. Parmenides 37; 4. The Poetic Presocratics: From Solon to the Dialogue Form 63; 5. The Academy Pythagorized: What We Can Know about the Intellectual Activities of the Pythagoreans 83; 6. What We Don't Know about Plato and Socrates 105; Selected Bibliography 121; Index 139-145.

"The interpretations of Parmenides' "Being" which have perpetuated the distinction between the objects of reason and the objects of sense as an epistemological one are just those that keep "Being" from being the appropriate subject of the cluster of predications that the Goddess makes about it in the poem. These interpretations turn the reader's problem into one of reconciling his own (or his times') notions about Being with the attributes Parmenides assigned to it. But the real problem is to find a subject to which the attributes can all be seen to attach without difficulty. The project, then, is to make coherent sense out of Parmenides' text in accordance with the kinds of sense it would have made to Parmenides' time and peers. The solution which we will come to here will also make literary sense out of the relationship between the different parts of the poem." (p. 37)

"One paradox about Parmenides' insight is that, while it is implied that discourse about "Being" must be strictly consistent when understood to be making truth-claims, the language in which he has enacted this lesson is not itself assertive or propositional, but exhibitive or poetic. But the logically two-valued strict discourse that the Goddess recommends is compelling, because it is the only guide we have to rightly conceptualizing the "All." Whether the characterization of Being that she has offered is itself strictly consistent is another matter. Is the "All," for instance, in fact one, or only because, to be spoken of at all, it must have the unity of a grammatical subject? The "All," we can agree, is certainly distributively exhaustive and innummerable. But we may ask, with Buchler, is it a unity in the sense of having a collective existential integrity? There certainly cannot be two Alls; but, in the Goddess's own terms, it could not be completely observed even if it did have such a unity. Conceptually, the "All" can be all there is, was, and will be without having any other than a nominal or grammatical unity; like Buchler's "the world," it has no collective integrity. And this is why nature philosophy must ever be an incomplete (endeês) and merely probable (hôs eikós) account, as Plato's Timaios will be willing to admit when he rehearses for Socrates his eikóta mûthon in the Timaeus. This, in turn, reassures us that Plato -- unlike the neoplatonist forgers of the Lokrian Timaios -- has quite understood and taken to heart Parmenides' admonitions about nature-inquiry." (pp. 59-60)

30. Thanassas, Panagiotis. 2006. "How Many Doxai Are There in Parmenides?" Rhizai.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 3:199-218.

"The paucity of surviving fragments of the Doxa section certainly reinforces the tendency to overlook its importance. But how did it happen that, at least according to Diels (1897 [Parmenides, Lehrgedicht, Reimer, Berlin (2nd ed.: Academia Verlag, Sankt Augustin 2003)], 25-26), about 9/10ths of the material on Aletheia has survived, but only about 1/10th of the material on Doxa? I would recommend viewing the scant attention paid to Doxa as a case of helplessness without any parallel in the history of philosophy. From Plato to Heidegger (or if one prefers, to Guthrie), the history of philosophy has consistently been confronted with the above-mentioned duality of Doxa and has not known how to deal with it. The loss of so much material on Doxa has less to do with its lack of philosophical content than with the tradition’s intuitive strategy of resolving the aporia by eliminating that duality. After the detailed passages of Parmenides’ cosmogony and cosmology had been lost, Doxa could be restricted to a region of 'lies and deception' (5) and then completely dismissed as philosophically uninteresting." (p. 200)

"We are not in a position to revoke retroactively the traditional oversight and to remedy the substantial loss of essential passages from Parmenides’ cosmogony and cosmology. But we can and must set the record straight: the fact, the factum brutum that there really were such passages, should not remain ignored. A 'correction' of this oversight does not take its bearings by the criterion of historical fidelity; we do not 'correct' the oversight because it discredits just a part of Parmenides’ philosophy, but because it distorts what is the heart of that philosophy: Parmenidean Aletheia." (p. 201)

(5) ‘Lug und Trug’: Reinhardt (1916) [Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie, Klostermann, Frankfurt (5th ed.1985)], 6.

31. ———. 2008. Parmenides, Cosmos, and Being: A Philosophical Interpretation. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments 6; 1. The Poem and its legacy 9; 2. The Heart of Truth 23; 3. Esti, Being and Thinking 31; 4. The signs of Being 43; 5. Doxa: mixture vs. partition 61; 6. Aletheia and Doxa: the human and the divine 77; Appendix: translation of the Fragments 89; Selected bibliography 99: Index of names 107; Index of topics 109.

"Indeed, given the plurality of themes and intentions effective in the second part of the poem, the simple, unqualified use of the Doxa seems altogether misleading. In view of this, the presentation undertaken above discerned four distinctive perspectives on Doxa:

(1) Understanding the deceptive human conjectures and demonstrating their error (8.53-9).

(2) Presenting an appropriate positive Doxa that rests on a mixture of both forms instead of their separation, thus counteracting the deception (8.60 ff.).

(3) Portraying the genesis of the deceptive opinions, the divergences of which are traced back to differences in the perceptual apparatus (16).

(4) Giving (in the Aletheia) an ontological evaluation and rejecting the deceptive opinions by demonstrating their path to be the “third (non-) way” (6, 7). (pp.79-80)

32. ———. 2011. "Parmenidean Dualisms." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 289-308. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "The poem of Parmenides is systematically composed of dual structures. The part of Aletheia establishes an opposition between Being and Non-Being, but also an “identity” between Being and Thinking; the part of Doxa attempts to give an account of the relation between the two forms of Light and Night; finally, it is the duality of the two parts of the poem themselves that poses the question of their own relation. I attempt to explore the character and role of these dualisms, and especially their impact on the traditional perception of Parmenides as a rigorous “monist.” "

33. ———. 2020. "Ontology and Doxa: On Parmenides’ Dual Strategies." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 28:216-249.

Abstract: "Starting from Reinhardt’s interpretive instruction to take into account both parts of the poem of Parmenides in order to achieve a sufficient understanding of his philosophy, this paper aims to re-evaluate the state of recent scholarship, and to propose an approach that reveals the “dualistic methodology” at the heart of Parmenides’ philosophy. The ontological monism of Truth emerges as grounded in the dualistic projection of the concepts of Being and Nothing. The dualism of Doxa, structured upon the forms of Light and Night, evolves by producing a further duality: the erroneous opinions that separate the two forms have to be replaced by the appropriate cosmological world-order of their mixture. Finally, the poem as a whole, in its two parts, reflects a deeper duality, which signifies the profound distance that separates the human from the divine. The importance of all these binary structures compels us to re-examine the consideration of Parmenides as champion of a blind monism."

34. Thom, Paul. 1986. "A Lesniewskian Reading of Ancient Ontology: Parmenides to Democritus." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 7:155-166.

Abstract: "Parmenides formulated a formal ontology, to which various additions and alternatives were proposed by Melissus, Gorgias, Leucippus and Democritus. These systems are here interpreted as modifications of a minimal Lesniewskian Ontology."

"There is a tradition of ontological theorising which commences with Parmenides and whose central arguments can can be given a purely formal interpretation. This, of course, is not their only possible interpretation. It is, nonetheless, worthy of consideration, as a means of articulating the continuities and discontinuities within that tradition, and of investigating the prehistory of logic.

The main thesis of this paper is that such a purely formal interpretation of Parmenides, his followers and critics, is best expressed in the language (or, if you wish, in some of the languages) of Leśniewski's Ontology." (p. 155)

35. ———. 1999. "The Principle of Non-Contradiction in Early Greek Philosophy." Apeiron.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 32:153-170.

Abstract: "The principle of non-contradiction received ontological formulations (in terms of 'being' and 'non-being') as well as logical formulations (in terms of affirmation and denial) in early Greek philosophy. The history of these formulations is traced in the writings of Parmenides, Gorgias, Plato and Aristotle. Gorgias noticed that the principle — in Parmenides' formulation NC: 'Not (what-is-not is)' — is inconsistent with the thesis G that what-is-not is what-is-not, given a principle P whereby we can infer from 'a is b' to 'a is'. Parmenides, Gorgias, Plato and Aristotle all address the inconsistent triad {NC, G, P} in different ways."

36. ———. 2002. "On the Pervasiveness of Being." In Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos, edited by Caston, Victor and Graham, Daniel W., 293-301. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Abstract: "The pervasiveness of Being is the doctrine that everything is. This doctrine would be false if something was not. That being is pervasive is not a trivial claim. An ontology might be motivated by the desire to quantify over non-beings in such a way that we can say that something is a flying man without implying that some being is a flying man. If such a distinction is allowed, then it might be thought that something is not, even though no being is not. Pervasiveness then would be true for beings but not for ‘something's.'

This chapter explores the different positions that philosophers from Parmenides to Aristotle take on the question of the pervasiveness of Being, and traces some of the relations linking those positions to one another."

"Note the thesis’s modal import. Parmenides is asserting that everything is, not just as a matter of fact, but necessarily. And this is fitting, given that the premiss of his reasoning is the modal claim that ‘a is not' cannot be said.

Is Parmenides' position internally consistent? It depends. If we suppose that his philosophy is intended as a description of language in general, then it will appear to be self-refuting. He tells us that various things can not be spoken, or thought, or singled out, or consummated, at the same time forbidding us to make negative statements. Consistency can, however, be rescued by distinguishing an object-language about which Parmenides is speaking, and a meta-language in which he is speaking. We can then represent him as saying, in the meta-language, that there are no negative statements in the object-language. In this case, Parmenides' project will be a prescriptive one - to delineate the conditions that govern a certain ‘higher' language that is not subject to the contradictions inherent in the language of mortals.

This is a noble conception, but not one that will be universally shared. Faced with these Parmenidean prescriptions, there will always be anarchic spirits who will dare to speak of what is alleged to be unspeakable." (p. 294)

37. Tilgham, B. R. 1969. "Parmenides, Plato and logical atomism." Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 7:151-160.

"It has been remarked more than once that many of the questions raised by philosophers in the twentieth century are more nearly akin to those raised by the Greeks than to the ones that concerned their more recent predecessors.

I am interested here in kinship that, if not altogether unnoticed, does not seem to have been commented upon. I want to show that there is a problem that both Parmenides and Plato dealt with that seems very much like one that intrigued Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein and also that the way Plato saw to what he thought was its solution is very similar to that taken by Russell and Wittgenstein." (p. 151)

38. Tor, Shaul. 2015. "Parmenides’ Epistemology and the Two Parts of His Poem." Phronesis no. 60:3-39.

Abstract: "This paper pursues a new approach to the problem of the relation between Aletheia and Doxa. It investigates as interrelated matters Parmenides’ impetus for developing and including Doxa, his conception of the mortal epistemic agent in relation both to Doxa’s investigations and to those in Aletheia, and the relation between mortal and divine in his poem. Parmenides, it is argued, maintained that Doxastic cognition is an ineluctable and even appropriate aspect of mortal life. The mortal agent, however, is nonetheless capable of sustaining the cognition of Alëtheia by momentarily coming to think with — or as — his divine (fiery, aethereal) soul."

39. ———. 2017. Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology: Study of Hesiod, Xenophanes and Parmenides. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Preface and Acknowledgements page IX; List of Abbreviations XII; Introduction 1; 1 Rationality and Irrationality, Philosophy and Religion 10; 2 Hesiodic Epistemology 61; 3 Xenophanes on Divine Disclosure and Mortal Inquiry 104; Introduction to the Chapters on Parmenides 155; 4 Why Did Parmenides Write Doxa? 163; 5 How Could Parmenides Have Written Alêtheia? 222; 6 Retrospect and Prospect 309; Appendix 347; Bibliography 360; Index Locorum 387; General Index 399-406.

"On the assumption, which I share, that the goddess represents Doxa as the best possible account of Doxastic things, she indeed implies that even the best cosmology could never constitute an account of the unshaken heart of ultimate reality. Nonetheless, the scope and nature of Parmenides’ cosmological investigations undermine these dialectical responses to the aetiological question.

The goddess had concluded in Alêtheia her critical demonstrations that processes like coming-to-be and change do not typify what-is. Both direct and indirect evidence indicates that what followed in Doxa was an extended and detailed exposition, thoroughly positive in tone, of diverse scientific theories, spanning, among other things, universal cosmology (DK28 B9, B12; A37), cosmogony (B10–11), astronomy (B10–11; B14–15; A40a), geography (A44a; B15a), theogony (B13), anthropogony (Diogenes Laertius, 9.22, A53), embryology (B18; A53–4) and human physiology and cognition (A46 = B16, A46a-b, A52)." (pp. 163-164)

40. ———. 2020. "Parmenides on the Soul." In Heat, Pneuma, and Soul in Ancient Philosophy and Science, edited by Bartoš, Hynek and King, Colin Guthrie, 61-79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Direct doxographic reports concerning Parmenides’ view of the soul are scanty, schematic and variable. Aëtius indiscriminately ascribes to Parmenides and Hippasus the view that the soul is fiery (Παρμενίδης δὲ καὶ Ἵππασος πυρώδη, A 45, followed by Theodoret, Graec. affect. cur. 5,16,5–6, 18,5–6). According to Macrobius, who most likely reflects here nothing more than the awareness that Parmenides’ cosmology was dualistic, Parmenides maintained that the soul was constituted from earth and fire (Parmenides ex terra et igne, A 45). Theophrastus, according to Diogenes Laërtius, said that Parmenides identified soul and mind: ‘and [sc. Parmenides says that] the soul and the mind are one and the same, as Theophrastus too mentions in his Physics’ (καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ τὸν νοῦν ταὐτὸν εἶναι, καθὰ μέμνηται καὶ Θεόφραστος ἐν τοῖς Φυσικοῖς, A 1,11–12).

In view of this scarcity and variance, it is not surprising that the question of Parmenides’ conception of the soul has been largely ignored in modern scholarship, despite an upsurge of interest in recent years in Parmenides’ cosmology more generally. In his account of Parmenides’ natural philosophy, for example, Giovanni Casertano (2011) recounts our evidence for his conception of soul and, without further comment, concludes that ‘we do not have any clue to judge on this point’.(1) In this chapter, I wish to

challenge this verdict and to offer a sustained examination of Parmenides’ conception of soul and of the relation of this conception to his broader cosmological, physiological and eschatological attitudes in Doxa.(2)" (p. 61)

(1) Casertano 2011, 49 n. 111.

(2 This chapter, then, explores in detail Parmenides’ psychology and its place in his cosmology more broadly. For a discussion of the role which Parmenides’ notion of a divine element within the mortal (his soul) plays in his epistemology, and of the light which this notion can shed on the relation between the two parts of his poem, see Tor 2017, 155–308.

References

Casertano, G. (2011). “Parmenides: Scholar of Nature,” in N. L. Cordero (Ed.), Parmenides Venerable and Awesome. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 21–58

Tor, S. (2017). Mortal and Divine in Early Greek Epistemology: A Study of Hesiod, Xenophanes and Parmenides. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

41. ———. 2023. "Language and doctrine in Parmenides’ Way of Reality." The Journal of Hellenic Studies no. 143:1-26.

Abstract: "As early as Plato and as recently as current scholarship, readers of Parmenides have diagnosed tensions of one sort or another between his ontological views and the language through which he expresses those views. In the first instance, this article examines earlier claims for such tensions and argues that they are predicated on problematic assumptions concerning Parmenides’ ontological commitments or his strictures regarding the use of language. In the second instance, however, it argues that Parmenides’ Way of Reality does indeed confront us with tensions between language and doctrine, that these tensions are more pointed and sustained than scholars generally recognize and that they can be identified independently of specific or determinate elaboration of Parmenides’ precise ontological views. This analysis discloses a reflective preoccupation with, and a consistent attitude towards, the scope and limitations of human language. Parmenides persistently evinces his awareness that his description of what-is proceeds through expressive measures that are imported with difficulty from a different domain and, consequently, are limited, indirect and often figurative. The article closes by pointing to a meaningful (but partial) affinity between Parmenides and those Platonists who placed their own ultimate philosophical and ontological principle beyond the expressive reach of words."

42. Torgerson, Tobias Peter. 2006. "The εἰδως φώς and the traditional dichotomy of divine and mortal epistemology." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 24:25-43.

Abstract: "That Parmenides drew upon previous poets' dichotomy between divine knowledge and mortals' opinions is obvious. In his poem, the word βροτός, "mortal," always carries a connotation of ignorance or opinion. Nevertheless, Parmenides credits one type of human being - the εἰδότα φῶτα of line 1.3 - with true knowledge. This man receives a divine revelation of the truth about being, yet it seems that he possesses some knowledge even before the goddess' revelation. What sets him apart from other mortals and grants him access to divine knowledge? Homer, Hesiod, and other poets had previously spoken of the false notions of mortals, the inscrutable truth accessible only to the gods, and the conditions of revelation. By comparing and contrasting Parmenides with his predecessors, we can perceive an original element in his adaptation of the dichotomy of mortal and divine epistemology: there is a type of human being, the είδως φως whose mental perception νοός not only liberates him from the deceptive opinions of mortals but also renders him able to verify the words of the gods themselves."

43. Townsley, A. L. 1974. "Parmenides and Gregory of Nyssa: an antecedent of the dialectic of participation in being, in De vita Moysis." Salesianum no. 36:641-646.

44. ———. 1975. "Cosmic Eros in Parmenides." Rivista di Studi Classici no. 22:337-346.

45. ———. 1975. "Parmenides' religious vision and aesthetics " Athenaeum no. 53:343-351.

46. ———. 1976. "Some comments on Parmenidean eros " Eos no. 64:153-161.

47. Travers, Martin. 2019. The Writing of Aletheia: Martin Heidegger in Language. Bern: Peter Lang

Chapter 3: Re-calling the Originary: Parmenides, pp. 105-139.

"Parmenides’ poem has been read as an allegory of an “ontological education”: “the youth is to learn how to think properly according to the divine; his thinking will be removed from mortal thinking and brought to think ‘to eon’ [‘Being’] properly” (Jacobs 188). He will achieve this by learning fromthe goddess what truth, “aletheia”, means. Consequently, Heidegger explores during the course of his lectures the nature of that concept, explicating its past uses, literary and philosophical, in an attempt to establish its foundationalcentrality to “inceptual thinking”. The first lecture, a discussion of the goddess “Aletheia”, is followed by an enquiry into the conditions required to regain contact with the originary meaning of truth as “aletheia”, and a disquisition on how the methods of conventional translation are insufficient to achieve this. In his second and third lectures, he discusses the various forms of “aletheia” as “unconcealedness” (Unverborgenheit), and how these manifest themselves in “forgetting”. This is followed by an analysis of the conflicting notions of “truth” in Greek and Latin, and a critique of the historical dominance of the latter in Western culture. The fourth and fifth lectures focus on “the multiplicity of the opposites of unconcealedness”, notably those connected with “lethe”. In the lecture that follows, Heidegger exhorts us to return to the “rich essence of concealedness” and, in furtherance of this, to be prepared to make contact with “aletheia” through hand and eye, as we open ourselves, as the Greeks did through their art and literature, to the experience of the “uncanny” (Ungeheuer). Parmenides concludes with two lectures that chart the movement of “aletheia” into the “open and free space of Being”, before concluding with a return to the journey that the hero of the poem has undertaken." (p. 107)

References

Jacobs, David C. “The Ontological Education of Parmenides”. The Presocratics after Heidegger. Ed. David C. Jacobs. Albany: The State University of New York Press, 1999. 185–202.

48. Tsantsanoglou, Kyriakos. 2017. "Parmenides in the Derveni Papyrus?" Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik no. 203:24.

"In "Parmenides in the Derveni Papyrus: New Images for a New Edition", ZPE [Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik] 200 (2016) Richard Janko, exploiting new technologies not available to old papyrologists, makes a ing discoveries in the Papyrus of Derveni. Perhaps his most astonishing finding is the one article, viz., a quotation of Parmenides' fr. 1.1 D.-K., actually some letters close to the end of Parmenides' poem: "ϊπποι ταί με φέρουΰΐν, öcov τ' έπι θ/υμόϋ ίκά,νοι" The quotation was found in the third line of fr. G 16, one of the unplaced fragmentsd of the KPT edition." (p. 24)

KPT = Theokritos Kouremenos, George M. Parássoglou, Kyriakos Tsantsanoglou (eds.), The Derveni Papyrus, Firenze, Leo Olschki, 2006.

49. Tugwell, Simon. 1964. "The Way of Truth." Classical Quarterly no. 14:36-41.

"Professor G.E.L. Owen has demonstrated (C. Q. [Classical Quarterly]. N.s. X (1960), 84 ff.) that Parmenides' Way ef Truth is to be taken as a self-contained logical argument.

The basis for this argument is a proof that whatever we may choose to think about εον. The first stage of this proof is contained in B 2.

According to Owen's reconstruction of the argument, Parmenides' method is to take the three possible answers to the question εστιν η ουκ εστιν; (i.e. an unqualified yes; an unqualified no; and a noncommittal answer that sometimes we must say yes, sometimes no) and rule out two of them. This view involves giving equal status to each of the two wrong answers; but Parmenides appears not to do this." (p. 36)

50. Tulli, Mauro. 2022. "Parmenides’ inquiry and the literary representation of the ways." Phoînix no. 28:48-63.

Abstract: "Critics often consider the division in Parmenides’ poem among fields of knowledge or not knowledge, depicted in a polar perspective. In the tale of the journey the division emerges, for example, with the allusion to the day and the night or with the image of the door and in a polar perspective unravels the speech given by the goddess in the vibrant exhortation to achieve both the truth and the opinion, which does not convince. In the complex panorama of the preserved fragments, the desire to describe the result of inquiry, being, as redemption from the darkness, which conditions the life of mortals, is woven with the desire to stress the choice among the ways of inquiry, not all positive, not all oriented towards the truth. Certainly, the ways of inquiry. But how many? The division involves the opinion, the ghost of not being, the doctrines of Heraclitus or the common people, with the metaphors of deafness and blindness. It is useful to check the literary tradition and this paper will try to understand the choice among the ways of inquiry by means of the peculiar pattern of the Priamel, the frame of parallel structures which underlines in Sappho’s song or in the corpus of Pindar the new conception that the author offers."

51. Vandoulakis, Ioannis M. 2024. "On a Possible Relation Between Greek Mathematics and Eleatic Philosophy." In Universal Logic, Ethics, and Truth: Essays in Honor of John Corcoran (1937-2021), edited by Madigan, Timothy J. and Béziau, Jean-Yves, 217-230. Cham (Switzerland): Birkhäuser.

Abstract: "In this paper, we approach the problem of the relationship between Greek mathematics and Eleatic philosophy from a new perspective, which leads us to a reappraisal of Szabó’s hypothesis about the origin of mathematics out of Eleatic philosophy. We claim that Parmenidean philosophy, particularly its semantic core, has possibly been shaped by reflexion on the Pythagoreans’ mathematical practice, particularly in arithmetic. Furthermore, Pythagorean arithmetic originates not from another domain outside mathematics but from counting, i.e., it has its roots in man’s practical activity. This interpretation restores the historically inverse relationship between mathematics and philosophy, refuting the attribution of mathematics’ origin to a field outside mathematics, for which Szabó’s hypothesis has been criticized. Moreover, Parmenidean theory of truth is viewed not as a defective predecessor of Aristotle’s classical theory of truth that needs to be remedied but as a semantic conception coordinated with the mathematics of Parmenides’ times."

52. Vassallo, Christian. 2016. "Parmenides and the «First God». Doxographical Strategies in Philodemus’ On Piety. Praesocratica Herculanensia VII." Hyperborea no. 22:29-57.

Abstract: "Among the several Herculanean testimonia to Parmenides, fr. 13 of PHerc. 1428 no doubt represents the most important piece of evidence for this pre-Socratic philosopher. A new autopsy of the papyrus made a reconstruction of the name ‘Eros’ at line 12 possible. Within the Doxa section of Parmenides’ poem, Eros is notoriously described as the first of the gods to be created by Aphrodite (DK 28 B 13). In fr. 12 DK, Aphrodite is defined in turn as the goddess governing the universe, who represents the balancing point of the astronomical theory of celestial spheres. In the second part of the Herculanean fragment, Philodemus says that, according to Parmenides, the “first god” would be inanimate and that gods who were generated by him would have, in the view of mortal people, the same passions of human beings. The paper argues that Philodemus could have (a) either intentionally mixed his sources in order to create a pendant between PHerc. 1428’s frs. 12 (on Xenophanes) and 13 (on Parmenides); (b) gone back to an older tradition, later developed by early Stoicism, which exactly describes the “first god” as the ruler of the universe and absolutely devoid of human passions; (c) or mixed some attributes of Parmenides’ god with those ascribed to One by his

follower Melissus."

53. Verdenius, Willem Jacob. 1942. Parmenides. Some Comments on his Poem. Groningen: J. B. Wolters.

Reprinted with a new Preface: Amsterdam: A. M. Hakkert, 1964.

Contents: Preface (to the reprint) III-IV; Introduction 1; Chapter I. The doctrine of knowing 5; Chapter II. The doctrine of being 31; Chapter I. The doctrine of opinion 45; Appendices 64; Bibliography 79; English index 81; Greek index 82; Index of quotations 83-88.

"The present study was submitted as a doctoral dissertation to the Faculty of Arts of Utrecht University in 1942. Since its publication, so many books and articles have been written on the same problems that it might seem presumptuous to reprint a comparatively old work. I do not want to suggest that everything published after my thesis has little or no value. On the other hand, a critical evaluation of these works would not affect the substance of my original comments. As the book continued to be in demand and I could not find time to carry out my intention of writing a full commentary, an unrevised reprint seemed to be the only solution.

There are three points on which I have altered my opinion. I no longer believe, as I did in my dissertation (p. 73 f.) and in Mnemosyne III 13 (1947), pp. 272 ff., that Περί φύσεως may have been the original title of Parmenides' work and of the works of a number of other Pre-Socratics. I now take the subject of εστιν in frags 2,3 and 8,2 to be Άληδείη in the sense of ‘the true nature of things' (cf. Mnemos. IV 15, 1962, p. 237), and not Reality in the sense of the total of things (as suggested in my dissertation, p. 32). The μέλεα in frag. 16 I no longer take to be ‘something between the two universal Forms and the parts of the human frame' (p. 7), but the human frame itself (cf. Mnemosyne IV 2, 1949, p. 126 n. 5fn)." (Preface III)

"Expounding an ancient philosophy is only possible with the aid of modern notions, which have a more limited sense than the material to which they are to be applied. Hence the difficulty of ascertaining the differences between ancient and modern abstractions and the danger of misconceiving an idea through attaching a too specific meaning to one or other particular expression. It will now be understood how in the course of time Parmenides has come to be classed with the most divergent philosophical systems. An attempt might be made to classify and analyse all these various interpretations. This would, however, not be the most expedient way to arrive at the real meaning of the poem. It stands to reason that our conclusions should be constantly reviewed and tested in the light of current opinion, but the more our considerations are bound up with the criticism of other interpreters, the greater will be the difficulty in evolving a coherent system of interpretation.

So I will attempt to follow a more positive method by considering in detail three fundamental problems of Parmenides' philosophy, viz. 'Knowing', 'Being', and 'Opinion'. If it proves to be possible to arrive at definite conclusions in this respect, the road will probably be clear for a better understanding of the thoughts associated with these principles.

With regard to the method adopted in my interpretation I may conclude with the following remark. I have pointed out already that Parmenides stands out from his predecessors by the application of a deductive method and the building up of a coherent argument. The methodical way of reasoning characterizes his work so much that even in ancient times he was classed by some critics among the dialecticians. In fact, his syllogisms, the distinction made between the three 'ways of inquiring', and also his way of putting questions foreshadow dialectical methods. This is not surprising since the whole trend of his thought aims at valid arguments, cogent conclusions, and complete evidence'. It seems advisable, then, to give more attention to the logical form in which Parmenides exposes his views than has been done hitherto. When the goddess of Truth counsels him not to trust to the senses but to judge by reasoning, we might accept her words as a suggestion to base our interpretation on the logical context of the argument in accordance with Parmenides' own intention.

It may be objected that a criterium for such a logical context is hard to find since in a pre-Aristotelian philosopher we cannot expect a method of reasoning which may be formulated in syllogisms. From the logical point of view Parmenides' argument undeniably does not always comply with scientific standards, but this does not imply that the form of the syllogism is not applicable to his thought. This form is not an invention of Aristotle kept alive by convention, but it is at the root of all reasoning. Parmenides may not have been aware of the syllogistic form as a general mode of arguing, but he uses it, it may be unconsciously and not always accurately, yet, generally speaking, 'guided by truth itself'.

I have undertaken the following inquiries in the belief that such a 'truth' exists, and that the principles of logic are no mere arbitrary grammatical phenomena as moderns would have us believe, but the universal foundation which underlies all science, including the science of interpretation." (pp. 3-4, notes omitted).

54. ———. 1947. "Notes on the Presocratics." Mnemosyne no. 13:271-289.

"The term πίστης is used in the sense of 'religious faith' in the New Testament (e.g. I Cor. 13, 13), but it has not got this meaning in early Greek literature. In the works of the Pre-Socratics πίστης means 'evidence, both in the subjective sense of confidence that one's belief is true and in the objective sense of reliable signs which justify such confidence' (15). Parmenides used it to denote the logical stringency of his argument (frag. 8, 12 and 28); his Way of Truth is at the same time Πειθοῦς κέλευθος (frag. 2, 4)." (p. 1)

(15) G. Vlastos, Philos. Rev. 55 (1946), 590 n. 60. ["Ethics and Physics in Democritus", The Philosophical Review, Vol. 54, No. 6 (Nov., 1945), pp. 578-592]

The text by Gregory Vlastos:

"Unlike Platonic being which, immaterial by definition, is never given in sensation, Democritean being is the material stuff of nature as we see, touch, and taste it.) The "assurance" (πίστης) (60) of its existence must, therefore, be given in the phenomenon " (p. 590, two notes omitted)

(60) πίστης in [Diels-Kranz] B. 125: φρήν gets its πίστεις from the senses. This is confirmed by Sextus (Adv. Math. 7.136; B. 9 in Diels-Kranz), who tells us that in his essay entitled κρατυντήρια Democritus "promised to assign to the senses the power of evidence (το κράτος της πίστεως)." This last should be compared with πίστιος ἰσχύς in Parmenides, B. 8, 12. Πίστης in the pre-socratics is not an inferior form of knowledge as in Plato, Rep. VI 511e, but evidence, both in the subjective sense of confidence that one's belief is true and in the objective sense of reliable signs which justify such confidence.

55. ———. 1949. "Parmenides Conception of Light." Mnemosyne no. 2:116-131.

"In this paper I shall deal with a problem in the philosophy of Parmenides which has been rather neglected, because it did not seem to be a problem at all. Parmenides based his cosmology on the dualism of two primary substances, Fire or Light and Night." (p. 116)

"Perhaps another aspect of his mind may bring us nearer to the solution of our problem. In the proem of his work Parmenides describes his discovery of the truth as a journey from the realm of Darkness to the realm of Light Driving a car and guided by Sun-maidens he passes through the gates of Night and Day and is kindly welcomed by a goddess who discloses to him the principles of reality. There is much in this description that may be regarded as mere poetical imagery, but there are also many details which have a serious meaning. I shall only mention those points which have some bearing upon the present question." (p. 119)

"It may be suggested that Parmenides in a similar manner distinguished between a supreme kind of light as the cognitive aspect of Being and Truth, and an inferior kind of light restricted to the world of change and opinion. This interpretation would fit in very well with the general trend of his philosophy, which tries to attribute the various aspects of the world to a higher and a lower plane of reality.

It might only be asked how Parmenides managed to get from the lower plane of empirical reality up to the higher plane of Being, or in other words: how the ordinary light which formed one of the elements of his mental constitution could pass into the divine light which enabled him to grasp the ultimate principle of reality. This criticism is justified; it could only be met by putting another question: is there anyone who has succeeded in finding a satisfactory transition from psychology to metaphysics?" (pp. 130-131, a note omitted)

56. ———. 1962. "Parmenides B2, 3." Mnemosyne no. 15:237.

"Much ingenuity has been spent on the question as to what is the subject of ἔστιν in Parmenides B 2,3 (and 8,2), but even the most recent attempts, such as that made by G. E. L. Owen in C.Q. 10 (1960), 95, are far from convincing.

My own suggestion (Parmenides, 32), that the subject is reality in the sense of the total of things, has not met with much approval. I now believe that the clue to the solution of this problem is to be found in B 8, 51 ἀμφὶς ἀληθείης. If Truth is the subject of the goddess' discourse, it is by implication the subject of ἔστιν." (p.237)

57. ———. 1977. "Opening Doors (Parm. B 1, 17-18) " Mnemosyne no. 30:287-288.

"After Dike has removed the bar (5), the doors open spontaneously at the approach of the divine maidens." (pp. 287-288)

(5) Wiersma, [Notes on Gree Philosophy] Mnemosyne IV 20 (1967), 405 rightly points out that this idea has to be supplied from the context.

58. ———. 1980. "Opening Doors Again." Mnemosyne no. 33:175.

In my note on Parmenides B 1, 17-8 in this journal, IV 30 (1977), 287-8, I forgot to refer to K. J. McKay, Door Magic Epiphany Hymn, CQ [Classical Quarterly] 17 (1967), 184-94, who discusses Callim. H. 2, 6 in connection with Hom. Epigr. XV 3-5 and other texts." (p. 175)

59. Vick, George R. 1971. "Heidegger's Linguistic Rehabilitation of Parmenides' 'Being'." American Philosophical Quarterly no. 8:139-150.

Reprinted in: Michael Murray (ed.), Heidegger and Modern Philosophy, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978 pp. 204-221.

"It is a fairly well-known fact that Martin Heidegger has defended Parmenides' account of Being, (1) but the strategy of his complex semantic and etymological arguments for the meaningfulness of Parmenides' type of discourse on Being is unknown to the great majority of philosophers in Britain and America(2) - indeed is virtually unnoted even within the phenomenological-existential school (in part, perhaps, because of the abstruse character of both his thought and language).

Furthermore, the fact that Heidegger has corrected what is ordinarily taken as an essential part of Parmenides' theory has not, so far as I know, been pointed out, even by Heidegger.(4) Nor has anyone taken note of the way in which Heidegger's correction makes what remains of Parmenides' theory more defensible. In the following pages I shall attempt to set forth and explain Heidegger's strategy (including a reason why it has been useful for him to couch his argument in language that is so abstruse). I will then go on to show the way in which his correction of Parmenides' theory strengthens its claim to being true." (p. 139)

1 This defense is to be found primarily in the most extensive work of Heidegger's later period, his Einfuhrung in die Metaphysik (1953) in which his summer lectures at Freiburg in 1935 were revised and published. All page references will be to the English translation by Ralph Mannheim, An Introduction to Metaphysics (New Haven, 1959).

(2) For this strategy, see especially ibid, ch. II and III, pp. 52-92. (p 139, a note omitted)

(4) See fn. 44.

(44) Heidegger has, indeed, distinguished his own view of the meaning of "Being" from that which he maintains has been current since antiquity (cf. Heidegger, op. cit., [Introduction to Metaphysics] pp. 203-204). And the view which Heidegger regards as having been current since antiquity is that in which Being is regarded as excluding our saying that becoming, appearing, thinking, and the ought are, and this is a view which is, except with respect to the third of these four factors, usually attributed to Parmenides. But, on the other hand, he has continually distinguished between the authentic pre-Socratic, or Parmenidean, view of Being, and the defective view which has come down to us since (Ibid., pp. 179-196). And he has, furthermore, given an exegesis of Parmenides in which he interprets him as allowing to thinking a certain distinction from Being (in that he interprets Parmenides as saying that thinking is one with Being only in a "contending sense," i.e., in a unity through opposition).

Hence, it is not clear whether Heidegger identifies the teaching of Parmenides with the view of Being from which he distinguishes his own (a position with which exegesis of Parmenides' treatment of the relation between Being and thinking would make difficult), or whether he interprets Parmenides in such a way as to allow "is" to be predicated of becoming, etc., without being thereby identified with them (a position directly challenging the usual monistic interpretation of Pamenides, and challenging it in such an essential way that we should expect Heidegger to have made some explicit mention of the fact that he was correcting the usual interpretation of Parmenides on the very point which since Plato has probably been given most attention, i.e., his supposed monism.)

60. Vlastos, Gregory. 1946. "Parmenides' Theory of Knowledge." Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association no. 77:66-77.

Reprinted in: G. Vlastos, Studies in Greek Philosophy, Volume I: The Presocratics, edited by Daniel W. Graham, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, pp. 153-163.

Abstract: "Parmenides' frag. 16 has been taken for a general statement of his theory of knowledge. I argue that it is no more than his doctrine of sense-perception, since it views thought as a passive record of the "much-wandering" ratio of light to darkness in the frame. Theophrastus' report that Parmenides explains "better and purer" thinking by the preponderance of light must refer to the active phases of thought, memory and judgment. When these are perfect the ratio of light to darkness must be one to zero, and the knowledge of Being must represent a state of unmixed light." (p. 66)

61. ———. 2008. ""Names" of Being in Parmenides." In The Route of Parmenides, edited by Mourelatos, Alexander, 367-390. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Previously unpublished essay (1961).

Editing note by A.P.D. Mourelatos.: The importance and continuing value of this essay is, in my judgment, fourfold. (1) Beyond what was already accomplished by Woodbwy's essay of 1958 [Parmenides on Names] Vlastos here provides the best and most sustained argument in favor of the reading onomastai at B8. 38. (2) There is an assumption many have made (doubtless, as Vlastos points out at n. 20, because of the influence of Diels, who first voiced it in 1887) [*] that Parmenides employs "naming" terms (onoma, onomaztin) only with reference to the false

beliefs posited by "mortals." Vlastos' essay provides a decisive refutation of this quite unwarranted and misleading assumption. (3) Vlastos also shows that we gain a more coherent account of Parmenides' critique of the language of "mortals" if we read that critique as charging that mortals make statements that are false rather than meaningless.

(4) Finally, Vlastos offers in this essay a philosophically incisive and engaging argument in support of the thesis that Parmenides' rationale for the rejection of "not-being" as a subject of thinking and speaking is quite different from that advanced by the Eleatic Stranger in Plato, Sophist (237B-C)." (p. 367)

[*] "Ueber die ältester Philosophenschulen der Griechen," in Philosophische Aufsätze, Eduard Zeller zu seinem fünfzigjährigen Doctor-Jubiläum gewidmet [no editors listed] (Leipzig, 1887), pp. 239-60.

62. Volpe, Enrico. 2023. "Some Footnotes to Richard McKirahan’s Lectures at Eleatica XI." In Eleatica Vol. 9: Aristotle and the Eleatics = Aristotele e gli Eleati, edited by Pulpito, Massimo and Berruecos Frank, Bernardo, 217-225. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlsg.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Parmenides of Elea. Annotated bibliography of the studies in English: Wac - Z

Bibliography

1. Wacziarg, Aude. 2008. "For a Rehabilitation of the Parmenidean doxa." In Eleatica Vol. 1: Parmenide scienziato?, edited by Rossetti, Livio and Marcacci, Flavia, 143-151. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

"To conclude: as far as we can project the concept of ‘science’ on preclassic Greece, Parmenides did seem to have a ‘scientific’ project. His Doxa certainly presents a global vision of the world, from the macrocosm to our human realities (and down to medicine). A system comparable in its scope to that of the Milesians’ ones. But with a superior worth because it asks the question of its own validity. After establishing the very little that we can consider ‘true’, Parmenides progresses with rigorous logic to give a picture that is the ‘best lie’ we can reach. From the separation between ‘is’ and ‘is not’ and their transposition into the sensible principles of Light and Night, our world is perfectly structured. Vice-versa, from an understanding of the dual structure of the world, one can reach the understanding of‘Truth’. This is why Parmenides introduces the exposition of the world within his development on ‘is’, in fr. 8.53-61. And this is why the philosopher claims: ‘it is indifferent for me where I begin, for there I shall return again’ (fr. 5)." (p. 149)

2. Warren, James. 2007. Presocratics. Stocksfield: Acumen.

Chapter 5: Parmenides, 77-102; Chapter 6: Reactions to Parmenides, 103-118.

"Parmenides of Elea, a town on the west coast of southern Italy, is perhaps the most celebrated of all the early Greek philosophers. His fame and importance derive from his one known work: a poem in the hexameter metre used also by the Homeric epics, which was perhaps entitled On Nature or On What Is. There is no doubt that he was also very influential in his own time, and caused quite a stir in the Greek intellectual world. He is the first of our philosophers whose followers are themselves well-known – the paradox-monger Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos – and who can be said to constitute some sort of philosophical movement. Parmenides cast a tremendous shadow over all succeeding Greek philosophy, not only of the period before Socrates, but long after too. Plato names one of his dialogues in Parmenides’ honour, and the philosophical problems first emphasized by Parmenides exercised Plato, Aristotle, and their successors." (p. 77)

(...)

"However influential or powerful we imagine the arguments of Parmenides to have been, they were certainly not successful in discouraging entirely the practice of cosmological speculation. Indeed, if Parmenides had intended to put an end to all such accounts of the origin and composition of the cosmos, then he would surely have been very disappointed by the response to his arguments. The period after Parmenides saw no diminution in attempts to explain the universe and the processes of change and generation within it, although perhaps Parmenides would have been pleased to see that those attempts tended to be more self-conscious and precise in their claims about which things “are”, which things are fundamental to the universe and how these fundamental things compose everything else. It is also worth noticing that Parmenides had himself, arguably, already led the way by producing the first post-Parmenidean cosmology in his own “Way of Opinion”." (p. 103)

3. Wedin, Michael. 2011. "Parmenides' Three Ways and the Failure of the Ionian Interpretation." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 41:1-65.

"The middle part of Parmenides’ great philosophical poem, the section known as the Way of Truth (WT), opens with the divine declaration that only two paths of enquiry present themselves to the mind—the path of what is and the path of what is not. I regard these as Parmenides’ 'canonical' paths and shall refer to them as Path I and Path II, respectively. Fragment 2 emphatically warns against pursuing Path II, and fragment 6 is no less direct in advancing Path I as a necessary path of enquiry. According to some, Parmenides is merely expressing his preferences in these early fragments of WT. Of course he is doing so, but not just this. Rather, fragments 2 and 3 contain a deduction whose aim is to exclude what is not as a fit target for investigation because such a thing is flatly impossible, and fragment 6 certifies Path I, again deductively, on the grounds that what it investigates is nothing less than what is necessary. Her opening declaration notwithstanding, in fragment 6 the goddess goes on to warn against a third path, the path of what is and is not. This too is excluded on the basis of a crisp, but tricky, Eleatic deduction.

This paper offers reconstructions of these three opening deductions." (p. 1)

4. ———. 2014. Parmenides' Grand Deduction: A Logical Reconstruction of the Way of Truth. New York: Oxford University Press.

"When I examined the arguments of the leading nouveaux interpreters, none of the contenders lived up to expectations. Each was flawed in logically telling ways.

The results of this examination surface in the monograph in two ways. On the one hand, a contending view is sometimes discussed in the course of advancing or clarifying my own argument. On the other hand, I address them in their own right in Part III of the monograph, where the views are subjected to more systematic scrutiny. The view argued in this monograph, outré or not, favors an austere reading of Fr. 8’s ‘signs’ or deductive consequences of what is." (p. 2)

"A general study of Parmenides’ poem would address many issues, from the influence of the epic tradition, and the significance of the Proem with its divine invocation, to the relation between the two substantive parts of the poem—the Way of Truth (WT) and the Way of Opinion. This monograph is less ambitious.

First, I am interested almost exclusively in WT; in particular, I am interested in the logical form of Parmenides’ arguments in WT. Second, I pursue this interest by offering reconstructions of WT’s deductions, in their entirety, and only rarely do I introduce material that does not serve this project. Nonetheless, the reconstructions have global reach because the deductions of WT are the core of Parmenides’ philosophical position." (pp. 4-5, a note omitted)

5. Weiss, Yale. 2018. "Commentary on Cherubin." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy no. 33:22-26.

Abstract: "This commentary examines the interpretation of Parmenides developed by Rose Cherubin in her paper, “Parmenides, Liars, and Mortal Incompleteness.” First, I discuss the tensions Cherubin identifies between the definitions and presuppositions of justice, necessity, fate, and the other requisites of inquiry. Second, I critically assess Cherubin’s attribution of a sort of liar paradox to Parmenides. Finally, I argue that Cherubin’s handling of the Doxa, the section of Parmenides’ poem that deals with mortal opinion and cosmology, is unsatisfactory. I suggest that her reading may contradict the text in denying that the Doxa contains truths."

6. White, Harvey. 2005. What is What-is? A Study of Parmenides' Poem. New York: Peter Lang.

"The interpretation of the poem which follows takes issue with what has long been the standard view, and which, only recently, has begun to be challenged. Because my interpretation ascribes many of the fragments which have been taken as the mortal view to the goddess' position, my arrangement of the fragments differs somewhat from the standard one provided by Diels and Kranz. Thus the numbers assigned to the fragments differs from theirs." (p. 2)

"It has long been fashionable to take the ontology (and attendant epistemology) that Parmenides set forth in his poem to be characterized by "the one", or "Being", as the all encompassing single reality, which is to be distinguished from mere sensible and pluralistic being." (p. 5, notes two notes omitted)

"Against this understanding of the Poem I will argue that:

1. "is" is used predicationally rather than purely existentially, and as a result the text is best understood as being consistent with a pluralistic ontology rather than a monistic one; i.e., Parmenides did not claim that all reality is a single ideal universal and non-sensible "Being";

2. Parmenides affirms the positive role of sense perception in apprehending reality, accepting as real what appears sensibly; most of what is traditionally termed the Doxa section of the poem is an elucidation of his own position;

3. the poem's major point is that each individual object is a unity rather than a plurality constituted of opposites, even though it may come to be out of a mixture of opposites. The erroneous position held by the mortals is that an individual object is a plurality, a view that results from a confusion of what something is with the conditions out of which it is generated;

4. the poem is critically concerned with judgement rather than perception: the error of the mortals consists of misjudgements concerning perceived reality.

The overall perspective is that historically Parmenides does not present as radical and revolutionary an ontology and epistemology as he is commonly portrayed to advocate. His importance lies within the intellectual transition occurring in the Greek world, in that his poem is an attempt to move from the past mythos ( as in Homer and Hesiod) into the emerging scientific view of the world." (p. 6)

7. White, Stephen. 2021. "Truth Attending Persuasion: Forms of Argumentation in Parmenides." In Essays on Argumentation in Antiquity, edited by Bjelde, Joseph Andrew, Merry, David and Roser, Christopher, 1-19. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Abstract: "Parmenides marks awatershed in the history of argumentation, presenting the earliest surviving sequence of recognizably deductive reasoning in the Greek tradition. This chapter focuses on the central section of his poem (fr. 8 DK) and examines the form of its argumentation: its use of indirect proof, the articulation of its reasoning, and the role necessity plays in it."

8. Whittaker, John. 1971. "God, Time, Being. Two Studies in the Transcendental Tradition in Greek Philosophy." Symbolae Osloenses no. 23:16-32.

First study: 'Parmenides, Fr. 8, 5'.

Parmenides, fr. 8, 5 as quoted by Simplicius seems to proclaim the doctrine of the Eternal Now clearly and succinctly:

ουδέ ποτ’ ήν ούδ’ έσται, έπεϊ νΰν έστιν όμοϋ παν.

Simplicius is our main authority for the surviving fragments of Parmenides and his general reliability is beyond question. Yet if we accept Parmenides as the author of the above verse and as the originator of the conception there contained, many difficulties arise, as the following considerations will indicate.

(1) The conception of non-durational eternity is not of the sort that presents itself spontaneously to the mind. Bearing in mind the abstrusity of the notion, it would seem hardly conceivable that, Stated in this bald manner, it would have been at all comprehensible to Parmenides’ contemporaries. No doubt there was much in Parmenides’ poem that his contemporaries found obscure. Yet it cannot have been Parmenides’ aim merely to mystify. If Parmenides had really formulated the notion of non-durational eternity and was teaching it in his poem, a certain degree of elaboration would have been essential. But the relevant section of the poem contains no such elaboration.

(2) The notion in question is not accepted by Melissus; cf., e.g., fr. 1 άεί ήν δ τι ήν καί άεί έσται. Yet there is nothing in the doxographi-cal evidence to suggest that Parmenides and Melissus were at variance on this point.

(3)The only reason Parmenides might have had for introducing the notion into the Way of Truth is that he felt that passage from past to present to future involves coming-to-be and passing-away, i.e., that duration as such entails change. But if Parmenides had stressed this aspect of duration, then he would have raised a problem which all subsequent philosophers would have had to face. Parmenides’ Presocratic successors accepted the validity of the Eleatic denial of change and were painfully aware of the predicament in which it placed them. If Parmenides had argued that duration is a process and therefore a form of change, then they would have had to tackle this problem too. Yet no post-Parmenidean Presocratic seems to have been aware that bare duration could be held to involve change. Empedocles’ philosophy, for example, is a conscientious attempt to solve the difficulties raised by Parmenides. Yet there is nothing to suggest that Empedocles was acquainted with this particular problem. The same is true of other post-Parmenidean philosophers - including, as I shall argue, Plato and Aristotle.

Such considerations as these render it obvious that, in spite of fr. 8, 5 as cited by Simplicius, Parmenides cannot possibly have propounded the doctrine of non-durational eternity. Once this point has been established there are two courses open to the student of Parmenides: (a) he may search for another and more plausible interpretation of the text quoted by Simplicius, or (b) he may call into question the reliability of the text which Simplicius has preserved." (pp. 16-17)

(...)

"Because of their faith in the text presented by Simplicius, students of Parmenides have not usually considered it necessary to devote attention to a rival version of fr. 8,533 preserved by Ammonius (In Interpr. 136, 24 f. Busse), Asclepius’ (In Metaph. 42, 30 f. Hayduck), Philoponus (In Phys. 65, 9 Vitelli), and Olympiodorus (In Phd. 75, 9 Norvin).

I do not believe that this alternative version is necessarily correct as it stands, but must draw attention to one fact which speaks strongly in its favour. In Simplicius’ version fr. 8, 6 opens with the words έν, συνεχές syntactically linked to v. 5 but nevertheless left somewhat in the air, whilst Asclepius (loc. cit.) quotes the opening of v. 6 in conjunction with v. 5 as follows:

ού γάρ έην ούκ έσται όμοΰ παν έστι δέ μοϋνον ούλοφυές.

It can, in my opinion, hardly be doubted that Simplicius’ έν, συνεχές was originally a gloss on ούλοφυές and has supplanted that reading in Simplicius’ exemplar. Since the latter term was used by Empedocles there is no reason why it should not also have been employed by Parmenides. However, it was not current in Neoplatonic terminology and might well have provoked a textual gloss." (p. 21)

(...)

"However, my own conviction is that one cannot feel assured that either version is close enough to the original text of Parmenides to permit of more than highly conjectural interpretation. We have already seen that fr. 8, 4 was universally corrupt by the time of Plutarch" (p. 24).

(...)

"I would conclude that no knowledge of the teaching of the historical Parmenides can be safely derived from the versions of fr. 8, 5 which have survived. One can, however, assert with complete conviction, as was shown at the outset, that the doctrine of non-durational eternity, which Neoplatonists associated with both versions of the line, was not taught by the historical Parmenides." (p. 24, notes omitted)

9. Wilkinson, Lisa Atwood. 2009. Parmenides and to eon. Reconsidering Muthos and Logos. London: Continuum.

Contents: Acknowledgments IX; Introduction 1; 1 A Route to Homer 10; 2 Homeric or “Sung Speech” 27; 3 Reconsidering Xenophanes 40; 4 Reconsidering Speech 56; 5 Parmenides’ Poem 69; 6 The Way It Seems . . . 104; Notes 118; Bibliography 147; Index 153-156.

"I suggest that we might be able to begin to “hear” anew the wisdom of hour first philosophical texts. Hence, I take a historical-philosophical route to Parmenides. This route begins with an analysis of the significance of “Homer” in ancient Greek culture that challenges some of our common knowledge about “Homer” and how oral poetry works (Chapter 1). These challenges are supplemented by an overview of Homeric or “sung speech” (Chapter 2) that is brought to bear on assumptions about Xenophanes’ fragments (Chapter 3) and contemporary accounts of speech (Chapter 4). Having reconsidered Homer, Xenophanes, and basic assumptions about speech, the final chapters offer an interpretation of Parmenides’ poem (Chapter 5) that differs from some of our general accounts (Chapter 6)." (p. 7)

10. Wilson, John R. 1970. "Parmenides, B 8. 4." The Classical Quarterly no. 20:32-34.

"The text of Parmenides 8. 4 is unusually corrupt. Most recent critics, however, agree that Plutarch's ἐστι γὰρ οὐλομελές printed in the later editions of Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, should be excluded in favour of ουλον μουνογενες." (p. 32)

(...)

"The corruptions in the first half of the line are fairly easily explained.

Plutarch's οὐλομελές could be the result of a conflation of the preceding ουλον with μουνο-. This parallels the corruption of ουλον itself into μουνον in Eusebius, Theodoretus, and Ps.-Plut. Strom. The corruption μουνογενες in Simplicius and other testimonia, the earliest of which is Clement, can best be explained as the substitution of the familiar Christian epithet 'only begotten' for that strange and perhaps puzzling 'single-limbed.(2)" (p. 34)

(2) Cf. Karl Meister, Die homerische Kunstsprache (Leipzig, 1921; repr. Darmstadt, 1966), 207.

11. Wolfe, C. J. 2012. "Plato's and Aristotle's answers to the Parmenides problem." The Review of Metaphysics no. 65:747-764.

"The questions raised by the great pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides were perhaps the main challenge for Plato and Aristotle, two of the greatest post-Socratic philosophers." (p. 747)

"No philosopher was able to accurately interpret and refute the Parmenides problem until Plato and Aristotle. Plato answered it in an important way in his dialogue the Sophist, and Aristotle followed this up with the complete answer in Physics book 1, chapter 8. My thesis is that Plato's answer would have been good enough to defeat Protagoras in extended argument, thereby remedying the political aspects of the Parmenides problem. However, Aristotle's answer is required to answer some additional philosophical and scientific aspects.

The first section of this paper will summarize the history of pre-Socratic philosophy and explain why Parmenides was a turning-point.

The second section will explain the sophist Protagoras' relation to the Parmenides problem. The third part will present Aristotle's complete answer to the Parmenides problem, and in the fourth part I will compare that approach with Plato's solution in the Sophist. Lastly, I will sum up by characterizing how I think Plato and Aristotle would have responded to Protagoras' Parmenidean sophistry in political life." (p. 748)

12. Wood, James L. . 2020. "Necessity and contingency in the philosophy of Parmenides." The The Review of Metaphysics no. 73:421-454.

To bring out the determinative, self-revealing nature of being in Parmenides’ poem, I will examine his account of necessary versus impossible being in the Way of Truth, followed by his treatment of contingent being in relation to necessary being in the Proem and Way of Opinion. On the basis of that examination, I will argue that we can make the best sense of Parmenides’ poem as a whole by seeing the cosmos of contingent beings as the self-manifestation of necessary being, and that the misunderstanding of “mortals” lies not in their acceptance of the reality of contingent beings, but in their failure to grasp the distinction and the connection between the modes of being. Moreover, because many interpreters of Parmenides see him as rejecting contingent beings, and a plurality of beings of any sort, in favor of a strict ontological monism, they too fail to grasp the distinction and the connection between the modes of being in his thought. Consequently, salvaging a place for contingent being in Parmenides’ philosophy will also require that we confront the problematic interpretation of Parmenides as a strict monist." (pp. 423-424, notes omitted)

13. Woodbury, Leonard. 1958. "Parmenides on Names." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology:145-160.

Reprinted in: J. P. Anton and George L. Kustas (eds.), Essays in Ancient Greek philosophy, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1972, pp. 145-162 and in: C. Brown, R. Fowler, E. I. Robbins, P. M. Matheson Wallace (eds.), Collected Writings of Leonard E. Woodbury, Atlanta: Scholars Press, pp. 80-95.

[The essay is a discussion of the fr. B8 34-41]

"νοεῖν has been until now translated, for convenience' sake, as "mean" or "think", but these renderings will no longer suffice, since it now appears what is implied when νοεῖν is used, as by Parmenides, not of a word or a thought, but of the name of the world. The object of νοεῖν is that-in-being, and in consequenceνοεῖν can here stand only for that knowledge which perceives the world as it is. Knowledge of being can be found only in the meaning of the name, "being". Parmenides' philosophy of names leads directly into his ontology. But we have no text that asserts the identity of knowledge with its object, of νοεῖν with το έον. The text that has so often been thought to make this assertion says in fact something quite different. It says that νοεῖν is the same as είναι, and this must mean that knowledge, like the right thought and meaning, can be found only in the use of the name. The only way is a μυθος όδοιο, ώς ἐστίν.

Werner Jaeger has taught us to take seriously the theological significance of Parmenides' proem and to see at the heart of his philosophy a " Mystery of Being".(39) What I should venture to propose to him is that the meaning of the goddess's revelation is that the world is expressed in "being", and that Parmenides' holy mystery is the reality of a name." (p. 157)

(39) Cf. W. Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (Oxford, 1947), 107.

14. ———. 1986. "Parmenides on Naming by Mortal Men: fr. B8.53-56." Ancient Philosophy no. 6:1-13.

Reprinted in: C. Brown, R. Fowler, E. I. Robbins, P. M. Matheson Wallace (eds.), Collected Writings of Leonard E. Woodbury, Atlanta: Scholars Press, pp. 439-453.

"Concerning the text and syntax of the passage there appears to be a wide, though not a universal, agreement. But in regard to interpretation it is agreed only that severe problems proliferate and defy clear solutions." (p. 1)

"The proper choice is the one figured in the proem, the entrance upon a road that passes beyond the paths of Night and Day into light , under the guidance of the Daughters of the Sun, who quit the House of Night for this purpose, throwing back there at the veils that cover their faces.(24) The journey is one that is directed by Justice and has the effect of persuading the Necessity that controls the goings of mortal men under the direction of a bad dispensation . The choice of the road , it is plain , entails the choice of the guidance of light ." (p. 12)

(24) On the allegory of Parmenides ' journey and the vicissitudes of the sun in this world, see my "Equinox at Acragas: Pindar 0l. 2 . 61 - 62" TAPA [Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association] 97 (1966) 597 - 616 , especially 609 ff . and E . Robbins in Greek Poetry and Philosophy (Ed. D.E. Gerber (Chico , California 1984), note 20) 224 . "

15. Wright, Maureen Rosemary. 1998. "Philosopher poets: Parmenides and Empedocles." In Form and Content in Didactic Poetry, edited by Atherton, Catherine, 1-22. Bari: Levante.

"Parmenides and Empedocles are crucial figures in the history of philosophy, and it is important to understand why they chose hexameters instead of prose, and what they did with them. As might be expected, the style and language of the didactic epics of Hesiod are relevant, but so too are the battle epic of the Iliad and the travel and homecoming epic of the Odyssey. In the present exploration of the adaptation of traditional poetic forms to new philosophic uses it is the Homeric borrowings that become more significant and arresting." (pp. 2-3)

(...)

"Coxon's edition of Parmenides restored the epic and Ionic forms in place of the tragic and Attic ones. He showed that there are only 55 words in the surviving fragments for which a Homeric form is not found, and that most of these are related to or compounded from words in Homer.

Vocabulary, phrasing and imagery throughout Proem, Doxa and Aletheia were found to be Homeric, and there are grounds for a similar case to be made for a Homeric-based Empedocles, although he has in addition his own idiosyncrasies. Aristotle, however, in the above quotations, hesitates between finding nothing in common for Homer and Empedocles except the metre (one being a poet and the other a scientist'), and attributing positive poetic value to Empedocles' work on the grounds that he 'Homerises' with metaphors and similar devices. The inconsistency here may be due to the Aristotelian context, for in the opening of the Poetics, in which the first quotation is found, Aristotle views the poetic art as primarily imitative, comparable to ballet or playing a musical instrument. He expects a plot, a muthos, which is worked through metrically in narrative or direct involvement or a combination of the two, and on this criterion a work of philosophy in metre would not qualify as poetry. Yet where the detailed adaptation of stylistic devices is under consideration the two philosophers are indeed poets, using old forms but for new purposes." (p. 5)

16. Wyatt, William F.Jr. 1992. "The Root of Parmenides." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology no. 94:113-120.

"Parmenides, in looking for the roots of things and for essence, examined and pondered as well on the roots of words and their essential meaning. In so doing he found linguistic support for his notions, or for some of them. He wrote at a time and in a style which allowed root meanings to appear clearly and which saw in nouns the verbal notion underlying them, and in verbs the nominal cognates. In this he is rather in the style of the choral poets such as Pindar and Aeschyulus who, it would seem, at times cared little for parts of speech but very much for the meanings conveyed in roots. I close with a Parmenidean example.

In 7.3 he characterizes ἔθος as πολύπειρον.(19) There can be much discussion about the precise meaning of the word, but it appears to me that it contains (for Parmenides) the meaning or meanings inherent in the verb πειρασθαι "attempt," and in the noun πειρασ "limit" with its adjective ἄπειρον.(20) It will therefore have to do with mankind's tentative and uncertain steps toward truth, steps which lead to no conclusion or end. In this man is like the ανθρωποι of Heracleitus' Fr. 1." (p. 120)

(19) For so I take it. Coxon (58 & 191) construes the adjective with τουτο. Little hinges on this, I suspect, but the Greek works better my way, which is the usual translation.

20 Parmenides seems to have played as well with prefixes, particularly the negative prefix (ά- and the prefix "many" (πολυ-). They correspond to the way of non-being on the one hand, and of mortal uncertainty and searching on the other. Of the three words τροπος, ἄτροπος, πολύτροπος only the first has any real existence.

17. Yamakawa, Hideya. 2008. Visible and Invisible in Greek Philosophy. Lanham: University Press of America.

Chapter 5: Dual Truth, Parmenides and Nāgārjuna, pp. 67-79.

"The “ἀλήθεια” (alétheia) was, for Parmenides, nothing other than the very thing that he discovered and gave it a name “τὸ ἐὸν” (to eon) for the first time. To eon is, according to Parmenides, the alétheia.

The denomination of a novel concept like that of ‘to eon’ inevitably forces one to grapple with a traditional system of language, to which s/he is necessitated to conform and under which everything that is already known is comprised.

The language presupposes necessarily a whole of conventional things that has been traditionally established by social consensus or surroundings.(1) It is an original field where the so-called Urdoxa casts its anchor.(2) The words of a language qua language are fully charged with various preconceptions imposed by collective usage that may conceal and pervert the real state of things; the unconcealed state of the things, namely the a-/étheia as ‘un-concealed-ness’ (Unverborgenheit).(3)

In order to reveal the real state of things (alétheia), one must un-cover the veil of concealed facts." (p. 67)

(...)

"About 2500 years ago, Parmenides the Eleatic, a Western philosopher, went along this way to alétheia, and came back again to the native land of mortals (brotoi) in order to tell them the truth of to eon in human language; namely in the so-called Doxa-language.

By the way, contrasting with Parmenides’ case, it is very interesting that, in the second and third centuries A. D., Nagarjuna, another philosopher in the East, followed a very similar way of negation. He too preached to people on the doctrine of dual truth, namely truth relating to worldly convention (samvrtisatya) on the one hand and truth in terms of ultimate fruit (paramarthatya) on the other hand.

Both philosophers’ motives and ways of thinking are so strikingly similar one another that their theories of dual truth, which are originally based on a kind of divine revelation or religious experience,(5) will be worthy of comparison." (pp- 67-68)

(1) See J. O. Gasset, The Origin of Philosophy, W. W. Norton & Company Inc. New York, 1967., 60-1: “Language is precisely something not created by the individual but something that is found by him, previously established by his social environs, his tribe, polis, city, or nation.’

(2) Here I have in my mind the Husserlian conception of “Lebenswelt” as a basic and universal belief of one’s particular experiences. Cf. E. Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, 32.

(3) Cf. M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 8 ed. Tubingen, Niemeyer, 1957, 33. See also Seidel, G.J., Martin Heidegger and the Pre-Socratics, An Introduction to his Thought, University of Nebraska Press/Lincoln, 1964. 45-46.

(5) For Parmenides’ religious connotations, cf. the fragment 1 and see also my book Kodai Girisia no Shisou (Ancient Greek Thought) Kodan-sha, 1993.

18. ———. 2021. "The Bottom of Parmenides’s ΠΕΡΙ ΦΥΣΕΩΣ." In The Poetry in Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Christos C. Evangeliou, edited by Mitsis, Philip and Reid, Heather L., 57-98. Fonte Aretusa: Parnassos Press.

"I. KATA ΠANT ATH

[I1] I reject the text “κατὰ πάντ’ ἄστη” at Parmenides B1.3 in Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (the 3rd-6th Editions) as well as all other revisions so far proposed and adopt the original letters in the manuscript N as they are.

Walter Burkert left us his English version3 of the well-known article “Proömium des Parmenides und die Katabasis des Pythagoras.”4 He says in its preface that: “In the well-cultivated fields of classical philology, real progress is rare; […] one mis-spelled word in Parmenides’s proem (line 3) has not found its definitive correction, in spite of specialists’ exertions for more than a hundred years”." (p. 57)

"[I4] In order to recover the lost honor of the proposition (b) [*], let me read the lines of N afresh. Below is the original text in N:(35)

I translate the above three lines as follows:

The mares that carry me, as far as ever my yearning spirit might reach, were sending me, once they stepped and set me on the much resounding way of the goddess (ἐς ὁδὸν... πολύφημον... δαίμονος), that carries (φέρει) the man of knowledge (εἰδότα φῶτα)36 over (κατὰ) all the heads (πάντ’ <ἀνδρῶν> <κράατα> [neuter plural accusative]) blinded <ἀαθέντα> by Ate (ἄτῃ =Ἄτῃ [causal dative]).’

The corpus of extant Greek poetry from Homer to Euripides contains ‘ΑΤΗ’ 169 times besides Parmenides’s case: Homer 26, Hesiod 6, Solon 4, Alcaeus 1, Ibycus 1, Theognis 7, Pindar 5, Aeschylus 48, Sophocles 40, Euripides 31.37 While twenty cases among them employ the dative case of ‘ἄτη,’ I have detected four cases using the causal dative,38 which testify to the appropriateness of “ἄτῃ” (=Ἄτῃ) in the context of fr. 1.3." (pp. 65-66)

(3) Walter Burkert, “Parmenides’ Proem and Pythagoras’ Descent,” trans. Joydeep Bagchee, in Philosophy and Salvation in Greek Religion, ed. Vishwa Adluri (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 85-116, 85-6.

(4) Walter Burkert, "Das Proömium Des Parmenides Und Die ‘Katabasis‘ Des Pythagoras“ Phronesis 14.1 (1969): 1-30.

(5) Burkert in “Vorwort to Hermann Diels,“ Parmenides Lehrgedicht (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 2003),(...)

(35) Sextus Empiricus, Codex Laur. 85.19. f. 124v (from Coxon, The Fragments of Parmenides).

[*] (b) The text ἄτη is not meaningless, therefore it should not be revised.

19. Yildiz, Arif. 2020. "Hegel’s Critique of Parmenides in the Science of Logic." Arkhe-Logos. Journal of Philosophy no. 10.

Abstract: "Parmenides plays an important role in the first section of Hegel’s Science of Logic due to his definition of being as a pure thought-determination.

This article investigates, first, how Hegel conceives the Parmenidean being.

Secondly, by discussing Hegel's logical analysis of pure being and pure nothing, it aims to show why and how such conception of being, according to Hegel, provides a crucial insight into the function of the understanding."

20. Younesie, Mostafa. 2021. "Parmenides on the True and Right Names of Being." Open Journal for Studies in Philosophy no. 5:1-18.

Abstract: "Parmenides as a knowing mortal (F I. 3) writes a philosophical-poetic account of a travelogue in which distinctive voices (F. 2) that are a mixture of myth and logos come out of an unnamed goddess (F I. 23) who didactically speaks with an unnamed young man as her direct listener and addressee (F II. 1) in order to reveal for him different spheres and routes (F II. 2) of inquiry about a specific referent. In the hybrid and tailored account of the immortal about a specific subject-matter, such as being, we can read different approaches of the thoughtful mortals through the narration of the goddess, and the idea of the immortal herself. And exactly when thoughtful mortals want to introduce their thinking and understanding of the “referent” in human lingual terms they appeal to the act of naming and making names, though there is no explicit account by the immortal about her approach for lingual expressing of the referent. Such an account gives us some useful and distinctive hints about Parmenides’ conception as a mortal about naming/names which makes his conception in a specific position in regard to the other pertinent and close words, such as ἔπος/ἔπεα, ῥῆμα, ἔργον, καλεῖν, λόγος and Presocratic thinkers like Heraclitus, Democritus, and Empedocles. According to the immortal’s account, in relation to naming and names thoughtful mortals can be classified mainly into two groups: (1) Those who are in Aletheia are informed of the distinctive features of the referent that is a “totality” and should be able to make “true” names for it but fail (F8. 38-39). If they succeeded, then their naming and names are true/ ἀληθῆ; and (2) those who are in Doxa think to know the features of the referent that is a “dual” and accordingly thoughtful mortals make names. Though all of names that are made are not unacceptable, one set is acceptable/χρεών (F 8. 54). As a result, we can infer that if Parmenides as a thoughtful mortal wants to express his thought about eon in lingual terms, he should appeal to naming and making names for they have specific dynamis (F IX. 2—a term that appears in Plato’s Cratylus 394b) in communicating the nature of any specific referent. The first best situation or Aletheia is where on the basis of his “knowledge”, he can communicate the distinctive features of eon in names and thereby make “true” names. Besides, there is the second best or Doxa, where he can communicate his “beliefs” about the essence and essential features of eon in names and make “acceptable” names."

21. Young, Tyler. 2006. "Perceiving Parmenides: A Reading of Parmenides of Elea's Philosophy by Way of the Proem." Dionysius no. 24:21-44.

Abstract: "Parmenides' poem must be read as a whole, beginning with the proem and seeing it as a basis for approaching the entirety of the work. Analysis of Homer's Odyssey and Hesiod's Theogony shows that Parmenides' poem is a masterpiece of allusion, and that the proem establishes a method and imagery by which the following two sections can be read both independently and in relation to each other. Examination of the Way of Doxa in the second part of the poem provides the opportunity for an explication of Parmenides' cosmology and theology and demonstrates that the Doxa is necessary to his philosophy. The heart of his thesis lies in the juxtaposition of the two ways. The Way of Truth in the third part stands as a succinct statement of the nature of Reality and its relation to human experience."

22. Zeller, Eduard. 1881. A History of Greek Philosophy from the earliest Period to the time of Socrates. London: Longman, Green and Co.

With a General Introduction (pp. 1-183),

Translated by S. F. Alleyne in two volumes from the German fourth edition of: Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, Leipzig: R. Reisland, 1876-1882.

On Parmenides: vol. I, pp. 580-608.

"The great advance made by the Eleatic philosophy in Parmenides ultimately consists in this, that the unity of all Being, the fundamental idea of the Eleatics, was apprehended by him in a much more definite manner than by Xenophanes, and that it was based upon the concept of Being. Xenophanes, together with the unity of the world-forming force or deity, had also maintained the unity of the world; but he had not therefore denied either the plurality or the variability of particular existences. Parmenides shows that the All in itself can only be conceived as One, because all that exists is in its essence the same. But for this reasonhe will admit nothing besides this One to be a reality. Only Being is: non-Being can as little exist as it can be expressed or conceived; and it is the greatest mistake, the most incomprehensible error, to treat Being and non-Being, in spite of their undeniable difference, as the same. This once recognised, everything else follows by simple inference." (pp. 580-585, notes omitted)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliographie des études en Français sur Parménide A - E

Bibliographie

1. Année, Magali. 2010. "Le verbe « être » de Parménide: elaboration strategique d'une entité linguistique infaillible." Antiquorum Philosophia :75-97.

;"Au il d’une analyse structurelle, sémantique et morphologique des fragments, centrée sur l’énonciation du verbe être, j’essaierai de mettre en évidence que la fonction primordiale de la construction de ce verbe est, avant toutes choses, d’instituer la parole kosmologique du poète-savant en une parole d’autorité infaillible. Comme l’a dit J. Bollack de l’oeuvre d’Empédocle, il faut considérer le poème parménidien comme «une ample épopée, savante et visionnaire», mais discursive et parénétique, et non pas «narrative et didactique».(1) Car le verbe être que Parménide invente semble être au coeur d’une véritable stratégie d’énonciation visant plus à instaurer qu’à transmettre un savoir." (p. 79)

(...)

"Il ressort donc de ces remarques sur les emplois du pronom-adjectif τὸ et de la négation, que le discours de Parménide n’est pas tout entier tourné vers la construction d’un substantif contenant en germes le «concept» de l’être. Il donne plutôt l’impression d’élaborer un verbe être aux variations paradigmatiques sans limites, un verbe être métamorphique capable de se manifester n’importe où, un verbe être original, spécialement conçu pour et par le poème, dont la valeur n’a de sens que le temps de la profération du poème, ain d’assurer une assise infaillible à la parole même du poète-savant.(2)" (p. 82)

(1) 1 Cf. Bollack 1965-1969, p. 7. J’ai volontairement substitué «discursive» à son «narrative».

(2) Indépendamment de la question de la ixation écrite du poème dans sa forme déinitive, il est très probable que celui-ci a été destiné à une communication orale, visant un auditoire particulier. On sait, à en croire Aristote, que Parménide aurait eu pour maître Xénophane (Métaphysique A 5, 986 b 22, ὁ γὰρ Παρμενίδης τούτου λέγεται γενέσθαι μαθητής). Au sujet de l’inluence profonde de ce dernier sur la formation philosophique de Parménide, voir Mogyoródi 2006. Or, Xénophane est aussi connu pour les élégies qu’il a composées. Si les poèmes savants avaient pour cadre une «école», leur prononciation devant un «cercle d’étude» n’était peut-être pas si éloignée des performances élégiaques devant les convives de banquets. Quoi qu’il en soit, sortis du contexte pragmatique de son énonciation, le poème de Parménide et ses échafaudages linguistiques perdent sinon tout leur sens, du moins toute leur eicacité. Même si la vérité des fragments n’était certainement pas destinée à l’oubli, comme ce pouvait être le cas pour un texte de tragédie, puisque leur vérité repose justement, comme on va le voir, sur la continuité fondamentale du λόγος, j’oserai parler ici, pour emprunter un terme cher à Fl. Dupont (2001, notamment p. 25), d’une certaine «insignifiance» du verbe être.

Références

Bollack, J. 1965-1969, Empédocle , i, ii, iii, Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit; Gallimard, 1992.

Dupont Florence 2001, L’insignifiance tragique, Paris, Gallimard.

Mogyoródi Emese 2006, Xenophanes’ epistemology and Parmenides’ quest for knowledge, dans M. M. Sassi (éd.), La costruzione del discorso filosofico nell’età dei Presocratici = The Construction of Philosophical Discourse in the Age of Presocratics , Pisa, Edizioni della Normale, pp. 123-160.

2. ———. 2012. Fragments. Poème . Paris: Vrin.

;Texte et traduction de Magali Année; précedé de Énoncer le verbe être (pp. 9-146).

"L’élaboration singulière du verbe être, dans le poème dt Parménide, qui a dû frapper jusqu’à ses contemporain· mêmes, participe vraisemblablement d’un tel fonctionnement. Son déploiement tant syntaxique que sémantique et morphologique lui confère indéniablement une place fondamentale, partant un rôle clé, dans l’économie du discours d'ensemble. Ce qu’on désigne habituellement comme I’« ontologie» de Parménide, et que je me contenterai d’appeler « développement sur l’être», constitue, en effet, la première partie d’une longue composition poétique dont la seconde partie, beaucoup plus importante, dépend. S’il est vrai comme le prétend P. Aubenque, que «personne n’a jamar contesté que l’interprétation de la première partie commandait celle de la seconde»(1), il n’est, à ma connaissance, que J. Bollack(2), qui ait proposé d’y voir le moyen stratégique de fonder un discours kosmologique à partir d’un langage concentré sur lui-même. De fait, les emplois du verbe être dans chacune de ses réalisations morphologiques différentes, incitent d’eux-mêmes à une approche purement linguistique du poème, loin de la «surdétermination philosophique» qui empêche d’aborder le texte qui nous est parvenu avec innocence(3). Car la pensée qu’on y découvre, ne s’élabore fondamentalement que par le discours en train de se faire. Aussi laisserai-je volontairement de côté et le sens et la pensée «ontologiques» du verbe être, qui accompagnent certainement(4) son emploi dans le poème parménidien, pour me concentrer sur la fonction énonciative que ses valeurs sémantiques et son amplitude morphologique semblent signaler au destinataire comme autant d’indices linguistiques." (pp. 15-17, certaines notes ont été omises)

(1) Cf. Aubenque, 1987, p. 103.

(2) Dans son article de 1957, il montre déjà que le fragment 4 et le fragment 16, appartenant tous deux au discours kosmologique, se complètent parfaitement pour mettre en évidence la cohérence du tout. La kosmologie parménidienne refléterait au sein de l’apparence l’unité de l’être définie dans la première partie, et rendrait ainsi possible une expérience commune de l’être « au-delà des noms qui cachent ce qui est ». Voir Bollack 1957, en particulier, p. 64-65 et 70.

(3) Cf. Wersinger 2008, p. 14.

Références

Aubenque (P.) 1987, « Syntaxe et sémantique de l’être dans le pi temo de Parménide », dans P. Aubenque (dir.), Études sur Parménide. Problèmes d’interprétation , t. Il, Paris, J. Vrin, 1987, p. 102-111.

Bollack (J.) 1957, «Sur deux fragments de Parménide (4 et 16)», Revue des Études Grecques, 70,1957, p. 56-71.

Wersinger (A.-G.) 2008, La sphère et l’intervalle. Le schème de I'Harmonie dans la pensée des anciens Grecs d’Homère à Platon. Grenoble, Jérôme Millon, 2008.

3. ———. 2013. "Parménide. Recommencer le verbe être." Les Études philosophiques :463-491.

;"« Recommencer », c’est peut-être justement le propre du verbe être parménidien.

« Toujours recommencé », un peu comme la mer de Valéry, mais linguistiquement seulement, c’est-à-dire « énoncé » une nouvelle fois, pour reprendre le titre de l’ouvrage qu’il s’agit ici de présenter et, en quelque sorte, de continuer : Parménide. Fragments, Poème , précédé de Énoncer le verbe être (Paris, Vrin, « Bibliothèque des textes philosophiques », 2012). Les lignes qui suivent, en effet, ont ceci de particulier qu’elles ne doivent pas s’entendre autrement que comme la restitution de la présentation qui a été prononcée dans le cadre du Séminaire « présocratique » du Centre Léon Robin, le 29 juin 2013. Elles n’ont de sens, autrement dit, qu’en tant que simple explicitation, ou justification, des intentions et de l’approche qui furent les miennes au moment de la rédaction du commentaire et de la traduction qui constituent ce livre." (p. 463)

4. ———. 2019. "Discours en creux et négation de la négation. Quelques objections à la ‘sémantique de la disjonction’ et au principe d’ ‘incompatibilité sémique’ " In Eleatica Vol. 7: Parmenide: tra linguistica, letteratura e filosofia = Parménides: entre lingüística, literatura y filosofía , edited by Berruecos Frank, Bernardo and Giombini, Stefania, 121-134. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

;"S’agissant d’un artisan-professionnel de la langue comme le fut Parménide – et comme le furent avant et après lui la plupart des poètes et savants de l’époque archaïque, «autant poètes que penseurs de la nature et de l’esprit humain»(1) – l’‘expérience’ linguistique que propose Alberto Bernabé au commencement de sa 2e leçon et qu’il poursuit dans la 3e, ne peut qu’être en tout point profitable. Comme les sessions d’Eleatica en sont l’une des plus belles illustrations, le poème de Parménide, sans doute plus que tout autre, ouvre la voie à une infinité d’interprétations, parfois radicalement contraires, mais toujours nécessairement complémentaires. Suivant l’esprit d’ouverture et d’échange qui caractérise ces sessions, je n’hésiterai donc pas à y participer à contre sens – en adoptant un point de vue linguistique παλίντροπος qui, outre qu’il me semble mieux adapté aux dictions savantes et poétiques de l’époque archaïque, se trouve être en accord avec certains aspects de la composition du poème, à commencer par celle de B 6, 8-9. " (p. 121)

(1) Cf. Sassi 2015 [“Parmenides and Empedocles on Krasis and Knowledge”, Apeiron , October 2015), pp. 1-19], p. 16, à propos de Parménide et d’Empédocle «having addressed the issue of the conditions of knowledge as poets, students of nature, and philosophers of mind».

5. Aubenque, Pierre, ed. 1987. Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation . Paris: Vrin.

;Table des matières:

Première partie: Parménide.

Néstor Luis Cordero: L'histoire du texte de Parménide p. 3; Lambros Couloubaritsis: Les multiples chemins de Parménide p. 25; Rémi Brague: La vraisemblance du faux: Parménide fr. I, 31-32 p. 44; Coloman Viola: Aux origines de la gnoséologie: réflexions sur le sens du fr. IV du Poème de Parménide p. 69; Pierre Aubenque: Syntaxe et sémantique de l'être dans le Poème de Parménide p. 102; Denis O'Brien: L'être et l'éternité p. 135; Barbara Cassin: Le chant des Sirènes dans le Poème de Parménide: quelques remarques sur le fr. VIII, 26-33 p. 163; Jürgen Wiesner: Überlegungen zu Parmenides, fr. VIII, 34 p. 170; Jean Frère: Parménide et l'ordre du monde: fr. VIII, 50-61 p. 192.

Deuxième partie: La tradition de Parménide.

Monique Dixsaut: Platon et le logos de Parménide p. 215; Guillaume Rocca-Serra: Parménide chez Diogène Laërce p. 254; Robert Muller: Euclide de Mégare et Parménide p. 274; Barbara Cassin et Michel Narcy: Parménide sophiste: la citation aristotélicienne du fr. XVI p. 277; Christian Guérard: Parménide d'Élée chez les Néoplatoniciens p. 294; Denis O'Brien: Problèmes d'établissement du texte: la transmission du Poème dans l'Antiquité p. 314.

Index. 1. Index des passages de Parménide p. 353; 2. Index des passages cités d'auteurs anciens p. 359; 3. Index des auteurs modernes p. 371.

6. ———. 1987. "Syntaxe et sémantique de l'être dans le Poème de Parménide." In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation , edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 102-134. Paris: Vrin.

;"On voudrait s'efforcer ici de répondre à une question simple, mais probablement décisive: de quoi s'agit-il dans le Poème de Parménide? (...)" (p. 102)

(...)

"Donc l'être, et non d'abord l'unité. Mais pourquoi l'être?

Pour répondre à la question du pourquoi, on en est réduit à des conjectures, car aucun texte conservé ne justifie explicitement le choix de Parménide. Mais ne pas se poser la question serait considérer comme allant de soi un choix qui ne s'imposait pas absolument, puisque Parménide aura été pendant longtemps le seul à le faire. Il faut, si difficile que ce soit après vingt-trois siècles de métaphysique, réactiver l'étonnement devant le fait que, avec Parménide, la philosophie se soit constituée pour la première fois comme ontologie, et non physiologie, cosmologie, théologie ou même hénologie.

De surcroît, un certain nombre d'indices convergents permettent peut- être d'apporter à la question du pourquoi un début plausible de réponse. Nous rangerons ces indices sous cinq rubriques, en mentionnant à chaque fois le très petit nombre d'interprètes qui ont pu nous précéder sur cette voie." (pp. 108-109)

7. Badiou, Alain. 2014. Parménide : l'être 1, figure ontologique, 1985 . Paris: Fayard.

;Texte établi par Véronique Pineau.

"On peut présenter aussi simplement que possible les trois propositions principales de la façon suivante :

- Proposition 1 : Parménide fonde la philosophie en proposant un noeud entièrement nouveau entre trois concepts, celui d'être, celui de pensée et celui de non-être.

- Proposition 2 : ce noeud est borroméen. Ce qui veut dire que chacun des trois termes n'est lié à un autre que par le troisième. Centralement, que le noeud soit borroméen signifie que, pour Parménide, l'être n'est lié à la pensée par une relation identitaire (l'être est « le même » que la pensée) qu'autant qu'intervient le troisième terme, le non-être, sous la forme d'un acte : l'acte d'en interdire la pensée.

- Proposition 3 : si tout cela relève de la philosophie et non du récit mythique (où il est souvent question, en Égypte comme en Inde, d'être et de non-être), c'est parce que, bien que proposé sous la forme d'un poème et comportant des éléments de récit sacré, le texte de Parménide, pour la première fois, se soutient, quant à ses propositions principales, d'un mathème: le raisonnement par l'absurde.

Ainsi, la méthode de ce séminaire consiste bel et bien à tenter de démontrer qu'il y a de sérieuses raisons de tenir Parménide pour le fondateur d'une discipline nouvelle, non parce qu'il a vaticiné sur l'être et le non-être, comme le firent de nombreuses mythologies, mais parce qu'il a convoqué dans cette vaticination poétique son contraire, à savoir la rigueur universelle absolue des procédures mathématico-logiques qui, au même moment, trouvaient en Grèce leur forme définitive. Et ce, d'une double façon : topologie d'un noeud d'une part, structure logique du raisonnement apagogique de l'autre." (p. 6)

8. Battistini, Yves. 1955. Trois presocratiques: Héraclite, Parménide, Empédocle . Paris: Gallimard.

;Deuxième édition augmentée avec le titre Trois Présocratiques , Paris: Gallimard, 1968.

9. Beaufret, Jean. 1971. "Héraclite et Parménide." L'Herne no. 15:152-161.

;Repris dans J. Beaufret, Dialogue avec Heidegger. Philosophie grecque, Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1973 pp. 38-51 (sur Parménide, pp. 45-51).

Traduction en Anglais : Dialogue with Heidegger. Greek Philosophy, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006, pp. 20-31.

"Si le monde dit présocratique est riche en figures originales, Héraclite et Parménide sont les figures les plus radieusement centrales de ce monde. Car, avec Héraclite et Parménide, c'est la fondation même de la pensée occidentale qui s'accomplit. C'est à eux que remonte comme au secret de la source ce qu'il y a d'encore vivant et de toujours vivace au fond de nos pensées.

On peut dire que c'est par eux que nous pensons, même si nous ne pensons pas à eux, car ils sont la lumière où se révèle initialement la profondeur de notre monde, profondeur que nous ne cessons d'être et qui, cependant, nous demeure d'autant plus énigmatique et ainsi d'autant mieux réservée que nous lui appartenons davantage au plus intime de notre histoire jusqu'ici advenue et encore à advenir." (p. 38)

"Si Parménide est le penseur de l'être, comprenons maintenant que cette pensée de l'être ne porte pas plus ombrage au changement que la pensée du changement, tel que le conçoit Héraclite, n'ébranle une permanence fondamentale. Le mouvement n'apparaît à Héraclite que sur fond de permanence, et, lorsque Parménide pense face au non-être la permanence de l'être, c'est comme horizon immuable de la présence-absence qui est l'essence de tout changement. Loin donc qu'Héraclite et Parménide surgissent l'un contre l'autre dès l'aurore comme les champions d'une polémique inaugurale, peut-être sont-ils l'un et l'autre, malgré la différence de leurs paroles, à l'écoute d'un même λόγος auquel ils prêtent l'un comme l'autre une même oreille à l'origine de la pensée occidentale. Au fond, il n'y a peut-être pas plus d'immobilisme dans le Poème de Parménide qu'il n'y a de mobilisme dans les fragments d'Héraclite, ou plutôt permanence et changement sont aussi bien des deux côtés. Ainsi les deux langages divergent sans cependant se contrarier, exposant tous les deux le savoir grec de l'être, ce savoir être qui se déploie dans l'élément de la présence sans rien forcer ni tourmenter, sans esquiver ni se crisper, sans compromis ni démesure." (p. 50).

10. Bollack, Jean. 1957. "Sur deux fragments de Parménide (4 et 16)." Revue des Études Grecques no. 70:56-71.

;Résumé : "Par l'étude grammaticale du fragment 4, l'auteur cherche à montrer que les vers appartiennent à la deuxième partie du poème, réservée aux Opinions, et que l'exhortation qu'on y trouve formulée concerne l'expérience de notre univers, et non la contemplation de l'Être vrai. Ces vers doivent donc être rapprochés du fragment 16, où il convient de donner à πλέον le sens de « plein » (et non de « prédominant »). Les deux textes réunis font valoir les prédicats de continuité, de cohérence et de plénitude, qui reviendraient à une forme d'être saisissable dans l'univers des choses devenues. L'étude des deux fragments forme ainsi une contribution au problème, essentiel pour la compréhension du poème de Parménide, des liens qui unissent les deux parties de l'oeuvre, l'Être et les apparences."

11. ———. 1990. "La cosmologie parménidéenne de Parménide." In Herméneutique et Ontologie. Hommage à Pierre Aubenque , edited by Brague, Rémi and Courtine, Jean-François, 17-53. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

12. ———. 2000. "La langue rencontre son objet. L'exorde du poème de Parménide." Dédale no. 11:434-442.

13. ———. 2006. "Parménide, un auteur." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 24:45-49.

;"La forme littéraire qu'a choisie Parménide pour s'exprimer, l'hexa mètre, a autant occupé les esprits que la contradiction construite entre les deux parties du poème, que l'on a cru énoncée comme une aporie par l'auteur lui-même. Le recours à la langue de l'épopée paraissait inadapté, imposé, mais mal assumé.

(...)

La doxographie sur ce sujet est riche et instructive ' - à côté d'une interprétation proprement dépréciative (le rejet a souvent été violent et radical)- on trouve le plus souvent une référence faite à l'environne ment culturel, mais parfois aussi le reflet du contenu2.Le point de vue défendu ici privilégie dans la forme littéraire la création du sens. Le choix des conventions techniques, largement héritées, doit être consi déré comme une décision initiale, qui en tant que telle revêt à son tour une importance historique et culturelle." (p. 45)

(1) Voir, à titre d'exemple, l'article de Georg Wöhrl, « War Parmenides ein schlechter Dichter ? Oder : Zur Form des Wissensvermittlung in der früh griechischen Philosophie », dans W. Kullmann et J. Althoff (éds), Vermittlung und Tradierung von Wissen in der griechischen Philosophie , Tübingen, 1993,pp.167-180. 2. Voir Lambros Couloubaritsis, Mythe et Philosophie chez Parménide , Bruxelles, 1986, rattachant la forme et la démarche à « une transmutation profonde du mythe archaïque » (p. 252). Voir aussi sa présentation du problème tel qu'il a été traité dans la critique (la section « Le mythe du philosophe », pp. 129-133, et ailleurs.

14. ———. 2006. Parménide: de l'étant au monde . Lagrasse: Verdier.

;"La familiarité avec le texte et avec l’histoire de la critique ma fortement soutenu, mais la relecture que je propose et le système qui s’y ébauche reposent autant, sinon davantage, sur une mise en question; c’est le propre d’un nouveau départ sur de nouvelles bases. Les certitudes anciennes y trouvent la place qui leur revenait. Les interprétations d’autres poètes anciens, Homère, Hésiode ou les tragiques, et autant de poètes modernes, m’ont beaucoup aidé et appris à mieux lire. La table n’est pas rase, mais on apprend à faire comme si c’était le cas. Il y a de quoi lire, mais il importe autant de recomposer librement, à la place de l’auteur, ce qu’on n’a pas Verbatim, en se servant de la logique qu’on est parvenu par ailleurs à reconstituer. Si l’on s’entend sur cette obligation, on pourra faire d’autres progrès. J’ai essayé d’aller le plus loin possible sur la base de ce travail, sans me laisser effrayer par les lacunes et les pertes. On tente l’impossible et on a les moyens de s’aventurer avec ce qui se trouve déjà quasi archéologiquement repéré." (pp. 8-9)

15. Bollack, Jean, and Wissman, Heinz. 1974. "Le moment théorique: Parménide fr. 8,42 - 49." Revue de Sciences Humaines no. 39:203-212.

16. Boussoulas, Nicolas-Isidore. 1964. "La structure du mélange dans la pensée de Parménide." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale :1-13.

;"II semble de primea bord très difficiled e parler de mélange chez Parménide.

En effet, chez un penseur pour qui, en dehors de l'Être, il n'existe rien d'autre, comment déceler la moindre trace d'une intuition des mixtes ?

Et pourtant, à y voir de plus près, il existe dans le poème parménidien l'entité de la mixtion, dans sa seconde aussi bien que dans sa première partie, qui nous décrit l'Être absolu.

Mais pour détecter cette structure, il serait plus efficace de commencer par la deuxième partie du poème, celle qui traite des Opinions, pour s'acheminer par la suite vers la première partie, purement ontologique.

Et tout d'abord, nous ne pensons pas que la partie traitant de la Physique n'ait absolument rien à faire a vec la Vérité.(1)'"

(...)

"II y aurait chez Parménide la même différence entre le domaine de l'Ontologique et celui du Physique que celle existant chez Platon relativement à ces deux ordres : dans le Tintée, l'Être est taxé de vérité, tandis que tout ce qui concerne le devenir relève de l'opinion ; en d'autres termes, du probable et du vraisemblable."

(...)

"Et maintenant, après ces quelques remarques préliminaires, lisons attentivement cette deuxième partie du poème. Nous constatons aussitôt qu'elle est presque entièrement dominée par l'idée du Mélange." (pp. 1-2)

(1) Cf., par exemple, J. Burnet : L'Aurore de la Philosophie grecque ,p. 213.

17. Brague, Rémi. 1987. "La vraisemblance du faux (Parménide, Fr. I, 31-32)." In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation , edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 44-68. Paris: Vrin.

;Repris dans Rémi Brague, Introduction au monde grec. Études d'histoire de la philosophie , Chatou: Les Éditions de la Transparence 2005 (Édition revue 2008), pp. 101-142.

"Les deux derniers vers du premier fragment de Parménide, qui contient le prologue de son poème ontologique et cosmologique, comptent parmi les plus ardus et les plus âprement discutés de son oeuvre, ou de ce qui nous en est parvenu. Le fait est d'autant plus regrettable qu'ils constituent à l'évidence l'annonce par la déesse qui instruit le poète-philosophe du programme qu'il lui faudra étudier, et qu'ils sont donc comme la clef de tout le poème. Malgré les efforts de beaucoup de très bons esprits, armés d'une incontestable érudition, aucune interprétation ne semble capable de recueillir l'adhésion générale. Nous aimerions intervenir dans ce débat, non pour rivaliser avec de plus savants que nous, mais pour attirer l'attention sur un fait nouveau, résultat des travaux de ceux-ci, mais qui ne nous semble pas avoir été remarqué comme il le mériterait.

Il nous semble en effet que les efforts des philologues et des philosophes ont abouti, il y a un peu plus de dix ans, à une situation herméneutique nouvelle et simplifiée. Avant cette date, les interprétations les plus variées de ces deux vers semblaient pouvoir être admises, au moins en principe. Ce n'est, à notre avis, plus le cas. Les arguments en sont venus, nous semble-t-il, à s'annuler les uns les autres, de façon à exclure toutes les possibilités d'interprétation. Une telle situation d'aporie, si elle doit s'avérer définitive, impose un réexamen d'ensemble de la question. Nous nous proposons donc de mettre en évidence les obstacles infranchissables que rencontre toute tentative d'interprétation, avant de proposer une solution." (p. 44)

18. Bredlow, Luis André. 2011. "La théologie des passions dans le poème de Parménide (frs. 12-13 D-K)." In Figures de la passion et de l'amour , edited by Chateua, Dominique and Salabert, Pierre, 91-107. Paris: L'Harmattan.

;"La tradition classique de la philosophie grecque — dont nous sommes héritiers, de bon ou mauvais gré, et même sans le savoir — a marqué les passions du double stigmate de la réduction à l’intériorité de l’individu et de la relégation à un niveau inférieur de la vie consciente." (p. 91)

(...)

"Mais il fut un temps, pas très éloigné de l’époque de Platon et d’Aristote, où ce que nous appelons les passions de l’âme était conçu comme des divinités vivantes, objet du culte des communautés humaines, et dont le pouvoir, vivifiant ou destructeur, loin de demeurer renfermé dans l’intimité de l’âme individuelle, se répandait sur l’ensemble du monde naturel. C’est la situation que nous trouvons chez Hésiode, parfois encore chez les poètes tragiques, et un peu partout dans le folklore et les coutumes religieuses des Grecs. Pourtant, je préfère me concentrer ici sur un bref commentaire des fragments « théologiques » de Parménide d’Élée (frs. 12-13 Diels-Kranz) : c’est, certes, un document — hélas ! — très fragmentaire, mais qui a l’avantage de nous laisser entrevoir le surprenant degré de systématisation que ce complexe diffus de croyances et de pratiques avait acquis dans ses formulations les plus mûres." (p. 92)

19. Briand, Michel. 2020. "Pindare et Parménide, poètes et penseurs jeux de métaphores et effets pragmatiques." Dialogues d'histoire ancienne no. 46:75-104.

;Résumé : "Pindare et Parménide, poètes et penseurs : jeux de métaphores et effets pragmatiques. Aidée des notions de cognition incarnée et métaphore conceptuelle, l’analyse porte sur l’interaction entre jeux de langage et pensée ou imagination et connaissance, dans la poésie de Pindare et dans la philosophie de Parménide, par exemple : le char des Muses et la voie du poète et de son chant (Parménide, fr. 1, 2, 3, 8, et Pindare, dans une trentaine de cas, dont l’Olympique 6) ; les figures synesthésiques du regard et de la lumière, où Parménide, fr. 1, 4, 7 à 12, 14, rappelle la poétique pindarique de l’éclat ; des maximes sur la meilleure manière de sentir, penser, agir (Parménide, fr. 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8 ; Pindare, par exemple Pythique 2, 72 ou 3, 61-62). On trouve ici en germe une distinction poésie/philosophie, mais riche d’analogies primordiales."

20. Brisson, Luc. 1990. "Remarques sur les études parménidiennes en France." Revue des Études Grecques no. 103:684-692.

;"L·ouvrage dédié à la mémoire de Pierre-Maxime Schuhl. est le plus important. sur Parménide depuis très longtemps : deux tomes totalisant. plus de 700 pages et comprenant le texte grec., une traduction française et une traduction anglaise des fragments du Poème. traduction annotée et complétée par un Essai critique et par quinze études résultant des travaux du Centre Léon Robin.

(...)

"L'index des mots grecs est un modèle à suivre. On y trouve les 1147 mot.s qui subsistent du Poème de Parménide. Les différentes formes d'un mème vocable sont indiquées; quelquefois mème, ces formes sont accompagnét•s de renmarques grammaticales qui indiquent le choix du traducteur." (pp. 684-685)

(...)

"Que dire sur l'ensemble de cet important travail'? Une fois de plus, il ne saurait être question d'entrer dans les détails. Je ne ferai donc que quelques remarques, et je formulerai une idée que je développerai et dont j'essaierai de tirer tout.es les conséquences.

Alors que le premier tome constitue dans son ensemble et pour ce qui est de son orientation générale une critique des positions, des présupposés et des orientations analytiques de G.E.L. Owen en particulier et de !'École philosophique d'Oxford en général, une critique qui ne peut s'empêcher d'adopter la méthode argumentative de ceux qu'elle vise, le second se trouve surtout sous l'influence d'une herméneutique d'inspiration heideggerienne, un Heidegger représenté par .J. Beaufret. En fait, cette dualité reflète plus généralement la ligne de partage qui s'est institutée ces dernières années, en France, entre les chercheurs en philosophie grecque." (p. 691)

(1) Éludes sur Parménide , puhlièes sous la direction de Pierre Aubenque, Ribliothèque dìHistoire de la Philosophie. tome I : l..e Poème de Parménide. texte, traduction, essai critique par Denis O'Brien en collahoration avec .Jean Frère pour la traduction française. Paris (Vrin) HJ8i. XXIv+ :324 p. tome II : Problèmes d'inlerprélalion, par un groupe de chercheurs. Paris (Vrin) 1987. [IV] + 378 p.

21. Brunschwig, Jacques. 1990. "Parménide un et indivisible." In La philosophie et son histoire , edited by Vuillemin, Jules, 233-263. Paris: Odile Jacob.

22. Casertano, Giovanni. 2002. "Parménide, Platon et la vérité." In Platon source des présocratiques. Éxplorations , edited by Dixsaut, Monique and Brancacci, Aldo, 67-92. Paris: Vrin.

;"Aux origines du problème de la vérité il y a Parménide. On parle de problème car, pour claires que soient les coordonnées théorétiques dans lesquelles se situe la perspective parménidienne, il n'est pas facile, ensuite, d'en dégager la signification et les implications. Le fragment 3 (« en effet penser et être sont la même chose »), lu en dehors de tout horizon néoplatonicien ou idéaliste, nous parle seulement d'une coïncidence, ou bien d'une identité, ou bien d'une inséparabilité : mais, tandis que « penser » est facile à entendre, il est plus difficile d'entendre le champ sémantique de « être ». On sait que Parménide n'utilise pas le terme « être » pour indiquer l'objet de sa recherche mais plutôt το έόν, l'étant, « ce qui est ». Voilà le premier problème : l'être de B 3 est-il le même que τὸ έόν, ou bien indique t-il autre chose? La question se complique parce que, à côté de « ce qui est » apparaît aussi un τὸ μὴ έόν, un non-étant, « ce qui n'est pas », qui n'est, comme il est dit explicitement, possible ni à connaître ni à exprimer (B 2.7-8: οὔτε γνοίης ... οὔτε φράσαις), donc qui, évidemment, n'est pas pensable. Il y a donc une relation étroite entre la séquence : être / penser connaître / exprimer-dire, et, de façon spéculaire par rapport à celle-ci, l'autre séquence : ne pas être / ne pas penser-ne pas connaître / ne pas exprimer - ne pas dire." (p. 67)

23. Cassin, Barbara. 1980. Si Parménide. Le traité anonyme De Melisso Xenophane Gorgia. Édition critique et commentaire . Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille.

;Le Parménide de Gorgias pp. 43-75.

"«Si Parménide»: il s'agit d'ontologie, de sophistique, de doxographie. «Edition commentée du traité anonyme Sur Mélissus, Xénophane et Gorgias»: il s'agit de l'établissement d'un texte grec, de sa traduction, de leurs justifications. Du titre au sous-titre, il s'agit de philosophie et de philologie, d'un certain rapport entre elles." (p. 17)

"[Dans le Poème de Parménide] la déesse nomme pour qui les portes se sont ouvertes, les deux seuls chemins qui s'offrent à la recherche:

«L'un: que est et que n'est pas possible de n'être pas,

l'autre: que n'est pas et qu'est besoin de n'être pas».

L'énoncé de la première thèse de Gorgias [dans le traité De Melisso Xenophane Gorgia = G.], dans la reprise introduisant à sa démonstration, est littéralement identique au nom du second chemin: «n'est pas». Il ne faut pas croire pour autant que Gorgias, désobéissant délibérément à la déesse et au père Parménide, s'engage d'emblée déjà sur le chemin interdit, impraticable et qui n'aboutit pas ; rien d'une contestation aussi immédiate, primaire, et somme toute négligeable puisqu'elle donne du sophiste l'image bien connue d'un insolent blanc-bec prêt à tout pour faire le malin. Au contraire, «n'est pas» se présente explicitement comme une conséquence et le résultat d'une double démonstration. Or ces deux démonstrations constituent en elles-mêmes une interprétation du chemin du «est» tel qu'il est tracé dans le Poème et en marquent les étapes.

C'est, tout d'abord, la différence entre les deux démonstrations proposées qui est significative. La première, celle qui est propre à Gorgias, porte sur le verbe comme tel: elle prouve que «n'est pas» parce que ni «être» ni «n'être pas» ne se soutiennent en position de verbe, parce qu'il n'y a pas de verbe pour être. La seconde, démonstration référentielle qui opère en combinant les thèses des autres Eléates, porte sur le sujet : elle prouve que «n'est pas» parce que, aucun prédicat ne convenant au sujet, il n'y a pas non plus de sujet pour être. C'est donc par deux fois qu'il faut conclure «n'est pas»: parce qu'il n'est pas vrai qu'il y ait être, et parce qu'il n'est pas vrai qu'il y ait un étant pour être. La duplication produit une structure de recul, d'ailleurs caractéristique tout au long du traité de la manière de Gorgias: il n'y a pas de verbe, et quand bien même il y aurait un verbe, ce verbe n'aurait pas de sujet. Ainsi s'interprète, avec ses deux négations en renfort portant l'une sur le verbe et l'autre sur le sujet, l'énoncé inaugural de cette première thèse, impossible en vertu des règles françaises de la double négation à rendre par la formule littérale «n'est pas rien», et qu'on peut transcrire d'un : «(il) n'est (absolument) rien».

Si l'hypothèse texte contre texte est exacte, ce renchérissement démonstratif suppose à lui seul une certaine compréhension du Poème: à lire en deux temps ou trois mouvements, tels que de la position inaugurale du verbe «est» advienne, au moyen d'une prédication effective, la position seconde du sujet «l'étant».

Puis l'annonce faite par l'Anonyme de la démonstration propre à Gorgias pour la première thèse est elle aussi révélatrice d'une lecture de même type. Elle tient en une phrase: «(il) n'est pas (possible) ni (d')être ni (de) ne pas être» (2). Les parenthèses sont là pour servir d'alibi, c'est-à-dire conférer à la phrase un ailleurs, une ubiquité, l'équivoque caractéristique de la tournure grecque. Car le grec veut dire à la fois: «ni être ni pas être ne sont», «il n'est pas possible ni d'être ni de n'être pas», «ce n'est ni être ni ne pas être». Et la démonstration elle-même prouve qu'aucun de ces sens n'est à exclure, mais qu'au contraire ils découlent l'un de l'autre de façon réglée: si les deux verbes «être» et «ne pas être» ne sont pas, ils ne peuvent pas plus l'un que l'autre servir effectivement de verbe et donc «il n'est pas possible ni d'être ni de n'être pas», auquel cas, quel que soit le sujet qu'on veuille supposer, ni être ni ne pas être n'en seront les prédicats, si bien que «ce n'est ni être ni pas être».

Cet énoncé unique engage à explorer la prétendue tautologie parménidéenne, «l'être est», pour y lire non pas la fixité de l'identité stérile d'un «est» à jamais imposé, antihéraclitéisme caricatural, mais l'auto-mouvement en quelque sorte plus hégélien d'une identité vivante qui se développe dans la langue et en produit la logique comme syntaxe prédicative.

Reste à éprouver directement cette lecture-miroir, sa possibilité et son intérêt, au contact du texte du Poème." (pp. 45-47)

(1). G., 2., 1: hoti men ouk estin , «que (ce) n'est pas», reprend 28 B 2, 5 DK: hè d' hôs ouk estin : «l'autre: que n'est pas».

(2) G., 1.,1: ouk einai... ouden ; voir commentaire p. 432 s.

(3) G., 2., 19 s.

Abréviations

G. = Sur Gorgias

24. ———. 1985. "Gorgias critique de Parménide." Siculorum Gymnasium no. 38:299-310.

25. ———. 1987. "Le chant des Sirènes dans le Poème de Parménide: quelques remarques sur le fr. VIII, 26-33." In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation , edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 163-169. Paris: Vrin.

;"Le Poème de Parménide est une épopée philosophique: "Odyssée spirituelle", cette quête cognitive, menacée par l'errance, d'un être d'exception divinement guidé. La pertinence du lieu commun fondé sur l'analogie de certains motifs et thèmes comme sur l'identité formelle de l'hexamètre, devient plus pressante lorsque les parallèles terminologiques ne relèvent manifestement pas du seul phrasé épique. L'un de ces parallèles me paraît devoir retenir singulièrement l'attention; il superpose en effet l'immobilité d'Ulysse lié au mât par ses compagnons dans l'épisode des Sirènes [Odyssée, XII, 158 ss], et l'immobilité de ce qui sera la sphère, retenue par une nécessité puissante dans les liens de la limite, l'un ou l'autre 'reste ici même solidement planté dans le sol'." (p. 163)

"Odyssée et Poème servant tour à tour de propre et de métaphore ou d'allégorie l'un pour l'autre, le chant des Sirènes nous est ainsi apparu comme un miroir et donc une caricature de l'épopée dans l'épopée elle-même: Ulysse passe ligoté, préférant au bruit de sa gloire une identité minimale -- il sera reconnu de son chien en arrivant au pays. De façon parallèle, la doxa serait miroir ou caricature de l'alétheia au sein de l'alétheia elle-même, et l'étant qui lui échappe est lui aussi ligoté dans une identité minimale." (p. 169)

26. ———. 1998. Parménide. Sur la nature ou sur l'Étant: la langue de l'Être ? Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

;"Le point nodal quant à l’interprétation littérale du Poème est alors le sens et le statut de la doxa. Si, comme on le fait toujours, on retient pour derniers vers du proème, non pas ceux que donne Sextus, mais ceux que transmet Simplicius, le poids du « doxique » s’accroît considérablement. On ne peut plus croire que les « opinions des mortels » (brotôn doxas , 30), qui vont faire partie de l’enseignement de la déesse accueillante au voyageur, soient un simple repoussoir. Il faut comprendre de quelle nécessité elles relèvent, et interpréter deux autres termes de même famille, au sens plus ou moins ambigu, le participe neutre pluriel ta dokounta (31, « les choses qui paraissent / apparaissent ») et l’adverbe dokimôs (32, « comme il convient », « honnêtement », dit le Bailly, « really », « genuinely », dit le LSJ [Liddell, Scott, Jones, Ancient Greek Lexicon ]). Valeur d’abord négative (tout cela n’est que semblant), et Parménide est toujours platonicien. Valeur d’abord positive ou, au moins, ambiguë (tout cela a l’éclat de la présence), et, loin de toute « pétition de platonisme », Parménide devient « authentiquement », c’est-à-dire à la fois nietzschéennement et heideggériennement, grec. Les dokounta baignent dans l’amour de la lumière de ce monde-ci : Beaufret va jusqu’à gloser avec insolence dokounta de la plus antiplatonicienne manière par « les choses mêmes » (p. 33). La clef du rapport alêtheia / dokounta tient tout entière, conclut-il, dans « la Différence ontologique qui est le lieu originel du Poème de Parménide » (p. 53), alêtheia pour dire l’être et son dévoilement, donation-retrait, dokounta pour dire les étants et leur (ap)paraître.

Où l’on voit comment l’appréciation du sens et de la valeur de ces quelques mots implique une vision d’ensemble du poème, de son architecture et de ses articulations. On assiste même in vitro à la fabrication simultanée du texte et du sens : Parménide platonicien rationaliste, Parménide heideggérien." (pp. 18-19, une note omise)

27. Cassin, Barbara, and Narcy, Michel. 1987. "Parménide sophiste: la citation aristotélicienne du fr. XVI." In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation , edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 277-293. Paris: Vrin.

;"Certes, il peut paraître difficile de parler d'une exégèse d'Aristote à propos du fragment XVI, étant donné que les quatre vers sont cités sans commentaire, encadrés seulement d'autres citations. Mais c'est justement dans la façon dont sont présentées, agencées, ces citations, qu'il faut essayer de saisir l'interprétation." (p. 281)

28. Castelnérac, Benoît. 2014. "Le Parménide de Platon et le Parménide de l’histoire." Dialogue. Canadian Philosophical Review no. 53:435-464.

;Résumé : "Cette étude se consacre à l’exergue méthodologique du Parménide où Parménide explique comment fonctionne l’enquête dialectique. Cette méthode reprend les indications que le Parménide historique prêtait à la déesse, une méthode d’enquête qui se déploie en «pensant la voie de l’être et la voie du non-être». Dans le Parménide, ces voies de la recherche sont présentées comme la manière d’examiner une hypothèse.

Cette démarche prend des aspects d’exhaustivité : il faut se demander, en alternance et un grand nombre de fois, ce qu’il en découle si la chose en question existe ou si elle n’existe pas. Elle peut enfi n se distinguer des autres pratiques de la dialectique chez Platon."

29. ———. 2015. "Note exégétique sur le fragment 2 de Parménide (DK 28 B 2)." Revue des Études Grecques no. 128:291-308.

;Résumé : "Cette analyse textuelle du fr. 2 de Parménide (DK 28 B2) a pour principal objectif de démontrer que le verbe νοῆσαι (l. 2) doit être lu comme un infinitif actif ayant pour complément les propositions subordonnées introduites respectivement par ὅπως à la li. 3 et ὡς à la li. 5. Il est en outre suggéré que le De arte (II, 1-2), du corpus hippocratique, ainsi qu’un passage du Parménide de Platon (136a-c) ont des points communs avec le fr. 2."

30. Charles, Sébastien. 2001. "Du Parménide à Parménide." Les Études philosophiques no. 59:535-552.

;"Nous voilà parvenus à la fin de notre analyse. Nous croyons avoir bien montré en quoi le Poème de Parménide n’est pas d’ordre métaphysique mais ontologique(4) et cosmologique. Un tel travail de lecture attentive des textes peut bien entraîner une certaine déception car faire de Parménide un Présocratique avant tout, c’est lui faire perdre une dimension métaphysique dont l’histoire de la philosophie l’avait affublé et qui pouvait être, pour certains, à la source d’une véritable jouissance spéculative. Mais le travail philosophique se veut aussi effort critique pour nous débarrasser de nos illusions en général, et, parfois, de nos illusions philosophiques. Comme l’écrit André Comte-Sponville : « La vérité, pour le philosophe, prime sur le bonheur. Mieux vaut une vraie tristesse qu’une fausse joie5). » Mieux vaut un Parménide philosophe

de la nature qu’un métaphysicien anachronique. Mais cela ne nous empêche pas de faire encore de Parménide l’objet de nos recherches car tout n’est pas dit. Comme l’écrit judicieusement Heidegger : « Le dialogue avec Parménide ne prend pas fin ; non seulement parce que, dans les fragments conservés de son Poème didactique, maintes choses demeurent obscures, mais aussi parce que ce qu’il dit mérite toujours d’être pensé. Mais que le dialogue soit sans fin n’est pas un défaut. C’est le signe de l’illimité qui, en soi et pour la pensée qui se souvient, préserve la possibilité d’un revirement du destin. »(6) La métaphysique

a bel et bien une histoire, et cette histoire, pour nous, est toujours à faire ." (p. 552)

(4) Une nouvelle fois nous rappelons ici notre distinction entre métaphysique et ontologie.

Alors que l’ontologie se passe de principes transcendants (Idées, formes, etc.), la métaphysique recourt essentiellement à ce genre de concepts pour expliquer le réel. Parménide pense l’Être et non le Bien ou l’Acte pur...

(5) André Comte-Sponville, L’amour, la solitude, Vénissieux, Paroles d’Aube, 1992, p. 11.

(6) Heidegger, Essais et conférences , « Moira (Parménide, VIII, 34-41) », Paris, Gallimard, « Tel », 1993, p. 310.

31. Collobert, Catherine. 1993. L'être de Parménide, ou le refus du temps . Paris: Kimé.

;Table des matières: Préface de Marcel Conche I-VI; Avant-propos 3; Le poème de Parménide 5; Sources 7; Texte et traduction 10; Introduction 27; Première partie: La parole: dire et penser 33;

Chapitre 1: L'instauration de la parole: le chemin 35; Chapitre 2: Les chemins en question 73; Chapitre 3: L'indissolubilité du Dire et du Penser 101; Deuxième partie: Ontologie et temporalité 125; Chapitre 1: La sémantique de l'être 127; Chapitre 2: Genèse, destruction et temps 155; Chapitre 3: Les caractères et la présence permanence souveraine 197; Chapitre 4: L'étant, le non-étant et le temps 231; Conclusion 227; Bibliographie 281; Index des passages d'auteurs anciens 291; Index de noms 295-296.

"Ce travail est né de la volonté de comprendre comment, dès son origine, la pensée de l'Être s'est constituée comme refus du temps, comment "être" a cessé de signifier "devenir".

Avec Parménide, le discours philosophique, le logos, s'instaure comme parole métaphysique de l'être. L'être a pour corollaire essentiel et fondamental la négation du temps ; ce qui est dans le temps, n'est pas absolument. Vivant et mourant, nous sommes dans le non-être parménidien.

La question initiale de ce travail est la suivante:

comment Parménide, en posant que tout logos est logos de l'être, c'est-à-dire aussi que tout discours vrai est discours de l'être, a-t-il fermé les portes du logos au temps?

Pour répondre à cette question, nous avons eu recours à une analyse structurelle du poème. Nous avons donc écouté la parole parménidienne par delà les vissicitudes historiques de ses différentes interprétations.

Nous avons pensé que seule l'analyse de la construction du discours parménidien nous permettait d'entrer dans ce même discours pour en saisir toutes les difficultés et toutes ses richesses et pour tenter dans la mesure du possible de lever ces difficultés.

Nous avons, par conséquent, voulu écouter Parménide et lui seul, parce que la réponse à notre question est dans sa seule pensée. Nous avons en effet, voulu comprendre de quelle manière il a réalisé le rejet du temps de la sphère de l'Être.

La question du pourquoi aurait sans doute nécessité une autre méthode. Nous n'avons pas recherché les causes historiques de cette éviction du temps et de l'instauration du discours métaphysique.

Nous avons voulu comprendre comment s'est établie la dissociation de l'être et du temps dans le discours original, c'est-à- dire dans la pensée parménidienne ; comment finalement Parménide a-t-il rendu possible la métaphysique ?

Il fallait donc s'interroger sur la force et les ressorts de ce discours, qui a commandé, à certains égards, l'avenir de la philosophie. L'analyse de la logique gouvernant ce discours nous permettait d'accéder, selon nous, à la compréhension de la dissociation de l'être et du temps.

C'est pourquoi, nous nous sommes abstenus d'expliquer Parménide à la lumière de Platon ou d'Aristote, ces derniers ne nous étant d'aucun secours pour répondre à notre question initiale. Il ne s'agissait pas, en effet, de lire Parménide au travers de sa postérité ou des problèmes qu'il a posés à cette même postérité - même si nous avons pu éclairer Parménide de certaines lumières platoniciennes ou aristotéliciennes, notamment concernant la question du temps. Mais il faut être extrêmement prudent sur les rapprochements historiques. Et cette prudence même aurait nécessité un tout autre travail." (pp. 3-4)

"La traduction qui suit n'est pas le fruit d'un travail personnel en dehors de certains vers qui nous sont apparus déterminants pour notre interprétation, et pour lesquels nous avons cru bon de proposer notre propre traduction lorsque celle de D. O'Brien et de J. Frère ne nous satisfaisait pas. Nous nous sommes largement inspirés de leur commune traduction ainsi que de celles de L. Couloubaritsis et de N.L. Cordero. Cette traduction n'a par conséquent qu'une valeur d'outil de travail et se présente à cet égard comme le reflet de notre interprétation." (p. 9)

32. Constantineau, Philippe. 1987. "La question de la vérité chez Parménide." Phoenix.Journal of the Classical Association of Canada no. 41:217-240.

;"Nous proposons, dans ce qui suit, une interprétation du fragment 2 dont la principale nouveauté réside dans le fait que nous partons de l'hypothèse que les propositions des vv. 3 et 5 constituent non pas des déclaratives, comme l'écrasante majorité des commentateurs l'ont cru jusqu'à présent, mais des interrogatives indirectes. En effet, rares ont été les commentateurs qui ont admis comme possible cette lecture et aucun ne l'a encore sérieusement défendue, comme si cela ne changeait pas grand-chose au sens de ces vers que l'on adopte l'une ou l'autre lecture.

Nous croyons au contraire pouvoir démontrer que la lecture que nous proposons résout les principales difficultés auxquelles se butait l'interprétation traditionnelle et fait apparaître sous un jour nouveau le point de départ de l'ontologie parménidienne." (pp. 218-219)

(...)

"La raison de la disqualification par Parménide des propositions existentielles usuelles tient à la compréhension restrictive, qui se veut d'ailleurs conséquente, voire littérale, qu'il fait de ce qu'implique la question qui demande ὄντως ἔστιν. En effet, pour Parménide, "ce qui est" ou l'étant, cela vaut dire d'emblée la totalité de ce qui existe (cf. fr. 8,3-5) et non pas tel ou tel objet particulier. Il suit de cette compréhension restrictive de la question de la Vérité que tout discours sur les "formes" autres que l'étant comme tel, y inclus les propositions usuelles d'existence, se trouve ravalé par Parménide au rang d'opinions," (p. 240)

33. Cordero, Néstor-Luis. 1977. "Analyse de l'édition Aldine du commentaire de Simplicius à la Physique d'Aristote." Hermes.Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie no. 105:42-54.

;Repris dans N.-L. Cordero, Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate i i suoi "eredi" , Baden-Baden; Academia Verlag 2019, pp. 37-48.

"Tout porte a croire, par consequent, que 1'édition de Simplicius de 1526 a eté effectuée sous la responsabilité de Francesco d'Asola, dont les conjectures, en general, n'ont pas été tellement heureuses. Cependant, nous devons reconnaitre une fois de plus que nous nous trouvons sur le plan des conjectures et que la possibilité - lointaine, certes - n'est pas exclue que Francesco d'Asola ait disposé de l'archetype de l'oeuvre de Simplicius. Toutefois, nous pouvons constater que les manuscrits conserves actuellement presentent le même texte que E et F et, par consequent, ne justifient pas quelques conjectures « trop hardies »." (p 54)

34. ———. 1979. "Les deux chemins de Parménide dans les fragments 6 et 7." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 24:1-32.

;"Nous avions dit qu'à 6.1-2 il était question du premier chemin de la recherche, et qu'à 6.4 sq. nous trouvions un exposé concernant le second chemin. Selon l'invitation de la Déesse, l'élève doit apprendre les deux chemins; or, il doit commencer par ce premier chemin ( exposé a 6.1-2), et après il doit continuer par le second chemin, cette impasse par laquelle déambulent les hommes qui ne savent rien. Toutefois, selon les thèses présentées au fr. 2, il suffit d'énoncer un chemin pour se rendre compte que le chemin contradictoire n'est pas possible, car s'il n'y a que de l'être, il est évident que le non-être n'existe pas. C'est ainsi que le point du départ est double, et telle est la signification de l'énigmatique fr. 5: Ξυνὸν δὲ μοί ἐστιν, ὁππόθεν ἄρξωμαι· τόθι γὰρ πάλιν ἵξομαι αὖθις.. Ici c'est la Déesse qui expose son (μοι) point de vue, et, pour elle, le point du départ est commun (ξυνός,). A partir (όππόθεν)(151) de ce point ξυνός, elle commence (άρχομαι) son raisonnement. Mais tandis que pour la Déesse le point du départ est commun, l'élève doit commencer par un chemin et ensuite(152) il doit commencer par un autre. Pour cette raison, lorsque la Déesse termine son exposé du premier chemin, elle signale: "ici je termine pour toi (σοι) le raisonnement et la pensée à propos de la Vérité" (8.50-51 ); et elle commence ensuite (δ' ἀπὸ τοῦδε) l'enseignement des opinions des mortels, exposé par l'intermédiaire d'une "trompeuse distribution de mots" (8.52)." (p. 23)

(151) Etym. Mag . p. 611; Etym. Gr. Ling ., p. 416; Hesychius, Lex., III, p. 173.

(152) Il faut signaler que la corrélation ρώτης γάρ ... αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα (6.3-4) n'a pas sens adversatif, comme le font ressortir la plupart des traductions, mais simplément corrélatif.

35. ———. 1982. "La version de Joseph Scaliger du Poème de Parménide." Hermes.Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie :391-398.

;Repris dans N.-L. Cordero, Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate i i suoi "eredi" , Baden-Baden; Academia Verlag 2019, pp. 69-76.

"La plupart des livres des grands philosophes et de leurs commentateurs voient la lumière aux XVe et XVIe siècles, et a l'interieur de ce précieux corpus les philologues commencent à décéler des noms presqu'inconnus,

des citations d'ouvrages déjà perdus, dont la reconstitution, à partir de fragments isolés, devient pour certains erudits une veritable et souhaitable obsession.

Un des resultats les plus heureux de cette passion est la reconstitution presque complete, vers la fin du XVIe siecle, du Poème de Parménide. L'auteur de cette authentique prouesse - car il a reussi a recueillir cent quarante huit des cent soixante vers attribués aujourd'hui a Parménide(3) - fut le philologue français Joseph J. Scaliger.

L'excellente reconstitution de Scaliger du Poèeme de Parménide n'eut qu'un seul defaut: elle n'a jamais été publiée." (p. 392)

(...)

"Dans son testament, Scaliger leguait a l'Universite de Leiden tous ces livres et ses ecrits, et dans un catalogue de l'annee 1612 figure déjà une liste du "fonds Scaliger" (pp. 79-88). Le manuscrit que nous presentons ne constitua pas une exception: dans cet ancien catalogue on lui attribua le code '14'." (p. 395)

(...)

"Nous rappelons que dans la version de Scaliger manquent les Fr. 3, 5, 11, 19, et les vers 31 -32 du Fr. 1 (c'est-a-dire, douze vers). Son texte des Fr. 4, 9, 13, 14 et 15 ne differe pas de celui presente par Diels-Kranz. L'ordre des fragments chez Scaliger, enfin, était le suivant: Fr. 1 (1 -30), 7 (2- 6), 8,9, 12,2,6, 13, 15, 14,7(1-2), 17,4, 10, 16et 18." (p. 398)

36. ———. 1982. "Le vers 1, 3 de Parménide ("la Dèesse conduit à l'égard du tout")." Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger :159-179.

;Repris dans N.-L. Cordero, Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate i i suoi "eredi" , Baden-Baden; Academia Verlag 2019, pp. 77-96.

"La seule source du vers 1.3 est l'Adv. Math . de Sextus Empiricus et, dans la plupart des éditions de ce texte publiées après 1912, nous lisons quel' « homme qui sait» a été conduit jusqu'à la demeure de la Déesse « à travers toutes les villes » (κατὰ πάντ' ἄστη). Bien que dans le contexte de la philosophie de Parménide, cette formule ait toujours semblé douteuse, il est probable que beaucoup d'érudits importants l'ont conservée parce qu'elle se trouvait - croyaient-ils - au moins dans un manuscrit de l'oeuvre de Sextus, et que son rythme respectait fidèlement celui de l'hexamètre parménidien.

Mais, dans ces dernières années, le texte de Sextus a subi de nouveaux examens, et dans le cas précis de la citation parménidienne, A. H. Coxon a fait une découverte éclairante : la version κατὰ πάντ' ἄστη que nous citions ci-dessus n'est qu'une fausse lecture du cod. N (Laur. Gr. 85.19) par H. Mutschmann.

Cependant, il reste encore beaucoup à dire en ce qui concerne le vers 1.3 de Parménide car, quoique la critique de Coxon ouvre la voie à des nouvelles enquêtes, elle n'apporte pas une solution définitive pour ce passage. C'est pour cette raison que notre tâche consistera à proposer une nouvelle conjecture pour le vers 1.3, même si nous risquons d'ajouter encore une interprétation aux « innombrables conjectures» dont se plaignait déjà H. Diels en 1897 et qui, comme nous le voyons aujourd'hui, étaient loin d'épuiser toutes les possibilités offertes par le texte de Sextus." (pp. 159-160, notes omises)

37. ———. 1984. Les deux chemins de Parménide . Paris: Vrin.

;Édition critique, traduction, études et bibliographie.

Deuxième édition corrigée et augmentée 1997.

Table des matières: Introduction IX-XIV; Introduction à la 2e édition 1; Parite I: Le Poème de Parménide. A. Sources 17; B. Texte 29; Addenda et corrigenda 34; C. Traduction 35; Partie II: Études critiques. Chapitre I: Analyse de la présentation des deux chemins de la recherche dans le fr. 2 45; Chapitre II: Le contenu des deux thèses du fr. 2 73; Chapitre III: Les deux chemins dans les fragments 6,7 et 8,34-7 110; Chapitre IV: L'Alétheia, la Doxa, et la portée de l'enseignement parménidien 176; Appendice I: La signifcation du verbe einai dans la littérature préparménidienne. La racine indoéuropéenne. Le Lexicon d'Ebeling. La thèse de Ch. H. Kahn. Les trois nuances d' einai exemplifiées par trois utilisations différentes 215; Appendice II: La tradition manuscrite du vers 6,3. List de manuscrits qui contiennent le vers 6,3. Les variations du texte 234; Parte III: Bibliographie parménidienne 237; Table analytique des matières 301-302.

"Nous ne prétendons pas avoir trouvé la solution, c'est-à dire le point de vue à partir duquel la philosophie de Parménide révélera la clé de sa fertilité. L'état fragmentaire dans lequel nous est parvenu son Poème nous place en état d'infériorité par rapport aux penseurs classiques pour émettre un jugement sur la totalité de son oeuvre. C'est pour cela que nous avons préféré limiter notre étude à un seul problème. Toutefois, nous avons choisi un problème qui, à notre avis, occupe une place de choix dans les fragments du Poème que nous possédons actuellement: le problème des chemins de la connaissance, des voies de la recherche. (...)

Pour atteindre cet objectif, nous proposons d'analyser certains éléments généralement admis dans la pensée de Parménide, mais qui, dans la plupart des cas, ne sont pas poursuivis jusqu'à leurs conséquences extrêmes. (...)

La quasi totalité des chercheurs qui se sont intéressés à la philosophie de Parménide s'accordent sur le fait que sa pensée est structurée autour du principe de la non - contradiction (8). Nous n'affirmons pas ni ne nions pour autant que Parménide ait "inventé" ce principe, ni qu'il ait eu conscience de son utilisation, mais il ne faut pas oublier que le principe du tiers exclu apparaît également chez Parménide - principe qui renforce celui de la non-contradiction et rend contradictoires toutes les oppositions que nous rencontrons tout au long de son Poème. Sur la base de cette constatation, dont nous fournirons des exemples tout au long de notre travail, nous trouvons chez Parménide un dualisme méthodologique rigoureux qui sépare, "comme d'un coup de hache", l'espace conceptuel, ainsi que l'a remarqué P.M. Schuhl à juste titre (10), en deux régions opposées. Cette dichotome, véritable transposition sur le plan philosophique de la bifurcation mystique que nous trouvons dans les récits orphiques et pythagoriciens (11), constitue, à notre avis, la structure primordiale du raisonnement parménidien. C'est à cette dichotomie qu' obéit la présentation de son enseignement sous la forme de deux thèses contradictoires: les deux chemins de la recherche.

Notre analyse cherchera à établir le contenu de ces thèses contradictoires ainsi que leur portée, c'est-à-dire le domaine auquel elles s'appliquent et les conséquences qui dérivent de leur acceptation rigoureuse (12). Nous partirons pour cela du fr. 2, où apparaît la première énonciation des "deux seuls chemins de la recherche", et, une fois établie la valeur des deux thèses, nous étudierons leur réapparition (reliée à des problèmes différents) dans les fr. 6, 7 et 8. Ensuite, nous tenterons de découvrir quelques correspondances possibles entre ces chemins de la recherche et le récit mythique du voyage entrepris par le poète-philosophe, tel qu'il figure dans le fr. 1. Enfin, nous analyserons la nouveauté que présente le système de Parménide par rapport à la pensée de ses prédécesseurs.

En ce qui concerne notre méthode, enfin, il y a deux constatations que le lecteur ne pourra pas s'empêcher de faire. La première, qui sera reçue avec un certain soulagement, concerne le fait que notre travail semble se terminer à la page 214. Cela obéit, d'une part, à notre intention de grouper dans deux Appendices l'analyse de certains éléments qui renforcent notre recherche, mais dont l'insertion dans les chapitres correspondants aurait, à notre avis, nui à la continuité du discours, et, d'autre part, à la présentation, dans cet ouvrage, de la Bibliographie Parménidienne.

La deuxième constatation concerne l'abondance - l'excès parfois - de questions dites "philologiques" dans un travail qui, comme le nôtre, se voudrait proche du domaine de la "philosophie". La raison en est simple: nous croyons que dans le domaine des études classiques, une collaboration étroite, voire une symbiose, entre philologie et philosophie s'impose. Nous n'hésitons pas à affirmer que, en ce qui concerne la pensée antique, la philosophie sans philologie est aveugle, de même que la philologie sans philosophie est vide. Sans son support réel, c'est-à-dire les mots et la science qui s'en occupe, les spéculations philosophiques ne sont que tâtonnements; mais les mots, isolés du système conceptuel dont ils sont issus, ne sont que "paroles trompeuses", comme dit Parménide lui-même." (Introduction pp. X-XIII)

8. Cf. K. Reinhardt (1916), p. 56, et J. Mansfeld (1964), p. 57, n. 3.

9. Cf. notamment 8,16 et 8,36-7.

10. P.M. Schuhl essai sur la formation de la pensée grecque (1949), p. 284.

11. Cf. Idem, p. 285.

12. Parmi ces conséquences, la principale est le rejet, en tant que "chemin de recherche", du prétendu "troisième chemin" du fr. 6.

38. ———. 1985. "Les sources vénitiennes de l'édition Aldine du Livre I du Commentaire de Simplicius sur la Physique d'Aristote." Revue internationale des études relatives aux manuscrits médiévaux no. 39:70-88.

;Repris dans N.-L. Cordero, Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate i i suoi "eredi" , Baden-Baden; Academia Verlag 2019, pp. 49-68.

"Même si, ces dernières années, les progrès ont été presque nuls dans l'étude des techniques et de la méthode des éditions d'Alde Manuce, ainsi que dans l'identification des manuscrits dont il s'est servi pour l'édition du Commentaire de Simplicius sur la Physique d'Aristote, la récente parution de certains documents concernant les bibliothèques vénitiennes vers la fin du XVe et le début du XVIe siècle nous permet d'envisager notre tâche avec de nouvelles précisions. Nous ne croyons pas pour autant avoir trouvé une solution définitive à notre problème, mais nous pouvons avouer que les inconnues dans notre recherche ont maintenant presque entièrement disparu." (p. 70)

39. ———. 1987. "L'histoire du texte de Parménide." In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation , edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 3-24. Paris: Vrin.

;Repris dans N.-L. Cordero, Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate i i suoi "eredi" , Baden-Baden; Academia Verlag 2019, pp. 16-36.

"Nous sommes condamnés aujourd’hui à ne posséder qu’un schéma très partiel et mutilé de sa philosophie, si puissante et polémique(7). Il nous est parvenu toute une série de fragments d’un poème à caractère philosophique8 attribuée depuis l’antiquité à Parménide (voir l’appendice B à la fin de cet article). Tous ces fragments appartiennent-ils à un seul ouvrage9, Trouvons-nous à l’intérieur de ces fragments le noyau central de la pensée de Parménide?(10). Nous n’en aurons jamais la certitude totale. En outre, et comme complication supplémentaire, Platon fait allusion à l’enseignement “en prose” (πεζή)(11) de Parménide. Cet enseignement était-il oral ou écrit? Nous ne pouvons pas le savoir. Il n’y a qu’une réalité: une certaine quantité de vers - groupés ou isolés - écrits vers le début du Ve siècle par Parménide, à partir desquels, à un moment donné, des érudits ont essayé de reconstituer le Poème originel. Les péripéties de la découverte de ces fragments et des essais de reconstitution du texte de Parménide constituent le domaine auquel nous faisons allusion lorsque nous parlons de “l’histoire du texte de Parménide”." (pp. 3-4)

(...)

"A partir de la 5e édition de Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (1934/7), la responsabilité du travail appartient à W. Kranz, (qui était responsable depuis 1910 d’un volume contenant le Wortindex ). Kranz modifia encore une fois quelques leçons, la traduction, et l’ordre des fragments(76). La 6e édition (1951), enfin, reproduit le texte de la 5e et ajoute un “Nachtrag” détaillé. Toutes les éditions qui paraîront après 1951 ne sont que reproductions photomécaniques de la 6e édition.

Cette version du Poème de Parménide est devenue orthodoxe. Elle est souvent reproduite, et la plupart des érudits, même les plus compétentes, lui font confiance. Il n’y a que quelques auteurs qui aient proposé de légères modifications, toutes basées sur l’apparat présenté par Diels-Kranz. Cet apparat, pourtant, n’est pas exempt d’erreurs (nous en signalons quelques exemples dans l’“Appendice A”). Nous estimons, en conclusion, que cette version “orthodoxe” doit être modifiée en profondeur, à partir des éléments fournis par une nouvelle analyse des sources manuscrites du texte de Parménide(77)." (p. 24)

Appendice A: Sur la version de Diels-Kranz du Poème de Parménide: a) L'évolution (pp. 18-19); b) Quelques erreurs (pp. 19-24);

Appendice B: Les sources du texte de Parménide (pp. 22-24)

(7) Sur l’aspect “contestataire” du Poème de Parménide par rapport aux philosophes précédents, cf. notre travail Les deux chemins de Parménide , Paris-Bruxelles, 2e éd. 1997, pp. 197-8.

(76) Dans [’“Appendice A” nous signalons les différents changements effectués par Diels-Kranz dans leur version entre 1897 et 1937.

(77) Nous avons présenté un texte critique correspondant à l'état actuel des éditions des auteurs-sources, aussi qu’à nos recherches personnelles, dans notre ouvrage Les deux chemins de Parménide (Vrin-Ousia, Paris-Bruxelles, 1984; 2e éd. 1997). Voir aussi nos contributions dans “Les deux chemins de Parménide dans les fragments 6 et 7” (Phronesis , 24, 1979, pp. 1-32) et “Le vers 1.3 de Parménide (‘La déesse conduit à l’égard de tout’)”, Revue Philosophique , 1982, 2, pp. 159-179.

40. ———. 1987. "Simplicius et l'«école» élèate." In Simplicius. Sa vie, son oeuvre, sa survie , edited by Hadot, Ilsetraut, 166-182. Berlin: de Gruyter.

;Repris dans N.-L. Cordero, Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate i i suoi "eredi" , Baden-Baden; Academia Verlag 2019, pp. 214-227.

"En effet, il est trèsprobable que l'école éleate n'ait jamais existé. II est très probable que les éleates, en tant que mouvement philosophique, n'aient jamais existé. Mais, dans ce cas lä, il aurait fallu les inventer, car ce concept, comme celui de Dieu, permet de resoudre toute une serie de problèmes.

II a permis, surtout, de mener ä bien une classification par rapport à laquelle les systèmes de Piaton et d'Aristote se sont placés et ont dessiné ses limites, ce qui n'est pas une petite affaire. En effet, c'est grâce ä des schemas clairs et distincts, qui ont coulé dans des moules acceptables, c'est-ä-dire comprehensibles, des systèmes parfois très eloignés des interets de ces penseurs plutöt «primitifs», que seraient les resocratiques, que la métaphysique et l'ontologie occidentales ont pu avancer. Et l'«école éleate» est l'un de ces moules, l'un de ces casiers. Voilä pourquoi, si l'école éleate n'a peut-etre pas existé, il aurait fallu l'inventer.

Le titre de notre travail fait allusion ä Simplicius et l'«école» éleate, mais nous ne pouvons pas oublier que Simplicius utilise un schema qu'il reproduit, plus ou moins fidèlement — comme nous le verrons; aussi ne sera-t-il pas inutile de porter notre réflexion sur la réalité historique de ce qu'on appelle «école éleate», sur sa genèse, ses integrants et ses caractéristiques." (p. 166)

41. ———. 1990. "La Déesse de Parménide, maîtresse de philosophie." In La naissance de la raison en Grèce. Actes du Congrès de Nice, mai 1987 , edited by Mattéi, Jean-FRançois, 207-214. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

;Repris dans N.-L. Cordero, Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate i i suoi "eredi" , Baden-Baden; Academia Verlag 2019, pp. 110-117.

"Un siècle et demi après Hésiode, mais presque au même temps qu'Eschyle et que Pindare, Parménide partage encore cet univers. Dans l'histoire qu'il nous raconte, il y a quelqu'un qui s'adresse à une déesse. Il ne l'invoque pas, mais il fait un voyage pour la rencontrer, et ce voyage est très certainement initiatiques. Et lorsque le voyageur arrive au domaine de la déesse, celle-ci qui, comme la théa du début de l'Iliade , est anonyme parle. Comme toutes les déesses que nous venons de mentionner, elle dit la Vérité, et exhorte son élève à écouter son mythos : «Eh bien : je dirai, et toi, qui écoutes, accueille mon mythos » (fr. 2. 1).

Jusqu'ici, rien de nouveau. La Déesse parménidienne n'a rien de particulier. Mais une fois exposés (au fr. 2) les principes de sa Vérité -- c'est-à- dire les axiomes desquels découlent les affirmations qui constitueront un véritable "système" la Déesse s'engage dans une révolution copernicienne. Elle, qui est une Déesse, se sécularise, et, d'une manière inattendue, demande à son élève : "Juge avec le logos la preuve très polémique que je viens d'énoncer" (fr. 7.5-6). Etonnante formule dans la bouche d'une déesse, que cet appel à son élève afin qu'il examine son message avec le logos! Il est probable que la philosophie, comme recherche du principe de toutes les choses, est née le 28 mai 585 (8), lorsque l'éclipse que Thalès avait prédite a eu la gentillesse de ne pas manquer au rendez-vous; mais nous n'hésitons pas à affirmer que la philosophie, en tant que critique argumentée des idées reçues, c'est-à-dire comme dialogue didactique entre la Vérité et la pensée qui l'interroge, est née en ce jour du début du Ve siècle, quand Parménide écrivit -- ou récita -- les mots que nous venons de citer. Notre affirmation peut paraître surprenante. Il est indéniable, néanmoins, que dans cette formule nous trouvons pour la première fois une invitation -- même une incitation -- adressée par un maître à son élève, afin que celui-ci joue un rôle actif dans la recherche de la vérité. Mais nous devons justifier notre enthousiasme, et le meilleur moyen est l'analyse détaillée des vers 5 et 6 du fragment 7 de Parménide." (pp. 208-209)

(8) W. K. C. Guthrie, A Hislory of Greck Philosophy , I, Cambridge, 1962, p. 6.

42. ———. 1991. "L'invention de l'école Éléatique: Platon, Soph. 242d." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon , edited by Aubenque, Pierre and Michel, Narcy, 91-124. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

;Repris dans N.-L. Cordero, Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate i i suoi "eredi" , Baden-Baden; Academia Verlag 2019, pp. 194-213.

"La "philosophie éléatique" est devenue ensuite l'un des clichés dont les commentateurs dans un premier temps, et les historiens de la philosophie après, n'ont pas pu se passer. Nous voudrions analyser dans ce travail le rapport qui pourrait s'établir entre les deux philosophes nés à Elée ("éléates", donc) et le "système éléatique"(5) tel qu'il a été canonisé par Platon dans le Sophiste .

«Pour ce qui est de notre gent (ethnos ) éléatique, qui part de Xénophane et de plus haut encore» (tr. L. Robin), elle «ne voit qu'unité dans ce qu'on nomme le Tout» (tr. A. Diès) (Soph . 242 D). Lorsque Platon écrivait ce passage du Sophiste qui constitue la première "histoire de la philosophie" que nous connaissons(6) - pouvait-il imaginer qu'il venait de signer l'acte de naissance de l'école éléatique? Probablement pas, mais comme sa· systématisation permettait à la fois de "clarifier" la complexité de la pensée parménidienne et de placer le «vénérable et redoutable» Parménide (Theaet . 183 E) parmi des collègues plus facilement critiquables, la formule eut un succès retentissant.

Mais il faut justifier ces appréciations, et le point de départ le plus approprié est l'analyse du passage platonicien." (p. 94)

(...)

"Dans le Sophiste, Platon doit se libérer d'une certaine conception de l'être: celle qu'il avait affirmée jusqu'aux dialogues de la période des "critiques". Le Parménide règle les comptes avec la théorie des Formes, mais surtout en ce qui concerne le rapport entre celles-ci et les individus. Dans le Sophiste, c'est la structure même de !'univers des Formes, ainsi que la constitution de chaque Forme, qui est en question. Jusqu'au Sophiste, l'héritage du père Parménide était la source de l'univers des Formes. La nouvelle conception du παντελῶς ον, en revanche, exige le parricide.

Mais Platon, qui se considérait jusqu'alors comme un parménidien lui-même, est certain que les conceptions de Parménide ont dépassé la personne du Maître et sont à la base d'un mouvement qui montre - enfin! - ses faiblesses chez !"'élève" Mélissos. En fin de compte, Parménide n'était qu'un moniste, dit Platon. Il devient ainsi la figure centrale d'un groupe qui «ne voyait que l'unité dans ce qu'on nomme le Tout», dont le représentant le plus récent, Mélissos, propose une version ad usum Delphini du système. L'école d'Elée, devenue un cliché, est une généralisation didactique utile, profitable. Mais elle possède autant de réalité historique que la très belle "Ecole d'Athènes" de Raphaël.

(5) 5 Nous appelons conventionnellement "éléates" les habitants d'Elée et "éléatique" tout ce qui concerne l'école ou le système philosophique qui serait né à Elée.

6 Cfr. F. Chiereghin, Implicazioni etiche della storiografîa filosofîca di Platone , Padova 1976, ch. III, passim .

43. ———. 1994. "Parménide : la "rhétorique" de la déesse." In La rhétorique grecque. Actes du Colloque 'Octave Navarre' : troisième Colloque international sur la pensée antique organisé par le CRHI les 17, 18 et 19 décembre 1992 à la Faculté des Lettres de Nice edited by Galy, Jean-Michel and Thivel, Antoine, 53-62. Nice: Association des publications de la Faculté des lettres de Nice.

;Repris dans N.-L. Cordero, Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate i i suoi "eredi" , Baden-Baden; Academia Verlag 2019, pp. 118-125.

44. ———. 2000. "Parménide platonisé : à propos du 'Parménide' de Marcel Conche." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 18:15-24.

;Repris dans N.-L. Cordero, Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate i i suoi "eredi" , Baden-Baden; Academia Verlag 2019, pp. 135-141.

45. ———. 2004. "La pensée s'exprime 'grâce' à l'être: Parménide, fr. 8, 35." Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 129:5-13.

;"En effet : Parménide est très cohérent : étant donné la priorité qu’il a accordée au fait d’être, le penser s’exprime ép’eónti, c’est-à-dire, « grâce » (ou « à cause de » : epí n’abandonne jamais son pouvoir causal) à ce qui est. La formule eph’hôi , que nous proposons d’adopter, consacre ce principe au beau milieu de l’exposé des sémata de ce qui est, dans le long fragment 8. Et, à la ligne suivante, Parménide exprime la même idée, mais d’une manière négative :sans ce qui est (áneu(1) toû eóntos), le penser n’existe pas. Voici donc le sens du passage 8.34-6 : « Penser et ce pour quoi la pensée est, sont la même chose ; car sans ce qui est, grâce auquel il est énoncé, tu ne trouveras pas le penser. » Le penser n’existe que lorsqu’il exprime quelque chose sur ce qui est en train d’être. Et comme « il n’y a pas, et il n’y aura pas, autre chose que ce qui est » (8 .36 b-7), la pensée n’a qu’un seul objet : ce qui est. Lorsque ce qui est est absent de la pensée ou du dire, il n’y a que des « mots » trompeurs (8 . 52), des opinions vides." (p. 13)

(1) Áneu , en tant que privation, est l’expression contraire à epí.

46. ———. 2004. "Le logos comme critère chez Parmènide." In Cosmos et psychè. Mélanges offerts à Jean Frère , edited by Vegleris, Eugènie, 45-54. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

;Repris dans N.-L. Cordero, Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate i i suoi "eredi" , Baden-Baden; Academia Verlag 2019, pp. 126-134.

47. ———. 2006. "Pour en finir avec la "troisième voie" chez Parménide." Elenchos no. 27:5-33.

;"Parler de "voies de la recherche" chez Parménide est non seulement naturel, mais aussi légitime. En effet, il est tout à fait naturel de parler de ces voies car Parménide lui-même en parle, et il est légitime de le faire parce que Parménide affirme, dans le texte connu aujourd’hui comme "fragment 1", que celui qui entreprend le chemin du savoir a le "droit" à l’ouverture des portes de la connaissance. Ce n’est pas le fruit du hasard que soit Diké, la déesse du droit, qui détienne les clés qui ouvrent la voie du chemin de la vérité, et que soit elle qui permet ainsi d’entreprendre la recherche qui conduira vers la découverte de l’être. En revanche, parler d’un problème concernant ces voies de recherche est à la fois artificiel (c’est-à-dire, non naturel) et illégitime, car ce problème n’existe pas dans la philosophie de Parménide. Il s’agit d’une invention des commentateurs, et même des commentateurs qui s’étalent dans le temps dans une période très restreinte, car Parménide a écrit son texte il y a au moins vingt-cinq siècles, et ledit problème est né il y a à peine un siècle et demi, et même moins. On pourrait soutenir que la tradition philosophique s’est trompée, et même que les commentateurs anciens sont restés aveugles et sourds face à ce qui était évident. Ce n’est pas impossible. Mais on peut affirmer aussi que notre post-modernité a une tendance naturelle à compliquer ce qui, en soi, était presque banal, et qu’elle exige des gens du passé qui s’expriment au présent. Les intellectuels ont l’habitude de parler d’une "récupération" du passé. Nous préférons la catégorie de "tergiversation". Regardons à ce propos le cas de Parménide." (p. 5)

48. ———. 2010. Gianfrancesco d'Asola, le "créateur" de la troisième voie de Parménide .

;Celtic Conference in Classics - The Second Conference of the International Association for Presocratic

Studies, University of Edinburgh 28-31 July 2010. (inédit, disponible sur academia.edu).

"Notre travail a un seul but: inviter (et même inciter) les chercheurs intéressés à la philosophie de Parménide à revenir au passé, car la seule justification de l'existence d'une éventuelle troisième voie de recherche est la conséquence d'un verbe introduit en 1526 par l'éditeur Gianfrancesco d'Asola pour combler une lacune existante dans les manuscrits qu'il avait utilisé lorsqu'il s'est occupé d'imprimer le Commentaire de Simplicius à la "Physique" d'Aristote, seule source du fr. 6 de Parménide. La meilleur manière de revenir au passé consiste à interpréter la philosophie de Parménide sans tenir compte de la conjecture proposé par d'Asola, et respecter, en ce qui concerne le vers 6.3, son état lacunaire." (p. 5)

49. ———. 2011. "La “Doxa des mortels” n’est pas la “physique” de Parménide." In Ontologia scienza mito. Per una nuova lettura di Parmenide , edited by Ruggiu, Luigi and Natali, Carlo, 81-90. Milano-Udine.

;Repris dans N.-L. Cordero, Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate i i suoi "eredi" , Baden-Baden; Academia Verlag 2019, pp. 181-189.

50. ———. 2012. "“Être” (et non “L’Être”) chez Parménide." In Λόγον διδόναι. La filosofia come esercizio del render ragione. Studi in onore di Giovanni Casertano , edited by Palumbo, Lidia, 107-114. Loffredo: Napoli.

;"Nous voyons aujourd’hui que le rapport qu’il y a entre les textes conservés (les “fragments”) des Présocratiques les plus éminents, Héraclite et Parménide, et l’interprétation platonicienne et aristotélicienne, n’est – comme on dit dans certains films – qu’une pure coïncidence.

Il semble évident qu’aussi bien Platon comme Aristote possédaient le texte intégral des deux philosophes, mais quand ils commentent les passages que, heureusement, nous conservons encore aujourd’hui (par exemple, les vers 8.43-4 de Parménide sur l’image de la sphère, en ce qui concerne Platon(5), ainsi que l’interprétation aristotélicienne des vers 8.55-9, où le Stagirite se permet de parler de “principes”, ἀρχαὶ, chez Parménide, le froid et le chaud(6), nous voyons qu’il s’agit d’une véritable entreprise de désinformation, car ils adaptent ces textes à leurs propres recherches." (pp. 108-109)

(...)

"L’origine des trois prétendues propriétés de l’Être (unité, immobilité, sphéricité) est facile à trouver: depuis l’Antiquité on a parle de “L’Être” de Parménide, c’est à dire, d’un verbe substantivé, comme traduction, dans toutes les langues, de la formule parménidienne τὸ ἐὸν. Le verbe “être”, “substantialisé”, c’est à dire, devenu un substantif, “L’Être”, peut être envisagé comme une substance, susceptible d’être une ou multiple, immobile ou en mouvement, et sphérique ou cubique.

Mais la nouveauté introduite par Parménide dans le domaine de la philosophie (nouveauté que Platon semble découvrir tardivement, lors de l’écriture du Sophiste ; je reviendrai sur ce point), a consisté à découvrir que, s’il a des entités “substantielles”, ou, si l’on préfère, des “étants”, c’est parce qu’il y a de l’être. Et son Poème est une (dé)monstration passionnée du caractère nécessaire (car il est impossible de ne pas être: fr. 2.3) et absolu (car il n’y a pas des étants qui ne soient pas: fr. 7.1) du fait d’être. Le participe, parfois substantivé, (τὸ) ἐὸν, est une nuance grammaticale de la thèse centrale du Poème, qui est une analyse de l’infinitif εῑναι, nuance qui permettra de faire allusion a tous les “étants” (τά ἐόντα) moyennant un singulier général ou générique, (τὸ) ἐὸν, et ceci pour la première fois dans un texte philosophique." (p. 109)

(...)

"Les mortels ne mélangent pas deux “entités”, l’Être et le Non-Être, comme on dit presque toujours, mais deux “états”: le fait d’exister et le fait de ne pas exister." (p. 110)

(...)

"N’oublions pas que Platon, presque son contemporain, n’a pas hésité à écrire que «je crains ne pas comprendre ce que lui [Parménide] a dit, et, plus encore, que le sens de sa pensé nous échappe»(15). Il y a à cet égard un fait très curieux: le texte que nous appelons aujourd’hui “fragment 2”, qui présente les seules voies de recherche que l’on peut imaginer (dont l’une sera supprimée), et qui expose les véritables axiomes sur lesquels s’appuie toute la philosophie de Parménide (grosso modo : il y a de l’être; ne pas être n’est pas possible) n’a été cité par des “collègues” philosophes, Proclus et Simplicius, que plus d’un millénaire après son écriture. Ce texte fondamental semble ne pas avoir été l’objet d’un intérêt particulier de la part de Platon, d’Aristote, de Plutarque, ni de personne, peut être parce que Parménide n’avait pas accompagné sa découverte du fait d’être d’une assimilation de celui-ci à des étants privilégiés (eau, feu, atomes, Formes, etc.), comme c’était le cas des autres philosophes." (pp.112-113)

(5) Sophiste , 244e.

(6) Aristote, Métaphysique, 986b33.

(15) Platon, Théétète , 184a.

51. ———. 2015. "L'insoutenable poids des 'absences' dans l'interprétation parméndienne de Casertano." In Eleatica Vol. 4: Da Parmenide di Elea al Parmenide di Platone , edited by Gambetti, Francesca and Giombini, Stefania, 129-135. Sank Augustin: Academia Verlag.

;"Or, la nouveauté de Parménide, laissée de côté par Casertano, c'est l’utilisation, pour la première fois, du singulier, το έόν. Or, si Parménide a introduit cette nouveauté c’est pour se séparer de ses collègues (tout en restant un ‘physicien’) et pour souligner que, comme πάντα τα όντα ont en commun 'le fait d'être' - on reviendra sur cette formule - c’est du fait d’être que doit s’occuper le philosophe, et ce fait d’être est représenté par un singulier générique. Casertano a donc raison lorsqu’il dit que Parménide utilise la formule το έόν, ‘l’ente, «ciò che è»', et qu’il ne parie pas de ‘l’être’. Mais on peut lui répondre: parler de τό έόν, est parler de ce que ‘tous’ les philosophes grecs on appelé ‘l’être’. La très connue phrase d’Aristote en est une confirmation: «Il y a une certaine science qui étudie τό ôv ή ôv» (Mét. 1003a21). La traduction littérale de la formule est, bien sur, «ce qui est, en tant qu’il est», mais personne ne peut nier qu’Aristote envisage ce que les philosophes appellent ‘l’être’. Personne n’a utilisé la formule qui devrait être traduite littéralement par ‘l’être’, τό είναι. Elle apparaît une fois chez Platon (Soph. 243 e2 mais elle concerne le ‘verbe’ être.

Mais après avoir dit que, pour parler de l’être, Parménide utilise la formule 'ce qui qui est’, il s’interroge: «l’essere di B3 è la stessa cosa di τό έόν o indica qualcosa d’altro?». Or, DK 28B3 parle ‘d’être’, non pas de ‘l’essere’ (‘l’être’). Nous rentrons ici au centre du parménidisme, car, en effet, la découverte de Parménide concerne ‘le fait d’être’, une activité dénotée par un ‘verbe’, qui se concrétise ‘après’ dans un participe, τό έόν(2). Parménide commence par la découverte d'ἐστί (DK 28B2,3) et arrive, après, a concrétiser cet ἐστί dans ce qui ‘indéniablement' ‘est’, ‘ce qui est’ (τό έόν). Dans tous les passages décisifs de son Poème, Parménide présente sa découverte par l’intermédiaire des formes du ‘verbe’ être (et, parfois, directement par l’infinitif, comme en DK 28B3), représenté soit pas είναι suit par πελέναι(3). Et, contrairement à ce que dit Casertano (‘Tutti i σήματα di DK T H' riguardano «ciò che è»’), les σήματα du fr. 8 concernent exclusivement Γέστι: 'il reste un seul mot comme chemin: ώς εστιν. Sur ‘celui-ci’ (ταύτη δ’ έπί) (donc, a propos de ce ‘mot’) il y a plusieurs σήματα (DK 28B8,l-2). Comme le ‘seul’ sujet qui peut appartenir au dénudé έστι d’une manière claire, immédiate et distincte c’est τό έόν (car, qui pourrait nier que, s’il y a quelque chose qui εστιν, est ‘ce qui est’?), Parménide concrétise le dénudée εστιν dans ‘ce qui est’ (en réalité, dans la plupart des cas, sans l’article), et ce qui est un, inaltérable, complet, etc., est ‘ce qui est en train d’être’, [τό] έόν, qui garantit l’existence des étants." (p. 130)

(2) Des détails sur notre position se trouvent dans notre contribution au volume consacré à Casertano: N.-L. Cordero, Etre (et nonpas L’Être) chez Parménide, in L. Palumbo (a cura di), λόγον διδόναι. La filosofia come esercizio del render ragione. Studi in onore di Giovanni Casertano , Napoli 2011, pp 107-114.

(3) Voir DK28B2,3: έστιν; 28B6,1: έστιγάρείναι; 28B6,8: τό πέλειν τε καί ούκ είναι; 28Β8.1 : Μ έστι; 28Β8,11: πελέναι [...] ή ούχί; 28Β8,16: έστιν ή ούκ έστιν.

52. ———. 2016. "Aristote, créateur du Parménide díkranos que nous héritons aujourd’hui." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 10:1-25.

;Abstract: "All studies consecrated to Parmenides reads his “Poem” as it had been written in this way: Introduction (fr. 1), Way of Truth (fr. 2-fr. 8.50), “Way of Seeming” (Doxa) (fr. 8.51- fr 19).

However, this order was proposed in 1795 by G. G. Fülleborn, based on the interpretation of Simplicius, inspired by Aristotle. But Aristotle had already “platonized” Parmenides, by applying to him a dualistic scheme inexistent before Plato. If we don’t take care of Aristotle’s mistake, the interpretation of Simplicius, as well as Fülleborn’s arrangement, must be abandoned, especially because doxa, in Parmenides’ time, means “opinion” and have not an ontological value, synonym of “appearances”. There is not in Parmenides a study of two subjects (being and appearances) but a single subject, considered from two points of view opposites."

53. ———. 2017. "La place de la "physique" de Parménide dans une nouvelle reconstitution du Poème ." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 35:3-13.

;Résumé : "En 1795, G. G. Fülleborn publia un travail sur Parménide dans lequel, pour la première fois, on proposa un arrangement des fragments du Poème en deux parties, l’Alétheia (fr. 1 à 8.50 DK) et la Dóxa (fr. 8.51 à 18 DK). L’auteur avoue s’être inspiré de Simplicius, et cette division devint canonique. Or, le critère utilisé par Simplicius est une conséquence de la « platonisation » de Parménide, esquissée déjà par Aristote, qui trouve chez l’Éléate la dichotomie « sensible / intelligible ».

Conséquence : il y aurait dans le Poème une théorie sur l’être et aussi sur les apparences. Il suffit de regarder ce que Parménide lui-même établit comme « vérité » et ce qu’il considère comme « dóxa » pour réfuter ce schéma et trouver dans le Poème une place pour les textes « physiques », qui ne correspondent pas à la « doxa », étant donné qu’ils ne sont ni trompeurs ni décevants."

54. ———. 2018. "Quelques exemples de la « physique » contestataire de Parménide." Anais de Filosofia Clássica de Rio de Janeiro no. 12:88-109.

;Résumé : "Chez Parménide, une analyse détaillée des citations authentiques de son Poème, sans tenir compte des commentaires, qui, depuis Platon, ont essayé de les interpréter, montre clairement qu'il y a une distinction entre ce qu'il appelle "doxa" et sa propre "physique". Cette distinction est malheureusement effacée dans la version du Poème, proposé en 1795 par G.G. Fülleborn et accepté aujourd'hui comme "orthodoxe". Dans cette version, les citations que Parménide consacre aux "doxai" des mortels, qui ne sont ni vraies ni convaincantes, cohabitent avec des fragments qui contiennent la véritable "physique" de Parménide. Cet article se propose de déchiffrer ce qui reste, dans cet ensemble, de la "physique Parménidienne" de Parménide."

55. ———. 2018. " L’être parménidien selon Cerri: une realitè... irréale." In Eleatica Vol. 6: Dall'universo-blocco all'atomo nella scuola di Elea: Parmenide, Zenone, Leucippo , edited by Pulpito, Massimo and Ranzato, Sofia, 154-157. Sank Augustin: Academia Verlag.

;"En réalité, il est impossible de ne pas partager la thèse centrale de Cerri concernant Parménide: il s’est occupé, dit-il, de ‘il reale’, de ‘ciò che esiste oggettivamente’. Mais plusieurs questions se posent à propos de ces formules, la première: qu’est-ce qu’est ‘il reale’? D’autres philosophes, après Parménide, notamment Platon, ont forgé la formule ‘ontôs on’ , et, pour faire allusion à la totalité du réel il a utilisé ‘pantelôs on ’. Mais chez Parménide il n’y a qu’eon (et, très rarement,n ). Or, pour montrer que ‘la realtà è costituita dall’eon ’ (p. 53), Cerri emprunte un chemin très curieux qui fait de l'eon l’opposé de ce qu’il se propose soutenir, car il devient une abstraction totalement irréelle , une sorte de fantôme qui annonce la philosophie-fiction de Mélissos, créateur d’un eon qui n’a rien à voir avec ce qui est réel.

Le fait d’attribuer un caractère ‘scientifique’ à ‘la metodologia-epistemologia della conoscenza’ (p. 49) parce qu’elle s’appuie sur l'esti, et la critique ‘dei falsi sapienti’ parce qu'ils font appel à des énoncés ‘imperniati sul ‘non è”, n’a pas de sens. Les ‘falsi sapienti’ utilisent, eux aussi l'esti : ils disent que ‘tout est en même temps un ensemble de lumière et de nuit obscure’ (fr. B9, 3), et le discours vrai n’hésite pas à faire appel à l'ouk esti quand il affirme que l’un des chemins 'n’est pas le vrai chemin’ (fr. B8, 17).

Mais le point le plus contestable de l’interprétation de Cerri est l’antithèse radicale qu’il trouve entre le pluriel eonta et le singulier eon. Pour lui, eonta ‘sono doxai’ (p. 54), tandis que l'eon ‘è il reale’. C’est évident que Cerri est victime d’un préjugé qui découle de l’interprétation d’Aristote, qui avait envisagé Parménide à la lumière de son propre système (Platon, en revanche, avait été plus prudent), selon lequel l’Éléate, d’une part, s’exprimait monachôs, mais ‘obligé par les phainomena '' (Metaph . 986 b), avait proposé deux ‘principes’, lumière et nuit. L’inexactitude d’Aristote est plus qu’évidente, car, dans les passages authentiques du Poème que nous conservons aujourd’hui - et qu’Aristote sans doute connaissait - Parménide attribue la postulation (katethento, fr. B8, 53) de deux principes aux ‘mortels qui ne savent rien’." (p. 154)

56. ———. 2019. "Il y a, évidemment, un « Parménide phusikós », mais… (à propos de Livio Rossetti, « Un altro Parmenide », 2017) " Archai. The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology no. 25:1-29.

;Résumé : "Comme tous les Présocratiques, Parménide s’est intéressé à la phúsis ; donc, considérer qu’il était un phusikós , c’est tout à fait naturel. L. Rossetti, dans son capolavoro en deux volumes Un altro Parmenide (Diogenes Multimedia, Bologne, 2017), a étudié d’une manière très détaillée la question. Cependant, la perspective à partir de laquelle Rossetti a envisagé la question n’a pas pu se dégager de deus obstacles principaux : la place dans laquelle se trouvent les textes « physiques » (à l’intérieur de la « doxa ») et le caractère négatif que la « doxa » a aux yeux de Parménide. En effet, en fonction d’une division arbitraire du Poème en deux parties, proposée par G.G. Fülleborn, en 1795, les textes « physiques » de Parménide seraient à l’intérieur d’ « un ordre trompeur de mots », qui commence au vers 8.51 et se termine au fr. 19, ce qui anéantie la valeur d’une physique parménidienne. La seule façon de revendiquer une physique chez Parménide consisterait à séparer ses textes physiques de la « doxa des mortels », critique par la Déesse.

Évidemment, cette possibilité suppose une critique d’une partie de la tradition doxographique, initiée par Aristote."

57. ———. 2019. "Pourquoi Sextus cite le fr. 7.2 (DK) de Parménide après le vers 30 du fragment 1 (DK) ?" In Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate e i suoi "eredi" , 97-103. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

;Conférence prononcée à l'International Association for Presocratic Studies 6, Delphi, juin 2018.

Traduction anglaise: "Why Simplicius quoted the fr. 7.2 (DK) of Parmenides after the fr. 1.30 (DK)?" disponible sur academia.edu.

58. ———. 2020. "Parménide phusikós, oui, mais." In Verso la filosofia: Nuove prospettive su Parmenide, Zenone e Melisso , edited by Galgano, Nicola, Giombini, Stefania and Marcacci, Flavia, 195-198. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

;"Le Parménide de Rossetti est en réalité un Parménide ‘platonisé’, mais non par Platon, mais par Aristote et Simplicius. Aristote, qui a du mal a ranger Parménide parmi les phusiologōi, interprète que, malgré tout, il aurait du s’occuper du sensible, et affirme que, “obligé par les phénomènes, il a proposé aussi deux arkhai ” (Met. 985b31).

C’est absurde. Ce n’est pas Parménide, mais les ‘mortels’ qui ont, comme les philosophes précédents, trouvé une explication de ‘la réalité’ (non ‘du sensible’) moyennant des éléments. La dichotomie sensible/intelligible ne se trouve pas chez Parménide. La doxa parménidéenne n’est pas l’‘apparence’ d'un Être occulte.

Simplicius systématise la platonisation de Parménide quand il dit que, “dans son discours sur l'opinion, il pose comme principes le froid et le chaud. Il les appelle feu et terre, lumière et nuit ou obscurité” (In Phys . 170). Grâce à Simplicius, Parménide devient díkranos ...

Un Parménide phusikós ? Pourquoi pas, mais en fonction de sa découverte, le fait d’être, qui empêche que ce qui est (lune, soleil, sexes, voie lactée) ne soit pas." (p. 198)

59. ———. 2021. "Le très curieux silence des Doxographes à propos de l'incompétence des auteurs des opinions chez Parménide." Journal of Ancient Philosophy no. 15:1-17.

;Abstract: "Since the Goddess of Parmenides presents the two ways to explain the reality that must be faced by this who want to become a "man who knows", the truth and the opinions of mortals, she makes clear that the opinions (dóxai) are not "reliable". Later, when he describes in detail how the makers of opinions really are, the description is devastating: they are the people who are incapable of judging, who are astonished, who do not know how to use sensations, and who have a misguided intellect. Consequently, when they express their opinions, they present only a "misleading set of words". However, already from Aristotle onwards, this way of conceiving reality is attributed to Parmenides himself, and not to "the mortals". Theophrastus echoes this interpretation of Aristotle and, with him, the totality of the Doxographers. Obviously, in order to attribute the "opinions" to Parmenides himself, any reference to the incapacity of his authors is absent from the comments: no Doxographer mentions it."

60. ———. 2022. "Les deux manières d’expliquer la réalité proposées par Parménide." Peitho. Examina Antiqua no. 13:13-23.

;Abstract: "Towards the end of fragment 1 of his Poem, Parmenides puts forward two methods or paths that a priori explain the same object of study: the existence of the fact or state of being. One of the options leads to the core of the truth and is, therefore, pursued. The other is merely a set of contradictory opinions and is, accordingly, abandoned. These two paths are expounded in the rest of the Poem, while fragment 4 shows that even the erroneous conception, which had to be set aside, can still be fruitful. Once the firm foundation of truth has been established, fragments 10 and 11 propose to widen the inquiry to the whole of reality. This interpretation suggests a rejection of the arrangement of the Poem that has become canonical, and a criticism of the doxographic tradition that since Aristotle has “Platonised” the philosophy of Parmenides by assimilating the “opinions” (which are only points of view) to the “appearances” (in the Platonic sense of the term)."

61. ———. 2023. "L’aristotélisation de Parménide, est-elle un parménidicide ?" In Eleatica Vol. 9: Aristotle and the Eleatics = Aristotele e gli Eleati , edited by Pulpito, Massimo and Berruecos Frank, Bernardo, 135-146. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlsg.

;"Le titre de cette communication, “L’aristotélisation de Parménide, est-elle un parménidicide?” pourrait sembler exagéré, mais je ferai de mon mieux pour le justifier, de la manière la plus succincte possible.

Le défaut principal de l’aristotélisation de Parménide, est son héritage. Les notions, comme les gens, ont des ancêtres, et l’ADN originaire reste dans les descendants.

C’est le cas d’une erreur de lecture de la part d’Aristote (nous justifierons ce mot, car il ne s’agit pas d’une interprétation erronée, mais d’une faute; Platon n’a pas commis cet erreur, même si son interprétation peut être considérée partielle) qui a déterminé, à partir de lui (via Simplicius et G. G. Fülleborn) la destinée des études parménidiennes." (p. 136)

(...)

"La véritable tragédie grecque à laquelle nous avons fait allusion dans nos travaux récents cités ci-dessus commence en 1795 quand le philosophe kantien Georg G. Fülleborn écrit le premier livre consacré exclusivement à la pensée de Parménide(11). Le travail est excellent, et, tel qu’on attend d’un chercheur sérieux, il envisage la pensée de Parménide selon un critère herméneutique, dans l’occasion, d’origine kantienne, qui distingue, d’un point de vue gnoséologique, l’intelligible et le sensible. Et, en fonction de ce critère, Fülleborn divise les dix-huit(12) fragments en deux “sections”. Un ensemble de textes font partie du “Vernunfterkenntniss vom Wesen der Dinge” (p. 55), et un autre ensemble s’occupe du “Sinnliche Erkenntniss vom Wesen der Dinge” (p. 81). Mais l’ADN aristotélicien apparaît à la page 54, quand Fülleborn reconnaît que “ita dividit carmen Parmenidis Simplicius”. Et il a raison; après avoir transcrit quelques vers concernant l’être-Un, Simplicius, s’inspirant d’Aristote, écrit: “Ensuite Parménide quitta l’intelligible pour le sensible, ou, selon ses propres termes, la vérité pour l’opinion (δόξα) […] Et établit, lui aussi, comme principes élémentaires des choses engendrés, l’opposition première, qu’il appelle ‘lumière et obscurité’ ou ‘feu et terre’ ou ‘dense et rare’ ou ‘le même et l’autre’“ (In Phys . 30)" (pp. 136-137, certaines notes ont été omises)

(11) Fülleborn 1795 [1795, Fragmente des Parmenides , Züllichau], passim .

(12) Le fragment 19 fut ajouté en 1810 grâce a la découverte d’A. Peyron 1810 [Empedoclis et Parmenidis fragmenta ex codice Taurinensis Bibliotheca restituta et illustrata, Leipzig], 55-61.

62. ———. 2024. "Les conséquences tragiques pour Parménide d'une erreur d'Aristote." Journal of Ancient Philosophy no. 18:1-24.

;Abstract: "The difficulty of grasping the thought of Parmenides led interpreters already in antiquity to approach his philosophy according to later schemes of thought. This was the case of Aristotle, whose interpretation was inherited by his disciple Theophrastus and by his commentators, especially Simplicius. Simplicius, a Neoplatonist and Aristotelian at the same time, proposed an interpretation, strongly dualistic (dominated by the sensible/intelligible dichotomy), which is not found in the recovered quotations. The origin of this interpretation is an "error" of Aristotle, inherited by Simplicius, who attributed to Parmenides himself the paternity of the "opinions of mortals". In 1795 G. G. Fülleborn, inspired by Simplicius, proposed a division of the Poem into two "parts", unanimously accepted today, and which must be urgently revised and rejected."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliographie des études en Français sur Parménide F - Z

Bibliographie

1. Couloubaritsis, Lambros. 1986. Mythe et philosophie chez Parménide . Bruxelles: Ousia.

;Index: Préface de la deuxième édition (1990) 7; Introduction: Le mythe des multiples chemins 9; Chapitre I: Transmutation du mythe 76; Chapitre II: L'émergence de l'ontologie 165; Chapitre III: L'émergence d'une nouvelle physique 261; Conclusion: L'émergence de la philosophie 352; Appendice: Traduction du poème 368; Table de matières 381-382.

Troisième édition modifiée et augmentéè avec le titre: La Pensée de Parménide - Bruxelles, Ousia, 2008.

"Dans les pages qui suivent, nous allons tenter d'élucider l'instauration de la philosophie au travers de cette transmutation du mythe, grâce à laquelle se manifestent successivement une problématique de l'être et de la pensée (première partie du poème) et une nouvelle physique (seconde partie). Pour ce faire, nous commencerons par élucider le sens du proème, où le mythe parménidien pose ses fondations en vue d'édifier un nouveau type d'activité, axé exclusivement sur le savoir. Cette première étape de notre recherche nous permettra d'établir plus clairement la pratique parménidienne du mythe et d'en déceler la portée. Ensuite, nous montrerons en quoi l'émergence de l'ontologie est tributaire de la transmutation accomplie par le mythe des multiples chemins. Le traitement du texte nous aidera à discerner comment, par une sorte de retournement, cette émergence de l'ontologie déstabilise fatalement le mythe lui-même, rendant possible l'instauration de nouveaux discours, comme le discours métaphorique et le logos proprement dit. Mais plus fondamentalement encore, que cette démarche parménidienne institue le penser et la pensée, ouvrant la voie à une appréhension nouvelle des choses en devenir. C'est en effet en nous appuyant sur cette problématique de la pensée que nous achèverons notre travail, en indiquant comment, à la fois la prise en considération des diverses critiques que Parménide adresse à ses prédécesseurs (117) et une certaine réorganisation des fragments (118) autorisent à établir l'émergence d'une nouvelle physique, fort différente de celle des Ioniens, non seulement parce qu'elle met en oeuvre une cosmogonie quasi-mythique, fondée sur deux entités, mais aussi et surtout parce qu'elle s'institue grâce à l'usage même de la pensée, qui seule peut accorder le devenir aux lois de l'être, lui assurant, de ce fait même, une crédibilité. Par là, le poème parménidien nous apparaîtra dans toute sa cohérence: en vue d'instaurer la philo-sophie le mythe des multiples chemins nous conduit vers la compréhension du cosmos en devenir à partir, d'une part, de l'institution de l'ontologie comme la condition même d'une pensée susceptible de le prendre comme objet possible d'un savoir et, d'autre part, de l'édification d'une physique qui suppose l'impossible ontologisation du réel en devenir." (pp. 74-75)

(117) En distinguant la critique concernant les akrita phyla de celle des "mortels" qui, au contraire, séparent le corps du réel sans chercher l'unité des deux entités qu'il établissent.

(118) En situant le fr. 4 dans la seconde partie du poème. Voir l'Appendice de cet ouvrage, où nous introduisons d'autres réaménagements de moindre importance.

2. ———. 1987. "Les multiples chemins de Parménide." In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation , edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 25-43. Paris: Vrin.

;"Des nombreuses difficultés qui subsistent encore dans le Poème de Parménide, les plus importantes nous paraissent celles qui touchent aux trois éléments mêmes du texte: le sens à accorder au mythe qui l'introduit, la représentation que l'on devrait se donner de l'eon , y compris son rapport énigmatique à la question de la pensée, et enfin la signification de la doxa et son lien éventuel avec le discours sur alétheia . Bref, ce qui est toujours en jeu, c'est encore aujourd'hui, comme autrefois, la cohérence mémé du texte parménidien et donc son unité." (p. 25)

3. ———. 2009. La pensée de Parménide . Bruxelles: Ousia.

;Troisième édition modifiée et augmentée de Mythe et Philosophie chez Parmenide, Bruxelles: Ousia, 1986.

Index: Préface de la troisième édition 9; Introduction: L'avénement de la pensée 27; Chapitre I: Le mythe des multiples chemins 57; Chapitre II: Le "Proème" comme producteur de chemins 121; Chapitre III: Transmutation du mythe 197; Chapitre IV: L'émergence de l'eon 243; Chapitre V: Le statut de l'eon 297; Chapitre VI: La question de la pensée 343; Chapitre VII: Au seuil d'une nouvelle distorsion 405; Chapitre VIII: Les traces d'un univers perdu 445; Conclusion: L'émergence de la philosophie 515; Appendice: Texte et traduction 537; Auteurs cités 559; Table des matières 569-570.

"Ce livre constitue une nouvelle version, modifiée et augmentée de Mythe et Philosophie chez Parménide (1986, 1990 deuxième édition). Parallèlement à une réévaluation de la question du mythe qui différencie le mythos comme façon de parler autorisée, et le logos comme discours catalogique, cette nouvelle livraison refuse, pour l'eon parménidien, le sens anachronique d' "être" ou d' "étant", et distingue eon / eonta (ce qui est dans le présent / choses qui sont dans le présent) et on / onta (ce qui est ou étant / choses qui sont ou étants), accordant ainsi une prééminence au temps, en l'occurrence au "maintenant". Par là, l'auteur prend davantage encore ses distances par rapport aux interprétations dominantes, et propose comme centre d'analyse le penser et la pensée . Légitimée par "Ce qui est dans le présent" (eon ) d'une façon absolue et permanente qui en est la condition "inviolable" (asylon ), la pensée est appliquée au devenir des "choses qui ne sont pas dans le présent" (mè eonta ), "choses ab-sentes" (apeonta ), et les convertit en "choses pré-sentes" (pareonta ), sans jamais les identifier à une forme d'être. Grâce à cette promotion du présent dans le devenir, l'impossible ontologisation du réel en devenir s'accompagne néanmoins de la possible édification d'une nouvelle physique, différente de celle des premiers Ioniens, à savoir une physique du mélange , fondée sur l'unité de deux "formes", la lumière et l'obscurité, se référant au Feu et à la Terre, et dont le statut doxatique transforme le "nominalisme" propre au devenir des choses éphémères en une pensée de la doxa . Ce cheminement complexe donne une solution nouvelle au problème toujours en débat de l'unité du Poème, et laisse percevoir, par la transmutation du mythe archaïque, l'émergence de la philosophie comme aspiration au savoir, grâce à l'irruption de la pensée qui, en l'homme, puise sa continuité dans l'inflexibilité de "Ce qui est dans le présent", dont l'enracinement dans la flexibilité de la physis réussit à équilibrer et à fonder la force différenciante de la parole."

4. ———. 2019. "Réinterpretation de l'eon de Parménide dans l'éclairage du Papyrus de Derveni." In ὁδοὶ νοῆσαι. Ways to Think. Essays in Honour of Néstor-Luis Cordero , edited by Palumbo, Lidia, 193-206. Diogene Multimedia: Bologna.

;Résumé : "Ce texte se propose de démontrer la nécessité d’une reconsidération de notre approche de Parménide dans l’éclairage du Papyrus de Derveni, qui montre qu’il faut avoir en considération la temporalité au moment de traduire l'eon , de sorte que la traduction qui convient, pour le pluriel ta eonta , est il "les choses qui sont dans le présent”. Tout d’abord, il montre que le B 2 de I'édition Diels-Kranz de Diogène d’Apollonie distingue clairement ta eonta et ta onta , co-présence qu’implique que cette différence exprimait deux sens dilférents dans la problématique de l’être. Ensuite, il indique comment cette différence est clairement posée dans le Papyrus de Derveni, et enfin il établit le sens dans lequel le Papyrus bouleverse notre vision de la pensée de Parménide."

5. Croissant, Jeanne. 1986. "Parménide." In Études de philosophie ancienne , 58-129. Bruxelles: Éditions Ousia.

6. Cursaru, Gabriela. 2015-2016. "Imagerie mythico-poétique, philosophie et religion dans le Proème de Parménide." Archæus. Studies in the History of Religions no. 19-20:19-48.

;"L'analyse du Poème de Parménide, des emprunts à l'imagerie mythico-poétique-religieuse et des stratégies que le poète-philosophe a utilisées pour renverser cette tradition au moyen de la substitution, de la transposition du μύθος par l'instauration du λόγος,, permet de constater que l 'Éléate s'inscrit de ce point de vue dans une tradition plus large, celle des Présocratiques, qui, nouveaux bâtisseurs, récupèrent les pierres des édifices antérieurs, les réemploient et leurconfèrent de nouvelles fonctions pour construire leurs propres édifices. Parménide, comme Anaximandre et Anaximène, Héraclite et Empédocle, chacun à son tour et à sa façon, s'approprient des thèmes et des moyens poétiques, des figures et des motifs empruntés à la tradition pré-présocratique pour les détourner, substituant leur propre vision philosophique soumise à l'ordonnance de la pensée logique à celle des ποιηταί, instances culturelles traditionnelles qui faisaient autorité. À cet égard, il est intéressant de noter que, par la suite, la pensée philosophique fera constamment appel aux figures du voyage pour traiter de questions épistémologiques, il suffit de mentionner l'image de l'attelage qui, de Parménide à Platon et de Boèce à Ficin, a cristallisé tout un discours sur l'être, l'âme, la connaissance et le lien entre l'homme et Dieu." (p. 44)

7. ———. 2016. "Le Proème de Parménide : anabase et / ou catabase ?" Cahiers des études anciennes no. 53:39-63.

;"Il n’existe peut-être pas de question plus débattue concernant le Proème de Parménide que celle de la direction du parcours suivi par l’attelage du jeune voyageur guidé par les Héliades, et celle du trajet de ces dernières lorsqu’elles sont parties à sa rencontre.

Alors qu’on s’accorde pour reconnaître que le voyage hors du temps et hors de l’espace effectué par le κοῦρος parménidien n’est qu’une forme d’expression spatialisée de sa quête du savoir, des mouvements noétiques de son âme et du processus de recherche de la connaissance et de la Vérité absolue d’origine et d’essence divines, on ne cesse de s’interroger sur la nature de son expérience : s’agit-il d’une anabase ou d’une catabase ? Dans cette analyse, il ne s’agira pas de prendre position à ce sujet, mais plutôt de remettre en question la pertinence d’une telle interrogation et de porter un regard neuf sur le sujet. Il me semble que réduire le voyage parménidien soit à une anabase, soit, inversement, à une catabase, le traiter donc à l’aune des interprétations en quelque sorte « dualistes », c’est s’arrêter en chemin. Alors qu’au premier abord, anabase et catabase semblent s’opposer radicalement, à mieux y réfléchir, elles entretiennent des rapports autrement plus féconds que celui de l’exclusion." (pp. 39-41, deux notes omises)

8. Dehon, Pierre-Jacques. 1988. "Les recommandations de la déesse. Parménide fr. 1,28-32." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 6:271-289.

;"Les propos par lesquels la Déesse met fin à son discours introductif dans les derniers vers du proème de Parménide ont été diversement traduits et interprétés. Le plus souvent, les solutions avancées découlent de la conception globale défen due par les critiques de la pensée parménidienne. Aussi m'a t-il semblé opportun d'aborder d'un oeil neuf le texte même du passage, tout en dressant un bilan de ces différentes tentatives." (p. 271)

9. Destrée, Pierre. 2000. "L’être et la figure du soleil: note sur Parménide, DK B 8 v. 34." Revue des Études Grecques no. 111:304-307.

;"Même si la problématique des sèmata de l'être est bien connue, il demeure, à notre avis, une question que les interprètes n'ont pas vraiment abordée pour elle-même : celle de savoir quelle pourrait bien être l'origine ou la provenance des termes retenus par Parménide pour tenter de décrire ou de caractériser l'être. Ou, plus précisément, quel pourrait bien être comme le fil conducteur, c'est-à-dire l'image ou le réfèrent implicite de tous ces « signes » ou « symboles » servant à faire comprendre ce qu'est l'être ?

Très curieusement, il y a un petit mot qui, dans le fragment central du Poème de Parménide, le D.K. Β 8, n'a jamais vraiment attiré l'attention des interprètes : όγκω au vers 43. C'est sans doute l'importance de l'image de la sphère, symbole de la ' perfection ' de l'être, comme on l'interprète généralement, qui a oblitéré la lettre même du texte : il faut faire en effet remarquer que l'être n'est pas directement comparé à une sphère, mais bien à la « masse d'une sphère bien arrondie » (εύκύκλου σφαίρης έναλίγκιον όγκω). Quel est le sens de cette précision?

La réponse pourrait sembler obvie : Parménide répète ce qui a été dit au vers 24 du même fragment : « tout entier, il est plein d'être » ; tel est le sens du mot όγκος qu'Aristote reprend dans sa Physique, lorsqu'il l'oppose au « vide » (κενός) ·. Cette réponse, cependant, ne nous livre pas le sens de ce choix ici, au vers 43. En effet, si Parménide tient à préciser que la sphère à laquelle l'être est comparé a une certaine « masse », ou un certain « poids » (cf. le lien étymologique entre όγκος et ένεγκεΐν) au sens réel comme au sens figuré 2, c'est qu'il a voulu donner une indication quant au type de sphère qu'il fallait se représenter. Or, ce type de sphère ne peut être que le soleil que les tragiques associent fréquemment à l'idée de cercle, et que, de manière générale, les Grecs associent au divin, à commencer par Apollon Phébus 3. Il nous semble que ce n'est qu'à la faveur de cette représentation précise que l'on peut comprendre le choix des « signes » de l'être." (p. 304)

(1) Cf. Physique, III, 4, 203 b 28.

(2) Cf. Sophocle, Trachiniennes , 817, où il est question de la « majesté » d'un nom.

3 Sur ce thème, cf. P. Boyancé, « L'Apollon solaire », dans : Mélanges Jérôme Carcopino , Paris, 1966, p. 149-170.

10. ———. 2000. "La communauté de l'être: Parménide fr. B5." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 18:3-13.

;"Aujourd'hui, à la suite de l'article pionnier de Cornford(1), la majori té des interprètes s'accorde à donner une portée méthodologique, et purement méthodologique, au fragment D.K. Β 5 du Poème de Parmé nide (ξυνόν δέ μοί έστιν, όππόθεν άρξωμαι τόθι γαρ πάλιν ΐξομαι αύθις), que l'on traduit de la manière suivante: "Il m'est indifférent d'où je commence, car je retournerai en ce point à nouveau" (Trad. M. Conche)(2). Les deux seules questions restent alors de savoir sur quoi porte l'énoncé, quelle est la problématique visée par ce lieu d'où, "indifféremment", la déesse part et auquel elle revient, ainsi que la place qu'il faut donner à ce texte dans l'ordre des fragments." (p. 3)

(...)

"Telles sont donc les raisons, rapidement exposées, pour lesquelles il nous semble que l'on doive reprendre à nouveaux frais l'interprétation de cet "énigmatique" fragment 5, comme l'a dit un interprète (14) .

(1) F.M. Cornford, "Parmenides' two ways", Classical Quaterly, 27, 1933, p. 97-111; cf. p. 102.

(2) Même traduction chez Couloubaritsis, Coxon, Taràn, O'Brien-Frère, Gallop, Austin, etc.

(14) Cf. N.-L. Cordero, Les deux chemins de Parménide , p. 172

11. Di Giuseppe, Riccardo. 2008. "La conclusion du proème de Parménide : « constitutio textus » et histoire de la tradition." In Filologia, papirologia, storia dei testi. Giornate di studio in onore di Antonio Carlini: Udine, 9-10 dicembre 2005 , 317-370. Pisa: Serra.

;Abstract: "Parmenides, Moses, Jesus: the revelation of the Absolute in the Greek, Hebrew and Christian traditions is marked by the persistence of three surprising invariants: Being, Heart, and Word. In the Mediterranean area, the divine revelation takes always place in the heart, has invariably being as subject, and is performed by a word, which is the verb « be » itself. As a striking result, the Name is always a Verb as well in Parmenides’ poem as in Ex 3,14 and in the Gospels’ text. However, while Being is a neuter participle in the pagan poem giving birth to ontology as well as to Western philosophy, Being is a Person, I AM , in the world of the Bible. The study of the use of « be » in these three different contexts brings to the stunning conclusion that absolute Reality is seen as a substance in classical Greek philosophy, while it is seen as relation in the world of the Bible. The opposition between these two categories recalls the crucial difference between natural and supernatural mystic proposed by Maritain, worked out by Gardet and Lacombe and further investigated by J.-H. Tisin. While pagan, or natural mystic aims at the identification of knower, known and knowledge in an indifferent unity, implying the annihilation of consciousness and personality (enstasis), the supernatural mystic, typical of monotheism, conceives the revelation of a transcendent Creator as a Love relation, in which the creature’s person is, at the same time, transfigured and preserved (exstasis, visio beatifica)."

12. ———. 2011. Le voyage de Parménide . Paris: Orizons.

13. ———. 2012. "”Le passage de la Méditerranée : Parménide et la métaphysique de l’Exode ." Bulletin de Littérature ecclésiastique no. 113:87-98.

;Abstract: "Parmenides, Moses, Jesus: the revelation of the Absolute in the Greek, Hebrew and Christian traditions is marked by the persistence of three surprising invariants: Being, Heart, and Word. In the Mediterranean area, the divine revelation takes always place in the heart, has invariably being as subject, and is performed by a word, which is the verb « be » itself. As a striking result, the Name is always a Verb as well in Parmenides’ poem as in Ex 3,14 and in the Gospels’ text. However, while Being is a neuter participle in the pagan poem giving birth to ontology as well as to Western philosophy, Being is a Person, I AM, in the world of the Bible. The study of the use of « be » in these three different contexts brings to the stunning conclusion that absolute Reality is seen as a substance in classical Greek philosophy, while it is seen as relation in the world of the Bible. The opposition between these two categories recalls the crucial difference between natural and supernatural mystic proposed by Maritain, worked out by Gardet and Lacombe and further investigated by J.-H. Tisin. While pagan, or natural mystic aims at the identification of knower, known and knowledge in an indifferent unity, implying the annihilation of consciousness and personality (enstasis ), the supernatural mystic, typical of monotheism, conceives the revelation of a transcendent Creator as a Love relation, in which the creature’s person is, at the same time, transfigured and preserved (exstasis, visio beatifica )."

14. Dixsaut, Monique. 1987. "Platon et le logos de Parménide." In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation , edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 215-253. Paris: Vrin.

;Repris comme Chapitre VI dans Platon et la question de la pensée. Études platoniciennes I, Paris Vrin 2000, pp. 175-223.

"Avant d'aborder l'examen critique des doctrines de l'être, l'Étranger adresse trois prières à Théétète. Dans la première, il lui demande de se contenter «du peu qu'on pourra gagner, par quelque biais que ce soit, sur un logos aussi fort que celui de Parménide»; dans la deuxième, de ne point le regarder comme un parricide «s'il est contraint de mettre à l'épreuve le logos de son père Parménide»; dans la troisième, de ne pas l'accuser de manquer de mesure, de délirer, s'il «entreprend de réfuter ce logos », à supposer qu'il en soit capable (Sophiste 241c-242a).

Du sens que l'on accorde à cette manière d'annoncer l'entreprise comme mise à l'épreuve d'un logos fort, paternel et sacré -- et de l'importance que l'on attache (ou non) à cette manière de l'introduire, dépend toute la lecture du texte qui suit. La relecture de ce célèbre passage du Sophiste aura donc pour objet de déterminer sur quoi porte exactement la réfutation, comment et dans quel but elle se conduit."(p. 215)

15. Drvota, Tomáš, and Vitek, Tomáš. 2020. "Parménide DK 28 B 16 : un fragment méconnue [sic] d’Empédocle ?" Eirene no. 56:179-240.

;"Dans la première partie de cette étude, nous chercherons à montrer que ces quatre vers font surgir d’insurmontables diffi cultés exégétiques et que leur contenu est incompatible, d’un point de vue sémantique comme philosophique, avec celui des autres fragments de Parménide. La thése principale du fragment considéré, qui semble présenter le νόος comme le résultat d’un mélange variable d’énigmatiques μέλεα corporels, se révèle à l’examen en contradiction très nette avec le coeur de la doctrine de Parménide, laquelle, selon l’interprétation commune, établit l’identité ou l’inséparabilité de νοεῖν avec τὸ ἐόν. Or, il est fort peu concevable que Parménide ait pu, dans ce fragment B 16, conférer aux termes νοεῖν et νόος une signification totalement différente de celle qu’ils ont dans les autres fragments. Le fragment B 16 semblerait plutôt partager la notion traditionnelle du νόος telle que nous la connaissons de la poésie archaïque, épique ou lyrique.

Dans la deuxième partie de cet article, nous essaierons de montrer qu’en envisageant ce fragment dans un contexte empédocléen, il devient soudain possible d’en comprendre la singulière sémantique et d’en proposer une interprétation cohérente. Nous ne prétendons certes pas parvenir de la sorte à réfuter définitivement la paternité de Parménide ni à établir ainsi avec certitude celle d’Empédocle, mais peut-être cette tentative aura-t-elle eu le mérite d’attirer l’attention sur cette éventualité : celle d’une attribution erronée d’un fragment d’Empédocle à Parménide, que celle-ci ait été initialement le fait des premiers doxographes ou bien d’Aristote et de Théophraste. Plus tard, les exégètes modernes, héritiers d’une tradition qui remontait à l’école péripatéticienne, n’auraient eu d’autre possibilité que d’interpréter ces vers dans le cadre de la doctrine de Parménide." (pp. 180-181, une note omise)

16. Dubarle, Dominique. 1973. "Le poème de Parménide, doctrine du savoir et premier état d'une doctrine de l'être (première partie)." Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques no. 57:3-34.

17. ———. 1973. "Le poème de Parménide, doctrine du savoir et premier état d'une doctrine de l'être (deuxième partie)." Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques no. 57:397-432.

18. Dumont, Jean-Pierre. 1994. "Le modèle parménidien de l’assimilation: pensée, sensation et vie." In Ainsi parlaient les Anciens. In honorem Jean Paul Dumont , edited by Jerphagnon, Lucien, Lagrée, Jacqueline and Delattre, Denis, 349-371. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses universitaires de Lille.

19. Escoubas, Éliane. 2996. "Λόγος et tautologie: la lecture heideggérienne d'Héraclite et de Parménide." In Phénoménologie et logique , edited by Courtine, Jean-François, 297-313. Paris: Presses de l’École Normale Supérieure.

20. Espinosa, Santiago Eugenio. 2019. L'Impensé. Inactualité de Parménide . Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

21. Fattal, Michel. 1998. "Mythe et philosophie chez Parménide." In Philosophes et historiens anciens face aux mythes , edited by Bouvier, Daniel and Calame, Claude, 91-103. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

;"Si Parménide n'attribue pas à l'instar de Xénophane une connotation fortement négative au discours mensonger de la tradition poétique, il n'en demeure pas moins qu'on assiste chez lui à une véritable transmutation du discours homérique et hésiodique notamment en ce qui concerne le problème complexe de la vérité, de la tromperie et de la vraisemblance. Son originalité philosophique résiderait non seulement dans l'élaboration d'un logos qui incarnera pour la première fois l'idée d'une «raison critique personnelle» capable de «juger» une réfutation énoncée par l'autorité d'une «maîtresse de vérité» et dans l'établissement d'une gnômê susceptible de faire le choix entre le plus vraisemblable et le moins vraisemblable; mais également dans le fait d'entamer, bien avant Platon et à la différence du Sophiste, une réflexion sur la vérité et l'erreur qui est commandée par la question des bons et des mauvais mélanges, des bonnes et des mauvaises séparations."

22. ———. 1998. "Le logos dans le Poème de Parménide." In Les lieux de l’intersubjectivité. Mélanges offerts en hommage à S. Abou , edited by Hatem, Jad. Paris / Montréal: L'Harmattan.

23. ———. 2016. Du bien et de la crise : Platon, Parménide et Paul de Tarse . Paris: L'Harmattan.

24. ———. 2019. "Raison critique et crise chez Parménide d'Élée." In ὁδοὶ νοῆσαι. Ways to Think. Essays in Honour of Néstor-Luis Cordero , edited by Palumbo, Lidia, 113-120. Diogene Multimedia: Bologna.

;Résumé : "Le but de cet article est de montrer le rôle fondamental joué par la “raison” (logos ) aux origines de la Grèce antique. Parménide d’Elée est le premier philosophe qui recommande, à travers l’injonction de la “Déesse” du Poème, rencontrant d’une manière allégorique son “disciple” (le philosophe), d’utiliser sa “raison critique personnelle” en vue d’instaurer une “crise” (krisis)(4) parmi les opinions et les fausses valeurs du commun des mortels, et dans le but de critiquer la validité de la vérité affirmée par la Déesse elle-même qui représente l’autorité par excellence(5). Cette importance assignée par Parménide à la “raison critique” et au concept de “crise” détermine, en quelque sorte, le destin de notre culture/science occidentale fondée sur le questionnement et la remise en cause - et définit l’activité et la “méthode” originale du philosophe."

(4) Au fragment B 8, 15, la krisis désigne la "décision" séparant et distinguant l'être du non-'être, le vrai du faux.

(5) Au fragment B /, 5, la déeese lui dit clairement: "Décide (juge) par la raison (krinai logô ) la réfutation polémique que j'ai enoncée."

25. Francotte, Auguste. 1958. "Les disertes juments de Parménide." Phronesis :83-94.

;"1. Le premier fragment du poème philosophique de Parménide(1) relate un mythe apparemment sans mystère. Le penseur feint d'être emporté dans les cieux sur un char attelé de juments. De jeunes Vierges, les Filles du Soleil, le conduisent auprès d'une Déesse qui lui révèle la voie de la Vérité et les embûches de !'Opinion.

La signification de cet enlèvement est transparente: l'assomption est synonyme à la fois de rupture avec le commun et d'initiation aux réalités transcendantes.(2) De nombreuses difficultés surgissent toutefois si l'on veut rendre raison de tous les détails du récit. Entre ces différents traits, nous nous proposons d'examiner, sinon le plus riche de sens, du moins, pensons-nous, le plus négligé." (p. 83)

(..)

"Si l'intelligence greque élargit, approfondit et littéralement informe le mythe, elle ne se substitue pas à lui. D'Hésiode à Platon, la pensée grecque ne cesse d'être mythe ni le mythe grec d'être pensée. Bien plus, comme nous avons tenté de le montrer, la pensée la plus logique est aussi la plus imprégnée de mythe. Car les perspectives de la fable et de la critique, loin de diverger, se complètent.

Composant l'une et l'autre avec l'aisance géniale qu'elle met à surmonter toutes les antinomies vulgaires, la pensée grecque doit à son ambiguïté même son irremplaçable particularité et sa valeur universelle." (p. 94)

(1) Parménide, 28 (18) B 1, Diels-Kranz.

(2) M. Éliade, Traité d'histoire des religions, Paris, 1953, p. 32-101. - Du même, Le chamanisme et les techniques archaïques de l'extase, Paris, 1951, p. 423 sv. - Du même, Mythes, rêves et mystères , Paris, 1957, p. 133-164.

26. Frère, Jean. 1981. "Parménide, penseur du cosmos." Deukalion no. 33-34:77-86.

;"Dans ce qui subsiste des vers du poème de Parrnénide(1), les vers 50 - 61 sur lesquels s'achève le fragment 8 marquent un tournant. La première partie du poème avait dit l'Être (τὸ ἐόν») (fgt 8, v. 19, v. 32, v. 35; déjà fgt 4, v. 2) et l'impossibilité du Non-Être radical (fgt 8, v. 7). L'Être se révèle en son surgissement comme parole (φάσις) (fgt 8, v. 35),. comme pensée (νόημα) (v. 33 - 35), comme vérité (αλητεία) (v. 51). Mais Parménide en reste-t-il à une pure réflexion sur l'Être et sur les caractères de l'Être ? Bien des commentateurs, philosophes ou historiens de la pensée, l'ont à tort prétendu. En réalité, ce que nous allons montrer, c'est que le discours sur l'Être n'a de sens que comme fondement d'un discours sur le Cosmos. Après le discours (λόγος) plein de foi (πίστις) (fgt 8, v. 50; cf. fgt 1, v. 30) concernant la Vérité ou l'Être, Parménide, loin de se contnter comme on l'a cru trop souvent de dénoncer des opinions illusoires de mortels, énonce avec netteté des jugements (γνώμη) (fgt 8, v. 61) permettanl de connaître, dans la mesure du possible, le Cosmos.

Parménide, dans la seconde partie du poème, depuis le fragment 8, v 61, jusqu'au fragment 19, s'il critique assurément certaines conceptions erronées du Cosmos ou du 'Toul' (πᾶν) (fgt 9, v. 3) n'en esquisse pas moins sa propre conception du Cosmos." (pp. 77.78)

27. ———. 1985. "Aurore, Éros et Ananké. Autour des dieux parménidiens." Les Études Philosophiques :460-470.

;"Deux divinités dominent le cosmos selon Parménide : Ananké et Eros.

Ananké intervient en deux passages essentiels du poème; dans l'un il s'agit de l'Etre, dans le second il est question des astres. Au fragment 8, vers 30-31, parlant de l'immobilité de l'Etre, Parménide dit :

la contraignante Nécessité le maintient dans les liens d'une limite qui l'enserre de toutes parts.

Au fragment rn, vers 5-6-7, Parménide dit parlant du ciel :

tu connaîtras le ciel et comment la Nécessité qui le dirige l'a contraint à maintenir les limites des astres.

Ainsi les deux passages insistent-ils sur la « contraignante » Nécessité qui « maintient » dans des « liens » et des « limites ».

Pour ce qui est de la conception parménidienne d'Eros, nous possédons le fragment 1 3. Le fragment 1 3 dit :

le tout premier de tous les dieux, c'est Eros qu'[Elle] conçut.

(...)

Dans le commentaire de la Physique d'Aristote, Simplicius apporteà son tour des textes et des indications concernant Ananké et Eros.

C'est grâce à ces passages de Simplicius que les éditeurs de Parménide ont ordonné plusieurs fragments de la seconde partie du poème (f. 9 et suiv.).

Cependant l'ordonnance des fragments ici retenue par la plupart des éditeurs, si l'on y apporte quelque attention, semble loin de s'imposer.

Relisant de près le texte de Simplicius, nous voudrions ici dégager conjointement plusieurs thèmes. D'abord en ce qui concerne Simplicius, nous voudrions apporter des précisions sur sa technique de citation des fragments. A partir de là, nous pourrions envisager une nouvelle structuration des fragments portant sur Ananké et Eros. Enfin, nous pourrions ainsi essayer de mieux dégager certains aspects de la place du divin dans l'oeuvre parménidienne." (pp. 459. 460, notes omises)

28. ———. 1987. "Parménide et l'ordre du monde: fr. VIII, 50-61." In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation , edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 192-212. Paris: Vrin.

;"La lecture des derniers vers du fragment VIII de Parménide (v. 50-61) pose un problème difficile. La clôture du discours cernant la Vérité est-elle ouverture sur les débordements d'opinions erronées? Ce morceau terminal ne concerne-t-il pas plutôt les étants en leur relation avec l'Être? La nouveauté de Parménide, depuis le fragment I jusqu'au fragment VIII, v.49, c'est assurément de s'arracher aux conceptions des penseurs de la physis ; Parménide s'y montre le premier véritable philosophe de l'Être: mais délaisse-t-il pour autant certains aspects de la physis ? La dernière partie de l'oeuvre (fr. VIII, v. 50-61; fr. IX à fr. XIX) n'est-elle qu'une critique des opinions erronées des philosophes sur le monde? Ou ne serait- elle pas, bien plutôt, l'articulation de ce qu'il est possible et légitime d'énoncer sur le monde, en tant que les étants sont fondés dans l'Être? Ainsi une lecture approfondie des derniers vers du fragment VIII s'avère-t- elle fondamentale. Déjà les derniers vers du fragment I suggèrent que les dokounta sont fondés dans l'Être. Dans leur prolongement, les derniers vers du fragment VIII n'amorcent-ils pas la mise en place d'une connaissance possible du monde et d'une connaissance possible des étants par rapport à leur fondement dans l'Être?" (p. 192)

29. ———. 1991. "Platon, lecteur de Parménide dans le Sophiste ." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon , edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 125-143. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

;"Bien que souvent négligé, le témoignage de Platon sur Parménide est sans aucun doute capital. Comment Platon lit-il Parménide avant de le discuter?" (p. 127)

(...)

"Le témoignage de Platon semble donc fondamental.

Pourtant, les exégètes de Platon - dans l'Antiquité, de nos jours - ont-ils réellement tenu compte de ce que dit le texte de Platon concernant Parménide?

On a vu dans Parménide, à travers le témoignage de Platon, le premier penseur de l'Etre, en sa pureté et son intemporalité d'être. Certes. Mais en quel sens précis Parménide pensait-il "est" (esti ) ou l'"Etant" (to on )? C'est ici que les penseurs et commentateurs ont projeté et continuent de projeter leurs propres conceptions philosophiques - théologiques, ontologiques, matérialistes sur le texte de Platon aussi bien que sur celui de Parménide. Ne faudrait-il pas revenir au témoignage de Platon, même si sa lucidité nous montre chez Parménide des thèmes auxquels nous ne prêtons souvent aujourd'hui que peu attention?" (pp. 128-129)

(...)

"Ainsi selon Platon dans le Sophiste y avait-il chez Parménide énoncés vrais, énoncés erronés, quant à l'Etant et quant aux étants. C'est le problème du bien-fondé de tels énoncés qui allait amener Platon à contourner Parménide énonçant de l'Etant son caractère d'inengendré et indestructible Englobant. «Il nous faudra nécessairement, pour nous défendre, mettre à la question la thèse de notre père Parménide» (Soph . 241 D). Au dialecticien rationaliste usant de mythes rationnels Platon, Parménide apparaissait, tels les autres Présocratiques, comme un abusif "conteur de mythes". «Ils m'ont tout l'air de nous conter des mythes, comme on ferait à des enfants» (Soph. 242 C). Mais, même si Parménide a intégré à son oeuvre des figures mythiques, Parménide selon Platon n'a point vraiment "conté de mythes". Des pensées désormais incontournables ont été énoncées par Parménide.

Platon le sait et l'a écrit. Or Platon ne nous montre pas seulement en Parménide un penseur de l'Etre un, mais aussi un penseur de !'Etre-sphère et de l'Etant dont se peuvent énoncer avec certitude bien des qualifications et bien des négations essentielles." (p. 143, une note omise)

30. ———. 2005. "Les dieux d'Élée et d'Agrigente." In Agonistes: essays in honour of Denis O'Brien , edited by Dillon, John M. and Dixsaut, Monique, 3-12. Aldershot: Ashgate.

;"C'est semblablement à ces conceptions très complexes et élaborées de ce qu'est le Dieu un que Parménide fut amené à envisager sa propre conception de l'Être un.

Du monisme théologico-géométrique de Xénophane, Parménide passe à l'ontologie. Mais en fonction et à partir de Platon, surtout attentif à la conception parménidienne de l'Être un en tant qu'inengendré (agéng_ton) et impérissable (agênethron ) (30), les commentateurs ont négligé le versant de corporéité pure (démas ) qu'impliquait« !'Être» (tò eón ) (31).

Certes Platon n'a pas ignoré, bien qu'il ne l'ait envisagé que fort épisodiquement, cet aspect de l'Être parménidien, à la fois corporéité géométrique parfaite et pensée pure (32). Mais ce ne furent pas ces aspects de la conception parménidienne de l' Être qui attirèrent ses réflexions et commentaires.

Toutefois, le déroulement même de la démonstration de Parménide dans le fragment 8 est tout à fait net et explicite. Et ne voir dans l'image de la « Sphère» qu'une métaphore pour signifier la perfection constitue un total déni de compréhension de la seconde partie du fragment. Parménide était sur ce point très proche de ce qu'avait admis le monothéisme xénophanien. Après les analyses de l'intemporalité de !'Être un, Parménide a aussi traité de ce démas parfait qui caractérise tout autant et réellement I' Être éternel que le penser parfait. Pourquoi, sinon, les vers 22-49 du Poème? On trouve ici une longue et très précise analyse de ce qu'est le démas parfait constitutif de !'Être en sa perfection quasi divine." (p. 11)

(30) 28 B, 8, 3 D.K.

(31) 28 B 4, 3, D.K.; 8, 19, O.K. Le démas ne concerne pas seulement Feu éthéré et Nuit obscure (8, 55, 59).

(32) Cf. Sophiste, 244e-245a-b, citant 8, 43-45.

31. ———. 2012. Parménide ou le souci du vrai: ontologie, théologie, cosmologie . Paris: Éditions Kimé.

;Table des matières : Introduction 7;

Première partie

Chapitre 1 L’Être et le cosmos 15; Chapitre 2 Les illusions des mortels 29; Chapitre 3 Le souci de l’Être 39; Chapitre 4 Le double « je » 53;

Deuxième partie

Chapitre 5 Dieux étemels, dieux immortels 63; Chapitre 6 Les dieux d’Élée 73; Chapitre 7 Ananké et Eros 85;

Troisième partie

Chapitre 8 La physis 95; Chapitre 9 Parménide et l’ordre du monde 101; Chapitre 10 Lumière et nuit 119;

Conclusion 131; Le Poème, texte grec 133; Traduction 143; Notes 153; Bibliographie 163-164.

"Parménide distingue très nettement deux plans du divin. D’une part, le plan des dieux étemels dans l’entour de l’Un étemel, dieux puissants, silencieux, purificateurs. D’autre part, celui des dieux présidant soit au devenir du cosmos soit au surgissement du savoir humain : dieux immortels. Les dieux étemels sont au nombre de quatre : Diké, Moira, Thémis, Ananké ; s’y ajoutent les grands principes cosmiques divins étemels : Ananké II, la Nuit, la Lumière. Parmi les dieux non étemels mais immortels figurent d’abord les dieux dominant l’ensemble du Cosmos; se situent ici les dieux favorablés que sont l’Amour, les dieux astraux (le Soleil et la Lune). Mais il y a aussi des dieux malveillants tels les dieux de la guerre. Viennent ensuite les dieux du dialogue avec les humains, dieux tout de bienveillance : la Déesse sans nom révélatrice de la Vérité, les Héliades, filles du Soleil conduisant le jeune homme avide de savoir, la déesse Portière qu’il faut tâcher de séduire, la bonne Moira, les déesses immortelles Equité (Thémis) et Justice (Diké).

Ainsi, pour parachever sa doctrine de l’Un étemel et du dualisme cosmique de Nuit et Lumière, Parménide se trouve amené à donner une place d’importance à tout un ensemble de déesses et de dieux bien déterminés. Dans ce panthéon parménidien, l’on constate l’absence des dieux olympiens. Point de Zeus, en effet, ni d’Athéna. D’autre part, il n’y a aucune hiérarchie généalogique à la façon d’Hésiode. De la tradition, Parménide ne conserve que très peu de noms. On retrouve Moira, Thémis, Eros ; mais leurs places et fonctions précises sont très différentes de celles des conceptions antérieurement admises par les Grecs." (pp. 10-11)

32. Fronterotta, Francesco. 2013. "Une école éléatique ? : Parménide, Zénon et Mélissos." In La sagesse présocratique. ommunication des savoirs en Grèce archaïque : des lieux et des hommes edited by Desclos, Marie-Laurence Desclos and Fronterotta, Francesco, 131-147. Paris: Armand Colin.

;Résumé : "Le critère «géographique» de classement des penseurs présocratiques adopté dans ce volume montre bien son efficace dans le cas de Parménide et Zénon, natifs de la ville d' Élée, dans le sud de l'Italie, car ce n'est qu'entre eux que l'on peut admettre un rapport, sinon d'école à proprement parler, au moins de connaissance directe et de doctrine, alors que, pour ce qui est de Xénophane et de Mélissos, habituellement rangés dans le cadre de !'«école» éléatique, la situation apparaît beaucoup plus douteuse, Xénophane n'ayant aucune relation certaine avec Parménide (ni personnelle ni docrrinaire) ec avec la ville d'Élée, ec Mélissos, qui reprend évidemment une version «moniste» des thèses de Parménide, se situant à une distance considérable de ce dernier, dans l'île de Samos, en mer Égée.

C'est la raison pour laquelle on ne traitera pas, dans ce chapitre, de Xénophane (voir, dans ce volume, le chapitre Égée); et que l'on examinera, de Mélissos, les arguments qui se rattachent de manière directe aux thèses de Parménide (voir aussi, pour compléter sa présentation, le chapitre Abdère)."

33. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2006. "Parménide ou L'immanence de l'être " In Interroger les Grecs: études sur les Présocratiques, Platon et Aristote , 47-85. Noêsis (Saint-Laurent (Québec): Fides.

34. Golitsis, Pantelis. 2008. Les Commentaires de Simplicius et de Jean Philopon à la Physique d’Aristote . Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

;Sur Parménide voir:

Deuxièe partie. Les digressions : lieux de réflexion personnelle et moyens d'innovation philosophique;

Chapitre 4. — Les digressions : esquisse dune typologie 83; Chapitre 5. — Analyse des digressions 89;

5.1 Les digressions « concordistes » de Simplicius 89;

5.1.3 Deux digressions à propos de la doctrine de Parménide (In Phys., 86.19 – 90.22 et 142.28 – 148.24) 100-108.

Appendice

Les digressions traduites et annotées 207;

3) Simplicius, Sur les significations de l'un chez Parménide (In Phys ., 86.19 – 90.22) 220;

4) Simplicius, Sur l'Un-qui-est parménidien (In Phys ., 142.28 – 148.24) 225-231.

"Le présent livre se propose d'étudier l'originalité de l'éxégèse philosophique de Simplicius et de Jean Philopon, telle qu'elle se laisse appréhender par une analyse systématique de leurs Commentaires sur la Physique d'Aristote.

Commentant le même texte fondateur de la pensée antique, les deux exégètes, contemporains l'un de l'autre et nourris dans le même modèle philosophique, celui du néoplatonisme tardif, sont loin de nous proposer une interprétation de la Physique identique ou semblable, et cela dans une époque où la nouveauté, la « kainoprépeia », fut généralement dévaluée. C'est dire que la tradition – ce dont l'originalité tient à la fois sa différenciation et son identité – pesait lourd sur les épaules des derniers philosophes de l'antiquité." (p. 1)

"La présente étude est accompagnèe d'un appendice, dans lequel sont traduites et annotées les principales digressions des deux Commentaires sur la Physique , mis à part les excursus contra Philoponum de Simplicius et les quatre Corollaria (sur le lieu et le temps, de Simplicius, et sur le lieu et le vide, de Philopon)." (p.4)

"Les digressions que Simplicius consacre à la doctrine de Parménide visent à éclairer non seulement la critique que lui adresse Aristote, mais aussi, à l'arrière-plan du commentaire, celle de Platon. La première digression (In Phys ., 86.19 – 90.22) suit l'explication de Phys. , I 2, 185b 5 – 25, où Aristote réfute le monisme de l' «école » éléate en faisant apparaître les différents sens quadmet le nom d' « un ». Quand on dit que quelque chose est un, explique le Stagirite, on entend qu'elle est : 1) soit continue ; 2) soit indivisible ; 3) soit une et identique avec une autre chose en vertu de leur définition commune." (p. 100)

"La deuxième digression (In Phys ., 142.28 – 148.24) est une sorte de récapitulation des remarques déjà formulées dans les digressions précédentes et aussi au cours du commentaire. Somme toute, elle couronne l'exégèse de Phys ., I 2–3, dont le contenu est pour l'essentiel une réfutation des thèses éléatiques. En voici le proème :

Mais puisque nous avons déjà atteint la fin des discours qui s'opposent àParménide, il serait bon de dépister à quel degré la doctrine de l'Un-qui-est de Parménide répond à ce dont il est question ici, et d'examiner également sur quoi portent précisément les objections." (p. 104)

35. Graham, Daniel W. 2002. "La Lumière de la lune dans la pensée grecque archaïque." In Qu’est-ce que la philosophie présocratique ? = What is presocratic philosophy ? , edited by Laks, André and Louguet, Claire, 351-380. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.

;Traduction : Létitia Mouze.

« Thalès a dit le premier que [la lune] est éclairée par le soleil ; Pythagore et Parménide de même. » (Aétius Il, 28, 5)

« [Anaximandre dit que] la lune brille d'une lumière empruntée, éclairée par le soleil. » (Diogène Laërce Il, 1)

« Eudème rapporte dans son Astronomie qu'OEnopide a le premier découvert le cercle du zodiaque et le cycle de la Grande Année ; Thalès, l'éclipse du soleil et l'époque des solstices, et qu'ils ne paraissent pas toujours au même moment ; Anaximandre, que la terre est suspendue et se meut autour du centre du monde ; Anaximène, que la lune reçoit sa lumière du soleil, et de quelle manière elle a une éclipse. » (Théon de Smyrne, CXCVIII, 14-CXCIX, 2)

"Qui a découvert le premier la source de la lumière de la lune ? Les notices doxographiques citées ci-dessus reflètent les mauvaises informations accumulées dans l'Antiquité sur le prétendu Premier Découvreur" (p. 351)

"Le dernier personnage, auquel il est fait allusion dans notre liste des prétendus découvreurs de la source de la lumière de la lune, est Parménide. Et cette fois, il existe une preuve positive en faveur de cette allégation. La compréhension de Parménide est attestée dans deux brefs fragments :

Νυκτιφαὲς περὶ γαῖαν ἀλώμενον ἀλλότριον φῶς (28 B14)

αἰεὶ παπταίνουσα πρὸς αὐγὰς ἠελίοιο. (B15)

[la lune est un corps] qui brille la nuit35, errant autour de la terre avec une lumière empruntée, jetant sans cesse un regard vers les rayons du soleil.

Les deux idées principales dans ces fragments sont le fait que la lune reçoit sa lumière d'autre chose, et qu'elle fait toujours face aux rayons du soleil. Au lecteur non averti, les observations de Parménide sembleront complètement triviales. Mais si nous avons en tête le fait qu'aucune de ces observations n'a, à notre connaissance,j amais été faite avant - en tout cas pas dans la littérature grecque que nous avons conservée - nous commençons à voir dans ces lignes la reconnaissance de quelque chose d'important.

Puisque nous avons disqualifié les prétendants anciens, il nous reste comme premier découvreur Parménide, ce qui est confirmé par ses propres paroles." (p. 289, deux notes omises)

(35) 35. Ou bien : « brillant comme la nuit», d'après Coxon 1986, 245s.

36. Guérard, Christian. 1987. "Parménide d'Êlée chez les Néoplatoniciens." In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation , edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 294-313. Paris: Vrin.

;"Dans toute son oeuvre conservée, Proclus cite abondamment les fragments orphiques, les Oracles chaldaïques et Homère surtout, mais, somme toute, peu fréquemment Parménide.

On ne trouve des citations ou des allusions certaines que dans trois seuls ouvrages:

-- l'un de jeunesse, mais probablement remanié plus tard: l'In Timaeum ;

-- l'autre de la majorité, et pour nous le plus important: l'In Parmenidem ;

-- le dernier de la fin: la Théologie platonicienne (30).

À l'évidence, l'Éléate n'est pas pour Proclus une autorité primordiale. Cela se comprend aisément dans la mesure où il ne connaissait pas l'Un avant l'être, et, dans son Poème, ne distingue pas explicitement les différents degrés de la «largeur intelligible». Toutefois, il n'est aucunement regardé comme un adversaire; nous allons le constater en étudiant toutes les citations et allusions évidentes au Poème parménidien." (pp. 300-301)

(...)

"À l'issue de cette étude, il nous semble possible de définir le néoplatonisme par rapport à sa propre perspective historique.

Nous avons vu que les rares allusions à Parménide, chez Plotin, font place à des citations textuelles et nombreuses chez Proclus. Le Lycien a peut-être même commenté systématiquement l'Éléate, tant on a l'impression qu'il affine son exégèse à mesure qu'il lit la Voie de la Vérité. Mais ce ne sont là que différences de méthode et de personnalité.

La pensée néoplatonicienne est rigoureusement identique de Plotin à Proclus: Parménide justifie la lecture théologique du Parménide . C'est parce qu'il a connu l'intellect que, par son hypothèse, Platon a pu s'élever jusqu'à l'Un premier. L'Éléate s'inscrit donc parfaitement dans le mouvement de dévoilement de la Lumière." (p. 312)

(30) Signalons que nous ne rencontrons plus aucune citation de Parménide après le livre III de cet ouvrage. À part une allusion dans le livre IV, il n'est question que du personnage du dialogue pfatonicien.

37. Guidara, Giulia. 2019. "Les idées des intellectuels alexandrins sur la vérité, la philosophie grecque et les Présocratiens : Plotin et Clément en comparaison." Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie no. 66:431-454.

;Résumé : "La comparaison entre Clément d'Alexandrie et Plotin donne une idée de la circulation et de l'interprétation de la pensée présocratique dans l'Alexandrie des Ier-IIIe siècles : les significatives analogies concernant Héraclite, et les importantes différences à propos de Parménide mettent en lumière l'existence d'une tradition exégétique alexandrine qui est unitaire, mais aussi fluide. En outre, les points de contact et les divergences entre Clément et Plotin permettent de comprendre la manière dont la philosophie chrétienne et la philosophie « païenne » pensent les débuts (et donc aussi, la nature même) de la sagesse humaine, à savoir le contexte où la pensée présocratique se développe."

38. Hoffman, Ernst. 2005. "Logos et epos chez Héraclite et Parménide." Poésie no. 114:111-125.

;Traduit de la version italienne, Il linguaggio e la logica arcaica , traduit et introduit par Luca Guidetti, Spazio libri, Firenze, 1981 et présenté par Martin Rueff.

Édition originale: "Die Sprache und die archaische Logik" (Heidelberger Abhandlungen zur Philosophie und ihrer Geschichte , 3, 1925).

"Le langage et la logique archaïque est l’oeuvre la plus connue d’Ernst Hoffman. Ce texte qui fut d’emblée considéré comme un « classique » fut publié la première fois en 1925 dans les « Heidelberger Abhandlungen zur Philosophie und ihrer Geschichte » qu’Ernst Hoffman dirigeait avec Heinrich Rickert." (p. 111, une note omise)

"Si l’on voulait rendre la doctrine de Parménide en une formule, on pourrait dire : les mots sont « faux » parce qu’ils feignent d’être identiques aux choses qu’ils prétendent nommer alors que seuls l’être et la pensée sont identiques. Seul ce qui peut être objet de la véritable pensée, seul ce qui est véritablement pensable, peut être le contenu d’un « discours véridique ». Ce qui est, ce qui est pensable et ce qui peut être dit ne doit pas être séparé : par cette affirmation, Parménide a créé la présupposition de la logique archaïque des Grecs. La pensée prélogique pose comme identiques, en vertu de la connaissance du nom, l’être de la chose, son nom et ce qui lui appartient. Parménide retire l’identité au monde des choses et des mots pour leur attribuer une demeure dans le mundus intelligibilis. C’est alors et alors seulement que l’identité est chez elle, c’est là et là seulement que se réalise l’unité sans partage de l’eon, du noêma et du logos. Telle est la thèse proposée par Parménide et c’est exactement cette thèse que les sophistes ont convertie en son contraire. Gorgias ne dit-il pas « premièrement et pour commencer que rien n’existe, deuxièmement que, même s’il existe quelque chose, l’homme ne peut l’appréhender, [et] que même si on peut l’appréhender, on ne peut ni le formuler ni l’expliquer aux autres »? (3)" (p. 125)

(3) Cf. D.K., 82 A 3. Cf. Les écoles présocratiques , [Paris, Folio, 1988, édition établie par Jean-Paul Dumont], p. 701. Sur la tendance générale de la parole de Gorgias, cf. W. Nestle, [Die Schrift des Gorgias über die Natur oder über das Nichtseiende ] in « Hermes », 57, 1922, p. 551 et sq.

39. Iribarren, Leopoldo. 2006. "Rationalisations de la croyance : la construction de la « pistis » comme philosophème chez Parménide et Empédocle." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 24:63-82.

;"Chez Parménide, les appels à la pistis résonnent avec insistance du côté de l'ontologie; l'étant y apparaît comme son dépositaire légitime, car il assure, dans les limites de sa détermination parfaite, la coïncidence

de l'être, du penser et du dire. Dans ce contexte, la persuasion et la croyance se posent en barrières logiques du chemin de la vérité, empêchant toute contamination par l'évidence sensible et les concepts qui

sous-tendent la physique." (p. 64)

(...)

"De l'une à l'autre pistis , de la conviction parménidienne, force logique qui résume les attributs de l'étant, à la fiabilité empédocléenne, phénomène physiologique lié à la sensation, nous avons essayé de montrer les opérations qui, à l'intérieur de ces deux poèmes philosophiques, déterminent rationnellement la croyance. Au-delà des différences concernant la nature des évidences et ses critères de vérification, Parménide

et Empédocle thématisent le rapport de la vérité à la croyance.

On l'a vu, il revient à chaque poète d'imposer un critère de vérité, de forger une pistis qui lui soit propre et de la rendre indissociable de l'articulation interne de son discours. Que son fondement relève de

l'ontologie ou qu'il tienne d'un processus sensoriel, la croyance s'érige en seul rapport légitime du sujet à l'objet de connaissance. Faire émerger la pistis , expliciter ses conditions de possibilité dans le discours,

fait partie intégrante des projets des poètes-philosophes. Cette suprême ambition performative, créatrice de mondes persuasifs, atteint son sommet dans l'Éloge d'Hélène (DK 82 B11), oeuvre de Gorgias, disciple

d'Empédocle, où se réalise la tentative de production de la pistis à partir d'un écart de la vérité établie." (p. 82)

40. ———. 2013. "Sophistique contre cosmologie. Á propos d'une allusion à Parménide dans les Nuées ." In Socrate et les « Présocratiques » dans les Nuées d'Aristophane edited by Laks, André and Saetta Cottone, Rosella, 133-149. Paris: Éditions Rue d'Ulm.

;"On peut affirmer, certes de façon très schématique, que l’action des Nuées d’Aristophane repose sur le rapprochement entre, d’un côté, ce que l’on pourrait appeler le « monde de la vie », incarné par Strepsiade, paysan sommaire pressé par ses dettes, et, de l’autre, la « théorie », personnifiée par un certain Socrate, intellectuel improbable proférant un composite de doctrines « présocratiques » plus ou moins identifiables." (p. 133)

(...)

"D’autres indices textuels montrent qu’à travers le personnage de Strepsiade, Aristophane ne se contente pas de détourner quelques éléments significatifs du proème de Parménide, qui devait constituer à l’époque le récit initiatique par excellence, mais vise la doctrine même du philosophe. Dans la première partie du poème, connue comme le récit de la « vérité », la Déesse présente au jeune élu les seules voies de recherche qui peuvent être pensées, « est » et « n’est pas », deux formes verbales conjuguées et dépourvues de sujet." (p. 138)

(...)

"La diversité des termes que Parménide mobilise autour de la métaphore de la « voie » comme quête du savoir ne semble pas avoir échappé à Aristophane(14). On remarquera ainsi que chez le poète comique, le chemin « divinement merveilleux » qui fait l’objet de la scène de persuasion de Strepsiade (v. 76) est désigné par le terme ἀτραπός, le même qui, dans le poème de Parménide, sert à nommer le chemin impraticable du « n’est pas ». La voie initiatique censée sauver Strepsiade de ses créanciers reçoit donc la connotation négative que Parménide imprime à ce mot." (p. 139)

(14) Parménide déploie tout un vocabulaire lié à la « voie » : ὁδός (B1 2, 5, 27 ; B2 2 ; B6 3 ; B7 2, 3 ; B8 1, 18), κέλευθος (B1 11 ; B2 4 ; B6 9), ἀμαξιτός (B1 21), πάτος (B1 27), ἀταρπός (B2 6). Voir à ce propos l’étude classique d’A. P. D. Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides , p. 16-25.

41. ———. 2018. Fabriquer le monde : technique et cosmogonie dans la poésie grecque archaïque . Paris: Classiques Garnier.

;Chapitre 6: Le poème de Parménide. Technique et spéculation philosophique , pp. 131-163.

42. Journée, Gérard. 2010. "Parménide B6, 1 et 8-9 DK: grammaire, poésie, métaphysique." Revue des Études Grecques no. 123:397-424.

;"Alors qu’il est habituel de traduire B6, 8-9 de la manière suivante, «Ils sont emportés, sourds en même temps qu’aveugles, race indécise, pour qui l’être et le non être sont tenus pour le même et non le même». Burnet proposait au contraire pour la fin «Undiscerning crowds, who hold that it is and is not the same and not the same(1)», en donnant à τὸ une valeur démonstrative. C’est semble-t-il plutôt la question de savoir si ce passage constituait ou non une attaque d’Héraclite, comme le pensait Burnet contre Zeller(2), qui a ensuite intéressé les interprètes. L’interprétation proposée, quant à elle, n’a guère été reprise(3), sinon de manière très remarquable par A. H. Coxon, à une nuance près «people without judgment, by whom this has been accepted as both being and not being the same and not the same(4).» (p. 398)

"La considération de la leçon des mss., en B6, 1, ne renforce pas la solution articulaire qui, dans tous les cas, peut subir les mêmes critiques. Elle affaiblit en revanche très fortement l’hypothèse déjà difficile de Burnet. Mais elle ne saurait abattre, en tout cas, la possibilité de la lecture démonstrative qui, soutenue par Bollack et Wismann sur l’ancienne version du texte, vaut toujours pour la nouvelle.

La suite est une question de lecture : si B6, 8 ouvre le texte à son contexte, la syntaxe présumée ambiguë de B6, 1 s’éclairerait finalement toujours à partir de ce même contexte. Faute de ce liant, les possibilités se multiplient : considérer en revanche que les tó de B6, 1 ont une fonction similaire à celui de B6, 8 ferme la syntaxe et, quoi qu’il faille penser de sa poésie, rend justice à Parménide." (p. 421)

(1) Burnet 1920, p. 174. La construction pourrait être comparée à celle que l’on trouve en Iliade I, 228, «τὸ δέ τοι κὴρ εἴδεται εἶναι», «cela te paraît être la mort». Le rôle du tó est en l’occurrence plus clair, mais il est parfaitement possible que, aux yeux de Parménide, le oûk posé à la suite ait suffi à réduire l’ambiguïté.

(2) Burnet 1920, p. 179.

(3) A. Rey 1933, p. 143, qui a suivi Burnet, rend la phrase de manière légèrement différente, mais dans un esprit comparable «Foules sans jugement, aux yeux de qui cela est et cela n’est pas, le même et non le même».

(4) Coxon 1986, p. 54 et son commentaire p. 185. On signalera encore J. Bollack 2006, p. 122 qui traduit, conformément à son interprétation générale du τὸ , qu’il ne traite jamais comme un article chez Parménide «ils se sont entendus pour faire de ceci de l’être et du non-être, le même et pas le même». Mais il relève néanmoins une autre construction possible (p. 133), suggérée par A. Laks, qui consiste à prendre le τὸ comme le sujet des deux infinitifs, et revient donc en puissance à la solution de Burnet.

Références

Bollack Jean, 2006, Parménide, de l’étant au monde , Verdier, Lagrasse.

Burnet John, 1920, Early Greek Philosophy, 3ème éd., Londres.

Coxon A. H., 1986, The fragment of Parmenides , Van Gorcum, Assen/Maastricht (Phronesis, Supplementary Volume III).

REY Abel, 1933, La science dans l’antiquité , vol. II, La jeunesse de la science grecque , Paris.

43. ———. 2012. "Lumière et nuit, féminin et masculin chez Parménide d’Élée: quelques remarques." Phronesis no. 57:289-318.

;Abstract: "The great german Scholar, Eduard Zeller, suggested that the reference to male and female in Parmenides B12.5-6 was probably an allusion to the physical principles of ‘mortal opinion’: Night and Light. This suggestion has been rejected by some scholars because such an association would lead us to admit that, in B12, male was associated with Night and female with Light, a theory which would be at odds with the supposed misogyny of Greek culture.

However, Parmenides’ account of ‘mortal opinion’ certainly associates male with coldness and density, the attributes of Night, and female with hotness and greater rarity, the attibutes of Light. The aims of this paper are, then, first, to show that the association of female with Light and of male with Night is in fact right; and secondly to investigate the main dualistic features of Parmenides’ ‘mortal opinion’ (embryology, sleep, death, knowledge) in relation to this theme. This will lead us, finally, to focus our attention on the Proem, which introduces us to a world full of female divinities, among whom – beyond the gates of the

ways of day and night – is the unnamed goddess who will initiate her young male auditor into the two ‘ways’."

44. ———. 2014. "Les avatars d’une démone : à propos de Parménide fr. 28B13." Elenchos no. 35:5-38.

;Abstract: "It is a striking fact that the role played by Parmenides’ female divinity (he daimon) in the Doxa is not adequately reflected in ancient doxography. While Parmenides’ description, known from Simplicius’ quotation of fr. B12, makes of her the main origin of generation (she steers all things and initiates the “odious birth and mixing of everything”), she does not seem to have featured as a cause in the ancient doxographical reports about Parmenides’ causal principles, starting with Aristotle.

Even more puzzling: while Simplicius reports that this female divinity was the one who “devised to make Eros, the first of all gods” (according to fr. B13, which Simplicius quotes in the wake of fr. B12), Plato and Aristotle, who also quote the fragment, leave the verb of this sentence without any clear subject, so that we can’t elicit from them that the divinity in question was responsible for the origin of Eros. This paper tries to show how and why the status of Parmenides’ female divinity in Plato and Aristotle and then in later doxography was reduced to that of a sheer metaphor."

45. Kélessidou, Anna. 1986. "Dire et savoir (legein - eidenai ) chez Xénophane et Parménide." In Philosophie du langage et grammaire dans l'Antiquité , 29-46. Bruxelles: Ousia.

46. Lafrance, Yves. 1993. "Les multiples lectures du Poème de Parménide." Dialogue no. 32:117-127.

;"Les Études sur Parménide viennent s'ajouter à cette liste déjà impressionnante d'ouvrages qui, dans la dernière décennie, ont été consacrés au texte et à l'interprétation du Poème de Parménide. Celui-ci contient les études issues du Centre de Recherches sur la Pensée Antique ou Centre L. Robin de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV) que dirigeait le professeur P. Aubenque. Les spécialistes de Parménide de la nouvelle génération ne manqueront pas d'instruments de travail pour leur lecture du Poème. Mais ils risquent du même coup de pénétrer dans un véritable labyrinthe d'interprétations d'où ils auront vraisemblablement plus de difficultés à sortir que leurs devanciers. La somme de connaissances accumulées autour des quelques cent soixante vers de ce Poème au niveau des manuscrits, de la langue grecque et de la littérature de l'époque est considérable, la diversité des lectures codicologîques, philologiques et philosophiques qui touche chaque vers du Poème, pour ne pas dire chaque mot, est déroutante puisque les arguments qui fondent chacune de ces lectures ne manquent pas de vraisemblance." (p. 117, une note omise)

47. ———. 1999. "Le sujet du Poème de Parménide: l'être ou l'univers ?" Elenchos :265-308.

48. Laks, André. 1988. "Parménide dans Théophraste, De sensibus 3-4." La Parola del passato no. 43:262-280.

;Traduction anglaise: "‘The More’ and ‘The Full’: on the reconstruction of Parmenides' theory of sensation in Theophrastus' De sensibus , 3-4" in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy , 8, 1990, pp. 1-18.

49. ———. 2003. " Phénomènes et références : éléments pour une réflexion sur la rationalisation de l’irrationnel." Methodos. Savoirs et textes no. 3:1-22.

;Résumé : "Le terme de « rationalisation », qui renvoie à un processus menant de l’« irrationnel » au « rationnel », prend deux valeurs opposées, selon que le processus en question est considéré comme objectif ou subjectif, légitime ou non. Le développement d’une nouvelle forme de rationalité en Grèce ancienne (la philosophie) et son historiographie postérieure présentent souvent des tensions intéressantes entre les deux options. Avons-nous affaire au « phénomèn » originel, dont la raison, malgré qu’elle en ait, doit s’accommoder, ou déjà à des utilisations et transpositions, qui font « référence » à des prétentions ou des types de pensée traditionnels ? L’article étudie sous ce rapport deux cas célèbres : la description fantastique que donne Parménide de son voyage chez la Déesse dans le proème de son poème et l’autoportrait d’Empédocle en « magicien » dans un de ses fragments, pour suggérer, contre certaines tendances récentes de l’interprétation, qu’ils répondent tous deux à la seconde hypothèse."

50. Lambin, Gérard. 2021. Parménide et l’école d’Élée . Pais: L’Harmattan.

;"Et faut-il bien parler d'une école philosophique(11) ? Pour autant que nous sachions, Élée ne connut rien de comparable aux sociétés pythagoriciennes, alors florissantes, ou bien à l'Académie, au Lycée, au Jardin, au Portique. Notre embarras est d'autant plus grand que le nom du fondateur de l'école (ou prétendue école) put être discuté. Platon nous intrigue en faisant remonter la « gent éléatique » (Ἐλεατικὸν ἔθνος) à Xénophane de Colophon (vers 570 - vers 475 avant J.-C.) et même plus haut, sans préciser(12). De plus, un ἔθνος / ethnos - la traduction « gent » est empruntée à Auguste Diès et Léon Robin - n'est pas une école : le mot, comme on sait, désigne essentiellement un peuple(12). Les habitants d'Élée avaient-ils la réputation d'être des esprits curieux voulant tout comprendre, en allant jusqu'à l'unité dans laquelle se seraient rejointes des réalités apparemment distinctes ? Car, ajoute Platon, cette « gent » « expose en détail, en devisant », plus littéralement « par ses propos » (τοῖς µύθοις), que « chose une sont celles, multiples, que l'on nomme » : pour « les Mélissos et les Parménide », « un est l'ensemble des choses, et, n'ayant pas d'espace où se mouvoir, il reste en lui-même »(14).

(11) Cf. Néstor-Luis Cordero, « L'invention de l'école éléatique : Platon, Sophiste, 242 D », dans les Études sur le Sophiste de Platon publiées sous la direction de Pierre Aubenque, Naples (Bibliopolis), 1991, p. 91-124 ; Francesco Fronterotta, « Une école éléatique ? Parménide, Zénon et Mélissos », dans La Sagesse présocratique. Communication des savoirs en Grèce archaïque , sous la direction de Marie-Laurence Desclos et F. Fronterotta, Paris (Armand Colin), 2013, p. 131-147.

(12) Jaap Mansfeld estime que Platon pouvait penser à Orphée et Musée, partisans de la suprématie d'un seul dieu (« Aristotle, Plato and the Preplatonic Doxography and Chronography », dans Storiografia e dossografia nella filosofia antica, sous la direction de Giuseppe Cambiano, Turin [Tirrenia Stampatori], 1986, p. 27).

13 Cf. Daniel Petit, « Ἔθνος et son évolution sémantique dans la poésie grecque d'Homère à Pindare », dans Laurent Dubois (édit.), Poésie et lyrique antiques , Lille (Presses universitaires du septentrion), 1995, p. 161- 177.

14 Platon, Théétète, 180 e ; cf. Parménide , 128 a-b, Théétète , 181 a, Sophiste , 242 d et 244 d-e.

51. Létoublon, Françoise. 1990. "La notion de non-être dans l'histoire de la langue grecque archaïque." Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie no. 122:313-322.

;Résumé : "L'étude de la langue grecque aux origines - Homère et Hésiode - confirme celle de la mythologie et montre que la notion même de non-être n' existe pas en Grèce à l'époque archaïque. La poétique homérique est une poétique de l'être, même quand il s'agit des Sirènes, montrées en pleine activité de mensonge. La poétique du mensonge (ou de la fiction?) apparaît, timidement d'ailleurs, avec Hésiode; mais il n'est jamais question du non-être à cette époque, même avec le terme χάος «vide». Personne ne s'étonnera de ce que la spéculation grecque sur le non-être commence, dans le vocabulaire aussi bien qu'en tant qu'objet philosophique, avec les Présocratiques, Xénophane et surtout Parmenide. C'est l'apparition du neutre singulier affecté de la négation (τὸ μὴ ὄν) au lieu du pluriel homérique jamais nié τά ὄντα) qui nous semble le signe linguistique capital de cette évolution dans la pensée, à mettre en parallèle avec la désignation, à partir d'Anaximandre, de «l'infini» par un autre neutre singulier (τὸ ἀπείρων). Retour vers l'Odyssée enfin: la spéculation sur l'ambiguïté d'οὖτις «personne», pronom susceptible de devenir un nom propre, pourrait constituer un témoignage sur la germination de cette réflexion sur le non-être à l'époque archaïque."

52. Lorite Mena, José. 1978. "Parménide : la parole entre la vérité et le soupçon." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 83:289-307.

;"La parole de Parménide trame par delà les siècles l'appel du mystère.

Son Poème répartit les possibilités du discours suivant les épreuves de lapensée dans et par l'amorce du silence. L'architectonique de son expérience donne la possibilité du silence comme garantie de la réalité de la parole. Parménide nous propose - par le dire de la déesse - les marques, les signes du mystère; à cette partie inexprimable s'accroche un discours en cascade qui, pour respecter la saisie plurielle des choses, se revêt d'un langage discontinu, sans briser pour autant l'unité de l'éthos de« l'homme qui sait ». Son message ne se limite pas à l'instauration de l'ontologie; il appelle à un mode d'être. Aurait-il pu positionner l'ontologie sans exiger une modification de l'habituel humain ? Le Poème nous parle d'une manière de se placer face au monde où la dimension religieuse - « initiatique » - côtoie sans pudeur les perspectives du rationalisme naissant en Grèce, où l'infaillibilité d'une révélation réclame une adhésion totale (pistis) qui contraste avec l'effort logique mis en oeuvre dans la démonstration ... Pluralité de discours pour que l'homme apprenne à regarder le monde dans l'ordonnancement d'une perspective divine. Le regard de Parménide réside dans une parole qui n'est possible qu'inscrite dans une manière d'être; l'épistemè est enchainée à I'éthos - elle en marque les paramètres - : une manière de connaitre prend forme dans une manière d'être.(1)" (p. 289)

1. Voir E. Fink, Zur ontologischen Frühgeschichte vom Raum, Zeit, Bewegung , La Haye, 1957, pp. 53 sq."

53. Lowit, Alexandre. 1986. "Les 'principe' de la lecture heideggerienne de Parménide (Parmenides , GA, 54)." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 4:163-210.

;"A partir d'où Heidegger lit-il Parménide dans le Parmenides (1) ? Posée ainsi, la question est évidemment indéterminée. Mais c'est bien ce qu'elle doit être si elle veut prétendre interroger la démarche du Parmenides dans toute son amplitude. Pour ne formuler que les deux extrêmes de son champ: "A partir d'où ... ?", cela doit certes demander: dans quel fragment, vers ou mot de Parménide Heidegger voit-il le motif, le 'commencement' déterminant du Poème? Mais cela doit - ou du moins devrait - demander aussi bien: dans l'horizon de quelle tâche, en répondant à quel χρή, à quel "Il faut", Heidegger lit-il Parménide? Pour m'aventurer à faire quelques pas sur le chemin — déroutant à souhait - où cette question m'engage, je procéderai selon trois étapes, en recourant successivement à trois types de démarche. Dans la première, sans aller jusqu'à 'ramper dans les phrases', je chercherai à me tenir au ras des énoncés et de leurs enchaînements, avec le but de dégager à ce niveau l'essentiel de l'itinéraire du Parmenides et de relever les principales objections auxquelles cet itinéraire est exposé quand on le suit à ce niveau-là; dans la seconde, reprenant quelques-uns des pas décisifs de cet itinéraire, je tenterai, pour échapper aux objections soulevées, de les suivre, non plus sur le plan des propositions mais dans l'espace des phénomènes; quand les phénomènes mettront fin à la possibilité d'avancer ainsi grâce à eux, je me donnerai, dans la troisième et dernière étape, la liberté de recourir, pour avancer quand même encore, à une 'supposition'." (pp. 163-164)

(1) Parmenides, publié seulement en 1982 dans la Gesamtausgabe , est un cours prononcé par Heidegger en hiver 1942-1943 — au moment donc où se déroulait la bataille de Stalingrad. - Pour éviter des confusions, je me référerai à ce volume en recourant à la forme allemande de son titre.

54. Lucarini, Carlo Martino. 2020. "La circulation du poème de Parménide à l’époque impériale." Maia no. 72:13-30.

;Abstract: "This paper aims to determine which authors of the imperial period read the poem of Parmenides. Through a philological analysis I conclude that only Plutarch, Proclus, Simplicius (and perhaps Ammonius) had a direct knowledge of Parmenides, whereas the majority of philosophers had no access to the poem. Greek poets do not seem to have been influenced by Parmenides."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliographie des études en Français sur Parménide Mal - Z

Bibliographie Mal - Z

1. Mallan, Claude. 2007. "De Parménide à Platon, quelques remarques sur le σύμβολον." Conaissance Hellénique no. 111:14-17.

2. Mansfeld, Jaap. 1999. "Parménide et Héraclite avaient-ils une théorie de la perception ?" Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 44:326-346.

;"Dans un article paru en 1996, auquel le présent essai fait suite, nous avons analysé la thèse aristotélicienne selon laquelle les philosophes pré-platoniciens ne faisaient pas de distinction entre perception et pensée.(1)" (p. 326)

(...)

"Á la fin de cette discussion nous nous trouvons donc face à face avec un paradoxe qui vaut la peine d'être ébauché. Les deux grands philosophes présocratiques qui ont établi, ou du moins cherché à établir, une doctrine du logos (le «raisonnement» de Parménide, l'«explication» d'Héraclite), n'ont pas développé une doctrine de la perception sensorielle. Les philosophes présocratiques qui se sont efforcés de fournir des descriptions des différents sens, et des mécanismes et conditions de la perception sensorielle,(69) c'est-à-dire Empédocle, Anaxagore, Diogène d'Apollonie, et surtout Démocrite, chez qui la distinction entre sensation et pensée est de surcroît explicite dans des fragments cités littéralment non seulement par Sextus mais aussi par Galien,(70) n'ont pas cherché à développer une doctrine du raisonnement, ou de l'explication.(71)

Aristote, qui prétendait que la doctrine du percevoir-et-savoir des anciens physiciens était une voie sans issue, et trouvait que la doctrine du «raisonnement» a priori de Parménide s'était éloignée de la physique

et pour cette raison ne lui était pas applicable, s'était donc bien rendu compte de quelques-uns des problèmes fructueux que ces doctrines comportent." (pp. 345-346)

(1) «Aristote et la structure du De sensibus de Théophraste», Phronesis 41, 1996, p. 158 sqq. (basé sur la première partie d'une conférence tenue à Paris le 7 avril 1995). Il s'agit surtout d'Aristote, Métaphysique 4.5.1009b12 sqq., De l'âme 1.2.404a25 sqq., 3.427a16 sqq.; cf. aussi infra, notre note 4. Remarquons que le commentateur tardif du , Jean Philopon, n'é tait pas d'accord avec ce qu'il appelle les inférences d'Aristote (In De an . p. 71.22 sqq. Hayduck).

(69) Voir, une fois de plus, l'article cité plus haut, à la note 1.

(70) Ce qui constitue une différence majeure avec la majorité des autres Présocratiques dicutés ici; Sextus, dans le septième livre de son grand ouvrage cité plusieures fois plus haut, n'a pas besoin d'une interpré tation pour établir que Démocrite faisait cette distinction capitale. Les fragments en cause sont 68B9-10 (Sextus, deux fragments), B125 (Galien; deux fragments, dont le premier coîncide avec le premier texte cité par Sextus). Cet aspect de la doctrine de Démocrite manque dans le De sensibus de Théophraste; faute bizarre, ou défaut d'information?

(71) Il est vrai que nous sommes mal renseignés sur la production énorme de Démocrite.

3. Mansion, Suzanne. 1953. "Aristote, critique des Eléates." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 51:165-186.

;"L'étude qu'on se propose de faire ici se limitera pour l'essentiel à la critique aristotélicienne de la thèse centrale des Eléates: le monisme. On négligera notamment les aspects « physiques » de la doctrine (inexistence du vide, limitation ou illimitation du Tout, etc.), et ses aspects mathématiques (arguments de Zenon pour prouver l'impossibilité du mouvement, p. ex.), ainsi que les objections qu'Aristote adresse à ces conceptions. Ce sont donc les positions métaphysiques et épistémologiques de l'école d'Elée qui retiendront surtout notre attention. C'est en elles, du reste, tout insuffisantes qu'elles soient, que réside le principal intérêt philosophique de la pensée éléatique. D'un autre côté, les attaques qu'elles subissent de la part du Stagirite s'appuient sur un certain nombre de principes qui paraissent assez fondamentaux dans son système et originaux dans une large mesure. C'est pourquoi la réflexion théorique a intérêt à voir s'affronter ces deux philosophies à propos d'un problème qu'elle rencontre inévitablement." (p. 165)

4. Martineau, Emmanuel. 1986. "Le 'coeur' de l' alétheia ." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 4:33-86.

;". . .άληθηίης εύκυκλέος άτρεμές ήτορ

Ainsi se présente, dans le poème de Parménide, la pre mière nomination de Yalètheia. Que cette nomination pré cède, au fr. 1, celle de l'être lui-même, qui ne surgira qu'au fr. 2, nous considérons ce fait immédiatement constatable comme un signe univoque de l'absolue primauté, dans la pro blématique parménidienne, de la question de la "vérité" sur toute autre, y compris la question même de la distinction de l'"être" et du "non-être". Non moins absolue, dès lors, est la nécessité de comprendre correctement le vers cité (1,29). Aussi, c'est seulement après en avoir fait progresser l'exé gèse (A) que nous esquisserons les quelques principes de la nouvelle interprétation d'ensemble qui constitue la perspec tive de cette étude (B)" (p. 33)

5. Monnoyer, Jean-Maurice. 2014. "Le dogme de la vérité selon Parménide." In Mind, Values, and Metaphysics. Philosophical Essays in Honor of Kevin Mulligan – Volume 1 edited by Reboul, Anne, 459-470. Dordrecht: Springer.

;Résumé: "Peut-on continuer d’opposer l’approche phénoménologique et métaphysique? Parmenide, fondateur de la métaphysique, s’adresse dans son texte à l’évidence de la thisness (à la caractéristique du ceci): le to gar auto . Son emploi double de la copule est , emploi existentiel et prédicationnel, a provoqué une discussion légendaire sur son actualisme et son nécessitarisme supposés, qui ont été forgés en dépit de la compréhension de ses énoncés. L’article se propose de comparer les lectures de C.Kahn, D. O’Brien, J. Barnes et J. Bollack, pour fournir une lecture non archéologique de cette conception trahie depuis Le Sophiste de Platon au moins, mais qui reste le modèle de ce que devrait être une métaphysique expérimentale."

6. Morel, Jean-Paul. 2005. "« Oulis » à Velia: l'hypothèse phocéenne." In Da Elea a Samo: filosofi e politici di fronte all'impero ateniese: atti del Convegno di Studi: Santa Maria Capua Vetere, 4-5 giugno 2003 , edited by Bregia, Luisa and Luoi, Marcello, 31-47. Napoli: Arte Tipografica.

7. Mouraviev, Serge. 2012. "Parmenide chez Perséphone." In Λόγον διδόναι. La filosofia come esercizio del render ragione. Studi in onore di Giovanni Casertano , edited by Palumbo, Lidia, 139-158. Loffredo: Napoli.

;"Le texte de Laura Gemelli Marciano (LGM) est un travail remarquable et immensément ambitieux(2). C’est une tentative de «refocaliser » toute la tradition parménidienne (de Platon à Patricia Curd), avec pour objectif de «lever le voile de mystère qui obscurcit toujours l’essence de l’oeuvre» du grand Éléate. Ensuite, c’est une tentative de rétablir dans ses droits l’élément religieux incontestablement présent dans cette oeuvre et d’en déterminer la place et le rôle. Troisièmement, c’est toute une série de suggestions prégnantes, méritant examen, d’une part sur l’importance de certaines sources historiques relatives à Parménide (P) et, d’autre part, sur la meilleure façon de dire, lire et interpréter maint passage concret de son poème. Enfin, aussi difficile qu’il soit d’émettre pareille supposition, ce pourrait être une bombe à retardement qui, si elle explose jamais, révolutionnera l’histoire de la philosophie occidentale et relancera les vieux débats sur les rapports entre religion, philosophie et science.

Plan suivi

Les remarques ci-dessous iront du coq à l’âne et paraîtront décousues.

Elles concernent chacune un sujet particulier restreint, mais crucial pour juger de la démarche de LGM. Je les ai regroupées en trois petits chapitres.

J’examinerai d’abord la situation exceptionnelle que semble créer la conception générale de LGM relativement à celle qui s’est instaurée – avec nombre de divergences, certes, dans notre discipline et l’impact beaucoup plus large qu’elle pourrait avoir (I). Je continuerai par un examen de l’argumentaire de LGM et en particulier de la stratégie macrorhétorique qu’elle met en place en faveur de l’interprétation mystique (II).

Et je terminerai par un examen détaillé de la façon dont elle analyse le langage et la poétique de P et dont elle interprète les structures supralinguistiques qu’elle y découvre (III)." (pp. 139-140)

(2) Cet article, dédié conférences présentées par Laura Gemelli Marciano à Ascea (Velia) en novembre-décembre 2007 sous le titre générique Parmenide: Suoni, immagini, esperienza , auxquelles j’avais pu assister et dont le préprint m’avait été communiqué, était destiné à l’origine au recueil Eleatica 2 (Academia, Sankt Augustin, 2012).

Des circonstances imprévues m’ont empêché de l’y inclure. Mais sachant l’intérêt que Giovanni Casertano porte à Parménide, Lidia Palumbo a proposé que je le lui offre ici à l’occasion de son anniversaire. Je le fais avec d’autant plus de plaisir que Gianni est un ami et que j’admire beaucoup sa vision du grand Éléate. Quant au texte intégral des conférences de LGM, le lecteur le trouvera dans le recueil sus-indiqué. Les chiffres entre crochets renvoient aux pages du preprint.

8. ———. 2019. "Ersatz de vérité et de réalité? ou Comment Parménide (B 1, 28-32) a sauvé les apparences (avec la collaboration épistolaire de Scott Austin †2014)(1)." In ὁδοὶ νοῆσαι. Ways to Think. Essays in Honour of Néstor-Luis Cordero , edited by Pulpito, Massimo and Spangenberg, Pilar, 61-86. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia.

;(1) Je remercie sincèrement A.P.D. Mourelatos, N.-L. Cordero, R. Brague, R. Di Giuseppe, S. M. Kraus et un collègue ayant préféré garder l’anonymat, pour leurs remarques et critiques d'une première version de cet article. Elles m’ont permis d’en améliorer considérablement le texte et la documentation. Il va de soi qu’ils ne sont en rien responsables des opinions différentes des leurs que je défends, ni a fortiori de mes erreurs (2009). En 2010 il a fait l’objet d’un échange d’opinions par courriels avec Scott Austin qui a eu pour résultat l’addition d’une troisième partie intitulée Philosophie. En 2015 et 2016 ces deux versions furent affichées sur le site academia.edu (2015 et 2016) M e ont donné lieu à une discussion suivie par de nombreux collègues, dont Massimo Pulpito qui suggéré j’ajoute ma correspondance féconde avec Scott Austin, lequel, hélas, nous a quittés en 2014. Je le fais d’autant plus volontiers que je lui dois l’écriture de la Ille partie. Le lecteur trouvera donc ci dessous, en tant qu’un des derniers reflets de ses opinions sur ce sujet qu’il avait tellement à coeur, un Appendice contenant l’essentiel de ses réactions. J’assume entièrement le contenu de la partie philologique (I), j’ai quelques doutes sur l’intérêt de la partie historique (II) et je prie le lecteur de ne voir dans la partie philosophique (III) qu’un simple ballon d’essai (2010), ballon d’essai que je replace maintenant dans le contexte originel de mon échange de vues avec S. Austin.

Résumé : "Nouvelle interprétation de Parménide fr. B 1,28-32 sans amendements modernes. Traduction: “Il faut que tout tu connaisses, et le cœur, qui point ne bat, de Vérité persuasive, et les opinions des mortels en lesquelles il n’y a pas de confiance vraie. Mais tu apprendras quand même ceci : qu’il fallait qu’on admette que les choses apparentes sont toujours tout à fait semblables à des choses existantes.” Le commentaire comporte une partie philologique, une partie historico-méthodologique et une partie philosophique sur la dissymétrie du logique et du réel."

9. Muller, Robert. 1987. "Euclide de Mégare et Parménide." In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation , edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 274-276. Paris: Vrin.

;"Pour être bref (...) l'élement le plus propre à justifier le rapprochement avec les Éleates nous paraît être le refus mégarique de ce non-être relatif qu'est l'alterité (cfr. [Die Megariker ] fr. 27 [ed. Döring], et par suite de la relation en général."(p. 274)

10. Narecki, Krzysztof 2004. "La fonction du logos dans la pensée de Parménide d’Élée." In Logos et langage chez Plotin et avant Plotin , edited by Fattal, Michel, 37-60. Paris: L'Harmattan.

11. O'Brien, Denis. 1980. "Temps et intemporalité chez Parménide." Les Études Philosophiques no. 35:257-272.

;"Conclusion : t,emps et intemporalité

Cette analyse du raisonnement de la déesse ouvre une nouvelle perspective sur les notions de temps et d'intemporalité chez Parménide.

L'objet du discours s'avère éternel, si nous entendons par là qu'il est sans commencement ni fin temporels. En revanche, deux conceptions de l'intemporalité sont ici à exclure: celle d'énoncés logiques et mathématiques, dont Aristote reprendra l'analyse dans son traité de la Physique ; et celle de l'éternité non durative propre à l'existence divine, conception qu'on trouvera plus tard dans la philosophie de l' Antiquité, notamment chez Plutarque(31).

Certes, ces deux conceptions de l'intemporalité ont été attribuées à Parménide, celle-ci par les commentateurs néoplatoniciens de la fin de l'Antiquité classique, celle-là par M. Owen. Strange bed-fellows, dira-t-on(32); mais soulignons que dans les deux cas on a été amené à fausser le sens littéral de ces deux vers (vv. 5-6), soit en supprimant les adverbes temporels « jadis » et« maintenant» (c'est le procédé d' Ammonius et d' Asclépius), soit en prenant ces deux adverbes pour des inexactitudes linguistiques dont l'auteur lui-même aurait été parfaitement conscient et que le lecteur aurait tort de prendre au pied de la lettre (c'est la solution que semble supposer l'approche de M. Owen).

La seule issue possible, me semble-t-il, est de rattacher la formuel « intemporelle » à son contexte d'origine : cela permet de voir en elle une affirmation de la thèse qui la précède (v. 3) et une première ébauche de l'argumentation qui la suit (vv. 6 sqq.).

Une fois replongée dans les tours et les détours de ce contexte, cette formule manifeste sa fonction, qui est d'annoncer, sous une forme liminaire et incomplète, non pas une existence non durative et intemporelle, mais bien plutôt la nécessité d'une existence qui serait « éternelle », en ce sens seulement qu'elle est inengendrée et impérissable." (p. 270)

(31) Sur Plutarque, et sur la conception d'une éternité non durative, voir J. Whittaker, Ammonius on the Delphic E, Classical Quarterly, n.s., 1969, 185-192. Je reprendrai l'étude de l' «intemporalité» chez Aristote dans une publication ultérieure, où j'examinerai aussi la référence que M. Owen fait à Leibniz et à son principe de l'identité des indiscernables, pour fonder sa critique de Parménide.

32. Je reprends l'expression de Shakespeare, Tempest , II, 2.

12. ———. 1987. "L'être et l'éternité." In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation , edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 135-164. Paris: Vrin.

;"Sommaire: I. Le problème de l'intemporalité; II. «Il n'est pas» III. «Il ne sera pas»; IV. «Il n'était pas»; V. L'inengendré; VI. L'impérissable; VII. La preuve de l'immortalité; VIII Les deux emplois du «maintenant»; IX. L'éternel (1)

LE PROBLÈME DE L'INTEMPORALITÉ

Le sens d'« éternité»

Au fr. VIII, l-2, la déesse déclare: «Il ne reste plus qu'une seule parole, celle de la voie énonçant: 'est'». Elle désigne ainsi la Voie de l'existence, annoncée au fr. II, 3. Cette Voie est «chemin de persuasion, car la persuasion accompagne la vérité» (fr. II, 4). C'est donc au fr. VIII que la déesse accomplira la promesse faite dans le prologue (fr. I, 29): le disciple s'instruira du «coeur de la vérité persuasive ...» (2).

Quelle est cette «vérité», exposée dans la Voie de l'existence?

En ouvrant cette Voie, la déesse affirme que l'objet de son discours est «inengendré» et «impérissable» (fr. VIII, 3). Elle précise, deux vers plus loin (v. 5): «II n'était pas à un moment, ni ne sera à un moment, puisqu'il est maintenant». Pour la majorité des exégètes, Parménide aurait évoqué dans ce dernier vers, pour la première fois dans l'histoire de l'Occident, le concept d'éternité. Mais de quelle «éternité» s'agit-il? En quel sens prend-on ici ce terme? Le plus souvent, les formules adoptées par les commentateurs laissent perplexe." (pp. 135-136)

(1) Le chapitre que l'on va lire repose sur les conclusions dégagées dans le premier tome de cet ouvrage (Éludes I, Essai critique: Introduclion à la lecture de Parménide ) ainsi que sur mes recherches antérieures, que je reprends ici, en les approfondissant et en les corrigeant. Quelques précisions de terminologie s'imposent, ici comme dans mon Essai critique (cf. p. 140 n. 3): je parlerai indifféremment de «genèse» et de «naissance», de «disparition» et de «mort»; en employant ces termes «naissance» et «mort», je n'ai point voulu imposer au lecteur une représentation de l'«être» de Parménide comme d'un être animé/vivant. Dans ce que j'appelle la «preuve de l'immortalité» (voir surtout pp. 157-158 infra), la déesse vise à montrer non seulement que l'être est immortel (absence de «mort» ou de «destruction»; sur la possibiflté d'une distinction implicite entre ces deux termes, voir p.155 infra), mais encore qu'il est inengendré (absence de «genèse» ou de «naissance»).

(2) Sur l'articulation du poème, voir mon Essai critique, chap. XI (Études 1 , pp. 239 sqq.)

13. ———. 1987. "Problèmes d'établissement du texte: la transmission du Poème dans l'Antiquité." In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation , edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 314-350. Paris: Vrin.

;"Sommaire: I. L'édition des textes et l'histoire de la philosophie; II. Fr.I, 29: «vérité» et «persuasion»; III. Fr. VIII, 4: «entier en sa membrure»; IV. Immortalité et indivisibilité: la thèse de G. E. L. Owen; V. Immortalité et immobilité: la citation de Plutarque; VI. Fr. VIII, 4: «unique» et «inengendré»; VII. Fr. VIII, 4: l'histoire de la transmission du texte; VIII Fr. VIII, 5: «il est maintenant»; IX. Fr. VIII, 6: la «continuité» du temps; X. La tradition manuscrite du poème; XI. Fr. VIII, 12: une naissance à partir de l'être; XII. Les éditeurs de la fin de l'Antiquité."

"Le texte de Parménide commenté dans un chapitre précédent de cet ouvrage (fr. VIII, l-21: la première partie du discours sur la vérité) est émaillé de variantes; je reprendrai, dans ce chapitre, celles qui touchent de près à mon analyse.

Le texte du poème, on le sait, n'est pas attesté en tradition directe; il n'est conservé que dans les manuscrits d'une trentaine d'auteurs anciens qui en ont cité des extraits. Dans ces manuscrits, comme pour tous les textes qui nous sont venus de l'Antiquité, des erreurs de copistes se sont accumulées; à l'éditeur de rectifier ces erreurs, en tirant parti de ses connaissances codicologiques ou philologiques.

La science du codicologue ou du philologue risque cependant de s'avérer insuffisante, lorsqu'il s'agit d'une difficulté relevant d'un domaine qui n'est pas le sien: celui de l'histoire de la philosophie. Les fragments de Parménide, tels qu'ils ont été conservés dans les manuscrits, ne présentent pas seulement en effet des variantes imputables à l'inadvertance ou à l'ignorance des copistes; on peut aussi subodorer ici et là, sous certaines variantes, les traces de manipulations tendancieuses du poème.

À y regarder de plus près, il devient en effet évident que des copistes savants, imbus de platonisme et de néoplatonisme, ont pris à coeur de «normaliser» la pensée de Parménide, en l'intégrant, de gré ou de force, dans leur vision idéaliste de la philosophie des anciens. Pour ce faire, ils ont gommé, dans le texte du poème qui leur était transmis, les discordances, réelles ou supposées, avec les dialogues de Platon ou les Ennéades de Plotin.

Les «corrections» ainsi infligées au texte primitif du poème, si elles ont été faites avec suffisamment d'habileté, ne violentent ni la grammaire ni la métrique. Elles risqueront par conséquent de passer inaperçues tant que l'éditeur moderne n'aura pas pris conscience des considérations proprement philosophiques qui peuvent avoir influé sur la transmission des fragments." (pp. 314-315)

14. ———. 1991. "Le non-être dans la philosophie grecque: Parménide, Platon, Plotin." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon , edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 317-364. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

;Sur Parménide, voir pp. 320-328.

15. ———. 2012. "Le Parménide historique et le Parménide de Platon." In Lectures de Platon , edited by Castel-Bouchouchi, Anissa, Dixsaut, Monique and Kévorkian, Gilles, 89-106. Paris: Ellipses.

;"« L'un » qui fait l'objet de l'examen dans la seconde partie du dialogue n'est plus en effet « l'être » qui est « un » dans le poème de Parménide. Dès les premières lignes du premier raisonnement, Parménide nous apprend que «l'un" dont il est ici question est« illimité" (137d8) et« sans forme" (d9). Ce n'est donc plus « l'être » de Parménide, qui est, au contraire, « fini» (fr. 8.42) et «semblable à la masse d'une sphère à la belle circularité" (v. 43). Dans «l'un» soumis à l'examen dans le dialogue de Platon on ne peut donc plus reconnaître « l'être » qui est « un » dans le poème de Parménide.

Mais une différence plus radicale encore sépare « l'un » qui fait l'objet des arguments successifs élaborés dans la seconde partie du dialogue de Platon, d'une part, et « l'être » qui est « un », dans le poème de Parménide, d'autre part, « L'être» qui est « un » dans le poème de Parménide constitue l'ensemble de ce qui est. Admettons donc qu'il est, en ce sens, l'univers. Admettons donc que le jeune Socrate, quand il prête à Parménide la thèse suivant laquelle « le est un » (128a 8-b1), n'a pas faussé sa pensée.

Or, « l'un» qui fait l'objet des raisonnements dans la seconde partie du dialogue de Platon n'est plus l'univers. Il n'est donc plus to pan . Parménide·-Ie Parménide de Platon --.- propose en effet d'examiner les conséquences que doit entraîner chacune des deux hypothèses (que l'un soit « un » ou que l'un soit (« non un »), non seulement pour l'un, mais aussi pour« les autres), (136a4-c5).

Si « l'un ), était l'univers, il n'y aurait pas d'« autres ».

Mais l'on ne doit pas s'étonner que la thèse du Parménide ne soit plus la thèse de Parménide. Ici, comme dans les critiques adressées à Parménide dans le Sophiste, Platon ne s'occupe plus de l'« univers » qui est « un » ; il s'attache à savoir ce que c'est que d'être un. Cet « un » n'est plus par conséquent ni monde ni l'univers. Ce n'est certainement pas « le monde » : le monde, soit pour Parménide que pour Empédocle, s'oppose à l'un. Mais ce n'est pas plus {« l'univers» : s'il s'agissait de l'univers, donc de la totalité de ce qui est, n'aurait même pas le droit de s'interroger sur « les autres », car ces « autres », fait même qu'ils ne faisaient pas partie de l'univers, n'existeraient pas. « L'un » de la seconde partie du Parménide , - c'est l'un, en tant que tel." (pp. 105-106)

16. ———. 2012. "[Chapitre] V. Parménide." In Lire les présocratiques , edited by Brisson, Luc, Macé, Arnaud and Therme, Anne-Laure, 129-148. Paris: Press universitaires de France.

;"Parménide avait autour de soixante-cinq ans quand il rencontra Socrate, alors tout jeune ; tels sont les propos de Platon, au début de son dialogue le Parménide. Cette rencontre est sans doute fictive, mais Platon, metteur en scène scrupuleux, a certainement cherché à l’intégrer dans un contexte historique plausible. Socrate, mort en 399 à l’âge de soixante-dix ans, est un jeune adolescent avant le tournant du Ve siècle av. J.-C. (455-450) ; la naissance de Parménide remonterait donc, si l’on en croit Platon, aux premières décennies du siècle précédent (520-515).

Le poème dont il est l’auteur n’a pas été conservé. Il n’en reste pas moins de longs extraits, dont un prologue (32 vers), cité dans son entier par Sextus (IIe siècle ap. J.-C.), et « un discours sur la vérité » (49 vers), recopié en partie par Sextus et en partie par Simplicius (VIe siècle ap. J.-C.). Dans le prologue, Parménide parle de lui-même comme d’un κοῦρος, un « jeune homme » (fr. 1, 24) ; le poème est donc présenté comme une oeuvre de jeunesse. La doctrine du poème, et notamment le préambule au « discours sur la vérité », fera l’objet d’une critique détaillée dans le dialogue de Platon, le Sophiste . Ce sont les données essentielles dont nous disposons pour reconstituer la philosophie de Parménide." (p. 129)

17. Parenteau, Danic. 2004. "Du recours heideggerien à la thèse ontologique de Parménide : sur la différence ontologique comme le fait originaire." Horizons philosophiques no. 14:27-36.

;"Le présent article se veut une analyse de la place et du rôle de la différence ontologique au sein de l'ensemble de la pensée de Heidegger, tant sa première pensée que sa pensée qui procède du Tournant. Notre travail vise une compréhension de la manière dont Heidegger conçoit la différence ontologique et de l'importance qu'il lui accorde. Il s'agira pour nous de montrer pourquoi Heidegger considère que la différence ontologique peut se passer d'une quelconque interrogation quant à son existence, pouvant ainsi être présentée comme relevant de l'évidence. Notre analyse portera premièrement sur la place de la différence ontologique au sein des deux pensées de Heidegger. Deuxièmement, nous analyserons la manière dont Heidegger cherche à faire valoir la différence ontologique comme le fait originaire, c'est-à-dire ce à quoi rien ne saurait échapper et ce sur quoi tout repose. Pour Heidegger, au «fondement» de tout ce qui «est» se trouve la différence ontologique. Troisièmement, nous formulerons une critique de cette idée de la différence ontologique comme le fait originaire." (p. 28)

(...)

"En raison de l'importance qui revient à Parménide eu égard à la question de l'être, ce penseur occupe une place prépondérante et incomparable dans la pensée de Heidegger. Celui-ci estime que Parménide serait le premier penseur de l'être, le premier à poser la question de l'être et à prendre conscience de ce que Heidegger nomme «le mystère originel pour toute pensée(13)». On le sait, pour Heidegger, la suite de l'histoire de la pensée occidentale — pensée qui est devenue avec Platon et Aristote «métaphysique» — ne sera qu'un long déclin, celui de l'oubli de plus en plus grandissant de l'être(14)." (p. 32)

(13) Lettre sur l'humanisme , p. 87. Heidegger écrit bien «das anfângliches Geheimnis».

14. Cf. entre autres, Introduction à la métaphysique , p. 203 et Lettre sur l'humanisme , p. 35.

18. Pasqua, Hervé. 1992. "L'unité de l'Être parménidien." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 90:143-155.

;"Being exists in an absolute sense, and because it exists it cannot cease to be. In other words non-being is impossible. This is the central thesis of Parmenides' poem. The Author aims to show that this thesis can only be justified in Parmenides' view if Being is considered to be identical with the One. If this is the case, it has an important effect on the interpretation of the Poem, namely that the affirmation of Being does not depend on the denial of Non-being, as many exegetes hold. In this article two recent interpretations are discussed, namely those of N. L. Cordero and L. Couloubaritsis. The Author aims to inquire to what extent the true thought of Parmenides does not consist in making the affirmation of Being depend on that of Non-Being, but rather the contrary, by basing his argumentation on the reciprocity of Being and the One."

19. Pòrtulas, Jaume. 2019. "Parménide et les traditions de la palinodie poétique." In La poésie archaïque comme discours de savoir , edited by Desclos, Marie-Laurence, 219-244. Paris: Garnier.

;Résumé : "Le poème de Parménide est l’héritier d’une longue tradition poétique, dont il reprend de nombreux procédés. Son invocation à une autorité transcendante est lourde de conséquences : l’adoption du rôle de messager ; l’accent mis sur la thématique de Peithô ; la dénonciation de la foule ; l’appel aussi à une certaine « pierre de touche », etc. On verra que les conventions de la palinodie pourraient nous aider à mieux comprendre l’articulation délicate entre l’Alétheia et les doxai des mortels."

20. Primavesi, Oliver. 2013. "Le chemin vers la révélation : lumière et nuit dans le proème de Parménide." Philosophia Antiqua no. 13:37-81.

;Traduction par Mathilde Brémond de Der Weg zur Offenbarung: Über Licht und Nacht im Proömium des Parmenides (2011).

Résumé : "Cet article propose une interprétation de la relation entre l’aletheia et la doxa dans le poème de Parménide sur la base d’une analyse du voyage relaté dans le proème. À partir d’un examen précis du texte parménidien, il établit que l’hypothèse selon laquelle la citadelle de la nuit est la destination finale du voyage rend bien mieux compte de celui-ci que l’hypothèse longtemps admise selon laquelle il s’agirait de la lumière. Cette lecture du proème permet non seulement d’établir un certain nombre de parallèles avec d’autres œuvres poétiques qui décrivent le trajet du Soleil, mais surtout de mettre au jour une analogie entre le récit de voyage et la partition en deux du poème parménidien : notre monde, où alternent le jour et la nuit, représente le monde de la doxa, où être et non-être sont mêlés et qui est gouverné par deux principes correspondants, le feu et la nuit, tandis que l’unicité de la déesse de la Nuit dans l’au-delà renvoie à celle de l’être. De plus, en distinguant deux étapes dans le voyage du narrateur, celle où il atteint de lui-même le chemin de la nuit et du jour et celle où les filles d’Hélios le guident sur ce chemin, on peut expliquer l’existence même d’un discours sur les opinions des mortels : de même que le narrateur a besoin d’abord d’aller de notre monde quotidien jusqu’au chemin de la nuit et du jour pour avoir ensuite accès à la connaissance divine, de même il faut expliquer le monde de l’opinion en le faisant remonter à deux principes fondamentaux pour montrer aux mortels le chemin vers l’aletheia. L’article conclut en expliquant, à partir des fragments B14 et B15, pourquoi Parménide a recours à la déesse de la Nuit pour faire cette révélation : ce choix repose sur une critique de la lumière du soleil comme condition de la vision trompeuse."

21. Ramnoux, Clémence. 1979. Parménide et ses successeurs immédiats . Monaco: Éditions du Rocher.

22. Ranzato, Sofia. 2019. "Choisir sa propre route chez Parménide, dans la poésie didactique et dans les traditions religieuses à l’époque archaïque." In La poésie archaïque comme discours de savoir , edited by Desclos, Marie-Laurence, 201-217. Paris: Garnier.

;Résumé: "Point de départ de cette étude, l’image du carrefour dans l’œuvre d’Homère, d’Hésiode et de Théognis, ainsi que sa re-fonctionnalisation dans les lamelles d’or orphiques. Choisir un chemin déviant par rapport à celui que parcourent les masses apparaît comme une modalité nécessaire en vue d’obtenir une condition post mortem privilégiée. Ainsi s’éclaire l’insistance de Parménide sur le choix de la seule voie qui conduise à la vérité, semblant se charger d’une valeur également existentielle."

23. Regvald, Richard. 1986. "Parménide : le trajet de la non-coïncidence." Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 176:13-29.

;"En déclarant notre attachement à la conception heideggerienne de la parole, nous nous efforcerons, après quelques préliminaires, de mettre en évidence le croisement de l'atemporalité et de la temporalité dans le poème de Parménide et l'importance de ce croisement pour la constitution de la science. La transparence parménidienne, opposée traditionnellement à l'obscurité héraclitienne, conserve une épaisseur bien propre : elle peut être envisagée comme ce qui fait transparaître et implique, pour cela même, un résidu foncièrement irréductible. Cette perspectivè prend également en compte les rapports aporétiques et fragiles (à proprement parler, le saut) reliant les deux parties du poème. Pour que l'unité puisse devancer la diversité, sans en faire purement et simplement abstraction - car la seconde partie du poème a bel et bien été écrite-, il y a lieu de supposer qu'un frémissement parcourt cette unité-là, si initial ou si évanescent soit-il." (p. 14)

24. Riu, Xavier. 2019. "Vérités et performance publique. Quelques réflexions sur ἀλήϑεια " In La poésie archaïque comme discours de savoir , edited by Desclos, Marie-Laurence, 245-258. Paris: Garnier.

;Résumé : "Qu’en est-il du concept de vérité en Grèce archaïque et partiellement classique ? Plusieurs conceptions de la vérité coexistaient, plusieurs mots pour la dire également, que nous ne différencions mal et que souvent nous tendons à confondre. Il faut par ailleurs resituer le concept d’ἀλήθεια dans le contexte de l’énonciation publique. Enfin, ces types de vérité multiples nous permettent de penser autrement la manière dont Parménide présente les différentes façons d’être et d’être vrai."

25. Rocca-Serra, Guillaume. 1985. "Parmenide et les médecins d'Elèe." Histoire des sciences médicales no. 19:169-174.

;Résumé : "Nous désirons examiner à nouveau quatre inscriptions grecques découvertes à Velia, qui portent le nom de trois médecins et celui de Parménide. Nous nous interrogeons sur la possibilité d'un rapport entre ces médecins et le philosophe et nous attirons l'attention sur quelques fragments et témoignages qui nous permettent de voir dans Parménide un auteur lu par les médecins et utilisé comme autorité par une association médicale."

26. ———. 1987. "Parménide chez Diogène Laërce." In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation , edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 254-273. Paris: Vrin.

;"Nous avons choisi d'organiser notre recherche autour de la notice consacrée à Parménide par Diogène Laèrce. Une autre méthode eût consisté dans une présentation qui aurait suivi un ordre chronologique, mais une telle procédure supposait résolu un problème qui tourmente, au moins depuis Nietzsche, philologues et philosophes, celui des sources de Diogène Laèrce. Au contraire, partir de cet auteur et revenir en arrière nous évitait de prendre des positions trop tranchées à la fois sur ses informateurs immédiats et sur les sources de ces informateurs eux-mêmes.

L'oeuvre de Diogène constitue, on le sait, une sorte de synthèse, maladroite et parfois mal intentionnée, de ce que l'érudition hellénistique avait rassemblé sur le thème des «Vies et doctrines des philosophes célèbres». Sa méthode de travail, son esprit superficiel lui ont attiré des critiques méritées, mais il nous a conservé une masse d'informations qui font de son livre un ouvrage indispensable. Ajoutons qu'une partie des absurdités qu'on lui attribue pourrait parfaitement provenir de la maladresse des scribes médiévaux." (p. 254)

"Cet examen, bien que partiel, de la tradition biographique et doxographique nous aura persuadés, semble-t-il, d'abord, que les restes de cette tradition ne représentent qu'une infime partie d'une littérature jadis très importante. C'est ainsi que la modeste notice de Diogène nous fait entrevoir les travaux de l'école d'Aristote, de l'érudition alexandrine, de la doxographie sceptique.

Ensuite et surtout, on peut mettre en évidence la valeur de certaines des indications qu'elle nous transmet. Elle nous fournit le canevas vraisemblable de la biographie de Parménide, d'abord héritier d'une grande famille et voué probablement à une activité politique et législatrice, puis se tournant vers la philosophie, sans toutefois que la fine pointe de sa pensée soit mise en évidence, et c'est là une des lacunes de la tradition. Pourtant, bien avant K. Reinhardt 1°2, Sotion puis Diogène ont dissocié Xénophane et Parménide, pressentant ainsi l'originalité de ce dernier. La tradition, enfin, a retenu plus volontiers le monde de l'apparence que le poème. C'est surtout grâce à elle que nous reconstruisons la doxa parménidéenne, sur laquelle les parties conservées du Poème nous renseignent guère. Elle a donc sa place dans l'approche d'un Parménide dans sa totalité." (p. 273 notes omises)

27. Rossetti, Livio. 2010. "La structure du poème de Parménide." Philosophie Antique no. 10:187-226.

;Résumé : !La structure qui sous-tend la composition du poème de Parménide est très élaborée, il est aisé de s’en rendre compte. La déesse y parle des enseignements qu’elle s’apprête à délivrer et, dans les fragments 10 et 11, elle offre un panorama détaillé de tout un ensemble de questions qu’elle va traiter aussitôt après. Un certain nombre d’éléments métatextuels se trouvent de cette façon insérés dans le texte écrit au premier degré et en interrompent le cours. D’autres passages de texte à métatexte (et vice versa) se rencontrent d’ailleurs dans les fragments, mettant ainsi en évidence de frappantes discontinuités et des changements significatifs dans le type de saturation provoqué dans l’auditoire. Tout cela fait comprendre que les enseignements délivrés dans le poème sont immergés dans une infrastructure beaucoup plus « construite » et « étudiée », beaucoup plus consciente que celle qui apparaît dans tant d’autres textes de la même époque ou antérieurs. D’où l’importance d’une recherche spécifiquement consacrée à la composition du poème dans son ensemble.

La formule rassurante de B10.1, « tu apprendras » (eisē) , prend dans cette recherche une importance particulière, parce qu’elle démontre que Parménide lui-même a donné une valeur explicitement positive à ce qui, jusque peu auparavant, faisait l’objet de jugements fortement négatifs. Cette incohérence n’est donc pas une conjecture de notre part, mais quelque chose dont Parménide ne peut pas ne pas s’être rendu compte, ce qui signifie vraisemblablement que la seconde partie du poème expose des connaissances auxquelles il était parvenu dans une « phase précritique » de sa recherche. Sinon, à quelle autre explication pourrait-on penser ?"

28. ———. 2021. "Les déesses de Parménide." In Penser les dieux avec les présocratiques , edited by Saetta Cottone, Rossella, 129-142. Paris: Éditions Rue d'Ulm.

;"Dans son poème, Parménide ne parle que de déesses, et non pas de dieux au masculin.

Plus encore, au début du poème, Parménide choisit de commencer le premier vers par les mots hippoi tai , des juments, détail confirmé au vers 25 avec la reprise du même mot, cette fois sous la forme hippois th’ hai. Pourquoi une telle insistance sur le féminin ? Le poète qui relate son voyage évoque des juments tout en suggérant que celles-ci ont rempli une mission importante, confiée par une déesse, en vue d’une rencontre que cette déesse semble avoir voulue (et soigneusement préparée)." (p. 129)

(...)

"Un tel ensemble a un sens et remplit une fonction. Ce que nous découvrons de la suite du poème ne fera que renforcer l’impression que le poète veut mettre en lumière l’univers féminin ; il saisit plusieurs opportunités pour le faire, même lorsqu’il n’est pas question de voyage. Mais dans quel but ?

Chose curieuse, à aucun moment le poème n’indique ouvertement que le féminin mérite une considération particulière. On doit donc en déduire que ce message est pensé comme implicite ou indirect, tout en étant un message que Parménide souhaite faire passer. Avant d’essayer de le déchiffrer, faisons déjà état des donnéesfournies par le texte." (p. 130)

29. Ruben, Tanja. 2007. "L'être, la pensée et les liens du discours : structures et argumentation du fr. 8, 1-49 D-K de Parménide." Métis :163-184.

;Résumé : "Une analyse attentive aux liens formels et aux marques de l’énonciation du fragment 8 (1-41) D-K de Parménide montre qu’il présente une structure annulaire. Les parties corrélatives de chacun des trois anneaux se complètent et font progresser l’argumentation. Le discours de la déesse, par lequel elle cherche à convaincre le jeune homme d’emprunter le chemin de l’être, doit son efficacité et sa force persuasive à cette composition en anneaux et au récit paradigmatique qui en forme le centre. Celui-ci donne en exemple au jeune homme la divine Justice qui s’est prononcé jadis en faveur du chemin de l’être."

30. Salignon, Bernard. 1999. Parménide: énigme de la présence, dévoilement de la pensée . Nîmes: Théétète.

31. Santoro, Fernando. 2008. "Entre néréides et sirènes : Parménide et les catalogues d'Homère." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 26:25-38.

;"La discussion à propos du sens des catégories philosophiques est, depuis Aristote, un lieu récurrent de la problématisation de la connaissance, voire aussi de la constitution du langage et de la nature humaine elle-même.

(...)

Ce qui nous intéresse à présent est la façon dont les catégories philosophiques ou scientifiques, les catégories de connaissance, les catégories qui ont rapport à un discours à prétention de vérité, sont produites dans le langage et dans les langues occidentales. Une hypothèse de départ, à utiliser comme axiome de recherche, est que le discours philosophique et scientifique que nous utilisons puise ses formes sémantiques, syntatiques et herméneutiques dans des usages langagiers, dans certaines pragmatiques qui ont des rapports expressifs avec la vérité – et qui se rencontrent parmi plusieurs genres littéraires dans les conditions les plus diverses : festives, religieuses, politiques, judiciaires etc. Ils y puisent certaines formes tout en les transformant en modèles du discours scientifique et philosophique. Une recherche parmi ces moments métaboliques du sens pourrait trouver des ponts dans cette zone de frontière entre les discours poétiques en général et le discours philosophique traditionnel.

Dans ce programme, une étape décisive est sans doute la formulation aristotélicienne de la doctrine des catégories et ses interprétations par les commentateurs néoplatoniciens. Pourtant, il ne seront pas visés en cet article dans une herméneutique directe, mais comme le point de départ inverse d’une généalogie et même d’une archéologie des manières de dire la vérité. Cherchons à dégager dans la formulation aristotélicienne les emprunts langagiers qui peuvent constituer des traces pour une généalogie de ces catégories. On y peut repérer deux lignées principales : l’une qui remonte aux catalogues épiques, l’autre aux disputes judiciaires rhétoriques sur la vérité des accusations. Ces deux lignées ont pourtant un moment de rencontre exceptionnel dans la préhistoire des catégories aristotéliciennes, dans le Poème de Parménide. C’est précisément le sujet de cet article :Parménide et les catalogues d’Homère." (pp. 25-26)

32. Sassi, Maria Michela. 2013. "La logique de l'eoikos et ses transformations : Xénophane, Parménide, Platon." Philosophie antique :13-35.

;Résumé : "L'adjectif eoikos apparaît dans trois passages cruciaux de la pensée grecque (Xénophane, fr. B35; Parménide, fr. B8, 60; Platon, Timée, 29b3-c3), caractérisant une certaine « ressemblance » à la vérité qui se veut constitutive du discours du savant. En fait, le long de cet examen on découvre que les trois usages du terme ne peuvent pas être disposés le long d'une ligne continue, vu la difficulté de comprendre à quelle notion de vérité, sous quel point de vue, et avec quel degré d'évidence, ce discours se veut « ressemblant » selon l'occasion. Dans le cas de Parménide, cet aspect passe même au second plan, puisqu'on assiste à la prédominance d'une autre connotation qui accompagne le terme eoikos à partir de l'usage homérique, à savoir celle de la «convenance» à un contexte communicatif. L'article cherche dans l'ensemble à éclairer les déplacements que subie la logique de la similitude (et des procédés analogiques qui s'y greffent) en passant par des cadres ontologiques et épistémologiques aussi différents que le sont ceux de Xénophane, Parménide et Platon."

33. Sauvage, Micheline. 1973. Parménide ou La sagesse impossible . Paris: Seghers.

;Présentation, choix de textes, chronologie, bibliographie.

34. Schürmann, Reiner. 1988. "Le différend hénologique. La loi de l'Un, et la loi des contraires." La Parola del passato no. 43:397-419.

35. Schüssler, Ingeborg. 1996. "La question de la nature au début de la pensée occidentale. Destruction ou conservation? À propos du Poème de Parménide." Cahiers de la Revue de théologie et de philosophie no. 18:392-396.

36. Semenzato, Camille. 2017. A l’écoute des Muses en Grèce archaïque. La question de l’inspiration dans la poésie grecque à l’aube de notre civilisation . Berlin: de Gruyter.

;7e mouvement : Parménide et Empédocle, deux poètes-penseurs; poètes-penseurs; 7.1 Parménide : proème musical 291-308.

"Depuis la fin du 19e siècle au moins, Parménide et Empédocle sont classés parmi les présocratiques – appellation qui en fait des précurseurs de Socrate-Platon, des philosophes, distincts des chanteurs et poètes. Aujourd’hui, la tendance est de repenser ces catégories, impropres à la réalité archaïque. On considère désormais les deux auteurs comme des poètes de genre particulier.(1) Des poètes-musiciens, parce qu’ils écrivent en vers, font mention respectivement de déesses aux traits musicaux ainsi que de Muses et déploient un champ lexical sémantiquement proche des autres auteurs de notre corpus. Des poètes-penseurs, parce que leurs oeuvres sont inscrites dans une ambiance pré-philosophique : voie vers la pensée métaphysique et la connaissance abstraite des phénomènes. Même sans entrer dans les détails d’interprétation philosophique, l’observation des apparitions parménidienne et empédocléenne des divinités féminines et du vocabulaire musical s’avère des plus instructives ; elle montre l’importance et influence de la musique sur toute composition." (P. 291, une note omise)

(...)

"Si le voyage initiatique raconté par le narrateur du poème de Parménide ouvre la pensée humaine aux lumières de la philosophie, il n’en demeure pas moins une expérience menant aux sombres profondeurs de la vérité. Même si les filles, la divinité et la déesse ne sont pas des Muses, l’ensemble de l’initiation se déroule dans un contexte et une ambiance de part en part musicaux : musique qui accorde à l’homme une connaissance inédite de la vérité. Voyage initiatique, connaissance et vérité que Platon et l’ensemble de notre tradition a interprété en termes de pure lumière métaphysique, mais qui ouvre toutefois en même temps sur quantité d’expériences et de compréhensions sensibles, claires-obscures, mystérieuses du monde." (p. 308)

37. Somville, Pierre. 1970. "Hypotyposes parménidiennes." Tijdschrift voor Filosofie no. 32:488-493.

;"L'articulation des Doxai et de l'Alethéia au sein d'un même système de pensée semble bien être la croix de toute interprétation parménidienne.

Que ces deux ,,chemins de pensée" soient présentés dans le rapport d'une radicale exclusion de termes, ou, qu'au contraire, les exégètes tentent de les réunir dans une vision ontologiquement unifiante, le problème reste pendant.

Or, il nous semble que les tentatives d'explications d'ordre tant logique qu'historique ne soient pas satisfaisantes en l'occurrence.

Nous croyons plutôt voir dans ces deux axes parménidiens de l'Apparence et de l'Etre la première émergence lucide d'une problématique inhérente à toute situation philosophique, au-delà même des écoles et des différences de localisation dans l'espace et dans le temps. Doxai et Alethéia sont les deux éléments pour la première fois posés d'une dialectique de l'Etre et du Paraître, dont on ne peut même pas dire qu'elle aura une grande postérité, ou qu'elle ,,fera école", puisqu'elle nous semble être constituante de toute démarche philosophique en tant que telle.

(...)

Notre propos sera donc de voir brièvement le genre d'aménagement réciproque que Parménide réserve à ses deux grandes notions, et de tenter ensuite d'en rapprocher la pensée de trois philosophes modernes, - Descartes, Kant et Emile Meyerson -, nous risquant à établir une sorte de dialogue figuré entre Parménide et ces trois penseurs. D'où la couleur d'ébauche et de prosopopée évoquée par l'intitulé de cette contribution, qui se veut stricte, autant qu'il est possible, mais qui ne prétend nullement atteindre à la rigueur d'une démonstration." (pp. 488-489)

38. ———. 1976. Parménide d'Elée: son temps et le nôtre. Un chapitre d'histoire des idées . Paris: Vrin.

39. Steinrück, Martin. 2006. "La forme figurative et le vers de Parménide." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 24:17-24.

;"Où faut-il localiser le poète Parménide ? Dans la tradition homé rique ou dans la tradition orphique ? Dans la poétique coloniale ou dans la poétique grecque? Du côté panhellénique ou du côté épicho rique? Est-il archaïsant ou moderne? Nous tenterons de donner ses coordonnées en croisant trois critères, celui de la forme figurative, de l'arrangement des répétitions thématiques, celui du type d'hexamètre (du véhicule) qu'il utilise pour créer ces figures et finalement le critè re de l'enchaînement accentuel." (p. 17, une note omise)

40. Stella, Fabio. 2020. "Parménide, fragment 2 DK : du lexique de l’agir au lexique de la connaissance." Dialogues d'histoire ancienne no. 46:51-73.

;Résumé : "Cet article se propose de montrer que le lexique utilisé par Parménide dans le fragment 2 DK est pour la plupart tiré d’un vocabulaire déjà homérique, tout à fait « pratique », dont il conserve la cohérence logico-syntactique originelle. La transformation de ce « lexique de l’agir » en « lexique de la connaissance », que Parménide met en œuvre, n’est pas réalisée par une resémantisation de chacun des mots, mais en changeant, grâce à une réflexion métalinguistique sur le texte homérique, le niveau d’abstraction de l’objet du discours, l’ἐόν."

41. Stevens, Annick. 1990. Posterité de l'être. Simplicius interprète de Parménide . Bruxelles: Ousia.

;Table des matières: Introduction 5; Chapitre I: L'Alétheia 11; Chapitre II: La Doxa 53; Conclusion 80; Appendice: Traduction 83; Bibliographie 143; Index des Fragments de Parménide cités par Simplicius 147.

"La plupart des fragments que nous connaissons de Parménide nous sont parvenus par l'intermédiaire de Simplicius, philosophe néoplatonicien du Vlème siècle de notre ère, grâce aux multiples citations et références étayant son commentaire à la Physique et au De Caelo d'Aristote. Or, ce commentateur ne s'est pas contenté de citer, mais a apporté bien des explications aux apories suscitées depuis vingt-cinq siècles par l'obscurité du poème parménidien. En effet, le contexte dans lequel apparaissent les citations permet souvent de situer plus exactement leur objet, et par là leur signification précise.

(...)

Par conséquent, mon travail suppose une connaissance préalable des doctrines platonicienne et néoplatonicienne, particulièrement en ce qui concerne la notion de l'Un dans son rapport avec l'être. Bien que j'aborde le problème au chapitre 1,B, cependant, j'évite de concentrer mon étude sur ces théories, au risque de perdre l'essentiel. Je ne fournirai pas davantage un travail exhaustif sur la pensée parménidienne, quoique, pour des raisons de clarté, j'étudierai et comparerai, sur les points les plus controversés, les explications de plusieurs interprètes modernes, en vue de proposer, quand cela est possible, mon propre point de vue. A ce propos, je voudrais signaler qu'il existe deux études récentes traitant spécifiquement de l'exégèse de Simplicius; il s'agit de "Simplicius as a source for and an interpreter of Parmenides" de Bruce M. Perry, et de "The Interpretation of Parmenides by the Neoplatonist Simplicius" de Karl Bormann. On peut leur faire le reproche commun d'être davantage des paraphrases que des tentatives d'explication, et de ne pas exploiter ce nouveau champ herméneutique, cette richesse nouvelle d'interprétations possibles, que nous ouvre la lecture de Simplicius pour celle de Parménide. Néanmoins, la dissertation doctorale de Perry a le mérite d'exposer le commentaire de façon très systématique, paragraphe par paragraphe, en l'accompagnant d'index, de remarques philologiques, d'une bonne critique des sources et des manuscrits, et de nombreuses références aux commentateurs antérieurs qui ont pu influencer Simplicius. Quant à l'article de Bormann, s'il relève certains passages où le néoplatonicien sort de l'aporie les interprétations traditionnelles sur quelques conceptions obscures de Parménide, il n'en donne aucun commentaire ni ne cherche à voir ce qui motive l'interprète, d'où s'inspire sa conception de l'Étant, et dans quelle mesure elle déforme celle de l'Éléate lui-même.

(...)

J'espère avoir montré, par ces quelques observations, qu'une étude attentive de Simplicius n'est ni superflue ni aisée.

Mon intention étant de suivre les questions posées comme essentielles par Simplicius lui-même, je n'envisagerai que les fragments transmis grâce à lui, laissant de côté une partie importante du poème. Le fait de suivre le commentaire m'oblige également à voyager constamment d'une page à l'autre en faisant bon nombre de comparaisons, d'anticipations et de rappels, ce dont le lecteur voudra bien m'excuser, puisque Simplicius, suivant lui-même l'ordre de oeuvre d'Aristote, et passant, selon le besoin, d'un Présocratique à l'autre, présente une explication tout à fait disparate et en rien systématique. Néanmoins, j'essaierai de structurer mon étude de la manière la plus claire possible, envisageant, selon la méthode classique, chacune des deux parties du poème, divisées elles-mêmes en questions principales.

Une traduction des passages de Simplicius concernant la pensée éléatique figure en appendice; j'invite le lecteur à la consulter fréquemment, car elle sert de support à tous mes développements.

Enfin, ce travail étant achevé en 1988, je n'ai pas tenu compte des études qui ont paru à partir de cette date." (pp. 5-9)

42. ———. 2011. "Parménide." In Le Néant , edited by Laurent, Jérôme [et al.], 29-40. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

;"Le non-étant de Parménide est bien, comme l’a compris Platon dans le Sophiste, le contraire de l’étant, ce qui n’est d’aucune manière et donc ce qui ne peut être ni dit (au sens de « décrit ») ni pensé ni même imaginé. C’est pourquoi Platon se défend à juste titre de commettre le moindre parricide envers le père de la philosophie, lorsqu’il affirme l’existence d’un certain non-étant, déterminé par altérité visà-vis d’un certain étant(1). Sa véritable révolution par rapport à Parménide est l’introduction de la multiplicité et de la différence au sein même de ce qui est, c’est-à-dire parmi les Formes éternelles. Pour cette raison même,

il est manifeste que le ce-qui-est de Parménide n’est pas la Forme, l’universel intelligible, car il devrait être multiple. Il ne doit pas davantage être identifié à un principe ultime de la nature, que ce soit l’un-tout ou le principe d’être des étants en devenir. Nulle part un tel souci de fonder la physique n’apparaît dans le poème ; au contraire, les deux types de discours, celui sur la nature, celui sur l’être, sont absolument séparés. Ce qui est n’est rien d’autre que ce qui satisfait le sens véritable d’être, et exposer toutes les conséquences de cette signification constitue toute l’ambition de l’enquête parménidienne.

C’est pourquoi aussi, lorsque Gorgias entreprend de réfuter le rapport exclusif entre l’être et la pensée, au sens où il serait absurde que tout ce qu’on peut penser soit, il manque la cible en prenant l’être au sensordinaire. Il la manque aussi, du même coup, en ne faisant pas de distinction, au sein des actes mentaux, entre une représentation quelconque et la signification restreinte du « penser » et du « dire » qui correspond à la signification stricte de l’être.

Or c’est précisément cette confusion que Parménide entendait éviter grâce au premier acte de la pensée, qui est l’affirmation du fait de l’être : tant les célèbres vers 8, 34-38 que déjà le fragment 6, 1 donnent pour tâche à la pensée d’affirmer que ce qui est est. La pensée est avant tout jugement d’existence. C’est seulement après cette exclusion du « n’est pas » et le refus corollaire de ne pas choisir entre « est » et « n’est pas », que d’autres actes de pensée seront possibles, car alors seulement tout ce qui suivra sera une pensée connaissante et non une trompeuse opinion. En effet, quel que soit ce qu’elle prendra pour objet, si cela admet le fait d’être, alors elle pourra le connaître. Le poème de Parménide est une détermination des conditions a priori de l’accès à la vérité, et le partage de l’être et du non-être en est la toute première étape, bien antérieure à la connaissance de ce qui est et de ce qui n’est pas." (pp. 34-35)

(1) Au vers 8, 46, l’hypothèse d’un non-étant tel qu’il viendrait interrompre la continuité de l’étant, n’est probablement pas une préfiguration du non-être relatif mais plutôt une allusion à la controverse contemporaine entre une physique du continu et une physique du discontinu composé de plein et de vide. Sur cette controverse qui opposa probablement Zénon d’Élée et les Pythagoriciens, voir M. Caveing, Zénon d’Élée : prolégomènes aux doctrines du continu : étude historique et critique des fragments et témoignages , Paris, Vrin, 1982. Cependant, si l’argument est issu de la physique, la cohérence de la conception exige qu’il soit appliqué métaphoriquement à l’étant, qui n’est d’aucune façon un objet physique.

43. Todoua, Maïa. 2007. "Sur l'improbable douceur du feu dans la cosmologie de Parménide (v. 57 du Fr. 8 DK)." Revue des Études Grecques no. 120:395-413.

;Résumé : "D'après la théorie physique de Parménide, deux éléments fondamentaux régissent le monde, le feu éthéré de la flamme et la nuit obscure. Dans l'énumération des adjectifs (v. 57-59 du Fr. 8 DK), qui n'est pas sans rappeler un système de paires d'opposés, chacun de deux éléments reçoit les caractéristiques opposées les unes des autres. Il se trouve que, suite à des interventions ultérieures, le vers 57 nous est parvenu sous forme d'un heptamètre au lieu d'un hexamètre attendu, donnant ainsi lieu à une irrégularité métrique qui soulève un problème davantage dogmatique que textuel. Tous les manuscrits du Commentaire à la Physique de Simplicius, notre source unique pour ce passage, établissent, pour l'élément du feu, trois épithètes : ήπιον, « doux », άραιόν, « clairsemé », et έλαφρόν, « léger ». Dès les premières éditions de Parménide, la lecture consensuelle a consisté à conserver ήπιον, « doux », en éliminant soit άραιόν, « clairsemé », soit έλαφρόν, « léger », considérés, à tour de rôle, comme une glose l'un de l'autre. Quant à ήπιον, traduit tantôt comme « calme, non intense », tantôt comme « doux, favorable », sa véritable portée dans ce contexte n'a jamais été dûment expliquée. Le présent article essaie de démontrer que la conservation de ήπιον au vers 57 va à rencontre du principe même d'un système cosmologique fondé sur une opposition fondamentale.

Selon la théorie physique de Parménide, les éléments premiers, ainsi que leurs caractéristiques, sont établis à part les uns des autres (χωρίς απ' αλλήλων). Chaque qualificatif du feu devrait donc trouver son pendant dans la description de la nuit. Or ήπιον est le seul terme qui échappe à cette règle. Dans ma tentative de réfuter l'opinion consensuelle concernant l'authenticité de ήπιον au vers 57 du Fr. 8 DK, j'ai trouvé que le cardinal Bessarion, dans sa traduction latine de ce passage, offrait une lecture proche de cette idée non orthodoxe. Par ailleurs, Simon Karsten, auteur de la reconstitution définitive du poème de Parménide, se sentait, lui aussi, tenté par cette hypothèse."

44. Tournaire, Roland. 2004. L’intuition existentielle : Parménide, Isaïe et le midras protochrétien . Paris: L'Harmattan.

45. Villani, Arnaud. 1988. "La tenue ontologique dans le Poème de Parménide." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 93:291-315.

;Résumé : "Si le prologue du Poème de Parménide n'est pas seulement formules consacrées de l'imagerie magico- religieuse, mais exhibition de deux modèles homothétiques où il est question d'axes, d'alvéoles, et de leur tenue réciproque; si des passages cruciaux (I, v. 31 et 32 ; VIII, v. 50 à 61) et plusieurs termes majeurs du Poème sont susceptibles d'une double lecture où le sens généra- lement accepté va jusqu'à s'inverser ; si le retour des mots de la famille séman- tique d'« échein » est systématique, et relègue bien loin la préoccupation de V« hen » au profit du « synéchès » ; alors une meilleure "tenue" du Poème dans son ensemble est possible, le Prologue, les Fragments II à VII, IX à XIX n'ayant pas moins de sens philosophique que le « Fragment ontologique » (VIII L'enjeu de cette réflexion aurorale nous semblera alors la préservation d'une Règle dont le juste usage décèlerait dans le réel des « configu- rations convenables », bien ajointées, et pour cela préservées autant que possible de « naissance et destruction.»"

46. Viola, Coloman. 1984. "Á propos d'un fragment du Poème de Parménide cité par Clément d'Alexandrie (V Stromate c. IX, 59, 6)." Bulletin de la Société Internationale pour l'Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale no. 26:90-92.

;"Les Fragmente der Vorsokratiker Griechisch und Deutsch édités par H. Diels (réédités en 1934 par W. Franz) omettent une référence incluse dans le V Stromate de Clément d'Alexandrie (écrivant entre 193 et 211) concernant un fragment du Poème de Parménide. Cette référence, que rapportera Simplicius quatre siècles plus tard, comporte des variantes importantes par rapport au texte transmis par Simplicius."

47. ———. 1987. "Aux origines de la gnoséologie: réflexion sur le sens dur fr. IV du Poème de Parménide." In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation , edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 69-101. Paris: Vrin.

;"Le fr. IV du Poème de Parménide est sans aucun doute un des fragments les plus difficiles à interpréter: certains commentateurs sont allés jusqu'à mettre en doute son intelligibilité. (...)

La solution ne consistera pas nécessairement en une option pure et simple pour l'une des hypothèses en excluant d'une manière absolue l'autre. Les difficultés du fragment ont amené certains à proposer des corrections du texte en supposant soit que Clément d'Alexandrie s'était trompé en le transcrivant soit que le texte de Clément lui-même nous est parvenu sous une forme corrompue. Ces problèmes grammaticaux et textuels difficiles à résoudre doivent inspirer une grande prudence en ce qui concerne l'interprétation du fragment. Ces difficultés combinées aux difficultés d'une méthodologie en général - dont un Hölscher (2) a déjà fait état -- mettent à une sérieuse épreuve quiconque se promettrait de trouver la solution idéale du fragment.

Les cadres de cet essai ne rendent pas possible l'examen même superficiel de tous les problèmes qui ont été déjà soulevés au sujet de ce fragment. Je propose avant tout d'examiner le contexte originel dans les Stromates de Clément d'Alexandrie qui nous ont conservé le fragment pour y chercher et trouver éventuellement la solution de certains problèmes inhérents au fragment. D'autre part, pour éclaircir davantage le sens des termes, nous allons faire appel à la philologie comparée ce qui nous permettra d'esquisser quelques principes d'interprétation qui, à notre avis, devraient guider toute recherche concernant le sens du fragment." (pp. 69-70 notes omises)

(2) Cf. U. Hölscher, Anfângliches Fragen. Studien zur frühen griechischen Philosophie , Göttingen, p.90.

48. Wersinger-Taylor, Gabrièle. 2012. "Parménide croyait-il dans les signes de l’Etre ? Remarques sur l’énonciation et la délocution au fragment 8, vers 1-11." Savoirs en prisme no. 1:1-22.

;"En se situant d’un point de vue analytique, Gorgias a conduit Parménide à une impasse insoluble. Mais Parménide avait peut-être lui-même mesuré l’ampleur d’une autre contradiction, celle qui, d’ordre pragmatique, couve comme une bombe à retardement et menace tout discours sur l’être. Ainsi cette contradiction de type pragmatique sera entièrement perdue de vue, lorsqu’on croira pouvoir dire les affections (pathè) de l’Être. Car pour admettre qu’il peut y avoir un discours des affections de l’Être, il faut croire comme Socrate dans le Cratyle, qu’il est possible de partir des choses elles-mêmes pour juger de la pertinence des signes que sont les mots. Il faut donc avoir définitivement forclos la perspective de l’énonciation sans évidemment en annuler les effets, plus que jamais sensibles aujourd’hui." (p. 20)

49. Zafiropulo, Jean. 1950. L'école Eléate. Parménide, Zénon, Melissos . Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Parmenide di Elea. Bibliografia degli studi Italiani

Bibliografia

1. Abbate, Michele. 2010. Parmenide e i neoplatonici: dall'Essere all'Uno e al di là dell'Uno. Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso.

2. ———. 2013. "Ferrea razionalità e logica ineludibile nel monismo ontologico assoluto di Parmenide." Anuario Filosófico no. 46:79-119.

Abstract: "The proposed monistic interpretation of Parmenides' ontology appears confirmed by the inescapable logic that permeates his whole thought. In spite of the fragmentary nature of his poem, it is possible to reconstruct the ironclad rationality of the Parmenidean ontology. This intrinsically coherent logic shows the absolute necessity of the monistic nature of being. From this perspective the absolute incompatibility between the perfect rationality and coherence of truth and the deceptiveness and inconsistency of doxa is made evident."

3. Adorno, Francesco. 1988. "Da Platone a Parmenide, da Parmenide a Platone." La Parola del passato no. 43:7-18.

"Presents a study of the influence of Parmenidean philosophy on the formation of Plato's metaphysics." [N.]

4. Armaro, Gabriella. 2016. La dottrina platonica delle idee tra il Parmenide e il Timeo. Roma: Stamen.

5. Battezzato, Luigi. 2005. "Le vie dell’Ade e le vie di Parmenide. Filologia, filosofia e presenze femminili nelle lamine d’oro “orfiche”." SemRom. Seminari Romani di cultura greca no. 8:67-99.

6. Beaufret, Jean. 2023. Parmenide: il Poema. Milano: Christian Marinotti Edizioni.

7. Berrettoni, Pierangiolo. 2013. "Dall'orfico καλεῖν all'ὀνομάζειν parmenideo." In Comparing Ancient Grammars: The Greek, Syriac and Arabic Traditions, edited by Eco Conti, Sara and Farina, Mergherita, 65-96. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale.

8. Berti, Enrico. 2002. "L’essere e le sue regioni: da Parmenide ad Aristotele." In Enosis kai philia = Unione e amicizia: omaggio a Francesco Romano, edited by Barbanti, Maria, Giardina, Giovanna and Manganaro, Paolo, 25-41. Catania: Edizioni CUECM.

Ristampato in E. Berti, Nuovi studi aristotelici, Vol. I, Brescia: Morcelliana, 2004, pp. 345-363.

9. Bontempi, Milena. 2013. La fiducia secondo gli antichi. 'Pistis' in Gorgia tra Parmenide e Platone. Napoli: Editoriale Scientifica.

"... il punto d’arrivo del presente percorso [è] dedicato ad alcuni passaggi filosofici che hanno al centro la nozione di pistis intesa nel senso per cui essa definisce una relazione — la relazione di fiducia, e altresì l’affidamento (ovvero la credenza in altri), la fedeltà, l’affidabilità e la garanzia che essa comporta. Ad occuparci saranno pochi luoghi e pochi autori che individuano in tale relazione una sorta di punto-limite e di nucleo elementare capace insieme di definire e regolare i rapporti umani. Si tratta di Gorgia soprattutto, e in particolare dell'Apologia di Palamede, che andrà però letta in riferimento agli altri aspetti del suo pensiero. Ma si tratta ancor prima di Parmenide, il cui percorso d’indagine teoretica è all’insegna del logos perché questo è pistos, affidabile. E si tratta infine di Platone, in alcuni passi (di Repubblica e Leggi) che impongono riflessioni sulla pistis intesa in modo specifico nell’accezione relazionale, e lo fanno non senza connessioni con l’approccio gorgiano." (p. 9)

(...)

"Sfondo logico e contrappunto ontologico alla posizione gorgiana, padre da superare per quella platonica, è, notoriamente, il poema di Parmenide: qui pistis ricopre una posizione letteralmente nodale e, nonostante si presenti su un fronte dell’essere e del conoscere opposto a quello in cui la collocheranno sia Gorgia sia Platone, i significati che lì le si attribuiscono rimarranno vigenti e determinanti anche per costoro. Perciò, pur nella parzialità dell’operazione dal punto di vista strettamente storiografico, assumeremo l’Eleate come premessa per arrivare in età sofistica." (p. 23)

(...)

"Solo il logos che svolge la prima via è logos pistos: o, meglio, poiché di logos si parla in effetti solo in ambito di eon e noein, l’affidabilità che è propria del logos e del pensiero intorno alla verità (noema; 8, 50-51) vien meno passando alle opinioni dei mortali, al loro cosmo di parole suscettibile d’inganno (51-52). Solo il logos è pistos: abbandonare la strada da esso tracciata è abbandonare la strada segnata da pistis. Così come solo la pistis che bandisce le doxai è alêthês: non perché sia possibile una pistis non alêthês, in quanto di pistis si parla solo in contrapposizione al cosmo dei mortali. E però la verità che a pistis si salda vien meno se si cede alle abitudini espressive e cognitive del mondo. Sicché, come il logos è sempre pistos e la pistis ne è una caratteristica certa, così la verità è un carattere proprio e certo di pistis, laddove alêtheia non sempre in grado altrettanto sicuro sostiene ciò di cui siamo persuasi. La verità, come correlato del dire, può essere velata dal dire stesso, che rende una parvenza: ma se il dire è logos, ovvero è pistos, l'alêtheia ne è correlato certo in senso pieno e non, invece, nel modo frammentato e apparente (quindi non-alêthês, ovvero ingannevole) del kosmos e della glossa." (p. 46)

10. Calenda, Guido. 2011. Epistemologia greca del VI e V secolo a.C. Eraclito e gli eleati. Roma: Aracne.

Indice: Introduzione 11; 1. Il contesto storico 19; 2. Le intuizioni di Eraclito 41; 3. Le dimostrazioni di Parmenide 139; 4. Le ragioni di Zenone 219; 5. Gli equivoci di Melisso 265; 6. Influenza del pensiero eleatico 299; 7. Frammenti 317; Bibliografia 369; Indice delle citazioni 393; Indice degli autori antichi 399; Indice degli autori moderni 407; Indice degli argomenti 415-423.

11. ———. 2017. Un universo aperto. La cosmologia di Parmenide e la struttura della terra. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia.

12. ———. 2020. "Rilevanza epistemologica dell’ontologia parmenidea." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 27:121-145.

Riassunto: "È possibile intendere l’essere di Parmenide come la ‘totalità dell’esistente’.

L’intuizione di Parmenide è che l’essere è un continuum compatto (fr. 4), e egli fornisce una dimostrazione logica di questa intuizione riconoscendo che il non-essere, che solo potrebbe dividere l’esistente in una molteplicità di esseri, non esiste. Di onseguenza, la conoscenza dell’essere può soltanto essere l’apprendimento della totalità dell’essere nel suo insieme – una forma di conoscenza che è inconcepibile per l’uomo.

La conoscenza umana si articola sempre in concetti, immagini, relazioni…, espresse da i loro nomi. Gli uomini dunque non colgono l’essere stesso ma, al più, alcuni limitati aspetti di una minima parte di esso, come appaiono da prospettive umane e personali. Parmenide attribuisce l’epiteto ‘dalla doppia testa’ a quei mortali che pretendono che le loro verità rappresentino la realtà dell’essere, perché questa pretesa implicherebbe l’esistenza insieme dell’essere e del non-essere. Questa concezione epistemologica è l’unico risultato che conti dell’ontologia di Parmenide. L’epistemologia di Parmenide scioglie molti degli enigmi filosofici del suo tempo, mostra che i cosiddetti paradossi di Zenone sono argomenti validi e prefigura le dottrine di Protagora e Gorgia."

13. Calogero, Guido. 1932. Studi sull'Eleatismo. Roma: Tipografia del Senato del dott. G. Bardi.

Seconda edizione con due nuove appendici, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1977; la prima edizione è stata tradotta in tedesco da Wolfgang Raible: Studien über den Eleatismus Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1970.

Indice: Avvertenza alla prima edizione VII; Avvertenza a questa nuova edizione IX-XIX; I. Parmenide 1; II. Melisso 69; III: Zenone 105; Iv. Gorgia 189; V. Il "parmenide" platonico 269; Appendici. I. Senofane, Eschilo e la prima definizione dell'onnipotenza di Dio (Guido Calogero); II. Recensione di Kurt von Fritz agli Studi sull'eleatismo di Guido Calogero 335; Indice dei nomi e dei luoghi 361-366.

14. ———. 1936. "Parmenide e la genesi della logica classica." Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa no. 5:143-185.

Ristampato in: G. Calogero, Storia della logica antica, vol. I, Bari: Laterza, 1967.

15. ———. 1967. Storia della logica antica. Vol. I. L'età arcaica. Bari: Laterza.

(Gli altri volumi previsti non sono stati pubblicati).

Indice: Prefazione IX-XI, Introduzione 1; Libro primo. L'età arcaica. I. La struttura del pensiero arcaico 33; II. Eraclito 63; III. Parmenide 109; IV. Zenone e Melisso 171; V. Empedocle 209; VI. Anassagora 251; VII. Diogene di Apollonia 317; VIII. Leucippo e Democrito 363; Indice dei nomi 455; Indice de passi 461; Indice dei termini 467-470.

"Per i Greci di età preparmenidea le varie forme di είναι « essere », cioè i molti tipi verbali che le seriori schematizzazioni dei grammatici avrebbero poi raggruppati e ordinati sotto l'esponente di quel « modo infinito », costituivano un complesso di strumenti significativi che essi adoperavano con la stessa spontanea libertà con cui se n’è valso e se ne varrà sempre, in ogni ambiente linguistico non privo di quel motivo semantico, il parlante idealmente preparmenideo, cioè non preoccupato delle formali difficoltà del suo uso. Chi voglia intendere la posizione di Parmenide nella sua genuina freschezza storica deve perciò riportarsi a quell’ambiente e a quell’uso: deve rifarsi Parmenide, tornare al suo primitivo ed ingenuo orizzonte mentale, presupporre i suoi soli presupposti e lasciar da parte tutti quelli di cui la sua coscienza di storico è arricchita dai ventiquattro secoli dell’evoluzione di quel problema dell’essere, che appunto in quanto nacque da Parmenide non fu la premessa di Parmenide." (p. 109)

(...)

"Ormai legittimata anche nelle sue coerenti difficoltà, la teoria della doxa completa dunque ed accentua, coi suoi chiaroscuri, quella fisionomia del pensiero di Parmenide, i cui lineamenti primari risultano schietti già dalla sua concezione della realtà verace. Così nell'una come nell'altra egli resta il massimo eroe ellenico della verità parlata: il più potente traduttore di contingenze linguistiche in presunte situazioni e problemi di realtà. Nasce in un ambiente abituato a sentire su un solo piano l'infinito divergere e contrastare dei nomi e delle cose; ed ha per contemporaneo Eraclito che, persuaso di scoprir la legge del mondo in quello stesso guerreggiare delle cose nominate, era perciò condotto ad enunciarla in un linguaggio in cui il « no » disdiceva il « sì » e l'« è » era oppugnato dal « non è ». Egli invece sente l'« è» come la parola stessa della verità, e non può tollerare che sia contaminata dal « no »: deve quindi accogliere come verace solo ciò il cui « è » sia affatto immune da « no », e rifiutare come apparente anche tutto l'universo visibile, quando la multiforme sua realtà enunciabile appaia soggetta a quel contagio. Giunge così, da un lato, a proclamar reale « ciò che è », l'« ente », che solo risponde a quella suprema Necessità e Giustizia del Vero. Apre dall'altro il vasto abisso del « no », in cui precipita tutto quanto non regge al paragone del sí » dell'« è ».

Suoi epigoni sono quindi, d'allora in poi e per millenni, tutti coloro che credono che l'« ente » o l'« essere » sia una realtà o un problema, e non una maschera verbale di molte possibili realtà e problemi; coloro che vedono nell'antitesi del sì e del no, dell'affermazione e della negazione non una contingente struttura del linguaggio ma una fatale guisa della realtà, una discriminazione assoluta spezzante il cosmo in due parti, il positivo e il negativo, la luce e la tenebra dell'essere; coloro che sulla base di tale antitesi costruiscono le loro logiche e con esse l'intero quadro del mondo, e coloro che capovolgendo quelle logiche costruiscono sulla stessa base le loro dialettiche, e con esse l'intero quadro del mondo. Suoi successori sono invece coloro che, pur appartenendo ad età ancora fortemente dominate dal senso arcaico del linguaggio e quindi subendo in varia misura l'influsso di quello spontaneo atteggiamento mentale, accentuano sempre più la reazione critica nei suoi riguardi, e riescono a volta a volta a liberarsi da talune delle sue difficoltà: coloro che non accettano quelle parole-realtà come tali, ma per intenderle le analizzano, e s'accorgono come in tale analisi si scinda e moltiplichi anche la loro presunta realtà; coloro che scoprono quante esperienze concrete possano celarsi sotto il puro « no » di Parmenide, quanti significati assumere, non solo nelle sfere dottrinali in cui vivono l'esistenza la predicazione la realtà l'identità la necessità ma anche nell'universale uso semantico, il suo astratto e solitario « è ». La storia della logica occidentale è in questo senso la storia degli sforzi, con cui il pensiero lentamente si affranca dalla servitù parmenidea." (pp. 151-153)

16. ———. 1974. "Plotino, Parmenide e il 'Parmenide'." In Plotino e il neoplatonismo in Oriente e in Occidente (Roma, 5-9 ottobre 1970), 49-59. Roma: Accademia nazionale dei Lincei.

17. Capizzi, Antonio. 1975. Introduzione a Parmenide. Bari: Laterza.

18. ———. 1975. La porta di Parmenide. Due saggi per una nuova lettura del Poema. Roma: Edizioni dell'Ateneo.

19. ———. 1987. "Trasposizioni del lessico omerico in Parmenide ed Empedocle. Osservazioni su un problema di metodo." Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica no. 25:107-118.

20. ———. 1988. "Quattro ipotesi eleatiche." La Parola del passato no. 43:42-60.

21. Cardelli, Emanuela. 2008. Eidos, tra diversità e molteplicità: uno studio dalParmenide di Platone. Roma: Aracne.

22. Casertano, Giovanni. 1974. "Una nuova lettura di Parmenide." Atti della Accademia di Scienze morali e politiche della Società nazionale di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti di Napoli no. 85:379-421.

23. ———. 1978. Parmenide il metodo la scienza l'esperienza. Napoli: Guida.

Ristampa: Napoli: Loffredo 1989.

"Avvertenza. Per il testo dei frammenti parmenidei, ci siamo serviti della raccolta di H. Diels - W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Dublin-Ziirich 1968 (13 ed.); le varianti rispetto a questo testo sono state sempre indicate e discusse nel corso del commento o delle note. Della stessa raccolta ci siamo serviti anche per le testimonianze su Parmenide, come per i frammenti e le testimonianze riguardanti gli altri presocratici. Le traduzioni italiane delle testimonianze su Parmenide e dei testi relativi agli altri presocratici che appaiono nel volume si intendono prese sempre - qualora non sia indicato diversamente - da I presocratici. Testimonianze e frammenti, a cura e con Introduzione di G. Giannatoni, Voll.. 2, Bari 1969 (le traduzioni sono di: M. Gigante, G. Giannantoni, R. Laurenti, A. Maddalena, P. Albertelli, V.E. Alfieri, M. Timpanaro Cardini).

L'ordine dei frammenti parmenidei da noi offerto è diverso da quello di Diels-Kranz, ma alla nostra numerazione abbiamo fatta seguire tra parentesi quella del DK per consentire un più agevole confronto con la classica edizione; per la stessa ragione, nel corso del commento e delle note, tutti i rimandi sono stati fatti conservando la numerazione tradizionale."

24. ———. 1988. "Astrazione ed esperienza. Parmenide (e Protagora)." La Parola del passato no. 43:61-80.

25. Cassio, Albio Cesare. 1996. "Da Elea a Hipponion e Leontinoi: Lingua di Parmenide e testi epigrafici." Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik no. 113:14-20.

26. Cavarero, Adriana. 1984. L'interpretazione hegeliana di Parmenide. Trento: Verifiche.

27. ———. 1988. "Platone e Hegel interpreti di Parmenide." La Parola del passato no. 43:81-99.

28. Cerri, Giovanni. 1997. "Il v. 1, 3 di Parmenide: la ricognizione dell'esperienza." In Mousa. Scritti in onore di Giuseppe Morelli, 57-63. Bologna: Patron.

29. ———. 1999. "La poesia di Parmenide." Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica no. 63:7-27.

30. ———. 2005. "Parmenide fisico." SemRom. Seminari Romani di cultura greca no. 8:101-112.

31. ———. 2008. "La sezione astronomica del poema parmenideo." Aion. Annali dell'Istituto universitario Orientale di Napoli. Sezione filologico-letteraria no. 30:27-37.

32. ———. 2011. "La fisica di Parmenide." In Ontologia scienza mito. Per una nuova lettura di Parmenide, edited by Ruggiu, Luigi and Natali, Carlo, 51-80. Udine: Mimesis.

33. ———. 2019. "Parmenide in Lucrezio. (Parm. B 12, 3-6 = Lucr, 1, 19-21)." In ὁδοὶ νοῆσαι. Ways to Think. Essays in Honour of Néstor-Luis Cordero, edited by Pulpito, Massimo and Spangenberg, Pilar, 207-212. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia.

Riassunto: "L'autore approfondisce il confronto tra Lucr. 1,21 e Parm. B 12,3 D.-K., non limitandosi, come ha fatto finora la critica moderna, ai due singoli versi presi in se stessi, ma spingendosi a considerare nel suo insieme la struttura dei due interi poemi Sulla natura."

34. Colli, Giorgio. 2003. Gorgia e Parmenide. Lezioni 1965-1967. Milano: Adelphi.

35. Colombo, Alberto. 1972. II primato del nulla e le origini della metafisica. Per una ricomprensione del pensiero di Parmenide. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

36. Condello, Federico. 2016. "Nuovi studi parmenidei tra filologia e dialettologia." Eikasmos. Quaderni Bolognesi di Filologia Classica no. 27:495-519.

Recensione di Enzo Passa, Parmenide. Tradizione del testo e questioni di lingua e Franco Ferrari, Il migliore dei mondi impossibili. Parmenide e il cosmo dei Presocratici.

37. D'Alessio, Giovan Battista. 1995. "Una via lontana dal cammino degli uomini: (Parm. frr. 1+6 D.-K. ; Pind. Ol. VI 22-27 ; pae. VIIb 10-20)." Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica no. 13:143-181.

38. d'Hoine, Pieter. 2017. "Parmenide neoplatonico: intorno a un nuovo studio sulla presenza di Parmenide nel commento alla Fisica di Simplicio." Méthexis.International Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 28:188-198.

A proposaito del libro di Ivan A. Licciardi, Parmenide tràdito, Parmenide tradìto nel commentario di Simplicio alla Fisica di Aristotele (Symbolon 42), Sankt Augustin, Academia Verlag, 2016.

39. de Simone, Giovanni. 2016. "«Ein Verkanntes Fragment des Parmenides». Una proficua ipotesi di lavoro." Syzetesis. Associazione filosofica no. 3:183-194.

40. ———. 2016. "Gli aspetti della cosmologia parmenides in 28 B10 DK." Lexicon Philosophicum no. 4:43-64.

41. Dorandi, Tiziano. 2009. "Parmenide, Senofane e Anassimandro (Una nota a Diog. Laert. IX 21)." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 30:347-353.

Abstract: "A new inspection of the B manuscript of Diogenes Laertius' Lives of Eminent Philosophers allows to restore the text of the beginning of Parmenides' Life (IX 21) in a way that corresponds with Diogenes', and also to eliminate an obvious syntactic difficulty."

42. Drivet, Dario, and Teaversa, Claudia. 2006. "Realtà e apparenza del cielo: la filosofia di Parmenide e Zenone." Filosofia no. 57:3-81.

43. Ducci, Edda. 1963. "Il τό έόν parmenideo nella interpretazione di Simplicio." Angelicum no. 40:173-194.

44. ———. 1963. "Il τό έόν parmenideo nella interpretazione di Simplicio (seconda parte)." Angelicum no. 40:313-327.

45. ———. 1964. "Il τό έόν parmenideo nella interpretazione di Filopono." Rassegna di scienze filosofiche no. 17:253-300.

46. Ebner, Pietro. 1966. "Parmenide medico Ouliades." Giornale di Metafisica no. 21:103-114.

Ristampato in P. Ebner, Studi sul Cilento, vol. I, Salerno: Acciaroli 1996, pp. 195-202 e in id., Velia e la Scuola di Medicina, Salerno: Acciaroli 1997, pp. 35-51.

47. Fazzo, Silvia. 2020. "Una versione progredita della teoria delle idee nel papiro di Ai Khanoum: una scoperta nella scoperta." Elenchos no. 41:157-163.

Abstract: "The paper firstly focuses on a rare vox, that is, the verb μετίσχω, as a new finding in two different sources: the Π text of Methaphysics Lambda 1075b19 and the “Ai Khanoum philosophical papyrus” (not only at column II.9, but arguably at II.11 and IV.8–9 as well). Using the verb μετίσχω testifies for a “2.0 version” of the theory of ideas, in a subsequent phase to Plato’s Parmenides. Xenocrates is likely to have played a role. This suggests a deeper connection than previously thought between Aristotelian theories and Plato’s Academy."

48. Ferrari, Franco. 2003. "Il ritorno del «kouros»: tradizione epica e articolazione narrativa in Parmenide 28 B 1 D.-K." In Des géants à Dionysos : mélanges de mythologie et de poésie grecques offerts à Francis Vian, edited by Accorinti, Domenico and Chuvin, Pierre, 189-205. Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso.

Discussione del significato filosofico-iniziatico del viaggio parmenideo, e dell'identità delle due dee menzionate ai v. 3 e 22, in cui si possono riconoscere rispettivamente l'Aurora e la Notte.

49. ———. 2005. "L'officina epica di Parmenide: due sondaggi." SemRom. Seminari Romani di cultura greca no. 8:113-129.

50. ———. 2010. Il migliore dei mondi impossibili: Parmenide e il cosmo dei presocratici. Roma: Aracne.

51. ———. 2010. "Equiparazionismo ontologico e deduttivismo: l’eredità di Parmenide nella « gymnasia » del « Parmenide »." In Il quinto secolo: studi di filosofia antica in onore di Livio Rossetti, edited by Giombini, Stefania and Marcacci, Flavia, 357-368. Passignano sul Trasimeno: Aguaplano.

52. ———. 2012. "Afrodite timoniera del cosmo nel racconto di Parmenide." In Tradizioni mitiche locali nell'epica greca. Convegno internazionale di studi in onore di Antonio Martina per i suoi 75 anni: Roma, 22-23 ottobre 2009, 121-146. Roma: Scienze e Lettere.

53. Ferrero, Giovanni. 1979. "La via della Demone. Per lo studio sulla genesi e la struttura del poema di Parmenide." In La matematica della civiltà arcaiche. Egitto, Mesopotamia, Grecia, edited by Giacardi, Livia and Roero, Silvia Clara, 283-321. Torino: Stampatori didattica.

54. Forcignanò, Filippo. 2010. "« Illimitata pluralità »: l'argomento del regresso in Parm. 132a-b2." Acme: Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università degli Studi di Milano no. 63:31-74.

55. Franchi, Leonardo. 2017. "Alcune osservazioni sul procedimento logico di Parmenide." In Physiologia: Topics in Presocratic Philosophy and its Reception in Antiquity, edited by Vassallo, Christian, 199-226. Trier: AKAN-Einzelschriften - Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.

56. ———. 2018. "Parmenide e l'origine della nozione di nulla." Giornale Critico della Filosopfia Italiana no. 97:247-274.

57. ———. 2019. "Gabriele Giannantoni interprete di Parmenide." In μέγιστον ἀγαθόν. La storiografia filosofica di Gabriele Giannantoni. Atti della giornata di studio (Roma, 30 novembre 2018), edited by Brancacci, Aldo, 31-47. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia.

58. Fränkel, Hermann Ferdinand. 1997. Poesia e filosofia della Grecia arcaica: epica, lirica e prosa greca da Omero alla metà del V secolo. Bologna: Il Mulino.

Traduzione di Carlo Gentili.

59. Fratticci, Walter. 2008. Il bivio di Parmenide ovvero la gratuità delle Verità. Siena: Cantagalli.

60. ———. 2015. "Parmenide: suoni, immagini, esperienza. A proposito di una nuova lettura." Peitho. Examina Antiqua no. 6:295-330.

61. ———. 2020. "Apeonta, pareonta. Sul frammento B4 DK." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 27:271-296.

Riassunto: "L’orizzonte interpretativo entro cui questo lavoro si inserisce è quello della discussione del rapporto tra la dottrina dell’essere e quella dell’opinione nel poema di Parmenide. Rifiutando la prospettiva di una qualche separazione o opposizione tra le due parti in cui esso tradizionalmente viene diviso, sostengo la tesi dell’unità teorica del Poema.

Dopo aver mostrato come una tale unità sia richiesta dall’impianto generale del pensiero di Parmenide, individuo nel frammento 4 il luogo in cui Parmenide articola il passaggio tra le due dottrine. Il Poema offre pertanto una positiva visione della realtà, dove l’ontologia pone le premesse di un’originale spiegazione dei fenomeni naturali."

62. Fronterotta, Francesco. 1994. "Essere, tempo e pensiero: Parmenide e l’ «origine dell’ontologia»." Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia no. 24:835-871.

63. ———. 2000. "La dottrina eleatica dell’ ‘unità del tutto’: Parmenide, il ‘Parmenide’ platonico e Aristotele." Annali dell'Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici no. 17:31-53.

64. ———. 2011. "Citazione o frammento? Sulla tradizione indiretta dei filosofi preplatonici: Il caso di Parmenide." In Le opere dei filosofi e degli scienziati: filosofia e scienza tra testo, libro e biblioteche: atti del convegno, Lecce, 7-8 febbraio 2007, edited by Meschini, Franco A., 61-76. Firenze: Olschki.

65. ———. 2011. "ὑπόψεσιω e διαλέγεσψαι: metodo ipotetico e metodo dialettico in Platone " In Argument from Hypothesis in Ancient Philosophy, edited by Longo, Angela and Del Forno, Davide, 43-74. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

66. ———. 2016. "Il verbo « noein » nel fr. 3 DK di Parmenide." Methodos: Savoirs et Textes.

English abstract: "In this paper I examine the traditional reading of Parmenides’ fr. B3 (τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι), which implies a strong “identity” between thinking and being, suggesting the hypothesis of a “correspondence” of what is thinkable and what is. These considerations lead me to defend a translation of fr. B3, which seems to me the less anachronistic: “For there is the same thing for being thought and for being”. I discuss in what follows the meaning of the verb νοεῖν and of the connected terms in Parmenides’ Poem (especially in fr. B4). I indicate three interpretative options of νοεῖν: 1. As a form of purely intellectual knowledge of true being (that is, the intelligible); 2. As a form of propositional or “veritative” knowledge concerning the truth or the falsity of a proposition; 3. As a capacity of “catching a situation”, of “recognising” something or someone, suggesting a meaning of being that implies the simple observation of the being of things and of the sensible world."

67. ———. 2020. "Per una critica della conoscenza sensibile: « vista » e « udito » fra Eraclito e Parmenide." Antiquorum Philosophia no. 14:11-21.

68. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2002. Scritti su Parmenide. Napoli: Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici.

Indice: Hans Georg Gadamer e l'Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici di Antonio Gargano V-XII; Parmenide nell'interpretazione di Kurt Riezler [Gnomon, 2, 1936, pp. 77-86, ristampato in Gesammelte Werke (GW) vol. 6, Mohr Tubingen 1985, pp. 30-38] 3;

Ritrattazioni [Varia Variorum. Festsgabe für K. Reinhardt, Böhlau-Verlag, Münster, 1952, pp. 58-68, ristampato in GW vol. 6, pp. 38-49] 19; Ancora sull'interpretazione di Riezler [Nachwort alla ristampa di K. Rielzler Parmenides, Frankfurt 1970, pp. 92-102, ripreso in GW vol. 6, pp. 49-57] 39; Parmenide, ovvero l'aldiqua dell'essere [La Parola del Passato, 43, 1988, pp.143-176, ristampato in GW, vol. 7, Mohr Tübingen 199, pp. 3-31] 53; Testo del poema dottrinale (H. Diels - W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker) 101-106.

69. ———. 2018. Parmenide. Napoli: La Scuola di Pitagora.

70. Galgano, Nicola Stefano. 2012. "Parmenide inventore del non essere." Bollettino della Società Filosofica Italia no. 206:3-12.

71. ———. 2017. I precetti della dea. Non essere e contraddizione in Parmenide di Elea. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia.

72. ———. 2019. "Parmenide B 2.3: dall’esperienza immediata del non essere alla doppia negazione." In ὁδοὶ νοῆσαι. Ways to Think. Essays in Honour of Néstor-Luis Cordero, edited by Pulpito, Massimo and Spangenberg, Pilar, 101-112. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia.

Riassunto: "Uno dei chiché più comuni contro la logica usata nel poema parmenideo è l’accusa della presenza di contraddizione fra le affermazioni della dea sull’impossibilità di conoscere e esprimere il non essere (DK B 2.5-8) e l’uso in particolare del non essere, ma più in generale della negazione lungo tutti i frammenti. Come esempio di questa contraddizione, uno dei passaggi più citati è B 2.3, dove Parmenide usa la doppia negazione. Si presume che Parmenide si contraddica quando dice che ‘è’ (qualunque cosa sia questo ‘è’) non è non essere. La contraddizione appare se si prendono entrambe le negazioni in senso predicativo e sparisce se si tiene la seconda in senso esistenziale. Tuttavia, considerare il non essere come esistenziale costituisice esattamente la proibizione della dea, restituendo l’argomento alla contraddizione. L’articolo vuole mostrare che non c’è contraddizione nell'argomento di Parmenide ed esamina in tre parti l’uso che egli fa del non essere e della negazione. La prima parte presenta il fr. 2 e il significato problematico del suo uso delle negazioni. La seconda parte studia il non essere “esistenziale” come una possibile esperienza di ‘ciò che non è’, evidenziando che tale esperienza accade nelle nostre comuni funzioni psicologiche di percezione, e lo fa usando soltanto nozioni elementari del senso comune, come devono essere state quelle di Parmenide. Infine, la terza parte distingue la negazione predicativa da quella esistenziale in B 2.3 concludendo che non ci può essere nessun inganno: la prima negazione è predicativa e la seconda è esistenziale, dunque non c’è contraddizione nell’uso delle negazioni nel fr. 2."

73. Germani, Gloria. 1988. "Aletheie in Parmenide." La Parola del passato no. 43:177-206.

74. Giannantoni, Gabriele. 1988. "Le due 'vie' di Parmenide." La Parola del passato no. 43:207-221.

75. Gigante, Marcello. 1967. "Parmenide e i medici nelle nuove iscrizioni di Velia." Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica no. 95:487-490.

76. Gras, Michel. 2021. "Tornare ad Elea." La Parola del passato no. 76:73-90.

77. Greco, Giovanna. 2012. "Parmenide e Zenone: imagines illustrium nella Velia romana." In Λόγον διδόναι. La filosofia come esercizio del render ragione. Studi in onore di Giovanni Casertano, edited by Palumbo, Lidia, 159-185. Loffredo: Napoli.

78. Guazzoni Foà, Virginia. 1958. "Le recenti interpretazioni italiane e straniere dell' "essere eleatico"." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 50:326-340.

79. ———. 1961. Attualità dell'ontologia eleatica. Torino: Società Editrice Internazionale.

Indice: Premessa V-VII; Gli Eleati 1; Senofane 3; Parmenide 35; Zenone 77; Melisso 127; Conclusione 143; Grammatica e filosofia nell'interpretazione di einai, on, ousia 153; Einai 155; On (negli Eleati) 185; Excursus: il tò on presso Platone ed Aristotele 204; Ousia 221; Conclusione 236; Bibliografia degli Eleati 247; Bibliografia di einai, on, ousia 251-256.

"Nel presentare questo volume ci sembra utile avvertire il lettore che siamo stati indotti ad unire i nostri due studi (I. Gli Eleati; II. Rapporti tra grammatica e filosofia nell'interpretazione del greco einai, on, ousia) sotto l'unico titolo: Attualità dell'ontologia eleatica per la evidente connessione che é possibile rilevare tra lo studio dei frammenti dei filosofi che appartengono alla scuola di Elea e lo studio dell'essere, nonché tra lo stesso concetto dell'essere che fu da quei pensatori elaborato per la prima volta nella storia della filosofia greca e la problematica attuale su di esso, viva oggi come ieri. Che l'attualità del problema dell'essere sia sentita dagli studiosi contemporanei è prova l'abbondante messe di studi a sfondo idealistico, esistenzialistico, cristiano che sono stati recentemente pubblicati. È anzi particolare merito dello Heidegger l'aver posto e cercato di svolgere il problema dell'essere «come costitutivo essenziale della verità riportandolo al suo significato originario »: (1) è solo mediante lo studio dei Presocratici che, secondo lo Heidegger (2) si può giungere alla conoscenza dell'essere, della verità, del divino. Affermazione questa di grande importanza perché, come risulterà dal nostro studio -- che si discosta, per altro, dalle conclusioni heideggeriane -- é partendo dalla concezione eleatica (e particolarmente parmenidea) che si può giungere alla determinazione dell'essere concepito nel senso cristiano. Con quest'affermazione, com'è ovvio, intendiamo definire sin d'ora, l'atteggiamento del nostro pensiero che é diverso dalla tesi di coloro che considerano l'essere «come elemento logico e verbale dell'affermazione» e da quella esistenzialistica. Mentre la prima poggia sul significato copulativo dell'ἐστι parmenideo e sostiene la dimostrazione della genesi dell'ontologismo parmenideo dal suo logicismo, la seconda tesi, dopo aver escluso l'interpretazione idealistica del significato dell'è del giudizio da ascrivere all'ἐστι parmenideo, procede all'identificazione dell'essere con l'apparire.

Un esame attento dei frammenti di Parmenide ci porterà a sostenere un valore esistenziale ontologico dell’έστι che si legge in essi. A sostegno della nostra interpretazione varranno alcuni rilievi filosofici, glottologici, grammaticali. Basandoci sull’accordo di tutti i filologi nell’ammettere la lezione ἐστι (e non già έστι) nel testo parmenideo, nonché sul rilievo grammaticale che l’uso di ἐστιστι parossitono nella lingua greca racchiude in sé un valore esistenziale, sosterremo la presenza di questo valore in Parmenide: quindi il punto di partenza della disquisizione parmenidea è per noi ontologico e non logico e siamo di fronte ad un’ontologicità dell’essere e non ad un’ontologizzazione dell’essere. Dal rilievo glottologico, poi, che è insostenibile l’accostamento semantico della radice bhu di φύω alla radice bha di (ραίνω, che invece vorrebbe lo Heidegger, giungeremo a negare l’identificazione dell’essere con il fenomeno per eccellenza.

Com’è ovvio, il valore esistenziale dell'ἐστι parmenideo non può avere ancora in sé nè il senso creazionistico nè quello idealistico né quello fenomenistico, ma tuttavia lascia aperta la via al primo. Così dicendo si salva la creazione e salvare la creazione vuol dire salvare il fondamento della metafisica cristiana « imperniata non più e non soltanto attorno all’οὐσία, ma attorno all’atto di essere ».(3) Trovare il fondamento della creazione vuol dire trovare la giustificazione di quanto di più vitale è nel Cristianesimo. Questa interpretazione, poi, conserva la consistenza all’essere di fronte alle altre due tesi che tendono a svuotarlo del suo essenziale significato." (pp. V-VI)

(1) Fabro, C. Partecipation et causalité, Louvain, 1961, pag. 153.

(2) Heidegger, M. "Der Spruch des Anaximander", in Holzwege, Frankfurt a. M., 1950. pag. 296.

(3) Fabro, C. La nozione metafisica di partecipazione secondo S. Tommaso, Torino, SEI, 1949, p. 349.

80. Heidegger, Martin. 1999. Parmenide. Milano: Adelphi.

Traduzione di Franco Volpi.

81. ———. 2022. L'inizio della filosofia occidentale. Interpretazione di Anassimandro e Parmenide. Milano: Adelphi.

A cura di Peter Trawny. Edizione italiana a cura di Giovanni Gurisatti.

"Tenuto nel 1932 e dedicato all’interpretazione di Anassimandro e Parmenide – insieme a Eraclito i «pensatori iniziali» della filosofia occidentale –, questo corso universitario rappresenta una vera e propria cesura nel percorso di Heidegger dopo Essere e tempo, e si inserisce nella celebre «svolta» inaugurata dal saggio del 1930 sull’Essenza della verità. Compito della filosofia è ormai per Heidegger, impegnato nella ricerca di tale essenza, quello di rievocare la forza delle parole più elementari del pensiero delle origini – phýsis, alétheia, noûs, lógos – mediante una comprensione prefilosofica, cioè preplatonica e prearistotelica, del fenomeno della verità. Si tratta cioè di compiere quel passo indietro che permette di ripensare in modo ancora più iniziale l’inizio del pensiero occidentale, prima della soglia che dà accesso alla storia della metafisica: non già per operare una ricostruzione filologica e storiografica, ma nella prospettiva che tale «inizio più iniziale» possa essere «ripetuto» e, soprattutto, trasformato in un nuovo inizio, promosso da un’umanità futura in modo ancora più originario. Sicché, conclude Heidegger, «l’inizio non sta più dietro di noi, alle nostre spalle, bensì sta davanti a noi in quanto compito essenziale della nostra più propria essenza».

82. Imbraguglia, Giorgio. 1974. L'ordinamento assiomatico nei frammenti parmenidei : per uno studio sulla genesi dell'assiomatica astratta nel processo di formazione delle teorie scientifiche. Milano: Marzorati.

83. ———. 1979. Teoria e mito in Parmenide. Genova: Studio editoriale di cultura.

84. ———. 1985. "Via della Demone o via del Nume?" Filosofia oggi no. 8:233-284.

85. Isnardi Parente, Margherita. 1988. "Il Parmenide di Plutarco." La Parola del passato no. 43:225-236.

86. Lapini, Walter. 2003. ""Ma non uguale all'altro" (Parmen. B8.58-59)." In Studi di filologia filosofica greca, 73-89. Firenze: Olschki.

87. Leszl, Walter. 1988. "Un approccio 'epistemologico' all'ontologia parmenidea." La Parola del passato no. 43:281-311.

"Maintains that an epistemological approach to Parmenides' metaphysics can yield more meaningful results than a strictly semantical interpretation of the language of his poem. Explores various themes related to Parmenides' ontology: the relationship between language, thought, and reality; the eternity of Being; and the epistemological conditions which render knowledge true and genuine." [N.]

88. Licciardi, Ivan Adriano. 2016. Parmenide tràdito, Parmenide tradìto: nel Commentario di Simplicio alla Fisica di Aristotele. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

89. ———. 2016. "Modi di guardare: su alcuni verba videndi omerici in Parmenide ed Empedocle." In Modi di guardare: su alcuni verba videndi omerici in Parmenide ed Empedocle, edited by Cardullo, R. Loredana and Giardina, Giovanna, 15-40. Sankt August: Academia Verlag.

90. ———. 2017. Critica dell’apparente e critica apparente. Simplicio interprete di Parmenide nel Commentario al de Caelo di Aristotele. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlg.

Saggio introduttivo, raccolta dei testi in greco, traduzione e commentario.

91. Marino, Silvio. 2012. "Un'immagine del corpo tra epos e scienza. Il frammento B16 di Parmenide." In Elementi eleatici, edited by Pozzoni, Ivan, 61-77. Villasanta: Limina Mentis.

92. Marsoner, Agostino. 1978. "La struttura del Proemio di Parmenide." Annali dell'Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici no. 5:127-181.

"Il fr. 1 di Parmenide, trascurato da Zeller, ma rimesso successivamente in luce da ulteriori studi, appare meritevole di attenzione particolare in quanto sembra racchiudere in forma metaforica l'enunciazione dei principi dottrinari del sistema parmenideo. La corretta esegesi del frammento deve tuttavia scaturire da un esame preliminare riguardante la struttura secondo la quale viene allegoricamente espressa la concezione metafisica esposta nel prosieguo del poema. Una prima analisi rivela una composizione 'ad anello' che abbraccia quasi l'intero proemio." (p. 127)

(...)

"A base della struttura del proemio è dunque posta una concezione triadica, che scaturisce dalla dialettica della antitesi fondamentale tra essere e non essere. Da un'indistinta molteplicità iniziale, simboleggiata nel primo anello dal numero imprecisato delle cavalle, si passa, nel secondo anello, ad un primo riconoscimento della natura dell'essere in quanto eterna extratemporalità. Il terzo anello rappresenta la sistematica classificazione delle antitesi, metodo che conduce ad una precisa definizione del non essere, tema del quarto anello. Nel quinto anello si riconosce la suprema antitesi metafisica essere-non essere, mediante la quale si giunge, nel centro, all'affermazione definitiva della realtà assoluta dell'Essere, del quale sono predicabili soltanto talune determinazioni." (p. 179 note omesse)

93. Martinelli, Flaminia. 1987. "Fra Omero e Pindaro: Parmenide poeta." In Forme del sapere nei presocratici, edited by Capizzi, Antonio and Casertano, Giovanni, 169-186. Roma: Edizioni dell'Ateneo.

94. Michestaedter, Carlo. 2003. Parmenide ed Eraclito; Empedocle: appunti di filosofia Milano: SE.

A cura di Alfonso Cariolato ed Enrico Fongaro-

95. Mignosi, Rosa. 1977. Parmenide e la logica della disgiunzione. Palermo: Flaccovio.

96. Montagnino, Marco. 2018. "L’ἀλήθεια dell’‘essere’ nel cielo del proemio parmenideo (28, B1 D.-K.)." Sileno no. 44:149-193.

Abstract: "The dóxa is a major aspect of Parmenides’ “scientific” commitment, as evidenced by studies of its discoveries in various fields of knowledge. Among them in astronomy.

However, these studies have ended up identifying a scientific plan separate from the mythical religious and philosophical one of the first part. This survey explores the possibility of reconsidering the presence in the Parmenides’ dóxa of ontology and theology. It does so by proposing the hypothesis that the proem contains among the multiple semantic-linguistic layers the mythopoeic presentation of the astronomical theorem of the identity of Eos and Hesperus, with the intent of showing, from the very beginning and in the most authoritative language for his audience , the alḗtheia of «being» on the divine stage of the celestial sphere. In our reading, therefore, the deities that enter the scene give life to a firmament that interconnects every

cosmic dimension with each other and leads the one who knows (the εἰδότα φῶτα; B1, 3) – he knows that πᾶν πλέον ἐστὶν ὁμοῦ φάεος καὶ νυκτὸς because ἐπεὶ οὐδετέρωι μέτα μηδέν (B9, 3-4) – on the other side of the sky, in the presence of the theá that will reveal to him the meaning of everything."

97. Montevechi, Federica. 2021. "L’Uomo divino: azione e conoscenza in Eraclito, Parmenide e Zenone." In Penser les dieux avec les présocratiques, edited by Saetta Cottone, Rossella 113-127. Paris: Rue d'Ulm.

98. Ottaviano, Carmelo. 1965. "La prima testimonianza epigrafica su Parmenide filosofo e medico?" Sophia no. 33:311-313.

99. Passa, Enzo. 2009. Parmenide: tradizione del testo e questioni di lingua. Roma: Edzioni Quasar.

Sommario: Premessa 11; Introduzione: Parmenide tra Elea e Atene

Parte I: La trasmissione del poema nell'antichità.

Capitolo I: le fonti e la loro attendibilità 21; Capitolo 2: Problemi di costituzione del testo 45;

Parte II: Tradizione epica e dialetto ionico.

Capitolo 1: La dizione dei frammenti 73; Capitolo 2: Forme notevoli 99;

Parte III: Rapporti con altre tradizioni letterarie.

Capitolo 1: Atticismi della tradizione 119; Capitolo 2: Influsso della lirica corale 129;

Conclusioni 143; Abbreviazioni 151; Bibliografia 153; Indice delle prole greche 161; Indice dei passi discussi 163-167.

"Ho iniziato le mie ricerche sulla lingua di Parmenide percorrendo la via fino a oggi più battuta negli studi, quella - fondamentale - del rapporto tra la dizione parmenidea e i suoi modelli epici. Quindi mi sono rivolto à studiare il delicato problema dei rapporti tra i dialetti e le tradizioni letterarie in un poeta attivo in un'area di intensi contatti culturali e linguistici come il mondo coloniale d'Occidente. A un certo punto, tuttavia, si è delineata ai miei occhi con contorni sempre più nitidi una questione che non ho tardato a riconoscere della massima importanza: mentre studiavo i problemi linguistici posti dai frammenti di Parmenide, mi sono infatti accorto che essi non possono essere affrontati con profitto senza che la loro trattazione venga preceduta da un'attenta disamina delle fonti che ci hanno trasmesso i vari testi. In altre parole, ho iniziato a riscontrare convergenze e divergenze significative tra fonti diverse o tra diversi gruppi di fonti; e mi sono convinto che ordinare quelle fonti in base a criteri linguistici avrebbe potuto condurre a un progresso rilevante per la nostra conoscenza della storia del testo di Parmenide.

Il mio libro riflette questo percorso di studio. La prima parte è infatti dedicata alla storia del testo di Parmenide nell'antichità, alla discussione sull'attendibilità delle fonti e ad alcuni tra i più tormentati problemi di costituzione del testo. La seconda parte si occupa del rapporto tra il dialetto ionico, la dizione parmenidea e quella dell'epica tradizionale. La terza parte, infine, studia l'influsso sul testo di Parmenide di tradizioni poetiche altre rispetto alla tradizione ionico-epica, mettendo in luce da un lato il carattere secondario di un alto numero di elementi linguistici riconducibili all'attico, dall'altro le probabili influenze esercitate su Parmenide dalla lingua della lirica." (pp. 11-12)

100. Pieri, Alberto. 1977. "Parmenide e la lingua della tradizione epica greca." Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica no. 49:68-103.

101. Pizzo, Alessandro. 2013. "Ontologia in Parmenide: come e cosa si pensa quando si dice «è»." Dialeghestai:1-22.

102. Popper, Karl Raimund. 1998. Il mondo di Parmenide. Alla scoperta della filosofia presocratica. Casale Monferrato: Piemme.

103. Porfirio. 1993. Commentario al "Parmenide" di Platone. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

Saggio introduttivo, testo con apparati critici e note di commento a cura di Pierre Hadot; presentazione di Giovanni Reale; traduzione e bibliografia di Giussepe Girgenti.

104. Pozzoni, Ivan, ed. 2012. Elementi eleatici. Monza: Limina Mentis.

Sommario: Maria Michela Sassi: Prefazione 5; Walter Fratticci: L'esperienza fondamentale di Parmenide 9; Alessia Ferrari: Echi orfici nel proemio del poema di Parmenide 41; Silvio Marino: Un'immagine del corpo tra epos e scienza. Il frammento B 16 di Parmenide 61; Dario Zucchello: Parmenide e la περὶ φύσεως ἱστορία » 79; Massimo Pulpito: La freccia sospesa. Un argomento zenoniano contro il movimento (ma non contro il tempo) 133; Sofia Ranzato: Una nuova immagine dell'uomo ephemeros (28 B 16 DK) 173; Roberto Baldini: Lo stesso è infatti "pensare" ed "essere" 201; Giovanni Schiavo Campo: Il fato della fisica di Pamenide 219; Alessandro Medri: agli albori della metafisica: Parmenide e la noeticità dell'essere 245; Ivan Pozzoni: L'ontologia civica eleatica come aristocrazia moderata 265; (Giacomo Borbone: Essere, nulla e divenire: il ritorno a Parmenide di Emanuele Severino 299; Antonio Melillo: La supremazia della parola poetica: una lettura contemporanea di Pamenide 331; Alessandro Pizzo: La svolta ontologica in Parmenide: come e cosa si pensa quando si dice "è" 357; Camilla Ilaria Colombo; La critica contemporanea si interroga su Parmenide 389-419.

105. Privitera, Giuseppe Aurelio. 2011. "La dea di Parmenide: Θεία." Atti della Accademia nazionale dei Lincei. Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche. Rendiconti. Serie 9 no. 22:5-10.

106. ———. 2011. "La porta della luce in Parmenide e il viaggio del sole in Mimnermo." Atti della Accademia nazionale dei Lincei. Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche. Rendiconti. Serie 9 no. 29:447-463.

107. Pulpito, Massimo. 2003. "Atemporalità, perpetuità, totalità: un trivio interpretativo nel poema di Parmenide." Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università di Siena no. 24:1-30.

108. ———. 2005. Parmenide e la negazione del tempo: interpretazioni e problemi. Milano: LED Edizioni.

109. ———. 2010. "Monismo predicazionale. Sui limiti di un'interpretazione epistemologica dell'eleatismo." Méthexis.International Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 23:5-33.

Abstract: "Today, the field of Parmenidean studies is still divided over the fundamental question of the correct exegesis of the verb 'to be' in the poem On Nature. The two principal interpretative lines supported by

scholars are, on the one hand, the traditional view that understands the verb 'to be' in its existential sense and, on the other, the one that arose in the 20th century that focuses on its predicative sense. This paper examines the latest and most ambitious attempt to interpret the thought of Parmenides and the profound influence that he had on pluralist philosophers, starting from a purely predicative approach. It is an epistemological interpretation of the Eleaticism proposed by Patricia Curd, centred on the notion of 'predicational monism', which has the unquestionable merit to place Parmenides within the pre-Socratic naturalistic debate but that, after a careful analysis, fails to convince. In fact, this interpretation, which certainly appears to be one of the most articulate and intelligent proposais of recent years, raises a series of exegetical and argumentative problems that do not seem possible to resolve without exiting the predicative horizon."

110. ———. 2015. "Il crocevia ontologico e i due volti della Doxa. Un’apologia della terza via in Parmenide." Peitho. Examina Antiqua no. 6:265-293.

111. ———. 2020. "Transizioni prospettiche nel poema didascalico di Parmenide." P.O.I. Rivista di indagine filosofica e di nuove pratiche della conoscenza no. 6/7:61-82.

112. Radice, Roberto. 2015. Parmenide. Milano: Corriere della Sera.

113. Ranzato, Sofia. 2013. "Luce e Notte nel Proemio di Parmenide." In Origini e svolgimento del pensiero greco: studi per Jean-Pierre Vernant, edited by Di Donato, Riccardo, 11-28. Pisa: ETS.

114. ———. 2015. Il kouros e la verità. Polivalenza delle immagini nel poema di Parmenide. Pisa: Edizioni ETS.

Indice: Ringraziamenti 11; Introduzione 15; Abbreviazioni 23; Capitolo 1: Luce e Notte nel proemio di Parmenide 25; Capitolo 2: Parmenide tra la dea e gli uomini 57; Capitolo 3: Nel cuore di ben rotonda verità 125; Capitolo 4: La metamorfosi della cosmogonia 181; Bibliografia 229; Indice dei nomi antichi 263; Indice dei passi citati 269; Indice dei nomi moderni 287-291.

"Su queste basi, il poema viene qui interpretato secondo l’ordine in cui le immagini sembrano ricorrere in un percorso che parte dal proemio, affronta il discorso su verità (l'alêtheia), e termina con l’analisi delle opinioni dei mortali (la doxa).

Il proemio, come è noto, è un racconto mitico che ha per protagonista l’autore del poema. Non sorprende, pertanto, che qui più che altrove l'Eleate faccia uso delle immagini, sfruttando al massimo la loro potenzialità evocativa. Per tale motivo a questa parte dell’opera sono dedicati ben due capitoli di questo studio. Il primo si concentra sul percorso che il giovane compie fino a giungere all’incontro con la dea che gli impartisce l’insegnamento riferito nel poema.

(...)

Il secondo capitolo si concentra, invece, sulla scena dell’incontro tra il giovane e la dea e tenta di approfondire le modalità del loro relazionarsi, a partire dalla definizione dell’identità del primo sulla base del racconto in prima persona e della presentazione che ne fa la divinità nel momento in cui lo accoglie nella sua dimora. In tal senso sarà importante considerare anche il luogo dell’incontro e il suo richiamo al paesaggio mitico dell’oltretomba.

(...)

Nella seconda parte del discorso veritiero viene poi presentata l’unica realtà ammissibile per chi sceglie di seguire la via “come è”: to eon. Esso è subito presentato attraverso una serie di tratti distintivi (semata) che permettono di assimilarlo alla nuova immagine del divino che si andava diffondendo all’epoca, ravvisabile soprattutto nell’opera di Senofane.

(...)

La parte conclusiva del poema dell’Eleate è dedicata, invece, al miglior quadro del cosmo realizzabile da chi resta nella prospettiva comunemente condivisa dagli uomini. In tale sezione, l’uso di un discorso in esametri che racconta l’origine del cosmo attiva un automatico confronto con le teogonie tradizionali, da cui, peraltro, la cosmogonia qui presentata si distanzia, sia per l’adozione di alcuni termini e concetti elaborati in seno alle ricerche fisiche e cosmologiche più recenti, sia per alcuni suoi tratti specifici. Nella prima parte dell’ultimo capitolo si tenterà dunque di capire il senso della scelta di Luce e Notte come principi fondanti questo quadro cosmico, sulla base del confronto con la funzione che le stesse entità ricoprono nelle teogonie tradizionali e nei testi dei naturalisti, in particolare nella riflessione ili Eraclito sull’unità degli opposti. Affrontando il problema in questa prospettiva potremo concludere che la cosmologia proposta nella sezione liliale dell’opera dell’Eleate, per quanto verisimile, non corrisponderà mai, in verità, proprio perché fondata su due principi che non possono in alcun modo essere ricondotti all’eon parmenideo, fondando invece le basi di una VI ione del reale attraversata da un continuo divenire.

In questo quadro, particolare attenzione sarà rivolta all’analisi del frammento 16, in cui è descritto il processo con cui l’uomo conosce in base alla corrispondenza tra Luce e Notte all’interno e al di fuori del soggetto.

(...)

Una lettura dell’opera di Parmenide concentrata sull’efficacia comunicativa delle immagini che vi ricorrono permetterà dunque di proporre un’interpretazione globale del poema dell’Eleate e della relazione tra le tre parti di cui si compone (proemio, alëtheia e doxa); e, al tempo stesso, contribuirà a stabilire in che modo il discorso poetico dell’autore si inserisce all’interno del contesto culturale in cui è stato composto." (pp. 18-21)

115. Riccardo, Amalia. 2004. "Tra ἔλεγχος e ἀπόδειξις: strategie di analisi di un testo parmenideo (DK 28 B7. 1-2) nel « Sofista » di Platone." In L'ultima parola: l'analisi dei testi, Teorie e pratiche nell'antichità greca e latina: atti del terzo Colloquio italo-francese: Napoli 13-15 marzo 2003, edited by Abbamonte, Giancarlo, Conti Bizzarro, Ferruccio and Spina, Luigi, 289-301. Napoli: Arte tipografica.

116. Ricci, Vittorio. 2020. "Annotazioni su B1,1-3 ( B1,4a) di Parmenide." Journal of Ancient Philosophy no. 14:1-52.

Abstract: "The extraordinary overall textual situation of Parmenides’ B1,1-3, due to complex, variegate and polymorphous causes, entailed and still entails diverse sorts of problematic issues so to constitute a true labyrinth of philological, hermeneutical and theoretical instances interwoven each other in almost inextricable way. In this analysis, a first substantial knot of philological type resulted necessary to a preliminary discrimination for making sure the textual reconstruction in order to argue then its most literarily clear and specifiable meaning. In this way it was also possible to make sure its semantic and theoretical relevancies. This research leaded to outline and, hopefully, to demonstrate no textual corruption and following misunderstanding happened before sec. XIII, namely corresponding to the lecture present in the first available manuscript, the so-called cod. N, universally excluded and entirely misevaluated, even discarded; instead it is not only the principle, but the unique reliable codex. The detailed analyse including the autoptic exam is the result of enlightening the absolute goodness of this version and the reasons both philological and hermeneutical comparations, which allow to achieve its complete textual rehabilitation and so to grasp its real conceptual content."

"Si può approntare quindi la seguente traduzione di B1,1-4a:

Cavalle, e esse, portando me [Quando cavalle, e esse, portarono me], fin dove l’animo raggiungerebbe, come quinto (con le quattro [presenti]), dopo che vennero a trasportami a (una) via magniloquente

di demone (femminile), la quale (sc. via) in tutto ‘alienata’ (disattesa; occlusa) [dai mortali] porta uomo che sa, vi ero portato (destinato [ad arrivare])…" (.p. 47)

117. Robbiano, Chiara. 2009. "Il poema di Parmenide come guida lungo la via verso la verità. La fase del resistere alla tentazione." In Gli antichi e noi: scritti in onore di Antonio Mario Battegazzore edited by Lapini, Walter [et al.], 3-11. Genova: Brigati.

118. ———. 2010. "L'immutabilità come valore morale: da Parmenide (B8, 26-33) a Platone (Rep. 380d1-383a5)." In Il quinto secolo: studi di filosofia antica in onore di Livio Rossetti, edited by Giombini, Stefania and Marcacci, Flavia, 483-492. Passignano sul Trasimeno: Aguaplano.

119. Rossetti, Livio. 2012. "Parmenide filosofo?" In Λόγον διδόναι. La filosofia come esercizio del render ragione. Studi in onore di Giovanni Casertano, edited by Palumbo, Lidia, 127-136. Loffredo: Napoli.

120. ———. 2015. "La polumathia di Parmenide." Chôra no. 13:193-216.

121. ———. 2017. Un altro Parmenide. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia.

Vol. 1: Il sapere pery physeos – Parmenide e l'irrazionale; Vol. 2: Luna, antipodi, sessualità, logica.

122. ———. 2017. "La filosofia virtuale di Parmenide, Zenone e Melisso uno sguardo alle prossime lezioni eleatiche." Archai no. 21:297-333.

Abstract: "Queste note hanno lo scopo di dare un’idea delle Lezioni Eleatiche dedicate alla filosofia virtuale dei cosiddetti Eleati. Tali lezioni sono in programma per i giorni 28-30 settembre 2017 durante ELEATICA, nei locali della Fondazione Alario ad Ascea Marina, SA. Queste pagine, e così pure i dettagli dell’evento, sono (o saranno) disponibili in italiano e in inglese in www.eleatica.it e forse anche altrove.

Perché ‘filosofia virtuale’? Perché con ogni verosimiglianza né Parmenide né Zenone o Melisso ebbero la più vaga idea di ciò che in epoche successive cominciò ad essere chiamato ‘filosofia’, e perciò non ebbero nemmeno la possibilità di delineare una

loro filosofia. Così essi possono essere stati, al massimo, dei filosofi inconsapevoli e involontari, dunque meramente virtuali.

Inoltre c’è abbondanza di indizi per pensare che, una volta stabilite le fondamenta della sua dottrina dell’essere, Parmenide omise di sviluppare una compiuta teoria basata su di esse, mentre fu capace di offrire una serie di dottrine su cielo, terra e organismi viventi. Ora, se così stanno le cose, in cosa dovrebbe consistere la sua filosofia virtuale? Nemmeno Zenone pervenne a delineare una sua filosofia virtuale, mentre Melisso sì."

123. ———. 2019. "Il Parmenide « phusikos » e il meccanismo di Antikitera: risposta alle osservazioni di N.-L. Cordero (Archai 25, 2019)." Archai no. 27:2-7.

"Tra il Decano del Collegio dei Cittadini Onorari di Elea (cioè Néstor) e me è in corso una disputa a distanza che ormai ha diversi anni alle spalle. È iniziata, infatti, con le sue Lezioni Eleatiche del 2006, che convenimmo di intitolare «Parmenide scienziato?». All’epoca Néstor era già pronto a dire esattamente ciò che ha appena ripetuto nel titolo del suo recente intervento su Archai: “sì, scienziato, ma…” (mentre io avrei fatto a meno di quel “ma” già allora). All’epoca la sua preoccupazione era di trovare un posto, per il sapere naturalistico di Parmenide, nella cornice della trattazione sull’essere, dunque di collocarla all’interno di questa ‘scatola’ molto sui generis. Così egli otteneva di non toccare quella, che fin dai tempi di Melisso, Gorgia e Platone, è sempre stata considerata l’idea centrale e l’insegnamento cardine del parmenidismo: la riflessione sull’essere.(1)"

(1) Ricordo che, durante tutto il Novecento la dottrina dell’essere ha fatto di Parmenide un pensatore sempre più importante, ma anche sempre più inarrivabile. Con una conseguenza sicuramente inattesa: una dilatazione dell’offerta di libri e articoli sul suo poema così estrema da passare da una media di una monografia ogni dieci anni (agli inizi del Novecento) fino a una media di due monografie all’anno (nel nostro XXI secolo).

124. ———. 2019. "Mondo vero e mondo falso in Parmenide." In ὁδοὶ νοῆσαι. Ways to Think. Essays in Honour of Néstor-Luis Cordero, edited by Pulpito, Massimo and Spangenberg, Pilar, 143-153. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia.

Riassunto: "Una consolidata communis opinio vuole che, confidando nei versi finali del Proemio e nei versi finali di B8, a Parmenide si debba attribuire un’immagine del mondo cost semplificata da non far posto alia distinzione tra le chiacchiere degli ignoranti e il raffinato e, in molti casi, ampiamente comprovato sapere impartito dalla dea. Ma, se la verità viene associata alla sola trattazione sull’essere, e se ciò che ricade nella sfera della non-verità viene assimilato alle opinioni irriflesse della gente, queste opinioni e gli insegnamenti su cielo, terra e organismi viventi verrebbero poste sullo stesso piano delle opinioni dei mortali. Possibile che questo abbia insegnato Parmenide? Non sarebbe troppo strano? E stato Nestor Corderò, in anni a noi vicini, ad aver finalmente messo a fuoco il problema, e anche ad aver avanzato una sua ipotesi di soluzione. La sua idea è che non siamo affatto tenuti ad assimilare il sapere naturalistico impartito dalla dea alle opinioni irriflesse. A suo avviso, è logico che questo sapere faccia parte dell’area di ciò che è vero. A mio parere bisogna distinguere il problema dalla soluzione. Molte ragioni invitano a non mettere sullo stesso piano il sapere naturalistico e le opinioni irriflesse della gente. In questo, Corderò ha ragione. Tuttavia la soluzione da lui proposta è incompatibile con un passo di Simplicio, Cael. 558.3-11, che è presente in Coxon ma non in Diels-Kranz o Laks-Most. Su questa base viene avanzata una proposta alternativa."

125. ———. 2020. Parmenide e Zenone: « sophoi » ad Elea. Pistoia: Petite Plaisance.

Presentazione di Mariana Gardella Hueso.

126. Ruggiu, Luigi. 1988. "Unità e molteplicità in Parmenide." La Parola del passato no. 43:347-372.

127. ———. 1991. "Heidegger e Parmenide." In Heidegger e la metafisica, edited by Ruggerini, Mario, 49-81. Genova: Marietti.

128. ———. 2014. Parmenide. Nostos. L’essere e gli enti. Udine: Mimesis Edizioni.

Seconda edizione rivista e ampliata.

Prima edizione: Venezia, Marsilio, 1975.

129. ———. 2015. "Il filosofare di Parmenide." In Seconda navigazione. Omaggio a Giovanni Reale, edited by Radice, Roberto and Tiengo, Glauco, 587-615. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

130. Ruggiu, Luigi, and Natali, Carlo, eds. 2011. Ontologia scienza mito. Per una nuova lettura di Parmenide. Udine: Mimesis Edizioni.

Indice: Luigi Ruggiu: Introduzione 9;

SAGGI

Jean Bollack: Questions de lecture 43; Giovanni Cerri: La fisica di Parmenide 51; Nestor Louis Cordero: La "doxa des mortels" n'est pas la "physique" de Parménide 81; Fernando Santoro: Il tribunale di Parmenide 91; Enrico Berti: Verità e necessità in Parmenide, Fr. 2 D-K 105; Patricia Curd: Divnity and intelligibility in Parmenides 117; Arnold Hermann: What are the semata of "what is not" in Parmenides' poem? 135; Luigi Ruggiu: Il cuore della verità: ontologia e scienza in Parmenide 173;

INTERVENTI

Maddalena Nonelli: Parmenide e l'orgine dell'ontologia scientifica 213; Daniela De Cecco: Le porte del proemio parmenideo in una testimonianza di Numenio (fr.31 Des Places) 223; Aude Engel: Le proème de Parménide, du monde à l'étant, un voyage à trasvers la doxa 235; Stefano Maso: La dea accoglie e parla 247; Massimo Pulpito: Quanto dura τὸ ἐόν? Parmeide e la presupposizione del tempo 257; Livio Rossetti: Intorno alle metafore di Parmenide (e all'articolo di Fernando Santoro) 271; Davide Spanio: εἶναι μή ἐόντα. Il discorso intorno al non essere (Sofista, 239b4) 281;

ELENCO DEGLI AUTORI 297.

131. Russo, Lucio. 2005. "Parmenide e la scienza moderna." SemRom. Seminari Romani di cultura greca no. 8:131-134.

132. Sainati, Vittorio. 1965. "Tra Parmenide e Protagora (Le premesse storiche della logica greca)." Filosofia no. 16:49-110.

133. Sangiacomo, Andrea. 2007. La sfida di Parmenide: verso la rinascenza. Saonara: Il Prato.

Presentazione di Giuseppe Girgenti.

134. Santillana, Giorgio de. 1967. "Prologo a Parmenide." De Homine no. 22-23:3-50.

Ristampato in G. de Santillana, Prologo a Parmenide e altri saggi, Firenze: Sansoni, 1971 e in Fato antico e Fato Moderno, Milano. Adelphi, 1985.

135. Sassi, Maria Michela. 1988. "Parmenide al bivio. Per un'interpretazione del proemio." La Parola del passato no. 43:383-396.

136. Sasso, Gennaro. 1988. "L'esegesi parmenidea di Guido Calogero." La Cultura no. 26:189-285.

Ristampato in G. Sasso, Filosofia e idealismo. III. De Ruggiero, Calogero, Scaravelli, Bibliopolis, 1997, pp. 177-299.

137. Scalera McClintock, Giuliana. 2006. "Dalle personificazioni di Esiodo alla Thea di Parmenide. Considerazioni sul rapporto tra femminile e astratto." Aion. Annali dell'Istituto universitario Orientale di Napoli no. 28:25-48.

138. Serra, Mauro. 2005. "All'ombra di Parmenide: considerazioni in margine al De Melisso, Xenophane et Gorgia." In Da Elea a Samo. Filosofi e politici di fronte all'impero ateniese. Atti del convegno di studi: Santa Maria Capua Vetere, 4-5 giugno 2003, 49-58. Napoli: Arte Tipografica.

139. Severino, Emanuele. 1964. "Ritornare a Parmenide." Rivista di Filosofia Neoscolastica no. 56:137-175.

Ristampato in E. Severino, Essenza del nichilismo, Milano, Adelphi, 1972, pp. 19-61.

140. ———. 1965. "Ritornare a Parmenide. Poscritto." Rivista di Filosofia Neoscolastica no. 56:559-618.

Ristampato in E. Severino, Essenza del nichilismo, Milano, Adelphi, 1972, pp. 63-133.

141. Spinelli, Emidio. 1991. "Parmenide fr. 8,5-6: contra Simplicium?" Elenchos no. 12:303-312.

142. Tarca, Luigi Vero. 2013. "Opposizione e verità: l’enigmatica via di Parmenide." Peitho. Examina Antiqua no. 4:105-124.

Abstract: "In Parmenides’ B 8 37–41, we find a question that raises a difficult problem: how can Parmenides handle the opposition between “being and not” (i.e. being and not being) in the same way as the oppositions which characterize the mortals’ opinions? This question is especially relevant for answering the following theoretical question: how do we to treat the fundamental philosophical question of oppositions at large? To answer these question we need to reinterpret some major points of Parmenides’ thought: the second part of his poem, but also the identification of πέλειν and εἶναι in B 6 8, as well as other passages of the poem. But, above all, the question makes us introduce some distinctions within the oncept of negation and, consequently, between difference and negation. This allows us to distinguish the affirmation of the truth of being from the negation of the negation of being (i.e. the negation of nonbeing). This distinction has a major philosophical relevance, as can be seen by referring it to such thinkers as Plato, Hegel and Heidegger."

143. Timpanaro Cardini, Maria. 1967. "Saggio sugli Eleati." Studi Classici e Orientali no. 16:149-255.

144. Trabattoni, Franco. 1998. "Parmenide, fr. 1, 31-32." Hyperboreus no. 4:5-20.

145. Traglia, Antonio. 1955. "Per la storia dei termini onoma e rhema e sul valore di onoma, logos ed epos in Eraclito e in Parmenide." In Contributi dell'Istituto di Storia della Filosofia dell'Università di Bari, 147-161. Trani: Vecchi & C. Editori.

146. Tulli, Mauro. 2000. "Esiodo nella memoria di Parmenide." In Letteratura e riflessione sulla letteratura nella cultura classica. Atti del convegno: Pisa, 7-9 giugno 1999, edited by Arrighetti, Graziano and Tulli, Mauro, 65-81. Pisa: Giardini.

147. ———. 2005. "Investitura e conquista del sapere: la dea nel proemio di Parmenide." Humanitas: Rivista Bimestrale di Cultura no. 60:658-669.

Abstract: "Parmenide impiega il codice dell'epica di Omero e di Esiodo sia per definire l'origine del proprio sapere, tramite il racconto del viaggio e dell'incontro con la dea, sia per delineare l'opposizione fra verità e opinione, opposizione modellata sul rapporto vero-falso in Omero e in Esiodo."

148. Untersteiner, Mario. 1955. "«L’essere di Parmenide è οὖλον non ἕν." Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia no. 10:5-23.

Ristampato come primo capitolo in: M. Untersteiner, Parmenide. Testimonianze e frammenti, Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1958.

149. ———. 1956. "L’ὁδός di Parmenide come via all’ἐόν." Studi urbinati no. 29:22-69.

150. ———. 1956. Parmenide: interpretazioni filologiche e ricostruzione del pensiero. Genova: Libreria Mario Bozzi.

151. Vitali, Renzo. 1969. "Il νόος di Parmenide." Vichiana. Rassegna Internazionale di Studi Filologici e Storici no. 6:227-251.

152. ———. 1972. "Il φῦν di Parmenide." Studi Urbinati. Serie B, Scienze Umane e Sociali no. 46:303-324.

153. Zeller, Eduard, and Mondolfo, Rodolfo. 1967. La filosofia dei Greci nel suo sviluppo storico. Parte I. I Presocratici. Volume III. Eleati. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

Traduzione aggiornata di E. Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, (quinta edizione, 1892).

Il capitolo su Parmenide (pp. 165-355), a cura di Giovanni Reale, contiene un esame approfondito della lettueratura critica fino al 1965.

Ristampato nel volume Gli Eleati, Milano, Bompiani, 2011 con una bibliografia aggiornata (1965-2010) a cura di Giovanni Girgenti (pp. 481-539).

154. Zucchello, Dario. 2019. "Avventure della mente: a proposito dell’altro Parmenide di Livio Rossetti." Peitho. Examina Antiqua no. 10:173-188.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Eleatica. Indice dei volumi della collana

Bibliografia

1. Cordero, Néstor-Luis [et al.], ed. 2008. Eleatica Vol. 1: Parmenide scienziato? Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

A cura di Livio Rossetti e Flavia Marcacci.

Indice: (L. Rossetti - F. Marcacci: Introduzione 7; N.-L. Cordero: Parmenide scienziato? 31; N.-L. Cordero: Postscriptum 2007 78;

Il dibattito.

G. Cerri: Testimonianze e frammenti di scienza parmenidea 83; F. Gambetti: Il Parmenide medico negli studi del Novecento 91; A. Hermann: Negative Proof and Circular Reasoning 103; M. Pulpito: Ta dokounta: oggetti reali di opinion false 113; C. Robbiano: Attento alle opinioni: non ti condurranno alla verità! Ma imparale: sono utili e appropriate al loro oggetto 123; L. Rossetti: Perché Parmenide non rinunciò alla seconda sezione del poema, mentre i suoi allievi lo fecero? 133; A. Wacziarg: For a Rehabilitation of the Parmenidean doxa 143;

La replica del Prof. Cordero 153;

Gli autori 161; Indice dei nomi 165.

"Il pensiero di Parmenide e stato identificato con le sole teorie svolte nella prima parte del monologo della dea fin dai tempi di Platone, anzi fin da prima: gia nel caso di Melisso e Gorgia, e probabilmente anche nel caso di Zenone e Protagora, cio che fece impressione, cio che ci si affannò a difendere - o attaccare - non furono questa o quella tessera del sapere doxastico sui piu diversi fenomeni naturali, ma unicamente la dottrina dell’essere svolta nel primo logos. Si puo ben dire dunque che, una volta reso pubblico il poema, pochi decenni furono sufficienti per il formarsi di una communis opinio, poi recepita senza la minima esitazione anche da Platone, secondo la quale la dottrina dell’essere costituisce l’insegnamento di Parmenide, il suo pensiero, e in un certo senso lo esaurisce." (pp. 1-2)

(...)

"In effetti, una volta individuata 1’esistenza di una doxa ‘buona’, e assu-mendo come accertata 1’esistenza di un’ampia seconda parte del poema nel corso della quale veniva presentato un vasto e articolato sapere peri physeos, diventa quasi automatico spingersi a pensare che Parmenide (A) abbia fermamente creduto anche nella validita del sapere peri physeos da lui stesso elaborato, (B) abbia investito energie cospicue anche nella costruzione di quel particolare sapere al quale dedicò, come sembra, i 3/4 o addirittura i 4/5 dell’intero poema; (C) in quel contesto, abbia elaborato una piu che creativa congettura sulla forma del cosmo(20), un piu che rispettabile iatrikos logos e una serie di altre teorie su question! particolari, mediamente degne di attenzione; D) nondimeno abbia insistito nel far presente che questo suo sapere peri physeos, per quanto rispettabile, non poteva reggere il confrontovon il supremo sapere peri tou ontos professato nella prima parte del poema (pp. 20-21)

(20) Trovo pertinente ricordare che, come ha efficacemente segnalato il Cerri (o.c., p. 266 ss.), la teoria parmenidea delle στηφάναι costituisce un preciso e inequivocabile antecedente del modello di cosmo a sfere concentriche successivamente sviluppato da Eudosso e Aristotele. Il fatto che Aristotele non menzioni Parmenide allorché, nel De caelo, discute delle sfere concentriche non potrebbe certo valere come indizio del contrario.

2. Rossetti, Livio, and Pulpito, Massimo, eds. 2012. Eleatica Vol. 2: Zenone e l'infinito. Sank Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Indice: An overview 7; L. Rossetti - M. Pulpito: Introdfuction 13; J. Barnes: Zenone e I'infinito 37;

Preface 38; 1. Zenone paradossologo 39; 2. L'infinito 48; 3. La Dicotomia 56; 4. Atomi 65; 5. Partizioni 77; 8. Addizioni infinite 85; 9. ’ Sequenze infinite 102; 8. Una soluzione del problema? 112;

II dlbattito 119

C. Antonopoulos: An Infinity of Priorities 121; M. Bonelli: La dicotomia di Zenone ovvero l’anacronismo anglosassone 135; N.-L. Cordero: Commentaire à propos du Zenon de Jonathan Barnes 141; F. Gambetti: Zenone filosofo e Parmenide scienziato 145; M.G. Lorenzi e M. Francaviglia: I paradossi di Zenone e la meccanica quantistica 151; M. Pulpito: Partizioni infinite. Zenone, Barnes e la grandezza dei corpi 159; L. Rossetti: Un filosofo senza filosofia 171;

La replica del Prof. Barnes: Some Notes and Queries 185;

Gli autori 211-213.

"Il ciclo di conferenze che si tiene annualmente ad Ascea presso la Fondazione Alario per Elea-Velia (a nemmeno tre km dagli scavi) e che raccoglie una comunità di studiosi interessati ai temi riguardanti la filosofia presocratica e, in particolare, queIla eleatica, ha avuto come docente invitato, per l’edizione 2008-2009, il Professor Jonathan Barnes. Le sue lezioni magistrali costituiscono il nucleo centrale di questo libro. Esse vertevano sui paradossi di Zenone e hanno aperto un intenso dibattito di carattere sia filosofico sia storico, che ha coinvolto diversi partecipanti.£ (p. 19)

(...)

"Il problema, secondo Barnes, è proprio che [Zenone] non vi riesce, perché l’argomento da lui proposto, come si è visto, riposa su una premessa falsa: l’idea che la somma di un numero infinito di quantità sia necessariamente infinita. Che sia un argomento fallace lo si dimostra molto semplicemente: posto che il volume del corpo iniziale sia finito, di qualunque grandezza siano le parti che scegliamo, la loro somma sarà sempre pari al volume totale, che per ipotesi è finito. Ammesso che il volume di un corpo sia pari alla somma delle parti di qualsiasi partizione, allora le varie partizioni dovranno essere tutte uguali fra loro (perché tutte uguali al volume iniziale del corpo finito): di conseguenza, la somma degli elementi di nessuna di esse darà per risultato una grandezza infinita. Barnes osserva, in chiusura, che la migliore confutazione di Zenone resta quella di Antistene, mettersi a camminare (sebbene si tratti, probabilmente, di una leggenda). Ciò che Antistene ha fatto per rivendicare la realtà e la comprensibilità del movimento, avrebbe potuto farlo anche per la grandezza delle cose, richiamandosi all’evidenza empirica della finitezza dei corpi, così come, secondo leggenda, egli si era richiamato all’evidenza del movimento. Certo, egli avrebbe dimostrato che Zenone è in errore, ma non dove e come. Mostrare dove esattamente si nasconde Tenore di Zenone è, secondo Barnes, un proficuo esercizio filosofico, complesso ma gratificante. Per dirla con Platone, una utilissima gymnasia." (p. 24)

3. ———, eds. 2013. Eleatica Vol. 3: Parmenide. Suoni, immagini, esperienza. Sank Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Indice: Livio Rossetti, Massimo Pulpito: Introduzione 7;

Maria Laura Gemelli Marciano: Parmenide: suoni, immagini, esperienza. Con alcune considerazioni ‘inattuali’ su Zenone 43;

Il dibattito.

Commenti alle lezioni su Parmenide.

Giovanni Casertano: Osservazioni sul Parmenide di Laura Gemelli Marciano 129; Néstor-Luis Cordero: Risposta a Laura Gemelli Marciano 140; Gabriele Cornelli: Il Parmenide che non volevamo vedere 145; Enrique Hülsz Piccone: Some comments on L. Gemelli Marciano’s ‘Lezioni eleatiche’ 149; Alexander P. D. Mourelatos: Sounds, images, mysticism, and logic in Parmenides 159; Lidia Palumbo: Commento a Laura Gemelli 178; Massimo Pulpito: Se una notte d’inverno un eleate 186;

Commenti alla lezione su Zenone.

Antonietta D’Alessandro: Quale origine per il gioco di immagini e parole nei logoi di Zenone? 197; Livio Rossetti: Un contesto per i paradossi di Zenone 206;

La replica della Prof. M. L. Gemelli Marciano 215;

Bibliografia 289; Gli autori 301.

" Per LGM [Laura Gemelli Marciano] la peculiare cultura della Magna Grecia dell’epoca ha segnato in profondità gli scritti di Parmenide - e di Zenone - per cui è possibile comprendere appieno la loro opera e il loro pensiero solo a condizione di riscoprire i connotati inequivocabilmente esoterici che entrano in gioco e restituire loro il giusto peso.

Come abbiamo ricordato, la sua presa di posizione trova i suoi più intuitivi punti di riferimento in note opere di Walter Burkert e di Peter Kingsley, mentre si delinea una sorta di vero e proprio scontro frontale con i molti interpreti che hanno invece ravvisato in Parmenide un campione del rigore logico-deduttivo e il promotore di un sapere sull’essere, eventualmente anche di un sapere sul mondo fisico e i fenomeni biologici (per converso, l’impostazione difesa da LGM raccoglie vasti consensi tra gli studiosi del pitagorismo). A questo riguardo la contrapposizione è molto netta e, non a caso, è emersa anche nel dibattito seguito a queste Lezioni Eleatiche.

Sarebbe tuttavia fuor di luogo generalizzare, in quanto il panorama dei consensi e dei dissensi si fa subito più articolato se si considerano alcuni punti qualificanti." (p. 10)

(...)

"Un ultimo presupposto di cui liberarsi, quello forse più radicato nella tradizione ermeneutica occidentale, consiste nel vedere in Parmenide un metafisico, un logico o uno scienziato, in ogni caso un filosofo mosso da mere esigenze speculative, cioè volto a ottenere la conoscenza fine a se stessa, senza ulteriori scopi pratici. Ma questa immagine del filosofo speculativo non si applica al Parmenide storicamente vissuto ad Elea, essendosi formata ad Atene negli ultimi decenni del V secolo. Tale è la figura del meteòrologos elaborata, ad esempio, per Anassagora e quelli come lui, e, in seguito, proiettata retrospettivamente su personaggi più antichi. Questa interpretazione comporta non solo la marginalizzazione del proemio, inteso come una sezione del poema oscura e del tutto accessoria, puro ornamento letterario, ma anche la perdita di un elemento, che invece LGM giudica essenziale per la comprensione dell’opera, e cioè la struttura fonica del poema. Come per molti altri testi mistici, anche nel poema l’ordine dei suoni non è casuale o funzionale solamente alla trasmissione di un contenuto. La ripetizione di suoni o di versi con l’attenzione focalizzata esclusivamente sui suoni notoriamente costituisce, infatti, nelle varie tradizioni religiose una pratica corrente nel raggiungimento di altri stati di coscienza. È su questo piano (del tutto inedito nella storia delle interpretazioni parmenidee) che bisogna riconsiderare il poema, e cioè riscoprirne la tessitura fonica, al fine di comprenderne l’impatto fisico, reale, diretto sugli uditori anche indipendentemente da ciò che le parole significano." (p. 15)

4. Casertano, Giovanni [et al.]. 2015. Eleatica Vol. 4: Da Parmenide di Elea al Parmenide di Platone. Sank Augustin: Academia Verlag.

A cura di Francesca Gambetti e Stefania Giombini.

Indice: Francesca Gambetti and Stefania Giombini: From Parmenides to Plato: an overview 7; Francesca Gambetti and Stefania Giombini: Da Elea ad Atene: verità, linguaggio, politica 15; Giovanni Casertano: Da Parmenide di Elea al Parmenide di Platone 43;

II dibattito.

Nestor-Luis Cordero: L’insoutenable poids des ‘absences’ dans l’interpretation parménidienne de Casertano129; Maria Carmen De Vita: Essere, pensare, nominare: alcune riflessioni su Gorgia e Platone 136; Sergio Di Girolamo: τό έόν, τό παν e «quelle che uno può ritenere che siano idee» (Parm. 135e3-4) 141; Franco Ferrari: L’essere (e il non essere) nel Parmenide di Platone148; Francesco Fronterotta: Sulla natura del genere del diverso nel Sofista 153; Francesca Gambetti: II tradimento di Platone 159; Stefania Giombini: Per un profilo di Gorgia 165; Silvio Marino: Logica e dialogica. Analogia e dialettizzazione della realtà nel pensiero platonico 169; Lidia Palumbo: Commento alle lezioni eleatiche di Gianni Casertano 176; Massimo Pulpito: La versione di Seniade e il parricidio performativo di Platone 182; Sofia Ranzato: Il Κούρος diventa maestro: note sull’incontro tra Socrate e Parmenide 192; Fernando Santoro: Itinerarios das ideias 199; Alessandro Stavru: La δόξα appare? Nota a DK 28B1,28-32 e B8,51-61 206;

Giovanni Casertano: Le repliche 211;

Gli autori 231-235.

"Il cursus studiorum di Giovanni Casertano (d’ora in poi GC) rappresenta una delle espressioni più originali e significative di questo importante ripensamento ermeneutico avvenuto nel secolo scorso, di cui anche il presente volume è esempio. GC esordì, come è noto, con ricerche sulla sofistica e su Parmenide (con la ‘rivoluzionaria’ monografia del 1978, Parmenide, il metodo la scienza l’esperienza), per poi approdare ad ampie e profonde letture dei dialoghi platonici, non senza aprire ulteriori finestre su autori come Empedocle e Protagora. Accenniamo appena a questo lungo percorso di GC perché di recente esso è stato oggetto di molteplici interventi in occasione di λόγον διδόναι. La filosofia come esercizio del render ragione, la Festschrift in suo onore curata da Lidia Palumbo che gli venne presentata proprio in occasione delle sue Lezioni Eleatiche del 2011.

Per le ragioni indicate, la scelta di dedicare queste Lezioni Eleatiche al complesso tragitto che da Parmenide conduce a Platone ha significato toccare le principali tappe del suo ricco itinerario di ricerca, dunque spostare l’attenzione da singole questioni storiografiche al filo conduttore che ha ispirato un complessivo ripensamento di questa cruciale fase del pensiero antico.

(...)

"Gli assi portanti delle Lezioni Eleatiche di GC che, dunque, risultano euristica-mente fecondi sono due: il primo riguarda la rielaborazione protagorea e gorgiana del parmenidismo, come training filosofico formativo di Platone, nella quale l'ontologia è ridotta a logologia e il λόγος assume il ruolo fondativo della realtà.

Il secondo asse invece descrive il tentativo di Platone di ristabilire il primatodel piano ontologico su quello logico: a causa dell’impossibilità di fondare ontologicamente il non essere attraverso la risoluzione del falso nell’alterità, intesa come diversità della relazione predicativa rispetto a ciò che pretenderebbe di descrivere, Platone è di fatto costretto a riaffermare la centralità del linguaggio e quindi la prospettiva sofistica, specialmente quella gorgiana." (pp. 16-17)

5. Pulpito, Massimo, ed. 2016. Eleatica Vol. 5: Melissus between Miletus and Elea. Sank Augustin: Academia Verlag.

A cura di Masimo Pulpito.

Indice: M. Pulpito: Initroduzione. Lo Straniero di Samo 9;

Le lezioni

J. Mansfeld: Melissus between Miletus and Elea 71;

I Eleatic philosophy without tears 71; II Melissus in the ancient tradition, from Isocrates to Simplicius 85; III Further problems 95; References 108;

II dibattito

G. Calenda: Melisso: il tradimento del pensiero eleatico 115; P. Curd: Ruminations on Mansfeld’s Melissus 123; 5. Daniele: linmobilita e vuoto in Parmenide e Melisso 129; S. Di Girolamo: ()i τοΰ δλου στασιώται. Il Teeteto su Parmenide e Melisso in rapporto al problema mereologico 137; F. Marcacci: Sulla logica dimostrativa di Melisso 145; J. Palmer: The early tradition on Melissus and Parmenides 150; M. Pulpito: Udire suoni o ascoltare parole? Un commento a Mansfeld su 30 B8 DK 157; C. Robbiano: Parmenides’ and Melissus’ being without not-being 165; L. Rossetti: Un Melisso molto innovativo 175;

La replica del Prof. Mansfeld: Some Comments on Comments 180;

Gli autori 192; Indice dei nomi 196-201.

"Negli ultimi due secoli - con una certa approssimazione - si possono riconoscere due grandi periodi nella ermeneutica parmenidea. Nel primo si è sostenuta un’interpretazione che ha costituito, fino alla prima metà del Novecento, la lettura standard di Parmenide: essa ha di fatto misconosciuto la sezione fisica, la cosiddetta Doxa, relegandola a pura appendice senza alcun valore conoscitivo o epistemologico, perché incompatibile con la prima parte del poema, quella sulla Verità. Si è trattata, come oggi appare evidente, di una lettura inconsapevolmente ‘melissiana’ di Parmenide (come già nell’antichità fecero personaggi come l’epicureo Colete di Lampsaco), fondata sulla eliminazione del mondo fisico e la sua riduzione a mero piano illusorio. Ciò però ha danneggiato Melisso, poiché la sua dottrina potè essere intesa non come un parto originale del suo pensiero, ma come un clone di quella del suo illustre predecessore. E così, l’aver reso Parmenide una sorta di Melisso di Elea ha sottratto al Samio l’originalità, ossia la condizione minima per essere ritenuto filosofo degno d’attenzione.

(...)

Ma come s’è detto, c’è poi stato un secondo periodo. Più o meno a partire dalla metà del Novecento si è fatta strada con sempre più forza una nuova famiglia di interpretazioni di Parmenide, molto diverse tra loro (e prevedibilmente conflittuali), ma tutte accomunate dalla radicale messa in discussione della lettura classica e quindi da una più o meno robusta rivalutazione della sezione fisica del poema, al punto che oggi si può dire che il paradigma si sia del tutto rovesciato ed è raro incontrare sostenitori del vecchio approccio anti-naturalistico. Questa riscoperta della Doxa (o comunque del sapere naturalistico parmenideo) ha evidentemente impedito la precedente identificazione tra la dottrina di Melisso e quella di Parmenide, poiché (nonostante alcuni audaci tentativi esegetici in controtendenza) l’ammissione dell’esistenza di un piano doxastico o fisico accanto a quello dell’Essere, è del tutto assente nel filosofo di Samo.

(...)

Da questo mutamento di schema interpretativo, dunque, Melisso non ne è uscito avvantaggiato: egli diviene una sorta di Straniero di Elea - in questo caso di Samo - che, come il protagonista del Sofista platonico, si macchia di un parricidio nei confronti del maestro. Ma nel un caso non si tratta di un delitto filosoficamente fecondo, come quello platonico; al contrario, la sua diviene piuttosto una sterilizzazione forzata del parmenidismo.

(...)

< Cionondimeno, le linee di ricerca su Melisso emerse negli ultimi decenni (ma in fondo già all’opera nel primo dei due periodi ora menzionati, seppure ancora in modo germinale) hanno giudicato il pensatore di Samo meritevole di maggiore considerazione, in alcuni casi del tutto simpatetica, e anche laddove non sono giunte fino ad una sua piena riabilitazione critica, hanno offerto un contributo alla ricostruzione

del suo pensiero che segue nuove strade.

(...)

Ma per comprendere appieno il quadro interpretativo nel quale s’inseriscono le Lezioni Eleatiche di Mansfeld, è utile gettare un rapido sguardo agli studi dedicati a Melisso negli ultimi cinquant’anni (e qualcosa di più)." (pp. 20-22)

6. Cerri, Giovanni [et al.]. 2018. Eleatica Vol. 6: Dall'universo-blocco all'atomo nella scuola di Elea: Parmenide, Zenone, Leucippo. Sank Augustin: Academia Verlag.

A cura di Massimo Pulpito e Sofia Ranzato.

Indice:

Introduzione: M. Pulpito - S. Ranzato: L'atomismo come metamorfosi dell’eleatismo 11;

Le lezioni

G. Cerri: Dall’universo-blocco all’atomo nella scuola di Elea: Parmenide, Zenone, Leucippo 49;

II dibattito

G. Calenda: Dall’essere di Parmenide agli atomi di Leucippo: un’improbabile discendenza 145; G. Casertano: Una piccola osservazione a Giovanni Cerri 152; N.-L. Cordero: L’être parménidien selon Cerri: une realité... irréale 154; W. Fratticci: Ma veramente ‘il Parmenide scienziato si identifica col Parmenide filosofo’? Considerazioni a margine delle lezioni eleatiche di Giovanni Cerri 158; F. Gambetti: Parmenide physiologos della relatività 164; F. Passa: Troppi modi di ‘essere’? Giovanni Cerri legge Parmenide 170; F. Piergiacomi: La razionalità e necessità della nascita. Leucippo in dialogo-polemica con gli Eleati 177; M. Pulpito: Contro il moto. Nota su un’ipotesi di Cerri circa le aporie di Zenone 189; S. Ranzato: Alla fine del progresso conoscitivo umano c’è I’eon di Parmenide? 200; L. Rossetti: Tre versi enigmatici: B8, 50-52 206;

La replica del Prof. Cerri 214;

Gli autori 251-254.

"Secondo Giovanni Cerri (GC) il punto di partenza della riflessione parmenidea è una ricerca scientifica lunga e laboriosa fondata sulle due componenti della rilevazione sperimentale e del ragionamento matematico-geometrico. In entrambe, GC individua una comune tendenza a identificare tra loro diversi elementi in un processo che porta a semplificare la complessità del reale e, così, a comprenderla meglio.

(...)

Sulla base del fatto che, in greco, il concetto di uguaglianza da noi formulato con il segno = si esprimeva con l’espressione «è» (est), GC ipotizza che questo sia il senso del verbo ‘essere’ su cui insiste l’Eleate nella sua opera. Su questa ‘epistemologia equazionale’ si basa il nuovo metodo conoscitivo che Parmenide contrappone al sapere tradizionale dei poeti e alle nuove ricerche storico-gcografiche di tradizione ionica (historie), entrambi basati su un accumulo di nozioni tra loro diverse (polymathie) senza che via sia una vera comprensione scientifica (frr. B2-8, 2a). Il risultato del graduale processo di identificazione dei diversi enti (eonta) tra loro, prospettato nel poema parmenideo, sarebbe dunque quello di ridurre la complessità del reale ad un solo ente (eon). Le caratteristiche distintive dell'eon sono elencate e descritte in B8, laddove si verifica il passaggio dall’essere copulativo-equazionale a quello sostanzialistico-esistenziale. Il fatto che esso sia subto presentato come ingenerato e imperituro riconnette la natura dell’ente parmenideo al principio - valido ancor oggi - nihil ex nihilo, nihil in nihilum, che, come ha riconosciuto Aristotele in Metaph. 1,3, 983 b 6 ss., appare il postulato fondamentale della maggior parte dei sistemi fisici dei presocratici. Tuttavia, Parmenide porta all'estremo tale assunto e individua un intervento ex nihilo in ogni forma di trasformazione, arrivando quindi a postulare, per primo, 1’esistenza di una realtà che sia anche unica, immobile, immutabile e perfettamente omogenea. Questo eon, peraltro, come suggeriscono alcuni versi di B8, è un ente reale, con una massa corporea che occupa la totalità dello spazio, non un corpo tra gli altri, ma il solo corpo in assoluto. In questo contesto, οὐκ ἐόν, ‘non ente’ viene a significare, per la prima volta, "spazio vuoto" secondo una terminologia che verrà poi ripresa da Leucippo e Democrito. Appare così chiaro che la ricerca di Parmenide si iscrive interamente nell’ambito della fisica, piuttosto che in quello della metafisica, come sembra avere riconosciuto lo stesso Aristotele in De caelo 3, 1, 298 b 21-24. E in quest’ambito, formulando l'immagine di un ente che occupa uno spazio finito illimitato in una dimensione atemporale, Parmenide anticipa le teorie di alcuni fisici moderni come Hawking e Capra. All'interno di questa linea interpretativa trova senso anche la seconda parte del poema, dove è descritto il migliore quadro del reale alla luce del sapere scientifico più aggiornato, presentato nella versione propria di Parmenide stesso e della sua scuola. Si tratta di un mondo di parvenze ingannevoli, fondato sulla fallace contrapposizione tra luce e tenebra, stabilita in base ad un’impressione sensoriale degli uomini agli albori della loro storia, ma, dietro di esso traluce la Verità dell’Essere/Uno." (pp. 20-21)

7. Bernabé, Bernabé, Berruecos Frank, Bernardo, and Giombini, Stefania, eds. 2019. Eleatica Vol. 7: Parmenide: tra linguistica, letteratura e filosofia = Parménides: entre lingüística, literatura y filosofía. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

A cura di Bernardo Berruecos Frank e Stefania Giombini.

Indice: Bernardo Berruecos Frank - Stefania Giombini: Introduzione. Sulla via di Parmenide: Alberto Bemabé tra linguistica, letteratura e filosofia 11;

Le Lezioni

Alberto Bernabé: Parménides: entre linguistica, literatura y filosofia 49; I. Parménides poeta: tradición e innovación en el proemio del poema 49; IL Parménides a través del prisma de la linguistica 72; III. Afirmar negando: compuestos negativos en Parménides 95; Bibliografia 114;

Il dibattito

Magali Année: Discours en creux et négation de la négation. Quelques objections à la ‘sémantique de la disjonction’ et au principe d’ ‘incompatibilité sémique’ 121; Bernardo Berruecos Frank: El Poema de Parménides y la liriea arcaica. Notas a la primera Lección Eleâtica de A. Bemabé 135; Luis Andrés Bredlow †: Espacio iniciâtico o espacio cosmològico? Una nota sobre el proemio de Parménides 146; Giovanni Casertano: Linguistica e scienza 153; Giovanni Cerri: Intervento di G. Cerri sulle Lezioni di Bemabé 2015 155; Néstor-Luis Cordero: El insoportable peso de la negación. A propòsito de la tercera Lección de A. Bemabé 157; Stefano Daniele: Lampi sul proemio. Mito, simbolo e ritualità in Parmenide B 1 DK 161; Nicola Stefano Galgano: Parmenide e la costruzione del linguaggio epistemico. Due domande a Bemabé 173; Manfred Kraus: Commento ad Alberto Bemabé, Parménides a través del prisma de la linguistica 181; Massimo Pulpito: El ‘giro linguistico’ de Parménides 189; Sofia Ranzato: Parmenide tra mito e filosofia 202; Livio Rossetti: Senso e ragion d’essere del proemio nella cornice del poema 207; Fernando Santoro: Commento alla terza Lezione di Alberto Bemabé 216;

Alberto Bernabé: Respuestas 221;

Alberto Bernabé - Julia Mendoza: Appendice. ‘Ser’ y ‘no ser’ en el RigVeda y en Parménides: usos diversos de un mismo recurso 253;

Gli autori 269-274.

"Un certo e costante interesse per Parmenide lo ha accompagnato [Alberto Bernabé] per molti anni di studio e questo rapporto con il filosofo di Elea è giunto al suo culmine con le tre lezioni magistrali che ha offerto in occasione di Eleatica 2015 nella sede della Fondazione Alario per Elea-Velia, ente promotore della sessione scientifica, nei giorni 10-12 settembre.

La prima parte di questo nostro lavoro introduttivo ha l’obiettivo di espone e analizzare la presenza di Parmenide negli studi scientifici di Alberto Bernabé (da ora AB), con il proposito ulteriore di seguire e ricostruire le linee interpretative e le proposte che AB è andato suggerendo negli ultimi 38 anni.

Questo percorso di analisi si costituirà di undici sezioni in cui analizzeremo altrettanti studi di AB nel quale egli ha toccato punti importanti del poema di Parmenide che in una forma o nell’altra sono stati ripresi e ampliati in questo volume.

Di seguito si potranno trovare le sintesi delle lezioni, dei commenti alle lezioni e delle rispettive risposte di AB.

La sezione introduttiva si chiude con un profilo biografico di AB." ) (p. 11)

(...)

"Infine, l’ultimo studio parmenideo pubblicato nel 2015 da AB, “Parménides se encuentra con la diosa”(19), è un lavoro nel quale vengono sviluppati alcuni dei punti che saranno esposti e portati alle estreme conseguenze nella prima Lezione Eleatica, quali l’atipicità del proemio in relazione alla tradizione letteraria precedente, in particolare in riferimento alla mancanza di una invocazione a una musa; l’assunto secondo cui si tratterebbe di un viaggio celeste nel carro del sole, da cui deriverebbe l’apparizione delle Eliadi; e, infine, la convinzione che non si tratta della descrizione o del riflesso di una esperienza reale, né di un’allegoria con significato occulto, ma dell’ «elaboración literaria del acceso a una gran verdad que el autor interpreta corno una revelación religiosa» (p. 29). Parmenide «situa lo que tiene que decir en el àmbito en el que en su època se situaban las verdades profundas, la iniciación» (p. 29). Questa sarà l’idea centrale della proposta che AB farà nella prima delle tre Lezioni Eleatiche.

Questo percorso nell’opera di AB ha inteso essere propedeutico alla lettura delle tre Lezioni Eleatiche: quella di AB si è dimostrata una interpretazione forte, costruita nel tempo, nata dal tessere le fila delle dottrine del pensiero presocratico e di quelle orfiche nel contesto della letteratura e del pensiero antichi. Il quadro delineato dovrebbe agevolare e avvicinare il lettore alle tre Lezioni, di cui di seguito si offre una sintesi ragionata." (pp. 18-19)

(19) Bernabé 2015 [in A. Fernandez Sanchez e Μ. Herrero de Jâuregui (eds.), ΑΕΙΛΕ ΘΕΑ. La inspiración en la poesia religiosa, Madrid], pp. 13-31.

8. Galgano, Nicola S., Giombini, Stefania, and Marcacci, Flavia, eds. 2020. Eleatica Vol. 8: Verso la filosofia: Nuove prospettive su Parmenide, Zenone e Melisso. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlsg.

Indice: Nicola S. Galgano – Stefania Giombini – Flavia Marcacci: Introduzione. ‘Ricostruire la scena’: gli Eleati secondo Livio Rossetti 11;

Le Lezioni

Livio Rossetti: Verso la filosofia. Nuove prospettive su Parmenide, Zenone e Melisso

I. Parmenide 51; II. Zenone 91; III. Melisso 129; Bibliografía162;

Il dibattito

Mathilde Brémond: Qualche osservazione sulla ricezione dell’Eleatismo 171; Rose Cherubin: Comments on Livio Rossetti, Verso la filosofia. Nuove prospettive su Parmenide, Zenone e Melisso 183; Néstor-Luis Cordero: Parménide phusikós, oui, mais... 195; Vincenzo Fano: Discussione sulla ‘filosofia virtuale’ di Zenone secondo Livio Rossetti 199; Francesco Ferro: L’ἐόν e la sua manifestazione cosmica nel Poema di Parmenide 209; Walter Fratticci: Da un Parmenide paranoico a un Parmenide schizofrenico? 225; Nicola Stefano Galgano: Contro la tradizione, con la tradizione 233; Jaap Mansfeld: Another Parmenides 242;

Alexander P. D. Mourelatos: Elements of Natural Science in the Second Part of Parmenides’ Poem: Comment on Livio Rossetti’s Lezione I at Eleatica 2017 244; Enrico Piergiacomi: Non di sola ontologia. Melisso e la logica delle apparenze? 251; Livio Rossetti: Habent sua fata libelli. In risposta 271;

Gli autori 301-305.

"Nel 2017, in occasione della decima edizione di Eleatica, di cui è stato ideatore e fondatore, Livio Rossetti è stato invitato dal Collegio dei Cittadini Onorari dell’Antica Città di Elea a offrire le tre lezioni magistrali che, fin dalla prima edizione, caratterizzano la struttura di questo evento.

Ricorrendo alla ‘filosofia virtuale’ come chiave interpretativa, Rossetti ha analizzato il pensiero dei tre grandi esponenti della cosiddetta scuola Eleatica: Parmenide, Zenone e Melisso. Un progetto ambizioso quanto fruttuoso quello di guardare da una prospettiva inedita a questi tre pensatori: senza cedere a preconcetti e interpretazioni consolidate nella (vastissima) letteratura critica esistente sui temi, Rossetti ingaggia un personale e intenso corpo a corpo con gli Eleati col chiaro scopo di riscoprire e ridare valore ai loro aspetti maggiormente inediti e tralasciati, se non addirittura mai rilevati. In tal senso, l’approccio peculiare delle sue Lezioni Eleatiche risulta coraggioso, come d’altronde, la sua bibliografia ci ha abituati a pensare.

Così a queste Lezioni sono seguiti due anni di lavoro e di scambi con colleghi e studiosi. Le analisi si sono intensificate, i risultati accresciuti, le prospettive rettificate, le divergenze appianate o acutizzate, le questioni aperte rinnovate.

Prima di entrare nel vivo delle lezioni, intendiamo ripercorrere in maniera sintetica le indagini di Rossetti e il dibattito che esse hanno sollevato con altri studiosi. Si intende così offrire al lettore uno strumento agile per avere una visione generale dei risultati raggiunti in queste pagine." (p. 11)

9. Pulpito, Massimo, and Berruecos Frank, Bernardo, eds. 2023. Eleatica Vol. 9: Aristotle and the Eleatics = Aristotele e gli Eleati. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlsg.

Indice: M. Pulpito - B. Berruecos Frank: : Introduzione. Al limite della follia (GC [De generatione et corruptione] 325a19). L’eleatismo attraverso Aristotele 11;

Le lezioni

R. McKirahan: Aristotle and the Eleatics 43

I An Aristotelianizing Parmenides 43; II Aristotle’s Parmenides 59; III Aristotle and Zeno 79; IV Aristotle’s Melissus 89; Bibliography 108;

Il dibattito

A. Bernabé: Cortesía y estrategia discursiva. Menciones de Zenón en Aristóteles 111; M. Brémond: Some Remarks on Aristotle’s Interpretation of Melissus 125; N.-L. Cordero: L’aristotélisation de Parménide, est-elle un parménidicide ? 135; P. Curd: Aristotle, Parmenides, Melissus (and Plato?) 147; L. Franchi: L’apparente contraddizione nel resoconto di Aristotele su Parmenide 157; R. Güremen: Melissus on Limits and Beginnings. Reflections upon McKirahan’s Lecture on Aristotle’s Melissus 175; M. Pulpito: Metaphysics of an Instant: A Dialogue with McKirahan on his “Aristotelianizing Parmenides” 189; B. M. Sattler: The relationship of Zeno and Parmenides according to Plato, Aristotle, and Eudemus. Reply to Richard McKirahan’s Lecture “Aristotle and Zeno” 203; E. Volpe: Some Footnotes to Richard McKirahan’s Lectures at Eleatica XI 217;

R. McKirahan: Replies 227;

Gli autor 237-240.

"La discussione aristotelica del pensiero eleatico, e parmenideo principalmente, si sviluppa attorno ad almeno tre linee tematiche, che costituiscono il maggiore contributo testimoniale aristotelico sul tema. Se la seconda di esse affronta il cuore della tesi eleatica più nota, quell’ontologia monista e immobilista che Aristotele si propone di decostruire, le altre due si rivelano non meno significative e riguardano, l’una, lo statuto epistemologico della teoria di Parmenide e dei suoi seguaci, l’altra, il piano di compatibilità tra questa teoria e la trattazione fisica (tematica circoscritta all’interpretazione del solo Parmenide)." (p. 13)

(...)

"1. An Aristotelianizing Parmenides. – La prima lezione di RM Ruchard McKirahan], come recita il titolo, intende introdurre il lettore a un nuovo modo di interpretare la filosofia di Parmenide, che cerca di conciliarla e armonizzarla con le idee essenziali che definiscono il progetto filosofico di Aristotele, in particolare con la sua concezione della metafisica come scienza dell’essere in quanto essere e con la distinzione, centrale nel suo sistema di pensiero, tra metafisica e fisica. RM presenta la sua proposta come una nuova interpretazione, sebbene riconosca talune affinità con quella proposta da Thanassas (2007) e sia solidale con l’influente lettura di P. Curd (2004), la quale sostiene che Parmenide non fosse un monista numerico, ma un monista predicativo: quando Parmenide afferma che ciò che è è uno, ciò non significa che esista un’unica cosa, ma che ogni cosa che è è una cosa unitaria, d’un solo genere. Lo studio di RM esordisce stabilendo tre punti preliminari, prima di presentare la sua lettura aristotelizzante del fr. DKB8" (p. 24)

Riferimenti

Curd, P. 2004, The Legacy of Parmenides: Eleatic Monism and Later Presocratic Thought, 2nd edn., Las Vegas.

Thanassas, P. 2007, Parmenides, Cosmos, and Being: A Philosophical Interpretation, Milwaukee.

10. Cordero, Néstor-Luis. 2019. Supplementa Eleatica Vol. 1: Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate e i suoi "eredi". Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

A cxura di Massimo Pulpito.

Indice: M. Pulpito: Prefazione 9;

A. Il testo del Poema di Parmenide

Introduzione 13; I. L’histoire du texte de Parménide 16; 2. Analyse de l’édition Aldine du Commentaire de Simplicius à la Physique d’Aristote 37; 3. Les sources vénitiennes de l’édition Aldine du Livre I du Commentaire de Simplicius sur la Physique d’Aristote 49; 4. La version de Joseph Scaliger du Poème de Parménide 69; 5. Le vers 1.3 de Parménide (“La déesse conduit à l’égard de tout”). 77; 6. Pourquoi Sextus cite le fr. 7.2 (DK) de Parménide après le vers 30 du fragment 1 (DK)? 97;

B. La filosofia di Parmenide

Introduzione 105; 7. La Déesse de Parménide, maîtresse de philosophie 110; 8. Parménide: la “rhétorique” de la Déesse 118; 9. Le logos comme critère chez Parménide 126; 10. Parménide platonisé (A propos du Parménide de Marcel Conche) 135; 11. En Parménides, tertium non datur 142; 12. Acerca de la inexistencia de una “tercera via de investigación” en Parménides 154; 13. Las “partes” del Poema de Parménides: un prejuicio interpretativo tràgico 171; 14. La “Doxa des mortels” n’est pas la “physique” de Parménide 181;

C. Gli “eredi” di Parmenide

Introduzione 191; 15. L'invention de l’école éléatique (Platon, Sophiste 242d) 194; 16. Simplicius et l’“école éléate” 214; 17. Jenófanes invitado a Elea... por H. Diels (Diogenes Laercio, IX.18) 228; 18. Una tragedia filosòfica, del “se es” de Parménides al “ser-Uno” de Meliso 234; 19. Zénon d’Elèe, moniste ou nihiliste? 243; 20. Zenón de Elea y Borges de Buenos Aires: una amistad a través del tiempo 263-269.

"L’apporto principale che Corderò ha dato agli studi sul poema di Parmenide è consistito nell’insistenza sul netto dualismo che lo caratterizzerebbe: la visione pienamente negativa delle doxai dei mortali (non redibimili attraverso arbitrarie attenuazioni della dura condanna della dea, come invece è stato proposto da altri interpreti) si accompagnerebbe all'esclusione di una possibilità di conciliazione tra la verità e l’opinione, la cosiddetta ‘terza via’. È proprio questo ‘corto circuito’ ermeneutico che ha condotto Corderò negli ultimi tempi a separare la ‘doxa’ dalla fisica, e quindi, non trovando alcuno spazio terzo tra la sezione della verità e quella dell’opinione, a muovere i frammenti fisici dalla seconda alla prima parte. Oltre a ciò, Corderò aveva già mostrato come il riconoscimento dell’affermazione di una ‘terza via’ nel poema (terza, secondo i suoi sostenitori, rispetto alle due vie, cosiddette, dell’‘essere’ e del ‘non essere’) si fondasse in realtà non sul testo pervenuto, ma su una congettura del grande filologo Hermann Diels sul fr. 6, peraltro inaccettabile se considerata nel contesto del frammento." (pp. 9-10)

(...)

"Il tratto originario di questo percorso di ricerca si ritrova nei venti scritti (in francese e in piccola parte in spagnolo) qui raccolti. Il volume si divide in tre sezioni, introdotte da una breve presentazione dello stesso autore. La prima sezione è incentrata sui problemi di ricostruzione del testo del Poema, e si occupa della complessa trasmissione dei frammenti a noi noti. La seconda tratta dei nodi interpretativi posti dal pensiero dell’Eleate, a cui offre soluzioni originali. L’ultima sezione, dedicata ai cosiddetti ‘eredi’ di Parmenide (oltre che ad un suo ‘predecessore’), affronta invece le questioni legate all’esistenza della presunta ‘scuola’ di Elea." (p. 11)

11. Mourelatos, Alxander P. D. 2022. Supplementa Eleatica Vol. 2: After Parmenides: Studies on Language and Metaphysics in Early Greek Philosophy. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

A cura di Massimo Pulpito.

Table of contents: Author’s Prefatory Note 10: M. Pulpito: Prefazione 11; Acknowledgments 17; Abbreviations 18;

Part I: Preliminaries and Fundamentals

1. Presocratic Origins of the Principle that There Are No Origins from Nothing 21; 2. “Nothing” as “Not-Being”: Some Literary Contexts That Bear on Plato and also on Parmenides 36;

Part II: The Discovery of Form

3. Form as Shape, Array, Order: Earliest Approaches and Eleatic Scruples 49; 4. Quality, Structure, Emergence: in Anaxagoras, Philolaus, Democritus, and in Empedocles 79; 5. The Concept of the Universal in Some Later pre-Platonic Cosmologist 127; 6. Democritus on the Distinction Between Universals and Particulars: the Relevance of Fragments B124 and B165. 146; 7. Intrinsic and Relational Properties of Atoms in the Democritean Ontology 159;

Part III: The Sophist’s Demurrer

8. Gorgias on the Function of Language 183

Bibliography 213; Indexes 227-239.

"Il campo di studi principale di Alexander P. D. Mourelatos è stato il pensiero presocratico, assieme ad alcuni aspetti della filosofia di Platone e di Aristotele. Il suo primo libro, The Route of Parmenides, è stato pubblicato nel 1970, e poi riedito in una versione riveduta e ampliata nel 2008. Quel volume, apparso quando l’autore aveva solo trentatré anni, è ritenuto oggi uno dei testi più importanti della letteratura critica su Parmenide.

Un posto particolare tra i Presocratici lo ricopre dai primi anni 2000 un pensatore pre-parmenideo, Senofane di Colofone, la cui fisica, talvolta marginalizzata, è stata invece l’oggetto di una originale reinterpretazione da parte di Mourelatos.

Proprio a Senofane (e alla sua affascinante “astrofisica delle nuvole”) furono dedicate le lectiones magistrales che lo studioso tenne in italiano per Eleatica 2010, e che gli valsero l’anno dopo la Cittadinanza Onoraria dell’Antica Città di Elea. Le lezioni si intitolavano La “natura delle cose” prima di Parmenide: il mondo visto da Senofane, e offrivano uno sguardo lucido su una delle fasi più interessanti della riflessione naturalistica pre-parmenidea.

Ma Mourelatos, già nei tre decenni precedenti, aveva riservato una serie di studi altrettanto significativi a quel che era avvenuto dopo Parmenide. E come avrebbe poi fatto nel caso di Senofane, in quegli studi egli problematizzò la lettura, fino troppo schematica, secondo cui tutto era legato (anche retrospettivamente) a Parmenide. Se nel caso del Colofonio Mourelatos avrebbe rivelato gli errori interpretativi generati dal “mito eleatico”, che aveva condotto a sovrainterpretare (e in ultima analisi a fraintendere) i versi di Senofane, degradandolo a mero precursore, nel caso dei filosofi post-parmenidei si era proposto di valutare il reale condizionamento che Parmenide (e l’eleatismo in genere) avevano determinato sulla filosofia successiva. Seppure, infatti, tale condizionamento appare innegabile, è alto il rischio di una sua sopravvalutazione, allorché tutta la riflessione successiva viene forzatamente ricondotta ad una mera replica all’eleatismo. Mourelatos si è sforzato di mostrare come il quadro fosse sensibilmente più complesso, cercando di far emergere anche i contributi più originali di questi pensatori (e cioè i cosiddetti Pluralisti, i Pitagorici – più nello specifico Filolao – ma anche figure più prossime all’eleatismo, come Melisso o, seppure polemicamente, Gorgia).

È a questa fase della sua ricerca, incentrata sul pensiero post-parmenideo, che è dedicata principalmente questa raccolta. Il volume contiene otto saggi, di cui sette già pubblicati in inglese, e uno (il terzo di questo libro) che originariamente, in una versione ridotta precedente – qui sviluppata e ampliata – era stato pubblicato in greco moderno." (pp. 11-12)

12. Volpe, Enrico, ed. 2022. Supplementa Eleatica Vol. 3: Le vie dell'essere. Studi sulla ricezione antica di Parmenide. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

Indice: E. Volpe: Introduzione 9; A. Bernabé: Dike in Parmenide e nella tradizione letteraria e filosofica greca 19; F. Montevecchi: Modi di essere uomini: Parmenide ed Empedocle. Riflessione sulla soggettività nel mondo antico 45; E. Piergiacomi: La logica degli atomi. Un dialogo tra Parmenide e Democrito? 63; M. Corradi: Πρὸς τοὺς ἓν τὸ ὂν εἰσάγοντας. Protagora davanti a Parmenide e Zenone 87; R. Ioli: Essere e nulla. Una riflessione su eleatismo e sofistica tra Parmenide e Gorgia 109; C. Marsico: From Filiar Love to the Parricide. Parmenides among the Socratics 131; E. Volpe In che senso 'tutto è uno'? La critica di Aristotele agli eleati in Ph. 1.2 151; A. Motta: La akribeia di Parmenide secondo Plotino (Enn. V l [10], 8) 169; M. Abbate: La dottrina ontologica di Parmenide nell'interpretazione di Proclo: il problema dell'unità originaria dell'essere nell'ottica tardo-neoplatonica 183;

Gli autori 205-208.

"Il presente volume raccoglie un insieme di nove saggi che hanno l'obiettivo di fare luce sul ruolo che il pensiero eleatico, in particolare quello di Parmenide, hanno avuto nell'ambito della riflessione filosofica antica e tardo-antica, una Wirkungsgeschichte che giunge fino alla riflessione procliana nel tardo Neoplatonismo.

Lo scopo è quello di mostrare come il pensiero parmenideo, seppur secondo differenti accezioni e con finalità diverse, abbia avuto un ruolo fondamentale in diversi autori e tradizioni filosofiche, tanto da risultare determinante nella formazione di veri e propri sistemi filosofici oppure fungendo da punto di riferimento critico." (p. 9)

(...)

!L'insieme dei saggi che compongono il presente volume mostrano come la presenza di Parmenide si riveli un elemento di confronto costante per gli autori antichi successivi. La ricezione della dottrina di Parmenide viene assorbita e richiamata in diversi aspetti del pensiero filosofico, quali l'etica, il linguaggio, la teologia, la fisica, la metafisica e l'ontologia. Parmenide è dunque, in alcuni casi, una sorta di fondamentale punto di riferimento, la cui dottrina risulta imprescindibile e necessaria per la comprensione dello sviluppo del pensiero successivo. Allo stesso tempo, tuttavia, non mancano i casi in cui la dottrina di Parmenide venga posto sul banco degli imputati da autori che si rivolgono all' Eleate con un atteggiamento critico, cercando di mostrare come il ferreo razionalismo delle sue posizioni conduca, in alcuni casi, a un cortocircuito logico-ontologico difficile da accettare nella sua radicalità.

In conclusione, ciò che emerge con chiarezza da tutti gli studi di questo volume è il fatto che non sia possibile affrontare alcuni grandi temi filosofici del pensiero antico senza prendere nella dovuta considerazione il condizionamento o almeno la suggestione che il pensiero eleatico ha fortemente esercitato sulla riflessione a lui successiva." (p. 18).

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Parmenides: Studien in Deutsch

Bibliographie

1. Angehrn, Emil. 2011. "Einheit, Ganzheit, Identität. Zur Frühgeschichte des metaphysischen Denkens bei Parmenides." In Einheit und Vielheit als metaphysisches Problem, edited by Brachtendorf, Johannes and Herzberg, Stephan, 15-33. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

2. Bäumker, Clemens. 1886. "Die Einheit des parmenideischen Seienden." Jarhrbuch für klassische Philologie no. 133:541-561.

3. Benz, Hubert. 2000. "Parmenides im Denken Martin Heideggers: Ein Fall von Seinsvergessenheit." Antike und Abendland,:21-45.

4. Bernardy, Jörg. 2017. Der Traum vom neutralen Blick: Parmenides und Wittgenstein als radikale Realisten. Freiburg: Alber.

5. Bloch, Karl. 1953. "Über die Ontologie des Parmenides." Classica et Mediaevalia no. 14:1-29.

"Outlines the ontological characteristics which Parmenides assigns to Being (timelessness, indivisibility, immutability, and changelessness), and the four ontological categories which result there from: modality, quantity, relation, and quality."

6. Boeder, Heribert. 1967. "Parmenides und das Verfall des kosmologischen Wissens." Philosophische Jahrbuch no. 74:30-77.

Nachdruck: Gerald Meier (Hrsg.), Heribert Boeder, Das Bauzeug der Geschichte. Aufsätze und Vorträge zur griechischen und mittelalterlichen Philosophie, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1994 pp. 117-187.

"Argues that Parmenides' antagonism towards cosmological investigations (which, according to him, reveal only a world of opinion and appearance) was responsible for the decline of cosmology as a science among his successors."

7. ———. 1968. "Der Ursprung der 'Dialektik' in der Theorie des Seienden. Parmenides und Zenon." Studium Generale no. 2:184-202.

Nachdruck: Gerald Meier (Hrsg.), Heribert Boeder, Das Bauzeug der Geschichte. Aufsätze und Vorträge zur griechischen und mittelalterlichen Philosophie, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1994 pp. 95-115.

"Attempts to elucidate the process through which mythological and archaic thought was transformed into rigorous dialectical reasoning among the early Greek philosophers. Identifies Parmenides as the major factor in the creation of dialectics in the sense of critical thinking. Argues that Zeno's dialectics, far from being a negative exercise in eristics, was the way in which critical thinking first emerged as the tool par excellence in philosophical inquiry." [N.]

8. Böhme, Robert. 1986. Die Verkannte Muse. Dichtersprache und geistige Tradition des Parmenides. Bern: Francke.

9. Bormann, Karl. 1971. Parmenides. Untersuchungen zu den Fragmenten. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.

Vorwort VII-VIII; Kapitel I. Der Stand der Parmenides-Forschung. Ziel und Methode der Untesuchung 1; Kapitel II. Die Fragmente. Text 28, Übersetzung 29; Kapitel III. Interpretation 56; Schluss 183; Anmerkungen 185; Quellen und Literatur 253; Namenregister 260-263.

"Schluss. Das Seiende, das Kennen des Seienden, menschliches νοεΐν und scheinbare Realität, im Zusammenhang hiermit der einzig richtige und die beiden falschen Wege der Forschung sind die großen Themen des parmenideischen Denkens. Der Weg der Wahrheit endet nicht mit der Lehre vom Seienden und den Ausführungen über das mit dem Seienden verbundene νοεΐν, sondern führt auch zur Erhellung der rein menschlichen Erkenntnis und der von ihr hervorgebrachten scheinbaren Realität. Das Seiende ist gleichmäßig ausgedehnt und kugelförmig. Wollte man aristotelische Terminologie auf es anwenden, dann ist es eine Substanz, die nur Quantität, aber keine bestimmte Quantität hat. Weder innerhalb noch außerhalb des Seienden existiert das Nichts; die räumlichen Grenzen bilden weder den Abschluß gegen anderes Seiendes noch gegen das Nichts, sondern, in der Ganzheit des Seienden gegründet, schließen sie das Seiende ein und gewährleisten seine Ganzheit. Somit erwies die Interpretation die Richtigkeit der auf Aristoteles und Theophrast >· zurückgehenden Konzeption. In der Erkenntnislehre ist der Unterschied zwischen göttlichem und menschlichem Erkennen von größter Wichtigkeit. Das göttliche Erkennen sieht das Seiende so, wie es ist; das menschliche Erkennen erreicht das Seiende nicht, sondern entwirft die scheinbare Realität.

Durch diese Lehren sind alle denkerischen Bemühungen vor Parmenides als falsch zurückgewiesen worden. In wenigen Fällen sind einige Denker kenntlich, deren Theorien durch die parmenideische Argumentation widerlegt werden. Die Ablehnung aller früheren Deutungsversuche der Wirklichkeit besagt nicht, daß Parmenides von ihnen gänzlich unbeeinflußt geblieben ist, wenngleich solcher Einfluß selten zu entdecken ist2). Auffallend ist, daß gerade hierbei eine altpythagoreische Doktrin (Seelenwanderung) mit Wahrscheinlichkeit anzutreffen ist; das läßt erwarten, daß noch mehr Bezüge zwischen Parmenides und dem frühen Pythagoreismus sichtbar werden, wenn sich das Dunkel um diesen gelichtet hat. Die Methode des Parmenides ist dadurch ausgezeichnet, daß er der erste unter den Vorsokratikern zu sein scheint, der argumentiert. Direkte und indirekte Beweisführung werden verwendet; die Kreisförmigkeit der Argumentation3) ahmt das »wohlgerundete« Seiende nach.

Thema des zweiten Teils der Untersuchung wird die antike Parmenides-Interpretation sein. Angestrebt wird die Beantwortung von drei Fragen: 1) Was galt als Philosophie des Parmenides? 2) Stimmt die jeweilige Auffassung mit den Fragmenten überein, und welche Autoren haben Parmenides verstanden und deuten seine Lehre richtig? 3) Ist es möglich, die Lehren der Fragmente durch doxographische Berichte zu erweitern? Falls es nämlich Autoren gibt, welche den Inhalt der Fragmente richtig darstellen, darf angenommen werden, daß ihr Bericht auch dann zuverlässig ist, wenn er durch die Fragmente nicht zu verifizieren ist, ihnen aber auch nicht widerspricht. Da die Fragmente ein zwar lückenhaftes, aber doch, was den Seinsteil und die Charakteristik der Doxa betrifft, ein klares Bild ergeben, ist von ihnen her die Doxo-graphie zu beurteilen. Notwendige Voraussetzung hierfür aber ist eine Interpretation der Fragmente; sie wurde im ersten Teil versucht." (183-184)

10. Bröcker, Walter. 1958. "Gorgias contra Parmenides." Hermes.Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie no. 86:425-440.

11. ———. 1978. "Parmenides' ἀλήθεια." Hermes.Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie no. 106:504-505.

12. Brzoska, Andreas. 1992. Absolutes Sein: Parmenides' Lehrgedicht und seine Spiegelung im Sophistes. Münster: Lit.

13. Burkert, Walter. 1969. "Das Proömium des Parmenides und die Katabasis des Pythagoras." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 14:1-30.

14. Bux, Ernst. 1941. "Gorgias und Parmenides." Hermes.Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie no. 76:393-407.

15. Constantineau, Pkilippe. 1984. Parmenides und Hegel über das Sein. Zur Interpretation des Anfangs der Hegelschen Logik. Heidelberg: Universität Heidelberg.

16. Deichgräber, Karl. 1959. Parmenides' Auffahrt zur Göttin des Rechts: Untersuchungen zum Prooimion seines Lehrgedichts. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner.

Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz, Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse 11.

17. ———. 1983. Das Ganze-Eine des Parmenides. Fünf Interpretationen zu seinem Lehrgedich. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner.

Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz, Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse 7.

18. Detel, Wolfgang. 1982. "Zeichen bei Parmenides." Semiosis no. 4:21-40.

19. Drews, Friedemann. 2012. "Intelligibles = Sinnliches? Simplikios’ differenzierter Umgang mit Aristoteles’ Parmenides-Kritik." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie no. 155:389-412.

20. Drvota, Tomáš. 1998. Parmenides. Eine Vorarbeit in der Religionsgeschichte. Prag.

21. ———. 2006. "Die Kosmologie des Parmenides." Listy Filologické / Folia philologica no. 129:1-50.

From the English Summary: "The question why the poem of Parmenides includes a detailed account of the origin and the order of the world that according to his ontology is deprived of truth, cannot be answered with certainty. There are affinites between the Parmenides' cosmos and his absolute hen, and so the ancient idea of the unity of god and the cosmos seems to be at the background of his philosophical system.

(...)

On the basis of this reconstruction it is possible to outline the main features of the Parmenidean cosmological system. It is a very archaic conception of the universe divided into three spheres, paralled in the Babylonian and Indian cosmography. In contrast to the systems recognizing the seven planets, in this case the fixed stars are located under the sun. In Greece, this system is recognizable in the thought of Anaximander, Metrodorus or Leucippus as a parallel to the more developed Pythagorean model.

Another important feature of this system is a contraposition of two balancing cosmic principles, Fire and Earth. A dark and solid principle is represented in the very centre, while the edges are dominated by a principle that is light and thin. Between these extremes, there is a gradual transition from one principle to the other. In the process of creation of a cosmos, these two elementarily pure principles mingle and mix. Yet whenever this process is referred to as 'hateful' or 'abominable' (stygeros), we can assume that everything that stems from it has a negative character. In the proem, Parmenides describes a passage leading out of this world and towards knowledge of eternal and immutable truth." (pp. 48-50).

22. Ebert, Theodor. 1989. "Wo beginnt der Weg der Doxa? Eine Textumstellung im Fragmente 8 des Parmenides." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 34:121-138.

23. Engelhard, Hans Peter. 1996. Die Sicherung der Erkenntnis bei Parmenides. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog.

24. Erbse, Hartmut. 1998. "Parmenides und Sokrates bei Platon: Ein literaturgeschichtlicher Versuch." Hermes.Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie no. 126:15-30.

25. Falus, R. 1960. "Parmenides-Interpretationen." Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae no. 8:267-294.

26. Farandos, Georgios D. 1982. Die Wege des Suchens bei Heraklit und Parmenides ; die Dialektik des Suchens und Findens. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann.

27. Feyerabend, Barbara. 1984. "Zur Wegmetaphorik beim Godblättchen aus Hipponion und dem Proömium des Parmenides." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie no. 127:1-22.

28. Fränkel, Hermann Ferdinand. 1930. "Parmenidesstudien." Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen:153-192.

Nachdruck: Franz Tietze (Hrsg.), Wege und Formen frühgriechischen Denkens: literarische und philosophiegeschichtliche Studien, München: Beck 1955, zweite erweiterte Auflage, 1960.

29. ———. 1951. Dichtung und Philosophie des frühen Griechentums. Eine Geschichte der griechischen Epik, Lyrik und Prosa bis zur Mitte des fünften Jahrhunderts. New York: American Philological Association.

Zweite edition München: C. H. Beck 1962.

30. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1952. "Retraktationen zum Lehrgedicht des Parmenides." In Varia variorum: Festgabe für Karl Reinhardt dargebracht von Freunden und Schülern zum 14. Februar 1951, 58-68. Münster - Köln: Böhlau.

31. ———. 1988. "Parmenides oder das Diesseits des Seins." La Parola del passato no. 43:143-176.

32. Gianvittorio, Laura. 2013. "Sprechen und Verstehen bei Heraklit und Parmenides." Mnemosyne no. 66:1-29.

Abstract: "Many scholars explain the epistemological value of Heraclitus’ λόγος by interpreting it as a rational or mathematical pattern, whose translations refer to the related semantic fields: e.g. ‘law of thinking’, ‘proportion’, ‘formula of things’. Such meanings are not safely documented earlier than the philosophical language of the fourth century BC. From Homer until the end of the sixth century BC, λέγειν means basically ‘to collect’ and ‘to tell’, λόγος means ‘collection’ and much more often ‘speech’, whereas ‘speech’ itself represents a ‘collection of utterances (ἔπεα, µῦθοι)’.

Maybe our common sense suggests that no speaking activity can affect the human understanding as Heraclitus’ λόγος does. However, another archaic thinker, Parmenides, argues that ‘names’ and ‘naming’ mislead the opinions of human beings concerning natural phenomena. Furthermore, Heraclitus’ epistemology conforms to the Grundbedeutung of λόγος as ‘collection of utterances’ and consists in ‘listening’ (ἀκούειν) and ‘putting together’ (ξυνιέναι), even grasping the secret ‘joint’ (ἁρµονίη) of things. That is why I suggest to interpret λόγος according to the archaic, not philosophical meaning of the word, i.e. as ‘speech’."

33. Graeser, Andreas. 1977. "Parmenides über Sagen und Denken." Museum Helveticum no. 34:145-155.

"Explores the relationship among the concept of Being, the function of language, and the reality of eternal truth in the philosophy of Parmenides, emphasizing the intimate and inseparable connection in which they stand related to one another." [N.]

34. ———. 2002. "Platons « Parmenides » 132a1-b2 und Speusipp " Museum Helveticum no. 59:133-136.

35. ———. 2003. Platons « Parmenides ». Stuttgart: Steiner.

36. Günther, Hans Christian. 1998. Aletheia und Doxa: das Proömium des Gedichts des Parmenides. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.

37. ———. 2001. Grundfragen des griechischen Denkens: Heraklit, Parmenides und der Anfang der Philosophie in Griechenland. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann.

38. Heidegger, Martin. 1954. "'Moira' (Parmenides, fr. 8,34-41)." In Vorträge und Aufsätze, 231-256. Pfullingen: G. Neske.

39. ———. 1982. Parmenides. Freiburger Vorlesung Wintersemester 1942/1943. Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann.

Herausgegeber Manfred S. Frings.

40. Heinrich, Klaus. 1966. Parmenides und Jona. Vier Studien über das Verhdltnis von Philosophie und Mythologie. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.

41. Heitsch, Ernst. 1970. Gegenwart und Evidenz bei Parmenides. Aus der Problemgeschichte der Aequivokation. Wiesbaden: Steiner.

42. ———. 1974. Parmenides und die Anfänge der Ontologie, Logik und Naturwissenschaft. München: Tusculum.

43. ———. 1974. "Evidenz und Wahrschenlichtkeitsaussagen bei Parmenides." Hermes.Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie no. 102:411-419.

Nachdruck: E. Heitsch, Gesammelte Schriften. II. Zur griechischen Philosophie, München-Leipzig: K. G. Saur 2001, pp. 80-88.

44. ———. 1977. "Parmenides." Gymnasium no. 84:1-18.

Nachdruck: E. Heitsch, Gesammelte Schriften. II. Zur griechischen Philosophie, München-Leipzig: K. G. Saur 2001, pp. 62-79.

45. ———. 1979. Parmenides und die Anfänge der Erkenntniskritik und Logik. Donauwörth: L. Auer.

Inhalt: Einführung 7; I. Parmenides (1977) 15; II. Der Ort der Wahrheit. Aus der Frügeschichte des Wahrtheitsgegriffs 33; III. Evidenz und Wahrscheinlichkeitsaussagen bei Parmenides (1974) 71; IV. Logischer Zwang und die Anfänge der Beweistechnik (1975) 81; V. Die Erkenntniskritik des Xenophanes (1966) 102; VI. Ein Buchtitel des Protagoras (1969) 132-136.

46. Held, Klaus. 1980. Heraklit, Parmenides und die Anfang von Philosophie und Wissenschaft. Eine phänomenologische Besinnung. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

47. Hennigfeld, Jochem. 1993. Geschichte Der Sprachphilosophie: Antike Und Mittelalter. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Kapiterl II. Parmenides. Sein und Sprechen, ss. 14-22.

48. Hölscher, Uvo. 1956. "Grammatisches zu Parmenides." Hermes.Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie no. 84:385-397.

49. ———. 1956. Parmenides. Von Wesen des Seienden. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.

50. Hösle, Vittorio. 1984. Wahrheit und Geschichte. Studien zur Struktur der Philosophiegeschichte unter paradigmatischer Analyse der Entwicklung von Parmenides bis Platon. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog.

51. Huber, Marina Steinich. 2008. Parmenides’ Einübung in die Seinserkenntnis. Berlin: de Gruyter.

52. Jaeger, Werner. 1957. "Ein Verkanntes Fragment des Parmenides." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie no. 100:42-47.

Nachdruck: W. Jaeger, Scripta Minora, Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1960, vol. II, pp. 5111-516.

53. Jantzen, Jõrg. 1976. Parmenides zum Verhältnis von Sprache und Wirklichkeit. Münich: C. H. Beck.

Presents an analysis of the relationship between language and reality in the philosophy of Parmenides, focusing on the way in which the two parts of his poem stand related to each other. Maintains that both parts have the same object, namely, Being or reality, although, it insists, Being as the object of opinion becomes inevitably falsified and deformed by the human language of predication. Regards Parmenides more as a philosopher of language (comparable to Frege, Russell, and the early Wittgenstein) than as a metaphysician in the platonic tradition." [N.]

54. Jeck, Udo Reinhold. 2016. "Philia und Eros: Überlegungen zu einer neu edierten Aufzeichnung Martin Heideggers über Parmenides (fr. 13)." Heidegger Studies no. 32:105-127.

55. Jucker, Hans. 1968. "Zur Bildnisherme des Parmenides." Museum Helveticum no. 25:181-185.

56. Jüngel, Eberhard. 1964. Zum Ursprung der Analogie bei Parmenides und Heraklit. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Analogie als Ansatz - Parmenides, ss. 9-29.

57. Jürgasch, Thomas. 2013. Theoria versus Praxis?: Zur Entwicklung eines Prinzipienwissens im Bereich der Praxis in Antike und Spätantike. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Kapitel 3: Parmenides’ Einsicht in das Herz der Wahrheit, pp. 20-44.

58. Kalogerakos, Ioannis G. 1996. Seele und Unsterblichkeit. Untersuchungen zur Vorsokratik bis Empedokles. Berlin: B. G. Teubner.

Kapitel VI. Parmenides, ss. 252-267.

59. Kingsley, Peter. 2000. Die Traumfahrt des Parmenides: die mystischen Wurzeln der westlichen Zivilisation. Frankfurt am Main: Krüger.

60. Kirstein, Roland. 2009. Wege mit Parmenides: Koordinaten parmenideischer Philosophie. Münster: Rhema.

61. Klowski, Joachim. 1969. "Die Konstitution der Begriffe Nichts und Sein durch Parmenides." Kant-Studien no. 60:404-416.

62. ———. 1977. "Parmenides' Grundlegung seiner Seinslehre B 2-7 (Diels-Kranz)." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie no. 120:97-137.

63. Knoll, Manuel. 2017. Antike Griechische Philosophie. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Kapitel 3: Heraklit, Parmenides und die eleatische Schule, ss. 64-95 (Parmenides, ss. 78-90)

64. Koplin, Fritz. 2016. "Parmenides: Über die Menschwerdung des Geistes. Kritische Neuübersetzung, neue Ergebnisse und Lösungen zum Lehrgedicht." In.

65. Kraus, Manfred. 1988. Name und Sache: ein Problem im frühgriechischen Denken. Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner.

Kapitel III: Sein und Name - Parmenides von Elea, pp. 57-97.

66. ———. 2005. "Νῦν ἔστιν ὁμοῦ πᾶν Sein, Raum und Zeit im Lehrgedicht des Parmenides." In Frühgriechisches Denken, edited by Georg, Rechenauer, 252-269. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

67. Kutschera, Franz von. 2004. "Teile von Ideen: zu Platons « Parmenides »." In Ausgewählte Aufsätze, edited by Kutschera, Franz von, 273-291. Paderborn: Mentis.

68. Loew, Emmanuel. 1928. "Das Lehrgedicht des Parmenides. Gliederung und Gedankengang." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie no. 78:148-165.

69. ———. 1928. "Das Lehrgedicht des Parmenides. Eine Kampfschrift Gegen die Lehre Heraklits." Philologische Wochenschrift no. 48:605-608.

70. Mansfeld, Jaap. 1964. Die Offenbarung des Parmenides und die menschliche Welt. Assen: Van Gorcum.

"Mansfeld has given us one of the most penetrating and original discussions of Parmenides' poem since Fränkel's Parmenidesstudien in 1930. The book consists of four chapters, each one of which might stand alone as an independent essay, but which together aim at a unified view of Parmenides' thought. Mansfeld develops his interpretation with a wealth of detail, a careful, nearly complete, and on the whole judicious discussion of other views, which makes his book at once a commentary on the poem and a valuable survey of earlier scholarship.

Chapter I ('Die Vorgeschichte des dritten Wegs') is a brilliant study of the literary and historical background of fragment 6, designed to clarify the question whether or not Parmenides is referring to Heraclitus in his polemic against ignorant mortals (...). Mansfeld's answer to this question is, I think, the correct one: the evidence of fragment 6 and of the poem generally is compatible with a reference to Heraclitus but does not require it (pp. 41 and 204-208). The parallels are perfectly intelligible without the assumption that Parmenides has Heraclitus in mind. Since there is no relevant external evidence, we are faced with a question of historical fact which we have no historical means of deciding. What we can say is that if Parmenides was familiar with Heraclitus' work, he may have seen in it simply "die modernste Formulierung der archaischen Bestimmungen des Menschen" (41), and thus made use of Heraclitean terms in fr. 6 to characterize human folly as such. Certainly fr. 6 does not refer uniquely or primarily to the folly of Heraclitus.

(...)

Chapter II ('Die Logik des Parmenides: Disjunktion und Implikation') is a stimulating but on the whole unsatisfactory analysis of the argument in the section on Truth. Mansfeld here attempts to identify Parmenides as the originator of the Megaric-Stoic tradition of ancient propositional logic, in contrast with the Aristotelian logic of terms. Mansfeld is certainly correct in insisting upon the careful structure of Parmenides' argument and upon the logical character of the fundamental krisis as an exclusive disjunction. This disjunction, éstin mé ouk éstin, is in fact a compressed statement of the law of contradiction and the law of excluded middle at once. But Mansfeld is much less successful in his reconstruction of various syllogisms of the Stoic type in fr. 2 (pp. 56-62). And in presenting Parmenides and Zeno as 'logicians' he fails to distinguish between skill in constructing particular arguments, which the two Eleatics exhibit to a remarkable degree, and the analysis of forms of valid argument, which is the proper achievement of the logician and of which there is really no evidence before Aristotle, except for a few remarks in the Platonic dialogues. Mansfeld also fails to distinguish between implication understood as a conditional proposition ('If p, then q') and implication as entailment between propositions ('p. Therefore q'). (For Mansfeld's use of implication in the former sense, see e. g. pp. 100. 102 ; for the latter, confusedly, pp. 59. 68. Thus the arrow, which symbolizes inference to a conclusion on p. 59 is used to represent the propositional connective 'if ... then. . on p. 108.)"

From: Charles H. Kahn review in: Gnomon. Kritische Zeitschrift für die Gesamte Klassische Altertumwissenschaft, 42, 1970, pp. 113-118.

71. ———. 1966. "Parmenides, Fr. B 2,1." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie no. 109:95-96.

72. Marcinkowska-Rosól, Maria. 2007. "Zur Syntax von Parmenides Fr. 1. 31-32." Hermes.Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie no. 135:134-148.

73. ———. 2009. "Der Elenchos des Parmenides (DK 28 B6, 1-3 und B7, 1-2)." Eos. Commentarii Societatis Philologae Polonorum no. 96:7-28.

74. ———. 2010. Die Konzeption des "noein" bei Parmenides von Elea. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

75. Matsui, Yoshiyasu. 2007. "Der Bann des Seins." Philosophisches Jahrbuch no. 114:265-278.

76. Mauerhofer, Kenneth. 1997. "Parmenides DK 28 B 8, 19-20." Museum Helveticum no. 54:193-203.

77. Meixner, Uwe. 1994. "Parmenides und die Logik der Existenz." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 47:59-75.

78. Merlan, Philip. 1966. "Neues Licht auf Parmenides." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie:267-276.

79. Mugler, Charles. 1975. "Der Schatten des Parmenides." Hermes.Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie no. 103:144-154.

80. Müller, Enrico. 2005. Die Griechen im Denken Nietzsches. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Kapitel 4: Nietzsches philosophische Selbstsituierung: Zur Auseinandersetzung mit Heraklit und Parmenides, ss. 139-162.

81. Neumann, Gunther. 2006. "Sein und Logos. Heideggers frühe Auseinandersetzung mit Parmenides." In Heidegger und die Logik, edited by Alfred, Denker and Zaborowski, Holger, 65-87. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

82. ———. 2006. Der Anfang der abendländischen Philosophie. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.

Eine vergleichende Untersuchung zu den Parmenides-Auslegungen von Emil Angehrn, Günter Dux, Klaus Held und dem frühen Martin Heidegger.

83. Padrutt, Hanspeter. 1991. Und sie bewegt sich doch nicht. Parmenides im epochalen Winter. Zürich: Diogenes.

84. Perger, Mischa von. 2001. "Möglichkeit,Parmenideisch." In Potentialität und Possibilität. Modalaussagen in der Geschichte der Metaphysik, edited by Buchheim, Thomas, Kneepkens, Corneille Henri and Lorenz, Kuno, 25-42. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog.

85. Pfeiffer, Horand. 1975. Die Stellung des parmenideischen Lehrgedichtes in der epischen Tradition. Bonn: R. Habelt.

86. Popper, Karl Raiumund. 2001. Die Welt des Parmenides: der Ursprung des europäischen Denkens München: Piper.

87. Primavesi, Oliver. 2005. "Theologische Allegorie. Zur philosophischen Funktion einer poetischen Form bei Parmenides und Empedokles." In Wissensvermittlung in dichterischer Gestalt, edited by Horster, Marietta and Reitz, Christiane, 69-93. Stuttgart: Steiner.

88. ———. 2011. "Der Weg zur Offenbarung: Über Licht und Nacht im Proömium des Parmenides." In Anschaulichkeit in Kunst und Literatur. Wege bildlicher Visualisierung in der europäischen Geschichte, edited by Uhlmann, Gyburg and Schmitt, Arbogast, 181-231. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

89. Proklos. 2002. Kommentar zu Platons Parmenides 141 E-142 A. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Eingeleitet, übersetzt und erläutert von Rainer Bartholomai. 2. neu bearbeitete Auflage.

90. Rapp, Christof. 2005. "Eleatischer Monismus." In Frühgriechisches Denken, edited by Georg, Rechenauer, 290-315. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

91. Rappe, Guido. 1995. Archaische Leiberfahrung. Der Leib in der frühgriechischen Philosophie und in außereuropäischen Kulturen. Berlin: de Gruyter.

4. Parmenides, ss. 135-169.

92. Reckermann, Alfons. 1982. "Nietzsche und Parmenides." Philosophisches Jahrbuch no. 89:325-346.

93. Reich, Klaus. 1954. "Parmenides und die Pythagoreer." Hermes.Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie no. 82:287-294.

94. Reinhardt, Karl. 1916. Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie. Frankfurt: Klostermann.

Contents: Einleitung 1; I. Parmenides 5; II. Xenophanes 89; III. Heraklit 155; IV. Schulzusammenhänge 231; V. Logik und Mystik 250; Register 259.

Nachdruck: Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2012.

95. Rumpf, Lorenz. 2005. "Lukrez und Parmenides." Philologus no. 149:78-95.

96. Schlüter, Jochen. 1979. Heidegger und Parmenides. Ein Beitrag zu Heideggers Parmenidesauslegung und zur Vorsokratikerforschung. Bonn: Bouvier.

Ein Beitrag zu Heideggers Parmenidesauslegung und zur Vorsokratiker-Forschung, zur Formung des parmenideischen Prooimions (28B1).

97. Schmitt, Arbogast. 2007. "Parmenides und der Ursprung der Philosophie." In Anfang und Ursprung. Die Frage nach dem Ersten in Philosophie und Kulturwissenschaft, edited by and Angehrn, Emil, 109-139. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

98. ———. 2023. Frage nach dem Sein bei Parmenides. Hannover: Der Blaue Reiter.

99. Schmitz, Hermann. 1988. Der Ursprung des Gegenstandes. Von Parmenides bis Demokrit. Bonn: Bouvier.

100. Schwabl, Hans. 1953. "Sein und Doxa bei Parmenides." Wiener Studien no. 66:50-75.

Nachdruck: H. G. Gadamer (Hrsg.), Um die Begriffswelt der Vorsokratiker, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968, pp. 391-422.

"Discusses the relationship between the realm of Being and the world of opinion in the philosophy of Parmenides. Emphasizes the fact that even though the sensible world stands in radical opposition to Being, both are ultimately the complementary polarities of one philosophical vision which remains coherent and consistent within itself. Offers comments on the impact of Milesian and Pythagorean ideas on the formation of Parmenidean thought."

101. ———. 1956. "Parmenides Forschungsbericht 1939-1955." Anzeiger für die Altertumswissenschaft no. 9:129-156.

102. ———. 1957. "Zur Theogonie bei Parmenides und Empedokles." Wiener Studien no. 70:278-289.

103. ———. 1963. "Hesiod und Parmenides: zur Formung des parmenideischen Prooimions (28 B 1)." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie no. 106:134-142.

104. ———. 1972. "Parmenides Forschungsbericht 1957-1971." Anzeiger für die Altertumswissenschaft no. 25:15-43.

105. Scuto, Giuseppe. 2005. Parmenides' Weg. Vom Wahr-Scheinenden zum Wahr-Seienden. Sankt Augustin: Academ verlag.

Mit einer Untersuchung zur Beziehung des parmenideischen zum indischen Denken.

Inhalt: Einleitung 7; I. Der Text 15; Die Fragmente 17; Das Lexikon 63; II. Der Weg 75; Durch das Tor 77; Die Natur des Wahr-Scheinenden 98; Die κρίσις 115; Das Herz des Wahr-Seienden 137; III. Die Rezeption 155; Verlegenheit 157; Anhang 171; Parmenides und das indische Denken 173; Schluss 196; Bibliographie 202; Namenregister 210.

106. Sellmer, Sven. 1998. Argumentationsstrukturen bei Parmenide: zur Methode des Lehrgedichts und ihren Grundlagen. New York: Peter Lang.

107. Slonimsky, Henry. 1912. Heraklit und Parmenides. Giessen: A. Töpelmann.

3. Parmenides, ss. 32-62.

108. Snell, Bruno. 1975. "Aletheia." Würzburger Jahrbucher für die Altertumswissenschaft no. 1:9-17.

Festschrift Ernst Siegmann.

109. Sommer, Marc Nicolas. 2019. "Vater Parmenides. Denken und Sein in moderner Metaphysik." Philosophische Rundschau no. 66:327-358.

110. Songe-Møller, Vigdis. 1980. Zwiefältige Wahrheit und zeitliches Sein. Eine Interpretation des parmenideischen Gedichts. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

111. Stallmach, Josef. 1981. "Der Mensch zwischen Schein und Sein. Zum anthropologischen Motif im parmenideischen Denken." In Gnomosyne: menschliches Denken und Handeln in der frühgriechischen Literatur : Festschrift für Walter Marg zum 70. Geburtstag, edited by Kurz, Gebhard. München: C. H. Beck.

112. Stamer, Gerhard. 2001. Parmenides. Kurzer Traktat über Ursprungserfahrung der Philosophie. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann.

113. Steiger, Kornél. 1986. "Die Kosmologie des Parmenides und Empedokles." Oikumene no. 5:173-236.

114. Stemich, Martina. 2008. Parmenides' Einübung in die Seinserkenntnis. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

115. Szabó, Árpád 1953. "Zum Verständnis der Eleaten." Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae no. 2:243-289.

116. ———. 1955. "Eleatica." Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae no. 3:67-102.

117. ———. 1971. "Die Philosophie der Eleaten und der Aufbau von Euklids Elementen." Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae no. 1:195-228.

118. Tegtmeier, Erwin. 1996. "Meixner über Parmenides (Zu Uwe Meixner: Parmenides und die Logik der Existenz) "Grazer Philosophische Studien" 47, (1994)." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 51:253-257.

"Meixner argues that Parmenides' refutation of becoming is logically defective, that the term "being" occurs in two senses in his inference, synonymously with "actual" and in a wider sense. This interpretation is rejected. In addition, it is pointed out that Meixner's concepts of actuality and potentiality are not relevant referring to facts rather than to things. Finally, Meixner's disproof of what he calls "actualism" is refuted. "

119. ———. 1997. Zeit und Existenz: parmenideische Meditationen. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

120. ———. 2008. "Parmenides – Begründer der Substanzphilosophie." In Substantia - Sic et Non, edited by Gutschmidt, Holger, Lang-Balestra, Antonella and Segalerba, Gianluigi, 9-16. Berlin: de Gruyter.

121. Thanassas, Panagiotis. 1997. Die erste "zweite Fahrt". Sein des Seienden und Erscheinen der Welt bei Parmenides. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag.

122. ———. 2005. "Doxa Revisitata." In Frühgriechisches Denken, edited by Georg, Rechenauer, 270-289. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

123. Tugendhat, Ernst. 1970. "Das Sein und das Nichts." In Durchblicke. Festschrift für Martin Heidegger zum 80. Geburstag, 132-161. Frankfurt: Klostermann.

Nachdruck: E. Tugendhat, Philosophische Aufsätze, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1992 pp. 36-66.

124. Tulli, Mauro. 2016. "Strategien der Erzählung und der Überzeugung des Adressaten bei Parmenides." In Philosophus Orator. Rhetorische Strategien und Strukturen in philosophischer Literatur, edited by Mannlein-Robert, Irmgard, Rother, Wolfgang, Schorn, Stefan and Tornau, Christian, 31-46. Basel: Schwabe.

"An den Anfang seines Lehrgedichts stellt Parmenides die Darstellung einer persönlichen Erfahrung, einer Reise zum Wissen, zur Göttin hin, einer Reise, die ohne Zweifel über die gewöhnlichen Erfahrungen des Menschen hinausgeht. Die Erzählung stellt den Gegensatz zwischen dem Menschen dar, der in die Welt der Göttin kommt, und dem Menschen, der in der Finsternis umherirrt. Parmenides erreicht die Welt der Göttin.

Es liegt auf der Hand, den Menschen, der in der Finsternis umherirrt, mit dem Leser zu identifizieren. Aber Parmenides organisiert den Text mit Blick auf den Leser. Die Analyse, die dieser Beitrag bieten soll, will in dieser Hinsicht mehr als nur einen Aspekt herausarbeiten. Themen sind hier die Definition des Weges, die Form der Erzählung, der Enthusiasmus des Menschen, die Richtung der Reise, das Paradigma Homer, der Gruß der Göttin, das Paradigma Hesiod, der Imperativ, das Verhältnis zwischen Reise und Suche sowie das aufmerksame Zuhören. Es wäre nicht schwer, die Liste noch zu erweitern." (p. 31)

125. Verdenius, Willem Jacob. 1966. "Der Logosbegriff bei Heraklit und Parmenides." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 11:81-98.

126. ———. 1967. "Der Logosbegriff bei Heraklit und Parmenides II." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 12:99-117.

127. Welzk, Stefan. 1976. Die Einheit der Erfahrung. Eine Interpretation der parmenideischen Fragmente. München: C. Hansen.

128. Wiesner, Jürgen. 1970. "Die Negation der Entstehung des Seienden. Studien zu Parmenides B 8,5 - 21." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 52:1-34.

129. ———. 1987. "Überlegungen zu Parmenides, fr. VIII, 34." In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 170-191. Paris: Vrin.

"Sur le lien dans le Fr. 8 entre "nous " et "eon", les raisons pour lesquelles l'être est accessible à la cognition."

130. ———. 1996. Parmenides. Der Beginn der Aletheia. Untersuchungen zu B2 - B3 - B6. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Vorwort V-VI; Einleitung 1; 1, Kapitel: Antithesen 4; 2. Kapitel: Argumentation 84; Text und Übersetzung B2 - 8,2 251; Bibliographie 255; Indizes 262-280.

"Einleitung. Die bisherige Parmenidesforschung geht im Hinblick auf den Beginn des Aletheiateils von einer prinzipiell falschen Voraussetzung aus. Die Abfolge des Textes entspricht m. E. nicht der Abfolge des Gedankenganges. B 2, mit dem die Darlegung der Seinslehre einsetzt, ist auch als inhaltlicher Ausgangspunkt interpretiert worden; doch den eigentlichen gedanklichen Beginn bildet B 6,1—2. Die Argumentation verläuft von B 6,1—2 über B3 zu B2 und nicht, wie bisher allgemein angenommen, in umgekehrter Richtung. Das Statement von Karl Deichgräber (1), Parmenides formuliere, mit der Aletheia einsetzend, sogleich ein Resultat, hat seine tiefe Berechtigung. Freilich in anderem Sinne, als der Verfasser es eigentlich meinte: der Philosoph begeht keinen logischen Kurzschluß, sondern entwickelt seinen Gedankengang, der auf die Formulierung der beiden Wege hinführt, von B 6 her in kontinuierlicher Argumentation.

Um dies aufzuzeigen, ist der Nachweis notwendig, daß die bisher als Einzelfragmente gezählten Textpartien B 2, B 3, B 6 ein fortlaufendes, lückenloses Ganzes darstellen. Hierfür gibt es einmal Indizien grammatisch-sprachlicher und gedanklicher Art: Parmenides hat seinen Text höchst sorgfältig gestaltet und verwendet durchgehend Parallelführungen und Antithesen (auf manches ist bereits hingewiesen worden). Darüber hinaus führt der Gedankenablauf, wenn man die drei Fragmente zu einer Einheit zusammenschließt, zu einer Abfolge, deren Historizität beweisbar ist. Die drei Hauptpunkte, welche sich in diesem Falle für den Gedankengang ergeben, bilden nämlich gerade das positive Pendant zu den negativen Feststellungen, die am Beginn von Gorgias’ Schrift Über das Nichtseiende erscheinen: (1) Es gibt nichts. (2) Wenn es etwas gibt, ist es nicht erkennbar. (3) Wenn es erkennbar ist, kann es einem anderen nicht mitgeteilt werden. Die Reaktion des Gorgias auf Parmenides, auf die allgemein schon öfters hingewiesen worden ist, erweist sich als exakter Bezug auf den Beginn der Aletheia. Äußerungen wie diejenige von Barbara Cassin2, der Widerlegung des Gorgias läge das Produkt einer schulmäßigen Ausformulierung parmenideischer Gedanken („Parménide scolaire“) zugrunde, verlieren damit ihre Berechtigung.

Unsere Thesen sollen nun im einzelnen erläutert und begründet werden. Das Unternehmen, über den Beginn der Aletheia zu handeln, stellt freilich jeden Parmenidesinterpreten vor immense Schwierigkeiten. Wovon soll er ausgehen? Denn in den Fragmenten 2, 3 und 6 ist nahezu alles umstritten: B 2,3 und 2,5, B 3 und B 6, la—2a werden in ihrer Syntax und ihrer Argumentationsform höchst unterschiedlich erklärt." (ss. 1-2)

(1) K. Deichgräber, Parmenides’ Auffahrt zur Göttin des Rechts (Abh. Akad. Mainz 1958, Nr. 11), Wiesbaden 1959, 676.

(2) B. Cassin, Si Parménide, 44. Cassin kann der Vergleich Parmenides — Gorgias nicht gelingen, weil sie, der traditionellen Sichtweise verhaftet, für den Beginn von Gorgias von B 2 ausgeht statt von B 6.

(3) Die umfangreiche „Bibliographie parménidienne“, die Cordero seinem Buch Les deux chemins de Parmenide (1984) beigegeben hat, verzeichnet für den Zeitraum 1573 bis 1983 591 Titel (S. 240—272). Darüber hinaus ist noch eine Liste von „Ouvrages cités ne concernant pas exclusivement la pensée de Parménide“ erstellt (S. 277—281). Obwohl der Autor keinesfalls Vollständigkeit in Anspruch nimmt (siehe seine Vorbemerkung S. 239 - 240), dürften in der Bibliographie die Forschungsberichte von H. Schwabl nicht fehlen. In der zweiten Liste sollten z. B. Barnes’ Presocratic Philosophers und Stokes’ Buch The One and the many aufgefuhrt sein, die ausführliche Parmenideskapitel enthalten.

131. Ziermann, Christoph. 2004. Platons negative Dialektik: eine Untersuchung der Dialoge « Sophistes » und « Parmenides ». Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Parménides. Bibliografia de estudos en Español

Bibliografia

1. Aguirre De la Luz, Nazyheli. 2020. "El verbo εἰμί en Parménides. entre epistemología y ontología." Hypnos no. 44:54-74.

Resumen: "Resumen: A partir de la propuesta de Charles H. Kahn sobre identificar como primario el valor veritativo del verbo εἰμί en el poema de Parménides, este artículo se propone dar cuenta del desarrollo del argumento central de su poema en términos de una transición de un nivel epistemológico a uno ontológico. Se argumentará que dicho recorrido sigue el despliegue semántico del verbo εἰμί, que avanza desde dicho sentido inicial veritativo hasta poner en primer plano el valor existencial, en ese entonces todavía incipiente. A su vez, se mostrará cómo cada uno de estos dos niveles interpretativos se traduce, respectivamente, en estructura lógica de la realidad y estructura fáctica y concreta, las cuales confluyen en el concepto totalizador ἐόν."

2. ———. 2021. "La denominación como operación lingüística humana en Parménides." Emerita. Revista de Lingüística y Filología Clásica no. 89.

Resumen: "Como han puesto en evidencia los trabajos de varios estudiosos en las últimas décadas, en Parménides hay una reflexión más consciente que en sus predecesores sobre la relación tripartita entre realidad, pensamiento y lenguaje. El presente estudio, que parte de las investigaciones de Woodbury (1958 y 1986) sobre el uso de ὀνόματα y de ὀνομάζω en el poema de Parménides, ofrece un nuevo y más amplio análisis de las cuatro referencias explicitas al establecimiento de nombres (Parm. 28 B 8.38-41; B 8.53-56; B 9.1 ss.; B 19.3 DK), sobre las que desarrolla una interpretación de tipo semiótico que busca hacer patente el papel que desempeña el lenguaje en la propuesta epistemológica del pensador eleático. En especial, se pone de relieve cómo la crítica de Parménides a la vía de las δόξαι βροτῶν no estaría necesariamente conectada con su postura convencionalista sobre el lenguaje, sino con la identificación de una falla en el proceso cognitivo de clasificación de la realidad por parte de los mortales."

Referencias

Woodbury, L. (1958): «Parmenides on Names», Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 63, pp. 145-160.

Woodbury, L. (1986): «Parmenides on Naming by Mortal Men: Fr. B8.53-56», Ancient Philosophy 6, pp. 1-13.

3. Arduini, Stefano. 2001. "Parménides y la metáfora de las dos vías." Logo: Revista de retórica y teoría de la comunicación no. 1:43-52.

"Este art ículo se ocupará de traducción, retórica y filosofía. Voy a considerar un texto imprescindible de la filosofía griega para ver cómo las traducciones occidentales modernas son hijas de una tradición que tiene su origen en la lectura platónica de Parménides que sucesivamente no ha sido discutida realmente, una tradición que ha descorporizado el saber y el conocimiento.

Sin duda esta crítica lleva consigo una idea de la traducción no sólo como simple teansferencia de un significado ya incluido en el texto fuente sino como construcción de un significado que está en relación con los parámetros de la cultura de la que forma parte el texto traducido(2). Esto signifíca colocar en el centro de la investigación la realidad del texto traducido, esto es, el texto real en la cultura de destino. En este caso el punto central llega a ser el de considerar la traducción como un ejemplo de manipulación del significado y de construcción de una identidad(3) .

Traducir es entonces utilizar est rategias cada vez dist intas y la traducción de un texto es una reconstrucción que siempre está orientada por la cultura en la que se realiza. En consecuencia es posible considerar la traducción también como rewriting(4) , como

reescritura. Traducir es una act ividad de reescritura porque la historia de la traducción coincide con la de la identidad de un grupo social y reescribir es pensar un texto en su ámbito cultural.

Creo que las referencias anteriores son importantes para encararnos con un texto complejo como el de Parménides, porque nuestro objetivo es precisamente entender a qué tipo de manipulación fue sometido para proponer una traducción distinta que, sin embargo, no considero menos manipulada." (p. 43)

(2) Sobre la traducción en el mundo antiguo cfr . Gentili 1989.

(3) Cfr. Lefevere 1975; id. 1992; Hermans 1985; Bassnett-Lefevere 1990; Toury 1995.

(4) Cfr. Bassnet 1991a; id. 1991b.

Referencias

Bassnett , S. 1991a Translation Studies, revised edition, London-New York.

____ 1991b "Translation and Ideology" , Koiné, I , 2: 7-32.

Bassnet t , S. e Lefevere A. 1990 Translation, History and Culture, London.

Gentili, B. 1989 Poesia e pubblico nella Grecia antica, Roma-Bari, Laterza.

Hermans, T. 1985 The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation, London-Sidney.

Lefevere, A. 1975 Translating Poetry: Seven Strategis and a Blueprint, Assen-Amsterdam.

____ 1992 Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Frame, London-New York.

Toury, G. 1995 Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, Amsterdam.

4. Bernabé Pajares, Alberto. 1998. "Lingüística antes de la lingüística: la génesis de la indagación sobre el lenguaje en la Grecia antigua." Revista Española de Lingüística no. 28:307-331.

"IX. La reflexión linguística de Parménides, pp. 320-325.

"Más importante que la aportación de Heráclito (y a mi modo de ver aún no valorada como se merece en las historias de la lingüística) es la de Parménides.

En efecto, si leemos los fragmentos del eléata observamos que su teoría filosófica está basada primordialmente en principios lingüísticos o, al menos, lingüísticamente formalizables. Su punto de partida es una reflexión lingüística, aunque llegue más allá. No voy aquí a trazar el sistema filosófico de Parménides, sino sólo hacer referencia a los principios lingüísticos en que se basa, tal y como se traslucen en sus propios fragmentos. En otros términos, lo que propongo es una lectura «lingüística» de los fragmentos del eléata. Desglosemos, pues, los principios lingüísticos sobre los que se basa." (p.320)

5. ———. 2015. "Parménides se encuentra con la diosa." In ΑΕΙΔΕ ΘΕΑ. La inspiración en la poesía religiosa, edited by Fernández Sánchez, Albertoù and Herrero de Jáuregui, Miguel, 13-31. Madrid: Ediciones Universidad San Dàmaso.

"Parménides nació en Elea, hoy Velia, en la Magna Grecia, a finales del primer cuarto del siglo VI a. C. Escribió un poema, que no ha llegado a nosotros en su totalidad, sino que solo nos quedan de él algunos fragmentos, escrito en el mismo tipo de verso en que estaban escritas la Ilíada y la Odisea o las obras de Hesíodo, esto es, los poemas épicos más antiguos. El poema, en todo caso, no debió de haber sido muy extenso. El fragmento del que voy a ocuparme, el primero de la edición canónica del autor, lo componen una treintena de versos que eran los primeros de la obra, lo que llamamos el proemio del poema, la parte en que el autor presentaba el frontispicio de lo que venía a continuación, tratando de atraer al oyente hacia su contenido." (p. 13)

(...)

"Es hora de esbozar unas conclusiones.

El proemio ni es reflejo de una experiencia real, como creen algunos(31), ni una alegoría en que todo tenga un sentido oculto(32). Intentaría definirlo como la elaboración literaria del acceso a una gran verdad que el autor interpreta como una revelación religiosa: da la impresión de que Parménides considera que el discurso sobre el ser no es una verdad más; es la Verdad.

En consecuencia, sitúa lo que tiene que decir en el ámbito en el que en su época se situaban las verdades profundas, la iniciación.

Desde las coordenadas ideológicas de la religión de su época y de su entorno, debió interpretar que se le había ocurrido porque alguien (una divinidad cuya identidad él no sabía) se la había inspirado, bien entendido que tampoco consideró que hubiera sido posible sin intervención de la razón en absoluto, de modo que debía de ser algo que estaba mas allá, que se situaba en el ámbito de las verdades eternas. En los Misterios, el espacio en que la verdad divina se transmite a los seres humanos es el espacio iniciático, entre nuestro mundo y el Más Allá, entre lo humano y lo divino, entre la vida y la muerte. Consecuentemente ése es el escenario en que Parménides sitúa la revelación, que pretende, además, presentar como legítima y no como una intromisión indebida de un mortal en las verdades de los dioses." (pp. 29-30)

(31) Cf. Gemelli Marciano, 'Images and Experience: [At the Roots of Parmenides’ Aletheia. Ancient Philosophy 28 (1):21-48 (2008)]

(32) Pace Bowra, Problems in Greek Poetry [Oxford: Clarendon Press 1953; see the chapter The Proem of Parmenides]

6. ———. 2019. "Parménides: entre linguistica, literatura y filosofia." In Eleatica Vol. 7: Parmenide: tra linguistica, letteratura e filosofia = Parménides: entre lingüística, literatura y filosofía, edited by Berruecos Frank, Bernardo and Giombini, Stefania, 49-118. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

"A diferencia de los milesios, que expresaban sus ideas sobre el origen y sobre la evolución de las cosas en un relato en prosa, sin especificar el modo en que habian llegado a sus conclusiones, Parménides, que expone corno piedra angular de toda su obra la premisa sobre lo que es, y que luego argumenta detenidamente sobre las consecuencias de està afirmación inicial, presenta tanto una corno la otra corno reveladas por una diosa y describe pormenorizadamente en un poema hexamétrico, un viaje que lo conduce a presencia de està divinidad. Mourelatos (1970,46) tiene razón en senalar que la pregunta «why poetry» no debe siquiera hacerse, dado que el λόγος en prosa no seria una opción viva para alguien que se sitùa en las coordenadas ideológicas del autor. Ademàs, escribir un poema hexamétrico en una tradición literaria tan formalizada corno la griega representaba situarse en un contexto tradicional, cuyos modelos mas evidentes son Homero y Hesiodo.

La parte del poema en que la presencia de la tradición se advierte de manera mas intensa es el proemio, el punto en el que el contraste entre forma literaria y contenido se hace mas evidente. Pese a todo, el proemio de Parménides es también atipico para la poesia hexamétrica tradicional. Dado que estoy convencido de que el proemio no es algo ajeno a su filosofia, sino todo lo contrario, la fundamenta, creo que el anàlisis en detalle de cuànto de lo que en él se lee procede de la tradición y cuânto es innovación del autor puede ser revelador de su importancia y su función dentro del poema en su conjunto." (pp. 49-60)

Referencias

Mourelatos 1970. The route of Parmenides, New Haven-London (Las Vegas-Zürich-Athens 2008^2).

7. Bernal, Sonsoles Alonso. 2011. "Parménides: el poema y su datación." Ontology Studies no. 11:297-331.

Resumen: "De Parménides no existen datos biográficos; solamente la atribución de la autoría del Poema y una escasa leyenda transmitida por los platónico-aristotélicos. El género poético del Poema, escrito en hexámetros, remite su composición a una época en que la poesía era oral, gestada en el seno de tradiciones gremiales de vates, ligadas a lugares de culto o a sagas familiares. Nuestro trabajo intenta demostrar que el Poema sufrió la misma peripecia diacrónica que los demás poemas de su género y que no tuvo un único autor. Hemos encontrado huellas de una diacronía compositiva anterior al momento de su redacción escrita: por un lado, nexos con el folclore minorasiático sitúan el origen matricial del Poema en una época anterior a la fundación de Elea, pero, por otro, ciertos conocimientos cientí#cos que se exhiben en la Teogonía -el origen de las mareas o el origen solar de la luz lunar- sólo pueden datarse a principios del s. IV a. C. y los interpretamos como la huella del escriba: sitúan en esa época la redacción escrita de la obra."

8. Berruecos Frank, Bernardo. 2015. "Las hijas del Sol en el proemio de Parménides." Diánoia no. 60:55-84.

Resumen: "El presente trabajo esbozará ciertos elementos para una interpretación global del proemio de Parménides, a partir del análisis de uno de sus elementos centrales: las doncellas hijas del Sol. Tras examinar las acciones que éstas realizan dentro de la narración, y con el objetivo de defender una interpretación alegórica, se definirá la actividad alegórica arcaica mediante algunos ejemplos. Finalmente, se trazarán los cimientos para una revalorización crítica de la interpretación de Sexto Empírico y se argumentará que la alegoría platónica del carro alado como símbolo de la ψυχή en el Fedro bien podría estar recreando y evocando de cerca el mito parmenideo del proemio.

La disyuntiva hermenéutica (ἀνάβασις-κατάβασις) se halla motivada por la ambigüedad intrínseca del relato, ambigüedad que tiene por objeto mostrar la unidad real de los contrarios aparentes a través del símbolo de las doncellas hijas del Sol."

9. ———. 2019. "Bene rotunda et globosa ueritas : Epítetos de la verdad en Parménides DK28 B1.29." Archai. As origens do pensamento ocidental no. 26:1-25.

Resumen: "En el presente artículo se discuten brevemente las tres variantes, ofrecidas por la tradición, del adjetivo que califica ἀληθείη en el fr. DK28 B1.29 de Parménides, es decir, εὐφεγγέος, εὐπειθέος y εὐκυκλέος, buscando sobre todo aclarar la última de éstas. Dicha lectura ha sido acogida por algunos editores del Poema no sólo por ser considerada la lectio difficilior (así ya desde Diels), sino también debido a la autoridad de quien la ha transmitido, Simplicio, y a la conexión que emerge con la imagen de la esfera del fragmento B8. Se presenta a continuación un breve estudio sobre el adjetivo εὔκυκλος y su significación en la poesía arcaica griega y finalmente se intenta dar una posible respuesta a la pregunta de por qué la diosa habría calificado de “bien redonda” la verdad."

10. ———. 2019. "El Poema de Parménides y la lirica arcaica. Notas a la primera Lección Eleâtica de A. Bemabé." In Eleatica Vol. 7: Parmenide: tra linguistica, letteratura e filosofia = Parménides: entre lingüística, literatura y filosofía, edited by Berruecos Frank, Bernardo and Giombini, Stefania, 135-145. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

"En la primera Lección Eleàtica (pp. 53-54), AB [Alberto Bernabé] cita y rebere a este pasaje de la Olimpica sexta de Pindaro y a este paralelismo que constituye uno de los tópoi literarios empleados por Parménides en el proemio y compartidos por la poesia lirica. AB simpatiza con la hipótesis del modelo comùn, pues considera que el origen de la tradición de un viaje en carro a otro espacio, comùn a Pindaro, a Parménides y conocida por Platón en el Fedro(5), estaria en un poema èpico religioso de la Magna Grecia (pp. 6-7.)" (pp. 135-136)

(5) Tal y corno Alberto Bemabé (p. 54) lo refiere, el comentarista Hermias se percató de la continuidad temàtica entre Parménides y Platón {In Phdr. 122, 19 Couvr. {OF 172) y, ademàs, de que la imagen del auriga y los caballos también file empleada por Orfeo, referencia detrae de la cual deben estar Ias Rapsodias órficas. AB aventura la hipótesis de que el mismo motivo debió figurar en una Teogonia òrfica mas antigua, reelaborada por el poeta de las Rapsodias (p. 54).

11. ———. 2021. "El nuevo Parménides de André Laks y Glenn W. Most. Nota crítica de Early Greek Philosophy, vol. 5, parte 2, cap. 19." Diánoia, Revista de Filosofía no. 66:153-170.

Resumen: "En esta nota crítica presento un análisis de los materiales textuales que constituyen el capítulo 19 de la serie Early Greek Philosophy de A. Laks y G. Most dedicado a Parménides. Después de comparar cuantitativamente los textos de este capítulo con las ediciones de H. Diels y A.H. Coxon, así como de precisar cuáles son los textos “nuevos” que figuran en esta edición y las formas en que los editores decidieron presentarlos, ofrezco algunas consideraciones sobre el concepto mismo de recepción y su operatividad en este capítulo, sobre la superación definitiva de la distinción entre testimonios y fragmentos y sobre las ventajas y desventajas que supone cortar los textos para la presentación esquemática y temática de los contenidos. Por último, examino el modo en que la doctrina de Parménides se presenta en este capítulo y muestro algunas de las decisiones que los autores tomaron sobre los innumerables problemas de transmisión textual del Poema."

12. Boeri, Marcelo D. 2006. "Aristoteles contra Parmenides. El problema del cambio y la posibilidad de una ciencia fisica." Tópicos no. 30 bis:45-68.

Resumen: "Este ensayo se propone presentlr una lectura de las criticas de Ari stóteles a Parménides en la Física. El autor sugiere que algunas importantes cuestiones que Aristóteles tiene en cuenta cuando determina los principios básicos de la ciencia de la natur aleza surgen de esas criticas, Boeri argwnenta que, a pesar del fuerte desacuerdo declarado por Aristóteles en Física 1 2-3 respecto de las posiciones eleáticas en general y la posición de Parménides en particular, Aristóteles aprovecha su discusión con Parménides de un modo constructivo a favor de su propia teoría del cambio y, en general, de las condiciones indispensables para la constitución de la ciencia de la naturaleza..Según el autor, uno de los puntod centrales del desacuerdo de Aristóteles con Parménides (la teoría del ser) es al mismo tiempo una de las más fértiles cuestion es desde el punto de vista del uso de Aristóteles de tal desacuerdo para establecer los fundamentos de su física."

13. Bossi, Beatriz. 2010. "Parménides, DK 58 B 16: ¿ el eslabón perdido ? ." In Il quinto secolo: studi di filosofia antica in onore di Livio Rossetti, edited by Giombini, Stefania and Marcacci, Flavia, 45-61. Passignano sul Trasimeno: Aguaplano editore.

14. Bredlow, Luis Andrés. 2000. El Poema de Parménides: un ensayo de interpretación.

Tesis doctoral, Universitat de Barcelona.

Resumo: "La presente tesis realiza un estudio conjunto de los fragmentos de Parménides de Elea y los testimonios acerca de su poema, con especial atención a las cuestiones del sentido de éstin/estin ("es") (cap.1), la ordenación de las señales de la vía de la Verdad (B8, 1-49) (cap.2), las teorías físicas de Parménides y las "creencias de los mortales" (cap. 3), la cosmología (cap. 4), la teoría de la conciencia (cap. 5) y el significado de los elementos "Luz" y "Noche" (cap. 6). Se ofrecen diversas propuestas más o menos novedosas respecto al establecimiento del texto, aspectos gramaticales y de traducción, ordenación de los fragmentos e interpretación de las enseñanzas de Parménides. El estudio concluye con dos apéndices sobre el proemio (B1) y los personajes divinos que aparecen en los fragmentos."

15. ———. 2010. "Cosmología, cosmogonía y teogonía en el poema de Parménides." Emerita no. 78:275-297.

Resumen: "El propósito de este artículo es ofrecer una nueva reconstrucción del sistema del mundo físico de Parménides, distinguiendo debidamente los momentos cosmológicos, cosmogónicos y teogónicos de la teoría, cuya confusión ha sido fuente principal de malentendidos en las interpretaciones anteriores.

En particular, el sistema de coronas o anillos de B 12 y A 37 no representa el orden actual del universo, sino la estructura general de la materia, así como el estado inicial de la cosmogonía (sección 1), según puede inferirse también de la lectura de los fragmentos por Simplicio (sección 2). Esa distinción permitirá una reconstrucción tentativa de la cosmogonía (sección 3) y la cosmología de Parménides, cuyo rasgo más llamativo es la ubicación de las estrellas fijas por debajo del Sol y de la Luna, sostenida asimismo por Anaximandro y

—como trataré de mostrar— en la cosmología del papiro órfico de Derveni (sección 4)."

16. ———. 2011. "Verdad, creencia y convención en el poema de Parménides." Ontology Studies no. 11:263-279.

Resumen: "Esta intervención trata de resumir las líneas generales de una nueva interpretación del conjunto de los fragmentos de Parménides, tomando pie de la relación entre forma poética y razonamiento lógico (I). Se sostiene, en particular, que el ‘ES’ de la diosa ha de entenderse en el sentido de una predicación de verdad necesaria, cuya negación (‘NO ES’) resulta contradictoria consigo misma (II), por lo cual ‘lo-que-ES’ ha de ser lo que es de modo eterno, perfecto e inmutable, mientras que las cosas de la realidad ordinaria no pueden ser lo que se supone que son más que “de nombre” (III); que el problema de la mal llamada dóxa sólo se resuelve con tal de distinguir la teoría física del poema – cuyo principio es la mezcla y unidad de los opuestos– de las engañosas creencias de los mortales en la rígida separación (lógica y física) de los términos opuestos (IV), empezando por la oposición raigal ‘luz/noche’, esto es, ‘vida/muerte’ o, para la visión cosmológica y religiosa, los dominios de Zeus y de Hades (V), si bien la teoría física misma debe partir dialécticamente de los mismos supuestos (la oposición y discontinuidad de los entes) cuya condición !cticia está denunciando (VI); lo cual, en !n, arroja alguna nueva luz también sobre el proemio como parodia irreverente de la Tartaroscopia hesiódica y sobre la unidad de razón poética y lógica en el poema (VII).

17. ———. 2011. "Platon y la invencion de la Escuela de Elea (Sof. 242d)." Convivium no. 24:25-42.

Resumen: "Los estudiosos suelen concordar actualmente en que la “escuela eleática”, tal como se nos presenta por primera vez en los diálogos de Platón, tiene más de ficción que de realidad histórica. En este artículo trato de dilucidar el origen de esa ficción, empezando por examinar las hipótesis de que el comentario de Platón acerca de la “tribu eleática” iniciada por Jenófanes es una broma o bien refleja una interpretación previa debida a Hipias o a Antístenes. Argüiré que la “eleatización” de Jenófanes fue introducida –junto a la lectura

de Parménides y Zenón como filósofos monistas, a la manera de Meliso– por la escuela megárica de Euclides (lo cual me obliga a defender, contra Von Fritz y Döring, el carácter neo-eleático de la filosofía megárica), y sugeriré que una huella precisa de tal interpretación

megárica puede encontrarse en la sección dedicada a Jenófanes del tratado pseudo-aristotélico De Melisso Xenophane Gorgia."

18. ———. 2013. "Parménides científico y las opiniones de los mortales (apuntes para una nueva interpretación)." Méthexis.International Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 26:5-22.

Abstract: "The aim of this paper is to suggest a possible way of understanding Parmenides' so-called doxa, starting from the clear and lucid formulation of the problem which is offered to us in some recent writings of N.-L. Cordero. We agree with Cordero (and some others) on the need to distinguish between the "opinions of mortals" and Parmenides' own physical theories, usually confused under the label of the doxa or "way of opinion" (I-II); not so with his proposal to insert the 'scientific' fragments into the discourse on Truth, which seems rather incompatible with the sources (III) and ultimately grounded on the confusion –shared by most interpreters– of the ordering of the parts of the Poem, enounced at the end of fr. 1 (IV), with the "ways of inquiry" of frs. 2 and 6-7 (V). This is followed by an outline of a tentative reconstruction of Parmenides' polemics against the beliefs of mortals (VI-VIII). The guiding principle of Parmenides' physics is the mixture and interpenetration of the apparent opposites separated by mortals (VI), beginning with the antithesis 'light' / 'darkness', i. e. 'life' / 'death', the dominions of Zeus and of Hades in the traditional world vision which is refuted by the new cosmology of Parmenides (VII). But even so, the new cosmos is in its own way a "deceptive order" as well: since what-is is continuous and homogeneous, the entities postulated by the physical theory have to be necessarily fictitious or conventional; only the explicit acknowledgement of this status prevents the theory from the error of mortals, which consists in taking linguistic convention for the true being of things (VIII)."

19. ———. 2019. "Espacio iniciâtico o espacio cosmològico? Una nota sobre el proemio de Parménides." In Eleatica Vol. 7: Parmenide: tra linguistica, letteratura e filosofia = Parménides: entre lingüística, literatura y filosofía, edited by Berruecos Frank, Bernardo and Giombini, Stefania, 146-152. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

"Si alguna dificultad ofrece la magnifica exposición de Alberto Bemabé al comentario critico, es la de ballar algùn punto en que se pueda no estar de acuerdo, fuera de algunas minucias textuales, siempre discutibles, en las que no vale la pena insistir aqui. Su esmerado y erudito estudio de los fragmentos, reacio a toda especulación, concienzudamente cenido a los datos que el texto mismo nos ofrece, su copiosa aportación de paralelos literarios, merecen nuestra gratitud y no brindan apenas resquicio al disentimiento.

Entre los contados puntos que no me dejan muy convencido, es acaso el de mayor interés la interpretación del proemio, de la ruta del viaje que se describe y del escenario en que se desarrolla. Una larga controversia ha venido enfrentando a los partidarios de un viaje a los cielos o, por el contrario, al inframundo; Bemabé juzga, con bastante razón, estéril este debate (pp. 70 ss.), ya que el texto del poema combina, sin duda deliberadamente, variados elementos de lo uno y de lo otro, de un modo por lo demàs dificil o imposible de conciliar con el cuadro de la cosmologia tradicional. Ahora bien, de ahi concluye Bemabé que las caracteristicas que definen la ruta del viaje no son coherentes entre si; que Parménides desea «crear un espacio iniciàtico fuera de este mundo [...] pero tampoco quiere identificarlo ni con el cielo ni con el mundo subterràneo» (p. 70)." (p. 146)

20. Calvo, Martinez Tomas. 2000. "El lenguaje de la ontologia: de Parmenides a Meliso." Convivium no. 13:1-12.

Resumen: "En este trabajo se pretende analizar la relación existente entre Parménides y Meliso desde la perspectiva del lenguaje utilizado por ambos. En la primera parte el autor analiza las principales oposiciones léxicas mediante las cuales suele articularse la filosofía de Parménides: Verdad-Opinión, Ser-No ser, Verdadero-Falso, Razón-Sentidos, Discurso Racional-Discurso narrativo. El autor descarta la pertinencia de las oposiciones Razón-Sentidos y Verdadero-Falso, insistiendo en la relevancia de la oposicion entre dos formas de discurso, el racional argumentativo (propio de la Verdad) y el narrativo (caractenstico de la opiniones relativas a la cosmogénesis). En la segunda parte del artículo el autor se vuelve a Meliso mostrando el empobrecimiento y simplificación que se produce en éste, tanto desde el punto de vista del léxico como desde el punto de vista de la doctrina, en comparación con la compleja estructura de la filosofía de Parménides."

21. Candel, Miguel. 2016. "Ser, verdad y misterio: El poema de Parménides." Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin no. 5:93-121.

"Sea como fuere, lo cierto es que tanto quienes privilegian la «luz» racional como quienes reivindican la mirada místico–esotérica para interpretar el poema de Parménides esgrimen buenos argumentos en apoyo de sus tesis. Lo razonable, pues (y, en consecuencia, nada esotérico), es suponer que en el poema de Parménides se entrecruzan en mayor o menor proporción ambas perspectivas.

En cualquier caso, me ocuparé aquí fundamentalmente de los elementos lógico–racionales del poema, aunque trate de hacer ver cómo éstos, que constituyen la obra estructural, los pilares o paredes maestras de todo el edificio, le permiten a éste alojar una vasta (aunque, lamentablemente, fragmentaria) concepción de la naturaleza en la que no faltan los elementos esotéricos, vinculados acaso a algún ritual mistérico comparable a los misterios eleusinos.(10)" (p. 95)

(10) De ser cierta la hipótesis de Kingsley de que la diosa que guía al poeta–filósofo (o, según Kingsley, iatromante o chamán) de Elea sea Perséfone, la hija de Deméter raptada por Hades para convertirla en reina del Averno, la conexión del poema con rituales como los de Eleusis (articulados en torno al culto a Deméter, diosa del ciclo vida–muerte–resurrección) resultaría harto verosímil.

22. Capizzi, Antonio. 2016. Introducción a Parménides zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza.

23. Casadesús Bordoy, Francesc. 2021. "La alegoría socrático-platónica del carro alado en el « Fedro » y su correlato en Parménides y en la Kaṭha upaniṣad " Studia Philologica Valentina no. Anejo 2:233-245.

24. Casanova, Carlos. 2002. "La vía de la verdad en El Poema de Parménides." Revista Venezolana de Filosofía no. 43-44:125-129.

Resumen: "El artículo es una lectio de la vía de la verdad en el Poema de Parménides. Expone su contenido intentando evitar anacronismos, frecuentes en los comentadores modernos. Muestra, además, las hazañas metafísicas de valor perenne que se encierran en esta obra clásica, tales como la determinación del ente como objeto de la primera captación intelectual, la primitiva formulación del principio de no contradicción, la identidad del cognoscente y lo conocido, la oposición entre lo simple y lo compuesto, el vínculo entre el tiempo y el movimiento y entre éste y la pluralidad, y las consecuencias que se pueden extraer de lo que “ente” significa. En esta tarea dilucida el problema del sujeto de “¡es!” y usa como herramienta el señalar la recepción de muchas de las intuiciones parmenídeas en la obra de Aristóteles."

25. Colli, Giorgio. 2010. Gorgias y Parménides: lecciones 1965-1967. Madrid: Siruela.

26. Cordero, Néstor-Luis. 1999. "Una tragedia filosófica: del "se es" de Parménides al ser-uno de Meliso." Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofía no. 19:283-293.

Reimpreso en N.-L. Cordero, Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate i i suoi "eredi", Baden-Baden; Academia Verlag 2019, pp. 234-242.

Abstract: "Parmenide's philosophy is the presentation of a general notion expressed by the verb "to be" at the present tense: third singular person: "is" (estin). The absence of a grammatical subject denotes and reenforces the general meaning of the notion, because_ "everything" is.

Parmenides' Poem is an analysis of the fact of being: it is always present, homogeneous, and its absence (that is, its refusal) is impossible to conceive, because whenever we think and speak, we think or say "some-thing". "No-thing" is not. Sorne years later, Melissus of Samos, concerned, as all Ionian philosophers, by concrete realities (placed in time and in space), applied Parmenides' theory to reality. Thus, Parmenides' "is" become the "Eleatic One", criticized by Plato in the Sophist. The condemnation of the father (Parmenides) because of a fault of the son (Melissus) is a genuine philosophical tragedy."

27. ———. 2002. "Acerca de la inexistencia de una tercera vía de investigación en Parménides." Argos no. 26:19-39.

Reimpreso en N.-L. Cordero, Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate i i suoi "eredi", Baden-Baden; Academia Verlag 2019, pp. 154-170.

"Volvamos al núcleo del pretendido tercer camino. El mismo mezclaría ser y no ser al decir que hay no ser y que el ser no es. ¿Para qué hipostasiar un tercer camino si, como vimos, el segundo camino dice exactamente lo mismo? Entramos así al centro del problema. Quienes aíirman que hay un tercer camino de investigación en Parménides creen que el segundo camino es "el camino del no ser". Si así fuera, ¿qué sostiene este camino? Que hay no-ser, o que el ser no es. En ambos casos se supone que hay ser, o sea, el contenido del primer camino, ya sea porque se otorga la calidad de "ser" al noser (y para afirmar que el no-ser, es, hay que poseer ia noción de "ser"), ya sea porque del "ser" se dice que no es. El ser está abusivamente presente y no podría ser de otra manera, ya que el ser es una evidencia primaria, necesaria y absoluta, al menos, para Parménides.

La pretendida fórmula del "tercer camino" no es otra que la del segundo.

Quienes la encuentran en el fr. 6, a partir del verso 4, no tienen en cuenta que, en el conjunto que va de 6, 4 a 7, 5, Parménides presenta el segundo camino en función de sus eventuales "usuarios". No es la diosa quien lo formula; sino los "mortales que nada saben", por quienes "el ser y el no-ser son considerados (nenómistai, de "nómos", "costumbre") como lo mismo y no lo mismo" (fr. 6, 8-9). Parménides subraya el carácter "habitual" de esta opinión humana que se apoya sobre un "intelecto errante" (plaktòs nóos, 6, 6). Es la "costumbre inveterada" (éthos polupeiron, 7, 3) la que conduce a los hombres a "fabricar" (pláttontai, 6,5) un método que mezcla ser y noser y, por consiguiente, a afirmar que estos son idénticos y diferentes a la vez. La expresión que encontramos en 6, 8-9 significa simplemente que los mortales atrióuyen el ser al no-ser y el no-ser al ser. Dicho de otro modo: ellos confunden (mezclan, combinan) lo que está siendo y lo que no es." (p. 24)

28. ———. 2005. Siendo, se es. La tesis de Parménides. Buenos Aires: Ciudad Biblio.

"Toda nueva interpretación de la filosofía de Parménides, o toda crítica de interpretaciones anteriores, debe apoyarse sobre un texto que se acerque lo más posible al original perdido. La titánica tarea llevada a cabo durante siglos por filólogos y codicólogos nos ofrecía un

punto de partida firme, pero mucho quedaba aún por hacer. Pasajes del Poema permanecían inexplicablemente oscuros (por ejemplo, ¿por qué la diosa ordena apartarse de un camino verdadero en el v. 6.3? ¿Cómo puede afirmarse que el pensamiento está expresado en el ser, como parece decir el v. 8.35?). Por esta razón, desde que nuestra presencia en Europa lo hizo posible, decidimos efectuar una revisión de la tradición manuscrita de las citas (mal llamadas "fragmentos") del Poema de Parménides con el objeto de proponer una nueva versión, purificada de ciertos errores que se habían acumulado a lo largo de los siglos. Un primer resultado de nuestra búsqueda fue presentado en 1971 como tesis de doctorado, (4) y varios años después nuestro libro Les deux chemins de Parménide (1997) (5) completó nuestro trabajo. Nuevas investigaciones acerca de las fuentes manuscritas de las primeras ediciones del Poema, así como un cambio de perspectiva en nuestra valoración de "los dos caminos", nos permiten presentar hoy esta nueva versión de "la tesis" de Parménides. En este trabajo, además, tenemos en cuenta comentarios y críticas suscitados por nuestros estudios sobre Parménides y, cuando ello es posible, nos defendemos o hacemos, resignados, ciertas rectificaciones.

Es imposible adentrarse en la filosofía de Parménides sin contagiarse.

Esperamos que el eventual lector de este libro comparta esta idea." (p. 15)

(4) París IV, Sorbona. Director: Pierre-Maxime Schuhl.

(5) Primera edición: París-Bruselas, Vrin-Ousia, 1984. La segunda edición [1997] es corregida y aumentada.

29. ———. 2007. "En Parménides, ‘tertium non datur'." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:1-13.

Reimpreso en Fernando Santoro, Henrique Cairus e Tatiana Ribeiro (eds.), Acerca do Poema de Parmênides, Rio de Janeiro: Azogue 2009, pp. 11-21 y en N.-L. Cordero, Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate i i suoi "eredi", Baden-Baden; Academia Verlag 2019, pp. 142-153.

"El título de nuestra conferencia hace alusión a un principio que pertenece al ámbito de la lógica, el principio del "tercero excluido". Esta referencia a la lógica sugiere que nuestra exposición se ocupará fundamentalmente de una cuestión que hoy podríamos llamar "metodológica". Pero para ubicar este punto en su contexto, me permitiré exponer en muy pocas palabras, apenas unos minutos, el punto central de mi interpretación de Parménides.

La filosofía nació como un intento de explicación total de la realidad. Para referirse a ese "objeto" de estudio, quizá los primeros filósofos utilizaron el término physis. No nos consta, al menos hasta Heráclito. El texto más antiguo que poseemos, esas inagotables tres líneas de Anaximandro, hablan de ta onta, en plural (en el fragmento, en dativo), o sea, directamente, las cosas, y, literalmente, "los entes". Nada sabemos de los otros filósofos de Mileto. Podemos suponer que Heráclito también habla de "las cosas" cuando dice que él explica "hekaston", cada cosa, según la physis, y en otro texto (fr. 123) independiza la physis, entendida sin duda como la constitución última del conjunto de todas las cosas, ta onta.

Parménides, en cambio, es el primer filósofo que, para referirse a "los entes", utiliza el singular, pero ello no significa que va a ocuparse de una sola cosa. Su singular es genérico, porque se refiere a aquello que tienen en común todas las "cosas", los entes, ta onta. Así como el biólogo estudia to zoon, lo viviente, o sea, eso que caracteriza a todos los seres vivos, panta ta zoa, el filósofo debe ocuparse de "to eon", lo que es, que está presente en todas las cosas que son, que existen, en panta ta onta. Ya las ciencias se ocuparán de estudiar en particular lo que corresponde a cada grupo de cosas, pero esto es posterior, ya que las cosas no existirían, si no se diese el hecho de ser. Parménides se limita a este "objeto", el hecho de ser, y su Poema es una analítica de cuanto puede decirse sobre el mismo. En resumen, la unidad parmenídea es la unidad del singular, y esto es lo que dice Platón en el Sofista, si se traduce bien el texto, cuando afirma que, para lo que él llama "la raza eleática", "todas las cosas (ta panta) son llamadas, nombradas (kalouménon) un ser único (hen on)" (242d). Platón no dice que para ellos "todo es uno" (frase, por lo demás, escrita por Heráclito). Dentro de esta problemática, me propongo hoy ocuparme del método puesto en práctica por Parménides para llegar a "demostrar", a su manera, las verdades que él creyó alcanzar a propósito de "to eon"."(pp. 142-143)

30. ———. 2013. "El Extranjero de Elea, “compañero” de los parmenídeos... desde 1561." Méthexis.International Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 26:51-58.

Abstract: "In 1561 J. Comarius proposed his own version of some passages of Plato's Sophist. In this version Theodorus presents the Eleatic Stranger as "a companion (hetairas) of Parmenideans and Zenonians" (216a). Since then, this cliché is accepted by all translations. However, when the possibility of justifying the existence of images and appearances is considered, the Stranger himself proposes 'testing' Parmenides' thesis.

His remarks are rather those of an adversary than of a friend or companion of Parmenides. In fact, in spite of Theodorus' presentation, the Stranger, albeit citizen of Elea, does not seem to share the theses of the 'Eleatics'. These anomalies invited us to question the character of 'companion' of the 'Parmenideans' credited to the Stranger. The questioning is possible if we exploit some valuable greek manuscripts of Plato's Sophist, neglected by J. Bumet, like Vindobonensis 21 (Y). This manuscript, among others, has the lecture heteras, 'different', instead of hetairon, 'companion'. This manuscript permits to maintain the formula tón hetairón, transmitted by all the manuscripts after the first hetairon, and removed in modem editions. The translation we propose is: the Eleatic Stranger is "different (heteras) of the companions (tón hetairón) of Parmenides and Zenon".

31. ———. 2013. "Las “partes” del Poema de Parménides: un prejuicio interpretativo trágico." In Μαθήματα. Ecos de Filosofía Antigua, edited by Gutiérrez, Raúl, 15-26. Lima: Fondo Editorial Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.

Reimpreso en N.-L. Cordero, Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate i i suoi "eredi", Baden-Baden; Academia Verlag 2019, pp. 171-180.

English translation available on Academia.edu: The "parts" of Parmenides' Poem: a tragic interpretative prejudice.

Resumen: "Los textos conservados de los Presocráticos son reconstrucciones y en ningún caso se pretendió restaurar el texto en su orden originario. No obstante, desde hace más de dos siglos, se estudia el Poema de Parménides como si el filósofo lo hubiese escrito tal como lo leemos: con una Introducción, una Primera Parte (Alétheia) y una Segunda Parte (Doxa). Esta estructura es peligrosa en lo que concierne la "Segunda Parte", la "Doxa". Sólo los últimos nueve versos del fragmento 8 corresponden, según la Diosa, a las "opiniones de los mortales". No obstante, desde que el Poema tiene la forma actual, once citas textuales (=fragmentos) se agregaron a continuación, con lo cual se constituyó un dossier conocido como "la Doxa de Parménides".

La ubicación errónea de esos textos en la llamada "Doxa" obedece al prejuicio platonizante que consiste en atribuir a la noción de Doxa el valor anacrónico en tiempos de Parménides de "apariencia". Parménides pretende explicar LA realidad, y para ello expone dos métodos" posibles: uno persuasivo y verdadero (la Vía de la Verdad) y otro engañoso y no convincente: las opiniones de los mortales. La dicotomía ser-aparecer es platónica, no parmenídea."

32. ———. 2014. "Jenófanes invitado a Elea... por H. Diels (Diógenes Laercio 9.18)." In Dos Homens e suas Ideias Estudos sobre as Vidas de Diógenes Laércio, edited by Leão, Delfim, Cornelli, Gabriele and Peixoto, Miriam C., 101-107. Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra.

Reimpreso en N.-L. Cordero, Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate i i suoi "eredi", Baden-Baden; Academia Verlag 2019, pp. 228-233.

Resumen: "En un pasaje del Sofista en el cual Platón se ocupa de algunas escuelas filosóficas anteriores (242c), se dice que Jenófanes fue el iniciador del grupo eleático.

Parménides no es mencionado, pero como se sabe que era originario de Elea, se impuso desde entonces la fórmula “Parménides, discípulo de Jenófanes”. No obstante, ninguna fuente antigua atestigua la presencia en Elea de Jenófanes. Pero cuando H. Diels narra la vida de este filósofo en Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker tal como la presenta Diógenes Laercio, se apoya en un manuscrito de este autor en el cual podría haber una laguna y, en el lugar de la posible laguna, agregó esta conjetura: “<y [ Jenófanes] también se relacionó con la colonia de Elea, donde enseñó>”. Nada justifica esta conjetura (ningún editor del texto de Diógenes Laercio la adoptó), pero en transcripciones sucesivas del texto de Diels, y especialmente en traducciones, suelen omitirse los corchetes angulares, con lo cual se consagra la presencia de Jenófanes en Elea... gracias a Diels."

33. ———. 2015. "La aristotelización y platonización de Parménides por Simplicio." Argos no. 38:32-51.

Resumen: "La dificultad de captar el pensamiento de Parménides llevó a los intérpretes ya en la Antigüedad a encarar su filosofía según esquemas de pensamiento posteriores. Fue el caso de Aristóteles, cuya interpretación fue heredada por su discípulo Teofrasto y por sus comentadores, especialmente Simplicio. Simplicio, neoplatónico y aristotélico a la vez, propuso una interpretación, fuertemente dualista (dominada por la dicotomía sensible/inteligible), que no se encuentra en las citas recuperadas. En 1789 G. G. Fülleborn, inspirándose en Simplicio, propuso una división del Poema en dos "partes", aceptada hoy en forma unánime, y que debe ser revisada y rechazada con urgencia."

34. ———. 2019. "El insoportable peso de la negación. A propòsito de la tercera Lección de A. Bemabé." In Eleatica Vol. 7: Parmenide: tra linguistica, letteratura e filosofia = Parménides: entre lingüística, literatura y filosofía, edited by Berruecos Frank, Bernardo and Giombini, Stefania, 157-160. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

"Como dijimos al comienzo, las Lecciones de AB [Alberto Bernabé] son una invitación a la investigación y a seguir el camino trazado por él. En nuestro caso personal, siempre hemos privilegiado en nuestros trabajos el rol preponderante de la negación en Parménides, pero por razones diferentes de las expuestas por AB. No obstante corno sus lecciones son una ocasión ideal para el diàlogo, nos permitimos exponer muy someramente nuestro punto de vista que seguramente puede tomarse corno complementario del de AB. Eventualmente, él lo dirà.

La eficacia argumentativa de la negación consiste en lo siguiente: quien niega, debe conocer lo que niega. Toda negación es puntual. Y cuando se niega la negación, se confirma aquello que se conoce, porque se lo ha puesto a prueba, y se lo ha reforzado. Los ejemplos de compuestos negatives propuestos por AB confieren caràcter de necesidad y de obligatoriedad a lo contrario de lo que se niega. Basten dos ejemplos: anóetos, cuya significación es “no imaginado”, pero que deviene en la argumentación “inconcebible”; anónimos, “que no tienen nombre”, deviene “innombrable”. (p. 158)

35. Cordero, Nestor-Luis. 2020. "Parménides y la concepción ante-predicativa de la verdad." Archai. As origens do pensamento ocidental no. 30:1-21.

Resumen: "Platón sostiene que, para confirmar que el sofista es un fabricante de ilusiones (Sph.262d8), hay que refutar la tesis de Parménides que afirma que sólo existe – según Platón lo interpreta – el ser absoluto. Muy probablemente un eco de esta tesis se encuentre en Antístenes, a quien Platón parece aludir en el Sofista, para quien “lo que es, es verdadero”. Esta concepción de la verdad se conoce como “ante-predicativa” u ontológica, y, según Heidegger, sería originaria. No es así. Desde Homero y hasta Parménides, la verdad (o falsedad) fue siempre atribuida a un discurso o a un pensamiento, jamás a un ente. La concepción “ante-predicativa” de la verdad fue una creación de la filosofía, que probablemente comenzó con Parménides y continuó con Antístenes. Cuando Platón la refuta, en la segunda parte del Sofista, no hace sino regresar al pasado, pues hace del discurso el “lugar” de la verdad."

36. Cordero, Néstor-Luis. 2020. "Gianfrancesco d’Asola, el “creador” de la tercera vía parmenídea." Hypnos no. 45:185-195.

English translation available on Academia.edu: Gianfrancesco d'Asola, the creator of the third way of Parmenides.

Resumen: "Identificamos, na edição renascentista do Comentário de Simplício à Física de Aristóteles, a invenção de uma conjectura que determinaria os rumos da interpretação do Poema de Parmênides desde o século XIX. Com a escolha de preencher a lacuna do verso B6,3 com um verbo que exprime a ideia de recusa ou afastamento, o editor Gianfrancesco d’Asola está efetivamente na origem da interpretação que supõe a existência de três caminhos de investigação no Poema. Ora, como vai se argumentar, todos os indícios textuais, bem como as notícias transmitidas desde a Antiguidade, apontam para um dualismo entre Alêtheia e Doxa, de maneira que qualquer esquema tricotômico depende forçosamente de uma criação datada do século XVI."

37. ———. 2021-2022. "El extraño criterio utilizado para crear “la Doxa” de Parménides." Diánoia no. 66:141-151.

Resumen: "En 1795, un filólogo de origen kantiano, G.G. Fülleborn, agrupó en dos “partes” los fragmentos recuperados del Poema de Parménides: “la Verdad” (frgs. 1–8.50) y “la Doxa” (frgs. 8.51–18; el frg. 19 fue descubierto después). Con pequeñas modificaciones, esta estructura se convirtió en clásica y se acepta hoy en forma unánime. Sin embargo, una lectura de cada fragmento en forma aislada no justifica dicha división, la cual se basa en una interpretación de Simplicio influida por Aristóteles, quien encuentra ya en Parménides un esbozo del dualismo platónico entre lo “sensible” y lo “inteligible”, inexistente en éste. Analizo aquí en forma crítica el criterio que emplea Fülleborn, anacrónico para el caso de un pensador preplatónico."

38. ———. 2022. "Las “opiniones” en Parménides y su desconocimiento del insoportable peso del ser." Hypnos no. 48:1-22.

Resúmen: "La lengua griega para referirse a las cosas utiliza la expresión τὰ όντα, “las cosas que son”. Ya la lengua cotidiana establece una relación entre “algo que es” y el hecho de ser. La filosofía de Parménides puede explicarse como una reflexión filosófica sobre este hecho lingüístico. Una perspectiva no filosófica desconoce este hecho, y explica la realidad en función de las cosas que “parecen ser”, las “opiniones”. Parménides demuestra en su Poema, sólo una relativización del hecho de ser puede justificar la una explicación de la realidad basada en opiniones."

English translation available on Academia.edu: "The "opinions" in Parmenides and his ignorance of the unbearable weight of being".

39. Edwards, Anibal. 1986. Parménides: trás la pista de Karl Reinhardt y Walter F. Otto Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile.

40. Fernandez Moujan, Raimundo. 2019. "Parménides como precursor de la dialéctica platónica." Archai. As origens do pensamento ocidental no. 26:1-26.

Resumen: "Partiendo de una interpretación de la dialéctica platónica y de la lectura del artículo de Monique Dixsaut “Platon et le lógos de Parménide”[°], investigamos en este trabajo si acaso no podemos encontrar en el Poema de Parménides algunos elementos que luego resultarán fundamentales en la constitución de la dialéctica en los diálogos de Platón. El rechazo del nombre como medio y depositario del conocimiento, la necesidad de la mediación del lógos y la insistencia en lo importante que resulta conocer también la naturaleza del engaño, son algunos de esos elementos que ya encontramos expuestos en Parménides y que resultarán fundamentales para el paulatino desarrollo del método propuesto por Platón."

[*] Dixsaut, M. (1987). Platon et le lógos de Parmenide. In: Aubenque, P. (ed.). Études sur Parmenide. Vol. 2. Paris, Vrin, p. 215-255.

41. Fernández Mouján, Raimundo. 2020. "No existe la separacion: algunas continuidades entre el Poema de Parménide y el Sofista de Platon." Signos Filosóficos no. 22:8-33.

Resumen: "En varios pasajes de su poema, Parménides identifica al no ser con la separación: “No podrás obligar a lo que es a separarse de lo que es”. No es posible no ser significa así que no existe corte o franja al interior de lo que es por la que pase el no ser. No existe separación ontológica. Platón apoya esta idea: en el Sofista dice que la separación es a-filosófica, y consecuentemente define al ser como capacidad de relación. ¿No hay acaso una suerte de “deducción” a seguir, una que va del es parmenídeo a la dúnamis koinonías platónica, pasando justamente por la imposibilidad de la separación ontológica como dato central? ¿Y no podemos identificar gracias a esta continuidad una prevención fundamental contra todo sustancialismo, contra toda concepción según la cual el mundo estaría hecho de sustancias separadas entre sí? Me propongo pensar esa continuidad para analizar cómo la lectura conjunta del poema de Parménides y el Sofista de Platón permite hablar de un rechazo fundamental de toda filosofía sustancialista."

42. Gallego Franco, Santiago. 2006. "Los caminos de (y hacia) Parménides." Revista de Filosofia no. 24:27-36.

Resumen: "El poema de Parménides a la physis ha invitado a muchas polémicas desde la Antigüedad. Desde las paradojas de Zenón hasta los trabajos de Heidegger y Jaeger, el poema ha sido objeto de interpretaciones que han ubicado al filósofo de Elea unas veces entre los negadores de las apariencias y otras entre quienes sólo conciben al ser en relación con ellas. En el artículo se recorren los caminos expuestos por el poema, los cuales ayudarán a comprender al mismo Parménides, intentando redimir el camino olvidado de las opiniones al que tantos hexámetros le dedicó el filósofo."

43. Gálvez Garduni, Rafael. 2008. "La poesía de Parménides: el arte del estilo ambiguo y desafiante, insinuador y sutil." Nova Tellus no. 26:55-90.

Resumen: "En este trabajo se realiza un análisis del proemio del poema de Parménides con la intención de mostrar cómo su construcción está sabiamente acabada tanto en el plano literario de la factura artística, como en el del proyecto comunicativo, que plantea un reto a la inteligencia del auditorio. Éste, en efecto, se ve sometido a un haz de estímulos a menudo contradictorios, que van de la ambigüedad expresiva a la insinuación sutil, cuyos efectos están destinados por cierto a tocar cuerdas muy sensibles en el receptor. Sentadas estas premisas, se sugiere que el contraste entre el fascinante relato alegórico del proemio y la parte propiamente filosófica del poema de Parménides puede depender de su gestación en dos diferentes etapas de la vida del filósofo, en la primera de las cuales la influencia de la epopeya homérica resulta insoslayable."

44. ———. 2011. "“Y una diosa me recibió” al volver en mi camino por el relato de Parménides." Nova Tellus no. 29:19-46.

Resumen: "Con base en algunos pasajes de Platón, se plantea la hipótesis de que los escritos de la mayoría de los filósofos presocráticos contienen un discurso insinuante e indirecto, derivado de otro fundamental y privado que contendría explícitamente su doctrina íntima. El reto que de esto resulta para el estudioso es realizar un análisis objetivo y penetrante, exento de todo prejuicio desorientador, del modo de expresión presocrático que le permita dar el “salto” del discurso público al privado e íntimo. El caso de Parménides se presenta como especialmente ejemplar, pues muestra cómo su Musa ofrece ciertas pistas e insinuaciones que, si son captadas por un lector muy atento y reflexivo, le posibilitarán acceder con claridad a ciertas intimidades del pensar parmenídeo."

45. García Bacca, Juan David. 1943. El Poema de Parménides. Atentado de hermenéutica histórico-vital. México: Universidad Autónoma de México.

46. Gigon, Olof. 1985. Los orígines de la filosofía griega. De Hesíodo a Parménides. Madrid: Editorial Gredos.

Parménides, pp. 274-324.

"Resulta seductor y peligroso ver —como ha hecho Platón en Parménides de Elea la pura oposición de Heráclito. Hay sin duda una oposición tanto en el estilo de su obra como en los propósitos de su tarea filosófica. La obra de Heraclito, por su forma, va íntimamente ligada a los arcaicos libros-όποθήκαι, compilaciones de trabazón poco rigurosa de dichos conceptuosos e independientes en sí mismos. Parménides vuelve a la forma más antigua de la literatura griega, el gran poema épico como era, por ejemplo, la Teogonia de Hesíodo. La filosofía de Heráclito está determinada por el propósito de iluminar al hombre el sentido de su obrar. La filosofía de Parménides es al menos en cierto sentido— la más pura expresión de cuanto había sido el ideal de la filosofía jonia del cosmos objetivo. Su pensamiento tiene tal monumentalidad y tal voluntad de transparencia perfecta que se convierte por ellas en un punto central de la filosofía griega. Es el primer filósofo que ha quedado como valedero y clásico. El problema del ser, que hemos visto en Hesíodo perfilándose en el horizonte, se hace en él perfectamente visible. Es quien ha dado al lenguaje filosófico el concepto y la palabra de ser." (p. 274)

47. Gómez, Luis F. 2019. "El Enigma de Parménides: Un enfoque ecofeminista." Gestión y Ambiente no. 22:267-276.

Resumen: "La obra de Augusto Ángel Maya [*] se ha constituido como una de las bases del pensamiento ambiental colombiano. Dentro de esta, la metafísica es una de las causas de la actual crisis ambiental. Por su parte, el ecofeminismo ha postulado que la visión de mundo moderna hegemónica se estructura alrededor de marcos conceptuales, es decir, pares antagónicos y excluyentes, donde uno de sus términos tiene un mayor valor que el otro. La articulación de estas dos propuestas puede ampliar el análisis de las implicaciones de la metafísica en la actual crisis ambiental. El objetivo de la presente investigación fue determinar los marcos conceptuales de la metafísica griega.

Para esto, se analizaron algunos textos de Parménides, Platón y Aristóteles desde la teoría de los marcos conceptuales propuesta por el ecofeminismo anglosajón y se compraron los resultados obtenidos con los de Ángel. Se encontró que las teorías de Parménides, Platón y Aristóteles se organizan alrededor de las categorías verdad/opinión, razón/sensación y alma/cuerpo, respectivamente. Éstos corroboran la conclusión de Ángel que Parménides inaugura el camino de la metafísica como un intento de deshacerse del devenir, introduciendo el concepto de ser, pero muestran que esto condujo a dos principios epistemológicos que han marcado la visión de mundo occidental: la búsqueda de un conocimiento universal, deslocalizado e incorpóreo y la lógica de la identidad."

[*] Ángel, A., 2004. El enigma de Parménides. Los laberintos de la metafísica. Hacia una filosofía ambiental. Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Manizales, Colombia.

48. Gomez-Lobo, Alfonso. 1986. "Parmenides y la Diosa. Breve historia de la interpretación de un texto." Ideas y Valores no. 36:49-66.

"Como se recordará. Sexto Empíríco nos decía que Parménides iniciaba su poema con los versos que el, Sexto, transcríbiría a continuación. Ahora comprendemos por qué. La experiencia de Parménides equivale muy de cerca a la conciencia de Homero de saberse inspirado por una musa y al encantamiento e invocación de las musas todas en Hesíodo. (38) En un sentido más distante y salvadas las diferencias culturales, hay también una equivalencia con la vocación del profeta en Israel. (39)

En cada uno de estos casos no se discierne una anticipación alegórica de lo que el poeta o profeta dirá en cumplimiento de su vocación. Se describe más bien una escena autosuficiente en que se apunta a una fuente superior de sabiduria que garantiza al auditor que lo cantado o narrado efectivamente es lo que pretende ser: una revelación profunda y arcana pero, por sobre todo, verdadera."

(...)

"Si Parménides estaba familiarizado con esas ideas cosmogónicas que la tradición posterior asoció con Orfeo, Museo y Epiménides, figuras cuya cercanía a Parménides hemos hecho notar, entonces es altamente probable que haya que interpretar el viaje de éste como conducente al origen último del cosmos, a la fuente última de todo lo que hay. Que mayor autoridad podria invocarse para la revelación de la admirable y paradójica filosofía de Elea?

Este es, por último el punto al cual nos han encaminado las investigaciones modernas del misterioso proemio de Parménides, éste es el estado actual de nuestro conocimiento histórico en este campo."

(38) Teog. 1-115.

(39) Isaías 6. 1-12; Jeremías 1. 4-19; Amos 7. 14-15. El paralelismo entre este último pasaje y la vocación de Hesíodo es analizado por F.M. Cornford, Principium Sapientiae, Cambridge, 1952, pp. 99-100.

49. Gonzalez Escudero, Santiago. 1983. "Una precisión sobre el Es en Parmenides." El Basilisco no. 15:62-70.

Resumen: "Entre los muchos problemas que plantea la comprensión del poema de Parménides es sin duda el fundamental poner en claro lo que en el fragmento 2 recogido por Diels (1) se manifiesta como contenido del camino de investigación propuesto por la diosa y que ha dado lugar a las más variadas controversias dado que en él radica lo que podríamos llamar «el discurso del ser en Parménides».

Parece pues procedente tratar de contrastar los estudios realizados desde diferentes ángulos acerca de los sentidos que pudo haber tenido en Parménides este fragmento.

Estudios realizados desde la posibilidad de comprender las palabras de Parménides, de difícil sentido, dentro no sólo de los análisis filológicos más precisos sino desde las perspectivas que nos brinda la ideología conocida como propia dé Parménides y su repercusión enla filosofía griega.

Pues indudablemente el problema sobre el ser que desde los versos de este fragmento comienza su andadura en el pensamiento ha constituido y constituye el núcleo del que arrancan o al que conducen todos los sistemas filosóficos, como los de Platón o Aristóteles, por ejemplo.

Las dificultades de comprensión y de traducción de la terminología en que se expresa este núcleo ideológico ha sido magistralmente analizado por García Calvo en Lecturas Presocráticas (2), si bien creemos que es preciso ahondar más en el problema para dejar en claro sobre todo las relaciones que se abren con los grandes sistemas filosóficos griegos.

Es P. Aubenque (3) el que indirectamente más ha contribuido a denunciar las consecuencias de las afirmaciones de Parménides, por cuanto ha sabido ver en Platón y sobre todo en Aristóteles la necesidad de un planteamiento de la base lingüística fundamental en lo que va a ser considerado el problema principal de la Metafísica.

Desde este ángulo vamos a tratar de anaüzar en el fragmento a que nos referimos el sentido y el alcance conceptual de la definición de lo que tradicionalmente se considera el «Ser» en Parménides, sin entrar en ima pormenorización exhaustiva de sus manifestaciones lo que nos llevaría a una edición nueva de todo el poema, lo que excede los límites de un artículo."

(1) Hermán Diels-W. Kranz. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 10 ed. Berlín, 1960.

(2) A. García Calvo. Lecturas Presocráticas, Lucina, Madrid 1981. En donde, además de una edición crítica del poema junto con una versión rítmica, hay dos estudios acerca de las dificultades de traducción del verbo «éstin» griego, págs. 58 y ss. y Apéndice 225-234.

(3) Fierre Aubenque. El problema del ser en Aristóteles, Taurus, Madrid 1981, sobre todo págs. 93-131 y 158-199. Sin embargo no estamos de acuerdo con su teoría de que los eléatas se encierran en uña ontología demasiado exigente (pág. 140), ya que así deja de lado los fundamentos de la valoración lingüística de «éstin», si bien estamos de acuerdo en que en los megáricos no aparecerían de la misma manera que en Parménides.

50. Gracia, Joan Ferrer. 2016. Heráclito y Parménides. ¿Cuál es el origen de todas las cosas? El primer intento de dar una explicación racional del universo Barcelona: RBA Contenidos Editoriales y Audiovisuales.

Sumario: Introducción 7; Capítulo 1 El nacimiento de la filosofía 19; Capitulo 2 La cuestión del ser 55; Capítulo 3 La cuestión del saber 87; Capitulo 4 El mensaje de Heráclito y Parménides 117; Glosario 147;

Lecturas recomendadas 151; Índice 153-155.

"Para entender el pensamiento de Heráclito y Parménides habrá que empezar explicando brevemente las peculiares fuentes de información gracias a las cuales se conoce a los presocráticos, porque, a diferencia de lo que ocurre con el resto de autores de la tradición filosófica, de ninguno de ellos se conserva ni una sola obra completa. De todos ellos se dispone solamente de un puñado de breves fragmentos, conservados gracias a las citas de autores posteriores, y también, como fuente complementaria, de los llamados testimonios, que son noticias indirectas de muy variable valor. No hay nada más. Así que, del mismo modo en que un historiador de la arquitectura arcaica, a partir de cuatro pedazos de columnas, estatuas y capiteles, debe hacerse una idea del aspecto que el templo tenía cuando estaba entero, leer a Heráclito y Parménides requiere hacerse una idea de cómo era su obra antes de que el azar la hiciera trizas." (p. 8)

51. Grammatico, Giuseppina. 2000. "Cuando el hacer se condensa en el ser." Kléos: Revista de Filosofia Antiga no. 4:57-70.

Resumen: "La imagen del filósofo en Grecia es relativamente reciente. Preceden a éste en el tiempo otras figuras de depositarios de la actividad cogitativa y del saber en los que, aunque no está presente la filosofía como hoy la entendemos, se pueden entrever algunos rasgos de la misma en su modo de ser y de hacer. Se dibujan estas diversas imágenes : la del adivino-profeta, a través del análisis de la figura de Tiresias en las « Bacantes » de Eurípides ; la del poeta-músico, a través de Hesíodo en su encuentro con las Musas en la « Teogonía » ; y la del sabio propiamente tal, científico, legislador y político, a través en particular del testimonio de Anaximandro y de la reflexión de Parménides sobre el ser."

52. Guerrero-Troncoso, Hernán. 2019. "Identidad o confluencia. Apuntes para una interpretación de la relación entre pensar y ser en Parménides." Byzantion nea Hellàs no. 38:105-127.

Resumen: "Este artículo analiza en clave histórico-especulativa la relación entre ser y pensar en Parménides, a partir de lo que se ha llamado el “segundo inicio” de la metafísica. Dicha propuesta sostiene que ésta habría dejado de ser una ciencia del ser supremo para ocuparse del primer objeto del intelecto. A partir de estas posibilidades de la metafísica, se exponen dos interpretaciones de aquella relación, una que afirma la identidad entre ser y pensar y otra que sostiene su confluencia.

Esta última posición sería más afín a una metafísica del primer objeto del intelecto y permitiría, a su vez, plantear una comprensión del ser más amplia que la de una metafísica del ser supremo."

53. Guiu, Ignacio. 2007. "La lectura de Parménides en la Física de Aristóteles." Ágora. Papeles de Filosofía no. 26:27-53.

Resumen: "La intención de este artículo es esclarecer la crítica aristotélica a quien pasa por ser el padre de la metafísica. Toda la crítica de Aristóteles a Parménides en la Física se centra en la afirmación “todo es uno”. Aunque enfrentarse a la tesis central del monismo no sea encarar directamente el argumento parmenídeo que afecta a la realidad del cambio, sin embargo, Aristóteles considera de especial importancia examinarlo. Y a nosotros nos puede ayudar a hacernos una idea de cómo entendió Aristóteles

el eleatismo."

54. Hülsz, Enrique, and Berruecos, Bernardo. 2019. "Parménides B1.3: una nueva enmienda." In ὁδοὶ νοῆσαι Ways to Think. Essays in Honour of Néstor-Luis Cordero, edited by Pulpito, Massimo and Spangenberg, Pilar, 31-59. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia.

Resumen: "Este trabajo se ocupa de algunos problemas de lectura e interpretación de DK28 B1.3, un verso que nos ha llegado corrupto. A partir de una ojeada a la estructura del Proemio (que evidencia una compleja composición anular pentádica), y del examen y la discusión de las diversas conjeturas que se han propuesto hasta ahora – en particular el rechazo de la enmienda κατὰ πάντ᾽ἄστη – asumimos como lectura original la siguiente, admitiendo como suplemento una ípsilon y siguiendo el camino trazado por una conjetura antigua de G. Hermann, πάντ’ αὐτὴ, y dos propuestas recientes, de N. L. Cordero, πᾶν τα<ύ>τῃ, y A. Mourelatos, κατὰ … α<ὐ>τὴ<ν>: ΔΑΙΜΟΝΟΣΗΚΑΤΑΠΑΝΤΑΥΤΗΦΕΡΕΙΕΙΔΟΤΑΦΩΤΑ.

Nuestra conjetura, ἣ κατὰ πάντ’ αὖ τῇ φέρει εἰδότα φῶτα, “el cual [camino] lleva de vuelta nuevamente ahí al hombre que sabe todas las cosas”, resulta de un análisis diferente de la secuencia ΑΥΤΗ, interpretada como dos palabras: los adverbios αὖ y τῇ. El verso anticipa así la formulación metodológica en B5 y es una micro-imagen del Proemio entero que pone en el primer plano su carácter eminentemente poetológico. Nuestra interpretación recurre a la hipótesis de que se trata de un caso de sintaxis discontinua: desarticulando la frase preposicional κατὰ πάντα, construimos πάντα en hipérbaton como objeto directo del participio εἰδότα: el “hombre que lo sabe todo”, caracterización antitética perfecta de los βροτοὶ εἰδότες οὐδὲν, “los mortales que nada saben”, del fragmento B6, y la preposición κατὰ en tmesis con el verbo φέρει, con el sentido de “llevar de vuelta”, “regresar”.

55. Lafrance, Yvon. 1992. "Las multiplas lectura del Poema de Parménides." Méthexis.International Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 5:5-27.

Traducido deI frances por Eduardo Andujar.

"En el transcurso de es tos ultimos diez anos, el texto y Ia interpretación deI poema de Parménides han dado lugar a numerosos trabajos de investigación."

(...)

"Los Études sur Parménide (1987) (1) vienen a agregarse a esta lista ya de por si impresionante. La obra eontiene los estudios provenientes

deI Centre de Recherches sur la Pensée Antique o Centre L. Robin de la Sorbona que dirigia el profesor P. Aubenque."

(...)

"EI primer tomo de estos Études sur Parménide ha sido enteramente redactado por D. O'Brien, Direetor de Investigaciones deI C. N. R. S. de Paris. EI volumen eomprende el texto deI poema (1-134) y un ensayo critico de interpretación (135-319). EI texto griego ha sido establecido a partir de las mejores ediciones modernas, dejando el autor la entera responsabilidad de la colación de manuscritos a los diversos editores (XVI n. 3). Por otra parte, O'Brien no cree, contrariamente a Cordero (Études II 18), que una revisión ab ovo de la colación de manuscritos pueda modificar, de manera significativa, el texto griego del poema de Parmenides que leernos hoy dia. Para ello, segun O'Brien, habria que esperar el descubrimiento de un nuevo documento (116)."

56. Lomba Fuentes, Joaquín. 1985. El oraculo de Narciso: lectura del poema de Parmenides. Zaragoza: Secretariado de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Zaragoza.

57. Maestre Sanchez, Alfonso. 2010. "Síntesis transversal de la «filosofía» de Parménides (Sobre la controversia de la ἀλήθεια y del δόξα o el alborear del Λόγος)." Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía no. 27:9-47.

Resumen: "Como dijimos en la Parte I, las obras de Heráclito y Parménides nos resultan desconocidas en su integridad. Sin embargo, pocos filósofos han sido tan comentados como ellos. Pero esta crítica –diversa y contradictoria– de los fragmentos heraclitanos y del Poema de Parménides, respectivamente, en vez de aclarar, ha servido para ocultar aún más sus genuinas reflexiones filosóficas, pues muchos de estos escritos se han utilizado ya sea para alabar a Heráclito o Parménides, ya sea para criticarlos y contraponerlos, o bien para justificar intereses espurios. Esta Parte II de nuestro trabajo versa sobre las interpretaciones de la doctrina de la ἀλήθεια y de la δόξα en el filósofo de Elea, advirtiendo de nuevo que siempre se planteará el problema de la duda respecto a la autenticidad o falsedad, orden y estructura de sus fragmentos como fuente."

58. Martínez Marzoa, Felipe. 1987. Heráclito-Parménides (bases para una lectura). Murcia: Secretariado de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Murcia.

59. Meza, Carlos Carrasco. 2017. "La justificación dialéctica de la refutación al eleatismo en Física I, 2-3." Revista de Filosofía no. 73:9-27.

Resumen: "Este trabajo tiene por objetivo mostrar el carácter dialéctico de la refutación al eleatismo en Física I, 2-3. En primer lugar, se argumenta que la dialéctica aristotélica puede llegar a constituir un método de investigación científica, ya que permite esclarecer los principios de una ciencia particular. En segundo lugar, se muestra que la refutación al eleatismo en Física I 2-3 solo se justifica en el marco de una argumentación dialéctica, ya que esta refutación constituye un método de esclarecimiento de los principios de la física."

60. ———. 2020. "La filosofía de Parménides según el testimonio de Aristóteles." Tópicos. Revista de Filosofía no. 59:397-426.

Resumen: "Este trabajo pretende exponer y comentar la interpretación aristotélica de la filosofía de Parménides. En primer lugar, se analiza la refutación del monismo parmenídeo en Phys. I 2-3.

Luego se comenta una serie de pasajes relevantes del corpus en los que Aristóteles hace referencia tanto a la ontología y cosmología de Parménides como a su metodología de investigación filosófica. Se propone una interpretación compatibilista de la lectura aristotélica de Parménides, según la cual este último habría afirmado la unidad e inmovilidad de lo real según el concepto y su pluralidad cambiante según la sensación. Si bien es evidente la influencia platónica en ciertos aspectos de la interpretación aristotélica, esta última no es una mera recepción y repetición de la lectura de Platón. En efecto, Aristóteles parece haber comprendido el pensamiento de Parménides a partir de una distinción metodológica operativa en Phys. I 5."

61. Montero Moliner, Fernando. 1960. Parménides. Madrid: Editorial Gredos.

"En resumen, éste es el fin que nos proponemos: sugerir y fundamentar que cabe una interpretación de la obra de Parménides en la que la realidad del Cosmos empírico no quede anulada, sino tan sólo subordinada a un principio o dimensión metafísica del mismo; que el Ser y el Cosmos de las opiniones propias de los mortales constituyen dos aspectos epistemológicos de la misma realidad. Con el primero se descubre el fundamento último del Cosmos. Pues, .las apariencias sensibles encubren más bien esa dimensión decisiva de cuanto constituye el Universo; ¿responden a una forma burda de pensamiento que es capaz solamente de captar los estratos más superficiales de las cosas. Sólo cuando el pensar adquiere toda su pureza es posible «pie se descubra, cual tmn revelación divina, la verdad decisivu, la del Ser «pie loitniiiiiyr la última y lilis pura dimensión de lodo el Universo. Pues el Oíamos múltiple y cambiante, sometido a luchas, guerras y escisiones dolorosus, el Cosmos en que domina la enfermedad, el odio y la muerte, se ofrece como uno, eterno, continuo y homogéneo, inmóvil y equilibrado, cuando es considerado como lo Ente. Un hálito de mística paz acompaña asi al descubrimiento de ese Ser transido de pureza. Pero, no obstante esta supremacía de la Verdad que se alcanza con el descubrimiento del Ser, es posible y estimable realizar una interpretación o juicio (p»(ú|JLYj) de esas mismas realidades según su presencia empírica, decidiendo su denominación y encuadre bajo dos “formas” supremas (Luz y Noche oscura) que someten a un cierto orden la multiplicidad y cambio de las “potencias” cósmicas.

Si a lo largo de este estudio vamos a seguir un orden que en general parece acomodarse al que siguen los fragmentos del Poema de Parmánides ello no se debe a un simple prurito de fidelidad al mismo. Se ha decidido asi porque al mismo tiempo ello constituye el orden más adecuado para una clara dilucidación del problema que nos interesa y que se ha bosquejado. Por esto mismo no se ha dudado en traicionar esa fidelidad aparente para con el orden del Poema cuantas veces ha sido conveniente examinar ciertos fragmentos prescindiendo del lugar que ocupan, atendiendo su conexión con otros fragmentos distantes." (pp. 28-29)

62. Padilla Gálvez, Jesús. 2015. Parménides, ΠΕΡΙ ΦΥΣΕΩΣ - Sobre la naturaleza. El desarrollo de una gramática metafísica. Madrid: Ápeiron Ediciones.

"El fin de este trabajo es el de repasar ciertas cuestiones de envergadura que generan ciertos dilemas filosóficos. El primero es el de supervisar si el prejuicio arraigado de que la filosofía analítica no posee instrumentos válidos para analizar textos clásicos de la filosofía se puede justificar adecuádamente. Se trata, pues, de saber si el método analítico es incapaz de estudiar textos y propuestas filosóficas atendiendo a un análisis del lenguaje y sus estructuras formales. Seguidamente, se trata de confirmar o rebatir si la investigación del lenguaje filosófico y las estructuras formales permiten disipar los prejuicios metafíisicos o más bien confirman las posturas metafísicas. Este estudio se centrará en el análisis de las propuestas desarrolladas por Parmenides.

Lo propio del método analítico es considerar y entender separadamente las partes de un todo. Con ello podemos conocer una serie de elementos, distinguirlos, y luego tratar de componerlos. Una composición que es un mosaico, una serie de notas escrita que ponen de manifiesto una gramática. Ciertamente, en dicho trabajo debemos respetar al máximo la estructura del texto de origen. Hay, pues, que tener bien claro en qué consiste el análisis: estudio gramatical de las unidades semánticas que portan un determinado contenido. De hecho, cualquier estructura gramatical bien construida persigue unos fines constructivos. La terminología usada da cuenta de la reducción de unos conceptos a otros. Por ello es particularmente importante demostrar determinadas formas lógicas y reglas de transformación entre enunciados que en definitiva dan cuenta de la reducción de unos conocimientos a otros. La fundamentación del análisis gramatical en filosofía depende de dos supuestos: primero, del hecho de que solo puede decirse algo con sentido a través de proposiciones sintácticas bien estructuradas y que están sometidas a controles formales; y, segundo, que uno de los instrumentos más rigurosos que poseemos es el análisis formal de dichas estructuras lingüísticas." (pp. 45-46)

63. Pòrtulas, Jaume. 2014. "Παναπευθέα ἀταρπόν (a propósito de Parménides 28 B 2 DK)." In Ágalma : ofrenda desde la Filología Clásica a Manuel García Teijeiro, edited by Fernández, Ángel Martínez, Ortega Villaro, Begoña, Velasco López, María del Henar and Zamora Salamanca, María del Henar, 587-592. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid.

Abstract "The aim of this paper is to analyze two difficult expressions in lines 4 and 6 of Parmenides’ fragment 2 DK (= 3 Coxon). In the course of this analysis, several probable Homeric hypotexts are examined. The idea underlying the paper is that the problems related to persuasion and communication have a fundamental role in Parmenides’ attempt to define aletheia."

64. Posada, Gonzalo Soto. 2008. "El enigma de Parménides: el fascinante pero terrible Parménideds." Escritos no. 16:558-577.

Resumen: "El artículo intenta leer el poema parmenídeo en contra vía de la interpretación tradicional que ve en eléata al filósofo del ser, negador del devenir. Esta dicotomía tradicional opone la vía de la verdad y la vía de la opinión y descalifica el proemio como mero exordio poético, místico y religioso, sin ninguna importancia para el poema en sí. Se establece así la separación radical entre ser y devenir, ser y aparecer y el pensar sólo se ocupa del ser en tanto unidad, inmovilidad, lejos del movimiento. La reflexión intenta hermenéuticamente polemizar con esta perspectiva mostrando la unidad del poema desde el proemio mismo. Este, lejos de ser una formalidad lírica, es el pórtico de entrada al templo del poema. Como en un pórtico sacral, el proemio es la

escalinata que establece la unidad del poema, derribando la dicotomía destructiva. Desde el proemio copulan ser–devenir, ser–pensar, ser–aparecer en una unidad que hace del tó eón como physis una totalidad envolvente que concilia la contrariedad en una

compensación armoniosa como concordia de los contrarios."

65. Pulpito, Massimo. 2019. "El 'giro linguistico' de Parménides." In Eleatica Vol. 7: Parmenide: tra linguistica, letteratura e filosofia = Parménides: entre lingüística, literatura y filosofía, edited by Berruecos Frank, Bernardo and Giombini, Stefania, 189-201. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

"En la plètora de estudios actuales sobre el poema de Parménides no es comùn encontrarse con interpretaciones que puedan jactarse de ser originales y, al mismo tiempo, justificadas y fundamentadas. A veces, en pos de la bùsqueda de innovaciones interpretativas, se sacrifica la solidez argumentativa y las evidencias textuales; por el contrario, la cautela excesiva, en algunos casos, no sólo ha impedido dar pasos hacia adelante en la comprensión del eléata, sino que a menudo ha inducido a repetir lo ya dicho. El mèrito de las tres lecciones ofrecidas por Alberto Bemabé ( AB) para Eleatica 2015 me parece precisamente éste: haber sabido anadir una nueva perspectiva para nuestra visión del texto y de las operaciones intelectuales de Parménides, pero haciéndolo a partir de una gran pericia filològica, reconocida por todos. Los puntos fuertes de està fértil perspectiva me parecen numerosos. Aqui me limitaré a intervenir en algunos pasajes argumentativos que, pienso, ameritan una discusión adicional." (p. 189)

66. Quirante Rives, José Vicente. 2021. "Catábasis e identidad de la diosa en el proemio de Parménides." In Forum classicorum: perspectivas y avances sobre el Mundo Clásico, edited by de la Villa Polo, Jesús, López Fonseca, Antonio and Falque Rey, Emma, 835-841. Madrid: Sociedad Española de Estudios Clásicos.

67. Rivera, Rubén Soto 1999. De Parménides a Demonacte: hilos de una urdimbre textual para una nueva historia de la filosofía. Bayamón (Puerto Rico): R. Soto Rivera.

68. Rossi, Arnaldo. 2016. "Mismidad y alteridad en torno al poema de Parménides." Limes. Revista de Estudios Clásicos no. 27:33-48.

Resumen: "Ni Parménides en su poema ni otros filósofos griegos se quedan sólo con su experiencia de lo Mismo. Necesitan por eso retornar al mundo manifestado donde lo Mismo y lo Otro se vinculan imprevisiblemente y donde no reinan ni el puro azar ni la necesidad apodíctica del clásico racionalismo moderno sobre la Filosofía o sobre la Ciencia."

69. Schüssler, Ingeborg. 1978. "La relación entre el pensamiento y el ser en el poema de Parménide." Anuario Filosófico no. 11:197-205.

"La relación entre el pensamiento y el ser es un tema fundamental de la filosofía europea. Su primera expresión escrita se encuentra en el poema de PARMÉNIDES: «es una misma cosa el Pensar con el Ser» (1)

En esta frase los términos «pensar y ser» forman el sujeto y los términos «es una misma cosa» el predicado. Quiere decir, por lo tanto: pensar y ser son lo mismo; el pensar y el ser se relacionan en la mismidad. Sin embargo surge la pregunta, ¿qué es la misma cosa en relación con qué? ¿es el ser en relación con el pensar o el pensar en relación con el ser? En el primer caso, la frase sería una proposición acerca del ser y afirmaría su mismidad con el pensar; en el segundo sería primariamente una proposición sobre el pensar y afirmaría su mismidad con el ser. ¿Cómo hay que entender, pues, esta frase?

En el transcurso de la historia de la filosofía la frase de PARMÉNIDES se ha interpretado de numerosas maneras, hasta en la investigación moderna acerca de PARMÉNIDES. Estas interpretaciones coinciden esencialmente en que la entienden como frase acerca del ser —por tanto en el primer sentido: el ser es lo mismo que el pensar; el ser está determinado por el pensar; el pensar es el principio de determinación del ser. La frase de PARMÉNIDES se considera, pues, como testimonio de una concepción idealista del ser y se entiende o en el sentido de un idealismo platónico antiguo o de un idealismo moderno.

Según la interpretación idealista antigua, debe significar que el ser tiene la naturaleza del pensamiento, es decir es un νοετον, a saber, la idea suprasensible que sólo se capta con el pensamiento. Según la interpretación idealista moderna, significa que un ser sólo existe dentro de y para una consciencia." (pp. 197-198)

(1) Fragm. 3. (La traducción de este fragmento y de los demás corresponden a la versión de J. P. GARCÍA BACCA, El poema de Parménides, México 1962. N. d. T.).

70. Seggiaro, Claudia Marisa. 2021. "La phýsis como problema en el fragmento 9 de Sobre la filosofía." Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofía no. 47:357-381.

Resumen: "En el presente trabajo, nos centraremos en el análisis de las críticas a Parménides y Meliso realizadas en el fragmento 9 de Sobre la filosofía.

Creemos que este fragmento es un testimonio relativamente sólido de que en esta obra Aristóteles habría intentado indagar en torno a uno de los principios de lo real: la phýsis, presentando las problemáticas que su negación presupone. Para realizar nuestro análisis, dividiremos el trabajo en dos partes. En la primera, examinaremos el contexto en el cual aparece citado el fragmento 9 de Sobre la filosofía y la fuente por la cual nos ha llegado: Sexto Empírico. En la segunda parte, nos centraremos en las estrategias argumentativas que Aristóteles habría implementado para desarrollar las tesis presentadas en el fragmento en cuestión."

71. Segura Peraita, Carmen. 2001. "Una interpretación de la concepción de la physis entre los presocráticos. Antes y después de Parménides." Contrastes. Revista Internacional de Filosofía no. 6:143-160.

Resumen: "La pregunta por la physis es un rasgo característico del pensamiento griego, y en particular de los pensadores presocráticos. A pesar de sus puntos de coincidencia, no podemos olvidar las diferencias entre ellos. Con respecto a la physis Parménides establece una ruptura entre los filósofos anteriores y posteriores a él. Si, como su significado original sugiere, el concepto de physis esta vinculado esencialmente a la generación, entonces su estatuto entre Parménides y sus seguidores resulta problemático. Por esta razón, es útil analizar algunas de las implicaciones de physis entre los filósofos jonios."

72. Sierra Martin, César. 2019. "Tucídides y la vía parmenídea de la verdad." Éndoxa: Series Filosóficas no. 43:19-40.

Resumen: "En el presente artículo exploramos el contexto filosófico de la obra de Tucídides. A través del análisis de la verdad en la obra de Tucídides definimos una conexión intelectual con filósofos presocráticos como Parménides de Elea y Gorgias de Leontinos."

73. Solana, Dueso José. 2006. De Logos a Physis. Estudio sobre el Poema de Parménides. Zaragoza: Miros Editores.

"Parménides es uno de los pensadores más influyentes de la filosofía occidental. El presente libro ofrece una hipótesis hermenéutica que se puede resumir en dos afirmaciones esenmciales: primera, Parménides, como todos los pensadores de su tiempo, era ante todo un físico o fisiólogo (como los denominó Aristóteles), cuyas inquietudes y aportaciones se expresan en la segunda parte de su poema Sobre la naturaleza. Esa parte, escasamente representada en los fragmentos conservados, exponía una teoría original que se caracterizaba por defender una física dualista frente al monismo de los milesios. Segunda, Parménides, a diferencia de la mayoría de los físicos, tomó conciencia por primera vez de la necesidad de explicar, no solo el orden de la naturaleza (physis) y las leyes que la rigen (tarea de los físicos), sino también el orden y las leyes del mundo del discurso (logos), de la teoría que trata de explicar el mundo. A esta segunda tarea, que sin duda puede ser calificada como el descubrimiento de la lógica, dedicó la primera parte de su Poema a modo de un discurso del método y no de una anacrónica especulación metafísica."

74. Solana Dueso, José. 2001. "Lenguaje y filosofía en el poema de Parménides." Convivium: revista de filosofía no. 14:31-47.

Resumen: "Este artículo aborda tres cuestiones relativas al sentido y alcance que tiene en el Poema de Parménides la reflexión sobre el lenguaje. La primera pretende explicar el diferente tratamiento que merece el lenguaje en las dos partes del texto parmenídeo. La segunda trata de señalar cómo algunos aspectos gramaticales son aprovechados como recursos formales al servicio de lo que podríamos llamar la protológica parmenídea.

Finalmente, se analizan los versos B8.34-41 para sostener que del citado pasaje no debe deducirse, como hacen muchos intérpretes, una descalificación del mundo fenoménico.

Por el contrario, el citado pasaje contiene dos tesis muy decisivas para la interpretación del conjunto del Poema: primera, que el lenguaje es un artefacto necesario e inevitable para la teona física, y segunda, que la imposición de los nombres es una actividad teórica que debe someterse a la krisis."

75. ———. 2003. "Generación y tiempo en el Poema de Parménides." Méthexis.International Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 16:7-22.

"El fragmento 8 del poema de Parménides constituye un conjunto de argumentos a favor de un grupo de predicados del éóv que se presentan en los versos a favor de un grupo de predicados del éóv que se presentan en los versos B8.3-4:

άγένητον éóv καί άνώλ6θρόν έστιν,

ούλον μουνογβνές re καί άτρεμές ήδ’ άτ€λ€στόν

El objeto de este artículo será analizar cuestiones relacionadas con el primero de estos versos, el que se refiere al carácter ingénito e indestructible del éóv, cuya prueba se desarrolla a lo largo de B8.5-21. La estrecha asociación entre generación y tiempo queda patente al comprobar el énfasis de que son objeto los adverbios de tiempo en conjunción con el uso de los tiempos verbales." (p. 7)

76. ———. 2006. De Logos a Physis. Estudio sobre el Poema de Parménides. Saragoza: Mira editores.

"Parménides es uno de los pensadores más influyentes de la filosofía occidental. El presente libro ofrece una hipótesis hermenéutica que se puede resumir en dos afirmaciones esenciales: primera, Parménides, como todos los pensadores de su tiempo, era ante todo un físico o fisiólogo (como los denomina Aristóteles), cuyas inquietudes y aportaciones se expresan en la segunda parte de su poema Sobre la naturaleza. Esa parte, escasamente representada en los fragmentos conservados, exponía una teoría original que se caracterizaba por defender una física dualista frente al monismo de los milesios. Segunda, Parménides, a diferencia de la mayoría de los físicos, tomó conciencia por primera vez de la necesidad de explicar, no sólo el orden de la naturaleza (physis) y las leyes que la rigen (tarea de los físicos), sino también el orden y las leyes del mundo del discurso (logos), de la teoría que trata de explicar el mundo. A esta segunda tarea, que sin duda puede ser calificada como el descubrimiento de la lógica, dedicó la primera parte de su Poema a modo de un discurso del método y no de una anacrónica especulación metafísica."

77. ———. 2015. La voz de los Maestros: Parménides.

78. ———. 2019. "Mito y logos en Parménides." In ὁδοὶ νοῆσαι Ways to Think. Essays in Honour of Néstor-Luis Cordero, edited by Pulpito, Massimo and Spangenberg, Pilar, 87-99. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia.

Resumen: "El artículo argumenta que la tesis de “paso del mito al logos” para explicar el nacimiento de la filosofía en Grecia no se ajusta a la realidad; antes bien, el mito siguió existiendo en el campo de la filosofía, incluida la de Parménides.

No solo eso, sino que del Poema parmenídeo se infiere que el mito es ineliminable, y además es necesario en dos dominios: el de la explicación del mundo y el de la justificación del orden social."

79. Suárez de la Torre, Emilio. 2010. "La diosa lleva al iniciado por la vida del Ser: conjetura a Parménides B 1.3 D.-K." In Dic mihi, mvsa, virvm: homenaje al profesor Antonio López Eire, edited by Cortés Gabaudan, Francisco and Méndez Dosuna, Julián Víctor 659-662. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.

"La diosa lleva a quien ha recibido su iniciación sapiencial por el camino del Ser. el único verdadero: lo conduce por todo lo que es. Dejo claro que, en mi opinión, la enseñanza que recibe el Κοῦρος; que se inicia en la sabiduría no es sólo distinguir entre la vía de la Verdad y la de lo opinable, sino que, además, aprende una explicación cosmológica que, aunque cotejable con otras alternativas y dotada de la virtualidad engañosa de todo relato poético bellamente ordenado y verosímil (fr. 8.52 κόσμον ἐμῶν ἐπέων ἀπατηλὸν, 60 διάκοσμον ἐοικότα), tiene la garantía y autoridad de la diosa que lo transmite. Por la propia teoría expresada por la diosa, ni ella ni el camino (para quienes prefieran esta concordancia del relativo) nos pueden llevar por la vía del No-Ser (que no es), sólo por la de lo que es, aunque los poetas y filósofos hayan dado explicaciones que pueden estar equivocadas. En cualquier caso, si algo es, es pensable, opinable y puede ser dicho." (p. 661)

80. Untersteiner, Mario. 1956. "La "doxa" en la filosofía de Parménides." Diánoia no. 2:203-221.

Resumen: "La determinación precisa del significado de la δόξα parmenídea y de sus relaciones con la ἀλήθεια puede considerarse verdaderamente como una vexata questio hasta hoy sin solución. Mientras que en relación a otros problemas la historia de las cuestiones puede facilitarnos el hallar un hilo conducente a una solución de orden superior, en este caso, por el contrario, es más conveniente enfrentarse directamente a las palabras mismas de Parménides, sin dejar de tener presentes, en su oportunidad, para las exégesis de detalle, las precedentes soluciones parciales que puedan considerarse acertadas."

81. Uzqueda, Juan Araos. 2003. "Relectura del poema de Parménides." In América latina y lo clásico, edited by Giuseppina, Grammatico Amari, Arbea, Antonio G. and Luz, María Edwards, 664-679. Santiago de Chile: Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Parmenides. Bibliografia dos estudos en Português

Bibliografia

1. "Parmênides I." 2007. Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1.

Este volume é dedicado ao Emérito Professor Nestor Cordero, na comemoração de seus 70 anos, em grande parte ocupados com a vitalidade do Poema de Parmênides.

Este volume, em dois números, apresenta artigos apresentados no I Simpósio Internacional OUSIA de Estudos Clássicos: O Poema de Parmênides, realizado no Rio de Janeiro em 2006. O simpósio foi uma realização dos laboratórios OUSIA (filosofia) e PROAERA (letras clássicas) da UFRJ.

Índice: Nestor-Luis Cordero: Em Parmênides, 'tertium non datur' 1; José Trindade Santos: Parménides contra Parménides 14; Emmanuel Carneiro Leão: O homem no Poema de Parmênides 26; Fernando Muniz: A Odisséia de Parmênides 37; Luís Felipe Bellintani Ribeiro: Parmênides tràgico 45; Gérard Émile Grimberg: Parmênides e a matemática 55; Carla Francalanci: O diálogo Sofista à sombra de Parmênides 69; Fernando Pessoa: Entre pensar e ser, Heidegger e Parmênides 78; Gisele Amara: A necessidade do dizer 87; Alexandre Costa: O sentido histórico-filosófico do Poema de Parmênides 92; José Trindade Santos: Índice da recepção dispensada a Parmênides, na Antiguidade 1-3.

2. "Parmênides II." 2007. Anais de Filosofia Clássica.

Índice: Giovanni Casertano: Verdade e erro no poema de Parmênides 1; Chiara Robbiano: Duas fases parmenídeas ao longo da via para a verdade: elenkhos e ananke 17; Charles Kahn: Algumas questões controversas na interpretação de Parmênides 33; Gabriele Cornelli: A descida de Parmênides: anotações geofilosóficas às margens do prólogo 46; Markus Fiqueira: O atomismo antigo e o legado de Parmênides 59; Marcus Reis Pinheiro: Plotino, exegeta de Platão e Parmênides 70; Fernando Santoro: Os nomes dos deuses 83; Marcelo Pimenta Marques: O frag. 4 de Parmênides 91; Izabela Bocayuva: O poema de Parmênides e a viagem iniciática 106; Fernando Santoro: Tabela de valores funcionais do verbo eimi no poema de Parmênides 1-3.

3. "Parmênides EON I." 2020. Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 14.

No dossiê do volume 14, inauguramos o Projeto EON – Ontologia Eleática: origem e recepção, idealizado por Nicola Galgano (USP), um amplo trabalho de cooperação internacional em História da Filosofia, que deve estender-se por vários anos e diversos meios de publicação. O primeiro Tomo do Volume 1 vem publicado nos nossos números 27 e 28 de 2020, perfazendo o dossiê especial do Volume 14 da revista.

Índice: Rose Cherubin, Fernando José De Santoro Moreira, Nicola Galgano, Massimo Pulpito: Eleatic Ontology: origin and reception 1; Rose Cherubin, Fernando José De Santoro Moreira, Nicola Galgano, Massimo Pulpito: Ontologia Eleática: origem e recepção 19; Berruecos Frank: Parmênides and Heraclitus revisited. Palintropic Metaphysics, Polymathy and Multiple Experience 37; Jenny Bryan: The Non-Divinity of Parmênides' What-is 71; Guido Calenda: Epistemological Relevance of Parmênides’ Ontology 96; Guido Calenda: Rilevanza Epistemologica dell’Ontologia Parmenidea 121; Rose Cherubin: The Eleatics and the Projects of Ontology 146; Bruno Loureiro Conte; Doxa, Diakosmêsis and Being in Parmênides’ Poem 176; Nestor Codero: Parmênides by himself 198; Nestor Cordero: Parménide par lui même 222; Walter Fratticci: Apeonta, pareonta. On fragment B4 DK 246; Walter Fratticci: Apeonta, pareonta. Sul frammento B4 DK 271-296.

4. "Parmênides EON II." 2020. Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 14.

Índice: Galgano: Non-being in Parmênides, DK B2 1; Daniel W. Graham: The Metaphysics of Parmênides' Doxa and Its Influence 35; James Lesher: Parmênides on Knowing What-is and What-is-not 59; Emese Mogyorodi: Materialism and Immaterialism, Compatibility and Incompatibility in Parmênides 81; Massimo Pulpito: Samian Meontology. On Melissus, Non-Being, and Self-Refutation 107; Livio Rossetti: Several New Notions Introduced and Exploited, but not Made Explicit, by Zeno (of Elea) 140; Fernando José De Santoro Moreira: Venus and the Erotics of Parmênides 165; Fernando José De Santoro Moreira: Vênus e a Erótica de Parmênides 190; Panagiotis Thanassas: Ontology and Doxa. On Parmênides’ Dual Strategies 216-249.

5. Amaral, Gisele. 2007. "A necessidade do dizer." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:87-91.

"Para Parmênides, é necessário explicar e superar o mundo dos erros e das ilusões, combatendo a presunção de todo conhecimento fundado na aparência, pois o mundo da aparência é um mundo enganador. Pensar apoiado no fundamento da verdade de ser desmente o caminho da aparância e dá lugar na fala ao que é íntegro, imutável, incorruptível, indivisível, imóvel, não-gerado, inabalável, sempre o mesmo, em suma, permanente. E isso é ser. Ao dirigir-se apenas para a constitução de ser, pensar coincide com ser. Mas a desconfiança da experiência dos mortais no mundo é a provocação de pensar que a Deusa lança sobre o jovem, por isso é tão necessário que ele seja capaz de reconhecer o que é aparente como meramente aparente e, para tanto, ele deve aprender o ordenamento inventivo (kósmon apatelón) de suas palavras. A verdade do discurso depende da relação entre pensar e dizer isto que só ser é. Neste sentido, deve ser eliminada qualquer consideração tanto acerca do que não é, quanto acerca do vir-a-ser, pois o vir-a-ser exprimiria uma condição de ainda não ser ser, uma hipótese também descartada no Poema." (p. 90)

6. Azevedo, Cristiane Almeida de. 2021. "O poema de Parmênides e suas temporalidades." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 29:34-49.

Resumo: "Os estudos mais recentes sobre o pensamento de Parmênides esforçam-se por entender os fragmentos que chegaram até nós de forma integral. Trata-se de relacionar o que ficou conhecido como três partes diferentes do poema em um todo coerente. O presente trabalho pretende pensar o poema dentro dessa perspectiva integral a partir de uma reflexão sobre a questão da temporalidade. Para tanto, identificamos em cada parte do poema uma temporalidade diferente relacionada com o pensamento de Parmênides sobre o conhecimento do que é e das coisas que são."

7. Barbosa, Rafael Mello. 2015. "Sobre o Princípio de não-contradição: Entre Parmênides e Aristóteles." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 9:13-25.

Resumo: "O artigo procura mostrar que Parmênides não deve ser considerado percursor do princípio de não contradição. Não são poucos aqueles que compreendem os versos B2 do poema de Parmênides como o princípio de não contradição avant la lettre. Contudo, quando se realiza tal aproximação, perdemos de vista aquilo que parece ser próprio de cada autor. Por um lado, Parmênides defende o Monon On, o Ser Único, como testemunham Platão, Zenão e Melisso. Por outro lado, é preciso não assumir uma parte mais fundamental da formulação do princípio de não contradição, do contrário teríamos que sustentar um princípio do princípio mais fundamental, o que implica ter que manter o movimento e a pluralidade como itens essenciais da formulação do primeiro princípio."

8. Bellintani Ribeiro, Luís Felipe. 2007. "Parmênides trágico." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:45-54.

"Eis aqui o ponto central da presente interpretação. O espírito fundamental da filosofia de Parmênides é trágico, ao contrário do que pensava Nietzsche (A filosofia na época trágica dos gregos), que corretamente assinalou o caráter trágico de toda filosofia pré-socrática e incorretamente excluiu, como o menos grego dos gregos contemporâneos à eclosão da revolução jônica, a pretexto de certo sacrifício da empiria em nome da exatidão lógica de truísmos vazios, exatamente o mais trágico de todos. Como na tragédia, em que o herói tem e não tem escolha, o caminho do não-ser é e não é um caminho." (p. 48)

9. Bernabé, Alberto. 2013. "Filosofía e mistérios: leitura do proêmio de Parmênides." Archai. Revista de Estudos sobre as Origens do Pensamento Ocidental no. 10:37-58.

Resumo: "Tem-se analisado, recorrentemente, a influência de Homero e de Hesíodo no proêmio do poema de Parmênides. As possíveis influências da poesia órfica tem sido apenas consideradas.

Todavia, diversas descobertas de textos órficos aconselham voltar a analisar os vestígios da tradição mistérica, em geral, e órfica, em particular, no poema do filósofo de Eléia, sem minimizar, com isso, as outras influências já postas em relevo.

O autor assinalou, em um trabalho anterior, algumas conexões entre Parmênides e os textos órficos; neste artigo, a análise se centra nos pontos de contato com ideias e imagens literárias dos Mistérios que se encontram no proêmio. Não se trata de determinar as crenças do filósofo, senão de situar, no âmbito da tradição, os conteúdos doutrinais e/ou poéticos expressados nesta parte fundamental do seu poema, para fazer ver o que têm de poderosamente originais e, em consequência, tratar de determinar o significado do proêmio no conjunto da obra."

10. Bocayuva, Izabela. 2007. "O Poema de Parmênides e a viagem iniciática." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:106-118.

"O acolhimento da Deusa em relação ao viajante só se deu dentro de determinadas condições. Foi preciso que Díke fosse persuadida pelo apelo das filhas do sol a favor do poeta, para então destrancar a passagem da qual detém as chaves. Com esse consentimento, entendemos que Díke diz, mesmo sem pronunciar palavra: "Ele encontrou a medida. É justo que ele ultrapasse o umbral das portas do Dia e da Noite, é justo que para ele aconteça o deslocamento radical dos eixos delas". Eis que o que era noite virou dia. A visão do invisível se torna possível. Agora o poeta, o homem que tomou o caminho apartado dos homens, pode ver com uma clareza que antes não existia. Agora ele é um iniciado." (p. 108)

11. Brinati Furtado, Daniela, and da Silva Fortes, Fábio. 2020. "Um possivel dialogo entre o Poema de Parmenides, e o Tratado do nao-ser de Gorgias." In Estudos em Tradução & Recepção dos Clássicos, edited by Taveira Baptista, Natan Henrique, de Abreu Carvalho, Luiza Helena Rodrigues and Ribeiro Leite, Leni, 10-19. Vitória, ES: Letras-Ufes.

"O objetivo deste estudo é apresentar uma reflexão sobre a filosofia parmenídica acerca do ser e em que medida esta pode ter viabilizado o pensamento de Górgias desenvolvido no Tratado do não-ser. Em seu tratado, Górgias apresenta a hipótese de que as coisas externas ao discurso [lógos] não são traduzíveis em palavras, portanto não são comunicáveis. Ao fazê-lo, o sofista impede que qualquer discurso fale fielmente da realidade, atitude que inviabiliza tratar o Poema de Parmênides realmente do ser. Feito isso, Górgias dá, ao nosso conhecimento, apenas acesso ao discurso, o qual receberá o poder de atribuir sentido à realidade que será um constante fluxo de discursos pontuais. E, ao refletirmos sobre a questão do sofista, nos perguntaremos se o ser parmenídico – na medida em que este é confundido com o pensamento presente em seu Poema – possivelmente abriu espaço para os postulados gorgianos." (p. 10)

12. Casertano, Giovanni. 2007. "A cidade, o verdadeiro e o falso em Parmênides." Kriterion. Revista de Filosofia no. 116:307-327.

Resumo: "Parte da historiografia filosófica da segunda metade do século XIX se empenha em renovar a imagem de Parmênides de Eléia fixada pela tradição – filósofo do imobilismo, isolado, estranho e venerável – recuperando as relações estreitas que ele mantinha com as exigências da cultura de sua época. O propósito deste artigo é reconduzir Parmênides ao seu tempo, apontando o pensamento vivo de um homem que foi não apenas filósofo, mas também cientista e político de grande relevo."

13. ———. 2007. "Verdade e erro no Poema de Parmênides." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:1-16.

Tradução de Maria da Graça Gomes de Pina.

"Em conclusão, podemos dizer que não há uma oposição entre o campo da ciência e o da experiência comum, entre o processo do discurso racional e o das experiências sensíveis, mas uma continuidade. Uma continuidade que é dada pelo no/oj, pelo intelecto, pela mente do homem que conhece. A intervenção do no/oj na leitura da experiência comum, essa intervenção necessária para que este mundo possa constituir não uma sucessão caótica de factos e de aparências, mas um cosmo racionalmente ordenado, é precisamente a de dar um justo valor, uma justa colocação (veja-se o w(j eiÅnai de B1.31-32) à multiplicidade dos fenómenos dessa única realidade em que o homem vive e trabalha." (p. 14)

14. Cassin, Barbara. 2023. Se Parmênides: O tratado anônimo De Melisso Xenophane Gorgia. Bel Horizonte: Autêntica Editora.

15. Cherubin, Rose, Galgano, Nicola Stefano, Pulpito, Massimo, and Santoro, Fernando. 2020. "Ontologia Eleática: origem e recepção. Introdução Geral; Introduções ao Volume 1. e ao Tomo 1.1." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 27:19-26.

Resumo: "O primeiro volume do projeto Ontologia Eleática: Origem e Recepção lança seu olhar para a filosofia antiga, onde as principais características de uma prospectiva ontologia eleática foram forjadas. No

pensamento grego antigo, encontramos a origem desta perspectiva teórica, na obra de Parmênides e dos outros eleatas, que a seu modo testemunharam uma primeira recepção doParmenidianismo. Mais tarde, a filosofia antiga veio a mostrar repetidamente exemplos de recepção deste ponto de vista, e foi esta posteridade que, por sua vez, originou a noção de ontologia eleática nos séculos seguintes."

16. Conte, Bruno Loureiro. 2010. Mythos e logos no poema de Parmênides. Sâo Paulo: Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Sâo Paulo.

Resumo: "Como é bem sabido, o poema de Parmênides, considerado uma das obras fundamentais do pensamiento filosófico grego, apresenta uma pluralidade de elementos míticos, seu esclarecimento constituindo um problema para os intérpretes. Trata-se, neste trabalho, de investigar o significado histórico-filosófico do mythos e do logos no poema, a partir da inserção da obra em seus contextos culturais. Nossa análise inicia-se destacando a presença do mythos, entendido em seu sentido original de maneira autorizada de falar, mostrando-o de tal modo entrelaçado ao que o "argumento': sem ele, sequer seria compreensível.

De outro lado, procuramos determinar a especificidade do logos de Parmênides: trata-se de um logos reflexivo, "refutativo", mas não, como pretendem alguns intérpretes, de uma estrita "demonstração". Estabelecido esse ponto, surge a obra de Parmênides como produtora de agenciamentos míticos diversos, apropriando-se das imagens do poeta tradicional inspirado, da iniciação nos cultos de mistérios, de figuras de divindades e da concepção da existência humana presente na Lírica arcaica, efetuando-se o poema em múltiplas configurações discursivas (narrativa, argumento, fala oracular). Nesse sentido, introduzimos a hipótese interpretativa da associação da fala da deusa no poema a um tipo específico de oráculo, similar ao do médico-adivinho. Tais associações ou agenciamentos, todavia, não se revelam como simples reproduções de aspectos presentes na cultura grega: eles são mesmo subvertidos em direção à instauração filosófica de uma reflexão radical, que recolhe "sinais" do visível e do invisível, conduzindo ao "pensar"."

17. ———. 2016. "A poética de Parmênides e sua nova imagem de mundo." Hypnos:225-251.

Resumo: "Este artigo procura uma elucidação a respeito da escolha por Parmênides de compor um poema em hexâmetros dactílicos, característica do épico, apesar da prosa já estar disponível em seu tempo. Através de uma análise do proêmio, observa-se que, longe de inscrever-se de maneira simplesmente orgânica em seus contextos tradicionais, o Poema apresenta uma dinâmica de antecipações e ressignificações que aponta para uma relação dialética entre o novo e o tradicional."

18. ———. 2023. A Doxa no poema de Parmênides: Uma investigação a partir dos testemunhos antigos. São Paulo Edições Loyola.

Resumo: "O objetivo desta investigação é determinar o lugar da assim chamada seção da Doxa no Poema de Parmênides, tanto do ponto de vista de sua reconstituição textual quanto de seu estatuto teórico. O trabalho se justifica, de um lado, a partir da constatação de que a representação moderna do Poema, dividindo-o em duas Partes principais, Alétheia {Verdade} e Doxa {Opinião}, não concorda com alguns aspectos noticiados pela doxografia.

Desse ponto de vista, coloca-se em questão o princípio dicotômico adotado pelos editores modernos no esrabelecimenco do texto parmenídeo que nos chega fragmentariamente.

Trata-se assim, em um primeiro momento, de investigar com cuidado as fontes, procurando a partir delas detenninar o conteúdo temático preciso que a tradição identificou através da expressão ta pros doxan. Particular atenção é dedicada aos testemunhos de Simplício e de Aristóteles. De outro lado, a visão predominante na literatura interpretativa, que tende a simplesmente desvalorizar as "opiniões" para o pensamento de Parmênides, depara-se com o problema de explicar a razão da presença de uma Cosmogonia na assim entendida Segunda Parte do Poema. Apresentamos, a partir da investigação das fontes, a hipótese de uma versão deflacionista da Doxa, composta pelos versos B8,51-61 e B9,1-4 {numeração da edição Diels-Kranz}. A partir daí, mostramos a sua inserção, em conjunco com a Cosmogonia propriamente dita, no contexco mais amplo de uma Diakosmésis, e desenvolvemos un1a hipótese interpretativa que procura mostrar o seu estatu to teorético positivo, o que a tradição viu como a postulação de princípios cosmológicos (arkhai}, e que identifica-se no poema a um "arranjo cósmico" (diakosmos} dos contrários. De acordo a essa hipótese, no entanto, a Doxa pode ser interpretada não apenas como uma teoria física, mas também segundo aspectos de suas implicações crítico-epistemológicas e para os fundamentos de uma filosofia da linguagem parmenídea, o que revela o seu papel no conjunto do argumento do Poema."

19. ———. 2024. "A necessidade e outras divinidades no poema de Parmênides." In Filosofía y religión en la Grecia antigua, edited by Gutiérrez, Jorge Luis and Castrillejo, David Torrijo, 29-45. Salamanca: Sindéresis.

"Das muitas perspectivas que permitem pensar os aspectos mítico-religiosos presentes no Poema, limitar-me-ei a tratar do papel de algumas das divindades naquilo que elas de algum modo contribuem para a formulação de certos problemas filosóficos e também enquanto auxiliam a estruturar, como veremos, o discurso parmenídeo. Principalmente, terei algo a dizer sobre a deusa anônima que enuncia uma doutrina sob forma de revelação e sobre a divindade ou as divindades que recebem o nome de Justiça (Dike) e Necessidade (Ananke), que podem ou não ser a mesma entidade a que se refere o fr. 12 (aquela “que tudo conduz”). Direi ainda acessoriamente algo sobre a Persuasão (Pistis) e a Verdade (Aletheia), divinizadas.

Este parece ser o conjunto completo de divindades do poema, além das já mencionadas Heliádes, todas elas figuras femininas, em contraste com o Kouros, protagonista masculino da viagem filosófica. Mas, em especial, interessa-me neste trabalho compreender como a Necessidade, divinizada, relaciona-se a fórmulas modais de clara importância filosófica no Poema." (pp. 29-30)

20. Cordero, Néstor-Luis. 2007. "Em Parmênides, 'tertium non datur'." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:1-13.

Traduzido por Josefina Neves Mello.

"Parmênides, no entanto, é o primeiro filósofo que, para se referir a “os entes”, use o singular, mas isso não significa que vá tratar de uma só coisa. Seu singular é genérico porque se refere àquilo que têm em comum todas as “coisas”, os entes, tà ónta. Assim como o biólogo estuda tò zôon, os seres vivos, ou seja, isto que caracteriza todos os seres vivos, pánta tà zôa, o filósofo deve ocupar-se com "tò eón”, isto que é, o que está presente em todas as coisas que são, que existem, em panta ta onta. Já as ciências tratarão de estudar particularmente aquilo que corresponde a cada grupo das coisas, mas isto é posterior, pois as coisas não existiriam, se não se desse o “fato” de elas serem. Parmênides se limita a este “objeto”, o ato de ser, e seu poema é uma análise do quanto se pode dizer sobre ele mesmo.

Em suma, a unidade parmenídea é a unidade do singular, e isso é o que diz Platão em “O Sofista” – se se traduz bem o texto – quando ele afirma que, para aquilo que ele chama de “a família eleática”, “todas as coisas (tà pánta) são chamadas, nomeadas (kalouménon) um ser único (hèn ón)” (242d). Platão não diz que para eles “tudo é um” (frase, aliás, escrita por Heráclito). Dentro desta problematização, proponho-me cuidar do método posto em prática por Parmênides para conseguir “demonstrar”, à maneira dele, as verdades às quais ele acreditou haver chegado a propósito de “tò eón”." (pp. 1-2)

21. ———. 2011. Sendo, se é. A Tese de Parmênides. São Paulo: Odysseus.

Tradução de Eduardo Wolf.

"A interpretação de Parrnênides que proponho neste trabalho é resultado de mais de quarenta anos de investigações acerca do grande filósofo eleático.

Nada assegura, no entanto, que essa interpretação seja definitiva. Os cento e cinquenta versos que puderam ser recuperados de seu Poema (apenas três ou quatro páginas de um texto impresso atual) parecem ser inesgotáveis: cada palavra é uma espécie de bomba relógio, ou, para usar uma metáfora mais agradável, uma espécie de fogo de artifício que, uma vez aceso, espalha-se em variadas cores. Consciente dessa riqueza, minha tarefa principal consistiu em, durante muitos anos, "depurar" o texto do Poema, texto que ao longo dos séculos foi abrigando leituras equivocadas e, pior ainda, conjecturas excessivamente fantasiosas. Uma leitura direta das principais fontes do Poema (entre elas, os manuscritos de Proclo e de Simplício existentes atualmente, entre outros), permitiu-me apresentar um texto que considero mais próximo do original que a versão clássica de H. Diels.

Uma segunda etapa, que forma o núcleo central desse trabalho, consistiu em interpretar o texto, que já na Antiguidade foi objeto de leituras muito diferentes (Platão e Aristóteles, por exemplo, não parecem estar se referindo ao mesmo filósofo quando comentam Parmênides). Minha interpretação ressalta a contribuição original da filosofia de Parmênides com relação a outros pensadores de seu tempo, mas não pretende separá-lo do contexto filosófico dos pré-socráticos para fazer dele uma espécie de "pai" da oncologia) (p. XII)

22. ———. 2011. "Una consecuencia inesperada de la reconstrucción actual del Poema de Parménides." Hypnos:222-229.

Resumo: "O estabelecimento moderno do texto do poema de Parmênides, ao apresentá-lo em uma certa ordem de fragmentos, induziu os intérpretes à divisão de sua doutrina em “Verdade“ e “Opinião”. Lançando dúvidas quanto a essa ordenação e questionando a leitura do poema em duas “partes”, o autor procura desvincular os testemunhos que tratam dos astros de qualquer suposta doutrina parmenídica das doxai."

23. ———. 2013/2014. "O diálogo enganoso de Platão consigo mesmo na primeira parte do Parmênides." Revista E. F.e H. da Antiguidade, Campinas no. 27:103-122.

Tradução e notas: André Luiz Braga da Silva (USP).

Resumo: "Não são cabíveis dúvidas de que o Parmênides é um diálogo estranho. Ele foi escrito mais de vinte anos após a abertura da Academia, e Platão viu na obra a oportunidade para exibir certos pontos débeis de sua Teoria das Formas (sugeridos quiçá por alunos avançados, colegas, ou diretamente detectados por ele mesmo). Elegeu para isso uma miseen-scène adequada: fez sua teoria ser exposta pelo seu porta-voz habitual, Sócrates, mas o rejuvenesceu: na fi cção este não tem mais de vinte anos. Isso não signifi ca que sua posição fi losófica seja diferente: tudo que este diz corresponde literalmente às ideias expostas por Platão em diálogos anteriores... Mas a falta de experiência própria à juventude o impedem de responder às severas críticas que lhe apresenta seu interlocutor, o “grande Parmênides”.

O diálogo trata-se, na realidade, de um diálogo de Platão consigo mesmo: sob o aspecto do jovem Sócrates, ele expõe a versão tradicional de sua teoria; e, identifi cando-se com o personagem Parmênides, critica os aspectos sensíveis que, no momento de escrever este diálogo, ele encontrou em sua filosofia. Todavia, este diálogo de Platão consigo mesmo é enganoso porque Platão já tem elaboradas as respostas às críticas que ele põe na boca de Parmênides. Estas respostas aparecerão no diálogo Sofista."

24. Cornelli, Gabriele. 2005. "O caminho de Parmênides: Sobre filosofia e Katábasis no prólogo do Poema." Hypnos no. 10:93-101.

Resumo: "À margem das apressadas generalizações aristotélicas, este artigo se propõe remastigar o prólogo do poema Sobre a Natureza de Parmênides, em busca de uma compreensão profunda da relação entre a filosofia que nasce e as práticas de

katábasis, de descida ao mundo dos mortos. Ocasião para redescobrir a beleza de um diálogo, antigo entre a reflexão filosófica e o vasto mundo da sabedoria em suas formas mais arcaicas. Possibilidade de repensar as categorias fundamentais de nossa

historiografia filosófica."

25. ———. 2007. "A descida de Parmênides: anotações geofilosóficas às margens do prólogo." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:46-58.

"Conclusão

Mais uma vez, a história da filosofia antiga nos regala uma ferramenta, um martelo nietzschiano, ou quem sabe um simples pincel, para redesenhar tanta historiografia racionalista e presentista das origens de nossa maneira de ver o mundo ocidental. Para conseguirmos ver origens mais amplas, de maior diálogo e menos estanques daquelas às quais estamos acostumados.

Pois nosso jogo da história da filosofia parece-me ser, ainda hoje, aquele que jogava Merleau-Ponty: o de “explorar o irracional para integrá-lo numa razão expandida”.

Explorar e expandir, portanto: imperativos para descer, para a katábasis até as origens de nossa filosofia, quaisquer elas sejam, aonde quer que nos levem, com coragem e sinceridade intelectual, aprendendo com a ousadia parmenidea: dià pántos pánta perônta, “atravessando tudo através de tudo." (p. 57)

26. Costa, Alexandre. 2007. "O sentido histórico-filosófico do Poema de Parmênides." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:92-128.

"Constituído de três partes, o poema de Parmênides oferece de imediato uma dificuldade aos seus leitores e estudiosos: sendo essas três partes muito distintas entre si, seja no que se refere aos seus conteúdos, como também às suas formas ou gênero, como conciliálas a contento? Esta pergunta, por sinal, já gera um outro obstáculo: será mesmo que devem ser conciliadas? De onde nasce a nossa tendência a conceber o poema como um todo necessariamente harmônico, um conjunto internamente coerente apesar das referidas diferenças de teor e de caráter que separam essas suas partes?

Perguntas como essas têm sido respondidas das mais variadas formas, perfazendo a grande amplitude e diversidade que marcam a literatura a respeito da compreensão do poema.

Há um pouco de tudo dentro desse acervo crítico. Desde as hipóteses que apontam no seu interior a mais franca contradição até as que vêem no poema a mais absoluta coerência, passando por hipóteses ou soluções intermediárias, claro, como aquelas que sugerem que Parmênides tê-las-ia escrito em épocas distintas, de modo a conterem o itinerário do seu pensamento e, portanto, as mudanças que esse pensamento teria sofrido ao longo do tempo." (p. 92)

27. Da Silva, José Lourenço Pereira. 2014. "Sobre alguns problemas de interpretação difícil no Poema de Parmênides." Hypnos no. 32:108-129.

Resumo: "Resumo: Parmênides de Eléia é o mais importante pensador pré-socrático.

Seu poema filosófico marca um momento decisivo na história da investigação racional no século V a.C. Os fragmentos restantes, objeto de amplo debate entre os estudiosos da filosofia antiga, apresenta problemas para a interpretação do pensamento de Parmênides. Focalizando sua via da Verdade, sugiro uma interpretação das lições de Parmênides sobre o ser. Examino três problemas cruciais extensamente tratados na literatura crítica sobre Parmênides: (i) sua relação com outros filósofos do seu tempo, (ii) o sujeito do verbo ser em seu poema, e (iii) o significado desse verbo no fragmento 2."

28. de Azevedo, Cristiane A. 2017. "O discurso sobre o devir no poema de Parmênides: a presença fundamental de Éros na constituição do cosmos e do homem." Revista Enunciação no. 2:72-84.

Resumo: "Este artigo pretende, primeiramente, voltar-se para a última parte do poema de Parmênides que ficou ao longo de séculos relegada ao âmbito do não-ser, da aparência ou da falta de verdade. Este discurso trata da dóxa dos mortais e apresenta os elementos que formam a cosmologia. Nosso objetivo é pensar a dóxa de maneira positiva, constituindo-se como a maneira própria de falar daquilo que está sujeito ao devir, a saber, o sol, a lua, as estrelas, a Via Láctea, o homem. Em um segundo momento, vamos pensar não só a presença e a função de Éros no cosmos construído pelo pensamento de Parmênides mas também sua importância para o homem."

29. de Barros. 2023. "Para ler Parmênides. Uma breve introdução à questões estruturais do texto." Kinesis no. 15:300-319.

Resumo: "Como é possível extrair filosofia de um texto de quatro ou cinco páginas, arbitrariamente montado ao longo de mil anos de citações na Antiguidade, cujo tamanho original se desconhece, e suas partes, precariamente conectadas, juntam-se a partir de critérios e suposições tardias? Normalmente, nem se quer refletimos sobre questões desse tipo quando tratamos de estudar o pensamento de um autor, pois é comum que o estudo de um filósofo não passe pela história da obra em questão, quando e de que forma ocorreu a transmissão do texto ao longo da história. No presente artigo, teceremos algumas considerações importantes que leitor não familiarizado com o Poema de Parmênides tem de ter para que evite cair em armadilhas e reproduza dogmaticamente interpretações convencionalmente estabelecidas."

30. Figueira, Markus. 2007. "O atomismo antigo e o legado de Parmênides." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:59-69.

"Gostaríamos de propor também uma incursão no pensamento atomista antigo, notadamente nas poucas referências que fizeram ao pensamento de Demócrito de Abdera, nos textos remanescentes da física de Epicuro e na exposição que Lucrécio fez em seu poema De rerum natura, sobre os princípios da natureza. Trata-se, por um lado, de apontar a influência do pensamento parmenídeo na exposição acerca da realidade (phýsis) presente nos escritos destes pensadores; por outro lado, mostrar a necessidade que a eles se apresentou de encontrar um caminho divergente do apontado no Poema de Parmênides para pensar o movimento de constituição e dissolução das coisas na natureza. Acreditamos que todo o pensamento pluralista surgido no final do século V a. C. teve que responder ao sério problema deixado por Parmênides sobre a impossibilidade de se pensar o vir-a-ser e tributamos ao atomismo de Leucipo e Demócrito, e seu desdobramento em Epicuro e Lucrécio, uma solução, ainda que problemática, para esta questão." (p. 60)

31. Francalanci, Carla. 2007. "O diálogo Sofista à sombra de Parmênides." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:49-76.

"O Sofista, diálogo que, através da busca por distinguir sofista e filósofo, necessita rever as relações entre ser e não ser, tomando para isso a disjunção entre ambos atestada pelo Poema de Parmênides, é conduzido pelo Estrangeiro de Eléia. Tão intrigante quanto o silêncio guardado por Sócrates é a ausência de nome próprio dessa personagem, o que nos obriga a ouvir, continuamente, a sua denominação; somos confrontados, ao longo de todo o diálogo, com o termo “Estrangeiro” (xénos). A personagem é de fato, geograficamente, estrangeira, uma vez que provém do génos de Eléia(6)." (p. 70)

(...)

"Gostaria de concluir aqui essa exposição. Através da descoberta de uma nova possibilidade de resguardar a unidade do ser, a linguagem se mostra, mais uma vez, como horizonte para o acontecimento de um limite, através do qual o ser pode ser entrevisto em sua separação, distinção. Na retomada de um dizer que expressa o pertencimento do ser ao Um, refulge ainda uma vez o dizer inaugural de Parmênides." (pp. 76-77)

(6) Sofista 216a.

32. Galgano, Nicola Stefano. 2012. "DK 28 1.29. A verdade tem um coração intrépido?" In Una mirada actual a la filosofía griega. Ponencias del II Congreso Internacional de Filosofía Griega de la Sociedad Ibérica de Filosofía Griega, 189-202. Madrid-Mallorca: Ediciones de la Sociedad Ibérica de Filosofía Griega (SIFG).

"O artigo estuda uma das passagens mais famosas do Poema de Parmênides, o verso 29 do fragmento 1, Ἀληθέιης εὐκυκλέος ἀτρεμές ἦτορ, que literalmente pode ser assim traduzido: «o coração intrépido da verdade bem redonda». Essas palavras são proferidas por uma deusa anônima a um discípulo e querem expor o programa de ensino da divina mestra: o discípulo tem que aprender a verdade, mas também as opiniões dos mortais. Todos os estudiosos interpretam esse verso como metáfora, onde as expressões ‘coração intrépido’ e ‘bem redonda’ formam a imagem de uma ‘verdade imortal’ oposta às ‘opiniões dos mortais’.

O artigo questiona esta interpretação metafórica, talvez platonizante, alegando três tipos de considerações: literárias, (imagem imprópria de um coração que não bate, intrépido), históricas (pela fisiologia da época o coração é também a sede do pensamento) e filológicas (o termo para significar ‘centro’ é καρδία e não ἦτορ). A nova tradução proposta mostra que Parmênides queria dizer algo mais simples, isto é, ‘a mente firme da verdade bem conexa’, apontando para um fenômeno psicológico, a persuasão, sucessivamente retomado no fragmento 2." (p. 189)

33. ———. 2015. "Depois ou antes: Parmênides e o tempo em DK 8. 9-10." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 9:87-103.

Resumo: "É um cliché muito comum considerar que Parmênides introduz a atemporalidade na história da filosofia, negando o tempo em seu poema. Este cliché está baseado em passagens que supostamente expressam claramente esta negação. Das muitas passagens, a mais importante é a DK 8. 5: ὐδέ ποτ΄ ἦν οὐδ΄ ἔσται, ἐπεὶ νῦν ἔστιν ὁμοῦ πᾶν / ἕν, συνεχές […]; nem nunca era nem será, pois é todo junto agora, / uno, contínuo. Todavia, estudos recentes contestam esta interpretação, que podemos chamar de clássica, mostrando problemas no estabelecimento do texto de 8. 5 e na sua tradução. Meu objetivo, em linha com estes estudos, é mostrar duas coisas. A primeira é que os versos 8. 9-10, que contêm as palavras ‘depois’ e ‘antes’ (ὕστερον e πρόσθεν), não apresentam uma noção de tempo, a qual seria afinal negada pelo argumento, e portanto não propõem uma atemporalidade. A segunda é que estas duas palavras, que parecem indicar marcação de tempo, não discutem especificamente o tempo, mas se referem a uma ideia mais simples, a de sequência."

34. ———. 2016. "Os limites da palavra: Parmênides e o indizível." Revista Ética e Filosofía Política no. 2:4-24.

Resumo: "A importância do papel de Parmênides na história da filosofia foi evidenciada por Hegel, quando chegou a considerá-lo o primeiro verdadeiro filósofo. No entanto, o hegelianismo e, com ele, a moderna história da filosofia acentuaram a descoberta parmenidiana do ser, deixando de lado a complexa noção de não-ser. Mas o próprio Parmênides, ao introduzir aquelas noções, se dedica mais à explicitação e à argumentação do não-ser, mostrando algumas características peculiares que acabam tendo consequências sobre a estruturação do discurso cognitivo. Uma destas características é a indizibilidade do não ser, demonstrada por Parmênides indiretamente. Com a afirmação da indizibilidade, Parmênides estabelece, pela primeira vez na história do pensamento ocidental, um limite para o uso da linguagem e, portanto, um critério para o desenvolvimento do discurso epistêmico, uma autêntica regra metalinguística. A presente análise procura evidenciar os argumentos de Parmênides a partir do texto do poema, revelando a sutileza da reflexão do eleata, o primeiro a introduzir a problemática da linguagem epistêmica na cultura ocidental."

35. ———. 2018. "O não-ser em Parmênides de Eleia." Trans/form/açao no. 41:9-36.

Resumo: "No fragmento DK 28 B 2 de seu poema, Parmênides apresenta seu método para distinguir a persuasão verdadeira da falta de persuasão verdadeira. As famosas duas vias para o pensar que ele propõe são o enunciado complexo de um sistema que quer garantir a veracidade das afirmações para obter, afinal, um discurso confiável, o único capaz de persuasão verdadeira. O presente artigo mostra que o papel central da argumentação parmenidiana é atribuído ao não-ser, uma noção derivada certamente de uma reflexão sobre a impossibilidade da negação do ser. Assim, o inteiro fragmento é interpretado a partir dessa noção central, evidenciando que Parmênides descobre aquela impossibilidade de negação, que hoje nós chamamos de “contradição”, e enuncia qual é a maneira de evitar a contradição no pensamento e no discurso, uma regra que atualmente nós chamamos princípio de não-contradição. O estudo aqui apresentado faz uma investigação detalhada da noção de não-ser, no fragmento DK 28 B 2, oferecendo finalmente uma nova tradução."

36. ———. 2019. Parmênides: o não ser como contradição. São Paulo: Paulus.

"O estudo apresentado nas páginas a seguir trata de um tema específico entre os muitos presentes no poema de Parmênides: o não ser. Os motivos para este recorte são dois: o primeiro é a necessidade atual, no debate contemporâneo, de uma revisão dos mais variados pressupostos que sustentam e compõem a nossa visão de mundo – que podemos chamar genericamente de newtoniana – onde, imergida em espaço e tempo homogêneos, se encontra uma realidade em constante devir; esta visão parece não ser mais suficiente e, ademais, é questionada desde o século XIX pela filosofia e ao menos desde o século XX pela ciência mais avançada. Hoje, espaço e tempo não são mais tidos como um receptáculo neutro do mundo; alguns tradicionais instrumentos cognitivos humanos, como a relação causa-efeito e o princípio de não contradição, parecem não atuar de forma absoluta como se acreditava; e, finalmente, a projeção para o futuro das dinâmicas do mundo segundo nossos atuais conhecimentos – e, portanto, uma ideia de rumo para a humanidade – não tem cenários confortáveis, principalmente porque a equivocidade, a instabilidade e até mesmo a confusão das noções que utilizamos para ver o mundo não permitem um foco mais preciso." (p. 17)

37. ———. 2020. "Graduação e pós-graduação em Parmênides DK 7." In Educación, arte y política en la filosofia antigua. Actas del IV Simposio Nacional de la AAFA, edited by Suñol, Viviana and Berrón, Manuel, 266-276. Santa Fe: Asociación Argentina de Filosofía Antigua.

Resumen: "O poema de Parmênides é um texto didático à maneira arcaica, onde alguém que ensina, representado pela figura de uma Deusa, se propõe a mostrar ao discípulo uma representação do mundo extremamente sofisticada e complexa. No programa de aprendizagem, em DK B 1, a deusa avisa que o discípulo vai aprender tanto os conhecimentos verdadeiros quanto aqueles que são somente opiniões dos mortais. Essa distinção depende de um método, que ela ensina no fr. 2 e que permite ir além do conhecimento comum. Nos fr. 7, é especificado que há uma maneira de pensar aprendida culturalmente, dentro da qual os homens comuns desenvolvem suas atividades. Todavia, o discípulo deve ser capaz de se afastar dessa pensar comum e deve ser capaz de realizar suas pesquisas autonomamente a partir dos critérios por ela ensinados. O discípulo, que já aprendeu muito (graduação), agora deve ser capaz de pesquisar para aprender sozinho (pós-graduação)."

38. ———. 2024. "Do problema do cosmo ao problema do cosmólogo: Parmênides observador da mente humana." In Filosofía y religión en la Grecia antigua, edited by Gutiérrez, Jorge Luis and Castrillejo, David Torrijo, 63-78. Salamanca: Sindéresis.

39. Grimberg, Gérard Émile. 2007. "Parmênides e a matemática." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:55-68.

"O poema de Parmênides é o primeiro texto a refletir sobre o discurso da verdade e como tal um discurso atento à lógica. Durante a Antiguidade grega, a matemática vai se tornar o modelo de discurso da verdade. É portanto legitima a tentiva de avaliar e delimitar alguns aspectos da influência que teve o pensamento de Parmênides sobre o desenvolvimento da matemática grega." (p. 55)

40. Huguenin, Rafael. 2009. "Sugestões para a interpretação do poema de Parmênides." Síntese. Revista de Filosofia no. 36:197-218.

Resumo:" O objetivo deste artigo é oferecer uma sugestão para uma nova interpretação do poema de Parmênides. Para isso, em um primeiro momento, (I) discutiremos algumas abordagens tradicionais das duas vias de conhecimento no fragmento 2 e suas relações com as funções do verbo grego ‘ser’. Depois, (II) faremos uma exposição da tese de Charles Kahn acerca dos usos antigos do verbo ‘ser’, que coloca a questão em novos termos. Para concluir, (III) mostraremos como alguns aspectos da tradição oral, na qual o poema está certamente inserido, podem iluminar a interpretação dos problemas aos quais ele se dirige."

41. ———. 2013. "Parmênides e Frege: um breve estudo sobre as relações entre o poema sobre a natureza e as investigações lógicas." Kriterion. Revista de Filosofia no. 54:7-24.

Resumo: "O presente texto tem como objetivo estabelecer algumas relações entre o poema de Parmênides e as Investigações Lógicas, de Frege.

Mais especificamente, nosso objetivo é iluminar certos aspectos do poema de Parmênides por meio de uma comparação com certas noções utilizadas por Frege para caracterizar aspectos centrais de seu pensamento."

42. ———. 2015. "O fragmento B4 de Parmênides à luz da épica." Prometeus - Filosofia no. 8:218-227.

Resumo: "O propósito do presente texto é interpretar alguns termos empregados por Parmênides de Eléia em seu fragmento B4 à luz dos usos homéricos dos mesmos termos, em especial aqueles utilizados em contextos militares"

43. Kahn, Charles H. 1997. Sobre o verbo grego ser o conceito de ser. Rio de Janeiro: Núcleo de Estudos de Filosofia Antiga (Depto. de Filosofia da PUC-Rio).

Sumário: Editorial V; Apresentação IX; O Verbo Grego "Ser" e o Conceito de Ser 1; Sobre a Teoria do Verbo "Ser" 33; Sobre a Terminologia para Cópula e Existência 63; Por que a Existência não emerge como um Conceito distinto na Filosofia Grega ? 91; Alguns Usos Filosóficos do Verbo "Ser"em Platão 107; Retrospectiva do Verbo "Ser" e do Conceito de Ser 155; Ser em Parmênides e em Platão 197-227.

Apresentação: "No artigo "Retrospectiva sobre o Verbo 'Ser' e o Conceito de Ser", incluído nesta coletânea, Charles Kahn apresenta as razões que o levaram a investigar o verbo grego einai: seu objetivo era "fornecer uma espécie de prolegômenos gramaticais ao estudo da ontologia grega". Desconfiado de uma compreensão do verbo einâi que se tinha tornado cristalizada, e que lhe atribuía esquematicamente ou bem um uso copulativo ou o sentido de existência, desconfiado além disso da própria noção de existência a ele associada sem nenhuma crítica, Kahn empreendeu um estudo sobre os usos ordinários do verbo, independentes de seu uso especial pelos filósofos, a fim de "esclarecer o ponto de partida pré-teórico para as doutrinas do Ser desenvolvidas por Parmênides, Platão, Aristóteles".

Kahn começou a publicar os resultados de suas pesquisas em 1966, com o artigo que abre este volume, "O Verbo Grego 'Ser' e o Conceito de Ser". A partir daí, nunca mais o verbo grego ser foi o mesmo.

As revelações de Charles Kahn sobre os usos e sentidos do verbo einai supreenderam os meios acadêmicos, e obrigaram a uma revisão radical de interpretações tradicionais não só sobre o sentido do verbo ser nos textos gregos, mas sobre o sentido dos próprios textos dos filósofos que forjaram o conceito de Ser, o fundamento por excelência do pensamento filosófico ocidental. O que realmente disseram Parmênides, Platão, Aristóteles, quando falaram sobre ser e o Ser? Tudo teve de ser revisto, e as polêmicas, evidentemente, não poderiam faltar. Nos debates em que se viu envolvido, Charles Kahn soube defender suas posições e soube ouvir seus opositores. Dessa escuta atenta são prova os ajustes e precisões introduzidos em suas teses ao longo do tempo. Seria redundante, na ocasião em que publicamos seus textos, apresentar, ainda que resumidamente, tanto as teses originais de Kahn quanto os ajustes e precisões a que nos referimos. Os artigos desta coletânea estão organizados cronologicamente, para que o leitor possa acompanhar essa evolução." (pp. IX-X)

44. ———. 2007. "Algumas questões controversas na interpretação de Parmênides." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:33-45.

Tradução de Marcus Reis Pinheiro.

"É sempre um prazer ter a oportunidade de retornar a Parmênides, um filósofo pelo qual me apaixonei quando eu ainda era um estudante de pós-graduação. Ao longo dos anos, publiquei mais de uma vez sobre as concepções de Parmênides acerca do Ser e seu impacto sobre Platão. Assim, minhas visões sobre este assunto são bem conhecidas, e eu não as repetirei aqui. No entanto, irei, pelo menos, me referir ao conceito de Ser de Parmênides, e ficarei feliz em discutir sobre isto no momento das perguntas. Por outro lado, quero começar por situar Parmênides em relação à tradição da filosofia da natureza que começa em Mileto e, então, procederei à discussão de alguns pontos controversos, primeiro concernentes à interpretação de passagens cruciais e, finalmente, concernentes à direção da marcha da carruagem no proêmio." (p. 33)

45. Leão, Emmanuel Carneiro. 2007. "O homem no Poema de Parmênides." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:26-36.

"Primeiro apresentaremos o texto do Poema, a seguir, damos uma versão em português e, por fim, propomos uma interpretação de pensamento. É importante ler o original grego, para sentir o que há de estranho no familiar e de alheio no conhecido de nós mesmos, tanto na consciência, que temos, quanto na língua, que falamos."

46. Lopes, Daniel Rossi Nunes. 2006. "Parmênides vs. Górgias. Uma polêmica sobre a linguagem." Phaos no. 6:21-50.

Abstract: "This article intends to show the quarrel between Gorgias and Parmenides about the possibility of the ontologic speech. The gorgian treatise On Non-being or On Nature presenls itself, in this perspective, as refutation of the "parmenidian triad"

being, thinking and saying, expressed in the Poem. Gorgias intends to prove that the speech concerning being, which Parmenides considers the only possible and true, is inconsislent, both sintaticly and semanticly. Denying lhe possibility of an ontologic speech, Gorgias attribules then a central function to rhetoric in the theory of specch."

47. Marques, Masrcelo Pimenta. 1992. "A dóxa de Parmênides." Classica. Revista Brasileira de Estudos Clássicos:33-39.

Resumo: "Neste trabalho desenvolve o que seria a cosmologia de Parmênides, tal como podemos inferir a partir dos escassos fragmentos que nos chegaram da chamada 'd6xa', ou a segunda parte de seu poema (DK 28 B 8,50- 19). Para ta/lanço máo também de fragmentos doxogrd.ficos (DK 28 A 37; 46; 46a; 46b; 52; 53; 54), utilizados criticamente, numa reconstrução das linhas gerais da visão pannenidiana do cosmo e do homem, pensados como mistura de Fogo e Noite."

48. ———. 1997. "A presença de Dike em Parmênides." Kleos no. 1:17-31.

"No poema de Parmênides, encontramos díke tanto no prólogo (l, 14 e 28) quanto no fragmento dito "ontológico" (8,14). Díke detém as chaves que abrem as portas aos caminhos de noite e dia. É díke e não uma má moira quem manda o jovem percorrer o caminho rumo ao âmago da verdade. E é ainda díke quem mantém o ser firmemente em seus laços.

Três momentos que nos revelam o papel ordenador de uma potência divina no centro de um poema filosófico. Dentro do esquema mítico dos caminhos que estrutura o poema filosófico de Parmênides, díke permanece uma figura divina que controla, guia e amarra, companheira de alétheia. Por outro lado, o percurso no qual ela se inscreve é um viagem humana: o percurso do jovem que caminha rumo à divindade. Para além deste percurso interno ao poema, podemos também falar do percurso que o próprio poema executa, caminho poético de Parmênides que inaugura a filosofia enquanto busca pelo ser na palavra que se quer justa e verdadeira." (p. 17)

49. ———. 2007. "O frag. 4 de Parmênides." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:91-105.

"Desenvolvo aqui algumas anotações sobre o fr. 4, traindo minha incapacidade de resistir ao fascínio que este poema primeiro da filosofia ainda exerce sobre mim. Limito-me a explorar o termo apeónta, experimentando, com Couloubaritsis, uma leitura heterodoxa: proponho compreender "coisas ausentes" como não-entes, seres afastados do ser, em meio aos quais erra o pensamento humano; o noûs é percepção inteligente que fundamentalmente erra, mas que, se aprumada na direção do ser, pode adquirir alguma solidez." (p. 91)

50. Muniz, Fernando. 2007. "A Odisséia de Parmênides." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:37-44.

"O que eu pretendo insistir aqui é na relação genética entre poema de Parmênides e a Odisséia. Em primeiro lugar, quero explicar o que entendo por relação genética. Não quero dizer que a Odisséia explica o Poema da Deusa, nem que há uma continuidade simples, sem ruptura, entre os dois poemas, mas, sim, que Parmênides usou a Odisséia não como forma atraente para tratar de temas áridos. Mas, sim, como um arquivo onde selecionou aspectos narrativos relevantes para os quais ofereceu alcance filosófico. Desse modo, penso num tipoespecífico de elaboração filosófica a partir de materiais poéticos significativos: imagens, palavras, temas, objetos, personagens etc." (p. 38)

51. Pereira da Silva, José Lourenço. 2010. "Sobre o conceito de Noeîn em Parmênides." Dissertatio no. 32:177-191.

Resumo: "O verbo noeîn e sua substantivação nóos pertencem ao vocabulário cognitivo grego na literatura épica e pré-socrática comunicando a ideia de uma apreensão imediata da realidade ou da verdade de um objeto, isto é, um tipo de cognição análogo à percepção sensível em seu caráter intuitivo e direto. Segundo Von Fritz, esses conceitos passaram por uma evolução na qual Parmênides representa um momento decisivo. Em Parmênides, sem perder o aspecto preponderante de uma intuição da natureza das coisas – portanto de captar o ser (tò eón) – o nóos também opera como raciocínio lógico. Quer dizer, noeîn-nóos exerce uma dupla função: é o contato direto com a realidade última e o pensamento discursivo, que argumenta, infere e deduz. Nosso propósito aqui é mostrar como, em Parmênides, essas funções do nóos se encontram articuladas."

52. ———. 2014. "Sobre alguns problemas de interpretação difícil no Poema de Parmênides." Hypnos no. 12:108-129.

Resumo: "Parmênides de Eléia é o mais importante pensador pré-socrático.

Seu poema filosófico marca um momento decisivo na história da investigação racional no século V a.C. Os fragmentos restantes, objeto de amplo debate entre os estudiosos da filosofia antiga, apresenta problemas para a interpretação do pensamento de Parmênides. Focalizando sua 'via da Verdade', sugiro uma interpretação das lições de Parmênides sobre o ser. Examino três problemas cruciais extensamente tratados na literatura crítica sobre Parmênides: (i) sua relação com outros filósofos do seu tempo, (ii) o sujeito do verbo ser em seu poema, e (iii) o significado desse verbo no fragmento 2."

53. Pessoa, Fernando. 2007. "Entre pensar e ser, Heidegger e Parmênides." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:78-86.

"O propósito deste texto é mostrar como Heidegger, em seu projeto de superação da metafísica moderna, recoloca a questão do sentido do ser através de uma repetição da compreensão da identidade entre pensar e ser indicada por Parmênides. Essa demonstração visa a esclarecer o projeto heideggeriano de desconstrução da noção vigente de verdade como adequação, através da interpretação da verdade como descobrimento." (pp. 79-80)

54. Pimenta Marques, Marcelo. 1997. "A presença de Dike em Parmênides." Kléos no. 1:17-31.

"No poema de Parmênides, encontramos díke tanto no prólogo (1,14 e 28) quanto no fragmento dito "ontológico" (8,14). Díke detém as chaves que abrem as portas aos caminhos de noite e dia. É díke e não uma má moîra quem manda o jovem percorrer o caminho rumo ao âmago da verdade. E é ainda díke quem mantém o ser firmemente em seus laços. Três momentos que nos revelam o papel ordenador de uma potência divina no centro de um poema filosófico. Dentro do esquema mítico dos caminhos que estrutura o poema filosófico de Parmênides, díke permanece uma figura divina que controla, guia e amarra, companheira de alétheia. Por outro lado, o percurso no qual ela se inscreve é um viagem humana: o percurso do jovem que caminha rumo à divindade. Para além deste percurso interno ao poema, podemos também falar do percurso que o próprio poema executa, caminho poético de Parmênides que inaugura a filosofia enquanto busca pelo ser na palavra que se quer justa e verdadeira." (p. 17)

55. Pinheiro, Marcus Reis. 2007. "Plotino, Exegeta de Platão e Parmênides." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:70-82.

"O presente artigo é dividido em três partes: na primeira, apresenta de modo geral e esquemático a totalidade da metafísica plotiniana, descrevendo as influências que Plotino sofre das obras de Platão para constituir suas três hipóstases; na segunda, apresenta a interpretação de Plotino para o fragmento três de Parmênides, “pois o mesmo é ser e pensar”(1); numa última parte, este artigo apresenta de modo introdutório a característica de toda atividade filosófica em Plotino ser uma exegese, e procura explicitar em que sentido se pode chamar Plotino de exegeta." (p. 70)

(1) τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι.

56. Robbiano, Chiara. 2007. "Duas fases parmenídeas ao longo da via para a verdade: elenkhos e ananke." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:17-32.

"Minha proposta é ler o Poema de Parmênides como uma condução capaz de acompanhar os ouvintes ou leitores em direção à verdade(2). Muitos elementos do texto parmenídeo se prestam a serem lidos nesta chave interpretativa, ou seja, como ajudas oferecidas àqueles que queiram adquirir aquele tipo de conhecimento (verdade, consciência) que o Poema encoraja a alcançar." (p. 17)

(Agradeço especialmente ao professor Fernando Santoro pelo entusiasmo com que se ocupou desta tradução do italiano para o português.

2 Cf. Santoro, F. Os Nomes dos Deuses. In: O Poema de Parmênides. Da Natureza. "No Poema de Parmênides, a verdade ontológica do ser não é dissociada da prescrição de correção no agir e no escolher. A proximidade entre ser e dever ser, na expressão da indicação do caminho da verdade, é um traço decisivo do Poema...", p.81.

57. Santoro, Fernando. 2007. "Os nomes dos deuses." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:83-90.

"No Poema de Parmênides, estamos num desses lugares textuais, em que ganha clareza a transição da teogonia mítica para a ontologia filosófica; a transição da celebração dos deuses em suas gestas para os conceitos em sua determinação. No Poema, estão presentes os nomes tradicionais de vários deuses, ora em passagens narrativas, como um mito tradicional, ora já nas passagens mais densas de uma precursora analítica do ser, ora ainda numa efetiva cosmogonia natural.

Este lugar de transição nos põe, já na tradução, um dilema: terão esses nomes o estatuto de conceitos abstratos ou lhes daremos as maiúsculas iniciais, com que caracterizamos hoje a condição personificada de deuses? Optamos, na tradução, pelas maiúsculas, mesmo anacrônicas, para realçar estes nomes, e poder perceber como os deuses, tão presentes na vida do pensamento grego, exprimem também estas idéias fundamentais com que os filósofos apreendem a realidade." (pp. 85-86)

58. ———. 2008. "As provas contra o ente, no tribunal de Parmênides." O que nos faz pensar no. 17:35-45.

Resumo: "Confluem, para a originalidade da linguagem ontológica de Parmênides, determinadas figuras de linguagem (skhemáta léxeon) do campo discursivo da veracidade, entre as quais destacam-se figuras da nascente retórica forense. Isto, evidentemente, já na tradição originária dos filósofos que falam da natureza, que Aristóteles chamou de físicos, fisiólogos. No fragmento 8, a Deusa do Poema de Parmênides leva o ente ao tribunal, denuncia-lhe os sinais (sémata) e por fim amarra-o nos liames da Necessidade."

59. ———. 2012. "Da Experiência à Ciência, o Céu de Parmênides." In Λόγον διδόναι. La filosofia come esercizio del render ragione. Studi in onore di Giovanni Casertano, edited by Palumbo, Lidia, 115-125. Loffredo: Napoli.

"Mas efetivamente é a recepção do Poema no século XX que levanta a grossa poeira do problema e que acaba por redefinir e reavaliar o sentido e o estatuto em relação à verdade do discurso da “Doxa”.

Para esta reavaliação, a meu ver, contribuíram duas ideias importantes, oriundas de formas diversas de aceder ao problema. A primeira, que entende τὰ δοκοῦντα como as coisas que se mostram, ou seja, fenômenos.

Esta tem como porta-voz a leitura fenomenológica de Jean Beaufret, sob inspiração do problema da diferença ontológica de Martin Heidegger. Há uma diferença de perspectiva entre o discurso sobre o ser como fundamento e sobre os entes ou fenômenos nos quais o ser se mostra e é. Assim, o caminho do “não ser” proibido, insondável e indizível não se identifica com a via das opiniões ou do que se mostra,

antes é o abismo face à constatação primordial de que há o ente e não antes o nada. O nada pertence ao discurso constitutivo do ser como fundamento. Do ser, abre-se o sentido do mundo que se mostra para

o homem.

A segunda ideia entende a dóxa como o caminho da experiência constitutiva do conhecimento e da ciência, para esta ideia contribuiu particularmente o livro de Giovanni Casertano, Parmenide il metodo la scienza l’esperienza. Tomo aqui a liberdade de entender a experiência a partir da qual se constitui a ciência como uma experiência não apenas de conhecimento, mas como uma completa experiência vital, carregada de emoção e sentido: como uma plena experiência humana.

Exemplifico a partir de um verso da dóxa, ou da phýsica, ou da cosmologia de Parmênides." (p, 118)

60. ———. 2020. "Vênus e a Erótica de Parmênides." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:83-90.

Resumo: "O século XXI começa com muitas viradas interpretativas com relação aos pensadores pré-socráticos, entre os quais Parmênides de Eleia. Investigo como os conteúdos cosmológicos contidos nos fragmentos do Poema podem ser integrados ao programa parmenídeo de conhecimento da verdade pelo pensamento. Neste caminho vislumbram-se descobertas científicas relativas à Lua, a Vênus e outras. Proponho ainda que uma antiga forma de integrar o conhecimento deconteúdos astronômicos ao conhecimento de conteúdos relativos à geração e ao sexo, que compõem os assuntos físicos do Poema, dá-se na forma de uma interpretação erótica do mundo, regido por Eros e por Afrodite."

61. Santoro, Fernando, Cairus, Henrique, and Ribeiro, Tatiana, eds. 2009. Acerca do Poema de Parmênides. Rio de Janeiro: Azougue Editorial.

Prefácio 5; Néstor Cordero: En Parmênides, ‘tertium non datur’ 11; José Trindade Santos: Parménides contra Parménides 23; Emmanuel Carneiro Leão: O homem no Poema de Parmênides 43; Giovanni Casertano: Verdade e erro no Poema de Parménides 53; Chiara Robbiano: Duas fases parmenídeas ao longo da via para a Verdade: elenkhos e ananke 65; Charles Kahn: Algumas questões controversas na interpretação de Parmênides 79; Fernando Muniz: A Odisséia de Parmênides 91; Luis Felipe Belintani Ribeiro: Parmênides trágico 97; Gérard Émile Grimberg: Parmênides e a matemática 107; Carla Francalanci: O diálogo Sofista à sombra de Parmênides 119; Fernando Pessoa: Entre pensar e ser, Heidegger e Parmênides 127; Gisele Amaral: A necessidade do dizer 135; Gabriele Cornelli: A descida de Parmênides: anotações geofilosóficas às margens do prólogo 139; Izabela Bocayuva: O Poema de Parmênides e a viagem iniciática 149; Markus Figueira: O atomismo antigo e o legado de Parmênides 161; Marcus Reis Pinheiro: Plotino, exegeta de Platão e Parmênides 171; Alexandre Costa: O sentido histórico-filosófico do Poema de Parmênides 181; Marcelo Pimenta Marques: Relendo o Fragmento 4 de Parmênides 213; Bibliografia 225-235.

62. Santos, José Trindade. 2007. "Parménides contra Parménides." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 1:14-26.

"Esta comunicação visa três objectivos:

1.mostrar que a influência de Parménides na tradição próxima e futura da Filosofia se deve ao argumento sobre o ser, desenvolvido na Via da Verdade;

2. propor uma leitura e interpretação sumárias do argumento em que é abordada a problemática do ser;

3. sugerir uma via para a compreensão do impacto que teve na tradição."

63. ———. 2012. "A questao da "Existencia" no Poema de Parmênides." Filosofi a Unisinos no. 13:182-198.

Resumo: "O texto estuda o uso do verbo grego ‘ser’ por Parmênides com vista ao estabelecimento do conceito de ‘ser’ pelos pensadores por ele infl uenciados.

Foca a noção de ‘existência’ tentando avaliar a correcção do nosso uso do verbo ‘existir’ para traduzir o verbo grego ‘einai’ no Peri physeôs. Baseado em considerações de ordem cognitiva, Parmênides avança a sua tese sobre a impossibilidade de conhecer “o que não é” (B2.5-8a) visando estabelecer “o que é” como “o que há para pensar” (B2.2; B8.15-18), para permitir a identidade de “pensar” e “ser” (B3; B8.34). Se, ao longo do argumento da Via da Verdade, Parmênides lê a existência como um pressuposto de “o que é”, mas nunca como um predicado separado, devem ser rejeitadas as leituras existenciais do verbo ‘ser’ nas traduções das expressões que nomeiam os dois caminhos (B2.3; B2.5)."

64. ———. 2012. "A leitura de "É/Enao É" a partir de Parmênides, B2." Dissertatio no. 36:11-31.

Resumo: "Interpreto antepredicativamente o argumento de Parmênides na “verdade” do Da natureza. Chamo ‘antepredicativa’ a uma interpretação que, explorando a ausência de sujeito e predicado em “é/não é” (B2.3,5), lê os dois caminhos como expressões autoreferenciais, negando às formas verbais usadas o valor de cópulas. Da incognoscibilidade de “que não é” (B2.6-8a) resulta a “decisão de abandonar esse ‘não-nome’ (anônymon: B8.17) como via de investigação” (B8.17-18a), “deixando” ‘que é’ (B8.2) como o único [‘nome’]” (B8.1b-2a) que “pode ser pensado” (B8.18b). Nesta interpretação, ‘ser’ não é objeto de ‘pensar’, nem pensar’/‘pensamento’ a faculdade que capta o “ser” (B3, B8.34), mas o estado cognitivo infalível em que “pensamento, pensar e pensado são” (B6.1a). A leitura antepredicativa de Parmênides deixou sinais em textos de Platão, Górgias e Protágoras, alguns anunciando a captação da antepredicatividade pela predicação, nos diálogos platônicos."

65. ———. 2015. "Parmênides e a antepredicatividade." Filosofia. Revista da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto no. 32:9-33.

Resumo: "O texto propõe uma interpretação antepredicativa dos argumentos de Parménides na Alêtheia do seu Poema. Lida antepredicativamente, a oposição do par de esti sem sujeito em ambos os «caminhos para pensar» (B2.2) implica apenas que se um deles «é» (B2.3), então necessariamente o outro «não é» (B2.5). Esta oposição justifica a necessidade de escolher (B8.15) entre eles, abandonando «a via impensável e anónima » (B8.17-18; B2.7-8), consequentemente deixando «é» como a via autêntica (B8.18). Devido ao hábito de confiar nas sensopercepções (b7.3-5a), as «opiniões dos mortais» ignoram esta oposição (B64-9), «considerando o ser e não-ser o mesmo e o não-mesmo» (B6.8-9a; B8.40). Contudo, os homens não deviam errar (B8.54), levados pela mistura dos seus membros (B16.1-2a), «pois, o pleno é pensamento » (B16.4b; B9.1-4)."

66. Soares, José de Ribamar Barreiro. 2014. "A questão metafísica em Parmênides. O ser. é, o não-ser não é." Cadernos Aslegis no. 53:25-27.

Resumo: "Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar a abordagem metafísica feita por Parmênides a respeito do ser, considerando que o ser não pode ser gerado, transformado ou destruído. Isto significa que toda mudança bem como os opostos decorrem de uma falácia criada pelos sentidos, razão pela qual a busca pela essência do ser deve seguir o caminho da razão."

67. Soares, Marcio. 2008. "Sobre ser, pensamento e discurso no poema de Parmênides." Intuitio no. 1:232-248.

Resumo: "Visamos tratar das relações entre ser, pensar e dizer na filosofia de Parmênides de Eléia.

Nesse sentido, procuramos demonstrar a sistemática imbricação entre essas três dimensões, na medida em que, segundo o Filósofo eleata, apenas o que realmente é (o ser) pode ser dito e pensado, como uma senda segura de investigação filosófica. Visamos, ainda, demonstrar que o nãoser acaba por figurar apenas como uma expressão lingüística puramente negativa na filosofia parmenídica, sem qualquer correspondência real (ôntica). Com isso, queremos defender que a via do não-ser e a opinião dos homens mortais são distintas e não podem ser confundidas. A partir dessa proposta interpretativa do poema de Parmênides, especulamos sobre os limites e paradoxos de sua filosofia ao pensar o não-ser como expressão negativa na linguagem, ao mesmo tempo em que o Filósofo proíbe completamente sua investigação. Também procuramos, ao final do texto, discutir o próprio conceito de discurso que resulta como conseqüência da filosofia parmenídica, especialmente em relação à opinião.

Para tanto, começamos analisando o proêmio do poema parmenídico desde a perspectiva da tradição poética grega, tentando demonstrar que nosso Filósofo reside em uma região fronteiriça entre a poesia e a filosofia nascente."

68. Spinelli, Miguel. 1997. "O exame de Aristóteles da proposição ontológica de Parménides." Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia no. 53:323-349.

Resumo: "Resumo: Embora Aristoteles considere a formula ontologica de Parmenides (i)<; como primitiva e incomplete faz dela, todavia, o fundamento de todo o discurso verdadeiro Interessado, sobretudo, em rever a teoria das Ideias de Platao, e bem provavel, inclusive, encontrado na formula de Parmenides, alem de motiva^ao para o seu proprio empenho, sintatico-semantico do discurso ontologico, mais precisamente, dos modos ou categorias podemos expressar-nos gramatical e filosoficamente."

69. Suárez de la Torre, Emilio. 2011. "El problema de Parmênides." Humanitas:27-59.

Resumo: "Este artigo foca dois elementos convergentes: 1. Uma tentativa de explicação do chamado estilo ‘áspero’ de Parménides, que pode ser justificado como uma ‘estratégia de estilo’ em busca de uma perfeita adaptação da linguagem aos princípios defendidos. 2. Algumas reflexões sobre a auto-apresentação de Parménides em relação ao contexto social e religioso, tendo em conta não só as circunstâncias contemporâneas, mas também a imagem do filósofo projectada na tradição local."

70. Vanin, Andrei Pedro. 2017. "As ‘Raizes da verdade' no proêmio do poema 'Da natureza' de Parmênides." Gavagai no. 4:103-120.

Resumo: "O texto procura evidenciar como algumas noções de verdade presentes, sobretudo, na Odisseia e na Ilíada, influenciaram a definição de verdade proposto no poema Da Natureza de Parmênides. A vasta literatura a respeito do tema, de modo geral, considera Parmênides o ‘divisor de águas’ entre a poesia e filosofia. Dada a importância filosófica do poema, ao enunciar pela primeira vez a identidade entre o ser e o pensar, esquece-se de ressaltar, no mais das vezes, fato não menos importante, a teoria literária subjacente ao poema, bem como as influências e semelhanças com os mitos precedentes. Sendo assim, parte-se de uma rápida caracterização do modo pelo qual a noção de verdade é apresentada em passagens específicas da Odisseia e da Ilíada. O segundomomento, apresenta rapidamente e de modo geral, a noção de verdade no poema de Parmênides, para após, buscar por contraste as semelhanças/dessemelhanças em relação aos poemas ditos homéricos, centrando-se a análise no proêmio do poema Da Natureza, onde pode-se ilustrar um contexto de teoria literária arcaica específico presente em ambos os textos a serem analisados, a saber: a adequação do assunto e estilo."

71. Veccho Alves, Daniel. 2020. "Parmênides no carro das sombras." Nuntius Antiquus no. 16:7-30.

Resumo: "Com a invasão persa do século VI a.C., diversos filósofos jônicos precisaram deslocar suas escolas para a Grécia continental e a Magna Grécia, fluxo emigratório intenso constituído por refugiados extremamente cultos. Entre alguns desses ilustres

emigrantes, encontramos Pitágoras de Samos, Xenófanes de Cólofon e Parmênides de Eléia. Exilados da Jônia cada um a seu tempo, esses cosmólogos e filósofos, conhecidos erroneamente pela etiqueta dos “pré-socráticos”, promoveram a filosofia tanto quanto Sócrates. Acostumados aos contatos interculturais promovidos em sua região (com babilônicos, egípcios e gregos), os pensadores jônicos se tornaram sensíveis ao problema da verdade e à ideia de examinar criticamente um relato quanto a sua capacidade de extrapolar impressões sensoriais, ou seja, quanto a sua capacidade de apreensão intelectiva do real. Por fim, investiga-se mais detidamente, em Parmênides, a plenitude de uma transformação filosófica dos elementos sensíveis do mundo em elementos racionais do pensamento humano, tendo como base a análise dos fragmentos de sua obra intitulada Da Natureza."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

A Selection of Critical Studies on the Poem of Parmenides

Fr. B1: The Proem

Our only source for the verses 1-28 is Sextus Empiricus, Against the logicians, VII, 111; verses 29-30 are also contained in Simplicius Commentary on De Caelo (On Aristotle's 'On the heavens' ) book III, p. 557, 20 ff.; Simplicius is the only source for the verses 31-32).

Sextus gives the most ancient commentary on Parmenides' Proem (op. cit. VII, 112-114):

"(112) In these words Parmenides is saying that the "mares" that carry him are the non-rational impulses and desires of the soul, and that it is reflection in line with philosophical reason that is conveyed along "the famed road of the goddess". This reason, like a divine escort, leads the way to the knowledge of all things. His "girls" that lead him forward are the senses. And of these, he hints at the ears in saying "for it was being pressed forward by two rounded wheels," that is the round part of the ears, through which they receive sound. (113) And he calls the eyes "daughters of Night," leaving the "house of Night," "pushed into the light" because there is no use for them without light. And coming upon "much-punishing" Justice that "holds the corresponding keys" is coming upon thought, which holds safe the apprehensions of objects. (114) And she receives him and then promises to teach the following two things: "both the stable heart of persuasive Truth," which is the immovable stage of knowledge, and also "the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true trust" -- that is, everything that rests on opinion, because it is insecure. And at the end he explains further the necessity of not paying attention to the senses but to reason. For he says that you must not "let habit, product of much experience, force you along this road to direct an unseeing eye and echoing ear and tongue, but judge by reason the argument, product of much experience, that is spoken by me".

So he too, as is evident from what has been said, proclaimed knowledgeable reason as the standard of truth in the things that there are, and withdrew from attention to the senses." (pp. 24-25)

From: Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, Translated and edited by Richard Bett, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005.

"The fragments of Parmenides are an important monument of Greek poetry at the end of the sixth or the beginning of the fifth century B.C. In time they cannot be far removed from Pindar's Pythian x, which was written in 498, or from his Pythians VI and XII, which were written in 490. With these flights of lyrical genius the poem has little in common, but it belongs to the same age, and it has suffered from being too often considered either in isolation as a contribution to truth or as an episode in purely philosophical poetry. But it presents questions to the literary critic which have little direct relation to its metaphysics; and particularly in the Proem Parmenides attempts a manner of writing so unusual that it is easy to dismiss it as an eccentricity of a philosopher attempting a task for which nature had not equipped him. But Parmenides was a careful and singularly exact writer, and the composition of his Proem no doubt cost him as much pains as the exposition of reality which it precedes. In it he had something to say of great importance, and he adopted a remarkable method to which Greek poetry presents hardly any parallel. The origins of his method have been studied, but a knowledge of them does not explain either what he meant to say or what his contemporaries would see in his words. If we can understand what the Proem meant in the thought of his time, we may perhaps understand better how Parmenides viewed his calling as a philosopher.(1)

Diels was surely right in assuming that behind Parmenides' Proem there lies a considerable literature which has almost entirely disappeared. There were certainly poems which described descents into hell,(2) and there may have been poems which described ascents into heaven, although the evidence for them is scanty and the story of Empedotimus, told by Servius, ad Georg. I. 34, cannot be pressed, since its date is not known. But even if such ascents had a poetry of their own, it seems to be quite different from that of Parmenides. For these poets surely told of such adventures as facts which they expected to be taken as literally true. When Epimenides told of his converse with nymphs in a cave, he stated what he claimed to be a fact.' It could be believed or disbelieved, but there was no question of allegory or symbolism. But Parmenides is plainly allegorizing. The allegory may of course be based on something akin to a mystical experience, but it is none the less an allegory. The transition from Night to Day is the transition from ignorance to knowledge; the Sun-maidens who accompany the poet are the powers in him which strain toward the light; the horses who know the road are his own impulses towards truth; the way on which he travels is the way of inquiry. The allegory is revealed as soon as the goddess begins to speak. For then the way with its three different branches becomes the ways of truth, of not-being, and of opinion. The allegory breaks down when the poet gets to his real task, and we may be certain that till then Parmenides is not giving the literal record of a spiritual adventure but clothing his search for truth in an allegorical dress.

Parmenides' Proem may be called allegorical because it has two meanings--the superficial meaning which tells a story and the implied meaning which gives the essential message of the poet. He tells of a chariot journey through gates to a goddess, but what he really describes is the transition from ignorance to knowledge. The use of allegory on such a scale is extremely rare in early Greek poetry. The first signs of it may be detected in Homer's account of the Aitiai(2) and in Hesiod's steep path which leads to Arethé.(3) But in neither of these is much added to the essential facts by the allegorical dress, and in both the allegory is closely related to traditional mythology." (pp. 97-99)

Notes

(1) Cf. especially H. Diels, Parmenides Lehrgedicht (Berlin, 1897); J. Dorfier, Die Eleaten und die Orphiker (Prog. Freistadt, 1911); W. Kranz, Über Aufbau und Bedeutung des Parmenideischen Gedichtes (Berlin, 1916).

(2) The question of such poetry is discussed by E. Norden in his Aeneis, VI, esp. 1-10. He is primarily concerned with Orpheus in his notes on vss. 120, 264 ff., 384-416, 548- 627, and with Heracles on vss. 131 ff., 260, 309-12, 384-416, 477-93, 538-627, 666-78.

(3) I. 502 ff.

From: Cecil Bowra, "The Proem of Parmenides," Classical Philology 32, 1937, pp. 97-112. Reprinted in: C. Bowra, Problems in Greek Poetry, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953, pp. 38-53.

Fr. B2: The Ways of Enquiry

"Then what roads of enquiry can be thought of? [Fragment B 2] mentions two roads: Road (A) is described in line 3, and proved by line 4 to be the Way of Truth; Road (B) is the 'track beyond all tidings', delineated in line 5. [B 6]. 3-4 also mentions two roads: Road (C), described in lines 4-9, is that 'along which mortals . .. wander', and it is therefore the Way of Opinion. The 'first road' of line 3 also has pitfalls (for the goddess 'restrains' Parmenides from it); and it cannot therefore be identical with Road (A), the Way of Truth. Now lines l-2 contain the end of an argument concerned with this 'first road' ; and, as I shall show, it is plausible to find the beginning of the argument in [B 2] 7-8, which starts to recount the horrors of the 'track beyond all tidings'. If that is so, then the 'first road' of [B 6] is identical with Road (B); and in consequence Road (B), the 'track beyond all tidings', is not the Way of Opinion.

[B 2] and [B 6] show Parmenides at a crossroads, faced by three possible paths of inquiry: (A) the Way of Truth; (B) the 'track beyond all tidings' and (C) the Way of Opinion. (8) The first duty of the goddess is to characterize those three roads in a logically perspicuous fashion. Road (A) maintains 'both that it is (esti) and that it is not for not being' (B2. 3) ; (9) Road (B) maintains 'both that it is not and that it is necessary for it not to be' (B2. 5); Road (C) is not explicitly described in comparable terms, but must have maintained 'both that it is and that it is not' (cf. [B 6.8]).

The three roads are thus distinguished by means of the word ' esti', 'it is'. Both the sense of the verb and the identity of its subject are matters of high controversy. Since they are also vital to any interpretation of Parmenides' argument, we cannot burke the issue. I begin by asking what is the sense of the verb ' einai' as Parmenides uses it here. The classification of the different 'senses', or 'uses', of the verb ' einai' is a delicate task, abounding in linguistic and philosophical difficulties; (10) and my remarks will be crude and superficial. Nevertheless, something must be said.

We can distinguish between a complete and an incomplete use of ' einai': sometimes a sentence of the form 'X esti' expresses a complete proposition; sometimes esti occurs in sentences of the form 'X esti Y' (or the form 'X esti' is elliptical for 'X esti Y'). In its complete use, ' einai' sometimes has an existential sense: ' ho theos esti' is the Greek for 'god exists'; ' ouk esti kentauros' means 'Centaurs do not exist'. In its incomplete use, ' einai' often serves as a copula, and the use is called predicative: ' Sokrates esti sophos' is Greek for 'Socrates is wise'; ' hoi leontes ouk eisin hemeroi' means 'Lions are not tame'. Many scholars think that Parmenides' original sin was a confusion, or fusion, of the existential with the predicative ' einai'; and they believe that the characterization of the three roads in [B 2] catches Parmenides in flagrante delicto. If we ask what sense ' esti' has in line 3, the answer is disappointing: ' esti' attempts, hopelessly, to combine the two senses of 'exists' and 'is Y'. (11)

Now I do not wish to maintain that Parmenides was conscious of the distinction between an existential and a predicative use of ' einai'; credit for bringing that distinction to philosophical consciousness is usually given to Plato. But I do reject the claim that [B 2] fuses or confuses the two uses of the verb. I see no reason to impute such a confusion to the characterization of the three roads; for I see no trace of a predicative 'is' in that characterization. The point can be simply supported: Road (B) rules out 'X is not'; if we read 'is' predicatively, we must suppose Parmenides to be abjuring all negative predications. to be spurning all sentences of the form 'X is not F. Such a high-handed dismissal of negation is absurd; it is suggested by nothing in Parmenides' poem; and it is adequately outlawed by such lines as B 8.22, which show Parmenides happy to accept formulae of the form 'X is not F'. (12) ' esti', in the passages we are concerned with, is not a copula.

Then is 'esti' existential? Aristotle distinguishes what has been called a 'veridical' use of 'esti'; 'X esti', in this use, is complete, and ' esti' means . . is the case' or . . is true'. If Socrates asserts that cobblers are good at making shoes, his interlocutor may reply ' esti tauta', 'Those things are' or 'That's true'. It has been suggested that Parmenides' complete 'esti' is veridical, not existential.

That suggestion can be accommodated, I think, to [B 2] and [B 6]; but the accommodation is not easy, nor (as far as I can see) does it have any philosophical merit. In any event, the suggestion breaks on the rocks of B 8: in that fragment, Parmenides sets himself to infer a number of properties of X from the premiss that X esti. None of those properties consists with the veridical reading of ' esti': the very first inference is that X is ungenerated; and if it is not, strictly speaking, impossible to take 'X' in 'X is ungenerated' to stand for the sort of propositional entity of which veridical ' esti' is predicable, it is grossly implausible to do so, and the implausibility mounts to giant proportions as the inferences of B 8 proceed. Since the inferences in B 8 are tied to the ' esti' of [B 2] and [B 6], the veridical reading of esti in those fragments can only be maintained at the cost of ascribing to Parmenides a confusion between veridical and non-veridical einai. And I see no reason for making that derogatory ascription. (13)

Existential ' einai' remains. The obvious and the orthodox interpretation of ' esti' in [B 2] and [B 6] is existential; and that interpretation is felicitous: it does not perform the impossible task of presenting Parmenides with a set of doctrines which are true, but it does give Parmenides a metaphysical outlook which is intelligible, coherent and peculiarly plausible. I shall continue to translate Parmenides' ' einai' by 'be'; but I shall paraphrase it by 'exist'.

Road (A) thus says that 'it exists', esti. Scholars have naturally raised the question of what exists: what is Parmenides talking about? what is the logical subject of 'esti'? Some have denied the appropriateness of the question, urging that we need no more ask after the subject of 'esti' than we do after 'huei', 'it is raining'. I find that suggestion perfectly incomprehensible. (14) Nevertheless, the spirit behind it is sound: ' esti' need not have a logical subject. For in general, we can make sense of a sentence of the form 'it φs' in either of two ways: first, we may find a determinate reference for 'it', so that 'it φs' is understood as 'a φs'. ('How is your motor car?' -- It's working again'.) Here we do look for a logical subject and we expect to find it, explicit or implicit, in the immediate context. Second, 'it φs' may be the consequent of a conditional or a relative sentence: 'If you buy a machine, look after it'; 'Whatever machine you buy, something will go wrong with it'. In ordinary discourse, the antecedent is often not expressed: 'What will you do if you catch a fish? -- Eat it'. Here there is no question of finding a logical subject for the predicate 'φs': 'it' does not name or refer to any particular individual.

One standard view gives 'esti' in [B 2].3 a logical subject: that subject is 'Being'; and Road (A) asserts, bluntly, that Being exists. I am at a loss to understand that assertion; what in the world can be meant by 'Being exists'? Nevertheless, behind abstract Being there lurks a more concrete candidate for the post of logical subject: 'to eon', 'what is': should we gloss 'esti' as 'what is, is'? (15)

Phrases of the form 'what φs' do not always serve as logical subjects: 'what φs' may mean 'whatever φs' ('What's done cannot be undone'); and then 'what φs ψs' means 'for any x: if x φs, x ψs'. Thus we might gloss Parmenides' 'esti' by 'what is, is', and yet deny that 'what is' is a logical subject; for we might explain the phrase by 'whatever is, is'. Road (A), on that view, maintains that whatever exists exists and cannot not exist. It has been objected to that interpretation that Parmenides attempts to prove that Road (A) is right, and Roads (B) and (C) mistaken; but that the interpretation makes (A) tautologous, and hence in no need of proof, and (B) and (C) contradictory, and hence in no need of disproof. But the objection is doubly mistaken: first, tautologies can, and sometimes should, be proved; and contradictions can, and sometimes should, be disproved. Second, Road (A) does not turn out tautologous; since it is far from a tautology that what exists cannot not exist.

'What φs' may mean 'the thing that φs', and serve as a logical subject. Thus 'to eon' may mean 'the thing which exists'. Then Road (A) maintains that the thing that exists -- 'the One' or 'the Whole' or 'Nature' -- exists and cannot not exist. It has been objected to that interpretation that Parmenides proceeds in B 8 to prove that the subject of his poem is One; and that he can hardly have intended to prove the tautology that 'the One is one'. Again, the objection is weak: first, Parmenides may have tried to prove a tautology; second, it is far from clear that Parmenides ever does try to prove that the subject of his poem is One; and thirdly, it is not clear that it is tautologous to say that 'the Whole' or 'Nature' or 'Reality' is one.

Nevertheless, I do not believe that 'to eon', on either interpretation, is a likely supplement to Parmenides' esti . The reason is simple: nothing in the context of [B 2] could reasonably suggest to even the most careful reader that by 'it is' Parmenides meant 'what is, is'. The term 'what is' does not appear in B 1 or in [B 2]; and it is not the sort of term a reader would naturally supply for himself. (16)

A close investigation of the context of [B 2] has supplemented ' esti' in a different way: instead of 'what is', supply 'what can be thought of or 'what can be known'. Road (A) then says that 'what can be thought of exists'; and 'Parmenides' real starting-point is . . . the possibility of rational discourse' or of thought. (17) My objection to that suggestion is a weaker version of my objection to 'to eon': nothing in the introductory context of [B 2] suggests such a supplement for 'esti' at line 3; reflexion on the subsequent argument may indeed lead us to 'what can be thought of', but it will also lead us to berate Parmenides for a gratuitously roundabout and allusive way of expressing himself; for the most careful reader, on this view, will only understand the crucial lines of [B 2] after he has read a quantity of later verses.

Nonetheless, the philosophical advantages of the interpretation are considerable; and we may well be loth to abandon the spectacle of a Parmenides who investigates, in Kantian fashion, the implications of rationality. We can retain the advantages and avoid the objection by modifying the interpretation slightly. I suggest the following paraphrase for lines 1-3: 'I will tell you . . . the different conceivable ways of inquiring into something -- the first assumes that it exists and cannot not exist . . .' In the paraphrase, 'it' has an explicit antecedent, and 'inquiring into' has an explicit object: viz. the word 'something'. In the Greek text there is no explicit subject for 'esti' and no explicit object of 'dizêsios' ('inquiry'). Subject and object must both be supplied, and nothing is easier than to make this double task one: the implicit object of 'dizêsios' is the implicit subject of 'esti'. 'Of the ways of inquiring [about any given object], the first assumes that [the object, whatever it may be] exists." (Chapter IX: Parmenides and the Objects of Inquyiry, pp. 125-128 of the 1982 edition)

Notes

(8) The reference of tautês in [B6] .3 has caused some difficulty (see especially Stokes [1971], 112-15); but as far as I can see that word refers simply enough to the Road discussed in [B2] and [B6].1-2 (see Cornford [1933], 99-100).

(9) The second half of [B2].3 is syntactically ambiguous: the esti in ouk esti me einai may be either 'personal' or 'impersonal' ('It is not for not being' or 'It is not possible for it not to be'). Line 5 proves that the sense is: 'It cannot not be'; and I take it that either syntax will yield that sense.

(10) See especially Kahn [1973]; there is a useful table on p. 82 presenting a summary classification of the roles played by einai.

(11) Eudemus, fr. 43 Wehrli = A 28, says that the Eleatics ignore different uses of einai; but the Peripatetic and the modern accusations are quite distinct. Furth [1968] maintains that the notions of existence and of the copula are 'impacted or fused in the early Greek concept of being' (243). He cites no evidence; and he does not explain the difference between fusion and confusion. Kahn [1973], 320-3, argues that existential einai -- his Type VI -- was invented in the fifth century; but I cannot distinguish Type VI from the early Type I.

(12) '. . . negative judgments (hoi apophatikoi logoi), as Parmenides says, fit principles and limits' (Scholiast to Euclid, A 22a in Untersteiner [1958]'s edition); but the sense and reliability of the report are uncertain.

(13) The veridical use of einai is discussed in Kahn [1966], and applied to Parmenides in Kahn [1968]. Kahn's view is complicated by the fact that he maintains first that the veridical use of einai involves both the existential and the predicative uses ([Kahn 1968], 712), and second, that Parmenides' esti means both 'it is the case' and 'it exists' (ibid., 336). Mourelatos [1970], ch. 2 and Appendix 2, claims to follow Kahn; but he says that esti is the 'is' of 'speculative predication' (predication which gives insight into the identity of something or says what it is). That is not a special sense of esti; nor can I give any account of the three Roads in terms of it. Holscher [1969], 79 and 98, holds that esti is neither existential nor predicative: it means 'seiend sein', 'Bestand haben', 'wahr sein'. Jones [1973], 290-1, thinks that Parmenides is proposing a new sense of einai, which he explains in [B3]. None of these modern suggestions has any linguistic or interpretative plausibility; and none is worth considering unless there are grave objections to the existential construe of esti.

(14) Some scholars talk vaguely of an 'indefinite' subject. Loenen [1959], 12-14, emends line 3 to read: . . . hopôs esti ti kai hôs . . . ('that something (ti) is . . .). Untersteiner [1958], LXXV-XC, takes the subject of esti to be he [hodos], 'the one [road]'; and 156.17-18 supports the suggestion. But that gives Parmenides grammar at the cost of sense.

(15) Reinhardt [1916], 60, supposes a lost line before [B2] in which Parmenides refers to to eon; Cornford [1939], 30, n. 2, emends line 3 to read: Hê men hopôs eon esti . . .

(16) Tugendhat [1970], 137, says that 'what Parmenides is dealing with is that (i.e. "the Whole") which previous philosophers had always dealt with'; so that the philosophically educated reader will grasp the subject of the poem at once (cf. Verdenius [1942], 32: Verdenius, 73-5, argues that the poem was explicitly entitled Concerning Nature). The Milesians had indeed described the universe as a whole; but they had not, in any very obvious sense, made statements about 'the Whole'.

(17) See especially Owen [1960]; I quote from Stokes [1971], 119-22.

References

F.M.Cornford: "Parmenides’ Two Ways", Classical Quarterly 27, 1933, 97–111

F.M.Cornford: Plato and Parmenides (London, 1939)

U.Hölscher: Parmenides: Vom Wesen des Seiendes (Frankfurt am Main, 1969)

B.Jones: " ‘Parmenides’ “The Way of Truth” ", Journal of the History of Philosophy 11.1973, 287–98

C.H.Kahn: "The Greek Verb “to be” and the Concept of Being", Foundations of Language 2, 1966, 245–65

C.H.Kahn: review of Tarán Parmenides (Princeton, N.J., 1965), Gnomon 40, 1968, 123–53

C.H.Kahn: "The Thesis of Parmenides", Review of Metaphysics 22, 1968/9, 700–24

C.H.Kahn: The Verb Be in Ancient Greek (Dordrecht, 1973)

J.H.M.M.Loenen: Parmenides, Melissus, Gorgias (Assen, 1959)

A.P.D.Mourelatos: The Route of Parmenides (New Haven, Conn., 1970)

G.E.L.Owen: ‘Eleatic Questions’, CQ n.s. 10, 1960, 84–102

K.Reinhardt: Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie(Bonn, 1916)

M.C.Stokes: One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy (Washington, DC, 1971)

E.Tugendhat: "Das Sein und das Nichts", in Durchblicke: Festschrift für Martin Heideggerzum 80. Geburtstag (Frankfurt am Main, 1970)

M.Untersteiner: Parmenide. Testimonianze e frammenti (Florence, 1958)

W.J.Verdenius: Parmenides (Gmningen, 1942)

F. Wehrli (ed.) Die Scbule des Aristoteles (Basel, 1967–92)

From: Jonathan Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, London: Routledge Kegan Paul 1979; revised edition in one volume 1982.

"What is declared to exist in B 2 is simply what can be talked or thought about; for the proof of its existence is that, if it did not exist, it could not be talked or thought about. (On our version of B 6. 1-2 the subject comes into the open there: to legein te noein t'eon.) (50) And it needs no proving that the subject of the argument can be talked and thought about, for we are talking and thinking about it. Hence indeed the temptation to say that the éstin has no subject; for Parmenides' argument need assume nothing save that we are thinking and talking of something, and this seems to be guaranteed by our framing or following the argument at all. The subject is quite formal, until it is filled in with the attributes (beginning with existence) that are deduced for it; and because this seems to reduce to the vacuous discovery that the subject is just the subject, it is as tempting as it is certainly illogical and misleading to say that there is no subject at all.

Is this too small a mouse from the mountain? Philosophically it seems more like the giant that Parmenides' successors thought it. The comparison with Descartes' cogito is inescapable: both arguments cut free of inherited premisses, both start from an assumption whose denial is peculiarly self-refuting. This seems sufficient to establish that Parmenides does not, in the sense described, rest his argument on assumptions derived from earlier cosmologists. To me it seems sufficient to establish him as the most radical and conscious pioneer known to us among the Presocratics." (Logic, Science, and Dialectic. Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy, pp. 15-16)

Notes

(50) [Lest this mislead, it must be emphasized that the problem has never been to supply a grammatical subject for the ἐστιν and οὐκ ἐστιν of B 2 (save for emendators such as Cornford and Loenen), for there is sufficient evidence that, at the start of the argument at least, Parmenides is prepared to dispense with one. The problem is to decide what must be supposed true, from the start, of whatever it is that Parmenides exhibits in the course of his argument as existing without beginning or end or change or plurality. I argue that this subject must simply be what can be spoken and thought of (told forth, picked out in speech -- (φραζειν, λέγειν, φατιζειν, cf. the contrasted ἀνωνυμον, B 8. 17; distinguished and grasped in thought -- γιγνώσκειν, νοειν). For one reviewer this still left the subject too 'definite' (Kerferd, Classical Review 1961, 26), and one can only ask what it would be to have a more indefinite subject than one which can merely be thought and spoken of: which of these attributes would it lack, and what nonsense would result? Another scholar, by contrast, found such an account of the subject 'rarefied and abstract' (A.P.D. Mourelatos, The Route o Parmenides (New Haven 1970), xiv) but himself proposed to translate the tatty and ouk éstin as '--is --' and '-- is not --', 'with blanks in both the subject and the predicate place' (ibid. 55).] But those who wish to set his poem inside an orthodox cosmological tradition have one prop left to rest on: the spherical universe, whose appearance is the outcome of the whole argument."

(51) 'In the sense described': I am not of course denying that some of the ideas employed in the course of the argument may have been inherited from earlier theorists. This must be true of some of the cosmogony, and probably of at least the idea of πεῖρας in the Αλήθεια (see the third section of the paper).

From: Gwilym Ellis Lane Owen, "Eleatic Questions", Classical Quarterly: 1960, pp.84-102; reprinted with additions in: D. J. Furley and R. E. Allen, Studies in Presocratic Philosophy. Vol. II: The Eleatics and Pluralists, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1975, pp. 48-81 and in: G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science, and Dialectic. Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy,Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1986, pp. 3-26.

Fr. B3: Thinking and Being

...τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι.

"As examples of semiotic analysis I have selected classical and, as far as possible, non-problematic older texts from the tradition on which our philosophy is founded, that is, the Greek tradition. Their clarity is a function of the non-ambiguity of translations, which is, of course, always relative since it itself is already an interpretation; in fact, variations in translation appear in our own language, as philosophical or any other dictionaries reveal (by the enumeration of synonyms and homonyms). Polysemy can be substantially reduced by investigating the context and comprehending the meaning as defined, on the whole, by the tension between context and situation -- to the extent, of course, that we are able to comprehend the situation.

For a first example I have chosen a sentence from Parmenides, fragment 3: to gar auto noein estin to kai einai, translated by Diels: denn (das Seiende) denken und sein ist dasselbe; by W. Capelle: Denn (nur) ein und dasselbe kann gedacht werden und sein; and by E. Cassirer: Dasselbe ist Denken und Sein.(3)

If we look at the syntactic side of semantic analysis, we see that everyone connects to-- auto and noein -- einai by means of estin and that the translations in general do not differ greatly, at least at first glance, with regard to the "sense," despite the fact that some translators insert words expanding the original text, and in so doing, already direct the interpretation. Let us suppose that we now choose the simplest translation, Cassirer's "it is the same to think and to be" and that we first examine without further interpretation those syntactic aspects of the texts which are important in determining the meaning. The most important is estin. Here logical syntax distinguishes three possibilities which could be illustrated by the following examples: (a) 1 + 1 = 2, (b) the crow is black, (c) ice is water. The first means a complete "identity" and tautology; in fact, the sentence can be reversed. The second case is an "inclusion" of a subclass; the crow is included in the class of black things. The third case represents an "identity" with regard to the third thing (the physical substance). Now, we can ask which case is applicable to the sentence: "It is the same to think and to be." The word "is" is semantically determined by the modifier "same," which would point to the first case, to a complete identity (thought = existence). Let us suppose that we accept this result; the question now is whether in such a case the "sense" is given without any ambiguity. How did Parmenides understand it and what did he mean by it? What did he want to say through this fundamental thesis of his? Is it meant subjectively (I think = I am), or, perhaps, in an objectivist sense as with Hegel, or is it meant in another, different way? What meanings did the words "to think" and "to be" have for Parmenides in his situation? Do we understand something similar by our own words in our own situation?

Neither syntax nor simple lexical semantics helps us here. We must study the whole of the context and especially passages worded identically and probably having identical meaning or intention. Hence we reach for the nearest sentence that seems to express the same thing or to clarify the first text. In Diels we read in fragment 8, verse 34: t'auton d'estin noein to kai houneken estin noema,(4) which is translated by Diels: Denken und das Gedankens Ziel ist ein und dasselbe; by Capelle: Dasselbe aber ist Denken und des Denkens Gegenstand. If we now compare the first sentence (fragment 3) with the second sentence (fragment 8), we find that "being" as an object of thinking coincides with thinking about that being. The subjectivist interpretation, approximately as in Descartes, would seem to be put aside, but surely the meaning is not yet fully clear for that reason. Diels, however, does have grounds for his analysis, that is to say, for his interpretation in terms of "substance" (einai -- to on, das Seiende), which he supports by the whole text of Parmenides' poem, by Parmenides' intention to recognize what actually "is," and to assert the impossibility of knowing what "is not." But if we are to decide for a definite interpretation, then we must not only study the whole of Parmenides' poem, but also examine other texts to which, in this instance, Parmenides might directly or indirectly be tied, that is, look at the part of philosophy which could have been known to him. Moreover, we have to try to disclose Parmenides' own intuition by considering an analogous situation and, in this way, explain the proper intention of his thought. All of this will be relevant to the interpretation that we finally give to the words "thought and being are one" or "to think and to be is the same thing." Thus, the unambiguity of the meaning does not depend only on the syntax and semantics of individual words in the sentence or of the sentence as a whole, but primarily on the situation.

The question now is: what meaning did einai and noein have for Parmenides in his immediate situation? Furthermore, did he distinguish einai and to on, noema and noein, being and existence, content and object of thought? Let us assume that we know the following about his relation to predecessors or to contemporaries and followers in the Eleatic school: Parmenides responds in his poem partly to the teaching of Heraclitus on origin, partly to the teaching of Anaximander on apeiron, and simultaneously to the teaching of the Pythagoreans, who were endeavoring to demarcate, to define, the "boundless" quantitatively. He applied a more profound concept of existence or being not only as physical existence in space, but also as substance, the essence of the physical, which is not quantitatively definable, like matter, and of which it cannot be said that it appears "more" here and "less" there (since "to be" means either that [something] "is" or "is not"). This substance is definable by thought as its own object and without it nothing exists. Apparently, what is at stake is to overcome, to demonstrate if you like, the impracticality of "negation" for knowledge and to establish the basic "position" prior to any thought of particularities. Here we have a case of a confrontation with the "boundless," with the identification of existence with the world of numbers and thus with the views of Anaximander and the Pythagoreans. What is at stake is a higher reality than reality originating empirically (Heraclitus). There are many grounds for this conclusion in the context of the poem as well as in the historical reality known to us. These problems were taken up by the Eleatic school, which later, during the time of Zeno and Melissus, attempted to reconcile formally Parmenides' original intuition about thinking that attains being with the problem of the continuum of existence and the discursiveness of concepts, that is, with the logical problems of mastering the "integrity" of being as the substance of phenomena, the "immutable" being itself which "hard Necessity keeps in the shackles of bounds that hold it fast on every side." The whole intent of the antinomies and paradoxes of this school is to demonstrate the unreliability of other schools on the questions of becoming and ceasing-to-be, of being and nonbeing, of the changeability of the position, color, or shape of an object.

It is our intention here only to indicate possibilities for a definite interpretation and not to choose one it is simply a question of showing the need to approach as closely as possible the situation in which Parmenides wrote his poem, if we are to understand it. It would certainly be a great help if we were able somehow to ascertain different situational possibilities with the assurance that they had a ground in history, and at the same time to ascertain the forms of thought, or better of expression, which we have at our disposal. In this way the arbitrariness of interpretation could be limited to a certain extent, and directions could be given for the intuition of an analogous situation. For that purpose, however, a mere typology of "world views" would not be adequate, but only the elucidation or deciphering of the whole "constitution of philosophy." This is an important goal which today philosophy can no longer neglect; but it goes beyond the framework and possibilities of this article. If we were to succeed in this goal, it would be possible to establish for the first time a true philosophical history of philosophy, that is, an interpretation which would neither fragment this history into independent, isolated accidents nor impose upon it a definitive rational scheme of development in which what follows fulfills what precedes it as if the latter existed only for the sake of the former. Formal developmental connections manifest themselves above all in language, in a syntactic-semantic structure of expressive possibilities that are at the disposal of a unique act of thought, which always wants to master being anew. And precisely that tension, in turn, has an effect on the development of the vehicle of expression, that is to say, on the development of language." (pp. 93-96)

Notes

(3) John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 4th ed. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1930): " . . . for it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be" (p. 173). H. Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 3rd ed. (Berlin, 1912), vol. 1; W. Capelle, Die Vorsokratiker (Leipzig, 1935); M. Dessoir (ed.), Lehrbuch der Philosophie (Berlin, 1925).

(4) Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, "The thing that can be thought and that for the sake of which the thought exists is the same." (p. 137)

From: Ladislav Rieger, "The Semantic Analysis of Philosophical Texts", in: Peter Steiner (ed.), The Prague School. Selected Writings, 1929-1946, Translated by John Burbank, Olga Hasty, Manfred Jacobson, Bruce Kochis, and Wendry Steiner, Austin: University of Texas Press 1982, pp. 83-102. (Originally published in Czech in 1941).

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Plato: Bibliographical Resources on Selected Dialogues

Bibliographical resources on Plato

1. Cherniss, Harold. 1959. "Plato's bibliography 1950-1957 (First part)." Lustrum.Internationale Forschungsberichte aus dem Bereich des klassischen Altertums no. 4:5-308.

2. ———. 1960. "Plato's bibliography 1950-1957 (Second part)." Lustrum.Internationale Forschungsberichte aus dem Bereich des klassischen Altertums no. 5:321-618.

Register to the Plato-Report (Lustrum 4/5) pp. 619-648.

3. Brisson, Luc. 1977. "Plato's bibliography 1958-1975." Lustrum.Internationale Forschungsberichte aus dem Bereich des klassischen Altertums no. 20:5-304.

4. Brisson, Luc, and Ioannidi, Hélène. 1983. "Plato's bibliography 1975-1980." Lustrum.Internationale Forschungsberichte aus dem Bereich des klassischen Altertums no. 25:31-320.

Corrigenda à Platon 1975-1980 - Lustrum 26, 1984 pp. 205-206.

5. ———. 1988. "Plato's bibliography 1980-1985." Lustrum.Internationale Forschungsberichte aus dem Bereich des klassischen Altertums no. 30:11-294.

Corrigenda à Platon 1980-1985 - Lustrum 31, 1989 pp. 270-271.

6. ———. 1992. "Plato's bibliography 1985-1990." Lustrum.Internationale Forschungsberichte aus dem Bereich des klassischen Altertums no. 34:7-338.

7. Brisson, Luc, and Plin, Frédéric. 1999. Platon 1990-1995. Bibliographie. Paris: Vrin.

Table des Matières: Introduction P. 7; 1. Listes des périodiques et des ouvrages comprenant une collection d'articles mentionnés dans cette bibliographie p. 15; Périodiques p. 15; Actes de congrés, mélanges, recueils p. 27; 2. Platon et ses oeuvres p. 47; Oeuvres complètes p. 48; Oeuvres choisies p. 51 Oeuvres particulières p. 53; Anthologies p. 60; 3. Travaux d'Interprétation sur Platon et ses oeuvres p. 63; 4. Index général analytique p. 365; Table de l'index p. 367; Index p. 374; 5. Addenda aux tranches antérieures p. 407; Références dans Platon 1990-1995 aux précédentes tranches de bibliographie platonicienne parues dans Lustrum p. 407; Comptes rendues de livres mentionnés dans Platon 1980-1985 et dans Platon 1990-1995, qui ont paru entre 1990 et 1995 p. 411.

8. Brisson, Luc, and Castelnérac, Benoît. 2004. Platon 1995-2000. Bibliographie. Paris: Vrin.

9. Brisson, Luc, and Plin, Frédéric. 2020. Platon 2000-2019. Bibliographie. Paris: Vrin.

10. ———. 2021. Plato Bibliography 2019-2020. Paris: Vrin.

11. Brisson, Luc. 2022. Plato Bibliography 2020-2021. Paris: Vrin.

12. ———. 2024. Plato Bibliography 2022-2023. Paris: Vrin.

Lexica

1. Brandwood, Leonard. 1976. A Word Index to Plato. Leeds: W.S. Maney & Son.

2. Des Places, Édouard. 1964. Lexique de la langue philosophique et religieuse de Platon. Paris: Belles Lettres.

3. Radice, Roberto, ed. 2003. Plato. Milano: Biblia.

Electronic edition by Roberto Bombacigno.

From the Preface: "This volume and the enclosed CD-ROM contain a fully lemmatised lexicon of the writings of Plato in John Burnet's critical edition (Platonis Opera, 5 vol., Oxford

University Press, 1900-1907).

This lexicon on the work of Plato is the first volume of Lexicon, a Lexicons Series dedicated to Ancient Philosophy, which is part of a multimedia project that includes printed volumes, CD-ROMs and an Internet site (www.biblia.it). A more complete description of the project can be found at this website.

The purpose of the Lexicon project is to create a powerful, scientifically reliable and easily usable resource for terminological and conceptual searches for scholars of ancient philosophy. The Lexicon archives contain original language texts by the major Greek thinkers in the most recent critical editions or the editions normally used in historical/philosophical research.

All the texts are coded and indexed to facilitate in-depth searches by forma and lemma and are presented in electronic form (on-line and on CD-ROM, with a search engine) and in a printed volume.

Obviously, the printed volume cannot offer all the characteristics available in the electronic edition. However, because the electronic publishing is still in a transitional phase, it was deemed appropriate to supply support facilities that are also accessible to people without access to computerised research tools, or who work in environments without a computerised workstation.

The electronic version of Lexicon is available in both on-line and off-line versions; the latter is distributed on CD-ROM with the printed volume. The two versions use the same search interface and the same technology. There are two differences: a) the on-line version allows for parallel searches within several lexicons while, with the CD-ROM version, only one lexicon can be consulted; b) the CD-ROM version allows users greater scope for personalising the text by means of notes, codes and markers."

4. Schäfer, Christian, ed. 2007. Platon-Lexikon. Begriffswörterbuch zu Platon und der platonischen Tradition. Darmstadt: Wissenschftlche Buchgesellschaft.

5. Stockhammer, Morris. 1963. Plato Dictionary. New York: Philosophical Library.

Critical editions and translations of Plato's Parmenides

1. Plato. 1905. Platonis Opera. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxit Ioannes Burnet.

2. Platon. 1923. Oeuvres Complètes. Tome VIII, première partie: Parménide. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Texte établi et traduit par Auguste Diès.

3. Plato. 1966. Platonis Parmenides [et] Phaedrus. Roma: Edizioni dell'Ateneo.

Recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxit Claudius Moreschini.

4. Greek text, with editorial matter in Latin (the best edition available).

5. ———. 1934. The Parmenides of Plato. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Translated by Alfred Edward Taylor.

6. ———. 1939. Plato and Parmenides. Parmenides' Way of Truth and Plato's Parmenides. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.

Translated with an introduction and a running commentary, by Francis Macdonald Cornford.

7. ———. 1963. Plato's Parmenides. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Translation and analysis by Reginald E. Allen (Revised edition: New Haven, Yale University Press 1997).

8. ———. 1996. Parmenides. Indianapolis: Hackett.

Translated by Mary Louise Gill and Paul Ryan; Introduction by Mary Louise Gill.

9. ———. 1996. Parmenides' Lesson. Translation and Explication of Plato's Parmenides. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Translation and commentary by Kenneth M. Sayre.

10. ———. 1996. Plato's Parmenides. Newburyport: Focus Publinshing.

Translation and introduction by Albert Keith Whitaker.

11. ———. 19999. The Philosophy of Forms: An Analytical and Historical Commentary on Plato's Parmenides, with a new English translation by Allan H. Coxon. Assen: Van Gorcum.

12. ———. 2003. Plato's Parmenides. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Translation and commentary by Samuel Scolnicov.

13. ———. 2010. Plato's Parmenides. Text, Translation and Introductory Essay. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Text Translation and Introductiory Essay by Arnold Hermann.

14. Translation in collaboration with Sylvana Chrysakopoulou.

15. Foreword by Douglas Hedley.

16. Platon. 1992. Parménide, Théetète, Le Sophiste. Paris: Gallimard.

Traduction de Auguste Diès (réimpression de la traduction publiée en 1925).

17. ———. 1994. Parménide. Paris: GF Flammarion.

Traduction inédite, introduction et notes par Luc Brisson.

18. Platone. 1994. Parmenide. Milano: Rusconi.

Introduzione, traduzione, note e apparati di Maurizio Migliori; testo greco con edizione critica a cura di Claudio Moreschini; appendice bibliografica di Claudio Marcellino.

19. ———. 1998. Parmenide. Bari: Laterza.

Traduzione di Giuseppe Cambiano [edizione originale Torino, Utet,1981], introduzione e note di Francesco Fronterotta.

20. ———. 1998. Parmenide. Napoli: Loffredo.

Traduzione, introduzione e note di Luc Brisson, versione italiana a cura di Amalia Riccardo.

21. Platon. 1972. Parmenides. Hamburg: Meiner.

Übersetzt und herausgegeben von Hans Günter Zekl.

22. ———. 1987. Parmenides. Stuttgart: Reclam.

Übersetzt und herausgegeben von E. Martens.

23. ———. 2001. Platon's Parmenides. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

Kommentar und Deutung von Ingeborg Schudoma.

24. ———. 1987. Parménides. Madrid: Alianza.

Traducción de G. R. de Echendía.

25. ———. 1988. Diálogos Parménides, Teeteto, Sofista, Político. (Vol V). Madrid: Gredos.

Traducción e introducciones, Maria Isabel Santa Cruz (Parménides. Político); A. Vallejo Campos (Teeteto); Nestor Luis Cordero (Sofista). - Revisión, C. García Gual y F. García Romero.

Critical editions and translations of the Sophist

1. Plato. 1905. Platonis Opera. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxit Ioannes Burnet.

2. Platon. 1925. Oeuvres Complètes. Tome VIII, troisième partie: Le Sophiste. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Texte établi et traduit par Auguste Diès.

3. Plato. 1995. Platonis Opera. Vol. I: Eutyphro, Apologia, Crito, Phaedo, Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophista, Politicus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxerunt E. A Duke, W. F. Hicken, W. S. M. Nicoll, D. B. Robinson, J. C. G. Strachan (revision of the edition published by John Burnet, 1900-1907).

4. Campbell, Lewis. 1867. The Sophistes and Politicus of Plato, with a revised text and English notes. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

5. Cornford, Francis Macdonald. 1935. Plato's Theory of Knowledge. The Theaetetus and the Sophist Translated with a Running Commentary. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.

Translated by Francis Macdonald Cornford.

6. Bemardete, Seth. 1986. Plato's Sophist. Part II of The Being and the Beautiful. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Translated and with commentary by Seth Benardete.

7. Plato. 1990. Plato' Sophist. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Translation with introduction and notes by William S. Cobb.

8. ———. 1993. Sophist. Indianapolis: Hackett.

Translated, with Introduction and Notes, by Nicholas P. White.

9. ———. 1996. Platos' Sophist or the Professor of Wisdom. Newburyport: Focus Publishing.

Translation, Introduction, and Glossary by Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, Eric Salem.

10. ———. 2004. Plato's Sophist. A Translation with a Detailed Account of its Theses and Arguments. Bern: Peter Lang.

Translated by James Duerlinger.

11. Platon. 1992. Parménide, Théetète, Le Sophiste. Paris: Gallimard.

Traduction de Auguste Diès (réimpression de la traduction publiée en 1925).

12. ———. 1993. Le Sophiste. Paris: GF Flammarion.

Traduction inédite, introduction et notes par Nestor-Luis Cordero.

13. ———. 2022. Le Sophiste. Paris: Vrin.

Introductin, traduction (texte grec en regard) notes et commentaire par Monique Dixsaut.

14. Platone. 2000. Tutti gli scritti. Milano: Bompiani.

Il Sofista, traduzione di Claudio Mazzarelli (prima edizione Milano, Rusconi, 1991).

15. ———. 2007. Sofista. Milano: Rizzoli.

Testo greco a fronte, traduzione e note di Francesco Fronterotta.

16. ———. 2008. Sofista. Torino: Einaudi.

Testo greco e traduzione a cura di Bruno Centrone.

17. Platon. 1967. Der Sophist. Hamburg: Meiner.

Griechisch-Deutsch. Neu bearbeitet und herausgegeben von Reiner Wiehl auf der Grundlage der Übersetzung von Otto Apelt (2. Aufl. 1922).

18. ———. 1990. Der Sophist. Stuttgart: Reclam.

Griechisch-Deutsch. Mit Einleitung, Übersetzung und Kommentar von Helmut Meinhardt.

19. ———. 1988. Diálogos Parménides, Teeteto, SofÌsta, Politico (vol. V). Madrid: Gredos.

Traducción e introducciones, Maria Isabel Santa Cruz (Parménides. PolÍtico); A. Vallejo Campos (Teeteto); Nestor Luis Cordero (SofÌsta). Revisión, C. García Gual y F. García Romero.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Plato's Parmenides and the Dilemma of Participation

Ancient interpretations of Plato's Parmenides

"Plato's Parmenides was probably written within the last two decades preceding the death of its author in 347 B.C. (1) Despite almost two millennia of documented commentary, however, scholars today are still struggling to make sense of the dialogue. Almost every major discussion of the Parmenides in this century has begun with some remark about its extraordinary difficulty; (2) and no line of interpretation has yet been offered that a majority of commentators find persuasive.

The main problem of interpretation, most agree, is what to make of Plato's treatment of the several hypotheses that constitutes the second portion of the dialogue (Stephanus 137C-166C, referred to subsequently as "Parmenides II"). One source of perplexity is that this latter portion fails to exhibit any obvious continuity of subject matter with the first part of the dialogue ("Parmenides I"), making it difficult to determine what the dialogue as a whole is about. To make matters worse, the argumentation of the second part is so extremely condensed that it sometimes gives the appearance of being incoherent. As a result, not only are individual arguments often very hard to decipher, but moreover it is far from apparent what Plato was trying to accomplish with these arguments in the first place.

(...)

Two major lines of interpretation were already established by the time of Proclus' Parmenides Commentary in the fifth century A.D., (3) and both have prominent followers in the present century. As Proclus notes in the first book of his commentary, (4) some readers view the dialogue as an exercise in logic. Within this group, some read Parmenides II as a polemical tour-de-force in which methods of argument derived from Zeno are turned against their originator, in an effort by Plato to show that Zeno's own monistic views lead to absurdities of the very sort he purports to demonstrate against the champions of pluralism. Others within this group read the second part more or less at face value, as a demonstration of a logical method that will enable Socrates to avoid the pitfalls in his theory of Forms that are exposed by Parmenides in the first part of the dialogue. In either case, readers of this persuasion view the dialogue primarily as a dialectical exercise, devoid of any positive metaphysical content.

The second major line of interpretation identified by Proclus (5) assigns Parmenides II a definite metaphysical purpose. An early version of this approach (perhaps associated with Origen in the third century A.D. (6) identifies the topic of the dialogue as the Being of the historical Parmenides, with the consequence that the exclusively negative results of the first hypothesis come to be viewed as adding to the pluralistic list of features denied of the singular Being in Parmenides' poem. The tradition of interpretation with which Proclus himself joins forces, on the other hand, is that beginning with Plotinus and moving through Porphyry to lamblichus and Syrianus. As Proclus puts it, (7) commentators of this group take the subject of the dialogue to be "all things that get their reality from the One," which he later identifies with the Good of Plato's Republic. (8) Keying upon the conclusion at Parmenides 142A that the One can be neither expressed nor conceived, Proclus reads the results of the first hypothesis as a demonstration of the ineffable transcendence of this Supreme Principle. (9)" (pp. XI-XII)

Notes

(1) See W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 5, p. 34. The most recent attempt to assign a date to the Parmenides is G. R. Ledger's Re-Counting Plato, which locates it between the Republic and the Theaetetus sometime before 369 B.C. My own view of the matter, defended in appendix B of Plato's Late Ontology, is that the second part of the dialogue at least was composed somewhat later, perhaps around the time of the Sophist and the Statesman.

(2) Thus, for example, the opening comment of F. M. Cornford (Plato and Parmenides, p. V) that ancient and modern scholars alike have differed more widely about the second part of the Parmenides than about any of the other dialogues, that of M. Miller (Plato's Parmenides, p. 3) that the Parmenides is "the most enigmatic of all of Plato's dialogues," and R. S. Brumbaugh's opening remark in Plato on the One that no other work in the history of philosophy has retained the obscurity of this particular writing.

(3) A history of commentary on the Parmenides up to the time of Proclus is given in John Dillon's introduction to Proclus' Commentary on Plato's Parmenides, translated in part by Glenn Morrow and completed by Dillon.

(4) Proclus' Parmenides Commentary 630.37-635.27.

(5) Ibid. 635.31-640.16.

(6) See Dillon in Proclus' Commentary on Plato's Parmenides, p. 8.

(7) Proclus' Parmenides Commentary 638.18-19.

(8) Ibid. 1097.10, passim.

(9) Ibid. 46K ff., from the Latin translation. The manner in which this reading anticipates, and to some extent inspires, the "negative theology" of the Middle Ages is noted by Cornford (Plato and Parmenides, p. VI) and by R. Klibansky (Plato's Parmenides in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, pp. 286, 309).

From: Kenneth M. Sayre, Parmenides' Lesson, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1996.

Brief outline of the Parmenides

"0. Stage-setting (126a-127d)

1. The elicitation of Socrates' theory of forms by Zeno's contradictions (127d-130a)

2. Parmenides' refutations of Socrates' theory (130a-134e)

1) Inquiry into the range of the forms (130b-130e)

2) The exposure of how participation appears to contradict the unity of the form (130e-133a)

(i) Against the unity (to be understood as the integrity) of the participated form, the dilemma of participation by whole or by part of the form (130e-131e)

(ii) Against the unity (to be understood as the singularity) of the participated form, the regress arguments (131e-133a)

3) The exposure of how, if the forms and their participants belong to separate domains, forms are unknowable (133a-134e)

3. Parmenides' reorienting help: the method of "gymnastic" (135a-137c)

4. Parmenides' return to Zenonian contradiction: the four pairs of apparently antithetical hypotheses (137d-166b)

(1) If the One is, it both has none of the possible characters, including being and unity, (hypothesis I, 137d-142a) and has all of the possible characters (hypothesis II, 142b-155e) and transits between them (hypothesis Ha, 155e-157b).

(2) If the One is, "the others" both participate in it and as a result have all the possible characters (hypothesis III, 157b-159b) and do not participate in it and as a result have no characters at all (hypothesis IV, 159b-16od).

(3) If the One is not, it both is, as referent of speech and knowledge, different from "the others" and participates in greatness, equality, and smallness and participates in being in some sense, transiting between being and not-being, (hypothesis V, 16ob-163b) and -- since it does not participate in being in any sense -- cannot have any characters at all (hypothesis VI, 163b-164b).

(4) If the One is not, "the others"both will not "truly" have, but will "seem" and "appear" to have, all the possible characters (hypothesis VII, 164b-165e) and -- since they cannot participate in anything that is not -- cannot even "seem" and "appear" to have any of the possible characters (hypothesis VIII, 165e-166b)." (pp. 185-186)

From: Mitchell H. Miller, Jr., Plato's Parmenides. The Conversion of the Soul, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1986.

A survey of contemporary interpretations (under construction)

"The sheer magnitude of the scholarly literature on Plato makes its assessment difficult. Even if we leave aside editions and translations, the study of Plato is carried on in many languages other than the more familiar English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish and by scholars in an astonishing diversity of fields: anthropology, archeology, art history, classical philology, city planning, drama, education, geography, history, law, literature, mathematics, medicine, music, penology, philosophy, politics, psychology, religious studies, rhetoric, and sociology. At least partly for this reason, there has been no really comprehensive review of the literature recently and it is questionable whether such a thing is even possible. The problem can be reduced to more manageable proportions by distinguishing among the diverse purposes for which scholars study Plato's dialogues. For a substantial amount of the Plato literature is essentially concerned with discovering Plato's answers to the questions of concern to contemporary scholars and researchers, or, more plainly, 'the enterprise of mining Plato for the purposes of one's own philosophizing' [cited from Rudolph Weingartner]. Guthrie is correct that there is nothing intrinsically better about what he calls, on the other hand, 'the historical approach' or 'a scholar's approach,' but the difference is often overlooked. The historical and scholarly approach has its own aims and uses, and is the concern here. Of that still substantial Plato literature which is left, there is a further distinction to be made between the study of Platonism, which involves study of the dialogues along with many other factors, texts, and influences, and the study and interpretation of the dialogues in and for themselves . That is to say, the subject of these pages is the state of the question about how to understand and interpret the dialogues of Plato, to discover their meaning in their own context, in terms of their own aims, functions, structures, and principles." (p. 309)

Gerald Press, "The State of the Question in the Study of Plato", Southern Journal of Philosophy, 34, 1996, pp. 507-532. Reprinted in: Nicholas D. Smith (ed.), Plato. Critical Assessments, Volume I: General Issues of Interpretation, London: Routledge 1998, pp. 309-332.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated Bibliography on Plato's Parmenides

Bibliography

N.B. For the critical editions and translations of the Dialogue see: Plato: Bibliographical Resources on Selected Dialogues

I will dedicate to the "Third Man Argument" a separate bibliography.

1. Allan, Donald J. 1960. "Aristotle and the Parmenides." In Aristotle and Plato in the Mid-Fourth Century. Papers of the Symposium Aristotelicum Held at Oxford in August, 1857, edited by Düring, Ingemar and Owen, G .E.L., 133-144. Göteborg: Elanders Bokrtyckeri Aktiebolag.

2. Allen, Reginald Edgar. 1960. "Participation and Predication in Plato's Middle Dialogues." Philosophical Review no. 69:147-164.

Reprinted in: R. E. Allen (ed.) - Studies in Plato's metaphysics - London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965 pp. 43-60 and in: N. D. Smith (ed.) - Plato. Critical assessments - Vol. II: Plato's middle period: metaphysics and epistemology - Lond, Routledge, 1998 pp. 57-71.

3. Ambuel, David. 2005. "On What Is Not: Eleatic Paradox in the Parmenides and the Sophist." In Plato's Parmenides. Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlícek, Ales and Karfík, Filip, 200-215. Prague: Oikoimené.

4. Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margareth. 1966. "The New Theory of Forms." Monist no. 50:403-420.

"In the relatively naive early theory of forms, Plato uses unreflectively such words as "one," "being," "whole," "same," "other"; when he came to reflect on these words and to treat them as signifying forms, he encountered many difficulties -- especially in view of his principle of "self-predication," that the form (being) is itself. An attempt is here made to delineate the "new" theory involved in the "Sophist" and "Parmenides", in two main aspects: participation of one form in another, and negation and incompatibility. A constructable model for these relations of forms is described. "

5. Barbanti, Maria, and Romano, Francesco, eds. 2002. Il Parmenide di Platone e la sua tradizione. Catania: CUECM.

Atti del III Colloquio Internazionale del centro di Ricerca sul Neoplatonismo. Università degli Studi di Catania, 31 maggio - 2 giugno 2001.

Indice: M. Barbanti, F. Romano: Prefazione 7; Carlos Steel: Une histoire de l'interpretation du Parménide dans l'antiquité 11; Luc Brisson: S'il (= le monde) est un. La seconde partie du Parménide de Platon considerée du point de vue de Parménide et de Zénon 41; Maurizio Migliori: L'unità del Parmenide e il suo intento protrettico 59; Franco Ferrari: Unità e oggetto del Parmenide. Problemi e proposte 85; Giovanni Casertano: Ogni uno di fronte a gioventù e vecchiaia 109; Franco Trabattoni: L'errore di Socrate 143; R. Loredana Cardullo: Il Peri Ideon di Aristotele e il Parmenide di Platone, ovvero: da un comune tentativo di "salvare" le idee verso un inevitabile scontro dottrinale 155; Eva Di Stefano: Il Parmenide di Platone e il Didaskalikos di Alcinoo 185; Francesco Romano: La probabile esegesi pitagorizzante (accademica, medioplatonica e neopitagorica) del Parmenide di Platone 197; Maria Barbanti: La teologia di Origene e la prima ipotesi del Parmenide 249; Gerald Bechtle: Speusippus and the Anonymous Commentary on Plato's Parmenides: how can the One be a Minimum? 281; Alessandro Linguiti: Sulla datazione del Commento al Parmenide di Bobbio. Un'analisi lessicale 307; Jean Pépin: Le Parménide dans les Sentences de Porphyre 323; John Dillon: Iamblichus' identifications of the subject-matters of the hypotheses 329; John J. Cleary: Proclus' elaborate defense of Platonic Ideas 341; Lambros Couloubaritsis: Georges Pachymere et le Parménide de Platon 355; Concetto Martello: Riflessi del Parmenide in Giovanni Eriugena 371; Werner Beierwaltes: L'interpretazione ficiniana del Parmenide platonico 389; Annalisa Raponi: Natorp e il Parmenide di Platone 411; Piero Di Giovanni: Il "Parmenide" di Platone nell'opera di Enzo Paci 425; Paolo Manganaro: Parmenide tra Heidegger e Platone 447-456.

6. Berti, Enrico. 1971. "Struttura e significato del Parmenide di Platone." Giornale di Metafisica no. 26:497-527.

Reprinted in: E. Berti - Studi aristotelici - L'Aquila: Japadre 1975 pp. 297-327

7. Bianchetti, Matteo, and Storace, Erasmo, eds. 2004. Platone e l'ontologia. Il Parmenide e il Sofista. Milano: Albo Versorio.

8. ———. 1957. "Forms as Standards." Phronesis no. 2:115-127.

9. Brisson, Luc. 1996. "Une nouvelle interprétation du Parménide de Platon." In Platon et l'objet de la science, edited by Morel, Pierre-Marie, 69-112. Bordeaux: Presses de l'Université de Boredaux.

10. ———. 2002. "'Is the World One?' A New Interpretation of Plato's Parmenides." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 22:1-20.

11. ———. 2005. "Les quatres dernières séries de déductions dans La seconde partie du Parménide de Platon." In Plato's Parmenides. Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlícek, Ales and Karfík, Filip, 216-233. Prague: Oikoimené.

12. ———. 2005. "Réponse a Denis O'Brien." In Plato's Parmenides. Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlícek, Ales and Karfík, Filip, 257-262. Prague: Oikoimené.

Réponse à Le Parménide historique et le Parménide de Platon pp. 234-256.

13. Brumbaugh, Robert. 1961. "Plato on the One. The Hypotheses in the Parmenides." In. New Haven: Yale University Press.

14. ———. 1973. "The Text of Plato's Parmenides." Review of Metaphysics no. 26:140-148.

15. ———. 1976. "Notes on the History of Plato's Text: With the Parmenides as a Case Study." Paideia:67-79.

16. ———. 1980. "The Purposes of Plato's Parmenides." Ancient Philosophy no. 1:39-48.

17. Brunschwig, Jacques. 1985. "Le problème de la "self-participation" chez Platon." In L'art des confins. Mélanges offerts à Maurice de Gandillac, edited by Cazenave, Annie and Lyotard, Jean-François, 121-135. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Repris dans: P. Aubenque - Problèmes aristotéliciens. I. Philosophie théorique - Paris, Vrin 2009 pp. 351-372

18. C., Rickless Samuel. 2007. Plato's Forms in Transition. A Reading of the Parmenides. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

19. Calogero, Guido. 1932. Studi sull'eleatismo. Roma: Tipografia del Senato del dott. G. Bardi.

Second edition with two new appendixes Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1977

First edition translated in German as: Studien über den Eleatismus Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1970

20. Cherniss, Harold. 1932. "Parmenides and the Parmenides of Plato." American Journal of Philology no. 53:122-138.

Reprinted in: H. Chermiss - Selected papers - edited by Leonardo Tarán - Leiden: Brill 1977 pp. 281-297.

"The antinomies of the Parmenides were composed for the purpose of showing that the Eleatic dialectic of Zeno when applied to the monistic Being of Parmenides produces the same paradoxes as when used against pluralism. It is demonstrated that the second part of the dialogue is formally an elaborate parodia of the poem of Parmenides and metodically a parodia of the logic-chopping of Zeno. By this means the psychological purpose of the dialogue is elucidated, the unity of the dialogue is made evident, and its relationship to the Sophist is established."

21. Chroust, Anton Hermann. 1947. "The Problem of Plato's Parmenides." New Scholasticism (21):371-418.

22. Cornford, Francis MacDonald. 1939. Plato and Parmenides. Parmenides' Way of Truth and Plato's Parmenides. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & co. Ltd.

Translated, with an introduction and a running commentary by F. M. Cornford.

Reprinted by Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980

23. Coxon, Allan H. 1999. The Philosophy of Forms. An Analytical and Historical Commentary on Plato's Parmenides. With a New English Translation. Assen: Van Gorcum.

24. Cresswell, Max J. 1975. "Participation in Plato's Parmenides." Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 13:163-171.

25. Curd, Patricia. 1988. "Parmenidean Clues in the Search for the Sophist." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 5:307-320.

"The paper challenges the view that in both the "Parmenides" and the "Sophist" Plato suffers from confusion about identity and predication. I claim that the arguments of part II of the "Parmenides" are not infected with this confusion. Further, I argue that part II of the "Parmenides" explores and investigates ideas (especially about being and not-being) that are crucial to the solution of the problem of not-being in the "Sophist" (a solution that does not depend on distinguishing identity and predicative senses of 'to be')."

26. Dillon, John. 2005. "Speusippus and the Ontological Interpretation of the Parmenides." In Plato's Parmenides. Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlícek, Ales and Karfík, Filip, 296-311. Prague: Oikoimené.

27. Dixsaut, Monique. 2005. "Les hypothèses du Parménide: Construire des mondes conceptuels possibles." In Plato's Parmenides. Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlícek, Ales and Karfík, Filip, 263-295. Prague: Oikoimené.

28. Fronterotta, Francesco. 1998. Guida alla lettura del Parmenide di Platone. Bari: Laterza.

29. ———. 2001. Methexis. La teoria platonica delle idee e la partecipazione delle cose empiriche. Dai dialoghi giovanili al Parmenide. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore.

30. ———. 2005. "Méthexis rt chôrismos dans l'intérprétation du Parménide de Platon." In Plato's Parmenides. Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlícek, Ales and Karfík, Filip, 88-124. Prague: Oikoimené.

31. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1983. "Der Platonische Parmenides und Seine Nachwirkung." Archivio di Filosofia no. 51:39-51.

Translated in Italian as: Il Parmenide platonico e la sua influenza in: Hans Georg-Gadamer - Studi platonici - Casale Monferrato, Marietti 1984, vol. II pp. 265-278

32. Gardeya, Peter. 1991. Platons Parmenides. Interpretation und Bibliographie. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

33. Gerson, Lloyd P. 1981. "Dialectic and Forms in Part One of Plato's Parmenides." Apeiron no. 15:19-28.

34. ———. 2002. "Plato's Development and the Development of the Theory of Forms." In Plato's Forms: Varieties of Interpretation, edited by Welton, William, 85-110. Lanham: Lexington Books.

35. Gourinat, Jean-Baptiste. 2002. "La dialectique des hypothèses contraires dans le Parménide de Platon." In La philosophie de Platon, edited by Fattal, Michel, 233-261. Paris: L'Harmattan.

36. Graeser, Andreas. 1999. Prolegomena zu Einer Interpretation des Zweiten Teils des Platonischen Parmenides. Bern: P. Haupt.

37. Hägler, Rudolf-Peter. 1983. Platons Parmenides: Probleme dDer Interpretation. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

38. Havlícek, Ales, and Karfík, Filip, eds. 2005. Plato's Parmenides. Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium Platonicum Pragense. Prague: OIKOYMENH Publishers.

Contents: Preface 7; Constance C. Meinwald: Literary elements and dialogue form in Plato's Parmenides 9; Dimitri El Murr: La critique de la participation en Parménide, 131a-132b: unité, unicité et le paradoxe de Zenon 21; Béatriz Bossi: Is Socrates really defending conceptualism in Parmenides, 132b3-d4? 58; Karel Thein: The second "Third Man Argument": what difference does the likeness make? 75; Francesco Fronterotta: Methexis et Korismos dans l'interpretation du Parménide de Platon 88; Kenneth Sayre: The method revisited: Parmenides, 135e9-136c6 125; Filip Karfik: Par rapport a soi-meme et par rapport aux autres. Une distinction clef dans le Parménide de Platon 141; Samuel Scolnicov: The conditions of knowledge in Plato's Parmenides 165; Stepán Spinka: Relation, Sein und Zeit 181; David Ambuel: On what is not: Eleatic paradox in the Parmenides and the Sophist 200; Luc Brisson: Les quatre dernières series de deductions dans la seconde partie du Parménide de Platon 216; Denis O'Brien: Le Parménide historique et le Parménide de Platon 234; Luc Brisson: Réponse a Denis O'Brien 257; Monique Dixsaut: Les hypothèses du Parménide: construire des mondes conceptuels possibles 263; John Dillon: Speusippus and the ontological interpretation of the Parmenides 296; Index locorum 313-323.

39. Jyiuan, Yu. 1991. "On Plato's Theory of the "Metheksis" of Ideas." Philosophical Inquiry:25-37.

40. Kim, Sung-Jin. 1989. Die Widerspruch und das Urteil in Platons Parmenides. Untersuchungen zur Platonischen Dialektik. New York: Peter Lang.

41. Lynch, William. 1959. An Approach to the Metaphysics of Plato through the Parmenides. Washington: Georgetown University Press.

Second edition: Westport, Greenwood Press 1969

42. Malatesta, Michele. 1997. "One Instance of tollendo tollens in Plato's Parmenides 127e1-7." Metalogicon no. 10:33-40.

43. Malcolm, John. 1981. "Semantics and Self-Predication in Plato." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 26:286-294.

44. Mates, Benson. 1979. "Identity and Predication in Plato." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 24:211-229.

Reprinted in: S. Knuuttila and J. Hintikka - The logic of Being - Dordrecht: Reidel 1986 pp. 29-47

45. McCabe, Mary Margaret. 1996. "Unity in the Parmenides: The Unity of the Parmenides." In Form and Argument in Late Plato, edited by Gill, Christopher and McCabe, Mary Margaret, 5-48. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

46. Meinwald, Constance. 1991. Plato's Parmenides. New York: Oxford University Press.

47. Migliori, Maurizio. 1990. Dialettica e verità. Commentario filosofico al Parmenide di Platone. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

48. Miller, Mitchell. 1986. Plato's Parmenides. The Conversion of the Soul. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

49. ———. 1995. ""Unwritten Teachings" in the Parmenides." Review of Metaphysics no. 48:591-633.

50. Moravcsik, Julius. 1982. "Forms and Dialectic in the Second Half of the Parmenides." In Language and Logos. Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy Presented to G. E. L. Owen, edited by Schofield, Malcolm and Nussbaum, Martha, 135-154. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

51. ———. 1992. Plato and Platonism: Plato's Conception of Appearance and Reality in Ontology, Epistemology, and Ethics, and Its Modern Echoes.

See in particular the Chapter 4: The Parmenides: Forms and Participation reconsidered pp. 129-167

52. Nadal, J. 1984. "Rémarques sur le Parménide de Platon et la pensée du non-être." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 89:11-32.

53. Nehamas, Alexander. 1979. "Self-Predication and Plato's Theory of Forms." American Philosophical Quarterly no. 16:93-103.

Reprinted in: A. Nehamas - Virtues of authenticity. Essays on Plato and Socrates - Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1999, pp. 176-195

54. Niewohner, Friedrich Wilhelm. 1971. Dialog und Dialektik in Platons Parmenides: Untersuchungen zur Sogennanten Platonischen 'Esoterik'. Meisenheim am Glan: A. Hain.

55. O'Brien, Denis. 2005. "Le Parménide uistorique et le Parménide de Platon." In Plato's Parmenides. Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlícek, Ales and Karfík, Filip, 234-256. Prague: Oikoimené.

56. Paci, Enzo. 1938. Il significato del Parmenide nella filosofia di Platone. Milano: Principato.

Second edition: Milano, Bompiani 1988

57. ———. 2003. "New Rounds of the Exercise of Plato's Parmenides." Modern Schoolman:245-278.

58. ———. 2008. "The Parmenides." In The Oxford Handbook of Plato, edited by Fine, Gail, 383-410. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Plato's Parmenides contrasts with Plato's other works in several ways. For example, Socrates is depicted as "very young" (127c5), perhaps fifteen or perhaps nineteen. Parmenides questions Socrates, who contradicts himself; in other dialogues of question and answer, Socrates typically questions others, who contradict themselves. Parmenides refutes Socrates on the topic of forms, items such as justice itself and good itself, while the older Socrates of other dialogues presents forms as central to philosophy; the dialogue thus raises the question whether its criticism of forms signals Plato's revision of views expressed in previous writings. The Parmenides is the only dialogue in which forms are the main topic. The dialogue's second part, 137c-166c, is the longest passage of unrelenting argument in Plato's writings. Its arguments arc his most puzzling." (p. 383)

59. Prior, William J. 1979. "Parmenides 132-133a and the Development of Plato's Thought." Phronesis no. 24:230-240.

60. ———. 1985. Unity and Development in Plato's Metaphysics. London: Croom Helm.

Contents: Acknowledgments; Introduction: The problem of Plato's development 1; The metaphysics of the early and middle Platonic dialogues 9; 2. The challenge of the Parmenides 51; 3. The response of the Timaeus 87; 4. The Sophist 127; Appendix: The doctrinal maturity and chronological position of the Tmaeus 168; Bibliography 194; Index 199-201.

61. Rickless, Samuel C. 1998. "How Parmenides Saved the Theory of Forms." Philosophical Review no. 107:501-554.

62. Rist, John. 1962. "The Parmenides Again." Phoenix no. 16:1-14.

About Runciman (1959)

63. Robinson, Richard. 1953. Plato's Earlier Dialectic. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Second edition (first edition 1941).

See the chapter XIII: Hypothesis in the Parmenides pp. 223-280, previously published in Classical Philology (1942).

64. Roecklein, Robert J. 2011. Plato Versus Parmenides. The Debate over Coming-into-Being in Greek Philosophy. Lanham: Lexington Books.

Contents: Acknowledgments IX; Introduction 1; 1. Parmenides' Argument 13; 2. Parmenides and the Milesian Philosophies: "Nothing Comes from Nothing" --- Physics or Logic? 37; 3. Parmenides' Influence of Empedocles and Anaxagoras 57; 4. Plato's Socrates and His Theory of Causation 83; 5. The Parmenides: Plato's Proof of Coming to Be 121; 6. The Theaetetus: Plato's Proof That the Objects of Knowledge Are Indivisible 159; Bibliography 187; Index 195-199.

65. Runciman, Walter Garrison. 1959. "Plato's Parmenides." Classical Philology no. 64:89-120.

Reprinted in: R. E. Allen - Studies in Plato's metaphysics - London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965 pp. 149-184.

66. Ryle, Gilbert. 1939. "Plato's Parmenides." Mind no. 48:129-151.

Reprinted in: R. E. Allen, Studies in Plato's metaphysics, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965 pp. 97-147, and in G. Ryle, Collected Papers. Volume I. Critical Essays, London, Hutchison 1971 (reprint: New York, Routledge, 2009) as Essay I pp. 1-44.

67. Sayre, Kenneth. 1983. Plato's Late Ontology: A Riddle Resolved. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

68. Schofield, Malcolm. 1996. "Likeness and Likenesses in Parmenides." In Form and Argument in Late Plato, edited by Gill, Christopher and McCabe, Mary Margaret, 49-78. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

69. Scolnicov, Samuel. 2003. "Things Worth Wondering At: A Response to Sandra Peterson." Modern Schoolman:279-287.

70. ———. 2005. "The Conditions of Knowledge in Plato's Parmenides." In Plato's Parmenides. Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlícek, Ales and Karfík, Filip, 165-180. Prague: Oikoimené.

71. Silverman, Allan. 2002. The Dialectic of Essence: A Study of Plato's Metaphysics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

72. Steel, Carlos. 1999. "Proclus comme témoin du texte du Parménide." In Tradition et traduction. Les textes philosophiques rt scientifiques grecs au Moyen Age latin. Hommage à Fernand Bossier, edited by Beyers, Rita, Brams, Jozef, Sacré, Dirk and Verrycken, Koenraad, 281-303. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

73. ———. 2002. "Une histoire de l'interpretation du Parménide dans l'antiquité." In Il Parmenide di Platone e la sua tradizione, edited by Barbanti, Maria and Romano, Francesco, 11-40. Catania: CUECM.

74. Sternfeld, Robert, and Zyskind, Harold. 1987. Meaning, Relation and Existence in Plato's Parmenides. The Logic of Relational Realism. New York: Peter Lang.

75. Sweeney, Leo. 1988. "Participation in Plato's Dialogues: Pahedo, Parmenides, Sophist, Timaeus." New Scholasticism no. 62:125-149.

"The aim of this paper is to give a synthetic and overview interpretation of what Plato intends by "participation" in several dialogues. "Phaedo", 100 sqq.: participation is the effect of the Forms' presence in things and of their having something in common. "Parmenides", 248-249: participation consists of things "being-caused-as-images-of Forms," where "cause" will in later dialogues be disclosed to be the Forms as models and goals and intellects as agents. "Sophist", 219 sqq. and 266a sqq.: by productive art intelligent agents -- human and divine -- cause products to participate through contemplation of Forms as models. "Timaeus", 26b-30d and 47e sqq.: working with the receptacle as the participant underlying all participation, the divine craftsman uses the Forms as models and telic causes in producing individual souls and bodies, together with the entire visible universe itself. "Symposium", 210e-211b, "Phaedo", 79d and "Republic", vi, 511d suggest that Plato's philosophy is not a phenomenology."

76. Tai-Bum, Yang. 2008. Das Problem des Nichtseienden in Platons Parmenides. Zur neuen Interpretation des Platonischen Dialogs Parmenides. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

77. Trabattoni, Franco. 1993. "Una nuova Interpretazione del Parmenide di Platone." Elenchos no. 14:65-82.

78. Turnbull, Robert G. 1998. The Parmenides and Plato's Late Philosophy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Translation of and commentary on the Parmenides with interpretative chapters on the Timaeus, the Theaetetus, the Sophist, and the Philebus.

79. Turner, John D., and Corrigan, Kevin, eds. 2010. Plato's Parmenides and Its Heritage. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

Vol. 1: History and Interpretation from the Old Academy to Later Platonism and Gnosticism; Vol. 2: Reception in Patristic, Gnostic, and Christian Neoplatonic Texts.

80. Vlastos, Gregory. 1969. "Self-Predication and Self-Participation in Plato's Later Period." Philosophical Review no. 78:74-78.

Reprinted in: G. Vlastos - Platonic studies - Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1973 pp. 335-341.

81. Wahl, Jean. 1926. Étude sur Le Parménide de Platon. Paris: F. Rieder et C.ie.

l

1. Fourth edition Paris: Vrin 1951

2. Wundt, Max. 1935. Platons Parmenides. Berlin: Verlag von W, Kohlhammer.

3. Wyller, Egil Anders. 1960. Platons Parmenides in seinem Zusammenhang mit Symposion und Politeia. Interpretationen zur Platonischen Henologie. Oslo: Aschehoug.

Reprint: Würzburg, Königshausen und Neumann, 2006

4. Zekl, Hans Gûnther. 1971. Der Parmenides. Untersuchungen über innere Einheit, Zielsetzung und Begriffliches Verfahren eines Platonischen Dialogs. Marburg: Elwert.

5. Ziermann, Christoph. 2004. Platons negative Dialektik. Eine untersuchung der Dialoge "Sophistes" und "Parmenides". Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Semantics, Predication, Truth and Falsehood in Plato's Sophist

Being and Nonbeing, truth and falsehood in the Sophist

"The Sophist seems to be concerned with two things: being and nonbeing, on the one hand, and true and false speech, on the other. If speech is either true or false speech, it seems not even plausible for being to be either being or nonbeing, since we would then be compelled to say that nonbeing is as much being as false speech is speech. If nonbeing, however, is being, then nonbeing cannot be nonbeing, for otherwise the falseness of false speech would not consist in its saying 'nonbeing.' And, in turn, if nonbeing is nonbeing, the falseness of' false speech again cannot consist in its saying 'nonbeing,' for it would then not be saying anything. If we then say that nonbeing is appearing, and appearing is not unqualified nonbeing, being is being and appearing, and we want to distinguish between the strict identity which belongs to being and the likeness of' nonbeing to the strict identity of being. We say, then, 'Here is Socrates himself' and 'Here is a likeness of Socrates.' Everything in the likeness of Socrates that is a likeness of' Socrates himself will generate a true speech of Socrates identical to another speech true of Socrates himself. Everything, how ever, in the likeness of Socrates that is not a likeness of Socrates himself yields a false speech of Socrates. Among the false speeches of Socrates would be, for example, the paint on Socrates' portrait but not the color of the paint that is true of Socrates himself. The paint, then, without the color (per impossibile), is not true of Socrates, but it certainly is not a likeness of Socrates either. The paint must be together with its color in order for it to be both a likeness of Socrates and nonbeing, but it seems to be utterly mysterious how by being together it can be that and by being apart it ceases to be anything of the sort. If every thing then is just what it is and nothing else, it is impossible for there to be any speech, either true or false, for speech is impossible unless something can be put together with something else. The conditions for speech are the same as the conditions for nonbeing, and we can have speech if there is always falsehood or being if there is never truth. Parmenides must and cannot be right. If this is the gist of the sophist's argument, it is hard to see how the Eleatic stranger shows its incoherence and thereby distinguishes between sophistry and philosophy. He leads us to believe that inasmuch as logos comes to be through the weaving together of kinds, the problem of nonbeing has been solved; but he goes on to characterize logos, insofar as it can be said to be true or false, as the weaving together of verb and noun (action and actor) without ever showing how these two kinds of logos are related to one another. The stranger himself even says that he has always failed to solve the problem of nonbeing, and in the dialogue he proves that the problem of being is no less baffling. He proposes then that his own logos, even if it fails to solve either problem, will be as far as it goes adequate for both; but since he also asserts that being and nonbeing are as different as light and dark, he implies that no single logos can be adequate for both unless it is indifferent to that difference. The argument, then, that the sophist mounts against philosophy is reinforced by the stranger's own self-contradictory account. That Theaetetus believes by the end that the problem has been solved only goes to show the degree to which the stranger in tracking the sophist has become indistinguishable from the sophist." (pp. XII-XIII)

From: Seth Benardete, Plato's Sophist. Part II of The Being of the Beautiful, Chicago: Chicago University Press 1986.

"The King admired Alice for being able to see even the nothing while he himself could hardly see anything. The King's intellectual ancestry goes back more than two thousand years. The problem of seeing nothing posed philosophical questions to the Greeks, and thus it became the main topic of Plato's Sophist. Plato did not share the King's point of view. He wished to explain truth, falsehood, and meaning without supposing that people can see the nothing. Plato's effort goes beyond the repudiation of the King's position. Underlying the problem of seeing nothing is the issue whether believing the truth is like seeing, seeing with "the eye of the mind." If believing the truth is seeing, then believing what is false must be blindness.

But how could it be? Believing falsehoods is still believing something. It is not blindness; it is not believing nothing. Plato's dissolution of this puzzle helps us to understand better the nature of truth and falsehood. In denying that wisdom is sight and folly blindness we come to understand that truths are not objects of mental sight. What is true or false is not an object or a name. Thus Plato's explanation of truth, falsehood, and meaning has important consequences for his conception of the nature and objects of knowledge, and therefore for his theory of Forms. The results of Plato's investigation are not of mere historical interest to us. The differences between statement and name, meaning and truth, sort- and formal concepts, -- differences which Plato was pointing out -- are as lively topics of philosophical debate today as they were twenty-four hundred years ago." (pp. 22-23)

From: Julius M. E. Moravcsik, "Being and Meaning in the Sophist", Acta Philosophica Fennica 14, 1962.

Summary of the section on Nonbeing

"To sum up then, the discussion in the Sophist seems to attempt the following things: to distinguish the sense of einai in which it means 'exist' from various other senses which the word bears; to deal, as we have seen, with the Paradox of False Belief; and to deal with the (related) problems raised by negation on the assumption that a sentence which does contain, or could be re-phrased so as to contain, the copula 'is' asserts the existence of its subject and that its negation might be thought to assert its non-existence, or at least to attribute to it a measure of non-existence. I hope that this will become clear in the following account of the argument in which, as before, I shall prefix a number to paragraphs which purport to give the gist of the text and a letter to those which contain comment. [Sections with comments are omitted in this summary] (To on is that which is, an on is something which is; to mê on is that which is-not, a mê on is something which is-not; einai means 'to be').

1. The relevant section begins in 236 d, when the Stranger, having said that sophists pursue apparent rather than real wisdom, goes on to say that there has been, and still is, a serious puzzle about "appearing and yet not being, and about saying something and yet something which is not true". Arguments implying the possibility of false statement or false belief "venture to say that not-being is; for there could not otherwise be such a thing as falsity" (237 a 4).

2. The Stranger then says that Parmenides always warned his pupils not to say that not-being is, and offers as the reason for this ban the argument that 'not-being' cannot be the name of anything which is, and therefore cannot be the name of anything. But a man who says something must say some one thing; therefore the man who does not say something must say nothing, and therefore perhaps we ought to say that the man who tries to utter what is-not not only says nothing, but does not even say at all. (237 a-e).

3. It has been shown so far that not-being is a balking notion. On the one hand we often have occasion to use it; on the other hand Parmenides has good reason to forbid us to do so. The Stranger goes on to find further difficulties in the notion of not-being. That which he calls the chief of them is as follows. Something which does not exist cannot have any properties. But if one is going to speak of non-entity at all one must either use the singular or the plural ('not-being' or 'not-beings'). Not-being, therefore, cannot be spoken of nor thought of at all. Furthermore, and worse, even to say that much about it is to treat it as if it were some one existing thing. (238 a-239 c).

4. The Stranger goes on to conclude from the difficulties he has raised about not-being that it will be embarrassing to say that sophists create semblances (eikones). For the sophists will ask what an eikôn is, will refuse to accept an ostensive definition, and will force you to admit that a semblance is something which is not the genuine thing. And since the genuine thing is really a being, and the non-genuine its opposite, a semblance will have to be something which 'is not really a being, but exists in a way, though not genuinely, except that it really is a semblance', and therefore 'not really being, it really is'. And thus we shall have to say that a not-being in a way is. (239 c-240 b).

5. The Stranger then says that he is unable to see how to define sophistry without contradicting the conclusions that they have come to in their discussion so far. He wants to say that sophists make us believe what is false, but he sees that the sophists will retort that this is impossible because a false belief must be one that asserts what is contrary to what is, either by holding that not-beings are, or by holding that beings are not. Therefore if we say that there are false propositions we shall, as Theaetetus puts it, 'be forced to tack being on to not-being, which we have agreed to be impossible'. (240 d241 b).

6. The Stranger then says that they must come to terms with Parmenides, and show that not-being in a way is, and being in a way is-not. This leads him to the criticisms of various philosophical and cosmological schools which we have examined in an earlier chapter, the professed aim of these criticisms being to show that being is just as difficult a notion as not-being. He criticizes (a) those who say that to on is two or three things, such as the warm and the cold; (b) Parmenides who says that it is to hen (which could mean either 'unity' or 'the one substance'); (c) the materialists who say that to on is what we can see and touch; and (d) the Partisans of the Forms who say that to on is utterly changeless. Showing, from this last criticism, that activity and inactivity both are (i.e. exist), and yet are not being, he concludes that it is as difficult to say what 'being' is the name of as it is to say what 'not-being' is the name of. (241 d-251 a).

7. The Stranger continues his argument by way of drawing attention to the fact that in every predication something other than the subject is predicated of it, and that this shows that kinds can share. Then follows the passage about dialectic and the discussion of the very great kinds-being, activity, inactivity, sameness and difference-in which it is demonstrated that all of these are, but that none is identical with any of the others. From this it is concluded (256-7) that activity (for instance) is not being, and that therefore 'not-being must exist with respect to activity and in accordance with all the kinds'. Since none of them is identical with being they can all be called not-beings while at the same time they are beings. 'Every kind has much being and infinite not-being' (256 a 1). Even being itself is-not everything else. (251 a-257 a).

8. The Stranger now concludes that when we speak of not-being we do not speak of the opposite of being, but only of something different from it. Negation does not 'signify the opposite'. To prefix 'not' to a word is to indicate something different from the thing that the word stands for. There are many parts of difference, or in other words many contrasts, such as that between the beautiful and that which is different from it; and the contrasted term (such as the not-beautiful) is just as much a being as the other term, since the former does not signify the opposite of the latter, but only something different from it. This, he says, deals with the problem of the sophists' teaching. Not-being is difference. It is not the opposite of being. We are not 'venturing to say' that the opposite of being exists. The question whether there is such a thing as not-being conceived of as the opposite of being, and if so whether any account can be given of it, is not one which arises in this connection. It is sufficient for the present purpose to show that the kinds can share, and that though difference (or "not-being" in the ordinary sense of that phrase) is not being, it is a being, in which all other beings, including being itself, partake. (257 b-259 b).

9. The Stranger continues his argument by warning his hearers against the frivolous production of antinomies. The fact that logos or the making of statements involves the interweaving of different kinds means that it will always be possible to produce apparent antinomies out of innocent statements if one fails to attend to the sense of what is said. But to exploit such antinomies is to render discourse impossible. He then alarms his hearers by telling them that though the existence of not-being has been established, the sophists will still be able to contend that statements and beliefs cannot partake in it, and meets this with the analysis of a proposition into an onoma and a rhema with which we are familiar. (259 b-264 b)." (pp. 502-514)

From: Ian MacHattie Crombie, An Examination of Plato's Doctrines, Vol. II: Plato on Knowledge and Reality, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1963.

A survey of recent interpretations (in progress)

"Coming back to false statement, a fantasm exists qua fantasm, and so possesses being. But qua fantasm -- qua perceived look and not qua verbal or material embodiment of that look -- it exists as not that which it shows itself to be. Therefore it cannot refer directly to what it shows itself to be or derive its existence solely from that and hence indirectly from /the pure form) being. So it looks as if the fantasm refers to, and derives its existence from, (a pure form) non-being. If, however, non-being is a pure form, then it too derives its being from combination with the pure form being.

If non-being is indeed a pure form, then 'non-being is' in the sense just explicated. This statement contains a self-contradiction because it can be unpacked into the two statements: ''non-being" means "complete absence of being" and ''non-being" means "presence of being" or something of the sort. Actually, the problem is even worse than this, because to deny that non-being possesses being is by the Stranger's analysis meaningful if and only if the expression 'non-being' refers to something. We can make this point sharply, if not in the Stranger's own terms, by saying that, for him, 'non' or 'not' cannot be explained entirely as a syntactical particle or function.

This leads to another preliminary remark that I think worth making here. We should not assume that it is self-evident what the Stranger means by a 'contradiction'. I want to bring this out by making use of an unpublished paper by Richard Routley.

Routley distinguishes three kinds or senses of 'contradiction.' (1) One statement may cancel another. In this case, the result of 'A and not-A' is silence or nothing. (2) The collision of the statements 'A' and 'not-A' results in what Routley calls the 'explosion' of 'A' into every statement whatsoever. In other words, from a contradiction everything follows. (3) The statement 'not-A' constrains but does not totally control 'A.' Routley is thinking here of relevance logic, in which the choice between 'A' and 'not-A' can be sensibly raised if and only if 'A' and 'not-A' are each the opposite of the other. The semantical rule for evaluating relevant negation is then: 'not-A' holds in a world a if and only if 'A' holds in world a', the reverse of a. Following this third case, 'not-A' is the reverse of 'A,' and reversal is the relevance-restricted version of 'other thanness,' or what looks like the Stranger's eventual explanation of nonbeing. In sum: within relevance logic, there must be a substantive connection between 'A' and 'not-A' for any meaningful (and hence truth-functional/ connection to hold between them. To the extent that this applies to the Stranger's doctrines, we may take the connection to be semantic; since the Stranger has no doctrine of possible worlds, the connection between 'A' and 'not-A' must hold in this world. However, this world has two different aspects. Some statements refer directly to pure forms. Other statements, like 'Theaetetus flies,' do not. So 'Theaetetus flies' and 'Theaetetus sits' are contradictory, if and only if there is someone we know named Theaetetus who is either flying or sitting.

To this extent, then, the Stranger may be called a relevance logician. The Stranger is not reduced to silence by the assertions 'nonbeing is' and 'non-being is not.' At least, this is not his intention, as his subsequent analysis makes plain. Similarly, the Stranger cannot accept the 'explosion' interpretation of contradiction. For within this interpretation, the statement 'non-being is' would continue to hold, side-by-side with 'non-being is not.' Differently stated, the Stranger's fundamental interest is ontological, not 'formal,' in the sense used in contemporary logical calculi. If the Stranger's interests were merely formal, he could easily avoid a contradiction by stipulation. This is of course an anachronistic way of looking at the actual situation, but that is precisely my point. One comes closer to the truth by saying that the Stranger is investigating the semantical basis of logical rules, and that for him 'semantics' is in the last analysis a doctrine of ontological or pure forms." (pp. 178-179)

From: Stanley Rosen, Plato's Sophist. The Drama of Original and Image, New Haven: Yale University Press 1983.

"In order to understand the Stranger's position with respect to otherness, we must remember that he is on the way to a resolution of the problem of non-being. It will be part of his resolution not to hypostatize 'not'; that is, he will deny that 'being' (or being) has a contrary (or 'opposite'). In one sense, then, 'not' must be explained as a syntactical particle to which no form corresponds. But in another sense, this is impossible, since the Stranger requires forms to provide meaning. The semantic force of 'not' will thus be derived by him from otherness. Despite the assurances of some scholars to the contrary, the Stranger does have a 'complete' use of 'is,' as I have now explained at length. This use cannot be negated; at least, the Stranger never deals with this problem. He never deals with nonexistent 'things' because (to put the point somewhat awkwardly) for him, there are no such things. I am not contending that he would not understand statements like 'Socrates does not exist.' The absence of such statements follows from his primary concern with 'exists' in the sense of 'possesses being' or 'combines with being.' But the analysis of statements like 'Socrates does not exist' would present grave problems for the Stranger. This is because he wants to explain 'not' by way of a form. The form he chooses is otherness. So 'not to be' means for him 'not to be F,' where ultimately F is a form or combination of forms (in the case of instances). But 'not to be F' must in turn mean 'to be G,' where G is ultimately a form, or formal combination, entirely distinct from F. If Socrates does not exist, then he does not participate in the form being. In this case, however, he participates in no forms at all. He is not 'other than' an instance of being. The doctrine of forms provides no basis for explaining the meaning of the statement 'Socrates does not exist.' Nor, for that matter, does the meaning of 'Socrates is dead' spring readily to the eye, given the Stranger's doctrine.

In sum: since we wish to avoid speaking of nonexistent things, or to put it positively, since anything at all combines with or participates in being, 'not' must be explained by means of the available network of pure forms. The obvious choice is otherness. 'Not to be this' is instead 'to be that.' Hence otherness must be a double look, or what would today be called a two-place relation. This conclusion gives rise in turn to a second question: What about sameness? Contrary to the contemporary procedure, the Stranger takes 'sameness' as a complete look. This is misunderstood by those who replace 'sameness' by 'identity' and explain that, in turn, as one sense of 'is'. As I have shown in detail, this destroys the distinction between the two forms being and sameness. When the Stranger says that each form is the same as itself, he is in fact denying that form F is 'related' to any other form, qua same; hence his insistence that sameness and otherness are two distinct forms. If sameness were a two-place relation, it would contain otherness in its intrinsic nature; and this would violate the separateness of the two forms. The Stranger sees no need to consider 'sameness' as a reflexive relation (for example, as 'F = F'); we may infer that this would introduce duality from his standpoint. However we might analyze it, the expression 'each of them is other' (254d13) is for the Stranger a way of saying that the form sameness is a distinct form, which provides a distinct look, and which is complete in itself. That is, 'a is the same' is a complete expression, whereas 'a is other' is not." (pp. 271-272)

From: Stanley Rosen, Plato's Sophist. The Drama of Original and Image,New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.

"Before Plato is ready to attempt an integration of his accounts of becoming and of being into a coherent theory of participation, however, another important problem from the Theaetetus must be resolved. Although lógos is made possible by the weaving together of Forms (Sophist 259b5-6), not every case of lógos is a case of knowledge. It is just the difference between true and false discourse, in fact, that ultimately marks the difference between philosophy and sophistry. To complete the 'official' mission of the Sophist, which is to make the nature of the latter clear, the distinction between truth and falsity in judgment must be firmly established. To complete its account of being, in turn, which is the more substantial purpose of the dialogue, is to show how the objects of knowledge (the Forms) must be related to make the distinction between true and false judgment possible. To this end Plato develops an account of not-being (of what is not) that remains among his more impressive accomplishments of the intermediate period.

The sophist is a producer of semblance in discourse, which means that he influences our minds 'to think things that are not' (240D9). What we thus understand him as doing, however, is precisely what Parmenides had proclaimed not to be understandable at all. That it is not,' he said, 'is not to be said or thought' (Kirk and Raven, 1995, fr. 347.8-9) rather, 'all that can be thought is the thought that it is' (Ibid, fr. 352.1). Thus to complete his definition of the sophist's art, the Stranger must engage in a form of parricide (241D3), and show that 'what is not' can be thought after all." (pp. 228-229)

From: Kenneth Sayre, Plato's Late Ontology. A Riddle Resolved,Princeton: Princeton University Press 1983. (Second edition with a new introduction and the essay, Excess and Deficiency at Statesman 283C-285C,Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2005).

"Plato's Sophist has held special significance in recent decades. Of all of his works it has seemed to speak most directly to philosophical interests of modern American and British philosophers. Much of the most sophisticated Platonic scholarship has been aimed at interpreting it. (...) In 1905 Russell published his article 'On Denoting'. In it he claimed to show how the notion of nonexistence could be expressed without the paradox that had often appeared to afflict it. His answer to the problem seemed to provide a lesson in how explaining a bit of language could unravel a metaphysical tangle. The problem arose because, for example, when one says 'Pegasus does not exist,' one seems to indicate that one is talking about a certain thing, Pegasus, and yet at the same time to say that it is not there to be talked about. Russell tried to show how this appearance of paradoxical conflict could be eliminated.

The Sophist mainly deals with a problem that looks much the same as Russell's. At 236ff., Plato expounds a difficulty concerning 'that which is not' (to me on). He attributes the discovery of it to the earlier philosopher Parmenides (who died probably not long after 450 B.C.). His contention was that we cannot speak or think of that which is not. Nonetheless, Plato emphasizes, certain things that we say and think do indeed seem to require us to use the phrase 'that which is not' -- including even our own effort to say that we cannot speak or think of that which is not (238d-239b). Parmenides' difficulty seems related to Russell's problem about nonexistence. For example the statement, 'That which is not cannot be spoken of,' seems paradoxical in a way that is reminiscent of 'Pegasus does not exist.' The resemblance appears especially strong if 'nonbeing' and 'nonexistence' amount to the same thing. In that case we have the two statements, 'Pegasus does not exist' and 'That which is not cannot be spoken of,' both of which look as though they single something out to talk about, but at the same time say that it is not there to be talked about. The two statements are not exactly parallel (the latter, unlike the former, tries to say explicitly that its alleged subject matter cannot be spoken of). Still, both appear to be caught up in much the same difficulty, which is roughly that of trying to speak about something that is, by hypothesis, not there at all.

It has been disputed whether the two problems are the same (cf. infra, pp. XX, XXVIII), and whether 'nonbeing' really is tantamount to 'nonexistence.' Nevertheless the resemblance between them makes clear why many nonexistence twentieth-century interpreters of Plato have found the Sophist especially congenial food for philosophical and historical thought. Its problem of nonbeing, taken along with its possibly antimetaphysical and obvious linguistically oriented thinking, fits well with modern preoccupations." (pp. VII-IX)

From: Plato, Sophist,Translated, with introduction and notes by Nicholas P. White, Indianapolis: Hackett 1993.

"The sophist as a kind can be grasped only if falsity is possible. But the False in things and in words, that which makes them pseudo-things and pseudo-accounts (pseudos being the Greek word for "falsehood"), is shot through with Non-being: Just as imitations are not what they seem to be, so false sentences say what is not the case. Now if Non-being is unthinkable and unutterable, as Father Parmenides asserted, then we may conclude that all speech must be granted to be true for those who utter it. Perfect relativity reigns.

Parmenides' dangerous single-mindedness cannot be overthrown by the mere counter-assertion of the paradox that Non-being after all somehow is. Non-being has to be given a meaning; it has to be rendered specific and placed among the articulable kinds. The stranger helps Theaetetus to discover the great and comprehensive kind that does indeed make Non-being sayable: the Other. When Non-being is specified as otherness, it becomes a powerful principle for regulating the slippery relativity that is the sophist's refuge The Other controls relativity in two ways. First it is itself the principle of relativity which turns the swampy relativity of "everything is true for someone" into a firm source of relationality. The Other does this work by being chopped up and distributed through all beings or, in the dialogue's other metaphor, by being thoroughly interwoven with Being. Every being, every thing, is not only the same with itself but also other than all the other beings. Each being is related to all the others by the reciprocating principle of otherness: It is the others' other without being the less itself, the less self-same.

So the Other acts as a sort of divisive bond that enables speech to mark off each kind or thing from all the others without consigning any of them to mere non-being or consigning itself to saying nothing. As the Other, Nonbeing does indeed become speakable. In fact the stranger's way of division relies continually on this power of the Other when it selects certain kinds and sets aside the other or non-selected kinds.

Non-being interpreted as the Other thus ceases to be mere nothingness and becomes instead the source of articulated diversity in things and in thought. Parmenides has been superseded.

But the sophist's relativity has not yet been completely controlled. The stranger has shown that Non-being, far from being unutterable, is in fact a necessary ingredient in thought and speech. To catch the sophist, however, another step is needed. The stranger does not just speak; he speaks falsehood, makes pseudo-arguments, offers imitation-wisdom. Though the Other is Nonbeing positively understood, it is still negative enough to help account not only for the diversity of kinds but also for differences in their dignity. An image or an imitation, because it has a share in Non-being, is not merely other than its original but also less. It is less in genuineness and may even fall further into falsity. The sophist can no longer claim that there is no intelligible discrimination between true and false.

The Other as positive Non-being thus has a double function: First it establishes a world of diversity through which the multifarious sophist ranges, with the stranger in hot pursuit. And second, the Other plays a role in establishing the hierarchy of genuineness in which the sophist is caught and marked by the stranger as one who truly deals in falsity." (pp. 11-12)

From: Plato's Sophist. The Professor of Wisdom, With translation, introduction and glossary by Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, Eric Salem, Newburyport: Focus Publishing 1996.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Plato's Sophist. Bibliography of the studies in English: A - Buc

Bibliography

N.B. For the critical editions and translations of the Dialogue see: Plato: Bibliographical Resources on Selected Dialogues

1. "Plato's Sophist." 2013. The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy no. 13:275-362.

Contents: PART IV: Plato’s Sophist 275; Nickolas Pappas: Introduction 277; John Sallis: Plato’s Sophist: A Different Look 283; Vigdis Songe-Møller: Socrates, the Stranger and Parmenides in Plato’s Sophist: Two Troubled Relationships 292; Jens Kristian Larsen: The Virtue of Power 306; Hallvard J. Fossheim: Development and Not-Being in Plato’s Sophist 318; Kristin Sampson: A Third Possibility: Mixture and Musicality 329; Nickolas Pappas: The Story that Philosophers Will Be Telling of the Sophist 339; Burt Hopkins: The Génos of Lógos and the Investigation of the Greatest Genê in Plato’s Sophist 353-362.

2. Ackrill, John Lloyd. 1955. "ΣΥΜΠΛΟΚΗ ΕΙΔΩΝ." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies no. 2:31-35.

Reprinted in J. L. Ackrill, Essays on Plato and Aristotle, New York, Oxford University Press, 1997, Chapter 4, pp. 72-79.

"It is the purpose of this short essay• to consider the meaning and implications of a sentence in Plato's Sophist. At the end of the section on μέγιστα γένη (the combination of kinds) the Eleatic visitor is made to speak as follows (259e4-6): τελεωτάτη πάντων λόγων ἐστὶν ἀφάνισις τὸ διαλύειν ἕκαστον ἀπὸ πάντων: διὰ γὰρ τὴν ἀλλήλων τῶν εἰδῶν συμπλοκὴν ὁ λόγος γέγονεν ἡμῖν (the isolation of everything from everything else is the total annihilation of all statements; for it is because of the interweaving of Forms with one another that we come to have discourse). I shall be mainly concerned with the second half of this remark, and shall refer to it, for brevity, as sentence or statement S." (p. 72 of the reprint)

(...)

"I have gradually passed from talking about Forms to talking about concepts, and I have taken these to be, in effect, the meanings of general words. Correspondingly, I have implied that the task assigned in Plato's later dialogues to the dialectician or philosopher is the investigation and plotting of the relations among concepts, a task to be pursued through a patient study of language by noticing which combinations of words in sentences do, and which do not, make sense, by eliciting ambiguities and drawing distinctions, by stating explicitly facts about the interrelations of word meanings which we normally do not trouble to state, though we all have some latent knowledge of them in so far as we know how to talk correctly. To justify all this, and to add the many sober qualifications which it evidently demands, would take a volume." (p. 78 of the reprint)

3. ———. 1957. "Plato and the Copula: Sophist 251-9." Journal of Hellenic Studies no. 77:1-6.

Reprinted in: R. E. Allen (ed.), Studies in Plato's Metaphysics, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1965, pp. 207-218, G. Vlastos (ed.), Plato. A Collection of Critical Essays. I: Metaphysics and Epistemology, Notre Dame: Indiana University Press 1971; J. L. Ackrill, Essays on Plato and Aristotle, New York: Oxford University Press 1997, pp. 80-92.

"My purpose is not to give a full interpretation of this difficult and important passage, but to discuss one particular problem, taking up some remarks made by F. M. Cornford (in Plato's Theory of Knowledge) and by Mr. R. Robinson (in his paper on Plato's Parmenides, Class. Phil., 1942)." (Allen 1965, p. 207)

(...)

"This examination of Plato's use of some terms, though far from exhaustive, is, I think, sufficient to discredit Cornford's claim that the 'blending' metaphor is the one safe clue to Plato's meaning, and to establish that μετεχειν and its variants, μετλαμβανειν and κοννειν (with genitive), are not used by Plato as mere alternatives for μειγνυσθαι. It may be admitted that in 2.5 5d, the passage Cornford exploits, μετεχειν is used in an exceptional way; but one passage cannot be allowed to outweigh a dozen others.(1)

To sum up: I have tried to argue firstly, that the verb μετεχειν, with its variants, has a role in Plato's philosophical language corresponding to the role of the copula in ordinary language; and secondly, that by his analysis of various statements Plato brings out - and means to bring out - the difference between the copula (μετεχει . . . ), the identity-sign (μετεχειν ταυτου ... ) and the existential ἔστιν (μετεχειν του ὄντος)." (Allen 1965, p. 218)

(1) This is rather a cavalier dismissal of the passage on which Cornford relies so heavily. But it is not possible in the space available to attempt a full study of the perplexing argument of 255c 12-e 1, and without such a study no statement as to the exact force of μετεχειν in 25 5c 4 is worth much. My own conviction is that even in this passage μετεχειν does not stand for the symmetrical relation 'blending'; but it is certainly not used in quite the same way as in the other places where it occurs in 2 5 1-9.

4. Adomënas, Mantas. 2004. "'They are telling us a myth': a curious portrait of the presocratic philosophers in Plato's Sophist." Literatura no. 46:8-14.

"Philosophical implications of the dialogue-form have been, for quite some time, all the buzz in Platonic studies. One need not enumerate all the advantages and productive insights that this approach has generated. One facet of Plato’s philosophical method, however, remains insufficiently explored so far: namely, Plato’s reflections on the question of genre and form of philosophical discourse which could be gleaned from his judgments on his philosophical predecessors, the Presocratics.

What I propose to do here is to offer a close reading of a couple of Platonic passages were Plato’s protagonists’ engagement with the Presocratic doctrines is described or dramatised. In doingthat, I shall seek to highlight Plato’s position and judgments concerning the form, or genre,(1) of Presocratic discourse, and to trace the implications of those judgments with one question in view: what is the nature, in Plato’s view, of Presocratic teaching qua intellectual enterprise or ‘genre’?(2)" (P. 8)

(1) The notion of ‘intellectual genre’ here is considerably indebted to Alasdair MacIntyre. Though he was not the first to interpret various types of philosophical enquiry in terms of their genre of discourse, each of which presupposes a certain distinct type of validity for its statements, I found MacIntyre’s observations in his Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry particularly rewarding.

(2) This is an aspect of larger project of reconstructing Plato’s reception of the Presocratic thinkers, addressed in my doctoral thesis.

5. Aguirre, Javier. 2011. "Plato's Sophist and Aristotelian being." Czesk and Slovac Journal of Humanities no. 1:74-81.

Abstract: "In the chapter M 4 of Metaphysics, Aristotle criticizes the dialectics practiced by Socrates. Aristotle attributes to Socrates the lack of “dialectical power”. In the same way, in N 2, Aristotle criticizes the dialectics practiced by “the dialecticians” imputing the archaic way in which the problem about being is posed. There are many signs that make us think that Aristotle refers to Plato and the Platonics with the term “dialecticians”, to whom he attributes the “dialectical power”. Therefore, Aristotle is aware of the merits and shortcomings of Platonic dialectics, more specifically of the dialectics practiced by Plato in the Sophist. In the development of his own conception of the being (to on), in the middle books of Metaphysics, Aristotle bears in mind the contents of this dialogue and makes the attempt to overcome the difficulties stated in the Eleatist, such as the deficiencies of the Platonic way of understanding the being."

6. ———. 2011. "Plato’s Sophist and the Aristotelian being." Czech and Slovak Journal of Humanities Philosophica:74-81.

Abstract: "In the chapter M 4 of Metaphysics, Aristotle criticizes the dialectics practiced by Socrates. Aristotle attributes to Socrates the lack of “dialectical power”. In the same way, in N 2, Aristotle criticizes the dialectics practiced by “the dialecticians” imputing the archaic way in which the problem about being is posed. There are many signs that make us think that Aristotle refers to Plato and the Platonics with the term “dialecticians”, to whom he attributes the “dialectical power”. Therefore, Aristotle is aware of the merits and shortcomings of Platonic dialectics, more specifically of the dialectics practiced by Plato in the Sophist. In the development of his own conception of the being (to on), in the middle books of Metaphysics, Aristotle bears in mind the contents of this dialogue and makes the attempt to overcome the difficulties stated in the Eleatist, such as the deficiencies of the Platonic way of understanding the being."

7. Albury, W. H. 1971. "Hunting the Sophist." Apeiron no. 5:1-12.

"The Stranger from Elea is asked by Socrates, at the outset of Plato's dialogue, the Sophist, to distinguish between the Sophist, Statesman, and Philosopher — "not so short and easy a task," as the Stranger tells us (217 b).

To Theaetetus, his joint inquirer, the Stranger says, "We had better, I think, begin by studying the Sophist and try to bring his nature to light in a clear formula" (218 b-c).

But being brought to light is, of course, the very thing which the Sophist most resists, for he is a creature who "takes refuge in the darkness of not-being, where he is at home and has the knack of feeling his way" (254 a).

Thus, the Stranger warns Theaetetus, "it is not so easy to comprehend this group we intend to examine or to say what it means to be a Sophist" (213 c). Now since the Sophist is such a "troublesome sort of creature to hunt down" (212 d) : it seems reasonable to ask why the Stranger has decided to begin with him instead of with the Statesman or the Philosopher." (p. 1)

8. Alieva, Olga. 2010. "Elenchus and Diairesis in Plato’s Sophist." Hermatena no. 189:71-91.

"The well-known sixth definition of the sophist in the homonymous dialogue contains a discussion of the elenchus (230b4-e3) which is often referred to as a manifestation of the late Plato’s attitude towards this method of argumentation. It is generally assumed that the definition of the sophist ‘of noble lineage’ given here should be applied to Socrates as represented in earlier Platonic dialogues."

(...)

"The scope of this paper is to demonstrate that the mention of the elenchus at 230b4-e3 is not merely retrospective, and to draw attention to the elenctic dimension of the whole dialogue. This, in its turn, enables us to reconsider also the method of diairesis and its methodological potential." p. 71)

9. ———. 2016. "Ὀρθολογία περὶ τὸ μὴ ὄν: Heidegger on the Notion of Falsehood in Plato’s Sophist." In Sophistes: Plato's Dialogue and Heidegger's Lectures in Marburg (1924-25), edited by de Brasi, Diego and Fuchs, Marko J., 143-155. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

"A crucial question Plato poses in the Sophist is how it is possible to say falsehoods: it involves the assumption that non-being exists (τὸ μὴ ὂν εἶναι), for otherwise falsehood could not come into existence (236e–237a). Plato’s solution to this problem has been explored mainly in terms of the modern philosophy of language with an emphasis on the meanings of the verb ‘to be’ existential/copulative/veridical),(1) types of predication (ordinary/definitional),(2) the character of false statements (affirmative/negative)(3) etc. It has been generally acknowledged that to understand the solution Plato offers to the so called “falsehood paradox” we must focus mainly on the propositional dimension of lógos, on its subject-predicate structure. In sharp contrast, Heidegger endeavours to “get rid of propositions” (GA 19, 594/411)(4) while interpreting the Sophist,(5) and this endeavour will be our topic in what follows." (p. 143)

(1) Ackrill (1957), 1−6; Kahn (1966), 245−265, and others; a useful overview can be found in Fronterotta (2011), 35f.

(2) Crivelli (2012), 9 and passim.

(3) Owen (1978), 223f; McDowell (1982), 115f; Brown (2008), 437f, etc.

(4) 4 Hereinafter the number after the slash refers to the English translation by Rojcewicz and Schuwer (1997)

(5) There are extremely few references to Heidegger in the vast literature on Plato’s Sophist. See, e.g.: Cordero (1993), 224; 227; Notomi (1999), 7. It has been repeatedly noted that Heidegger fails to do justice to the dialogical form of the writing because he reads Plato “through Aristotle”. See, e.g.: Gonzalez (2009), 60; Rosen (1983), 4f.

References

Ackrill, John L. “Plato and the Copula: Sophist 251–259.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 77, no. 1 (1957): 1–6.

Brown, Lesley. “The Sophist on Statements, Predication, and Falsehood.” In The Oxford Handbook of Plato, edited by Gail Fine, 437–62. Oxford, New York: OUP, 2008.

Cordero, Nestor-Luis. Platon: Le Sophiste. Paris: Flammarion, 1993.

Crivelli, Paolo. Plato’s Account of Falsehood: A Study of the Sophist. Cambridge, New York: CUP, 2012.

Gonzalez, Francisco J. Plato and Heidegger: A Question of Dialogue. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009.

Heidegger, Martin. Plato’s Sophist, translated by Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997.

Kahn, Charles H. “The Greek Verb ‘to Be’ and the Concept of Being.” Foundations of Language 2, no. 3 (1966): 245–65.

McDowell, John. “Falsehood and Not-Being.” In Language and Logos: Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy Presented to G.E.L. Owen, edited by Malcolm Schofield and Martha C. Nussbaum, 115–34. Cambridge, New York: CUP, 1982.

Notomi, Noburu. The Unity of Plato’s Sophist: Between the Sophist and the Philosopher. Cambridge, New York: CUP, 1999.

Owen, G. E. L. “Plato on Not-Being.” In Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays. Edited by Gregory Vlastos, 223–67. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978.

Rosen, Stanley. Plato’s Sophist: The Drama of Original and Image. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983.

10. Allred, Ammon. 2009. "The Divine Logos: Plato, Heraclitus, and Heidegger in the Sophist." Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 14:1-18.

Abstract: "In this paper, I address the way in which Plato’s Sophist rethinks his lifelong dialogue with Heraclitus. Plato uses a concept of logos in this dialogue that is much more Heraclitean than his earlier concept of the logos. I argue that he employs this concept in order to resolve those problems with his earlier theory of ideas that he had brought to light in the Parmenides. I argue that the concept of the dialectic that the Stranger develops rejects, rather than continues, the idea reached at the end of the Theaetetus that knowledge has to be grounded in a nous aneu logou (a non-logical, divine intellect) even while the Stranger appropriates the concerns that lead to his conclusion. Ultimately, I suggest that my differentiation of the later Plato’s appropriation of the tradition from Aristotle’s appropriation of that tradition is closely related to the re-thinking of the full sense of logos in the later Heidegger on Heraclitus and on Parmenides. I end by suggesting that the question that Plato and Heraclitus pose to us is to ask what such a divine logos tells about human ways of knowing."

11. Altman, William H. F. 2016. The Guardians on Trial. The Reading Order of Plato’s Dialogues from Euthyphro to Phaedo. Lanham: Lexington Books.

See Chapter 2: Plato’s Trilogy: Sophist, Statesman, and Apology of Socrates 69-169.

"In the traditional retelling of the outworn story of Plato’s Development, Parmenides marks its author’s abandonment or modification of the views of his “middle period,” especially as presented in Republic 5-7 and Phaedo. By configuring Timaeus, Philebus, Sophist-Statesman, and Laws as “late dialogues,” that story suggests that Plato has, in some meaningful ways, outgrown Socrates; I am challenging that story on the basis of Reading Order, an alternative paradigm for ordering and reading his dialogues. Looking back to The Guardians in Action [*], the indisputable fact that Plato joined Republic to Timaeus-Critias in a dramatic sense has not been given its due, and the parallel fact guiding The Guardians on Trial is that Plato, once again indisputably, has joined Sophist-Statesman to the trial and death of Socrates, primarily by means of Euthyphro." (p. 9, a note omitted)

[*] W. H. F. Altman, The Guardians in Action. Plato the Teacher and the Post-Republic Dialogues from Timaeus to Theaetetus, Lanham: Lexington Books 2016.

12. Ambuel, David. 2005. "On What is Not: Eleatic Paradox in the Parmenides and the Sophist." In Plato's Parmenides. Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlícek, Ales and Karfík, Filip, 200-215. Prague: Oikoymenh.

"The following argument undertakes to show one positive thesis implied by the thicket of interrelated contradictions that is the Parmenides. There may well be others. In particular, it is proposed here that, as a consequence of the multiply contradictory conclusions and the methods that lead to them, any analysis of the kind of unity that we find in the world - namely, that of composites, of wholes of parts - demands that being is not a form, but form the principle of being.

To accomplish this, the following thoughts look into parallels linking the Sophist with the Parmenides. Emphasis is directed especially to the concept of not-being as it appears in the second part of Parmenides and in the Sophist, 237a-244d. Both dialogues reveal inadequacies of Parmenides’ metaphysics by employing the logic of Eleatic metaphysics to examine form - being is and is intelligible (like the ideas), not-being is its opposite, their opposition is that of simple contradictories, i.e. between being and not-being lies nothing - with the result that the real is either empty, transcendent and inaccessible, or that being, all of reality, is reduced to the manner of existence of sensibles (i.e. having the being of wholes and parts), which, subsequently, upon analysis, leads to contradiction and unintelligibility." (p. 200)

13. ———. 2007. Image and Paradigm in Plato's Sophist. La Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Second edition; first edition Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991.

"The Sophist is a rather technical piece. The myth and drama are at their minimum, and Plato introduces a set of plodding definitions that evolves into a discussion of terms of highest abstraction: ‘being,’ ‘rest,’ ‘motion,’ ‘sameness,’ ‘otherness.’

And yet it is not only a technical piece. This volume aims to give an interpretation of the Sophist as a whole, with sensitivity to its subtleties and implications. The philosophical commentary is followed by a translation. As R. E. Allen remarked on translating Plato, “Plato, as a writer, stands with Shakespeare, but his translators do not, so this task is all but impossible.” There have been several translations of the Sophist, and I have learned from them all. The goal here is not to add one to their number, but to add clarity to the interpretation. Those familiar with other interpretations will quickly apprehend that the reading presented here sets out with an approach distinct from many. The intent is not to make a definitive statement of doctrine; where there is such philosophical richness, there is no finality. Instead, the intent is to overcome the barriers that keep us from the Sophist’s philosophical depths. As the Philebus states, discussing analysis and definition by divisions, when improperly done, is the cause of impasse; properly done, it is the entry to an open path. The Sophist presented here is not an artifact of our intellectual past or a notable historical point marking the ancestry of later developments; it is living philosophy." (Preface, pp. XI-XII)

(...)

"It has been observed that “all Platonic scholars hold that in the Sophist and subsequent works the protagonist expresses Plato’s own views.”(2) By now, it will not have escaped the attention of the reader familiar with the literature on the Sophist that I share neither this assumption that the Eleatic speaks straight Platonic doctrine nor other related presuppositions about the text. The reasons I find these absurd should become clear to the reader who persists. For the reader who does hold to what “all Platonic scholars” hold, and has both the kindly indulgence and diligence to persevere, let this be a dialectical exercise to discover what this dialogue might uncover, on the hypothesis that it is, after all, a work of metaphysics." (Introduction, P. XVII)

(2) Richard Robinson, Essays in Greek Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969, p. 21.

14. ———. 2011. "The Coy Eristic: Defining the Image the Defines the Sophist." In Plato's Sophist: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlíček, Aleš and Karfík, Filip, 278-310. Praha: Oikoymenh.

"The argument of this paper is informed by two observations about the Sophist’s dramatic structure: in contrast to the denial in all other Platonic depictions of the sophist, here the sophist is assumed to have an art. That assumption is never relinquished, even though the reason given elsewhere for declaring him artless is explicitly voiced when he is described as a kind of magician (233b–c). Secondly, the discussion is led, not by Socrates, but by an Eleatic philosopher, and is conducted following a process that adheres to an Eleatic ontology that admits no intermediate between being and absolute not-being.

Without an ontological intermediary, every image is as real as any reality, and every practice an art." (p. 278)

15. ———. 2013. "Difference in Kind: Observations on the Distinction of the Megista Gene." In Plato's Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 247-268. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"In short, the nominalism of an Eleatic metaphysics (or of a Heraclitean metaphysics, as they are interpreted in the Sophist and the Theaetetus) cannot state what anything “is,” which would require the means to conceive of a character that is universal, distinguishable from things that are characterized by it, and attributable in the same or in related senses to a plurality. Consequently, what a thing “is” becomes what it is not.

The analysis of combinations furnishes the abstract, if contradictory, logic underpinning the method of division used to pursue the sophist.

The irony is that, by setting aside the ontological inquiry into the opposite of “being” and identifying “not-being” (in one sense) with “other,” the being and nature of anything as a result is constituted entirely by its difference from what it is not. Being, in effect, is nothing other than not-being." (p. 267)

16. Andic, Martin, and Brown, Malcolm. 1973. "False Statement in the "Sophist" and Theaetetus' Mathematics." Phoenix no. 27:26-34.

"The purpose of this paper is to call attention to a parallel between Plato's account of false statement in the Sophist and Theaetetus' study of incommensurables, substantially preserved for us in Euclid's Elements, Book 10." (p. 26)

(...)

The main parallel to which we are calling attention gives rise to the following question. We have emphasized that the proportions into which we analyze assertions that a given statement is true or false put the same objects on both sides of the division between statement and being: does this not collapse the true statement with the fact it states? Readers of Russell's Problems of Philosophy (London 1912), Chapter 12, are often vexed by a similar puzzle in his doctrine of false belief, which is in many ways like the doctrine of the Sophist. If and only if it is true what Othello believes, i.e., that Desdemona loves Cassio, then there exists such a complex as Desdemona's love for Cassio (or, that Desdemona loves Cassio), and this, though its actual existence is independent of Othello's mind, is composed of the very objects which also go to compose his belief. But how, one wonders, can the objects of the world be the very objects in the believer's mind? In reply, one might ask, how can they fail to be the very objects concerning which he has belief? It seems a reasonable answer to this question simply to say that it is the same thing that can be believed and can be. More fully, the same relation which is believed to hold among objects, or holds among them in a picture, can also hold among them in reality, and does so just when the belief or picture is true to reality. Similarly, it is the same thing that one states to be the case with certain objects and which is the case when the statement is true, or not the case when it is false. Finally, a point about the Academy in the mid-fourth century. If we are right in finding a strict parallel between these philosophical and mathematical researches into "not-being in logos" at the Academy, we would have found some confirmation of the familiar Platonic thesis that mathematics prepares the way for philosophy. Nor would it be any surprise if Plato, admiring Theaetetus' work on incommensurability, should have developed his own treatment of false statement so as to run parallel to it, and accordingly had good reason for assigning to this mathematician a central role in the Sophist." (p. 34)

17. Anscombe, G.E.M. 1966. "The New Theory of the Forms." The Monist no. 50:403-420.

Reprinted in The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe, Volume One: From Parmenides to Wittgenstein, Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1981, pp. 21-33.

"I want to suggest that Plato arrived at a revised theory of forms in the later dialogues. Or perhaps I might rather say that he constructed a new underpinning for the theory. This can be discerned, I believe, in the Sophist, taken together with certain parts of the dialectic of the Parmenides which use the same language as the Sophist." (p. 21)

(...)

"If I am right, then the idea of some forms as having parts is of extreme importance.

In the Sophist (1158d-e) it is especially stressed that the other is divided up into many bits and parcelled out among all things in relation to one another, and we hear of the part of the other that stands over against the being of each, or, if we follow Simplicius, of each part of the other that stands over against being. I prefer the MSS reading, but on my interpretation it makes no difference to the sense. For the language of being divided up and parcelled out occurs also in the Parmenides in relation to one and to being (144), and it seems immensely unlikely that this part of the argument there was not also part of Plato's final view. This gives us three points: (1) the being and unity of each form are parts of being and of the one respectively; (2) the one being is a whole of parts, among which are the existent unitary forms of the early theory; (3) each existent form is a whole composed of the form and its being. Thus there will be a part of the other (the bottom right hand layer in my diptych as it lies open) which is a part of being that stands over against being. This part of the other will itself be divided into pans each of which stands over against part of being, i.e. the being in one of the forms of the early theory. We may add that one will, like being, same and other, "run through" everything, and same, like being, one and other, will be "parcelled out" among all things." (p. 30)

18. Baltzly, Dirk C. 1996. ""To an Unhypothetical First Principle" in Plato's Republic." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 13:149-165.

"This paper argues that we may find examples of two unhypothetical principles in Parmenides and Sophist. But, in the Republic, Plato speaks only of an unhypothetical principle. Moreover, commentators almost universally identify the unhypothetical principle of the Republic with the Form of the Good, or some account of the Form of the Good. My unhypothetical principles-One has a share of Being, some of the kinds blend-do not look like they have much to do at all with the Form of the Good. How, then, can these passages from Sophist and Parmenides be illustrations of the method described in Book VII in the ascent to an unhypothetical starting point?" (p. 157)

19. Beere, Jonathan. 2019. "Faking Wisdom: The Expertise of Sophistic in Plato's Sophist." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 57:153-189.

"How should we understand the Sophist’s definition of sophistic?

We tend to assume that the problem with sophistic is that sophists use bad arguments in the logical sense that the arguments are either invalid or unsound. Sophistic is either some special facility in the use of fallacious forms of argument or it is a character defect, the willingness to use such arguments, or both. But the concept of a logical fallacy distorts Plato’s view of sophistry, which is both stranger and more interesting, as I will argue. Indeed, perhaps the most interesting and, in its own way, puzzling aspect of the definition of sophistic has been neglected: the Eleatic Visitor defines sophistic as an expertise (τέχνη, Soph. 221 d 1–6).(1)" (p. 153)

(1) While I originally drafted this paper some time before the appearance of L. Brown, ‘Definition and Division in Plato’s Sophist’ [‘Definition’], in D. Charles (ed.), Definition in Greek Philosophy [Definition] (Oxford, 2010), 151–71, the two papers are antitheses to one another. Brown claims, ‘Sophistry, the sophist: these are not appropriate terms to be given a serious definition . . . there is no such genuine kind as sophistry—especially not under the genus of technē, skill, art, or expertise’ (Brown, ‘Definition’, 153). I attempt here to vindicate the seventh and final definition of sophistic by vindicating the claim that sophistic is an expertise.

20. Benardete, Seth. 1960. "Plato Sophist 223 b1-7." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 5:129-139.

"We must now ask what bearing this distinction between the hunter and the hunted has on the dialogue as a whole. Suppose all hunters were different, while all the things hunted were of the same kind. Art would then be definable exclusively in terms of its procedure. There would be no separable classes of beings in so far as they were beings, but only in so far as there were different ways of hunting them. There would be no εἶδη, Suppose, on the other hand, all the things hunted were different, while all the hunters were the same. Art would then be definable only in terms of its single subject. It would have no procedure, for an art presupposes a differentiable class of beings on all of which the same procedure can be applied; and a lack of procedure would entail no distinction between knowledge and ignorance. An art, then, must be defined both by its objects - the art of something - and by its way to that something." (p. 131)

21. ———. 1963. "The Right, the True, and the Beautiful." Glotta no. 41:54-62.

Whenever a Platonic character says ναί in answer to a question, we know that his "yes" is the same as ours; and if he answers πῶς γάρ; or πῶς γάρ οὔ; he is confirming a negative or positive statement; but when one of them says ὀρθός, αληθή, χαλώς is not self-evident that he means the same as we do in saying "right", "true", "fine". These answers hardly look except for their greater rarity more significant than ναί." (p. 54)

(...)

"Were there a gap in our manuscripts between two questions of Socrates, we should not now be able to say which stereotyped phrase was most suitable. Was Plato equally perplexed?

Are his "rights", "trues", and "fines" as arbitrary and interchangeable as Homeric formulae, or are they, as we shall try to show, dependent on and prompted by the form the previous question takes?" (p. 54)

(...)

"To bathe the reader in enough examples and yeτ not drown him, I have chosen to explain καλώς (κάλλιστα), ορθώς (ὀρθότατα) and αληθή (αληθέστατα) in two dialogues only, the Sophist and Politicus.

As the "dramatic" element in them is not so prominent as elsewhere, the propriety of each word for the course of the argument appears more distinctly. The danger, however, of using them lies in the similarity of their themes, style, and speakers, which may be thought to exclude any inference about other dialogues; but these very similarities allow us to check them against one another: to see how a similar remark in each provokes the same answer. And yet to indicate that our definitions are not too parochial, further examples from other dialogues have been added, though without explanation the force of these words is easily missed." (p. 55)

(...)

"If our interpretation of these passages is correct, we should not conclude that it holds everywhere. There may be cases where it would be impossible for us to make any discrimination, and we could go no farther than the almost-empty "fine", "right", and "true"; and possibly Plato did not always keep to the same usage throughout his writings. But the consistency of our results in two dialogues and their agreement with the other passages cited (from a much larger store), put out of court the possibility of accident and randomness. They show Plato's ability even in small things to imitate and sharpen the distinctions of ordinary speech). They further suggest that every context would have to be as thoroughly analyzed before we could decide on the scope and accuracy of our tentative definitions. It is not, however, a project that can be published. Complete lists, without explanation, would be almost useless, and with them, too tedious to be valuable. They would be as long as the Platonic corpus itself. We only offer this paper as a specimen and challenge: the reader of Plato must work out the rest for himself." (p. 62)

22. ———. 1986. Plato's Sophist: Part II of 'The Being of the Beautiful'. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Contents: Introduction IX; Guide for the Reader XVII; Sophist II.1; Sophist Commentary II.69; Notes II.168; Selected Bibliography II.178-180.

"The Sophist’s dialogic form presents us with another riddle: Either Socrates is just another sophist, or all philosophers prior to Socrates were sophists. The first half of the dialogue, in which the stranger traps Socrates in progressively narrower definitions until the sophist can be only Socrates, is balanced by its second half, in which the stranger proceeds to condemn all earlier philosophers for not understanding the necessity of Socrates’ so-called second sailing. Inasmuch as the second sailing is inseparable from Socrates’ discovery of political philosophy, the Sophist’s companion dialogue, the Statesman, in which the stranger brings about a complete identity of dialogic form and argument, needs to be put together with the Sophist before the Sophist can be understood by itself. It is because the Statesman is essentially prior to the Sophist that it follows it of necessity. The Sophist then requires a double reading. But even such a double reading does not suffice, for its problem is initiated by the Theaetetus, in which the joint failure of Socrates and Theaetetus to answer the question, What is knowledge?, prompts them to appeal to the Eleatic stranger. His answer is contained in the Sophist and the Statesman; it is not contained in either of them separately. It is therefore another question whether his twofold answer differs from the answer to be found in the Theaetetus." (p. 210)

23. ———. 1993. "On Plato's Sophist." The Review of Metaphysics no. 46:747-780.

Reprinted in: S. Benardete, The Argument of the Action: Essays on Greek Poetry and Philosophy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, pp. 323-353.

"It seems at first as if the Stranger's analysis of λόγος into agent and action is designed solely for finding truth or falsity in the correct or incorrect attachment of an action to a known agent; by his restriction of imitation to impersonation, however, the agent becomes significant in himself and independent of what he does.(13) The sophist embodies virtue as it is understood in opinion, despite his suspicion that he does not know what his σχῆμα declares he knows.

Gorgias exemplifies this perfectly, but what he does is to contradict and refute the opinions about virtue the interlocutor himself maintains and believes he sees represented in the sophist. The sophist impersonates the opinions he refutes. What, then, of Socrates?

He is not an impersonator. Theodorus at any rate found him pokerfaced, and could not figure out what Socrates believed from his totally convincing presentation of a Protagorean position (Theaetetus 161a6). Socrates, however, is ironical. Does his claim to ignorance come across as knowledge in light of his capacity to show up the ignorance of others? More particularly, does the incoherence in opinion about a virtue, once Socrates has exposed it, induce the impression that Socrates himself possesses that virtue? It would seem impossible that Socrates could display popular virtue without its inconsistencies while bringing to light its inconsistencies, but Socrates the logic-chopping moralist seems to be doing exactly that.

Λόγος as dialogue thus comes to light as the problem of Socrates the agent in his action. We can say that the Sophist ends at that point where the problem has been uncovered, and the Statesman is designed to treat Socratic agency. Socrates the agent, however, cannot show up in himself; instead, he shows up in the patient, young Socrates." (pp. 779-780)

(13) In the summary the Stranger gives of the sophist's genealogy (268c8-d4), all but one of his lines of descent can be rephrased as a verb: the difference between divine and human imitation resists such a rephrasing.

24. Benitez, Eugenio. 1996. "Characterisation and Interpretation: The Importance of Drama in Plato's Sophist." Literature & Aesthetics no. 6:27-39.

"I confess that I would not recommend the Sophist to anyone as a work of literature. But I deny that the dramatic form is ever unimportant in Plato. In my own work on Plato I have found that the drama and the philosophy are not separable.(10) to At the very least, the drama complements, supplements, and augments the philosophy. Let me cite what should be an uncontroversial example from the Sophist.

Theodorus innocently uses the word '(γένος ('kind') in his first speech: the Stranger, he says, belongs to the γένος of Elea (i.e. he is Eleatic by birth). Socrates, who has a nose for ambiguity, picks up the term in his second speech, claiming that the kind called 'philosopher' is scarcely easier to discern than the kind 'god'. The discussion then turns to a consideration of three '(γένη ('kinds') - sophist, statesman and philosopher [216c3, 217a7] - but ultimately even this topic yields to discussion of the five μέγιστα γένη ('greatest kinds'), namely being, sameness, difference, motion and rest. An innocent remark leads to the most extraordinary inquiry. This progression is the dramatic complement of the Stranger's own remark that: 'one must practise first on small and easy things before progressing to the very greatest' [218d1-2]." (p. 28)

(10) For a discussion of the importance of the dialogue form see E. Benitez, 'Argument, Rhetoric and Philosophic Method: Plato's Protagoras', Philosophy and Rhetoric 25 (1992): 222-252.

25. Berger, Fred R. 1965. "Rest and Motion in the Sophist." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 10:70-77.

"In a recent article,(1) Professor Julius M. E. Moravcsik has attempted an interpretation of a very difficult passage in Plato's Sophist (255 a4-b 6), in which Plato sought to prove that neither the Same nor the Other is identical with either Rest or Motion. The interpretation which Moravcsik puts forth aims at making Plato's argument sound and consistent with other points made in the dialogue. Unfortunately, Moravcsik's presentation is not always clear itself. It is one of the chief purposes of this paper to clarify Moravcsik's argument. In addition, it will be argued that his interpretation of the passage in the Sophist fails to save Plato's argument, and that it rests on a subtle logical distinction which there seems little reason to assume Plato intended to use. Indeed, it will be argued that an interpretation which Moravcsik rejects seems better suited to Plato's passage." (p. 70)

(1) Julius M. E. Moravcsik, "Being and Meaning in the 'Sophist'," Acta Philosophica Fennica, Fasc. XIV (1962), pp. 23-78. I am indebted to Professor Jürgen Mau who first called my attention to some of the problems in Moravcsik's interpretation.

26. Berman, Brad. 2015. "The Secret Doctrine and the Gigantomachia: Interpreting Plato’s Theaetetus-Sophist." Plato Journal no. 14:53-62.

Abstract: "The Theaetetus’ ‘secret doctrine’ and the Sophist’s ‘battle between gods and giants’ have long fascinated Plato scholars. I show that the passages systematically parallel one another.

Each presents two substantive positions that are advanced on behalf of two separate parties, related to one another by their comparative sophistication or refinement. Further, those parties and their respective positions are characterized in substantially similar terms. On the basis of these sustained parallels, I argue that the two passages should be read together, with each informing and constraining an interpretation of the other."

27. Berman, Scott. 1996. "Plato's Explanation of False Belief in the Sophist." Apeiron no. 29:19-46.

"Introduction. In this paper, I will reconstruct Plato's explanation of false belief as it emerges from his Sophist and suggest why it is explanatorily better than the principal contemporary account. Since Frege, the received view in contemporary analytic philosophy of mind and philosophy of language is that human cognition of the world is always mediated through some sort of intensional object.(1) Moreover, the identity conditions of such intensional objects have been assumed to be ontologically independent of their relation to the world. This theory of human cognition is worse ontologically as compared with a theory which does not require any mediary objects because the former commits itself to a larger ontology than the latter. However, the larger ontology is allegedly justified by gains in explanatory power. If that is the case, then the postulation of such further entities is justified. On the other hand, if the alleged gain in explanatory power is, as I shall suggest, illusory, then Plato's theory of human cognition, which makes no reference to intensional objects which are ontologically independent of their relation to the world, will be a better explanation insofar as it will commit itself to a smaller ontology in that explanation and further, will actually explain something we want explained." (p. 19)

(1) I owe a great debt, both here and elsewhere, to Penner, Terry. (1988). Plato and the Philosophers of Language. Unpublished manuscript.

28. Bernabé, Alberto. 2013. "The Sixth Definition (Sophist 226a-231c) : Transposition of religious language." In Plato's Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 42-56. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Plato defines the sophist, in the sixth definition of the dialogue of the same name (226a – 231c), as one who purifies the soul of wrong opinions through the technique of refutation. In so doing, however, he ends up in an awkward position: the result of applying the method of diairesis seems to result rather in a definition of the philosopher Socrates (1), or, what is worse, a definition valid for both the sophist and the philosopher, and likely to produce confusion between them. So the sixth definition looks a little bizarre, and is difficult to understand.

My aim is to make a contribution to the solution of the problem from the point of view of a philologist. I shall be looking at the use of certain words which in Plato’s time were as pertinent to the religious sphere as they were to the philosophical. I shall pay particular attention to those that had been used by him in dialogues antecedent to the Sophist.

This analysis will allow me to introduce a number of facts into the discussion from a point of view which is different from the usual, and to open up new possibilities for the understanding of this section of the dialogue." (p. 41)

(...)

"The art of the sophist, like the practices of Orpheus and his followers, is deceptive, false, and lies in the realm of δόξα. The philosopher alone is a true educator, physician and purifier, who effects a genuine liberation. And philosophy alone can be placed on the level of genuine religion." (p. 56)

(1) Cf. N. Notomi, The Unity of Plato’s ‘Sophist’. Between the Sophist and the Philosopher, Cambridge 1999, 65 n. 72, for those who take it that it is Socrates who is represented here.

29. Berrettoni, Pierangiolo. 2008. "A Metamathematical Model in Plato's Definition of Logos." Histoire Épistemologie Langage no. 30:7-19.

Abstract: "The definition of logos given by Plato in the Sophist is investigated together with its (meta) mathematical background.

Terminological resonances found in philosophical and mathematical authors are pointed out in order to show the generalization of an epistemic model based on the concept of generation."

"In a recent article (Berrettoni, forthcoming) I observed that Plato’s definition of logos, noun and verb in the Sophist makes use of a set of terms and of a phraseology which had a wide range of use in mathematical sciences, in many cases acquiring the status of technical terms; this might lead us to the hypothesis that the definition had a (meta)mathematical background. By this I understand a conceptual frame and mental map ultimately derived from mathematical sciences, which gave Plato the model and the form for his definition of logos, according to the apt expression with which Starobinski (1966), in his study on the history of the concept of “nostalgy”, characterizes the cultural hegemony of a discipline inside a particular historical epistēme, as in the case of the generalization of an epistemic model derived from psychoanalysis in the culture of the 20th century.

I am fully aware that this hypothesis is very strong and difficult to demonstrate on a strictly textual and philological basis. I am not claiming that Plato was consciously and deliberately applying mathematical concepts to the definition of logos, but simply that he was conditioned by his view of knowledge as based on a hierarchy of sciences, where the central role was attributed to mathematics." (p. 7)

References

Berrettoni, Pierangiolo (forthcoming). « Un modello matematico nella definizione platonica di nome e verbo », Atti del XXXI Convegno della Società Italiana di Glottologia, Categorie del verbo. Diacronia, teoria, tipologia (26 - 28 ottobre 2006, Scuola Normale Superiore) [2008, pp. 31-51].

Starobinski, Jean (1966). « The Idea of Nostalgia », Diogenes 54, 81-103.

30. Berry, John M. 1986. "A Deconstruction of Plato’s “Battle of Gods and Giants”." Southwest Philosophy Review no. 3:28-39.

"The Eleatic Stranger's extremely problematic refutation of materialism in Plato's "battle of gods and giants" (Soph. 246-48) is an instance of what Heidegger terms an 'ontology,' a 'theoretical inquiry explicitly devoted to the meaning of entities' - in this case, living things, souls, wisdom, justice, and the like. Every such explicit inquiry into beings, Heidegger claims, "has its foundation" in the implicitly presupposed "pre-ontological understanding of being" that characterizes the inquirers themselves - in this case, the Eleatic Stranger and Theaetetus (as a surrogate materialist). For all inquirers into being "fall prey to the tradition"

from which they have "more or less explicitly" received their "pre-ontology." The Stranger's and Theaetetus's pre-ontology, that is, dictates the direction and scope of their inquiry without their being aware of it. To understand the Sophist inquiry, then, "this hardened tradition must be loosened up and the concealments ... dissolved." My thesis is that, to a point, Heidegger is correct: The Eleatic Stranger's and Theaetetus's ontology, their explicit inquiry into being, is controlled ('mastered") by their traditional "pre-ontological" understanding of being. To understand them we must "destroy [i.e., unstructure or deconstruct their] ancient ontology' to reveal what it conceals." (p. 28)

31. ———. 1988. "Plato's Forms. A text that self-destructs to shed its light." Southwest Philosophy Review no. 4:111-119.

"Heidegger would call Plato's problematic revision of his theory of forms in "the Battle of Gods and Giants" (Soph. 246-48) an "ontology," a "theoretical inquiry explicitly devoted 10 the meaning of entities."

(...)

"On its surface, then, the text is incoherent. It can be coherent only if beneath its surface the Stranger's charge of inconsistency is somehow on target, and his move to conform the theory to his own ontology is somehow relevant.

I will show that the attack is on target and the revision relevant. For though the Stranger and the friend of forms cannot know it, their startling conclusion that being is nothing but power turns out to be the Heideggerian "preontology" that has controlled their inquiry from the outset, the subsurface upon which the theory of fom1s itself rests. Real being is "power either to affect anything else or to be affected," the Stranger concludes, "I am proposing as a mark to distinguish real things that they are nothing but power" (247de). This explicit ontology is the surfacing of the implicit "pre-ontology" which underlies and supports this text and the theory of forms wherever it is found. When on the surface the Stranger irrelevantly forces the theory of forms to conform to his apparently alien ontology, beneath the surface he is in fact forcing it to conform to its own presupposition. The text. that is, and the theory of forms which it attacks both make sense only if understood as presupposing the text's conclusion. The argument turns a perfect Heideggerian circle: its surface anomalies are the barely decipherable indications that within its depths its presupposition is twisting itself into position to surface disguised as the argument's conclusion." (p. 111)

32. Bestor, Thomas Wheaton. 1978. "Plato on Language and Falsehood " The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy no. 9:23-37.

"In a recent article in this journal entitled "Plato and the Foundations of Logic and Language,"(1) William B. Bondeson makes several acute points about Plato's philosophy of language, particularly as it relates to the so-called "paradox of false judgment." On one point he is almost certainly right, and importantly right. On another, however, he is almost certainly wrong, and importantly wrong. Both points deserve a certain amount of amplification, I believe, and that is what I want to give them here. The details provide us with a much clearer perspective on Plato's basic picture of how language works. They also provide a rather nice illustration of the relevance of analytic philosophy to Platonic scholarship today." (p. 23)

(1) Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 6 (1975): 29-41.

33. Blondell, Ruby. 2002. The Play of Character in Plato's Dialogues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Preface IX; 1. Drama and dialogue 1; 2. The imitation of character 53; 3. The elenctic Sokrates at work: Hippias Minor 113; 4. A changing cast of characters: Republic 165; 5. Reproducing Sokrates: Theaetetus 251; 6. Putting Sokrates in his place: Sophist and Statesman 314; Bibliography 397; General index 428; Index of passages cited 438-452.

"My first two chapters are devoted to clarifying certain preliminary matters that underlie this way of approaching Plato. I begin, in this chapter, with some general questions about “dramatic” form and literary” interpretation, which will help to clarify my methodology.

Chapter 2 explores issues surrounding literary and philosophical notions of character and its interpretation in ancient texts generally, and in Plato in particular, with special attention to the figure of Sokrates.

Subsequent chapters offer readings of a select number of individual dialogues: Hippias Minor, Republic, Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman. These works were chosen in part to exemplify a broad range of Platonic styles and methods, and in part because most of them have received relatively limited “literary” study, but also because their discursive content connects with my particular concerns, especially in their focus on the representation and use of literary character." (p. 3)

(...)

"The last chapter was concerned with Theaetetus on its own terms. But it is also the first of a triad of dialogues, completed by Sophist and Statesman, which are linked by a variety of thematic and structural connections.(1)

These three works are also bound together by formal features, in a way that is unparalleled among Plato’s works. These features include dramatic sequencing, explicit cross-references, and an overlapping cast of characters. At the end of Theaetetus Sokrates looks forward to continuing his conversation with Theaitetos and Theodoros the next day (210d); at the beginning of Sophist Theodoros alludes to “yesterday’s agreement” to continue (216a); and in Statesman, Sokrates refers back explicitly to his first meeting with Theaitetos and the previous day’s discussion (257a, 258a).

The explicitness and the dramatic character of these links distinguish them from other forms of Platonic intertextuality, and invite us to read these three works together, in a certain sequence, and in each other’s light." (p. 314)

34. Bluck, Richard Stanley. 1957. "False Statement in the "Sophist"." Journal of Hellenic Studies no. 77:181-186.

"Various attempts have been made to find a satisfactory alternative to Cornford's explanation of what the Sophist has to say about false statement, and in particular to his interpretation of the passage in which the statements ‘Theaetetus is sitting’ and ‘Theaetetus is flying’ are discussed. The difficulty with Cornford's view is that he wants to find the explanation of truth and falsity entirely in the ‘blending’ or incompatibility of Forms, but that in the examples Socrates chooses, while Sitting and Flying may be Forms, Theaetetus cannot be. Hence Cornford has to say, ‘It is not meant that Forms are the only elements in all discourse. We can also make statements about individual things. But it is true that every such statement must contain at least one Form’. Unfortunately, when talking about the ϵἴδων συμπλοκή at 259e, the Stranger seems clearly to envisage a blending of ϵἴδη with each other:. How can this be reconciled with an ‘example’ in which only one term stands for a Form?

I do not propose to discuss in detail the various solutions that have been offered, but to set forth my own interpretation of the whole passage. This may be regarded as to some extent a ‘blending’ of what has been said by Professor Hackforth and Mr. Hamlyn, but a number of points arise which deserve further discussion, and it may perhaps be hoped that such a σύνθϵσις as this may prove to be ." (p. 181)

35. ———. 1975. Plato's Sophist: A Commentary. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Edited by Gordon Neal.

"The problems raised by the Parmenides being extremely complicated, and the date of the Timaeus being a matter of dispute, studying the Sophist is perhaps the most promising way of trying to discover whether, and if so in what manner, Plato’s philosophy—and in particular his theory of Forms—developed or changed after the writing of the Republic.

(...)

No doubt the dialogue is capable, and is meant to be capable, of being interpreted without reference to Platonic Forms. The arguments of the unconverted sophist against the possibility of saying or thinking what is false must be controverted with arguments that he will accept as valid. Yet at the same time it is most unlikely that Plato would repeatedly use the term εἶδη; without bearing in mind that readers acquainted with his earlier works would at once think of his Forms; and it is therefore highly probable that what is said is meant to be capable of being interpreted in terms of Forms. This is all the more likely, as a great deal is said about one Kind (λέγως) or Form (εἶδος) partaking of another, and the question was raised in the Parmenides, clearly with reference to the theory of Forms, whether one εἶδος could partake of another. It is therefore a reasonable working hypothesis that the arguments are intended to be interpreted in terms of Platonic Forms by those acquainted with Platonic doctrine, while at the same time being capable of being interpreted without special reference to such doctrine by those who rejected it or had no knowledge of it. The aim in what follows is to try to determine the most natural significance of each argument from the Platonist’s point of view, taking the γένη or εἶδος; as Forms, and to see whether these arguments and the dialogue as a whole will, after all, make good sense when so interpreted. A positive answer to this question will emerge as the book proceeds. The reader must judge whether the case is proved.

Those who have never doubted that the Kinds can be taken as Forms may consider such an enquiry unnecessary. But there are many passages, as has already been mentioned, where difficulties raised have never been satisfactorily met, and the precise nature of the Platonic doctrine implied is still far from clear. New interpretations are here offered, for example, of the arguments for the separateness of the Kinds (chapter VII), of what is meant by a vowel Form (chapter VI), and of the argument against the monists (chapter III)" (pp. 1-2).

36. Bolton, Robert. 1975. "Plato's Distinction between Being and Becoming." The Review of Metaphysics no. 29:66-95.

Reprinted in: N. D. Smith (ed.), Plato. Critical Assessments, Vol. II: Plato's Middle Period: Metaphysics and Epistemology, London: Routledge 1998, pp. 116-141.

"The guiding questions to which I refer are familiar ones. First: What is the fate of the theory of paradigm forms of the Phaedo and Republic in view of the apparent criticism of the theory found in the Parmenides? And second: What is the fate of the distinction of the Phaedo and Republic between being (οὐσία) and becoming (γένεσις) in view of the apparent criticism of the adequacy of that distinction found in the Theaetetus and Sophist? Lately, the first of these two questions has received the greater share of the attention of philosophers and scholars. I want here to redirect attention to the equally important and equally intriguing second question." (p. 66, note omitted)

(...)

"The conclusion of our investigation is that Plato's theory of reality was neither subject to as much or to as little flux as some have believed. There were important modifications in his view of becoming and also in his view of being. In each case the changes were based on important philosophical developments. But Plato retained a version of the being-becoming distinction strong enough to sustain his theory of degrees of reality and of sufficient conceptual power to make that theory intelligible.

In the light of the history of Platonic scholarship it would be foolish to claim that no other theory of the development of Plato's views on being and becoming could be defended. All that is here claimed is that the theory which is here offered is the one which best accommodates all the available evidence. It accounts for Aristotle's testimony, for the explicit statements of the Phaedo and Republic and the argument of Republic V, for the explicit changes in Plato's way of characterizing being and becoming after the Theaetetus, and for the changes in Plato's view of the epistemic status of becoming. On this account none of these matters need be explained away or given any interpretation other than the most straightforward one. That constitutes the strongest argument in favor of this account." (p. 95)

37. Bondeson, William. 1972. "Plato's "Sophist": Falsehoods and Images." Apeiron no. 6:1-6.

"The chief arguments of the Sophist occur in what is sometimes called its "inner core". The core is that large section which begins after the dichotomies employed to catch the sophist come to an impasse about "nonbeing" and falsehoods, and which ends with the return to dichotomous division after the account of "logos" in the sense of "statement" has been given. This inner core runs from 232B to 263E. The relations between shell and core depend upon how seriously Plato is thought to have regarded the method of "division" (διαίρεσις). Such problems are not relevant to the questions discussed here, nor does Plato's attempt to catch the sophist appear to be entirely serious.

Rather, I want to discuss the puzzles about falsehood and how these puzzles are connected with the hunt for the sophist." (p. 1)

38. ———. 1973. "Non-Being and the One: Some Connections between Plato's "Sophist" and "Parmenides"." Apeiron no. 7:13-21.

"The purpose of this paper is to point out some similarities between a part of Plato's treatment of non-being in the Sophist and two hypotheses of the Parmenides. I shall first discuss a small section of the Sophist and try to show what Plato means by the phrase το μηδαμως όν. I shall then, by an analysis of the first and sixth hypotheses of the Parmenides, try to show that Plato wants to make virtually the same points as he made in the Sophist.

The conclusions reached here should be helpful for a more comprehensive interpretation of these two dialogues." (p. 13)

See the reply by Paul D. Eisenberg, "More ou'uon-being and the one". Apeiron, 10, 1976, pp. 6-14.

39. ———. 1974. "Plato's Sophist and the Significance and Truth-Value of Statements." Apeiron:41-48.

"The greater portion of Plato's Sophist deals with a number of issues in what might be called the philosophy of language. It also deals with a series of metaphysical and ontological views and attempts to show how language and reality are related. Thus one way of organizing the views of Plato in the Sophist is to view much of the material up to and including 260E as concerned with topics centring around the question: how is discourse possible? Thus Plato talks about Being, Non-being, Sameness and Otherness and makes the claim that it is the των ειδών συμπλοκή which makes discourse possible (259E). The interpretation of this important passage and what precedes it in the dialogue must be left aside for the purposes of this paper because it is concerned with what follows 260E rather than with what precedes it.

(...)

In this paper I want to do four things. First, it will be necessary to discuss and evaluate Plato's answer to the "nature" question about statements and their parts. Second, I want to determine the relation between statements and truth or falsehood, and to determine how statements can be true or false.

Third, I want to determine whether Plato has adequately discussed and answered the Sophist's difficulties and confusions about falsehoods (these will be also discussed as the topics in the first two parts are developed), and fourth, to point out the propositional character of belief which will indicate some important connections between the Sophist and the Theaetetus." (p. 41)

40. ———. 1975. "Plato and the Foundations of Logic and Language." The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy no. 6:29-41.

"Whatever Plato's philosophy of language and his logical theory might be, they are backed by a metaphysics and an ontology. Or, to put the claim more strongly, Plato's philosophy of logic and language implies a metaphysics and an ontology, and the elaboration of these is his primary goal, even in those dialogues, i.e., the later ones, where linguistic considerations might seem to be predominant. Or, as one recent interpreter of Plato, Julius Moravcsik, has put it, Plato constructs an elaborate metaphysics and ontology in order to make our ordinary ways of thinking, talking, and knowing intelligible.(14)

Thus, in this paper, the concern shall be with a variety of topics in Plato's philosophy of logic and language, but there is not the space here for developing many of the metaphysical implications of those views.

Probably the most fundamental question in interpreting Plato, and in terms of which most questions concerning Plato's views are settled, is the question of whether, and to what extent, the views in the dialogues are cut from the same cloth and form a single philosophic whole. Most analytic interpreters do not hold such a view; rather, they maintain that there are important differences in the doctrines of the various dialogues. Other interpreters have maintained that there are differences in the angle of approach to a problem or that there are differences in topic without real change in the overall doctrine. It will be shown that this will not work for at least some of the logical and linguistic problems with which I am concerned." (p. 30)

(...)

"Many distinctions and clarifications need to be made before the"object" view and its resultant paradoxes can be laid to rest; senses of "is" and "is not" need to be distinguished, negation and negative predication need to be understood, and how the forms and their interrelations make discourse possible needs to be shown. But all of these problems can be solved only if there is a clear awareness of the nature and function of statements in accounts of stating, believing, and knowing.

It seems to me that Plato realized that the "object" view is confused and contradictory and that in the Theaetetus, and even more so in the Sophist, he attempts to dispel it. Thus, the concept of a λόγος is the fundamental notion which ties the Theaetetus and the Sophist together." (p. 39)

(14) Being and Meaning in the Sophist, Acta Philosophica Fennica, fasc. 14 (1962).

41. ———. 1976. "Some Problems about Being and Predication in Plato's Sophist 242-249." Journal of The History of Philosophy no. 14:1-10.

"One of the central tasks which Plato sets for himself in the Sophist is to say what being (τὸ ὄν) is. In doing this he makes a variety of philosophical moves. The first is to show that non-being in a very restricted sense of the term (τὸ μηδαμώς ὄν) is an impossible and self-contradictory concept. (1) This occupies the first part (237A ff.) of the central section of the Sophist. After discussing some puzzles concerning deceptive appearances (240 B) and falsehoods (240 D), Plato turns to a discussion of being at 242B. In this section of the dialogue Plato claims to show that the attempts of previous philosophers to define being have failed and he makes his own first attempt in the dialogue to define being (cf. 242C and 247E). 2 In this paper I am concerned only with this section of the Sophist (242-249), and I want to show first that Plato's notion of being here is ambiguous, the term τὸ ὄν shifting between "being" and "what has being," between the form and those things which participate in it. Second, I want to show that the definitions of being at 248C and 249D are not only compatible with one another but also that, when properly understood, they make sense of Plato's use of motion and rest in the Sophist. And finally, I want to show that Plato is caught in the snares of self-predication when he talks about being and other Forms of the same ontological level. This is due to the way in which he formulates the difference between statements of identity and predication in the argument against Parmenides in this section of the Sophist." (p. 1)

(1) Cf. my "Non-being and the One: Some Connections between Plato's Sophist and Parmenides," forthcoming in Apeiron [1973]. My view is somewhat different from that of G. E. L. Owen's "Plato on Not-Being" in Plato, A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. G. Vlastos (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., 1971), vol. I.

(2) Cf. Owen, ibid. p. 229, n. 14. Owen presents a convincing case that Plato is giving a definition (as opposed to a mark or sign) of being. However, Owen also seems to take the view, for example against Moravcsik in Being and Meaning in the Sophist (Acta Philosophica Fennica, XIV [1962]), that little of philosophical significance happens in 242-249. I hope to show in this paper that this is not the case.

42. Booth, N. B. 1956. "Plato, Sophist 231 a, etc." The Classical Quarterly no. 6:89-90.

"Mr G. B. Kerferd , in Classical Quarterly XLVIII (1954), 84 ff. writes of 'Plato's Noble Art of Sophistry'. He suggests that Plato thought there was a 'Noble Art' of sophistry, other than philosophy itself; and he seeks to find this Art in the better and worse arguments of Protagoras. This suggestion is, unfortunately, based on a mistranslation of Plato, Sophist 231 a (...). Mr. Kerferd supposes that this can mean: 'For I do not think there will be dispute about distinctions which are of little importance when men are sufficiently on guard in the case of resemblances.'

(...)

But further, what are these distinctions which, if we accept Mr. Kerferd's view, are 'of little importance'? They are distinctions on the one hand between tame and fierce, and on the other hand between the cathartic process of dialectic and sophistry. The 'tame' and 'fierce' distinction is not between tame and fierce merely; it is a distinction between the very tamest and the very fiercest of animals (Plato uses superlatives at the beginning of 231 a). How Plato could have in the same paragraph stressed the vastness of the difference by means of superlatives and then spoken of 'small distinctions', is more than I can see. I also fail to see how Plato could ever have thought the distinction between sophistry and healing dialectic to be a small one; that would be saying that there was little to choose between Socrates and Thrasymachus. No: Plato is saying here that there is a certain superficial resemblance between healing dialectic and sophistry, but we must beware of that resemblance; in fact the one is a tame watch-dog, the other a ravening wolf, and 'we shall find in the course of our discussion, once we take adequate precautions, that there is no small distinction between the two'." (p. 89)

43. Bossi, Beatriz. 2013. "Back to the Point: Plato and Parmenides – Genuine Parricide?" In Plato's Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 157-173. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Famous scholars in the XXth century (1) understood that Plato really does refute Parmenides’ absolute condemnation of not-being as unthinkable and inutterable by his demonstration that ‘not-being’ ‘is’ in the sense of ‘is different from’. Though this goal is made explicit and is almost claimed to have been achieved by the Stranger in the Sophist, Plato offers certain clues that show there is enough evidence for a different reading that admits of some nuances. The Stranger begs Theaetetus not to suppose that he is turning into some kind of parricide (241d3). Yet Plato does toy with a potential parricide, which the Stranger claims he will never commit. The attitude might be regarded as a literary trope inserted for dramatic purposes, but in the context it could be merely rhetorical.

In my view, the person the Stranger really fights and kills is, not Parmenides himself but the ghost of a ridiculous Parmenides character dreamed up by the sophist, who will shelter his own ‘relativistic’ view beneath his cloak by denying the possibility of falsehood." (p. 158)

(1) Guthrie (1978) 151; Diès (1909) 7; Taylor (1960) 389; Ross (1966) 115; Cornford (1970) 289 –294 quoted by O’Brien (1995) 43 n.1. Also Notomi: ‘The two extreme philosophical positions of Parmenides and Protagoras converge on the denial of the possibility of falsehood’ (1999) 182.

References

Cornford, F.M., Plato’s Theory of Knowledge: The Theaetetus and the Sophist of Plato translated with a running commentary, London 1935, (repr. 1970) = Cornford (1935, 1970).

Diès, A., La définition de l’être et la nature des idées dans le Sophiste de Platon, Paris 1909 = Diès (1909).

Guthrie W.K.C., A History of Greek Philosophy 5: Later Plato and The Academy, Cambridge 1978 = Guthrie (1978).

Notomi, N., The Unity of Plato’s ’Sophist’. Between the Sophist and the Philosopher, Cambridge 1999 = Notomi (1999).

O’Brien, D., Le Non-être. Deux études sur le ‘Sophiste’ de Platon, Sankt Augustin 1995 = O’Brien (1995).

Ross, W.D., Plato’s Theory of Ideas, Oxford 1951, repr. 1966 = Ross (1951, 1966).

Taylor, A.E., Plato, the Man and his Work, London 1960 = Taylor (1960).

44. Bossi, Beatriz, and Robinson, Thomas M., eds. 2013. Plato's Sophist Revisited. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Proceedings of the International Spring Seminar on Plato's Sophist at the "Centro de Ciencias de Benasque Pedro Pascual", Benasque (Spain), May 26 - May 31, 2009.

Contents:

I. Defining Sophistry

Thomas M. Robinson: Protagoras and the Definition of ‘Sophist’ in the Sophist 3; Francesc Casadesús Bordoy: Why is it so Difficult to Catch a Sophist? Pl. Soph. 218d3 and 261a5 15; Josep Monserrat Molas and Pablo Sandoval Villarroel: Plato’s Enquiry concerning the Sophist as a Way towards ‘Defining’ Philosophy 29; Alberto Bernabé: The Sixth Definition (Sophist 226a– 231c): Transposition of Religious Language 41; Michel Narcy: Remarks on the First Five Definitions of the Sophist (Soph. 221c – 235a) 57; José Solana: Socrates and ‘Noble’ Sophistry (Sophist 226b –231c) 71; Kenneth Dorter: The Method of Division in the Sophist: Plato’s Second Deuteros Plous 87;

II. Parricide: Threat or Reality?

Enrique Hülsz: Plato’s Ionian Muses: Sophist 242 d –e 103; Denis O’Brien: Does Plato refute Parmenides? 117; Beatriz Bossi: Back to the Point: Plato and Parmenides – Genuine Parricide? 157; Antonio Pedro Mesquita: Plato’s Eleaticism in the Sophist: The Doctrine of Non-Being 175; Néstor-Luis Cordero: The relativization of “separation” (khorismos) in the Sophist 187;

III. Mimesis, Image and Logos

Francesco Fronterotta: Theaetetus sits – Theaetetus flies. Ontology, predication and truth in Plato’s Sophist (263a –d) 205; Jesús de Garay: Difference and Negation: Plato’s Sophist in Proclus 225; David Ambuel: Difference in Kind: Observations on the Distinction of the Megista Gene 247; Lidia Palumbo: Mimesis in the Sophist 269;

Bibliography 279; Index Locorum 291; Subject Index 301-304.

"The papers included fall into three broad categories: a) those dealing directly with the ostensible aim of the dialogue, the definition of a sophist; b) a number which tackle a specific question that is raised in the dialogue, namely how Plato relates to Heraclitus and to Parmenides in the matter of his understanding of being and non-being; and c) those discussing various other broad issues brought to the fore in the dialogue, such as the ‘greatest kinds’, true and false statement, difference and mimesis." (Preface, p. V)

45. Bostock, David. 1984. "Plato on 'Is Not' (Sophist, 254-9)." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 2:89-119.

"According to the received doctrine, which I do not question, the uses of the Greek verb 'to be' may first be distinguished into those that are complete and those that are incomplete. In its incomplete uses the verb requires a complement of some kind (which may be left unexpressed), while in its complete uses there is no complement, and it may be translated as 'to exist' or 'to be real' or 'to be true' or something of the kind. What role the complete uses of the verb have to play in the Sophist as a whole is a vexed question, and one that I shall not discuss. For I think it will be generally agreed, at least since Owen's important article of 1971, (1) that in our central section of the Sophist it is the incomplete uses that are the centre of Plato's attention. Anyway, I shall confine my own attention to these uses, and accordingly my project is to elucidate and evaluate Plato's account of 'is not' where the 'is' is incomplete. I might also add here that, for the purposes of the Sophist as a whole, I am in agreement with Owen's view that what Plato himself took to be crucial was the account of 'not', and what he has to say about 'is' is, in his own eyes, merely ancillary to this. But I do not argue that point, partly because Owen has already done so, and partly because it is not needed for my main contentions. As we shall see, one cannot in fact understand what Plato does say about 'not' without first considering his views on the incomplete 'is'.

Reverting to the received doctrine once more, the incomplete uses of 'is' may be divided into two. In one sense the verb functions as an identity sign, and means the same as 'is the same as', while in the other it functions merely as a sign of predication, coupling subject to predicate, and cannot be thus paraphrased. The vast majority of commentators on the Sophist seem agreed that Plato means to distinguish, and succeeds in distinguishing, these two different senses of the verb.(2) This I shall deny. In fact I shall argue not only that Plato failed to see the distinction, but also that his failure, together with another ambiguity that he fails to see, wholly vitiates his account of the word 'not'. The central section of the Sophist is therefore one grand logical mistake." (pp. 89-90)

(1) Plato on Not-Being in Plato I, ed. G. Vlastos (New York, 1971), 223-267.

(2) One may note P. Shorey, What Plato Said (Chicago, 1933), 298; J. L. Ackrill, ‘Plato and the Copula’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, LXXVII (1957), 1-6 esp. 2; J. M. E. Moravcsik, 'Being and Meaning in the Sophist’, Acta Philosophica Fennica, XIV (1962), 23-64 esp. 51; W. G. Runciman, Plato’s Later Epistemology (Cambridge, 1962), 89; I. M. Crombie, An Examination of Plato’s Doctrines, vol. II (London, 1963), 449; R. S. Bluck, Plato's Sophist (Manchester, 1975), 151; J. Malcolm, ‘Plato’s Analysis of to on and to me on in the Sophist', Phronesis, XII (1967), 130-46 esp. 145; Owen, above n. 1, 256; G. Vlastos, ‘An Ambiguity in the Sophist' in his Platonic Studies (Princeton, 1973), 287; and I would add J. McDowell, ‘Falsehood and not-being in Plato’s Sophist’ in Language and Logos, ed M. Schofield and M. Nussbaum (Cambridge, 1982), 115-34 (discussed below). But the older commentators do not always agree, e.g. F. M. Comford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge (London, 1935), 296, and A. E. Taylor, Plato, the Sophist and the Statesman (London, 1961), 82. More recently J. C. B. Gosling, Plato (London, 1973), 216-20, has put the case for scepticism, and F. A. Lewis, ‘Did Plato discover the estin of identity?’, California Studies in Classical Antiquity, VIII (1975), 113-43, has argued it at length.

46. Brisson, Luc. 2011. "Does Dialectic Always Deal with the Intelligible? A Reading of the Sophist 254d5-e1." In Plato's Sophist: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlíček, Aleš and Karfík, Filip, 156-172. Praha: Oikoymenh.

47. Brown, Lesley. 1986. "Being in the Sophist: A Syntactical Enquiry." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 4:49-70.

Reprinted with revisions in G. Fine (ed.), Plato 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999), pp. 455–478.

"Plato's Sophist presents a tantalizing challenge to the modern student of philosophy. In its central section we find a Plato whose interests and methods seem at once close to and yet remote from our own. John Ackrill's seminal papers on the Sophist, (1) published in the fifties, emphasized the closeness, and in optimistic vein credited Plato with several successes in conceptual analysis. These articles combine boldness of 'argument with exceptional clarity and economy of expression, and though subsequent writers have cast doubt on some of Ackrill's claims for the Sophist the articles remain essential reading for all students of the dialogue. I am happy to contribute an essay on the Sophist to this volume dedicated to John Ackrill.

Among the most disputed questions in the interpretation of the Sophist is that of whether Plato therein marks off different uses of the verb einai, 'to be'. This paper addresses one issue under that heading, that of the distinction between the 'complete' and 'incomplete' uses of 'to be', which has usually been associated with the distinction between the 'is' that means 'exists' and the 'is' of predication, that is, the copula." (p. 49)

(1) Symploke Eidon (1955) and Plato and the Copula: Sophist 251-59 (1957), both reprinted in Plato I, ed G. Vlastos (New York, 1971), 201-9 and 210-22.

48. ———. 1994. "The Verb 'To Be' in Greek Philosophy: Some Remarks." In Companions to Ancient Thought: Language, edited by Everson, Stephen, 212-236. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"The existence of at least these three distinct uses of 'is' was taken for granted by commentators and assumed to apply, by and large, to ancient Greek, though with some salient differences. These include the fact that Greek can and regularly does omit esti in the present tense, though not in other tenses, and that the complete 'is' is still very much a going concern, though more or less defunct in modern English. The fact that the esti of the copula can be omitted means that a predicative use of esti can convey a nuance over and above that of the mere copula (for instance connoting what really is F rather than merely appearing F, or what is enduringly F).

And the fact that current English has more or less abandoned the use of the complete 'is' to mean 'exist' (as in Hamlet's 'To be or not to be), while in Greek it is very much a going concern, may lead us to question whether the complete esti really shares the features of the 'is' which means (or used to mean) 'exist'." (p. 215)

(...)

"I cannot offer here a full account of what I take to be the results of the Sophist, far less a defence of such an account, but confine myself to a few points. To the question whether the dialogue distinguishes an 'is' of identity from an 'is' of predication, I have indicated my answer: that it does not, but it does draw an important distinction between identity-sentences and predications (see section I and n. 2 above). Here I focus on the question whether and if so how it distinguishes complete from incomplete uses. I shall suggest that Plato developed a better theory about the negative 'is not' than his argumentation in the Republic suggests, while continuing to treat the relation between the complete use (X is) and the incomplete (X is F) in the way I have described in section IV, that is, by analogy with the relation between 'X teaches' and 'X teaches singing'." (p. 229)

49. ———. 2001. "Innovation and Continuity: The Battle of Gods and Giants, Sophist 245-249." In Method in Ancient Philosophy, edited by Gentzler, Jyl, 181-207. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In Greek mythology, Zeus and the other Olympian deities were challenged in a mighty battle by the race of giants, a battle which, with the help of Herakles, the gods won. Unlike the earlier battle of the Titans, in which Zeus' party defeated and supplanted their own forebears, the Titans, the Gigantomachia ended with the preservation of the old order in the face of the newcomers' challenge.

(...)

Here I focus on the section of the Sophist whose high point is represented by Plato, through his chief speaker, the Stranger, as a Gigantomachia, a debate about being between materialists and immaterialists, or so-called Friends of the Forms. The materialists, cast in the role of 'giants', hold that only the material (what is or has a body) is or exists.

Their opponent the 'gods', labelled 'Friends of the Forms', take the opposite view; they accord the title 'being' only to the immaterial, to 'certain intelligible Forms', and relegate to the status of genesis (coming to be) those material, changing things the giants champion. In this section, in which the Stranger takes on each party in turn and aims at a rapprochement between them, Plato takes what may be thought of as first steps in ontology. in reflective discussion and argument about what there is and about how one should approach the question of what there is. There is considerable disagreement over the upshot of the whole debate, and especially over whether the discussion of the Friends of the Forms' views concludes with the Stranger advocating a radical departure from the treatment of Forms in the middle dialogues: both Owen and Moravcsik advocate a reading whereby the immutability of the Forms is abandoned.(1) Here I re-examine the Gigantomachia, asking what philosophical moves and results it contains. In doing so, I consider what use Plato makes of two innovations in approach which can be detected in the later dialogues, and in particular in the Sophist." (pp. 181-182)

50. ———. 2008. "The Sophist on Statements, Predication, and Falsehood." In The Oxford Handbook of Plato, edited by Fine, Gail, 383-410. New York: Oxford University Press.

"This essay focuses on two key problems discussed and solved in the Middle Part: the Late-learners problem (the denial of predication), and the problem of false statement. I look at how each is, in a way, a problem about correct speaking; how each gave rise to serious philosophical difficulty, as well as being a source of eristic troublemaking; and how the Eleatic Stranger offers a definitive solution to both. As I said above, the Sophist displays an unusually didactic approach: Plato makes it clear that he has important matter to impart, and he does so with a firm hand, especially on the two issues I've selected." (p. 438)

51. ———. 2010. "Definition and Division in Plato' Sophist." In Definition in Greek Philosophy, edited by Charles, David, 151-171. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In Plato's late dialogues Sophist and Politicus (Statesman), we find the chief speaker, the Eleatic Stranger, pursuing the task of definition with the help of the so-called method of division.

(...)

However, there are major and well-known problems in evaluating the method as practised in the two dialogues, but especially so in the Sophist.

(...)

I investigate below some of the many scholarly responses to this bewildering display of the much-vaunted method of division. I divide scholars into a 'no-faction', those who hold that we should not try to discern, in any or all of the dialogue's definitions, a positive outcome to the investigation into what sophistry is (Ryle, Cherniss), and a 'yes-faction': those who think an outcome is to be found (Moravcsik, Cornford, and others).(2) I shall conclude that in spite of the appearance of many answers (Moravcsik) or one answer (Cornford, Notomi), the reader is not to think that any of the definitions give the (or a) correct account of what sophistry is. But while I side with the no-faction, my reasons differ from those of Kyle and Cherniss, who, in their different ways, located the failure in the nature of the method of division. In my view the failure lies not, or not primarily, in the method of division itself; but in the object chosen for discussion and definition. Sophistry, the sophist: these are not appropriate terms to be given, a serious definition, for the simple reason that a sophist is not a genuine kind that possesses an essence to be discerned.(3) If we try to carve nature at the joints, we cannot hope to find that part of reality which is sophistry, for there is no such genuine kind as sophistry-especially not under the genus of techne, art, skill, or expertise." (pp. 151-153).

(2) The views of Moravcsik, Cornford, and Notomi are discussed in the text of section III; those of the 'no-faction' in note 17.

(3) I use 'genuine kind' to indicate something with a wider extension than that of 'natural kind' familiar from Locke, Putnam, etc. I use it to mean the kind of entity which Plato would allow to have an ousia (essence) or phusis (nature) of its own (cf. Tht. 172b). Virtues, senses like hearing and sight, and crafts like angling would be recognized as genuine kinds in the intended sense."

52. ———. 2012. "Negation and Non-Being: Dark Matter in the Sophist." In Presocratics and Plato: Festschrift at Delphi in Honor of Charles Kahn, edited by Patterson, Richard, Karasmanis, Vassilis and Hermann, Arnold, 233-254. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

"My aim is to try to understand what I regard as the most difficult stretch of the Sophist, 257–259. In responding to a particularly impenetrable claim made by the Eleatic Stranger (ES), Theaetetus announces at 258b7 that they have found τὸ μὴ ὄν (not being), which they have been searching for on account of the sophist. He is thinking, of course, of what sparked the long excursus into not being and being: the sophist’s imagined challenge to the inquirers’ defining his expertise as involving images and falsehood. Here’s that challenge: speaking of images and falsehood requires speaking of what is not, and combining it with being, but to do so risks contradiction and infringes a dictum of Parmenides. This heralds the puzzles of not being, and of being, which are followed by the positive investigations of the Sophist’s Middle Part. So Theaetetus’ eureka moment ought to signal some satisfying clarification and closure to the discussions. But in fact the stretch it is embedded in is singularly baffling, and the subject of continuing debate among commentators.(2) There is little agreement about what issues Plato is discussing in this section, let alone about any supposed solutions.

My strategy is to try to read the passage without preconceived ideas about what it ought to contain." (pp. 233-234)

(2) I list here and in the next two notes some of the major discussions. I have learned from them all, and from many others not mentioned: M. Frede, Prädikation und Existenzaussage. Hypomnemata 18 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967). G. E. L. Owen, “Plato on Not-being,” in Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays 1, ed. G. Vlastos (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1971), 223–267. Owen’s essay is reprinted in Plato 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology, ed. G. Fine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). E. N. Lee, “Plato on Negation and Not-being in the Sophist,” The Philosophical Review 81.3 (1972): 267–304. D. Bostock, “Plato on ‘Is Not’,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 2 (1984), 89–119. M. Ferejohn, “Plato and Aristotle on Negative Predication and Semantic Fragmentation,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 71 (1989), 257–282. M. Frede, “Plato’s Sophist on False Statements,” in The Cambridge Companion to Plato, ed. R. Kraut (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 397–424.

(3) J. van Eck, “Falsity without Negative Predication: On Sophistes 255e–263d,” Phronesis 40 (1995), 20–47 (...).

(4) J. Kostman, “False Logos and Not-Being in Plato’s Sophist,” in Patterns in Plato’s Thought, ed. J. M. E. Moravcsik (Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1973) (...).

53. ———. 2018. "Aporia in Plato’s Theaetetus and Sophist." In The Aporetic Tradition in Ancient Philosophy, edited by Karamanolis, George and Politis, Vasilis, 91-111. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Abstract: "The chief aim of this essay is to examine the development of Plato’s use of philosophical puzzles to guide his enquiries. Labelled aporiai, they are prominent in Sophist, but already found in Theaetetus. Section 2 identifies common features in such puzzles, and explores how in Theaetetus they are presented but left unsolved. In both dialogues the young Theaetetus is characterised as an ideal interlocutor, quick to appreciate a philosophical puzzle, and to respond appropriately. By these means Plato links the otherwise very disparate dialogues: Theaetetus, a formally aporetic attempt to define knowledge conducted by Socrates, and Sophist, whose new protagonist, the Stranger from Elea, confidently announces results both in the Outer Part’s search for the sophist and in solving the problems of the Middle Part.(1) Section 3 traces how the Sophist’s Middle Part is explicitly structured around a series of philosophical puzzles, and notes the plentiful terminology of aporia that signposts this. Plato shows his readers the philosophical payoffs of a serious attempt to diagnose the source of a given aporia: herein (I suggest) lies the real difference between the sophist and the philosopher.

But first Section I explores the famous image in Theaetetus of Socrates as a midwife, where Plato offers what I read as a new approach to the respondent’s subjective aporia."

(1) I follow Szaif’s classification of a formally aporetic dialogue, Chapter 2 [same volume], Section 2. Like other formally aporetic dialogues, This has been the subject of many doctrinal readings, cf. Sedley 2004.

References

Jan Szaif, "Socrates and the Benefits of Puzzlement", G. Karamanolis, V.Politis (eds.), The Aporetic Tradition in Ancient Philosophy, 2018.

David Sedley, The Midwife of Platonism: Text and Subtext in Plato’s Theaetetus, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

54. Brumbaugh, Robert S. 1983. "Diction and dialectic. The language of Plato's Stranger from Elea." In Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy, edited by Robb, Kevin, 266-276. LaSalle: Open Court.

Reprinted in R. S. Brumbaugh, Platonic Studies of Greek Philosophy: Form, Arts, Gadgets, and Hemlock, Albany: State University Press, 1989, pp. 103-111.

"An interesting effect of Eric Havelock's discussion has been the constant reminder of the location of Plato at the end of a dominant oral tradition, without which there might be the temptation to take Platonic dialogue as a discontinuous leap into literacy, thus leading a modem reader to misread the texts. For example, we easily assume, because we have not thought about it, that reading was done silently in Plato's time; that there were equivalents of our copyrights and publishers; even -in some cases- an axiom that "mature" thought must be expressed in clear, monochrome treatise. All of this helps misunderstand

the dialogue form.

(...)

The purpose of my present comments is to relate this framework to the interpretation of Plato's Sophist, with a passing glance at the Statesman. In particular, I want to follow up a suggestion I made earlier, that the principal speaker, the Eleatic Stranger, is an imported bounty-hunter, brought in to shoot the Sophist down (or, more exactly in the absence of the rifle, to catch him in a net). The "weapons" are, perhaps, new (or old) techniques of method and language. (For this simile, compare Socrates' remark in the Philebus that he will now require "weapons of a different kind" to resolve a shifted point under debate.)(2)" (p. 103)

(2) Philebus 23B5

55. Brunschwig, Jacques. 1994. "The Stoic Theory of the Supreme Genus and Platonic Ontology." In Papers in Hellenistic Philosophy, 92-157. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

English translation by Janet Lloyd of La théorie stoïcienne du genre suprême et l'ontologie platonicienne (1988).

"The discussion upon which I shall now embark is divided into six parts. In the introduction (i), I shall make a few observations on various structural problems which spring to mind once one examines the TSG doctrine [the doctrine of the τί as the supreme genus]. In part II, which is devoted to the chronology of the TSG doctrine, or more precisely to a kind of chronological topology of this doctrine, I shall be analysing a number of texts which could have been and/or were used as arguments to support the adoption of the TSG doctrine at a relatively late date in the history of Stoic thought, and I shall try to show that these texts do not justify such a conclusion. In the next two parts, I shall try to establish the role that may have been played by the reading of Plato's Sophist (III) and that possibly played by critical reflection upon the Platonic theory of Forms (IV) in the elaboration of the TSG doctrine. In the last two parts, finally, I shall try to put together two kinds of arguments that confirm my general thesis: to refute the idea that the TSG doctrine is the fruit of an induction based upon an analysis of the canonical incorporeals, I shall try to bring to light the disparities that those incorporeals present and the discrepancies between the various arguments used by the Stoics to fix their ontological status (V). To confirm the role played by the mediation of Platonism in the construction of the TSG doctrine, I shall examine some of the objections put to the Stoics by their adversaries on the subject of this doctrine and the varying degrees of attention that the Stoics paid to those objections (VI)." (pp. 95-96)

56. Bruseker, George. 2018. "The Metaphor of Hunting and the Method of Division in the Sophist." In Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy Volume 2, Section II: Classical Greek Philosophy, edited by Boudouris, Kostantinos, 55-60. Athens: Greek Philosophical Society.

Abstract: "This paper examines the metaphor of hunting as used in Plato’s dialogue, the Sophist. In it, we explore the idea that the example of the ‘angler’ given at the start of the dialogue is no throw-away example, but opens up the metaphor of hunting as an important element of understanding how to use the method of division introduced for coming to definitional knowledge. I argue that the use of the metaphor of hunting is a pedagogical tool that transforms the attentive student’s understanding of the method of division from a dry science of definition, to a manner of approaching the search for truth. Applied reflexively to the search for the definition of the sophist, it helps reveal that the search for knowledge is a non-linear, iterative process which requires passing-through, and abides no shortcuts. It leaves open the suggestion that the true image of knowledge and the philosopher may finally be found in a version of acquisitive rather than productive or separative arts (as they are classified within the dialogue)."

57. Buckels, Christopher. 2015. "Motion and Rest as Genuinely Greatest Kinds in the Sophist." Ancient Philosophy no. 35:317-327.

"The blending of the greatest kinds (γένη) or forms (εϊδη) is one of the central topics of Plato's Sophist. These greatest kinds, or megista gene, which seem to be either Platonic Forms or very similar to Platonic Forms, are Being, Motion, Rest, Sameness, and Otherness; I take them to be properties that are predicated of other things, for reasons we will examine. Why these five kinds are greatest is not made explicit, but immediately before taking up his investigation, the Eleatic Visitor, the main speaker of the dialogue, says that some kinds are ‘all-pervading’, such that nothing prohibits them from blending with every other kind, i.e., from being predicated of every other kind (254b10-c1). One might think, then, that these five are examples of all-pervading kinds. Almost immediately, however, the Visitor and his interlocutor, Theaetetus, agree that Motion and Rest do not blend with each other, which seems to cut off this explanation of their greatness (252d9-11). For this reason, many commentators suggest that Motion and Rest are simply convenient examples of kinds, garnered from discussions earlier in the text, and only Being, Sameness, and Otherness are special, all-pervading kinds. On this reading. Hot and Cold, which are also examples from earlier in the text (243d6-244b4), would seem to do the job just as well as Motion and Rest, since both pairs are opposites that do not blend with each other but which are (by blending with Being), are self-identical (by blending with Sameness), and are distinct (by blending with Otherness).

I think this reading is incorrect; Motion and Rest are carefully selected as megista gene, greatest kinds, and are not just convenient examples (Reeve [Motion, Rest, and Dialectic in the Sophist] 1985, 57 holds a similar position). In fact, I think the kinds are greatest because they are all-pervading; the Visitor intends us to question the agreement that Motion and Rest do not blend, as is suggested when Theaetetus agrees, later, that if Motion shared in Rest, there would be nothing strange about saying that Motion is at rest (255b6-8). Thus, I argue, Motion and Rest can blend, i.e., they can be jointly predicated of one subject and can be predicated of each other, just as Sameness and Otherness can. While Sameness and Otherness are opposites, a single subject may be the same in one respect, namely, the same as itself, and other in another respect, namely, other than other things. Thus they can be predicated of a single subject, and they can be predicated of each other, as well, since Sameness is other than other things and Otherness is the same as itself." (p. 317)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Plato's Sophist. Bibliography of the studies in English: Can - Fos

Bibliography

1. Campbell, Ian J. 2021. "Plato, the Eristics, and the Principle of Non-Contradiction." Apeiron no. 54:571-614.

Abstract: "This paper considers the use that Plato makes of the Principle of Non-Contradiction (PNC) in his engagements with eristic refutations. By examining Plato’s use of the principle in his most detailed engagements with eristic—in the Sophist, the discussion of “agonistic” argumentation in the Theaetetus, and especially the Euthydemus—I aim to show that the pressure exerted on Plato by eristic refutations played a crucial role in his development of the PNC, and that the principle provided him with a much more sophisticated means of demarcating philosophical argumentation from eristic than he is generally thought to have. In particular, I argue that Plato’s qualified formulation of the PNC restricts the class of genuine contradictions in such a way that reveals the contradictions that eristics produce through their refutations to be merely apparent and that Plato consistently appeals to his qualified conception of genuine contradiction in his encounters with eristics in order to demonstrate that their refutations are merely apparent. The paper concludes by suggesting that the conception of genuine contradiction afforded by the PNC did not just provide Plato with a way of demarcating genuine from eristic refutations, but also with an answer to substantive

philosophical challenges that eristics raised through their refutations."

2. Candiotto, Laura. 2011. "The Children's Prayer: saving the Phenomena in Plato's Sophist." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 5:77-85.

Abstract: "Plato builds an ontology capable of saving the Phenomena in the Sophist. By doing so, he distances himself from Parmenides. This article analyses the children's prayer (Soph. 249 d 5) in order to sustain this thesis and evaluate the platonic proposal, along with the role of the negation and the heteron in the communication of the Kinds."

3. ———. 2016. "Negation as Relation: Heidegger's interpretation of Plato's Sophist 257 b3-259 d1." In Sophistes: Plato's Dialogue and Heidegger's Lectures in Marburg (1924-25), edited by De Brasi, Diego and Fuchs, Marko J., 75-94. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

"The aim of the present chapter is to discuss and evaluate chapters 78 and 79 of Heidegger's Lectures on Plato's Sophist, which deal with Sph. 257b3-259dl. To this purpose, I will compare these chapters with the

more established interpretations concerning the role played by the heteron in Plato's dialogue. Providing my own reading, my main claim is that negation is understood by Heidegger as the foremost shape of relationality.

Moreover, negation as relation is not a dialectical tool but the disclosive power able to show the "things themselves".

My argument will proceed by: 1) providing a short introduction of the major themes within the Sophist; 2) presenting Heidegger's thesis; 3) analyzing the main threads within the Platonic text by referring to the

more established interpretations; 4) evaluating Heidegger's interpretation with a special emphasis on where it has to be situated with regard to the text and to other interpretations, thus pointing out the innovative elements proposed by Heidegger." (p. 75)

4. ———. 2018. "Purification through emotions: The role of shame in Plato’s Sophist 230b4–e5." Educational Philosophy and Theory no. 50:576-585.

Abstract: "This article proposes an analysis of Plato’s Sophist (230b4–e5) that underlines the bond between the logical and the emotional components of the Socratic elenchus, with the aim of depicting the social valence of this philosophical practice. The use of emotions characterizing the ‘elenctic’ method described by Plato is crucial in influencing the audience and is introduced at the very moment in which the interlocutor attempts to protect his social image by concealing his shame at being refuted. The audience, thanks to Plato’s literary strategy, realizes the failures of the interlocutor even as he refuses to accept them. As a result, his social image becomes tarnished. Purification through shame reveals how the medium is strictly related to the endorsement of specific ethical and political goals, making the Platonic dialogs the tools for the constitution of a new paideia."

5. Caplan, Jerrold R. 1995. "The Coherence of Plato's Ontology." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 65:171-189.

"In light of the so-called theory of Forms presented in earlier dialogues and the communion of the greatest kinds in the later dialogues, it has been argued that Plato abandoned his earlier ontology in favor of the more sophisticated scheme of his later period. The criticism is then made that the so-called later ontology is inconsistent with the earlier one and that the two accounts do not cohere.

I argue, to the contrary, that Plato's presentation has been consistent throughout. One might say that the discussion in the Sophist (236-259) is a revision or a refinement or expansion of the theory as found, for example, in the Phaedo (78-9). Although this may suggest that there has been some sort of development in the treatment of the Forms from early to late, it by no means implies any wholesale abandonment of the first formulations nor any inherent inconsistency. The fact that Plato himself raises questions about the Forms indicates the need for a clearer articulation of the relationship between thought and being, which is precisely what is undertaken in the later dialogues." (p. 171)

6. Casadesús Bordoy, Francesc. 2013. "Why Is It so Difficult to Catch a Sophist? Pl. Sph. 218d3 and 261a5." In Plato's Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 15-27. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Suffice it, therefore, in conclusion to this presentation, to return to the passage from the Republic in which the lines of the Odyssey which begin the Sophist are commented on in negative terms, and to ask once again the question Socrates poses in justification of his criticism of the lines of Homer:

‘Shall I ask you whether God is a magician, and of a nature to appear insidiously now in one shape, and now in another…?’

In order to answer this question in the negative, Plato has to undertake the writing of the Sophist, in an attempt to expose one who, due to his protean and mimetic character, adopts all kinds of forms, even the most divine. Equipped with his philosophical hunting weapon, the dialectical method and diaresis, he attempts, like Menelaus, to catch the sophist.

Nonetheless, the possibility of success remains in doubt, given Socrates’ disturbing observation that the hard-working hunter, the Stranger from Elea himself, could be yet another of the multiple and polymorphous manifestations of the Sophist …" (p. 27)

7. Casper, Dennis J. 1977. "Is There A Third One and Many Problem in Plato?" Apeiron no. 11:20-26.

"In a recent article (1), M.J. Cresswell points out that the problem of the one and the many "gets a new twist in three of Plato's later dialogues (Parmenides, Sophist, and Philebus) where we discover not one problem but apparently two."(2) The first problem (I) concerns particulars, things subject to generation and perishing (Philebus, 14D-15A); it is " the problem of how the same thing can have many characteristics."(3) The second problem (II) concerns forms, things not subject to generation or perishing; it is the problem how a unitary form can be in many things which come into being ( Philebus, 15B). The first problem is "childish and easy", the second serious and difficult.

Cresswell points out that the formal structure of (I) does not require that it concern particulars. In a sense, forms have "characteristics" — each is one, the same as itself, and so on. So a parallel one and many problem (III) might be raised: How can the same form have many characteristics? Here Cresswell remarks, "However, when Plato actually sets out the one and many problem about the forms it doesn't have the structure of (I) at all."

Rather, it is (II) above. So Cresswell believes apparently that Plato does not set out (III) in the passages he mentions or elsewhere in the Philebus, Parmenides, and Sophist. I shall argue, however, that Plato does raise (III) in these works and that he takes it as seriously as he does (II). " (p. 20, some notes omitted)

(1) 1M.J. Cresswell, "Is There One or Are There Many One and Many Problems in Plato?", The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. XXII (1972), pp. 149-154.

(2) Ibid., p. 149.

(3) Ibid. In stating (1) in this way, Cresswell takes his cue from Sophist, 251A-B. In the Philebus and at the opening of the Parmenides (127E; 129A-E), the problem concerning particulars is how the same thing can have opposite characteristics.

8. Cassin, Barbara. 2017. "The Muses and Philosophy: Elements for a History of the Pseudos." In Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Metaphysics, edited by Greenstine, Abraham Jacob and Johnson, Ryan J., 13-29. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

"Barbara Cassin's "The Muses and Philosophy: Elements for a History of the 'Pseudos"' (1991; translated by Samuel Galson), investigates Plato's attempt in the Sophist to distinguish the philosopher from the sophist. Cassin pinpoints the slippery operation of the pseudos through the texts of Parmenides and Hesiod. Yet Parmenides' rejection of not-being allows the sophist to claim infallibility. Plato's Eleatic Stranger shows that Parmenides' rejection of notbeing is self-refuting (thus the Stranger's famous parricide is just as much Parmenides' suicide). Further, although the Stranger ultimately fails to find a criterion for truth or falsity, he nevertheless establishes a place for the pseudos in the distinction between logos tinos (speech of something) and logos peri tinos (speech about something). Ultimately, Cassin argues that reality of pseudos is a condition for the possibility of language, and indeed involves the very materiality and breath of language." (p. 5)

9. Cataldo, Peter J. 1984. "Plato, Aristotle and προς εν equivocity." The Modern Schoolman no. 61:237-247.

"One of the brilliant features of Father Joseph Owens' commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics [*] is the way that be traces the integration of the προς ενequivocity of being in Aristotle's work. But Aristotle's concept of προς εν equivocity is not linked with his predecessor Plato in this classic commentary.

The aim of this essay is lo indicate such a link, and one in which Plato 's contribution is more than just an anticipation; for, it will be argued that all of the elements which constitute προς εν equivocity per se are also present in Plato's doctrine of being found in the Sophist.

The nature of this project requires that several texts be presented from both thinkers, but this in no way presumes to be a comprehensive analysis of the texts. I on! y wish to show that Aristotle's concept of προς εν equivocity is traceable to Plato in some definite ways, all the while assuming, of course, that their doctrines of being are essentially opposed." (p. 237)

[*] The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics: A. Study in the Greek Background of Mediaeval Thought, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1951, Third revised edition 1978.

10. Chan, Han-liang. 2012. "Plato and Peirce on Likeness and Semblance." Biosemiotics no. 5:301-312.

Abstract: "In his well-known essay, ‘What Is a Sign?’ (CP 2.281, 285) Peirce uses ‘likeness’ and ‘resemblance’ interchangeably in his definition of icon. The synonymity of the two words has rarely, if ever, been

questioned. Curiously, a locus classicus of the pair, at least in F. M. Cornford’s English translation, can be found in a late dialogue of Plato’s, namely, the Sophist. In this dialogue on the myth and truth of the sophists’ profession, the mysterious ‘stranger’, who is most likely Socrates persona, makes the famous distinction between eikon (likeness) and phantasma (semblance) (236a,b).

For all his broad knowledge in ancient philosophy, Peirce never mentioned this parallel; nor has any Peircian scholar identified it.(1) There seems to be little problem with eikon as likeness, but phantasma may give rise to a puzzle which this paper will attempt to solve. Plato uses two pairs of words: what eikon is to phantasma is eikastikhn (the making of likeness [235d]) to phantastikhn (semblance making [236c]). In other words, icons come into being because of the act of icon-making, which is none other than indexicality. Witness what Peirce says about the relationship between photographs and the objects they represent: ‘But this resemblance is due to the photographs having been produced under such circumstances that they were physically forced to correspond point by point to nature.’ (Ibid.) Thus the iconicity which links the representamen (sign) and its object is made possible not only by an interpretant, but also by indexisation.

Their possible etymological and epistemological links aside, the Peircian example of photographing and the Platonic discussion of painting and sculpturing in the Sophist, clearly show the physio-pragmatic aspect of iconicity. The paper will therefore reread the Peircian iconicity by closely analysing this relatively obscure Platonic text, and by so doing restore to the text its hidden semiotic dimension."

11. Chappell, T. D. J. 2011. "Making Sense of the Sophist. Ten Answers to Ten Questions." In Plato's Sophist: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlíček, Aleš and Karfík, Filip, 344-375. Praha: Oikoymenh.

"One notable feature of the method of division is this: every determination in a well-performed division is a positive determination.

See Statesman, 262c9–d7, on an attempted definition by division of barbaros:

“[Our division went wrong because we did] the same sort of thing as those who are trying to make a twofold division of the human race, and do what most of those do who live here: they distinguish on one side the race of Greeks as separate from all others, and then give the single name ‘barbarians’ to all the other races, though these are countless in number and share no kinship of blood or language.

Then because they have a single term, they suppose they also have a single kind.”

A good division will not divide Greeks from non-Greeks, but Greeks from Romans, Britons, Gauls, Teutons, Slavonic tribes, Hyperboreans, islanders of the utmost west, etc. etc. etc. To put it another way, every step of a well-performed division will use “other than” and not “is not”. More about this in due course." (pp. 344-345)

(...)

"In all these ways making sense of the Sophist, and (come to that) making sense of the sophist, is very literally a matter of watching Plato making sense: creating a theory of how, alongside the changeless world of the Forms, there can and must be a changing world of interweavings of those Forms. Not only the gods’ interweavings, which constitute the world, but also our interweavings, which constitute logoi about – representations of – that world: either misleading and false images of it, like the sophist’s, or faithful and accurate images, like those created by the person whom above all the sophist aspires to imitate: the philosopher." (p. 375)

12. Charlton, William. 1995. "Plato's Later Platonism." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 13:113-133.

"And although on some interpretations the analyses of negation and false statement in the Sophist call precisely for quantification over abstract objects, those passages have also been interpreted as requiring quantification over concrete objects like Theaetetus.

(...)

"But the passages themselves are brief and the issues clear. In what follows I first explain (Section I) why I prefer a Platonizing interpretation, and (Section II) question whether Plato is willing to quantify over concrete objects at all. I then (Section III) consider how he would wish us to understand existential claims to the effect that 'there is' something or that something 'shares in being'. Next (Section IV) I show how, using quantification over abstract but not over concrete objects, and also using the five Greatest Kinds mentioned in the Sophist, Plato could analyse various kinds of statement. He did not, of course, have the concept of quantification logicians have today. But he had strong logical instincts, and the suggestions he throws out lend themselves to development with the aid of quantifiers in a perspicuous and intriguing way. Finally (Section V), I suggest that his analysis of negation in terms of otherness reveals a sort of Platonism that is itself other than that defined by Quine: he believes that the difference between being and not being is independent of our thought in a way it would not be on an analysis similar to that proposed for change in Section IV." (pp. 113-114)

13. Cherubin, Rose. 1993. "What is Eleatic about the Eleatic Stranger?" In Platoʼs Dialogues: New studies and Interpretations, edited by Press, Gerald A., 215-235. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

"In this paper I would like to pose and to explore the following questions: Why is there an Eleatic Stranger in Plato's Sophist? What if anything does this character say or imply or do that only a "companion of those around Parmenides and Zeno" (216a) would?

I would also like to propose that central to these concerns is the question of how Plato read Parmenides' poem. Did Plato take the daimon's speech as a direct and literal statement of Parmenides' views? What we can discover about this issue could be instructive in our considerations of how we might best read Parmenides.

The Stranger's speeches and behavior include much that seems sophistic, as well as a number of reasons to suspect that he is not, or not only, a sophist. We are led, then, to ask what if any the differences are between Eleatic and sophist, and especially what if any differences between them appear in Plato. (For the latter I will focus on the Sophist.) What would account for the differences, or the lack thereof? And if there are differences, into which group-Eleatic or sophist-does the Stranger fall?" (p. 215)

14. Chrysakopoulou, Sylvana. 2010. "Heraclitus and Xenophanes in Plato's Sophist: The Hidden Harmony." Ariadne. The Journal of the School of Philosophy of the University of Crete no. 16:75-98.

"The principal aim of the present article is to shed light on Heraclitus’ intellectual kinship with Xenophanes. Although the overlap of fundamental patterns and themes in both thinkers’ worldview could be partly due to the osmosis of ideas in the archaic

era, the intertextual a!nity between them, as transmitted by the history of reception, cannot be regarded as a mere accident of cultural diffusion. Our primary intention is to focus on the common grounds of their criticism against the authority of the epic poets on the theological education of the Greeks and more particularly on its platonic appropriation." (p. 75)

(...)

"In conclusion, Plato in the Sophist uses Xenophanes’ and Heraclitus’ theological a!nity as a trait d’union between the latter and Parmenides, inasmuch as Plato’s ontology is presented as a response to Parmenides’ account on being." (p. 85)

15. ———. 2018. "Xenophanes in Plato’s Sophist and the first philosophical genealogy." Trends in Classics no. 10:324-337.

Abstract: "In this article I intend to show that Plato in the Sophist provides us with the earliest doxographic material on pre-Platonic thinkers. In his account on his predecessors, Xenophanes emerges as the founder of the Eleatic tribe as opposed to the pluralists, while Heraclitus and Empedocles are presented as the Ioanian and the Italian Muses respectively. This prima facie genealogical approach, where Plato’s predecessors become the representatives of schools of different origins paves the way for Plato’s project in the Sophist. In other words the monistic account Xenophanes introduces, prepares for the synthesis between the one and the many set forth by Heraclitus and Empedocles, which is thus presented as a further step towards the ‘interweaving of forms’ (συμπλοκήν εἰδῶν) Plato proposes in the Sophist."

16. Clanton, J. Caleb. 2007. "From Indeterminacy to Rebirth: Making Sense of Socratic Silence in Plato's Sophist." The Pluralist no. 2:37-56.

"I argue here that, in the Sophist, Plato opens up possibilities for philosophy that lie beyond Socrates's style of discourse. Plato does so by introducing indeterminacy as a way of salvaging determinate discourse itself. In the first section of this article, I explore what the problem of the Sophist seems to be. It appears that in order to preserve discourse, the characters within the dialogue must try to make sense of non-being, which clearly is a problematic undertaking. In the second section, I follow the characters as they try to

resolve this issue of not-being. Third, I argue that in saving determinate discourse through resolving the issue of not-being, the characters in the dialogue incorporate indeterminacy into the very enterprise of philosophy. With this reading of the Sophist in mind, I try to make sense of a crucial element that Plato adds -- namely, Socrates's absence in che dialogue. In doing so, I mean to stay closely attuned to the dramatic features of the dialogue as they generate the questions I focus on. Finally, in light of this reading of the Sophist,

I suggest a way to rethink what it means to do philosophy, following Plato's lead in carrying out a philosophical project that is often deemed foreign to Plato." (p. 37)

17. Clarke, Patricia. 1994. "The Interweaving of the Forms with One Another: Sophist 259e." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 12:35-62.

"At Sophist 259 E the Eleatic Stranger and Theaetetus agree that 'The loosening of each thing from everything [else] is the complete wiping out of all λόγοι for it is because of the interweaving of the forms with one another that we come to have λόγος. My chief aim in this paper is to air a possible solution to the problem of how this remark might apply to such statements as 'Theaetetus sits' and 'Theaetetus flies', (1) in each of which only one form is referred to. The solution turns on the claim that neither statement could be true unless forms could mix with one another in the sense of being instantiated together in Theaetetus. I do not positively endorse it. I wonder whether there is any definite solution to the problem; Plato does not seem to give sufficiently clear indication of how he is thinking. However, I wish to argue that a solution along the lines indicated cannot be dismissed as easily as has sometimes been supposed. In the first part of my paper I give some general consideration to the remark at 259 E, and examine briefly some alternative solutions to the problem of its application to 'Theaetetus sits' and other such statements." (p. 35)

(1) I use these translations, rather than the more idiomatic 'Theaetetus is sitting', 'Theaetetus is flying', to reflect the fact that in the original at 263 A each example is expressed by means of a two-word sentence composed of proper name and verb. However, even for a statement of the form 'Theaetetus is F', expressed with copula and predicate, a problem arises if for Theaetetus to be F is simply for Theaetetus to partake directly of F, for then again only one form might seem to be involved."

18. Cordero, Nestor-Luis. 2013. "The relativization of ”separation" (khorismos) in the Sophist." In Plato's Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 187-201. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"It is a commonplace among historians of ancient thought to refer to the “separation” (khorismos) which characterizes Platonic philosophy, and which Aristotle criticized severely. It is true that, like any commonplace, this separation, which is at base a type of dualism, can be the subject of very different understandings, including that of being minimized." (p. 187)

(...)

"All aporiai stem from separation. So, one has to try to suppress it, or at any rate relativize it, and that is going to be the task the Sophist sets itself.

Why the Sophist? Because, as we saw, khorismos separated two modes of being, and the Sophist is a dialogue about being. Steering clear of interpretation, the dialogue’s subtitle is peri tou ontos. And it is normal, if he is going to undertake an in-depth analysis of the figure of the sophist, that he should see himself as obliged, for the first time on his philosophical voyage, now that he is over seventy, to confront his father Parmenides, the venerable and fearsome monopolizer of being, and the confrontation concerns sophistry. This is not the time to expatiate on the “amitiés particulières” that Plato establishes between Parmenides and sophistry. In criticizing the great master all things are allowed, including taking literally images in the poem which are didactic, such as the sphere, and in particular characterizing him as a fellow traveller of sophistry, which is, all in all, a joke in poor taste. But it is undeniable that his changing of porte-parole, in which he replaces Socrates with the Stranger, allows Plato to take certain liberties, and to face problems that his Socrates had never faced, among them precisely the necessity of refuting Parmenides." (p. 191)

19. Corey, David D. 2015. The Sophists in Plato's Dialogues. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Chapter Eight: Plato's Critique of the Sophist?

"In this chapter, I consider four such accounts of the sophists: those of Anytus speaking to Socrates in the Meno, Socrates speaking to Adeimantus in the Republic, Socrates speaking to Polus in the Gorgias, and the Eleatic Stranger speaking to Theaetetus in the Sophist. Although all these appear to stand as general critiques of the sophists, none is successful as such, nor, I argue, does Plato mean for us to accept them as such. These accounts are obviously defective both in their own terms and in light of what we know of the sophists from other dialogues. At the same time, however, I want to argue that these passages of general criticism have a broader scope than merely attempting to criticize the sophists. They also call into question the very lines of demarcation

between such categories as “sophistry,” “philosophy,” and “good citizenship,” thus leading inevitably to the possibility of self-reflection, whether one understands oneself to be a philosopher or merely a citizen.

In other words, what is usually taken rather facilely to be “Plato’s critique of the sophists” in fact cuts more deeply into common thinking and doing than readers may like to admit. Widely accepted and even cherished political, philosophical, and pedagogical practices are implicated in these accounts. " (pp. 202-203)

20. Cornford, Francis Macdonald. 1935. Plato's Theory of Knowledge. The Theaetetus and the Sophist of Plato translated with a running commentary. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.

Contents: The Theaetetus, pp. 15-163; The Sophist pp. 165-332.

"My object was to make accessible to students of philosophy who cannot easily read the Greek text, two masterpieces of Plato's later period, concerned with questions that still hold a living interest. A study of existing translations and editions has encouraged also the hope that scholars already familiar with the dialogues may find a fresh interpretation not unwelcome. A commentary has been added because, in the more difficult places, a bare translation is almost certain, if understood at all, to be misunderstood.

This danger may be illustrated by a quotation from a living philosopher of the first rank: It was Plato in his later mood who put forward the suggestion "and I hold that the definition of being is simply power". This suggestion is the charter of the doctrine of Immanent Law.'(1)

Dr. Whitehead is quoting Jowett's translation. If the reader will refer to the passage (p. 234 below), he will see that the words are rendered: 'I am proposing as a mark to distinguish real things that they be nothing but power.'(2) A mark of real things may not be a 'definition of being'. This mark, moreover, is offered by the Eleatic Stranger to the materialist as an improvement on his own mark of real things, tangibility. The materialist accepts it, 'having for the moment no better suggestion of his own to offer'. The Stranger add that Theaetetus and he may perhaps change their minds 0n this matter later on. Plato has certainly not committed himself here to a 'definition of being'. So much could be discovered from an accurate translation; but the word 'power ' still needs to be explained. It has been rendered by 'potency', 'force', 'Möglichkeit', 'puissance de relation'. Without some account of the history of the word dynamis in Plato's time and earlier, the student accustomed to the terms of modem philosophy may well carry away a false impression.

To meet difficulties such as this, I have interpolated, after each compact section of the text, a commentary which aims at discovering what Plato really means and how that part of the argument is related to the rest. There are objections to dissecting the living body of a Platonic dialogue. No other writer has approached Plato's skill in concealing a rigid and intricate structure of reasoning beneath the flowing lines of a conversation in which the suggestion of each thought as it arises seems to be followed to an unpremeditated conclusion. In these later dialogues the bones show more clearly through the skin; and it is likely that Plato would rather have us penetrate his meaning than stand back with folded hands to admire his art. An interpolated commentary, giving the reader the information he needs when and where he needs it, may be preferred to the usual plan of stowing away such information in an introduction at the beginning and notes at the end. It is not clear why we should be forced to read a book in three places at once. This book, at any rate, is designed to be read straight through." (Preface, pp. VII-VIII)

(1) A. N. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, (1933), p, 165. I am not suggesting that Dr. Whitehead fundamentally misunderstands the master who has deeply influenced his own philosophy, but only pointing out how a profound thinker may be misled by a translation.

(2) This rendering is itself doubtful, the construction of the words, as they stand in the MSS, being obscure and difficult.

21. Cresswell, M. J. 1972. "Is There One or Are There Many One and Many Problems in Plato?" The Philosophical Quarterly no. 22:149-154.

"How can one thing be many and many things one? This perennial in Greek philosophy gets a new twist in three of Plato's later dialogues (Parmenides, Sophist, and Philebus) where we discover not one problem but apparently two. More interestingly, although one of them is a serious and perplexing problem demanding the full insight of the rigorously disciplined philosopher, the other problem is described in the Philebus (14d, e) as commonplace and one such that "almost everyone agrees nowadays that there is no need to concern oneself with things like that, feeling that they are childish, obvious and a great nuisance to argument". And in the Sophist (251b) it is relegated to providing a banquet for the young and for "late learners of old men" who are "poorly endowed with intelligence and marvel at such things, thinking themselves to have come upon all wisdom".

What is the difference between this trivial form and the serious form of the problem of how one thing can be many? In the Philebus (15a) Socrates says that the trivial problem occurs when the one in question is the sort of thing which can come into being and pass away, i.e., is something which belongs to the physical world. The serious problem is when the one is an eternal existent." (p. 149)

22. Crivelli, Paolo. 1993. "Plato's Sophist and Semantic Fragmentation." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 75:71-74.

"In this journal, Band 71, Heft 3, pp. 257-282, Michael T. Ferejohn [*] proposed to apply to the interpretation of certain parts of Plato's Sophist a methodological principle which I shall call 'principle of joint explanation': given the close relationship between Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, in particular circumstances it's possible to use Aristotelian texts to interpret obscure or vague Platonic passages. In this paper I shall criticize Ferejohn's application of the 'principle of joint explanation' to the Sophist and his interpretation of Plato's analysis of negation and of its philosophical aims."

[*] Plato and Aristotle on Negative Predication and Semantic Fragmentation.

23. ———. 2012. Plato's Account of Falsehood: A Study of the Sophist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Acknowledgements IX; Abbreviations of titles of Plato's works X; Note on the text XI; Introduction 1; 1. The sophist defined 13; 2. Puzzles about non-being 28; 3. Puzzles about being 71; 4. The communion of kinds 102; 5. Negation and not-being 177; 6. Sentences, false sentences, and false belief 221; Appendix: The Sophist on true and false sentences: formal presentation 261; References 275; Index of names 290; Index of subjects 294; index of passages cited 296-309.

"In the Sophist Plato presents his mature views on sentences, falsehood, and not-being. These views have given an important contribution to the birth and growth of the subjects now identified as ontology and philosophy of language. I have two main objectives: to offer a precise reconstruction of the arguments and the theses concerning sentences, falsehood, and not-being presented in the Sophist and to gain a philosophical understanding of them. In this introduction I offer an overview of the main problems addressed in i he Sophist and their solutions and then discuss the methodology whereby I pursue my primary goals." (Introduction, p. 1)

"Almost a commentary. The close interconnection of themes and concepts invited by the dialogue-form makes it difficult to address a Platonic dialogue by examining some of its themes and concepts in isolation from the others: if an operation of this sort is attempted, the impression arises that some factor essential for the understanding of the issues under consideration is ignored. Mainly for this reason I decided to have my examination of the Sophist unfolding in parallel with the development of the dialogue. So the present study covers most of the dialogue and follows its progression, almost as a running commentary.

Nevertheless, my examination of the Sophist is selective: not all the themes and concepts emerging from the dialogue are discussed with the same care or depth. The approach I have privileged is that of philosophy of language (in the comprehensive sense in which it addresses also ontological matters). In particular, I ask Plato some of the questions that a modern philosopher of language would regard as important and I consider what answers Plato is committed to offering. Establishing what answers Plato is committed to offering requires an accurate historical reconstruction of what he actually does say: modern questions, Plato’s answers. The present study therefore combines exegetical and philological considerations with a philosophically minded attitude." (p. 11)

24. Crombie, Ian M. 1962. An Examination of Plato's Doctrines. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Vol. 2: Plato on Knowledge and Reality; Chapter 3: Metaphysical Analysis. § V: The Sophist, pp. 388-421; Chapter 4: Logic and Language § III: The Paradox of False Belief pp. 486-497; § IV: Some Further Problems arising out of the Sophist: the Copula and Existence, etc., pp. 498-516.

"The doctrine of the Sophist is continuous with that which we have been examining. The fact that I have relegated the Sophist to a section of its own must not be allowed to give a contrary impression.

I have given the Sophist a section on its own partly because it is very difficult, and partly because it adds something to the doctrine sketched in the Cratylus and common to the Phaedrus, Statesman and Philebus. There are two parts to this additional material. One of these parts deals with matters which are perhaps more properly called logical than metaphysical, namely the meaning of the verb einai or "to be", and the nature of negation. The discussion of these topics is entangled with that of the others and can only be separated by violence. I shall use violence, however, and postpone the detailed consideration of these topics to the next chapter. The other part of the additional material can perhaps be described as follows. So far the "kinds" whose "sharing" we have been considering have been, on the whole, material or limiting properties. I call, for example, animality a limiting property, because there are certain limits which cannot be transgressed by anything which is to have the property.

We recall however that the discussion in the Parmenides was concerned with the formal or non-limiting property unity—non-limiting in the sense that to be told that X is one is to be told nothing whatever about the nature of X. It is clear that the relation of non-limiting to limiting properties was an important question in Plato's latest phase, and it is in the Sophist that this is first discussed in connection with the sharing of kinds. This is the special material with which this section will be primarily concerned. I may add that it will be impossible in a discussion of this—perhaps of any—length to justify an interpretation of the Sophist." (p. 388)

25. Curd, Patricia Kenig. 1988. "Parmenidean Clues in the Search for the Sophist." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 5:307-320.

"Does the Parmenides hold clues to a proper understanding of the Sophist? It seems to me that it does; in this paper I shall explore a number of issues that link the two dialogues, arguing that understanding Plato's treatment of these issues in the Parmenides can help us correctly interpret the arguments of the Sophist.

Influential interpretations of Plato's later work hold that there are serious confusions about identity and predication in that work. According to these interpretations some of the arguments in the antinomies of Part II of the Parmenides exhibit this confusion; further, according to these views, it is not until the Sophist that Plato sees his way to distinguish identity and predication adequately, and that it is this that allows him finally to solve the problems of Being and Not Being in that dialogue.(1)

In this paper I want to challenge this view: I shall claim that the arguments of Part II of the Parmenides are not infected with an identity/predication (I/P) confusion. Further, I shall argue that in the second part of the Parmenides Plato explores and investigates certain ideas that are crucial to his solution of the problem of Not-Being in the Sophist (a solution that does not depend on distinguishing identity and predicative "senses" or "uses" of the verb "to be"). (2) I shall begin with some preliminary remarks about the I/P confusion and the earlier dialogues before turning to the Parmenides and the Sophist." (p. 307)

(1) The interpretations I have in mind are primarily those of G. E. L. Owen (in "Notes on Ryle's Plato," in Logic, Science and Dialectic, ed. G. E. L. Owen and M. C. Nussbaum (Ithaca, 1986), pp. 85-103; hereafter NRP; and in "Plato on Not-Being," in LSD pp. 104-137; hereafter PNB); and Malcolm Schofield (in "The Antinomies of Plato's Parmenides," Classical Quarterly, vol. 21 [1977], pp. 139-158). See also M. Frede, Prädikation und Existenzaussage (Gottingen, 1967).

(2) Here I shall follow the interpretation of the arguments of the Sophist suggested by Jean Roberts in "The Problem about Being in the Sophist," History of Philosophy Quarterly, vol. 3 (1986), pp. 229-243 (hereafter PBS). What I shall say here about the Sophist is based on an acceptance of Roberts' arguments (which I shall not repeat here) and owes much to her work.

26. Dancy, Russell M. 1999. "The Categories of Being in Plato's Sophist 255c-e." Ancient Philosophy no. 19:45-72.

"Sophist 255c-e contains a division of beings into two categories rather than a distinction between the "is" of identity, existence, and/or predication; this emerges from an analysis of the argument that employs the division. The resulting division is the same as that ascribed to Plato in the indirect tradition among the so-called "unwritten doctrines"; there the two categories are attached to the One and the Indefinite Dyad." (p. 45)

(...)

"Conclusion. Perhaps it is not so bad if the later Plato sounds more like Aristotle. But there remains an enormous difference of ontology between Plato and Aristotle, if any of the reports of Plato's 'unwritten doctrines' can be believed.

We have already noticed that Plato thinks the distinction between beings and others can be put by saying that while beings partake of both the Forms Standalone and Relative, others partake only of the Form Relative. The partition of beings into Standalone ones and Relative ones, as I have construed it, is a categorial scheme: the scheme of Old Academic Categories adverted to in the introductory section of this article. Hermodorus (or whoever) was there quoted as saying that Plato says 'of the beings, some are by virtue of themselves, and some are relative to something'; that much we have the Eleatic Stranger saying in 255c13-14. But Hermodorus gives us examples, where the Stranger does not: a man and a horse are by virtue of themselves; large and small [things] are relative to things. If we unpack these examples, we presumably find ourselves saying: Bucephalus is a horse by virtue of himself; it is because he is Bucephalus that he is a horse, or, perhaps better, it is not because of some other thing that Bucephalus counts as a horse, whereas the fact that Bucephalus is large is something whose explanation requires us to introduce other, relatively smaller, horses which are the norm for horses as far as size goes. This then leads to categorizations of the terms man and horse under the heading Standalone and large, small, good, and bad under the heading Relative. And it seems a sound conjecture that where I am speaking of 'terms', Plato would speak of 'forms': the division is a division of forms, if that is right.

But that is not the end of the story. The Hermodorus text, along with other texts, (1) would have us believe that Plato rooted the two categories Standalone and Relative in two super-Forms that stood above all the others: the mysterious entities known as the One and the Indefinite Dyad, from which the more ordinary Forms derived as numbers. I think this, too, should be taken seriously. But that is a large undertaking, not to be entered on here." (pp. 69-70)

(1) Including, besides the others quoted in I, many in Aristotle, and also the rather strange and somewhat garbled stretch of text in Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos X 257-276 purporting to report on the views of 'Pythagoras and his circle'.

27. De Brasi, Diego, and Fuchs, Marko J., eds. 2016. Sophistes: Plato's Dialogue and Heidegger's Lectures in Marburg (1924-25). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Table of Contents: Acknowledgements VII; Diego De Brasi and Marko J. Fuchs: Introduction. Heidegger’s Lectures on Plato’s Sophist and their Importance for Modern Plato Scholarship 1; Jens Kristian Larsen: Plato and Heidegger on Sophistry and Philosophy 27; Catalin Partenie: Heidegger: Sophist and Philosopher 61; Laura Candiotto: Negation as Relation: Heidegger’s Interpretation of Plato’s Sophist 257b3–259d1 75; Nicolas Zaks: Is the ‘In-Itself’ Relational? Heidegger and Contemporary Scholarship on Plato’s Sophist 255c–e 95; Argyri G. Karanasiou: The Term symplokē in Symposium 202b1 and in Sophist 240c1ff, 259d-261c: Heidegger's Interpretation of the Concept of "Interconnection" in Platonic Thought 113; Maia Shukhoshvili: Tékhnē in Plato's Sophist (Discussing Heidegger's Opinion) 131; Olga Alieva: Ὀρθολογία περὶ τὸ μὴ ὄν: Heidegger on the Notion of Falsehood in Plato's Sophist 143; Contributors 157.

"This volume offers a selection of papers presented at the international Symposium “Sophistes: Plato’s Dialogue and Heidegger’s Lectures in Marburg (1924–25)” held at the University of Marburg in April 2013. At

that meeting young classicists and philosophers discussed the possibility of a re-evaluation of Heidegger’s hermeneutics of the Sophist, and argued for a more nuanced reconstruction of his relationship with Plato." (p. VII)

28. ———. 2016. "Introduction. Heidegger’s Lectures on Plato’s Sophist and their Importance for Modern Plato Scholarship." In Sophistes: Plato's Dialogue and Heidegger's Lectures in Marburg (1924-25), edited by De Brasi, Diego and Fuchs, Marko J., 1-26. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

"This introductory essay hence focuses on four aspects. First of all, it will offer an overview on the current state of research. Second, it will argue for a relativization of Heidegger’s alleged misunderstanding of Plato. This will be achieved by arguing against some of the criticism expressed by Werner Beierwaltes [*] towards Heidegger’s reading of Plato. Third, it briefly examines the “Transition” in the 1924 Marburg Lectures between Heidegger’s analysis of the Nicomachean Ethics and the interpretation of Plato’s Sophist, the “Preliminary Remarks” and the “Introduction” to the actual interpretation of the dialogue, describing Heidegger as a somehow unconscious ‘forerunner’ of the modern dialogical approach. Finally, it will present an overview of the contributions in the volume and suggest further possible research developments." (p. 2)

[*] Beierwaltes, Werner. “EPEKEINA. A Remark on Heidegger’s Reception of Plato.” Trans. Marcus Brainard, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 17, no. 1-2 (1994): 83–99 (orig.: “EPEKEINA. Eine Anmerkung zu Heideggers Platon-Rezeption.” In Transzendenz: zu einem Grundwort der klassischen Metaphysik. Festschrift für Klaus Kremer, edited by Ludger Honnefelder and Werner Schüßler, 39–55. Paderborn: Schöning, 1992).

—. “Heideggers Rückgang zu den Griechen.” Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse, Jg. 1995, Heft 1 (Munich: Beck).

—. “Heideggers Gelassenheit.” In Amicus Plato magis amica veritas. Festschrift für Wolfgang Wieland zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Rainer Enskat, 1–35. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1998.

The three essays are reprinted in:

Beierwaltes, Werner. Fußnoten zu Platon. Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 2011.

29. De Garay, Jesús. 2013. "Difference and Negation: Plato’s Sophist in Proclus." In Plato's Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 225-245. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"We do not have a specific commentary on the Sophist, and it is doubtful whether he ever wrote one. What we do have is the Commentary on the Parmenides, from which some have hypothesized that he also wrote one on the Sophist. Whatever the case, the explicit references to this dialogue are many, and they affect crucial issues in Proclus’ thought. In particular, The Elements of Theology aside (which, because of its axiomatic treatment does not include textual references of any kind), allusions to the Sophist are very frequent in his three most relevant systematic works: the Commentary on the Parmenides, the Platonic Theology, and the Commentary on the Timaeus (9)." (p. 227)

(...)

"However, as has been pointed out by Annick Charles-Saget, to understand Proclus’ interpretation of the Sophist we cannot pay attention solely to explicit quotations from the dialogue; but we must also consider his silences and significance shifts. In other words, on the one hand there are important questions in the dialogue which Proclus hardly adverts to: for example, the sophist as deceiver, and purveyor of falsehood in general; on the other hand, there are matters which Proclus presents in a different way, such as the vindication of poetic production in light of the definition of the sophist. Also significant is the way in which a number of very short passages from the Sophist are adduced over and over and again in support of his thesis." (p. 228)

(9) An exhaustive documentation of references to the Sophist can be found in Guérard (1991). My own exposition will focus strictly on the Commentary on the Parmenides and Platonic Theology.

References

Charles-Saget, A., “Lire Proclus, lecteur du Sophiste”, in P. Aubenque (éd.), Etudes sur le Sophiste de Platon (1991), 475 – 494 = Charles-Saget (1991).

Guérard, Ch., “Les citations du Sophiste dans les oeuvres de Proclus”, in P. Aubenque (éd.), Etudes sur le Sophiste de Platon, 1991, 495 – 508 = Guérard (1991).

30. de Harven, Vanessa. 2021. "The Metaphysics of Stoic Corporealism." Apeiron:1-27.

Abstract: "The Stoics are famously committed to the thesis that only bodies are, and for this reason they are rightly called “corporealists.” They are also famously compared to Plato’s earthborn Giants in the Sophist, and rightly so given their steadfast commitment to body as being. But the Stoics also notoriously turn the tables on Plato and coopt his “dunamis proposal” that being is whatever can act or be acted upon, to underwrite their commitment to body rather than shrink from it as the Giants do. The substance of Stoic corporealism, however, has not been fully appreciated. This paper argues that Stoic corporealism goes beyond the dunamis proposal, which is simply an ontological criterion for being, to the metaphysics of body. This involves, first, an account of body as metaphysically simple and hence fundamental; second, an account of body as malleable and continuous, hence fit for blending (krasis di’ holou) and composition. In addition, the metaphysics of body involves a distinction between this composition relation seen in the cosmology, and the constitution relation by which the four-fold schema called the Stoic Categories proceeds, e.g. the relation between a statue and its clay, or a fist and its underlying hand. It has not been appreciated that the cosmology and the Categories are distinct — and complementary — explanatory enterprises, the one accounting for generation and unity, the other taking those individuals once generated, and giving a mereological analysis of their identity and persistence conditions, kinds, and qualities. The result is an elegant division of Plato’s labor from the Battle of Gods and Giants. On the one hand, the Stoics rehabilitate the crude cosmology of the Presocratics to deliver generation and unity in completely corporeal terms, and that work is found in their Physics. On the other hand, they reform the Giants and “dare to corporealize,” delivering all manner of predication (from identity to the virtues), and that work is found in Stoic Logic. Recognizing the distinctness of these explanatory enterprises helps dissolve scholarly puzzles, and harmonizes the Stoics with themselves."

31. de Vries, Willem. 1988. "On "Sophist" 255B-E." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 5:385-394.

"At Sophist 255b7-e the Eleatic Stranger gives two arguments, one to show that being and identity are not the same, and one to show that being and otherness are not the same. Scholars have not paid them particularly close attention, but it seems generally agreed that the two arguments are quite different. In this paper I shall offer an interpretation which shows that the two arguments, though superficially quite different, are intrinsically and importantly related. Specifically, in the first argument the Stranger elicits an obvious falsehood from the hypothesis that being and identity are the same. I claim that in order to distinguish being and otherness an exactly parallel argument could have been given instead of the second argument we actually find. However, there are sound dramatic reasons why this was not done, for in this case the falsehood would not be obvious.

Instead, the argument we are given takes us deeper and analyzes the source of the falsehood by introducing a distinction between absolute and relative uses of "being." This distinction, which has been misinterpreted in the literature, is then applied to the problem at hand and is used to distinguish being from otherness. Thus the fuller and apparently different argument to distinguish being and otherness succeeds by giving the deeper reasons for the success of the argument to distinguish being and identity.

As a corollary to my interpretation, we can see that in these arguments other senses of "is," whether the "is" of existence or the "is" of identity, do not come into play, as other commentators have held.

The first section will discuss the first argument of our text, along with a recent interpretation of it. In the second section I shall introduce the argument to distinguish being and otherness and argue against Owen's interpretation.

The third section contains my interpretation of this argument, and is followed by a summary fourth section." (p. 385)

32. Delcomminette, Sylvain. 2014. "Odysseus and the Home of the Stranger from Elea." Classical Quarterly no. 64:533-541.

"Not very long ago, Plato’s Sophist was often presented as a dialogue devoted to the problem of being and not-being, entangled with limited success in an inquiry into the nature of the sophist. Thanks to the renewal of interest in the dramatic form of Plato’s dialogues, recent works have shown that this entanglement is far from ill conceived or anecdotal.(1) However, the inquiry into the sophist is itself introduced by another question, concerning the nature of the Stranger from Elea himself. I would like to show that this question and the way in which it is raised in the prologue may themselves shed light on the relations between the many threads which run across this very complex dialogue."

(1) See especially N. Notomi, The Unity of Plato’s Sophist (Cambridge, 1999).

33. Denyer, Nicholas. 1991. Language, Thought and Falsehood in Ancient Greek Philosophy. London: Routledge.

"How can one say something false? How can one even think such a thing?

Since, for example, all men are mortal, how can one either say or think that some man is immortal? For since it is not the case that some man is immortal, how can there be any such thing for one to say or think? That, in a nutshell, is the problem of falsehood. It, and some of its many ramifications in ancient philosophy, will be the topic of this book." (p. 14)

(...)

"In the Sophist Plato sorts out, once and for all, the problems about falsehood that still lingered in the Theaetetus. His strategy is one of unite and conquer. What has made falsehood so problematic hitherto is, he suggests, the fact that it has been treated in isolation. We have thought that not being was uniquely difficult to understand, not realising how wrong we are to think that we understand being (243 b 7 - c 5, 245 e 8 - 246 a 2). Once however we realise that both being and not being should by rights be found equally difficult, we will be able to make progress (250 e 5 - 251 a 3). Plato thus examines all the many and diverse questions and answers about being that were bequeathed him by his philosophical predecessors. How many things are there? Just one? Just two? Or more? What sorts of things are there? Only changing and tangible things? Only changeless and intangible ones? Or are there things of both sorts? If we are to speak and think at all, argues Plato, we must acknowledge the existence of many things, both tangible and intangible.

Above all, we must acknowledge the existence of the five Greatest Kinds: Change, Rest, Being, Same and Other. By the end of Sophist 255 those kinds have been isolated and distinguished from one another. Plato thereupon puts them to work. He starts to explore some of the connections between them, and in so doing solves the problem of how we can speak of that which is not." (Chapter 8, p. 147)

(...)

"Plato has explained how we can negate both predications and identifications. He has explained how both those ways of speaking about what is not are perfectly legitimate and free from paradox. His explanations seemed plausible enough, so far as they went. But did they go far enough? In particular, did they go far enough to solve our problem about falsehood? Plato thought not. By Sophist 258 b 7 he has legitimated talk of what is not. It is not however until Sophist 263 d 4 that he takes himself to have legitimated talk of falsehood. In the meantime, much other work is done; and even though the problem of falsehood was that to charge someone with falsehood requires talk of what is not, nevertheless the eventual solution to that problem is not a simple application of the earlier result that talk of what is not can make perfectly good sense. Why does Plato proceed in this way? Why does he not declare the problem of falsehood solved the moment he has given his account of negation?" (Chapter 9, p. 166)

34. Desmond, William. 1979. "Plato's Philosophical Art and the Identification of the Sophist." Filosofia oggi no. 2:393-403.

Summary: "The author starts from an interpretation of continuity in the dramatic character of Plato's dialogue (a trait to be found in the Sophist as well, also in account of those images helpful to outline the nature of the philosopher), thus bringing forward a reading of the dialogue based on the statement that Plato's philosophical purpose cannot be either dried up or fulfilled on the range of logical analysis."

35. Diggle, James. 2020. "Two Conjectures in Plato (Laches 183e, Sophist 261a)." Hermes. Zeischrift für Klassische Philologie no. 148:381-382.

36. Dinan, Matthew. 2013. "On Wolves and Dogs. The Eleatic Stranger’s Socratic Turn in the Sophist." In Socratic Philosophy and Its Others, edited by Dustin, Christopher and Schaeffer, Denise. Lanham: Lexington Books.

" I argue that in adopting a kind of Socratic “virtuosity,” the shortcomings of the Eleatic alternative to Socrates are put in dramatic relief. Not only does the Stranger’s appropriation of Socratic elenchos ultimately fail to produce clarity with respect to the sophist, but the drama of the dialogue suggests that the Stranger is critically lacking in self-knowledge. We see this most clearly in the Stranger’s philosophical parricide of “Father” Parmenides; certainly, it is through this parricide that the Stranger is able to produce an internally consistent account of being and logos, but the Stranger’s consistency only serves to attenuate his abstraction from a satisfactory account of the human things. At the end of the dialogue the Stranger thus produces a conclusion no more satisfying than the Athenian jury of the Apology—that Socrates looks awfully similar to a sophist. The specific ways in which Plato problematizes the Stranger’s investigation and conclusions, however, provide us with some insights into why Plato made Socrates the philosophical hero of the dialogues, particularly insofar as the Stranger seems lacking in Socrates’ characteristic self-knowledge. In the last analysis, while Plato opens the Sophist by dividing philosophy like from like, he closes it by dividing it better from worse, vindicating Socrates." (p. 117)

37. Dominick, Yancy Hughes. 2018. "The Image of the Noble Sophist." Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 22:203-220.

Abstract: "In this paper, I begin with an account of the initial distinction between likenesses and appearances, a distinction which may resemble the difference between sophists and philosophers. That distinction first arises immediately after the puzzling appearance of the noble sophist, who seems to occupy an odd space in between sophist and philosopher. In the second section, I look more closely at the noble sophist, and on what that figure might tell us about images and the use of images. I also attempt to use the insights provided by the noble sophist in an investigation of the kind of images that Plato the author produces. This raises the question of the general notion of image as it appears in the Sophist, and especially of the dual nature of all images, which in turn invites reflection on certain features of the examination of being and non-being late in the dialogue. Finally, I return to the deception inherent in images, and I argue that this dialogue does not present the possibility of completely honest images. Nevertheless, I hope to show that some uses of deceptions and images are better than others."

38. Dorter, Kenneth. 1990. "Diairesis and the Tripartite Soul in the Sophist." Ancient Philosophy no. 10:41-61.

"It has not generally been observed that there are remarkable differences between the way that the Eleatic stranger defines the sophist in the dialogue of that name, and the way that Socrates had characterized him in the earlier dialogues. These differences entail some serious consequences, and by paying attention to these we will be able to notice important implications of the Sophist's treatment of its theme. More generally, it will help us evaluate the claim that the dialogue represents a fundamental departure from Plato's earlier thinking." (p. 41)

39. ———. 1994. Form and Good in Plato's Eleatic Dialogues: the Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman. Berkeley: University of California Press.

"The four dialogues examined here form a natural group with sequential concerns. Since the aim of the present study is to try to understand the group as a whole, I have sacrificed the advantage of greater detail that book-length commentaries would provide, in order to present a more synoptic picture. But although the treatment of individual dialogues will not be as extensively detailed as in book-length studies, I have tried to pay careful attention both to the conceptual arguments and to the dramatic and literary events, and have tried to ensure that the lessening of detail would not mean a lessening of attentiveness." (from the Preface, p. IX)

(...)

"In the middle dialogues such as the Phaedo and Republic, Plato defines reality with reference to the criterion of rationality. Reason apprehends what is universal and unchanging, but not what is particular and in flux. The senses apprehend what is particular and in flux, but not what is universal and unchanging. Since reason is a more trustworthy guide to truth than are the changeable and deceptive senses, true reality is to be identified with "being" (the universal and unchanging) rather than "becoming" (the particular and fluid). This is the dichotomy represented later in the Sophist by the gods (friends of the forms) and giants (materialists), respectively. The former maintain against the materialists that "through the body we have intercourse with becoming by means of the senses, and by means of reason through the soul we have intercourse with real being, which always remains the same in the same respects, whereas becoming is different at different times" (248a). The leader of this dialogue is not Socrates but an unnamed stranger from Elea, who apparently is proposing to give up this dichotomy by neutralizing the difference between the gods and giants—in which case he would destroy the theory of forms in one of its most fundamental features.

Consequently it is more important in the case of the Sophist than with most other dialogues to consider its standpoint in relation to that of its predecessors. There are in fact notable differences between the way sophistry—the defining focus of the present dialogue—is portrayed here and in the Socratic dialogues." (pp. 121-122)

40. ———. 2013. "The Method of Division in the Sophist: Plato’s Second deuteros plous." In Plato's Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 87-99. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"I have suggested that the trilogy [Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophist], like the Phaedo, approaches the good indirectly, by a deuteros plous. The reason the good cannot be presented directly is indicated in the final definition. The visitor concedes that it is difficult to know in which of the two species of images – distorted “semblances” or accurate “likenesses” – the sophist’s products belong (Sophist 236c – d). He goes on to locate that difficulty in the problem that to say what is false is to attribute existence to “what is not”, and although at first he raises this point with regard to semblances rather than likenesses (236e– 239e), he proceeds to broaden the problem: since any image (ειδωλον) differs from the true thing (άληθινον) that it imitates, it must be not true (μή άληθινον), which means it really is not (ούκ όντος). When Theaetetus points out that it “really is a likeness (εικόν),” the visitor replies, “Without really being, then, it really is what we call a likeness (εικόνα)?” (239d – 240b). Although the passage began as if only semblances were problematic, the problem was eventually extended to images in general, and by the end even likenesses were expressly included." (p. 97)

41. Driscoll, John. 1979. "The Platonic Ancestry of Primary Substance." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 24:253-269.

"In this paper I will not examine the three-sided relationship between the Receptacle, primary substance, and primary matter. Such an examination would afford an interesting perspective from which to study the development of Aristotle's theory of substance from the Categories to the Metaphysics, but it would raise many difficult issues not easily resolved in a short paper. I will instead simply list the properties shared by the Receptacle and primary substance and discuss one important consequence of the link thereby established between Timaeus 49-52 and Categories V: that the well-known controversy between G. E. L. Owen and Harold Cherniss over the dating of the Timaeus must be decided in favor of Owen, at least with respect to the relative dating of the Timaeus and the Sophist. I propose to show, in other words, that Categories V owes a much greater debt to Plato than is usually thought and that an examination of this debt increases our understanding not only of Aristotle's theory of substance but also of the development of Plato's later philosophy." (pp. 253-254)

42. Duerlinger, James. 1988. "The ontology of Plato's Sophist: I. The problems of falsehood, non-being and being." The Modern Schoolman no. 65:151-184.

Second part: The Modern Schoolman, LXV, March, 1988, 170-184.

"This is the first part of a two-part article in which Plato's discussion of the problems of falsehood, non-being and being, as presented in his Sophist, 236D9-25908, is explained from an ontological perspective. A new, unifying account of Plato's discussion is introduced that place it squarely within the framework of his theory of forms as it was understood by Aristotle and the ancient Platonists instead of the linguistic frameworks in which it has been placed by modern scholars. Because these linguistic frameworks have dominated both the modern translations and interpretations of Plato's text, readers will need to take special care not to presuppose the correctness of one or another of them when assessing this explanation. In particular to understand what is said here readers must free themselves of the habit of assuming that we are concerned with interpretations of " is" in positive statements of existence, predication, or identity, or with interpretations of "is not" in negative statements of existence, predication, or identity. The result of their effort, I believe, will be a clearer understanding of the novelty of my account, and consequently, a better understanding of the place of Plato's discussion within the history of ancient Greek ontology.

In the first part of this article I shall explain Plato's presentations of the problems of falsehood, non-being, and being, and in the second I shall explain his solutions t0 these problems in the context of his reply to those who deny that something can be both one and many. As Plato presents the problems of falsehood and non-being, I claim, he intends that we should realize that they rely on the assumption that because non-being is the contrary of being nothing can be both a being and a non-being. For this reason his solution to these problems is to argue, first of all, that non-being is not the contrary of being, but instead the form of otherness than another being, and secondly, that because every being, including being itself, partakes of this form, something can be both a being and a non-being." (p. 151)

43. Duncombe, Matthew. 2012. "Plato's Absolute and Relative Categories at Sophist 255c14." Ancient Philosophy no. 32:77-86.

"Beginning at Sophist 255c9 the Eleatic Stranger attempts a proof that ‘being’ (τὸ ὄν) and ‘other’ (τὸ θάτερον) are different very great kinds. The key step in this proof is to group beings (τῶν ὄντων) into those that are themselves in themselves (αὐτὰ καθ’ αὑτά) and those that are in relation to other things (πρὸς ἄλλα). Much effort has been made to understand this distinction between αὐτὰ καθ’ αὑτά and πρὸς ἄλλα. The prevailing approach takes the former to name the class of ‘absolute’ terms and the latter to name the class of ‘relative’ terms, categories described in Diogenes Laertius’ Life of Plato. Some, however, have argued that this category approach fails because it cannot say into which class some terms, such as ‘sameness’, fit. This represents a longstanding interpretive impasse. In this paper I show that an alternative manuscript reading can preserve the general category approach, whilst allowing ‘sameness’ to fit into the scheme, and thereby end the interpretive deadlock. I then defend my alternative reading against the possible objection that certain terms do not fit into the new scheme by appealing to a range of texts where Plato discusses relative terms." (p. 77, notes omitted)

"For a good overview of the literature on this distinction, see John Malcolm, "A Way Back for Sophist 255c12-13", Ancient Philosophy 26: 275-289. 2006, p. 276."

44. Eisenberg, Paul D. 1976. "More on non-being and the one." Apeiron no. 10:6-14.

"In a recent issue of this journal, Prof. William Bondeson has argued(1) that previous translations of το μηδαμώς ου will not do (or, in some cases, are even seriously misleading); and he proposes to translate that phrase by 'that which has no characteristics at all'. In the second section of his paper, he seeks to show that there is "a close resemblance" (p.17) — indeed, "a direct parallel" (p. 18)—between the Sophist's το μηδαμώς όν and the ostensible subject of the first and sixth hypotheses of the second part of the Parmenides. Although, to be sure, he raises a number of other points as well—and although I am inclined to agree

with much else that he says or suggests in his paper—what I have just indicated seem to me to be the principal theses in his paper. In any case, in this paper I shall deal almost exclusively with them—and I shall take issue with both of them. Or, more exactly, I shall argue that Bondeson's proposal for a new translation is quite untenable; and, while agreeing that there is indeed a "direct parallel" between the materials in the two dialogues that he considers, I shall question what seems to be his interpretation of the significance of those materials or arguments." (p. 13)

(1) "Non-Being and the One." Apeiron, Vol. VII, No. 2 (1973). 13-21.

45. El Murr, Dimitri. 2006. "Paradigm and Diairesis: A Response To M.L. Gill’s 'Models In Plato’s Sophist and Statesman'." Plato: The Internet Journal of the International Plato Society no. 6:1-9.

"In her interesting and stimulating paper, Mary-Louise Gill addresses one of the central issues in Plato’s Sophist and Statesman: what is a model (paradeigma) and how does one become useful in a dialectical inquiry? Gill’s main thesis is clear: a paradeigma becomes truly useful when not only the sameness between the example and the target but also their difference are recognized (“the inquirers need to recognize, not only the feature that is the same in the example and the target, but also the difference between the two embodiments and the procedural difference those different embodiments entail”)." (p. 1)

46. El_Bizri, Nader. 2004. "On και κώρα. Situating Heidegger between the Sophist and the Timaeus." Studia Phaenomenologica no. 4:73-98.

Abstract: "In attempting to address the heideggerian Seinsfrage, by way of situating it between the platonic conception of ̉όν in the Sophist and of χώρα in the Timaeus, this paper investigates the ontological possibilities that are opened up in terms of rethinking space. Asserting the intrinsic connection between the question of being and that of space, we argue that the maturation of ontology as phenomenology would not unfold in its furthermost potential unless the being of space gets clarified. This state of affairs confronts us with the exacting ontological task to found a theory of space that contributes to an explication of the question of being beyond its associated temporocentric determinations. Consequently, our line of inquiry endeavors herein to constitute a prolegmenon to the elucidation of the question of the being of space as “ontokhorology.”

47. Ellis, John. 1995. "Δύναμις and Being: Heidegger on Plato's Sophist 247d8-e4." Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 3:43-78.

"This definition of being is proposed by the Stranger in the course of his discussion of the "gigantic battle."

One side maintains that only tangible, visible bodies have being (οὐσία), while the other claims that being is limited to only incorporeal, invisible Forms, the bodies of the opponents being relegated to the realm of becoming (δύναμις)." (p. 43)

(...)

"There is hardly a line in the above summary of the setting for 247d-e that is uncontroversial. The crux of the controversy is of course whether Plato is offering a definition of being as δύναμις;. Should we take this seriously, or is it merely a mark of being, used to refute the corporealists? After all, it looks as if the Stranger merely suggests that the known is changed by the knower-it is in fact one of three options mentioned so

the friends of the Forms may not be forced to accept it. And if we do take the definition seriously, this surely entails that Plato has radically altered his view on the nature of the Forms.

The issue still divides scholars. Heidegger's interpretation of this passage in his lecture course on the Sophist is one that takes the definition seriously.

(...)

What is most interesting, however, is his relation to an unnamed interpreter, whom, as we shall see, Heidegger no doubt wants to take issue with, but who also fundamentally shaped Heidegger's own reading. This

kind of problematic relationship is even more so because he remains unnamed. He is none other than Paul Natorp, whose name explicitly occurs only one other time in the course of the lecture (with the obvious exception of the eulogy at the very beginning), and that is with respect to his article on Antisthenes [*]." (p. 44)

(...)

"The essay is divided into three subsequent sections. I will give a review of Natorp's interpretation in section II. In section III, we shall turn to Heidegger's reading in the Sophist lecture, pointing out, along the way, influences of, and divergences from, Natorp. And in section IV, we will briefly consider the issue of destruction." (p. 45)

References

[*] Natorp, Antisthenes, Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft I 2, (1894), 1538-1545.

Natorp, Paul. Platos ldeenlehre. 1903. Reprint of the 2nd (1921) edition. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1961

48. Esposti Ongaro, Michele. 2009. "The Ontological Ground of Syntax: An Analysis of Plato's Sophist, 262c2-5. A Reply to Bruno Centrone." Les Études Platoniciennes no. 6.

"In his most recent translation of the dialogue, B. Centrone(1) argues that the expressions οὐσία ὄντος and οὐσία μή ὄντος can be interpreted in different ways, according to how we interpret the noun οὐσία, either as an indication of what a thing is or as an indication of the fact that it is.

Therefore, Centrone remarks that the meaningful λόγος can assert (a) that a thing which is, or a thing which is not, are (the horse is; the chimera is); (b) what a thing which is (exists) is, or what it is not (the horse is a quadruped, it isn’t a biped); (c) what a thing which is (exists) is, or what a thing which is not (doesn’t exist) is (a swallow is winged; a chimera is winged); or (d) that a particular nature is or is not.

Centrone suggests that the first is the right interpretation. Nevertheless I am not sure that he really gives a complete range of choices. I don’t believe that the expression οὐσία μή ὄντος could refer to a non-existing entity like “a chimera”, for the simple reason that Plato had previously excluded not being as an entity: “not being” is rather an expression which means the idea of Difference, in relation to a subject. I will therefore try to demonstrate that the expressions ὄντος and οὐσία μή ὄντος aren’t equivalent and that the first refers to a particular entity, while the second has a completely different function." (p. 178)

(1) Platone, Sofista, Translation of B. Centrone, Torino, Einaudi, 2008, note 146 p. 223.

49. Esses, Daniel. 2019. "Philosophic appearance and sophistic essence in Plato’s Sophist. A New Reading of the Definitions." Ancient Philosophy no. 39:295-317.

"Why does the Eleatic Visitor present so many definitions of sophistry in Plato's Sophist? Is the final definition complete, or should it be qualified and supplemented with further research'! These arc long-standing questions in scholarship on Plato·s Sophist, and they have been the subject of lively debate.(1) I develop a new reading of the dialogue's definitions and provide fresh answers to these questions.

The distinguishing features of my reading are the following. First, I read the Sophist as a drama, paying special attention to how the dialogue's participants are portrayed and its place in a trilogy that also includes the Theaetetus and the Statesman. Second, rather than simply casting aside the first six definitions of sophistry as erroneous and irrelevant due to the success of the seventh definition, I examine what they each contribute to !he search for the sophist. The multiple definitions not only help highlight the sophist's deceptiveness and manifold appearances, but they also though subtly and gradually turn our attention to the challenge of distinguishing Socrates and sophists. Last, I strike, middle course in my assessment of the Visitor's final definition. I accept it as an adequate disclosure of the sophist's essence, but I also grapple with the possibility that it fails to provide adequate guidance for differentiating between Socratic philosophizing and sophistry." (p. 295)

(1) See Rickless 2010 for a recent intervention in this debate. Brown 2010 and Gill 2010 are also notable for their focus on the dialogue's divisions and definitions. Though studies focusing on this particular aspect of the dialogue are relatively recent, interpretations of the dialogue as a whole generally address the status and significance of the definitions, with varying conclusions.

References

Brown, Lesley 2010. "Definition and Division in Plato' Sophist ." In Definition in Greek Philosophy , edited by Charles, David, 151-171. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gill, Mary Louis. 2010. "Division and Definition in Plato's Sophist and Statesman ." In Definition in Greek Philosophy , edited by Charles, David, 172-199. New York: Oxford University Press.

Rickless, Samuel C. 2010. "Plato's Definition(s) of Sophistry." Ancient Philosophy no. 30:289-298.

50. Ferejohn, Michael T. 1989. "Plato and Aristotle on Negative Predication and Semantic Fragmentation." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 71:257-282.

"This paper opened with the proposal of a somewhat unorthodox approach to reading the Sophist (as a close companion to certain Aristotelian texts), to which can now be added a further methodological prescription which needs no apology whatsoever. Simply put, it is that the Sophist should be read as a single and continuous whole. This may not seem to need saying, but in fact it is all too tempting (and has been too common) to think of the dialogue almost as if it were two separate works: an "outer shell" (216 — 36 and 264 — 8) in which Plato is concerned primarily to show off his method of division (and secondarily to continue his sustained invective against the sophists), and a more philosophical "inner core" (237 — 64) where the aim is to vindicate the possibility of false thought and speech against Eleatic attack. This bifurcation is an excessive reaction to an unexceptionable fact.

For one can quite readily agree that there is a vast difference in philosophical content between the two parts of this alleged division without committing the correlative errors of regarding the "inner" section as self-contained, and dismissing the "outer" sections as so much optional reading when trying to puzzle out the discussion of negation, falsity, and related topics which occurs at 237 — 64.

Besides the general point that this false partition denies justice to Plato both as a philosopher and as a master of the dramatic craft, there are very powerful reasons pertaining to the specific issues involved for suspecting that the parts in question must be more connected than the explicit transitions at 236,7 and 264 make it seem.

Chief among these is the fact that whereas the particular application of the method of division to the very special case of the sophist might depend on the intelligibility of false statement, Plato's very conception of the method itself presupposes the coherence of negative predication." (pp. 264-265)

51. Ferg, Stephen. 1976. "Plato on False Statement: Relative Being, a Part of Being, and Not-Being in the Sophist." Journal of The History of Philosophy no. 14:336-342.

"Recently Plato's account of not-Being in the Sophist has received considerable attention, notably in papers by David Wiggins, (1) G. E. L. Owen, (2) and Edward N. Lee. (3)

Lee's discussion is especially important because it emphasizes (in my opinion, correctly) the analogy of the partitioning of Knowledge at 257c-d. Nevertheless even Lee seems to me to fail to give a correct explanation of the Sophist's discussion of this matter." (p. 336)

(1) David Wiggins, "Sentence Meaning, Negation, and Plato's Problem of Non-Being," in Plato, A Collection of Critical Essays, Vol. I: Metaphysics and Epistemology, ed. Gregory Vlastos (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1971), pp. 268-303.

(2) G. E. L Owen, "Plato on Not-Being," also in Vlastos, pp. 223-267. (Henceforth referred to as "Owen.')

(3) Edward N. Lee, "Plato on Negation and Not-Being in the Sophist," Philosophical Review, LXXXI, 3 (July, 1972), 267-304. (Henceforth referred to as "Lee.")

52. Ferreira, Fernando. 2001. "A Two-Worlds, Two-Semantics Interpretation of Plato's Sophist." In Greek Philosophy and Epistemology. Vol. II, edited by Boudouris, Costantin, 61-68. Athens: Ionia Publications.

"The avowed purpose of Plato’s Sophist is to characterize the sophist. In the first part of his book, Plato employs the method of divisions to obtain this characterization, and eventually arrives at the conclusion that the sophist is an imitator and that “there is an art, concerned with speeches, by which it is possible to beguile the young” (234c). From here it is short shrift to arrive at the problem of falsity. This problem is, I claim, the philosophical leitmotiv that drives the discussions in the second part of Plato’s Sophist (after 236d). One should be clear about what exactly this problem consists of. In the Sophist, Plato is not concerned with the problem of the meaningfulness of false statements concerning some high-minded realm of objects (e.g., forms) - quite to the contrary (see the epilogue). Plato is concerned with falsity in ordinary statements. This is worth emphasizing: Plato’s main problem in the Sophist is to account for the meaningfulness of such simple and prosaic (false) statements as ‘Theaetetus is flying’ (263a)." (p. 61)

53. Figal, Gunter. 2000. "Refraining from Dialectic: Heidegger's Interpretation of Plato in the Sophist Lectures (1924/25)." In, edited by Scott, Charles E. and Sallis, John, 95-109. Albany: State University of New York Press.

"We should begin with a general characterization of the Sophist and Heidegger's reading of the dialogue. The aim of the long and extremely difficult discussion between the Eleatic Stranger and Theaetetos is to find out how something like sophistry is possible. To find an answer to this question is equivalent to investigating the human way of being in the world. In this way Plato's dialogue is a contribution to ontology. Nearly needless to say that it is an ontology of a very special kind and that the ontological investigation also turns out to be very special because of the nature of its subject. As Heidegger puts it, from the attempt to hold up a mirror "to the sophist's concrete Dasein within Greek life" (GA, 19:189) soon arises the suspicion, that sophists are connected with "deception and fraud," and so the investigation has to determine the status of deception and fraud. A quite simple reflection makes clear that every deception makes a pretense of being something that it is not, it passes off "non-being for being." Accordingly, the question of the being of the sophist's form of life is the question of the being of non-being. And, as Heidegger stresses, this means "a revolution in the previous way of thinking, even in the previous way in which Plato himself put forward the meaning of being"; the demonstration of non-being in being "is nothing less than the more radical conception of the meaning of being itself' (GA, 19: 192)." (pp. 96-97)

References

GA 19 = Martin Heidegger, Platon: Sophistes, edited by Ingeborg Schüßler, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1992.

54. Fine, Gail. 1977. "Plato on Naming." The Philosophical Quarterly no. 27:289-301.

"Plato is sometimes criticized for having failed to distinguish names and sentences, and naming and stating, until the Sophist, and this failure is thought to underlie both his supposed perplexity about false belief in the Cratylus, Theaetetus, and elsewhere, and his claim, in the Cratylus, that names can be true and false" (p. 289)

(...)

"This does not imply that Plato is clear about the differences between names and sentences; but we shall at least find that there is no evidence committing him to any confusion here. Nor, as we shall see, does Plato conflate stating and naming, in either of the alleged ways. Finally, we shall see that neither his account of true names nor his account of false belief in the Cratylus rests on the crude views ascribed to him. The account of true names says no more than that names are true or false of things, and that correct assignments of names depend upon the descriptive content of names. The account of false belief, so far from depending on the atomist "hit or miss" model, in fact matches the Sophist's later, supposedly more mature, account." (pp. 290-291)

55. Flower, Robert. 1980. "G. E. L. Owen, Plato and the Verb To Be." Apeiron no. 14:87-95.

"When it comes to Plato, the question which Aristotle tells us has plagued philosophers from the beginning — namely, "What is being?" (1) — has been reduced by certain contemporary commentators to the question, "How many syntactically distinct uses of the verb "to be" can be discerned in Plato's Sophist.(2) Over this latter question there has arisen something of a controversy of interpretation between two camps, so to speak. The first camp, from which I have chosen as representative, J.L. Ackrill (3), claims to have discerned three distinct uses: the "is" of identity, the "is" of the copula, and the "is" of existence. The second camp, represented here by G.E.L. Owen,(4) claims that there are only two uses of the verb "to be" in the Sophist: the "is" of identity and the "is" of the copula. To quote Professor Owen,

"The Sophist will turn out to be primarily an essay in problems of reference and predication and in the incomplete uses of the verb associated with these. The argument neither contains nor compels any isolation of an existential verb."(5)

I should like to argue in this paper that both camps are mistaken. There is only one use of the verb "to be" in the Sophist — namely, the "is" of participation — and it is this and this use alone that constitutes Plato's answer to Aristotle's question.

Being, for Plato of the Sophist, is participation or, perhaps better, the "power of participating". Thus, while Owen is, I shall argue, quite correct when he inveighs against discerning a substantive, existential use of the verb "to be" in the Sophist, his own account (and the arguments he offers in favor of it) warrants, shall we say, a "friendly amendment".

Whether one has adopted Ackrill's position or been persuaded by Owen, the evidence in question is minimally two-fold. Either interpretation must account for, first, the various passages wherein Plato either employs or seems to imply the expression, "participates in being" and, second, the passage from 255b7 to 255e where the Eleatic Stranger distinguishes Being from the Same and the Other."

(1) Aristotle, Metaphysics, Z 1.7, 1028b3-8.

(2) While this is not the time to argue about the advisability of such a "reduction". I must admit to the suspicion that the approach to Plato inherent in such a reduction does generate certain confusions; if only because it fails to preserve the issue of the initial question.

(3) J.L. Ackrill, "Plato and the Copula: Sophist 251-259", Plato I: Metaphysics and Epistemology ed. Gregory Vlastos (Garden City, 1971), pp. 210-222. For further representatives of AckrilPs position see P.M. Cornford, Plato's Theory of Knowledge (London, 1935),

p. 296; P. Shorey, What Plato Said (Chicago, 1933), p.298; M.K. Moravcsik, "Being and Meaning in the Sophist", Acta Philosophica Fennica xiv (1962), pp. 23-78; I.M. Crombie, An Examination of Plato's Doctrines (London, 1962), vol. II, pp. 498-499.

(4) G.E.L. Owen, "Plato on Not-Being", Vlastos, pp. 223-267. See also Owen, "Aristotle on the Snares of Ontology", New Essays on Plato and Aristotle ed. R. Bambrough (London, 1965), pp. 69-95. For others who tend to share Owen's position see J. Malcolm, "Plato's Analysis of το v and το μη δν in the Sophist", Phronesis xii (1967), pp. 130-146; M. Frede, "Pradikation und Existenzaussage" Hympomnemata xviii (1967), pp. 1-99; W.O. Runciman, Plato's Later Epistemology (Cambridge, 1962), ch, iii; C. Kahn, "The Greek Verb "To Be" and the Concept of Being", Foundations of Language ii (1966), p. 261.

(5) Owen, op. cit., p. 225.

56. ———. 1984. "The number of being." The Modern Schoolman no. 62:1-26.

"It is to my mind no accident that the primary interlocutor of both the Theaetetus and the Sophist, is the young mathematician, Theaetetus. In the former dialogue Theaetetus· in-roads into a theory of proportion that would include incommensurables constitute the model in terms of which Plato would have us understand the "fluid" logic of "maieutic" inquiry. I should here like to argue that the "object" of Theaetetus' own mathematical studies - namely incommensurables - offer Plato, if not the literal truth with regard to Being, at least a revealing metaphor in terms of which the nature and logic of Being can be articulated." (p. 1)

57. Foshay, Raphael. 2017. "Plato at the Foundation of Disciplines: Method and the Metaxu in the Phaedrus, Sophist, and Symposium." IAFOR Journal of Arts & Humanities no. 4:15-23.

Abstract: "This paper situates the interpretation of Plato in its 2500-year trajectory toward a significant change in the mid-twentieth century, away from the attempt to establish Plato’s metaphysical doctrines to a recognition of the intrinsic value of their literary-dramatic dialogue form. I discuss the lingering presence of doctrinal interpretation in the Nietzschean-Heideggerian tradition of Plato interpretation as it manifests in Derrida’s reading of Plato’s Phaedrus. I then give two examples of the transformative power of attention to the literary-dramatic structure of the dialogues in the work of two quite different but mutually confirming kinds of contemporary Plato interpretation, those by Catherine H. Zuckert and William Desmond, respectively. The Plato that emerges from their work confirms the growing recognition that the tradition of Platonism does not represent the thinking embodied in Plato’s dialogues."

References

Desmond, W. (1979). Plato’s philosophical art and the identification of the sophist. Filosofia Oggi, 11, 393–403.

Zuckert, C. H. (2009). Plato’s philosophers: The coherence of the dialogues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

58. Fossheim, Hallvard J. 2013. "Development and Not-Being in Plato’s Sophist." The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy no. 13:318-327.

Abstract: "Plato’s dialogue the Sophist seems to contribute to two separate projects that are not easily reconciled: on the one hand, defining the sophist, and, on the other hand, developing a theory of being and process. In this article, it is argued that the two undertakings come together in what is a main focus for the dialogue’s interlocutors and a major issue in Plato’s writings overall, namely, education or development. This is an issue which in the Sophist finds expression in two separate but intimately interconnected questions, concerning the “who” and “how,” respectively, of the educational process."

59. Foster, Bennett. 2018. "Platonic Agonism: A Dialogical Addendum to Plato’s Sophist." Sophia and Philosophia no. 1:1-28.

"The following addendum to Plato’s Sophist was fabricated as a kind of experimental answer to a specific contextual question: What is the relation of Plato’s conception of philosophy to the practice of the agōn in Ancient Greece? For the “contest-system,”(1) to adopt Gouldner's phrase, has long been recognized as one of the salient features of Greek culture in the centuries leading up to Plato’s time.(2)" (p. 1)

(...)

(1) By “contest-system,” Gouldner means to convey the sense that the agōn is a systematic cultural entity, almost on the level of a formal institution. By agōn there is certainly meant more here than the sum of the various types of contests in Ancient Greece, let alone a particular type or instance of contest. Alvin Gouldner, “The Greek Contest System,” in Enter Plato: Classical Greece and the Origins of Social Theory (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1965), 41-77.

(2) Jacob Burkhardt is credited with popularizing the notion of the “Agonal Age” of Greek history, during which the agōn was a “motive power ... capable of working on the will and potentialities of each individual .... and indeed became the paramount feature of life.” While the agōn was on the wane in Plato’s time, its influence was formative and lasting, and it was still a live issue whether traditional values such as the agōn represented should be retained. [Jacob Burkhardt, The Greeks and Greek Civilization, trans. by Sheila Stern, ed. by Oswyn Murray (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 162, 166.]

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Plato's Sophist. Bibliography of the studies in English: Fra - Kah

Bibliography

1. Frank, Daniel H. 1985. "On What there Is: Plato's Later Thoughts." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 6:5-18.

2. Frede, Michael. 1992. "Plato's Sophist on False Statements." In The Cambridge Companion to Plato, edited by Kraut, Richard, 397-424. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"...I want in what follows to focus on the discussion of false statements. Hence I will, only very briefly, comment on the remarks about being, and, in somewhat more detail, consider the remarks about what it is to be not being, to the extent that this seems necessary to understand Plato's resolution of the difficulty concerning false statements." (p. 399)

(...)

"Conclusion. In fact one thing that is striking about the Sophist, in comparison to the earlier dialogues, is its "dogmatic" and systematic character. It sets out carefully constructing a series of puzzles, aporiai. In this respect its first half resembles the early dialogues or even its immediate predecessor, the Theaetetus. But then it turns toward a resolution of these aporiai. In this regard the procedure of the dialogue reminds one of the methodological principle Aristotle sometimes refers to and follows, the principle that on a given subject matter we first of all have to see clearly the aporiai involved before we can proceed to an adequate account of the matter, which proves its adequacy in part by its ability both to account for and to resolve the aporiai (cf. De An. I, 2, 403b2o-21; Met. B1, 995a27 ff.). And the Sophist proceeds to resolve these difficulties in a very systematic and almost technical way. By careful analysis it tries to isolate and to settle an issue definitively. In this regard it does stand out among all of Plato's dialogues. And because of this it also is more readily accessible to interpretation. If, nevertheless, we do have difficulties with this text, it is in good part because in his day Plato was dealing with almost entirely unexplored issues for whose discussion even the most rudimentary concepts were missing. Seen in this light, Plato's solution of the difficulty presented by false statements is a singular achievement." (p. 423)

3. ———. 1996. "The Literary Form of the Sophist." In Form and Argument in Late Plato, edited by Gill, Christopher and McCabe, Mary Margaret, 135-152. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"If one considers the literary form of the Sophist, one is primarily interested in what is characteristic of, or distinctive about, the literary form of this particular dialogue, as opposed to other Platonic dialogues. But this should not make us overlook the fact that the Sophist, first of all, is a dialogue, and that, in the case of the Sophist, there is something particularly puzzling about this. So I will first consider the question why Plato wrote the Sophist as a dialogue, and then turn to two other literary features of the text.

The puzzle is this. If we look at the early aporetic dialogues, we have a number of readily available explanations why Plato wrote them as dialogues. But, as we proceed to the middle and then the late dialogues, these explanations become less and less plausible. And they seem to be particularly implausible in the case of the Sophist. For the Sophist, in a way, is the most dogmatic of all of Plato's dialogues. And it might seem that Plato could as well have written at least the central part of this dialogue as a treatise on falsehood." (p. 135)

4. Friedländer, Paul. 1969. Plato. Vol. III: The Dialogues, Second and Third Period. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Second edition, with revisions (First edition 1958) Chapter XXVI: Sophist, pp. 243-279.

Translated from the German Platon: Seinswaheheit und Lebenswirklichkeit, 3 vols. Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1954 by Hans Meyerhoff.

Publisher's note: "The first volume of this work, Plato: An Introduction (1958), contains seventeen chapters, each an independent study of an aspect of Plato’s thought, his creative work, and his relation to modern thinkers, and a chapter on Plato as jurist by Huntington Cairns. A new edition is in preparation, with revisions and additional annotation.

The second volume, Plato: The Dialogues, First Period (1964), contains Chapters I-XIX, which interpret the works of Plato’s early creative period, the “ascent.”

The third volume, Plato: The Dialogues, Second and Third Periods, contains Chapters XX-XXXI. These take up the central and late dialogues, the works of Plato’s major creative periods. At the end of this final volume, there is an Afterword, “On the Order of the Dialogues.”

"We know that the task of clarifying the meaning of pseudos— falsehood, deception, and lie—occupied Plato from his beginnings as a philosopher. It did not grow out of a special interest in a difficult logical problem. It occupied him because (to speak in the concrete imagery of the Sophist) both sophistic and eristic hide in this darkness and confusion—everything, in other words, that is hostile to philosophy and that, because of its dangerously similar appearance, jeopardizes the reputation of philosophy and the life of the philosopher. Even one of the earliest of Plato’s works, the Hippias Minor, deals with the problem of deception, involuntary and voluntary, sophistic and Socratic deception. Then, with the Cratylus, language becomes the instrument of positive enlightenment. There (Cratylus 431bc; cf. 385bc) discourse is explained as the “juxtaposition” of noun and verb. In the Sophist, it is the “combination” of the two, and this change is more than a mere difference in expression. In the Cratylus, we are shown that just as the elements of a sentence, the “names,” may be used wrongly, so may the juxtaposition of these elements. The Sophist derives discourse not simply from “naming”; discourse has a new and autonomous structure. As a unique kind of being it has the structure of being itself, characterized by “communion.” In the Cratylus, the “names” have the function of revealing (δήλωμα, 433b et seq.}; in the Sophist, it is the statement that has this function. Hence, the Cratylus seeks to discover falsehood in the elements of language; the Sophist seeks it more deeply, in the structure of language."

5. Fronterotta, Francesco. 2011. "Some Remarks on the Senses of Being in the Sophist." In Plato's Sophist: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlíček, Aleš and Karfík, Filip, 35-62. Praha: Oikoymenh.

Abstract: "In this paper I examine the question of the different senses of the verb "to be" and the notion of "being" in Plato's Sophist, discussing the relevant passages and bibliography."

6. ———. 2013. "Theaetetus sits - Theaetetus flies. Ontology, predication and truth in Plato’s Sophist (263a-d)." In Plato's Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 205-223. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"After solving the problem of “what is not” (259a–b) by elucidating the relations between the γένη that give rise to their reciprocal κοινωνία (259d-e), the next step, before getting back to hunting the sophist, is to clarify whether this also helps disentangle the difficulty connected with the possibility of falsehood in λόγοι, as the examination of what is not was introduced for precisely this purpose: once the logical aporia of falsehood has emerged from the ontological paradox of what is not, solving the latter would also solve the former. So, if what is not, whose form the Stranger has succeeded in identifying, “blends with thinking and discourse” (δοξη και λογω μειγνυται), there will be no contradiction in allowing falsehood in λόγοι, thus making approachable the dark place of images and appearances that are only similar to the truth, where the sophist has taken refuge; but if this were not the case, any λόγος would always have to be considered necessarily true and the inaccessibility of falsehood would make the sophist’s refuge safe from any threat (260d –261b). The section of the dialogue that opens in this way contains some of the fundamental premises of what can fairly be seen as Plato’s philosophy of language (259e –264b)." (p. 205)

7. Gacea, Alexandru-Ovidiu. 2019. "Plato and the “Internal Dialogue”: An Ancient Answer for a New Model of the Self." In Psychology and Ontology in Plato, edited by Pitteloud, Luca and Keeling, Evan, 33-54. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

"The theme of the dialogic relationship that the ψυχή entertains with itself appears explicitly in the Theaetetus and the Sophist.(10) Naturally, one could argue that “dialogicity” represents one of Plato’s main concerns throughout the dialogues.

However, I prefer to isolate the way the issue is treated in these two dialogues, because stating explicitly that thought is the “dialogue of the soul with itself” appears to be indicative of a particular Platonic outlook on thought and selfhood. I claim that Plato is subtly moving away from a descriptive perspective, the way thought has always been conceived in Greek culture, toward a prescriptive one, the philosophical appropriation and reinterpretation of this cultural trait. I thus propose not to treat this notion as being self-explanatory." (p. 35, a note omitted)

(...)

"In the Sophist, the description is couched in different terms, making the distinctions more explicit and adding some other elements: “Thought (διάνοια) and speech (λόγος), says the Visitor, are the same, except that what we call thought (διάνοια) is dialogue (διάλογος) that occurs without the voice (διάλογος ἄνευ φωνῆς), inside the soul (ἐντὸς τῆς ψυχῆς) in conversation with itself. […] And the stream of sound from the soul that goes through the mouth is called speech (λόγος)” (263e3-8). We find out that dialogic thought and speech are not identical but of the same kind, namely, λόγος. Διάλογος is a type of λόγος but not in the same way uttered speech is λόγος, i.e., doxic λόγος. The dialogue “placed inside the soul” occurs “without sound or voice,” but speech is always uttered, it is something that is “breathed out.”

Not all speech is thought or dialogue, but all thought can become speech when it is accompanied with sound or when it is exteriorized. Furthermore, the λόγος that is exteriorized, “breathed out,” is not the dialogue but its “conclusion,” i.e., the δόξα.

The belief marks the cessation of the conversation, the moment when the soul doesn't doubt anymore." (p. 40)

(10) There is a third passage about the “internal dialogue” in the Philebus (38c-e), but this is more of an example than a description of dialogic thought.

8. Galligan, Edward M. 1983. "Logos in the Theaetetus and the Sophist." In Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy: Volume Two, edited by Anthon, John P. and Preus, Anthony, 264-278. Albany: State University of New York Press.

"In this paper I am concerned with the Theaetetus' dreamed theory [(201d-206b)] and its refutation in that dialogue. From the vantage point of the Sophist, I ask (1) whether and how Plato changed the theory's view of logos and (2) whether and how he might have been able to loosen the dilemma that refutes the theory." (p. 265)

(...)

"The dreamed theory and the Sophist differ about logos in rather much the way they differ about syllables. Though the Theaetetus contains a distinction of letters into kinds, not much was made of these distinctions. But according to the Sophist, vowels make non-vowels pronounceable. The latter dialogue claims part-part asymmetry for syllables. As for logos, the dreamed theory does not clearly have any part-part asymmetry, whereas the Sophist articulates just such a distinction. On the other hand, concerning the whole-part aspect of logoi, the dreamed theory and the Sophist are closer. According to the dreamed theory, by means of a statement we can express our knowledge of complexes, but what we can only name, elements, we can neither know nor state. According to the Sophist, we can name beings by means of a name or a verb, but in doing so we do not state anything of anything.

The Sophist's view of both statement and syllable seems to be that they are wholes that come to be when their parts are put together and that the wholes have a character that their parts do not have. This suggests that syllables and statements are open to whatever force there is in the second horn of the dilemma brought against the dreamed theory." (p. 270)

9. Gerson, Lloyd. 1986. "A Distinction in Plato's Sophist." The Modern Schoolman no. 63:251-266.

Reprinted in: Nicholas D. Smith (ed.), Plato: Critical Assessments Vol. IV: Plato's Later Works, London: Routledge 1998, pp. 125-141.

10. ———. 2006. "The 'Holy Solemnity' of Forms and the Platonic Interpretation of Sophist." Ancient Philosophy no. 26:291-304.

"There is a famous passage in Plato's Sophist which serves-as well as any, I believe-to indicate perhaps one of the most fundamental divides among Plato scholars. The division is between those who do and those who do not take seriously the ancient Platonic tradition's interpretations of Plato. The passage is the Eleatic Stranger's response to the claim of the 'Friends of the Forms' that 'real being' (τὴν ὄντως οὐσίαν, 248a11) is immovable."

(...)

"The argument leading up to this rhetorical question is this: if knowing is a case of 'acting' (ποιείν) on something, then being known is a case of 'being acted upon' (παρχειν). Since the Friends of the Forms agree that real being is known, they would seem to be forced to admit that the Forms, insofar as they are known, are acted upon. But that which is acted upon is 'in motion' (κινεισθαι). So, the Forms would seem to be in motion insofar as they are acted upon. But the Friends have maintained that Forms are not in motion; on the contrary, they are completely immovable. So, the Friends are faced with an apparent dilemma: either Forms are not known or else their claim that real being is immovable must be abandoned." (p. 291)

(...)

"In sum, the Platonic interpretation of Sophist maintains that the Friends of the Forms - both ancient and modern - do not grasp full-blown Platonism. Perhaps Plato himself at one time in his career did not grasp its nature either. Platonism is, among other things, the view that οὐσία must never be supposed to have its own separate reality. It is always and necessarily understood as embedded in the matrix Demiurge-οὐσία-Idea of the Good. From the Platonists' perspective, Aristotle wrongly collapsed or telescoped this matrix into the Prime Unmoved Mover, thereby making it unsuitable to be the absolutely simple first principle of all. The inseparability of ontologically primary thinking and being is a doctrine shared by Plato and Aristotle." (p. 302)

11. Giannopoulou, Zina. 2001. ""The Sophistry of Noble Lineage" Revisited: Plato's Sophist 226 b1 - 231 b8." Illinois Classical Studies no. 26:101-124.

"This paper deals exclusively with the sixth logos of sophistry, which depicts the sophistic art as "noble" and its practitioner, the sophist, as a teacher with apparently similar educational characteristics as those possessed by Socrates, the greatest enemy of sophistic practices. My aim is to shed some new light on the identity of the "sophist of noble lineage." Some of the methodological questions which will shape my argumentation are the following: is "noble sophistry" a suitable characterization of Socrates' elenctic method? If the answer to this question is positive, then how can one explain the fact that the Socratic method seems to be reflected in otherwise straightforward definitions of the sophists which condemn and repudiate their practices? If, on the other hand, the sixth definition does not intend to present Socrates as a "noble sophist" but simply reveals a more positive aspect of the σοφιστική τέχνη which could be seen as Socratic, what are the distinctive boundaries that clearly separate the elenchos from even the noblest eristic? In order to conduct my examination, I have divided this paper into three parts. In Part I, I attempt a close reading of the method used by the Eleatic Stranger and demonstrate its limitations; it is, I suggest, the nature of these limitations which contributes significantly to the ambiguity of the logos provided in the sixth definition. In Part II, I explore the main methodological tool of the definition, namely the "body and soul" analogy, and assess its impact on the quality of the logos provided. Finally, in Part III, I offer my own interpretation; its novelty lies in the fact that it contextualizes this part of the Sophist in the broader frame of the dialectical quest conducted by the Stranger and attempts to account for its intentional definitional ambiguity." (pp. 101-102)

12. Gibson, Twyla. 2009. "The Code of Ethics in Medicine: Intertextuality and Meaning in Plato's Sophist and Hippocrates' Oath." In Critical Interventions in the Ethics of Healthcare: Challenging the Principle of Autonomy in Bioethics, edited by Holmes, David and Murray, Stuart J., 183-198. London: Routledge.

"I develop a set of criteria for identifying connections between Hippocrates and Plato by drawing upon media and information theory to adapt the principles devised by researchers working on intertextuality in other ancient Greek collections. Next, I turn to

Plato's Sophist, a dialogue that explains the procedure for distinguishing multiple sequences of classifications that make up the different branches of the definition of art or technique (techne). I delineate the topics in the definition of the Merchant of Learning, and then use this Platonic sequence as a template for comparing the organization of topics and ideas in the Oath. I show that the sequential order of topics in the Oath corresponds point by point to the serial order of the topics in the various classifications of the definition explained in Plato's Sophist. The presence in the Oath of the same sequence described in Plato makes it possible to line up the classifications in the two works and to cross-reference and compare information in corresponding categories. Cross-referencing of topics and ideas allows us to bring information presented in Plato to bear on the interpretation of the Oath. This new information provides the· resources for dealing with issues of interpretation that have gone unresolved due to lack of evidence concerning the meaning and context of words and ideas. The discovery of connections between Plato and Hippocrates adds to our understanding of the meanings communicated in the Oath by linking the Greek medical tradition to the wider context of ancient thought and expression.

This broadened context sheds new light on the foundations of Western medical ethics and provides the evidence and insights needed to reconstruct and reassess the history of our ethical tradition. It is my argument that the expanded horizons of meaning gained though the study of intertextual connections among Hippocratic and Platonic texts and traditions provides a rich resource for reevaluating the history of Western medical ethics, and for defending and critiquing the possibilities entailed by biomedical technologies today." (p. 184)

13. ———. 2010. "The Fisher: Repetition and Sequence in Plato’s Sophist, Statesman, and Ion." The McNeese Review no. 48:84-112.

"In this study, I address the question of a coherent philosophical system in Plato's collected dialogues as well as the problem concerning the meaning and function of Plato's method. Is there evidence of a consistent set of principles in Plato's dialogues that pertain to all the disparate discourses in the collection?

What is the purpose of the method of division and of the sequences of topics and ideas that make up the classifications spelled out by the characters in Plato's Sophist and Statesman? This study proposes new answers to these questions." (pp. 86-87)

(...)

"Comparing passages from several important dialogues in light of one definition suggests that the Sophist does offer a technical explanation and demonstration of Plato's method. Tracing the definition of the fisher across three books highlights a number of consistencies that point to the presence of a system, and shows how repetition and sequencing are principles that may be applied to different texts in the collection. Moreover, finding the definition in four works makes it possible to transfer findings from the case studies to Plato's dialogues more generally. Generalizing from the examples to the dialogues as a whole suggests that the "Forms" are the system of rules and conventions that govern the order, shape, and organization of all of Plato's dialogues." (pp. 108-109)

14. ———. 2011. "The Philosopher’s Art: Ring Composition and Classification in Plato’s Sophist and Hipparchus." In Orality and Literacy: Reflections across Disciplines, edited by Carlson, Keith Thor, Fagan, Kristina and Khanenko-Friesen, Natalia, 73-109. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

"With Plato, argued media theorist Marshall McLuhan, the Greeks 'flipped out of the old Homeric world of the bards into this new, rational ... civilized world.'(1) McLuhan and other scholars associated with the foundations of media studies cite Plato's writings as evidence for dating the shift from primary orality to literacy in ancient Greek culture.

Further research has demonstrated that the 'great divide' of orality versus literacy is untenable; traditional oral modes of communication persist alongside and into written texts.

This study re-examines Plato's dialogues in light of recent research concerning ring composition, an oral formulaic technique found in Homer. Comparative analysis of two exemplary dialogues - Plato's Sophist and Hipparchus - shows that these works manifest the ring pattern associated with oral traditional modes of communication. This comparative evidence suggests that the dialogues are transitional compositions, and that Plato's writings represented not a break with the oral tradition but rather its transposition to written texts. I explain the implications of these findings for the interpretation of the history and philosophy communicated in Plato's dialogues, in other ancient oral derived works, and for the study of oral histories and traditions today." (p. 73)

(1) Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Me: Lectures and Interviews, ed. Stephanie McLuhan and David Staines (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2003), 227.

15. Gili, Luca. 2017. "Plato, Soph. 216 a3–4." Méthexis no. 29:171-173.

"N.-L. Cordero has persuasively argued that there is no reason to delete ἑταίρων (l. 4) if one were to choose the reading ἔτερον (l. 3), that all manuscripts preserve, instead of ἑταῖρον.(2)" (p. 171)

(...)

"My reading turns the reference to the followers of the Eleatics as a piece of Platonic irony – they are philosophers, but definitely not as good as the stranger – Plato’s alter ego? – nor, we can suppose, as their masters Parmenides and Zeno." (p. 173)

(2) Cf. N.-L. Cordero, El Extranjero de Elea, ‘compañero’ de los Parmenídeos…desde 1561, Méthexis xxiii (2013), 51–58. Cordero, however, seems to be unaware of the fact that Y, the earliest source for ἕτερον, does not have a primary status. On this issue see A. D’Acunto, “Su un’edizione platonica di Niceforo Moscopulo e Massimo Planude: il Vindobonensis Phil. Gr. 21 (Y),” Studi classici e orientali 45 (1996), 261–279. Accordingly, Cordero’s intervention, whose rationale I fully endorsed, should not be understood as an emendation ope codicum, but rather as an emendation ope ingenii that at least one Byzantine reader already suggested. The text that Cordero and I defend is not an ancient variant.

16. Gill, Mary Louise. 2006. "Models in Plato's Sophist and Statesman." Journal of the International Plato Society no. 6:1-9.

"Plato’s Sophist and Statesman use a notion of a model (paradeigma) quite different from the one with which we are familiar from dialogues like the Phaedo, Parmenides, and Timaeus. In those dialogues a paradeigma is a separate Form, an abstract perfect particular, whose nature is exhausted by its own character. Its participants are conceived as likenesses or images of it: they share with the Form the same character, but they also fall short of it because they exemplify not only that character but also its opposite. Mundane beautiful objects are plagued by various sorts of relativity—Helen is beautiful compared to other women, but not beautiful compared to a goddess; she is beautiful in her physical appearance, but not in her soul or her actions; she is beautiful in your eyes, but not in mine, and so on. The Form of the Beautiful, which is supposed to explain her beauty, is simply and unqualifiedly beautiful (Symp. 210e5-211d1).

In the Sophist and Statesman a model involves a mundane example whose definition is relevant to the definition of some more difficult concept under investigation, the target. The steps taken to define the example also reveal a useful procedure to be transferred to the more difficult case. This much should be fairly uncontroversial. In my view it is important to recognize that a paradeigma is not merely an example (or paradigmatic example) of some general concept." (p. 1)

17. ———. 2010. "Division and Definition in Plato's Sophist and Statesman." In Definition in Greek Philosophy, edited by Charles, David, 172-199. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In this paper I will argue that dichotomous division yields a good definition of a target kind only in the simplest and most uncontroversial cases. Plato also uses division in defining more complex kinds, but then it serves as a preliminary strategy, which undertakes to expose some puzzle about the kind under investigation, which the enquirers must resolve in some other way, or at least in conjunction with some other method.

We have trouble catching the sophist, because we find him, not at the end of a single branch, but at many different termini, allowing multiple definitions. We find the statesman at a single terminus, but he has many rivals there, who claim to share his expertise; the definition of the statesman reached by dichotomous division, though very detailed, turns out to be much too general. These disappointing results serve a purpose. Plato wants us to see that something about the sophist explains why he turns up all over the map, and that something about the statesman explains why he has company at the terminus. In each dialogue, reflection on the peculiar outcome of division enables the enquirers to recognize something about the kind in question which helps to explain the peculiarity. The enquirers aim to discover a real definition that applies to all and only instances that fall under a kind, and which specifies its essence -- the feature or complex of features that explains why in the case of the sophist he turns up in too many places, and why in the case of the statesman he is not alone at the terminus." (p. 173)

18. ———. 2012. Philosophos: Plato’s Missing Dialogue. New York: Oxford University Press.

Contents: Introduction 1; 1. Forms in Question 18; 2. A Philosophical Exercise 45; 3. The Contest between Heraclitus and Parmenides 76; 4. Knowledge as Expertise 101; 5. Appearances of the Sophist 138; 6. Refining the Statesman 177; 7. The Philosopher’s Object 202; Works Cited 245; Index Locorum 263; Index of Names 274; General Index 278-290.

"The only thing that does not exist is something indescribable, something with no features at all: nothing—or to use Owen’s colorful phrase, “a subject with all the being knocked out of it and so unidentifiable.”(12) I take it that not-being, so understood, is the focus of the first three puzzles about not-being in the Sophist and of the sixth deduction in the Parmenides, so it could be that Plato restricts non-existence to an unidentifiable non-thing: Plato’s notion of existence need not correspond to our own. Even so, he talks about fictional entities in several dialogues (centaurs and other mythical creatures), and the Sophist itself begins and ends with a discussion of production, defined by the Stranger as bringing into being something that previously was not (219b4–6, 265b8–10).(13) Furthermore, the Battle of the Gods and Giants at the center of the dialogue treats two distinct views about what is real (tangible things or immaterial forms), a dispute that surely concerns actual being or existence (a monadic property), what things have it and what things do not. The items rejected on each side are describable, even as the opponents on the other side (Gods or Giants) deny their being. The Stranger tries to settle the feud with his definition of being as dunamis (the capacity to act on or to be affected by something else). Moreover, this same monadic being—the nature of being (250c6–7)—is the property that becomes mysterious in the Aporia about Being (249d9–250d4) directly following the Battle of the Gods and Giants.14 Plato is clearly interested in monadic being in the Sophist — what things have this feature, and what things, though describable, do not. In Chapter 5 I take the first steps toward an alternative interpretation of being, one indebted to Lesley Brown and Michael Frede, which aims to preserve the virtues of their different proposals without the shortcomings." (p. 176)

(12) Owen (1971: 247).

(13) Cf. E. N. Lee (1972: 300) and Heinaman (1983: 12).

14 Discussed below in Chapter 7 secs. 7.2 and 7.6.

References

Heinaman, R. 1983. “Being in the Sophist.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 65: 1–17.

Lee, E. N. 1972. “Plato on Negation and Not-Being in the Sophist.” Philosophical Review 81: 267–304.

Owen, G. E. L. 1971. “Plato on Not-Being.” In G. Vlastos (ed.), Plato 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology. Garden City: Doubleday. 223–67. Repr. in G. E. L. Owen, 1986. 104–137.

Owen, G. E. L. 1986. Logic, Science and Dialectic. M. C. Nussbaum (ed.). London: Duckworth/Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

19. ———. 2021. "Images of Wisdom in the Prologue of Plato’s Sophist." The Journal of Greco-Roman Studies no. 60:137-152.

Abstract: "This paper examines the prologue of Plato’s Sophist in light of interpretive claims by Proclus, and revived by Myles Burnyeat,[*] that Plato imaged in the opening scene of his dialogues the main philosophical themes of the work.

This paper applies that insight to the prologue of the Sophist and argues that Proclus is right but that the work in which this prologue is embedded is much larger than the dialogue it introduces. A close reading of the Sophist’s prologue reveals it to image, in a literary way, the whole series of dialogues—Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman, and missing Philosopher—of which the Sophist is a member. At the end of the Sophist, the sophist is identified as imitator of the wise man. The paper explores the sophist in relation to the kinds it imitates, including two sorts of wise men, the philosopher and the statesman, and asks whether there is a wide kind covering all of them, both genuine experts and their benign and dangerous imitators. If there is such a kind, what is its status as a kind? The paper considers a genealogical family, descended from a common ancestor (intelligence or cleverness) with derivative kinds differentiated from one another by their object and their aims, either beneficial or harmful."

[*] Burnyeat, M. F., 1997, “First Words,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 43, 1-20. (reprinted as Chapter 16 in F. M. Burnyeat, Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge Univerist Press 2012, p. 305-326.

20. Giovannetti, Lorrenzo. 2021. "Between Truth and Meaning. A Novel Interpretation of the Symploke in Plato’s Sophist." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 42:261-290.

Abstract: "In this paper, I provide an interpretation of the symploke ton eidon at Soph. 259e. My goal is to show that the specific metaphysical view expressed by the interweaving of forms best accounts for Plato’s explanation of truth and falsehood.

In the first section, I introduce the fundamentals of the interpretation of the greatest kinds and their functions. After that, I propose an interpretation of the assertion at 259e, the upshot of which is that the interweaving of forms only deals with extra-linguistic items, that it is related to both truth and meaning of linguistic items, in a very complex way which I aim to explain throughout the paper, and that it never involves sensible particulars. In the second section, I put forward my reading of the Stranger’s description of how logoi are structured and how they work. I pay particular attention to the view that words reveal being when they intertwine to form a statement. In the third section, I interpret the statements concerning Theaetetus. My goal is to advance a new reading of the specific role that kinds and their interweaving play with regard to the truth and falsehood of the statements concerning Theaetetus. The result is the very specific view that the kinds, which are the separated ontological cause of what happens in space and time, are the grounds of both the truth and the meaning of statements."

21. Gómez-Lobo, Alfonso. 1977. "Plato's Description of Dialectic in the Sophist 253d1-e2." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 22:29-47.

"In the Sophist there is an obscure and much disputed passage (253 d 1-e 2) which professes to say something about what is proper to the science of Dialectic (... μῶν οὐ τῆς διαλεκτικῆς φήσομεν ἐπιστήμης εἶναι ; 253 d 2-3). The communis opinio is that we are offered there a description of the Method of Division. The facts that the passage is introduced by the expression τὸ κατὰ γένη διαιρεῖσθαι , that it appears in a late dialogue and moreover in a dialogue where that method is explicitly practiced (218 b 5-236 c 8 and 264 b 9-268 d 5) seem to be very strong reasons for suspecting that here Plato must have in mind the Diaeretic Method. This conviction seems to be almost unavoidable when one takes the lines as an "ausführliche Definition des Dialektikers" (Stenzel). (2) If it is such an exhaustive definition, how could Division be missing from it? I would like to challenge the generally accepted view and show that another quite different interpretation gives a better sense to the text and solves some problems which otherwise must remain puzzling. Since nearly all recent interpretations depend on Stenzel's, I shall discuss it first (I). Then (II) I shall put forward the main theses of my interpretation and lastly (III) I shall paraphrase the whole text." (p. 29)

(...)

"Summary: Soph. 253 d 1-e 2 does not describe Division, it anticipates the comparison Being and Not-Being with other Forms which will ultimately provide Plato's answer to the dilemma of Parmenides." (p. 47)

(2) Julius Stenzel, Studien zur Entwicklung der platonischen Dialektik von Sokrates zu Aristoteles, 2. Auf., Leipzig, 1931 (reprint Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1961), English translation by D. J. Allan, Plato's Method of Dialectic, Oxford, 1940. Quotations or my own translations from the German original will be identified by 'orig.' Quotations from Allan's translation are identified by 'trans.' Occasionally Allan's version is inaccurate; in such cases I have referred to the original German text.

22. ———. 1981. "Dialectic in the Sophist: a reply to Waletzki." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 26:80-83.

Reply to Waletzki (1979).

"In "Platons ldeenlehre und Dialektik im Sophistes 253d" (Phronesis 24 (1979) 241-252) Wolfgang Waletzki has criticized an earlier article of mine on that passage (Phronesis 22 (1977) 29-47). Although I have benefitted from a number of his observations, I am not in a position to accept his interpretation as a whole. Instead of arguing piecemeal against each of his claims, I would here like to embark first on a task which I believe to be more rewarding: the working out of criteria which would have to be satisfied by a correct interpretation of the disputed passage. In the light of these criteria I hope to show that Waletzki's approach is unsatisfactory, thus vitiating his specific claims." (p. 80)

23. Gonzalez, Francisco J. 1997. "On the Way to Sophia: Heidegger on Plato's Dialectic, Ethics, and Sophist." Research in Phenomenology no. 27:16-60.

"The great lacuna in the Heideggerian Gesamtausgabe has been a detailed interpretation of an entire Platonic dialogue. This situation has changed with the publication of the lecture course on Plato's Sophist ( 1924/25) .(1) This text does not disappoint for lack of thoroughness or scope: Heidegger takes the task of interpreting this major Platonic dialogue so seriously that he devotes over two hundred pages to preparing his interpretation and almost four hundred pages to detailed, almost line by line exegesis of the text, from the dramatic prologue to the explanation of the possibility of falsehood. With this course, therefore, we are finally in a position to assess the extent to which Heidegger succeeded in coming to terms with Plato's thought.

In this paper I argue that, despite some important insights, this attempted "philosophical appropriation of Plato"(2) fails. I also suggest that this failure exposes certain limitations of Heidegger's thought,

specifically with regard to the relation between ethics and ontology." (p. 16)

(1) Platon: Sophistes, vol. 19 of Gesamtausgabe, ed. Ingeborg Schussler am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, hereafter GA 19.

(2) To use Heidegger's own characterization of what Friedrich Schleiermacher failed to achieve: "die philosophische Aneignung Plato" (GA 19: 313). All translations of Heidegger and Plato in this paper are my own.

24. ———. 2000. "The Eleatic Stranger: His Master's Voice? ." In Who Speaks for Plato? Studies in Platonic Anonymity, edited by Press, Gerald A., 161-181. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.

"Interpreters of the Sophist and the Statesman almost universally assume that the Eleatic Stranger speaks for Plato. This is surprising, given how little speaks in favor of this assumption and even how intuitively implausible it is." (p. 161)

(...)

"Yet, interpreters are apparently willing to live with some implausibility here because they consider it even more implausible that the Stranger should not speak for Plato. Their argument, insofar as it can be reconstructed, assumes that the only positive assertions made in the two dialogues are the Strangers and that therefore one could, without losing anything essential, eliminate the dialogue form by putting what the Stranger says into the form of a treatise authored by Plato. The aim of the present chapter is to refute this specific assumption and therefore the interpretation that depends on it. Socrates does speak in both dialogues, and what he says is of extraordinary importance; furthermore, a major, perhaps the major event of Socrates' life, namely, his trial, forms the dramatic context. These words and deeds of Socrates are not peripheral curiosities added to relieve the tedium of an otherwise highly abstract discussion. Instead, as I will show, what Socrates says and who he is, even his silence in the dialogue, expose serious problems in what the Stranger says. If Plato in this way uses Socrates against the Stranger, the assumption that the Stranger speaks for Plato, already implausible on the surface, is rendered untenable. On the other hand, we are not thereby required to conclude that Plato rejects everything the Stranger says and chooses Socrates instead as his mouthpiece. What we have here, as elsewhere, is not a disguised author expounding doctrines in a disguised treatise, but rather a drama in which two opposed and limited perspectives confront each other and in that confrontation leave us with a problem." (pp. 161-162, notes omitted)

25. ———. 2003. "Confronting Heidegger on Logos and Being in Plato's Sophist." In Platon und Aristoteles - sub ratione veritatis. Festschrift für Wolfgang Wieland zum 70. Geburstag, edited by Damschen, Gregor, Enskat, Rainer and Vigo, Alejandro G., 102-133. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

"In his WS 1924-25 lecture course on Plato's Sophist, Heidegger charges that, because in this dialogue the method of separation and division is applied not only to objects in the world, such as the angler, but also to Being itself and its structures, Plato recognized no distinction between the way of dealing with beings (Behandlungsart des Seienden) and the way of dealing with Being (Behandlungsart des Seins). What underlies this charge is Heidegger's conviction, which he seeks to support in the present course, that to address Being by way of λόγος and its structure, which is what the method of διαίρεσις does, is inevitably to collapse the distinction between Being and beings. Heidegger further suggests that Plato's Ideas or Forms are a product of this approach to Being and the confusion it produces (287). The goal of this paper is to defend Plato against this charge by arguing the following: 1) Plato fully recognizes both the ontological difference itself and the inability of λόγος, and any λόγος-centered approach, to preserve and do justice to this difference; 2) Plato's response to this "weakness" of λόγος is, in the Sophist, to distance himself from the λόγος of Being (and non-being) presented there by means of various strategies, most generally the dialogue

form itself; 3) though the εἰδη are unavoidably objectified in discourse, Plato did not understand the εἰδη as objectively present things: indeed, it was precisely in order to avoid objectifying the εἰδη that Plato refrained from offering a "theory of Forms"; 4) Heidegger's attempt to reduce the dialogue's characterization of Being as δύναμις to a characterization of Being as presence is unacceptable; 5) despite Heidegger's insistence to the contrary, even the account of Being as δύναμις is presented in the dialogue not as final, but as aporetic and necessarily so. In pursuing this goal it is neither my intention nor even possible in the present context to give a detailed, step-by-step exposition of Heidegger's course, much less of the Sophist itself. Instead. I will assume some acquaintance with both in focusing on only those moments where Heidegger explicitly sets himself apart from Plato, with the aim of encouraging us to set ourselves apart from Heidegger's reading of Plato." (pp. 102-103, notes omitted)

26. ———. 2011. "Being as Power in Plato's Sophist and Beyond." In Plato's Sophist: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlíček, Aleš and Karfík, Filip, 63-95. Praha: Oikoymenh.

"In the literature on Plato's metaphysics one finds much discussion of what kinds of beings exist for Plato, what makes one class of beings 'more real' than another, what relation exists between these different levels of beings, and what ultimate principles or causes can be invoked to explain the nature of these beings. What is much harder to find is reflection on what this word 'being' actually means for Plato. If both sensible objects and the Forms can be said to be, if the latter must nevertheless be said to be more truly, or 'more beingly', than the former, then what exactly is meant by this word 'be'? If this fundamental question has been neglected in the literature, the reason is not that Plato fails to address it In the Sophist this question is not only addressed, but given an answer. Since the passage in question (247d8-e4) is the only place in the Platonic corpus where this question is directly raised and answered - and this in a context that stresses the great importance and indispensability of the question - one would expect it to be the subject of a voluminous literature. Strangely, the exact opposite is the case. Not only the literature on Plato's ontology, but even the literature devoted specifically to the Sophist, displays little interest in the definition of being this dialogue offers. Those scholars who have discussed the definition at all have tended to dismiss it as purely provisional, ad hominem, and in the end unPlatonic. Other scholars, particularly in more recent works on the Sophist, quickly pass over the definition with little or no comment.' What explains this neglect? The first set of scholars presumably have interpretative grounds for denying that the definition is Plato's, but many devote little effort to making this case and all fail to suggest what might be a better definition in Plato's eyes.

The second set of scholars, in simply passing over the definition with no comment, perhaps have deeper philosophical reasons for just not being interested in the question, though these reasons are left unarticulated.

Ironically, many scholars writing on the Sophist today are in this way like those tellers of muthoi or those figures of muthos (the Giants and Gods) which the Eleatic Visitor criticizes for only talking about the number and kinds of beings without addressing the more fundamental question of what it means for any of these things to be.

My object in the present paper is to go against this trend by showing that the definition of being, far from being merely provisional and negligible, is absolutely indispensable not only to the argument of the Sophist, but to a proper understanding of Plato's metaphysics in both this and other dialogues. Specifically I wish to show that the characterization of being as "nothing other than dunamis" is incompatible with attributing to Plato a conception of the "really real" as static and immutable." (pp. 63-65, notes omitted)

27. Gooch, Paul W. 1971. ""Vice is ignorance": The interpretation of Sophist 226a-231b." Phoenix no. 25:124-133.

"It is often held by Plato's commentators that the famous Socratic paradox "Virtue is Knowledge" has as its complement the doctrine that vice is ignorance. While Plato's readers never find such an aphorism as "Vice is Ignorance" stated categorically in the texts, it is interpreted to mean that in Plato's view moral evil is the result of ignorance. And from this it is an easy step to the "intellectualist" Plato, who thought that knowledge of the right thing to do was a sufficient condition of virtue." (p. 124, notes omitted)

(...)

"My own reading of this section [Sophist 226a-231b] is that Plato, not popular opinion, is responsible for the division of evils into two branches, and that the division therefore cannot be considered unimportant for his ethics. Yet I cannot feel as sure as Dodds that the classification places ignorance and vice into two watertight compartments; there are indications that at least one kind of ignorance is a vice, and that its treatment cannot leave the irrational parts of the soul untouched. This in turn means that while Hackforth is probably right to say that Plato's real belief was that wrongdoing always involves ignorance, I hope to provide some evidence that this belief is not as obscured by the Sophist passage as Hackforth seems to think. With these claims in mind we may now turn to an analysis of the passage. After purification has been introduced as a negative art whose function is to throw out the evil and undesirable, the discussion develops various divisions within the art until the following schema becomes evident." (p. 126)

References

E. R. Dodds says that Plato "no longer makes ignorance the sole cause of wrongdoing, or increased knowledge its sole cure" ("Plato and the Irrational," Journal of Hellenic Studies 65 [1945] 18).

R. Hackforth claims that for Plato all moral evil involves ignorance ("Moral Evil and Ignorance in Plato's Ethics," Classical Quarterly 40 [1946] 118.

28. Grams, Laura W. 2012. "The Eleatic Visitor’s Method of Division." Apeiron no. 45:130-156.

"The method of division (diairesis) employed by the Visitor from Elea in Plato’s Sophist and Statesman is often interpreted as a hierarchical classification, in which each cut divides a kind (genos) into smaller parts that are fully contained within it and each subsequent kind entails all of the previous kinds in the sequence. On this view, division begins with one large class and continues separating it into successively smaller portions, until no further cuts can be made and an infima species is reached. I argue that a strictly hierarchical interpretation of diairesis cannot adequately explain the Visitor’s method for several reasons. First, division often produces kinds that are neither determined by nor fully contained within the intension or extension of the previous kinds, and division occasionally separates pairs of kinds that overlap in scope. In addition, division does not always move from general to more particular kinds, so the order in which a series of divisions is made often has no effect on the outcome. The same kinds may be divided in different ways in different contexts, which means that multiple paths may lead from a given starting point to the destination." (p. 130, note omitted)

29. Granieri, Roberto. 2019. "Xenocrates and the Two-Category Scheme." Apeiron:1-25.

Abstract: "Simplicius reports that Xenocrates and Andronicus reproached Aristotle for positing an excessive number of categories, which can conveniently be reduced to two: τὰ καθ᾽αὑτά and τὰ πρός τι. Simplicius, followed by several modern commentators, interprets this move as being equivalent to a division into substance and accidents. I aim to show that, as far as Xenocrates is concerned, this interpretation is untenable and that the substance-accidents contrast cannot be equivalent to Xenocrates’ per se-relative one. Rather, Xenocrates aimed to stress the primacy of Plato’s binary distinction of beings, as presented at Sophist 255c13–4, over Aristotle’s list of the categories."

30. Greenstine, Abraham Jacob. 2019. "Accounting for Images in the Sophist." In Plato and the Moving Image, edited by Biderman, Shai and Weinman, Michael, 19-36. Leiden - Boston: Brill Rodopi.

Abstract: "Plato’s Sophist is a critical dialogue for the question of images, for here the interlocutors divide images into two kinds – likenesses and apparitions – in their hunt for an account of sophistry. Yet much of the recent scholarship on the Sophist does not make much of this division. This chapter defends the continuing significance of the distinction between likeness and apparition. It argues for its importance in Plato’s analysis of images, in his theory of accounts, and in his endeavor to differentiate philosophy from sophistry. It further contends that one can only distinguish likenesses from apparitions by establishing a correct perspective on both the image and the original. Thus, the Sophist exhorts us differentiate likenesses from apparitions, even as we struggle to consistently find the right perspective for this task. Living in the cinematic age only intensifies the need to distinguish likeness from apparition. Over the course of this chapter, we consider two films that advance our questions about perspectives, images, and falsity: Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949) and Orson Welles’ F for Fake (1974). Like the Sophist, both films reveal a world of apparitions, where names are confused, lies are constant, and the truth is elusive."

31. Griswold, Charles. 1977. "Logic and Metaphysics in Plato's Sophist." Giornale di Metafisica no. 6:555-570.

Abstract: "In part one of this essay I defend the thesis that the "greatest genera" of the "Sophist" are not the metaphysical ideas of the earlier dialogues, and that the "participation" of these genera in each other is to be understood from a linguistic or logical, rather than metaphysical, perspective. The genera are like concepts, not essences. In part two I argue that the Stranger's doctrine of the genera means that they cannot be unified, self-predicative, separable, and stable; the doctrine deteriorates for reasons internal to itself. I suggest throughout that the Stranger's philosophical orientation is more "subjectivistic" than that of (Plato's) Socrates; unlike the ideas, the genera are subject to the soul's intellectual motion and productive capacity. finally, I suggest that there is no convincing reason for holding that the Stranger's views are superior to those of Socrates."

32. Grönroos, Gösta. 2013. "Two Kinds of Belief in Plato." Journal of The History of Philosophy no. 51:1-19.

"In the Sophist (263e10–264b4), Plato distinguishes between two kinds of belief.

On the one hand, there is a kind of belief that occurs “according to thinking” (κατὰ διάνοιαν), being “the completion of thinking” (διανοίας ἀποτελεύτησις). This kind is called ‘doxa.’ On the other hand, there is another kind of belief that occurs “through sense perception” (δι αἰσθήσεως). This kind is called 'phantasia,’ perhaps best rendered as “appearing.” The purpose of this paper is to uncover the distinction between these two different kinds of belief." (p. 1)

(...)

"The failure to recognize this distinction between two kinds of belief in Plato, despite the enormous scholarly effort devoted to the Theaetetus and the Sophist, is probably due to the fact that we do not operate with such a distinction any longer.

We may admit that beliefs are more or less justified, but this observation suggests that beliefs differ in degree (of justification), rather than in kind. Moreover, if we embrace the view that the formation of any belief requires the possession of concepts and the capacity for propositional thought, and that these capacities are the hallmarks of thinking and rationality at large, then it is difficult to escape the conclusion that even a phantasia is formed through thinking, and that it is a disposition of reason in precisely that sense. But attributing such an anachronistic starting point to Plato overshadows a more specific notion of thinking, and a different way of accounting for the role of thinking in belief formation. As Plato’s unfolding of the disguise of the sophist shows, this kind of thinking, giving rise to a qualified kind of belief, may well be worth serious consideration." (p. 18)

33. Gulley, Norman. 1962. Plato's Theory of Knowledge. London: Metheuen & Co.

Chapter III: Knowledge and Belief; § 4: The Sophist's Account of Statement and Belief, pp. 148-168.

34. Guthrie, William Keith Chambers. 1978. A History of Greek Philosophy V: The later Plato and the Academy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

On the Sophist: Chapter II, 3, pp. 122-163.

35. Hackforth, Reginald. 1945. "False Statement in Plato's Sophist." The Classical Quarterly no. 39:56-58.

"Plato's examination of False Statement (Sophist 259 D-263 D) is, like many of his discussions in the later dialogues, a mixture of complete lucidity with extreme obscurity. Any English student who seeks to understand it will of course turn first to Professor Cornford's translation and commentary(1); and if he next reads what M. Diès has to say in the Introduction to his Budé edition of the Sophist he will, I think, have sufficient acquaintance with the views of modern Platonic scholars on the subject. For myself, at least, I have not gained any further understanding from other writers than these two." (p. 56)

(...)

(1) Plato's Theory of Knowledge, pp. 298-317.

36. Hamlyn, David W. 1955. "The Communion of Forms and the Development of Plato's Logic." The Philosophical Quarterly no. 5:289-302.

"The impression given by many accounts of Plato's philosophy is that the doctrine of the communion of forms (or kinds) which is introduced in the Sophist is new and revolutionary. It may well be true that the use to which Plato puts this doctrine is revolutionary, but there are unmistakable hints of it much earlier. In the Republic 476a we are told of the communion of forms with actions, bodies, and one another, and, as Ross points out,(1) the doctrine is implicit in the account of the theory of forms given in the Phaedo 102b ff., in the sense that we are told that certain forms exclude each other." (p. 289)

(...)

"The doctrine of the communion of forms is an attempt to do two things at once - to characterise predicates as names referring to a kind of particular, and also to relate such names to those occurring as the subjects of assertions by means other than that of identity and difference. Consequently the assertion that Plato looked on proper names as disguised descriptions should be qualified by saying that for him descriptions were only another kind of name-names of forms rather than names of sensible particulars. Hence the doctrine of ' communion ' is still vitiated by the fault from which Plato was trying to free himself. That it was an important advance nevertheless is clear." (p. 302)

37. Harte, Verity. 2002. Plato on Parts and Wholes: The Metaphysics of Structure. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Contents: 1. The Problem of Composition 1; 2. Composition as Identity in the Parmenides and the Sophist 48; 3. A New Model of Composition 117; 4. Composition and Structure 158; 5. Plato's Metaphysics of Structure 267; References 293; General Index 300; Index of Names 300; Index Locorum 304-311.

"In my view—a view for which the book as a whole constitutes a defence—Plato's discussions of part and whole in the works I shall consider may be divided into two distinct groups: those in which Plato explores a model of composition which he does not endorse; and those which work towards building an alternative to the rejected model. This book is organized around discussion of these two groups. §1.6 to Chapter 2 examine the discussions of the first group, Chapters 3 and 4 those of the second.

The division between these two groups does not coincide with the division between different works. To the first group—those which focus on the model which Plato does not endorse—belong passages of the Parmenides, the Theaetetus, and a passage of the Sophist. To the second group—those which develop an alternative to the rejected model—belong other passages of the Parmenides and of the Sophist, and passages of the Philebus and Timaeus. The Parmenides as a whole enacts the contrast between the two groups and provides an illustration of the framework I propose for understanding their relation. Over the course of the Parmenides arguments involving the rejected model of composition are used to expose the problems that arise from its adoption; problems to which the alternative model of composition is framed as a solution." (pp. 2-3)

38. Havlíček, Aleš, and Karfík, Filip, eds. 2011. Plato's Sophist: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense. Praha: Oikoymenh.

Contents: Preface 7; Thomas Alexander Szlezák: Die Aufgabe des Gastes aus Elea Zur Bedeutung der Eingangsszene des Sophistes (216a–218a) 11; Francesco Fronterotta: Some Remarks on the Senses of Being in the Sophist 35; Francisco J. Gonzalez: Being as Power in Plato’s Sophist and Beyond 63; Walter Mesch, Die Bewegung des Seienden in Platons Sophistes 96; Filip Karfík: Pantelôs on and megista genê (Plato, Soph. 242C–259b) 120; Noburo Notomi: Dialectic as Ars Combinatoria: Plato’s Notion of Philosophy in the Sophist 146; Luc Brisson: Does Dialectic always Deal with the Intelligible? A Reading of the Sophist (253d5–e1) 156; Aleš Havlíček: Die Aufgabe der Dialektik für die Auslegung des Seins des Nichtseienden 173; Nestor-Luis Cordero: Une conséquence inattendue de l’assimilation du non-être à « l’Autre » dans le Sophiste 188; Denis O’Brien, The Stranger’s “Farewell” (258e6–259a1) 199; Štěpán Špinka: Das Sein des Nicht-Seins. Einige Thesen zur strukturellen Ontologie im Dialog Sophistes 221; Christoph Ziermann: La négativité de l’être chez Platon 240; David Ambuel: The Coy Eristic: Defining the Image that Defines the Sophist 278; Francisco Lisi: Ποιητικη τέχνη in Platons Sophistes 311; Jakub Jinek: Die Verschiedenheit der Menschentypen in Platons Sophistes 328; T. D. J. Chappell: Making Sense of the Sophist: Ten Answers to Ten Questions 344; Index locorum 377.

39. Heidegger, Martin. 1997. Plato's Sophist. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Heidegger's lecture course at the University of Marburg in the Winter Semester of 1924-25.

Translated by Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer.

Original German edition: Platon, Sophistes, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1992, edited by Ingeborg Schüssler (Gesamtausgabe, II, 19).

40. Heinaman, Robert E. 1981. "Being in the Sophist." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 65:1-17.

"There is an influential view, developed during the last fifteen years, concerning the relationship between the concept of existence and the notion of Being in Plato's Sophist. (a)

Three distinguishable claims are involved in this account:

(1) Plato does not wish to isolate the existential use of 'to be' from its other uses.

(2) Plato's discussion of being concerns syntactically incomplete uses of 'to be,' not syntactically complete uses of the verb. (b)

(3) The concept of existence plays no role in the philosophical problems discussed or their solutions. Plato operates with a "scheme of concepts which lacks or ignores an expression for 'exist.' (c)

I have no quarrel with (1). But (1) must be clearly distinguished from (3) since Plato may have failed to mark out the existential use of 'to be' while nevertheless using the word to mean existence with this latter concept playing an important role in the argument. In this paper I will try to show that there are no good reasons to accept (2) or (3). Although I shall deal with points raised by John Malcolm and Michael Frede, the focus will be on Professor Owen's paper. The first section will argue that Owen's interpretation of the Sophist is untenable and the second section will show that his arguments for (2) and (3) are unsuccessful. Finally, the third section explains how the position I defend is compatible with Plato's employment of negative existentials.

The position I defend is that the concept of existence does not monopolize but is part of the notion of Being in the Sophist." (pp. 1-2)

(a) G. E. L. Owen, "Plato on Not-Being," in G. Vlastos (ed.) Plato I (New York, 1971), pp. 223-67; Michael Frede, Prädikation und Existenzaussage (Göttingen, 1967); J. Malcolm, "Plato's Analysis of tò ón and tò me ón in the Sophist," Phronesis (1967), pp. 130-46. Also cf. W. Bondeson, "Some Problems about Being and Predication in the Sophist," Journal of the History of Philosophy (1976), p.7, n. 15; A. P. D. Mourelatos, " 'Nothing' as 'Not-Being'," in G. Bowersock, W. Burkert, M. Putnam (eds.) Arktouros (New York, 1979), pp. 319-29.

(b) Owen, pp. 225, 236, 240-41. Frede makes the still stronger claim that every use of 'to be' in the Sophist is incomplete (Frede, pp. 37, 40, 51). I discuss Frede's interpretation in an appendix.

(c) Owen, p. 263.

41. ———. 1981. "Self-Predication in the Sophist." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 26:55-66.

"A major problem in the interpretation of Plato's metaphysics is the question of whether he abandoned self-predication as a result of the Third Man Argument in the Parmenides. In this paper I will argue that the answer to this question must be 'no' because the self-predication assumption is still present in the Sophist.(1)" (p. 55)

(...)

"It has often been said that 250c confuses identity and predication. But since 255 establishes Plato's commitment to self-predication, it is preferable to see the mistake as occurring a few lines later (250c 12-d3) where the Stranger concludes that, since Being does not rest or move according to its own nature, it does not rest or move at all (cf. Parm. 139c6-d1). It is plausible to suppose that Plato believes that this error is corrected by the doctrine of the communion of Forms (cf. 252b8-10, 255e4-6, 258b9-c3)." (p. 63)

(1) The claim that the Sophist is committed to self-predication has been made before. W. F. Hicken, "Knowledge and Forms in Plato's 'Theaetetus'," in R. E. Allen (ed.) Studies in Plato's Metaphysics (London, 1965), p. 192; R. S. Bluck, "False Statement in the Sophist, " Journal of Hellenic Studies (1957), p. 186, n. 2; G. Striker, Peras und Apeiron (Gottingen, 1970), p. 37; W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy V (Cambridge, 1978), p. 43, n. 1. Cf. W. G. Runciman, Plato's Later Epistemology (Cambridge. 1962), pp. 80,95, 102; R. Marten, Der Logos der Dialektik (Berlin, 1965), p. 214, n. 134.

42. ———. 1983. "Communion of Forms." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 83:175-190.

"At Sophist 259e5-6 Plato says: 'Logos exists for us on account of the interweaving of Forms'. It appears to be an important claim, and various suggestions have been made as to why Plato believed logos depends on the communion of Forms. It has often been thought that the communion of Forms referred to in 259e5-6 lays down conditions for meaning, not truth. Thus, in a well known paper Professor Ackrill has suggested that the communion of Forms covers relations of compatibility, incompatibility, and presumably other relations which determine the meaning of words. (1) I believe that such an interpretation is too optimistic and that Plato's view is less sophisticated than scholars would like to admit. I will argue that the communion of Forms does not provide an explanation of meaning but of an entity's being characterized by a property. It is simply the relation of participation which in earlier dialogues related individuals to Forms. (But I make no claims about resemblance.)

259e5-6 occurs in a context (259d9-260a3) where the Eleatic Stranger refers back to an earlier argument for the conclusion that some Forms combine and some do not (25 1d5-252e8). And that earlier passage had been followed by a discussion where five 'Great Kinds' had been distinguished (254d4-255e1) and some relations of communion had been pointed out (255e8-257a12; cf. 254c4-5). If we want to determine what Plato means by 'communion of Forms' we must examine 251d-252e where Plato presents his arguments in support of the claim that some Forms combine and some do not.

One preliminary problem is the question of how to translate 'logos' in the statement that logos has come to be on account of the communion of Forms. The answer is provided by the context. 'Logos' also occurs in 260a5 and 260a7 where it possesses the same sense as 'logos' in 259e6. 260a7 says that we must determine what logos is, and when the explanation of logos is finally given (261d-262e) an explanation of statements is provided. So 259e5-6 is saying that statements exist because of the communion of Forms." (pp. 175-176)

(1) J. L. Ackrill, 'XYMJI-AOKHE IAQN', in G. Viastos (ed.) Plato I (New York, 1971), pp. 201-9. Also cf. his 'In Defense of Platonic Division', in 0. Wood and G. Pitcher (eds.) Ryle (London, 1971), pp. 376, 391-92.

43. ———. 1986. "Once More: Being in the Sophist." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 68:121-125.

"According to what I will call the 'new' interpretation, the meaning of 'being' which plays an important role in the philosophical argument of the Sophist is not 'existence' but 'being such and such,' what is expressed by syntactically incomplete uses of 'to be. (a) In an earlier paper I claimed, to the contrary, that 'being' is used to mean existence in the Sophist's argument, although its meaning corresponds to the other uses of the verb as well. (b) Against the new interpretation I argued as follows:

(1) The aporiai of 237-41 are solved in 251-59 by rejecting 237-41's assumption that 'not-being' means 'contrary to being' and claiming that 'not-being' instead means 'different from being.'

(2) On the new interpretation, 'the contrary of being' means 'what is (predicatively) nothing.'

(3) The aporia of 240c-241b cannot be given a coherent interpretation if 'not-being', as there used, is understood to mean 'what is (predicatively) nothing.'

(4) Hence the meaning of 'not-being' required by the new interpretation is unacceptable, and the new interpretation should be rejected.

In a recent note John Malcolm has replied to this argument and raised some other objections to my paper. (c) Here, I will limit myself to explaining why Malcolm's objections have no force, and why his reply to my argument. simply exchanges one absurdity for others." (p. 121)

(a) Its main proponents are G. E. L. Owen, "Plato on Not-Being," in G. Vlastos (ed.) Plato I (New York, 1971), pp. 223-67); Michael Frede, Prädikation und Existenzaussage (Göttingen, 1967); J. Malcolm, "Plato's Analysis of tò on and tò mé on in the Sophist," Phronesis (1967), pp. 130-46.

(b) "Being in the Sophist," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie (1983), pp. 1-17.

(c) "Remarks on an Incomplete Rendering of Being in the Sophist," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie (1985), pp. 162-65. Ensuing references to Malcolm will be to this paper.

44. Hermann, Arnold. 2011. "Parricide or Heir? Plato’s Uncertain Relationship to Parmenides." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 147-165. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "Most scholars view Plato’s critique of Parmenides in the Sophist, particularly the observations surrounding the “parricide” remark, as quite apt and justified. The theory is that Parmenides deserves to be rebuked for failing to recognize that “What Is Not” can be understood in more ways than one, namely, not only in an existential sense, but also predicatively or, in the language of the Sophist, as indicating “difference.” I aim to show, nevertheless, that Plato’s indictment of Parmenides misses the mark in significant ways, allowing Parmenides to escape the so-called threat of parricide not once but twice.

For example, Parmenides' abundant use of alpha-privatives (e.g., ἀγένητον)—as well as the negative οὐ (or οὐκ) when there is no a-privative form available—indicates that he was well aware of the difference between indicating “is not” predicatively versus existentially. Moreover, the Poem nowhere suggests that his strictures regarding the use of What Is Not are to be taken in the broadest possible sense, disallowing, in effect, the discrimination between the existential and the predicative case. Only when sought after as a “way of inquiry” does What Is Not—in contrast to the Way of What Is—fail to provide us with a graspable, expressible object. After all, the “Way of What Is Not,” lacks any sort of sēmata, or signs, that can be used to navigate it. As a “way of inquiry for thinking” (B2), it leads nowhere, lacking any sort of expressible or knowable object or goal. The complete absence of an object or result, however, does not hinder us from making statements to this effect, nor from uttering the words “What Is Not” or “Not Being.” Yet this fine distinction is lost to many who have criticized Parmenides for being inconsistent, careless, or simply ignorant. The move from the intellectual unavailability of an object that marks a defunct way of inquiry, to the claim that to even speak of such a “way” is both illegitimate and impossible—all the while insisting that Parmenides himself is to be blamed for such a monstrous fallacy—seems an egregious gloss-over, even if the perpetrator is someone of Plato’s stature. If my arguments prove sound, then Parmenides should be absolved of the charges leveled against him."

45. Hermann, Fritz Gregor. 1998. "On Plato's 'Sophist' 226b-231b " Hermes no. 126:109-117.

"The sixth attempt to show what it is to be a sophist (226 b-231 b) marks a fresh starting point in the discussion by Theodorus' guest-friend from Elea and Theodorus' young pupil Theaetetus. The first five attempts were closely modelled on the exemplary search for the angler (218 e-221 c), and started from the division, διαίρεσις, of all the arts and crafts into acquisitive, κτητική, and productive, ποιητική. Unlike the previous sections whose divisions were arrived at by abstract consideration, the passage commencing at 226 b starts with the enumeration of concrete examples of household activities. Adduced by the Elean, they serve as illustrations of the art of separation, διακριτική (1)." (p. 109)

(1) Cf. e.g. F.M. Cornford, Plato's Theory of Knowledge, London 1935, p. 177f

46. Hestir, Blake E. 2003. "A "Conception" of Truth in Plato's Sophist." Journal of The History of Philosophy no. 41:1-24.

" Plato's solution to the problem of falsehood carries a notorious reputation which sometimes overshadows a variety of interesting developments in Plato's philosophy. One of the less-noted developments in the Sophist is a nascent conception of truth which casts truth as a particular relation between language and the world. Cornford and others take Plato's account of truth to involve something like correspondence; some find the origin of Aristotle's "correspondence" account of truth in Plato's Sophist. But all this assumes a lot about Plato, much less Aristotle. For one, it assumes that to claim that the statement 'Theaetetus is sitting' is true is to claim that it is true because it corresponds with the fact that Theaetetus is sitting. Other scholars have been reluctant to accept Cornford's view, but few offer any explanation of what sort of account of truth we might ascribe to Plato by the end of the Sophist. Tarski has argued that truth is a simpler notion than that of correspondence. In fact, he claims his own "conception" of truth is similar to the classical conception we find in Aristotle's Metaphysics -- a conception of truth formulated in Greek in much the same way Plato formulates it in the Sophist. Unfortunately, Tarski never sufficiently explains what it is about the classical conception that makes it closer to his own. I argue that Tarski is generally right about the ancient conception of truth, but this is not to claim that Tarski's own conception is in Plato. By interpreting Plato's solution to the paradox of not-being and his solution to the problem of falsehood, I argue that Plato's account of truth implies a simpler notion of truth than correspondence. I outline various types of correspondence theory and show that none of these fits what Plato says about truth, syntax, and meaning in the Sophist." (pp. 1-2)

47. ———. 2016. Plato on the Metaphysical Foundation of Meaning and Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge Unviersity Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments page IX; Note on the text XII; List of abbreviations XIII; 1 Introduction 1; Part I Stability 17; 2 Strong Platonism, restricted Platonism, and stability 19; 3 Concerns about stability in the Cratylus 39; 4 Flux and language in the Theaetetus 57; 5 The foundation exposed: Parmenides 135bc 84; Part II Combination 105; 6 Being as capacity and combination: a challenge for the Friends of the Forms 107; 7 The problem of predication: the challenge of the Late-Learners 144; Part III Truth 181; 8 Predication, meaning, and truth in the Sophist 183; 9 Plato’s conception of truth 209; 10 Truth as being and a substantive property 234; Bibliography 243; Index locorum 259; General index 265.

"My project is motivated by my interest in understanding the following two passages from Plato’s Sophist. In the first passage, the so-called Stranger from Elea presents Theaetetus with an account of true and false statement.

In the second, he relates that account to thought and judgment, although my project concerns only that aspect of it that is an extension of the first.(2) He describes thought as “discourse without voice” (dialogos aneu phônês) and judgment as the end result of thought. Statement and judgment involve doing something with words and thoughts, respectively, namely asserting or denying, and assertions and denials are either true or false:

I [Sophist (263b4–12)]

II [Sophist (263e3–264b4)]

"Together these passages stand as what I consider to be the quintessential expression of Plato’s account of truth and falsehood, yet they do not by themselves constitute a complete account of his conception of truth. I am interested in that conception and its relation to Plato’s semantics and metaphysics.

This project aims to fill several gaps in the current scholarship on ancient Greek conceptions of truth, meaning, and language. What is missing is a detailed investigation into how the development of Plato’s understanding of the metaphysical foundation of meaning plays an integral role in his conception of truth in the Sophist. The two aforementioned passages follow on the heels of a discussion of language and signification that emerges, I argue, from a systematic approach to semantics that Plato commences in the Cratylus and continues through the Parmenides and Theaetetus, each of which is commonly taken to precede the Sophist. The Sophist supplies something of an explanation of how being grounds meaning and truth. However, more needs to be said about the mechanism of being, its relation to meaning and truth, the relation between the latter two, and what sort of conception of truth emerges from all this. It is also the case that more could be said about how this conception of truth complements the account of truth as being in “middle-period” dialogues such as the Phaedo and Republic. Moreover, there has not been a detailed treatment of the striking parallels between Plato’s and Aristotle’s conceptions of meaning and truth. This book contributes to the developing scholarship in these areas. (pp. 2-3)

(2) So, for example, I will not be discussing Plato’s account of concept acquisition and cognition.

48. Hopkins, Burt C. 2013. "The Génos of Lógos and the Investigation of the Greatest Genê in Plato’s Sophist." The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy no. 13:353-362.

Abstract: "It is argued that once the negative criterion for distinguishing eikones from phantasmata in lógos about the originals in the intelligible realm appears in the Sophist, the Stranger’s claim in the final divisions that “we now indisputably count off the kind of image-making as two” (266e), i.e., likeness making and semblance making, becomes problematical.

Specifically, what becomes a problem is whether the distinction in question is a mathesis (learning matter) and therefore something capable of becoming epistême. Consequent this, it is also argued that the eidetic-arithmoí that appear in the dialectical investigation of the greatest kinds rule out precisely the power of lógos to make the kind of clean cut the Stranger proposes regarding the sophist and philosopher belonging to different gene, given the incomparable nature of the gené and eidê being divided."

49. Horan, David. 2019. "Plato’s Parmenides in Plato’s Sophist." Etudes platoniciennes no. 15:1-23.

Abstract: "I wish to argue in this article that Plato, in considering the position of the monists in the Sophist, relies heavily upon arguments carried forward from the Parmenides. Accordingly, I argue, he invokes, in turn, three understandings of what one means, imported from the Parmenides, and finds that all of them fall short, and generate aporiai, when they are used in the Sophist as the basis for an account, not of the one, as in the Parmenides, but of being, or “what is”. In fact I shall argue in this paper that an entirely coherent reading of the overall challenge to the monists in the Sophist, beginning with the naming argument, or names’ argument, through to the argument about the whole, only emerges if we take account of the arguments of the Parmenides, and three conceptions of what “one” is, taken from that dialogue."

50. Hoseup, Rhee. 2021. "The Division of Images and the Deception of the Sophist." The Journal of Greco-Roman Studies no. 60:153-167.

Abstract: "This article discusses the division of images (eidōla) presented in Sophist, and explores how the sophist’s verbal deception is made based on this division. In Sophist, the Eleatic Stranger distinguishes between two types of images: likenesses (eikones) and apparitions (phantasmata). If the likeness is an image that actually resembles the original, the apparition is an image that does not actually resemble the original but appears to resemble it. How exactly should this distinction be understood? Cornford’s argument that the distinction between likenesses and apparitions is made according to the ‘degree of reality’ leads to the conclusion that Plato uses the concept of ‘image’ inconsistently. Bluck criticizes Cornford on the grounds that likenesses and apparitions are both related to falsehood as branches of images.

This criticism is reasonable but does not help us to understand the distinction.

According to Notomi, given the metaphysical distinction between reality and appearance, if the likeness is a correct image that truly resembles the original and represents its appearance, then the apparition is an incorrect image that only appears to resemble it by points of view. I basically agree with Notomi’s view, but his interpretation does not accurately reveal the falsehood particular to the apparition, nor does it accurately account for the deception of sophists, other than painters. It is because, according to Notomi’s interpretation, apparitions will appear as likenesses, i.e., they will represent the same appearance as likenesses even in the ‘unbeautiful point of view.’ This, contrary to Notomi’s assertion that the apparition is an incorrect image, seems to allow for the possibility that it can represents ‘true appearances.’

Moreover, unlike painters, the deception of sophists occurs when the original is not well known, and therefore it is difficult for the observer to determine which is a likeness, that is, when he does not know which image represents true appearances. For this reason, I argue that the falsehood particular to the apparition arise on the one hand by accidental resemblance irrelevant of the essence of the original and, on the other hand, by aesthetic and emotional effect. Thus, the sophist’s verbal deception can be achieved by stimulating the emotions of the audience with flashy rhetoric unrelated to the truth, and by imitating the appearance of a wise person in terms of performing discourses. Furthermore, the deception of the sophist can be discriminated into two types, according to the view on the relation between language and Forms."

References

Cornford, F. M., 1935, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, London: Routledge and K. Paul.

Notomi, N., 1999, The Unity of Plato’s Sophist: Between the Sophist and the Philosopher, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

51. Hülsz, Enrique. 2013. "Plato’s Ionian Muses: Sophist 242d-e." In Plato's Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 103-115. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"The focus of this short paper will be a couple of very famous lines at Sophist 242d–e, which constitute one of the precious few certain references to Heraclitus within the Platonic corpus. It will be well to recall from the outset that there are virtually no full quotations of Heraclitus in Plato’s works, with the possible exception of two consecutive passages in Hippias Maior (289a – b) usually counted as sources for Heraclitus fragments (DK22) B82 and (DK22) B83, which do not qualify as verbatim quotations but are at best mere paraphrases. What looks like the dominant trend in current scholarship concerning Plato’s views on Heraclitus is largely based on the Cratylus and the Theaetetus, which seem to provide a basic sketch for the official image of the Ephesian as the main representative of the Universal flux theory (the famous but apocryphal dictum, πάντα ῥεῖ). In spite of the popularity of this view, surely also based on Aristotle’s authority, if Universal flux is what allegedly defines Heracliteanism, Heraclitus was no Heraclitean." (p. 103, notes omitted)

52. Ionescu, Cristina. 2013. "Dialectic in Plato's Sophist: Division and the Communion of Kinds " Arethusa no. 46:41-64.

Abstract: "This paper explores the Eleatic Stranger's use of the method of division in the Sophist and attempts to reveal it to be a dialectical method of discovery, not of demonstration, that proceeds tentatively while it ultimately aims to ground its discoveries in the communion of the very great kinds. To illuminate this view, I argue for three main theses: first, that the method of division is a method of discovery, not of demonstration; secondly, that the much discussed passage at Sophist 253d-e is about both the method of division and the communion of kinds; and thirdly, that the method cannot succeed to discover natural articulations of reality as long as it ignores considerations of value."

53. ———. 2020. "Images and Paradigms in Plato’s Sophist and Statesman." Ancient Philosophy no. 40:1-22.

"At the heart of two Platonic dialogues, one of which is the sequel of the other, the Eleatic Stranger draws two distinctions: one between two types of images (είδωλα): είκασια (likenesses) and ϕαντάσματα (appearances), Sophist 234a-236d, and the other between two kinds of paradigms (παραδείγματα): perceptible and verbal paradigms, Statesman 277a-c, 285d-286b. My present aim is to examine the relevance of each of these distinctions in its respective context, and to suggest a way to understand the relation between them." (p. 1)

54. Isenberg, Meyer W. 1951. "Plato's Sophist and the Five Stages of Knowing." Classical Philology no. 46:201-211.

"in a well known passage in the Seventh Epistle (342 A ff.) Plato describes the five stages (1) which one traverses on the road to the knowledge of what is real. If this epistle was written about 353 B.C., its explanation of Plato's method, whether it is primarily directed to the beginner or the advanced student, (2) should have an intimate connection with the method pursued not only in the early and middle dialogues, but especially in the works of Plato's old age. Since the Sophist is one of the latest dialogues and has been generally considered one of the most difficult it may not be too far from the mark to inquire whether a right understanding of Plato's five stages of knowing in the Seventh Epistle may not be of use in the interpretation of that dialogue. In this way, perhaps, some difficulties which that work has raised may be solved and a more intimate acquaintance made with Plato's dialectical method.

It is, then, the purpose of the present paper to show that the movement of thought in the Sophist follows closely the description of method in the passage of the Seventh Epistle referred to above. All descriptions of method, however, tend to be more simple and more rigid than the actual application of the method itself." (p. 201)

(1) Plato does not use the word "stages." δι' ὃν (342 A 7) should be translated "instruments." But only "name," "discourse," and "image" are instruments.

The term "stages" in the present paper is used in a loose sense to indicate the unfolding of the dialectic.

It has no ontological significance. Various "stages" can only become definite in the context of the Sophist and its interpretation. It is important to note, then, that the various stages listed in this passage do not have even the apparent fixity of the levels of the divided line in the Republic, but are rather extremely fluid terms which flow into one another as the dialectic twists and turns. Note the term διαγωνή (343 E 1).

(2) Harward in his excellent edition of the Epistles states that Plato is "quoting material from some discourse addressed to a single learner, apparently a beginner in philosophy, who has already had a grounding in mathematics" (The Platonic Epistles [Cambridge, 1932], p. 213, n. 95). This may well be the case, but many an advanced student may be benefited by an elementary exposition. The importance of the passage on either count is not diminished.

55. Jeng, I-Kai. 2017. "Plato’s Sophist on the Goodness of Truth." Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 21:335-349.

Abstract: " “Late” Platonic dialogues are usually characterized as proposing a “scientific” understanding of philosophy, where “neutrality” is seen favorably, and being concerned with the honor of things and/or their utility for humans is considered an attitude that should be overcome through dialectical training. One dialogue that speaks strongly in favor of this reading is the Sophist, in which the stance of neutrality is explicitly endorsed in 227b-c. This paper will propose a reading of the Sophist showing that this common view of late Plato is misleading. It will argue for three things. First, 227b-c, when contextually understood, actually shows the limitation of being neutral. Second, that limitation compels the interlocutors in the rest of the conversation to pursue a non-neutral way of philosophizing about the sophist, contrary to the advice put forward in 227b-c. Finally, the non-neutral definition of the sophist that concludes the dialogue does not signal Plato’s preference for a non-neutral conception of philosophical knowledge either. A careful consideration of the dramatic ending suggests that he has reservations about it no less than he does about a neutral conception. The fact that both these conceptions had limitations perhaps explains why Plato, even in his late years, did not turn to the treatise format but remained within the dialogue: only in this form is it possible to retain both in philosophical logos."

56. ———. 2019. "On the Final Definition of the Sophist: Sophist 265A10–268D5." The Review of Metaphysics no. 72:661-684.

Abstract: "This paper defends the closing definition of the sophist in Plato’s Sophist as a modest success. It first argues that it consistently articulates the sophist’s class structure as someone who resembles someone wise without being in the same class as that being. Then it explains why this structuring principle satisfies the demands of a successful definition as stated in the Sophist 232a1-6, and how the earlier definitions, despite being informative, nevertheless are failures. Since a number of scholars consider the final definition to fail no less than the earlier ones, the paper then turns to address four common objections in the literature. The conclusion briefly discusses how this reading affects our understanding of the method of division (diaeresis) in Plato."

57. Johnson, Patricia Ann. 1978. "Keyt on ἕτερον in the Sophist." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 23:151-157.

"In his article, "Plato on Falsity: Sophist 263B,"' David Keyt introduces a crucial question for understanding the definition of false statement given by Plato in the Sophist: What is the relation of flying to Theaetetus (or, to the attributes which belong to Theaetetus)? The response given to this question will amount to an interpretation of the key line, 263B11-13. Keyt mentions five interpretations and argues briefly against each, but the major argument of his paper is devoted to showing that the definition of falsity is vague and therefore defies specific translation. I shall not discuss all of these possible interpretations because my concern here is in defending what Keyt calls the Oxford interpretation. He argues directly against this view as raising serious epistemological problems, but he also challenges it as an interpretation by presenting counter arguments to the two most persuasive reasons for choosing this interpretation over the others. I shall try to respond to the more significant of these challenges." (p. 151)

58. Jordan, Robert William. 1984. "Plato's Task in the Sophist." The Classical Quarterly no. 34:113-129.

"I shall argue that it is clear that Plato would himself characterize his task in the Sophist as showing τὰ μὴ ὄντα ὡς ἔστιν (258d 5) - that what is notbeing is being.(3)

Problems arise only in the interpretation of Plato's task. We must be guided in our interpretation by the solution Plato offers to his problems. This solution turns firstly on his demonstration of Communion of Kinds, and secondly on his distinction between otherness and opposition. The conclusion Plato draws from his discussion of Communion of Kinds has sometimes been thought to lend support to the view that Plato's task here is that of distinguishing different senses of einai. I shall argue that this view of the passage presents serious problems for the commentator. And this view of Plato's task in the Sophist receives no support at all from Plato's contrast between otherness and opposition. That contrast, however, equally fails to support the other commonly held view of the problems Plato is facing in the Sophist, that Plato is keen to distinguish between the medamos on and the me on. In particular, the analogy Plato draws between 'being' and 'big' presents a major difficulty for this view.

Finally, I shall introduce a new interpretation of Plato's task, via a consideration of his stated intention to commit patricide and refute Parmenides' criticism of the road of enquiry followed by mortals. Once we have seen that Plato promises to refute Parmenides, but does not accomplish this task by distinguishing between different senses or uses of einai, nor yet by a distinction between being in no way and simply not being, only one possibility remains: Plato thinks the refutation of Parmenides achieved if he can show that being (F) is not opposed to notbeing (G). This interpretation of Plato's task is then shown to fit well, both with the puzzles that introduce the central section of the Sophist, and with Plato's resolution of those puzzles by way of his demonstration of Communion of Kinds, and his distinction between otherness and opposition. It is compatible with what Plato says and does in Sophist 241-56; and it accounts well for the nature of Plato's discussion of negation and falsity in the dialogue. (pp. 113-114)

(3) We normally translate to mega as 'what is big'. I consequently translate to on as 'what is being' and to me on as 'what is notbeing', to preserve the parallel in the Greek.

59. Julia, Pfefferkorn, and Spinelli, Antonino, eds. 2021. Platonic Mimesis Revisited. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Contents: 1; Julia Pfefferkorn, Antonino Spinelli: Revisiting Mimesis in Plato: An Introduction 7; Stephen Halliwell: The Shifting Problems of Mimesis in Plato 27; Michael Erler: Performanz und Analyse. Mimesis als Nachmachen – ein Element traditioneller Paideia in Platons früheren Dialogen und seine Analyse in den Nomoi 47; Andrea Capra: Imitatio Socratis from the Theatre of Dionysus to Plato’s Academy 63; Anna Pavani: The Essential Imitation of Names: On Cratylean Mimesis 81; Laura Candiotto: Mimesis and Recollection 103; Elenio Cicchini: Der mimische Charakter. Mimus und Mimesis in der Philosophie Platons 123; Justin Vlasits: Plato on Poetic and Musical Representation 147; Irmgard Männlein-Robert: Mit Blick auf das Göttliche oder Mimesis für Philosophen in Politeia und Nomoi 167; Lidia Palumbo: Mimêsis teorizzata e mimêsis realizzata nel Sofista platonico 193; Michele Abbate: Der Sophist als mimêtês tôn ontôn (Sph. 235a1 f.). Ontologische Implikationen 211; Alexandra V. Alván León: Wolf im Hundepelz: Mimesis als Täuschung in der Kunst des Sophisten 225; Benedikt Strobel: Bild und falsche Meinung in Platons Sophistes 249; Francesco Fronterotta: Generation as μίμησις and κόσμος as μίμημα: Cosmological Model, Productive Function and the Arrangement of the χώρα in Plato’s Timaeus 275; Antonino Spinelli: Mimoumenoi tas tou theou periphoras. Die Mimesis des Kosmos als menschliche Aufgabe im Timaios 291; José Antonio Giménez: Gesetz und Mimesis im Politikos 313; Julia Pfefferkorn: Plato’s Dancing City: Why is Mimetic Choral Dance so Prominent in the Laws? 335; Index Locorum 359–376.

60. Kahn, Charles H. 1988. "Being in Parmenides and Plato." La Parola del Passato no. 43:237-261.

Reprinted in C. H. Kahn, Essays on Being, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 167-191.

"Despite the silence of Aristotle, there can be little doubt of the importance of Parmenides as an influence on Plato’s thought. If it was the encounter with Socrates that made Plato a philosopher, it was the poem of Parmenides that made him a metaphysician. In the first place it was Parmenides’ distinction between Being and Becoming that provided Plato with the ontological basis for his theory of Forms.

When he decided to submit this theory to searching criticism, he chose as critic no other than Parmenides himself. And when the time came for Socrates to be replaced as principal speaker in the dialogues, Plato introduced as his new spokesman a visitor from Elea. Even in the Timaeus, where the chief speaker is neither Socrates nor the Eleatic Stranger, the exposition takes as its starting point the Parmenidean dichotomy.(1) From the Symposium and Phaedo to the Sophist and Timaeus, the language of Platonic metaphysics is largely the language of Parmenides." (p. 237)

(...)

"My aim here has not been to analyze Plato’s use of to be in the formulation of his own ontology, but only to demonstrate how faithfully Parmenidean he is in his progression from an initial, quasi idiomatic use of ἐστι for truth and reality to more philosophically loaded, ‘ontological’ uses of the verb in which existential and predicative functions are combined with connotations of truth, stability, and permanence." (p. 257)

(...)

"In the Sophist veridical being is carefully analyzed as ‘saying of what is that it is concerning a subject’ (236b), whereas the problematic concept of not-being is dissolved into distinct negations for falsehood, identity, and predication. A long and laborious effort of analysis was required to bring to light the confusions hidden in Parmenides’ argument. But these confusions infect only the negative concept of what is not. The positive conception of Being emerges unscathed, to dominate the metaphysical tradition of the West for many centuries to come." (p. 258)

(1) Timaeus 27d5: ‘The first distinction to be made is this: what is the Being that is forever and has no becoming, and what is that which is always becoming but never being?’.

61. ———. 2007. "Why is the Sophist a sequel to the Theaetetus?" Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 52:33-57.

Abstract: The Theaetetus and the Sophist both stand in the shadow of the Parmenides, to which they refer. I propose to interpret these two dialogues as Plato’s first move in the project of reshaping his metaphysics with the double aim of avoiding problems raised in the Parmenides and applying his general theory to the philosophy of nature. The classical doctrine of Forms is subject to revision, but Plato’s fundamental metaphysics is preserved in the Philebus as well as in the Timaeus. The most important change is the explicit enlargement of the notion of Being to include the nature of things that change.

This reshaping of the metaphysics is prepared in the Theaetetus and Sophist by an analysis of sensory phenomena in the former and, in the latter, a new account of Forms as a network of mutual connections and exclusions. The division of labor between the two dialogues is symbolized by the role of Heraclitus in the former and that of Parmenides in the latter. Theaetetus asks for a discussion of Parmenides as well, but Socrates will not undertake it. For that we need the visitor from Elea. Hence the Theaetetus deals with becoming and flux but not with being; that topic is reserved for Eleatic treatment in the Sophist. But the problems of falsity and Not-Being, formulated in the first dialogue, cannot be resolved without the considerations of truth and Being, reserved for the later dialogue. That is why there must be a sequel to the Theaetetus."

62. ———. 2013. Plato and the Post-Socratic Dialogue: The Return to the Philosophy of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 3. Being and Not-Being in the Sophist, pp. 94-130.

"In the Theaetetus Socrates insisted on avoiding the discussion (which Theaetetus had requested) of Parmenides’ doctrine of Being. As the promised sequel to the Theaetetus, the Sophist is designed to fill that gap. A significant change in style suggests that a considerable lapse of time may have occurred between the composition of these two dialogues.

Nevertheless, the reappearance of Theaetetus as interlocutor in the Sophist is a clear reminder of continuity in this project.

It was presumably with these Parmenidean issues in view that Plato chose to replace Socrates as chief speaker with a visitor from Elea. One of Plato’s principal tasks in this dialogue will be to correct Parmenides’ account of Not-Being. The choice of a spokesman from Parmenides’ own school will serve to guarantee an atmosphere of intellectual sympathy for the doctrine to be criticized." (p. 94)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Plato's Sophist. Bibliography of the studies in English: Kal - Mig

Bibliography

1. Kalligas, Paul. 2012. "From Being an Image to Being What-Is-Not." In Presocratics and Plato: Festschrift at Delphi in Honor of Charles Kahn, edited by Patterson, Richard, Karasmanis, Vassilis and Hermann, Arnold, 391-409. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

"As Cornford has formulated it,(5) “the class of ‘images’ (εἴδωλα) we are concerned with—semblances—imply two relations between image and original.

The image is more or less like the original, though not wholly like it, not a reproduction. But it is also conceived as possessing in some sense a lower grade of reality, as illusory, phantom-like” (author’s emphasis). Thus it is not unusual to find Plato being accused of abandoning the world of concrete sensible reality in favor of a nebulous region of intangible presumed “prototypes” of the items encountered by our everyday experience, of assuming as properly real what—to every sober minded naturalist—seem to be no more than abstractions from things or features existing in the world of our common, and commonly shared, experience.

In what follows, I wish to challenge certain aspects of this interpretation of the analogy of the image and to suggest that Plato did not intend to question the reality of sensible existence, but only to deny that we can be confident about the truth of any statements we make in reference to it. In my view, in interpreting the image analogy we have to take seriously into account the extended analysis Plato offers with respect to the various kinds of imaging in the Sophist, where a great amount of energy is given to an ex professo examination of this, at first glance, rather inconsequential or, at best, marginal topic." (pp. 392-393)

(5) See F. M. Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1935), 199.

2. Karanasiou, Argyri G. 2016. "The Term symplokē in Symposium 202b1 and in Sophist 240c1ff, 259d-261c: Heidegger's Interpretation of the Concept of "Interconnection" in Platonic Thought " In Sophistes: Plato's Dialogue and Heidegger's Lectures in Marburg (1924-25), edited by De Brasi, Diego and Fuchs, Marko J., 113-130. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

"The pivotal question raised in this study is, whether Socrates's presentation of Eros in the Symposium could serve as an allegory of the concept of symploke(2) of Forms anticipating the exclusive and exhaustive distinction of a thing, its polar contrary, and its different (the tertium quid or third alternative) as presented in the relevant discussion of the Sophist (240c1; 259e5f; 260a1-6; d5).(3) Heidegger (GA 19, 572) argues that although Plato has seen the heteron early (in the Symposium), he only conceived the difference between heteron and enantiosis (mere negation) later referring to symploke as a logical possibility of something 'being' and 'not-being' at the same time; existing, even if it is other than itself (GA 19, 431-32; 569-75; 580). Relating to this topic in his Lectures on the Sophist Heidegger refers to a passage (Smp. 202b1) where the idea of otherness (heteron) is probably defined as signifying not necessarily opposition (enantion, GA 19, 572).4 Both the discovery of the heteron as a category in the Symposium and the resolution of the problem of negation through the notion of interconnection (symploke) in the Sophist laid the foundation of dialectical logic ( cf. Sph. 253d; 259c4ff)." (pp. 113-114)

(2) The term is rendered either as 'combination', 'dependency' or 'interrelation'. The verb sympleko means in general 'plait together' and it is usually used with the verb syndeo which at Rsp. 309b means 'bind together' or 'unite'. Both verbs occur at Sph. 268c5-6 when a reverse recapitulation of the definition (toúnoma) of the sophist is concisely mentioned (beginning at the end and closing at the opening of the dialogue).

(3) Cf. Seligman (1974), 18-9.

(4) Patt (1997), 23 7.

References

GA = Heidegger Gesamtausgabe

Patt, Walter. Formen des Anti-Platonismus bei Kant, Nietzsche und Heidegger. Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1997.

Seligman, Paul. Being and Not-Being: An Introduction to Plato's Sophist. Dordrecht: Springer, 1974.

3. Karfík, Filip. 2011. "Pantelôs on and megista genê (Plato, Soph. 242C–259b) " In Plato's Sophist: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlíček, Aleš and Karfík, Filip, 120-145. Praha: Oikoymenh.

"About the middle of Plato’s Sophist a perplexity (ἀπορία) emerges out of a lengthy discussion as to how to catch the “tribe” of sophists with a definition. It turns out that to define a sophist as somebody who has to do with falsehood implies the existence of not-being.(1)

Such a hypothesis clearly infringes the ban placed on not-being by Parmenides in his celebrated poem.(2)"

(...)

"The inquiry into this question, which eventually leads to a solution of the question about not-being, fills out the rest of the central part of the dialogue.7 Both these questions having been solved, the interlocutors take up the interrupted job of defining the sophist and bring it to a successful conclusion. The Sophist, unlike the Theaetetus, thus ends up with a positive answer to the question it has initially raised, namely: “What is a Sophist?”8 But the way to get there is anything but straightforward and raises more questions than it solves. Formally, both subordinated questions, about not-being and about being, receive due answers, the first one via the second one.

But especially the answer to the question “What does it mean ‘to be’” is itself far from being clear. Modern interpreters do not agree about its general meaning and there are several more particular points in Plato’s presentation which are in dispute. In this paper I would like to enquire once again into these vexed issues in order to get clearer about the general meaning of Plato’s answer to the question: “What is being?” (pp. 120-121)

(1) Cf. Plato, Soph. 236d8–237a4.

(2) Cf. ibid., 237a4–b1, line a8–9 = Parmenides, fr. 7 Diels – Kranz

4. Keane, Niall. 2010. "Interpreting Plato Phenomenologically: Relationality and Being in Heidegger's Sophist." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 41:170-192.

"... this paper sets out to examine the phenomenological import of Heidegger’s subsequent interpretation and appropriation of relationality (pros ti) and logos in his analyses of the megista gene in the Sophist. This paper addresses some of the more philosophically salient points of Heidegger’s ‘phenomenological interpretation’ and addresses what were, according to him, both the philosophical merits and limitations of Plato’s ‘late ontology’. To this end, I will attempt to explicate the phenomenological issues that inevitably remained unthematized in Plato’s Sophist. In this respect, I shall largely focus on Heidegger’s early interpretation of Plato’s analysis of ‘movedness’ (kinesis), ‘otherness’ (heterotes) and ‘relationality’ (pros ti); each of which will then be considered with respect to the role of the logos.

The ancillary aim of this article will be to disentangle these specific issues from the perspective of the limits and ground of the pros ti and it will subsequently examine how Heidegger’s early reading of ‘relational movedness’ in the Sophist inspired his later Being and Time analysis of the disclosive negativity of Dasein’s “Being-in-the-world” (In-der-Welt-sein). By way of conclusion, I argue, against what I consider to be a renewed case of ‘Platonic apologetics’, that Heidegger’s reading of Plato is best understood when approached from a purely ‘phenomenological perspective’. I contend that it is only by approaching Heidegger’s ‘deconstructive’ interpretation of Plato’s highest kinds from the standpoint of his nascent existential-ontology of Dasein, that one can both meaningfully defend and contextualise his interpretation of the Sophist against the above reproach. In contrast to what I have called a ‘Platonic apologetics’, I would like to argue that Heidegger’s compelling interpretation of the Sophist offers us an unconventional (yet nonetheless valid) way of responding to Plato’s thought, a response which is thoroughly evinced in the 1924/25 interpretation which I shall now pursue." (p. 170)

5. Kerferd, George B. 1954. "Plato's Noble Art of Sophistry (Sophist 226a-231b)." The Classical Quarterly no. 4:84-90.

"Plato's Sophist begins with an attempt to arrive by division at a definition of a Sophist. In the course of the attempt six different descriptions are discussed and the results summarized at 231 c-e. A seventh and final account may be said to occupy the whole of the rest of the dialogue, including the long digression on negative statements. The first five divisions characterize with a considerable amount of satire different types of sophist, (1) or more probably different aspects of the sophistic art.(2) The sixth division (226 a-231 b) is very different. To quote Cornford's words, 'satire is dropped. The tone is serious and sympathetic, towards the close it becomes eloquent.' (3)

(...)

"It is the purpose of this paper to argue that the natural meaning of the passage is the right one the persons referred to are sophists and Plato was aware that one aspect of their activities was not only extremely valuable but was a necessary preliminary to his own philosophy." (p. 84)

(...)

"There is thus ample evidence of the practice by sophists of a method which could be described in the terms which Plato uses in the Sixth Definition, a method which if used in the right way could prepare the ground for a true understanding of reality based on the Forms. It is in this sense that Plato could speak of 'the art of sophistry which is of noble lineage'." (p. 90)

(1) Cornford, Plato's Theory of Knowledge, 173.

(2) Taylor, Plato, the Man and His Work, 379. There is nothing to support Jackson's view (Journal of Philosophy, XIV (1885), 176-82) that Plato is describing successive stages in the history of the sophistic movement. Soph. 232 a shows that Plato held there was a single common element underlying the name 'sophist' and it is for this that he is searching.

(3) Op. cit. 177.

6. Ketchum, Richard J. 1978. "Participation and Predication in the Sophist 251-260." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 23:42-62.

"While a great deal of progress has been made in recent years in bringing to light the philosophical sense of the Sophist one problem, or cluster of problems, has resisted analysis.(1) The problem is that Plato seems to use a particular form of sentence ambiguously; the fact that he does so seems to reveal a fundamental confusion on Plato's part."

(...)

"Now it is argued that Plato uses sentences of the form "the F (is) ... sometimes to express a Form-predication and sometimes to say something about the nature of the F or perhaps about the nature of particular F 's. The fact Plato vacillates between these two types of predication not only obscures whatever philosophical point he may be making but also shows that Plato was confused about the nature of Forms.

I think, however, that there is a plausible reading of the Sophist which shows Plato to be in no way confused as to the meaning of such sentences.

None of the first-order sentences of the Sophist, I will argue, are Form predications.

After arguing that the text forces this conclusion on us (Part I), I will try to make the conclusion plausible (Part II) by describing a type of predication, different from Form-predication, in terms of which all of the first-order sentences of the Sophist can be consistently understood. A consequence of my interpretation is the rather surprising thesis that nowhere in the Sophist with the exception of those passages in which the friends of the Forms are discussed, does Plato mention the Forms of the middle dialogues. I will conclude (Part III) by explaining how I think those passages which seem to mention Forms are to be understood." (p. 42-43)

(1) The problem has been discussed by R. Robinson, Plato's Earlier Dialectic, 2nd Edition (Oxford, 1953), 250-264; I. M. Crombie, An Examination of Plato's Doctrine: II, Plato on Knowledge and Reality (London, 1963), 401-410; M. Frede, "'Pradikationu nd Existenzaussage," Hypomnemata, Heft 18, (1967) 9-99; and G. Vlastos, "On Ambiguity in the Sophist" in Platonic Studies, (Princeton, 1973), 270-322, among others, while it is alluded to by G. E. L. Owen, "Plato on Not-Being" in Plato I: Metaphysics and Epistemology, G. Vlastos, ed., (Garden City, 1971), 233, note 20.

7. Keyt, David. 1969. "Plato's Paradox that the Immutable is Unknowable." The Philosophical Quarterly no. 19:1-14.

"One of the great questions that Plato considers in the Sophist is that of the number and nature of real things (242C5-6). The protagonist of the dialogue, an Eleatic stranger, raises problems for both the pluralist (243D6-244B5) and the monist (244B6-246E5) without resolving them and then turns to the battle of gods and giants, the battle between those who hold that "body and being are the same" (246B1) and those who hold that "true being is certain intelligible and bodiless Forms" (246B7-8). What the one holds is the logical contrary, not the contradictory, of what the other holds; so it is possible that they are both wrong. This seems in fact to be the Eleatic's conclusion (249C10-D4), although by the time he gets to the friends of the Forms the property under examination has shifted from corporeality to mutability. The Eleatic stranger presents the friends of the Forms with an interesting paradox (248D1-E5). This is my subject. The friends of the Forms hold that real being " is always invariable and constant " (248A11-12). But being is known (248D2). And on the hypothesis that to know is to act on something, that which is known is acted upon (248D10-E1). Further, to be acted upon is to be changed (248E3-4). Therefore, since being is known, it is changed (248E3-4). But this conclusion contradicts their original contention." (p. 1)

(...)

"My conclusions are that he is not deeply committed to the proposition that Forms undergo change, but that he ought to be, and that he is deeply committed to the proposition that Forms are completely changeless, but for insufficient reasons. A Platonist really ought to hold that Forms are changeless in some respects but not in others. In what respects? This is my third question. Aristotle, in commenting on Plato's theory of Forms, provides a basis for answering it." (p. 2)

8. ———. 1973. "Plato on Falsity: Sophist 263b." In Exegesis and Argument. Studies in Greek philosophy presented to Gregory Vlastos, edited by Lee, Edward N., Mourelatos, Alexander and Rorty, Richard, 285-305. Assen: Van Gorcum.

9. Klein, Jacon. 1977. Plato's Trilogy: Theaetetus, the Sophist, and the Statesman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

"There can be no doubt that the Platonic dialogues entitled Theaetetus, The Sophist, and The Statesman belong together --- in that order and are meant to be a "trilogy," regardless of when they were written. It is important to note that these three conversations are supposed to take place not during three days but two, shortly before the trial and the conviction of Socrates. (3) The conversation in the Theaetetus is followed on the next day by two conversations, by that in the Sophist and that in the Statesman. There is almost certainly no pause between the latter two. (4)" (p. 3)

(...)

"Independently of the time sequence within the dialogues, something is dealt with in the Sophist which happens to be the fundamental premise in the Theaetetus, namely, that the roots, the ultimate sources of everything, the "ruling beginnings" (the αρχαί), arc these two: the 'Same' and the 'Other'. We shall, therefore, begin witl1 the Sophist, continue with the Theaetetus, and end with the Statesman.

How shall we convey what is either said or not said explicitly but only implied in the dialogues? We shall watch the text carefully, always remaining aware of the playfulness --- the sister of seriousness which persists in the dialogues and determines the way they proceed. We shall watch how the spoken words produce the dramatic content presented to us. We shall participate in the discussions: the paraphrase of the text of the dialogues will be interwoven with what occurs in us as listeners." (p. 5)

(3) Theaet. 210d 1-3.

(4) Cf. Diès, Platon: Oeuvres complètes, Vol. 8, pt. 3, Le Sophiste. Paris, 1963.

10. Kohnke, Friedrich Wilhelm. 1957. "Plato's Conception of τὸ οὐϰ ὄντως οὐϰ ὄν." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 2:32.40.

"In the neo-Platonic philosophy of the fifth century A.D. the hypostases of being are found in connection with a four-level scale of being and non-being." (p. 32)

(...)

"Plato seems to have formulated the concept of οὐϰ ὄντως οὐϰ ὄν for the first time in the Sophistes." (p. 38)

(...)

"We are now in a position to recognise its roots: The neo-Platonists derived a terminology for their fourfold system of being from Plato's Parmenides, the dialogue which they honoured as the revelation of metaphysical truth, and combined this with their system of hypostases of the cosmos." (p. 40)

11. Kostman, James. 1973. "False Logos and Not-Being in Plato's Sophist." In Patterns in Plato's Thought. Papers Arising Out of the 1971 West Coast Greek Philosophy Conference, edited by Moravcsik, Julius, 192-212. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"In the Sophist, Plato argues that false statements are possible, defending this common-sense view against the claims of a notorious sophistic puzzle: if there are false λόγοι, according to the puzzle, then not-Being is (237a3-4); but, as Parmenides had testified, what is-not cannot be (237a4-b2).

After introducing this puzzle, Plato goes on to magnify the difficulties it raises (237b7-239c3), and he asserts that, in order to refute Parmenides, we must show both that what is-not is and that what is is-not (239c4-242b5). Plato then takes up several traditional theories about Being (242b6-251a4), and finds that this subject too is full of perplexity. So he attempts to resolve the whole cluster of problems he has raised, starting with the question of how one and the same thing can be called by many names (251a5-c7). This leads to the topic of the communion of Kinds (251c7-257aI2). But, as we shall see, it is only at 257b1 that Plato begins

his direct reply to the original sophistic puzzle." (p. 192)

12. ———. 1989. "The Ambiguity of 'Partaking' in Plato's Sophist." Journal of The History of Philosophy no. 27:343-363.

"In the central section of the Sophist (25o-259), as Gregory Vlastos has shown,(1) statements about Forms or Kinds are subject to a certain structural ambiguity: 'The F is G' may be either an 'ordinary' or a 'Pauline' predication, in Vlastos' terminology; that is, it may either attribute being G to the F itself or assert that necessarily whatever is F is G. For example, 'Being is at rest' may assert either that the Form Being itself is at rest, in which case it is an ordinary predication, or that necessarily whatever is is at rest, in which case it is a Pauline predication." A few scholars have quibbled with Vlastos' interpretations of some of the passages on which he bases the claim that the ambiguity exists, but I find it surprising that, in the decade and a half since its publication, Vlastos' central thesis---that Plato was "utterly unaware" of the ambiguity--has never been directly challenged. After summarizing the evidence for the existence of the ambiguity in section 1 of this paper, I shall show in section 2 that the argument by which Vlastos concludes that there is "positive evidence" for his thesis is fundamentally incoherent.

In the rest of this paper, I offer an argument, based on my analysis of two important passages (255c-e and 25oa-e) and the relationship between them, that there is additional circumstantial evidence that Plato was not only aware of the ambiguity but allowed it to play a significant, though indirect, role in the overall argument of Soph. 250-259." (p. 343)

(1) Gregory Vlastos, "An Ambiguity in the Sophist," in his Platonic Studies, 270-322. This article will be referred to as 'AS'; all references to it and other papers in Platonic Studies are to the first edition.

13. Lacey, Alan Robert. 1959. "Plato's Sophist and the Forms." The Classical Quarterly no. 9:43-52.

"The Sophist is on the face of it concerned to charge the sophist with being a mere maker of images, and to defend this charge by showing that images, though they 'are not' what they are images of, yet in some sense 'are'. This leads to the analysis of Not-being as being other than, but Plato makes it quite clear that the general problem concerns Being as much as Not-being (250 e); the difficulty is that Being is neither Rest nor Motion, and so can neither rest nor move of its own nature, but surely it must do one of these (250 c, d). In other words Being is in danger of not being able to have attributes except by being identical with them. The ensuing discussion seems to point out that this is not so, and that Forms, like other things, do have some attributes and not others, without being identical with them.

But such an interpretation will only hold if the Megista Gene are in fact all Forms. This is denied by Dr. A. L. Peck, who argues (Classical Quarterly. 1952; cf. 1953, 1954) (2) that the whole point of the discussion is to show that Being, Not-being, Same, and Other are not Forms, but merely empty names, and so φάντασματα rather than the εἰκώνες which are the names of real things; the sophist raises paradoxes by relying on linguistic habits (Dr. Peck (S p. 52) points to the frequency of verbs of saying in the Sophist) to pervert the theory of Forms into positing absurd Forms." (p. 43)

14. Lanigan, Richard L. 1982. "Semiotic Phenomenology in Plato's Sophist." Semiotica no. 41:221-246.

Reprinted in: John Deely (ed.), Frontiers in Semiotics, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1986, pp. 199-216.

"My essay attempts to explicate the main features of the Platonic argument in order to establish that the model of discourse analysis is semiotic in nature and phenomenological in function. I am using the term model in its technical theory construction sense as an 'exemplar' (combined 'paradigm' and 'prototype') in a theory."

(...)

"My essay does not represent an effort to claim that Plato is either a semiologist or a phenomenologist. Rather, I argue that the dialogue Sophist offers a long neglected textual model of binary analogue thinking that is foundational to many of the issues current in the study of the philosophy of communication where semiology and phenomenology intersect in the problematic of analysis. Indeed, many of the basic elements in the Platonic investigation are being unnecessarily reinvented by contemporary theorists. By addressing the fundamental problem of the Being of Not-Being, Plato provides a semiotic phenomenology of discourse in which he demonstrates the acceptability of analytic proofs as the concrete analysis of empirical communication acts. Thus, the dialogue Sophist represents a critical, but often ignored, theoretical foundation for an empirical examination of the sign relationship between the ontology of the speaking subject and the epistemology of the discourse system." (pp. 221-222, note omitted)

15. Larsen, Jens Kristian. 2007. "The Soul of Sophistry: Plato’s “Sophist” 226a9–231b9 revisited." Filosofiske Studier no. 102:1-14.

"It is a widespread opinion that the first part of the Sophist (216a – 237b) is primarily concerned with the problem of finding an adequate definition of the sophist. Within this passage six different definitions

are given, each unsatisfactory, until a seventh description leads to the main problems of the dialogue, namely the questions concerning non-being, being, the intertwining of forms and the problem concerning false statements. Whereas the first five definitions are relatively unproblematic, the sixth is known to be troublesome – it has a peculiar resemblance to the Socrates-figure of the elenctic dialogues.

In the following I shall argue that the so-called sixth definition is not a definition of the sophist at all, but a methodological reflection which plays a central role in the overall composition of the dialogue. I shall further argue that this methodological reflection shows that Plato did not change his basic notion of philosophy in the late dialogues towards a more ‘technical’ concept, as is often maintained, but in a fundamental way stayed true to the Socratic, ‘existential’ impulse." (p. 1)

16. ———. 2013. "The Virtue of Power." The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy no. 13:306-317.

Abstract: "The “battle” between corporealists and idealists described in Plato’s Sophist 245e6–249d5 is of significance for understanding the philosophical function of the dramatic exchange between the Eleatic guest and Theaetetus, the dialogue’s main interlocutors.

Various features of this exchange indicate that the Eleatic guest introduces and discusses the dispute between corporealists and idealists in order to educate Theaetetus in ontological matters. By reading the discussion between Theaetetus and the Eleatic guest in the light of these features, one comes to see that the primary audience for the proposal advanced by the Eleatic guest in this passage, namely that being is power, is not any of the participants in the “battle,” as has been commonly assumed, but Theaetetus himself—a fact to bear in mind in any viable interpretation of the passage."

17. ———. 2016. "Plato and Heidegger on Sophistry and Philosophy." In Sophistes: Plato's Dialogue and Heidegger's Lectures in Marburg (1924-25), edited by De Brasi, Diego and Fuchs, Marko J., 27-60. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

"The present chapter investigates Heidegger's early understanding of Platonic dialectic in its contrast to sophistry as this comes to expression in his Lectures on Plato's Sophist." (p. 27)

(...)

"To investigate Heidegger's early understanding of sophistry is thus a challenging task, since this understanding cannot be isolated from his broader interpretation of Plato's understanding of philosophy or from his own understanding of philosophy, developed in discussion with the philosophical tradition. Moreover, as Heidegger's interpretation of Plato is primarily based on a reading of the Sophist, a text that may not be typical of Plato, we need to look at the Sophist itself if we wish to evaluate Heidegger's engagement with Plato. Accordingly, the chapter will have two main parts. The first part will focus on Plato's Sophist, in particular on the connection between arete, virtue, and the inquiry into sophistry in the dialogue. Here a now common reading of the Sophist will be examined critically. The second part will focus on Heidegger's interpretation of philosophy and sophistry in the light of the Sophist and will ask what role, if any, arete plays in this interpretation." (pp. 28-29)

18. ———. 2019. "Eleaticism and Socratic Dialectic: On Ontology, Philosophical Inquiry, and Estimations of Worth in Plato’s Parmenides, Sophist and Statesman." Etudes platoniciennes no. 15:1-17.

Abstract: "The Parmenides poses the question for what entities there are Forms, and the criticism of Forms it contains is commonly supposed to document an ontological reorientation in Plato. According to this reading, Forms no longer express the excellence of a given entity and a Socratic, ethical perspective on life, but come to resemble concepts, or what concepts designate, and are meant to explain nature as a whole. Plato’s conception of dialectic, it is further suggested, consequently changes into a value-neutral method directed at tracing the interrelation of such Forms, an outlook supposedly documented in certain passages on method from the Sophist and the Statesman as well.

The article urges that this reading is untenable. For in the Parmenides the question for what entities one should posit Forms is left open, and the passages on method from the Sophist and Statesman neither encourage a non-normative ontology nor a value-neutral method of inquiry. What the three dialogues encourage us to do is rather to set common opinions about the relative worth and value of things aside when conducting ontological inquiries; and this attitude, the article concludes, demonstrates a close kinship, rather than a significant difference, between Plato’s Socrates and his Eleatic philosophers."

19. ———. 2020. "Differentiating Philosopher from Statesman according to Work and Worth." Polis. The Journal for Amcient Greek and Roman Political Thought no. 37:550-566.

Abstract: "Plato’s Sophist and Statesman stand out from many other Platonic dialogues by at least two features. First, they do not raise a ti esti question about a single virtue or feature of something, but raise the questions what sophist, statesman, and philosopher are, how they differ from each other, and what worth each should be accorded. Second, a visitor from Elea, rather than Socrates, seeks to addressed these questions and does so by employing what is commonly referred to as the method of collection and division. Some scholars have argued that this so-called method is value neutral and therefore unable to address the question how philosophy differs from sophistry and statesmanship according to worth. This article contends that the procedures of collection and division does not preclude the visitor from taking considerations of worth into account, but rather helps establish an objective basis for settling the main questions of the dialogue."

20. Lee, Edward N. 1966. "Plato on Negation and Not-Being in the Sophist." The Philosophical Review no. 81:267-304.

"On pages 257c-258c of the Sophist, Plato introduces a notion which he calls the "Parts of the nature of Otherness." He then writes explicitly - in fact, he writes it twice - that that Part of Otherness, and not merely Otherness by itself, defines the genuine non-Being that is needed to conclude his inquiry and to trap the Sophist.(2) But why does he say so? Just what difference is there between the not-Being explicated by means of the Parts of Otherness and the not-Being explicated through Otherness by itself? I am convinced that none of the existing interpretations of the Parts doctrine adequately answer that question or accurately analyze Plato's own meaning. My aim will be to do both. To begin (I), we will work through the details of the difficult passage in which Plato spells out his doctrine of the Parts of Otherness; then we shall try to clarify the philosophical role that the doctrine plays-first (II) in Plato's analysis of negation (particularly his account of the sense of negative predication statements), and then (III), though more briefly, in connection with one of the wider metaphysical issues raised in the Sophist." (p. 267)

(...)

"If the account in Sections I and II above is sound, then the logical force of Plato's theories in the Sophist proves to be much greater than the commentators have appreciated. Not only can he analyze the sense of negative identity statements, but he can analyze the sense of negative predication statements as well. To an extent much greater than had earlier been recognized, he did succeed in dealing with the problem of negation. Yet we have noted that his aims in the Sophist were not narrowly logical or "analytical" in nature, and we need also to ask what other substantive issues he may have hoped to illuminate by means of these analytic achievements." (p. 299)

21. Lee, SangWon. 2016. "The Dynamic Association of Being and Non-Being: Heidegger’s Thoughts on Plato’s Sophist Beyond Platonism." Human Studies no. 39:385-403.

Abstract: "This article examines Heidegger’s interpretation of Plato’s Sophist, focusing on his attempts to grasp Plato’s original thinking of being and non-being. Some contemporary thinkers and commentators argue that Heidegger’s view of Plato is simply based on his criticism against the traditional metaphysics of Platonism and its language. But a close reading of his lecture on the Sophist reveals that his view of Plato is grounded in Plato’s questioning struggle with the ambiguous nature of human speech or language (logos). For Heidegger, Plato’s way of philosophizing is deeper than the metaphysical understanding of Platonism which sees only fixed ideas of being. In the Sophist, dialectical thinking of Plato constantly confronts the questionable force of the logos which betrays the natural possibility of non-being based on the tension between movement and rest. Thus, from Plato’s original insight Heidegger uncovers the dynamic association (koinōnia) of being and non-being as a natural ground of everyday living with others. However, although Heidegger’s understanding of the Sophist powerfully demonstrates the lively possibility (dunamis) of being beyond the customary perspective of Platonic metaphysics, his interpretation fails to further disclose Plato’s political question of being emerging in the Sophist, which seeks the true associative ground of human beings."

22. Leigh, Fiona. 2008. "The Copula and Semantic Continuity in Plato's Sophist." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 34:105-121.

"Lesley Brown first made a radical claim about uses of the Greek verb ‘to be’ (einai) in Plato’s Sophist some twenty years ago (1986).(1)

(...)

"In brief, Brown’s innovation is as follows: The verb ‘to be’ in Greek, unlike its counterpart in modern English, permits a complete and an incomplete use. Sometimes it does not take a complement, though it could, and at other times context demands a complement (whether elided or not). In the former case, the verb exhibits what Brown calls a ‘C2’ complete use, and in the second, an incomplete use. Brown’s view is that the verb is not being used merely homonymously in these cases, but, like ‘to teach’ in English, exhibits a certain continuity of meaning across uses. The mistake has been to take complete uses of estin as C1 complete uses, i.e. as uses that will not bear further completion.

The first critical discussion (to my knowledge) of Brown’s reading has recently appeared in print.(6) In it John Malcolm advances several arguments against Brown’s reading. I shall argue, however, that Malcolm’s textual considerations are less than decisive. More significantly, I shall suggest that his conceptual arguments miss their mark in two ways: one objection relies on a less than charitable reading of Brown, while another involves the questionable attribution of an assumption to the author of the Sophist. But despite my defence of Brown’s view, I do not endorse it. On the contrary, I hope to show that Brown’s central thesis—that there is a semantic continuity between complete and incomplete uses of einai—lacks the textual support it requires from the Sophist. Moreover, a central argument of that dialogue tells against it. (pp. 105-106)

(...)

"I have argued that Malcolm’s arguments against Brown’s reading of einai in the Sophist are ultimately unconvincing. None the less, I hope to have shown that Brown’s reading receives insufficient support from the relevant passages, and is even rendered doubtful by a central argument of that work. If this is right, the contention that einai has a C2 complete use in the Sophist—a use referred to in the kath’ hauta/pros alla distinction at 255 c 14—will turn out to be at best improbable, and at worst defeated." (p. 120)

(1) L. Brown, ‘Being in the Sophist: A Syntactical Enquiry’ [‘Being’], Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 4 (1986), 49–70; repr. with revisions in G. Fine (ed.), Plato 1:Metaphysics and Epistemology (Oxford, 1999), 455–78 (all references are to the later publication).

(6) J. Malcolm, ‘Some Cautionary Remarks on the “is”/“teaches” Analogy’ [‘Remarks’], Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 31 (2006), 281–96.

23. ———. 2009. "Plato on Art, Perspective, and Beauty in the Sophist." Literature & Aesthetics no. 19:183-214.

"With only a few exceptions, readers of Plato’s later dialogue, the Sophist, have not usually associated it with Platonic aesthetics. But this is to overlook two important features of the dialogue. First, the unfavourable contrast, built up throughout the dialogue, between the practice of sophistry – likened to the practice of the mimetic arts (235c-236e)–and the practice of philosophy. Only the latter, the Stranger implies, affords the possibility of what we might call an aesthetic experience, i. e., the experience of beauty in the soul, while the former results in ugliness (230d-e). Second, it overlooks the argument at 235d-236c, offered by the main speaker in the dialogue, the Eleatic Stranger, for the claim that certain artworks, such as monuments and large paintings, are necessarily illusory."

(...)

"I mentioned above that the conception of a beautiful soul figures in the Stranger’s remarks on the benefits of knowledge, as contrasted with the deleterious effects of submitting oneself to the teaching of sophists.

However, the conception of beauty at work here, and its relation to truth and knowledge, is not argued for or defended in our dialogue, but instead appears to be presupposed: there is nothing in the Sophist that counts as an advance in Plato’s thought on the conception of beauty. Nonetheless, as a preliminary, I want first to review this conception in the corpus, and its connection to truth, knowledge, and virtue, in order to provide a broader context within which to situate the importance accorded to a beautiful soul in the Sophist. We will see that the experience of beauty generally, and coming to have a beautiful soul in particular, is desirable because it has moral value. We will also see, however, that aesthetic value is not thereby reduced to moral value, since it will emerge that the soul’s beauty is for Plato a constituent of the good life, of eudaimonia, and not simply a means towards that end." (pp. 183-184, notes omitted)

24. ———. 2010. "Being and Power in Plato's Sophist." Apeiron no. 43:63-85.

"What should we make of the passage in the Sophist at 247d-e, in which the Eleatic Stranger declares that being is whatever has the power (dunamis) to act or be affected, even if only once, in the smallest way? Does this proposal about being — the 'dunamis proposal' (2) — express the view of the Stranger's interlocutors, the giants, or is the Stranger speaking in his own voice and so representing Plato's view? (3) If the latter, how could the proposal be seen to survive the encounter with the 'friends of the Forms', and be applicable to immutable Forms? Is the employment of 'horos' and 'horizein' at 247e3 meant to indicate that a mere mark of being is offered in the proposal, or the very definition of being? How these questions are answered determines what role, if any, one takes the dunamis proposal about being to play in the later constructive part of the dialogue, in which the Form, Being, takes centre stage."

(...)

"I shall argue that in the Sophist Plato has the Stranger forge the definition — that whatever has the power to act or be affected is a being — by distinguishing relations of causation (or poiesis) from relations of change." (p. 63-64)

(2) L. Brown, 'Innovation and Continuity: The Battle of Gods and Giants', In J. Gentzler, ed., Method in Ancient Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon 1998), 181-207, at 184ff.

(3) Although it has been recently challenged, the orthodox position, that provided one proceeds with care one can read off Plato's position — however partial and provisionary — from the views expressed by the main character of a dialogue, remains, and I shall assume it here. (For the case pro, see D. Sedley, Plato's Cratylus, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003), 1-2; M. Frede, "The Literary Form of the Sophist', In M. L. Gill and M. M. McCabe, eds., Form and Argument in Late Plato (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996), 135-151. 142,150-1. For the case contra, see e.g., R. Blondell, The Play of Character in Plato's Dialogues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002), 18-21.)

25. ———. 2012. "Modes of Being at Sophist 255c-e." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 57:1-28.

Abstract: "I argue for a new interpretation of the argument for the non-identity of Being and Difference at Sophist 255c-e, which turns on a distinction between modes of being a property. Though indebted to Frede [Prädikation und Existenzaussage] (1967), the distinction differs from his in an important respect: What distinguishes the modes is not the subject’s relation to itself or to something numerically distinct, but whether it constitutes or conforms to the specification of some property. Thus my view, but not his, allows self-participation for Forms. Against Frede and the more traditional interpretation, I maintain that the distinction is not introduced by way of the pros alla/kath’ hauta distinction, or by way of uses or senses of the verb ‘to be’, but is established prior to the argument and is deployed in its frame. Moreover, since I read the argument’s scope as restricted to properties in what I shall call the attribute mode, my interpretation can explain, as its rivals cannot, why the criterion of difference at 255d6-7 does not apply to the Form, Difference, itself."

26. ———. 2012. "Restless Forms and Changeless Causes." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 112.

Abstract: "It is widely held that in Plato's Sophist, Forms rest or change or both. The received opinion is, however, false-or so I will argue. There is no direct support for it in the text and several passages tell against it. I will further argue that, contrary to the view of some scholars, Plato did not in this dialogue advocate a kind of change recognizable as 'Cambridge change', as applicable to his Forms. The reason that Forms neither change nor rest is that they are purely intelligible entities, not susceptible to changing or being at rest. Since Plato continues in the Sophist to treat Forms as causes, it follows that Forms are changeless causes. I ask what conception of cause might allow for this view, and reject the suggestion that Plato was some kind of proto-dispositionalist about causation. Instead I suggest that he understood causation to incorporate a notion of structuring, such that Forms can be seen to structure their participants and so cause them to possess the attributes they possess."

27. Lentz, William. 1997. "The Problem of Motion in the Sophist." Apeiron no. 30:89-108.

"In the Sophist, Plato seems to introduce κίνησις, motion or change, into the unchanging and eternal realm of being. On the face of it, this looks like an outright contradiction; i.e., motion or change is introduced into a realm of unchanging and perfect actualities. The introduction of motion occurs in two ways: Plato suggests that when the soul knows its object it affects that object (248e2-4), and he claims that motion and rest define reality (249d3-4). Neither of these claims is very clear; both require some interpretative work.

After a brief examination of previous attempts to explain Plato's introduction of motion into being, I suggest that a solution to these problems begins with Plato's claim that being is defined by power. The concept of power is then filled out by reference to the genera of motion, rest, sameness, and difference. I oppose the tendency in the literature to reject motion and rest as essential genera. Instead I argue that these two genera are required in order for there to be relations in being — relations that are manifest between forms but do not affect the nature of the forms themselves. I also reject the tendency to explain the interweaving of forms as a function of discourse. Instead I argue that the interweaving of forms is referred to a metaphysical state that in turn makes knowledge and discourse possible." (p. 89)

28. Lewis, Frank A. 1976. "Did Plato Discover the "Estin" of Identity?" California Studies in Classical Antiquity no. 8:113-143.

Summary: "(I) The notion of an is of identity in English. Some passages from Plato suggesting the existence of the comparable notion of a special estin of identity in Greek. (II) What in particular would lead Plato to recognize such a special sense of estin? Forms, participation, and predication. In the account of ordinary singular predications, a predicate 'Y' is true of a subject X just in case X participates in the form the Y associated with. (III) Self-participation. If nothing can participate in itself, then for any forms X and Y, X participates in Y and so is Y only if X is not Y. Even if self-participation is allowed, still in the majority of cases a subject is not what it participates in. The difficulty for all theories of predication which wish to explain how a thing can be something which it also is not. (IV) The is of identity re-examined. Some fallacies which might support the notion, and some arguments against it. (V) Sophist 255e11-256d10. Plato does not explicitly recognize an estin of identity. Four competing, "equally best" accounts of the grammatical theory he may implicitly be invoking: (i) the estin of identity; (ii) relational terms; (iii) the definite article; (iv) the not of nonidentity. (VI) Conclusion. The notion of a special estin of identity has little basis in Plato's text."

29. ———. 1976. "Plato on "Not"." California Studies in Classical Antiquity no. 9:89-115.

"Plato's account of not being can be seen as a treatment of issues connected with the analysis of negation. It is generally agreed that his account covers at least one set of negative assertions. We are explicitly told how to analyze such sentences as "Motion is not rest," "Motion is not the same," which the context shows are intended to assert the nonidentity of motion and assorted other forms. For Plato, such assertions form a special class of sentences, which he analyzes by reference to the form "otherness." What is less clear is whether Plato successfully distinguishes negative sentences of this sort from negative sentences for which, on his terms, a different pattern of analysis is appropriate: "Socrates is not beautiful," "Helen is not wise." I shall call these sentences of negative predication proper ("NP" hereafter).(1) I argue that Plato does recognize this second sort of sentence, and that he does in the Sophist offer a theory to say how such sentences get their meaning. At the same time, his theory is in many respects unlike the kind of theory we should demand for the task at hand. These differences may help explain why the details of his account have so often seemed so elusive.

I offer first (I) a general account of the context within which Plato's treatment of negation takes place. I then turn (II) to a detailed examination of the passage at 25 7b3-c3, where I shall argue that we find our best evidence for what Plato regards as the chief desiderata in an account of NP. I end (III) with some brief comments on the aims and limits of Plato's inquiry." (pp. 89-90)

(1) By "NP," accordingly, I mean to confine my attention to simple, singular, negative sentences other than sentences that are denials of identity. I follow Plato in ignoring the use of negation in combination with general sentences.

30. Lisi, Francesco Leonardo, Migliori, Maurizio, and Monserrat-Molas, Josep, eds. 2011. Formal Structures in Plato's Dialogues: Theaetetus, Sophist and Statesman. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Abstract: "The three dialogues, which are the object of the collected papers included in this volume, are a unicum in the Platonic corpus. No other existing trilogy is connected dramatically so clearly as they are.

From the formal point of view, in these texts Plato shows his brilliant literary ability in all its facets in order to deploy all the grades of the philosophical inquiry, always related to education: maieutikos elenchus, dialectical dihairesis and everything entangled with allegory and myth. In the first dialogue of the trilogy Socrates searches in Theatetus' soul for the definition of episteme, not knowledge in general, but the specific wisdom proper of the true philosophers. In the following Sophist and Statesman, on the other hand, a new character, the guest from Elea, offers the science they had looked for as a gift, the diairesis. The exercises in it serve also for distinguishing the true philosopher-statesman from his fake: the sophist and all the historical politicians acting in the scene. Actually these dialogues develop the subject of the excurse, which stands at the centre of the Theaetetus (172c3-177c5): the opposition between true and false philosopher."

Essays on the Sophist:

Milena Bontempi: Opinione e legge: l’anima e la città nella trilogia, Teeteto, Sofista, Politico, pp. 47-58; Elisabetta Cattanei: Arithmos nel Teeteto, nel Sofista et nel Politico di Platone, pp. 59-71; Francesco Fronterotta: Dialettica et diaíresis nel Sofista platonico, pp.151-167; Beatriz Bossi: ¿Por qué Platón no refuta Parménides en el Sofista?, pp. 180-192; Noburu Notomi: Where is the Philosopher? A single project of the Sophist and the Statesman, pp. 216-236.

31. Lloyd, A. C. 1953. "Falsehood and Significance According to Plato." In Proceedings of the XIth International Congress of Philosophy. Vol. 12, 68-70. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

32. Losev, Alexandre. 2020. "Plato's Quincunxes." Philosophia: E-Journal for Philosophy and Culture no. 26:200-209.

Abstract. The Five Greatest Kinds discussed in Plato‘s Sophist are taken to be just one instance of a fivefold structure found in various related texts. Contemporary linguistic theories are a source for ideas about its functioning."

33. Lott, Micah. 2012. "Ignorance, Shame and Love of Truth: Diagnosing the Sophist’s Error in Plato’s Sophist." Phoenix no. 66:36-56.

"In the past several decades, philosophers have shown substantial interest in Plato’s dialogue the Sophist. Much of this interest has focused on the sections of the dialogue which provide an account of being and not-being, and of true and false speech. The sixth definition of the sophist, however, which is developed at 226b–231e, has received less attention." (p. 36, note omitted)

(...)

"I begin with a brief overview of the dialogue and a summary of the argument leading to the sixth definition. I then address some of the ambiguities in that argument and spell out some of the argument’s implications, paying particular attention to the notions of ignorance and shame. I then show how ideas from the sixth definition illuminate the final definition of the sophist. Although my focus in this paper is the Sophist, in my discussion of the sophist’s condition I also touch on some relevant cases of learning and shame from other Platonic dialogues, including the Apology, Charmides, and the Republic. Two key assumptions that affect my interpretation but which remain mostly unargued for are: 1) that the sixth definition describes some kind of expertise, even if it does not accurately describe the sophist, and 2) that the final definition of the sophist is, at least within the context of the dialogue, an adequate definition of the sophist." (p. 37)

34. Luce, J. V. 1969. "Plato on Truth and Falsity in Names." The Classical Quarterly no. 19:222-232.

"Further discussion of the logical points at issue between Lorenz-Mittelstrass [*] and Robinson [**] would involve a critique of the modern reference-theory of names. I propose to confine myself to Platonic exegesis, and to ask which of their theories better fits the facts of Plato's thought about names, not only as it appears in the Cratylus, but as stated or implied in other dialogues. My general conclusion will be that Plato in practice regards names as functioning in the sort of way required by the Lorenz-Mittelstrass theory, though I would not be prepared to ascribe to Plato a theory of the proposition as sophisticated as that implied in their symbolism (p. 6). In section II of the paper I aim at showing in detail that the concept of 'stating a name', i.e. applying a name as a predicate to its nominate, is fully accepted and used by Plato throughout the Cratylus, that this implies that names may be vehicles of truth or falsity, and that there is no reason to suppose that Plato was unhappy or suspicious about the logical validity of the concept of truth/falsity in names. In section III I shall argue that Plato treated names as descriptive predicates in earlier dialogues, and continued to do so in late dialogues, notably in the Sophist and Politicus, and that this is not incompatible with the fact that a doctrine of propositional truth is developed in one section of the Sophist (261 d-263 d). In section IV I shall consider briefly how a doctrine of truth-names and lie-names fits into Plato's general conception of the relations between language, truth, and reality." (p. 223)

References

[*] KUno Lorenz, Jürgen Mittelstrass, "On Rational Philosophy of Language: the Programme in Plato's Cratylus Reconsidered", Mind LXXVI (1967), 6.

[**] Richard Robinson, "The Theory of Names in Plato's Cratylus", Revue Internationale de Philosophie, XXXII, 1955, 1-16.

35. Mahoney, Timothy A. 2015. "Commentary on Planinc." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy no. 31:218-225.

Commentary on Z. Planinc, Socrates and the Cyclops: Plato’s Critique of ‘Platonism’ in the Sophist and Statesman.

Abstract: "Zdravko Planinc’s Odyssean reading of the Sophist and Statesman presents a radical critique of claims that these dialogues present developments of Plato’s thought. His claim that Plato intends us to see the Stranger as no more than an outrageous sophist, however, is undermined by the quality of at least some of Stranger’s arguments and insights."

36. Malabed, Rizalino Noble. 2016. "The Sophist of Many Faces: Difference (and Identity) in Theaetetus and the Sophist." Φιλοσοφια: International Journal of Philosophy no. 17:141-154.

Abstract: "One can argue that the problem posed by difference/identity in contemporary philosophy has its roots in the persistent epistemological imperative to be certain about what we know. We find this demand in Plato's Theaetetus and Sophist. But beyond this demand, there is a sense in the earlier dialogue that difference is not a passive feature waiting to be identified. "Difference" points towards an active differentiating. In the Sophist, difference appears in the method of dividing and gathering deployed to hunt for the elusive "sophist." Difference is also one of the great kinds that weaves together other kinds. Practically, difference enables the sophist's expertise of appearance-making as he knowingly confuses things with words. This paper then quizzes the concept of difference in all these guises in the two dialogues."

37. Malcolm, John. 1967. "Plato's Analysis of τὸ ὄν and τὸ μή ὄν in the Sophist." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 12:130-146.

"The main thesis I shall present is that in the Sophist Plato does not distinguish the existential sense of εἶναι from the predicative and identifying senses. It is regarded as a commonplace that he did so, (1) but I shall try to show that it is advisable to translate τὸ ὄν and εἶναι in a more general way, as "being" and "to be" respectively. This is sufficient not only to bring out the force of the paradoxes in 236e-250e, but also to explain Plato's use of the expression μἑτέροιν τοϋ ὄντος in 251 a-259 e and his account of τὸ ὄν as a vowel form in the same section." (p. 130)

(...)

"In short, I am suggesting that neither in Sophist 251-259 nor in 236e-250e do we need to take τὸ ὄν to be existential. Insofar as it need not be so taken, and in certain places it must not be so taken, it ought to be translated as 'being' rather than as 'existence'." (p. 131)

(...)

"Although I have denied that Plato distinguishes an existential sense of εἶναι, I would agree that he does distinguish positive predication from positive identity. He makes the latter a sub-division of the former.

To say "XpY" is to predicate Y of X. 'X is identical with Y' is written 'XpSrY.' To identify is to predicate sameness.

Plato, however, does not distinguish negative predication from negative identity. At 256e τὸ μή ὄν is limited to non-identity (as opposed to predication which is here τὸ ὄν), but at 263b, a parallel phrasing, τὸ μή ὄν must include predication (e.g. the flying of Theaetetus).

Plato's account of negation holds only for negative identity. He gives no account of negative predication as such.(30) (p. 145)

(1) Pro Taylor pp. 60, 81; Cornford p. 296; Ackrill p. 1; Moravcsik pp. 42, 51.

Crombie, though he has reservations as to the success of Plato's undertaking, maintains (p. 502) that it was a prime purpose of his to distinguish the existential sense of εἶναι in the Sophist. Contra Runciman p. 84.

(30) See Taylor pp. 64-65, also Runciman pp. 98, 101, Crombie p. 500, n. 1. For a dissenting opinion, see Moravcsik pp. 68-75.

Bibliography

Ackrill, J. L., 'Plato and the Copula: Sophist 251-259,' Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 77 (1957), pp. 1-6.

Cornford, F. M., Plato's Theory of Knowledge (London, 1935).

Crombie, I. M., An Examination of Plato's Doctrines, vol. 2, (London, 1963).

Moravcsik, J. M. E., 'Being and Meaning in the Sophist,' Acta Philosophica Fennica, Fasc. 14, (1962), pp. 23-78.

Peck, A. L., 'Plato and the ΜΕΓΙΣΤΑ ΓΕΝΗ of the Sophist: a Reinterpretation,' Classical Quarterly, n.s. vol. 2, (1952), pp. 32-56.

Runciman, W. G., Plato's Later Epistemology (Cambridge, 1962).

Taylor, A. E., Plato, the Sophist and the Statesman (ed. Klibansky and Anscombe, London, 1961).

Addendum

I note with some satisfaction that my major thesis is consistent with the results attained by Michael Frede in his thorough study Prädikation und Existenzaussage. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Gottingen, 1967.

38. ———. 1983. "Does Plato Revise his Ontology in Sophist 246c-249d?" Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 65:115-127.

"At Sophist 248 e—249 a, while examining the doctrine of the Friends of the Forms to the effect that real being or true reality (ή όντως ουσία) is always unchanging and is attained by thought alone (248 a), the Eleatic Stranger forcefully poses the rhetorical question whether we can easily be convinced that change, life, soul and intellect are not present to true reality: is that which completely is (το παντελώς δν), devoid of mind and changeless? Theaetetus readily agrees that we cannot exclude mind and change from the real. The Stranger concludes (249 b) that both change and that which is changed qualify as "beings" (οντά), and later (at 249d), that being (reality) is both the unchanging and the changed." (p. 115)

(...)

"Although I am persuaded that the Friends of the Forms include Plato himself, I shall not try to establish this or, indeed, to say definitively how the supposed emendation might apply in detail to Forms, souls and sense-objects. I shall suggest, rather, that the best way to read the passage in question is not to assume that Plato is here categorically affirming metaphysical truths which he endorses, be they at the expense of his earlier views or otherwise. On the contrary, given that we have here a part of a section which aims at showing confusion in the use of the term "being," we cannot plausibly regard it as a source of any new commitments on his part as to the nature of the real." (p. 116)

39. ———. 1985. "Remarks on an Incomplete Rendering of Being in the Sophist." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 67:162-165.

"In this journal, Band 65, Heft 1, pp. 1-17, Robert Heinaman has launched an attack on those (1) who have claimed that Plato's solution to the alleged paradox of false statement (Sophist 236-264) restricts itself to an incomplete use of "being" (identity and predication) and is not concerned with questions of existence. It is my contention that Heinaman 's assault miscarries in that he has totally misjudged the position he purports to oppose."

(1) I consider pages 1-13 of Heinaman 's "Being in the Sophist". These are directed at G. E. L. Owen, "Plato on Not-Being, in: G. Vlastos (ed.), Plato I, New York 1971, pp. 223-267 and J. Malcolm, "Plato's Analysis of τὸ ὄν and τὸ μή ὄν in the Sophist", Phronesis (1967), pp. 130-46. An appendix, pp. 13-17, treats of M. Frede's Prädikation und Existenzaussage, Gottingen 1967 and is beyond the scope of this paper.

40. ———. 1985. "On 'What is Not in any Way' in the Sophist." The Classical Quarterly no. 35:520-523.

"To ensnare the sophist of the Sophist in a definition disclosing him as a purveyor of images and falsehoods Plato must block the sophistical defence that image and falsehood are self-contradictory in concept, for they both embody the proposition proscribed by Parmenides - 'What is not, is'. It has been assumed that Plato regards this defence as depending on a reading of' what is not' (to me on) in its very strongest sense, where it is equivalent to 'what is not in any way' (to medamos on) or 'nothing'.

Likewise, the initial paradoxes of not-being (237b-239c) are seen as requiring that to me on be understood in this way, that later designated by Plato (257b, 258e-259a) as the opposite of to on or 'being'. On this interpretation, Plato's counter-strategy is to recognise a use of to me on which is not opposed in this strict sense to being, but is indeed a part of it and is 'being other than'.

In a stimulating article,(1) R. W. Jordan challenges this account.(2) I shall briefly attempt to show that his objections are not decisive and that his own interpretation is open to question." (p. 520)

(1) R. W. Jordan, 'Plato's Task in the Sophist',Classical Quarterly 34 (1984), 113-29.

(2) Referred to by Jordan as' Malcolm's view'. Though flattered by the appellation, I can claim to be but an adherent and not the initiator (see Jordan, p. 120, notes 14 and 15.

41. ———. 2006. "A Way Back for Sophist 255c12-13." Ancient Philosophy no. 26:275-289.

"At Sophist 255c8 the Eleatic Stranger asks whether Difference is to be distinguished from Being. As evidence that these are two distinct items he introduces at c12-13 two ways in which beings can be: (1) in themselves or αυτά καθ' αυτά (hereafter, KH) and (2) with reference to others or προς αλλα (hereafter, PA).(1)

At 255d1-7 it is then shown that Difference, unlike Being, only shares in the second way of being, since what is different is always different in relation to something else. Now this may be read in a straightforward and unproblematic manner since there are many ways in which something can be said to be without this something being said, in the surface grammar, to be in relation to something else.

Compare, for example, ‘Socrates exists’ or ‘Socrates is a man’ with ‘Socrates is wiser than Miletus’.

Yet some of the most distinguished and deservedly influential commentators differ radically from such a ‘naïve’ reading and see the KH/PA contrast here as germane to such issues as replying to the late-learners, dealing with self-predication, contrasting statements of identity with those of predication, involving different uses of ‘is’, and discussing the so-called ‘two-level’ paradoxes.(2) There is no doubt that these approaches have been philosophically most instructive and inspiring, but, I shall maintain, they should not intrude into the exegesis of this particular passage. The naïve reading is to be preferred."

(1) Line references to Plato are from Burnet 1900. The title’s passage is at lines 13-14 (mislabeled 15!) in Duke et al. 1995. The Budé edition, Diès 1925, agrees with Burnet.

(2) For this last item see Vlastos 1973, 323ff. The most discussed example is that where Motion, qua its nature as motion, moves, but, qua Form is at rest.

References

Burnet, John. 1900. Platonis Opera. vol. 1. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Diès, Auguste. 1925. Platon: le Sophiste. Édition ‘Les Belles Lettres’. Paris: Budé.

Duke, E.A. et al. 1995. Platonis Opera. vol. 1. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Vlastos, Gregory. 1973. Platonic Studies. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

42. ———. 2006. "Some Cautionary Remarks on the ‘Is’ / ‘Teaches’ Analogy." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 31:281-296.

"Ancient Greek thinkers, notably Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle, are regarded by some as having been led into error through a failure to recognize the difference between two uses of (their equivalent of) the verb ‘to be’: the incomplete or copula, and the complete or existential.(1) They allegedly acted as if ‘X is F’ entailed ‘X is’, i.e. ‘exists’.

Not everyone is convinced by this. I shall consider two responses.

The one I favour is to grant that a rigid existence/copula distinction is a legitimate tool for the interpretation of these philosophers.

Furthermore, I suggest that their reasoning may be understood in a way that does not leave them as vulnerable to the charge of this confusion as is sometimes supposed. The other reaction takes a more subtle approach. It maintains that, with respect to ‘being’, the complete/incomplete distinction is a modern contrivance,(2) hence it is anachronistic to employ it in addressing the ancients. In the use of the Greek equivalent of ‘to be’ the copula had some ‘built-in’ existential import. Since writers in that language did not have two completely different uses to confuse, it is unfair to look at them from this perspective.

Two leading proponents of this latter doctrine are Charles Kahn and Lesley Brown. Although it was introduced some time ago, this view continues to enjoy current endorsement(3) and I believe it is not inappropriate to examine the reasoning offered in its support in the work of Brown, especially that of 1994.(4)" (pp. 281-282, note 1 abbreviated)

(1) The charge is found in J. S.Mill, A System of Logic (London, 1843), 1. iv. i, who mentions Plato and Aristotle and implies that they were open to this error. He refers us to the Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, 2 vols. (1829; new edn. London, 1869), by his father James Mill.

(2) See e.g. C. Kahn, ‘A Return to the Theory of the Verb be and the Concept of Being’ [‘Return’], Ancient Philosophy, 24 (2004), 381–405 at 385, who allows that we should use ‘such modern distinctions’ in our ‘hermeneutical metalanguage’, but that are (i.e. exist).’ My aim will be to help him avoid this precarious position as far as is possible.

(3) Let me give two items from 2003: B.Hestir, ‘A “Conception” of Truth in Plato’s Sophist’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 41 (2003), 1–24 at 6 n. 16 ; J. Szaif, Der Sinn von ‘sein’ (Freiburg and Munich, 2003), 19 n. 13. To these may be added two from 2002: J. van Eck, ‘Not-Being and Difference: On Plato’s Sophist 256 d 5–258 e 3’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 23 (2002), 63–84 at 70–1; A. Silverman, The Dialectic of Essence (Princeton, 2002), 145 n. 17, 150 n. 21.

(4) The article in question is L. Brown, ‘The Verb “to be” in Greek Philosophy: Some Remarks’ [‘Verb’], in S. Everson (ed.), Language (Companions to Ancient Thought, 3; Cambridge, 1994), 212–36. (Any ‘bare’ page references in my article will be to this item.) Kahn, ‘Return’, 383, accepts Brown’s contribution unreservedly. He writes, ‘She shows [emphasis added] that the relation between the verb einai in sentences of the form X is and X is Y is like that between the verb teaches in Jane teaches and Jane teaches French’. See also his 385.

43. Marback, Richard C. 1994. "Rethinking Plato's Legacy: Neoplatonic Readings of Plato's Sophist." Rhetoric Review no. 13:30-49.

"In what follows I will historicize the reception of the terms Platonist and sophist by briefly exploring neo-Platonic discussions of sophistry and sophistic. As late Roman and early Christian exegetes of the Platonic texts, the neo-Platonists might at first seem unflinching adversaries of sophistry. While it might be unrealistic for us to expect any sympathetic treatment of Gorgias from scholars so invested in the authority of classical authors like Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, we should not be surprised to find these same scholars promoting sophistry-the contingency of meaning in the context of expression -- in the name of Plato." (p. 31)

(...)

"To recognize that Plotinus and Proclus and Augustine discerned and grappled with issues of sophistry raised by Plato in the Sophist is, I think, to recognize their creative influence over the subsequent reception and impact of classical rhetoric.

(...)

Along these lines I have attempted to show how the Sophist, as one instance, was used and can be used to fashion sophistic or antisophistic perspectives, how readings of it by rhetoricians, logicians, and ethicists, or by Augustine, Plotinus, and Proclus, reiterate or reject an antagonism to sophistry. Reading Plato in this way, I think we benefit from finding that along with the sophist whose language skills eluded easy capture in the Stranger's philosophical net, the neo-Platonist similarly eludes well-defined historical categories. Adding the Sophist to our Plato makes more elusive, more sophistical, the contingent and contextual elements by which we fashion our rhetorical terms as historical, genealogical categories. This approach also raises questions about the kinds of textual strategies that led to the dialogue's exclusion from Plato's rhetorical canon. Discussions of why the primary rhetoric texts in the Platonic corpus have come to be the Phaedrus and Gorgias can and should inform discussions of what sophistry has meant throughout the years people have been forming this canon. Such selectivity presupposes reading and writing and talking about the dialogues in particular ways, employing strategies and making choices influenced by an inheritance of possible issues and conflicts as well as settled ways of reading and representing that reading that may or may not be identified as "sophistic." Attention to the neo-Platonists and their readings of Plato's Sophist thus points not only, as Quandahl says, to the rhetorical elements of Plato (347), such attention points as well to the contextual and contingent rhetorical strategies constantly at work in the shaping of philosophy's, rhetoric's, and sophistry's intertwined histories." (p. 47)

References

Quandahl, Ellen. "What is Plato? Inference and Allusion in Plato's Sophist", Rhetoric Review 7 (1989): 338-51.

44. Marcos de Pinotti, Graciela Elena. 2016. "Plato’s Argumentative Strategies in Theaetetus and Sophist." In Plato’s Styles and Characters. Between Literature and Philosophy, edited by Cornelli, Gabriele, 77-87. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"In Theaetetus and Sophist, Plato accomplishes a construction operation of his adversaries which leads him to associate doctrines regularly attributed to Heracliteans or Eleatic thinkers with different sophistical positions. However, his primary purpose is not to refute historical positions, but to assert fundamental theses and principles of his own philosophy. So I am not interested here in evaluating the legitimacy of such associations, or “dialectical combinations”, as Cornford (1935, p. 36) calls them. I will focus instead on the peculiar kind of argument he employs for the refutation of both kinds of opponents. This is a sort of peculiar argumentation, as I will try to show, which does not appeal to the existence of the Forms but to the conditions of the possibility of language." (p. 77)

(...)

"To conclude, I would like to emphasize once more that the resource to the conditions of possibility of language rather than to the thesis of the existence of the Forms is not a defect of the argumentative strategy displayed in the passages of Theaetetus and Sophist analyzed here. On the contrary, such resource gives rise to a special type of argument that tries to persuade every language user and not only those who defend the Forms. Despite this, Plato’s reader will inevitably find veiled references to these realities in almost all of them." (p. 86)

45. Matthen, Mohan. 1983. "Greek Ontology and the 'Is' of Truth." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 28:113-135.

Abstract: "This is an essay about the ontological presuppositions of a certain use of 'is' in Greek philosophy - I shall describe it in the first part and present a hypothesis about its semantics in the second.

I believe that my study has more than esoteric interest. First, it provides an alternative semantic account of what Charles Kahn has called the 'is' of truth, thereby shedding light on a number of issues in Greek ontology, including an Eleatic paradox of change and Aristotle's response to it.

Second, it finds in the semantics of Greek a basis for admitting what have been called 'non-substantial individuals' or 'immanent characters' into accounts of Greek ontology. Third, it yields an interpretation of Aristotle's talk of 'unities' which is crucial to his treatment of substance in the central books of the Metaphysics."

(...)

"I have argued in this essay for the recognition of a sort of entity that is not familiar in modem ontologies. I have argued on the basis of a syntactic and semantic analysis of certain uses of 'is', and found textual support for the analysis in certain texts of Aristotle. In addition, the recognition of predicative complexes enables us to give a unified treatment of a number of puzzling features of Greek ontology.

It is possible that the Greeks may have regarded predicative complexes not in the way I have presented them, namely as constructed entitles derivative from more basic types, but as the entities given in perception, and so epistemically and even ontologically prior. If so, we may find that in positing the Forms, Plato was making a break with an ontology of predicative complexes, not, as is usually thought, with an ontology of individual substances. Similarly, it is possible that Aristotle posited individual substances against the background of an ontology composed of predicative complexes and Platonic Forms. These possibilities offer the prospect of a richer appreciation of the development of Greek ontology than is now customary." (pp. 130-131)

46. Mazur, Zeke. 2013. "The Platonizing Sethian Gnostic Interpretation of Plato’s Sophist." In Practicing Gnosis: Ritual, Magic, Theurgy and Liturgy in Nag Hammadi, Manichaean and Other Ancient Literature. Essays in Honor of Birger A. Pearson, edited by DeConick, April D. , Shaw, Gregory and Turner, John D. , 469-493. Leiden: Brill.

"This essay constitutes the second part of a larger investigation into the evidence of a tacit debate between Plotinus and the Gnostics over the interpretation of Plato. In a previous part of this study, I made the case that Zostrianos drew on a number of specific passages describing the cyclical reincarnation of souls especially in the Phaedrus, but also in the Phaedo and Republic, and that Plotinus and Porphyry had tacitly responded in several locations throughout their writings.(4) Here I would like to present a similar case for the Gnostic use of the Sophist. The specific thesis of this essay is that the Platonizing Sethians drew at least in part upon the text of Plato’s Sophist for central aspects of their metaphysics, and—in relation to the topic of the present volume—they even went so far as to reconceptualize the dialectical methods described in the Sophist in terms of their praxis of visionary ascent." (pp. 469-470)

(4) Mazur, Zeke. 2016. Traces of the Competition Between the Platonizing Sethian Gnostics and Plotinus’ Circle: the Case of Zostrianos 44–46. In Estratégias anti-gnósticas nos escritos de Plotino. Actas do colóquio internacional realizado em São Paulo em 18–19 de março 2012, M.P. Marsola and L. Ferroni, eds. São Paulo: Rosari et Paulus, pp. 125-211.

47. McCoy, Marina. 2008. Plato on the Rhetoric of Philosophers and Sophists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments VII; 1 Introduction 1; 02 Elements of Gorgianic Rhetoric and the Forensic Genre in Plato’s Apology 23; 3 The Rhetoric of Socratic Questioning in the Protagoras 56; 4 The Competition between Philosophy and Rhetoric in the Gorgias 85; 5 The Dialectical Development of the Philosopher and Sophist in the Republic 111; 6 Philosophers, Sophists, and Strangers in the Sophist 138; 7 Love and Rhetoric in Plato’s Phaedrus 167; Bibliography 197; Index 209-212.

"In this chapter, I argue that part of Plato’s purpose in the Sophist and Theaetetus is to offer two different accounts of the nature of philosophy.

Plato engages his audience in a reflection upon the nature of philosophy through the contrast between Socrates’ and the Stranger’s ways of speaking. I focus on two main questions about the Sophist. First, how is the Stranger’s character and way of speaking distinct from Socrates’ character and speech in the Theaetetus? Second, how do the divisions and collections of the Sophist illuminate some of the differences between Socrates and the Stranger? I argue that the Eleatic Stranger is deliberately presented as an enigmatic figure who may alternately be identified as either a sophist or a philosopher. While the Stranger defines sophistry in such a way that he would separate his own activity from that of the sophists, the drama of the dialogue suggests that Socrates would not consider the Stranger to be a philosopher. That is, the dialogues function to draw us into the philosophical question of what philosophy is. The Sophist and Theaetetus as a pair demonstrate that the philosopher–sophist contrast is relative to the way in which one constructs a positive understanding of philosophy.

I argue that the Stranger’s understanding of himself as a philosopher is inadequate from Socrates’ standpoint, although the Stranger seems to identify himself as a philosopher. While the Stranger identifies philosophy with a method of division and collection, and especially with applying that method to metaphysical questions, Socrates emphasizes self-knowledge and knowledge of the human soul and its moral good as central to philosophical practice.4 Both Socrates and the Stranger are interested in persuasion, but Socrates’ rhetoric is to be found in the role of a midwife who is helping others to give birth to ideas and to grow in self-knowledge, while the Stranger’s rhetoric is oriented toward making his interlocutor more compliant and dispassionate." (pp. 139-140, notes omitted)

48. McDowell, John. 1982. "Falsehood and Not-Being in Plato's Sophist." In Language and Logos. Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy Presented to G. E. L. Owen, edited by Schofield, Malcolm and Nussbaum, Martha, 115-134. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"For me, G. E. L. Owen's 'Plato on Not-Being' (1971) radically improved the prospects for a confident overall view of its topic. Hitherto, passage after passage had generated reasonable disagreement over Plato's intentions, and the disputes were not subject to control by a satisfying picture of his large-scale strategy; so that the general impression, as one read the Sophist, was one of diffuseness and unclarity of purpose. By focusing discussion on the distinction between otherness and contrariety (257B1-C4), Owen showed how, at a stroke, a mass of confusing exegetical alternatives could be swept away, and the dialogue's treatment of not-being revealed as a sustained and tightly organised assault on a single error. In what follows, I take Owen's focusing of the issue for granted, and I accept many of his detailed conclusions. Where I diverge from Owen - in particular over the nature of the difficulty about falsehood that Plato tackles in the Sophist (§§5 and 6 below) -it is mainly to press further in the direction he indicated, in the interest of a conviction that the focus can and should be made even sharper." (p. 115)

49. McPherran, Mark L. 1986. "Plato's Reply to the 'Worst Difficulty' Argument of the Parmenides: Sophist 248a- 249d." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 68:233-252.

"In a previous paper I have argued that the theory of relations Hector-Neri Castañeda has discovered in the Phaedo is clarified and extended in the Parmenides. In particular, the paper contains an Interpretation of the 'worst difficulty' argument (Parm. 133a —135a), an argument purporting to establish that human knowledge of the Forms is impossible. My Interpretation showed the argument to utilize the extended theory of relations in its premises. I also showed, contrary to previous interpretations, how Plato's argument was logically valid.

One consideration in favor of the Interpretation I offered is that it allows the argument at last to live up to its description as the most formidable challenge to the early theory of Forms (in a long series of tough arguments), requiring a "long and remote train of argument" by "a man of wide experience and natural ability" for its unsoundness to be exposed (Parm. 133b4 —c1).

Unfortunately, the Parmenides does not contain such a reply, even though the text at 133b seems to hint that Plato had already formulated one. Did he ever entertain and record a reply, and if so, could that reply rescue some version of the theory of Forms from the devastating consequences of the 'worst difficulty'? In the following, I present my previous reconstruction of that argument and the most plausible lines of response open to a defender of a theory of Forms. In the second section I argue that Plato gives clear recognition to one of those replies in the Sophist, and I show how that reply would save the theory of Forms. Finally, I will contend that this reply is Plato's best line of response, and I will discuss the problem of actually attributing the adoption of this solution to him." (pp. 233-234, some notes omitted)

(1) Mark McPherran, "Plato's Parmenides Theory of Relations," in F. J. Pelletier and J. King-Farlow (eds.), New Essays on Plato, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume IX (1983): 149 — 164 (hereafter, "Plato's Parmenides Theory").

(2) My Interpretation dealt explicitly only with the first half of the argument (133a11 — 134c3). The second half (134c4—135a3) attempts to establish that just as men cannot know Forms, so the gods cannot be knowers of particulars (e. g., men), but only Forms.

References to Hector-Neri Castañeda:

"Plato's Phaedo Theory of Relations," Journal of Philosophical Logic I (1972): 467—480.

"Plato's Relations, Not Essences or Accidents, at Phaedo 102b — d2," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 1 (1978): 39 — 53.

"Leibniz and Plato's Phaedo Theory of Relations and Predication," M. Hooker (ed.). Leibniz: Critical and Interpretive Essays (Minneapolis, 1982): 124—159.

50. Mesquita, Antonio Pedro. 2013. "Plato’s Eleaticism in the Sophist. The Doctrine of Non-Being." In Plato's Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 175-186. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"The aporia experienced by the interlocutors in the Sophist on the notion of non-being is, essentially, the following:

1. That which absolutely is not cannot be thought of or spoken of (238c).

2. However, every assertion concerning that which is not, even if negative in content, requires the mediation of an “is” in order to be expressed.

3. In effect, when we say that non-being is not thinkable or utterable, we are, in actual fact, uttering it and, necessarily, uttering it as being, namely, as being unutterable (239a).

4. Therefore, due not to linguistic ambiguity but to ontological requirement, to say that non-being is not utterable is the same as asserting that it is unutterable and, in general, to say that non-being is not is to say that non-being is non-being, which certainly collides with what those assertions were intended to demonstrate in the first place, that is, the absolute unutterability and the absolute non-being of non-being.

5. In fact, each of those assertions tacitly affirms the opposite of what it declares, namely, that non-being is utterable (precisely as being unutterable) and, therefore, that non-being is (precisely as being nonbeing).

The most immediate interpretation of this section would be as follows: the Eleatic notion of non-being, here patently challenged, must be superseded; and the Platonic notion of “other” (ἑτέρων), introduced through the novel doctrine of the κοινωνίᾱ των ειδων, is exactly what supersedes it.

Such an interpretation has, however, the disadvantage of being external to the argument, replacing analysis of its internal progress with the abstract assumption of the two extreme moments that structure it, namely, the two different notions of non-being. As an act of supersession, it excludes the Eleatic notion of non-being to the benefit of the Platonic one, without realizing that every act of supersession is never simply one of negation, but also one of incorporation.

Now, this is precisely what happens with the question of non-being in the Sophist.

The Eleatic notion is not dissolved; it is, rather, interpreted in the light of another conception of non-being which, in absorbing it, refashions it into a different shape.

The peremptory interdiction of Parmenides, according to which non-being is not,(1) is never actually refuted: it is taken as possessing its own truth, although such truth is understood as limited, and confined within new boundaries." (pp. 175-176)

(1) In summary form, for the exact statement never appears as such. See DK B 2.5 – 8, B 6. 2, B 7. 1, etc.

51. Michaelides, C. P. 1975. "The concept of not-being in Plato." Diotima.Review of Philosophical Research no. 3:19-26.

52. Mié, Fabian. 2011. "Plato's Sophist on Negation and Not-Being." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 363-372. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "This brief paper develops an interpretation of Plato’s theory of negation understood as an answer to Parmenides’ paradoxes concerning not-being. First, I consider some aspects that result from an analysis of Sophist 257b–259d, formulating some general theses which I then go on to unfold in more detail in the following section. Finally, I show what exactly Plato’s so-called overcoming of the Eleatic problem related to negation and falsehood is; and I outline some of the main semantic and metaphysical consequences that are entailed by this overcoming."

53. Migliori, Maurizio. 2007. Plato's Sophist: Value and Limitation on Ontology. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Five lessons followed by a discussion with Bruno Centrone, Arianna Fermani, Lucia Palpacelli, Diana Quarantotto.

Original Italian edition: Il Sofista di Platone. Valore e limiti dell'ontologia, Brescia: Morcelliana 2006.

Contents: Preface p. 9; First Lecture – Plato’s Writings and Dialectical Dialogues p. 11; Contents: Preface p. 9; First Lecture – Plato’s Writings and Dialectical Dialogues p. 11; Second Lecture – The Sophist’s Manifold Nature p. 29; Third Lecture – The driving force of Plato’s Philosophy p. 51; Fourth Lecture – Ontology and Meta-ideas p. 69; Fifth Lecture – The relative importance of the Sophist p. 93; Appendix I – The Whole-Part relation in the Parmenides and the Theaetetus p. 103; Appendix II – The Doing-Suffering Pair p. 121; Appendix III – The Dialectics of Being in the Parmenides (161 E - 162 B) p. 125; Exchanges with the Author 127-206.

"The Philosophical Contents of the Sophist.

First of all, one should establish as closely as possible the meaning of the dialogue in its Author’s mind. With Plato this task is far from easy, for it is one of the issues that arouses the liveliest debate among critics. As elsewhere, I suggest following the classification put forward by Szlezák (1) in an attempt to single out three elements in the dialogue:

a) The overriding issue, the aggregating force that breathes life into the text and which Plato never lets his readers forget about;

b) The thematic hub of the writing, the philosophically crucial question which assesses the worth of the overriding issue and/or confers it legitimate meaning;

c) The foremost problem which the argumentative development must grapple with.

This model has always appeared to me as capable of yielding some kind of clarifying effect. It is especially helpful in showing how the various facets of the discourse are not set alongside one another but necessarily recall each other. The aim is to identify three elements, strongly-linked yet not mutually coinciding, among the wealth of opinions in Plato’s text. Weaving them into one another will provide us with the thread that can guide us through the dialogue." (pp. 93-94)

(1) T. A. Szlezák, Come leggere Platone, Rusconi, Milano 1991, pp. 126-127. [in English: Thomas A. Szlezák, Reading Plato, Translated by Graham Zanker, New York: Routledge 2003].

54. ———. 2021. "The Use and Meaning of the Past in Plato." Plato Journal no. 21:43-58.

Abstract: "This essay is based on two premises. The first concerns the vision of writing proposed by Plato in Phaedrus and especially the conception of philosophical writing as a maieutic game.

The structurally polyvalent way in which Plato approaches philosophical issues also emerges in the dialogues. The second concerns the birth and the development of historical analysis in parallel with the birth of philosophy.

On this basis the text investigates a series of data about the relationship between Plato and “the facts”.

1) If we compare the Apology of Socrates with other sources, we discover a series of important “games” that Plato performs to achieve the results he proposes.

2) The famous passage of Phd. 96A-102A, which concludes with the Ideas and with a reference to the Principles, expresses definite judgments on the Presocratics.

3) In his works Plato attributes to the sophists some merits, even if the outcome of their contribution is overall negative.

4) However, in the fourth complicated diairesis of the Sophist, there is a “sophist of noble stock”, an educator who can only be Socrates.

5) Plato in the Sophist shows the weakness of the Gigantomachy, and proposes an adequate definition of the beings: the power of undergoing or acting. This reveals, before the Philebus and the Timaeus, the dynamic and dialectical nature of his philosophy

In summary, a multifocal vision emerges, adapted to an intrinsically complex reality."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Plato's Sophist. Bibliography of the studies in English: Mil - Pec

Bibliography

1. Miller, Dana. 2004. "Fast and Loose about Being: Criticism of Competing Ontologies in Plato's Sophist." Ancient Philosophy no. 24:339-363.

"In the Sophist, in the context of an argument designed t0 demonstrate that being (τὸ ὄν) is as puzzling as non-being, the Eleatic Visitor embarks on a discussion of competing views about being. It is generally thought that this discussion (242b6-250e4) establishes a number of significant claims that are made in the course of the Visitor's argument. The argument proceeds on two levels: (i) a general argument that focuses on what the Visitor regards to be a muddle about being and the consequences of this muddle, and (ii) specific argun1ents against specific views, where these arguments seek both (a) to refute these views and (b) to shed light on the muddle and consequences that are the concern of (i). Scholarship has been largely concerned with the claims made under (iia), as for example, the claim made in the argument against the Friends of the Forms that the objects of knowledge are somehow moved or changed by their being known. My intent, however, is chiefly to set out (i), the general argument, and then to examine the particular arguments from the perspective of (iib), that is, how these arguments relate to the general argument. Yet to get at (iib). it is necessary to examine the Visitor's arguments in some detail and this requires approaching them from the perspective of (iia). Because the claims made in the discussion should be understood with reference to their context, I begin by situating the general argument within the larger argument of the Sophist and explain the dialectical purpose that the discussion is meant to serve. Then, in brief, l argue that the puzzle about being derives from muddled thinking about the notion of being and that this muddled thinking lies at the base of the various earlier views about being that the Visitor undertakes to refute. To show how this is the case, I examine the argument against these views." (p. 339)

2. Miller, Mitchell. 2016. "What the Dialectician Discerns: a new reading of Sophist 253d-e." Ancient Philosophy no. 36:321-352.

"At Sophist 253d-e the Eleatic Visitor offers a notoriously obscure schematic description of the kinds of eidetic field that the philosopher practicing dialectic ‘adequately discerns’ (ἱκανῶς διαισθάνεται, 253d7). My aim is to propose a fresh reading of that obscure passage. For all of their impressive thoughtfulness and ingenuity, the major lines of interpretation pursued so far have missed, I will argue, the full context of the passage. As a consequence, the proponents of these lines Statesman of interpretation have failed to avail themselves of resources that would have freed them from otherwise unavoidable moments of force or neglect in their readings. The key is to recognize the place of the Sophist within the trilogy of the Theaetetus, Sophist, and, accordingly, to expand the context of Sophist 253d-e to include the Theaetetus and the Statesman. In his schematic description at Sophist 253d-e, the Visitor refers to the eidetic fields traced by two distinct modes of logos. At the end of the Theaetetus, Socrates offers anticipatory sketches of each of these modes; but in the body of the Sophist the Visitor restricts his practice of dialectic to just one of the two—only in the second half of the Statesman does he take up the other mode. As a consequence, only a reader who is oriented by the close of the Theaetetus and who lets this orientation guide her in a reading of the Sophist and the Statesman together is well positioned to recognize the referents of the Visitor’s remarks at Sophist 253d-e." (p. 321)

3. Mohr, Richard D. 1982. "The Relation of Reason to Soul in the Platonic Cosmology: "Sophist" 248e-249c." Apeiron no. 16:21-26.

Reprinted as Chapter X in R. D. Mohr, The Platonic Cosmology, Leiden: Brill, 1985, pp. 178-183.

"Since Cherniss' Aristotle's Criticism of Plato and the Academy I, there has been nearly universal agreement among critics that Plato's God or divine Demiurge is a soul.(1) Yet the prima facie evidence is that the Demiurge is not. In all three of Plato's major cosmological works the Timaeus, the Statesman myth, and the Philebus (28c-30e), the Demiurge is fairly extensively described and yet not once is he described as a soul. Rather souls, and especially the World-Soul, and what rationality souls have are viewed as products of the Demiurge (Timaeus 35a, 36d-e, Philebus 30c-d, Statesman 269c-d). Nonetheless, the overwhelming critical opinion is that since the demiurgic God of these works is described as rational, this entails that God is a soul. Three texts are adduced to prove this, Timaeus 30b3, Philebus 30c9-10, and Sophist 249a. These texts are taken as claiming A) that if a thing is rational, then it is a soul. Proclus saw that at least the Timaeus passage can mean only B) that when reason is in something else, what it is in must be an ensouled thing. The rhetoric of the Timaeus sentence strongly suggests that reading Β is correct and the argumentative context of the Philebus sentence (properly understood) requires sense B. This leaves (as Cherniss is willing to admit, ACPA, p. 606) the Sophist passage alone as bearing the whole weight of Plato's alleged commitment to the view A) that everything that is rational is a soul. I wish to give a new, tentative interpretation to this passage which shows that it is, like the Timaeus and Philebus, committed only to the weaker claim B) that when reason is in something, it is so along with soul. This leaves the Demiurge who is not in anything free to be rational without being a soul and to serve rather as a maker of souls." (p. 21, notes omitted)

(1) H.F. Cherniss, ACPA l (Baltimore, 1944), appendix XI, which is in part an attack on Hackforth's "Plato's Theism" (1936) rpt. in R.E. Allen (ed.), Studies in Plato's Metaphysics (London, 1965), pp. 439-447.

4. Mojsisch, Burkhard. 1998. "Logos and Episteme. The Constitutive Role of Language in Plato's Theory of Knowledge." Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter no. 3:19-28.

Abstract: "This essay first differentiates the various meanings of the term logos as it appears in Plato's dialogues Theaetetus and The Sophist. These are: the colloque of the soul with itself, a single sentence, a proposing aloud, the enumeration of the constitutive elements of a whole and the giving of a specific difference; further, opinion and imagination. These meanings are then related to Plato's determination of knowledge (episteme) and therewith truth and falsity. One can be said to possess knowledge only when the universal contents of thought -- dialogical thought -- are set in relation to the perceivable, imagination or opinion. Reflections on the principle significance of possibility as such -- a thematic not addressed by Plato -- conclude the essay."

5. Monserrat Molas, Josep, and Sandoval Villarroel, Pablo. 2013. "Plato’s Enquiry Concerning the Sophist as a Way Towards “Defining” Philosophy." In Plato's Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 29-39. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"The Sophist discloses the urgency of the question concerning being, and it is only in pondering this question that the essence of philosophising comes to light and is realised. In other words, the dialogue does not deal with the question of being simply because the problem of the sophist requires that it do so, but rather it deals and has to deal with the question concerning being in that its fundamental concern, its σκοπός, which consists in moving towards the essence of philosophy, not by way of a formal, abstract “definition”, but rather through the consummation of philosophising.

For this reason the Stranger of Elea later on poses the question: καὶ κινδυνεύομεν ζητοῦντες τὸν σοφιστὴν πρότερον ἀνηυρηκέναι τὸν φιλόσοφον [253c8 – 9], “and have we unwittingly found the philosopher while we were looking for the sophist?”. Who, then, is the philosopher?

He is that human being who has devoted himself fully, through thinking, to enquiring again and again into the essence of being: ὁ δέ γε φιλόσοφος, τῇ τοῦ ὄντος ἀεὶ διὰ λογισμῶν προσκείμενος ἰδέᾳ [254a8 – 9]." (pp. 38-39, note omitted)

6. Moravcsik, Julius M. E. 1958. "Mr. Xenakis on Truth and Meaning." Mind no. 67:533-537.

"In a somewhat breathless article Mr. J. Xenakis has presented us with a new interpretation of Plato's theory of truth and meaning in Sophist, pp. 260-263.(1) In this brief note I shall show that the theory which Xenakis champions is objectionable, and toward the end I shall suggest that Plato need not be burdened with it. Xenakis claims that all statements must satisfy four rules. According to the third of these, all statements - if they are to be statements - must be about something.(2) Little can be found in the article that pertains to the status of the four rules. We are told, however, that two of them are formation rules, and two are truth-conditions. Since Xenakis insists that all statements must satisfy the truth-conditions, one can assume that he excludes the possibility of there being statements which are neither true nor false. I am not sure whether he would go on to say that any utterance which does not satisfy one of the truth-conditions is meaningless. It may be that he would restrict himself to maintaining that if any utterance does not meet one of the truth-conditions, then meaningful as it may be, it cannot be true or false - and hence it cannot be a statement. In order to be on the safe side, I shall examine rule [3] first as a criterion of meaningfulness, and then as a mere truth-condition." (p. 533)

(1) Mind (April 1957), pp. 165-172.

(2) Ibid. pp. 168-169.

7. ———. 1960. "ΣΥΜΠΛΟΚΗ ΕΙΔΩΝ and the Genesis of ΛΟΓΟΣ." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 42:117-129.

"Διὰ γὰρ τὴν ἀλλήλων τῶν εἰδῶν συμπλοκὴν ὁ λόγος γέγονεν ἡμῖν [For our power of discourse is derived from the interweaving of the classes or ideas with one another. (Translation added)] (Sophist 259e5—6)*. In these lines Plato states that rational discourse is made possible by the interwovenness of the Forms. The task of the Interpreter is to discover what the nature of this interwovenness is, and to ascertain the exact nature of the relationship between the interwovenness of the Forms and the structure of rational discourse. At present there is considerable disagreement concerning these issues. In this paper the main difficulties of 259e5—6 will be outlined, and some recent attempts to overcome these difficulties will be surveyed. It will be indicated where and why I dissent from the positions taken by several contemporary authors, and a new Interpretation will be presented which attempts to show that a plurality of Forms, woven into a pattern, underlies each meaningful sentence, and that the interwovenness can be explained by reference to formal concepts. The importance which — in my opinion — Plato attaches to formal concepts in the Sophist has implications for the Interpretation of the theory of Forms as found in the later dialogues." (p. 117)

(...)

"In conclusion let me sum up the most important implications of what Plato says in 259e5—6. Plato believes that the changing dynamic combination of words, yielding meaningful discourse, is based on the static interwovenness of the Forms. For discourse is changing, man-made; and the language of 262d2—6 shows that Plato regards it s such. But he also believes that one of the essential tasks of meaningful discourse is to convey Information. Fundamental to the conveying of Information is the ability to order the elements of reality according to concepts (23). What makes this ordering possible, according to Plato, is the general fact that the elements of reality are identifiable and describable." (p. 129)

(*) Burnet's numbering of lines is followed throughout the paper.

8. ———. 1962. "Being and Meaning in the Sophist." Acta Philosophica Fennica no. 14:23-78.

From the Conclusion: "Communion and interweaving are the key concepts of the Sophist. They are used on two levels; the ontological and the semantic. The two are not sharply separated, and each helps to explain the other. The Communion of the Forms parallels the interwovenness of words, and thus 253-256 parallels 260-262. A similar parallel and relations of dependence are presented between the discussions of Not-being and falsehood. Thus 257-258 and 263 go together. This interrelatedness not only brings out the nature of Plato's philosophizing in this period, but it also presents the interpreter with the task of working out the whole passage as a unit, for the interpretations of the parts are interdependent. This justifies and necessitates my lengthy analysis.

Plato's arguments show that truth and falsehood are not matters of mental sight or blindness. Thus one should not conceive of the objects of knowledge as self-sufficient atomic units. Philosophical atomism is denied on all levels. The paradigm-case of how not to read Plato therefore is: "each element in the statement has now a meaning; and so the statement as a whole has meaning". (1) The notion of Communion and the analogy with vowels lead to the conception of the Forms as functions, as something incomplete, something which need arguments in order really to express something. At least some of the Forms are shown to be like functions in this dialogue. If we are willing to pursue Plato's line of thought beyond the point to which it is carried in the dialogue, we see that what Plato says leads to construing all Forms as functions. For what we know are truths and falsehoods, and these are complexes which contain Forms. The constituents of these complexes are not 'simples', or metaphysical atoms of some sort. In order to understand them we have to know into what complexes they fit. We do not grasp them prior to all completions.

It is small wonder that modern commentators of this dialogue have not made much progress with it. They approach it with the 'part-sum, division-collection, genus-species' distinctions in mind. Merely because one aspect of dialectic is said to be the method of division they identify all of Plato's methodology with this notion, and seek to explain the middle part of the Sophist within this framework. But these are the wrong tools and the wrong questions. When seen in proper light, the suggestions of the Sophist present themselves as topics the further exploration of which is one of the more important philosophical tasks today." (p. 77-78)

(1) F. M. Cornford, Plato's Theory of Knowledge. The Theaetetus and the Sophist of Plato translated with a running commentary, p. 315.

9. Morgan, Michael L. 1993. ""Philosophy" in Plato's Sophist." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy no. 9:83-111.

"In this paper I want to use a different approach to understand Plato's primary task in the Sophist. I want to ask a rather large set of questions about the dialogue. These questions arise out of the dialogue when it is viewed in terms of its relation to the Theaetetus and Politicus, to issues Plato discusses in the Phaedo, Republic, and Phaedrus, and to a consideration of Plato's place in fourth century Athenian culture. Once I have stated these questions and clarified them, I shall consider how the Sophist might be taken to answer them. All of this will be somewhat programmatic and provisional. The Sophist is a puzzling, demanding, complex text, and to make my case regarding the issues I have in mind would require much more evidence, interpretation, and argument than I can provide here. This is a beginning, with a promissory note for future development.

The questions that I want to ask about the Sophist are these: where, in the dialogue, do we find what Plato would think of as philosophy? Where - if anywhere - does he engage in it? Where does he refer to it or describe it, either directly or indirectly?

Who is a philosopher in the Sophist-Socrates, the visitor from Elea, Plato, all or none of these? And why does Plato here seek to articulate what sophistry is and how it differs from philosophy?" (p. 84)

(...)

"Philosophy, then, differs from sophistry in purpose—as well as in method and object, for philosophy is essential to the best human life. It is a form of intellectual and religious transcendence that is divine because its objects are divine and hence because its cognitive goal is pure, permanent, and comprehensive.

As the philosopher's understanding of the map of the world of Forms increases, so does the clarity, purity, and stability of the soul.

To Isocrates Parmenides is a sophist; to Plato he is a philosopher and divine, epithets that transfer to his followers, one a visitor to Athens, another Plato himself. Eleatic in spirit, the visitor advocates views that are Platonic in letter, for Plato is himself an Athenian with Eleatic convictions, and like the visitor a parricide and disciple all at once." (p. 110)

10. Morgenstern, Amy S. 2001. "Leaving the Verb 'To Be' Behind: An Alternative Reading of Plato's Sophist." Dionysius no. 19:27-50.

"Equating the terms esti, to on, and ta onta with the verb "to be", understood existentially, predicatively, or as an identity sign, cannot serve as a basis of an illuminating approach to the Eleatic Stranger's investigation in Plato's Sophist. An alternative reading of esti at 256 A 1, Esti de ghe dia to methexein tou ontos, allows a more comprehensive analysis of the limitations and accomplishments of this investigation. Here esti should be interpreted as rhema, i.e. a name that, in this instance, says something about kinesis, the implied subject."

11. Mourelatos, Alexander. 1979. "'Nothing' as 'Not-Being': Some Literary Contexts that Bear on Plato." In Arktouros. Hellenic studies presented to Bernard M. W. Knox on the occasion of his 65th birthday, edited by Bowersock, Glen, Burkert, Walter and Putnam, Michael, 319-329. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Reprinted in: J. P. Anton, A. Preus (eds.), Essays in Ancient Greek philosophy, Volume Two, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983, pp. 59-69.

"It has often been noticed that Plato, and before him Parmenides, assimilates "what is not" (to me ón) to "nothing" (medén or oudén).' Given that the central use of "nothing" has important ties with the existential quantifier ("Nothing is here" ---- "It is not the case that there is anything here"), it has widely been assumed that contexts that document this assimilation also count as evidence that both within them and in cognate ontological contexts the relevant sense of "being" or "to be" is that of existence. That this assumption is not to be granted easily, has been compellingly argued by G. E. L. Owen [Plato on Not-being, 1971]. His main concern was to show that the assumption is particularly mischievous in the interpretation of the Sophist, where he found it totally unwarranted. My own concern is to attack the assumption on a broader plane. "Nothing" in English has uses that do not depend on a tie with the existential quantifier. So too in Greek: medén or oudén can be glossed as "what does not exist," but it can also be glossed as "not a something," or in Owen's formulation, "what is not anything, what not-in-any-way is': a subject with all the being knocked out of it and so unidentifiable, no subject." In effect, the assimilation of "what is not" to "nothing" may-in certain contexts-work in the opposite direction: not from "nothing" to "non-being" in the sense of non-existence; rather from "non-being" as negative specification or negative determination to "nothing" as the extreme of negativity or indeterminacy. To convey the sense involved in this reverse assimilation I borrow Owen's suggestive translation "not-being" for me on, a rendering which makes use of an incomplete participle, rather than the complete gerund, of the verb "to be"." (p. 59 of the reprint)

(...)

"Observations made in this paper can be read as providing support, in yet a different way, for a thesis advanced by Charles H. Kahn (22) and others. In a formulation I prefer, the thesis is that the dialectic of Being in classical Greek speculation focuses not on "What there is" but on "What it is" or "How it is"; not on existence but on physis, constitution, or form. (23)" (p. 67 of the reprint)

(22) See "Why Existence Does Not Emerge as a Distinct Concept in Greek Philosophy," Arch. f. Gesch. d. Philos. 58 (1976): 323-34; cf. Kahn, The Verb 'Be' in Ancient Greek, Foundations of Language, suppl. ser., 16 (Dordrecht and Boston, 1973): 394-419.

12. Mouzala, Melina. 2019. "Logos as "weaving together or communion of indications about ousia" in Plato' s Sophist." Platonic Investigations no. 10:35-75.

Abstract: "In this paper, we set out to show that in the Sophist the interweaving of Forms (sumplokē tōn eidōn) is the substantial presupposition of the existence of logos, because what we do when we think and produce vocal speech is understanding by our dianoia the way in which the Forms are interwoven, and what we weave together in our speech are indications about ousia (peri tēn ousian delōmata). Dianoia conceives of the relations between the Forms, and these relations are reflected in our thought and its natural image, vocal speech. We support the idea that we cannot interpret the Platonic conception of the relationship between language and reality through the Aristotelian semiotic triangle, because according to it the relation between pragmata or onta and logos becomes real through the medium of thought (noēmata). On the contrary, logos in Plato has an unmediated relation with reality and is itself reckoned among beings.

In parallel, we set out to show the difference between the Platonic conception of logos and the Gorgianic approach to it, as well as the approaches of other Sophists and Antisthenes.

Logos itself in Plato is a weaving which reflects the interweaving of Forms, while vocal speech is a natural image of thought. Logos in its dual meaning, dianoia and vocal speech, is illustrated in Dialectic, because as vocal speech is a mirror to dianoia, so Dialectic is a means which clearly reflects the thinking procedures of dianoia."

13. Muckelbauer, John. 2001. "Sophistic Travel: Inheriting the Simulacrum through Plato's The Sophist." Philosophy and Rhetoric no. 34:225-244.

"A single question marks our departure, a question that, while apparently straightforward, has assumed so many shapes and disguises that it would not be unjust to claim it has infected all of Western history. In its current manifestation, however, we will take our cue from Plato in phrasing it thus: What is a Sophist? When Plato first formulated the question in these terms, he well understood that its self-evident simplicity could be deceptive and that its effects might proliferate uncontrollably. As Jacques Derrida comments, “The question of what the Sophists really were is an enormous question” (Olson 17). In Plato’s case, attempting to “hunt down” the Sophist led from a disturbing journey through the world of images to an unsettling encounter with the existence of nonbeing." (p. 225)

References

Olson, Gary. 1990. “Jacques Derrida on Rhetoric and Composition: A Conversation,” Journal of Advanced Composition, 10.1: 1–21.

14. Muniz, Fernando, and Rudebusch, George. 2018. "Dividing Plato’s Kinds." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 63:392-407.

Abstract: "A dilemma has stymied interpretations of the Stranger’s method of dividing kinds into subkinds in Plato’s Sophist and Statesman. The dilemma assumes that the kinds are either extensions (like sets) or intensions (like Platonic Forms). Now kinds

divide like extensions, not intensions. But extensions cannot explain the distinct identities of kinds that possess the very same members. We propose understanding a kind as like an animal body—the Stranger’s simile for division—possessing both an extension

(in its members) and an intension (in its form). We find textual support in the Stranger’s paradigmatic four steps for collecting a subkind."

15. Naas, Michael. 2003. "For the Name's Sake." Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 7:199-221.

Abstract: "In Plato's later dialogues, and particularly in the Sophist, there is a general reinterpretation and rehabilitation of the name (onoma) in philosophy. No longer understood rather vaguely as one of potentially dangerous and deceptive elements of everyday language or of poetic language, the world onoma is recast in the Sophist and related dialogues into one of the essential elements of a philosophical language that aims to make claims or propositions about the way things are. Onoma, now understood as name, is thus coupled with rhema, or verb, to form the two essential elements of any logos, that is, any claim, statements, or proposition.

This paper follows Plato's gradual rehabilitation and reinscription of the name from early dialogues through late ones in order to demonstrate the new role Plato fashions for language in these later works."

16. Narcy, Michel. 2013. "Remarks on the First Five Definitions of the Sophist (Soph. 221c-235a)." In Plato's Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 57-70. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"The Sophist is explicitly dedicated to the question of getting to know what constitutes a sophist. It is, however, far from being the only dialogue where one finds a definition of one. This is natural enough, given that, from the Apology to the Theaetetus, a good part of Plato’s work is devoted to pointing out the difference between Socrates and the sophists who were his contemporaries, considered less for who they were as individuals or for the particular positions they adopted than as representatives of a manner of thinking which Plato himself calls ‘sophistry’.(2) So it is normal that, as part of the enterprise, Plato would have been led to clarify just what the manner of thinking is which he condemns through the character Socrates. The question one ought rather to answer, however, is: Why, after so many repeated condemnations of sophistry, does Plato feel the need to devote a dialogue to it? After the Theaetetus, and the antithesis there – which takes up the central part of the dialogue – between the frequenter of the law courts and the philosopher,(3) is it still necessary to ask the question whether the sophist and the philosopher are or are not the same thing?" (p. 57)

(2) Cf. Gorg. 463b6, 465c2, 520b2; the Protagoras (316d3 – 4) talks of the σοφιστική τέχνη. (I naturally leave aside from the calculation the occurrences of the word in the Sophist).

(3) Theaetet. 172c3 –177b7.

17. Nehamas, Alexander. 1982. "Participation and Predication in Plato's Later Thought." The Review of Metaphysics no. 36:343-374.

Reprinted in: A. Nehamas, Virtues of Authenticity. Essays on Plato and Socrates, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1999, pp. 196-223.

"One of the central characteristics of Plato's later metaphysics is his view that Forms can participate in other Forms. At least part of what the Sophist demonstrates is that though not every Form participates in every other (252d2-11), every Form participates in some Forms (252d12-253a2), and that there are some Forms in which all Forms participate (253cl-2, 256a7-8). This paper considers some of the reasons for this development, and some of the issues raised by it." (p. 343)

(...)

"Having many properties is not being many subjects. Beauty is many things in virtue of participating in them, in virtue of bearing to them that relation which Plato had earlier introduced in order to account for the claim of some things which are not beautiful to be called "beautiful" nonetheless. But Plato came to see that the phrase "are not" is illegitimate in this context.

(...)

In arriving at this realization and in extending the ability to have many names, that is, to bear predicates, to Forms as well as to their participants, Plato finally left behind the tradition from which he had emerged. This tradition, he realized, was common to thinkers ranging from the sophists to the sage he most venerated and who was, astonishingly, discovered in the many-headed sophist's hiding place-a place which, even more astonishingly, he had himself supplied. In the Sophist Plato liberated himself from that tradition and showed that to have a characteristic is not an imperfect way of being that characteristic. In this, I think, he offered us the first solid understanding of the metaphysics of predication in western philosophy." (p. 374)

18. Noriega-Olmos, Simon. 2012. "Plato’s Sophist 259E4-6." Journal of Ancient Philosophy no. 6.

Abstract: "There are at least seven different well-known interpretations of Sophist 259E4-6. In this paper I show them to be either misleading, in conflict with the context, or at odds with Plato’s project in the dialogue. I argue that 259E4-6 tells us that in view of the fact that statements consist in the weaving of different linguistic terms that stand for different extra-linguistic items, if there is to be statements, then reality must consist in a plurality of items some of which mix with some and some of which do not mix with some according to certain ontological rules. My argument for this construal of Sophist 259E4-6 involves an analysis of the passage as well as an assessment of how that text fits into its context."

19. ———. 2018-2019. "'Not-Being', 'Nothing', and Contradiction in Plato's "Sophist" 236D–239C." Archiv für Begriffgeschichte no. 60-61:7-46.

Abstract: "At 236D-239C, Sophist presents three arguments to the conclusions, that the expression 'not-being' does not say or express anything, that we cannot even conceive of the alleged entity of not- being and that we contradict ourselves when claiming that not-being is not and that the expression 'not-being' does not express anything at all. I intend to answer five questions concerning these arguments: (Question 1) What does Plato mean when he says that the expression 'not-being' does not say any- thing at all? (Q2) What sort of semantic relation does he think the expression 'not-being' involves? (Q3) How could he possibly explain that 'not-being' is, after all, an expression? (Q4) What does he think we are to learn about the contradictions ensued by our talk of not-being? (Q5) And what does he think is the ontological status of not- being? My motivation for considering these questions is that the arguments against not-being in Sophist 236D-239C have not been charitably discussed and therefore have not been fully explored."

20. Notomi, Noburu. 1999. The Unity of Plato's Sophist: Between the Sophist and the Philosopher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"The aim of this work is to clarify the topic with which the Sophist is mainly concerned, and I do not discuss other hotly debated topics, such as the senses of the verb 'to be', and the dialogue's relation to the theory of Forms." (p. XIV)

"About the philosopher only a few passing reflections are offered in the Middle Part, as we saw in Chapter 7. It is a philosopher's attitude to value intelligence, wisdom, and knowledge (249cro-d5), and it was also philosophical to admit the proper combination of kinds, since it saved discourse, and therefore philosophy (26oar-7). The more important passage is in the midst of the Middle Part (253c6-254b6), where knowledge of dialectic is said to be rightly ascribed to the philosopher. In that digression, the Eleatic visitor wonders whether the inquirers, in searching for the sophist, may by chance have stumbled on the philosopher (Passage 38: 253c6-9; cf. e4-6). Yet clearly the description of dialectic in that digression (Passage 39) is not decisive, but rather, proleptic, and the mention of the philosopher is just an anticipation which needs further investigation. In this way, the question of what the philosopher is is not explicitly discussed in the Sophist. However, this does not imply that Plato intended another dialogue, the Philosopher, to give a fuller account and definition of the philosopher. On the contrary, the whole project of the Sophist has already shown the philosopher in three ways." (p. 297)

"The Sophist says little about the philosopher, but the dialogue as a whole shows something of what the philosopher really is. The inquirers try to be philosophers in defining the sophist, by performing dialectic. Apart from this way, there does not seem to be any other proper way of revealing the essence of the philosopher; for it is by our confronting the sophist within ourselves that philosophy can be secured and established." (p. 299)

21. ———. 2007. "Plato on What Is Not." In Maieusis. Essays on Ancient Philosophy in Honour of Myles Burnyeat, edited by Scott, Dominic, 254-275. New York: Oxford University Press.

"What is not (τὸ μὴ ὄν) was scarcely discussed in ancient philosophy before Plato.

Although this phrase, or concept, made occasional appearances in philosophical arguments, it did not figure as their primary subject." (p. 254)

(...)

"Modern philosophers often assume that Plato treats what is not merely as the privation of being and that he dismisses the idea of absolute nothingness from the inquiry altogether, although the latter always remains a real philosophical problem. Pointing to the way in which Plato in the Sophist describes what is not as ‘different from what is’, these philosophers fault him for reducing the problem of absolute nothingness to that of something lacking particular properties. Against this interpretation, which at first sight seems to give an adequate account of the argument of the dialogue, I suggest that Plato tackles a more profound problem.

What is not is no more trivial or easy to deal with than its counterpart, what is. It is perhaps a more perplexing concept, since it seems to prevent any discussion (λόγος). This feature takes us to the heart of the problem that Plato faces in the Sophist. There he works out a new strategy to overcome the difficulty: what is not can only be clarified together with what is. The purpose of my paper is to clarify the implication of this strategy." (pp. 255-256)

22. ———. 2008. "Plato Against Parmenides: Sophist 236d-242b." In Reading Ancient Texts: Vol. I: Presocratics and Plato. Essays in Honour of Denis O'Brien, edited by Suzanne, Stern-Gillet and Corrigan, Kevin, 167-187. Leiden: Brill.

"Parmenides, one of the greatest and most influential Greek thinkers, is not mentioned in Plato’s earlier dialogues. His name appears only n four dialogues: Symposium, Parmenides, Theaetetus, and Sophist. This peculiar fact by no means implies that Parmenides had little influence on Plato’s earlier thinking. On the contrary, it is generally agreed that Republic V bases the theory of forms on the Parmenidean scheme of what is and what is not. Nevertheless, that passage contains no reference to its source. (p. 167)

(...)

"It is noteworthy that Parmenides is never mentioned again after the Sophist." (p. 168)

(...)

"In presenting his own view, O’Brien criticises my reading of the Sophist on philological and philosophical grounds.(8)" (p. 169)

(...)

"Our disagreement concerns how we view Plato’s attitude toward Parmenides.

O’Brien suggests that Plato introduces a new distinction between two ‘kinds’ of what is not, which is unknown to Parmenides. Consequently, according to him, Plato’s response is oblique. From one point of view, Plato can agree with Parmenides, while from another he is in disagreement; but from the standpoint of Parmenides himself, Plato’s criticism is irrelevant or unanswerable. By contrast, my reading is straightforward: Plato tackles the same philosophical difficulty that Parmenides faces, and criticises him so forcefully in order to secure the possibility of logos and philosophy.

In this paper, I present my arguments against O’Brien’s criticisms, first by focusing on the key text, secondly by reconsidering Plato’s strategy, and finally in respect of philosophical interpretation.(9)" (p. 170)

(8) O’Brien (2000), 56, 68–75, 79, 84, 93–94, 96, takes up and criticises my 1999 (esp. pp. 173–179).

(9) I have also discussed Plato’s argument on what is not, in Notomi (forthcoming).

References

Notomi, N. (1999), The Unity of Plato’s Sophist: between the sophist and the philosopher, Cambridge.

Notomi, N. (forthcoming), ‘Plato on what is not’, D. Scott ed., Maieusis: Festschrift for Myles Burnyeat, Oxford. [2007]

O'Brien D. (2000), ‘Parmenides and Plato on what is not’, M. Kardaun and J. Spruyt eds., The Winged Chariot, Collected Essays on Plato and Platonism in Honour of L.M. de Rijk, Leiden: 19–104.

23. ———. 2011. "Where is the Philosopher? A single project of the Sophist and the Statesman." In Formal Structures in Plato's Dialogues: Theaetetus, Sophist and Statesman, edited by Lisi, Francesco Leonardo, Migliori, Maurizio and Monserrat-Molas, Josep, 216-236. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

24. ———. 2011. "Dialectic as Ars combinatoria: Plato's Notion of Philosophy in the Sophist." In Plato's Sophist: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlíček, Aleš and Karfík, Filip, 146-195. Praha: Oikoymenh.

25. ———. 2011. "Image-Making in Republic X and the Sophist. Plato’s Criticism of the Poet and the Sophist." In Plato and the Poets, edited by Destrée, Pierre and Herrmann, Fritz-Gregor, 299-326. Leiden: Brill.

"The famous phrase, ‘the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry’ (Rep. X, 607b), represents Plato’s critical attitude towards poetry. However, this phrase might mislead us, the modern readers, in multiple ways.

I believe it as yet a matter in need of clarification what the real target of Plato’s criticism is and how he deals with it. To re-examine his treatment of poetry reveals how Plato conceptualizes his own pursuit, namely philosophy, in contrast to its rivals." (p. 299)

(...)

"The Sophist is the later dialogue which finally defines the sophist as ‘the imitator (mimêtês) of the wise’ (Soph. 268c). While this dialogue does not deal with a poet or poetry in a direct way, it nevertheless examines the foundation of Plato’s earlier criticism of poetry in Republic X: namely the ontological basis of the art of image-making. Plato’s implicit intention can be seen in remarkable correspondences between the two dialogues."

(...)

"Republic X presents the ontological argument to criticise the poet; poetry is treated as a special kind of making, i.e. image-making or imitation.

In a parallel way, the Sophist defines the sophist as a specific kind of making, i.e. image-making and apparition-making in particular. Finally we should consider some differences between the two treatments of image-making.

First of all, while, as we saw in the previous section, the Sophist confronts the difficult challenge concerning the problematic notions of ‘image’ and ‘making’, the Republic does not seem to worry about such a metaphysical danger. Whereas the Sophist clarifies the concept of image in the course of defining the sophist, the Republic simply uses it." (p. 324, notes omitted)

26. ———. 2017. "Reconsidering the Relations between the Statesman, the Philosopher, and the Sophist." In Plato’s Statesman: Dialectic, Myth, and Politics, edited by Sallis, John, 183-195. Albany: State University of New York Press.

"In the opening conversation of the Sophist, Socrates (just before the trial in 399 BC) raises a crucial problem about the philosopher: how to distinguish between three kinds of people, a philosopher, a sophist, and a statesman." (p. 184)

(...)

"From this initial problem, the Sophist first engages in definition of the sophist and finally clarifies what the sophist is. The Statesman next discusses and defines the statesman." (p. 184)

(...)

"In the Sophist, the philosopher surprisingly appears in the middle of the inquiry. When the art of discerning combinations and separations of kinds is discussed, the Eleatic Visitor abruptly suggests that they may have come across the philosopher before finding the sophist (253c), and he gives a description of the art of dialectic, which belongs to philosophy. However, when he says that they will see the philosopher more clearly if they wish (254b), this is far from clear indication of a plan for another dialogue.

Rather, it is more important that the inquirers may have encountered the philosopher already in search for the sophist; for they are like two sides of one coin, or, more precisely, the original and its image." (p. 185)

The Sophist does not present the definition of the philosopher, but it finally shows the philosopher through definition of the sophist in three ways (11):

(1) First, since each feature of the sophist illuminates its opposite characteristic, the definitions of the sophist show what the philosopher should be. In addition to the contrast between apparition making (φανταστική) and likeness making (εἰκαστική), which we shall see, the sophist is characterized as “ironical” in consciously concealing his ignorance (267e–268a), while the philosopher sincerely admits it.

(2) Second, the inquiry into the sophist discusses dialectic (διαλεκτική), the art of the philosopher, in the middle part of the dialogue. The inquirers actually practice and demonstrate dialectical arguments, and thereby show what philosophers should do.

(3) Third, the project of the whole dialogue, namely, to define the sophist and thereby to show the philosopher, is itself a pre-eminent task of the philosopher. In this way, the Sophist represents the philosopher in stark contrast to the sophist. As for the problematic sixth definition, the “sophist of noble lineage” eventually turns out to represent more Socrates than the sophist." (pp. 185, 186 a note omitted)

(11) Cf. Notomi, The Unity of Plato’s Sophist, 296–301.

27. O'Brien, Denis. 1993. "Non-Being in Parmenides, Plato and Plotinus: a Prospectus for the Study of Ancient Greek Philosophy." In Modern Thinkers and Ancient Thinkers, edited by Sharples, Robert W., 1-26. London: University College London Press.

English version of "Le non-être dans la philosophie grecque: Parménide, Platon, Plotin", in Pierre Aubenque (ed.), Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, Napoli: Bibliopolis 1991, pp. 317-364.

"Negation and contrariety. In the Sophist, a Stranger from Elea sets out to refute Parmenides. Or so at least he does in most modern studies of that deceptively simple dialogue. But because Parmenides has been misunderstood, so too, inevitably, has been the Eleatic Stranger's criticism of Parmenides. For although the Eleatic Stranger does warn of the dangers of parricide (he may have to murder Parmenides, the father of Greek philosophy), in fact he starts off by agreeing with Parmenides, and that agreement, contrary to what most modern scholars will tell you, is never withdrawn or cancelled in the course of the argument.

Let me explain. The Eleatic Stranger distinguishes between two uses of the negation in the expression to me on, "what is not".

The negation may be used to mean "what is not in any way at all" (to medamos on, 237b7-8). "What is not in any way at all" is what would be, impossibly, the contrary of being (d. 258e6-7).

Impossibly: for there is no contrary of being, since there is nothing entirely without participation in being. What is entirely without participation in being is what you might expect it to be - just plain nothing. There isn't any." (p. 5)

28. ———. 2000. "Parmenides and Plato on What is Not." In The Winged Chariot: Collected Essays on Plato and Platonism in Honour of L.M. de Rijk, edited by Kardaun, Maria and Spruyt, Joke, 19-104. Leiden: Brill.

"Understanding of Plato's Sophist cannot therefore be dissociated from our understanding of the poem of Parmenides, and vice versa.

To understand the poem of Parmenides we need to appreciate that the goddess is working with a single conception of non-being, an appreciation which we can best arrive at by seizing the distinction between the two uses of non-being that are established in Plato's Sophist and yet, at the same time, refusing to read back that distinction into the poem of Parmenides.

Understanding the Sophist requires us, on the contrary, to appreciate that the Stranger arrives at his new definition of 'what is not' by consciously distancing himself from the way in which Parmenides had thought of nonbeing, nearly one hundred years before.

The distinction between the two 'kinds' of non-being is, in both cases, the same. But where the Stranger consciously and deliberately marshals his arguments in the light of that distinction, Parmenides, on the contrary, produces the arguments he does because the Stranger's distinction forms no part of his conscious self. (298)" (p. 90)

(298) Some of the implications of this style of conclusion for how I understand the history of philosophy are spelt out in O'Brien (1993).

References

O'Brien, D. (1993) 'Non-being in Parmenides, Plato and Plotinus: A Prospectus for the Study of Ancient Greek Philosophy', in Modem Thinkers and Ancient Thinkers, The Stanley Victor Keeling Memorial Lectures at University College London, 1981-1991, ed. R. W. Sharples (London) 1-26.

29. ———. 2011. "The Stranger's "Farewell" (Sophist 258e6-259a1)." In Plato's Sophist: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlíček, Aleš and Karfík, Filip, 199-220. Praha: Oikoymenh.

"‘Don’t let anyone try and tell us that we dare say of the contrary of being that it is. We have long ago said farewell to any contrary of being, to the question of whether it is or of whether it isn’t…’ Those are the first words spoken by the Stranger after Theaetetus’ enthusiastic reaction (258 E 4-5: ‘absolutely so’, ‘most true’) to the Stranger’s declaration (258 D 5-E 3) that he and Theaetetus have ‘dared’ speak of ‘the form that there turns out to be, of what is not’.

A ‘contrary of being’. A ‘form that there turns out to be, of what is not’. The meaning of those two expressions, together with their difference of meaning, lies at the very heart of Plato’s dialogue, of what the Sophist is all about. If the meaning, with the difference in meaning, of those two expressions has not been understood, then the dialogue itself has not been understood." (p. 199)

30. ———. 2013. "A Form that 'Is' of What 'Is Not' . Existential Einai in Plato's Sophist " In The Platonic Art of Philosophy, edited by Boys-Stones, George, El Murr, Dimitri and Gill, Christopher, 221-248. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Motivated by an otherwise very understandable desire to study ancient philosophical texts philosophically, recent commentators have taken to weeding out from Plato’s dialogues any existential use of the verb einai, seemingly in deference to the supposedly philosophical principle that existence cannot be a predicate. The result is disastrous. This is not only because Plato very clearly does use the verb as a predicate complete in itself, with a meaning that can properly be described as ‘existential’, notably in his account of being and non-being in the Sophist, but also because the principle itself is not what it is all too often thought to be." (p. 221)

(...)

"Veer to one side or another of that narrow line and you end up in one or other of the errors portrayed in the concluding pages of this essay. Identify the form of non-being with a straightforward negation of the existential meaning of the verb, and the Stranger will end up asserting, of ‘what is not in any way at all’, that it ‘is’ (Notomi’s error). Identify the form of non-being with a negation of the copulative use of the verb joined to any and every complement, so that ‘non-being’ is so because it is ‘other than’ and therefore ‘is not’ any one of all the vast variety of different forms that participate in being, and you will end up asserting, of ‘being itself ’, that it is ‘non-being’ (Owen’s error). Start from Plato’s own assumption that an existential use of einai has to be subjected to the same analysis as ‘is the same’ or ‘is beautiful’, with one specific part of otherness, and only one, opposed to ‘being’, whether to the form or to the instantiation of the form, while at the same time taking into account the different extension of forms that are, and forms that are not, participated universally, and you will, if you pay close attention to both syntax and argument, avoid both errors. You may even come within shouting distance of the essentials of Plato’s reply to Parmenides." (p. 248)

31. ———. 2013. "Does Plato refute Parmenides?" In Plato's Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 117-155. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"I have a couple of times ventured to suggest that in the Sophist Plato does not refute Parmenides.(2) The reaction has been, to say the least, hostile.(3) Hostile, with more than a touch of disapproval. You might have thought I had suggested that the Queen of England was a man. The suggestion was not only false, but foolish. A mere eye-catcher. Absurd, and unseemly." (p. 117)

(...)

"Not only is it obvious why Plato should want to refute Parmenides; it also seems clear enough, to many readers of Plato’s Sophist, that he no less obviously claims to do so. When the Stranger of Plato’s dialogue introduces Parmenides (237a3 – b3), he quotes a pair of verses giving voice to what are called elsewhere in the poem the ‘opinions of mortals’ (fr. 1.30 and 8.51 –52), summarised in the pithy sentence ‘things that are not, are’ (237a8 = fr. 7.1: εἶναι μὴ ἐόντα)." (p. 119)

(...)

"Pinned down to their context, the places where the Stranger supposedly speaks of successfully ‘refuting’ Parmenides vanish like the morning dew on a summer’s day. But if the Stranger doesn't claim to have ‘refuted’ Parmenides, does he then leave it to be understood that he therefore agrees with him?

Not at all. But at the crucial moment when he prepares to trumpet his discovery of ‘the form that there turns out to be, of what is not’, the language he uses is not the language of ‘refutation’.

The Stranger: ‘So do you think we’ve been unfaithful to Parmenides, in taking up a position too far removed from his prohibition?’ (258c6 – 7: οἶσθ᾽ οὖν ὅτι Παρμενίδῃ μακροτέρως τῆς ἀπορρήσεως ἠπιστήκαμεν) Theaetetus: ‘What do you mean?’ (258c8: τί δή;)

The Stranger: ‘By pushing on ahead with the search, what we’ve shown him goes beyond the point where he told us to stop looking’ (cf. 258c9 –10: πλεῖον ἢ 'κεῖνος ἀπεῖπε σκοπεῖν, ἡμεῖς εἰς τὸ πρόσθεν ἔτι ζητήσαντες ἀπεδείξαμεν αὐτῷ.).

Just so. The metaphor of distance, of uncharted and forbidden territories, hits off the situation very neatly. The Stranger and Theaetetus have entered a new world, far removed from the world of Parmenides, and have survived to tell the tale. But that does not mean that they claim to have ‘refuted’ him in any simple sense. How could they have done?

Refutation implies contradiction. No-one in his right mind would think to contradict Parmenides’ denial that ‘things that are not, are’, in so far as those words are taken as meaning, or even as implying, that ‘things that do not exist, do exist’." (pp. 151-152, note omitted)

(2) O’Brien (1995) 87 – 88, (2000) 94 –98.

(3) Dixsaut (2000) 269 n. 2. Notomi (2007) 167 – 187.

References

Dixsaut, M., Platon et la question de la pensée, Paris 2000 = Dixsaut (2000).

Notomi, N., ‘Plato against Parmenides: Sophist 236D-242B’, in S. Stern-Gillet and K.Corrigan (eds.), Reading Ancient Texts, vol. I: Presocratics and Plato. Essays in Honour of Denis O’Brien, Leiden-Boston 2007, 167 – 187 = Notomi (2007).

O’Brien, D., Le Non-être. Deux études sur le ‘Sophiste’ de Platon, Sankt Augustin 1995 = O’Brien (1995).

O’Brien, D., ‘Parmenides and Plato on What is Not’, in M. Kardaun and J. Spruyt (eds.), The Winged Chariot. Collected essays on Plato and Platonism in honour of L. M. de Rijk, Leiden, Boston, Köln 2000, 19 – 104 = O’Brien (2000).

32. ———. 2019. "To Be and Not To Be in Plato's Sophist." In Passionate Mind. Essays in Honor of John M. Rist, edited by David, Barry, 93-136. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

"Surely you can no more say of something that it both is and is not (as do Parmenides’ mortals) than you can say of it that, at one and the same time, it is non-being and being (as does the Stranger of Plato’s Sophist)?

3. Words and their meaning

The solution to the puzzle, if there is one, will have to depend on the precise meaning of the words in Greek. Dictionaries and grammars will take you only so far. The ultimate test has to be Plato’s use of the common idiom of his time, modified, when necessary, by the context—by the meaning, however idiosyncratic, that he has given his words in the course of an argument.

Those are the two criteria adopted in the course of this article. To steer your way through the Greek text of the Sophist, you will need to recognise a distinction that Plato has taken over from the common parlance of the day, while at the same time adapting it to his own purposes.

The distinction lies between two uses of einai, its common-or-garden use as a copula, joining a subject to an attribute, the verb and its attribute making up the predicate (x ‘is so-and-so’), and a less common, but still well authenticated, use as a predicate complete in itself (x ‘is’), traditionally called, for convenience, an ‘existential’ use of the verb, simply because such a use may easily lend itself, in modern English, to translation by ‘exist’." (p. 3 a note omitted)

33. O'Leary-Hawthorne, Diane. 1996. "Not-Being and Linguistic Deception." Apeiron no. 29:165-198.

"Though it is certainly clear that Plato spends a great deal of time in this dialogue [the Sophist] grappling with problems that we now place squarely in the domain of philosophy of language, we should think carefully about the context of these pursuits. As Owen,

Wiggins, Pelletier and countless others would have it, Plato is concerned with the nature of language, with the structure of sentences, with negation, with truth and with falsity simply because these problems are important and Plato was aware of their importance. Reluctant as I am to place any obstacles in the way of Plato's unstable popularity, I submit that we must think again about the relevance that these problems had for Plato." (p. 167)

(...)

"At the very least, even if we are skeptical about attributing a mistrust of language to Plato, there are certainly grounds here for caution. If indeed Plato has devoted himself in the Sophist to repairing 'the naive semantics of natural language' or some similar project, it is

unlikely that he will have done so without some hint as to how these issues might fit into his broad scheme of philosophical knowledge. At best Plato is concerned with linguistic matters in the Sophist precisely because he wants to examine and explain what underlies the linguistic skepticism that runs through the dialogues. In what follows I shall argue that beneath the glistening surface of debate about reference and truth in the Sophist there does lie a beautifully simple, though highly rigorous, account of the disparity between language and the world it purports to represent. Embedded within the Stranger's most technical linguistic pursuits is something we should have been missing in the Platonic corpus, that is, an explanation of Plato's persistent suggestion that language is not a good place to turn for philosophical insight." (p. 168)

34. O'Rourke, Fran. 2003. "Plato's Approach to Being in the Theaetetus and Sophist, and Heidegger's Attribution of Aristotelian Influence." Diotima.Revue de recherche philosophique no. 31:47-58.

"Olympiodorus reports the last dream of Plato: «Shortly before he died, Plato dreamt that he had become a swan which flew from tree to tree, thereby causing the utmost trouble to the archers who wanted to shoot him down.

Simmias the Socratic interpreted the dream as meaning that Plato would elude all the pains of his interpreters. For to archers may be likened those interpreters who try to hunt out the hidden meanings of the ancients, but Plato is elusive because his writings, like those of Homer, must be understood in many senses, both physically, and ethically, and theologically, and literally»(1)" (p. 47)

"It is significant to note that in the three dialogues we have examined, the Phaedrus, Theaetetus and Sophist, Plato brings the reciprocal, dynamic, distinction and relation «to act and act upon» to bear in his reflections, respectively, on φύσις, κίνησις, and είναι: these themes are inseparable; they refer to the intrinsic principles of every reality in its constitution, operation and foundation. The distinction and relation are clearly for Plato of central and lasting importance. In further support of Plato's own discovery of δύναμις it is worth noting that for Plato in the Republic, the Good which is the principle of all things, the source of their Being and intelligibility, is not itself Being, but «lies beyond Being, surpassing it in dignity and power» (509 b: ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας πρεσβείᾳ καὶ δυνάμει ὑπερέχοντος.). This is to place power at the heart of being, suggesting that for Plato the dignity or value of being is its power to act or be acted upon! Επέκεινα is indeed an unresolved dilemma.

Despite the criticisms offered earlier, we must conclude that Plato contributed immeasurably to the early development of the philosophy of being. His self-reproach, that the discussion in the Sophist concerning nonbeing was lengthy and irrelevant, is not only harsh but untrue. To quote Solon, as he does himself: x.χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά [beautiful/goods things are difficult]. The Sophist is a worthy contribution to this most difficult and rewarding of questions. It offers rich insights and distinctive signposts on a path of far reaching discovery. To refer again to Olympiodorus (32): whereas Aristotle wrote that all men seek wisdom, he suggests that all philosophers seek Plato as a source which overflows with wisdom and inspiration. Plato deserves our praise and, in words which he placed in the mouth of Socrates, in Athens it is easy to praise an Athenian." (pp. 57-58)

(1) Olympiodorus, Commentary on the First Alcibiades of Plato, ed. L. G. Westerink, Amsterdam, North-Holland Publishing Company, 1956, p. 6.

(32) Loc. cit., cf. supra and n. 1.

35. Oberhammer, Arnold. 2021. "Dialectic in Plato’s Sophist and Derrida’s ‘Law of the Supplement of Copula’ " In Platonism: Ficino to Foucault, edited by Rees, Valery, Corrias, Anna, Crasta, Francesca M., Follesa, Laura and Giglioni, Guido, 314-324. Leiden: Brill.

"Derrida [*] refers to Sophist 253d, where the Eleatic Stranger determines being to be the ability (δύναμις) to connect. He sees being (ὄν), in addition to motion and rest, as the third ‘in the soul’ (ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ).(12) The progress of the Eleatic Stranger, as opposed to the older aporetic ontologies where either motion or rest were considered to be, is based on the concept of ‘otherness’, ἕτερον. Being is different (ἕτερον) to motion and rest with the result that, ‘according to its own nature’ (κατὰ τὴν αὑτοῦ φύσιν), it is neither one nor the other.(13) Plato’s definition of being as disposition (δύναμις) or commonality (κοινωνία) takes place with reference to ‘the most general classes’ (μεγίστα γένη), which are connected because they are different to each other. In line with the critique of some ‘old men who came by learning late in life,’ it is impossible for one to be many.

Here the relationship between λόγος and ὄν takes centre stage.(14)" (pp. 316-317)

(12) Plato, Sophist, 250b7–10: ‘τρίτον ἄρα τι παρὰ ταῦτα τὸ ὂν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ τιθείς, ὡς ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνου τήν τε στάσιν καὶ τὴν κίνησιν περιεχομένην, συλλαβὼν καὶ ἀπιδὼν αὐτῶν πρὸς τὴν τῆς οὐσίας κοινωνίαν, οὕτως εἶναι προσεῖπας ἀμφότερα.’

(13) 13 Ibid., c3–7: ‘οὐκ ἄρα κίνησις καὶ στάσις ἐστὶ συναμφότερον τὸ ὂν ἀλλ᾽ ἕτερον δή τι τούτων. […] κατὰ τὴν αὑτοῦ φύσιν ἄρα τὸ ὂν οὔτε ἕστηκεν οὔτε κινεῖται.’

(14) Ibid., 251b6: ‘τῶν γερόντων τοῖς ὀψιμαθέσι.’

[*] Derrida, Jacques. ‘Le supplément de copule: La philosophie devant la linguistique,’ in

J. Derrida, Marges de la philosophie. Paris: Les Éditiones de Minuit, 1972, 209–46.

36. Oscanyan, Frederick S. 1973. "On Six definitions of the Sophist: Sophist 221c-231e." Philosophical Forum no. 4:241-259.

Abstract: "The paper shows that the definitions of the Sophist on 221c-231e refer to specific contemporaries of Socrates: Gorgias, Protagoras, Hippias, Prodicus, Euthydemus and Thrasymachus. Produced by the method of divisions, each definition consists of a nesting class of attributes. An examination of the Platonic corpus reveals that these same characteristics are used to satirically describe the sophists listed above. As the final definition equally describes Thrasymachus and Socrates, it is shown why Plato viewed the method of divisions as inadequate for obtaining the proper definition of sophistry: a good Platonic definition must have ostensive truth as well as essential validity."

37. Owen, Gwilym Ellis Lane. 1966. "Plato and Parmenides on the Timeless Present." Monist:317-340.

Reprinted in: Alexander Mourelatos (ed.), The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays, Garden City: Anchor Press, 1974 and in: G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science, and Dialectic. Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986 pp. 27-44.

"In sum, it is part of the originality of Plato to have grasped, or half-grasped, an important fact about certain kinds of statement, namely that they are tenseless whereas others are tensed. But he tries to bring this contrast under his familiar distinction between the changeless and the changing. So he saddles the familiar distinction with a piece of conceptual apparatus taken from Parmenides, a tense-form which retains enough of a present sense to be coupled with expressions for permanence and stability, yet which has severed its links with the future and the past. Armed with this device Plato is able to turn the distinction between tensed and tenseless statements into a more congenial distinction between timebound and timeless, changing and immutable, objects.

But at a price. The concept of stability has been stretched so that stability is no longer a function of time. And the interesting propositions, so far from staying tenseless, are restated in an artificial and degenerate tense-form. The theory for which we are asked to tolerate these anomalies will need to hold firm against scrutiny. But on scrutiny there seems to be something wrong at its roots.

What is wrong, I think, can be put very shortly. It is that to be tensed or tenseless is a property of statements and not of things, and that paradoxes come from confusing this distinction; just as they come from trying to manufacture necessary beings out of the logical necessity that attaches to certain statements. But how is the distinction to be recognized? One way, a good way, is to notice that tenseless statements are not proprietary to one sort of subject and tensed statements to another. And there seems to be evidence in another work of Plato that he did notice this, and brought the point home by a valid argument.

I want to end by discussing that evidence. It occurs in the Sophist, in the criticism that the chief speaker brings against the so-called "friends of the Forms.(15)" (pp. 335-336)

(15) My account of this argument lies close to that given by J. M. E. Moravcsik [Being and Meaning in the Sophist] in Acta Philosophica Fennica, 14 (1962), 35-40, which should be consulted for its criticism of alternative views.

38. ———. 1971. "Plato on Not-Being." In Plato. A Collection of Critical Essays. I: Metaphysics and Epistemology, edited by Vlastos, Gregory, 104-137. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press.

Reprinted in: G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science and Dialectic. Collected Papers in Ancient Greek Philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986, pp. 104-137 and in: Gail Fine (ed.), Plato 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 416-454.

"Platonists who doubt that they are Spectators of Being must settle for the knowledge that they are investigators of the verb 'to be'. Their investigations make them familiar with certain commonplaces of the subject for which, among Plato's dialogues, the Sophist is held to contain the chief evidence. But the evidence is not there, and the attempt to find it has obstructed the interpretation of that hard and powerful dialogue. The commonplaces that I mean are these: In Greek, but only vestigially in English, the verb 'to be' has two syntactically distinct uses, a complete or substantive use in which it determines a one-place predicate ('X is', 'X is not Y') and an incomplete use in which it determines a two-place predicate ('X is Y' , 'X is not Y'). To this difference there answers a semantic distinction. The verb in its first use signifies 'to exist' (for which Greek in Plato's day had no separate word) or else, in Greek but only in translators' English, 'to be real' or 'to be the case' or 'to be true', these senses being all reducible to the notion of the existence of some object or state of affairs; while in its second use it is demoted to a subject-predicate copula (under which we can here include the verbal auxiliary) or to an identity sign. Plato's major explorations of

being and not-being are exercises in the complete or 'existential' use of the verb. And, lest his arguments should seem liable to confusion by this versatile word, in the Sophist he marks off the first use from the verb's other use or uses and draws a corresponding distinction within the negative constructions represented by to me on, 'not-being' or 'what is not'. For the problems which dominate the central argument of the Sophist are existence problems, so disentangling the different functions of the verb 'to be' is a proper step to identifying and resolving them." (pp. 104-105, notes omitted)

39. ———. 1973. "Plato on the Undepictable." In Exegesis and Argument. Studies in Greek philosophy presented to Gregory Vlastos, edited by Lee, Edward N., Mourelatos, Alexander and Rorty, Richard, 349-361. Assen: Van Gorcum.

Reprinted in: G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science and Dialectic. Collected Papers in Ancient Greek Philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986, pp. 138-147.

40. Pacitti, Domenico. 1991. The Nature of the Negative. Towards an Understanding of Negation and Negativity. Pisa: Giardini editori.

Contents: Preface IX-X; On the nature of the Negative 1; Epilogue 77; Notes 79; Bibliographical references 103; Index nominum 115-118.

On Plato's Sophist see in particular pp. 63-75.

"The immensity of the 'tours de force' necessary in the Parmenides and Sophist for the admission of nonbeing on a par with being reflects the enormous hold that Parmenides must have exerted over the Greeks. His writing in verse, like the monotheist Xenophanes, reflects divine inspiration and the transcendent powers of thought. Thus it is not he but the goddess who speaks throughout.

The style of Parmenides fr. B8, 12-21 is strikingly reminiscent of the Vedic hymn and may easily be read as a solution to the anonymous poet's riddle. But his answer that there is only 'is' and no 'is not' cannot, I think, be understood as meaning that Parmenides wished to reject negative predication out, as Anscombe (Parmenides, Mystery and Contradiction, 1969) would have in the first place, Parmenides himself consistently uses negatives, which would be highly implausible if that was what he wished to outlaw, and secondly, his position on the illusory nature of 'opinion' and the nonexistence of what is not is quite compatible with the use of the negative.

For in Parmenides (fr. B2, B6, 1-2, & B8 34-36) thought and reality are probably even more closely bound together than in Plato, in that reality - or at least true reality - can be thought, and if 'opinion' is part of what is not, then the result of thinking that is what he calls a non-thought, which must be taken to mean something that is not a true or authentic thought. We find Aristotle (Posterior Analytics 89a) still pondering over this problem of how true knowledge and mere opinion could have the same object of reference.

Similarly, Parmenides' convincing rebuttal (fr. 3) of what is having been produced out of what is not, which would then mean what is being in some sense what is not, led Aristotle (De Anima 417a and Metaphysics 1051b) to his theory of potentiality in order to bridge the gap somehow between nonbeing and being.

And this is a radical challenge to the common concept of time: the unreality of past and future which are illusory, the present which is all there is, timeless and eternal.

For Parmenides, then, reason, namely the correct use of thought in contact with reality - not the world of appearance but the real world - will alone lead to truth." (pp. 73-74)

41. Painter, Corinne. 2014. "The Stranger as a Socratic Philosopher: The Socratic Nature of the Stranger’s Investigation of the Sophist." The St. John's Review no. 56:65-73.

"Much of the secondary literature on Plato’s Sophist considers the Stranger to be a non-Socratic philosopher, and regards his appearance in the dialogues as a sign that Plato had moved on from his fascination with Socrates to develop a more “mature” way of philosophizing.(2) This essay will argue, on the contrary, that the investigation led by the Stranger in the Sophist demonstrates an essentially Socratic philosophical stance. In order to do this, I will consider carefully some dramatic evidence in the Sophist that allows us to notice a philosophical “transformation” in the Stranger.

My consideration focuses upon the Stranger’s rejection of the Parmenidean way of philosophizing followed by his acceptance of the Socratic way of practicing philosophy. This is revealed most decisively by the Stranger’s willingness to pursue truth and justice at the expense of overturning the practices of his philosophical training, and, secondarily, by his genuine concern with showing that Socrates is not guilty of sophistry."

(2) There are far too many accounts to list here; but see, for example, Stanley Rosen, Plato’s Sophist: The Drama of the Original and Image (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 1999). Just as Rosen argues in his text, most of the accounts in the literature that treat this issue view the Stranger as non-Socratic and advance the position that he represents at least a change, or perhaps even a progression, in Plato’s thinking away from, for instance, emphasis on the Socratic elenchus, to a more developed, mature philosophical practice that emphasizes dialectic."

42. Painter, Corinne Michelle. 2005. "In Defense of Socrates: The Stranger's Role in Plato's Sophist." Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 9:317-333.

Abstract: "In this essay I argue that the Stranger's interest in keeping the Philosopher and the Sophist distinct is connected, primarily, to his assessment of the charges of Sophistry advanced against Socrates, which compels him to defend Socrates from these unduly advanced accusations. On this basis, I establish that the Stranger's task in the Sophist, namely to keep philosophy distinct from sophistry, is intimately tied to the project of securing justice and is therefore not merely of theoretical importance but is also -- and essentially - of political and ethical significance."

43. Palmer, John. 1999. Plato's Reception of Parmenides. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

"The Gorgianic perspective on Parmenides' philosophy also figures crucially in the First Deduction of the subsequent exercise in which Parmenides undertakes an examination of his own theory. Plato has Parmenides reject this reductive perspective, thereby providing us with a crucially important instance of how Plato is concerned with combating certain sophistic appropriations of Parmenides so as to recover him for the uses he himself wants to make. This dynamic of reappropriation becomes increasingly important as we continue to examine Plato's later period reception.

This theme in fact guides my discussion of the complex representation of Parmenides in the Sophist, where I argue that Plato's efforts to define the Sophist so as to discriminate between this figure and the Philosopher are accompanied by an attempt to recover Parmenides from sophistic appropriations that challenge certain of the key distinctions of Plato's middle period metaphysics. I therefore take

issue with the common view that Plato in the Sophist is determined to 'refute' Parmenides. The Sophist's denial of the viability of the distinctions between truth and falsehood and between reality and

appearance employ the logic of Parmenides in ways Plato himself finds unacceptable. Plato's own view of Parmenides in this dialogue emerges in the ontological doxography in which Parmenides is significantly associated with Xenophanes and in the subsequent interrogation of this doxography's first two groups. The interrogation of the Eleatics in particular has important connections with various deductions in the Parmenides's dialectical exercise. These connections make it possible to see where in each dialogue Plato is concerned with sophistic appropriations of Parmenides and where he is engaging with him in ways that reflect his own understanding. This understanding is reflected to some extent in portions of the Timaeus but most directly and importantly in the Parmenides's Second Deduction. I therefore conclude this study by describing how Plato will have understood Parmenides' account of the attributes of Being in B8 and the relation of this account to the cosmology he presented alongside

it, and I explain how this understanding is reflected in the Second Deduction." (p. 16)

44. Palumbo, Lidia. 2013. "Mimesis in the Sophist." In Plato's Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 269-278. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Mimesis is the production of images (Soph. 265b1 – 3). These cover a very wide semantic field, including the meanings of “opinion” and “viewpoint”. A false image is a wrong opinion that says the things that are not: in believing, we imagine; in thinking, we represent what we think. The false belief is therefore a mental scene, an image that possesses neither a corresponding reality nor a model, although it is perceived as a real scene. The virtue of an image (the arete eikonos) lies in its being similar to what is true, whereas the similarity between false and true can produce a deception similar to that caused by a dream or by poetry.

The aim of this paper is to show that in the Sophist falsity is closely linked to mimesis. This is not because every mimesis is false, but because all falsity is mimetic. That not every mimesis is false is shown at 235c – 236c. The crucial distinction between eikastike and phantastike must be understood as the distinction between true and false mimesis. That every falsity is mimetic is a far more complex issue, which I shall be discussing in this paper. I shall claim that falsity does not consist in confusing something for something else, but, more specifically, in confusing an image for its model." (p. 269)

45. Panagiotou, Spiro. 1981. "The 'Parmenides' and the 'Communion of Kinds' in the 'Sophist'." Hermes no. 109:167-171.

"The section on the Communion of Kinds in the 'Sophist' is prefaced with an outline of the view that in calling the same thing by many names we make it 'many', and are thus guilty of contradiction: we make what is 'one' to be 'many' and vice versa (251 A - C). The language here leaves no doubt that this aspect of the 'one and many' problem ought to be regarded as specious (cf. 251 B 5 - 6; C 4), although the Stranger does not explain why it should be so regarded. After making some derogatory remarks on those who are impressed by this aspect of the problem, the Stranger abruptly turns to the section on the Communion of Kinds. Though we are not told so, we may be certain that the two sections are related and that the Communion of Kinds has something to do with problems of the 'one and many' variety. We may, furthermore, fill in some of the missing details by considering what Plato has to say on the same topic in the 'Philebus'." (p. 168)

46. Pappas, Nickolas. 2013. "Introduction." The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy:277-282.

Abstract: "Plato’s Sophist is part of the most striking change that occurs within the chronology of his dialogues. Their dramatic presentation changes, the main speaker Socrates replaced by the Eleatic stranger. The dialogues still seek to define terms, but now use the method of division and collection and succeed where earlier attempts used to fail. They transform Platonic metaphysics to include the great kind heteron “other,” which points the way to a new enterprise of understanding the reality of appearance rather than opposing appearance to reality. The seven papers collected in this part explore metaphysical, methodological, and pedagogical topics explored in or arising from the Sophist. Their subjects include the other, number (arithmos), power (dunamis), mixture, appearance, and myth."

47. ———. 2013. "The Story that Philosophers Will Be Telling of the Sophist." The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy no. 13:338-352.

Abstract: "Plato’s stranger exemplifies the impulse to move beyond myth into logos, anticipating the later author Palaephatus. The stranger wishes earlier philosophers had not mythologized being to their students; he works to define the sophist so as to escape myths about that figure. Yet reading the Sophist alongside Palaephatus illuminates how far myth continues to permeate this work. The sophist’s moneymaking is mythologized into his wildness. The stranger’s closing words about announcing the meaning of the sophist hark back to a dense mythic passage from the Iliad. If philosophy begins by bidding good-bye to myth, it has not left home yet."

48. Partenie, Catalin. 2004. "Imprint: Heidegger Interpretation of Platonic Dialectic in the Sophist lectures (1924-25)." In Heidegger and Plato: Toward Dialogue, edited by Partenie, Catalin and Rockmore, Tom, 42-71. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

"My essay will follow one episode of this Platonico-Heideggerian interplay. The episode has at its core four theses centered upon the Platonic dialectic that Heidegger advances in his lectures on Plato’s Sophist. I shall argue that these theses, although they reveal a biased reading of Plato, manage to draw our attention to a genuine and important Platonic distinction, usually overlooked, between authentic and inauthentic human existence, and that this distinction also lies at the core of the fundamental ontology expounded in Being and Time. At the close of the essay I shall address, but only in a preliminary way, the question of why Heidegger did not acknowledge this Platonic imprint on his Being and Time.

The lectures on Plato’s Sophist were delivered at the University of Marburg during the winter semester 1924–25. They contain a running commentary of the Sophist completed by extensive analyses of book Z of the Nicomachean Ethics, book A (chapters 1 and 2) of the Metaphysics, and the Phaedrus.

Of the many theses Heidegger advances in these lectures (whose published text counts 653 pages), I shall focus here on four, centered upon the Platonic dialectic." (pp. 42-43)

49. ———. 2016. "Heidegger: Sophist and Philosopher." In Sophistes: Plato's Dialogue and Heidegger's Lectures in Marburg (1924-25), edited by De Brasi, Diego and Fuchs, Marko J., 61-74. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

"Heidegger's Lectures on Plato's Sophist are a long and complex affair. In their opening section, entitled "Preliminary Considerations", Heidegger claims that a double preparation is required for an interpretation of Plato's late dialogues: one philosophical-phenomenological, the other historiographical-hermeneutical." (p. 61)

(...)

"Usually, scholars go "from Socrates and the Presocratics to Plato"; Heidegger, however, will go from "Aristotle back to Plato" (11). Why? Because "what Aristotle said is what Plato placed at his disposal, only it is said more radically and developed more scientifically" (11-12)." (p. 62)

(...)

"So, we know how to grasp in the right way the past we encounter in Plato: through Aristotle. But how are we to grasp in the right way the past we encounter in Aristotle? In other words, if Aristotle is going to be the guiding line for our interpretation of Plato, what will be our guiding line for the interpretation of Aristotle? Who said more radically, and developed more scientifically, what Aristotle placed at our disposal? Nobody, Heidegger claims. Aristotle "was not followed by anyone greater", so "we are forced to leap into his own philosophical work in order to gain an orientation" (12), or guiding line. In what follows I shall argue that Heidegger's actual guiding line throughout the lectures was not Aristotle, but his own thinking at the time, which he brought to its fullest development in the fundamental ontology of Being and Time." (p. 62)

50. Peck, Arthur Leslie. 1952. "Plato and the ΜΕΓΙΣΤΑ ΓΕΝΗ of the Sophist. A Reinterpretation." The Classical Quarterly no. 2:32-56.

"It is important to recognize that the problem dealt with by Plato in the central part of the Sophist (232 b-264 d) is one which arises from the use of certain Greek phrases, and has no necessary or direct connexion with metaphysics (although the solution of it which Plato offers has an important bearing on the defence of his own metaphysical theory against one particular kind of attack).

We tend to obscure this fact if we use English terms such as 'Being', 'Reality', 'Existence', etc., in discussing the dialogue, and indeed make it almost impossible to understand what Plato is trying to do. It is the way in which the Greek terms ὄν and μή ὄν and other such terms are used by the 'sophists' which gives rise to the problem." (32)

(...)

"It is not easy to suppose that Plato thought the business of the true philosopher, as described at Sophist 253 d-e, consisted in spending his time on such verbal futilities as saying that Rest is not Motion, Motion is the same as itself, Motion is other than Being, etc. (Indeed, even in the discussion in the Sophist, the Eleatic Visitor and Theaetetus require no 'high art' to see that Rest and Motion cannot 'mix'.) The difficulties caused by sophistic verbal conjuring must, of course, be overcome by the philosopher; but once they are overcome, the philosopher can go forward with his own proper work. It is indeed surprising that the view has ever been entertained that the business of the true philosopher, as described in Sophist 253 d-e, is illustrated by the argument about the μέγιστα γένη. The philosopher's work, as epitomized in the phrases κατὰ γένη διαιρεῖσθαι (253 d) and διακρίνειν κατὰ γένος ἐπίστασθαι (253 e), is surely much more closely represented by the making of 'Divisions', of which semi-serious examples are given in the earlier part of the dialogue, than by the discussion about the μέγιστα γένη. It is, of course, true that any such work of Division would be blocked at the outset so long as the τό μη όν ουκ έστιν objection held the field; but once that objection is cleared away the course is open for the true dialectical philosopher to proceed with his work." (p. 56)

51. ———. 1962. "Plato's "Sophist": The συμπλοϰὴ τῶν εἰδῶν." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 7:46-66.

In Plato's Sophist, at 259 E 4 ff., we read the following sentence:

τελεωτάτη πάντων λόγων ἐστὶν ἀφάνισις τὸ διαλύειν ἕκαστον ἀπὸ πάντων: διὰ γὰρ τὴν ἀλλήλων τῶν εἰδῶν συμπλοκὴν ὁ λόγος γέγονεν ἡμῖν [The complete separation of each thing from all is the utterly final obliteration of all discourse. For our power of discourse is derived from the interweaving of the classes or ideas with one another (translation added)].

A few pages later, at 263 A2 and 8, we find these examples of λόγος:

‘Θεαίτητος κάθηται, [Theaetetus sits] Θεαίτητος πέτεται [Theaetetus flies].

The difficulty which seems to present itself is that these examples of λόγος do not illustrate what is said in the second part of the sentence quoted." (p. 46)

(...)

"The amount of effort expended by Plato in combating the activities of 'sophists' and αντιλογικοι is itself an indication of the prevalence and (as he felt it) the danger to philosophy of the kind of talk which was in vogue. The danger of this attitude, as Plato saw it, was its superficiality, its undue preoccupation with words instead of realities."

(...)

"Plato's attack, then, is against those who confine their attention to terminology, who fail to consider whether their terminology is a correct representation of the facts, or who believe it is a reliable index to truth and reality - or think they can floor Plato by specious verbal manipulations.

It will, I believe, be found that μετέχειν and all the various verbs and nouns used to denote 'combining' and 'mixing' in the Sophist imply no more than that two terms can be used together in the same sentence without self-contradiction." (p. 66)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Plato's Sophist. Bibliography of the studies in English: Pel - Sam

Bibliography

1. Pelletier, Francis Jeffry. 1975. "'Incompatibility' in Plato's Sophist." Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review no. 14:143-146.

"I want to consider a much-disputed reading of a certain critical area of Plato's Sophist. It is widely agreed by most commentators that in this text, between 255E and 259E there occurs a refutation of Parmenides' dictum that "one cannot say that which is not", and that this is followed by an application of the foregoing discussion to the problems of sentential falsity. (For a partial list of commentators, see bibliography.) It is also generally agreed that Plato uses the Form, The Different, for this purpose. What is not generally agreed upon is how Plato uses The Different." (p. 143)

Bibliography

Ackrill, J. L. (1955) "Symplokê eidôn", Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London (reprinted in Vlastos).

Frede, Michael ( 1967) Prädication und Existenzaussage, Hypomnemata 18.

Keyt, David ( 1973) "The Falsity of 'Theaetetus Flies' (Sophist 263B)" in Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos (ed.) E. N. Lee, A.P.D. Mourelatos. and R. Rorty; Phronesis Supplementary Volume I.

Lee, E, N. (1972) "Plato on Negation and Not-Being in the Sophist" Phil. Rev.

Lorenz, K. and Mittelstrauss, J, (1966) "Theaitetos Fliegt", Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie.

Owen, G. E. L. (1970) "Plato on Not-Being" (in Vlastos).

Philip, J, A. (1968) "False Statement in the Sophist's", Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Society.

Vlastos, Gregory (1970) Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays Vol. I.

Wiggins, David (1970) "Sentence Meaning, Negation, and Plato's Problem of Not-Being" (in Vlastos).

2. ———. 1983. "Plato on Not-Being: Some Interpretations of the συμπλοκή εἶδον (259e) and Their Relation to Parmenides Problem." In Midwest Studies in Philosophy VIII, edited by French, Peter A., Uehling Jr., Theodore E. and Wettstein, Howard K., 35-65.

"We have witnessed," says Mourelatos (1979: p. 3), "in the 'sixties and 'seventies, in English language scholarship, that rarest of phenomena in the study of ancient philosophy, the emergence of a consensus." This interpretation is so agreed upon that "one may even speak of a standard Anglo-American interpretation of Parmenides." One of the presentations counted by Mourelatos as standard, indeed one of the paradigms, is that of Furth (1968). According to this interpretation, Parmenides' infamous ontological views follow as corollaries from his implicit views about language and meaning. I will briefly present this Parmenidean view about language, but I will not here try to justify the attribution (for these sorts of arguments see Furth, 1968; Mourelatos, 1979; and Pelletier, forthcoming [1990]).

In this paper, I am interested in the Platonic response to Parmenides, especially the response that occurs in the middle portion of the Sophist (249-265). Since I am going to evaluate this as a response to the "standard interpretation" of Parmenides, it is clear that I owe a justification for my belief that Plato understood his opponent to be our "standard Parmenides." This issue, too, I will avoid here (further discussion can be found in Pelletier [1990], which discusses the "Parmenidean" arguments of Sophist 237-241, Theaetetus, 188-189, and Cratylus 429-430, with an eye toward showing that Plato was aware of these types of argument.)" (p. 35)

"It seems that one way to clarify the details of the interpretation of Parmenides is to investigate the symplokê eidôn of the Sophist. Unfortunately, Plato's position is also open to a variety of interpretations and cannot be convincingly elucidated in the absence of a precise account of what Parmenides' argument was. One, therefore, wishes to set up all the possible interpretations of Parmenides and all the interpretations of the symplokê eidôn and then to inspect these lists to discover which pairs of Parmenidean/Platonic interpretations mesh the best. This, it seems to me, would provide the best evidence possible that one had finally gotten both Plato and Parmenides right. I will not attempt that Herculean task. Rather, I will state one interpretation of Parmenides, Furth 's, and ask which of the many ways to understand Plato's position best accords with that interpretation of Parmenides. (p. 36)

References

Furth, Montgomery, “Elements of Eleatic Ontology.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 6 (1968): 111-32.

Mourelatos, A. P. D., “Some Alternatives in Interpreting Parmenides,” The Monist 62 (1979):

Pelletier. Francis Jeffry, Parmenides, Plato, and the Semantics of Not-Being (forthcoming) [Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1990].

3. ———. 1990. Parmenides, Plato, and the Semantics of Not-Being. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments IX; Introduction XI-XXI; 1. Methodological preliminaries 1; 2. Parmenides' problem 8; 3. Plato's problems 22; 4. Some interpretations of the symploke eidon 45; 5. The Philosopher's language 94, Works cited 149; Index locorum 155; Name Index 159; Subject index 163-166.

4. Peramatzis, Michail. 2020. "Conceptions of Truth in Plato’s Sophist." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 102:333-378.

Abstract: "The paper seeks to specify how, according to Plato’s Sophist, true statements achieve their being about objects and their saying that ‘what is about such objects is’. Drawing on the 6th definition of the sophist, I argue for a normative-teleological conception of truth in which the best condition of our soul –in its making statements or having mental states– consists in its seeking to attain the telos of truth. Further, on the basis of Plato’s discussion of original and image, his distinction between correct and incorrect image, and the 7th definition, I argue that achieving the telos of truth involves preserving the original’s proportions and appropriate features. The view that Plato’s conception of truth takes statements or mental states to be certain types of image is not ground-breaking. The important contribution of my argument is that it offers a plausible way to understand two recalcitrant claims made by Plato: first, that falsity obtains not only in the region of incorrect images (appearances) but also within correct images (likenesses); second, that some incorrect images are based on knowledge and so could be true."

5. Perl, Eric D. 2014. "The Motion of Intellect On the Neoplatonic Reading of Sophist 248e-249d." The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition no. 8:138-160.

Abstract: "This paper defends Plotinus’ reading of Sophist 248e-249d as an expression of the togetherness or unity-in-duality of intellect and intelligible being. Throughout the dialogues Plato consistently presents knowledge as a togetherness of knower and known, expressing this through the myth of recollection and through metaphors of grasping, eating, and sexual union. He indicates that an intelligible paradigm is in the thought that apprehends it, and regularly regards the forms not as extrinsic “objects” but as the contents of living intelligence. A meticulous reading of Sophist 248e-249d shows that the “motion” attributed to intelligible being is not temporal change but the activity of intellectual apprehension. Aristotle’s doctrines of knowledge as identity of intellect and the intelligible, and of divine intellect as thinking itself, are therefore in continuity with Plato, and Plotinus’ doctrine of intellect and being is continuous with both Plato and Aristotle."

6. Petterson, Olof. 2018. "The Science of Philosophy: Discourse and Deception in Plato’s Sophist." Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 22:221-237.

Abstract: "At 252e1 to 253c9 in Plato’s Sophist, the Eleatic Visitor explains why philosophy is a science. Like the art of grammar, philosophical knowledge corresponds to a generic structure of discrete kinds and is acquired by systematic analysis of how these kinds intermingle. In the literature, the Visitor’s science is either understood as an expression of a mature and authentic platonic metaphysics, or as a sophisticated illusion staged to illustrate the seductive lure of sophistic deception. By showing how the Visitor’s account of the science of philosophy is just as comprehensive, phantasmatic and self-concealing as the art of sophistry identified at the dialogue’s outset, this paper argues in favor of the latter view. "

7. Philip, James Allenby. 1961. "Mimesis in the Sophistes of Plato." Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association no. 92:453-468.

"If a generalized use of mimesis was current in Plato's time, it was current as an extension of a more specific use. We shall find in Plato instances of both the specific and the generalized use and instances in which, because Plato allowed them to co-exist, the meaning and connotations of the one overlap those of the other, and ambiguities arise. Already in the Republic these two senses of mimesis, the specific or dramatic sense and the generalized or metaphysical sense, are both present. They are exhibited again in the final division of the Sophistes as two classes related to one another as genus to species. When we have delimited the two senses in the Republic we will consider their relation in the Sophistes and its implications." (pp. 453-454)

(...)

"We must then ask ourselves: What enables us to know? and by what process of knowing do we make ourselves like the object of our knowledge?

(...)

So we affirm that in the wide spectrum of meaning given to mimesis in the Platonic dialogues we can distinguish two principal senses: a restricted or dramatic sense of making oneself like another, and a wider sense describing the creative processes in all the productive crafts; and further that in the final division of the Sophistes we find the latter related to the former as genus to species." (p. 468)

8. ———. 1968. "False Statement in the Sophistes." Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association no. 99:315-327.

"I shall limit myself to showing what are the moves he makes, and how he reaches the conclusion he does reach.

The question whether Plato's doctrine is tenable, in whole or in part, in terms of modern logic is beyond the scope of this study.

The discussion of false statement falls into five parts, each part corresponding to a move in the development of the thesis. It will be convenient to conduct our discussion conforming to these divisions:

1. 256D11-258C7: Not-being and its two kinds.

2. 258C7-260A1: Summing up against Parmenides.

3. 260A1-261C6: The problem of statement (logos).

4. 261C7-263A1: Basic doctrine of meaning and statement.

5. 263A1-263D5 : Test case : "Theaetetus flies" etc.

It must be remembered throughout that Plato is single-mindedly pursuing his purpose, which is to show that false statement as τὸ μὴ ὄν λέγειν is possible; and further that this phrase means: (a) in the Parmenidean sense, (if anything) nothing relevant to our inquiry, (b) in a modified sense, to say what is not as what is other than (or different from) X, and (c) to make a false statement. This last sense is for Plato's purpose the important one. He will use it to differentiate between the activities of the sophist and the philosopher, and to justify his relegating the sophist to the class of purveyors of false statement.

It must also be remembered that, here as elsewhere, Plato for all his frequent prolixity excludes from his argument what he does not consider essential to it. In the present instance he attempts no general logical doctrine." (pp. 315-316)

9. ———. 1968. "The apographa of Plato's Sophistes." Phoenix no. 22:289-298.

Since Burnet's edition of Plato it has been recognized that B, T, and W are primary sources for the first half of the Platonic corpus, and for most of those dialogues, including the Sophistes, the only primary sources. (In the Budé Sophistes, edited by Diès, Y is cited in the apparatus as a primary source; though this has been shown to be the case for other parts of Y it is not the case for the Sophistes, as will appear below.) All other manuscripts are conceded to be apographa of these, and their mutual relations have been in part explored. They have not been examined systematically, on the basis of collations, to discover precisely how they depend on one another and whether any of the manuscripts other than the principal three can be primary sources for our tradition in whole or in part." (p. 289)

Codices referred to by sigla are as follows: B = Clarkianus 39 of the Bodleian Library, Oxford; T = Ven.app.cl. 4.1 (542 in the new numbering of Mioni's catalogue) of the Marciana Library, Venice; W = Vind.supp.phil.gr.7, Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna; Y = Vind.phil.gr.21, Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. All other codices are referred to by the abbreviation of their library designations; a list is given in Post [L. A. Post, The Vatican Plato and its Relations (Middletown 1934)];. I shall discuss the primary source manuscripts, B, T, and W, in a separate study.

10. ———. 1969. "The Megista Gene of the Sophistes." Phoenix no. 23:89-103.

"Five common concepts or megista gene -- being, identity, difference, motion and rest-play a key role in the Sophistes.(1) They are not an innovation. Allusion is made to them, and to similar concepts, in earlier dialogues. Already in the Phaedo (103E-105C) certain ideas having a mathematical character-equality, oddness, evenness-are recognized not as a special category but as functioning in special ways and having peculiar problems. It is in the Parmenides that we first encounter them as a grouping.(2) There Parmenides introduces them as similar ideas specially suited to the training of neophytes in dialectic. The ideas mentioned are (136A-B): unity/plurality, similarity/dissimilarity, motion/rest, being/non-being, coming-to-be/passing away. To these are later added identity/difference (139B) and equality/inequality (140B)." (pp. 89-90, note 1 partly omitted)

(...)

"Let us now turn to the Sophistes. If we are to understand the role of the megista gene we must observe how and in what context they are introduced. The critical issue of the whole dialogue is approached by an episode to which Plato has given the name Gigantomachia, or Battle of the Giants. In this episode idealists and empiricists are pitted against one another in bitter conflict. Their ideological quarrel is about οὐσία.

The giants maintain that only what has physical body and is perceptible to touch or contact may be said to be real, or to exist. The idealists maintain that the only genuine reality/substance is to be found in incorporeal, intelligible kinds or ideas, physical body being merely genesis or change and process.

In the thesis of the idealists we have in its most uncompromising form Plato's chorismos of intelligibles and sensibles. But we find Plato not, as we might expect, championing the cause of the Friends of the Ideas, as he calls his idealists. Instead he attempts to mediate. Let us observe how he does so, remembering always that he develops only such aspects of his metaphysical assumptions as seems to him necessary for the theme he is treating." (p. 92)

(1) I use for megista gene "common concepts." That equivalent is suggested by Tht. 185c 4, and Ryle has pointed out in Studies in Plato's Metaphysics, ed. R. E. Allen (London 1965) 146 that it is used also by Aristotle. So it may have had some currency in the Academy. To translate by "greatest," "highest," "very important," is to suggest that they occupy a place in some hierarchy of concepts or ideas, whereas their importance derives from the fact that they are topic-neutral and of almost universal application. Their logical importance has been pointed out by Ryle, loc. cit., and in New Essays on Plato and Aristotle, ed. R. Bambrough (London 1965) 64-65. My debt to those discussions will be obvious.

(2) By "first" I mean first in the order Plato assigned to the dialogues -- Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophistes, Politicus. I shall treat the Timaeus as subsequent to these. I shall not attempt to discuss again the actual date of writing of any dialogue or part of a dialogue. Relative dating does not affect my thesis here. It ceases to be of major importance if we accept even in part the Krämer/Gaiser theory of agrapha dogmata.

11. Pippin, Robert B. 1979. "Negation and Not-Being in Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Plato's Sophist." Kant Studien no. 70:179-196.

"The origins of our contemporary fascination with language are, of course, quite complex and go to the very heart of that persistent twentieth-century attempt to see philosophy as a "critique of language". But, in investigating those origins, it does no one an injustice to insist upon the importance of Ludwig Wittgenstein and especially his little book, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in bringing the issue to the prominence it enjoys today."

(...)

"In fact, [Wittgenstein] seems to return quite explicitly to Plato's account of language as an eidolon in a dialogue like the Sophist. In a certain sense, one could claim that the central problem of dialogues like the Theaetetus and the Sophist was Wittgenstein's major concern in his early work."

(...)

"Further, in the opinion of some commentators, the Eleatic Stranger and Wittgenstein not only begin with very similar problems, they seem to arrive at very similar solutions.

The picture theory's representational model of language's relation to the world, the ontology taken by some to be supported by the picture theory (Wittgenstein's infamous "simples"), the doctrines of logical space and the "form" of objects, and perhaps more than any other issue, Wittgenstein's "derivative" explanation of negation (the claim that any not-X depends on X for its intension and the claim that it has no negative extension, that there are no negative facts), all count as evidence for Platonic shadows stretching across the Tractatus. This seems especially true when we consider that Wittgenstein regarded as a major consequence of the picture theory its ability to account for meaningful, false propositions, that it could explain how "Thought can be of what is not the case".

Plato's discussion of images is clearly and directly concerned with much the same problem in "capturing" the elusive sophist.

In the following, I will consider two such comparable issues- the general theory of language involved in both accounts, and their specific solution to the problem of negation and false propositions. What I hope to accomplish by this contrast is to illuminate two very different kinds of analyses appropriate to the topic of "not-being", differences one could roughly characterize as "semantic" versus "ontological". Further, this difference in orientation and in emphasis will involve differences within each mode; specifically it will involve a "picture" versus an "image" theory of language, and atomistic versus nonatomistic ontologies." (pp. 179-180, notes omitted)

12. Pirocacos, Elly. 1998. False Belief and the Meno Paradox. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Abstract: "The Sophist is a dialogue that may be addressed as a sequel to the Theaetetus. It also finds Socrates suspended of his capacity as director of inquiry, and replaced by an Eleatic Stranger. The difficulty of the task is located in the form of refutative argumentation adopted by each, and therefore involves the evaluation of the justifying epistemological systems supporting each. The stage setting of the Sophist is even more involved than the three phased report of the dialogue in the Theaetetus. The philosophical persuasion of the Stranger deserves special attention, especially given that he has been assigned the role to designate the criteria of philosophical inquiry by way of establishing the true relations between the tripartite subjects of inquiry. Both Theaetetus and the Eleatic Stranger are agreed that being and not-being are equally puzzling terms; but Theaetetus seems to have understood the objective of the present dialogue in a slightly different way."

13. Pitteloud, Luca. 2014. "Is the Sensible an Illusion? The Revisited Ontology of the Sophist." Aufklärung no. 1:33-57.

"I want to argue in this paper that, in the Sophist, behind the discussion about the nature of non-being, Plato provides the reader some elements about a revision of his ontology. First, the analysis of the notion of image gives some indications concerning the nature of the sensible, which is usually described as an image of the intelligible (Republic 509a9 and 509e1-2, Timaeus 52c).

Second, since the dialogue seems to assume that not only Forms are part of the realm of being, but what is in motion too, it will appear that sensible objects must somehow belong to being. The focus of this paper is the revision of the nature of the sensible." (p. 33)

(...)

"Conclusion: A new realm of being

The Friends of the Forms have to admit that Forms are acted upon but not that they change. In this way, they could easily defend the idea that for a Form, to be known, does not imply any alteration or change. Nevertheless, they seem to accept another different thesis, namely that some objects that are in motion belong to the realm of being. The Eleatic Stranger asks the question of the pantelôs on (248e7): this does not refer to what is really being (ontôs on), but to the total family of being. To this realm of being belong motion (κίνησις), life (ψυχήν) and intelligence (φρόνησιν). In this way, the Sophist does not only assert that an image cannot be reduced to non-being, but also that what is in motion is part of the realm of being. Those two elements seem to plead for a revaluation of the nature of the sensible, which has to be part of the set of being. We face an ontology with two degrees of being: the intelligible and its image, namely the sensible. The sensible is not reducible to an illusion or to falsehood (and nothingness), but is somehow a being. As the Timaeus will explain it, it is the image of the intelligible appearing into a milieu (the Receptacle), which guaranties to it some degree of existence (Timaeus, 52b3-d1)." (pp. 52.53)

14. Planinc, Zdravko. 2015. "Socrates and the Cyclops: Plato’s Critique of ‘Platonism’ in the Sophist and Statesman." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy no. 31:159-217.

Abstract: "The Eleatic Stranger plays a central role in all reconstructions of Plato’s “Platonism.”

This paper is a study of the literary form of the Sophist and Statesman and its significance for interpreting the Eleatic’s account of the nature of philosophy. I argue that the Eleatic dialogues are best understood through a comparison with the source-texts in the Odyssey that Plato used in their composition. I show that the literary form of the Sophist is a straightforward reworking of the encounter of Odysseus and his crewmen with Polyphemus the Cyclops; and that the form of the Statesman is a somewhat more complex reworking of the narrative in which Odysseus and those loyal to him oppose Antinoös, leader of the Ithacan suitors. The comparison reveals that the Eleatic Stranger is no way Plato’s spokesman. On the contrary: by casting the Stranger in the role of Polyphemus and the Cyclopean Antinoös, Plato intends the Sophist and Statesman to be read as an explicit critique of the metaphysical and political doctrines that have since come to be identified as Platonism. In Plato’s characterization, the Eleatic Stranger is neither a philosopher nor a sophist. He is an intellectual—the sort of person who professes to be a philosopher and is often mistaken for one."

15. Politis, Vasilis. 2006. "The Argument for the Reality of Change and Changelessness in Plato's Sophist (248e7-249d5)." In New Essays on Plato: Language and Thought in Fourth-Century Greek Philosophy, edited by Herrmann, Fritz-Gregor, 149-175. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales.

"Plato’s metaphysics, from beginning to end, is tiered rather than tier-less.(1) This is because Plato’s general account of reality is characterized by a fundamental distinction between certain things, especially the changeless forms, which he argues are perfect beings,(2) and certain other things, the changing objects of sense-perception, which he argues are something, as opposed to being nothing at all, only in virtue of being appropriately related to and dependent on those perfect beings.(3) However, in a dialogue addressed to the very question, ‘What is there?’ – and to the related question, ‘What is being?’ – he defends an answer which, so it appears, makes no reference to two tiers of reality and indicates rather a tier-insensitive ontology. This is the argument in the Sophist (248e7–249d5) which, together with the arguments that precede it in the dialogue, is summed up in the conclusion that any changing thing (κινούμενον), and likewise any changeless thing (ἀκίνητον, στάσιμον), is something that is.(4) There can be no doubt that this conclusion is about any changing thing and any changeless thing, and there is no suggestion, moreover, that the things referred to must occupy one or the other of two tiers of reality.

Following Julius Moravcsik and Gwil Owen, Lesley Brown has recently defended a tier-insensitive interpretation of this argument, such that the ‘upshot is an all-inclusive ontology’.(5) On the other hand, a number of critics, including David Ross, Harold Cherniss, and Michael Frede, have defended a tiered interpretation.(6) It seems to me, however, that the choice between these two interpretations – which evidently is of central importance for the understanding of Plato – has not been properly characterized, much less settled. My aim in this paper is to show, first, that the choice between these two fundamentally different and opposed interpretations of this argument, the tier-insensitive and the tiered interpretation, depends on how we read the single phrase, τὸ παντελῶς ὄν, at 248e8–249a1; and second, that the correct reading of this phrase commits us to a tiered interpretation beyond reasonable doubt, and that Plato’s formulation of the conclusion (249c10–d4), which sums up both this and the previous arguments in the dialogue, does not state a commitment to a tier-insensitive ontology." (pp. 149-150)

(1) See for example Phaedo 74 (esp. 74d5–8), 78–9 (esp. 79a6–7), 100b1–e7; Republic 475e9 ff.; Symposium 210e6–211b5; Timaeus 27d6–28a4, 51d3–52a7 (I am assuming that the Timaeus is a late dialogue); Philebus 58e4–59a9, 61d10–e3.

(2) παντελῶς ὄντα (Republic 477a3 and Sophist 248e8–249a1; see below). Also εἰλικρινῶς ὄντα (e.g. Republic 477a7, 478d6), ἀληθινὴ οὐσία (e.g. Sophist 246b8), ὄντως ὄν / οὐσία (e.g. Timaeus 28a3–4, 52c5 and Sophist 248a11), and sometimes simply οὐσία (e.g. Phaedo 78d1 and Sophist 246c2). Plato’s terminology is not fixed, indeed reconciling, or otherwise, his terms is an inquiry of long standing.

(3) i.e. the relation of one-way dependence which Plato sometimes refers to as ‘participation’ and ‘communion’ (μέθεξις, κοινωνία).

(4) The conclusion is stated at 249c10–d4. It is important to observe (as we will see in section 6) that this conclusion sums up not only the immediately preceding argument (248e7–249c9), i.e. the argument against the friends of the forms (which is our present concern), but also the earlier argument against the materialists (246e5–247c8, which is not our main concern at present).

(5) Brown 1998, 204. Moravcsik (1962, 31 and 35–41) argues that Plato defends an ‘all-inclusive’ and ‘tier-insensitive’ answer to the question ‘What exists?’ So too Owen 1986b [originally 1966], 41–4 [336–40]. A tier-insensitive interpretation is also defended by Teloh 1981, 194–5 and Bordt 1991, 514, 520, 528.

(6) see Ross 1951, 110–11; Cherniss 1965, 352; Frank 1986; Frede, 1996, 196; and Silverman 2002.

References

Bordt, M. 1991 ‘Der Seinsbegriff in Platons “Sophistes” ’, Theologie und Philosophie 66, 493–529.

Brown, L. 1998 ‘Innovation and continuity. The battle of gods and giants, Sophist 245–249’, in J. Gentzler (ed.) Method in Ancient Philosophy, Oxford, 181–207.

Cherniss, H. 1965 ‘The relation of the Timaeus to Plato’s later dialogues’, in R.E. Allen (ed.) Studies in Plato’s Metaphysics, London, 339–78.

Frank, D.H. 1986 ‘On what there is: Plato’s later thoughts’, Elenchos 6, 5–18.

Frede, M. 1996 ‘Die Frage nach dem Seienden: Sophistes’, in T. Kobusch und B. Mojsisch (eds.) Platon. Seine Dialoge in der Sicht neuer Forschungen, Darmstadt, 181–99.

Keyt, D. 1969 ‘Plato’s paradox that the immutable is unknowable’, Philosophical Quarterly 19, 1–14.

Moravcsik, J. 1962 ‘Being and meaning in the Sophist’, Acta Philosophica Fennica, vol. 14, 23–78.

Owen, G.E.L. 1986b ‘Plato and Parmenides on the timeless present’, in Owen, Logic, Science and Dialectic, London, 27–44.

Ross, D. 1951 Plato’s Theory of Ideas, Oxford.

Silverman, A. 2002 The Dialectic of Essence. A study of Plato’s metaphysics, Princeton.

Teloh, H. 1981 The Development of Plato’s Metaphysics, Pennsylvania.

16. Prior, William J. 1980. "Plato's Analysis of Being and Not-Being in the Sophist." Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 18:199-211.

"In this paper I offer an account of Plato’s analysis of Being and Not-Being in the Sophist. This account differs from those current in several important respects. First, although I take it that Plato distinguishes in the Sophist among existential statements, statements that are predicative in grammatical structure, and statements of identity, I do not believe that he distinguishes corresponding senses or uses of the verb “to be.” Second, I do not take Plato’s analysis to be linguistic or logical in nature, but rather metaphysical or ontological. In my view, the Greek verb “esti” is analyzed in terms of a metaphysical theory, the Theory of Forms, and specifically in terms of the metaphysical concept of participation. This indicates a third difference between my view and that of commentators who believe that Plato’s late dialogues show a trend away from transcendent metaphysics and toward a more neutral sort of conceptual analysis. As I shall hold that the genuine conceptual breakthrough of the Sophist is made with metaphysical apparatus not much changed from the Phaedo, I deny that this passage, at least, can be taken as evidence for such a trend.

The passage in which Plato makes his analysis is Soph. 251a-257c. I shall examine briefly the entire passage, but concentrate on 255e-256e, from which I draw the bulk of the material for my account." (p. 199)

17. ———. 1985. Unity and Development in Plato's Metaphysics. London: Croom Helm.

Contents: Acknowledgments; Introduction: The problem of Plato's development 1; The metaphysics of the early and middle Platonic dialogues 9; 2. The challenge of the Parmenides 51; 3. The response of the Timaeus 87; 4. The Sophist 127; Appendix: The doctrinal maturity and chronological position of the Timaeus 168; Bibliography 194; Index 199-201.

18. Priou, Alex. 2013. "The Philosopher in Plato’s Sophist." Hermathena no. 195:5-29.

"The above observations suggest that only by situating the arc of the Sophist between the Theaetetus and Statesman does the larger significance of its issues emerge. Obvious though this may sound, scholars who treat the Sophist’s place in the trilogy as a whole don't approach it from the perspective of Socrates’ failure to define false opinion in the Theaetetus. As we have seen, Plato presents the Stranger’s inquiry into being and non-being as a response to Socrates’ shortcomings in the Theaetetus; and, as I hope to show, his response anticipates the specific inquiry taken up in the Statesman. Toward this end, I will walk the arc of the Sophist’s argument from the Theaetetus to the Statesman as follows. First, I will consider how the initial definitions of the sophist frame the dialogue’s famous digression on images, being, and non-being (Section II). I will then consider how this frame necessitates the distinction of ‘spoken images’ (εἴδωλα λεγόμενα) into φαντάσματα and εἰκόνες, i.e. those that respectively distort and preserve the proportions of the beings, the very distinction that eventually allows the Stranger to distinguish between true and false opinions (Section III).

Thereafter, I will discuss how this distinction in spoken images necessitates the acquisition of a ‘dialectical science’ (διαλεκτική ἐπιστήμη), which very acquisition appears intractably problematic (Section IV). I will then conclude with some general reflections on the stance of the dialogue as a whole, the possibility of defining false opinion, and how the interpretation advanced informs the search for the statesman in the Statesman (Section V). My basic aim throughout will be to show that, in so situating the Sophist between its prequel Theaetetus and sequel Statesman, we come to see the place of the philosopher in Plato’s Sophist." (pp. 7-8, noted omitted)

19. Przelecki, Marian. 1981. "On What there Is Not." Dialectics and Humanism no. 8:123-129.

"It is my contention (which I shall try to defend in what follows) that the text of the dialogue contains thoughts and ideas that closely correspond to those characteristic of modern logical semantics. The difficulties which Plato is coping with and the solutions proposed by him find their explicit counterparts in the discussions of contemporary logicians and semanticists.

This statement, however, needs some qualification. The text of the dialogue is comprehensive and indefinite enough to allow for different readings and interpretations. It is only some interpretation of some of its fragments that may be said to yield that version of its problems which is suggested below. I would, however, contend that the interpretation advanced is a warranted one and the fragments so interpreted essential for the author's standpoint. One more point should be explicitly stated beforehand. Referring to what I call modern logical semantics, I mean by this a definite semantic theory: model theoretic semantics in its standard version, which might be regarded as a "classical" form of contemporary logical semantics. Some deviations from this use will be indicated in what follows.

The most important philosophical content of the dialogue is contained in its second part (esp. in the paragraphs 237-264). The main problem concerns the semantic characteristic of falsehood and, involved in it, notion of not-being." (p. 123)

20. Quandahl, Ellen. 1989. "What is Plato? Inference and Allusion in Plato's Sophist." Rhetoric Review no. 7:338-348.

"In this essay I will suggest that when rhetoricians consider the Sophist, they will find the opposition of Plato to Sophists disturbed. My argument is not particularly new; for several decades scholars like E. A. Havelock, Mario Untersteiner, and G. B. Kerferd have been reevaluating, and indeed revaluing, Sophistic thought, and noticing similarities, rather than contradictions, between the Sophists and Plato's Socrates. And yet I think that for many rhetoricians "Plato" means Phaedrus, Gorgias and perhaps portions of the Republic and Symposium, dialogues that are all striking in their "literary" qualities and in their discussion of the "Forms," Plato's version of the "foundations" around which the recurrent foundational/antifoundational debate centers. But the Sophist, rather than disproving sophistic relativism, provides philosophical underpinnings for the view that meaning is contextual and not absolute. At the level of inference—and the Sophist has often been seen as prototypically "logical"—we see in this dialogue how logical categories are in fact metaphorical. And if we read it with "literary" or "rhetorical" eyes, although it lacks the "poetic" quality of other dialogues, we find an extended illustration of ways in which words are allusive, replete with covert histories which, fully as much as "logical" inference, contribute to conclusions." (pp. 338-339)

(...)

"Whether Plato abandoned the theory of Forms or loyalty to his character Socrates in the late dialogues is not, at last, my concern. Rather, I want to question ways in which Plato has been appropriated and summarized, and the tradition in which the Plato of rhetoricians did not write the same texts as did the Plato of, say, logicians or ethicists. When rhetoricians add the Sophist to their Plato, Plato is no longer "Platonic," but a writer whose text acknowledges, both theoretically and by example, the power of contextual and contingent elements in rhetoric." (p. 347)

21. Ray, A. Chadwick. 1984. For Images. An Interpretation of Plato's Sophist. Lanham: University Press of America.

"Our dialogue is apparently an inquiry into the nature of the sophist. Theaetetus and Theodorus have kept their appointment with Socrates from the day before, when the Theaetetus is supposed to have transpired, (1) and after which Socrates was to go to the portico of the King Archon to meet the indictment of Meletus against him. (Theaet. 210d) Socrates, the lover of wisdom, has been indicted by Meletus on charges of "criminal meddling," inquiring into natural phenomena, making the weaker argument defeat the stronger, (Apol. 19b-c) and embracing atheism (Apol. 26c). The philosopher seems to have been mistaken in the popular mind for a sophist. His defense, the Apology, may be read largely as an attempt, adumbrated from the first sentence, to distinguish between appearance and reality; Socrates is not what his accusers make him appear to be. After Socrates has met the King Archon, it should not be surprising in the dramatic context if he shows a keen interest in the difference between the Philosopher and the Sophist. Thus the nature of the Sophist is to be today's topic.

A further reason for Socrates to bring the discussion to the nature of the Sophist is that Theodorus and Theaetetus have brought with them a guest from Elea, a student of the school of Parmenides and Zeno. Briefly, the "Eleatic School", as will become clearer, affirms the reality of being and denies the reality of any non-being, the upshot being (so the Stranger will suggest) that there could be no such thing as mere appearance or any falsehood, such as might seem to be real without being so. If the Apology presents a personal defense against false images propagated about Socrates, the Sophist can be seen in large part as a philosophical defense of the logical possibility of images at all. In fact, this will be the perspective of the present interpretation. As Socrates at the end of his life must give an account of himself to answer his critics, so perhaps must Plato toward the end of his career answer some of his most astute critics.

The concept of an image is central to Plato's metaphysics because he explains how many things may be called by one name by appeal to that concept. Where a number of individuals are all called F, this is possible because of F-ness itself, a Form which is different from the individuals but of which these are called images. The Form is said to make the many things F (Phaedo 100d) as these come to mirror that Form, to resemble it to one degree or another. The relationship of "the many" to the Form, which accounts for their somehow having its character, is called participation or sharing, but the nature of this relationship is somewhat problematic. Plato's diffidence on the subject is evident in the middle dialogues both in his refusal to let any explanatory terms harden into technical vocabulary and from his own explicit tentativeness, as Socrates expresses it at Phaedo 100d. That the uncertainty remains in Plato’s later thought, including the Sophist, will be evident in the present discussion. But the reality of images cannot be open to question.

Now Plato in the Sophist will identify certain Eleatically inspired challenges to his theory of participation and images, challenges which he will be able to answer in part from the resources of his own "classical theory" as developed in middle dialogues like the Phaedo and the Republic. To the extent that those resources are sufficient, the Sophist is essentially a "conservative" dialogue upholding the adequacy of the classical theory to handle particular objections. On the other hand, new developments in Plato's thought are apparent in the dialogue, (the upgraded status of sensible objects, for instance), developments for which Plato probably would have found no need had he not taken seriously the problems of deceptive appearance and falsehood." (pp. 1-2)

(1) Clearly Plato is using these details as a literary device. The historical Socrates never addressed the issues treated here.

22. Reagan, James T. 1965. "Being and nonbeing in Plato's Sophist." The Modern Schoolman no. 42:305-314.

"I take it that the principal problem of the dialogue concerns the ontological status of the Forms, or true being: to discern a real differentiated plurality in being which will at once ground a true dialectic or science and repudiate the false dialectic of the Sophist. Plato is wholly lacking in any conception of what will later be called metaphysical analogy, which might permit an essentially differentiated plurality of being. The famous Hypotheses of the latter part of the Parmenides have established the controlling limits within which Plato must solve the problem of the metaphysical status of the Forms. In fact, he concludes to a plurality which is differentiated not in terms of essence but in terms of relations which remain outside the essence of the Forms. This in turn will require that he posit a new metaphysical factor, relative nonbeing. Finally, he will accept as the epitome of science or true knowledge the true but nonessential dialectic which this view of being will support." (p. 305)

23. Reeve, C. D. C. . 1985. "Motion, Rest, and Dialectic in the Sophist." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 67:47-64.

"If discourse is to be possible at all, some Kinds (γενε) (1) must blend (μετέχειν) with one another (251d5ff.).(2) To follow the 'late learners' (251b5-6) in refusing to allow one thing to share in another is 'to make short work of all theories' (252a5-6). But nor can it be that all Kinds blend (252d2ff.), otherwise Motion itself would rest, and Rest itself would move, and both are impossible (252d6-11).(3) We need some science then 'to be our guide on the voyage of discourse' (253d10) and to tell us 'which Kinds are consonant, which incompatible' (253b10-c1). The science in question is dialectic (253d1-3).

My present topic is one rather stormy section of that voyage, namely the Eleatic Stranger's dialectical remarks about Rest and Motion and their proper interpretation. However what I have to say bears directly on the larger issues of Dialectic and the Theory of Forms." (p. 47)

(...)

Conclusion

If the foregoing discussion is cogent, the Sophist contains a cleverly constructed trap, and many of the Eleatic Stranger's remarks about Rest and Motion cozen us into it. If we take his bait, and fail to learn the lessons he teaches us in his discussion of Not-being, the Sophist presents us with paradoxes and contradictions of the sort I have been addressing. These lead us to believe that Plato was himself confused and urge us to import solutions from elsewhere. (49) If, on the other hand, we detect the trap, and learn the lesson the Stranger has to teach, we solve his puzzles about Being and being known, and the paradoxes and contradictions disappear.

Of course no analytic philosopher would play tricks of this sort - we like our philosophy transparent not tricky. Thus we tend to mistrust, often rightly, readings of the great philosophers which exhibit them as other than plain. We all know, of course, that Plato was a great literary artist and a great teacher as well as a great thinker. And we know that art is artful and that teachers often leave dangling puzzles to test their pupils' acumen. But we often read Plato as if his art and pedagogical purposes were extraneous to his thought. The result is that we often get the thought wrong." (p. 62)

(1) 1 The Eleatic Stranger calls the five μεγιστα γενε, Being, Rest, Motion, Identity, and Difference, both γενε (254d4) and ειδε (255c5). He applies both appellations to λόγος and δόξα (260a5, 260d7-8). At 255c12-d7 τὸ καθ᾽ αὑτό ανδ τὸ προς άλλο αρε ψαλλεδ ειδε. 'The question is thus unavoidably raised, Are all of these to be reckoned as Platonic Forms?', Peck (1962: 62). To postpone it for treatment on another occasion I adopt the following convention: I call all the items referred to either as γενε or as ειδε 'Kinds', and I leave open the question of whether or not Kinds are Forms.

(2) 2 Line references are to Burnet (1900). References are fully explained in the Bibliography.

(3) I have followed Vlastos (1970: 272n5) in using 'Motion' and 'Rest' as dummies for the Greek words κινεσις and στασις (and their cognates). I remind you that κινεσις covers all kinds of variation and that στασις stands for invariance in its most general sense.

Bibliography

Burnet (1900). John Burnet, Platonis Opera: Recognovit Brevique Adnotatione Critica Instruxit, Oxford.

Vlastos (1970). Gregory Vlastos, "An Ambiguity in the Sophist", in Vlastos (1973: 270-322).

Vlastos (1973). Gregory Vlastos, Platonic Studies (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1973).

24. Rickless, Samuel C. 2010. "Plato's Definition(s) of Sophistry." Ancient Philosophy no. 30:289-298.

Abstract: "Plato’s Sophist is puzzling inasmuch as it presents us with seven completely different definitions of sophistry. Though not all seven definitions could be accurate, Plato never explicitly indicates which of the definitions is mistaken. Recently, Kenneth Sayre and Mary Louise Gill have proposed a clever solution to this puzzle. In this paper I explain why the Sayre-Gill solution is mistaken, and suggest a better solution."

"There is something about the Sophist that has always bothered me. Why are there so many definitions of sophistry in the dialogue? Here is the problem: either all the definitions are right, or all of them are wrong, or some of them are right and some of them are wrong. But it can't be that all the definitions are right, because, after all, they are all different.

(...)

In this paper, I want to consider one influential answer to what we might call “the puzzle of the many definitions”, criticize it, and then provide an answer of my own. The answer I am going to criticize appears most clearly in the work of Kenneth Sayre, and also perhaps in the work of Mary Louise Gill. It is, I think, a very clever and compelling answer, but, as I will argue, it is mistaken." (p. 289)

References

Gill, Mary Louise. 2006. “Models in Plato’s Sophist and Statesman.” Journal of the International Plato Society 6.

Sayre, Kenneth M. 2007. Method and Metaphysics in Plato’s Statesman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

25. Rijk, Lambertus Marie de. 1981. "On Ancient and Mediaeval Semantics and Metaphysics. Part V. Plato's Semantics in His Critical Period (Second part)." Vivarium no. 19:81-125.

"In concluding the previous section I argued (1980: nr. 4.9, p. 62) that Aristotle's Categories may be viewed as dealing with the several ways in which an individual man can be named without destroying his concrete unity. A well-known passage of Plato's Sophist (251 A 8ff.) was referred to in which Plato deals with the puzzle of one man with many names. It is true, Plato labels the puzzle as just 'a magnificent entertainment for the young and the late-learners' (251 B), and is more interested in the related question of how 'things' like Rest and Change (presently called Kinds) can also have several attributes (attributive names) and the general problem of attribution as implying the 'Communion' of Kinds. But it is obvious at the same time that in this shape too the puzzle is mainly concerned with the notions of naming, asserting and predication. So Plato's Sophist unavoidably has to be part of our discussion. A further argument for taking the Sophist into consideration may be found in Ammonios' commentary to Aristotle's De interpretatione. He remarks {ad 17 a 26ff. : Comm. in Aristot. graeca IV 5, p. 83, 8-13, ed. Busse) that the analysis of the apophantikos logos as given by Aristotle is to be found scattered all over Plato's Sophist (261 Cff.) right after that master's excellent expositions about Non-being mixed with Being (peri tou synkekramenou toi onti mê ontos). For that matter, on more than one item of Aristotle's Categories and De interpretatione the Ancient commentators refer to related questions and discussions in Plato's later dialogues, especially the Sophist. I hope to show in sections (5) and (6) that the views found in the Categories and De interpretatione are most profitably compared with what Plato argues in the related discussions of the Sophist." (p. 81)

[* Parts (1), (2), (3) and( 4) are found in this Journal 15 (1977), 81-110; 16 (1978), 81-107, 18 (1980), 1-62; 19 (1981), 1-46.]

26. ———. 1982. "On Ancient and Mediaeval Semantics and Metaphysics. Part VI. Plato's Semantics in His Critical Period (Third part)." Vivarium no. 20:97-127.

"5. 8 Conclusion. From our analysis of Soph., 216 A-259 D it may be concluded that Plato did certainly not abandon his theory of Forms. We may try to answer, now, the main questions scholarship is so sharply divided about (see Guthrie [A History of Greek Philosophy] V, 143ff.). They are, in Guthrie's formulation: (1) does Plato mean to attribute Change to the Forms themselves, or simply to enlarge the realm of Being to include life and intelligence which are not Forms?, and (2) is he going even further in dissent from the friends of Forms and admitting what they called Becoming --changing and perishable objects of the physical world -- as part of the realm of True Being?

The first question should be answered in the negative. Indeed, Plato is defending a certain Communion of Forms, but this regards their immanent status and, accordingly, the physical world primarily, rather than the 'Forms themselves' (or: 'in their exalted status' as Guthrie has it, p. 159). As to the second question, to Guthrie's mind Plato's language makes it almost if not quite insoluble. I think that if one pays Plato's expositions the patient attention he asks for 'at 259 C-D and follows his analysis stage by stage, the exact sense and the precise respect in which he makes his statements (cf. 259 D 1-2: ekeinêi kai kat' ekeino ho physi) about Being and Not-being, Sameness and Otherness, and so on will appear. It will be easily seen, then, that there is no recantation at all in Plato's development. He still maintains, as he will maintain in his later works (e.g. Philebus, 14 D ff.) the Transcendent Forms as what in the last analysis are the only True Being. But Plato succeeds in giving a fuller sense to the old notions of 'sharing' and 'presence in' without detracting the 'paradigm' function of the Forms in any respect. Matter, Change and Becoming is given a better position in the Theory of Forms in that their immanent status has been brought into the focus of Plato's interest. From his Parmenides onwards Plato has been searching for the solution of his metaphysical problems and has actually found it in the Sophist in a new view of participation. Forms in their exalted status are just a too eminent cause for the existence of the world of Becoming. But their being shared in, i.e. their immanent status, make them so to speak 'operable' and yet preserve their dignity of being paradeigmatic standards. What makes something to be a horse is, no doubt, the Transcendent Form, HORSENESS, but it only can partake of that Form and possess it as an immanent form. So the Highness of the Form and the unworthy matter can come together as matter 'informed', that is, affected by an immanent form.

Plato never was unfaithful to his original view about Forms as the only True Being. In our dialogue, too, he brings the eminence of True Being (taken, of course, as a Transcendent Form) into relief by saying (254 A) that the true philosopher, through his devotion to the Form, 'What is' ('Being'), dwells in the brightness of the divine, and the task of Dialectic, accordingly, is described from that very perspective (see Part (5), 96ff.). Focussing on the immanence of the Forms does not detract anything from their 'exalted status', since immanent forms are nothing else but the Transcendent Forms as partaken of by particulars.

(...)

In his critical period Plato never ceased to believe in the Transcendent World. The important development occurring there consists in his taking more seriously than before their presence in matter and their activities as immanent forms. In the Sophist he uses all his ingenuity to show that a correct understanding of the Forms may safeguard us from all extremist views on being and not-being and zealous exaggerations of the Friends of Forms as well." (pp. 125-127)

27. ———. 1986. Plato's Sophist. A Philosophical Commentary. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Contents. Preface 9; Preliminary: Plato's Sophist to be reconsidered? 11; Introduction 13; Chapter 1. The dispute about interpreting Plato 22; Chapter 2. The evolution of the doctrine of Eidos 30; Reconsidering Plato's Sophist 69; Chapter 3. The dialogue's main theme and procedure 71; Chapter 4. On current views about 'what is not' 82; Chapter 5. On current views about 'what is' 93; Chapter 6. Plato's novel metaphysical position 103; Chapter 7. The variety of names and the communion of kinds 110; Chapter 8. An important digression on dialectic 126; Chapter 9. The communion of kinds; Chapter 10. How the five kinds combine 159; Chapter 11. The reinstatement of 'what is not' (256d-259d) 164; Chapter 12. On philosophic and sophistic discourse 186; The framework: semantics and philosophy in Plato; Chapter 13. Plato's semantics in the Cratylus 217; Chapter 14. Naming and representing 254; Chapter 15. Language and knowing 277; Chapter 16. Semantics and metaphysics 327; Bibliography 355; Index of passages quoted or referred to 365; Index of proper names 377; Index of terms and topics 383-394.

"The way in which Plato announces (Sophist, 249C-D) his novel metaphysics has been puzzling modern scholars for a long time: 'What is and the All consist of what is changeless and what is in change, both together'. Did Plato really introduce Change into the Transcendent World and thus abandon his theory of Unchangeable Forms?

Many of Plato's commentators have claimed that the use of modern techniques of logico-semantical analysis can be a valuable aid in unraveling this problem and other difficulties Plato raised and attempted to solve. However, not all modern distinctions and tools can be applied without reservation; for many of these are entirely alien to Plato's thought. Interpreters of Plato must also resist the temptation of applying methods as disjointing the dialogue and selecting specific passages only, in their eagerness to prove that Plato was explicitly interested in (their own favourite) problems of 'identity and predication' (not to mention such oddities as the 'self-predication of Forms'), or the distinctions between different senses (or applications) of 'is'.

The present author has tried to understand Plato by a close reading of the complete dialogue and to relate the doctrinal outcome of the Sophist to Plato's general development. Close reading Plato involves following him in his own logico-semantical approach to the metaphysical problems, an approach which shows his deep interest in the manifold ways to 'name' (or to 'introduce into the universe of discourse') 'what is' (or the 'things there are').

The reader may be sure that my indebtedness to other authors on this subject is far greater than it may appear from my text. Also many of those who have gone in quite different directions than mine have been of great importance to me in sharpening my own views and formulations. Two authors should be mentioned nominatim: Gerold Prauss and the late Richard Bluck; two scholars, whose invaluable works deserve far more attention than they have received so far.

I owe my translations of the Greek to predecessors. Where I have not followed them, my rendering is no doubt often painfully (and perhaps barbariously) literal: I do not wish to incur the suspicion of trying to improve Plato by modernising him." (from the Preface)

28. Ringbom, Sixten. 1965. "Plato on Images." Theoria no. 31:86-109.

The purpose of the present paper is to discuss Plato’s use of the concept of picture in three different contexts. First, his use of the picture as a metaphysical model; secondly, the picture-object relation as a semantic explanation; and, thirdly this same relation as an argument of value.

(...)

In his metaphysical model Plato regards the objects of our experience as pictures of the Ideas (1). But he also discusses the relationship between the visible things and the pictures of these things-for instance, the relation between a bed and a painting of a bed, or the name “bed”.

(...)

The obvious procedure in approaching Plato’s theory of pictures is to discuss each aspect in turn. But this must not mean that we isolate the three functions from each other; the purpose of the following discussion is, on the contrary, to show that Plato’s line of thought in all three cases adheres to the same pattern, and that it is actually based on an analogy between the three aspects." (pp. 86-87)

(1) D. Ross, Plato’s Theory of Ideas, Oxford 1953, p. 12 f.

29. Roberts, Jean. 1986. "The Problem about Being in the Sophist." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 3:229-243.

Reprinted in: Nicholas D. Smith (ed.), Plato. Critical Assessments, Vol. IV: Plato's Later Works, London: Routledge 1998, pp. 142-157.

"It is by now a matter of firmly entrenched orthodoxy that Plato's discussion of being in the Sophist serves to distinguish different meanings or uses of "esti." This claim has taken different forms in different hands.

Nevertheless, almost everyone seems agreed that a large part of what Plato needs (and gets) in order to rescue negation and falsity from sophistic attacks is either a distinction between the existential "is" and one or more incomplete uses of "is," a distinction between the so-called "is" of identity and the copula, or some more subtle distinction between incomplete uses of the word which amounts to a distinction in kinds of predication.

I shall argue that what Plato says about being in the Sophist is in no useful way described as a distinguishing of different senses or uses of the word "is."(1) The Eleatic puzzles Plato is out to solve here are solved, in large part, by demonstrating that being is something distinct from any or all of the things that might normally be described as being." (p. 229)

(...)

"There is, moreover, reason for suspicion of any interpretation which reduces the discussions of being and not-being to discussions of positive and negative statement in general. The commentators have failed to notice how careful Plato is to separate questions about the nature of being and not-being and the bearing of alternative answers on the status of negative and false statement. When he first sets out the problem he begins by describing the Eleatic position on not-being (237b10-239a12) and then showing, in a separate argument (240c7-241b3), that this makes false statement and negative statement impossible. The pattern is repeated later. After he has shown that not-being is he goes on (260a5-264b8) to explain how statements in general are put together and how false statement is to be explicated. That the blending of not-being and logos is still taken as, at least in principle, an open question after the discussion of not-being is completed suggests that that discussion could not have been intended as an account of negative statement. Nor is there any reason to take the previous account of being as an account of positive statement. They are, just what they claim to be, and all that they need to be, purely metaphysical accounts of being and not-being." (p. 239)

(1) I do not mean to deny that there is something to be learned from looking at Plato's use of esti, only that this is not his own object in the Sophist. For the record, I think that there is a complete use of "is" to be found in the Sophist for reasons I will not go into here. Much of what I would say in defense of this has been said by Robert Heinaman in "Being in the Sophist," Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 65 (1983), pp. 1-17.

30. Robinson, David B. 1999. "Textual notes on Plato's « Sophist »." The Classical Quarterly no. 49:139-160.

"In editing Plato's Sophist for the new OCT [Oxford Classical Texts] vol. I, ed. E. A. Duke, W. F. Hicken, W. S. M. Nicoll, D. B. Robinson, and J. C. G. Strachan (Oxford, 1995), there was less chance of giving novel information about W = Vind. Supp. Gr. 7 for this dialogue than for others in the volume, since Apelt's edition of 1897 was used by Burnet in 1900 and was based on Apelt's own collation of W."

(...)

"A reviewer counts 66 changes in our text of the Sophist, which may perhaps be a slight over-estimate. Classification of changes as substantive or as falling into different groups is sometimes difficult, but I think plausible figures are as follows. We (myself aided in the earlier sections by Nicoll) have in 25 places made a different choice of readings from the primary mss. and testimonia. We have printed conjectures where Burnet kept a ms. reading in 17 places, but conversely we have reverted to a ms. reading where Burnet had a conjecture in 8 places. We have printed alternative conjectures to conjectures adopted by Burnet in 6 places. So we have actually departed from the primary sources on at most 9 more occasions overall than Burnet. What must be noted is that Burnet had already printed conjectures (including readings from secondary mss.) on something like 87 occasions (12 from secondary mss., 75 from modern conjectures from Stephanus onwards), so our percentage addition to Burnet's departures from the primary sources is modest. Moreover Burnet printed about 25 readings from testimonia; we have followed him in 20 or so of these cases, and this in turn implies that the primary mss. are in error at these further 20 places." (p. 139)

31. ———. 2001. "The Phantom of the Sophist: τo oυκ oντως oυκ oν (240a–c)." The Classical Quarterly no. 51:435-457.

"A spurious phantom, Platonistic but non-Platonic, a non-entity by the name of ουκ όντως ουκ ον, made spectral appearances in manuscripts and printed texts of Plato’s Sophist over a long period. It perhaps first manifested itself a little earlier than Proclus and Damascius; but there seems to be no evidence of its appearing to Plotinus. It was rather strongly present in the primary MSS (give or take a little blurring). It still appeared in the Teubner edition by Hermann in 1852. But it was attacked by Bonitz in 1864, and on most views was successfully exorcized when Badham’s conjecture of 1865 was added to an earlier conjecture of Baiter’s, each removing an unwanted ουκ. Campbell’s edition of 1867 shows no awareness of Badham’s conjecture, but on an overall view, since then it might seem that the phantom had been left for dead by most interpreters. Apelt in 1897 said ‘locus . . . sanitati suae est redditus’. Burnet, as we have seen, banished the phantom from his 1900–5 OCT." (p. 436)

(...)

"The cruel deception practised by both phantoms turns upon readers making the erroneous assumption that we have exposition of doctrine in this passage, where in fact we have what is at least primarily intended as a reductio ad absurdum. This is not a situation where the Visitor is stating a Platonic view of ειδωλα; what is happening is that the supposed Sophist attempts to reduce the concept of ειδωλον to absurdity.

The passage does not set out to show that Plato or his Visitor, or even his Sophist, thought that ειδωλα have some degree of phantom being, but that an enterprising Sophist could argue that they have no being at all. Plato will later refute his own imaginary Sophist (not by introducing intermediates); but here the Sophist must be allowed to make his challenging manoeuvre." (p. 437)

32. Robinson, Jim. 1993. "A Change in Plato's Conception of the Good." Journal of Philosophical Research no. 18:231-241.

Abstract: "One of the most interesting passages in the Republic is the comparison of the Form of the Good with the Sun. Although this depiction of the Good was never repeated, many hold that the Good retained its privileged place in Plato’s metaphysics. I shall argue that there are good reasons for thinking that Plato, when writing the Sophist, no longer held his earlier view of the Good. Specifically, I shall contend that he ceased to believe that as the Sun makes its objects visible, so the Good makes the Forms knowable. This being the case, it cannot also be said to illuminate either the Forms or the order they exhibit. My procedure will be first to consider briefly how, in the Republic, the Good can be said to iIluminate the Forms. I shall then determine the extent to which, in the Sophist, this function can still be credited to the Good. "

33. Robinson, Thomas M. 2013. "Protagoras and the Definition of ‘Sophist’ in the Sophist." In Plato's Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 3-13. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"I should like to begin by setting out as clearly as I can what seem to be the main things that can be said about Protagoras, and offer an evaluation of them. This will be in large part without reference to the final definition of ‘sophist’ in the Sophist. I shall then turn to the definition, and see where if anywhere it appears to fit into the picture, and what can be said about the definition as a definition." (p. 3)

(...)

"As the dialogue draws to a close an intense, and uncompromisingly negative definition of the sophist is finally offered, and this one undoubtedly excludes what had earlier been called the sophist of noble lineage.

The sophist (268c) is now described as a mimetes who operates on the basis of belief not knowledge, by contrast with mimetai who operate on the basis of knowledge not belief. More precisely the mimesis characterizing a sophist is said to be a) mimesis of that which is ‘insincere’, of that which is productive of ‘contradictions’, and of that which is non-knowing; b) mimesis of that specific form of copy–making that constitutes appearance-making; and c) mimesis of that species of production which is marked off as human not divine." (pp. 10-11)

34. Rodriguez, Evan. 2020. "‘Pushing Through’ in Plato’s Sophist: A New Reading of the Parity Assumption." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 102:159-188.

Abstract: "At a crucial juncture in Plato’s Sophist, when the interlocutors have reached their deepest confusion about being and not-being, the Eleatic Visitor proclaims that there is yet hope. Insofar as they clarify one, he maintains, they will equally clarify the other. But what justifies the Visitor’s seemingly oracular prediction? A new interpretation explains how the Visitor’s hope is in fact warranted by the peculiar aporia they find themselves in. The passage describes a broader pattern of ‘exploring both sides’ that lends insight into Plato’s aporetic method."

35. Rosen, Stanley. 1983. Plato's Sophist: The Drama of the Original and Image. New Haven: Yale University Press.

"I said previously that I prefer the dramatic to the ontological approach to the Sophist. It should now be clear that this does not require a suppression of the narrowly technical themes in the dialogue.

On the contrary, it requires their meticulous analysis, both in themselves and as elements in a comprehensive dramatic structure.

In this section, I should like to clarify this view from a somewhat different angle and to introduce a term to describe my reading of the Sophist. The term in question is dramatic phenomenology.

Whereas a dialogue is not a "drama" in the sense of a poetic play written to be performed in the theater, it has a manifestly dramatic form. A dialogue is a poetic production in which mortals speak neither to gods nor to heroes, but to each other. At the same time, there is a hierarchy of mortals within a Platonic dialogue that is rooted, not in the contingencies of birth but in the natures of diverse human souls. Similarly, a dialogue is not a phenomenological description, but an interpretation of human life. As a poetic production, it so orders its scenes of human life as to provide an indirect commentary on the significance of the speeches delivered within those scenes.

Adapting a distinction of the Stranger's to our own purposes, we may say that a dialogue is centrally concerned with the better and the worse, the noble and the base." (p. 12)

36. Roupa, Vichy. 2020. Articulations of Nature and Politics in Plato and Hegel. Cham (Switzerland): Palgrave Macmillan.

Chapter 3: Producing the Categories of Being: The Sophist

"The Cratylus’s aporetic ending inevitably raises the question whether this is Plato’s last word on names or whether the issue is explored further in another dialogue where a more positive outcome is reached. The aim of this chapter is to show that the dialogue where Plato carries forward the programme of the Cratylus is the Sophist.(1) Although it is sometimes argued that the Sophist breaks new ground completely unanticipated in the Cratylus, there is an area of shared concern between the two dialogues that warrants, I believe, reading the Sophist as a development of the Cratylus.(2) This area is marked, in the first instance, by the methodological approach adopted; the two interlocutors—it is set down early on in the dialogue—will strive to reach agreement not only as regards the name but, first and foremost, as regards the thing itself. Thus, the Eleatic Visitor, who leads the discussion in the Sophist, claims in 218c to have only the name (‘sophist’) in common with his discussant Theaetetus at this stage, but this is not enough because ‘in every case’ they ‘always’ need to be in agreement ‘about the thing itself [pragma auto] by means of verbal explanation [dia logon̄], rather than doing without any such explanation [choris logou] and merely agreeing about the name [tounoma]’. So, the aim of the dialogue is to achieve an understanding of the sophist that goes beyond the un-stated assumptions that each of the discussants has about the sophist. (p. 43)

(1) I thus follow the interpretative approach of Fine and Barney both of whom reject a sharp distinction between the analysis of the Cratylus (which is aimed at the level of the name) and that of the Sophist (which is aimed at the level of the statement or sentence). See Gail Fine, ‘Plato on Naming’, The Philosophical Quarterly 27, no. 109 (1977): 289–294; Rachel Barney, Names and Nature in Plato’s Cratylus (London: Routledge, 2001), 170–172. This view is reinforced by Kahn: ‘The contents of the Cratylus on the theory of naming, the problems of flux, Protagorean relativism and the paradox of false statement, all point ahead to discussion of these topics in the Theaetetus and Sophist’. Charles Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 364. See also R.M. van den Berg, Proclus’ Commentary on the Cratylus in Context: Ancient Theories of Language and Naming (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 8–13.

(2) The proponents of this view see in the Sophist a radical break in Plato’s thinking because in it Plato offers an account of language at the level of the sentence or statement rather than that of the name. The distinction between name and statement is not made in the Cratylus, nor is there any recognition in the earlier dialogue of the importance of syntax for the truth value of a proposition. See Barney’s summary of this view (which she calls the ‘syntactical reading of the Sophist’) in Barney, Names and Nature in Plato’s Cratylus, 170.

37. Rowe, Christopher J. 1983. "Plato on the sophists as teachers of virtue." History of Political Thought no. 4:409-427.

Abstract: "When he came to try to find a formal definition of the sophist, Plato found him an elusive creature; and with good reason. But there are two features which regularly recur in his references to them: the sophist is a professional teacher, and what he professes to teach is ἀρετή. Sophists are people who claim παιδεύειν ἀνθρώπους εἰς ἀρετήν;(1) they set themselves up as παιδεύσεως καὶ ἀρετῆς διδάσκαλον (2) The only apparent exception is Gorgias, who though classified as a sophist in other dialogues, is represented in the Meno as laughing at other sophists for claiming to teach ἀρετή;(3) and it may well be that Plato regarded this disclaimer as disingenuous. (4) But there is a difficulty here, in that on the face of it different sophists claimed to teach different things under the title of ἀρετή. Hippias, for example, is portrayed in the Hippias Major as professing to encourage a 'devotion to honourable and beautiful practices', (5) whereas in the Euthydemus the ἀρετή which the two brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus claim to impart is apparently coextensive with skill in eristic debate.(6) In that case, 'teacher of ἀρετή appears to be a highly ambiguous description, and therefore incapable of serving, even informally, to define the class. In general, historians of philosophy tend to suggest that behind the apparent differences between individual sophists in this respect lies a single shared purpose: the teaching of 'the art of success'."

(1) Gorgias, 519e7.

(2) Protagoras, 349a2. Cf. also Meno, 95b; Apology, 20b; Euthydemus, 273d; Hippias Major,

283c ff.

(3) Meno, 95c.

(4) cf. E.L. Harrison, 'Was Gorgias a Sophist?', Phoenix, 18 (1964) (hereafter Harrison),

pp. 183-92.

5) Hippias Major, 286a f.

(6) See below, pp. 423-6; and Harrison, p. 189, note 34.

38. ———. 2015. "Plato, Socrates, and the genei gennaia sophistike of Sophist 231b." In Second Sailing: Alternative Perspectives on Plato, edited by Nails, Debra and Tarrant, Harold, 149-167. Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica.

39. ———. 2015. "Plato versus Protagoras: The Statesman, the Theaetetus, and the Sophist." Diálogos no. 98:143-165.

Abstract: "The Statesman is nowadays generally read either on its own, or with Republic and Laws. But more attention needs to be given to the fact that it is designed as part of a trilogy, alongside Theaetetus and Sophist. Reinstating the dialogue in this context gives a fuller perspective on its purposes. The Statesman (1) identifies existing so-called «statesmen», for whom the Protagoras of Theaetetus is chief apologist, as the greatest exemplars of sophistry as defined in Sophist: mere «imitators» and dealers in falsehood; (2) offers the Platonic alternative to the Protagorean vision of human life and organization sketched in the first part of Theaetetus; and (3), in common with Sophist, illustrates –after the apparent failures of Theaetetus– both what knowledge is and how it can be acquired. Finally, and controversially, the Statesman emerges, along with Theaetetus and Sophist, as part of one and the same project as the Republic."

40. Rudebusch, George. 1990. "Does Plato Think False Speech is Speech?" Noûs no. 24:599-609.

"Before Plato came along, there was no satisfactory account of the nature of false speech. This is not to say that no one had yet figured out how to tell a lie; the Greeks were notorious, even in their own literature, as skillful liars. What I mean is that there was a pair of puzzles floating around unanswered. These puzzles were expressed as arguments that false speech was impossible. One puzzle went like this: to say what is false is to say what does not exist, but to say what does not exist is to say nothing at all, and to say nothing at all is not to speak. Thus there can be no such thing as false speech. The other puzzle went like this: to say what is false is to say what is other than the things that are. Nonetheless (in view of the first puzzle), to say what is other is to say something that is. But to say what is is to speak the truth. Thus there can be no such thing as false speech.(1)" (p. 599)

(...)

"In what follows, I shall look at (I) the problem of false speech which Plato faces, (II) the solution he gives in the Sophist, and (III) how that very solution is undermined by the argument of the Theaetetus. It will then be clear (IV) what sort of reconciliation is ruled out and what sort remains to be investigated, if we are to avoid paradox." (p. 600)

(1) The distinction between these two puzzles is not always recognized. But the puzzles are two, and Plato presents them as a pair: Eud. 283e7-284a8 and 284bl-b7; Crat. 429d4-6 and 429e3-9; and Tht. 167a7-8 and 167a8-b1.

41. ———. 1991. "Sophist 237-239." Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 29:521-531.

"The text of the Sophist at 237-239 is aporetic: it leads any talk of non-being into perplexity. This passage shares with many other of Plato’s dialogues the following structure. A question is asked and an answer, given in a single sentence, is reached and accepted by the interlocutor. Then the interlocutor is examined further, his assent to that answer is undermined, and the interchange ends. After giving the details of this passage (in section I), I shall argue (section 11) that the Stranger does not share Theaetetus’s perplexity and continues to hold the rejected answer. Such an interpretation needs an explanation: why should the Stranger behave this way? Sufficient reasons can be found in the Stranger’s pedagogy. What those pedagogical reasons are, and how good they are, I consider in section 111." (p. 521)

42. Runciman, Walter. 1962. Plato's Later Epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Preface VII-VIII; 1. Introduction 1; 2. The 'Theaetetus': logic and knowledge 6; 3. The 'Sophist': ontology and logic 59; 4. Conclusion 127; Selected bibliography 134; Index 137.

43. Ryle, Gilbert. 1939. "Plato's Parmenides." Mind no. 48:129-151.

Second part: Mind, 48, PP. 302-325.

Reprinted in: R. E. Allen, Studies in Plato's Metaphysics, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965 pp. 97-147; G. Ryle, Collected Papers. Volume I. Critical Essays, London: Hutchinson 1971 (reprint: New York, Routledge, 2009), Essay I pp. 1-44.

On The Sophist see in particular pp. 42-46.

"However, there is a pair of concepts which are forced upon our notice in the course of the operations which turn out to require a very different sort of elucidation, namely those of non-existence and existence. For a Sophist is a pretender who either thinks or says that what is not so is so.

The puzzle which arose in the Theaetetus arises again here. How can what does not exist be named, described or thought of? And if it cannot, how can we or Sophists talk or think of it, falsely, as existing? So the question is squarely put: What does it mean to assert or deny existence of something?

(...)

"Now the interesting thing is that it is true that existence and nonexistence are what we should call ‘formal concepts’, and further that if modern logicians were asked to describe the way in which formal concepts differ from proper or material or content-concepts, their method of exhibiting the role of formal concepts would be similar to that adopted here by Plato. But we need not go further than to say that Plato was becoming aware of some important differences of type between concepts.

There is no evidence of his anticipating Aristotle’s enquiry into the principles of inference, which enquiry it is which first renders the antithesis of formal and other concepts the dominant consideration.

There is, consequently, in Plato, no essay at abstracting the formal from the contentual features of propositions, and so no code-symbolisation for the formal in abstraction from the material features of propositions." (pp. 44-46 of the reprint)

44. ———. 1960. "Letters and Syllables in Plato." The Philosophical Review no. 69:431-451.

Reprinted in G. Ryle, Collected Papers. Volume I. Critical Essays, London: Hutchinson 1971 (reprint: New York, Routledge, 2009), Essay III pp. 57-75.

"In his later dialogues Plato makes a lot of use of the notions of letters of the alphabet and the spelling of syllables out of these letters. He frequently uses these notions for the sake of analogies which help him to expound some more abstract matters.

There is one of his uses of the letter-syllable model which is not of special interest to me, namely, for the exposition of some merely chemical theories about the combinations of a few material elements into multifarious compounds.

Plato employs this model in this way in the Timaeus (48B–C), though he says that the analogy is not a good one. Here he is stating what is essentially an Empedoclean theory. Sextus Empiricus says that stoicheion, used thus to denote an ultimate material element, was a Pythagorean term.

My interest is in Plato’s use of the alphabet model in expounding his logical or semantic views, namely his views about the composition of the thoughts, that is, the truths and falsehoods that we express or can express in sentences (logoi)." (p. 57 of the reprint)

(...)

"Conclusion. Plato in his late dialogues was concerned with some of the same cardinal problems as those which exercised Frege and the young Russell, problems, namely, about the relations between naming and saying; between the meanings of words and the sense of sentences; about the composition of truths and falsehoods; about the role of ‘not’; about the difference between contradictories and opposites; and in the end, I think, about what is expressed by ‘if ’ and ‘therefore’. His admirable model, which Frege lacked, of the phonetic elements in syllables enabled Plato to explain more lucidly than Frege the notion of the independent-variability-without separability of the meanings of the parts of sentences. On the other hand, lacking the apparatus of algebra, he was nowhere near abreast of Frege’s and Russell’s symbolisation of substitution-places. Plato could not extract implications from their particular contexts or therefore codify implication patterns. A blackboard would have been of no use to him.

Plato says nothing about the bearings of the alphabet model on the Theory of Forms, or of the Theory of Forms on the alphabet model. So I shall not say much. If the Theory of Forms had maintained or entailed that Forms are just subject-terms of a superior sort, that is, just eminent namables, then this theory could contribute nothing to Plato’s new question, What does a sentence convey besides what its subject name mentions?

But if the theory of Forms had been meant or half-meant to explain the contributions of live predicates, including tensed verbs, to truths and falsehoods about mentioned subjects, then in his operations with the model of letters and syllables, Plato has raised to maturity things which, in his Theory of Forms, had been only embryonic. To his terminal questions about the composition of logoi and, therewith, about the roles of live, tensed verbs, the Theory of Forms was either quite irrelevant or else quite inadequate." (pp. 74-75 of the reprint)

45. Saati, Alireza. 2015. "Plato’s Theory of the Intercommunion of Forms (Συμπλοκή Εἰδῶν): the Sophist 259, e4-6." Philosophy Study no. 5:35-43.

"Plato’s lifelong confrontation with Parmenides and his metaphysical mire of believing that nothing (το μὴ ὂν) does not actually exist, gradually in the Sophist comes into finish, insofar as the philosopher after facing the foe and having the last laugh simmers down. In this paper after giving an interpretation of what Parmenides says, I shall present an analysis of Plato’s drastic answer to him (Sophist, 259 e4-6) to see how Plato opens the impasse way created by the Eleatic philosopher. Here the intercommunion of Forms is regarded as the final answer by which Plato devastates Parmenides infamous thesis. Since hitherto no in-depth analysis is given by the scholars who are puzzled with the subject, I have tried to analyze the intercommunion of Forms philosophically. Plato’s Eleatic challenge has always been crucial in Plato himself and philosophical development after him. As while as Parmenides thesis (Sph., 238 a8-9) provides the sophists opportunity to reject the falsehood, Plato’s theory of Forms in contrast in order to cross off the extremely sly sophists tries to make Parmenides come down. In my opinion, the intercommunion of Forms, as the last step of the theory of Forms, basically determines Plato’s late ontology tightly knitted with logic. Vindicating this proposal depends on true understanding of the intercommunion of Forms. Since Plato’s late ontology, in my opinion, is closed to Frege’s ontology and discussion of language, we are armed to interpret the intercommunion of Forms with recent recent logico-philosophicus achievements, I think.

In this respect, this is what I have done in my paper: analyzing sentence from Plato’s logico-metaphysical point of view. Ultimately, I have tried to show how the aim of the intercommunion of Forms, which Plato himself states, is demonstrating the possibility of dialogue and discourse. This statement explicitly sets forward that the discussion is bound up with several logical approaches, according to which finally full bright light is shed on different implications of the subject such as universals." (p. 35)

46. Sabrier, Pauline. 2019. "Parts, Forms, and Participation in the Parmenides and Sophist: A Comparison." Etudes platoniciennes no. 15:1-9.

Abstract: "This paper addresses the vexed question of the outcome of the second horn of the dilemma of participation in Plato’s Parmenides bringing in Sophist 257c7-d5 where the Eleatic Stranger accepts what he seems to reject in the Parmenides, namely that a Form can have parts and nevertheless remain one. Comparing Plato’s treatment of parts of Forms in both passages, and in particular the relation among Being, Change and Rest at Sophist 250a8-c8, I argue that unlike in the Parmenides, in the Sophist, parts and wholes are seen as offering a structure that can explain how things that may, at first, appear unrelated nevertheless belong together."

47. ———. 2020. "Plato’s Master Argument for a Two-Kind Ontology in the Sophist: A New Reading of the Final Argument of the Gigantomachia Passage (249b5–249c9)." Apeiron:1-20.

Abstract: "In this paper I defend a new reading of the final argument of the Gigantomachia passage of Plato’s Sophist (249b5–249c9), according to which it is an argument for a two-kind ontology, based on the distinction between the changing beings and the unchanging beings. This argument, I urge, is addressed not only to Platonists but to all philosophers – with one exception. My reading is based on the claim that this argument does not rely on the view that nous requires unchangeable objects – what I call the traditional reading – but on the view that nous itself is unchanging. The difference between the traditional reading and my reading is that on the former, Plato’s argument relies on a distinctive epistemological assumption, whereas on the latter, Plato’s argument is free from any such commitments. If the argument of this paper is along the right lines, then this implies that this argument has a much more far-reaching scope than critics have usually assumed. It also invites us to reconsider Plato’s

approach to the question of being in the Sophist."

48. Sallis, John. 1975. Being and Logos. The Way of Platonic Dialogue. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International.

Second edition with a new preface 1986; Third edition titled: Being and Logos. Reading the Platonic dialogues, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.

Chapter VI. The Way of Logos: Sophist, pp. 456-532.

49. ———. 2013. "Plato’s Sophist: A Different Look." The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy no. 13:283-291.

Reprinted in: Hallvard Fossheim, Vigdis Songe-Møller, Knut Ågotnes, Knut (eds.), Philosophy as Drama: Plato’s Thinking through Dialogue, New York: Bloomsbury Academic 2019, pp. 231-240.

Abstract: "This paper deals with the question of difference in the Sophist. It begins with the difference that sets this dialogue apart from its dramatic predecessor, the Theaetetus, and with the task posed at the outset of determining the difference between the sophist, the statesman, and the philosopher. An account is then given of the critical engagements through which the question of being and of its intertwining with nonbeing is taken up. Outlining the discussion of the five kinds, it concludes with a close examination of the genos difference as “chopped into bits” and hence as a different “look”."

50. Sampson, Kristin. 2013. "A Third Possibility: Mixture and Musicality." The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy no. 13:328-338.

Abstract: "This paper considers two small textual places within Plato’s Sophist, namely 252d–253c and 259d–260b. First it turns to what is called a third possibility and looks at how this is described by examples related to the letters of the alphabet and the notes of music. Three words that are used to describe the mixing that these two examples display are συμμίγνυμι, κοινωνία, and μίξις. What is common for these three words is that they are shrouded in a similar kind of ambiguity of meaning, related to sexuality.

This paper argues the relevance of taking this ambiguity seriously, something which has not, to my knowledge, previously been done. Next it considers how the exposition of this third possibility results in the emergence of the philosopher. At this point also a view of language and thinking (logos) related to the philosopher is developed, and used in order to distinguish between the philosopher and the sophist. At the end of the paper, in the last textual fragment mentioned (259d–260b), it is indicated how this is a place where an echo of the musical and the philosophical resound, where these two elements are linked to each other, to logos, and to the necessity of mixture."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Plato's Sophist. Bibliography of the studies in English: Say - Z

Bibliography

1. Sayre, Kenneth M. 1970. "Falsehood, Forms and Participation in the Sophist." Noûs no. 4:81-91.

"The Sophist is one of Plato's most constructive dialogues, and one of the most cleverly constructed. Feigning pursuit of the essential sophist, Plato analyzes in turn (a) δύναμις as the mark of what is, (b) collection and division as the source of "the free man's knowledge," (c) the modes of combination among the forms, (d) Difference as the nature of "that which is not" and, in culmination, (e) the distinction between false and true judgment which separates the sophist from the philosopher. These results surpass in their solidity any positive contribution of the Phaedo or the Republic.

Yet they are achieved with a more austere conception of the forms than any found in these earlier dialogues. The structure of this more mature conception, I believe, is best illustrated in Plato's analysis of true and false discourse. My purpose in this paper is (1) to recapitulate what I take to be Plato's analysis of truth and falsehood in the Sophist, (2) to contrast the theory of forms presupposed by this analysis with the theory of the Phaedo and the Republic, and (3) to sketch against this background the theory of participation which seems to be implicit in the Sophist and other late dialogues. My contention, in preview, is that a form in this later context is a kind definable in terms of criteria for membership, and that participation is the relationship by which individuals qualify for membership in a kind." (pp. 81-82)

2. ———. 1976. "Sophist 263b Revisited." Mind no. 85:581-586.

"This passage [Sophist 263b: "Theaetetus sits' and 'Theaetetus flies'] has posed problems for sympathetic commentators. One is the problem of mere intelligibility. (1) A more basic problem has been that of reconstructing from the passage a credible account of true and false judgment. In Plato's Analytic Method (Chicago, 1969) I offered an interpretation which, although I believe accurately directed, is potentially flawed in an important respect.(2) The difficulty with this interpretation stems from a mistaken assumption, which most commentators share, about the nature of not-Being in the Sophist account. Correcting this mistake yields an interpretation which is more fully Platonic both in content and elegance, and which is considerably more faithful to the text of the dialogue."

(1) A sensitive discussion of syntactical ambiguities in these sentences may be found in David Keyt's 'Plato on Falsity: Sophist 263B,' in E. N. Lee, A. P. D. Mourelatos, and R. M. Rorty (eds.), Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos (Humanities Press, New York: 1973), to which I am indebted in the translation above.

Robert Vacca also is to be thanked for advice on Plato's use of ὄν ἔστῐν .

(2) I say 'potentially flawed' because, although the interpretation in the book is literally compatible with what I now believe to be the correct account, its further elucidation in my 'Falsehood, Forms and Participation in the Sophist,' Noûs, iv (1970), 81-91, brought the flaw to the surface. I am indebted to Alvin Plantinga for drawing the problem to my attention.

This interpretation was developed originally in response to difficulties with other accounts of false judgment in the Sophist, which need not be reviewed for present purposes.

3. ———. 1983. Plato's Late Ontology: A Riddle Resolved. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Second edition: Parmenides Publishing, 2005 with a new introduction and the essay "Excess and Deficiency at Statesman 283C-285C".

4. ———. 1992. "A maieutic view of five late dialogues. Methods of interpreting Plato." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. Supplementary volume:221-243.

"There are five dialogues of Plato's late period, each consisting of a conversation with a master philosopher, in which the conversation is organized by methodological principles explicitly proposed by the philosopher himself. In the case of the Theaetetus, the method was stated by Socrates in earlier dialogues, notably the Phaedo and book 6 of the Republic. In each of the remaining four, however, the method is expounded and applied within the same conversation-by the Stranger from Elea in the Sophist and the Statesman, by Parmenides himself in his namesake dialogue, and by a renovated Socrates in the late Philebus. I shall refer to these five as the methodological dialogues." (p. 221)

(...)

"I have made two claims concerning the methodological dialogues.

The first is that the conversational format of these dialogues is intended to serve the maieutic function described by Socrates in the Theaetetus, and characterized in the Seventh Letter as the only path to the flame-like revelation of philosophic knowledge. The second is that the respective methods of these conversations provide the structure by which they are enabled to lead the reader to that state of fulfilment.

The first claim is supported by the texts involved, the second by the experience of the attentive reader. Neither claim by itself, perhaps, is particularly adventuresome. I have suggested further, however, that together these claims answer the question posed at the beginning of this discussion: namely, how the conversational format of these five late dialogues relates to the methods they severally illustrate. The answer, in summary, is that the method in each case provides the discipline by which the reader is enabled to follow the path of the conversation, to the state of wisdom that can be found at its end." (p. 243)

5. ———. 2006. Metaphysics and Method in Plato’s Statesman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 2. Collection in the Phaedrus and the Sophist 36; Chapter 3. Division in the Phaedrus and the Sophist 52-72.

"The Statesman is third in a sequence of dialogues employing the method of dialectical division. In both the Phaedrus and the Sophist, division is paired with a companion procedure of collection. To evaluate the absence of collection in the Statesman, it is helpful to look carefully at how it functions in these two previous dialogues. This is the purpose of Chapter 2. Also discussed in this chapter is the language of collection that appears in the Philebus, despite the absence of the corresponding methodological procedure.

In similar fashion, Chapter 3 addresses the use of division in those two earlier dialogues. A notable feature of division in the Phaedrus is its use of nondichotomous distinctions, a feature which is absent in the Sophist but reappears in the Statesman. The Sophist contains eight fully developed lines of division in all, each of which is examined in the course of this chapter." (p. 5)

6. ———. 2008. "Dialectic by Negation in Three Late Dialogues." In Reading Ancient Texts: Vol. I: Presocratics and Plato. Essays in Honour of Denis O'Brien, edited by Suzanne, Stern-Gillet and Corrigan, Kevin, 189-212. Leiden: Brill.

"While little is beyond dispute in Platonic commentary, it seems clear that there are three distinct methods of dialectical inquiry to be found in the middle and late dialogues. One is the method of hypothesis featured in the final arguments of the Phaedo and implicated in the Divided Line of the Republic. Another is the method of collection and division, introduced in the Phaedrus and employed extensively in the Sophist before collection is phased out in the course of the Statesman. And third is the method introduced by Parmenides in his namesake dialogue and meticulously illustrated in the ensuing arguments on Unity.(1) I shall refer to this latter as “Parmenides’ method.” (p. 189)

(...)

But what are we to say in this regard about Parmenides’ method?

Unlike the other two, the dialectical procedure employed by Parmenides is confined to a single dialogue. On initial consideration, at least, it appears that we lack evidence for earlier versions in Plato’s thought.(4)

While the dialectical approach in question is said (at Parmenides 135D) to be essential for achieving the truth, and while it produces some of the most substantial results in the entire Platonic corpus, (5) we encounter it here in full-blown form with no indication of prior development. Or so at least it appears.

The purpose of the present paper is to dispel this appearance. Parmenides’ method is distinguished from the other two primarily by its use of negative hypotheses. As we shall see, there are sections of both the Sophist and the Statesman where negation figures in the explication of important topics. While these passages are familiar in their own right, I am not aware of any previous attempt to connect them with the distinctive method of the Parmenides. If the attempt of the present paper is successful, we will have reason to believe that Parmenides’ method was anticipated in dialectical manoeuvers employed (appropriately enough) by the Eleatic Stranger." (p. 190)

(1) While any of these three methods might be accompanied by elenchus in a particular rhetorical setting, it should be noted that Socratic refutation by itself is not a dialectical method.

(4) Although one part of the procedure is said at 135D8 to trace back to Zeno, there is no reason to think that the method overall is not due to Plato himself.

(5) This claim is supported in K. Sayre, Parmenides’ Lesson: Translation and Explication of Plato’s Parmenides (University of Notre Dame Press, 1996).

7. Schipper, Edith Watson. 1964. "The Meaning of Existence in Plato's Sophist." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 9:38-44.

"In this paper, I should like to give arguments for the following points: (1) that, for the later Plato, what exists must be defined by forms interrelated in logos; (2) that the particular things of experience exist, and also are defined by the interrelated forms. Their existence is not that of substantial subjects beyond their predicative forms, but is comprised by the forms, which formulate them and bring them out of the matrix of experience. Thus, Plato is sketching a profoundly original approach to the perennial problems of philosophy." (p. 38)

8. ———. 1965. "Souls, Forms, and False Statements in the Sophist." The Philosophical Quarterly no. 15:240-242.

"In a provocative and ingeniously worked out article, Robert Turnbull has presented his view of the Sophist's account of false statements.(1) I should like to bring out some passages which raise questions about his position, and briefly suggest an alternative view to which I think they point.

The argument, as I understand it, rests upon Mr. Turnbull's interpretation of the Platonic ontology as consisting of " forms, souls, and immanent characters "(2) Immanent characters or actions, " the stuff of Becoming ", exist in the souls, and participate in the forms for which the souls strive.

A false statement about a soul ascribes to it a possible action participating in a form which is not (is different from or contrary to) the form for which the soul strives. For " the contrariety of forms is reflected in references to actions "(3) Thus, a false statement rests on the difference of some forms from others, though it is about the possible actions which illustrate the contrary forms and are somehow in the souls." (p. 240)

(1) "The Argument of the Sophist", The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 14, Jan. 1964, pp. 23-34.

(2) op. cit., p. 24.

(3) op. cit., p. 34.

9. ———. 1965. Forms in Plato's Later Dialogues. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Chapter IV: Forms in the Sophist, pp. 31-42.

"This little book is concerned with one problem, that of whether and in what respects Plato continued to hold his earlier theory of forms of the Phaedo and Republic in his later dialogues. The earlier theory is first considered; since those who deny that Plato continued to hold his theory base their contention on an interpretation of it which is inadequate to explain even the arguments of the earlier dialogues. The later dialogues are then examined, in an attempt to show that the earlier theory is continually assumed, in all its essentials; although it is developed and modified to make it more consistent and adequate to experience.

Special attention is given to Plato's treatment of the problem of the relation of the forms to the perceived things, left unexplained in the earlier dialogues, but clearly recognized and wrestled with in the later ones. This problem is the perennial one of how the objects of intellectual argument and explanation are related to the things of experience. A solution to that problem is brought out in Plato's reconsideration of his theory of forms." (Preface, P. VII)

"The Sophist by common consensus, is placed sometime after the Parmenides and Theaetetus, and before the Politicus. Its place in the dialogues is thought to follow their literary order; and it starts with an appointment made at the end of the Theaetetus, while the Politicus refers to the immediately preceding discussion of the Sophist.

The Sophist could be subtitled: On Being and Not Being.

Ostensibly, it is a laboriously worked out definition of the sophist by means of diaeresis, carried on by the Eleatic Stranger. Again, Theaetetus responds. Yet the defining of the sophist seems to serve primarily as a means of introducing discussions of the nature of existence and as an illustration of the interconnecting of the forms, the συμπλοκη ειδων, the central conception of the dialogue and the most important addition to Plato's later metaphysics." (p. 31)

10. Schoener, Abraham. 2000. "Not the Sophist." In Retracing the Platonic Text, edited by Russon, John Edward and Sallis, John, 41-54. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

"We must pause for a moment to recall just what Penelope is weaving. It is a burial shroud for Laertes, the father of Odysseus-the father of the image of the philosopher-who is not yet dead. This is a sign that, for Plato, the writing of the dialogues is not a supplement or marker for the dead, defunct Philosopher, but that the writing precedes and even announces his death. Plato's Socratic dialogues are Socrates' Penelopean burial shroud, tolling the death of conversational, "living," philosophy.

This brings us to our last question. This is a very vexed one and seems to be addressed with the greatest seriousness in all of the literature on the Sophist. The question is: Who is the (real) Philosopher?

Our answer must now be "Nobody in particular." Stop worrying about the question. It is a question left over from the pretextual era of philosophy. Once philosophy becomes and recognizes itself to be textual, the question for now and all time is: What is being? This displacement is the deepest form of the patricide of Socrates by Plato." (p. 53)

11. Sedley, David. 2019. "Etymology in Plato’s Sophist." Hyperboreus. Studia Classica no. 25:290-301.

Abstract: "The etymological method displayed at considerable length in the Cratylus is widely assumed to be intended by Plato as an object of ridicule. In my 2003 monograph Plato’s Cratylus I resisted this assumption. In the present paper I seek to strengthen my case by arguing that in Plato’s major work on philosophical logic, the Sophist, the same method is re-employed twice, at 221 a–c and 228 b–e, for entirely serious purposes."

12. Seligman, Paul. 1974. Being and Not-Being. An Introduction to Plato's Sophist. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

"The present study has been undertaken with the ontological perspective in mind. In addition the historical roots of Plato's thinking will be emphasized. His struggle with the Eleatic legacy permeates this dialogue in a deeper sense and to a greater degree than has generally been admitted. On the other hand, the value of logically and linguistically oriented exegeses of the Sophist, such as have appeared during the last thirty years, is readily acknowledged. Still, they have not given us the whole story; they have neglected a significant dimension of Plato's thinking, and therefore need supplementing, and it only speaks for the richness of his work that it can be approached in more than one way.

My discussion will concentrate on the middle sections of the dialogue and follow the order of its argument, which develops organically and with greater cohesion than its dramatic form and artistic presentation might suggest. There can be no doubt about the seriousness of Plato's concern (contra Peck, 1952, cp. Runciman, 1962, p. 59), but there is also present a tinge of poetic playfulness which can have a baffling effect on readers seeking straightforward, unequivocal answers. At times it looks as though Plato lived up to the Heraclitean word that nature likes to conceal itself. It seems though that on some issues raised in the Sophist Plato himself was wavering, that there are others on which he had not made up his mind. In any case, he was never prone to produce a closed and final system, and each dialogue right to the end of his life meant a fresh start. But certain positions he never surrendered, and some of these permeate the Sophist as well. One of them is his belief in a rational and intrinsically knowable order of reality. That order is apprehended by the intuitive intellect and capable of being set out, indeed needing to be set out, in reasoned discourse; i.e., it is apprehended by noesis, accompanied by logoi. As Plato matured, the emphasis shifted from the former to the latter mode. And while the latter takes the stage in the Sophist, there is no evidence that the former was abandoned by him even then." (pp. 2-3)

References

Peck, A. L. (1962). "Plato's Sophist: The Symploke ton Eidon," Phronesis, VII, I.

Runciman, W. G. (1962). Plato's Later Epistemology. Cambridge, U.P.

13. Sellars, John. 2010. "Stoic Ontology and Plato’s Sophist." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies:185-203.

"It has been suggested that Stoic ontology should be conceived as a reaction against Platonism thus understood. It has also been suggested that Stoic ontology be conceived as a ‘reversal’ of Platonism,(4) inverting the order of priority between bodies and incorporeals, or particulars and universals, depending how one views it. The most significant attempt to analyse the relationship between Stoic ontology and the work of Plato, however, must be Jacques Brunschwig’s article ‘The Stoic theory of the supreme genus and Platonic ontology" in which he argues that Stoic ontology was in effect a philosophical response to material the early Stoics found in Plato’s Sophist.(5) It was through reading Plato, Brunschwig claims, that the early Stoics developed their own distinctive position.

The aim of what follows is to assess this claim and to ask whether Stoic ontology can be read as the product of a critical engagement with Plato’s Sophist. I shall begin in the first section with a brief overview of Stoic ontology along with a closer look at some of the differences between the principal recent interpretations. I shall focus my attention not only on Brunschwig’s account of Stoic ontology but also those of David Sedley (which came before) and Victor Caston (which came after).(6) In the second section I shall move on to consider the Sophist, giving a brief overview of those sections of the dialogue that Brunschwig claims already contain the central features of Stoic ontology. In the third and final section I shall consider to what extent, if any, Stoic ontology can be said to be the product of a critical reading of the Sophist." (pp. 183-184)

(4) This is a claim made by G. Deleuze, Logique du sens (Paris 1969), where he says that the Stoics were the first to reverse Platonism. However he doesn’t specify how he thinks they achieved this and his account of Stoic ontology is eccentric to say the least (on which see J. Sellars, ‘Aiôn and Chronos: Deleuze and the Stoic theory of time’, Collapse 3 (2007) 177-205 (178 n. 4)). Elsewhere, in Différence et répétition (Paris 1968), he claims that Plato himself was the first to reverse Platonism.

(5) First published as J. Brunschwig, ‘La théorie stoïcienne du genre suprême et l’ontologie platonicienne’, in Matter and metaphysics, ed. J. Barnes and M. Mignucci (Naples 1988) 19-127 and translated in Brunschwig’s Papers in Hellenistic philosophy (Cambridge 1994) 92-157. All subsequent references are to the English version.

(6) It goes without saying that I have learned an enormous amount from the work of each of these authors and what I offer here is merely by way of a footnote to their contributions to our understanding of Stoic ontology. I shall not discuss directly earlier accounts of Stoic ontology as they are dealt with and taken into consideration in the works I shall consider, but I note the earlier discussion in J. M. Rist, Stoic philosophy (Cambridge 1969) 152-72.

14. Shorey, Paul. 1930. "Plato Sophist 255c and το δισσόν." Classical Philology no. 88:80.

15. ———. 1931. "Plato Sophist 236 C and Laws 668 A ff." Classical Philology no. 81:323-324.

"To sum up the common sense of the matter, in the Sophist and in order to disparage the sophist, Plato says that we may distinguish two kinds of imitation in all the mimetic arts, that which produces a likeness and that which produces an illusion. He employs a similar if not precisely identical distinction in Republic 380 D for another purpose. Elsewhere, when he has no such purpose in mind and is merely speaking of the general theory of art, he amplifies "imitation" by the addition of the virtual synonym "representation," and says art is imitation and representation. This, as the passage of Aristotle quoted shows [*], is a perfectly natural mode of expression, and it is the height of hypercriticism to read into it a contradiction or withdrawal of the special point that there are tricky arts for which illusion is a better name than representation or the production of an objective likeness." (p. 324)

[*] Aristotle, Poetics, 11447 a 19: πολλὰ μιμοῦνταί τινες ἀπεικάζοντες.

16. Shukhoshvili, Maia. 2016. "Tékhnē in Plato's Sophist (Discussing Heidegger's Opinion)." In Sophistes: Plato's Dialogue and Heidegger's Lectures in Marburg (1924-25), edited by De Brasi, Diego and Fuchs, Marko J., 131-142. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

"The aim of this chapter is a discussion of the concept of tékhnē in Plato's Sophist, since this dialogue distinguishes and defines many different tékhnai. But what is tékhnē for Plato? Very often tékhnē is translated by 'art', but this is not the case for Plato and especially not in the Sophist.

The chapter is divided into four main parts. First of all I would like to propose Heidegger's definition and interpretation of tékhnē. Then I will examine the etymology and precise meaning of tékhnē in Ancient Greek.

The third part is concerned with the meaning and use of tékhnē in Plato's dialogues, and finally, in the last part of the chapter I will try to reach the meaning of tékhnē in Plato's Sophist." (p. 131)

17. Silverman, Allan. 2002. The Dialectic of Essence. A Study of Plato's Metaphysics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

See in particular Chapter Five: Forms and Language, pp. 137-181 and Chapter Six: Not-Beings, pp. 182-217.

18. Smith, Colin C. 2019. "Dialectical Methods and the Stoicheia Paradigm in Plato’s Trilogy and Philebus." Plato Journal no. 19:7-23.

Abstract. "Plato’s Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman exhibit several related dialectical methods relevant to Platonic education: maieutic in Theaetetus, bifurcatory division in Sophist and Statesman, and non-bifurcatory division in Statesman, related to the ‘god-given’ method in Philebus. I consider the nature of each method through the letter or element (στοιχεῖον) paradigm, used to reflect on each method. At issue are the element’s appearances in given contexts, its fitness for communing with other elements like it in kind, and its own nature defined through its relations to others. These represent stages of inquiry for the Platonic student inquiring into the sources of knowledge."

19. ———. 2020. "Diairesis and Koinonia in Sophist 253d1-e3." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 378:1-20.

Abstract: "Here I interpret a central passage in Plato’s Sophist by focusing on understudied elements that provide insight into the fit of the dialogue’s parts and of the Sophist–Statesman diptych as a whole. I argue that the Eleatic Stranger’s account of what the dialectician “adequately views” at Sophist 253d1–e3 involves both division and the communion of ontological kinds—not just one or the other as has usually been argued. I also consider other key passages and the turn throughout the dialogue from imagistic opining toward noetic understanding."

20. ———. 2021. "The Method of Bifurcatory Division in Plato’s Sophist." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 42:229-260.

Abstract: "The strange and challenging stretch of dialectic with which Plato’s Sophist begins and ends has confused and frustrated readers for generations, and despite receiving a fair amount of attention, there is no consensus regarding even basic issues concerning this method. Here I offer a new account of bifurcatory division as neither joke nor naïve method, but instead a valuable, propaedeutic method that Plato offers to us readers as a means of embarking upon the kind of mental gymnastics that will stretch us properly in preparation for further, more challenging dialectical work. Considering several interpretive issues, I argue that bifurcatory division is a process of collective inquiry into the common through which an account, both definitional and taxonomical, is discovered. Depending on the level of understanding exhibited by the inquirers, this account may or may not allow for noetic understanding of the object in the deepest sense."

21. Solana, José. 2013. "Socrates and «Noble» Sophistry (Sophist 226b-231c)." In Plato's Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 71-85. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"The sixth division of the Sophist has caused and continues to cause notable perplexity for several reasons.

1. It is introduced into the dialogue in an anomalous way. The Stranger speaks about two kinds of art: acquisitive (κτητική) and productive (ποιντική). However, later on he introduces a third kind: separative (διακριτική) art, whose relationship with the earlier types remains unexplained.

2. The role of this new art in relation to the overall objective of the dialogue, which is to reach a strict definition of the nature of the sophist, is also not explained.

3. Apart from not contributing to the main objective, it creates great difficulties, since, on the one hand, the Stranger speaks of a “noble Sophistry” and, on the other hand, the sophist is defined as a negative figure: one who is in possession of a knowledge which is merely apparent (233c10). Thus the paradox occurs that noble Sophistry is entrusted with the task of destroying the apparent knowledge (231b5) produced by Sophistry.

In view of these difficulties, it is relevant to question, with Cornford ([1935)] 182), why in that case this division stands here." (pp. 71-72, notes omitted)

(...)

"So Plato would have faced two options: either to discard the αντιλογική τεκνηέ which would have seriously affected the ἔλεγχος, or to preserve it in the form of γενναια σοφιστική. This second option, chosen by Plato in the Sophist, is proof that Plato’s position against the sophists has to do with axiological and normative postulates rather than with theoretical questions and arguments." (p. 85)

22. Speliotis, Evantha. 2013. "Sophist and Philosopher in Plato's Sophist." In Socratic Philosophy and Its Others, edited by Dustin, Christopher and Schaeffer, Denise, 197-215. Lanham: Lexington Books.

"Having completed the search for the sophist and having identified the nature of his activity (see 218b-c), we may now reflect back and "calculate before ourselves" (dialogisometha, 231d) how he has appeared and what we have learned. From the beginning, the sophist has been particularly associated with appearances, and he may be said to dwell in, even to be a master of, appearances.

(...)

And yet the philosopher, too, appears. Just as the sophist faces a threat because of his overweening attention to the appearances and, the Stranger has argued, insufficient attention to knowledge, being, and truth; the philosophr also faces a challenge and a threat if, in his devotion to and pursuit of knowledge and truth, he does not care sufficiently for the appearances.

(...)

The Stranger, therefore, concludes the Sophist with both an affirmation and a criticism of Socrates. Socrates is in his being, his intention, and his activity a philosopher. But Socrates is also, in a sense "poor in speeches" (phaulos en logois). As masterful as he is at phantastic imitation, he is not masterful enough. For all his knowledge and his skill, his devotion to truth and being to the exclusion of appearance is a weakness, not a strength. The philosopher need not be a victim of others' opinions. Being masterful as he is at phantastike, he should also give some care and attention not only to what he does, but how he appears to others when he does it. As Plato seems to suggest also in the Phaedrus, the philosopher must embrace, not eschew, the true art of rhetoric, the art of making both true and beautiful speeches (see Phaedrus 277b-d)." (pp. 212-213)

23. Starr, David E. 1974. "The Sixth Sophist: Comments on Frederick S. Oscanyan's "On Six Definitions of the Sophist: Sophist 221e-231e"." Philosophical Forum no. 5:486-492.

24. Stenzel, Julius. 1940. Plato's Method of Dialectic. Oxfordf: Clarendon Press.

Translated and edited by D. J. Allan.

25. Stough, Charlotte. 1990. "Two Kinds of Naming in the Sophist." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 20:355-381.

"Those who hold the view that Plato is committed to self-predication by his theory of Forms are forced to consider whether he ever came to terms with the problem and, if he did not, why he did not, in view of the apparently damaging effects of the Third Man Argument. Their opponents in the tradition, on the other hand, insist that Plato would not have agreed that a Form can be predicated of itself and that his theory does not imply it. But they in turn have been hard put to explain the import of the Third Man Argument, which appears to trade so heavily on that assumption, as well as the unmistakably self-predicative language of the dialogues.

I believe that this line of thinking focuses too narrowly on what we have come to understand as the 'problem of self-predication'. To begin with, no winner in the debate is anywhere in view. Plato's language, overtly self-predicative though it is, gives no purchase to either party in the dispute, and the textual evidence on both sides is notoriously inconclusive. Much of the debate has centered on several controversial passages in the Sophist. In this paper I shall argue that the Sophist offers no unambiguous interpretation of grammatically self-predicative statements because it does not, either by design or in effect, distinguish between predication and identity. Instead of attacking certain troublesome puzzles connected with Being by directly analyzing that concept (esti), Plato offers a solution to those problems by distinguishing between two kinds of names." (pp. 355-356)

26. Strawser, Bradley Jay. 2012. "Those Frightening Men: A New Interpretation of Plato’s Battle of Gods and Giants." Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 16:217-232.

Abstract: "In Plato’s Sophist (245e–247e) an argument against metaphysical materialism in the “battle of gods and giants” is presented which is oft the cause of consternation, primarily because it appears the characters are unfair to the materialist position. Attempts to explain it usually resort to restructuring the argument while others rearrange the Sophist entirely to rebuild the argument in a more satisfying form. I propose a different account of the argument that does not rely on a disservice to the materialist nor restructuring Plato’s argument. I contend, instead, that the argument is enthymematic in nature, allowing the definitions employed to flow out of the reasoning as originally presented. Moreover, it suggests that Plato’s idealism was so deeply ingrained that modern defenses of materialism were not even live options."

27. Sweeney, Leo. 1988. "Participation in Plato's dialogues: Phaedo, Parmenides, Sophist, Timaeus." The New Scholasticism no. 62:125-149.

"Having witnessed Plato's upgrading intelligence (and thereupon the efficient causality it exercises) and his disclosing the efficient causality it exercises) and his disclosing the extent and nature of divine artistry, let us now, before moving to the Timaeus. bring the Sophist into focus with the Phaedo and Parmenides." (p. 125)

(...)

"In order to succeed, the three-factor theory of the Phaedo (the Form itself, the participated perfections, participants) needed further causes to explain how the participated perfections themselves were produced in the participants without the Form itself being changed, multiplied, divided. His answer can be found in the Parmenides and Sophist, where he joined participation explicitly with exemplarity and efficiency. More adequately, then, participation consists in things being made-as-images of the Forms (Parm. 132D3-4), which thereby are present in their participants through the participated perfections they cause by paradigmatically directing the artistic activity of cognitive agents (Sophist. 248E sgg. and 264 sgg.).

The advantages of this more adequate conception are obvious. By their activity agents are genuine causes that sensible existents are what they are. By their indirect presence through participated perfections the Forms are genuine causes of what things are. Yet they are not divided or multiplied or changed or lessened by their causality. Simply by being what it is, a Form can constantly direct as model whatever artistic activity the cognitive agent wishes to engage in. Sensible existents themselves are actually produced and yet they remain imperfect: they are only images of the Forms, upon which they depend constantly for being what they are.

Plato's procedure in formulating his philosophy was, then, to start with participation and end with efficient and exemplary causalities. But these latter do not replace the former: they complement and enrich it. à thing's participation in Forms results from the divine agent producing it while acting under their paradigmatic guidance." (p. 134)

28. Swindler, James Kenneth. 1980. "Parmenides' Paradox: Negative Reference and Negative Existentials." The Review of Metaphysics no. 33:727-744.

"In this section I hope to show that Plato offers in the Sophist an alternative conception of being and irreferential language which avoids commitment to forms without instances.

Although I believe the Sophist contains a general semantics of reference, including the germ of a solution to the paradoxes of intensionality, I will confine myself here to Plato's solution of Parmenides' Paradox. Whereas the modern accounts I have been discussing begin with language and take some settled ontology for granted, Plato insists that a real solution requires a reconsideration of being itself. Only when we understand the nature of being can we begin to fathom reference to nonbeings.

There are at least three statements by the Eleatic Stranger defining being. At 238a he says, "To that which is may be added or attributed some other thing which is. . . . But shall we assert that to that which is not anything which is can be attributed?" (24) An object exists if and only if it is possible for it to possess some real property besides existence. This principle is said to be violated in all attempts to refer to or describe what does not exist. At 247a, in refutation of materialists, the Stranger, alluding to virtues and vices, says, "But surely they will say that that which is capable of becoming present or absent exists." If it is possible for anything to possess or not to possess some property, then that property exists. These two principles give us existential conditions for objects and properties.

(...)

"Being'' means "possible relatedness"; being is exactly identical to possibility (dunamis ); being is the possible possession of properties. At Plato's hands Parmenides' ontology falls prey to his own logic. They agree that nonbeings can have no properties, but Plato adds that beings must have properties besides their being. There can be no simple, either Parmenidean or Russellian." (p. 738)

(24) All passages from the Sophist are in H. N. Fowler's translation, Theaetetus and Sophist (New York: Loeb, 1921)

29. Tabak, Mehmet. 2015. Plato's Parmenides Reconsidered. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Chapter 4: Parmenides in Theaetetus and Sophist: Introduction 127; Plato’s Critique of Protagoras in Theaetetus 128; Parmenides and Parmenides in Sophist 141; Conclusion 163-165.

"The eight arguments of the Parmenides are governed by eight hypotheses, or “suppositions” (henceforth, H1, H2, H3, etc.)." (p. 59)

(...)

"There is a noteworthy suggestion in Sophist to the effect that Parmenides’s principle is self-contradictory. On the one hand, (1) Parmenides claims that only the one is (as in H1) or that it is not many in any way. On the other hand, (2) his description of the one suggests that it has being and thus is a whole with parts (as in H2). What we have here is akin to setting argument 2 against argument 1. Relatedly, Sophist does not take up (1) directly as an object of refutation except when the Stranger mentions briefly, but critically, that Parmenides denies any combination and any conception of the real as a plurality.

However, the Stranger’s refutation of (2) makes it rather evident that H2 is attributable to the historical Parmenides and that Plato thinks it creates a “measureless perplexity” for Parmenides’s doctrine.

Sophist also briefly, but strongly, suggests that Plato supports H3.

This is implied in the Stranger’s definition of Unity itself." (p. 163)

30. Tegos, Michalis. 2019. "How does the Sophist reply to the Parmenides? Or, Why the One is not among the Megista Gene." Platonic Investigations no. 10:42-73.

Abstract: "This paper explores the relation of the Sophist to the Parmenides: in what ways the Sophist responds to the questions, aporias and demands raised in the Parmenides.

It aims to show how the problems encountered in the first part and the categories used in the second part of the Parmenides, relate to the solutions proposed in the Sophist. The Parmenides has been interpreted in various ways: as a logical exercise and as a theory about gods, even as an example of perfect symmetry in impossibility.

It has been acclaimed as the best collection of antinomies ever produced, but also, as an impossible map sketching how the theory of forms should not be thought. Its purpose, a parody, or training, a pedagogic exercise necessary for the proper way to truth.

Not, however, in order to discard forms, but, on the contrary, to affirm their necessity and to refine them, lest we end up abandoning forms and, with them, the possibility of dialectic and Philosophy. Throughout the Parmenides, the Theaetetus and the Sophist, we are led through a complex argumentative and dramatic strategy to the refutation of the Eleatic doctrine and the mature ontology of the Timaeus. We shall seek to show that the sections on dunamis, the megista gene and the community of forms that follow the Gigantomachia episode about ousia in the Sophist, propose a way out of the aporias of participation and the ‘greatest difficulty’ of the Parmenides, a way to salvage the theory of forms, and, with them, the possibility of knowledge, logos and Philosophy altogether."

31. Thomas, Christine Jan. 2008. "Speaking of Something: Plato's Sophist and Plato's Beard." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 38:631-668.

"After close examination of the Eleatic Visitor's arguments, I shall defend the view that Plato intends the something requirement articulated in the Sophist to be a metaphysical condition on significant discourse and contentful thought. For Plato, whatever is something is some one thing that is. In other words, whatever is something exists as a well-individuated, countable entity. Being and number 'belong to' whatever is something. Moreover, whatever is something is self-identical (by sharing in sameness) and different from everything else (by sharing in difference).

One of the central aims of the Sophist is to articulate and to develop Plato's metaphysics of somethings. We learn in the dialogue that, strictly speaking, speech and thought must be of existing, countable beings that are self-identical and different from everything else.

Some qualifications are, of course, in order. There is reason to believe that not simply any apparently contentful piece of speech commits Plato to the somethinghood and existence of the purported subject. For example, the apparent meaningfulness of the sentences 'Pegasus does not exist' and 'Pegasus is winged' does not commit Plato to the somethinghood or existence or being of Pegasus. Or so I argue. (pp. 632-633 a note omitted)

32. Thorp, John. 1984. "Forms, Concepts and TO MH ON." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 2:77-92.

Note 1: "This paper is a reply to Y. Lafrance "Sur une lecture analytique du Sophiste 237 b 10 - 239 a 12" [Revue de Philosophie Ancienne, 2, 1984, pp. 41-76]. His paper and my reply continue a discussion which began when we gave a seminar together in 1982 - 83 at the University of Ottawa on 'The analytic and continental traditions in the exegesis of Plato's Sophist'. I wish to thank him both for his vigorous curiosity and also his friendly tolerance throughout the seminar and since." (p. 77)

(...)

"Conclusion

In conclusion let me simply restate the principal thesis which I have argued. Plato's Forms and analysts' concepts are fundamentally the same things. Once we see this a good deal of Plato's philosophical work becomes remarkably alive.

And given that Plato is thus sufficiently on our wavelength that we can take him out of the museum and treat him seriously as a philosopher, why should we not do so? I am sure it is what he would have wanted." (p. 92)

33. Tilgham, B. R. 1969. "Parmenides, Plato and logical atomism." Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 7:151-160.

"In the Sophist Plato does not give us a theory of proper names although there is no reason to suppose he is not committed to thinking of names as meaning their bearers and likely enough he thinks of the names of the forms as logically proper names. Whether he would consider the name of a sensible object, e.g., “Theaetetus,” as a logically proper name, there is no evidence to suggest. At any rate, it doesn't make any difference. Whatever he takes to be logically proper names, it would, I think, be easy enough to impose the theory of descriptions upon him to take care of the other words that we use to refer and, besides, what is important and original is not a theory of names, but a theory of sentence meaning." (p. 157)

34. Trevaskis, J.R. 1955. "The Sophistry of Noble Lineage (Plato, Sophistes 230a5-232b9)." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 2:36-49.

"This passage has recently been examined by Mr G. B. Kerferd in the Classical Quarterly.(1) He reaches interesting and novel conclusions.

The following article questions the results of his investigations and attempts to support the usual view of the passage.

It may be best to begin with a recapitulation of the dialogue up to 231 e6. An Eleatic visitor and Theaetetus attempt to define the sophist.

Five divisions are pursued under the generic starting-point κτητική. The sixth is preceded by a Collection which yields the term διαλεκτική. The τέχνη διαλεκτική is successively divided until a cathartic method of education is isolated. The question is then raised whether its practitioners are sophists. The Eleatic is doubtful about this, but is prepared to accept the qualified title." (p. 36)

(...)

"The reason for the sixth division appearing where it does in the Sophist must surely be that the method of Socrates portrayed in it was often confused with sophistry. After five divisions which characterize sophistry as Plato saw it and are plainly hostile, the sixth is "serious and sympathetic; towards the close it becomes eloquent.(2)" (p. 48)

(1) N.S. IV I, 2 (Jan.-Apr. 1954) pp. 84-90.

(2) i.e. Plato to his reader: "Continue to call it sophistry, if you insist; but if you do you are talking of a 'sophistry' of a very different order."

35. ———. 1966. "The μέγιστα γένη and the Vowel Analogy of Plato, Sophist 253." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 11:99-116.

"I wish to discuss the μέγιστα γένη section of the Sophist (251a5-259d8) and in particular some difficulties in the passage 253a1-c3.

Let us begin by considering a couple of general points about the Sophist: 1. What is the Sophist about? Answers commonly given are that it is concerned with the relations of Ideas to one another, or with the elucidation of significant negative and of false statement, or with a development in Plato's ontology, or with the practical illustration of the method of Collection and Division, or with a number of these topics.

Even on the assumption (which I do not share) that all these topics are to be found treated in the dialogue, it does not seem to me that their treatment is other than incidental to a more fundamental theme: philosophy. The dialogue is an exercise in doing philosophy, which is distinct from its counterfeit, sophistry or casuistry. Of course all the dialogues are in a sense exercises in doing philosophy: the reader's mind is exercised by them in philosophical questions. But the Sophist is a dialogue which is itself pre-eminently a demonstration of philosophy in action. The passages concerned with significant negative and with false statement, for instance, are practical examples of casuistical positions refuted. No-one strongly interested in philosophy is likely to find the dialogue dry or technical. These adjectives may be applied to it by those more interested in literature than philosophy.

2. The discussion is led by a visitor from Elea' who, it is emphasized at the beginning of the dialogue and elsewhere, is a philosopher and no mere logic-chopper. He is, in fact, indistinguishable from Plato's Socrates in some traits: for example, his use of the aporematic method, and his penchant for the method of diaeresis.

The dialogue, then, shows us philosophy in action, and is conducted by a serious philosopher." (p. 99)

(1) I call him an 'Elean' rather than an 'Eleatic' since, although he is described at the opening of the dialogue as ἑταῖρον... τῶν ἀμφὶ Παρμενίδην καὶ Ζήνωνα, it becomes clear in the course of the dialogue that he does not adopt the Eleatic position.

36. ———. 1967. "Division and its Relation to Dialectic and Ontology in Plato." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 12:118-129.

"The formal divisional exercises which we meet above all in the Sophist may strike the reader as tedious. Yet it is usually said that Plato lays great store by Division as a method of philosophy, one, moreover, to which he gives the title of 'dialectic' and which reveals the real structure of Ideas.

I wish to discuss how far the method is to be identified with dialectic, what relation, if any, it bears to Plato's ontology, and what Plato hopes for from it. I shall be mainly concerned with Phaedrus, Sophist and Statesman, having discussed the Philebus on a previous occasion (Phronesis 5,1 [1960], 39-44)." (p. 118)

37. Trindade Santos, José. 2013. "For a Non-Predicative Reading of esti in Parmenides, the Sophists and Plato." Méthexis no. 26:39-50.

Abstract: "The absence of grammatical subject and object in Parmenides' "it is/it is not" allows the reading of the verbal forms not as copulas but as names, with no implicit subject nor elided predicate. Once there are two only alternatives, contrary and excluding each other, sustaining that a 'no-name' does not grant knowledge implies identifying its opposite – "it is" – as the only name conducive to knowledge in itself, denouncing the 'inconceivability of a knowledge that does not know. If "it is" is the only [name] "which can be thought/known", and "what is" is the way in which 'thought/knowledge' can be accomplished, there is no need to postulate the existence of 'anything' that is, nor of anything that can be said of "what is". Being the only name which "can be thought of/known", the unifying synthesis of "knowledge, knowing and known" in one infallible cognitive state, it is unthinkable that "what is" does not exist."

38. ———. 2016. "Reading Plato’s Sophist." In Plato’s Styles and Characters. Between Literature and Philosophy, edited by Cornelli, Gabriele, 89-99. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Plato’s Sophist explores a cluster of philosophical interconnected problems, namely those of truth/falsity and being/not-being. Highlighting some key passages in Plato’s dialogues in which these problems are approached I come to the Sophist where they are brought together and solved." (p. 89)

(...)

"The greatest innovation contained in this conception of dialectics consists in the previous separation and subsequent combination of the ontological and epistemological perspectives on reality(14). While the three first Greatest Kinds – Being, Movement and Rest – refer to what exists, the Same and the Other provide the dialectician with the ability to relate them using different kinds of statements: existential, identitative and predicative ones (this last one exploring the participation of Forms in one another: 255a–b, 256a).

Plato’s theory of Being shows how this kind includes all the others granting them ‘existence’ (Being is everything that is, seen in itself). In his conception of Not-Being he starts by making manifest the function played by the Other as ‘difference’ (Not-Being is Being seen from the perspective of any other kind: 255d, 256d–e). He then proceeds to condense in the idea of ‘contraposition’ (257d–258c) the role played by Not-Being in the generation of ontological hierarchies.

In these each grade is what it is, in contraposition to all the others it is not, but in relation to which it is and is said by discourse (258d–259b)." (p. 97)

(14) In the Phaedo or the Republic Epistemology and Ontology are tied together, for each one of the two cognitive competences “is related to” its own content – “being” or “opinion” – and “effects” its product: “knowledge” or “belief” (R. [Republic] V 477d ff.).

39. Turnbull, Robert G. 1964. "The Argument of the Sophist." Philosophical Quarterly no. 14:23-34.

"The aim of this paper is to present and defend an explanation of the connections between the most noteworthy parts of Sophist. That explanation ties together the battle of gods and giants, the section on non-being and the section on speaking and thinking falsely. As always in Platonic interpretation, however, my explanation accords with a more comprehensive interpretation of Platonic ontology and has ramifications for the explanation of other dialogues.

Baldly stated, my claim is as follows. In the battle of gods and giants section the Stranger insists that both forms and souls are, both being dynameis (powers). In the section on non-being a distinction is drawn between forms which, as it were, run through all the other forms as principles of their division and contrariety and forms which might be called " illustrable " forms (cf. the " illustrability " of mathematical forms in Republic in that the mathematician may draw diagrams). The former are Being, Same, and Different, the latter, Motion and Rest. Motion and Rest are among the " most important ", for every other illustrable form may be regarded as a kind (or sub-kind) of one of them. They are, moreover, contraries, that is, they mingle with Different with respect to each other. The section on speaking and thinking falsely requires that souls are, for " names " refer always to souls. It also requires contrariety, for " verbs " refer to immanent characters (i.e., to what, strictly, participate in forms) or, better, to " possible " immanent characters. And immanent characters, sharing contrariety with the forms in which they participate, provide the possibility of speaking or thinking what is not. To speak or think what is not (i.e., to make a false " statement ") is to refer to a soul and a " possible " immanent character, the " possibility " of which is assured by the diversity and contrariety of " illustrable " forms. The " discourse " principle which parallels the contrariety principle among the forms is : No soul may have in it at the same time (and in the same respect) contrary immanent characters.

And discourse here, of course, consists of juxtaposition of " names " and " verbs ".

In what follows, Part I will develop the intellectual considerations upon which my interpretation rests, providing a more general framework for it.

Part II will deal directly and briefly with the text of Sophist." (p. 23)

40. Turner, E. G. 1955. "A Ptolemaic scrap of Plato, Sophistes." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie no. 98:97-98.

"Shortly before the publication in May 1955 of The Hibeh Papyri Part II, I identified the contents of two small scraps printed therein as No. 228 as from Plato, Sophistes. I had time to insert a slip stating the identification, but not to revise or assess the value of the text, and I attempt that revision and evaluation here." (p. 97)

41. Van Eck, Job. 1995. "Falsity without Negative Predication: On Sophistes 255e-263d." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 40:20-47.

"The dramatic aim of the Sophistes is to characterise the sophist and capture him in a definition. He is to be described as an illusionist who creates false beliefs. Therefore, an analysis of falsity is needed, which is provided in 263.

Now, three of the main problems the Sophistes has raised among interpreters are: 'What is the preparation Plato made before he could arrive at his analysis of falsehood?', 'What is the nature of the problem about falsity Plato gets to grips with?' and 'What account of negative predication, if any, can we derive from the dialogue?' In the following I want to deal with these questions." (p. 20)

(...)

"To conclude: there is no treatment of what we usually call negative predication (that is, nonpredication) in 255e-258e, nor any reference to it, nor any use made of it in 258e-263d; further, the analysis of a sentence of the type 'x is not F' we can derive from 240e-241a and 263b-d, shows that it does not imply negative predication in the strict meaning of the phrase, viz. that a negative predicate is attributed to x. Thus, in a double sense we can say that there is no negative predication in the Sophistes. What we do find is falsity without negative predication. In consequence, it is wrong to speak of the 'crucial inadequacy of [the] Sophist account of negation to sustain Plato's theory of false judgement (50); the Platonic account of negation we can derive from the Sophist is an immediate result of the theory of false judgement we find there, and an adequate one indeed." (p. 40)

(50) Wiggins (1971), 268.

References

G. Vlastos ed. 1971. Plato I: Metaphysics and Epistemology. New York.

Wiggins, D. 1971. 'Sentence Meaning, Negation, and Plato's Problem of Non-Being'. 268-303 in G. Vlastos ed. 1971.

42. ———. 1997. "A Note on Sophist 257b9-c3." Mnemosyne no. 50:75-77.

"In the literature we find two kinds of translations of Sophist 25 7b9-c3, but, strange enough, no discussion among the commentators of the point of difference at issue. In my opinion, both versions are unsatisfactory. I will try to prove this claim and offer an alternative. The question behind the difference between the translations is: on what part of the sentence do the genitives τῶν ἐπιόντων ὀνομάτων (c1-2) and τῶν πραγμάτων (c2) depend?" (p. 75)

43. ———. 1999. "Plato's Analysis of Falsity. A Landmark in the History of Logical Analysis." In JFAK — Essays Dedicated to Johan van Benthem on the Occasion of his 50th Birthday, edited by Gerbrandy, Jelle, Maarten, Marx., de Rijk, Maarten and Venema, Yde. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Abstract: "Plato's theory of falsity and its preliminaries, as presented in Sophistes 254d-263d, has evoked many grave criticisms: it is said to be fundamentally flawed in several respects. Yet it appears that the main origin of this view is an incorrect reading of the section on negation, which precedes the analysis of falsity. This section is interpreted as treating negative predication; in fact it treats higher order (non-)identity propositions (F is [not] G). And it is on the basis of these (non)identity propositions that the falsity of atomic first order sentences is explained. The resulting analysis turns out to be impeccable and fully adequate to the problems at issue."

44. ———. 2000. "Plato's logical insights: On Sophist 254d-257a." Ancient Philosophy no. 20:53-79.

"Plato has often been censured for a serious lack of important logical insights.

Especially his theory of not being and falsity and its preliminaries, as presented in the middle part of the Sophist, particularly 254d-263d, has evoked many grave criticisms." (p. 53)

(...)

"I shall discuss those parts of the text that have given rise to these criticisms, which I show to be all mistaken: Plato is not guilty of any of the fallacies or failures mentioned. On all points at issue here Plato's logical insights are perfectly sound." (p. 54)

(...)

"On the basis of the criticisms dealt with above, the section 254d-263d of the Sophist, containing Plato's theory of not-being and falsity, has been called 'one great logical mistake' (Bostock 1984, 90). Now that we have seen all these criticisms are false, how should we evaluate the theory? We found that it is not faultless either, as it contains the idea that (a) rest does not participate of movement and movement not of rest, because (b) this would turn their-opposite-natures into each other. Actually, only the first part of (a) is true and the reason given for it is not sound. In fact, this makes the system inconsistent: it follows from the text

that every form is at rest (contra a), and also that resting is not part of the physis of any form (except for rest, of course), and so will not interfere with the form of movement either (contra b). How serious is this and what is the position of the inconsistency within the theory as a whole?" (p. 77)

(...)

"Thus, within the theory as a whole the idea that movement would not partake of rest and vice versa because this would turn their natures into each other, is merely a marginal slip. In fact it is the only fault in an otherwise impeccable series of arguments, leading, as our outline in the introduction can only adumbrate, to a highly adequate analysis of not being and falsity. Far from being the logical mess the criticisms would make us believe it is, the theory of falsity and negation we find in the Sophist is a masterpiece of logical analysis, to be reckoned among the great achievements in the history of the discipline." (p.78)

References

Bostock, D. 1984. 'Plato on "Is not' " Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 2: 89-119.

45. ———. 2002. "Non-Being and Difference: on Plato's Sophist 256d5-258e3." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 23:63-84.

"Plato's analysis of falsity at Sophist 263 is given in terms of notbeing and difference. 'Theaetetus flies' is false because what is different is stated as the same, and what is not as what is, θάτερα ὡς τὰ αὐτὰ καὶ μὴ ὄντα ὡς ὄντα, (263 D 1-2), things that are different from what is the case concerning him (viz. flying) are described as the same (as what is the case about him). That there are indeed many μὴ ὄντα, 'not-beings' in the sense of things different from the things that are, the Eleatic Stranger (ES) and Theaetetus remarked some lines above, 'for we said there are many things that are with regard to each thing and many things that are not' (263 B 11-12), referring to 256 E 6-7, 'so, with regard to each of the forms, being is many and not-being is indefinite in quantity' . In this way they had been disobedient to Parmenides, who had stated, 'Never shall it force itself on us that things that are-not are [είναι μη έόντα].' But they had gone even further in their disobedience: 'but we have not merely shown that the things that are-not are, but also brought to light the form not-being happens to have' (258 o 5-7).

The context of both points has caused commentators a lot of problems. The main question is, how is it that something (i.e. a form) is called an ουκ όν in 256 o 8-257 A 6? Is it because it is different from the form of being; or is it because it is different from any thing (i.e. any form) it is not identical with? And on which of the two lines is the form of not-being defined as it is introduced in the section that follows, in 258 A 11-B 8 and 258 D 7-E 3? Only a few commentators have tackled the problems systematically, and as far as I know no interpretation has been reached that is both coherent and sound. Nevertheless, such an interpretation is possible, as I shall argue in the following. I shall discuss the passages at issue, criticize commentaries that have been given, and present the interpretation intended." (pp. 63-64)

46. ———. 2008. "Self-predication and Being the Aitia of Things." Ancient Philosophy no. 28:105-124.

"In recent times sentences of self-predication in Plato, that is, sentences in which it is said that a certain form F-ness, is itself F. have been explained by referring to the causal role of forms. The form F-ness is F because it is the aitia of any particular x being F. This is taken in different senses. Some commentators are of the opinion that to say that F-ness, also called ' the F'. is itself F is to say that it is the ultimate source (explanation) of why anything is F (Fine 1992, 26 and 2003, 36, 314-315). For others, sometimes the form of F is itself F because as a cause of other things' being F, it must itself have the quality F (Malcolm 1991, 154-158 and Devereux 2003, 79).

I examine the evidence put forward for these interpretations and look at some passages pertinent to the issue of self-predication from the Phaedo and the Sophist. The Sophist features a context in which there is no question of the role of forms as aitiai; the Phaedo passage is explicitly about the causal role of the forms concerned. From both dialogues we can learn why a form F-ness cannot be not F, and what it means that it is F, without referring to the F as the aitia of F-things being F. Yet there is a very interesting connection between the causal role of the forms and a certain type of self-predication. Surprisingly. however, it is not self-predication of forms that is at issue, but self-predication with relation to the F-ness 'in us'." (p. 105)

References

Devereux, D. 2003. 'Plato: Metaphysics' 75-99 in C. Shields ed. The Blackwell Guide to Ancient Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell.

Fine, G. 1992. 'Aristotle's Criticisms of Plato' 13-41 in J. Klagge and N. Smith edd. Methods of Interpreting Plato and his Dialogues. Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, supplementary volume.

Fine, G. 2003. Plato on Knovledge and Forms, Selected Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Malcolm, J. 1991. Plato on the Self-Predication of Forms. Early and Middle Dialogues. Oxford: Oxford University.

47. ———. 2014. "Plato’s Theory of Negation and Falsity in Sophist 257 and 263: A New Defense of the Oxford Interpretation." Ancient Philosophy no. 34:275-288.

"There are two main rival interpretations of the text, the so-called Oxford interpretation and the incompatibility range interpretation.(1) On the Oxford interpretation, the sentence ‘Theaetetus flies’ is false, because flying is different from everything that applies to Theaetetus. So it reads a universal quantifier implied in the text: ‘other things than all the things that are’. The incompatibility range interpretation, however, says that ‘Theaetetus flies’ is false, because flying is different from something taken from the range of attributes incompatible with flying (viz., sitting) that applies to Theaetetus. Thus it reads an existential quantifier in the text: ‘other things than some things that are’. This reading finds its inspiration in an earlier passage, 257b1-c3, on negative expressions, where the idea of a range of incompatible attributes is introduced indeed, and where it is said that ‘the prefixed “not” indicates some of the other things than… the things the words uttered after the negative stand for’. On this interpretation ‘not big’, for instance, would signify middle-sized, or small, because it means ‘something other than big’.

What is at issue here, namely, to which interpretation we should subscribe, concerns an important point: whether the Sophist offers an adequate theory of falsity or not. On the Oxford interpretation it does, on the incompatibility range interpretation it does not.

Now, the incompatibility range interpretation is winning more and more support.2 Brown 2008, 453-458 argues against the Oxford interpretation. As her criticisms are incisive and forceful indeed, adherers to this interpretation cannot ignore them. In the following, I will oppose the incompatibility range interpretation and point out that it involves a remarkable inconsistency in the treatment of negative terms in 256-257. Then I will show that a natural reading of 263 justifies the Oxford interpretation." (pp. 275-276)

(1) The name ‘Oxford interpretation’ was introduced by Keyt 1973.

(2) Szaif 2004; Brown 2008; Gill 2009. Crivelli 2012 adheres to the Oxford interpretation.

References

Brown, L. 2008. ‘The Sophist on Statements, Predication, and Falsehood’ 437-462 in G. Fine ed. 2008. The Oxford Handbook of Plato. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Crivelli, P. 2012. Plato’s Account of Falsehood. A Study of the Sophist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gill, M.L. 2009. ‘Method and Metaphysics in Plato’s Sophist and Stateman’ 1-34 in E.N. Zalta ed. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Keyt, D. 1973. ‘Plato on Falsity: Sophist 263B’. 285-305 in E.N. Lee, A.P.D. Mourelatos, R. Rorty edd. Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos. Assen: Van Gorcum.

Szaif, J. 2004. Platons Begriff der Wahrheit. Munich: Alber.

48. van Fraassen, Bas C. 1969. "Logical Structure in Plato's Sophist." The Review of Metaphysics no. 22:482-498.

"In view of much recent discussion of the passage in the Sophist in which Plato discusses the relations among the forms, (*) it may not be inappropriate to examine this passage from the point of view of modern logical theory. There is indeed already one such study by Karl Dürr, (**) who attempts to represent the relations among the forms within the framework of classes in Principia Mathematica. Since we consider some of these relations to be modal in character, we cannot accept the adequacy of this framework for this purpose.

In what follows we shall examine the connection between relations among the forms and the relation of participation between forms and individuals (section 2) , the peculiar character of forms corresponding to relative terms (section 3), and finally the formal representation of the described logical structures (section 4). The main point which emerges is that the problems discussed by Plato are closely related to difficult problems in current logical theory." (p. 482)

(*) 251A-259D. See for example J. B. Trevaskis, "The megista genê and the vowel analogy of Plato, Sophist 253," Phronesis 11 (1966), pp. 99-116, and the references therein.

(**) "Moderne Darstellung der platonischen Logik. Ein Beitrag zur Erklärung des Dialoges Sophistes," Museum Helveticum 2 (1945), pp. 166-194.

49. Vázquez, Daniel. 2018. "Argumentation and Reflection in Plato’s Gigantomachia (Sophist 245e6–249d5)." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 100:241-285.

Abstract: "This paper argues that Plato’s gigantomachia is simultaneously concerned with first-order arguments about metaphysics and epistemology and with second-order arguments that reflect on the impact of ethical components, argumentative strategies and theoretical assumptions in the conversation. This complex argumentative structure reveals, I suggest, an organic and systematic conception of philosophy where all the elements are interdependent. This interpretation has four consequences, two at the second-order level, and two concerning the first-order arguments. First, it shows that there are methodological and ethical requirements without which philosophy is impossible. Second, it shows that the text does not refute materialism but tries to reflect the necessary conditions

to consider possible the existence of incorporeal beings. Third, it argues that the text assumes a conception of knowledge where knowing something is a complex activity composed of two causal relations. Finally, it offers a new interpretation of the overall conclusion of the passage."

50. Vigdis, Songe-Møller. 2013. "Socrates, the Stranger, and Parmenides in Plato’s Sophist: Two Troubled Relationships." The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy no. 13:292-305.

Abstract: "Who is the xenos, the Eleatic stranger, in the Sophist? Or rather: who is he not? In this paper, I try to shed light on this (latter) question by discussing Socrates’ relationship toward the stranger as well as the stranger’s relationship toward Parmenides. I argue that in the opening of the dialogue, Socrates creates an aura of disinterest, distance, and alienation toward the visitor and thus indicates that the stranger is a philosopher of another kind than himself. Through an analysis of the stranger’s treatment of Parmenides’ notions of non-being and being I come to the conclusion that the stranger also diverges from his spiritual father Parmenides: while both Socrates and Parmenides never lose the divine ideal out of sight, the stranger confines himself to a purely human perspective, in total isolation from the divine ideal."

51. Vlasits, Justin. 2021. "The Puzzle of the Sophist." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie:1-29.

Published first online.

Abstract: "The many definitions of sophistry at the beginning of Plato’s Sophist have puzzled scholars just as much as they puzzled the dialogue’s main speakers: the Visitor from Elea and Theaetetus. The aim of this paper is to give an account of that puzzlement. This puzzlement, it is argued, stems not from a logical or epistemological problem, but from the metaphysical problem that, given the multiplicity of accounts, the interlocutors do not know what the sophist essentially is.

It transpires that, in order to properly account for this puzzle, one must jettison the traditional view of Plato’s method of division, on which divisions must be exclusive and mark out relations of essential predication. It is then shown on independent grounds that, although Platonic division in the Sophist must express predication relations and be transitive, it need not be dichotomous, exclusive, or express relations of essential predication. Once the requirements of exclusivity and essential predication are dropped, it is possible to make sense of the reasons that the Visitor from Elea and Theaetetus are puzzled. Moreover, with this in hand, it is possible to see Plato making an important methodological point in the dialogue: division on its own without any norms does not necessarily lead to the discovery of essences."

52. Vlastos, Gregory. 1969. "Self-predication and self-participation in Plato's later period." The Philosophical Review no. 78:74-78.

Reprinted in G. Vlastos, Platonic Studies, Princeton. Princeton University Press 1973, pp. 335-341.

53. ———. 1973. "An Ambiguity in the Sophist." In Platonic Studies, 270-322. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Appendix I: On the interpretation of Sph. 248D4E4 pp. 309-317; Appendix II: More on Pauline predication in Plato pp. 318-322

54. Webb, David. 2000. "Continuity and Difference in Heidegger's Sophist." Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 38:145-169.

"My argument in this paper comprises four claims. First, Heidegger’s interpretation of nous and logos can only be fully understood in conjunction with his reading of phronesis and sophia. Second, the way in which the two pairs of terms bear upon each other turns at a series of levels on the question of relation. Third, for Heidegger the question of relation is articulated in terms of movement, and moreover Heidegger wishes movement, and thereby relation, to show itself as itself without being reduced either to a thing or to a subsequent relation between preexisting things. Fourth, while Heidegger’s reception of the Aristotelian conception of movement as “continuous” (squelches) assists in holding open the possibility of a more fundamentally ontological discourse than is possible within the dialectical form of inquiry as presented in Plato’s Sophist, it is paradoxically Heidegger’s deployment of continuity that leads to the movement by which philosophy relates to truth being revealed as aporetic and even discontinuous. As a result, we shall see that Heidegger’s attempt to secure a more “fundamental” philosophical relation to truth in fact draws philosophy back into the concreteness of human existence." (p. 146)

55. Wedin, Michael V. 1981. "Plato on What "Being" is Not." Philosophia no. 10-11:265-295.

"Three puzzles are raised at "Sophist" 243b-245e concerning theories that make claims about the number of things that are. I argue that they are preliminary to and reflect Plato's positive theory of being, in particular they indicate that it is a mistake to regard being as a standard first-order predicate and so support the thesis that for Plato being is a second-order or formal concept."

56. Wiggins, David. 1971. "Sentence Meaning, Negation, and Plato's Problem of Non-Being." In Plato. A Collection of Critical Essays. I: Metaphysics and Epistemology, edited by Vlastos, Gregory, 268-303. Notre Dame: Indiana University Press.

Synopsis: "I. An analysis of Sophist 236E ff. The sentential variant of the problem of non-being in dialogues earlier than Theaetetus and Sophist. II. The display theory of sentence meaning as an escape from Plato's problem of false judgement. The theory's inability to accommodate negation. III. Plato's analytical approach to the problem of sentence-sense in Sophist, and anticipations of this in Cratylus and Theaetetus. IV. Relevant points from the discussion of Being in Sophist. V. The Sophist explanation of negation. Preliminary criticism and a suggested amendment of the explanation. VI. The analysis of true and false judgement at Sophist 263B4 ff. and Plato's return from negation to falsity. VII. Crucial inadequacy of Sophist account of negation to sustain Plato's theory of false judgement. VIII. Positive achievements of the analysis."

"For these reasons I do not myself believe that Plato came near to solving the problem of negation, or that he reached any satisfactory understanding of what problem this problem really is. The little clarity we now have about the nature of the problem of negation does not lead me to think that Plato's notion of the notion of Other is of fundamental importance in solving it. A theory of speech acts is a more likely focus for a satisfying answer. On the other hand we are not in a position to condescend to him on the subject. As J. L. Austin complained, we ourselves are all too apt to define negation in terms of falsehood and falsehood in terms of negation, and to fend off the charge of circularity by keeping the occasions of such interdefinition apart (rather than by getting really clear about what exactly is to be expected from an analysis of negation).

As for falsity, Plato's objective was as much to find room for falsity as to define it by means of his account of negation; and in the former project I believe he has more success. Admittedly he mistakes the gravity of some of the obstacles which he thinks he sees in the way of admitting the existence of falsity, and he does not always take the best or the shortest way round them. As a result his eventual theory is a more primitive theory than it otherwise might have been. But in the course of it he puts logic and philosophy onto the subject of parts of speech and the asymmetrical roles of names and other parts in the completed sentence." (p. 302)

57. Wiitala, Michael. 2015. "Non-Being and the Structure of Privative Forms in Plato’s Sophist." Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 19:277-286.

Abstract: "In Plato’s Statesman, the Eleatic Stranger explains that the division of all human beings into Greek and barbarian is mistaken in that it fails to divide reality into genuine classes or forms (eide). The division fails because “barbarian” names a privative form, that is, a form properly indicated via negation: non-Greek. This paper examines how the Stranger characterizes privative forms in the Sophist. I argue that although the Stranger is careful to define privative forms as fully determinate, he nevertheless characterizes them as having a structure unlike that of their non-privative counterparts. A privative form, in contrast to a non-privative form, is indifferent to the specificity of its members."

58. ———. 2018. "The Argument against the Friends of the Forms Revisited: Sophist 248a4-249d5." Apeiron no. 51:171-200.

Abstract: "There are only two places in which Plato explicitly offers a critique of the sort of theory of forms presented in the Phaedo and Republic: at the beginning of the Parmenides and in the argument against the Friends of the Forms in the Sophist. An accurate account of the argument against the Friends, therefore, is crucial to a proper understanding of Plato’s metaphysics. How the argument against the Friends ought to be construed and what it aims to accomplish, however, are matters of considerable controversy. My aim in this article is twofold. First, I show that the two readings of the argument against the Friends that dominate the contemporary literature – the “Cambridge Change” reading and the “Becoming-is-Being” reading – lack sufficient textual support.

Second, I offer an alternative reading of the argument against the Friends that better explains both the text of 248a4-249d5 and the role the argument plays within the Stranger’s wider project of demonstrating that non-being is. My thesis is that the Stranger’s argument against the Friends seeks to demonstrate that the forms must be both at rest and moved, where “moved” (kineisthai) has the sense of “affected.” To participate in a form is to be affected by that form. I argue that since, according to the Stranger, every form participates in some other forms (see 251d5-253a2), every form is “moved” in the sense that it is affected by the forms in which it participates. Likewise, I argue that every form is at rest in the sense that its unique nature remains unaffected by the other forms in which it participates."

59. Wiles, Anne M. 1999. "Forms and Predication in the Later Dialogies." In Plato and Platonism, edited by van Ophuijsen, Johannes M., 179-197. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

60. Wolfe, C. J. 2012. "Plato's and Aristotle's Answers to the Parmenides Problem." The Review of Metaphysics no. 65:747-764.

"The question raised by the great pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides were perhaps the main challenge for Plato and Aristotle, two of the greatest post-Socratic philosophers. To summarize the challenge briefly: Parmenides denied that there was any change in the world.

(...)

If Parmenides' argument seems tricky, it ought to. It has seemed tricky to all thinkers who have followed Parmenides. There were even a few unscrupulous thinkers who took advantage of this trickiness and used it as a justification for moral relativism. These thinkers were the sophists, and the most brilliant of them was Protagoras.

Protagoras claimed that each individual man was "the measure of all things," so the same thing that was good for one man might not be good for another based on perspective.(1) Ultimately, Protagoras claimed there was no measure of goodness based on human nature because human nature as a separate individual form did not exist. Only being exists, as Parmenides argued; Protagoras said the rest of what we take to be reality is an illusion and subjective. Protagoras' argument is a stronger version of the sophist arguments about convention and nature (nomos and phusis). As Plato and Aristotle both recognized, the Parmenides problem had implications for politics as well as for philosophy.

No philosopher was able to accurately interpret and refute the Parmenides problem until Plato and Aristotle. Plato answered it in an important way in his dialogue the Sophist, and Aristotle followed this up with the complete answer in Physics book 1, chapter 8. My thesis is that Plato's answer would have been good enough to defeat Protagoras in extended argument, thereby remedying the political aspects of the Parmenides problem. However, Aristotle's answer is required to answer some additional philosophical and scientific aspects.

The first section of this paper will summarize the history of presocratic philosophy and explain why Parmenides was a turning-point.

The second section will explain the sophist Protagoras' relation to the Parmenides problem. The third part will present Aristotle's complete answer to the Parmenides problem, and in the fourth part I will compare that approach with Plato's solution in the Sophist. Lastly, I will sum up by characterizing how I think Plato and Aristotle would have responded to Protagoras' Parmenidean sophistry in political life." (pp. 747-748)

(1) See Joe Sachs' footnote 10 on page 214 in his translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics (Santa Fe, NM: Green Lion Press, 2002).

61. Wood, James L. 2009. "Is There an "Archê Kakou" in Plato?" The Review of Metaphysics no. 63:349-384.

"Does Plato admit an archê kakou, a source or principle of evil? One or more than one? If he does, is the principle of evil matter, soul, a god or gods, some combination of these, or something else entirely? Or, is evil merely a human phenomenon? Just what does Plato understand by evil anyway? These questions have been repeatedly addressed by Plato's commentators, but by no means has a consensus been reached on any of them. (p. 349)

(...)

"In what follows I intend to defend this stance by an analysis of key metaphysical passages in several Platonic dialogues, and in the process I will address the central disputes in the scholarship on the present topic. I begin with the idea of the good in the Republic in order to elicit, by contrast, the concept of an arche kakou, and the negativity of this notion will be developed through the discussion of me on (nonbeing) and thateron (difference) in the Sophist. I turn then to the Philebus, where negativity is conceived as the unlimited or indeterminate (apeiron), and evil is realized in the embrace of the unlimited in hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure, and particularly the pleasure of the body. In the next section I show with reference to key passages in the Statesman and Timaeus that what seems to be a competing principle of evil, the bodily element (to somatoeides), in fact is a metaphysically derivative notion referring back to the generative cosmic order and specifically to the relative negativity, thateron, that makes genesis possible. Finally, I consider the possibility of psychic evil on the cosmic level in the discussion of an evil cosmic soul in the Laws. Throughout I will show that positive evil lies only in the defection of the intellect from its responsibility to generate our being as good." (p. 350)

62. Xenakis, Jason. 1957. "Plato on Statement and Truth-Value." Mind no. 66:165-172.

"Plato discusses the notions of false, true and statement in a number of places, but Sophist 261e-3b stands out. I propose to analyse, and not merely to reproduce in other words, this passage because I expect to make it evident that it has been unduly if not regretfully neglected by those who concern themselves with such matters. I am almost tempted to retrodict, for example, that the Theory of Descriptions would not have been born had this passage been paid the attention it deserves. In any case, 'the present King of France is bald' would not have perplexed anybody because it would not have been even seriously considered, let alone chosen as a legitimate specimen of a false statement, or indeed of a statement." (p. 165)

(...)

"That Plato's analysis applies to 'there is '-statements of the form 'there is (isn't) a mouse in here 'is evident from what has already transpired before the preceding paragraph; the subject (in the by now familiar sense of 'subject') of this statement is not of course 'a mouse'—a substance expression—but 'in here', a place expression. Relational statements too can be accommodated in Plato's analysis, only that the elucidation of the truth-value of these is, perhaps, more complicated.

I am not necessarily maintaining, with Russell and others, that the higher-order use or elucidation of 'to exist' is the only one; nor that Plato did successfully cope with existential, as against attributive, statements, but rather that his present analysis can accommodate the former without postulating a Meinongian Realm of Being. If so, Quine's 'Plato's beard' need not be Plato's." (p. 172)

63. ———. 1959. "Plato's Sophist: A Defense of Negative Expressions and a Doctrine of Sense and of Truth." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 4:29-43.

"The Sophist anyhow may be said to surmount the difficulty about knowledge and logos appearing toward the end of the Theaetetus: logos, not being a name, can after all enter into the definition of knowledge; and it can do so, of course, as true not as false logos. You have knowledge not because you are "apprehending" an object if an ethereal one - for apprehension according to the Sophist is not thought and hence knowledge - but because you have a true logos.

This does not conflict with the Theaetetus thesis that perception is not knowledge; on the contrary it agrees with it, since perception is a form of apprehension - I should say the only form, but let that be as it may.

Nor would it conflict with that dialogue had Plato maintained in it, as perhaps he at bottom at does, that knowledge is not of particulars but of principles; for principles demand logoi.(1) However, the Theaetetus is not my present concern. In fact, I am rather uneasy over the way certain concepts are managed in the "commons" passage (185a ff.), some of which might correspond to some of the "highest concepts" of the Sophist: they seem to be treated as though they were first-order or attributive concepts, like "red" and "sound," only not perceptual.

Perhaps this is a slip. Anyhow Plato's stand against perceptionism does not require anything of the kind. Indeed, that passage could be said to amount to the following valid argument: Knowledge entails reality or truth (right: "illusory or false knowledge" is a contradiction in terms); neither truth nor reality is a perceptual concept (right; cf. " 'existence' is not a predicate"); therefore knowledge cannot be identical with perception." (pp. 42-43)

(1) It is worth adding that the Wax Tablet metaphor in the Theaetetus goes against 'innate ideas" of course, but also against the "Theory of Recollection" and, to that extent, against Formism.

64. Zaks, Nicolas. 2016. "Is the ‘In-Itself’ Relational? Heidegger and Contemporary Scholarship on Plato’s Sophist 255c–e." In Sophistes: Plato's Dialogue and Heidegger's Lectures in Marburg (1924-25), edited by De Brasi, Diego and Fuchs, Marko J., 95-112. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

"For some scholars, the proof offered by the Eleatic Stranger in Plato's Sophist 255c9-e2 of the fact that otherness and being are not two names for one kind is "probably the most crucial text in the dialogue", since "it contains two lines (255c13-14) that seem to speak directly about being and how the form being is spoken of'." (p 95, a note omitted)

(...)

"I will proceed as follows. After presenting the difficult text, accompanied by preliminary remarks making explicit how Heidegger's interpretation both aligns with and yet remains very different from contemporary scholarship, I start with two versions of what one might call the 'standard reading' of the proof. I claim that Heidegger would have endorsed this standard reading. But Heidegger goes further by adding a sharp remark concerning the relational character of the 'in-itself. To clarify his argument, I dig into the conception of 'understanding' and temporality developed in Being and Time. Then, I argue that Heidegger's remark concerning the relational character of the 'in-itself in some sense foresees Michael Frede's objection to the standard reading.(3) Finally, I present and discuss two different kinds of reactions to this objection. The first kind is a defence of the standard reading; the second regards the 'in-itself as relative. In my conclusion, I argue that even if the standard reading is right concerning the proof of 255c9-e2, the fact remains that Plato, at strategic points of the Sophist, speaks of forms relatively to themselves." (p. 96)

(3) Frede (1967), 17; 19, and 22. Cited and described by Heinaman (1983), 14-15.

References

Frede, Michael. Prädikation und Existenzaussage. Platons Gebrauch von '...ist' und '...ist nicht...' in Sophistes. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967.

Heinaman, Robert. "Being in the Sophist." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 65, no. 1 (1983): 1-17.

65. ———. 2018. "Socratic Elenchus in the Sophist." Apeiron no. 51:371-390.

Abstract: "This paper demonstrates the central role of the Socratic elenchus in the Sophist. In the first part, I defend the position that the Stranger describes the Socratic elenchus in the sixth division of the Sophist. In the second part, I show that the Socratic elenchus is actually used when the Stranger scrutinizes the accounts of being put forward by his predecessors. In the final part, I explain the function of the Socratic elenchus in the argument of the dialogue. By contrast with standard scholarly interpretations, this way of reading the text provides all the puzzles about being (241c4-251a4) with a definite function in the dialogue. It also reveals that Plato’s methodology includes a plurality of method and is more continuous than what is often believed."

66. ———. 2020. " Διακριτικὴ as a ποιητικὴ τέχνη in the Sophist." The Classical Quarterly:1-3.

Abstract: "The διακριτικὴ τέχνη (the art of separating or discriminating), from which the sixth definition of the Sophist starts (226b1–231b9), is puzzling. Prima facie the art of separating does not fit the initial division of art between ποιητικὴ τέχνη (production) and κτητικὴ τέχνη (acquisition) at 219a8–c9. Therefore, scholars generally agree that, although mutually exclusive, ποιητική and κτητική are not exhaustive and leave room for a third species of art, διακριτικὴ τέχνη, on a par with ποιητική and κτητική. However, I argue that textual evidence suggests otherwise."

67. Zistakis, Alexandar H. 2006. "Difference, συμπλοκή and the hierarchy of ideas in Plato's Sophist." Phronimon no. 7:29-45.

Abstract: "Starting from the dialectic of intertwinement, the weaving together (συμπλοκή) of ideas in the Sophist, this paper tries to determine the place, function and significance of Difference and Hierarchy among platonic ideas. To that effect, it is first established that and how the notion of difference becomes the fundamental and even substantial structural principle of the dialectic of being and non-being, motion and rest, and finally of the notions of unity and identity themselves. In the second instance, the question of the hierarchy among ideas is interpreted and understood as the question of liberty. Namely, that very hierarchy is understood as an intrinsic and an innate one, i.e. as the set of dialectical relationships between ideas that follow from their own essence and being, which therefore is not nor cannot be externally imposed or forced upon them. Such a character of hierarchy is, then, recognized and exemplified in the case of the individual and the collective, where it turns out not only that there exists a clear idea of individuality in Plato, but also that every individual necessarily belongs to some collective and indeed seeks to unite with the collective in the same way and for the same reasons everything or idea tends towards its form, or its own proper good."

68. Zucchetti, Nicholas. 2020. "An unexplained overlap between Sophist 232b1 236d4 and Republic X. The case of the sophist as a painter." Archai no. 30:1-27.

Abstract: "Although most scholars agree that the lexicon of Sophist 232b1-236d4 is similar to that of Republic X, they leave undetermined whether they are theoretically compatible. Notably, both dialogues elucidate the art of imitation through the metaphor of the painter who deceives his pupils through φαντάσματα. I argue that Plato’s conception of imitation of the Republic is not only consistent with that presented in the Sophist, but also importantly integrates it."

69. Zuckert, Catherine H. 2000. "Who's a Philosopher? Who's a Sophist? The Stranger v. Socrates." The Review of Metaphysics no. 54:65-97.

"Many readers have taken the Eleatic Stranger to represent a later stage of Plato's philosophical development because the arguments or doctrines the Stranger presents in the Sophist appear to be better than those Socrates articulates in earlier dialogues. (1) In particular, in the Sophist Plato shows the Stranger answering two questions Socrates proved unable to resolve in two of his conversations the day before. In the Theaetetus Socrates admitted that he had long been perplexed by the fact of false opinion; he was not able to explain how it was possible. Likewise, in the Cratylus Socrates and his interlocutors were not able to determine satisfactorily the relation between names and the things to which they refer. Through his teaching about the idea of the other, the Stranger shows not only how false opinion is possible but also why names do not always correspond to the kinds or ideas of things. More generally, in the course of his account of previous thought the Stranger presents a fundamental critique of the teaching of "friends of the forms" like Socrates. When we examine the definition of the sophist to which the Stranger comes at the end of the dialogue, however, we find reasons to question the adequacy of his teaching and, consequently, his superiority to Socrates.

If philosophy consists in knowledge - of the whole or merely of self - we are forced to conclude, neither the Stranger nor Socrates is a philosopher.

Each or even both might appear, therefore, to be a pretender - or sophist. If, on the other hand, philosophy consists in the search for knowledge by means of a dialectical sorting of things according to kinds, Socrates and the Stranger represent two different, although related types." (pp. 65-66, a note omitted)

(1) For example, Paul Friedlaender, Plato, trans. Hans Meyerhoff (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958-69); Kenneth M. Sayre, Plato's Late Ontology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983); Statesman, trans. Joseph Bright Skemp (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957), 96 n. 48.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Platon, Le Sophiste. Bibliographie des études en Français (A - L)

Bibliographie

1. Aubenque, Pierre. 1991. "Une occasion manquée: la genèse avortée de la distinction entre l' "étant" et le "quelque chose"." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 365-387. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

Repris dans: P. Aubenque, Problèmes aristotéliciens. Philosophie théorique, Paris: Vrin 2009, pp. 307-320.

"Platon, dans le Sophiste, ne consent pas à remettre en cause le primat de l'ontologie, remise en cause qui lui aurait peut-être permis de réfléchir sur le statut infra-ontologique de la temporalité et de la fausseté, mais peut-être aussi sur le statut supra-ontologique du premier principe, qui, selon Resp. VI 509 B, "n'est pas une essence", puisqu'il est "au-delà de l'essence".

P. Hadot, dans une analyse célèbre, a émis l'hypothèse que le Dieu transcendant de Porphyre, «non-étant au-dessus de l'étant (μή όν υπέρ το όν)», venait remplir la place éminente qu'occupe le "quelque chose" dans le schéma stoïcien.(22) Mais, en réalité, c'est l'Un, et non le "quelque chose", qui désigne le plus constamment pour les Néoplatoniciens le terme premier par rapport à quoi l'ontologie se trouve rabaissée à la seconde place, et il ne me paraît pas que le néoplatonisme ait été conscient de l'affinité structurale profonde qui existe entre son hénologie et la "tinologie" stoïcienne. J'ai moi-même souligné l'«aveuglement de Plotin à l'égard d'une doctrine qui pourrait passer à bon droit pour l'une des sources du dépassement néoplatonicien de l'ontologie» (23), rappelant notamment l'analyse très critique où Plotin, se référant à l'aristotélisme le plus orthodoxe, qualifie d' «incompréhensible et irrationnelle» la notion stoïcienne d'un "quelque chose" qui ne serait pas nécessairement un étant (24). La tradition néoplatonicienne n'a retenu expressément que le refus platonicien de la "tinologie", et par là de l'occasion, que saisira le stoïcisme, d'un dépassement de l'ontologie surdéterminée du substantialisme au profit d'une doctrine plus englobante du "quelque chose", c'est-à-dire de la détermination en général (25). L'occasion restera à jamais manquée pour la tradition platonicienne, qui dépassera certes l'ontologie, dans sa phase néoplatonicienne, mais par d'autres voies. Il reste que le problème, doublement posé par le Sophiste, du statut du discours faux et de celui de la non-présence "incorporelle" représente un premier et décisif ébranlement de l'ontologisme parménidien. C'est là un aspect trop méconnu du "parricide" : le discours sur l'être ne retrouvera jamais plus, après le Sophiste, son innocence perdue, celle d'une prééminence qui lui reviendrait en quelque manière de droit." (pp. 384-385)

(22) P. Hadot, Porphyre et Victorinus, t. I, Paris, 1968, p. 175 sq.

(23) P. Aubenque, Plotin et le dépassement de l'ontologie grecque classique, in Le néoplatonisme (Actes du Congrès de Royaumont, 9-13 juin 1969), Paris 1971, p. 106.

(24) Cfr. le premier des traités plotiniens Sur les genres de l'être, VI 1 (42), 25 s.

(25) On serait tenté de dire: la déterminité en général.

2. ———, ed. 1991. Études sur le Sophiste de Platon. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

Les textes de ce volume ont été recueillis par Michel Narcy.

Table des Matières

Pierre Aubenque: Avant-propos 11

Première Partie: L'ORDRE DU TEXTE: SOPHISTIQUE, ONTOLOGIE, COSMOLOGIE

Francis Wolff: Le chasseur chassé. Les définitions du sophiste 17; Maria Villela-Petit: La question de l'image artistique dans le Sophiste 53; Nestor-Luis Cordero: L'invention de l'école éléatique: Platon, Sophiste, 242D 91; Jean Frère: Platon, lecteur de Parménide dans le Sophiste 125; Michel Fattal: Le Sophiste: logos de la synthèse ou logos de la division? 145; Monique Dixsaut: La négation, le non-être et l'autre dans le Sophiste 165; Antonia Soulez: Le travail de la négation: l'interprétation du Sophiste par Gilbert Ryle 215; Monique Lassègue: L'imitation dans le Sophiste de Platon p. 247; Rémi Brague: La cosmologie finale du Sophiste (265 B4 - E6) p. 267;

Deuxième Partie: VUES PERSPECTIVES

Barbara Cassin: Les Muses et la philosophie. Élements pour une histoire du pseudos 291; Denis O'Brien: Le non-être dans la philosophie grecque: Parménide, Platon, Plotin 317; Pierre Aubenque: Une occasion manquée: la genèse avortée de la distinction entre l'"étant" et le "quelque chose" 365;

Troisième Partie: LA TRADITION DU SOPHISTE

Pierre Pellegrin: Le Sophiste ou de la division. Aristote-Platon-Aristote 389; Michel Narcy: La lecture aristotélicienne du Sophiste et ses effets 417; Luc Brisson: De quelle façon Plotin interprète-t-il les cinq genres du Sophiste ? (Ennéades VI 2 [43] 8) 449; Annick Charles-Saget: Lire Proclus, lecteur du Sophiste (avec un appendice par Christian Guérard: Les citations du Sophiste dans les œuvres de Proclus) 475; Françoise Caujolle-Zaslawsky: Note sur l'ἐπαγωγή dans le Sophiste. A propos de Diogène Laërce III 53-55 509; Alain Boutot: L'interprétation heideggerienne du Sophiste de Platon 535;

INDEX

Index de citations de Platon: I Index des citations du Sophiste 563; II Index des citations d'autres dialogues 567; Index des citations d'auteurs anciens (Platon excepté) 571; Index des noms d'auteurs modernes 582-587.

"Le Centre de Recherches sur la Pensée antique (Centre Léon Robin) de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV), formation associée au C.N.R.S. (U.A. 107), s'est attaché ces dernières années à l'étude des fondements grecs d'une théorie de l'être, de ce que les Modernes ont appelé "ontologie". Deux ouvrages déjà parus portent témoignage de ces recherches(1).

Après le Poème de Parménide, il était naturel que notre attention se portât - ce fut le cas des séminaires tenus entre 1984 et 1986 - sur le dialogue platonicien où la compréhension parménidienne de l'être se trouve contestée, mais aussi d'une certaine manière assumée, en même temps que transformée.

L'occasion de cette crise, que Platon dramatise au point de la voir culminer dans l'exigence d'un "parricide" pourtant impossible, avait été suscitée par l'existence du mouvement sophistique, dont la pratique "polymorphe" visait en fait à donner !'apparaître - donc une certaine forme d'être - au non-être, contrevenant par là à l'interdiction de Parménide de dire étant le non-être. On connaît la solution platonicienne : l'introduction dans l'être d'un certain non-être sous la forme de l'altérité." (p. 13)

(...)

"Replacer l'onto-logie dans les circonstances historiques de son surgissement, c'est, croyons-nous, redonner vie et d'abord sens à ce qui ne devrait plus apparaître dès lors comme le simple complément, général et abstrait, d'études philosophiques plus particulières, dont le platonisme nous fournit par ailleurs maints exemples, mais comme le fondement même et le garant de leur possibilité. En ce sens, le Sophiste est bien, dans toute l'acception du terme, un texte central, pour le platonisme comme pour l'histoire de la philosophie." (p. 14)

(1) Concepts et catégories dans la Pensée antique, Paris 1981; Etudes sur Parménide, Paris 1987, 2 voll.

3. Audouard, Xavier. 1966. "Le simulacre." Cahiers pour l'Analyse no. 3.

"Qui sait donc ? Celui qui commence ou celui qui parvient ? le sujet dont on part ou le sujet auquel on arrive? Qu'est ce sujet supposé savoir, sinon le sage lui-même? Savoir quoi? qu'il a toujours su précisément ce qu'il fallait savoir. Le sophiste, lui, prétend que savoir et ne pas savoir reviennent au même, parce qu'il n'y a pas de vérité du simulacre, parce que l'écart qui crée le simulacre le différencie autant de la copie de la réalité que de la réalité même, que de la réalité même, que le simulacre seul institue le sujet en l'incorporant comme cet écart même. Que le sujet n'est pas et ne peut pas être référence, sinon en mettant en lumière, à chaque instant, du procès dichotomique, qu'il est l'écart nouveau pris par rapport à toute référence, que jamais ce sujet-là ne survolera comme "sujet de connaissance", l'ensemble des écarts où, il s'est institué, que le sujet à connaftre est un simulacre, un fantasme enfin, car il ne peut être connu que du point de vue particulier du sujet auquel il se révèle." (p. 71)

4. Ballériaux, Omer. 2001. "Platon. Aporía, euporía et les mots étymologiquement apparentés : Sophiste." In Aporia dans la philosophie grecque, des origines à Aristote, edited by Motte, André and Rutten, Christian, 81-128. Louvain: Peeters.

"La fréquence relative des mots de la famille d’ᾰ̓πορῐ́ᾱ y est [dans le Sophiste], en effet, la plus élevée de tous les dialogues, à savoir 0,149 alors que la moyenne générale est de 0,044 (1) Les occurrences des mots à connotation positive, εὔπορος et εὐπορέω y sont très peu nombreuses et n’offrent guère d’intérét. Trois d’entre elles sont, on le verrà plus loin, prises dans l’acception physique ou socio-économique. Et la quatrième, la seule qui fasse référence à un stade atteint dans la connaissance, dépeint une réussite qui est en réalité illusoire.

Εὐπορεῖν φαμεν (2433 c3) : nous nous berçons d'illusion lorsque nous prétendons êtree sorti d'incertitude." (p. 81)

(...)

"Mais l'examen le plus révelateur est incontestablement celui qui porte sur l'inégale répartition des occurrences dans les diverses parties du dialogue. L’introduction (section A [216a 1-218b 5] ne retiendra guère notre attention. Elle ne comporte qu’une seule occurrence, d’ailleurs peu significative. Socrate ayant manifesté son intention d’interroger l’Étranger d’Élée sur le sophiste, le politique, le philosophe, Théodore constate, en passant, que Socrate a donc été jeté dans l’embarras à propos de ces trois personnages,περὶ αὐτῶν διαπορηθεὶς (217 a 4-5). Nous négligerons également les deux occurrences (267 c 7 et 10) qui, dans la conclusion (section I [264b 10-268 d5]), font référence à l’embarras éprouvé à un moment antérieur de la discussion. Restent 23 occurrences, fort inégalement réparties au sein du reste du dialogue, où nous distinguerons trois parties, la première (les divisions) correspondant aux sections B [218b 6-231 a 5] , C [231 a 6-232 b 3], D [232 b 3-236 c 8], la seconde regroupant les sections E [236 c 9-241 c 3], F [241 c 4-242 b 5], G [242 b 6-251 a 4] (examen des opinions des philosophes), la troisième enfin (section H [251 a 5-264 b 9]) étant celle où l’Éléate expose la doctrine des genres." (pp. 87-88)

(1) Pour un relevé complet des occurrences présentes dans chaque dialogue, voir le début du §6. Conclusions.

5. Boutot, Alain. 1991. "L'interprétation heideggerienne du Sophiste de Platon." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 537-559. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

"De toutes les interprétations modernes du Sophiste de Platon celle qu'en a donnée Heidegger dans un cours professé à Marbourg pendant le semestre d'hiver 1924-25, mais non encore publié à l'heure [*] compte probablement parmi les plus originales."

"L'exégèse heideggerienne du Sophiste, telle qu'elle s'exprime à travers les textes de la première période de Heidegger, reste, on le voit, très lacunaire. Elle n'est probablement que l'écho affaibli de l'interprétation développée dans le cours de Marbourg. Elle montre très clairement cependant que Platon n'était pas encore pour Heidegger, à cette époque, ce penseur charnière qu'il sera plus tard, en tant qu'initiateur de la tradition métaphysique, mais n'était qu'une étape, une étape essentielle certes, mais une étape seulement dans le développement de la pensée grecque qui va de Parménide à Aristote. Cette présentation, somme toute assez classique, de la place de Platon au sein de la philosophie grecque, a pu être suggérée à Heidegger par la problématique du Sophiste elle-même, puisque dans ce Dialogue Platon s'efforce précisément de dépasser l'ontologie parménidienne et ouvre la voie, du même coup, à l'ontologie aristotélicienne et à la doctrine des significations multiples de l'être. Le fait que Heidegger soit resté fidèle à cette présentation, qui apparaît déjà dans le cours de 1925/26 : Logik (56), jusque dans le cours sur Aristote de 1930/31 (57), tout comme les évocations, assez rares, mais persistantes, du Sophiste pourraient laisser supposer que c'est essentiellement à travers ce Dialogue que Heidegger appréhendait Platon ou plus précisément l'ontologie platonicienne pendant la première partie de son œuvre. Heidegger trouvait dans le Sophiste une anticipation de ses propres vues aussi bien sur le problème de l'être, que sur celui du λόγος. Ensuite, on le sait, Heidegger privilégiera, dans son analyse de la pensée de Platon, les textes où s'affirme l'idéalisme platonicien sous sa formulation la plus "traditionnelle", comme ceux de la République, et s'efforcera de montrer que, dans et par cet idéalisme, l'être en tant qu'être sombre dans l'oubli." (pp. 557-558)

[*] Platon: Sophistes, GA Bd. 19 (2002); traduction française: Platon : «Le Sophiste», Paris : Gallimard 2001.

(56) Cfr. [Gesamtausgabe] GA Bd. 21, p. 168-9.

(57) Cfr. GA Bd. 33, p. 27-8.

6. Brague, Rémi. 1991. "La cosmologie finale du Sophiste (263b4-e6)." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 269-288. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

Repris dans Rémi Brague, Introduction au monde grec. Études d'histoire de la philosophie, Chatou: Les Éditions de la Transparence 2005 (Édition revue 2008), pp. 195-218.

"Le but de la note qui suit est simplement d'attirer l'attention sur un passage du Sophiste de Platon: les pages 265 B 4 à E 6, qui forment la première moitié (hormis les quatre premières lignes) du paragraphe 49 du découpage traditionnel. Ce morceau se trouve communément négligé par les commentateurs, à ma connaissance (et à celle des répertoires spécialisés, comme par exemple celui de la revue «Lustrum») depuis une bonne trentaine d'années. On peut comprendre les raisons de cette omission : les philosophes, le plus souvent, et avant tout ceux de la tendance que l'on étiquette aussi commodément que caricaturalement comme «analytique», ne lisent du Sophiste que quelques pages qu'ils considèrent comme cruciales, et qui portent sur les cinq genres, la négation, le sens du verbe "être", etc. - problèmes avec lesquels notre passage n'a, à première vue, rien à voir. Par ailleurs, ceux, et ils ne sont pas si nombreux, qui se donnent la peine de fournir de tout le Sophiste un commentaire suivi, semblent curieusement pressés d'en finir, et passent rapidement sur les dernières répliques - non d'ailleurs sans imiter en cela les protagonistes mêmes du dialogue. Il me semble que l'on passe de la sorte à côté d'un texte fort intéressant et, en particulier, lourd d'implications pour la signification de tout ce que Platon dit ailleurs à propos de l'univers physique. Je ne puis ici que donner quelques rapides indications, me réservant de revenir plus en détail sur le contexte de ce qui reste ici programmatique." (pp. 269-270 notes omises)

7. Brisson, Luc. 1991. "De quelle façon Plotin interprète-t-il les cinq genres du Sophiste ? (Ennéades, VI 2 [43] 8)." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 451-474. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

"Il arrive souvent que le scholar contemporain qui essaie de comprendre un dialogue de Platon tombe sur une interprétation qui, de prime abord, le déconcerte, tout en excitant chez lui un grand intérêt, en raison de la profonde originalité qui s'en dégage. Or, il n'est pas rare qu'une recherche des sources de cette interprétation mène à Plotin. C'est le cas notamment en ce qui concerne les cinq genres du Sophiste. Voyons donc ce qu'il en est dans le détail, en prenant pour texte de référence Enn. VI 2 [ 43] 8, chapitre qui, après avoir été replacé dans son contexte théorique et historique, sera traduit et commenté." (p. 451)

(...)

"Pour Plotin donc, le problème est moins d'expliquer comment communiquent entre elles les formes intelligibles, qui représentent l'être par excellence, que de décrire l'intellect, lieu de l'intelligible et donc de l'être. Ce décalage entrâine des conséquences importantes. Alors que, dans le Sophiste, l'être, le même et l'autre, déduits d'une analyse du couple de contraires : repos/mouvement, constituent les genres véritablement suprêmes qui régissent la communauté des formes intelligibles, en Enn. VI 2. 8, l'être, le mouvement, le repos, et surtout le même et l'autre, ne sont que des aspects de l'intellect (νοῦς). Ils perdent ainsi leur autonomie ontologique, pour devenir, comme le veut d'ailleurs Plotin, des catégories du monde intelligible, c'est-à dire des instruments permettant la description de la seconde hypostase." (p. 472)

8. ———. 2008. "La définition de l'être par la puissance. Un commentaire de Sophiste 247 b - 249 d." In Dunamis. Autour de la puissance chez Aristote, edited by Crubellier, Michel, Jaulin, Annick, Lefebvre, David and Morel, Pierre-Marie, 173-196. Louvain-La-Neuve: Peeters.

"Lorsque, dans le Sophiste, il définit l’être par la puissance, Platon modifie-t- il sa position sur les formes intelligibles en les soumettant au changement ? Telle est la question à laquelle je voudrais tenter de répondre ici." (p. 173)

(...)

"Comme il est difficile d’admettre qu’il s’est contredit, on a fait l'hypothèse que Platon avait changé d’idée sur les Formes, qui, à partir du Sophiste, ne seraient plus totalement dépourvues de changement.

Depuis la seconde moitié du XXe siècle, deux types d’interprétation inspirés tous les deux par la philosophie allemande ont été développés, l'une dans le cadre de la philosophie analytique, et l’autre par Francesco Fronterotta récemment.

Les commentateurs analytiques suivent Gilbert Ryle(23), qui prétendait que Platon avait abandonné la doctrine des Formes dans la seconde partie du Parménide. Et ils estiment donc que le Sophiste est le témoin de ce changement. Les Formes ne sont plus des réalités séparées, des modelés, mais des concepts, susceptibles de changement comme le prétendent Julius Moravsick(24), G.E.L. Owen(25) et I. M. Crombie(26) entre autres.

L'interprétation analytique, où se fait sentir une très forte influence aristotélicienne(27), est en fait un avatar des grandes interprétations néo-kantiennes, celles de Ritter(28) et de Natorp(29).

Pour sa part, Francesco Fronterotta(30) propose une interprétation qui s’apparente à celle de Zeller(31), lequel était sous l’influence de Hegel. Francesco Fronterotta attribue aux Formes une activité causale qui est non pas seulement d’ordre paradigmatique, mais aussi d’ordre efficient.

(...)

À la suite de F.M. Cornford(34), de H. Chemiss(35) et de Gr. Vlastos(36), j’estime que Platon n’a pas modifié sa position sur le sujet. Relisons Sophiste 247b-249d. Force est d’admettre qu’il y a bien une définition de l’être par la puissance en Sophiste 247d-e. Mais des divergences apparaissent, lorsqu’il s’agit de déterminer à qui fait référence Sophiste 248d-e, et quel sens il faut donner au pantelôs ôn de 248e." (pp. 179-180)

(23) Ryle [1965] «Plato’s Parmenides» (1939^1), dans Allen (ed.) [1965]. Studies in Plato's metaphysics, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.

(24) Moravcsik [1962] «Being and meaning in the Sophist», Acta Philoso-phica Fennica, fase. XIV, p. 37 sq.

(25) Owen [1986] Logic, Science and Dialectic, collected papers in Greek philosophy, ed. by Martha Nussbaum, Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY), pp. 27-44.

(26) Crombie [1963] Examination of Plato's doctrines, vol. II: «Plato on knowledge and reality», Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, p. 396 sq.

(27) Notamment chez Keyt [1969] «Plato’s paradox that the immutable is unknowable», Philos. Quarterly, 19, p. 1 sq.

Keyt essaie de tenir les deux bouts de la chaîne en renvoyant à Aristote : «The Eleatic Stranger, in Sophist 248d 1-e 5, présents the friends of the forms with the paradox that the immutable is unknowable. Plato does not indicate in the Sophist how his own theory of forms avoids the paradox. He is not deeply committed lo the proposition that the forms undergo change, but ought to be; he is deeply committed lo the proposition that the forms are changeless, but for insufficient reasons. Aristotle, in Topics 137b3-13, distinguishes two respects in which a form may have an attribute, which suggests that a Platonist ought to hold that the forms are changeless in some respects, but not in others».

(28) Ritter [1976] «Eidos, idèa und verwandte Wörter in den Schriften Platons mit genauem Nachweis der Stellen» (19101) Neue Untersuchungen über Platon (1910), Amo Press, New York, pp. 228-236.

(29) Natorp [2004] Plato's theory of ideas. An introduction do idealism (1903^1, 1921^2), ed. by Valitis Politis, Academia Verlag, Sankt Augustin..

(30) Fronterotta [2001] Methexis. La teoria Platonica delle idee et la partecipazione delle cose empiriche. Dai dialoghi giovanili al Parmenide, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, pp. 348-356.

(31) Zeller, Mondolfo [1974] La filosofia dei Greci nel suo sviluppo storico (1922^5), trad, par Ervino Pocar, parte seconda, vol. III 1 et 2: «Platone e l'Accademia antica», a cura di Margherita Isnardi Parente, La Nuova Italia, Firenze.

(32) Fronterotta [2001: 343-348].

(33) Fronterotta [2001: 354-356]

(34) En m’inspirant des notes et des commentaires faits par Cornford [1964^2| Plato's theory of knowledge (1935^1), Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.

(35) Cherniss [1993] The riddle of the Academy; traduction française par L. Bou-lakia, Vrin, Paris.

(36) C’est la position soutenue par Vlastos [ 1981^2] «On the interpretation of Soph. 148d4-e4», dans Platonic Studies (1973^1), pp. 309-317.

9. ———. 2010. "L'âme ou l'intelligible ? Comment interpréter Sophiste 253d5-e2 ?" In Aglaïa. Autour de Platon : Mélanges offerts a Monique Dixsaut, edited by Brancacci, Aldo, El Murr, Dimitri and Taormina, Patrizia, 387-395. Paris: Vrin.

10. Brunschwig, Jacques. 1988. "La théorie stoïcienne du genre suprême et l'ontologie platonicienne." In Matter and Metaphysics. Fourth Symposium Hellenisticum, edited by Jonathan, Barnes and Mignucci, Mario, 19-127. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

Traduction anglaise : "The Stoic Theory of the Supreme Genus and Platonic Ontology", in J. Brunschwig, Papers in Hellenistic Philosophy, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press:1994, pp. 92-157.

11. Cassin, Barbara. 1991. "Les Muses et la philosophie. Ėlements pour une histoire du pseudos." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 293-316. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

"Le philosophe, chien de garde de la vérité et du désir de vérité, est commis à l' aletheia. Le sophiste, ce loup depuis qu'il y a des philosophes, est commis au pseudos. Or pseudos nomme dès l'origine et indissolublement le "faux" et le "mensonge" : la "fausseté" donc de celui qui trompe et/ou se trompe; c'est le concept éthico-logique par excellence. Le Sophiste de Platon marque expressément ce double lien qui rattache sophistique et pseudos aux yeux de la philosophie : le sophiste est une imitation, une contrefaçon sauvage du philosophe (Soph. 231 A), parce qu'il élit pour domaine le faux, le semblant, le phénomène, l'opinion, en un mot, tout ce qui n'est pas. Philosophie des apparences et apparence de la philosophie : sophiste simulateur-dissimulateur.

Je voudrais tenter de localiser le pseudos, essentiellement à travers Parménide et Hésiode, pour déterminer la manière dont la sophistique s'y loge, afin de comprendre, à travers Platon, comment la philosophie à ses débuts domestique l'idée même de pseudos, et aménage la place de la sophistique. Place de l'alter ego dans la structure : d'une part le pseudos, la possibilité de choisir le pseudos, est une condition de possibilité de l'existence même du langage; autrement dit : tous ne sont pas sophistes, mais, pour parler, il faut qu'il y ait des sophistes.

D'autre part, l'interprétation du pseudos en termes de mimesis bloque toute assignation de critère et brouille l'imputation : «Sage ou sophiste?» se demande l'Etranger jusqu'au bout." (pp. 293-294)

12. Caujolle-Zaslawsky. 1991. "Note sur l'ἐπαγωγή dans le Sophiste. A propos de Diogène Laërce, III 53-55." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 511-534. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

"Examinons donc, pour commencer, l'emploi effectif du terme ἐπαγωγή dans l'œuvre de Platon. Il se trouve que Platon a employé ἐπαγωγή en un sens correspondant à l'un des emplois courants du terme, celui de "charme", de sortilège, de mauvais sort, d'influence magique, ou encore d' "induction", mais dans l'acception aujourd'hui désuète de séduction, emprise. Il a utilisé, également, le terme ἐπαγωγός, en un sens que semblent retrouver de nos jours la médecine et la biologie contemporaines avec le néologisme '"inducteur": une cause "inductrice" déclenche un phénomène avec un certain retard par rapport au moment où elle intervient. Platon parlait d'un «inducteur de sommeil» : c'est la description qu'on pourrait donner, aujourd'hui, d'un somnifère.

Il est évident que l'usage platonicien d'ἐπαγωγή est simplement, ici, l'usage courant et n'a rien de technique ni de particulier. Surtout, cette sorte-là d'ἐπαγωγή n'a rien à voir avec celle qui lui est attribuée chez Diogène Laërce [III, 53-55], et que nous allons examiner maintenant." (pp. 520-521, notes omises)

(...)

"Si nous tentons ici de récapituler les notices et les thèmes qui semblent liés à l'enseignement ''épagogïque" selon Platon, nous observons successivement : le procédé est lié à l'analyse de cas particuliers, concrets, que la perception et l'évidence sensible y jouent le premier rôle, qu'il ne s'applique qu'à des choses présentant une similitude : (les lettres, par exemple). Car la place tenue dans cette méthode par la notion de τὸ ὅμοιον exige une homogénéité de cas." (p. 534, note omise)

13. Charles-Saget, Annick. 1991. "Lire Proclus, lecteur du Sophiste (avec un appendice par Christian Guérard : Les citations du Sophiste dans les oeuvres de Proclus)." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 451-474. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

"Nous ne connaissons pas de commentaire de Proclus au Sophiste de Platon. Quelques indices textuels permettent de supposer qu'il y eut, sinon un commentaire continu, du moins quelques "explications" ou exégèses de passages considérés comme essentiels. Mais pour le lecteur philosophe d'aujourd'hui, il ne reste qu'une série de citations sur laquelle faire fond, citations ou simples références qui représentent ici le matériau de notre travail.

Au premier examen, nous remarquons combien la densité des renvois varie avec les oeuvres, ce qui est bien naturel et correspond à la diversité des thèmes, mais ne saurait à soi seul être significatif. L'ln Parmenidem viendrait en premier (plus de 50 renvois), puis la Théologie Platonicienne (31 références pour les tomes I à V), l'In Timaeum (21), l'In rempublicam (9), les Trois Opuscules (7), enfin l'In Alcibiadem (2), l'In Cratylum (1). Même si le nombre des occurrences ne permet pas de préjuger de la résonance proprement philosophique du texte, il reste que les lieux de citation dessinent dejà une certaine lecture du Sophiste, au moins en ce que certains passages sont absents. Et même si la prudence est de rigueur, on est ici particulièrement tenté de donner au non-dit "un certain être".

Quant au dit, il faut en entendre les accents. Ceux que Proclus marque lui-même par les amplifications qui sont l'effet de son système ne peuvent, pour nous, se confondre avec les accents du texte de Platon. Car nous lisons aussi des éclaircissements, sans doute, mais souvent des déplacements (de sens ou d'accents), qui sont de l'ordre du détournement. Tout le néoplatonisme est de cette veine, dira-t-on. Sans doute, et c'est pourquoi nous allons proposer à notre tour un mode de lecture de la lecture que fit Proclus de certains passages du Sophiste de Platon." (pp. 477-478, notes omises)

14. Cordero, Nestor-Luis. 1985. "Révélation et rationalité aux origines de la pensée grecque. L’héritage parménidien dans le Sophiste de Platon." École pratique des hautes études, Section des sciences religieuses. Annuaire no. 94:409-416.

"Cette année nous avons étudié l'héritage du parménidisme, ainsi que son « dépassement », dans le Sophiste de Platon. Nous avons donc voulu nous pencher tant sur la naissance que sur la « mort » de Parménide, car Platon, par la bouche de l'Étranger d'Élée, a bien voulu « tuer » le Philosophe de l'Être. D'où l'une des inconnues qui nous a amenés à entamer notre enquête : le crime, a-t-il vraiment eu lieu ?" (p. 409)

(...)

"En effet, ce qui déclenchera le mécanisme qui aboutira à la nouvelle conception du non-être est le paradoxe qui fera dire à Théétète que tout cela est « très bizarre » (mala atopon) (242c 2). Le paradoxe consiste à admettre que, malgré son inexistence, l'image existe réellement (ontôs) en tant qu'image. Cela va de soi que si l'image avait déjà eu une certaine forme d'existence, le fait de dire maintenant qu'elle existe pleinement ne constituerait pas un paradoxe. Il a fallu d'abord nier absolument (ontôs) l'existence de l'image pour pouvoir ensuite susciter le plus grand étonnement lorsqu'on affirmera que pourtant elle existe absolument (ontôs).

Une nouvelle conception de l'être (et, par conséquent, du non-être) est en train de naître. Selon l'ancienne conception, tout ce qui n'est pas vrai, n'existe pas ; dans la nouvelle conception, l'identité est la garantie de l'existence. Et comme chaque individu est identique à lui-même et différent des autres, identité et différence définissent son être. On ne peut pas nier que le Sophiste est un dialogue étrange : si Parménide est (peut-être) tué, Aristote est certainement né." (p. 415)

15. ———. 1985. "L'héritage parménidien dans le Sophiste de Platon." École pratique des hautes études, Section des sciences religieuses. Annuaire no. 94:409-416.

Le sujet des conférences portant sur la période octobre 1985 - janvier1986 a été la suite presque évidente de celui de l'année précédente. En effet, les conférences sur « Révélation et rationalité aux origines de la

pensée grecque » avaient abouti à la naissance du premier essai de constitution d'une démarche rationnelle à partir de (ou en rapport avec) un univers chargé encore d'éléments mythiques et religieux, démarche

que nous avions située chez Parménide. Cette année nous avons étudié l'héritage du parménidisme, ainsi que son « dépassement », dans le Sophiste de Platon. Nous avons donc voulu nous pencher tant sur la

naissance que sur la « mort » de Parménide, car Platon, par la bouche de l'Étranger d'Élée, a bien voulu « tuer » le Philosophe de l'Être. D'où l'une des inconnues qui nous a amenés à entamer notre enquête : le

crime, a-t-il vraiment eu lieu ?" (p. 409)

16. ———. 1987. "Le non-être absolu dans le Sophiste de Platon." Annuaire de l'École Pratique des Hautes Études – Vème Section no. 95:282-285.

Analyse de Sophiste 237b-239c.

17. ———. 1991. "L'invention de l'école éléatique: Platon, Sophiste, 242D." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 91-124. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

Repris dans N.-L. Cordero, Parmenidea. Venti scritti sull'Eleate e i suoi"eredi", Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag 2019, pp. 194-213.

"Elée était une colonie fondée par le Phocéens vers 540 pour remplacer une ancienne enclave grecque située au nord du promontoire de Palinure, en Lucanie (Grande Grèce).

C'est là que naquirent Parménide et Zénon, à une date difficile à préciser (dans le cas de Parménide, presque simultanément avec la fondation de la colonie, selon la chronologie d'Apollodore qu'adopte Diogène Laërce IX 23; vers l'année 515, selon la chronologie que l'on peut déduire des témoignages de Platon, Theaet. 183 E, Soph. 217 C, Parm. 127 B. Dans le cas de Zénon, entre 508 et 490, selon les mêmes sources). Plus d'un siècle après, entre 368 et 361, date probable de l'écriture du Sophiste, Platon fait état d'un ethnos éléatique (242 D) dans une liste des mouvements philosophiques qui l'ont précédé. La "philosophie éléatique" est devenue ensuite l'un des clichés dont les commentateurs dans un premier temps, et les historiens de la philosophie après, n'ont pas pu se passer. Nous voudrions analyser dans ce travail le rapport qui pourrait s'établir entre les deux philosophes nés à Elée ("éléates", donc) et le "système éléatique" tel qu'il a été canonisé par Platon dans le Sophiste." (pp. 93-94, notes omises)

(...)

"Il ne reste qu'à répondre à deux questions: (a) Platon a-t-il été le premier à regrouper les quatre philosophes [Xénophane, Parménide, Zénon, Melisse] pour inventer ex nihilo l' ethnos éléatique? (b) Pourquoi cette mise en scène a-t-elle lieu dans le Sophiste? A la première question on peut répondre oui et non. J. Mansfeld a démontré dans une étude récente et très exhaustive (89) que des systématisations thématiques étaient pratiquées au moins depuis la Sophistique, et il analyse le cas de !'Anthologie d'Hippias. Selon Mansfeld, dans le passage qui nous occupe, Platon aurait hérité une séquence intégrée par Musée, Orphée (les mystérieux initiateurs de l'école), Xénophane et Parménide (90) dans un schéma contenant des réponses sur la "quantité" des êtres. C'est très probable. Mais Mansfeld admet que Platon effectue aussi des «additions personnelles aux schémas préalables» (91). Il a raison en ce qui concerne le sujet de la liste platonicienne: il s'agit de réponses à la question «combien y a-t-il d'êtres (τα όντα [...] πόσα) (Soph. 242 c). Mais c'est Platon qui ajoute les noms de Zénon et de Mélissos à cette liste, qui expose les fondements conceptuels du groupe, qui justifie doctrinalement - mais à tort - l'appartenance de Parménide à l'équipe, et surtout qui caractérise comme "issus d'Elée" ces "monistes"; il "invente" ainsi l'école éléatique.

La réponse à notre deuxième question a été avancée tout au long de notre travail. Dans le Sophiste, Platon doit se libérer d'une certaine conception de l'être: celle qu'il avait affirmée jusqu'aux dialogues de la période des "critiques". Le Parménide règle les comptes avec la théorie des Formes, mais surtout en ce qui concerne le rapport entre celles-ci et les individus. Dans le Sophiste, c'est la structure même de l'univers des Formes, ainsi que la constitution de chaque Forme, qui est en question. Jusqu'au Sophiste, l'héritage du père Parménide était la source de l'univers des Formes. La nouvelle conception du παντελως ὅν, en revanche, exige le parricide." (pp. 123-124)

(89) J. Mansfeld, Aristotle, Plato, and the Preplatonic Doxography and Chronography, in G. Cambiano (ed.), Storiografia e dossografia nella filosofia antica, Torino 1986, pp. 1-59.

(90) J. Mansfeld, op. cit. (note préc.), p. 27.

(91) Loc. cit., p. 28. Isocrate fera lui aussi des «additions évidentes» au «catalogue original» (loc. cit., p. 34).

18. ———. 1991. "Des circonstances atténuantes dans le parricide du Sophiste de Platon." In Platonisme et néoplatonisme. Antiquité et temps modernes, 29-33. Athène: Cahiers de la Villa Kérylos.

"On cherchera en vain, dans le Sophiste, un rapprochement quelconque entre l'Étranger et la philosophie éléatique. C'est un philosophe, mais différent des compagnons de Parménide et de Zenon. C'est un bon connaisseur de la philosophie qui est née à Élée et qui s'est répandue, évidemment très modifiée (mais ceci est un autre problème) dans tout le monde grec. A la demande de son amphitryon, il entreprend de définir le métier de sophiste, et sa logique impitoyable l'amène à réfuter le système du père de l'éléatisme — il dit «le père Parménide» (241 d) et non pas «mon père Parménide» — , ce personnage qu'il a écouté dans son enfance et qui avait été aussi le créateur des lois d'Élée. Si nous tenons compte de ces éléments, force nous est d'avouer que le crime, malgré son importance, a des véritables circonstances atténuantes." (p. 33)

19. ———. 1992. "Le procès de Parménide dans le Sophiste de Platon." École pratique des hautes études, Section des sciences religieuses. Annuaire no. 101:249-252.

"Nous pouvons affirmer avec certitude que nous ne trouvons pas chez Parménide ce que Platon lui critique : a) l'assimilation du faux au non-être (237a) ; b) une conception de l' être-Un (242d) associée littéralement à quelque chose de « spatial », voire à une sphère (244e). Ces deux affirmations découlent d'une perspective sur la réalité étrangère à celle de Parménide et que Platon résume comme une recherche sur « la quantité et la qualité des êtres » (242c), question qui n'est pas pertinente par rapport à

Parménide, dont les intérêts sont préalables à cette classification. Regardons maintenant les deux chefs d'accusation." (p. 250)

20. ———. 2000. "La participation comme être de la forme dans le Sophiste de Platon." In Ontologie et dialogue. Mélanges en hommage à Pierre Aubenque avec sa collaboration à l'occasion de son 70e anniversaire, edited by Cordero, Nestor-Luis, 33-46. Paris: Vrin.

"Le sujet de ce travail m'a été suggéré par une remarque de Pierre Aubenque à propos d'un passage du Sophiste de Platon. En effet dans le volume collectif Études sur le Sophiste de Platon (2)publié sous la direction de Pierre Aubenque, l'éditeur lui-même a écrit un article remarquable dans lequel il faisait état d'une sorte d'échec. Le titre du travail en témoigne : "Une occasion manquée. La genèse avortée de la distinction entre l'étant et le quelque chose». (p. 33)

(...)

"Je voudrais tout simplement réfléchir sur une affirmation qui fait partie de la conclusion de P. Aubenque. Il dit que Platon,l dans le Sophiste, n'accepte pas de remettre en cause le primat de l'ontologie : et c'est dommage. car la remise en cause de ce primat lui aurait permis de réfléchir sur le statut infra-ontologique de la temporalité et de la fausseté, mais peut-être aussi su le statut supra-ontologique du premier principe, qui, selon la République, n'est pas unee ssence (ousía), puisqu'il est au-delà de l'essence (Rép. 509b) (op. cit. 384).

Je n'ai rien à dire sur la première partie de la conclusion de P. Aubenque en ce qui concerne le statut infra-ontologique de certaines réalités telles que le temps et la fausseté, ou ce que les Stoïciens appelleront les incorporels : et je n'ai rien à dire parce que ce que P. Aubenque a dit me semble tout à fait convaincant. En revanche, je m'interroge sur la pertinence de la deuxième partie de sa conclusion, car il me semble - et je ferai de mon mieux pour justifier mon point de vue - que Platon a bel et bien réfléchi, je n'ose pas dire sur un premier principe, mais sur la question d'une sorte d'être qui n'est pas assimilé à des ousiai. c'est-à-dire, dans son système, à des Formes et il me semble que non seulement il s'est posé la question, mais qu'il a aussi trouvé la réponse. Je voudrais montrer que Platon se demande, à une certaine étape de sa démarche philosophique, quel est le statut d'un être qui n'est pas ceci ou cela. S'agit-il de la question de l'être en tant qu'être, attribuée depuis toujours, pour la première fois à Aristotle?

Pourquoi pas? En tout cas, ce n'est pas la réponse platonicienne qui pourrait être retenue, mais la question. S 'il en est ainsi, Aristote - qui, lui non plus (et P. Aubenque l'a bien démontré) n'a jamais répondu à la

question - ne fera que suivre l'exemple de son maître." (pp. 33-34)

(2) Essais publiés sous la direction de Pierre Aubenque, Naples, Bibliopolis. 1991.

21. ———. 2005. "Du non-être à l'autre. La découverte de l'altérité dans le Sophiste de Platon." Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 195:175-189.

"Le titre de ce travail suggère que nous avons l’intention de parcourir un chemin qui mène d’une notion (celle du non-être) à une autre (celle de « l’autre »). Mais il faut dire d’ores et déjà que la notion de « chemin » n’engage, dans notre cas, que l’interprète (donc, nous-mêmes), et que les auteurs étudiés ici (notamment, Platon) seraient très surpris d’apprendre qu’ils ont « découvert » quelque chose qui est, pour nous, une sorte d’aboutissement d’une longue marche. En effet, il arrive souvent aux philosophes de partager l’expérience que l’on constate aussi chez les grands écrivains : la signification la plus profonde de leurs oeuvres leur échappe." (p. 175)

(...)

"Lorsque Parménide parle de « ce qui est » (to on), il fait allusion au « fait d’être ». C’est d’ores et déjà une notion « dynamique », et c’est pour cette raison que, lorsqu’il présente pour la première fois dans son Poème la notion de « ce qui est », il utilise le verbe « être » à la troisième personne, isolé : esti (fr. 2. 3). « On est » (esti, sans sujet) ; donc, il y a de l’être, dirait Parménide. Cette notion d’être, présente dans tout ce qui est, est très voisine, et même plus, de la Forme de l’être présentée par Platon dans le Sophiste. Platon lui-même dit qu’il ne s’est pas occupé de la question d’un non-être qui serait l’opposé de l’être, et, nous croyons, pour cause : parce que Parménide avait déjà dit ce qu’il fallait dire : qu’il faut être, ou ne pas être du tout (fr. 8. 11). Platon accepte le défi, et trouve des nuances (avant Aristote) dans le sens du mot « être » ; quoi qu’il en soit, en tant que Forme, il donne de l’être, même au non-être, représenté par l’altérité. On pourrait donc dire que Platon confirme et élargit ce que Parménide disait : il y a de l’être, et il y a aussi du non-être, qui, en tant que Forme (celle de l’Autre), occupe une place éminente. Maintenant tout est, même le non-être...

Mais cette Forme de l’être que Platon découvre n’admet pas une négation, et c’est pour cette raison que les Formes les plus importantes ne sont que cinq : repos-mouvement, identité-altérité, être.

La Forme de l’être ne peut pas admettre une Forme contraire...

L’être que Platon propose a le même caractère absolu et nécessaire que l’être parménidien." (pp. 188-189)

22. ———. 2007. "Il faut rétablir la version originale de Sophiste 240b 7-9." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 28 (403):413.

"Si tout ouvrage écrit avant l’invention de l’imprimerie est devenu un “livre”, c’est grâce à l’aide de toute une série de collaborateurs que les auteurs anciens ont eu la chance de rencontrer à titre posthume: les “éditeurs”, des érudits qui ont mis de l’ordre à l’intérieur de la tradition manuscrite de ses ouvrages, qui ont établi des textes “bons à tirer”, et qui dans la plupart des cas ont offert aux érudits modernes des possibilités de lecture non retenues, mais valables, dans les apparats critiques.

(...)

"Cependant, dans quelques occasions – les cas son heureusement très peu nombreux – quelques éditeurs se sont laissés emporter par leur imagination, et des collègues plus respectueux du texte original ont du faire des efforts titanesques afin que la voix authentique de l’auteur puisse s’écouter à nouveau, ou, simplement, pour rétablir un silence salutaire là où des conjectures malheureuses avaient détourné le sens d’un passage.

(...)

"Un cas beaucoup plus grave, car il s’agit de la transformation volontaire d’un texte clair et distinct transmis d’une manière unanime par la tradition manuscrite, est celui d’un passage décisif du Sophiste de Platon (240 B 7-10)." (pp- 403-404)

(...)

"L’étonnement sera le résultat d’un véritable paradoxe: l’admission de l’existence réelle de quelque chose qui n’existe pas. Pour sortir de l’impasse il faudra admettre, malgré ce que l’on croit d’habitude, que le non-être existe d’une certaine manière (πως). Et, pour que l’étonnement soit authentique, c’est Théétète lui-même qui sera obligé de tirer cette conclusion à partir de la définition de l’image (εικών) que lui-même a proposé: une sorte de double d’un modèle mais qui, à la différence de celui-ci, «n’est pas du tout vrai» (οὐδαμῶς ἀληθινόν, 240 B 2). Comme Théétète lui-même admet que ce qui est vrai est ce qui existe réellement ( ὄντως ὂν, B 3) – qui est le contraire ( ἐναντίον, B 5) de ce qui n’est pas vrai – l’Étranger tire la seule conclusion qui s’impose: «tu dis donc que ce qui est semblable (τὸ οικὸς n’existe pas, car tu affirmes qu’il n’est pas vrai». Mais comme Théétète a déjà admis que ce qui ressemble est «semblable» (ἀλλ᾽ οικὸς, B 2), l’Étranger, dans la même phrase, ajoute: «Mais il existe» (B 8). Voilà le texte authentique de Platon." (p. 405)

(...)

"Toutes les éditions actuelles du Sophiste, en revanche, reproduisent la deuxième modification, aussi injustifiée que la précédente mais beaucoup plus grave, car nous n’hésitons pas à affirmer que la séquence de l’argumentation platonicienne a été tergiversé, et l’effet dramatique annulé. Le responsable a été C.F. Hermann, et la preuve du délit se trouve à la page 375 du volume premier de son édition (sans traduction) des dialogues de Platon (Teubner, Leipzig 1851)."(p. 407)

(...)

"Voici son texte, que l’on trouve, d’ailleurs, dans toutes les éditions et traductions actuelles du Sophiste 240 B:

7-8 – ÉTR. Tu dis donc que ce qui est semblable est un non-être [non]9 réel, si tu affirmes qu’il n’est pas vrai.

9 – THÉÉT. Mais il existe d’une certaine manière (πως).

10 – ÉTR. Non véritablement, tu dis.

Nous avons déjà dit que le texte que l’on trouve dans la totalité de la tradition manuscrite du passage (nous croyons avoir fait l’“autopsie” de tous les codices existants aujourd’hui), ainsi que dans les éditions antérieures à celle de 1851 (à l’exception de Schleiermacher) est celui que nous avons présenté plus haut. Les petites divergences (sur lesquelles nous reviendrons) concernent des adverbes ou des négations fournis par des sources manuscrites diverses, mais jamais un changement des répliques ni du statut de l’adverbe πως. La modification de Hermann, par conséquent, ne se justifie pas; mais il donne cependant des arguments." (p. 408)

23. ———. 2011. "Une conséquence inattendue de l'assimilation du non-être à l'Autre dans le Sophiste." In Plato's Sophist: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlíček, Aleš and Karfík, Filip, 188-198. Praha: Oikoymenh.

24. Cornea, Andrei. 2009. "Le Sophiste de Platon: cinq ou six «genres suprêmes» ? ." Semitica et Classica:43-49.

Résumé : "Il existe une ancienne interprétation (qu’on retrouve déjà chez Plotin) selon laquelle, dans le Sophiste, Platon aurait pris en considération seulement cinq «genres suprêmes»: le mouvement, le repos, l’être, le même et l’autre. Or, Platon admet aussi une certaine existence du non-être (à l’encontre du «père Parménide») qu’il définit comme «autre que l’être». Il s’ensuit, selon cette même interprétation, que Platon aurait identifié l’autre et le non-être. Cet article s’interroge sur le bien-fondé de cette interprétation et cherche à montrer que Platon distingue l’autre du non-être, de sorte que le nombre des genres suprêmes dans le Sophiste serait six et non pas cinq. La thèse est étayée de plusieurs sortes d’arguments.

Premièrement, Platon ne dit jamais que le nombre définitif des genres suprêmes est seulement cinq; au contraire, il laisse entendre que ce nombre est plus important.

Deuxièmement, il y a des raisons logiques qui s’opposent à ce que non-être et autre (celui-ci défini comme «autre que l’être») soient identiques. Par exemple, cela amènerait à confondre «l’autre que l’être» avec «l’autre», c’est-à-dire à confondre un sujet avec une relation.

Troisièmement, il s’ensuit une conséquence inévitable de la distinction entre l’autre et le non-être, étant donné que la théorie des Formes veut que tout sujet auquel on attribue une certaine propriété, participe de la Forme correspondante: cette conséquence est la «Forme des négations», distincte de la «Forme des relations». Or, cette «Forme des négations» est mentionnée par Aristote dans deux passages de la Métaphysique, à côté de la «Forme des relations», lorsqu’il évoque les objections contre la théorie des Formes que l’on formulait au sein de l’Académie.

L’article soutient qu’il est vraisemblable que, après le Sophiste, Platon ait abandonné la théorie des six genres suprêmes, tout en explorant des solutions alternatives dans le Philèbe, le Timée et la «doctrine non écrite»."

25. de Vogel, Cornelia. 1953. "Platon a-t-il ou n'a-t-il pas introduit le mouvement dans son monde intelligible?" In Proceedings of the XIth International Congress of Philosophy. Vol. 12, 61-67. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Reprinted in: C. de Vogel, Philosophia. Vol. I: Studies in Greek Philosophy, Assen: Van Gorcum 1970, pp. 176-183.

26. Diés, Auguste. 1909. La définition de l’Être et la nature des Idées dans le Sophiste de Platon. Paris: Félix Alcan.

Nouvelle édition Paris: Vrin 1963.

"Notre étude comprend donc cinq chapitres :

I. — Le rôle du concept de mouvement dans le Sophiste.

II. — La définition de TÊtre par la δύναμις.

III. — Le mouvement de l'οὐσία.

— Le παντελώς ον.

V. — Le Communauté des Genres.

Enfin, dans notre Conclusion, nous résumerons brièvement les résultats de notre étude." (p. VI)

(...)

"Lors même que les Amis des Idées seraient des Platoniciens ou Platon lui-même, il n'en resterait pas moins que le Sophiste ne met pas, dans l'οὐσία, autre chose que le mouvement passif qui résulte, pour elle, du fait d'être connue; il serait vrai encore que le παντελώς ον, en qui sont affirmés le mouvement, l'âme, la vie et la pensée, est le monde sensible et non pas l'idée platonicienne; il serait démontré, autant que nous avons pu le faire, que la définition de l'Être par le pouvoir de pâtir et d'agir n'est pas la proclamation solennelle d'une théorie énergétique de l'Être et que l'essentielle nouveauté du Sophiste, la Communauté des Genres, n'est pas la conséquence de ce dynamisme. La théorie des Idées resterait tout aussi exempte de transformation que si la thèse combattue dans les Amis des Idées eût été celle des Mégariques.

Seulement il deviendrait étrange de voir Platon, auteur du Phèdre et du Phédon, lire et combattre rétrospectivement en ces dialogues une théorie de la réalité exclusive de l'ousia et de l'éternelle immobilité du Tout. La preuve d'une transformation de la théorie des Idées dans le Sophiste serait une présomption en faveur de l'identification des Amis des Idées aux Platoniciens classiques : si Platon a mis, dans les Idées, à partir du Sophiste, le mouvement et la vie consciente, il a pu, il a peut-être dû, de ce nouveau point de vue, traiter sa doctrine antérieure comme une doctrine d'immobilité.

Nous avons essayé de prouver que cette transformation n'est pas opérée dans le Sophiste. Nous savons, d'ailleurs, que bien des traits différencient le platonisme classique de la théorie soutenue par les Amis des Idées. Si d'autres sont forcés d'identifier ces Néo-Eléates et presque obligés par leur thèse à y comprendre Platon lui-même, nous avons, nous, le droit de confesser provisoirement notre ignorance et de maintenir seulement ces simples propositions : le Sophiste ne combat pas la théorie classique des Idées, le Sophiste ne transforme pas la théorie classique des Idées; le Sophiste ne combat pas, ne transforme pas Platon." (p. 133)

27. Dixsaut, Monique. 1987. "Platon et le Logos de Parménide (Sophiste, 241d-245e)." In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 215-253. Paris: Vrin.

Repris dans M. Dixsaut, Platon et la question de la pensée: études platoniciennes I, Paris: Vrin 2015, Chapitre VI.

"Avant d’aborder l’examen critique des doctrines de l’être, l’Étranger adresse trois prières à Théétète. Dans la première, il lui demande de se contenter «du peu qu’on pourra gagner, par quelque biais (πη) que ce soit, sur un logos aussi fort que celui de Parménide»; dans la deuxième, de ne point le regarder comme un parricide «s’il est contraint de mettre à l’épreuve le logos de son père Parménide»; dans la troisième, de ne pas l’accuser de manquer de mesure, de délirer, s’il «entreprend de réfuter ce logos», à supposer qu’il en soit capable (Soph. 241c-242a).

Du sens que l’on accorde à cette manière d’annoncer l’entreprise comme mise à l’épreuve d’un logos fort, paternel et sacré — et de l’importance que l’on attache (ou non) à cette manière de l’introduire, dépend toute la lecture du texte qui suit. La relecture de ce célèbre passage du Sophiste aura donc pour objet de déterminer sur quoi porte exactement la réfutation, comment et dans quel but elle se conduit." (p. 215)

28. ———. 1991. "La négation, le non-être et l'autre dans le Sophiste." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 165-213. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

Repris dans M. Dixsaut, Platon et la question de la pensée: études platoniciennes I, Paris: Vrin 2015, Chapitre VII.

"L'analyse de la négation suit l'examen, par l'Etranger, de ceux qu'on dit être les plus grands parmi les genres; elle aboutit à la définition du non-être comme Forme assurée de son être et de son unité, possédant sa nature propre. La finalité de toute cette partie du dialogue est explicite : ne pas être un homme sans culture et sans philosophie, donc tenir le λογος pour l'un des genres qui sont. Pour cela, il a fallu établir, contre les opsimathes, la communication des genres; elle suppose que, d'une certaine manière, l'être n'est pas. La manière qu'a l'être de ne pas être, c'est de ne pas être les autres : «autant de fois les autres sont, autant de fois il n'est pas» (257 A 4-5), d'être autre que tous ses autres. L'articulation des genres entre eux garantit la possibilité du logos. Réciproquement, affirmer que le non-être, sous un certain rapport, existe, et qu'il est comme l'être une Forme une, είδος εν, va permettre d'affirmer la réalité du logos, d'affirmer que, tout en n'étant pas l'être, il en participe, il est. La réalité du discours a partie liée avec la différence de l'être et avec l'affirmation de l'être de cette différence.

De la pluralité et de la communauté des genres découle la nécessité d'attribuer le non-être et l'affirmation d'une pluralité infinie de non-étants (256 D-257 A 6). Cette attribution est !'œuvre de la nature de l'autre: l'existence de la différence, en différenciant les genres, les rend du même coup autres que l'être, donc, sous ce rapport, non étants. Ainsi, attribuer le non-être, c'est attribuer l'autre relativement à l'être. La réduction de la négation à l'altérité est-elle propre à ce seul terme, "non-être", ou ne fait-il que suivre la règle commune à toute expression et à toute attribution négative? C'est là l'objet d'un passage de transition, qui conclut le développement sur les cinq grands genres et introduit le morcellement de l'autre en "petites parties" [257 B 1-257 C 3]." (pp. 167-168)

29. ———. 1992. "La dernière définition du Sophiste (Sophiste 265b-268d)." In Sophies maietores = Chercheurs de sagesse : hommage à Jean Pépin, edited by Goulet-Cazé, Marie-Odile , Madec, Goulven and O'Brien, Denis, 45-75. Paris: Institut d'études augustiniennes.

Repris dans M. Dixsaut, Platon et la question de la pensée : études platoniciennes I, Paris: Vrin 2015, Chapitre VIII.

30. ———. 2000. "Images du philosophe." Kléos no. 4:191-248.

"Le sophiste est un être difficile à capturer, mais le philosophe ne l’est pas moins; cependant, “en ce qui le concerne la difficulté est d’un autre ordre qu’en ce qui concerne le sophiste”(1). Si, pour ce dernier, elle tient à l’obscurité du lieu où il s’est réfugié (le non-être), le philosophe “au contraire est difficile à voir en raison de l’éclatante lumière de la région” où il réside. Les objets sur lesquelles il réfléchit portent tous la “marque” (idea) de l’être, cesont des réalités véritablement existantes et pleinement intelligibles. “Or les yeux de l’âme de la plupart sont incapables d’avoir la force de regarder vers ce qui est divin”(2). La plupart des hommes, donc, ont une âme impuissante à voir et à comprendre ce qui est. Pour eux, l’éclat divin propre à l’intelligible est indiscernable de l’obscurité de l’inintelligible, ils sont semblablement aveuglés

par l’excès de lumière et par son absence. C’est donc leur incapacité à saisir la nature des réalités dont s’occupe le philosophe qui entraîne leur méconnaissance de ce qu’est réellement un philosophe."

(1) Platon, Sophiste, 254 a 1-2: ἐναργῶς καὶ τοῦτον, ἕτερον μὴν τρόπον ἥ τε τοῦ σοφιστοῦ χαλεπότης ἥ τε τούτου.

(2) Platon, Sophiste, 254

31. Dorion, Louis André. 2001. "Le destin ambivalent de la sixième définition du Sophiste : l’exemple d’Aristote et de Clément d’Alexandrie." In Une philosophie dans l’histoire : hommage à Raymond Klibansky, edited by Melkevik, Bjarne and Narbonne, Jean-Marc, 47-63. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval.

"La sixième définition du Sophiste comporte donc à la fois un volet logique et un volet moral, la dimension logique étant toutefois clairement subordonnée à la dimension morale. Ce double aspect de l'elenchos ne sera pas nécessairement conservé par les auteurs qui s' inspireront de ce texte du Sophiste. Les dimensions logique et éthique, que Platon s'efforce de concilier et d'articuler en subordonnant la première à la seconde, peuvent être indépendantes l'une de l'autre, si bien que l'on peut souscrire uniquement à l'une ou l'autre. C'est précisément cette dissociation des aspects logique et éthique que j'aimerais mettre en lumière chez deux auteurs, Aristote et Clément d'Alexandrie s'inspirent l'un et l'autre, à des fins différentes, de la description de l'elenchos en Sophiste 230b-e. Comme je m'efforcerai de le démontrer, Aristote ne retient de cette description que le volet logique en faisant l'impasse sur la perspective pédagogique qui confère pourtant sa finalité à la réfutation dialectique. Quant à Clément d'Alexandrie, il semble ignorer la structure logique de l'elenchos, au point même que son elenchos ne se présente plus comme une réfutation dialectique, mais il demeure néanmoins fidèle à l'autre aspect de l'elenchos, puisqu'il en fait un instrument pédagogique au service d'une finalité morale, qui n'est toutefois pas identique, en dépit des apparences, à celle visée par Platon." (pp. 49-50)

Références

L-A. Dorion. Les Réfutations sophistiques d'Aristote : introduction, traduction et commentaire. Paris. Vrin (coll. «Histoire des doctrines de l'Antiqui1é classique», 18), 1995.

Clément d'Alexandrie. Le Pédagogue, Livre I, introduction, texte, traduction et notes de M. Harl. H.-I. Marrou, Paris, Cerf (coll. «Sources Chrétiennes 70), 1960.

32. Fattal, Michel. 1991. "Le Sophiste : logos de la synthèse ou logos de la division?" In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 145-163. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

Repris dans: M. Fattal, Logos. Pensée et vérité dans la philosophie grecque, Paris: l'Harmattan 2001, pp. 161-180.

Trad. it. "Ricerche sul logos da Omero a Plotino", Milano, Vita e Pensiero, 2005, pp. 104-115.

"C'est en remontant aux origines de la pensée grecque, représentée par la poésie d'Homère d'une part et par la philosophie d'Héraclite et de Parménide d'autre part, que l'on se propose de comprendre l'originalité de la pensée platonicienne du logos telle qu'elle a été élaborée dans le Sophiste. Ce retour aux origines revêt une importance capitale pour la compréhension du logos platonicien. En fait, il s'agit de montrer que l'utilisation platonicienne du logos n'est pas sans se référer indirectement au fonctionnement simultanément synthétique et analytique du verbe legein tel qu'il apparaît pour la première fois chez Homère. La notion de dialectique représente, selon nous, la thématisation des deux fonctions synthétique et analytique déjà contenues dans le legein homérique. Platon se serait laissé guider par l'étymologie du verbe legein pour élaborer sa théorie philosophique et linguistique du logos et de la dialectique.

Compte tenu de cela, le logos du Sophiste ne serait pas non plus sans présenter certaines similitudes structurelles avec le logos d'Héraclite, qui semble pour sa part mettre l'accent sur l'idée de synthèse, et avec le logos de Parménide qui paraît fondé sur celle de l'analyse. Notre but étant de montrer, que malgré la valorisation des deux fonctions de la dialectique (Soph. 253 B-E), Platon finit par privilégier le langage de la division en se rangeant plutôt du côté de Parménide." (p. 147)

33. ———. 2009. Le langage chez Platon. Autour du Sophiste. Paris: L'Harmattan.

Sommaire : Avertissement 11; Introduction 13; Chapitre I: Le Cratyle 15; Chapitre Il: Le Phèdre 25; Chapitre III: Le Sophiste 39; 1. Le problème de la prédication (251 a - 259 d) : une difficulté linguistique, logique et philosophique 45; 2. Les conditions de possibilité du discours vrai et du discours faux (259 d - 264 b) 65; Conclusion 81; Annexe : Une mise en perspective du logos platonicien 85; Bibliographie sélective 103-114.

"Le Sophiste représente un des sommets de la philosophie en général et de la pensée grecque et platonicienne en particulier. C'est dans le Sophiste que Platon élabore une théorie philosophique du langage qui est complète et achevée. Le présent ouvrage, destiné à un large public et qui est également susceptible d'alimenter la réflexion des spécialistes, se propose de montrer toute l'originalité de la pensée platonicienne en matière de langage. Il entend ainsi décrire l'itinéraire intellectuel et philosophique qui a conduit progressivement Platon à élaborer sa théorie de la proposition, et à réfléchir sur les conditions de possibilité du vrai et du faux dans les discours." (p. 13)

34. Frère, Jean. 1991. "Platon, lecteur de Parménide dans le Sophiste." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 125-143. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

"Bien que souvent négligé, le témoignage de Platon sur Parménide est sans aucun doute capital. Comment Platon lit-il Parménide avant de le discuter ?

Platon, certes, lorsqu'il a parlé de Parménide, quand il a mis en scène Parménide, n'a pas toujours été fidèle à Parménide. Dans le dialogue intitulé Parménide, ce que Parménide. est censé envisager quant aux hypothèses sur l'Un (l'Un est un, l'Un est, etc.) constitue analyse platonicienne, non parménidienne. Quand, dans le Théétète, Platon évoque Parménide, c'est à propos d'un thème parménidien, non d'un vers précis du Poème que se fait la discussion (180 D).

Dans le Sophiste, au contraire, Platon cite Parménide; ceci par trois fois: 237 A, 244 E, 258 D." (p. 127, note omise)

(...)

"Ainsi selon Platon dans le Sophiste y avait-il chez Parménide énoncés vrais, énoncés erronés, quant à l'Etant et quant aux étants. C'est le problème du bien-fondé de tels énoncés qui allait amener Platon à contourner Parménide énonçant de l'Etant son caractère d'inengendré et indestructible Englobant. «Il nous faudra nécessairement, pour nous défendre, mettre à la question la thèse de notre père Parménide» (Soph. 241 D). Au dialecticien rationaliste usant de mythes rationnels Platon, Parménide apparaissait, tels les autres Présocratiques, comme un abusif "conteur de mythes". «Ils m'ont tout l'air de nous conter des mythes, comme on ferait à des enfants» (Soph. 242 C)31• Mais, même si Parménide a intégré à son œuvre des figures mythiques, Parménide selon Platon n'a point vraiment "conté de mythes". Des pensées désormais incontournables ont été énoncées par Parménide.

Platon le sait et l'a écrit. Or Platon ne nous montre pas seulement en Parménide un penseur de l'Etre un, mais aussi un penseur de l'Etre-sphère et de l'Etant dont se peuvent énoncer avec certitude bien des qualifications et bien des négations essentielles." (p. 143)

35. Fronterotta, Francesco. 1995. "L'être et la participation de l'autre, une nouvelle ontologie dans le Sophiste." Les Études Philosophiques:311-353.

"Mais sur quelle base repose l'interdit de Parménide, selon l'analyse de l'Eléate ? Quels sont les paradoxes et les difficultés du non-être ?

C'est sur ce point que porte l'enquête menée dans la section qui suit (3)." (p. 312)

(...)

"Pour sortir de telles difficultés, il est nécessaire d'examiner le raisonnement de Parménide, pour vérifier s'il est possible de réfuter le caractère péremptoire de sa négation du non-être : c'est seulement démontrant que, sous certains aspects, le non-être est, et que par conséquent il peut être objet d'analyse et de discours, que l'on pourra éclairer l' « endroit d'accès difficile » où s'est réfugié le sophiste; en effet, si l'on songeait à discuter les paradoxes de la fausse opinion et des imitations, ou des arts qui les touchent, avant d'avoir analysé en profondeur la question du non-être, qui est à la base de ces paradoxes, on tomberait immédiatement en contradiction avec soi-même (4). C'est un point important, parce qu'il met en relation le problème de l'être et du non-être avec celui du discours vrai ou faux, opérant ainsi un renvoi du plan logique au plan ontologique, et établissant une connexion nécessaire et indiscutable." (p. 313)

(...)

"La discussion sur la nature de l'être et du non-être est introduite par l'analyse des doctrines philosophiques antérieures où ce problème est pris en compte. L'Eléate dresse d'abord la liste des différentes positions et des philosophes qui les ont défendues; mais leur interprétation est tellement difficile qu'il doit suggérer une autre approche : il vaudra mieux classer ces doctrines par groupes, en examinant la théorie de l'être qu'elles présupposent (1)." (pp. 317-318)

(3) Soph. 237 b7 - 241 e 5.

(4) Ibid., 241 e1-5.

(1) Soph., 242 b6-243 b 9.

36. ———. 2008. "La notion de δύναμις dans le Sophiste de Platon : koinônia entre les formes et methexis du sensible à l'intelligible." In Dunamis. Autour de la puissance chez Aristote, edited by Crubellier, Michel, Jaulin, Annick, Lefebvre, David and Morel, Pierre-Marie, 187-224. Louvain-La-Neuve: Peeters.

"Prémisse. Le Parménide transmet aux dialogues qui le suivent deux problèmes fondamentaux dans la réflexion tardive de Platon, 1° celui de la κοινωνία των γενών, évoqué d’une manière allusive en Parménide 129b-130a (qui annonce un programme de travail qui consiste en l’explication du τέρας extraordinaire de la distinction et de la conjonction des formes)(1) 2° celui de la μέθεξις du sensible à l’intelligible, tellement discuté qu’il représente la question essentielle examinée dans le Parménide. Ce dernier, cependant, ne lui donne pas de réponse définitive: si aucune des formes «ne se trouve chez nous», dans le sensible (μηδεμίαν αυτών εἶναι έν ήμϊν), «les choses sensibles n’ont pas plus d’efficace sur les humes que les formes n’en ont sur les choses sensibles. Au contraire, je lr répète, c’est sur elles-mêmes que les formes ont de l’efficace et c’est en relation avec elles-mêmes qu’elles existent; et pareillement les choses sensibles n’existent qu’en relation avec elles-mêmes» (<τά εϊδη> αυτά ου ιών καί προς αυτά έκεϊνά τέ έστι ... τα παρ’ήμϊν ωσαύτως προς αύτά)(2). Mais les formes dans leur ensemble sont en même temps ce à quoi participent les choses sensibles, ce qui fait que ces dernières tirent justement de cette participation leur réalité propre, leurs qualités et leurs dénominations, d’où le problème de savoir si la participation entre les formes et les choses sensibles est compatible avec leur séparation réciproque, le fait de «se trouver chez nous» étant, pour les formes, contradictoire(3).

Une fois ces deux questions soulevées, si on admet que le Parménide précède de quelques années la composition du Sophiste, il est opportun de vérifier si le Sophiste se propose de leur donner une réponse. C’est précisément ce que je vais essayer de faire dans les deux parties qui composent cette étude." (pp. 187-188)

(1) Je parlerai dans cet article de formes (εϊδη) ou de genres (γένη) intelligibles, car le Sophiste emploie ces deux termes sans poser entre eux aucune distinction véritable. Sur l'interprétation de ce passage du Parménide, voir mon article Fronterotta [2001 a].

Avant ce passage du Parménide, il n’y a que très peu de références à la question de la participation des formes entre elles dans les dialogues de Platon (Cratyle 438e 5-10; République V 476a 4-7; Phédon 104b 6-105a 5).

(2) Voir Parménide 133a -e. La traduction du Parménide est celle, légèrement modifiée, de Brisson [1999^2] Platon. Parménide, GF-Flammarion, Paris.

(3) Concernant le «dilemme» de la participation des choses sensibles aux formes intelligibles, voir récemment Brisson [2005] «Come rendere conto della partecipazione del sensibile all'intellegibile in Platone», in Eidos-Idea. Platone, Aristotele e la tradizione platonica, éds. F. Fronterotta, W. Leszl, Sankt Augustin, pp. 25-36, et mes études Fronterotta [2001 b| ΜΕΘΕΞΙΣ. La teoria platonica delle idee e la partecipazione delle cose empiriche. Dai dialoghi giovanili al Parmenide, Pisa. pp. 115 57; 195-222; 271-314, et [2000] «Que feras-tu, Socrate, de la philosophie? L’un et les plusieurs dans l'exercice dialectique du Parménide de Platon», Revue de Métaphysique et d Morale, pp. 273-99.

37. ———. 2019. "Platon sur ΟΝΟΜΑ, ΡΗΜΑ et ΛΟΓΟΣ : théories du ΣΗΜΑΙΝΕΙΝ en Sophiste 261d-262e." Methodos. Savoirs et textes no. 19:1-20.

Résumé : "Dans cet article, j’examine la conception platonicienne du λόγος, en Sophiste 261d-262e, en tant que succession (συνέχεια) « signifiante » de ὄνομα et ῥῆμα, par un commentaire du passage cité du dialogue. Je discute particulièrement les points suivants : 1. Pourquoi « les termes prononcés », dans les cas d’une succession de noms ou d’une succession de verbes, n’indiquent aucune action ni aucune inaction (οὐδεμίαν ... πρᾶξιν οὐδ᾽ ἀπραξίαν), aucune réalité qui est ni aucune réalité qui n’est pas (οὐδὲ οὐσίαν ὅντος οὐδὲ μὴ ὄντος, 262c2-4) ? 2. Quelle est la différence entre « nommer » (ὀνομάζειν) et « dire» (λέγειν), en 262d4-6 ? 3. Quelle est la différence des constructions : λόγος περὶ + génitif et λόγος + génitif, en 262e-263a ? 4. Plus généralement : est-ce que le critère de vérité du discours établi en 263b-d est valide, rétrospectivement, pour toute forme de σημαίνειν, y compris le ὀνομάζειν ?"

38. ———. 2020. "Être, présence et vérité : Platon chez Heidegger (et à rebours)." Studia Phaenomenologica no. 20:167-189.

Abstract: "In this article, I wish to present and discuss some Heideggerian theses concerning the notions of “being,” “presence” and “truth” in Plato’s dialogues, taking as a point of departure Heidegger’s course on Plato’s Sophist given in Marburg in 1924–1925. My aim is to show that the fundamental philosophical link that unites them makes it possible to better understand seemingly obscure aspects of the Platonic conception of being and knowledge as it is presented in particular in the concluding pages of Republic V, to which this article is therefore essentially devoted."

39. Gaudron, Edmond. 1960. "Sur l'objet du Sophiste." Laval théologique et philosophique no. 16:70-93.

"L’étude des derniers dialogues platoniciens, depuis une soixantaine d’années, est généralement marquée des mêmes préoccupations : montrer que la théorie des idées, a subi, ou non, une transformation, — que Platon a finalement conçu, ou non, les idées comme des activités intellectuelles, des idées forces et même des esprits, — ou bien encore que de pareilles façons de concevoir les idées se retrouvent d’une certaine manière dans les dialogues écrits avant ceux qui ne laisseraient plus de doute sur la pensée de Platon.

(...)

Toutes les discussions qui se sont élevées autour de ce problème, ont cependant retenu l’attention des exégètes à ce point qu’il est permis de se demander si, pour édifier ou démolir une thèse ou même une hypothèse, on n’aurait pas fait passer au second plan des préoccupations auxquelles Platon lui-même donnait la première place. C’est ce que prêtent à penser les analyses dont le Sophiste, par exemple, a été l’objet.

On a bien insisté sur l’objet de ce dialogue : essayer de penser le non-être et en déduire que Parménide avait tort de dire : « Jamais tu ne feras que le non-être soit ». Il y a du non-être, autrement l’erreur est impossible, puisque se tromper c’est prendre une chose pour une autre, c’est dire qu’une chose est alors qu’elle n’est pas.

Mais il n’est pas facile de réfuter directement la thèse de Parménide.

Platon montre bien que le non-être échappe d’abord à toute définition et c’est ce qui le conduit à cette conclusion : peut-être ne savons-nous pas ce qu’est le non-être, parce que nous ignorons d’abord ce qu’est l'être lui-même. Et nous arrivons à ce long passage du dialogue (2) où Platon fait une revue sommaire des idées que se sont fait de l’être les présocratiques et les amis des idées."(p. 70)

(2) 2426-2546.

40. Gavray, Marc-Antoine. 2006. "La dunamis dans le Sophiste." Philosophie Antique. Problèmes, Renaissance, Usages no. 6:29-57.

Résumé : "En Sophiste, 247d8-e4, l’Étranger d’Élée pose un horos de l’étant comme « puissance d’agir et de subir (dynamis tou poiein kai tou pathein) ». L’objectif que se fixe cet article est d’envisager quel sens donner à cet horos et quelle valeur accorder à la dunamis dans ce dialogue. D’une comparaison avec d’autres occurrences dans le corpus platonicien (Phèdre et Théétète), il ressort que le Sophiste amène un double déplacement : d’une part il fait passer la question de la dunamis sur le champ de l’Etre d’une manière inédite, d’autre part son protagoniste n’attribue plus la formule à Hippocrate ou à Protagoras, mais il la présente comme le moyen, qu’il s’apprête à défendre, de sortir d’une impasse. Par une lecture des arguments qui annoncent et qui suivent cet horos, il apparaît que celui-ci possède une grande efficacité pour la compréhension de la structure du dialogue et de l’évolution de son argumentation. En même temps qu’il sert à définir l’Etre, il permet d’expliquer le fonctionnement de la koinonia des Genres et de jeter les bases de la théorie du non-être. En définitive, il se révèle être un truchement opérant pour dépasser définitivement la sophistique en lui substituant une véritable ontologie philosophique.".

41. ———. 2007. Simplicius lecteur du Sophiste. Contribution à l'étude de l'exégèse néoplatonicienne tardive. Paris: Klincksieck.

Table des matières: Introduction 9; Chapitre : L'hèritage néoplatonicien (Plotin, Proclus, Damascius) 13; Chapitre II: Les citations du Sophiste 35; Chapitre III: Simplicius lecteur du Sophiste 55; Conclusion 91; Traductions 95; Commentaire sur les Catégories 97; Commentaire sur la Physique 113; Commentaire sur le Traité de l'Âme 193; Annexe: Construction du Sophiste 203; Bibliographie 207; Index locorum 215; Index nominum 223; Index rerum 225-228.

"Pour les commentateurs contemporains, le Sophiste constitue un dialogue clé au sein de l’œuvre de Platon. La complexité de sa doctrine et son rôle dans l’ensemble, la rigueur de sa méthode et l’enjeu de ses réfutations, l’identité de ses personnages et le rapport à Parménide : autant de questions qui ne cessent d’alimenter les débats. Or, au lieu de les aborder frontalement, il est possible d’adopter un autre point de vue, consistant à interroger le rapport qu’entretenaient les Anciens avec le texte, en particulier les Néoplatoniciens. Et si Plotin et Proclus, les grands noms du néoplatonisme, ont fait l’objet de quelques études récentes, personne n’a encore abordé cette question à propos de Simplicius - bien qu’il se présente comme un lecteur assidu du Sophiste. Une telle entreprise enrichirait pourtant nos connaissances de l'histoire de l’interprétation et de l’étude de ce dialogue." (p. 9)

(...)

"Par sa méthode exégétique et par sa perspective de commentateur d’Aristote, Simplicius se démarque de ses prédécesseurs néoplatoniciens. Dès lors, nous commencerons par analyser leurs grilles de lecture respectives, car en décryptant leur approche du Sophiste et en cherchant l’objectif qu’ils se fixent, nous espérons dégager les traits propres à chacune. De cette manière, nous espérons rendre compte du fait que Plotin met en œuvre la dialectique qu’il définit dans ses Ennéades, afin d’aboutir à une déduction des Genres de l’Être; que Proclus systématise les Dialogues de Platon et les rassemble dans une structure théologique où le Sophiste se voit accorder une place de choix par rapport au Parménide, malgré les apparences ; enfin, que Damascius, en raison de sa formation de rhéteur, retourne au texte original, mais que son regard varie si l’on observe son œuvre de philosophe ou bien celle de commentateur." (p. 10)

42. Grasso, Elsa. 2008. "Socrate dans le Sophiste : Platon, le juge et le prétendant." In Socratica 2005: Studi sulla letteratura socratica antica presentati alle Giornate di studio di Senigallia, edited by Rossetti, Livio and Stavru, Alessandro, 305-325. Bari: Levante.

43. ———. 2021. "L’ousia dans le Théétète et le Sophiste." Chôra. Revue d'études anciennes et médiévales no. 18-19:41-71.

Abstract: "The Theætetus and the Sophist present in succession two “battles” regarding ousia. In so doing, ousia is placed at the heart of what is essential to both dialogues: in fact, ousia interconnects with the conditions of possibility, both physical and metaphysical, of logos and epistèmè.

However, each dialogue brings differing conceptions of discourse and science into play, and both articulate a different train of thought regarding being.

Ousia appears differently in the two dialogues and it is not the same thing as the notion of ousia, usually considered to be truly Platonic, presented in the central books of the Republic, which neither the Socrates of the Theætetus nor the Stranger of the Sophist put forward.

Both present ways out of the battles, each has its own middle course. Against the thesis of the non-immutability of ousia, the Theætetus establishes that there is not only motion. And, unlike the doctrine that reduces ousia to Forms excluding all motion, the Sophist shows that while there is not only motion, there is not only rest either. Such different orientations in the treatment of ousia, just below and just above doctrinal Platonism as it were, adjust to distinctions in the epistemological stakes: even if the Theætetus emphasizes that science proceeds from an activity of the soul bringing together “commons”, it is not yet a question, as it will be the following day, of systematically getting epistèmè to intellectually grasp a set of eidetic relationships, nor of making

logos itself the elaboration of relationships. One needs to have left the field where those in favour of motion are challenged on their own ground, and in an albeit transformed field marked out by the partisans of eide which is not the field hierarchical metaphysics either, it will become possible to analyse the discourse itself as a relational framework that is consistent with the framework of ousia."

44. Guérard, Christian. 1991. "Les citations du Sophiste dans les oeuvres de Proclus." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 495-508. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

"Liste complète pour les Tria Opuscula, !'In Alcibiadem, !'In Parmenidem, les cinq premiers livres de la Théologie platonicienne et l'In Cratylum" (p. 495)

45. Hoekstra, Marieke, and Scheppers, Frank. 2003. "Ὄνομα, ῥῆμα et λόγος dans le Cratyle et le Sophiste de Platon : analyse du lexique et analyse du discours." L'antiquité Classique no. 72:55-73.

"Cette étude concerne (i) les valeurs sémantiques des mots Ὄνομα, ῥῆμα et λόγος en grec classique (paragraphe 1), et (ii) la façon dont ces valeurs sont mises en œuvre dans le développement thématique de quelques passages chez Platon ( Cra. 424e-425a et Soph. 261c-262e), passages qui sont important du point de vue de l'histoire de la linguistique (paragraphes 2 et 3). À ce propos, nous essaierons de décrire le fonctionnement de ces mots dans ces passages à partir de l'hypothèse que le vocabulaire de Platon n'est pas encore une terminologie spécialisée, mais puise dans les ressources du lexique commun de l'époque.

Le champ sémantique de la parole dans le lexique grec « commun» (non spécialisé) de l'époque classique est assez différent des champs lexicaux comparables dans les langues modernes; ainsi, il n'y a pas d'équivalents (sauf très approximatifs) en grec classique pour des termes fondamentaux comme 'mot' ou 'phrase'; de plus, ce champ a connu une évolution diachronique importante entre les époques homérique et classique (évolution qui continue d'ailleurs ensuite). D'autre part, il y a eu une mutation profonde dans la conceptualité philosophique ou scientifique qui a donné lieu - après Platon - à des concepts tels que sujet, attribut, référence, etc., concepts qui n'existent pas encore à l'époque de Platon, mais qui déterminent la tradition grammaticale occidentale." (p. 55, notes omises)

46. Husson, Suzanne. 2018. "Autarcie du Bien et dépendance de l’être ? De la République au Sophiste." Chôra. Revue d'études anciennes et médiévales no. 15-16:45-66.

Abstract: "Even thought Parmenides doesn’t use αὐτάρκης and any noun derived from this root, the Being is conceived by him as self-sufficient (v. 8,33). Plato, for its part, never uses this term concerning the intelligible reality; however, in the Sophist, he allusively challenges Parmenides self-sufficiency of Being and outlines an ontology that is conflicting with it. On the other hand self-sufficiency is explicitly ascribed by Plato to the human good (Philebus, 20d, 67a), to the divine world (Timaeus, 33d), and also to the virtuous man (Republic, 387d). This paper aims to demonstrate that these facets (theological or anthropological) of self-sufficiency are consistent with the supremacy of the idea of the Good in the Republic, which can be understood as a structural kind of self-sufficiency."

47. Ildefonse, Frédérique. 2021. "Quelques différences entre le Cratyle et le Sophiste." In Plato's Cratylus. Proceedings from the Eleventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Mikes, Vladimir. Leiden: Brill.

A paraître.

Abstract : "In this contribution, I seek to propose an approach to certain aspects of Cratylus by combining two paths : an approach to Cratylus by the Sophist and an approach, enlightened by stoicism, of what both of the dialogues develop. I do not propose to consider what the Cratylus would anticipate from the Sophist in terms of language study, but rather what the Sophist will shift from the investigation of the name, specific to the Cratylus. By reading the Cratylus closely, one can better see what operations the Stranger carries out in the Sophist : on truth, on the relationship between legein and logos, on logos and its parts, as well as on the interlacing between the question of truth and the distinction between legein and logos, as well as on the interlacing between the question of truth and the relationship between logos and its parts. I also propose, for some of their aspects, to read the Cratylus and the Sophist in the light of Stoicism, which, for these dialogues as for others, gives a particular light to the Platonic issues, but also allows us to understand the genesis of the Stoic concepts coming, for many of them, from a certain reading of Platonism."

48. Jaulin, Annick. 2011. "Rupture et continuité : les divisions du Sophiste de Platon." In Figures de la rupture, figures de la continuité chez les anciens, edited by Desclos, Marie Laurence, 82-179. Paris: Vrin.

49. Kapantaïs, Doukas. 2003. "Deux exemples du ‘paradoxe du non-être’ dans la littérature philosophique grecque." Skepsis no. 13-14:193-201.

50. ———. 2004. "La dunamis du Sophiste et la critique aristotélicienne dans les Topiques." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 22:3-18.

"Parmi les érudits il y a pas mal de disputes concernant l'importance du passage sur la définition de l'être en tant que puissance d'agir ou de pâtir en 247e du Sophiste. Mais, même si cette définition ne possède pas une place centrale dans le dialogue, Aristote semble lui en attribuer une.

Il y a de fortes raisons exégétiques pour soutenir qu'Aristote non seulement prend au sérieux cette définition, mais que, en plus, il consacre une partie considérable des Topiques à sa réfutation. Nous argumenterons dans cet article en faveur de la thèse selon laquelle la réfutation d'Aristote est basée sur une ambiguïté du domaine des variables p et q dans des formules générales qui peuvent obtenir la paraphrase formelle suivante: "a est (soit p, soit q)" (1)." (p. 3)

(1) "a" est une variable d'objet général (d'un καθόλου). Ce n'est que par la suite que nous allons voir si la disjonction est exclusive ou inclusive, ainsi que quelle sorte de variables sont "p" et "q".

51. ———. 2013. "Le paradoxe de Russell et l’idée de l’autre dans le Sophiste de Platon." In Plato, Poet and Philosopher: in memory of Ioannis N. Theodoracopoulos : proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of Philosophy : Magoula-Sparta, 26-29 may 2011 259-273. Athens: Academy of Athens, Research Centre of Greek Philosophy.

52. Kévorkian, Gilles. 2013. "L’ « invention de la proposition » dans le Sophiste de Platon : une projection des paradigmes aristotéliciens et frégéens de la prédication." In Le langage, edited by Kévorkian, Gilles. Paris: Vrin.

53. Kucharski, Paul. 1949. Les chemins du savoir dans les derniers dialogues de Platon. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

54. Lafrance, Yvon. 1984. "Sur une lecture analytique des arguments concernant le non-être (Sophiste 237b10 - 239a12)." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 2:41-76.

"Dans son étude sur le Sophiste de Platon [*], Moravcsik nous propose de comprendre l'expression τὸμὴ ὂν αὐτὸ καθ᾽ αὑτό (238c10) comme signifiant le concept de Non-Existence qu'il identifie par ailleurs à une Forme platonicienne (3) Il analyse ensuite les trois arguments du Sophiste (237b10 -239a12) à l'aide de cette Forme-concept. Nous appellerons donc logique ou conceptualiste cette lecture de Moravcsik.

Par ailleurs, d'autres traductions ont été proposées et qui ne se recommandent pas de cette Forme-concept. Bluck traduit notre expression par: "that which is not all by itself, without any properties" (4), Cornford: "that which just simply is not" (5), Seligman: "that which is in no way whatever" (6), Diès: "le non-être en lui-même" (7), et D. Ross: "that which is not" (8). Nous appellerons ontologiques ces dernières lectures parce qu'elles invitent à comprendre les trois arguments sur le non-être en considérant celui-ci non pas comme un concept, mais comme le fait négativement contingent d'une "chose qui n'est pas". Nous pensons que la lecture conceptualiste de Moravcsik impose au texte platonicien la notion analytique de "public concept" ou de "conceptual reality", et que cette notion est incompatible avec la conception platonicienne de la réalité, du langage et de la vérité." (pp. 41-43)

[*] Nous nous référons ici à l'étude de Moravcsik intitulée: "Being and Meaning in the Sophist", Acta Philos. Fennica, 14, 1962, pp. 23 - 78.

Le commentaire du Sophiste (237b - 239a) se trouve aux pages 26 - 29 de cette étude.

(3) J. M. E. Moravcsik, art. cit., p. 24, n. 2 et p. 26, n. l. Toutes nos références aux textes de Platon sont prises dans l'édition de l'Association G. Budé, publiée par les Belles Lettres de Paris.

4. R. S. Bluck, Plato's Sophist, Univ. Press. Manchester, 1975, p. 63.

5. F.M. Cornford, Plato's theory of knowledge, Routledge & K. Paul, London, 1964, p. 206.

6. P. Seligman, Being and Not-Being, M. Nijhoff, The Hague, 1974,

p. 15. Seligman propose aussi de traduire par "not-being qua se", c'est à-dire "without any determination".

7. A. Diès, Le Sophiste, Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1963, p. 238.

8. D. Ross, Plato's theory of ideas, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963, p. 115.

55. ———. 2014. La théorie platonicienne de la doxa. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Deuxième édition ajournée 2014 (première édition 1981).

Sur le Sophiste voir chapitre 7.

56. Lassègue, Monique. 1991. "L'imitation dans le Sophiste de Platon." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 249-265. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

"Etudier l'imitation dans le Sophiste, c'est, semble-t-il, la condamner d'avance, puisqu'en ce dialogue le sophiste est celui qui imite et qu'il est aussi l'opposé du philosophe.

Les rares commentateurs qui ont étudié l'imitation dans ce dialogue ont souligné le caractère négatif du contexte dans lequel cette notion apparaît. Il faut se garder de prendre trop au sérieux, pensent-ils, la distinction entre la "copie" (eikon), fidèle à l'objet qu'elle imite et le "simulacre" (phantasma) qui ne ressemble pas au modèle. Cette distinction faite par l'Etranger en 236 A-B, n'empêche pas en 241 E d'affirmer: «on ne pourra guère parler de discours faux, ni d'opinions fausses, ni d'images, ni de copies, ni d'imitations, ni de simulacres», tant qu'on n'aura pas réfuté Parménide et rejeté son interdiction de poser le non-être de quelque façon que ce soit. Ainsi, qu'il s'agisse de "copie" ou de "simulacre", il semble bien que l'imitation tout entière rentre dans une classe unique et que tout y soit de la même façon marqué de fausseté. Comment alors ne pas condamner l'imitation?" (p. 249)

(...)

"Si on admet ces analyses, on sera conduit à conclure que la doctrine de l'imitation qui apparaît dans le Sophiste n'est pas une nouveauté platonicienne, et qu'elle permet d'écarter un certain nombre d'ambiguïtés présentes dans d'autres dialogues.

Le sophiste n'est pas l'imitateur par excellence, car ses modèles, comme ceux du peintre, sont des objets ou des êtres sensibles qui ne peuvent servir à produire de belles images. Le modèle n'est d'ailleurs pas seul en cause. Le sophiste n'a pas de bons modèles parce que ses intentions sont perverses, il veut séduire, donner à croire qu'il est savant alors qu'il sait ne l'être pas. Pour mener à bien son projet, il a besoin de l'imitateur véritable, celui en qui nous avons reconnu le philosophe.

Le philosophe se fait aussi ressemblant au modèle que possible et, passant du faire au dire, il tient un discours véridique, qui sans doute n'est pas identique à l'essence, mais lui demeure fidèle. Si, en cherchant le sophiste, on trouve d'abord le philosophe, il ne faut pas s'en étonner : on ne saurait trouver d'image s'il n'y a pas de modèle. Le sophiste parodie le philosophe, ce n'est qu'un imitateur de pacotille, mais la vanité des images qu'il produit peut révéler pourtant, à sa façon, la valeur de l'image qui imite l'essence." (pp. 264-265)

57. Ledesma, Felipe. 2009. "Le logos du Sophiste : image et parole dans le Sophiste de Platon." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 30:207-254.

Abstract : "The logos' question, one of the most important among the subjects that traverse the Plato' s Sophist, has in fact some different aspects: the criticism of father Parmenides' logos, that is unable to speak about the not-being, but also about the being; the relations between logos and its cognates, phantasia, doxa and dianoia; the logos' complex structure, that is a compound with onoma and rema; the difference between naming and saying, two distinct but inseparable actions; the logical and ontological conditions that make possible to say the truth, or to lie or simply to joke; the necessity of a most flexible logos that allows us to speak about the not-being, and about the being, but at the same time is a logos dangerously similar to the sophist's one; finally, the identity between the power to produce "spoken images" and the very power to speak. The aim of the present article is giving a systematical view of the matter that grasps all these faces." (pp. 207-208)

58. ———. 2009. "Le sophiste et les exemples : sur le problème de la ressemblance dans le Sophiste de Platon." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 27:3-39.

"Gráce á ce jeu de ressemblance et de dissemblance qui d'entrée leur semblait impossible á dire, non seulement parce que ceci est ce que le père Parménide a dit, mais aussi parce que le logos même le montrait en résistant fermement á dire que ce qui n'est pas toutefοis est (85), Théététe et l'Étranger arrivent á rendre dicible qu'il y a des exemples, des images et des apparences sans renoncer á étre d'accord avec eux-mêmes, c'est-á-dire sans étre en désaccord á l'égard de ce qu'eux-mémes disent (86). Cependant, ils n'arrivent aucunement á dire ce qu'est finalement la ressemblance ni la dissemblance ; ils n'arrivent pas à dire ce qu'est finalement un exemple. Cela il faut le montrer.

Il faut d'ailleurs en donner des exemples. Ce qu'ils font en effet le jour suivant, l'Étranger et le jeune Socrate, quand ils nous proposent I'exemple d'exemple, mais sans avoir jamais renoncé á son emploi, sans s'étre jamais passés des comparaisons, des ressemblances et de l'exercice. Il est vraiment difficile pour le logos d'en faire l'économie. Bien plus qu'arriver á rendre dicible sans désaccord qu'il y a des exemples, des ressemblances et de l'exercice." (p. 37)

(85) Cf. 237 a-239 b.

(86) En 240 c 8. lc verbc employé est en effet σθμφωρείν.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Platon, Le Sophiste. Bibliographie des études en Français (M - Z)

Bibliographie

1. Malverne, Lucien. 1958. "Remarques sur le « Sophiste »." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 63:149-166.

"Comme tous les systèmes, la philosophie platonico-aristotélicienne du concept s'est posée en s'opposant. Elle avait à surmonter les difficultés inspirées aux Sophistes par la méditation des Présocratiques, et presqu'aucune de ses thèses ne fut forgée autrement qu'à l'occasion d'une polémique engagée contre la Sophistique ou l'Eristique issues des Eléates ou d'Héraclite. Dans le débat ainsi ouvert devant l'histoire, la philosophie occidentale à peu près tout entière s'est prononcée contre les Sophistes ou les Mégariques, en faveur de Socrate, Platon et Aristote. Devons-nous considérer cette cause comme entendue ? D'un précédent travail consacré aux réfutations de Zenon par Aristote (2), au contraire, nous avions cru pouvoir conclure qu'en ce qui concerne au moins le débat entre adversaires et partisans du changement, le choix demeurait libre. Nous nous proposons aujourd'hui de reconsidérer la réfutation qu'opposa Platon aux néo-éléates de Mégare, selon lesquels l'impossibilité ontologique d'exprimer le non-être eût permis de nier l'erreur. Cette réfutation habite l'œuvre entière de Platon ; il n'est guère de dialogue qui n'en livre un aspect. Mais les seuls textes où Platon l'ait méthodiquement exposée sont la sixième hypothèse du Parménide, et surtout le Sophiste. Outre que le cadre du présent article nous l'interdirait, nous ne pouvons songer à isoler ici du Parménide le contenu de la sixième hypothèse, trop profondément mêlé au reste du dialogue, et encore relativement extérieur à notre sujet : cette hypothèse constitue, en effet, moins une réfutation de l'éléatisme qu'une étude méthodologique de la δόξα comme statut ontologique du non-être. Nous nous bornerons donc à l'examen du Sophiste, ne pouvant d'ailleurs en retenir ici que ce qui concerne immédiatement le problème de la réalité du non-être." (pp. 149-150, notes omises)

(2) Lucien Malverne : « Aristote et les apories de Zenon » (Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, janvier-juin 1953).

2. Mansion, Suzanne. 1969. "Dialectique platonicienne et dialectique plotinienne (Sophiste 254b-256d; Enneade VI, 2, 6-8),." In La Dialectique. Actes du XlVe Congres des Societés de Philosophie de Langue francaise. Nice, 1-4 sept. 1969. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

Reprins dans S. Mansion, Etudes aristotéliciennes, Louvain-la-Neuve : Editions de l'Institut supérieur de philosophie, 1984, pp. 499-502.

3. Marcos de Pinotti, Graciela Elena. 1994. "Négation, fausseté et non-être dans le Sophiste." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 12:153-170.

"Certes, la doctrine du non-être comme altérité ou différence est la clef de la solution platonicienne au problème de la fausseté.

C'est pourquoi, lorsque Platon conteste l'argument des sophistes grâce aux célèbres lógoi sur Théétète, il n'hésite pas à caractériser l'énoncé faux comme celui qui dit "des choses autres que celles qui sont" ((έτερα των δντων), Soph. 263b7).

Cette formule, comme on le sait, fait l'objet de nombreuses discussions. Dans ce travail nous tenterons d'en faire un éclaircissement à l'aide du Sophiste 257b-c, le passage où Platon, avant d'exposer la doctrine des "parties de la nature de l'autre", trace la distinction entre le non-être comme contrariété et comme altérité ou différence. Nous examinerons tout d'abord ce passage platonicien afin d'éclairer cette distinction signalée dans la plupart des études consacrées au Sophiste, mais dont la vraie signification demeure cependant obscure. Ensuite, dans la seconde partie de notre travail, nous appliquerons le résultat de notre examen à l'interprétation de ''Théétète, avec qui maintenant je dialogue, vole", l'exemple bien connu d'énoncé faux que Platon offre vers la fin du dialogue. Les deux passages correspondent, à notre avis, aux deux modalités de 'dire ce qui n'est pas', celle de la négation (Soph. 257b-c) et celle de la fausseté (Ibid. 263b-d).

Or, au-délà des différences entre ces deux textes, une lecture attentive montrerait quelle est l'exigence fondamentale que selon Platon tout énoncé doit remplir. D'après notre interprétation, il s'agit d'indiquer, d'exprimer ou de signaler ce dont on parle,

exigence qui concerne aussi bien la négation que l'affirmation, l'énoncé faux non moins que l'énoncé vrai. Cette condition remplie - c'est l'enseignement du Sophiste - il est possible de dire le non-être." (p. 154)

4. ———. 2005. "Platon, son « père Parménide » et l'héritage sophistique." In La philosophie de Platon. Tome 2, edited by Fattal, Michel, 237-268. Paris: L'Harmattan.

"La bataille que livre Platon contre le sophiste dans le dialogue qui porte son nom est en même temps une bataille contre l'ontologie de Parménide, dans laquelle s'enracine la thèse sophistique qui nie la possibilité de l'erreur et que notre philosophe se propose de réfuter.

En vertu de ce double affrontement, Platon se trouve contraint d'adopter des stratégies complexes d'argumentation qui, comme nous tenterons de le montrer, l'associent à l'ennemi et l'en rapprochent beaucoup plus que l'on ne pourrait le supposer. Pour ce qui est de sa polémique avec Parménide, une fois établie la réalité du non-être à titre d'altérité ou de différence, Platon proclame avoir réfuté le dictum paternel qui nie le non-être. Néanmoins, dans la mesure où son objectif ultime est de démasquer certains arguments sophistiques fallacieux qui dénaturent l'esprit de la philosophie de Parménide, sa recherche ne l'éloigne pas mais le rapproche plutôt des arguments présentés par celui-ci. Quant à sa polémique avec la sophistique, cible directe de l'attaque du Sophiste, l'hostilité mutuelle n'empêche pas Platon de reconnaître que les occupations du philosophe et du sophiste se rejoignent sur certains points. Nous pourrions même dire qu'en vue de trouver une solution au problème du discours faux, Platon n'hésite pas à élaborer une conception du discours qui le rapproche dangereusement du rang de l'ennemi.

Nous examinerons dans ce travail quelques aspects de la polémique que notre philosophe entretient avec les deux courants, et au travers de laquelle ont certainement vu le jour nombre des doctrines positives que nous transmettent ses dialogues. Tous ces affrontements n'ont certes pas la même valeur, car dans une cas, il s'agit d'un prédécesseur illustre que Platon traite avec respect, et dans l'autre cas, d'un courant de pensée auquel sa philosophie est ouvertement hostile. Toutefois, un examen attentif de certains passages du Sophiste met en évidence que dans les deux cas, derrière les critiques ouvertes de Platon, il existe également des appropriations, des héritages cachés permettant de détecter d'intéressants points de contact entre la philosophie platonicienne, celle de son « père Parménide » et certaines positions sophistiques. Ce que nous voudrions éclaircir ce n'est pas tant l'attitude de Platon envers d'autres courants de pensée que la possible incidence de ceux-ci sur sa propre philosophie, qui a dû en grande partie être le produit du rapprochement et du «dialogue» avec ses prédécesseurs et ses contemporains." (pp. 237-238)

5. Mattéi, Jean-François. 1983. L'Étranger et le simulacre. Essai sur la fondation de l'ontologie platonicienne. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

"Notre dessein naquit d'une première et déjà ancienne rencontre avec le Sophiste de Platon, dont une particularité de composition nous avait frappé, et dont nous sentions confusément qu'elle n'était pas étrangère à la chasse au faiseur de simulacres comme au détour ontologique par la communauté des cinq genres de l'être. Nous soupçonnions même que la forme du texte, ou plutôt la figure des personnages, pour parler avec Pascal, portait« absence et présence », et constituait le lien voilé qui rapproche, en leur perpétuel déchirement, Philosophie et Sophistique. Nous ne pensions pas, alors, découvrir que cette figure avait été faite sur un chiffre, en son double sens que l'on ne réduira pas seulement au clair et au caché, et exprimait la vérité ontologique de l'acte de fondation. Il fallait donc lever le sceau et reconnaître chez Platon, chez d'autres penseurs aussi sans doute, cette reprise continue d'une parole à l'écoute de sa propre origine et qui se tourne vers l'être, au croisement du temps et de l'éternité. Nous fascinaient en effet la répétition du voyage du philosophe, à la recherche du royaume perdu, et sa volonté tranquille de sauver de l'anéantissement, face aux écueils symétriques d'un Parménide et d'un Gorgias - le langage, voué aux mirages de la Mimésis, tant qu'il n'a pas restauré sa droite filiation ; - l'être, dont le visage menace de se figer dans la paralysie éléatique ou de se dissoudre dans les convulsions sophistiques ; - le pouvoir enfin, qui conquiert sa légitimité en s'ancrant dans la parole du Maître, seul à dire l'être. Et certes, l'enjeu ultime de l'Odyssée du philosophe - la Maîtrise - semblera peu conforme au goût d'une époque qui a cru bon d'assujettir la pensée au désir de Rebellion, malgré çà et là quelques résurgences incertaines, à l'écho de Nietzsche, et qui ne partagent l'intempestivité du penseur de l' Aurore que pour mieux atténuer l'éclat de la lumière platonicienne." (p. 5)

6. ———. 1985. "La symphonie de l'être dans le Sophiste de Platon." Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review no. 24:237-256.

Repris dans J.-F. Mattéi, L'ordre du monde. Platon - Nietzsche - Heidegger, Paris. Presses universitaires de France, pp. 25-47.

"La pensée platonicienne du Sophiste, comme celle des autres dialogues, revele ainsi ce que j'appellerai, sur le modèle de l'onto-theologie heideggerienne, sa dimension onto-theo-cosmo-mytho-logique; elle unit en un même tout ces cinq déterminations majeures: (1) ONTO-: car la parole du philosophe est toujours en quête de l'« être »;(2) THEO-: comme l'être est assimilé au « divin » (254a8-9; 254b1), la formation du Tout est due a « une science divine emanèe de Dieu » (265c9); (3) COSMO-: l'être et le Tout (249d4) sont identifiés à l'Ousia au centre du Monde; (4) MYTHO-: le Monde et les Dieux relevent du muthos et non du logos, comme en témoigne la verité du mythe du Timée (26d-e); (5) LOGIQUE: enfin le logos trouve sa racine dans l'être dont nous sommes partis, et qui conduit en silence nos pas." (p. 255)

7. ———. 1989. "Feu et lieu : Platon et la modernité." In L'ordre du monde. Platon - Nietzsche - Heidegger, 119-141. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

"Le principe de l'argumentation platonicienne, après que !'Etranger d'Elée a rappelé les doctrines de ses prédécesseurs relatives au nombre des êtres et à leur nature (242b6-249d5), consiste à emprunter à la tradition un couple de contraires irréductibles l'un à l'autre, puis à établir que cette dualité exige, pour être posée, la présence d'un troisième terme qui distingue les précédents tout en se distinguant d'eux. La

même argumentation va se reproduire à propos d'un second couple, appelé par le premier, dont on montrera la différence interne des éléments qui le composent et la différence externe avec le couple antérieur. L'articulation des deux couples à l'aide de leur élément commun - l'être - qui se trouve toujours en tiers parmi eux, permet d'affermir la Communauté des cinq genres de l'être (κοινωνία) en laquelle nombre d'interprètes ont pu voir « la clef de voûte de tout le système platonicien »(232)" (p. 130)

(232) V. Brochard, Etudes de philosophie ancienne et de philosophie moderne, Paris, 1912, p. 142.

8. ———. 2005. "L'origine platonicienne de la métaphysique : la communauté des genres de l'être." In Y a-t-il une histoire de la métaphysique?, edited by Zarka, Yves Charles and Pinchard, Bruno, 27-44. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

9. ———. 2005. "Les genres de l'être chez Platon et le système aristotélicien des quatre causes." In Cosmos et psychè. Mélanges offerts à Jean Frère, edited by Vegleris, Eugénie, 183-202. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

10. Mazzara, Giuseppe. 1991. "Quelques remarques sur Gorgias et les Gorgiens dans le Sophiste." Argumentation no. 5:233-241.

Résumé : "Le Sophiste de Platon est une oeuvre qui - comme on le sait - du moins à en croire son titre, n'est pas la première du genre: le Peri tn Sophiston d'Alcidamas et le Katai tôn Sophistón d'Isocrate tout autant que la partie introductive (§§ 1-13) de son Eloge d'Hélène avaient déjà ouvert la voie.

A propos du sophiste : un doxomimète fallacieux qui invite le philosophe come imitateur "historique". Tout comme l'allusion que fait Platon la definition isocratienne du δημολγιχóς comme imitateur εlρονιχóς. L'auteur s'engage a démontrer ici, outre le developpement du concept d' fπιστήμη chez Platon et Gorgias, une influence possible d'Alcidamas et d'Isocrate sur la definition platonicienne du sophiste."

11. Milner, Jean Claude. 1966. "Le point du signifiant. Sur Platon: à propos du Sophiste." Cahiers pour l'Analyse no. 3:73-82.

"Qu'il y ait eu entre l'être et une computation un lien hérité, la doxographie antique suffirait à le manifester, qui, rapportant les opinions sur l'être, ne sait les énoncer que comme des dénombrements, et ne peut, pour en dresser la liste, que se conformer à la suite des nombres: "pour l'un (des anciens sophistes), relate par exemple Isocrate, il y a une infinité d'êtres; pour Empédocle, quatre ; pour Ion, seulement trois; pour Alcméon, rien que deux; pour Parménide, un ; pour Gorgias, absolument aucun". (Isocrate, Or. XV, 268 ; cité à la page 345 de l'édition Diès).

Ce lien, que l'anecdote ici décrit, cerne bien cependant l'hypothèse qui supporte le mouvement de Platon, désireux dans le Sophiste d'établir ce qu'il en est du non-être: se plaçant dans la succession des opinions, puisqu'il entend la clore, - entre le "un" de Parménide, qui résume tous les comptes positifs, et l' "absolument aucun" de Gorgias, qui les efface tous, il ne peut faire qu'énumérer le non-être, en susciter l'émergence par une computation." (p. 73)

12. Miura, Kaname. 2015. "Quelques notes sur les critiques du pluralisme et du monisme dans le Sophiste de Platon." Kanazawa Journal of Philosophy and Philosophical Anthropology no. 6:69-84.

Il semble que la thèse selon laquelle le changement majeure de la métaphysique à la logique s'est accompli dans le Sophiste de Platon soit assez fondée.(1) Certains y ont vu une transformation ou un abandon même de la théorie des Idées exposée par Platon dans les dialogues dits de transition(2) En effet, ce dialogue a attiré l'attention d'un nombre considérable de chercheurs voulant y trouver les «anticipations logiques» de Platon.

(...)

Platon est-il vraiment obligé à réviser sa théorie dans le Sophiste? Les arguments qu'il énonce dans ce dialogue sont-ils à ranger uniquement dans le domaine de la logique? Il n'en est rien. Au contraire, nous pouvons dire que le Sophiste occupe une position cruciale dans toute la théorie des Idées au point de vue de son développement ontologique et épistémologique. Il faut alors que l'on remette à plat le rôle que jouent les critiques du monisme et du pluralisme 242C-245E dans ce développement aussi bien que dans le plan général du Sophiste, en dépit du diagnostic d'un «détour» par Diès(4)." (p. 69)

(1) Cf. Soulez (1991), pp.222-227.

(2) Diès (1969), p.286, n.1.

(4) Diès (1969), p.274.

Réferences

A. Diès, (1969), Le Sophiste, OEuvres complètes de Platon, Torne VIII, 3e partie (Collection des universités de France), Paris.

A. Soulez (1991), "Le travail de la négation. L'interprétation du Sophiste par Gilbert Ryle", dans P. Aubenque (ed.), Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, Napoli, pp.215-246.

13. Motte, André. 1987. "Άγιος chez Platon." In Stemmata. Mélanges de philologie, d’histoire et d’archéologie grecques offerts à Jules Labarbe, edited by Servais, J., Hackens, T. and Servais-Soyez, B., 135-152. Liège/Louvain-la-Neuve: L'Antiquité classique.

14. Mouze, Létitia. 2020. Chasse à l'homme et faux-semblants dans le Sophiste de Platon. Paris: Classiques Garnier.

15. Muralt, André de. 1957. "De la participation dans le Sophiste de Platon." Studia Philosophica no. 17:101-120.

16. ———. 1975. "Dialectique de l'idée et analogie de l'être. Comparaison structureIle du Sophiste de Platon et des Métaphysiques d'Aristote." Diotima.Review of Philosophical Research no. 3:43-59.

17. Narcy, Michel. 1991. "La lecture aristotélicienne du Sophiste et ses effets." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 419-448. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

"En deux passages de la Métaphysique, Aristote s'exprime au sujet du Sophiste de Platon. La première fois (E 2. 1026 b 14-15) il nomme Platon, et c'est pour l'approuver: «Platon, d'une certaine façon, n'a pas eu tort d'assigner la sophistique au non-être».

Une telle assignation, c'est bien la tâche à laquelle s'évertue !'Etranger d'Elée tout au long du Sophiste; ou du moins c'est celle à laquelle il se voit condamné à partir du moment où sa pratique des divisions l'a conduit à situer le sophiste dans l'art de produire des simulacres (Soph. 235 A-236 c). Or, le second passage de la Métaphysique dont nous aurons à nous occuper est une rigoureuse condamnation de la façon dont]'Etranger arrive à ses fins: en se croyant confronté à la «nécessité de montrer que le non-être est» (Metaph. N 2. 1089 a 5). C'était là, juge Aristote, se laisser prendre à une difficulté archaïque ( ἀπορῆσαι ἀρχαϊκῶς, 1089 a 1-2).

On voudrait montrer ici que non seulement ces deux passages trouvent leur cohérence dans une conception du non-être (et de l'être) fondamentalement différente, chez Aristote, de celle de Platon (1), mais que dans cette façon qu'a Aristote d'approuver d'un côté, de condamner de l'autre, est impliquée une façon de lire le Sophiste, allons jusqu'à dire une stratégie de lecture, qui pèsera pour longtemps sur la compréhension de ce dialogue: Plotin en sera ici l'exemple." (p. 419)

(1) Cfr. E. Berti, Quelques remarques sur la conception aristotélicienne du non-être, «Revue de Philosophie Ancienne», I (1983) pp. 115-42.

18. Nercam, Nathalie. 2012. "«Topos» en question dans l’introduction du Sophiste (216a1-217a1)." Plato Journal:1-18.

Résumé : "Au début du Sophiste, Socrate demande au visiteur éléate ce qu’ont pensé des genres philosophe, sophiste et politique, « ceux qui sont de ce lieu-là ». L’article a pour but d’éclairer cette dernière expression et en particulier son mot clef « topos ». Il est montré que les significations de ce terme, dans son contexte, sont multiples et que cette diversité, loin d’apporter la confusion, permet au contraire et précisément d’ouvrir les diverses perspectives du dialogue."

"« Topos », mot crucial du problème posé par Socrate dans l’introduction du Sophiste (216a1-217a1) peut donc être interprété de façon plurielle. Il peut désigner : premièrement, une adresse géographique (le pays d’Elée), deuxièmement, une école philosophique (« l’école éléatique ») troisièmement, un classement rhétorique (la « classe » des spécialistes de la définition des genres) ou quatrièmement, un niveau d’intelligibilité (le seuil maximal d’une pensée discursive).

(...)

La polysémie de « topos » invite ainsi le lecteur à relativiser les propos de l’étranger de trois façons :

- En les considérant dans le cadre de l’action pédagogique conduite qui peut être caractérisée en comparaison avec celle de Parménide dans le dialogue éponyme et avec celle de Socrate dans le Théétète.

- En les rapportant à l’ensemble des discours rhétoriques ou sophistiques tenus sur le même sujet pour mesurer sur ce point les continuités et les ruptures proposées par le visiteur éléate.

- En les examinant enfin selon les critères socratiques du Phèdre, pour déterminer le sens accordé à « topos » au cours de l’exposé afin d’apprécier son degré relatif d’intelligibilité et de déterminer ses limites.

Socrate reformule immédiatement sa première question et réduit alors considérablement le problème (217a2-4). Mais il attend toujours une réponse de la part de « ceux qui sont et/ou s’occupent de ce lieu-là ». « Topos » reste donc un critère d’appréciation pertinent. Cet article n’avait pas pour prétention de l’éclairer complètement et définitivement, mais avait pour but de montrer que son étude permet d’ouvrir des perspectives interprétatives qui viennent compléter les exégèses plus classiques du dialogue." (pp. 17-18)

19. Nevsky, Alexandre. 2011. Voir le monde comme une image: Le schème de l’image mimétique dans la philosophie de Platon (Cratyle, Sophiste, Timée). Bern: Peter Lang.

Table des matières: Introduction 1; Partie I. Analyses; I. Le Cratyle: le schème de l'image dans la constitution du langage 33; Le déploiement du schème de l'image dans le Cratyle 39; Apories de l'interprétation 130; II. Le Sophiste: le schème de l'image dans la constitution du discours 159; III. Le Timée: le schème de l'image dans la constitution du monde 297; Partie II. Conclusions; I. Conclusions des dialogues 435; II. La conception de l'image chez Platon 473; Epilogue. Voir le monde comme une image selon Platon 503; Bibliographie 507; Index des noms 519; Index des textes anciens 523.

"Que veut nous dire Platon quand il nous invite à voir le monde comme une image ? De quoi est-il l’image et existe-t-il plusieurs images possibles de la même réalité ? A quel degré d’engagement ontologique exposons-nous quand nous acceptons, avec Platon, de redéfinir comme étant image le langage, le discours, le monde matériel et même le matériau de celui-ci ?

Ce travail propose une analyse approfondie de la conception de l’image de Platon dans ses trois dialogues clés. Il essaie de nous montrer que cette conception n’est pas une simple conséquence de la théorie des Idées, mais une solution philosophique originale au paradoxe de l’apparence archaïque et une étape préalable à la dialectique platonicienne.

Cette étude nous invite ainsi à revoir les fondements de la métaphysique occidentale, au moment où se produit la naissance conceptuelle de la notion d’image, en mettant en évidence son originalité et son importance pour l’enquête philosophique sur la réalité."

20. O'Brien, Denis. 1991. "Le non-être dans la philosophie grecque: Parménide, Platon, Plotin." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 317-364. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

Repris dans: D. O'Brien, Le non être. Deux études sur le Sophiste de Platon, pp. 3-39.

Sommaire: I INTRODUCTION: LA PHILOSOPHIE ET L'HISTOIRE; II PARMÉNIDE. 1. L'être et la vérité 2. Le non-être et l'erreur des mortels; III PLATON. 1. Les deux sens du non-être 2. Le non-être et l'altérité; IV PLOTIN. 1. Les trois sens du non-être

2. Le non-être et la matière; V PARMÉNIDE ET PLATON. 1. L'existence des non-êtres 2. La question du parricide; VI PLATON ET PLOTIN. 1. "Réellement non-étant" 2. Le non-être et le contraire VII CONCLUSION : L'HISTOIRE ET LA PHILOSOPHIE.

"Cette étude du non-être permettra, je l'espère, de résumer en quelque sorte les recherches que nous avons menées en commun depuis plusieurs années sous l'intitulé général: Recherches sur le vocabulaire de l'être dans !'Antiquité. Comme le dit Hegel, comme le dit Heidegger, comme l'a dit aussi Platon : comment étudier l'être sans le non-être?" (pp. 119-120)

(...)

"Résumons, le plus simplement possible, les différents sens du non-être que nous avons repérés en examinant ces quelques textes de Parménide, de Platon, de Plotin.

- Parménide a parlé d'un non-être impensable et incommunicable.

- Platon a distingué le non-être qui serait comme le contraire de l'être et le non-être qui serait "autre" que l'être,

- Plotin a distingué: premièrement, le non-être absolu; deuxièmement, l'altérité du mouvement et du repos; enfin, troisièmement, la "forme" du non-être qui est la matière.

Voilà la philosophie; où se trouve son histoire? A moins que l'on ne se pose la question inverse: voilà l'histoire, où se trouve la philosophie?" (pp. 349-350)

21. ———. 1991. "Platon et Plotin sur la doctrine des parties de l'autre." Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 116:501-512.

Résumé : "La matière est-elle identique à l'alterité ? » Plotin se pose cette question au commencement du dernier chapitre de son traité Sur la matière (Enn., II 4 [12] 16). « Plutôt non », répond-il. « Elle est en revanche identique à cette partie de l'altérité qui s'oppose aux êtres proprement dits. » En s'exprimant de la sorte, Plotin fait allusion à un passage du Sophiste (258 E 2-3). Son allusion suppose pourtant l'existence d'un texte qui n'est pas attesté dans les manuscrits. Cette différence textuelle implique un changement fondamental de doctrine, dont les éditeurs modernes ne se sont pas avisés."

22. ———. 1995. Le non-être. Deux études sur le Sophiste de Platon. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Sommaire: Avertissement XI-XII; Étude I: Le non-être dans la philosophie grecque: Parménide, Platon, Plotin 3; Étude II: Le non-être et l'altérité dans le Sophiste de Platon 43; Notes complementaires 91; Index: I. Auteurs anciens 133; II. Auteurs modernes 139; III. Supplément bibliographique 151; English summaries: I. Non-Being in Parmenides, Plato and Plotinus 169; II. Non-Being and otherness in Plato's Sophist 176-181.

23. ———. 1996. "Á propos du Sophiste de Platon." Les Études Philosophiques:375-380.

Dans une étude sur le Sophiste de Platon, parue récemment dans Les Études philosophiques, F. Fronterotta me reproche d'avoir mal interprété la doctrine des parties de l'autre, telle que la présente l'Étranger d'Élée dans sa critique de Parménide (Soph. 257 c5-258 c10) (1)" (p. 375)

(...)

"A la différence de la forme de l'être, à la différence de la forme du non-être, la forme de l'autre ne sera donc qu'unité « en quelque sorte» (cf. 257 c10: που).

Cette différence est essentielle pour qui veut comprendre la différence qui sépare le non-être et l'autre. La science est divisée en une multiplicité de sciences, possédant chacune son nom propre. Il en va de même de la nature de l'autre qui, elle aussi, est divisée en une multiplicité de parties, dont chacune possède une appellation (appellation négative) qui lui est propre («non beau», « non grand», « non juste»). Mais il n'en va pas de même, ni de l'être, ni du non-être." (p. 379)

(...)

"Ainsi s'expliquerait l'erreur dans la thèse de Fronterotta. Cet exégète n'a pas en effet compris qu'en participant d'une « partie» (la forme du non-être), les autres parties de l'autre ne deviennent pas, de ce fait, les parties d'une partie. Il n'a donc pas compris que la forme du non-être ne peut pas être définie à la fois comme une partie de l'autre (258 a 11 -b 4) et comme «chaque partie de l'autre» (cf. 258e2-3). La doctrine de !'Étranger n'est pas à ce point contradictoire." (p. 380)

(1) 1. F. Fronterotta, L'être et la participation de l'autre, une nouvelle ontologie dans le Sophiste,Les Études philosophiques, 1995, p. 311-353. Voir surtout p. 350-353, Annexe:

« L'interprétation de D. O'Brien». Pout la thèse incriminée, Fronterotta renvoie à D. O'Brien, Il non essere e la diversità nel Sofista di Platone, Atti dell'Acccademia di Scienze Morali e Politiche di Napoli, vol. 102, 1992, p. 271-328. Voir aussi maintenant Le non-être, deux études sur le Sophiste de Platon, dans la collection « International Plato Studies, published under the auspices of the International Plato Society», n° 6, Sankt Augustin, Academia Verlag, 1995. Pour la thèse de Fronterotta, voir surtout p. 159-166.

24. ———. 1999. "Théories de la proposition dans le Sophiste de Platon." In Théories de la phrase et de la proposition. De Platon à Averroès, edited by Büttgen, Philippe, Diebler.Stéphane and Rashed, Marwan, 21-41. Paris: Éditions Rue d'Ulm.

"Commençons par le Sophiste de Platon. Deux théories de la proposition s’y opposent : celle de l’Etranger d’Elée, porte-parole de PIaton, et celle du sophiste. Pour étayer sa thèse, le sophiste se réclame de Parménide. S’opposeraient donc ici, par personnes interposées, Platon et Parménide. Or voilà, d’emblée, l’une des raisons pour lesquelles les exégètes se trompent dans leur interprétation du dialogue. S’ils ne - comprennent pas le Sophiste, c’est parce qu’ils comprennent mal le poème de Parménide. Et s’ils comprennent mal le poème de Parménide, c'est parce que, cherchant dans les fragments du poème une proposition - proposition qui sera reprise par le sophiste de Platon —, ils gauchissent, sans le savoir, le point de départ du raisonnement parménidien.

Je m’explique. Toute proposition permet de distinguer ce dont on parle de ce qu’on en dit. Cette distinction, fondamentale, ne s’applique pourtant pas aux deux énoncés formulés par la déesse au début de son discours : ἔστιν (“est”, fr. 2.3), οὐκ ἔστιν (“n’est pas”, fr. 2.5). Aucun de ces deux verbes, prononcés sans sujet ni complément dans le contexte immédiat du poème, ne permet de distinguer ce dont on parle de ce qu’on en dit(1)." (p. 21)

(...)

"L’Etranger rétablit de la sorte une contrariété du vrai et du faux, sans pourtant revenir sur son refus d’une contrariété de l’être et du non être(4). D’où l’ambivalence dont fait preuve la déclaration "des non êtres sont” au cours de son raisonnement. Dans un premier temps, cette formule établit l’existence des objets, des nombreux objets, dont on parle, renversant de la sorte la thèse moniste de Parménide. Dans un deuxième temps, la même formule, revêtue d’un sens nouveau et différent, rétablit la vérité ou la fausseté de ce qu’on en dit, autorisant, enfin, la définition du sophiste comme pourvoyeur d’erreurs et de mensonges." (p. 41)

(1) I "Il faut que tu sois instruit de toutes choses, à la fois du cœur de la vérité persuasive [..: ainsi la déesse à Parménide (fr 1.28), quand ce dernier aura franchi les portes du Jour et de la Nuit. Pour apprendre à son disciple la vérité, la déesse commence par distinguer deux “voies de recherche, les seules que l'on puisse concevoir” (fr. 2.2). Ces deux voies sont les deux énoncés cités ci-dessus (“est", fr. 23 , "n'est pas", fr. 2.5)

(4) "Le vrai serait le contraire du faux : cf. Sophiste, 240 b 5 ; 240 d 6-7. Le non-être, tel que le définit l’Etranger, ne serait pourtant pas le contraire de l’être : cf. Sophiste, 258 e 6-259 a 1.".

25. Pasqua, Hervé. 1996. "L'Être comme πολλά chez Platon. Les enseignements du «Parménide» et du «Sophiste»." Revue Philosophique De Louvain no. 94:7-18.

Résumé : "L'Être est l'Un. Tel est l'héritage que Platon reçoit de Parménide. Non pas l'Être est un, mais : l'Être est l'Un. Autrement dit, l'Un n'est pas prédicat ni accident de l'Être, il en constitue l'essence. Quand l'Éléate affirme : l'Être est, le non-Être n'est pas, Platon comprend : l'Un est, le non-Un n'est pas. Dès lors, le sens du parricide que va commettre l'Étranger dans le Sophiste sera non pas, comme on l'entend traditionnellement : l'Être n'est pas, le non-Être est, mais l'Un n'est pas, le non-Un est. En refusant l'identification parménidienne de l'Être à l'Un, Platon révèle son véritable dessein, à savoir, montrer que l'Être, le réellement réel, le ontôs on, c'est le Plusieurs (les Idées)."

26. Pellegrin, Pierre. 1991. "Le Sophiste ou de la division. Aristote-Platon-Aristote." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 391-416. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

"Depuis quelques années notre approche de la critique par Aristote de la méthode platonicienne de division a été profondément renouvelée, notamment par une relecture du versant biologique de cette critique. Le premier effet qu'on en peut signaler n'est anodin qu'en apparence : la diairesis qui est critiquée dans les textes logico-métaphysiques d'une part et biologiques d'autre part du corpus aristotélicien semble bien être la même." (p. 391)

(...)

"Comme les grands dialogues de la période antérieure, le Sophiste et le Politique sont eux aussi consacrés à la dialectique platonicienne, mais c'est la dialectique qui a changé.

Ainsi se résolvent certaines des difficultés de la diairesis.

Comme la relation d'altérité, par exemple, n'est pas une simple relation d'exclusion, on comprend ce que signifie la règle qui prescrit de couper un genre en deux parties à peu près égales : tous les oiseaux sauf les grues ne forment pas "l'Autre des grues". L'hypothèse de la contemporanéité de la méthode diérétique et du Sophiste se trouve ainsi singulièrement renforcée.

Il ressort de tout cela l'image contrastée d'une diairesis à la fois fondamentale et invalide. Car même le dévoilement du fondement ontologique de la diérétique platonicienne ne la guérit pas de son essentielle impuissance. Quand l'objet à définir, comme dans le cas du pêcheur à ligne, ne subit pas la concurrence de rivaux suspects, la diairesis va droit au but.

Mais quand surgissent les questions «grosses d'embarras, aujourd'hui comme hier et comme toujours» du «paraître et sembler sans être» (Soph. 236 E), on s'aperçoit que la nouvelle dialectique platonicienne n'a pas à elle seule les moyens de lever une difficulté qui a été un des prétextes originaires de l'entreprise philosophique de Platon." (p. 412)

27. Rizzerio, Laura. 1999. "Dialectique et art dans la République et le Sophiste de Platon." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 97:231-252.

Résumé : "Cet article étudie le rapport que Platon établit entre la beauté, la mesure, et la production artistique aux fins de prouver que le philosophe athénien n'est pas un véritable «ennemi» des arts, à tout le moins qu'il ne peut être considéré comme un ennemi de la beauté des œuvres «sensibles», qu'elles soient naturelles ou produites par l'homme. Grâce à l'analyse de quelques extraits du Sophiste et de la République, cette étude veut montrer que la distinction de l'art d'imitation en deux «sections» différentes, «art de la copie» et «art de l'illusion», proposée par Platon dans le Sophiste, n'est pas simplement un expédient auquel le philosophe athénien a recours pour parfaire ses diaireseis et «capturer» la définition tant recherchée. Cette distinction trouve sa justification dans le rôle important que Platon confie à la «mesure» là où il s'agit de la saisie du beau. C'est par cette notion de «mesure» qu'il en vient effectivement à rejeter un type d'art d'imitation, «l'art d'illusion», et à en accepter un autre, «l'art de la copie», en comparant ce dernier au travail du dialecticien. Or, il est fort probable que Platon prononce son jugement sur l'art d'imitation en ayant présente à l'esprit la production artistique de son temps. Soumis à condamnation serait alors l'art basé sur les techniques de l'illusion et du trompe-l'oeil, un art qui en était venu à s'imposer à son époque grâce à l'utilisation d'une proportionnalité capable de reproduire la réalité d'une manière vraisemblable, mais qui ne fabriquait qu'illusion, était loin de la vérité et se révélait incapable de saisir le beau. La production artistique reconnue comme respectable, voire utile à l'acquisition de la science, serait au contraire l'art qui s'était développé autour du canon de Polyclète dont les productions étaient fondées sur le respect absolu d'une «mesure» objective et d'une proportionnalité rigoureuse, mathématiquement représentables."

28. Rougier, Louis. 1914. "La correspondance des genres du Sophiste, du Philèbe et du Timée." Archiv für Geschichte de Philosophie no. 27:205-334.

"La correspondance des genres du Sophiste, du Philebe et du Timée est un des problèmes fondamentaux de la philosophie de Platon. Suivant les conceptions qu'ön s'en fait, cette philosophie prête aux interprétations les plus divergentes. Dans une première partie, nous exposerons la thèse que nous adoptons; dans une seconde, noüs en vérifierons les details par l'examen critique des théories opposées les plus representatives: celles de M. Lachelier, Zeller, Rodier, Brochard. Sans pretendre apporter une solution définitive de cette redoutable question, nous en fournirons, peut-etre, une approximation plus exacte." (p. 305)

Réferences

Victor Brochard, "La morale de Platon", Année philosophique 1909, p. 29, note 1; "Le Dévenir dans la philosophie de Platon". Bibliothèque du Congrés International de philosophie 1902, IV, p. 103-127.

Jules Lachelier, "Note sur le Philèbe de Platon", Revue de métaphysique et de morale, mars 1902; reproduit dans: Études sur le syllogisme, suivies de l'observation de Platner et d'une note sur le Philèbe, Paris, Alcan, 1907, p. 151-163.

Georges Rodier, "Remarques sur le Philèbe", Revue des études anciennes, avril-mai 1900; "L'évolution de la Dialectique de Platon", Année philosophique 1909.

Eduard Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, Leipzig: R. Reisland, 1880, vol. II, 1 p. 169 sq.

29. Rousset, Emmanuelle. 2009. Les intermittences de l'être. Lecture du Sophiste de Platon. Lagrasse: Verdier.

30. Santa Cruz, Maria Isabel. 1997. "L’exégèse plotinienne des μεγιστα γενε du Sophiste de Platon." In The Perennial Tradition of Neoplatonism, edited by Cleary, John J., 105-118. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

"Dans une étude précédant (3) j'ai examiné quelques aspects fondamentaux de la critique de Plotin à la doctrine aristotélicienne sur les catégories. Je voudrais aborder maintenant quelques points concernant la conception plotinienne des genres de l'intelligible exposée en VI 2, traité qui peut être lu presque comme un commentaire (4) des passages du Sophiste où Platon présente la doctrine des μεγιστα γενε, que Plotin va situer au niveau de la deuxième hypostase, l'intelligence. J'essayerai seulement de tracer les grandes lignes de la doctrine plotinienne des genres de l'intelligible et de signaler les principaux points de divergence avec la conception platonicienne des μεγιστα γενε. Malgré sa prétention de fidélité à Platon, Plotin n'adopte pas d'une façon stricte les genres du Sophiste pour les situer dans l'intelligence, mais il les interprète du point de vue de son propre système et en fait un libre emploi pour développer sa propre théorie. L'exégèse de Plotin n'est pas une reprise de l'analyse conceptuelle du Sophiste et de son enplacement dans le domaine de l'intelligence. Lorsqu'il caractérise la nature et la fonction des genres, Plotin s'écarte des affirmations et même des suggestions de Platon.

Etant donné que chez Plotin le monde intelligible est une réalité de deuxième ordre et dérivée, dont la source, l'Un, est au-delà de l'être et de la pensée, les genres de l'intelligible ne peuvent avoir du point de vue ontologique ainsi que du point de vue de la prédication ni la même portée ni la même importance que chez Platon, pour qui ils appartiennent à la région plus élevée de la réalité. L'interprétation du Sophiste sur les cinq genres ne prend sens qu'à l'intérieur d'un système métaphysique donné, celui de Plotin" (pp. 105-106, deux notes omises)

(3) "Aspectes de la critica de Plorino a las categorias de Aristoteles", Elenchos. Rivista di studi sul pensiero antico XI (1994) 1, 25-41.

4. Evangeliou, Aristotle's Categories and Porphyry, Leiden: Brill, 1988, pp. 131-133, offre un résumé des points qu'il considère comme les thèses principales dans VI 2.

31. Schüssler, Ingeborg. 1996. "Le Sophiste de Platon dans l'interprétation de Heidegger." In Heidegger 1919-1929. De l'herméneutique de la facticité à la métaphysique du Dasein, edited by Courtine, Jean-François, 91-111. Paris: Vrin.

Actes du colloque organisé par Jean-François Marquet (Université de Paris-Sorbonne, novembre 1994).

Repris dans: Ada Neschke-Hentschke (éd.), Images de Platon et lectures de ses oeuvres: les interprétations de Platon à travers les siècles, Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters, 1997, pp. 395-415.

32. Serra, Mauro. 2004. "Lectures du Sophiste entre analytiques et continentaux." In Actualité des anciens sur la théorie du langage, edited by Petrilli, Raffaella and Gambarara, Daniele, 97-109. Münster: Nodus Publikationen.

33. Soulez, Antonia. 1987. "Aux sources grecques de la tradition sémantique : le thème platonicien des "liaisons premières"." Archives de Philosophie no. 50:371-401.

Résumé : "Il s'agit dans cet article de retracer la filiation sémantique qui permet d'enraciner la tradition de la « proposition en soi » à partir de Bolzano dans les anticipations « logiques » que représentent les premiers efforts de certains philosophes de l'antiquité grecque pour penser les conditions de l'unité de la composition d'un sens. Pour cela il fallait remonter, au-delà de ceux que Bolzano lui-même cite comme ses propres sources, jusqu'au Sophiste de Platon. De quelle façon Platon s'est-il posé la question de l'unité sémantique de l'énoncé, et quelle réponse il a apportée à cette question ? Tels sont les points sur lesquels la démonstration cruciale de l'existence du discours faux dans le Sophiste apporte la lumière, en révélant le nerf verbal de l'articulation des parties d'énoncé en une « liaison » douée de sens, qu'elle soit vraie ou fausse. L'examen de la signification des phrases fausses découvre par là-même le rôle d'opérateur que joue la négation sans la fonction assertive de laquelle l'unité des complexes de parties ne saurait être mise à jour. La négation s'offre ici pour expliquer une sorte de mystère à la fois syntaxique et sémantique qu'Aristote devra à son tour considérer. Toutefois, ce sera plutôt à renoncer à le percer qu'Aristote invitera en proposant d'axer la solution sur l'unité de la chose signifiée par une interprétation ontologique de la référence. La conséquence de ce nouveau traitement du problème est l'obscurcissement du motif originaire des « liaisons premières » chez Platon, et son recouvrement par le thème prédicationniste de l'énoncé de l'être. Ce qui s'observe dès lors est un véritable glissement de l'intérêt logique de ce qui constitue le socle de l'inférence à l'étude formelle de ses lois."

34. ———. 1991. La grammaire philosophique chez Platon. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

"Axé sur la confrontation de la méthode dite de nos jours « analytique » avec l'histoire de la philosophie, ce travail donne une large place à une lecture qui a été menée, il y a une trentaine d'années outre-manche,

sur un grand dialogue de Platon : le Sophiste, par un philosophe à la fois connaisseur de la pensée grecque ancienne et logicien professionnel. Il s'agit d'une lecture « logique » originale entr'autres d'une partie du Sophiste consacrée aux genres dits « suprêmes » et à leur mélangeainsi qu'à la définition du logos(1). L'intérêt de ces passages est parfois discuté parce que à cet endroit du dialogue il semblerait qu'il y ait plutôt une pause qu'un développement vraiment central. L'auteur de cette lecture est Gilbert Ryle(2), philosophe logicien d'Oxford" (p. 6)

(...)

"En plus d’articles spécialisés dans ce domaine, dont certains seront mentionnés dans ce travail, il est pourtant l’auteur d’un livre : Plato’s Progress (1967) et d’une contribution importante sur Platon dans la fameuse Encyclopedia of Philosophy éditée par Paul Edwards (1967)." (p.6)

(...)

"En dehors du plaisir que j’ai personnellement ressenti à lire le philosophe Ryle, dont le style est à la mesure d’une pensée frondeuse et volontiers démarquée, j’ai trouvé un double intérêt à son interprétation des dialogues de Platon, en particulier les dialogues qu’il appelle « logiques » tels le Parménide ou le Sophiste. D’abord, Ryle a vraiment cherché à dégager chez Platon ce qu’il vaudrait mieux appeler une « sémantique catégoriale » pour des raisons que j’explicite plus bas, qu’une « philosophie du langage », et une « sémantique » qui, bien qu’articulée à la doctrine des Idées, nous parle à nous, aujourd’hui. Cependant, il ne s’est pas contenté de déterrer une approche séduisante pour le contemporain. Sa lecture engage un choix méthodologique. C’est ce choix qui m’a paru, non pas le plus plausible, mais le plus important en raison des conséquences qui en résultent pour l’exercice de la philosophie et sa conception." (pp. 8-9)

(1) Il s’agit des passages 251 a - 264 a du Sophiste (coll. Budé).

(2) Cf. « Letters and syllables in Plato », Ph. Rev., vol. LXIX, 1960. [repris dans G. Ryle, Collected Papers. Volume I. Critical Essays, London: Hutchinson 1971, Essay III pp. 57-75.]

35. ———. 1991. "Le travail de la négation: l'interprétation du Sophiste par Gilbert Ryle." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 215-246. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

"Tout porte à croire, dans ce qu'on peut appeler le "détour sémantique" du Sophiste consacré de 260 A 5 à 264 B 8 à la définition du logos, que le non-être dont l'Etranger avec Théétète a découvert qu'il était un «genre déterminé parmi les autres genres» (260 B) (1), a décidément une "forme" (eidos) (2) vraiment exceptionnelle. C'est ce que la chasse au genre du sophiste a permis de découvrir non sans mal. Cependant, arrivés à ce point où le non-être se révèle fractionné le long de la série des êtres (ibid.), !'Etranger et Théétète n'ont parcouru que la moitié du chemin." (p. 217)

(...)

"Le Parménide, dialogue donc à la fois auto-critique et marqué par des préoccupations formelles, s'inscrit dans l'histoire des recherches logiques s'il ne l'inaugure pas. D'après Ryle, le Parménide est une discussion d'un problème de logique, comme le sont une partie du Théétète et la majeure partie du Sophiste:

«Non que Platon dise: "détournons-nous de l'Ethique, de la Métaphysique, de l'Epistémologie et de la Physique pour considérer quelques questions qui sont du ressort de la Logique"»

car, dit Ryle, «ces titres n'existaient pas. Cependant les questions et les arguments qu'il énonce dans ce dialogue, nous devrions les ranger dans le même domaine que celui auquel appartiennent par exemple la théorie aristotélicienne des catégories, la séparation kantienne des concepts formels et non-formels, la théorie russellienne des types et les théories de la syntax logique de Wittgenstein et Carnap» (8).

(1) Dans la traduction de Diès adoptée ici sauf mention contraire. Cfr. plus haut dans le dialogue le passage 258 B 10 où le non-être est dit «posséder sa nature propre (τὴν αὑτοῦ φύσιν ἔχον), et, dans les lignes qui suivent, la façon dont sa nature d' "autre" permet de comprendre comment son ezdos (258 D 6) se distribue sur toute la chaîne des êtres dans leurs relations mutuelles.

(2) Cfr. ci-dessus.

(8) G. Ryle, Plato's 'Parmenides', «Mind», XLVIII (1939), repris dans Collected Papers, London 1971, I, pp. 35-6.

36. Steel, Carlos. 1992. "Le Sophiste comme texte théologique dans l'interprétation de Proclus." In On Proclus and His Influence in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Bos, Egbert B. and Meijer, Pieter Ane, 51-64. Leiden: Brill.

"Dans cette communication, je voudrais examiner comment Proclus a interpreté cet autre dialogue dans lequel on trouve un exposé scientifique de la théologie, le Sophiste. S'il est loin d'avoir !'importance du Parménide, Ia doctrine qui y est developpee constitue neanmoins, selon les mots memes de Proclus, "une preparation (προτέλεια) aux mysteres du Parménide.(4)" (p. 51)

(...)

"Ce qui l'intéressait dans le Sophiste, ce n'etait pas sa théorie de l'être, son ontologie, mais la doctrine de l'Un qu'on trouve dans la discussion des thèses pluralistes et unitaires (242 c - 245 e). C'est par cette discussion hénologique que le Sophiste a pour lui une signification théologique.

Je me limiterai done ci-dessous a présenter !'interprétation proclienne de cette seule section du dialogue, sans oublier pour autant que le Sophiste était également important pour la théorie de la dialectique et pour le statut de la negation (question capitale dans la théologie negative).(10) Dans mon exposé, je distinguerai trois parties. D'abord je présenterai !'interprétation que Proclus donne de la section 242 c -245 e, pour autant qu'on puisse la reconstruire en s'appuyant sur des informations dispersées dans son œuvre . (En effet, on n'a pas gardé de commentaire sur le Sophiste, et il est même probable que Proclus n' en a jamais composé). Ensuite, j' examinerai l'apport du Sophiste à l'interprétation du Parménide. Enfin, je relirai le Sophiste à la lumière du Parménide, ce qui nous fera decouvrir d'autres doctrines théologiques." (p. 52, note omise)

(4) Cf Theol. plat. III 21, p. 73, 10- 12 [For the conceptions of the Elean guest are the proteleia of the mysteries of the Parmenides. (translation by Thomas Taylor]

(10) Sur la dialectique dans le Sophiste, voir In Parm. 622, 22- 24; 634, 30- 33; 637, 9-12; 649, 36- 651,9 (texte important); 653, 32- 654, 14; 654, 34- 655, 12; 656, 2- 14; 989, 14- 17. Sur le statut du non-etre et de la negation, voir In Parm. 1072, 19- 1074, 21; Theol. plat. II 5, p. 38, 13- 39, 5 et l'importante note complementaire de Saffrey-Westerink a la p. 39, 1 (o. 99- 100).

37. Strycker, Émile de. 1979. "Notes sur les relations entre la problématique du Sophiste de Platon et celle de la Métaphysique d'Aristote." In Études sur la Métaphysique d'Aristote. Actes du VI Symposium aristotelicum, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 49-67. Paris: Vrin.

"L’objet de la Métaphysique aristotélicienne est la recherche et la construction de la science la première et la plus universelle. Nous voudrions, dans la présente communication, préciser quelques-unes des relations que ce traité entretient avec le Sophiste de Platon. Pourquoi ce seul dialogue, et non tel ou tel autre? D’abord parce qu’il faut se limiter, ensuite parce que les sujets qui y sont débattus s’apparentent d’assez près à certains thèmes centraux de la Métaphysique et que certaines formulations dont Platon s’y sert paraissent avoir directement influencé divers passages d’Aristote. Nous n’avons évidemment pas l’intention de présenter ici une confrontation générale des philosophies spéculatives d’Aristote et de Platon ni de nous demander si l’une est supérieure à l’autre. Notre but est beaucoup plus modeste et s’inspire directement du programme du présent Symposium. Nous voudrions seulement, en partant du Sophiste, contribuer à mieux délimiter, sur quelques points, ce qu’Aristote a voulu réaliser dans sa Métaphysique. Assurément, le plan et la méthode de ce traité sont profondément originaux et il peut sembler que les rencontres avec Platon soient peu nombreuses et d’un intérêt médiocre. Peut-être, néanmoins, notre exposé réussira-t-il à montrer que les rapports sont plus étroits qu’il n’y paraît à première vue. S’ils ne se manifestent pas d’emblée, c’est parce qu’Aristote a si radicalement repensé les problèmes qu’ils prennent chez lui une tout autre figure que chez son maître. C’est moins le cas dans les livres M et N, consacrés à la polémique contre les doctrines de l’Académie, que dans ceux ou Aristote poursuit son propre projet, c’est-à-dire AB T EZH0I. Nous ne ferons mention qu’une seule fois du livre A, dont la problématique et la méthode, du moins dans les chapitres 6-10, sont en un sens plus proches de celles de Platon, mais qui semble avoir été rédigé sans relation littéraire directe avec le groupe des livres centraux.

Les re

38. Sun, Yu-Jung. 2018. "À quoi sert la discussion sur l’opinion fausse dans le Théétète de Platon ?" Philosorbonne:61-76.

"L’interprétation défendue ici est la suivante : dans le Théétète, surtout dans le passage sur l’opinion fausse, ainsi que dans le Sophiste, Platon cherche à mettre au jour l’importance d’un savoir d’intermédiaire oud’une science d’intermédiaire, alors que, sans ce savoir d’intermédiaire, il est impossible d’interroger l’essence du savoir et la nature de la fausseté sans tomber dans l’aporie. Dans le Théétète, Platon montre la conséquence d’une interrogation de la nature du savoir sans prise en compte du rôle des relations dans la connaissance. C’est pourquoi le Théétète ne présente que des arguments qui, en définitive, échouent. Le Sophiste fait suite à ce questionnement du Théétète et apporte une solution à l’aporie partagée par ces deux dialogues, en expliquant ce qui est nécessaire mais absent dans les arguments sur l’opinion fausse du Théétète." (p. 62)

39. Swiggers, Pierre. 1984. "Théorie grammaticale et définition du discours dans le Sophiste de Platon." Les Études Classiques no. 52:15-17.

40. Teisserenc, Fulcran. 2007. "Consonnes et voyelles: les fonctions de l'Être et de l'Autre dans le Sophiste de Platon (251a-259e)." Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review no. 46:231-264.

Résumé : "Le but de cet article est de comprendre les fonctions que dans le Sophiste l’Étranger attribue à la forme de l’Être et à celle de l’Autre. À la différence d’une interprétation de type linguistique, qui vise à déceler dans le texte une distinction entre les emplois du verbe «être», nous mettons en évidence le rôle ontologique assigné aux très grands genres dans l’entrelacement des formes. Exploitant l’analogie des voyelles, nous montrons que l’Être est un connecteur, qui rend actuelles les participations entre formes, tandis que l’Autre est un séparateur, qui rend actuelles leurs différences. Cette analyse permet d’éclairer les procédés dialectiques décrits dans le dialogue en termes très abstraits et de résoudre le problème controversé de l’auto-prédication sans avoir besoin de recourir à l’auto-participation."

41. ———. 2008. "Platon a-t-il distingué différents emplois du verbe « être » ? : note sur un passage controversé du Sophiste 255c-d." Philosophie Antique.Problèmes, Renaissance, Usages no. 8:153-188.

Résumé : "Contrairement à ce que présupposent certaines lectures contemporaines du Sophiste, l’Étranger ne cherche pas à conférer au verbe « être » des sens différents selon le type d’énoncé dans lequel il figure, qu’il s’agisse d’un énoncé d’identité, prédicatif, ou encore existentiel. L’analyse précise d’un passage fréquemment sollicité à cet effet (255c-d), analyse qui tient compte également de l’ensemble de la partie centrale du dialogue, fait apparaître que l’Étranger n’a pas un besoin crucial d’une telle distinction et qu’elle n’est pas non plus implicitement présente dans ses autres arguments. Quant au texte litigieux de 255c-d, il se lit bien mieux comme opérant une séparation quasi catégorielle entre termes absolus et termes relatifs. Cette dernière distinction, attestée par l’Ancienne Académie comme authentiquement platonicienne, se trouve enrichir le tableau des relations entre genres que l’Étranger esquisse dans son exploration partielle de la συμπλοκη τον ειδον."

42. ———. 2008. "Puissance, activité et passivité dans le Sophiste." Philosophie no. 96:25-45.

"Quand l’Étranger d’Élée passe en revue dans le Sophiste les diverses théories de l’être que la philosophie de son temps a pu produire, la gigantomachie qui met aux prises les Fils de la Terre et les Amis des Idées retient particulièrement son attention. Dans ce combat, les premiers accordent spontanément le monopole de l’être aux réalités corporelles (et accessoirement tangibles) tandis que les seconds n’admettent pour véritables οὐσίαι que les réalités intelligibles et incorporelles. Entre « matérialistes » et « idéalistes », l’Étranger recherche une sorte de dénominateur commun qui puisse les mettre d’accord. Il propose alors de caractériser l’être par la puissance (247 d-e)." (p. 25)

(...)

"Nous nous proposons de reprendre ces deux questions : après avoir rappelé les textes concernés, nous mettrons en lumière certains aspects de l’argument développé en 248 c-e qui laissent à penser que l’Étranger engage délibérément le débat sur une fausse piste, dont le bénéfice attendu est indirect. Piste qu’il abandonne d’ailleurs juste après pour revenir à des considérations plus familières sous la plume de Platon.

Quant à l’importance et la signification du « critère » de la puissance, elles dépendent en grande partie du mode et de la mesure selon lesquels il est utilisé dans la suite du dialogue. S’il se trouve en effet, comme l’a relevé F. Fronterotta, [*] sollicité dans les analyses centrales sur les très grands genres, c’est toutefois, verrons-nous, moyennant des aménagements conceptuels considérables qui confèrent à l’Être comme genre voyelle un rôle charnière de premier plan que ne pouvait laisser entrevoir le seul passage de 247 e." (p. 27)

[*] Francesco Fronterotta, « L’être et la participation de l’autre. Une nouvelle ontologie dans le Sophiste », Les Études philosophiques, no 3/1995, 311-353.

43. ———. 2012. Le Sophiste de Platon. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

"Le présent travail est un commentaire suivi du Sophiste. J’ai profité pour sa rédaction de certains de mes travaux antérieurs qui portaient déjà sur ce Dialogue, mais n’en abordaient que des parties ou des aspects singuliers. Ce livre s’en distingue par le souci de restituer au parcours dans lequel l’Étranger entraîne le jeune Théétète toute sa complexité et sa cohérence. La tradition du commentaire est en France peu pratiquée, du moins dans les études platoniciennes, alors qu’elle est florissante outre-Manche. Nos spécialistes ont préféré pour la plupart fournir des Dialogues des traductions amples et informées, nanties de substantielles préfaces, ou bien se consacrer à éclairer tel point du texte, tel concept ou tel élément de doctrine. Mais l’analyse pas à pas du texte, de son argumentation, et de ses silences comme de ses équivoques, est un exercice qui a pratiquement disparu du paysage académique français.(1) Je souhaite proposer une lecture attentive d’une œuvre pourtant déjà surchargée d’interprétations, mais qui pour la plupart ne portent que sur certains passages, toujours les mêmes. On sait pourtant qu’avec un auteur aussi intelligemment retors que Platon, il n’est possible d’offrir quelque clarté supplémentaire sur un texte si saturé et raturé qu’en le mettant en mouvement, ce qui veut dire : le situer dans une progression qui n’est pas nécessairement progrès, le rapprocher d’autres textes dont les perspectives peuvent être différentes tout en étant consonantes, le faire entendre enfin dans ses variations de ton et de visée." (p. 7)

(1) Exception faite du remarquable ouvrage de Sylvain Delcomminette consacré au Philèbe (Le Philèbe de Platon. Introduction à l’agathologie platonicienne, Leiden/Boston, Brill, 2006) qui, à lui tout seul, en a renouvelé le genre.

44. Thornton, Anna Maria. 1986. "λόγος-phrase et λόγος-texte chez Platon et Aristote." In Philosophie du langage et grammaire dans l'Antiquité, 165-179. Bruxelles: Ousia.

45. Vanohutte, M. 1948. "Note sur la communauté des genres dans le « Sophiste »." Revue philosophique de Louvain no. 46:177-187.

Sommaire : "Le passage du Sophiste (253d5-253e2), où l'on a cru que Platon devait décrire soit les deux opérations de la dialectique, συναγωγή et διαίρεσις, soit la seule συναγωγή, soit toutes autres relations de concepts, ne peut nullement être interprété dans ce sens. Il semble, dans le cadre même du dialogue, qu'il s'agisse plutôt de quatre conceptions différentes de la communauté des genres, qui résument succinctement les positions historiques adoptées par Platon lui-même, les Pluralistes, les Amis des Formes et Parménide."

46. Vasiliu, Anca. 2001. "Dire l’image ou la parole visible chez Platon (sur le Sophiste, 216a-241e)." Dionysius no. 19:75-111.

"Le Sophiste introduit dans le discours philosophique un riche vocabulaire qui désigne des copies et des ressemblances de toutes sortes, des simulacres, des apparitions et des phantasmes qui ouvrent une brèche entre être et non-être, un écart à travers lequel s’insinue dans le discours de l’Étranger la multiplicité d’expressions et de définitions possibles de l’image - alors que le philosophe (mais est-ce bien le point de vue de Platon ?) ne visait pas le rôle de l’image dans la connaissance, mais la distinction tranchée entre le vrai et le faux, à travers la complémentarité des définitions de l’être et du non-être." (p. 75)

(...)

"L’analyse que nous proposons part du déploiement lexical à travers lequel l’Étranger tente de nommer et donc de circonscrire par/dans la langue l’image « ontique », instrument favori du sophiste. Mais dès l’abord le rapport entre l’image et la parole s’avère ici conflictuel, et il demeurera d’ailleurs sous le signe d’une impossibilité de la rencontre parfaite, voire sous le signe d’une inadéquation ou d’une inappropriation du discours à l’égard du visible : l’image glisse, fugace et furtive comme des reflets sur l’eau, à peine saisis par la rétine, et le langage n’arrive pas à la contenir, ou bien elle se laisse définir, s’adapte même à la définition (tantôt ceci, tantôt cela), et lui échappe aussitôt que l’on croit pouvoir arrêter la « chasse ». De fait, l’image ne peut se dire que par un dédoublement à l’intérieur même de la langue, dédoublement qui reprend, calque la nature même de l’image, sa nature double, sa réflexivité. Le moyen le plus adéquat de l’exprimer serait peut-être celui de la tautologie ou de la « double négation » - en un mot, l’astuce, la mechanè d’une sorte de miroir placé dans un interstice choisi de la langue, une brèche réfléchissante opérée dans son intimité. D’où le recours ardu et néanmoins révélateur au non-être, et par-delà le non-être, au mouvement et au temps, notions étrangères de prime abord à l’image, impropres en apparence à en définir la nature." (pp. 2-3)

47. ———. 2008. Dire et voir. La parole visible du Sophiste. Paris: Vrin.

"Au lecteur inquiet de savoir à l’avance ce qu’il aurait à gagner en parcourant ces pages, nous lui livrons un raccourci  : ce livre cherche dans la lecture d’un texte particulier de la philosophie grecque classique réponse à l’étonnement suscité par ce manque de précision apparente de la part de l’expérience la plus commune et la plus souvent évoquée de toutes les expériences diurnes. Il s’adresse, par conséquent, à ceux qui voudraient apprendre à regarder le visible à la manière dont les Anciens en parlent, c’est-à-dire dans la patience d’une vision qui traverse la parole et s’enrichit de l’épaisseur des mots. Mais, si l’objet d’étude de ce travail est un texte historiquement déterminé, le Sophiste de Platon en l’occurrence, notons tout de suite que le regard au sujet duquel est formulée la question de départ, est, lui, un acte indéterminé historiquement. On pourrait définir ce regard, simplement, comme l’acte de recevoir de manière réfléchie le visible en tant que visible. Précisons donc, d’emblée, que cette définition basique du regard est notre définition, tout autant que la lecture du texte platonicien est notre lecture, sans autre but que de répondre à la question du régard et à la nécessité de définir le statut du visible pour la pensée." (pp. 7-8)

48. ———. 2014. "Le Même et l’Autre et les images. Une lecture de la division des genres dans le Sophiste." Philosophia no. 44:95-136.

49. Vieillard Baron, Jean-Louis. 2008. "Le même et l'autre, du Sophiste de Platon à la Logique de Hegel." Les Cahiers Philosophiques de Strasbourg:37-51.

50. Villela-Petit, Maria. 1991. "La question de l'image artistique dans le Sophiste." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 55-90. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

"Si, avec Stanley Rosen, nous admettons que dans le Sophiste Platon met en scène «le drame de l'original et de l'image»(1), nous devons aussitôt constater qu'il y fait jouer à l'image artistique un rôle clef. De quelle expérience du monde grec et de son art un tel "rôle" porte-t-il la trace? Comment se fait-il, en effet, que Platon choisisse tantôt l'art du peintre, tantôt l'art du sculpteur (et nous verrons que cette différence n'est pas insignifiante) comme l'analogon le mieux à même de faire saisir non seulement le sophiste et son activité mais aussi la distinction entre le sophiste et le philosophe ?

Pour déployer ce genre de questionnement nous sommes certes redevables à la tradition déjà longue constituée par ceux qui, frappés par l'abondance d'allusions à l'art dans les dialogues, ont essayé d'éclairer, à partir d'une confrontation entre le corpus et les autres documents disponibles, le rapport de Platon à l'art, ou plutôt aux arts, en particulier à la peinture et à la sculpture." (p. 55)

(1) S. Rosen, Plato's 'Sophist': the drama of original and image, New Haven & London, 1983.

51. Wolff, Francis. 1991. "Le chasseur chassé. Les définitions du sophiste." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 19-52. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

"On se propose d’analyser ici la structure et l’objet des “définitions” initiales du Sophiste dans le dialogue homonyme (222 A-232 a). Quelle est leur fonction dans l’économie du dialogue, voire dans celle de la trilogie inachevée (Sophiste, Politique, Philosophe) ? Qui définissent-elles et comment ? Sont-elles des définitions et pourquoi ? En revanche les problèmes liés à la méthode de la division (son principe et son but, son rapport avec les autres “méthodes” platoniciennes, sa place dans l’évolution de la dialectique, dans “l’histoire de la logique” etc...) seront largement laissés de côté: ce sont eux qui ont généralement retenu l’attention des rares commentateurs du Sophiste qui se soient arrêtés à ce texte." (p. 19)

(...)

"Nous revoilà face à nos trois genres suprêmes et leurs gardiens: le Sophiste du Non-Etre, c’est-à-dire de l’Autre, le Politique du Même, le Philosophe de l’Etre. Leur compétence universelle leur est aussi mutuellement nécessaire que celle des trois genres maximes - qui se mêlent à tous les autres - est nécessaire à tout “dire”.

Concernant le Politique et le Philosophe, rappelons seulement que le Philosophe est dit explicitement avoir l’Etre pour résidence (254 A); et que dans le Politique, mais surtout dans la République, le rôle architectonique du Politique, par rapport à toutes les autres pratiques, consiste dans le fait qu’il est le garant de l’identité du tout par la pureté des parties. Quant au Sophiste, on sait qu’il habite le Non-Etre (254 A), et on ne manque pas de nous rappeler (258 B) que c’est à cause de lui qu’on cherche ce Non-Etre. Mais d’une manière plus générale, n’est-ce pas la leçon de tout le dialogue de montrer que le Non-Etre est possible d’une part, qu’il est nécessaire d’autre part : il est possible comme Autre, genre suprême, il est nécessaire pour que le “contredire”, et donc aussi le “dire”, soient possibles. De la même façon, de toute compétence, si générale soit-elle, s’origine une pratique sophistique. Derrière tout politique ou tout philosophe, il y a sans doute un sophiste. Car le Sophiste est le genre même qui redouble tous les autres et son être (comme celui du Non-Etre) n’est rien d’autre que d’être l’Autre de tous les autres. Qui sait même si l’intention de la trilogie n’était pas de montrer cette nécessité où se trouvent le Politique comme le Philosophe de leur Autre, le Sophiste, pour que chacun d’eux soit ce qu’il est, c’est-à-dire pour que chacun soit, tout court." (pp. 51-52)

52. Zaks, Nicolas. 2014. "Être et non-être dans la République (livre V) et dans le Sophiste " Zetesis - Ζήτησις : Actualités scientifiques en philosophie ancienne et sciences de l'Antiquité no. 4:1-16.

Résumé : "À la fin du livre V de la République, Socrate démontre patiemment à Glaucon, porte-parole désigné des amateurs de spectacles, que seuls les objets de la connaissance sont pleinement, alors que ceux de la doxa participent à l’être et au non-être. Dans le Sophiste, l’Étranger, pour capturer le sophiste, se voit dans l’obligation, contre Parménide, de reconnaître l’être, d’une certaine manière, du non-être, dans la mesure où chaque Forme, étant autre que n’importe quelle Forme, n’est pas cette Forme. Les analyses du Sophiste viennent-elles bouleverser la conception de l’être établie dans la République ? Après avoir présenté une interprétation du texte difficile et controversé de la République, interprétation dégageant du texte les critères de détermination et d’identité à soi comme caractérisant les objets de la connaissance, on démontre la compatibilité de ces enseignements avec les analyses ontologiques menées dans le Sophiste : la participation à l’Autre et au non-être ne nuit pas à la pleine détermination d’une Forme, mais au contraire y contribue, et elle ne trouble pas l’identité à soi de cette Forme, car elle implique une altérité non pas par rapport à soi-même mais par rapport aux autres."

53. ———. 2016. "À quel logos correspond la συμπλοκὴ τῶν εἰδῶν du Sophiste ?" Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 34:37-59.

Résumé : "Cet article est consacré au problème du rapport entre l’entrelacement des genres (συμπλοκὴ τῶν εἰδῶν) et le logos dans le Sophiste. Après avoir brièvement présenté le problème, je discute, dans la première partie, différentes solutions proposées par les commentateurs. Je cherche à montrer qu’aucune de ces solutions n’est pleinement satisfaisante.

Dans la deuxième partie, je propose une nouvelle solution au problème de la συμπλοκὴ τῶν εἰδῶν fondée sur une distinction entre deux types de logos, le logos dialectique et le logos doxique. Dans la troisième partie, je cherche à justifier textuellement cette solution en recourant à la fois au texte du Sophiste lui-même et à la dernière partie du Théétète. Dans ma conclusion, je suggère que la distinction entre logos dialectique et logos doxique correspond à une différence qui traverse toute l’œuvre de Platon, à savoir la différence entre connaissance et opinion."

54. ———. 2017. "Science de l’entrelacement des formes, science suprême, science des hommes libres : la dialectique dans le Sophiste 253b-254b." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 38:61-81.

Abstract: "Despite intensive exegetical work, Plato’s description of dialectic in the Sophist still raises many questions. Through a close reading of this passage that contextualizes it in the general organisation of the Sophist, this paper provides answers to these questions. After presenting the difficult text, I contend that the “vowel-kinds” are necessary (but not individually sufficient) conditions for the blending of kinds. Then, I interpret the “cause of divisions” mentioned by the Stranger as the kinds responsible of the dichotomous division in the first half of the dialogue. In the next part, I show that 235d5-e2 does not describe a procedure of “meta-divison” as some commentators have it, but that it describes the method of division itself. Finally, I connect the difficulty and the obscurity of the passage to the fact that dialectic is the supreme science and I explain why dialectic is the science of free men."

55. Ziermann, Christoph. 2011. "La négativité de l'être chez Platon." In Plato's Sophist: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlíček, Aleš and Karfík, Filip, 240-277. Praha: Oikoymenh.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Platon: Sophistes. Studien in Deutsch

Bibliographie

1. Abbate, Michele. 2021. "Der Sophist als mimêtês tôn ontôn (Sph. 235a1 f.). Ontologische Implikationen." In Platonic Mimesis Revisited, edited by Julia, Pfefferkorn and Spinelli, Antonino, 211-224. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

2. Alván León, Alexandra V. 2021. "Wolf im Hundepelz: Mimesis als Täuschung in der Kunst des Sophisten." In Platonic Mimesis Revisited, edited by Julia, Pfefferkorn and Spinelli, Antonino, 225-248. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

3. Apelt, Otto. 1895. "Platons Sophistes in geschichtlicher Belenchtung." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie no. 50:394-452.

"Unsere Abhandlung verweilte etwas lange bei trockenen logischen Fragen. Aber vielleicht trägt sie doch etwas bei zu der Erkenntniss, wie innig diese logischen Quisquilien - als welche sie manchen erscheinen dürften - mit den höchsten Problemen des Denkens zueammenhängen, wie wichtig und entseheidend also für den ganzen Verlauf der Geschichte der Philosophie sie sind.

Aristoteles lässt sich nicht ungestraft umgehen: die Gesetze des Reflexionsvermögens haften unserer Erkenntniss als unbequem Mitgaben au und lassen sich durch keine intellectuelle Anschauung oder vermeintliche höhere Logik bei Seite schieben. Die Rückkehr von aristotelischer zu platonischer Abstractionsweise war ein Anachronismus. Wir halten fest an der selbständigen Geisteswelt Platons in Gestalt des Kantischen transcendentalen Idealismus. Darin sah Platon viel weiter als Aristoteles. Dafür sah dieser weit schärfer in der Nähe. Seinen Belehrungen in Sachen der Logik müssen wir treu bleiben, wenn wir die Grundlagen gesunden Denkens nicht aufgeben wollen." (s. 452)

4. Bechtle, Gerald. 2002. "Dihairesis, Definition, Analysis, Synthesis: Betrachtungen zu Jamblichs Skopos-Lehre und zur Interpretation des platonischen Sophistes (253d1 - e5)." Wiener Studien: Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie und Patristik no. 115:175-218.

"Es mag manchem gewagt erscheinen, einen Aufsatz zu Jamblich und seinem Verhältnis zu dem platonischen Dialog Sophistes verfassen zu wollen. Diese Zweifel sind zunächst deshalb berechtigt, weil uns die Spät antike insgesamt nur sehr spärliche und indirekte Zeugnisse der Interpreta tion des platonischen Sophistes hinterlassen hat. Die Bedeutung dieses Dialogs scheint somit - vor allem von der Überlieferungslage her gesehen - hinter der solch zentraler Dialoge wie Parmenides, Timaeus oder auch Philebus zu verblassen, zu welchen wir ja direkte und wesentlich reichhal tigere Zeugnisse und oft sogar noch ganze Kommentare besitzen." (s. 175)

(...)

"Damit sind zwei der weiteren, über die Teilrekonstruktion der Philoso phie Jamblichs hinausreichenden Ziele dieses Beitrags bereits umrissen. Zum einen geht es um die Ergänzung eines historischen Bausteins im not wendigerweise stark lückenhaften Gebäude der Geschichte der Sophistes Interpretation, zum anderen um einen eher systematischen Baustein im Bereich der weniger erforschten spätplatonischen Methodologie/Logik und Methodenphilosophie. Die meisten bisherigen Arbeiten zum Einfluß Sophistes in der spätantiken Philosophie verfolgten andere Schwerpunkte, wenn auch klar sein muß, daß die angesprochenen Probleme immer teil weise miteinander verknüpft sind. Dies gilt umso mehr, als man nie die Tatsache aus den Augen verlieren darf, daß gerade für die späten Plato Interpreten immer der gesamte Dialog - also sogar mit den heute oft philo sophisch irrelevant erscheinenden Teilen - relevant war und vom σκοπός erfaßt wurde bzw. auf ihn bezogen werden konnte." (ss. 176-177)

5. Bordt, Michael. 1991. "Der Seinsbegriff in Platons Sophistes: eine Untersuchung zu 242b6-249d5." Theologie und Philosophie no. 66:493-529.

Abstract: "The article provides, first, a survey of the scholarly debate about the meaning of 'to be' in Plato's Sophist, starting from Cornford, centering on Michael Frede and Owen, and leading up to the present day discussion. Then, Plato's criticism of dualism, monism, idealism, materialism (Soph. 242b6-249d5) is given detailed analysis. The scope of this analysis is to substantiate the hypothesis that Plato distinguishes two types of propositions in Sophist, i.e., those of predication and a particular kind of identity. Each type uses 'is' differently. However, even when criticizing traditional ontologies, Plato does not use 'is' to mean 'exists'."

6. Brach, Markus Joachim. 1996. Heidegger-Platon. Vom Neukantismus zur existentiellen Interpretation des "Sophistes". Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann.

7. Brzoska, Andreas. 1992. Absolutes Sein. Parmenides' Lehrgedicht und seine Spiegelung im Sophistes. Münster: Lit.

8. Buchheim, Thomas. 2013. "Megista genê und Weisen der Gemeinschaft in Platons Sophistes 249d-259e." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 67:538-565.

"Noch immer gibt es in der Forschung keine allgemein akzeptierte und hinreichend präzise Auffassung darüber, was Platon mit dem Lehrstück über‚ größte Gattungen‘ (μέγιστα γένη) im Herzen des Dialogs Sophistes genau genommen hat ausrichten wollen." (s. 538)

(...)

"Meine Argumentation stützt sich vor allem auf zwei bisher wenig in Erwägung gezogene Punkte des Textes: Zum einen wurde kaum beachtet, was Platon selbst als über Parmenides hinausgehenden Gewinn an logischer Befähigung nennt, der sich ergibt, wenn man die betreffenden Gattungen unterscheidet (259c – d). Zum anderen ist der innere Zusammenhang der Lehre von den fünf Gattungen mit dem wie eine Abschweifung wirkenden Passus über Philosophie als dialektische Wissenschaft in der Mitte des Abschnitts (253b – 254b) nicht genügend erkannt und für die Klärung des Gedankengangs herangezogen worden. (s. 539)

9. Colloud-Streit, Marlis. 2004. "Warum gibt es keinen Mythos im Sophistes?" Plato Journal no. 4:1-17.

"Der vorliegende Beitrag möchte zeigen, dass das Fehlen respektive das Vorhandensein eines Mythos mit Platons Verständnis von Dialektik zu tun hat. In einem ersten Schritt wird versucht, die Bedeutung von Dialektik im Politikos respektive im Sophistes zu beleuchten. Dann werden in einem zweiten Schritt die Figuren Theaitetos und Jung-Sokrates vorgestellt, und es wird eine Antwort auf die Frage gewagt, weshalb der Eleat nur einem von beiden einen Mythos erzählt.

Zweck dieses Artikels ist, eine Antwort vorzuschlagen, welche die Anwesenheit des Mythos im Politikos beziehungsweise dessen Abwesenheit im Sophistes erklärt. Die folgenden Überlegungen sind bei weitem nicht abgeschlossen und der Artikel ist als Anregung für eine vertiefte Forschung gedacht." (p- 2)

10. Detel, Wolfgang. 1972. Platons Beschreibung des falschen Satzes im Theätet und Sophistes. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

11. Dürr, Karl. 1945. "Moderne Darstellung der platonischen Logik. Ein Beitrag zur Erklärung des Dialoges Sophistes." Museum Helveticum no. 2:166-194.

"§ 1. Der platonische Dialog "Sophistes" erscheint uns heute in manchen seiner Teile merkwürdig spröde, während andere Stellen des Werkes durch eine Fülle von Sätzen, die zu tieferer Forschung anregen, ausgezeichnet sind.

§ 2. Friedrich Schleiermacher war wohl der erste, derdaraufaufmerksammachte, daß innerhalb des Dialoges zwei wesentlich verschiedene Teile, ein äußerer und ein innerer, zu unterscheiden sind (vgl .SchP Bd. lI,2, S. 13lff.). An dieser Grundauffassung ist späterhin von denen, welche eine Analyse des Dialoges gegeben haben, stets festgehalten worden; und gerne bezeichnete man von nun an den äußeren Teil als die Schale, den inneren als den Kern des Ganzen. Doch kommt in dieser Bezeichnungsweise eine Wertung zum Ausdruck, die Schleiermacher selbst nicht gebilligt hätte; denn er hebt ausdrücklich hervor, daß in dem Dialog nichts ist, was als bloße Schale wegzuwerfen wäre (ibid. S. 134, Z. 20-21)."

SchP = Platons Werke von F. Schleiermacher. Zweite verbesserte Auflage. 1817-1824

12. Ebert, Theodor. 1998. "Wer sind die Ideenfreunde in Platons Sophistes?" In Amicus Plato magis amica veritas. Festschrift Wolfgang Wieland zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Enskat, Reiner, 82-100. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"In der Diskussion philosophischer Lehren, die Platon im Sophistes durch den Mund des Besuchers aus Elea im Gespräch mit dem jungen Theaitetos vortragen läßt, kommt es an einer Stelle (246 a ff.) zur Schilderung eines „Gigantenkampfes" zwischen zwei entgegengesetzten und sich bekämpfenden Lagern. Ihr Streit geht um die ουσία, um das Sein, genauer um die Frage, wem eigentlich überhaupt der Charakter des Seins zukommt. Auf der einen Seite stehen, etwas vereinfacht gesagt, die „Materialisten", von denen es heißt, daß sie alles aus dem Himmel und dem Unsichtbaren auf die Erde herunterziehen (246 a 8 —9), daß sie, wie der eleatische Besucher sagt, mit ihren Händen Steine und Bäume umklammern. Nach ihnen gilt als seiend nur das, was körperlich ist (246 b l -2). Ihnen gegen ber stehen die Ideenfreunde (οί των ειδών φίλοι 248 a 4 —5), die sich, wie es heißt, „von oben herab aus dem Unsichtbaren" verteidigen (vgl. 246 b 7). Sie lassen als das wahre Sein nur die „denkbaren und unkörperlichen Eide" zu (νοητά άττα και ασώματα είδη 246 b 7 —8). Beide Positionen werden von dem Besucher aus Elea einer kritischen Prüfung unterzogen." (s. 82)

13. Eckl, Andreas. 2011. Sprache und Logik bei Platon: Zweiter Teil: Ideenlogik und Logik der grammatischen Form im Sophistes. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

"Mit dem Dialog „Sophistes“ liegt nicht nur die späteste Fassung der Platonischen Ideenlehre vor, sondern auch die refl ektierteste. Am Beispiel der Bestimmung des Begriffs des „Sophisten“ lässt Platon darin seine Gesprächspartner verschiedene Varianten von Begriffs- und Ideentheorien durchgehen und entwickelt kritisch-selbstkritisch eine Theorie der Grundlegung des Logos allen Seins. Die Argumentation zeichnet sich dadurch aus, dass sie überall auf das Faktum und die Notwendigkeit des sprachlich-logischen Ausdrucks der Begriffe oder Ideen rekurriert. Die Ideenlogik wird insofern in den Zusammenhang einer Theorie eingebettet, die Sprache und Logik umfasst, in Beziehung zueinander setzt, und die Platon von der sprachphilosophischen Seite her schon im Dialog „Kratylos“ behandelt hat. Die Begründung des Logos im Dialog „Sophistes“ kann deshalb aber doch nicht sprachanalytisch, sondern muss logisch-begrifflich erfolgen: in einer refl ektierten, selbstbegründenden Theorie der Synthesis der Logoi. Diese Theorie führt am Ende zu einem „Gefl echt“ „wichtigster Begriffe“, die alle den Status von Bedingungen der Möglichkeit des Logos beanspruchen. In Form von Gegenbegriffen treten sie auseinander und bestimmen so jeweils verschiedene Dimensionen ihrer möglichen Verbindung oder wechselseitigen Durchdringung. Für die systematische Theorie der Gegenwart ist dieses Modell von besonderem Interesse, weil es seine eigene dynamische Veränderung rechtfertigt. Das Buch setzt den vorliegenden ersten Band „Sprache und Logik bei Platon I“ fort und schließt die Arbeit am Zusammenhang von „Sprache und Logik bei Platon“ ab."

14. Frede, Michael. 1962. "Bemerkungen zum Text der Aporienpassage in Platons Sophistes." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 7:132-136.

15. ———. 1967. Prädikation und Existenzaussage. Platons Gebrauch von '...ist' und '...ist nicht...' in Sophistes. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

16. ———. 1996. "Die Frage nach dem Seienden: Sophistes." In Platon. Seine Dialoge in der Sicht neuer Forschungen, edited by Kobusch, Theo and Mojsisch, Burkhard, 181-199. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

17. Friedländer, Paul. 1975. Platon. Band III: Die Platonischen Schriften: Zweite und Drite Periode. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Kapitel 26. Sophistes, ss. 224-259.

18. Gardeya, Peter. 1988. Platons Sophistes. Interpretation und Bibliographie. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

19. Gauss, Hermann. 1960. Die Spätdialoge Theätet, Parmenides, Sophist und Politicus. Bern: Peter Lang.

Dritte Band, Erste Hälfte.

20. Glasmeyer, Christian. 2003. Platons Sophistes: zur Überwindung der Sophistik. Heidelberg: Winter.

21. Havlíček, Aleš. 2011. "Die Aufgabe der Dialektik für die Auslegung des Seins der Nichtseienden." In Plato's Sophist: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlíček, Aleš and Karfík, Filip, 173-197. Praha: Oikoymenh.

22. Iber, Christian. 2007. Platon, Sophistes. Kommentar. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

23. Jinek, Jakub. 2011. "Die Verschiedenheit der Menschentypen in Platons Sophistes." In Plato's Sophist: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlíček, Aleš and Karfík, Filip, 328-343. Praha: Oikoymenh.

"Der vorliegende Text möchte die Topographie der Menschentypen im Sophistes vervollständigen und dadurch mit Sinn erfüllen. Dabei soll a) bekräftigt werden, dass die Topographie sich auf die Seinsordnung

stützt, und dass sie sich deswegen nicht nur auf die Sprache oder Prädikation bezieht, sondern auf Erkenntnis- und Seinsobjekte.

b) Diese Objekte sind dabei hierarchisch abgestuft. Die Hierarchie der Objekte erschließt die Existenz c) mehrerer Kontexte der philosophischen Tätigkeit und d) einer hierarchisch abgestuften Menschenskala,

die normativ ist und den Verfassungskatalog aus dem Politikos vorweg nimmt." (S. 3)

24. Kamlah, Wilhelm. 1963. Platons Selbstkritik im Sophistes. München: C. H. Beck.

25. ———. 1966. "Zu Platons Selbstkritik im Sophistes." Hermes no. 94:243-245.

"Ich habe Verständnis dafür, daß mancher auf meine 'Sophistes'-Interpretation zunächst mit Abwehr reagiert. Wir bemühen uns nicht allein aus guten Gründen darum, das Eine und Wichtige zu fassen, das Platon uns zu sagen hat, sondem in der Verehrung fur den großen Mann lassen wir es gelten, daß er seine Lehre in den langen Jahren seines Lebens mehr und mehr 'entfaltet' hat, nicht dagegen, daß er ein eigenes Lehrstück eines Tages zugunsten einer besseren Einsicht fallen gelassen hat. Gerade dies aber zeigt, wie mir scheint, der 'Sophistes' demjenigen, der sich auf eine subtil unterscheidende Interpretation einzulassen

gewillt ist, die alle Teile des Dialogs miteinander in Beziehung setzt. Sieht man Platon so, dann wird er kein unfehlbarer Kirchenvater mehr sein, sondem ein menschlicher' Denker, der im Dialog mit anderen um seine Probleme gerungen hat wie wir und dabei nicht immer nur geradeaus gegangen ist. Sieht man ihn so, dann wird man zwar nicht den 'Entwicklungsgedanken' und das bloß historische Interesse für das 'Werden der Personlichkeit' wieder ausgraben, man wird aber auf historische Differenzierungen nicht mehr gar zu allergisch reagieren, vielmehr historische Forschung und systematisches Denken zu vereinigen trachten, wie es doch auch sonst das Geschaft des Philosophen ist.

Meine prinzipielle These zur Platonforschung lautet also: Wir sollten nicht allein den Entwicklungsgedanken, sondern auch das - diesem Gedanken verwandte - Entfaltungsdogma verabschieden." (S. 244)

26. Koch, Anton Friedrich. 2010. "Was meint ihr eigentlich, wenn ihr 'seiend' sagt? Überlegungen zu Piatons Sophistes." Philosophical Inquiry no. 32:69-83.

"Die Kunst des Sophisten ist eine hervorbringende, menschliche, bildnerische, trugbildnerische, nachahmende, mei-nungsnachahmende, ironisch sich verstellende und in kurzen Reden sich artikulierende Kunst.

Unter den vielen philosophischen Errungenschaften, die dieser Dihairesis zugrunde liegen, seien zwei zum Schluß noch einmal eigens hervorgehoben. (1°) Piaton hat gegen den eleatischen Monismus ein Verfahren der Ausdifferenzierung des Seienden entwickelt, das theoretisch anspruchsvoller ist als die entsprechende anti-eleatische These seines Schülers Aristoteles, daß das Seiende keine Gattung sei, sondern auf unhintergehbar viele Weisen ausgesagt werde. (2°) Piaton hat das Sein, das mit dem Logos ausgesagt bzw. beansprucht wird, als ein propositional gegliedertes Der-Fall-Sein erkannt und ipso facto gegen das Sein dessen profiliert, was der Noesis zugänglich ist, also das Sein der Ideen. Auf diesem Weg ist Aristoteles." (S. 83)

27. ———. 2012. "Prädikate von und Relationen zwischen Ideen in Platons Parmenides und Sophistes." In Platons Hermeneutik und Prinzipiendenken im Licht der Dialoge und des antiken Tradition. Festschrift für Thomas Alexander Szlezák zum 70. Geburtstag, edited by Bruchmüller, Ulrike, 345-362. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

28. Kolb, Peter. 1992. "Die Dihairesen in Platons Sophistes." Perspektiven der Philosophie no. 18:329-346.

"Im Folgenden will ich die Aufmerksamkeit auf ein Detailproblem aus dem Kosmos des platonischen Spätdialoges Sophistes lenken, auf die Frage, welche genuin philosophische Bedeutung der Gruppe der ersten fünf Dihairesen zugedacht werden muß, die das Wesen des Sophisten erfoiglos zu bestimmen versuchen.

Trotz der thematischen Eingrenzung scheint es nötig zu sein, vorweg auf die Fülle der Interpretationsprobleme des Gesamtdialoges, die typologisch sehr verschiedenartig sind, wenigstens aufmerksam zu machen, ganz einfach, weil all diese Probleme - gut platonisch - so ineinander verschlungen sind, daß die Erörterung eines einzigen von ihnen sich unvermeidlich im Kontext aller bewegt." (S. 329)

29. ———. 1997. Platons Sophistes: Theorie des Logos und Dialektik. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

"Die vorliegende Studie ist dem Vorhaben verpflichtet, den Sophistes systematisch und argumentativ zu rekonstruieren. Dies soll durch einen fortlaufenden philosophischen Kommentar erreicht werden. Damit das Untemehmen auf solidem Boden steht, muß der Gang des Dialogs Schritt für Schritt nachvollzogen werden. Um die Gefahr zu vermeiden, daß die historische Distanz zum Text unreflektiert übersprungen und das Auszulegende einer sprachlichen und sachlichen Überformung unterworfen wird, werden zentrale Termini sowohl im griechischen Original als auch in deutscher Übersetzung wiedergegeben. Der Leser soll die Möglichkteit des Vergleichs und der Kontrolle haben. Auch wenn es unvermeidlich ist, daß die Elegnz der Darstellung unter den Textreferaten leiden wird, so erscheint es doch mit Blick auf die außerordentlichen Schwierigkeiten des Sophistes geboten, diese Vorsicht walten zu lassen. Die ausführliche Wurdigung der Forschung findet in einem abgetrennten Literaturanhang statt, um von der ruhigen Entfaltung des epochemachenden platonischen Gedankens nicht ständig durch Hinweise auf die Kontroversen in der Forschung ablenken zu müssen. Dort weiden auch die Hauptthesen zu jedem Abschrutt in bündiger Form wiederholt.

Zu welchem Ergebnis eine Rekonstruktion führt, hingt trivialerwise von dem philosophischen Standpunkt des Interpreten ab, der sie durchführt. Die Vielfalt der Deutungen, die der Sophistes erfahren hat, liefert den besten Beweis dafür, bis zu welchem Grad das jeweilige Verständnis von den mitgebrachten systematischen Positionen präformiert ist. Deshalb weiden wir uns bemühen, den Verstehenshorizont, der hinter der vorliegenden Interpretation steht, in seinen Grundzügen jeweils zu explizieren und dem Leser verfügbar zu machen. Dadurch läßt sich zwar das Risiko einer Fehlinterpretation nicht veringem, aber immerhin die Wahrscheinlichkeit erhöben, daß unausgesprochen wirksame Interpretationsvoraussetzungen aus der unmittelbaren Auslegung ausgeschlossen bleiben." (S. 18)

30. Königshausen, Johann-Heinrich. 1992. "Parallelen zwischen Platons Sophistes und Aristoteles' Met Γ." Perspektiven der Philosophie no. 18:347-368.

31. Krohs, Ulrich. 1998. "Platons Dialektik im Sophistes vor dem Hintergrund des Parmenides." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 52:237-256.

"Um im Sophistes kein Flickwerk sehen zu müssen, sollte jedoch die Einheit hinter Inhalt und Struktur des Dialogs gesucht werden.

Zunächst möchte ich anhand einer Analyse beider Methoden zeigen, daß sie für Platon erst zusammengenommen hinreichend für die Untersuchung der Beziehungen zwischen den Gattungen (Ideen) und damit adäquates Werkzeug des Dialektikers sind (Kapitel I und II dieses Aufsatzes).

Im Anschluß daran werde ich die These entwickeln, daß in der Aufspaltung des Sophistes in Mittelteil und Eckteile - mit jeweils unterschiedlicher Problemstellung und Untersuchungsweise - eine Differenzierung der Dialektik gegenüber derjenigen des Parmenides strukturell abgebildet wird. Die Methode war dort noch einheitlich, führte jedoch bei der Untersuchung der Ideen in Aporien (Kapitel III). Die sehr interessante nicht-aporetische Lesart Meinwalds[*] erweist sich nach kritischer Diskussion als nicht haltbar (Kapitel IILa). Erst im Sophistes löst Platon die Aporien des Parmenides. Die Verknüpfung beider Methoden über den gemein" (S. 237)

[*] Meinwald, C. C. (1991): Plato's Parmenides, New York.

32. Künne, Wolfgang. 2004. "Die "Gigantomachie” in Platons Sophistes: Versuch einer analytischen Rekonstruktion." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 86:307-321.

Abstract: "Prima facie there is a tension between a principle upheld by the Friends of Forms, 'Whatever is real is omnitemporally stable‘, and a conclusion into which they are driven, 'Some things are real, and yet they change in becoming the objects of cognition‘. The paper argues that we should stop looking for a faulty premiss in the argument that leads to this conclusion but rather seek a way of reconciling principle

and conclusion. Frege and Russell can help us to see that the principle only disallows intrinsic change and that the conclusion only requires extrinsic change. There is some evidence that Plato himself was very well aware of this option."

33. Lisi, Francesco Leonardo. 2011. "Ποιητική τέχνη in Platons Sophistes." In Plato's Sophist: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlíček, Aleš and Karfík, Filip, 311-327. Praha: Oikoymenh.

34. Lorenz, Kuno, and Mittelstrass, Jürgen. 1966. "Theaitetos fliegt: Zur Theorie wahre und falscher Sätze bei Platon (Soph. 251d— 263d)." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 48:113-151.

"Wir haben es hier mit einer Untersuchung zu tun, die in Platons Werk ganz einzigartig dasteht und die mit Recht auch heute als ein unerläßlicher Bestandteil der Prolegomena zur Logik angesehen werden darf. Kein Wunder also, daß diese Untersuchung gerade in neuerer Zeit, in der sich Probleme der Logik wieder größerer Aufmerksamkeit erfreuen, das Interesse vieler Interpreten gefunden hat, wenngleich deren Darstellung den logisch entscheidenden Partien bei Platon meist nur unvollkommen gerecht wurde. Diesem Mangel hoffen wir mit einem neuen Vorschlag zur Interpretation der fraglichen Textstellen abzuhelfen.

Es soll gezeigt werden, daß Platon — allerdings in der Sprache der Ideenlehre — über wahr und falsch im wesentlichen nicht anders denkt, als man es heute tut. (S. 113)

(...)

"Die vorliegende Arbeit gliedert sich in zwei Teile: der erste behandelt kritisch die wichtigsten Interpretationen der letzten Jahre, der zweite bietet und begr ndet die von uns vorgeschlagene Interpretation." (s. 114)

35. Manasse, E. M. 2009. Platons Sophistes und Politikos. Das Problem der Wahrheit. Berlin-Schöneberg: Siegfried Scholem.

36. Marten, Rainer. 1965. Der Logos der Dialektik: eine Theorie zu Platon Sophistes. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

37. Mayer, Rupert. 2008. "Heidegger und Platon: Die Dialektik der wahren Aussage im "Sophistes"." Phänomenologische Forschungen:147-167.

Abstract: "In his reading of the Sophist, Heidegger unfolds Plato's late thought concerning the dialectics of the correctness of statements. This dialectics is described as gathering into one genus and dividing of the same genus, as dialectics of the community of ideas, and as the being-able-to-be-with-one-another of mind and idea. Hence, Plato's solution of the question of truth is dialectical. He looks at the ideas through statements and conforms his mind to the ideas through the same statements. Thus the question arises: If one and the same statement represents both the manifestness of an idea and the conforming of the mind to this idea, how are we able to judge, whether our statement conforms to the idea? Plato answers: If the idea of sameness is present in a judgment, then a thing is said as it is, i.e. it is judged to be the same with itself. This solution is both richer and poorer than the description of truth in the parable of the sun in the Republic: It is poorer, because it leads further away from unconcealedness or the truth of things; it is richer, because it unfolds truth as a relation to the whole truth in the community of ideas, not as a relation to this or that singular idea."

38. Meinhardt, Helmut. 1968. Teilhabe bei Platon. Ein Beitrag zum verständnis platonischen Prinzipiendenkens ünter besönderer Berucksichtigung des Sophistes. München: Alber.

39. Meissner, David. 2015. "Überlegungen zum platonischen Seinsbegriff." Philosophisches Jahrbuch no. 122:3-23.

Abstract: "In Plato’s Sophist (247e), the Eleatic Stranger seems to propose to define being by means of the notion of dynamis. Although some recent papers have claimed that his dynamis-proposal should be taken seriously (at least as an explication of Plato’s concept of being, if not as a definition in the strict sense) it is still far from clear what this claim amounts to – especially in the case of the being of the forms.

This paper shows that, regarding forms, a modal and a formal interpretation of the dynamis-proposal is possible. While the latter interpretation is preferable on philosophical and hermeneutical grounds, it seems to conflict with the principle that a form is a being by participating in the form of being. By distinguishing between direct and indirect participation in the form of being, the paper resolves this conflict, concluding that the formal interpretation of the dynamis-proposal can indeed be read as a philosophically attractive holistic explication of Plato’s concept of the being of forms."

40. ———. 2015. "Der Dynamis-Vorschlag im 'Sophistes'. Überlegungen zum platonischen Seinsbegriff." Philosophisches Jahrbuch no. 122:3-23.

41. Mesch, Walter. 2011. "Die Bewegung des Seienden in Platons Sophistes." In Plato's Sophist: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlíček, Aleš and Karfík, Filip, 96-120. Praha: Oikoymenh.

42. Mojsisch, Burkhard. 1986. "Platons Sprachphilosophie im 'Sophistes'." In Sprachphilosophie in Antike und Mittelalter. Bochumer Kolloquium, 2-4 Juni 1982, edited by Mojsisch, Burkhard, 35-62. Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner.

"Nicht nur die Authentizität, sondern auch die eminente Bedeutung des Dialogs 'Sophistes' für das platonische Denken ist heute nahezu unbestritten(1) , wenngleich bisweilen immer noch Stimmen laut werden, die diesem Dialog als Episode(2) im Sinne einer transeunten Verirrung nur eine untergeordnete Rolle zuerkennen, um nicht an den Fundamenten eines sonst harmonischen Platonbildes rühren zu müssen.

Abgesehen davon, daß selbst eine Episode stets ein integratives Moment eines Denkens bilden und somit für dieses Denken - in welcher Hinsicht auch immer - konstitutiv sein dürfte, erlaubt gerade der 'Sophistes', ihn als grundlegendes Werk Platons zu betrachten. Damit verkehren sich die Vorzeichen: Ein als bloße Episode deklarierter Dialog gewinnt prädominierende Relevanz - eine umwertende Aufwertung, die nach Rechtfertigung verlangt, dies um so mehr, als der Dissens selbst zwischen denen, die sich der Bedeutung dieses Dialogs gewiß sind, nicht größer sein könnte.

Worin seine Bedeutung aber besteht, läßt sich aus einer Betrachtung der immer noch Probleme aufwerfenden platonischen Sprachphilosophie ermitteln. Der 'Sophistes' ist insofern Platons wichtigster Dialog zur Theorie der Sprache, als nach Hinweisen auf die Hypothesis im 'Phaedon'(3), nach der Wörterlehre im 'Kratylos' und aporetisch endenden Reflexionen über den Satz im 'Theaetet'(4) der Logos selbst(5) thematisiert wird. Im Folgenden soll diese Thematisierung selbst thematisiert, sollen die spätplatonischen Einsichten zum Logos, zur Sprache in ihrer Differenziertheit, analysiert und zugleich weiterweisende Grenzen dieser Sprachtheorie bedacht werden." (S. 35-36)

(1) Vgl. Platon, Der Sophist, Auf der Grundlage der Übers, von O. Apelt (2. Aufl. 1922) neu bearb. u. eingel., mit Anm., Literaturübers. u. Regist. vers, von R. Wiehl, (PhB 265) Hamburg 1967, VII f.

(2) Vgl. H. Gauss, Philosophischer Handkommentar zu den Dialogen Platos, 3. Teil/1. Hälfte: Die Spätdialoge. Theätet, Parmenides, Sophist und Politicus, Bern 1960, 221-223.

(3) Vgl. Phaed. 100 a 3-7.

(4) Vgl. Theaet. 206 c 1 - 210 b 3.

43. ———. 1996. ""Dialektik" und "Dialog": Politeia, Theaitetos, Sophistes." In Platon. Seine Dialoge in der Sicht neuer Forschungen, edited by Kobusch, Theo and Mojsisch, Burkhard, 167-180. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

44. ———. 1999. "Der Dialog als sechste wichtigste Gattung in Platons Sophistes." Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter no. 4:41-48.

Abstract: "In his late dialogue The Sophist, Plato intends to show that the universal contents <motion>, <rest>, <being>, <identity> and <difference> differ from and yet intermingle with each other. Plato develops this theory using the universal content <motion> as an example, whereas the present essay concentrates on <dialogue> as a further universal content linked with all the other contents. It thereby aims to deepen the understanding of Plato's late theory of ideas, arriving at the conclusion that for Plato the possibility of philosophy is due to the possibility of the relational community of the universal contents. Plato, however, does not investigate the possibility of possibility itself - an issue which can indeed be seen as the principle of the very possibility of universal contents and their relation."

45. ———. 2001. "Das Verschiedene als Nicht-Seiendes in Platons Sophistes." In Umbrüche: Historische Wendepunkte der Philosophie von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit, edited by Kahnert, Klaus and Mojsisch, Burkhard, 1-9. Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner.

Abstract: "Plato's dialogue The Sophist highlights the commonality of the most important genera: rest, being, identity, difference and dialogical thinking are necessarily implicated in movement. This essay explores how difference combines as not-being with these other genera.

It concludes that not-being makes possible the commonality of the genera in the first place, that dialogical thinking alone justifies the thought of motive not-being and, finally, that not-being allows of conceiving the idea of being as also not-being, as in motion and as mediated through language. In sum: In Plato's late philosophy, not-being is the most important of the most important genera."

46. Mouroutsou, Georgia. 2010. Die Metapher der Mischung in den platonischen Dialogen Sophistes und Philebos. Sank Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Zusammenfassung: "Der in den späteren platonischen Dialogen zentrale Begriff der Mischung wird zunächst in die ganze Übertragung der Methexis eingeordnet: von der Ebene der Teilhabe des Wahrnehmbaren an der Idee zu der innerideellen Teilhabe aufsteigend und von daher zu der Teilhabe der zwei platonischen Prinzipien. Einerseits wird die Beziehung der μέγιστα γένη untereinander, andererseits diejenige zwischen der Grenze und der Unbegrenztheit im Philebos als Mischung bezeichnet (Teil I). Daraufhin wird ihr Wesen als Metapher behandelt und rehabilitiert, nämlich als Transformation eines sinnlichen Bildes in ein philosophisches (Teil II). Zur Leitfrage unserer Ausführung wird: Warum kann die im Rahmen des Dialogs Sophistes eingeführte Mischung der größten Gattungen miteinander als ein besserer Kandidat als derjenige der Teilhabe gerechtfertigt werden? Die Mischung wird als eine wohlbegründete Verwandlungsform der Teilhabe in den ideellen Zusammenhängen der gleichursprünglichen größten Gattungen betrachtet (Teile III–IV). Bei unserer die umstrittene Einheit des Philebos wiederherstellende Interpretation wird aufgezeigt, wie der Philosoph Platon die schönen Phänomene rettet: Die vierfache Einteilung des Ganzen (Phil. 23–27)

wird als Ort der Genese der schönen Erscheinungen interpretiert. Ihnen wendet sich der Philosoph nach dem Aufstieg zum σύμφυτον der zwei platonischen Prinzipien zu, nicht länger sie als “zwischen dem Sein und dem N icht-Sein herumschweifend” degradierend (Resp. 479d), sondern als “Zeugung” würdigend (Teile V–VII)."

47. Peron, Barbara. 2008. Mit Aristoteles zu Platon. Heideggers ontologische Ausdeutung der Dialektik im "Sophistes". Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

48. Prauss, Gerold. 1966. Platon und der logische Eleatismus. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

49. Ritter, Costantin. 1898. "Bemerkungen zum Sophisten." Archiv für Geschichte de Philosophie no. 11:18-57.

50. Römpp, G. 1988. "Dogmatismus und Reflexivität in Platons Sophistes." Wiener Jahrbuch für Philosophie no. 20:153-177.

51. Seeck, Gustav Adolf. 2011. Platons Sophistes: Ein Kritischer Komment. München: C. H. Beck.

52. Špinka, Štĕpán. 2011. "Das Sein des Nicht-Seins. Einige Thesen zur strukturelle Ontologie im Dialog Sophistes." In Plato's Sophist: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlíček, Aleš and Karfík, Filip, 221-239. Praha: Oikoymenh.

53. Stenzel, Julius. 1917. Studien zur Entwicklung der platonischen Dialektik von Sokrates zu Aristoteles: arete und diairesis. Breslau: Trewendt & Granier.

54. Strobel, Benedikt. 2021. "Bild und falsche Meinung in Platons Sophistes." In Platonic Mimesis Revisited, edited by Julia, Pfefferkorn and Spinelli, Antonino, 249-274. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

55. Stygermeer, Moth. 2005. Während Sokrates schweigt. Der zweite Anfang der Philosophie in Platons Dialog Sophistes. Berlin: Tenea.

56. Szezlák, Thomas Alexander. 1997. "Theaitetos und der Gast aus Elea. Zur philosophischen Kommunikation in Platons Sophistes." In Beiträge zur antiken Philosophie: Festschrift für Wolfgang Kullmann, edited by Günther, Hans-Christian and Rengakos, Antonios, 81-101. Stuttgart: F. Steiner.

Nachdruck in: T. A. Szezlák, Das Bild des Dialektikers in Platons späten Dialogen. Platon und die Schriftlichkeit der Philosophie Teil II, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 2004, Kapitel 7, "Sophistes. Theaitetos und der Gast aus Elea", pp. 128-155.

57. ———. 2011. "Die Aufgabe des Gastes aus Elea. Zur Bedeutung der Eingangsszene des Sophistes (216a-218a)." In Plato's Sophist: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlíček, Aleš and Karfík, Filip, 11-34. Praha: Oikoymenh.

58. Waletzki, Wolfgang. 1979. "Platons Ideenlehre und Dialektik im Sophistes 253d." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 24:241-252.

"In einem kürzlich in dieser Zeitschrift erschienenen Aufsatz(1) hat A. Gómez-Lobo es dankenswerter Weise unternommen, die Stenzelsche(2) Deutung dieser Stelle als unhaltbar zu erweisen und durch eine neue zu ersetzen. Zwar ist Stenzel das Verdienst des Bahnbrechers in dem schwierigen Gelände der spätplatonischen Dialektik nicht abzusprechen, aber nachdem seine Interpretation 60 Jahre lang beherrschend war, ist es an der Zeit, ihre Einseitigkeiten und Fehler zu erkennen und sie durch eine bessere abzulösen. Nach der Interpretation von Gómez-Lobo sind die Dunkelheit und Lückenhaftigkeit des Textes nicht zufällig, sondern von Platon beabsichtigt; er habe Ergebnisse, die er erst später erarbeitet, vorwegnehmen wollen; er verschlüssele, was er wirklich meine(3).

Gegen diese Deutung möchte ich Widerspruch anmelden. Es wäre befremdlich, Platon hier in den Noten eines schlechten Regisseurs zu sehen, der zu Tricks greifen muß; allerdings wird man vielleicht diese Interpretation annehmenm müssen, wenn sich keine besseref inden läßt. Die Frage stellt sich so: Ist die seit Stenzel an unserer Stelle festgestellte Dunkelheit nur aus der verschlüsselten Vorwegnahme des folgenden zu erklären?

Ich bin andrer Meinung; Gómez-Lobo hat sich nicht ganzlich vom Einfluß tenzels freimachen können, in einigen wesentlichen Punkten hat er sich von ihm auf eine falsche Bahn locken lassen, so daß er eine reichlich unwahrscheinliche Lösung versuchen mußte, ohne doch zu voller Klarheit gelangen zu können, wie er selbst zugibt(4). Ich mochte meinen, wenn eine Stelle dunkel ist, soll man nicht diese Dunkelheit für gewollt erklaren, sondern sie möglichst aufhellen. Das halte ich für moglich, und ich mochte es hier versuchen, ohne die Schwere der Beweislast zu verkennen, die ich damit übernehme." (S. 241)

(1) "Plato's Description of Dialectic in the Sophist 253d 1 -e2", Phronesis 22 (1977) 29ff.

(2) Julius Stenzel, Studien zur Entwicklung der platonischen Dialektik von Sokrates zu

Aristoteles, 3Darmstadt 1961.

(3) S. 36.

(4) S. 29

59. Wieland, Wolfgang. 1976. "Platon und der Nutzen der Idee. Zur Funktion der Idee des Guten." Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie no. 1:19-33.

60. Ziermann, Christoph. 2004. Platons negative Dialektik. Eine Untersuchung der Dialoge "Sophistes" und "Parmenides". Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Il Sofista di Platone. Bibliografia degli studi italiani

Bibliografia

1. Arangio-Ruiz, Vincenzo. 1950. "Le operazioni della dialettica nel Sofista di Platone." In Studi di filosofia greca. Pubblicazione in onore di R. Mondolfo, edited by Alfieri, Vittorio Enzo and Untersteiner, Mario, 231-244. Bari: Laterza.

2. Bancalari, Stefano. 2019. " Sulla soglia della metafisica. Il Sofista tra Platone e Heidegger." Giornale di Metafisica:434-447.

3. Belardi, Walter. 1997. "Dal "non essere" parmenideo all' "alterità" platonica: un caso di paralogismo verbale." Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.Rendiconti Classe di Scienze Morali Storiche e Filologiche no. 8:633-647.

Abstract: "Plato, in his dialogue The Sophist, tried to disprove the thesis of Parmenides, according to which the contrary of the eiναi would be the nonexistent μη eφναi. Plato maintained instead that μη eφνα is not the contrary of eγναi but its otherness (το eτeρον). Plato's argument has seemed impeccable and constructive, and has had notable resonance and a sound approval through the history of the philosophy. Really, the deep structure of Parmenides' nominalized μη eγναi was a predicate. Plato replaced the universal notion of «being (eiναi) with an eφναi assumed as a determined «thing. Besides he transformed the negative meaning of μη into the arithmetic meaning of less». So that μη slum → - eiναi», and the wholeness of the «things», from which eφναi was subtracted, became the wholeness less to be, viz. the. Such an argument is actually a paralogism, according to Aristotle who says exactly: «it is not the same thing to affirm not to be absolutely and to affirm not to be in a determinated sense and about a determined thing (Soph. elench. I67 a 4). Then, Plato simply committed the well known paralogism which consists in changing a statement «a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid»."

4. Berti, Enrico. 2004. "Elementi di ontologia nel Parmenide e nel Sofista." In Platone e l'ontologia. Il Parmenide e il Sofista, edited by Bianchetti, Matteo and Storace, Erasmo, 15-22. Milano: Albo Versorio.

"È possibile ricavare degli elementi di ontologia da entrambi i dialoghi e credo di aver trovato un passo del Sofista (c. XXXII, 244 b-245 e) in cui, a proposito di tematiche ontologiche, sembrano essere contenuti riferimenti al Parmenide. Mi rendo conto che questa affermazione è molto audace e azzardata." (p. 15)

(...)

"Ebbene, il passo del Sofista che ho preso in considerazione contiene, a mio giudizio, alcuni riferimenti a quelle che tradizionalmente sono chiamate le prime due ipotesi del Parmenide." (p. 15)

(..-)

"In conclusione mi sembra che, in questo passo del Sofista, si trovi una conferma di ciò che è detto nel Parmenide. Ciò significa che il Parmenide non è un dialogo aporetico, come molti affermano, ma è un dialogo costruttivo, sia pure in senso dialettico, cioè come confutazione dell'eleatismo.

Credo che sia aporetica, effettivamente, la prima parte del Parmenide, cioè tutta la discussione sulle idee. Quanto alla seconda parte, non credo che essa sia un mero esercizio dialettico, ma penso che essa contenga un nucleo di ontologia, il quale, tuttavia, non emerge con chiarezza nel Parmenide, ma emerge, invece, nel Sofista, se è vero che il Sofista contiene questo riferimento alle prime due ipotesi del Parmenide." (P. 22)

5. Bianchetti, Matteo, and Storace, Erasmo, eds. 2004. Platone e l'ontologia. Il Parmenide e il Sofista. Milano: Albo Versorio.

Indice: Matteo Bianchetti, Erasmo Silvio Storace: Presentazione 9; Prima parte. Enrico Berti: Elementi di ontologia nel Parmenide e nel Sofista 15; Giovanni Casertano: Il falso: un'esistenza che non esiste tra cose esistenti 23; Francesco Fronterotta: Pensare la differenza. Statuto dell'essere e definizione del diverso nel Sofista di Platone 39; Maurizio Migliori: Non è l'ontologia il vero cuore del Parmenide e del Sofista 65; Mario Vegetti: Struttura e funzioni della dicotomia nel Sofista 95; Seconda parte. Vincenzo Vitiello: Incontro sul Parmenide e il Sofista 107; Carlo Sini: Il significato politico dell'ontologia di Platone 115; Nota bio-bibliografica 121-123.

"Questo volume raccoglie le riflessioni di autorevoli studiosi, che si sono espressi e confrontati sulla questione dell'ontologia in Platone e a partire da Platone, nonché sulla stessa possibilità di parlare di ontologia

in riferimento ad un autore vissuto circa duemila anni prima che tale termine fosse coniato.

La scelta di questi due dialoghi non è stata casuale, ma guidata dalla volontà di approfondire, all'interno della ricchezza di temi e spunti dell'intera produzione platonica, proprio quel che, interpretato forse attraverso la lente deformante della posterità, appare più. interessante per comprendere lo spazio e la possibilità in cui situare il dire filosofico in generale e la problematica ontologica in particolare." (p. 9)

6. Bianchi Bandinelli, Ranuccio. 1955. "Osservazioni storico-artistiche a un passo del Sofista di Platone." In Studi in onore di U. E. Paoli, 81-96. Firenze: Le Monnier.

Ristampatio in R. Bianchi Bandinelli, Archeologia e cultura, Roma: 1979, pp. 146-163.

7. Bontempi, Milena. 2011. "Opinione e legge: l'anima e la città nella trilogia, Teeteto, Sofista, Politico." In Formal Structures in Plato's Dialogues: Theaetetus, Sophist and Statesman, edited by Lisi, Francesco Leonardo, Migliori, Maurizio and Monserrat-Molas, Josep, 47-58. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

"Il nesso fra legge e opinione è posto esplicitamente nella prima parte del Teeteto, che affronta la dottrina protagorea." (p. 47)

(...)

"Il seguito del Teeteto e il Sofista si concentrano sull'opinione nell'anima individuale. Valido però il parallelismo singolo-città, la ricerca sulla doxa dovrebbe servirci anche per la polis e la sua legge. Dato questo particolare punto prospettico, la nostra indagine sull'opinione, tema che nella trilogia è di fatto onnipresente, si concentrerà specificamente sulla dimensione psicologica della doxa, ovvero sulla sua posizione e sul suo ruolo rispetto alla natura dell'anima nel suo complesso. Per capire infine come l'intreccio doxa-legge sia ripreso e rielaborato nelle ultime pagine del Politico, consentendovi di impostare la questione del rapporto e dell'interazione fra la città tutta e le sue componenti, anche singolari." (pp. 48-49)

8. Botter, Barbara. 2016. "Enti inesistenti: phantasmata in Platone." Archai no. 18:113-149.

Estratto: "Una delle questioni problematiche attorno alle quali ruota il dialogo Sofista di Platone è la distinzione fra originale e immagine, più precisamente, la distinzione fra originale, immagini vere e immagini false. È per giustificare questa classificazione che il filosofo si impegna nella dimostrazione del non-essere e gioca, sin dalle prime battute del dialogo, con il dualismo realtà-apparenza. Scopo del presente articolo è di intrecciare le nozioni di non-essere e apparenza, tali quali sono definite nel Sofista, per giustificare l’esistenza di enti che sono, pur non essendo reali né veri, i phantasmata, i quali si distinguono da altre forme di immagine per il fatto di essere, per natura, ingannevoli."

9. Brancacci, Aldo. 1999. "Eutidemo e Dionisodoro, gli όψιμαθείς deI Sofista e un passo dell'Eutidemo." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 20:381-396.

"È singolare, ma anche rivelativo, come, tra i non molti passi platonici i quali presentano serie possibilità di riferirsi allusivamente o polemicamente ad Antistene, il solo, forse, il cui riferimento al Socratico

sia stato accettato pressoché unanimemente da una tradizione storiografica antica(1), e dura a morire, sia un luogo del Sofista platonico, che, invece, alle dottrine e alla persona di Antistene non può in alcun modo fare riferimento." (p. 381)

(...)

"Il passo, celebre, del Sofista, che già in quella sede [*] osservai non potersi riferire ad Antistene, perché il suo contenuto, anziché concordanze, rivela opposizioni e contraddizioni gravissime con le dottrine logiche del Socratico, è 251 B-C" (p. 382)

(...)

"Ma chi sono allora, una volta escluso il Socratico, gli όψιμαθείς [qualcuno che impara tardi nella vita] di cui parla Platone? A mio parere si tratta di Eutidemo e Dionisodoro, a noi noti dal dialogo che Platone ha intitolato al primo dei due, ove la fisionomia dei due sofisti è delineata con una serie di tratti che il passo del Sofista riecheggia con precisione." (p. 386)

(1) Una lista dei principali studiosi che hanno sostenuto questo riferimento è in G. Giannatoni, Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae (" Elenchos ", XVIII), Napoli 1990, I, pp. 369-70.

[*] A. Brancacci, 'Oikeios logos'. La filosofia del linguaggio di Antistene ("Elenchos", XX), Napoli 1990.

10. Cambiano, Giuseppe. 1986. "Tecniche dossografiche in Platone." In Storiografia e dossografia neUa filosofia antica, edited by Cambiano, Giuseppe, 61-85. Torino: Tirrenia Stampatori.

11. Capra, Andrea. 2008. "La carne e il fantasma: il Sofista di Platone e l’ombra del filosofo." OT / Orbis Tertius. Ricerche sull'immaginario contemporaneo:39-46.

12. Carchia, Gianni. 1997. La favola dell'essere. Commento al Sofista. Macerataa: Quodlibet.

Con il Sofista di Platone nella traduzione di Ermidio Martini.

Presentazione "Problemi e motivi de Il Sofista platonico sono all’origine di innumerevoli ricerche della filosofia contemporanea. Basti pensare, per rammentare il caso più celebre, all’esergo di Essere e tempo di Martin Heidegger. Spesso, però, quest’incontro si è realizzato attraverso una forzata attualizzazione del testo platonico, come provano soprattutto i trattamenti cui esso è stato sottoposto nelle indagini delle scuole filosofiche d’ispirazione analitica. Diversa è l’intenzione del presente commento. Esso non si propone, infatti, di interrogare e sollecitare Il Sofista, per rinchiuderlo nell’orizzonte dei problemi attuali della filosofia. Al contrario, esso vuole rimettersi all’ascolto del testo platonico, per prolungare innanzi tutto le sue stesse domande. In questa lettura, insomma, è Platone a interrogare la nostra attualità, mentre l’esegesi si pone come l’onda di risonanza del testo, ovvero, in termini figurativi, come una sua “icona”. Il commento vorrebbe così rendere giustizia all’idea di filosofo che nutre il dialogo platonico, ponendo la sua differenza dal sofista. Per quest’idea, la filosofia è musica, pura voce accordata sull’essere, mero tramite del suo risuonare."

13. Casertano, Giovanni. 1999. "Il “veramente falso” in Platone." Atti dell’Accademia di Scienze Morali e Politiche della Società Nazionale di Scienze, Lettere e Arti in Napoli no. 90:33-47.

14. ———. 2004. "Il falso: un'esistenza che non esiste tra cose esistenti." In Platone e l'ontologia. Il Parmenide e il Sofista, edited by Bianchetti, Matteo and Storace, Erasmo, 23-38. Milano: Albo Versorio.

"Quello che qui vorrei mostrare è che (...) Platone costruisce il suo discorso sul difficile crinale della differenza tra una duplice discendenza da Parmenide: da un lato i sofisti, che su Parmenide fondano, sempre nell'interpretazione platonica, la loro negazione del falso basandosi sulla negazione del non essere; dall'altro Platone stesso, che, a sua volta "interpretando", su Parmenide fonda la netta distinzione tra verità e falsità, concedendo una realtà al non essere. Questa operazione, che esaminerò per quanto detto nel Sofista, è comunque condotta con la piena coscienza della sua problematicità, che traluce anche nella stessa impostazione stilistica e linguistica del dialogo." (p. 25)

(...)

"Concludendo, l'orizzonte parmenideo, nella sua tesi centrale della coincidenza tra realtà e verità, qui nel Sofista, viene riaffermato ma non dimostrato, perché la differenza tra discorso vero e discorso falso non è

questione di differenza logica, od ontologica, ma etica, o politica. E Platone lo sa bene, ed anche in questo dialogo ci sono tutti gli indizi di questa sua consapevolezza: ma è discorso che qui non posso affrontare.

Ma quella che resta comunque, sempre, anche in questo dialogo, e non sullo sfondo, bensì rivendicata esplicitamente, è la centralità del logos e della dialettica, del discorso in quanto costitutivo della filosofia (260a) e dell'unica "scienza degli uomini liberi" (253c-d): la quale, se è vero che appartiene non genericamente al filosofo, ma "a colui che filosofa con purezza e giustizia" (253e ), non può però procedere se non confutando, essendo la confutazione la massima delle purificazioni, tanto che chi non è stato mai confutato, fosse pure il Gran Re, non essendo purificato nelle cose più importanti, è privo di educazione e brutto nell'anima (230d-e)." (p. 37)

15. ———. 2009. "Verità e realtà nel Sofista e nel Parmenide platonici." In Gli Antichi e noi. Scritti in onore di Antonio Mario Battegazzore, edited by Lapini, Walter, Maluza, Luciano and Letterio, Mauro, 31-44. Genova: Glauco Brigati.

16. ———. 2019. "ΠIΣΤOΣ ΛΟΓΟΣ ed ΑΠΑΤΗΛΟΣ ΚΟΣΜΟΣ ΕΠΕΩΝ in Parmenide di Elea." In Venticinque studi sui preplatonici, 205-216. Pistoia: Petite plaisance.

17. ———. 2019. "Astrazione ed esperienza: Parmenide (e Protagora)." In Venticinque studi sui preplatonici, 217-236. Pistoia: Petite plaisance.

18. ———. 2019. "Noterelle parmenidee." In Venticinque studi sui preplatonici, 237-248. Pistoia: Petite plaisance.

19. ———. 2019. "Aristotele critico di Parmenide." In Venticinque studi sui preplatonici, 249-265. Pistoia: Petite plaisance.

20. Castelli, Laura Maria. 2007. "Note sulla nozione di δύναμις τοῦ ποιεῖν και πάσχειν in Soph. 247 D-E: alcuni spunti aristotelici " Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 28:415-434.

"In un discusso passo del Sofista (247 D-E) Platone fornisce una caratterizzazione di ciò che è in termini di δύναμις ποιεῖν και πάσχειν. Tale caratterizzazione sarà destinata (nonostante la sua oscurità

per gli interpreti del testo platonico) ad una straordinaria fortuna nella storia della filosofia attraverso l'idea che l'efficacia causale possa costituire un criterio di esistenza.(1)

Le note qui proposte sulle espressioni che compaiono nella formulazione dello ὄρος di Soph. 247 D-E (δύναμις τοῦ ποιεῖν και πάσχεινna:crxnv) hanno lo scopo di riesaminare tale caratterizzazione nel suo

complesso, cercando di valutarne la possibile portata qualora la si intenda, se non come una conclusiva definizione dell'essere, per lo meno come espressione di un nucleo teorico non meramente provvisorio.

Alcuni passi dei Topici di Aristotele sembrano fornire materiale utile per la discussione." (p. 415)

(1) Cfr.J. Cargile, On "Alexander's dictum", «Topoi», XXII (2003) pp. 143-9.

21. Cattanei, Elisabetta. 2011. "Arithmos nel Teeteto, nel Sofista et nel Politico di Platone." In Formal Structures in Plato's Dialogues: Theaetetus, Sophist and Statesman, edited by Lisi, Francesco Leonardo, Migliori, Maurizio and Monserrat-Molas, Josep, 59-71. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

22. Charles-Saget, Annick. 1988. "Un esempio di ermeneutica neoplatonica. Il Sofista-Demiurgo." In Questioni neoplatoniche, edited by Romano, Francesco and Tiné, Antonino, 27-44. Catania: CUECM.

23. Chiereghin, Franco. 1969. "La metodologia della storiografia filosofica di Platone nel Sofista." Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Classe di Scienze morali, storiche e filologiche. Rendiconti no. 24:205-223.

24. Chiurazzi, Gaetano. 2015. "Salvare le differenze. Sulla necessità del non-essere nel Sofista di Platone." Verifiche no. 44:29-46.

Abstract: "La tesi centrale dell'articolo è che ci sia una relazione tra la definizione dell'essere come dynamis nel Sofista di Platone e la discussione coeva sulle grandezze incommensurabili, mostrando come alcuni degli argomenti che Platone usa per affermare l'insostenibilità della definizione quantitativa dell'essere (Uno, molti) sono riconducibili all'argomento sulla decomposizione del pari e del dispari con cui si dimostra l'irrazionalità della diagonale del quadrato. Come conseguenza, l'articolo cerca di mostrare che la definizione dell'essere come dynamis è necessaria al fine di "salvare le differenze", ovvero far sì che l'uno non sia uguale al due, come accade secondo Platone nelle tesi dei monisti e dei pluralisti, un collasso logico e ontologico che sarebbe anche conseguenza della negazione dell'irrazionalità della diagonale."

25. Cordero, Nestor-Luis. 2002. "Aristotele critico spietato ma erede furtivo del Sofista di Platone." In Gigantomachia. Convergenze e divergenze tra Platone e Aristotele, edited by Migliori, Maurizio, 205-219. Brescia: Morcelliana.

26. Cosenza, Paolo. 1958. "Aristotele e la dottrina della partecipazione secondo il 'Sofista' platonico." Atti dell'Accademia di Scienze Morali e Politiche della Società Nazionale di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Napoli:1-40.

27. Crivelli, Paolo. 1990. "Il 'Sofista' di Platone. Non essere, negazione e falsità." Atti e Memorie dell'Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere "La Colombaria" no. 55:11-104.

"Introduzione. Dopo sei tentativi insoddisfacenti di definire il sofista con il metodo diairetico, nella settima classificazione dicotomica Platone lo descrive come 'produttore di immagini'. Tale caratterizzazione si scontra con le difficoltà sollevate dal 'paradosso del falso', l'argomentazione che cerca di provare l'inesistenza del falso. L'ampio excursus centrale del Sofista (236d5-264d9) affronta e risolve una delle versioni del paradosso del falso. Platone riconduce la fallacia dell'argomentazione a un'errata valutazione dei rapporti tra negazione ed esistenza, e corregge lo sbaglio mediante una minuziosa analisi del significato della particella 'non'.

La versione del paradosso del falso studiata nel Sofista può essere presentata, a meno di qualche inessenziale semplificazione, come un'argomentazione che esclude la falsità degli enunciati singolari affermativi: perché un enunciato singolare affermativo sia falso, bisogna che ciò che non è P sia detto essere P ('P' termine generale arbitrario), e quindi bisogna parlare di ciò che non esiste; ma è impossibile parlare di ciò che non esiste; di conseguenza, un enunciato singolare affermativo non può essere falso. Il passaggio critico di questa argomentazione si fonda sull'assunzione che la negazione predicativa implichi l'inesistenza: se x non è P, allora x non esiste.

Platone ritiene (giustamente) che tale assunzione sia errata, e adotta la strategia di svelare, e quindi confutare, il ragionamento sofistico che sta a fondamento di essa. A suo avviso, tale ragionamento muove dal presupposto che la particella 'non' indichi contrarietà: dato che la copula ha portata esistenziale, la verità di un predicato nominale 'è P' rispetto a un oggetto x richiede (tra l'altro) l'esistenza di x; se il 'non' indica contrarietà, la verità rispetto a x del predicato nominale negativo 'non è P' richiede la soddisfazione di condizioni contrarie (ossia antitetiche, il più possibile lontane) rispetto a quelle che garantiscono la verità di 'è P', e quindi richiede (tra l'altro) l'inesistenza di x. Pertanto 'non è P' è vero solo di ciò che non esiste, e la negazione predicativa implica l'inesistenza.

Platone demolisce tale ragionamento attaccandone il presupposto: il 'non' non indica contrarietà, ma solo diversità. Più precisamente: la verità del predicato nominale negativo 'non è P' rispetto a un oggetto x richiede 'solo' che x sia diverso da ciascuno degli oggetti dei quali è vero il predicato nominale 'è P', ossia (poiché la predicazione ha portata esistenziale) che x sia diverso da ciascuno degli oggetti che esistono e partecipano della proprietà significata dal termine generale 'P'.

Ora, però, niente vieta che tra gli oggetti diversi da tutti quelli che esistono e partecipano della proprietà significata da 'P' ve ne siano di esistenti. Pertanto 'non è P' può essere vero anche di ciò che esiste, e la negazione predicativa non implica l'inesistenza. L'assunzione sulla quale si fonda il paradosso del falso è confutata.

Platone non si limita a demolire il paradosso del falso, ma propone anche un'analisi della falsità degli enunciati singolari nella quale mette a frutto i risultati dello studio della negazione: 's è P' è falso quando s (l'oggetto del quale 's è P' parla) non è P, ossia quando s è diverso da ciascuno degli oggetti che esistono e partecipano della proprietà significata dal termine generale P.

La versione del paradosso del falso studiata nel Sofista non dipende da uno scambio tra gli usi 'esistenziale' e 'predicativo' del verbo 'einai' ('essere'), ma da un errore nel modo d'intendere il 'non'. Ciò spiega perché la soluzione suggerita da Platone non si concentri sulla distinzione tra gli usi 'esistenziale' e 'predicativo' di 'einai' (un fatto, questo, che mette in crisi varie accreditate interpretazioni del dialogo): la distinzione tra gli usi di 'einai' non avrebbe colpito l'errore che sta alla radice del paradosso esaminato da Platone. Il problema logico più profondo studiato dal Sofista non riguarda i sensi o usi di 'einai', ma i rapporti fra negazione ed esistenza." (pp. 11-12)

28. D'Angelo, Antonello. 1993. "Sul Sofista di Platone." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 14:83-89.

29. De Cecco, Daniela. 1998. "Simile, uguale, identico. Brevi annotazioni intorno all'uso Platonico in Fedone, Parmenide e Sofista." Esercizi filosofici:211-221.

30. De Petris, Alfonso. 2005. Del vero e del falso nel Sofista di Platone. Con un saggio sul Cratilo. Firenze: Olschki.

"In aderenza al testo, si rivisita la speculazione platonica sul vero e sul falso.

Nel Cratilo, contro chi nega che il falso sia in quanto dice il non-essere, Socrate – posta la corrispondenza tra originale e copia, categorizzato che suoni e colori rinviano alle cose reali, essendo linguaggio e pittura imitazioni – correla il discorso all’essere delle cose, che in sé hanno sostanza, di per sé sono.

La scoperta dell’oggettività degli enti è anche alla base del Sofista: non più sul piano logico-glottologico ma su quello ontologico, nella ricerca di una dialettica risolutiva delle aporie di una diairesi ad ambito formale. Superata la negazione parmenidea del non-essere,presupposta l’inoppugnabilità del non-essere, «in qualche modo» il falso è, perché partecipa del non-essere relativo. Platone estende al logos umano questa acquisizione teorica.

Postulato che ragionamento e opinione partecipano del non-essere relativo, dimostra che vero e falso ricorrono anche nel discorso: vero, se dice l’essere com’è; falso, se predica il diverso dall’essere. Si pongono i fondamenti dell’analisi logica quale intesa fino all’Ottocento. Si evidenzia la rilevanza filosofico-linguistica di un epocale studio scientifico della compiuta articolazione del discorso umano.

Si delinea la figura del sofista: opinimitatore, che non sa, nella categoria della parvenza. In seconda rappresentazione, dalla copia egli riproduce ciò che «pare»."

31. Di Iulio, Erminia. 2020. "Á rebours: Dal Sofista a Parmenide. Platone tra «corrispondenza» e «identità»." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 112:111-125.

Abstract. "This paper aims to develop an answer to a twofold question: in the Sophist, what does the aporetic notion of falsehood amount to, from a theoretical point of view? And, consequently, how can be theoretically defined the concept of truth Plato is rejecting in order to provide a new account of truth (and falsehood)? The two questions are, in fact, deeply related. Thus, the strategy will be as follows: firstly, the Plato’s «not-being as difference» account employed to solve the «ontological falsehood» puzzle will be recalled and its consequences examined; secondly, an analysis of the correspondence theory of truth Plato seems to endorse in the Sophist will be provided; finally, a suggestion concerning the theoretical nature of Eleatic account of truth – i.e. the account Plato is questioning – will be made."

32. Esposti Ongaro, Michele. 2008. "Analisi nominale e analisi verbale nel Sofista di Platone." Giornale Critico di Filosofia Italiana no. 87:240-254.

33. Ferrari, Franco. 2011. "L'anima dell'essere. Sofista 248e-249a e Timeo 30c-31a." In Logon didonai. La filosofia come esercizio del rendere ragione. Studi in onore di Giovanni Casertano, edited by Palumbo, Lidia, 601-613. Napoli: Loffredo.

34. ———. 2019. "« Homologia » e dialettica in Platone." Antiquorum Philosophia no. 13:23-44.

Abstract: "According to the Republic (books VI and VII) and che Cratylus, homologia, in neither of its meanings - i.e. agreement on the one hand, and formal coherence and consistency on the other, - can be identified with philosophical knowledge (episteme), that is, with dialectic. The reason is that homologia represents a hypothetical procedure unable to reach an anhypothetical principle, and therefore to acquire certainty and truth. However, in Plato's dialogues there are numerous examples of homologia within philosophical and dialectical sections: in some cases it is fallacious homologia, which leads to unacceptable consequences (Parmenides); in other cases, instead, Plato seems to admit the existence of dialectical homologia, that its, of an agreement on a nonhypothetical principle (Sophist). Moreover, dialectic seems to display a degree of coherence superior to that of the other disciplines (i.e. mathematical sciences). The conclusion is that homologia (agreement and coherence) cannot be considered foreign to dialectic."

35. Ferro, Antonio. 2011. Il problema della predicazione tra antichi e moderni. Il Sofista platonico e la sua fortuna nella filosofia contemporanea. Bologna: CLUEB.

"In questa prima parte, la trattazione sarà prevalentemente diretta a una preparazione preliminare sullo state of the art nella letteratura contemporanea sul problema [della predicazione], che possa metterci in grado di valutare più accuratamente le ragioni dell’attacco davidsoniano all’autore del Sofista – il fatto che si tratti del caratteristico «uomo di paglia» non toglie che un esame della strategia di Davidson possa rivelarsi assai istruttivo." (p. 32)

(...)

"L’utilità di queste (lunghe) considerazioni preliminari dovrebbe risultare con chiarezza nel terzo capitolo, ragione per cui la lettura degli ultimi due capitoli, dotati di una certa autonomia, e senz’altro di maggiore interesse per gli antichisti, può essere fatta precedere a quella del primo, in cui, a partire da una disamina delle posizioni di logici e filosofi del linguaggio contemporanei si cerca di sistematizzare i diversi requisiti per una buona teoria della predicazione.

Sono proprio questi requisiti a spiegare alcuni scrupoli teorici che informano la trattazione offerta nei capitoli finali: sulla scorta di un principio di carità interpretativa minimale, abbiamo preferito non attribuire a Platone tesi filosofiche sulla predicazione banalmente false, assurde, non sufficientemente generali, o particolarmente controverse agli occhi di un filosofo contemporaneo.

Questo non significa ovviamente che abbiamo proceduto a retrodatare al IV sec. a.C. sofisticate teorie contemporanee della predicazione: piuttosto, all’unico scopo di raggiungere il massimo grado di chiarezza, ci è parso legittimo e sensato proiettare sul dialogo – in particolare, su quei passi “linguistici” dell’opera che solleciterebbero l’attenzione anche di un filosofo moderno – requisiti di adeguatezza basilari e preoccupazioni teoriche anche più tarde, ferma restando la priorità assoluta per lo storico (cioè, per chi scrive) di leggere il dialogo privilegiando temi e problemi che sembrano suscitare l’interesse di Platone." (p. 32)

36. Franchi, Leonardo. 2020. "Considerazioni sulla presenza di Parmenide nel Sofista di Platone (Soph. 236 D-241 B)." La Cultura no. 58:177-195.

37. Friedländer, Paul. 2004. Platone. Milano: Bompiani.

lntroduzione di Giovanni Reale. Traduzione, note e apparati di Andrea Le Moli.

Libro secondo, Capitolo XXVI: Sofista, pp. 975-1014.

"Sappiamo che il compito di chiarire il significato dello pseudos (la falsità, l'inganno, la menzogna) impegnò Platone sin dai suoi esordi come filosofo. Tale compito non è un interesse particolare derivato da un problema logico di difficile soluzione. Esso lo occupò perché (per parlare nel linguaggio concreto del Sofista) in questa oscurità e confusione si nasconde ogni sofistica e ogni eristica - tutto ciò, in altre parole, che è ostile alla filosofia e che, a causa della sua pericolosa somiglianza con quella, minaccia la reputazione della filosofia e la vita del filosofo. Persino una delle prime opere platoniche, l'Ippia minore, si rivolge al problema dell'inganno, volontario e involontario, sofistico e socratico. In seguito, con il Cratilo, il linguaggio diviene strumento dell'illuminazione positiva. Già lì (Cratilo, 431 BC; cfr. 385 BC) il discorso è descritto come «composizione» [Zusammenstellung] di nome e verbo. Nel Sofista esso è !'«intreccio » dei due e questo cambiamento è più di una semplice differenza di espressione. (p.1012)

38. Fronterotta, Francesco. 1995. "L'essere e la partecipazione dei diversi nel Sofista di Platone." La Cultura no. 33:117-157.

39. ———. 2004. "Pensare la differenza. Statuto dell'essere e definizione del diverso nel Sofista di Platone." In Platone e l'ontologia. Il Parmenide e il Sofista, edited by Bianchetti, Matteo and Storace, Erasmo, 39-64. Milano: Albo Versorio.

"È certamente vero che il Sofista affronta per la prima volta nel suo insieme il problema della partecipazione o della comunicazione fra i generi ideali, per fornirgli una soluzione che Platone sembra considerare in qualche modo definitiva. Abitualmente, si tende a dire che la soluzione del problema consiste nell'elaborazione del genere del diverso, come pure nell'elaborazione del genere del diverso consisterebbe la soluzione dell'altra grande aporia che il Sofista si propone di risolvere, quella relativa al non essere, alla sua pensabilità e alla sua dicibilità. In realtà, le cose non stanno propriamente così. Di per sé, l'elaborazione del genere del diverso, il diverso come tale, non risponde affatto né al problema della κοινωνία dei generi né al problemadel non essere, perché, di per sé, il diverso non coincide con il non essere (e non lo rende perciò pensabile e dicibile) né si pone come l'esclusiva chiave di volta per la comprensione della struttura e della composizione della κοινωνία dei generi. Non a caso, la lettura del testo indica chiaramente che la soluzione di questi due problemi risiede piuttosto in quella che lo Straniero di Elea, che conduce la discussione, individua come la totale "compenetrazione" di essere e diverso, per tre volte a breve distanza ribadita." (pp. 39-40 due note omesse)

(...)

"Ciò significa senza dubbio, a mio avviso, che una corretta comprensione dei fondamentali problemi affrontati nel Sofista, con la loro eventuale soluzione, dipende precisamente dai due termini, essere e diverso, di cui il dialogo afferma, argomenta e dimostra ripetutamente l'unione e la mescolanza.

Cercherò in quanto segue di presentare alcune riflessioni intorno allo statuto e alla definizione di questi due termini, lasciando invece da parte - se non per servirinene come occasionale punto di partenza dell'esame i delicati problemi del non essere e della κοινωνία dei generi cui essi sono chiamati a dare risposta nel Sofista." (p. 41)

40. ———. 2011. "Dialettica et διαίρεσις nel Sofista platonico." In Formal Structures in Plato's Dialogues: Theaetetus, Sophist and Statesman, edited by Lisi, Francesco Leonardo, Migliori, Maurizio and Monserrat-Molas, Josep, 151-167. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

"Ci si deve forse rassegnare a riconoscere la complessità irriducibile del metodo e l’assenza di un obiettivo univoco e ben definito, perché, se la dialettica fornisce nella sua applicazione (1) la mappa, parziale o totale, delle relazioni fra i generi ideali, con il fine di far emergere quali generi comunichino e quali non comunichino con quali altri, disegnando così (2) la rete di significati di cui sono intessuti il pensiero e il discorso, e perciò in generale il sapere e il giudizio, potremo anche ricavare per questa via (3) il Λόγος definitorio relativo a ciascun genere e l’insieme di tali λόγοι avrà (4) un tratto indubbiamente classificatorio." (p. 167)

41. ———. 2015. "Il non essere e la strategia dello Straniero di Elea. Deduzione o rimozione." Rivista di Storia della Filosofia no. 70:143-162.

Abstract: "In this paper the Author examines the problem of not-being in Plato’s Sophist. “Notbeing” is closely connected in Plato’s Sophist with the notion of the “other” or “difference” since not-being can be understood as “not-being something”, that is, as “different from” something. In fact, what “is not” beautiful, for example, is not only what is “contrary” to beautiful but also what is “different” from beautiful. Thus, the “other” introduces and explains the notion of a relative “not-being” as “different” from what it is. The Author puts this idea at the center of the analysis in an attempt to verify its coherence and legitimacy and establish some connections with two contemporary thinkers, Meinong and Frege, who clearly depend on Plato’s reflections on this point."

42. ———. 2018. "“Movimento, vita, anima e intelligenza”, la σεμνότης del παντελῶς ὄν nel Sofista platonico. Nota a margine di P.-M. Morel, L’argomento delle “venerabilità dell’essere” e la sua fortuna." Antiquorum Philosophia no. 12:27-36.

Abstract: "In this note I discuss Pierre-Marie Morel's article L'argomento della 'venerabilità dell'essere' e la sua fortuna published in this same volume (see pp. 11-16) on Soph. 248e-249a, trying to develop his interpretation of this passage and the conception of being it implies. I also examine Morel's reconstruction of some steps of the exegetical history and reception of this passage in the history of Ancient Platonism, with reference to Aristotle and Plotinus."

43. ———. 2020. "Panteles zōion e pantelōs on: Vita, anima e movimento intellegibile nel Timeo (e nel Sofista)." In Plato’s Timaeus: Proceedings of the Tenth Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Jorgenson, Chad, Karfík, Filip and Špinka, Štĕpán, 49-69. Leiden: Birll.

Abstract. "In this article, I try to propose some reflections about the nature and status of the intelligible in the Timaeus, particularly with respect to its features of a properly being and above all vital reality. The attribution of “life” and “vitality” to the intelligible certainly has an analogical character, that is, it depends on the consideration of the sensible: since the cosmos is a sensible living being and is a copy of an intelligible model, then the intelligible model must be configured as an intelligible living being. Now, to be “living”, for a sensible reality, means to have a soul that animates a body, that is a soul which is embodied; but this seems to apply only in the case of the sensible. What does it mean, then, and what does it entail, to be “living” for an intelligible reality? Some interpretative hypotheses on this point are examined here and a possible overall explanation is suggested."

44. Grimaudo, Sabrina. 2012. ""Un conflitto intestino e una malattia dell’anima“ ΝΟΣΟΣ E ΣΤΑΣΙΣ nel Sofista di Platone (Soph. 228 A 7–8)." Philologus no. 156:3-16.

Abstract: "In Sophist 228a7–8 the reading of Plato’s manuscripts διαφορᾶς διαφϑοράν is defended on the basis of a reconsideration of the Galenic passages of De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis (V 2, p. 302, 18–19 and V 3, p. 310, 26 De Lacy) usually advanced in order to maintain that it is corrupt and is to be changed into in διαφϑορᾶς διαφοράν. The analysis of several other passages of the Platonic corpus concerning στάσις and νόσος, and the comparison with Plutarch’s De Stoicorum repugnantiis 1041b, which shows a textual history very similar to the considered passage of Plato’s Sophist, further support the reading in the manuscripts."

45. Grondona, Mauro. 1956. "La dialettica nel Sofista di Platone." Atti della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino. 2, Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche no. 91:261-319.

46. Guglielminetti, Enrico. 2012. "Gemelli diversi: Sulla 'piccola differenza' tra il sofista e il filosofo." Spazio Filosofico:115-124.

Abstract: "A little mystery is contained in the prologue to the Sophist. It is not completely clear why Plato mentions Homer. The Homeric quotations that are employed appear rather poorly chosen given that, while attempting to grasp the essence of the philosopher, to which they refer, they seem to bring it to a disquieting proximity with the essence of the sophist. More specifically, in the Republic Plato sharply criticizes Homer: “Then let no poet ... say that ‘The gods, in the likeness of strangers from foreign lands,/ Adopt every sort of shape and visit our cities’” (Rep. 381d1-4). The same quotation, which comes from Odyssey 17, 485-486, is used in the prologue to the Sophist to define philosophers—not faked philosophers, but rather authentic ones. What has happened meanwhile? Has Plato changed his mind? Or is it the case of a different use of the same quotation? And, in this hypothesis, why could the very same quotation apply equally well to the sophist (or the poet) as well as to the philosopher?"

47. Le Moli, Andrea. 2002. "Platone e l'essere in comune. Figure della relazione dal Sofista alle Leggi." Studium Philosophicum no. 1:89-106.

48. Lettieri, Gaetano. 1993. "L'esegesi neoplatonica dei generi sommi del Sofista: Plotino e Mario Vittorino." Annali di storia dell'esegesi no. 10:451-493.

49. Li Volsi, Rocco. 2002. "Il Sofista di Platone." Giornale di Metafisica no. 24:177-234.

50. Licata, Gaetano. 2002. "Il vero e il falso in Platone." Studium Philosophicum no. 1:107-128.

"Nel Cratilo, aprendo la confutazione del convenzionalismo proposto da Ermogene, Socrate domanda al proprio interlocutore: "Chiami qualcosa dire il vero e dire il falso ( ἀληθῆ λέγειν καὶ ψευδῆ)?" (385b 2) (1); esiste qualcosa il cui nome è "dire il vero" e qualcosa il cui nome è "dire il falso"?

Naturalmente il senso effettivo della domanda riguarda la differenza: in cosa consiste la differenza fra il discorso vero e il discorso falso? Risponde Ermogene: "il discorso vero è quello che dice le cose come stanno, il discorso falso è quello che dice le cose come non stanno" (385b 2-8) (2) La risposta platonica lega la verità dell'espressione linguistica alla relazione con la realtà, ma il modo in cui debba attuarsi tale relazione, come vedremo, è problema di non facile soluzione. In questa ricerca tenteremo di chiarire i rapporti fra le due diverse soluzioni - l'una nel Cratilo, l'altra nel Sofista - che Platone appronta per questo problema, al fine di determinare meglio il concetto platonico di Àoyor,, e per confrontare due atteggiamenti teorici nei confronti del problema della rappresentazione linguistica della realtà che ancora oggi si mescolano e si oppongono in semantica e in filosofia del linguaggio." (p. 107)

(1) L'edizione critica di riferimento utilizzata per i dialoghi di Platone è Platonis Opera, recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxit J. Burnet, Oxford, 5 voll., 1900-1907.

Secondo Schofield l'argomento del vero e del falso (385 b2-d1) non può essere la confutazione della tesi di Ermogene, per cui andrebbe spostato e posto fra 387c 5 e 387c 6; M. Schofield, The Dénouement of the Cratylus, in Language and Logos: Studies Presented to G.E.L. Owen, edited by M. Schofield and M. Nussbaum, Cambridge 1982: PP· 61-81.

(2) A. Soulez rinviene nell'argomento del vero e del falso il punto iniziale dell'analisi platonica della contrapposizione fra i sostenitori della stabilità dell'essenza e quanti pensano al divenire come ad un flusso continuo che non permette né una

conoscenza stabile né una nominazione vera e propria: "L'important était de mettre d'abord en lumière que la distinction entre le vrai et le faux, sur laquelle sans le savoir Hermogène s appuie lorsqu'il prétend 'avoir raison' en matière de Justesse, présuppose que la dénomination est ontologiquement garantie. 'Dire vrai' est une chose et 'dire faux' en est une autre parce que le logos s'applique à de l'être stable." A. Soulez, La grammaire philosophique chez Platon, Paris 1991, pp. 52-3.

51. ———. 2002. "Nome e conoscenza in Platone." Studium Philosophicum no. 1:9-22.

"1. Nome e idea

In che modo, a parere di Platone, i nomi si riferiscono alle cose? In che modo, problema per Platone molto più importante, i nomi ci fanno, o ci farebbero conoscere le cose? La risposta a questi interrogativi, a nostro modo di vedere, è da ricercare nel Cratilo - nella sterminata confutazione di Ermogene e nella prima sezione della confutazione di Cratilo (384c 9-433 b 7) - , ma anche nella teoria della definizione delineata nel Sofista. I diversi punti di vista espressi da Platone sul concetto di nome devono essere sottoposti ad una considerazione che tenga conto dell'esigenza di dare unità e coerenza alla spiccata complessità concettuale dell'idea platonica di òvoμα; questo perché, all'epoca in cui scrisse le Leggi, quasi sicuramente l'ultimo fra i dialoghi(1), il filosofo aveva in mente un concetto sufficientemente determinato, e sufficientemente unitario, di nome. Il nostro tentativo, è bene puntualizzarlo fin d'ora, non ci darà, pronta per l'uso, l'essenza del nome: la ricerca dell'essenza infatti non ha termine. Dal momento però che è stata nominata diciamo subito che, in Platone, la ricerca dell'essenza è molto vicina alla ricerca del nome: il nome e l'essenza, nella loro vicinanza, rimandano ad una irraggiungibilità che è stata intesa come segretezza; come se il nome rivelasse l'essenza con lo stesso movimento col quale la mantiene segreta." (p. 9, una nota omessa)

(1) Cfr. L. Brandwood, The Chronology of Plato's Dialogues, Cambridge 1990.

52. Lo Casto, Claudia. 2019. L'essere come dynamis. Heidegger interprete del Sofista di Platone attraverso Aristotele. Pisa: Edizioni ETS.

53. Maggi, Claudia. 2017. "Il 'qualcosa' in Soph. 237c e in Enn. VI 6." In Platone nel pensiero moderno e contemporaneo, edited by Muni, Andrea, 17-28.

"IL TI E L’ ὌN IN SOPH. 237C. Obiettivo di questa nota sarà, a partire da una proposta di lettura relativa a una breve sezione del Sofista, sondare la ridefinizione semantica del τι e dell’ὄν nel trattato plotiniano Sui numeri. La mia indagine esula, ovviamente, da una più vasta considerazione del dominio dei due termini nella riflessione dei due filosofi; intendo, più semplicemente, provare a verificare come la costellazione lessicale che gravita attorno all’ὄν possa mutare nel momento in cui si ammetta, con Plotino, che la sua natura intrinsecamente molteplice rinvia a una unità originaria che la fonda e la precede metaontologicamente." (p. 17)

54. Magri, Elisa. 2015. "Holon e Heteron. Osservazioni per un collegamento fra il Teeteto e il Sofista." Journal of Ancient Philosophy no. 9:34-66.

Abstract "It is noteworthy that both in the Theaetetus and in the Sophist Plato aporetically introduces the notion of holon. The author argues that it is possible to outline a connection between the two dialogues by focusing on the methodological relevance of holon and heteron. Several hints contained in the Theaetetus suggest that Plato conceives of holon as a method of dialectical thinking, underlying the process of soul’s reasoning. The Theaetetus presents this notion ex negativo due to the lack of distinction between difference (heteron) and negation (not being). By contrast, the Sophist shows that heteron is the read thread guiding the dialectics of forms as well as the communication between the soul and the eidetic sphere. Accordingly, the Sophist entails that the process of soul’s reasoning is correlative to the eidetic horizon in so far as they both rely on a holistic methodology that is activated by the quest for the difference."

55. Marrucci, Elia. 2020. "Filiera tessile e dialettica conoscenza tecnica ed impieghi analogici nella seconda tetralogia platonica." Dialogues d’ histoire ancienne no. 46:105-121.

Abstract: "Nel presente contributo ho intenzione di mostrare la continuità tra l’impiego paradigmatico della filiera tessile nel Sofista e nel Cratilo e l’impiego che Platone ne fa nel Politico. Nella prima parte di questo contributo evidenzierò la perfetta conoscenza da parte di Platone delle singole procedure in cui si articola la filiera e la sua diffusa presenza all’interno del corpus. Nella seconda parte, attraverso l’analisi e l’intreccio di passi provenienti da Cratilo, Teeteto, Sofista e Politico, tenterò di dimostrare l’esistenza nella seconda tetralogia di un filo rosso legato all’impiego paradigmatico della filiera tessile e necessario all’illustrazione della natura e dei campi applicazione dell’arte dialettica. In conclusione di contributo tenterò di dimostrare come la scelta della filiera tessile come paradigma del metodo dialettico da parte di Platone dipenda dalla cosciente ripresa da parte del filosofo di un arcaico paradigma tecnico-artigianale della produzione poetica, in linea con le intenzioni didascaliche della sua riflessione filosofico-politica."

56. Meo, Oscar. 2016. "Lo statuto ontologico dell'immagine in Platone." In In cammino verso la casa della sapienza, edited by Ross, Paolo Aldo and Li Vigni, Ida, 161-191. Aicurzio: Gruppo Editoriale Castel Negrino.

"L’indagine di Platone intorno allo statuto ontologico dell’immagine è poliprospettica. Nei testi fondamentali per lo studio della questione, la prima parte del Libro X della Repubblica (ma, come si vedrà, un rilievo non marginale lo hanno anche la fine del Libro VI e l’inizio del VII) e il Sofista1, alcune fra le maggiori difficoltà si incontrano sul piano dell’approccio semasiologico, giacché egli utilizza per designare l’immagine diversi termini, che si alternano e si sovrappongono semanticamente nella prima opera, mentre – sia pure con qualche oscillazione – appaiono abbastanza differenziati nella seconda: eikón, eídolon e phántasma." (p. 161, a nota omessa)

57. Migliori, Maurizio. 1999. "Verso il Filosofo: dialettica e ontologia nel Sofista Platone." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 91:171-204.

"Dovendo affrontare un tema così vasto e un dialogo tanto complesso, vorremmo limitarci a svolgere la nostra analisi sulla base di tre domande:

a) perché proprio nel Sofista troviamo questa specifica trattazione sull'essere?

b) ci sono altre trattazioni analoghe a questa?

c) che cosa Platone pensava dell'essere?

A tali domande cercheremo di rispondere sulla base di tre riflessioni:

1. il senso della collocazione del Sofista; crediamo infatti che l'Autore ci abbia offerto una vera e propria indicazione di lettura, che brilla per la sua 'unicità'; seguendola, è possibile comprendere meglio la specificatrattazione del dialogo e la stessa struttura dell'opera;

2. l'indicazione dialettica che in questo quadro emerge; infatti, non solo lo stesso inserimento del dialogo nel contesto delle altre opere obbedisce a uno schema diairetico, ma la dialettica è, a un tempo, un tema da sviluppare e lo strumento per chiarire gli argomenti affrontati in questo blocco di dialoghi;

3. la metafisica che emerge dalla trattazione centrale dell'opera; crediamo infatti che occorra mostrare il peso, in verità molto relativo, che Platone attribuisce alla tematica dell'essere e del non essere. (pp. 171-172, note omesse)

58. ———. 2004. "Non è l'ontologia il vero cuore del Parmenide e del Sofista." In Platone e l'ontologia. Il Parmenide e il Sofista, edited by Bianchetti, Matteo and Storace, Erasmo, 65-94. Milano: Albo Versorio.

"Premetto subito due chiarimenti: a) uso il termine "ontologia" nel suo senso pregnante, come teoria dell'essere; b) questo articolo, come indica il titolo, indaga il "cuore teoretico" dei due dialoghi, cioè la questione centrale sul piano della concezione della filosofia e della visione del reale che Platone propone." (p. 65)

(...)

"La domanda che propongo è quindi se ci sia in Platone, e in particolare in questi due dialoghi, una centralità dell'ontologia o se questo appaia in tanta letteratura secondaria come frutto di una sorta di fenomeno proiettivo.

Per tentare di dimostrare tale assunto, devo necessariamente cercare di rispondere in modo adeguato a due domande:

Quali sono i passi di Platone che giustificano la mia affermazione?

Qual è allora il centro teoretico dei due dialoghi in questione?" (p. 65)

59. ———. 2007. Il Sofista di Platone. Valore e limiti dell'ontologia. Brescia: Morcelliana.

"Due sono stati negli ultimi decenni i modelli interpretativi della filosofia platonica: un modello, ispirato a Schleiermacher, ha privilegiato l'interpretazione cronologica dei dialoghi, l'altro, proprio delle scuole di Tubinga e Milano, ha reinterpretato tutto Platone alla luce delle «dottrine non scritte». Come per sottrarsi a unilateralità ermeneutiche, l'autore di questo volume legge «il corpus platonico come un vero e proprio "protrettico" che propone filosofia per costringere il lettore a trovare soluzioni sulla base di poche indicazioni, il che implica la proposta di difficoltà crescenti che via via nello svolgimento delle opere selezionano i "veri filosofi". Platone appare convinto socraticamente che la filosofia è lavoro comune e scoperta. Ciò dà luogo a un insegnamento che, sempre, ma soprattutto nella forma scritta, avvicina al vero senza rivelarlo, comunica informazioni vere che non sono tout court la verità, ma che richiedono la partecipazione, l'elaborazione e lo sviluppo da parte del lettore». Un modello messo qui alla prova nella disamina del Sofista: ad assumere inaspettati significati sono i suoi punti più controversi (la dialettica come esercizio diairetico, il parricidio di Parmenide, la scoperta del non-essere in quanto "diverso")."

60. Mignucci, Mario. 1989. "Esistenza e verità nel Sofista di Platone." Atti della Accademia di Scienze Morali e Politiche di Napoli no. 100:267-281.

61. Morel, Pierre Marie. 2018. "L’argomento delle “venerabilità dell’ essere” e la sua fortuna (Aristotele e Plotino, eredi di Platone, Sofista, 248c-249a)." Antiquorum Philosophia no. 12:11-26.

Abstract: "In a famous passage of Plato's Sophist (248e-249a), The Stranger addresses the question of the activity of the perfect being: is it deprived from change, life, soul and understanding? Does it stand immutable, holy and solemn (semnos), devoid of intellect? There is an issue about whether this text is to be taken seriously. The present article analyses how this passage (and especially the word semnos) has been read after Plato, mainly by Plotinus but also by Aristotle (and hypothetically by Epicurus). In particular, it is argued that, despite is obscurity, the idea of solemnity plays a major role in Plotinus, but with different purposes, depending on the context, and in an ambiguous way. Generally speaking, the legacy of Plato's passage is much more a question (is it possible to deprive that which is perfectly real from activity?) or even an aporia than a positive claim regarding the properties of being. This is probably the best way to read the passage, and to take it seriously."

62. Movia, Giancarlo. 1985. "il Sofista di Platone: dal problema dell'essere al principio teologico." In Sapienza antica: studi in onore di Domenico Pesce 192-216. Milano: Franco Angeli.

63. ———. 1988. "La diairesi nel Sofista." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 80:501-548.

64. ———. 1991. Apparenze essere e verità: commentario storico-filosofico al Sofista di Platone. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

"L'adesione convinta al nuovo paradigma ermeneutico degli scritti di Platone [*] non mi è servita da comoda scorciatoia per evitare la serie infinita di problemi che, come tutti sanno, un qualunque dialogo platonico suscita (specialmente se si tratta di un dialogo "sistematico" o, se preferiamo dir così, "critico-dialettico"). Piuttosto, il nuovo paradigma mi ha offerto un quadro unitario di riferimento entro cui collocare le varie dimensioni teoriche che percorrono il testo. In realtà, è il testo stesso, almeno in un punto davvero cruciale, che subordina la dottrina metafisico-ontologica dei generi sommi alla dottrina metafisico-protologica dei principi. Né l'Essere né l'Identico sono l'Uno, ma partecipano dell'Uno, e, analogamente (si dovrebbe dire), né il Non-Essere né il Diverso sono essi stessi la Diade indefinita, il principio di molteplicità, ma rappresentano soltanto alcune delle sue prime "concretizzazioni" ideali.

In questa visuale interpretativa, la lettura del Sofista richiede, per così dire, un'attenzione e un impegno bivalente: uno negativo ed uno positivo. Per un verso, bisogna rinunciare a privilegiare il nostro dialogo, e in particolare l'excursus ontologico sui generi sommi, quasi fosse il depositario della dialettica globale e della verità filosofica integrale di Platone.

(Per parte sua, come sappiamo, Hegel, probabilmente anche a motivo di un "incidente" filologico, [**] giungerà a porre il Sofista, col Filebo, addirittura al di sopra del Parmenide, nella misura in cui, come egli crede, il nostro dialogo tematizza esplicitamente l'unità dialettica degli opposti). Per un altro verso, bisogna minuziosamente esplorarlo in ogni sua piega più riposta, per evidenziare tutti i suoi (notevolissimi) contributi teorici.

In ogni caso, la lettura qui proposta àncora saldamente allo spessore metafisico della dottrina delle idee (e dei principi) i vari tipi di approccio al testo che sono stati effettuati e ai quali ho cercato di prestare la massima attenzione critica possibile. Mi riferisco, in particolare, all'approccio dialettico-epistemologico, incentrato sul problema della diairesi e delle tecniche e sulla componente etico-politico-retorica del dialogo, nonché all'approccio logico-linguistico, con le connesse interpretazioni intensionali ed estensionali della dottrina delle idee da un lato, e le analisi della funzione sintattica e del contenuto semantico dei "nomi" associati ai sommi generi dall'altro." (pp. 31-32)

[* Il "nuovo paradigma ermeneutico" è quello della scuola di Tubinga-Milano (Krämer, Gaiser, Reale, Szlezák)]

[** Berti documenta anche che il tentativo di Hegel (cfr. Lezioni di Storia della filosofia, trad. di E. Codignola e G. Sanna, II, Firenze 1964, pp. 220 ss.) di ridurre l'elenchos platonico alla contraddizione dialettica dipende da un errore di traduzione di 259 D I s. (rilevato, peraltro, già da Campbell, L. Campbell, [in The Sophistes and Politicus of Plato, with a Revised Text and English Notes by L. C., Oxford 1867 (rist. 1973)], pp. LXXXIX e 166) e risalente a Marsilio Ficino.] (p. 421)

Il riferimento ad Enrico Berti è: "Hegel la ritrova [la dialettica] nel Sofista, dove non ci sono più le complicazioni del Parmenide, cioè lo sviluppo di ipotesi opposte, ma c'è anzi, secondo Hegel, l'affermazione diretta dell'identità di essere e non essere, anzi addirittura di identico e diverso. Naturalmente questa interpretazione è possibile solo al prezzo di ignorare le reiterate affermazioni, da parte di Platone, del p.d.n.c. [principio di non-contraddizione], ed al prezzo di un almeno apparente errore di traduzione, dovuto probabilmente all'influenza del neoplatonico Marsilio Ficino, grazie al quale si fa dire a Platone che ciascuna cosa è insieme identica e diversa « sotto il medesimo riguardo», mentre Platone dice esattamente l'opposto.(80)"

(80) G. W. F. Hegel, Lezioni sulla storia della filosofia, trad. di E. Codignola e G. Sona, Firenze 1964 2 edizione, II, pp. 220-223. Su ciò abbiamo già richiamato l'attenzione nel capitolo su Platone (v. sopra, p. 98). Va detto, in ogni caso, che il testo di Michelet [delle Lezioni sulla storia della filosofia] su cui si basa la traduzione non è attendibile, perciò non si può imputare l'errore senz'altro a Hegel.

65. ———. 1991. Il "Sofista" e le dottrine non scritte di Platone. Napoli: Istituto Suor Orsola Benincasa.

Ristampato in: Giovanni Reale (a cura di), Verso una nuova immagine di Platone, Milano: Vita e pensiero, 1994, pp. 225-249.

66. Napolitano, Linda M. 1979. "Caratteri e significato della dialettica nel Sofista platonico." Verifiche no. 8:365-394.

67. ———. 2011. "Teodoro, Teeteto, Socrate il Giovane. I matematici deuteragonisti nei Teeteto, Sofista e Politico." In Formal Structures in Plato's Dialogues: Theaetetus, Sophist and Statesman, edited by Lisi, Francesco Leonardo, Migliori, Maurizio and Monserrat-Molas, Josep, 72-83. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Abstract: "Sono note le figure storiche dei matematici – appunto Teodoro, Teeteto e Socrate il Giovane - deuteragonisti nei dialoghi indicati: si può perciò, per tale aspetto, riferirsi alla letteratura classica relativa (fra gli altri E. Sachs, Th. Heath). Accogliendo però la recente ipotesi ermeneutica di E. Ostenfeld, che tutti i personaggi dei dialoghi in qualche modo e misura “parlino per Platone”, è interessante e utile esaminare il ruolo filosofico problematico ivi svolto da tali matematici. Va chiarita anzitutto la ragione per cui proprio costoro siano, volta a volta e in modo certo disomogeneo, interlocutori adeguati rispettivamente di Socrate e dello Straniero per il problema centrale discusso nelle tre opere e se tale ragione resti poi costante, per ognuno di tali personaggi, da una all’altra di esse. Vanno approfondite in particolare le ragioni del lusinghiero giudizio pronunciato – nel Teeteto e nel Sofista - sul giovane matematico ateniese (che farebbe, seppur nella bruttezza, da “specchio” allo stesso Socrate e che è simile, per alcune doti ascrittegli, perfino al filosofo-re della Repubblica); va chiarito il senso filosofico del suo allenamento a “raccogliere in uno” e a “bipartire” poi i materiali aritmetico-geometrici, procedura che lo avvicina alle pratiche dialettiche della sunagoghè e della diàiresis; va discusso il motivo per cui, nel primo dialogo, proprio lui discuta con Socrate una teoria dell’àisthesis di stampo protagoreo più adeguata forse, storicamente, al suo maestro, il cireneo Teodoro. Va delineato il compito specifico anche di tale autorevole figura nel Teeteto (capacità di giudicare la virtù e saggezza delle anime) e nel Sofista e quello di Socrate il Giovane, solo citato nei primi due dialoghi e chiamato invece, nel Politico, a sostituire Teeteto quale deuteragonista. Sempre tenendo presente ed evitando di banalizzare e forzare gli specifici contesti drammatici dei tre testi, va indagato infine se siano i loro contenuti filosofici complessi (la conoscenza e i limiti del relativismo, il falso e il non essere, la figura del politico) o piuttosto il metodo dialettico ormai maturo in essi impiegato a legittimare o forse perfino ad esigere dei matematici quali interlocutori di un Socrate ormai vecchio, al quale però già nel secondo dialogo subentra, quale protagonista, un significativo e non meno problematico Straniero di Elea."

68. Napolitano Valditara, Linda M. 2007. Platone e le 'ragioni' dell'immagine. Percorsi filosofici e deviazioni tra metafore e miti. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

Capitolo 4: pp. 137-211.

69. O'Brien, Denis. 1992. "Il non-essere e la diversità nel Sofista di Platone." Atti della Accademia di Scienze Morali e Politiche di Napoli no. 102:271-328.

Versione francese in: D. O'Brien: Le non être. Deux études sur le Sophiste de Platon, pp. 43-165.

"Platone [nel Sofista] non intende confutare Parmenide: questa tesi sembrerà, sulle prime, paradossale ed anche un po' assurda. All'inizio della sua analisi del non essere (237 A), lo Straniero di Elea non ha forse citato dei versi in cui Parmenide condanna il non essere (nostro fr. 7 .1-2), e alla fine della sua analisi (258 D) non ha forse citato una seconda volta gli stessi versi, e affermato al tempo stesso (258 C6-10) di essersi « molto allontanato » dalla condanna pronunciata da Parmenide? Come dunque, esprimendosi in questo modo, egli non avrebbe confutato l'insegnamento espresso nei versi citati?

Notiamo tuttavia che nelle due pagine che seguono la prima citazione di Parmenide (237 B7-239 C8), Teeteto e lo Straniero convengono sul fatto che, conformemente alla dottrina enunciata nei versi appena citati, non si può concepire « ciò che non è in nessun modo » ( τὸ μηδαμῶς ὂν , 237 B7-8), il « non essere in se stesso » (τὸμὴὂν αὐτὸ καθαὑτό, 238 C9). Se lo Straniero ritenesse di aver « confutato » Parmenide, ci si dovrebbe aspettare di trovare in qualche luogo, nello svolgersi del dialogo (239 C9 sgg.), una ritrattazione - da parte dello Straniero e di Teeteto - della condanna di questo non essere per così dire « assoluto ».

Ora, una simile ritrattazione non si trova in nessuna parte del dialogo; tutt'al più si troverà, nelle linee che seguono la seconda citazione dal poema parmenideo, una distinzione: lo Straniero afferma di aver dimostrato l'esistenza di una « forma» del non essere (258 D5-E3), ma afferma anche, nella stessa pagina (258 E6-259 Al), che non « osa» minimamente parlare di un non essere che sarebbe il contrario dell'essere.

Ci si domanda allora: di questi due « non esseri » qual è quello condannato da Parmenide? È quello che lo Straniero chiamerà la « forma » del non essere? O quello che chiamerà il contrario dell'essere?" (p. 272)

70. ———. 2005. "La forma del non essere nel Sofista di Platone." In Eidos - Idea. Platone, Aristotele e la tradizione platonica, edited by Fronterotta, Francesco and Leszl, Walter, 115-159. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

"«Una forma che è, di ciò che non è». La definizione platonica del non essere (Soph. 258d6-7) è volutamente paradossale. Ma ciò che si trova nella maggior parte delle storie della filosofia greca non è un paradosso, ma un pasticcio che rasenta la sciocchezza. E questo perché la presentazione che gli storici moderni forniscono della forma platonica del non essere è basata su una serie di errori.

H lungo e complesso argomento che conduce alla definizione di una forma del non essere nel Sofista platonico si conclude, nella maggior parte delle edizioni moderne del dialogo (258e2-3), con una sequenza di parole che non si trova in nessuno dei nostri manoscritti. Anche nel primo volume rivisto delle opere di Platone, recentemente pubblicato presso Clarendon Press a Oxford, si trova stampato, al posto delle parole unanimemente riportate dai nostri tre migliori e più antichi manoscritti, una lezione che è data soltanto da Simplicio nella seconda di due citazioni di questa parte del Sofista contenute nel suo commento alla Fìsica di Aristotele. La definizione di una forma del non essere, così come appare nella seconda delle due citazioni di Simplicio, non è di per sé priva di senso, ma appare completamente fuori luogo nel contesto del dialogo platonico. E questo perché la sequenza di parole che Simplicio riporta qui come tratte dal Sofista è stata chiaramente adattata in modo tale da rendere la definizione platonica del non essere compatibile con la ben diversa concezione del non essere avanzata da Plotino nelle Enneadi (1).

Ma questo è soltanto uno degli errori. Il portavoce nel dialogo di Platone è uno Straniero di Elea. Quando si propone inizialmente di indagare la natura di ‘ciò che non è’, lo Straniero deve confrontarsi con la spiegazione del non essere fornita oltre cento anni prima in un poema in cui Parmenide, anch’egli di Elea, affermava di riportare le parole di una dea situata oltre le porte della Notte e del Giorno. Al principio della sua analisi del non essere, lo Straniero di Platone cita dal poema di Parmenide le parole: «le cose che non sono, sono» (237a8). Grazie a lunghe citazioni di Simplicio dal poema originale di Parmenide, sappiamo che, nel loro contesto (fr. 7.1), quelle parole intendevano fornire il contraddittorio resoconto di ciò che la dea afferma essere il mondo illusorio del movimento e della pluralità che noi ‘mortali’ crediamo di vedere e di sentire intorno a noi. Lo Straniero del dialogo platonico ci dice che quelle stesse parole, soltanto al singolare (237a3-4: «ciò che non è, è»), costituiscono «ciò che Parmenide άπεμαρτύρατο». Se si cerca il verbo άπεμαρτύρομαι nel Greek English Lexicon, pubblicato a Oxford in successive edizioni per ben oltre un secolo e mezzo, si trova che il significato indicato, con specifico riferimento al nostro passo del Sofista, è ‘asserire risolutamente’(2) L’affermazione dello Straniero, allora, deve essere che Parmenide «asseriva risolutamente» che «ciò che non è, è». Ma nel contesto del poema parmenideo il senso che il termine deve avere è esattamente l’opposto. La dea del poema parmenideo nega che le cose che non sono, siano. Il senso del verbo nel dialogo di Platone non è dunque ‘asserire risolutamente’, ma ‘negare recisamente’.

Gli errori che caratterizzano la lettura del dialogo platonico sono piuttosto seri. Ancor più disastrosi sono gli errori che insidiano la moderna comprensione di ciò che Parmenide intendeva nel poema che Platone ha posto come punto di partenza della propria analisi. I commentatori attribuiscono comunemente alla dea di Parmenide, al principio del suo argomento (fr. 2), due proposizioni: ‘l’essere è’ e ‘l’essere non è’. Talvolta, essi modificano la seconda proposizione, in modo che a essere negato è il soggetto e non il verbo. Le due proposizioni sono in tal caso: ‘l’essere è’ e ‘il non essere è’(3). La variazione è abbastanza straordinaria. Come è possibile che studiosi diversi diano due significati così differenti (‘l’essere non è’, ‘il non essere è’) alle stesse parole greche? Ma ciò che appare ancor più straordinario è che entrambe le traduzioni sono false. La dea, al principio del suo argomento, non dice che ‘l’essere non è’ (∃~x, dove x è l’essere) né che ‘il non essere è’ (∃~x) e neanche dice che ‘l'essere è’ (∃x). Ognuna di queste traduzioni è falsa. Peggio ancora, queste false traduzioni impediscono di comprendere come lo Straniero di Elea, nel Sofista di Platone, possa trovarsi sia in accordo sia in disaccordo con Parmenide. Esse impediscono dunque di comprendere come lo Straniero giunga infine alla definizione paradossale di una «forma che è, di ciò che non è»." (pp. 115-116)

(1) Si veda in proposito infra, § 5.

(2) Cf. Liddell & Scott, 1996, s.v. (p. 209). La prima edizione di questa opera fu pubblicata a Oxford (University Press) nel 1843.

(3) Per gli opportuni riferimenti si veda infra § 1.

71. Palumbo, Lidia. 1990. "Sulla nozione di phántasma nel Sofista platonico." Atti della Accademi a di Scienze morali e politiche della Società nazionale di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti di Napoli no. 101:23-42.

72. ———. 1994. Il non essere e l'apparenza. Sul Sofista di Platone. Napoli: Loffredo Editore.

"In questa prospettiva tenteremo di dimostrare che la " questione tecnica", intorno alla quale ruota l'intera opera, è la distinzione tra originale e immagine, che su questa distinzione vengono per così dire ricalcate le distinzioni tra essere e non essere, tra realtà e apparenza, tra discorso vero e discorso falso, dunque tra filosofo e sofista. Proveremo a mostrare come, guardando all'intero dialogo come al "luogo " platonico ove si affronta il problema della definizione dell'apparenza, tutti i passi dell'opera si rivelino profondamente collegati in un'unica tensione speculativa che attraversa orizzontalmente il testo dal principio alla fine e ne costituisce la dialettica interna.

Il punto chiave della nostra lettura del Sofista, che ci permetterà di interpretare alcuni passi del dialogo, non ultimo quello del famoso "parricidio", in una nuova luce, è proprio la nozione di μὴ ὄν, che la critica è orientata ad identificare con oν έτερον. Noi non accettiamo questa identificazione tra il «non essere» ·e il «diverso», perché riteniamo che in 258d5-e3 Platone stabilisca tra il genos έτερον e l' eidos μὴ ὄν un rapporto di tutto a parte: la natura del non essere non si identifica con la natura del diverso, ma con «quella parte di essa che è contrapposta all'essere di ciascun ente».

Non si tratta, come vedremo, di una questione marginale: la comprensione del tipo di relazione che intercorre tra la natura del non essere e la natura del diverso - per cui il non essere è una parte del diverso, e precisamente quella parte che è contrapposta all'essere di ogni ente - è di fondamentale importanza per la comprensione della definizione platonica dell'apparenza che, come dicevamo sopra, impegna il filosofo per l'intero dialogo.

Noi tenteremo di dimostrare che il non essere rappresenta per Platone proprio tale dimensione dell'apparire, che il discorso falso, per la sua "comunicazione" con il non essere, è propriamente un discorso apparente, esattamente nello stesso senso in cui il sofista, a causa del suo "commercio" con τὸ μὴ ὄν, è un non filosofo, una falsa immagine di filosofo, un filosofo soltanto in apparenza.

Il "luogo testuale" in cui, a nostro avviso, Platone pone le basi ontologiche della identificazione tra l'idea del non essere e la specie dell'apparire, è propriamente quello della discussione sulla κοινοια τών γενών , ma noi tenteremo di dimostrare che i termini del problema - che troverà una soluzione appunto solo in quella discussione - vengono posti fin dalle prime pagine del dialogo e si ritrovano nelle ultime battute dell'opera, quando viene data la settima definizione del sofista, cosicché esso appare essere non uno tra gli argomenti dibattuti, ma l'argomento dell'intero lavoro, quello alla cui corretta impostazione e soluzione concorrono tutti gli altri." (pp. 21-22, note omesse).

73. ———. 1994. "Su alcuni problemi (e alcune soluzioni) relativi al Sofista di Platone." Bollettino della Società Filosofica Italiana no. 152:5-14.

74. ———. 1995. "Realtà ed apparenza nel Sofista e nel Politico." In Reading the Statesman, Proceedings of the III Symposium Platonicum, edited by Rowe, Christopher J., 175-183. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

"Quanto ci proponiamo di dimostrare, facendo perno su alcuni passi del Sofista e del Politico (come è noto questi due dialoghi nella finzione drammatica presentano lo sviluppo di una discussione che è cominciata nel Teeteto), è che uno dei problemi di fondo della speculazione platonica di questo periodo, quello di individuare i fondamenti ontologici del falso; viene affrontato dal filosofo passando attraverso la questione del non essere inteso non come semplice differenza, ma come apparenza.

Proprio all'inizio della sezione aporetica del Sofista, quando, dopo alcuni tentativi di definire l'oggetto della ricerca - appunto il sofista - ci si è imbattuti nell'ipotesi che questi altro non sia che 'una specie di stregone, un imitatore delle cose che sono ( ὅτι τῶν γοήτων ἐστί τις, μιμητὴς ὢν τῶν ὄντων, 235 a 1), 'un rappresentante del genere degli illusionisti' (235 b 5), nell'ipotesi che la più corretta denominazione dell'arte sofistica sia quella che la presenta come τέχνη φανταστική, 'arte di produzione delle apparenze' (cfr. 236 c 4), lo Straniero ha annunciato a Teeteto: 'Beato ragazzo, è realmente un ambito di ricerca estremamente difficile quello in cui siamo. Infatti, che una cosa appaia e sembri, ma non sia il dire qualcosa, ma che non sia vero, tutto ciò è pieno di difficoltà sempre, tanto in passato quanto ora. In che modo si debba parlare per dire di opinare che il falso è realmente, e senza che questa asserzione comporti una contraddizione, è una cosa assolutamente difficile da mostrare' (236 d 9 - e 6).

La difficoltà dell'indagine - chiarisce lo Straniero in questo luogo del Sofista - è tutta nella 'audacia di porre come ipotesi che il non essere sia; in nessun altro modo, infatti, il falso potrebbe venire ad essere' (237 a 3-4)." (p. 175)

75. ———. 2002. "Hegel interprete del Sofista nelle Lezioni sulla storia della filosofia." In Hegel e Platone, edited by Movia, Giancarlo, 225-249. Cagliari: Edizioni AV.

76. ———. 2018. "La nozione di immagine in Platone, Soph. 240." In ὁδοὶ νοῆσαι – Ways to think. Essays in Honour of Néstor-Luis Cordero, edited by Spangengerg, Pilar and Pulpito, Massimo, 395-402. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia.

Abstract: "Questo contributo è un commentario della lettura di Cordero di Platone, Sofista 240. Nel dialogo lo Straniero si meraviglia dell’esistenza del non essere.

La parola chiave dell’argomento è eidolon (immagine). L’esistenza dell’immagine, infatti, comporta l’esistenza del non essere, perché l’immagine è μὴ ἀληθινὸν, ἐναντίον ἀληθοῦς (240b5). L’immagine è qualcosa di non vero, di contrario del vero. L’immagine dovrebbe non esistere, eppure essa esiste.

Questa sezione del dialogo è molto aporetica: sebbene molti studiosi ne hanno modificato il testo, Cordero difende la lettura dei manoscritti."

77. ———. 2021. "Mimêsis teorizzata e mimêsis realizzata nel Sofista platonico." In Platonic Mimesis Revisited, edited by Julia, Pfefferkorn and Spinelli, Antonino, 193-210. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Abstract: "'This paper aims at discussing Platonic examples of mimesis in the Sophist, by trying to identify the mimetic figures that show to the reader, in a vivid way, what the characters of the dialogue abstractly theorize. All Platonic dialogues are mirnetic, but the Sophist is a privileged point of observation of their "mimeticity'' because in the Sophist one of the characters explains what mimesis is, how it works. In addition. such a character does not simply explain this abstractly, but puts mimetic figures in front of the eyes of his interlocutor, just as Plato does with his reader. The question of difference is linked to that of mimesis and plays a crucial role in the Sophist. This question. too, is not only discussed at length but is also presented in front of the eyes of the reader !hanks to the figure of the Eleatic Stranger who embodies the difference and makes it visible, just as the Sophist makes visible the misleading nature of not-being. This dialogue, with the aporiai of diairesis, stages the difficulty of drawing the figure of the sophist, who is never staged as a character, but always faced as a problem."

78. Palumbo, Lidia, and Casertano, Giovanni. 1994. "Discorso e realtà nel Sofista platonico." Atti dell'Accademia di Scienze Morali e Politiche - Napoli no. 105:281-296.

"Possiamo guardare al Sofista come al supremo sforzo di Platone di concettualizzare la possibilità stessa del discorso e della scienza, nella consapevolezza di tutte le difficoltà che comporta la teoria delle idee (quindi nel tentativo di raffinarla, correggendola e dialettizzandola, esplicitandone tutte le potenzialità e le complicazioni), ma ancora nella profonda convinzione che soltanto essa conserva la possibilità di costruire un «discorso migliore» sulla realtà; non solo, alla maniera di Protagora, da un punto di vista etico e politico, ma anche, alla maniera di Aristotele, da un punto di vista logico e gnoseologico. In questa direzione lo sforzo massimo di Platone è appunto quello di definire il più correttamente possibile: 1) il rapporto che lega il nostro discorso sulla realtà alla realtà che nel nostro discorso viene "rispecchiata"; 2) il significato profondo, e nello stesso tempo le modalità, del nostro «costruire» il discorso: non solo cioè stabilire in generale che cosa è un λόγος, quando possiamo parlare correttamente dell'esistenza di un λόγος, ma anche le regole del λόγος corretto senza le quali il "τί" che costituisce l'oggetto del nostro discorso rimane, nonostante tutte le parole che usiamo e che sprechiamo, estraneo alla nostra comprensione ed alla nostra comunicazione (ed è chiaro che questo è il tentativo platonico di superare le difficoltà sollevate da Gorgia); 3) i diversi livelli ai quali dobbiamo porci per capire, e quindi per fissare, le norme per una corretta comunicazione del discorso (e questo era necessario appunto dopo il περί του μη όντος. di Gorgia), per fissare che cosa sono «l'essere» ed «il non essere» (τό όν e τό μη όν). Questo terzo aspetto nel Sofista è quanto mai importante, non solo perché comporta una riflessione ulteriore sulla teoria delle idee elaborata dal Fedone e dalla Repubblica fino al Parmenide, ma anche perché esprime il più alto e consapevole sforzo di Platone di utilizzare, incorporandole nel vivo del suo pensiero, le riflessioni di un Parmenide, di un Eraclito, di un Protagora, di un Gorgia. Questi autori, infatti, implicitamente od esplicitamente, sono presenti, in tutta l'importanza e la complessità delle loro proposte, nel nostro dialogo." (pp. 281-282, note omesse)

79. Perazzoli, Giovanni. 1999. "Il Nulla e la Chimera. Il Sofista di Platone e la distinzione tra essere della copula e essere dell’esistenza." Novecento.

"Il rilevamento della presenza o dell’assenza di una chiara delineazione della distinzione tra l’essere come mera «congiunzione» e come «predicato», è stato, soprattutto in ambito neopositivista, l’obiettivo della gran parte dei commentatori del Sofista platonico. L’assunto fondamentale di queste interpretazioni è che la «confusione» logico semantica dei sensi della predicazione, oltre ad essere all’origine dell’aporia centrale del Sofista, l’aporia del nulla, sia in realtà l’errore costitutivo delle indagini filosofiche sull’essere.(1) Le pagine dedicate da Platone alla delineazione dell’aporia del nulla in forza anche della drammatica e disorientante sospensione del rapporto del linguaggio con la logica che vi si realizza, hanno costituito, perciò, un problema molto attraente per tutte quelle concezioni, che attribuiscono ai miraggi del linguaggio i «paradossi» e, in generale, gli stessi problemi della filosofia speculativa." (p. 2)

(...)

"L’indagine, dunque, è rivolta ad esaminare, nella teoria della distinzione dei sensi dell’essere, il senso e la possibilità della distinzione tra il senso dell’«essere» come semplice «copula» e quello dell’«essere» come «predicato». Al contempo, si tratterà di esaminare, in particolari occorrenze testuali, le posizioni di quegli interpreti, ma soprattutto di quei filosofi, che, incontrando in modo più o meno opportuno e felice il problema platonico del «nulla», hanno ritenuto di avere in mano la soluzione del bimillenario «guazzabuglio mentale intorno all’‘esistenza’»(3) (secondo la definizione di Russell). L’indistinzione tra l’«essere copulativo» e l’«essere esistenziale» è stata considerata, con varie differenze, come la conseguenza dell’indistinzione «arcaica» tra parola e cosa, tra piano logico e piano ontologico.

In realtà, benché dotata di un’apparente irrefragabile evidenza e di un’enorme fortuna, la distinzione della predicazione copulativa ed esistenziale risulta coinvolta, ben più di quanto immediatamente non appaia, in difficoltà e paradossi ed è ben lungi dal risolvere il problema posto da Platone; e non risolvendolo entra in crisi essa stessa nella sua ambizione di costituirsi come prospettiva ontologica." (p. 3)

(1) Un esempio di questa tesi si può trarre da Jon Stuart Mill, il quale scrive nel System of Logic, ratiocinative and inductive: being a connected view of the principles of evidence and the methods of scientific investigation (London, Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer, 18728, I, p. 86): «many volumes might be filled with the frivolous speculations concerning the nature of Being, [...] which have arisen from overlooking this double meaning of the word to be; from supposing that when it signifies to exist, and when it signifies to be some specified thing, as to be a man, to be Socrates, to be seen or spoken of, to be a phantom, even to be a nonentity, it must still, at bottom, answer to the same idea; and that a meaning must be found for it which shall suit all these cases. The fog which rose from this narrow spot diffused itself at an early period over the whole surface of metaphysics».

(3) B. Russell, Storia della filosofia occidentale e dei suoi rapporti con le vicende politiche e sociali dall’antichità ad oggi, 4 voll., Milano, Longanesi, 1967, IV (Da Rousseau ad oggi), p. 1101.

80. Perriello, Ricardo Lucio. 2010. "La metafisica del Sofista nell'orizzonte della protologia (prima parte)." Salesianum no. 72:423-444.

Abstract: "In this article I propose to afford an interpretation of the metaphysic of the five genus of the platonic Sophist, on the base of the last hermeneutic paradigm, concerning the studies of the school of Tubinga-Milano. The last hermeneutic paradigm of the platonic thought concentrates the attention on the "unwritten doctrines" and on their metaphysic nucleus, the prothology, doctrine of the supreme principles of the One and the Diades. The One, principle of unity and the Diades, principle of multiplicity, found the being, understood as synthesis of unity and multiplicity. On the base of this general statement of platonic thought and of the articulated metaphysic system, which is founded on this interpretation, I try to interpret the five great genus of Sophist: the being, the same, the different, the movement and the quiet, searching to prove the transcendence of the being, of the same and of the different on other two genus and their deep valence about the platonic System and about a renovated metaphysic proposal in the actual age."

81. ———. 2010. "La metafisica del Sofista nell'orizzonte della protologia (seconda parte)." Salesianum no. 72:629-654.

82. Raschini, Maria Adelaide. 1961. "La dialettica del Sofista." Giornale di Metafisica no. 16:693-730.

Ristampato in M. A. Raschini, Saggi su Platone e Plotino, a cura di Pier Paolo Ottonello, Venezia: Marsilio, 2000, pp. 23-60.

83. Rezzani, Maria. 1952. "I problemi fondamentali del Sofista di Platone." Sophia:298-309.

84. Riccardo, Amalia. 2004. "Tra ἔλεγχος e ἀπόδειξις: strategie di analisi di un testo parmenideo (DK 28 B7. 1-2) nel Sofista di Platone." In L’ultima parola: l’analisi dei testi. Teorie e pratichenell’antichità greca e latina: atti del terzo colloquio italo-francese, edited by Abbamonte, Giancarlo, Conti Bizzarro, Ferruccio and Spina, Luigi. Napoli: Arte Tipografica.

85. Roggerone, Giuseppe Agostino. 1983. La crisi del platonismo nel Sofista e nel Politico. Lecce: Milella.

86. ———. 1990. I dialoghi platonici del Forestiero di Elea: Sofista e Politico. Settimo Milanese: Marzorati.

87. Rossetti, Livio. 2019. "Il Parmenide phusikos e il meccanismo di Antikitera: Risposta alle osservazioni di N. L. Cordero ( Archai 25, 2019)." Archai no. 27:1-7.

88. Rossitto, Cristina. 1995. "La dialettica platonica nel Sofista: elenchos o diairesis?" In Platone e la dialettica, edited by Di Giovanni, Piero, 39-57. Bari: Laterza.

Ristampato in: C. Rossitto, Studi sulla dialettica in Aristotele, Napoli: Bibliopolis, 2000, pp. 327-346.

89. Russo, Nicola. 2011. "Nichilismo del lógos. Il "veramente falso" nel Sofista di Platone." In Logon didonai. La filosofia come esercizio del rendere ragione. Studi in onore di Giovanni Casertano, edited by Palumbo, Lidia, 615-627. Napoli: Loffredo.

"... le brevi considerazioni che seguono non hanno lo scopo di “difendere” Platone dall’accusa di nichilismo, ammesso e non concesso che di un’accusa possa trattarsi, né di emendare quelle vulgate, la cui inconsistenza è stata già più volte dimostrata. Il ritorno al testo platonico, invece, risponde a esigenze teoriche, a quelle esigenze suscitate proprio dalla riflessione intorno alla questione del nichilismo.

Una questione che nasce essenzialmente dal problema della verità, decisivo in Nietzsche come in Platone, e che si sviluppa verso l’ontologia in maniera consequenziale, poiché il luogo della verità è proprio il nesso ontologico, l’unità di λόγος e ὄν riconosciuta fin dai suoi primi inizi dalla filosofia greca, quell’equazione parmenidea intorno a cui Platone non si è mai stancato di interrogarsi e che nelle pagine centrali del Sofista considera proprio in riferimento al vero e al falso, all’ente e al non ente. Pagine in cui mostra di avere una consapevolezza molto lucida di quanto andava maneggiando teoricamente e di cosa vi fosse in gioco, tanto che non è infondato il sospetto, che almeno a lui «l’essenza del nichilismo» non fosse affatto «occulta». È allora tramite una breve lettura di alcuni passi di quel dialogo acrobatico – in senso greco –, che cercheremo di saggiare la sostanza del “nichilismo platonico”. (p. 614)

90. Sasso, Gennaro. 1991. L'essere e le differenze. Sul Sofista di Platone. Bologna: Il Mulino.

"Poiché, oltre che storiografica, questo libro ha natura teoretica, e anzi proprio quest'ultima apparirà a qualcuno come la sua più autentica, desidero dichiararne subito, o specificarne, l'intento e la tesi. Ho scritto questo libro per far vedere che, malgrado la sua importanza, e lo straordinario acume con il quale l'analisi dell'eleatismo e, in particolare, di Parmenide, vi è stata condotta fino alle estreme conseguenze, il Sofista culmina nella dichiarazione, non però nell'autentica dimostrazione, della «differenza». Ho scritto questo libro perché, convinto come sono che da nessuno la questione della differenza sia stata posta e discussa con altrettanta lucidità, ritengo tuttavia che, pur dopo il tentativo platonico di risolverla, questa resti, per la filosofia, aperta. Ho scritto questo libro, non per risolverla, tale questione; ma piuttosto per mostrare, in forma implicita (e, qualche volta, esplicita), perché quella tracciata da Platone sia una via che, dopo essere stata seguita fino in fondo, deve tuttavia, con decisione, essere abbandonata. L'ho scritto, infine, per far vedere quante difficoltà la consapevolezza del «fallimento» platonico riveli nel fondo della questione, e quanto lungo, aspro e disagevole sia il cammino che resta, o resterebbe, da percorrere." (Prefazione, 7)

91. Sini, Carlo. 2004. "Il significato politico dell'ontologia di Platone." In Platone e l'ontologia. Il Parmenide e il Sofista, edited by Bianchetti, Matteo and Storace, Erasmo, 115-120. Milano: Albo Versorio.

" "Ontologia di Platone" è un'espressione impropria. Essa sembra suggerire che esista una "storia dell'ontologia" in qualche modo presupposta e in sé entro la quale sia possibile e legittimo collocare Platone, come poi Tommaso, Spinoza, Hegel e così via. Penso invece che il Sofista e il Parmenide, cioè i dialoghi ai quali si fa qui espresso riferimento, costituiscano, caso mai, la soglia e la premessa a partire dalla quale qualcosa come l'ontologia si mette in movimento e si rende intelligibile e disponibile nella storia della tradizione filosofica. Non esiste, come se fosse cosa ovvia, una scienza dell'ente, della quale Platone rappresenterebbe un capitolo; al contrario, è con Platone che si inaugura un nuovo senso di ciò che si dice "realtà" e un nuovo senso dell'"essere reale"; è a partire dal gesto inaugurale di Platone che la riflessione filosofica comincia a immaginare e, per così dire, a "sognare" qualcosa come un'ontologia: invenzione di Platone che anche noi moderni non smettiamo di perseguire e di sognare." (p. 115)

92. Sirianni, Filippo. 2020. "ΣΤΑΣΙΣ e ΔΙΑΦΘΟΡΑ. Nota a Sofista 228a7-8." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 41:141-155.

Abstract: "Passage 228a7-8 of Plato’s Sophist has been the object of a broad debate by reason of a number of subtle interpretative problems. The present work attempts to take stock of this passage and to put forward a satisfying solution from both a philological and an exegetic perspective. I seek to show that the reading cited by Galen and adopted in the editions of the Sophist (τὴν τοῦ φύσει συγγενοῦς ἔκ τινος διαφθορᾶς διαφοράν) cannot be preferred to the variant found in the manuscripts of the dialogue (τὴν τοῦ φύσει συγγενοῦς ἔκ τινος διαφορᾶς διαφθοράν). As for the interpretation, both readings stand out as problematic. I propose to reconsider the interpretation of the syntagma τοῦ φύσει συγγενοῦς and to translate it as “the natural kinship” rather than as “what is naturally kindred”.

The paper continues with an analysis of the role played by kinship in Plato’s philosophy, showing how its sundering can be identified with stasis.

93. Valle, Manuela. 2016. Un'antica discordia. Platone e la poesia: Ione, Simposio, Repubblica e Sofista. Napoli: Paolo Loffredo iniziative editoriali.

""Vi è un’antica discordia tra filosofia e poesia”: così si esprime Socrate nel X libro della Repubblica e possiamo convenire che tale controversia certamente antica sia, almeno per Platone. Lungo l’intero arco della sua vita da filosofo e da scrittore filosofico, Platone si pose il problema del confronto con la poesia e i poeti. Ione, Simposio, Repubblica, Sofista costituiscono quattro momenti fondamentali in cui tale confronto si è articolato ed è ad una loro analisi, insieme contenutistica e formale, che questo libro è dedicato. Più che ad una discordia, l’impressione è che si assista ad una ripetuta insoddisfazione rispetto ai risultati raggiunti nelle indagini sulla poesia, ancora una volta sfuggente. La diaphora è allora, in fondo, una “distanza”, oltre che antica, salutare, perché è là che si origina l’esigenza di una nuova ricerca."

94. van Eck, Job. 2007. "L'analisi platonica del falso. Una vetta nella storia dell'analisi logica." Rivista di Storia della Filosofia no. 62:635-646.

Traduzione dall'inglese di Mauro Bonazzi.

"Eppure rimangono dei testi non ancora adeguatamente compresi. Un esempio significativo è la parte centrale del Sofista (237-264), dove Platone affronta il problema del falso. L'obiettivo di fondo del dialogo è descrivere il sofista imbrigliandolo in una definizione. I due personaggi principali, Teeteto e uno 'Straniero di Elea', intendono presentare il sofista come un illusionista che crea false opinioni. Ma il sofista non cade facilmente nella rete replicando che il concetto di falso è problematico. Chi ha una falsa opinione o pronuncia una falsa asserzione crede o dice qualcosa che non è. Ora, ciò che non è non esiste.

Ma come possono un'opinione o un'asserzione rappresentare qualcosa che non è, vale a dire qualcosa di cui non si può dare una rappresentazione? Come possono un'opinione o un'asserzione essere false? Di questo problema si discuteva nella seconda metà del V sec. a.C. in un contesto segnato dallo scetticismo e dal relativismo tipici del movimento sofistico del tempo. L'idea che nessuno possa pronunciare una falsa asserzione e che contraddire sia impossibile è attribuita a Protagora (490-420 a.C.), l'esponente di spicco della sofistica, e ben si adatta al soggettivismo da lui professato: non c'è una realtà oggettiva, esiste soltanto il mondo dell'esperienza soggettiva di cui non si danno affermazioni con validità oggettiva. Tutto ciò che appare ad ognuno, ogni percezione e ogni opinione possiedono la stessa validità soggettiva. Le opinioni di ciascuno sono per ciascuno vere: 'L'uomo è la misura di tutte le cose'. Il problema del falso e l'idea che non si possa distinguere tra asserzioni false e vere era alla radice di una diffidenza generale circa la possibilità della conoscenza scientifica, cioè oggettiva; questo problema aggiungeva benzina al fuoco dello scetticismo circa la possibilità che il pensiero e le argomentazioni funzionassero come mezzo per arrivare a dei giudizi in grado di pretendere validità oggettiva.

Ecco perché risolvere questo problema era importante non soltanto da un punto di vista logico." (p. 636)

95. Vegetti, Mario. 2004. "Struttura e funzioni della dicotomia nel Sofista." In Platone e l'ontologia. Il Parmenide e il Sofista, edited by Bianchetti, Matteo and Storace, Erasmo, 95-104. Milano: Albo Versorio.

Ristampato in: Gastaldi, Silvia, Calabi, Francesca, Campese, Silvia and Ferrari, Franco (a cura di), Dialoghi con gli Antichi, Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag 2007, pp. 123-131.

"Per avvicinarci a una comprensione in positivo della natura e del senso della dialettica dicotomica, è bene considerare il modo con cui essa viene delineata nel disegno dialogico del Sofista. Si tratta, come è ben noto, di dare la caccia al personaggio omonimo, che a sua volta è un cacciatore, di seguirne le tracce (ichne), di afferrarlo e chiuderlo in una rete: come ha osservato Bernadete, il linguaggio della caccia - che comporta una valenza euristica - appare dominante nel dialogo. Ma come condurre questa caccia a una figura di cui è noto soltanto il nome?

Il primo aspetto saliente del dialogo è che il procedimento che verrà seguito risulta introdotto senza formulare alcuna regola metodica, per la quale occorre attendere il riepilogo - a cose fatte - delineato alla fine del dialogo (264d-e ). Poiché nella finzione dialogica il Sofista precede il Politico, e non è lecito d'altra parte presumere che lo Straniero di Elea avesse assistito alla conversazione fra Socrate e Fedro sulle rive dell'Ilisso (su cui dovremo tornare), nel contesto del dialogo viene presentato un esperimento privo sia di regole sia di precedenti, e come tale esso andrà qui rapidamente riconsiderato." (p. 97)

96. Vitiello, Vincenzo. 2004. "Incontro sul Parmenide e il Sofista." In Platone e l'ontologia. Il Parmenide e il Sofista, edited by Bianchetti, Matteo and Storace, Erasmo, 107-114. Milano: Albo Versorio.

"Mi fermerò in particolare sul Parmenide che costituisce da sempre - e ancora - un problema aperto." (p. 107)

(...)

"Qualche parola ancora sul Sofista - solo a smentire la falsa convinzione che con questo dialogo Platone scioglie le "contraddizioni" del Parmenide, trasforma l'aporia in euporia, la via bloccata in strada di passaggio.

Fermiamoci sulla koinonia ton genon. Bene, cosa dice questa comunione di generi? Che essere non è diverso, ma si partecipa del diverso - fosse il medesimo che diverso, non potremmo dire che l'identico "è". E lo stesso va ripetuto per moto e quiete. Ma ... , ma per parteciparsi a moto e quiete, a identico e diverso, moto e quiete, identico e diverso in qualche modo debbono già "essere". Come, se già non fossero, essere potrebbe ad essi parteciparsi?

E non si dica che solo perché essere si partecipa ad essi, identico e diverso, quiete e moto sono. Perché se identico è solo dopo che essere gli si partecipa, allora essere conferisce ad identico con l'essere l'identità, e così al diverso, alla quiete e al moto. In entrambi i casi all'essere che è diverso dagli altri quattro generi s'aggiunge altro essere che è - in qualche modo - tutti i generi, non essendoli. In qualche modo: in quale? In quello che Platone ci ha detto nel Parmenide. Al modo dell'essere non essendo, del disdire disdicentesi." (p. 112)

97. Zadro, Attilio. 1961. Ricerche sul linguaggio e sulla logica del Sofista. Padova: Antenore.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Platón: Sofista. Bibliografía comentada de estudios en Español

Bibliografía

1. Aguirre, Javier. 2010. "El Sofista de Platón y la concepción aristotélica del ser." Revista aguna:53-62.

Resumen: "En el capítulo M4 de la Metafísica, Aristóteles critica la dialéctica practicada por Sócrates achacándole su falta de «vigor dialéctico». Asimismo, en N2, Aristóteles critica la dialéctica practicada por «los dialécticos» imputándoles el modo arcaico en que se plantean el problema del ser. Hay numerosos indicios que apuntan que con el término «dialécticos» Aristóteles se está refiriendo a Platón y a los platónicos, y de que es a ellos a quienes atribuye el «vigor dialéctico». Aristóteles es consciente, por consiguiente, de los méritos y de las deficiencias de la dialéctica platónica, y más concretamente la practicada por Platón en el Sofista. En el desarrollo de su propia concepción del ser (to on) en los libros centrales de la Metafísica, Aristóteles tiene presente el contenido de este diálogo y trata de superar tanto las dificultades planteadas por los eléatas como las propias deficiencias en el modo platónico de entender el ser."

2. Aguirre Sala, Jorge Francisco. 1994. "La falsedad en el pensamiento y en el discurso. Comentarios al Sofista 259b al 265e." Revista de Filosofía (México) no. 27:432-434.

"En el presenta artículo nos proponemos elaborar una digresión sobre uno de los temas más controversiales en Filosofía: las relaciones entre el ser y la falsedad. Queremos asimismo tomar lo más directamente posible el texto de Platón porque no queremos perder a nuestro autor entre sus miles de comentaristas." (p. 432)

3. ———. 2001. "La ontologìa platonica de los géneros supremos I." Analogía (Filosófica) Revista de filosófia, México no. 15:121-156.

Segunda parte: Analogía (Filosófica) Revista de filosófia, México, 15, 2001, pp. 123-137.

"Con Platón y acompañado de sus múltiples comentadores e intérpretes se nos ofrece, al menos, dos modos de abordar el mundo; tarea que todo humano debería hacer de vez en cuando, pero si por oficio se es filósofo, nunca debe despreciarse ni tomar demasiado aprisa tan atractivo ofrecimiento. Uno de estos modos parte desde los arquetipos -esas instancias inventadas por Platón para explicarse, precisamente, el mundo- y tiende hacia las cosas, el mundo físico tal y cual lo percibimos en nuestra experiencia cotidiana. Este camino podríamos denominarlo como la “vía deductiva” . El otro derrotero, en el mismo sentido y propósito, pero en dirección contraria, va desde las cosas hacia sus arquetipos, esas instancias pretendidamente justificadoras, fundadoras que nos hacen inteligible el mundo. A esta vía podríamos denominarla el “camino fenomenológico”, en el sentido de que lo primero que nos aparece es un “acontecer”, es “lo que sucede”, lo que la cosa “manifiesta” en el plano inmediato." (p. 121)

4. Álvarez, Lucas. 2008. "El Sofista como pseudorgós: sus posibles sentidos." Circe de clásicos y modernos no. 12.

Resumen: "En Sofista, Platón alcanza simultáneamente la definición más acabada y la crítica más severa a propósito de la figura del sofista.

Éste aparece allí como un pseudourgós. Mediante el uso de eídola legómena los sofistas pretenden demostrar que pueden producirlo todo para así engañar a jóvenes desorientados.

Hasta aquí la letra platónica pero, ¿qué otro sentido se puede pensar respecto de este título de ‘hacedor de falsedades’? Teniendo en cuenta la concepción del lenguaje propia de la sofística es posible entender ese mote como un indicador del estatuto propio no sólo del lógos demiúrgico sino también de la pólis hecha por y para sus palabras."

5. ———. 2014. "Las figuras del justo y del injusto en República II como antecedentes del sofista y del filósofo en Sofista de Platón." Nova Tellus no. 32:9-43.

Resumen: "Teniendo en cuenta la construcción de personajes o figuras realizada por los interlocutores de los diálogos platónicos, aquí nos ocuparemos de estudiar la de los sujetos justo e injusto (efectuada por Glaucón y Adimanto en República II)y la del sofista (consumada por el Extranjero de Elea y Teeteto en el diálogo Sofista), sin perder de vista la singular presentación que se hace del filósofo en este último diálogo. Establecidas esas cuatro figuras, buscaremos explicitar las relaciones que hacen de las primeras antecedentes de las últimas. Finalmente, destacaremos las consecuencias que se derivan de dichas relaciones para la comprensión de la interpretación platónica del filósofo y de su principal adversario, el sofista."

6. ———. 2016. "La función propedéutica del sofista y la emergencia del filósofo. División, dialéctica y paradigmas en el diálogo Sofista." Areté no. 28:337-366.

Resumen: "El propósito de este trabajo es examinar la cuestión de los objetivos planteados por Platón en el diálogo Sofista. En primer lugar, procuramos echar luz sobre el objetivo general que se estaría trazando en el prólogo de la obra, allí donde el Extranjero de Elea comienza a demostrar su estatus filosófico. En segundo lugar, nos ocupamos de ubicar la caracterización del sofista en el marco de ese objetivo, interpretando el resultado de dicha caracterización como un παράδειγμα implícito que prepara la ejecución de la dialéctica y anticipa los rasgos de un objeto clave de esa ciencia."

7. ———. 2017. "El no-ser como diferencia y el sofista como diferencia: hallazgos ontológicos y estrategias refutativas en el diálogo Sofista." Hypnos no. 39:238-257.

Resumen: "En este trabajo, nos ocuparemos de dos cuestiones vinculadas al concepto de lo diferente, el gran hallazgo del diálogo Sofista. En primer lugar, intentaremos aclarar el estatus específico que adquiere el no-ser relativo, en la medida en que es posible leer dicho no-ser como la diferencia tout court o como una parte de esa diferencia, debido a una aparente oscilación del texto platónico. En segundo lugar, iluminaremos la particular caracterización del sofista que, al ser entendido como lo diferente del sabio, termina funcionando como un modelo a pequeña escala que anticipa de forma proléptica aquel no-ser relativo."

8. ———. 2019. Platón frente al sofista. Buenos Aires: Teseopress.

Índice: Comité editorial de la colección Pensamiento Antiguo 9; Introducción 11;

Primera parte 17

1. La caracterización del sofista 19; 2. Los planteos de República como antecedentes del diálogo Sofista 63; 3. El sofista como μιμητής 105; 4. Recapitulación: filósofo vs. sofista 185;

Segunda parte 193

5. Los objetivos del diálogo Sofista 195; 6. El filósofo platónico: su método y sus objetos 225;

Conclusiones 335; Abreviaturas 343; Bibliografía 347-388.

"Blanco preferido de los ataques platónicos contra dichas formas de sabiduría (o, en realidad, de pretendida sabiduría) es el sofista quien resulta severamente cuestionado a lo largo de todo el corpus platonicum. En este trabajo, nos ocuparemos del punto culminante de ese cuestionamiento alcanzado en el diálogo Sofista. Según intentaremos mostrar, en esa obra de su etapa tardía, Platón logra articular su crítica más aguda contra ese adversario con la postulación de una renovada ontología, y todo ello a través de la noción de alteridad.

Nuestro estudio, de hecho, gira en torno a esa noción; gira, más precisamente, en torno a dos modalidades específicas de la alteridad. Hablamos, en principio, de la doble alteridad que comporta el propio sofista a los ojos de los interlocutores, pues siendo lo otro del filósofo, es, en simultáneo, aquel que hace siempre de otro, pero además de la alteridad que implica el no-ser equiparado, en el marco de una novedosa propuesta ontológica, a la Forma de la Diferencia." (p. 11)

9. Álvarez, Lucas M. 2014. "Platón: el filósofo y el sofista a la luz del paradigma teatral." In El filósofo y sus adversarios en los escritos de Platón y Aristóteles, edited by Marcos, Graciela Elena and Díaz, María Elena 50-69. Buenos Aires: Editorial Rhesis.

10. Anchepe, Ignacio Miguel. 2017. "¿Existen los fantasmas? Sobre imagen (eidolon) y conocimiento en el Sofista de Platon." Praxis Filosófica no. 44:37-58.

Resumen: "En el Sofista, Platón revé algunos puntos clave de su teoría del conocimiento, tales como la teoría de las Formas y la noción de imagen (eídolon). Según algunos intérpretes (Ringbom, Palumbo, Deleuze, Audouard), este diálogo contendría la decisiva novedad de que entre conocimiento verdadero y conocimiento falso hay una notable paridad: ambos recurren a imágenes, el verdadero al eikón y el falso al eídolon (según diálogos anteriores, la imagen está reservada a las formas inferiores de conocimiento, lindantes con lo apariencial y lo falso). En este trabajo me propongo discutir estas interpretaciones. No hay duda de que el Sofista revisa el estatuto de las imágenes falsas, no obstante creo que no llega a establecer la aludida equiparación entre ambos tipos de conocimiento. Incluso en este diálogo —argumentaré— el conocimiento verdadero continúa funcionando de un modo cualitativamente distinto respecto del falso, sin recurrir a imágenes o haciéndolo lo menos posible."

11. Bossi, Beatriz. 2011. "¿Por qué Platón no refuta Parménides en el Sofista?" In Formal Structures in Plato's Dialogues: Theaetetus, Sophist and Statesman, edited by Lisi, Francesco Leonardo, Migliori, Maurizio and Monserrat-Molas, Josep, 180-192. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

12. Carrasco Campos, Ángel. 2007. "Reinterpretación del proyecto filosófico de Platón: una lectura del Sofista." Revista Bajo Palabra no. 2:43-55.

Resumen: "En este ensayo nos proponemos analizar las figuras del sofista y del filósofo a partir de una lectura del Sofista de Platón. Para ello haremos uso del concepto de sabiduría de Giorgio Colli, con el fin de ver el clásico debate entre filósofos y sofistas como una lucha, con auténticas implicaciones filosóficas y sociales, por la herencia del rol del sabio arcaico en el nuevo contexto de la polis griega."

13. Casadesús Bordoy, Francesc. 2010. "La terminología filosófica en el Sofista y el Político: dificultades de traducción." Estudios Clásicos. Organo de la Sociedad española de estudios clásicos:83-94.

14. Casnati, María Gabriela. 2004. "Una lectura unitaria del Sofista de Platón." In Diálogo con los griegos. Estudios sobre Platón, Aristóteles y Plotino, edited by Santa Cruz, María Isabela, E., Marcos. Graciela and Di Camillao, Silvana G., 111-130. Buenos Aires: Colihue Universidad.

"En lo que sigue, me concentraré en analizar los nexos que muestran que el diálogo es una unidad en su conjunto y que no es correcto -como tradicionalmente se sostuvo(3)- leer la parte central como una digresión. Al mismo tiempo, relevaré los cambios que aparecen en el Sofista respecto del planteo ontológico tradicional, para mostrar que Platón nunca "olvida" sus doctrínas anteriores, sino que la, completa y asimismo refina la caracterización ontológica de lo que son apariencias(phantásmata) y copias (eikónes). fundamentales a la hora de caracterizar al sofista." pp. 111-112)

(3) Cordero, N. L (Platón, Diálogos, Madrid, Gredos, 1988) señala en la introducción a su traducción. pp. 322·323, esta actitud tradicional y confies él mismo no encontrar ninguna unidad en la obra. Ver también Notomi. N., The Unity of Plato's 'Sophist'. Between the Sophist and the Philosopher, Cambridge, 1999, p. 7.

15. Castro Caeiro, António de. 2011. "Compreender o eînai e alethè dokeîn e a semântica estruturante do poieîn (Sofista 234a - 240c)." In Formal Structures in Plato's Dialogues: Theaetetus, Sophist and Statesman, edited by Lisi, Francesco Leonardo, Migliori, Maurizio and Monserrat-Molas, Josep, 168-179. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

16. Cordero, Nestor-Luis. 2013. "El extranjero de Elea, ̕”compañero“ de los parmenídeos ... desde 1561." Méthexis no. 26:51-58.

Abstract: "From 228d of the Sophist Plato deals with diseases of the soul, and argues that the most serious is ignorance (agnoía). And in a completely unusual way, he presents the sophist as someone who would be able to purify the soul and cure it of ignorance. The method used by the sophist seems even in its most precise details the activity of the “Platonic Socrates”. Since the context of the Sophist is exclusively ontological (the subtitle of the dialogue is About Being), as Socrates was not interested of “Being” (as nor the sophists), not should wonder that Plato assimilate Socrates to them, even if he is considered a sophist “of noble lineage”.

17. ———. 2016. Platón contra Platón. La autocrítica del Parménides y la ontología del Sofista. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos.

Índice: Introducción 13;

PRIMERA PARTE. De la muerte de Sócrates al segundo viaje a Sicilia

Capítulo 1: Observaciones preliminares 2

SEGUNDA PARTE. La autocrítica del Parménides

Introducción 61; Capítulo 1: ¿De qué hay Formas? 67

TERCERA PARTE La ontología del Sofista

Introducción 91; (a) La presencia de Parménides en el Sofista 92; (b) El extraño Extranjero de Elea 94; (c) Las etapas previas al cuestionamiento de Parménides 98

Capítulo 1: La relación problemática entre el ser y el no-ser 101; Capítulo 2: La revisión de quienes se interesaron en la ousía 119; Capítulo 3 El ser como dúnamis 137; Capítulo 4: Consecuencias de la definición del ser como dúnamis 167; Capítulo 5: El ser como dúnamis y el discurso (lógos) 207;

Epílogo 237; Apéndice 1. Esquema biográfico 241; Apéndice 2. La transliteración de los términos griegos 243; Bibliografía 245-248.

"Ha llegado el momento de hacer lugar a nuestro tema en esta presentación: la autocrítica que (¿quizá?, ¿seguramente?) encontraremos en cierto momento en la producción de Platón. Para que la noción de autocrítica pueda aplicarse a un filósofo de la Antigüedad, deben tenerse en cuenta circunstancias materiales y conceptuales. Desde el punto de vista concreto, el autor en cuestión tiene que haber escrito más de un trabajo (6) y debe conocerse, con un margen mínimo de error, el orden cronológico de la escritura de sus obras.(7) Platón cumple con ambos requisitos.(8)

Las circunstancias conceptuales que permitirían aplicar la noción de autocrítica dependen de la manera o del tipo de filosofar del autor. Utilizamos la fórmula “tipo de filosofar” en vez de la esperada categoría de “filosofía” porque, en el caso de Platón, el hecho de evitar expresarse mediante tratados(9) nos invita a privilegiar la actividad filosófica que resulta del diálogo, con idas, venidas, juego de caracteres, incluso rasgos de humor, en desmedro de un eventual “sistema” que, a nuestro juicio, no existe en Platón. Y bien: este tipo de filosofar, propio de Platón, ¿admite la autocrítica? Evidentemente. Que la autocrítica se lleve a cabo, es otro problema (y, si el lector persiste y llega hasta la conclusión de este trabajo, se convencerá de que realmente se produjo). (pp. 15-16)

(6) Los partidarios de la existencia en Platón de “doctrinas no escritas” encuentran natural que en sus escritos se critique. Es el caso de Maurizio Migliori (1990: 155), quien escribió:“No nos extraña [...] La presentación escrita de la mayor parte de la filosofía de Platón es sustancialmente insuficiente”.

(7) Esta condición, ausente en el caso de Aristóteles, explica la interminable discusión respecto de la evolución (o no) de su pensamiento. Un caso ideal, en cambio, es el de Plotino, cuyo discípulo Porfirio ordenó sus tratados por orden a la vez temático y cronológico.

(8) La cronología generalmente aceptada en la actualidad se basa en el estudio estilométrico del filólogo polaco Wincenty Lutoslawski (1897: passim). Otro especialista de la cuestión, Leonard Brandwood (1990: 2), no duda en afirmar que el “greater consensus” que existe hoy respecto de la cronología se debe al éxito del método estilométrico.

(9) Las conocidas críticas de Platón a la escritura son más bien críticas a los tratados filosóficos: véase Fedro 275d y Carta VII 344c.

Referencias

Brandwood, L. (1990), The Chronology of Plato's Dialogues, Cambridge University Press.

Lutoslawski,W (1897), The Origin and Growth of Plato’s Logic. With an account of Plato’s style and of the chronology of his writings, Londres.

Migliori, M. (1990), Dialettica e Veritá. Commentario filosofico al Parmenide di Platone, Milán, Vita e Pensiero.

18. ———. 2017. "El extraño purificador del alma del Sofista de Platón (228d-231b)." Nova Tellus no. 35:83-95.

Resumen: "A partir de 228d del Sofista, Platón se ocupa de las enfermedades del alma y sostiene que la más grave es la ignorancia (agnoía). De manera totalmente inusual, presenta al sofista como alguien que sería capaz de purificar el alma y de curarla de la ignorancia. El método utilizado por el sofista reproduce hasta en sus detalles más precisos la actividad del “Sócrates platónico”.

Dado que el contexto es exclusivamente ontológico (se subtitula Sobre el ser), como Sócrates no se ocupó “del ser” (ni los sofistas), no debe extrañar que Platón lo asimile a ellos, si bien se trata de un sofista “de buen linaje”.

19. ———. 2019. "El extraño no-ser descubierto por Platón en el Sofista." In Nunc est Bacchandum. Homenaje a Alberto Bernabé, edited by Piquero, Juan, de Paz, Pablo and Planchas, Soraya, 223-230. Madrid: Guillermo Escolar Editor.

"No caben dudas de que la frase principal del Sofista es la siguiente: "Cuando hablamos de lo que no es, no hablamos de algo contrario a lo que es, sino sólo de algo diferente (héteron)" (257b)."

(...)

"La lectura que ya propusimos hace años en nuestras traducciones al español y al francés, héteron, se encontraba sin duda en el ejemplar griego que poseía Marsilio Ficino, quien, en 1482, tradujo "Eleatem quidem natione, longe vero alterum ac dissimilem a Parmenide et Zenone suis aequalibus", y otro tanto puede decirse de la fuente utilizada en 1552, en Lovaina, por Petreio Tiara, un médico frisio, en su traducción latina: "itemque alterum quendam Parmenidis Zenonisque familia". Por último, podemos recurrir a la autoridad de H. Estienne, en cuya edición de 1578 se lee también la lectura héteron. Inexplicablemente, estos códices que yo cito en apoyo de héteron, que ya habían sido utilizados por A. Diès en 1925, no fueron tenidos en cuenta en la nueva edición de Oxford de 1995, a cargo de D.B. Robinson.

(...).

En nuestra comunicación nos vamos a ocupar de esta noción de héteron, central en el Sofista, la cual le permite a Platón justificar la existencia del no-ser, en realidad de "cierto" no-ser, un no-ser un tanto extraño que, como intentaré demostrar, influyó, con su intrusión en el ámbito de las Ideas, nada menos que a la noción de ser, esa también extraña idéa tou óntos que Platón presenta en la página 254a8." (pp. 223-224)

20. ———. 2020. "Parménides y la concepción ante-predicativa de la verdad." Archai. As origens do pensamento ocidental no. 30:1-21.

Resumen: "Platón sostiene que, para confirmar que el sofista es un fabricante de ilusiones (Sph.262d8), hay que refutar la tesis de Parménides que afirma que sólo existe – según Platón lo interpreta – el ser absoluto. Muy probablemente un eco de esta tesis se encuentre en Antístenes, a quien Platón parece aludir en el Sofista, para quien “lo que es, es verdadero”. Esta concepción de la verdad se conoce como “ante-predicativa” u ontológica, y, según Heidegger, sería originaria. No es así. Desde Homero y hasta Parménides, la verdad (o falsedad) fue siempre atribuida a un discurso o a un pensamiento, jamás a un ente. La concepción “ante-predicativa” de la verdad fue una creación de la filosofía, que probablemente comenzó con Parménides y continuó con Antístenes. Cuando Platón la refuta, en la segunda parte del Sofista, no hace sino regresar al pasado, pues hace del discurso el “lugar” de la verdad."

21. ———. 2021. "Acerca del Sofista de Platón." Parerga. La Revista de la SFPA no. 3:7-49.

"1. El lugar del Sofista en la trayectoria filosófica de Platón.

El conjunto de soluciones que ha propuesto cada pensador como respuesta a las cuestiones filosóficas fundamentales, y que la posteridad denomina, a veces abusivamente, su “sistema”, es, en la mayoría de los casos, el resultado de un largo camino, incluso de una cierta “evolución”. La cumbre de esta evolución coincide, en algunos filósofos, con sus últimas obras; en otros casos, se alcanza durante cierta etapa de su carrera filosófica, y sus posteriores obras son sólo aclaraciones o retoques de lo que ya expuso; finalmente, estamos ante el caso de los autores que, después de haberlo dicho todo, encuentran fisuras en los sólidos cimientos que habían construido y que no dudan en analizar el origen de esas flaquezas y en emprender nuevos enfoques. Este es el caso de Platón." (p. 7)

22. ———. 2021. "Segun Platon los 'mortales' de Parmenides son los antepasados de los sofistas." Eidos no. 36:397-419.

Resmen: "¿Por qué cuando Platón quiere justificar su definición del sofista como un «fabricante de imágenes» (Sofista, 236c), se apoya sobre dos versos auténticos de Parménides (fr. 7.1-2) que aluden, sin duda alguna, al camino recorrido por los «mortales que nada saben» (fr. 6.4)? ¿Quiere acaso sugerir que esos «mortales», que son en realidad «fabricantes de opiniones» (doxaí), son un antecedente de los sofistas, que son «fabricantes de imágenes»?"

23. Costa Pinto Francalanci, Carla 2009. "O diálogo Sofista à sombra de Parmênides. Acerca do poema de Parmênides." In Acerca do poema de Parmênides: estudos apresentados no I Simpósio Internacional OUSIA de Estudos Clássicos, edited by Tatiana, Ribeiro, 123-129. Rio de Janeiro: Azougue.

24. Deaño, Alfredo. 1970. "El Sofista de Platón y la prehistoria de la lógica formal." Emerita no. 38:131-147.

25. Di Camillo, Silvana Gabriela. 2007. "El problema del lógos falso en el Eutidemo y su solución en el Sofista." Hypnos no. 13:1-15.

Resumen: "El problema del discurso falso en Platón se plantea en el diálogo Eutidemo pero encuentra su máxima elaboración en el Sofista. En este trabajo intentaremos mostrar que Platón no podía, a la altura del Eutidemo, resolver el problema del discurso falso, puesto que la solución implicaba operar un cambio profundo en su ontología, que se haría efectivo recién en el Sofista. Allí él concibe al lógos como combinación de nombres que se corresponde, pero no se identifica con la combinación que se da en la realidad. La distinción entre lógos y prâgma constituye una de las claves para que el problema del discurso falso reciba una solución definitiva."

26. Echauri, Raúl. 1996. "Ser y no ser en el Sofista de Platón." Sapientia no. 51:327-334.

"El ser y lo diferente penetran todos los géneros, y éstos son en la medida en que participan del ser, pero no son cuando participan de lo diferente, ya que, al hacerlo, resultan distintos del ser y, debido a ello, no son. En tal sentido, las cosas «en muchos casos son, y, en muchos otros, no son»(26).

El no ser se mezcla también con el juicio y con el discurso (X6yoQ). Si no fuera así, no habría juicios, ni discursos falsos, los cuales expresan lo que no es. Pero «nadie piensa —argumenta el sofista— ni dice lo que no es: pues el no ser no participa en modo alguno de la realidad (οὐσία)»(27.

Por su parte, la realidad (οὐσία) resulta expresada por dos tipos de sonidos: el verbo, que indica las acciones, y el nombre, que señala el sujeto que las ejecuta. En el discurso verdadero, ambos se combinarán a fin de expresar algo acerca de lo que los seres son, y en el falso, manifestarán cosas diferentes de las que son. Aunque no sea quizás el objetivo principal del diálogo, éste tiene como «fin confesado —escribe Diés al respecto— resolver el problema del error; para establecer la posibilidad del error, se trata de demostrar la existencia del no-ser»"(28). (p. 333)

(26) Sofista 259b.

(27) Sofista 260d.

(28) A. Diés, La définition de l'étre et la nature des idées dans le Sophiste de Platon, Vrin, Paris 1932 p. 1.

27. Flórez, Alfonso. 2012. "Entre la semejanza y la apariencia. La reflexión sobre la imagen y la captura del sofista en el Sofista de Platon." Pensamiento no. 68:357-371.

Resumen: "En el diálogo el Sofista de Platón el tema de la imagen ocupa un lugar central. En efecto, la captura del sofista que se proponen los interlocutores puede llevarse a cabo sólo en la medida en que el sofista, hábil constructor de imágenes, pueda ser apresado en una de las clases de la imagen.

Para ello en el diálogo se recurre a diversas imágenes habladas que deben entenderse según las propias determinaciones del diálogo sobre la imagen, por lo que el resultado del diálogo puede alcanzarse sólo gracias a la reflexión de él sobre sí mismo en el ámbito de la imagen."

28. Forciniti, Martín. 2014. "Erótica de las estatuas y retórica de los fantasmas. Una contraposición entre las producciones miméticas del filósofo y el sofista en Platón." Hypnos no. 33:259-282.

Resumen: "En este trabajo comparo el vínculo erótico entre el filósofo y su joven amado, tal como es descripto en Fedro 249b-256b, con la relación retórica que el sofista establece con el pueblo, según Sofista 232b-236d y 265a-268d.

Postulo que se trata de dos casos estructuralmente análogos de producciones miméticas. El primero da como resultado un ágalma, (“estatua sagrada”), mientras que el segundo genera un phántasma (“simulacro”). Identifico las semejanzas y diferencias entre los elementos que participan de cada producción, para concluir poniendo en cuestión la pretendida inocuidad de la erótica filosófica, así como la supuesta nocividad de la retórica sofística."

29. Gómez-Lobo, Alfonso. 1979. "Platón, Sofista 256 e 5-6." Critíca no. 11:3-13.

"En este trabajo me propongo contribuir a dilucidar el sentido de dos líneas del Sofista de Platón.(1) En la primera parte presento una sumaria interpretación del contexto en que se encuentran. En la segunda, las cito en el original y examino críticamente la interpretación de G. E. L. Owen procediendo luego a proponer una interpretación diferente." (P. 3)

(1) He utilizado el texto del Sofista establecido por J. Burnet, Platonis Opera, Vol. I, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905. Este trabajo presupone la pequeña revolución copemicana en la interpretación de este diálogo que tuvo lugar hacia fines de la década del 60. La linea interpretativa desplazada es la de F. M. Cornford, Plato's Theory of Knowledge. London: Routledge, 1935 (hay traducción al castellano de N. L. Cordero y M. Ligatto, Buenos Aires: Paidos, 1968). La línea interpretativa que ha terminado por imponerse entre un número creciente de estudiosos es la introducida por M. Frede, en Prádikation und Existenzaussage, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1967 y por J. Malcolm, "Plato's analysis of to on and to me on in the Sophist", Phronesis 12 (1967) 118-129.

30. ———. 1979. "Platón Sofista 244 b 6 - d 12." Dialógo no. 10:131-137.

"En un valioso artículo publicado por Diálogos, Año VII, 19 (1970) 73-82 el profesor O. N. Guariglia interpreta un pasaje del Sofista de Platón (244 b 6- 245 e 2) en que se formulan dos argumentos contra la tesis eleática de que sólo lo uno existe. El artículo, invirtiendo el orden del texto, trata primero el segundo argumento que, como nos muestra muy claramente Guariglia, se basa en la ley de la transitividad de la identidad, sin mencionarla.

Me veo obligado a disentir en cambio respecto a la interpretación de la primera argumentación (244 b 6 · d 12, expuesta en las pp. 75-82 del artículo)." (p.131)

(...)

"Mis objeciones apuntan básicamente a lo siguiente: (a) Platón no posee una teoría de la predicación lo suficientemente desarrollada como para que sea razonable pensar que dentro de un mismo argumento opere conscientemente con ella y luego pase a su semántica habitual de '"denominación".

En esto me parece que puedo contar con el consenso del Prof. Guariglia (p. 78, 4° aparte), ( b) Interpretando de una y la misma manera la relación palabra-objeto se puede dar un buen sentido a ambas partes del texto; y (e) Parménides 142 b 5. e 5 no posee la misma estructura que el argumento en discusión." (p. 132)

31. González Ruiz, Oscar Leandro. 2016. "Más allá de presupuestos ontológicos: la posibilidad de la falsedad en el Sofista de Platón." Saga: Revista de Estudiantes de Filosofía no. 17:52-63.

Resumen: "Es un lugar común de la interpretación de la teoría platónica del conocimiento, el verla como sostenida bajo la presuposición de dos ‘órdenes ontológicos’ distintos: el mundo de las apariencias y el mundo de las ideas. A dichos ‘mundos’ corresponden distintas características que, a su vez, determinan dos posibilidades del conocimiento. Así, en el llamado ‘mundo aparente’, solo sería posible la opinión (doxa); en efecto, al estar referida a los objetos de un mundo de apariencias en constante devenir, la doxa se hace intrínsecamente pasible de falsedad. Este ensayo no tiene como propósito entrar a discutir directamente si la distinción platónica, entre doxa y episteme, efectivamente tiene como fundamento dicho dualismo. Más bien, indagaré las razones por las cuales se considera que la doxa es pasible de falsedad en el Sofista, con el objetivo de mostrar que –contrario a la interpretación precedente– Platón no vincula necesariamente dicha falsedad al hecho de que la doxa esté circunscrita a un

supuesto ‘mundo aparente’ esencialmente falso. Con ello, tendremos elementos de juicio para poner en cuestión, de manera preliminar, la tesis según la cual a distintas formas de conocimiento (episteme y doxa), se debe hacer corresponder distintos órdenes ontológicos (mundo de las ideas y aparente, respectivamente)."

32. Guariglia, Osvaldo. 1970. "Platón, Sofista 244b6-245e2: la refutación de la tesis eleatica." Diàlogos no. 7:73-82.

"Dentro de la revisión sumaria de las antiguas teorías sobre el ser (242c - 251a), que sirve de conclusión a la primera parte del Sofista y al mismo tiempo de transición al próximo tema -a saber: el problema de la predicación y el de las proposiciones negativas (251a - 259d), donde el diálogo alcanzará uno de sus puntos culminantes, filosóficamente hablando , Platón nos ofrece una breve discusión de la teoría eleática, que consta de dos argumentaciones, una que comienza en 244b6 y termina en 244d13 y una segunda que comienza inmediatamente a continuación (244d14) y terminará en 245d11." (p. 73)

(...)

"Se advertirá de inmediato que en este planteo hay de hecho dos cuestiones envueltas : (1) ¿a qué llaman ser los eleatas? y (2) ¿qué están realmente afirmando cuando dicen que 'el Todo es uno'?" (p. 74)

33. Iglesias, Mercedes. 1994. "La alteridad en el Sofista de Platón." Revista de Filosofía (Venezuela) no. 19:1-19.

Resumen: "Él présente trabajo trata del concepto de participación en El Sofista de Platón.

El propósito fundamental del texto es epistemológico; pero, sin embargo, toca la dimensión ontológica.

Haytres tipos de participación: 1) Participación de las Ideas entresí, 2) Participación del alma a las Ideas y 3) Participación dé los elementos sensibles a las Ideas. La participación es posible por cuanto el Ser noes más Absoluto. El Ser es y no es; el no-ser no es y es. El No-Ser o Diversidad será otra forma de ser del no-ser.

Identidad y Diversidad participarán con todas las demás formas."

34. Julià, Victoria E. 1977. "Algunas cuestiones sobre el significado de ser y no ser en el Sofista." Cuadernos de Filosofía no. 17:35-41.

35. Königshausen, Johann-Heinrich. 1993. "¿Paralelismos entre el Sofista de Platón y el libro Gamma de la Metafisica de Aristóteles?" Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía no. 10:157-171.

"Procederé de la siguiente manera: Empezaré por hacer unas breves consideraciones introductorias acerca de ambos escritos. Luego, en vez de intentar hacer una comparación entre tales o cuales problemas o conceptos, buscaré probarque existe una íntima conexión entre ambos, que se revela en su estructura argumentativa altamente compleja, y no sólo en lo que respecta a los elementos y a las funciones de la argumentación, sino incluso en ciertos matices de lenguaje, todo lo cual, más que un mero hecho, pone de manifiesto el tema central propio de ambos escritos." (p. 158)

36. Marcos de Pinotti, Graciela Elena. 1991. "Aporias del no-ser y aporias de lo falso en "Sofista" 237b-239c." Revista Latino-Americana de Filosofia no. 17:259-274.

Abstract: "In Sophist 237b-239c Plato presents three puzzles designed to show that nothing can be thought or said about the not-being: what is not in any way ("to medamos on") cannot even be unthinkable or unsayable. This paper argues that these puzzles involving the not-being are parallel to those raised with respect to falsehood, which are exploited by Plato in order to prove that false statement is possible. While "what is not in any way" cannot be denied, because this negation forces us precisely to what we are trying to deny-the being of not-being, in denying the falsehood, the Sophist is bound to accept that the false in some respect is ("einai pos")."

37. ———. 1993. "Συμπλοκή en el Sofista de Platôn. Su posibilidad y alcance." Cuadernos de Filosofía no. 24:55-71.

"What Plato means by «combination» in the Sophist is extremely difficult to establish. In this paper, I try to elucidate the point by considering the concept of συμπλοκή in the light of the Platonic argument in support of the c1aim that there must be a combination. Firstly, I examine the several verbs used to express the notion of combination in the dialogue. Secondly, I analyse the arguments by which Plato proves that there is a συμπλοκή (251e-252e), to show that the denial of combination is rejected on linguistic and specifically ontological grounds. The conclusion brings out useful consequences concerning Plato' s theory of συμπλοκή των ειδων."

38. ———. 1995. Platón ante el problema del error: la formulación del Teeteto y la solución del Sofista. Buenos Aires: Fundec.

Prefacio de Nestor-Luis Cordero.

39. ———. 1997. "Discurso y no ser en Platón (Sofista 260a-263d)." Synthesis no. 4:61-83.

"El problema de la falsedad enfrentó a Platón con los sofistas de su época e indirectamente con el "padre Parménides", de cuya ontología derivaba la tesis sofística de la imposibilidad de lo falso. Si no hay no ser y es imposible pensarlo o decirlo -argüía el sofista apelando, hábilmente, a la autoridad del fundador del eleatismo- es imposible pensar o decir algo falso, ya que la falsedad no es otra cosa que pensar o decir "lo que no es" (τὸ μὴ ὄν). A combatir este argumento se consagraron los esfuerzos de Platón en el Sofista, uno de cuyos principales logros es brindar una solución definitiva al problema. Al cabo de una ardua investigación que ocupa buena parte del diálogo, Platón consigue por fin demostrar que el discurso (λόγος) no es forzosamente verdadero sino que puede, en ocasiones, ser falso, al consistir en una combinación de nombres por cuyo medio nos es dado reproducir lo que es tal como es, pero también como no es." (p. 61)

40. ———. 2000. "Las falacias en torno a la falsedad: una lectura de Eutidemo 283e-286b a la luz de la solución del Sofista." In Euthydemus, Lysis, Charmides. Proceedings of the V Symposium Platonicum, edited by Robinson, Thomas M. and Brisson, Luc, 144-153. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

41. ———. 2001. "Platón, el sofista y el "padre Parménides". Sobre la legitimidad del parricidio." Congreso Nacional de Filosofía no. 10:151-153.

42. ———. 2004. " Filosofía versus sofística en el Sofista de Platón." In Diálogo con los griegos. Estudios sobre Platón, Aristóteles y Plotino, edited by Santa Cruz, María Isabela, Marcos, Graciela E. and Di Camillao, Silvana G., 77-92. Buenos Aires: Colihue Universidad.

"En lo que sigue, teniendo en cuenta que filósofo y sofista plantean una dificultad similar, aunque por razones bien distintas, y que cuando uno de los dos se muestre, presumiblemente, "el otro se mostrará de la misma manera"(4) me serviré de la definición platónica del sofista como productor de imágenes habladas, fabricante de apariencias en el dominio de los discursos, para echar alguna luz sobre la actuación del filósofo en ese mismo terreno. Cuando se sirve del lenguaje para comunicar verdades, el filósofo construido por Platón se acerca peligrosamente a las filas enemigas." (p. 78)

(4) Cf. Sof. 250e 8-251 a 1. La afirmación del Extranjero se refiere en rigor al ser y al no-ser, que según 253e 7-254b 1 son dominios respectivos del filósofo y del sofista, por lo que resulta aplicable a estos últimos. En cuanto a la dificultad de percibir con claridad tanto al filósofo como al sofista, en un caso se debe a la luminosidad, en el otro caso a la oscuridad del ámbito en que se actúa.

43. ———. 2006. "La crítica platónica a oradores, poetas y sofistas. Hitos en la conceptualización de la mímesis." Estudios de Filosofía no. 9:34-28.

Resumen: "Este trabajo se ocupa de la crítica de Platón a oradores, poetas y sofistas. Su propósito es mostrar que independientemente de las características que singularizan una batalla de vasto alcance librada por el filósofo en tres frentes distintos, la noción de imitación (mímesis) proporciona un hilo conductor que permite vincular esos diferentes enfrentamientos y arrojar luz sobre la reacción de Platón ante quienes identifica, peyorativamente, como imitadores. La práctica adulatoria del orador en Gorgias, no menos que el quehacer del poeta puesto en tela de juicio en República y el del sofista en el diálogo homónimo tendrían, en efecto, una naturaleza mimética. Esto no impide reconocer, junto a los puntos de continuidad, diferencias significativas en los tratamientos de la mímesis que ofrecen los tres diálogos aquí considerados."

44. ———. 2013. "Platón vs. Gorgias. El itinerario del Sofista a la luz de la sección gnoseológica del tratado Sobre el no ser." In El filósofo griego frente a la sociedad de su tiempo, edited by Cordero, Nestor-Luis, 152-167. Buenos Aires: Editorial Rhesis.

45. Marino López, Antonio. 1997. "Argumento, silencio y acción en la distinción de filósofo y sofista." Tópicos.Revista de Filosofia no. 12:19-41.

Abstract: "A detailed analysis of the dialogue Sophist shows that the distinction between philosopher and sophist sketched there by Plato is possible by tracing a distinction between dialogue and argument, in which the difference between the recourse to appeararice arid the demand of objectivity plays an important role.

This distinction, on the other hand, is supported by' some main ideas of later Plato's ontology."

46. Martin, José Pablo. 1991. "El Sofista de Platón y el platonismo de Filón de Alejandría." Méthexis no. 4:81-99.

Resumo: "El marco general de 'esta investigación es el de la historia del platnismo. Esta historia comienza de una manera problemática, en cuanto no tenemos noticias coincidentes sobre la primera recepción de la enseñanza platónica, ni sabemos cómo se iniciaron los primeros desplazamientos que habrían de conducir dicha historia hasta Plotino o hasta Agustín de Hipona. En tales desplazamientos actúan decenas de autores de varios tiempos y lugares, cuya documentación ha quedado oscurecida, en b mayoría de los casos, por los repliegues del tiempo. En algunos casos, aunque gocemos de un conocimiento aceptable de los textos de un autor, no se ha logrado todavía darle una ubicación mayoritariamente aceptada por los historiadores del platonismo. Uno de estos casos es Filón de Alejandría"

47. Másmela, Carlos. 1997. "Copia y simulacro en el Sofista de Platón." Tópicos.Revista de Filosofia:163-173.

Abstract: "Within the Sophist, Plato establishes a clear distinction between two types of mimetic art: the copy and the simulacrum.

Such a distinction avoids reducing the image to the faithful reproduction of a sensitive model. The present article aims at making visible the fact that the phantasma (simulacrum), and not the copy, constitutes the starting point of artistic creation."

48. ———. 2006. Dialéctica de la imagen: una interpretación del "Sofista" de Platón. Rubí: Anthropos.

"El libro destaca la concepción dialéctica de la imagen en contraste con las interpretaciones esquemática (Kant), fenomenológica (Husserl) y hermenéutica (Gadamer), así como con la actualidad de la pregunta por la imagen (Gottfried Boehm). Intenta confrontar estas interpretaciones con base en la exposición platónica de la imagen en el Sofista, específicamente en la esencial distinción entre la imagen icónica y la imagen fantasmal. La mayoría de comentaristas de Platón resaltan la prioridad del icono sobre el fantasma. El libro, por el contrario, muestra que una comprensión icónica de la imagen sólo puede comprenderse a partir de la técnica de una imagen fantasmal. Cuestión que se aborda en las tres partes de la obra: en la primera, se expone el significado de los dos tipos de imagen; en la segunda, se presenta un análisis pormenorizado del concepto de dialéctica en el Sofista; y en la tercera, se elabora una dialéctica del fantasma con base en la otredad."

49. Mié, Fabian. 2004. Dialéctica, predicación y metafísica en Platón. Investigaciones sobre el Sofista y los diálogos tardíos. Cordoba: Ediciones del Copista.

"A las investigaciones sobre la filosofía platónica tardía está reservado actualmente un amplio espectro de legítimos objetivos, intereses y metodologías conforme a las perspectivas filosóficas privilegiadas. A un estudio como éste, que persigue examinar la validez de la versión ofrecida por el “platonismo” contenido en la “metafísica de los dos mundos”, que está asociada a una restringida interpretación de la teoría de las ideas, se ofrece hoy una amplia gama de aportes críticos como herramienta de trabajo. Las siguientes investigaciones pretenden identificar componentes fundamentales de la filosofía de los diálogos platónicos tardíos sobre cuya determinación no está permitido pactar nada de antemano a fin de poner en cuestión esa base de preconceptos que, a lo largo de la inmensa historia de la recepción de la filosofía platónica, operan como peligrosos “sobreentendidos” especulativos." (Introducción, p. I)

50. Monserrat Molas, Josep. 2013. "Figuras de la filosofía en el Teeteto y en El sofista de Platón." La Torre del Virrey: revista de estudios culturales no. 14:53-56.

"En esta escena inicial de El sofista se define el papel del filósofo como parecido al de la divinidad: mirar (observar) elmundo desde las alturas. La referencia socrática a la comedia aristofánica Las nubes parece plausible. De algún modo, la filosofía es algo que presenta este aspecto de estar en las nubes. En la Apología, el acusador más antiguo que Sócrates trae a colación es, sin ninguna duda, Aristófanes; recordemos además cómo aparece ridiculizada la figura del filósofo en el centro del Teeteto.

A la luz de las escenas iniciales del relato de Teeteto y de El sofista, vemos, pues, que la escena inicial de El político retoma la voluntad socrática de examinar a los jóvenes discípulos atenienses del extranjero Teodoro, que este examen es un intento de corrección de la sabiduría aparente que el maestro de geometría enseña a sus discípulos, y que los caracteres de los jóvenes están dibujados con ciertas aptitudes y ciertas deficiencias para el ejercicio al que Sócrates les quiere someter. Pero Sócrates cede su posición al Extranjero." (p. 55)

51. Mouján, Raimundo Fernández. 2020. "No existe la separación. Algunas continuidades entre el poema de Parmenides y el Sofista de Platón." Signos Filosóficos no. 22:8-33.

Resumen: "En varios pasajes de su poema, Parménides identifica al no ser con la separación: “No podrás obligar a lo que es a separarse de lo que es”. No es posible no ser significa así que no existe corte o franja al interior de lo que es por la que pase el no ser. No existe separación ontológica. Platón apoya esta idea: en el Sofista dice que la separación es a-filosófica, y consecuentemente define al ser como capacidad de relación. ¿No hay acaso una suerte de “deducción” a seguir, una que va del es parmenídeo a la dúnamis koinonías platónica, pasando justamente por la imposibilidad de la separación ontológica como dato central? ¿Y no podemos identificar gracias a esta continuidad una prevención fundamental contra todo sustancialismo, contra toda concepción según la cual el mundo estaría hecho de sustancias separadas entre sí? Me propongo pensar esa continuidad para analizar cómo la lectura conjunta del poema de Parménides y el Sofista de Platón permite hablar de un rechazo fundamental de toda filosofía sustancialista."

52. Muriete, Matías. 2020. "A pesar de existir realmente: sobre la reivindicación del arte en Sofista y su inexorable destino en Leyes." In Simposio AAFA IV - Educación, arte y política en la filosofía antigua. Actas del IVº Simposio Nacional de la Asociación Argentina de Filosofía Antigua-AAFA, edited by Suñol, Viviana and Berrón, Manuel, 377-384. Santa Fe: Asociación Argentina de Filosofía Antigua.

Resumen: "En el presente trabajo se analizará cómo la redefinición ontológica de Sofista 247d8 afecta directamente al esquema político del arte que Platón plantea en República II y X y lo conduce al que se ve en Leyes II. En estos últimos dos diálogos, la intención es establecer una serie de lineamientos que guíen el rol social y político del arte. Dado que entre ambos se sitúa el Sofista y, en particular, el pasaje 247d8,

veremos en este trabajo cómo en Leyes no hay una argumentación de tipo onto-gnoseológica basada en la cadena imitativa desde la verdadera realidad hacia la obra de arte para justificar la censura de ciertos artistas. Es precisamente a causa de que se ha reestructurado la noción de “ser” (tò ón) y el andamiaje ontológico que los lineamientos políticos y morales hacia el arte en Leyes tienen la posibilidad de cobrar

aún más vigor, aún más sentido, y estar aún más justificados que antes."

53. Nova, Ana Bertha. 1992. "Ciertas cuestiones sobre el εἴδωλον." Tópicos.Revista de Filosofia no. 2:139-152.

"Los diversos problemas suscitados por el εἴδωλον en la filosofía de Platón no nos habían parecido tan importantes. Sin embargo, cuando se analiza qué papel tiene en su gnoseología vemos que nos remite a cuestiones fundamentales, que requieren una explicación. Por una parte, se le ve como un intermedio entre el mundo sensible y la realidad a que pretende remitimos y, por otra, tiene peculiaridades que hay que reconocer para acercamos a su naturaleza y las consecuencias que implica. Esta es la diferencia más obvia que hay en el nivel inmediato de su comprensión, pero parece que la manera como está en el Sofista se encamina a mostrar la implicación de problemas más complejos." (p. 139)

54. Palazzo, Ana Julia Fernández. 2020. "Una relectura a partir del curso sobre el Sofista de la crítica de Heidegger al pensamiento de Platón en torno a la cuestión del ser." Hybris. Revista de Filosofía no. 11:175-185.

Resumen: "En el presente trabajo nos proponemos analizar la crítica de Heidegger al pensamiento de Platón en torno a la cuestión del ser con el objetivo de mostrar que, si bien esta varía a lo largo de los años en sus puntos de vista, las objeciones son las mismas que ya aparecen en el curso sobre el Sofista. A su vez intentaremos definir la naturaleza de la relación entre ambos pensadores, es decir, si lo planteado por Platón en torno a la cuestión del ser estaba, dada la valoración general eminentemente negativa que Heidegger realiza de su filosofía, efectivamente alejado de la postura del autor de Ser y Tiempo o si, por el contrario, Heidegger pudo haber encontrado en él una fuente de inspiración gracias a la cual habría desarrollado los conceptos fundamentales de su propia filosofía."

55. Pascual, Fernando. 2015. "Educación y comunicación en el Sofista de Platón." Alpha Omega no. 18:23-60.

"Introducción

Estudiar a Platón permite profundizar numerosos temas de gran importancia para la filosofía y para tantos otros ámbitos de la vida humana, especialmente aquellos que se refieren al mundo educativo.

En la línea de una serie de artículos publicados en los años pasados, el presente estudio quiere recoger y sintetizar ideas y reflexiones sobre la educación y la comunicación que podemos encontrar a través de una lectura analítica del Sofista de Platón. El esquema adoptado es el siguiente: tras una sección dedicada a la presentación de los datos esenciales de este diálogo platónico, se analizan aquellos contenidos que más tienen que ver con nuestro argumento, para luego ofrecer algunas reflexiones conclusivas sobre la teoría dialógica que podemos encontrar en este texto." (p. 23)

56. Pedrero, Rosa. 1995. "Comentario a Platón, Sofista 261 d ss." In De Homero a Libanio: estudios actuales sobre textos griegos, edited by López Férez, Juan Antonio, 273-280. Madrid: Ed. Clásicas.

57. Pino Posada, Juan Pablo. 2006. "La caza del filósofo: Comentarios al Sofista de Platón." Estudios de Filosofia no. 33:123-141.

Resumen: "El siguiente pasaje del Sofista ilustra el asunto de este ensayo: "¿O ocaso inadvertidamente hemos caído, por Zeus, en la ciencia de los hombres libres, y, buscando al sofista, corremos el riesgo de haber encontrado primero al filósofo?" (253c5-10). Que el extranjero de Elea se tope sorpresivamente con el filósofo en una conversación que pretende ofrecer una definición del sofista, insinúa lo poco inadvertida que resultaba para Platón la cercanía entre el "hombre libre" y su imitador. En el Sofista, el interés platónico se centra en poner de manifiesto esta cercanía y a la vez definir sus límites haciendo que el primero cace al segundo. El presente artículo explora el sentido de la caza atendiendo a las singularidades de 1) el procedimiento formal que sigue; 2) la pregunta que la gula; 3) la cualidad de espíritu que demanda; 4) las palabras con que los interlocutores la nombran; y 5) la "noble" presa que termina encontrando. "

58. Ramírez Vidal, Gerardo. 2008. "El Sofista y el filósofo en Platón." Revista de Filosofía de la Universidad de Costa Rica no. 46:49-59.

Resumen: "En sus orígenes el término σοφιστής se empleó como el sustantivo del adjetivo σοφός o como sinónimo de ó σοφός. Asimismo, en el siglo V. aquel sustantivo se empleó, en general, para designar a grandes pensadores anteriores y contemporáneos indistintamente, pero también se utilizó, sobre todo en Aristófanes, de manera irónica, para ridiculizar a maestros como Sócrates, que era un 'sofista' en el sentido que entonces se daba a esa palabra. A su vez, φῐλόσοφος se empleaba como sinónimo de σοφιστής. Platón modificó el sentido y las relaciones estructurales de los tres términos. Es decir, llevó a cabo operaciones de resignificacián y de disociación: reformuló los sentidos de los términos φῐλόσοφος y σοφιστής haciéndolos antitéticos. Como puede observarse en los diálogos, la resignificación se realizó de manera paulatina, y la oposición entre los términos no fue completa sino vacilante. Platón prefirió llamarse a sí mismo φῐλόσοφος y σοφισταί a sus adversarios. Fue así como se crearon los nuevos conceptos y nació la filosofía."

59. Segura, carmen. 1994. "Analitica dei logicismo platónico." Anuario filosófico no. 27:461-481.

Abstract: "Is Plato a logicist? A comparative study between The Republic and The Sophist shows at one side how Plato maintains the transcendence of Good over the rest of the Ideas conserving it in this manner not just like a form but as that which made possible the Ideas and the intelligibility of all that is. On the other hand one notice in The Sophist that being which Plato is talking about is surely the being (and not being) of propositions. Being is for Plato like an Idea, but this doesn't imply logicism because in his thought there's a place for a Foundation, a Principle -the Good- which transcends all the forms: which made possible also "the seen" and seeing itself."

60. Soares, Lucas. 2002/2003. "Sobre el epigrafe de Ser y tiempo." Espaciod de critica y producción no. 29:58-64.

"Hay una parte del Ser y tiempo que suele pasarse de largo. Me refiero puntualmente al epígrafe que enmarca esta obra. Allí Heidegger cita un breve pasaje del Sofista de Platón [244a] como antecedente del hilo conductor que recorre todo su tratado: la

pregunta que interroga por el sentido del ser.

(...)

"Este epígrafe al comienro de Ser y tiempo nos abre un horizonte de interrogantes:¿cuál es el tema del Sofista? ¿Qué afinidades guarda este diálogo tardío de Platón con la problemática fundamental que atraviesa Ser y tiempo? En una palabra: ¿cuál es el propósito de Heidegger al iniciar su tratado con dicho epígrafe?" (pp. 58-59)

61. ———. 2013. "Los paradigmas politicos de República a la luz de las técnicas miméticas del Sofista." Méthexis no. 26:59-82.

Abstract: "Of all the themes running through the Sophist, in this paper I am interested in focusing on the definitions, particularly on the seventh of these, as in its attempt to hunt the sophist and distinguish his own particular activity, Plato may therein make important references to the "technique of producing images" (eidolopoiike techne). It is in the context of this seventh definition of the sophist as a 'wizard' (goes) and 'imitator' (mimetes), belonging to the "genre of the illusionists" who perform illusions in their discourses, where Plato mentions the examination of such a productive human technique of an imitative nature (mimetike) and, what interests me, the explanation of its potential divisions (eikastike and phantastike) in order to include the sophist in one of these. The drama of the original and the image that the Sophist stages, and whose inclusion leads to a new reworking in the domain of mimetics, will allow us, in making it extensive in the specific case of poetic mimesis, to corroborate from another perspective the counterpoint between poetic paradigms (traditional and platonic) which can be deduced from books II, III and X of The Republic."

62. Sonna, Valeria. 2017. "Ouk éstin antilégein: Antístenes tras la máscara de Parménides en el Sofista de Platón." Eidos no. 27:15-38.

Resumen: "El tema principal de este trabajo es la posición que suele atribuirse a Antístenes de que es imposible contradecir (ouk éstin antilégein) o decir falsedades (pseúdesthai) y su vinculación con el problema metafísico central del Sofista, el del No Ser. La imposibilidad de contradecir es presentada como la posición opuesta a la de la sofística entendida como contradictor (antilogikós) en Sof., 232b y ss., cuyo relativismo es asociado con la figura de Protágoras, más específicamente con su tesis de que sobre cualquier cuestión hay dos argumentos opuestos entre sí. Nos proponemos argumentar a favor de la hipótesis de que esta posición que en el diálogo es atribuida a Parménides es la de Antístenes, discípulo de Sócrates y rival teórico de Platón."

63. Spangenberg, Pilar. 2004. "Acerca de la relación entre ser y lógos en el Sofista." In Diálogo con los griegos. Estudios sobre Platón, Aristóteles y Plotino, edited by Santa Cruz, María Isabela, E., Marcos. Graciela and Di Camillao, Silvana G., 93-110. Buenos Aires: Colihue Universidad.

"A fin de comprender el planteo conlra el cual Platón elabora su prueba de la falsedad en el Sofista, en la sección I me referiré a los argumentos presentados en el Eutidemo, a través de los cuales el sofista negaba la posibilidad del discurso falso. Tales argumentos, a mi entender, representan la postulación más clara y mas completa de la paradoja de lo falso, y por eso contribuyen a esclarecer la formulación del problema en el Sofista. En la sección II analizaré brevemente la concepción del discurso de Sofista 261d 1-263a 11, pasaje en el cual Platón introduce la distinción entre nombre y verbo de la que se servirá con el objetivo de dar cuenta de la posibilidad de lo lo falso. Un análisis del tratamiento de la falsedad en la sección III permitirá un examen de la relación que establece Platón entre ser y lógos. Una vez aclarada tal relación a partir de la consideración del enunciado falso, en IV me referiré a otro aspecto de la relación entre ser y lógos, enfocando esta vez no el enunciado, sino el nombre en su relación con el ser. Asimismo, me referiré allí a las interpretaciones que consideran que Platón se hizo eco sin más de la adhesión sofistica entre ser y nombre, interpretaciones que serán discutidas en la sección V a partir del análisis de un nuevo sentido de "ser" introducido por Platón. Tal sentido permitiría dar razón de ojetos que no cuentan con una existencia efectiva al margen del discurso, pero que sin embargo son. Finalmente, ofreceré algunas conclusiones." (pp. 93-94)

64. ———. 2018. "Lenguaje y acceso al ser en el Sofista." In ὁδοὶ νοῆσαι – Ways to think. Essays in Honour of Néstor-Luis Cordero, edited by Spangengerg, Pilar and Pulpito, Massimo, 385-394. Bologna: Diogene Multimedia.

Resumo: "El trabajo analiza las razones que pudieron conducir a Platón a equiparar el algo (ti) y el ente (on) en el marco del Sofista e intenta exhibir que es la primacía conferida al lenguaje como vía privilegiada de acceso al ser una de las razones fundamentales de tal equiparación. Sirviéndose de algunas tesis de Cordero en relación con la concepción del ser como forma relacional, muestra la emergencia de una concepción de ser de alcance universal en el Sofista: el acento, según se intenta mostrar, no está puesto en este diálogo en una consideración vertical del ser atada a una fundamentación, sino en una horizontalidad plena determinada por el lenguaje."

65. ———. 2020. "Dialéctica y refutación en el Sofista de Platón." Plato Journal no. 20:7-20.

Abstract: "The dialectic exhibited in Plato’s dialogues assumes different characters throughout the corpus. Nevertheless, it remains always linked to refutation. In this way, like dialectic, refutation assumes different characteristics. The aim of this work is to show how refutation takes a key role in the Sophist, even with unique features: far from facing an opponent of flesh and blood as in Socratic dialogues, the Eleatic Stranger faces hypotheses, and instead of examining consistence within the opponent’s beliefs, he draws upon a radical mechanism that focuses in the conditions of possibility of the (opponent’s) discourse."

66. Spangengerg, Pilar. 2017. "Antecedentes de algunos lineamientos de la estrategia de Aristóteles frente al negador del principio de no contradicción en el Sofista de Platón." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 38:83-105.

Abstract: "The purpose of this paper is to show that in the Sophist Plato develops a dialectical strategy that appeals to necessary conditions of language as a fundamental step toward establishing some principles of his ontology. This strategy constitutes a clear antecedent of the elenctic refutation offered by Aristotle in Metaphysics Gamma 4 against the denier of the principle of noncontradiction and could be described as transcendental because it refers to conditions without which there wouldn’t be any speech. The paper aims to show that such a strategy is used both by Plato and Aristotle to deal with radical adversaries whose refutation allows the establishment of basic theses of their own philosophies."

67. Spinassi, Miguel Angel. 2014. "El extranjero de Elea y la « Sofística de noble linaje » (Platón, Sofista 230 E5-231 B8)." Exemplaria Classica no. 18:29-46.

Resumen: "El siguiente artículo tiene que ver con el famoso pasaje de Sofista 230e5-231b8.

Mi hipótesis fundamental sostiene que no sería el sofista quien aparece en la sexta definición como practicante del élenkhos, sino el verdadero filósofo, representado en el diálogo por la figura del Extranjero de Elea."

68. Tonti, Silvia Liliana. 1999. "La crítica del « Gorgias » a la retórica sofística y su relación con la primera definición de sofista en el diálogo homónimo." Synthesis:115-135.

"Tratar de dilucidar cuál es el objetivo que persigue la retórica, es uno de los problemas que ha preocupado a Platón en el Gorgias." (p. 115)

(...)

"Con tal propósito, examinaré la crítica a la retórica sofística que procura el Gorgias al tiempo que procuraré establecer una conexión con la primera definición de sofista que Platón brinda en el diálogo homónimo." (p. 116)

(...)

"En el caso del Sofista, exhibiré aquellos aspectos metodológicos, particularmente aquellas cuestiones que tienen que ver con el procedimiento definicional por divisiones dicotómicas. Sugeriré, a propósito de la cuestión, que en el Gorgias pueden rastrearse los indicios del procedimiento por división dicotómica desarrollado en diálogos posteriores, dado que hay un intento por establecer -aunque prematuramente- aquellos requisitos necesarios que debe satisfacer una definición, a través de la clasificación sistemática de los significados involucrados en el término que se busca definir." (p. 116)

69. ———. 2001. "La alteridad y el problema del status de los mégista géne en el Sofista de

Platon: principales con Enéada III 6 y VI 2,." Congreso Nacional de Filosofía no. 10:174-176.

70. ———. 2002. "La doble función de la alteridad, su aporte y su relevancia en el terreno metodológico del Sofista de Platón." Revista de Filosof´ıa y Teor´ıa Pol´ıtica, no. 34:337-349.

En este trabajo me ocupo de la doble función de la alteridad en el terrenometodológico del Sofista de Platón. Este examen supone precisar, por una parte, (I) cómo juega el no ser así entendido en el procedimiento de división dicotómica (Sof. 218 b-231 e5), que pone en práctica la búsqueda de la definición. Dicho mecanismo definicional es novedoso con relación a los diálogos tempranos y de madurez. En este caso, si bien Platón apela a este procedimiento sin haber demostrado aún la existencia del no ser como alteridad, esta concepción parece estar en germen. En este contexto, intentaré mostrar, se exhibe una función “diferenciadora” de la alteridad en el terreno metodológico.

Por otra parte, (II) advierto igualmente de manera anticipada otro rol decisivo de la alteridad en la caracterización platónica de la dialéctica, como ciencia de la combinación de los géneros-formas inteligibles (Sof. 253 d4-e2). En este caso, mostraré que una función “combinativa” de la alteridad permite inferir indirectamente -ya que toda combinación reposa sobre la base de la diferenciación- cuál es la capacidad de relación mutua entre los géneros-formas.

Finalmente, si se acepta mi interpretación, las conclusiones destacarán un papel decisivo de la alteridad en el terreno metodológico. Pero, además, doble sería la función que cumple el no ser así entendido en el terreno mencionado." (pp. 337-338, notas omitidas)

71. Villar, Francisco. 2020. "No-ser, falsedad y contradicción: la segunda demostración erística del Eutidemo y el problema de lo falso en el Sofista." Revista de Filosofía no. 58:11-37.

Resumen: "Este trabajo lleva a cabo una lectura de Eutidemo 283c-288b a la luz del problema de la falsedad en el Sofista. Mi hipótesis será que la segunda demostración erística del Eutidemo puede ser interpretada como una representación de Sofista 236d-239b: mientras que allí es el Extranjero el que evoca lo que el sofista diría para defenderse de la séptima definición, donde se le acusa de producir falsedades, en el Eutidemo son dos sofistas quienes emplean las nociones de no-ser y falsedad para refutar dicha acusación. La exposición tendrá tres partes. En la primera analizaré Sofista 236d-239b y lo contextualizaré en el marco de la séptima definición. En la segunda me concentraré en la caracterización de Eutidemo y Dionisodoro en tanto sofistas.

En la tercera analizaré los tres argumentos que organizan la segunda demostración del Eutidemo, intentando dar cuenta de su estructura y su rol en la economía dramática del diálogo."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Platão, Sofista. Bibliografia dos estudos en Português

Bibliografia

1. Alves, Alexandre. 2021. "Método e discurso filosófico no diálogo O Sofista de Platão." Princípios: Revista de Filosofia no. 28:131-142.

Resumo: "Por sua discussão da questão do não-ser e por sua intenção de fundamentar o discurso filosófico, o diálogo Sofista ocupa uma posição central na história da filosofia. O objetivo deste artigo é relacionar o método de definição empregado por Platão no diálogo Sofista (a diérese) com sua concepção do discurso filosófico. As diferentes definições para o sofista propostas no diálogo não são somente parte da polêmica de Platão contra a sofística, mas fundamentam a própria concepção platônica do filósofo e do discurso filosófico. Enquanto a dialética seria o método empregado pelo filósofo para chegar ao conhecimento e à sabedoria, a sofística seria apenas imitação do verdadeiro conhecimento e da verdadeira sabedoria."

2. Arêas, James Bastos. 2013. "O estatuto ontológico da imagem no Sofista de Platão." Tríade: Revista de Comunicação, Cultura e Mídia no. 2:399-411.

Resumo: "A análise da mimesis, no Sofista de Platão, nos conduz, como em um círculo, da linguagem à imagem, da “linguagem imagem” à imitação; da possibilidade da imitação à afirmação do “ser” do não-ser e à realidade do falso. O exame do estatuto ontológico da imagem requer, portanto, a análise desses três principais problemas que a imitação pressupõe. A imagem traz consigo, por sua índole, um turbilhão de questões; desdobra, em sua fulguração, intermináveis impasses."

3. Barbosa Dias, José Ricardo. 2010. "O Ser no "Sofista" de Platáo." Kalagatos: Revista de Filosofia no. 7:58-75.

Resumo: "Platão, no “Sofista”, busca melhor determinar os gêneros do ser e a relação entre eles a fim de capturar o não-ser como sendo. Em nosso artigo visamos, em meio a essa busca de Platão, a sua tese sobre o ser.

Com isso enfatizamos a relação de entrelaçamento do ser com o não-ser como “lugar” no qual essa tese se dá. Para tanto, nos mantemos num triplo movimento como constituindo o todo do diálogo platônico em questão: O Sofista e o não-ser; Platão e Parmênides; e Ser e discurso. Somente então apontamos para o que consideramos essencial na tese em questão: o caráter de ambigüidade e primazia do ser."

4. Bocayuva, Izabela. 2014. "Entre o Parmênides e o Sofista de Platâo." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 16:62-72.

Resumo: "A teoria platônica das ideias sofreu uma crítica contundente, em primeiro lugar, pelo próprio Platão. Isso fica mais do que claro no diálogo Parmênides, onde uma personagem homônima evidencia as aporias inevitáveis de uma suposta dicotomização da realidade e da proposta da participação como uma saída para o relacionamento entre os dois polos criados pela metafísica platônica. No âmbito da primeira aporia que vem à tona na primeira parte do Parmênides, encontra-se a questão da possibilidade, ou não, da ideia de coisas desprezíveis tais como cabelo, lama e sujeira, questão essa que nos incomoda e exige investigação. Arriscamos a hipótese de que na segunda parte do diálogo Parmênides e ainda na inaugural proposta ontológica contida no Sofista podemos perceber uma saída para esse passo aporético."

5. Borges de Araújo Junior, Anastácio. 2007. "Heidegger e o Sofista de Platão." Revista de Estudos Filosóficos e Históricos da Antiguidade no. 22/23:31-45.

Resumo: "Entre os vários pensadores que, no panorama filosófico atual, retomaram a Antigüidade, Martin Heidegger, seguramente, ocupa uma posição de destaque. Ainda que muitas de suas interpretações acerca do pensamento antigo sejam controversas entre os especialistas, parecem incontornáveis muitas de suas lições e seminários. Nosso trabalho tomará como tema as lições de Heidegger, ocorridas durante o semestre de inverno [1924 – 1925], acerca do diálogo Sofista de Platão. O Mestre de Fribourg deixa explícito na sua exegese do diálogo Sofista, e isto parece aplicar-se a suas interpretações dos textos da tradição filosófica em geral, que ele não tem uma intenção histórica, na medida em que ele parece não se preocupar em reconstituir o pensamento platônico, mas antes, seguir o trabalho do pensamento, desobstruir suas tendências imanentes, pensar ao lado do texto e assim tentar elucidá-lo. Nosso trabalho procurará caracterizar a exegese heideggeriana acerca do Sofista de Platão, a partir de uma dupla perspectiva: por um

lado, mostrar que suas interpretações acerca do pensamento antigo parecem, do ponto de vista daquilo que estudamos e investigamos na história da filosofia, discutíveis, para não dizer inaceitáveis, e, por outro lado, essas mesmas interpretações, do ponto de vista filosófico, parecem revigorar os textos antigos ao atualizar seus conceitos."

6. Braga da Silva, André Luiz. 2011. "Dificuldade e beleza em um parricídio que não há (Platão, Sofistam 236e-237a)." Hypnos no. 26:146-159.

Resumo: "Trata-se de investigar acerca da relação do Estrangeiro de Eléia, personagem do Sofista, com o filósofo Parmênides de Eléia, a quem ele chama de “pai”. O foco desta análise é a idéia de refutação ou “parricídio” do último nas mãos do primeiro. Tal refutação diria respeito ao reconhecimento que faz o Estrangeiro de certa realidade do não ser, a qual havia sido totalmente interdita pelo mestre eleata. O estudo defenderá a idéia de inexistência de refutação, ou parricídio do filósofo eleata, por parte de seu discípulo."

7. Cavalcante Brígido, Anúzia Gabrielle. 2016. "O cão versus o lobo ou qual a diferença entre Platão e Górgias?" Phaine. Revista de Estudos Filosóficos e Históricos da Antiguidade no. 1:17-23.

Resumo: "Não raras vezes os chamados “sofistas” são interpretados a partir da caracterização presente nos diálogos de Platão e esta mesma caracterização não é de todo abandonada, ainda quando essas interpretações se propõem a partir diretamente dos textos dos "sofistas" - estabelecidos em séculos bem mais próximos de nós que deles - na tentativa de reabilitar suas imagens ou discordar de Platão. Parece-nos que, a despeito disso ou exatamente por isso, existe um certo consenso em torno do conceito de “sofista” ser uma criação platônica e de não podermos nos fiar em sua caracterização se quisermos chegar a uma compreensão mais adequada do pensamento de determinado “sofista”. Partindo disso, o presente trabalho pretende esboçar alguns questionamentos sobre o significado dessa caracterização e caça ao “sofista” efetuadas por Platão. Mais especificamente, usaremos a imagem de Górgias criada por Platão para sugerir que Platão parece não só não estar interessado simplesmente em interpretar e criticar as teses "sofísticas" em nome de um saber pretensamente desinteressado, como muitas vezes se utiliza das mesmas estratégias discursivas dos "sofistas"."

8. da Silva, José Lourenço Pereira. 2001. "A definição da imagem no Sofista de Platão." Cadernos de Atas da ANPOF (Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação em Filosofia):71-78.

"A noção de imagem, no Sofista, guarda as mais desconcertantes dificuldades." (p. 71)

(...)

"Tudo isso implica a fundamental distinção entre o ser e o não-ser pros ti, que faz com que o ser em um certo sentido não seja (ser uma certa determinação equivale a não ser uma outra) e o não-ser de algum modo seja (não ser uma certa determinação equivale a ser uma outra). Atinando, assim, à polisse-mia do ser, antes mesmo de Aristóteles, Platão pôs as condições de possibilida-de do não-ser e, por conseqüência, da falsidade. Não porém do não-ser como contrário do ser, o medamos on, que foi abandonado já no começo da discus-são, mas do não-ser como diferente (do ser), de sorte que falar o falso, embora seja enunciar o que não é, não consiste na absurda enunciação de nada, mas simplesmente na afirmação de um fato, estado ou ação que não é o caso pre-sente, mas outro." (p. 77-78)

9. ———. 2019. "O problema do um multiplo ou de como Platão se liberta das injunçoes eleaticas no Sofista." Revista de estudos FilosóFicos e Históricos da antiguidade no. 34:23-35.

Resumo: "Neste artigo, procuro mostrar como a colocação do problema do um e do múltiplo e a hipótese da participação mútua das Formas para respondê-lo no Sofista significam um decisivo afastamento por parte de Platão da ontologia e lógica eleática. Rejeitando a noção do ser absoluto e o princípio de identidade intransigente de Parmênides, que não permitiam afirmar senão tautologias, o Estrangeiro trata do problema do um e do múltiplo no plano do inteligível para mostrar que a concomitância do um e do múltiplo que nossos discursos expressam se apoia no fato de que as próprias Formas, que na ontologia do Banquete, República e Fédon foram concebidas tal como o ser de Parmênides, mantêm relações mútuas que torna cada qual, ao mesmo tempo, una e múltipla. O reconhecimento do fenômeno da relação como inerente à constituição dos verdadeiros seres só foi possível mediante o rompimento com a lógica e a ontologia eleática e sua crença no ser absoluto que a tudo pretendia imobilizar na

sua unidade e auto-identidade. O Estrangeiro libertou o ser das amarras que impossibilitavam o contato com o Outro. Reconhecendo o modo de ser em relação (pros allo), compatível com o modo de ser em si (kath auto), o diálogo Sofista não só superou as injunções parmenideana, mas também refinou a ontologia das Formas que Sócrates havia defendido."

10. da Silva, José Wilson. 2021. "Elenchos e educação moral no Sofista de Platão." Argumentos. Revista de Filosofia no. 13:43-53.

Resumo: "Uma das características marcantes de Sócrates é o seu modo de examinar. Através da investigação apoiada em uma série de perguntas intercaladas por respostas de um interlocutor, Sócrates segue um caminho de negação das teses que lhes são apresentadas até chegar a um total impasse nesta busca. Sócrates chama de elenchos (refutação) ao seu procedimento habitual e ficou bem conhecido pelo o que nos é apresentado nos primeiros diálogos de Platão. Por outro lado, há no diálogo Sofista, na sexta definição, a associação do elenchos à atividade sofística e, ainda, é apresentado como um método educacional. Estes dois casos são matéria de debate entre os estudiosos, que consideram que o elenchos nesta passagem do Sofista não é o mesmo método dos primeiros diálogos de Platão, principalmente, por ser considerado um método educacional; já o elenchos dos primeiros diálogos serviria apenas para mostrar que o interlocutor sustenta opiniões conflitantes sobre os assuntos morais. Pretendemos, portanto, mostrar que Platão não está apresentando uma nova compreensão do elenchos e, ainda, que já era pensado como um método educacional em diálogos anteriores."

11. ———. 2021. "Sobre valor moral e correçao intellectual no Sofista de Platão." Trans/Form/Ação no. 4:149-176.

Resumo: "Platão, no diálogo Sofista, argumenta que a vergonha tem a capacidade de fazer que umindivíduo mude sua opinião. Além disso, a vergonha não opera apenas uma mudança qualquer, mas o abandono de uma opinião falsa, retirando-a do caminho que leva ao conhecimento. Contudo, é argumentado que o erro intelectual é corrigido pelo ensino e não por um valor moral. Pretendese explicar como a vergonha pode ter essa função de uma positiva mutação mental, contribuindo desta forma para a obtenção do conhecimento. A interação entre valor moral e capacidade cognitiva é possibilitada pelo conceito de imagem e fealdade."

12. de Aguiar Menezes Neto, Nelson. 2013. "Uma leitura do prólogo do Sofista de Platão." Calíope Presença Clássica no. 30:48-62.

Resumo "O Sofista é um diálogo dramático. De modo semelhante a outros diálogos platônicos, a obra começa com a cena em ação, em discurso direto, dispensando o papel de um narrador e o uso de terceira pessoa.

Provavelmente por conta de seu estilo, os passos iniciais da obra (216a a 218b) são comumente tomados como “prólogo”, sendo entendidos como uma introdução ao diálogo como um todo, cuja investigação filosófica propriamente dita se iniciaria apenas a partir do passo 218b, com a busca pela definição do sofista através do método das dicotomias. Fazendo referência às noções de “prólogo” e de “proêmio”, buscamos conferir aos passos iniciais do Sofista um sentido e uma função para além de uma mera introdução. Neles, não se apresenta apenas o projeto de enquadramento do sofista, como também se pode encontrar, de algum modo já esboçado, a sua própria definição. A proposta deste trabalho é desvencilhar-se de uma leitura en passant dos passos iniciais do Sofista, pretendendo uma interpretação que evidencie o seu caráter ao mesmo tempo literário e filosófico."

13. de Souza, Eliane Christina. 1997. " Sobre a teoria da participaçao da Formas no Sofista de Platão." Hypnos no. 2:81-88.

"O objetivo desta apresentação é fazer algumas observações sobre a teoria da participação das formas exposta no Sofista de Platão, abordando especificamente como esta teoria procura resolver o problema da predicação. Neste diálogo, a possibilidade do discurso predicativo é ameaçada por um argumento conhecido como "argumento de Antístenes", segundo o qual é impossível predicar, já que a predicação implica na identificação de duas coisas diferentes. Esta ameaça ao discurso predicativo é, na verdade, uma ameaça à própria possibilidade do discurso filosófico, visto que ela representa um dos pólos de um confronto entre filosofia e sofística com relação ao uso do discurso." (p. 81)

14. ———. 1998. "Platão e Parmênides: notas sobre o « parricídio »." Letras Clássicas no. 2:27-38.

Resumo: ": O “parricídio” que Platão apresenta no Sofista não pretende ser uma negação completa da ontologia de Parmênides, mas a crítica do princípio de não-contradição postulado por Parmênides em seu

Poema, que interdita a união entre ser e não-ser. Após a exposição das dificuldades discursivas a que esta interdição conduz, Platão admite uma ontologia que associa ser e não-ser do mesmo modo como eles estão associados no plano discursivo."

15. ———. 2009. Discurso e Ontologia em Platão. Um Estudo Sobre o Sofista. Sāo Paulo: Unijui.

Resumo: "Este livro apresenta um exame das condições de possibilidade do discurso informativo sobre o ser esboçadas no Sofista de Platão e da reformulação ontológica sugerida no diálogo para satisfazer estas condições. Ao entender a concepção sofística de discurso como uma ameaça ao caráter informativo da linguagem, o Estrangeiro de Eléia se vê obrigado a reconhecer Parmênides como um forte aliado do sofista contra sua própria compreensão de discurso filosófico: um dizer o que as coisas são. A tarefa do Estrangeiro de Eléia será, então, preservar o caráter objetivista da concepção de discurso de Parmênides e reformular as noções de ser e não-ser e a relação entre ser e discurso, de modo a garantir que a ontologia forneça o fundamento para que o discurso diga o ser."

16. ———. 2010. "Negação e diferença em Platão." Trans/Form/Acao.Revista de Filosofia no. 33:1-18.

Resumo: "Platão, ao tratar da negação no diálogo Sofista, afirma que sempre que enunciamos o que não é, não enunciamos algo contrário ao que é, mas algo diferente. A negação significa cada parte da natureza da diferença em antítese ao que é. Tal tratamento da negação resulta da necessidade de resolver alguns problemas colocados pelo eleatismo. Propõe-se indicar esses problemas e examinar o tratamento que Platão dá ao nãoser como diferença."

17. Engler, M. R. 2021. "Comentário a "Pressuposto ético da alteridade na hermenêutica filosófica a luz do Sofista de Platão": platonismo militante." Trans/Form/Ação no. 44:277-286.

"No artigo de Rohden e Kussler (2021), a associação entre Gadamer e Platão pressupõe o raro e admirável reconhecimento do elemento antitirânico do platonismo, contra todo o ranço conservador com o qual Platão ainda é lido, em especial no Brasil. Isso faz com que a história de Quíon nos venha inevitavelmente à mente. Os dados que os autores usam para mostrar esse fato são outros, todavia, sua conclusão é a mesma, a saber, que o platonismo implica profundo respeito à diferença, e que tal respeito pode ter sido absorvido na hermenêutica de Gadamer através de um processo de transformação dos princípios do Sofista em noções como alteridade e identidade. No fim, talvez devamos dizer: “Sob o signo de Platão, mas não pelo militarismo prussiano, caro Herr Moellendorff, e sim contra toda a tirania, do passado e do presente!” (pp. 283-284)

(8) Trata-se de famosa afirmação de Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1920, Nachwort, tradução nossa), no prefácio à sua obra sobre Platão: “Combaterei, sob o signo de Platão, enquanto respirar”. Como a análise de Vegetti (2010, p. 114) demonstra, porém, essa luta era em prol de uma versão bastante militarizada da Prússia da época.

18. Flaksman, Ana. 2015. "Notas sobre Heráclito no Teeteto, Banquete e Sofista." Archai no. 15:87-95.

Resumo: "Este artigo, partindo da leitura da primeira parte do Teeteto e de passagens do Banquete e do Sofista, busca examinar de que forma Platão interpretou e transpôs o pensamento de Heráclito. O texto sustenta que Platão não transmitiu de Heráclito a imagem de um mobilista radical, nem dissociou a tese do fluxo de outras teses do Efésio, como a tese da unidade dos opostos, mas, ao contrário, distinguiu as teses de Heráclito das opiniões extremadasde seus adeptos e apresentou uma imagem bastante rica, complexa e multifacetada de seu pensamento."

19. Floriano, Rodrigo César , Franco, José Henrique Fonseca, and Oliveira, Richard Romeiro. 2020. "O problema do erro (pseûdos), a possibilidade do discurso predicativo e a questão ontológica no Sofista de Platão." Investigação Filosófica no. 11:27-38.

Resumo: "O presente artigo analisa as relações entre discurso e ser, estabelecidas de maneira dialética por Platão em seu diálogo tardio Sofista. Como se sabe, os sofistas defendiam a impossibilidade de provar a falsidade ou verdade de qualquer discurso. Tais pensadores basearam-se no interdito ontológico de Parmênides de Eleia, que asseverava a existência de uma correspondência estrita entre dizer e ser, de modo que seria, portanto, impossível dizer algo que não é, isto é, um não-ser. Contrariamente a essa perspectiva e fazendo uso do método da "diaíresis" - no qual os seres são caracterizados por suas diferenças mais fundamentais -, o Sofista se desdobra revisitando e pondo à prova as teorias ontológicas de seu tempo, a fim de explorar uma nova maneira de pensar a relação entre os seres. Com isso, Platão garante a possibilidade de análise qualitativa do discurso predicativo e, consequentemente, define o erro (pseûdos) como desarmonia entre dizer e ser. No intuito de levar a cabo tal empreendimento, o filósofo explica como ocorre o entrelaçamento entre ser e não ser em suas relações básicas, as quais são mediadas pelas seguintes categorias fundamentais: Ser, Mesmo, Outro, Movimento e Repouso. A partir disso, a dialética é finalmente constituída como a técnica correta de diferenciação dos predicados em suas possibilidades de comunicação com cada sujeito. Graças aos resultados filosóficos alcançados por meio desses procedimentos, desenvolveram-se novas reflexões que levaram Aristóteles a instrumentalizar a análise da linguagem."

20. Huguenin, Rafael. 2008. "Sobre alguns empregos do verbo grego ser no Sofista de Platão." O que nos faz pensar no. 24:47-58.

Resumo: "O objetivo deste artigo é oferecer uma breve análise de algumas ocorrências do verbo grego ‘ser’ no Sofista de Platão. Em um primeiro momento, (I) discutiremos algumas abordagens tradicionais de algumas ocorrências do verbo na parte central do Sofista. Depois, (II) faremos uma breve exposição da tese de Jaakko Hintikka acerca da suposta ambiguidade do verbo. Para concluir, (III) mostraremos como o texto pode ser interpretado sem atribuir tais ambiguidades às ocorrências do verbo."

Referências

Hintikka, Jaakko. “Existence and Predication from Aristotle to Frege”. In: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. LXXIII, N. 2, 2006, pp. 359-377.

21. Iglesias, Maura. 2003. "A relaçao necessaria entre a primeira parte e a parte central do Sofista de Platão." Boletim do CPA no. 15:143-156.

"A importância capital das discussões realizadas na segunda parte; sua posição central, literalmente encravada no desenvolvimento do tema explícito do diálogo; a nítida quebra temática entre as duas partes, apesar da continuidade formalmente bem construída entre elas, tudo isso levou Th. Gomperz a uma célebre comparação: a primeira parte seria a casca, a segunda o fruto (citado por Diès na Notice da ed. do Sofista da Collection Budé, Belles Lettres)." (p. 144)

(,...)

"Quando, na primeira parte do diálogo, o Estrangeiro acusou o sofista de ser produtor de imagens no discurso, a sugestão parecia ser que haveria um discurso que não seria imagem. Mas o desenvolvimento das questões levantadas pelo não ser acaba revelando o próprio discurso verdadeiro como imagem, i.e., algo cujo ser consiste em não ser aquilo a que ele se refere, mas que ele faz aparecer por uma relação natural de semelhança entre a tessitura que ele estabelece entre onoma e rhema com a tessitura da coisa de que ele fala, e que ele próprio não é. Diferente do caso das figuras geométricas, o discurso jamais poderia ser entendido como uma imagem de um modelo que seria produto de abstração, uma vez que a coisa dita necessariamente pre-existe ao discurso, sendo um tipo de ser que é intuitivamente reconhecido como independente do discurso que a diz.

Assim, fixando o ser do discurso como essencialmente imagem –algo que não é aquilo que faz aparecer– Platão consegue não só provar que há imagens –o que é essencial para sua ontologia, que afirma o sensível como imagem do inteligível–, mas torna o discurso verdadeiro um instrumento de investigação da tessitura do real." (p. 155-156)

22. Machado, Alexandre N. 1999. "Enunciado Falso e Não-Ser no Sofista de Platão." Barbarói no. 11:81-109.

"O presente artigo consiste numa breve reconstrução do problema sofista a respeito da possibilidade de enunciados falsos e da solução que Platão pretende ter dado a este problema. A solução de Platão é dependente de considerações sobre o ser e o não-ser, dada a sua definição de enunciado falso como aquele que enuncia o não-ser (aquilo que não é). Devido a isso, as considerações de Platão sobre o ser e o não-ser, que são relevantes para a solução do problema do nãoser, também são apresentadas sumariamente. A abordagem dos temas procura seguir a ordem expositiva de Platão." (pp. 82-83)

23. Marques, Aurelio Oliveira. 2019. "A noção de opinião falsa à luz de uma interpretação do não-ser: um problema entre o Teeteto e o Sofista de Platão." Griot: Revista de Filosofía no. 19:122-134.

Resumo: "Embora o Teeteto nos coloque num cenário interpretativo completamente à parte da teoria das Formas, não nos é permitido admitir seu total esquecimento. Conceitos como ‘racionalidade’ contraposto à percepção sensível, e a ‘imprescindibilidade do logos’ enquanto discurso que perfaz o conhecimento verdadeiro, são extremamente caros ao Teeteto. Desconsiderar a pertinência e a similaridade do significado destes conceitos desde a maturidade até à velhice, colocar-nos-ia em situação de grande dificuldade explicativa acerca do conhecimento. Assim, é importante destacar que optamos por uma perspectiva intermediária, que por um lado reconhece a ausência de uma argumentação calcada na clássica teoria das Ideias, mas que compreende a obra platônica sob a tutela de uma interpretação sistemática e holística, segundo a qual Platão não abandona os pressupostos metafísicos das Formas inteligíveis. Longe de uma ruptura com o que foi dito anteriormente na maturidade, o Teeteto serve como complementação teórica acerca da ontologia e da epistemologia, embora no Teeteto não haja uma menção direta às noções presentes nos diálogos anteriores e boa parte do tema se apresente por meio de estilo de escrita e vocabulário inusitados. Por fim, mas não menos importante, será feita uma breve análise de alguns trechos dos momentos finais do Sofista com o objetivo de compreender em que medida o aspecto epistemológico, proposto por Platão no Teeteto, pode ser lido à luz de questões relacionadas ao Ser e ao Não-ser, já que a pergunta pelo ‘o que é conhecimento’ nos remete também a uma discussão ontológica."

24. Marques Kussler, Leonardo. 2018. "Alteridade no Sofista: ecos platônicos oculto sna proposta ricoeuriana." Problemata. International Journal of Philosophy no. 9:61-69.

Resumo: "No Sofista, Platão já desenvolve princípios argumentativos acerca dos conceitos de identidade e reconhecimento, mesmidade e alteridade. Ao traçar limites entre o que se caracteriza por ser, não ser e a possibilidade de estas grandezas relacionarem-se, Platão explicita, pela voz do estrangeiro, o mesmo e o outro, modos de compreender os entes. Ricoeur, por sua vez, elabora uma teoria tangente ao reconhecimento e à alteridade, do si-mesmo como um outro, uma vez que insiste na necessidade de um outro para a formação e o reconhecimento da identidade. O objetivo, aqui, é remontar alguns aspectos da filosofia ricoeuriana à teoria anteriormente proposta por Platão, enfatizando e defendendo que a) a ideia de alteridade mostra-se presente já no Sofista, dependendo do modo como se interpreta o conceito de ἕτερος [héteros] e b) quais as principais distinções da proposta de Ricoeur com relação à tese platônica, não referenciada diretamente em sua obra. Assim, abriremos o diálogo entre as tradições supracitadas com o fito de alimentar a discussão sobre a possibilidade de defender traços de alteridade ao identificar as definições platônicas e em que medida elas ecoam na proposta hermenêutica e literária de Ricoeur."

25. Marques, Marcelo Pimenta. 2000. "O Sofista: uma fabricação Platônica?" Kriterion no. 41:66-88.

26. ———. 2001. "Imagem e aporia no Sofista de Platão." Classica, Sao Paulo no. 13-14:189-204.

Resumo: "É no contexto da série de aporias relativas à possibilidade de dizer o não-ser, numa perspectiva eleata, aporias derivadas da posicão inicial do problema da produção de imagens, que o Estrangeiro e Teeteto formulam uma definição da imagem que, por sua vez, se apresenta como uma aporia do não-ser. Meu propósito é compreender o problema da imagem no Sofista articulando-o aos temas da produçâo (dimensâo antropológica) e da aporia (dimensâo Iogico-ontológica)."

27. ———. 2005. "Phantasia em Platâo." Tòpicos no. 28:57-82.

Resum: "Neste artigo, interrogo a noção de phantasia (aparição, representação imagética, simulacro), a partir das ocorrencias do termo no corpus platônico: uma na República, duas no Teeteto, quatro no Sofista e uma no Timeu. De um modo geral, me interessam como objeto de pesquisa as modalidades do "aparecer" nos diálogos de Platão, na medida mesma em que questiono preconceitos e lugares comuns com relação a aparência e o aparecer. Como introdução, me limitarei a alguns comentários a proposito de um clássico."

28. ———. 2006. Platão, pensador da diferença: uma leitura do Sofista. Belo Horizonte: Editora da UFMG.

"Que conclusões tirar quanto ao que concerne aos objetivos, do Sofistá? O desafio proposto no Parmênides é o de demonstrar o entrelaçamento das formas entre si, entrelaçamento que torna possivél a unidade de sua multiplicidade, evitando e superando as ameaças de contradiçào. A partir do Teeteto, deve-se pensar na busca de uma ciência que ultrapasse os dados de la percepçao sensível e da opinião, levando em conta a diferença entre os seres.

A reflexão epístemológica aporética exige que se aprofunde na compreensào do que é o lógos propriamente dito: como pensá-lo para que ele possa ser tanto verdadeiro, quainto verdadeiramente falso. O Político indica o coração aporético do Sofista, que é a impossibilidaide e a inevitabilidade de se pensar o ser da imagem, justamente aquele ser que é o que não é; sua posiçao exige que se possa estableer o ser do não-ser." (p. 21)

(...)

"Obtenho, assim, os elementos que estruturam meu percurso de leitura do Sofista, em três planos - antropológico. lógico-epistemológico e ontológico: os cidadàos em suas relaçoes (açoes e produçôes) na cidade, seus discursos e argumentos enquanto modos de agir e os gêneros maiores ou as formas mteligíveis como objectos de conhecimento que determinam decisivamente seus discursos e açoes. A diferença entre os seres humanos e, em particular, a diferença entre o sofista e o filósofo; a diferença essencial com relaçao ao ser do lógos às contraposiçóes entre lógoi; e, finalmente, a diferença enquanto parte da alteridade inteligível, condição para o entrelaçamento das formas que determina a significaçao dos discursos, sua verdade e sua falsidade.

Posso, assim, dizer que a diferença se revela como a pe3dra de toque da dialéctica, tal como ela é visada non Sofista: uma ciência humana (dos homens livres), da diferenciaçao e da divisâo (nos discursos) dos seres, seguendo os gêneros (as formas)." (p. 22)

29. McCoy, Marina. 2010. Platāo e a retórica de filosófs e sofistas. Sāo Paulo: Madras.

Tradução de Plato on the Rhetoric of Philosophers and Sophists.

30. Mesti, Diogo Norberto. 2020. "Marques ilustrando as imagens do Sofista de Platão." Voluntas: Revista Internacional de Filosofia no. 11:134-149.

Resumo: O objetivo deste artigo é retomar a leitura de Marcelo Marques do conceito de imagem do Sofista de Platão, tendo como recorte o capítulo sobre a “Aporía” do livro Platão, pensador da diferença. Além de retomar essa leitura, pretende-se reconstruir as pontes sugeridas pelas epígrafes que o comentador retirou de Faulkner e de Guimarães Rosa para ilustrar o estatuto paradoxal das imagens, que são definidas no diálogo platônico como um tipo de ser que é, mas que não é aquilo que é. Com isso, pretende-se avaliar algumas imagens literárias utilizadas para falar de imagens na teoria filosófica de Platão."

31. Oliveira, Claudio. 1999. "Um outro « lógos », um outro sofista: variações em torno de Platão." Kléos no. 2-3:73-83.

"Trata-se, em Platão, de distinguir o sofista do filósofo? Ou talvez, melhor, de distinguir o filósofo do sofista? A diferença é sutil, mas importa.

Qual dos dois, na verdade? Platão não deixa dúvida e ainda menos toda tradição filosófica que segue seus passos: trata-se, muito mais, do segundo caso. O caso: um filósofo atormentado, às voltas e em busca de um princípio que possa distingui-lo do sofista." (p. 73)

32. Oliveira, Lethicia Ouro de. 2014. "A εἰκαστική no Sofista de Platão." Archai: The Origins of Western Thought no. 13:53-60.

Resumo: "No diálogo Sofista de Platão, os personagens Estrangeiro e Teeteto estão à caça da definição do sofista.

Ambos concordam em que o sofista produz imitações, ficções.

Seguindo o método dialético, será preciso responder: que tipo de imitação é produzido pela sofística? Para isso, o Estrangeiro divide a mimética em εἰκαστική e φανταστική. Essa divisão, feita sem grandes explicações, gerou, contudo, bastante controvérsia na tradição comentarista. Nesse texto analisaremos a leitura de diferentes comentadores sobre o sentido de um desses gêneros miméticos, a εἰκαστική. Esta análise permitirnos- á posicionarmo-nos entre as vertentes interpretativas e compreender o texto do Sofista com maior acuidade. Por fim, novos direcionamentos serão abertos para apreender o que é a própria filosofia tal como realizada nos diálogos platônicos."

33. ———. 2018. Da Mímesis Divina à Humana: um breve estudo sobre as noções de pintura e escultura nos diálogos Sofista, Timeu e Leis de Platão. Rio de Janeiro: Casa da Editora PUC-Rio.

"Finalizamos assim a expressão de nossa percepção sobre as noções de pintura e escultura nos diálogos Sofista, Timeu e Leis. Nosso intuito foi de construir uma imagem fidedigna, um discurso icástico, mas sempre corremos o risco de nos deixarmos enganar por uma ou outra simulação, artimanha ou brincadeira com palavras e imagens tão do gosto de Platão. Como uma pintura, este estudo é também inacabado e cumprirá seu fim ao despertar o desejo por mais pesquisas e investigações sobre o que são pinturas, esculturas e quais seus poderes na filosofia platônica. E se estas são exemplos claros do que são imagens em geral, uma investigação, por fim, sobre si mesma, dado o caráter imagético do discurso, pelo qual nos arriscamos a conhecer e divulgar o real no perigo de nos percebermos sofistas e/ou filósofos, dadas todas as variáveis históricas e políticas de ambas as posições." (p. 208)

34. Paviani, Jayme. 1997. "Tópicos para uma leitura de O Sofista." Veritas (Porto Alegre) no. 42:937-943.

Sìntese: "Indicação de tópicos do prólogo de o Sofista considerados relevantes, sob o ponto de vista propedêutico, para o estudo do diálogo na perspectiva do processo diairético. Observações sobre as implicações entre o método, os temas e a estrutura do diálogo."

35. Pereira, Viviane Magalhãe. 2013. "Uma concepção hermenêutica de Filosofia: pensar com o Sofista de Platão e a Metafísica de Aristóteles." XII Semana Acadêmica do PPG em Filosofia da PUCRS:3-10.

Resumo: "Quem trabalha com Filosofia em algum momento se deparou com a dificuldade de defini-la. Mesmo ante as indicações daqueles elementos que caracterizariam a unidade da Filosofia, vemos que a nossa concepção pormenorizada do que ela seja depende da teoria filosófica na qual apoiamos nossas teses. Para defender isso, utilizaremos neste artigo o exemplo de dois textos clássicos que nos influenciam até hoje, a saber, o Sofista de Platão e a Metafísica de Aristóteles. Mostraremos como estes escritos apresentam o exemplo da unidade da Filosofia e da multiplicidade de suas teorias. O que está por trás desses argumentos, no entanto, é uma concepção hermenêutica de Filosofia, segundo a qual principalmente as questões filosóficas são dependentes da linguagem daqueles que com ela estão envolvidos."

36. Rocha, Thomas. 2016. "Saussure: leitor de Platão." Letrônica. Revista Digital do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras da PUCRS no. 9:126-143.

Resumo: "Neste trabalho, propomo-nos a fazer um estudo que coloca em relação a teoria da alteridade, elaborada por Platão no diálogo Sofista, e a teoria do valor linguístico apresentada no Curso de linguística geral (CLG) de Ferdinand de Saussure. Partimos da hipótese levantada por Oswald Ducrot de que, ao desenvolver a noção de valor linguístico, Saussure aplica ao estudo da linguagem o que Platão disse sobre as Ideias. Profundo conhecedor da filosofia clássica, Ducrot encontrou, na teoria do valor linguístico, a fundamentação que o lançou na pesquisa linguística e que hoje conhecemos pelo nome de Semântica Argumentativa. Segundo Ducrot, na teoria da alteridade concebida por Platão encontramos a origem filosófica da teoria saussuriana do valor. Nossa intenção é, partindo de um estudo minucioso do diálogo Sofista e do CLG, circunscrever a concepção de diferentes conceitos que, por sua vez, pertencem a diferentes campos do conhecimento: a filosofia e a linguística. Dessa forma, é de uma perspectiva epistemológica que nos colocamos. Foi através desses textos que Ducrot pode relacionar a ideia de alteridade com a noção de valor, ao encontrar, em ambas, a ideia de “oposição” como constitutiva das entidades a serem analisadas. De modo que, ao investigar e aprofundar a noção de valor, tentamos explicitar as influências filosóficas que fundamentaram o conceito desenvolvido pelo linguista genebrino."

37. Rodrigues Pimenta, Danilo. 2013. "Ontologia, linguagem e techné no Sofista de Platão." Plêthos no. 3:8-16.

Resumo: "O presente texto pretende discorrer sobre a ontologia e a linguagem no Sofista de Platão. Seguiremos os passos do diálogo entre o Estrangeiro de Eléia e Teeteto, a fim de melhor compreender a questão proposta. Portanto, nosso objetivo é acompanhar os passos do Sofista com a finalidade de investigar a real problemática do diálogo, o problema do discurso falso."

38. Rohden, Luiz, and Kussler, Leonardo Marques. 2021. "Pressuposto ético da alteridade na hermenêutica filosófica a luz do Sofista de Platão." Trans/Form/Ação no. 44:257-276.

Resumo: "A teoria filosófica de Gadamer comporta a proposta da hermenêutica filosófica enquanto um projeto ético. Embora o autor não tenha focalizado essa relação, de forma sistemática, almejase, aqui, explicitar e aprofundar a noção de alteridade como pressuposto ético fundamental da hermenêutica gadameriana, à luz do Sofista de Platão. Para tanto, na primeira seção, abordam-se a estrutura e as formas de interação do conceito de outro, tal como apresentado por Platão, no Sofista, que trata de aspectos da identidade, da diferença, da coexistência do eu e do outro enquanto princípios metafísicos. Em um segundo momento, propõe-se uma percepção possível da apropriação de Gadamer relativamente aos conceitos platônicos os quais dialogam entre si, por meio da dialética, a partir da subjetividade moderna. Dessa maneira, justifica-se que os traços fundamentais da ética hermenêutica têm base em princípios não autoexcludentes, visto que não se exige o assujeitamento do outro como condição da formação e da manutenção identitária de si. Por fim, reconduz-se a hipótese de que o outro hermeneuticus é tão importante quanto o eu hermeneuticus para a compreensão de si e do mundo, em uma relação copartícipe, a qual não nega diferentes modos de ser para se afirmar com significativas implicações pessoais e sociopolíticas."

39. Salles, Lucio Lauro Barrozo Massafferri. 2016. "As faces do Sofista de Eleia." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 10:1-22.

Resumo: "Apresento aqui a hipótese de que Platão pode ter usado aspectos da filosofia e do estilo de Alcidamante na composição poética dos personagens Estrangeiro de Eleia e Palamedes Eleático. Para compartilhar essa hipótese, farei uma leitura onde examino e comparo determinadas passagens do Sobre os Sofistas, de Alcidamante, com o Sofista e com o Fedro, de Platão."

40. Santos, Barbara Helena de Oliveira. 2021. "Unidade e Multiplicidade no método diairético de Platão no Sofista." Archai no. 31:1-27.

Resumo: "Ao colocar a diairesis em comunhão com a dialética, Platão rompe com a estrutura dicotômica-unívoca parmenídica; no Fragmento 2 do Poema Da Natureza, a deusa estabelece que há apenas dois caminhos para a verdade, um que é e outro que não é. Desses dois caminhos, Parmênides nega o segundo, afirmando que é impossível conhecer o que não é: para o filósofo préssocrático conhecer algo está relacionado ao é, logo, para ele, é impossível conhecer o que não é. De maneira que há, em Parmênides, uma cisão entre “ser” e “não-ser”. O desafio, ao qual nos propomos neste artigo, é explorar as implicações, para a diairesis no Sofista de Platão, quanto à afirmação parmenídica sobre a impossibilidade cognoscível a respeito do não-ser."

41. Santos Lima, Jorge dos. 2008. "A dialética presente na estrutura textual d'O Sofista de Platâo." Saberes, Natal – RN no. 1:71-83.

Resumo: "O objetivo deste artigo é resolver uma simples pergunta: como é possível apresentar a trama filosófica que se desenvolve no Diálogo O Sofista de Platão sem subtrair a dialética, mobilidade e fluidade dinâmica de seu texto? Com esse intuito, pressupõe-se de imediato que há uma trama filosófica no Diálogo e que é dialética. Assim, optou-se por seguir seis passos que, metodologicamente, estruturam este estudo e resumem, ao mesmo tempo, esse escrito de Platão: o primeiro é a introdução responsável pela delimitação deste estudo; depois se descreve em conjunto, a introdução que Platão faz à obra e as primeiras tentativas de definição do sofista; em seguida mostra-se como Platão interpreta as discussões existentes na história acerca do ser e não-ser e os resultados dessa interpretação; logo adiante, enfatiza-se a retomada de Platão do debate sobre ser e não-ser que culmina na afirmação do não ser como alteridade no contexto da linguagem; depois, expõe-se as conclusões que Platão escreve sobre o autêntico sofista para, por fim, assinalar algumas considerações sobre o caráter dialético e móbil da trama ou idéias principais desse Diálogo."

42. Santos, Maria Carolina Alves dos. 2001. "A demarcação platônica de novas fronteiras epistêmicas para o discurso filosófico um estudo sobre o Sofista." Trans/Form/Ação no. 24:273-299.

Resumo: "No Sofista, mediante os circuitos do procedimento ontológico-binário das divisões dialéticas, Platão busca não somente chegar à verdade das coisas em si, mas, também, a sua correta expressão. A superação das aporias relativas à natureza da linguagem por um tratamento metódico rigoroso, que minimiza suas limitações e inadvertências e a instala numa dimensão transcendente, entre os gêneros do Ser, assegura-lhe o estatuto de discurso filosófico, capaz de dizer aquilo que é como ele é."

43. Severo Buarque de Holanda, Luisa. 2014. "A parte e o todo: atomismo e linguagem no Sofista." Anais de Filosofia Clássica no. 16:49-61.

Resumo: "O atomismo de Leucipo e Demócrito é utilizado implicitamente, em não poucos diálogos de Platão, como um importante paradigma científico a ser problematizado, criticado ou reempregado. Interessa-me, aqui, analisar a contribuição do atomismo para a Filosofia da Linguagem platônica presente no Sofista. A hipótese a ser desenvolvida é que o cerne das reflexões linguísticas encontradas em tal diálogo se inicia com uma importante crítica à doutrina do atomismo."

44. Trindade Santos, José. 1998. "Do Crátilo ao Sofista: a descoberta da linguagem." Atti della Accademia di Scienze morali e politiche della Società nazionale di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti di Napoli no. 109:55-67.

45. ———. 2011. "Notas sobre o estatuto do não-ser no Sofista." In Logon didonai. La filosofia come esercizio del rendere ragione. Studi in onore di Giovanni Casertano, edited by Palumbo, Lidia, 591-600. Napoli: Loffredo.

46. ———. 2018. "Metamorfoses do logos: do não predicativo ao predicativo." Archai no. 24:179-206.

Resumo: Este texto aborda alguns usos filosóficos de logos em Platão, em especial os associados a contextos lógico-epistemológicos contrastantes. Contraposta a vagas concepções ‘não-predicativas’, a teoria ‘predicativa’ do enunciado (Sofista 261-264) culmina a pesquisa sobre o logos, desenvolvida nos diálogos. Da obra “socrática”, retira o pedido de resposta à pergunta “O que é?” por meio de um logos, correspondida, no Fédon e na República, pela exigência de logon didonai como prova do saber. Noutro plano, exemplificando usos sofísticos do logos, são expostas três" concepções infalibilistas e não-referencialistas de logos, avançadas no Eutidemo, no Teeteto e no Crátilo. Depois de analisar três casos de logos não-predicativo, o texto defende que, com a teoria predicativa do logos, Platão visa a habilitar do discurso para o conhecimento de “o que é”."

47. Veloso, Cláudio William. 2001. "Dicotomia e imitação no Sofista de Platão." Cadernos de Atas da ANPOF (Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação em Filosofia) no. 1:121-126.

"Tempos atrás, eu decidira nunca mais me ocupar de Platão. Eu achava impossível —pelo menos para mim— dizer algo de sensato —e, ao mesmo tem-po, de não óbvio— acerca desse autor. Como ouvi dizer de Luc Brisson uma vez, Platão é perverso. E diante de um perverso só consigo constatar a sua perversi-dade, onde por perversidade entendo o fato de se afirmar algo e se negar esse algo ao mesmo tempo. Levado, porém, pelo entusiasmo de uma discussão com Monique Dixsaut e Marcelo Pimenta no III Simpósio Nacional de Filosofia Antiga (Itatiaia (RJ), Abril de 2000), deixei-me convencer a apresentar um trabalho neste encontro. Na verdade, logo me arrependi. Platão não é, como se costuma dizer, minha especialidade. Embora leitor interessado dos diálogos, confesso que sou muito ignorante da Bibliografia crítica. Mesmo assim, atrevo-me a expor-lhes algumas minhas reflexões." (p. 121

48. Wolff, Francis. 1996. "Dois destinos possíveis da ontologia a via categorial e a via física." Analytica no. 1:179-225.

"Os gregos são tidos como tendo falado do Ser. Falar do Ser, certamente, mas o que dizer do Ser? Que ele é, mas isso não diz nada. Para instituir a possibilidade de um discurso sobre o ser, é preciso começar pensando e dizendo também que ele não é. Um discurso é então possível, mas é ainda sobre o ser? Pode ser que, ao invés de nos ter mostrado como o discurso sobre o ser é possível ou necessário, o pensamento grego tenha esboçado, de uma vez por todas, três figuras de sua impossibilidade.

Três figuras, as únicas possíveis, nas quais se abisma necessariamente toda “ontologia”: aquém do discurso “ontológico”, há a tautologia vazia; além, há uma física ou há uma lógica." (p. 179)

(...)

"A ontologia institui-se, dizíamos, no curto momento que separa Parmênides de Aristóteles ou de Epicuro. Antes, ela não é ainda possível, por não pensar o não-ser; depois, não é mais possível, o ser não devendo mais ser pensado como tal. Ela institui-se também na estreita via que separa a lógica da física e abisma-se necessariamente em uma ou em outra se quiser verdadeiramente pensar o discurso

ou o movimento. Tudo isso é natural. Pois querer uma ciência universal do ser obriga o pensamento a escolher. Em que pensa ela? Neste mundo em que evidentemente nos encontramos, ao qual temos uma relação imediata (aisthesis), este mundo que vemos e tocamos e no qual nos movemos não menos evidentemente?

O mundo-visto? Ou neste mundo no qual a linguagem (logos) nos joga, mediante a qual temos uma relação possível com todos os seres que falam e no qual falamos infinitamente das coisas e aos outros? A linguagem-mundo?" (p. 225)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The subject matter of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Ancient and Modern Interpretations

Introduction

Aristotle gives four definitions of what is now called metaphysics: wisdom, first philosophy, theology and science of being qua being.

The purpose of this page is to present some of the most important interpretations, ancient and contemporary, of the definition of a science of being qua being.

The main points that will be developed are the following:

A panorama of current interpretations;

A discussion of the authenticity of the Book K (XI) of Aristotle's Metaphysics;

Citations from the most important Greek and Latin Commentators about Aristotle's definition of a science of Being qua Being;

A brief presentation of the theory of reduplication (qua-theory):

An annotated bibliography of contemporary research.

Why Aristotle does not simply say that ontology is the theory of being? Is there any difference between 'theory of being' and 'theory of being qua being'? In brief, the problem is deciding whether the two expressions 'the theory of being' and 'the theory of being qua being' are equivalent. If they are, the functor ' qua' does not seem to play any interesting role. On the contrary, if the two expressions are different -- that is to say, if there is a difference between the theory of being (simpliciter) and the theory of being qua being -- we should study the role played by the functor of reduplication ' qua'.

For an introduction to the problem of reduplication see Roberto Poli, "Qua-theories", in Liliana Albertazzi, (ed.), Shapes of Forms, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1998, pp. 245-256.

It should be noted that the functor of reduplication is massively used by Aristotle in his theory of mathematics (see in particular Met., books XIII and XIV). Reduplication is the tool Aristotle uses for avoiding the pitfalls of Platonism.

ARISTOTLE'S TEXTS ON BEING QUA BEING

The sentence ὂν ἢ ὀν (Being qua Being) is used only in the books IV, VI and XI of the Metaphysics.

References are made to: Aristotle, Metaphysics. Text and Commentary, Edited and translated by William David Ross, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1924, corrected edition 1953.

ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS IN A NUTSHELL

"What were Aristotle's metaphysical contentions, and what is Aristotle's Metaphysics? The latter question is the easier. The work, as . we now have it, divides into fourteen books of unequal length and complexity. Book Alpha is introductory: it articulates the notion of a science of the first principles or causes of things, and it offers a partial history of the subject. The second book, known as "Little Alpha," is a second introduction, largely methodological in content. Book Beta is a long sequence of puzzles or aporiai: possible answers are lightly sketched, but the book is programmatic rather than definitive. Book Gamma appears to start on the subject itself: it characterizes something which it calls "the science of being qua being" -- and it then engages in a discussion of the principle of non-contradiction. Next, in book Delta, comes Aristotle's "philosophical lexicon": some forty philosophical terms are explained and their different senses shortly set out and illustrated. Book Epsilon is brief: it returns to the science of being qua being, and also passes some remarks on truth. Books Zeta, Eta and Theta hang together, and together they form the core of the Metaphysics. Their general topic is substance: its identification, its relation to matter and form, to actuality and to potentiality, to change and generation. The argument is tortuous in the extreme, and it is far from clear what Aristotle's final views on the subject are -- if indeed he had any final views. The following book, Iota, concerns itself with the notions of unity ('oneness') and identity. Book Kappa consists of a resumé of Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon and of parts of the Physics. In book Lambda, we return to the study of beings and of first principles: the book contains Aristotle's theology, his account of the 'unmoved movers', which are in some sense the supreme entities in his universe. Finally, Books XIII and XIV turn to the philosophy of mathematics, discussing in particular the ontological status of numbers." (pp. 66-67)

From: Jonathan Barnes (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Aristotle Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1995. Chapter 3: Metaphysics, by Jonathan Barnes.

"Aristotle can fairly be said to be the founder of metaphysics as a separate discipline, as well as one of the most influential theorists of metaphysics. (...) Aristotle was not the first philosopher to concern himself with metaphysical issues, but he was the first to study metaphysics systematically and to lay out a rigorous account of ontology. (...) In the Metaphysics Aristotle subjects to scrutiny his own metaphysical principles. Our word 'metaphysics' itself derives form the expedient of early editors of Aristotle who, not knowing what to call his books on first principles, called them META TA PHYSIKA, the material after the physical enquiries. Whether the fourteenth books of the Metaphysics are a unity or a collection of disparate treatises is a matter of serious debate. Aristotle clearly recognizes a special study corresponding to metaphysics which he calls variously wisdom, first philosophy, and theology.

But the books of the Metaphysics seem to present different conception of what metaphysics is. In Book I Aristotle identifies wisdom with knowledge of the ultimate causes and principles, which he identifies as the four causes. Book IV makes metaphysics an enquiry into the causes of being qua being, an enquiry made possible by the fact that all senses of being are related to a single central notion, the notion of substance. Book VI argues that the highest science must study the highest genus of substance, which is the divine, and hence this science must be theology. Of course, it is not surprising that metaphysics should take in studies of causation, of ontology (the study of the basic entities in the world), and what was later called special metaphysics (the study of special kinds of beings, e.g. God and the soul); but precisely how these enquiries were related in Aristotle's mind remain obscure." (vol. I, pp. 50-52)

From: Hans Burkhardt & Barry Smith (eds.), Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, München: Philosophia Verlag 1991, entry Aristotle, by Daniel W. Graham.

AN HYPOTHESIS ABOUT THE TITLE METAPHYSICS

In an essay published in 1954 (1), Hans Reiner proposed a new interpretation of the origins of the title of Aristotle's book.

His hypothesis is summarized by Takatura Ando in: Metaphysics. A Critical Survey of Its Meaning, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1963, pp. 4-5.

"According to Reiner, it would have been a quite arbitrary procedure to christen the science, which Aristotle himself called the first philosophy, and Theophrastus the first theology, with a name derived by chance from the mere editorial sequence of the work. The interpretations of this book by Alexander of Aphrodisias and by Asclepius, on which modern scholars like Brandis, Zeller, and Bonitz base the above mentioned hypothesis [that the title is due to Andronicus of Rhodes], tell us in reality that the book was called ta meta ta fisika, because it came after the physical sciences. Rather then mentioning anything about its origin from Andronicus' arbitrary arrangement, Alexander and Asclepius said that the order was taxix proz hmaz. Anyone who has learned a little about Aristotle's philosophy must know that prox emax usteron is the contradictory opposite of prox emax proteron, which on its side, is the contrary of fusei proteron. Metaphysics is posterior to physical sciences in the order in which we learn things, and this is consistent with calling metaphysics prote filosofia, first philosophy, i.e. prior in the order of being. (...) The name metaphysica, Rainer proceeds, cannot be found even in Diogenes Laertius, the oldest catalogue of Aristotle's works. The first person to use this title if Nicolaus of Damascus, who lived in the latter half of the first century B.C. In a commentary on Theophrastus metaphysics -- this book had also originally another name -- we find that Nicolaus of Damascus wrote a book on Aristotle's meta ta fusica. (...) Though as we have already said we cannot find it [metaphysics] in the list of Diogenes Laertius, it seems very probable that it was included in an earlier list -- that of Hermippus (ca. 200 B.C.) -- and was by some chance dropped from the list of Diogenes. According to Howald, Ariston of Ceus who was master of the Peripatetic school fro 228-5 B.C. made a list of philosophical works before Hermippus and Diogenes presumably used this when he made his list. The origin of the name metaphysics, thus traced back to one century after Aristotle's death, might be safely conjectured to reflect the sequence which Aristotle himself followed. (...) Eudemus, Aristotle's immediate disciple, the author of the History of Theology, and the first editor of his teacher's works, is supposed by Reiner to have invented the name ta meta ta fusica."

N.B. The bibliographical references of the works cited can be found in the Selected Bibliography

Notes

Reiner, Hans. 1954. "Die Entstehung Und Usprüngliche Bedeutung Des Names Metaphysik." Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung no. 8: 210-237.

Reprinted in: Fritz-Peter Hager (ed.), Metaphysik und Theologie des Aristoteles, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1969 pp. 139-174; translated as: "The Emergence and Original Meaning of the Name "Metaphysics"," in: Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 13, 2, 1990 pp. 23-53.

THE DEBATE ABOUT THE EVOLUTION OF ARISTOTLE'S THOUGHT

"For most of this century, Aristotelian scholarship was dominated by a single question: how might Aristotle's intellectual development be used to shed light on his philosophical doctrines? Opinions differed widely as to how this growth might be charted; eventually, a reaction to the whole enterprise set in. The past thirty years have seen the question lose its prominence as scholars returned to studying the corpus without Aristotle's development as a primary concern.

Recently, the question of the Aristotle's philosophical development has been reopened. Two books in particular, Daniel Graham's Aristotle's Two Systems (Oxford, 1987) and John Rist's The Mind of Aristotle: A Study in Philosophic Growth (Toronto, 1989), have advanced comprehensive developmental accounts of the whole of Aristotle's thought. Together they may signal a renewed interest in developmentalism, and offer philosophers an opportunity to assess the problems and prospects facing any such revival. (...) For fifty years after it was first raised, to little notice by Oxford professor Thomas Case (Case 1910), then resoundingly by Werner Jaeger in a groundbreaking study two years later (Jaeger 1912), scholars devoted themselves to the question of Aristotle's growth as a thinker. Jaeger's 1912 study concentrated on the development of Aristotle's Metaphysics; in 1923, he furnished a comprehensive account of the whole of Aristotle's growth, which revolutionized the study of the philosopher (Jaeger 1923; all references are to the 1948 second English edition except as noted). The main points of his thesis are familiar (though perhaps no longer familiar enough: see Code 1996). Aristotle began his philosophical career as a follower of Plato and only later, after a long transitional period, emerged into philosophical maturity as the opponent of Platonic forms and the investigator of empirical nature and living things. Much of Jaeger's evidence for the early Aristotle came from fragments of the literary remains, many of which had been regarded as spurious before his work. He then turned to works often regarded as assemblages of independent lectures or smaller pieces (the Metaphysics and Politics in particular) and to the three ethical treatises that have come down to us under Aristotle's name. Using these works he constructed a picture of Aristotle's development in which Aristotle moved toward an increasing independence from Plato. He then sought parallels with doctrines in other works not held to be internally inconsistent. So, for instance, his contention that Aristotle's empiricism came late in his career led to his assigning the biological works to the Lyceum period.

Almost immediately, the genetic question came to dominate Aristotelian scholarship (see Chroust 1963, also A. Mansion 1927). (...) Cherniss (1944) argued forcefully that, given Aristotle's constant revision of his lectures until the end of his life and the clear programmatic connections between many of them, interpreters are compelled to take his doctrines as a unified whole. Others sought to dismiss Jaeger's approach as being simply the product of positivist or historicist dogmas popular in Germany at the turn of the century.

Gradually, Jaeger found himself with fewer and fewer supporters for his version of the developmental thesis. Probably the decisive challenges came in the work of Düring and Owen. During (1956, 1966a, 1966b) argued that Aristotle was from the beginning opposed to Plato and his transcendental view of reality. His growing interest in natural science developed, in turn, under the influence of Aristotle's own gifted pupil and eventual successor, Theophrastus. Owen's analysis (1960, 1965) was yet more influential. Owen argued that early in his career Aristotle issued an uncompromising rejection of Platonic metaphysics and the corresponding master science of dialectic. Later, a pivotal insight into how we refer to one thing by means of another -- the now famous doctrine of 'pros hen equivocity" of 'focal meaning' -- prompted him to make room for a universal science of Being after all. In effect 'the Platonism of Aristotle' was more complex that Jaeger had pictured it (and perhaps more so than Owen thought -- see Code 1996)." (Introduction by William Wians, pp. IX-XI.)

From: William Wians (ed.), Aristotle's Philosophical Development: Problems and Prospects, Lanham: Rowman Littelfield Publishers 1996.

"Turning to Aristotle's own works, we immediately light upon a surprise: Aristotle began his extant scientific works during Plato's lifetime. By a curious coincidence, in two different works he mentions two different events as contemporary with the time of writing, one in 357 and the other in 356. In the Politics (V 10, 1312b10), he mentions as now (nun) Dion's expedition to Sicily, which occurred in 357. In the Meteorologica (III 1, 371a30), he mentions as now (nun) the burning of the temple at Ephesus, which occurred in 356. To save his hypothesis of late composition, Zeller resorts to the vagueness of the word "now" (nun). But Aristotle is graphically describing isolated events and could hardly speak of events of 357 and 356 as happening "now" in or near 335. Moreover, these two works contain further proofs that they were both begun earlier than this date. The Politics (II 20) mentions as having happened lately (neosti) the expedition of Phalaecus to Crete, which occurred towards the end of the Sacred War in 346. The Meteorologica (III 7) mentions the comet of 341. It is true that the Politics also mentions much later events, e.g., the assassination of Philip, which took place in 336 (V 10, 1311b1-3). Indeed, the whole truth about this great work is that it remained unfinished at Aristotle's death. But what of that? The logical conclusion is that Aristotle began writing it as early as 357, and continued writing it in 346, in 336, and so on till he died. Similarly, he began the Meteorologica as early as 356 and was still writing it in 341. Both books were commenced some years before Plato's death; both were works of many years; both were destined to form parts of the Aristotelian system of philosophy. It follows that Aristotle, from early manhood, not only wrote dialogues and didactic works, surviving only in fragments, but also began some of the philosophical works that are still parts of his extant writings. He continued these and no doubt began others during the prime of his life. Having thus slowly matured his separate writings, he was the better able to combine them more and more into a system, in his last years. No doubt, however, he went on writing and rewriting well into the last period of his life; for example, the recently discovered Athenaion Politeia mentions on the one hand (c. 54) the archonship of Cephisophon (329-328), on the other hand (c. 46) triremes and quadriremes but without quinqueremes, which first appeared at Athens in 325-324; and as it mentions nothing later it probably received its final touches between 329 and 324. But it may have been begun long before and received additions and changes. However early Aristotle began a book, so long as he kept the manuscript, he could always change it. Finally, he died without completing some of his works, such as the Politics, and notably that work of his whole philosophic career and foundation of his whole philosophy -- the Metaphysics -- which, projected in his early criticism of Plato's philosophy of universal forms, gradually developed into his positive philosophy of individual substances, but remained unfinished after all.

On the whole, then, Aristotle was writing his extant works very gradually for some thirty-five years (357-322), like Herodotus (IV 30) contemplated additions, continued writing them more or less together, not so much successively as simultaneously, and had not finished writing at his death.

There is a curious characteristic connected with this gradual composition. An Aristotelian treatise frequently has the appearance of being a collection of smaller discourses (logoi), as, for example, K. L. Michelet has remarked.

This is obvious enough in the Metaphysics: it has two openings (Books Α and α); then comes a nearly consecutive theory of being (Β, Γ, Ε, Ζ, Η, Θ), but interrupted by a philosophical lexicon Δ; afterwards follows a theory of unity (Ι); then a summary of previous books and of doctrines from the Physics (Κ); next a new beginning about being and, what is wanted to complete the system, a theory of God in relation to the world (Λ); finally, a criticism of mathematical metaphysics (Μ, Ν), in which the argument against Plato (Α 9) is repeated almost word for word (Μ 4-5). The Metaphysics is clearly a compilation formed from essays or discourses; and it illustrates another characteristic of Aristotle's gradual method of composition. It refers back to passages "in the first discourses" (en tois protois logois) -- an expression not uncommon in Aristotelian writings. Sometimes the reference is to the beginning of the whole treatise; e.g., Metaph. B 2, 997b3-5, referring back to Α 6 and 9 about Platonic forms. Sometimes, on the other hand, the reference only goes back to a previous part of a given topic, e.g., Metaph. Θ 1, 1045b27-32, referring back to Ζ 1, or at the earliest to Γ 2. On either alternative, however, 'the first discourses' mentioned may have originally been a separate discourse; for Book Γ begins quite fresh with the definition of the science of being, long afterwards called 'Metaphysics,' and Book Ζ begins Aristotle's fundamental doctrine of substance." (vol. 2 p. 506-507)

From: Thomas Case, Aristotle, Encyclopedia Britannica (1910). Reprinted In William Wians (ed.), Aristotle's Philosophical Development: Problems and Prospects, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996, pp. 1-40.

"This book, being at once treatise and monograph, demands a brief word of explanation.

It does not seek to give a systematic account, but to analyse Aristotle's writings so as to discover in them the half obliterated traces of his mental progress. Its biographical framework is intended merely to make more palpable the fact that his previously undifferentiated mass of compositions falls into three distinct periods of evolution. Owing to the meagerness of the material the picture that we thus obtain is of course fragmentary; yet its outlines constitute a distinctly clearer view of Aristotle's intellectual nature and of the forces that inspired his thinking. Primarily, this is a gain to the history of philosophical problems and origins. The author's intention is, however, not to make a contribution to systematic philosophy, but to throw light on the portion of the history of the Greek mind that is designated by the name of Aristotle.

Since 1916 I have repeatedly given the results of these researches as lectures at the universities of Kiel and Berlin; even the literary form, with the exception of the conclusion, was established in essentials at that time. The literature that has since appeared is not very important for Aristotle himself anyhow, and I have noticed it only so far as I have learnt something from it or am obliged to contradict it. The reader will look in vain for the results even of earlier researches so far as they concern merely unimportant changes of opinion or of form; such matters have nothing to do with development. Still less has my purpose been to analyse all Aristotle's writings for their own sake and to complete a microscopic examination of all their stages. The aim was solely to elucidate in its concrete significance, by means of evident examples, the phenomenon of his intellectual development as such." (Preface to the German edition (1923)

From: Werner Jaeger, Aristotle. Fundamentals of the History of His Development, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1948.

"It can be shown, however, that even the earlier version of the introduction (Κ 1-8) is not the original form of the Metaphysics. We have seen that in Κ 1-8 metaphysics is described as the science of that which is unmoved and eternal and transcendent. We also find there, however, the definition of it as the science of being as such (ὂν ἢ ὀν), though not developed, as it is in the later version, into a science of the manifold meanings of being including the perceptible being of movable nature. This combination of the two definitions in K 1-8 is a serious difficulty, and becomes only too painfully obvious in the later version of E, which in its present revised form is meant to introduce the science of the manifold meanings of being. Since the earlier and the later versions do not differ in this respect, but only in the extension that they assign to the notion of being, we shall not fall into error if we use them both together in what follows.

In E 1 ( = K 7 ) Aristotle explains what he understands by a science of being as such. All sciences inquire into certain causes and principles of things. As examples he mentions medicine and gymnastics, and-to take one with a more developed method mathematics, i.e. the examples usual in Plato's theory of science and method. Each of these sciences marks off systematically a definite sphere of reality and a definite genus and studies the resulting limited complex of facts. None of them discusses the being of its object; they all either presuppose it on the ground of experience, as do natural science and medicine; or, like mathematics with its axioms, they start from particular definitions. Their demonstrations, which differ from each other only in degree of accuracy, deal solely with the properties and functions following from these definitions or from facts evident to sense. The metaphysician, on the other hand, inquires about being precisely as being. He examines the presuppositions of these sciences, of which they themselves are neither willing nor able to give an account.

Aristotle supplements this explanation at the beginning of Book E 1 ( = K 3), where he brings out even more fully and clearly the distinction between first philosophy as universal science and the special sciences, between being as such and its particular realms. Here he treats being not as a sort of object separate and distinct from others, but as the common point of reference for all states, properties, and relations, that are connected with the problem of reality. As the mathematician, according to him, looks at all things solely from the point of view of quantity, so the philosopher studies everything that belongs to being as such, whereas the physicist, for example, considers it only as in motion. Many things 'are' only because they are the affection or the state or the motion or the relation of some one being they derive from something that ' is' simply. (...) To Plato dialectic was as such ontology. To Aristotle it was rather a practical and historical question whether this whole logic of being was under all circumstances to be included in first philosophy. His original metaphysics was theology, the doctrine of the most perfect being; it was hard to combine abstract dialectic with this once the Ideas were gone. But he tried to link them up by means of their common relation to being as such." (pp. 214-216)

From: Werner Jaeger, Aristotle. Fundamentals of the History of His Development, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1948.

"According to Werner Jaeger, the ὂν ἢ ὀν has two different meanings, depending on whether it is considered as found in the more ancient books or in parts which would have been added to the collection of the Stagirite's Metaphysics in the last-period.

In 'the last' stage the theory of the ὂν ἢ ὀν, according to Jaeger, would signify a sort of 'ontological phenomenology,' that is, 'an enumeration and description of the various meanings of being' in which a place would be found for all the forms of being, while transcendent being will not hence forward be the center of interest itself. Thus understood, the ὂν ἢ ὀν permits Aristotle to unify the two preceding conceptions of Book Κ Λ Ε 1; one in which the predominant interest concerns the supersensible and transcendent substance, the other, Books Ζ Θ, in which the interest in sensible substance and immanent entelechy or immanent form predominates. In fact the ὂν ἢ ὀν comprehends both the pure energeia of divine thought and the αἰσθητη ουσια of the physical world which is subject to generation and corruption insofar as both are 'being.'.

This conception of the ὂν ἢ ὀν, as we said, would be contained only in the last additions, insertions, and articulations, chiefly in the second, the third, and the fourth chapters of Book Ε. In Book Κ, where according to Jaeger the object of first philosophy is indicated in 'a clear way and without exception' as being the immobile and eternal realities, the ὂν ἢ ὀν also appears close to this perspective, but here the ὂν ἢ ὀν is not developed yet, as it is in the later version, into a science of the manifold meanings of being, including the perceptible being of movable nature. The same ought to be said of the meaning of ὂν ἢ ὀν in Books Γ and Ε 1, which, on this account, are not even distinguished from Book Κ by means of 'the different scope with which it treats the concept of being. 'By excluding the doctrine of ὂν ἢ ὀν from Κ, Γ, and Ε 1 as having the meaning of an ontological phenomenology, as it will, on the contrary, be present in Ε 2-4, Jaeger only explains rather vaguely what it does signify in that first group of writings. With respect to Book Γ he writes: 'Here he treats being not as a sort of object separate and distinct from others, but as the common point of reference for all states, properties, and relations that are connected with the problem of reality. It would seem, therefore, that Jaeger considers it as a kind of general ontology, in the sense of a universal theory of being.' (Jaeger, - Aristoteles - p. 289, Robinson trans. p. 215)". (pp. 138-139 notes omitted)

From: Giovanni Reale, The Concept of First Philosophy and the Unity of the Metaphysics of Aristotle, Albany: State University of New York Press 1980.

CONTEMPORARY INTERPRETATIONS: METAPHYSICS AS GENERAL ONTOLOGY

The general science of causes is general ontology.

Gamma 1 begins with the assertion that there is a science that studies 'that which is' qua 'thing which is' and what belongs to 'that which is' intrinsically, or per se. (1) By virtue of its generality this science is contrasted with the departmental sciences that cut off merely some part of 'that which is' and study the properties that are unique to that part. To study 'that which is' qua 'thing that is' is not to study some special object called 'that which is qua thing that is'. The 'qua' locution is here used to indicate the respect in which this science studies its subject matter, and indicates that it deals with those ubiquitous truths that apply to each 'thing that is'. The metaphysician must both state the general (propositional) principles that apply to 'that which is' as such and treat of their properties or features. An example of a metaphysical principle that belongs to beings as such is the principle of non-contradiction (PNC). To study what belongs to 'that which is' per se also involves a study of the terms that apply to 'things that are' as such (for instance, 'same' and 'one'), and to investigate truths about them.

This concept of general ontology is further clarified by the way in which Aristotle proceeds to deal with issues raised by four puzzles stated in B 1 about the nature of the metaphysical enterprise itself. These are four of the first five items on the list, and they concern the characterization of the universal science that deals in the most general way possible with the causes and starting points of all things. The second puzzle (995b6-10), for instance, assumes that this science will at the very least deal with the principles of substance, and inquires whether it will also deal with the common axioms those principles 'from which everybody makes proofs'. Does it, for instance, study the PNC? I 3 solves this puzzle by showing that the science of substance is the science that studies the common axioms. Gamma also provides answers to at least portions of the other puzzles, though without explicitly referring back to them. For instance, after Book B has queried whether the science of substance also studies the per se accidents of substances, it goes on to ask whether it will study in addition to these accidents such terms as 'same', 'other', 'similar', 'dissimilar', 'contrariety', 'prior' and 'posterior', and then concludes by asking whether it will also study even the per se accidents of these last mentioned items. This is to ask whether in addition to investigating the definitions of the per se accidents of substance, it will also study such issues as whether each contrary has a single contrary. Gamma 2 is in part devoted to answering these last two questions in the affirmative." (pp. 57-58).

Notes

(1) 'That which is qua thing that is' translates 'to on hêi on', an expression often rendered as 'being qua being'.

From: Alan Code, "Aristotle's Logic and Metaphysics", in: C. C. W. Taylor (ed.), Routledge History of Philosophy. From the beginning to Plato, Vol. I, London/New York: Routledge, 1997.

"One of the most difficult problems of interpretation set by the Metaphysics lies in the fact that in book IV the 'sought-for science' is characterized very precisely as the science of 'being qua being' ( ὂν ἢ ὀν).(1) Unlike the particular sciences, it does not deal with a particular area of being, but rather investigates everything that is, in its most general structural elements and principles. This description fulfils the expectations the reader has derived from books I and III, which repeatedly aim at insights of the highest generality. But, on the other hand, and startlingly, we also discover that in Metaphysics VI 1 - only a few pages further on, if we exclude book V as not part of the collection Aristotle seems first to accept this opinion and then, immediately afterwards, to embrace its exact opposite. For in VI 1 we again find an analysis of the sciences designed to establish the proper place of 'first philosophy'. Here, however, Aristotle does not, as he did in book IV, distinguish the 'sought-for science' from all other sciences by its greater generality. First he divides philosophy into three parts: theoretical, practical, and productive; and then he splits theoretical philosophy into three disciplines. To each of these disciplines he entrusts well-defined areas as objects of research. The 'sought-for science', referred to in IV as the 'science of being qua being', he now calls 'first philosophy', and defines it as the science of what is 'changeless and self-subsistent (akinêton kai chôriston)'. He explicitly gives it the title of 'theology'. Physics and mathematics stand beside it as the two neighboring disciplines in the field of theoretical philosophy.

Such an unexpected conclusion to so extended an introduction to 'first philosophy' must seem strange to the reader. It is understandable that an author should see the fundamental philosophical science as universal ontology. We can also accept that a philosopher should elevate theology above all other sciences because of the importance of its object. But that Aristotle should attempt to undertake both enterprises in a single work surely violates 'the greatest duty of a philosopher', which, according to Kant, consists in 'being consistent'.(2)That Aristotle here contradicts himself has been the dominant view in textbooks and commentaries since the middle of the last century. When faced by such difficulties of interpretation, it is customary to seek help from philology. It seemed necessary to saddle Aristotle with an internal inconsistency; and yet scholars were unwilling to credit him with one. Might not philology show that Aristotle's text did not, after all, contain such an inconsistency? In this way, the problem has submitted to what might be called therapeutic surgery at the hands first of Paul Natorp [1887] and then, more recently, of Werner Jaeger ([1948], pp. 214-21). Natorp resorted to the classical remedy of the nineteenth century, the obelus. Jaeger replaced this by its modern and more lenient counterpart, stratification. The two attempts are, curiously, almost mirror images of each other: Natorp saw the 'theologising tendency' of VI 1 as the result of interpolations by a later hand into Aristotle's text. By making excisions in the text and by giving a somewhat violent interpretation to what was left, he attempted to obliterate this tendency. Jaeger, on the other hand, regards the problematical line of thought which culminates in the description of 'first philosophy' as theology not as the amateurish addition of anonymous epigoni but as the remains of an earlier theologising stage in Aristotle's own development.

The following discussion attempts to prove three points:

I. Both Natorp's and Jaeger's solutions,(3) which may be seen as the two end points of a whole spectrum of related solutions,' are contradicted by the text of the Metaphysics itself.

II. As opposed to these radical solutions, we find that a conservative treatment, based on a detailed analysis of the text is possible.

III. This interpretation, which defuses the supposed contradiction, reveals a characteristically Aristotelian mode of thought and argument -- a mode which can be discovered in other parts of the corpus too, and which merits the attention of anyone concerned to give an accurate portrayal of Aristotle's intellectual 'development'."

(1) Met. IV 1, 1003a21; 24; 31.

(2) Critique of Practical Reason (1787), p. 44.

(3) Thus Reidemeister in his important article 'Das System des Aristotele's' (now in K. Reiderneister, Das exakte Denken der Griechen, 1949, pp. 67-87) speaks of a certain 'refractoriness' which 'appears in Aristotle's thought as a double inclination that he could not overcome but is explicitly aware of' (p. 70). Reidemeister rejects, on good grounds, both the separate ascription of these inclinations to Aristotle's youth and to his maturity, and the early dating of books I-VI. And he has informed me by word of mouth that he does not regard the 'refractoriness' as a contradiction.

From: Günther Patzig, "Theology and Ontology in Aristotle's Metaphysics", in: Jonathan Barnes, Malcolm Schofield. Richard Sorabji (eds.), Articles on Aristotle, Vol. 3: Metaphysics, London: Duckworth 1979 (Originally published in German in: Kant-Studien, 52, 1960/61 pp. 185-205. (Translated by Jennifer and Jonathan Barnes).

A NOTE ON THE NUMBERING OF THE BOOK OF ARISTOTLE'S METAPHYSICS

The books of Aristotle's Metaphysics are standardly referred to by their Greek numbering, i.e. by the letters of the Greek alphabet, because of the anomaly that after book 'I' there comes a short book labeled, as it were, not 'II' but 'i'. Translators have often called this 'book II', so that the following book is then called 'book III' in English, though in the Greek it is unambiguously entitled 'B', which means 'II'. This creates confusion, which is avoided by using the Greek numbering throughout. For those unfamiliar with the Greek alphabet, here are the relevant letters, and the confusing 'translation' of them into Roman numerals, which is found in translations of the Metaphysics but nowhere else:

Α = I

α = II

Β = III

Γ = IV

Δ = V

Ε = VI

Ζ = VII

Η = VIII

Θ = IX

Ι = X

Κ = XI

Λ = XII

M = XIII

Ν = XIV

This peculiar numbering reflects a more important fact about the books themselves, namely that they do not form a single and well organized whole, and one should not think of them as intended for publication as they stand. Aristotle clearly did mean there to be a connected series of books which we could call his 'Metaphysics' but the writings that have come down to us under that title contain much that would have been either abandoned or re-formed in a final version. For example, book a, which is an alternative introduction, would surely have found no place at all; book A would certainly have been pruned of the material in the first half of chapter 9 (which reappears almost unchanged in chapters 4-5 of book M), and probably of other material in consequence. There is no book of the existing Metaphysics of which one can confidently say that it would have figured in the final version just as it now is."

From: Aristotle Metaphysics. Books Z and H, Translated with a commentary by David Bostock, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1994 p. IX.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected bibliography on Aristotle's Concept of Metaphysics

Studies in English

1. Aiken, Wyatt D. 1991. "Essence and existence, transcendentalism and phenomenalism: Aristotle's answers to the questions of ontology." Review of Metaphysics no. 45:29-55.

2. Anton, John P. 1972. "On Aristotle' principle of contradiction: its ontological foundations and platonic antecedents." Philosophia :266-280.

3. Aubenque, Pierre. 2017. "Science Regained." In Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Metaphysics , edited by Greenstine, Abraham Jacob and Johnson, Ryan J., 119-137. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

"Pierre Aubenque's "Science Regained" (1962; translated by Clayton Shoppa) was originally published as the concluding chapter of Le Probleme de l'Etre chez Aristote, one of the most important and original books on Aristotle's Metaphysics. In this essay, Aubenque contends that the impasses which beset the project of first philosophy paradoxically become its greatest accomplishments.

Although science stabilizes motion and thereby introduces necessity into human cognition, human thought always occurs amidst an inescapable movement of change and contingency. Aristotle's ontology, as a discourse that strives to achieve being in its unity, succeeds by means of the failure of the structure of its own approach: the search of philosophy - dialectic - becomes the philosophy of the search. Aubenque traces this same structure of scission, mediation, and recovery across Aristotelian discussions of theology, motion, time, imitation, and human activity." (p. 7)

4. Bäck, Allan. 2004. "What is Being qua Being?" In Idealization XI: Historical Studies on Abstraction and Idealization. , edited by Coniglione, Francesco, Poli, Roberto and Rollinger, Robin, 37-58. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities - Vol. 82.

"I offer truth conditions for propositions about being qua being in Aristotle's philosophy. I show that in general Aristotle views expressions of the form "qua S " in "S qua S is P " (or "S is P qua S ") as making a claim not about the subject "S", but about the predication of "P" of "S". I develop necessary and sufficient truth conditions for propositions of the form "S qua S is P ". Finally, I show how this analysis satisfactorily covers what Aristotle says about being qua being in the Metaphysics ."

5. Bell, Ian. 2004. Metaphysics as an Aristotelian Science . Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

6. Bolton, Robert. 1994. "Aristotle's conception of metaphysics as a science." In Unity, Identity, and Explanation in Aristotle's Metaphysics , edited by Scaltsas, Theodore, David, Charles and Gill, Mary Louise, 321-354. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

7. Brentano, Franz. 1975. On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle . Berkeley: University of California Press.

English tranasltion of Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles (1862).

8. Cheng, Chung-Hwan. 1976. Sophia: The Science Aristotle Sought . Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

9. Code, Alan. 1996. "Owen on the development of Aristotle's metaphysics." In Aristotle's Philosophical Development. Problems and Prospects , edited by Wians, William, 303-325. London: Rowman & Littlefield.

10. ———. 1997. "Aristotle's metaphysics as a science of principles." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 51:357-378.

11. Duarte, SWhane. 2007. "Aristotle's Theology and its Relation to the Science of Being qua Being." Apeiron no. 40:267-318.

12. Ferejohn, Michael T. 1980. "Aristotle on focal meaning and the unity of science." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 25:117-128.

In chapter Two of book IV of the "Metaphysics", Aristotle alludes to an argument that the Platonic vision of constructing a science of being "qua" being is made possible by the fact that the verb "to be", while categorially ambiguous, also exhibits a special sort of ambiguity to which he gives the name "focal meaning." This paper contains a reconstruction of the focal meaning analysis of "to be", from which are extracted principles which are shown to form the structure of Aristotle's argument for the science of being "qua" being.

13. Fraser, Kyle A. 2002. "Aristoteles ex Aristotele : A response to the analytic reconstruction of Aristotelian ontology." Dyonisius no. 20:51-69.

14. ———. 2002. "Demonstrative science and the science of Being qua Being." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 22:43-82.

15. Frede, Michael. 1987. "The Unity of General and Special Metaphysics: Aristotle's Conception of Metaphysics." In Essays in Ancient Philosophy , 81-95. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

16. Gill, Mary Louise. 2006. "First philosophy in Aristotle." In A Companion to Ancient Philosophy , edited by Gill, Mary Louise and Pellegrin, Pierre, 347-373. Malden: Blackwell.

17. Gomez Nogales, Salvador. 1972. "The Meaning of 'Being' in Aristotle." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 12:317-333.

18. Hahn, Robert. 1979. "Aristotle as ontologist or theologian? Or, aristotelian form in the context of the conflicting doctrines of being in the Metaphysics ." Southwestern Journal of Philosophy no. 10:79-88.

"Scholars have believed that there are two apparently conflicting doctrines of being in the "metaphysics" -- one which treats being qua being as the concept of the most general object, comprehending both sensible and supersensible being alike, traditionally identified as the "ens commune"; the other which treats being qua being as the concept of the separate and divine entities, traditionally identified as the "ens perfectissimum". Following Owen, the conflicting positions of the tradition of Greek commentators are contrasted with those Aristotelianizing christians of the middle ages; scholarship, in the last century, on this problem of the conflicting doctrines of being in the "Metaphysics" is considered. Next, it is argued that primary being for Aristotle is understood as formal cause, the meaning of which is considered in terms of the separate and divine entities, the "ens perfectissimum". Finally, an attempt is made to explain the inclusion of the supposedly conflicting doctrine of the "ens commune", as a means of clarifying the nature of primary being as formal cause."

19. Halper, Edward C. 1987. ""Being qua Being" in Metaphysics Gamma." Elenchos no. 8:43-62.

20. Harré, Rom. 1997. "Forward to Aristotle: the case for a hybrid ontology." Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour no. 27:173-191.

21. Huntz, Jude. 1955. "Some ontological aspect of Aristotle's logic." Lyceum no. 1995:29-42.

22. Husain, Martha. 1981. "The multiplicity in unity of being 'qua ' being in Aristotle's 'pros hen ' equivocity." New Scholasticism no. 55:208-218.

"Pros hen equivocity unquestionably plays a central role in Aristotle's philosophy, both as a linguistic and as an ontological structure. This paper attempts to answer both G.E.L. Owen's charge that the secondary senses of being are reducible to the primary and D. W. Hamlyn's charge that the dependence of secondary on primary being cannot be understood concretely. It shows that Aristotle carries out the program of "Metaphysics" vii, 1 in the "Physics" where the dependence of secondary on primary being can be understood concretely in terms of characteristic ranges within which all processes of quantitative and qualitative change occur. Thus he is able to preserve both the irreducible multiplicity of the categorial senses of being and their unity, and so pros hen equivocity."

23. Irwin, Terence. 1977. "Aristotle's Discovery of Metaphysics." Review of Metaphysics no. 31:210-229.

24. ———. 1987. "Ways to First Principles: Aristotle's Methods of Discovery." Philosophical Topics no. 2:109-134.

25. ———. 1988. Aristotle's First Principles . Oxford: Clarendon Press.

26. Ketchum, Richard. 1998. "Being and existence in Greek ontology." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 80 (3):321-332.

27. Leszl, Walter. 1970. Logic and Metaphysics in Aristotle . Padova: Antenore.

28. ———. 1975. Aristotle's Conception of Ontology . Padova: Antenore.

29. Llano, Alejandro. 2001. "The different meanings of ‘being’ according to Aristotle and Aquinas." Acta Philosophica no. 10:29-44.

30. Ludwig, Walter D. 1989. "Aristotle's Conception of the Science of Being." New Scholasticism no. 63:379-404.

31. Madison, Ryan Douglas. 2008. First Philosophy. Aristotle's Concept of Metaphysics .

Unpublished h.D. Dissertation.

32. Marx, Werner. 1954. The Meaning of Aristotle's 'Ontology' . The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

"This study forms part of a wider investigation which will inquire into the relationship of Ontology and Anthropology. Since the meaning of the term 'ontology' is far from clear, the immediate task is to ask the 'father of ontology' what he might have understood it to mean.

The introductory chapter emphasizes the fact that Aristotle himself never used the term 'ontology.' It should be stressed at once that, even had be used it, he could not very well have employed it to denote the discipline of ontology. For it was only during the era of the schoolmen that the vast and rich body of the prose philosophia carne to be disciplined into classifications; these classifications reflected the Christian, - not the pagan Greek view of all-that-is. The metaphysica specialis dealing with God (theology), his creatures (psychology), and the created universe (cosmology), was differentiated from the metaphysica generalis, dealing with being-in-general (ens commune). This latter discipline amounted to the 'discipline of ontology' (1).

We are not concerned with the meaning of the metaphysica generalis. We wish to approach our problem with an open mind and want to hear directly from Aristotle - on the basis of the text of the prole philosophia alone - which body of thought he might have called his 'ontology' and what its meaning might have been.

Yet however carefully we may attempt to 'bracket' all preconceived notions, it stili remains true that it is an audacious undertaking to pose a definite question to Aristotle. More than two millenia of changing human thought cannot be eliminated, and we know very well that our question, as such, shapes and compels the answer in a definite direction which might easily be adjudged too 'modem'. Moreover, in concentrating on just one motif out of the many variegated and rich themes of the corpus aristotelicum, we are certain to overstress this one motif at the expense of others." (frm the Preface, P. VII)

(1) cf. M. Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, p. 18.

33. ———. 1977. Introduction to Aristotle's Theory of Being as Being . The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

English translation by Robert S. Schine of: Einführung in Aristoteles' Theorie vom Seienden , Freiburg: Rombach, 1972.

34. Matthen, Mohan. 1983. "Greek ontology and the 'Is' of truth." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 28:113-135.

35. Merlan, Philip. 1960. From Platonism to Neoplatonism . The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Second revised edition (First edition 1953).

See Chapter VII: Metaphysica generalis in Aristotle? pp. 160-220.

36. ———. 1968. "On the terms 'Metaphysics' and 'Being qua Being'." The Monist no. 52:174-194.

Reprinted in: Philip Merlan, Kleine Philosophische Schriften, Herausgegeben von Franciszka Merlan mit einem begeitwort von Hans Wagner, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1976 pp. 238-258.

37. Modrak, Deborah. 1995. "Theories of meaning and ontology in Aristotle's Metaphysics ." In The Crossroads of Norm and Nature. Essays on Aristotle's Ethics and Metaphysics , edited by Sim, May, 221-234. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

38. Owen, Gwilym Ellis Lane. 1960. "Logic and Metaphysics in Some Earlier Works of Aristotle." In Aristotle and Plato in the Mid-Fourth Century. Papers of the Symposium Aristotelicum held at Oxford in August, 1957 , edited by Düring, Ingemar and Owen, Gwilym Ellis Lane, 163-190. Göteborg: Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia.

Reprinted in: G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science and Dialectic. Collected Papers in Ancient Greek philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1986 pp. 180-199.

Reprinted in: Jonathan Barnes et al. (eds.), Articles on Aristotle. Vol. 3: Metaphysics , London: Duckworth, 1979 pp. 13-32.

39. ———. 1965. "Aristotle on the Snares of Ontology." In New Essays on Plato and Aristotle , edited by Bambrough, Renford, 69-95. New York: Humanities Press.

Reprinted in: G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science and Dialectic. Collected Papers in Ancient Greek Philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1986 pp. 259-278.

40. Owens, Joseph. 1978. The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics. A Study of the Greek Background of Mediaeval Thought . Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

Third revised edition (first edition 1951).

41. ———. 1982. "The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics - Revisited." In Philosophies of Existence. Ancient and Medieval , edited by Morewedge, Parviz, 33-59. New York: Fordham University Press.

42. ———. 1986. "Is there Any Ontology in Aristotle?" Dialogue. Canadian Philosophical Review no. 25:697-707.

43. ———. 2007. Aristotle's Gradations of Being in Metaphysics E-Z . South Bend: St. Augustine's Press.

Edited with a preface by Lloyd P. Gerson.

44. Patzig, Günther. 1979. "Theology and Ontology in Aristotle's Metaphysics ." In Articles on Aristotle. Vol. 3: Metaphysics , edited by Barnes, Jonathan, Schofield, Martin and Sorabji, Richard, 33-49. London: Duckworth.

Originally published in German as: "Theologie und Ontologie in der "Metaphysik" des Aristoteles", Kant-Studien , 52, 1960/61 pp. 185-205.

45. Poli, Roberto. 1994. "Formal aspects of reduplication." Logic and Logical Philosophy no. 2:87-102.

"Aristotle's presentation of ontology advanced at the beginning of the fourth book of Metaphysics is universally known: "there is a science which studies being qua being. . . ". Needless to say, this is a familiar sentence: unfortunately, it is also quite an odd one. Why Aristotle does not simply say that ontology is the theory of being? Is there any difference between 'theory of being' and 'theory of being qua being'?

In brief, the problem is to decide whether the two expressions 'the study of being' and 'the study of being qua being' are equivalent. If they are, the 'qua' does not play any interesting role. On the contrary, if the two expressions are different, that is to say, if there is a difference between the study of being (simpliciter ) and the study of being qua being, we should study the role played by the (operator) 'qua'.

Let us remember that 'qua' is a technical term. The word is the Latin translation of the Greek 'he' in the expression 'on he on' which, in the 17th century, gave origin to the term ontology'.

I shall call 'reduplicative' the expressions containing some instance of the functor 'qua'. Theories of reduplicative expressions will also be labelled as qua-theories." (*)

(*) The term 'reduplication' (anadiplosis) is to be found in Aristotle. For a general presentation of reduplication see Roberto Poli, "", (PDF) in Liliana Albertazzi, (ed.), Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1998, pp. 245-256).

46. ———. 1999. "Qua -theories." In Shapes of Forms. From Gestalt Psychology and Phenomenology to Ontology and Mathematics , edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, 245-256. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"Reduplicative expressions: some introductory notes.

I shall call a theory of the functor 'qua' a 'qua-theory'. This functor is used in expressions like 'A qua B is C'. Some synonymous expressions are 'as', 'insofar as', 'in virtue of, 'with respect to'.

`Qua' is a technical term. The word is the Latin translation of the Greek 'he' in the expression 'on he on' which in the seventeenth century gave origin to the term 'ontology'. That is to say, a qua-theory is an ontology, and ontology is the heart of philosophy.

The definition of ontology that Aristotle advanced itself involves the functor `qua'. His definition of ontology at the beginning of the fourth book of Metaphysics is universally known: "there is a science which studies being qua being [...]". My problem is this: why does Aristotle does not simply say that ontology is the theory of being? Is there any difference between 'theory of being' and 'theory of being qua being'?

In brief, the problem is deciding whether the two expressions 'the theory of being' and 'the theory of being qua being' are equivalent. If they are, the 'qua' does not play any interesting role. On the contrary, if the two expressions are different - that is to say, if there is a difference between the theory of being (simpliciter) and the theory of being qua being - we should study the role played by the (operator) 'qua'.

The main reason for distinguishing between theory of being and theory of being qua being rests on Aristotle's opinion that the analysis of being simpliciter cannot be developed in a scientific fashion. Aristotle's intention to submit being to scientific analysis was the principal reason for his adoption of a reduplicative kind of analysis. His position derived from the thesis that being is not a genus.

It is well known that Aristotle believed that scientific analysis can be developed only if there is a common genus for the entities under examination. If being does not have a common genus, the study of being cannot be a science.

From this arises a fundamental difference between study of being and study of being qua being. If ontology is a science, we must admit that there is a common genus for the entities studied by ontology: the main role of 'qua' is precisely that of assigning a surrogate for the lacking common genus to beings by making explicit the context of the being referred to.

Qua- theories will be collectively referred to as reduplicative-theories or as theories of reduplication." pp. 245-246.

47. Politis, Vasilis, and Steinkrüger, Philipp. 2017. "Aristotle’s second problem about the possibility of a science of being qua being: a reconsideration of Metaphysics Γ 2." Ancient Philosophy :59-89.

Abstract: "It is commonly assumed that Aristotle thinks that his claim that being exhibits a category-based pros hen structure, which he introduces to obviate the problem of categorial heterogeneity, is sufficient to defend the possibility of a science of being qua being. We, on the contrary, argue that Aristotle thinks that the pros hen structure is necessary only, but not sufficient, for this task. The central thesis of our paper is that Aristotle, in what follows 1003b19, raises a second problem for the possibility of the science of being qua being; and that he does not think that the resolution of the first, the category-based problem, is either necessary or sufficient for resolving this problem. This is the problem: how can a plurality of apparently primary kinds and their opposites (they include to hen, to on, to auto, to homoion, to heteron and to anhomoion ) be the subject-matter the science of being qua being? It has been argued that these kinds are per se attributes of ousia and that, therefore, this problem is not different from the first problem. This, we argue, is mistaken; for nowhere in Gamma 2 does Aristotle claim that unity is a per se attribute of ousia. Rather, he says that identity, similarity, etc. are per se attributes of being qua being and unity qua unity. Aristotle’s resolution of the second problem, we argue, is that most of these kinds are reducible to a single compound principle: being-and-unity. Being and unity, moreover, are themselves related to each other as primary ousia and consequent ousia; but, we argue, Aristotle leaves it open, in Gamma 2, which of the two is primary, and which is consequent ousia."

48. Reale, Giovanni. 1980. The Concept of Philosophy and the Unity of Metaphysics of Aristotle . Albany: State University of New York Press

Edited and translated by John R. Catan.

Authorized Translation from the Third Edition.

49. Seddon Jr., Frederick A. 1981. "The principle of contradiction in Metaphysics , Gamma ." New Scholasticism no. 55:191-207.

"The purpose of my paper is an historical-critical examination of the principle of contradiction as it appears in Aristotle, specifically but not exclusively as it appears in "Metaphysics, Book Gamma". to achieve this goal, I have chosen to subject Jan Lukasiewicz's article on this topic in the march 1971 number of "The Review of Metaphysics" to critical exposition and, as it turns out, refutation. Should the essay achieve its intended result, it will have shown that the principle of contradiction to be "...true of being qua being..." rather than, as Lukasiewicz would have us believe, a mere assumption having only a practical-ethical value."

50. Shields, Christopher. 2012. "Being Qua Being." In The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle , edited by Shields, Christopher, 343-371. New York: Oxford University Press.

Abstract: "According to Aristotle, there is a science (epistêmê) that studies being qua being, and the attributes belonging to it in its own right. This claim, which opens Metaphysics IV 1, is both surprising and unsettling—surprising because Aristotle seems elsewhere to deny the existence of any such science, and unsettling because his denial seems very plausibly grounded. He claims that each science studies a unified genus, but denies that there is a single genus for all beings; claims which evidently conspire against the science. Aristotle announces: “[I]f there is no genus of being and every science requires its own genus, then

there is no science of being.” This seems, moreover, to be precisely the conclusion he draws in his Eudemian Ethics, where Aristotle maintains that we should no more look for a general science of being than we should look for a general science of goodness. This article looks at three problems about the science of being qua being: The Possibility Problem, the Extension Problem, and the Intension Problem."

51. Skousgaard, Stephen. 1976. "Wisdom and Being in Aristotle's First Philosophy." Thomist no. 40:444-474.

"The thesis of this article is that Aristotle's notion of wisdom is determined by his ontology. Starting with the fact that people do think, and think about being, the argument of the article traces the development of Aristotle's notion of being "qua" being, then decides that the tension between being-itself and the many-ways-of-being structures wisdom as dynamic rather than dogmatic."

52. Stevenson, J.G. 1975. "Being "qua" Being." Apeiron no. 9:42-50.

"It is shown that in the opening chapter of the Fourth Book of the "Metaphysics" (Book Gamma), Aristotle conceives of metaphysics as a very general study, encompassing all being. This is shown by means of a close study of the meaning of the phrase "being "qua" being" which Aristotle uses here. This result is important because it contradicts the claims of Joseph Owens and Philip Merlan, who have argued that there is nothing in Aristotle's "metaphysics" to contradict a conception of metaphysics as theology."

53. Upton, Thomas. 1988. "Aristotle on existence: escaping the snares of ontology?" New Scholasticism no. 62:373-399.

54. Wedin, Michael. 2009. "The science and axioms of Being." In A Companion to Aristotle , edited by Anagnostopoulos, Georgios, 125-143. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.

"Aristotle's first editor, Andronicus of Rhodes, placed the fourteen books now known as the Metaphysics after the Physics, whence comes the word "metaphysics," which literally means "after the physics." Some have used this fact to buttress the claim that the work as a whole has no focused subject, but rather is a collection of loosely linked essays. There is some warrant for this skeptical assessment. The first chapter of the first Book, Book A , (1) announces that "we" are seeking a certain kind of theoretical knowledge, something Aristotle calls "wisdom" (sophia). Because wisdom is knowledge of first causes and principles, the task is to investigate what sorts of causes and principles are suited to play this role. The reader might expect Aristotle to then proceed on just such a course of inquiry. After A , however, the term "wisdom" effectively disappears from the treatise.(2) In B 's set of puzzles we get instead the "science of substance," in G we are introduced to the "science of being qua being," and in Book E preference appears to be given to "first philosophy" and "theology." Are these the same or different enterprises and, if different, are they independent or related, and, if related, how? These questions can be addressed by seeing how Aristotle's treatment of wisdom follows a coherent, if complicated, path through much of the Metaphysics, beginning with the science of being qua being." p. 125

(1) It is customary to indicate books of the Metaphysics by uppercase Greek letters, with the exception of the diminutive second book, which is denoted by lower case Alpha (a ).

(2) The term occurs in B.2 but only by way of referring back to A.2 's marks of wisdom. It also reappears in K . But K is just a precis of Books B, G, and E (with, in its second half, material from the Physics ); plus, some doubt that K was even written by Aristotle.

55. Yu, Jiyuan. 2003. The Structure of Being in Aristotle's Metaphysics . Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Études en Français

1. Aubenque, Pierre. 1962. Le problème de l'être chez Aristote. Éssai sur la problématique aristotélicienne. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

2. ———. 1964. "Sens et structure de la Métaphysique aristotélicienne." Bulletin de la Société Française de Philosophie no. 58:1-50.

Repris dans: P. Aubenque, Problèmes aristotéliciens. I. Philosophie théorique, Paris: Vrin 2009 pp. 131-170.

3. ———. 1983. "Sur l'inauthenticité du livre K de la Métaphysique." In Zweifelhaftes im Corpus Aristotelicum. Studien zum einigen Dubia. Akten des 9. Symposium Aristotelicum, Berlin, 7-16. September 1981, edited by Moraux, Paul and Wiesner, Jürgen, 318-344. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Repris dans P. Aubenque, Problèmes aristotéliciens. I. Philosophie théorique, Paris: Vrin 2009 pp. 171-196.

4. Balmes, Marc. 2000. "Ontologie formelle de l'objet, catégories et philosophie première." Revue Thomiste no. 108:259-268.

5. Bastit, Michel. 2002. Les quatre causes de l'être selon la philosophie première d'Aristote. Louvain-la-Neuve: Éditions Peeters.

"... le présent ouvrage se devra de préserver l'originalité de la pensée d'Aristote et, pourrait-on dire, toute sa verdeur. Il devra donc entre autre se garder des lectures platoniciennes de la Métaphysique très fréquentes depuis celles de nombreux commentateurs grecs, jusqu'à certains aspects de celles qui sont inspirées aujourd'hui par Heidegger. Sans aucun doute, le texte d'Aristote n'est pas lui-même univoque, il suffit de rappeler la multiplicité des interprétations auxquelles il a donné lieu pour en être persuadé. Néanmoins, notre intention n'est nullement de tenter de projeter, en recourant à telle ou telle philosophie, un sens sur un texte qui par lui-même en serait dépourvu. Nous chercherons plutôt l'originalité génuine de ce texte. Cela implique de penser qu'il peut encore nous éclairer sur les questions que nous avons évoquées. Mais cet espoir n'est pas infondé, dans la mesure où les problèmes que nous rencontrons aujourd'hui pour utiliser les causes dans le cadre d'une philosophie de l'être et d'une philosophie première sont issus d'une remise en cause et d'un oubli progressif de la pensée aristotélicienne. Nous demanderons à Aristote de nous aider à philosopher sur une réalité commune; peut-être est-ce là ce que les doctrines contemporaines de l'interprétation appellent une fusion d'horizon (1).

Notre propos se déroulera selon le plan suivant. Après avoir examiné quelques-unes des interprétations des causes aristotéliciennes les plus autorisées, nous commencerons par marquer nos réserves à l'égard de la présentation habituelle de la causalité aristotélicienne, ou tout au moins nous en ferons ressortir les limites. Nous devrons constater également que celle qui lui a été préférée par Richard Sorabji n'est pas non plus entièrement satisfaisante. Ceci constituera un premier chapitre, à la suite duquel nous nous tournerons vers l'usage des causes tel qu'il est mis en oeuvre dans la Métaphysique. Là nous montrerons que la recherche des causes les plus élevées, leur dénombrement et leurs relations constituent l'un des caractères originaux de la pensée d'Aristote.

Notre projet consistera donc d'abord à examiner la conception aristotélicienne de la causalité là où elle se déploie avec le plus d'intelligibilité pour nous, à savoir en physique et en logique. Cela nous conduira à concevoir la causalité comme une relation de dépendance dans l'ordre de l'intelligibilité ou du devenir. En même temps nous serons conduit à reconnaître l'originalité de l'exercice de chaque genre de causes et le lien de celles-ci avec la cause formelle. Nous devrions donc parvenir à une conception de la causalité beaucoup plus diversifiée que celle qui réduit les causes à la cause matérielle ou efficiente, voire à la cause formelle si on néglige la distinction qui suit. En effet ceci ne sera possible qu'en recourant à la distinction des causes en acte et des causes en puissance qui fait cruellement défaut dans la plupart des interprétations aristotéliciennes, alors qu'elle recouvre pourtant tous les genres de causes. Probablement cette distinction peut-elle faire saisir à la fois l'unité des causes et leur rattachement à la cause formelle.

Muni de ces préalables, nous devrons alors constater que la philosophie première aristotélicienne se donne bien comme une analyse de l'être à la lumière des causes et des principes les plus élevés. Si la quête de ces causes et principes exige une méthode dialectique, celle-ci par sa fécondité même entraîne une connaissance des causes et une science analogique de cet objet analogique qu'est l'être dans la diversité des étants. Nous entreprendrons alors d'examiner l'usage des diverses causes dans la philosophie première. Ce qui nous montrera d'une part la fidélité d'Aristote au programme initial du livre Alpha et d'autre part la spécificité irremplaçable de chacune d'elles pour parvenir à une connaissance satisfaisante de l'être. Mais la connaissance des causes et des principes ne peut en rester à celle des causes universelles et en puissance.

Elle doit, pour parvenir à son terme, à savoir les causes en acte, parvenir jusqu'au principe de cette actualité, lequel ne peut lui-même être que l'être où les causes sont perpétuellement actuelles. L'analyse des causes de l'être devra donc, pour être complète, déboucher sur une théologie. Pour ce faire, nous prendrons en compte essentiellement les textes de la Métaphysique, mais aussi ceux de la Physique et de l'Organon, principalement dans les Analytiques, sans nous interdire les incursions et rapprochements avec d'autres textes du corpus aristotélicien, tels qu'ils ont été lus dans la tradition antique et médiévale et jusqu'aux modernes."

Introduction pp. 5-7.

Cf. Berti (E.), «Les stratégies contemporaines d'interprétation d'Aristote», Rue Descartes, n° 1-2, 1991, p. 33-55.

6. Brague, Rémi. 2001. Aristote et la question du monde. Essai sur le contexte cosmologique et anthropologique de l'ontologie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

7. Breton, Stanislas. 1992. "Sophistique et ontologie." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 90:279-296.

8. Cassin, Barbara. 1992. "Aristote et le linguistic turn." In Nos Grecs et leurs modernes. Les stratégies contemporaines d'appropriation de l'Antiquité, edited by Cassin, Barbara, 432-452. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

"Les raisons de lire Gamma plutôt ainsi qu'autrement: pour une histoire sophistique de la philosophie.

La question à laquelle Terence Irwin et moi-même avons accepté d'être confrontés, sinon de répondre, est une application du principe de raison leibnizien, sans doute constitutive de l'herméneutique elle-même: quelles sont les raisons de lire un texte plutôt ainsi qu'autrement? Et, s'il y en a, rendez-les-nous, si vous pouvez!

Elle suppose d'abord, qu'il y a plusieurs lectures, plusieurs mondes, possibles; ensuite que ces lectures, ces mondes, sont hiérarchisables selon un classement comparatif auquel préside encore le principe de raison, cette fois sous forme de principe d'économie: maximum d'effet pour un minimum de dépense. Reste à décider ce qu'est un "effet" et ce qu'est une "dépense" en herméneutique: mettons, maximum d'intelligibilité, c'est-à-dire d'oscillation entre fidélité et philosophicité (comme la boiterie du centaure philologue-philosophe que décrit Nietzsche), pour un minimum d'hypothèses, d'anomalies et de déchets.

Tout le problème est de savoir s'il n'y a que des comparatifs, ou bien si l'on peut, si l'on doit, passer au superlatif.

(...)

Ce type de chemin faisant, il me semble qu'on tente de sortir du sillon ontologique de l'herméneutique, pour s'essayer à quelque chose comme: une histoire sophistique de la philosophie.

Je propose d'appeler "histoire sophistique de la philosophie" celle qui rapporte les positions, non pas à l'unicité de la vérité, qu'elle soit éternelle ou progressivement constituée en mode hégélien (la vérité comme telos, dans un temps orienté, ou "comme si" orienté), mais celle qui les rapporte aux instantanés du kairos, occasion, opportunité, grâce à des mékhanai, procédés, ruses, machines, permettant de happer le kairos par son toupet. Et l'agôn est par excellence l'une de ces procédures, vieilles comme le monde.

(...)

Bref, dans l'histoire sophistique de la philosophie, il serait explicite que le meilleur, la performance, est la mesure du vrai.

Le premier intérêt de ce type de série comparative, par différence avec la clôture du superlatif, même réfléchissant, c'est qu'elle n'est, en droit, jamais finie. (...) Le challenge du "encore mieux" (passer à l'étage au-dessus) fait place à la possibilité de l' "autrement mieux" (traverser la cour). Et même, à en croire Deleuze et Lindon, c'est autrement mieux tout simplement déjà parce que c'est autrement. Il ne s'agit plus dans ce cas des "raisons de lire Gamma plutôt ainsi qu'autrement", mais bel et bien des "raisons de lire Gamma autrement".".

9. Claix, René. 1982. "L'objet de la métaphysique selon Aristote." Tijdschrift voor Philosophie no. 44:454-472.

10. Décarie, Vianney. 1961. L'objet de la métaphysique selon Aristote. Paris: Vrin.

11. ———. 1983. "L'authenticité du livre K de la Métaphysique." In Zweifelhaftes im Corpus Aristotelicum. Studien zum einigen Dubia. Akten des 9. Symposium Aristotelicum, Berlin, 7-16. September 1981, edited by Moraux, Paul and Wiesner, Jürgen, 295-317. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Repris dans: Pierre Aubenque (éd.), Études aristotéliciennes. Métaphysique et théologie, Paris: Vrin, 1985.

12. ———. 1990. "Le titre de la Métaphysique." In Herméneutique et ontologie. Mélanges en hommage à Pierre Aubenque, edited by Brague, Rémi and Courtine, Jean-François, 121-126. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

13. Desanti, Jean-Toussaint. 1988. "Remarques sur l'ontologie aristotélicienne." In Aristote aujourd'hui, edited by Sinaceur, Mohammed Allal, 27-43. Paris: Éditions érès.

14. Destrée, Pierre. 1992. "'Physique' et 'métaphysique' chez Aristote. Á propos de l'expression on me on." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 90:422-444.

15. Dhondt, Urbain. 1961. "Science suprême et ontologie chez Aristotle." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 59:5-30.

16. Dillens, Anne-Marie. 1982. Á la naissance du discours ontologique. Étude de la notion de kath'hauto dans l'oeuvre d'Aristote. Bruxelles: Éditions Ousia.

17. Dumoulin, Bertrand. 1986. Analyse génétique de la Métaphysique d'Aristote. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

18. Elders, Leo. 1962. "Aristote et l'objet de la métaphysique." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 60:165-183.

19. Follon, Jacques. 1992. "Le concept de philosophie première dans la 'Metaphysique' d'Aristote." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 90:387-421.

"In this article the author inquires into the meaning of "First Philosophy" in Aristotle's "Metaphysics". In his view, attentive examination of the passages in which the nature of this discipline is mentioned (essentially "Alpha" 1-2, "Gamma" 1-3 and "Epsilon" 1) shows rather clearly that the Stagirite meant by "First Philosophy" the science of first causes and hence necessarily of divine substances, which are causes of this kind. In other words, First Philosophy, being the supreme aitiology, was theology for him, as the traditional interpretation always held. But, being the science of first causes, it was equally the science of being "qua" being in his eyes, as first causes are precisely those of being "qua" being. The author thus concludes, contrary to the hermeneutic deriving from Suarez, that it is inappropriate to maintain a duality of inspiration and of subject-matter in the "Metaphysics", and that there is no "onto-theological" ambiguity in Aristotle's view of first philosophy."

20. ———. 1993. "Le concept de philosophie première chez Aristote: note complémentaire." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 91:5-13.

21. Irwin, Terence. 1992. "Quelques apories de la science de l'être." In Nos Grecs et leurs modernes. Les stratégies contemporaines d'appropriation de l'Antiquité, edited by Cassin, Barbara, 417-431. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

"Le quatrième livre de la Métaphysique est divisé en deux sections principales. La première section (chapitres 1-3) est programmatique; Aristote introduit la science de l'être en tant qu'être (ou: de l'étant en tant qu'étant), et décrit les tâches de cette science nouvelle. La deuxième section (chapitres 4 et suivants) est en même temps polémique et constructive; Aristote présente une défense du principe de non-contradiction (PNC), et il combat le subjectivisme de Protagoras. Quel est le lien entre les deux sections du livre? En particulier, Aristote se borne-t-il à décrire la science proposée, ou achève-t-il son programme? Autrement dit: la section polémique de Gamma nous offre-t-elle des raisonnements propres à la science de l'être, ou faut-il conclure qu'ils ne sont que préliminaires à cette science ?

Je voudrais discuter principalement la section programmatique, pour mieux comprendre la tâche et le but qu'impose Aristote à la science de l'être. Ensuite, je vais suggérer que la section polémique de Gamma fait vraiment partie intégrante de la science de l'être ; c'est-à-dire que, après avoir annoncé le programme de la science nouvelle, Aristote commence à le remplir'.

L'interprétation de Gamma que je vais esquisser n'est certainement pas la seule possible; et je voudrais la développer en comparaison avec une interprétation alternative qui a souvent paru être bien fondée. Selon cette interprétation, que j'appellerai "propédeutique", le livre Gamma n'achève aucun raisonnement propre à la science de l'être; bien sûr, la section polémique discute de questions qui sont propres à la science de l'être, mais elle ne présente aucun raisonnement scientifique; au contraire, les raisonnements sont tout à fait préliminaires à la science de l'être (2)

L'interprétation propédeutique peut paraître bien fondée, si nous tenons compte de la conception aristotélicienne de la science (epistêmê). On peut raisonner comme suit :

(I) Aristote exige une forme démonstrative pour chaque vraie science, selon les règles des Seconds Anatytiques; mais

(II) les raisonnements du livre Gamma sont évidemment dialectiques, plutôt que démonstratifs ; donc

(III) ces raisonnements ne peuvent pas appartenir à une science (3).

La première prémisse est hors de contestation, si l'on applique les règles des Anatytiques à la Métaphysique. La deuxième prémisse est hors de contestation, si l'on considère les raisonnements de Gamma en les comparant avec la conception aristotélicienne normale de la dialectique. Donc, si l'on accepte les conceptions de la science et de la dialectique qui sont exposées dans l'Organon, on conclura que les raisonnements de Gamma ne sont point scientifiques.

Cette conclusion laisse, pourtant, un rôle légitime aux raisonnements de Gamma. Car Aristote assigne à la dialectique un rôle sur la route "vers les principes" des sciences démonstratives (Topiques, 101 a 36 - b 4). On ne peut pas saisir les principes par les raisonnements propres à la science elle-même; donc il faut les saisir par l'intuition (nous). La dialectique elle-même n'atteint pas l'intuition des principes, mais elle accomplit une tâche propédeutique qui nous aide à atteindre cette intuition.

On voit alors que l'interprétation propédeutique prétend révéler une certaine unité et stabilité dans la pensée d'Aristote. Selon cette interprétation, il n'y aurait aucune fracture entre l'Organon et la Métaphysique sur la question des rapports entre la science et la dialectique. Il ne faut donc pas rejeter l'interprétation propédeutique, à moins de trouver des objections fortes; et telles sont les objections que je cherche. J'espère montrer comment remplacer l'interprétation propédeutique par une interprétation (pour ainsi dire) "scientifique", selon laquelle les raisonnements de Gamma font partie intégrante de la science de l'être."

(1) Dans les sections I-II, je présente des questions que j'ai plus largement discutées dans Aristotle's First Principles, Oxford, 1988; voir surtout les chapitres 7-9 (avec des renseignements bibliographiques). Dans les sections III-VI je propose des corrections et des développements. Après avoir écrit Aristotle's First Principles, j'ai lu la discussion très provocante de Gamma par Barbara Cassin et Michel Narcy, La Décision du sens, Paris, 1988; mais, pour la circonstance présente, je ne réponds pas aux thèses principales de ce livre (qui portent surtout sur la section VI, infra).

(2) Pour une défense de l'interprétation propédeutique, voir, par exemple, W. D. Ross, Aristotle's Metaphysics, Oxford, 1924, p. 252; M. Frede, Essays in Ancient Philosophy, Oxford, 1987, p. 94.

(3) Cette objection est soutenue par P. Aubenque, Le Problème de l'être chez Aristote, Paris, 1962, p. 299: "L'opposition de la dialectique et de la philosophie serait donc justifiée si la philosophie parvenait à se constituer comme science selon le type défini dans les Analytiques."

22. Louis, Pierre. 1956. "Observations sur le vocabulaire technique d'Aristote." In Mélanges de philosophie Grecque offerts a Mgr Diés par ses élèves, ses collègues, ses amis, 141-150. Paris: Vrin.

23. Mansion, Augustin. 1956. "L'objet de la science philosophique suprème d'aprés Aristote, Metaphysique, E 1." In Mélanges de philosophie Grecque offerts a Mgr Diés par ses élèves, ses collègues, ses amis, 151-168. Paris: Vrin.

24. ———. 1958. "Philosophie première, philosophie seconde et métaphysique chez Aristote." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 56:165-221.

25. Marion, Jean-Luc. 1999. "La science toujours recherchée et toujours manquante." In La métaphysique. Son histoire, sa critique, ses enjeux, edited by Narbonne, Jean-Marc and Langlois, Luc, 13-36. Paris: Vrin.

26. Moreau, Joseph. 1977. "Remarques sur l'ontologie aristotelicienne." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 75:577-611.

"The science of being "qua" being dwells on dialectic and from the examination of the conditions of speaking draws the priority of substance towards other categories. Then the analysis of sensible substance exhibits an "aporia" which, through the distinction of act and potency, leads to the concept of immaterial substance or pure act. Theology is connected with ontology by means of "ousiology", and the consideration of hierarchised substances, according with degrees of act and potency, is a way for understanding the role of cognition within realistic ontology."

27. Muralt, André de. 1963. "La genèse de la Métaphysique. La primauté de l'être en perspective aristotélicienne." Revue de Theologie et de Philosophie no. 13:185-204.

28. Narbonne, Jean-Marc. 1997. "Aristote et la question de l'être en tant qu'être. Réflexions à propos de The Question of Being de S. Rosen." Archives de Philosophie no. 60:5-24.

29. Rutten, Christian. 1992. "La stylometrie et la question de 'Métaphysique' K." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 90:486-496.

"Les méthodes de la stylométrie fournissent des indications non négligeables concernant la chronologie relative des parties de la Métaphysique et leur authenticité aristotélicienne. Le passage de Met. K 7 (1064 a 28 - 1064 b 14), où la science de l'être en tant qu'être se trouve assimilée à la science de l'être divin, est plus proche, du point de vue de la stylométrie, de la Métaphysique de Théophraste que de celle d'Aristote. Il en va de même pour Met. Kappa 10. En revanche, pour les autres chapitres, le classement fondé sur la stylométrie correspond à l'évolution que paraît avoir connue, à divers égards, la pensée d'Aristote."

30. ———. 2001. "Science de l'être et théologie dans la Métaphysique d'Aristote. Essai d'analyse génétique." Kernos no. 11:227-235.

Vol. Suppl. 11: Képoi. De la religion à la philosophie. Mélanges offerts à André Motte, edités par Édouard Delruelle et Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge.

31. Stevens, Annick. 2000. L'ontologie d'Aristote au carrefour du logique et du réel. Paris: Vrin.

32. Verbeke, Gerard. 1952. "La doctrine de l'être dans la Métaphysique d'Aristote." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 50:471-475.

Compte-rendu de Joseph Owens, The Doctrine of Being in Aristotle's Metaphysics (first edition, 1951).

33. Verbeke, Gérard. 1983. "L'objet de la métaphysique d'Aristote selon des études récentes." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 1:5-30.

34. Weil, Eric. 1967. "Quelques remarques sur le sens et l'intention de la Métaphysique d'Aristote." Studi Urbinati di Storia, Filosofia e Letteratura no. 41:831-852.

Deutsche Studien

1. Ambühl, Hans. 1994. "Metaphysik Und Ontologie Bei Aristoteles." Freibürger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie no. 41:223-228

"This is a review of five articles on Aristotelian metaphysics ("Revue Philosophique de Louvain", 90, November 1992). Main results are: 1) there is no conflict between ontology and theology, because in its object the latter also comprises the causes of the being qua being. 2) in the formula "being qua being" the "qua being" does not stand for a specific reality, but for a formal point of view directing the investigation. 3) the train of thought in book Z leads to the establishment of the fundamental structure of being, i.e., the "being in itself". 4) ontology and henology (theory of the one) complement each other; the former relates to reality, the latter provides the corresponding methodical structure. 5) the application of stylometric methods and an in-depth analysis of book K show certain traditional interpretations in a new light."

2. Aubenque, Pierre. 1961. "Aristoteles Und Das Problem Der Metaphysik." Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung no. 15:321-333.

3. Brentano, Franz. 1862. Von Der Mannigfachen Bedeutung Des Seienden Nach Aristoteles. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder

Neuauflage herausgegeben von Werner Sauer, mit einem Vorwort von Thomas Binder und Arkadiusz Chrudzimski zur Ausgabe der veröffentlichten Schriften, eingeleitet von Mauro Antonelli und Werner Sauer, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014.

4. Jaeger, Werner. 1923. Aristoteles: Grundlegung Einer Geschichte Seiner Entwicklung. Berlin: Weidmann

English translation by R. Robinson, Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of his Development, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934.

5. ———. 1934. Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development. Oxford: Clarendon Pres

English translation by R. Robinson, of Aristoteles: Grundlegung einer Geschichte seiner Entwicklung (1923).

6. Kamlah, Wilhelm. 1967. "Aristoteles Wissenschaft Vom Seienden Als Seienden Und Die Gegenwartige Ontologie." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 49:269-297

"Methodische Vorbemerkung.

Die folgende Untersuchung ist entstanden in Anknüpfung an die von Paul Lorenzen und mir soeben veröffentlichte Logische Propädeutik (LP). Es soll gezeigt werden, wie mit den sprachlichen Mitteln dieser Logik ein bedeutsamer Text unserer philosophischen Tradition interpretiert werden kann (Buch Gamma der Metaphysik des Aristoteles), und zwar unter sparsamem Einsatz dieser Mittel und unter radikalem Verzicht auf die entartete Terminologie unserer traditionellen Bildungssprache. (Weitere hermeneutische Hinweise im Text selbst und LP V, 5 Ende.)

Übersicht:

1. Die heutige Ontologie

2. Die 'erste' Wissenschaft

3. Das Seiende und das Eine, die Gegensätze

4. Der Grundsatz vom Widerspruch, Sein als Wahrsein

5. Das Einzelding als das vorrangig Seiende

6. Ist die antike Ontologie heute wiederholbar?" p. 269

7. Lutz-Bachmann, Matthias. 1990. "Die Frage Nach Dem Gegenstand Der Metaphysik Bei Aristoteles. Ontologie Und Theologie." In Beiträge Zum Problem Der Metaphysik Bei Aristoteles Und Thomas Von Aquin, edited by Lutz-Bachmann, Matthias, 9-35. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

8. Merlan, Philip. 1957. "Metaphysik: Name Und Gegenstand." Journal of Hellenic Studies no. 77:87-92

Nachdruck: Philip Merlan, Kleine Philosophische Schriften, Herausgegeben von Franciszka Merlan mit einem begeitwort von Hans Wagner, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1976 pp. 189-194.

9. Natorp, Paul. 1887. "Thema Und Disposition Der Aristotelischen Metaphysik." Philosophische Monatschefte no. 24:37-65;-540-574.

10. ———. 1888. "Über Aristotele's Metaphysik K 1-8." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 1:178-193.

11. Reiner, Hans. 1954. "Die Entstehung Und Usprüngliche Bedeutung Des Names Metaphysik." Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung no. 8:210-237

Nachdruck: Fritz-Peter Hager (Hrsg.), Metaphysik und Theologie des Aristoteles, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969 pp. 139-174.

English translation: The Emergence and Original Meaning of the Name "Metaphysics" in: Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 13, 2, 1990 pp. 23-53.

12. Routila, Lauri. 1969. Die Aristotelische Idee Der Ersten Philosophie. Untersuchungen Zur onto-Theologischen Verfassung Der Metaphysik Des Aristoteles. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliographical resources on some logical and metaphysical works of Aristotle

Lexicon

Readers with Greek will find indispensable:

Hermann Bonitz, Index aristotelicum, First edition Berlin, 1870, reprinted by Walter de Gruyter, 1961.

A new Greek Lexicon of Aristotle's works is now available:

Aristotle. Edited by Roberto Radice, Electronic edition by Roberto Bombacigno, Milano: Biblia, 2005.

Readers without knowledge of Greek can see:

Wilson Organ Troy, An Index to Aristotle in English Translation, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949 (reprinted in 1966, New York: Gordian Press).

From the Preface: "It is well-known that the Corpus Aristotelicum contains many passages which throw light on one another, but there has been no method by which the student of Aristotle can easily discover this interrelationship. Bonitz' word index is of great help to advanced students of Aristotle in locating terms, but it is of little value to those who are interested in attaining a well-rounded view of Aristotle's analysis of a particular subject. Students of Plato find Abbott's index to Jowett's translations of the dialogues invaluable; but students of Aristotle, who are in much greater need of a synoptic apparatus, have no such work to which they may refer. Consequently, Aristotle is often studied as a biologist, or an orator, or a metaphysician, or an art critic, or a political and moral philosopher without due attention being given to the light thrown upon a particular view by his other works. When approached in this manner Aristotle is open to unnecessary misinterpretations; for example, he has been unduly Christianized by those who have attempted to comment upon the Politics or the Poetics without appreciating the relevance of his Ethics and Metaphysics. The intricacies of his terminology and the variety of extant translations add to the difficulty. This English topical index should aid not only the philosopher, but also the student of letters, politics, ethics, or psychology who seeks to evaluate Aristotle's contribution in a specific field.

In the preparation of this index the eleven volume English translation edited by W. D. Ross and J. A. Smith and published by the Oxford University Press (1908-1931) was used. The page numbering is that of the Berlin Academy edition of the Greek text (1831-1870) edited by Immanuel Bekker. This pagination is listed in the margins of the Oxford translations and is likewise indicated in most translations of Aristotle's works. In this pagination, 184 b 32, for example, refers to line 32 of the second column on page 1284 of the text."

Critical editions and translations of Aristotle's Categories

Greek text

1. Aristotle. 1844. Aristotelis Organon graece. Lipsiae: Sumtibus Hahnianis.

Novis codicum auxiliis adiutus recognovit, scholiis ineditis et commentario instruxit Theodorus Waitz.

Pars prior 1844: Categoriae, Hermeneutica, Analytica priora. pp. XXXII, 540; Pars posterior 1846: Analytica posteriora, Topica. pp. X, 599.

Reprinted Aalen, Scientia Verlag 1965 and Dubuque, Iowa : Wm. C. Brown Reprint Library 1962 (?).

Index of the Categories: De codicibus graecis Organi, pp. 1-29; Scholia ad Categoria, pp. 30-38; Commentarius, pp. 265-322.

2. ———. 1949. Aristotelis Categoriae et Liber De interpretatione. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxit Lorenzo Minio-Paluello.

3. ———. 2001. [Catégories]. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Texte établi et traduit par Richard Bodéüs (Élements de bibliographie: pp. CXCI-CCXV).

4. Colin, Bernard, and Rutten, Christian, eds. 1993. Aristote. Categoriae. Index verborum Listes de fréquence. Liège: C.I.P.L.

English translations

1. Aristotle. 1963. Aristotle's Categories and De interpretatione. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Translated with notes and glossary by John Lloyd Ackrill.

2. ———. 1980. Aristotle's Categories and Propositions (De interpretatione). Grinnell: Peripatetic Press.

Translated with commentaries and glossary by Hippocrates G. Apostle.

French translations

1. Arstote. 1983. Les Attributions (catégories). Le texte aristotélicien et les prolegomènes d'Ammonios d'Hermeias. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Présentées, traduits et annotées par Yvan Pelletier.

2. ———. 2002. Catégories. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

Présentation, traduction du Grec et commentaires par Frédérique Ildefonse et Jean Lallot.

3. ———. 2001. [Catégories]. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Texte établi et traduit par Richard Bodéüs (Élements de bibliographie: pp. CXCI-CCXV).

4. ———. 2007. Catégories. Sur l'interprétation. Organon I-II. Paris: GF Flammarion.

Introduction géenérale à l'Organon par Pierre Pellegrin.

> Introduction, traduction, notes et index des Catégories par Pierre Pellegrin et Michel Crubellier.

> Introduction, traduction, notes et index de Sur l'interprétation par Catherine Dalimier.

Italian translations

1. Aristotele. 1955. Organon. Torino: Einaudi.

Introduzione, traduzione e note di Giorgio Colli.

> Ristampa in tre volumi: Bari, Laterza, 1970.

2. ———. 1989. Categorie. Milano: Rizzoli.

Introduzione, traduzione e commento di Marcello Zanatta (Bibliografia: pp. 271-298).

German translations

1. Aristoteles. 1984. Kategorien. Berlin: Akademie-Varlag.

Übersetzt und erläutert von Klaus Oehler (Bibliographie: pp. 120-151).

2. ———. 1998. Kategorien. Hermeneutik, oder vom spraclichen Ausdruck (De interpretatione). Hamburg: Meiner.

Herausgegeben, ubersetzt, mit Einleitungen und Anmerkungen versehen von Hans Gunter Zekl.

Spanish translations

1. Aristóteles. 1988. Tratados de lógica: Órganon. Madrid: Editorial Gredos.

Vol. 1: Categorías; Tópicos; Sobre las refutaciones sofísticas; Vol.2: Sobre la interpretación; Analíticos primeros; Analíticos segundos.

> Introducciones, traducciones y notas per Manuel Candel Sanmartín.

2. ———. 1999. Categorías. De Interpretatione. Porfirio: Isagoge. Madrid: Tecnos.

Introducción, traducción y notas de A. García Suárez, L. M. Valdés Villanueva y J. Velarde Lombraña.

Portuguese translations

1. Aristóteles. 2004. Categorias. Goiânia (Brasil): Editora Alternativa.

Traduçao do grego clássico, introduçao e notas feitas por José Veríssimo Teixeira da Mata.

Critical editions and translations of Aristotle's De interpretatione

(In preparation)

Bibliographical resources on Aristotle's Metaphysics

On Aristotle's Metaphysics the most complete bibliography is:

Roberto Radice e vari collaboratori, La 'Metafisica' di Aristotle nel XX secolo. Bibliografia ragionata e sistematica, Seconda edizione riveduta, corretta e ampliata, Presentazione di Giovanni Reale, Milano: Vita e Pensiero 1997.

English translation: Roberto Radice and Richard Davies, Aristotle's Metaphysics. Annotated bibliography of the Twentieth-Century Literature, Leiden: Brill 1997.

From the Foreword by Giovanni Reale: "The historiography of philosophy, especially today, with the huge and unpredictable growth in publication, has need of Annotated bibliography. Aiming to avoid the Scylla of partialness and the Charybdis of mere cataloguing, the present volume aims not merely to collect most, but to describe much, of the astonishing amount of work that Aristotle's Metaphysics has stimulated and continues to stimulate in our century.Roberto Radice undertook the labour of putting this bibliography together more than five years ago, and has worked at it tirelessly and with great efficiency ever since, producing the first Italian edition in 1996. This sold out in less than a year, and the second, up-dated, edition appeared in 1997. It is on this latter that Richard Davies has based his translation. My hope is that the reader will appreciate not only their vision of the importance of the instrument they have made available, but also the commitment and passion that they and the other collaborators have brought to this undertaking.

The result of the editors' collaboration with the team of more than forty scholars world wide is a work that will surely be indispensable to anyone seeking to investigate the Metaphysics with an open mind and without the blinkers of methodological or theoretical preconceptions. I am confident, therefore, that Aristotle's masterpiece will be more fruitfully exploited and more clearly seen for what it is-one of the great and abiding legacies of ancient Greece."

Critical editions of the Book Gamma of Aristotle's Metaphysics

1. Ross, William David. 1924. Aristotle's Metaphysics. A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2. Jaeger, Werner. 1957. Aristotelis Metaphysica. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

3. Plezia, Marian, ed. 1977. Aristotelis Privatorum Scriptorum Fragmenta. Leipzig: Teubner.

4. Gigon, Olof, ed. 1987. Aristoteles Opera. III. Librorum deperditorum fragmenta. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

5. Cassin, Barbara, and Narcy, Michel, eds. 1989. La Decision du sens. Le livre "Gamma" de la "Métaphysique" d'Aristote. Paris: Vrin.

Introduction, texte, traduction et commentaire.

> Traduzione italiana: La decisione di significare. Il libro Gamma della Metafisica, edizione italiana a cura di Stefano Maso, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1997.

6. Hecquet-Devienne, Myriam. 2008. Aristote. Métaphysique Gamma. Édition, traduction, études. Louvain-la-Neuve: Éditions Peeters.

Introduction, texte grec et traduction par M. Hecquet-Devienne.

> Onze études réunies par Annick Stevens.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The Rediscovery of the Corpus Aristotelicum and the Birth of Aristotelianism

The edition of Aristotle's works by Andronicus of Rhodes

"We know that Aristotle’s death in 322 B.C. left in the hands of his immediate disciples an impressive series of texts unedited and without determinate classification.(1) As F. Wehrli has suggested,(2) the very nature of the texts (joined to the difficulty of the message which they contain) was perhaps the principal cause of what one must call the decadence of the Peripatos during the Hellenistic period. Still the fact remains that the rebirth of Aristotelianism in the first century before our era coincides with the labors of Andronicus of Rhodes, who obtained a first-rate edition of the principal so-called “acroamatic” texts [writings thought to have served as the basis for oral presentations] of Aristotle, of which Andronicus drew up a new catalog.(3) Its arrangement supposes an organizing principle about which we should inquire.(4) The historian who desires to measure the originality of Andronicus’ contribution is forced to study the early lists of Aristotle’s works preserved by Diogenes Laertius and the anonymous author of the Vita Menagiana, which permit us to ascertain the condition of the Corpus a good century at least before the catalogs of Andronicus were drawn up.(5) But the comparison of these earlier materials with the catalogs of Andronicus is not without difficulties. For no Greek text has preserved the latter for us. Perfectly known in Plutarch’s time (6) and probably still used by Porphyry and the Neoplatonists,(7) these catalogs, if one believes the tradition, were integrated (in an abridged form?) into a general work on Aristotle’s life and writings composed by a certain Ptolemy.(8) Thanks to Ptolemy, at first translated into Syriac,(9) they then penetrated the Arab world and it is there that we can make our acquaintance with them in the parallel editions of Ibn al Qifti (twelfth-thirteenth centuries) and Ibn Abi Usaibi'a (thirteenth century).(10) A section of the lists which these authors offer us has every chance of reproducing the work of Andronicus; it indexes the principal titles of the modern Corpus as it is edited, for example, by I. Bekker.(11) It is a section which has no parallels in the earlier lists and thus constitutes an exceptional document." (pp. 111-112)

Notes

(1) Cf. Düring, Aristoteles. Darstellung und interpretation des Denkens, Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1966, 35 ff.

(2) F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles, Text und Kommentar, Bâle, 1959, 96. On this subject see my remarks in Bodéüs, "En marge de la théologie aristotélicienne", Revue Philosophique de Louvain, 73, 1975, 5-33.

(3) Cf. Moraux, Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen, Berlin, 1973, 58-94.

(4) Cf. Littig Andronikos von Rodhos: I. Das Leben des Andronikos und seine Anordnung der Aristotelischen Schriften München, 1890, 34ff., and Diels "Zur Textgeschichte der Aristotelischen Physik"Berichte der Berliner Akademie der Wlssenschaften 1882, 1-42. pp. 2-3. “It was actually Andronicus' edition which laid the basis for the view that Aristotle was striving for a closed philosophical system" (Düring 1966, 42).

(5) Diogenes Laertius V 22-27 (cf. Düring Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, Stockholm, 1957, 41-51, 67-69) and Vita Menagiana = Vita Hesychii, published in Düring 1957, 83-89. As P. Moraux notes (1973, 60 n. 5), the hypothesis that the lists go back to Andronicus himself (V. Rose, J. Bernays, H. Diels, A. Gerke, ...) is today explicitly contradicted by what we know about the Rhodian.

(6) Plutarch, Life of Sulla 26 (Düring 1957, 414 [74 b]): τοὺς νῦν φερομένους πίνακας.

(7) Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 24 (Düring 1957, 414 [75 g]). Cf.H.-R. Schwyzer "Plotinos" In Paulys Realencyclopedie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft XXI, 1, 1951, col. 486-87.

(8) On this individual, see: Dihle "Dei Platoniker Ptolemaios", Hermes 85:314-25, 1957, 314-25; Moraux 1973, 60 n. 6 (with discussion and bibliography); and Düring 1957 20B-210.

(9) Probabilities established in Lippert Studien auf dem Gebiete der Griechisch-Arabischen Übersetzungsliteratur Braunschweig 1894; cf. Littig 1890, 22-23.

(10) A. Müller "Das arabische Verzeichniss der Aristotelischen Schriften", In Morgenländische Forschungen. Festschrift H. L. Fleischer, 1-32. Leipzig, 1875, no. 34-35. With this scholar, the Arabic text is preceded (pp. 18-22) by a reconstruction of Ptolemy's Greek πίναξ; a similar attempt working from Ibn Abi Usaibi’a is found in Düring 1957, 221-31. Cf. Moraux Les listes anciennes des d'Aristote, Louvain 1951, 289ff. and less recently: Baumstark, Syrisch-arabische Biographien des Aristotele Leipzig, 1898, 61-70; Plezia De Andronici Rhodii studii aristotelicis Krekow, 1946, 26ff., and Littig 1890, 38-42. A Latin translation by M. Steinschnelder is found in Aristotelis Opera Omnia, t. V {Berlin, 1870), 1469 (cf. Rose, Aristotelis qui ferebantur librorum fragmenta 2).

From: Richard Bodéüs, The Political Dimensions of Aristotle's Ethics, translated by Jan Edward Garrett, Albany: State University of New York Press 1993.

The story of Aristotle's Library

"In 307 the Peripatos met with a decisive catastrophe. Demetrius Poliorcetes captured Athens nearly without striking a blow. Demetrius of Phaleron escaped to Thebes and from there to Alexandria. The Athenians who had constantly been hostile towards the pro-Macedonian Peripatos, were easily enticed into adopting a decree, compelling all non-Athenian philosophers to leave Athens. Ptolemy Soter now tried to persuade Theophrastus to move Aristotle's school to Alexandria. He declined, but Strato and Demetrius accepted the invitation. Strato became tutor of the young Philadelphus: thus pursuing the tradition of Aristotle, and Demetrius advised Soter in planning for the Mouseion and the library. Soter was obviously very anxious to uphold the traditional relations with Aristotle's school. He was particularly interested in acquiring for his new library as many of the written works of Aristotle he could lay hand on. So it happened that Alexandria rapidly became a seat of learning, marked by the scientific tradition from the Peripatos. But whereas Aristotle as ό νους τής διατριβής had been able to lead and unite all branches of study, specialization, often in rather narrow tracks, became the rule in Alexandria. After the catastrophe of 307 Eudemus returned to his home in Rhodes. It is more than probable that he brought with him copies of the Aristotelian school literature, and I have already mentioned his correspondence with Theophrastus on this matter. Praxiphanes, one of Theophrastus' disciples, was also from Rhodes. Among later Rhodians whose writings betray intimate knowledge of Aristotle’s writings may be mentioned Hieronymus, Panaetius and Posidonius. From Rhodes came also Andronicus, of whom I shall speak presently. Hieronymus played an important rôle in popularizing Aristotelian doctrines. He was highly appreciated and utilized by Cicero and Plutarch. What Panaetius and Posidonius did as intermediaries of Aristotle’s doctrines', and philosophy can hardly be overrated.

Cicero’s knowledge of Aristotle came this way. When he was in Rhodes and listened to Posidonius, he certainly did not miss the opportunity to visit its rich library. In 287 Theophrastus died, and was succeeded by Strato. He bequeathed his and Aristotle’s library, which was the private possession of the σχολάρχης, to his kinsman Neleus (τά βιβλία πάντα Νηλεϊ Diog. V 52). Up to this point the tradition is undisputed. As to whatl happened with the library after Neleus had taken possession of it, there is complete disagreement. I limit myself to stating briefly how I interpret the evidence.(1) We know from the testaments of Strato and Lyco that a distinction was made between τα βιβλία άνεγτωομνένα and τά άίνέκδοτα or ά αυτοί γεγράφαμεν,(2) i.e. between copies of published books and the author’s own un-edited manuscripts. Neleus sold to Philadelphus Aristotle’s and Theophrastus’ library of published books, including works of both philosophers, but kept Aristotle's manuscripts and brought them with him to his home in Skepsis.

In his eagerness to obtain a collection as complete as possible of Aristotle’s writings, Philadelphus bought books from all quarters. We are thus told that the library possessed no less than 40 copies of Aristotle's Analytics, only four of which were regarded as representing the pure Aristotelian version. We have hardly any right to doubt, that a complete collection of Aristotle's writings, both the dialogues and the school literature, belonged to the original stock of the Brucheion. The πίναχες contained a πίναξ των φιλοσόφων, fr. 438 Pfeiffer, and we are told that "Ερμιππος δ έν τοΐς Θεοφράστου μαθηταϊς καταλέγει which is a strong support for the view that Hermippus ± 200 B. C. composed the catalogue of the works of Theophrastus. This catalogue is alphabetical, whereas the arrangement of the catalogue of Aristotle’s writings is more or less systematic.(3) It is probably older, and I suppose that Hermippus incorporated it in his biography of Aristotle, without essentially changing its character." (pp. 59-61)

Notes

(1) Strab. XIII 608, Plut. Sulla 26, Luk. Adv. ind. 4, Athen. 3 ab aqns 214d, Suda s.v. Συλλας.

(2) Diogenes Laert. V 62 and 73.

From: Ingemar Düring, "Notes on the History of the Transmission of Aristotle's Writings", Acta Universitatis Gotoburgensis 1950, pp. 37-70. (Reprinted as second study in: Aristotle and His Influence: Two Studies, New York: Garland 1987.)

"As it is recounted both in ancient sources and by modern scholars, the history of the Peripatetic School after Aristotle and Theophrastus may be summed up in one word: decline. Some accounts, with special pleading or a begrudging tone, may admit that Theophrastus’ immediate successor, Straton of Lampsakos, was a somewhat worthy heir of the school (cf. Diogenes Laertius V, 64; Cicero, De Finibus V, 5.13); but otherwise ancient (1) and modern (2) authorities agree that the Peripatos declined drastically during the Hellenistic Period. Wilamowitz stated the prevailing view in its most extreme form, when he spoke — in a remark which is often quoted with approval — of “the death-sleep of Aristotelian Philosophy” beginning with Straton’s successor Lykon.(3) Despite the unanimity of opinion, one might nevertheless be tempted to question whether or not the Athenian Peripatos did decline so much. For there is an enormous variety of work produced in the Hellenistic Period which goes under the name “Peripatetic”: “Peripatetic biography,” “Peripatetic literary criticism,” “Peripatetic art criticism,” and “Peripatetic historiography.” Most of this activity, however, did not in fact go on in the school at Athens. The essential distinction to be made about the label “Peripatetic” in the Hellenistic Period is stated very precisely by K. O. Brink:

The name Peripatetikos, which by the middle of the third century denoted a member of the Peripatetic School in Athens, changed its significance about that time. With the wider influence of Peripatetic studies it is not only used for the Athenian School but can also denote any writer of biography or literary history connected with Alexandria. The two non-Peripatetics to whom the name appears to have been applied first are two pupils of Callimachus, Hermippos and Satyros.(4)

Since the Peripatos under Aristotle established the systematic treatise, particularly in biography and literary history, as a new form of writing, any Alexandrian author of such a work might claim the title Peripatetikos — whether or not he had studied in the Athenian Peripatos and whether or not he composed his treatise along lines which appear to be in some sense “Aristotelian.” As Brink has shown, much of the so-called “Peripatetic” work done at Alexandria was in fact anti-Aristotelian in intention.(5) Not only did these “Neo-Peripatetics” reject Aristotelian principles in their biographies and literary treatises but they also claimed to be doing better what Aristotle and his school had inaugurated. Polemical opposition rather than descendance is what the use of the title Peripatetikos signifies among the Alexandrians. Far from being an Alexandrian extension indicating the vitality of the Athenian Peripatos in the third and second centuries B.C., the “Peripatetic” works of Hermippos, Satyros, Sotion, Herakleides Lembos, and other Alexandrians represent an attempt to usurp and to surpass the traditions inherited by Aristotle’s school in Athens." (pp. 135-137)

Notes

(1) In Cicero's De Finibus (V, 4-5) a survey of the Peripatetic School is put into the mouth of Piso, whose contention is that after Aristotle and Theophrastus the Peripatetics “declined so much that they seem to have been born of themselves.” Strabo, who had studied Peripatetic philosophy with Boethos of Sidon at Rome (XVI, 2.24), says that “the earlier men from the Peripatos, after Theophrastus, were unable to study philosophy effectively but instead managed only to spout tedious commonplaces” (XIII, 1.54). Diogenes Laertius reveals that a number of schemes for treating the history of Greek philosophy ended the Peripatetic tradition with Theophrastus (I, 14-15). The Roman editor of Aristotle, Andronicus of Rhodes, also had a very low opinion of the Athenian Peripatetics after Theophrastus. For a reconstruction of Andronicus' critique of the school, see M. Plezia, De Andronicii Rhodii studiis aristotelicis (Krakow, 1946) pp. 10-15.

(2) According to I. Düring, “it is not merely exaggeration, when Cicero says [of the later Peripatetics] ita degenerapt ut ipsi ex se nati esse videantur; their teaching consisted of endless repetition of their master's words, just as in the school of Ammonios seven hundred years later” (Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition (1957), p. 394). The Peripatetic's are often dismissed with little or no comment even in general works on Hellenistic philosophy and literature; cf. F. A. Wright, A History of Later Greek Literature (New York, 1932) p. 128: “Of the Peripatetics little need be said; after the death of Theophrastus they abandoned pure philosophy for the collection of historical and scientific facts, and by the middle of the third century their work was over.” E. Zeller had a slightly higher opinion of the Hellenistic Peripatos, but only slightly; cf. History of Greek Philosophy VI, Aristotle and the Earlier Peripatetics, vol. 2, p. 500.

(3) “Der Totenschlaf der aristotelischen Philosophie,” Wilamowitz, Antigónos von Karystos, p. 83; cf. F. Susemihl, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur in der Alexandrinerzeit I (Leipzig, 1891) p. 147.

(4) K. O. Brink “Callimachus and Aristotle: An Inquiry into Callimachus’ Pros Praxiphanen” Classical Quarterly 40 (1946) p. 11; cf. art. “Peripatos” in Pauly-Wissowa (Suppl. band 7) col. 905. The distinction between “Peripatetics” and Alexandrian “Neo-Peripatetics” is usefully observed in the article by A. Podlecki, “The Peripatetics as Literary Critics,” Phoenix 23 (1969) pp. 114-137.

From: John Patrick Lynch, Aristotle's School. A Study of a Greek Educational Institution. Berkeley: University of California Press 1972.

"Reasons for the decline in the Peripatos have often been suggested. Some scholars are content with attributing the decline to a general "failure of nerve" characteristic of the Hellenistic Period.(19) But the difficulty with this kind of explanation is quite obvious. Theophrastus' directorship of the school came in the Hellenistic Period, and two of the schools -- the Stoa and the Garden -- were founded and flourished at the beginning of the age. Not long after the Peripatos declined never to rise again, the Stoa and the Academy were bolstered by their "second founders," Chrysippos and Arkesilaos. The "failure of nerve" thesis fails to account for the fact that the later history of the Peripatos was so different.

The most recent and perhaps most authoritative solution to the problem has been offered by F. Wehrli in his "Rückblick der Peripatos in vorchristlicher Zeit" (Die Schule des Aristoteles, Heft 10 ( Basel, 1959; 2nd ed., 1969 pp. 95-128). Although Wehrli's treatment of the question is very brief, his views are based on an elaborate re-edition, with commentary, of all the fragmentary Peripatetikoi in the pre-Christian era. Wehrli's sketch of the process of decline in the school convincingly demonstrates the prevailing view of the Hellenistic Peripatos after Theophrastus; his explanation for the phenomenon is not, however, equally persuasive.

It is Wehrli's contention that since Aristotle's philosophical outlook changed considerably over the time between his earlier dialogues and his later systematic treatises, the Peripatos failed to develop an orthodoxy which subsequent members of the school could follow. Because it was difficult, Wehrli argues, for the Peripatetics of the third century B.C. to reconcile the teaching of Aristotle's esoteric treatises with that of the exoteric dialogues, the school ended up in confusion and, in an eclectic spirit, turned to sources of clarification outside the confines of the Lyceum. And these sources proved to be influences of the worst sort, such as those tendencies of the age which emphasized the marvelous over the logical. As far as the apparent split between the earlier and later Aristotle was concerned, all later Peripatetics chose one to the exclusion of the other. Most opted for the direction suggested by Aristotle's exoteric writings and addressed themselves to subjects of popular appeal; those who followed the lead of the esoteric writings failed to recognize the importance of keeping larger systems in mind and as a result ended up pursuing a banal empiricism. The result of all these developments was the decline, or -- to use Wehrli's stronger word -- the "disintegration," of the Peripatos until its revival in the time of Andronicus of Rhodes.

Wehrli's interpretation seeks to explain the decline of the school purely on the literary level. That is to say, Wehrli tried only to isolate tendencies in the writings of Aristotle and his successors which, in his opinion, led to disintegration; he did not consider other modes of explanation which might help to account for the phenomenon and which might, in addition, suggest causes for the literary tendencies themselves. In brief, the features which Wehrli points out in the writings of the later Peripatetics seem more symptomatic of degeneration than causal. Furthermore -- and equally important -- the problem of decline in the Peripatetic School is more than a literary problem, just as the school itself was more than a literary phenomenon.

(...)

Several events in the early history of the Peripatos as an institution suggest much less subtle and more convincing reasons why Aristotle's school at Athens declined in the third century B.C. An important factor was undoubtedly the loss of the school library, which after Theophrastus' death was taken by Neleus of Skepsis from Athens to the Troad. (20)

Strabo in fact argues that this was the reason why the Peripatos became so insignificant in the period after Theophrastus:

The effect of this [the loss of the library] was that the earlier men from the Peripatos after Theophrastus had no books at all, with few exceptions, mostly exoteric works; hence, instead of studying philosophy effectively, they were able only to spout tedious commonplaces. ( Strabo, XIII, 1.54; cf. Plutarch, Sulla 26)

Modern scholarship, however, has shown that Strabo's view of Peripatetic decline is simplistic for a number of reasons. Later Peripatetics at Athens, although only fragments of their works survive, show knowledge of most esoteric works, as do some other Athenian philosophers in the Hellenistic Period.(21) Despite the implications of Strabo's statement, it is not reasonable to suppose that the library of Neleus contained the only copies of the pragmateiai written under Aristotle and Theophrastus. Other members of the school doubtless had copies of esoteric works which interested them and could have gotten copies of others if they had some incentive to do so. It is known, for example, that when Eudemos left the Peripatos in the time of Theophrastus and went to Rhodes, he had in his possession a copy of Aristotle's Physics, some readings in which he asked Theophrastus by letter to check in the school text (fr. 6, Wehrli ); it is probable that Eudemos also had a copy of the Ethics, a version of which he worked up into a different form, and copies of other treatises as well.(22) Straton, who took over the Peripatos after Neleus' departure, was able to build up and pass on to his successor a library which probably contained personal copies of some of the school literature ( cf. Straton's will in Diogenes Laertius V, 62).

P. Moraux has made a brilliant and plausible case that the catalogue of Aristotle's writings preserved by Diogenes Laertius (V, 22-27) is a copy of the works available in the library of the Peripatos during the time of Ariston of Keos, the second-century B.C. scholar who, Moraux argues, was responsible for drawing up the list as part of his biography of Aristotle.(23) And Diogenes Laertius' catalogue, though full of Aristotle's dialogues and rhetorical works and deficient in the works on natural science, does include a large number of the esoteric treatises.(24) It appears that by the third century B.C. multiple copies of books were increasingly available, and it became common for cities and private individuals like Eratosthenes ( Strabo II, 1.5) to amass considerable libraries of their own.(25) In building up the Alexandrian Library, Ptolemy II Philadelphos reportedly was able to buy from Neleus a complete set of the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus (Athenaeus I, 3a-b) (26)

Why were the members of the Peripatos content to do without works which they did not have? And why did they not build upon those which they are known to have had? The loss of the library was undoubtedly a serious inconvenience and could not help setting back somewhat the workings of a school which aimed to systematize the whole of human knowledge. But that loss alone cannot, as Strabo would have it, completely explain the decline of the Peripatos. A vital philosophical community could have done more than the Peripatetics after Theophrastus did to offset the loss of the systematic collection which Theophrastus willed to Neleus."

See the full analysis of the contents of Diogenes Laertius' list given by P. Moraux 1951 (above, n. 21) pp. 27-153.

On city libraries in the third century B.C., see E. A. Parsons, The Alexandrian Library (New York, 1952.) pp. 19-50. The testimonia to private and city libraries are gathered by J. Platthy, Sources on the Earliest Greek Libraries (Amsterdam, 1968). The proliferation of libraries in the third century B.C. implies the existence of multiple copies of books.

Athenaeus' statement is supported by Elias, In Cat. p. 107.11 = T 75p, p. 419, Miring; Philoponos, In Cat. pr. p. 7.16 = T 77c, p. 456, Dining. On the esoteric works available in the Alexandrian Library during the Hellenistic Period, see the article of E. Howald, "Die Schriftenverzeichnisse des Aristoteles and des Theophrast," Hermes 55 (1920) pp. 204-221, which also must be modified by the work of Moraux." (pp. 144-149)"

Notes

(19) This influential view of the Hellenistic Period was first developed by G. Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion (New York, 1912); cf. Murray's third edition, Five Stages of Greek Religion (New York, 1951) pp. 119-165.

(20) The story of Aristotle's library has often been recounted and includes many controversial details. The most detailed and readable study is perhaps that of J. Bidez, Un singulier naufrage littéraire dans l'antiquité (Bruxelles, 1943). The ancient evidence is assembled and discussed by Düring, Aristotle in the ancient biographical tradition. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell 1957, pp. 337-338, 382-384, 392-395, 412-425; E. Zeller V, Aristotle and the Earlier Peripatetics, vol. 1, pp. 137-160; and F. Susemihl, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur in der Alexandrinerzeit II, pp. 296301; cf. also A.-H. Chroust, "The Miraculous Disappearance and Recovery of the Corpus Aristotelicum," Classica et Mediaevalia 23 (1962) pp. 50-67 and R. Shute, On the History of the Process by which the Aristotelian Writings Arrived at their Present Form (Oxford, 1888), an excellent essay bringing together and sifting the results of research done in the nineteenth century. For a very illuminating overview of the complicated process by which Aristotle's writings were transmitted to the West, see I. Düring, "Von Aristoteles bis Leibnitz,"Antike and Abendland 4 (1954) 118-154 (reprinted in P. Moraux, ed., Aristoteles in der neueren Forschung [Darmstadt, 1968] pp. 250-313).

(21) E. Zeller (above, n. 20) reexamined the question of knowledge of the esoteric writings during the Hellenistic Period and argued that most of the Aristotelian Corpus must have been available at Athens and Alexandria after Theophrastus' death: "We may sum up the case by saying that of the genuine portions of the extant Corpus, there are only the works on the Parts, Genesis, and Movement of Animals, and the minor anthropological tracts, as to which we cannot show either express proof or high probability that they were in use after the disappearance of Theophrastus' library from Athens. Even as to these we have no reason to doubt it -- only we cannot positively prove it; and that, when we remember the fragmentary character of our knowledge of the philosophic literature of the period in question, is nothing strange' (p. 152). Zeller's discussion and conclusions must be modified somewhat by the work of P. Moraux, Les listes anciennes des d'Aristote (Louvain, 1951) especially pp. 312-321 (conclusions). But Moraux's work serves to confirm the general view that despite Strabo's statement to the contrary, a large number of esoteric works were available in the Hellenistic Period (see further below, n. 23 for the Aristotelian works in the library of Ariston of Keos). The esoteric works do not appear to have been studied or used very much, even in the Peripatos; but that is a different problem -- one directly connected with the decline of the school.

(22) It is commonly held that the Eudemian Ethics was so-called because it was a compilation of Aristotle's lectures on ethics by Eudemos, while the Nicomachean Ethics was a version compiled by Nikomachos. For a discussion of various theories about the relation between the two works, see W. Jaeger, Aristotle, pp. 228-258 and I. Düring, art. "Aristoteles" in Pauly-Wissowa (Suppl. band 11, 1968) cols. 282-287.

(23) P. Moraux, Les listes anciennes des d'Aristote, pp. 237-247. I. Düring has attempted to refute Moraux's thesis in favor of the traditional view that Diogenes Laertius' list reflects the one drawn up by Hermippos and contains the holdings of the second-century B.C. Alexandrian Library ("Ariston or Hermippos?"Classica et Mediaevalia 17 [1956] pp. 11-21). But Moraux's objections to Hermippos as author seem to me to be persuasive (pp. 221-233). Moraux's thesis has been strongly supported against Düring's objections by J. J. Keaney, "Two Notes on the Tradition of Aristotle's Writings,"American Journal of Philology 84 (1963) pp. 52-63.

From: John Patrick Lynch, Aristotle's School. A Study of a Greek Educational Institution. Berkeley: University of California Press 1972.

The recovery of Aristotle's works

"The difficulty of piercing the screen, sometimes very opaque, which is the Aristotelianism of so many centuries, based substantially on the thinking of a thousand and one more or less faithful "disciples," is doubled by a difficulty probably unique in its kind: the impossibility of always being able to determine exactly the sort of things the writings of the authentic Aristotelian Corpus are. For we suspect that scholars often have to deal with texts whose definitive form owes something to the work of Aristotle's disciples. We remain, on the other hand, powerless to determine always with precision the extent to which the products of their work continue to conform to the master's thinking or proceed, on the contrary, from a new idea. At least I can state very generally that the organization of the Corpus Aristotelicum, such as scholars after Andronicus of Rhodes have understood it, depends for them on the firmer and firmer conviction that Aristotle elaborated a philosophical system whose constituent parts are reflected in the arrangement of the different preserved treatises, as if their author had effectively "programmed" them from the perspective of systematic expression. Now, this is the one intention that we may hardly attribute to our philosopher. The project of expounding a genuine system is in fact, as I. Düring has written,(4) "typically Hellenistic but very un-Aristotelian." Such a claim will perhaps seem today the unavoidable result of Jaeger's explicit attempt to combat "scholastic idolatry,"(5) which regarded the work of the "master of those who know" as a genuine "summa," firmly articulated. But, independently of Jaeger, K. Praechter, for example, assures us that "a secure division of the philosophical disciplines according to a determinate principle does not occur in Aristotle"! (6) And it is obvious that Aristotle was not as concerned as his disciples were to propose a rigid system of sciences and to organize his writings systematically according to it.

This indeterminateness is obviously quite irksome for the interpreter who asks about the occasion for the project of Aristotle to which the texts catalogued under the titles Ethics and Politics correspond, and who finds himself dealing with a Corpus established by people who indeed thought that they could abolish such indeterminateness by recourse to the hypothesis that the philosopher conceived his project as formally expounding a genuine system. Moreover -- and this is a prime consideration whose significance I shall examine at great length -- the originality of Aristotle's project risks being masked by the interpretation or the importance given since antiquity to certain interpretive categories (human philosophy, practical science, ethics, etc.) in accounting for the approach of a series of texts integrated in the Corpus, itself conceived as a philosophical summa. The danger will appear considerable especially as these categories make reference to Aristotelian vocabulary.

To restore to the philosopher that which properly belongs to him is thus an extremely perilous task. Without hiding from ourselves either the difficulty of the undertaking or the limits beyond which everything is no more than a tissue of gratuitous hypotheses, it is important to state in the clearest way the particulars of the problem." (pp. 9-10, some notes omitted)

Notes

(4) Ingemar Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell 1957.

(5) Werner Jaeger, Aristotle. Fundamentals of the History of His Development, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1948.

From: Richard Bodéüs, The Political Dimensions of Aristotle's Ethics, translated by Jan Edward Garrett, Albany: State University of New York Press 1993.

"Strabo is the main source. There are supplementary texts, the most important of which is in Plutarch.(1) Here, first, are Strabo and Plutarch.

From Scepsis came the Socratics, Erastus and Coriscus, and also Coriscus' son, Neleus, a man who attended the lectures both of Aristotle and of Theophrastus, and who took over Theophrastus' library, which included Aristotle's. For Aristotle left his own library to Theophrastus, to whom he also entrusted the school. (Aristotle was the first man we know to have collected books, and he taught the kings of Egypt how to put a library together). Theophrastus left it to Neleus, who took it to Scepsis and left it to his successors. They were not philosophers and kept the books locked away and carelessly stored. When they heard that the Attalid kings, by whom their city was ruled, were eagerly searching for books in order to set up the library at Pergamum, they hid them underground in a sort of tunnel, where they were damaged by mildew and worms. Some time later the family sold the books of Aristotle and Theophrastus for a large sum to Apellicon of Teos. Apellicon was a bibliophile rather than a philosopher. That is why he tried to repair the worm-damage by transferring the writings to new manuscripts but did not complete them satisfactorily; and he published the books full of errors.

Thus it was that the older Peripatetics who came after Theophrastus did not possess the books at all -- except for a few, and in particular the exoteric works -- and so were not able to do any serious philosophy but merely declaimed generalities. Their successors -- once these books became available -- were better philosophers and better Aristotelians; yet they were obliged for the most part to speak at haphazard because of the number of mistakes.

Rome too had a considerable hand in this. For immediately after Apellicon's death Sulla, who had captured Athens, took his library and brought it here, where the scholar Tyrannio, who was an amateur of Aristotle, put his hand to it, having buttered up the librarian. And certain booksellers made use of bad scribes and did not check the copies -- something which happens with other books which are copied for sale, both here and at Alexandria. But enough of this. Strabo, [Geography] 13-1. 54 (608-9).

Sulla reserved for himself the library of Apellicon of Teos, which included most of the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus (which were then not yet familiar to most people). It is said that after the library had been taken to Rome the scholar Tyrannio prepared most of it and that Andronicus of Rhodes obtained copies from him, made them public and drew up the catalogues which are now in circulation. The older Peripatetics were themselves evidently accomplished and scholarly men; but the writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus which they had come across were neither numerous nor accurately written because the estate of Neleus of Scepsis (to whom Theophrastus had left his books) was passed on to men who were unambitious and not philosophers. (Plutarch, Sulla 26 (468 BC)

Strabo does not cite any authority for his story. Elsewhere he says that he heard Tyrannio lecturing (12. 3. 16 (548) ), and also that he 'studied Aristotelian philosophy together with Boethus' of Sidon (16. 2. 24 (757)). He might well have heard the story from Tyrannio or from his Aristotelian lecturer.'(10) Plutarch cites no authority either; but his text is strikingly close to Strabo's, and it is tempting to suppose that either Plutarch copied from Strabo or else the two men drew from a common source.(11) If the two men drew from a common source, then Strabo-whatever he may have heard from his cronies-knew the story in a written form." (pp. 2-3, some notes omitted)

Notes

(1) The texts are conveniently found in Düring [1966], Gigon [1987], and in Fortenbaugh et al. [Theophrastus 1992] I. 90-4. Of recent discussions the fullest are Düring, [1966] 46-54; id. [1968] cols. 190-203; Moraux [1973] I. 3-94; Blum [1977] 109-34; Gottschalk [1990] 1083-97; Richardson [1994] 7-28; Irigoin [1994] 50-3. Of the older literature, I mention Stahr [1830] 117-34; id. [115] 23-32. The romantic will read L. Canfora, La biblioteca scomparsa (Palermo, 1986), 34-7, 59-66, 181-90.[See the Bibliography on the Rediscovery of Corpus Aristotelicum below for the complete references]

(...)

(10) Together with Andronicus and Boethus he [i.e. Strabo] heard Tyrannio, and through Andronicus he became interested in Aristotle's works': Düring [132] 413 -- a garbled invention.(11) See Moraux [76] I. 21-4; below, pp. 9, 19-20.

From: Jonathan Barnes, Roman Aristotle in: Jonathan Barnes and Miriam Griffin (eds.), Philosophia togata II. Plato and Aristotle at Rome, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, pp. 1-69.

"The external evidence for the transmission of Aristotle's writings before the edition of Andronicus is meagre. There is also a great difference in opinion as to the essential question. Silently and without entering upon the problem many scholars seem to presuppose that Aristotle's writings, in the form they are handed down to us in the Corpus Aristotelicum, were widely circulated during the Hellenistic era and that the edition of Andronicus was nothing but a stage in an otherwise uninterrupted tradition. Other scholars maintain that the scientific pragmateiai known to us through the Corpus Aristotelicum on the whole were unknown during the time from the death of Theophrastus to the age of Sulla, when, through Apellicon's famous find, they began to be known again. This opinion is energetically and with great skill defended by Bignone and the Italian school.(1) It is a well-known fact that the Peripatetic School mismanaged their inheritance from Aristotle. It was outside the Peripatos that Aristotle's philosophic tenets, his scientific method, his achievements is various branches of 'science, in brief, his life's work gained most importance. How could this be possible, if we are not to assume widespread and intimate knowledge of his writings, the dialogues as well as the treatises, in the Hellenistic era? More concretely the question might be put thus: which works of Aristotle were known for example to Polybius, Posidonius or Cicero? The crucial point in an inquiry into this problem is that direct and definable quotations from Aristotle are exceedingly rare, particularly quotations which agree with a text known to us in the Corpus Aristotelicum. As to quotations from Plato it is, as everybody knows, quite the other way. They are generally in perfect accord with our text. It is not unusual to come upon a statement like this: here we find the earliest quotation from the Metaphysics. A close examination of the passage in question, however, often makes us disappointed. As a rule it turns out that there is a general agreement between the two passages in factual content, but this is not enough." pp. 37-38

(1) A. Bignone. L'Aristotele perduto, Firenze 1936, Vol. I p. 33. He often stresses that "l'Aristotele che pubblicamente si leggeva e che solo, o quasi solo, si poté conoscere, sopratutto fuori della scuola, particolarmente nel periodo fra la morte di Teofrasto e l'età di Silla ... era l'Aristotele dei dialoghi e degli scritti esoterici, i soli da lui pubblicati."

(...)

In 47 B. C. the main part of the books belonging to the Alexandrian library were destroyed. Caesar intended to bring the books to Rome and had them transported down to the harbour. In the course of the riots they caught fire. (...) This fire did not of course mean that Aristotle's writings were lost to the world: there existed, as I have said, copies in other libraries. But when the commentators began their work in the first and second century they were obliged to resort to the Andronicean edition and such books as they happened to encounter in one library or another. Apart from the Andronicean edition, there existed no more a complete collection of the writings of Aristotle like that which had existed in Alexandria. We shall now briefly trace the history of this edition. Athens was, in the beginning of the first century B. C., the stage of events which became decisive for the history of the Peripatos and for later Aristotelianism. In these happenings Apellicon played an important rôle. Apellicon was, according to Strabo, ψιλόβίβλος μάλλον ή φιλόσοφος. His wealth enabled him to buy large collection of books during his travels in Asia Minor. He happened to run into the family of Neleus, who still treasured Aristotle's manuscripts, once inherited from Theophrastus. He bought the whole collection and brought it to Athens, where he, as Strabo says, »attempted to restore the parts which had been eaten and corroded by worms, made alterations in the original text and introduced them into new copies; he moreover supplied the defective parts unskilfully, and published the books full of errors». This last statement is, of course, impossible to control, and we can believe it or not. (...) When, during the first Mithridatic war, the Athenians sided with the oriental despot against the Romans, Apellicon was elected στρατηγός bii των δπλων. In 86 [B.C.] Sulla besieged Athens. The Roman soldiers cut down the grove of Academus and used the trees for their entrenchments. The Peripatos was evacuated, and what eventually was left of books landed in Apellicon's library. When, early next year, Sulla stormed Athens, Apellicon was slain. His library was subsequently sent to Rome.

Another famous Roman also brought books to Rome, namely Lucullus (2) and among them also copies of Aristotle's works. He was a great philhellene, and when at Amisos he captured the learned Tyrannio, he treated him well, after some quarrel with his legate Murena. Tyrannio went with him to Rome in 67 and there became an important person. He took charge of the books taken as war-booty. At the same time as he acted as adviser to Roman noblemen, he gathered a library of his own, comprising 30.000 volumes. It is probable that he acted as counsellor to Atticus in his publishing-house. He was still alive in 26. Cicero mentions his name often, the first time in 59 (3) as literary authority. In 56 he rearranged Cicero's library and fixed appropriate titles on his rolls, offendes designationem Tyrannionis mirificam in librorum miorum bibliotheca; and in another letter from the same year postea vero quam Tyrannio mihi libros disposuit, mens addita videtur meis aedibus. (4) The last time he is mentioned by Cicero is in a letter of 46.(5) It was probably through Tyrannio Cicero for the first time had access to other woks of Aristotle than the dialogues. In earlier work he had spoken of the flumen aureum of Aristotle's style. Aristotle, Theophrastus and Carneades were eloquentes et in dicendo soaves atque ornati.(6) In 45 he writes in his Hortensius (apud Nonium p. 264.15): magna etiam animi contentio adhibenda est explicando Aristoteli si legas, and a year later, in his Topica he confesses that Aristotle ignoratur ab ipsis philosophis praeter paucos. He seems to have accustomed himself to his style, which now is characterized as dicendi incredibilis copia, tum etias suavitas, words that arouse some suspicion in everybody who know Aristotles' Topica.

We must, however remember, that he writes this from memory during a voyage. His judgment is superficial as so often. In Sulla's library Cicero must have had ample opportunities to browse. Sulla's son was killed in Caesar's camp 46, and after this time the library was entirely in Tyrannio's charge. Already in 55 Cicero writes to Atticus (IV 10): ego hic pastor bibliotheca Fausti.

Tyrannnio seems to have advised Atticus to publish works of Aristotle after the manuscripts, bought to Rome by Sulla and Lucullus.

Since we have no exact information about these editions, it can hardly have been more than occasional copies. That Atticus admired Aristotle particularly, is shown by the fact that Cicero mentions a statue of Aristotle in a niche in Atticus' office. (7)

Tyrannio left the task of preparing an edition of Aristotle's works to Andronicus of Rhodes. And here we leave the story to Plutarch, Sulla 26 [see the text cited above] .

From the context in which this notice occurs, (8) it is pretty obvious that it is taken from Strabo's lost work Hypomnemata historika. It is Strabo too, who In his geographical work provides information concerning Apellicon's find and how his library was brought to Rome by Sulla.(9) We can also see the reason why Strabo was so well informed in this matter. He mentions that he together with Boëthos of Sidon listened to lectures in Aristotelian philosophy.(9) Boëthos was the foremost disciple of Andronicus and pursued his work. It is not improbable that Strabo sat together with Boëthos in Rome before Andronicus' professorial chair, or perhaps all together heard Tyrannio.(10) This must have happened circa 30 B.C. Strabo's Hypomnemata historika related events which occurred in 27 and must consequently have been finished some time after this date. His Geography was not finished before 18 B.C. and is probably later.

If the chronology which I have followed here is right, it is impossible to date the beginning of Andronicus activity as editor of Aristotle's works earlier than 40. It would probably be safes to say: between 40 and 20 A. C. This means that Andronicus' edition did not appear until many years after Cicero's death.

Here I am entirely at issue with the general opinion. It is generally believed that Andronicus was scholarch in Athens in the seventies and published his edition there. Practically all information in this matter in current handbooks is based on F. Littig's dissertations. (11) Even K. O. Brink follows Littig in his article Peripatos, (12) although he expresses his doubts. In my opinion Littig's argumentation don not stand confrontation with the ancient evidence. His chief argument is, in fact, his strong belief in his own theory, and this is, as all of us know, a communs malum in our field of study.

To the positive arguments I have set forth in support of my theory, I should like to add a very strong negative argument. Cicero was very interested in the works of Aristotle, particularly during his last years when he wrote his philosophical works. He mentions Lucullus' two companions, Antiochus of Ascalon and Tyrannio, he often speaks of Diodotus, but he never mentions Andronicus. When he was in Athens 78, he heard Philo, the leading Peripatetic, and when, in 45, he sent his son to Athens, he mentioned Cratippus as the foremost Peripatetic. Is it really possible that he could have escaped noticing a man of Andronicus' qualities, and much less, a new edition of Aristotle's works?

Andronicus introduced his edition with a work in five books, containing a biography and catalogue of Aristotle's writings. A comparison between Hermippus' catalogue in Diogenes and Andronicus' (which is handed down to us in Arabic versions) raises a number of problems which cannot be discussed here. I just wish to touch two essential questions. Firstly, is it a catalogue of the writings of Aristotle, known to Andronicus, or a catalogue of his edition? For my part I find the first alternative more probable. It is not very likely that he made new editions of works already known and widely circulated, such as the dialogues, Protrepticus, the polities. It is more probable that our present Corpus Aristotelicum on the whole corresponds to his edition.

He is responsible for the editing of the existing treatises. Thus he added the peri lexeos as a third book to the Rhetoric, the independent first book of the Parts of Animals to the existing edition, the likewise independent fourth book to the existing edition of the Meteorologica etc. In his catalogue and in quotations after his time we meet with the title Meta ta phusikà, reflecting the order in which he arranged the treatises. The earliest quotation I have found, which is undoubtedly taken from Andronicus' edition, is Dionysius de compos. c' 25, 198 and ep. ad Arm. 8 en te tite bublo ton technon. These works were written after the year 30 B. C.

Andronicus was also responsible for introducing the distinction between exoteric and esoteric works. The notion in itself is early (13) but we find no signs of this distinction applied to Aristotle's works until after the edition of Andronicus. Andronicus obviously interpreted Aristotle's of oi exoterikoi logoi in a way, which suited the taste of his time. Thus he inspired the creation of the myth of .the two Aristotles, ridiculed in Lucian's Vitarum auctio 566.

The second interesting question is this: did Andronicus use the manuscripts, bought by Apellicon from the family of Neleus in Skepsis, as a basis for his edition? This is not the place for a full discussion of this problem, but I should like to add a few remarks. I think the part played by the manuscripts from Skepsis has been both underrated (14) and overrated.(15) As I have shown, there was in Rome, from the sixties onwards, a continuous influx of books to private libraries. The first public library in Rome was founded in 39 by Asinius Pollio after his triumph over the Parthians. Andronicus must have had to his disposal s comparatively rich collection of Aristotelian works, although certainly not nearly so rich as that in Alexandria.

Sulla brought from Athens not only the manuscripts from Skepsis, but also other books taken from Apellicon's library. An attempt to define more precisely the contents of the collection from Skepsis can only be a mere guess. Thus I do not find it improbable that Metaphysics α, the peri lexeos, the first book of the present Parts of Animals, the fourth book of the Meteorologica and a collection of Aristotle's letters came to Andronicus exclusively through the find in Skepsis. In his catalogue of Aristotle's writings, handed down to us in the Arabic translation of Ptolemaios Chennos, we read under n. 86: " the books found in the library of Apellicon", and under n. 90: "other letters, found by Andronicus ". We shall probably never know, exactly how important the find from Skepsis was for the formation of Andronicus' edition, but it is certain that this edition saved Aristotle's works from the fate that befell the works of Democritus." (pp. 64-70)

Notes

(1) Isid. or. VI, 5.1 librorum copiam advexit Lucullus a Pontica praeda. (...)

(2) Ad Att. II 6.

(3) Ad Att. IV 4 a and IV 8. See further Usener Kleine Schriften III 153.

(4) Ad Att. XII 2, cf. ad Qu. fr. II 4.

(5) De or. I 12, 49.

(6) Ad Att. IV 10 from the year 55.

(7) He quotes Strabo for a notice concerning Sulla in the same chapter.

(8) Lucian knew the story, probably from Andronicus' own work on Aristotle. ad. ind 4.

(9) XVI 2,24.

(10) Strabo XII 3,16.

(11) Friedrich Littig Andronikos von Rhodos I, Munchen 1890, II, Progr. Erlangen 1894, III, Progr. Erlangen 1895.

(12) Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft Suppl. 7, 1940.

(13) See Usener, Epicurea p. XLII.

(14) E.g. by E. Howald, Die Schriftenverzeichnisse des Aristoteles und des Theophrast Hermes, 55, 1920, pp. 204-221.

(15) E.g. by J. Bidez, Un singulier Naufrage littéraire dans l'Antiquité, Bruxelles 1943.

From: Ingemar Düring, "Notes on the History of the Transmission of Aristotle's Writings", Acta Universitatis Gotoburgensis 1950, pp. 37-70. (Reprinted as second study in: Aristotle and His Influence: Two Studies, New York: Garland 1987.)

The Roman edition of Aristotle's works

"Most information on Andronicus in current handbook is based on F. Littig's dissertation Andronicus von Rhodos. I. Das Leben des Andronikos and seine Anordnung der aristotelischen Schriften, München 1890, followed by two additional parts, Erlangen 1894-95. K. O. Brink, in: Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft Suppl. 7, s. v. Peripatos, expresses some doubt as to the validity of Littig's conclusions. As I said in my "Notes on the history of the transmission of Aristotle's writings", Littig's argumentation does not stand confrontation with the ancient evidence. Very useful is M. Plezia, "De Andronici Rhodii studiis Aristotelicis", Polska Ak. Archiwum filologiczne, N. 20, Krakόw 1946. Although I do not agree with some of his conclusions, his treatment of the subject has considerably advanced our knowledge.

There is no ancient evidence that Andronicus ever was head of the Peripatetic school in Athens, apart from T 75 p [Elias In Cat. CIAG (Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca) XVIII, 1, p. 113-117)], which I regard as entirely untrustworthy. Cratippus is mentioned as scholarch in 46 by Cicero; when Cicero was in Athens in 78, he met no Peripatetic philosopher of importance except Antiochus, germanissimus Stoicus, as he mockingly calls him, seeing that he was in fact more of a Stoic than Aristotelian. Neither before nor after Cratippus is there any room for Andronicus as scholarch. To Littig the solution was simple: "Wahrscheinlich dass Andronikos in aller Stille Vorstand der Schule geworden war."

In our evidence there is universal agreement on one point: Andronicus was highly respected as a conscientious scholar. He was educated in Rhodes, an old centre of Aristotelian studies, and it is not unlikely that he preserved the traditions of Eudemus and his school, see T 75 m [Simplicius In Phys. CIAG X, p. 923-927] and Diels in: Abhandlungen Akademie Berlin, 1882, p. 40. It was one of those rare and happy coincidences of history that this scholar, educated in a good Aristotelian tradition, happened to find in Rome a library rich in manuscripts of Aristotle's writings. The find from Scepsis was probably not unimportant, but of much greater importance was the large-scale influx of books to the private libraries in Rome after about 60 B. C. Lucullus, the great philhellene, brought with him from Asia Minor not only Tyrannion and other learned scholars, but books in great quantities, too, bought or taken from old Hellenistic libraries. We are told that Tyrannion collected a library of his own, comprising 30,000 rolls; from Cicero's correspondence we may conclude that he acted as literary adviser to Atticus. Sulla's son was killed in 46, and after this time his library was in Tyrannion's charge. In the circle of men of letters that we get to know through Cicero's correspondence, Aristotle was admired as one of the greatest minds of the past. Atticus had a bust of him in his library, and Orsini believed that the replica he had bought actually was that same bust (see Studniczka Das Bildnis des Aristoteles (1908) p. 17). It is against this background of a general awakening of interest in Aristotle that we should see Andronicus' achievement.

Cicero knows nothing about Andronicus or his edition. The evidence, especially T 66 c [Strabon XIII 1, 54, p. 608], 74 d [Strabon XII, 3,16 p. 548] and 75 b [Strabon XVI 2, 24, p. 757], suggests that Andronicus was younger than Tyrannion and that he came to Rome some time between 50 and 40 B. C. In my "Notes on the history of the transmission of Aristotle's writings" I suggested that his work on Aristotle's writings and his edition of the Οrganon and the other pragmaties were accomplished between 40 and 20 B. C. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De compos. c. 25, 198 and Ep. ad Amm. 8 εν τη τρίτη βυβλώ τών τεχνών are the earliest references to Andronicus' edition known to me. These works were written after 30 B. C. When speaking of his "edition", εκδοσίς, we should take care not to think in modern terms. Horace's poems and literary works of the same kind might have been produced commercially, although we should be on our guard against too exaggerated accounts of ancient book-production. A scholarly work like Andronicus' edition, was produced only for use in the school, anιd certainly only a few copies were made for his collaborators and disciples.

The only work of Andronicus which concerns us in this connexion is his book on Aristotle's writings. We do not know the title, but we know that it served as an introduction to his edition of the scholarly writings of Aristotle; we are entitled to conclude that his work had a somewhat propagandistic tendency. Like all innovators he was full of enthusiasm for his great enterprise, and rightly so. Porphyry mentions his book as Διaίρεσις τών 'Αριστοτελικών συψψραμματων Simplicius as '(Περί) Αριστοτέλονς βιβλίων, Gellius merely says Liber Andronici philosophi. Ptolemy mentions Andronicus' book in title 97, retranslated by Baumstark εν πεμπτω 'Aνδρονίκον Περί πίνακος τών 'Αριστοτέλους σνγγραμμάτων. If we stick to this information, the title of his book must have been On Aristotle's writings, but the exact Greek title cannot be ascertained. It was a work in at least five books; in the third book Andronicus dealt with the physical treatises.

We have three fairly extensive fragments of the text, T 75 m [Simplicius In Phys. CIAG X p. 923-927] and o [Philoponus In de an. CIAG XV, p. 27.21, T 76 f [Aulus Gellius Noct. att. XX 5], and several short indications of the contents, as in T 75 g, j, n and q [Porphyrius Vita Plotini, c. 24; Ammonius In l. De interpr. pr., CIAG IV 5, p. 5.24 -- Schola Brandis, p. 97a 13-20; Philoponus In Cat. pr., CIAG XIII 1, p. 5.16; Boethius In Aristotelis De interpr. II p. 11.16]. According to VM 43 it included the text of Aristotle's Will. We have no evidence whatever that his book contained a biography of Aristotle. The story presented by Gellius T 76 f is an extract from a chapter in which Andronicus developed his ideas about the difference between "exoteric" and "acroatic" writings.

Littig, Baumstark and Plezia take for granted that Andronicus' work contained a biography of Aristotle. Baumstark's and Plezia's reconstruction of the work is interesting. Plezia thinks that the first book was devoted to the biography, including the Will; the second dealt with the dialogues, the third (cited by Simplicius) with the σὑταγματικα, the fourth with the ύπομνήματα, the fifth finally with the ψπευδεπίγραφα (this he infers from the note in Ptolemy's catalogue). He then reconstructs Andronicus' biography by picking out from the Vita Marciana and the Arabic tradition all objective information on Aristotle and excluding all those small details which are so characteristic of Ptolemy's Vita. The result is, as he himself says, "rigida atque ieiuna de vita philosophi narratio."

Quite consistently he concludes that such a biography is entirely different from the anecdotic Vita of Hermippus and the neoplatonic eulogy of Ptolemy, and consequently must have been written by a scholar who seriously tried to apply the principles stated by Dionysius, De Dinarcho 2. This is all very attractive, but Plezia has finally to admit that not a single fragment of this Life of Aristotle has reached us; no ancient writer mentions the name of Andronicus in connexion with a single biographic detail, apart from the Will. With this the whole structure falls to the ground. Until new evidence is produced, I think we must rest content with what we really know, namely that Ptolemy relied on Andronicus for his Index librorum and for the text of the Will.

In his work on Aristotle's writings Andronicus was inspired by some typically Hellenistic but very un-aristotelian ideas. He believed that Aristotle had written his scholarly treatises as part of a philosophic system; he tried to arrange the writings according to this idea. The arrangement was based on his ideas of the subject-matter treated; rather artificially he created a department of knowledge which he called "metaphysics", corresponding to Aristotle's Πρώτη φιλοσοφία. The chemical treatise was collocated as the fourth book of the Meteorology, the treatise On diction and style as the third book of the Rhetoric. He paid no respect to the chronology of the various treatises; the whole corpus was to him a closed system of knowledge. He accepted and developed further the idea that Aristotle had expounded certain advanced doctrines in his lectures and pragmaties which differed from the opinions set forth in the dialogues and other popular writings. He identified "exoteric" with the popular writings, and held that the "acroatic" writings were more important and in reality the only true expression of Aristotle's philosophy. His third idea is perhaps not entirely un-aristotelian, but mentioned only in passing by Aristotle, namely that logic and dialectics are the instruments of philosophy. Andronicus was so impressed by this idea that he built a system on it and arranged all the logical writings in a corpus to which he gave the title Organon. Finally, he had a high opinion of himself: as a result of his work on Aristotle and his investigations, he arrived at the conviction (which certainly was true), that he and the circle of scholars around him were fellow actors in a great revival of Aristotelian studies. He believed that he was following up the great tradition from Theophrastus and Eudemus, whereas the Peripatetics of the third and second century had degenerated (see T 66 b, 66 d and 76 b [Strabon XIII 1, 54 p. 609; Boethius De divisione, Migne 64, p. 892 b; Cicero De fin. V 4.10 (45 B.C.)]). His book as a whole was a vigorous plea for a new approach to Aristotelian studies.

None of his basic ideas was in itself new; no doubt Antiochus of Ascalon has a great share in propagating them (T 76 b [Cicero De fin. V 4.10 (45 B.C.)]). But it was Andronicus who fused these ideas into a kind of philosophy and soon became celebrated as the man who had given new impetus to Aristotelian studies. He gave rise to a school of commentators whose main activity aimed at making the learned writings of Aristotle more intelligible by means of paraphrases and commentaries: among them may be mentioned his contemporary Ariston of Alexandria, disciple of Antiochus; his own collaborator Boethus of Sidon; Eudorus, Xenarchus, Athenodorus and, most famous of these early commentators, Nicolaus of Damascus.

Plezia believed that the first book of his work contained a biography of Aristotle; I am more inclined to believe that it was a general introduction, developing the ideas which I have outlined here. It is understandable that his introduction should have aimed at arousing great interest in his edition; the extract preserved by Gellius is a good example of his style in this introduction. It is interesting to see that he did not abstain from using spurious letters as evidence; I have offered a possible explanation in my note on T 76 f. [Aulus Gellius Noct. att. XX 5] From Ptolemy's catalogue we can gather that he included Artemon's collection of letters in his "catalogue raisonné" and that he himself had collected no less than twenty books of letters. His interest in this kind of literature is thus well attested. In his introduction he also made as much as he could of the find from Scepsis.

The Will is a special problem. To Littig, Baumstark and Plezia the solution was simple: it formed part of his biography. But if he did not include a biography, why did he find it appropriate to present the text of the Will, which was well known through Hermippus? In my notes on Ptolemy, p. 239, I have offered a possible explanation. He might have found in the papers from Scepsis a better text than that given by Hermippus and added it as an appendix to his Index librorum.

His catalogue was a thoroughly revised edition of the old Alexandrian Πίναξ, transmitted by Hermippus; in this he included his own rearrangement of the scholarly treatises. In Ptolemy's catalogue we possess a transcript of his index which gives us a fairly good idea of the original. The reconstructions made by Littig, Baumstark and Plezia are interesting but seem to me too sophisticated and speculative. We have not the slightest evidence that Andronicus divided the dialogues in tetralogies. Much more interesting is that we know a good deal about his methods in discussing the titles; the extract in T 75 m [Simplicius In Phys. CIAG X, p. 923-927] is especially valuable. Plezia rightly says: "Ex hoc fragmento facile colligi potest Andronicum imprimis Aristotelis ipsius testimoniis colligendis operam dedisse, quibus usus scripta eius in ordinem quendam redigeret, qui ipsius auctoris consiliis ei respondere videretur. Quibus ut hunc ad modum uti liceat, probandum est Arius Aristotelem omnia opera sua uno eodemque examinato consilio conscripsisse; nobis id parum probabile videtur, sed Andronicus rem ita se habere certe persuasum habuit." -- "At in solis locis non acquievit, qui in ipsis Aristotelis scriptis haererent, sed etiam extrinsecus testimonia quaerebat.

" His methods were thus in principle the same as those followed by modern scholars before W. Jaeger. His systematic discussion was a "catalogue raisonné" in which he applied the leading ideas which I have outlined; scraps of the discussion concerning the composition, arrangement and authenticity of individual writings are found in great number in Simplicius (see Plezia, pp. 7-10) and other commentators; in this connexion he also made observations on philosophic questions. He had an open mind and did not hesitate to criticize Aristotle. Owing to the immense influence of his edition and its leading idea that all the writings contained in it are parts of a closed philosophic system he has been called "the first school-man", but this is quite inappropriate. He was a fine scholar and in certain respects an innovator; a good example of Hellenistic erudition and scholarship, with the imperfections and merits of his age." (pp. 420-425)

From: Ingemar Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell 1957.

The role of Demetrius of Phalerum

Demetrius of Phalerum (c. 350 - c. 280 B.C.) was a disciple of Theophrastus (the successor of Aristotle at the head of Peripatos).

Demetrius and the Alexandrian Library

Fragment 58A: “This Ptolemy Philadelphus brought together from all over the world every book, so to speak, through the exertions of Demetrius of Phalerum, third lawgiver of the Athenians, a man of great importance amongst the Greeks. Included were also the writings of the Hebrews, as mentioned above.(1) Thus he established the library in Alexandria in the 132rd Olympiad,(2) but while it was being stocked he died.(3) There were, according to some, 100,000 books.” (p. 111)

From: Georgius Syncellus, Chronographical Selection, Karl Wilhelm Dindorf (ed.), Corpus scriptorum historiæ byzantinæ (CSHB), Bonn 1829, vol. 22, p. 518 (Alden A. Mosshammer (ed.), Georgii Syncelli Ecloga chronographica, Leipzig: Teubner, 1984, pp. 329, 3-8)

Notes

(1) Part of this paragraph on Ptolemy II Philadelphus is quoted in Fragment 64.

(2) I.e., 252/1-249/8. According to Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 5.8.11 (citing Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.21.2; cp. 61.3-4), it was founded by Ptolemy I Soter.

(3) In 246.

Fragment 58B: “For the said king Ptolemy, (1) a truly most philosophic and divine spirit, was a confirmed lover of everything beautiful to sight and in deed and in word. Thus he collected through the services of Demetrius of Phalerum and other elderly men the books from all over the world in Alexandria, defraying expenses out of the royal funds, and deposited them in two libraries. Of these two the one outside numbered 42,800 books, the one inside the royal palace(2) 400,000 books of a composite nature and 90,000 books of a simple and non-composite nature... (3)”

From: Joannes Tzetzes, Introduction to Greek Comedy, Proem II (Willem John Wolff Koster & Douwe Holwerda (eds.), Scholia in Aristophanem, Groningen: J. B. Wolters, Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1960-1964, XIa II, 1.1A.32.2-11)

Notes

(1)i.e., Ptolemy II Philadelphus, mentioned by Tzetzes in the preceding sentence.

(2) The one outside was the Serapeum, the one inside the Museum.

(3) Tzetzes adds that these figures were computed later on by Callimachus in his pinakes

Fragments cited from: William W. Fortenbaugh, Eckart Schütrumpf (eds.), Demetrius of Phalerum. Text, Translation and Discussion, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers 2000.

Demetrius and the History of Aristotle's Works

"His influence on later letters may in fact have been far more profound than is usually suspected and than I have thus far suggested. (I am aware that I am entering onto very slippery ground, but proceed anyway.) The account in the letter of Aristeas that made Demetrius head of the library charged with collecting all the books in the world, even with translating books from the Hebrew,(58) is certainly late -- ca. 100 B.C. -- and fundamentally wrong on some important points.(59) To take but the most obvious -- however much the first Ptolemy may have laid the groundwork for it, the library as an actual institution did not apparently come into being until the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphos. By then Demetrius was out of favor at court; he could not, therefore, have been head of the library. Surely, however, Demetrius was active in some way in the efforts of the first Ptolemy to create a collection. The letter could well, therefore, preserve in exaggerated form a real memory of Demetrius' activities. He no doubt put together at least part of the collection that later became the great library.(60) And he certainly saw to it that his own books and his own scholarly work found a place in the new collection. More importantly, it is prima facie extremely probable that he acquired ca. 295 B.C. or earlier copies of many of the works of Aristotle and Theophrastos. As a distinguished member of the Peripatos, he was unusually well-positioned to do exactly this.

If this is correct (and it must remain an hypothesis), the early history of Aristotle's works must be seen in a different light than heretofore. Previous discussion has tended to focus on the activities of one Neleus of Skepsis to whom Theophrastos left all his books at his death ca. 287 B.C.(61) It is reported, I assume correctly, that the books of Aristotle were among Theophrastos' books.(62) The ancient sources preserve two conflicting accounts about Neleus' handling of his legacy. One was that he took the books to Skepsis where after his death they lay moldering in a cellar until Apellikon of Teos brought them back to Athens early in the first century B.C.(63) The other was that he sold them to Ptolemy II Philadelphos for the library at Alexandria.(64) Whatever Neleus' exact role was, (65) it is significantly diminished in importance if we believe that, thanks to the activities of Demetrius of Phalerum, copies of many of the major Aristotelian treatises were already in Alexandria before the death of Theophrastos.(66) They were thus well-known in the Hellenistic period and some of them formed the basis for the work of the scholars of the library.

In conclusion, Demetrius surely deserves a better press than he has received -- first, for his enlightened rule of Athens where he accomplished much that was positive and did the best he could for his fellow citizens in the difficult circumstances he faced; second, for his very important scholarly contributions, particularly his efforts to further, as well as preserve, the work of the Peripatos; finally, for his creation of the collection that formed the basis of the library at Alexandria." (pp. 343-345)

Notes

(58) The letter of Aristeas to Philokrates (Felix Jacoby's Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 1954, 228 T6e).

(59) Beginning with this sentence most of this paragraph and the next have been taken with slight alterations from my Athenian Democracy in Transition, Berkeley: University of California Press 1995 50-51.

(60) P. M. Fraser Ptolemaic Alexandria I (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1972), 314-15.

(61) D.L. 5.52. Theophrastos died either in the year 288/7 or 287/6.

(62) The report occurs in Athenaios 1.3A-B and in Strabo 13.1.54. The will of Aristotle preserved in Diogenes Laertios (5.11-17) makes no provision for his books. There are two possible reasons: either the will is incomplete or the books had already been entrusted to Theophrastos.

(63) Strabo 13.1.54, Plutarch Sulla 26.1-2.

(64) Athenaios 1.3A-B.

(65) On Neleus' activities, see H. B. Gottschalk, "Notes on the Wills of the Peripatetic Scholarchs," Hermes 100 (1972) 335-42 and C. Lord, "On the Early History of the Aristotelian Corpus,"American Journal of Philology 107 (1986) 137-61, esp. 138-45.

(66) Indeed, their presence may have acted as a catalyst to spur the agents of Ptolemy II to assemble in the library at Alexandria as complete a collection as possible of the works of Aristotle. Neleus may indeed have been approached by them and sold to them much of what he had. Thus it is quite possible that the very efforts of Demetrius to preserve the writings of his great master and his school brought it about that they were concentrated in the library at the time of the great fire and thus many works, including his own, were lost to posterity.

From: Stephen V. Tracy, Demetrius of Phalerum: who was He and who was He not?, in: William W. Fortenbaugh, Eckart Schütrumpf (eds.), Demetrius of Phalerum. Text, Translation and Discussion, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers 2000, pp. 331-345.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Ancient Catalogues of Aristotle's Works: First Part

Diogenes Laertius Lives V, 22-27

The Vitae Aristotelis and the Ancient Catalogues

"The following pages are an attempt to give a brief account or compressed overview of what may be called the 'traditional' Vitae Aristotelis, namely, the lost Vita authored by the Peripatetic Hermippus of Smyrna, and the lost Vita composed by the Neo-Platonist Ptolemy, whom the Arabic biographers call Ptolemy-el-Garib. These two Vitae, which have been compiled in antiquity, survive in one form or another only through their respective 'derivatives' or epitomes of which we still possess a fair number.

The more important biographies of Aristotle, (6) which have been handed down to us from antiquity, are:

Diogenes Laertius, The Lives And Opinions of Eminent Philosophers V. 1-35; (7)

the Vita Aristotelis Hesychii; (8)

the Pseudo-Hesychius; (9)

the Vita Aristotelis Marciana; (10)

the Vita Aristotelis Vulgata; (11)

the Vita Lascaris; (12)

the Vita Aristotelis Latina; (13)

the Vita Aristotelis Syriaca I (anonymous); (14)

the Vita Aristotelis Syriaca II (anonymous); (15)

the Vita Aristotelis Arabica I (by An-Nadim); (16)

the Vita Aristotelis Arabica II (by Al-Mubashir or Mubassir); (17)

the Vita Aristotelis Arabica III (by Al-Qifti); (18)

and the Vita Aristotelis Arabica IV (by Usaibi'a). (19)

All these Vitae in some ways are related to, or are more or less accurate abridgments of, either the Vita Aristotelis of Hermippus or the Vita Aristotelis of Ptolemy-el-Garib. An attempt shall be made here to reconstruct the essential content or outline of these two basic Vitae with the help of their surviving 'derivatives' or epitomes. Such an undertaking, however, is a purely tentative effort based on much conjecture and many hypotheses.

According to C. A. Brandis, E. Zeller, F. Susemihl, E. Heitz, W. Christ, F. Littich, W. Jaeger, W. D. Ross, L. Robin, I. Düring and others,(20) Hermippus -- the Peripatetic, the disciple of Callimachus and the justly famed librarian at Alexandria (towards the end of the third century B.C.) -- must be considered the main, though by no means the sole, source for the biographical notes found in Diogenes Laertius. It has been claimed by some scholars that as a librarian at the Alexandrian Museum this Hermippus had at his disposal ample biographical materials about Aristotle. In the year 306 B.C., when all 'alien' or 'subversive' philosophers were threatened with banishment from Athens by the decree of Demetrius Poliorcetes,(21) Ptolemy Soter, the King of Egypt, invited Theophrastus to come to Egypt and also to transfer the Peripatetic School together with its library to Alexandria. Although Theophrastus declined this invitation, two of his disciples or colleagues in the Peripatus, Straton of Lampsacus and Demetrius of Phaleron, for a short period of time actually went to Egypt.(22) Undoubtedly, these two men brought to Alexandria some of the writings of the Peripatetics, including probably some of Aristotle's compositions or, at least, notes and excerpts from his works. It is also known that at the time of his death (288-87 or 287-86 B.C.) Theophrastus bequeathed the library of the Peripatus, including the writings of Aristotle, to Neleus of Scepsis.(23) Neleus (or his heirs) subsequently might have sold parts of this library or 'collection' to Ptolemy Philadelphus, the successor of Ptolemy Soter.(24)

All this would indicate that in the course of the third century B.C., Alexandria had become one of the great centers of Aristotelian and Peripatetic scholarship as well as the repository for many Aristotelian and Peripatetic works. Such a situation, in turn, enabled Hermippus to draw much reliable information concerning the life and works of Aristotle from the materials which had accumulated in Alexandria. Moreover, Hermippus himself was considered a painstakingly objective and conscientious scholar whose statements could unquestionably be taken at face value.

This highly idealized picture, which, among other matters, is based on the entirely unsupported presumption that many of Aristotle's writings had reached Alexandria and that Hermippus was a dispassionate as well as objective reporter, was shattered by I. Düring. On the strength of his detailed and searching studies, Düring, in opposition to many scholars, reached the well-founded conclusion that Hermippus' biographical reports were uncritical accounts, heavily slanted in favor of Aristotle.(25) In keeping with the general literary tendencies of the time (which were concerned primarily with entertaining and amusing one's readers), Hermippus, according to Düring, concocted a strange mélange of fact and fiction, history and anecdote, truth and gossip, praise and slander. To be sure, Hermippus' biography contains many items which are correct, or almost correct. In accord with a widespread Hellenistic trend, however, it is also replete with many fanciful stories devoid of all foundations in fact. Moreover, it is by no means certain that any of the intramural, 'esoteric' or doctrinal late writings of Aristotle, provided they were actually and in toto authored by the Stagirite, ever reached Alexandria during the fourth and third centuries B.C., although it will have to be admitted that some of his 'exoteric' early compositions were known there. According to tradition, after the death of Theophrastus (c. 286 B.C.) the 'esoteric' works were carried to Scepsis by Neleus of Scepsis, where they were gradually lost. Düring believes that Hermippus' most important contribution (and, perhaps, least credible addition) to the biographical tradition concerning Aristotle was his determined effort to present Aristotle as the true and sole founder of the Peripatetic school. Among the many and, in all likelihood, fanciful stories he invented, probably the most conspicuous was the legend, subsequently widely accepted (and widely exploited), that Aristotle seceded from the Academy and from Plato's basic teachings while Plato was still alive. (...)

When attempting to recast some of the main features of Hermippus' Vita Aristotelis, we must always bear in mind, however, that with the exception of the very complex Vita Aristotelis of Diogenes Laertius and some parts of the Vita Hesychii, all surviving Vitae Aristotelis, in the main, go back to Ptolemy (-el-Garib) rather than to Hermippus. It is more than likely, however, that Ptolemy (or his sources) to some extent is also influenced by Hermippus' Vita, although the degree of this influence can no longer be determined. Hence, it would appear that any attempt to reconstruct the basic contents of Hermippus' Vita Aristotelis will have to rely almost exclusively on Diogenes Laertius . Düring has suggested a tentative and conjectural sketch of the main features that were characteristic of the likely contents of Hermippus' original biography of Aristotle.(28) Implementing Düring's suggestions, it may be assumed, as some of the other Vitae of Diogenes Laertius indicate, that ancient biographies of philosophers seem to have followed a general pattern. They recite, (i) the name of the philosopher; (ii) the name of his father, but rarely that of his mother; (iii) sometimes the 'social position' and occupation of the father; (iv) the place of birth of the philosopher; (v) the time of his birth; (vi) sometimes the more remote ancestry of the father and occasionally that of the mother; (vii) the philosopher's schooling and his teacher or teachers; (viii) his 'intellectual qualities' ; (ix) his physical appearance and physical peculiarities; (x) his travels; (xi) his 'social connections'; (xii) sometimes his 'family status'; (xiii) his public or political activities; (xiv) his scholarly activities and achievements; (xv) bits of general information; (xvi) some particular events in his life; (xvii) some particular honors bestowed upon him or some unusual misfortunes that befell him; (xviii) sometimes his last will and testament or his last sayings; (xix) his death; (xx) a list of the works he wrote; (xxi) his most distinguished pupils; and (xxii) a summary of his philosophic teachings. Naturally, not every ancient biography follows this pattern, mentions all the fact we have indicated or observes the order suggested above."

Notes

(6) Except for the purpose of shedding some additional light on the several Vitae Aristotelis, no attention will be paid here to occasional biographical references to Aristotle by a host of ancient authors, historians, grammarians, critics and commentators. For an exhaustive treatment of our subject, see also I. Düring Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, vol. 63, no. 2 (Goteborg, 1957), passim [this work contains a critical edition of all the Vitae Aristotelis. Added by R. Corazzon]; O. Gigon, 'Interpretationen zu den Antiken Aristotelesviten,' Museum Helveticum, vol. 15 (1958), pp. 147-93. Also, no mention is made here of the 'abridgment' or 'chronology' found in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I Epistola ad Ammaeum 3-5. This epitome, it will be noted, is based on several Vitae Aristotelis that were in circulation during the latter part of the first century B.C. See A.-H. Chroust, 'The Vita Aristotelis of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (I Epistola ad Ammaeum 5)' Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, vol. 13 (1965), pp. 369-77, and Chapter II.

(7) See O. Gigon (see note 6); I. Düring, cit., pp. 29-56; P. Moraux, 'La composition de la "Vie d'Aristote" chez Diogène Laerce,' Revue des Études Grecques, vol. 68 (1955), pp. 124-63; A.-H. Chroust, 'A Brief Analysis of the Vita Aristotelis of Diogenes Laertius (DL V. I-16)'; Antiquité Classique, vol. 34, fasc. I (1965), pp. 97-129, and Chapter III.

(8) This Vita, which contains an important 'list of Aristotle's writings,' is also known as the Vita Menagiana or Vita Menagii. It is reprinted in V. Rose, Aristotelis Qui Ferebantur Librorum Fragmenta (Leipzig, 1886), pp. 9-18; I. Düring (see note 6), pp. 82-9.

(9) This relatively unimportant Vita is a brief compilation from Diogenes Laertius and from the Vita Hesychii. See I Düring (see note 6), pp. 92-3.

(10) This important Vita was first edited by L. Robbe, Vita Aristotelis ex Codice Marciano Graece (Leiden, 1861); V. Rose (see note 8), pp. 426-36. See also A. Busse, 'Neuplatonische Lebensbeschreibung des Aristoteles,' Hermes, vol. 28 (1893), pp. 252-73; I. Düring (see note 6), pp. 96-106; O. Gigon, Vita Aristotelis Marciana: Kleine Texte für Vorlesungen and Übungen, Heft no. 81 (Berlin, 1962). The Vita Marciana, in the main, is dependent on an abridgment of Ptolemy's lost Vita Aristotelis.

(11) This Vita, which is also called Vita Pseudo-Ammoniana or Pseudo-Elias, is probably an abridgment of Ptolemy's Vita Aristotelis or is based on such an abridgment. It contains some additions which can also be found in an anonymous commentary to Porphyry's Isagoge. See A. Busse, Die Neuplatonischen Ausleger der Isagoge des Porphyrios (Berlin, 1892), passim; V. Rose (see note 8), pp. 437-41; I. Düring (see note 6), pp. 131-6.

(12) This Vita is an unimportant abridgment of the Vita Marciana. See I. Düring (see note 6), pp. 140-1; A. Továr, 'Para la formation de la Vita Marciana de Aristoteles,' Emerita, vol. 11 (1943), pp. 180-200; V. Labate, 'Per la biografia di C. Lascaris,' Archivo Storico Siciliano (1901), pp. 222-40; L. Alfonsi, 'Su una Vita di Aristotele scritta da C. Lascaris,' Giornale di Metafisica, vol. 4 (1949), pp. 381 ff.

(13) This Vita, which can be found in V. Rose (see note 8), pp. 442-50, is a rather 'liberal' thirteenth-century Latin translation of a Greek epitome of Ptolemy's Vita or of the Vita Marciana (which likewise is based on such an epitome), with some minor additions from the Vita Vulgata (?). See I. Düring (see note 6), pp. 142-63.

(14) This brief Vita, which might be called a Syriac version of the Greek Vita Vulgata (see note 11), ultimately goes back to Ptolemy's Vita (or to an abridgment of this Vita), which probably was brought to Nisibis when Emperor Zeno closed down the Neo-Platonic school in Edessa. It was edited and translated by A. Baumstark, Syrisch-Arabische Biographien des Aristoteles (Leipzig, 1900), appendix to p. 130, and ibid., p. 38. See I. Düring (see note 6), pp. 185-6.

(15) This very short and relatively unimportant Vita, which is likewise based on Ptolemy's Vita, was translated by A. Baumstark (see note 14), p. 116. See I. Düring (see note 6), pp. 187-8.

(16) This Vita, which follows the Vita of Ptolemy, was translated by A. Baumstark (see note 14), pp. 39 ff. See I. Düring (see note 6), pp. 193-5.

(17) This Vita, which shows the influence of Ptolemy's Vita, the Vita Syriaca I and II, and of the Vita Arabica I, was translated by A. Baumstark (see note 14), pp. 39-51 and 120-4; and by J. Lippert, Studien auf dem Gebiete der Griechisch-Arabischen Übersetzungsliteratur (Braunschweig, 1894), pp. 4-19. See I. Düring (see note 6), pp. 197-201.

(18) This Vita, which is a sort of 'article' on Aristotle, to a large extent is based on the Vita of Ptolemy as excerpted by several Arabic authors. See J. Lippert, Ibn al-Qifti's Tarih-al-Hukama (Leipzig, 1903); M. Steinschneider, Al-Farabi: Des Arabischen Philosophen Leben and Schriften (St Petersburg, 1869), pp. 187-91; I. Düring (see note 6), pp. 211-12.

(19) This Vita, which likewise follows Ptolemy's Vita, contains a 'catalogue' of Aristotle's writings which ultimately goes back to Ptolemy-el-Garib. See P. Moraux, Les Listes Anciennes des d'Aristote (Louvain, 1951), passim; I. Düring (see note 6), pp. 211-31. The important and influential Greek Vita Aristotelis of Ptolemy, which underlies the Syriac and Arabic Vitae Aristotelis (and the Vita Marciana, the Vita Vulgata and the Vita Latina), has come down to us only in the garbled, mutilated and abridged form of these Vitae. See below. A discussion of the Vitae mentioned in notes 9-19 can also be found in I. Düring (see note 6), passim; the Vitae mentioned in notes 14-19 are analysed in A.-H. Chroust, 'A brief summary of the Syriac and Arabic Vitae Aristotelis,' Acta Orientalia, vol. 29, nos 1-2 (1965), pp. 23-47, and Chapter IV.

(20) These scholars were opposed by V. Rose, J. Bernays, H. Diels, A. Gercke and others, who insisted that the primary source of information used by Diogenes Laertius was Adronicus of Rhodes, the alleged 'restorer' of the Corpus Aristotelicum around the middle of the first century B.C. This thesis, which sees in Andronicus the original source of Diogenes Laertius, by now has been mostly abandoned.

(21) See Demochares' Oration Against the Philosophers in support of Sophocles' motion to have all 'subversive' philosophers expelled from Athens (in 306 B.C.). D.L. V. 38; Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae XIII. 610EF, and XI. 509B; Pseudo-Plutarch, Vita Decem Oratorum (Moralia 850B ff.); Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica XV. 2. 6; Pollux IX. 42. Demochares denounced Aristotle in particular (whom he charged with having committed many acts detrimental to Athenian political interests) as well as the philosophers in general.

(22) Straton of Lampsacus probably went to Egypt because he was an 'undesirable alien' in Athens as well as a Peripatetic. Demetrius of Phaleron left because, aside from his association with the Peripatus, he was in political difficulties. See note 21.

(23) D.L. V. 52. See also A.-H. Chroust, 'The miraculous disappearance and recovery of the Corpus Aristotelicum,' Classica et Mediaevalia, vol. 23, fasc. 1-2 (1962), pp. 50-67.

(24) Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae L 3AB. See also I. Düring, Notes on the History of the Transmission of Aristotle's Writings (Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, vol. 56, Goteborg, 1950), pp. 59-60.

(25) I. Düring (see note 6), pp. 464-7. See also M. Plezia, 'De Hermippi Vita Aristotelis,' Charisteria Th. Sinko Quinquaginta abhinc Annos Amplissimis in Philosoph. Honor. Ornato ab Amicis Collegis Discipulis Oblata (Warsaw, 1951), pp. 271-67; P. Moraux (see note 19), pp. 243-5.

(28) I. Düring (see note 6), pp. 465-7.

From: Anton-Hermann Chroust, Aristotle. New Light on His Life and on Some of His Lost Works. Vol. I. Some Novel Interpretations of the Man and His Life, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973, pp. 1-4.

The following Vitae contain catalogues of the writings of Aristotle:

a) Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers - Book V. The Peripatetics 22-27 (III century);

b) The anonymous Vita Menagiana or Vita Hesychii, attributed to Hesychius of Miletus (V century);

c) The catalogue attributed to Ptolemy el-Garib, surviving in two Arabic version by Ibn al-Qifti (ca. 1172-1248) and Ibn Abi Usaibi'a (1203-1270) (IV century?).

The Works of the Peripatetics on Philology, Literary History and Biography until the Middle of the Third Century B.C.

"Many of Aristotle's pupils and their own pupils shared his interest in philology and literary history. In some of them these interests were even more pronounced than they were in Aristotle himself. This pertains to the following scholars of the last third of the fourth and the first third of the third century BC.:

1) Herakleides Pontikos, that respected pupil of Plato, had also heard Aristotle in the Academy but he had returned to his hometown Herakleia on the Pontos when Aristotle reappeared in Athens (335 B.C.). Although he may be counted among Aristotle's pupils, he does not belong to the Peripatetics, but is generally dealt with together with them. His works, which cannot be dated, belong however more to the pre- and exo-peripatetic researches in fields that were also investigated by the Peripatetics.

2) Theophrastos of Eresos on Lesbos, Aristotle's versatile successor, who was, however, more interested in other disciplines. We have already made his acquaintance as a doxographer of natural philosophy.

3) Phainias of Eresos, a fellow countryman of Theophrastos and of about the same age as he, who had heard Aristotle when he taught in Mytilene on Lesbos (345-343 RC.) and remained there.

4) Aristoxenos of Tarentum, nicknamed "the musician", a rival of Theophrastos, who had hoped to become Aristotle's successor. Even today he is highly regarded as a theoretician of music, and we met him already as a doxographcr of musicology.

5) Dikaiarchos of Messene (Messina).

6) Chamaileon of Herakleia on the Pontos, a somewhat younger fellow oountryman of Herakleides, who apparently returned to his home town after studying in the Peripatos.

7) Demetrius of Phaleron, a pupil of Theophrastos, who switched from science to politics, ruled Athens under Macedonian sovereignty from 317 till 307, had to flee, and lived since 297 in Alexandria at the court of Ptolemaios I.

8) Praxiphanes of Mytilene on Lesbos, also a pupil of Theophrastos. He taught on Rhodos. Eudemos, a pupil of Aristotle who hailed from the island, and had worked meritoriously on mathematical and astronomical doxography, taught also there during the last period of his life. It is said that Praxiphanes, purportedly the teacher of Kallimachos, was the first to be named a grammarian in the later A1exandrian sense.(181)

9) Hieronymos of Rhodos, probably a pupil of Praxiphanes.(182) The relevant writings of these scholars are lost, but we know the titles of many of their works, and we also know a little more about some of them because they were used by later authors. Thus, it is possible to indicate at least approximately which subjects were dealt with by the pupils of Aristotle and by their own pupils. It is much more difficult to say what they did not deal with, because so little has come down to us."

Notes

(181) See note 23 above [note 23: Alfred Hilgard (ed.) Scholia in Dionysii Thracis Artem grammaticam Leipzig, 1901. (Grammatici Graeci I,3) pp. 164, 26-28 and 488, 12-14; Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship: frm the beginning to the end of the Hellenistic age, Oxford, 1968, p. 158.] ; see also Wehrli Die Schule des Aristoteles. Texte und Kommentar (1967) Heft 9, fragment 8010 and 16-17, with commentary.

(182) On the cited scholars and their works see the relevant fascicles (Hefte) of Wehrli's collection cit. (2. Auf. 1967-69), also his summary in Heft 10, pp. 95-128. Wehrli excluded Theophrastos, which is understandable because what has been preserved of his works would have been beyond the scope of the collection. Only five of the Peripatetics of the 4th and 3rd century B.C. dealt with by Wehrli did not pursue studies in the history of literature: Eudemos (except for the doxography), Klearchos, Straton, Lykon, and Ariston. It is remarkable that except for Demetrios, who had to leave the city, Herakleides, Phainias, Chamaileon, Praxiphanes, and Hieronymos did not live in Athens for the better part of their lives, but this fact is not quite clear. In addition to the Peripatetics dealt with by Wehrli there were of course at that time also others who were active in literature, e.g. the "Homer scholar" Megakleides named by Tatianos (see above, note 23) and Menon, the founder of medical doxography.

From: Rudolf Blum, Kallimachos. The Alexandrian Library and the Origins of Bibliography, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991, pp. 47-48.

The Library of Aristotle

We have four testimonia on the destiny of the Library of Aristotle (that included his own works) after his death:

- Strabo, Geographia, XIII, 1, 54-55;

- Plutarch, Sulla, XXVI, 468 A-B;

- Athenaneus, Deipnosophistae, I, 3A-B;

- Athenaneus, Deipnosophistae, V, 214D - 215A;

I give the texts in an Appendix to this page.

"The library of Aristotle which is mentioned by several ancient authors must have been a very plentiful collection of Greek literature, and it was also at the disposal of his pupils. The works of Aristotle and his pupils, especially those mentioned above, show a comprehensive knowledge of literature and could not have been written at all without such a library. Public libraries, where scholars could study works of interest to them or where they could even borrow them, did not exist at that time, neither in Athens nor anywhere else. But Aristotle had the necessary means to acquire the books which he needed from booksellers or other people. Thus, after the death of Speusippos, Plato's successor, he bought his books (library?) (there were only a few of them) for the sum of three talents (18,000 drachmas).(210) The geographer Strabo (d. AD. 20) claims in a passage that Aristotle had been the first man, so far as known, to collect books; that, to be sure, is an exaggeration. because Euripides (485-406 B.C), for example, already had a library. But if that statement is limited to the systematic organization of a research library, then it is correct.

The nickname anagnostis (reader) which Aristotle acquired in Plato's Academy, seems to indicate that he had a library already at that time. He was also a new type of philosopher in that he, unlike those of an earlier period and quite like those of a modern scholar, perused the literature and made excerpts.(211)

During this lifetime, this became the custom of all scholars, largely thanks to his own example, but in his youth, immediately before this change, it still made him the butt of jokes on the part of his school mates who were listeners rather than readers. Euripides, a reader and collector of books, had also been ridiculed by his contemporaries, especially by Aristophanes.(212) Plato himself declared in the Phaedrus that written notes served not for the communication of knowledge but only as memory aids for the knowledgeable.(213) Basically, Aristotle shared this opinion. During his time in the Academy he, like his teacher, published works (mostly in the form of dialogs) that were intended for a larger public, but as head of a school he acted through talks, lectures and didactic writings which grew out of his lectures and were intended only for the school itself.(214) Nevertheless, he thought it indispensable to complement the oral transmission of knowledge by the study of literature. His method demanded to begin every inquiry with the collection of material. This included also the perusal and evaluation of the relevant Iiterature.(215)

The fate of Aristotle's library is a very remarkable chapter of ancient library history, and it is also important for our present investigation. His collection contained three parts: 1. the copies of works by other authors which he had bought, that is, his library proper; 2. the personal copies of his own works, written by himself or by others, both those that were intended for a larger public, the more polished 'exoteric' works, and those that were aimed only at his pupils, the "acroamatic" works which resulted from his lecture notes (literally: only intended to be heard); 3. his written legacy (in the archival sense), consisting of notes (hypomnemata) of all kinds (annotations, excerpts, lecture notes and the Iike),(216) letters and personal papers. Well-known scholars of Antiquity as well as modem researchers identified, however, Aristotle's works which formed part of his library with that library itself, as if it had contained only his works and his literary legacy. The term ta Aristotelus biblia (Aristotle's books) which occurs in addition to hē Aristotelus bibliothēkē (Aristotle's library), is admittedly ambiguous: it means both the books acquired by Aristotle and those written by him. Even those researchers who distinguished between these kinds of books did generally not consider that the books written by Aristotle himself constituted, despite their large number, only a very small part of his library; strictly speaking, they were even no more than an annex to that collection of books which surpassed all earlier ones in scope and importance. This is so because researchers devoted to Aristotle tried to elucidate the fate of the philosopher's library with regard to the history of transmission of his works. Gottschalk and Moraux treated the problem also from that point of view.(217) .217 Since I cannot agree with them on some important points, I must here deal with the fate of Aristotle's library, limiting myself to questions that are relevant for my investigations."

Notes

(210) Gellius III 17, 3 and Diogenes Laertios IV 5. According to Carl Wendel "Das griechisch-römische Altertum." Erganzt von Willi Göber. (In: Handbuch der Bibliothekwissenschaft, 2. Auf. 3. Bd. Gechichte der Bibliotheken, Wiesbaden, 1955. pp. 51-145.) p. 60, note 3, Aristotle bought only the writings of Speusippos, according to Eckart Mensching Favorin von Arelate. Der erste Teil der Fragmente. Berlin, 1963 p. 75, he bought all books that had been in his possession.

(211) Ingemar Düring Aristoteles. DarStellung und Interpretation seine Denken, Heideiberg, 1966, p. 607, note 125.

(212) Georg Rohde "Über das Lesen im Altertum." (In: Ansprachen und Reden zur Feier der Uebergabe der Spende der Ford Foundation Berlin, 1951, pp. 16-28) Also in his Studien un Interpretationen zur Antiken Literatur, Religion und Geschichte p. 20; Wendel-Göber (1955) p. 56.

(213) Plato, Phaedrus 274 C-277 A, especially the myth of Theuth. Plato argues that only knowledge taught orally by the teacher reaches exclusively those for whom it is intended, and that it can be further explained, if necessary, when pupils ask questions."

(214) Karl Oskar Brink "Peripatos." RE Suppl. VII (1940): 899-949, column 907 f.

(215) Similarly Wendel-Göber (1955) p. 59 f.

(216) On these hypomnēmata see Paul Moraux Les listes anciennes des d'Aristote, Louvain, 1951 pp. 153-166; HOmer (1952) pp. 216-221.

(217) Hans B. Gottschalk "Notes on the wills of the Peripatetic scbolars." Hermes 100 (1972): 314-342, pp. 335-342; Paul Moraux Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen: Von Andronikos bis Alexander von Aphrodisias. Berlin, 1973, pp. 3-31 with many references to works by earlier scholars, among which I mention only Brink (1940), especially column 939 f., Otto Regenbogen "Theophrastos." RE Suppl. VII (1940): 1354-1562, column 1375-77, and Düring (1966) pp. 38-43 and "Aristoteles." RE Suppl. XI (1968): 159-336, and (1968) column 184-200.

From: Rudolf Blum, Kallimachos. The Alexandrian Library and the Origins of Bibliography, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991, pp. 52-53.

The Life of Aristotle by Diogenes Laertius (Vitae, Book V)

"The Catalogue of Aristotle's writings has been thoroughly examined and discussed by P. Moraux, Listes anciennes des d'Aristote, Louvain 1951. I refer to his bibliography and his copious and careful references to the earlier literature. I have refuted his thesis concerning the origin of the catalogue in my paper "Ariston or Hermippus?", in: Classica et mediaevalia 17, 1956, pp. 11-21, but this hypothesis is a rather unimportant detail in his valuable book. His main contribution is the interpretation and discussion of the individual titles. I have limited myself to very brief notes, appended to each individual title in the testimonia under the text; for further information I refer to Moraux.

As I have said in my paper, mentioned above (which I am now summarizing), our evidence favours the traditional opinion that the catalogue is a list of manuscripts of Aristotle's works in the possession of the Alexandrian library. To be more precise, I would say that it is an inventory of the manuscripts acquired fairly soon after the library was established. Apart from the History of Animals and the Anatomai, the important biologic works and the Meteorology are missing, but these works are expressly mentioned and quoted by third century writers; it is inconceivable that the Alexandrian library should not have possessed copies of these works. Their absence from our catalogue is best explained, if we assume that it is an old inventory made before the collection was complete. The disposition of the inventory is this:

1) Nos. 1-19. The works most widely known by the general public in Hellenistic times.

2) Nos. 20-24. Here we recognize Aristotle's synopses of Plato's dialogues and oral teaching, later quoted under the collective title ta Platoniká. We do not know anything certain about 23-24; they might be doxographic hypomnemata of the kind mentioned by Aristotle Top. I 14, 105 b 12.

3) Nos. 25-73. Logical and dialectical writings. Some of the titles are known to us as titles of separate parts of the pragmaties, other titles seem to be entirely out of place. In many instances Moraux's interpretations of individual titles are convincing. More than any other part of the catalogue, this section gives the impression of being an inventory of manuscripts in the possession of a library. It is likely that Nos. 42, 43 and 62 were different manuscripts of the same work, and the same can be said about Nos. 48, 56 and 57. (...)

4) Nos. 74-75. Political writings, very meagre indeed. We should have expected to find the ethical treatises here (it is almost certain that Epicurus knew and used the Nicomachean Ethics), and the omission is difficult to explain. Nos. 78 - 79. Works on rhetoric and on style. Nos. 90-110 (109 - 110 may be late interpolations). Works pertaining to natural philosophy and biology. Nos. 111 - 116. Mathematical works, including optics and musical theory. In this section we can see that the author has attempted to arrange the books according to their subject-matter.

5) Nos. 117-127 (128). Aporemata and Problemata. It is possible that 128 is a collective title referring to the following section.

6) Nos. 129-144. Collectanea. Here Nos. 141 -142 are certainly misplaced, probably interpolated in the course of transmission.

7) Letters and poetry.

I can find no philosophy behind this arrangement, no idea that Aristotle's writings should be arranged according to some principle inherent in his philosophy; it is purely matter-of-fact. Any librarian endowed with common sense could have made this list, starting with the more well-known, popular works, proceeding with the bulk of the scholarly works roughly arranged according to their subject-matter, then the so-called hypomnematic works and the collectanea, and finishing the catalogue with the personal documents, letters and poetry.

Hermippus worked in the Alexandrian library and had access to its inventories and catalogues. He hit upon an old inventory of Aristotle's writings and incorporated it in his biography, without essentially (or perhaps at all) changing its character. Perhaps he realized that it would have involved him in a laborious work, entirely outside his competence, to investigate these four hundred-odd rolls, many of which had more or less identical titles or no titles at all.”

From: Ingemar Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell 1957, pp. 67-69.

“The catalogues are arranged according to different principles and, overall, there is a great lack of uniformity among them, which would seem to point to different sources. All of the lists, moreover, are unsatisfactory or imperfect for several reasons: for each of the philosophers we can point to titles of works cited by other trustworthy ancient sources which do not appear in Diogenes' lists, many titles are repeated or duplicated in a single catalogue, there are variant titles for the same work listed separately, instances of melding and blending the other lists and later supplements, the separate listing of individual books of larger, collective works as well as the listing of the collective work, restorations, clear misattributions, and other contaminations and corruptions.(292) All of the lists present almost insurmountable difficulties for interpretation and analysis and the final conclusive word on them has yet to be spoken and may never be. Even if there were space and time to do so, I cannot discuss each item in each list here, but shall limit discussion to a presentation of some of the general characteristics of each list.

The catalogues of Aristotle (5.21-7) and Strato (5.59-60) are most like one another, which is evidence that they derive from the same source. They are ordered along similar lines in a sensible, matter-of-fact manner. Dialogues or exoteric works appear first, listed according to the diminishing number of books included for individual titles. Esoteric works take up the next section, within which various scientific treatises are grouped according to subject matter. Next, collections of different sorts are found, e.g. aporemata and ipomnemata, and each list concludes with personal papers and letters.(293) Of course in both lists there are titles which are found in each of the sections which do not fit them, but overall one can see this general pattern of arrangement.” (p. 3850)

Notes

(292) Diogenes does not seem to have been totally oblivious to problems of trustworthiness in the book lists which he transmits. At the end of his entry for Aristotle, he writes: "For Aristotle was in all things !oust industrious and most inventive, as is obvious front the writings listed before, which come near in number to 400, at least all those that are undisputed" (5.34).

(293) See I. Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, pp. 67-69 and P. Moraux, Les listes anciennes des d'Aristote p. 27 ff. and 246-7 .

From: Michael George Sollenberger, The Lives of the Peripatetics: An analysis of the contents and structure of Diogenes Laertius ' Vitae philosophorum' Book 5. In Wolfgang Haase and Hildegard Temporini (eds.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, vol. 36.6, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 1992, pp. 3793-3879.

“At the conclusion of three of these catalogues, those of Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Strato, Diogenes appends a stichometric notice. This is meant to be an indication of the total length of all the writings in each catalogue. One stichoi, a verse or line, was regarded as a line of prose or poetry equivalent in length to one hexameter verse, approximately sixteen syllables or 34-38 letters.(300) Counting the number of stichoi in a given work seems to have been a customary way of measuring its length, and such notices were a common bibliographic practice in Alexandria in the third century B.C., a point to which I shall soon return. The total given for Aristotle is 445,270 verses, for Theophrastus 232,850, and for Strato 332,440.(301) But these numbers are certainly corrupted. If they are supposed to represent the number of lines contained in all the works in each catalogue, there is some great disproportion. There are 146 titles in Aristotle's list which comprise over 550 individual books. His total number of stichoi is almost twice that of Theophrastus, and yet the latter is credited with more titles (224) and almost as many individual books (495). Further, Strato's catalogue has only 47 titles (302) which comprise only 58 individual books, yet his number of stichoi is nearly half again as many as the number given for Theophrastus. If some rough calculations are made and the number of stichoi is divided by the number of individual books, we arrive at some surprising average lengths of individual books. For Strato the average length of a book is 5,732 verses, for Aristotle 809, and for Theophrastus 470. These figures are so incommensurate that, unless we want to assume that Strato composed tremendously long books, over twelve times as long as those written by Theophrastus, we will have to reject them as accurate measurements of the total length of the works listed in Diogenes' catalogues.(303)

Diogenes nowhere names his source(s) for the catalogues of Peripatetic writings, but the stichometric notices in the first three, although their accuracy is to be rejected, may provide some clue about the provenance of the lists. Such a reckoning system points, as mentioned earlier, to an Alexandrian source.(304) Book catalogues were compiled in Alexandria during the third century B. C., most notably by Callimachus, whose 130-volume Pinakes (305) appears to have been a listing of works available in the library at Alexandria in his day. (306) It is generally thought that Callimachus arranged the works in large groups according to type or genre, e. g., medical treatises, epic, tragic and lyric poetry, philosophy, political works, etc. Within each of these classes the various authors were listed in alphabetical order. For each author some brief biographical material seems to have been included. Next, the works of each author were apparently listed in alphabetical order, with the incipit and number of verses in each being given.(307) But, as already remarked, there are three different types of catalogues among the Peripatetics in Book Five of Diogenes' work: 1) systematic (Aristotle's and Strato's), 2) alphabetical (Theophrastus'), and 3) thematic (Demetrius' and Heraclides'). Surely these must derive from three different sources, which may be Alexandrian in origin. The only one which comes close to fitting the previous outline of Callimachus' cataloguing method is that of Theophrastus. While no one has ever suggested that Callimachus himself compiled Theophrastus' catalogue, and no such claim is made here, most scholars tend to accept the conclusion of H. Usener that Theophrastus' catalogue is derived fundamentally from the work of Hermippus of Smyrna, a follower of Callimachus.(308) Hermippus, in fact, has been put forth by a number of scholars as the source not only of Theophrastus' catalogue, but also of the other four lists of Peripatetic writings. This can hardly be the case, unless one assumes that the same man compiled Bibliographies according to three different systems. It seems more likely that if Hermippus was Diogenes' ultimate source for Theophrastus' list of writings, there is a different source behind his lists of Aristotle and Strato, and probably yet another one for the lists of Demetrius and Heraclides. Besides Hermippus, the source of Aristotle's list has been thought to be Andronicus of Rhodes, the famous arranger and editor of the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus.(309)

On the other hand, others have maintained that Diogenes' ultimate source of Aristotle's list as well as Strato's was Ariston of Ceos, who is considered to have been the successor to the leadership of the Peripatos after Lyco.(310) Further, it has been claimed that these lists pre-date the bibliographic activities in Alexandria and derive from a library list in the Lyceum itself.(311) For the lists of Demetrius and Heraclides, besides Hermippus, Sotion has often been suggested as Diogenes' ultimate source.(312) In addition to all these contending claims concerning the source(s) of these lists there is the matter of the tale of the fate of the books of Aristotle and Theophrastus, their alleged disappearance and general unavailability during the two centuries after Theophrastus' death and their rediscovery in the first century B.C. This complicated tale begins with Theophrastus' bequest of 'all the books to Neleus' in his will (5.52). This topic is extremely controversial and complex and requires more space than can be allotted here. It has little relevance to the lives and wills of the Peripatetics, but is of major importance for the influence of Aristotle and Theophrastus and the availability and use of their writings during the succeeding centuries.(313)” pp. 3852-3855

Notes

(300) Galen, De placita Hippocratis et Platonis. 8.2 (vol. 5, p. 655 - 6 Kühn); see T. Birt, Das antike Buchwesen in seinem Verhältniss zur Literatur. Mit Beiträgen zur Textgeschichte des Theokrit, Catull, Properz und anderer Autoren (Berlin, 1882) p. 204-5, 214, and 286, K. Ohly, Stichometrische Untersuchungen. Zbl. fiir Bibliothekswesen, Beiheft 61 (Leipzig, 1928) p. 4-22, and R. Blum, Kallimachos und die Literaturverzeichnung bei den Griechen: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Biobibliographie. Archiv fiir Geschichte des Buchwesens 18 (Frankfurt a. M., 1977) p. 124 n. 291 and 238 ff.

(301) D. L. 5.27, 5.50, and 5.60 respectively.

(302) In all three cases the number of titles could be greater or fewer, since in some instances what is listed as one title may in fact be two. One example of this should suffice: 5.59 Peri ton metallikon mekanematon may be two titles Peri to metallikon and Mekanematon.

(303) I. Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, p. 77, writes: "Moraux counted 550 books; a simple calculation (sc. Listes anciennes p. 192) shows that his figure tallies well with the number of lines at the end of the catalogue. Taking as standard an average page of a Greek text in the Loeb library with 30 lines of 40 letters in each line, Aristotle's literary output according to Hermippus' catalogue, in which most of the great pragmaties are missing, would correspond to about 12,000 printed pages." The calculations for Aristotle are not disproportionate as far as I. Düring and P. Moraux are concerned, but since Strato's numbers are so incommensurate, perhaps all such numbers should be suspected of error. It is also interesting to note that Demetrius of Phalerum is reported to have surpassed all Peripatetics in the number of lines written (5.80). However, Demetrius' total is not given by Diogenes; his list of works is nowhere near as long as Theophrastus' or Aristotle's.

(304) In addition to the studies of T. Bity, R. Blum, and K. Ohly (note 300 above), see F. Ritschl, Die Stichometrie der Alten, in: ID., Die Alexandrinischen Bibliotheken unter den ersten Ptolemäern und die Sammlung der Homerischen Gedichte durch Pisistratus (Breslau, 1838, Reprint: Amsterdam, 1970) p. 91 and 103 ff. = ID., Opuscula Philologica vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1886) p. 74 and 84 ff., E. Howald, Die Schriftenverzeichnisse des Aristoteles und des Theophrast, Hermes 55 (1920) p. 204, F. Schmidt, Die Pinakes des Kallimachos. Klassisch-Philologische Studien 1 (Berlin, 1922) p. 68 ff., W. Weinberger, Stichometrie, RE 3A,2 (1929) col. 2487 - 8, P. Moraux, Listes anciennes, p. 214 n. 17 and 246, I. Düring, Ariston or Hermippus?, Classica et Mediaevalia 17 (1956) p. 19, and L. Daly, Contributions to the History of Alphabetization. Coll. Latomus 90 (Brussels, 1967) p. 92. While stichometric notices are given for the sum of the writings of both Speusippus (4.5) and Xenocrates (4.14), elsewhere totals are given in epe, e. g., 1.34, 9.20 and 9.111. Totals for individual writings are also given, e. g., 1.61, 68, 79, 85, 89, 97, 101, and 8.77.

Several different purposes were achieved by stichometric notices. They served to indicate the extent of a work or corpus of works, to determine the pay of the copyist, to determine the price or value of a work or corpus of works, to ascertain the integrity of a work or corpus as well as its authenticity. Moreover, stichometry facilitated the citation of individual passages in a work, for just as line numbers are often used in modern books, consecutive numbers of verses were often placed at regular intervals in the margins of a work. See the citations of line numbers by Diogenes at 7.33 and 7.187-8 and the remarks of M. Sschanz, Zur Stichometrie, Hermes 16 (1881) p. 309-14, K. Wachsmuth, Stichometrie and kein Ende, Rheinische Museum 34 (1879) p. 481-4, and K. Ohly, op. cit. (note 300) p. 74 f.

(305) The full title of the work is recorded as [Pinakes (or Tables) of those who were eminent in every branch of learning, and what they wrote, in 120 volumes] in the Suda, s. v. Kallimachos (no. 227, part 3, p. 19.27-9 Adler).

(306) See O. Regenbogen, Pinax, RE 20.2 (1950) col. 1419-20, and R. Blum, op. cit. (note 300) p. 224 ff., for much of the older literature on Callimachus' bibliographical work.

(307) On the reconstruction of Callimachus' work see R. Pfeiffer, Callimachus, 2nd ed. (Oxford 1965), fr. 429, 435, 438, and 452-3, R. Blum, op. cit. (note 300) p. 231, and F. Sschmidt, op. cit. (note 304) p. 58 ff.

(308) H. Usener, Analecta Theophrastea (Diss. Bonn; Leipzig, 1858) p. 22-4, reprint. in: Idem, Kleine Schriften, ed. L. Rademacher, Vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1912). For a succinct summary of Usener's argument, see O. Regenbogen, Theophrastos col. 1366-9.

(309) For a review of the scholarly battles on the sources of these lists and the various proponents see P. Moraux, Listes p. 15-21, 211-16, and 221-37, and Idem, Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen von Andronikos bis Alexander von Aphrodisias I. Die Renaissance des Aristotelismus im 1. Jh. v. Chr., Peripatoi 5 (Berlin-New York, 1973) p. 4 n. 2, and C. Lord, The Early History of the Aristotelian Corpus, Amer. Journal of Philology 107 (1986) p. 137-61.

(310) P. Moraux, Listes p. 243 ff., and more recently with a bit of hesitation, Idem, Diogène Laerce et le Peripatos p. 251-2. That Ariston was Diogenes' source was first suggested by A. Gercke, Ariston no. 52, RE 2.1 (1896) col. 953 ff.

(311) J. Keaney, Two Notes on the Tradition of Aristotle's Writings, American Journal of Philology 84 (1963) p. 58-63.

(312) P. Moraux, Listes p. 220-1 and 246-7, F. Wehrli, Schule Aristoteles vol. 7, p. 64-5, and H. Gottschalk, Heraclides of Ponto (Oxford, 1980) p. 6 n. 20.

(313) The most recent treatment of this problem is that of C. Lord, op. cit. (note 309) where much of the relevant secondary literature will be found listed.

From: Michael George Sollenberger, The Lives of the Peripatetics: An analysis of the contents and structure of Diogenes Laertius ' Vitae philosophorum' Book 5. In Wolfgang Haase and Hildegard Temporini (eds.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, vol. 36.6, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 1992, pp. 3793-3879.

(*) See my page in French, Les Listes Anciennes des Ouvrages d'Aristote : Diogène Laërce.

Who is the source of Diogenes' Catalogue: Aristo of Ceo, Hermippus of Smyrna or an Anonymous author?

The Traditional Thesis: Hermippus of Smyrna

"Hermippus refers by name to the following writers: Eumelus, Bryon (from whom he quotes Theocritus of Chios), Timaeus, Timotheus, Lycon, Timon. It is a well-known fact that many ancient writers like to quote their subsidiary sources but keep silent about their principal sources. Hermippus worked in the library of Alexandria and was a diligent compilator. It is reasonable to assume that he had access to a rich material, not only of books published in the usual manner, but also of records and other unpublished material which had reached the library from the archives of the Peripatos. The Catalogue of Aristotle's writings which he included in his biography is best explained as an inventory of the books in the possession of the Alexandrian library.

The Hellenistic biographic literature in the two centuries after Hermippus was very rich, but in most cases only the titles of these works are known. It is likely that a small standard biography of Aristotle crystallized in what we use to call the koiné historia, corresponding to our encyclopaedias. Dionysius of Halicarnassus refers in general words to the koiné historia and to "those who have written about the life of Aristotle". No certain fragments of these biographies are known.

Some fragments of other Hellenistic literature give us glimpses of what we have lost. A valuable fragment of Apollodorus' Chronica on the chronology of Aristotle's life is preserved by Dionysius and Diogenes. Aristocles tells us that Apellicon wrote a book on Aristotle's relations with Hermias. It is tempting to assume that Artemon used some of the letters which Apellicon had bought from Aristotle's heirs in Scepsis in his collection of Aristotle's correspondence (in no less than eight books). But most of the letters in his collection were probably faked, which did not prevent later writers from quoting them as genuine. Philodemus is generally held to be the author of the Index Academicorum philosophorum Herculanensis, containing precious information from old reliable sources. In his Volumina Rhetorica, written about 75 B.C., he deals at length with the Epicurean attacks on Aristotle.

At about this time Cicero was in Athens, listening to lectures held by Antiochus of Ascalon and other reputed professors. Cicero's letters and philosophic treatises testify to his great interest in Aristotle, and I do not doubt that it was Antiochus who stimulated this interest. With Antiochus begins the revival of Aristotle; according to him the Peripatos after Straton had degenerated; it was his ambition to resuscitate the old Peripatetic tradition. The final result of this revival is Andronicus' edition of Aristotle's scholarly works.

As an introduction to his edition Andronicus wrote a book On Aristotle's writings which I have characterized as a "catalogue raisonné". It is superfluous to repeat here what I have said in the chapter on the Roman edition of Aristotle's works about the ideas which inspired Andronicus. It is nowhere attested that his book contained a biography of Aristotle. Hermippus' Life of Aristotle remained the standard work."

From: Ingemar Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell 1957, pp. 466-467.

APPENDIX: THE ANCIENT TESTIMONIA ON THE LIBRARY OF ARISTOTLE IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

The texts are collected in:

- Ingemar Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, Part III. Fragments of the Ancient Biographical Tradition, Chapter VII. Aristotle's Library, pp. 337-338; see also Chapter XVIII. The Roman edition of Aristotle's works, pp. 412-425.

- Olof Gigon, Aristotelis opera III: Librorum deperditorum fragmenta, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1987;

- William Fortenbaugh et al. (eds.), Theophrastus of Eresus, Part One, Leiden Brill 1992, Writings. Preservation and Publication [Fragments] 37-41, pp. 90-94 (with English tranaslation).

These are the more relevant texts:

“[1] From Scepsis [a town in the Troad] were the Socratics Erastos and Coriscus, and Coriscus’ son Neleus, a man who studied under Aristotle and Theophrastus. He received the library of Theophrastus, which contained also Aristotle’s library. For indeed Aristotle gave his own library to Theophrastus, and also left his school to him.

[2] Aristotle was the first man we know to have collected books, and he taught the kings in Egypt how to organize a library.

[3] Theophrastus gave (the library) to Neleus. But Neleus brought it to Scepsis and gave it to his heirs, ordinary men who kept the books shut up and carelessly stored. And when they learned that the Attalid kings, to whom their city was subject, were eagerly searching for books for the provision of the library in Pergamum, they hid them in a place dug in the ground.

[4 ]After some length of time their descendants sold the books of Aristotle and Theophrastus, which were damaged by dampness and moths, to Apellicon of Teos for a large sum of money. But Apellicon was more a bibliophile than a philosopher. For this reason, though he attempted to correct parts that had been eaten through, he transferred what was written to new copies, making restorations that were not good, and published the books full of errors.

[5] Since the ancient members of the Peripatos after Theophrastus were entirely without books, except a few, and these were mostly the exoteric writings, it happened that they were unable to do philosophy in a systematic way, but could (only) hollowly declaim theses.

[6] Those who came later, after these books (re)appeared, were better able than they to philosophize and to expound Aristotle. Nevertheless they were forced in many cases to state what was probable, due to the great number of errors.

[7] ome also added much to this (situation). For immediately after Apellicon’s death, Sulla, who had taken Athens, seized Apellicon’s library, and after it had been brought here (to Rome), Tyrannio, the grammarian, a lover of Aristotle, got his hands on it by playing up to the person in charge of the library, [8] and some booksellers, employing poor scribes and not comparing (manuscripts) — which also happens in the case of books copied for sale, both here and in Alexandria. But enough about these matters.”

From: Strabo (64/63 B.C.-25 A.D.), Geographia, XIII, 1, 54-55.

"Having put out from Ephesus with all his ships, (Sulla) anchored on the third day in Piraeus. And after being initiated into the mysteries, he carried off for himself the library of Apellicon of Teos, in which were most of the books of Aristotle and Theophrastus, at that time not yet clearly known to many. When it (the library) was brought to Rome, Tyranrdon the grammarian is said to have prepared many (of the books) and the Rhodian Andronicus, obtaining the use of copies from him, published them and drew up the lists now in circulation. In themselves the elder Peripatetics appear to have been elegant and fond of learning, but neither to have read many of the writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus nor (to have done so) with care, since the estate of Neleus of Scepsis, to whom Theophrastus left his books, passed to men who lacked aspiration and were ordinary."

From: Plutarch (ca. 45–120 A.D.), Sulla, 26.1-3.

"He (Athenaeus) says that he (Larensis) possessed such a great number of ancient Greek books that he outdid all those who have been admired for their collections: Polycrates the Samian and Peisistratus, who was tyrant of the Athenians, and Euclid, who was also an Athenian, and Nikocrates the Cypriot and, moreover, the kings of Pergamum and Euripides the poet and Aristotle the philosopher (and Theophrastus), and Neleus, who preserved their books. From him, he says, Ptolemy, surnamed Philadelphus, the king of our country, purchased all of them and transferred them along with those from Athens and Rhodes to beautiful Alexandria."

From: Athenaneus ( ? - after 192 A.D.), Deipnosophistae, 1.4, 3A-B: Livius Laurensis, a rich Roman, is the host of the symposium (this first book is extant only in a byzantine epitome of unknwon date).

"And he [Athenion] seized not merely the property of citizens [of Athens], but presently he took the goods of foreigners as well, reaching out his hands even for the property of the god at Delos. At any rate, he sent to the island Apellicon of Teos, who had been made an Athenian citizen and had run a chequered and novelty-seeking career.

When, for example, he professed the Peripatetic philosophy, he bought up Aristotle’s library and many other books (for he was very rich), and began surreptitiously to acquire the original copies of the ancient decrees in the Metroön, as well as anything else in other cities which was old and rare. Detected in these acts at Athens, he would have forfeited his life if he had not absconded. But after a short while he returned to Athens again, having won over the favour of many persons; he then enlisted in the cause of Athenion, as one who belonged to the same philosophic sect. Athenion, meanwhile, had forgotten the precepts of the Peripatetic school, and was rationing out a quart of barley every four days to the silly Athenians, giving them food fit for cocks, not human beings. And Apellicon, though he had set out with a military force to Delos, behaved as if he were attending a festival rather than as a true soldier, and, on the side toward the town of Delos, set a guard which was too negligent; as for the regions behind the island, he left them completely unguarded, and went to bed without even throwing up a palisade. When this came to the knowledge of Orbius, who was the Roman praetor in charge of Delos, he waited for a night when there was no moon; he then led out his troops and attacked the Athenians when they were asleep or carousing, and slaughtered them and their companions in arms like sheep, to the number of six hundred; he also took about four hundred prisoners. And this noble general Apellicon made off from Delos in secret flight. When Orbius observed many others fleeing together for refuge in farm-houses, he burned them up, houses and all, as well as all their appliances for a siege, including the siege-engine which Apellicon had constructed when he came to Delos...”

From: Athenaneus, Deipnosophistae, 5, 214D - 215A.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Ancient Catalogues of Aristotle's Works: Second Part

Hesychius and Ptolemy al-Garib

The anonymous Vita Menagiana or Vita Hesychii

"The Vita is known in the literature under the name of Vita Menagiana, because it was first edited by Gilles Ménage in the London edition of Diogenes, 1663. His Animadversiones, extended and considerably improved, were then published in the beautiful folio edition, Amsterdam 1693, printed by H. Wetstenius, together with the notes of H. Stephanus, Casaubonus father and son, and others; a veritable treasure-house from which all later commentators have borrowed material.

V. Rose reprinted the Index Hesychii in his Aristoteles pseudepigraphus, pp. 18-20, reporting that Tischendorf had seen a manuscript of the Vita Hesychii ("cum edito plane conspirantem") in St. John's monastery in Patmos. The Index is reprinted in the Berlin edition of Aristotle, vol. 5, p. 1466, and then in Rose's Aristotelis fragmenta, 1886, together with the Vita. It was also reprinted by Buhle in the first volu me of his edition, by Westermann in his Vitarum scriptores, and by Flach in his Hesychii Milesii Onomatologi quae supersunt. P. Moraux in his Listes anciennes des d'Aristote deals at length with problems connected with the Index librorum."

From: Ingemar Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell 1957, p. 81.

"If we count the books listed in the first part of the catalogue (1-139), accepting the transmitted numbers of books and assuming, when no figure is given, that the title represents one book, we get 403 books plus the 158 books of the Polities. Moraux counted in the original list of Hermippus (or as he believed, Ariston) 551 books (Listes anciennes, p. 192). The number of stikoi, according to Hermippus' catalogue was 445.270, corresponding roughly to 550 papyrus-rolls of about 800 lines each.

(...)

Hesychius' Catalogue of Aristotle's writings has been dealt with at length by P. Moraux, Listes anciennes, pp. 195-271. Plezia has a note on the catalogue in De Andronici Rhodii studiis, p. 51.

On the first part of the catalogue, titles 1-139, there is general agreement. As appears from the following survey, it is essentially the same Pinax as that transmitted by Hermippus.

Nos. 1-24. The works most widely known to the general public in Hellenistic times; the list agrees pretty well with Hermippus.

Nos. 25-68. Logical and dialectical writings; a few titles misplaced, but the general agreement with Hermippus is obvious. It is interesting to see that both lists preserve an old error: ethikon (title 38 in Diogenes Laertius, 39 in Hesychius).

Nos. 69-70, and title 64, misplaced; the same three "political" writings as in Hermippus.

Nos. 81-98, eighteen writings on natural philosophy and biology; as in Hermippus, the list ends up with two interpolated titles, 97-98, another old error which both lists have preserved.

Nos. 99-104, the same six mathematical and astronomical writings as in Hermippus.

Nos. 105-119, hypomnematic writings; No. 111 must be a late addition, perhaps by Hesychius himself.

Nos. 120-131, collectanea; No. 121 is perhaps the general title. No. 123 has preserved an ancient gloss, probably an annotation by the librarian who made up the original Pinax. "This is the book by which he defeated the corresponding book of Menaechmus."

Nos. 132-133, added in the same way as Hermippus 141-142. Nos. 135-139, the same as Hermippus.

Both catalogues, then, are transcribed from the same original. According to Heitz, DL is more reliable, according to Howald the list of Hesychius is a deteriorated copy of the list in DL. Like Moraux I am more inclined to believe that Diogenes and Hesychius independently used the same original, and that in some small and rather unimportant details Hesychius has preserved the original better than Diogenes. At least two additions are very late and may be ascribed to Hesychius himself: title 96 (this work was not divided into two books until the second century A. D.), and title 111.

The appendix Hesychiana, titles 140-197, raises problems which can never be answered satisfactorily. Moraux's hypotheses are very ingenious, but I doubt whether he can persuade anybody to believe in them. And what has Porphyry to do with this list? As far as I know, his Philosophos historia did not include a biography of Aristotle, let alone a Catalogue of his writings, genuine or spurious.

The appendix consists of four different parts.

Nos. 140-147 belong to the class of aporemata or problemata, possibly with one exception, No. 140.

Nos. 148-158, a selection of the well-known pragmaties, as edited by Andronicus.

Nos. 159-187, a list of various writings, inviting wild conjectures as to the original arrangement. Christ, and later Plezia, suggested that this is an inventory of a Hellenistic library, e.g. in Rhodes or Pergamon, an attractive and simple hypothesis which, however, as Plezia rightly says, "aequo iure affirmari ac negari potest".

Nos. 188-197, a list of pseudepigrapha. Such a list was probably included in Andronicus' work; at least he discussed the titles of spurious works. Diogenes merely says that he knows that some books, circulated under Aristotle's name, are anaepsilekta. Moraux's reconstruction of 1 he original alphabetical order in this list, p. 271, is attractive but does not carry us any further.

Hesychius, a diligent collector of facts, must have compiled this appendix from different sources. The first and the third section are probably pre-Andronicean. The second list, 148-158, is certainly made after Andronicus, but equally certain is that the titles are quite arbitrarily ranged. If Hesychius had known Andronicus' work, he would hardly have presented such a disordered list of the pragmaties. It is therefore more likely that this section, too, is an inventory of a library. It is futile to make any conjectures concerning the fourth section.

As to the individual titles, I refer to Moraux's careful and valuable comments. A characteristic feature of this catalogue is that so many of the titles are in the accusative. The history of the transmission of this list is entirely unknown; it may, or may not have been interfered with during this process.

It is generally assumed that the Vita Hesychii is an epitome of the original Onomatologon of Hesychius, and the language in ([Vita Hesychii] 4) would lend some support to this hypothesis. Concerning the relationship with Diogenes we can only say that Hesychius used the same biographical sources, but the mixture is his own, and on two or three points he transmits information which is plainly wrong and not found anywhere else. The catalogue proves that he had access to post-Andronicean sources.

The Suda contains an excerpt of our Vita under No. 3929 Adler. The text is identical with that of Ambros. 490 with a few minor variants, annotated in the critical apparatus."

From: Ingemar Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell 1957, pp. 90-92.

Ptolemy el-Garib (or al-Gharib)

"It is commonly held that the two surviving Syriac and the four extant Arabic Vitae Aristotelis are ultimately based on the biographical tradition represented or inaugurated by Ptolemy (-el-Garib) and his (lost) Vita Aristotelis.(1) Probably in the course of the fifth or sixth century A.D., a Syriac translation was made of Ptolemy's Vita or, more likely, of an epitome of this Vita. Of this original translation, only two rather scanty abridgements by some Syriac biographers survive, namely, I Vita Aristotelis Syriaca and II Vita Aristotelis Syriaca, which might also be called short resumes of an older and more comprehensive Syriac translation of Ptolemy's original Greek Vita Aristotelis or of an epitome of this Vita.

The Syriac translation of either Ptolemy's Vita or that of an epitome of this Vita, together with some additional (probably Neo-Platonic) materials transmitted through several intermediary sources, ultimately became the foundation of the four Arabic Vitae Aristotelis. It has been surmised that towards the end of the ninth century A.D., Ishaq Ibn Hunayn translated into Arabic a Syriac rendition of Ptolemy's Vita or, rather, of a Syriac translation of an epitome of this Vita. In any event, the Arabic biographers, without exception, ultimately derived their information and materials, through the intermediary of Syriac translators, from Ptolemy, although they seem to have included in their Vitae not only some elements that were probably added (or invented) by the Syriac translators (or by the Arabic biographers themselves), but also bits of information gleaned from some other (Neo-Platonic?) reports or accounts. There exists no evidence, however, that the later Arabic biographers made direct use of Greek or Syriac sources. It might be correct to maintain, therefore, that the Syriac and Arabic biographers, like the Neo-Platonic School of Ammonius, derived most of their information concerning the life of Aristotle from Ptolemy (-el-Garib) and his Vita Aristotelis.(2)

The four major Arabic biographers of Aristotle are: Al-Mubassir (or Al-Mubashir, subsequently cited as II VA), who wrote during the latter part of the eleventh century; (3) Ibn Abi Usaibia (subsequently cited as IV VA), who wrote during the latter part of the thirteenth century; (4) Ibn an-Nadim (subsequently cited as I VA), who wrote near the end of the tenth century; (5) and Al-Qifti Gamaladdin (subsequently cited as III VA), who wrote during the first half of the thirteenth century.(6) A cursory examination of the Arabic (and Syriac) Vitae Aristotelis might indicate that especially I VA, II VA and IV VA, which are based on a single main source, are quite similar in content. Closer analysis reveals, however, that there exist quite a few significant differences in the facts selected and discussed by the different Arabic biographers. It is also obvious that some of the later Arabic biographers simply copied from some earlier Arabic author. Thus, Usaibia, for instance, occasionally seems to quote from Mubashir without, however, acknowledging his source." pp. 54-55

(...)

"A long list of Aristotle's writings is preserved by Usaibia. This list or catalogue, which includes a number of pseudepigrapha, ultimately goes back to the list compiled by Ptolemy (-el-Garib).(104) A brief classification of Aristotle's works can also be found in An-Nadim (I VA 18). Mubashir (II VA 35), who maintains that Aristotle 'wrote many books, about one hundred, and that it is said that apart from these one hundred books he wrote others too,' (105) enumerates only twenty works which he claims to have seen, namely, 'eight books on logic; eight (actually seven) books on physics; (106) one book on ethics; one book on constitutions; one large book called Metaphysics, also known by the title of Theology, that is, Divine Discourse; one book on mathematics; and one book on mechanics.' (107)

A comparison of the Syriac and Arabic Vitae Aristotelis with other Vitae -- Diogenes Laertius V. 1-16,(108) Vita Aristotelis Marciana, Vita Aristotelis Vulgata, Vita Aristotelis Latina and Vita Aristotelis Hesychii (Vita Menagiana or Vita Menagii) -- indicates that the Syriac and Arabic biographies supplement and implement, and must be implemented by, these other Vitae." pp. 68-69

(1) See A.-H. Chroust, 'A brief account of the traditional Vitae Aristotelis,' Revue des Etudes Grecques, vol. 77, nos. 364-5 (1964), pp. 50-69, especially, pp. 60-9, and Chapter I. The title of Ptolemy's Vita Aristotelis probably was something like 'On the Life of Aristotle, His Last Will and Testament, and a List of His Writings.' See Elias (olim David), Commentaria in Porphyrii Isagogen et in Aristotelis Categorias, CIAG, vol. XVIII, part I (ed. A. Busse, Berlin, 1900), p. 107, line 7, where we are told that Ptolemy wrote about Aristotle's 'list of writings, about his life, and about his last will and testament.' I VA 19 (An-Nadim) reports that 'Ptolemy-el-Garib . . . is the author of a book "On the Life of Aristotle, His Death, and the Classification of his Writings."' See also IV VA (Usaibia), at the beginning. For the Syriac and Arabic Vitae Aristotelis, see, in general, F. A. Muller, 'Die griechischen Philosophen in der arabischen Überlieferung,' Festschrift der Frankischen Stiftungen für Professor Bernhardy (Halle, 1873); F. A. Muller, 'Das Arabische Verzeichnis der Aristotelischen Schriften,' Morgenländische Forschungen: Festschrift für H. L. Fischer[=Fleischer] (Leipzig, 1875); M. Steinschneider, 'Die arabischen Übersetzungen aus dem Griechischen,' Centralblatt für Bibl.-Wesen, Beiheft no. II, part 5 (Leipzig, 1890-1), and Beiheft no. IV, part 12 (Leipzig, 1893); J. Lippert, Studien auf dem Gebiete der GriechischArabischen Übersetzungsliteratur (Braunschweig, 1894); A. Baumstark, 'Lucubrationes Syrio-Graecae,' Jahrbuch fur Klassische Philologie, Supplement, vol. 21 (Leipzig, 1894), pp. 333-524; A. Baumstark, Syrisch-Arabische Biographieen des Aristoteles (Leipzig, 1900); J. Lippert, Ibn al-Qiftis Tarih al-Hukama (Leipzig, 1903). For additional and detailed information about the literature on our subject, see M. Guidi and R. Walzer, 'Studi su al-Kindi I: un scritto introduttivo allo studio di Aristotele,' Memorie della Reale Academia Nazionale dei Licei. Classe di Scienze Morali, series VI, vol. VI, fasc. 5 (Rome, 1940), pp. 375-419; R. Walzer, 'New light on the Arabic translations of Aristotle,' Oriens, vol. VI (1953), pp. 91-142; I. During, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, vol. LXIII, no. 2 (Goteborg, 1957), pp. 183-92, 193-246.

Notes

(3) His full name is Abu-(e)l-Wafa al-Mubashir (or Mubassir) Ibn Fatik. He authored the Kitab Mukhtar al-Hikam wa-Mahasin al-Kilam (The Book of Selections of Wisdom and Wonderful Sayings). For simplicity's sake the accents on the Arabic words have been omitted.

(4) He authored the Kitab uyun al-Anba fi Tabaqat al-Atibba (The Book of Sources for Information Concerning the School of Physicians). Usaibia, who died in 1270, was a physician.

(5) His full name is Ibn Abi Yaqub an-Nadim. He authored the Kitab al-Fihrist, which was written before the year 987. This work, like that of Al-Qifti (see note 6), is more in the nature of a 'biographical encyclopedia.'

(6) His full name is Al-Qifti Gamaladdin al-Qadi al-Akram. He authored the Tabaqat al-Hukama (The School of Wise Men). He died in 1248. See note 5.

Neither the work of An-Nadim nor that of AlQifti will be used extensively.

(104) Usaibia also contains a short survey of Aristotle's writings. This survey is based upon, or taken from, Ibn Said Al-Qordubi.

(105) The number 'one hundred' is probably a mistranslation or misreading of the Greek chilioi (one thousand), which can be found in Vita Marciana 45 and Vita Lascaris 48.

(106) Like An-Nadim (I VA 18), Mubashir (II VA 35) actually recites only seven titles on 'physics.'

(107) Mubashir (II VA 36) also mentions the 'public' and private letters of Aristotle. These 'public' letters might well contain the 'official reports' which Aristotle sent to Macedonia and to Antipater in particular. In his Oration Against the Philosophers of 306 B.C., Demochares implies that Aristotle 'conspired' with Macedonia against Athens.(...)

(108) A.-H. Chroust, 'A Brief Analysis of the Vita Aristotelis of Diogenes Laertius (DL V. 11-16),' pp. 97-129, and Chapter III.

From: Anton-Hermann Chroust, Aristotle. New Light on His Life and on Some of His Lost Works. Vol. I. Some Novel Interpretations of the Man and His Life, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973, pp. 54-55; 68-69

"The Kitab al-Fihrist by Ibn An-Nadim: "Ptolemy-el-Garib who was an adherent of Aristotle and spread knowledge about his merits; he is the author of a book On the life of Aristotle, his death, and the classification of his writings. -- Usaibia, in the introduction to his biography, says: "Thus speaks Ptolemy in his book to Gallus on the life and history of Aristotle, his Will and the list of his famous writings." -- Apart from the fact that his name is mentioned several times in the biographies, this is all information we have on Ptolemy in Arabic sources." I. Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, cit. p. 195

"The Life of Aristotle current in the neoplatonic schools was written by a certain Ptolemy. The identification of this Ptolemy, the character and scope of his biography, the relationship of the numerous late epitomes to the original work: all this is very problematic.

We possess three neoplatonic epitomes, all from the fifth century, Vita Marciana, Vita vulgata, and Vita Latina; the two Syriac Vitae are probably from the same period; the Arabic tradition is represented by an-Nadim's Fihrist, transcribed by al-Qifti, and by the extracts in al-Mubashir and Usaibia; there are also some scattered fragments of other writers; the entire Arabic tradition goes back to a translation (or epitome) of Ptolemy's Life of Aristotle, presumably made by Ishaq ibn Hunayn towards the end of the ninth century.

All the material handed down to us in these nine Vitae is very uniform in its general character, in spite of differences in details. But sometimes, even in small details, their agreement is complete, as I have shown in my comments. I do not for a moment doubt that these nine Vitae ultimately are derived from the same common source, Ptolemy's Life of Aristotle. I have found no vestiges of any other independent source. This conclusion is confirmed by the neoplatonic prolegomena. The biographical material in these prolegomena (and incidentally in the commentaries) shows such close relationship with the Vitae and with Ptolemy's Catalogue of Aristotle's writings that there is no room for doubt.

The examination of the three Greek and Latin Vitae has led to the result that they are three independent versions of the same original epitome. This epitome was used as the basis of oral instruction in the school of Ammonius Hermeiu and by his disciples Olympiodorus, David and Elias. It was also used by Philoponus and Simplicius, and after the time of Elias and David by the anonymous professor called Pseudo-Elias: thus by three generations of students from about 480 A. D. until the middle of the following century.

The Syriac Vitae are very meagre in content and not derived directly from any of the existing epitomes; they too must be regarded as independent versions of the same original. They may have been current in the school of Ibas of Edessa, but it is also possible that they are products of the seventh century used in the schools of Bishop Sebocht of Qennesrin or Jacob of Edessa.

The Arabic tradition is rich in facts which are not found at all in the Greek and Syriac Vitae, and in many cases when the Greek Vitae merely contain a hint or a simple fact, we find a more elaborate account in the Arabic tradition. The Arabic tradition has been unduly neglected; as I have shown in my comments, it contains much valuable material of undoubtedly Greek origin; the Arabic elaborations, distortions and embellishments stand out clearly, and in most cases we can easily detach them. The Arabic text of Aristotle's Will affords an excellent criterion, since we can directly compare the Greek and the Arabic text paragraph by paragraph. The result is that there is a remarkable agreement between Diogenes' text (derived from Hermippus, probably via Phavorinus), and the Arabic text (derived from Andronicus, via Ptolemy, via Ishaq's translation and other possible intermediate sources). As a matter of fact, the Arabic text of the Will is in certain respects superior to that given by Diogenes. This should warn us not to be too suspicious of the Arabic tradition. The criteria that I have used in my scrutiny of the Arabic sources are these: agreement in substance with Greek sources, agreement in language of such a kind that it is possible to recognize typically Greek idioms behind the Arabic text, and finally, agreement in tendency.

Ptolemy's biography has a clear tendency: it is a glorification of Aristotle, based on some typically neoplatonic conceptions. Aristotle is dios Aristoteles. He was entrusted to Plato in compliance with an oracle of the God in Delphi. He made an extraordinary impression on Plato, and when Plato went on his second visit to Sicily, he deputized as head of the school. He was held in great honour by Philip and Alexander and was very influential in political affairs, "using philosophy as an instrument". He dissuaded Alexander from attacking Persia, telling him that the omina were unfavourable. He was great as a benefactor, both towards individuals and cities. The inhabitants of Stagira honoured him in many ways after his death. They believed that "their coming to the place where Aristotle's remains were buried would purify their minds". It is said that a swarm of bees was found around the urn containing his ashes. And so forth.

It is further characteristic of Ptolemy's biography that he frequently refers to Aristotle's correspondence as evidence. It is probable that he used Artemon's collection of letters and the additional collection made by Andronicus as principal sources. The section on chronology is probably taken from Hermippus; the fact that Aristotle was not elected head of the Academy after Plato's death is explained in exactly the same way as by Hermippus: "Aristotle was on a mission to Macedonia". Other facts are of such a nature that it is impossible to determine whether he has taken them from Hermippus or from the koiné historia. Although his tendency to glorify Aristotle forbids us to speak of critical scholarship, it cannot be denied that his biography is a scholarly work, based on extensive investigations and a thorough knowledge of the biographical tradition. He wanted to find material likely to extol Aristotle and present him as an almost divine personality, and he found it. If suitable for his purpose, he transferred to Aristotle qualities, honours, and actions originally ascribed to other persons. Philip, Alexander and Antipater were honoured by the Athenians after the battle of Chaeronea with statues on the Acropolis and the status of proxenoi -- Ptolemy felt no scruples in transferring this to Aristotle, perhaps using faked letters as evidence; other examples of similar transfers are cited in my comments. The habit as such is old; a short time after Aristotle's death the historian Eumelus is already describing Aristotle as a second Socrates. Ptolemy is really critical only when he refutes stories which, if believed, could damage the memory of his idol." Düring, cit., p. 469-471

"Who was this Ptolemy and when did he live? The identification with Ptolemaios Chennos should in my opinion be discarded. The general character of the Vita tells us that the author was a neoplatonist, writing after Porphyry's time. A neoplatonist named Ptolemy is mentioned as disciple of Porphyry and Iamblichus, Stobaeus I 378 Wachsmuth; he might well be our Ptolemy. But the name was indeed very common, especially in Alexandria. A curious detail in Fihrist 15 is the dating of Aristotle's death to "the beginning of the reign of Ptolemy, son of Lagos". An Arabic writer can hardly have invented this; it must be derived from Ptolemy; it would be natural for an Alexandrian scholar to use the Alexandrian List of Kings instead of or parallel with the Athenian List of Archons. This is admittedly a weak argument, but it points to Alexandria. So does the scholarly character of the biography. My conclusion, then, is that Ptolemy was a member of Porphyry's and Iamblichus' school and that he wrote his Life of Aristotle in the first half of the fourth century. I base this conclusion mainly on the general tendency of the biography.

Two problems, in themselves of little importance, must be left open: the alleged dedication of the biography to a certain Gallus, and the name Ptolemy-el-Garib. The simplest solution is to accept both facts as true. Dedications of books to Roman noblemen was a common habit; Porphyry is a good example. It is possible to translate el-Garib with "the unknown", and explain it as a surname given to him by Ishaq to distinguish him from the well-known Ptolemy, the author of Al-Magest. Other possible explanations are discussed in my comments on al-Qifti.

With this my brief survey comes to an end. After Ptolemy no ancient writer is known who has made an independent or original contribution to the biographical tradition.

The biographical tradition on Aristotle is interesting from two quite different points of view. Part of this material is important because it is true and gives us knowledge about the historical Aristotle, about the events of his life and about his personality. His Will is one of the most precious documents that antiquity has preserved to us. Another part of the fragments and the biographies is interesting because it provides us with material for a history of Aristotelianism. But it is not my object in this book, either to write a Life of Aristotle or a history of the changes in the conception of his personality and importance as a philosopher and scholar, but rather to provide a source-book for such work."

From: Ingemar Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, cit., pp. 475-476.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Les Listes Anciennes des Catalogues d'Aristote : Première Partie

Diogène Laërce, Vies, V 22-27

Introduction

L'Antiquité nous a laissé trois catalogues des d'Aristote :

Diogène Laërce, Vies et doctrines des philosophes illustres, Livre V. Les Péripatétiques 22-27 (III siècle) ;

La Vita Menagiana (anonyme), connue aussi comme Vita Hesychii, attribuée à Hesychius de Milet (V siècle) ;

Le catalogue attribué à Ptolémée el-Garib, existant en deux versions arabes de Ibn al-Qifti (ca. 1172-1248) et de Ibn Abi Usaibia (1203-1270) (IV siècle ?).

Les études de Paul Moraux

1) Le livre Les listes anciennes des d'Aristote, Louvain : Éditions universitaires, 1951.

"M. Paul Moraux a publié, en 1942, une fort bonne monographie consacrée à Alexandre d'Aphrodise, exégète de la noétique d'Aristote. On sait que l'activité d'Alexandre, aux environs de l'an 200 de notre ère, marque l'une des étapes les plus importantes dans l'histoire de l'aristotélisme et que ses vues sur les conditions de la pensée humaine ont alimenté pendant des siècles les controverses sur le sens véritable de la doctrine aristotélicienne de l'intelligence. Depuis ce premier travail plein de promesses, M. Moraux a poursuivi en sens inverse, en remontant vers la source, ses études sur le péripatétisme ancien ; mais nul n'ignore que la longue période qui s'étend de Théophraste à Alexandre nous est connue seulement par des témoignages fragmentaires et trop peu nombreux, permettant à peine de tracer une image bien pâle des prestations de l'École péripatéticienne à cette époque.

Devant cette pénurie de documents, M. Moraux n'a pas craint de s'attaquer à ceux d'entre eux dont la nature même ne semblait guère autoriser l'espoir d'en tirer des renseignements quelque peu substantiels sur la vie de l'École et l'activité concrète du maître : les sèches énumérations de titres d' que constituent les listes anciennes des écrits du Stagirite. L'étude historique qu'il en a entreprise répond sans doute aux vœux des spécialistes que ne pouvaient plus satisfaire les travaux actuellement vieillis sur cette matière aride. Mais par la manière dont il a su traiter le sujet, il rejoint des problèmes d'un intérêt plus étendu et de portée plus grande. On ne songe plus, de nos jours, à contester l'importance des recherches sur l'origine et la formation des écrits d'Aristote. Elles éclairent autant le philosophe qui s'attache à la doctrine du maître du Lycée pour en approfondir le sens, que l'historien qui a souci de retracer l'évolution de sa pensée et de suivre les répercussions qu'elle a eues après lui dans son école. Toute contribution nouvelle à l'étude de ces questions mérite, dès lors, notre attention sympathique.

C'est précisément à ce titre que nous avons été heureux d'accueillir dans la collection consacrée à l'œuvre philosophique d'Aristote l'ouvrage de M. Moraux sur les listes anciennes des écrits du Stagirite. Car cet ouvrage nous apporte beaucoup plus que son titre ne permet de le soupçonner. Sans doute y trouvera-t-on un examen patient et consciencieux du contenu et de l'origine de ces listes. Mais pour découvrir ce qui se cache sous ces longues énumérations de titres dont la grosse part ne révèle quasiment rien au premier abord, il était nécessaire de replacer dans leur cadre aussi bien les listes elles-mêmes que chacun des écrits qui y sont relevés. M. Moraux s'y est employé avec un succès remarquable. Il s'est imposé la tâche ardue de rassembler les données innombrables propres à éclaircir le mystère de chacun des titres de ces listes. Il ne s'est pas contenté toutefois des renseignements épars, fournis par les auteurs de l'antiquité, sur l'activité d'Aristote ou des philosophes postérieurs ; il a su tirer des lumières inattendues de l'étude des traités conservés du Stagirite : en en scrutant le contenu, la structure, les procédés de composition, les expressions caractéristiques, il est parvenu à déceler, avec une sûreté de coup d'œil peu commune, le sens vrai de tel titre d'apparence anodine, ne suggérant de façon précise aucune œuvre nettement déterminée.

Il nous amène ainsi à reconnaître, sans contestation possible, que tels livres parfaitement connus d'un de nos traités, -- des Topiques, par exemple, -- figurent dans les listes sous des dénominations inattendues. Et par ce biais on apprend aussi de quelle indépendance relative ont joui, aux premiers temps de l'École, certaines parties -- livres ou groupes de livres -- des traités aristotéliciens considérés depuis des siècles comme formant une unité.

Par ces brèves indications, données à titre d'échantillon, nous espérons faire entrevoir en quelque mesure ce que l'on peut attendre du travail de M. Moraux. La manière même dont il a abordé son sujet l'a mené bien au-delà de l'interprétation immédiate des documents squelettiques qui font l'objet direct de son étude. Pour une bonne part, les écrits qui y sont simplement énumérés ont pu être replacés dans leur ambiance vivante et dans les circonstances concrètes où ils ont vu le jour. Par voie de conséquence, certaines dates ont pu être précisées de façon heureuse, ou du moins proposées avec une sérieuse probabilité. On est mis en présence d'Aristote en pleine activité au sein de son école, rassemblant avec ses disciples des documents de toute sorte, constituant avec eux des collections de problèmes et d'exercices relatifs aux domaines les plus variés, mais composant aussi, de façon progressive, ses fameux traités qui devaient le rendre si célèbre plus tard.

A côté de cela, on nous montre, avec preuves à l'appui, le rétrécissement de plus en plus accentué du champ sur lequel s'est porté l'intérêt des représentants de l'École après les successeurs immédiats du maître. Ces disciples tardifs se cantonnent dans certains domaines, — logique et dialectique, entre autres, — rappelés par une profusion de titres dans les listes les plus anciennes. Ils semblent plier sous le poids d'un héritage trop lourd pour leurs faibles épaules et négligent, malgré leur importance, une série de traités de philosophie naturelle caractéristiques de la manière et des préoccupations du fondateur du Lycée.

C'est à la fin du Me siècle avant J.-C. que nous reportent en fait les documents envisagés. En étudiant de façon minutieuse les procédés de la catalographie alexandrine, M. Moraux a su montrer que les listes les plus anciennes d' d'Aristote (Diogène Laërce, Hésychius) n'appartiennent pas au milieu alexandrin, mais ont leur origine dans l'école péripatéticienne elle-même, vers la fin du IIIe siècle, un peu plus de cent ans après la mort du Stagirite. Elles proviennent d'un catalogue dressé à cette époque et dont l'auteur ne serait autre qu'Ariston de Céos, chef de l'École après Lycon. -- En même temps, les listes en question nous fournissent un précieux témoignage touchant la diffusion des traités aristotéliciens après Théophraste et avant l'édition d'Andronicus de Rhodes. Il en résulte une fois de plus qu'on ne peut ni refuser tout crédit, ni s'en tenir de façon exclusive à la tradition qui veut que tous les traités ou à peu près seraient restés enfouis durant plus de deux siècles dans une cave à Skepsis.

Cet aperçu, tout incomplet qu'il soit, ne laisse pas, croyons-nous, de mettre en lumière la richesse de contenu de l'ouvrage de M. Moraux et l'apport considérable qu'il représente pour notre connaissance de l'œuvre d'Aristote, de la formation et de l'origine de maints écrits qui y figurent, et du sort qui leur fut fait aux temps qui suivirent la mort du maître. Nous osons espérer que cette étude sera le point de départ de bien d'autres, visant à approfondir la genèse et la signification de bon nombre de ces écrits qui n'ont pas encore livré à l'histoire tout le secret de leur origine, ni dévoilé à l'analyse toute la portée philosophique de leur contenu." (pp. V-VIII)

Préface de Augustin Mansion à Paul Moraux, Les listes anciennes des d'Aristote, Louvain : Éditions universitaires 1951.

Oubli des scolaires d'Aristote dans le premier Peripatos

"Près de trois siècles s'écoulèrent entre le moment où furent écrits les scolaires d'Aristote et celui où l'activité des commentateurs en assura la diffusion dans le monde philosophique. Durant cette longue période, l'histoire des traités d'Aristote reste fort obscure. Strabon rapporte, à ce propos, une singulière histoire. La bibliothèque de Théophraste, qui contenait celle d'Aristote, fut transmise à Nélée par voie d'héritage. Nélée la fit transporter à Skepsis en Troade. Ses successeurs, des gens ignorants, l'enfouirent dans une cave pour la dissimuler à l'ardeur bibliophile des Attales. Longtemps après (au commencement du ter siècle avant J.-C.), les livres furent achetés par Apellicon ; celui-ci les publia en réparant maladroitement les dégâts faits par les vers et par l'humidité. La bibliothèque fut ensuite transportée par Sylla d'Athènes à Rome. Là, elle “passa par les mains” du grammairien Tyrannion, qui goûtait beaucoup Aristote. Les libraires se servirent souvent de copies fautives qu'ils ne collationnaient pas, ce qui arrive encore tous les jours, dit Strabon, aussi bien à Rome qu'à Alexandrie (1). Dans la Vie de Sylla, Plutarque raconte la même histoire ; il ajoute cependant qu'Andronicus de Rhodes acquit de Tyrannion des copies qu'il "publia et qu'il écrivit les tables (pinakés) qui circulaient encore à l'époque de Plutarque (2). Les deux auteurs signalent que les anciens Péripatéticiens, successeurs de Théophraste, n'avaient point les livres d'Aristote, si ce n'est en très petit nombre, et que, par conséquent, ils ne pouvaient pas philosopher sérieusement.

Dans ces récits, le mélange d'histoire et de légende est bien difficile à débrouiller. Strabon, le plus ancien auteur qui narre le sort des d'Aristote, n'écrivait guère qu'un demi-siècle après la découverte d 'Apellicon ; il était disciple de Tyrannion (3), avait étudié la philosophie aristotélicienne avec Boéthus de Sidon (4) et puisait souvent son information chez le stoïcien Posidonius, lequel témoignait un vif intérêt aux choses de l'aristotélisme (5). Toutes ces circonstances confèrent un certain poids à son témoignage.

D'ailleurs, l'école péripatéticienne elle-même semble avoir ignoré longtemps les scolaires d'Aristote. Straton fut sans doute le dernier à les utiliser, pour les combattre ; peut-être même ne les lisait-il plus et n'en connaissait-il les théories que par l'enseignement de Théophraste. Après Straton, le Lycée décline. Lycon n'est qu'un beau parleur ; l'éloquence l'intéresse plus que la philosophie. Ariston passe aussi pour un orateur plein d'élégance et pour un philosophe sans profondeur. Hiéronymus et Diodore, les moralistes de l'école, cherchent leur inspiration chez les Cyrénaïques, les Épicuriens et les Stoïciens. Critolaus, le seul Péripatéticien de l'époque qui ait quelque importance comme philosophe, utilise visiblement les dialogues d'Aristote et non ses ésotériques.

En dehors de l'école, on ne connaît pas davantage les traités scolaires du Stagirite. L 'adversaire le plus acharné de l'aristotélisme, Épicure, dirige ses attaques contre les dialogues. L' Eudème, le Protreptique, le De Philosophia, le Banquet et d'autres exotériques font l'objet de ses critiques. Il ne tient compte ni du De Anima, ni de l' Éthique, ni de la Métaphysique, ni des autres traités dont les théories différaient, sur bien des points, de celles des dialogues (6). Cependant, Épicure fut l'hôte d'Athènes dès 323, année où Aristote prit sa retraite à Chalcis en Eubée. Il était alors âgé de dix-huit ans et s'occupait de philosophie depuis plusieurs années. Quand il revint à Athènes et y ouvrit une école, après avoir enseigné à Mytilène et à Lampsaque, Aristote était mort depuis quinze ans. Dans ces conditions, les traités ésotériques ne lui auraient pas échappé, s'ils avaient joui d'une certaine diffusion à Athènes.

Dans leur polémique contre l'école péripatéticienne, Colotès et Diogène d'Œnoanda se contentent de reproduire les arguments d'Épicure. D 'autre part, les Épicuriens associent dans leurs attaques l'Académie et le Lycée, comme si l'enseignement des deux écoles était le même ; pareille confusion n'aurait pas été commise si l'on avait connu les traités ésotériques, où Aristote établissait sa position antiplatonicienne. La thèse syncrétiste d'un Antiochus d'Ascalon, affirmant l'unité foncière des doctrines de l'Académie, du Lycée et du Portique, ne se justifie pas autrement. Il semble d'ailleurs que Cicéron, le disciple d'Antiochus, ne connaisse d'Aristote que les publiés, les dialogues.

Pendant près de trois cents ans, les traités du Stagirite sont donc demeurés inconnus de la plupart des philosophes. Ce fait confirme, dans une certaine mesure, le récit de Strabon et de Plutarque. Cependant, il ne faut pas perdre de vue que nous connaissons mal l'histoire philosophique des siècles pendant lesquels, selon Strabon, les écrits d'Aristote demeurèrent cachés à Skepsis. Les penseurs de cette époque n'ont laissé aucune grande œuvre qui nous soit parvenue : nous n'avons que des fragments transmis par des auteurs parfois très tardifs (7). Dans ces conditions, il est bien téméraire d'affirmer qu'un philosophe ou qu'une école de ce temps ignorait tel ou tel ouvrage d'Aristote.

Peut-être les traités du Stagirite étaient-ils connus, mais peu prisés ; il n'est pas nécessaire d'en admettre la disparition pour expliquer l'oubli dans lequel ils tombèrent (8)." (pp. 1-3)

Notes

(1) Strabon, XIII, 608-609.

(2) Plutarque, Sylla, 26.

(3) Strabon, XII, 548.

(4) Strabon, XVI, 757.

(5) Strabon, II, 104. Cfr R. Zimmermann, Posidonius und Strabo, dans Hermes, XXIII, 1888, pp. 103-130.

(6) Sur la connaissance qu'il a pu avoir des Analytiques et des de physique, cfr infra, p. 4 et n. 9.

(7) M. F. Wehrli a commencé à réunir les fragmenta des Péripatéticiens sous le titre Die Schule des Aristoteles, Texte und Kommentar, B. Schwabe, Basel. Sont parus jusqu'ici : I, Dikaiarchos (1944) ; II, Aristoxenos (1945) ; III, Klearchos (1948) ; IV, Demetrios von Phaleron (1949).

(8) L'étude des traités scolaires n'a peut-être pas été absolument négligée : un assez long morceau de l'ouvrage d 'Ocellus (§ 20-35) présente d'incontestables analogies avec le De generatione et corruptione ; à cause de cette circonstance, Diels (Doxographi Graeci, p. 187 ss.) croit qu'Ocellus a vécu après Andronicus. Mais le bien-fondé de cette déduction est contesté par Harder, dont voici la thèse : Ocellus n'a pas utilisé directement Aristote ; il s'est contenté de reproduire un commentaire, fort imprécis et de maigre valeur, au deuxième livre du D e gen. et corr. ; ce commentaire n'est probablement rien autre qu'un cours provenant d'Athènes ; il est si médiocre que l'on ne peut le croire postérieur à la renaissance de l'aristotélisme ; les arguments qui tendent à démontrer qu'Ocellus a vécu avant Andronicus restent donc valables. Cfr. : Richard Harder, Ocellus Lucanus, Berlin, 1926, pp. 97 et 110-111 (= Neue philologische Untersuchungen, I).

Extrait de : Paul Moraux, Les listes anciennes des d'Aristote, Louvain : Éditions universitaires 1951.

2) Les écrits successifs de Paul Moraux sur Diogène Laërce

"Parmi les autres documents très précieux que nous devons à Diogène, il faut mentionner les "catalogues" des d'Aristote (13), Théophraste (14), Straton (15), Démétrius de Phalère (16) et Héraclide Pontique (17). Celui d'Aristote, que j'ai étudié en détail il y a quelque 35 ans (18), mérite de retenir particulièrement notre attention. Il s'agit manifestement d'un document très ancien, antérieur à la mise en ordre du corpus par Andronicus de Rhodes. Plusieurs grands traités scolaires, et des plus importants, n'y sont pas mentionnés. Pour d'autres, comme les Topiques, chaque livre figure encore isolément, sous un titre particulier. En revanche, on y trouve à peu près au complet les dialogues et autres exotériques, qui ne devaient pas tarder à disparaître après la diffusion des scolaires. La liste mentionne aussi une foule de travaux et recueils destinés aux exercices de l'école, et qu'on n'a pas reproduits dans la suite. Elle contient une série de grandes collections documentaires telles que les Constitutions, les Didascalies, les Listes de vainqueurs, etc. Tout cela montre bien que celui qui a dressé la liste ne disposait pas encore des travaux d'Andronicus, mais avait connaissance d' que le Rhodien n'a probablement pas repris dans son édition. Par ailleurs, les d'Aristote y sont groupés dans un ordre encore perceptible, en dépit d'accidents mineurs et de l'incertitude de l'une ou l'autre identification. On trouve en tête les exoterica, suivis d'extraits de Platon et d' consacrés au platonisme. Vient alors une longue série d' proprement scientifiques, classés par disciplines : de logique, consacrés aux disciplines pratiques et poétiques et aux sciences théorétiques. On trouve ensuite des aide-mémoires en tout genre (les écrits dits hypomnématiques), puis des collections et finalement des documents d'ordre privé, les lettres et les poèmes.

Si nous nous tournons vers la liste de Straton, nous constatons que l'ordre dans lequel sont énumérés les est assez semblable à celui qu'offre la liste d'Aristote. À l'une ou l'autre exception près, les premiers titres ont trait à l'éthique et à la politique. Vient ensuite une série de 25 titres environ consacrée, en gros, à la philosophie naturelle. Une troisième section, d'une dizaine de titres, groupe des ayant manifestement trait à la logique. De même que le pinacographe d'Aristote avait groupé à part les collections, les hypomnemata et les lettres, celui de Straton mentionne en fin de liste un catalogue d'inventions, des hypomnemata d'authenticité douteuse et enfin les lettres de notre philosophe (19).

Le pinax de Théophraste se présente, lui, sous un aspect très différent. Comme Usener l'a bien montré dans sa dissertation doctorale (20), il est fait en réalité de quatre parties distinctes : a) une liste alphabétique de 108 titres ; b) une seconde liste alphabétique, de 65 titres ; elle énumère sans doute les nouvelles acquisitions faites par la bibliothèque à laquelle appartenaient les mentionnés dans le premier tronçon du catalogue ; c) une série de 29 titres cités pêle-mêle ; il s'agit sans doute d'acquisitions qui n'ont pas encore été mises en ordre, et dont on n'a pas supprimé les titres faisant double emploi avec ceux d'autres parties de la liste : d) enfin, une nouvelle liste alphabétique de 22 titres, dont l'ordre a été quelque peu troublé par l'insertion intempestive de quatre titres en fin de liste.

Que peut-on conclure de la comparaison de ces listes ? D'une part, nous savons qu'Hermippos, élève et successeur de Callimaque, s'était intéressé à l'authenticité des de Théophraste et avait dressé une anagraphé de ceux-ci. Il y a donc de bonnes chances que le catalogue reproduit par Diogène soit l'œuvre d'Hermippos et ait été rédigé à partir du catalogue de la grande bibliothèque d'Alexandrie. L'ordre alphabétique, du reste, est particulièrement commode pour grouper, dans un catalogue de bibliothèque, les d'un seul et même auteur (21). Mais alors, les catalogues d'Aristote et de Straton remonteraient-ils aussi à Hermippos, comme on l'admet assez couramment ? Le même bibliothécaire-pinacographe aurait-il soigneusement classé les d'Aristote et de Straton en respectant à la fois les grandes articulations de la philosophie et certaines pratiques habituelles dans la confection des catalogues systématiques, mais adopté pour Théophraste le principe du classement alphabétique ? Une telle hypothèse semble difficile à admettre, et on est tenté de dire que si le catalogue de Théophraste est bien d'Hermippos, ceux d'Aristote et de Straton ne peuvent être de lui (22). En partant de ces considérations, j'ai suggéré, dans mes Listes anciennes, que le catalogue d'Aristote devait avoir été rédigé dans l'école péripatéticienne elle-même et était probablement tiré de l'ouvrage d'Ariston de Céos sur les scolarques ses prédécesseurs. Cette thèse a, on le sait, été approuvée par les uns et rejetée par les autres (23). Aujourd'hui, j'hésite à me prononcer. Ce sont surtout les lacunes très importantes de la liste qui me paraissent militer contre la thèse de son origine péripatéticienne ; il est en effet peu probable, en principe, que le Lycée, même en pleine décadence, n'ait pas conservé au moins un exemplaire de pragmaties aussi importantes que le De caelo, le De generatione et corruptione, les Météorologiques, le De anima et l' Éthique à Nicomaque. Dans une étude récente, R. Blum soutient la thèse que la bibliothèque de Nélée, qui contenait les livres d'Aristote et de Théophraste, aurait été acquise par la grande bibliothèque d'Alexandrie, où auraient été dressées les listes conservées par Diogène. Il n'ignore pas, bien sûr, la différence fondamentale entre le catalogue "alphabétique" de Théophraste et le catalogue "systématique" d'Aristote, mais il se débarrasse assez cavalièrement de la difficulté : d'après lui, la liste de Théophraste représenterait une exception, un essai d'Hermippos pour classer alphabétiquement les d'un même auteur ; cet essai n'aurait pas eu de succès et serait resté sans lendemain (24).“ pp. 249-252

Notes

(13) V 73

(14) V 22-27

(15) V 42-50

(16) V 59-60

(17) V 86-88

(18) P. Moraux, Les listes anciennes des d'Aristote, Louvain 1951

(19) Sur le catalogue de Straton, voir, en dernier lieu, M. Gatzemeier, Die Naturphilosophie des Straton von Lampsakos, Meisenheim am Glan 1970, pp. 38-43.

(20) H. Usener, Analecta Theophrastea, diss. Bonn, Leipzig 1858, pp. 1-24.

(21) Sur le catalogue de Théophraste, voir la bonne mise au point d'O. Regenbogen, s.v. Theophrastos (n. 3), in RE Supplbd. VII (1940) coll. 1363-70 : le catalogue doit être d'Hermippos ; il donne les en possession de la bibliothèque d'Alexandrie.

(22) Dans le même sens, F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles. Texte und Kommentar, Basel 1944-1959, IV, pp. 56-7 : les catalogues d'Aristote et de Straton, dont l'origine reste mystérieuse, ne présentent aucune trace d'ordre alphabétique. “Hermipp als Urheber [...] kommt nicht in Betracht, wenn auf diesen das alphabetische Theophrastregister bei Diogenes Laertios V 42 ff. zurückgeht”. (23) Status quaestionis dans P. Moraux, Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen, I, p. 4 note 2.

(24) R. Blum, Kallimachos und die Literaturverzeichnung bei den Griechen. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Biobibliographie, (Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens, XVIII 1-2) Frankfurt am Main 1977 p. 125.

Extrait de : Paul Moraux, "Diogène Laërce et le Peripatos", Elenchos, 7, 1986, pp. 245-294.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Les Listes Anciennes des Catalogues d'Aristote : Deuxième Partie

Hésychius de Milet et Ptolémée el-Garib

A) La Vita Menagiana (Anonymus Menagii) attribuée à Hésychius de Milet

Les études de Paul Moraux

1) Le livre Les listes anciennes des d'Aristote, Louvain : Éditions universitaires, 1951

“La Vita Menagiana d'Aristote (1) se termine par une liste d' dont la première partie ressemble fort à la liste de Diogène. Même si cette vie anonyme n'est autre que l'article ' Aristoteles' de l' Onomatologue d'Hésychius de Milet (2), son origine demeure obscure, car les sources d'Hésychius n'ont pas encore été identifiées avec certitude (3). Il est donc impossible d'en déterminer a priori les rapports avec Diogène Laërce.

La liste anonyme se divise en trois parties. La première compte cent trente-neuf titres (4) et correspond à peu près à la liste de Diogène ; la seconde, plus courte, se compose de quarante-six titres, dont certains figurent déjà dans la première partie, tandis que d'autres sont nouveaux ; la troisième est faite de dix titres d' donnés comme pseudépigraphes." pp. 195-196

(...)

"Vingt-cinq titres de la liste anonyme occupent une place différente de celle qu'ils ont chez Diogène ; ils ne sont cependant jamais fort éloignés de la place qu'ils devraient occuper si l'ordre des deux listes était identique.

L'ordonnance primitive de la liste a été conservée plus fidèlement par Diogène que par l'Anonyme. (...)

Un examen attentif de la liste anonyme permet d'affirmer que les déplacements de titres ne sont pas dus à une volonté formelle d'améliorer la liste ou d'y introduire un nouveau principe d'ordre.

De toute évidence, les modifications ont été exécutées sans but ; elles sont bien plus le produit d'un hasard aveugle que l'œuvre d'une intelligence ordonnatrice. Elles doivent, à notre avis, s'expliquer en grande partie par des accidents survenus au cours des copies successives de la liste. L'auteur de la Vita avait sous les yeux un catalogue qui s'était déjà altéré au cours des siècles, et les copistes qui nous transmirent la Vita ne manquèrent point d'ajouter encore aux fautes existantes. Il suffit, en effet, d'une légère distraction pour que l'on oublie plusieurs titres en transcrivant de semblables listes. Les copistes commettent souvent des omissions de ce genre ; ils tentent bien de réparer leurs bévues, en ajoutant en marge ou entre les lignes les titres oubliés. Mais ceux qui transcrivent un texte ainsi surchargé ne savent pas toujours où il faut insérer les additions : la porte est ouverte aux bouleversements de l'ordre primitif.

(...)

L'étude comparative des deux listes nous a permis d'arriver aux conclusions suivantes : la liste anonyme n'a pas été copiée directement sur celle de Diogène ; elle conserve en effet des vestiges d'un texte meilleur ou plus complet (6) ; la présence de ceux-ci serait incompréhensible si l'Anonyme ou sa source n'avait eu sous les yeux que le texte de Diogène. En outre, la liste anonyme contient cinq titres absents de celle de Diogène, ceux de la Métaphysique et de quatre écrits hypomnématiques ; or, le texte de Diogène présente justement une lacune de cinq titres dans la quatrième colonne, où devaient se trouver la Métaphysique et les hypomnemata : alors que les trois premières colonnes comptent trente-cinq titres, la quatrième n'en compte que trente. La conclusion s'impose : les cinq titres propres à l'Anonyme sont ceux qu'a perdus Diogène ; la liste anonyme ne peut donc pas dériver du texte lacuneux de Diogène. Heitz et Howald ont vu juste : les deux listes remontent à une source commune ; celle-ci est postérieure à la transcription du pinax en cinq colonnes, au déplacement du peri pathon, et de l' Éthique et à l'interpolation des Physiognomiques, des Iatrika, des Catégories et du De interpretatione ; elle présentait un certain nombre de fautes qui ont passé dans les deux listes, notamment des mauvaises coupes de titres (7) et des erreurs de lecture (...)

Le texte de Diogène demeure assez proche de sa source ; il en conserve fidèlement l'ordre ; de ci, de là, il laisse bien tomber l'un ou l'autre morceau de titre, mais ces suppressions n'ont, d'ordinaire, aucune gravité (11) ; son principal défaut est l'omission de cinq titres, dont celui de la Métaphysique.

Le texte de l'Anonyme présente des altérations de loin plus graves et plus nombreuses. Il n'est pas impossible d'établir en partie dans quel ordre celles-ci se sont succédé.

Certaines confusions de chiffres, notamment celles de 'α' avec 'γ' et de 'γ' avec 'δ' n'ont pu se produire que dans l'ancienne onciale ; elles sont antérieures à l'ère chrétienne (12). Or, ces fautes sont propres à la liste anonyme ; elles n'apparaissent pas chez Diogène. La source commune de l'Anonyme et de Diogène (le catalogue déjà fautif dérivant du pinax en cinq colonnes interpolé) ne les connaissait pas ; elle est donc nécessairement antérieure à l'ère chrétienne.

Les chiffres de quelques livres ont été corrigés intentionnellement, pour mettre la liste d'accord avec les éditions d'une époque donnée ; ces corrections doivent avoir été opérées après le premier tiers du second siècle de notre ère (13). La suppression des doublets et les corrections savantes de certains titres remontent vraisemblablement au personnage qui a jugé bon de rectifier les chiffres. D'autre part, la suppression des doublets est antérieure à l'addition de l'appendice : dans le cas contraire, le correcteur aurait supprimé les nombreux titres qui y font double emploi avec ceux de la première partie (tels sont : 145, 146, 147, 151, 153, 154, 161, 163, 167, 169, 171, 172, 174, 176 ?, 177, 181, 182). Les rectifications de chiffres sont, elles aussi, antérieures à l'addition de l'appendice ; autrement, un correcteur s'intéressant au nombre des volumina n'aurait pas toléré que plus de la moitié des titres de l'appendice manquent de cette indication bibliographique ; si son modèle avait laissé à désirer à ce point de vue, il l'aurait complété, du moins en partie, d'après les matériaux dont il disposait. L'addition de l'appendice fut faite après l'intervention du premier correcteur ; elle est donc postérieure au premier tiers du second siècle après J.-C.

Les modifications apportées à la forme des titres (addition de perí, de biblion, etc.) remontent à un autre correcteur ; celui-ci ne connaît guère le contenu des dont il lit les titres et son intervention est parfois malheureuse : il fait précéder d'un perí, comme s'il s'agissait de traités théoriques, des listes de divisions ou des didascalies (...).

Quant aux bouleversements apportés à l'ordre primitif dans la liste anonyme, ils ne peuvent être datés ; il en va de même des fautes accidentelles affectant l'énoncé de certains titres.

Les transformations successives du catalogue sont représentées par le tableau suivant, que nous préciserons plus loin, quand nous aurons analysé l' appendix hesychiana." (pp. 204-209)

Notes

(*) Observationes et emendationes in Diogenem Laertium Paris 1663 (réimprimé à Londres 1664) : Observationibus ad librum V Diogenis Laertii, p. 202 ss. [Note de R. Corazzon]

(1) Cette vie anonyme fut éditée pour la première fois par Égide [Gilles]Ménage, en appendice à son édition de Diogène Laërce (*). Elle avait été communiquée à Ménage par un avocat d'Angers, Philippe Loyauté, qui ne dit point d'où il la tenait (cfr. [Aemilius] Heitz, Aristotelis Fragmenta [1869], p. 5) ; on la retrouve dans un manuscrit de Patmos, décrit par Tischendorf (Wiener Jahrbücher, 110, Anz. Bl., p. 17), et dans le Codex Ambrosianus R 117. Les plus récentes éditions sont, à notre connaissance, celles de Flach dans Hesychii Milesii Onomatologi quae supersunt, Leipzig, 1883, pp. 245-249, et de Rose dans Aristotelis q. f. librorum fragmenta, Leipzig, 1886, pp. 9-18. [Voir la Bibliographie pour les éditions plus récentes].

(2) Rose a, le premier, défendu cette thèse dans son De Arist. libror. ord. et auctoritate, Berlin, 1854, pp. 48-50. La Vie anonyme et celle de Suidas se correspondent textuellement, à cette différence près, que Suidas ne donne pas la liste des œuvres. Or, on sait que la source principale de Suidas est, pour les parties biographiques de l'ouvrage, l' Épitomé de l' Onomatologue d'Hésychius (cfr. Suidas, s. v. Hesuchios, et A. Adler, dans RE, s. v. Suidas, col. 706-707). La Vie anonyme est donc tirée de l' Onomatologue non encore abrégé. Cette thèse est admise entre autres par Susemihl, Aristoteles Politik, p. XLIII ; Schneider, Callimachea, II, p. 26 ; Heitz, Die verlorenen Schriften des Aristoteles, p. 15 et Aristotelis, Fragmenta, p. 5 ; Nietzsche, dans Rheinische Museum, XXIV, 1869, p. 216 ; Maass, De biographis graecis, pp. 81 et 119 ; G. Wentzel, Hesychiana, dans Hermes, XXXIII, 1898, p. 276, et H. Schultz, dans RE, s. v, Hesychios 10. Elle est rejetée par Flach, Untersuchungen zu Suidas und Eudokia, Leipzig, 1879, p. 93, que nous n'avons pas pu consulter, et Hesych. Mil. Onomat., p XIX, note 1, où l'auteur ne donne aucun argument.

(3) L'état de la question est résumé par H. Schultz, l.l., qui conclut qu'aucun résultat certain n'est acquis.

(4) l'édition de Ménage, don Heitz, Aristotelis Fragmenta, pp. 5-9 reproduit la liste, est fautive et lacuneuse ; Rose, Aristotelis g. f. librorum fragmenta, Leipzig, 1886, l'a considérablement amendée.

(7) Dans Aristot. Opera, V, p. 1467, app. crit. ad 107.

(11) Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen, II, 2 p. 103, n. 1, sub fine.

12) Cfr supra, p. 202, n. 20.

Cfr supra, p. 203. Il ne faut pas s'étonner que le correcteur n'ait pas amendé les erreurs de chiffres résultant de confusions paléographiques : celles-ci affectaient, pour la plupart, des qui n'étaient plus guère en circulation au second siècle après J.-C

Extrait de : Paul Moraux, Les listes anciennes des d'Aristote, Louvain : Éditions universitaires 1951.

2) Les écrits successifs de Paul Moraux sur la Vita Menagiana

(en préparation)

B) La liste de Ptolémée el Garib (en préparation)

"La liste de Ptolémée diffère, par plus d'un aspect, des documents étudiés jusqu'ici. Nous en connaissons l'auteur, du moins de nom. Nous savons aussi qu'elle est relativement récente : elle est postérieure aux classiques travaux d'Andronicus et date d'une époque où le corpus aristotélicien avait, à peu de chose près, pris la forme qu'il a conservée jusqu'aujourd'hui. Enfin, les témoins qui nous l'ont transmise sont très tardifs ; ce sont deux Arabes du début du treizième siècle ; comme bien on pense, les intermédiaires, et notamment les traducteurs, n'ont pas été sans faire subir au document plus d'une transformation.

Par bonheur, cette liste a, bien plus que les précédentes, retenu l'attention des érudits : les témoins arabes ont été traduits à plus d'une reprise et la liste elle-même a fait l'objet de bonnes monographies, au premier rang desquelles il convient de signaler celle de Baumstark. Notre tâche sera donc assez simple : nous résumerons à grands traits les résultats acquis ; nous redresserons, à l'occasion, l'une ou l'autre erreur de détail et surtout nous tâcherons de faire la lumière sur certaines questions qui n'ont pas intéressé nos devanciers. Étant donné la date de sa composition, la liste de Ptolémée ne présente d'ailleurs pour nous qu'un intérêt secondaire : elle nous servira de jalon pour montrer le chemin parcouru depuis Ariston, et, en outre, elle nous permettra de constater la longue survivance des principes d'ordre adoptés par ce pinacographe ; en revanche, comme elle est indubitablement postérieure à Andronicus, elle ne peut pas nous apprendre grand 'chose sur l'état du corpus avant l'activité de ce savant." (p. 289)

Extrait de : Paul Moraux, Les listes anciennes des d'Aristote, Louvain : Éditions universitaires 1951.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography on the Ancient Catalogue of Aristotle's Works

Ancient Catalogues

A) Diogenes Laërtius (III century): Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers - Book V.22-27 The Peripatetics.

1. Diogenes, Laertius. 2018. Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. New York: Oxford University Press.

Translated by Pamela Mensch.

Edited by James Miller.

The translation is based on Tiziano Dorandi edition of the Greek text, published in 2013 by Cambridge University Press.

2. Diogenes, Laertii. 1964. Vitae Philosophorum. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Critical edition of the Greek text by Herbert Strainge Long.

3. Diogenes, Laertius. 1999. Vitae philosophorum. Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner.

Critical edition by Miroslav Marcovich.

Vol. I: Libri I - X; Vol. II: Excerpta Byzantina et indices; Vol III: Indices Hans Gärtner (2002).

4. Diogenes, Laërtius. 2013. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

New critical edition by Tiziano Dorandi.

B) The Anonymous Catalogue known as Vita Menagiana or Vita Hesychii, sometimes attributed to Hesychius of Miletus (V century).

1. Diogenis, Laertis. 1664. De vitis, dogmatis et apophtegmatis eorum qui in philosophia claruerunt libri X. Londinii: Octavanum Pulleyn.

First edition Paris 1663. Reprint by John Pearson (1613-1686) of the Aldobrandinian edition of 1594 with Annotationes by Henri Estienne (Stephanis), Isaac and Méric Casaubon and Observationibus by Gilles Ménage (Aegidii Menagii, 1613-1692) that contains the first printed edition of an anonymous life of Aristotle (the so-called Vita Menagiana).

2. ———. 1692. De vitis, dogmatibus et apophtegmatibus clarorum philosophorum libri X. Amstelædami: H. Wetstenium.

Greek and Latin text by Marc Meibom, with annotations to I. and M. Casaubon, T. Aldobrandini in two volumes.

The second volume contains: Aegidii Menagii in Diogenem Observationes auctiores, ut et Joachimi Kühnii ad Diogenem Notas.

3. Rose, Valentine. 1863. Aristoteles pseudoepigraphus. Lipsia: Teubner.

Index Diogenis pp. 12-18; Index Hesychii (ex Aegidii Menagii observ. in Diog. Laert. p. 201 cum vitis omnibus accurate excriptus) pp. 18-20.

4. ———. 1886. Aristotelis qui ferebantur librorum fragmenta. Lipsia: Teubner.

Reprint of the Vita Hesychii published in Aristoteles pseudepigraphus.

5. Düring, Ingemar. 1957. Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.

Reprinted New York, Garland, 1987.

Diogenes Laertius (Catalogue) pp. 41-50; Hesychius (Catalogue) pp. 83-89; Ptolemy's Catalogue (English translation and Greek retroversion from Arabic) pp. 221-231.

6. Diogenes, Laertius. 1999. "Pseudo-Hesychii Milesii De Viris Illustribus." In Vitae philosophorum, 89-138. Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner.

Vol. II: Excerpta Byzantina et indices. Critical edition by Miroslav Marcovich of the Pseudo-Heysichius Viris illustribus: a compilation of texts extracted from the Lives of Diogenes Laertius and the Suda.

7. Dorandi, Tiziano. 2006. "La Vita Hesychii d'Aristote." Studi Classici e Orientali no. 52:87-106.

Publié en 2009; édition critique du text grec pp. 98-103.

"La Vita Hesychii ou Vita Menagiana d'Aristote (= VH), faisait partie de l'Onomatologos e pinax ton en paideia onomaston d'Hésychius de Milet (VI s.), histoire de la littérature limitée, à ce qu'il semble, aux auteurs païens, et perdue dans son intégralité.

Je voudrais proposer une nouvelle édition de ce court texte, dont l'importance pour la reconstruction de la biographie d'Aristote et de la liste de ses oeuvres est indéniable. J'ai commencé à travailler sur la VH en marge de mon édition du texte grec des Vies et doctrines des philosophes illustres de Diogène Laërce (en particulier de la Vie d'Aristote au livre V 1-35), et en prévision d'un volume consacré à la tradition biographique antique d'Aristote dans lequel je rééditerai, entre autre, les Vies anciennes (grecques et latines) du Stagirite accompagnées d'apparats, d'une traduction et de notes de commentaire." p. 87

C) The Catalogue attributed to Ptolemy el-Garib (I century) and transmitted in two Arabic version by Ibn al-Qifti (ca. 1172-1248) and Ibn Abi Usaibia (1203-1270).

1. Ibn, An-Nadim. 1871. Kitab al-Fihrist, mit Anmerkungen. Leipzig: F.C.W. Vogel.

Two volumes: I edited by Gustav Flügel (1871); II: edited by Johannes Rödiger, August Müller (1872); written in the 10th century.

On Ptolemy el-Garib see vol. I pp. 246-252.

"We learn from the writer's own words that he has before him the Vita of Ptolemy-el-Garib; he gives us the title of it and says in (14) that his own notes are a brief epitome. Our conclusion is that before 950 there was in circulation in Baghdad an Arabic summary of Ptolemy's Vita, including a full translation of the Will. Since an-Nadim presents his classification of Aristotle's writings in roughly the same form as al-Yaqubi (...), Baumstark concluded that he had not seen the Arabic translation of Ptolemy's catalogue. But this is a weak argument, for he might have found Ptolemy's catalogue too detailed and technical and have preferred the classification based on the traditional prolegomena. Moreover we observe that, unlike al-Kindi and al-Yaqubi, an-Nadim regarded the De anima as one of the physical treatises." Düring, 1957 cit., p. 195.

(14) About him [Aristotle] numerous stories are circulated of which we only have mentioned the essentials.

2. Müller, August. 1875. "Das Arabische Verzeichniss der Aristotelischen Schriften." In Morgenländische Forschungen. Festschrift Herrn Professor Dr. H. L. Fleischer, 1-32. Leipzig: Brockhaus.

Verzeichniss der Aristotelischen Schriften aus dem Buche des Ptolomaeus an Gallus (first edition of Ptolemy's Catalog) pp. 19-22.

3. ———, ed. 1884. Ibn Abi Usaibi'a. Uyun al-anba fi tabaqat al-atibba (Lives of the Physicians). Königsberg.

Vol. I pp. 54-69 (contains the Vita Aristotelis by Usaibi'a and the Catalogue by Ptolemy el-Garib) written 1245-1246.

"Comments on Ptolemy's Catalogue. P. Moraux's valuable book, Les Listes anciennes des ouvrages d'Aristote, Louvain 1951, deals at length with Ptolemy's catalogue and gives full references to the earlier literature. I have learnt much from his discussion of the complicated problems, but I do not always agree with his conclusions; see my paper "Ariston or Hermippus?", in: Classica et mediaevalia, 17, 1956, pp. 11-21. M. Plezia De Andronici Rhodii studii aristotelicis closely follows Baumstark but contributes many good observations.

My translation of the catalogue is based on Usaibia, but I have added al-Qifti's readings (...)

A full critical apparatus is found in Steinschneider's edition, in the Berlin Academy edition of Aristotle, tom. V, pp. 1469-73. (...) Baumstark Syrisch-arabische Biographieen des Aristoteles gives a complete translation of the two versions of the catalogue, pp. 61-7o, profuse comments and a bold reconstruction of the original catalogue of Andronicus, built on Littig's book on Andronicus. I am sceptical of these airy constructions. In my edition I have added ten sub-titles (Published works, etc.) to distinguish the sections of the catalogue." (Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition,1957 cit., pp. 241-242

4. Baumstark, Anton. 1900. Syrisch-arabische Biographieen des Aristoteles. Syrische Kommentare zur Eisagoge des Porphyrios. Leipzig: Teubner.

Aristoteles bei den Syrern vom V. - VIII. Jahrhundert

Syrische texte herausgegeben, übersetzt und untersucht von Dr. A. Baumstark. Erster Band.

Reprint: Aachen, Scientia Verlag, 1975.

German translation of the two versions of Ptolemy's Catalogue (by IBN al-Qifti and by Ibn Abi Usaibi'a) pp. 61-70).

5. Lippert, Julius, ed. 1903. Al-Qifti Gamaladdin. Tabaqat al-hukama (Schools of Wise Men). Leipzig.

Contains the Catalogue by Ptolemy el-Garib; Latin translation of the Catalogue by Moritz Steinschneider in: Aristotelis Opera Omnia vol. V, Berlin, 1870, p. 1469.

"s. v. Ptolemy-el-Garib:

'This scholar was during his lifetime a philosopher in the country of the Greeks, and he is not identical with the author of the Almagest. He was a friend of Aristotle whom he loved and defended from his enemies, and he transmitted his doctrines to everybody who was eager to acquire knowledge about them from him. On account of this he was a highly reputed and honoured scholar during his lifetime.

Many kings and scholars are known under the name of Ptolemy. They distinguished them from one another by adding a special name, so that we can know them under this name.

In order to show his solicitude concerning Aristotle this scholar wrote a book On the life of Aristotle, his death, and the classification of his books.

Comment: The Fihrist says (19): "Ptolemy-el-Garib who was an adherent of Aristotle and spread knowledge about his merits; he is the author of a book On ... books". - Usaibia, in the introduction to his biography, says: "Thus speaks Ptolemy in his book to Gallus on the life and history of Aristotle, his Will and the list of his famous writings."

Apart from the fact that his name is mentioned several times in the biographies, this is all information we have on Ptolemy in Arabic sources. Almost identical is the title given by Elias, In Cat. CIAG XVIII 1 p. 3.

Al-Qifti's work is a biographic handbook with about one hundred articles on Greek authors, arranged in alphabetical order, written between 1230 and 1235. The original, now lost, was used by Usaibia, Abu-l-Farag, and Abu-l-Fida; what is left is an epitome and several extracts. Steinschneider, Lippert and Baumstark characterize the work as a compilation of earlier works, partly lost, partly extant. Steinschneider Al-Farabi. Des arabischen Philosophen Leben und Schriften (1869), pp. 187-191 gives a general survey of his biographical article on Aristotle; some additional notes by Baumstark Syrisch-arabische Biographieen des Aristoteles p. 15, and by Lippert Studien auf dem Gebiete der greich-arab. Übersetzungslitteratur, Braunschweig, 1894, in his comments on Mubashir. Latin translation of the catalogue by Steinschneider, in: Aristotelis Opera Omnia, V, Berlin 1870, p. 1469.

On the special problem of identifying our Ptolemy a great many scholars have expressed opinions; a good survey of the literature in P. Moraux, Listes anciennes des ouvrages d' Aristote, pp. 289-294. It was W. Christ and J. Lippert who simultaneously suggested that our Ptolemy is identical with the rather obscure Ptolemaios Chennos, writing in the last half of the first century A. D.

It is important to realize that the presentation of Ptolemy in our three sources is nothing but an elaboration of the title of his book. Everything in this note is obviously based on the book itself as the only source. Lippert interpreted the sentence "They distinguished - under this name" as implying: "and this is why Ptolemy-el-Garib also has a special name, given to him by the Greeks". Susemihl, in his review of Lippert, op. cit. (Berl. Phil. Wochenschrift 15, 15, p. 1130) added the following remark: "dass diese Bezeichnung "der Fremde" nicht erst von den Arabern herriihrt, erhellt aus der nachdrucklichen Angabe von Qifti". Unfortunately this is not so; Usaibia's statement is not at all so definite and unambiguous." Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, 1957 cit., pp. 208-209

6. Düring, Ingemar. 1957. Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.

Reprinted New York, Garland, 1987.

Diogenes Laertius (Catalogue) pp. 41-50; Hesychius (Catalogue) pp. 83-89; Ptolemy's Catalogue (English translation and Greek retroversion from Arabic) pp. 221-231.

7. ———. 1971. "Ptolemy's Vita Aristotelis Rediscovered." In Philomathes. Studies and Essays in the Humanities in Memory of Philip Merlan, edited by Palmer, Robert B. and Hamerton-Kelly, Robert, 264-269. La Haye: Nijhoff.

Contains the English translation, by Bernhard Lewin, of the dedicatory letter to Gallus found in an Arabic manuscript (codex Ayasofya 4833, Istanbul, folios 10a-18a) of the Vita Aristotelis by Ptolemy el-Garib.

8. Hein, Christel. 1985. Definition und Einteilung der Philosophie. Von der spätantiken Einleitungsliteratur zur arabischen Enzyklopädie. New York: Peter Lang.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Einleitung 1; 1. Einleitungen in dir Gesamtphilosophie 34; 2. Einletungen in die Philosophie des Aristoteles 238; 3. Schriftenverzeichnisse zu Aristoteles (Pinakes) 388; Anhang zu Teil 3: Ms. Ayasofia 4833 fol. 10b-11a, 14b-18a 415; Zusammenfassung 440; Siglen 445; Abkuzungen 446; Literatuvzeichnis 447-482.

Contains the Arabic transcription of the Catalogue of Aristotle's writings ascribed to Ptolemy el-Garib and a German translation of the dedication to Gallus, according to the new Arabic manuscript discovered in the Aya Sofia Library in Istanbul by Hellmut Ritter, "Philologika XIII. Arabische Handschriften in Anatolian and Istanbul" in: Oriens 2, 1949, pp. 236-314; 3, 1950, pp. 31-107.

9. Ptolémée, "al Gharib". 2021. Épître à Gallus sur la vie, le testament et les écrits d’Aristote. Paris: Les Belles Letttres

Texte établi et traduit par Marwan Rashed.

"On trouvera ici l’editio princeps, fondée sur tous les témoins disponibles, dont un manuscrit jusqu’ici inconnu, d’un document antique perdu en grec et conservé en arabe. Il s’agit d'une épître adressée par un certain Ptolémée à un certain Gallus. Ce vestige est l’une de nos meilleures sources d’information et la seule qui soit interne à l’école péripatéticienne -sur la biographie d’Aristote. C’est aussi notre seul témoignage sur la première édition, dans l’Antiquité, des écrits savants du Philosophe. Instantané pris sur le vif de l’état de la philologie aristotélicienne, à Alexandrie, avant les grandes pertes libraires du IIIe siècle, ce texte préservé par les érudits arabes est une pièce essentielle pour reconstituer l’histoire mystérieuse du corpus d'Aristote à la période hellénistique et au début de la période romaine. C’est de lui que doit partir, on s’en apercevra à la lecture, quiconque s’intéresse à la question de savoir ce que nous lisons quand nous lisons Aristote. Le paradoxe n’est qu’apparent : un peu de philosophie éloigne de l’histoire des textes, beaucoup y ramène." (Introduction).

Editions and translations of the Fragments of the Peripatetic School

The fragments of the successors of Aristotle and Theophrastus have been edited in ten volumes by Fritz Wehrli; the fragments of some Peripatetics are now available, with English translation, in the Rutgers Studies in Classical Humanities (RUSCH), founded in 1979 by William Fortenbaugh.

For Theophrastus see Selected bibliography on the Philosophical Works of Theophrastus.

1. Wehrli, Fritz. 1944. Die Schule des Aristoteles. Texte und Kommentar. Basel-Stuttgart: Schwabe

Zweite Auflage 1967-1969.

I. Dikaiarchos (1944); II. Aristoxenos (1945); III. Klearchos (1948); IV. Demetrios von Phaleron (1949); V. Straton von Lampsakos (1950); VI. Lykon und Ariston von Keos (1952); VII: Herakleides Pontikos (1953); VIII. Eudemos von Rhodos (1955); IX. Phainias von Eresos, Chamaileon, Praxiphanes (1957); X. Hieronymos von Rhodos, Kritolaos und seine Schuler, Rückblick: Der Peripatos in vorchlisticher Zeit; Register (1959); Supplementband I: Hermippos der Kallimacheer (1974); Supplementband II: Sotion (1978).

2. Hellmann, Oliver, and Mirhady, David, eds. 2015. Phaenias of Eresus. Text, Translation and Discussion. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers

RUSCH, XIX.

3. Huffman, Carl A., ed. 2011. Aristoxenus of Tarentum. Discussion. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers

RUSCH, XVII.

4. Schütrumpf, Eckart, ed. 2008. Heraclides of Pontus: Text and Translation. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers

RUSCH, XIV.

5. Fortenbaugh, William W., and Pender, Elizabeth, eds. 2009. Heraclides of Pontus: Discussion. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers

RUSCH, XV.

6. Bodnár, István, and Fortenbaugh, William W., eds. 2002. Eudemus of Rhodes. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers

RUSCH, XI.

Contents: Preface VII; Contributors IX; 1. Dimitri Gutas: Eudemus in the Arabic tradition 1; 2. Hans B. Gottschalk: Eudemus and the Peripatos 25; 3. Tiziano Dorandi: Qualche aspetto controverso della biografia di Eudemo di Rodi 39; 4. William W. Fortenbaugh: Eudemus' work On Expression 59; 5. Pamela M. Huby: Did Aristotle reply to Eudemus and Theophrastus on some logical Issues? 85; 6. Robert W. Sharples: Eudemus' physics: change, place and time 107; 7. Han Baltussen: Wehrli's edition of Eudemus of Rhodes: the physical fragments from Simplicius' commentary On Aristotle's Physics 127; 8. Sylvia Berryman: Continuity and coherence in early Peripatetic texts 157; 9. István Bodnár: Eudemus' Unmoved Movers: fragments 121-123b Wehrli 171; 10.Deborah K. W. Modrak: Phantasia, thought and science in Eudemus 191; 11. Stephen A. White: Eudemus the naturalist 207; 12. Jørgen Mejer: Eudemus and the history of science 243; 13: Leonid Zhmud: Eudemus' history of mathematics 263; 14. Alan C. Bowen: Eudemus' history of early Greek astronomy: two hypotheses 307; 15. Dmitri Panchenko: Eudemus fr. 145 Wehrli and the ancient theories of lunar light 323; 16. Gábor Betegh: On Eudemus fr. 150 (Wehrli) 337; Index of ancients sources 359-383.

7. Fortenbaugh, William W., and Schütrumpf, Eckart, eds. 2000. Dicaearchus of Messana. Text, Translation and Discussion. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers

RUSCH, X.

8. ———, eds. 2000. Demetrius of Phalerum: Text, Translation and Discussion. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers

RUSCH, IX.

9. Desclos, Marie-Laurence, and Fortenbaugh, William W., eds. 2012. Strato of Lampsacus: Text, Translation, Discussion. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers

RUSCH, XVI.

10. Martano, Andrea, Matelli, Elisabetta, and Mirhady, David, eds. 2012. Praxiphanes of Mytilene and Chamaeleon of Eraclea. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers

RUSCH, XVIII.

11. Fortenbaugh, William W., and White, Stephen A., eds. 2004. Lyco of Troas and Hieronymus of Rhodes: Text, Translation and Commentary. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers

RUSCH, XII.

12. ———, eds. 2006. Aristo of Ceos: Text, Translation and Discussion. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers

RUSCH, XIII.

13. Fortenbaugh, William W., ed. 2018. Arius Didymus on Peripatetic Ethics, Household Management, and Politics: Text, Translation, and Discussion. New York: Routledge

RUSCH, XX.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography on the Ancient Catalogue of Aristotle's Works

Studies in English: A-Gra

1. Barnes, Jonathan. 1997. "Roman Aristotle." In Philosophia Togata II. Plato and Aristotle at Rome , edited by Barnes, Jonathan and Griffin, Miriam, 1-69. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Reprinted in: Gregory Nagy (ed.), Greek Literature in the Roman Period and in Late Antiquity, New York, Routledge, 2001 pp. 119-187; revised edition in J. Barnes, Mantissa: Essays in Ancient Philosophy IV , Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2015, pp. 407-478.

"When Theophrastus died, his library, which included the library of Aristotle, was carried off to the Troad. His successors found nothing much to read; the Lyceum sank into a decline; and Peripatetic ideas had little influence on the course of Hellenistic philosophy. It was only with the rediscovery of the library that Aristotelianism revived — and it revived in Italy. For the library went from the Troad to Athens — and thence, as part of Sulla’s war-booty, to Rome. There Andronicus of Rhodes produced the ‘Roman edition’ of the corpus Aristotelicum. It was the first complete and systematic version of Aristotle’s works, the first publication in their full form of the technical treatises, the first genuinely critical edition of the text. Andronicus’ Roman edition caused a sensation. It revitalized the languishing Peripatetics. It set off an explosion of Aristotelian studies. It laid the foundation for all subsequent editions of Aristotle’s works, including our modern texts. When we read Aristotle we should pour a libation to Andronicus — and to Sulla.

That story is the main subject of the following pages. It is familiar enough; and although my argument will be long and laborious, I have nothing new to say, and my general conclusions are dispiritingly sceptical. But recent scholarship on the topic has taken to the bottle of phantasy and stumbled drunkenly from one dogmatism to the next. Another look at the pertinent texts may be forgiven — and in any event the story is a peach.

My concern (let me stress at the start) is the way in which Aristotle’s texts reached Rome — and us. I am not concerned with the general influence of Peripatetic ideas on the Roman intelligentsia — that is a vast and a complex question; nor am I concerned with the specific influence of Aristotle’s ideas on the Roman intelligentsia — that is a different question, less vast and more complex. Indeed, I deal neither with the history of ideas nor with the history of philosophy: my subject is an episode in the history of books and the book-trade. " (J. Barnes, Mantissa , p. 407)

2. Benoit, William L. 1981. "A Guide to Line Numbers in the Aristotelian Corpus." Rhetoric Society Quarterly no. 1:42-44.

"Those who work with several of Aristotle's works at once, as is often necessary, are frequently confronted with the minor difficulty of determining which work contains the passage indicated by the line numbers from Bekker's edition of Aristotle's Opera (Berlin, 1870). This is especially true when using the index of Hermann Bonitz Index Aristotelicus, Graz, 1955 or of Troy Organ An Index to Aristotle in English Translation, Princeton, NJ, 1949. As a tool for the Aristotelian scholar, then, this guide may be of some modest assistance. In an attempt to make the work as helpful as possible, both English and the Greek titles are included, as well as the names of the Oxford and Loeb Translators and the Oxford volume number for each work (these being the two most complete sets)." (p. 42)

3. Blum, Rudolf. 1991. Kallimachos. The Alexandrian Library and the Origins of Bibliography . Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Translated by Hans H. Wellisch from the German: Kallimachos und die Literaturvezeichung bei den Griechen. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Biobibliographie - Frankfurt am Main, Buchhändler-Vereinigung, 1977.

"This work deals with the beginnings of bibliography. Kallimachos of Kyrene, a Hellenistic scholar and a famous poet, created about 260 B.C. a fundamental list of Greek authors with biographical and bibliographical data, the first national author bibliography, based on the holdings of the Alexandrian library. But what he, his predecessors, and successors achieved in the field of bibliography, that staging area for the history of literature, is almost unknown outside the circle of experts. In addition, there are some important related issues which are still in need of clarification.

The investigations which I have undertaken for this purpose pertain to questions in the history of ancient scholarship and librarianship. But I endeavored to write in such a manner that not only students of Classical Antiquity will be able to follow me. Therefore, I inserted explanations of issues pertaining to Antiquity wherever I deemed them to be appropriate. Greek quotations are rendered in translation. Greek titles of books, typical Greek expressions, and shorter sayings of Greek scholars are always transliterated. Some passages in the footnotes are also given in the original Greek.

Bibliographic works of the Romans and those of Christians in Antiquity have been omitted because I am treating these, together with those of the Middle Ages and the early modern period, in another work.(*)" (Preface , IX)

(*) Rudolf Blum. Die Literaturverzeichnung im Altertum und Mittelalter. Versuch einer Geschichte der Biobibliographie von den Anfängen bis zum Beginn der Neuzeit (Frankfurt a.M.: Buchhändler-Vereinigung, 1983)

On Aristotle see Chapter 2: Forerunners: Aristotle, His Predecessors and Pupils , pp. 14-94 (in particular 2.6 The Library of Aristotle pp. 52-94) and Chapter 5: Later lists of Greek Writers and Their Works , pp. 182-225 (in particular 5.4 The List of Aristotle's Writings by Andronikos of Rhodos , pp. 194-195 and 5.6 The Work of Diogenes Laertios on the Lives and Opinions of Famous Philosophers , pp. 199-201).

4. Bodéüs, Richard. 1993. The Political Dimensions of Aristotle's Ethics . Albany: State University of New York Press.

Translation by Jan Edward Garett of: Le Philosophe et la cité , Paris, Publications de la Faculté de Philosophie de l'Université de Liège, 1982.

See Chapter I. In Search of Aristotle's Project pp. 9-46.

"Conceived at first for the sake of the citizens of the Greek city of the fourth century B.C., the part of Aristotle's teaching traditionally associated with human philosophy sought somehow to be useful. How can one make sense of this aim historically, this desire to contribute concretely to the perfection of human becoming? This is the question which has guided my research from the beginning.

It has led me to scrutinize the unity of purpose which clearly governs the elaboration of the two Ethics and of the Politics . This issue is not sufficiently clarified if one limits oneself to saying that the two series of texts are written from the same theoretical perspective, a perspective appropriate for explaining human affairs, and that the one series describes mies of an ethical code for individuals, the other series principles for the organization of communities.

On this point it is necessary to challenge a very long tradition of misunderstandings.

To make this clear is my task in the first chapter. This chapter also brings to light support for the belief that the works of Aristotle with which we are concerned were the object of a political teaching which the philosopher aimed primarily at the “lawgiver" ( νομοθέτης). Aristotle designates by this term not the well-known magistrate of Athenian institutions (19) but, like the French word législateur , with its collective sense, the individuals to whom political communities entrust the ultimate task of defining coercive norms relating to the good and who potentially include all the adult citizens in the city which corresponds "to the wishes" of the philosopher." (p. 3)

(19) Cf. Demosthenes, Olynth . III, 10, “Although they are not mentioned by Aristotle in the Constitution of Athens , their existence is not in doubt." (P. Lavedan, Dictionnnaire illustré de la mythologie et des antiquités grecques et romaines , Paris: Hachette, 1964, s.v.).

5. Bollansée, Jan. 1999. Hermippos of Smyrna and His Biographical Writings: A Reappraisal . Leuven: Peeters.

See Appendix 1. Translations of selected Testimonia and the biographical fragments pp. 189-226, and 3. Hermippos and the authorship of Diogenes Laertios' Catalogue of Aristotle's writings (5.22-27) , pp. 233-243.

Abbreviations: F = Fragment, T = Testimonia.

"A problem that cannot be left undiscussed in the present study is Hermippos’ presumed authorship of the catalogue of Aristotle’s writings as found in Diogenes Laertios, even though strictly speaking we have no nominatim F or even an indirect testimony connecting the Callimachean with that catalogue, let alone that the ancient sources speak of such a list ever having been composed by Hermippos in the first place. However, since we have sound proof that he drew up (or at least transmitted) a similar pinax for Theophrastos (1), it is a reasonable assumption that the Callimachean may also have edited (or published) one for Aristode (as well as for others: cf. F 9, 44, 89). To be sure, this is still a far cry from asserting that Diogenes’ list goes back to the Callimachean. As it is, along with the provenance of the other catalogues of leading Peripatetics preserved in Diogenes’ Book 5 (Theophrastos: 5,42-50; Straton: 5,59-60; Demetrios of Phaleron: 5,80-81; Herakleides of Pontos: 5,86-88), the origin of the Laertian pinax of Aristotle is one of the most oft-discussed points with regard to the history of the transmission of the early Peripatetic corpus of writings. In spite of the great number of participants in the debate, definitive results of this quest are still wanting." (Appendix 3: Hermippos and the Authorship of Diogenes Laertios' Catalogue of Aristotle's Writings (5,22-27) , p. 233)

(1) See the discussion of T 20 and F 37 above, p. 164-177.

6. ———. 2001. "Animadversiones in Diogenem Laertium." Rheinisches Museum no. 144:64-106.

§ b) Diog. Laert. 5.2-3: On Aristotle and the Foundation of the Peripatos , pp. 72-99.

"If, as seems likely in the light of the foregoing, this means that Diogenes had one primary source for the passage, that au- thority might very well be identified as Hermippos, who is quoted at the very beginning. It would seem that his account of the foundation and organization of the Peripatos by Aristotle was worked out in much more detail and that the Laertian (and/or his intermediary) practically condensed it to the point of incomprehensibility. All this will be made clear and modified in the following exposition" (p. 74)

7. Bos, Abraham P. 1987. "The Relation Between Aristotle's Lost Writings and the Surviving Corpus Aristotelicum ." Philosophia Reformata no. 52:24-40.

Reprinted as Chapter X in A. Bos, Cosmic and Meta-Cosmic Theology in Aristotle's Lost Dialogues , Leiden: Brill, 1989, pp. 97-112.

"Something else is relevant at this point. Historians of philosophy concerned to trace Aristotle’s influence are faced by the remarkable fact that in the first centuries following Aristotle’s death his school shows a clear and continual decline in both quality and productivity. Not until the first century BC is it possible to speak of a ‘renaissance’. Only then does the Peripatetic school awaken ‘aus ihrer langen Lethargie’.(43) No satisfactory explanation for this highly remarkable state of affairs has yet been suggested. We must begin by realizing that the decline of the Peripatos took place during the period in which the dialogues, composed, ordered, and produced in a highly polished form by Aristotle himself, were in circulation, while the writings of the Corpus were not available as they are to us.

The revival of interest in Aristotle’s philosophy, on the other hand, is strictly connected with the discovery of the unpublished treatises in the first century BC. Here too we should prefer a philosophical explanation. We suggest that Aristotle’s philosophy, in the period when he was known on the basis of his published work only, fell into disrepute because the notion of ‘genuine, serious scholarly philosophy’ underwent a change at the hands of the professional philosophers, who no longer accepted an appeal to any experience other than common human experience. And to this shift in the idea of ‘scientific philosophy’ Aristotle’s own activities within the school no doubt pointed the way." (pp. 110-111 of the reprint)

(43) Cf. P. Moraux, Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen , l, xiv.

8. ———. 1989. "Exoterikoi Logo i and Enkyklioi Logoi in the Corpus Aristotelicum and the Origin of the Idea of the Enkyklios Paideia ." Journal of the History of Ideas no. 50:179-198.

Reprinted as Chapter XI in: A. P. Bos, Cosmic and Meta-Cosmic Theology in Aristotle's Lost Dialogues , Leiden: Brill, 1989, pp. 113-152.

"We would now like to show how various elements from the tradition can be combined in an entirely new hypothesis.

(a) Since the explanations of the term 'exoteric' do not appear until after Andronicus' edition, it is legitimate to assume that they were attempts to solve the problem of the references in the Corpus with no more information than is now available to us.

(b) On the basis of the subjects dealt with in the exoterikoi logoi, as we will discuss below, which included Plato's doctrine of Ideas and the debate over the Idea of the Good, we seem justified in considering that 'exoteric' was understood by Aristotle as: 'pertaining to the realities lying outside Physis .

(c) That is to say that in these works Aristotle discussed the subjects which, according to his own philosophy of science, were not susceptible to treatment in a discursive, conclusive argumentation. For argumentation or proof is possible only on the basis of acceptance of the starting-points (archai )." (p. 129 of the reprint)

(...)

"We would like to advance the hypothesis, therefore, that the notion of the enkyklios paideia is a product of philosophical reflection on kinds of knowledge in relation to kinds of objects of knowledge, as laid down in the lost writings of Aristotle. The introduction of this notion may well have been linked there to the distinction which Aristotle did make in any case, i.e. between enkyklioi logoi and exoterikoi logoi , if we assume that enkyklios and exoterikos in this combination refer not to the target group of these logoi but to their content. In this view, the enkyklioi logoi comprised all sciences concerning the natural reality 'surrounding' us and whatever is derived from it through abstraction. And the exoterikoi logoi dealt with the matters related to ta exo and with those themes which Plato reserved for dialectic and Aristotle for an 'earlier, higher, and more logical science than physics', a science which deals with the archai, the principia, and which cannot therefore be deductive and demonstrative.(162) This distinction was no doubt geared to a difference in the level of difficulty, seen from the viewpoint of man who stands at the beginning of the road to knowledge. Aristotle will have regarded the study of experiential reality in all its aspects as a necessary preliminary training for insight into metaphysical reality. The elements discussed above are best integrated, therefore, if we assume that in his lost writings Aristotle described the process of man's striving for knowledge in metaphors of 'liberation', 'purification', 'initiation', 'ascent', and 'enlightenment', following and transforming what Plato had said about this process in his dialogues the Phaedo , the Phaedrus, and the Republic .

Aristotle saw man in his everyday existence as a 'natural' being, a being belonging to and enclosed by Physis , and endowed with a 'natural' rational faculty. As such, man is occupied by, bound to, and oriented toward the 'surrounding' reality of ordinary, everyday experience. But as such, man is also in many respects 'unfree'(163) and 'is as susceptible to those things which are by nature most evident as the eyes of bats to daylight'.(164) The road to liberation indicated by Aristotle is a road involving various stages." (pp. 150-151 of the reprint).

(162) a. Arist, Top . 1.2.

(163) Arist, Metaph . Α 2 982b29.

(164) Arist, Metaph . α 1 993b9.

9. Chroust, Anton-Hermann. 1962. "The Miraculous Disappearance and Recovery of the Corpus Aristotelicum ." Classica et Mediaevalia no. 23:50-67.

10. ———. 1964. "A Brief Account of the traditional Vitae Aristotelis ." Revue d'Études Grecques no. 77:50-69.

Reprinted in A.-H. Chroust, Aristotle: New Light on His Life and on Some of His Lost Works , London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973, Vol. I, pp. 1-15, with the title: A Brief Account of the (Lost) Vita Aristotelis of Hermippus and of the (Lost) Vita Aristotelis of Ptolemy el-Garib.

Abstract: "The Vita Aristotelis of Diogenes Laertius to a large extent relies on Hermippus whose original account might be reconstructed with the help of Diogenes Laertius. Hermippus' is a strange though in the main encomiastic melange of fact and fiction, praise and slander. With the exception of the Vita Hesychii (Vita Menagii), all the other Vitae — the Vita Marciana, the Vita Vulgata (Vita Pseudo-Ammoniana) , the Vita Latina, the two Syriac Vitae and the four Arabic Vitae — ultimately go back to, or are derivates of a Vita (or an epitome of a Vita) of Ptolemy (el-Garib), a member of Porphyry's or Jamblichus' school of Neo-Platonists. The Vita of Ptolemy, the essential contents of which can fairly well be reconstructed with the help of its several derivates, is strongly encomiastic. It is based on what seems to be an adequate mastery of the biographical materials available around 300-400 A. D., but its uncritical admiration for Aristotle greatly reduces its historical value."

11. ———. 1965. "The Vita Aristotelis of Dionysius of Halicarnassus." Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientarum Hungaricae no. 133:369-377.

Reprinted in A.-H. Chroust, Aristotle: New Light on His Life and on Some of His Lost Works , London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973, Vol. I, pp. 16-24.

"In his Vita Aristotelis (or Chronologia Vitae Aristotelis ), which because of its brevity and alleged unimportance has been sadly neglected, Dionysius of Halicarnassus writes:

‘Aristotle was the son of Nicomachus, who traced his ancestry and his profession to Machaon, the son of Asclepius. His mother, Phaestis, descended from one of the colonists who led the [Greek] settlers from Chalcis to Stagira. Aristotle was bom in the 99th Olympiad, when Diotrephes was archon in Athens [384-83 B.C.]. Hence, he was three years older than Demosthenes. During the archonship of Polyzelus [367-66 B.C.], and after his father had died, he went to Athens, being then eighteen years of age. Having been introduced to the company of Plato, he spent a period of twenty years with the latter. On the death of Plato, during the archonship of Theophilus [348-47 B.C.], he went to Hermias, the tyrant of Atarneus. After spending three years with Hermias, during the archonship of Eubulus [345-44 B.C.], he repaired to Mytilene. From there he went to the court of Philip [of Macedonia] during the archonship of Pythodorus [343-42 B.C.], and spent eight years there as the tutor of Alexander. After the death of Philip [in 336 B.C.], during the archonship of Evaenetus [335-34 B.C.], he returned to Athens, where he taught in the Lyceum for a space of twelve years. In the thirteenth year [of his second stay in Athens], after the death of Alexander [in 323 B.C.] and during the archonship of Cephisodorus [323-22 B.C.], he retreated to Chalcis where he fell ill and died at the age of sixty-three.' (1)" (p. 16 of the reprint)

(1) Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I Epistola ad Ammaeum 5. See also F. Jacoby, Frag. Hist. Grace . 244, F. 38.

"The brief and not very informative Vita Aristotelis of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, it must be borne in mind, is primarily a ‘chronology’ rather than a detailed biography of Aristotle, compiled to disprove the allegation that Demosthenes owed his rhetorical prowess to Aristotle’s Rhetoric . Hence, like Apollodorus in his Chronicle (DL V, 9-10), Dionysius was of the opinion that he could restrict himself to citing some of the essential dates in the life of Aristotle. Aside from this rather scanty bit of information, the Vita Aristotelis of Dionysius contains practically nothing that might shed additional light on the life and work of the Stagirite. The only novel piece of information furnished by Dionysius is the report that Aristotle’s mother Phaestis was a descendant from the original colonists who led the Chalcidian settlers from Chalcis on the island of Euboea to Stagira. Of great importance and much assistance to us is also his effort to date, though in all likelihood not always accurately, certain key events in the life of Aristotle by referring to the respective archonships during which these events took place.

Despite its brevity, the Vita Aristotelis of Dionysius of Halicarnassus appears to be based on extensive research and what seems to be a fairly accurate grasp of the most relevant facts and dates in the life of the Stagirite. It was motivated by the desire to check and disprove the claims of certain Peripatetics who exalted and exaggerated beyond reason and historical fact the importance and influence of Aristotle upon the history of rhetoric in general and on the rhetoric of Demosthenes in particular. In so doing, Dionysius, like so many apologists, occasionally overstates his case and becomes guilty of some minor inaccuracies. What he did not know, and probably could not know, is that certain parts of the Aristotelian Rhetoric—the (Urrhetorik9 according to W. Jaeger—may date back to the years 360-55 B.C., and that during the fifties of the fourth century B.C., Aristotle probably composed, two works on rhetoric as well as taught a course of lectures on rhetoric.49 Moreover, his manner of dating Aristotle’s arrival in Athens in the year 367 B.C., that is, his insistence that Aristotle went there during the archonship of Polyzelus (367-66 B.C.), when he was eighteen years old (in his eighteenth year), is open to debate.50 Most likely, Aristotle went to Athens during the latter part of Nausigenes’ archonship (368-67 B.C., or the first year of the 103rd Olympiad), that is, in the late spring of 367 B.C. (after Plato had departed for Syracuse), when he was seventeen years old (in his seventeenth year), rather than in the summer or early fall of 367. Dionysius also seems to imply that Aristotle died during the archonship of Cephisodorus (323-22 B.C.), that is, during the first half of the year 322, rather than during the early part of Philocles’ archonship (322-21 B.C.), that is, between July and October of 322 B.C." (pp. 23-24 of the reprint, a note omitted)

12. ———. 1965. "A Brief Analysis of the Vita Aristotelis of Diogenes Laertius (DL V 1-16) " L'Antiquité Classique no. 34:97-129.

Revised and expanded in A.-H. Chroust, Aristotle: New Light on His Life and on Some of His Lost Works , London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973, Vol. I, pp. 25-53.

"Book V, sections 1-16, of Diogenes Laertius’ The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, also called The Lives of the Philosophers (Photius) or The Lives of the Sophists (Eusthatius),(1) contains a rather important, though at times confused (and confusing), account of the life of Aristotle.(2) In his Vita , which to a large extent relies rather heavily on a biography of Aristotle by Hermippus of Smyrna, Diogenes Laertius also employs a number of other divergent sources. Some of these sources are cited by name, others can be determined with a reasonable degree of certainty, while others cannot readily be identified. What is perhaps the most striking characteristic of Diogenes’ biography, however, is that he constantly alternates his use of two distinct types of sources or biographical tendencies: the decidedly sympathetic, favorable and even encomiastic tradition; and the clearly unsympathetic, unfavorable and even hostile trend.(3) In this, Diogenes Laertius and his Vita Aristotelis differs from the majority of the extant biographies of Aristotle. The following is a tentative analysis of Diogenes’ rather bewildering account in terms of these two types of sources or tendencies." (p. 25 of the reprint)

(1) Diogenes Laertius, in the main, has remained an obscure author. There exists no certainty even about his correct name. Eustathius (Comment. in Iliadem M 153 , vol. ΙΠ, p. 103, ed. G. Stallbaum) calls him Laertes, while some authors (Stephanus of Byzantium and Photius, for instance) refer to him as Laertius Diogenes. The approximate date of his Vitae has been fixed provisionally in the first decade or decades of the third century A.D., that is, shortly after the year A.D. 200, although some scholars would prefer to place the Vitae closer to the year A.D. 300. The latest philosopher whom Diogenes cites in his work is Saturninus (DL IX. 116), an otherwise unknown disciple of Sextus Empiricus (floruit towards the end of the second century A.D.). If our assumption should be correct, namely, that Diogenes Laertius wrote shortly after 200 A.D., then he was the younger contemporary of Clement of Alexandria, Galen and Philostratus. See, in general, E. Schwartz, ‘Diogenes Laertius,’ in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft , vol. V (Stuttgart, 1905), pp. 738-63.

(2) See P. Moraux, ‘La Composition de la Vie d’Aristote chez Diogène Laërce,’ Revue des Études Grecques , vol. 68 (1955), pp. 124-63; I. Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition (Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, vol. 63, no. 2, Göteborg, 1957, pp. 29-79, et passim; O. Gigon, ‘Interpretationen zu den Antiken Aristoteles-Viten,’ Museum Helveticum , vol. 15 (1958), pp. 147-93. I. Düring, op. cit ., pp. 25-6, aptly calls the Vita Aristotelis of Diogenes Laertius ‘a compilation of literary sources ranging over a period of about 500 years. It lacks stylistic unity. It is probable that the author went on making insertions and adding marginal notes until he partly spoiled his original arrangement. It is probable, too, that some of these additions were rather carelessly inserted in the text... This makes Diogenes’ work appear more disorderly, not to say sloppier, than it really is. It is habitual to sneer at Diogenes as an insipid and stupid author... The texts which he excerpted were of course not without textual errors, and we must expect that he inherited many of these ancient errors.... The assumption that he was stupid is mainly based on the epigrams with which he adorned his work: they beat the record in bathos and bad taste. But this manifestation of insipidity does not give us the right to dismiss him once and for all as an ignorant ass... [H]e has undoubtedly collected for us a material without which our knowledge of the history of ancient philosophy would be much poorer; he has traced and used some excellent sources; and he has put his material in a tolerably good order.

(3) Whenever and wherever the situation demands it, some of the sympathetic sources or biographies turn at times into outright, though fanciful, apologies, while some of the unsympathetic or hostile sources or biographies, though by no means all of them, lapse into invective and slander. Naturally, there are also those sources which, on the whole, seem to be fairly ‘neutral’ and objective.

13. ———. 1965. "A Brief Summary of the Syriac and Arabic Vitae Aristotelis ." Acta Orientalia no. 29:23-47.

Revised version in A.-H. Chroust, Aristotle: New Light on His Life and on Some of His Lost Works , London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973, Vol. I, pp. 54-72.

"It is commonly held that the two surviving Syriac and the four extant Arabic Vitae Aristotelis are ultimately based on the biographical tradition represented or inaugurated by Ptolemy (-el-Garib) and his (lost) Vita Aristotelis .(1) Probably in the course of the fifth or sixth century A.D., a Syriac translation was made of Ptolemy’s Vita or, more likely, of an epitome of this Vita . Of this original translation, only two rather scanty abridgements by some Syriac biographers survive, namely, I Vita Aristotelis Syriaca and II Vita Aristotelis Syriaca , which might also be called short résumés of an older and more comprehensive Syriac translation of Ptolemy’s original Greek Vita Aristotelis or of an epitome of this Vita .

The Syriac translation of either Ptolemy’s Vita or that of an epitome of this Vita , together with some additional (probably Neo-Platonic) materials transmitted through several intermediary sources, ultimately became the foundation of the four Arabic Vitae Aristotelis . It has been surmised that towards the end of the ninth century A.D., Ishaq Ibn Hunayn translated into Arabic a Syriac rendition of Ptolemy’s Vita or, rather, of a Syriac translation of an epitome of this Vita . In any event, the Arabic biographers, without exception, ultimately derived their information and materials, through the intermediary of Syriac translators, from Ptolemy, although they seem to have included in their Vitae not only some elements that were probably added (or invented) by the Syriac translators (or by the Arabic biographers themselves), but also bits of information gleaned from some other (Neo-Platonic?) reports or accounts. There exists no evidence, however, that the later Arabic biographers made direct use of Greek or Syriac sources. It might be correct to maintain, therefore, that the Syriac and Arabic biographers, like the Neo-Platonic School of Ammonius, derived most of their information concerning the life of Aristotle from Ptolemy (-el-Garib) and his Vita Aristotelis .(2)

The four major Arabic biographers of Aristotlee are: Al-Mubassir (or Al-Mubashir, subsequently cited as II VA ), who wrote during the latter part of the eleventh century;(3) Ibn Abi Usaibia (subsequently cited as IV VA ), who wrote during the latter part of the thirteenth century;(4) Ibn an-Nadim (subsequently cited as I VA ), who wrote near the end of the tenth century;(5) and Al-Qifti Gamaladdin (subsequently cited as III VA ), who wrote during the first half of the thirteenth century.(6) A cursory examination of the Arabic (and Syriac) Vitae Aristotelis might indicate that especially I VA, II VA and IV VA , which are based on a single main source, are quite similar in content. Closer analysis reveals, however, that there exist quite a few significant differences in the facts selected and discussed by the different Arabic biographers. It is also obvious that some of the later Arabic biographers simply copied from some earlier Arabic author. Thus, Usaibia, for instance, occasionally seems to quote from Mubashir without, however, acknowledging his source." (pp. 54-55 of the reprint)

(1) See A.-H. Chroust, ‘A brief account of the traditional Vitae Aristotelis,’ Revue des Études Grecques , vol. 77, nos 364-5 (1964), pp. 50-69, especially, pp. 60-9, and Chapter I. The title of Ptolemy’s Vita Aristotelis probably was something like ‘On the Life of Aristotle, His Last Will and Testament, and a List of His Writings. ’ See Elias (olim David), Commentaria in Porphyrii Isagogen et in Aristotelis Categorias , CIAG , vol. XVIII, part 1 (ed. A. Busse, Berlin, 1900), p. 107, line 7, where we are told that Ptolemy wrote about Aristotle’s ‘list of writings, about his life, and about his last will and testament.’ I VA 19 (An-Nadim) reports that ‘Ptolemy-el-Garib ... is the author of a book “On the Life of Aristotle, His Death, and the Classification of his Writings.”’ See also IV VA (Usaibia), at the beginning.

(2) For the Syriac and Arabic Vitae Aristotelis , see, in general, F. A. Müller, ‘Die griechischen Philosophen in der arabischen Überlieferung,’ Festschrift der Fränkischen Stiftungen fur Professor Bernhardy (Halle, 1873) ; F. A. Müller, ‘Das Arabische Verzeichnis der Aristotelischen Schriften,’ Morgenländische Forschungen: Festschrift für H. L. Fischer (Leipzig, 1875); M. Steinschneider, ‘Die arabischen Übersetzungen aus dem Griechischen,’ Centralblatt für Bibl.-Wesen , Beiheft no. Π, part 3 (Leipzig, 1890-1), and Beiheft no. IV, part 12 (Leipzig, 1893); J. Lippert, Studien auf dem Gebiete der Griechisch-Arabischen Übersetzungsliteratur (Braunschweig, 1894); A. Baumstark, ‘Lucubrationes Syrio-Graecae,’ Jahrbuch für Klassische Philologie , Supplement, vol. 21 (Leipzig, 1894), pp. 333-524; A. Baumstark, Syrisch-Arabische Biographien des Aristoteles (Leipzig, 1900); J. Lippert, Ibn al-Qiftis Tarih al-Hukama (Leipzig, 15)03). For additional and detailed information about the literature on our subject, see M. Guidi and R. Walzer, ‘Studi su al-Kindi I: un scritto introduttivo alio studio di Aristotele,’ Memorie della Reale Academia Nazionale dei Lincei . Classe di Scienze Morali, series VI, vol. VI, fasc. 5 (Rome, 1940), pp. 375-419; R. Walzer, ‘New light on the Arabic translations of Aristotle,’ Oriens , vol. VI (1953), pp. 91-142; I. Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition , Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, vol. LXIII, no. 2 (Göteborg, 1957), pp· 183-92, 193-246.

(3) His full name is Abu-(e)l-Wafa al-Mubashir (or Mubassir) Ibn Fatik. He authored the Kitab Mukhtar al-Hikam wa-Mahasin al-Kihm (The Book of Selections of Wisdom and Wonderful Sayings ). For simplicity’s sake the accents on the Arabic words have been omitted. See also Chapter I, note 17.

(4) He authored the Kitab uyun al-Anba fi Tabaqat al-Atibba ( The Book of Sources for Information Concerning the School of Physicians). Usaibia, who died in 1270, was a physician. See also Chapter I, note 19.

(5) His full name is Ibn Abi Yaqub an-Nadim. He authored the Kitab al-Fihrist , which was written before the year 987. This work, like that of Al-Qifti (see note 6), is more in the nature of a ‘ biographical encyclopedia.’ See also Chapter I, note 16.

(6) His full name is Al-Qifti Gamaladdin al-Qadi al-Akram. He authored the Tabaqat al-Hukama (The School of Wise Men ). He died in 1248. See note 5 and Chapter I, note 18. Neither the work of An-Nadim nor that of Al-Qifti will be used extensively.

14. ———. 1970. "Estate Planning in Hellenic Antiquity: Aristotle's Last Will and Testament." Notre Dame Law Review no. 45:629-662.

Reprinted in A.-H. Chroust, Aristotle: New Light on His Life and on Some of His Lost Works , London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973, Vol. I, pp. 183-220.

"The text of Aristotle's last will and testament is preserved in the writings of Diogenes Laertius, (1) Ibn An-Nadim, (2) AI-Qifti Gamaladdin, and Ibn Abi Usaibi'a.(4) Without question, this instrument is wholly authentic. Although in the course of its transmission it may have been somewhat mutilated or abridged, it remains the most revealing, as well as the most extensive, source of information among the few surviving original documents related to the life of Aristotle. It is safe to assume that the ancient biographers of Aristotle derived or inferred much of their information and data from this will. Concomitantly, this document supplies the modem historian with details that in many instances have been obscured, altered, or simply omitted in the traditional (and preserved) biographies of Aristotle.

The testaments of the early Peripatetic scholarchs, including Aristotle's, were carefully preserved and finally collated by Ariston of Ceos in his Collection [of the Wills of the Peripatetic Scholarchs].(6)" (p. 183 of the reprint)

(1) Diogenes Laertius, βίων [καί ·γνώμων] των ίν φίλοσοφίαιεΰδοκιμησάντων των els δέκα (On the Lives [and Opinions] of Eminent Philosophers in Ten [Books]), bk. 5, paras. 11-16 [hereinafter cited as Diogenes Laertius].

(2) Ibn Abi Ya'qub An-Nadim Kitab al-Fihrist [hereinafter cited as I Vita Aristotelis Arabica].

(3) Al-Qifti Gamaladdin al-Qadi al Akram, Tabaqat al-Hukama' (Schools of Wise Men) [hereinafter cited as III Vita Aristotelis Arabica].

(4) Ibn Abi Usaibi’a, Kitab ‘Uyun al-Anba' fi Tabaqat al-Atibba’ (Book of Sources of Information about the Schools of Doctors) [hereinafter cited as IV Vita Aristotelis Arabica]. The text transmitted by An-Nadim is almost identical to that of Usaibi’a. It is fair to assume that Usaibi’a used the text of An-Nadim.

(5) Diogenes Laertius, bk. 5, para. 64; see Strabo, "Στράβωνος γεωγραφικών (Geography), bk. 13, ch. 1, para. 54.

(6) In the preserved will of Theophrastus we read: “And the whole library [of the school] I bequeath to Neleus.” Diogenes Laertius, bk. 5, para. 52; see Strabo, supra note 5, bk. 13, ch. 1, para. 54; Athenaeus, Αθηναίου Nανχρατίτου δειπνοσοφίστων (Deipnosophists), bk. 1, para. 3A [hereinafter cited as Athenaeus]. Theophrastus, it must be borne in mind, expected that Neleus of Scepsis would succeed him in the scholarchate of the Peripatus. When Neleus failed to be “elected” scholarch, he went back to Scepsis, in the Troad, taking with him the library containing the intramural compositions or treatises of Aristotle, Theophrastus, and other early Peripatetics. This incident also explains why the doctrinal treatises of Aristotle and others became lost for some time. See Chroust, The Miraculous Disappearance and Recovery of the Corpus Aristotelicum , 23 Classica et Mediaevalia 50 (1962). This also justifies doubts as to the authenticity of parts of the extant Corpus Aristotelicum .

15. ———. 1973. Aristotle: New Light on His Life and on Some of His Lost Works . London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Volume I. Some Novel Interpretations of the Man and His Life .

Contents: Preface IX-XVI; Abbreviations XVII; Introduction XIX-XXVI; I A Brief Account of the (Lost) Vita Aristotelis of Hermippus and of the (Lost) Vita Aristotelis of Ptolemy (-el-Garib) 1; II The Vita Aristotelis of Dionysius of Halicarnassus 16; III An Analysis of the Vita Aristotelis of Diogenes Laertius (DL V. 1-16) 25; IV A Summary of the Syriac and Arabic Vitae Aristotelis 54; V The Genealogy and Family of Aristotle 73; VI Aristotle and Callisthenes of Olynthus 83; VII Aristotle Enters the Academy 92; VIII Aristotle’s Earliest ‘Course of Lectures on Rhetoric’ 105; IX Aristotle Leaves the Academy 117; X Was Aristotle Actually the Chief Preceptor of Alexander the Great? 125; XI Aristotle’s Return to Athens in the Year 335-34 B.C. 133; XII Aristotle’s Flight from Athens in the Year 323 B.C. 145; XIII Aristotle, Athens and the Foreign Policy of Macedonia 155; XIV The Myth of Aristotle’s Suicide 177; XV Aristotle’s Last Will and Testament 183; XVI Aristotle’s Religious Convictions 221; XVII Aristotle’s ‘Self-Portrayal’ 232; Conclusion 249; Notes 257; Index of Ancient Authors and Sources 417; Index of Modern Authors 435.

Volume II. Observations on Some of Aristotle’s Lost Works .

Abbreviations IX; Introduction XI; I The Probable Dates of Some of Aristotle’s Lost Works 1; II A Note on Some of the Minor Lost Works of Aristotle 15; III Aristotle’s First Literary Effort: The Gryllus — A Work on the Nature of Rhetoric 29; IV Eudemus or On the Soul : An Aristotelian Dialogue on the Immortality of the Soul 43; V The Psychology in Aristotle’s Eudemus or On the Soul 55; VI Aristotle’s On Justice 71; VII A Brief Account of the Reconstruction of Aristotle’s Protrepticus 86; VIII An Emendation to Fragment 13 (Walzer, Ross) of Aristotle’s Protrepticus 105; IX What Prompted Aristotle to Address the Protrepticus to Themison of Cyprus? 119; X The Term ‘Philosopher’ and the Panegyric Analogy in Aristotle’s Protrepticus 126; XI Aristotle’s Politicus 134; XII The Probable Date of Aristotle’s On Philosophy 145; XIII A Cosmological (Teleological) Proof for the Existence of God in Aristotle’s On Philosophy 159; XIV The Concept of God in Aristotle’s On Philosophy (Cicero, De Natura Deorum I. 13. 33) 175; XV The Doctrine of the Soul in Aristotle’s On Philosophy 194; XVI Aristotle’s On Philosophy and the ‘Philosophies of the East’ 206; XVII Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato’s ‘Philosopher King’: Some Comments to Aristotle’s On Kingship 216; Conclusion 224; Postscript: Werner Jaeger and the Reconstruction of Aristotle’s Lost Works 231; Notes 270; Index of Ancient Authors 469; Index of Modem Authors 495.

"This book, which consists of two distinct volumes, essentially is a collection of papers which I wrote between 1963 and 1968, when I became interested in the historical Aristotle -- the Aristotle revealed not merely in the highly problematic Corpus Aristotelicum, but also in the ancient biographical tradition and in the 'lost works' of the young Stagirite. Some of the papers collected and edited here owe their origin to classroom discussions and lectures which I offered while on leave from the Notre Dame Law School. They have previously been published in various journals, both in the United States and elsewhere. When re-editing these papers for this book, I made some far-reaching alterations, important additions, incisive corrections and, it is hoped, some worthwhile improvements." (Vol. I, from the Preface , IX)

"Aside from a more general and rather sweeping discussion of the several Vitae Aristotelis in Chapter I, only the Vita (or Chronologia) Aristotelis of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Vita of Diogenes Laertius And the Vitae of the Syriac and Arabic biographers are treated in this book with any detail. The Vita Aristotelis Marciana, which was recently edited by O. Gigon, the Vita Hesychii (Vita Menagii or Vita Menagiana), the Vita Vulgata, the Vita Latina and the brief biographical sketches found in the Neo-Platonic commentaries to the works of Aristotle, on the other hand, have not received special treatment, although frequent reference is made to them. Chapter I also makes an attempt to reconstruct the essential content of the lost Vita Aristotelis of Hermippus of Smyrna as well as that of the likewise lost Vita Aristotelis of Ptolemy (-el-Garib). These two Vitae, it is claimed, constitute the most important sources or intermediary authorities for the majority of the subsequent Vitae. Chapter II, which discusses the Vita Aristotelis of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, indicates that this Vita is actually a brief chronology which offers little detailed information, except some valuable and apparently accurate biographical data. The Vita Aristotelis of Diogenes Laertius, which is analyzed in Chapter III, poses many vexing problems, some of which are almost impossible to resolve. Especially difficult to determine are the sources used by Diogenes Laertius. There can be little doubt, however, that this Vita, as we shall see in Chapter I, draws heavily on the Vita of Hermippus. Chapter IV, again, presents a general survey and discussion of the Syriac and Arabic Vitae Aristotelis without entering into a detailed analysis of each individual Vita. This particular chapter is primarily an attempt to illustrate the peculiar biographical trend introduced (?) by the Neo-Platonic biographers and by Ptolemy (-el-Garib) in particular. Of necessity no less than by design, the expository and analytical discussions of all these Vitae Aristotelis are at times repetitious in that certain statements found in one Vita are referred to or restated again and again.

(...)

The somewhat arbitrary selection of these biographical sources was made on the basis of the following considerations: The lost Vita Aristotelis of Hermippus and the lost Vita Aristotelis of Ptolemy (-el-Garib), it is widely and probably correctly held, constitute what appear to be the two main biographical trends. The Vita of Diogenes Laertius, in particular, to a fairly large extent, though not exclusively, relies on the Vita of Hermippus (as does the Vita Aristotelis of Hesychius) and, hence, at least in part, may be considered an 'epitome' or 'derivative' of the latter. The Syriac and Arabic Vitae, in turn, are primarily based on the Vita of Ptolemy (-el Garib) -- as are the Vita Marciana, the Vita Vulgata and the Vita Latina -- and, hence, may be called 'epitomes' or 'derivatives' of Ptolemy's biography. The Vita Aristotelis of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, which is largely based on what appear to be independent investigations, seems to follow a course of inquiry all its own." (Vol. I, Introduction , pp. XIX-XX, notes omitted).

16. Dix, T. Keith. 2004. "Aristotle’s ‘Peripatetic’ Library." In Lost Libraries. The Destrucion of Great Book Collections since Antiquity , edited by Raven, James, 58-74. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

"The details in Strabo’s account are subject to question and interpretation; and the truth of the Scepsis episode in particular must remain an open question. Three elements in Strabo’s story do ring true to the history of libraries in the Hellenistic age. First, there is the rise of institutional libraries, beginning with the library of the Peripatetic school.

At least four of the Macedonian dynasts established libraries in their capitals, a practice which spread to other rulers on the fringe of the Mediterranean world who aspired to Hellenic culture; and a number of Greek cities established libraries in their city gymnasia, presumably for the education of their young men. Second is the bibliomania of rival Hellenistic kings, especially the Ptolemies in Alexandria and the Attalids in Pergamum. Indeed, the entire Scepsis episode may reflect wrangling between Alexandria and Pergamum over who had the better texts of Aristotle. Third is the confiscation of the cultural treasures of Greek civilisation, including libraries, by victorious Roman generals: Sulla was not the first nor would he be the last to acquire a library as spoils of war. One element is unusual: Strabo’s assertion that the decline of the Peripatetic school after Theophrastus was due to the ‘disappearance’ of Aristotle’s library. In no other ancient account of lost libraries do we find any assessment of the consequences of loss. Other ancient accounts and modern scholarship do not seem to bear out Strabo’s assertion; nevertheless, for his ability to conceive that the loss of a library might have practical and intellectual consequences, Strabo can take his place in this collective history of lost libraries. (pp. 69-70)

17. Dorandi, Tiziano. 2016. "The Ancient Biographical Tradition on Aristotle." In Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Aristotle in Antiquity , edited by Falcon, Andrea, 277-298. Leiden: Brill.

"Conclusion

I have tried to answer the two question I asked at the beginning of this chapter— Who was Aristotle? and What should we take the ancient biographical tradition on Aristotle to be? At the same time, I have mapped some of the landmarks in the reception of Aristotle’s thought in this body of literature. The results may be limited, but they are nevertheless interesting and consequential.

Both as a metic and above all because of life choices well matched with his philosophical ideas, Aristotle lived an isolated and studious life, entirely caught up in scientific and theoretical research and in his educational program at the Lyceum.

The biographical tradition tries, in various ways, to fill in the gaps left by a normal life of philosophical research. The tradition unfolds in two broad currents, one of which probably goes back to Hermippus of Smyrna (third century BC) and the other to the Neoplatonic milieu (starting in the fourth century AD). There is also an Arabic tradition, parts of which are drawn from lost Greek sources.

A “biographical legend” took form early on, attaching various friendly and hostile accounts to Aristotle’s name. The sources for the reconstruction of these biographical veins are varied. They include an enormous amount of evidence which must, in every case, be analyzed and studied in order to establish their importance and reliability which separates the authentic from the spurious.

In the biographical as well as the gnomological tradition, we ultimately find clear traces both of Aristotle’s own doctrine and of doxographical texts which combine readings of Aristotelianism from several centuries, filtered through Hellenistic and Neoplatonic philosophy. Two concrete examples are preserved in Sextus Empiricus and Diogenes Laertius." (pp. 295-296)

18. Drossart, Lulofs Henrik Joan. 1999. "Neleus of Scepsis and the Fate of the Library of the Peripatos." In Tradition et traduction. Les textes philosophiques et scientifiques grecs au Moyen Age latin. Hommage à Fernand Bossier , edited by Beyers, Rita, Brams, Jozef, Sacré, Dirk and Verrycken, Koenraad, 9-24. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Text prepared for publication and completed after the death of author by A. M. I. van Oppenraay.

"Roughly speaking, Posidonius (135-51 BC) and Apellicon (d. 87) were contemporaries, while Strabo was only 13 years old when Posidonius died. So this (*) is the earliest mention of Apellicon’s purchase of Aristotle’s library which has come down to us. When and where he acquired it is not explicitly stated, but it may have been in his student days — thirty or forty years before, perhaps with Athenion, who after a career as sophist in Messene and at Larissa, in Thessaly, amassed a considerable fortune and returned to Athens. (31) Messene, Larissa and Athens are quite distant from Scepsis. Since Posidonius does not refer to Neleus at all, it is clear that he follows a different tradition. Even so it is noteworthy that the two authors (Posidonius and Strabo) agree as to the main point: that Apellicon was the owner of the library of Aristotle (so Athenaeus; Strabo more correctly adds Theophrastus).

The implications in § 4 are downright impossible. For it is improbable that this rascal, at best an amateur, was able to restore heavily damaged manuscripts of extremely difficult texts. Apart from that, even if he had been an accomplished philosopher and a trained expert in textual criticism, he might have corrected only a very small part of the 676.078 lines of the literary remains of Aristotle and Theophrastus (32).

There is, however, an independent witness: the annotated catalogue of Andronicus is lost, but we still have a summary (in Arabic), made by a certain Ptolemy. Towards the end of the Arabic translation of the catalogue of Ptolemy, called the Foreigner (al-garïb), in which a miscellany of personal papers, letters etc. is listed, there is a reference to “Books that were found in the library of a man called Ablikun” (Ablikun is the regular transcription of Apellicon). Now, it is known that he was interested in Aristotle’s marriage to Pythias (I. Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition , p. 267, T. 10; p. 375, T. 58 / and the commentary, on p. 392), and it may be that he bought some personal papers concerned with Aristotle’s private life, because such texts appealed to him, and he was able to read and to emend them. Boastful and vainglorious as he was, he may have grossly exaggerated his acquisition.

According to § 7, after his death Apellicon’s books were carried away by Sulla and included in his private library at Rome (or Cumae? see Cicero, ad Att . IV. 10, 1). If it really had contained all the books of the Peripatos, the hundreds of volumes in large chests would immediately have caught the eye. But Cicero, who was privileged to visit Sulla’s library, failed to notice anything of the sort, so that we may safely conclude that the famous library of the Peripatos was not among the belongings of Apellicon captured by Sulla. Presumably, Apellicon had actually acquired some Aristotelica, which may easily have escaped Cicero’s attention. On the other hand Cicero came across several Commentarii , that is to say esoteric works, of Aristotle in the library of Lucullus, another general, who had collected manuscripts during his expeditions in the East (see Cicero, Fin. III. 10 and Moraux Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen 1973, pp. 39ff.). This is extremely interesting, for the same Lucullus brought Tyrannio of Amisia as a prisoner to Rome, where he was freed and honoured as a scholar. Apparently, even in remote Pontus it was possible to acquire Aristotelian MSS. In this connection it should be stressed once more that, contrary to the impression given by Strabo’s account (in § 5), MSS of Aristotelian esoterica were available outside the school in various countries. This stands to reason, because the school was known all over the world. And this was exactly what Strabo’s informant ignored: apart from Athens and Rome there existed intellectual centres in many parts of the ancient world (like the Troad, for instance, see note 25.

My conclusions are that Strabo’s account ought to be dated early, that it may have had a place in Strabo’s own Historical Sketches , and that later on it may have been inserted in his Geography . It consists mainly of misinterpreted facts." (pp. 23-24)

(*) [Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, V. 214 de].

(25) Note that Straton is nowhere referred to in the account, and Strabo himself seems to have ignored that he was a Peripatetic. He quotes him (in 1.3, 4-5) on the authority of Eratosthenes with his usual nickname Straton the Physicist. The account in Geogr . XIII. 1.45 may suggest that Scepsis was an insignificant one-horse town, but that is far from the truth. In the next chapter of the 13th book Strabo repeatedly quotes Demetrius of Scepsis (Geogr . XIII.1.45, 55, al.), a famous historian who spent his life in his native town, where he must have been able to collect the material for his thirty books of commentary on a little more than sixty lines of Homer, that is on the Catalogue of the Trojans (ibid. XIII.1.45), a work of stupendous erudition. In fact, Strabo’s reports on the Troad reveal that it was one of the centres of intellectual activity. From Assos, where Aristotle had taught, came Cleanthes, the Stoic (ibid. XIII. 1.57). With Lampsacus and Parium many great names are connected. See ibid. XIII.1.19 : “Now Neoptolemus, called the Glossographer [and author of a Poetic, heavily drawn upon by Horace for his Ars poetica ], a notable man, was from Parium; and Charon the historian and Adeimantus and Anaximenes the rhetorician, and Metrodorus the comrade of Epicurus were from Lampsacus; and Epicurus himself was in a sense a Lampsacenian, having lived in Lampsacus and having been on intimate terms with the ablest men of that city, Idomeneus and Leonteus and their followers” (transi. Jones). Here again, Strabo omits mention of Straton — a Lampsacenian too — and of Lycon, the son of the Trojan Astyanax, who was Straton’s successor. Evidently he was poorly informed about the Peripatos.

(31) See R. Goulet, in Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques , I, Paris, 1989, p. 649.

(32) For this number see the catalogues of Diogenes Laertius V. 27 and V. 50.

19. Düring, Ingemar. 1950. "Notes on the History of the Transmission of Aristotle's Writings." Acta Universitatis Gotoburgensis :37-70.

Reprinted as second study in: Aristotle and His Influence: Two Studies, New York: Garland, 1987 (First study: Hans Kurfess: Zur Geschichte der Erklärung der aristotelischen Lehre vom sog. Nous poietikos und pathetikos (1911).

20. ———. 1956. "Ariston or Hermippus? A note on the Catalogue of Aristotle's writings, Diog. L. V 22." Classica et Mediaevalia no. 17:11-21.

"The catalogue of Aristotle's writings preserved to us by Diogenes Laertius is a valuable document, supplementing our knowledge of Aristotle's literary production. Provided that we can solve the problem of its origin, it will enable us to draw important conclusions as to the extent to which Aristotle's books were known during the centuries immediately following his death. In his book on this and the other catalogues, preserved by Hesychius and Ptolemy-el-Garib, Moraux (1) has well summarized the results of earlier research, and his own contributions to the interpretation and clarification of details in these catalogues are very important. With his predecessors Littig and Baum-stark, however, he shares a tendency towards highly conjectural construction. Owing to the conditions under which the catalogues are handed down to us, they pose for us a series of complicated problems. If we are going to draw any profit from the information they contain, we must be careful not to transcend what is really knowable. These problems cannot be solved by substituting still more problematic reconstructions, however ingenious these may be.

Moraux has advanced and vigorously defended the thesis that the catalogue preserved by Diogenes is a list of Aristotle's works in the library of the Peripatos, composed by Ariston of Ceos who succeeded Lycon as head of the School, about 226/5 B.C. If this thesis can be proved, it will have important consequences for the history of the Peripatos and Hellenistic philosophy in general, and Moraux has not shrunk from drawing such far-reaching conclusions. The object of this paper is to examine Moraux's thesis and match it with the traditional opinion that this catalogue is an inventory of Aristotle's books in the possession of the Alexandrian library." (pp. 11-12)

(1) P. Moraux, Les listes anciennes des ouvrages d' Aristote, Louvain 1951. To the exhaustive bibliography can be added: O. Regenbogen s. v. Pinax , RE XX 2, 1950.

21. ———. 1957. Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition . Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.

Reprint New York, Garland, 1987.

Contents: Preface 7; Part I. Editions of the Ancient Vitae Aristotelis. 1. Diogenes Laertius 13; 2. Hesychius 80; 3. Vita Marciana 94; 4. Vita vulgata 120; 5. Vita Lascaris 140, 6. Vita Latina 142, 7. Medieval Vitae Aristotelis 164; Part: II. The Syriac and Arabic tradition on Aristotle's life and writings 183; Part III. Fragments of the ancient biographical tradition. I. Chronology of Aristotle's life 249; II. Descent and family 263; III. Hermias of Atarneus 272; IV. Relationship with Philip and Alexander 284; V. Aristoteles and Isocrates 299; VI. Aristotle and Plato 315; VII. Aristotle's library 337; VIII. Aristotle honoured by the Delphic Amphyctions 339; IX. Aristotle's dicta on leaving Athens 341; X. Aristotle's apology 343; XI. Aristotle's death 345; XII. Appearance and personal qualities 349; XIII. Some ancient verdicts 353; XIV. Indirect evidence from Aristotle's own writings 366; XV. Early invectives against Aristotle 373; Comments on ch. XV 374; XVI. Characteristic sayings. Bon-mots. Anedoctes 396; XVII: The words peripatos, peripatein, peripatetikos 404; XVIII. The Roman edition of Aristotle's works 412; XIX. Exoterichoi logoi 426; XX. The neoplatonic introductions to the study of Aristotle 444; Part IV. From Hermippus to Ptolemy. A brief summary of results and conclusions 459; Index testimoniorum 479-490.

"This book has a long history. It was begun as an investigation of the passages in which Plutarch speaks of Aristotle. Detached from their context some of these passages lent themselves to different interpretations and I found too that they were used as evidence for quite different opinions. It soon became apparent that the scattered fragments of the biographical tradition could not be fully understood and properly interpreted unless on the basis of an examination of all the material. The aim of this book is to present this material and the result of my examination of it and to trace the development of the biographical tradition concerning Aristotle's life and writings.

Part I contains critical editions of all ancient Vitae Aristotelis, based on fresh collations of all manuscripts known to me. To the very last I hoped to find another manuscript of the Vita Marciana , now preserved only in Marcianus 257 , which is today almost indecipherable, but my hope failed. The editions of the Vitae pose problems which I have set forth in the introductions. To each text I have added testimonia , a running commentary, and a short chapter with a general evaluation. In this part of the book I have also included a brief survey of some of the late medieval Vitae .

Part II contains a survey of the Syriac and Arabic tradition. My chief object has been to present readable translations of the most important Vitae Aristotelis and to discuss the problems raised by these texts. This material has been hard to deal with for a non-orientalist, and it would have been impossible for me to give an account of it, had I not received kind and generous assistance from my orientalist colleagues, Professors Oscar Löfgren and Bernhard Lewin, Göteborg University, and Dr. Richard Walzer, Oxford University. I wish to emphasize, however, that I am alone responsible for all shortcomings in this chapter.

Part III contains about four hundred passages from ancient and medieval writers, selected from a large collection of excerpts and arranged according to subject-matter. I have experimented with several types of arrangement and finally decided upon the one chosen here. This arrangement of the material inevitably leads to certain repetitions for which I ask the reader's indulgence. I hope that the frequent cross-references and the Index testimoniorum will help the reader to find what he wants to find.

In most cases each passage or cluster of passages is provided with a commentary. In my comments and interpretations I have followed the simple method applied in every critical treatment of sources and authorities. Each statement has first been examined separately, with due consideration given to textual problems, language, context, mode of transmission, the writer's personality (if known), time and tendency, and so forth. It has then been compared with related texts and further analysed and interpreted with the ultimate aim of finding out as much as possible about trends and tendency in that branch of the biographical tradition to which the passage belongs. Certain facts recorded in the biographical tradition are of such a nature that we can never prove whether they are true or not. But we may advance a step nearer the truth if we can prove that the author (or his source) is biassed and find out something about his prejudices or tendency. In most cases it is possible to evince that he follows a certain tradition whose general character we are able to determine. However, everybody familiar with the ancient biographical tradition knows that the material is fragile and often open to different interpretations. I have honestly tried to make a clear distinction between facts and hypotheses and left many questions open with a non liquet. But I am fully aware how complicated and difficult the problems are and how evasive the truth is. The reader will find that my conclusions are often qualified by an additional "probably" or subject to other reservations.

It is my hope that the editions of the Vitae Aristotelis together with the large collection of testimonia will prove useful as a source book for the purpose of reference, quite irrespective of the appended comments.

Part IV contains a brief outline of the development of the biographical tradition from Hermippus to Ptolemy-el-Garib.

I have of course had a great mass of material to draw upon in the works of the many scholars who have written on the life of Aristotle: Brandis, Stahr, Blakesley, Zeller, Bywater, Shute, Busse, Baumstark, Praechter, Jaeger, Mulvany, Wormell, Hubbell, Moraux, and many others cited or referred to in my notes and comments. My separate debts to predecessors I have tried to acknowledge in all cases where they were contracted; I may sometimes have put down, from ignorance or forgetfulness, as my own, what ought to have been credited to another. Let me say, however, that without the diligent and careful work done by generations of scholars towards clarifying obscure passages and hidden rapports in the biographical tradition, this presentation and, if I may be allowed to say so, this tidying-up of the entire material, could not have been achieved." (from the Preface, pp. 7-9)

22. ———. 1971. "Ptolemy's Vita Aristotelis Rediscovered." In Philomathes. Studies and Essays in the Humanities in Memory of Philip Merlan , edited by Palmer, Robert B. and Hamerton, Kelly, 264-269. La Haye: Nijhoff.

"In a discussion at the Fondation Hardt (1) Professor Richard Walzer reminded classical scholars and historians of philosophy that they largely ignore the fact that Arabic translations of hitherto unknown Greek texts are becoming known in steadily increasing numbers, either through editions of the Arabic texts or, more often, because more detailed information about existing manuscripts is now available. The following example well illustrates his point.

Some twelve years ago I attempted to collect a number of facts transmitted to us in nine late epitomes of a Vita Aristotelis , two Greek, one Latin, two Syriac, and four Arabic Vitae. I concluded that these epitomes were extracts from a Vita written by a certain Ptolemy. Having examined the evidence and the solutions reached by other scholars I came to the result which I summarize here.(2) The author is possibly identical with the Neo-Platonic Ptolemy mentioned by Iamblichus, Proclus, and Priscianus.(3) The book was dedicated to Gallus, presumably a Roman of high standing and a contemporary phil-Aristotelian. Ptolemy’s book contained a biography, numerous aphorisms and anecdotes referring to Aristotle, the text of Aristotle’s Will, and a catalogue of Aristotle’s writings. The biography has a clear tendency: it is a glorification of Aristotle,(4) based on some typical Neo-Platonic conceptions." (pp. 264-265)

(1) Porphyre , Entretiens Fondation Hardt XII, 1965 (Geneva, 1966), p. 275·

(2) For further details, see my Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition , Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia V (Goteborg, 1957), pp. 208-246, abbreviated hereafter as Biogr. Trad .

(3) The references in V. Rose, De Aristotelis librorum ordine et auctoritate commentatio (Berlin, 1854), p. 45.

(4) I quote here Biogr. Trad ., pp. 470 f.

23. Earl, Donald. 1972. "Prologue-Form in Ancient Historiography." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, vol. I. 2 , edited by Haase, Wolfgang and Temporini, Hildegard, 842-856. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

On Aristotle see pp. 850-856.

"That all knowledge of the acroatic works was completely lost is an untenable belief and the cellar at Scepsis is a highly suspicious story(43). Fortunately, however, the complexities of the problems connected with the Andronican recension need not concern us here. On the basic facts about Apellicon, Sulla, Tyrannion, Andronicus and the transmission of Aristotle to Rome Strabo is a witness of authority. He studied Aristotelian philosophy with Boethus of Sidon, Andronicus' most notable pupil, perhaps under Andronicus himself(44), and also heard Tyrannion lecture(45). Two things seem incontrovertible: that Rome at the time that Sallust was writing was the centre of Aristotelian studies and that the result of these studies, Andronicus' edition, was to make available for the first time to the generally educated and cultured public the works of Aristotle as we know them, whatever had been the position among philosophic specialists. On the latter point the argument ex silentio from Cicero is decisive. For all his wide reading and commerce with Greek philosophers and scholars he did not know our Aristotle. His Aristotle, with one exception, is the author of the dialogues and the exoterica(46).

The date of the publication of Andronicus' edition cannot be accurately established. The earliest indication seems to be in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 'Epistula ad Ammaeum' I, written to refute the belief of an unnamed Peripatetic that Demosthenes learned the rules of rhetoric from Aristotle's 'Rhetoric', a view which Dionysius himself had once held(47). The discussion is conducted with considerable skill on the basis of wide research. There are quotations expressly assigned to all three books of the 'Rhetoric' as we know it(48). Dionysius clearly knew our text of the 'Rhetoric' well(49). Moreover, Dionysius has a confident command of the details of Aristotle's biography and of the order of his works: on internal evidence he argues that 'Topica', 'Analytica' and 'Methodica' precede the 'Rhetoric'(50)." (pp. 851-852)

(43) My colleague Dr. H. B. Gottschalk, whose guidance through the maze of the Aristotelian text tradition has been invaluable, suggests to me that the cellar was an invention of Apellicon to cover up theft of MSS from the Peripatos.

(44) Strabo, XVI 2, 24.

(45) Strabo, XII 3, 16.

(46) Cf. e. g. Cic., Ad Att. XIII 19, 4. (29 June, 45). It is clear from the references in the great series of philosophical works produced in 45—44 B. C. that Cicero did not know of the 'new' Aristotle. (...)

(47) Epist. ad Amm. I 1.

(48) Epist. ad Amm. I 6: (...) 11: (...) Cf. De Comp. Verb. 198, (...).

(49) Epist. ad Amm. I 6 = Rhet. 11, 12; 7 = I 2, 8—10; 8 = III 10, 7; 11 = II 23, 6; 12 = II 24, 8 and 23, 3.

(50) Epist. ad Amm. I 6; 7; 8.

24. Gottschalk, Hans B. 1972. "Notes on the Wills of the Peripatetic Scholarchs." Hermes no. 100:314-342.

"Among the more important documents preserved by Diogenes Laertius are the wills of six leading philosophers, Plato (3, 41—3), Epicurus (10, 16—21), and the first four heads of the Aristotelian school, Aristotle himself (5, 11—16), Theophrastus (5, 51—7), Strato (5, 61—4 = fr. 10 Wehrli) and Lyco (5, 69 to 74 = fr. 15 Wehrli); Aristotle's will has also been preserved in two Arabic versions containing some variant readings (1). While those of Plato and Aristotle are purely personal, the remaining wills contain more or less detailed provisions for the continuation and endowment of the Epicurean and Peripatetic schools, which throw a good deal of light on their organisation and the conditions in which they operated. The Peripatetic wills are particularly instructive, forming as they do a continuous series dating from 322 to 228/5 BC. Yet there has been no comprehensive study of these documents since the eighties of the last century, and the discussions published then concentrated mainly on their legal aspects (2). The aim of this paper is rather to extract as much historical information as possible about the Peripatos and its members. I shall press the evidence hard and some of my conclusions are more speculative than I like. But none of my results conflict with any reliable ancient testimony, and I hope at least to succeed in dispelling some misconceptions and in clarifying the nature of our sources and the limits of our knowledge." (p. 314)

(1) See below, p. 315 ff.

(2) C. G. Bruns, "Die Testamente der gr. Philosophen", Ztschr. d. Savigny-Stiftun g, Romanistische Abtlg. I, 1880, 1-52; A. Hug, "Zu den Test. d. gr. Philos.", Festschr. zur Begrüßung der Vers. deutscher Philologen u. Schulmänner, Zürich 1887, 1-22. Wilamowitz, Antigonos v. Karystos, Berlin 1881, 263ff., deals with the historical problems. Aristotle’s will has come in for a great deal of individual attention. An English translation of the Arabic version of Usaibia is printed by I. Düring, Aristotle in the Biographical Tradition , Göteborg 1957, p. 219f., and both the Arabic and the Greek text are discussed on pp. 61 ff. and 238 ff. ; this work will be referred to as AB . Another edition of the Greek text, with the chief Arabic variants (in a Latin translation) given in an apparatus, is in M. Plezia, Arist. Epistulae cum Testamento , Warsaw 1961. Discussions by A. Grant, Aristotle , London 1877, 26ff. ; G. Grote, Aristotle , London (2nd edition) 188o, 17ff. ; E. Zeller, Ph. d. Gr. II 23, 1879, 41 ff.; W. W. Jaeger, Aristoteles, Berlin 1923 etc., 34ff.; C. M. Mulvany, "Notes on the Legend of Ar.", Class. Quart . 20, 1926, 157ff. ; M. Plezia, in Meander 2, 1947, 215ff. (in Polish ; not available to the present writer); A.-H. Chroust, "Ar.’s Last Will and Testament", Wien. Stud . 80, 1967, 90 ff. includes English translations of the Greek and Arabic versions in parallel columns. Düring, Plezia and Chroust break the text up into short numbered sections; in this paper references will be given to Diogenes’ paragraphs and sections in the numeration of Düring and Plezia, e.g. Diog . 5. 15, § 2e D.-P. Chroust’s numeration differs from that of the other editors and will not be given here.

25. ———. 1987. "Aristotelian Philosophy in the Roman World from the Time of Cicero to the End of the Second Century AD." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, vol. 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. II. Teilband: Philosophie (Platonismus, [Forts.]; Aristotelismus) , edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 1079-1174. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Partial reprint in: R. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed. The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence, London: Duckworth, 1990, pp. 55-81.

Contents: Introduction 1079; I. The revival of Aristotelianism 1083;II. The 'early commentators' 1097;III. Compendia and compilations 1121;IV. The impact on other schools 1139;V. Aristotelians of the later first and second centuries AD 1151; VI. Ptolemy and Galen 1164; VII. Conclusion 1172-1174.

"A particular difficulty for our study is the almost complete loss of the relevant literature. This is in large measure due to the character of that literature, much of which consisted of commentaries on Aristotle's works or discussions of problems arising out of them. Such writings were by their very nature liable to be superseded as each generation reread Aristotle in the light of its own needs and preoccupations. The only writings by professed Aristotelians of this era to have survived in their original form are a commentary on parts of the 'Nicomachean Ethics' by Aspasius (second century AD) and the 'De mundo' wrongly attributed to Aristotle himself, to which one can doubtfully add the pseudo-Aristotelian 'De virtutibus et vitiis' with its doublet, falsely ascribed to Andronicus of Rhodes. In addition two treatises by Nicolaus of Damascus,

originally perhaps parts of the same work, have survived through being translated into Syriac or Arabic.(1) Besides these we only have fragments quoted by later writers; the chief sources are the commentaries on Aristotle's works written by Alexander of Aphrodisias in the third century and by Ammonius (the son of Hermeias), Philoponus and Simplicius in the fifth and sixth.(2) The last-named is especially generous with quotations and sometimes gives a synopsis of the views of earlier interpreters on particular problems;(3) the introduction of his commentary on the 'Categories' (pp. 1-2) includes a survey of the work of earlier commentators. The information they provide is sufficient to give us an idea of the problems which interested the earlier Aristotelians and the kind of answer they gave, but usually not to reconstruct their arguments in full." (p. 1080)

(1) All these works will be discussed below.

(2)This and the other ancient Greek commentaries on Aristotle have been excellently edited in the series 'Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca' (CAG), published under the auspices of the Prussian Academy (Berlin 1883-1909); other relevant works, notably the treatises and essays of Alexander of Aphrodisias, have been published in the same format in the 'Supplementum Aristotelicum' (Berlin 1885—1903). They will be quoted by page and line of these editions.

(3) E.g. In Cat. 62-7, on whether Aristotle was right to posit ten and only ten categories.

26. Grayeff, Felix. 1956. "The Problem of the Genesis of Aristotle's Text." Phronesis no. 1:105-122.

"If the Corpus Aristotelicum consists of such varied material it is necessary, as Brink says ["Peripatos" in Pauly-Wissowa suppl. VII 1.1. p. 925], to investigate separately in each case in what manner the individual books, or μέθοδοι, of the Corpus were first edited. But perhaps the most immediate task of Aristotelian students is, to search for characteristics of the three (or more) main sources on which, I think, Tyrannion and Andronicus drew, i.e. to attempt to assign parts of the Corpus to the Rhodian, the Athenian, the Alexandrian branches of tradition. Only if we succeed in distinguishing between such branches, if we discover trends prevalent in each of them, and understand the principles of editing and lecturing used in the different peripatetic centres, can we hope to find a way to Aristotle himself." (p. 122)

27. ———. 1974. Aristotle and His School: An Inquiry into the History of the Peripatos with a Commentary on Metaphysics Ζ, Η, Λ and Θ . London: Duckworth.

Contents: Preface 7; List of Abbreviations 8; Introduction 9; Part One: 1. Life of Aristotle 13; 2. The Peripatos after Aristotle’s Death 49; 3. The Emergence of New Philosophical Schools during the Fourth and Third Centuries B.C. 57; 4. The Library of the Peripatos and its History 69; Part Two: 5. The Structure of Metaphysics Z; 6. Peripatetic Ontology according to Metaphysics Η 127; 7. Peripatetic Ontology according to Metaphysics Λ 143; Excursus: The Theory of the Proper Place 183; 8. A Volume on Potentiality and Actuality: Metaphysics Θ 187; Select Bibliography 213; Index of Passages Quoted in Text 219; General Index 225-230.

"This book on Aristotle and the Peripatos aims at elucidating the origin and growth of the Aristotelian treatises and it poses the question whether the treatises are the work of Aristotle himself, or of some of the outstanding members of his school." (p. 9)

(...)

"In making this new attempt at explaining the Aristotelian contradictions I intend to analyse the structure of Metaphysics Z, H, Θ and Λ — a task greatly facilitated by W. D. Ross’s commentary on Aristotle’s works. The analysis, which forms the main part of this book, is preceded by an introductory section on Aristotle’s life and the history of the Peripatos after Aristotle’s death, and on the history of the school library, especially after the closure of the school. Both sections of the book are designed to throw light on the genesis of the treatises, which must not be read as though they had been composed in a void, but as lectures delivered before often critical audiences of students, in the consciousness of changing trends of thought." (p. 10)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography on the Ancient Catalogue of Aristotle's Works

Studies in English: Gut-Z

1. Gutas, Dimitri. 1986. "The Spurious and the Authentic in the Arabic Lives of Aristotle." In Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages: the Theology and Other Texts , edited by Ryan, William Francis, Kraye, Jill and Schmitt, Charles Bernard, 15-36. London: Warburg Institute. University of London.

Reprinted as Chapter VI in D. Gutas, Greek Philosophers in the Arabic Tradition, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.

"The study of the Arabic lives of Aristotle is an old and tired subject; it can fairly lay claim to the distinction of being the first area of sustained scholarly concentration in Graeco-Arabic studies. I would not undertake an extensive treatment anew in a volume on Pseudo-Aristotle were it not for the fact that, despite considerable discussion for more than a century now, much light can still be shed on the scope and nature of this material from the vantage point of an examination of the spurious and the authentic in it, and for the rather ironic state of affairs that the secondary literature has itself generated its own share of the spurious. A review of the whole subject, then, that would list in detail the sources and remark on the ways of analysing them, remove the incrustations of outdated or misguided scholarship, and put the tasks of future research in perspective would seem to be in order.

For the purposes of the present discussion, all the Arabic biographical material on Aristotle can be conveniently categorized under the following six headings:

1) Reports in Arabic biographies of scholars;

2) Information in Arabic histories and chronographies, in so far as it does not derive from No. 1;

3) The story of young Aristotle, the precocious orphan, in Hunayn's Nawâdir al-falasifa ('Anecdotes of the Philosophers');

4) The story of Aristotle's death in The Book of the Apple;

5) Various scattered reports, the Aristotelian adespota;

6) The voluminous material on Aristotle in his relation with Alexander: anecdotes, stories, correspondence, the 'legend' of Aristotle.

In this paper I shall concentrate mainly on No. 1, deal very briefly with Nos. 2 to 5, and omit altogether No. 6 which, in addition to being biographical only peripherally, clearly requires a volume -- if not volumes -- of its own." (p. 15)

2. ———. 2012. "The Letter before the Spirit: Still Editing Aristotle after 2300 Years." In The Letter before the Spirit: The Importance of Text Editions for the Study of the Reception of Aristotle , edited by van Oppenraai, Aafke M. I. , 11-36. Leiden: Brill.

Summary: "Survey of the methods and practices used to edit the texts of Aristotle from the time of Aristotle himself to the present. Special attention is paid to the significance of the translations of Aristotelian texts, in particular into Arabic, for the establishment of their critical editions, as well as to the relative value of the vet-eres and recentiores Greek codices. Attention is also paid to some of the shortcomings of modem research and the challenges it faces." (p. 11)

3. Hatzimichali, Myrto. 2013. "The Texts of Plato and Aristotle in the First Century BC." In Aristotle, Plato and Pythagoreanism in the First Century BC , edited by Schofiled, Malcolm, 1-27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"One of the main developments that characterise first-century bc philosophy is that the detailed study of texts became an autonomous and often central philosophical activity in its own right. For this reason, any investigation of philosophical developments during this period must address questions surrounding the circulation of written texts. In this chapter I will examine the respective fates of the texts of Plato and Aristotle, and the editorial interventions that shaped each tradition. The case of Plato, as well as further evidence on the activity of ancient scholars and editors, will then inform my proposed interpretation of developments in the textual tradition of Aristotle, where the first century bc holds particular prominence thanks to the well-known sensational stories about the rediscovery of long-lost works. The history of these texts indicates two different and separable types of activity, namely textual criticism and canon-organisation. However, the modern term ‘edition’ is sometimes used to describe either activity, thus making it more difficult to ascertain what it was that ancient ‘editors’ actually did. In fact, as Dorandi pointed out, Porphyry is probably the only ‘real’ ancient editor of a philosophical corpus, having dealt with both aspects of Plotinus’ text.(1) Keeping the two activities distinct will help to clarify what happened to Aristotle’s text in the first century bc and informthe eventual value judgement that this period was of paramount importance for the way in which Aristotle has been transmitted to us." (p. 1)

(1) Dorandi 2010: 172.

References

Dorandi, Tiziano. (2010) ‘ “Editori” antichi di Platone’, Antiquorum Philosophia 4: 161–74.

4. ———. 2016. "Andronicus of Rhodes and the Construction of the Aristotelian Corpus." In Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Aristotle in Antiquity , edited by Falcon, Andrea, 81-100. Leiden: Brill.

"The present chapter will be an effort to trace some of the steps in the complicated history of the Aristotelian corpus, with particular emphasis on the role of Andronicus of Rhodes. We shall be asking what happened in the first century BC that led Strabo to speak of a rediscovery of Aristotle’s writings with an impact on Peripatetic philosophizing; and we shall also be looking for factors that could have contributed to the published dialogues’ falling out of circulation. For a long time it was traditional to speak of a “Roman edition” of Aristotle, prepared by Andronicus of Rhodes, and often credited with being a canonical or standard edition. But Jonathan Barnes in his “Roman Aristotle”(2) reminded us quite emphatically that no ancient source speaks of such a respected reliable edition, nor is Andronicus held in any esteem anywhere as a textual critic. So it is important to make a distinction between two different and separable types of activity, namely textual criticism on the one hand and canon- or corpus-organization on the other. A modern edition of an author’s entire oeuvre normally involves both activities, and this can lead to the term “edition” being used for either one when speaking of ancient “editors,” which does not help with ascertaining what it was they actually did. In fact, as Tiziano Dorandi has shown very convincingly,(3) Porphyry is the only individual that we can safely speak of as a full-blown ancient editor of a philosophical

corpus, because we know that he dealt with both aspects of Plotinus’ text, namely ordering (διάταξις) and correction (διόρθωσις) (Life of Plotinus 24).

As we shall see, Andronicus can only be credited with the former activity, that of canon- or corpus-organization, and in that respect he was very successful and influential indeed."(pp. 81-82)

(2) Barnes 1997.

(3) Dorandi 2010.

References

Barnes, J. 1997. Roman Aristotle. In Philosophia Togata II: Plato and Aristotle at Rome , edited by J. Barnes and M. Griffin. Oxford, Clarendon Press: 1–69.

Dorandi, T. 2010. ‘Editori’ antichi di Platone. In Antiquorum Philosophia 4: 161–74.

5. Hecquet-Devienne, Myriam. 2004. "A Legacy from the Library of the Lyceum? Inquiry Into the Joint Transmission of Theophrastus' and Aristotle's Metaphysics Based on Evidence Provided by Manuscripts E and J ." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology no. 102:171-189.

"The starting point for this inquiry is a scholium in one of the most important pieces of evidence for the handwritten tradition of the Aristotelian corpus: Parisinus graecus 1853 , from the tenth century.

This scholium concerns a somewhat strange opuscule by Theophrastus that was first transmitted to us within the Aristotelian corpus under the title Metaphysics. The scholium reveals that this opuscule was not on

the lists of Theophrastus' works drawn up by Hermippus in the Library of Alexandria in the third century B.C., or those by Andronicus two centuries later. It also reveals that Nicolaus[*], still in the first century B.C.,

identified its true author in his study of Aristotle's Metaphysics. The history of the transmission of this opuscule is thus closely linked to that of the Aristotelian corpus. My codicological inquiry has led me to some

new findings, not only concerning the history of the transmission of Theophrastus' Metaphysics , but also that of Aristotle's Metaphysics, and even the history of the transmission of part of the Aristotelian corpus

which includes some zoological treatises. These findings support other research on the nature and function of Theophrastus' opuscule, and confirm its particular literary status." (pp. 171-172)

[*] Nicolaus Damascenus On the Philosophy of Aristotle, e dited by H. J. Drossart Lulofs, Leiden: Brill, 1965 (reprint with additions and corrections 1969).

6. Huby, Pamela M. 1969. "The transmission of Aristotle's writings and the places where copies of his works existed." Classica et Mediaevalia no. 30:241-257.

"This is an attempt to trace the history of the Aristotelian tradition, (1) mainly by means of a study of the evidence about the whereabouts of the manuscripts of his esoteric writings in ancient times. In this particular case the task is a relatively easy one, because these works are too difficult to have had a wide circulation. A few important centres of learning probably had good copies of all of them, and some works like the Organon , may have been much more widely known at certain periods, but most of the material that once existed must have been destroyed, and we can often say where and when such destruction is likely to have happened. We can distinguish four main centres of tradition, by which I mean places where manuscripts were kept, studied and copied over a long period — Athens, Alexandria, Rome and Constantinople. (2) Of these the Roman tradition is completely lost, except in some Latin translations; the large collection at Athens probably slowly decayed, though some manuscripts may have gone to Constantinople; the perhaps even larger collection at Alexandria was scattered, but its tradition survived in Antioch and other parts of the Arab dominions, and is probably at the base of the Arabic translations. Even in Constantinople much was lost through fire or neglect, but a certain amount survived till the revival of interest in the ninth century, when our earliest extant Greek manuscripts were made." (p. 241)

(1) The following books are frequently referred to by an abbreviated title:

Düring, ABT = I. Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition , (Göteborg, 1957)

Lulofs = H. J. Drossaart Lulofs, ed. & trans: Nicolaus Damascenus, On the Philosophy of Aristotle (Leiden, 1965).

2) Too much must not, however, be made of the idea of a separate tradition in each place. For long periods there was close contact between two or more of these centres, and men, and their private libraries, might move from one to another. But it has some value.

7. Jaeger, Werner. 1948. Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development . Oxford: Clarendon Press.

English translation by Richard Robinson of: Aristoteles. Grundlegung einer Geschichte seiner Entwicklung , Berlin: Weidemann, 1923.

"This book, being at once treatise and monograph, demands a brief word of explanation.

It does not seek to give a systematic account, but to analyse Aristotle's writings so as to discover in them the half obliterated traces of his mental progress. Its biographical framework is intended merely to make more palpable the fact that his previously undifferentiated mass of compositions falls into three distinct periods of evolution. Owing to the meagerness of the material the picture that we thus obtain is of course fragmentary, yet its outlines constitute a distinctly clearer view of Aristotle's intellectual nature and of the forces that inspired his thinking.

Primarily, this is a gain to the history of philosophical problems and origins. The author's intention is, however, not to make a contribution to systematic philosophy, but to throw light on the portion of the history of the Greek mind that is designated by the name of Aristotle." (From the Author's Preface to the German Edition)

8. Keaney, John J. 1963. "Two Notes on the Tradition of Aristotle's Writings." American Journal of Philology no. 84:52-63.

"In recent years, scholars have taken up anew the problem of the knowledge of Aristotle's works, most particularly his school treatises, in the period from Theophrastus to Andronicus, and the question of the sources of the catalogues of Aristotle's writings, especially of that preserved by Diogenes Laertius (V, 22-7). The names of Paul Moraux and Ingemar Düring have been prominent in this activity.(1) In the present paper, I propose to deal with two of the many points raised by these scholars." (p. 52)

(1) P. Moraux, Les listes anciennes des ouvrages d'Aristote (Louvain, 1951); I. Düring, "Notes on the history of the transmission of Aristotle's writings," Goteborgs Hogskolas Araskrift, LVI (1950), pp. 35-70.

9. Lindsay, Hugh. 1997. "Strabo on Apellicon's Library." Rheinische Museum no. 140:290-298.

"A remarkable tale, full of fabulous elements, appears in Strabo's Geography in the course of his discussion of notable figures from Scepsis (2). It relates to the history of the text of the Corpus Aristotelicum. The passage has been taken to contain an important discussion of the chain of events surrounding the fate of Aristotle’s personal library between the time of Aristotle and Cicero. It certainly purports to deal with this topic, but there are good reasons for believing that it exaggerates the extent to which Aristotelian texts were unavailable in the interim (3). This has frequently been noticed, but in this paper I shall suggest that Strabo had motives related to his own career for wishing to add to the mystique over the history of Aristotle’s text, and for dismissing the value of earlier editions of Aristotle. It may be that Apellicon before him had started the process of making excessive claims over the importance of the documents that passed through his hands." (pp. 290-291)

(2) Strabo 13.1.54 p.608-9. For a summary of the vast literature on this passage see H. B. Gottschalk, Notes on the Wills of the Peripatetic Scholarchs , Hermes 100 (1972) 335 n. 2, and further in "Aristotelian philosophy in the Roman world from the time of Cicero to the end of the second century AD", ANRW II.36.2, 1079-1174, partially reprinted as "The earliest Aristotelian commentators", in: Aristotle Transformed: The ancient commentators and their influence , ed. R. Sorabji (London 1990) 55-81 (henceforth Gottschalk 1990).

(3) As emphasized by A.H. Chroust, The Miraculous Disappearance and Recovery of the Corpus Aristotelicum, C&M 23 (1962) 50-67; D.C. Earl, Prologue form in Ancient Historiography, ANRW I.2, 851.

10. Lord, Carnes. 1986. "On the Early History of the Aristotelian Corpus." American Journal of Philology no. 107:137-161.

"The manner in which the collection of Aristotelian writings now extant was originally constituted remains very much a mystery. The curious and in many respects implausible story of the disappearance and subsequent recovery of the library of Theophrastus is the best known element in this puzzle. But the most detailed evidence concerning the early condition of the Aristotelian corpus is that provided by three lists of books ascribed to Aristotle which have been preserved in ancient biographies of him. These catalogues are the chief source of external evidence touching on both the condition of Aristotle's writings in the period immediately following his death and the alterations they appear to have undergone in the edition of Aristotelian works prepared by Andronicus of Rhodes in the first century B.C. Because of the many problematic features of the catalogues, their evidence has often been ignored or dismissed, or used only in selective and unsystematic fashion.

The extensive studies devoted to the catalogues in recent years by Paul Moraux and Ingemar During have rectified this situation to some degree, and have secured general agreement as to their authority and importance.(1) At the same time, however, the problem of the catalogues, and of the early history of the Aristotelian corpus as a whole, can hardly be said to have been satisfactorily resolved. Disagreements persist over such questions as the identity of the original source of the earliest catalogues and the circumstances and precise nature of Andronicus' editorial activity. Moreover, even when liberal recourse is had to textual emendation, no fully convincing account has yet been given of the exact relationship of the three catalogues to one another, to the edition of Andronicus, and to the corpus as presently constituted.(2) In the state of our knowledge, many uncertainties must remain concerning matters such as the status of book titles and the meaning of the numbering of books of larger treatises. Still, it has to be acknowledged that much information in the lists appears to be transmitted with great fidelity, and under these circumstances it seems legitimate to wonder whether there are not alternative hypotheses concerning the catalogues which remain to be explored.

In what follows, an attempt will be made to establish the plausibility of such a hypothesis and to examine some of its implications with respect to the composition and early history of Aristotle's writings." (pp. 137-138).

(1) Paul Moraux, Les listes anciennes des ouvrages d'Aristote (Louvain 1951); Ingemar During, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition (Göteborg 1957); Düring, art. "Aristoteles," RE Suppl. XI (1968) cols. 184-90.

(2) Consider the negative judgment on Moraux' undertaking expressed by R. Stark, Aristotelesstudien (Munich 1972) 160-64.

11. Lynch, John Patrick. 1972. Aristotle's School: A Study of a Greek Educational Institution . Berkeley: University of California Press.

See Chapter V. The Athenian Peripatos and Its Decline Among the Successors of Aristotle and Theophrastus , in particular pp. 146-154.

"The research presented here does not make great claims for its utility in understanding Greek philosophy as a speculative phe nomenon. Pure philosophers will not find in these pages much even about the educational theory of Aristotle and his successors. My inquiry originates from a concern with what Aristotle and other Greek philosophers actually did as teachers, not what they said should be done. Such a concern is, I believe, both proper and desirable. For Greek philosophy as it developed in the Athenian schools of the fourth century B.C. was more than a general name for various kinds of theories and systems, and that "more” — philosophia as higher education among the Greeks — can be legitimately isolated and subjected to analysis on its own. Much con fusion results from not clearly distinguishing between theory and practice. Histories of ancient education almost always conflate the two with misleading results, and interpretations of Greek phil osophical texts often lapse into concrete formulations such as "Plato’s University,” “Scholarch of the Stoa,” or “chair in the Per ipatos” without considering concrete facts which such language implies.

To those scholars who are interested in ancient educational practice and the external history of the Athenian philosophical schools, the modifications in traditional views which have been suggested above may seem too drastic. Because of the vastness of the area concerned, this may well prove in some measure to be the case. But if these six chapters serve to stimulate some debate in a virtually unexplored field, the purpose of this investigation will be fulfilled." (pp. 7-8)

12. McAdon, Brad. 2006. "Strabo, Plutarch, Porphyry and the Transmission and Composition of Aristotle's Rhetoric—a Hunch." Rhetoric Society Quarterly no. 36:77-105.

Abstract: "Scholars who have been writing recently about the unity and composition of Aristotle’s Rhetoric make either brief or no mention of the transmission and editorial history of Aristotle’s texts. This essay addresses this void by first presenting and discussing Strabo’s, Plutarch’s, and Porphyry’s accounts of the transmission and editorial history of Aristotle’s and Theophrastus’ texts in conjunction with discussing the list of works that Diogenes Laertius ascribes to both authors. Once the transmission and editorial history is considered, evidence is presented from the Rhetoric that may indicate two important points—the extent to which the text is a compilation of previously independent texts that were ascribed to both Aristotle and Theophrastus and that Andronicus, rather than Aristotle, may be responsible for the text as we have it."

13. Menn, Stephen. 1995. "The Editors of the Metaphysics ." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 40:202-208.

"Christopher Kirwan writes as follows in his introductory note to Metaphysics Γ:

We are told that the fourteen books of Metaphysics were brought into their present arrangement by editors after Aristotle's death."(1)

(...)

"To conclude: we have not been "told," as Kirwan says we have, that editors after Aristotle's death brought the fourteen books of the Metaphysics into their present arrangement. We have been told that the editors received from Aristotle fourteen books of Metaphysics in their current order (except possibly for α or Α), and that, perhaps to repair some damage, they made local changes which did not affect the overall structure (although we mightconsider it a major change if the original Κ has been completely replaced).

Apart from the possibly correct general tradition that the present text comes from the school of Eudemus, those who "tell" us about the history of the text know no more than what we know, namely, that there are doublets, and that sometimes we have difficulty construing the argument. Of course, we may very well conclude that the order of the text as we have it fails in some major way to reflect Aristotle's intentions; we might even conclude that we have before us fourteen independent treatises on metaphysical topics; but we cannot draw such conclusions from authority. We can only draw them if, after serious effort, we are unable to make sense of the text as we have it.

Kirwan may possibly be right that Metaphysics Γ "announces its subjectmatter in the first chapter" and that it and later books of the Metaphysics proceed to explore the science first defined there, "hardly more dependent on what has preceded than on other parts of Aristotle's works," rather than specifying further the science of first principles described in ΑαΒ and resolving problems in that science; but the claim cannot be allowed to pass without argument." (p. 208)

(1) Aristotle's Metaphysics, Books Γ, Δ, and Ε , translated with notes by Christopher Kirwan (Oxford, 1971), p.75. The second edition (Oxford, 1993) reproduces the original edition with new supplementary material. The passage here cited is not modified by anything added in the second edition.

14. Natali, Carlo. 2013. Aristotle: His Life and School . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Translated and edited by D.S. Hutchinson from Italian Bios theoretikos. La vita di Aristotele e l’organizzazione della sua scuola , Bologna: Il Mulino, 1991.

"In my view, the interest to be taken in an investigation into the biography of Aristotle, as with the biography of Plato or of other figures of the ancient world, lies principally in the paradigmatic value of their intellectual experience. With Aristotle, in my view, a new cultural type was born, a model of the wise man different from that of his predecessors, and especially different from the sages who have been called the “Presocratics”; and a new style of philosophical reflection was worked out, the impact of which on European culture in all the centuries that followed would be very difficult to overestimate. What I am interested in doing here is to reconstruct as well as possible the historical features of this new intellectual figure, and to determine its specific characteristics.

In the reconstruction of these historical events I shall not concern myself directly with the content of Aristotle’s thought; its birth and its development will be understood in a more global context, by means of a comparison with the philosophical discussions of the school of Plato and the influences of other cultural currents of his time. In this sense my research is lacking and insufficient, but it is impossible to proceed otherwise, given the enormous difficulty and the great complexity of this material.

(...)

In the first three chapters of the present work I have started off by going back to the ancient sources, rather than the scholarly status quaestionis; and I have instead devoted the whole of chapter 4 of the present study to a delineation of the panorama of biographic research on Aristotle from the time of Zeller to the present. In the first three chapters I have not failed to keep in mind the results of the critical debate, at least of most of it, but I have undertaken first and foremost to re-read the texts, and have attempted to reconstruct a coherent picture of the life and of the intellectual personality of the philosopher by making use of the most reliable facts or, if not those, of the least uncertain ones. In order to give my readers some tools with which to check up on what I am going to be saying, I thought it a good idea to provide for them, in

my own Italian translation, most of the data and most of the texts upon which I base my reconstruction." (pp. 3-4)

15. Pajón Leyra, Irene. 2013. "The Aristotelian Corpus and the Rhodian Tradition: New Light from Posidonius on the Transmission of Aristotle's Works." Classical Quarterly no. 63:723-733.

"There are clear pieces of evidence (6) that point, if not to a broad circulation of the Corpus’ treatises, at least to the existence of copies of several Aristotelian works, preserved in the various culture centres of the Hellenistic period associated with the Peripatos. Though it is most unlikely that the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus were at that time widely known and available, the idea that they were preserved in single copies can hardly be sustained, so that the problem now is not to determine if there was a total loss of the Corpus, but when and where the different treatises were known, and what their relation is to the version of the Corpus that we know today.

In this context, the preserved fragments of the works of the Stoic philosopher Posidonius of Apamea might offer useful information. The aim of this paper is, then, to examine how they demonstrate that the author had access to some Aristotelian treatises during the time when they were supposed to be lost, and how Posidonius’ reading of Aristotle can shed light on the tradition of Peripatetic studies developed in Rhodes, and on its role in developing the final version of the Aristotelian Corpus as we know it today." (pp. 724-725)

(6) Particularly important is the information provided by Philodemus and Simplicius. See Phld. Cont.: P.Herc. 1005 , fr. 111 Angeli; W. Crönert, Kolotes und Menedemos. Texte und Untersuchungen zur Philosophen und Literaturgeschichte (Amsterdam, 1965 = 1874), 174, on the existence of copies of the Aristotelian Analytics and Physics . See F. Grayeff, Aristotle and his School. An Inquiry into the History of the Peripatos. With a Commentary on Metaphysics Z, H, Λ and Θ (London, 1974), 70 n. 2. Simpl. In Phys . 923.9 ff., on the letters exchanged between Theophrastus and Eudemus, regarding a mistake of the scribe on the copy of the Physics available in Rhodes. See Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, Zweiter Teil, zweite Abteilung: Aristoteles und die alten Peripatetiker (Hildesheim, 1963 = 1921 4th edition = 1878) 149 n. 2; J. E. Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship. Vol. 1: from the Sixth Century B. C. to the End of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1921), 85.

16. Perkams, Matthias. 2019. "The Date and Place of Andronicus’ Edition of Aristotle’s Works According to a Neglected Arabic Source." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 101:445-468.

Abstract: "This paper presents and discusses the notice on the life and work of Andronicus of Rhodes by the famous Arabic philosopher Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī, which has been transmitted by the historian of medicine Ibn Abī ʿUṣaibiʾa. This text, which has never been discussed by modern scholarship on Andronicus, is our only direct source on the life, the time and the place of Andronicus’ famous edition of Aristotle. The paper argues that the informations in this passage must stem from a rather well informed Greek source, which presented an alternative and more complete account than the informations we have from Plutarch.

We learn that Andronicus taught Aristotelian philosophy in Alexandria before 30 B.C. and based his editorial work on old Aristotelian manuscripts from the library there. After that date, he accompanied Augustus to Rome where he may have completed his edition. Thus, the late dating of Andronicus’ edition is confirmed by an independent source."

17. Plezia, Marian. 1961. "Supplementary Remarks on Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition." Eos.Commentarii Societatis Philologue Polonorum no. 51:241-249.

"Ingemar Düring's excellent book Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition (Göteborg 1957) represents an important step forward in the development of research on Aristotle, in so far it manages to present an almost complete collection of biographical material available to us and relating to the philosopher of Stagira, not only in the form of his proper biographies in Greek, Latin, Syrian and Arabic, but also in the shape of a rich collection of loose references to him (some taken from valuable sources) which can be found scattered in the whole of the ancient and parts of medieval literature. At the end of the book the author makes an attempt to draw some conclusions, of a broadest nature, from the collected texts, which are all very clearly annotated.

However, like all human works, Düring's valuable book shows some shortcomings and defects, which are unavoidable at such first attempts; we thought it therefore both necessary and useful to present here a handful of supplementary remarks, based on our research on the same subject, carried out between the years 1943 to 1957, in the belief, that they may prove useful to those interested in Aristotle's biography and how it took shape in the course of centuries. Our remarks are divided, in conformity with the way During handles his material, into three parts: (a) those dealing with full biographies of the philosopher of Stagira; (b) those dealing with loose references to him, contained in sources pertaining to various epochs; and finally (c) certain amendments relating to the question of how the ancient tradition about Aristotle has developed." (p. 241)

18. Richardson, Nicholas J. 1994. "Aristotle and Hellenistic Scholarship." In La philologie grecque à l'époque hellénistique et romaine. Sept exposés suivis de discussions , edited by Montanari, Franco, 7-28. Genève: Fondation Hardt.

Followed by a discussion, pp. 29-38).

"Modern scholars have on the whole viewed Strabo's story with scepticism(3). The serious question is not so much what became of the books which Neleus inherited, but rather whether other copies of Aristotle's esoteric works were available, and if so to what extent. It is generally believed that the catalogue of Aristotle's writings preserved by Diogenes Laertius (V 22-7) dates from the Hellenistic period, and this includes many (but not all) of the esoteric works, arranged in a way which suggests the work of a member of the Peripatos. Moraux argued that this may have been done by Ariston of Ceos in the third quarter of the third century B.C., whereas Diiring and others have ascribed it to Callimachus' pupil Hermippus of Smyrna(4). In a more recent work Moraux concluded, after a careful review of the evidence, that some at least of the esoteric texts were available and used during the Hellenistic period, but that they were probably not in general circulation(5). As we shall see, there is indeed evidence to suggest that this is correct, although much of it relates to the documentary and antiquarian areas of Aristotle's scholarship (where, moreover, his work shades most naturally into that of his followers). The situation becomes a good deal less clear when we turn to such a key text for literary studies as the Poetics. " (pp. 11-12)

3 Cf. H.B. Gottschalk ANRW !I 36, 2, 1083 ff. and Hermes 100 (1972), 335-42; P. Moraux, Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen I (Berlin 1973), 3-31. But see [Les éditions de textes ] pp. 51 f. below, where J. Irigoin argues for its truth, and suggests that what Athenaeus refers to could be the purchase by Philadelphus of the "bibliothèque de documentation réunie par Aristote et Th6ophraste", whereas the esoteric works, i.e. the papers and notes of Aristotle's own lectures, were kept in Scepsis.

4 Cf. P. Moraux, Les listes anciennes des ouvrages d'Aristote (Louvain 1951), especially 243 f.; 1. Düring, in Classica et Medievalia 17 (1956), 11-21. For a review of other opinions cf. P. Moraux, Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen I (Berlin 1973), 4 n. 2.

(5) Aristotelismus I 3-31. For further discussion see A. Rostagni (ed.), Aristotele, Poetica (Turin 21945), pp. lxxxvi-xcii; D.W. Lucas (ed), Aristotle, Poetics (Oxford 1968), pp. ix-xi, xxii-xxiii; F. Grayeff, Aristotle and his School (London 1974), 69-85; L. Taràn, in Gnomon 53 (1981), 723ff. (review of Moraux); C. Lord, in AJP 107 (1986), 137-61; L. Canfora, The Vanished Library: a Wonder of the Ancient World , transl. M. Ryle (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1990), 173-82; R. Janko, in Cronache Ercolanesi 21 (1991), 7.

19. Rist, John M. 1964. "Demetrius the Stylist and Artemon the Compiler." Phoenix no. 18:2-8.

"The appearance of G. M. A. Grube’s book (1) on Demetrius the Stylist has revived interest in the date of his work. Grube dates it at about 270 B.C. whereas G. P. Goold holds (2) that it was written in the Augustan Age. Such a discrepancy is disturbing; two hundred and fifty to three hundred years is a wide margin of error. This note therefore is intended to reduce the gap by an investigation of the Artemon who is described by Demetrius (223) as the editor of Aristotle’s Letters. It seems that some progress may be possible here, although the matter has been quickly passed over by both Grube (3) and Goold. (4) More in fact can be discovered about the date of Artemon than either of these scholars has indicated. To attain such knowledge, it is necessary to examine the traditional accounts of the contents of the Aristotelian corpus." (p. 2)

(1) G. M. A. Grube, A Greek Critic: Demetrius on Style (Toronto 1961).

(2) G. P. Goold, "A Greek Professorial Circle at Rome," TAPA 92 (1961) 168-192.

(3) Grube (note 1), who on p. 111 writes that nothing is known of the Artemon who edited Aristotle's letters, mentions on p. 42 the suggestion of H. Koskenniemi, "Studien zur Idee und Phraseologie des griechischen Briefes," Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae B.102 (Helsinki 1956), that the Artemon mentioned by Demetrius may have been a contemporary of Theophrastus.

(4) Goold (note 2) 181.

20. Searby, Denis Michael. 1998. Aristotle in the Greek Gnomological Tradition . Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.

Dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Classical Languages presented at Uppsala University 1998.

Abstract: "This dissertation consists of a new collection of maxims and apophthegms associated with Aristotle in the Greek gnomologies along with an introduction to the sources and a commentary on the content of the sayings. The major sources have been Diogenes Laertius, the anthology of Stobaeus, Gnomologium Vaticanum and related collections, cod. Par. gr. 1168 (Corpus Parisinum ) and cod. Bodl. Digby 6, the Loci Communes of ps.-Maximus the Confessor and related anthologies, the Florilegium Atheniense , and the gnomology of Joannes Georgides. The introductory chapters concern the definition and history of the gnomological tradition, the investigation of the extant sources, the problem of multipie attributions, possible explanations for the title The Chreiae of Aristotle found in Stobaeus, and the different ways Aristotle makes his appearance in the tradition. The collection of sayings is based on Greek sources alone, but frequent references are made to the Latin and Arabic traditions, and Appendices I and IV offer a sampling of the material to be found in these traditions. Appendix VI shows the sources of the so-called Gnomologium Parisinum Ineditum . The commentary dwells primarily on the attribution to Aristotle and the possible Aristotelian content of the sayings while at the same time relating the sayings to the gnomological tradition as a whole."

21. Sharples, Robert W. 2007. "Aristotle's Exoteric and Esoteric Works: Summaries and Commentaries." In Greek and Roman Philosophy 100 BC - 200 AD. Vol. II , edited by Sharples, Robert W. and Sorabji, Richard, 505-512. London: Institute of Classical Studies.

"A familiar and once popular account of the revival of interest in Aristotle’s esoteric works runs as follows. Ancient tradition tells us that Andronicus of Rhodes produced a standard edition of Aristotle’s esoteric works in the first century BC. Even if we do not have to believe - and would be very unwise to believe - the story that these works were completely inaccessible in the preceding, Hellenistic period because the only surviving copies were buried in a ditch in Asia Minor, it is clear that Andronicus’ edition marked a turning-point; he himself wrote commentaries on the works, his pupil Boethus did so too, and from that day onwards philosophy, inspired by the attempt to understand Aristotle’s treatises, has never looked back.

The part of that account which is most securely established is in fact the last. Andronicus did indeed have a major influence on the whole subsequent course of philosophy. Whatever exactly Andronicus’ role was in the ordering of the Aristotelian texts and in establishing an order in which they should be studied, it is with him that the series of commentaries on the Categories starts. Because of its place in the curriculum the Categories was a major concern of commentators subsequently, and it thus formed an early part of Boethius’ project to translate Aristotle’s works into Latin and provide commentaries on them. Consequently the early Western Middle Ages found their philosophizing influenced by the preoccupations of the Categories and the commentaries on them, such as the problem of universals. While what is new and distinctive about post-Hellenistic philosophy may well be the contribution of revived dogmatic Platonism, a case might be made for the decisive influence of Andronicus on what eventually replaced that post-Hellenistic philosophy - though I do not want to suggest that the influence of both Plato and Aristotle was not present throughout, in varying degrees at different times.

What is less clear is how else Andronicus really contributed to the ‘Aristotelian revival’. There has long been a problem over dating Andronicus and his so-called edition, for Cicero shows no awareness of or interest in either, even though he refers quite often to Aristotle and his followers, and was aware of some of the esoteric works. Jonathan Barnes has shown that later commentators on Aristotle never refer to Andronicus as settling disputed textual questions, or even cite his reading of the text as a particularly authoritative one, and has pointed out that if the earlier editions referred to by Strabo were based on defective manuscripts, it is at least quite unclear where Andronicus could have got better ones from.(8)" (pp. 505-506. some notes omitted)

(8) Barnes, ‘Roman Aristotle’ [in Philosophic Togata II, eds J. Barnes and M. Griffin (Oxford 1997)] 1-69, 28-31.

22. Shute, Richard. 1888. On the History of the Process by which the Aristotelian Writings Arrived at Their Present Form .

Reprint: New York, Arno Press, 1976.

Table of Contents: I. The problem 1; II. From Aristotle to the time of Cicero and the Latin Renaissance 19; III. Cicero and the Latin Renaissance 46; IV. From Cicero to Alexander Aphrodisiensis 66; V. Of titles and references 96; VI. Of repetitions and second and third texts, illustrated especially from the Physics, Metaphysics, and De anima 117, VII. Of the Nichomachean ethics 141; VIII. The Politics and evidence from the avoidance of hiatus 164; General summary 176; Index of references 183.

"General Summary.

I have in this essay attempted to prove, first, that of the great bulk of the Aristotelian works as we now have them, there was no kind of publication during the lifetime of the master, nor probably for a considerable period after his death. Secondly, that as to this portion of the Aristotelian whole, we cannot assert with certainty that we have ever got throughout a treatise in the exact words of Aristotle, though we may be pretty clear that we have a fair representation of his thought. The unity of style observable may belong quite as well to the school and the method as to the individual. We have certainly got a most precious Aristotelian literature ; we have not certainly got Aristotle in the strongest and most literal sense. Thirdly, I have tried to prove that the works which are preserved to us come chiefly, if not entirely, from the tradition of Andronicus, and stand in no very definite relation to the list of Diogenes, and consequently we have a very considerable proportion, and not a merely insignificant fraction of the reputed works of Aristotle known to Latin antiquity. Fourthly, I have laid down that the majority of the titles, and probably all the definite references, are post-Aristotelian, and that therefore no safe argument can be drawn from the latter as to the authenticity or original order of the Aristotelian works, though other very valuable inferences as to the subsequent history of these works result from their careful consideration. Fifthly, I have attempted to trace the double texts and repeated passages each to several original sources, and not to a single point of origin. I have applied the doctrines arrived at to the consideration of those Aristotelian treatises which have given rise to most controversy, and seem to myself to have found some solutions at least, through the method I have followed. Incidentally I have been led to investigate the question of another class of works which bear Aristotle's name, of which we can say with certainty that the portions which we have of them are precisely as the final author wrote them; but cannot with equal certainty assert that that author was Aristotle. We can safely assume, however, that these works, and works like these, were those best known to our earliest authorities on the subject, Cicero and his predecessors, and that on them all the praise of Aristotle's style is founded.

If there be any value in these conclusions, the practical lesson to be drawn from them will be, that the present duty of scholarship is to determine as far as possible the course of the Aristotelian argument, by bracketing superfluous and repeated passages. In some cases there will be internal or external evidence for bracketing the one of two passages rather than the other. In other cases, and I believe they will be the majority, there will be no trustworthy evidence which shall lead us to reject one of such passages more than the other. We shall not follow such assumptions as that of Torstrik in the De Anima , that the former of two like passages is always the preferable; nor shall we rashly assume that the one is more strictly Aristotelian than the other. When we have pointed out such reduplications to the student we shall leave him to choose which of them he prefers, showing him only that both cannot be wanted in the text. If we bracket at all, it will not be that we assert the one passage rather than the other to be spurious (except in those rare cases where we have definite proof). It will merely be in order that he may see what is the general line and connection of the argument. We shall be cautious in many cases in assuming even reduplication ; for an author or lecturer may deliberately repeat himself. But this caution will not be necessary in the case of repeated and almost identical passages which follow immediately after each other.

In a word, we shall try to get as near as we can to the earliest form of the teachings of the master, but shall not vainly and pedantically hope to restore his actual words; nor shall we rashly reject this or that passage or phrase as being clearly un-Aristotelian, since we shall know well that the Aristotle we have can in no case be freed from the suspicion (or rather almost certainty) of filtration through other minds, and expression through other voices. Criticism of Aristotle must in truth always be of thought rather than of phrase, of sentence rather than of word." (pp. 176-177).

23. Sollenberger, Michael George. 1992. "The Lives of the Peripatetics: an analysis of the contents and structure of Diogenes Laertius' Vitae philosophorum Book 5." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, vol. 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. 6. Teilband: Philosophie (Doxographica [Forts.]) , edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 3793-3879. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

On the Catalogue of Aristotles' writings see § 2. Writings pp. 3849-3855.

"Accounts of the lives of six early Peripatetic philosophers are contained in the fifth book of Diogenes Laertius' 'Vitae philosophorum': the lives of the first four leaders of the sect -- Aristotle, Theophrastus, Strato, and Lyco -- and those of two outstanding members -- Demetrius of Phalerum and Heraclides of Pontus. Our knowledge of the history of two rival schools, the Academy and the Stoa, is aided not only by the lives of several members of these two schools in Books Four and Seven of Diogenes' work, but also by accounts in the `Index Academicorum' and the 'Index Stoicorum' which have been preserved for us among the several papyri from Herculaneum.(1) But for the Peripatos there is no such second source of information. There are, to be sure, numerous bits and pieces of evidence which concern the school and its members scattered throughout ancient and medieval literature, many of which have been made readily accessible by F. Wehrli in his well-known series 'Die Schule des Aristoteles'.(2) Moreover, in addition to Diogenes' version, several other lives of Aristotle have come down to us and have been collected and analyzed in detail by I. Düring in his 'Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition'.(3) But for the lives and careers of other Peripatetics, Diogenes' accounts are the only ones available to us.

All of the many aspects of these six lives cannot be discussed here with comprehensive thoroughness. Rather, relying on the studies and findings of past scholars, sometimes heavily, I shall offer a compilation of those findings in a systematic manner. Although oversimplification is inevitable in view of the many complex problems encountered in these lives, consideration will be given to general matters of content, structure, organization, and arrangement of material in Book Five as a whole, to the different categories of information in the individual lives, and to the two most striking features of this book which set it apart from other books: the wills of the first four scholarchs and the extensive catalogues of writings included by Diogenes for five of the six philosophers." (pp. 3793-3794)

(1) P. Herc. 1021 (and 164) and 1018 respectively, edited by S. Mekler, Academicorum Philosophorum Index Herculanensis (Berlin, 1902), which should be read in conjunction with W. Crõnert, Die Ueberlieferung des Index Academicorum , Hermes 38 (1903) p. 357-405, and A. Traversa, Index Stoicorum Herculanensis . Istituto di filologia classica 1 (Genoa, 1952).

(2) F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles. Texte und Kommentare , 2nd ed. vol. 1 - 2 (Basel, 1967), vol. 3 --10 (Basel, 1969), suppl. vol. I (Basel, 1974), and suppl. vol. 2 (Basel, 1978). The fragments of Theophrastus, not included by Wehrli are being prepared by a team of scholars headed by W. Fortenbaugh in a series of volumes which is scheduled to appear soon. [Theophrastus of Eresus. Sources for his life, writings, thought and influence . Edited by Fortenbaugh William W. et al. Leiden: Brill 1992, two volumes].

(3) Ingemar Düring Ingemar. Aristotle in the ancient biographical tradition. Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensis 5 (Göteborg, 1957).

24. Staikos, Konstantinos. 2016. The Library of Aristotle: The Most Important Collection of Books Ever Formed . New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press.

Translated from Greek by Alexandra Doumas.

"The Library of Aristotle follows the adventures of Aristotle's book collection down to the edition of the corpus aristotelicum by Andronicus of Rhodes in the first century CE. Aristotle started to collect books in order to form his personal library even before he became a member of the Academy and a pupil of Plato (367 BCE). The kernel of his collection consisted in the texts of his father Nicomachus and medical treatises which the latter, who was physician to Amyntas III of Macedonia, probably had in his possession. Aristotle's own writings, the exoteric together with the didactic, cover 106 cylinders. In order to comment on the whole of the cultural tradition, he also collected all written texts accessible to him at the time: treatises on physics, philosophy, poetry, rhetoric, theory of government and politics, cosmogony, the diatribes of the sophists and all the works of Plato and the members of the Academy. His knowledge of the written tradition is evident from the numerous citations he uses in his texts and his critical comments on the works of other authors. There are three discernible periods in Aristotle's writing, which correspond to the three stages in his life in which he made major additions to his library: the period of the Academy (c. 367-347), the period of his self-imposed exile to Assus, Lesbos and Macedonia (c. 347 - 335) and the time when he taught at the Lyceum of Athens (c. 335-322). His library, comprised of all these books, came to form part of the Lyceum library, and remained intact until Theophrastus's death." (Publisher's website)

25. Tanner, R.Godfrey. 2009. "Aristotle's Works: The Possible Origins of the Alexandria Collection." In The Library of Alexandria. Centre of learning in the ancient world , edited by MacLeod, Roy, 79-91. London: I. B. Tauris.

"Some of the most puzzling issues surrounding the Alexandria Library involve the source and content of the Library's holdings of Aristotle's works. The history of these works bears a close and intriguing relationship to the history of the library. The argument of this paper is that there are two sources for the transmission of Aristotle's work from the ancient to modern world. The first - what we may call the traditional view - holds that Aristotle's corpus was inherited entirely by Theophrastus, and subsequently buried, sold, and edited in Rome. Thence, in Roman times, copies made their way to the library. The second, the more controversial, but possibly more interesting view, argues that there is a ,collection of Aristotle's works which was derived from the works prepared at Mieza for the education of Alexander; and that these were either given by Alexander to Alexandria, or were subsequently stolen for the library by Ptolemy Soter.

These two, parallel accounts, present us with Aristotle's thought at two different stages in its chronological development. One phase we can describe as the 'educational stage', dealing with works intended for the education of Alexander, and embracing Aristotle's four so-called `non-scientific' works on poetry, ethics, politics and rhetoric; the other can be described in terms of Aristotle's larger philosophical corpus." (p. 79)

26. Tarán, Leonardo. 1981. "Aristotelianism in the First Century B.C." Gnomon no. 53:721-750.

Review-article of Paul Moraux, Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen, Von Andronikos bis Alexander von Aphrodisias . Vol. I: Die Renaissance des Aristotelismus im I. Jh.v. Chr. (1973).

Reprinted in: L. Tarán, Collected papers (1962-1999), Leiden: Brill, 2001 pp. 479-524; on the Aristotelian Corpus see in particular pp. 481-511.

"This is the first volume of a work which will comprise three.

In that work Moraux proposes to study the history of the Aristotelian tradition from Andronicus of Rhodes (first cent. B.C.) to Alexander of Aphrodisias (latter part of the second cent. A.D.). The book under review covers the first cent. B.C. It contains five parts: The first is devoted to the fate of Aristotle's scholarly treatises up to and including Andronicus' edition and catalogue. The second deals with the earliest Aristotelian commentators, Andronicus himself the Peripatetic Boethus of Sidon, and Ariston of Alexandria.

The third is concerned with Xenarchus of Seleuceia, a Peripatetic who criticized some of Aristotle's central doctrines.

The fourth discusses Staseas of Naples and Cratippus of Pergamum, two authors M. characterizes as offshoots of Hellenistic Aristotelianism. The fifth and final part is devoted to complete expositions and summaries of Aristotelian and/or Peripatetic philosophy. The two authors discussed are Arius Didymus and Nicolaus of Damascus.

The main purpose of M.'s work is to investigate that part of Aristotelian tradition whose main concern was the study and interpretation of Aristotle's works and doctrines especially of his scholarly treatises. Therefore his decision to include both authors who perhaps cannot be regarded as "orthodox" peripatetics, e.g. Xenarchus, and Stoics such as Arius Didymus seems to be justified." (p. 479 o0f the reprint)

(...)

"The three chapters making up the first part of the book (1. Das Sch1cksal der Bibliothek des Aristoteles"; 2. Tyrannion von Amissos"; 3. "Andronikos von Rhodos") are devoted to the fate of Aristotle's scholarly treatises after his death up to the time of Andronicus' edition and catalogue. As M. himself indicates, the subJect requires that three investigations be undertaken: (i) A critical assessment and evaluation of the ancient notices and anecdotes concerning the fate of Aristotle's scholarly treatises during the period in question; (ii). A study of the ancient lists of Aristotle's writings, of their origins and contents; (iii) An analysis of the philosophical and scientific literature of the first two hundred and fifty years after Aristotle's death in order to determine whether or not there is evidence of direct acquaintance with Aristotle's scholarly treatises on the part of Hellenistic philosophers. One must therefore regret that the author decided to limit his discussion to the first topic only. It is of course well known that M: himself has published an important monograph on the ancient lists of Aristotle's writings.(4) But the results of that work are scarcely used at all in the book under review. Doubtless, however, a systematic exploitation of the catalogues of Aristotle's works in Diogenes Laertius and in the so-called Vita Hesychii (M. himself and others have shown they go back to the early part of the Hellenistic age) combined with an analysis of later quotations, paraphrases from, and references to, Aristotle's treatises and doctrines would have yielded important results." (pp. 481-482)

(4) Cfr. P. Moraux, Les listes anciennes des ouvrages d'Aristote , (Louvain, 1951)

27. Tarán, Leonardo, and Gutas, Dimitri, eds. 2012. Aristotle Poetics. Editio Maior of the Greek Text with Historical Introductions and Philological Commentaries . Leiden: Brill.

See the Introduction by Leonard Tarán: Chapter One, History of the Text of the Poetics : 1. The Poetics and Its Place among Aristotle’s Works. The Availability of Aristotle’s Scholarly Treatises during His Lifetime and those of Theophrastus and Eudemus , pp. 11-25; 2. From the Deaths of Theophrastus and Eudemus until the End of the First Century CE , pp. 25-31; 3. From the Second Century CE to the Poetics’ Archetype pp. 32-35.

"The extant evidence to determine what kinds of works Aristotle wrote is: 1) References and cross-references found in Aristotle’s scholarly treatises; 2) Ancient lists of his writings; 3) Fragmentary remains of his lost works; 4) References by later authors to the kind of works Aristotle was supposed to have written. Discussion of the last two topics need not concern us here.

Let us begin with the three ancient lists of Aristotle’s writings: that in Diogenes Laertius V, 21–27, which is part of his life of Aristotle; the catalogue extant in the Vita Hesychii; and the list extant in the life of Aristotle by a certain Ptolemy, most probably a Neoplatonist, whose biography exists inArabic translation." (p. 14, a note omitted)

(...)

"These three lists present to the modern interpreter diffcult problems which more often than not cannot be solved with reasonable certainty.

The earliest list is preserved by Diogenes Laertius. It has been claimed that it goes back to Ariston of Ceos (Moraux), who succeeded Lyco, ca. 225 bce, as head of the Peripatos, or to Hermippus of Smyrna, called “the Callimachean” (so Düring, and many other scholars before and aer him). ough we need not decide this issue here, I believe the latter opinion to be right. therefore, the likelihood is that the list in Diogenes Laertius reproduces the record of some library; in any case, it was most probably drawn up during the third century bce. There is evidence that Diogenes himself had access to Aristotle’s scholarly treatises in an edition different from the one which the list exhibits. In Diogenes’ list we find no evidence of the later arrangement of the Aristotelian corpus generally ascribed to Andronicus of Rhodes (first century bce); for example, there is in it no separate work called “Metaphysics,” though we do recognize a few individual treatises, some of which were later rearranged by Andronicus or someone else. In short, whereas Diogenes is to be dated in all probability to the third century ce, the list of Aristotle’s writings he has preserved goes back to the third century bce." (p. 15, notes omitted)

28. Verdenius, Willen Jacob. 1985. "The nature of Aristotle's scholarly writings." In Aristoteles. Werk und wirkung: Paul Moraux Gewidmet. Erster Band: Aristoteles und seine Schule , edited by Wiesner, Jürgen, 12-21. Berlin: de Gruyter.

"It is commonly held that Aristotle's scholarly writings were not meant for publication but served the internal purposes of his school. (p. 12)

(...)

"It is true that the writings sometimes show a way of expression which is remarkably full and even circumstantial. On the other hand, many passages of crucial importance are so condensed and elliptical that students who had missed the lectures would hardly have understood the notes. In addition Aristotle's accuracy leaves much to be desired: his writings are full of contradictions and obscurities. We cannot but conclude that during his lectures Aristotle did not simply read his text but added a considerable amount of oral expansion and explanation. It may further be assumed that he continually rewrote and amplified his notes, but the unity of style is so manifest that a multiple authorship is out of the question. The editors of his writings may have modified the arrangement of the notes, but they seem to have been scrupulous in preserving the master's own words. There are interpolations and alterations, but these have an incidental character and are comparatively easy to detect. The unity of style also shows that the text is not based on notes taken by students. Besides, they were hardly able to take notes, for Aristotle seems to have been walking up and down when he lectured to his students.

There remains a problem to which not much attention has been paid, viz. the coexistence of a literary and a non-literary style in Aristotle's writings." (p. 14-15, notes omitted)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected bibliography on the rediscovery of the Corpus Aristotelicum

Études en Français

1. Bidez, Joseph. 1943. Un singulier naufrage littéraire dans l'antiquité. A la recherche des épaves de l'Aristote perdu . Bruxelles: Office de publicité.

2. Bodéüs, Richard. 1973. "Contribution à l'histoire des oeuvres morales d'Aristote: les Testimonia ." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 71:451-467.

3. ———. 1982. Le philosophe et la cité. Recherches sur les rapports entre morale et politique dans la pensée d'Aristote . Paris: Publications de la Faculté de Philosophie de l'Université de Liège.

Chapitre premier. À la recherche du projet aristotélicien .

4. ———. 1995. "L’influence historique du Stoïcisme sur l’interprétation de l’oeuvre philosophique d’Aristote." Revue de sciences philosophiques et théologiques no. 79:553-586.

5. Dorandi, Tiziano. 2006. "La "Vita Hesychii" d'Aristote." Studi Classici e Orientali no. 52:87-106.

6. ———. 2007. "Diogène Laërce "lecteur" d'Aristote." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 28:435-446.

7. Goulet, Richard. 1989. "Aristote de Stagire." In Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques. Vol. I: Abam(m)on à Axiothéa , edited by Goulet, Richard, 413-590. Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Aristote de Stagire . Maroun Aouad: Prosopographie. La version arabe (intégrale?) de la Vie d'Aristote écrite par Ptolomée, pp. 415-417; Richard Goulet: L'oeuvre d'Aristote, pp. I, 424-443.

Voir aussi les notices sur:

Andronicus de Rhodes (Richard Goulet) I, 200-2002; Apellicon de Téos (Richard Goulet) I, pp. 266-267; Hermippe de Smyrne (Jean-Pierre Schneider) III, pp. 655-658; Néleus de Scepsis (Jean-Pierre Schneider) IV, pp. 617-620.

Dans le volume Supplément , voir: II. Aristote de Stagire, pp. 109-471; III. Aristote de Stagire. Dubia et Spuria , pp. 475-654.

8. Goulet, Richard, and Toulouse, Stéphane. 2012. "Ptolémée le Platonicien." In Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques. Vol. Vb: de Plotina à Rutilius Rufus , edited by Goulet, Richard, 1744-1747. Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

9. Hecquet-Devienne, Myriam. 2000. "Les mains du Parisinus Graecus 1853 . Une nouvelle collation des quatre premiers livres de la Métaphysique d’Aristote (folios 225v-247v)." Scrittura e Civiltà no. 24:103-171.

10. ———. 2004. "Les éditions d'Aristote." In Aristote au XIXe siècle , edited by Thouard, Denis, 415-441. Villeneuve d'Acq Cédex: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.

1. La reception du corpus d'Aristote au XIXe siècle 415; 2. Les principales éditions des œuvres airistotéliciennes au XIXe siècle 427-441.

11. Hoffmann, Philippe. 1997. "La problématique du titre des traités d'Aristote selon les commentateurs grecs. Quelques exemples." In Titres et articulations du texte dans les oeuvres antiques. Actes du Colloque International de Chantilly 13-15 décembre 1994 , edited by Fredouille, Jean-Claude, Goulet-Cazé, Marie-Odile, Hoffmann, Philippe and Petitmengin, Pierre, 75-103. Paris: Institut d'Études Augustiniennes.

12. Irigoin, Jean. 1994. "Les éditions de textes." In La philologie grecque à l'époque hellénistique et romaine. Sept exposés suivis de discussions , edited by Montanari, Franco, 39-82. Genève: Fondation Hardt.

13. Mansion, Auguste. 1958. "Compte-rendu de Ingemar Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition ." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 56:624-629.

14. Moraux, Paul. 1949. "L'exposé de la philosophie d'Aristote chez Diogène Laërce (V, 28-34)." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 47:5-43.

"Diogène n'a pas lu lui-même les ouvrages du Stagirite. Dieu sait par combien d'intermédiaires son information lui est parvenue!

S'il est difficile de mettre un nom sur les sources du compilateur, peut-être une critique sagace pourra-t-elle en déterminer l'époque, les tendances, la valeur.

La question des sources revêt d'ailleurs ici un intérêt tout particulier. Strabon et Plutarque rapportent une étrange histoire sur les traités aristotéliciens: la bibliothèque d'Aristote passa, par héritage, à Théophraste, puis à Nélée; les successeurs de Nélée, gens ignorants, enfouirent ce legs dans une cave, à Skepsis, pour le dissimuler à l'ardeur bibliophile des Attales; les précieux ouvrages n'en sortirent, gâtés par les vers et l'humidité, que deux siècles plus tard, dans la première moitié du premier siècle avant J. C. et c'est vers le milieu du même siècle qu'ils commencèrent à circuler dans le monde savant (1).

Le déclin du Lycée après Straton doit, selon nos deux auteurs, s'expliquer par là: ne possédant plus les ouvrages techniques d'Aristote, les péripatéticiens furent incapables de philosopher sérieusement. En fait, il semble bien que le Lycée et les autres écoles n'aient, entre 250 et 50, connu, ou, du moins, utilisé que les écrits exotériques d'Aristote, ceux que leur style et leur contenu rendaient plus accessibles à un public moyennement cultivé, les dialogues. Même si l'on n'ajoute qu'une foi médiocre à l'histoire rapportée plus haut, il reste que cette histoire veut expliquer un fait, l'abandon quasi complet des ouvrages scolaires d'Aristote pendant deux siècles: les traités qui nous sont familiers n'entrent guère dans le monde philosophique qu'avec Andronikos, le père du commentarisme (milieu du premier siècle avant J. C.). A l'époque où vivait Diogène Laërce (on a de bonnes raisons de croire que c'était au troisième siècle après J. C.), ils étaient de longue date en circulation.

Reste à savoir si l'information de Diogène se fonde sur des ouvrages « modernes », je veux dire postandroniciens, où les traités étaient largement utilisés, ou si, au contraire, elle remonte à une époque où l'on connaissait fort mal les traités scolaires. Dans la biographie d'Aristote, Diogène nous livre un document fort archaïque, la liste des ouvrages du philosophe; il est manifeste que cette liste est antérieure aux travaux par lesquels Andronikos donna au corpus aristotelicum sa physionomie actuelle; on est, aujourd'hui, bien d'accord sur ce point, encore que l'attribution à Hermippos, généralement admise, se heurte à de très grosses difficultés (2). L'adoption de cette liste préandronicienne à une époque où les πίναχες d'Andronikos étaient aisément accessibles (3) semble indiquer que le compilateur a voulu interroger les témoins les plus anciens de préférence aux autres. A-t-il obéi à la même tendance à propos de la notice sur la philosophie d'Aristote? Nous tenterons de répondre à cette question au cours de la présente étude." pp. 5-6

(1) Strab., XIII, 608; Plut., Sylla, 26.

(2) Nous les signalerons dans un ouvrage qui attend la publication, Les catalogues aristotéliciens. Recherches sur la diffusion des traités d'Aristote avant l'époque des premiers commentateurs . [cfr. Moraux 1951]

(3) Plut., l.l.

15. ———. 1951. Les listes anciennes des ouvrages d'Aristote . Louvain: Éditions universitaires de Louvain.

Table des matières: Préface par Augustin Mansion V; Avant-propos IX-X;

Chapitre I. Problèmes et méthodes 1; Le sort des ouvrages scolaires d'Aristote avant l'époque des commentateurs, 1. Utilisation des listes anciennes comme moyen d'information sur le sort des ouvrages d'Aristote 6; Difficultés rencontrées dans l'identification des ouvrages catalogués 8; Recherche du principe d'ordre appliqué dans les listes 11; Enquète sur l'origine et la destination des listes 13.

Chapitre II. Le Catalogue conservé par Diogene Laërce 15. § 1. État de la question 15; § 2. Texte du catalogue 21; § 3. Contenu du catalogue 27. Dialogues, exhortations, études platoniciennes 27; Logique, 44; Politique 95; Rhétorique et poètique 96; Physique 104; Mathématique 111; Problèmes et ouvrages hypomnèmatiques 114; Collections 122; Lettres 133 Poèmes, 144. § 4. Ordonnance du catalogue 145. Le catalogue et la division néoplatonicienne du corpus aristotélicien 145; Ouvrages particuliers, ouvrages intermèdiaires, ouvrages généraux, 150; Écrits hypomnématiques et ouvrages syntagmatiques 153; Dialogues et traités 167; Logique, pratique, poétique et théorie 177; Ouvrages théorétiques, 184; § 5. Accidents survenus au cours de la transmission du catalogue 186.

Chapitre III. Le catalogue anonyme 195. § 1. Contenu du catalogue 195; § 2. Ordonnance du catalogue 204; § 3. Rapports entre le catalogue anonyme et celui de Diogène 206.

Chapitre IV. La source de Diogène et de l'Anonyme 211. § 1.État de la question 211; § 2. Multiplicité des sources pinacographiques de Diogène 216; § 3. L'attribution à Hermippe 221; § 4. L'attribution à Andronicus 233; § 5. L'origine du catalogue 237.

Chapitre V. L'appendice du catalogue anonyme 249. § 1. Contenu de l'appendice 250; La première partie 250; Les pseudépigraphes 265; § 2. Ordonnance de l'appendice 267; § 3. Origine de l'appendice 271; Multiplicité des sources 271; Rapports avec le catalogue 272; Age des différents tronçons 277; Rattachement de l'appendice à la liste anonyme 284.

Chapitre VI. La catalogue de Ptolémée 289. § 1. L'auteur du catalogue 289; § 2. Contenu du catalogue 294; § 3. Ordonnance du catalogue 299; § 4. Modèles et sources de Ptolémée 306.

Chapitre VII. Premières conclusions sur le sort des ouvrages scolaires d'Aristote 311; Les traités connus à Athènes vers 200 avant J.-C. 312; Le cas de la Métaphysique 314; Appartenance de certains traités omis par Ariston à la dernière période de l'activité d 'Aristote 315; Les catalogues, témoins du groupement progressif d'études apparentés, mais primitivement indépendantes, 320.

Appendice. Notes sur la chronologie de quelques ouvrages d'Aristote 323;Bibliographie 347; Index 361; I. Aristote, ouvrages conservés 361; II. Aristote, ouvrages perdus et titres 368; III. Commentateurs d'Aristote 371; IV. Autres auteurs 374; V. Noms et matières 376; Errata et Addenda 385.

16. ———. 1955. "La composition de la Vie d'Aristote chez Diogène Laerce." Revue des Études Grecques no. 53:124-163.

Résumé : "Bien des inepties déparent les biographies dues à Diogène Laërce. Comme le révèle l'analyse de la Vie d'Aristote, une grande partie d'entre elles s'expliquent par l'application maladroite d'un procédé de composition assez singulier: d'un thème normalement amené par la marche du récit chronologique, l'auteur passe volontiers, par associations d'idées, à un thème voisin; de celui-ci, il saute à un autre, et ainsi de suite. Des digressions en cascades se mêlent donc à la narration biostraphique. On peut retrouver, cependant, la charpente originelle de la biographie: il suffit d'isoler les digressions et de ne considérer que les morceaux qui les ont déclenchées. Or ce démontage de la Vie d'Aristote révèle un fait d'une importance primordiale: le canevas, sur lequel a brodé Diogène est identique à celui qu'on retrouve chez le grand Apollodore , l'un et l'autre découlent d'une source commune, qui est probablement le péripatéticien Ariston de Céos. Diogène a fait de son mieux pour étoffer ce donné primitif en y insérant une foule de renseignements complémentaires; il a rédigé lui-même une partie de ces digressions et a laissé à l'état brut les matériaux qu'il destinait aux autres. Son manuscrit, à demi achevé et bourré de notes additionnelles non encore incorporées au texte, a été confié à un éditeur, qui a transcrit le tout en un texte continu, non sans commettre une foule de bévues et d'erreurs. La stupidité d'un rédacteur incapable est ainsi venue s'ajouter à l'insigne naïveté de Diogène."

17. ———. 1967. "Le Parisinus graecus 1853 (ms. E) d'Aristote." Scriptorium no. 21:17-41.

"De tous les manuscrits d Aristote, le Parisinus gr. 1853 est sans contredit l’un des plus importants. Il compte parmi les plus anciens, puisqu’il remonte, dans sa plus grande partie, au milieu du Xe siècle. L’abondance des scholies marginales et des notes interlinéaires dont il est pourvu et dont l’exécution s’étale sur plusieurs siècles montre qu’il a servi d’exemplaire de travail à de nombreux spécialistes. Mais ce qui lui confère un intérêt tout particulier, c’est le fait que le texte d’un bon nombre des traités qu’il renferme s’écarte sensiblement de celui de la tradition courante et remonte peut-être à une translittération différente de celle d’où sont issus la plupart des autres manuscrits. Aussi n’est-il pas surprenant qu’il ait été collationné à maintes reprises et que les éditeurs en aient toujours fait grand cas. Cependant, plusieurs de scs particularités semblent bien avoir échappé totalement à l’attention des philologues qui l’ont eu en mains. Dans les pages qui suivent, je partirai de quelques observations d’ordre codicologique pour tenter de préciser plusieurs points de l’histoire du manuscrit. On verra que, comme dans une enquête policière, des détails apparement dépourvus d’importance peuvent constituer autant d’indices révélateurs et mener à des conclusions insoupçonnées." (p. 17)

18. ———. 1970. "Les manuscrits d'Aristote." In D’Aristote à Bessarion: Trois exposés sur l’histoire et la transmission de l’aristotélisme grec , 67-94. Quebec: Les presses de l'Universite Laval.

"Nous diviserons en trois parties l’histoire du texte grec d’Aristote:

1. Période antérieure à la renaissance byzantine du IXe siècle.

2. Aristote dans le monde byzantin, du IXe siècle à la prise de Constantinople par les Turcs en 1453.

3. L’arrivée du texte grec d’Aristote en Europe occidentale et sa diffusion.

Ensuite, nous examinerons quelques aspects du travail historique et philologique que rendent indispensable les circonstances de la transmission de ce texte." (pp. 68-69)

19. ———. 1986. "Les débuts de la philologie aristotélicienne." In Storiografia e dossografia nella filosofia antica , edited by Cambiano, Giuseppe, 127-147. Torino: Tirrenia.

"Il est temps de résumer rapidement nos observations. Bien avant la renaissance des études aristotéliciennes au premier siècle avant J.-C., plusieurs savants se sont efforcés, en partie avec un succès indéniable, de préciser la chronologie de la vie d'Aristote et de laver le philosophe des calomnies dont l'avaient accablé ses détracteurs. - Il est possible, mais non certain, que la plus ancienne liste conservée des ouvrages d'Aristote ait été élaborée par un savant alexandrin; si tel est bien le cas, celui-ci devait se fonder en partie sur un classement, d'origine péripatéticienne, des écrits du philosophe. - L'édition et les pinakes d'Andronicus de Rhodes marquent un tournant dans l'étude de l'aristotélisme.

Avec Andronicus commence l'époque des commentaires; ceux-ci ne sont pas, en tant que tels, des créations ex nihilo; ils ont comme modèles lointains les commentaires à divers auteurs, dont Homère, conçus et réalisés par les grands philologues alexandrins. - Les méthodes proprement philologiques, également créées par l'érudition alexandrine, ont été appliquées par les commentateurs au texte d'Aristote. Dès avant Alexandre d'Aphrodise, ceux-ci pratiquaient ce que nous appelons aujourd'hui la critique des textes; ils mentionnaient et interprétaient les leçons de plusieurs manuscrits; le cas échéant, ils s'efforçaient d'améliorer, par des conjectures diverses, un énoncé qu'ils trouvaient fautif ou peu satisfaisant.

Enfin, la critique dite supérieure a laissé des traces assez nombreuses dans l'oeuvre des commentateurs. Nous apprenons ainsi que l'authenticité de plusieurs livres avait été contestée, surtout en raison de prétendues divergences doctrinales avec l'aristotélisme authentique. L'hypothèse a aussi été avancée que tel livre ne serait pas à sa place là où nous le trouvons, qu'il n'aurait pas été terminé par Aristote ou nous serait arrivé incomplet. Dans leur ensemble, les commentateurs que nous lisons se montrent très conservateurs et rejettent unanimement ces vues souvent hypercritiques.

Parfois, ils se fondent sur des points de doctrine assez précis pour montrer qu'une athétèse était sans fondement. Il leur arrive aussi, à l'occasion, d'exploiter les renvois d'un livre à un autre. Mais la plupart du temps, ils se contentent de constatations générales assez subjectives et dépourvues de preuves concrètes: la teneur d'un livre et son style en montreraient bien l'origine aristotélicienne. Sans aucun doute, l'oeuvre d'Aristote leur était familière, et leur intuition ne les trompait pas. Il n'empêche que nous aurions aimé qu'ils nous fournissent plus de précisions sur ce que, par exemple, ils tenaient pour caractéristique du style aristotélicien. A cet égard, nous restons sur notre faim, et c'est assez dommage." (pp. 143-144)

20. ———. 1986. "Diogène Laërce et le Peripatos ." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 7:245-294.

"Un mot encore des livres et de la bibliothèque. L’école disposait à coup sûr d’une bibliothèque; il semble bien que celle-ci ait partagé purement et simplement le sort de l’école. Aristote n’en dit rien dans son propre testament. La brève indication du testament de Théophraste est assez ambiguë. Après avoir légué à Callinos le morceau de terrain qu’il possédait à Stagire, Théophraste lègue τα [...] βιβλία πάντα Νηλεϊ9. S’agit-il de la bibliothèque de l’école ou de la bibliothèque privée de Théophraste ou encore des livres sortis de sa plume? Quoi qu’il en soit, cette indication évoque l’histoire assez rocambolesque qu’on connaît par Strabon et Plutarque: Nélée aurait transporté à Skepsis de Troade les livres d’Aristote et de Théophraste; ils y seraient restés cachés pendant très longtemps et n’auraient été retrouvés qu’au début du premier siècle avant notre ère (10). Pourtant, sous Straton, l’école devait encore disposer d’une bibliothèque. Dans son testament, en effet, Straton lègue la διατριβή à Lycon, puis il ajoute: « Je lui lègue également tous les livres, sauf ceux que j’ai écrits moi-même » (11).

Après cela sont mentionnés le mobilier et la vaisselle servant aux repas en commun (κατά το συσσίτιον). Les livres, eux aussi, devaient donc être ceux de l’école. Lycon, en revanche, ne mentionne dans son testament que les livres dont il est l’auteur; ceux qui ont déjà fait l’objet d’une lecture publique iront à Charès; les inédits sont légués à Callinos, pour qu’il en assure une publication soignée (12).

Parmi les autres documents très précieux que nous devons à Diogène, il faut mentionner les “catalogues” des ouvrages d’Aristote (13), Théophraste (14), Straton (15), Démétrius de Phalère (16) et Héraclide Pontique (17)." (pp. 247-249)

(...)

"Ce rapide coup d’oeil sur les renvois à Aristote que l’on trouve en dehors du bios lui-même confirme tout à fait les conclusions auxquelles nous ont amenés les analyses consacrées au V livre. Diogène et ses sources ignorent à peu près tout des traités scolaires d’Aristote. Leur Aristote, c’est avant tout celui des ouvrages perdus: celui des écrits dits exotériques, qu’on lisait beaucoup avant qu’Andronicus ne tirât les ouvrages scolaires de l’oubli à peu près complet dans lequel ils étaient tombés. C’est aussi celui des grandes collections documentaires, qui étaient bien faites pour retenir l’attention des savants de l’époque hellénistique. Dans l’ensemble, on peut dire que l’image de l’aristotélisme que nous livre Diogène, c’est celle qu’on s’en faisait trois ou quatre siècles auparavant, à une époque où les traités scolaires n’avaient pas encore fait l’objet d’une étude approfondie. Si, d’aventure, quelques indications qu’il nous donne mentionnent des ouvrages scolaires ou en évoquent des échos, elles ne représentent, en fait, que les informations assez générales et assez vagues dont on disposait avant Andronicus." (p. 294)

(10) Cette histoire, et, d’une manière plus générale, celle de la bibliothèque d’Aristote ont déjà fait couler beaucoup d’encre. Parmi les études récentes, je citerai H. B. Gottschalk, Notes on the Wills of the Peripatetic Scholars , (*) pp. 335-42. P. Moraux, Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen von Andronikos bis Alexander von Aphrodtsias. I. Die Renaissance des Aristotelismus im I. Jh. v. Chr ., Berlin-New York 1973; II. Der Aristotelismus im I. und II. Jh. n. Chr. , Berlin-New York 1984 (Peripatoi , 5-6), I, pp. 5-31; R. Blum, Kallimachos und die Literaturverzeichnung bei den Griechen. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Biobibliographie , (Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens, xviii 1-2) Frankfurt am Main 1977, p. 109-33.

(*) "Hermes", (1972) pp. 314-342.

(11) V 62.

(12) V 73.

(13) V 22-27.

(14) V 42-50.

(15) V 59-60.

(16) V 80-81.

(17) V 86-88.

21. Plezia, Marian. 1986. "Encore sur la Vie d'Aristote de Ptolemée." Études Classiques no. 54:383-385.

22. Rashed, Marwan. 2011. "Aristote à Rome au IIe siècle : Galien, De indolentia , §§ 15-18." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 32:55-77.

English abstract: "Galen's essay On not being Distressed , which was rediscovered a few years ago, contains in §§ 15-18 references to several philosophical manuscripts which had been in his possession. The single copy of the essay dates from the 15ᵗʰ century, and it is wretchedly corrupt.

This paper proposes some emendations to the text. From them, it will emerge that Galen owned a copy of Aristotle's On Plants, as well as some rare works by other early Peripatetics (Eudemus, Theophrastus, and the shadowy Clytus of Miletus). In addition, some new information about the libraries in Antium will be discovered. And finally it will be suggested that Galen had had access to books which derived, directly or indirectly, from the Peripatetic collection which Sulla appropriated when he took Athens."

23. Ronconi, Paolo. 2012. "Le corpus aristotélicien du Paris. gr. 1853 et les cercles érudits à Byzance: un cas controversé." Studia Graeco-Arabica no. 2:201-225.

English abstract: "Parisinus gr. 1853, a key witness to the Corpus Aristotelicum, is usually believed to be the medieval copy of an ancient corpus. Nevertheless, the analysis of its codicological, paleographic and textual features strongly suggests that it is built up out of smaller items, probably copied in different milieux from different exemplars, and combined in a single manuscript by an unknown scholar in tenth century Constantinople."

"Le Paris gr. 1853 est un livre de grand format qui contient, dans son état actuel, les textes suivants:

f. 1 r - 2 v - De Anima II (partim )

f. 3 r - 67 v - Physica

f. 67 v - Anth. Pal. IX. 577

f. 68 r - Κεφάλαια τοΰ Θ (48 propositions tirées du livre Θ de la Physique )

f. 68 v - Annotations philosophiques et grammaticales

f. 69 r -106 v - De Caelo

f. 106 v -129 r - De Generatione et corruptione

f. 129 r - 175 v - Meteorologica

f. 175 v - 202 v - De Anima

f. 203 r - 210 r - De Sensu et sensibilibus

f. 210r-212v - De Memoria et reminiscentia

f. 212 v - 221 r - De Somno et vigilia. De Divinatione per somnum

f. 221 r - 225 v - DeMotu animalium

f. 225 v - 308 r - Metaphysica

f. 308 r - Deux oracles chaldaïques + un vers d’Empédocle

f. 309 r - Συλλογή περί νομίμου

f. 309 r - 312 r - Théophraste, Metaphysica

f. 312v-318r - ([ps.-] Aristot.), De Coloribus

f. 318 r - 351 r - De Partibus animalium

f. 352 r - 393 r - De Generatione animalium

f. 393 r - De Incessu animalium (partim )

f. 393 r - 437 v - Ethica ad Nicomachum

f. 437 v - 453 r - Magna Moralia " (p. 203, notes omises).

24. Schubert, Paul. 2002. "Strabon et le sort de la bibliothèque d'Aristote." Études Classiques no. 70:225-237.

25. Toulouse, S. 2012. "Ptolemèe al-gharib ." In Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques. Vol. Vb: de Plotina à Rutilius Rufus , edited by Goulet, Richard, 1744-1747. Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Aristote de Stagire . Maroun Aouad: Prosopographie. La version arabe (intégrale?) de la Vie d'Aristote écrite par Ptolomée, pp. 415-417; Richard Goulet: L'oeuvre d'Aristote, pp. I, 424-443.

Voir aussi les notices sur:

Andronicus de Rhodes (Richard Goulet) I, 200-2002; Apellicon de Téos (Richard Goulet) I, pp. 266-267; Hermippe de Smyrne (Jean-Pierre Schneider) III, pp. 655-658; Néleus de Scepsis (Jean-Pierre Schneider) IV, pp. 617-620.

Dans le volume Supplément , voir: II. Aristote de Stagire, pp. 109-471; III. Aristote de Stagire. Dubia et Spuria , pp. 475-654.

26. Toulouse, Stéphane. 2012. "Ptolémée al-ġarīb." In Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques. Vol. Vb: de Plotina à Rutilius Rufus , edited by Goulet, Richard, 1739-1743. Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

27. Verbeke, Gerard. 1952. "[Compte rendu de] Les listes anciennes des ouvrages d'Aristote." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 50:90-112.

Compte rendu du livre de Paul Moraux, Les listes anciennes des ouvrages d'Aristote (1951).

28. Vleeschauwer, Herman Jean de. 1957. "L'odyssée de la bibliothèque d'Aristote et ses repercussions philosophiques." Mousaion no. 24 -25.

Studien in Deutsch

1. Baumstark, Anton. 1900. Syrisch-arabische Biographien des Aristoteles. Syrische Kommentare zur Eisagoge des Porphyrios. Leipzig: Teubner.

Aristoteles bei den Syrern vom V. - VIII. Jahrhundert.

Syrische texte herausgegeben, übersetzt und untersucht von Dr. A. Baumstark. Erster Band.

Reprint: Aachen, Scientia Verlag, 1975.

Inhalt: Vorrede V-XIV. Syrisch-arabische Biographieen des Aristoteles 1; 1. Ptolemaios Chennos 13; A. Die Lebensgeschichte und das Testament 15; B. Das Schriftenverzeichnis 53; 2. Der Anonymus des Ishaq ibn Hunain 105; 3. Der Anonymus des al-Räzi 126; Syrische Commentare zur Eisagogé des Porphyrios 133. 1. Der Commentar des Pröbä 139; 1. Der Commentar des Ioannes Philoponos 156; A. Die Fragmente des cod. Vat. Syr. 158 171; B. Stephanos von Alexandreia in den Dialogen des Severus bar Sakkü 181; C. Der liber deftnitionum des Bäzüd 210; 3. Der Commentar des Anonymus Vaticanus 223; Syrische Texte (68 Seiten).

2. Dietze-Mager, Gertrud. 2015. "Die "Pinakes" des Andronikos im Licht der Vorrede in der Aristoteles-Schrift des Ptolemaios." Aevum. Rassegna di Scienze storiche linguistiche e filologiche no. 89:93-123.

English summary: "According to Plutarch, Andronicus of Rhodes (1st century B.C.) drew up Pinakes of the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus on the basis of books from their personal library which had been hidden away in Skepsis, centuries later brought to Rome by Sulla, where finally copies made by Tyrannio came into the hands of Andronicus. Andronicus’ Pinakes are lost. Our sources only provide scant information about them. Interestingly they are mentioned in a treatise on Aristotle written by a certain Ptolemy, the Greek original of which is also lost, but which is preserved in several Arabic sources. Most importantly, this treatise contains a catalogue of Aristotle’s writings, and additionally in one source manuscript (Ayasofya 4833) Ptolemy’s introduction to his treatise in which he explains its content and structure. Ptolemy’s Aristotelian Pinax is one of the three extant ancient lists of Aristotle’s writings, its structure and titels closely resembling Aristotle’s corpus as it is currently known. Because Ptolemy mentions Andronicus’ Pinakes in his list, the general assumption was and still is that Ptolemy more or less copied his list from Andronicus, and that therefore Andronicus’ lost work on Aristotle can be reconstructed directly from Ptolemy. However, Ptolemy’s introduction – contained only in Ayasofya 4833 – (which, although discovered around the middle of the last century, still is rarely taken into account) clearly excludes this hypothesis, as in it Ptolemy informs us about fundamental differences between Andronicus’ approach and his own. Currently there are three widely diverging translations of this introduction which – specifically in four passages – have important consequences concerning the relationship between Ptolemy and Andronicus. This article aims to offer a new interpretation of the relevant passages on the basis of a translation from a new transcript of the Arabic original text by E. Wakelnig."

Appendix: Abschrift des arabischen Texts der Vorrede an Gallus auf der Grundlage eines Mikrofilmabzugs der HS Ayasofya 4833, 10b-11a, (Christel Hein, Definition und Einteilung der Philosophie, 416, 418).

Übersetzung der Vorrede an Gallus, (C. Hein, cit., 417, 419); English translation, pp. 120-123.

3. ———. 2015. "Aristoteles-Viten und Schriftenkatalog des Ptolemaios im Licht der Überlieferung." Studi Classici e Orientali no. 61:97-166.

4. Dihle, Albrecht. 1957. "Der Platoniker Ptolemaios." Hermes no. 85:314-325.

Nachdruck: A. Dihle, Antike und Orient. Gesammelte Aufsätze, Hrsg. von Viktor Pöschl und Hubert Petersmann, Heidelberg: C. Winter Universitätsverlag, 1984, pp. 9-20.

"In den philosophischen Texten der späten Kaiserzeit stößt man zuweilen auf den Namen Ptolemaios, ohne daß dabei an einen Lagiden oder an den berühmten Astronomen zu denken wäre. Wie jene Zitate auf einen oder mehrere Träger dieses Namens zu verteilen seien, war eine einst viel diskutierte Frage, die dann allerdings im Anschluß an eine Vermutung W. v. Christs durch das Buch von A. Chatzis (Der Philosoph und Grammatiker Ptolemaios Chennos I = Stud, z Gesch. u. Kult. d. Altert. VII 2, Paderborn 1914) endgültig dahin beantwortet schien, es handele sich bei all diesen Ptolemaioi immer weder um Ptolemaios Chennos aus der Zeit um 100 n. Chr., der uns durch den Auszug des Photios aus seiner καινή Ιστορία (cod. 190) recht gut bekannt ist. Diese Frage soll hier einer erneuten Prüfung unterzogen werden."

5. Düring, Ingemar. 1966. Aristoteles. Darstellung und Interpretation seines Denkens. Heidelberg: Winter.

6. ———. 1968. "Aristoteles." In Paulys Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Suppl. XI, 159-336. München: Druckenmüller.

7. Georgi, Dieter. 1993. "Die Aristoteles- und Theophrastusausgabe des Andronikos von Rhodos. Ein Beitrag zur Kanonsproblematik." In Konsequente Traditionsgeschichte. Festschrift für Klaus Baltzer zum 65. Geburstag, edited by Rüdiger, Bartelmus, Krüger, Thomas and Utzschneider, Helmut, 45-78. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

8. Gigon, Olof. 1958. "Interpretationen zu den Antiken Aristoteles-Viten." Museum Helveticum no. 15:147-193.

9. Hein, Christel. 1985. Definition und Einteilung der Philosophie. Von der spätantiken Einleitungsliteratur zur arabischen Enzyklopädie. New York: Peter Lang.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Einleitung 1; 1. Einleitungen in dir Gesamtphilosophie 34; 2. Einletungen in die Philosophie des Aristoteles 238; 3. Schriftenverzeichnisse zu Aristoteles (Pinakes) 388; Anhang zu Teil 3: Ms. Ayasofia 4833 fol. 10b-11a, 14b-18a 415; Zusammenfassung 440; Siglen 445; Abkurzungen 446; Literaturvzeichnis 447-482.

10. Jaeger, Werner. 1923. Aristoteles. Grundlegung einer Geschichte seiner Entwicklung. Berlin: Weidemann.

11. Littig, Friedrich. 1890. Andronikos von Rhodos: I. Das Leben des Andronikos und seine Anordnung der Aristotelischen Schriften. München: Buchdruckerei von F. Straub.

Inhalt: Das Leben des Andronikos 1; Die Andronikosausgabe der aristotelischen Schriften 8; Anhang I: Das Verzeichnis der aristotelischen Schriften nach Ptolemäos Chennos 37; Anhang II: Die Disposition der aristotelischen Schriften nach den griechischen Erklärern des V. Jahrhunderts 43-58.

Vol. II: Erlangen, 1894; Vol. III. ERlangen 1895.

12. Moraux, Paul. 1973. Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen. Von Andronikos bis Alexander von Aphrodisias. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Vol. I: Die Renaissance des Aristotelismus im I. Jh.v. Chr. (1973)

Vol. II: Der Aristotelismus im I. und II. Jh.n. Chr. (1984)

Vol. III: Alexander von Aphrodisias (2001) - Edited by Jürgen Wiesner, with a chapter on Ethics by Robert W. Sharples.

See the Chapter "Das Schicksal der Bibliothek des Aristoteles" in the first volume, pp. 3-94.

The first two volumes are translated in Italian as: L'Aristotelismo presso I Greci. Vol. I: La rinascita dell'Aristotelismo nel I secolo a. C.; vol. II/1: Gli Aristotelici nei secoli I e II d.C.; vol. II/2: L'Aristotelismo nei non-Aristotelici nei secoli I e II d.C., Milano: Vita e pensiero, 2000.

"This is the first volume of a work which will comprise three. In that work Moraux proposes to study the history of the Aristotelian tradition from Andronicus of Rhodes (first cent. B.C.) to Alexander of Aphrodisias (latter part of the second cent. A.D.). The book under review covers the first cent. B.C. It contains five parts: The first is devoted to the fate of Aristotle's scholarly treatises up to and including Andronicus' edition and catalogue. The second deals with the earliest Aristotelian commentators, Andronicus himself, the Peripatetic Boethus of Sidon, and Ariston of Alexandria. The third is concerned with Xenarchus of Seleuceia, a Peripatetic who criticized some of Aristotle's central doctrines. The fourth discusses Staseas of Naples and Cratippus of Pergarnum, two authors Moraux characterizes as offshoots of Hellenistic Aristotelianism. The fifth and final part is devoted to complete expositions and summaries of Aristotelian and/or Peripatetic philosophy. The two authors discussed are Arius Didymus and Nicolaus of Damascus. The main purpose of Moraux's work is to investigate that part of the Aristotelian tradition whose main concern was the study and interpretation of Aristotle's works and doctrines, especially of his scholarly treatises. Therefore, his decision to include both authors who perhaps cannot be regarded as "orthodox" Peripatetics, e.g. Xenarchus, and Stoics such as Arius Didymus seems to be justified." (from the article-review by Leonardo Tarán, Aristotelianism in the First century B.C., Gnomon, 1981, 53, pp. 721-750)

13. Moraux, Paul, and Wiesner, Jürgen, eds. 1983. Zweifelhaftes im Corpus Aristotelicum. Studien zu einigen Dubia. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Akten des IX. Symposium Aristotelicum, Berlin, 7.-16. September 1981.

Inhalstverzeichnis: Vorwort VII; Neuntes Symposium Aristotelicum, Teilnehmerverzeichnis IX-X; Michael Frede: Titel, Einheit und Echtheit der aristotelischen Kategorienschrift 1; Andreas Graeser: Aspekte der Ontologie in der Kategorienschrift 30; Bertrand Dumoulin: L’ousia dans les Catégories et dans la Métaphysique 57; David J. Furley: The Mechanics of Metereologica IV. A Prolegomenon to Biology 73; Hans Strohm: Beobachtungen zum vierten Buch der aristotelischen Meteorologie 94; Martha Nussbaum: The “Common Explanation” of Animal Motion 116; Gudrun Vuillemin-Diem: Anmerkungen zum Pasikles-Bericht und zu Echtheitszweifeln am größeren und kleineren Alpha in Handschriften und Kommentaren 157; Olof Gigon: Versuch einer Interpretation von Metaphysik Alpha Elatton 193; Thomas A. Szlezäk: Alpha Elatton: Einheit und Einordnung in die Metaphysik 221; Enrico Berti: La fonction de Métaph. Alpha Elatton dans la philosophie d’Aristote 260; Vianney Décarie: L’authenticité du livre K de la Métaphysique 295; Pierre Aubenque: Sur l’inauthenticité du livre K de la Métaphysique 318; Anthony Kenny: A Stylometric Comparison between five disputed works and the remainder of the Aristotelian corpus 345; Index 367; Index locorum: Aristoteles 368; Auctores Graeci et Latini (praeter Aristotelem) 383; Index nominum et rerum 388; Corrigenda 402.

14. Müller, August. 1875. "Das arabische Verzeichnis der Aristotelischen Schriften." In Morgenländische Forschungen, Festschrift H.L. Fleischer gewidmet von seinen Schülern, 1-32. Leipzig: Brockhaus.

Contains an annotated edition of the article on Ptolemy’s list of Aristotle’s books in Ibn al-Qifti, Ta’rikh al-hukama’ (= ed. J. Lippcrt, Leipzig 1903, 42-48). [Note by Hans Daiber].

15. Overwien, Oliver. 2014. "Kurzfassungen und Erbstreitigkeiten. Die zwei Versionen des Testamentes des Aristoteles." Mnemosyne no. 67:762-780.

16. Primavesi, Oliver. 2007. "Ein Blick in den Stollen von Skepsis: Vier Kapitel zur frühen Überlieferung des Corpus Aristotelicum." Philologus no. 151:51-77.

English summary: "The purpose of the paper is to defend a modified Version of the report given by Strabo about the transmission of the writings of Aristotle during the Hellenistic period. The basic dilemma was pointed out by Dom Jean Liron in 1717: The existence of our Corpus Aristotelicum entails that Strabo must be exaggerating either in assuming that the manuscripts brought by Neleus to Scepsis were the only manuscripts of the Aristotelian and Theophrastean writings, or in asserting that these manuscripts were severely damaged. Many writings of our Corpus are missing in the Hellenistic catalogue of Aristotle's works while they are listed in the later catalogue of Ptolemy al-Gharlb; furthermore, the single books of the transmitted treatises are labelled by means of the pre-Hellenistic System of 24 letter labeis, whereas in the Hellenistic catalogue the single books are numbered by means of the Hellenistic System of 27 alphabetic numerals. This suggests that the treatises missing in the Hellenistic catalogue formed part of a collection which was inaccessible in Hellenistic times and which, therefore, preserved the pre-Hellenistic System of book-labelling. After the rediscovery of the collection (ca. 100 BC) its System of book-labelling was maintained by the editors who laid the foundations of our Corpus. The same criterion reveals the Eudemian Ethics in eight books to be a later compilation."

17. Reiner, Hans. 1954. "Die Entstehung und usprüngliche Bedeutung des Names Metaphysik." Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung no. 8:210-237.

Nachdruck: Fritz-Peter Hager (ed.), Metaphysik und Theologie des Aristoteles, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969 pp. 139-174.

English translation: The Emergence and Original Meaning of the Name "Metaphysics" in: Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 13, 2, 1990 pp. 23-53.

18. ———. 1955. "Die Entstehung der Lehre vom Bibliothekarischen Ursprung Names Metaphysik." Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung no. 9.

19. Reinsch, Diether. 1982. "Das Griechsche Original der Vita Syriaca I des Aristoteles." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie no. 125:106-112.

20. Stahr, Adolf Wilhelm Theodor. 1830. Aristotelia. Halle.

Two volumes: I. Das Leben de Aristoteles von Stagira (1830); II. Ueber die verlornen Briefe des Aristoteles (1832).

Inhalts des Zweiten Theils: I. Beiträger zur Geschichte der Aristotelischen Schriften. I. Die Schicksale der Aristotelischen Schriften von Aristoteles bis auf Andronikos von Rhodos 3; II. Die vorhandenen angeblichen Briefe des Aristoteles 169; III. Ueber der Unterschied exoterischer und esoterischer Schriften des Aristoteles 237-297

21. Steinschneider, Moritz. 1869. "Al-Farabi (Alpharabius). Des Arabischen Philosophen Leben und Schriften." Mémoires de l'Académie Impériale des Sciences de St.Pétersbourg.VII Série no. 8.

Mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Geschichte der griechischen Wissenschaft unter den Arabern, nebst Anhängen Joh. Philoponus bei den Arabern, Leben und Testament des Aristoteles von Ptolemaeus, darstellung der Philosophie Plato's, Grösstentheils nach handschriftlichen Quellen.

Nachdruck Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1966.

22. Wehrli, Fritz. 1944. Die Schule des Aristoteles. Texte und Kommentar. Basel-Stuttgart: Schwabe.

Zweite Auflage 1967-1969.

I. Dikaiarchos (1944); II. Aristoxenos (1945); III. Klearchos (1948); IV. Demetrios von Phaleron (1949); V. Straton von Lampsakos (1950); VI. Lykon und Ariston von Keos (1952); VII: Herakleides Pontikos (1953); VIII. Eudemos von Rhodos (1955); IX. Phainias von Eresos, Chamaileon, Praxiphanes (1957); X. Hieronymos von Rhodos, Kritolaos und seine Schuler, Rückblick: Der Peripatos in vorchlisticher Zeit, Register (1959); Supplementband I: Hermippos der Kallimacheer (1974); Supplementband II: Sotio (1978).

23. Wiesner, Jürgen, ed. 1985. Aristoteles Werk und Wirkung. Paul Moraux Gewidmet. Erster Band: Aristoteles und Seine Schule. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

24. ———, ed. 1987. Aristoteles Werk und Wirkung. Paul Moraux Gewidmet. Zweite Band: Kommentierung, Überlieferung, Nachleben. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Studi in Italiano

1. Baffioni, Carmela. 1976. "Antiche liste arabe delle opere di Aristotele." Rassegna di Scienze Filosofiche no. 29:83-114.

2. Baldi, Davide. 2011. "Ioannikios e il Corpus aristotelicum." Revue d"histoire des textes no. 6.

3. Berti, Enrico. 1997. La filosofia del "primo" Aristotele. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

Presentazione di Giovanni Reale.

Prima edizione: Padova: CEDAM, 1962.

4. ———. 2004. Aristotele dalla dialettica alla filosofia prima. Con saggi integrativi. Milano: Bompiani.

Presentazione di Giovanni Reale.

Prima edizione: Padova: CEDAM, 1977.

5. Bignone, Ettore. 1936. L'Aristotele perduto e la formazione filosofica di Epicuro. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

Presentazione di Vittorio Enzo Alfieri.

Nuova edizione Milano, Bompiani, 2007.

6. Chiaradonna, Riccardo. 2011. "Interpretazione filosofica e ricezione del corpus. Il caso di Aristotele (100 a.C. - 250 d. C.)." Quaestio. Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 11:83-114.

English summary: "This paper focuses on the reception of Aristotle’s writings from 100 BC to early Neoplatonism. The 1st century BC is marked by a renaissance of interest in Aristotle’s acroamatic treatises, in connection to Andronicus’ editorial work (whatever its precise character). This is a well known fact, but it is worth noting that interpreters of Aristotle between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD were only familiar with a limited set of treatises (in particular, Aristotle’s Categories, Rhetoric, Topics and De caelo). The Academic Eudorus of Alexandria was a partial exception, since he was probably acquainted with parts of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Aristotle’s exoteric dialogues remained a majour source for those interested in Aristotle well into the 2nd century AD. Finally, late-hellenistic compendia and handbooks provided second-hand information on Aristotle’s philosophy. It is only between the 2nd and the 3rd centuries that the Peripatetic commentators developed a systematic reading of the whole corpus of Aristotle’s acroamatic treatises. Their work culminated with Alexander of Aphrodisias, whose exegesis laid the basis for the subsequent incorporation of Aristotle within Neoplatonism accomplished by Plotinus and Porphyry."

7. Desideri, Paolo. 2000. "Strabone e la cultura asiana." In Strabone e l'Asia Minore, edited by Biraschi, Anna Maria and Salmeri, Giovanni, 25-44. Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane.

8. Donini, Pierluigi. 1977. "L’aristotelismo nel primo secolo. La ricostruzione di Paul Moraux." Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica no. 105:237-251.

9. Dorandi, Tiziano. 2010. "‘Editori’ antichi di Platone." Antiquorum Philosophia no. 4:161-174.

10. Düring, Ingemar. 1976. Aristotele. Milano: Mursia.

Traduzione di Pierluigi Donini.

11. Feola, Giuseppe. 2017. "Alcune considerazioni sull’ordinamento del corpus biologico di Aristotele." In La zoologia di Aristotele e la sua ricezione dall'età ellenistica e romana alle culture medievali: atti della X "Settimana di formazione" del Centro GrAL, Pisa, 18-20 novembre 2015, edited by Sassi, Maria Michela, Coda, Elisa and Feola, Giuseppe, 35-57. Pisa: Pisa University Press.

12. Masellis, Vito. 1956. "Tradizione e cataloghi delle opere aristoteliche." Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica no. 34:337-363.

13. Moraux, Paul. 2000. L'Aristotelismo presso i Greci. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

Vol. I: La rinascita dell'Aristotelismo nel I secolo a. C.; vol. II/1: Gli Aristotelici nei secoli I e II d.C.; vol. II/2: L'Aristotelismo nei non-Aristotelici nei secoli I e II d. C.

Traduzione di Stefano Tognoli. Revisione e indici di Vincenzo Cicero.

Prefazione di Giovanni Reale. Introduzione di Thomas A. Szlezak.

14. Natali, Carlo, ed. 1981. La scuola dei filosofi. Scienza e organizzazione istituzionale della scuola di Aristotele. L'Aquila: Japadre.

Indice: C. Natali: Introduzione 7; U. v. Wilamowitz-Moelledorff: Le scuole filosofiche e la politica. La posizione giuridica delle scuole filosofiche 29; H. Jackson: L'aula di Aristotele e le sue lezioni 47; W. Jaeger: La pubblicazione dei trattati 55; F. Wehrli: Il Peripato fino al I sec. a.C. Panorama generale 69; I. Düring: Breve sommario di commenti e conclusioni 97; J. P. Lynch: Il Liceo al tempo di Aristotele 107; H. B. Gottschalk: Note sui testamenti degli scolarchi peripatetici 129;

Appendice: 1) Il Liceo: ambiente fisico 145; 2) Filosofi e teatro 146; 3) La legge di Sofocle di Sunio 149; 4) La scuola di Aristotele. Alcuni dati 152; Aristotele e la sua biblioteca 152; Iscrizioni onorifiche per Aristotele 154; Notizie sull'organizzazione della scuola dopo Aristotele 154; 5) Le polemiche contro Aristotele 157; 6) Brani dalle opere di Aristotele 163-169.

15. ———. 1991. Bios theoretikos. La vita di Aristotele e l’organizzazione della sua scuola. Bologna: Il Mulino.

16. ———. 1991. "Aristotele Professore?" Phronesis no. 36:61-73.

17. Rashed, Marwan. 2022. Tolomeo «al-gharib» e il primo aristotelismo alessandrino. Milano: Scuola della Cattedrale.

A cura di Gianantonio Borgonovo e Armando Torno.

Studia Latina

1. Plezia, Marian. 1946. De Andronici Rhodii studii aristotelicis. Krakow: Polska Akademia.

2. ———. 1951. "De Hermippi Vita Aristotelis." In Charisteria Thaddaeo Sinko quinquaginta abhinc annos amplissimis in philosophia honoribus ornato ab amicis collegis discipulis oblata, edited by Kumaniecki, Kazimierz, 271-287. Warszawa: Polskie Towarzystwo Filologiczne.

3. ———. 1975. "De Ptolemaeo pinacographo." Eos.Commentarii Societatis Philologue Polonorum no. 63:37-42.

4. ———. 1981. "De Aristotelis biographis." Meander no. 36:481-493.

5. ———. 1985. "De Ptolemaei vita Aristotelis." In Aristoteles. Werk und wirkung: Paul Moraux Gewidmet. Erster Band: Aristoteles und seine Schule, edited by Wiesner, Jürgen, 1-11. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Theophrastus "On First Principles" (known as his Metaphysics)

The oblivion of metaphysics in Hellenistic philosophy

"It would not be quite accurate to claim that Aristotle's Metaphysics, like Hume's Treatise, "fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots." First, there was no press. Second, the Metaphysics would not have been published as a book had there been a press. And finally, the Metaphysics was not completely ignored by Aristotle's school. Still, if one peruses Fritz Wehrli's monumental Die Schule des Aristoteles and notes the few scattered and desultory references to ontological or theological topics, one cannot resist forming the impression that the Metaphysics is pretty largely an academic failure. Even Aristotle's formidable disciple and colleague Theophrastus, who himself actually composed a treatise on metaphysics, seems to write with a remarkably limited understanding of the work of his predecessor in this area.

(1) Apart from a few references to book twelve, there is almost total silence regarding the central features of Aristotle's work as they are recognized today. There is nothing about the identification of first philosophy with wisdom and theology and a science of causes; nothing of the aporiai facing the construction of such a science; nothing of the doctrine of pros en equivocity or of the conclusion that being in the primary sense is separate form. Nor is there a word about the dialectical treatment of sensible substance in the central books of the Metaphysics, which has so exercised contemporary scholars. The list of the disappearing doctrines could easily he expanded and reconfirmed by considering other philosophers both inside and outside the Lyceum. We must not be tempted to account for this extraordinary state of affairs by supposing that Aristotle's successors regarded his metaphysical doctrines as too sublime for comment, for both Theophrastus and Strato, the first and second heads of the Lyceum after Aristotle, appear actually to have rejected the argument for the existence of an unmoved mover.'

Strato's argument amounts to the claim that nature alone is sufficient to account for motion, a claim that must have been intended to recall Aristotle's own admission that if separate substance does not exist, then there is no special science of substance apart from physics (cf. Met. 6.1.1026a27-29). Since Aristotle adds that the putative science of separate substance is first philosophy and the science of being qua being, Strato's denial of the need for the hypothesis of an unmoved mover is nothing short of a rejection of the entire enterprise of the Metaphysics. And this from within the Peripatos!

If we look beyond the Lyceum to the tradition of Aristotelian commentaries, beginning with Alexander of Aphrodisias, we do indeed find something more like reverence for the words of the founder, but hardly any awareness at all of the problematic and crucial connection between the specific theological arguments in the Metaphysics and the science of being qua being. Though the extant corpus of Aristotelian commentaries includes four works on the Metaphysics, there exists not a single commentary by one hand on the entire work as preserved and edited by Andronicus of Rhodes in the first century B.C. Alexander's commentary ends at book five and is completed by an anonymous continuator; Themistius has a commentary, or more accurately a paraphrase, of book twelve alone; Syrianus comments on books three, four, thirteen, and fourteen; Asclepius halts his commentary at book seven.

In the face of this modest harvest, one might well conceive the notion that the Metaphysics was doomed from the beginning to bear meager fruit. (3) The dominance of Stoicism throughout the Hellenistic period explains in part the near oblivion into which metaphysics in general and Aristotle's work in particular were cast. A central principle of Stoic theoretical philosophy is the refusal -- perhaps for methodological reasons as much as anything else -- to countenance the existence of immaterial entities. Accordingly, physics becomes Stoic first philosophy, and theology becomes a branch of physics (cf. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta 2.42; cited hereafter as SVF). Within such a system there is little conceptual space for isolating being as a subject for investigation, and, especially, for raising Aristotelian aporiai regarding its nature. The evidence for this claim is to be found in the corpus of Stoic fragments, where a science of being qua being makes no appearance at all, not even as a dragon to be slain. It is as if it had never existed. (4) Considering that Stoics, and to a lesser extent Epicureans and Academic Skeptics, were the primary purveyors of theoretical philosophy throughout the Hellenistic period, it is hardly surprising that the doctrines of the Metaphysics simply lay dormant. (5)" (pp. 3-5)

Notes

(1) Theophrastus did not of course title his work meta ta physika, but he does describe it as dealing with first principles (Theo., Met. 4a 1-2) and as distinct from physics (ibid., 2-4) and mathematics (ibid., 4b6-8). The first principles are apparently reducible to a unique first principle, i.e., god (ibid., 4615). As Giovanni Reale, "The Historical Importance of the Metaphysics of Theophrastus in Comparison with the Metaphysics of Aristotle," appendix to The Concept of First Philosophy and the Unity of the Metaphysics of Aristotle, trans. John Catan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980), 364-91, shows, Theophrastus closely follows Metaphysics 12 in many respects. But apart from these and some less convincing parallels from Metaphysics 2, there is little awareness shown by Theophrastus of any connection between theology and a science of being qua being.

(2) For Theophrastus's criticism, see his Metaphysics 563-10, and for Strato, see the testimony contained in Cicero, Academica 2.38.

(3) See Gerard Verbeke's "Aristotle's Metaphysics Viewed by the Ancient Greek Commentators," in D. J. O'Meara, ed., Studies in Aristotle (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1981 114ff., for a useful summary of some of the basic interpretations in the commentators. Verbeke concludes that there is a consistent interpretation among the commentaries that may be aptly termed "Neoplatonic." We should distinguish, however, a Neoplatonic interpretation of Aristotle from a Neoplatonic refutation of Aristotle, as is to be found in Plotinus.

(4) Zeno, Chrysippus, and Antipater are all reported to have written books titled Perí Ousías. Of course, these Stoics all identify ousía with matter. The few scattered references to tò on, which identify it with body and make it a species of the genus tò ti, betray little more than a lingering memory of some Aristotelian terminology stripped of its argumentative context. The Stoic position was perhaps taken to follow immediately from the principle that immaterial entities cannot exist; hence, argument indicating the contrary can be safely ignored. F. H. Sandbach, Aristotle and the Stoics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), has argued the revisionary case that, for the Stoics, Aristotle was not rejected but largely unknown. But the lack of hard evidence, rightly insisted upon by Sandbach, is also explicable by the hypothesis that Aristotelian arguments, in metaphysics at least, were rendered irrelevant on the above principle.

(5) Cf. Fritz Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles: Text and Kommentar (Basel/Stuttgart: Benno Schwabe & Co., 1959), 10:95-128, who suggests in a Ruckblick over the material he has collected that the disintegration of the Peripatetic school was owing to its undogmatic and aporetic character as compared to its Academic, Epicurean, and Stoic rivals. He also suggests that conflict in doctrine between the Metaphysics and the early dialogues of Aristotle might account for diffidence or confusion on the part of his disciples: "der Zerfall der Schule hatte seine tiefste Ursache im Werke des Meisters selbst" (ibid., 96). Undoubtedly, there is much in what Wehrli has to say. One may also add the instability of the Peripatetic foundation owing to political reasons.

From: Lloyd P. Gerson, "Plotinus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Metaphysics", in: Lawrence P. Schrenk (ed.), Aristotle in Late Antiquity, Washington: Catholic University Press 1994, pp. 3-21.

Summary of On First Principles,Known as Theophrastus' Metaphysics

"Chapter I. The nature of the relation between the first principles and sensible things; II. Problems about the impulse of sensible things towards the first principle; III. The importance of deducing the observed facts from the first principles; IV. Are the first principles definite or indefinite?; V. The supposed immobility of the first principles; VI. Matter and form; VII: Good and evil; VIII: The multiplicity of being and of knowledge; IX; The limits of teleological explanation."

From: Theophrastus Metaphysics. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1929. With translation, commentary and introduction by William David Ross and Francis Howard Fobes. Reprint: Hildesheim, Georg Olms 1967.

“What are first things? They are different from the world of nature, and are the objects of reason, not sense. (Here he adopts Aristotle's standard distinction, derived from Plato.) But how are these two related, and what are the objects of reason? They must either be in mathematical objects, or be something prior to these. If the latter, how many are they? He continues in an Aristotelian vein to say that they/it are the cause of motion, but themselves unmoved. They are objects of desire, and cause the rotation of the heavens. But if the prime mover is one, why do heavenly bodies move differently? If there are more than one, how is their influence harmonized? And why does love of the unmoved cause an imitation which is movement? After an interlude about the Platonists, he continues: anyhow the heavenly bodies, having desire, must also have soul, and the movement of soul, which is thought, is better than rotary movement. And what about the inferior parts of nature? And is rotation essential to the existence of heavenly bodies?

He then criticizes Plato, and some of his followers, including Speusippus (died 339 BO, for not carrying through their accounts to the end, but considers a possible reply, that metaphysics is only concerned with first principles. So are first principles definite, or indefinite, in the sense of shapeless and merely potential? At this point it is difficult to be sure whether he is talking of first things in the sense in which the hot, the cold, the wet, and the dry may be seen as first things, or about the fundamental principles (laws) which govern what exists. So when he asks if they are moving or motionless, it could be that the former are in motion but the latter, being abstract, are motionless. In any case, the universe is complex.

Among particular first things are form and matter, one of Aristotle's basic dichotomies.

What is the status of matter? This problem was developed in his De Anima, in which he pointed out the similarities between prime matter and potential intellect, both being merely potential, and probably explained their differences in terms of how each is related to forms. Other pairs then occupy him, especially good and evil -- Why is there so much evil in the world? -- and he mentions the void as the contrary of being. But there are different types of being, and knowledge is of similarity in difference at various levels. (Here again he adopts Aristotle's distinctions.) There are different methods of knowledge for different subject.

One must stop somewhere in searching for causes. It is often difficult to assign final causes, as with floods, male breasts, the shapes of inanimate objects, and many other things. Perhaps these result automatically from the rotation of the heavens. Alternatively there is a limit to purposiveness, and the desire for what is good.

Though wide ranging, this is largely a criticism of many of the assumptions on which Aristotle's system is based, and some people believe that it was so devastating that interest in metaphysics ceased in the Peripatos. Theophrastus's successor, Strato (died 269 BC), concentrated on natural science.” (p. 894)

From: Pamela M. Huby, "Theophrastus", in: Hans Burkhardt & Barry Smith (eds.), Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, Munchen: Philosophia Verlag 1991, vol. II.

The Metaphysics

"Theophrastus recognized the need to justify the assumption that natural science involves principles, causes, and elements. He also warned against inquiring into the cause of everything. Nevertheless, his physics is in large measure an attempt to trace observed phenomena back to principles of order and determination. He believed in the divinity of the heavens and the eternity of the universe and held that the heavenly bodies possess regularity in the highest degree. However, he denied a clean break between the heavenly and sublunary spheres, holding that the universe is a single system in which the same physical laws apply to all its parts. Theophrastus considered the possibility that the sun might be a form of fire, but the discussion is aporetic and not proof that Theophrastus rejected Aristotle's fifth element, aether, as Strato did. Theophrastus does, however, appear to depart from Aristotle by analyzing place in terms of arrangement and position with reference to the whole universe.

Academic discussion and Aristotle's postulation of an unmoved mover form the background to Theophrastus's treatise on metaphysics. Many of the views discussed are considered plausible, but often we do not know what Theophrastus accepted as part of his own theory. It is probable that Theophrastus rejected Aristotle's unmoved mover and laid greater emphasis on the limits of teleological explanation. Like both Plato and Aristotle, he held that the study of first principles is more definite and ordered than the study of nature. Intelligible and physical entities are related as prior and posterior, but further specification of the relationship is not clearly provided. Most likely Theophrastus posited an unbroken causal series, for he requires continual explanation of all phenomena." (p. 553)

From: "Theophrastus" by William W. Fortenbaugh and Josip Talanga, in: Donald J. Zeyl (ed.), Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy, London; Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997.

“The historical importance of this brief treatise on first philosophy by Theophrastus has not escaped some scholars who have been concerned with it. It is the most significant metaphysical text that we possess between the time of Aristotle and the flowering of the new philosophical schools of the Hellenistic period. The treatise has two different dimensions, one refers to Aristotle, the other, in a certain way, refers to Stoicism. A careful examination of the precise links which one aspect has to the other as well as in comparison with Aristotle and Stoicism has come only recently and is susceptible of further precisions as well as corrections and modifications.

The historical relations existing between the treatise of Theophrastus and Aristotle's Metaphysics has been recently studied by Jaeger, in connection with his well-known thesis on the genesis and development of Aristotle's metaphysical doctrine, as well as on the basis of his special interpretation of the development of theology and the doctrine of the immobile Mover.(1)

The other dimension of the treatise, which refers to Stoicism, has been investigated chiefly by Grumach.(2)

We intend to limit ourselves to a reexamination of the first point. To review the second point, it would be necessary to reexamine many problems concerning Stoicism, which would take us outside the limits of our subject.” (pp. 364, notes omitted)

Notes

(1) Werner Jaeger, Aristotle. Fundamentals of the History of His Development, translated by Richard Robinson, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1948, pp. 349, 354-357.

(2) Ernst Grumach, Physis und Agathon in der alten Stoa, Berlin: Weidmann 1932

From: Giovanni Reale, The Concept of First Philosophy and the Unity of the Metaphysics of Aristotle, Albany: State University of New York Press 1980, Appendix A. The Historical Importance of the Metaphysics of Theophrastus in Comparison with the Metaphysics of Aristotle.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on the Philosophical Work of Theophrastus

Bibliography

Abbreviations:

FR = Fragments

FHS&G = Theophrastus of Eresus. Sources for his life, writings, thought and influence. Edited by Fortenbaugh William W. et al. Leiden: Brill 1992 (two volumes)

RUSCH = Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities

Ancient editions of the Collected Works of Theophrastus

1. Theophrastus. 1541. Theophrasti Opera. Basileae.

Edited with a preface by Hieronymus Gemusaeus and Joachim Camerarius (the first printed edition of Theophrastus' works).

2. ———. 1605. Theophrasti Opera pleraque graeca et latina. Hanoveri.

3. ———. 1818. Theophrasti Eresii quae supersunt opera et excerpta librorum quatuor tomis comprehensa. Lipsiae.

Edited by Gottlob Schneider (1818-1821).

4. ———. 1854. Theophrasti Eresii Opera quae supersunt omnia. Lipsiae.

Edited by Friedrich Wimmer (3 volumes, 1854-1862); reprint: Frankfurt am Main, Minerva, 1964.

5. ———. 1890. Theophrasti De prima philosophia libellus. Bonn: C. Georg.

Edited by Hermann Usener.

Modern editions and translations of Theophrastus' philosophical works

English

1. Fortenbaugh, William W., Gutas, Dimitri, Huby, Pamela, and Sharples, Robert W., eds. 1992. Theophrastus of Eresus. Sources for His Life, Writings, Thought and Influence. I. Life, Writings, Various Reports, Logic, Physics, Metaphysics, Theology, Mathematics. Leiden: Brill.

Contents: Preface VII-VIII; Introduction 1; Abbreviations 15; Texts. Life (FR 1-36) 20; Writings (FR 37-55) 90; Various reports (FR 56-67) 104; Logic (FR 68-136) 114; Physics (FR 137-245) 276; Metaphysics (FR 246-250) 436; Theology (FR 251-263) 442; Mathematics (FR 264) 456; Appendix 460-465.

"These two volumes represent the first fruits of an international project to produce a new collection - text, translation and commentary - of the fragments and testimonia relating to Theophrastus (c. 370-288/5 B.C.), Aristotle's pupil and successor as head of the Lyceum. The need for a new collection was apparent: the standard collection, by Wimmer, is already 120 years old, whereas we now have far better texts of many of the ancient authors in which fragments and testimonia of Theophrastus occur. Whilst classicists have devoted the past hundred years to bringing into the light the work of the major post-Aristotelian schools, the contribution of Theophrastus has remained obscure. The second printing contains corrections to the first.

This first stage of the project presents the texts, critical apparatus and English translation of the fragments and testimonia. It contains a long methodological introduction, an index of Theophrastean texts and concordances with other collections (Scheider, Wimmer and the several recent partial editions).

The second stage of the project, which Brill will also publish, will consist of 9 commentary volumes, planned at present as follows:

1. Life, Writings, various reports (M. Sollenberger, Mt. St. Mary's College)

2. Logic (P.M. Huby, Liverpool University)

3. Physics (R.W. Sharples, University College London)

4. Metaphysics, Theology, Mathematics, Psychology (P.M. Huby, Liverpool University)

5. Human Physiology, Living Creatures, Botany (R.W. Sharples, University of London)

6. Ethics, Religion (W.W. Fortenbaugh, Rutgers University)

7. Politics (J. Mirhady)

8. Rhetoric, Poetics (W.W. Fortenbaugh, Rutgers University)

9. Music, Miscellaneous Items and Index of proper names, subject index, selective index of Greek, Latin and Arabic terms (several authors/editors).

Most of the nine commentary volumes will include significant discussion of Arabic texts, with contributions by Dimitri Gutas (Yale University) and Hans Daiber (Free University of Amsterdam).

2. ———, eds. 1992. Theophrastus of Eresus. Sources for His Life, Writings, Thought and Influence. II. Psychology, Human Physiology, Living Creatures, Botany, Ethics, Religion, Politics, Rhetoric and Poetics, Music, Miscellanea. Leiden: Brill.

Contents: Texts. Psychology (FR 264-327) 2; Human physiology (FR 328-349) 106; Living creatures (FR 350-383) 134; Botany (FR 384-435) 188; Ethics (FR 436-579) 254; Religion (FR 580-588) 400; Politics (FR 589-665) 438; Rhetoric and Poetics (FR 666-713) 508; Music (FR 714-726) 560; Miscellneous items (FR 727-741) 584; Appendix Nos. 5-9 600; Concordances 619; Index of Theophrastean texts 629.

3. Huby, Pamela M., ed. 2007. Theophrastus of Eresus. Commentary Volume 2: Logic. Sources for His Life, Writings, Thought and Influence. Leiden: Brill.

"This volume contains commentary on the sections concerned with logic (texts 68-136) of the collection of texts published in 1992 (Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for his Lift, Writings, Thought and Influence, edited and translated by William W. Fortenbaugh, Pamela M. Huby, Robert W. Sharples (Greek and Latin) and Dimitri Gutas (Arabic) and five others, 2 vols., Leiden: Brill, 1992). It was comparatively easy to isolate those texts connected with logic, though in a few cases there was uncertainty about whether an item was to be assigned to rhetoric rather than logic. There was also little difficulty with problems of texts where the attribution to Theophrastus is doubtful.

The texts on which we are commenting are nearly all ones that contain the name of Theophrastus, along with a few in which only "the colleagues of Aristotle" are mentioned in a context where it is clear that Theophrastus is intended, usually with Eudemus. They are evidence for works now lost, even in translation. We have taken account, either by actual quotation or by giving references in the upper apparatus, of all such passages up to the cut-off date of 1450. Two items printed in the appendix are without attribution, and are included only as possibly by Theophrastus. To facilitate access to contexts we have added references to English translations of some passages quoted or referred to, and have given short accounts of most of the items mentioned in the upper apparatus.

Within the commentary in some cases several items are grouped together for a general discussion, but then individual items are also treated separately. Lists of relevant literature are given either under the heading of a group or with individual items. We have transliterated short items of Greek, but quoted longer ones in the original script.

(...)

It was only after the bulk of this work had been written that I became aware of the important study of De Rijk, entitled Aristotle Semantics and Ontology, which in fact contains a great deal of valuable work on Aristotle's logic. I have however been able to incorporate many references to it, either in the text or in footnotes." (from the Preface).

4. Sharples, Robert W., ed. 1998. Theophrastus of Eresus. Commentary Volume 3.1: Sources on Physics (Texts 137-223). Leiden: Brill.

This volume contains commentary to the section concerned with physics (texts 137-223) of the collection of texts relating to Theophrastus compiled and edited under the leadership of W.W. Fortenbaugh and published in 1992 (Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought and Influence). The collection of texts was arranged by subject matter, rather than by the known or conjectured relation of testimonia to particular Theophrastean works (cf. the Introduction to the collection of texts, vol.1 pp. 7-8), and the arrangement of topics was broadly that familiar from the ordering of Aristotle's writings in Bekker's edition. The subject matter of the present commentary might thus be loosely described as the Theophrastean counterpart to the Baker pages of Aristotle 184-390 (Physics, On Heaven, On Coming-to-Be and Passing Away and Meteorology). Commentary by Han Baltussen on the texts relating to physical doxography (224-245) will appear in a separate volume, 8.2, along with that by Pamela Huby on texts on metaphysics, theology and mathematics (246-264).

It should be emphasised at the outset that our collection of texts is confined, with a very few exceptions, to those passages where Theophrastus is actually named, and that it is explicitly concerned with material that does not survive in Theophrastean works transmitted in MSS. We are concerned, in other words, with reports of Theophrastus' views -- sometimes quotations, but more often paraphrases -- in other authors." (from the Preface).

5. Huby, Pamela M., ed. 1999. Theophrastus of Eresus. Commentary Volume 4: Psychology (Texts 265-327). Leiden: Brill.

"This will eventually be the fourth of nine volumes of commentary by various authors, each relating to a part of the collection of texts relating to Theophrastus compiled and edited under the leadership of W.W.Fortenbaugh and published in 1992 (Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought and Influence). This volume covers texts 265-327, which relate to psychology and epistemology.

This commentary is designed to be used in conjunction with the volume of texts and translations; that includes both an apparatus of parallels for each text and an apparatus of textual variations and emendations. In the commentary isolated words or phrases of Greek have been given in transliteration, with longer passages being given in Greek script. The titles of ancient works have generally been given in the same English versions as used in the text and translation volume.

The procedure adopted in writing the commentary varies according to the nature of the passage involved. At the start of each passage there is usually a short list of pieces of modem literature; for references to such works the reader should consult first that list and then the general bibliography at the end of this volume." (from the Preface).

6. Sharples, Robert W., ed. 1994. Theophrastus of Eresus. Commentary Volume 5: Sources on Biology (Human Physiology, Living Creatures, Botany: Texts 328-435). Leiden: Brill.

"This is the first to appear of a projected nine volumes of commentary by various authors, each relating to a different part of the collection of texts relating to Theophrastus compiled and edited under the leadership of W.W. Fortenbaugh and published in 1992 (Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought and lnfluence). The present volume of commentary, no. 5 in the eventual series, cover texts 328-435 in the second volume of that collection, relating to human physiology, zoology and botany. The collection of texts was arranged by subject matter rather than by the known or conjectured relation of testimonia to particular Theophrastean works (cf. the Introduction to the collection of texts, vol. 1 pp. 7-8), and the arrangement of topics was broadly that familiar from the ordering of Aristotle's writings in Bekker's edition. The subject matter of the present commentary might thus be loosely described as the Theophrastean counterpart to the Bekker pages of Aristotle 436-789 (i.e. starting with the Parva Naturalia; Theophrastus' writings on general psychology will be dealt with in volume 4 of the commentary).

It should be emphasised at the outset that our collection of texts is confined, with a very few exceptions, to those passages where Theophrastus is actually named, and that it is explicitly concerned with material that does not survive in Theophrastean works transmitted in MSS. We are concerned, in other words, with reports of Theophrastus' views, sometimes quotations but more often paraphrases, in other authors."

7. Fortenbaugh, William W., ed. 2011. Theophrastus of Eresus. Commentary Volume 6.1: Sources on Ethics. Leiden: Brill.

With contributions on the Arabic material by Dimitri Gutas.

8. ———, ed. 2005. Theophrastus of Eresus. Commentary Volume 8: Sources on Rhetoric and Poetics (Texts 666-713). Leiden: Brill.

"The present volume (...) concerns the rhetorical and poetic fragments that are found in the second of the two text-translation volumes.

The central sections of the commentary, i.e., III and IV, are ordered in accordance with the material presented in the second text-translation volume. Section III covers the twenty-four titles that have their primary listing in the section on the "Titles of Books." That section carries the number 666. It also includes discussion of nine titles that have their primary listing elsewhere (under logic, mathematics, physics, ethics, religion and miscellaneous items) but for one reason or another have or might be thought to have a connection with rhetoric and poetics. Each of these related titles is referred to in 666 and appears in this commentary in the same position in which it is found in 666. For example, the mathematical title In Reply to Aeschylus (137 no. 42) appears both in the source volume and in this commentary after the second work On the An of Poetry (666 no. 21) and before On Comedy (666 no. 22).

Section IV on "The Texts" is also ordered in accordance with the second text-translation volume: i.e., the discussion of texts 667-713 proceeds in numerical order. There are, however, occasional interruptions, ten in all, when texts whose primary listing occurs elsewhere (under life, logic and ethics, among the miscellaneous items and in the appendix to the second text-translation volume) are discussed. In each case, the text is referred to in the second text-translation volume within the section on rhetoric and poetics, and discussion occurs in accordance with the position of the reference. For example, a logical text from Alexander of Aphrodisias (135) is referred to after one from Cicero (672) and before one from the codex Parisinus Graecus 3032 (673A), and discussion of the text occupies a similar position in this commentary.

I have created a separate section on the ancient sources - Demetrius Rhetor, Philodemus, Cicero, etc. - and placed it at the beginning of the commentary proper, i.e., as Section II. An alternative would have been to reserve discussion on any given source until a text taken from that source is commented upon. Were that procedure adopted, Cicero qua source would be discussed at the very outset, for the first text among the rhetorical and poetic texts is taken from Cicero (667). In contrast, discussion of Philodemus, Cicero's contemporary, would occur much later (689A). "

9. ———, ed. 2018. Theophrastus of Eresus. Commentary Volume 9.1: On Music. Leiden: Brill.

10. ———, ed. 2014. Theophrastus of Eresus. Commentary Volume 9.2: Sources on Discoveries and Beginnings, Proverbs et al. (texts 727-741). Leiden: Brill.

With contributions on the Arabic material by Dimitri Gutas.

11. Ross, Wiiliam David, and Fobes, Francis Howard, eds. 1929. Theophrastus. Metaphysics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

With translation, commentary and introduction by W. D. Ross and F. H. Fobes.

Reprint: Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1967.

Contents: Preface VIII; Introduction IX; Sigla XXXIII; Text and translation 2; Commentary 41; Index verborum 77; Index to the Introductiona and Commentary 84-87.

"The text as here given, the English translation, the greater part of the Introduction, and all the Commentary are the work of Mr. Ross; for that part of the Introduction which deals with the MSS., for the apparatus criticus, and for the Indexes Mr. Fobes is responsible." (from the Preface)

"All the Greek manuscripts of this work assign it to Theophrastus. A scholion at the end adds that it was unknown to Hermippus (c. 200 B.C.) and to Andronicus (c. 85 B.C.) and does not occur in their lists of Theophrastus' writings, but that Nicolaus (i.e. Nicolaus of Damascus) ascribed it to Theophrastus. Thus the tradition that Theophrastus was its author goes back to about 25 B.C. (...)

The title ta meta ta phusika must have been imposed on the work at some time after Andronicus' edition of Aristotle's works, from which the phrase took its origin; and may have been imposed by Nicolaus, who was the first, so far as we know, to refer to Aristotle's Metaphysics by that name. (..:)

The essay is printed in the editio princeps of Aristotle (Aldus, 1498); in the edition of Theophrastus published at Basel in 1541 by Hieronymus Gemusaeus or Oporinus (a reprint of the Aldine), and in a reprint of this (bearing the same date) in which Priscian's Metaphrasis is added; in the Camotian Aristotle (Venice, 1552), and in the Sylburg Aristotle (Frankfurt, 1585). It is omitted in the edition of Theophrastus' shorter works by H. Stephanus (Paris, 1557), in the editions of Theophrastus by Furlanus and Turnebus (Hanover, 1605), by Daniel Heinsius (Leyden, 1613), and by J. G. Schneider (Leipzig, 1818-21), but was printed by Brandis (1) with Aristotle's Metaphysics (Berlin, 1823), and in Wimmer's two editions of Theophrastus (Leipzig, 1862, and Paris, 1866), and finally has been edited separately by H. Usener (Bonn, 1890). It is the subject of a Greek commentary by Camotius (Venice, 1551)." (from the Introduction)

(1) Who summarizes and discusses its contents in his Handbuch der Geschichte der Griechisch-Römischen Philosophie (1835-1866).

12. van Raalte, Marlein ed. 1993. Theophrastus. Metaphysics. Leiden: Brill.

With an introduction, translation and commentary by M. van Raalte.

Contents: Preface XI; Abbreviations XV; Introduction 1; Text and translation 35; Commentary 67; Chapter One (4 a 2 - 5 a 13) 69; Chapter Two (4 a 14 - 6 a 15) 164; Chapter Three (6 a 15 - 6 b 22) 250; Chapter Four (6 b 23 - 7 b 8) 285; Chapter Five (7 b 9 - 8 a 7) 330; Chapter Six (8 a 8 - 8 a 20) 362; Chapter Seven (8 a 21 - 8 b 9) 277; Chapter Eight (8 b 10 - 10 a 21) 393; Chapter Nine (10 a 22 - 12 a 2) 485; References and author index 588; Index of passages cited 598; Index of Theophrastus Metaphysics 628; General Index: English 659; Greek 668-657.

"The history of this book is like that of the best of relationships in that it was started lightheartedly and lasted much longer than foreseen.

Initially serving mainly as a counterbalance to the study of Greek stichic verse, the project was meant to be completed in 1983-1985, during which years the Netherlands Organisation for the Advancement of Pure Research granted me a post-graduate scholarship for that purpose. In the course of time it became increasingly clear that Theophrastus' argument, in spite of the deceptive familiarity of its idiom, defies any easy access to a consistent interpretation-even allowing for its obviously dialectical nature. This made the commentary grow to its present size, my extensively quoting of parallel passages testifying to the experience that without a careful study both of the idiom and of the kind of reasoning involved the purport of the argument remains elusive.

The opportunity offered by Project Theophrastus to present a paper at its 1985 conference at the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London triggered a choice of focus which is at the base of the present interpretation of the treatise. As if infected by Theophrastus' way of proceeding I have made an attempt to expose each and every question that is posed by the text, and to detect the reasons for preferring one interpretation rather than another-my prevailing criterion being the internal consistency of the argument.

A side-effect of the somewhat unusual set-up of this book might be that it could be used as a kind of sourcebook for Peripatetic idiom; in order to help those who may want to explore this way of making a virtue out of necessity full indices have been provided.

During all these years I had the opportunity to profit from the wisdom and erudition, and certainly did profit front the assistance and support of many people.

First of all I have to acknowledge my indebtedness to the authors of the forthcoming Budé-cdition of the Metaphysics, and especially to Professor Andre Laks for generously sending me a copy of their completed manuscript in 1990 (and of a revised version of it in 1992), and for allowing me to make use of their apparatus criticus and to incorporate references to their interpretation of the text; in this way we have tried to minimize the drawbacks of our simultaneously working on a treatise which had been waiting for attention for so long. It will he clear that the present work heavily relies on Laks & Most's study especially where the manuscript tradition is concerned." (from the Preface).

13. Gutas, Dimitri, ed. 2010. Theophrastus On First Principles (known as his Metaphysics). Leiden: Brill.

Greek Text and Medieval Arabic Translation, edited and translated with introduction, commentaries and glossaries, as well as the medieval Latin translation (by Bartholomew of Messina), and with an Excursus on Graeco-Arabic editorial technique by D. Gutas.

Contents: Preface XIII; Acknowledgments XVII; Abbreviations and Reference Works XXI; Abbreviations of Works by Aristotle and Theophrastus XXIII; Part I. Introduction to the Texts. Chapter One. Introduction to the Essay 3; Chapter Two. The Greek Text: Manuscripts, Translations, Stemma Codicum 45; Chapter Three. The Arabic Text: Manuscripts, Transmission, Editions 75; Part II. The Texts and Translations 105; Part III. Commentary Introduction 247; Aporia 1-25 248-395; Scholium 395; Appendix. "Known by Being Unknown" (9a18-23) 401; Word Indices and Glossaries 409; Bibliography 481; Index Nominum 491; Index Locorum 499.

14. Priscian. 1997. On Theophrastus on Sense-perception. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Translated by Pamela Huby; with Simplicius, On Aristotle's On the soul 2. 5-12, translated by Carlos Steel; in collaboration with J. O. Urmson; notes by Peter Lautner.

French

1. Tricot, Jules, ed. 1948. Théophraste. La Métaphysique. Paris: Vrin.

Traduction et notes par J. Tricot.

2. Laks, André, and Most, Glenn W., eds. 1993. Théophraste. Métaphysique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Table des matières: Avant-propos VII; Notice IX ; I. La question du titre et du caractère fragmentaire de l'opuscule IX; II. Caractères généraux de l'opuscule XVIII; III. Sommaire de l'argument de l'opuscule XXVII; IV: La transmission de l'opuscule XL; Bibliographie LXXXI; Sigla LXXXIX-XC; Texte et traduction 1; Notes complémentaires 25; Index nominum 91-101.

Texte édité, traduit et annoté par A. Laks et G. W. Most avec la collaboration de Charles Larmore et Enno Rudolph et pour la traduction arabe de Michel Crubellier.

"Le travail que nous présentons ici a débuté, en décembre 1983, par un séminaire sur la Métaphysique de Théophraste réunissant André Laks (Centre de recherche philologique de l'Université Charles de Gaulle-Lille III/Princeton University, Grec), Charles Larmore (Columbia University, Philosophie), Glenn W. Most (Université de Heidelberg, Philologie classique), Enno Rudolph (Forschungsslâtte der Evangelischen Studiengemeinschaft et Université de Heidelberg, Théologie). Pendant quatre ans, ce séminaire s'est réuni à intervalles variés, à Heidelberg, Florence ou Paris, pour approfondir le travail d'interprétation. En 1987, Michel Crubellier (Centre de recherche philologique) s'est adjoint au groupe de travail, quand nous nous sommes rendu compte de l'importance de la version arabe conservée à la bibliothèque de Téhéran. Les discussions intensives qui se sont prolongées pendant celte période fournissent la base de ce travail. Si deux auteurs signent finalement le livre, c'est qu'ils se sont chargés de l'établissement du texte grec et de la rédaction de cette édition. G. W. Most a relu les manuscrits grecs et latins et établi le texte avec l'apparat. Il a préparé les parties de l'introduction relatives à l'histoire de la transmission du texte (I et IV), à l'exception de la partie arabe, due à M. Crubellier (qui a aussi collationné les manuscrits arabes), et élaboré un premier état du sommaire (III). Une première version de la traduction, des notes, et de la section II de l'Introduction, rédigée par A. Laks (qui a également révisé l'Index des mots figurant dans l'édition Ross-Fobes), a été soumise à la critique des membres du séminaire. La mise en forme finale de l'ensemble, qui résulte du travail commun des signataires, a tiré profit des remarques de tous." (Extrait de l'Avant-propos)

(...)

(*) En janvier 1993, Marlein van Raalte a mis à notre disposition le manuscrit du volumineux commentaire de l'opuscule qu'elle publie chez Brill, et qui se réfère au manuscrit de la présente édition. Nous n'avons pu comparer et utiliser les résultats obtenus que dans un cas (cf. p. 69, n. 41). Elle n'a pu, de son côté, tenir compte des dernières modifications apportées à notre propre travail (cf. e.g. notre texte en 11a19-20, notre interprétation de 10b25 ou notre note 37, p. 57).

Italian

1. Reale, Giovanni. 1964. "Traduzione integrale con commento de "la Metafisica" di Teofrasto." In Teofrasto e la sua aporetica metafisica, 165-207. Brescia: La Scuola.

English translation by John Catan of Reale's translation of Theophrastus' Metaphysics in: G. Reale, The concept of first philosophy and the unity of the Metaphysics of Aristotle, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1980, pp. 392-423.

2. Romani, Silvia, ed. 1994. Teofrasto. La Metafisica. Milano: La vita Felice.

Testo greco a fronte, introduzione, traduzione e note a cura di S. Romani.

3. Repici, Luciana, ed. 2013. Teofrasto. Metafisica. Roma: Carocci.

Testo greco a fronte. Introduzione, traduzione e commento di L. Repici.

4. ———. 1977. "Teofrasto. Testimonianze e frammenti." In La logica di Teofrasto. Studio critico e raccolta dei frammenti e delle testimonianze, 193-223. Bologna: Il Mulino.

A cura di Luciana Repici (testi greci e latini di 77 frammenti).

German

1. Henrich, Jörn, ed. 2000. Die Metaphysik Theophrasts. Edition, Kommentar, Interpretation. München: K. G. Saur.

2. Theophrast. 2012. Metaphysik. Hamburg: Meiner.

Griechisch-deutsch. Übersetzt und mit Anmerkungen herausgegeben von Gregor Damschen, Dominic Kaegi und Enno Rudolph. Mit einer Einleitung von Gregor Damschen und Enno Rudolph. Griechischer Text nach der Edition "Théophraste: Métaphysique" von André Laks und Glenn W. Most.

3. Graeser, Andreas, ed. 1973. Die Logischen Fragmente des Theophrast. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

4. Fortenbaugh, William W., ed. 1984. Quellen zur Ethik Theophrasts. Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner.

Selected bibliography on Theophrastus' philosophical works

For the logical works see: Peripatetic Logic: The Work of Eudemus of Rhodes and Theophrastus on the website "History of Logic".

1. Alon, Ilai. 1985. "The Arabic version of Theophrastus' Metaphysica." Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam no. 6:163-217.

2. Anton, John P. 1998. "The concept of causality in Theophrastus' Metaphysics." Journal of Neoplatonic Studies no. 7:1-31.

3. Baltussen, Han. 1992. "Peripatetic dialectic in the De Sensibus in Theophrastus." In Theophrastus: His Psychological, Doxographical, and Scientific Writings, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W. and Gutas, Dimitri, 1-19. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

"The nature and purpose of the De sensibus have remained unstudied ever since the text was printed as a fragment of the lost (so-called) Physikon doxai in Hermann Diels's Doxographi graeci (1879). In this paper its general structure and argument are studied from a Peripatetic point of view by using recent insights in Aristotle's use of dialectic. This procedure provides tools for testing reputable views' (endoxa), which may then serve as a starting-point for a systematic exposition. It is shown that Theophrastus also makes use of dialectical moves to examine the theories on perception."

4. ———. 1993. Theophrastus on theories of perception: Argument and purpose in the De sensibus. Utrcht: Department of philosophy Utrecht University.

5. ———. 1998. "The Purpose of Theophrastus' de Sensibus Reconsidered." Apeiron no. 31:167-199.

6. ———. 2000. Theophrastus against the Presocratics and Plato. Peripatetic dialectic in the De sensibus. Leiden: Brill.

7. ———. 2002. "Theophrastean echoes? The De Sensibus in the Platonic and Aristotelian tradition." In On the Opuscula of Theophrastus, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W. and Wöhrle, Georg, 39-58. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

8. ———. 2014. "The Peripatetics after Aristotle." In The Routledge Companion to Ancient Philosophy, edited by Warren, James and Sheffield, Frisbee, 1211-1246. New York: Routledge.

9. Barbotin, Edmond. 1954. La théorie aristotélicienne de l'intellect d'aprés Théophraste. Louvain: Publications de l'Université de Louvain.

10. ———. 1956. "Autour de la noétique aristotélicienne. L'interprétation du témoignage de Théophraste par Averroès et S. Thomas d'Aquin." In Mélanges de philosophie grecque offerts a Mgr. Diés par ses elèves, ses collegues, ses amis, 27-40. Paris: Vrin.

11. Battegazzore, Antonio. 1989. "La posizione di Teofrasto tra metafisica e fisica." Epistemologia no. 12:49-72.

"L'interprétation moderne fait apparaître de plus en plus clairement les divergences de Théophraste par rapport à Aristote. Sa critique est avant tout dirigée contre ce qui, dans Aristote, porte la marque de l'esprit platonicien, et en particulier contre la doctrine du moteur immobile. Homme de science, aveugle à l'esprit ontologique, Théophraste est rétif à tout système abstrait et global et incapable d'admettre l'idée d'une science au-dessus de toutes les autres sciences. Il représente le triomphe du pragmatisme et de l'empirisme et inaugure la séparation entre philosophie et science. Cette optique caractérise aussi sa recherche physique."

12. ———. 1989. "Il 'Theophrast in Assos' di Konrad Gaiser." Elenchos. Rivista di Studi Sul Pensiero Antico no. 10:217-230.

13. Beatty, Laura. 2022. Looking for Theophrastus: Travels in Search of a Lost Philosopher. London: Atlantic Books.

14. Boulogne, Jacques. 2005. "Plutarque lecteur de Théophraste." In Plutarco e l'età ellenistica. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi: Firenze, 23-24 settembre 2004, edited by Casanova, Angelo, 287-300. Firenze: Università degli studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di scienze dell'antichità "Giorgio Pasquali".

15. Cronin, Patrick. 1992. "The authorship and sources of the Peri Semeion ascribed to Theophrastus." In Theophrastus: His Psychological, Doxographical, and Scientific Writings, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W. and Gutas, Dimitri, 307-345. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

"The purpose of this paper is to establish through an analysis of the language of the text and the arrangement of its contents whether or not the Peri Semeion is a genuine work of Theophrastus. The author concludes that it is the work of an anonymous Peripatetic, probably a pupil of Theophrastus, who had recourse to (a) two written sources, (b) oral weather lore, and (c) his own experience, and that it was probably composed c. 300 BC."

16. Crubellier, Michel. 1992. "La version arabe de la Métaphysique de Théophraste et l'établissement du texte grec." Revue d'Histoire des Texts no. 22:19-45.

"Traduction en francais, sur la base d'une nouvelle lecture des manuscripts conservés, de la version réalisée par Ishaq ibn Hunain (IX/X s.). Témoin d'un état du texte grec antérieur à celui que nous fait connaître la tradition directe, cette version offre un grand intérêt pour la reconstitution de l'original."

17. Daiber, Hans. 1985. "A survey of Theophrastean texts and ideas in Arabic: some new material." In Theophrastus of Eresus: On His Life and Work, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W., Huby, Pamela M. and Long, Anthony A., 103-114. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.

18. Devereux, Daniel. 1988. "The relations between Teophrastus' Metaphysics and Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda." In Theophrastean Studies: On Natural Science, Physics and Metaphysics, Ethics, Religion and Rhetoric, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W. and Sharples, Robert W., 167-188. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

"In Theophrastus's treatise, Metaphysics, we find a critique of Aristotle's metaphysical theories, but the critique strangely relies exclusively on book Lambda for the views it addresses. This fact poses a problem for both Jaeger's hypothesis that Lambda is early (why, then, would Theophrastus treat it as "the" authoritative source for Aristotle's views?), and the unitarian hypothesis that it is late (why is there "no" discussion of the views of the central books?). In the paper I try to show, on the basis of a comparison of the conception of metaphysics in book Lambda and the central books, that Lambda was written earlier; I then offer some evidence for the view that Theophrastus' critique was written during Aristotle's lifetime, before the central books of his Metaphysics were written. "

19. Dieter, Georgi. 1993. "Die Aristoteles- und Theophrastausgabe des Andronikus von Rhodus: ein Beitrag zur Kanonsproblematik. Festschrift fur Klaus Baltzer zum 65. Geburtstag." In Konsequente Traditionsgeschichte, edited by Rüdiger, Bartelmus, 45-78. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

"An den Nachrichten über das Verschwinden und Wiederauftauchen der Schriften des Aristoteles und des Theophrast bis hin zu ihren kritischen Ausgaben lässt sich erkennen, dass dem Einfluss pragmatischer und politischer Überlegungen in den damaligen Entscheidungen und Vollzügen hinsichtlich der Bewahrung von Dokumenten ein grösserer Platz eingeräumt werden muss. Dies gilt auch für den Kanon des Neuen Testaments."

20. Dillon, John. 2002. "Theophrastus' critique of the Old Academy in the Metaphysics." In On the Opuscula of Theophrastus, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W. and Wöhrle, Georg, 175-187. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

21. Düring, Ingemar, ed. 1969. Naturphilosophie bei Aristoteles und Theophrast. Heidelberg: Lothar Stiehm Verlag.

Verhandlungen des 4. Symposium Aristotelicum veranstaltet in Göteborg, August, 1966.

22. Ellis, John. 1988. "The aporematic character of Theophrastus' "Metaphysics"." In Theophrastean Studies: On Natural Science, Physics and Metaphysics, Ethics, Religion and Rhetoric, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W. and Sharples, Robert W., 216-223. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

23. Festugière, André-Jean. 1931. "Le sens des apories métaphysiques de Théophraste." Revue Néoscolastique de Philosophie:40-49.

Repris dans: A.-J. Festugière, Études de philosophie grecque, Paris: Vrin 1971, pp. 357-366.

24. Fortenbaugh, William W. 1984. Quellen zur Ethik Theophrasts. Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner.

25. ———. 2003. Theophrastean Studies. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner.

Collection of 22 essays published between 1975 and 2000 in seven sections: I. Logic (4), II. Psychology (2); III. Ethics and Politics (5); IV. Religion (1); V. Rhetoric (7); VI. Poetics (2); VII. Parody (1).

I. Section: Logic.

1. Theophrastus, fr. 65 Wimmer: Is it important for understanding Peripatetic rhetoric? 15; No. 78 FHS&G: The Sentence in Relation to its Hearers and to the Facts; 2. Theophrastus, no. 84 FHS&G: There’s Nothing New Here! 22 Did Theophrastus Oppose Aristotle and Accept Quantification of the Predicate?; 3. Theophrastus of Eresus: Rhetorical Argument and Hypothetical Syllogistic 35; 4. Cicero, On Invention 1.51-77: Hypothetical Syllogistic and the Early Peripatetics 51-67.

26. ———. 2013. "Cicero's Letter to Atticus 2.16: "a great controversy"." The Classical World no. 106:483-486.

"In Ad Atticum 2.16, Cicero speaks of a great controversy between Theophrastus and Dicaearchus. Consideration of context (literary and political) makes clear that the controversy is the creation of Cicero."

27. Fortenbaugh, William W., and Gutas, Dimitri, eds. 1992. Theophrastus. His Psychological, Doxographical, and Scientific Writings. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

RUSCH vol. V.

"The contents includes two new critical editions: Theophrastus' Meteorology and his work On Fish. Both editions are accompanied by an English translation and commentary. Also included in the volume are discussions of Theophrastus' work On Sense Perception, his Physical Doctrines and the spurious treatise On Signs. Finally there are articles on Theophrastus' notion of place, of intellect and of animal intelligence."

28. Fortenbaugh, William W., Huby, Pamela M., and Long, Anthony A., eds. 1985. Theophrastus of Eresus: On His Life and Work. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.

RUSCH vol. II.

29. Fortenbaugh, William W., and Mirhady, David C., eds. 1994. Peripatetic Rhetoric after Aristotle. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

RUSCH Vol. VI.

30. Fortenbaugh, William W., and Sharples, Robert W., eds. 1988. Theophrastean Studies: On Natural Science, Physics and Metaphysics, Ethics, Religion and Rhetoric. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

RUSCH vol. III.

"The majority of the papers in this volume were originally presented at a conference held at the Institute of Classical Studies in the University of London from the 25th to the 27th of June, 1985."

31. Fortenbaugh, William W., and Steinmetz, Peter, eds. 1989. Cicero's Knowledge of the Peripatos. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

RUSCH Vol. IV.

32. Fortenbaugh, William W., and Wöhrle, Georg, eds. 2002. On the Opuscula of Theophrastus. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

Akten der 3. Tagung der Karl-und-Gertrud-Abel-Stiftung von 19.-23. Juli 1999 in Trier.

33. Frede, Dorothea. 1971. "Theophrasts Kritik am unbewegten Beweger des Aristoteles." Phronesis no. 26:65-79.

34. Gabbe, Myrna. 2008. "Theophrastus and the Intellect as Mixture." Elenchos. Rivista di Studi Sul Pensiero Antico no. 29:61-90.

35. Gaiser, Konrad. 1985. Theophrast in Assos. Zur Entwicklung der Naturwissenschaft zwischen Akademie und Peripatos. Heidelberg: C. Winter.

36. Gigon, Olof. 1988. "The Peripatos in Cicero's De finibus." In Theophrastean Studies: On Natural Science, Physics and Metaphysics, Ethics, Religion and Rhetoric, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W. and Sharples, Robert W., 259-271. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

37. ———. 1989. "Theophrast in Cicero's De finibus." In Cicero's Knowledge of the Peripatos, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W. and Steinmetz, Peter, 159-185. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

38. Glucker, John. 1998. "Theoprastus, the Academy, and the Athenian philosophical atmosphere." In Theophrastus:Reappraising the Sources, edited by Ophuijsen, Johannes van and Raalte, Marlein Van, 299-316. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

39. Görler, Woldemar. 1998. "Thophrastus, the Academy, Antiochus and Cicero: a response (to John Glucker) and an appendix." In Theophrastus: Reappraising the Sources, edited by Ophuijsen, Johannes van and Raalte, Marlein Van, 319-329. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

40. Gottschalk, Hans B. 1972. "Notes on the Wills of the Peripatetic Scholarchs." Hermes no. 100:314-342.

41. ———. 1985. "Prolegomena to an edition of Theophrastus' fragments." In Aristoteles. Werk und Wirkung, Paul Moraux gewidmet, I: Aristoteles und seine Schule, edited by Wiesner, Jürgen, 543-556. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"To sum up, the layout of the text pages would be as follows:

1. The text, each fragment introduced by a reference to the primary source; it would use two sizes of print, one for the fragments themselves and the other for the context, but only one fount each for Greek, Roman and Italic.

2. Three, or less ideally two, apparatus, of references to earlier publications, of secondary attestations, and apparatus criticus.

This gives all the information needed for a first reading of the fragments: the actual quotations, enough of the context to make them intelligible, and the basic facts about the constitution of the texts and their fortuna up to the present. But it would not answer all the questions a reader may legitimately ask, and so a commentary would be unavoidable. It will have to deal with several kinds of questions:

1. Textual problems, involving choices between the readings of different manuscripts and also, where the same fragment has been transmitted independently by several intermediaries, between the versions they present.

2. The accuracy and extent of the quotation. This may involve some discussion of the intermediate author's motive for quoting Theophrastus and the distortions or adaptations, particularly of terminology, he may have imported.

3. The relationship of each fragment to the others, especially those belonging to the same work or subject-group. This will necessitate some consideration of the form and subject-matter of the book from which each fragment was originally taken, and where there is sufficient evidence, its arrangement and method of treatment. But in view of the available evidence, this will in most cases fall far short of anything that could be called a "reconstruction".

4. The meaning of the fragment and its historical context, i.e. what Theophrastus is trying to say and what place his ideas have in the history of philosophy." pp. 554-55

42. ———. 1987. "Did Theophrastus write a Categories?" Philologus no. 131:245-253.

43. ———. 1998. "Theophrastus and the Peripatos." In Theophrastus: Reappraising the Sources, edited by Ophuijsen, Johannes van and Raalte, Marlein Van, 281-298. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

44. Gutas, Dimitri. 1985. "The Life, Works, and Sayings of Theophrastus in the Arabic Tradition." In Theophrastus of Eresus: On His Life and Work, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W., Huby, Pamela M. and Long, Anthony A., 63-102. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.

Reprinted as Chapter VII in D. Gutas, Greek Philosophers in the Arabic Tradition, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.

45. ———. 1985. "The starting point of philosophical studies in Alexandrian and Arabic Aristotelianism." In Theophrastus of Eresus: On His Life and Work, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W., Huby, Pamela M. and Long, Anthony A., 115-123. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.

46. Hecquet-Devienne, Myriam. 2004. "A legacy from the Library of the Lyceum? Inquiry into the joint transmission of Theophrastus' and Aristotle's Metaphysics based on evidence provided by manuscripts E and J." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology no. 102:171-189.

"A scholium in Paris, BNF, gr. 1853, fol. 312r, provides evidence for the tradition of the Aristotelian corpus. The scholium reveals that Theophrastus' Metaphysics was not on early lists of Theophrastus' works. It also reveals that Nicolaus of Damascus in his study of Aristotle's Metaphysics (*) identified the author of the work as Theophrastus. The transmission of Theophrastus' Metaphysics is thus closely linked to that of the Aristotelian corpus. Conclusions are: that both Book Λ of Aristotle's Metaphysics and Theophrastus' Metaphysics were written before the central books of Aristotle's treatise as it is known to us; and that Theophrastus' Metaphysics could have provoked, in response, Aristotle' writing of De partibus animalium and De generatione animalium."

(*) Nicolaus Damascenus on the Philosophy of Aristotle, edited by H. J. Drossart Lulofs, Leiden: Brill, 1965 (reprint with additions and corrections 1969).

47. Horky, Phillip Sidney. 2013. "Theophrastus on Platonic and 'Pythagorean' Imitation." Classical Quarterly no. 63:688-712.

"In the twenty-fourth aporia of Theophrastus' Metaphysics, there appears an important, if ‘bafflingly elliptical’, ascription to Plato and the ‘Pythagoreans’ of a theory of reduction to the first principles via ‘imitation’:

Plato and the Pythagoreans make the distance [between the first principles and everything else] a great one, and they make all things desire to imitate fully; and yet, they set up a certain opposition, as it were, between the Indefinite Dyad and the One. In the former [resides] the Unlimited and the Unordered and, as it were, all Shapelessness as such; and they make it altogether impossible for the nature of the universe to exist without this [that is, the Indefinite Dyad] – it [that is, the Indefinite Dyad] could only have an equal share in things, or even exceed the other [first principle, that is, the One] – whereby they also make their first principles contrary [to one another]. Therefore, those who ascribe causation to the god claim that not even the god is able to reduce all things to the best, but, even if at all, only in so far as is possible. And perhaps he wouldn't even choose to, if indeed it were to result in the destruction of all existence, given that it [that is, existence] is constituted from contraries and consists of contraries. ((Theophrastus, Metaphysics, 11a26–b12)."

[Geek text omitted]

48. Howald, Ernst. 1920. "Die Schriftenverzeichnisse des Aristoteles und des Theophrast." Hermes no. 55:204-221.

49. Huby, Pamela M. 1991. "Stages in the development of language about Aristotle's Nous." In Aristotle and the Later Tradition, edited by Blumenthal, Henry and Robinson, Howard, 129-143. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

50. ———. 2002. "Arabic evidence about Theophrastus' De Sensibus." In On the Opuscula of Theophrastus, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W. and Wöhrle, Georg, 59-63. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

51. Isnardi Parente, Margherita. 1971. "Théophraste, Metaphysica 6 a 23 ss." Phronesis no. 26:49-64.

"Le passage 6 a 23 ss. de la Métaphysique de Théophraste, si, contre l'opinion de plusieurs éditeurs, on le lit sans y supprimer aucun mot, nous donne un exemple parmi les autres et très important, de la tendance de la première Academie (et non pas de Platon lui même, la théorie qu'on y envisage ne pouvant pas être reconduite a Platon) a voir la realité, dans sa totalité, partagée en deux chaînes métaphysiques, celle des êtres qui dépendent de l'Un et des nombres (l'âme, le ciel, le temps, tout ce qui a en soi un principe d'ordre mathématique) et celle des êtres qui dependent de la Dyade indefinie, qui n'ont en soi aucune forme, ordre ou determination."

52. Kidd, Ian Gray. 1996. "Theophrastus Fr. 184 FHS&G: some thoughts on his arguments." In Polyhistor: Studies in the History and Historiography of Ancient Philosophy Presented to Jaap Mansfeld on His Sixtieth Birthday, edited by Algra, Keimpe, Van der Horst, Pieter and Runia, David, 135-144. Leiden: Brill.

53. Kneale, William, and Kneale, Martha. 1962. The Development of Logic. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Reprinted 1975 with corrections; on Theophrastus see pp. 100-112.

54. ———. 1972. "Prosleptic propositions and arguments." In Islamic Philosophy and the Classical Tradition. Essays Presented by His Friends and Pupils to Richard Walzer on His Seventieth Birthday, edited by Stern, S.M., Hourani, Albert and Brown, Vivian, 189-207. London: Bruno Cassirer.

55. Krämer, Hans-Joachim. 1968. "Grundbegriffe akademischer Dialektik in den biologischen Schriften von Aristoteles und Theophrast." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie no. 111:293-333.

56. ———. 1973. "Zum Standort der 'Metaphysik' Theophrasts." In Zetesis. Album amicorum: door vrienden en collegas aangeboden aan E. de Strycker, 206-214. Antwerpen-Utrecht: De Nederlandse Boekhandel.

57. Laks, André. 1990. " 'The more' and 'the full' : on the reconstruction of Parmenides' theory of sensation in Theophrastus, De sensibus, 3-4." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 8:1-18.

"Theophrastus distinguished two factors in Parmenides' theory of knowledge: the nature of the element that knows, and the adaptation to the object. Theophrastus constructed Parmenides' theory of sensation as an anticipation of that of Empedocles. On Theophrastus' interpretation, 'the full' is thought, 'the more' a principle of variation that provides an explanation for the changing thought of man."

58. ———. 2007. Histoire, doxographie, vérité. Études sur Aristote, Théophraste et la philosophie présocratique. Leuven: Peeters.

59. Laks, André, Most, Glenn W., and Rudolph, Enno. 1988. "Four notes on Theophrastus' Metaphysics." In Theophrastean Studies: On Natural Science, Physics and Metaphysics, Ethics, Religion and Rhetoric, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W. and Sharples, Robert W., 224-256. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

1) The relative date of the Metaphysics; 2) E)NERGEIA in Aristotle and Theophrastus; 3) Eurytus in Theophrastus' Metaphysics; 4) Heraclitus D-K 22 B 124 in Theophrastus' Metaphysics.

60. Lennox, James G. 1985. "Theophrastus on the limits of teleology." In Theophrastus of Eresus: On His Life and Work, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W., Huby, Pamela M. and Long, Anthony A., 143-163. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.

61. Lonfrigg, James. 1975. "Elementary physics in the Lyceum and Stoa." Isis no. 66:211-229.

62. Long, Antohony A. 1996. "Theophrastus' "De sensibus" on Plato." In Polyhistor: Studies in the History and Historiography of Ancient Philosophy Presented to Jaap Mansfeld on His Sixtieth Birthday, edited by Algra, Keimpe, Van der Horst, Pieter and Runia, David, 345-362. Leiden: Brill.

63. Long, Anthony A. 1998. "Theophrastus and the Stoa." In Theophrastus: Reappraising the Sources, edited by Ophuijsen, Johannes van and Raalte, Marlein Van, 355-383. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

64. Mansfeld, Jaap. 1992. "A Theophrastean excursus on God and Nature and its aftermath in Hellenistic thought." Phronesis no. 37:314-335.

65. ———. 1996. "Aristote et la structure du De sensibus de Théophraste." Phronesis no. 51:158-188.

66. Margoliouth, David Samuel. 1892. "Remarks on the Arabic version of the Metaphysics of Theophrastus." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society:187-252.

67. Matelli, Elisabetta. 1992. "ΕΝΔΙΑΘΕΤΟΣ e ΠΡΟΦΟΡΙΚΟΣ ΛΟΓΟΣ. Note sulla origine della formula e della nozione." Aevum. Rassegna di Scienze storiche linguistiche e filologiche no. 66:43-70.

68. ———. 1999. "Il tono dell' "anima" in Teofrasto: una nuova lettura del frammento FHS&G 712 sull'ὑπόκρισις." Aevum. Rassegna di Scienze storiche linguistiche e filologiche (73):53-73.

69. Mcdiarmid, J. B. 1953. "Theophrastus on the Presocratic Causes." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology no. 61:85-156.

Reprinted in D. J. Furley & R. E. Allen (eds.), Studies in Presocratic Philosophy, Vol. I: The Beginnings of Philosophy, London/New York, Routledge & Kegan Paul 1970, pp. 178-238.

70. ———. 1959. "Plato in Theophrastus' De Sensibus." Phronesis no. 4:59-70.

71. Millett, Paul. 2007. Theophrastus and His World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

72. Modrak, Deborah. 1994. "Theophrastus and recent scholarship." Journal of the History of Ideas no. 55:337-345.

Reviewed works:

On Stoic and Peripatetic Ethics: The Work of Arius Didymus, by William W. Fortenbaugh;

Theophrastus of Eresus on his Life and Work, by William W. Fortenbaugh; Pamela M. Huby; Anthony A. Long;

Theophrastean Studies on Natural Science, Physics and Metaphysics, Ethics, Religion and Rhetoric, by William W. Fortenbaugh; Robert W. Sharples;

Cicero's Knowledge of the Peripatos, by William W. Fortenbaugh; Peter Steinmetz;

Theopharastus His Psychological, Doxographical and Scientific Writings, by William W. Fortenbaugh; Dimitri Gutas;

Theophrastus of Eresus Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought and Influence, by William W. Fortenbaugh; Pamela M. Huby; Robert W. Sharples; Dimitri Gutas.

73. Moraux, Paul. 1979. "Le De anima dans la tradition grecque. Quelques aspects de l'interprétation du traité, de Théophraste à Thémistius." In Aristotle on Mind and the Senses. Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Aristotelicum, edited by Lloyd, Geoffrey Ernest Richard and Owen, Gwilym Ellis Lane, 281-324. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Aristotelicum, Cambridge, 1975.

74. Morison, Ben. 2010. "Did Theophrastus Reject Aristotle's Account of Place?" Phronesis no. 55:68-103.

"It is commonly held that Theophrastus criticized or rejected Aristotle's account of place. The evidence that scholars put forward for this view, from Simplicius' commentary on Aristotle's Physics, comes in two parts: (1) Simplicius reports some aporiai that Theophrastus found for Aristotle's account; (2) Simplicius cites a passage of Theophrastus which is said to 'bear witness' to the theory of place which Simplicius himself adopts (that of his teacher Damascius) — a theory which is utterly different from Aristotle's. But the aporiai have relatively straightforward solutions, and we have no reason to suppose that Theophrastus didn't avail himself of them (and some reason to think that he did). Moreover, the text which Simplicius cites as bearing witness to Damascius' view on closer inspection does not seem to be inconsistent with Aristotle's account of place or natural motion. "

75. Most, Glenn W. 1988. "Three Latin Translations of Theophrastus' Metaphysics." Revue d'Histoire des Texts no. 18:169-200.

"Recherches sur le texte grec utilisé par Barthélemy de Messine, Gregorius Tiphernas et l'auteur de la traduction anonyme publiée par Henri Estienne (Paris 1515) pour leurs versions respectives de la Métaphysique. Il apparaît que ces traductions reposent toutes sur des mansucripts conservés et ne peuvent guère contribuer à l'établissement du texte."

76. Movia, Giancarlo. 1967. "Il νοῦς ποιητικός in Teofrasto di Ereso." Vichiana no. 4:5-28.

77. ———. 1968. Anima e intelletto. Ricerche sulla psicologia peripatetica da Teofrasto a Cratippo. Padova: Antenore.

78. Ophuijsen, Johannes van, and Raalte, Marlein Van, eds. 1998. Theophrastus: Reappraising the Sources. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

RUSCH Vol. 8.

79. Pötscher, Walter. 1970. Strukturprobleme der aristotelischen und theophrastischen Gottesvorstellung. Leiden: Brill.

80. Raalte, Marlein Van. 1988. "The idea of the cosmos as an organic whole in Theophrastus' Metaphysics." In Theophrastean Studies: On Natural Science, Physics and Metaphysics, Ethics, Religion and Rhetoric, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W. and Sharples, Robert W., 189-215. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

"Detailed study of the text reveals that, in spite of its aporetic character, Theophrastus's Metaphysics contains not only a criticism of Aristotelian tenets such as the principle of teleology and the idea of an unmoved mover, but also his own suggestions for a different kind of explanation, in which the cosmos is conceived as a hierarchically structured whole bound by the natural coherence of its parts. Theophrastus's final rejection of Platonic formism -- which takes to its logical conclusion the course taken by Aristotle himself -- accounts for his affinity with both Heraclitean and Stoic thought."

81. ———. 2003. "God and the nature of the world: the "theological excursus" in Theophrastus' Meteorology." Mnemosyne no. 56:306-342.

"The so-called theological excursus in the Arabic translation of Theophrastus' Meteorology shows a division between two kinds of causation that gives rise to serious doubts concerning the authorship of the passage. Whereas from the Metaphysics it may be inferred that Theophrastus was inclined to consider the mode of being of the cosmos, by its very essence consisting of both order and disorder, as good and divine, the excursus maintains that god is responsible only for the order in the world (which is good), whereas the nature of the world itself, with its plurality of causes, accounts for the disorder (which is bad). It is argued that those passages adduced as a parallel for the excursus (from the Metaphysics and De pietate in particular) do not bear out this claim, and that other Theophrastean texts and sources make it unlikely that Theophrastus is the author of the excursus in its present form."

82. Rashed, Marwan. 2007. Essentialisme. Alexandre d'Aphrodise entre logique, physique et cosmologie. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Chapitre I. Les aristotélismes possibles et l'éxegèse ancienne § 2. Le questionnaire de Théophraste 6-7 et Chapitre X. Mécanisme § 1. Eternité et absoluité: l'hésitation péripateticienne et le principe de Théophraste 261; § 2. Alexandre et le problème de Théophraste 269.

83. Reale, Giovanni. 1964. Teofrasto e la sua aporetica metafisica. Brescia: La Scuola.

Saggio di ricostruzione e di interpretazione storico-filosofica con traduzione e commento della "Metafisica".

Ristampa parziale in: G. Reale, Il concetto di filosofia prima e l'unità della Metafisica di Aristotele, Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1961 (nuova edizione Milano: Bompiani, 2008).

84. ———. 1980. The concept of first philosophy and the unity of the Metaphysics of Aristotle. Albany: State University of New York Press.

This volume is a translation of "Il concetto di filosofia prima e l'unità della Metafisica di Aristotele", Milano, Vita e Pensiero, 1967, third edition). In addition the volume includes the fourth chapter from Reale's work on Theophrastus ("Teofrasto e la sua aporetica metafisica", 1964), as well as a translation of Reale's translation of Theophrastus' Metaphysics.

85. Regenbogen, Otto. 1940. "Theophrastus von Eresos." In Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Vol VII Suppl., edited by Pauly, August and Wissowa, Georg, 1354-1562. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler.

86. Repici, Luciana. 1990. "Limits of teleology in Theophrastus' Metaphysics?" Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 72:182-213.

87. Rudolph, Enno. 1988. "Energeia in Aristotle and Theophrastus." In Theophrastean Studies: On Natural Science, Physics and Metaphysics, Ethics, Religion and Rhetoric, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W. and Sharples, Robert W., 233-237. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

88. ———. 2000. "Theophrast. Destruktion der Metaphysik?" In Philosophen des Altertums. Eine Einführung, Bd. I: Von der Frühzeit bis zur Klassik, edited by Erler, Michael and Graeser, Andreas, 2014-214. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

89. Runia, David T. 1989. "Aristotle and Theophrastus conjoined in the writings of Cicero." In Cicero's Knowledge of the Peripatos, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W. and Steinmetz, Peter, 23-38. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

"An analysis is given of the 16 passages in Cicero's rhetorical and philosophical works where the names of Aristotle and Theophrastus are mentioned together. Cicero joins them together so often (1) because of his great interest in philosophical successions, and (2) because he regards the encyclopedic research carried out in the early Peripatos as an example to follow in his own attempt to present philosophy to a Roman audience."

90. Rutten, Christian. 1992. "La stylometrie et la question de 'Métaphysique' K." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 90:486-496.

"Les méthodes de la stylométrie fournissent des indications non négligeables concernant la chronologie relative des parties de la Métaphysique et leur authenticité aristotélicienne. Le passage de Met. K 7 (1064 a 28 - 1064 b 14), où la science de l'être en tant qu'être se trouve assimilée à la science de l'être divin, est plus proche, du point de vue de la stylométrie, de la Métaphysique de Théophraste que de celle d'Aristote. Il en va de même pour Met. Kappa 10. En revanche, pour les autres chapitres, le classement fondé sur la stylométrie correspond à l'évolution que paraît avoir connue, à divers égards, la pensée d'Aristote."

91. Rutten, Christian, and Benzécri, Jean-Paul. 1990. "Métaphysique d'Aristote et Métaphysique de Théophraste: analyse comparative des chapitres fondée sur les fréquences d'emploi des parties du discours." Cahiers de l'Analyse de Données no. 14:37-58.

92. Schmitt, Charles Bernhard. 1984. "Theophrastus in the Middle Ages " In The Aristotelian Tradition and Renaissance Universities, edited by Schmitt, Charles Bernhard. London: Variorum Reprints.

93. Schnayder, J. 1973. "Der Begriff Dynamis in den Werken des Theophrastos." Eos. Commentarii Societatis Philologae Polonorum no. 61:49-56.

94. Schofield, Malcolm. 2002. "Leucippus, Democritus and the oυ μαλλoν Principle: An Examination of Theophrastus Phys.Op. Fr. 8." Phronesis no. 47:253-263.

"This paper is a piece of detective work. Starting from an obvious excrescence in the transmitted text of Simplicius's treatment of the foundations of Presocratic atomism near the beginning of his Physics commentary, it excavates a Theophrastean correction to Aristotle's tendency to lump Leucippus and Democritus together: Theophrastus made application of the oυ μαλλoν principle in the sphere of ontology an innovation by Democritus. Along the way it shows Simplicius reordering his Theophrastean source in his efforts to find material which will strengthen the contrast between Leucippus's atomism and Eleatic metaphysics. And it argues that in doing so he all but obliterates Theophrastus's attempt to point up the Democritean credentials of the oυ μαλλoν principle."

95. Sharples, Robert W. 1984. "Some Medieval and Renaissance Citations of Theophrastus " Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes no. 47:186-190.

96. ———. 1998. "Theophrastus as philosopher and Aristotelian." In Theophrastus: Reappraising the Sources, edited by Ophuijsen, Johannes van and Raalte, Marlein Van, 267-280. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

97. ———. 2002. "Aristotelian theology after Aristotle." In Traditions of Theology: Studies in Hellenistic Theology, Its Background and Aftermath, edited by Frede, Dorothea and Laks, André, 1-40. Leiden: Brill.

98. Skemp, Joseph B. 1969. "The Metaphysics of Theophrastus in Relation to the Doctrine of κίνησις in Plato’s Later Dialogues." In Naturphilosophie bei Aristoteles und Theophrast. Verhandlungen des 4. Symposium Aristotelicum veranstaltet in Göteborg, August 1966, edited by Düring, Ingemar, 217-223. Heidelberg: Lothar Stiehm Verlag.

99. Sollenberger, Michael G. 1985. "Diogenes Laertius 5.36-57: The Vita Theophrasti." In Theophrastus of Eresus: On His Life and Work, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W., Huby, Pamela M. and Long, Anthony A., 1-62. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.

100. ———. 1987. "A note on the lives of Theophrastus and Strato in Diogenes Laertius 5.57-58." Classical Philology no. 82:228-230.

"In dividing the text, editors have produced an unjustifiable correction. The διεδέξατο clause is clearly the conclusion of the life of Theophrastus, not the beginning of the life of Strato."

101. Sollenberger, Michael George. 1990. Diogenes Laertius' Life of Theophrastus: A Critical Edition of the Greek Text With a Translation and Commentary.

Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey, 1984.

Availble at UMi Dissertation Express ref. n. 8424162.

102. Sollenberger, Michael G. 1992. "The lives of the Peripatetics: an analysis of the contents and structure of Diogenes Laertius' 'Vitae philosophorum' book 5." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, vol. 36.6, edited by Haase, Wolfgang and Temporini, Hildegard, 3793-3879. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

103. Sorabji, Richard. 1988. "Theophrastus on place." In Theophrastean Studies: On Natural Science, Physics and Metaphysics, Ethics, Religion and Rhetoric, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W. and Sharples, Robert W., 139-166. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

104. Stark, R. 1958. "La definizione teofrastea della retorica." Maia. Rivista di letterature classiche no. 10:101-105.

105. Steinmetz, Peter. 1964. Die Physik des Theophrastos von Eresos. Bad Homburg: Dr. Max Gehlen.

106. Stratton, George Malcolm. 1917. Theophrastus and the Greek Physiological Psychology before Aristotle. New York: Macmillan.

Reprint Amsterdam: Bonset Schippers 1964.

107. Szegedy-Maszak, Andrew. 1981. The Nomoi of Theophrastus. New York: Arno Press.

108. Theiler, Willy. 1958. "Die Entstehung der Metaphysik des Aristoteles. Mit einem Anhang über Theophrasts Metaphysik." Museum Helveticum no. 15:85-105.

Nachdruck: W. Theiler, Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1970 pp. 318-342; F.-P. Hager (Hrsg.), Metaphysik und Theologie des Aristoteles, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1969, pp. 266-298.

109. Touwaide, Alain. 1991. "L'œuvre scientifique de Théophraste d'Erèse: bilan et perspectives de la recherche: notes en marge du "Project Theophrastus"." Nuncius no. 6:279-293.

110. Usener, Hermann. 1861. "Zur Theophrasts metaphysichen Bruchstück." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie no. 16:259-281.

Nachdruck H. Usener, Kleine Schriften. Arbeiten zur griechischen Philosophie und Rhetorik. Grammatische und text-kritische Beitrage, Vol. I, Leipzig-Berlin: Teubner 1912, pp. 91-111.

111. Viano, Cristina. 1992. "Eraclito nella Metafisica di Teofrasto. Il Fr. 124 DK e la discussione sui principi del Cap. IV e V." Rivista di Storia della Filosofia no. 3:455-476.

112. Wehrli, Fritz Robert. 1983. "Theophrastos." In Die Philosophie der Antike. Band 3: Ältere Akademie. Aristoteles. Peripatos, edited by Flashar, Hellmut, 474-522. Basel: Schwabe.

Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie begründet von Friedrich Ueberweg.

113. White, Stephen A. 2002. "Opuscula and Opera in the Catalogue of Theophrastus' works." In On the Opuscula of Theophrastus, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W. and Wöhrle, Georg, 9-38. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

114. Wiersma, W. 1940. "Der angebliche Streit des Zenon und Theophrast über die Ewigkeit der Welt." Mnemosyne no. 8:235-243.

115. Wilson, Nigel G. 1961. "Some manuscripts of Theophrastus." Classical Philology no. 56:109.

116. ———. 1962. "The manuscripts of Theophrastus." Scriptorium no. 16:96-102.

117. Yartz, Frank J. 1998. "The Importance of Theophrastus' Metaphysics in Ancient Greek Intellectual History." Ancient World no. 29:151-160.

"In raising important questions about the nature of In raising important questions about the nature of arché, Theophrastus puts the Greek philosophers in dialogue with each other; hence we get a sense of the intellectual history of the period, especially concerning how the view of the astronomers and empirical scientists had an impact on the notions held earlier by Aristotle."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Stoic Ontology: Existence vs Subsistence

Stoic Ontology

(page under construction)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on Ancient Stoic Ontology

Bibliography

1. Algra, Keimpe. 1995. Concepts of Space in Greek Thought. Leiden: Brill.

Contents: Abbreviations IX; Introduction 1; 1. Writing the history of the concept of space 7; 2. Topos, Chôra, Kenon: some case studies 31; 3. Concepts of space in Plato's Timaeus 72; 4. Conceptions of Topos in Aristotle 121; 5. Problems in Aristotle's theory of place and early Peripatetic reactions 192; 6. Place, space and void in Stoic thought 261; Conclusions 335; Appeind: The Stoic theory of space and Aristotelian physics 336; Bibliography 341; Indices 351-363

2. Aubenque, Pierre. 1991. "Une Occasion Manquée: La Genèse Avortée De La Distinction Entre L'"Étant" Et Le "Quelque Chose"." In Études Sur Le Sophiste De Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 365-385. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

3. Barnes, Jonathan, and Mignucci, Mario, eds. 1988. Matter and Metaphysics. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

Proceedings of the fourth Symposium Hellenisticum, held in Pontignano, Italy, August 21-28, 1986.

Contents: Richard Sorabji: The Lays of Ancient Tuscany 9; Gabriele Giannantoni: Introduzione 11; Jacques Brunschwig: La théorie stoïcienne du genre suprême et l'ontologie platonicienne 19; Mario Mignucci: The Stoic notion of relatives 129; Jonathan Barnes: Bits and pieces 223; David Sedley: Epicurean anti-reductionism 295; Malcolm Schofield: The retrenchable present 329; Nicholas Denyer: Stoicism and token reflexivity 375; Anna Maria Ioppolo: Le cause antecedenti in Cicero De fato 40 397; Fernanda Decleva Caizzi: La "materia scorrevole". Sulle tracce di un dibattito perduto 425; Michael Wolff: Hipparchus and the Stoic theory of motion 471; Index locorum 549; Index of names 573; Index of subjects 581; Index of Greek and Latin terms 591-596.

4. Bobzien, Susanne. 1998. Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.

See Chapter 3 Modality, determinism, and freedom pp. 97-143.

"A considerable number of our testimonies about the Stoic doctrine of determinism are concerned with modality. In particular the concepts of possibility and necessity were central to some parts of its discussion. It seems that Hellenistic philosophers generally agreed that an action or, in general, activity does not depend on us and is not in our power, if it (or a corresponding proposition) is necessary or impossible; or, put differently, that a prerequisite for something's depending on us is that it is both possible and non-necessary. This fact is invoked both by the Stoics in defence of their theory and in the criticism of their opponents. But in the debate over fate and determinism, modalities played a role in a number of different contexts. They are dealt with separately in the following sections:

- Chrysippus rejected Diodorus' modal theory, because of its built-in necessitarian consequences (3.1.2).

- Chrysippus developed his own set of modal notions, which, in themselves, do not lead to necessitarianism and which secure a necessary condition for that which depends on us (3.1.3-5).

- Some critics of Chrysippus and the Stoics developed arguments to show that there is a conflict between Chrysippus' modal notions and the Stoic theory of fate (3.2).

- Some later Stoics replied to this type of objection by giving an epistemic interpretation of Chrysippus' modal notions (3.3).

- Critics of the Stoics objected that fate, qua Necessity, renders all events necessary; but this objection is not justified in Chrysippus' philosophy (3.4)." p. 97

5. ———. 2005. "Early Stoic Determinism." Revue de Mètaphysique et de Morale:489-516.

"Although from the 2nd century BC to the 3rd AD the problems of determinism were discussed almost exclusively under the heading of fate, early Stoic determinism, as introduced by Zeno and elaborated by Chrysippus, was developed largely in Stoic writings on physics, independently of any specific theory of fate". Stoic determinism was firmly grounded in Stoic cosmology, and the Stoic notions of causes, as corporeal and responsible for both sustenance and change, and of effects as incorporeal and as predicates, are indispensable for a full understanding of the theory. Stoic determinism was originally not presented as causal determinism, but with a strong teleological element, in the context of a theory of natural motions, which makes use of a distinction between a global and an inner-worldly perspective on events. However, Chrysippus also employed his conception of causality in order to explicate his determinism, and can be shown to have maintained a universal causal determinism in the modern sense of the term. The teleological and mechanical elements of early Stoic determinism were brought together in Chrysippus' conception of fate, which places elements of rationality in every cause."

6. Boeri, Marcelo. 2001. "The Stoics on Bodies and Incorporeals." Review of Metaphysics no. 54:723-752.

7. Bréhier, Émile. 1908. La Théorie Des Incorporels Dans L'ancien Stoïcisme. Paris: Vrin.

Neuvième édition 1997.

8. Bronowski, Ada. 2007. "The Stoic View on Universals." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 18:71-87.

9. Brunschwig, Jacques. 1988. "La Théorie Stoïcienne Du Genre Suprême Et L'ontologie Platonicienne." In Matter and Metaphysics. Fourth Symposium Hellenisticum, edited by Jonathan, Barnes and Mignucci, Mario, 19-127. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

Translated in English by Janet Lloyd as: The Stoic theory of the supreme genus and platonic ontology, in: J. Brunschwig, Papers in Hellenistic Philosophy, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 92-157.

10. ———. 1990. "Sur Une Faon Stoïcienne De Ne Pas Être." Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie no. 122:389-403.

Repris dans: J. Brunschwig, Études sur les philosophies hellénistiques: Epicurisme, stoïcisme, scepticisme, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1995.

Translated in English by Janet Lloyd as: On a Stoic Way of Not Being, in: J. Brunschwig, Papers in Hellenistic Philosophy, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 158-169.

11. ———. 1997. "Les Stoiciens." In Philosophie Grecque, edited by Canto-Sperber, Monique, 511-562. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

12. ———. 2003. "Stoic Metaphysics." In The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, edited by Inwood, Brad, 206-232. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

13. Caston, Victor. 1999. "Something and Nothing: The Stoics on Concepts and Universals." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 17:145-213.

14. Christiansen, Johnny. 1962. An Essay on the Unity of Stoic Philosophy. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.

Second edition with a Foreword and Afterword by Sten Ebbesen and Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2013.

15. Couloubaritsis, Lambros. 2005. "Les Structure Hénologiques Dans Le Stoïcisme Ancien." In Les Stoïciens, edited by Romeyer Dherbey, Gilbert and Gourinat, Jean-Baptiste, 187-211. Paris: Vrin.

16. Courtine, Jean-Franois. 1980. "Note Complémentaire Pour L'histoire Du Vocabulaire De L'être. Les Traductions Latines D' Ousía Et La Compréhension Romano-Stoïcienne De L'être." In Concepts Et Catégories De La Pensée Antique, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 33-87. Paris: Vrin.

Reprinted and updated in: J-F. Courtine, Les catégories de l'être. Études de philosophie ancienne et médiévale, Paris, Press Universitaires de France, 2003, pp. 11-77.

17. Crivelli, Paolo. 2007. "The Stoics on Definitions and Universals." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 18:89-122.

18. de Harven, Vanessa. 2012. The Coherence of Stoic Ontology, University of Calfornia, Berkeley.

Unpublished Ph.D dissertation available at ProQuest Dissertations and Thesis.

19. Drozdek, Adam. 2002. "Lekton. Stoic Logic and Ontology." Acta antiqua.Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae no. 42:93-104.

"For the Stoics, the lekton is as an intermediary between the thought and the object. They do not exist independently of the mind, but, at the same time, the mind does not create them. Due to this status, they guarantee intersubjectivity of the rational discourse. They are incorporeals that do not exist, but subsist and the Stoic Logos-God guarantees their permanent subsistence. The lekta are semantico-syntactic entities. Their role is analogous to the role of an interlingua used as a tool for automated translation of languages."

20. Epp, Ronald H., ed. 1985. Recovering the Stoics. Memphis: Memphis University Press.

Spindel Conference 1984 published in the Southern Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary volume 23.

Contents: Ronald H. Epp: Editor's Introduction; John M. Rist: Stoicism: some reflections on the state of the art 1; Anthony A. Long: The Stoics on world-conflagration and everlasting recurrence 13; David E. Hahm: The Stoic theory of change 39: Nicholas P. White: The role of physics in Stoic ethics 57; Brad Inwood: The Stoics on the grammar of action 75; Davide Sedley: The Stoic theory of universals 87; Peter Barker: Jean Pena and Stoic physics in the 16th century 93; B. J. T. Dobbs: Newton and Stoicism 109; Ronald H. Epp: Stocism bibliography 125-171.

21. Eunyoung Ju, Anna. 2009. "Th E Stoic Ontology of Geometrical Limits." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 54:371-389.

22. Goldschmidt, Victor. 1953. Les Système Stoicien Et L'idée De Temps. Paris: Vrin.

Deuxième édition 1969; troisième édition 1977; quatrième édition 1979.

23. ———. 1972. " Hyparxein Et Hyphistanai Dans La Philosophie Stoicienne." Revue des Études Grecques:331-345.

Repris dans: V. Goldschmidt, Écrits. Tome 1: Études de philosophie ancienne, Paris, Vrin, 1984, pp. 187-201.

24. Goulet, Richard. 2005. "Les Principes Stoïciens Sont'ils Des Corps Ou Sont-Ils Incorporels?" In Agonistes. Essays in Honour of Denis O'brien, edited by Dillon, John and Dixsaut, Monique, 157-176. Aldershot: Ashgate.

25. Gourinat, Jean-Baptiste. 2005. "La Disparition Et La Reconstitution Du Stoïcisme: Éléments Pour Une Histoire." In Les Stoiciens, edited by Romeyer Dherbey, Gilbert and Gourinat, Jean-Baptiste, 13-28. Paris: Vrin.

26. Gourinat, Jean-Baptiste, and Barnes, Jonathan, eds. 2009. Lire Les Stoïciens. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Table des matières: Avant-propos 1; Abréviations 3; Jonathan Barnes et Jean-Baptiste Gourinat: Introduction 5; Première partie: L'école stoïcienne à l'époque hellénistique. I. Jean-Baptiste Gourinat: Épistémologie, rhétorique et grammaire 23; II. Paolo Crivelli: La dialectique 41; III. Jean-Baptiste Gourinat: Le monde 63; IV. David Sedley: Les dieux et les hommes 79; V. Thomas Bénatouil: La vertu, le bonheur et la nature 99; VI. Suzanne Husson: Le convenable, les passions, le sage et la cité 115; Seconde partie: Le stoïcisme impérial. VII. Jonathan Barnes: Grammaire, rhétorique, épistémologie et dialectique 135; VIII. Keimpe Algra: Cosmologie et théologie 151; IX. Anthony A. Long: L'éthique: continuité et innovations 171; X. Jean-Baptiste Gourinat: La sagesse et les exercices philosophiques 193; XI. Christelle Veillard: L'empreinte du stoïcisme sur la politique romaine 201; Chronologie 211; Bibliographie 215; Index des passages cités 225-234

27. Graeser, Andreas. 1971. "A Propos Hyparchein Be Den Stoikern." Archiv für Bregiffsgeschichte no. 15:299-305.

28. ———. 1972. Plotinus and the Stoics. A Preliminary Study. Leiden: Brill.

29. Hadot, Pierre. 1969. "Zur Vorgeschichte Des Begriffs 'Existenz'. Hyparchein Bei Den Stoikern." Archiv für Bregiffsgeschichte no. 13:115-127.

"Das Wort exsistentia erscheint erstmalig im Lateinischen-in den theologischen Werken des Marius Victorinus, in denen es fast immer zur Übersetzung von hyparxis; dient, im Gegensatz zu dem Wort substantia das ousia übersetzt, und zu subsistentia, das hypostasis wiedergibt. (1) Exsistentia ist abgeleitet von exsistere, das in der philosophischen Sprache oft für esse eintrat, zumal in der Form des Partizips.(2) Exsistere seinerseits wurde auch zur Übersetzung von hyparkein verwendet, wie aus der Timaios-Übersetzung des Calcidius ersichtlich.(3)

Für das Verständnis der Vorgeschichte des Begriffes Existenz ist es daher unerläßlich, sorgfältig die Bedeutung zu präzisieren, die das Wort hyparkein innerhalb des technischen Wortschatzes der griechischen Philosophie aufweist, und die vorliegende Studie möchte einen Beitrag zu einer derartigen Untersuchung liefern. Zunächst soll zu zeigen versucht werden, daß das Wort hyparkein innerhalb der Stoa eine Seinsweise bezeichnet, die dem Geschehen, dem Akzidenz, dem Prädikat zukommt und der Seinsweise des Subjektes gegenübergestellt wird. Danach soll diese Bedeutung des hyparkein einerseits mit dem aristotelischen, andererseits mit dem neuplatonischen, Gebrauch dieses Wortes verglichen werden." p. 115

(1) Marius Victorinus Adversus Arium, III, 7, 9, Henry-Hadot (Sources Chrétiennes, Paris, 1960); deutsche Übersetzung, Bibliothek der alten Welt, Artemis Verlag, S. 244-245, Hadot-Brenke); Adversus Arium, II, 4, 48-57 (S. 221, Hadot-Brenke); Candidi Arriani (= Marii Victorini) ad Marium Victorinum rhetorem, I, 2, 18 (S. 74, Hadot-Brenke).

(2) CICERO, De officiis, I, 30, 107: "Ut in corporibus magnae diaim;litudines suns, sic in animis exsistunt maiores etiam uarietates " Marius Victorinus, Adversus Arium, I, 33, 7: "In potentia exsistens ad id quod est esse."

(3) Calcidius, Timaeus, 50, 23, Wasznik: "In reputatione quidem et consideratlone, uere existentis uereque peruigilis naturae." Cf. Plato, Tim. 52 B.

30. ———. 1991. "Philosophie, Discours Philosophiques Et Divisions De La Philosophie Chez Les Stoiciens." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 45:205-219.

31. Hahm, David E. 1977. The Origins of Stoic Cosmology. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

Contents: Preface IX; Abbreviations XI; Introduction XIII-XIX; I. Corporealism 3; II. Principles 29; III. Cosmogony 57; IV. Cosmology 91; V. Cosmobiology 136; VI. The Cosmic Cycle 185; VII. Epilogue: The definition of Nature and the origins of Stoic cosmology 200; Appendixes. I. Influences on Stoicism according to the biographical tradition 219; II. The contents of Book One of Chrysippus's Physics 238; III. Cleanthes' Cosmogony 240; IV. Accounts of the Stoic proofs for the immobility and coherence of the Cosmos 249; V. Chrysippus's statement on the alleged imperishability of the Cosmos 260; VI. Cleanthes' proof for the intelligence of the Cosmos 267; Indexes 275-292.

32. ———. 1992. "Diogenes Laertius Vii: On the Stoics." In Aufstieg Und Niedergang Der Römischen Welt, Vol. 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. 6. Teilband: Philosophie (Doxographica [Forts.]), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 4076-4182. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Indices pp. 4404-4411.

"In this study I propose to reexamine Diogenes' composition of the seventh book of his 'Lives' in the light of what is now known about ancient methods of composition of informational works. By carefully picking through the text for evidence on its construction I hope to clarify the nature and identity of most of the sources that he used in this book. This analysis will also bring into clearer focus his historiographical and literary objectives to the extent that they are manifested in this book. It is my hope that these results will, in combination with studies of other parts of his work, also advance our understanding and appreciation of Diogenes as an author and historian of philosophy in the early third century A. D."

33. Ierodiakonou, Katerina. 1993. "The Stoic Division of Philosophy." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 38:57-74.

"In introductions to Stoicism, Stoic philosophy customarily is discussed under the headings of "logic", "physics", and "ethics"; the evidence, however, shows that the Stoics' own view on the tripartition was more complex. The paper focusses on a passage in Diogenes Laertius (VII 39-41) and deals with the following four points the passage raises: first, according to most Stoics, it is not philosophy, but philosophical discourse, which is divided into three parts. Second, different Stoics used different terms when referring to the three parts. Third, Stoics were not unanimous as to the order of the three parts. Fourth, different similes were used by the Stoics to describe the interrelation of the three parts. It is only by close analysis of these points that we see in what sense Stoic philosophers divided philosophy, and how they understood the unity of the philosophical disciplines underlying their division."

34. ———, ed. 1999. Topics in Stoic Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Contents: List of Contributors VIII; Katerina Ieorodiakonou: Introduction. The study of Stoicism: its defense and revival 1; 1. Jonathan Barnes: Aristotle and Stoic logic 23; 2. Mario Mignucci: The Liar Paradox and the Stoics 54; Michael Frede: On the Stoic conception of the Good 71; 4. Brad Inwood: Rules and reasoning in Stoic ethics 95; 5. David Sedley: The Stoic-Platonist debate on kathékonta 128; 6. Philip Mitsis: The Stoic origin of natural rights 153; 7. Dirk Obbink: The Stoic sage in the cosmic city 178; 8. Susanne Bobzien: Chrysippus' theory of causes 196; Select bibliography 243; Index locorum 249; Index of names 255-259

35. Ildefonse, Frédérique. 2004. Les Stoïciens I. Zénon, Cléanthe, Chrysippe. Paris: Belles Lettres.

Sommaire: Reperès chronologiques 9; Introduction 11; i. Physique 31; II. Logique, 1: Théories de la représentation 75; III. Logique, 2: La syntaxe des lexta 111; IV. Éthique 143; V. La théorie du destin 183; Conclusion 211; Bibliographie 219-224

36. Inwood, Brad. 1999. "Stoicism." In Routledge History of Philosophy. Volume Ii: From Aristotle to Augustine, edited by Furley, David, 222-252. New York: Routledge.

37. ———, ed. 2003. The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Contributors VII-IX; Brad Inwood: Introduction: Stoicism, an intellectual Odyssey 1; 1. David Sedley: The School from Zeno to Arius Didymus 7; 2. Christopher Gill: The School in the Roman Imperial period 33; 3. R. Jim Hankinson: Stoic epistemology 59; 4. Susanne Bobzien: Logic 85; Michael J. White: Stoic natural philosophy (physics and cosmology) 124; 6. Keimpe Algra: Stoic theology 153; 7. Dorothea Frede: Stoic determinism 179; 8. Jacques Brunschwig: Stoic metaphysics 206; 9. Malcolm Schofield: Stoic ethics 233; 10. Tad Brennan: Stoic moral psychology 257; 11. R. Jim Hankinson: Stoicism and medicine 395; 12. David Blank and Catherine Atherton: The Stoic contribution to traditional grammar 310; 13. The Stoics and the astronomical sciences 328; 14. Terence H. Irwin: Stoic naturalism and his critics 345; 15. Anthony A. Long: Stoicism in the philosophical tradition: Spinoza, Lipsius, Butler 365; Bibliography 393; List of primary works 417; General index 423; Passages index 433-438.

38. Irwin, Terence H. 1997. "Aristotelian Substances and Stoic Subjects." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 51:397-415.

39. Isnardi-Parente, Margherita. 2005. "La Notion D'incorporel Chez Les Stoiciens." In Les Stoïciens, edited by Romeyer Dherbey, Gilbert and Gourinat, Jean-Baptiste, 175-185. Paris: Vrin.

40. Layrand, Valéry. 2002. Le Vocabulaire Des Stoiciens. Paris: Ellipses Marketing.

Réédition in Jean Pierre Zarader (ed.), Le vocabulaire des philosophes, Vol. I. De l'Antiquité à la Renaissance, Paris, Ellipses, 2002, pp. 219-268

41. Lewis, Eric. 1995. "The Stoics on Identity and Individuation." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 40:89-108.

42. Lloyd, Anthony C. 1970. "Activity and Description in Aristotle and the Stoa." Proceedings of the British Academy no. 56:227-240.

43. ———. 1971. "Grammar and Metaphysics in the Stoa." In Problems in Stoicism, edited by Long, Anthony Arthur, 58-74. London: Athlone Press.

"The Stoics thought language to be natural and not conventional, but they failed to separate the theory of meaning from the theory of etymology. Aristotle's categories underlay his logic and metaphysics, which belonged to a doctrine of terms. The Stoic categories, however, depended upon traditional grammar."

44. Long, Anthony Arthur, ed. 1971. Problems in Stoicism. London: Athlone Press.

Reprinted 1996.

Contents: Preface to Reprint (1996) VI; Preface VIII; Corrigenda X; Anthony A. Long: Introduction 1; I. Francis H. Sandbach: Phantasia Kataleptike 9; II. Francis H. Sandbach: Ennoia and Prolépsis 22; III. John M. Rist: Categories and their uses 38; IV. Arthur C. Lloyd: Grammar and metaphysics in the Stoa 58; V. Anthony A. Long: Language and thought in Stoicism 75; VI. E. G. Pembroke Oikeiosis 114; VII. Ian G. Kidd: Stoic intermediates and the end for man 150; VIII. Anthony A. Long: Freedom and determinism in the Stoic theory of human action 173; IX. Ian G. Kidd: Posidonius on emotions 200; X. Gerard Watson: The natural law and Stoicism 216; Select bibliography 239; Indexes 242-257.

"This book brings together a set of papers by different hands on problems in Stoicism. Most of the material is published here for the first time, and it deals with problems of Stoic epistemology, logic, metaphysics and ethics. In more than one sense this book is a statement of work in progress. Several of its topics take up questions already treated in recent literature, and further publications on Stoicism by most of its authors are current or forthcoming. More particularly, half the chapters of the book were presented at a series of seminars in the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, and we are deeply grateful to its Director, Professor E. W. Handley, for offering us such a congenial forum for discussion and for suggesting publication in this form.

The problems in Stoicism are vast, and they vary greatly in type over a long period of time. This book makes no claim to treat more than some of them, much less to give a comprehensive account of Stoicism. But its collection of papers does cover topics of considerable philosophical and historical importance, and through the treatment of these much of the coherence and significance of Stoicism as a whole can be seen. Because we are concerned here with a school of Greek philosophy, and its Roman inheritance, part, sometimes a large part, of the discussion turns on matters of philology. But with the help of translation and transliteration it is hoped that the book will be found intelligible and interesting to those who have no knowledge of Greek and Latin. A short bibliography gives full details of most of the works on Stoicism cited in the notes and often referred to there by abbreviated titles." (From the Preface)

45. ———. 1974. Hellenistic Philosophy. Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Second edition 1986 with a Bibliographical Postscript 1985 pp. 257-268.

See Chapter 4: Stoicism § III: Stoic logic pp. 121-146.

46. Lossky, Nikolay. 1929. "The Metaphysics of the Stoics." Journal of Philosophical Studies no. 4:481-489.

"The metaphysical doctrine of the Stoics is a remarkable instance of a theory that appears to be materialism, but is in truth a form of unconscious ideal-realism. It is worth while to give an exposition of it in order to show that this is really the case, and, incidentally, to explain why a materialistic philosophy seems so attractive to many minds. I will refer chiefly to the teaching of the ancient Stoics, i.e. of Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus, and also to the later doctrine of Posidonius."

47. Mansfeld, Jaap. 1986. "Diogenes Laertius on Stoic Philosophy." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 7:295-382.

48. Mansfeld, Jaap. 2003. "Zeno on the Unity of Philosophy." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 48:116-131.

49. Papazian, Michael. 1999. "Stoic Ontology and the Reality of Time." Ancient Philosophy no. 19:105-119.

"Aristotle starts his discussion of time in Physics iv by presenting a couple of paradoxical arguments that appear to show that time does not exist at all or that it exists only 'scarcely or dimly' (217b29).(1) The first paradox begins with the assertion that both infinite time and also any period of time are composed of a part that is past and a part that is future. The past has been but is not now. The future will be but it is not yet. It follows that no part of time just is. Since nothing which consists entirely of non-existing parts can exist, time does not exist.

One may argue on behalf of the reality of time that at least one part of time, namely the present, is. Aristotle replies that the present or the 'now' is not a part. A whole must be made up of parts, but the whole of time is not thought to be made up of 'nows'. Aristotle does not state exactly why the whole of time is not thought to be made up of nows. The argument may be that if there is a present, it either has a duration or it does not. If it has duration or temporal extension, then it is not really present but consists of a part that is past and future (cf. 234a9-19). But if it lacks extension, it cannot be a part of time because 'parts must measure, and the whole must be composed of parts' (218a6-7). A durationless point of time cannot be used to measure time nor can the whole of time consist of durationless points.

Aristotle does not provide a refutation of the paradoxical arguments against the reality of time in his subsequent discussion. (2) The question of the reality of time remained an issue in Hellenistic philosophy and, in particular, for the Stoics. The purpose of this article is to examine the Stoic ontology of time. Did the Stoics believe that time is real? How did they understand the relation between the past, present, and future? These are important questions not only because Stoic views on time are interesting in their own right but also because they can shed much needed light on the philosophy of time in late antiquity. The Stoic views appear to have had considerable influence on late Neoplatonic theories of time and on Augustine's speculations on time."

(1) Translations of the Physics are from Hussey Aristotle Physics Books III and IV Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1983.

(2) Most commentators, though, claim that Aristotle's discussion of time provides the requisite philosophical apparatus to refute the arguments. See, e.k., Sorabji Time, Creation and the Continuum, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1983, 7ff.

50. Pohlenz, Max. 1948. Die Stoa. Geschichte Einer Geistigen Bewegung. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Two volumes: I (1948), II (1949).

See: Vol. I - Die Logik. Der Logos als Träger unserer geistigen Existenz pp. 37-62.

Traduzione italiana: La Stoa. Storia di un movimento spirituale - Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1967.

51. Rieth, Otto. 1933. Grundbegriffe Der Stoischen Ethik. Eine Traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung.

52. Rist, John M. 1969. Stoic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

53. ———, ed. 1978. The Stoics. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Contents: Preface VII; Abbreviations VIII; 1. Ian Mueller: An introduction to Stoic logic 1; Michael Frede: Principles of Stoic grammar 27; Andreas Graeser: The Stoic theory of meaning 77; Anthony A. Long: Dialectic and the Stoic sage 101; George B. Kerferd: What does the wise man know? 125; 6. Robert B. Todd: Monism and immanence: the foundations of Stoic physics 137; Michael Lapidge: Stoic cosmology 161; 8. Margaret E. Reesor: Necessity and fate in Stoic philosophy 187; 9. Charlotte Stough: Stoic determinism and moral responsibility 203; 10. Arthur C. Lloyd: Emotion and decision in Stoic psychology 233; 11. Ian G. Kidd: Moral actions and rules in Stoic Ethics 247; 12. John M. Rist: The Stoic concept of detachment 259; 13. F. E. Sparshott: Zeno on art: anatomy of a definition 273; Bibliography 291-295.

54. Romeyer Dherbey, Gilbert, and Gourinat, Jean-Baptiste, eds. 2005. Les Stoïciens. Paris: Vrin.

Table des matières: Gilbert Romeyer Dherbey: Préface 7; Note liminaire 11; Jean-Baptiste Gourinat: La disparition et la reconstitution du stoïcïsme : éléments pour une histoire 13; Tiziano Dorandi: La tradition papyrologique des stoïciens 29; Première partie: Logique, poétique et théorie de la connaissance; Aldo B. Brancacci: Antisthène et le stoïcisme: la logique 55; David Sedley: La définition stoïcienne de la phantasia katalêptiké 75; Richard Goulet: La méthode allégorique des stoïciens 93; Anna Maria Ioppolo: Poétique et théorie de la perception chez Ariston 121; Stéphane Toulouse: Les sciences et l'âme chez Posidonius. Remarques sur une définition de l'âme conservée dans Plutarque et sur le statut de l'astronomie et des mathématiques dans sa philosophie 153; Deuxième partie: La physique stoïcienne. La nature et les dieux; Margherita Isnardi-Parente: La notion d'incorporel chez les stoïciens 175; Lambros Couloubartsis: Les structures hénologiques dans le stoïcisme ancien 187; Michael Frede: Sur la théologie stoïcienne 213; Clara Auvray-Assayas: Deux types d'exposé stoïcien sur la providence dans le De natura deorum de Cicéron 233; Jean-Baptiste Gourinat: Prédiction du futur et action humaines dans le traité de Chrysippe Sur Ie destin 247; Troisième partie: L'homme et l'éthique; Gilbert Romeyer Dherbey: La naissance de la subjectivité chez les stoïciens 277; Maximilian Forschner: Le Portique et le concept de personne 293; Mary-Anne Zagdoun: Problèmes concernant l' oikeiôsis stoïcienne 319; Cristina Viano: L'Epitomê de l'éthique stoïcienne d'Arius Didyme (Stobée, Eclog. II, 7, 57, 13-116, 18) 335; Jacques Brunschwig: Sur deux notions de l'éthique stoïcienne. De la "réserve" au "renversement" 357; Maria Daraki: Les deux races d'hommes dans le stoïcisme d'Athènes 381; Anthony A. Long: L'empreinte socratique dans la philosophie d'Épictète 403; Ilsetraut Hadot et Pierre Hadot: La parabole de l'escale dans le Manuel d'Épictète et son commentaire par Simplicius 427; Quatrième partie: Postérités du Stoïcisme ; Jean-Joël Duhot: Métamorphoses du logos. Du stoïcisme au Nouveau Testament 453; Agnès Pigler: Les éléments stoïciens de la doctrine plotinienne de la connaissance ( Traité 29) 467; Philippe Hoffmann: La définition stoïcienne du temps dans le miroir du néoplatonisme (Plotin, Jamblique) 487; Michel Gourinat: Hegel et le stoïcisme 523; Bibliographie d'orientation par Jean-Baptiste Gourinat 545; Index des textes cités 573; Index des noms anciens et médiévaux 603; Index des noms modernes et contemporains 608; Index des notions 615-620.

55. Samb, Djibril. 2009. Étude Du Lexique Des Stoiciens. Paris: L'Harmattan.

56. Sambursky, Samuel. 1959. Physics of the Stoics. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Reprint: Westport, Greenwood, 1973 and Routledge & Kegan Paul 1987.

Contents: Preface V; Introduction VII-X; I. The Dynamic Continuum 1; II. Pneuma and Force 21; III. The Sequence of Physical Events 49; IV. The Whole and Its Parts 81; Appendix: Translations of Texts 116; Selected Bibliography 146; Index to Passages Quoted 148; General Index 151-153.

57. Sandbach, Francis Henry. 1985. Aristotle and the Stoics. Cambridge: The Cambridge Philological Society.

Contents: Preface IV, Abbreviations V; List of works cited VI-XI; I. Introduction 1; II. References to Aristotle 4; III. Methods of estimating influence 16; IV. Logic 18; V. Ethics 24; VI. Physics 31; VII: Disregard of peculairly Aristotelian ideas 53; VIII. Conclusion 55; Panaettius and Posidonius 58; Appendix: Ocellus Lucanus 63; Notes 65; Index 82-88.

"This essay maintains that the extent of influence exerted by Aristotle on the Stoics has often been exaggerated by modern scholars. A collection of all references to him by authors other than Peripatetics, whether contemporary or belonging to the following century, shows that his importance as a philosopher was not then recognised and reveals a lack of evidence that his school-works were known. Professor Sandbach argues that it is a mistake to proceed on the assumption that the Stoics must have known his work, or even an outline of it, and been stimulated whether to agreement or to modification. If the supposed evidence for Aristotelian influence is examined without this presumption, much is found to be flimsy and some can be confidently rejected. A residue remains of varying degrees of probability, which it is hard to estimate owing to our insufficient information, particularly about Zeno, about the Academy of his time, about Aristotle's exoteric works, and about memory of him in oral tradition." (Abstract, p. 89)

58. Sedley, David. 1982. "The Stoic Criterion of Identity." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 27:255-275.

"The growing argument, a sceptical puzzle favoured by the Hellenistic Academy, maintained that every material reconstitution, however slight, entails a change of identity. The Stoics responded to this challenge by denying the identity of a "qualified individual" with his material substrate. This was achieved in particular by Chrysippus' paradox about Dion and Theon (ancient forerunners of Geach's Tibbles and Tib), Best interpreted as a dialectical refutation of the growing argument's assumption that matter is the sole principle of individuation. Chrysippus thereby licensed his theory of the four levels of existence (conventionally called the Stoic theory of "categories"). The notion of enduring "qualified individual" provides a criterion of identity central not only to this theory but also to a quite separate epistemological thesis, that of the possibility of infallible recognition."

59. ———. 1985. "The Stoic Theory of Universals." In Recovering the Stoics, edited by Epp, Ronald H., 87-92. Memphis: Memphis University Press.

Supplementary volume to the Southern Journal of Philosophy.

60. ———. 1999. "Stoics Physics and Metaphysics." In The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, edited by Algra, Keimpe, Jonathan, Barnes, Mansfeld, Jaap and Schofield, Malcolm, 382-411. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

61. ———. 2008. "Stoic Metaphysics at Rome." In Metaphysics, Soul, and Ethics in Ancient Thought. Themes from the Work of Richard Sorabji, edited by Salles, Ricardo, 117-142. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

"Overview.

In this essay my main concern has been to illustrate the Roman Stoics' attitude to metaphysics. It is an area of philosophical discourse in which Seneca grants the Platonists and Aristotelians greater territorial rights than in any other. For his excursions into it he offers a fundamentally Platonist justification, and as regards ontological kinds, at least, he sees Platonism as superior to the legacy of his own school.

What we have seen to be Seneca's reservations about Stoic metaphysics, I can now add, fit comfortably with Letter 117, where he finds severe ethical disadvantages in the Stoics' too rigid distinction between corporeals and incorporeals, and Letter 113, where he is painfully embarrassed by the Stoic paradox which treats virtues as living beings. But its most typical manifestation is in the counting games which Seneca and other Stoics play with their Platonic-Aristotelian colleagues. Sometimes the Stoics are the winners at these games-notably when arguing more directly against Aristotle, the inventor and chief proponent of such games-sometimes, on Seneca's own confession, the losers. It is this residue of open-mindedness that most clearly characterizes the syncretism which we have been witnessing.

Seneca's readiness to jump ship shows up with regard to metaphysical questions far more prominently and explicitly than in other philosophical areas.(59) I have tried to sketch in a background which makes it plausible that, far from being Seneca's own quirk, this attitude was characteristic of Roman Stoicism in his day. It is hard to know whether it is anything more than accidental that both the main figures who have emerged as Seneca's fellow-participants in the discussions-Severus and Cornutus have Roman names. But Cornutus at least, like Seneca himself, worked in Italy; and Sergius Plautus has emerged as yet another Roman Stoic of the era who wrote about both Stoic and Aristotelian metaphysics. In the light of this pronounced pattern, I do not see why we should not assume Italy to be the primary scene of those discussions, as indeed Seneca may be taken to imply when he presents them in narrative guise as recent conversations with his friends. My main point, however, is that Seneca is almost certainly not alone among Stoics in his constructively conciliatory attitude to Platonist metaphysics.

If it had merely been a question of Seneca's personal distaste for abstruse areas of Stoic metaphysics, it would have been easy for him to remain silent, as lie does for the most part about Stoic epistemology and logic. But instead of thus staying aloof, he cooperates in what I have presented as a pooling of resources between Stoic and Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics.(60) If I have been even half right, his way of conducting these negotiations can teach us something about what it meant to be a Stoic in an age when the Platonic worldview was rapidly regaining its old ascendancy.(61)" pp. 140-141

(59) Seneca's psychology is often taken to be infused with Platonic rational-irrational dualism. For a measured response to this assessment, see Brad Inwood, 'Seneca and Psychological Dualism', in J. Brunschwig and M. Nussbaum (eds.), Passions and Perceptions (Cambridge, 1993), 150-83. The Platonizing tendency in Letters 58 and 65 seems much stronger and more explicit than that in any of the psychological cases discussed by Inwood.

(60) For evidence of the degree of syncretism that had developed by Plotinus' day, cf. Porphyry, Vit. Plot. 17.3, on Trypho 'the Stoic and Platonist'.

(61) Ancestors of this essay have benefited from discussion with audiences at Chicago, Gargnano (Italy), Mexico City, London, and Cambridge. My thanks to all who were kind enough to supply comments, especially Brad Inwood, Victor Caston, Ricardo Salles, Stephen Menn, and Myles Burnyeat, although responsibility for the views expressed is entirely my own.

It is a special pleasure to be contributing, with this essay, to a collaborative celebration of Richard Sorabji and his work. No one has done more than he has to show the philosophical vitality of the debates conducted in the Roman imperial era.

62. Sellars, John. 2010. "Stoic Ontology and Plato’s Sophist." In Aristotle and the Stoics Reading Plato, edited by Harte, Verity;, McCabe, Nary Margaret;, Sharples, Robert W.; and Sheppard, Anne D. R., 185-203. London: Institute of Classical Studies.

See Chapter Three: Stoic Logic pp. 55-79.

63. Todd, Robert B. 1976. Alexander of Aphrodisias on Stoic Physics. Leiden: Brill.

A study of the De mixtione with prelimunary essays, text, translation and commentary.

64. White, Stephen. 2007. "Posidonius and Stoic Physics." In Greek and Roman Philosophy 100 Bc - 200 Ad. Vol. Ii, edited by Sharples, Robert W. and Sorabji, Richard, 35-76. London: Institute of Classical Studies.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius. Bibliography (A-Lea)

English studies (A-Lea)

1. Barnes, Jonathan. 1986. "Nietzsche and Diogenes Laertius." Nietzsche Studien no. 15:16-40.

Reprinted in: J. Barnes, Mantissa: Essays in Ancient Philosophy IV, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2015, pp. 584-611.

"In 1869 and 1870 Nietzsche published three long studies on Diogenes Laertius: de Laertii Diogenis fontibus, analecta Laertiana, and Beiträge Quellenkunde und Kritik des Laertius Diogenes.(1) The Beiträge contains a short index to all three papers, which Nietzsche evidently regarded as parts of a single work; and indeed the second and third studies can properly be treated as a series of appendixes to the first. Even as the studies were in press Nietzsche wrote of his intention to revise and publish them in book form.(2)

(...)

But these plans and projects were never realized, and Nietzsche published nothing on Diogenes after 1870.(6)" (p. 16)

(1) The studies should be read in KGW II/l (edd. F. Bornmann and M. Carpitella, Berlin, 1982). Nietzsche's Nachlass contains a vast number of notes, essays and preliminary sketches on Diogenes: the texts are printed, with annotations, in BAW and V.

(2) Letters to Friedrich Ritschl of 16. 10. 69 and 28. 3. 70: KGB [] I/l, p. 66 [no. 35] = BAB II, p. 377 [no. 461], KGB l, p. 110 [no. 68] = BAB, p. 42 [no. 494].

(6) Not that Nietzsche ever forgot his Diogenes: there are occasional allusions or reminiscences in many of his later writings (see the Index to C. P. Janz, Friedrich Nietzsche: Biographie, Munich/Vienna, 1978/9).

Sigla:

BAB = Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Briefe, Beck, München 1938–

BAW = Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Werke, Beck, München 1933–

KGB = Briefe: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Berlin/New York, de Gruyter, 1967–

KGW = Kritische Gesamtausgabe Werk, Berlin/New York, de Gruyter, 1967–

2. ———. 1992. "Diogenes Laertius IX 61-116: the Philosophy of Pyrrhonism." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Teil II: Principat. Band 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. 6. Teilband: Philosophie (Doxographica [Forts.]), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 4241-4301. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Reprinted in J. Barnes, Mantissa: Essays in Ancient Philosophy IV, edited by Maddalena Bonelli, New York: Oxford University Press 2015, pp. 510–583.

"Diogenes Laertius includes an account of scepticism in his Life of Pyrrho (IX 61 — 108). An introductory section (IX 61—62) gives a concise description of Pyrrho's life and thought, after which the Life divides into three main parts.

First, there is a collection of anecdotal material, the purpose of which is to illustrate the peculiar διάθεσις of Pyrrho himself (IX 63-69). Then come various observations on Pyrrho's successors, together with a list of his putative precursors (IX 68 — 73). The third part consists of an extended account of the philosophy of Pyrrhonism (IX 74-108). The brief Life of Timon, which constitutes an appendix to the Life of Pyrrho, is made out of a short biography and a rehearsal of the so-called Pyrrhonian διαδοχή (IX 109- 116).

This outline encourages two preliminary thoughts. First, the Life of Pyrrho, considered at the most abstract level, has a clear and coherent structure: it is not a farrago, nor a jackdaw's nest; it is a unitary piece of composition. Diogenes is often accused of being a scissors and paste man who snipped sections of the works he happened to read and then contentedly glued them into his own scrap-book. The Life of Pyrrho proves that he had at least a minimal literary competence: he could arrange and organise his snippets.

Secondly, the philosophical part of the Life is far longer than the biographical. The strictly philosophical section is over four times the size of the strictly biographical section; indeed, the strictly philosophical section is longer than all the rest of the Life, with the Life of Timon thrown in. It is often said that Diogenes' interests were primarily biographical, and that he cited philosophical views primarily in order to illuminate the characters of the men who maintained them. Whether or not this is true of the Lives in general, it is certainly not true of the Life of Pyrrho." (p. 4242, notes omitted)

3. ———. 1996. "The Catalogue of Chrysippus’ Logical Works." In Polyhistor: Studies in the History and Historiography of Ancient Philosophy. Presented to Jaap Mansfeld on his Sixtieth Birthday,, edited by Algra, Keimpe A., van der Horst, Pieter W. and Runia, David T, 169-184. Leiden: Brill.

Reprinted in J. Barnes, Mantissa: Essays in Ancient Philosophy IV, edited by Maddalena Bonelli, New York: Oxford University Press 2015, pp. 479–494.

"At the end of his brief Life of Chrysippus, Diogenes Laertius remarks that

since his books have a very high reputation, I have decided to record here the list of them arranged by subject. They are these. (VII 189).

There follows an articulated catalogue of Chrysippus' works.

Diogenes has a standing interest in the writings of his subjects, an interest which he implicitly avows in his preface (I 16). Almost all the Lives refer to what their subjects wrote; and in the vast majority of them Diogenes presents a book-list. The list of Chrysippus' writings stands out on three diverse counts. First, it is articulated into sections and subsections, and the articulation is based on philosophical principles. Secondly, it is incomplete: the end of Book VII is missing from all surviving manuscripts of Diogenes-and with it half the Chrysippean bibliography.

Thirdly, it is exciting; for it appears to offer us information about Chrysippus' philosophical activities, and in particular about his logical activities, which we cannot find elsewhere-it parades his terminology; it shows where his interests lay; it indicates the structure which he gave to his philosophical work." (p. 169, notes omitted)

4. Beall, E. F. 2001. "Diogenes Laertius on Aeschines the Socratic's Works." Hermes:142-144.

"D.L. [Diogenes Laertius] inform us (II 60-1 = Giannantoni(1) VI A 22) that Menedemus of Eretria slandered A. [Aeschines] in saying he appropriated dialogues by Socrates as his own, and that those called "headless" are poorly written and un-Socratic and not by Aeschines according to Peristratus the Ephesian.

(...)

Finally, D.L. concludes that, in any case (δ oύν), the truly Socratic works by A. are the sevenpieces Miltiades, Callias, Axiochus, Aspasia, Alcibiades, Telauges, and Rhinon.

It is of course important to know whatever we can about the provenance of A.'s works, in view of his attested close relation to the historical Socrates." (p. 142, some notes omitted)

(1) Gabriele Giannantoni, ed., Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae, 4 vols. (Naples 1990).

5. Bett, Richard. 2015. "Pyrrhonism in Diogenes Laertius." In Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius, edited by Vogt, Katja Maria, 75-104. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

"This paper has two goals. First, it offers a general overview of Diogenes Laertius’ lives of Pyrrho and Timon, distinguishing as far as possible a) the biographical from the more purely philosophical material in these lives, and b) the parts bearing upon the period of Pyrrho himself and his immediate following from those bearing upon the later tradition started by Aenesidemus and taking Pyrrho as an inspiration. Both these distinctions, however, are less than hard and fast, and this is of interest in itself. Second, focusing on the philosophical material, it investigates in detail the many parallels between the text of Diogenes and passages of the Pyrrhonist Sextus Empiricus, and attempts to extract from these parallels some lessons concerning the development of the Pyrrhonist tradition. Though not a Pyrrhonist himself, Diogenes emerges as an important witness to the character of Pyrrhonism." (p. 75)

6. Bollansée, Jan. 1999. Hermippos of Smyrna and His Biographical Writings. A Reappraisal. Leuven: Peeters.

"The present study fits in with the larger project to continue Felix Jacoby's unfinished Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (FGrHist), a project initiated in 1991 by G. Schepens (K.U.Leuven) and G.A. Lehmann (then Universitat zu Koln) and at the moment a truly international enterprise carried out by scholars working in Gottingen, Leuven, Koln, Miinchen and Zurich and at Harvard University." (Preface,p. VII)

(...)

"In sum, there are no indications that Hermippos was panicularly well educated in the various philosophical systems, let alone that he was ever an active member of the Peripatetic school. In fact, ever since the beginning of this century, it is generally assumed by modern scholarship that Hermippos, just like his (younger) contemporary Satyros, was called a 'Peripatetic' simply because he wrote biographical works, the underlying idea being that during the Hellenistic period (already starting from the thirdcentury on, and continuing at least until about 100 B.C.) all authors of studies in literary history and biography connected with Alexandria were called Peripatetics, regardless of whether or not they actually belonged to that school. Two interrelated reasons are given for this new usage of the term. Firstly, the fields of research concerned had been primarily covered by, and were therefore associated with, Aristotle and his pupils, so that even non-school members who were active in those domains were given the name. Secondly, the pinacographical work conducted by Kallimachos in the Museion' s library - in itself wholly in the Peripatetic vein and to alarge extent based on the work of the Aristotelian precursors - led to a refinement of the form of those literary and biographical studies. Consequently, the two 'branches' (Peripatos and Museion) were considered complementary, the older lending its name to the younger." (pp. 10-11, notes omitted)

7. ———. 2001. "Animadversiones in Diogenem Laertium." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie no. 144:64-106.

"Over the past two decades, a few studies have unearthed and consolidated the important new insight that Diogenes Laertios was not the mindless and untrustworthy copier he has so long been taken for by nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship; thus, it has been demonstrated that the standard ancient technique of excerpting - such as it was adopted, among others, by Varro - also underlies Diogenes' work, and that this author may be thought to have assembled by himself a substantial number of the extracts scattered across the ten books constituting the Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. All the same, this deserved rehabilitation does not alter the fact that present-day scholarship frequently comes away from the long-winded treatise with a feeling of frustration, when trying to move beyond the manifold stories recounted by Diogenes and attempting, for instance, to gather precise information even about the sources to which he refers by name (how did he use them, and what did they actually say?). These problems originate in Diogenes' seemingly carefree method of quoting those sources (in itself wholly in line with standard ancient practice, since there were no strict rules enforcing the exact acknowledgement of name, title and book-number of the sources consulted) and in his manner of editing, rewriting and organizing the material drawn from them. Scattered throughout his work, there are effectively dozens of passages which offer details and/or source-citations in abundance but, at the same time, suffer from poorly thought-out structuring, as borne out by excessive compression or accumulation of information and the resultant confusion and ambiguity." (p. 64, notes omitted)

8. Bredlow, Luis Andrés. 2007. "Some Notes on Diogenes Laertius." Hermes:370-372.

"1. Theodorus: doxographer or Stoic moralist?

2. A textual problem in Platonic cosmogony

3. Three misunderstood witticisms of Diogenes the Cynic."

9. ———. 2008. "Diogenes Laertius 20, 22: Metrodorus of Lampsacus or of Athens?" Philologus:145-148.

"The Epicurean Metrodorus of Lampsacus is a relatively well known character(1), as we are to expect from his reputation as one of the most outstanding representatives of the school. But there is a quite obscure passage concerning him in Diogenes Laertius’ Life of Epicurus (10, 22) which apparently has not yet been sufficiently understood." (pp. 145-146)

(1) See the collection of fragments and testimonia by A. Körte, Metrodori Epicurei Fragmenta, Jahrb. Klass. Philol. Suppl. 17, 1890, 531–97.

10. Brent, Allen. 1993. "Diogenes Laertius and the Apostolic Succession." Journal of Ecclesiastical History no. 44:367-389.

"I will argue that the concept of διάδοχαί, and the historiographic form adopted in that genre of literature of which Diogenes Laertius' The Successions of the Philosophers,(9) is our surviving representative, are far more important for our understanding of the development of the idea of apostolic succession than Ehrhardt [*] admitted. A careful analysis of Diogenes as representative of a whole genre of historiography about philosophers and their schools will reveal certain specific and fundamental connections between such historiography and Justin, Irenaeus, Hegesippus, Hippolytus, and the Clementine literature, which have been overlooked in the discussion dominated, at least in English-speaking quarters, by Ehrhardt's thesis. We will see that Hippolytus' extraneous idea of a specifically sacerdotal succession has been falsely imposed upon the essentially scholastic view of succession in these earlier writers." (p.368)

(9) I prefer the title Successions to the Byzantine Lives (Βίῶν) employed by R. D. Hicks in his edition, Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Cambridge, Mass. 1925. I show below that, in the Severan age in which he lived (c. AD 205) the genre in which he wrote would have suggested the title διάδοχαί, as is clear from the titles used by his predecessors.

[*] A. A. J . Ehrhardt, The Apostolic Succession in the First Two Centuries of the Church, London 1953.

11. Chroust, Anton-Hermann. 1965. "A Brief Analysis of the Vita Aristotelis of Diogenes Laertius (V, 1-16)." L'Antiquité Classique no. 34:97-129.

Revised reprint as Chapter III in: A.-H. Chroust, Aristotle. New Light on His Life and on Some of His Lost Works, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973, Vol. I pp. 25-53.

"Book V, sections 1-16 , o f Diogenes Laertius' The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, also called The Lives of the Philosophers (Photius) or The Lives of the Sophists (Eusthatius), contains a rather important,

though at times confused (and confusing), account of the life of Aristotle. In his Vita, which to a large extent relies rather heavily on a biography of Aristotle by Hermippus of Smyrna, Diogenes Laertius also employs a number of other divergent sources. Some of these sources are cited by name, others can be determined with a reasonable degree of certainty, while others cannot readily be identified. What is perhaps the most striking characteristic of Diogenes' biography, however, is that he constantly alternates his use of two distinct types of sources or biographical tendencies: the decidedly sympathetic, favorable and even encomiastic tradition; and the clearly unsympathetic, unfavorable and even hostile trend. In this, Diogenes Laertius and his Vita Aristotelis differs from the majority of the extant biographies of Aristotle. The following is a tentative analysis of Diogenes' rather bewildering account in terms of these two types of sources or tendencies." (p. 25 of the reprint, notes omitted)

12. Copeland, Rita. 2016. "Behind the 'Lives of Philosophers'. Reading Diogenes Laertius in the Western Middle Ages." Interfaces no. 3:245-263.

Abstract: "The classical learning of medieval readers, especially those fortunate to have access to a good library, could be formidable. But in the Middle Ages knowledge was also a commodity, and there was powerful temptation to satisfy intellectual hunger with compressed, simplified digests and easy fare. One text, De vita et moribus philosophorum, long attributed to Walter Burley, seems to have achieved particular success in satisfying that hunger for an easy version of ancient lore. Its roots reach back to Diogenes Laertius’ Greek Lives of the Philosophers. This essay explores the roads of transmission that led to the making of De vita et moribus philosophorum, which fed a popular fascination with ancient philosophy and the lives of ancient philosophers. Through what channels did the ‘history’ of ancient philosophy find a readership beyond the scholarly academy, and how can we explain the appeal of such classical knowledge?"

13. Corti, Lorenzo. 2015. "Mind and Language of the Laërtian Pyrrhonist: Diog. Laert. 9.74–77." In Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius, edited by Vogt, Katja Maria, 123-145. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

"The Pyrrhonian sceptic1 makes no judgements and has no beliefs; if so,how could he speak?"

(...)

"The aim of this paper is to contribute towards filling this gap by analysing and elucidating the Laërtian account in the light of the closest Laërtian and Sextan loci similes.

Diog. Laert. 9.74–7 may be divided into four main parts. Diogenes starts by characterising the sceptics as being devoted to a certain philosophical activity: they overturn all the tenets of the philosophical schools.

In doing so, they speak – they utter some characteristic phrases. In the rest of our passage, Diogenes reports some remarks indicating how we are supposed to understand these phrases. In the first section (74) he points out that the sceptic does not affirm or determine what he says, but just utters and reports; he then adds that the sceptic’s φωναί – of which he mentions “In no way more”, “We determine nothing” and “Opposed to every account there is an account” – express some affections of his. The second part of the passage (section 75) discusses several uses of the expressions “more/rather” and “in no way more”, and indicates that the sceptics use “in no way more” negatively. The following part (76) discusses the self-applying property of two sceptical expressions in particular: “In no way more” and “Opposed to every account there is an account”. Finally, in the last section of the passage (77), Diogenes hints at a dogmatic reaction to the description of the sceptic’s linguistic behaviour just sketched and puts forward another one of its features, by indicating how the sceptic uses his words and statements.

In the following pages I will put forward an analysis of each of the four sections and of the major features they ascribe to the sceptical φωναί. I will end by discussing an intriguing difference between the account of the Pyrrhonist we find in Diogenes and the corresponding account we find in Sextus." (pp. 123-124, note omitted)

14. Dorandi, Tiziano. 2012. "Socrates in the Ancient Biographical Tradition: From the Anonymous PHib. 182 to Diogenes Laertius." In Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue, edited by Stavru, Alessandro and Moore, Christopher, 787-798. Leiden: Brill.

"The life of Socrates, understood as the continuous narrative of the primary events in his life, from birth until death, received only modest attention from ancient authors.

(...)

Except for Diogenes Laertius (third-century ce) we have no traces of proper “biographies” of Socrates comparable in structure and content to the many “Lives” of Plato and Aristotle." (p. 787)

(...)

"The only complete “biography” of Socrates is that of Diogenes Laertius in his Lives of Eminent Philosophers (2.18–47).6 The Laertian bios of Socrates is shorter than, for example, that of Plato, which occupies the entire third book of the Lives, but is about the same length as that of Aristotle (5.1–35). Giannantoni [*] has proposed a plausible division of the bios into four sections. The first (2.18–26) is biographical (parents, home, teachers, education, character traits, military exploits, and anecdotes). The second (2.27–37) corresponds to what is in other lives the doxography. In it, through a series of anecdotes, Diogenes describes the character and behavior of Socrates and provides material useful for giving a sense of his thought. The third (2.38–44) is devoted to the trial and death sentence and subsequent reaction. In the fourth and last (2.45–47), Diogenes gets back to the chronology of Socrates, cites the epigram he composed for his death, introduces the discussion related to his disciples (Xenophon, Aristippus, Phaedo, Euclides, Stilpo, Crito, Simon, Glaucon, Simmias, Cebes and Menedemus of Eretria: 2.48–144), and finally adds the list of homonyms." (pp. 791-792).

[*] Giannantoni, G. ‘Socrate e i Socratici in Diogene Laerzio’, Elenchos 7 (1986), 183–216.

15. ———. 2014. "Diogenes Laertius and the Gnomological Tradition: Considerations from an Editor of the Lives of the Philosophers." In Ars Edendi Lectures 3, edited by Odelman, Eva and Searby, Denis M., 71-103. Stockholm: Stockholm University.

"One of the characteristics of the Lives and Doctrines of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius (third century C.E.) is the preponderance of chreiai (apophthegms) within the narrative.(1) One of the Lives in particular, that of the Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope (6.20–83), consists almost entirely in a succession of chreiai occupying the central part of the narrative (§ 24–30, 32–69). In other books, and therefore in regard to other philosophers, there are specific groups of sayings or maxims of, first, the Seven Sages (book 1), including Anacharsis (1.103–5); Aristippus of Cyrene (2.65–83), Plato(3.38–40), Bion of Borysthenes (4.48–51), Aristotle (5.17–21), Antisthenes (6.3–10), Zeno of Citium (7.16–24) and Pyrrho of Elis (9.66–8). A separate case, but equally interesting, is that of Epicurus, whose life takes up all of book 10, ending with Diogenes’ presentation of forty principal doctrines or maxims (Κύριαι δόξαι) of the founder of the Garden." (p. 71)

(1) I follow Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé, Diogène Laërce. Vies et doctrines des philosophes illustres. Traduction française sous la direction de Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 1999), p. 668 in the use of the term chreia: ‘le terme chrie comme terme générique s’appliquant indifféremment aux multiples types de dits et d’anecdotes que l’on trouve assemblés dans les collections gnomologiques.’" (p. 71)

16. ———. 2016. "Aristotle in the Biographical Tradition." In Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Aristotle in Antiquity, edited by Falcon, Andrea, 277-298. Leiden: Brill.

"The oldest “Life of Aristotle” of which we have any evidence is by Hermippus of Smyrna, a work in at least two books.(16) It has also been suggested that the Peripatetic Aristo of Ceos wrote a biography of Aristotle, but this remains uncertain. Aristo probably only collected the wills of his Aristotelian predecessors—from Aristotle himself to Lyco of Troas (F 16 Stork, Fortenbaugh, Van Ophuijsen and Dorandi). Various other ancient “lives” have come down to us either entire or in more or less fragmentary states:

1. Diogenes Laertius’ Life of Aristotle (third century AD) is the most rich in detail (5.1–35). Along with a timeline and a section dedicated to biographical information about the philosopher, it contains his will, a list of the titles of his works, and an doxography, which has proven highly useful in making sense of the reception of Aristotelianism in the late Hellenistic period.)"

2. The Life of Aristotle attributed to Hesychius of Miletus (sixth century AD).(18) This biography is essentially a long catalog of titles of works of Aristotle. It has a great deal in common with those of Diogenes Laertius and of the Life of Ptolemy.

These two “lives” go back to a single unknown Hellenistic source, now lost, which was enriched with supplementary material over the centuries. There does not

seem to be any real support for the hypothesis that the “life” by Hermippus was the main source for the biographies by Diogenes and Hesychius.(19)" (p. 282)

[The other Lives are: 3. Vita Marciana. 4. Vita Vulgata, 5. Vita Lascaris, 6. Vita Latina and Vita Vulgata]

(16) Hermippus T 10, F 28–33, 73?, 89?.

(17) See below 231–235..

(18) Hesychius’ life has been re-edited in Dorandi 2006.

(1) Bollansée 1999: 52–69.

References

Bollansée, J. 1999. Hermippus of Smyrna and His Biographical Writings: A Reappraisal. Leuven, Leuven University Press.

Dorandi, T. 2006, revera 2009. La Vita Hesychii d’Aristote. In Studi Classici e Orientali 52: 87–106.

Felix Jacobi, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker continued: Hermippos of Smyrna, edited by Jan Bollansée, Leiden: Brll 1999.

Stork, Fortenbaugh, Van Ophuijsen and Dorandi (eds.), Lyco of Troas: The Sources, Text and Translation, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers 2004.

17. Düring, Ingemar. 1956. "Ariston or Hermippus? A note on the Catalogue of Aristotle's writings." Classica et Mediaevalia no. 17:11-21.

According to Paul. Moraux the catalogue by Diogenes Laertius is based on the Peripatetic philosopher Aristo of Ceos; according to Ingemar Düring on Hermippus of Smyrna.

18. Ferrer, Montserrat. 2011. "Diogenes Laertius's lives in the fifteenth-century Italian and Catalan versions of Pseudo-Burley's Vita et moribus." Studi Medievali no. 53:681-696.

Abstract: "This article identifies the Latin translation of Diogenes Laertius's Lives by Ambrogio Traversari as one of the sources of a fifteenth-century Italian version of Pseudo Burley's Liber de vita et moribus philosophorum. It also presents a Catalan translation made in 1499 of the Italian version of Pseudo Burley's work."

19. Finkelberg, Aryeh. 1998. "Diogenes Laertius on the Stoic definitions of κόσμος." Scripta Classica Israelica no. 17:21-26.

"Among numerous reports of the Stoic distinctions between several applications of certain terms1 there is one which specifies the three senses of the word κόσμος:

D.L. vii: (137) λέγουσι [sc. the Stoics] δε κάσμον τριχὡς· αὐτὸν τε τὸν θεὸν τὸν ἐκ τἦς «πάσης ούσἱας ὶδἱως ποιάν, δς δὴ ἀφθαρτὄς ἐστι καὶ ἀγένητος, δημιουργὸς ῶν τἡς διακοσμὴσεως, κατὰ χρὅνων ποιὰς περιάδους ἀναλἱσκων εὶς ἑαυτὸν τὴν απασαν ούσἱαν καὶ πάλιν ἐξ ἑαυτού γεννὡν. (138) καὶ αΰτὴν δὲ τὴν διακάσμησιν τὡν ἀστέρων κάσμον εἷναι λένουσν καὶ τρἱτον τὸ συνεστηκὸς εξ ἀμφοιν ,

The apparent difficulty of the report is that αμφοιν in the third definition must refer to the two preceding meanings of κόσμος, so that the third sense of the term appears to be τὸ συνεστηκὸς ἐκ τοϋ ἐκ τής απάσης οΰσἱας ἱδΐως ποιοϋ καὶ τής διακοσμὴσεως των άστερων. This is an impossible notion, and Arnim proposed excising των άστἐρων. Yet his solution is difficult." (p. 21)

(...)

"Accordingly, the original text must have looked like this:

λέγουσι [sc. the Stoics] δὲ κάσμον [τριχὡς· αὐτόν τε] τὸν θεὸν τὸν ἐκ τἦς ἀπάσης ούσἱας ιδἱως ποιόν, δς δῆ ἀφθαρτός ἐστι καὶ ἀνένητος, δημιουργὸς ιυν τἦς διακοσμὴσεως, κατὰ χρόνων ποιὰς περιόδους ἀναλἱσκων εἱς ἑαυτὸν τὴν ἅπασαν ούσἱαν καὶ πάλιν ἐξ εαυτοΰ γεννὡν. [καὶ αὐτὴν] <κατὰ> δε τὴν διακόσμησιν [τῶν ἀστερων <τὡν τὴν νἦν περιφερομενων >] κόσμον εἷναι λέγουσι [καὶ τρἱτον] τὸ συνεστηκὸς ἐξ [ἀμφὄὶν] <αἱθερος καὶ ἀστερων κατὰπεριοχὴν καὶ γἦς καὶ τῶν ἐπ’ αύτἦς ζῴων καὶ φυτῶν >.

If my line of reasoning is correct, Diogenes’ report is a result of the mechanical addition of the sense of ‘heaven’ of the word κόσμος to an account of the Stoic distinction between κόσμος in the sense of eternal god comprising all substance and κόσμος in the sense of world-arrangement. The way in which this addition was made distorted the original account: the phrase κατα τὴν διακόσμησιν, which explained the conceptual relation between the two senses of κόσμος, was sacrificed, so that these senses came to look unrelated,22 and the original σΰστημα description was mutilated. As a result, the report is misleading: the added sense of ‘heaven’ is neither terminological nor even frequent in the Stoics." (p. 26)

(1) Two senses of ούσἱα (Η. v. Arnim, Stoicorum veterum fragmenta [Stuttgart, 1905; hereafter SVF], i 25.2; ἰἰ 114.19) and ἀδιάφορον (SVF iii 28.20, 29; 29.17); three senses of στοιχειον (SVF ii 136.26), ποιόν (SVF ii 128.33), πόλις (SVF iii 81.10), ἀρετή (SVF iii 19.23), etc.

(2) The same report is found in Suda, s.v. κόσμος.

(3) Arnim, SVF, ii 168.9. Arnim is followed by Α. A. Long and D. Ν. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1987), ii, 268.

20. ———. 2000. "Diogenes Laertius on the Stoic definitions of κόσμος again." Scripta Classica Israelica no. 19:271-280.

"I am very pleased that my short and unambitious piece ‘Diogenes Laertius on the Stoic definitions of κὸσμος’, published in the previous issue of Scripta Classica Israelica, should have attracted the critical attention of Dr. Ludlam. As a self-conscious scholar I am well aware of the fallibility of my arguments and highly appreciative of professional criticism as a major help in ihe improvement of my skills and expertise. I am grateful to the Editors of Scripta Classica Israelica for inviting me to respond to Dr. Ludlam’s critical review of my article." (p. 271)

(...)

"It is a pity therefore that this as well as certain other deficiencies of Dr. Ludlam’s article render his rich critical commentary less helpful than it might otherwise have been. But what is regrettable beyond all this is that Dr. Ludlam has chosen to phrase his paper in an unpleasantly dismissive language which does little honour to the profession, and argues in a way which may on occasion strike the less sympathetic reader as simple malice. It is, alas,all too easy to give the uninformed reader the impression that what purports to be detached scientific precision is in reality no more than the expression of personal animus."

21. Fleischer, Kilian. 2020. "Structuring the History of Philosophy – A Comparison between Philodemus and Diogenes Laertius in the Light of New Evidence." The Classical Quarterly:1-16.

Considering the fair amount of ancient authors who compiled works on the subject of the ‘History of Philosophy’, it is remarkable—and regrettable—that there is no solid basis for a comparative analysis of their structures.(1) Most ancient histories of philosophy are only preserved in a few fragments or excerpts and hardly allow any meaningful non-trivial comparison of the structure and order of the philosophers and schools discussed. The only more or less entirely preserved ‘History of Philosophy’ is Diogenes Laertius’ famous treatise." (p. 1)

(...)

"The only other ‘History of Philosophy’ which has come down to us from antiquity in significant excerpts—or, to be more precise, in significant original fragments—is Philodemus’ Σύνταξις τῶν φιλοσόφων." (p. 2)

(...)

"In this contribution I present a new reading of the final section of the Index Academicorum which has far-reaching consequences not only for the supposed content of the Index Academicorum itself but also for the supposed structure of the entire syntaxis. A reassessment of the similarities between Philodemus and Diogenes, taking the new evidence into account, suggests that the structure of the two works was different in many respects and that the hypothesis that Philodemus’ arrangement of the material served as model for Diogenes has to be rethought and probably rejected.

The Index Academicorum (also known as Historia Academicorum or similar) is commonly deemed to represent a book of Philodemus’ Σύνταξις τῶν φιλοσόφων (10)" (p. 3, some notes omitted)

(1) For the different types of ancient historiography of philosophy and their relation to Diogenes Laertius, see J. Mejer, Diogenes Laertius and His Hellenistic Background (Wiesbaden, 1978), especially 60–95.

(10) The latest edition was provided by T. Dorandi, Filodemo. Storia dei filosofi. Platone e l’Accademia (PHerc. 1021 e 164). Edizione, traduzione e commento (Naples, 1991).

22. Fletcher, Richard. 2016. "Imagination dead imagine: Diogenes Laertius’ work of mourning." In Creative Lives in Classical Antiquity: Poets, Artists and Biography, edited by Fletcher, Richard and Hanink, Johanna, 219-240. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Diogenes Laertius’ Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers shares something vital with both Roland Barthes’ mourning diary and Jacques Derrida’s work of mourning.

(...)

It is precisely this conception of the work of mourning that I want to explore in my reading of the ill-fated poetic output of Diogenes Laertius, which consists in the selections from his collection (or collections) called Epigrammata or Pammetros (‘Epigrams or In Various Metres’), interspersed throughout his monumental Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers.(3)

It has been well-documented that Diogenes’ work emphasizes the deaths, as much as the lives, of Greek philosophers.(4)

Central to any discussion of Diogenes and death is the role played by his poetic works scattered throughout his biographical narratives, works which I will dub his biographical death-poems." (p 219-220)

(3) 1.39. On Diogenes’ poetry in general, see Mejer (1978) 47-50; Gigante (1986) 34-44; Bollansée (1999) 227-32.

(4) Mejer (1978) 32, n. 67; Bollansée (1999) 228.

References

Bollansée, J. (1999) Hermippus of Smyrna and his Biographical Writings:A Reappraisal. Leuven.

Gigante, M. (1986) ‘Biografia e dossografia in Diogene Laerzio’ Elenchos 7: 7 102.

Mejer, J. (1978) Diogenes Laertius and his Hellenistic Background. Wiesbaden.

23. Gaines, Robert N. 2010. "Sophists in Diogenes Laertius." Papers on Rhetoric no. 10:113-125.

24. Grau, Sergi. 2013. "Diogenes Laertius between tradition and innovation: philosophers and θεῖοι ἄνδρες." In The Theodosian Age (A.D. 379 - 455): Power, place, belief and learning at the end of the Western Empire, edited by García-Gasco, Rosa, González Sánchez, Sergio and Hernández de la Fuente, David A., 183-190. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Abstract: "It has become commonplace for scholars to point out the similarities, as well as the vast differences —despite both works belonging to the literary genre of philosophical biography— between Diogenes Laertius’ The Lives of Eminent Philosophers and Eunapius of Sardis’ Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists, which were in all likelihood written in the space of less than a century. It is particularly salient that, although this phenomenon is often backed up by archaeological evidence, the heroisation or even deification of some ancient Greek philosophers in Laertius’ Lives tends only to be dealt with in the epigrams dedicated to them by the author – the place where Laertius usually expresses his own personal stance and his judgement on the lives and deaths of the philosophers in question. There are scarce few references to this typically Greek religious process in the body of Laertius’ narrative, except, tellingly, where this is to condemn it as fraud. As such, this short article looks to explore the somewhat ambiguous mentality, which can be seen to

undergo a transformation of sorts, which emerges in Laertius’ Lives regarding the cult of the philosophers and their divine character. This is presented against a particularly significant historical backdrop immediately preceding the popularisation of the figure of the θεῖος ἀνήρ and Christian hagiography, a viewpoint which brings into focus a number of changes and continuities."

25. ———. 2022. "Conversion to Philosophy in Diogenes Laertius: Forms and Functions." In Religious and Philosophical Conversion in the Ancient Mediterranean Traditions, edited by Despotis, Athanasios and Löhr, Hermut, 219-237. Leiden: Brill.

"The well-established theme of the conversion to philosophy by the ancient Greek thinkers has long been identified in various studies.(2) This conversion to philosophy, the usual Greek term for which is ἐπιστροφή,(3 often leads, in effect, to a true initiation process, when the new philosopher abandons his previous life of luxury, excess and superstition, or a life which simply has no connection with philosophy, to embrace a new disciplined life, based on asceticism, σωφροσύνη and, naturally, the practice of philosophy. The philosopher has usually already been called to the vocation of philosophy, often demonstrated by extraordinary skills that have been apparent since childhood and considerable intellectual precocity, but a concrete ‘call’ is necessary which formalises it in an educational context, always by a master’s side, given that the transmission of philosophical activity is unthinkable outside of a school or at least outside of the relationship between master and disciple." (p. 219, some notes omitted)

(...)

This is why it is useful to classify and analyse the various models of conversion and initiation in philosophy as presented in the ancient biographies, in particular, of course, in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, the only surviving complete work in this genre. We must clarify that a study of this kind cannot be considered rigorously historical: the ancient biographies, as is well known, can rarely be used in this way. Rather, this seeks to classify and analyse the sense, when possible, of the various biographical themes related to philosophical conversion and initiation that appear in these narratives, in order to understand, at least, how the ancient Greeks viewed philosophers and philosophy." (pp. 220-221)

(2) (...) For Diogenes Laertius in particular, see Hope (1930, 102–103) and Grau (2008).

(3 Cf. Plato, The Republic 518d: conversion is presented there as the goal of philosophical education. (...)

References

Grau, Sergi. 2008. “Modelos de conversión e iniciación a la filosofía: análisis de un tópico biográfico”. Noua Tellus. Anuario del centro de estudios clásicos 26: 67–102.

Hope, Richard. 1930. The Book of Diogenes Laertius: Its Spirit and Its Method. New York: Columbia University Press.

26. Haake, Matthias. 2004. "Documentary Evidence, Literary Forgery, or Manipulation of Historical Documents? Diogenes Laertius and an Athenian Honorary Decree for Zeno of Citium." The Classical Quarterly no. 54:470-483.

"The Athenian decree honouring the philosopher Zeno of Citium is generally considered to be one of the most important sources for the social status of philosophers and their public acceptance in Hellenistic Athens. A remarkable aspect of this source, which also constitutes the reason for the present investigation, is that the text has not come to us as an inscription engraved on stone, but is quoted by Diogenes Laertius in his Life of Zeno:(1)" (p. 470)

(...)

"My discussion of this text will focus on the motivation clause and the details for the publication. But rather than assume that the decree is genuine and draw consequences from that assumption, I will consider these two parts of the text against the background of the epigraphic habit of Athenian honorary decrees dating to the third century. To anticipate my conclusions, both the motivation clause and the provisions for the publication of the decree show a fairly consistent pattern of concepts and ideasthat are very common in the literary biographies of Hellenistic philosophers, but are exceptional in public inscriptions for philosophers and in Athenian honorary inscriptions in general. (p. 474)

(1) Diog. Laert. 7.10-12. (...)

27. Hägg, Thomas. 2012. The Art of Biography in Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 7.4: The philosophical gallery: Diogenes Laertius, pp. 305-317.

"(...) I shall be content to give a general description of contents and disposition, and then to offer a few examples of different kinds of philosophical Lives provided by Diogenes. His close reliance on earlier Lives and collections makes rather futile any attempt at defining a typical Laertian Life, as is possible (to a certain extent) with the Plutarchan form. The best one can do is to show what kinds of ingredients tend to occur and how they are combined in particular cases, and to ask what the author may have wanted to achieve, from a literary point of view, with his voluminous specimen of collective biography." (p. 306, note omitted)

(...)

"What literary ambitions can we detect in Diogenes’ collection? It is true that biography, in a sense, dominates over doxography in the work as a whole. This is one reason why modern users of the work, who mostly consult it to get philosophical information, tend to return disappointed: the author seems to be more interested in ‘silly’ anecdotes about the philosophers’ lives than in what they really thought and taught. But it is difficult to see that he was interested in writing readable and attractive biography either; the aesthetic aspirations that earlier in life moved him to publish the collection of epigrams in different metres seem to be absent in his vast work in prose. He makes no effort to fill in missing parts of the Lives using his own creative imagination, as most ancient biographers do, but is content to reproduce what the tradition offers, leaving the gaps wide open. A uniform literary tone is hardly to be overheard; what unity there is resides in the philological pedantry." (p. 317)

28. Hahm, David E. 1992. "Diogenes Laertius VII: On the Stoics." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Teil II: Principat. Band 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. 6. Teilband: Philosophie (Doxographica [Forts.]), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 4076-4182. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Indices pp. 4404-4411.

"Diogenes Laertius' 'Lives of the Stoics', Book 7 is a literary enigma. In a series of so-called biographies of the Stoics of the third century B. C. Diogenes Laertius presents his readers with a kaleidoscopic array of colorful anecdotes, witty sayings, dates and bits of biographical data, bibliographies, and a long synopsis of Stoic philosophical doctrines. Moreover, he presents many of these items as quotations from a bewildering number of Stoic philosophers and other authors of the first three centuries B. C. The thorough going fragmentation of subject matter and authority creates an almost irresistible temptation for the reader to ignore the author's literary pretentions, simply to enjoy the parade of images and ideas, ostensibly emanating from a chorus of ancient authorities. The nature of Diogenes Laertius' literary method,

combined with the fact that most of the surviving biographical information about the early Stoics and the most comprehensive survey of early Stoic teaching are found in this book have quite understandably led modern readers to focus their attention on the historical information that Diogenes preserves rather than on Diogenes' own literary, historical, or philosophical aims and accomplishments.3 Yet there can be little question that Diogenes' literary and historiographical aims have had a profound influence upon the nature and quality of his historical information, and that an understanding of his method of composition is crucial both for evaluating his own literary and philosophical achievement and for critically interpreting the historical information contained in his work." (p. 4077, notes omitted)

"In this study I propose to reexamine Diogenes' composition of the seventh book of his 'Lives' in the light of what is now known about ancient methods of composition of informational works. By carefully picking through the text for evidence on its construction I hope to clarify the nature and identity of most of the sources that he used in this book. This analysis will also bring into clearer focus his historiographical and literary objectives to the extent that they are manifested in this book. It is my hope that these results will, in combination with studies of other parts of his work, also advance our understanding and appreciation of Diogenes as an author and historian of philosophy in the early third century A. D." (p. 4078)

29. Hope, Richard. 1930. The Book of Diogenes Laërtius: Its Spirit and Its Method. New York: Columbia University Press.

30. Kindstrand, Jan Frederik. 1986. "Diogenes Laertius and the Chreia tradition." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 7:217-243.

"In Diogenes Laertius’ work on Greek philosophers pointed sayings and anecdotes play an important role. These collections are prominent especially for the Seven Sages and many members of the Socratic schools, and certainly belong to the most entertaining parts. In some biographies they dominate absolutely, and if they were to be removed, little would be left in the form of biography for characters such as Anacharsis, Aristippus, Antisthenes and above all the Cynic Diogenes." (p. 219)

31. Kölligan, Daniel. 2012. "Dying in Diogenes: the use of τελευτάω in Diogenes Laertius and beyond." In Hyperboreans: Essays in Greek and Latin Poetry, Philosophy, Rhetoric and Linguistics, edited by da Cunha Corrêa, Paula, Martinho, Marcos, Macedo, José Marcos and Pinheiro Hasegawa, Alexandre, 395-428. São Paulo: Humanitas.

"Summary.

The IMPF [imperfect] of τελεντάω in Diogenes Laertius and Plato either opens up a framework for further elaboration on the topic it introduces into the discourse or refers back to a topic already under discussion at some previous point. While the corresponding AOR [aorist] form is sufficient to make a self-contained statement about a fact in the past, the IMPF is not. The imperfective aspectual value it is usually seen to have can either be exploited on the clausal and sentential level by referring to an event without taking into accoynt its temporal delimitation, which gives us the well-known progressive, conative, iterative, habitual, etc., readings, or on the discourse level by creating a setting into which further information may be couched or by referring back to previous information.

This behaviour of τελεντάω sets it off from its semantic near-synonym αποθνήσκω which is much less frequently used in the IMPF, the reason for which may originally have been the fact that the former is an accomplishment, and the latter an achievement verb. The standard readings of the imperfective forms of the latter - iterative, distributive - may have made it less suitable for the discourse related uses described in this paper." (p. 426)

32. Lacalle, Jacinto Martínez. 1976. "Three Stoic Propositions in Diogenes Laertius VII 69-80." Phronesis:115-119.

"The present paper aims at suggesting the emendation of the texts of three Stoic propositions appearing in Diogenes Laertius' Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers at the places indicated by the abbreviations 'DL VII 69', 'DL VII 78', and 'DL VII 80'" (p. 115, a note omitted)

(...)

"Ideally, editors of texts of Stoic logic should learn and understand it. In this paper I offer corrected versions of the three incorrect texts quoted. My aim is but to help future editors to establish a better Greek edition of Diogenes Laertius." (p. 119, a note omitted)

33. Laks, André. 2013. "The Pythagorean Hypomnemata Reported by Alexander Polyhistor in Diogenes Laertius (8.25–33): A Proposal for Reading,." In On Pythagoreanism, edited by Cornelli, Gabriele, McKirahan, Richard and Macris, Constantinos, 371-384. Berlin: De Gruyter.

"One can wonder whether the main responsibility for Pythagoras’ Platonization – which is much older, and also easier to understand, given Plato’s own clear if indirectly expressed Pythagorean inclinations, than his Aristotelization – belongs to Plato’s immediate disciples Speusippus and Xenocrates, as is commonly held, or rather to Aristotle himself, as L. Zhmud interestingly argues in the present volume.(5) In any case, with respect to the line of development that stretches from Pythagoras to the Neopythagoreans through the Ancient Pythagoreans, the Platonic Academy, and Aristotle, the Pythagorean Hypomnemata (or Pythagorean Notes, as I shall call them)(6) which Diogenes Laertius read in Alexander Polyhistor’s Successions and which he reproduced in Book 8 of his Lives (§§25–33), occupy an interesting position.(7) Although the date of redaction of this text is impossible to settle exactly, there is scholarly agreement that it is both post-Academic and pre-Neopythagorean, which means that it must have been written between the late 4th and the 1st century BC.(8)" (pp. 371-372)

(5) See supra, p. 323 ff. [Pythagorean Number Doctrine in the Academy, pp. 323-344]

(6) The title Hypomnemata is difficult to translate. Memoirs, Commentaries, Notebooks,which one finds in various authors, do not strike the right note. Notes might be the least confusing. (...)

(7) Alexander of Miletus, surnamed Polyhistor because of his vast learning, lived in Rome under Sulla at the beginning of the 1st century (for further information, see Schwartz 1894). On doxographical excerpts in Successions-literature, see Mejer 1978, p. 64f. (cf. Zhmud 2012, p. 59). Alexander may have abbreviated the original text, and Diogenes the text he found in Alexander (the kalei in § 29 or phesi in §32 are clear traces of report and hence intervention, but it is impossible to be more specific). Rewriting might account for some of the text’s not infrequent obscurities and oddities.

(8) Alexander Polyhistor, who worked in Rome after 82 – c. 35 provides, of course, a terminus ante quem.

References

Mejer, J. (1978), Diogenes Laertius and his Hellenistic Background. Wiesbaden.

Schwartz, E. (1894), “Alexandros von Milet”, RE 1. 2, cols. 1449–1452.

Zhmud, L. (2012), Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans. Oxford

34. ———. 2014. "Diogenes Laertius’ Life of Pythagoras." In A History of Pythagoreanism, edited by Huffman, Carl A., 360-380. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"The Life [of Pythagoras] itself is an odd book, a product of late erudite Hellenistic scholarship, extremely heterogeneous, full of quotations (explicit or not), and often lacking visible, or for that matter any kind of organization. This explains why reading Diogenes may mean – and has in fact often meant – reading him for the sources he quotes and uses, especially since he frequently happens to be the only author to preserve them. This natural tendency to exploit Diogenes’ work rather than read it “for itself” has been enhanced on the one hand by a disciplinary orientation towards Quellenforschung (“inquiry about sources”) and, on the other hand, by a strongly depreciative judgment on Diogenes’ own capacities and achievement. Progressive awareness of the fact that part at least of the strangeness of Diogenes’ book may come from our own expectations as to what historiography should be has led some scholars at least (mostly in recent times) to minimize Diogenes’ shortcomings and to try to understand better his procedures and intentions.

Given the nature of his work, it is in any case difficult to talk about Diogenes without talking about his sources. I shall do this (section 3) after having reviewed the content of Book 8 and explained its place within Diogenes’ work (section 2). I shall then comment about some specific features of Diogenes Laertius’ picture of Pythagoras (section 4), give an analysis of the extended report about his (alleged) doctrines which, as I read it, plays a central function in the overall construction of the book (section 5) and eventually raise the problem of Diogenes’ attitude towards Pythagoras (section 6)." (pp. 371-372, notes omitted)

35. Lapini, Walter. 2015. "Diogenes Laertius on Epicurus (Diog. Laert., 10, 29)." Philosophia no. 45:277-283.

36. Leão, Delfim Ferreira. 2019. "Can we trust Diogenes Laertius? The Book I of the Lives of Eminent Philosophers as source for the poems and the laws of Solon." In Dike. Essays on Greek Law in Honor of Alberto Maffi, edited by Gagliardi, Lorenzo and Pepe, Laura, 227-242. Milano: Giuffrè Francis Lefebvre.

"Conclusions.

In what regards the transmission of Solon’s poems — and even taking into account that Diogenes provides sometimes doubtful information (such as the number of verses that the statesman would have composed) —, the doxographer turns out to be a very useful source for the recuperation of the poetic work of the statesman, to the point of preserving verses that no other sources have documented. As for the legislative work, the value of Diogenes is more ambivalent. On the whole, it refers to a still relatively high number of norms, but, unlike with the poems, he chooses not to quote the laws literally, thus giving preference to brief allusive summaries, not always exact in their wording and in their ascription to Solon. Even so, one can find in his testimony also some useful interpretive suggestions which do not appear in other sources. Still, if one compares the thin information provided about laws with the attention he dedicates to the alleged letters that Solon exchanged with other personalities such as Peisistratus, Periander, Epimenides, and Croesus (1.52-4; 64-7), it is clear that the doxographer (and most probably his readers) would be far more interested in the ethical potentialities of this type of apocryphal material than in critically reconstituting Solon’s legislative work. Awareness of this fact requires caution in analyzing the information that Diogenes conveys, but does not obliterate his value and relevance as a source." (pp. 240-241)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius. A Bibliography (Lew-Z)

English studies (Lew-Z)

1. Lewis, Eric. 1988. "Diogenes Laertius and the Stoic Theory of Mixture." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies no. 35:84-90.

"Here I shall discuss the Stoic theory of mixture. Perhaps no other physical theory has ever been so ridiculed, by ancient and modern commentators alike.

The Stoics are thought to have 'bitten the bullet', and claimed that the gin and the tonic in your mixed drink are actually coextensive; that it is a case of two bodies occupying exactly the sameplace at the same time. This 'absurdity' is thought to result not just from their theory of mixture, but from their whole natural philosophy. The Stoics are thought to have conceived of almost everything as a body, qualities, mental states, the soul, etc., and so coextensive bodies are thought to be found wherever one looks in the Stoic universe. My body and my soul are said to be two coextensive bodies, all of my qualities are claimed to be bodies distinct both from my body, and from each other. Aristotle made it axiomatic that no two bodies can be in the same place at the same time.(6) Most subsequent philosophers have agreed, the Stoics being seen as foolish metaphysicians who base their whole natural philosophy on an obvious falsehood.

This is a mistaken view. Neither has the correct Stoic theory of mixture been discovered, nor has their theory of body, qualities and soul been properly worked out. Here I hope to correct the first error, but hinting at the proper explication of the second.

The passages most useful for discussing the Stoic theory of mixture are as follows: Stobaeus Ecl. XVII 4.153.24-55 14 Wachsmuth (= Ar. Did. Fr. Phys. 28 = SVF 2.471), Alexander de mixt. 3.216.14-217.2 (= SVF 2.473), and, perhaps most importantly, Diogenes Laertius VII.151 (= SVF2.479)." (pp. 85-86, some notes omitted)

(6) Aristotle denies this possibility at the following: Phys. 4.1 209a4-7, 4.6 213b7: Cael. 3.6 305al9-20: GC 1.5 32la5-10; DA 1.5 409b3, 2.7 418bl3-18.

2. Long, Anthony A. 1986. "Diogenes Laertius, Life of Arcesilaus." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 7:429-449.

"No philosopher in the Hellenistic period is more intriguing than Arcesilaus of Pitane, and none is of greater historical significance.

His interpretation of the Platonic tradition became the stance of the Academy down to the time of Philo of Larissa and Antiochus of Ascalon. Thereafter in the refurbished Pyrrhonism of Aenesidemus, the dialectical strategies of Arcesilaus and Carneades lived on among the methods of that new school for inducing suspension of judgement (ἐποχή). Arcesilaus in effect was the founder of Greek scepticism, as a methodology for demonstrating that every claim to knowledge or belief could be met with a counter-argument of equal strength. By his rejoinders to Stoic theses, continued and developed by Carneades, Arcesilaus ensured that Stoic philosophers must be constantly on the alert against sceptical challenges. More than any other thinker of his time, Arcesilaus deserves the credit for ensuring that Hellenistic philosophy remained true to the classical tradition of argument, with no quarter given to sloppy thinking or idle dogmatism.

(..)

Some traces of Arcesilaus, we may conjecture, were transmitted in writing through the Academy’s Stoic opponents. But if, as seems certain, Arcesilaus published nothing under his own name we have to reckon with the probability that even our meagre record of his arguments in Cicero, Sextus and Plutarch is nothing like a first-hand report of what he said.

This situation casts Diogenes Laertius’ life of Arcesilaus into a prominence which seems not to have been appreciated. If, as I shall argue, his life captures features of Arcesilaus which go back to the third century B.C., we should ask whether, notwithstanding the low level of Diogenes’ philosophical acumen, these features corroborate or throw light on our more sophisticated but much later reporters. Apart from this, Diogenes’ Life of Arcesilaus is one of the best examples we might take if we are interested in a case-study of his collection at the highest level it achieves. That level, to be sure, is a hill of very modest altitude. But with Arcesilaus, it does at least avoid the flatness, not to say, depths, evident in some of his lives." (pp. 429-430)

3. ———. 2018. "In and Out of the Stoa: Diogenes Laertius on Zeno." In Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, edited by Bryan, Jenny, Wardy, Robert and Warren, James, 242-262. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"David Sedley in his celebrated article on ‘philosophical allegiance in the Greco-Roman World’ emphasizes the extraordinary authority that founders of schools acquired among their followers, at least after the founder’s death.(1) This point pertains to Zeno of Citium as much as it does to Epicurus, who is the main focus of Sedley’s study." (p. 242)

(...)

"In this chapter I want to develop Sedley’s insight by first discussing a striking mismatch between Cicero and Diogenes on details of Zeno’s career, and then by exploring in some detail the sources and the structure of Diogenes’ vita section.

These findings will tell us little that is certain, unfortunately, about Zeno’s philosophical career. What they will illuminate is a large gap between how Zeno was perceived by various contemporary authors and how Stoics at the time of Cicero represented Zeno’s role as founding father of the school.

I am far from being a pioneer in taking this line, which Jaap Mansfeld and David Hahm have already pursued most effectively.(10) Much, however, remains to be said about Diogenes’ Life of Zeno, leaving us, if I am right, unsettling questions about the first Stoic’s intellectual biography and persona." (p. 244)

(1) Sedley (1989).

(10) Mansfeld (1986); Hahm (2002).

References

Hahm, D. (2002) ‘Zeno before and after Stoicism’, in T. Scaltsas and A. S. Mason (eds.) The Philosophy of Zeno, Larnaca: 29– 56.

Mansfeld, J. (1986) ‘Diogenes Laertius on Stoic philosophy’, Elenchos 7: 295– 382, repr. in J. Mansfeld (1990) Studies in the Historiography of Greek Philosophy, Assen and Maastricht: 343– 428.

Sedley, D. N. (1989) ‘Philosophical allegiance in the Greco- Roman world’, in J. Barnes and M. Griffin (eds.) Philosophia Togata I, Oxford: 97– 119.

4. Long, Herbert S. 1944. "The short forms of the text of Diogenes Laertius." Classical Philology no. 44:230-235.

5. Ludlam, Ivor. 2000. "The 'Original Text’ of D.L. 7.137-8." Scripta Classica Israelica no. 19:251-280.

"In a previous issue of this periodical, Aryeh Finkelberg appears to attempt a reconstruction of the ‘original text’ (p. 25) upon which a part of Diogenes Laertius 7, 37-8 is based." [Finkelberg 1998].

(...)

"My reply will not be completely negative. I shall take the opportunity to propose an alternative explanation for the text at D.L. 7Ἰ37-8 which is based on Stoic philosophy, and I shall ponder a few issues concerning Stoic physics, Stoic physical terms, and source criticism.

Finkelberg’s dense argument needs to be teased apart in order to examine its various claims and methods. I shall present the main points of Finkelberg’s argument in a number of steps, with my remarks following each step. Page references are to Finkelberg’s article" (p. 253)

(...)

"Concerning the transformation from the ‘original text’ to the received text of Diogenes Laertius, the explanation offered falls on philological and philosophical grounds and suffers from numerous internal inconsistencies. The context of none of the testimonia adduced is considered, with the result that all the testimonia are treated as of equal worth. Not only is the significance of the context of Diogenes Laertius

7Ἰ37-8 overlooked, but the context itself is ignored, with the far-reaching consequences I have felt obliged to address in the analysis above." (p. 271)

6. Maber, Richard. 2001. "A Publisher's Nightmare: Ménage, Wetstein, and Diogenes Laertius." Seventeenth-Century French Studies no. 23:173-185.

7. Mann, Wolfgang-Rainer. 1996. "The Life of Aristippus." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 78:97-119.

"There are no doubt any number of issues one might want to consider in connection with Aristippus and his philosophy. Yet since all his writings - if ever there were any - are lost to us, we have to content ourselves with the doxography. Here the Life of Aristippus in Book II of Diogenes Laertius occupies a special place. In this paper, I would like to consider four questions or problems that arise with respect to the Life (and the life) of Aristippus, not so much in the hope of settling them, as hoping to suggest some lines for further inquiry." (p. 97)

8. Mansfeld, Jaap. 1986. "Diogenes Laertius on Stoic Philosophy." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 7:295-382.

Reprinted in J. Mansfeld, Studies in the Historiography of Greek Philosophy, Assen: Van Gorcum 1990, pp. 343–428.

"Quellenforschung, just as psycho-analysis, is an heirloom of 19th century positivism; it was believed that something is understood if one knows its origins, or what it is composed of. One could even argue the remote influence, or actio very much in distans, of Presocratic arche-speculation. But we have since learned also to take the author and his public into account. Consequently, I have attempted to display less interest in Diogenes Laertius as a person than as an author, and although one knows little about the sort of early third-century provincial public he wrote for, one may at least account for the fact that the traditions used by him reflect the feudings among and the discussions internal to the philosophical schools, as well as the various ways of teaching philosophy or addressing the general public, that evolved in the Hellenistic period and later. The way Diogenes Laertius handles his materials may reveal certain preferences, but it would be jejune to hold him responsible for the information at his disposal." (p. 299)

9. ———. 1988. "Number Nine (Diog. Laert. IX, 87)." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 5:235-248.

"In this paper I wish to propose a new interprétation of a well known and vexing passage in Diogenes Laertius. We may Start by quoting the text as found at IX 87:

τόν ενατον Φαβωρΐνος ογδοον, Σέξτος δέ καν Αι νεσί δήμος δέκατο ν. άλλα και τόν δέκατον Σέξτος όγδοόν φησι, Φαβωρϊνος δέ ενατον.

It is odd to have a second-order note, dealing with the relative order of tropes eight nine ten in a plurality of authors, interrup ting Diogene's first-order account of the ten tropes. It is also odd to find this note, dealing with tropes eight nine ten, at the end of the short descriptive summary of Diogenes' trope nine. Further more, it is odd that these two oddities do not seem to have troubled the learned. Nevertheless one would have been puzzled less if the odd note had been found at the end of Diogenes' account of the ten tropes or had served to introduce his last batch of three. To be sure, in the latter position too it would have interfered with the flow of Diogenes' exposition, but much less flagrantly than as it is now." (p. 235)

10. ———. 1999. "Sources." In The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, edited by Long, Anthony A., 22-44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Diogenes Laertius' work, though for the most part a treatment of the sects, is structured according to lines of succession, the Ionian in books II-VII and the Italian in books VIII-X. Hence, we find the early Greek philosophers who are Ionians starting with Anaximander (said to be the pupil of Thales and so linked to book I) at the beginning of book II, and the Italians-cum-Eleatics together with Heraclitus and Xenophanes (who are counted as "random") in books VIII and IX. 1-49. Protagoras is added at IX. 50-6 because he was purportedly a pupil of Democritus, and Diogenes of Apollonia at IX. 5 7 for no visible reason.(36) Diogenes' treatment is very uneven. The early Ionians get only brief chapters, and the sections about the early Eleatics are also relatively short. Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism are treated on an extraordinarily large scale, though not yet in the mystagogical way of a Porphyry, or an Iamblichus; Empedocles (included among the Pythagoreans), Heraclitus, and Democritus are presented in fairly long sections.(37)

(...)

The doxographies in Diogenes Laertius that are concerned with Pythagoras, Empedocles, Heraclitus, and Democritus are preceded by fairly extensive biographies, whereas biographical information about the other early Greek philosophers is thin, or even, as in Leucippus' case, absent (though he is part of the succession). This too shows that Diogenes Laertius, or the traditions he is following, attached a special importance to these figures. The biography of Heraclitus is perhaps the most interesting. Factually, little was known, so stories about his character, his behaviour, and his death were fabricated from the utterances in his book - an interesting example of the idea, prominent in Diogenes Laertius but also quite common in a variety of other authors, that a philosopher's life and his work should agree with each other.(41) The study of the life, activities, and sayings of a philosopher was in fact regarded as an indispensable preliminary to the study of his writings and doctrines. In the cases where no books were available, the philosopher's "life" itself, including acts, apophthegms, and so on had to suffice. Conversely, if biographical data were unavailable, they were made up from what a person wrote, or from what others were believed to have written about him. These practices gave ancient biography, or at least part of it, its bad name.(42) " (pp. 33-34)

11. ———. 2000. "Diogenes Laertius 7.83." Mnemosyne no. 53:592-597.

"The antepenultimate sentence, εἰς μὲν γὰρ ... ἔχειν εἰπεῖν, of the concluding paragraph of the doxography (as with some latitude we may call it) of Stoic logic in book seven of Diogenes Laertius is by several scholars believed to be corrupt. It has been emended in various ways, sometimes drastically, at other times a bit less drastically, but the results of these attempts are far from satisfactory and no agreement has been reached.

Literal translations of what is in the manuscripts as a rule either avail themselves of tacit, or implicit, additions, or are perhaps too clever (see on Long & Sedley below). What is more, either way the unity and coherence of the passage as a whole are not maintained. In the present note I shall propose a very slight emendation." (p. 592)

12. Mejer, Jørgen. 1978. Diogenes Laertius and his Hellenistic Background. Wiesbaden: Steiner.

Contents: Preface IX; Part I: Diogenes Laertius 1; The intentions of Diogenes' book 2; The question of sources 7; The technique of excerpting 16; A specimen of source analysis 29; Diogenes' personality 46; Part II: Hellenistic historiography of philosophy 60; Diadokai 62; History of a single School 74; Peri aireseon 75; Doxography 81; Biographies of philosophers 90; Concluding remarks 94; Bibliography 96; Index locorum 102; Index nominum 105-108.

"The original motivation for this book was a wish to sort out the many ways in which Presocratic philosophy was transmitted in Antiquity. Only later did I realize that such a study demanded far more knowledge and skill than I possessed, and that any attempt to discuss the question of historiography of philosophy in Antiquity had to be based on a fresh analysis of Diogenes Laertius. This book is offered as a contribution to Laertian scholarship but its value, if any, is to be decided by the extent to which it will be followed up by further research on Hellenistic scholarship, concerning history of philosophy and biographies of philosophers, and on the transmission of early Greek philosophy in Antiquity. Ultimately, a History of Historiography of Philosophy in Antiquity is to be hoped for." (from the Preface)

13. ———. 1992. "Diogenes Laertius and the Transmission of Greek Philosophy." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Teil II: Principat. Band 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. 5. Teilband: Philosophie (Einzelne Autoren, Doxographica), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 3556-3602. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"It should be clear by now that Diogenes did not mindlessly copy out his sources for his doxographical sections. He must have made an effort to find what he considered the best sources for each philosophical school, and he definitely had his own ideas as to the content of each doxography even if he did not always understand the more complicated philosophical arguments. Most of his doxographies show some affinity to the presentations of earlier Greek philosophy, which we find in other texts from the IInd and IIIrd centuries A. D., though in some cases he seems to have turned to older sources (e. g. for Aristotle and Epicurus). There is no sign of any mechanical use of sources, not even in the case of the Presocratics where he undoubtedly drew upon a source belonging to the doxographical tradition going back to Theophrastus. His information sometimes differs from that in Aetius and Hippolytus. In the few longer excerpts on the Presocratics he seems to reproduce his source(s) fairly closely but he is not averse to changing, or even adding to, the text he found in his source. We may not always be happy with him as a source of information on earlier Greek philosophy, but he is neither incompetent nor consciously misleading; there is little doubt that he can be taken to represent what an individual interested in philosophy, (161) living somewhere in the provinces of the Roman empire in the IInd or IIIrd centuries A. D., could do, provided he worked hard collecting and excerpting the sources which he could find. Diogenes may not be a great writer, and there were obviously better philosophical minds writing in his period, but he is not to be vilified, and he has preserved much information that would have been lost to us, had it not been for his enthusiasm and industry." pp. 3599-3600.

(161) Diogenes is usually compared to sources like Plutarch, Galen, Sextus, and Hippolytus. They were, however, in some sense all 'professionals' and placed in important positions with access to good libraries in major cities. If we measure Diogenes with another stick, e. g. the philosophical knowledge implied in Lucian's `Vitarum Auctio', his effort becomes much more respectable.

14. ———. 2007. "Biography and Doxography: Four Crucial Questions Raised by Diogenes Laertius." In Die griechische Biographie in hellenistischer Zeit. Akten des internationalen Kongresses vom 26.-29. Juli 2006 in Würzburg, edited by Erler, Michael and Schorn, Stefan, 431-442. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Diogenes' text is divided into 10 'books' (...)

This structure is important since it seems to indicate that Diogenes' work belongs to a type of ancient literature in which the lives of philosophers were arranged as two or three series of biographies so that teacher and student followed one another within each major philosophical school. This type of literature had the title Successions of Philosophers, (5) though there are also other books with different titles that seem to belong in this category, not least Philodemus' two surveys of the Platonic and the Stoic schools.(6)

Some of Diogenes' biographies, however, seem to have been composed later than the Hellenistic period (Xenophon, Democritus), and some of his reports on philosophical systems show features that are similar to texts from the second century AD (Plato, Skeptics). Therefore, we must ask:

To which extent is Diogenes representative of the Successions type -- and in general of the Hellenistic tradition of biography and historiography of philosophy?

Diogenes' biographical sections are composed of a number of items like birth, parents, name, appearance, relationship to other philosophers, travels, life style and circumstances of death; there is no particular order in which these items are presented, and though many details also were found in Hellenistic sources, they cannot have come from one particular source. In any case, we must ask:

Is the biographical information we get, trustworthy?

The dominating element in all the biographies is Diogenes' use of anecdotes; sometimes the same anecdote is told about more than one philosopher, hence it is hard to believe that Diogenes himself was convinced of them being literally true. Since it is commonly assumed that anecdotes are fictitious, we must ask a third question:

What is the biographical value of anecdotes?

Many, but not all, of Diogenes' Lives include a section on the philosophical ideas, if not of an individual philosopher, then at least of a philosophical school. In the case of the Post-Socratic schools (the Cyrenaics, Plato, Aristotle, the Cynics, the Stoics, the Skeptics and Epicurus) there is no uniform way of presenting their philosophy: Plato is presented in the light of second century AD Platonism, while Aristotle's philosophy seems to represent a fairly early way of doing Peripatetic philosophy; the Stoic philosophy is described with references to many Stoics of different periods while Epicurus' philosophy is represented by four texts going back to Epicurus himself. The survey of the Skeptic tropes (9,79-105) is shorter than in Sextus Empiricus but otherwise comparable.(7)

The philosophy of the Presocratics is, however, for the most part described by means of fairly short systematic surveys similar to what we find in Hippolytus' Refutatio omnium haeresium Book One, and -- in content, if not in form -- to Pseudo-Plutarch's Placita and to sections of Stobaeus. These surveys have since Diels' pioneering work Doxographi Graeci (1879) been called doxographical, though the term 'doxographical' unfortunately has been extended to mean any text reporting the views of previous philosophers.

Considering this variety of philosophical information, we must ask a fourth important question:

To which extent can we assume that Diogenes just copied his predecessors, or to put the question in another way: are we justified in assuming that most of the Hellenistic biographies of philosophers contained separate sections on the philosophers' views?

I would like to discuss these four crucial questions (8) by examining Diogenes' Life of Democritus (9,34-49) and draw some more general conclusions on that basis." (pp. 432-433)

(5) Cf. Mejer Uberlieferung der Philosophie im Altertum. Eine Einführung (Kobenhaven, 2000). Fragments in Rosa Giannattasio Andria I frammenti delle Successioni dei Filosofi, (Napoli, 1989).

(6) Tiziano Dorandi’s two editions of Philodemus (Filodemo. Storia dei filosofi. Platone e l’Academia (PHerc. 1021 e 164). Edizione, traduzione e commento a cura di T. D. [La scuola di Epicuro 12] (Napoli 1991) and Storia dei filosofi: La Stoà da Zenone a Panezio (PHerc. 1018) (Leiden - New York 1994) have superseded all previous editions.

(7) For these philosophical sections in Diogenes, cf. Mejer, Diogenes Laertius and the Transmission of Greek Philosophy, in: ANRW II 36.5 (1992) 3556-3602.

(8) A fifth important question which I shall not discuss in this context, is to which extent Diogenes’ presentations of philosophical ideas are reliable, cf., however, the paper mentioned in the previous note.

15. Olfert, Christiana M. M. 2015. "Skeptical Investigation and Its Perks: Diog. Laert. 9.69–70 and 79–89." In Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius, edited by Vogt, Katja Maria, 147-170. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

"In what follows, I will argue that despite some appearances to the contrary, Skeptical investigation has all the features we usually think belong to the epistemic type of investigation described above. The epistemic credentials of Skeptical investigation have often been discussed by other interpreters, but I hope to add to this discussion by focusing on epistemic improvement or advancement, and the sense in which Skeptical investigation aims to improve or advance the epistemic state of the investigator. In particular, I hope to show that the Skeptic – or anyone engaged in a Skeptical investigation – arguably achieves a number of epistemic advancements or benefits when she achieves suspension of judgment. These, we might say, are the perks of Skeptical investigation." (p. 148)

16. Ornelas, Jorge. 2021. "The Missing End of the Threefold Cord in the Transmission of Ancient Skepticism into Modernity: The Lives by Diogenes Laertius." In Sceptical Doubt and Disbelief in Modern European Thought: A New Pan-American Dialogue, edited by Raga Rosaleny, Vicente and Junqueira Smith, Plinio, 301-318. Cham (Switzerland): Springer Nature.

Abstract: "The orthodox position regarding how ancient Skepticism first arrived in the Reinassance and later into Modernity has been dominated by the work of Charles B. Schmitt and Richard Popkin. They jointly defended what I call here “the Popkin/Schmitt thesis”: the transmission of skeptical ideas and arguments took place via a threefold cord made up of Cicero’s Academica, Sextus Empiricus’s Opera and Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of Eminent Philosophers; in which the first two are dominant over the last one. This paper is intended to challenge this historical hypothesis through a twofold movement: on the one hand, I will argue that, from a historical perspective, unlike Cicero’s Academica and Sextus’s Opera, Diogenes’s Lives was one of the primary sources of ancient philosophy since the Middle Ages. I will also argue that, given its particular compositional features, Diogenes’s Lives transcended the philosophical context, influencing other branches of science like history and literature, through which Diogenes’s characterization of Skepticism became commonplace in the Western world. Furthermore, and from a philosophical perspective, I will argue that Diogenes’s version of Pyrrhonian Skepticism has some explanatory advantages that provide us with a more comprehensive image of it, one that is not centered on epistemological topics as in Sextus’s version. Both elements allow us to understand why Diogenes’s Lives has, by its own right, a central place among the Holy Trinity of texts responsible for the transmission of ancient Skepticism into Modernity."

17. Perilli, Lorenzo. 2005. ""Quantum coniectare (non) licet." Menodotus between Sextus Empiricus (P. 1.222) and Diogenes Laertius (9.116)." Mnemosyne no. 58:286-293.

"The sequence of leading figures of the Sceptical school which Diogenes Laertius proposes in the ninth book of his Lives has appeared problematic to many. The passage (and the whole book) has been repeatedly investigated, and it is unnecessary to reopen here the related issues, concerning Diogenes’ sources and the overall trustworthiness of his account. Diogenes associates Sceptical philosophers particularly with Empiricist physicians, tries to assign a specific role to each, makes out of the Empiricists an underpinning axis of the school. Among others, he explicitly sets Menodotus of Nicomedia, an Empiricist doctor whose floruit was around 125 AD, in the frame of scepticism: together with Menodotus, leading empirical representatives of Sceptical philosophy would have been at least Heraclides of Tarentum (I BC) and Theodas of Laodicea (II AD), then Sextus Empiricus.

Taken for granted the conceptual kinship between Empiricism and Scepticism, as well as the cues that empirical science will have taken, mostly at the outset, from sceptical elaborations (and vice versa), the attempt to incorporate the figures into a school is a characteristic piece of doxography, but it lacks consistency, let alone confirmation. Viano rightly labelled the Laertian list as “most dubious”, and Menodotus’ position there as “paradoxical”." (pp. 286-287, notes omitted)

18. Plass, Paul. 1973. "A Fragment of Plato in Diogenes Laertius." The Modern Schoolman no. 51:29-46.

"After opening his book on Plato with a brief biographical sketch, Diogenes Laertius turns to charges that Plato stole some of his ideas from others. The most circumstantial accusation concerns plagiarism from Epicharmus. For this, Diogenes quotes directly from a certain Alcimus, probably a Sicilian historian active during the second half of the fourth century B.C. and therefore a younger contemporary of Plato. Alcimus apparently was interested in establishing Plato's dependence on Epicharmus to bolster his contention that Magna Graecia was a cultural equal of mainland Greece. He made his case in a book addressed to Amyntas, a mathematician and student of Plato.[*]"

(...)

"Before examining this curious "quotation," it will be useful to get some idea of how Alcimus goes about establishing his other parallels between Plato and Epicharmus. We will be concerned solely with his treatment of Plato; the content and authenticity of the lines of Epicharmus which he quotes are of no importance for our purpose. His first summary of Plato's views runs as follows: what never remains the same in quantity or quality but always flows and changes is sensible, for if you take number from anything it cannot have quantity, quality, o.r any identity. Of all such things there is no being but only constant becoming. The intelligible, on the other hand, is that from which nothing is ever taken and to which nothing is ever added; this is the natu.re of eternal things, which are always the same (Diogenes Laertius, III. 9, 10)." (pp. 29-30)

[*] Diogenes Laertius III, 5.

19. Ranocchia, Graziano. 2019. "Heraclitus’ Portrait in Diogenes Laërtius and Philodemus’ On Arrogance." In Presocratics and Papyrological Tradition: A Philosophical Reappraisal of the Sources, edited by Vassallo, Christian, 221-247. Berlin: de Gruyter.

"It is a matter of fact that the arrogance, conceit, and boastfulness of certain philosophers were well-known in antiquity. As we shall see, the case of Heraclitus is illustrated by the important witness of Diogenes Laërtius’ life of this philosopher, where the author draws copiously upon a source hostile to the philosopher, which highlighted his haughtiness and misanthropy.14" (p. 224)

(...)

"The author of the biographical-characterological portrait is unknown; the identity of Aristo the author of the Περὶ τοῦ κουφίζειν ὑπερηφανίας is still disputed; the identification of the Aristo mentioned twice in the Life of Heraclitus remains problematic; and, finally, the coincidence between Aristonymus and Aristo of Chios is most probable, yet not deductively inferable. With regard to the identity of the author of the biographical-characterological portrait of Heraclitus transmitted by Diogenes Laërtius in the Life of this philosopher – whether his name be Aristo or not, and whoever Aristo may he be – it will be best to maintain a prudent approach in the future." (p. 244)

(14) See Diog. Laërt. 9.1–6, 12–15 and below.

20. Román-Alcalá, Ramón. 2021. "Diogenes Laertius: A Moderate Skeptic in the History of Philosophy (Book IX)." Philosophy Study no. 11:293-302.

Abstract: "This paper presents the keys and reasons for Diogenes Laërtius’ alleged scepticism, based on an analysis of the general design of his work The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. I believe that it would be manifestly erroneous to seek confirmation of this scepticism solely in Book IX without taking into account the overall structure of the work. A convincing explanation is also provided of one of the most enigmatic and most studied phrases in this work. What did Diogenes mean when he said that Apollonides of Nicaea was ὁ παρ’ ἡμῶν (“one of us”)?"

21. Sassi, Maria Michela. 2011. "Ionian Philosophy and Italic Philosophy: From Diogenes Laertius to Diels." In The Presocratics from the Latin Middle Ages to Hermann Diels, edited by Primavesi, Oliver, 19-44. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag.

Abstract: "This paper traces the history of a particular cliché of scholarship on the Presocratic philosophers which has persisted from ancient commentators until the present day, and in whose development Hermann Diels work constitutes an important stage. This cliché concerns the division of early Greek philosophy into an Ionian tradition founded by Thales and an Italic one founded by Pythagoras – although a tripartite division is also often found, in texts in which the Eleatic lineage is also given a certain importance and autonomy. I examine in detail how this model, which was originally inspired simply by considerations regarding the different places in which the traditions flourished, developed in various phases of ancient and modern philosophy along with reflections on the distinct theoretical characteristics of the different traditions and on their relations to Plato, whose philosophical system has generally been seen as a synthesis of them. However, even in its simplest, geographical form the model contributed to shape and preserve the tradition of Presocratic thought."

22. Searby, Denis Michael. 1998. Aristotle in the Greek Gnomological Tradition. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.

Dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Classical Languages presented at Uppsala University 1998.

Abstract: "This dissertation consists of a new collection of maxims and apophthegms associated with Aristotle in the Greek gnomologies along with an introduction to the sources and a commentary on the content of the sayings. The major sources have been Diogenes Laertius, the anthology of Stobaeus, Gnomologium Vaticanum and related collections, cod. Par. gr. 1168 (Corpus Parisinum) and cod. Bodl. Digby 6, the Loci Communes of ps.-Maximus the Confessor and related anthologies, the Florilegium Atheniense, and the gnomology of Joannes Georgides. The introductory chapters concern the definition and history of the gnomological tradition, the investigation of the extant sources, the problem of multipie attributions, possible explanations for the title The Chreiae of Aristotle found in Stobaeus, and the different ways Aristotle makes his appearance in the tradition. The collection of sayings is based on Greek sources alone, but frequent references are made to the Latin and Arabic traditions, and Appendices I and IV offer a sampling of the material to be found in these traditions. Appendix VI shows the sources of the so-called Gnomologium Parisinum Ineditum. The commentary dwells primarily on the attribution to Aristotle and the possible Aristotelian content of the sayings while at the same time relating the sayings to the gnomological tradition as a whole."

"Chapter Three: Sources for the Present Collection

II.2 Diogenes Laertius

Our oldest datable source is found in Diogenes Laertius' Vitae Philosophorum.

Diogenes composed his work probably during the third century A.D., making wide use of a variety of older sources. He deals with the lives of the Peripatetic philosophers in Book 5, Aristotle being treated in 5.1-35. As earlier noted, Diogenes explicitly mentions collections of sayings several times both as his own sources and as titles in the lists of works attributed to various philosophers. Apophthegms play an important role in general throughout Diogenes' work and are normally given a place of their own in his usual biographical scheme for each philosopher." (pp. 43-44, notes omitted)

23. Sedley, David. 2015. "Diogenes Laertius on the Ten Pyrrhonist Modes." In Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius, edited by Vogt, Katja Maria, 171-185. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

"The most recognizable and recurrent manifestation of Pyrrhonist Scepticism, from the movement’s revival by Aenesidemus in the first century BC down to Diogenes Laertius’ Life of Pyrrho in the third century AD, is its trademark list of ten ‘Modes’ or ‘Tropes’.(1)" (p. 171)

"In the present study I shall concentrate on Diogenes Laertius’ presentation of the Ten Modes. Although he, like Sextus Empiricus (PH 1.164–9), goes on to add the Five Modes (Diog. Laert. 9.88–9), his account of the latter is virtually identical, word for word, to that given by Sextus, and therefore does not appear to demand a separate discussion here.(3)

In Sextus’ surviving account of the Ten Modes, they are more fully “the modes [τρόποι, i.e. ‘means’] through which (δι´ ὧν) suspension seems to be inferred” (PH 1.35–6). Later, contracting this phraseology, Sextus calls each of them simply a “mode of suspension” (e.g. 79, ὁ ... πρῶτος τῆς ἐποχῆς τρόπος). Alternatively, Sextus tells us, instead of ‘modes’ they can be called ‘arguments’, λόγοι, or ‘headings’, τόποι, although the latter may instead, on a variant reading of his text, be ‘patterns’, τύποι. Jointly, these designations make it reasonably clear that the Ten Modes are so called because they are the inferential means through which, and/or the domains by reference to which, the Sceptic attains epochē." (p. 172)

(1) These are exhaustively presented and studied in the pioneering Annas / Barnes 1985.

The primary sources are: Sextus Empiricus PH 1.35–163; Philo, De ebrietate 169–205; Aristocles ap. Eusebius, Praep. evang. 14.18.11–12; Diogenes Laertius 9.78–88. Other apparent references to the Ten Modes include: Favorinus as cited by Gellius 11.5.4–5, and Plutarch’s lost On the Ten Modes of Pyrrho (Lamprias catalogue 158, accepting the emendation of τόπων to τρόπων). See further, Annas / Barnes 1985, chapter 3.

(3) It has often been observed that the methodology of the Five Modes is at some points applied by Sextus while expounding the Ten Modes. It is impossible to say whether this represents a difference from Diogenes, whose version of the Ten Modes is too condensed for such methodological details to show up.

References

Annas / Barnes 1985: J. Annas / J. Barnes, The Modes of Scepticism. Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations (Cambridge 1985).

24. Shalev, Donna. 2006. "The Role of εὑρήματα in the "Lives" of Diogenes Laertius, and Related Literature." Hermes:309-337.

"1. the case of Protagoras, founder of speech act types

The father of modem speech act theory and of the canon of speech act types is the Oxford philosopher John Austin: consensus has ascribed this founding role to Austin. Possibly assuming all his readers to be as erudite as himself, Austin did not feel the need to bring the prehistory of propositional meaning from the sources most accessible to him and his colleagues, the Greek Peripatetic and Stoic philosophers.

Passage (1) below discusses varying taxonomies and terms for speech act types in different Greek philosophical schools of the Classical period as reflected in a much later text from the period of the Second Sophistic, namely, by Diogenes Laertius, the biographer of ancient Greek philosophers, in his chapter on Protagoras.

Diogenes, in Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers 9.53.11-54.4, describes the taxonomy by the sophist Protagoras, an early contemporary of Socrates, giving him credit for having originated this division of speech act types, elsewhere attributed to Stoics:

(1) Διεΐλέ τε τον λόγον πρώτος εις τέτταρα εύχωλήν, έρώτησιν, άπόκρισιν, έντολήν (οι δε είς επτά· (54) διήγησιν, έρώτησιν, άπόκρισιν, έντολήν, άπαγγελίαν, εύχωλήν, κλήσιν), ους καί πυθμένας είπε λόγων. Άλκιδάμας δέ τέτταρας λόγους φησί· φάσιν, άπόφασιν, έρώτησιν, προσαγόρευσιν.(3)

[Protagoras] first divided speech into four: entreaty, interrogation, answer, and injunction.

Others [say that he divided speech] into seven [types]: statement, interrogation, response, injunction, promise, entreaty, invocation which he also called pillars of speech. But Alcidamas says [that there are] four [types of] speech: affirmation, denial, question, greeting.

The legitimacy of Protagoras' taxonomy of speech act types in passage (1) above is couched in the vehicle of coming from an innovator (Διεΐλέ ... πρώτος). A survey of the immediate context offers additional signs of a concerted effort to create an impressive effect, and ultimately to establish the standing and reception of Protagoras, the Sophist, as a cultural hero, in the context of the Lives of Diogenes Laertius; of Protagoras as a hero in the realm of the philosophy of language." (pp. 309-310, some notes omitted)

(3) 3The texts of Diogenesi n this article are quoted from Marcovich 1959 edition published in the Teubner series (...)

25. Sluiter, Ineke. 2005. "Communicating Cynicism: Diogenes' gangsta rap." In Language and Learning: Philosophy of Language in the Hellenistic Age, edited by Frede, Dorothea and Inwood, Brad, 139-163. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"In this contribution, I will focus on Cynic strategies of communication, and on problems of the interpretation of Cynicism resulting from their communicative choices. First, I will look at the Cynics’ use of transgressive non-verbal communication with the help of modern socio-linguistic theories of non-verbal communication and impression management. The Cynics scandalise their audience by their conscious use of the body and its processes for philosophical purposes; anthropological ideas about transgression will be helpful here (section 2).

In section 3, I will turn to verbal communication, and investigate the Cynics’ characteristic use of language and literature, regarded as an aspect of their self-fashioning.Here, I argue thatCynic ideas on language correspond to a specific type of folk-linguistics, represented for us by a well-delineated literary tradition of iambos and comedy. I claim that the literary representations of Cynicism that have come down to us cannot be fully understood, unless their intertextual relations with other ancient transgressive genres are explored. The literary representations of the Cynics acquire a fuller meaning when they are seen to resonate within a web of comparable texts, notably the tradition of iambos and ancient comedy (section 3).

Finally (section 4), I will raise the question of the effectiveness of the consciously self-undermining aspects of Cynic communication, again by comparing them to other transgressive genres like satire and gangsta rap.

Throughout, my main focus of attention will be Diogenes, supplemented with some Antisthenes and later Cynics." (pp. 139-140, a note omitted)

26. Sollenberger, Michael George. 1985. "Diogenes Laertius 5.36-57. The Vita Theophrasti." In Theophrastus of Eresus: On His Life and Work, edited by Fortenbaugh, William W., Huby, Pamela M. and Long, Anthony A., 1-62. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.

"Diogenes' Lives and Opinions of the Outstanding Philosophers contains ten books, of which the fifth is devoted to Peripatetic philosophers. The Vita Aristotelis naturally comes first (5.1-35) and is followed by the Vita Theophrasti (5.36-57). While the former has recently been given special attention by Ingemar During, whose 1957 edition is readily available in his Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, the latter has not received the attention it deserves. Indeed, it has not received special treatment since 1497, when it appeared, together with the Vita Aristotelis, in the second volume of the Aldine Aristotle. The text of Aldus' edition is quite unsatisfactory, for it is based on a reading of an inferior manuscript and embodies many conjectural emendations. Hermann Usener did publish an edition of Diogenes' catalogue of Theophrastean writings (5.42-50) in his Analecta Theophrastea (Diss. Bonn 1858), but he, too, neglected much of the manuscript evidence, only consulting Cobet's collation of a few manuscripts and some early editions and translations. The complete life of Theophrastus has, of course, been included in all editions of the whole of Diogenes' work, but the text has never been adequately supplied with textual apparatus. My aim, then, is to provide scholars with an edition of the Vita Theophrasti which is complete with upper and lower apparatus and generally meets the standards of modern philology." (p. 1, notes omitted)

27. ———. 1987. "A Note on the Lives of Theophrastus and Strato in Diogenes Laertius 5. 57-58." Classical Philology no. 82:228-230.

28. ———. 1992. "The Lives of the Peripatetics: An Analysis of the Contents and Structure of Diogenes Laertius' 'Vitae philosophorum' Book 5." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Teil II: Principat. Band 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. 6. Teilband: Philosophie (Doxographica [Forts.]), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 3793-3879. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Accounts of the lives of six early Peripatetic philosophers are contained in the fifth book of Diogenes Laertius' 'Vitae philosophorum': the lives of the first four leaders of the sect -- Aristotle, Theophrastus, Strato, and Lyco -- and those of two outstanding members -- Demetrius of Phalerum and Heraclides of Pontus. Our knowledge of the history of two rival schools, the Academy and the Stoa, is aided not only by the lives of several members of these two schools in Books Four and Seven of Diogenes' work, but also by accounts in the `Index Academicorum' and the 'Index Stoicorum' which have been preserved for us among the several papyri from Herculaneum.(1) But for the Peripatos there is no such second source of information. There are, to be sure, numerous bits and pieces of evidence which concern the school and its members scattered throughout ancient and medieval literature, many of which have been made readily accessible by F. Wehrli in his well-known series 'Die Schule des Aristoteles'.(2) Moreover, in addition to Diogenes' version, several other lives of Aristotle have come down to us and have been collected and analyzed in detail by I. Düring in his 'Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition'.(3) But for the lives and careers of other Peripatetics, Diogenes' accounts are the only ones available to us.

All of the many aspects of these six lives cannot be discussed here with comprehensive thoroughness. Rather, relying on the studies and findings of past scholars, sometimes heavily, I shall offer a compilation of those findings in a systematic manner. Although oversimplification is inevitable in view of the many complex problems encountered in these lives, consideration will be given to general matters of content, structure, organization, and arrangement of material in Book Five as a whole, to the different categories of information in the individual lives, and to the two most striking features of this book which set it apart from other books: the wills of the first four scholarchs and the extensive catalogues of writings included by Diogenes for five of the six philosophers." (pp. 3793-3794)

(1) P. Herc. 1021 (and 164) and 1018 respectively, edited by S. Mekler, Academicorum Philosophorum Index Herculanensis (Berlin, 1902), which should be read in conjunction with W. Crõnert, Die Ueberlieferung des Index Academicorum, Hermes 38 (1903) p. 357-405, and A. Traversa, Index Stoicorum Herculanensis. Istituto di filologia classica 1 (Genoa, 1952).

(2) F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles. Texte und Kommentare, 2nd ed. vol. 1 - 2 (Basel, 1967), vol. 3 --10 (Basel, 1969), suppl. vol. I (Basel, 1974), and suppl. vol. 2 (Basel, 1978). The fragments of Theophrastus, not included by Wehrli are being prepared by a team of scholars headed by W. Fortenbaugh in a series of volumes which is scheduled to appear soon. [Theophrastus of Eresus. Sources for his life, writings, thought and influence. Edited by Fortenbaugh William W. et al. Leiden: Brill 1992, two volumes].

(3) Ingemar Düring Ingemar. Aristotle in the ancient biographical tradition. Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensis 5 (Göteborg, 1957).

29. Swift, Paul. 2007. "The History and Mystery of Diogenes Laertius." Prajñâ Vihâra no. 8:38-50.

Abstract: “The History and Mystery of Diogenes Laertius” examines the peculiar status of the Lives of the Eminent Philosophers.

As literature, philosophy, and history, the Lives is a unique text, since it furnishes us with the only surviving attempt to construct an encyclopedia of philosophy from the ancient western world. This essay examines some of the influence this text has had on the history of philosophy, especially Nietzsche’s interpretation of philosophy. There are parts of the Lives which are widely regarded as accurate by specialists in philosophy (such as the Letter to Menoeceus by Epicurus), but there are also parts of the text which are historically unreliable and inaccurate. Diogenes veers from history into fiction at times and this essay addresses some of the difficulties involved in determining precisely where these transitions occur. Even when using the best scholarly methods, it is not always possible to know which parts of the Lives are trustworthy: thus there is a mystery, a legend which Diogenes preserves at the dawn of western philosophy."

30. Usher, M. D. . 2009. "Diogenes’ doggerel: ‘chreia’ and quotation in Cynic performance." Classical Journal:207-223.

Abstract: "This paper examines Diogenes the Cynic's parodic quotations from Homer in anecdotes, or chreiai, preserved in Diogenes Laertius' Life. I argue that Diogenes' reworking of Homer suggests a deep familiarity with the themes, structures and compositional techniques of epic poetry and that Diogenes refashioned it spontaneously as a composing poet or rhapsode might have done in performance."

31. Vogt, Katja Maria. 2015. "Introduction: Skepticism and Metaphysics in Diogenes Laertius." In Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius, edited by Vogt, Katja Maria, 3-14. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

"In this Introduction, I make some suggestions about ways in which the study of Diogenes’ report may alter one’s perception of ancient skepticism.

To situate these suggestions, a sketch of the nature of Diogenes’ report is needed. I shall address what kind of author Diogenes is, the history of Pyrrhonism, the structure of Diogenes’ report, and which versions of skepticism it covers (Section 1). To illustrate how interesting Metaphysically Inclined Skepticism may be, I then turn to §§ 61–73. Here Diogenes talks about Pyrrho, Pyrrho’s immediate students, as well as presumed ancestors of skepticism in early Greek thought. Interpreters tend to agree that nothing of philosophical interest can be found in these references to poets and Pre-Socratic thinkers. I shall suggest that the opposite holds (Section 2).

My remarks on these matters are brief. They are intended to raise rather than answer questions, pointing the reader to the essays in this volume, to existing contributions in the field, and to what I see as potential topics for future research." (p. 4)

32. ———, ed. 2015. Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Table of Contents: SAPERE V, Preface to this Volume VII-VIII;

A. Introduction

Katja Maria Vogt: Introduction: Skepticism and Metaphysics in Diogenes Laertius 3;

B. Text, Translation and Commentary

ΔΙΟΓΕΝΟΥΣ ΛΑΕΡΤΙΟΥ ΠΥΡΡΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΤΙΜΩΝ (Text by Tiziano Dorandi, and Translation by Elizabeth Scharffenberger and Katja Maria Vogt) 16;

Elizabeth Scharffenberger and Katja Maria Vogt: Commentary on the Translation 52;

C. Essays

Richard Bett: Pyrrhonism in Diogenes Laertius 75; James Warren: Precursors of Pyrrhonism: Diog. Laert. 9.67–73 105; Lorenzo Corti: Mind and Language of the Laërtian Pyrrhonist: Diog. Laert. 9.74–77 123; Christiana M. M. Olfert: Skeptical Investigation and Its Perks: Diog. Laert. 9.69–70 and 79–89 147; David Sedley: Diogenes Laertius on the Ten Pyrrhonist Modes 171;

D. Appendices

I. Bibliography 189; II. Indices (Andrea Villani) 193; III. Authors 201-202.

"Diogenes Laertius’ report on Pyrrhonian skepticism occupies part of Book IX of his Lives of Eminent Philosophers (§§ 61–116). Diogenes writes in the 3rd century CE, and his account of Pyrrhonian skepticism covers roughly four hundred years of the history of Pyrrhonism. It is divided into two chapters, one devoted to Pyrrho and more generally to Pyrrhonian skepticism, and a much shorter chapter devoted to Timon, Pyrrho’s student.

Next to Sextus Empiricus’ writings, Diogenes’ report is the most detailed and philosophically sophisticated description of Pyrrhonian skepticism.

This volume offers a new English translation, printed next to the Greek text generously supplied by Tiziano Dorandi, as well as a range of scholarly essays by experts on ancient skepticism." (Preface, p. VII)

33. Warren, James. 2007. "Diogenes Laertius, Biographer of Philosophy." In Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire, edited by König, Jason and Whitmarsh, Tim, 133-149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Diogenes’ importance as a source for those working on the history of ancient philosophy has never been in doubt, but his credentials as a philosophical historian have not been so universally accepted. Often, Diogenes is praised for the virtue of having collected and ordered information from other, mainly Hellenistic, sources, and is thanked for his compilation but excused for his lack of philosophical acumen. Of course, such damning criticism of his approach is possible only once we have established some more concrete answers to the sorts of questions with which I began, questions about how the history of philosophy ought to be written. I make no effort to do that here. In any case, although I cannot attempt to articulate fully and defend the view here, I suspect that there is no single definitive or superior conception of how the history of philosophy ought to be written. Rather, I will ask why Diogenes wrote as he did. What does the organisation of the work tell us about his conception of philosophy and its history? My central contention will be that Diogenes’ work is an example of one way of writing and conceiving the history of philosophy – in terms of biography. But he does not limit himself to telling the life-stories of philosophers; he also wishes to construct from these philosophers’ lives the ‘life-story’ of philosophy itself."(p. 134, a note omitted)

34. ———. 2015. "Precursors of Pyrrhonism: Diog. Laert. 9.67–73." In Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius, edited by Vogt, Katja Maria, 105-121. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

"I will consider two of these sub-sections in turn: first, and more briefly, 67–9 and then 71–3. As a pair they illustrate rather well the combination of the ethical and the epistemological aspects of Pyrrho’s outlook at work throughout this part of book nine and neatly announced in 9.61: “And in general he denied that anything is ‘in truth’ but thought that all human actions are ‘by habit’ or ‘by convention’, for each thing is no more this than that.” The question of the precise original emphasis in Pyrrho’s own thought between these ethical and the epistemological strands is, of course, rather difficult to settle. Modern interpreters differ, often quite significantly, in their assessment of the extent to which later sceptics influenced the presentation of Pyrrho’s original position. This brief section in Diogenes neatly encapsulates the difficulties in our sources that give rise to these on-going disputes and suggests that certainly already by Diogenes’

time it had become difficult to reconcile all the various accounts and interpretations of Pyrrho’s philosophy. This passage also exemplifies a more general difficulty that ancient philosophers and ancient historians of philosophy faced in accommodating scepticism as a tradition or movement in their stories of the development of Greek thought.(3)" (pp. 106-107)

(3) For an excellent and concise account of this difficulty see Brunschwig 1999a, 232–7.

References

Brunschwig 1999a “Introduction: The Beginnings of Hellenistic Epistemology”, in: K. Algra / J. Barnes / J. Mansfeld / M. Schofield (eds.), The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge 1999) 229–59.

35. White, Stephen. 2020. "Diogenes Laertius and Philosophical Lives." In The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Biography, edited by De Temmerman, Koen, 251-266.

"Diogenes’ Lives is an exceptional work on many counts, including some of special significance for this Handbook. For one, it is the single largest collection of Lives to survive from Classical Antiquity, handily surpassing Plutarch in number and scope if not in depth or length, and so too Philostratus and Suetonius. It is also a key witness to the early stages of biographical literature in the fourth and third centuries BC, preserving valuable evidence for pioneers like Aristoxenus, Antigonus of Carystus, Hermippus, and Satyrus. At the same time, it presents the single most comprehensive account of the origins and development of an entire discipline, and a distinctive form of intellectual history from a biographical perspective. It also, accordingly, represents a distinctive form of life-writing, framed by basic biographical data but lean, often very lean, on the standard biographical fare—from a modern perspective at least—of incident and narrative, and governed instead by its disciplinary orientation, its sustained focus on philosophy as a distinctive cultural practice and way to live. Its over-arching goal, evidently, is to tell, in condensed but leisurely fashion, how that practice began and evolved, the contributions of its formative figures, and especially the enduring fruits of their endeavours: a record of their memorable insights and sayings, their writings, theories, and other discoveries—stopping for the most part well short of the author’s own day, some time in the Severan age, most likely the opening decades of the third century. The result thus amounts to an ostensive definition of philosophy, as the author conceived it, in the form of a gallery of its most influential and memorable representatives in all their diversity of attitude, approach, and achievement (Mejer 1992; Warren 2007). Importantly for this Handbook, its peculiar methods, contents, and format also enlarge the range and scope of ancient biography, and in ways that invite and inform critical reflection on the nature and purposes of life-writing in Antiquity." (pp. 251-252, a note omitted)

References

Mejer, J. 1992. ‘Diogenes Laertius and the transmission of Greek philosophy’, ANRW II. 36.5, 3656-3602.

Warren, J. 2007. ‘Diogenes Laertius, biographer of philosophy’, in J. König and T. Whitmarsh (eds.), Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire. Cambridge, 133-149.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliografia degli studi in italiano su Diogene Laerzio

Studi in Italiano

1. "Diogene Laerzio storico del pensiero antico." 1986. Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 7.

Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Napoli ed Amalfi, 30 settembre - 3 ottobre 1985.

Sommario: Avvertenza 5; Marcello Gigante: Biografia e dossografia in Diogene Laerzio 7; Gerard Verbeke: Panétius et Posidonius chez Diogène Laërce 103; Olof Gigon: Das dritte Buch des Diogenes Laertios 133; Gabriele Giannantoni: Socrate e i Socratici in Diogene Laerzio 183; Jan Frederik Kindstrand: Diogenes Laertius and the Chreia tradition 217; Paul Moraux: Diogène Laërce et le Péripatos 245; Jaap Mansfeld: Diogenes Laertius on Stoic philosophy 295; Jonathan Barnes: Diogene Laerzio e il Pirronismo 383; Anthony A. Long: Diogenes Laertius, Life of Arcesilaus 429-449; Indici 451.

2. Ambaglio, Delfino. 1983. "Diogene Laerzio e la storiografia greca frammentaria." Athenaeum no. 61:269-272.

3. Aronadio, Francesco. 1990. "Due fonti laerziane: Sozione e Demetrio di Magnesia." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 11:203-255.

4. Azzarà, Silvia. 2002. "Note su Alcuni codici di Platone e Diogene Laerzio: la datazione del Laur. LXXXV 9 e il Marc. Gr. 189." Res publica litterarum no. 25:164-171.

5. Barnes, Jonathan. 1986. "Diogene Laerzio e il pirronismo." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 7:383-427.

6. Basta Donzelli, Giuseppina. 1960. "Per un'edizione critica di Diogene Laerzio: i Codici VUDGS." Bollettino dei Classici:93-132.

7. Beghini, Andrea. 2019. "Nota a Diog. Laert. X 13." Eikasmos.Quaderni Bolognesi di Filologia Classica no. 30:195-200.

8. Brancacci, Aldo. 1992. "I Koivή αρέσκοντα dei Cinici e la κοινωνία tra cinismo e stoicismo nel libro VI (103-105) delle 'Vite' di Diogene Laerzio." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Teil II: Principat. Band 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. 6. Teilband: Philosophie (Doxographica [Forts.]), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 4049-4075. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Cinismo non è né antistenismo né diogenismo(1). Con questa singolare dichiarazione, ricordata sul fïnire dell'antichità dall'imperatore Giuliano nell'orazione 'Contro i cinici ignoranti', Enomao di Gadara rilanciava, in piena età imperiale, un problema di definizione storiografica su cui vivo era stato il dibattito già a partire dall'età ellenistica, e che anche in seguito avrebbe ricevuto varie formulazioni, spesso intrecciandosi con l'altro, intimamente connesso, relativo alla qualifica di αἵρεσις attribuibile o meno al movimento.

E' sintomatico che sia proprio Diogene Laerzio, cui pure si deve la sistemazione canonica e più compiuta del κυνισμός nel sistema di αἵρεσις, e διάδοχαι ellenistiche, a farsi eco per noi di queste discussioni, trasmettendoci non secondari elementi per valutarne l'incidenza sulla ricostruzione complessiva che egli, per parte sua, ci offre. Il sesto libro delle 'Vite dei filosofi' si conclude infatti con una appendice il cui scopo primario è precisare alcune scelte che sono alla base dell'operazione storiografica compiuta nei nove βίοι precedenti: l'autore vi comprende, peraltro, una definizione unitaria della κυνική φῐλοσοφῐ́ᾱ il cui esame rivela l'esistenza di una fitta rete di relazioni tra cinismo e tradizioni, non solo filosofiche, connesse. Le pagine che seguono si propongono di ripercorrere in modo analitico questo materiale, nel tentativo di chiarire, dalla ricognizione e dal vaglio delle tradizioni che lo sottendono, le principali questioni d'ordine storico e dottrinario che almeno alcune dichiarazioni di Diogene Laerzio sollevano.(pp. 4049-4050, note parzialmene omesse)

(1) Oenom. ap. Jul. orat. IX p. 187c (= Socraticorum Reliquiae V A 26 Giannantoni):

9. Canfora, Luciano. 1992. "Clemente di Alessandria e Diogene Laerzio." In Storia poesia e pensiero nel mondo antico. Studi in onore di Marcello Gigante, 79-81. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

10. Capasso, Mario. 1983. "Il libro X delle Vite di Diogene Laerzio." In Syzetesis. Studi sull'epicureismo greco e romano offerti a Marcello Gigante, 464-480. Napoli: Macchiaroli.

11. Celluprica, Vincenza. 1989. "Diocle di Magnesia come fonte della dossografia stoica in Diogene Laerzio." Orpheus.Rivista di Umanità Classica e Cristiana no. 10:58-79.

12. Centrone, Bruno. 1987. "Alcune osservazioni sui Placita di Platone in Diogene Laerzio III, 67-80." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 8:105-118.

13. ———. 1992. "L'VIII libro delle 'Vite' di Diogene Laerzio." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Teil II: Principat. Band 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. 6. Teilband: Philosophie (Doxographica [Forts.]), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 4183-4217. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"L’VIII libro di Diogene Laerzio e dedicato a Pitagora, capostipite del ramo italico della filosofia e primo a chiamarsi filosofo e a usare il termine philosophia (1), nonché ai pitagorici famosi; di questi solo Telauge, figlio di Pitagora, figura nel proemio, ma non ha una vita autonoma a lui dedicata. Il programma descritto nel § 50 e il bilancio tratto nel § 91 lasciano presumere che Diogene abbia condotto a termine il piano previsto e che dunque l’ottavo libro possa considerarsi ultimato (2): dopo aver trattato Pitagora, Diogene annuncia ( § 50) di voler trattare dei pitagorici più famosi, c subito dopo dei cosiddetti 'sporadici', poi di continuare la successione sino a Epicuro. Le scarne notizie fornite su Teano e Telauge nel corso della vita di Pitagora (§§ 42 -43) valgono ai suoi occhi come una trattazione esaurita; quanto egli dichiara al termine del libro (§ 91), di aver trattato i pitagorici più famosi, non contrasta pertanto con la concisione dei capitoli dedicati ad alcuni di questi (Epicarmo, lppaso, Alcmeone, Filolao) c può ritenersi definitivo."

(1) Questa notizia compare nel Proemio delle 'Vite' (I 12), mentre nelI’VIII libro la medesima storia (Sosicrate-Eradide) è narrata senza la menzione del primato. Nel proemio (I 41) Pitagora figura tra i sette saggi. Su Pitagora inventore del termine cfr. W. Burkert, Platon oder Pythagoras? Zum Ursprung des Wortes 'Philosophie', Hermes 88, 1960, 159-177; H. Gottschalk, Heraclides of Pontus, Oxford 1980, stt. 23 - 36, con letteratura critica.

(2) J. Mejer, Diogenes Laertius and his hellenistic Background (Hermes Einzelschriften 40), Wiesbaden 1978, 16 n. 31.

14. Decleva Caizzi, Fernanda. 1992. "Il libro IX delle 'Vite dei filosofi' di Diogene Laerzio." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Teil II: Principat. Band 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. 6. Teilband: Philosophie (Doxographica [Forts.]), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 4218-4240. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Il libro IX di Diogene Laerzio contiene le Vite di Eraclito (1 — 17); Senofane (18-20); Parmenide (21-23); Melisso (24); Zenone (25 - 29); Leucippo (30-33); Democrito (34-49); Protagora (50-56); Diogene di Apollonia (57); Anassarco (58-60); Pirrone (61-108); Timone (109-116)." (p. 4218)

(...)

"Se il quadro generale può dirsi, a grandi linee, comune, la lista delle Vite contenute nel libro IX presenta alcune evidenti discrepanze sia rispetto alla successione italica riportata nel proemio, sia rispetto agli schemi che ritroviamo in altri autori.

1) Diogene inserisce tra i Pitagorici e gli Eleati la Vita di Eraclito, che non entrava, tradizionalmente, in nessuna successione.

2) Parallelamente, egli presenta una particolare classificazione, che riguarda non soltanto Eraclito, ma anche Senofane (οί οποράδην).

3) In connessione con questo punto vengono segnalate alcune varianti nei rapporti tra filosofi rispetto alla successione tradizionale.

4) Diogene di Apollonia appare inserito tra Protagora e Anassarco senza esplicita connessione con i filosofi della successione (in IX 57 si dice soltanto che secondo Antistene egli fu discepolo di Anassimene).

5) I filosofi scettici (Pirrone e Timone), che non comparivano nella successione riportata nel proemio, occupano invece i §§61 — 116, cioè poco meno della metà dell'intero libro IX; inoltre, la successione scettica che conclude il libro (115-116) è la sola che si estende fino a tempi vicini a quelli di Diogene, con la menzione di Sesto e del suo discepolo Saturnino." (p. 4220, note omesse)

15. Donzelli, Giuseppina. 1960. "Donzelli, I codici P Q W Co H I E Y Jb nella tradizione di Diogene Laerzlo." Studi italiani di filología classica no. 32:156-199.

16. Dorandi, Tiziano. 1992. "Il quarto libro delle 'Vite' di Diogene Laerzio: l'Accademia da Speusippo a Clitomaco." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Teil II: Principat. Band 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. 5. Teilband: Philosophie (Einzelne Autoren, Doxographica), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 3761-3792. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Sebbene singoli 'Bioi' siano stati analiticamente studiati nella varietà dei loro problemi, in particolare quelli di Speusippo, Senocrate (Isnardi Parente / Tarán) e Arcesilao (Long), né sia stata trascurata una indagine sui rapporti di Diogene Laerzio con la 'Academicorum historia' di Filodemo (Gaiser, Gigante, Dorandi), manca, per il quarto libro, una trattazione complessiva unitaria. Tale non possono esser considerati infatti né la rapida rassegna del Leo, (11) né il profilo biografico di Antigono del Wilamowitz, (12) interessati entrambi a enucleare piuttosto la struttura, le fonti e la genesi formativa della compilazione diogeniana.

Il presente contributo, che ricalca idealmente le pagine della mia Introduzione all'edizione della 'Academicorum historia' filodemea, (13) dedicate a Filodemo quale storico dell'Academia, si propone di colmare, almeno in parte, questa lacuna, ma anche di delineare e definire le caratteristiche salienti del contributo di Diogene Laerzio e porre così i presupposti essenziali di una progetta indagine complessiva sulla tradizione antica dell'Academia da Speusippo Antioco." (pp. 3762-3763)

17. ———. 1992. "Considerazioni sull'index locupletior di Diogene Laerzio." Prometheus no. 18:121-126.

"Tra le singolarità più notevoli del Codex Parisinus gr. 1759 (P) di Diogene Laerzio e dei suoi apografi - Cod. Laur. 69.35 (H), Marc. gr. 394 (Í), Vat. Palat. gr.182 (E), Angel. gr. 97 (olim C.2.1: Y) - (1) è, senza dubbio, da annoverare il così detto índex locupletior, un anonimo πίναξ κατά πρόσωπα dei personaggi le cui biografie erano narrate da Diogene nei dieci libri delle Vite dei filosofi integrato, dopo Crisippo (l. VII), dai nomi di ben venti stoici successivi dei quali non resta traccia alcuna nella stesura dell'opera quale pervenutaci.

Nel capostipite codice Parigino, l'índex, copiato dalla prima mano, occupa il f. 1r-v oggi esremamente lacero e malconcio e di difficile letrura. Lo precede, sul verso del foglio di guardia (A), aggiuno in un secondo momento, un altro indice scritto da Janos Lascaris (2) che rispecchia il reale contenuto del manoscritto, privo cioè dei filosofi post-crisippei (3).

L'index locupletior venne pubblicato, per la prima volta, dal Rose (4) estratto dal codice Laurenziano e riproposto, in una forma migliore, a partire dal codice Parigino, dal Manini (5) e nella Praefatio all'edizione basileense della Vita di Platone (6)." [Segue l'edizione critica del documento]

(1) Per uno studio sulle relazioni tra questi manoscritti, tutti del sec. XV, e il codice Parigino (della fine del Xlll sec.), cfr. G. Donzelli, I codici P Q W Co H I E Y Jb nella tradizione di Diogene Laerzlo, *S.I.F.C." n.s. 32, 1960, 156-199 (d'ora innanzi Donzelli).

Seguo le sigle adottate dalla studiosa: nell'edizione oxoniense, Diogenis Laertii Vitae philosophorum (Oxonii 1964), H. Long preferisce fare uso delle letterè minuscole.

(2) Cfr. E. Martini, Analecta Laertiana, "Leipz. St." 19, 1899, 85 confermato dalla Donzelli 158 sg.

(3) Il foglio A è scritto da due mani diverse dei secoli XV-XVI e contiene, sul recto, di mano del XV sec., l'epitaffio dell'Imperatore Basilio II il Bulgaroctono e due epitaffi per la morte di Giuliano l'Apostata e di un Bessarione. Notizie più dettagliate in Donzelli, p. 158.

(4) V. Rose, Die Lücke im Diogenes Laërtius und der alte Übersetzer, "Hermes" 1, .1866., 367 -397 : 368 -37 2.

(5) E. Martini, Analecta Laertiana [J. B. Hirschfeld, 1899] 85 sg.

(6) Díogenís Laertii Vita Platonis rec. H. Breitenbach - F. Buddenhagen - A. Debrunner - F. Von der Muehll, Basel 1907, IV-VI.

18. ———. 1995. "Estratti dal III libro di Diogene Laerzio in un codice di Vienna (Cod. phil. gr. 314)." Studi Classici e Orientali no. 43:63-72.

La storia degli excerpta bizantini di Diogene Laerzio, indagata dal Biedl(1), si arricchisce di un ulteriore elemento: alcuni fogli délia prima parte (ff. lr-110v) del Cod. Vindob. phil. gr. 314 (Vi)(2) finita di copiare il 28 luglio 925 da un non meglio cono sciuto Ioannes γραμματικός(3)." (p. 63)

(...)

"Nelle pagine che seguono presento una trascrizione di Vi relativi a Diogene Laerzio accompagnata da una note di carattere esegetico-testuale intese a definire che può derivare dallo studio di questi estratti alla manoscritta e alla critica del testo del nostro autore. Si tratta, per lo più, di excerpta che riproducono alla lettera interi passi, anche se non mancano punti in cui l'anonimo excerptor ha preferito sunteggiare ο rimaneggiare a fini di 'chiarezza' e di sinteticità il testo originario. Da un attento esame appare evidente che Vi, nonostante la relativa antichità, è latore di una tradizione già stabilizzata, che non porta novità di rilievo rispetto alle varianti già attestate negli altri manoscritti delle Vite laerziane. (pp. 64-65, una nota omessa)

(1) A. Biedl, Das grosse Exzerpt Φ. Zur Textgeschichte des Laertios Diogenes (Città del Vaticano 1955).

(2) Wien, Ôsterreichische Nationalbibliothek.(...)

(3) Su Joannes γραμματικός, cf. R. Barbour, Greek literary hands A.D. 400-(Oxford 1981), p. 27 (n° 98) e J. Whittaker, Arethas and the «Collection Philosophique», in: D. Halfinger-G. Prato (a cura di), Paleografia e codicologia greca, I (Alessandria 1991), pp. 513-521: 514 s.

19. ———. 1996. "Studi sulla tradizione indiretta di Diogene Laerzio: la Ionia di Arsenio." In Hodoi dizesios: le vie della ricerca: studi in onore di Francesco Adorno, edited by Funghi, Maria Serena, 169-180. Firenze: Olschki.

20. ———. 1998. "Qualche aspetto della Vita Theophrasti di Diogene Laerzio e il Liceo dopo Aristotele." In Theophrastus. Reappraising the sources, edited by Ophuijsen, Johannes van and Raalte, Marlein Van, 29-38. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

"Da una più attenta lettura del paragrafo di Diogene Laerzio dove si riferisce la legge contro i filosofi fatta votare da Sofocle di Sunio è stato dedotto che, prima di quella data, non era necessaria una approvazione dello Stato per aprire una scuola filosofica a Atene e tale situazione si ripropose, a partire dall'anno ·successivo, dopo l'intervento di Filone e il ripristino dello status quo ante. Appare inoltre indiscutibile il fatto che il Liceo ricevette uno statuto di vera e propria scuola a partire da Teofrasto; Aristotele non aveva pensato a Teofrasto come suo successore ufficiale nella direzione della scuola, ma piuttosto come a colui al quale affidare la continuità del suo insegnamento. Questo compito Teofrasto sente come quello basilare della comunità filosofica che aveva costituito a partire dall'eredità del maestro. Egli stesso, pur proprietario di un giardino suo proprio e di edifici, e fondatore, dal punto di vista giuridico, del Liceo come scuola istituzionalizzata, non nomina uno scolarca ufficiale come suo successore. Il fatto che Diogene Laerzio, per indicare la successione sia di Teofrasto a Aristotele sia di Stratone a Teofrasto, ricorra alla formula διεδέξατο τὴν σχολὴν, non può essere addotto come prova contraria: si tratta, infatti, di una formula ormai stereotipa e canonica nella lingua della letteratura delle diadochai." (p. 37, una nota omessa.)

21. ———. 1999. "La versio latina antiqua di Diogene Laerzio e la sua recezione nel medioevo occidentale: Il Compendium moralium notabilium di Geremia di Montagnone e il Liber de vita et moribus philosophorum dello ps.-Burleo." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 10:371-396.

22. ———. 2000. "Diogenes Laertius Vitae Philosophorum*." Phronesis no. 45:331-340.

Recensione dell'edizione delle Vitae Philosophorum edita da Miroslav Marcovich (1999).

Un'edizione modema delle Vite dei filosofi di Diogene Laerzio, fondata su una rinnovata collazione dei principali manoscritti e che tenga conto del contributo degli studi accumulatisi per piu secoli su quel testo, e un desideratum degli studi classici dopo il tentativo discutibile di H.S. Long (Oxonii 1964, 1966^2: <<Oxford Classical Texts>>). La recente pubblicazione dell'edizione di M. Marcovich (d'ora in avanti: M.) nella prestigiosa <<Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Roma- norum Teubneriana>> rappresenta, senza alcun dubbio, un grande passo in avanti, ma non colma questa lacuna, se non in maniera parziale. Quale futurus editor delle Vite laerziane nella <<Collection des Universités de France>> (Belles Lettres), avrei dovuto rinunciare all'invito di rendere conto di questi due volumi al fine di evitare 1'accusa di avere mancato di imparzialita per un senso di malcelato malumore caratteristico di chi e stato battutto sul tempo. Non e tuttavia per il piacere malsano di mettere in evidenza errori o mancanze dell'edizione di M. che ho accettato l'offerta, ma per presentarla ai lettori con le sue caratteristiche, siano esse pregi o difetti, e per rendere pubblici alcuni almeno dei criteri che intendo applicare nella mia prossima edizione. Nelle pagine che seguono, per rispetto alla rivista che ospita questo contributo, evito di soffermarmi troppo su dettagli tecnici e di catalogare in lunghe e inutili liste le imprecisioni o gli errori, i punti di disaccordo, le presunte o vere anomalie dell'edizione di M. (segnalerò comunque qualche esempio per restare nel concreto) e mi concentro piuttosto su una analisi dei criteri ecdotici seguiti dallo studioso e sui risultati che dalla loro applicazione sono scaturiti nella concretezza della constitutio textus." (p. 331)

* Diogenes Laertius Vitae Philosophorum. Vol. I: Libri 1-X edidit M. Marcovich, Stutgardiae et Lipsiae, In Aedibus B.G. Teubner 1999. L+826 p. - ISBN 3-519-01316- 9. Vol. II: Excerpta Byzantina, edidit M. Marcovich, Stutgardiae et Lipsiae, In Aedibus B.G. Teubner 1999. 346 p. - ISBN 3-519-01317-7. Come Appendice al vol. I (815- 826) è pubblicato lo Gnomologium Epicureum Vaticanum.

23. ———. 2002. "Due note alla Vita di Arcesilao di Diogene Laerzio." Prometheus no. 28:52-56.

"Tra i molti luoghi del quarto libro delle Vite dr Diogene Laerzio che presentano ancora difficoltà testuali o esegetiche, due.passi della Vita di Arcesilao (N 32 e 41) meritano di essere considerati con particolare attenzione. Prendo a fondamento il testo della recente edizione di Marcovich accompagnato da un apparato critico(1)

Δια δέ το περί πάντων έπέχειν ουδέ βιβλίον τι, φασί, συνέγραψεν· οι δέ, δτι έφωράθη (Κράντορός) τινα διορθών, α φασιν οί μεν έκδοΰναι, οΐ δέ κατακαΰσαι."

(...)

"Dopo avere narrato che, alla morte di Cratete, Arcesilao aveva ottenuto la direzione dell'Accademia in seguito alla rinuncia di un ignoto Socratide, Diogene continua con la frase trascritta sopra. La fonte alla quale Diogene ha attinto queste informazioni e quella che segue immediatamente, relativa alla ammirazione di Arcesilao nei confronti di Platone di cui possedeva una copia delle opere, sono i Bioi di Antigono di Caristo. Lo dimostra il confronto con il passo parallelo della Storia della Accademia di Filodemo (PHerc. 1021, col. XVII 41-XVIII 40, p. 152-153 Dorandi = Antig. Car., fr. 18-20 Dorandi). Una differenza sostanziale distingue tuttavia Filodemo da Diogene Laerzio: Filodemo ha utilizzato i Bioi di Antigono di prima mano, mentre essi sono giunti a Diogene indirettamente, attraverso uno o più stadi intermedi. È un dato di fatto della massima importanza di cui non può non tenere conto I'editore di Diogene(2)." (p. 52)

(1) Diogenes Laertius Vitae Philosophorum ed. M. Marcovich, Lipsiae 1999. (...)

(2) Ho discusso i rapporti fra Diogene Laerzio e Antigono nell'introduzione alla mia edizione dei frammenti di Antigono di Caristo: T. Dorandi (a c. di), Antigone de Caryste. Fragments, Paris 1999, pp. XLIV-XLVIII e LIII-LXII.

24. ———. 2002. "Tracce delle Vite dei filosofi di Diogene Laerzio nell'Epistolario di Fozio?" Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaften no. 5:59-63.

"Quello che, in conclusione, possiamo dire è che non ci sono elementi sufficienti per dimostrare che Fozio ebbe tra le mani un codice di Diogene Laerzio.

Questo fatto non esclude tuttavia la presenza di un tale manoscritto a Bisanzio.

Fozio non ebbe probabilmente accesso o non ebbe interesse a leggere le Vite laerziane. Esse vennero 'riscoperte' qualche decennio più tardi in altri milieux culturali, piuttosto orientati verso gli studi filosofici. Le tracce più antiche della presenza di un codice delle Vite nel mondo bizantino sono gli estratti del III libro (Vita di Platone) contenuti nei fogli 27r-29v del codice Vindob. phil. gr. 314, datato al 28 luglio 925.(15) é possibile risalire un pò più indietro se si considera che questo manoscritto è copia di un codice passato fra le mani del discepolo di Fozio, Areta di Cesarea (nato verso l'anno 850). La vera e propria 'rinascita' laerziana a Bisanzio comincia alla fine del sec. X, grazie ai redattori della Anthologia Graeca e della Suda.(16) Fozio è destinato a restare fuori da questa ìoperazione culturale'." (p. 63)

(15) Pubblicati da T. Dorandi, Estratti dal III libro di Diogene Laerzio in un codice di Vienna (Cod. phil. gr. 314), SCO 43 (1993), pp. 63-72.

(16) Cf. T. Dorandi, Diogene Laerzio a Bizanzio nel X secolo. Studi sulla tradizione indiretta delle Vite dei filosofi, di prossima pubblicazione nella BZ [Byzantinische Zeitschrift] 2003.

25. ———. 2003. "Diogene Laerzio a Bisanzio nel X secolo. Studi sulla tradizione indiretta delle Vite dei filosofi." Byzantinische Zeitschrift no. 96:123-155.

26. ———. 2007. "Diogene Laerzio fra Bisanzio e l'Italia Meridionale. La circolazione delle Vite dei filosofi tra la tarda antichità e l'età paleologa." Segno e Testo no. 5:99-172.

27. ———. 2007. "I manoscritti di Diogene Laerzio: un catalogo sommario." Codices Manuscripti no. 62/63:45-61.

28. ———. 2007. "Le Vite di Diogene Laerzio fra Bisanzio e l'Italia Meridionale. La circolazione delle Vite dei filosofi tra la tarda antichità e l'età paleologa." Segno e Testo no. 5:99-172.

29. ———. 2008. "Ricerche sulla più antica tradizione delle Vite di Diogene Laerzio." Prometheus no. 34:193-216.

Ristampato in T. Dorandi, Laertiana, pp. 49-124.

30. ———. 2008. "Codici della Vita Platonis di Diogene Laerzio." Νέα ῾Ρώµη - Nea Rhome no. 5:323-331.

Ristampato con modifiche in T. Dorandi, Laertiana.

31. ———. 2008. "Altri codici con excerpta delle Vite di Diogene Laerzio." Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaften no. 11:1-6.

"In un articolo recente ho catalogato tutti i codices integri delle Vite dei filosofi di Diogene Laerzio a me noti e una scelta di manoscritti che conservano estratti con particolare attenzione alla cosiddetta tradizione degli Excerpta Vaticana.(1)

Ulteriori ricerche, tenendo conto anche dei dati riuniti nel repertorio di Sinkewicz,(2) mi hanno consentito di ampliare la lista dei testimoni con estratti delle Vite.(3) Si tratta spesso di documenti nei quali la presenza di brani o pericopi testuali laerziane sono limitate a raccolte (più o meno ampie) di apoftegmi, a singole vite o a piccole antologie. La maggior parte di questi codici sono posteriori al XVI secolo; in un paio di casi, essi sono copiati su altri testimoni tuttora conservati. Nell’insieme, il loro contributo è senza rilevanza per la constitutio textus delle Vite. Li elenco, di seguito, per desiderio di completezza, ordinati secondo il criterio geografico della biblioteca di conservazione.

Salvo rare eccezioni, segnalo solo il contenuto della sezione laerziana." (pp.1-2, una nota omessa)

(1) T. Dorandi, I manoscritti di Diogene Laerzio: Un catalogo sommario, Codices Manuscripti 62/63 (2007), pp. 45-61 (citato come Catalogo).

(2) R.E. Sinkewicz, Manuscript Listings for the Authors of Classical and Late Antiquity (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990) VI, 49 p. + 6 microfiches. In diversi casi ho tacitamente corretto i dati raccolti dallo studioso.

32. ———. 2009. Laertiana. Capitoli sulla tradizione manoscritta e sulla storia del testo delle Vite dei filosofi di Diogene Laerzio. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Sommario: Premessa XI-XIII; I. Dai codici alle edizioni delle Vite dei filosofi 1; II. Ricerche sulla più antica tradizione delle Vite dei filosofi 49; III. Lettori bizantini delle Vite dei filosofi ovvero del buon uso della tradizione 'indiretta' 125; IV. Verso uno stemma codicum dei più antichi testimoni 195; V. Le Vite dei filosofi tra Medioevo e Rinascimento latino 201; VI. Appendice. Peter von der Mühll editore di Diogene Laerzio 229; VII. Bibliografia 247; VIII. Indici 256-276.

"Le sei sezioni che compongono questo volume, costituiscono altrettanti capitoli sulla tradizione manoscritta e sulla storia del testo delle Vite laerziane. Nel primo capitolo (Dai codici alle edizioni delle Vite dei filosofi) sono catalogati tutti i manoscritti che contengono l’insieme delle Vite o una scelta di libri o di estratti nonché le edizioni dell’opera dall’editio princeps Frobeniana (1533) a quella di M. Marcovich (1999). Il secondo capitolo (Ricerche sulla più antica tradizione delle Vite dei filosofi) si compone di una serie di studi sui principali manoscritti integri e sulla tradizione degli excerpta Vaticana; vi è discussa la questione dell’esistenza o meno di una tradizione italo-greca delle Vite e proposta una ricostruzione di Ω, il capostipite dei codices integri antiquiores, e di Χ, il modello tardo-antico da cui derivò tutta la tradizione medievale. L’ultima parte del capitolo è riservata alla vulgata e alla sua formazione, da collocare in un’epoca relativamente antica. Con il terzo capitolo (Lettori bizantini delle Vite dei filosofi, ovvero del buon uso della tradizione ‘indiretta’) intendo presentare una storia del testo delle Vite nel mondo bizantino attraverso uno studio delle testimonianze degli autori che le hanno lette e utilizzate, dalla fine dell’Antichità alla caduta di Costantinopoli, e oltre. Alla ricostruzione (per molti aspetti ancora incerta) delle vicende delle Vite prima della loro sistemazione nel perduto codice Χ e allo stemma dei testimoni più antichi è consacrato il capitolo quarto (Verso uno stemma codicum dei più antichi testimoni). Il capitolo quinto (Le Vite dei filosofi tra Medioevo e Rinascimento latino) indaga le due traduzioni latine delle Vite, quella (perduta) di Enrico Aristippo e quella (ancora conservata) di Ambrogio Traversari. L’Appendice (capitolo sesto) contiene una descrizione dell’inedito Nachlaß di Peter Von der Mühll, da me per la prima volta utilizzato nella sua integralità, per l’edizione delle Vite laerziane." (pp. XI-XII)

33. ———. 2009. "Parmenide, Senofane e Anassimandro (Una nota a Diog. Laert. IX 21)." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 30:347-353.

Abstract: "A new inspection of the B manuscript of Diogenes Laertius' Lives of Eminent Philosophers allows to restore the text of the beginning of Parmenides' Life (IX 21) in a way that corresponds with Diogenes', and also to eliminate an obvious syntactic difficulty."

34. ———. 2010. "Diogene Laerzio, Epicuro e gli editori di Epicuro e di Diogene Laerzio." Eikasmos.Quaderni Bolognesi di Filologia Classica no. 21:273-301.

35. ———. 2013. "Diogene Laerzio e la storia della filosofia antica: con qualche considerazione di un editore." In Aristotele e la storia, edited by Rossitto, Cristina, Coppola, Alessandra and Biasutti, Franco, 185-203. Padova: CLEUP.

36. ———. 2013. "Diogene Laerzio e la tradizione catalogica: liste di libri nelle Vite e opinioni dei filosofi." Antiquorum Philosophia no. 7:107-126.

37. ———. 2016. "Le ‹Divisiones quae vulgo dicuntur Aristoteleae›. Storia del testo e edizione delle Recensiones Marciana, Florentina e Leidensis." Studia Graeco-Arabica no. 6:1-58.

Abstract: "This paper is devoted to the manuscript tradition of the Divisiones quae dicuntur Aristoteleae (DA), and in particular to two discoveries that shed new light on it. The collection of DA is transmitted in four different versions, that should be investigated and edited individually. The editor should also resist the temptation to reconstruct a imaginary Urtext. The focus of this study is on the three versions independent of the Recensio Laertiana (Diog. Laert. III 80-109): the Recensiones Marciana, Florentina and Leidensis. These versions are reconstructed on the basis of six Byzantine manuscripts dated between the 10th and the 15th/16th century. Then, the new edition of the Recensio Marciana and the editiones principes of the Recensiones Florentina, and Leidensis is presented."

38. Garin, Eugenio. 2009. "La prima traduzione latina di Diogene Laerzio." Giornale della Filosofia Italiana no. 38:283-285.

39. Giannantoni, Gabriele. 1986. "Socrate e i Socratici in Diogene Laerzio." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 7:183-216.

"La biografia di Socrate scritta da Diogene Laerzio non ha goduto di grande fortuna presso gli studiosi di Socrate: per quanti sforzi si siano fatti, soprattutto dopo il fondamentale libro di Olof Gigon(1), per liberarsi dalle angustie della classica impostazione del “problema socratico”, che vedeva nel confronto, nella composizione o nella scelta, tra le fonti cosiddette canoniche (Platone, Senofonte e Aristotele) l’unico criterio metodico possibile per attingere il “vero” Socrate, si è ancora lontani da un’utilizzazione esauriente di tutto il materiale disponibile, che solo da una quindicina d’anni si è cominciato a raccogliere e a studiare direttamente(2). In sostanza si può dire che ci si è ormai abbastanza convinti a guardare con maggiore attenzione alle Nuvole di Aristofane (e agli altri accenni contenuti nelle sue commedie) e che, soprattutto, si è abbastanza convinti dell’opportunità di prendere in considerazione anche gli altri esiti del socratismo (Eschine, Euclide, Antistene, Aristippo, ecc.), pur se si è ancora a un livello di pura esigenza metodica. Ma ciò che, a tutt’oggi, manca è uno studio approfondito e sistematico della storia della fortuna di Socrate nell’antichità e quindi una ricostruzione esauriente dei vari filoni dell’interpretazione filosofica e delle tradizioni biografiche, aneddotiche, apoftegmatiche ed erudite(3) , che poi, almeno parzialmente, confluiscono nell’opera di Diogene Laerzio." (p. 185)

(1) Cfr. O. Gigon, Sokrates. Sein Bild in Dichtung und Geschichte, Bern 1947.

(2) Cfr. J. Ferguson, Socrates. A Source Book, London 1970 e G. Giannatoni (a cura di), Socrate. Tutte le testimonianze da Aristofane e Senofonte ai Padri cristiani, Bari 1971. Entrambi i libri danno le fonti in traduzione.

(3) Solo parzialmente colmano questa lacuna alcuni studi che riguardano l’epicureismo (cfr. la successiva nota 23) o determinate fasi della tradizione cinico-stoica (cfr. K. Doering, Exemplum Socratis. Studien zur Sokratesnachwirkung in der kynisch-stoischen Popularphilosophie in der frühen Kaiserzeit und in frühen Christentum, «Hermes», Einzelschr. XLII, Wiesbaden 1979); mancano invece studi adeguati per ciò che concerne lo stoicismo antico, l’Accademia di mezzo e la tradizione scettica, il platonismo medio e il neoplatonismo.

(23) Tra gli studi più recenti su questo argomento mi limito a segnalare: Μ. T. Runia, The Epicurean Criticism of Socrates, «Phoenix», XXXIV (1980) pp. 55-68 e K. Kleve, Scurra Atticus. The Epicurean View of Socrates,

nelle pp. 227-53 del primo volume di Συζήτησις. Studi sull’epicureismo greco e romano offerti a M. Gigante, Napoli 1983. Sulla testimonianza di Idomeneo cfr. A. Angeli, I frammenti di Idomeneo di Lampsaco, «Cronache Ercolanesi», 11 (1981) pp. 41-101 (specialmente pp. 56-61 e 92-3).

40. Giannantoni , Gabriele. 1992. "Il secondo libro delle 'Vite' di Diogene Laerzio." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Teil II: Principat. Band 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. 5. Teilband: Philosophie (Einzelne Autoren, Doxographica), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 3603-3618. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"La struttura del secondo libro delle 'Vite' di Diogene Laerzio è presto detta. Rifacendosi al criterio delle 'successioni' fissato nel 'Proemio', ribadito in questo stesso libro (II 19) e sul quale dovremo tornare, Diogene Laerzio inizia con il bios di Anassimandro (II 1 - 2), che - a rigore - se si prescinde dalla indicazione cronologica fornita sulla base di Apollodoro, non è un vero e proprio bios quanto piuttosto un compendio dossografico. Ad esso segue il bios di Anassimene (II 3 - 5), con la solita indicazione cronologica desunta da Apollodoro e quasi interamente occupato dal testo di due lettere - certamente non autentiche - di Anassimene a Pitagora. Inverosimile, per ragioni cronologiche, è la notizia, desunta da fonti anonime, di un suo discepolato presso Parmenide.

A questi bioi seguono quelli di Anassagora (II 6 - 15) e di Archela (II 16 - 17); il seguito del libro è interamente occupato dai bioi di Socrate e dei Socratici, ad eccezione di Platone (trattato nel libro III) e di Antistene (trattato nel libro VI): su questa parte ci soffermeremo con particolare attenzione, dopo aver detto qualcosa sui bioi di Anassagora ed Archelao." (pp. 3603-3604)

41. Gigante, Marcello. 1962. "Note laerziane." La Parola del Passato no. 17:371-381.

42. ———. 1972. "Per una interpretazione di Diogene Laerzio." Rendiconti dell'Accademia di Archeologia Lettere e Belle Arti di Napoli no. 47:119-137.

Ristampato come introdzione alla nuova edizione delle Vite dei filosofi, Bari: Laterza, 1983 (pp. I - CXVIII).

43. ———. 1973. "Diogene Laerzio storico e cronista dei filosofi antichi." Atene e Roma no. 18:105-132.

44. ———. 1984. "Gli studi di Nietzsche su Diogene Laerzio." Rendiconti dell'Accademia di Archeologia Lettere e Belle Arti di Napoli no. 59:67-78.

45. ———. 1986. "Biografia e dossografia in Diogene Laerzio." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 7:7-102.

"Come l’intera opera, così ogni βίος è stato concepito da Diogene quale contributo alla conoscenza di un passato ormai classico, che ha chiuso il suo ciclo di vita, ma non ha esaurito la sua vitalità: da tempo la polis era morta, sopravvivevano le individualità. La biografia laerziana non è in questo dissimile da altre biografìe politiche o letterarie: è il regno dell’individuo. E tuttavia l’individuo è creatore di storia dentro la storia, portatore di pensieri o idee e anche di fatti che non sono per lo più meri eventi privati, ma segnali di una cultura e di un’epoca.

Così la filosofia nei βίοι che permangono, se sono storia, una storia “esterna” e non “concettuale”(129), appartiene ad un patrimonio di sapienza anche popolare o al sistema di una scuola, ma non cessa mai di essere espressione di libertà interiore. E la doxa che accompagna quando è possibile il bios e gli è subordinata — almeno dell’impostazione fondamentale — assume anche la forma di una chreia, di una massima, di un apophthegma e Diogene non esercita generalmente un criterio di valutazione: nella leale registrazione del βίος e della doxa Diogene espone, non giudica. La doxa si configura non solo come filosofia, ma come cultura, letteratura, poesia, arte, politica, in una varietà di forme di espressione dello spirito che si colloca nella forma di un βίος, in un kefalaion, o in una serie di kefalaia: l’interazione fra biografia e filosofia è perciò mutevole e duttile. Una biografia fondata sulle testimonianze di pensiero o di vita tratte dall’opera scritta di colui di cui viene scritta la vita è necessariamente diversa dalla biografia di un filosofo che nulla ha scritto o la cui opera sia rimasta inaccessibile." (p. 97)

(129) Cfr. M. Dal Pra, Storia e verità della filosofia, «Rivista critica di storia della filosofia», XXVI (1971) pp. 439-49.

46. ———. 1988. "Ambrogio Traversari interprete di Diogene Laerzio." In Ambrogio Traversari nel VI centenario della nascita. Convegno internazionale di studi (Camaldoli-Firenze, 15-18 settembre 1986), edited by Garfagnini, Gian Carlo, 367-459. Firenze: Olschki.

47. ———. 1994. "Diogene Laerzio." In Lo spazio letterario della Grecia antica Vol. I.3, edited by Canfora, Luciano and Lanza, Diego, 723-740. Roma: Salerno Editrice.

"Diogene Laerzio non appartenne a una scuola filosofica, operò probabilmente a Roma prima di Plotino e Porfirio, dispose di una attrezzata biblioteca, fu biografo d' insaziabile curiosità, erudito infaticabile, lettore straordinario, ebbe forse a modello la Scuola di Aristotele non meno che il Museo di Alessandria. Certo una vena aristotelica o se si preferisce un aristotelismo come tendenza storiografica è sotteso piu o meno scopertamente alla sua opera, incompiuta e aperta.

Nel Proemio la sua coscienza aristotelica si svela nel concepire la filosofia come creazione dei Greci, nel sottolineare il divario fra Greci e barbari, nella polemica con i sostenitori dell' origine barbarica della filosofia. La filosofia è perfetta creazione dei Greci, il suo nome è greco (1 5). Non omette d' esporre il filosofare orientale, ma prima di esporre la storia del pensiero greco ordinata in categorie, distinta in scuole (aipfoeiç), collocate in successioni (òiaòoxai) afferma (1 12) che Pitagora per primo usò il termine "filosofia" e per primo si chiamò "filosofo" : « piu anticamente si chiamava sapienza, e sapiente chi la professasse, ed eccellesse nell' estrema cura dell' anima; filosofo era colui che accoglie la sapienza ». (p. 732)

48. ———. 2001. "Il bios laerziano di Epimenide." In Epimenide cretese, edited by Federico, Eduardo and Visconti, Amedeo, 7-24. Napoli: Luciano.

49. Girardi, Luca. 2014. Praeparatio epicurea? Filosofia e dossografia in Diogene Laerzio. Saonara (Padova): Il Prato.

Prefazione di Giuseppe Girgenti.

50. Grignaschi, Mario. 1990. "Lo pseudo Walter Burley e il "Liber de vita et moribus philosophorum"." Medioevo no. 16:131-190.

51. ———. 1990. "'Corrigenda et addenda' sulla questione dello ps. Burleo." Medioevo no. 16:325-352.

52. Guida, Augusto. 2013. "L'origine dei termini filosofo e filosofia secondo il testo di Diogene Laerzio." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie no. 156:410-413.

"Nel proemio alle sue Vite dei filosofi Diogene Laerzio, trattando dell'origine della filosofia, ricorda che, secondo quanto racconta Eraclide Pontico nell'opera Sulla donna esanime (fr. 87 Wehrli), Pitagora in un colloquio a Sicione con Leone tiranno di Sicione, ο di Fliunte, fu il primo a dare il nome alla filosofia e a chiamarsi filosofo, rifiutando l'appellativo di σοφός: φιλοσοφίαν δέ πρώτος ώνόμασε Πυθαγό ρας και εαυτόν φιλόσοφον, έν Σικυώνι διαλεγόμενος Λέοντι τω Σικυωνίων τυράν νφ η Φλιασίων, καθά φησιν Ηρακλείδης ό Ποντικός έν τγί Περί της απνου.(1) La notizia è confermata da altre fonti, in particolare da Cicerone, che nelle Tusculane (Heracl. Pont. fr. 88 Wehrli) riferisce distesamente il racconto eraclideo del dialogo avvenuto fra Pitagora e il tiranno, di cui Diogene sintetizza invece solo le conclusioni.(2) Diogene, per altro, motiva il rifiuto del titolo di σοφός in quanto pertinente esclusivamente a Dio: μηδένα... είναι σοφόν άνθρωπον άλλ' ή θεόν, secondo quanto concordemente tramandato dai manoscritti.! (p. 410)

(1) Diog. Laert. 1,12. L'edizione di riferimento è quella teubneriana a cura di M. Marcovich, Stutgardiae et Lipsiae 1999. Quando l'articolo era in bozze è uscita la nuova edizione a cura di Tiziano Dorandi, Cambridge 2013 (vedi sotto, nota 9).

2) L'esame più dettagliato e acuto delia notizia su Pitagora e le sue fonti è fornito da W. Burkert, Piaton oder Pythagoras? Zum Ursprung des Wortes 'Philosophie', Hermes 88, 1960, 159-177.

(9) Faccio riferimento aile riflessioni metodologiche di T. Dorandi, Diogene Laerzio, Epicuro e gli editori di Epicuro e di Diogene Laerzio, Eikasmos 21, 2010, 273-301. Ringrazio il Dorandi, che ha letto questo articolo e concorda sulle sue conclusioni, di cui non ha potuto tener conto per la sua nuova edizione di Diogene, già licenziata per la stampa e or ora uscita (Cambridge 2013). Sono molto grato anche a R. Kassel per aver esaminato e discusso con la solita generosità e sollecitu dine una prima bozza di questo lavoro.

53. Janácek, Karel. 1992. Indice delle Vite dei filosofi di Diogene Laerzio. Firenze: Olschki.

54. Lapini, Walter. 2003. "Il Diogene Laerzio di Miroslav Marcovich." Méthexis:105-114.

"Con questa edizione,(1) il compianto MirosJav Marcovich (= M.) ha reso grandi servizi alla tradizione di Diogene Laerzio: ha allargato Ja base documentaria, ha fatto ordine fra le molte e varie mani di scriba, ha studiato i testimoni disponibili con un'acribia ignota al suo predecessore oxoniense H. S. Long. Sotto questi aspetti la valutazione dell'opera non può che essere positiva, come anche è positiva, anzi preziosa, Ja scelta di rendicontare in apparato non solo tutte Je principali varianti tradite, ma anche, nei limiti dei possibile, tutte Je congetture, risparmiando al lettore formule frustranti come "alii aliter", "alii alia", ecc. Nelle righe che seguono, però, io cercherò di mettermi nei panni dell'utente, in particolare dell'utente non filologo; di conseguenza lascerò da parte valutazioni stemmatiche e codicologiche, ehe i futuri editori potranno esprimere con piu competenza di me, e giudicherò il lavoro di M. soprattutto dal punto di vista della sua affidabilità e fruibilità pratica per lo studioso di filosofia antica. E devo dire, da questo punto di vista, che J'edizione presenta numerosi difetti, che solo in parte possono essere attribuiti ala maneanza delle ultimae curae." (p. 105, note omesse)

(1) Diogenes Laertius, edidit M. Mareovieh, Stutgardiae et Lipsiae, Teubner 1999,2 voll.: vol. I, Vitae philosophorum, pp. L + 826; vol. II, Excerpta Byzanlina et indices, pp. 346; accedit vol. III, Indices, confecit H. Gärtner, Monachii et Lipsiae, Saur 2002, pp. 183.

55. ———. 2010. "Il prologo della Lettera a Erodoto di Epicuro: sul testo di Diog. Laert. X 35-7." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 31:331-343.

"Prima di entrare nell'analisi di questi passi occorrerà ricordare la distinzione - fondamentale e mai abbastanza sottolineata - tra testo di Diogene Laerzio e testo di Epicuro; distinzione che è stata fatta oggetto anche recentemente di uno specifico studio di Tiziano Dorandi(3), e che può essere riassunta nel principio secondo cui l'editore epicureo è tenuto ad emendare tutti gli errori indistintamente, mentre l'editore di Diogene dovrà intervenire solo a valle dell'``originale'', lasciando tali e quali gli errori di primo livello(4), cioè quelli che si possono presumere insorti nel segmento di tradizione che va dall'autore citato all'autore che riporta la citazione. Un principio ovvio, ma tante volte violato, anche da parte dell'ultimo editore laerziano Miroslav Marcovich(5).

Quanto a me, presenterò qui di seguito tre suggerimenti, nuovi il secondo e il terzo, già noto il primo. I primi due mi paiono necessari per il testo di Epicuro e solo possibili per il testo di Diogene; il terzo invece è probabilmente necessario per entrambi." (p. 334)

(3) T. Dorandi, Diogene Laerzio, Epicuro e gli editori di Epicuro e di Diogene Laerzio, «Eikasmos», xxi (2010) pp. 273-301; ma vedasi anche Id., `Laertiana'. Capitoli sulla tradizione manoscritta e sulla storia del testo delle `Vite dei filosofi' di Diogene Laerzio , Berlin-New York 2009, pp. 45-6.

(4) Per la terminologia cfr. R. Tosi, Studi sulla tradizione indiretta dei classici greci, Bologna 1988, p. 52.

(5) La confusione tra i livelli di errore assume dimensioni sistemiche nell'edizione della Refutatio di Ippolito del 1986 (M. Marcovich (ed.), Hippolytus. Refutatio omnium haeresium, Berlin 1986).

56. ———. 2011. "Note Laerziane (D. L. 1.12, 8.48, 10.2, 10.5, 10.7-9, 10.9, 10.11, 10.124, 10.140)." Sileno no. 37:207-217.

"Presento qui sotto una serie di note testuali a Diogene Laerzio, facendo séguito a un altro mio contributo di identico titolo comparso nel 2009 su questa rivista1. Come in quel caso, così in questo non posso preliminarmente sottrarmi all’obbligo e al piacere di rivolgere un sincero ringraziamento all’amico Tiziano Dorandi(2), sia per aver letto e discusso con pazienza ed acribia le pagine che qui si pubblic no, sia per avermi permesso di visionare in anteprima, e di utilizzare, gli apparati della sua imminente edizione critica delle Vite dei Filosofi(3)." (p. 207)

(1) W. Lapini, Note laerziane (D. L. 1.86, 3.102, 4.51, 5.41, 6.73), «Sileno» 35, 2009, 227-234.

(2) Nonché a Jan Hessler, per i motivi che saranno detti sotto, n. 28.

(3) Il testo (se non diversamente indicato) sarà invece quello di M. Marcovich, Diogenes Laertius, ed. M. M., Stutgardiae et Lipsiae 1999 (alle pagine e ai righi di questa edizione sono riferite le parentesi che accompagnano l’indicazione dei libri e dei capitoli).

(28) J. E. Hessler, Ergebnisse der Arbeit am Kommentar zu Epikurs Brief an Me noi keus: Ep. Men. 124, in stampa su «Studi Classici e Orientali». Ringrazio l’autore per avermi permesso di visionare il suo articolo in anteprima. Molte di queste congetture erano state discusse anche da A. Barigazzi, Epicurea, «Hermes» 81, 1953, 145-162: 147-148 e 157-158.

57. ———. 2015. L’Epistola a Erodoto e il Bios di Epicuro in Diogene Laerzio. Note testuali, esegetiche e metodologiche. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.

58. Martinelli Tempesta, Stefano. 2014. "La nuova edizione di Diogene Laerzio." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico:157-189.

Recensione di: Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Edited with Introduction by T. Dorandi (“Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries”, 50), Cambridge 2013.

"L’edizione si compone delle seguenti parti: un’introduzione che presenta in sintesi, alle pp. 1-44, i risultati argomentati distesamente e con ricchissima documentazione nel già citato volume Laertiana, oltre a spiegare con molta chiarezza i principi metodologici su cui si fonda la constitutio textus (pp. 45-57); il testo critico delle Vite con tre serie di apparati (pp. 58-824); il Subsidium interpretationis, di cui si è detto; una prima appendice con i metri (esclusi i distici elegiaci) delle composizioni poetiche di Diogene che originariamente facevano parte della Pammetros (pp. 873-5); una seconda appendice con alcuni addenda e corrigenda al volume Laertiana (pp. 876-8); una terza con un additamentum contenente tredici congetture proposte per litteras da Walter Lapini (pp. 879-80); una bibliografia selettiva (pp. 881-94); un indice dei nomi largamente ispirato, come lo stesso Dorandi dichiara, a quello compilato da Hans Gärtner a complemento dell’edizione di Marcovich." (p. 160)

59. Ramelli, Ilaria. 2004. "Diogene Laerzio e Clemente Alessandrino nel contesto di un dibattito culturale comune." Espacio, Tiempo y Forma no. 15:207-224.

Sommario: "I! Presente articolo anaiizza i paralleiismi tra le Vitae Philosophorum di Diogene Laerzio e gli Stromata di Clemente Aessandrino e pone entrambi nel contesto di un dibattito cultúrale comune relativo alie origini della fllosofia."

60. ———. 2004. "Diogene Laerzio e i cristiani: conoscenza e polemica con Taziano e con Clemente Alessandrino?" Espacio, Tiempo y Forma no. 15:27-41.

Sommario: "Questo articolo studia le interrelazioni tra la Oratio ad Graecos di Taziano e le Vitae Philosophorum di Diogene Laerzio e cerca di delineare il dibattito —che interessò pagani e cristiani— al quale essi presero parte."

61. Sottili, Agostino. 1984. "Il Laerzio latino e greco e altri autografi di Ambrogio Traversari." In Vestigia. Studi in onore di Giuseppe Billanovich, edited by Avesani, Rino, Ferrari, Mirella, Foffano, Tino, Frasso, Giuseppe and Sottili, Agostino, 699-745. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.

62. Untersteiner, Mario. 1970. Posidonio nei Placita di Platone secondo Diogene Laerzio III. Brescia: Paideia..

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliographie des études en Français sur Diogène Laërce

Études en Français

1. Algra, Keimpe A. 1994. "Gassendi et le texte de Diogène Laërce." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 15:79-103.

Résumé: "L'étude des objectifs et de la méthode de Gassendi, ainsi que du matériel dont il disposait pour la rédaction de ses Animadversiones in decimum librum Diogenis Laërtii (Lyon 1649), permet d'affirmer que le jugement très négatif que la plupart des savants du XIX et XX siècle ont porté sur cet ouvrage n'est pas justifié. Même si les compétences philologiques de Gassendi n'égalaient pas ses qualités de philosophe, il a donné une impulsion non négligeable à l'établissement du texte de Diogène grâce à sa connaissance de l'épicurisme et à sa maîtrise du grec."

2. Bidez, Joseph. 1894. La biographie d'Empédocle. Gand: Université de Gand.

Table des matières: La vie d'Empédocle par Diogène Laërce; Histoire de la tradition; Biographie d'Empédocle.

Reprint: Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1973; Charleston, BiblioLife 2009.

3. Bodéüs, Richard. 1995. "L'aristotélisme stoïcien." Cahiers des Études Anciennes no. 29:7-32.

"The text of Diogenes Laertius' testimony to Aristotle's philosophy is in fact a Stoic construction the principle elements of which, established in the Hellenistic era, have influenced for centuries our understanding of Aristotle's thought."

4. ———. 1995. "L’influence historique du Stoïcisme sur l’interprétation de l’oeuvre philosophique d'Aristote." Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques no. 79:553-586.

"On connaît très mal le sort réservé durant la période hellénistique à l'oeuvre d'Aristote qui nous est familière. De cette époque, pourtant, datent les premiers travaux doxographiques qui ont accompagné le classement des écrits attribués au philosophe. On en a l'indice dans l'exposé de la philosophie aristotélicienne fourni par Diogène Laërce (V, 28-34).

Ce dernier texte, comme l'a montré P. Moraux(1), semble contenir, en effet, les traces d'opinions antérieures aux recherches d'Andronicos de Rhodes (1er s. avant notre ère), qui a ouvert la tradition des commentateurs et marqué le renouveau de l'aristotélisme. Nous voudrions reprendre ici l'étude de ces traces, dans l'intention d'établir l'importance de l'influence stoïcienne sur la plus ancienne interprétation de la philosophie aristotélicienne que nous connaissions." (p. 553)

(1) P. Moraux, « L'exposé de la philosophie d'Aristote chez Diogène Laërce (V, 28-34)•, dans Rev. Phil. de Louvain, 47 (1949) p. 5-43; cette étude, citée ci-après P. Moraux (1) a été reprise ultérieurement et partiellement corrigée dans un travail plus global intitulé « Diogène Laërce et le Peripatos » dans Elenchos, 7 (1986) p. 247-294, en particulier p. 267-290, ci-après P. Moraux (2). Ce dernier travail intègre les résultats de plusieurs autres recherches effectuées dans l'intervalle, par l'auteur lui-même ou par d'autres; mais aucune de ces recherches, ni aucune de celles qui ont été entreprises après 1986 n'ont directement porté sur la partie du document que nous allons analyser.

5. Brisson, Luc. 1992. "Diogène Laërce, 'Vies et doctrines des philosophes illustres', Livre III: Structure et contenu." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Teil II: Principat. Band 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. 5. Teilband: Philosophie (Einzelne Autoren, Doxographica), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 3619-3760. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Conclusion. Le livre III, qui, comme on peut le constater, suit un plan assez rigoureux, présente donc un intérêt tout particulier, dans la mesure où la dédicace qui s'y trouve insérée permet de se faire une idée du public auquel s'adressait Diogène Laërce: il s'agissait non de spécialistes intéressés par les doctrines philosophiques, mais d'amateurs éclairés friands de littérature. Ce point précisé, on comprend mieux de quelle manière procède Diogène Laërce, lorsqu'il décrit la vie de Platon, et lorsqu'il évoque ses oeuvres et ses doctrines.

Pour fabriquer la vie de Platon, qui, pour l'essentiel, répond à des intentions bien précises, notamment celle d'illustrer ou d'exemplifier des points de doctrine par référence à des éléments biographiques, un certain nombre de recettes ont été appliquées. Or, cette recherche systématique d'un accord entre la vie de Platon et ses doctrines ne laisse pas de prêter à cette partie du livre III l'allure d'un "roman".

En revanche, les informations que recèle la partie du livre III sur les oeuvres et les doctrines de Platon présentent un caractère plus positif. Diogène Laërce y donne des renseignements de première importance sur la transmission du texte de Platon et sur sa présentation matérielle à son époque. En outre, la doxographie que, par la suite, propose Diogène Laërce nous permet de nous faire une idée de l'interprétation à laquelle furent soumises les doctrines de Platon dans les tout premiers siècles de l'Empire, période que nous connaissons mal par ailleurs.

Cela dit, on ne peut, à la suite de cette lecture "savante", manquer de se poser cette question. Si le corpus platonicien avait été perdu, s'il n'en restait plus que des fragments, serions-nous en mesure de relativiser l'image que l'on pouvait se faire de Platon et de son oeuvre dans certains milieux durant la première moitié du IIIème siècle apr. J.-C., pour retrouver une image de Platon plus authentique, celle qu'essaie de reconstituer un historien contemporain de la philosophie, à partir d'une lecture systématique et assidue du corpus platonicien? Cette question présente d'autant plus de pertinence que les oeuvres de la plupart des philosophes qu'évoque Diogène Laërce ont été perdues en tout ou en partie." (pp. 3759-3760)

Indices pp. 2* - 25*.

6. Caujolle-Zaslawsky, Françoise. 1991. "Note sur l'ἐπαγωγή dans le Sophiste dans le Sophiste. A propos de Diogène Laërce III 53-55." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 509-534. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

"Revenons maintenant à l'étude sémantique de l'ἐπαγωγή elle-même.

L'opinion généralement admise, et qui semble fondée, fait donc d'Aristote l'initiateur de l'empfoi du terme en philosophie.

Aussi n'est-ce pas sans un étonnement mêlé d'intérêt qu'on voit Diogène Laërce (III 53s.) attribuer sur le ton dé l'évidence à Platon un usage méthodique intensif de l'ἐπαγωγή usage qu'il expose aussitôt en détail - et dont on constatera qu'ii ne se borne pas à «conduïre l'adversaire dans un piège».

(...)

"Quant à la défiance· systématique manifestée aujourd'hui par certains à l'égard de Diogène Laërce, on nous permettra de la mettre un peu de côté, en la circonstance, en raison principalement du caractère· fort bien structuré et cohérent de notre passage. La véritable imprudence serait sans doute, ici, d'oublier qu'il est arrivé à Diogène Laërce de se montrer bien inspiré dans le choix des textes - des lettres d'Epicure, par exemple, qu'il recopiait." (pp. 518-519, une note omise)

7. Delatte, Armand. 1922. La vie de Pythagore de Diogène Laërce. Bruxelles: Lamertin.

Introduction, pp. 5-100.

Reprint: New York, Arno Press, 1979; Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1988; Genève, Slatkine, 2002.

8. Delebecque, Édouard. 1957. Essai sur la vie de Xénophon. Paris: Klincksieck.

9. Desbordes, Bernadette Anne. 1990. Introduction à Diogène Laërce. Exposition de l'Altertumswissenschaft servant de préliminaires critiques à une lecture de l'oeuvre, Rijksuniversiteit, Utrecht.

Deux volumes.

10. Dorandi, Tiziano. 2002. "Remarques sur le Neapolitanus III B 29 (B) et sur la composition des Vies des philosophes de Diogène Laërce." Revue d'histoire des textes:1-23.

Résumé : "L'article met en évidence quelques caractéristiques du ms. Napoli, Biblioteca Nazionale III Β 29 (Β, s. XII in.), témoin le plus important de la tradition des Vies des philosophes de Diogène Laërce. La main du correcteur est contemporaine (s. XII) de celle qui a copié le texte principal ; le modèle de ce correcteur était celui qui avait servi à la copie de B, les rares différences pouvant être expliquées comme des conjectures. L'étude des inscriptiones et des subscriptiones, la présence de « réclames » à la fin de certains livres semblent démontrer que l'oeuvre de Diogène Laërce fut copiée à l'origine sur des rouleaux de papyrus. L'archétype médiéval des Vies est probablement né au VIe siècle du regroupement dans un seul codex de deux « éditions » partielles ou partiellement conservées.

Diogène mourut sans avoir eu le temps de mettre la dernière main à son oeuvre et sans avoir, en particulier, choisi définitivement la succession des dix livres. Les mss les plus anciens ne conservent pas trace des titres des différentes Vies que l'on lit dans les éditions modernes ; ils manquaient dans la rédaction laissée par Diogène et furent ajoutés seulement plus tard, dans le cours de la transmission.

L'application de ces résultats a permis d'avancer dans la constitution du texte de deux passages controversés (II, 47 et V, 57-58)."

11. ———. 2002. "Eustathe a t-il lu Diogène Laërce ?" In Noctes Atticae: 34 articles on Graeco-Roman antiquity and its Nachleben. Studies presented to Jürgen Mejer on his sixtieth birthday March 18, 2002, edited by Amden, Bettina, Flensted-Jensen, Pernille, Nielsen, Thomas Heine and Schwartz, AdamTortzen, Chr. Gorm, 76-81. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.

12. ———. 2006. "Diogene Laërce du Moyen Âge a la Renaissance." In Exempla docent: Les exemples des philosophes de l'antiquité à la renaissance, edited by Ricklin, Thomas, Carron, Delphine and Babey, Emmanuel, 35-48. Paris: Vrin.

"En ce qui concerne le sujet, j'ai évité d'ajouter à« Moyen Âge» le qualificatif de« latin» parce que j'ai l'intention de traiter de la diffusion des Vies de Diogène Laërce non seulement dans le monde occidental, mais aussi dans l'Empire byzantin.

li serait impossible de repérer et d'exposer dans l'espace limité d'une communication l'ensemble des traces des Vies et doctrines des philosophes de Diogène dans la culture grecque et latine de la fin de I' Antiquité à la Renaissance - grosso modo du VIe au XVIe siècle de notre ère; j'ai donc restreint le domaine de ma recherche à trois moments bien définis :

1. La découverte ou redécouverte de Diogène à Byzance entre les IXe et Xe siècles

2. La circulation des Vies dans le Moyen Âge occidental

3. La traduction latine d' Ambrogio Traversari.

Il découle de ce qui précède que j'ai n'ai pas cherché dans les Vies de Diogène un ou plusieurs exempla à partir desquels j'aurais pu retracer leur devenir au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance; j'en ai fait l'exemplum par excellence en essayant de montrer leur présence et leur vitalité tout au long de ces siècles." (p. 35)

13. ———. 2007. "Diogène Laërce "lecteur" d'Aristote." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 28:435-446.

"L’exposé de la doctrine d’Aristote que Diogène Laërce transcrit à la fin de la Vie d’Aristote (V 27-34), à la suite de la liste des oeuvres du philosophe, a été à plusieurs reprises corrigé et manipulé afin de lui restituer une “cohérence” avec la pensée du Stagirite(1). Les progrès récents concernant l’histoire du texte des Vies de Diogène et sa méthode de travail ainsi que l’étude de la réception et de l’interprétation de l’aristotélisme dans les premiers siècles de l’Empire, ont apporté des éléments nouveaux, concrets et substantiels, qui permettent de progresser dans l’établissement du texte et dans la compréhension de ce passage difficile. Je présente une nouvelle édition de ces paragraphes accompagnée d’un apparat et de quelques notes de lecture qui n’ont pas l’ambition d’un commentaire, mais qui se proposent de fournir aux lecteurs une aide à l’intelligence de quelques-uns de mes choix textuels." (p. 435, une note omise)

1 A partir de l’édition d’I. Bywater, Αριστοτέλους βίος έκ των Λαέρτιου, Oxonii 1879, et, en particulier, dans les éditions d’I. Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, Göteborg 1957, et d’O. Gigon,, Aristotelis Opera, III: Librorum deperditorum fragmenta, Berolini et Novi Eboraci 1987. Les deux derniers éditeurs tiennent compte en particulier des corrections suggérées par P. Moraux, L’exposé de la philosophie d’Aristote chez Diogène Laërce (V, 28-34), «Revue Philosophique de Louvain», XLVII (1949) pp. 5-43 (dorénavant Exposé) et en proposent d’autres."

14. ———. 2008. "Notes critiques et éxégetiques aux livres III et V des Vies des philosophes de Diogène Laërce." Eikasmos.Quaderni Bolognesi di Filologia Classica no. 19:241-262.

"Les quelques notes critiques et exégétiques qui suivent trouvent leur origine dans mon édition des Vies des Philosophes de Diogène Laërce en préparation pour Cambridge University Press. Elles se limitent aux livres III à V et ont pour point de départ le texte édité par M. Marcovich (Stutgardiae et Lipsiae 1999). Pour chaque livre, je cite le paragraphe et, si nécessaire, la page et les lignes de l’édition de Marcovich. J’espère ainsi fournir aux lecteurs un subsidium interpretationis à nombre de passages difficiles en justifiant certains de mes choix textuels" (p. 241)

15. ———. 2010. "Diogène Laërce et la datation de Zoroastre." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie no. 153:409-412.

"Le prologue des Vies des Philosophes de Diogene Laërce s'ouvre par une discussion sur l'origine de la philosophie, laquelle prendrait sa source chez les Barbares. Les initiateurs de la philosophie auraient été les Mages chez les Perses, les Chaldéens chez les Babyloniens ou les Assyriens, les Gymnosophistes chez les Indiens, les Druides ou Semnotheoi chez les Celtes et les Gaulois (1,1). En continuant par des remarques sur la datation de ces philosophes barbares (1,2), Diogene cite à propos des Mages, dont le premier fut Zoroastre le Perse, le témoignage d'Hermodore le Platonicien, et celui de Xanthos le Lydien."

(...)

"Il n'est pas dans mes intentions (je n'en aurais pas les compétences) de re- prendre l'ensemble de la vexatissima quaestio de la chronologie de Zoroastre.4 Je voudrais seulement apporter quelques précisions sur la constatino textus au passa- ge de Diogene Laërce, en tenant compte des résultats de la relecture des manuscrits des Vies (dont je prépare une nouvelle édition), et ceci afin de justifier un choix textuel que j'ai fait et qui demande quelques mots d'explication. Il y a, à l'origine des discussions innombrables que ce passage a suscitées, un (faux) problème relatif au choix entre les deux variantes (présumées) - εξακισχιλια et εξακόσια - dans le témoignage de Xanthos." (p. 409)

(...)

"À la lumière de ces éléments, il apparaît clairement que la lectio εξακισχιλια est sans aucun doute une conjecture savante inspirée par la lecture des sources pa rallèles qui circulaient et étaient lues au XVe siècle, et qu'elle n'a aucune valeur traditionnelle. Dans l'édition des Vies de Diogene Laërce, on doit conserver sans hésitation εξακόσια. Il sera donc opportun que les classicistes et les iranistes reprennent la question de la chronologie de Zoroastre en tenant compte des données fermes de la tradition de Diogène; et ceci sans oublier que, désormais, il est inutile de parler de lectio difficilior et de lectio facilior par rapport à εξακισχιλια et à εξακόσια, puisque εξακόσια, est la seule lectio qui puisse être considérée comme traditionelle par l'éditeur des Vies." (p. 412)

16. ———. 2011. "Sur deux passages difficiles de la Vie de Straton de Diogène Laërce." In Strato of Lampsacus: Text, Translation, and Discussion, edited by Desclos, Marie-Laurence and Fortenbaugh, William W., 231-237. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

"La Vie de Straton vient immédiatement après celle de Théophraste dans le livre cinq des Vies des philosophes de Diogène Laërce (5.58–64), consacré à Aristote et aux Péripatéticiens qui lui succédèrent dans la direction de l’école (Théophraste, Straton, Lycon, Démétrios de Phalère), y compris Héraclide le Pontique. Après avoir donné quelques renseignements sur la personne de Straton, homme de grande réputation, surnommé le Physicien (φυσικός), sur son séjour à Alexandrie où il avait été le précepteur de Ptolémée II Philadelphe, et sur la durée de sa direction du Peripatos (dix-huit ans selon la Chronologie d’Apollodore d’Athènes: 5.58), Diogène transmet le catalogue des oeuvres du philosophe, aujourd’hui perdues dans leur intégralité (5.59–60). L’épigramme funéraire du même Diogène pour Straton ainsi qu’une liste d’homonymes suit (5.61). La brève biographie est complétée par le testament de Straton (5.61–62) que Diogène déclare avoir récupéré dans la collection du péripatéticien Ariston de Céos,(1) et par un éloge du philosophe."

(1) Ariston fr. 16 SFOD. On suppose qu’Ariston a été la source (probablement indirecte) de Diogène pour les autres testaments des Péripatéticiens. Voir Sollenberger (1992) 3859–76 et J. Bollansée dans le notes à Hermippe FGrHist 1026 F 28 (304–5).

Sigla

SFOD = [Peter Stork, William W. Fortenbaugh, Johannes M. van Ophuijsen, Tiziano Dorandi =] William W. Fortenbaugh & Stephen A. White (éd.), Aristo of Ceos. Text, Translation, and Discussion. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick 2006.

17. ———. 2015. "La Vie de Polémon. Thème et variations : Antigone de Caryste, Philodème de Gadara et Diogène Laërce." Aitia - Regards sur la culture hellénistique au XXIe siècle no. 5.

"Prélude. La figure du philosophe dans les Vies et Doctrines des philosophes de Diogène Laërce a fait récemment l’objet de la monographie bien documentée et convaincante de S. Grau i Guijarro, La imatge del filòsof i de l’activitat filosòfica a la Grècia antiga. Anàlisi dels tòpics biogràfics presents a les Vides i doctrines dels filòsofs més il·lustres de Diògenes Laerci (1). Il serait donc inutile de revenir sur ce sujet sinon pour y apporter quelques éléments nouveaux ou en modifier l’une ou l’autre des suggestions. N’ayant rien d’important à ajouter à la recherche de Grau, j’ai choisi de me concentrer sur un aspect différent de l’art de la biographie de Diogène Laërce à partir d’une lecture de la Vie de Polémon, troisième successeur de Platon dans la direction de l’Académie. Pour cette biographie, on dispose en effet (par l’intermédiaire de Philodème de Gadara) de larges extraits de la source principale utilisée par Diogène, les Biographies d’Antigone de Caryste. L’étude comparée de ces données montre comment Diogène, en retravaillant et en intégrant en plusieurs endroits son modèle, a créé une nouvelle image de Polémon, moins expressive que celle brossée par Antigone. La description singulière et vivante d’Antigone, témoin oculaire des événements de la vie de Polémon, s’est ainsi figée dans un portrait statique qui découle de la culture livresque d’un savant désormais enfermé dans sa tour d’ivoire."

(1) Col·leció Cum Laude 2, Barcelone, PPU, Institut Privat d’Estudis Món Juïc, 2009.

18. ———. 2021. "Le ‘titre’ des Vies de Diogène Laërce et les ‘titres’ des oeuvres des philosophes illustres." In Le médecin et le livre. Hommages à Marie-Hélène Marganne, edited by Ricciardetto, Antonio, Carlig, Nathan, Nocchi Macedo, Gabriel and De Haro Sanchez, Magali, 343-356. Lecce: Pensa Multimedia.

19. Dumont, Jean Paul. 1987. "Les modèles de conversion à la philosophie chez Diogène Laërce." Augustinus no. 32:79-97.

"Les quelques modèles de conversion à la philosophie que présente Diogène établissent un ordre de filiation entre l'Académie, l'école cynique et le Portique. Radicales, ces conversions n'obéissent pas tant aux raisons de l'intelligence (protreptique) qu'à une intervention incompréhensible et gratuite de la Fortune, c'est-à-dire de Dieu. Ainsi, de spéculative la philosophie devient existentielle, préparant le terrain à la conversion chrétienne."

20. ———. 1993. "La physique de Zénon d'Élée: Diogène Laërce, Vies 9, 29." Helmantica no. 44:73-90.

"Étude visant à montrer la cohérence de la physique zénonienne, sur la base de l'examen des kephalaia d'un ouvrage de Zénon sur la physique conservés et cités par Diogène Laërce 9, 29."

21. Frede, Michael. 1992. "Doxographie, historiographie philosophique et historiographie historique de la philosophie." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 97:311-325.

"Considérons enfin Diogène Laërce : sa préface montre à l'évidence qu'il possède lui aussi une perspective très détaillée de l'histoire de la philoso- phie. La première moitié de la préface est consacrée à la question de l'origine de la philosophie. Diogène Laërce rejette l'idée d'une origine barbare de la philosophie (I, 3). Ainsi il rejette l'idée d'une sagesse origi- nelle (cf. I, 13) que nous avons rencontrée chez Numénius, mais qui se trouve également chez plusieurs Stoïciens (comme par exemple Chae- remon et Cornutus) ainsi que, postérieurement, chez la plupart des Platoniciens de l'âge impérial. Diogène est prêt à reconnaître la catégorie traditionnelle des Sages comme Solon (I, 13). Il est même prêt à maintenir que la philosophie tient ses origines de cette sagesse primitive (I, 13; 15) - peut-être une concession à Pidée stoïcienne classique d'une sagesse, ou mieux d'un bon sens primitif et pré-philosophique. Car il distingue deux grandes traditions philosophiques, l'italique et l'ionienne, dont la première dérive, selon lui, de Pythagore, tandis que la seconde est inau- gurée par Anaximandre. Mais en même temps, il suppose que Pythagore et Anaximandre étaient respectivement les élèves de Phérécyde et de Thaïes, qu'il compte au nombre de ces Sages. Il suggère ainsi que la philosophie s'enracine en quelque façon dans cette sagesse pré-philosophique. L'origine de la philosophie étant ainsi éclaircie, Diogène Laërce cherche à situer, dans le cadre de ces deux grandes traditions, tous les mouvements philo- sophiques et tous les philosophes du passé dans des listes où se succèdent maîtres et disciples, relation qu'il est prêt à expliquer en détail. Même si nous ne sommes pas d'accord sur certains aspects de son exposé, nous ne pouvons nier que Diogène Laërce a une perspective très élaborée sur l'histoire. (pp. 318-319)

22. Goulet, Richard. 1992. "Des sages parmi les philosophes : le premier livre des Vies des philosophes de Diogène Laërce." In Sophiés Maiètores. Chercheurs de Sagesse, Mélanges Jean Pépin, edited by Goulet-Cazé, Marie-Odile, Madec, Goulven and O'Brien, Denis, 167-178. Paris: Institut d'études Augustiniennes.

Repris dans: R. Goulet, Études sur les vies de philosophes dans l'antiquité tardive. Diogène Laërce, Porphyre de Tyr, Eunape de Sardes, Paris, Vrin 2001. pp. 67-77.

23. ———. 1997. "Les références chez Diogène Laërce : sources ou autorités?" In Titres et articulations du texte dans les oeuvres antiques. Actes du Colloque nternational de Chantilly, 13-15 décembre 1994, edited by Fredouille, Jean-Claude, Goulet-Cazé, Marie-Odile, Hoffmann, Philippe and Petitmengin, Pierre, 149-166. Paris: Institut des Études Augustiniennes.

Repris dans: R. Goulet, Études sur les vies de philosophes dans l'antiquité tardive. Diogène Laërce, Porphyre de Tyr, Eunape de Sardes, Paris, Vrin 2001. pp. 79-96.

24. ———. 2007. "La conservation et la transmission des textes philosophiques grecs." In The Libraries of the Neoplatonists, edited by D'Ancona, Cristina, 29-61. Brill: Leiden.

"Parmi les textes conservés de l’Antiquité, les oeuvres philosophiques représentent une proportion nullement négligeable. Il suffit de constater la place tenue sur les rayons de nos bibliothèques par le corpus de Platon ou d’Aristote, de Plotin ou de Proclus, et encore plus celle occupée par les commentateurs grecs d’Aristote, pour se faire une idée de l’importance de ce qui a été conservé. Et pourtant les listes d’oeuvres philosophiques que Diogène Laërce fournit pour de nombreux philosophes suffisent à nous convaincre que nous ne disposons plus que d’une fraction de la littérature philosophique attestée(1) que d’une infime portion des oeuvres, certainement encore beaucoup plus nombreuses, réellement écrites." (p. 29, une note omise)

(1) Selon Diogène Laërce, VII 180, la liste complète des oeuvres de Chrysippe comprenait plus de 705 livres. On dénombre pour la logique 119 titres différents en 300 livres ; une note en VII 198 fait état de 311 livres pour la logique. Pour l’éthique, incomplètement conservée, la liste signale 43 titres pour un total de 122 livres. Il manquait donc environ 283 autres livres relevant de l’éthique et de la physique. Encore faut-il ajouter de nombreux titres à cette liste. Voir l répertoire de P. Hadot (notice « Chrysippe » C 121, dans R. Goulet (éd.), Dictionnaire des Philosophes Antiques, III, CNRS Éditions, Paris 1994, p. 336–56), complété par R. Goulet (ibid., p. 356–61). Pour Épicure, D. L., X 27–28 cite 41 titres, mais il lui attribue 300 rouleaux de papyrus. Selon D. L., X 25, un autre épicurien, Apollodore Kèpotyrannos, avait écrit 400 livres. C’est également le nombre de livres attribués à Clitomaque, le disciple de Carnéade (IV 67), qui lui n’écrivit rien. Le taux de conservation de ces centaines d’ouvrages en tradition directe est bien entendu voisin de 0%.

25. Goulet-Cazé, Marie-Odile. 1982. "Un syllogisme stoïcien sur la loi dans la doxographie de Diogène le Cynique. A propos de Diogène Laërce VI 72." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie no. 125:214-240.

Repris dans M.-O. Goulet Cazé, Le Cynisme, une philosophie antique, Paris: Vrin 2017, pp. 13-33.

26. ———. 1986. L'ascèse cynique. Un commentaire de Diogène Laërce VI, 70-71. Paris: Vrin.

"Ainsi que nous l’avons déjà indiqué, l’objectif final de cet ouvrage est de rendre compte de Diogène Laërce VI 70-71. Pour y parvenir, nous avons dû nous livrer à une approche synthétique de la morale de Diogène et déterminer en quoi l’ascèse préconisée par le philosophe était une méthode originale pour accéder à la vertu. C’est pourquoi le commentaire du passage n’apparaît qu'à la troisième et dernière partie de cet ouvrage, comme l’aboutissement de toute une réflexion sur les idées-forces de la morale de Diogène (première partie) et sur l’originalité de l'ascèse cynique face au Socratisme et Stoïcisme (deuxième partie). (pp. 13-14)

27. ———. 1986. "Une liste de disciples de Cratès le Cynique en Diogène Laërce 6, 95." Hermes no. 114:247-252.

Repris dans M.-O. Goulet Cazé, L Cynisme, une philosophie antique, Paris: Vrin 2017, pp. 35-40.

28. ———. 1992. "Le livre VI de Diogène Laërce: analyse de sa structure et réflexions méthodologiques." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Teil II: Principat. Band 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. 6. Teilband: Philosophie (Doxographica [Forts.]), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 3880-4048. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Repris dans M.-O. Goulet Cazé, L Cynisme, une philosophie antique, Paris: Vrin 2017, pp. 41-193..

"Le lecteur des 'Vies’ de Diogène Laëree en général et du livre VI en particulier a le sentiment de pénétrer dans une sorte de labyrinthe où il manque de points de repère. Le texte offre peu de prises, il résiste, parce que les 'Vies’ sont le témoignage résiduel d’une vaste littérature en partie disparue. Comment alors échapper à une lecture naïve, à une lecture de surface, et découvrir les problématiques sous-jacentes aux différents matériaux qui, juxtaposés, constituent le livre VI?

D’emblée nous proposons de dégager la structure du livre VI, telle qu’elle peut apparaître au cours d’une première lecture, afin de susciter une confrontation immédiate avec la complexité du texte." (p. 3880).

29. ———. 1997. "Les titres des œuvres d'Eschine chez Diogène Laërce." In Titres et articulations du texte dans les oeuvres antiques. Actes du Colloque nternational de Chantilly, 13-15 décembre 1994, edited by Fredouille, Jean-Claude, Goulet-Cazé, Marie-Odile, Hoffmann, Philippe and Petitmengin, Pierre, 167-190. Paris: Institut des Études Augustiniennes.

30. Gugliermina, Isabelle. 2005. "Les écrits de Cratès de Thèbes selon Diogène Laërce : (Vies et doctrines des philosophes illustres, II, 118, 26; VI, 85-98)." Philosophie Antique no. 5:3-196.

31. ———. 2006. Diogène Laërce et le Cynisme. Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.

"Les unissant par des liens de type scolaire, les Vies présentent les cyniques dans un ordre chronologique, ce qui contribue à les installer dans une relation de durée, signe de leur cohésion, et cela dès le Prologue:

• Socrate eut pour auditeur Antisthène (Σωκράτους διακηκοότος Ἀντισθένης), celui-ci Diogène le chien (οὐ Διογένης ὁ κύων), celui-ci Cratès de Thèbes (οὐ Κράτης ὁ Θηβαῖος), celui-ci Zénon de Kition (οὐ Ζήνων ὁ Κιτιεύς) (1). Notons la précision avec laquelle sont évoqués les trois derniers philosophes : leur nom étant accompagné de leur surnom ou de leur origine géographique, ils ne peuvent être confondus avec leurs homonymes(2) , ce qui tend à traduire l'authenticité de ces liens.

Conforme à ce Prologue s'avère la succession qui régit le Livre VI : si elle relie Antisthène, Diogène et Cratès, elle est également encadrée par Socrate en amont et les stoïciens en aval, ce qui les inscrit dans un ensemble où les stoïciens font figure d'héritiers du cynisme, donc de Socrate." (p. 17)

(1) Cf. D.L., 1, 15 : le verbe qui exprime la transmission de la philosophie grecque à travers l'ensemble de ses adeples ne se trouve exprimé que la première fois, en 1, 13. Le texte grec est celui de l'édition de M. Marcovich, Diogenes Laertius: Vitae Philosophorum, Stuttgart-Leipzig, 1999, et de G. Giannantoni, Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae. Naples, 1992, Tome II, Section V, le plus souvent confronté à ceux de H. S. Long. Diogenes Laertius Vitae Philosophorum OCT, Oxford, 1964, et de R. D. Hicks, Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, with an English Traduction, "LCL", Londres-New York, 1970 ; quant à la traduction, elle est personnelle, librement inspirée de celles que proposent l'ouvrage collectif paru en "Pochothèque", Vies et Doctrines des Philosophies Illustres de Diogène Laërce, et L Paquet, Les Cyniques Grecs. Fragments et Témoignages. Ottawa, 1988. Afin de ne pas surcharger le texte, nous ne citerons des sources grecques et latines que les termes ou expressions directement en rapport avec le sujet traité ; même s'ils s'avèrent parfois répétitifs, nous les indiquons de manière à mettre en évidence justement leur fréquence el / ou leur récurrence.

(2) Cf. J. Mansfeld, Diogenes Laertius on Stoic philosophy, dans G. Giannantoni (éd.), Diogene Laerzio Storlco del Pensiero Antico. Colloquio internazionale (30 sellembre-3 ollobre 1985), Elenchos, Vll, 1-2, 1986, p. 318.

32. Jouanna, Jacques. 2009. "Médecine et philosophie : sur la date de Sextus Empiricus et celle de Diogène Laërce à la lumière du Corpus galénique." Revue des Études Grecques:259-390.

Résumé : "L’objet de l’article est de réévaluer l’oeuvre et la date de Sextus Empiricus en combinant les témoignages philosophiques et médicaux : 1. Sextus dans Diogène Laërce IX 115-116 est l’avant-dernier membre de la lignée des philosophes sceptiques après Timon, mais il est aussi un médecins empirique ; 2. Examen des passages dans l’oeuvre de Sextus indiquant qu’il est médecin et problème de son appartenance à la médecine empirique ou méthodique ; 3. Examen de la place de Sextus dans le Corpus galénique : il est totalement absent des oeuvres authentiques, malgré les nombreuses informations que Galien donne sur les empiriques (cf. surtout Esquisse empirique, De l’expérience empirique). Il est, en revanche mentionné par le Pseudo-Galien, Médecin (= Introductio sive medicus) en dernier dans la liste des médecins empiriques. 4. La conséquence en est que le floruit de Sextus est postérieur à Galien et date du début du IIIe s., tandis que le Pseudo-Galien, Médecin est postérieur à Sextus et a fortiori à Galien. Quant à Diogène Laërce qui cite non seulement Sextus, mais aussi son disciple Saturninus, il est postérieur d’une génération à Sextus (milieu du IIIe s.)."

33. Masson, Olivier. 1995. "La patrie de Diogène Laërce est-elle inconnue?" Museum Helveticum no. 52:225-230.

"En conclusion de cette enquête, je propose de revenir sans hesiter à!'interprétation traditionnelle pour le nom de «Diogèe de Laërte» (le patronyme restant inconnu). Etant donné la diffusion de la culture antique en Asie Mineure au IIe-IIIe s., il n'est pas difficile d'admettre que notre Diogène, né dans cette bourgade cilicienne, ait pu devenir un érudit. Ainsi, !'explication specieuse de Wilamowitz]*] ne represente, a mon avis, qu'un obiter dictum, que ses admirateurs et disciples auraient dú controler, avant de s'incliner devant son autorité.(23)"

(23) La célèbre formule «le maitre l'a dît» a dú être souvent appliquée.

[*] Publièe dans les Philologische Untersuchungen III (Leipzig 1880) 163, simple rappel dans Hermes 34 (1899) 629.

34. Mejer, Jørgen. 1994. "Diogène Laërce." In Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques. Vol. II, edited by Goulet, Richard, 824-833. Paris: CNRS Éditions.

"Caractère général de l’œuvre. Si le titre «Vies, doctrines et sentences des philosophes illustres» semble bien connu, cela résulte de la popularité de l’œuvre de Diogène Laërce, car en fait ce titre, qui caractérise de façon exacte l’œuvre de Diogène Laërce, est unique dans l’historiographie philosophique de l’Antiquité. Néanmoins, si l’on prend en considération la structure de l’ouvrage et les sources citées par Diogène, il faut rattacher le livre au genre historiographique des “Successions”. Après une introduction consacrée à l’origine et au nom de la philosophie, ainsi qu’aux différentes classifications de la philosophie et des philosophes (I 1-21, cf. 30 O. Gigon, «Das Prooemium des Diogenes Laertios : Strüktur und Problème», dans Freundesgabe fur W. Wili, Bern 1960, p. 37-64), Diogène présente deux séries de philosophes, une qui conduit des sept Sages aux stoïciens à travers Socrate et les socratiques, Platon et les péripatéticiens (livres I-VII), l’autre de Pythagore aux sceptiques et à Épicure à travers Héraclite, les Éléates et les atomistes (livres VIII-X). L’histoire de l’Académie est conduite jusqu’à Clitomaque, celle de l’école aristotélicienne jusqu’à Lycon, celle de la Stoa seulement jusqu’à Chrysippe dans l’état actuel de l’ouvrage, mais atteignait originellement Cornutus au Ier siècle de notre ère (cf. l’apparat critique à la fin du livre VII de l’édition d’Oxford; on ne peut savoir de façon certaine si Diogène donnait ces noms dans le cadre d’une simple liste ou s’il leur avait consacré des biographies indépendantes). Diogène nomme les épicuriens les plus célèbres jusqu’à Zénon de Sidon, Démétrios Lacon, Diogène de Tarse et Orion, par conséquent jusqu’au premier siècle av. J.-C. Seule la succession sceptique est conduite jusque vers 200 ap. J.-C. Cette progression historique est exclusivement biographique: à l’exception des stoïciens, Diogène décrit toujours les opinions philosophiques du fondateur, mais non celles des successeurs." (p. 827)

35. Moraux, Paul. 1949. "L'exposé de la philosophie d'Aristote chez Diogène Laerce 5.28-34." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 47:5-43.

"Dans la Vie d'Aristote de Diogène Laërce, c'est surtout la notice biographique qu'ont exploitée les modernes; l'exposé doctrinal les a moins intéressés; pour connaître la pensée du philosophe, ils disposaient des propres traités de celui-ci et jugeaient ces témoins bien plus précieux que le médiocre résumé d'un obscur compilateur!

Pourtant, les quelques lignes dans lesquelles Diogène croit condenser la doctrine d'Aristote soulèvent bien des problèmes.

Diogène n'a pas lu lui-même les ouvrages du Stagirite. Dieu sait par combien d'intermédiaires son information lui est parvenue!

S'il est difficile de mettre un nom sur les sources du compilateur, peut-être une critique sagace pourra-t-elle en déterminer l'époque, les tendances, la valeur." (p. 5)

(...)

"Comme le catalogue, l'exposé doctrinal fut donc ajouté au fonds primitif par Diogène lui-même. Il reste à savoir si Diogène l'a emprunté en bloc à un autre auteur, ou s'il en a lui-même rassemblé, tant bien que mal, les éléments. Plusieurs constatations nous inclinent vers la seconde hypothèse. Laisser aller, incohérence et manque d'esprit critique sont, certes, défauts communs aux compilations de l'époque impériale, et l'on comprendrait que Diogène ait pu les tenir de sa source; mais pourtant, ces travers ne déparent que certains genres littéraires, tels que biographies, recueils d'anecdotes, histoires merveilleuses, etc. Nous tournons-nous vers la littérature philosophique de certaines écoles, nous sommes frappés par le sérieux, la méthode, la discipline que l'on s'est efforcé d'y faire régner; nous n'en voulons pour preuve que les travaux scolaires, aide-mémoire, fragments de dialogues et commentaires réunis sous le titre d'Apories et attribués à Alexandre d'Aphrodise. Dès lors, il est à peu près sûr que, si Diogène avait emprunté son exposé doctrinal à un ouvrage spécialisé ou même à un manuel sans prétention, nous n'y découvririons pas la disparate que nous avons constatée. En fait, chaque tronçon diffère de l'autre par l'âge, la valeur et le but visé; la forme grammaticale elle-même laisse deviner qu'il s'agit de morceaux étrangers l'un à l'autre; le résumé de la logique est, par exemple, en discours direct, mais la division de la philosophie, qui le précède, est en style indirect dépendant de βούλεται; le commentaire est également en discours direct, tandis que les placita sont faits de propositions infinitives introduites, de temps à autre, par un ἔφη ou άπεφαινε.

Le compilateur s'est peu soucié d'unifier les documents qu'il a résumés et mis bout à bout; il les a cependant marqués involontairement de son empreinte: on remarque, dans l'exposé doctrinal, plusieurs des relâchements caractéristiques du style des Biographies: ainsi, une proposition sur l'immobilité divine coupe en deux la doctrine de la Providence; or, des insertions malencontreuses du même genre se rencontrent dans les autres livres diogéniens; le commentaire sur la définition de l'âme est défiguré par un déplacement de texte, faute qui n'est pas non plus sans exemple dans les Biographies; c'est la preuve que l'exposé doctrinal n'a point été simplement copié sur un ou plusieurs manuels, mais qu'il a été retravaillé par la main à qui nous devons la rédaction de l'œuvre tout entière." (pp. 42-43)

36. ———. 1951. Les listes anciennes des ouvrages d'Aristote. Louvain: Éditions universitaires de Louvain.

Table des matières: Préface par Augustin Mansion V; Avant-propos IX--X; Chapitre I. Problèmes et méthodes 1.Le sort des ouvrages scolaires d'Aristote avant l'époque des commentateurs, 1. Utilisation des listes anciennes comme moyen d'information sur le sort des ouvrages d'Aristote 6; Difficultés rencontrées dans l'identification des ouvrages catalogués 8; Recherche du principe d'ordre appliqué dans les listes 11; Enquète sur l'origine et la destination des listes 13.Chapitre II. Le Catalogue conservé par Diogene Laërce 15. § 1. État de la question 15; § 2. Texte du catalogue 21; § 3. Contenu du catalogue 27. Dialogues, exhortations, études platoniciennes 27; Logique, 44; Politique 95; Rhétorique et poètique 96; Physique 104; Mathématique 111; Problèmes et ouvrages hypomnèmatiques 114; Collections 122; Lettres 133 Poèmes, 144. § 4. Ordonnance du catalogue 145. Le catalogue et la division néoplatonicienne du corpus aristotélicien 145; Ouvrages particuliers, ouvrages intermèdiaires, ouvrages généraux, 150; Écrits hypomnématiques et ouvrages syntagmatiques 153; Dialogues et traités 167; Logique, pratique, poétique et théorie 177; Ouvrages théorétiques, 184; § 5. Accidents survenus au cours de la transmission du catalogue 186.Chapitre III. Le catalogue anonyme 195. § 1. Contenu du catalogue 195; § 2. Ordonnance du catalogue 204; § 3. Rapports entre le catalogue anonyme et celui de Diogène 206.Chapitre IV. La source de Diogène et de l'Anonyme 211. § 1.État de la question 211; § 2. Multiplicité des sources pinacographiques de Diogène 216; § 3. L'attribution à Hermippe 221; § 4. L'attribution à Andronicus 233; § 5. L'origine du catalogue 237;Chapitre V. L'appendice du catalogue anonyme 249. § 1. Contenu de l'appendice 250; La première partie 250; Les pseudépigraphes 265; § 2. Ordonnance de l'appendice 267; § 3. Origine de l'appendice 271; Multiplicité des sources 271; Rapports avec le catalogue 272; Age des différents tronçons 277; Rattachement de l'appendice à la liste anonyme 284.Chapitre VI. La catalogue de Ptolémée 289. § 1. L'auteur du catalogue 289; § 2. Contenu du catalogue 294; § 3. Ordonnance du catalogue 299; § 4. Modèles et sources de Ptolémée 306; Chapitre VII. Premières conclusions sur le sort des ouvrages scolaires d'Aristote 311; Les traités connus à Athènes vers 200 avant J.-C. 312; Le cas de la Métaphysique 314; Appartenance de certains traités omis par Ariston à la dernière période de l'activité d 'Aristote 315; Les catalogues, témoins du groupement progressif d'études apparentés, mais primitivement indépendantes, 320.Appendice. Notes sur la chronologie de quelques ouvrages d'Aristote 323;Bibliographie 347; Index 361; I. Aristote, ouvrages conservés 361; II. Aristote, ouvrages perdus et titres 368; III. Commentateurs d'Aristote 371; IV. Autres auteurs 374; V. Noms et matières 376; Errata et Addenda 385.

37. ———. 1955. "La composition de la Vie d'Aristote chez Diogène Laerce." Revue des Études Grecques no. 53:124-163.

"Bien des inepties déparent les biographies dues à Diogène Laërce. Comme le révèle l'analyse de la Vie d'Aristote, une grande partie d'entre elles s'expliquent par l'application maladroite d'un procédé de composition assez singulier: d'un thème normalement amené par la marche du récit chronologique, l'auteur passe volontiers, par associations d'idées, à un thème voisin; de celui-ci, il saute à un autre, et ainsi de suite. Des digressions en cascades se mêlent donc à la narration biographique. On peut retrouver, cependant, la charpente originelle de la biographie: il suffit d'isoler les digressions et de ne considérer que les morceaux qui les ont déclenchées. Or ce démontage de la Vie d'Aristote révèle un fait d'une importance primordiale: le canevas, sur lequel a brodé Diogène est identique à celui qu'on retrouve chez le grand Apollodore, l'un et l'autre découlent d'une source commune, qui est probablement le péripatéticien Ariston de Céos. Diogène a fait de son mieux pour étoffer ce donné primitif en y insérant une foule de renseignements complémentaires; il a rédigé lui-même une partie de ces digressions et a laissé à l'état brut les matériaux qu'il destinait aux autres. Son manuscrit, à demi achevé et bourré de notes additionnelles non encore incorporées au texte, a été confié à un éditeur, qui a transcrit le tout en un texte continu, non sans commettre une foule de bévues et d'erreurs. La stupidité d'un rédacteur incapable est ainsi venue s'ajouter à l'insigne naïveté de Diogène."

38. ———. 1986. "Diogène Laërce et le Peripatos." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 7:245-294.

"Les matériaux dont est fait le livre V, consacré au Péripatos, sont de valeur très inégale. On y trouve des documents originaux de toute première importance. Je pense par exemple aux “testaments” d’Aristote, de Théophraste, de Straton et de Lycon (1). Les seuls autres philosophes dont Diogène nous ait conservé les dernières volontés sont Platon (2) et Épicure (3). Les testaments des Péripatéticiens, dont l’authenticité peut être tenue pour certaine, ont été bien étudiés (4). Leur intérêt réside surtout dans les renseignements qu’on peut en tirer sur la famille du testateur, ses intimes, ses biens meubles et immeubles. En ce qui concerne l’école elle-même, on n’en trouve pas mention dans le testament d’Aristote, sans doute parce que celui-ci, en tant que métèque, n’avait pas le droit d’être propriétaire de biens fonciers à Athènes. Théophraste, bien que métèque lui aussi, se vit exceptionnellement reconnaître ce droit, grâce à l’intervention de Démétrius de Phalère (5); aussi bien léga-t-il «le jardin, la promenade et les maisons situées à côté du jardin » à un groupe de dix philosophes décidés à poursuivre leurs recherches en commun (6). Le groupe prit manifestement la décision d’élire Straton à la tête de l’école, si bien que celui-ci put mentionner la διατριβή dans ses dispositions testamentaires; sans doute eût-il aimé suivre l’exemple de Théophraste et céder l’école à un groupe de membres éminents; mais, dit-il, « les uns sont trop âgés et les autres n’ont pas le loisir de se livrer à l’étude ». C’est donc au seul Lycon que reviendra l’école (7). Dans son propre testament, Lycon en revient à la pratique instituée par Théophraste: le Péripatos est légué à un collège de dix membres, parmi lesquels Ariston, qui fut élu scolarque à la mort de Lycon (8)." (pp. 247-248)

(...)

(1) V 11-16; 51-57; 61-64; 69-74. Pour les renvois à Diogène Laërce, je ne donne, comme ici, que le livre et le paragraphe, sans, indiquer le nom de l’auteur.

(2) III 41-43.

(3) X 16-21.

(4) Voir, en dernier lieu, H. B. Goxttschalk, Notes on the Wills of the Peripatetic Scholars, « Hermes », (1972) pp. 314-42, où sont mentionnés (ρ. 314 note 2) les travaux antérieurs.

(5) V 39.

(6) V52-53.

(7) V 62.

(8) V 70.

39. Mouraviev, Serge. 1987. "La Vie d'Héraclite de Diogène Laërce (analyse stratigraphique; le texte de base; un nouveau fragment d'Ariston de Céos?)." Phronesis no. 32:1-33.

"L'analyse permet de distinguer 1) un texte de base, 2) des compléments (doxographie, lettres, épigrammes, etc.) et 3) des additions postérieures. Le texte de base se subdivise en une étude caractérologique, attribuable à Ariston de Céos d'après Diogène Laërce II, 22, du fr. 13-I Wehrli d'Ariston, et d'un pinax bibliographique. Dans une apostille est reconstituée l'histoire du texte de la Vie et la technique de citation de Diogène."

40. Rocca-Serra, Guillaume. 1987. "Parménide chez Diogène Laërce." In Études sur Parménide. Tome II. Problèmes d'interprétation, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 254-273. Paris: Vrin.

"Nous avons choisi d'organiser notre recherche autour de la notice consacrée à Parménide par Diogène Laèrce. Une autre méthode eût consisté dans une présentation qui aurait suivi un ordre chronologique, mais une telle procédure supposait résolu un problème qui tourmente, au moins depuis Nietzsche, philologues et philosophes, celui des sources de Diogène Laèrce. Au contraire, partir de cet auteur et revenir en arrière nous évitait de prendre des positions trop tranchées à la fois sur ses informateurs immédiats et sur les sources de ces informateurs eux-mêmes.

L'oeuvre de Diogène constitue, on le sait, une sorte de synthèse, maladroite et parfois mal intentionnée, de ce que l'érudition hellénistique avait rassemblé sur le thème des «Vies et doctrines des philosophes célèbres». Sa méthode de travail, son esprit superficiel lui ont attiré des critiques méritées, mais il nous a conservé une masse d'informations qui font de son livre un ouvrage indispensable. Ajoutons qu'une partie des absurdités qu'on lui attribue pourrait parfaitement provenir de la maladresse des scribes médiévaux." p. 254

"Cet examen, bien que partiel, de la tradition biographique et doxographique nous aura persuadés, semble-t-il, d'abord, que les restes de cette tradition ne représentent qu'une infime partie d'une littérature jadis très importante. C'est ainsi que la modeste notice de Diogène nous fait entrevoir les travaux de l'école d'Aristote, de l'érudition alexandrine, de la doxographie sceptique.

Ensuite et surtout, on peut mettre en évidence la valeur de certaines des indications qu'elle nous transmet. Elle nous fournit le canevas vraisemblable de la biographie de Parménide, d'abord héritier d'une grande famille et voué probablement à une activité politique et législatrice, puis se tournant vers la philosophie, sans toutefois que la fine pointe de sa pensée soit mise en évidence, et c'est là une des lacunes de la tradition. Pourtant, bien avant K. Reinhardt 1°2, Sotion puis Diogène ont dissocié Xénophane et Parménide, pressentant ainsi l'originalité de ce dernier. La tradition, enfin, a retenu plus volontiers le monde de l'apparence que le poème. C'est surtout grâce à elle que nous reconstruisons la doxa parménidéenne, sur laquelle les parties conservées du Poème nous renseignent guère. Elle a donc sa place dans l'approche d'un Parménide dans sa totalité." p. 273 (notes omises)

41. Veillard, Christelle. 2009. "Les Vies de Philosophes de Diogène Laërce. Une réflexion sur l'histoire de la philosophie." Dissertatio no. 30.

Abstract: "Diogenes Laertius’ Lives and opinions of Eminent Philosophers is one of the monumental works of ancient philosophy, an inestimable source of biographical and doctrinal information. For a certain time, little value was assigned to the work, since Diogenes Laertius used to be considered someone who was not able to comprehend doctrines, had the unpleasant habit of compiling them out of order and was fond of uninteresting anecdotes.

Diogenes is commonly presented as a great scholar, passionate about philosophy, who copied without understanding what was copied – someone not to be entirely trusted.

However, contemporary studies have shown that such point of view must be corrected through the analysis of the structure of Lives, in spite of the still present disagreement over the choices the author made when reorganizing the works he compiled, both in terms of the scope and meaning of such choices. Two interpretative threads are identified: one being deflationary, the other, inflationary. This article tests the validity of the inflationary interpretation, and the investigation will concern two main questions: 1) Does the text show traces of the author’s personality?; 2) Is the text the result of a personal conception of the history of philosophy?"

42. Verbeke, Gerard. 1986. "Panétius et Posidonius chez Diogène Laërce." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 7:103-131..

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliographie der deutschsprachigen Studien zu Diogenes Laertios

Deutsche Studien

1. Anastassiou, Anargyros. 2018. "Fünf Bemerkungen zum Text des Diogenes Laertios." Philologus no. 162:360-365.

2. Biedl, Artur. 1955. Das grosse Exzerpt Φ. Zur Textgeschichte des Laertios Diogenes. Roma: Città del Vaticano.

3. Dührsen, Niels Christian. 1994. "Die Briefe der Sieben Weisen bei Diogenes Laertios. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Rekonstruktion eines verlorenen griechischen Briefromans." In Der griechische Briefroman: Gattungstypologie und Textanalyse, edited by Holzberg, Niklas and Merkle, Stefan. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.

4. Gigante, Marcello. "Friedrich Nietzsche und Diogenes Laertius." In Centauren-Geburten. Wissenschaft, Kunst und Philosophie beim jungen Nietzsche, edited by Borsche, Tilman, Gerratana, Federico and Venturelli, Aldo, 3-16. Berlin: de Gruyter.

5. ———. 1992. "Das zehnte Buch des Diogenes Laertios: Epikur und der Epikureismus." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Teil II: Principat. Band 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. 6. Teilband: Philosophie (Doxographica [Forts.]), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 4302-4307. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

6. Gigon, Olof. 1960. "Das Prooemium des Diogenes Laertios. Struktur und Probleme." In Horizonte der Humanitas. Eine Freundesgabe für Walter Wili zu seinem 60. Geburtstag, edited by Luck, Georg, 37-64. Bern: Haupt.

7. ———. 1986. "Das dritte Buch des Diogenes Laertios." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 7:133-182.

8. Grewing, Farouk F. 2015. "Hellenismos und virtutes dicendi in der stoischen Sprachphilosophie: Zu Diogenes Laertius 7,59 und Ps.-Plutarch, Hom. 16-26." In Translatio humanitatis. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Peter Riemer, edited by Kugelmeier, Christoph, 381-404. Sankt Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag.

9. Howald, Ernst. 1917. "Handbücher als Quellen des Diogenes Laertius." Philologus no. 74:119-130.

10. Janácek, Karel. 2008. Studien zu Sextus Empiricus, Diogenes Laertius und zur pyrrhonischen Skepsis. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Herausgegeben von Jan Janda und Filip Karfík.

11. Kaiser, Christian. 2012. Das Leben der Anderen im Gemenge der Weisheitswege. Diogenes Laertios und der Diskurs um die philosophische Lebensform zwischen Spätantike und Früher Neuzeit. Berlin: De Gruyter.

12. Kienle, Walter von. 1961. Die Berichte über die Sukzessionen der Philosophen in der hellenistischen und spätantiken Literatur, Freien Universität, Berlin.

13. Lucarini, Carlo M. 2017. "Dorandis neue Ausgabe von Diogenes Laertios." Memosyne no. 70:689-717.

14. Schorn, Stefan. 2018. "Studien zur hellenistischen Biographie und Historiographie." In. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Kapitel 10: Jørgen Mejers Diogenes Laertius and His hellenistic Background nach 30 Jahren – einige Überlegungen, ss. 339-364.

15. von Kienle, Walter. 1961. 'Die Berichte über die Sukzessionen der Philosophen in der hellenistischen und spatantiken Literatur. Berlin: Ernst-Reuter-Gesellschaft der Förderer und Freunde der Freien Universität.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Diogenes Laertius: Bibliography of Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (II)

Selected translations in English, Italian, French, German, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese and Latin

English

1. Diogenes Laertius. 1925. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Translated by R. D. Hicks with the Greek text facing.

Reprint with an introduction by Herbert Strainge Long, 1972.

2. Sollenberger, Michael George. 1984. Diogenes Laertius' Life of Theophrastus. A critical edition of the text with a translation and commentary, Rutger University.

Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey, 1984.

Availble at ProQuest Dissertation Express ref. n. 8424162.

"The primary purpose of this dissertation is to provide a critical edition of Diogenes Laertius' life of Theophrastus. The Greek text has been established from an examination and collation of nineteen manuscripts dating from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. The text is furnished with an apparatus criticus of variant manuscript readings, scholarly emendations and conjectures.

Between the text and apparatus criticus appears an apparatus testimoniorum, in which are given references to other ancient and mediaeval authors who offer the same or closely related material.

A long introduction establishes the need for such an edition, outlines the general organization of Diogenes' work and focuses on the content and structure of Theophrastus' life. Also in the introduction the several manuscripts are described and an attempt is made to indicate their various affiliations.

Diogenes' work is unique among literary documents surviving from antiquity and unquestionably a valuable source for the history of ancient philosophy. Not only does it contain more biographical information on Theophrastus than any other ancient source, but also an extensive catalogue of Theophrastus' writings, most of which are lost, and Theophrastus' testament are included as parts of the biography.

Theophrastus was the student of Aristotle ·and head of the Peripatetic school from Aristotle's death in 322/1 B.C. until his own death thirty-five years later. Today he is best known for his Characters and his ground-breaking work in botany. But fragments of his voluminous writings scattered throughout the works of later ancient and mediaeval writers show that he made important contributions in other fields, e.g., logic, physics, metaphysics; zoology, ethics, politics and rhetoric, and in many instances advanced beyond Aristotelian antecedents. Theophrastus' importance for Hellenistic philosophy is clear, but the actual influence he had on his contemporaries and later philosophers remains obscure. From the abundant details concerning Theophrastus' life and writings provided by Diogenes we can gain valuable insight concerning his influence and better understand the importance of his achievements as a writer and a philosopher." (From the Abstract)

3. Diogenes, Laertius. 2018. Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. New York: Oxford University Press.

Translated by Pamela Mensch.

Edited by James Miller.

The translation is based on Tiziano Dorandi edition of the Greek text, published in 2013 by Cambridge University Press.

4. ———. 2018. Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. An Edited Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Edited and translated by Stephen White.

The translation is based on Tiziano Dorandi edition of the Greek text, published in 2013 by Cambridge University Press.

Italian

1. Laerzio, Diogene. 1962. Vite dei filosofi. Bari: Laterza.

Traduzione Italiana di Marcello Gigante; terza edizione riveduta 1987.

2. Diogene, Laerzio. 2005. Vite e dottrine dei più celebri filosofi. Milano: Bompiani.

Traduzione italiana con testo greco a fronte (edizione Marcovich) a cura di Giovanni Reale, con la collaborazione di Giuseppe Girgenti e Ilaria Ramelli.

3. Epicuro. 2002. Epicurea, Nell'edizione Di Hermann Usener. Milano: Bompiani.

Traduzione dell'edizione del 1887 di Ilaria Ramelli con testo greco a fronte.

Contiene la Vita di Epicuro di Diogene Laerzio.

French

1. Diogène, Laërce. 1999. Vies et doctrines des philosophes illustres. Paris: LGF - Livre de Poche.

Traduction française sous la direction de Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé. Introduction et notes de J.-F. Balaudé, L. Brisson, J. Brunschwig, R. Goulet, T. Dorandi, M.-O. Goulet-Cazé, M. Narcy, avec la collaboration de Michel Patillon.

2. Delatte, Armand. 1922. La vie de Pythagore de Diogène Laërce. Bruxelles: Lamertin.

Édition critique avec introduction (pp. 5-100) et commentaire par Armand Delatte.

Reprint New York, Arno Press, 1979 and Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1988.

3. Diogène, Laërce. 1996. Vie de Platon. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Traduction, introduction et notes d' Alain Philippe Segonds.

4. ———. 2006. Vies et doctrines des Stoïciens. Paris: LGF.

Traduction, introduction, notes de commentaire, bibliographie, index de Richard Goulet.

German

1. Diogenes, Laertius. 1921. Leben und Meinungen berühmter Philosophen. Leipzig: Meiner.

Übersetzung von Otto Apelt (neu herausgegeben sowie mit Vorwort Einleitung und neuen Anmerkungen zu Text & Übersetzung versehen von K. Reich (1967); 3. Auflage Hamburg, Meiner, 1998).

2. Diogenes, Laertios. 1998. Leben und Lehre der Philosophen. Stuttgart: Reclam.

Übersetzung von Fritz Jürß.

3. Diogenes, Laertius. 2015. Leben und Meinungen berühmter Philosophen. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.

In der Übersetzung von Otto Apelt unter Mitarbeit von Hans Günter Zekl neu herausgegeben sowie mit Einleitung und Anmerkungen versehen von Klaus Reich.

Spanish

1. Diógenes, Laercio. 1982. Vidas, opiniones y sentenciás de los filósofos mas illustres. Madrid: Luis Navarro.

Traducidas por José Ortiz y Sanz (2 tomos).

2. ———. 2007. Vidas de los Filósofos Ilustres. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.

Traducción de Carlos García Gual.

Catalan

1. Diògenes, Laerci. 2014. Vides i doctrines dels filòsofs més il·lustres. Vol I. Barcelona: Bernat Metge.

Libre I. Introducciò generla, notícies preliminares, text revisat, traducciò i notes de Sergi Grau.

2. ———. 2018. Vides i doctrines dels filòsofs més il·lustres. Vol II. Barcelona: Bernat Metge.

Libres II-III. Notícies preliminares, text revisat, traducciò i notes de Sergi Grau.

Portuguese

1. Pinto de Brito, Rodrigo, and Lopes Dinucci, Aldo. 2019. "Tradução de Diógenes Laércio, Vitae Philosophorum, Livro IV (sobre os Acadêmicos)." Archai no. 25:1-52.

2. Pinto de Brito, Rodrigo, and Santos Pereira, Marcos Roberto. 2019. "Diógenes Laércio. Vitae Philosophorum 5.36-57 (vida de Teofrasto)." Archai no. 30:1-29.<(p>

Latin

1. Diogenes, Laertius. 1472. Laertii Diogenis Vitae et sententiae eorum qui in philosophia probati fuerunt. Romae: Giorgo Lauer.

Latin version by Ambrogio Traversari (1386-1439) between 1424 and 1433 (the first printed text of the Lives) edited by Elius Fanciscus Marchisius.

Many reprints: Venice, 1475, 1490, 1493 and 1497; Brescia 1485, Bologna 1495 (Miroslav Flodr - Incunabula classicorum. Wiegendrucke der griechischen und römischen Literatur - Amsterdam, Hakkert, 1973, pp. 137-138).

2. ———. 1475. Diogenes Laertius Vitae et Sententiae eorum qui in Philosophia probati fuerunt. Venetia: Nicolaum Jenson.

Translated by Ambrosio Camaldulensi [Ambrogio Traversari] from the recension by Benedetto Brognoli.

3. ———. 1566. Laertii Diogenis de vita et moribus philosophorum, libri decem. Antwerpiae: Tirnaviensis Pannonii.

Translated by Joannes Sambucus [János Zsámboky] (1531-1584).

Editions of the Greek text

Greek

1. Diogenis Laertij De vitis, decretis & responsis celebrium philosophorum Libri decem, nunc primum excusi. 1533. Basileae.

First complete edition (Editio princeps) of the Greek text, edited and translated by Hyeronimus Frobenius and Nicolaus Episcopus.

Three Vitae have been already printed:

Aristotelis et Theophrasti Vitae in vol. II of the Aldine edition of Aristotle (Venetiis 1497).

Xenophontis Vita in the Aldine edition of the works of Xenophon (Venetiis 1525) reprinted in the Giuntina edition (Florentiae 1527).

2. Laertii Diogenis de vita et moribus philosophorum, libri X. 1566. Antverpiae: Christophori Plantini.

Edited Ioannis Sambuci (Iános Zsámboky, 1531-1584).

3. Diogenis Laertii de vitis, dogmatis & apophthegmatis eorum qui in philosophia claruerunt, libri X. 1570. Geneva.

Edited with annotations and Latin translation by Henricus Stephanus.

4. Diogenis Laertii de vitis, dogmatis & apophthegmatis clarorum philosophorum libri X. 1593. Geneva.

Reprint of the edition by Henri Estienne (Henricus Stephanus, 1570) with annotations by Isaac Casaubon.

5. Laertii Diogenis de uitis, dogmatis et apophthegmatis eorum qui in philosophia claruerunt, libri X. 1594. Romae: Aloysium Zanettum.

Edited with annotations by Tommaso Alodobrandini.

6. Diogenes Laertius, De Vitis, dogmatis et apophthegmatis clarorum Philosophorum, Libri X. 1615. Geneva: Iacobum Stoer.

Edited by Paul Estienne (son of Henri Estienne), with the notes by Isaac Casaubon.

7. Laertii Diogenis De Vitis Dogmatis et Apophthegmatis Eorum qui in philosophia Claruerunt; Libri X. 1664. Londinii: Octavanum Pulleyn.

Reprint by John Pearson (1613-1686) of the Aldobrandinian edition of 1594 with Annotationes by Henri Estienne, Isaac and Méric Casaubon and Observationibus by Gilles Ménage (Aegidii Menagii, 1613-1692) that contains the first printed edition of an anonymous life of Aristotle (the so-called Vita Menagiana).

8. Diogenis Laertii De Vitis, Dogmatibus et Apophthegmatibus Clarorum Philosophorum Libri X. 1692. Amstelaeami: Henricus Wetstenium.

Greek and Latin text by Marc Meibom, with annotations to I. and M. Casaubon, T. Aldobrandini in two volumes.

The second volume contains: Aegidii Menagii in Diogenem Observationes auctiores [with the unedited Vita of Aristotle called Vita Menagiana], ut et Joachimi Kühnii ad Diogenem Notas.

9. Diogenis Laertii De vitis, dogmatibus et apophthegmatibus clarorum philosophorum Libri X. 1739. Curiae Regnitianae: Gotthard Ioannem Puttnerum.

Greek and Latin edition By Paulo Daniele Longolio.

10. Diogenis Laertii De vitis, dogmatis et apophthegmatis clarorum philosophorum libri X. 1828. Lipsiae: Carolus Franciscus Koehlerus.

Greeek and Latin edition in two volumes: I. (1828) edited by Heinrich Gustav Hübner; II. (1831) edited by Gottfried Hermann.

11. Commentarii in Diogenem Laertium. Volumen Primum. 1830. Lipsiae und Londini: C. F. Kochler und Black, Young & Young.

Edited by Heinrich Gustav Huebner, contains: Menagius, Aegidius, Notae atque Aegrdii Menagii observationes et emendationes in Diogenem Laertium. Addita est historia mulierum philosopharurn ab eodem Menagio scripta. Editionem ad exemplar wetstenianum expressam atque indicibus instructam curavit Henricus Gustavus Huebnerus lipsiensis.

12. Commentarii in Diogenem Laertium. Volumen Secundum. 1833. Lipsiae: C. F. Kochler.

Edited by Carl Iacobitz after the deat of Huebner; contains the reprint of the notes by Gilles Ménage with the Vita Menagiana (1692): Menagius, Aegidius, Notae atque Aegidii Menagii observationes et emendationes in Diogenem Laertium. Addita est historia mulierum philosopharum ab eodem Menagio scripta. Editionem ad exemplar wetstenianum exspressam atque indicibus instructam post Huebneri mortem absolvit Carolus lacobitz. Volumen Secundum.

13. Diogenis Laertii De Vitis Philosophorum libri X cum indice rerum. 1833. Lipsiae: Charles Tauchnitz.

14. Diogenis Laertii de clarorum philosophorum vitis, dogmatibus et apophthegmatibus libri decem. 1850. Pariisis: Firmin-Didot.

Edited by Carel Gabriel Cobet.

Reprinted 1862 and 1929.

15. Diogenes, Laërtius. 1925. Lives of eminent philosophers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Greek text facing an English translation by Robert Drew Hicks.

Reprint with an introduction by Herbert Strainge Long, 1972.

16. Diogenes, Laertii. 1964. Vitae Philosophorum. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Critical edition of the Greek text by Herbert Strainge Long.

17. Diogenes, Laertius. 1999. Vitae philosophorum. Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner.

Critical edition by Miroslav Marcovich.

Vol. I: Libri I - X; Vol. II: Excerpta Byzantina et indices; Vol III: Indices Hans Gärtner (2002).

18. Diogenes, Laërtius. 2013. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Critical edition by Tiziano Dorandi.

19. Mühll, Peter von der. 1922. Epicuri Epistulae Tres et Ratae Sententiae. Leipzig: Teubner.

20. Knoepfler, Denis. 1991. La Vie de Ménédème d'Érétrie de Diogène Laërce. Contribution à l'histoire et à la critique du texte des Vies des philosophes. Basel: Reinhardt.

Chapitre VII. Édition critique et traduction annotée (pp. 159-204).

21. Laks, André. 1976. "Édition critique et commentée de la Vie d'Epicure dans Diogene Laerce (X, 1- 34)." In Études sur l'épicurisme antique, edited by Bollack, Jean and Laks, André, 1-118. Lille: Publications de l'Université de Lille.

22. ———. 1983. Diogène d'Apollonie. La dernière cosmologie présocratique. Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille.

Édition, traduction et commentaire des fragments et des témoignages. Présentation de Jean Bollack.

Appéndice 4. Diogène Laërce, Vies des philosophes, IX, 57. Avec une note sur l'ordre des chapitres dans le livre IX des Vies.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Proceedings of the Symposium Platonicum

List of the Proceedings of the "Symposium Platonicum"

1. Eggers, Lan Conrado, ed. 1987. Platón: Los diálogos tardíos. Ciudad de México: Editorial UNAM-Instituto de Investigaciones Filósoficas.

Proceedings of the First Symposium Platonicum, Ciudad de México, 1986.

Reprint: Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag,1994 and 2001 (International Plato Studies, vol. 3).

Contents: Conrado Eggers: Presentación; Livio Rossetti: Sui rischi di un’attitudine troppo benevola dell’interprete verso il testo: il caso del Politico; Ute Schmidt Osmanczik: Epichereîn… Katà Pólin Therapeían Téchnei Gnorízein. En torno al Político de Platón; Conrado Eggers: Dios en la ontología del Parménides; T.M. Robinson: Sobre la fecha de composición del Timeo; Giuseppe Mazzara: Teeteto. 201e-208b. Totalità (Holon) e insieme (Pan): un problema di non facile soluzione; Enrique Hülsz Piccone: Aporía y dialéctica en el Teeteto; Alfonso Gómez-Lobo: Autopredicación; Christopher Rowe: Public and Private Speaking in Plato’s Later Dialogues; Juliana González: Psique y Eros en el Fedro; Antonio Gómez Robledo: La ley en el pensamiento platónico; Discusión: La autenticidad de la carta VII.

2. Rossetti, Livio, ed. 1992. Understanding the Phaedrus. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Second Symposium Platonicum, Perugia, 1-6 settembre 1989.

International Plato Studies, vol. 1.

3. Rowe, Christopher J., ed. 1995. Reading the Statesman. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Third Symposium Platonicum, Bristol 1992.

International Plato Studies, vol. 4.

Contents:

I. Text.

W.S.M. Nicoll: The manuscript tradition of Plato's Statesman; D. Robinson: The new Oxford text of Plato's Statesman: editor's comments;

II. The Statesman and the Platonic corpus.

C.H. Kahn:: The place of the Statesman in Plato's later work;

III. Forms.

R. Ferber: Für eine propädeutische lektüre des Politicus; F. Bravo: La ontología de la definición en el Politico de Platon; C. Natali: Commenti su Bravo; Y. Lafrance: Métrétique, mathématiques et dialectique en Politique 283 c-285 c; A. Tordesillas: Le point culminant de la métrétique;

IV. Logic and Method. i) Diaeresis and classification.

C. Chiesa: De quelques formes primitives de classification; W. Cavini: Naming and argument: diaeretic logic in Plato's Statesman; C. Natali: Commenti su Cavini; G. Casertano: Il problema del rapporto nome-cosa-discorso nel Politico (277-87); G.M. de Pinotti: Autour de la distinction entre [eidos] et [mepos] dans le Politique de Platon (262 a 5-263 e 1);

ii) Imitation and likeness.

S. Kato: The role of paradeigma in the Statesman; A.W. Price: Commentary on Kato; L. Palumbo: Realtà e apparenza nel Sofista e nel Politico; U. Hirsch: [Mimeisthai] und verwandte ausdrücke in Platons Politikos; iii) Metra and metrêta. M.I. Santa Cruz: Méthodes d'explication et la juste mesure dans le Politique; V. Politikê. i) Statesmanship and the statesman.

P. Accattino: Politikê. [L'apxh] del Politico; R. Weiss: Statesman as [epistimon]: caretaker, physician, and weaver; G. Arrighetti: Commenti su Accattino e Weiss; M. Narcy: La critique de Socrate par l'étranger dans le Politique; S.R.L. Clark: Herds of free bipeds; M. Dixsaut: Une politique vraiment conforme à la nature; D. Morrison: Herding and weaving (comments on Clark and Dixsaut);

V) The ideal and the actual.

M. Lane: A new angle on utopia: the political theory of the Statesman; C. Gill: Rethinking constitutionalism in Statesman 291-303; T. Mishima: Courage and moderation in the Statesman; C. Bobonich: The virtues of ordinary people in Plato's Statesman;

VI. Plato and Historical Reality?

D. Samb: Plato and historical reality? Le Politique 290 d-e; S. Dušanić: The true statesman of the Statesman and the young tyrant of the Laws: an historical comparison;

VII. The Myth.

L. Brisson: Interprétation du mythe du Politique; J. Dillon: The neoplatonic exegesis of the Statesman myth; M. Erler: Kommentar zu Brisson und Dillon; R. Schicker: Aspekte der rezeption des Politikos im Mittel- und neuplatonismus; G.R.F. Ferrari: Myth and conservatism in Plato's Statesman.

4. Calvo, Tomás, and Brisson, Luc, eds. 1997. Interpreting the Timaeus - Critias. Sankt Augustn: Academia Verlag.

Fourth Symposium Platonicum, Granada, 1995.

International Plato Studies, vol. 9.

Contents: Tomás Calvo - Luc Brisson: El Timeo-Critias. Contenido y cuestiones hermenéuticas.

I. The Timaeus-Critias. Project and Context.

G. Naddaf: Plato and the [Peri Physeos] Tradition; F. Rodríguez Adrados: Coherencia e incoherencia en la forma y contenido del Timeo; D. Clay: The Plan of Plato's Critias; L. Ayache: Est-il vraiment question d art médical dans le Timée?; I.D. Otto: Der Kritias vor dem Hintergrund des Menexenos; M. Erler: Ideal und Geschichte. Die Rahmengespräche des Timaios und Kritias und Aristoteles Poetik;

II. The Prooemium and the Nature of Timaeus Cosmological Myth.

D. Runia: The Literary and Philosophical Status of Timaeus Prooemium; E. Berti: L'oggetto dell [eikos mythos] nel Timeo di Platone; M. I. Santa Cruz: Le discours de la physique: eikos logos; A. Vallejo: No, it s not a Fiction; G. Reale: Plato s Doctrine of the Origin of the World, with special reference to the Timaeus;

III. Ideas, Numbers, Principles.

E. Ostenfeld: The Role and Status of the Forms in the Timaeus: Paradigmatism revisited?; R. Ferber: Why did Plato maintain the "Theory of Ideas" in the Timaeus?; M. Isnardi-Parente: Idee e Numeri nel Timeo; Th. A. Szlezák: Über die Art und Weise der Erörterung der Prinzipien im Timaios;

IV. Cosmology and Ontological Issues.

C. Natali: Le cause del Timeo e la teoria delle quattro cause; J. M. Narbonne: Note á propos de l "extériorité" présumée du réceptacle platonicien; W. Mesch: Die ontologische Bedeutung der Zeit in Platons Timaios; J. J. Cleary: Plato's Teleological Atomism;

V. The Soul of the World and the human Soul.

F. L. Lisi: La construcción del alma del mundo en el Timeo (35a-b) y la tradición indirecta; G. Reydam-Schils: Plato's World Soul: grasping sensibles without Sense-perception; Ch. Gill: Galen vs. Chrysippus on the tripartite psyche in Timaeus 69-72; S. Rotondaro: II [pathos] della ragione e i sogni: Timeo 70D7- 72B5; E. Pender: The Language of Soul in Plato's Timaeus;

VI. Perception and Knowledge.

D. O Brien: Perception et intelligence dans le Timée de Platon; L. Brisson: Perception sensible et raison dans le Timée; U. Hirsch: Sinnesqualitöten und ihre Namen (zu Tim. 61-69);

VII. Ethics and Education.

D. Sedley: Becoming like god in the Timaeus and Aristotle; G.R. Carone: The ethical Function of Astronomy in Plato's Timaeus; E. Cavagnaro: The Timaeus of Plato and the erratic Motion of the Planets; S. Scolnicov: Freedom and Education in Plato's Timaeus.

Index of discussed Passages.

5. Robinson, Thomas M., and Brisson, Luc, eds. 2001. Plato: Euthydemus, Lysis, Charmides. Sankt Augustn: Academia Verlag.

Fifth Symposium Platonicum, Toronto, 1998.

International Plato Studies, vol. 13.

6. Scolnicov, Samuel, and Brisson, Luc, eds. 2003. Plato's Laws: From Theory Into Practice. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Sixth Symposium Platonicum, Jerusalem, 2001.

International Plato Studies, vol. 15.

7. Erler, Michael, and Brisson, Luc, eds. 2007. Gorgias - Menon. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Seventh Symposium Platonicum, Würzburg, 2004.

International Plato Studies, vol. 25.

Contents: List of contributors V; Table of contents VII; Michael Erler, Luc Brisson: Vorwort X-XI;

1. De Vogel Lecture, Sauders Memorial Lecture.

Terry Penner: The Death of the so-called “Socratic Elenchus” 3; Harold Tarrant: Studying Plato and Platonism Together: Meno-related Observations 20;

2. Gorgias.

John J. Cleary: Erotic Paideia in Plato’s Symposium 33; Lloyd P. Gerson: Plato’s Gorgias and ‘Political Happiness’ 46; Frederik Arends: Why Socrates came too late for Gorgias’ epideixis: Plato’s Gorgias as political philosophy 52; Noburu Notomi: Plato’s Critique of Gorgias: Power, the Other, and Truth 57; Christopher Gill: Form and outcome of arguments in Plato’s Gorgias 62; Ada Neschke-Hentschke: Der Dialog Gorgias und die Tradition des europäischen Naturrechts 66; Mauro Tulli: Il Gorgia e la lira di Anfione 72; Holger Thesleff: The Gorgias re-written – why? 78; Arnaud Macé: Gorgias, le Gorgias, et l’ordre de l’âme 83; Christopher Rowe: The Moral Psychology of the Gorgias 90; Francisco Bravo: El Gorgias de Platon: ¿Anti-hedonista o anti-relativista? 102; Erik Nis Ostenfeld: The Meaning and Justification of a Paradox: Wrong doing is Involuntary. The refutation of Polus 108; Richard F. Stalley: The Politics of the Gorgias 116; Julius Moravczik: Goodness Trumps Pleasure-loving in the Gorgias 122; Thomas C. Brickhouse, Nicholas D. Smith: The Myth of the Afterlife in Plato’s Gorgias 128; Álvaro Vallejo: Myth and Rhetoric in the Gorgias 138; Giovanni Casertano: 21 punti su persuasione e verità nel Gorgia 144; Walter Mesch: Analogien und Antistrophen. Zur Bestimmung der Rhetorik in Platons Gorgias 149; Hayden W. Ausland: Socrates’ Argument with Gorgias, the Craft Analogy, and Justice 158; Maurizio Migliori: Socrate e Gorgia di fronte all’insegnamento della virtù 162;

3. Meno

Graziano Arrighetti: Menone, 81a10-e2: un mito dell’al di là? 173; Theodor Ebert: “The Theory of Recollection in Plato’s Meno”: Against a Myth of Platonic Scholarship 184; Luc Brisson: La réminiscence dans le Ménon (81c5-d5) 199; Linda M. Napolitano: Anamnesi e dialettica nel ‘Menone’ 204; Jan Szaif: Requirements of Knowledge according to the Meno 212; Yuji Kurihara: Goodness, Desire and Thought in Plato’s Meno (77b-78b) 218; Benoît Castelnérac: Comment acquérir la vertu? La tripartition phúsis, áskesis, máthesis dans le Ménon 223; Aleš Havlíček: Die Bedeutung der phronêsis für die Erläuterung der aretê im Menon 228;

Edward C. Halper: A Lesson from the Meno 234; Thomas M. Tuozzo: Knowing Meno Blindfolded: The Dialectic of Essence and Quality in the Meno 243; Elisabetta Cattanei: Due geometrie per il Menone 248; Moon–Heum Yang: ‘Similarity’ in the Solution to the Duplication Problem in Plato’s Meno 253;

4. Comprehensive papers.

Rafael Ferber: What did Socrates know and how did he know it? 263; Vasilis Politis: Is Socrates Paralyzed by his State of Aporia? Meno 79e7-80d4 268; Christoph Helmig: Der Gegensatz von Platon und Aristoteles

in den neuplatonischen Interpretationen des Menon paradoxons und der Anamnesislehre 273; Samuel Scolnicov: The structure and object of anamnesis 278; Louis-André Dorion: Le Gorgias et la défense de Socrate dans l’Apologie 284; Franco Ferrari: La transizione epistemica 290; Matthias Vorwerk: Der Arzt, der Koch und die Kinder. Rhetorik und Philosophie im Wettstreit 297; Michel Narcy: Socrate, l’esclave, les sophistes et les géomètres 303; François Renaud: Rhétorique, Dialectique, Maïeutique: Le commentaire du Gorgias par Olympiodore 309; Annie Larivée: Combattre le mal par le mal. Socrate et sa méthode de soin homéopathique dans le Gorgias 317; Charles Kahn: Prolepsis in Gorgias and Meno? 325; Thomas Alexander Szlezák: ἅτε γὰρ τῆς φύσεως ἁπάσης συγγενοῦς οὔσης (Men. 81 c 9- d11). Die Implikationen der ‘Verwandtschaft’ der gesamten Natur 333;

Bibliography 345; Index Locorum 368; Subject Index 388-389.

8. Dillon, John, and Brisson, Luc, eds. 2009. Plato's Philebus. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Eighth Symposium Platonicum, Dublin, 2007.

International Plato Studies, vol. 26.

Contents: List of contributors V; Table of contents VII; John Dillon: Preface IX-X;

De Vogel Lecture.

Dorothea Frede: Life and its Limitations: the conception of happiness in the Philebus 3;

1. Themes.

A. Logi and Dialectic

Hugh H. Benson: Collection and Division in the Philebus; Francisco Bravo: El método de la división y la división de los placeres en el Filebo de Platón 25; Hallvard J. Fossheim: Method in the Philebus 31; Mary Louise Gill: The Divine Method in Plato’s Philebus 36; Christopher Gill: Dialogue Form and Philosophical Content in Plato’s Philebus 47; Charles H. Kahn: Dialectic, Cosmology, and Ontology in the Philebus 56; Michel Narcy: Socrate à l’école de l’Étranger d’Élée 68;

Noburu Notomi: The questions asked in the Philebus 74; Richard Patterson: The Philebus and the Unity of Platonic Method 80; Naomi Reshotko: Restoring Coherence to the Gods’ Gift to Men: Philebus 16c9-18b7 and 23e3-27b8 92; Serafina Rotondaro: Il Filebo di Platone, ovvero l’abile difesa di una supremazia 98; David T. Runia: Didactic enumeration in the Philebus and other Platonic writings 104; Harold Tarrant: ‘A Taste of the Doctrines of each group of Sages’: Plato’s Midwifery at work in the Academy 110;

B. Ethical Questions

Beatriz Bossi: How consistent is Plato with regard to the ‘unlimited’ character of pleasure in the Philebus? 123; Giovanni Casertano: Opinione, verità e piacere: la prima specie dei piaceri falsi 134; Benoît Castelnérac: Plaisirs esthétiques et beauté dans le Philèbe : un essai de reconstruction du discours platonicien sur l'art 140; Louis-André Dorion: L’autarcie et les critères du bien (Philèbe 20d et 67a) 146; Michael Erler: Philebos und Phaidon über die Qualität von Emotionen 152; Marc-Antoine Gavray: Pourquoi rire ? Philèbe, 47d-50e 158; Annie Larivée: The Philebus, a Protreptic? 163; Aikaterini Lefka: La « vie mixte » du Philèbe : une concession pragmatique de Platon au plaisir ? 172; Francisco L. Lisi: Ley, placer e intelecto en el Filebo 178; Graciela E. Marcos de Pinotti: Placer y phantasía en Filebo 36c3-40e5 188; Mary Margaret McCabe: Banana skins and custard pies: Plato on comedy and self-knowledge 194; Mark L. McPherran: Love and Medicine in Plato’s Symposium and Philebus 204; Suzanne Obdrzalek: Fleeing the Divine – Plato’s Rejection of the Anedonic Ideal in the Philebus 209; Satoshi Ogihara: The Contrast between Soul and Body in the Analysis of Pleasure in the Philebus 215; Richard D. Parry: Truth, Falsity, and Pleasures in Philebus and Republic 9. 221; Richard Stalley: The Philebus and the Art of Persuasion 227; Mauro Tulli: Weak ignorance: the geloi'on from the scenes of Aristophanes to the dialogue of Plato 237; Álvaro Vallejo Campos: La verdad del placer en el Filebo 243; Katja Maria Vogt: Why Pleasure Gains Fifth Rank: Against the Anti-Hedonist Interpretation of the Philebus 250;

C. First Principles.

Rafael Ferber Platons Nebensonnen: Schönheit, Symmetrie und Wahrheit 259; Francesco Fronterotta: Nature and structure of the cause in Philebus 26e1-27b3 266; Lloyd P. Gerson: Beauty, Commensurability, and Truth in Plato's Philebus 272; Arnaud Macé: L’eidos-structure dans le Philèbe au fondement de la science de la nature (Philèbe 31d4-32b5) 279; Andrew Mason: Plato’s God: the evidence of the Philebus 285; Maurizio Migliori: Uni-molteplicità del reale e dottrina dei Principi 292; Erik Nis Ostenfeld: The psychology of the Philebus 307; Jean-François Pradeau: The Forging of the Soul in Plato’s Philebus 313; María Isabel Santa Cruz: Quantité déterminée et juste mesure dans le Philèbe 320; Samuel Scolnicov: The wonder of one and many 326; Luc Brisson: Lecture de Philèbe 29a6-30d5 336; Fulcran Teisserenc: D’une causalité démiurgique en cosmologie et en éthique 342; Anne Gabrièle Wersinger: L’apeiron et les relatifs dans le Philèbe 348; Moon-Heum Yang: Arithmetical Numbers and Ideal Numbers in Plato’s Philebus 355;

2. Influences and Interpretations.

Marcelo D. Boeri: Epicurus the Platonist 363; Angela Longo: La divisione nel commento di Damascio al Filebo di Platone 369; Sara Ahbel-Rappe: Damascius’ exegesis of Philebus 27, on the nature of the Mixed 376; Tomasz Mróz: Philebus Interpreted by Paul Natorp and Wincenty Lutoslawski 382;

Bibliography 391; Index locorum 410; Subject Index 425-430.

9. Notomi, Noburu, and Brisson, Luc, eds. 2013. Dialogues on Plato's Politeia (Republic). Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Ninth Symposium Platonicum, Tokio, 2010.

International Plato Studies, vol. 31.

10. Tulli, Mauro, and Erler, Michael, eds. 2016. Plato in Symposium. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Tenth Symposium Platonicum, Pisa, 15th - 20th July 2013.

International Plato Studies, vol. 35.

Contents: List of contributors V; Table of contents VII, Mauro Tulli: Preface XI;

I. C.J. De Vogel Lecture.

Stephen Halliwell: Eros and Life-Values in Plato’s Symposium 3;

II. Reading the Symposium.

Francisco Bravo: ¿Propone el Banquete una ciencia del amor? 16; Luc Brisson: Éros éducateur: entre paiderastia et philosophia 24; Gabriel Danzig: “Testing the Truth and Ourselves” (Prot. 348a). Boasting and Philosophizing in Plato’s Symposium 36; Arianna Fermani: Perché tanta “morte” in un dialogo sull’amore e sulla vita? Riflessioni sulla dialettica amore-morte-immortalità nel Simposio di Platone 44; Christian Keime: Lector in dialogo: Implied Readers and Interpretive Strategies in Plato’s Symposium 52; Mariella Menchelli: Isocrate, la condotta di vita e il discorso di Diotima nel Simposio di Platone 59; Maurizio Migliori: L’importanza della dimensione esperienziale ed empirica nel Simposio 65; Hugues-Olivier Ney: L’amour, drame de Socrate 71; Nicholas P. Riegel: Tragedy and Comedy at Agathon’s Party: Two Tetralogies in Plato’s Symposium 77; Harold Tarrant: Stylistic Difference in the Speeches of the Symposium 84;

III. The Frame Dialogue.

Dino De Sanctis: Agathon agathos: l’eco dell’epos nell’incipit del Simposio 92; Giovanni R.F. Ferrari: No Invitation Required? A Theme in Plato’s Symposium 98; Lidia Palumbo: Narrazioni e narratori nel Simposio di Platone 104; Matthew D. Walker: The Functions of Apollodorus 110;

IV Phaedrus.

Annie Hourcade Sciou: Éros sans expédient: Platon, Banquet, 179b4-180b5 118; Noburu Notomi: Phaedrus and the Sophistic Competition of Beautiful Speech in Plato’s Symposium 124;

V Pausanias.

Olga Alieva: Ἔρως προτρέπων: Philosophy and Seduction in the Symposium 132; Olivier Renaut: La pédérastie selon Pausanias: un défi pour l'éducation platonicienne 140;

VI Eryximachus.

Ivana Costa: Qué aporta Erixímaco a la filosofía del Simposio y a Platón 148; Silvio Marino: La medicina di Erissimaco: appunti per una cosmologia dialogica 155; Richard D. Parry: Eryximachus’ Physical Theory in Plato’s Symposium 160; Richard Stalley: Sophrosyne in the Symposium 165;

VII Aristophanes.

Michele Corradi: Aristofane e l’ombra di Protagora: origini dell'umanità e orthoepeia nel mito degli uomini-palla 172; Samuel Scolnicov: What Socrates Learned from Aristophanes (and What He Left Behind) 178; Roslyn Weiss: Split Personalities in the Symposium and the Bible: Aristophanes’ Speech and the Myth of Adam and Eve 183;

VIII Agathon.

Aikaterini Lefka: Eros Soter. How Can Love Save Us? 192; Irmgard Männlein-Robert: Die Poetik des Philosophen: Sokrates und die Rede des Agathon 198; Mario Regali: La mimesis di sé nel discorso di Agatone: l’agone fra poesia e filosofia nel Simposio 204; Richard Patterson: Agathon’s Gorgianic Logic 209;

IX Diotima.

Francesco Aronadio: What’s in the Name “Eros”? Onoma and Holon in Symposium 204e-206a 218; Giovanni Casertano: La difficile analogia tra poesia e amore 224; Mehmet M. Erginel: Plato on the Pangs of Love 231; Lloyd P. Gerson: The Hermeneutics of Mystery in Plato’s Symposium 237; Chad Jorgenson: Becoming Immortal in the Symposium and the Timaeus 243; Yahei Kanayama: Recollecting, Retelling and Melete in Plato’s Symposium: A New Reading of ἡ γὰρ ἀνδρὸς καὶ γυναικὸς συνουσία τόκος ἐστίν (206c5-6) 249; Filip Karfík: Eros und Unsterblichkeit: das Hervorbringen im Schönen 257; Manfred Kraus: Socrates’ thea: The Description of Beauty in Symposium 211a and the Parmenidean Predicates of Being 270; Yuji Kurihara: Telos and Philosophical Knowledge in Plato’s Symposium 278; Francisco L. Lisi: Symposion 210d4: τὸ πολὺ πέλαγος τοῦ καλοῦ 255; Arnaud Macé: L’océan du beau: la Forme et ses reflets hétérogènes (Banquet, 210a-211c) 291; Giusy Maria Margagliotta: Eros e l’Anima nel Simposio 297; Cristina Rossitto: Plato’s Symposium and the Notion of Intermediate 303; Ikko Tanaka: Divine Immortality and Mortal Immortality in Plato’s Symposium 309; Alonso Tordesillas: Le beau, une nature merveilleuse, une vision soudaine (Banquet 210e2-211d1) 315; Mario Vegetti: Immortalità personale senza anima immortale: Diotima e Aristotele 321;

X Alcibiades.

Gabriele Cornelli: Alcibiades’ Connection: Plato’s Symposium Rewriting the Case on Socrates and Alcibiades 337; Edward C. Halper: Alcibiades’ Refutation of Socrates 342; Alessandro Stavru: Socrate karterikos (Platone, Simposio 216c-221b) 347;

XI The Ethics of Eros.

Carolina Araújo: Who Loves? The Question of Agency in Plato’s Symposium 356; Marcelo D. Boeri: Ἔρως y συνουσία en el Simposio 362; Christopher Gill: Are the “Higher Mysteries” of Platonic Love Reserved for Ethical-Educational Pederasty? 371; Annie Larivée: Le pouvoir protreptique de l’amour. Eros, soin de soi et identité personnelle dans le Banquet 380; Federico M. Petrucci: La dottrina della virtù di secondo grado nel Simposio 386; Christopher Rowe: On the Good, Beauty, and the Beast in Plato’s Symposium 391; David T. Runia: Eudaimonist Closure in the Speeches of Plato’s Symposium 403; Álvaro Vallejo Campos: Desire and Will in the Symposium 409;

XII The Picture of Socrates.

Beatriz Bossi: On Which Step of the Scala Amoris Is Socrates Standing in the Dramatic Action of the Symposium? Notes on the Practical Consequences of Theory 420; Giuseppe Cambiano: Chi è il Socrate del Simposio? 428; Andrea Capra: Transcoding the Silenus. Aristophanes, Plato and the Invention of Socratic Iconography 437; Rafael Ferber: Plato as Teacher of Socrates? 443; Graciela E. Marcos de Pinotti: Sócrates aprendiz y maestro de Eros 449; Gerard Naddaf: The Young “Historical” Socrates in the Apology and Symposium 455; Thomas Alexander Szlezák: Sokrates’ Rollen im Symposion. Sein Wissen und sein Nichtwissen 461;

XIII Reception.

Ruby Blondell, Sandra Boehringer: Un Banquet revisité : l’érotisme paradoxal de Platon et de Lucien 470; Piera De Piano: Gli eroi e la natura demonica di Amore: Proclo interprete di Simposio 201e-204b 476; Margherita Erbì: Lettori antichi di Platone: il caso del Simposio (POxy 843) 483.

Index locorum 493; Index nominum 520 -

11. ———, eds. 2016. The Symposium: Proceedings II. Pisa: International Plato Society.

Tenth Symposium Platonicum, Pisa, 15th - 20th July 2013.

Contents: Christopher Gill: Are the ‘higher mysteries’ of Platonic love reserved for ethical-educational pederasty? 7; Marcelo D. Boeri: Ἔρως y συνουσία en el Simposio o cómo hay que apasionarse en vista de la vida buena 13; Filip Karfík: Eros und Unsterblichkeit: das Zeugen im Schönen und das Zusammenhalten des Alls 23; Luc Brisson: Le Banquet de Platon: un dialogue sur le rôle de la séduction dans l'éducation 24;

Philosophical Writing and the Immortality of the Soul (PhD Parallel Workshop).

Christian Keime: Lector in dialogo: images du lecteur et coopération interprétative dans le Banquet de Platon 27; Enrico Maria Polizzano: I proverbi nel Simposio 39; Chad Jorgenson: Becoming Immortal in the Symposium and the Timaeus 42; Ikko Tanaka: The Immortality of a Philosopher in Plato’s Symposium 46;

Eros, Psyche, Eidos (PhD Parallel Workshop).

Jonathan Fine, Usha Nathan: What Lovers Seek: Eros and Poiesis in Plato’s Symposium 49; Giusy Maria Margagliotta: Eros e l’Anima nel Simposio di Platone 54; Guilherme Domingues da Motta: Eros as a Quality of the Rational Element of the Soul 62; Luca Pitteloud: Le Banquet et la cohabitation de deux points de vue ontologiques sur le sensible et l’intelligible 66; Gabriel Richardson Lear: Thauma and Eros: Philosophical Passion in Plato’s Symposium (Abstract) 77;

Eros and Knowledge.

Georgia Mouroutsou: Plato’s Symposium: The Ladder of the Philosopher’s Atopia 81; Debra Nails: The Naturalized Epistemology of the Symposium 82; Francesco Fronterotta: La visione dell’idea del bello: conoscenza intuitiva e conoscenza proposizionale nel Simposio 91; Naomi Reshotko: Ignorance, Knowledge and True Belief in Plato’s Symposium 99; Marie-Élise Zovko: Impassioned by Passion: Knowledge and Eros in Plato and Spinoza 106; Antony Hatzistavrou: The Corybantic Effect of Arguments 123;

The Ethics of Eros: Life and Practice.

Francisco Bravo: ¿Propone el Banquete una ciencia del amor? 129; Matteo Nucci: La bellezza dell’amante: la strada più lunga che Alcibiade non vide e i grandi misteri che finì per profanare 135; Lucas Soares: La téchne de la caza de hombres: la dimensión prática del saber erótico de Sócrates en el Banquete 143; Linda M. Napolitano Valditara: “Philosophôn dià pantòs toû bìou”: un tratto particolare di Eros nel Simposio platonico (203d7) 149; Thomas M. Robinson: From tolerance to condemnation: Plato on paederastia and nature qua productive 152; Mehmet Erginel: Plato on the Pangs of Love 156;

Reading the Symposium: Themes and Literary Tradition.

María Isabel Santa Cruz: El Banquete como agón literario 159; Catherine Rowett: Is Agathon’s Speech in Plato’s Symposium recycling the views of Empedocles? 169; Hugues-Olivier Ney: L’amour, drame de Socrate 176; Yahei Kanayama: Recollecting, Retelling and Meletē in Plato’s Symposium: A New Reading of ἡ συνουσία τόκος ἐστίν (206C5-6) 186; Mariella Menchelli: Ὀρθὴ δόξα ed ἐπιτηδεύματα: gli scritti isocratei sulla condotta di vita e il grado intermedio di ἐπιτηδεύματα e νόμοι nel Simposio 192; Pierre Destrée: Plato and Laughter in the Symposium 193;

The Language of Mysteries.

Jason Rheins: The Curious Absence of the Immortality of the Soul from Diotima’s Speech 197; Fernando Santoro: Le maschere di Dioniso nel Simposio di Platone 199; Jean-Luc Périllié: Le satyrikon d’Alcibiade et rites d'initiation des mystères socratiques 200; Constance C. Meinwald: Erotic Mysteries 206; Barbara Sattler: Plato’s Forms in the Language of the Eleusinian Mysteries 212; Lloyd P. Gerson: The Hermeneutics of Mystery in Plato’s Symposium 213;

Alcibiades and Socrates.

Tosca Lynch: The seductive voice of the aulós in Plato’s Symposium: From the dismissal of the αὐλητρίς to Alcibiades' praise of Socrates-αὐλητής 219; Alessandro Stavru: Socrate karterikos (Symp. 216c-221b) 226; Wei Liu: The Ugliness and Beauty of Socrates: Portraits of Socrates in the Clouds and the Symposium 227; Andrea Capra: Transcoding the Silenus: Aristophanes, Plato and the Invention of Socratic Iconography 234; Jure Zovko: The Historical and Platonic Socrates in the Symposium 239; Gabriele Cornelli: Alcibiades’ Connection: Plato’s Symposium Rewriting the Case on Socrates and Alcibiades 240;

Ascending the Ladder of Love.

Melissa Lane: “The Greatest and Most Beautiful Part of Wisdom” (Symp. 209a): Moderation and Justice as the Creating of Laws 251; Anthony Hooper: Scaling the Ladder: Why the Final Step of the Lover’s Ascent is a Generalizing Step 257; Maria Angelica Fierro: Loving and Lovable Bodies in the Symposium 258; Alonso Tordesillas: Enigmatique exaiphnes 263; Beatriz Bossi: On which step of the scala amoris is Socrates standing in the dramatic action of the Symposium? 264; Rachana Kamtekar: Eudaimonism in the Symposium? 272; Vasilis Politis: Eros: One, Two, or Two-in-One? (Abstract) 275; Anthony W. Price:What does Diotima mean by erōs? 281; Alvaro Vallejo Campos: Desire and will in the Symposium 289; Christopher J. Rowe: On the Good, Beauty and the Beast in Plato’s Symposium 297-305.

12. Cornelli, Gabriele, Robinson, Thomas, and Bravo, Francisco, eds. 2018. Plato's Phaedo. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

Eleventh Symposium Platonicum, Brasilia, 2016.

Contemts: List of contributors 5; Table of content 7;

Gabriele Cornelli, Thomas M. Robinson, Francisco Bravo: Foreword 11; Gabriele Cornelli: Plato went South! 12;

1. Phaedo’s Strucuture.

Giovanni Casertano: Phaedo — dramatic structure and philosophical content 17; Marcelo D. Boeri: “To act and to be acted upon”: Interactionism in the Phaedo 28; Michele Corradi: Il Fedone e la memoria dell’Apologia di Socrate: a proposito di una raffinata strategia letteraria 33; Lidia Palumbo: Filosofia e narrazione. Il caso del Fedone 38; Marco Antonio Santamaría Álvarez: Apology, Crito and Phaedo: Socrates’ tragic trilogy 43; Renato Matoso Brandão: On the Translation and Meaning of Phaedo 74b7-9 49;

2. Philosophy and Myth in the Phaedo.

Irmgard Männlein-Robert: on der Höhle in den Himmel: Der Philosoph im Jenseitsmythos des Phaidon oder Sokrates im Glück 57; Alberto Bernabé: Describir el Más Allá. Consideraciones sobre el mito del Fedón 62; Beatriz Bossi: ack To The Cock: On Gratitude andCare 74; Francesc Casadesús Bordoy: La definición del verdadero filósofo en el Fedón o cómo construir una ortodoxia filosófica a partir de una heterodoxia religiosa 84; Francisco J. Gonzalez: Why the Minotaur is Misology 90; Fulvia de Luise: Il canto del cigno di Socrate. Una celebrazione della morte? 96; Annie Larivée: Socrate « Asclépios politique » dans le Phédon 101;

3. Emotions, Pleasures and Philosophical Virtues.

Olga Alieva: How Plato Saved Pleasures for Philosophy 113; Dino de Sanctis: Socrate e le lacrime dei philoi: emozioni e catarsi nel Fedone 118; Edward C. Halper: The Currency of Virtue: Phaedo 68c-69d 124; Marcelo P. Marques: The exchange of pleasures and pains in the Phaedo 133; Donald Morrison: Egoism and Benevolence in the Phaedo 150; Carolina Araújo: Plato’s Phaedo on rational suicide 154; Richard D. Parry: Illusions of Pleasure 159; Federico M. Petrucci: There Should Be a Virtue for Everyone. Non-Philosophical Virtue in the Phaedo 164;

4. Death and the Problem of Soul’s Survival.

Monique Dixsaut: « La mort, estimons-nous que c’est quelque chose ? » 173; Filip Karfík: L’âme et la Forme de la vie 183; Lenka Karfíková: The soul and life – the soul and ratio. Augustine’s criticism of the final proof in Plato’s Phaedo 188; Taichi Miura: Immortality and imperishability of the soul in the final argument of Plato’s Phaedo 193; Satoshi Ogihara: Immortality and eternity: Cebes’ remark at Phaedo 106d2-4 199; Cynthia B. Patterson: Metaphors of Body and Soul in the Phaedo – and Socrates’ Last Words 205; David Sedley: The Phaedo’s final proof of immortality 210; Rafael Ferber: Deuteros Plous, the immortality of the soul and the ontological argument for the existence of God 221; Roslyn Weiss: Fear of Death in Plato’s Phaedo (and Apology) 231;

5. Knowledge, Reminiscence and the Forms.

Barbara M. Sattler: Sufficient Reason in the Phaedo and its Presocratic antecedents 239; Filippo Forcignanò: Experiences without Self-Justification: the “Sticks and Stones” Argument in the Phaedo 249; Andy German: Socratic Iconography: Two Examples in the Phaedo 255; Daniel W. Graham: Plato’s Scientific Manifesto 262; Manfred Kraus: Δοκεῖν, δόξα and eikṓs in the Phaedo 268; Anna Motta: Strategie esegetiche neoplatoniche: qual è lo skopos del Fedone? 273; Graciela E. Marcos de Pinotti: ¿Cuántos y quiénes “recuerdan”? El doble alcance de la reminiscencia en Fedón 72e-77a 278; Noburu Notomi: The Soul and Forms in Plato’s Phaedo 288; Richard Patterson: Malaria, Causality and Plato’s Explanatory Framework 294; Karine Tordo Rombaut: Qu’est-ce qui, dans la question de l’anonyme, a pu troubler Socrate (Phd. 103a4-c5) ? 299; Harold Tarrant: Argument from Similarity or Socrates’ Inspired Vision Part I? 304; Thomas M. Tuozzo: Sense Perception and Explanation in the Phaedo 310;

6. Phaedo’s Socrates Itinerary and Portrait.

Andrea Capra: Father and Son: Apollo, Asclepius and the Socratic Birth of the Platonic dialogue 319; Lloyd P. Gerson: Socrates’ Autobiography: An Epitome of Platonism 323; Gerard Naddaf: The “young” historical Socrates in Phaedo 96a-99d: a re-examination of the controversial “autobiography” 328; Mario Regali: Una maschera per il dialogo: la caratterizzazione di Socrate nel Fedone 333; François Renaud: L’autorité d’Homère et de la tradition dans le Phédon 338; Franco Trabattoni: La “prima navigazione” nel Fedone 344;

Bibliography 353; Index Locorum 379; Index Nominum 394; Subject Index 402-407.

13. Brisson, Luc, Macé, Arnaud, and Renault, Olivier, eds. 2022. Plato's Parmenides. Selected Papers of the Twelfth Symposium Platonicum. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

Twelfth Symposium Platonicum, Paris, July 15th-20th 2019.

Contents. Introduction 5;

I. On the threshold of the Parmenides.

François Renaud: Poésie et poétique dialogique dans le prologue du Parménide 17; Nikos G. Charalabopoulos: Road to Academy. The implicit protreptics of Plato’s Parmenides 25; Lidia Palumbo: Il prologo come chiave di interpretazione del dialogo intero 33;

II. The Parmenides in context.

Mario Regali: Parmenide e il cavallo di Ibico: l’immagine dell’eros senile per la dialettica (Prm. 136e-137c) 43; Julia Pfefferkorn: Parmenides auf dem Prüfstand: Unendliche Schwierigkeiten und eine Aufgabe 51; André Luiz Braga da Silva: The “Ideas as thoughts” hypothesis of Parmenides 132b-c: a historical approach 59; D. Gregory MacIsaac: Plato’s Account of Eleaticism: A New Interpretation of Parmenides 67; Francesco Ferro: La dottrina eleatica dell’Uno-tutto nel primo λόγος di Zenone 75; Sandra Peterson: Socrates Objects to Zeno at 128e-129a in Plato’s Parmenides 83; Filippo Forcignanò: Anaxagoras in Plato’s Parmenides 91; Mathilde Brémond: Gorgias and Antilogic in Plato’s Parmenides 101; Michele Corradi: Il Parmenide di Platone fra il Περὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος di Gorgia e il Περὶ τοῦ ὄντος di Protagora: l’ombra dei sofisti nella γυμνασία 115; Ivana Costa: Las huellas de Gorgias y el robo del λόγος de Zenón 123; Claudia Mársico: Intra-Socratic polemics. The Parmenides as an element of an anti-Megaric program 133;

III. Dialogue, dialectics and exercices.

Mary-Louise Gill: Exercise on Being: The ἀγών of Heraclitus and Parmenides 149; Annie Larivée: Socrate en devenir. Le développement du jeune Socrate dans le Phédon comme clé herméneutique du Parménide 163; Sergio Di Girolamo: Parmenides’ hypothesis behind Plato’s Parmenides: ‘all the things are collectively called ἓν ὄν’ (Sph. 242d6) 173; Jens Kristian Larsen: On common forms and dialectical inquiry in Plato’ Parmenides 183; Georgia Mouroutsou: A Diagnosis of Dialectic in Parmenides 142b1-144e7 193; Alessio Santoro: Eleatic training. The aim and uses of dialectic in Plato’s Parmenides and Aristotle’s Topics 201;

IV. The Theory of Forms.

Noburu Notomi: Homonymy and Similarity in Plato’s Parmenides 211; Antonino Spinelli: Sind die Ideen wirklich unteilbar? Zur zweifachen Natur der platonischen Formen (Prm. 131a-e) 221; Irina Protopopova:

The Parmenides and the Typology of eide (according to Plato’s Hippias Major, Protagoras, Republic, and Sophist) 229; Vittorio Ricci: Sul cosiddetto “argomento del terzo uomo” (TMA) nel Parmenide 239; Amber D. Carpenter: Separation Anxieties. Parmenides 133a-135c 245; Beatriz Bossi: Why is the ‘greatest’ difficulty neither great nor consistent? (Prm. 133b-134e) 253; José Antonio Giménez: La “mayor dificultad” y el poder del conocimiento en Parménides 133b-134e 261; Irmgard Männlein-Robert: Der ferne Gott – Ideen auf Distanz? Die siebte Aporie im Kontext (Prm. 133b4–135b4) 269; Carolina Araújo: Ousia and dunamis in the greatest aporia (Prm. 133b4-135b4) 279; Kezhou Liu: The Problem of Separation in Plato’s Parmenides 287;

V. Hypothesis and deductions.

Maurizio Migliori: The many meanings of the One in Plato’s Parmenides 299; Eric Sanday: The Subject and Number of Hypotheses in Plato’s Parmenides 309; Béatrice Lienemann: Prädikationen pros heauto im Parmenides als Aussagen über die Struktur von Ideen 317; Luca Pitteloud: La deuxième partie du Parménide : identité et altérité de l’intelligible ? 331; Dougal Blyth: Dialectic and Forms in Prm. 137c-144e 339; Mateo Duque: “Οὐκ ἔστιν” (141e8): The Performative Contradiction of the First Hypothesis 347; Carmen Di Lorenzo: Il numero come prototipo di pluralità unificata (Prm.147a3-6) 355; Richard Parry: The One and Time: Parmenides 151e-153a 361; Aleksei A. Pleshkov: Eternity for Plato: The Dialogue between Parmenides and Timaeus 371; Francisco J. Gonzalez: “Let us say the third”: The Meaning of τὸ τρίτον in the Deductions of Plato’s Parmenides 379; Samuel Meister: Gunk in the Third Deduction of Plato’s Parmenides 393; Claudia Luchetti: La Noesi nascosta. Sulla presenza della teoria platonica dellʼAnima nella γυμνασία del Parmenide (142a-144e, 155e-157b, 157b-159b) 401; Roberto Granieri: Riferimento, essere e partecipazione. Prm. 160b4-163b5 e il Sofista 409; Francesco Aronadio: La duplice accezione dell’espressione me esti nella V e nella VI ipotesi del Parmenide 423; Lorenzo Giovannetti: Structure and sense of the seventh deduction in Prm. 164b5-165e1 431; Jan Szaif: Pseudo-Objects in a World of Seeming (Prm. 164b–165e) 439; I-Kai Jeng: Nonbeing and the Final Four Deductions in Plato’s Parmenides 453;

VI. The Reception of the Parmenides.

Federico M. Petrucci: Una lettura stoica della “più grande difficoltà” del Parmenide 469; Harold Tarrant: Apuleian Evidence regarding Pre-Plotinian Interpretation of the Parmenides 483; Lloyd P. Gerson: Plotinus and Parmenides 491; Melina G. Mouzala: Forms as paradigms in Plato’s Parmenides 132c-d. Proclus’ response to Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias’ attacks on the Forms considered as patterns 501; Anna Motta: La peculiare solennità dell’isagoge procliana al Parmenide di Platone 509; Ivan Adriano Licciardi: Simplicio, in Cael. 556, 3-560, 10, a margine di Platone, Prm. 135b8-c1. Prolegomeni a una genealogia del parallelismo onto-epistemologico 517;

References 527; Index Locorum 549; Index Rerum 565-568.

14. Symposium Platonicum XII. Le Parménide de Platon. Plato’s Parmenides. Résumés – Book of Abstracts. 2021. Paris: International Plato Society.

Paris – 15-18 avril 2019. Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art.

15. Plato's Sophist. 2024.

Thirteenth Symposium Platonicum, Athens, GA, USA (Jul. 18-22, 2022).

Not yet published.

List of the Proceedings of the "Symposium Platonicum Pragense"

1. Havlíček, Aleš, and Karfík, Filip, eds. 1998. The Republic and the Laws of Plato. Prague: Oikoymenh.

First Symposium Platonicum Pragense.

2. ———, eds. 2001. Plato's Phaedo. Prague: Oikoymenh.

Second Symposium Platonicum Pragense.

3. ———, eds. 2003. Plato's Protagoras. Prague: Oikoymenh.

Third Symposium Platonicum Pragense.

4. ———, eds. 2005. Plato's Parmenides. Prague: Oikoymenh.

Fourth Symposium Platonicum Pragense.

5. Havlíček, Aleš, and Cajthaml, Martin, eds. 2007. Plato's Symposium. Prague: Oikoymenh.

Fifth Symposium Platonicum Pragense.

6. Havlíček, Aleš, Karfík, Filip, and Špinka, Štepán, eds. 2009. Plato's Theaetetus. Prague: Oikoymenh.

Sixth Symposium Platonicum Pragense.

7. Havlíček, Aleš, and Karfík, Filip, eds. 2011. Plato's Sophist. Prague: Oikoymenh.

Seventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense.

Contents: Preface 7; Thomas Alexander Szlezák: Die Aufgabe des Gastes aus Elea. Zur Bedeutung der Eingangsszene des Sophistes (216a–218a) 11; Francesco Fronterotta: Some Remarks on the Senses of Being in the Sophist 35; Francisco J. Gonzalez: Being as Power in Plato’s Sophist and Beyond 63; Walter Mesch: Die Bewegung des Seienden in Platons Sophistes 96; Filip Karfík: Pantelôs on and megista genê (Plato, Soph. 242c–259b) 120; Noburu Notomi: Dialectic as Ars Combinatoria: Plato’s Notion of Philosophy in the Sophist 146; Luc Brisson: Does Dialectic always Deal with the Intelligible? A Reading of the Sophist (253d5–e1) 156; Aleš Havlíček: Die Aufgabe der Dialektik für die Auslegung des Seins des Nichtseienden 173; Nestor-Luis Cordero: Une conséquence inattendue de l’assimilation du non-être à « l’Autre » dans le Sophiste 188; Denis O’Brien: The Stranger’s “Farewell” (258e6–259a1) 199; Štěpán Špinka: Das Sein des Nicht-Seins. Einige Thesen zur strukturellen Ontologie im Dialog Sophistes 221; Christoph Ziermann: La négativité de l’être chez Platon 240; David Ambuel: The Coy Eristic: Defining the Image that Defines the Sophist 278; Francisco L. Lisi: Ποιητικὴ τέχνη in Platons Sophistes 311; Jakub Jinek: Die Verschiedenheit der Menschentypen in Platons Sophistes 328; T. D. J. Chappell: Making Sense of the Sophist : Ten Answers to Ten Questions 344; Index locorum 377.

8. Havlíček, Aleš, Jirsa, Jakub, and Thein, Karel, eds. 2013. Plato's Statesman. Prague: Oikoymenh.

Eighth Symposium Platonicum Pragense.

9. Jirsa, Jakub, Karfík, Filip, and Špinka, Štepán, eds. 2016. Plato's Philebus. Prague: Oikoymenh.

Ninth Symposium Platonicum Pragense.

10. Karfík, Filip, and Špinka, Štepán, eds. 2018. Plato's Timaeus. Prague: Oikoymenh.

Tenth Symposium Platonicum Pragense.

Contents: Preface VII; Acknowledgments IX; Tanja Ruben: Genos, chōra et guerre dans le prologue du Timée-Critias 1; Lucius Hartmann: Die grosse Rede des Timaios – ein Beispiel wahrer Rhetorik? 22; Francesco Fronterotta: Panteles zōion e pantelōs on : Vita, anima e movimento intellegibile nel Timeo (e nel Sofista ) 49; Luc Brisson: How to Make a Soul in the Timaeus 70; Karel Thein: Planets and Time: A Timaean Puzzle 92; István M. Bodnár: The Day, the Month, and the Year: What Plato Expects from Astronomy 112; Ondřej Krása: Bodies and Space in the Timaeus 131; George Karamanolis: Does Plato Advance a Bundle Theory in the Timaeus ? 149; Gerd Van Riel: Matter Doesn’t Matter: On the Status of Bodies in the Timaeus (30a–32b and 53c–61c) 169; Marwan Rashed: An Unnoticed Analogy between the Timaeus and the Laws 187; Filip Karfík: What is Perceptible in Plato’s Timaeus ? 213; Gábor Betegh: Plato on Illness in the Phaedo , the Republic , and the Timaeus 228; Chad Jorgenson: Responsibility, Causality, and Will in the Timaeus 259; Index Locorum 275-283.

11. Mikeš, Vladimír, ed. 2022. Plato’s Cratylus. Leiden: Brill.

Eleventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense.

Contents: Preface – Making Sense of the Cratylus VII; Acknowledgments X; List of Tables XI;

1. Steffen Lund Jørgensen: The Opening of Plato’s Cratylus. A Prelude to a Socratic Reading of the Dialogue 1; 2. Francesco Ademollo: Why the Cratylus Matters, or: Plato’s Cratylus and the Philosophy of Language 26; 3. Francesco Aronadio: Intentionality and Referentiality in Plato’s Cratylus 48; 4. Vladimír Mikeš: What Remains of Socrates’ Naturalist Theory Once Conventionalism Is Accepted 65; 5. Anna Pavani: Forms and Names. On Cratylus 389a5– 390a10 90; 6. Jakub Jinek: Platons Theologie der Götternamen 107; 7. Olof Pettersson: Commerce, Theft and Deception. The Etymology of Hermes in Plato’s Cratylus 124; 8. Mariapaola Bergomi: Gorgias and the Cratylus 144; 9. Frédérique Ildefonse: Quelques Différences entre le Cratyle et le Sophiste 163; 10. Filip Karfík: A Theory of Language between the Cratylus , the Theaetetus and the Sophist 179; Index Locorum 191-198.

12. Plato's Gorgias. 2023.

Twelfth Symposium Platonicum Pragense, Prague, November 13-15, 2019.

Not yet published.

13. Plato's Phaedrus. 2025.

Thirteenth Symposium Platonicum Pragense, Prague, November 3-5, 2021.

Not yet published.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Proceedings of the Symposium Aristotelicum

List of the Proceedings of the "Symposium Aristotelicum"

1. Düring, Ingemar, and Owen, Gwilym Ellis Lane, eds. 1960. Aristotle and Plato in the Mid-Fourth Century. Göteborg: Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia.

Papers of the [First] Symposium Aristotelicum held at Oxford in August 1957.

Contents G. E. L. Owen: Preface VII;

SECTION I

David Ross: The development of Aristotle's thought 1;

SECTION II.

O. Gigon: Prolegomena to an edition of the Eudemus 19;

SECTION III

I. Düring: Aristotle on ultimate principles from 'nature and reality': Prolrepticus fr. 13 35;

S. Mansion: Contemplation and action in Aristotle's Protrepticus 56;

E. de Stricker: On the first section of fr. 5 a of the Protrepticus 76;

SECTION IV

R. Walzer: Aristotle, De Philosophia fr. 24 in the Arabic tradition 105;

SECTION V

P. Moraux: From the Protrepticus to the dialogue On Justice 113;

SECTION Vl

D. J. Allan: Aristotle and the Parmenides 133;

G. R. Morrow: Aristotle's comments on Plato's Laws 145;

SECTION VII

G. E. L. Owen: Logic aud metaphysics in some earlier works of Aristotle 163;

D. A. Rees: Theories of the soul in the early Aristotle 191;

J. B. Skemp: 201;

F. Solmsen: Platonic influences iu the formation of Aristotle's physical system 213;

G. Verbeke: Υίη and υποδοχή. Plutarch and the development of Aristotle 236;

C. J. De Vogel: The legend of the Platonizing Aristotle 248;

P. Wilpert: The fragments of Aristotle's lost writings 257;

Index of passages 267; Index of subjects 275-279.

2. Aristote et les problèmes de méthode. 1961. Louvain: Publications universitaires.

[Deuxième] Symposium Aristotelicum, tenu à Louvain du 24 août au 1er septembre 1960.

Table des matières: Avant-Propos V-VI; Liste des participants VII;

Section 1. Problemes généraux.

Pierre Aubenque: Sur Ie notion aristotelicienne d'aporie 3; Joseph Moreau: Aristote et la verité antéprédicative 21; Suzanne Mansion: Le rôle de l'exposé et de la critique des philosophies anterieures chez Aristote 35; Augustin Mansion: L'origine du syllogisme et la théorie de la science chez Aristote 57; G. E. L. Owen: Tithenai ta Phainomena 83;

Section II. La méthode en métaphysique.

Gerard Verbeke: Démarches de la réflexion métaphysique chez Aristote 107; Olof Gigon: Methodische Probleme in der Metaphysik des Aristoteles 131; C. J. de Vogel: La méthode d'Aristote en métaphysique

d'apres Métaphysique A 1-2 147;

Section III. La méthode en philosophie naturelle.

Paul Moraux: La méthode d'Aristote dans l'éetude du ciel ( De Caelo I 1 - II 12) 173; D. M. Balme: Aristotle's use of differentiae in Zoology 195; Ingemar Düring: Aristotle's melthod in biology. A note on De Part. An. I 1, 639 b 30-640 a 2 213; Heinrich Dörrie: Gedanken zur Methodik des Aristoteles in der Schrift Περὶ Ψυχῆς 223;

Section IV. La méthode en éthique.

J. Donald Monan: Two methodological aspects of moral knowledge in the Nicomachean Ethics 247; W. Gerson Rabinowitz: Ethica Nicomachea II 1-6: Academic eleaticism and the critical formulation of Aristotle's discussion of moral virtue 273; D. J. Allan: Quasi-mathematical method in the Eudemian Ethics 303;

Section V. Aristote et son école.

F. Werli: Aristoteles in der Sicht seiner Schule, Platonisches und Vorplatonisches 321;

Table des références aux textes d' Aristote 337; Table des noms cités 353; Table des matières 361-362.

3. Owen, Gwilym Ellis Lane, ed. 1968. Aristotle on Dialectic: The Topics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Proceedings of the Third Symposium Aristotelicum, Oxford, 1963.

Contents: The Text.

Jacqus Brunschwig: Observations sur Ies manuscrits parisiens des Topiques 3; W. J. Verdenius: Notes on the Topics 22; Marion Soreth: Zu Topik E 7, 137a8-20 u n d b3-13 43;

Aristotle and Plato.

Friedrich Solmsen: Dialectic without the Forms 49; Gilbert Ryle: Dialectic in the Academy 69; Joseph Moreau: Aristote et la dialectique platonicienne 80; C. J. de Vogel: Aristotle's Attitude to PIato and the Theory of Ideas according to the Topics 91; G: E. L. Owen: Dialectic and Eristic in the Treatment of the Forms 103; L. Elders: The Topics and the Platonic Theory of Principles of Being 126;

The Equipment of Aristotelian Dialectic.

É de Strycker: Concepts-clés et terminologie dans les livres II à VII des Topiques 141; W. A. de Pater: La fonction du lieu et de l'instrument dans les Topiques 164; Suzanne Mansion: Notes sur la doctrine des catégories dans les Topiques 189; Ingemar Düring: Aristotle's Use of Examples in the Topics 202;

The Subject Matter of Particular Books.

Olof Gigon: Topik III. 1-3 233; G. Verbeke: La notion de propriété dans les Topiques 257; Paul Moraux: La joute dialectique d'après le huitième livre des Topiques 277;

Indexes.

I. Index of Sources: (a) Aristotle and the Ancient Commentators 313; (b) Plato 333; (c) Other Ancient Authorities 337; II. Index of Technical Terms 340; III. Index of Persons and Subjects 342-346.

4. Düring, Ingemar, ed. 1969. Naturphilosophie bei Aristoteles und Theophrast. Heidelberg: Lothar Stiehm Verlag.

Verhandlungen des 4. Symposium Aristotelicum veranstaltet in Göteborg, August, 1966.

Inhalt: E. Berti: Physique et métaphysique selon Aristote; J. Bollack: Deux figures principales de l'atomisme d'après Aristote: l'entrecroisement des atomes et la sphère du feu; F. Dirlmeier: Physik IV 10; A. Eldel: 'Actione and 'Passion' : some Philosophical Reflections; K. von Fritz: Das ἀπείρων bei Aristoteles; D. J. Furley: Aristotle and the Atomists on Infinity; K. Gaiser: Das Zweifache Telos bei Aristotles; O. Gigon: Die ἀρχαὶ der Vorsokratiker bei Theophrast; S. Mansion: To σιμόν et la définition physique; J. Mau: Zur Methode der aristotelischen .Ableitung der Elementar-Körper; J. Moreau: Le temps et l'instant selon Aristote; G. R. Morrow: Qualitative Change in Aristotle's Physics; K. Oehler: Die systematische lntegration der aristotelischen Metaphysik; J. Owens: The Aristotelian Argument for the Material Principle of Bodies; G. A. Seeck: Leicht-schwer und der Unbewegte Beweger; J. B. Skemp: P. Steinmetz: The Metaphysics of Theophrastus in Relation to the Doctrine of κίνησις in Plato s Later Dialogues; Ansatzpunkte der Elementenlehre Theopkrasts im Werk des Aristoteles; G. Verbeke: L'argument du livre VII de la Physique. Une impasse philosophique; W. J. Verdenius: Critical and exegetical Notes on De Caelo; H. Wagner: Einige schwierige Partien aus der aristotelischen Physikvorlesung,

5. Moraux, Paul, and Harlfinger, Dieter, eds. 1971. Untersuchungen zur Eudemischen Ethik. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Akten des 5. Symposium Aristotelicum, Oosterbeek, Niederlande, 21.-29. August 1969.

Inhaltverzeichnis:Vorwort VII; Fünftes Symposium Aristotelicum, Teilnehmerverzeichnis IX-X;

Dieter Harlfinger: Die Überlieferungsgeschichte der Eudemischen Ethik 1; Jean M. Mingay: Some controversial passages in the Eudemian Ethics 51; Donald J. Allan: The fine and the good in the Eudemian Ethics 63; C. J. Rowe: The meaning of φρόνησις in the Eudemian Ethics 73; Olof Gigon: Das Prooimion der Eudemischen Ethik 93; G. Verbeke: La critique des idées dans l' Ethique Eudémienne 135; Enrcio Berti: Multiplicité et unité du bien selon E E 1 8 157; David B. Robinson: Ends and means and logical priority 185; Enrico Berti: Réponse ä D. B . Robinson 195; Jacques Brunschwig: EE I 8, 1218 a 15-32 et le περί τάγαθοϋ 197; Jseph Moreau: Τέλος et αρετή d'apres EE II 1, et la tradition platonicienne 223; D. A. Rees: „Magnanimity" in the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics 231; Jean-Claude Fraissé: Αύτάρκεια et φιλία en E E VII 12 , 1244 b 1 - 1245 b 19 245; Paul Moraux: Das Fragment VIII 1. Text und Interpretation 253; W. J. Verdenius: Human reason and God in the Eudemian Ethics 285; Index locorum 299; Index nominum et rerum 311-317.

6. Aubenque, Pierre, ed. 1979. Études sur la Métaphysique d'Aristote. Paris: Vrin.

Actes du VI. Symposium Aristotelicum, Cerisy-la-Salle, 1972.

Table des matières: Pierre Aubenque: Avant-propos 5; Dieter Harlfinger: Zur Überlieferungsgeschichte der Metaphysik 7; Günter Patzig: Logical aspects of some arguments in Aristotle's Metaphysics 37; Émile de Strycker: Notes sur les relations entre la problématique du Sophiste de Platon et celle de la Métaphysique d'Aristote 49; Pierre Aubenque: La pensée de la substantialité dans la Métaphysique ( Zeta 17 et Theta 10) 69; Enrico Berti: Le problème de la substantialité de l'être et de l'un dans la Métaphysique 89; Jacques Brunschwig: La forme, prédicat de la matière? 131; Vianney Décarie: Le livre Z et la substance immatérielle 167; Suzanne Mansion: La notion de matière en Métaphysique , Z 10 et 11 185; Joseph Owens: The relation of God to world in the Metaphysics 207; J. B. Skemp: The activity of immobility 229; Maurice de Gandillac: Plotin et la Métaphysique d'Aristote 247; Index des noms: A) Auteurs anciens 265; B) Auteur modernes 265; Index des passages cités d'Aristote 269-273.

7. Lloyd, Geoffrey Ernest Richard, and Owen, Gwilym Ellis Lane, eds. 1979. Aristotle on Mind and the Senses. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Aristotelicum, Cambridge, 1975.

Contents: Preface VII; List of participants IX; S. 1. Mansion: Soul and life in the De anima 1; 2. Charles Lefèvre: Sur le statut de l'âme dans le De anima et le Parva naturalia 21; 3. Andreas Graeser: Om Aristotle's framework of Sensibilia 69; 4. M. Schofield: Aristotle on the imagination 99; 5. Enrico Berti: The intellection of indivisibles according to Aristotle De anima III 6 141; 6. David J. Furley: Self movers 165; 7. J. B. Skemp: ὄρεξῐς in De Anima III 10 181; 8. G. Verbeke: Doctrine du pneuma et entelechisme chez Aristote 191; 9. G. E. R. Lloyd: The empirical basis of the physiology of the Parva Naturalia 215; 10. Jürgen Wiesner: The unity of the De Somno and the physiological explanation of sleep in Aristotle 241; 11. Paul Moraux: Le De Anima dan la tradition Grecque: quelques aspects de l'interpretation du traité de Theophraste à Themistius 281; I Index of sources 325; II Index of technical terms 347; III Index of persons and subjects 348-362.

8. Berti, Enrico, ed. 1981. Aristotle on Science: The Posterior Analytics. Padova: Antenore.

Proceedings of the Eight Symposium Aristotelicum, Padua from September 7 to 15, 1978.

Proceedings of the Eighth Symposium Aristotelicum held in Padua from September 7 to 15, 1978.

Contents: Foreword 1; List of participants 3; Proceedings of previous Symposia 5;

1. Jonathan Barnes: Proof and the Syllogism 17; 2. Jacques Brunschwig: L'objet et la structure des Seconds Analytiques d'après Aristote 61; 3. M. F. Burnyeat: Aristotle on Understanding Knowledge 97; 4. Günther Patzig: Erkenntnisgründe, Realgründe und Erklärungen (zu An. post. A 13) 141; 5. A. C. Lloyd: Necessity and Essence in the Posterior Analytics 137; 6. Mario Mignucci: On epi to polu et nécessaire dans la conception aristotélicienne de la science 173; 7. Richard Sorabji: Definitions: Why Necessary and in What Way? 205; 8. Wolfgang Kullmann: Die Funktion der mathematischen Beispiele in Aristoteles' Analytica posteriora 245; 9. Walter Leszl: Mathematics, Axiomatization and the Hypotheses 271; 10. S. Mansion: La signification de l'universel d'après An. post. I 1 329; 11. W. J. Verdenius: Notes on Some Passages from Book I 343; 12. J. L. Ackrill: Aristotle’s Theory of Definition: Some Questions on Posterior Analytics II 8-10 339; 13. Charles H. Kahn: The Role of nous in the Cognition of First Principles in Posterior Analytics II 19 385;

Index of proper names 417; Index of Aristotelian texts 423.

9. Moraux, Paul, and Wiesner, Jürgen, eds. 1983. Zweifelhaftes im Corpus Aristotelicum. Studien zu einigen Dubia. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Akten des IX. Symposium Aristotelicum, Berlin, 7.-16. September 1981.

Inhalstverzeichnis: Vorwort VII; Neuntes Symposium Aristotelicum, Teilnehmerverzeichnis IX-X; Michael Frede: Titel, Einheit und Echtheit der aristotelischen Kategorienschrift 1; Andreas Graeser: Aspekte der Ontologie in der Kategorienschrift 30; Bertrand Dumoulin: L’ousia dans les Catégories et dans la Métaphysique 57; David J. Furley: The Mechanics of Metereologica IV. A Prolegomenon to Biology 73; Hans Strohm: Beobachtungen zum vierten Buch der aristotelischen Meteorologie 94; Martha Nussbaum: The “Common Explanation” of Animal Motion 116; Gudrun Vuillemin-Diem: Anmerkungen zum Pasikles-Bericht und zu Echtheitszweifeln am größeren und kleineren Alpha in Handschriften und Kommentaren 157; Olof Gigon: Versuch einer Interpretation von Metaphysik Alpha Elatton 193; Thomas A. Szlezäk: Alpha Elatton: Einheit und Einordnung in die Metaphysik 221; Enrico Berti: La fonction de Métaph. Alpha Elatton dans la philosophie d’Aristote 260; Vianney Décarie: L’authenticité du livre K de la Métaphysique 295; Pierre Aubenque: Sur l’inauthenticité du livre K de la Métaphysique 318; Anthony Kenny: A Stylometric Comparison between five disputed works and the remainder of the Aristotelian corpus 345; Index 367; Index locorum: Aristoteles 368; Auctores Graeci et Latini (praeter Aristotelem) 383; Index nominum et rerum 388; Corrigenda 402.

10. Graeser, Andreas, ed. 1987. Mathematik und Metaphysik bei Aristoteles / Mathematics and Metaphysics in Aristotle. Bern, Stuttgart: P. Haupt.

Akten des X. Symposium Aristotelicum, Sigriswil, 6.-12. September 1984.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Vorwort 5; Zehntes Symposium Aristotelicum, Teilnehmerverzeichnis 9; Enrico Berti: Les livres M et N dans la genese et la transmission de la Métaphysique 11; Christian Rutten: Métaphysique M et N. Essai de chronologie relative 33; Tuomas Alexander Szlezák: Die Lückenhaftigkeit der akademischen Prinzipientheorien nach Aristoteles' Darstellung in Metaphysik M und N 45; Gail Fine: Forms as Causes: Plato and Aristotle 69; Günther Patzig: Das Programm von Mund seine Ausführung 113; Julia Annas: Die Gegenstände der Mathematik bei Aristoteles 131; Jonathan Lear: Active Episteme 149; Mario Mignucci: Aristotle's Arithmetic 175; M. R. Burnyeat: Platonism and Mathematics. A Prelude to Discussion 213; Ian Mueller: Aristotle's Approach to the Problem of Principles in Metaphysics M and N 241; Margherit Isnardi Parente, TA META TAΣIΔΕΑΣ: Figures idéales ou premières figures? 261; Janine Bertier: Les preuves de la realité des nombres et la théorie des idées d'après Metaphysique N2, 1090a 2-3, 1090b 5 281; Index 311; Index locorum: Aristoteles 312; Index locorum: Auctores. Graeci et Latini (praeter Aristotelem) 323; Index Nominum 328-332.

11. Patzig, Günther, ed. 1990. Aristoteles Politik. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Akten des XI. Symposium Aristotelicum: Friedrichshafen/Bodensee, 25.8.-3.9.1987.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Verzeichnis der Teilnehmer IX; Friihere Veroffentlichungen der Symposia Aristotelica XI;

Malcolm Schofield: Ideology and Philosophy in Aristotele's Theory of Slavery 1; Charles H. Kahn: Comments on M. Schofield 28; Gerhard Seel: Die Rechtfertigung von Herrschaft in der ,,Politik" des Aristoteles 32; Theodor Ebert: Bemerkungen zu G. Seel 63; Terence Irwin: The Good of Political Activity 73; Gisela Striker: Comments on T. Irwin 100; Richard Bodéûs: Savoir politique et savoir philosophique 102; Pierre Pellegrin: Naturalité, excellence, diversité. Politique et biologie chez Aristote 125; Martha C. Nussbaum: Nature, Function, and Capability: Aristotle on Political Distribution 153; David Charles: Comments on M. Nussbaum 188; Carnes Lord: Politics and Education in Aristotle's "Politics" 203; David A. Rees: Comments on C. Lord 217;John M. Cooper: Political Animals and Civic Friendship 221; Julia Annas: Comments on J. Cooper 243; Jonathan Barnes: Aristotle and Political Liberty 250; Richard Sorabji: Comments on J. Barnes: State Power: Aristotle and Fourth Century Philosophy 265; Christoph Eucken: Der aristotelische Demokratiebegriff und sein historisches Umfeld 278; Terence Irwin: Comments on Christoph Eucken 293; Carlo Natali: Aristote et la chrématistique 297; Günther Bien: Die Wirkungsgeschichte der aristotelischen ,, Politik '' 325; Wolfgang Kullmann: Bemerkungen zu G. Bien 357; Charles H. Kahn: The Normative Structure of Aristotle's "Politics" 369;

Indizes

Index locorum: Aristoteles 385; Index locorum: Auctores Graeci et Latin 403; Index Nominum 407-411.

12. Furley, David, and Nehamas, Alexander, eds. 1994. Aristotle's Rhetoric. Philosophical Essays. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Proceedings of the Twelfth Symposium Aristotelicum, Princeton, 1990.

Contents: David J. Furley: Preface VII-IX; Alexander Nehmas: Introduction XI-XIV; M.F. Burnyeat: Enthymeme: Aristotle on the logic of persuasion 3; Jacques Brunschwig: Rhétorique et dialectique, Rhétorique et Topiques 57; Eckart Schütrumpf: Some observations on the introduction to Aristotle's Rhetoric 99; Jürgen Sprute: Aristotle and the legitimacy of rhetoric 117; Mary Margaret McCabe: Arguments in context: Aristotle's defense of rhetoric 129; Glenn W. Most: The uses of Endoxa : philosophy and rhetoric in the Rhetoric 167; John M. Cooper: Ethical-political theory in Aristotle's Rhetoric 191; Stephen Halliwell: Popular morality, philosophical ethics, and the Rhetoric 211; Jean-Louis Labarrière: L'Orateur politique face à ses contraintes 231; Alexander Nehamas: Pity and fear in the Rhetoric and the Poetics 257; André Laks: Substitution et connaissance: une interprétation unitaire (ou presque) de la théorie aristotélicienne de la métaphore 283; Contributors 307; Index Locorum 309; Index Nominum 321-322.

13. [Aristotle's De interpretatione]. 1994.

Unpublished.

"The XIIIth meeting of the Symposium Aristotelicum, which took place in 1993 on the De Interpretatione , had a very strange and very sad history. True enough, it took place in the enchanting decor of the Certosa di Pontignano, near Siena; and, as usual, it offered contributions and discussions of the highest order. But this time the publication of the papers met with insurmountable obstacles. It had been initially entrusted to Mario Mignucci and Michael Frede, two of the most faithful and devoted participants in the Symposium. Most infortunately, however, they were both wrenched from our admiration and affection, Mario Mignucci in 2004, after a protracted and merciless disease, Michael Frede in 2007, owing to an unpredictable, sudden accident. The inevitable ensuing delay for the publication of the XIIIth Symposium has not been caught up with so far and those members of the Organization Committee whom I have been able to contact told me that, in their opinion, it ran a strong risk of never being caught up at all, alas." (p. 35)

Jacques Brunschwig, Le chapitre 1 du 'De Interpretatione'. Aristote, Ammonius et nous , Laval Philosophique et Théologique, 64, 2008, pp. 35-87.

14. Frede, Michael, and Charles, David, eds. 2000. Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Proceedings of the Fourteenth Symposium Aristotelicum, Oxford, 1996.

Contents: List of Contributors IX; Michael Frede: Introdcution 1; Michael Frede: Metaphysics Λ 1 53; 2. David Charles: Metaphysics Λ 2 81; 3. Lindsay Judson: Metaphysics Λ 3 111; 4. Michel Crubeller: Metaphysics Λ 4 137; 5. Alan CDode: Metaphysics Λ 5 161; 6. Enrcio Berti: Metaphysics Λ 6 181; André Laks: Metaphysics Λ 7 207; 8. G. E. R. Lloyd: Metaphysics Λ 8 245; 9. Jacques Brunschwig: Metaphysics Λ 9: A Short-Lived Experiment? 275; 10. Aryeh Kosman: Metaphysics Λ 9: Divine Thought 307; 11. David Sedley: Metaphysics Λ 10 327; Bibliography 351; Index Locorum 359; Index Nominum 363; General Index 365.

15. Haas, Frans de, and Mansfeld, Jaap, eds. 2004. Aristotle: On generation and corruption, Book 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Proceedings of the Fiftheenth Symposium Aristotelicum, Deurne, the Netherlands, 21 to 28 August 1999.

Contents: List of Contributors IX; Editor’s Introduction 1; M. F. Burnyeat: Introduction: Aristotle on the Foundations of Sublunary Physics 7; 1. Jacques Brunschwig: On Generation and Corruption I. 1: A False Start? 25; 2. David Sedley: On Generation and Corruption I.2 65; 3. Keimpe Algra: On Generation and Corruption I. 3: Substantial Change

and the Problem of Not-Being 91; 4. Sarah Broadie: On Generation and Corruption I. 4: Distinguishing Alteration 123; 5. David Charles: Simple Genesis and Prime Matter 151; 6. Alan Code: On Generation and Corruption I. 5 171; 7. Carlo Natali: On Generation and Corruption I. 6 195; 8. Christian Wildberg: On Generation and Corruption I. 7: Aristotle on poiein and paschein 219; 9. Edward Hussey: On Generation and Corruption I. 8 243; 10. Michel Crubellier: On Generation and Corruption I. 9 267; 11. Dorothea Frede: O n Generation and Corruption I. 10: On Mixture and Mixables 289; 12. John M. Cooper: A Note on Aristotle on Mixture 315; References 327; Index Locorum Potiorum 331; Index Nominum et Rerum 345-347.

16. Crubellier, Michel, and Laks, André, eds. 2009. Aristotle: Metaphysics Beta. New York: Oxford University Press.

Proceedings of the Sixteenth Symposium Aristotelicum, Lille, 20–24 August 2002.

Contents: List of participants VIII; Michel Crubellier and André Laks: Introduction 1; 1. André Laks: Aporia Zero (Metaphysics, B 1, 995a 24–995b 4) 25; 2. Michel Crubellier: Aporiai 1–2 47; 3. Frans A. J. de Haas: Aporiai 3–5 73; 4. Enrico Berti: Aporiai 6–7 105; 5. Sarah Broadie: Aporia 8 135; 6. Christian Wildberg: Aporiai 9–10 151; 7. Walter Cavini: Aporia 11 175; 8. Ian Mueller: Aporia 12 (and 12 bis) 189; 9. Stephen Menn: Aporiai 13–14 211; Bibliography 267; Index locorum 273; Index of Modern Names 289; General Index 292.

17. Natali, Carlo, ed. 2009. Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, Book 7. New York: Oxford University Press.

Seventeenth Symposium Aristotelicum, Venezia, 11-16 luglio 2005.

Contents: List of Contributors VIII; Carlo Natali: Editor's Introduction 1; 1. John M. Cooper: Nicomachean Ethics VII, 1-2: Introduction, Method, Puzzles 9; 2. David Charles: Nicomachean Ethics VII, 3: Varieties of akrasia 41; 3. Hendrik Lorenz: Nicomachean Ethics VII, 4: Plain and Qualified akrasia 72; 4. Carlo Natali: Nicomachean Ethics VII, 5-6: Beastliness, Irascibility, akrasia 103; 5. Chris Borononic: Nicomachean Ethics VII, 7: Akrasia and Self-Control 130; 6. Sarah Broadie: Nicomachean Ethics VII, 8-9 (1151b 22): Akrasia, enkrateiea , and Look-Alikes 157; 7. Teun Tieleman: Nicomachean Ethics VII, 8 (1151b 23)-10: (In)Continence in Context 173; 8. Dorothea Frede: Nicomachean Ethics VII, 11-12: Pleasure 183; 9. Christo Rapp: Nicomachean Ethics VII, 13-14 (1154a 21): Pleasure and eudaimonia 209; 10. Gwenaelle Aubry: Nicomachean Ethics VII, 14 (1154 a22 - b34): The Pain of Living and Divine Pleasure 237; Bibliography 265; Index locorum 271; Index nominum 287; General Index 291.

18. Steel, Carlos, ed. 2012. Aristotle's Metaphysics Alpha. New York: Oxford University Press.

Proceedings of the Eighteenth Symposium Aristotelicum, Leuven, 7th to 13th July 2008, with a new critical edition of the Greek Text by Oliver Primavesi.

Contents: List of Participants IX; 1. Giuseppe Cambiano: The Desire to Know { Metaphysics A1) 1; 2. Sarah Broadie: A Science of First Principles { Metaphysics A2) 43; 3. Rachel Barney: History and Dialectic ( Metaphysics A3, 983*24 - 984b8) 69; 4. Gábor Betegh: ' The Next Principle ' ( Metaphysics A3-4, 984b8 - 985b22) 105; 5. Malcolm Schofield: Pythagoreanism: emergingfrom the Presocratic fog { Metaphysics A5) 141; 6. Carlos Steel: Plato as seen hy Aristotle ( Metaphysics A 6) 167; 7. Stephen Menn: Critique of Earlier Philosophers on the Good and the Causes ( Metaphysics A7-A8 989a18) 201; 8. Oliver Primavesi: Second thoughts on some Presocratics ( Metaphysics A8, 989a18 - 990a32) 225; 9. Dorothe Frede: The Doctrine of Forms under Critique — PART I ( Metaphysics A9, 990a33-991b9) 265; 10. Dorothea Frede: The Doctrine of Forms under Critique - PART II ( Metaphysics A9, 991b9 - 993b10) 297; 11. Michel Crubellier: Conclusion - and Retrospect ( Metaphysics A10) 335; 12. John M. Cooper: Bibliography 365-383;

Aristotle, Metaphysics A: A New Critical Edition with Introduction 385;

Oliver Primavesi: Introduction: The Transmission of the Text and the Riddle of the Two Versions 387;

Bibliography 459-464;

Oliver Primavesi: Text of Metaphysics A (and of the corresponding parts of M 4-3) 465;

Index of Names 517; Index locorum 521; General Index 534-541.

19. Rapp, Christopher, and Primavesi, Oliver, eds. 2020. Aristotle's De Motu Animalium. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nineteenth Symposium Aristotelicum, Munich, 16–22 July, 2011.

Contents: Preface VII; List of Participants IX; Christof Rapp: Introduction Part I: The Argument of De Motu Animalium 67; Oliver Primavesi: Introduction Part II: The Text of De Motu Animalium 67; Oliver Primavesi, Benjamin Morison: A New Critical Edition of the Greek Text with an English Translation 159; Christof Rapp: I. The Inner Resting Point and the Common Cause of Animal Motion: MA 1 203; II. Ursula Cope: Animal and Celestial Motion: the Role of an External Springboard: MA 2–3 240; III. Benjamin Morison: Completing the Argument that Locomotion Requires an External and Unmoved Mover: MA 4–5 273; IV. Klaus Corcilius: Resuming Discussion of the Common Cause of Animal Self-Motion: How Does the Soul Move the Body? MA 6 299; V. John M. Cooper: The Role of Thought in Animal Voluntary Self-Locomotion: MA 7 (through 701b1) 345; VI. R.J. Hankinson: Aristotle and the Mechanics of Desire: MA 7 (from 701b2) – 8 387; VII. Pavel Gregoric: The Origin and the Instrument of Animal Motion: MA 9 - 10 416; VIII. Pierre-Marie Morel: Voluntary or Not? The Physiological Perspective: MA 11 445; IX. André Laks: Articulating the De Motu Animalium: The Place of the Treatise within the Corpus Aristotelicum 475; Bibliography 497; Index Locorum 521; Index of Names 545.

20. Ierodiakonou, Katerina, Kalligas, Paul, and Karasmanis, Vassilis, eds. 2019. Aristotle's Physics Alpha. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Twentieth Symposium Aristotelicum, Delphi 26 July - 2 August 2014.

Contents: List of Participants IX; Symposium Aristotelicum X; Carlo Natali: Introduction: Some General Remarks on Aristotle's Physics I 1; I. Stephen Menn: Physics I 1: The Path to the Principles 19; 2. Michel Crubellier: Physics I 2: Lookingfor a Starting Point - The Eleatic Paradox Put to Good Use 53; 3. Diana Quarantotto: Physics I 3: Towards the Principles-Resolving the Eleatics' Arguments for Absolute Monism 89; 4. Gábor Betegh: Physics I 4: One and Many 124; 5. Sylvain Delcomminette: Physics I 5: Principles and Contraries 156; 6. Andreas Anagnostopoulos: Physics I 6: A Third and Underlying Principle 190; 7. Benjamin Morison: Physics I 7, Part 1: The Complexity of the Subject in a Change 229; 8. Hendrik Lorenz: Physics I 7, Part 2: The Principles of Natural Things - Two or Three? 262; 9. Mariska Leunissen: Physics I 8: The Route to Solving the Eleatic Puzzle 286; 10. Sarah Broadie: Physics I 9: Responding to the Platonists 302; Bibliography 341; Index of Names 351; Index of Passages 356.

21. Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics. 2023.

Twenty-first Symposium Aristotelicum, Athens, GA, USA (July 23-29, 2017).

Not yet published.

22. Aristotle's Categories. 2025.

Twenty-second Symposium Aristotelicum, Oslo (August 8-14, 2022).

Not yet published.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Proceedings of the Symposium Hellenisticum

List of the Proceedings of the "Symposium Hellenisticum"

1. Schofield, Malcolm, Burnyeat, Myles, and Barnes, Jonathan, eds. 1980. Doubt and Dogmatism. Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

First Symposium Hellenisticum, Oxford, 1978.

Contents: G. E. L. Owen: Preface V; Acknowledgements VII; Note to the Reader XI-XII; 1. David Sedley: The Protagonists 1; 2. M. F. Burnyeat: Can the Sceptic Live his Scepticism? 20; 3. Gisela Striker: Sceptical Strategies 54; 4. Julia Annas: Truth and Knowledge 84; 5. C.C. W. Taylor: 'All Perceptions are True' 105; 6. Jacques Brunschwig: Proof Defined 125; 7. Jonathan Barnes: Proof Destroyed: 161; 8. Claude Imbert: Stoic Logic and Alexandrian Poetics 182; 9. Michel Frede: The Original Notion of Cause 217; 10. Richard Sorabji: Causation, Laws, and Necessity 250; 11. Malcolm Schofield: Preconception, Argument, and God 283; Select Bibliography 309; Index Locorum 317; Index of Greek Words 333; General Index 335-342.

2. Barnes, Jonathan, Brunschwig, Jacques, Burnyeat, Myles, and Schofield, Malcolm, eds. 1982. Science and Speculation. Studies in Hellenistic Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Second Symposium Hellenisticum, Paris, 1980.

Contents: Victor Goldschmidt: Preface IX; Acknowledgements XVII; Jonathan Barnes: Introduction XIX; Bibliographical note XXV; Chronological table XXVII; 1. Michael Frede: The method of the so-called Methodical school of medicine 1; 2. Jonathan Barnes: Medicine, experience and logic 24; 3. Ian Mueller: Geometry and scepticism 69; 4. François De Gandt: Force et science des machines 96; 5. G. E. R. Lloyd: Observational error in later Greek science 128; 6. A. A. Long: Astrology: arguments pro and contra 165; 7. M. F. Burnyeat: The origins of non-deductive inference 193; 8. David Sedley: On Signs 239; 9. Jean-Paul Dumont: Confirmation et disconfirmation 273; 10. Victor Goldschmidt: La théorie épicurienne du droit 304; Indexes (i) Passages 327, (ii) General index 341, (iii) Index and glossary of Greek terms 349-351.

3. Schofield, Malcolm, and Striker, Gisela, eds. 1986. The Norms of Nature. Studies in Hellenistic Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Third Symposium Hellenisticum, Bad Homburg, 1983.

Contents: Acknowledgements; G. Patzig: Preface;

Part I. Argument, belief and emotion.

1. J. Annas: Doing without objective values: ancient and modern strategies 3; 2. M. Nussbaum: 2 Therapeutic arguments: Epicurus and Aristotle 31; 3. D. Furley: Nothing to us? 75; 4. M. Frede: The Stoic doctrine of the affections of the soul 93;

Part II. Ethical foundations and the summum bonum.

5. J. Brunschwig: The cradle argument in Epicureanism and Stoicism 113; 6. T. Engberg-Pedersen: Discovering the good: oikeiosis and katheconta in Stoic ethics 145; 7. G. Striker: Antipater, or the art of living 185; 8. T. H. Irwin: Stoic and Aristotelian conceptions of happiness 205; 9. M. Hossenfelder: Epicurus - hedonist malgré lui 245;

Bibliography 265; Index of passages 271; Glossary of Greek and Latin terms 281;

General index 283.

4. Barnes, Jonathan, and Mignucci, Mario, eds. 1988. Matter and Metaphysics. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

Proceedings of the fourth Symposium Hellenisticum, Pontignano, Italy 1986.

Contents: Richard Sorabji: The Lays of Ancient Tuscany 9; Gabriele Giannantoni: Introduzione 11; Jacques Brunschwig: La théorie stoïcienne du genre suprême et l'ontologie platonicienne 19; Mario Mignucci: The Stoic notion of relatives 129; Jonathan Barnes: Bits and pieces 223; David Sedley: Epicurean anti-reductionism 295; Malcolm Schofield: The retrenchable present 329; Nicholas Denyer: Stoicism and token reflexivity 375; Anna Maria Ioppolo: Le cause antecedenti in Cicero De fato 40 397; Fernanda Decleva Caizzi: La "materia scorrevole". Sulle tracce di un dibattito perduto 425; Michael Wolff: Hipparchus and the Stoic theory of motion 471; Index locorum 549; Index of names 573; Index of subjects 581; Index of Greek and Latin terms 591-596.

5. Brunschwig, Jacques, and Nussbaum, Martha, eds. 1993. Passions and Perceptions. Studies in Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fifth Symposium Hellenisticum, Champagnole, 1989.

Contents: Preface IX; Avant-propos XI-XII;

Part I. Ethics and Psychology of Edonism 1.

1. G. Striker: Epicurean hedonism 3; 2. A. Laks: Annicéris et les plaisirs psychiques: quelques préalables doxographiques 7;

Part II. Atomism and Epichurean Psychology 51.

3. J. Annas: Epicurus on agency 53; 4. D. Furley: Democritus and Epicurus on sensible qualities 72;

Part III. The Passions 95.

5. M. C. Nussbaum: Poetry and the passions: two Stoic views 97; 6. B. Inwood: Seneca and psychological dualism 150; 7. J. Hankinson: Actions and passions: affection, emotion and moral self-management in Galen's philosophical psychology 184;

Part IV. Stoic Psychological Concepts 223.

8. J.-L. Labarrière: De la 'nature phantastique' des animaux chez les Stoiciens 225; 9. C. Levy: Le concept de doxa des Stoiciens à Philon d'Alexandrie: essai d'étude diachronique 250; 10. P. Mitsis: Seneca on reason, rules and moral development 285; 11. D. Sedley: Chrysippus on psychophysical causality 313; Bibliography 332; Subject index 334; Name index 346; Index of passages cited 351-364..

6. Laks, André, and Schofield, Malcolm, eds. 1995. Justice and Generosity. Studies in Hellenistic Social and Political Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sixth Symposium Hellenisticum, Cambridge, 1992.

Contents: Preface IX; Introduction 1;

Part I. Political Philosophy: Development and Transformation.

1. David E. Hahm: Polybius' applied political theory 7; 2. Jean-Louis Ferrary: The statesman and the law in the political philosophy of Cicero 48; 3. Julia Annas: Aristotelian political theory in the Hellenistic period 74; 4. Carlo Natali: Oikonomia in Hellenistic political thought 95; 5. J. L. Moles: The Cynics and politics 129;

Part II. The Ethical Framework of Politics and Society.

6. Antonina Alberti: The Epicurean theory of law and justice 161; 7. Malcolm Schofield: Two Stoic approaches to justice 191; 8. A. A. Long: Cicero's politics in De officiis 213; 9. Brad Inwood: Politics and paradox in Seneca's De beneficiis 249; Bibliography 266; General index 280; Index of Greek and Latin words 285; Index of ancient names and philosophical schools 287; Index of passages 290-291.

7. Inwood, Brad, and Mansfeld, Jaap, eds. 1997. Assent and Argument. Studies in Cicero's Academic Books. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Seventh Symposium Hellenisticum, Cambridge, 1992.

Contents: Preface VII; Introduction IX-XI; M. Griffin: The composition of the Academica : motives and versions 1; W. Gõrler: Cicero's philosophical stance in the Lucullus 36; J. Glucker: Socrates in the Academic books and other Ciceronian works 58; T. Dorandi: Gli Academica quale fonte per la storia dell' Academia 89; K. A. Algra: Chrysippus, Carneades, Cicero: the ethical divisiones in Cicero's Lucullus 107; J. Barnes: Logic in Academica I and the Lucullus 140; R. J. Hankinson: Natural criteria and the transparency of judgement: Antiochus, Philo and Galen on epistemological justification 161; J. Allen: Carneadean argument in Cicero's Academic books 217; G. Striker: Academics fighting Academics 257; M. F. Burnyeat: Antipater and self-refutation: elusive arguments in Cicero's Academica 277; Index Nominum et rerum 311; Index locorum potiorum 316-323.

8. Frede, Dorothea, and Laks, André, eds. 2002. Traditions of Theology. Studies in Hellenistic Theology, Its Background and Aftermath. Leiden: Brill.

Eighth Symposium Hellenisticum, Villeneuve-d'Asq, 1998.

Contents: D. Frede, André Laks: Introduction VII-XIV; R. Sharples: Aristotelian Theology after Aristotle 1; D. Sedley: The Origins of Stoic God 41; D. Frede: Theodicy and Providential Care in Stoicism 85; B. Inwood: God and Human Knowledge in Seneca's Natural Questions 119; M. Erler: Epicurus as deus mortalis. Homoiosis theoi and Epicurean Self cultivation 159; D. Obbink: 'All Gods are True' in Epicurus 183; J. Dillon: Plutarch and God: Theodicy and Cosmogony in the Thought of Plutarch 223; E. Spinelli: Sesto Empirico e l'astrologia 239; D. Runia: The beginnings of the end: Philo of Alexandria and Hellenistic Theology 281; Indexes compiled by S. Fazzo and A. Laks: Index Nominum 317; Index Rerum 321; Index Locorum 325-348.

9. Frede, Dorothea, and Inwood, Brad, eds. 2005. Language and Learning. Philosophy of Language in the Hellenistic Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ninth Symposium Hellenisticum, Hamburg, 2001.

Contents: List of ontributors VII; Preface IX; List of abbreviations XI; Introduction 1; 1. J. Allen: The Stoics on the origin of language and the foundations of etymology 14; 2. A. A. Long: Stoic linguistics, Plato's Cratylus, and Augustine's De dialectica 36; 3. A. Verlinsky: Epicurus and his predecessors on the origin of language 56; 4. C. Atherton: Lucretius on what language is not 101; 5. I. Sluiter: Communicating Cynicism: Diogenes' gangsta rap 139; 6. C. Brittain: Common sense: concepts, definition and meaning in and out of the Stoa 164; 7. D. Blank: Varro's anti-analogist 210; 8.S. Bobzien: The Stoics on fallacies of equivocation 239; 9. J. Barnes: What is a disjunction? 274; 10. S. Ebbesen: Theories of language in the Hellenistic age and in the twelfth and thirteeenth centuries 299; References 320; Index nominum et rerum 336; Index locorum 341-353.

10. Ioppolo, Anna Maria, and Sedley, David, eds. 2007. Pyrrhonists, Patricians, Platonizers. Hellenistic Philosophy in the Period 155-86 BC. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

Tenth Symposium Hellenisticum, Roma, 2004.

Contents: A.M. Ioppolo and D. N. Sedley: Introduction 9; J.-L. Ferrary: Les philosophes grecs à Rome (155-86 A V. J.-C.) 17; D. E. Hahm: Critolaus and Late Hellenistic Peripatetic Philosophy 47; T. Tieleman: Panaetius' Place in the History of Stoicism with Special Reference to His Moral Psychology 103; F. Alesse: Il concetto di ousia nel pensiero metafisico e cosmologico di Posidonio: alcune considerazioni su F 92 e 96 EK (= 267 e 268 Th.) 143; J. Annas: Carneades' Classification of Ethical Theories 187; A.M. Ioppolo: L'assenso nella filosofia di Clitomaco: un problema di linguaggio? 225; M. Schofield: Aenesidemus: Pyrrhonist and "Heraclitean" 269; V. Tsouna: Philodemus and the Epicurean Tradition 339; Chronological Table 398; Index locorum 403; Index of ancient names 421; Index of modern authors 427-430.

11. Algra, Keimpe, and Ioerodakonou, Katerina, eds. 2015. Sextus Empiricus and Ancient Physics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Eleventh Symposium Hellenisticum, Delphi, 2007.

M = Adversus Mathematicos.

Contents: Keimpe Algra and Katerina Ierodiakonou: Introduction; 1. Richard Bett: God: M 9.13–194; 2. Michael J. White: Cause: M 9.195–330; 3. Katerina Ierodiakonou: Wholes and parts: M 9.331–358; 4. Gábor Betegh: Body: M 9.359–440; 5. Keinpe Algra: Place: M 10.1–36; 6. R. J. Hankinson: Motion: M 10.37–168; 7. Susanne Bobzien: Time: M 10.169–247; 8. Tad Brennan: Number: M 10.248–309; 9. James Warren: Coming-to-be and passing-away: M 10.310–351.

12. Annas, Julia, and Betegh, Gábor, eds. 2016. Cicero's De Finibus: Philosophical Approaches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Twelfth Symposium Hellenisticum, Budapest, 2010.

Contents: List of contributors VII; Julia Annas: Introduction 1; Charles Brittain: 1. Cicero’s sceptical methods: the example of the De Finibus 12; 2. James Warren: Epicurean pleasure in Cicero’s De Finibus 41; 3. Pierre-Marie Morel: Cicero and Epicurean virtues (De Finibus 1–2) 77; 4. Dorothea Frede: Epicurus on the importance of friendship in the good life (De Finibus 1.65–70; 2.78–85) 96; 5. Margaret Graver: Honor and the honorable: Cato’s discourse in De Finibus 3 118; 6. Brad Inwood: The voice of nature 147; 7. Anna Maria Ioppolo: Sententia explosa : criticism of Stoic ethics in De Finibus 4 167; 8. Thomas Bénatouïl: Structure, standards and Stoic moral progress in De Finibus 4 198; 9. Christopher Gill: Antiochus’ theory of oikeiōsis 221; Bibliography 248; Subject index 259; Index locorum 262.

13. Bénatouil, Thomas, and Ierodiakonou, Katerina, eds. 2018. Dialectic after Plato and Aristotle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thirteeenth Symposium Hellenisticum, Abbaye des Prémontrés at Pont-à-Mousson (Lorraine, France), 15-19 July 2013.

Contents: List of Contributors VII; Preface IX, List of Abbreviations X; Thomas Bénatouïl: Introduction: Dialectics in Dialogue 1; James Allen: Megara and Dialectic 17; Paolo Crivelli: Dialectic in the Early Peripatos 47; David Sedley: Epicurus on Dialectic 82; Katerina Ierodiakonou: Dialectic as a Subpart of Stoic Philosophy 114; Jean-Baptiste Gourinat: Stoic Dialectic and Its Objects 134; Luca Castagnoli: Dialectic in the Hellenistic Academy 168; Tobias Reinhardt: Pithana and probabilia 218; Sophie Aubert-Baillot: Terminology and Practice of Dialectic in Cicero’s Letters 254; Benjamin Morison: The Sceptic’s Modes of Argumentation 283; Riccardo Chiaradonna: Galen and Middle Platonists on Dialectic and Knowledge 320; Bibliography 350; Index of Names 371; Index of Passages 376-391.

14. Inwood, Brad, and Warren, James, eds. 2020. Body and Soul in Hellenistic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University press.

Fourteenth Symposium Hellenisticum.

Contents: List of Contributors VI; List of Abbreviations VII; Brad Inwood, James Warren: Introduction 1;

1. Sylvia Berryman: Hellenistic Medicine, Strato of Lampsacus, and Aristotle's Theory of Soul 9; David Leith:

2. Herophilus and Erasistratus on the Hegemonikon 30; 3. Philip van der Eijk: Galen on Soul, Mixture and Pneuma 62; 4. The Partition of the Soul: Francesco Verde: Epicurus, Demetrius Lacon, and Diogenes of Oinoanda 89; 5. Francesco Ademollo: Cosmic and Individual Soul in Early Stoicism 113; 6. Christelle Veillard: Soul, Pneuma , and Blood: The Stoic Conception of the Soul 145; 7. Jan Opsomer: The Platonic Soul, frorn the Early Academy to the First Century CE 171; 8. J. P. F. Wynne: Cicero on the Soul's Sensation of Itself: Tusculans 1.49-76 199; Bibliography 231; Index Locorum 252; Subject Index 262.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The Neoplatonic Commentators on Aristotle's Metaphysics

The Greek Commentary tradition

"More than any other philosophical current of the Imperial period, Aristotelianism operated as a commentary tradition. Based on the texts of the Master -- on their precise wording and terminology -- Aristotelian philosophy found in the commentary format not only a means of transmission, but also a preferred tool for the development of doctrine. A closed system, but not a static one, it evolved in two main directions: internal consistency and external competitiveness. Thus, the basic aim was, on the one hand, systematic coherence and didactical proficiency; on the other, fuller responsiveness to the various issues that emerged in the long span of time between Aristotle and the last traces of an Aristotelian school.

In a broad sense, one can see a development of this sort starting from the early Peripatos, among Aristotle's immediate successors, Eudemus and Theophrastus. But a major part of the process -- namely, work on the texts of Aristotle -- probably came to a halt in the next generation. We are told that the libraries of Aristotle and Theophrastus were dispersed, while the dialogues and the more popular texts remained in circulation (the so-called exoteric works, i.e. those written for publication outside the school). As a matter of fact, the Aristotelian legacy among masters and teachers of the Hellenistic period was often elementary and non-specialized, open to various influences from other contemporary schools, especially Stoicism.

The development of Aristotelianism into a commentary tradition was not completed until the first centuries of the Christian era. This development presupposes, above all, the accessibility of the treatises or pragmateiai written by Aristotle for his own school (the so-called 'esoteric' works). Here, according to the commonly held view, a decisive role was played by the editorial activity of Andronicus, a Peripatetic scholarch who arranged them and made them accessible during the first century BC. Toward the end of the century, these treatises were available again, or became available for the first time (as seems to have been the case with the Metaphysics as a whole, although some of its individual books were already listed among Aristotle's works). The Aristotelian corpus was largely accessible to the 'early commentators', in particular to Boethus of Sidon, a pupil of Andronicus, and to Nicolaus of Damascus. The latter's compendium of Aristotelian philosophy implies the circulation of a Metaphysics not too far in content and shape from the one we do have, with the same title, Meta to physika.

A major qualitative change took place in the course of the second century AD, when the commentary tradition adopted the specific aims of a period of archaizing and of a return to the classics. Literary Atticism is one of the best-known expressions of this archaizing tendency, which saw in the ancients both a timeless model for stylistic imitation and, in the context of philosophy, a legacy of truth that could be neither extended nor surpassed.

This is why the commentary gained such a central position in Aristotelian literature. Still, it was conceived as something to be used, rather than as a product with a cultural value of its own. For this reason, the successive stages of the commentary tradition tend to obliterate one another. A new commentary on a given work of Aristotle thus appropriated, not without criticism and selection, the interpretative legacy of the preceding commentary. At this point the earlier commentary could cease to be consulted and transmitted and so often came to be lost. In the new commentary, both recent and earlier components co-exist in successive layers, often without distinction, so that it is difficult to determine what the most recent commentator has himself contributed and what he has inherited from his predecessors. For both reasons, therefore, commentaries tend to be an impersonal product: both because of their original purpose -- to help the reader of a text written by someone else -- and because of the peculiar dynamics of their use and transmission. Within the Peripatetic tradition, the personality of the commentator is overshadowed not only by the authority of the Master, but also by the collective authority of the school.

We are now in a position to understand the first basic difficulty that the history of philosophy faces in attempting to give an account of the work of commentators and, hence, in evaluating the Aristotelianism of late antiquity. The evidence is plentiful, but it does not sufficiently explain the activity of individuals. This difficulty is further increased by another factor: the theoretical foundations of nineteenth-century history of philosophy, which inevitably persist in categorizations and evaluations that still have an influence, especially in areas that are not yet fully explored. This approach concentrated, on the one hand, on important individuals, and, on the other, on the reconstruction, through 'successions' or diadochai, of a progressive development of ideas that, from imperfect and embryonic beginnings, came to be displayed in all their fullness and power. In both respects, the historical approach has been opposite to the emphases and aims of the commentary tradition itself, which tends to play down the intermediary contributions while looking backward to the past in order to search for (or to reconstruct) a timeless truth, held to be definitively contained in the foundational texts of the school.

Such historiographical difficulties have led to negative judgements on the culture of commentaries. Hence its summary treatment -- if not complete neglect -- in many scholastic manuals, where the commentary seems to be just a dry and long-winded repetition of what is already contained in the texts of the great masters. Nor has the commentary tradition been judged any less critically where it has been possible to point out differences between Aristotle's and a commentator's Aristotelianism: this kind of instances have led to harsh accusations, both of deliberate betrayal, and of incompetence and misunderstanding of the original text.

The rediscovery of the work of the commentators as a living tradition of re-workings of Aristotle's philosophy, and not just of its transmission (or distortion), has taken place only in our own day. And even now, this does not mean that the relevant problems mentioned have been resolved in a single way, nor that methodological principles of inquiry have been firmly and generally agreed on. Rather, specific interests and contexts have prompted the different, particular direction that research on individual topics has followed (...). But it is precisely this plurality of complementary approaches that is producing now one of the richest, most lively and dynamic fields of research in ancient philosophy." (pp. 3-8) (notes omitted)

From: Silvia Fazzo, Aristotelianism as a Commentary Tradition, in: P. Adamson, F. Baltussen and M. W. F. Stone (eds.), Philosophy, Sscience and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries, London; Institute of Classical Studies 2004, Vol. One, pp. 1-19.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on The Neoplatonic Commentators

General studies on the Neoplatonic Commentators

1. Adamson, Peter, Baltussen, Han, and Stone, M.W.F., eds. 2004. Philosophy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries. London: Institute of Classical Studies - University of London.

Contents:

Volume One - Preface VII; Richard Sorabji: Poem VIII-IX; Silvia Fazzo: Aristotelianism as a commentary tradition 1; Han Baltussen: Plato Protagoras 340-48: commentary in the making? 21;

Gabor Betegh: Exegesis in the Derveni Papyrus 37; R. W. Sharples: Alexander of Aphrodisias: what is a Mantissa? 51; Inna Kupreeva: Aristotelian dynamics in the 2nd century school debates: Galen and Alexander of Aphrodisias on organic powers and movements 71; George Karamanolis: Porphyry: the first Platonist commentator on Aristotle 97; Riccardo Chiaradonna: The categories and the status of the physical world: Plotinus and the Neo-Platonic commentators 121; Jan Opsomer: Plutarch's De animae procreatione in Timaeo: manipulation or search for consistency? 137; Peter Lautner: The koinè aisthesis in Proclus and Ps.-Simplicius 163; Harold Tarrant: Must commentators know their sources? Proclus in Timaeum and Numenius 175; R. M. van den Berg: Smoothing over the differences: Proclus and Ammonius on Plato's Cratylus and Aristotle's De Interpretatione 191; Anna Somfai: Calcidius' commentary on Plato's Timaeus and its place in the commentary tradition: the concept of analogia in text and diagrams 203; Katerina Ierodoakonou: Byzantine commentators on the epistemic status of ethics 221; John Sellars: The Aristotelian commentators: a bibliographical guide 239; Index locorum 269-280.

Volume Two - Preface IX; Gotthard Strohmayer: Galen's not uncritical Commentary on Hippocrates' Airs, Waters, Places 1; Peter E. Pormann: The Alexandrian Summary (Jawami) of Galen's On the Sects fro Beginners: Commentary or abrdgment? 11; Marwan Rashed: The problem of the composition of the Heavens (529-1610) a new fragment of Philoponus and its readers 35; Peter Adamson: Correcting Plotinus: soul's relationship to body in Avicenna's Commentary on the Theology of Aristotle 59; Dimitri Gutas: Avicenna's marginal glosses on De anima and the Greek commentatorial tradition 77; Steven Harvey: The impact of Philoponus' Commentary on the Physics on Averroes' three Commentaries on the Physics 89; Richard C. Taylor: Improving on nature's exemplar: Averroes' completion of Aristotle's psychology of intellect 107; Dag Nikolaus Hasse: The attraction of Averroism in the Renaissance: Vernia, Achillini, Prassico 131; Robert Winowsky: The nature and scope of Arabic philosophical commentary in post-classical (ca. 1100-1900 AD) islamic intellectual history: some preliminary observations 149; Index Locorum 193-197.

"This two volume Supplement to the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies represents the proceedings of a conference held at the Institute on 27-29 June, 2002, in honour of Richard Sorabji. These volumes, which are intended to build on the massive achievement of Professor Sorabji's Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series, focus on the commentary as a vehicle of philosophical and scientific thought. Volume One deals with the Greek tradition, including one paper on Byzantine philosophy and one on the Latin author Calcidius, who is very close to the late Greek tradition in outlook. The volume begins with an overview of the tradition of commenting on Aristotle, and of the study of this tradition in the modern era. It concludes with an up-to-date bibliography of scholarship devoted to the commentators. Volume Two deals with commentaries in Arabic, including a paper on the reception of Arabic interpretations of Aristotle's De anima in Latin during the Renaissance." (From the Preface)

2. Baltussen, Han. 2002. "Philology or Philosophy? Simplicius on the Use of Quotations." In Epea and Grammata. Oral and Written Communcation in Ancient Greece, edited by Worthington, Ian and Foley, John Miles, 173-189. Leiden: Brill.

3. ———. 2007. "From Polemic to Exegesis: The Ancient Philosophical Commentary." Poetics Today no. 28:247-289.

Abstract: "Commentary was an important vehicle for philosophical debate in late antiquity. Its antecedents lie in the rise of rational argumentation, polemical rivalry, literacy, and the canonization of texts. This essay aims to give a historical and typological outline of philosophical exegesis in antiquity, from the earliest allegorizing readings of Homer to the full-blown "running commentary" in the Platonic tradition (fourth to sixth centuries CE). Running commentaries are mostly on authoritative thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle. Yet they are never mere scholarly enterprises but, rather, springboards for syncretistic clarification, elaboration, and creative interpretation. Two case studies (Galen 129-219 CE, Simplicius ca. 530 CE) will illustrate the range of exegetical tools available at the end of a long tradition in medical science and in reading Aristotle through Neoplatonic eyes, respectively."

4. ———. 2008. Philosophy and Exegesis in Simplicius: The Methodology of a Commentator. London: Duckworth.

5. Barnes, Jonathan. 1992. "Metacommentary." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 10:267-281.

6. Benakis, Linos. 1988. "Commentaires and Commentators on the Works of Aristotle (Except the Logical Ones) in Byzantium." In Historia philosophiae Medii Aevi. Studien zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, edited by Mojsisch, Burkhard and Pluta, Olaf, 45-54. Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner.

7. ———. 1988. "Commentaries and Commentators on the Logical Works of Aristotle in Byzantium." In Gedankenzeichen. Festschrift für Klaus Oehler zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by Claussen, Regina and Daube-Schakat, Roland, 3-12. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag.

.

8. Beullens, Pieter, and De Leemans, Pieter. 2008. "Aristote à Paris: Le système de la pecia et les traductions de Guillaume de Moerbeke." Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales no. 75:87-135.

9. Blank, David. 2010. "Ammonius Hermeiou and his school." In The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity. Vol . II, edited by Gerson, Lloyd, 654-666. Cambridge: Cambridge Unversity Press.

10. Brisson, Luc. 2014. "Alexandrie, berceau du néoplatonisme. Eudore, Philon, Ammonios et l'École d'Alexandrie." In Alexandrie la Divine. Volume I, edited by Méla, Charles and Möri, Frédéric, 354-363. Genève: Éditions de la Baconnière.

11. Cardullo, R. Loredana. 1986. "Syrianus' Lost Commentaries on Aristotle." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies no. 33:112-124.

12. Cardullo, Rosa Loredana. 1987. "Siriano nella storiografia filosofica moderna e contemporanea." Siculorum Gymnasius no. 40:71-182.

13. Celluprica, Vincenza, and D'Ancona, Cristina, eds. 2004. Aristotele e i suoi esegeti neoplatonici. Logica e ontologia nelle interpretazioni greche e arabe. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

Atti del Convegno internazionale, Roma, 19-20 ottobre 2001.

Sommario: Vincenza Celluprica: Prefazione IX; Cristina D'Ancona: Introduzione XI-XXI; Riccardo Chiaradonna: Plotino e la teoria degli universali. Enn. VI 3 [44], 9 p. 1; Frans A. J. De Haas: Context and strategy of Plotinus' treatise On the Genera of Being (Enn. VI 1-3 [42-44]) 37; Henri Hugonnard-Roche: La constitution de la logique tardo-antique et l'élaboration d'une logique "matérielle" en syriaque 55; Cleophea Ferrari: Der Duft des Apfels. Abu 1-Farag 'Abdallah Ibn at-Tayyib und sein Kommentar zu den Kategorien des Aristoteles 85; Marwan Rashed: Ibn 'Adi et Avicenne: sur les types d'existants 107; Amos Bertolacci: La ricezione del libro Gamma della Metafisica nell'Ilahiyyat del Kitab al-Sifà' di Avicenna 173; Cecilia Martini Bonadeo: Os éromenon:: alcune interpretazioni di Metaph. Lambda 7 211; Bibiografia 245; Indici 271-282.

14. Chiaradonna, Riccardo, and Rashed, Marwan. 2010. "Before and after the Commentators. An exercise in periodization." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 38:251-297.

15. D'Ancona, Cristina, ed. 2007. The Libraries of the Neoplatonists. Leiden: Brill.

Proceedings of the Meeting of the European Science Foundation Network "Late antiquity and Arabic thought: patterns in the constitution of European culture" held in Strasbourg, March 12-14, 2004 under the impulsion of the Scientific Committee of the Meeting, composed by Matthias Baltes, Michel Cacouros, Cristina D'Ancona, Tiziano Dorandi, Gerhard Endress, Philippe Hoffmann, Henri Hugonnard Roche.

16. D'Ancona, Cristina, and Serra, Giuseppe, eds. 2002. Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia nella tradizione Araba. Padova: Il Poligrafo.

Atti del colloquio La ricezione araba ed ebraica della filosofia e della scienza greche Padova, 14-15 maggio 1999.

Indice: Presentazione 7; Abbreviazioni 17; Gerhard Endress: Alexander Arabus on the First Cause. Aristotle's First Mover in an Arabic Treatise attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias 19; Cecilia Martini: La tradizione araba della Metafisica di Aristotele. Libri α - A 75; Carmela Baffioni: Una citazione di De interpretatione, 9 in Abu Ma'sar? 113; Emma Gannagé: Matière et éléments dans le commentaire d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise In De generatione et corruptione 133; Silvia Fazzo: Alessandro di Afrodisia sulle 'contrarietà tangibili' (De Gen corr. II 2); fonti greche e arabe a confronto 151; Marc Geoffroy: La tradition arabe du Peri nous d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise et les origines de la théorie farabienne des quatres dégrés de l'intellect 191; Paola Carusi: Filosofia greca e letteratura nel Ma' al-waraqi di Ibn Umail al-Tamimi (X secolo) 233; Marwan Rashed: La classification des lignes simples selon Proclus et sa transmission au monde islamique 257; Heidrun Eichner: Ibn Rusd's Middle Commentary and Alexander's Commentary in their relationship to the Arab commentary tradition on the De Generatione et corruptione 281; Mauro Zonta: Le traduzioni di Zerahyah Gracian e la versione ebraica del De Generatione et corruptione 299; Giuseppe Serra: Note in margine a M. Zonta, Le traduzioni di Zerahyah Gracian e la versione ebraica del De Generatione et corruptione 319; Indice dei manoscritti 325; Indice degli autori antichi 327; Indice degli autori moderni 331-334.

17. D'Ancona Costa, Cristina. 2002. "Commenting on Aristotle: from Late Antiquity to the Arab Aristotelianism." In Der Kommentar in Antike und Mittelalter. Beiträge zu seiner Erforschung. Band 1, edited by Geerlings, Wilhelm and Schulze, Christian, 201-251. Leiden: Brill.

This paper is a detailed presentation of the transmission history of commentaries to Aristotle from Alexander of Aphrodisias to Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and contains a list of the Greek commentaries on Aristotle's works, including those mentioned in Arabic sources.

18. d'Hoine, Pieter. 2016. "Syrianus and Proclus on Aristotle." In Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Aristotle in Antiquity, edited by Falcon, Andrea, 374-393. Leiden: Brill.

19. de Boer, Sander W. 2013. The Science of the Soul: The Commentary Tradition on Aristotle’s De anima, c. 1260–c. 1360. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

20. Donini, Pierluigi. Commentary and Tradition: Aristotelianism, Platonism, and Post-Hellenistic Philosophy. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Edited by Mauro Bonazzi.

21. ———. 1987. "Testi e commenti, manuali e insegnamento: la forma sistematica e i metodi della filosofia in età post-ellenistica." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (ANRW). Geschichte und Kultur Roms in Spiegel der neueren Forschung. Teil II: Principat, edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 5027-5094. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Band 36.7: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. Teilband II: Systematische Themen; Indirekte Überlieferungen; Allgemeines; Nachträge.

22. Drossaart Lulofs, Hendrik J. 1965. Nicolaus Damascenus on the Philosophy of Aristotle. Leiden: Brill.

Fragments of the first five books translated from the Syriac witn an introduction and commentary.

Photomechanical reprint with additions and corrections 1969.

23. Dubois, Jean-Daniel, and Roussel, Bernard, eds. 1998. Entrer en matière. Les prologues. Paris: Cerf.

24. Ebbesen, Sten. 2002. "Late-ancient ancestors of medieval philosophical Commentaries." In Il Commento filosofico nell'Occidente Latino (secoli XIII-XV) / The Philosophical Commentary in the Latin West (13-15th centuries), edited by Fioravanti, Gianfranco, Leonardi, Claudio and Perfetti, Stefano, 1-15. Turnhout: Brepols.

25. Falcon, Andrea. 2008. "The Pre-History of the Commentary Tradition: Aristotelianism in the First Century BCE (Prolegomena to a Study of Xenarchus of Seleucia)." Laval Théologique et Philosophique no. 64:7-18.

"In the first century BCE Aristotle was subject to an intense textual study. This study eventually led to the appropriation of the conceptual apparatus developed in his writings. In the case of Xenarchus, the relevant apparatus was Aristotle's theory of motion, with an emphasis on the concepts of natural place and natural motion. Xenarchus reworked Aristotle's theory of motion so as to make the celestial simple body expendable. While I do not deny that some of his views are best understood in light of the debates of late Hellenestic philosophy, I contend that his textual engagement presupposes the distance from Aristotle that is characteristic of Post-Hellenistic philosophy."

26. ———, ed. 2016. Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Aristotle in Antiquity. Leiden: Brill.

Contents: Acknowledgements IX; Notes on Contributors X; Andrea Falcon: Introduction 1;

Part 1: The Hellenistic Reception of Aristotle

1. David Lefebvre: Aristotle and the Hellenistic Peripatos: From Theophrastus to Critolaus 13; 2. Francesco Verde: Aristotle and the Garden 35; 3. Thomas Bénatouïl: Aristotle and the Stoa 56;

Part 2: The Post-Hellenistic Engagement with Aristotle.

The Peripatetic Tradition

4. Myrto Hatzimichali: Andronicus of Rhodes and the Construction of the Aristotelian Corpus 81; 5. Andrea Falcon: Aristotelianism in the First Century BC 101; 6. Georgia Tsouni: Peripatetic Ethics in the First Century BC: The Summary of Didymus 120; 7. Inna Kupreeva: Aristotelianism in the Second Century AD: Before Alexander of Aphrodisias 138; 8. Cristina Cerami: Alexander of Aphrodisias 160;

Cristina Cerami

Beyond the Peripatetic Tradition

9. John Dillon: The Reception of Aristotle in Antiochus and Cicero 183; 10. Angela Ulacco: The Appropriation of Aristotle in the Ps-Pythagorean Treatises 202; 11. Alexandra Michalewski: The Reception of Aristotle in Middle Platonism: From Eudorus of

Alexandria to Ammonius Saccas 218; 12. R. J. Hankinson: Galen’s Reception of Aristotle 238; 13. Sara Magrin: Plotinus’ Reception of Aristotle 258; 14. Tiziano Dorandi: The Ancient Biographical Tradition on Aristotle 277; 15. Jaap Mansfeld: Aristotle in the Aëtian Placita 299;

Part 3: Aristotle in Late Antiquity

16. Riccardo Chiaradonna: Porphyry and the Aristotelian Tradition 321; 17. Jan Opsomer: An Intellective Perspective on Aristotle: Iamblichus the Divine 341; 18. Arnaud Zucker: Themistius 358; 19. Pieter d’Hoine: Syrianus and Proclus on Aristotle 374; 20. Michael Griffin: Ammonius and the Alexandrian School 394; 21. Pantelis Gollitsis: Simplicius and Philoponus on the Authority of Aristotle 419; 22. Christophe Erismann: Aristoteles Latinus: The Reception of Aristotle in the Latin World 439; 23. George Karamanolis: Early Christian Philosophers on Aristotle 460;

Index of Ancient Names 481; Index of Passages 484-512.

27. Fazzo, Silvia. 2004. "Aristotelianism as a Commentary Tradition." In Philosophy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries (Vol. One), edited by Adamson, Peter, Baltussen, Han and Stone, M.W.F., 1-19. London: Institute of Classical Studies, University of London.

28. Fernández-Garrido, Regla. 1991. "La categoría de onoma según Ammonio de Alejandría." Habis.Arqueología, filología clásica no. 22:313-327.

29. ———. 1994. "Los adverbios en Ammonio de Alejandría." Habis.Arqueología, filología clásica no. 25:297-307.

30. ———. 1998. La reflexión lingüística en el último Neoplatonismo. Huelva: Universidad de Huelva.

Introducción, traducción y notas del Comentario de Ammonio al tratado "Sobre la interpretación" de Aristóteles (Ammon. In int. 1-77,25 Busse).

31. Fioravanti, Gianfranco, Leonardi, Claudio, and Perfetti, Stefano, eds. 2002. Il commento filosofico nell'Occidente Latino (secoli XIII -XV) / The Philosophical Commentary in the Latin West (13-15th century). Turnhout: Brepols.

32. Geerlings, Wilhelm, and Schulze, Christian, eds. 2002. Der Kommentar in Antike und Mittelalter. I: Beiträge zu seiner Erforschung. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

33. ———, eds. 2004. Der Kommentar in Antike und Mittelalter. II: Neue Beiträge zu seiner Erforschung. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

34. Gerson, Lloyd P. 2006. Aristotle and Other Platonists. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

35. ———. 2014. "The Aristotelian Commentaries and Platonism." Quaestiones Disputatae no. 4:7-23.

36. Golitsis, Pantelis. 2008. Les Commentaires de Simplicius et de Jean Philopon à la Physique d'Aristote: tradition et innovation. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

37. Golitsis, Pantelis, and Ieorodiakonou, Katerina, eds. 2019. Aristotle and His Commentators: Studies in Memory of Paraskevi Kotzia. Berlin: de Gruyter.

38. Gottschalk, Hans B. 1987. "Aristotelian philosophy in the Roman world from the time of Cicero to the end of the Second century AD." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (ANRW). Geschichte und Kultur Roms in Spiegel der neueren Forschung. Teil II: Principat, edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 1079-1174. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Band 36.2: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. Teilband II: Philosophie (Platonismus [Forts.]; Aristotelismus.

39. ———. 1990. "The earliest Aristotelian commentators." In Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence, edited by Sorabji, Richard, 61-88. London: Duckworth.

40. Goulet-Cazé, Marie-Odile, ed. 2000. Le commentaire entre tradition et innovation. Paris: Vrin.

Actes du colloque international de l'Institut des traditions textuelles (Paris et Villejuif, 22-25 septembre 1999).

41. Griffin, Michael. 2016. "Ammonius and the Alexandrian School." In Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Aristotle in Antiquity, edited by Falcon, Andrea, 394-418. Leiden: Brill.

42. Hadot, Ilsetraut. 1987. "La division néoplatonicienne des écrits d'Aristote." In Aristoteles. Werk und Wirkung (Mélanges Paul Moraux), edited by Wiesner, Jürgen, 249-285. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

43. ———. 1987. "Les introductions aux commentaires exégétiques chez les auteurs néoplatoniciens et le auteurs chrétiens." In Les règles de l'interprétation, edited by Tardieu, Michel, 99-122. Paris: Cerf.

"Le présent article décrit les différents types de schémas introductifs contenus dans les commentaires des néoplatoniciens tardifs sur les ceuvres d'Aristote et de Platon, en essayant de déterminer leur signification exégétique ainsi que l'origine de plusieurs d'entre eux. Il apparaît que les deux schémas en dix points qui introduisent respectivement à la philosophie d'Aristote et à celle de Platon ont de toute vraisemblance été codifiés par Proclus au V siècle de notre ère, tandis que certains points des schémas en six points introduisant aux différents traités d'Aristote ou aux divers dialogues de Platon apparaissent déjà au III siècle chez Origène qui a dû s'inspirer des commentaires platoniciens de son temps." (p. 99)

44. ———. 1991. "The role of the commentaries on Aristotle in the teaching of philosophy according to the prefaces of the neoplatonic commentaries on the Categories." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy. Supplementary Volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition:175-189.

Supplementary volume: Aristotle and Later Tradition.

45. ———. 1997. "Le commentaire philosophique continu dans l'Antiquité." Antiquité Tardive no. 5:169-176.

46. ———. 2002. "Der fortlaufende philosophische Kommentar." In Der Kommentar in Antike und Mittelalter. Beiträge zu seiner Erforschung. Band 1, edited by Geerlings, Wilhelm and Schulze, Christian, 183-199. Leiden: Brill.

"[The essay] lucidly presents continuous commentaries on philosophical works focusing on their Sitz im Leben in the instruction of a circle of students with a specific level of knowledge. She briefly discusses formal aspects, and then focuses on the syncretistic tendencies regarding the philosophical schools, the educational function of the introductions to single treatises, the gradually increasing level of difficulty as challenge for the developing student, and the act of interpretation as religious deed." From the review by Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra (Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2004.03.46).

47. ———. 2015. Athenian and Alexandrian Neoplatonism and the Harmonization of Aristotle and Plato. Leiden: Brill.

48. Hadot, Pierre. 1968. "Philosophie, exégèse et contresens." In Akten des XIV. Internationalen Kongress für Philosophie. Vol I, 333-339. Wien: Herder.

Repris dans P. Hadot, Études de philosophie ancienne, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1998, pp. 3-11.

49. Hoffmann, Philippe. 1997. "La problématique du titre des traités d'Aristote selon le commentateurs grecs. Quelques exemples." In Titres et articulations du texte dans les oeuvres antiques, edited by Fredouille, Jean-Claude, Goulet-Cazé, Marie-Odile, Hoffmann, Philippe and Petitmengin, Pierre, 75-103. Paris: Institut d'Études Augustiniennes.

50. ———. 1998. "La fonction des prologues exégétiques dans la pensée Pédagogique néoplatonicienne." In Entrer en matière. Les prologues, edited by Dubois, Jean-Daniel and Roussel, Bernard, 209-245. Paris: Cerf.

51. ———. 1999. "Les analyses de l'énoncé: catégories et parties du discours selon les commentateurs néoplatoniciens." In Théories de la phrase et de la proposition. De Platon à Averroès, edited by Buttgen, Philippe, Diebler, Stéphane and Rashed, Marwan, 209-248. Paris: Éditions Rue d'Ulm.

52. ———. 2006. "What was Commentary in Late Antiquity? The example of the Neoplatonic Commentators." In A Companion in Ancient Philosophy, edited by Gill, Mary Louise and Pellegrin, Pierre, 597-622. Malden: Blackwell.

"Neoplatonic thought at the end of antiquity -- like that of most of the schools of the Hellenistic and Roman period -- has an essentially exegetical and scholastic dimension. Beginning with the classical and Hellenistic period, philosophy in Greece is inseparable from the existence of schools (private or public), often organized as places of communal life (sunousia), in which the explication of the texts of the school's founders came to be one of the main activities.(1) The practice of exegesis of written texts supplanted the ancient practice of dialogue. It was sustained through its application to canonical texts, and was put to everyday use in the framework of courses in the explication of texts. The social reality of the school as an institution, with its hierarchy, its diadochos (i.e., the successor to the school's founder), its structure as a conventicle in which communal life was practiced, its library, its regulation of time, and its programs organized around the reading of canonical texts, constitutes a concrete context into which we should reinsert the practice of exegesis, which is the heart of philosophical pedagogy and the matrix of doctrinal and dogmatic works." (p. 597)

(1) See Thomas Bénatouil, Philosophic Schools in Hellenistic and Roman times, in this volume. [pp. 415-429]

53. ———. 2007. "Les bibliothèques philosophiques d'après le témoignage de la littérature néoplatonicienne des Ve et VIe siècles " In The Libraries of the Neoplatonists, edited by D'Ancona Costa, Cristina, 135-153. Leiden: Brill.

Première pubblication: "Bibliothèques et formes du livre à la fin de l’Antiquité. Le témoignage de la littérature néoplatonicienne des Ve et VIe siècles", Manoscritti greci tra riflessione e dibattito. Atti del V Colloquio Internazionale di Paleografia Greca (Cremona, 4-10 ottobre 1998), a cura di Giancarlo Prato, Firenze: Gonnelli, 2000, p. 601-632 (repris partiellement avec quelque addictions).

54. ———. 2014. "Le cursus d'études dans l'école néoplatonicienne d'Alexandrie." In Alexandrie la Divine. Volume I, edited by Méla, Charles and Möri, Frédéric, 342-353. Genève: Éditions de la Baconnière.

55. Karamanolis, George. 2006. Plato and Aristotle in Agreement? Platonists on Aristotle from Antiochus to Porphyry. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

56. Lössl, Josef, and Watt, Jiohn W., eds. 2011. Interpreting the Bible and Aristotle in Late Antiquity: The Alexandrian Commentary Tradition between Rome and Baghdad. Burlington: Ashgate.

57. Mansfeld, Jaap. 1994. Prolegomena. Questions to Be Settled Before the Study of an Author Or a Text. Leiden: Brill.

See Chapter I.1 Commentaries on Aristotle and Christian Commentaries, pp. 10-19.

58. Marenbon, John. 2020. "Aristotelianism in the Greek, Latin, Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew Traditions." In Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy. Second Edition, edited by Lagerlund, Henrik, 180-188. Dordrecht: Springer.

Abstract: "Aristotle was the most important ancient philosopher for all four main traditions of medieval philosophy: Greek philosophy from Byzantium; Latin philosophy; philosophy in Arabic (the work mainly of Muslims, but also Jews and Christians); and, from the thirteenth century, philosophy written by Jews in Hebrew. All these traditions drew, directly, or indirectly, on Aristotle as transmitted by the Neoplatonic schools of late antiquity. But the way in which the Aristotelian texts were disseminated (in translation, except in Byzantium) and studied varied in each of these traditions. And, although all the medieval philosophers had it in common that they lived in cultures dominated by a monotheistic religion, the range of attitudes to Aristotle varied from one to another. This entry has the strictly limited aim of giving enough basic information about each of these circumstances to enable comparisons to be made. Fuller treatment of each of the areas it covers will be found elsewhere in the Encyclopedia. Readers will also

find a fuller exposition of most of the particular view suggested here in Marenbon (Medieval philosophy; an historical and philosophical introduction. Routledge, London/New York, 2007; Medieval philosophy. A very short introduction. Oxford University Press,

Oxford, 2016)."

59. McKirahan, Richard D. 2022. A Vocabulary of the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Combining the Greek–English Indexes from the Eponymous Series Spanning Works from the 2nd Century CE to Late Antiquity.

60. Militello, Chiara. 2010. I commentari all'Isagoge di Porfirio tra V e VI secolo. Acireale: Bonanno.

61. Minio-Paluello, Lorenzo. 1972. Opuscola. The Latin Aristotle. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert.

62. Moraux, Paul. 1973. Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen, Von Andronikos bis Alexander von Aphrodisias. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Vol. I: Die Renaissance des Aristotelismus im I. Jh.v. Chr. (1973); Vol. II: Der Aristotelismus im I. und II. Jh.n. Chr. (1984); Vol. III: Alexander von Aphrodisias (2001), edited by Jürgen Wiesner, with a chapter on Ethics by Robert W. Sharples.

In the third volume see the Fourth Chapter: Kommentar zur Aristotelischen Metaphysik, pp. 423-510.

63. ———. 1991. "Les commentateurs grecs." In Penser avec Aristote, edited by Sinaceur, Mohammed Allal, 745-756. Paris: Éditions érès.

64. Mueller-Jourdan, Pascal. 2014. "Ammonios [fils] d'Hermeias. Sources, héritages, transmission et postérité." In Alexandrie la Divine. Volume I, edited by Méla, Charles and Möri, Frédéric, 388-393. Genève: Éditions de la Baconnière.

65. Opsomer, Jan. 2014. "Syrianus, Proclus, and Damascius." In The Routledge Companion to Ancient Philosophy, edited by Warren, James and Sheffield, Frisbee. New York: Routledge.

66. Renaud, François. 2008. "Tradition et critique : lecture jumelée de Platon et Aristote chez Olympiodore." Laval théologique et philosophique no. 64:89-104.

67. Salis, Rita. 2020. "L’analogia dell’essere. Testi antichi e medievali." In I commentatori greci di Aristotele, edited by Catapasno, Giovanni, Martini Bonadeo, Cecilia and Salis, Rita. Padova: Padova University Press.

68. Sedley, David. 1997. "Plato's auctoritas and the rebirth of the Commentary tradition." In Philosophia togata II. Plato and Aristotle at Rome, edited by Barnes, Jonathan and Griffin, Miriam, 110-129. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

"In this paper I shall be considering the emergence, or rather re-emergence, of Platonic commentary around the end of the Hellenistic age. That is the period which forms the essential background to our chief surviving specimens of the genre, the great fifth-century Platonic commentaries of Proclus. Specifically, I intend to examine why Platonic philosophy came to such a large extent to take the form of commentary, and how the resources of the commentary format were deployed for the task of establishing, preserving, and exploiting Plato's philosophical authority.

I have explored this theme, mainly with reference to the Epicureans, in [226] 97-119. The present paper tries to take the same discussion further, with occasional modifications to what I said there.

For three reasons, Rome provides a peculiarly apt vantage-point from which to observe the process. First, the philosophical centre of gravity having shifted away from Athens, Rome had now become more of a magnet to philosophers than at any previous time. Both Philo of Larissa and Antiochus of Ascalon, who fought for Plato's mantle in the Academy's dying phase, were known at Rome, and each had close links with a network of influential Roman figures. Second, by far our most voluminous and eloquent witness to that battle is a Roman, Cicero. And third, the Romans had one unusual advantage over the Greeks. They had the right word: auctoritas. As the Greeks themselves admitted, auctoritas was a concept inexpressible in their own language Yet it is this Latin word which, by combining the notions of leadership, ownership, prestige, and validation, most informatively conveys the commanding status that the founder (the auctor) of a Greek philosophical system held in the eyes of its subsequent adherents. Such a linguistic advantage, along with his lifetime adhesion to the Academy, makes Cicero a uniquely valuable witness to, and commentator on, the refurbishment of Plato's auctoritas among first-century BC Academics. (Just because the Greek language could not express the notion of auctoritas, it does not follow that the phenomenon which it describes was absent from Greek philosophical schools.) And without an understanding of that background, there is no hope of seeing how and why, in the immediate aftermath, Platonists turned to the writing of commentaries.

To illuminate the renaissance of Platonic commentary, I can make no use of the numerous indirect reports of Middle Platonist commentators. Nor can I do much with our considerable evidence for the interpretations of Plato which held the field from the late first century BC to the late second century AD. Most of it comes from epitomes, treatises, and indirect reports which do not directly display the process of textual exegesis, even though this undoubtedly lies just below their surface. It is only when we have the actual words of the commentators in front of us that we can examine their exegetical techniques in adequate depth." (pp. 110-111)

69. Sellars, John. 2004. "The Aristotelian Commentators: a bibliographical guide." In Philosophy, science and exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries (Vol. One), edited by Adamson, Peter, Baltussen, Han and Stone, M.W.F., 239-268. London: Institute of Classical Studies, University of London.

70. Sorabji, Richard, ed. 1990. Aristotle Transformed. The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence. London: Duckworth.

Second edition with a new Introduction by Richard Sorabji, London: Bloomsbury 2016.

Contents: Preface VII; Acknowledgments IX; List of contributors X; 1. Richard Sorabji: The ancient commentators on Aristotle 1; 2. Karl Praechter: Review of the Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca (1909) 31; 3. Hans B. Gottschalk: The earliest Aristotelian commentators (1987) 55; 4. Robert W. Sharples: The school of Alexander? 83; 5. Henry J. Blumenthal: Themistius: the last Peripatetic commentator on Aristotle? (1979) 113; 6. Pierre Hadot: The harmony of Plotinus and Aristotle according to Porphyry (1974) 125; 7. Sten Ebbesen: Porphyry's legacy to logic: a reconstruction (1981) 141; 8. H. D. Saffrey: How did Syrianus regard Aristotle? (1987) 173; 9. Richard Sorabji: Infinite power impressed: the transformation of Aristotle's physics and theology (1989) 181; 10. Koenrad Verrycken: The metaphysics of Ammonius son of Hermeias 199; 11. Koenrad Verrycken: The development of Philoponus' thought and its chronology 233; 12. Ilsetraut Hadot: The life and work of Simplicius in Greek and Arabic sources (1987) 275; 13. Henry J. Blumenthal: Neoplatonic elements in the de Anima commentaries (1976) 305; 14.Leendert Gerrit Westerink: The Alexandrian commentators and the introductions to their commentaries (1962) 325; 15. James Shiel: Boethius' commentaries on Aristotle (1958) 349; 16. Sten Ebbesen: Boethius as an Aristotelian commentator (1987) 373; 17. Robert Browning: An unpublished funeral oration on Anna Comnena (1962) 393; 18. H. P. F. Mercken: The Greek commentators on Aristotle's Ethics (1973) 407; 19. Sten Ebbesen: Philoponus, 'Alexander' and the origins of medieval logic 445; 20. Ian Mueller: Aristotle's doctrine of abstraction in the commentators 463; Donald R. Morrison: Note on the frontispiece: 'Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias' by Ulocrino 481; Select bibliography 485; Index locorum 525; General index 535-545.

"The story of the ancient commentators on Aristotle has not previously been told at book length. Here it is assembled for the first time by drawing both on some of the classic articles translated into English or revised and on the very latest research. Some of the chapters will be making revisionary suggestions unfamiliar even to specialists in the field. The philosophical interest of the commentators has been illustrated elsewhere. (1) The aim here is not so much to do this again as to set out the background of the commentary tradition against which further philosophical discussion and discussions of other kinds can take place.

The importance of the commentators lies partly in their representing the thought and classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonist schools, partly in the panorama they provide of the 1100 years of Ancient Greek philosophy, preserving as they do many original quotations from lost philosophical works. Still more significant is their profound influence, uncovered in some of the chapters below, on subsequent philosophy, Islamic and European. This was due partly to their preserving anti-Aristotelian material which helped to inspire medieval and Renaissance science, but still more to their presenting an Aristotle transformed in ways which happened to make him acceptable to the Christian Church. It is not just Aristotle, but this Aristotle transformed and embedded in the philosophy of the commentators, that lies behind the views of later thinkers.

Many of the commentaries are being translated in the series 'The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle', published by Duckworth and Cornell University Press from 1987 onwards (general editor: Richard Sorabji). The present book will also serve as an introduction to them.

(Chapters 1, 4, 10, 11, 19 and 20 are new; 2, 6, 8 and 12 are translated; 5, 9, 14, 15 and 18 are substantially revised. Others are revised in more minor ways; Greek and Latin passages are translated throughout." (from the Preface)

71. ———. 1991. "Aristote et les commentateurs anciens." In Penser avec Aristote, edited by Sinaceur, Mohammed Allal, 75-91. Paris: Éditions érès.

72. ———, ed. 2004. The Philosophy of the Commentators 200-600 AD. A Sourcebook. London: Duckworth.

Vol. I: Psychology; Vol. II: Physics; Vol. III: Logic and Metaphysics.

73. ———, ed. 2016. Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators. London: Bloomsbury.

Contents: Acknowledgements; List of Contributors; Richard Sorabji: Introduction: Seven hundred years of commentary and the sixth century diffusion to other cultures; Myrto Hatzimichali: The texts of Plato and Aristotle in the first century BCE: Andronicus' Canon; Marwan Rashed: Boethus' Aristotelian Ontology; Susanne Bobzien: The inadvertent conception and late birth of the free will problem and the role of Alexander; Marwan Rashed: Alexander of Aphrodisias on particulars and the Stoic criterion of identity; Devin Henry: Themistius and the problem of spontaneous generation; Yoav Meyrav: Spontaneous generation and its metaphysics in Themistius' paraphrase of Aristotle's Metaphysics 12; James Wildberding: The Neoplatonic commentators on ‘spontaneous' generation; Riccardo Chiaradonna, Marwan Rashed, and David Sedley: A rediscovered Categories commentary: Porphyry? with fragments of Boethus; G. Fay Edwards: The purpose of Porphyry's rational animals: a dialectical attack on the Stoics in On Abstinence from Animal Food; Richard Sorabji : Universals transformed in the commentators on Aristotle; John Dillon: Iamblichus' Noera Theôria of Aristotle's Categories; Carlos Steel: Proclus' defence of the Timaeus against Aristotle: a reconstruction of a lost polemical treatise; R. M. van den Berg: Smoothing over the Differences: Proclus and Ammonius on Plato's Cratylus and Aristotle's De Interpretatione; Richard Sorabji: Dating of Philoponus' commentaries on Aristotle and of his divergence from his teacher Ammonius; Pantelis Golitsis: John Philoponus' commentary on the third book of Aristotle's De Anima, wrongly attributed to Stephanus; Frans A. J. de Haas: Mixture in Philoponus: an encounter with a third kind of potentiality; Peter Lautner: Gnôstikôs and/or hulikôs: Philoponus' account of the material aspects of sense-perception; Peter Adamson: The last philosophers of Late Antiquity in the Arabic Tradition; Ahmad Hasnawi: Alexander of Aphrodisias versus John Philoponus in Arabic: a case of mistaken identity; Marwan Rashed: New Arabic fragments of Philoponus and their reinterpretation: does the world lack a beginning in time or take no time to begin?; Philippe Hoffmann and Pantelis Golitsis: Simplicius' Corollary on Place: method of philosophising and doctrines; Mossman Roueché: A philosophical portrait of Stephanus the philosopher; Pantelis Golitsis: Who were the real authors of the Metaphysics commentary ascribed to Alexander and Ps.-Alexander?; The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle Translations; Bibliography; Index Locorum; General Index.

74. Tuominen, Miira. 2009. The Ancient Commentators on Plato and Aristotle. Stocksfield: Acumen.

Contents: Acknowledgements VI; Abbreviations VII; Chronology IX-X; 1. Introduction; 2. Epistemology 41; 3. Science and logic 70; 4. Physics 118; 5. Psychology: perception and intellect 158; 6. Metaphysics 200; 7. Ethics 237; 8. Conclusion 280; Notes 288; Further reading 301; Bibliography 306; Index 320-324.

"The aim and organization of this book.

The main objective of this book is to offer a philosophically focused introduction to the ancient commentators.

(...)

There is a wealth of material in the commentaries themselves but no general introduction comparable to this one exists. During the past twenty years, more and more texts by the commentators have become available to English-speaking students and scholars in the translation series led by Sorabji. Sorabji has also edited a sourcebook (2004) that contains a selection of translated texts with brief introductions. Scholars working in continental Europe (such as Hadot's group at the National Centre for Scientific Research [CNRS] in France) have produced considerable research, as well as new editions, on the commentaries. All these works make the commentaries much more accessible than they used to be. However, none of these works serves exactly as an introduction to the topic.

In order to introduce the commentators as philosophers, some restrictions have been necessary. Anything like a complete overview of the commentators' thought would be unimaginable. The text material is simply too large, not to mention the fact that the group that could justifiably be called "ancient commentators" would include many more than the authors studied in this volume. The selection of material concentrates on themes that have been found philosophically inspiring during most periods of the history of Western philosophy. They also are themes that were central in the commentaries themselves. Methodologically speaking, the discussions in this book start from generally recognized philosophical problems or themes (such as the nature and possibility of knowledge, explanatory principles of nature, the nature of reality, the content of a good human life and so forth) and ask how the commentators formulated questions related to these themes and how they answered them. The most important reason for choosing this approach is that it helps integrate the commentators into the continuum of thinkers who work in different historical periods, employ different methods and follow divergent meta-philosophical guidelines." (pp. 14-16)

75. Wiberding, James. 2014. "The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle." In The Routledge Companion to Ancient Philosophy, edited by Warren, James and Sheffield, Frisbee, 643-658. New York: Routledge.

76. Wildberg, Christian. 1991. "Three Neoplatonic Introductions to Philosophy: Ammonius, David and Elias." Hermathena no. 149:33-51.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography on the Neoplatonic Commentators on Aristotle's Metaphysics

Selected bibliography on the Greek Commentariesa on Metaphysics

The critical edition of reference is: Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca (CAG) edita consilio et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Regiae Borussicae Berolini: G. Reimeri, 1882-1909, 23 voll. (This edition has been reprinted by Walter de Gruyter, Berlin).

1. Alexandru, Stefan. 1999. "A new manuscript of Pseudo-Philoponus' Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics containing a hitherto unknown ascription of the work." Phronesis no. 44:347-352.

2. Bonelli, Maddalena. 2001. Alessandro di Afrodisia e la metafisica come scienza dimostrativa. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

3. ———. 2001. "Alessandro di Afrodisia e la metafisica scientifica." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 12:61-84.

4. Cardullo, Rosa Loredana. 1987. "Siriano nella storiografia filosofica moderna e contemporanea." Siculorum Gymnasius no. 40:71-182.

5. ———. 1993. "Syrianus défenseur de Platon contre Aristote selon le témoignage d'Asclépius." In Contre Platon. Le platonisme dévoilé, edited by Monique, Dixsaut, 197-214. Paris: Vrin.

6. D'Ancona, Cristina. 2000. "Syrianus dans la tradition exégétique de la Métaphysique d'Aristote. II. Antécédents et posterité." In Le Commentaire entre tradition et innovation, edited by Goulet-Cazé, Marie-Odile, 311-327. Paris: Vrin.

Actes du Colloque International de l'Institut des Traditions Textuelles (Paris et Villejuif, 22-25 septembre 1999)

7. Diem, Gudrum. 1967. "Les traductions gréco-latines de la Métaphysique au moyen âge: le problème de la Metaphysica Vetus." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 49:7-71.

"Les quatre traductions latines de la Métaphysique au moyen âge, faites directement à partir du grec, sont intimement liées entre elles, soit par des relations entre les textes originaux tels qu'on peut les reconstituer, soit par la tradition des manuscrits. Il n'est pas possible de discuter de l'une d'entre elles séparément des autres.

On résumera d'abord les résultats qui ont été acquis par les diverses recherches jusqu'à présent pour déterminer les problèmes qui se posent. Ensuite, on examinera en détail quelques questions concernant les trois plus anciennes traductions, en particulier le problème de la Metaphysica Vetus et de ses relations aux deux autres traductions. Dans une annexe, on donnera, outre un tableau des mss, certaines informations concernant les exemplaires grecs de la Metaphysica Vetustissima et de la Metaphysica Vetus." p. 7

8. Frede, Michael. 2009. "Syrianus on Aristotle's Metaphysics." In Syrianus et la métaphysique de l'Antiquité tardive, edited by Longo, Angela, 23-56. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

9. Genequand, Charles. 1979. "L'objet de la métaphysique selon Alexandre d'Aphrodisias." Museum Helveticum no. 36:48-57.

10. Goulet, Richard, and Aouad, Maroun. 1989. "Alexandros d'Aphrodisias." In Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques. Vol. I, edited by Goulet, Richard, 125-139. Paris: Éditions du CNRS.

11. Guldentops, Guy. 2001. "La science suprême selon Thémistius." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 19:99-120.

12. Hadot, Ilsetraut. 1987. "Recherches sur les fragments du commentaire de Simplicius sur la Métaphysique di Aristote." In Simplicius. Sa vie, son oeuvre, sa survie, edited by Hadot, Ilsetraut, 225-245. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Actes du Colloque Internationale de Paris (28 septembre - 1 octobre 1985).

13. Hecquet-Devienne, Myriam. 2005. "L'authenticité de Métaphysique "Alpha" (meizon ou elatton) d'Aristotle, un faux problème? Une confirmation codicologique." Phronesis no. 50:129-149.

"La discussion sur l'authenticité du deuxième livre de la Métaphysique d'Aristote (Petit Alpha), qui dure depuis un millénaire, a pour origine une scholie qui se trouve dans le Parisinus gr. 1853 (Xe siècle) à la jonction du premier et du deuxième livre. Or, cette scholie a été copiée par la même main que celle qui a ajouté une scholie d'un contenu comparable à la fin de la Métaphysique de Théophraste. Ce fait était passé inaperçu, parce que ce scribe a utilisé différentes écritures: droite ou penchée, calligraphique ou cursive. L'ensemble des témoignages et indices déjà examinés par Gudrun Vuillemin-Diem, d'une part, et par Enrico Berti, d'autre part, est analysé et réinterprété à la lumière de cette nouvelle information, qui permet d'établir que c'est le premier livre de la Métaphysique, et non le deuxième, qui était attribué par certains à Pasiclès de Rhodes, comme en témoignait déjà Asclépios.

Le contenu et la formulation très proches des deux scholies permettent de penser qu'elles viennent d'un même érudit: à l'aide, notamment, des commentaires d'Alexandre et d'Asclépios à la Métaphysique d'Aristote, de l'étude de Nicolas de Damas ou des catalogues d'Hermippe et d'Andronicos, il a préparé une 'édition' d'Aristote destinée à devenir un modèle de référence.

Dans la tradition latine, Grand Alpha a été accidentellement attribué à Théophraste à cause de la seconde scholie. Mais la discussion dont témoigne la première scholie a pu également être provoquée dès l'origine par celle que rapporte la seconde scholie: la Métaphysique de Théophraste avait probablement été transmise comme un traité aristotélicien, jusqu'à ce que Nicolas de Damas en restitue la paternité à Théophraste; par suite, l'authenticité d' autres livres du corpus aristotélicen a pu également être mise en doute, mais parce qu'ils posaient des problémes d' ordre éditorial, il y a deux millénaires déjá."

14. Kremer, Klaus. 1961. Der Metaphysikbegriff in den Aristoteles-Kommentaren der Ammonius Schule. Münster: Aschendoff.

15. Longo, Angela. 2005. Siriano e i principi della scienza. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

Cfr. pp. 225-292.

16. Lortie, François. 2007. Le Commentaire d'Asclépius à la Métaphysique d'Aristote (Livre Alpha, Chapitres 1 et 2). Introduction, traduction annotée et étude doctrinale.

Mémoire présenté à la Faculté des études supérieures de l'Université Laval dans le cadre du programme de maîtrise en philosophie pour l'obtention du grade de maître es arts (M. A.).

"Bien que plusieurs études aient été consacrées à Asclépius de Tralles (VIe siècle), disciple du néoplatonicien Ammonius à Alexandrie, on ne dispose à ce jour d'aucune traduction de son commentaire aux livres A-Z de la Métaphysique d'Aristote. Puisqu'il constitue l'un des plus précieux témoignages de la réception des doctrines métaphysiques du Stagirite au sein de l'école néoplatonicienne, nous avons jugé bon d'entreprendre la première traduction en langue moderne de cet ouvrage. Comme la pleine compréhension de l'exégèse d'Asclépius n'est possible qu'à la lumière de son contexte historico-philosophique, nous avons d'abord présenté la tradition des commentaires grecs à la Métaphysique d'Aristote. Nous avons ensuite offert une traduction annotée des premières pages du commentaire d'Asclépius, à savoir de son prologue et des deux premiers chapitres du livre Alpha. Enfin, nous avons rédigé une étude doctrinale concernant les principaux enjeux philosophiques de la section traduite du commentaire: la division du prologue exégétique en questions capitales, le concept d'appréhension simple et les rapports entre les intelligibles, Dieu et le Bien."

17. Luna, Concetta. 2000. "Syrianus dans la tradition exégétique de la Métaphysique d'Aristote. I. Syrianus entre Alexandre d'Aphrodise et Asclépius." In Le Commentaire entre tradition et innovation. Actes du Colloque International de l'Institut des Traditions Textuelles (Paris et Villejuif, 22-25 septembre 1999), edited by Goulet-Cazé, Marie-Odile, 301-309. Paris: Vrin.

18. ———. 2001. Trois études sur la tradition des commentaires anciens à la Métaphysique d'Aristote. Leiden: Brill.

Table des Matières: Avant-propos VII-VIII; Étude I: Les commentaires de Syrianus et du Ps. Alexandre sur la Mètaphysique. Essai de mise au point 1; Étude II: Le commentaire d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise comme source du commentiare de Syrianus 72; Étude III: Alexandre d'Aphrodise et Syrianus comme sources du commentiare d'Asclépius 99; Conclusions 187; Appendices I-IX 191-226; Index 227-251.

See the review by Leonard Tarán, La tradition des commentaires à la Métaphysique d'Aristote, Gnomon, 53 (2005), pp. 196-209.

19. ———. 2003. "La Métaphysique. Tradition grecque. Les commentaires grecs à la Métaphysique." In Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques. Supplément, edited by Goulet, Richard, 249-258. Paris: Éditions du CNRS.

20. ———. 2004. "Alessando di Afrodisia e Siriano sul libro B della Metafisica: tecnica e struttura del commento." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 15:39-79.

21. Movia, Giancarlo, ed. 2005. Alessandro di Afrodisia e la 'Metafisica' di Aristotele. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

22. Narbonne, Jean-Marc. 1987. "Définition et description: le problème de la saisie des genres premiers et des individus chez Aristote dans l'exégèse de Simplicius." Archives de Philosophe no. 50:529-554.

23. ———. 2005. "La reformulation néoplatonicienne de la Métaphysique grecque." In Y a-t-il une histoire de la métaphysique?, edited by Zarka, Yves Charles and Pinchard, Bruno, 83-97. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

24. Narcy, Michel. 1981. "L'homonymie entre Aristote et ses commentateurs néoplatoniciens." Les Études philosophiques:35-52.

25. ———. 2003. "La Métaphysique. Tradition grecque. Origine et titre." In Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques. Supplément, edited by Goulet, Richard, 224-229. Paris: Éditions du CNRS.

26. O'Meara, Dominic. 1986. "Le problème de la métaphysique dans l'antiquité tardive." Freiburger Zeitschrift fûr Philosophie und Theologie no. 33:3-22.

Reprinted in: D. J. O'Meara, The Structure of Being and the Search for the Good. Essays on Ancient and Early Medieval Platonism, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998.

"La conception de la métaphysique comme science philosophique chez Proclus et Syrianus les problèmes posés à ces deux néoplatoniciens par l'adoption du projet aristotélicien d'une science métaphysique les solutions apportées, l'originalité et la cohérence de leur conception."

27. Pines, Salomon. 1981. "Les limites de la métaphysique selon al-Farabi, Ibn-Bassa et Maimonides: sources et anthèses de ces doctrines chez Alexandre d'Aphrodise et chez Themistius." In Sprache und Erkenntnis im Mittelalter. Vol. I. Berlin: de Gruyter.

28. ———. 1987. "Some distinctive metaphysical conceptions in Themistius' commentary on Book Lambda and their place in the history of philosophy." In Aristoteles Werk und Wirkung. Vol II, edited by Wiesner, Jünger, 177-204. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

29. Saffrey, Henry Dominique. 1987. "Comment Syrianus, le maître de l'école néoplationicienne d'Athènes, considérait-il Aristote?" In Aristoteles Werk und Wirkung. Vol II, edited by Wiesner, Jünger, 205-214. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Translated in English as: How did Syrianus regard Aristotle?, in: Richard Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed, pp. 173-179.

30. Salis, Rita. 2000. La pluralità dei cieli e dei motori immobili secondo lo pseudo Alessandro. Cagliari: Edizioni AV.

Il commento dello pseudo Alessandro al cap. VIII del libro XII della Metafisica di Aristotele.

31. ———. 2000. La metafisica come teologia. Cagliari: Edizioni AV.

Il commento delle pseudo Alessandro al libro XII della Metafisica di Aristotele.

32. ———. 2005. Il commento di pseudo-Alessandro al libro L della Metafisica di Aristotele Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino.

33. Sharples, Robert W. 1987. "Alexander of Aphrodisias: Scholasticism and innovation." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Vol. 36.2: Platonismus [continuation], Aristotelismus, edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 1176-1243. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

34. ———. 2008. "Habent Sua Fatà Libelli: Aristotle's Categories in the First Century B. C." Acta AntiquaAcademiae Scientiarum Hungaricae no. 48:273-287.

35. Steel, Carlos. 2005. "Theology as First Philosophy: the Neoplatonic Concept of Metaphysics." Quaestio no. 5:3-21.

36. Tarán, Leonardo. 1987. "Syrianus and Pseudo-Alexander's Commentary on Metaphysics E-N." In Aristoteles Werk und Wirkung. Paul Moraux Gewidmet. Vol. II: Kommentierung Überlieferung, Nachleben, edited by Wiesner, Jünger, 215-232. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Reprinted in: L. Tarán, Collected Papers (1962-1999), Leiden: Brill, 2001, n. 27, pp. 525-543.

37. Verbeke, Gerard. 1982. "Aristotle's Metaphysics Viewed by the Ancient Greek Commentators." In Studies in Aristotle, edited by O'Meara, Dominic, 107-127. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

38. Verrycken, Koenraad. 1990. "The Metaphysics of Ammonius son of Hermeias." In Aristotle transformed. The Ancient Commentators and their influence, edited by Sorabji, Richard, 199-231. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

39. ———. 2001. "La métaphysique d'Ammonius chez Zacharie de Mytilène." Revue des Science Philosophiques et Théologiques no. 85:241-266.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Alexander of Aphrodisias' metaphysics: Annotated bibliography of the studies in English: A - Faz

Bibliography

1. Adamson, Peter. 2018. "Dialectical method in Alexander of Aphrodisias’ treatises on fate and providence." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 54:279-308.

"The second century was a time of philosophical diversity.

(...)

Philosophers of a more ‘dogmatic’ orientation were under pressure to show how the methods of their favoured school could resolve philosophical dispute. The challenge was, negatively, to offer a convincing refutation of rival views, and positively, to show that one’s own school doctrines rested on sound foundations.

In what follows, I will show how the most famous Aristotelian of the second century, Alexander of Aphrodisias, rose to this challenge.

I will do so with reference to two works, neither of which is among Alexander’s famous commentaries on Aristotle. They are instead independent treatises devoted to the closely related notions of fate and providence. Whereas On Fate has survived in its original Greek version,(3) On Providence is known to us only in two medieval Arabic translations.(4)" (pp. 279-280)

(3) For text, translation, and commentary see R. W. Sharples, Alexander of Aphrodisias on Fate [Alexander on Fate] (London,1983); cited by page and line from the edition of I. Bruns in Supplementum Aristotelicum, . 2.1.2 (Berlin, 1887 and 1892), reprinted by Sharples. I quote from Sharples’ translation with occasional modifications; all other translations in the paper are mine, unless otherwise noted.

(4) I will be drawing in this paper on the version most scholars take to be more complete and reliable, namely the later one produced by Abū Bishr Mattā. For the Arabic text(s) and translations into three languages see H.-J. Ruland, ‘Die arabische Fassungen von zwei Schriften des Alexander von Aphrodisias: Über die Vorsehung und Über das liberum arbitrium’ (Ph.D. thesis, Saarbrücken, 1976); S. Fazzo and M. Zonta, Alessandro di Afrodisia: La provvidenza [Provvidenza] (Milan, 1998); and P. Thillet, Alexandre d’Aphrodise: Traité de la providence (Lagrasse, 2003). For the influence of the work in early Arabic thought see S. Fazzo and H. Wiesner, ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias in the Kindi Circle and in al-Kindī’s Cosmology’ [‘Kindi Circle’], Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 3 (1993), 119-53.

2. Avotins, Ivars. 1980. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on vision in the atomists." The Classical Quarterly no. 30:429-454.

"In discussing the atomists' theory of vision modern accounts have quite neglected to take into account two sections of Alexander of Aphrodisias on this topic.(1)" (p. 429)

(...)

"In conclusion, a more general question. In his two accounts Alexander has supplied us with material partly attested elsewhere, partly found only in him.

In view of scholars' interest in Alexander's reliability,(91) what can be said about the over-all accuracy of his testimony on atomist philosophy? Wherever we can test him against other material he, or his sources, cannot be accused of outright error or gross distortion. The one possible exception seems to be his intimation that there were atomists who believed that vision of external objects could occur without idols. One could wish that Alexander had introduced atomist doctrine in the form of statements rather than obliquely by questions because in the latter case it is more difficult for the reader to decide whether a doctrine is being asserted or only inferred. In our two accounts it cannot be clearly demonstrated whether or not the question form has impaired Alexander's veracity or accuracy.

To sum up, the examination of the content and method of presentation of these two accounts shows that Alexander's evidence can neither be accepted nor discarded a priori. Each datum has to be scrutinized separately." (p. 454)

(1) P. Wendland (ed.), 'Alexandri in librum de sensu commentarium', Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, III.l (Berlin, 1901), pp. 56.6-58.22 (henceforth De sensu) and I. Bruns (ed.), 'Alexandri Aphrodisiensis

praeter commentaria scripta minora. De anima liber cum mantissa', Supplementum Aristotelicum, II.1 (Berlin, 1887), pp. 134. 28-136.28 (henceforth Mantissa).(...)

(91) Above, n. 4.

3. Baghdassarian, Fabienne. 2023. "De mixtione IX–X: Promoting the Aristotelian Causal System." In Studies on Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Mixture and Growth, edited by Guyomarc'h, Gweltaz and de Haas, Frans A.J., 122-143. Leiden: Brill.

Abstract: "In De Mixtione IX–X, Alexander considers the theory of total blending from the perspective of its metaphysical value. He examines whether it can provide a satisfactory account of the being, unity and stability of things and he provides an explicit argument in favor of the Aristotelian causal system, against the Stoic theory of principles informed by total blending. He purposefully and methodically substitutes one causal system for another: in chapter IX, hylomorphism is preferred to total blending to account for the constitution of beings; in chapter X, the motion of the heavens and the formal cause are preferred to the cohesive function of pneuma. By doing so, Alexander does not aim solely at rejecting Stoic materialism in favor of a number of immaterial causes. He also wants to put forward a positive philosophical claim about the nature of reality: since in his eyes Stoic materialism leads to a pervasive ontological confusion, Alexander wants to re-establish the fact that individual substances are ontologically fundamental and primary."

4. Baltussen, Han. 2016. The Peripatetics: Aristotle’s Heirs, 322 bce–200 ce. New York: Routledge.

Contents: Sources and abbreviations viii; Preface xi; 1 Aristotle’s Heirs 1; 2 The natural world and its (hidden) foundations 27; 3 Things and words: language, logic, and reasoning 55; 4 Ethics and politics: on morality and citizenship 80; 5 Continuity and criticism in the Peripatos 106; 6 Intellectual context: rivals and devotees 127; 7 Epilogue: from Theophrastus to Alexander of Aphrodisias 158; Appendix A: Known Peripatetics 322 bce–250 ce 165; Appendix B: Modern editions and commentaries on the Peripatetics 171; Index 174-177.

"This book is about the Peripatetic school after Aristotle (d. 322 bce) down to Alexander of Aphrodisias (ca. 200 ce). Since a recent and accessible account of the Peripatetics in English is still not available (Lynch 1972 is still useful, but now out of date; Grayeff 1974, ch. 2–4 is in some respects flawed), this book fills an existing gap in the scholarly literature by synthesising the new scholarship of the past four decades. The account offered here is not intended to be comprehensive (an impossible task), but may serve as a good starting point for those who are interested in Hellenistic philosophy, while it suggests further readings for anyone wanting to pursue detailed analysis on specific topics or individuals. A useful companion volume is R. Sharples’ sourcebook (Routledge, 2010), which covers roughly the same period (200 bce–200 ce), but has a greater range of materials with some commentary." (Preface, p. XI)

References

Grayeff, F. 1974. Aristotle and His School (London: Duckworth).

Lynch, J. P. 1972. Aristotle’s School. A Study of A Greek Educational Institution (Berkeley: University of California Press).

Sharples, R. W. 2010. ‘Peripatetics from 100 bce to 200 ce’. In Lloyd Gerson (ed.) Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity. 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), ch. 8.

5. ———. 2017. "The Aristotelian tradition." In The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic, edited by Richter, Daniel S. and Johnson, William A., 581-594. New York: Oxford University Press.

37.2.3 Alexander of Aphrodisias, pp. 585-587.

"Until recently we had no precise dates for Alexander's working life, since his dedication of On Fate to emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla allowed only an estimate between 198 and 211 CE ( the death of Septimius Severus).(29) Our knowledge was supplemented in 2004 by epigraphic evidence from Aphrodisias with publication of a honorary inscription dedicated to his father (also a philosopher) which confirms his status as diadochos and provides his full name, which he shares with his father: Titus Aurelius Alexandros.(30) Arguably the commentator par excellence, at least in the Aristotelian tradition, Alexander became the model for the running commentary on Aristotle's esoteric writings for several centuries. His appointment to the chair of Peripatetic philosophy in Athens was significant-one of several chairs set up by emperor Marcus Aurelius (Philostr. VS 2.2 [566])." (pp. 585-586)

(29) Dedication: De Jato 1.164.1-3 (=Sharples 2010a, chap. 1, text Ab).

(30) Inscription found in Karacasu and dated to ca. 200 CE: see Chaniotis 2004, 388-389 and Sharples 2005.

References

Chaniotis, A. 2004. "New Inscriptions from Aphrodisias (1995-2001):' American Journal of Archaeology 108: 377-416.

Sharples, R. W. 2005. "Implications of the New Alexander of Aphrodisias Inscription:' BICS, 48: 47-56.

Sharples, R. W. 2010a. Peripatetic Philosophy 200 BC-CE 200: An Introduction and Collection of Sources in Translation. Cambridge.

6. Barnes, Jonathan. 2015. "Alexander, Ethical Problems 22." In Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia: (« Questioni etiche » e « Mantissa »): metodo e oggetto dell’etica peripatetica, edited by Bonelli, Maddalena, 87.114. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

7. Benevich, Fedor. 2019. "The Priority of Natures against the Identity of Indiscernibles: Alexander of Aphrodisias, Yahyā b. ‘Adī, and Avicenna on Genus as Matter." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 37:203-233.

Abstract: "When one studies the history of universals in late antiquity and in the Arabic and Latin Middle Ages, the key notion is ‘nature.’ Natures are notions like ‘redness qua redness,’ which are neither universal nor particular in themselves, but are immanent either in universals, which exist only in the mind, or in extramental particulars. All recent studies agree that Alexander of Aphrodisias probably developed the idea of ‘nature.’ Then it travelled either directly or via the Baghdad Peripatetic Yahyā b. ‘Adī, to Avicenna. From Avicenna, it was transmitted to thinkers of Latin Scholasticism, for instance, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. In this paper, I will show that this historical reconstruction of the inheritance of the notion of ‘nature’ neglects an important shift in the middle of the historical chain: natures are ontologically prior to their instances in Alexander and Ibn ‘Adī, but posterior in Avicenna.

This crucial difference will be shown on the basis of the parallel between (a) natures and universals, and (b) the material and generic aspects of common notions. We will see that Avicenna’s reason for disagreeing with the previous tradition on this parallel was a concern regarding the compatibility of the priority of natures with the principle of the identity of indiscernibles."

8. Betegh, Gábor. 2023. "De mixtione I–II: Alexander’s Dialectical Method." In Studies on Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Mixture and Growth, edited by Guyomarc'h, Gweltaz and de Haas, Frans A.J., 28-57. Leiden: Brill.

Abstract: "The chapter aims to show that the task of the first two chapters of De Mixtione is to set the dialectical strategy for the entire treatise and to indicate the principles of Alexander’s methodology. Contrary to what is customarily supposed, Alexander does not seek to debunk the Stoic theory already at the outset, but rather shows why, its basic flaws notwithstanding, Chrysippus’ theory shares crucial features with the Aristotelian theory, and why it requires thorough critical analysis. The discussion of the pluralist theories, and in particular that of Democritus and Empedocles, highlights that only the Stoic and the Aristotelian theories have the theoretical resources to countenance the ‘unification’ of matter, which, for Alexander, is a central feature of blending. Moreover, in the review of alternative views, Alexander is relying on a sceptical diaphōnia used also by Sextus. Yet, Alexander deploys this doxographical material not with the aim of reaching a sceptical conclusion, but for the purposes of an Aristotelian-type dialectical investigation. This reading of the initial chapters also shows that Alexander’s dialectical methodology in the De mixtione is close to the one he applies in De fato, and in On providence. In these chapters, Alexander spells out further central elements and key terms of his methodology, which also evince his methodological consistency across treatises."

9. Bloch, David. 2003. "Alexander of Aphrodisias as a textual witness: the commentary on the « De Sensu »." Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen-Âge Grec et Latin no. 74:21-38.

"Alexander of Aphrodisias' commentary on Aristotle's De Sensu presents readings of obvious interest to an editor of the De Sensu. No extant manuscript of the Aristotelian text is older than the 10th century A.D.,

and therefore a famous Peripatetic commentator of the 2nd or the 3rd century A.D. will certainly have had access to manuscripts now lost, and possibly to a quite different textual tradition. A. Förster explicitly

assumes that this is the case.(1) In preparing a critical edition of Aristotle's De Sensu, I have made a complete collation of Alexander's commentary, using Wendland's edition (CAG. Ill.I, Berlin 1901).

In this article I will show that, even though Alexander seems to be an excellent textual witness, the commentary can rarely be considered solid, textual evidence on a par with manuscript readings. Both Förster and

Ross commit the mistake of treating Alexandrian readings as manuscript readings in their editions. First, I will make some general points about the textual transmission of Aristotle and Alexander; then, I will examine the different parts of Alexander's commentary: lemmata, quotations, paraphrases, and the discussions of variatio lectionis; and finally, I will state exactly how I think Alexander's commentary can be used by the editor of Aristotle." (p. 21)

10. Blumenthal, Henry J. 1987. "Alexander of Aphrodisias in the later Greek commentaries on Aristotle's De anima, II." In Aristoteles. Werk und Wirkung, Paul Moraux gewidmet, II: Kommentierung, Überlieferung, Nachleben, edited by Wiesner, Jürgen, 90-106. Berlin: de Gruyter.

"Of the commentators on Aristotle whose works survive in other than partial or fragmentary form Alexander is unique in that he worked before the new Platonism of Plotinus and his successors came to dominate Greek philosophy: I use "successors" in the temporal and therefore not necessarily philosophical sense. With the exception of Themistius he is also alone in that he wrote more or less unbiased commentaries on Aristotle,(1) commentaries that were on the whole an honest, and generally successful - though this is admittedly now controversial - attempt to set out what Aristotle thought." (p. 90, two notes omitted)

(1) For Themistius cf. my Themistius, the last Peripatetic commentator on Aristotle?, in: Arktouros, Festschrift Knox (1979) 391-400; for another view cf. E.P. Mahoney, Neoplatonism, the Greek commentators, and Renaissance Aristotelianism, in: Neoplatonism and Christian Thought, ed. D.J.O'Meara (Albany 1982) n. 1, on 264-266.

11. Bobzien, Susanne. 1998. "The Inadvertent Conception and Late Birth of the Free-Will Problem." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 43:133-175.

Reprinted in R. Sorabji, Aristotle Re-Interpreted: New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators, New York: Bloomsbury 2016, pp. 125-159.

Abstract: "In this paper I argue that the ‘discovery’ of the problem of causal determinism and freedom of decision in Greek philosophy is the result of a combination and mix-up of Aristotelian and Stoic thought in later antiquity; more precisely, a (mis-)interpretation of Aristotle’s philosophy of deliberate choice and action in the light of Stoic theory of determinism and moral responsibility. The (con-)fusion originates with the beginnings of Aristotle scholarship, at the latest in the early 2nd century AD. It undergoes several developments, absorbing Epictetan, Middle-Platonist, and Peripatetic ideas; and it leads eventually to a concept of freedom of decision and an exposition of the ‘free-will problem’ in Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Fate and in the Mantissa ascribed to him."

12. ———. 2014. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on Aristotle’s theory of the Stoic indemonstrables." In Strategies of Argument: Essays in Ancient Ethics, Epistemology, and Logic, edited by Lee, Mi-Kyoung, 199-227. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In her important 1979 paper “Aristoteles über Syllogismen ‘aufgrund einer Hypothese,’ (1) Gisela Striker provided an in-depth analysis of these vexing and perplexing Aristotelian arguments. She showed that they were Aristotle’s way of providing a logical vehicle for inferences based on other than term-logical relations; that the “hypothesis” that gives them their name is best understood as a rule that is not based on a relation of terms,(2) rather than as a premise; and that in those arguments “the thing taken instead” (τὸ μεταλαμβανόμενον) is an assertion that is used instead of the dem onstrandum.(3) It was upon reading this paper that I realized that the (then) prevalent interpretation of later ancient texts on hypothetical syllogisms as presenting the Stoic theory of indemonstrables needed a thorough revision. For it is possible to show that, starting from Aristotle’s “syllogisms based on a hypothesis,” a specifically Peripatetic (and from the third century CE also partly Platonist) development can be traced through the centuries up to the late ancient passages on hypothetical syllogistic in Philoponus and Boethius. Although the Stoic indemonstrables undoubtedly played a role in this development, the various theories of hypothetical syllogisms over the centuries are all Peripatetic (and sometimes a little Platonist) in form, function, and terminology.(4) The present paper looks at Alexander of Aphrodisias’ role in this development." (p. 199)

(1) Striker [1979]. See now also Striker [2009], 174–8, 201, 237–238.

(2) Striker [1979], 46.

(3) Ibid., 43.

(4) Here I am in agreement with Maroth [1989]. The arguments the Stoics called hypothetical syllogisms were completely different from those the Peripatetics called hypothetical syllogisms: see my [1997].

References

Bobzien, S. [1997] “The Stoics on Hypotheses and Hypothetical Argument,” Phronesis 42(3), 299–312.

Maroth, M. [1989], Ibn Sina und die peripatetische “Aussagenlogik” (Leiden: Brill).

Striker, G. [1979] “Aristoteles über Syllogismen ‘aufgrund einer Hypothese,’ ” Hermes 107, 33–50. [English trnaslation: Aristotle on Syllogisms ‘from a Hypothesis’ in G. Striker, From Aristotle to Cicero: Essays on Ancient Philosophy, New York: Oxford niversity Press 2022, pp. 1-17]

Striker, G. [2009] Aristotle, Prior Analytics: Book I (Oxford: OUP).

13. Bodnár, István M. 1997. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on Celestial Motions." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 42:190-205.

"After identifying the contribution of the nature of the celestial spheres with that of their soul, Alexander follows Aristotle in setting out a celestial hierarchy, on top of which there is or there are the separate unmoved mover(s), which move(s) by being object(s) of striving and desire for the less perfect entities of the heavens. This much seems to be firmly settled. A number of further issues, however, call for detailed examination. In this paper first I set out to clarify the contributions of the striving of the different celestial spheres, then I turn to describing the interaction between the various motions of the celestial system, and I discuss whether the theory Alexander propounded could have been a fundamental revision, or rather an alternative exposition of the original, Aristotelian celestial theory deploying homocentric spheres." (p. 191)

14. ———. 2014. "Alexander’s unmoved mover." In Nature et sagesse : les rapports entre physique et métaphysique dans la tradition aristotélicienne: recueil de textes en hommage à Pierre Pellegrin, edited by Cerami, Cristina. Leuven: Peeters.

15. ———. 2023. "De mixtione XV: the Aristotelian Account Vindicated." In Studies on Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Mixture and Growth, edited by Guyomarc'h, Gweltaz and de Haas, Frans A.J., 212-230. Leiden: Brill.

Abstract: "This chapter gives further confirmation of the account worked out in chapters XIII and XIV by stressing that a proper blend neither contains the original ingredients in actuality, nor is there a generation of these ingredients in the proper sense of the word when these original constituents are recovered from the mix. Indeed, the recovered constituents are not the original batch of constituent material. Furthermore, such processes of dissolution are in need of a trigger—some slight fermentation in the case of must, a heated stone to separate milk into cheese and whey, and a sponge, to extract the water from wine mixed with water. In addition to this, the chapter sets out how the divisibility of the ingredients contributes to their ability to be blended, how such a preparatory phase facilitates the interaction of the ingredients leading to blending."

16. Bonelli, Maddalena. 2010. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on the Science of Ontology." In Interpreting Aristotle's Posterior Analytics in Late Antiquity and Beyond, edited by de Haas, Frans A.J., Leunissen, Mariska and Martijn, Marije, 99-122. Leiden: Brill.

"Conclusion

In this article, I have tried to show how Alexander conceived of the science of being as being as constituting a demonstrative science. In particular, I have tried to show that Alexander thought it possible to apply the scientific conditions codified by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics to ontology. Although it is difficult to discern the precursors of this theory, it is easy to see the great success thismodel of philosophy had in the history of philosophy after Alexander. The conception of metaphysics as a demonstrative science that I discern in Alexander actually had a fundamental influence on the philosophical tradition: we might mention not only Proclus’ Elements of Theology, but also Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, as well as certain developments in so-called ‘analytic’ philosophy." (p. 121)

17. Castelli, Laura Maria. 2013. "Collections of « topoi » and the structure of Aristotle's « Topics »: notes on an ancient debate: (Aristotle, Theophrastus, Alexander and Themistius)." Antiquorum Philosophia no. 7:65-92.

18. ———. 2015. "Alexander of Aphrodisias: Methodological Issues and Argumentative Strategies between Ethical Problems and Commentary on the Topics." In Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia. (Questioni etiche e Mantissa). Metodo e oggetto dell'etica peripatetica, edited by Bonelli, Maddalena, 19-42. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

19. Caston, Victor. 2012. "Higher-order awareness in Alexander of Aphrodisias." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies no. 55:31-49.

Abstract: "Alexander of Aphrodisias discusses higher-order awareness in perception twice: in Quaestiones 3.7, where he offers a detailed exegesis of Aristotle's arguments at the beginning of De anima 3.2 on how we perceive that we see, as an explanation of what Alexander calls 'sunaisthesis'; and in Alexander's own systematic treatise, the De anima. In the Quaestiones, Alexander develops an interpretation of Aristotle that has since become dominant, the moderate capacity reading, according to which the same faculty that enables us to see also enables us to perceive that we are seeing. But he also makes the provocative claim that higher-order awareness is itself a necessary consequence of perceiving and is entailed by some of Aristotle's central doctrines. It is difficult to make good on this claim, though, and Alexander avoids making it in his own De anima, which offers a more nuanced and defensible position on the question."

20. ———. 2023. "Alexander of Aphrodisias’ Emergentism: Hylomorphism Perfected." In The History of Hylomorphism: From Aristotle to Descartes, edited by Charles, David, 154-173. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Emergentism, to our ears, has obvious ramifications for concerns about reductionism and mental causation. But for Alexander it is primarily a way of understanding and spelling out what is involved in hylomorphism. It allows him to make precise the relation a form has to the matter that underlies it, and to see how this relation is recursively iterated at various levels, resulting in a layered conception of reality. Since the matter of a hylomorphic compound might itself be a hylomorphic compound, it may have a form and matter of its own, which in turn may again be a hylomorphic compound, until we finally hit bottom with prime matter. Therefore, there are forms all the way down, so to speak, in matter at every level except the lowest, a feature which is significant for Alexander because of the distinctive efficient causal role he assigns to form. As a consequence, even material explanations will make essential reference to form, insofar as distinctive types of matter possess forms of their own, which makes any given matter the kind that it is and explains why it is suitable for the functions required for the form above it. And it is the form at each of these levels that figures in causal explanations.

Alexander does not, then, merely gesture at a rough and ready distinction between form and matter, or the fact that it ‘stacks’ and iterates hierarchically.

His emergentism allows him to offer a highly specific version of hylomorphism, making clear exactly what the distinctive contributions of form and matter are, as well as their relation to one another." (pp. 154-155)

21. Cerami, Cristina. 2016. "Alexander of Aphrodisias." In Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Aristotle in Antiquity, edited by Falcon, Andrea, 150-179. Leiden: Brill.

"Our Greek, Arabic, and Latin bibliographical sources attribute a great number of writings to Alexander. Not all of them are authentic. Among the authentic ones, the treatises On Mixture, On Fate, and On the Soul are extant in the original Greek. Some writings are preserved only in Arabic translation. Among them, there are the treatises On the Principles of the Cosmos, On Providence, and Against Galen on Motion. Moreover, Alexander wrote philosophical commentaries on several Aristotelian works. His commentaries on the Prior Analytics (book 1), Topics, Meteorology, and On the Senses are extant. His commentaries on the Posterior Analytics, on the Physics, and on the treatise On the Heavens survive only in fragmentary form.(3) A complete commentary on the Metaphysics is transmitted under his name, but only the first five books are genuine. Finally, his philosophical production included concise expositions on particular exegetical questions prompted by the text of Aristotle’s writings or linked to questions debated by other contemporary philosophical schools. These expositions are collected in three books of Natural Questions, one book of Ethical Questions, and a book that is traditionally known as Mantissa (“makeweight”), which is concerned with psychology.

A complete presentation of Alexander’s philosophical production would go beyond the limits of this chapter. In the pages to follow, I will try to assess Alexander’s unique place in the Aristotelian tradition by singling out what is distinctive in his reading of Aristotle." (pp. 160-161)

(3) Collection of extant testimonies in Moraux 1979 (Posterior Analytics), Rescigno 2004 and 2008 (On the Heavens), and Rashed 2011 (Physics 4–8).

References

Moraux, 1979. Le commentaire d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise aux Seconds Analytiques d’Aristote, Berlin/New York, W. De Gruyter.

Rashed, 2011. Alexandre d’Aphrodise, Commentaire perdu à la Physique d’Aristote (Livres IV–VIII). Les scholies byzantines. Berlin/New York, W. De Gruyter.

Rescigno, A. 2004. Alessandro di Afrodisia: commentario al De caelo di Aristotele. Frammenti del primo libro. Amsterdam, Hakkert.

——— 2008. Alessandro di Afrodisia: commentario al De caelo di Aristotele. Frammenti del secondo, terzo e quarto libro. Amsterdam, Hakkert.

22. Chaniotis, Angelo. 2004. "Epigraphic evidence for the philosopher Alexander of Aphrodisias." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies no. 47:79-81.

"Inscriptions often provide information about great figures of ancient literature. This applies to Arrian, Plutarch and Tacitus no less than to the poet Nikandros of Colophon or Aristotle.

A new find from the city of Aphrodisias in Asia Minor in 2001 now adds some important biographical information on the city's most known author and one of the greatest philosophers of the Imperial period. This new inscription will be published together with other recent epigraphic finds from Aphrodisias in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Archaeology; as the news about this text has already spread among scholars interested in the history of ancient philosophy, it seemed appropriate to present this text as soon as possible in a journal more likely to be read by scholars interested in classical literature." (p. 79)

23. ———. 2004. "New Inscriptions from Aphrodisias (1995-2001)." American Journal of Archaeology no. 108:377-416.

Abstract: "This article presents 33 Greek inscriptions found at Aphrodisias between 1995 and 2001. They include an honorary decree, honorary inscriptions of other types, statue bases, dedications, building inscriptions, epitaphs, and a sundial. The most important new text is an honorary inscription on a statue base set up by the prominent philosopher Alexander of Aphrodisias for his father (4).

A n unusually early inscription is a posthumous honorary decree for a prominent local citizen (1), which records his achievements probably during the wars and diplomatic exchanges of the first century B.C. The other new texts provide information about cults (Thea Eleutheria: 8; Zeus Nineudios: 11; Hephaistos: 15), the date of the Civil Basilica (14; under Domitian?), gladiatorial competitions (21-22), the prosopography of the city, occupations (11 a bronze-smith; 28: an agent of Fulvia Cervidia Vestina, member of a senatorial family, who probably owned land near Aphrodisias), and the relations between Aphrodisias and the Roman provincial administration (23 and 26)."

24. Chase, John Michael. 2025. "Summing up the universal. Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius and Simplicius on the formation of universals." In Wie der Universalienstreit begann. Koina/universalia in der spätantiken Philosophie, edited by A. V. Alván León, A V. and Mesch, W., 1-22. Leiden: Brill.

Preprint: the volume has not yet been published.

"Conclusion

If I were to attempt a sunkephalaiôsis of the preceding discussion, I’d say that our quest for the origins of the Peripatetic doctrine of the formation of universal concepts has led us back, by sometimes tortuous paths, to a period when Academic, Peripatetic, Stoic, and Epicurean views still shared many doctrinal elements, although they were struggling to demarcate themselves from one another. As we tried to track down the nature and function of “summation” (kephalaiôsis, sunkephalaiôsis) in this doctrine, we saw that it appeared as a component in the logical scheme of analysis and synthesis, where it served to designate the “upward path” of synthesis, by which species discovered through analysis or division are “summarized” or “recapitulated”, and then added to the genus in order to form a definition of the essence of an object. In an epistemological context, we found that the same terminology could be used by the Peripatetics and others to denote the way in which individual sensations, memories and experiences are somehow “summed up” and “recapitulated” by the rational faculty in order to form universal concepts, and we saw some motives to suspect this may have been the case for the shadowy medical sect of the Empiric physicians as well. This last hypothesis, would, of course, require confirmation by further research." (pp. 21-22)

25. Cheng, Wei. 2018. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on Pleasure and Pain in Aristotle." In Pain and Pleasure in Classical Times, edited by Harris, William V., 174-200. Leiden: Brill.

"Instead, I aim to draw attention to a similar, yet basically ignored debate in antiquity over the obscure relation of supervenience between pleasure and activity in which both Alexander of Aphrodisias and other interpreters of Aristotle, probably his colleagues, students, and even some of his predecessors, took part.(13) This exegetic debate is hidden in Alexander’s theoretical criticism of some anonymous ‘hedonists’ in the Problemata Ethica (PE)—a collection of short and unsystematic notes about ethical issues.(14) I shall argue that Alexander develops his anti-hedonistic argument mainly based on the Extrinsic Reading of Aristotle’s supervenience-based interpretation of pleasure, whereas the ‘hedonists’ criticized by him are those who advocate a pleasure-friendly and an Intrinsic Reading of the supervenience in question, or those who try to verify the goodness of pleasure by appealing to Aristotle in this way. In light of this dialogic situation, many of Alexander’s argumentative moves are presumably reactions to, and influenced by, the proposal of his opponents who base their theories likewise on a reading of Aristotle." (pp. 176-177)

(13) This hypothesis does not necessarily commit us to believe that the debates in question happened between Alexander and his opponents in an established institution (as the hedonistic debates among the Academics in the Academy), because (due to the fact that there is no information about any of his immediate pupils) whether and in what sense Alexander had a school is still an open question (cf. Sharples 1990b). Rather, I simply want to argue that the main target at which Alexander aimed was the Aristotelian tradition. For my detailed discussion, see below.

(14) For discussions of this collection, see Madigan 1987; Sharples 1990a. The collection edited by M. Bonelli: Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia (Questioni etiche e Mantissa): Metodo e oggetto dell’etica peripatetica (Naples, 2015) awaits further examination given that it was published after I finished the main part of my manuscript. As a remedy, I have added a few footnotes to reflect some of the discussions that arose in that volume, in particular the contributions of L. Castelli and C. Natali.

References

Bonelli, M. (ed.), Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia (Questioni etiche e Mantissa): Metodo e oggetto dell’etica peripatetica (Naples, 2015).

Madigan, A., “Alexander of Aphrodisias: the Book of Ethical Problems”, ANRW II, 36, 2 (Berlin and New York, 1987), 1260–79.

Sharples, R. W., Alexander of Aphrodisias. Ethical Problems (Ithaca, 1990). (1990a).

Sharples, R. W., “The School of Alexander?”, in Sorabji 1990, 83–111. (1990b).

26. Coda, Elisa. 2012. "Alexander of Aphrodisias in Themistius’ Paraphrase of the De Caelo." Studia greco-arabica no. 2:355-371.

Abstract: "This paper examines some fragments of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ lost commentary on Aristotle’s De Caelo preserved in Themistius’ paraphrase of this work. Its aim is to make available the list of Themistius’ explicit quotations of Alexander on the basis of the Hebrew text of the paraphrase, checked against the manuscript Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, II.II.528. It also examines in detail a selection of these passages. It will appear that some of Alexander’s fragments, as preserved by Themistius, can be recovered in their original wording and meaning only on the basis of the Hebrew text. The first two passages, discussed in section 1, are meant to substantiate this claim. The third passage, discussed in section 2, raises a doctrinal question. In the Appendix, I provide a list of Alexander’s passages explicitly quoted by Themistius. For each quotation, the reference to the folios and lines of the Florence MS is given. This is especially necessary, in consideration of the differences between the Hebrew text as edited and as preserved in the MSS."

27. Corcilius, Klaus. 2023. "De mixtione XIII: Finally, the Truth about Mixture." In Studies on Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Mixture and Growth, edited by Guyomarc'h, Gweltaz and de Haas, Frans A.J., 168-191. Leiden: Brill.

Abstract: "Chapter XIII of De mixtione makes a start with Alexanders exposition of what he takes to be the only theory of blending that makes sense, namely Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory of blending. Alexander defends the theory mainly on three grounds: it alone preserves our common preconception of mixture, it alone accounts for the corresponding phenomena, and it alone can explain the shortcomings of all the other theories of blending. In this chapter I argue that, according to Alexander, all other theories of blending, including the Stoic theory, are of a reductive character. They are reductive in that they do not accept the existence of a qualitative fusion of natural bodies as a physical reality; instead, they reduce blending to other kinds of interaction between bodies all of which fall short of qualitative fusion. Alexander, by contrast, defends Aristotle’s realism about blending as philosophically superior: blending is not just an epiphenomenon or a subjective impression but a physical reality, and only Aristotle’s realist theory is capable of explaining blending in a satisfactory way."

28. Corrigan, Kevin. 1996. Plotinus' Theory of Matter-Evil and Question of Substance: Plato, Aristotle, and Alexander of Aphrodisias. Leuven: Peeters.

"This work attempts to do three things: first, to examine all of Plotinus' major works on matter-evil as individual treatises in their chronological order and as representatives of a cumulative, 'developing' theory; second, to situate these works in the context of questions concerning both the generation of lower matter and the nature of intelligible matter in relation to intellect and the One; and third, to complete the first two parts of the enquiry by locating the whole problem of matter-evil within the context of what Plotinus means by substance, thereby providing a new answer to the problem of substance and matter in Plotinus in the light principally of Plato, Aristotle, and Alexander of Aphrodisias. Chapter 1 is an introduction and Chapters 2 to 5 are extended commentaries on the major works on matter-evil." Preface, p. XI)

29. Cranz, F. Edward. 1958. "The prefaces to the Greek editions and Latin translations of Alexander of Aphrodisias, 1450 to 1575." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society:510-546.

"THE present article is primarily a descriptive catalogue, using both quotation in extenso and summary, of the prefaces to the early modern Greek editions and Latin translations of Alexander of Aphrodisias. Its first purpose is to make the prefaces, which are often unpredictable in content and difficult to locate, more accessible to historical study, and it further attempts to suggest some of the points at which they illuminate the thought of their epoch. An index of names is appended which includes all contemporaries mentioned in the prefaces, together with very brief biographical and bibliographical information. A short account of the fortuna of Alexander may serve to place the prefaces in their historical context. Alexander flourished toward the end of the second century after Christ, and he quickly won a position of great authority in the late Greek and Byzantine philosophic tradition. Similarly in the Moslem world, his writings were early translated into Syriac and Arabic, and here too Alexander exercised an important influence on philosophic thought, notably through his interpretation of the Aristotelian doctrine of the intellect. In the Latin West, however, Alexander played no significant role during the late ancient and medieval periods. His works were not translated into Latin, and his very name was soon forgotten." (p. 516, a note omitted)

30. Dalla Valeria, Lisa. 2013. "Alexander and the Aristotelian formula of the principle of excluded middle in Metaphysics Γ 7." Lexicon Philosophicum no. 1:193-215.

Abstract: "Alexander of Aphrodisias’ comment to the arguments on the principle known as of excluded middle, held by Aristotle in Metaphysics Γ 7-8, seems to interpret that text in a predominantly logical and philosophical perspective, and considers the subsequent research carried out in different fields. This perspective emerges from the particular importance that the exegete gives to not only the concepts of true and false with respect to the principle’s formula (“For neither can there be anything intermediate of a contradiction, but of one thing we must either affirm or deny one thing, whatever it is” 1011b 23-24) and its first proof, but also to the axioms and the concept of contradiction. The attribution to the principle of a meaning closely related to those concepts can, moreover, be traced back to Alexander. The reason for Alexander’s interpretative choice could be found in his own conception of first philosophy as a demonstrative science, which seems to discover a consistent criterion for truth in the principle, thus establishing the existence of something true and how to find it. However, such a requirement would be purely Alexandrian, because in Aristotle, as can be demonstrated by the texts, the truth is nothing more than the discourse which describes reality as it is. In fact, the truth expresses a relationship between terms, and this relationship may be said to subsist, in the case of the affirmative statement, or not subsist, in the case of denial."

31. de Haas, Frans A. J. 2014. "Presuppositions of Moral Action in Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias." In Fate, Providence and Moral Responsibility in Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Thought: Studies in Honour of Carlos Steel, edited by D'Hoine, Pieter and Van Riel, Gerd, 103-116. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

"Conclusion

Although the list of modifications undertaken by Alexander is much longer, we are now in a position to give an affirmative answer to the question whether the changes in the interpretation of Aristotle’s De anima that Alexander is famous for were spawned by ethical concerns (among others). Alexander works hard to create the largest possible distance between the chains of antecedent causes that define Stoic determinism on the one hand, and Aristotle’s causal chain of animal locomotion in De anima and De motu animalium on the other—despite (or because of?) the possible historical relations between Aristotle and Stoic determinism. Alexander denies Aristotle’s chain every necessity, and tries to remove any impression that each of the links is itself a motion or a moved mover. As perfections or activities (ἐντελεχεῖαι) they are exempt from motion. Only in this way, Alexander must have thought, could Aristotle’s moral psychology be a worthy adversary of 2nd century Stoicism." (p. 116)

32. ———. 2021. "Deduction and common notions in Alexander's commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics A 1-2." History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis no. 24:71-102.

Abstract: "In this paper I explore the ways in which Alexander of Aphrodisias employs and develops so-called ‘common notions’ as reliable starting points of deductive arguments. He combines contemporary developments in the Stoic and Epicurean use of common notions with Aristotelian dialectic, and axioms. This more comprehensive concept of common notions can be extracted from Alexander’s commentary on Metaphysics A 1–2. Alexander puts Aristotle’s claim that ‘all human beings by nature desire to know’ in a larger deductive framework, and adds weight to Aristotle’s use of the common understanding of the notion of ‘wisdom’. Finally I will indicate how these upgraded common notions are meant to play an important role in the general framework of metaphysics as a science."

33. ———. 2023. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on the Ancient Debate on Hylomorphism and the Development of Intellect." In The History of Hylomorphism: From Aristotle to Descartes, edited by Charles, David, 174-196. New York: Oxford University Press.

"The aim of this inquiry is to reconstruct rival approaches to hylomorphism which helped shape Alexander’s version of it, and to show how Alexander’s hylomorphism enabled him to expand the scope of the doctrine to the development of intellect. The reconstruction of rival approaches to hylomorphism offers us a glimpse of the long-standing concern for the general theory of hylomorphism, over and above its important application to the relation between body and soul.(8)

In section 1, I shall discuss interpretations of the relation between form and matter that Alexander considers to be mistaken as a first encounter with the ancient debate on hylomorphism. In section 2, I shall highlight Alexander’s discussion of more positive suggestions on how to conceive of the relation between form and matter. In section 3, I shall briefly discuss which Aristotelian ingredients Alexander added in order to develop his full account of hylomorphism that we find in De An. 1–26. Finally, in section 4, I shall show how Alexander’s brand of hylomorphism allowed him to apply it to the development of human intellect." (pp. 175-176)

(8) Sharples (2009) speaks of a sharp decline of interest in the general theory of hylomorphism between Aristotle and Alexander. This chapter may serve to provide some evidence to the contrary.

References

Sharples, R.W. 2009. ‘The Hellenistic Period: What Happened to Hylomorphism?’ In Ancient Perspectives on Aristotle’s De Anima, edited by Gerd van Riel and Pierre Destrée, Ancient and Medieval Philosophy: De Wulf-Mansion Centre. Series I, 155–66. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

34. ———. 2023. "De mixtione V–VI: Common Notions and Bodies Receiving Bodies." In Studies on Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Mixture and Growth, edited by Guyomarc'h, Gweltaz and de Haas, Frans A.J., 83-99. Leiden: Brill.

Abstract: "In this paper I first set out the role of common notions in the structure of Alexander’s argument in Mixt. V–VI. Furthermore, I argue that a series of topics discussed in Mixt. V–VI, Mant. XIV and Quaest. II.12 concern the initial stages of Stoic as well as Peripatetic blending rather than the resulting blend. The presence of certain types of (filled) pores and changes in density both facilitate mutual division; mutual division and coextension go hand in hand until a degree of juxtaposition of ingredients is reached which easily allows for the specific interaction that creates the final blend: interaction of qualities for the Peripatetics, tensional dynamics for the Stoics. In addition, I show that a list of stock examples used by Alexander also raises serious questions concerning changes in density and volume, which Aristotle, Alexander and the Stoics had to deal with. I suggest that the role of pores found in Meteorology IV may have been part of the solution for some of Alexander’s contemporaries. Throughout the arguments in the chapters V–VI, indeed throughout the De mixtione, Alexander consistently tries to replace a comprehensive materialist metaphysics of interacting bodies by his own equally comprehensive brand of hylomorphism—even if not every argument is equally convincing."

35. ———. 2024. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on Concepts." In Conceptualising Concepts in Greek Philosophy, edited by Betegh, Gábor and Tsouna, Voula, 368-383. Cambridge: Cambrdige University Press.

"The numerous works transmitted under the name of Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. 200 CE) show a rich vocabulary denoting concepts, thoughts, and universals,(1) and an equally rich collection of verbs denoting the human activities of abstracting or constructing concepts, whether they be simple (individual, genus, species) or complex (definitions, propositions). Within the confines of this chapter, I would like to focus on a number of interesting occurrences of the terms ennoia and noēma in Alexander’s texts. I shall deal with Alexander’s interrelated views of concept formation as the development of potential intellect, divine intellect in us as noēma, ennoiai as concepts under construction, and human intellect as a unity of concepts.

Alexander not only draws on Aristotle’s works and the Aristotelian tradition, but also on centuries of polemics against Aristotle by the Stoics and Platonists, which have led to new ways of engaging with Aristotle’s legacy. Often terms of Stoic or Platonist origin have become part of the common parlance in the philosophical debates of the first centuries of our era. One example that we shall come across below is the use of ‘common notions’ as starting points of valid arguments, which Alexander believes is in perfect agreement with Aristotelian dialectic. When Alexander elaborates on the extent of the human capacity to acquire some universal concepts by nature, and others by teaching and study, he always intends to confirm the Aristotelian rejection of innate knowledge." (p. 368)

(1) One term does not play a role in Alexander’s own thought: ennoēma occurs only in Alex., in Top. 359.13-16 where it echoes the Early Stoic notion of a ‘figment of the mind’ (cf. Diog. Laert. 7.61.1-3); cf. LS 30 C and D with commentary.

LS = A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley,1987, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

36. Di Giovanni, Matteo, and Primavesi, Oliver. 2016. "Who Wrote Alexander’s Commentary on Metaphysics Λ? New Light on the Syro-Arabic Tradition." In Aristotle’s Metaphysics Lambda – New Essays: Proceedings of the 13th Conference of the Karl and Gertrud-Abel Foundation Bonn, November, 28th–December 1st, 2010, edited by Horn, Christoph, 11-66. Berlin: de Gruyter.

"It seems, then, that “Alexander’s” commentary on Book Λ as expounded and quoted in Arabic by Ibn Rušd cannot be ascribed directly to the historical Alexander of Aphrodisias, but rather to an unknown Greek reviser of an original work by Alexander of Aphrodisias. For we have shown that the main part of “Alexander’s” commentary on Book Λ 1–7 as quoted by Ibn Rušd must belong – pace Freudenthal – with the same translation of a Greek original into Syriac as the book-by-book analysis expounded in Part III of Ibn Rušd’s proem, and that this analysis cannot be attributed – pace Bouyges – to the historical Alexander of Aphrodisias without qualification. The bad news is that the authenticity of the quotations from “Alexander” interspersed in Ibn Rušd’s commentary on Book Λ 1–7 will probably have to be examined afresh, as well as the conclusions to be drawn from that evidence with regard to the Greek commentary ascribed to Michael of Ephesus. The good news, however, is that the book-by-book analysis expounded in Ibn Rušd’s proem

has turned out to be a document pertaining to the ancient reception of the Metaphysics – partly by Alexander of Aphrodisias, partly by one of his successors." (p. 62)

37. Donini, Pierluigi. 2010. "Alexander 's On Fate: Questions of Coherence." In Aristotle and Determinism, 159-176. Leuven: Peeters.

Original edition: "II de Fato di Alessandro. Questioni di coerenza," in Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt II 36.7 (1987), pp. 1244-1259.

"The Aim of the Treatise

None of the major problems of philosophical coherence posed by On Fate - those I have thought necessary to illustrate in the above pages - relates directly to Stoicism and the discussion of Stoic theses. All

instead arise from Alexander 's relation to Aristotle's philosophy. If we take into account the remarkable effort (which, as we have seen, is up to a point successful) involved in reinterpreting Aristotle 's doctrines so as to incorporate them coherently within the debate on determinism, the common view of On Fate as basically a polemical tract against Stoicism, and of the Stoics as the single adversary Alexander has in mind throughout, should seem less adequate to the situation than ever. I am of course fully aware that it would be foolish to deny that Stoicism plays a very large role in Alexander 's treatise and in his polemic ; but, beside the polemic against Stoicism, another crucial preoccupation of Alexander's should be evident: that of giving a coherent account of Aristotelianism as an indeterminist philosophy. More than to reiterate the usual arguments, I think the thoughts developed above serve to support the idea that Alexander's treatise offers a comprehensive and general reflection on the problem of determinism. It was logical that the Stoics should capture a great share (not all) of the author's polemical attention here, but this polemic is not all-important : what was at least equally important for Alexander was to grapple with what seemed to him (almost always with good reason) the problematical aspects of Aristotle 's philosophy in the face of a looming and by now unavoidable issue." (p. 176, a note omitted)

38. ———. 2010. "Natural Endowments, Habits and Character in Alexander 's On Fate." In Aristotle and Determinism, 177-190. Leuven: Peeters.

Original edition: "Doti naturali, abitudini e carattere nel de fato di Alessandro," in Polyhistor: Studies in the History and Historiography of Ancient Philosophy presented to Jaap Mansfield, ed. K. Algra, P. Van der Horst, and D. Runia (Leiden-New York-Koln: Brill, 1996), pp. 284-299.

"Among the works of Alexander of Aphrodisias, his treatise On Fate is thus far the only one to which Jaap Mansfeld has devoted an entire essay(1), I will be considering here a small suggestion found in his essay which in my view is extremely fruitful, and can help ease a substantial interpretive difficulty I had raised myself some time ago." (p. 177)

(,,,)

"There is no need to criticize Alexander any further by insisting on the fact that even after thus explaining, as he attempts to do in On Fate, how virtuous and vicious characters are formed, his case in defense of the autonomy and power of self-determination of men becomes no stronger; for even after we have granted that an original choice in favor of the good and of virtue is possible, we are nevertheless still faced with the problem that the character of the phronimos, once constituted as such, turns out to be no less binding than that ( considered the expression of "fate, " that is, of nature) of the multitude of people who are not wise.

There is nothing more to add here to what has already been remarked in previous studies on the problem of determinism in Aristotle, and more specifically in On Fate." (p. 190, a note omitted)

(1) "Diaphonia: The Argument of Alexander De Fato Chs. 1-2, " Phronesis 33 (1988) 188-207. I address how this essay 's thesis contributes to clarifying the nature and the aims of On Fate in Donini (1994) 5043 n. 54.

References

Donini ( 1994) = P.L. Donini, "Testi e commenti, manuali e insegnamento: la forma sistematica e i metodi della filosofia in età postellenistica," in Aufstieg und Niedergang der Romischen Welt II 36. 7, 5027-5100.

39. Ebbesen, Sten. 2020. "Alexander of Aphrodisias, Brito and Jandun: Comments on Aurélien Robert’s Paper." In Philosophical Problems in Sense Perception: Testing the Limits of Aristotelianism, edited by Bennett, David and Tohivanen, Juhana, 213-221. Cham [Switzeland): Springer.

Abstract: "This chapter discusses Alexander of Aphrodisias’ explanation of the relational nature of perception and analyses John of Jandun’s and Radulphus Brito’s views concerning the same issue. The chapter includes a critical edition of a question from Brito’s commentary on De sensu."

40. Echeñique, Javier. 2021. "A Peripatetic Argument for the Intrinsic Goodness of Human Life: Alexander of Aphrodisias' Ethical Problems I." Apeiron no. 54:367-384.

Abstract: "In this article I argue for the thesis that Alexander's main argument, in Ethical Problems I, is an attempt to block the implication drawn by the Stoics and other ancient philosophers from the double potential of use exhibited by human life, a life that can be either well or badly lived. Alexander wants to resist the thought that this double potential of use allows the Stoics to infer that human life, in itself, or by its own nature, is neither good nor bad (what I call the Indifference Implication). Furthermore, I shall argue that Alexander's main argument establishes that human life, despite exhibiting a double potential of use, is by its own nature or intrinsically good. Finally, given that this is not a conclusion that the Stoics are likely to accept, I shall also contend that the argument should be regarded as conducted for the most part in foro interno, as a way of persuading the Peripatetics themselves of the falsity of the Indifference Implication, precisely because of the risk that such an implication be derived from their own theoretical framework.

41. Eichner, Hedrun. 2002. "Ibn Rušd’s Middle Commentary and Alexander’s Commentary in their relationship to the Arab commentary tradition on the De generatione et corruptione." In Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia nella tradizione araba, edited by D'Ancona, Cristina and Serra, Giuseppe, 281-297. Padova: Il Poligrafo.

"The history o£ the reception of Aristotle’s De Generatione et corruptione in the Arab world is marked by the fact that Arab/Islamic culture generally had a strong interest in science, and in the beginning gave great prominence to ancient texts dealing with ‘science’. Subsequently, works like De Gen. corr., which were rather a sort of development of speculative thought, became outdated because the achievements of empiric research made them superfluous. In the case of De Gen. corr., the lack of interest in later centuries even resulted in the loss of the Arabic text of the translation; therefore, a very important link between the Greek text and the Arabic works dealing with this topic is missing. The Middle Commentary by Ibn Rusd someway in the Arabic tradition is the iext which comes closest to the Aristotelian text, and a comparison between it and the other surviving testimonies is a way to regain some features of the lost Arabic tradition. In my paper I would like to show some possible starting points for such a comparison and thus try to settle the position of Ibn Rusd’s Middle Commentary with respect to the other texts." (p. 281)

42. Ellis, John. 1994. "Alexander's Defense of Aristotle's Categories." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 39:69-89.

"One aspect of the story of the attempt to challenge Aristotle's categories in late antiquity has already been told. Richard Sorabji has shown us how Philoponus, in the contra Proclum, came to consider prime matter as 'the three-dimensional', which he also called a substantial quantity.(1)"

(...)

"By Philoponus' time, in fact, there was already a long standing tradition in place. We can see this in part from the way that Philoponus argues for the notion of a substantial quantity by referring to the already accepted idea that there are substantial qualities.(3)

In this essay I shall be dealing with two problems in this area, both probably issuing from the hostile work against Aristotle Categories by Lucius and Nicostratus.(4) One, which I shall call 'the hylomorphic problem', has to do with the question of whether form is an accident of matter. The other has to do with the problem of 'substantial' (συσιωδης) qualities, viz., are there certain kinds of qualities that make up or complete the substance (τα συμπλήρωτικα τής ούσιας) of what they inhere in? For example, is the whiteness of snow an example of a 'substantial' quality?"

(...)

Alexander, the Aristototelian commentator par excellence, set himself the task of responding to many of these hostile objections. In this paper I shall be concerned with Alexander's answers to these two difficulties and how his solutions save Aristotle's categorical scheme. His response will be compared with Porphyry's, who prima facie is trying to save the categories as well and heal the quarrel(6) between the Platonists and Aristotelians. Porphyry is standardly credited with making the Categories palatable for Platonists so that it becomes the introductory text to Platonic metaphysics. As we will see, however, his "cure" in these cases exacts too high a price from the Aristotelian perspective.

My discussion will be divided into three sections. In the first I provide some background to the hylomorphic problem in Aristotle; the second focuses on Alexander's solution to the problem; in the third, I shall look at Porphyry's attempt to solve the substantial qualities problem." (pp. 69-71)

(1) See Sorabji 1988, ch. 2.

(3) e.g., consider contra Proclum 424,4-11(...)

(6) So Dillon 1977, p. 236, puts it.

References

Dillon, J. 1977. The Middle Platonists, London: Duckworth.

Sorabji, R. 1988. Matter, Space and Motion, London: Duckworth.

43. Endress, Gerhard. 2002. "Alexander Arabus on the First Cause. Aristotle's First Mover in an Arabic Treatise attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias." In Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia nella tradizione araba, edited by D'Ancona, Cristina and Serra, Giuseppe, 19-74. Padova: Il Poligrafo.

"Late Hellenistic science had to offer its own contribution, which, though based on the general principles of the Platonic and Peripatetic paradigms, sought to cover the data of observation and calculation. Thus a Hellenistic, and a potiori a mediaeval reader, had to deal with the models of professional astronomy which, through Ptolemy and his Arab disciples, had developed a high level of observation and mathematical sophistication, but had discarded Aristotle’s model of planetary movement.

It was the work of the commentators - starting with Alexander of Aphrodisias in the second century - to bring the works of natural philosophy (the Physics on the processes of natural motion, the De Caelo on the celestial body, the quinta essentia in perpetual circular motion, and the De Anima on the phenomena of sense-perception and thought) into a logically argued system.

One of the prominent figures in this scene was Alexander of Aphrodisias, the chief representative of a tradition of literal commentaries influential far beyond the Peripatetic school, regarded as the arch-Peripatetic, and a household name coming in conveniently whenever the contradictions, aporias and lacunae in Aristotle required an authoritative interpreter. Yet in this process, the Arabic Alexander grew to be another virtual text, covering a variety of authentic translations, compilations, and pseudepigraphy accompanying the Peripatetic, Neoplatonic and Gnostic Aristotle who had emerged from the first century of Arabic translation and reception. I am going to present a text transmitted under Alexander’s name which is exemplary for this process." (p. 38)

44. Fazzo, Silvia. 2004. "Aristotelianism as a Commentary Tradition." In Philosophy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries (Vol. One), edited by Adamson, Peter, Baltussen, Han and Stone, M.W.F., 1-19. London: Institute of Classical Studies, University of London.

III. Alexander of Aphrodisias and the Aristotelian commentary tradition 6; IV. The fortuna of Alexander and other Greek commentators 11-14.

"We have seen that it was only in the twentieth century, after the two World Wars, that the study of Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca began to come into its own as a field of research.(44) Among the first to make profitable use of the CAG were those Orientalists, chiefly from Germany, who were interested in Greek-Arabic connections and translations.

In the case of Alexander, the availability of critical editions of the texts made it possible to identify the Greek counterparts of many short pieces transmitted in Arabic under his name but with titles different from those familiar to us.

A first list of Arabic texts attributed to Alexander was drawn up by A. Dietrich in 1964, and supplemented by J. Van Ess in 1966.(45) Still, items included in this list were heterogeneous and mixed up. By the end of the century, further advances enabled scholars to distinguish, at least in a majority of cases, between genuine and spurious works, between whole texts and extracts, between single texts and groups or collections of texts, between literal translations and free adaptations. As for these latter - which turned out usually to be early versions, originating from the circle of al-Kindī in the ninth century - it was furthermore possible to detect the underlying working methods, and to relate them to the specific cultural inclinations that had motivated the translators." (p. 14)

(44) Extensive use of the CAG lies at the foundation of the first general history of Greek Aristotelianism, Moraux 1973-2001 (Paul Moraux was the founder of the Aristoteles-Archiv at the Free University in Berlin; his early monograph is a pioneer work on Alexander: Moraux 1942). Moraux 1973-2001, vol. 3, devoted to Alexander, was published posthumously under the editorship of J. Wiesner in 2001, accompanied by a chapter on ethics and determinism and an extensive and up-to-date bibliography (618-650), both by R. W. Sharpies. For a general summary of Alexander's philosophy see Sharpies 1987.

(45) See Dietrich 1964, esp. 92-100; van Ess 1966, 148-168 (hence the reference system in use for the Arabic Alexander, with 'D' or 'vE' followed by an index number). These contributions have been a useful starting point but they are now severely outdated: as mentioned above, many items turned out not to be Alexander's at all; in some cases different translations were made of the same Greek original (and different translations might have been revised versions of one another); some items are not single texts but groups or collections of texts: for details and bibliography see Goulet and Aouad 1989 with Fazzo 2003a. A new reference system is therefore an obvious desideratum.

References

Dietrich 1964 = Dietrich, A. 'Die arabische Version einer unbekannten Schrift des Alexander von Aphrodisias über die Differentia specifica', Nachrichten von der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, phil.-hist. Kl. (1964) 85.

van Ess 1966 = van Ess, J. 'Über einige neue Fragmente des Alexander von Aphrodisias und des Proklos in arabischer Übersetzung', Der Islam 42 (1966) 148-168.

Fazzo 2003a = Fazzo, S. 'Alexandros d'Aphrodise', in Goulet 2003, 61-70.

Goulet and Aouad 1989 = Goulet, R. and Aouad, M. 'Alexandres d'Aphrodise', in Goulet 1989, 125-39.

Goulet 1989 = Goulet, R. (ed.) Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, ed. R. Goulet (Paris 1989.

Moraux 1942 = Moraux, P. Alexandre d'Aphrodise, exégète de la noétique d'Aristote, 'Bibliothèque de la faculté de philosophie et lettres de l'université de Liège' 99 (Liège - Paris 1942).

Moraux 1973-2001 = Moraux, P. Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen. Von Andronikos bis Alexander von Aphrodisias, 'Peripatoi' 5, 6, 7/1, 3 vols so far (Berlin 1973, 1984, 2001.

Sharpies 1987 = Sharpies, R. W. 'Alexander of Aphrodisias: scholasticism and Innovation', Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II. 36.2 (Berlin 1987) 1176-1243.

45. ———. 2012. "The Metaphysics from Aristotle to Alexander of Aphrodisias." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies no. 55:51-68.

Abstract: "The article explores (alleged) evidence concerning the Metaphysics from Aristotle to Alexander of Aphrodisias, casting doubt on the idea that the work was assembled in its current form by Andronicus of Rhodes. No ancient source supports this claim, nor can we be certain that the collection as it now stands was already available in the first century BC. By contrast, Alexander seems to be well-acquainted with the Metaphysics as we have it today. The article also reconsiders the role that Eudorus of Alexandria, Nicolaus of Damascus, Aspasius may have played in the tradition of commentary on the Metaphysics."

46. ———. 2016. "Unmoved Mover as Pure Act or Unmoved Mover in Act? The Mystery of a Subscript Iota." In Aristotle’s Metaphysics Lambda – New Essays, edited by Horn, Christoph, 181-206. Berlin: De Gruyter.

"In my present contribution, I will suggest the hypothesis that the theory of the Prime Mover as pure act, no doubt a main tenet of Aristotelianism in modern accounts, in fact originates from the plain statement that the Prime Mover must be in act; it slowly took its actual shape much later than it is supposed to have done. The process cautiously began with Alexander of Aphrodisias, then developed in a Neoplatonizing atmosphere, partly in Greek, partly in Arabic.(1) In Greek, this happened during a time when scribes and scholars were less and less equipped to make full sense of the most ancient manuscripts, written in scriptio continua and uncial script. In such scripts, the subscript iota – which makes the difference between ‘in act’ (or ‘in activity’, ἐνεργείᾳ in the dative with subscript iota) and ‘act’ (ἐνέργεια in the nominative without subscript iota) – was not recorded in the majority of cases. Thus, ἐνέργεια written in capital letters can signify either ἐνέργεια or ἐνεργείᾳ. This happens in many more recent copies as well, namely in minuscule

manuscripts, as extant manuscripts usually are.(2) For this reason, it is commonly admitted that changes in the subscript iota hardly count as emendations, both in general and especially when dealing with manuscripts from the Aristotelian tradition.(3)" (p. 181)

(1) See below, Appendix 1. “The first principle as ἐνέργεια in Michael of Ephesus, Plotinus and Averroes”.

(2) Other minuscule manuscripts have the iota but not as a subscript iota. Hence some further cases of ambiguity, see for example 1051b31 and ad loc. note 10 below.

(3) M. Burnyeat, ‘Kinesis vs. Energeia: A much-read passage in (but not of) Aristotle’s Metaphysics’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Volume XXXIV (2008) 219–92: 256. For an example, see e.g. Bruns’ critical apparatus of Alexander’s Quaestio 1.1 at p 4.11, with my note 15 below.

47. ———. 2023. "Aporiai with Mutiple Solutions in Alexander of Aphrodisias " In Ancient Greek Dialectic and Its Reception, edited by Mouzala, Melina G., 277-286. Berlin: de Gruyter.

"Alexander’s so-called Quaestiones, in Greek ἀπορίαι καὶ λύσεις,(1) are of special interest for scholars thinking of Aristotelianism as an exegetical tradition.

In Alexander, an aporia is a peculiarly philosophical kind of problem.(2) Typically, more than one solution can be offered for a single aporia, i.e., for a single exegetical and/or theoretical problem." (p. 277)

(...)

"This makes Alexander’s aporiai paradigmatic in a sense, because after Alexander philosophical exegesis became the proper way of making philosophy based on Aristotle’s texts. Multiple solutions often arose on the part of different philosophers whose names became famous in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Nonetheless, in Alexander’s aporiai, the different solutions are not attributed to other authors. Does this mean that Alexander produced all of them? Or rather that a canon was built in Alexander’s time as a given standard system on Aristotle’s name?

Up to now, it seems that the way aporiai were produced and intended to work still requires investigation.(4) The issue is relevant for that part of the history of ancient dialectics which is concerned with the use of philosophical questions. For the present purpose, I will initially frame my argument rather more widely." (p. 278)

(1) Reference edition by Bruns (1892). Translation by Sharples (1992–1994). For a more comprehensive

inquiry, see Fazzo (2002), with special reference to pp. 25–29.

(2) Aporiai or Quaestiones? The so-called “minor works” (Opera Minora) by Alexander, which bear in Greek the title of Aporiai and lyseis, are better known, if ever, as Quaestiones, which is the title of their first print in the 16th century: “Alexandri Aphrodisiensis quaestiones naturales, de anima, morales” (Venetiis, Zanetti 1536). Since this title appears in catalogues of manuscripts as well, this implies

a frequent confusion between Alexander’s Quaestiones and pseudo-Alexander’s.

(4) See also Kupreeva (2018), p. 228, n. 1, “Much still remains to be done” (my italics), and Fazzo (2002).

References

Fazzo, Silvia (2002): Aporia e Sistema: la materia, la forma, il divino nelle Quaestiones di Alessandro di Afrodisia. Pisa: ETS-

Kupreeva, Inna (2018): “Aporia and Exegesis: Alexander of Aphrodisias”. In George Karamanolis, George and Politis Vasilis (Eds.): The Aporetic Tradition in Ancient Philosophy. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 228–247.

48. Fazzo, Silvia, and Wiesner, Hillary. 1993. " Alexander of Aphrodisias in the Kindi-Circle and in al-Kindi's cosmology." Arabic Sciences and Philosophy no. 3:119-153.

"How do the heavenly bodies physically affect the sublunary world?"

On this topic, similar accounts can be found in four groups of texts: (1) a few fragmentary statements in Aristotle; (2) Greek works of the Aristotelian commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. ca. 200 A.D.); (3) Kindi-circle Arabic versions of the same writings; and (4) the cosmological works of al-Kindi.

Across the centuries of transmission and transformation of Aristotle's thought, we observe a gradual expansion from latent possibilities introduced by his own partial or allusive statements, to philosophical justifications of celestial influence in the Greek writings of Alexander, to more specific astrological models in the Kindi-circle's Arabic Alexander, which al-Kindi himself reworks with further astronomical and astrological details. In fact, this is a subject on which al-Kindi's cosmology relies explicitly on Alexander, or better, on the transformed Alexander.

But the relationship was circular. While the Kindi-circle's Alexander was closely followed by al-Kindi on certain points, al-Kindi exerted a reciprocal influence on the Arabic Alexander, who was largely a product of his own group of translators." (p. 119)

49. Fazzo, Silvia, and Zonta, Mauro. 2014. "Towards a Textual History and Reconstruction of Alexander of Aphrodisias’s Treatise On the Principles of the Universe." Journal of Semitic Studies no. 59:91-116.

Abstract: "Among Alexander of Aphrodisias’s works, a key-role is played by his treatise On the Principles of the Universe. It contains Alexander’s exegesis of Aristotle’s theory of the unmoved mover, as in Metaphysics Lambda and in Physics VIII. Its original Greek text is lost, but a sixth-century Syriac version and two tenth-century Arabic ones are still extant. All these versions have already been published, and two of them have been rendered into modern languages (English, French, Italian) in the last ninety years, but a really deep textual comparison between them, aiming at the reconstruction of the lost Greek text, has not yet been made. Usually, a key-role is given to the second, later Arabic version of it, mostly since it is more complete than the other ones. Here, a philological re-examination of the history of the textual transmission of Alexander’s work is given, and some new conclusions about it are suggested, according to which the role of the first Arabic version, and that of the Syriac one in particular, are found to be more important than hitherto suspected."

50. ———. 2015. "Toward a critical translation of Alexander of Aphrodisias' De Principiis, based on the indirect tradition if sysriac and arabic sources." χώρα. Revue d'Etudes anciennes eet médiévales no. 13:63-101.

Abstract: "One of the main philosophical works by Alexander of Aphrodisias, De principiis, is lost in its original Greek text, but it is preserved in three extant Medieval Semitic versions, one in Syriac and two in Arabic, which were written in the Near East between 500 and 950 AD. These versions are not totally identical and, as we have tried to show in another article of ours (2012), they are in a rather complex textual relationship. Like we will show in this article, a tentative reconstruction of the lost text cannot be based upon a critical edition of only one of the two extant Arabic version, as we have observed elsewhere, but through an attentive and point-to-point comparative analysis of at least some aspect of all three versions of it – a way we have tentatively called “critical translation”."

References

S. Fazzo and M. Zonta, «Towards a Textual History and Reconstruction of Alexander of Aphrodisias’s Treatise On the Principles of the Universe», Journal of Semitic Studies, 59 (2014), pp. 91-116.

51. ———. 2016. "The first account of Aristotle’s Metaphysics in fourteen books: Alexander of Aphrodisias’ fragment Zero." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 4:985-995.

Abstract: "1. The scope of this article.

The overall scope of this article is to highlight the historical significance of textual findings made by the authors in 2014, namely the confirmation that a large section of Averroes’ introduction to Metaphysics Lambda comes from a corresponding text by Alexander of Aphrodisia.

To this end, we reproduce at the end of this paper our original Tables 1 and 2.

The section is to be added to Freudenthal’s 1885 collection of Alexander’s fragments as preserved by Averroes.(2) For quick reference, we call it ‘Fragment Zero’. Since Freudenthal 1885 scholars has been aware that Averroes was still able to use Alexander’s commentary on Aristotles’ Lām – the Arabic name for Metaphysics book Lambda –, even though the Greek had already been lost in Averroes’ times. This was possible because, before disappearing, Alexander’s commentary had been translated in the 9th c. from Greek into Syriac by Hunayn ibn Isḥāq (808-873) and in the early 10th c. from Syriac into Arabic by Abū Bishr Mattā ibn Yūnus (d. 940). On this latter basis it was adjusted and rearranged into a summarized form by Averroes (1190 ca.).

The significance of our findings is twofold. Firstly, a standard view, namely a legacy of the late 19th century edition of Alexander’s fragments in Averroes (Freudenthal 1885), is revised; additional proof can be integrate into our previous research on the textual history of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, thus confirming Alexander as a safe terminus ante quem for the final assemblage.

This leads to a different issue. This terminus is remarkably later than usually assumed.

According to a widespread vulgate, Andronicus of Rhodes had already made it available in the 1st century BC. Yet, this standard view is no longer convincing, based on our previous results and developments in this same direction and research path, as summarized by Fazzo in 2012(4). Instead, Alexander turns out to be the first safe source of our current arrangement of the books. In this revised frame, one can best make sense of our present point – namely, that a description by Alexander of our Metaphysics in fourteen books underlies the one by Averroes. As a result Averroes becomes the witness of a lost text by Alexander, possibly a part of Alexander’s introduction to his lost commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics bookLambda.This tallies with extant traces of Alexander’s Lambda commentary within the Arabic tradition: before disappearing from view, Alexander’s commentary on Lambda was translated into Syriac (probably in the in the 9th century, by Hunayn ibn Ishaq), then into Arabic (in the 10th century, by Abū Bishr Mattā ibn Yūnus)5. Only later on (late 12th century), was it adjusted and rearranged into a summarized form by Averroes." (pp. 985-986, some notes omitted)

(2) J. Freudenthal, Die durch Averroes erhaltenen Fragmente des Alexanders zur ‘Metaphysik’ des Aristoteles, Königliche Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1885 (the conference was held in 1884).

(4) S. Fazzo, The Metaphysics from Aristotle to Alexander of Aphrodisias, «Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies», 55 (2012), pp. 51-68.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Alexander of Aphrodisias' metaphysics: Annotated bibliography of the studies in English: Fla - Kra

Bibliography

1. Flannery, Kevin. 2003. "Logic and Ontology in Alexander of Aphrodisias Commentary on Metaphysics IV." In Alessandro di Afrodisia e la 'Metaflsica' di Aristotele', edited by Movia, Giancarlo, 117-134. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

"What, therefore, can we say after this fairly detailed analysis of some passages in Alexander’s commentary on the Metaphysics? Three things. I affirm the first two with some confidence; the third is an hypothesis. I believe that I have demonstrated that, when he wrote in Metaph., Alexander was under the influence of a certain model of the proper method of doing philosophy, including first philosophy - that is, he was much attached to the demonstrative method found in the Posterior Analytics. On account of this attachment, he had an antipathy for going below the logical and linguistic level of analysis, to the level of signification. I believe that I have also demonstrated that, being so inclined, Alexander in in Metaph. also occasionally forces the reading a text. Often he offers us a series of possible interpretations of a text, thereby giving the appearance of objectivity; but, in fact, as we have seen in one such passage, even while doing so, he is capable of succumbing to this most common of academic temptations.

This brings me to the hypothesis. Of course, we cannot assume that mature scholars are never tempted to force a text, but there are also other factors that suggest that in Metaph. (or, at least, in Metaph. IV) is less mature than some other works of Alexander’s. We have seen that, in in APr., Alexander seems to adopt a more balanced approach: i.e., he seems to have a more exact understanding of the relationship between the logical and the non-logical. We have also seen that in in Metaph. he demonstrates a certain ignorance regarding the way in which the game of dialectics is played - an ignorance (I might add) that he does not demonstrate in his comment on the Topics.(57) Since there are references in in Top. to in APr. but not in in APr. to in Top.,(58) the order of composition that I would suggest is the following: in Metaph., in APr., in Top. This is, however, only an hypothesis; such issues demand a more thorough study than I can perform here." (p. 134)

(57) See, e.g., in Top. 577.5-15. It is noteworthy also that at in Metaph. 204.13-14, Alexander says that something in fact found in Top. is found in APo., suggesting with this that, at the time he was writing this section of in Metaph., he did not know Top. especially well.

(58) in Top. 7.11, 166.21.

2. Flannery, Kevin L. 2019. "Analogy in Alexander of Aphrodisias." In La dottrina dell’analogia dell’essere nella « MetaFisica » di Aristotele e i suoi sviluppi nel pensiero tardo-antico e medievale, edited by Salis, Rita, 119-142. Padova: Il Poligrafo.

Abstract: "The author examines the interpretation by Alexander of Aphrodisias of an argument in Metaphysics Δ 6 where Aristotle speaks of things that are one ‘by analogy’ (κατ’ ἀναλογίαν). He argues that Alexander’s commentary on that passage allows us to conclude that he understands analogy quite broadly so as to include not only four-term proportional relationships but also the two relationships spoken of in Metaph. Γ 2: the πρὸς ἕν (‘in relation to one’) relationship, expounded earlier in that chapter, and the τῷ ἐφεξῆς (‘numerical succession’) relationship, mentioned later (1004 a 9, 1005 a 11). The author then examines how Alexander, in his Commentary on metaph. Γ 2, ultimately distinguishes the πρὸς ἕν relationship from the τῷ ἐφεξῆς relationship. The essay concludes with two arguments aimed at resolving problems related to Alexander’s reading of Metaph. Δ 6 and Γ 2. One of the problems concerns the opening lines of Metaph. Λ;; the other concerns the final remarks in metaph. α 1."

3. Frede, Dorothea. 1982. "The Dramatization of Determinism: Alexander of Aphrodisias' De Fato." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 27:276-298.

"As we know from other sources,(3) there raged a never ending battle about the notion of fate among the schools, a battle in which the various opponents seem to have relied on the same kind of arguments, counterarguments and examples time and again. Alexander himself does not claim originality; he professes to give only an account of the Aristotelian position (cf. 164, 13; 212,5) which he compares with and defends against the more rigid determinism of a rival school. All commentators agree that the target of Alexander's criticism must be the Stoa. Opinions differ on the question why Alexander does not mention the Stoa or any of its members. The ancient habit of not citing the name of a living person in criticism would suggest that Alexander is dealing with the position of a contemporary, a contemporary as it seems who maintained a stronger determinism than, e.g., Chrysippus himself as witnessed in Cicero's De Fato, and who does not always understand the refinements of the earlier Stoic compatibilism.

There is, of course, the problem of our sources' historical accuracy and fairness. The openly polemical tone and arguments in Alexander make it difficult to assess what, precisely, the Stoic position was and whether Alexander in his reductio arguments (his favourite method of criticism) does not distort the Peripatetic position sometimes too. I will try to present a 'reasonable' Stoic position and work out what the main points of disagreement are(4)." (pp. 276-277)

(3) Cicero De fato; Ps-Plutarch De fato; Albinus Didasc. XXVI; Apuleius De dogm. Platonis; Ammonius Comm. in de int. 9; Plotinus III, 1; Proclus De providentia; St. Augustine De libero arbitrio; Boethius De consolatione philosophiae V ; Nemesius, De nat. homin. XXXVIII; Calcidius In Tim. For a comprehensive discussion cfr. W. Theiler, 'Tacitus und die antike Schicksalslehre', in his Forschungen zum Neuplatonismus (Berlin, 1966), pp. 46-103.

(4) For a more detailed discussion cf. R. Sharples, Stoic Conceptions of Necessity in the De Fato of Alexander of Aphrodisias', Phronesis 20, 1975, 247-274 id. 'Alexander of Aphrodisias De Fato: Some Parallels', Classical Quarterly 28, 1978, 243-66; A. Long, 'Freedom and Determinism in the Stoic Theory of Human Action', in Problems of Stoicism, London, 1971; id. '''Stoic Determinism and Alexander of Aphrodisias' De Fato ; Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 52, 1970, 247-268.

4. ———. 1984. "Could Paris (son of Priam) have chosen otherwise? A discussion of R. Sharples, Sharpies , Alexander of Aphrodisias: De fato." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 2:279-292.

5. Frohn-Villeneuve, W. 1980. "Space, time, and change. Alexander's interpretation of Melissus " In Mélanges d'études anciennes offerts à Maurice Lebel,, edited by J. B. Caron, Michel Fortin and Gilles Maloney, 173-186. Québec: Éditions du Sphinx.

6. Ganson, Todd Stuart. 2003. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on the role of color appearances." Ancient Philosophy no. 23:383-393.

"Aristotle has very little to say about how we visually discriminate spatial properties of ohjects like distance from the perceiver. The task of saying something significant about such cognition was left to Alexander of Aphrodisias, who wished to show that the Aristotelian theory of vision is superior to its competitors.(1) Because rival schools purported to solve difficull problems concerning visual cognition of spatial properties, Alexander wanted lo show that one could satisfactorily address these problems within an Aristotelian framework." (p. 383)

(1) In the Mantissa there is a valuable discus.sion of allernative approaches to spatial cognition in the sections which come before the one titled 'How seeing comes about according to Aristotle'

(141.30-147.25). See especially the section devoted to 'those who say that seeing comes about through the impact of images' (134.30-136.28). ln what follows I do not assume that all of these sections

were written by Alexander, though I will take for granted that 'How seeing comes ahout accordling to Aristotle' is by Alexander. For discussion of the title and contents of the Mantissa, sec Sharples

1998.

References

Sharples, Robert W., 'Alexander and pseudo-Alexander of Aphrodisias: Scripta minima. Questions and Problems, makeweights and prospects', in Gattungen wissenschaftlicher Literatur in der Antike, ScriptOralia 95, ed. W. Kullmann, J. Althoff, M. Asper (Tiibingen 1998) 383-408.

7. Gaskin, Richard. 1993. "Alexander's Sea Battle: a discussion of Alexander of Aphrodisias De Fato 10." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 38:75-94.

"The tenth chapter of Alexander of Aphrodisias' De Fato(1) contains a treatment of fatalism and future truth which clearly harks back to Aristotle's famous 'Sea Battle' discussion in De Interpretatione (DI) 9.2 Alexander's discussion has not yet been satisfatorily interpreted: this paper is intended to help remedy this lack." (p. 75)

(...)

"If my interpretation of ch.10 is correct, it follows that Alexander must have read Aristotle as accepting the fatalist's inference from the truth of a FCS [= future contingent statement] to its (real) necessity. How Alexander responded to fatalism - whether in accordance with the traditional interpretation of Aristotle or that favoured by the commentators - cannot, as I have mentioned, be extracted from De Fato itself; but it is an implication of my construal of 177 .15-177 .27 that some sort of restriction or adaptation of PB [ = principle of bivalence] would have been accepted by Alexander, and hence that he must have understood Aristotle in DI 9 to be announcing such a restriction or adaptation(51)" (p. 94)

(1) The text of the De Fato is available in Supplementum Aristotelicum II.ii. 164-212, ed. I. Bruns, Berlin, 1892. Bruns' text is reproduced in the commentary of R. Sharples: Alexander of Aphrodisias on Fate (London, Duckworth, 1983).

8. Genequand, Charles. 2019. "Alexander of Aphrodisias and Arabic Aristotelianism." In Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy between 500 and 1500. Second Edition, edited by Lagerluns, Henrik, 60-62. Dordrecht: Springer.

Abstract: "Alexander of Aphrodisias, commentator par excellence of Aristotle, lived about 200 CE. A fairly important part of his works was translated into Arabic during the ninth century and greatly influenced the reception and interpretation of the Stagirite’s thought in the East. Important fragments of his commentary on the Metaphysics have been preserved in Ibn Rushd’s own Great Commentary on that work. Among the independent treatises preserved in Arabic, the most important are On the Principles of the Universe, On Providence, and On the Intellect."

9. Gili, Luca, and Podolak, Pietro. 2018. "Hugh Eterianus, Alexander of Aphrodisias and syllogistic demonstrations a newly discovered fragment of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ « Commentary » on Aristotle’s « Posterior analytics »." Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale no. 29:137-154.

Abstract: "Hugh Eterianus (ca. 1110/1120-1182), an Italian theologian who worked in Byzantium as an advisor to Manuel I Comnenos, is the author of the treatise De sancto et immortali deo, where he argues against the Orthodox denial of the filioque. In this treatise, Hugh quotes from the works of Plato, Aristotle and other Greek philosophers. In chapterI, 4, Hugh includes a short passage from a certain ‘Alexander’ who commented on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. We show that this passage is a fragment from Alexander of Aphrodisias’ lost commentary on the Posterior Analytics. This article includes a new edition of the fragment with an English translation and a philosophical commentary."

10. Golitsis, Pantelis. 2016. "Who were the real authors of the « Metaphysics » commentary ascribed to Alexander and Ps.-Alexander?" In Aristotle Re-Interpreted: New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators, edited by Sorabji, Richard, 565-587. New York: Bloomsbury.

"I should like to revisit the so-called recensio altera of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ Commentary on the Metaphysics, part of which was published by Hayduck in the apparatus featured at the bottom of the page of his edition under the title ‘the more serious discrepancy of the alternative recension’ ( alterius recensionis gravior discrepantia ). To do this, I shall structure my thought around three questions which unfold in a decreasing chronological order, and which will all admit a negative answer: a) did the person who produced the so-called recensio want to produce an ‘interpretation’ of Alexander’s commentary, in other words a text which, by means of its author’s intention, maintains its relation to Alexander’s commentary?(9) b) did the persons who thereafter reproduced and studied this text, i.e. Byzantine copyists or scholars, consider that they had before them a text by Alexander (whether it be a ‘kind’ of Alexander’s text or not)? c) were the philologists of the modern era, who believed that they had detected a recensio altera of Alexander’s commentary, judiciously helped in their critical work by an outlook which can be called alexandro-centric? At the end of this investigation, it will become apparent, I hope, that many elements of the exegetical history of the Metaphysics have disappeared because of a misapplication of the concept of recensio." (pp. 566-567)

(9) Such texts are, e.g., the recensiones pachymerianae of Proclus’ commentary on Plato’s Parmenides and of Michael of Ephesus’ commentary on Aristotle’s On the Parts of Animals; see P. Golitsis, ‘ Copistes,

élèves et érudits: la production de manuscrits philosophiques autour de Georges Pachymère ’, in A. Bravo García and I. Pérez Martín, eds, The Legacy of Bernard de Montfaucon: Three Hundred Years of Studies on Greek Handwriting (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 157–70.

11. ———. 2016. "The manuscript tradition of Alexander of Aphrodisias Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics: Towards a New Critical Edition." Revue d’histoire des textes no. 11:55-94.

"Alexander of Aphrodisias’ ( fl. 200 A.D.) commentary on the Metaphysics is among the first commentaries on Aristotle to be printed in Latin and among the last to be printed in Greek. It might seem as a paradox that the Latin version of the commentary by the Spanish humanist Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1490-1573) was quite a philological achievement in its time and can still be admired today, whereas the two editions of the Greek text made by Hermann Bonitz and by Michael Hayduck in the nineteenth century are defective in some important respects. The present article aims at laying the basis for a new critical edition of Alexander’s commentary on books Α-Δ of the Metaphysics, which I have recently undertaken thanks to a generous funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)." (p. 55)

(...)

"The most important finding, however, of our own recensio is the discovery of the lost hyparchetype β, a copy of which is the Par. gr. 1878 [P], made by an anonymous scribe and Andronicus Callistus.

I provide in Appendix I two specimens which illustrate the textual improvements that P enables us to make. The number and type of variant readings attested in P, as well as the mere fact that this is not a manuscript exclusively copied by Callistus, who is otherwise known for his good conjectures, suffice to establish that the two copyists had access to a nowadays lost manuscript of Alexander’s commentary on Metaphysics A-Δ." (p. 72)

12. ———, ed. 2022. Alexander of Aphrodisias: Commentary on Aristotle, Metaphysics (Books I–III). Berlin: de Gruyter.

Critical edition with Introduction and Notes.

"Editing Alexander of Aphrodisias’ (fl. 200 AD) commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics is a complicated task for both historical and scholarly reasons. To begin with, there is some doubt whether Alexander, whose full name was Τίτος Αὐρήλιος Ἀλέξανδρος,(1)

commented on the entire treatise or only on some of its books. At any rate, the direct Greek tradition of the text delivers no commentary beyond book Delta. Nevertheless, Averroes has preserved some thirty fragments of Alexander’s commentary on book Lambda(2) and Syrianus refers to some of Alexander’s comments in his own commentary on books Mu and Nu.(3) Taken together with three mentions of Alexander in Asclepius’ commentary on book Zeta,(4) these references suggest that Alexander composed a commentary on the entire Metaphysics." (Introduction, p. XXIII)

"The edition consists of Alexander’s reconstructed text with three apparatuses: (a) apparatus fontium et locorum aristotelicorum, (b) apparatus criticus et historicus, (c) apparatus lectionum aristotelicarum. These have been put into this order in accordance

with the relevance that they may have for the potential (Hellenist) reader of the edition: (a) historians of philosophy interested in Alexander’s interpretation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, who would like to know his references to Aristotle’s text(s) and other sources; (b) historians of philosophy and philologists, who may have a different (and possibly better than the present editor’s) understanding of Alexander’s commentary and may prefer a reading rejected by the present editor; (c) historians of the text of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, who wish to readily know what was Alexander’s reading each time there is a divergence in our textual tradition of the Metaphysics. I take it that (a) concerns more people than (b) and (b) more people than (c)." (Introduction, p. CLIII)

(1) According to the epigraphic evidence from Aphrodisias discussed by Chaniotis 2004: 388–389.

Alexander had a homonymous father, who was awarded Roman citizenship by the governor of Asia (135/136 AD) Titus Aurelius Fulvus Antoninus (the later emperor Antoninus Pius), as the pronomina Titus Aurelius imply.

(2) See Freudenthal 1885; Genequand 1986. Di Giovanni – Primavesi 2016 raise some issues as to whether Averroes had access to Alexander’s genuine commentary.

(3) Syrianus, In Metaph. [= Kroll 1902] 96.18, 111.34, 122.12 and 18, 160.8, 166.27, 186.16, 195.12. In 186.16,

Alexander is quoted by Syrianus as an authority for the traditional division between books Mu and Nu.

Alexander’s commentary on Nu is mentioned in the Kitāb al-Fihrist of the tenth century; see below, p. xlviii, n. 3.

(4) Asclepius, In Metaph. [= Hayduck 1888] 408.5 and 20, 428.13.

References

Chaniotis 2004 A. Chaniotis, “New inscriptions from Aphrodisias (1995–2001)”. American Journal of Archaeology 108 (2004), 377–416.

Freudenthal 1885 J. Freudenthal, Die durch Averroes erhaltenen Fragmente Alexanders zur Metaphysik des Aristoteles, untersucht und übersetzt von J. Freudenthal. Mit Beiträgen zur Erläuterung des arabischen Textes von S. Fränkel. Berlin: Abhandlungen der Königlichen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1885.

Di Giovanni – Primavesi 2016 M. di Giovanni and O. Primavesi, “Who wrote Alexander’s Commentary on Metaphysics Λ? New light on the Syro-Arabic tradition”. In: C. Horn (ed.), Aristotle’s Metaphysics Lambda – New Essays. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2016, 11–66

Genequand 1986 C. Genequand, Ibn Rushd’s Metaphysics. A Translation with Introduction of Ibn Rushd’s Commnentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book Lām. Leiden: Brill, 1986..

13. Gottschalk, Hans B. 1987. "Aristotelian Philosophy in the Roman World from the Time of Cicero to the End of the Second Century AD." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, vol. 36.2: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. II. Teilband: Philosophie (Platonismus, [Forts.]; Aristotelismus), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 1079-1174. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Revised reprint in: R. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed. The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence, London: Duckworth, 1990, pp. 55-81.

"A particular difficulty for our study is the almost complete loss of the relevant literature. This is in large measure due to the character of that literature, much of which consisted of commentaries on Aristotle's works or discussions of problems arising out of them. Such writings were by their very nature liable to be superseded as each generation reread Aristotle in the light of its own needs and preoccupations. The only writings by professed Aristotelians of this era to have survived in their original form are a commentary on pans of the 'Nicomachean Ethics' by Aspasius (second century AD) and the 'De mundo' wrongly attributed to Aristotle himself, to which one can doubtfully add the pseudo-Aristotelian 'De virtutibus et vitiis' with its doublet, falsely ascribed to Andronicus of Rhodes. In addition two treatises by Nicolaus of Damascus, originally perhaps pans of the same work, have survived through being translated into Syriac or Arabic.(1) Besides these we only have fragments quoted by later writers; the chief sources are the commentaries on Aristotle's works written by Alexander of Aphrodisias in the third century and by Ammonius (the son of Hermeias), Philoponus and Simplicius in the fifth and sixth.(2) The last-named is especially generous with quotations and sometimes gives a synopsis of the views of earlier interpreters on particular problems;(3) the introduction of his commentary on the 'Categories' (pp. 1-2) includes a survey of the work of earlier commentators. The information they provide is sufficient to give us an idea of the problems which interested the earlier Aristotelians and the kind of answer they gave, but usually not to reconstruct their arguments in full." (p. 1080)

(1) All these works will be discussed below.

(2) This and the other ancient Greek commentaries on Aristotle have been excellently edited in the series 'Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca' (CAG), published under the auspices of the Prussian Academy (Berlin 1883-1909); other relevant works, notably the treatises and essays of Alexander of Aphrodisias, have been published in the same format in the 'Supplemenrum Aristotelicum' (Berlin 1885—1903). They will be quoted by page and line of these editions.

(3) E.g. In Cat. 62-7, on whether Aristotle was right to posit ten and only ten categories.

14. Granieri, Roberto. 2023. "Not-Being, Contradiction and Difference. Simplicius vs Alexander of Aphrodisias on Plato’s Conception of Not-Being." Méthexis no. 35:185-200.

Abstract: "In explicating a passage from Physics A 3, Simplicius reports a criticism by Alexander of Aphrodisias against Plato’s conception of not-being in the Sophist. Alexander deems this conception contradictory, because it posits that unqualified not-being is. Simplicius defends Plato and gives a diagnosis of what he regards as Alexander’s interpretative mistake in raising his objection. I unpack this debate and bring out ways in which it sheds light on important aspects of Plato’s project in the Sophist and of Simplicius’ own philosophical background, notably in Damascius’ De principiis."

15. Gregoric, Pavel. 2017. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on the Common Sense." Filozofski vestnik no. 38:47-64.

"Introduction.

The primary aim of this paper is to present Alexander’s understanding of the common sense and its functions. In doing so, I will keep an eye on Alexander’s agreement with or departure from Aristotle and indicate his contributions to the subject matter. The secondary aim of this paper is to discuss one particular point of departure which came to dominate later reception of Aristotle’s notion of the common sense." (p. 47)

16. ———. 2018. "Aristotle’s Transparency: Comments on Ierodiakonou, “Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias on Colour”." In The Parva naturalia in Greek, Arabic and Latin Aristotelianism: Supplementing the Science of the Soul, edited by Bydén, Börje and Radovic, Filip, 91-98. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "In my comment on Katerina Ierodiakonou’s paper, I outline my understanding of the programme of De anima and how it bears on Aristotle’s discussion of the transparent in De anima 2.7, in contrast with his discussion of the transparent in De sensu 3. I then explore Aristotle’s notion of transparency and sketch an alternative to Ierodiakonou’s interpretation of Aristotle’s views as to how colours are generated in physical objects. At the end, I raise two objections to Alexander’s interpretation of the transparent as discussed by Ierodiakonou."

17. Gregoric, Pavel, and Lautner, Péter. 2023. "De mixtione XVI: on Growth." In Studies on Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Mixture and Growth, edited by Guyomarc'h, Gweltaz and de Haas, Frans A.J., 231-262. Leiden: Brill.

Abstract: "In Chapter XVI Alexander investigates whether the Stoic notion of body going through body is applicable to the phenomenon of biological growth. If anything, growth through nutrition seems to recommend this Stoic notion. However, in Chapter XVI Alexander develops an Aristotelian explanation of growth, which is more convincing and does not rely on the Stoic notion. Since the Stoic notion of body going through body has been shown to be problematic in the earlier chapters of De mixtione, and the final chapter discards its utility even for an explanation of growth, we argue that the outcome of the treatise is that the Stoic notion should be abandoned. In this contribution we divide Alexander’s text in 9 sections and analyse it section by section, availing ourselves of other relevant texts, such as Aristotle’s De generatione et corruptione I 5, Quaestio I 5 attributed to Alexander, and his Commentary on Aristotle’s Meteorology IV. In the Appendix we discuss four points: (1) it is the nutritive capacity of the soul that is the efficient, formal and final cause of nourishment, (2) diminution in old age is due to the decreasing rate of absorption of digested nutriment, (3) for any episode of growth, some bit of matter needs to remain through it, which makes replacement of bodily ingredients a gradual process, (4) Chapter XVI is not extraneous to De mixtione or tucked at the end of it for want of a better place, as some scholars have suggested, but an integral part of the treatise at its right place."

18. Groisard, Jocelyn. 2023. "Alexander of Aphrodisias’ De mixtione: Text, Tradition, Reception." In Studies on Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Mixture and Growth, edited by Guyomarc'h, Gweltaz and de Haas, Frans A.J., 1-27. Leiden: Brill.

Abstract: "Alexander of Aphrodisias’ De mixtione did not share the fame of its author: it may have been read by Plotinus and its existence was known, probably through Alexander’s own commentaries on Aristotle, by Themistius and Simplicius, but it does not seem to have been quoted, discussed or translated until the 16th century after its first edition was printed in 1527 by the Aldine Press in Venice. The manuscript tradition is very scarce with most witnesses copied after the editio princeps; our knowledge of the text relies on two medieval manuscripts of the late 13th or early 14th century, one of them incomplete and giving less than half of the text. This more than modest reception and textual tradition of Alexander’s treatise contrasts with the intellectual fortune the issues it deals with had in Late Ancient, medieval and early modern philosophy: mixture models analysed and discussed by Alexander continued to be used and continually refined in a great range of intellectual fields, such as theories of soul, Neoplatonic metaphysics, Christian theology, pharmacology, as well as theories of hylomorphism in the Peripatetic tradition until the 17th century. For modern scholars, it is a precious document not only as a source on previous theories of mixture in Ancient philosophy but also as an entry point into the later developments of mixture theories from Late Ancient to early modern philosophy."

19. Guyomarc'h, Gweltaz. 2021. "Dividing an Apple: The Nutritive Soul and Soul Parts in Alexander of Aphrodisias." In Nutrition and Nutritive Soul in Aristotle and Aristotelianism, edited by Korobili, Giouli and Lo Presti, Roberto, 197-219. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Abstract: "The nutritive soul provides a relevant test case to examine Alexander of Aphrodisias’ conception of the parts of the soul, since it appears in Alexander’s De anima along with methodological considerations, especially an analogy with the division of an apple. I examine here the unity of the powers of the soul, focusing especially on the case of the vegetative soul. If the division of soul parts and soul powers is neither local, nor numerical, what is it? I put forward three correlated hypotheses: 1) Even if there is no lexical distinction in Alexander between “powers of the soul” and “parts of the soul”, Alexander nonetheless comes up with criteria which distinguish a soul power from a soul part, or from a soul of its own. The difference between his position and Aristotle’s is found chiefly in Alexander’s effort to clarify these criteria. 2) As will become clear in the case of the vegetative soul, even the powers that do constitute a soul or a soul part (vegetative/animal/human) are objectively distinct (in a sense that remains to be clarified) and are not simply the result of a change in perspective. 3) The main criterion by which one can account for the organization and the unification of soul parts is the teleological criterion."

20. ———. 2023. "The Services of Dialectic: Dialectic as an Instrument for Metaphysics in Alexander of Aphrodisias." In Ancient Greek Dialectic and Its Reception, edited by Mouzala, Melina G., 249-276. Berlin: de Gruyter.

"It is commonplace to think that ancient commentators aimed to systematize Aristotle." (p. 249)

(...)

"To put it plainly—I think this is painting too unilateral and simple a picture, and I would like to contribute, here, following others,(6) to enrich and detail it. To do so, I will look into Alexander’s usage of dialectical method in metaphysics, with particular interest for his exegesis of book Beta of the Metaphysics and his use of the aporetic method. Alexander’s aporetic method in the Quaestiones(7) as well as the one he puts to use in his commentary on Metaphysics Beta has led to the same diagnosis. In both cases, no “honest perplexity”(8) is displayed, and the Beta aporiae are not treated like genuine puzzles but rather as simple exposition devices.(9) In contrast to this view, I would like to show two things: first, that aporia retains an authentically exploratory function for Alexander; and, second, that Alexander’s use of aporia in metaphysics does not originate in systematization, but rather in the fulfillment of dialectic’s status as an organon within Aristotelian tradition.

(...)

But I would like to pursue another path in this paper and examine the role of dialectic in metaphysics. I will claim that dialectic allows Alexander to retain the exploratory aspect of aporiae within a scientific investigation. If we show that the heuristic role proper to dialectic is an integral part of science, we will be better able to support the idea that Alexander retains the exploratory aspect of aporiae." (pp. 249-250)

(6) In particular Kupreeva (2017), with whom I am in complete agreement.

(7) Fazzo (2002), pp. 17–18. For a more nuanced view, see Rashed (2007), pp. 3–4.

(8) Cf. Madigan in Madigan and Dooley (1992), p. 79.

(9) The expression is in Aubenque (1961).

References

Aubenque, Pierre (1961): “Sur la notion aristotélicienne d’aporie”. In: Mansion, Suzanne (Ed.): Aristote et les problèmes de méthode. Communications présentées au Symposium Aristotelicum tenu à Louvain du 24 août au 1er septembre 1960. Louvain: Publications Universitaires, pp. 3–19.

Fazzo, Silvia (2002): Aporia e sistema: la materia, la forma, il divino nelle “Quaestiones” di Alessandro di Afrodisia, Pisa: Edizioni Ets.

Kupreeva, Inna (2017): “Aporia and Exegesis: Alexander of Aphrodisias”. In: Karamanolis, George and Politis, Vasilis (Eds.): The Aporetic Tradition in Ancient Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 228–247.

Madigan, Arthur, and Dooley, William E. (Trans.) (1992): Alexander of Aphrodisias: On Aristotle’s Metaphysics 2 and 3. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Rashed, Marwan (2007): Essentialisme: Alexandre d’Aphrodise entre logique, physique et cosmologie. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.

21. ———. 2023. "Alexander of Aphrodisias and the Active Intellect as Final Cause." Elenchos no. 44:93-117.

Abstract: "In his own De anima, Alexander of Aphrodisias famously identifies the “active” (poietikon) intellect with the prime mover in Metaphysics Λ. However, Alexander’s claim raises an issue: why would this divine intellect come in the middle of a study of soul in general and of human intellection in particular? As Paul Moraux [*] asks in his pioneering work on Alexander’s conception of the intellect, is the active intellect a “useless addition”? In this paper, I try to answer this question by challenging a solution according to which the active intellect would intervene directly with the material intellect to trigger its ordinary working. I argue that the active intellect acts as a final cause, both for human intellect and for its ordinary objects of thought. The active intellect is twice “cause of the intellection”, i.e. cause of the actualization of human thought: once (i) when it offers thought occasions for thinking through objects, and again (ii) when it actualizes mediately the human intellect itself in its development. This reading agrees with Alexander’s usual position about the prime mover’s causality. It accounts for the multiplicity of expressions with which Alexander describes the causality of the active intellect in his De anima. It also explains why the development of human intellect has been described without direct reference to active intellect, since substances do not aim directly at the First cause, but their aiming at it is mediated by their desire for their own good."

[*] Moraux, P. 1942. Alexandre d’Aphrodise. Exégète de la noétique d’Aristote (Bibliothèque de la faculté de philosophie et lettre de l’universit´e de Liège, 99). Liège & Paris: Droz.

22. ———. 2023. "De mixtione XI–XII: the Encounter of Two Ontologies." In Studies on Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Mixture and Growth, edited by Guyomarc'h, Gweltaz and de Haas, Frans A.J., 144-167. Leiden: Brill.

Abstract: "Chapters XI and XII of De mixtione have been read as a digression from the main argument of the treatise. In the following, I will show that what takes place in IX–XII is not secondary regarding the issue of blending, or, more generally, regarding Alexander’s opposition to Stoic philosophy. In my view, chapters IX–XII aim to produce a more fine-grained account of blending. They set the stage for the first requirement of blending in chapter XIII: that there is blending only of corporeal substances, i.e. of independently subsisting entities. To accomplish this, chapters XI–XII must bring their investigation up to the nature of the Stoic principles and criticize the Stoic notion of body. This is why Alexander must examine the fundamentals of Stoic ontology.

It also explains why these chapters, despite being essentially refutative, make explicit some of the main claims of Alexander’s own ontology. In these chapters, Alexander makes us pivot smoothly from a Stoic ontology to an Aristotelian one."

23. Guyomarc'h, Gweltaz, and de Haas, Frans A.J., eds. 2024. Studies on Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Mixture and Growth. Leiden: Brill.

Contents: Acknowledgements VII; Abbreviations VIII; Contributors IX; 1. Jocelyn Groisard: Alexander of Aphrodisias’ De mixtione: Text, Tradition, Reception 1; 2. Gábor Betegh: De mixtione I–II: Alexander’s Dialectical Method 28; 3 Vladimír Mikeš: De mixtione III–IV: the Stoics on Blending—Arguments, Proofs, Examples 58; 4. Frans A.J. de Haas: De mixtione V–VI: Common Notions and Bodies Receiving Bodies 83; 5. Christian Pfeiffer: De mixtione VII–VIII: on the Possibility of a Stoic Blend 100; 6. Fabienne Baghdassarian: De mixtione IX–X: Promoting the Aristotelian Causal System 122; 7. Gweltaz Guyomarc’h: De mixtione XI–XII: the Encounter of Two Ontologies 144; 8. Klaus Corcilius: De mixtione XIII: Finally, the Truth about Mixture 168; 9. Orna Harari: De mixtione XIV: the Ingredients’ Preservation in the Blend 192; 10. István Bodnár: De mixtione XV: the Aristotelian Account Vindicated 212; 11. Pavel Gregorić and Péter Lautner: De mixtione XVI: on Growth 231; Bibliography 263; Index of Ancient and Medieval Authors 273; Index of Renaissance and Modern Authors 274; Index of Topics 275-276.

24. Hackforth, R. 1946. "Notes on some passages of Alexander Aphrodisiensis De fato." The Classical Quarterly no. 40:37-44.

"The treatise of Alexander of Aphrodisias Περὶ Εἱμαρμένης [de Fato] is probably the most interesting of his independent works to the general reader. Not only is it one of our chief sources for the Stoic doctrine of Destiny, as a glance at the relevant pages of Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta will show, but it also contains a closely reasoned and exhaustive (if somewhat prolix) criticism of that doctrine from the Peripatetic standpoint. I therefore hope that an attempt to deal with some of the numerous corruptions and difficulties in the text may not be wholly useless." (p. 37)

25. Hangai, Attila. 2020. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on Simultaneous Perception." In Philosophical Problems in Sense Perception: Testing the Limits of Aristotelianism, edited by Bennett, David and Tohivanen, Juhana, 91-124. Cham [Switzeland): Springer.

Abstract: "Alexander of Aphrodisias picks up Aristotle’s insufficient treatment of simultaneous perception and develops an adequate solution for the problem, thereby offering an account of the unity of perceptual consciousness—the single mental activity of a single subject with complex content. I show the adequacy of the solution by using as criteria the requirements that have been identified by Aristotle and approved (and explained) by Alexander. I analyze Alexander’s solution in two turns.

First, with respect to heterogeneous perceptibles, Alexander adopts and reformulates Aristotle’s metaphorical account invoking the analogy with a point. Second, with respect to homogeneous opposites, accordingly, perception is judgement, but it involves physical changes in diverse parts of the primary sense-organ. By this account Alexander resolves the issue of the unity of the subject on the level of the capacity of the soul, and coordinates the complexity of content with the complexity on the physical level. In addition to being adequate, the solution is faithful to Aristotle. I suggest that the interpretative decisions Alexander makes (the clarification of the analogy; the reference he finds to the analogy; the two components of the solution, judgement and parts of the organ) form an ingenious extension of Aristotle’s treatment. Interestingly, even though many elements in Alexander’s interpretation are taken up by modern commentators, no one has followed it in its entirety, nor even treated it in its own right."

26. ———. 2023. "Alexander of Aphrodisias’ Criticism of the Stoic Theory of Perception: typos and typōsis." Elenchos no. 34:319-362.

Abstract: "The Stoics identified the phantasia with the impression (typos) in the soul, or the impressing process (typōsis). Alexander of Aphrodisias engages directly with this account at De anima 68.10–21, and argues against the applicability of the impression in a theory of perception in Mantissa 10, especially 133.25–134.23. I analyse Alexander’s polemic account at De anima 68.10–21, I demonstrate that it differs from Chrysippus’ criticism of Cleanthes (contrary to some commentators), and I show how it fits in the context of his argument.

From this analysis it will emerge how Alexander uses Stoic ideas to form his Aristotelian account. Then, I show that Alexander, by taking ‘typos’ metaphorically, not only prefers the term ‘enkataleimma’ over ‘typos’ in his theory of phantasia, but he keeps the ‘typos’ terminology only to remain faithful to Aristotle’s use (contrary to some commentators)."

27. Hankinson, Robert James. 2002-2003. "Xenarchus, Alexander, and Simplicius on simple motions, bodies and magnitudes." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies no. 46:19-42.

Abstract: "Aristotle accounted for the fundamental dynamics of the cosmos in terms of the tendencies of the various elements to distinct types of natural motions, and (in the case of the sublunary elements) to rest in their natural places. In so doing, he introduced a fifth element, the ether, with a natural and unceasing tendency to revolve, as the matter for the heavenly bodies. This paper deals with some of the objections raised to this model, and to its conceptual underpinnings, raised by Xenarchus of Seleuceia, an unorthodox Peripatetic of the 1st century BC, and of the attempts of later philosophers to rebut them. In so doing it casts light on a little-known, but historically important and interesting, episode in the development of physical dynamics."

28. Harari, Orna. 2016. "Alexander against Galen on motion: a mere logical debate?" Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 50:201-236.

"Since Shlomo Pines’s pioneering study of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ Refutation of Galen, the understanding of this treatise has significantly changed.(1)" (p. 201)

(...)

Admittedly, the Refutation of Galen is dedicated to a presentation and refutation of Galen’s claim that Aristotle’s argument in Physics 7.1 is invalid, but it is not obvious that the treatise is restricted to this logical point. As Pines pointed out, Alexander reports here that Galen based his criticism on substantive assumptions which suggest that in Galen’s view certain things are not moved by something. In spite of Pines’s observation, no one has examined in detail how these assumptions are related to Galen’s criticism of Aristotle’s argument. The following study is devoted to an examination of this question.£ (pp. 2301-202, anote omitted)

(1) This treatise is extant in an Arabic translation that has come down to us in two partially overlapping manuscripts, Carullah 1279 and Escorial 978. These manuscripts are respectively entitled The Treatise of Alexander of Aphrodisias Answering Galen’s Attack on Aristotle’s View that Everything that Moves is Moved by Something and Alexander’s Treatise in Reply to Galen concerning the First Mover. For brevity, I use here the title Refutation of Galen. It is not clear whether this work is a part of Alexander’s lost commentary on Aristotle’s Physics or an independent treatise.

For the former view see S. Pines, ‘Omne quod movetur necesse est ab aliquo moveri: A Refutation of Galen by Alexander of Aphrodisias and the Theory of Motion’ [‘Omne quod movetur’], Isis, 52 (1961) 21-54 at 22; for the latter view see N. Rescher and M. E. Marmura (ed., trans., comm.), The Refutation by Alexander of Aphrodisias of Galen’s Treatise on the Theory of Motion [Refutation by Alexander] (Islamabad, (1971) 60-2.

29. ———. 2023. " Alexander of Aphrodisias' theory of action and the capacity of doing otherwise." Apeiron no. 56:693-721.

Abstract: "I examine Alexander of Aphrodisias’ theory of action, addressing the question how his view that human actions are determined by reason accounts for the capacity of doing otherwise. Calling into question the standard view that Alexander frees agents from internal determination, I argue that (1) the capacity of doing otherwise is a consequence of determination by reason, since it enables agents to do something different from what they would have done had they followed external circumstances; and (2) this capacity is compatible with causal determination by reason because as a case of potentiality for opposites, it grants agents the qualified possibility of doing otherwise insofar as their nature as human beings is concerned – a possibility which remains also when their actions are causally determined by reason and by their internal disposition. I show further that these elements of Alexander’s theory of action are ultimately based on his conception of the soul, specifically on his commitment to Aristotle’s view that the human soul is not purely rational, as the Stoics hold, but has nonrational and rational parts."

30. ———. 2023. "De mixtione XIV: the Ingredients’ Preservation in the Blend." In Studies on Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Mixture and Growth, edited by Guyomarc'h, Gweltaz and de Haas, Frans A.J., 192-211. Leiden: Brill.

Abstract: "I argue that in De mixtione XIV Alexander addresses the question of the ingredients’ preservation in the blend from the viewpoint of the distinction between their substrates and their qualities. Through this interpretation I show that the discrepant claims regarding the ingredients’ preservation found in De mixtione XIII–XV are compatible because they hold for different aspects of the ingredients: the claim that they perish holds for their substrates, whereas the claim that they are preserved holds for their qualities. In so doing, I clarify Alexander’s stance in his debate with the Stoics as well as his contribution to the Peripatetic tradition. I show that in holding that blending is a real unification of the ingredients, he argues against the Stoics that the ingredients are not preserved as distinct individual bodies but their qualities are preserved in a diminished mode, and also departs from the earlier Peripatetic tradition, by stressing that blending does not result in a juxtaposition that appears unified due to the imperceptibility of its different ingredients. This interpretation helps place Alexander’s account of blending in the broader context of his metaphysics, by indicating that his view of the preservation of the ingredients underpins his anti-reductionist conception of substantial forms."

31. Hasnawi, Ahmad. 2016. "Alexander of Aphrodisias versus John Philoponus in Arabic: A Case of Mistaken Identity." In Aristotle Re-Interpreted: New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators, edited by Sorabji, Richard, 477-502. New York: Bloomsbury.

"One could claim that for an Aristotelian philosopher, particulars are not a philosophical problem – at least not an epistemological one. For an Aristotelian philosopher daily confronted with Stoic theories of Providence and individuation, however, this was a haunting question. After all, what did Aristotle have to say on the status of the particulars not qua belonging to a species, but qua pure singularities taking place within the world? I would like to show that even if Alexander is too much of an Aristotelian to have a real theory of the particular, his reaction to his historical context leads him to new insights on this topic. These insights, in turn, constitute a starting point out of which Avicenna and Leibniz developed their ideas about how fatalism could be avoided without giving up the principle that the entire effect corresponds to its full cause. I will try to sketch, in the following pages, the main phases of this long and intricate story." (p. 161)

32. Havrda, Matyáš. 2021. "Five Views of definienda in Alexander’s Quaestiones 1.3 and 2.14." Elechos no. 42:351-374.

Abstract: "In Quaestiones 1.3 and 2.14, Alexander presents a distinctly realist or essentialist view of the objects of definition, distinguished, on the one hand, from two types of realism rejected by Aristotle (definienda as separate forms and as particulars), and, on the other, from two types of conceptualism (non-essentialist and essentialist abstractivism) that probably belong within the Peripatetic tradition. The difference between Alexander’s view and essentialist abstractivism lies in his understanding of definienda not as the common concepts of things existing in the particulars, but as the common things conceived of as existing in the particulars. This paper offers a close reading of Quaest. 1.3, whose aim is to flesh out Alexander’s position vis-à-vis the objects of definition against the backdrop of the four rejected alternatives. The distinction between Alexander’s essentialism and the essentialist abstractivist notion of definienda is further explained in light of Quaest. 2.14. The amended Greek text of Quaest. 1.3 is appended with an English translation."

33. Helle, Reier. 2023. "Alexander of Aphrodisias and the Stoics: Blending, Forms, and the Upwards Story." In The History of Hylomorphism: From Aristotle to Descartes, edited by Charles, David, 106-132. New York: Oxford University Press.

"The Stoics hold that animals, plants, and inanimate natural bodies are composites of pneuma (‘breath’) and matter.(1) The composition relation in question is ‘blending’ (krasis). And by blending with the relevant matter, pneuma causes the animal, plant, or inanimate natural body to be what it is.(2) In his work on material composition, De Mixtione, Alexander of Aphrodisias discusses the Stoic theory of blending and the specific case of pneuma and matter at length. His aim is to refute the Stoic view, and in so doing to clear the ground for his own Aristotelian theory of blending, for the development and defence of which

he relies on Stoicism as a foil.(3)"

(1) I am grateful to Brad Inwood, Alexander Bown, Victor Caston, and especially to David Charles for helpful discussions, comments, and questions.

(2) For references and details, see section 1 below.

(3) Alexander, De Mix. is our most important source of evidence for Stoic thinking about blending.

Remarkably, out of the forty-seven total pages of Groisard’s edition of the text, Alexander’s discussion of the Stoic position takes up twenty-one; by comparison, the presentation and defence of his own

theory of blending is ten pages long.

Referencesù

Groisard, J. (2013), Alexandre D’Aphrodise: Sur La Mixtion et La Croissance (De Mixtione) (Les Belles Lettres).

34. Hendrix, John Shannon. 2010. "Philosophy of Intellect and Vision in the De anima and De intellectu of Alexander of Aphrodisias." School of Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation Faculty Papers:1-29.

"There are thus three intellects: material, in habitus, and productive. Matter is defined as the substrate which can become a particular being through the presence of a form, as potential intellect can become actual intellect through the presence of an intelligible. According to Aristotle in the Metaphysica, the substratum of matter “is that of which everything else is predicated, while it is itself not predicated of anything else” (7.3.1028b36),(9) meaning that matter can be seen as participating in anything which can be affirmed as a quality, but matter itself cannot be affirmed as a quality. Matter can be seen as neither a quality nor a particular (7.3.1029a20–21); it is a vocabulary element of neither the apprehension of the intelligible nor discursive thought. Matter can only be seen as a potentiality, and anything which can be described as material is so only as potentiality. Material intellect is thus potential intellect, and not an actual intellect. The material intellect has the potential to become actual intellect to the extent to which “existents are

possible objects of knowledge” (De anima 106), according to Alexander.

The faculty in material intellect which can apprehend an intelligible cannot be an intelligible itself, because then its own intelligible form would appear and interfere with the grasping of the intelligible. The faculty of intellect to know intelligibles can only be a potentiality, able to conform to the intelligible from without, in the same way that matter can only be a potentiality able to conform to the form of an object as it is perceived." (pp. 12-13)

(9) Aristotle, Metaphysics (Metaphysica), trans. W. D. Ross, in The Works of Aristotle (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952).

35. Hesamifar, Abdurrazzaq, and Baqershahi, Ali Naqi. 2018. "Intellect in Alexander of Aphrodisias and Its Impact upon Muslim Philosophers." Athens Journal of Humanities & Arts no. 5:447-468.

Abstract: "In his treatise "On the Intellect," Alexander of Aphrodisias paraphrases Aristotleʼs views on the intellect. He refers to four kinds of intellect. The first three include: the potential intellect which resides potentially in manʼs soul and will be actualized through perceiving the intelligible; the habitual intellect which has perceived certain intelligibles and can perceive some others as well; the Active Intellect which can change the first kind of intellect into the second one. This intellect can perceive its essence. And since its essence is intelligible so it can perceive it through perceiving the intelligibles. The fourth is the acquired intellect and it is a part of the Active Intellect and comes to soul from outside and enables it to perceive the intelligibles. The main objective of this article is to treat Alexanderʼs idea of the intellect and to explore its impact upon Islamic philosophy which can be traced in the similarities between their debates on the issue and the allusions to Alexanderʼs view in the works about intellect written by Muslim philosophers."

36. Ierodiakonou, Katerina. 1995. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on medicine as a stochastic art." In Ancient Medicine in Its Socio-Cultural Context: Volume 2, edited by Horstmanshoff, H. F. J., van der Eijk, Philip J. and Schrijvers, P. H. , 473-485. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Summary: "Medical practice in antiqwuity was conspicuous for its failures, which sertously challenged medicine's status as an art. Ancient philosophers and doctors tried to explain how a whole group of arts including medicine, the so-called stochastic arts, was characterised by rhe fact that even the most competent exercise of the art cou!d not guarantee a successful outcome. This paper focuses on Alexander of Aphrodisias' (second century AD) explanation and compares it to some other ancient views, in particu!ar to Gelen. The central feature at Alexander's suggestion is a distinction between the end of an art and its function. In the case of medicine end and function do not coincide; for the end is to heal the patient, whereas the function consists solely in doing artfully

what is possible to attain the end."

37. ———. 2018. "Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias on Colour." In The Parva naturalia in Greek, Arabic and Latin Aristotelianism: Supplementing the Science of the Soul, edited by Bydén, Börje and Radovic, Filip, 77-90. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "The aim of this paper is to unravel Aristotle’s reasoning with regard to the ontological status of colours; also, to get a better understanding of his views on the production of the whole spectrum of colours; and finally, to evaluate the explanatory power of his theory of colours. The texts I mainly draw my evidence from is Aristotle’s De sensu 3 and the relevant passages from the De anima as well as from other Aristotelian treatises; in addition, I use for my interpretation remarks made by Alexander of Aphrodisias in his commentary on the De sensu, in his Quaestiones and in the dubious treatise Mantissa."

38. ———. 2021. "Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias on Sight as a Relative." In Encounters with Aristotelian Philosophy of Mind, edited by Gregoric, Pavel and Fink, Jakob Leth, 99-118.

"Introduction

Most contemporary scholars who have tried to reconstruct Aristotle’s perceptual theory have bypassed his remarks on the relational character of perception without taking them into serious consideration. This is perhaps justifable, since there are very few and scattered passages in the Aristotelian corpus that present perception as a relative. On the other hand, the Aristotelian commentators of late antiquity, and especially Alexander of Aphrodisias, often refer to this fact in their attempt to explain how, according to Aristotle, perception, in general, and sight, in particular, function. Does Alexander simply unravel Aristotle’s thought, or does he develop the Aristotelian doctrine in innovative ways? Before I look into Alexander’s more detailed account of sight as a relative, let me begin with the scarce relevant evidence found in Aristotle’s own works." (p. 99)

39. ———. 2022. "Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias on the Individuation and Hierarchy of the Senses." In Forms of Representation in the Aristotelian Tradition. Volume One: Sense Perception, edited by Toivanen, Juhana, 40-65. Leiden: Brill.

"Conclusion

To conclude, both Aristotle and Alexander are well aware of the fact that their aim to individuate and classify the senses is a complicated affair. Indeed, in their attempt to come up with plausible ways of differentiating the senses, they are often faced with difficulties that undermine the intuitive idea that the senses are easily distinguished from one another. To deal with such difficulties, Aristotle suggests a multiplicity of demarcating criteria as well as a multiplicity of hierarchies, which are later further developed more systematically by Alexander. As we have seen, the role of the criteria for individuating the senses other than the criterion of proper objects proves to be significant, especially in the case of touch, but also in the cases of smell and taste; that is, criteria other than proper objects are significant for individuating three out of the five standard Aristotelian senses. This should be a good enough reason, I think, for reassessing the established view, according to which the one essential Aristotelian criterion for defining and distinguishing the senses is their proper objects. After all, Aristotle and his followers seem to have considered multiple criteria, which allowed them to classify the senses in a complex and rather sophisticated way." (p. 64)

40. Jackson, J. D. 1999. "From Alexander of Aphrodisias to Young and Airy." Physics Reports no. 320:27-36.

Abstract: "A didactic discussion of the physics of rainbows is presented, with some emphasis on the history, especially the contributions of Thomas Young nearly 200 years ago. We begin with the simple geometrical optics of Descartes and Newton, including the reasons for Alexander's dark band between the main and secondary bows. We then show how dispersion produces the familiar colorful spectacle. Interference between waves emerging at the same angle, but traveling di!erent optical paths within the water drops, accounts for the existence of distinct supernumerary rainbows under the right conditions (small drops, uniform in size). Young's and Airy's contributions are given their due."

41. Johnstone, Mark A. 2015. "Aristotle and Alexander on perceptual error." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 60:310-338.

Abstract: "Aristotle sometimes claims that (i) the perception of special perceptibles by their proper sense is unerring. This claim is striking, since it might seem that we quite often misperceive things like colours, sounds and smells. Aristotle also claims that (ii) the perception of common perceptibles (e.g. shape, number, movement) is more prone to error than the perception of special perceptibles. This is puzzling in its own right, and also places constraints on the interpretation of (i). I argue that reading Alexander of Aphrodisias on perceptual error offers an understanding of Aristotle that can help us to make good sense of both of Aristotle’s claims."

42. Jurasz, Isabela. 2021. "Destiny, Nature and Freedom According to Bardaisan and Alexander of Aphrodisias: An Unknown Aspect of the Controversy Against Determinism." In Women’s Perspectives on Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, edited by Chouinard, Isabelle, McConaughey, Zoe, Medeiros Ramos, Aline and Noël, Roxane, 133-159. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "The relationship between Bardaisan the Syriac (150–221) and Greek philosophy remains the object of several hypotheses. In the past, Bardaisan’s teaching has already been compared with Stoicism and Platonism. Some points in common with Aristotelianism have only been recently suggested by scholars. The present article provides an in-depth analysis of a doctrinal theme for which Bardaisan was well known in the Greek-speaking world: his anti-fatalist polemic deployed in the Book of the Laws of Countries. In this dialogue, in the course of which his disciples put forward various questions, Bardaisan’s answers show a certain resemblance to the theses of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ treatise On Fate, written against the determinism supported by the Stoics. A detailed analysis of the two texts reveals the extent of the similarities (and differences) between them, particularly in the approach to the notions of nature, freedom, and destiny or fate."

43. Kapetanaki, Sophia, and Sharples, Robert W. 2000. "A glossary attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies no. 44:103-143.

"MS Ambrosianus Q74 sup. is a codex in minuscules from the tenth century, containing miscellany of extracts mainly taken from patristic sources and with questions relating soul as its dominant theme." (p. 103)

(...)

"There remains the first and longest text attributed to Alexander (fols 167v-172r), the subject of the present article. It is headed 'Alexander of Aphrodisias's selections from the definitions given in Aristotle' .6 It does indeed take the form of a series of definitions, in what at first seems, apart from some clustering of terms in related areas, a random sequence.

Closer inspection however shows that the sequence reflects the manner of composition. The compiler has apparently gone through the Corpus Aristotelicum, work by work, extracting from Aristotle's text definitions of terms mentioned there. With a few m inor exceptions the sequence of terms defined simply reflects the sequence in which they appear in Aristotle's own text. This explains the occurrence of several definitions of the same term. It also explains why the definitions of virtuous and vicious moral states come in two separate sequences." (p. 104, notes omitted)

44. Kessler, Eckhard. 2011. "Alexander of Aphrodisias and his Doctrine of the Soul: 1400 Years of Lasting Significance." Early Science and Medicine no. 16:1-93.

Abstract: "This piece of work intends to shed light on Alexander of Aphrodisias from the second-century Aristotle commentator through the history of Aristotelian psychology up to the sixteenth century's clandestine prompter of the new philosophy of nature. In the millennium after his death the head of the Peripatetic school in Athens served as the authority on Aristotle in the Neo-Platonic school, survived the Arabic centuries of philosophy as Averroes' exemplary exponent of the mortality of the soul and as such was not considered worthy of translation by the Latin Scholastics. This attitude changed only in the Late Middle Ages, when the resistance against Averroes grew fierce and Alexander emerged as the only Aristotelian alternative to him. In 1495 his account of Aristotle's psychology was translated and published and the underlying principles of a natural philosophy, based on sense perception and exempt from metaphysics, became accessible. The prompt reception and widespread endorsement of Alexander's teaching testify to his impact throughout the sixteenth century."

45. King, Daniel. 2010. "Alexander of Aphrodisias' 'On the Principles of the Universe' in a syriac adaptation." Lè Muséon no. 123:159-191.

"The seventh century Syriac manuscript BL Add.14658 is a wide-ranging collection of texts of mostly non-Christian origin(1)." (p. 159)

(...)

"The present study concerns another of the texts in this important collection, namely that which is entitled A treatise concerning the causes of the universe, written by Mar Sargis, priest of Rish Ayna, according to the view of Aristotle the Philosopher, that it is a sphere(5).

Earlier work on the manuscript and on Sergius assumed that this was an original work of the Syrian’s(6). Only in 1994 was the text correctly identified by Dana Miller as an adapted version of a work by Alexander of Aphrodisias(7), otherwise known only in an Arabic version entitled Alexander of Aphrodisias’ treatise on the theory concerning the Principles of the Universe according to the philosopher Aristotle’s opinion (more generally referred to as the Mabadi’(8). This Arabic text was edited originally by Badawi(9), and more recently in a much improved edition in 2001 by Charles Genequand(10), following closely on the heels of an important study of this and related texts by Prof. Endress(11).

The present offering seeks to complement the critical Syriac text published in the present volume by indicating the characteristics of the adaptation and by locating Sergius’ treatment of it within the broader currents of cosmological and theological concern among educated Greeks and Syrians of his era." (p. 160, a note in Arabic omitted)

(1) W. Wright, Catalogue of Syriac manuscripts in the British Museum acquired since the year 1838. 3 vols. London, 1870-2, p. 1154-60.

(5) See the edition and translation of our text in the current issue by E. Fiori, which replaces the less accurate Italian translation, G. Furlani, Il trattato di Sergio di Res’ayna sull’ universo, in Rivista trimestrale di studi filosofica e religiosi, 4 (1923), p. 1-22 (= Furlani, Il trattato di Sergio). The item is no. 7 in Wright’s Catalogue (p. 1156).

(6) E.g. Renan, Lettre à M. Reinaud, p. 320; Furlani, Il trattato di Sergio.

(7) D.R. Miller, Sargis of Res’ayna: On what celestial bodies know, in R. Lavenant (ed.), VI Symposium Syriacum (Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 247), Rome, 1994, p. 221-233 (= Miller, Sargis).

(9 A. Badawi, Aristu ‘inda al-‘Arab, Cairo, 1947, p. 253-277.

10 C. Genequand (ed.), Alexander of Aphrodisias on the Cosmos. Arabic text with English Translation, Introduction and Commentary (Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science. Texts and Studies, 44), Leiden, 2001 (= Genequand, On the Cosmos).

11 G. Endress, Alexander Arabus on the First Cause. Aristotle’s First Mover in an Arabic Treatise attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias, in C. D’Ancona Costa . G. Serra (ed.), Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia nella tradizione araba, Padua, 2002, p. 19-61 (= Endress, Alexander Arabus on the First Cause).

46. King, R, A. H. . 2021. "Alexander’s De Sensu – and Aristotle’s." In Aristoteles, « Parva naturalia »: Akten der 18. Tagung der Karl und Gertrud Abel-Stiftung vom 30. September bis 2. Oktober 2015 in Mainz, edited by Althff, Jochen, 135-153. Berlin: de Gruyter.

"In this paper, I argue that Alexander, while he knows the Parv. nat. as we know it, has no very good solution to the problems of demarking Parv. nat. from De an., on the contrary, his concern is the integration of Parv. nat. into physikê, and, to boot, a fairly rigid view of the structure of what is happening in Parv. nat., which undersells the flexibility and breadth of the work. However, what Alexander does bring to the table is a consuming interest in anathymiasis, which, while not prominent on the surface of Parv. nat.,

is certainly to be found there. Given Alexander’s interest in the Meteor., where Aristotle does make extensive use of anathymiasis to explain everything from lightening to the eructations of the earth, this emphasis in his commentary is hardly surprising. This emphasis is Alexander’s own take on the way sensation is treated in the Parv. nat. as opposed to in De an., and puts a process in the centre of his interpretation which is at once material, but also formal. Not only that, it is a process that happens both in living

things, and outside, that is to say, both serving the ends of living things, and as a blind natural phenomenon. Anathymiasis achieves two noteworthy aims in terms of its explanatory power: it anchors life in the material world, and, as the change of state of food, is the formation of the living thing itself. This paper concentrates on anathymiasis in Alexander’s reading of De sens., and investigates the extent to which he is being faithful to Aristotle." (p. 135)

47. Koch, Isabelle. 2021. "How to Limit Fatalism? A Comparison Between Alexander of Aphrodisias and Bardaisan." In Women’s Perspectives on Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, edited by Chouinard, Isabelle, McConaughey, Zoe, Medeiros Ramos, Aline and Noël, Roxane, 161-167. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Alexander of Aphrodisias and Bardaisan, at the end of the second/beginning of the third century CE, are part of a cultural context where astrology, beyond popular or civic beliefs, is integrated into a cosmological reflection on the principles of reality. In such a context, they analyse the concepts of nature and free choice with the project of limiting the influence of fate, in the face of adversaries who submit everything to destiny (the Chaldeans for Bardaisan, the Stoics—and perhaps other deterministic currents—for Alexander). In both cases, the aim is not to deny but torecognise the causal power of fate, while nonetheless assigning it to a particular sphere of reality rather than the whole. In both cases, too, it is mainly through the relations between nature, fate and free choice that this restrictive assignment takes place. Here we will study, regarding a few points, the different strategies by which these two authors fit into the ancient anti-fatalist tradition and contribute to the emergence of the idea of free will in late antiquity."

48. Kotwick, Mirjam. 2016. Alexander of Aphrodisias and the Text of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Berkeley: California Classical Studies.

"Aristotle’s Metaphysics was written in the fourth century BC. But our testimonies about the transmission of Aristotle’s writings suggest that the earliest date of an edition containing the 14 books known to us, in the order known to us, is the first century BC. Worse still, our manuscript tradition containing Aristotle’s Metaphysics begins with the transliteration process in the ninth century AD: Metaphysics manuscripts of an earlier date did not survive. This means that our direct access to the Metaphysics begins about 1200 years after it was written." (Introduction, p. 11)

(...)

"The present study analyzes Alexander’s commentary as a textual witness to Aristotle’s Metaphysics. It thereby pursues two main objectives, which correspond to two different ways in which Alexander’s commentary provides information on the Metaphysics text. The first objective is to analyze how the Metaphysics text Alexander used when composing his commentary relates to the versions of the direct transmission, α and β, and to their common ancestor ωαβ. A clear picture of how these versions interrelate will enable us to use the readings we can extract from Alexander’s commentary more effectively. The second objective is to investigate the effects that Alexander’s commentary had on the transmission of the Metaphysics text. Alexander’s impact on the Metaphysics text can be identified through words or phrases present in the

Metaphysics text that were not actually written by Aristotle but were adopted into the text from Alexander’s commentary. Such traces of contamination reveal to us the dynamics that shaped the text we read today, and hence can improve our understanding of the textual history of the Metaphysics." (p. 12)

49. ———. 2021. "Aristotle, Metaphysics A -10, 993a13-15. A new reading and its implication for the unity of book Alpha." The Classical Quarterly no. 71:183-188.

Abstract: "This article argues for an emendation in Aristotle’s Metaphysics A 10, 993a13–15. Theemendation is based on a hitherto overlooked reading preserved in Alexander of Aphrodisias’ commentary on A 7. First, the article problematizes the reading of the

Metaphysics manuscripts in terms of syntax, diction and content. Second, it shows that Alexander’s reading is free of all three problems. Third, it argues for the originality of Alexander’s reading according to the principle utrum in alterum abiturum erat? and

based on the fact that the new reading reveals a subtle didactic link between A 7 and A 10 that sheds new light on the argumentative architecture of Metaphysics Book A."

50. Krause, Katja. 2015. "Transforming Aristotelian Philosophy: Alexander of Aphrodisias in Aquinas' early anthropology and eschatology." Przeglad Tornistyczny no. 21:175-217.

"As is well known, almost all ancient Greek and Arabic Peripatetic works following the footsteps of Aristotle's psychology and ethics were opposed to some aspects of traditional Christian doctrines of the human soul, intellect, and ultimate happiness. Alexander of Aphrodisias - the most influential Hellenistic commentator on the corpus Aristotelicum, who flourished around 200 AD - presents no exception to this picture."

(...)

"In fact, Aquinas' treatment of Alexander's thought will no longer seem paradoxical if examined in light of the two kinds of transformation just outlined.

For, as will emerge, whenever Aquinas implements an anchored transformation of Alexander's thought, he disapproves of it on the grounds of its irreconcilability with Christian doctrine. In contrast, whenever Aquinas implements a dissociated transformation of his thought, he approves of it on the grounds of usefulness for Christian doctrine, since the formal-structural elements from Alexander's conception of ultimate happiness serve in allowing him to conceive of the face-to-face beatific vision by way of ultimate conjunction. To the best of my knowledge, the particular nature of Aquinas' transformations of Alexander of Aphrodisias' thought have not yet been the subject of a detailed study.

1he purpose of my paper is thus to provide such a study and to show how and why Aquinas treats Alexander's conceptions of the human soul, intellect, and ultimate happiness in such a twofold way." (pp. 178-179, two notes omitted)

51. Kraye, Jill. 1991. "Alexander of Aphrodisias, Gianfrancesco Beati and the Problem of Metaphysics α." In Renaissance Society and Culture. Essays in Honor of Eugene F. Rice, Jr., edited by Monfasani, John and Nusto, Ronald G., 137-160. New York: Italica Press.

"Book α of Aristotle's Metaphysics has troubled scholars since Alexander of Aphrodisias composed his commentary in the second century A.D. Doubts as to the authenticity of this unusually short book (less than four columns in the Bekker edition), whose numbering seems to classify it as an afterthought to the far more substantial Book Α, must have been circulating even earlier: Alexander felt it necessary to argue that a was indeed written by Aristotle, on grounds of both style and content." (p. 137)

(...)

"The situation changed in 1527 when Alexander of Aphrodisias' commentary on the Metaphysics became generally available in the Latin translation of Juan Gines de Sepulveda.(18)" (p. 141)

(...)

"More interesting is the case of Gianfrancesco Beati, who used Alexander's comments, or at any rate some of them, as the basis for a new theory of a. In 1543, Beati, a Dominican professor at the University of Padua, published a treatise in which he attempted to demonstrate that Metaphysics a was in reality the preface to Physics II.(26)" (p. 143)

(18) Alexander of Aphrodisias, Commentaria in duodecim Aristotelis libros De prima philosophia (Rome: Marcellus Silber, 1527). The translation was reprinted in Paris in 1536 and in Venice in 1544, 1551 and 1561: see F. E. Cranz, "Alexander of Aphrodisias," in Catalogus translationum et commentariorum (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, I960-), 1:77-135 at 93-5. On Sepulveda see C. Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries (Florence: Olschki, 1988-), 2:419-20.

(26) G. F. Beati, In librum secundum Metaphysicae interpretatio, in qua... ostenditur eum librum ad Metaphysicam omnino non pertinere, sed esse prooemium secundi libri De auscultatione physica (Venice: Bernardinus Bindonius, 1543). The treatise was originally delivered as a lecture in Padua in 1542: see sig. 1 3r. On Beati, see Lohr, Aristotle Commentaries (note 18 above), 2:36. Beati was at Padua from 1531 to 1543, when he moved to Pisa, where he continued to teach metaphysics with considerable success until his death in 1546: see A. Fabroni, Historia Academiae Pisanae, 3 vols. (Pisa: Cajetanus Mugnainius, 1791-95; reprinted Bologna: Forni, 1971), 2:128.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Alexander of Aphrodisias' metaphysics: Annotated bibliography of the studies in English: Kup - Sch

Bibliography

1. Kupreeva, Inna. 2003. "Qualities and bodies: Alexander against the Stoics." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 25:297-344.

Abstract: "The goal of this paper is to examine the relation between the Stoic notion of quality and Aristotelian form on the basis of some discussions in Alexander of Aphrodisias, the leading Peripatetic of the late second century AD, who expended a considerable effort on criticism of the Stoic system, while recognizing a number of shared goals and principles."

2. ———. 2004. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on Mixture and Growth." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 27:297-334.

"The discussion of 1nixture and growth by Alexander of Aphrodisias presents_special interest in this respect, as he uses both topics in order to articulate the key concepts of Aristotelian metaphysics of hylomorphism, such as form and matter of individual substance identity, and continuity through change.

The goal of this paper is to study these concepts as presented by Alexander in his polemic against the Stoic theory of mixture and in his elaboration of Aristotle's analysis of growth. The first part of the paper has to do with mixture. I show that Alexander's criticism of the Stoic theory of total pervasion is based on his idea that ingredient qualities cannot be individuated in a mixture because in a mixed state they lose their specific identities on which their spatio-temporal continuity depends. The second part is devoted to Alexander's account of growth, which elaborates on the Aristotelian thesis of persistence of form by spelling out some ontological constraints on the concept of 'flowing matter' in the account of material continuants. Both discussions have a bearing on the concept of individual substance construed in terms of Aristotelian

hylomorphic theory, and show differences between treatments of the individual in the Stoic and Aristotelian systems." (pp. 297-298)

3. ———. 2004. "Aristotelian dynamics in the 2nd century school debates: Galen and Alexander of Aphrodisias on organic powers and movements " In Philosophy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries: Volume 1, edited by Adamson, Peter, Baltussen, Han and Stone, Martin William Francis, 71-95. London: London: Institute of Classical Studies, University of London.

"This paper has to do with the explanation of the nature of organic movements by Galen and Alexander. I shall avoid the controversial subject of direct contacts between the two men,(1) and focus instead on the analysis of some doctrinal parallels in their respective use of Aristotelian background. A particular question to be examined in each case is how the material constitution of living beings and operation of lower living functions is explained.

This question has been recognised as important at all periods of history of ancient philosophy and medicine." (p. 71)

(...)

"The paper falls into three parts. I begin by looking at the relation of the cocepts of organic and inorganic in the explanation of the mechanism of growth as founs in the Aristotelian corpus, and identifying some problems left unresolved by Aristotle that were taken up by later thinkers. In the second part, I review Galen's discussion of the nature of organic powers in On natural faculties, reconstructing some theoretical motives behind his use of Aristotle's theory of elements and mixture as a part of his physiological of doctrine. In the third part, I focus on Alexander's explanation of the mechanism of growth, and discuss the role of his version of the theory of elements in his expostion of the concepts of power and motion in Aristotle' s system of natural philosophy." (p. 72)

(1) For the state of the question, sources and bibliography, see Pines 1961; Marmura and Rescher 1965; Moraux 1973-2001, vol. 2, 362 and n. 6; Todd 1995; most recently Fazzo 2002 109-44.

References

Fazzo 2002 = Fazzo, S. 'Alexandre d'Aphrodise contre Galien: la naissance d'une légende', Philosophie Antique. Problèmes, Renaissances, Usages 2 (2002) 109-44.

Marmura and Rescher 1965 = Marmura, M. E. and Rescher, N. The Refutation by Alexander of Aphrodisias of Galen's Treatise of the Theory of Motion (Islamabad 1965).

Moraux 1973-2001 = Moraux, P. Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen. Von Andronikos bis Alexander von Aphrodisias, 'Peripatoi' 5, 6, 7/1, 3 vols to date (Berlin 1973, 1984, 2001.

Pines 1961 = S. Pines, ' Omne quod movetur necesse est ab aliquod moveri: A refutation of Galen by Alexander of Aphrodisias and the Theory of Motion', Isis 52 (1961) 21-54.

Todd 1995 = Todd, R. B. 'Peripatetic epistemology before Alexander of Aphrodisias: the case of Alexander of Damascus', Eranos 93 (1995) 122-28.

4. ———. 2010. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on Form: A Discussion of Marwan Rashed, Essentialisme." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 38:211-249.

"Marwan Rashed’s new book is the first monograph-length discussion of Aexander’s theory of form. The author is sensitive to the problem of sources. Taking his stand against Zeller’s view of Aexander as a line-by-line commentator without a sustained philosophical agenda of his own, he challenges the very assumption that the commentaries cannot be taken as evidence for Aexander’s original philosophical position. He claims that commentaries often provide more insight into this philosophy than the opuscula and school treatises, where the pressure of pedagogical and expository tasks occasionally leads to simplifications.

In his discussion of the central problem, Rashed makes use of relevant texts taken from all over the Alexandrian corpus, including commentaries and school treatises, authentic works and testimonia, in Greek and in Arabic. Many of these texts are little known and some only recently discovered. One particularly important discovery seems to be that of the Byzantine scholia in MS Paris. Suppl. Gr 643 which, Rashed argues, are excerpted from Alexander’s lost Physics commentary.(10) Rashed appends a number of new annotated translations into Fench, with many valuable textual and exegetical suggestions. However, the main goal of the book is not the study of the texts as such, but of Alexander’s tackling of the tension between the individual substance and substance-form in Aristotle’s metaphysics." (p. 214)

(10) An edition of the fragments is forthcoming as M. Rashed (ed., trans., comm.), Alexandre d’Aphrodise: Commentaire perdu à la ‘Physique’ d’Aristote (livres IV–VIII). Les Scholies byzantines (Berlin, 2010).

5. ———. 2012. "Alexander of Aphrodisias and Aristotle's 'De anima': What's in a commentary?" Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies no. 55:109-129.

Abstract: "A study of testimonia for Alexander's lost commentary on Aristotle's De anima can shed new light on his interpretation of Aristotle. Two cases are discussed. (1) Alexander reads De anima 3.12 (434b3-8) as applying teleological explanation of soul's powers to the souls of heavenly bodies, which in his own treatise De anima he excludes from the scope of psychology.

Inclusive reading agrees with Alexander's position in other writings and must be his considered view. (2) Philoponus reports a Platonist (probably Numenius') exegesis of De anima 2.2 (413bl 1-13). Alexander's argument against it, with parallels in his other psychological writings, provides evidence that his controversial definition of soul as a power supervenient on elemental mixture is due, in part, to his polemic against Platonist readings of Aristotle's theory of soul and soul's powers."

"This paper is a report on work in progress which will hopefully lead to a collection of testimonia for Alexander's lost commentary on De anima. A reconstruction of this commentary was once contemplated by Paul Moraux, who printed a partial collection of fragments as an appendix to his dissertation based monograph on the intellect. (1) Later on, Moraux outlined some problems and prospects of a more comprehensive study, in an essay published as a section devoted to Alexander's De anima commentary in the posthumous volume III of Aristotelismus bei den Griechen devoted to Alexander, published by J. Wiesner and R. W. Sharples in 2001(2) I would like to address some preliminary questions concerning the scope and tasks of such a study, including, in particular, the questions of the sources available for the reconstruction of this commentary and of the potential interest of such a study for the understanding of Alexander's views on the soul. I shall begin with a brief survey of sources which should make it clear that there is room for both kinds of questions, and then discuss two samples of Alexander's argument in the commentary which hopefully will provide some moderately reassuring answers." (p. 109)

(1) P. Moraux, Alexandre d'Aphrodise: Exégète de la noétique d'Aristote (Liège; Paris 1942) 205-21.

2 According to J. Wiesner's introduction, the section on De anima dates back to the 1960s (P. Moraux, Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen Von Andronikos bis Alexander von Aphrodisias III: Alexander von Aphrodisias, ed. J. G. Wiesner (Berlin 2001) v).

6. ———. 2016. "Aristotelianism in the Second Century AD: Before Alexander of Aphrodisias." In Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Aristotle in Antiquity, edited by Falcon, Andrea, 138-159. Leiden: Brill.

"The second century AD sees a revival of Aristotelianism. Its culmination is the activity of Alexander of Aphrodisias whose monumental literary legacy provided later commentators with an authoritative school reading of Aristotle.

Presence of Aristotelian ideas is also perceived in the works of philosophers of other schools, such as Stoics, Platonists, and Epicureans, who debate with Peripatetics,(1) and outside school philosophy, in scientific and medical writings such as the works of Galen and Ptolemy, where we find both adaptation and criticism of various Aristotelian doctrines. Peripatetic philosophy is popular with the Roman elite.(2) Its ideas and characters make it to the jokes of urban wits.(3)" (p. 138)

(...)

"The most striking feature of this period, not documented before, is a thorough and detailed knowledge that all the Peripatetic philosophers have of the Aristotelian corpus. Most often dialectical engagement with problems or criticisms happens in the course of interpretation of an Aristotelian text or argument, and search for solution usually mobilizes the full theoretical arsenal of Aristotle’s logic and ontology, whether the problem under discussion belongs to physics, logic, or ethics, to use the Hellenistic classification. The prevalence of Aristotelian method and Aristotelian ontology in all these areas puts Hellenistic agenda in a new perspective.

This is the same approach that is documented much more fully in the work of Alexander of Aphrodisias, and it is possible to say that it has been formed during the second century AD." (p, 156)

(1) Stoics: Cleomedes, Lectures on Astronomy 1.1.81; Platonists: Atticus frr. 4, 5, 7 Des Places; Epicureans: Diogenes of Oenoanda fr. 5 cols. 1.11–3.1.

(2) The people Galen describes as Peripatetics include, apart from Eudemus and Alexander of Damascus, who were teachers, also two consuls (at different times), Flavius Boethus and Severus, and the prefect of the city Sergius Paulus (see On Prognosis [De praecog.] XIV 605–613 and 624–630 K; My Own Books [Lib. Prop.] XIX 11–16 K; Anatomical Procedures [De anat. admin.] II 215–216 K).

(3) E.g. Lucian, Demonax 56.

7. ———. 2018. "Aporia and Exegesis: Alexander of Aphrodisias." In The Aporetic Tradition in Ancient Philosophy, edited by Karamanolis, George and Politis, Vasilis, 228-247. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"In this essay it is not my goal to discuss aporia as a genre in Alexander’s literary work. Instead I would like to probe into a somewhat different area, that of Alexander’s thinking about the aporia as a part of philosophical method. This is not an easy task, since despite the ubiquity of aporetic contexts in Alexander’s work, there is no single place where we can find the statement of his views on this subject. Is there a specific role for aporia in Aristotle’s scientific methodology, according to Alexander? I will present an answer in the affirmative and try to show, using several important texts, that for Alexander, aporia is a vehicle of dialectical method, and this method itself has an important formative and auxiliary role in sciences – helping to elucidate and clarify key concepts and arguments, respond to objections, and bring out conceptual problems. This approach informs Alexander’s exegesis of Aristotle’s aporiai in Metaphysics Beta. I begin in section one with a survey of Alexander’s Aristotelian background.

In section two, I present Alexander’s view on the methodological function of dialectic. In section three, I show how this function is fulfilled by an aporia in relation to first philosophy." (p, 228, a note omitted)

8. ———. 2023. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on the Principle of Non-Contradiction: The Argument “from Signification”." In Ancient Greek Dialectic and Its Reception, edited by Mouzala, Melina G., 249-276. Berlin: de Gruyter.

"In this paper, I would like to provide an outline of Alexander’s reading of Aristotle’s argument which will allow us to see how his position stands in the light of contemporary discussions of Aristotle’s argument. After a very brief summary of the main points of Aristotle’s argument in Γ 4 in § 1, Ι discuss (in § 2) Alexander’s interpretation of elenctic demonstration (with special attention to his distinction between the elenchos proper and the more general argument from signification), and in § 3, I try to show that Alexander develops his own version of unrestricted essentialist interpretation of Aristotle’s argument which has some philosophical merits." (pp. 287-288)

9. Laks, André. 2018. "Destructible Worlds in an Aristotelian Scholion (Alexander of Aphrodisias’ Lost Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, Frag. 539 Rashed)." Elenchos no. 39:403-420.

Abstract: "Does Anaxagoras admit that the world is destructible? Aëtius’ doxographical handbook says as much, and so does a doxographical scholion derived from Alexander of Aphrodisias’ lost commentary on Aristotle’s Physics (Frag. 539 Rashed) according to the transmitted text. However, because of other difficulties occurring in the same scholion, Rashed was led to correct not only this text, thus making it contradict Aëtius’ testimony, but also the entry dedicated to Plato. My article suggests that while Rashed’s corrections are superfluous, the problems that triggered them are of great interest for the history of the doxographical tradition, for the way in which this tradition was used by Alexander of Aphrodisias and Simplicius in their commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics and, last but not least, for the understanding of the difficulties that ancient interpreters had to confront when they had to make sense of the lines now known as Anaxagoras B12 DK – difficulties that modern interpreters have still to confront."

References

Rashed, M. 2011. Alexandre d’Aphrodise, commentaire perdu à la Physique d’Aristote (livres IV-VIII): les scholies byzantines: édition, traduction et commentaire, Berlin/Boston, de Gruyter.

10. Lautner, Péter. 1996. "Ἀναζωγράφημα and related terms in Alexander of Aphrodisias' notion of Phantasia." Scripta Classica Israelica no. 14:33-41.

"Basing his theory of the soul on Aristotle’s theses, Alexander cannot pretend to be unfamiliar with the doctrine of the Stoics who offered a powerful alternative to the Aristotelian version. This holds true particularly of the concept of phantasia, since they made it central to the theory of knowledge, and so forced Alexander to elaborate a notion more detailed and, perhaps, more clear-cut than what we find in Aristotle.(1) No wonder that in doing so he incorporates much of the views of the rival school into his account. Apart from remarks scattered throughout the corpus, Alexander discusses this problem in a relatively long portion of his de Anima, where he follows the line of Aristotle’s de Anima III 3.(2) As my aim is to examine the role and meaning of some special terms, I am going to dwell mainly on this text, although, when necessary, relevant passages elsewhere will also be examined." (p. 33)

(1) Aristotle’s own account is notoriously complex. New Unitarian approaches have been proposed by G. Watson, “Phantasia in Aristotle de Anima III 3”, CQ n.s. 32, 1982, 100-113, and H.J. Horn, “Aristote, Traité de l’âme, III 3, et le concept aristotélicien de phantasia”, Les Etudes Philosophiques 2, 1988, 221-235. As my purpose is not to examine Aristotle’s concept, it is unnecessary to list even the main items of the vast literature.

(2) 66.9-Ί3Α3 Bruns, CAG Suppl. II,Γ A translation of Alexander’s de Anima has been offered in A. Fotinis, The de anima of Alexander of Aphrodisias. A translation and commentary, 1979. His own treatment of phantasia is to be found on pp. 262-274. For an evaluation of his work which I accept, see P. Donini, Le scuole, l’anima, l'impero: la filosofia antica da Antioco a Plotino, 1982, 247 n. 50. According to R.B. Todd, “Two displaced passages in Alexander of Aphrodisias’ de Anima",'Eranos 74, 1976, 28-31, 72.5-13 and 73.3-7 have been displaced from its original place in all our manuscripts of the whole treatise. But this fact, I believe, does not alter my point.

11. ———. 2020. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on Fate as a Problem in Epistemology and Moral Psychology." In Fate, Providence and Free Will: Philosophy and Religion in Dialogue in the Early Imperial Age, edited by Brouwer, René and Vimercati, Emmanuele, 152-172. Leiden: Brill.

"The logic and metaphysics behind Alexander’s notion of fate have been much discussed in the literature about ancient views on determinism. By contrast, the ethical and epistemological aspects have received considerably less attention.

In what follows I shall concentrate, first, on the way the various definitions of ἐφ’ἡμῖν, what is “up to us”, culminate in the account of character states involving knowledge, and then, second, on the inner conditions that make free action possible. It will involve a discussion of the appropriate cognitive and conative states alike. My aim is to give a unitarian explanation in the sense that I shall try to show that the accounts we find in the Mantissa and in On the Soul are by no means exclusive of one another. As a consequence, I shall have much less to say about the metaphysical conditions of fate and free action or about the logic behind them." (P. 152)

12. Long, Anthony A. 1970. "Stoic Determinism and Alexander of Aphrodisias De Fato I-XIV)." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 52:247-268.

"There is more similarity than difference between the views of ps,~Plutarch and Calcidius and those of the Stoics. On Alexander the Stoic influence is only a little less strong.

He too has been influenced by the Community of language and doctrine characteristic of the contemporary philosophical climate.

In such circumstances it is not surprising that his and other attacks on determinism are expressed in anonymous terms.

Are we then to conclude that Alexander is not attacking 'the Stoics' ? The answer must, I fear, be equivocal. He attacks 'those who say that all things are determined', and he does so by focussing attention on certain Stoic theses. But unless we assume, what is improbable, a more extreme form of Stoic determinism than that known to us s Chrysippus' doctrine, Alexander cannot be said to direct the Defato s a whole against Stoicism Many of the views he attacks will have been held by Stoics, but Alexander does not attempt a systematic presentation and critique of Stoic determinism." (p. 268 a note omitted)

13. ———. 1975. "Alexander of Aphrodisias, De fato 190.26 ff." The Classical Quarterly no. 25:158-159.

14. Madigan, Arthur. 1987. "Alexander of Aphrodisias: the Book of Ethical Problems." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Teil II: Principat. Band 36.2: Philosophie, Platonismus [Forts.], Aristotelismus), edited by Haase, Wolfgang and Temporini, Hildegard, 1260-1279. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"The book of Alexander's ethical problems has been edited by I. Bruns.(1)

(...)

Given that the book has received comparatively little study, and given the aims of ANRW, it seems best to present an analytical acount of its contents, as an invitation to and an instrument of future research, which would include a study of Alexander's terminology and of the background (Peripatetic, Stoic, other) of each of the problems, and eventually yield a full commentary. While the book is far from being an epitome of Peripatetic doctrine in the manner of Arius Didymus, its treatments of virtue and of pleasure are fairly detailed, its treatments of responsibility and of the objects of choice somewhat less so. As widely separated texts treat of the same or allied themes, and as there is no need to suppose that the order found in our texts comes from Alexander, I will group the problems under these main headings." (pp. 1260-1261, two notes omitted)

(1) Supplementum Aristotelicum II 2 (Berlin: Reimer, 1892), 117-63.

15. ———. 1994. "Alexander on Aristotle's species and genera as principles." In Aristotle in Late Antiquity, edited by Schrenk, Lawrence P., 76-91. Washington (D. C.): The Catholic University of America Press.

"It is commonly held, and correctly held, that the arguments of Metaphysics 3 are in large part dialectical,that is, that they proceed from premises that are plausible or agreed upon, but not known to be true. And it is notorious that the arguments of Metaphysics 3 come to contradictory conclusions. So one might say, Why look here for Alexander's views on the status of genera and species as principles? My answer is, I want to turn the difficulty into an opportunity. When Alexander handles dialectical material, he tries, at times, to sort out the wheat from the chaff, the sound from the unsound. He does not always limit himself to explaining the arguments on their own terms and within their dialectical assumptions.

On the contrary, he often gives signs of which assumptions he regards as merely dialectical, and which he regards as more than merely dialectical.

To observe Alexander's handling of these largely dialectical arguments will show us something about his philosophical gut instincts." (pp. 76-77)

16. Mansfeld, Jaap. 1988. "Diaphonia, the argument of Alexander De fato chs. 1-2." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 33:181-207.

"In the present paper, I wish to argue that the prologue [to De fato] consists of chs. 1-2 and that the exposition of the Aristotelian view only begins at ch. 3. Chs. 1-2 provide a continuous and coherent argument which serves to introduce and justify Alexander's undertaking as a whole. We should not confuse the exordium, containing the dedication of the monograph to the emperors which indeed does not go beyond ch. 14 (and is recalled in the final chapter, or epilogue), with the introduction in the proper sense of the word, which consists of both exordium and status quaestionis. (pp. 180-181)

17. ———. 1989. "An echo of middle platonist theology in Alexander De fato, ch. 34." Vigilae Chrstianae no. 42:86-91.

"I assume that Alexander, a learned person and a subtle polemist, thoroughly familiar with the main philosophical issues and debate of his own time and had read the relevant literature.(12) In the passage from Fat. ch. 35 quoted above, he obviously exploits the Middle Platonist distinction between the via negationis and the via analogiae in his polemics against the (Stoic) determinists." (p. 89)

(12) For this familiarity with Neopyrrhonist methods see my paper Diaphonia: The Argument of Alexander De Fato Chs. 1-2, Phronesis 33 (1988), 182 ff.

18. McGinnis, Jon. 2006. "Positioning Heaven: The Infidelity of a Faithful Aristotelian." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 51:140-161.

Abstract: "Aristotle's account of place in terms of an innermost limit of a containing body was to generate serious discussion and controvery among Aristotle's later commentators, especially when it was applied to the cosmos as a whole. The problem was that since there is nothing outside of the cosmos that could contain it, the cosmos apparently could not have a place according to Aristotle's definition; however, if the cosmos does not have a place, then it is not clear that it could move, but it was thought to move, namely, in its daily revolution, which was viewed as a kind of natural locomotion and so required the cosmos to have a place. The study briefly outlines Aristotle's account of place and then considers its fate, particularly with respect to the cosmos and its motion, at the hands of later commentators. To this end, it begins with Theophrastus' puzzles concerning Aristotle's account of place, and how later Greek commentators, such as Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius and others, attempted to address these problems in what can only be described as ad hoc ways. It then considers Philoponus' exploitation of these problems as a means to replace Aristotle's account of place with his own account of place understood in terms of extension. The study concludes with the Arabic Neoplatonizing Aristotelian Avicenna and his novel introduction of a new category of motion, namely, motion in the category of position. Briefly, Avicenna denies that the cosmos has a place, and so claims that it moves not with respect to place, but with respect to position."

19. Mikeš, Vladimír 2023. "De mixtione III–IV: the Stoics on Blending—Arguments, Proofs, Examples." In Studies on Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Mixture and Growth, edited by Guyomarc'h, Gweltaz and de Haas, Frans A.J., 58-82. Leiden: Brill.

Abstract: "Chapters III–IV of De mixtione represent a new beginning of the treatise where the Stoics, the main target of Alexander’s critical assessment of preceding theories of blending, are presented in a more systematic manner than in the first chapters. Closer reading reveals that the context of the Stoic theory which Alexander is reporting is most probably the ontological query into the unity of the cosmos on its different levels in which the challenge is to distinguish blendings from other types of unified objects.

This can be done thanks to corresponding common notions, although these notions cannot stand for a firm and detailed grasp of the unified objects in question but are rather the means to make one acknowledge the existence of blending as a special kind of unity (between fusion and juxtaposition). The existence of this kind of unity is then supported by examples of analogical processes in which a result is achieved by the

mutual interaction of two bodies upon each other or their mutual help. The conclusion should be that the Stoics’ effort to present a special kind of unity was part of their general account of the unity of the world which however did not include a claim about the blending of the first principles (insofar as cosmic pneuma is not such a principle)."

20. Militello, Chiara. 2023. "The paschein and pathê of the Earth and Living Beings in Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias (Meteorologica 1.14)." Peitho. Examina Antiqua no. 24:185-200.

Abstract: "In his 2013 monograph on Structure and Method in Aristotle’s Meteorologica [*], Malcolm Wilson has shown both that Aristotle conceived of meteorological phenomena as analogous to the bodily processes of animals, and that for the Stagirite the sublunar world should not be seen as a single body, but rather as composed of many different individuals. However, Wilson did not articulate the relationship between these two theories—that is, he did not answer the following question: how is it possible for the Earth to behave like an animal if it is not a single body? This paper argues that the answer to this question lies in the Aristotelian statement about the different paschein of the Earth and animals. In fact, in the chapter of Meteorology dedicated to climatic changes (1.14), Aristotle, after comparing such changes to the maturing and ageing of living organisms, states that ‘only, in the case of the bodies of plants and animals being affected does not occur in each part separately, but it is necessary for the being to mature and decay all at once, whereas in the case of the Earth this occurs in each part separately, due to cooling and warming’ (351a.28-31). In his commentary, Alexander of Aphrodisias reiterates that the difference between the changes of the Earth and those of living organisms concern the way in which these different subjects undergo affections (pathê). The concept of paschein/pathos is thus fundamental to understanding how Aristotle conceives of biological analogies, which play a key role in his meteorology: as the affections of maturing and corruption show, parallels with organic processes can be found in meteorological phenomena, but always at the level of the individual parts of the Earth. Although the sublunary world can be understood in organic terms, this world is not a ‘cosmic animal’, but rather a multiplicity of ‘regional animals’. To corroborate this thesis, this paper addresses several related questions, including: the mechanics of environmental changes according to Aristotle; the differences between the regions of the Earth; the lexicon used in Meteorology to refer to the transformations of the Earth; the personal notes that Alexander adds to Aristotle’s discussion. Finally, the first modern translation of the relevant section of Alexander’s commentary is also provided here."

[*] M. Wilson, Structure and Method in Aristotle’s Meteorologica. A More Disorderly Nature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013.

21. Mittelmann, Jorge. 2013. "Neoplatonic Sailors and Peripatetic Ships: Aristotle, Alexander, and Philoponus." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 51:545-566.

"in order to harmonize the conflicting views that impair the Aristotelian definiens of the soul, at least two paths suggest themselves. the first is to recast the ὄργανον of the soul so as to “soften” its separation from its immaterial user. To such effect, a suitably redefined notion of ὀρανικόν may prove useful. the second way is toendorse the instrumental characterization of the body, but understanding the soul in such a way that it can do duty as “first actuality,” despite being separated from its instrument. the first line of argument was supported by Alexander of Aphrodisias, who sought to release the adjective ‘ὀργανικόν’ from the dualist overtones it usually evokes. even today the Alexandrian reinterpretation is held to be the most natural reading of that qualification in the definiens.(12) the second line, which focuses on the ontology of the user rather than that of the instrument, flourished in Neoplatonic quarters. Although Philoponus willingly accepted the lexical innovation introduced by Alexander,(13) his efforts (as well as those of the Ps. Simplicius) were aimed at reinterpreting the Aristotelian notion of “first actuality” (ἐντελέχεια ἡ πρώτη), that constitutes the other pole of the definiens. Within the Neoplatonic conceptual framework, Philoponus was able to show that in spite of its separation and ontological subsistence, the soul behaves as the true entelechy of the ship, steering it all along its journey. in the following pages, our goal will be confined to reconstructing the chief features of both exegetical proposals, in order to assess their strengths and weaknesses." (p. 548)

(12) 12 Bos (“Psychology”) has rightly stressed the “Alexandrian” tenor of this dominant interpretation.

(13) In De An. 217.12–15.

References

Bos, Abraham P. “Aristotle’s Psychology: the traditional (Hylomorphistic) interpretation refuted.” Accessed June 12, 2013. http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Anci/AnciBos.htm. [“Psychology”]

22. Modrak, Deborah. 1993. "Alexander on Phantasia: A Hopeless Muddle or a Better Account." Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 31:173-194.

"Alexander is in an excellent posit.ion to give a rich and compelling account of phantasia (φᾰντᾰσῐ́ᾱ). As the leading exponent of Peripatetic philosophy in the second century, he is heir to Aristotle's perceptive insights and systematic analysis of psychological phenomena. Aristotle makes phantasia the faculty for sensory representation, which is requjred for memory and other higher cognitive processes. In the Hellenistic era, the moderate empiricism of the Peripatetics was eclipsed by the empiricist epistemologies developed by the Epicureans and the Stoics; their theories were more radical, clearer, and arguably more defensible. As the immediate stamp of experience upon the senses and intellect, phantasia assumed a critical importance in their attempts to define knowledge and to defend their epistemological positions against sceptical attacks. There is abundant evidence in Alexander's writings that he is sensitive to these debates. His lengthiest treatment of phantasia explores both the psychological and epistemological dimensions.

This analysis, found in the de Anima, is detailed and largely satisfactory. All would be well were this the only discussion of phantasia in the extant corpus. But it is not, and what emerges from an examination of Alexander's various treatments of this subject is a chameleon concept that seems to change with each new context." (p. 173, notes omitted)

23. Mouzala, Melina. 2022. "Proclus on the Forms as Paradigms in Plato’s Parmenides. The Neoplatonic Response to Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias’ Criticisms." Journal of Ancient Philosophy no. 16:115-163.

Abstract: "This paper sets out to analyze Proclus’ exegesis of Socrates’ suggestion in Parmenides 132d1-3 that Forms stand fixed as patterns (παραδείγματα), as it were, in the nature, with the other things being images and likenesses of them. Proclus’ analysis of the notion of being pattern reveals the impact of the Aristotelian conception of the form as paradigm on his views, as we can infer from Alexander of Aphrodisias’ and Simplicius’ explanation of the paradigmatic character of the Aristotelian form. Whereas Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias refute the efficient causality of the Platonic Forms and support that μέθεξις is just a metaphor, Syrianus, Proclus and Asclepius defend the Platonic theory, and specifically Proclus, who brings to the fore the multilateral role of the Forms as patterns with regard to the secondary things of this realm."(1)

(1) An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Symposium Platonicum XII: Plato’s Parmenides, organized by the International Plato Society, Paris, 15-19 July 2019.

24. Mueller, Ian. 2016. "Aristotle’s doctrine of abstraction in the commentators." In Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence, edited by Sorabji, Richard, 501-520. New York: Bloomsbury.

Second revised edition. First edition London: Duckworth 1990, pp. 463-480.

"Summary.

In this paper I have argued for the following account of the treatment of abstractionism in later antiquity:

(1) Alexander established abstractionism as an interpretation of Aristotle’s philosophy of mathematics. Alexander’s account was accepted, with insignificant variations, as an interpretation by all subsequent philosophers.

(2) The doctrine of abstractionism was accepted as a true account of ordinary mathematics by Porphyry, Ammonius, and Philoponus, who saw ordinary mathematics as a Platonic bridge from the sensible to the intelligible world.

(3) Iamblichus put forward the doctrine of projectionism as an account of Pythagorean mathematics, which he glorified at the expense of ordinary mathematics; he was followed by Syrianus, but Proclus transformed projectionism into an account of ordinary mathematics to which he restored its Platonic role.

(4) Simplicius accepted the ‘Porphyrean’ position on ordinary mathematics, but elevated Pythagorean mathematics, of which he thinks projectionism provides the correct account, to the level of philosophy." (pp. 519-520, a note omitted)

25. Natali, Carlo. 2020. "Determinism and Deliberation in Alexander of Aphrodisias." In Fate, Providence and Free Will: Philosophy and Religion in Dialogue in the Early Imperial Age, edited by Brouwer, René and Vimercati, Emmanuele, 137-151. Leiden: Brill.

"In this paper I defend a minority position in contemporary scholarship on Alexander of Aphrodisias with regard to the theme of determinism and his theory of what is up to us. Many modern scholars agree about the following basic points. The first point is that Aristotle did not develop a specific stance on the problem of determinism, given the fact that at the time this problem was not considered a central theme in the philosophical debate. Second, Alexander’s position on indeterminism was influenced by the debate in the imperial period and was not merely a precise account of what Aristotle had maintained.

In the third place, indeterminism is a slightly embarrassing position to hold; therefore, it is better to liberate the ancient philosophers from it, as far as possible.

What is more, a strong tendency can be discerned to attribute some form of compatibilism to most of the ancient philosophical schools – which cannot be easily reconciled with the polemics that existed between the schools.

As for me, I think that already in Plato’s Academy philosophers began to reflect upon the problem of determinism, freedom and human responsibility, starting out from certain statements in Plato’s Republic and in book 10 of the Laws.(1) As far as Alexander is concerned, I think that his position can be characterised as a kind of “creative orthodoxy”, which consists in trying to show the vitality of the Aristotelian viewpoint in the debate in imperial times. In order to make this clear, I will concentrate on the problem of deliberation and the Peripatetic notion of causality, particularly in relation to chapters 11–15 in Alexander’s On Fate." (p. 137)

(1) See further Natali 2014. [“Aristotele e il determinismo.” In: Libero arbitrio. Storia di una controversia filosofica, edited by Mario De Caro, Massimo Mori, and Emidio Spinelli, 39–57. Rome: Carocci.]

26. Nortmann, Ulrich. 2000. "Deduction by « metalēpsis »: a critical examination of Alexander's understanding of a proof method of Aristotle's." In Beiträge zum Satz vom Widerspruch und zur Aristotelischen Prädikationstheorie, edited by Niels, Offenbergerm and Skarica, Mirko. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

27. Opsomer, Jan, and Sharples, Robert W. 2000. "Alexander of Aphrodisias, "De Intellectu" 110.4: 'I Heard This from Aristotle'. A Modest Proposal." The Classical Quarterly no. 50:252-256.

28. Pack, Roger. 1937. "A passage in Alexander of Aphrodisias relating to the theory of tragedy." American Journal of Philology no. 58:418-436.

"In his treatise On Destiny Alexander of Aphrodisias, the most illustrious of the Aristotelian commentators,(1) has left us an interpretation of the tragedy of Laius, the father of Oedipus.(2) I shall try to evaluate this neglected passage(3) for the theory of tragedy by considering, first, its place in the treatise as a whole, secondly, its broad relation to the philosophy of Aristotle, and thirdly, its interest for the criticism of the Poetics."

(1) See Gercke in Pauly-Wissowa, RE, I, 1453-5. For a bibliography ofAlexander to 1926, see Ueberweg-Praechter, Die Philosophie des Altertums (1926), p. 179 of the "Verzeichnis der Arbeiten."

(2) De Fato, 31. This work is cited according to sections, the other minor works of Alexander according to page and line in the edition of Ivo Bruns (Vol. II, parts I and II of the Supplementum Aristotelicum). There is a separate edition of the De Fato, with a translation, by Augustine FitzGerald (London, The Scholartis Press, 1931).

(3) It is not discussed in Robert's Oidipus or elsewhere so far as I know.

29. Pfeiffer, Christian. 2023. "De mixtione VII–VIII: on the Possibility of a Stoic Blend." In Studies on Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Mixture and Growth, edited by Guyomarc'h, Gweltaz and de Haas, Frans A.J., 100-121. Leiden: Brill.

Abstract: "The paper discusses chapters VII–VIII of De mixtione, where Alexander argues against the possibility of a Stoic blend. I will show that Alexander offers good reasons in chapter VII to think that the Stoics were committed to co-extension and the preservation of surfaces in a mixture and that these constraints are indeed incompatible.

I will argue further that chapter VIII continues the argument of chapter VII by offering a response on behalf of the Stoics and that the two chapters are a unity. Building on my argument that Alexander’s criticism is neither polemical nor confused, I argue that chapters VII–VIII, although employing a different terminology than chapters III–IV, provide an accurate picture of the Stoic theory and that Alexander’s criticism is very

much to the point."

30. Pines, Shlomo. 1961. "Omne quod movetur necesse est ab aliquo moveri: A Refutation of Galen by Alexander of Aphrodisias and the Theory of Motion." Isis no. 51:21-54.

"IN 1952 Professor Franz Rosenthal discovered in the course of a sojourn instanbul that the MS. 127-9 of the Carullah Collection in the Millet Library was a collection of philosophical texts, most of which he obtained on micro-film. He described these texts in an article which appeared in the Journal of the American Oriental Society (1955, 75: 14-23) under the title "From Arabic books and manuscripts, V: a one-volume library of Arabic philosophical and scientific texts in Istanbul.". As Rosenthal observes, the scribe was named Muhammad b. Hasan b. 'All b. Mu'taql al-Nihmi, was born and brought up and probably also resided in Sa'dah in the Yemen and copied out most of thetexts in 1477-1478, but made additions to the manuscript at least up to 1480. Though the name and the pedigree of the scribe are purely Arabic, the fact that some of the texts included in the manuscript are of Jewish provenience suggests, Rosenthal points out, that he may have been of Jewish origin, a circumstance which he may have tried to conceal. He certainly knew the Hebrew script. Certain of the texts found in the manuscript purport to be translations of treatises composed by Alexander of Aphrodisias. Some of these were unknown up to now either in Greek or in Arabic. I intend to study this group of writings. The first part of this article deals with Galen's critique of the Aristotelian thesis "omne quod movetur necesse est ab alique moveri." The second part discusses some relevant opinions of certain commentators and philosophers. I should like to express my gratitude to Professor Rosenthal for having put at my disposal his microfilms of these and other texts contained in the manuscript." (p. 21, two notes omitted)

31. Ramelli, Ilaria. 2014. "Alexander of Aphrodisias: a source of Origen’s philosophy?" Philosophie Antique:237-289.

Reprinted in I. Ramelli, Origen, the Philosophical Theologian: Trinity, Christology, and Philosophy-Theology Relation. Selected Studies/Kleine Schriften, Berlin: de Gruyter 2025, pp. 237-284.

Summary: "Alexander of Aphrodisias and Origen are two semi-contemporary philosophers and teachers of philosophy who composed the same kinds of works. Origen was a Christian philosopher, a disciple of Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus’ teacher. It is

very probable that Origen knew Alexander of Aphrodisias’ works, which were read at the school of Plotinus, and drew inspiration from them. Many clues support my hypothesis.

For instance, Origen’s Περὶ ᾽Ἀρχῶν in its structure was probably inspired by Alexander’s homonymous work. The expression ἦν ποτε ὅτε οὐκ ἦν, very interestingly, was used for the first time exactly by Alexander and Origen; the latter very probably imported it from the philosophical debate on the eternity of the world into Christian Trinitarian theology. The notion of hypostasis as «individual substance», which becomes technical in Origen and will exert an enormous influence on Christian Trinitarian theology, was present in Middle Platonists and medical theorists of the early imperial age who are very likely to have inspired Origen, and possibly also in Alexander.

Also, Origen seems to have modified the Stoic doctrine of mixture in a way that comes closer to Alexander and his criticism of that doctrine. The concepts of ὕλη/ὑποκείμενον and εἶδος in Origen are clearly influenced by Aristotle and probably by Alexander too. Both the presentation and the refutation of Stoic determinism are very similar in Alexander and Origen. The doctrine of God as Intellect and the whole characterisation of God in Alexander is remarkably similar to that which is found in Origen and is almost sure to have exerted some influence on him. The doctrine of the soul and its existence in a body and the doctrine of the Ideas also reveal impressive parallels in our two philosophers. The contribution of the present research to (hopefully) advancing scholarship also helps to cast light on Origen’s relation to Greek philosophy, which is the object of critical debate."

32. ———. 2021. "Bardaisan of Edessa on Free Will, Fate, and Nature: Alexander of Aphrodisias, Origen, and Diodore of Tarsus." In Women’s Perspectives on Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, edited by Chouinard, Isabelle, McConaughey, Zoe, Medeiros Ramos, Aline and Noël, Roxane, 169-176. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Against the backdrop of the relations between Alexander of Aphrodisias and Bardaisan and Origen, and of Diodore of Tarsus’ reading of Bardaisan, this article reflects on Bardaisan’s ideas towards free will, fate, and nature in the so-called Book of the Laws of Countries, based on Bardaisan’s Against Fate. With reference to the article by Izabela Jurasz on the comparison between Alexander and Bardaisan, I present the main topics that scholarship debates regarding Bardaisan and argue that Eusebius had already found important parallels between Alexander, Barsaisan, and Origen. Attention is paid to the strong affinities on crucial questions (including free will and eschatology) between Bardaisan and Origen, as established by recent research. These two comparisons—between Alexander and Bardaisan and between Origen and Bardaisan—reinforce one another. Bardaisan’s knowledge of parts of Philo’s oeuvre is also brought to the fore as an issue recently explored and in need of further investigation. Lastly, the article focuses on Diodore of Tarsus’ Against Fate, its indebtedness to Bardaisan’s Against Fate and generally his anti-astrological, anti-fatalistic arguments (indebtedness represented by arguments and rather unequivocal details), and its reproach to Bardaisan for maintaining the category of “fate,” albeit Christianized."

33. Rashed, Marwan. 1997. "A « new » text of Alexander on the soul's motion." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. Supplement no. 68:181-195.

"To conclude, then, the historical evolution of the polemics may be summarised as follows:

1. 'Aristotelian' claim of the intellect from without;

2. Atticus attacks the intellect from without because of its inability to move;

3. Aristoteles of Mytilene (as reported by Alexander in C1 [in Sharples]) defends the intellect from without by claiming its ubiquity;

4. Alexander (C2) criticises Aristoteles' solution to Atticus' criticisms and gives an alternative reply to Atticus by accounting for separation in terms of thought processes;

5. Alexander (In Phys.) attacks Atticus' vehicle-theory on the grounds that it does not resolve the question at all and alludes indirectly to his previous solution.

Thus, we may conclude that the De intellectu is an authentic work of Alexander, but an earlier one than the commentary on the Physics." (pp.1 94-195)

Referencesù

R. W. Sharples' survey in 'Alexander of Aphrodisias: Scholasticism and Innovation', ANRW II, 36,1 (Berlin 1987) 1176-1243, p. 1211ff.

34. ———. 2010. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on Particulars and the Stoic Criterion of Identity." In Particulars in Greek Philosophy: The seventh S.V. Keeling Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, edited by Sharples, Robert, 157-179. Leiden: Brill.

Reprinted in R. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Re-Interpreted: New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators, New York: Bloosbury 2016, pp. 161-177.

"One could claim that for an Aristotelian philosopher, particulars are not a philosophical problem – at least not an epistemological one. For an Aristotelian philosopher daily confronted with Stoic theories of Providence and individuation, however, this was a haunting question. After all, what did Aristotle have to say on the status of the particulars not qua belonging to a species, but qua pure singularities taking place

within the world? I would like to show that even if Alexander is too much of an Aristotelian to have a real theory of the particular, his reaction to his historical context leads him to new insights on this topic. These insights, in turn, constitute a starting point out of which Avicenna and Leibniz developed their ideas about how fatalism could be avoided without giving up the principle that the entire effect corresponds to its full cause. I will try to sketch, in the following pages, the main phases of this long and intricate story." (p. 157)

35. Rist, John M. 1966. "On Tracking Alexander of Aphrodisias." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 48:82-90.

"We are then back to Alexander, and what we have seen in this study, when combined with such analyses äs that of Schwyzer in his article on Plotinus in Pauly [RE 21 (1951) cols. 573-574], must lead to the conclusion that Plotinus' attitude to Alexander is much like his attitude to most other writers.

Not only does he not follow him closely, but even where he is criticizing certain theories which occur in Alexander he only rarely refers cleärly enough to the original text to make it certain that he is in fact using

that particular text at all. Plotinus' interest throughout the Enneads is almost always constructive. He is not greatly interested in the detailed refutation of the specific theories of particular opponents. He

undertakes such refutations, äs with the Aristotelian and Stoic categories in 6.1, to clear the ground. In such examinations — and this applies perhaps particularly to his treatment of the Stoic views of the soul in the fourth Ennead — he is often not concerned to destroy a particular view but a particular kind of view." (p. 89)

36. Robert, Aurélien. 2020. "John of Jandun on Sense Perception and Instantaneous Change." In Philosophical Problems in Sense Perception: Testing the Limits of Aristotelianism, edited by Bennett, David and Tohivanen, Juhana, 193-212. Cham [Switzeland): Springer.

Abstract: "The aim of this paper is to show that John of Jandun, a French philosopher active in the first decades of the fourteenth century, defended an interesting interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of sense perception. His view on this topic could help us clarify some aspects of the contemporary debate among specialists of the Aristotelian tradition about the dependence of sense perception on physical changes in the medium and the organs. John of Jandun made use, much more than his contemporaries, of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ commentary on the De sensu, and Averroes’ commentaries on the De anima and the Physics. But his solution seems nonetheless original. This paper will focus on the nature of the changes involved in sense perception. I will try to show (1) that for Jandun sense perception is a kind of relational and qualitative change in the soul, which is not a mere Cambridge change; and (2) that for him sense perception is an activity of the soul, which is not reducible to the reception of a form in the organs."

37. Roreitner, Robert. 2023. "Nous thurathen: between Theophrastus and Alexander of Aphrodisias." British Journal for the History of Philosophy:1-22.

Abstract: "The idea that nous comes from without, deriving from Aristotle’s Generation of Animals II.3, became a key element in late ancient and Medieval accounts of human rationality drawing on Aristotle’s De Anima. But two very different understandings of the concept were around (often occurring next to each other): either it was taken to refer to the human capacity for thought and its origin outside the natural ontogenetic process; or it was taken to stand for the most perfect act of thought, existing separately as the supreme divinity, and becoming, hopefully, ours at the very climax of human development. This paper shows how these two influential conceptions derive from the work of the two greatest scholars of Aristotle’s school, Theophrastus and Alexander of

Aphrodisias, respectively. More to the point: it shows that (i) there is an intriguing philosophical story to be told of how the notion developed from one understanding to the other, this being the core of a larger story of nous from without in Western thought; and that (ii) this story sheds new light on what was at stake in the early – genuinely Peripatetic – reception of Aristotle’s account of nous (as contrasted with later, heavily Platonized, interpretations)."

Correction: "When the above article was first published online the Commentary on Generation of Animals traditionally attributed to Philoponus was mentioned among Philoponus’ genuine works. That mention has now been removed to reflect scholarly consensus that the work was in fact written by Michael of Ephesus."

38. ———. 2025. "Thought 'From Without' The Role of the Agent Intellect in Alexander's 'De intellectu'." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 64:1-81.

Preprint to be published in January 2025.

"Interpreters used to understand Alexander’s account along the traditional compatibilist (abstractionist) lines. But since the pioneering doctoral dissertation of Paul Moraux on Alexander’s noetic, the attention of scholars has been captured by Alexander’s circumspection in describing the role of the agent intellect in his De Anima. He analyzes here the development of the ‘potential’ or ‘material’ intellect from the state of a pure potentiality to the acquisition of universal concepts, and apparently also of scientific definitions, without any reference to the agent intellect whatsoever (80. 16–86. 6). Such a reference is only made much later at 88. 24–89. 11, where Alexander, in contrast to compatibilist interpreters, seems to ascribe only an indirect role to the agent intellect." (p. 3, a note omitted)

References

Moraux, P., Alexandre d’Aphrodise: exégète de la noétique d’Aristote (Liège, 1942).

39. Ross, Alberto. 2016. "Causality, Nature and Fate in Alexander of Aphrodisias." Acta Philosophica no. 25:319-332.

"The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between “causality”, “nature”, and “fate” in the De Fato of Alexander of Aphrodisias. The Greek commentator follows the Aristotelian doctrine on this matter, but it is worth noting that Alexander diverges from the letter of the master on more than one occasion. It is well known that the most important Aristotelian commentators in late Antiquity offer us a detailed reconstruction of the Aristotelian arguments, but also the development of new positions in the framework of very different traditions. The works of Alexander of Aphrodisias in general and his book De fato (“On Fate”) in particular are one of the best examples of this practice." (p. 319)

40. Rossi, Pietro B., Di Giovanni, Matteo, and Robiglio, Andrea A., eds. 2021. Alexander of Aphrodisias in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Turnhout: Brepols.

Contents: Pietro B. Rossi – Matteo Di Giovanni – Andrea A. Robiglio Foreword 9; Lucio Bertelli 11: Paolo Accattino lettore della Politica di Aristotele; Pier Luigi Donini: Paolo Accattino interprete del De intellectu di Alessandro di Afrodisia 23; Amos Bertolacci: “The Excellent among the Earlier Scholars”. Alexander of Aphrodisias in Avicenna’s Metaphysics 33; Matteo Di Giovanni: New Wine in Old Vessels. Alexander of Aphrodisias as a Source for Averroes’ Metaphysics 59; Joël Biard: L’Alexandrisme comme rationalité philosophique 77; Amos Corbini: “Alexander of Aphrodisias” in the Medieval Latin Tradition of the Posterior Analytics. Some Remarks 95; Elisa Rubino: Alberto il Grande e il commento ai Meteorologica di Alessandro di Afrodisia 109; Luigi Silvano: (Pseudo-)Alexander of Aphrodisias between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Notes on the Afterlife of the Medical Puzzles and Natural Problems 117; Barbara Bartocci: Topics and Syllogistic. Agostino Nifo Reading Alexander of Aphrodisias 145; Pietro Daniel Omodeo: Presence/Absence of Alexander of Aphrodisias in Renaissance Cosmo-Psychology 173; Francesca Iurlaro: Hugo Grotius’ Translation of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ De fato in His Philosophorum sententiae de Fato (1648) 193; Abstracts 211; Indices 215-223.

41. Salis, Rita. 2018. "The accident and its causes: pseudo-Alexander on Aristotle, Metaphysics Ε 3." In Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy, edited by Boudouris, Kostantinos, 297-302. Charlottesville: Philoosphy Documentation Center.

Abstract: "Pseudo-Alexander’s commentary in Metaphysics Ε3 is one of the three ancient commentaries which came down to us together with Ascepius’s commentary and Pseudo-Philoponus’s one, in Latin. Pseudo-Alexander’s work, in particular, constitutes the source of interpretation of the Aristotelian text for many modern scholars. In chapter 3 Aristotle shows that there are causes of accidental being, which are generable and destructible without ever being in course of being generated or destroyed. This problem is one of the most difficult and controversial for Aristotle. The thesis is explained by Aristotle with examples concerning past and future events. Pseudo-Alexander considers them as referring to accidental causes. The exegete’s explanation of both cases introduces some elements which are totally extraneous to the Aristotelian text, but nevertheless it could be helpful to cast some light on the understanding of the most controversial passages. In the final passage, Aristotle raises the question of what kind of cause the accident leads to, whether to the material or to the final or to the efficient cause. It is apparently left without an answer. Pseudo-Alexander gives a plausible solution, which is nonetheless probably only partial. The chapter was also examined with reference to the problem of determinism in Aristotle."

42. ———. 2024. "The identification of wisdom with the science of being as being. Unity and universality of Aristotle’s Metaphysics according to Alexander of Aphrodisias." Acta Philosophica no. 33:11-30.

Abstract: "The entire ancient and late antique commentary tradition tends to read Aristotle’s Metaphysics as a unitary work. According to this reading, one and the same science is developed, culminating in book Λ, containing the famous doctrine of the unmoved mover. The systematic intent of the reading of the Metaphysics, which extends to the entire corpus aristotelicum, begins with Aristotle’s greatest ancient commentator, Alexander of Aphrodisias. Through an analysis of key passages in Alexander’s commentary on books Α and Γ of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, this paper aims to show that the thesis according to which the exegete considered wisdom and science of being as being to be independent is not in fact borne out in Alexander’s texts. The connection between the books Α and Γ is shown by Alexander through the identification of wisdom with the science of being as being. This, in turn, constitutes the fundamental step for the demonstration of the existence of the science of being as being, which, according to Alexander, is initially only assumed by Aristotle."

43. Salles, Ricardo. 1998. "Categorical possibility and incompatibilism in Alexander of Aphrodisias' theory of responsibility." Méthexis no. 11:65-83.

"Alexander of Aphrodisias' animosity against Stoic philosophy is well attested in his extant writings. One of his preferred targets is Stoic compatibilism - thesis that there are things which "depend on us", and for which we are morally responsible, despite the fact that everything that happens has a necessitating cause, or set of causes. In recent times, it has been argued that many of Alexander's objections are unfounded inasmuch as they stem from a misunderstanding and distortion of the Stoic position2 This thesis has been sometimes complemented with the further claim that the disagreement between the two parties is less substantial than is contended by Alexander. This deflationary interpretation is defended by Dorothea Frede in an important article published in 1982."

(...)

(3) "The Dramatization of Determinism: Alexander of Aphrodisias' de fato'' Phronesis (1982), 276-98.

44. Santi, Raffaella. 2020. "Plato Revealed: Alexander of Aphrodisias and His Philosophical Historiography." Philosophy Study no. 10:177-186.

Abstract: "Alexander of Aphrodisias’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics is an important testimony to understand Plato’s philosophy. In fact, Alexander uses some lost Aristotelian books, especially a work On the Good, from which we learn that Plato’s metaphysics is a dialectical metaphysics, founded on an original opposition of two principles that shapes the whole reality—these principles being the One and the indefinite Dyad. Sensible things participate in ideas (they receive their being from ideas) and the intermediate mathematical entities lie between these two realities. However, ideas can be traced back to ideal numbers and the principles of ideal numbers are the One and the indefinite Dyad. Thus, these principles constitute their metaphysical foundation of ideas and, through the ideas, of the whole reality."

45. Schroeder, Frederic. 1981. "The Analogy of the Active Intellect to Light in the "De Anima" of Alexander of Aphrodisias." Hermes no. 109:215-225.

"The Active Intellect by the fact of being supremely intelligible is cause of being and intelligibility to other intelligibles and is thus indirectly the cause of human intellection. At the same time the second order of intelligibles make their own contribution toward intelligibility (and toward intellection) when they are abstracted by the human mind from their material substrate and brought into that relation with the Active Intellect which will allow intellectual illumination to take place. The human mind progresses through a natural evolution to the abstraction of form from matter. In this moment of illumination, the natural and metaphysical orders meet in the philosophy of Alexander." (p. 225, a note omitted)

46. ———. 1982. "The potential or material intellect and the authorship of the De Intellectu: A reply to B.C. Bazán." Symbolae Osloenses no. 57:115-125.

47. ———. 1984. "Light and the active intellect in Alexander and Plotinus." Hermes no. 112:2539-248.

"Plotinus indeed takes issue with Alexander's explanation of sensible light in stressing the unique role of the source and the effect of its withdrawal. The inspiration of this critique of Alexander's theory of sensible light may lie elsewhere. For Plotinus metaphysical illumination is an effect uniquely of the source. His orientation toward the other world may be more firm. In 4,5 [29],- 7, the chapter concerning sensible light which we discuss above, Plotinus illustrates his point that light is an effect of the source alone. He observes (lines 49- 51): "So it is in the case of the soul, considered as the act of a prior soul, that as long as the prior soul abides, so does the subsequent act. It may seem extraordinary that he would illustrate the nature of sensible light with such an example, as if the intelligible world were somehow more familiar. It is the same Plotinus, however, who says of sensible fire (1,6 [1],3,26) that "it shines and glitters as if it was a form''(36)." (p. 248)

(36) Tr. A. H. Armtrong, Plotinus, London and Cambridge, Mass. 1966, vol. 1, 241.(...)

48. ———. 1997. "The provenance of the « De intellectu » attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 8:105-120.

49. Schroeder, Frederic, and Todd, Robert B. 2008. "The De Intellectu Revisited." Laval théologique et philosophique no. 64:663-680.

Abstract: "The author of the De Intellectu is acquainted with the De Anima of Alexander of Aphrodisias and offers a Neoplatonic interpretation of that document in its consideration of the noetic doctrine at Aristotle, De Anima 3.5. That interpretation reveals that philosophical independence from a purely philological examination of Aristotelian texts which the present volume is exploring. The De Intellectu, because of its Neoplatonic character, is to be dated some two to four centuries after Alexander. There is no reference to an Aristotle of Mytilene, teacher of Alexander, as has been supposed."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Alexander of Aphrodisias' metaphysics: Annotated bibliography of the studies in English: Sha - Z

Bibliography

1. Sharples, Robert W. 1975. "Aristotelian and Stoic Conceptions of Necessity in the De Fato of Alexander of Aphrodisias." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 20:247-274.

"I(n chapter IX of his treatise De fato Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. c. 200 A.D.) argues that the occurrence of some things contingently is incompatible with the view of those who say that everything occurs of necessity (174.30-175.2). The whole of this part of the treatise is devoted to pointing out the difficulties in the view those who assert a theory of universal causal determinism; and, just as Alexander claims that those who hold such a view cannot preserve chance or 'what is up to us' except by giving these terms strained and unusual meanings (172.4-16, and cf. 172.20-6; 181.7-12), so here he asserts that the occurrence of some things contingently is incompatible with the assertion that everything occurs of necessity, if the proper, (175.2) sense of 'contingently' is that those things occur contingently which can also not happen (175.2-3)." (pp. 247-248, notes oitted)

2. ———. 1975. "Responsibility, chance, and not-being (Alexander of Aphrodisias mantissa 169-172)." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies no. 22:37-64.

Abstract: "In this article I propose to give a translation and discussion of a passage(2) which occurs in the so-called second book of the treatise de anima by the Aristotelian commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. c. A.D. 200), rechristened de anima libri mantissa by the Berlin editor lvo Bruns. It has frequently been mentioned by scholars discussing Alexander's de Fato - references to these discussions will be given in the course of what follows - and has recently been the subject of a special study;(3) but it has not, as far as I am aware, been fully translated into any modern European language.(4)

It is I think of particular interest. I will first give a translation and then proceed to discuss the passage."

(2) Supplementum Aristotelicum 11.i (ed. I. Bruns, Berlin 1887) 169.33-172.15. (169.34-39 and 170.2-7 are nos. 111 and 76 respectively in A. Gercke, Chrysippea, Jahrb. f. Klass. Phil. Supplbd. 14 (1885) 691-781.)

(3) P. Merlan, "Zwei Untersuchungen zu Alexander von Aphrodisias, I: Eine eigenartige Erklärung des έφ' ήμΐν", Philol. 113 (1969) 85-88. On the opening section in particular cf. also P. L. Donini, Tre Studi sull' aristotelismo nel II secolo d. C. (Torino 1974) 165-8.

(4) There is however quite a full paraphrase in French in J. F. Nourrisson, De la liberté et du hasard: Essai sur Alexandre d'Aphrodise suivi du Traité du Destin, etc. (Paris 1870) 61-67. There are two Renaissance Latin translations of de anima II which include our text, one by Angelus Caninius Anglarensis (Venice 1546 etc.), the other by an as yet unidentified author and extant only in manuscript; cf. F. E. Cranz, "Alexander of Aphrodisias", in P. 0. Kristeller, ed., Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum, I 86 and II 412, 414.

3. ———. 1978. "Alexander of Aphrodisias, De Fato: some Parallels." The Classical Quarterly no. 28:243-266.

"As was first pointed out by Gercke,(1) there are close parallels, which clearly suggest a common source, between Apuleius, de Platone 1.12,2 the treatise On Fate falsely attributed to Plutarch, Calcidius' excursus on fate in his commentary on Plato's Timaeus, and certain sections of the treatise de Natura hominis by Nemesius." (p. 243, some notes omitted)

(...)

"To elucidate this I propose to discuss various alleged parallels in turn, considering also certain parallels between Alexander and other later authors. (Reference will be made, in addition to the de fato, to the last section of the de anima libri mantissa attributed to Alexander. This draws on the de fato at certain points, but its authenticity is doubtful; I hope to discuss this elsewhere)." (p. 245, note omitted)

(1) A. Gercke, 'Eine platonische Quelle des Neuplatonismus', RbMus. 41 (1886), 266-91.

4. ———. 1979. "Dr. John Fell, editor of Alexander of Aphrodisias?" Liverpool Classical Monthly no. 4:9-11.

5. ———. 1980. "Alexander of Aphrodisias' second treatment of fate? De anima libri mantissa, pp. 179-186 Bruns." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies no. 27:76-94.

"There are attributed to the Aristotelian commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (floruit early 3rd century A.D.) two works concerned with the establishment of an Aristotelian doctrine of fate, εἱμαρμένη. One is his well-known treatise To the Emperors concerning Fate and Responsibility; the other is the last section of the collection of passages appended to his treatise de anima, named de anima libri mantissa by Bruns (mantissa= "worthless addition").(2) The passages in this collection frequently reflect themes found in Alexander's major treatises, and clearly reflect the activity of his school; but in some cases at least it seems that they may be the work of pupils rather than of Alexander himself.(3) In the case of the text that concerns us, however, there seems no strong reason to doubt Alexander's authorship; it is in any case the question of its chronological relationship to the treatise To the Emperors that is of most importance, rather than that of its authorship, as will be seen. For convenience' sake I will refer to the author of both works as "Alexander", but this should not be taken as a categorical assertion that they are by the same author. And, for the sake of simplicity, "de fato" will henceforth be used only to refer to the treatise To the Emperors, and "mantissa" will, unless otherwise indicated, refer to the last text in that collection, the one with which we are concerned." (p. 76)

(2) Respectively I. Bruns, ed., Supplementum Aristotelicum 2.2 (Berlin 1892) 164-212, and id. Supplementum Aristotelicum 2.1 (Berlin 1887) 101-186.

(3) See also Bruns 1892 (above, n. 2) i-xiv, especially ix-xii; P. Moraux, Alexandre d'Aphrodise, Exegete de la noétique d'Aristote (Lieèe 1942) 19-28, 132-142, "Alexander von Aphrodisias quaest. 2.3", Hermes 95 (1967) 161 n. 2, and "Le De Anima dans la tradition grecque", in Aristotle on Mind and the Senses: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Aristotelicum, eds. G.E.R. Lloyd and G.E.L. Owen (Cambridge 1978) 304 f.; P. Merlan, "Zwei Untersuchungen zu Alexander von Aphrodisias", Philologus 113 (1969) 85-88; B.C. Bazan, "L'authenticite du de intellectu attribué à Alexandre d'Aphrodise", Rev. philos. de Louvain 71 (1973) 476-478; R.W. Sharples, "Responsibility, chance and not-being (Alexander of Aphrodisias mantissa 169-172)", BICS 22 (1975) 41 f.

6. ———. 1982. "Alexander of Aphrodisias. Problems about Possibility I." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies no. 29:91-108.

"The concept of possibility is one that has been of central interest in ancient and modern philosophy alike, not least because of its bearing on the question of determinism and of whether anything could in fact have happened otherwise than it did - or can in fact happen otherwise than it will. One of the most important works in the ancient discussion of determinism and related issues is the treatise On fate by the Aristotelian commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (floruit ca. 200 A.D.) - important as a source, even though a biassed one, for the determinist position of the Stoics; for the breadth and thoroughness of the way in which it treats the topic, bringing out many important issues; and for its influence on later writers.(1) Among the quaestiones attributed to Alexander are a number which relate to the topic of possibility; these have never been translated into English, and in view of the importance of the topic and of their alleged author it seems useful to make them more widely available. Whether any individual passage is by Alexander himself or by a pupil,(2) the aim is the same - to take a case where the apparent implications of an Aristotelian doctrine seem to conflict with our natural assumptions, and to try to resolve the difficulty; this has been a fruitful exercise for philosophers in almost every century from Aristotle’s to our own, and there is no little interest in observing the attempts of our predecessors. Accordingly, in this article and in a sequel to appear in BICS 30 (1983) I have translated a number of these questiones(3). There are also some discussions of possibility in Alexander’s commentary on Aristotle’s Prior Analytics which are “questiones” in all but name - indeed, one of them begins “I investigated”;(4) these too I have included. And, finally, an important part in ancient discussion of possibility was played by what became known as the debate “Concerning the Possibles”; an important source for this - and one of the earliest - is a passage in Alexander’s commentary on the Prior Analytics, and I have therefore translated this and some later passages too, as providing an introduction to the whole topic." (p. 91)

(1) See my edition, translation and commentary, Alexander of Aphrodisias: To the Emperors on Fate and Responsibility, etc. (forthcoming); and also my “Alexander of Aphrodisias, De fato: Some Parallels”, CQ n.s.

(2) See Bruns, SA 2.2 i-xiv; P. Moraux, Alexandre d'Aprodise, Exègète de la noéque d’Aristote (Liège and Paris 1942) 19-24 (but also his remarks at Hermes 95 (19671 161 n. 2); R.B. Todd, “Alexander of Aphrodisias and

the Alexandrian quaestiones 2.12”, Philologus 116 (1972) 293-305.

(3) In this article, quaestiones 1.19 and 2.15, and in the sequel 1.18, 1.23, and 2.20. For quaestio 1.4, which differs from these in that it is more closely concerned with the place of possibility in a deterministic system, see my article “An ancient dialogue on possibility: Alexander of Aphrodisias, quaestio 1.4”, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 64 (1982) 23-38.

(4) Alexander, in an. pr. 161.3 (below, section 2).

7. ———. 1982. "Alexander of Aphrodisias, On Time." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 27:58-81.

"The treatise On Time by Alexander of Aphrodisias, the Aristotelian commentator (c.200 A.D.), has never been the subject of any detailed philosophical study, in spite of the interest of its subject matter and the importance of its author. It enables us to see how Aristotle's theory of time was handled and modified by one of the most important of his ancient followers; and it is also of significance as one stage in the series of dis- cussions of time which begins with Plato and continues to the Neoplatonists and beyond.

The Greek original is lost. The work survives in an Arabic translation made by Hunain ibn Ishaq in the ninth century, published by A. Badawi in Commentaires sur Aristote perdus en grec et autres épitres (Beirut 1971; 19-24), and in a Latin translation from the Arabic made by Gerard of Cremona in the twelfth century, published by G. Thery in 'Autour du décret de 1210: 1I, Alexandre d'Aphrodise, Aperçu sur l'influence de sa noétique' (Bibliotheque Thomiste 7, 1926, 92-97).

(,,.)

I have here translated Gerard's Latin version into English; this is the first English rendering of the treatise to have appeared." (p. 58)

8. ———. 1982. "Alexander of Aphrodisias On divine providence: Two problems." The Classical Quarterly no. 32:198-211.

"The position on the question of divine providence of the Aristotelian commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. c. A.D. 200) is of particular interest. It marks an attempt to find a via media between the Epicurean denial of any divine concern for the world, on the one hand, and the Stoic view that divine providence governs it in every detail,on the other.(2) As an expression of such a middle course it finds a place in later

classifications of views concerning providence.(3) It is also of topical interest: Alexander's fullest discussion, in his treatise De providentia (On Providence) (surviving only in two Arabic versions), has only recently been edited and translated,(4) although some aspects of his position had long been known from other texts preserved in Greek.(5)" (p. 198)

(2) De providentia I. 1-9. 2 Ruland, cf. 31. 11 ff. (cf. Bibliography). All references to this work are by Ruland's pagination, and unless otherwise indicated are to the upper of his two texts; cf. below, n. 14, and nn. 42-4. I should stress that my knowledge of the Arabic versions derives entirely from Ruland's translation and from discussions in the other secondary literature, and that it is on Ruland's German that my translations are based, except where otherwise indicated.

(3) Notably in Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed, 3. 17. I suspect that the position formulated and attacked at Nemesius de natura hominis 44, PG 40. 800a ff. Migne, may owe something to Alexander; cf. especially 804a and the objection, peculiarly appropriate against a Peripatetic, brought at 804 b. I hope to discuss this issue more fully elsewhere.

(4) By Ruland; the outlines of the work were however previously known from references in later literature (notably in Maimonides Guide 3. 16 and 3. 17) and from modern summaries, especially that by Thillet. Cf. Bibliography.

5 Especially quaestiones I. 25 and 2. 21 (cf. Bibliography).

References

H.-J. Ruland, Die arabischen Fassungen von zwei Schriften des Alexander von Aphrodisias, diss. Saarbriicken (1976).

P. Thillet,' Un traité inconnu d' Alexandre d' Aphrodise sur la providence dans une version arabe inédite', in L'homme et son destin, Actes du Jer congrés internat. de philos. médiévale (Louvain, 1960), 313-24.

9. ———. 1982. "An Ancient Dialogue on Possibility; Alexander of Aphrodisias, Quaestio 1.4." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 64:23-38.

"In a series of papers which were of great importance both for modern logic and for the study of ancient logic, the Polish logician Jan Lukasiewicz drew attention to many points concerning the relation between logical considerations and the problem of determinism(1). Three points in particular are relevant to the present paper." (p. 23)

(...)

"All thcsc points, together with many others, are illustrated by the text here translatcd for ihe first time, äs far äs I know, into any modern languagc. It employs the first of the three points in polemic against determinism; and, by combining it illegitimately with the second, it produces conclusions which are even more paradoxical. And it is in the final section of this text that the view of the Sea-Battle paradox which was Standard in later antiquity makes, äs far äs I know, its first appearance.

The text is included among the quaestiones attributed to the Aristotelian commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. c. 200 A. D.)." (p.24)

10. ———. 1982. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on the compounding of probabilities." Liverpool Classical Monthly no. 7:74-75.

11. ———. 1983. " Alexander of Aphrodisias. Problems about Possibility II." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies no. 30:99-110.

"Conclusion

The interest of these quaestiones is twofold. Firstly they are of interest as historical documents, for the evidence they provide of the development of ideas and for their relation to the works of thinkers both earlier and later. But, secondly, they are of interest as attempts to clarify thought on the topics with which they are concerned, and to remove difficulties. And in this respect we can see them as essentially engaged on similar tasks to ourselves today; for it is a feature of the history of philosophy that the historical and the timeless aspects are always combined in it. The basic questions remain the same; and answers are not necessarily either better or worse because they are more recent, though it is true that those who come later can profit by the experience- and the mistakes! - of their predecessors.

That in itself, however, is sufficient justification for the study of the history of philosophy. If we criticise the attempts of our predecessors to answer certain questions, that is not to be taken as an assertion that we can necessarily answer them any better; but rather as a hope that others may learn by comparing our predecessors’ solutions and our criticisms, and thus be enabled to improve on us both." (p. 106, a noter omitted)

12. ———. 1983. "The unmoved mover and the motion of the heavens in Alexander of Aphrodisias." Apeiron no. 17:62-66.

"In the De caelo Aristotle argued that the heavenly spheres move with a circular motion because it is their nature to do so.(1) But in other works he explains their continuous circular motion by their desire directed towards the Unmoved Mover.(2) Modern scholars have debated whether these two explanations represent two different and incompatible stages in Aristotle's development, or whether, on the con trary, the latter is a completion, rather than a contradiction, of the former.(3) And a related question is whether Aristotle throughout held that the heavenly spheres had souls (as the theory of the Unmoved Mover, at least, requires), or whether there was a stage in his thought when he regarded them as moved only by their own inanimate nature.(4)" (p. 62)

(1) De cáelo 1.2, especially 269 a 5ff., 30ff.; cf. 2.1 284 a 27ff.

(2) Metaph. A 7 1072 a 23 - b 13; cf. Physics 8.5-6.

(3) ompatible stages: H. von Arnim, Die Entstehung der Gotteslehre des Aristoteles (Vienna, 193 1), l0f. Completion rather than contradiction: for example, W.K.C. Guthrie, The Development of Aristotle's Theology, I', CQ 27 (1933), 167, and introduction to Aristotle: On the Heavens (Loeb, 1939), especially xviii, xxx; W.D. Ross, Aristotle's Physics (Oxford, 1936) 94-100, especially 98.

(4) Ross, op. cit. 97f.; Guthrie, introduction to Aristotle: On the Heavens, xxxi-xxxvi. E. Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen 3. 14 (Leipzig, 1903) 827f. n.5 regarded the doctrine of an ensouled heaven as altogether un-Aristotelian; but cf. De caelo 2.2 258 a 29, 2.12 292 a 18-21, and W.D. Ross, Aristotle: Metaphysics (Oxford, 1924) cxxxvi f.

13. ———. 1985. "Ambiguity and opposition: Alexander of Aphrodisias, Ethical Problems, 11." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies no. 32:109-116.

The eleventh of the Ethical Problems attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias is one of a number of items in this collection which are concerned with questions relating to voluntary and involuntary action, and thus with discussions in the first half of the third book of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. Problem 11 differs from the others in this group, however, in that its immediate concern is with an issue of logic, rather than of ethical philosophy And it is of particular interest for two reasons.

Firstly, from the historical point ofview, the issue with which this text is concerned, that of whether one of a pair of opposites can have several senses if the other does not, is one that exercised both other commentators on the Ethics and also Alexander himself in his commentary on Aristotle's Topics. It therefore gives us the opportunity of tracing the discussion of a particular theme in Peripatetic philosophy, and what is more of doing so in the earliest period from which we have first-hand evidence for the Aristotelian commentators.

(...)

Secondly, from the philosophical point of view, the issue discussed in this text relates to the wider one of when it is and is not correct to say that a term is used in two different senses. That was an issue which Aristotle himself did much to clarify; as what follows will show, it continued to be discussed in later antiquity and in Islamic philosophy; and it is still a topic of debate among philosophers and philosophers of science at the present day." (p. 109, notes omitted)

14. ———. 1987. "Alexander of Aphrodisias: Scholasticism and Innovation." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, vol. 36.2: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. II. Teilband: Philosophie (Platonismus, [Forts.]; Aristotelismus), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 1176-1243. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"A particular difficulty for our study is the almost complete loss of the relevant literature. This is in large measure due to the character of that literature, much of which consisted of commentaries on Aristotle's works or discussions of problems arising out of them. Such writings were by their very nature liable to be superseded as each generation reread Aristotle in the light of its own needs and preoccupations. The only writings by professed Aristotelians of this era to have survived in their original form are a commentary on pans of the 'Nicomachean Ethics' by Aspasius (second century AD) and the 'De mundo' wrongly attributed to Aristotle himself, to which one can doubtfully add the pseudo-Aristotelian 'De virtutibus et vitiis' with its doublet, falsely ascribed to Andronicus of Rhodes. In addition two treatises by Nicolaus of Damascus,

originally perhaps pans of the same work, have survived through being translated into Syriac or Arabic. Besides these we only have fragments quoted by later writers; the chief sources are the commentaries on Aristotle's works written by Alexander of Aphrodisias in the third century and by Ammonius (the son of Hermeias), Philoponus and Simplicius in the fifth and sixth. The last-named is especially generous with quotations and sometimes gives a synopsis of the views of earlier interpreters on particular problems; the introduction of his commentary on the 'Categories' (pp. 1-2) includes a survey of the work of earlier commentators. The information they provide is sufficient to give us an idea of the problems which interested the earlier Aristotelians and the kind of answer they gave, but usually not to reconstruct their arguments in full." (p. 1080, notes omitted)

15. ———. 1987. "Could Alexander (follower of Aristotle) Have Done Better? A Response to Professor Frede and Others." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 5:197-216.

"In her article 'Could Paris (son of Priam)(1) Have Chosen Otherwise(2) Professor Dorothea Frede, discussing my edition of Alexander of Aphrodisias' de Fato(3), raises issues which deserve further discussion.

So too has Professor Nicholas White.(4) The points they make have a bearing on general questions of method in the study of ancient philosophy, and are worth discussing for that reason as well as for their

own intrinsic interest." (p. 197)

(1) Paris was also known as Alexander; so Alexander (of Aphrodisias), de Fato XVI. 187. 16 Bruns.

(2) Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, II (Oxford 1984), 279-92; henceforth cited as 'Frede'. Cf. also her article 'The dramatisation of determinism', Phronesis, XXVII (1982), 276-98. I do not understand Frede's reference on 285 n 13 of her Oxford Studies article to my views on Ch. XXXV of de Fato.(3) London (Duckworth) 1983. Since the publication of this the Budé edition by Professor Pierre Thillet has also appeared (Paris, 1984; cf. my review of this at Classical Review 36 (1986) 33-35).

(4) Philosophical Review (PhRev), XCIV (1984), 31.

16. ———. 1989. "The Criterion of Truth in Philo Judaeus, Alcinous and Alexander of Aphrodisias." In The Criterion of Truth: Essays in honour of George Kerferd, edited by Huby, Pamela and Neal, Gordon, 231-256. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

"In this paper I propose to examine the views of three figures from this period on one of the major questions of post-Aristotelian and perhaps of all philosophy, that of the criterion of truth, or the source of our knowledge. It gives me great pleasure to offer this study to George Kerferd, one of the leading ancient philosophy specialists of our day and a personal friend, as a contribution to his Festschrift." (p. 231)

(...)

"There is as a matter of fact some evidence for Alexander's interest in contemporary Platonism, and there is also evidence which suggests that he did hold that God had awareness of earthly things, at least in universal terms. But there is no suggestion of this idea either in On the Soul (where the objects of the Supreme Intelligible's thought seem to be the other Unmoved Movers) or in On the Intellect; and thus it does not seem that the Active Intellect can be described as in any real sense a criterion of truth for Alexander." (p. 243, note omitted)

17. ———. 1994. "On Body, Soul and Generation in Alexander of Aphrodisias." Apeiron no. 27:163-170.

"The Aristotelian commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (c.200 AD) has been criticised for defining soul as the product of the mixture of the bodily elements, a view which has been criticised for making form dependent on matter rather than the reverse and for being un-Aristotelian in doing so. Alexander's account of soul in his treatise de Anima works upwards from the simple bodies or 'elements' to progressively more complex compounds, of which living creatures are the most complex. This approach certainly suggests that form is something that emerges from or supervenes upon arrangements of matter. But it is one thing to recognise that Alexander's emphasis is different from Aristotle's, and another to suggest that his views are actually inconsistent with Aristotle's. Even while developing this analysis, Alexander insists that it is the form of each thing that determines its nature and argues that form (and matter) are substances in their own right, not just because they are parts of the composite substance. And a number of texts attributed to Alexander6 argue that soul is not in body 'as in a substrate', that is in the way in which one thing can be in another separately existing thing; for the organic body of which soul is the form cannot exist as such in the first place without soul." (pp. 164-165, notes omitted)

(...)

"However, Aristotle himself asserts that 'a human being is produced by a human being and the sun.'30 The combination of the two causes, the heavenly movement and the father, is present in Aristotle himself; there is no need to suppose that Alexander saw them as alternatives or that he did anything other than combine them in Aristotelian fashion." (p. 170)

(30) Aristtole, Physics II 2,194bl3; cf. Metaph Λ 5 1071a15 and GA [Generatione Animalium] IV 10,777b35.

18. ———. 1998. "Alexander and pseudo-Alexanders of Aphrodisias, Scripta minima: Questions and Problems, makeweights and prospects." In Gattungen wissenschaftlicher Literatur in der Antike, edited by Kullmann, Wolfgang, Althoff, Jochen and Asper, Markus, 383-403. Tübingen: Narr.

"The works attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias, who lived and worked at the end of the second century A.D. and the beginning of the third, are conventionally divided into two groups. First there are the commentaries on works of Aristotle, of which five (on Prior Analytics 1, Topics, Meteorology, On Sensation and Metaphysics A-Δ) survive in whole or in part; in addition, extensive parts of the Physics commentary have recently been discovered by Marwan Rashed in the margins of a Paris MS.(2) Other commentaries are known from secondary reports.

Of the remainder of the works attributed to Alexander, most of what survives in Greek was edited by Ivo Bruns in two fascicles of the Supplementum Aristotelicum which accompanied the Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca.(3)

These scripta minora can however be further divided into two groups. There are the major treatises, Alexander’s work On the Soul occupying 100 quarto pages in the standard edition, for example, the treatise On Fate approximately half that. And there are also collections of minor texts.(4) It is the latter that I have labelled scripta minima for the purposes of this discussion."(p. 383)

(2) Parisinus supp. gr. 643. M. Rashed, Alexandre d’Aphrodise et la “Magna Quaestio”: Röle et independance des scholies dans la tradition byzantine du corpus aristotelicien, Les Etudes Classiques 63, 1995, 295-351; id., A “new“ text of Alexander on the Soul’s Motion, in: R. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle and After, London 1997.

(3) Supplementum Aristotelicum 2.i (Berlin 1887) and 2.ii (1892).

(4) There is good reason to think that there were once other such collections now lost. Cf. the reference to σκολιά λογικά at Alexander, In an. pr. 250.2; on the “explanation and summary of certain passages from (Aristotle’s) On sensation and what is sensed” referred to in a scholion on Quaest. 1.2 (Sharples, below, n. 10, 1196-7), see further below, n. 96.

(10) R.W. Sharples, Alexander of Aphrodisias: Scholasticism and Innovation, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, vol. II.36.1 (Berlin 1987), 1176-1243,

19. ———. 1999. "On being a τόδε τι in Aristotle and Alexander." Méthexis no. 12:77-87.

"For Aristotle, what primarily exists is individual substances. These substances are indeed, with the exception of the unmoved movers of the heavenly spheres, compounds of form and matter, and they have form in virtue of being members of species.(2)" (p. 77)

(...)

"Perhaps, then, consideration of the first section of the mantissa attributed to Alexander may lead us to question whether Notes on Eta and Theta are right in holding that "to say that ... fire is not τόδε τι ['this-something'] is not to say that it is a stuff without qualities or attributes, but that it is not a reidentifiable something" (my emphasis).(39)

Rather, the criteria for being a τόδε τι may sometimes after all have to do with definability rather than with reidentifiability. As Charlton indeed remarks in the passage quoted in § 1 above, "The phrase T68E Tt may sometimes mean rather 'a particular sort of thing' than 'a particular individual'. (40)

(2) At least according to one reading of Aristotle, which the writings attributed to Alexander follow. Cf. R.W. Sharples, "Species, Form and Inheritance: Aristotle and After", in A. Gotthelf (ed.), Aristotle on Nature and living things: philosophical studies presented to David M. Balme, Pittsburgh: Mathesis, 1986, 117-128.

(5) Notes on Eta and Theta of Aristotle's Metaphysics, recorded by Myles Bumyeat and others, Oxford: Sub-Faculty of Philosophy, 1984, 131-2, on Metaphysics e 7, 1049a18-b2 (below, at n.25).(...)

(7) W. Charlton, "Aristotle on Identity", in T. Scaltsas, D. Charles and M.L. Gill (eds.), Unity, Identity and Explanation in Aristotle's Metaphysics, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, at 48-49. (...)

(39) Above, n. S.

(40) Above, n. 7.

20. ———. 1999. "The Peripatetic School." In Routledge History of Philosophy. Volume II: From Aristotle to Augustine, edited by Furley, Davd, 147-187.

"The history of Aristotelianism as a separate tradition in the ancient world comes to an end with Alexander and Themistius. Part of the reason for Alexander’s having no distinguished followers in his own school is undoubtedly the decline in interest in formal higher education in the third century by contrast with the second. But that does not on its own explain why Aristotelianism declined where Platonism did not. Once again, as in the third century BC, the lack of a distinctive doctrinal appeal may have played a part; where Platonism had a radical and distinctive message, Aristotelianism appealed to scholars and, on a different level, to common sense. The difference was that, where Aristotelianism in the Hellenistic period lacked a distinctive identity except in so far as the pursuit of enquiry itself provided one, the revived Aristotelianism of the Empire was limited in its scope by being too closely tied to the exposition of the Aristotelian texts. More might indeed have been made of those texts and their implications; but if Alexander had developed his ideas concerning intellect further, he would, as already indicated, have been adopting a position not unlike that of the Neoplatonists themselves." (p. 168)

21. ———. 2000. "Alexander of Aphrodisias Quaestio 2.21: a question of authenticity." Elenchos no. 21:361-379.

22. ———. 2000. "The unity of the virtues in Aristotle, in Alexander of Aphrodisias, and in the Byzantine commentators." Etica e Politica:1-20.

Abstract: "Aristotle’s argument in Nicomachean Ethics 6 for the mutual implication of the virtues by one another is developed, and others added to it, in a repertory of arguments for this thesis in section 18 of the De anima libri mantissa (Supplement to the Book On the Soul) attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias. The last part of this is echoed in no.22 of the Ethical Problems attributed to Alexander; nos. 8 and 28 of the same collection are also relevant. A distinction can be drawn between the mutual implication of the virtues and the unity of virtue in some stronger sense; the arguments in the texts attributed to Alexander are examined to see whether they imply the latter more clearly than Aristotle’s own argument does, and the conclusion is drawn that some do so because of the use they make of the conception of the noble as the goal of virtuous action, or of virtue as a whole of parts. The treatment of Aristotle’s argument in the Byzantine commentaries is characterised by a preoccupation with the special status of practical wisdom."

23. ———. 2002. "Aristotelian Theology After Aristotle." In Traditions of Theology: Studies in Hellenistic Theology, Its Background and Aftermath, edited by Frede, Dorothea and Laks, André, 1-40. Leiden: Brill.

"There has been no shortage of discussion among modern scholars as to just what Aristotle’s own views on god were. I cannot hope to reproduce that whole debate here, let alone develop it further. The identification of certain central questions will here be purely preliminary to consideration of how these are reflected in discussions of Aristotle’s views in the subsequent half-millennium. On a strict interpretation of “Hellenistic philosophy” it is indeed only the first three of those five centuries that are strictly relevant. However, interpretations of Aristotle’s position from the first two centuries of the Roman Empire reflect those developed in the Hellenistic period; and the views developed by Alexander of Aphrodisias and his school around the turn of the third century A.D., much more fully documented than what had preceded, are developments of, and reactions to, the preceding debate.(5) Moreover, in terms of the contrast between Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic theology developed by Runia [*] elsewhere in this volume, Alexander’s treatment, just because it keeps so closely to the Aristotelian texts and the problems they raise, falls on the “Hellenistic” side of the divide, in spite of its later date." (p. 2)

[*] The beginnings of the end: Philo of Alexandria and Hellenistic Theology, pp. 281-316.

(5) On the general history of the Peripatetic school in the Hellenistic period see Wehrli, F., ‘Der Peripatos bis zum Beginn der römischen Kaiserzeit’, in: Flashar, H., ed., Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, begründet von Friedrich Ueberweg: Die Philosophie der Antike, 3, Basel: Schwabe, 1983, 459-599; in the Imperial period, Moraux 1973, id. 1984, and Gottschalk 1987. I have attempted an overview of the entire period in ‘The Peripatetic School’, in D.J. Furley, ed., From Aristotle to Augustine, London: Routledge 1999 (Routledge History of Philosophy, vol. 2), 147-187.

References

Gottschalk, H.B., ‘Aristotelian Philosophy in the Roman World from the Time of Cicero to the End of the Second Century A.D.’, in ANRW II 36.2 (1987), 1079-1174.

Moraux, P., Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen I, Berlin 1973.

—— Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen II, Berlin 1984.

24. ———. 2002. "Alexander of Aphrodisias and the End of Aristotelian Theology." In Metaphysik und Religion: zur Signatur des spiitantiken Denkens. Akten des Internationalen Kongresses vom 13.-17. März 2001 in Würzburg, edited by Kobusch, Theo and Erler, Michael, 1-21. München · Leipzig: K. G. Saur.

"This paper will be concerned with two distinct though related aspects of Alexander's thought about the divine; firstly the nature of god's own intellectual activity and of the connection between his thinking and ours; second that of the sense in which and extent to which the universe is for Alexander governed by divine providence. The connection between the two points in terms of the genesis of Alexander's own position is indirect(4): he is, as we shall see, prompted to construct an "Aristotelian" theory of providence by the need to defend Aristotelianism against attack, and is very probably influenced in the way in which he does so by the fact that he regards the De mundo as a genuine Aristotelian work(5).

Since for Alexander providence is the result of the movement of the heavens itself caused by their desire for the Unmoved Mover, its effects - though not, as we shall see, its status as providence - are completely independent of the question whether or not the Unmoved Mover is itself aware of the world.

(...)

The second point to be emphasised at the outset is that, especially on the first topic but also on the second, the nature of our sources is in various ways less than satisfactory; it is a matter of piecing together an account from various pieces of information, and many of the questions that we would like to have answered must remain unanswered." (p. 2)

(4) I am grateful to Daniel Schulthess for pressing the need to clarify this point.

(5) Cf. Moraux, Alexander von Aphrodisias Quaest. 2.3 160 n. 2; Sharpies, Quaestiones 1.1-2.15 94 n. 307.

References

Moraux, P., Alexander von Aphrodisias Quaest. 2.3, in: Hermes 95 (1967) 159-169.

Sharpies, R.W., Alexander of Aphrodisias: Quaestiones 1.1-2.15, London 1992.

25. ———. 2003. "Threefold providence: the history and background of a doctrine." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. Supplement no. 78:107-127.

"Three texts from antiquity preserve a distinctive classification of providence into three levels. In probable order of composition it appears in the work De Platone attributed to Apuleius (fl. c.160 AD), in the treatise De fato attributed to Plutarch but certainly not by him, and in the treatise De natura hominis by Nemesius of Emesa (c.400 AD)." (p. 107)

(...)

"The doctrine found in these texts is clearly and explicitly derived from Plato's dialogues; in particular, the distinction between primary and secondary providences is based on that at Timaeus 41c and 42e between the creation carried out by the Demiurge himself and the part of it that he delegates to the secondary gods, and the notion of an aspect of providence concerned with human affairs is based on Timaeus 42e, though the specific link with daemones derives from other texts." (p. 109, notes omitted)

(...)

"The present paper will therefore attempt to examine some of these in order to put the Platonist doctrines into their intellectual context; it will also attempt a partial classification of some views concerning providence held in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods, with a view both to clarification of the Platonist texts and to the larger project of a history of ancient theories of providence."(p. 110)

26. ———. 2003. "Pseudo-Alexander on Aristotle, Metaphysics Lambda." In Alessandro di Afrodisia e la 'Metaflsica' di Aristotele', edited by Movia, Giancarlo, 187-218. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

"Conclusion

What then can we regard as established concerning the author of the pseudoAlexander commentary on Λ?

1. He is neither identical with the genuine Alexander, nor did he use the genuine Alexander’s commentary.

2. There are reasons to suppose that he used, and therefore wrote later than, both Simplicius and the De intellectu attributed to Alexander.

3. On some of the issues which are most controversial today in the interpretation of Λ, or of Aristotle’s thought generally (notably the nature of the Unmoved Mover’s thinking in the first case, and the question of individual forms in the second) pseudo-Alexander follows the Aristotelian text so closely that it is difficult to attribute to him any definite position. Similarly on issues which had already been topics of discussion, such as the relation between Unmoved Movers and sphere-souls, pseudo-Alexander follows Aristotle’s text closely without consideration of alternative views.

4. Pseudo-Alexander is influenced by Platonism but does not regard himself as a Platonist.

5. Contrasts drawn between the naturalism of Alexander and the mysticism of pseudo-Alexander have rested on a one-sided reading of the former and have involved a failure to recognise passages in the latter borrowed directly from the former." (p. 214)

27. ———. 2004. "Alexander of Aphrodisias: What is a Mantissa?" In Philosophy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries (Vol. One), edited by Adamson, Peter, Baltussen, Han and Stone, M.W.F., 51-69. London: Institute of Classical Studies, University of London.

"Conclusion

The answers to many questions about the Mantissa remain obscure; the origins of some of the arguments the texts contain, the circumstances in which the collection was assembled, and the earlier stages of its transmission before the copying of V, our earliest extant MS. It is to be hoped however that even the foregoing brief discussion will have helped to show the interest of the material contained in the collection, and its relevance to the study of Alexander's thought, and thus to an important stage in the transmission of Aristotelian philosophy to the commentators of late antiquity." (p. 66)

28. ———. 2005. "Implications of the new Alexander of Aphrodisias inscription." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies no. 48:47-56.

Abstract: "Abstract The new inscription dedicated to his father by the Aristotelian commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias does not help us in establishing his dates more precisely. It does, however, show conclusively for the first time that his post was at Athens, and strongly suggests that at the end of the second century AD the term diadokhos ‘successor’ was applied to the imperially appointed holders of the chairs of philosophy at Athens. It also provides us with a possible candidate for the authorship of works attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias but not apparently by him, notably On fevers."

29. ———. 2005. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on universals: two problematic texts." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 50:43-55.

Abstract: "Two texts that raise problems for Alexander of Aphrodisias' theory of universals are examined. De anima 90.2-8 appears to suggest that universals are dependent on thought for their existence; this raises questions about the status both of universals and of forms. It is suggested that the passage is best interpreted as indicating that universals are dependent on thought only for their being recognised as universals. The last sentence of Quaestio 1.11 seems to assert that if the universal did not exist no individual would exist, thereby contradicting Alexander's position elsewhere. This seems to be a slip resulting from the fact that species with only one member are the exception rather than the rule."

30. ———. 2005. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on the Nature and Location of Vision." In Metaphysics, Soul, and Ethics in Ancient Thought: Themes from the work of Richard Sorabji, edited by Salles, Ricardo, 345-362. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

"The so-called second book of the treatise On the Soul (De anima) by Alexander of Aphrodisias is a collection of short discussions on a range of topics, more or less closely connected with psychology. Since 1887 it

has commonly been known by the title Mantissa given to it by its editor Ivo Bruns, Mantissa originally being an Etruscan word meaning a makeweight, something the trader puts in to balance up the scales. One

sequence of discussions in the Mantissa, §§9–14, consists of a series of refutations of non-Aristotelian theories of vision, followed in §15 by an exposition of Aristotelian doctrine and in §16 by a discussion of the

Aristotelian account of colour. I have attempted to say something about the relations of these texts to one another, and also to Alexander’s commentary on Aristotle’s On Sensation (De sensu), in an earlier paper.(2)

Vision is also discussed by Alexander in the first book of his treatise, De anima, which, unlike the Mantissa, is a single and self-contained discussion, structured in a similar way to Aristotle’s own treatise De anima.The topic of vision was one in which Alexander’s teacher Sosigenes had a special interest, writing a work On Vision in at least eight books.(4)" (pp. 345-346, some notes omitted)

(2) R. W. Sharples, ‘Alexander and pseudo-Alexanders of Aphrodisias, scripta minima. Questions and Problems, Makeweights and Prospects’ [‘Alexander and pseudo-Alexanders’], in W. Kullmann, J. Althoff, and M. Asper (eds.), Gattungen wissenschaftlicher Literatur in der Antike (ScriptOralia 95) (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1998), 383–403.

(4) Alexander, In meteor. 143.12–14, cf. Themistius, In de an. 61.23–4; P. Moraux, Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen, ii (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1984), 359.

31. ———. 2005. "An Aristotelian commentator on the naturalness of justice." In Virtue, Norms, and Objectivity: Issues in Ancient and Modern Ethics, edited by Gill, Christopher, 279-293. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

"The question of whether justice or ‘what is right’, dikaiosunê or to dikaion,(1) is a matter of nature or convention is a central one in ancient Greek thought from the time of the Sophists onwards. It has a particular

importance in the context of ancient eudaimonistic ethics. Justice in the more general sense of the term is, Aristotle argues, the aspect of virtue concerned with our behaviour towards other people;(2) and in a system of thought which assumes, as ancient eudaimonistic ethics does, that I should act in my own true self-interest, the question whether and why it is in my own interest to treat other people justly is nothing less than the question of the basis of morality." (p. 279)

(...)

"The text we shall be considering also shows how an interpreter or interpreters of Aristotle could draw upon the different and more universal perspectives and agendas of Hellenistic philosophy.

This text is §19 of a collection transmitted in the MSS as Book 2 of the treatise On the Soul by the Aristotelian commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. c. ad 200), and labelled Mantissa (‘makeweight’ or ‘supplement’) by its nineteenth-century editor Ivo Bruns." (pp. 281-282, a note omitted)

(1) The Greek terms cover the meanings of both the English ones; indeed, ‘general’ justice as described by Aristotle is close to the archaic English ‘righteousness’. In the major part of this chapter, ‘right’ and ‘just(ice)’ should both be understood as translating the Greek terms as they apply to actions. The connection is that performance of ‘just’ actions is a necessary, though not in Aristotle’s view sufficient, condition for being a ‘just’ person (EN 2.4, 1105b5–9).

(2) EN 5.1, 1129b25–30.

32. ———. 2007. "Peripatetics on fate and providence." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. Supplement no. 94:595-605.

"Issues relating to fate and providence are not prominent among Peripatetics of as far as our evidence goes; it is Alexander of Aphrodisias who really develops themes as far as the Peripatetic tradition is concerned. Nevertheless, earlier views examination, for this enables us to assess, in so far as the evidence allows, what found in the tradition of his school, and is also relevant to consideration of interaction between the Peripatetics and other schools. Both topics are prime examples of Aristotle did not himself discuss as such, but where Peripatetics found themselves formulate positions for him to match those of other philosophical schools." (p. 595)

33. ———. 2010. "Peripatetics." In The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity: Volume I edited by Gerson, Lloyd P., 140-160. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"What, finally, did later ancient philosophy take from the Peripatetic tradition?

The answer must be, in the first instance, interpretations of Aristotle’s text, since some of his works continued to be part of the standard Platonist philosophical curriculum. But beyond that, the philosophical agenda continued to be influenced by the issues that concerned the Peripatetics discussed in this chapter; and they provided later thinkers with ideas to incorporate (as with the notion of the divine intellect making use of our intellects), or to react against (as with arguments for the mortality of the human soul)." (p. 160, a note omitted)

34. ———. 2012. "Alexander on Physics 2.9." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies no. 55:19-30.

Abstract: "In this paper, Bob Sharples considers a report regarding Alexander in Simplicius' Physics commentary, which touches on the problem of hypothetical necessity and how it relates to unqualified necessity. Simplicius seems to think that for Alexander, necessity imposed by matter is not purposive. This is why bricks do not necessarily give rise to a brick house. He here exploits the genuinely Aristotelian idea that form and end account for the matter, rather than vice versa; yet Alexander will have been motivated also by his opposition to the Stoics."

35. ———. 2016. "The school of Alexander?" In Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence, edited by Sorabji, Richard, 89-118. New York: Bloomsbury.

Second revised edition. First edition London: Duckworth 1990, pp. 83-111.

"It is not my concern here to give a full enumeration of the works attributed to Alexander or to classify them in detail. Th at has been done elsewhere both by myself and by others. Rather, I will proceed to a discussion of what the works can tell us about the context in which they arose. It will be helpful to start with consideration of the relation of Alexander’s works to those of his predecessors, teachers and contemporaries." (p. 91)

(...)

"The impression given by the writings attributed to Alexander is one of lively philosophical discussion. The opinions of his predecessors and of his nearcontemporaries from other philosophical schools play a part in this; but it is difficult to believe that some at least of the texts here considered do not reflect the activity of Alexander’s own philosophical school. This makes it all the more odd that we know so little about any pupils of Alexander, and that as far as our information goes he seems to mark the end of a distinctive and continuous Peripatetic tradition." (pp. 117-118)

36. Sirkel, Riin. 2011. "Alexander of Aphrodisias's Account of Universals and Its Problems." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 49:297-314.

"The aim of this paper is to explore Alexander’s account of universals, the difficulties it entails and the possible solutions to those difficulties. I focus on presenting a broad picture of Alexander without delving into particular and often controversial interpretive issues. I begin by analyzing the Aristotelian definition of a universal as that which is predicated of many things. In the second part of the paper, I will outline Alexander’s distinction between being a form and being a universal, as I understand it. In the third and fourth parts, I consider two problems this distinction introduces, viz. the problem about the ontological status of the form, and that of the universal. In the last part of the paper, I will briefly examine Boethius’s solution to the problem of universals, which he claims to take from Alexander, and which clarifies some of the problems raised by Alexander’s account." (p. 298)

37. Sorabji, Richard. 2017. "A Neglected Strategy of the Aristotelian Alexander on Necessity and Responsibility." In Rereading Ancient Philosophy: Old Chestnuts and Sacred Cows, edited by Harte, Verity and Woolf, Raphael, 240-256. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"A justly influential author, Michael Frede, has treated as an orthodoxy, needing no discussion, an interpretation of Alexander, put forward earlier in an objective spirit, in a seminal article by Susanne Bobzien(1)

She discussed the Stoics’ opponent, Alexander of Aphrodisias, who held the Aristotelian chair in Athens 500 years after Aristotle’s death, at or soon after 200 AD. He was the greatest defender of Aristotelianism, and at a time when Aristotelianism needed defending against the refurbished versions of Stoicism and Platonism. Her interpretation of Alexander on this subject has now been treated not only as an orthodoxy,

but as a ground for a sustained onslaught on Alexander as caught in a hopeless tangle, which will, I am afraid, mislead some readers, if nothing is said on the other side. I will draw attention to two small

passages of Alexander, mentioned but not discussed in Bobzien’s enlightening treatment, which I think may suggest that he had an entirely different strategy. I also disagree with the other objections raised against Alexander, and will try to fill out the picture of his approach, as I see it. But first I should give the context of Bobzien’s interpretation; I will come to what I think is a mistaken use of her interpretation later." (p, 240)

(1) Bobzien 1998a (=Sorabji 2016: 125–59).

References

Bobzien, S. (1998a) ‘The Inadvertent Conception and Late Birth of the Free Will Problem’, Phronesis 43: 133–75. Reprinted in Sorabji 2016: 125–59.

Sorabji, R, (ed.) (2016) Aristotle Re-Interpreted: New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators. London.

38. ———. 2023. "Philoponus and Alexander in Historical Context on Relations between Matter and Form Inside and Outside Philosophy of Mind." In The History of Hylomorphism: From Aristotle to Descartes, edited by Charles, David, 245-254. New York: Oxford University Press.

"John Philoponus, the Christian commentator on Aristotle in Alexandria of the 6th century CE, elucidated several relations between matter and form, most of them, but not all, from the context of philosophy of mind. He drew several of these relations from discussions by earlier philosophers. The soul or its activities had been said to be a harmony or blend of bodily items, or else to follow such a blend or harmony, or to supervene on it. I think I can now explain Philoponus’ contribution better than before.(1)" (p. 245)

(1) My previous contributions on Philoponus were in Sorabji (2000: ch. 7, 2003: ch. 7, 2005: 199–203, 2010: 33–4).

References

Sorabji, R. (1987), ‘Mind-Body Relation’, in R. Sorabji, ed., Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science, London (see also Sorabji 2010).

Sorabji, R. (2000), Emotion and Peace of Mind, Oxford.

Sorabji, R. (2003), ‘The Mind-Body Relation in the Wake of Plato’s Timaeus’, in G. Reydams-Schils, ed., Plato’s Timaeus as Cultural Icon, Notre Dame, 152–62.

Sorabji, R. (2005), The Philosophy of the Commentators 200–600 AD, vol. 1: Psychology, Cornell (discussion on Philoponus at pp. 199–203).

Sorabji, R. ed. (2010), ‘Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, supplementary volume 103: 33–4 (revised 2nd edition of Sorabji 1987)

39. Tieleman, Teunis Lambertus. 1996. "The hunt for Galen's shadow: Alexander of Aphrodisias, « De anima » 94.7-100.17 Bruns reconsidered." In Polyhistor: Studies in the History and Historiography of Ancient Philosophy Presented to Jaap Mansfeld on his Sixtieth Birthday, edited by Algra, Keimpe A., Van der Horst, Pieter Willem and Runia, David T., 265-283. Leiden: Brill.

"In the following pages, I will reconsider the relation between the closing section of the De an. and what is to be found in Galen's writings, most notably the PHP [On the doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato]. I shall argue that Alexander does respond to specific arguments he had read in Galen. Meanwhile Accattino's critique may stand as a reminder of the strict criteria needed for assessing 'parallels' in terms of historical relations.

Mere resemblances are not good enough. Many current arguments and ideas used in the controversy over the regent part were traditional and hence not confined to Galen and Alexander.

(...)

"My argument is structured as follows. I shall begin by presenting some observations on the overall design and strategy of Alexander's demonstration (§ 2). Next I shall compare his arguments concerned with the nutritive and other faculties of the soul with the relevant passages in Galen (§ 3). This is followed by a few observations on Alexander's rebuttal of two encephalocentric arguments at the end of his demonstration (§ 4). Finally I shall draw some conclusions with special reference to Alexander's dialectical procedures (§ 5)" (pp. 267-268)

References

Accattino, P. (1987) 'Ematopoiesi, malattia cardiaca e disturbi mentali in Galeno e in Alessandro di Afrodisia', Hermes 115: 454-473.

40. Todd, Robert B. 1972. "Alexander of Aphrodisias and the Alexandrian Quaestiones II,12." Philologus no. 116:293-305.

"In this article I shall examine in detail one brief text with the following questions in mind: (1) what is its relation to authentic works of Alexander? and (2) what contribution does it make to the exegesis of Aristotelian doctrine? In this way we may not be able to determine its authenticity, but we shall go a long way towards establishing its raison d'etre in the Alexandrian corpus," (p. 293, a note omitted)

41. ———. 1973. "Alexander of Aphrodisias, De mixtione 11,226,13. An emendation." Hermes no. 101:278-282.

42. ———. 1974. "Lexicographical Notes on Alexander of Aphrodisias' Philosophical Terminology." Glotta no. 52:207-215.

"Here I shall confine myself to examining Alexander of Aphrodisias' use of two groups of words. The first is a set of non-Aristotelian epistemological terms that he uses to describe various concepts in

Aristotle's theory of knowledge; and the second a group of terms, partly borrowed and partly developed by himself, that are employed to describe major metaphysical concepts in the Aristotelian system:

substance, form, matter, and potentiality. In each of these cases the lexicon [*] entry is deficient. This is unfortunate since although much of the vocabulary of the Greek commentators is necessarily parasitic on that of the author they are discussing, it is important to acknowledge occasions on which this pattern is broken. In particular is this necessary in the case of as relatively early an author as Alexander of Aphrodisias who drew on a well-established philosophical tradition.6) The words I shall discuss are for the most part sufficiently familiar for the indices to have recorded a large number of instances, and in only one case are they entirely silent. By examining contexts as thoroughly as possible I have tried to offset any residual deficiencies that they may possess. Although I shall concentrate here on Alexander of Aphrodisias my account could in a very large measure be extended to the vocabulary of the later commentators who in this, as in other areas, were greatly in Alexander's debt. I shall therefore also include some evidence of their usage." (p. 208)

[*] Hereafter I shall refer to A Greek-English Lexicon, compiled by HenryGeorge Liddell and Robert Scott, revised by H. Stuart Jones (9th ed.; Oxford 1940, with a supplement, 1968) simply as "the lexicon".

(6) Although only the commentary of Aspasius (c. 100 A. D.) on the Nicomachean Ethics is extant (Commentaria, XIX-i) it is a reasonable assumption that Alexander's vocabulary was influenced by that of earlier second century commentators such as Adrastus, Herminus, or Sosigines.

43. ———. 1976. "Two displaced passages in Alexander of Aphrodisias De anima." Eranos no. 74:28-31.

44. ———. 1976. Alexander of Aphrodisias on Stoic Physics: A Study of the De Mixtione with Preliminary Essays, Text, Translation and Commentary. Leiden: Brill.

"The importance of Alexander of Aphrodisias in the Aristotelian tradition in Western philosophy is well established. This reputation however rests almost exclusively on his very influential interpretation of Aristotle's doctrine of the active intellect. The subject of the present study, the de mixtione, is a treatise in which he deals with the philosophically less important topic of the mixture of physical bodies. My aim is to show that both as an exposition of Aristotelian thought and as an extended discussion of Stoic physics it offers an excellent opportunity to observe the development of Peripatetic scholasticism in the face of ideas developed in post-Aristotelian philosophy. In this way I shall try to establish the largely unacknowledged importance of Alexander's contribution to the Greek philosophical tradition." (Preface, p. XI)

45. ———. 1976. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on de Interpretatione 16a 26-29." Hermes no. 104:140-146.

"At de interpretatione 16a 26-29 Aristotle makes the brief assertion that names (ονόματα) exist by convention and not by nature. In his note on this text Ammonius, the fifth century Alexandrian commentator, reports that Alexander of Aphrodisias had proposed the following syllogism, presumably in his own commentary on this work which is no longer extant: ονόματα and ρέματα are sounds' (φοναί), sounds exist by nature, therefore so doονόματα and ρέματα. Ammonius then proceeds to offer a refutation of this argument. Although he does not explicitly attribute this subsequent reasoning to Alexander I shall try to show in this note that he must be offering an account of the earlier exegete's thought, for all the essentials and some of the details of Ammonius' report can be paralleled in some philosophically interesting ways from texts in other Alexandrian works." (p. 140, notes omitted)

46. ———. 1982. "Alexander of Aphrodisias, De anima 76.16. Michael of Ephesus' text defended." Liverpool Classical Monthly no. 7:48-49.

47. ———. 1984. "Alexander of Aphrodisias and the case for the infinite universe. Quaestiones III.12." Eranos no. 82:185-193.

48. Torrijos Castrillejo, David. 2017. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on Fate, Providence and Nature." Forum. Supplement to Acta Philosophica no. 3:7-18.

Abstract: "To study the influence of divinity on cosmos, Alexander uses the notions of ‘fate’ and ‘providence,’ which were common in the philosophy of his time. In this way, he provides an Aristotelian interpretation of the problems related to such concepts. In the context of this discussion, he offers a description of ‘nature’ different from the one that he usually regards as the standard Aristotelian notion of nature, i.e. the intrinsic principle of motion and rest. The new coined concept is a ‘cosmic’ nature that can be identified with both ‘fate’ and ‘divine power,’ which are the immediate effect of providence upon the world.

In the paper it is exposed how the conception of providence defended by Alexander means a rejection of the divine care of the particulars, since the divinities are only provident for species. Several texts belonging to the Middle Platonic philosophers will convince us that such thinkers (and not directly Aristotle) are the origin of the thesis that will be understood as the conventional Aristotelian position, namely that divinity only orders species but not individuals."

49. Towey, Alan. 1991. "Aristotle and Alexander on Hearing and Instantaneous Change: A Dilemma in Aristotle's Account of Hearing." In The Second Sense: Studies in Hearing and Musical Judgement from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century, edited by Burnett, Charles, Fend, Michael and Gouki, Penelope, 7-18. London: Warburg Institute.

"Aristotle's account of hearing,(1) despite its considerable influence on subsequent thought,(2) has usually been discussed only as part of a wider treatment of some other subject in the context either of ancient music(3) or of Aristotle's general psychology.(4) Yet there is much to be said for a study that concentrates specifically on hearing. Such an approach accords well with Aristotle's own advice that accounts seeking to embrace different psychological capacities in a general survey are less informative than ones which are focused on the peculiar differences of each.(5) More significantly, despite this apparent emphasis on autonomous explanations for each sense modality, it is clear that Aristotle himself took hearing to be in certain important respects paradigmatic of sense perception generally. (6)" (p. 7)

(1) I shall concenrate on Aristotle himself, in particular his discussions of hearing in the De anima, edited with introduction and commentary by W. D. Ross (Oxford, 1961) , and the De senu et sensibili from Aristotle, Parva naruralia, edited by W. D. Ross (Oxford. 1955): also the commentary on the latter by the Aristotelian commentator, Alexander of Aphrodisias (floruit 205 AD), In librum De sensu commentarium, edited P. Wendland, Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca, 3. 1 (Berlin, I 901), and Alexander's own treatise De anima, edited by I. Bruns in Alexander, Praeter commentaria scripta minora, Supplementum Aristotelicum, 2.1 (Berlin, I 887). I shall not consider the Pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata, beyond noting that Book XI contains an account of hearing close in some respects to the account given by Alexander. For a discussion of the Problemata see the article by Burnett in this volume. All translations of Aristotle are, except where otherwise stated, from The Complete Works, edited by J. Barnes, 2 vols (Princeton, 1984). Translations of Alexander are my own.

(2) See especially the chapters by Burnett and Frangenberg in this volume.

(3) There is a useful treatment in E. A. Lippman, Musical Thought In Ancient Greece (Columbia, 1964), pp. I I 8-20; see also A. Barker, Greek Musical Writings (Cambridge, 1984-9), II, pp. 74-80.

(4) The standard account remains J. I. Beare, Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition (Oxford, 1906).

(5) De anima 11. 3-4, 414b25-4I5a16. Aristotle is referring to nutrition, perception and thought , but the same principle will apply to the five senses which constitute perception. See Alexander, De anima, p. 40.3-15.

(6) See pp. 8-10 below.

References

Charles Burnett, Sound and its Perception in the Middle Ages, same volume, pp. 43-69.

Thomas Frangenberg, Auditus visu prestantior: Comparisons of Hearing and Vision in Charles de Bovelles’s Liber de sensibus, same volume, pp. 71-94.

50. ———. 2019. "The Physiology of Vision in Alexander’s Commentary on the De sensu." Ancient Philosophy no. 39:211-223.

"I consider how far the commentary of Alexander of Aphrodisias on Aristotle’s De sensu (henceforth IDS) presents a coherent account of the workings of the eye while at the same time assessing the extent to which Alexander was aware of the work of Galen in this area. These two questions are linked. Galen’s account of the workings of the eye in De methodo medendi (MM), De usu partium (UP), and above all De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis (PHP), is characterised by its anatomical detail. The account presented in IDS is in contrast devoid of anatomical detail. And yet in other areas various studies have argued the case for seeing Alexander as responding to Galen. If Alexander when he wrote IDS was mindful of Galen’s contribution to the subject of visual physiology, his apparent disregard for the fruits of Galen’s dissections of the human eye requires explanation." (p. 211, two notes omitted)

51. Tuominen, Mitra. 2010. "Receptive Reason: Alexander of Aphrodisias on Material Intellect." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 55:170-190.

Abstract: "According to Alexander of Aphrodisias, our potential intellect is a purely receptive capacity.

Alexander also claims that, in order for us to actualise our intellectual potentiality, the intellect needs to abstract what is intelligible from enmattered perceptible objects. Now a problem emerges: How is it possible for a purely receptive capacity to perform such an abstraction? It will be argued that even though Alexander’s reaction to this question causes some tension in his theory, the philosophical motivation for it is a sound one. Rather than a calculation of actualities and potentialities, the doctrine of receptivity is supposed to explain how human beings come to grasp universal aspects of reality in an accurate manner."

52. Tweedale, Martin. 1984. "Alexander of Aphrodisias Views on Universals." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 29:279-303.

"Alexander's views on universals are, it seems, quite important history philosophy. When Boethius gives in his second commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge(1) his solution to the problem of universals as he conceived it, he claims to be adopting Alexander's approach."

(...)

"However, it is not at all straightforward to determine what Alexander's theory of universals or common items exactly was, and this for several reasons. First of all, the view as we find it in Greek texts attributed to Alexander seems not entirely coherent, and the interpreter naturally feels unsure whether he has understood it properly. Secondly, doubt has been cast on the authentiticity of some of the more important of these texts.

Finally, commentators, both ancient and modern, have ascribed an extreme anti-realist view to Alexander that, as we shall see, is not borne out by the texts we possess, authentic or not.

In the following I shall try to surmount these difficulties, to the extent that this is possible on our present knowledge, and give an account of what Alexander's view probably was, or at least what it would have appeared to Boethius and Avicenna to be, and then go on to locate the philosophical difficulty it leaves unresolved. For my overall estimate of Alexander's theory is that it is not entirely satisfactory and probably did not appear so to thinkers such as Boethius and Avicenna." (pp. 279-280)

(1) pp. 164-7 of In lsagogen Porphyrii Commentorum, editionis secundae, fiber primus. Ed. by S. Brandt in Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii In lsagogen Porphyrii Commenta, vol. 48 of Corpus Scriplorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna/Leipzig, 1906).

53. Twetten, David. 2023. "Why the Prime Mover Is Not an Exclusively Final Cause. Alexander of Aphrodisias and Averroes." In Contextualizing Premodern Philosophy: Explorations of the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin Traditions, edited by Krause, Katja, López-Farjeat, Luis Xavier and Oschman, Nicholas A. , 29-55. New York: Routledge.

"The argument of this chapter is, first, that Alexander of Aphrodisias is not the source of the “final cause only” interpretation,(13) since the greatest commentator on Aristotle, in fact, takes Aristotle’s prime mover to be an efficient cause.(14) For Alexander, celestial ensoulment, rather than being a threat to the prime mover’s efficiency, is precisely that through which efficiency is discovered. Second, Averroes largely agrees with Alexander on the causality of the heavens and Aristotle’s god, and, where Averroes disagrees, he is closer to Aristotle’s mind than is Alexander. I make these points largely by lining up, successively, the surprisingly parallel teachings of the two great commentators, then by introducing considerations from the text of Aristotle that lend support to their readings.(15)" (p. 30)

(13) Syrianus is the first I have found for whom Aristotle’s prime mover is a final cause only. Syrianus, In Metaphysica commentaria, ed. Kroll, B.1, 8.30–33 and 10.20–11.9; M.5, 117.16–20. 14 Berti, “Da chi è amato,” 70, aptly observes that the creationist/emanationist reading of Aristotle has been an obstacle to a contemporary appreciation of the efficiency of Aristotle’s prime mover. Accordingly, when Simplicius famously criticizes Alexander for taking god to be a final cause, not efficient, of the heavens, we readily imagine Simplicius to be ascribing the “exclusively final cause” interpretation to Alexander. On the contrary, Simplicius repeatedly ascribes to Alexander efficiency over the motion, though not over the very being, of the heavens. For discussion, see Sharples, “Aristotelian Theology,” 19 n. 94; Twetten, “Aristotelian Cosmology,” 335–37. Nevertheless, an investigation of what “efficient causality” means is clearly in order, as I undertake in a preliminary way below.

(15) I treat other parallel argumentation in Alexander and Averroes in Twetten, “Whose Prime Mover,” 379–90.

References

Berti, Enrico. “Da chi è amato il motore immobile? Su Aristotele, Metaph. XII 6–7.” Méthexis 10 (1997): 59–82.

Sharples, Robert. “Aristotelian Theology after Aristotle.” In Traditions of Theology: Studies in Hellenistic Theology, Its Background and Aftermath, edited by Dorothea Frede and Andre Laks, 1–40. Leiden: Brill, 2002.

Twetten, David. “Aristotelian Cosmology and Causality in Classical Arabic Philosophy and Its Greek Background.” In Ideas in Motion in Baghdad and Beyond: Philosophical and Theological Exchanges Between Christians and Muslims in the Third/Ninth and Fourth/Tenth Centuries, edited by Damien Janos, 312–433. Leiden: Brill, 2016.

Twetten, David. “Whose Prime Mover Is More (un)Aristotelian: Broadie’s, Berti’s or Averroes’?” In La philosophie arabe à l’étude: Sens, limites et défis d’une discipline moderne, edited by Jean-Baptiste Brenet and Olga L. Lizzini, 347–92. Paris: Vrin, 2019.

54. Weidemann, Hermann. 1996. "Alexander of Aphrodisias, Cicero, and Aristotle's Definition of Possibility." In Studies on the History of Logic: Proceedings of the III. Symposium on the History of Logic, edited by Angelelli, Ignacio and Cerezo, María, 33-41. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"My strategy in this paper is as follows: First I shall examine what may be called Aristotle's definition of possibility. Then I shall explain the use that Alexander of Aphrodisias makes of this definition in an interesting argument of his. And finally I shall try to show that the soundness of this argument depends on a conception of truth that is tacitly presupposed by Aristotle and strongly rejected by Cicero. Some glimpses beyond will round off the picture." (p. 33)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliographie annotée des études en français sur Alexandre d'Aphrodise: A - Guy

Bibliographie

1. "Alexandre d'Aphrodise: Commentateur d'Aristote et philosophe." 2008. Les Études philosophiques no. 86:281-414.

Table des matières: Marwan Rashed: Présentation: Alexandre d'Aphrodise: de l'eidocentrisme comme actualisation d'un aristotélisme possible 281; Robert W. Sharples: L'accident di déterminism: Alexandre d'Aphrodise dans son contexte historique 285; David Lefebvre: Le commentaire d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise à Métaphysique, A, 9, 990 a 34 - b 8: Sur le nombre et l'objet des idées 305; Gweltaz Guyomarc’h: Le visage du divin: La forme pure selon Alexandre d'Aphrodise 323; Annick Jaulin: Remarques sur la construction de la nature dans les § 2-6 du De fato d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise 343; Valérie Cordonnier: Corps, matière et contact. La cohérence du sensible selon Alexandre d'Aphrodise 353; Riccardo Chiaradonna: Hylemorphisme et causalité des intelligibles. Plotin et Alexandre d'Aphrodise 379; Laurent Lavaud: Matière et privation chez Alexandre d'Aphrodise et Plotin 399-414.

2. Annick, Jaulin. 2017. "L’être et l’un selon le commentaire d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise à Γ 2." In Alexandre d’Aphrodise et la métaphysique aristotélicienne, edited by Balansard, Anne and Jaulin, Annick, 131-155. Leuven-la-Neuve: Peeters.

3. Balansard, Anne, and Jaulin, Annick, eds. 2017. Alexandre d’Aphrodise et la métaphysique aristotélicienne. Leuven-la-Neuve: Peeters.

Table des matières: Présentation 1; Lists des abréviations 5; Silvia Fazzo: Alexandre d'Aphrodise comme témoin du texte de la Métaphysique d'Aristote 9; Claire Louguet: Les Préocratiques dan le commentaire

d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise à la Métaphysique d'Aristote: un essai de typologie 25; Gweltaz Guyomarc'h: Métaphysique et Organon selon Alexandre d'Aphrodise: l'utilité de la logique pour la philosophie première 83; Michel Crubellier: Alexandre sur le statut du principe de contradiction 113; Annick Jaulin: L'être et l'un selon le commentaire d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise à Γ 131; Riccardo Chiaradonna: Catégories et métaphysique chez Alexandre d'Aphrodise: l'exégèse de Catégories 5 157; Marwan Rashed: Alexandre d'Aphrodise sur la «chose» (πράγμα) et le «quelque chose» ((πράγμα τι) 181; Pantelis Golitsis: Alexandre d'Aphrodise, Simplicius, et la cause efficiente de l'univers 217; Cristina Cerami: Changer pour rester le même: forme, δύναμις et ἕξις chez Alexandre d'Aphrodise 237; Index locorum 281; Index des auteur anciens 285; index des auteurs modernes 287.

4. Bazán, Bernardo Carlos. 1973. "L'authenticité du « De intellectu » attribué à Alexandre d'Aphrodise." Revue Philosophique de Louvain. no. 71:468-487.

Résumé : "En confrontant le De anima d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise et le De intellectu que la tradition scolastique lui a attribué, M. Paul Moraux a cru pouvoir mettre en évidence de telles divergences doctrinales entre ces deux traités qu'elles laisseraient supposer deux auteurs différents. La présente étude, reprenant la comparaison de près, remarque non une opposition mais une évolution qui, loin d'exclure l'identité d'auteur, la suggère au contraire fortement."

Abstract: "In comparing the De Anima of Alexander of Aphrodisias and the De Intellectu which scholastic tradition attributed to him, M. Paul Moraux believed that he was able to bring to light such doctrinal divergencies between these two treatises as to lead one to believe in a difference of authorship. This study, which closely reexamines the comparison, observes not an opposition, but an evolution which, far from excluding an identity of authorship, on the contrary strongly suggests it."

5. Bertier, Janine. 1978. "Une hénadologie liée au stoïcisme tardif dans le commentaire d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise à la Métaphysique d'Aristote (990 B 9)." In Les Stoïciens et leur logique. Actes du colloque de Chantilly, 18-22 sept. 1976, edited by Brunschwig, Jacques, 41-57. Paris: Vrin.

Abstract: "In the passage offered for analysis (Met. 990 b 9 = 123.19-125.2) Alexander sets out the practise and the principles of ekthesis, i.e. the method by which the Platonists believed they were able to demonstrate that the One is the most fundamental essence. The doctrine which Alexander sets forth does not attribute any essentially formal function to the One; the function of the One in this theory is ontological, and consists in the production of beings, and in maintaining the durability of their nature. The idea of the One that comes into play in this passage is thus not so much that of an indivisible minimum of quantity it is closer to the idea of a tie, of a force of unification. This activity of the One is reproduced by the Ideas, which, each within their own field, pass on to others the unifying force which they have received from the One. It is for this reason that the Ideas are called henads. There follows a study of this word in l'lato (Phil. 15a) and in the Neoplatonic commentators writing on Plato, namely I'roclus and Damascius. The commentators distinguish henad, as the unity of the Idea in its relation to whatever entity may depend upon the Idea, and monad, as the unity of the Idea in the relation which the Idea itself has to the One.

There are differences between this doctrine and that recorded by Pseudo-Alexander (813.24-9) in his commentary on Met. N 3, 1090 a 17 ff. The theory recorded in Pseudo-Alexander is concerned to bring out and to highlight the • depossession » which any sensible particular must manifest in virtue of having its nature fixed in the way it is as a result of participation in an intelligible. The argument given in this text to justify the non-identity that obtains between terms attributed in common and the beings to which these terms are attributed is not far removed from that which is given in texts of Plotinus (VI, 6, 5, 29 ff; ibid., 13, 2 ff) and of Sextus (Adv. math. IV, 21-32, X, 248-309, Hyp. pyrrh. Ill, 150-167). The theory presented by the genuine Alexander does not distinguish so sharply between what is intelligible and what is sensible, and is in general closer to Porphyry’s « tree » (Isag. IV 21), and notably to Seneca, Epist. 58, 8-22; the three passages have in common, alongside certain differences of detail, the general notion of the genus as a tie and of an opposition between the flux of movement spread through the universe and the stabilising grasp of the One. "

6. Bonelli, Maddalena. 2009. "Dialectique et philosophie première: Syrianus et Alexandre d’Aphrodise." In Syrianus et la métaphysique de l’antiquité tardive, edited by Longo, Angela, 423-438. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

"Dans cet article je me propose d'analyser un passage du commentaire de Syrianus sur le livre Γ de la Métaphysique d'Aristote, en le comparant à un passage parallèle du commentaire d'Alexandre d' Aphrodise sur le même livre(1).

Trois raisons rendent le passage de Syrianus extrêmement intéressant. Tout d'abord, on trouve là un essai de la méthode du commentaire "spéculatif" de Syrianus, qui ne se limite pas à donner une explication littérale du texte d'Aristote (ce qui est le cas pour Alexandre), mais qui juge et parfois utilise, comme c'est le cas ici, des doctrines aristotéliciennes pour ses propres buts théoriques. Deuxièmement, ce passage se trouve dans une partie du commentaire particulièrement importante pour l'histoire de la métaphysique ancienne tardive, parce que Syrianus, en accord substantiel avec la description de la science de l'étant en tant qu'étant donnée par Aristote, opère une sorte de fusion entre la dialectique platonicienne et la science philosophique aristotélicienne, fusion qui connaîtra une certaine réussite et qui sera développee par son élève Proclus. Enfin, dans ce passage on peut voir ce qu'on commence à reconnaître seulement maintenant, à savoir que parfois l' aristotélisme que Syrianus accepte et élabore n'est pas l' aristotélisme d'Aristote, mais celui, en partie modifié, d'Alexandre d' Aphrodise.

Je vais donc ici présenter le passage de Syrianus, en le comparant à celui d'Alexandre d' Aphrodise et en le commentant en détail. Le but est de mettre en relief le mélange d' éléments platoniciens et aristotéliciens élaboré par Syrianus, ainsi que l'influence d'Alexandre dans son élaboration de la métaphysique platonico-aristotélicienne.

Alexandre et Syrianus sur Aristot. Metaph. r 1003 a 21-25" (pp. 423-424, notes omises)

7. ———. 2009. "Alexandre d’Aphrodise et la cause matérielle." Journal of Ancient Philosophy (Brésil) no. 3:1-17.

Abstract: "This paper considers the conception of material cause according to Alexander of Aphrodisias. I defend the view that Alexander tries to conciliate two conceptions of material cause which are often confused in Aristotle: the concept of material cause as conditio sine qua non and the concept of material cause as a genuine cause (as 'because', dia ti). In his De fato and in his commentary on chapters 2 and 24 of book Delta of Aristotle's Metaphysics, Alexander analyses the three Aristotelian elements of material cause, namely (1) the ex hou (the 'out of which'), (2) the enuparchon (internal constituent) and (3) the hupokeimenon (substratum), and confirms the Aristotelian conception of material cause as the condition of becoming and existence of items. But explaining that material cause seems to be rather a conditio sine qua non, in his commentary on book Beta of Metaphysics Alexander explains also that, for this reason, it is less a cause than the other Aristotelian causes."

8. ———. 2012. "Alexandre d'Aphrodise et la philosophie première." In Physique et Métaphysique chez Aristote, edited by Bonelli, Maddalena, 259-275. Paris: Vrin.

"Alexandre d' Aphrodise traite de la philosophie première dans son commentaire à la Métaphysique d'Aristote.

Son intention est de montrer que « philosophie pi:emière » n'est qu'une des •dénominations d'une seule science ou discipline, qui est désignée aussi par Aristote sous d'autres noms: σοφία, σοφία, πρώτη, science de l'étant en tant qu'étant, théologie. La science est unique parce que son objet est unifié(2) Alexandre en effet, s'efforce ici et là de montrer que les sujets « métaphysiques » de la Métaphysique, apparemment disparates, (les causes et les principes premiers; l'étant en tant qu'étant; la substance;_les étants divins) sont unifiés de fait. Mais Alexandre se montre partois conscient ·du fait que cette unité est problématique, et, dans un cas au moins, terriblerrient difficile," (p. 259, deux notea omises)

(...)

"Lei passages importants pour essayer de déterminer ce qu'Alexandre entend par « philosophie première » sont au nombre de deux. Ces deux passages semblent être en conflit: en effet, le premier (Alex., in Metaph., p. 245, 33-246, 13) présente deux philosophies premières, avec deux sens de« premier»; en revanche, le _deuxième (Alex., in Metaph., p. 266, 2-14) établit de façon orthodoxe (à savoir, selon la solution suggerée par Aristote en Métaph., E, 1) qu'après tout il y en a seulement une et un seul sens de« premier·». Dans les deux cas, c'est Aristote le responsable: les analyses cl' Alexandre sont toujours déterminées par la nécessité d 'expliquer des passages d'Aristote, et dans notre cas, de la Métaphysique." (p. 260)

(2) Sur cette unité, voir P.-L. Donini, « Unità e oggetto della metafisica secondo Alessandro di Afrodisia », in G. Movia (a cura di), Alessandro di Afrodisia e la « Metafisica » di Aristotele, Milano, Vita e Pensiero, 2003, p. 15-19 (traduction française in M. Narcy et A. Tordesillas (éd.), La « Métaphysique » d'Aristote: Perspectives contemporaines, Paris, Vrin et Bruxelles, Ousia, 2005, p. 81-98). L’article de Donini représente à ma connaissance l’étude la plus exhaustive d’une liste, assez maigre, d’études consacrées au concept de métaphysique dans le commentaire à la Métaphysique d'Alexandre. Cette liste comprend: P. Merlan, «Metaphysik: Name und Gegestand», Journal of Hellenic Studies, 77 (1957), p. 87-92; C. De Vogel, « La méthode d’Arislote en métaphysique d’après Métaphysique A 1-2», in Aristote et les problèmes de mèlhode. Communications présentées au Symposium Aristotelicum tenu à Louvain du 24 au 1 septembre 1960, Louvain-Paris, Publications universitaires, 1961, p. 147-70, C. Genequand, « L’objet de la Métaphysique selon Alexandre d’Aphrodise », Museum Helveticum, 36 (1979), p. 48-57; G. Verbeke, «Aristotle’s Metaphysics viewed by the Ancient Greek Commentators», in D.J. O’Meara (ed.), Studies in Aristotle, Washington D.C., Catholic University of America Press, 1981, p. 107-127; M. Bonelli, « Le caratteristiche della scienza filosofica », in M. Bonelli, op. cit. [Alessandro di Afrodisia e la metafisica come scienza dimostrativa, Napoli, Bibliopolis, 2001], p. 199-235 Voir aussi G. Movia, Introduzione, in G. Movia (ed.), Alessandro di Afrodisia, Commentario alia Metafisica di Aristotele, Milano, Bompiani, 2007, spécialement p. lix-lxxvi.

9. ———. 2013. "Alexandre d’Aphrodise : les causes κατὰ τὸ εἶδος." In Aitia. I. Les quatre causes d’Aristote : origines et interprétations, edited by Viano, Cristina and Natali, Carlo, 209-220. Leuven: Peeters.

10. ———. 2013. "Alexandre d’Aphrodise et le destin comme cause productrice." In Fate, Chance, and Fortune in Ancient Thought, edited by Guadalupe Masi, Francesca and Maso, Stefano, 83-101. Amsterdam: Hakkert.

Abstract: "This paper considers the theory of fate to be found in Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On fate.Against the opposing theory, which may be regarded as Stoic, and using Aristotelian ‘materials’, Alexander constructs a theory that identifies fate with nature. In this way, he saves human freedom on two fronts: on one hand, because in nature everything happens only “for the most part”; on the other, because in nature so conceived, and hence as regards fate, there is room for “counter-nature” and for “counter-fate”, and, so, for human responsibility."

11. ———. 2015. "Alexandre d'Aphrodise et la cause ποιητική." In Aitia II avec ou sans Aristote. Le débat sur les causes à l’âge hellénistique et impérial, edited by Natali, Carlo and Viano, Cristina, 119-135. Leuven: Peeters.

"Pour comprendre la position alexandriste sur n’importe quelle théorie philosophique, il faut toujours considérer le double rôle qu’Alexandre a eu par rapport à Aristote, ainsi que ses écrits, qui en sont la conséquence : (i) les commentaires aux ouvrages aristotéliciens, où Alexandre, en commentateur, s’arrête à éclaircir les affirmations d’Aristote, souvent difficiles à comprendre, en introduisant parfois de véritables virtuosismi exégétiques, non dépourvus d’originalité (exégèse philosophique) ; (ii) les oevres ainsi dites ‘personnels’ (mais qui de fait sont foncièrement influencées par Aristote), où Alexandre, en philosophe, utilise les théories d’Aristote pour ses propres buts philosophiques (philosophie exégétique).

Ainsi, pour analyser la théorie alexandriste de la cause ποιητική, il faudra d’abord considérer son commentaire sur la Métaphysique, étant donné que celui sur la Physique, où on aurait peut-être pu trouver plus de matériel, est perdu. Ensuite, on considérera brièvement les ouvrages ‘personnels’, car Alexandre utilise la théorie des quatre causes d’Aristote tantôt pour présenter sa théorie du destin, tantôt pour parler de l’âme et des objets divins. En particulier, c’est au De fato qu’on s’adressera, car ici Alexandre présente la célèbre théorie du destin comme cause ποιητική." (p. 119, notes omises)

12. ———. 2019. "Alexandre d’Aphrodise et les présocratiques. Les amis et les disciples. Mélanges offerts à Francis Wolff, édités par Julie Giovacchini & Juliette Lemaire." Journal of Ancient Philosophy (Brésil) no. Supplementary volume 1:3-25.

"L’importance de la considération d’Alexandre pour les présocratiques réside dans le fait qu’il a été un point de repère insigne pour tous les commentateurs d’Aristote successifs, et notamment pour Simplicius ??Ie après J.-C. qui, lui, est l’une des sources les plus importantes pour la reconstruction des doctrines présocratiques. L’on retrouve des références aux présocratiques dans plusieurs textes d’Alexandre (notamment dans les commentaires des textes d’Aristote, par exemple dans les commentaires des livres Alpha et Gamma de la Métaphysique, du De sensu, des Meteorologica et des Topiques), mais pour une raison que j’expliquerai, je me contenterai de son commentaire du livre Alpha de la Métaphysique." (p. 3)

13. ———. 2022. "Alexandre d’Aphrodise et l’existence des intermédiaires." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 40:113-135.

Résumé : "Dans le commentaire d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise sur la Métaphysique d’Aristote, nous trouvons plusieurs passages concernant « les intermédiaires » (τὰ μεταξύ). Dans cet article, j’en considérerai quelques-uns, tirés des commentaires sur les livres Alpha (6, 987b14-18) et Beta (2, 997a34-b3 ; 997b25-28 ; 998a7-9), car dans ces passages on ne trouve pas une simple paraphrase de ce qu’Aristote dit (comme c’est fréquent chez Alexandre), mais une prise de position qui me semble fort originale. À partir de cette analyse, nous trouverons une confirmation de ce que l’on dit souvent, à savoir qu’Alexandre ne s’intéresse pas aux philosophes (passés et contemporains) en tant que tels, mais seulement en tant qu’objets de considération, souvent polémique, d’Aristote et des aristotéliciens « purs et durs » comme lui. On trouvera aussi une autre confirmation, à savoir qu’Alexandre essaye toujours et à tout prix d’expliquer systématiquement Aristote, même lorsque les thèses aristotéliciennes ne paraissent pas cohérentes ou bien harmonisées entre elles. D’ailleurs, il faudra constater aussi que les passages du commentaire d’Alexandre que l’on analysera ont le mérite de souligner et d’expliquer clairement les difficultés sérieuses que nous rencontrons lorsque nous réfléchissons sur les μεταξύ des Platoniciens : la difficulté de concevoir leur rapport avec la réalité sensible si on les considère comme les objets de certaines sciences mathématiques ; la difficulté de considérer leur existence si on les conçoit comme des objets immanents au réel."

14. Brenet, Jean-Baptiste. 2015. "Alexandre d'Aphrodise ou le matérialiste malgré lui. La question de l’engendrement de I’intellect revue et corrigée par Averroés." In Averroes's Natural Philosophy and Its Reception in the Latin West edited by Bakker, Paul J. J. M., 37-67. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

15. Cerami, Cristina. 2017. "Changer pour rester le même: forme, δύναμις et ἕξις chez Alexandre d’Aphrodise." In Alexandre d’Aphrodise et la métaphysique aristotélicienne, edited by Balansard, Anne and Jaulin, Annick, 237-280. Leuven-la-Neuve: Peeters.

16. Chiaradonna, Riccardo. 2008. "Hylemorphisme et causalité des intelligibles: Plotin et Alexandre d'Aphrodise." Les Études philosophiques:379-397.

"Dans la présente étude, je me propose d’aborder un nombre limité de parallèles entre Alexandre et Plotin ; je voudrais montrer que l’existence de ces parallèles ne doit pas conduire à trouver du platonisme chez Alexandre ou de l’aristotélisme chez Plotin, mais à mettre en valeur les analogies et les différences qui subsistent entre la version de l’aristotélisme développée par Alexandre et la version du platonisme développée par Plotin." (p. 380)

17. ———. 2017. "Catégories et métaphysique chez Alexandre d’Aphrodise: l’exégèse de Catégories 5." In Alexandre d'Aphrodise et la métaphysique aaristotélicienne, edited by Balansard, Anne and Jaulin, Annick, 157-179. Leuven: Peeters.

"Cette contribution vise à reconstruire la lecture de Cat. 5 par Alexandre d’Aphrodise dans le cadre de l’exégèse qu’Alexandre propose de ce traité. Comme nous le verrons, Alexandre semble réagir à une lecture plus ancienne des Catégories, une lecture de type particulariste ou extensionnelle, qui fut probablement développée par Boéthos de Sidon(1). On peut montrer que l’interprétation d’Alexandre conserve certains aspects de l’exégèse de Boéthos et notamment la lecture sémantique du traité (c’est ce qu’on voit dans la doctrine du σκοπός). Cependant, Alexandre introduit des corrections qui visent à intégrer, contre Boéthos, l’ontologie des Catégories et celle de la Métaphysique, ainsi qu’à répondre aux problèmes posés par l’interprétation de Boéthos (mais aussi, peut-être, aux apories du platonicien Nicostrate). C’est cette démarche générale qui explique l’interprétation essentialiste ou intensionnelle du traité que développe Alexandre. La discussion de ce dossier n’est pas facile, car les textes sont assez peu nombreux et, comme on va le voir, les commentateurs néoplatoniciens ont parfois tendance à superposer les positions de Boéthos et d’Alexandre sans reconnaître leurs différences."

(1) Les conclusions de mon analyse se rattachent à celles des recherches conduites par Rashed 2007.

References

Rashed, Marwan, Essentialisme. Alexandre d’Aphrodise entre logique, physique et cosmologie, Berlin – New York, De Gruyter, «Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca et Byzantina», 2007.

18. Coda, Elisa. 2015. "Un fragment du commentaire perdu au « De Caelo » d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise sur les différents sens des termes « engendré » et « inengendré » (Thémistius, In De Caelo, p. 43.3-44.17 Landauer)." Studia greco-arabica no. 5:13-26.

"Abstract: "Well before Philoponus’ attack against eternalism and Simplicius’ response, taking the form of a colossal commentary on Aristotle’s De Caelo, another thinker, the 4th century rhetorician and philosopher Themistius, had embarked upon a running exegesis of the this Aristotelian work. Themistius still had at his disposal the commentary on the De Caelo penned by Alexander of Aphrodisias, lost to us. Notwithstanding its importance, Themistius’ paraphrase of the De Caelo is poorly known: the Greek text is lost; a medieval Hebrew translation made on the basis of a lost Arabic one survives, together with a Latin translation of the Hebrew text, made during the Renaissance. From this unpromising material it is however possible to unravel important issues. This article deals with Themistius’ and Alexander’s exegeses of the meaning of the key terms “generated” and “ungenerated” and argues that Themistius attests the classification made by Alexander, but in his own exegesis endorses the typical Neoplatonic distinction between “generated” as “temporally generated”, on the one hand, and “generated” as “having a cause of its coming into being”, on the other."

19. Cordonnier, Valérie. 2008. "Corps, matière et contact. La cohérence du sensible selon Alexandre d'Aphrodise." Les Études philosophiques:353-378.

Résumé : "Cet article étudie la manière dont Alexandre analyse le monde sensible, en ses structures constitutives et quant aux principes tenus pour être a l'origine ses operations fondamentales que sont l'alteration et le mélange. En premier lieu, il s'agit de voir quels sont les critères pour qu'un etant soit un "corps". Ensuite, je montre les facteurs mobilisés par Alexandre pour expliquer les caractèristiques de ces corps, leur activité et leur passivité reciproques. Prenant pour point de départ la définition du corps pretée dans le De anima aux stoïciens comme matière ou composé materiel, j'essaie de dégager, pour le projet d'Alexandre lui même, le sens de cette étrange reconstruction doxographique. Celui-ci tiendrait a l'orientation résolument "anti-materialiste" et "anti-reductionniste" de son analyse du sensible : pour lui, ni la constitution ni l'operation des corps ne peuvent etre ramenées a leurs conditions nécessaires que sont, respectivement, la matière et le contact physique. A l'exact opposé de la physique stoïcienne, l'aristotelicien developpe ainsi sa théorie du sensible en référence aux principes intelligibles et incorporels donnant les veritables fondements a la cohérence du monde corporel, entendue au double sens de la polarité et de la selectivite reglant les relations entre corps. Pour finir, j'étudie un problème particulier de cosmologie ou Alexandre met en application ce programme. Je montre alors l'originalité d'un "naturalisme" qui, de fait, s'est averé stimulant pour les néoplatoniciens des Plotin autant qu'ensuite pour les Médiévaux en quête d'une philosophie satisfaisant aux exigences implicitement posées a l'enquête rationnelle par les religions revelées. Et ce serait, en somme, parce que les corps d'Alexandre sont dejà plus que des corps et parce que la physis aristotélicienne devient avec lui plus qu'une pure "nature", que sa physique a pu devenir la rference obligée des penseurs ulterieurs, a qui elle a fourni le cadre de ce qu'on pourrait appeler une approche métaphysique du monde sensible."

Abstract: "This paper addresses Alexander's theory of the sensible world, and of the most important sorts of change within it, such as alteration and blending. First, I overview the minimal requirements for an item to be considered a "body" according to Alexander. Then, I determine which factors explain the physical characteristics of the bodies and their mutual interactions (that is, their rela tions of activity and passivity with one another). I also examine why Alexander does not find the Stoic account of material bodies to be satisfactory and, I consider Alexander's strange construal of the Stoic body as a "stuff" composed either of matter, or of matter and qualities. The solution to these questions lies in the !anti-materialist" and "anti-reductionist" orientation of Alexander's physics : according to him, neither the constitution nor operation of bodies can be reduced to their minimal and necessary conditions (that are, respectively, matter and contact). Thus, his position is the exact opposite of the Stoic view: the essence of bodies and their changes can only be understood by reference to the incorporeal and intelligible principles that ultimately form the very factors responsible for the specific "coherence" of the sensible world (that is, of both its polarity and selectivity). Finally, I will examine a specific problem Alexander solves by emphasizing the non-corporeal causes of the natural world. And I will show that his position leads him to a special type of "naturalism", which was particularly exciting for the Neoplatonists and, later, highly consonant with the medieval approaches to accounting for the causes of sensible things. Because bodies are, for Alexander, more than mere bodies, his physics becomes not only the common point of reference for Plotinus and his followers in Late Antiquity and Middle Ages, but also an important point of departure for what we might call a metaphysical approach to the sensible world."

20. Crubellier, Michel. 2017. "Alexandre sur le statut du principe de contradiction." In Alexandre d’Aphrodise et la métaphysique aristotélicienne, edited by Balansard, Anne and Jaulin, Annick, 113-130. Leuven-la-Neuve: Peeters.

21. Dalimier, Catherine. 1998. "La saisie des principes physiques chez Aristote. Simplicius contre Alexandre d’Aphrodise." Oriens-Occidens no. 2:77-94.

22. Donini, Pierluigi. 2005. "L’objet de la métaphysique selon Alexandre d’Aphrodise." In La « Métaphysique » d'Aristote : perspectives contemporaines : première rencontre aristotélicienne (Aix-en-Provence, 21-24 octobre 1999), edited by Narcy, Michel and Tordesillas, Alonso, 81-98. Bruxerlles: Ousia.

Repris dans P. Donini, Commentary and Tradition: Aristotelianism, Platonism, and Post-Hellenistic Philosophy, Berlin: Walte de Gruyter 2011, pp. 107-123.

Abstract: "To our knowledge Alexander was the first who attempted to reconcile Aristotle’s (apparently conflicting) views regarding the object of that science which Alexander now and there already dubs “metaphysics”. For much of his commentary, in fact, Alexander acknowledges that the universal science of being qua being is identical to the science of first substances that are unchangeable, unmoved, and divine, i.e. that science which in Metaph. E 1 Aristotle once even dubbed “theology”. But this unified conception of Aristotle’s “first philosophy” is strangely marred in Alexander’s commentary by a few pages (pp. 245-246 H. [Hayduck]), where a wholly different situation arises. In his effort to account for a text of Metaph. Γ 2 that differs from the one found in manuscripts and in modern critical editions, Alexander suggests that two different levels of first philosophy should be distinguished, even though he applies the same designation to both levels: 1) the first and most universal level of first philosophy as a general science of being qua being, where being is regarded as a genre. This level of first philosophy is responsible for the partition of being into ten categories and for their distinction. In addition to that 2) a second-level science would address each of the individual species of being (i.e. each category) that is conceived of as a species subject to the most universal science. Amid these special sciences of being, however, abides yet another “first philosophy” (“first” but subordinated to the other) operating at a second and thus lower degree of universality, namely, the science of first substance (the immovable and immaterial substance of the divine). Since all other substances are subordinated to the first substance, in accordance with the Aristotelian principle of αφ' ἐνός και πρὸς ἓν, this science also deals with all the other substances and any properties belonging to them. The idea of a two-level first philosophy takes up limited space in the commentary and would not necessarily be contradictory in itself if only Alexander had squarely associated the general science of being qua being with just one of the two distinct levels. As this is not the case and both “first” philosophies are identified with the science of being qua being, the outcome is a confused and inherently inconsistent presentation. But more problems lie ahead in pp. 245-246: the biggest is that among the special sciences of being we find practical philosophy, whose object is hard to bring into line with or condense into any one (and if so, which?) of the ten categories. Moreover, the suggestion by those modern scholars, who would liken Alexander’s distinction between the two levels of first philosophy with the later distinction between general metaphysics and special metaphysics, appears somewhat flawed. In any case, identifying the doctrine of categories as the content of the more universal science of being almost seems typical of an age in which this doctrine was attacked or defended as if it were considered the mainstay and the cornerstone itself of Aristotelian philosophy."

23. Dufour, Richard. 2004. "Comment se produit l'écho selon Alexandre d'Aphrodise (De l'âme 47.25-48.21)." Dionysius no. 22:9-28.

24. Duhot, Jean-Joĕl. 1989. La conception stoïcienne de la causalité. Paris: Vrin.

Les causes dans le De Fato d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise, pp. 236-240.

25. Fazzo, Silvia. 1997. "L'Alexandre arabe et la génération à partir du néant." In Perspectives arabes et médiévales sur la tradition scientifique et philosophique grecque, edited by Hasnawi, Ahmad, Elamrani-Jamal, Abdelali and Aouad, Maroun 277-287. Leuven: Peeters.

"Le problème de la création ou génération ex nihilo, dont je vais m'occuper, est un bon exemple, me semble-t-il, des raisons qui peuvent rendre souhaitable une nouvelle évaluation de l 'Alexandre Arabe dans son ensemble.

Nous pouvons partir d'un témoignage de Miskawayh (mort en 1030). Dans son al-Fawz al-a~gar ( «Le moindre triomphe»), Miskawayh parle de la création, par Dieu, du monde à partir du néant, et cite une série d'arguments contre l'opinion, dit-il, de Galien et de certains philosophes, «que tout s 'engendre toujours à partir de quelque chose». À ce propos, Miskawayh cite un traité qu'Alexandre aurait écrit, pour réfuter justement la théorie que «tout s 'engendre toujours à partir de quelque chose», et prouver que «les choses contingentes qui viennent à être ne s'engendrent d'aucune autre chose»," (pp. 277-278, une note omise)

26. ———. 2002. "Alexandre d'Aphrodise contre Galien: La naissance d'une légende." Philosophie Antique no. 2:109-144.

Résumé : "Un certain nombre de sources arabes font état d'une polémique entre Alexandre et Galien. Une tendance marquée de la recherche a été de lire nos sources grecques, relativement peu nombreuses, à la lumière de cette tradition.

L'objectif de cet article est de contester le bien-fondé d'une telle orientation, et de dégager en même temps le statut spécifique de ce genre de récit biographique."

Summary: "Some Arabie sources report a polemic between Alexander of Aphrodisia and Galen. A marked tendency amongst schofars has been to read our Greek sources, which are relatively few, in the light of this tradition. The aim of this article is to question the basis of this orientation, and at the same time to bring out the specific status of this kind of biographical account."

27. ———. 2003. "Alexandros d'Aphrodisias." In Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, Supplément, edited by Goulet, Richard, 61-70. Paris: Éditions du CNRS.

"Supplément à la notice de R. Goulet et M. Aouad, dans DPhA, vol. I, Paris 1989, p. 125-139. Cette mise à jour n'entend pas répertorier tous les travaux consacrés à Alexandre depuis 1989, mais se concentre sur l'identification, la tradition textuelle et la traduction des traités et des fragments grecs ou arabes tranmsis sous le nom d' Alexandre. Les références ont été numérotées en prolongements des 107 numéros de la notice de 1989." (p. 61)

28. ———. 2008. "L’exégèse du livre Lambda de la Métaphysique d’Aristote dans le De principiis et dans la Quaestio I.1 d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise." Laval théologique et philosophique no. 64:607-626.

Résumé : "Le commentaire continu d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise sur le livre Lambda de la Métaphysique d’Aristote était déjà perdu au XIIe siècle. Néanmoins, il exerçait toujours une influence par l’entremise du commentaire d’Averroès et de deux autres textes d’Alexandre : le traité Sur les principes de l’univers et la Quaestio I.1. Le présent article montre que ces deux derniers textes renferment chacun une section qui s’appuie sur Métaphysique Lambda, chapitres 6 et suiv., ce qui confirme le fait, ayant été établi ailleurs, que tous les textes d’Alexandre revêtent un caractère exégétique et prennent pour base les textes d’Aristote. Qui plus est, une comparaison entre le texte du chapitre Lambda et l’interprétation alexandriste permet d’apercevoir l’apport distinctif d’Alexandre à ce que la tradition a reçu comme la théologie d’Aristote.

Entre autres choses, nous devons à Alexandre, ou à ses sources proches, l’idée que les cieux, étant animés, se meuvent en cercle parce qu’ils désirent imiter la parfaite quiétude du Premier Moteur. Nous devons également à Alexandre une mise en rapport détaillée de la théorie du livre Lambda avec les analyses du chapitre 8 de la Physique."

29. ———. 2017. "Alexandre d’Aphrodise comme témoin du texte de la Métaphysique d’Aristote." In Alexandre d’Aphrodise et la métaphysique aristotélicienne, edited by Balansard, Anne and Jaulin, Annick, 9-23. Leuven-la-Neuve: Peeters.

30. ———. 2017-2018. "Le manuscrit Laurentianus 87.12 comme le témoin le plus ancien du Commentaire d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise à la Métaphysique d’Aristote." χώρα. Revue d'Etudes anciennes eet médiévales no. 15-16:675-704.

Sommaire : "Prolegomena pour une nouvelle modalité critique d’édition et de référence concernant le témoignage d’Alexandre sur le texte de la Métaphysique dAaristote. méthode et cas d’étude : ‘Alexandre’ et le ‘téléphone sans fil’ des apparats critiques in Métaphysique 1072b2-3. Quel ‘Commentaire’ d’Alexandre ? Un texte à ré-établir. Les éditions du Commentaire d’Alexandre au XIXe siècle (1836, 1847, 1891) : le rôle du manuscrit Monacensis gr. 81, a. 1550 env. (sigle M). L’édition Hayduck 1888 du Commentaire d’Asclépius comme étude de cas parallèle et comme source supplémentaire. Le Commentaire d’Alexandre selon la recensio laurentiana (AlL). L’indépendance des deux recensiones comme dilemme.

La tradition indirecte de la tradition indirecte de la Métaphysique : le commentaire d’Asclépius. L’analyse des parties communes entre Asclépius et la recensio laurentiana sur Δ29 : un cas particulier. Les arguments de Hayduck 1891 pour l’athétèse du texte du Laurentianus. L’argument de Hayduck 1891 sur la recensio laurentiana in Arist. 985a18-20 et ses développements récents : la suppression des mots d’Aristote concernant la fonction du νοῦς chez Anaxagore. La nouvelle athétèse de la recensio laurentiana : arguments pro et contra. Discussions de nos jours sur l’édition d’Alexandre : l’hypothèse du Paris. 1878 comme branche β.

Tradition d’exégèse, souci de légitimation, perte d’information, normalisation du langage. L’hypertexte possible et autres perspectives."

31. ———. 2018. "Le récit ancien sur l'assemblage de la Métaphysique d'Aristote : sa réception, ses implications, ses origines." Aevum. Rassegna di Scienze Storiche, Linguistiche e Filologiche no. 92:163-177.

Summary: "This paper deals with the most ancient tale about the way and the time Aristotle’s Metaphysics was composed. This is found at the beginning of Asclepius’ commentary in Metaphysicam (4.4-16 Hayduck). If we consider the general context which the tale seems to presuppose, its interest is twofold: it witnesses for a time when the Metaphysics could still be regarded as an unfinished work. In this paper, after some remarks on the reception and the textual constitution of the text, I suggest that Asclepius’ source could be Alexander of Aphrodisias in his lost introduction to Aristotle’s Metaphysics. If so, Alexander could have still been in condition to apologize for some lately made changes in the overall shape of the work."

32. Finnegan, J. 1956-1957. "Al-Farabi et le Περι νοῦ d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise." In Mélanges Louis Massignon, 133-152. Damas: Institut Francais De Damas.

33. Fiori, Emiliano. 2010. "L’épitomé syriaque du traité Sur les causes du tout d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise attribué à Serge de Resh‘ayna : édition et traduction." Le Muséon no. 123:127-158.

"Nous présentons ici l’édition critique qui manquait jusqu’à aujourd’hui d’un texte syriaque controversé, à savoir l’épitomé d’une oeuvre d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise. Cet écrit est pourtant attribué, dans le seul manuscrit qui le transmet, au médecin, prêtre et philosophe syrien Serge de Res‘ayna, qui vécut entre la fin du Ve siècle et 536. L’ouvrage d’Alexandre n’est pas conservé en grec, mais on en a une version arabe, qui diffère pourtant du texte syriaque." (p. 127, une note omise)

34. Gavray, Marc-Antoine. 2005. "Alexandre d'Aphrodise et autres interprétations." In Logique et ontologie : perspectives diachroniques et synchroniques : liber amicorum in honorem Huberti Hubiani, edited by Beets, François and Gavray, Marc-Antoine, 1-17. Liège: Éditions de l’Université de Liège.

35. Genequand, Charles. 1979. "L'objet de la métaphysique selon Alexandre d'Aphrodisias." Museum Helveticum no. 36:48-57.

"Le tait que la Métaphysique se préoccupé avant tout de l'être en général et seulement très brièvement du divin contribue à expliquer le destin ultérieur de l'ouvrage dans le monde grec tardif et au-delà. Ce qui retient l'attention, lorsque l'on jette un coup d'oeil sur l'ensemble des Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, c'est le petit nombre et la médiocrité de ceux consacrés à ce qui nous paraît être le plus important des traités d'Aristote. Asclépius et Syrianus cherchent surtout à néoplatoniser le Stagirite et à réfuter les critiques qu'il adresse à Platon. Quant au meilleur et au plus détaillé de ces commentaires, celui d'Alexandre, il est significatif qu'une grande partie (à partir du livre E) en ait disparu très tôt et ait dû être remplacée par le médiocre travail de Michel d'Ephèse(20). La raison de cet état de choses n'est guère difficile à découvrir. Entre Alexandre et les commentateurs des Ve et Vie siècles, il y a eu Plotin et Porphyre. Plotin établit définitivement au sommet de toute la philosophie et comme partie essentielle de celle-ci une métaphysique dérivée de Platon et ne s'occupant que du monde intelligible, dont le monde sensible n'est qu'un pâle reflet. Dans la mesure où les entités du monde intelligible de Plotin et de ses successeurs peuvent être considérées comme des dieux, on peut dire que pour eux la métaphysique se réduit à une théologie. Porphyre, lui, jeta les fondements du syllabus philosophique qui s'imposera à l'Antiquité tardive et à une bonne partie du Moyen-Age et dans lequel la logique et la physique sont tirées pour l'essentiel d'Aristote et la métaphysique de Platon. Pour une philosophie qui se réfugiait de plus en plus dans le ciel, la Métaphysique d'Aristote n'offrait qu'une assez maigre pâture. On se contenta de récupérer dans les chapitres 5 10 du livre A ce qui était utilisable dans le grand système du néoplatonisme.

Le caractère insatislaisant de la métaphysique aristotélicienne pour une philosophie ainsi orientée permet de rendre compte d'un autre phénomène surprenant. Le Moyen-Age arabe et, à travers lui, les scholastiques latins ont connu sous le nom de Théologie d'Aristote et de Liber de Causis, également attribué à Aristote, ce qui n'était en fait que des paraphrases assez libres des Ennéades de Plotin et des Eléments de Théologie de Proclus. Quels que soient les accidents mécaniques de transmission qui ont pu donner naissance à ces fausses attributions, il est évident que la situation qui résultait de celles-ci était profondément satisfaisante pour les esprits systématiques; elle permettait de faire passer sous l'autorité d'Aristote, qui était alors devenu le philosophe par excellence, un système philosophique complet tel que le concevait l'Antiquité tardive, c'est-à-dire dans lequel le monde intelligible était à la fois la cause de tout et la partie essentielle de la philosophie. Pour ces philosophes, la partie proprement ontologique de la Métaphysique sombra rapidement dans l'oubli. L'expression même d'être en tant qu'être disparaît pratiquement sans laisser de traces de la philosophie ultérieure, simplement parce qu'aucune notion n'y correspondait plus. Dans cette synthèse de l'aristotélisme et du platonisme, la contribution d'Aristote à la philosophie «première» se résume à un nom - métaphysique - et guère plus." (pp. 56-57, une note omise)

(20) C'est l'attribution qui a pour elle le plus de vraisemblance; cf. K. Praechter, Gött. Gel. Anz. 1906, 882, n. 1.

36. Giovacchini, Julie. 2017. "De elementis, 5, 14-16 : la tetrapharmakos et l’épistémologie galénique du mélange." Aitia. Regards sur la culture hellénistique au XXIe siècle no. 7:1-13.

Résumé : "On souhaite reconstituer les sources de la référence à la tetrapharmakos dans un passage du De elementis, afin d’élucider le statut exact de l’argument utilisé par Galien. Cette source est probablement stoïcienne mais on en trouve également des traces dans l’Anonyme de Londres. Manipulant les concepts stoïciens, Galien fait un usage épistémologique et non directement physique du paradigme du mélange fusionnel, que l’on distinguera en ce sens du mélange dit « total » utilisé quant à lui pour conceptualiser la théorie humorale que Galien souhaite défendre dans la suite du De elementis."

"Le De mixtione propose une synthèse très complète sur les différentes définitionsphysiques du mélange, et présente notamment les thèses stoïciennes comme desréponses (certes imparfaites aux yeux de l’auteur) aux impasses de l’atomisme, avant deles critiquer à leur tour, le texte d’Alexandre étant tout entier construit comme unecritique analytique de la thèse stoïcienne dite du « mélange total ». Le De mixtione est probablement légèrement postérieur au De elementis de Galien mais il en reste assez voisin chronologiquement. Il décrit en vérité l’opposition entre physique péripatéticienne et physique stoïcienne du mélange dans des termes très proches de ceux de Galien, se rapprochant comme lui très nettement de la conception aristotélicienne et rejetant la conception stoïcienne considérée comme contradictoire. On peut donc considérer qu’il représente une sorte d’état de l’art de la question du mélange physique à l’époque de rédaction du De elementis." (p. 5)

37. Golitsis, Pantelis. 2017. "Alexandre d'Aphrodise, Simplicius, et la cause efficiente de l'univers." In Alexandre d’Aphrodise et la métaphysique aristotélicienne, edited by Balansard, Anne and Jaulin, Annick, 217-235. Leuven-la-Neuve: Peeters.

38. Goulet, Richard, and Aouad, Maroun. 1989. "Alexandros d'Aphrodisias." In Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques, Tome I: d'Abam(m)on à Axiothea, edited by Goulet, Richard, 125-139. Paris: Éditions du CNRS.

"Philosophe déjà reconnu au tournant du II au III s., Alexandre a dû naître au début de la seconde moitié du IIe s. On considère qu'il était originaire d' Aphrodise de Carie, bien que d'autres cités, moins importantes, aient porté ce nom.

Alexandre dit avoir « écouté» Herminus (apud Simplicius, ln De caelo, p. 430, 32-33 Heiberg), disciple d' Aspasius (et maître de Galien, si l'on en croit des sources arabes : voir Thillet 1, p. IX n. 3 et XL VI n. 2), et il le cite à plusieurs reprises (références dans Thillet 1, p. VIII n. 3). Il présente également Sosigénès comme son maître (références dans Thillet 1, p. IX n. 4). On a pensé que son compatriote, le péripatéticien Adraste d' Aphrodise, avait pu lui enseigner, mais Thillet 1, p. XXXII, souligne qu'on ne dispose d'aucun témoignage positif en ce sens." (p. 126)

Références

Alexandre d'Aphrodise, Triaté du destin, Paris: Vrin 1984, texte établi et traduit par Pierre Thillet.

39. Gourinat, Jean-Baptiste. 2015. "La prudence et les vertues éthiques : le débat aristotélico-platonicien." In Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia: (« Questioni etiche » e « Mantissa »): metodo e oggetto dell’etica peripatetica, edited by Bonelli, Maddalena, 115-141. Napoli: Biblipolis.

40. Guyomarc'h, Gweltaz. 2008. "Le visage du divin : la forme pure selon Alexandre d'Aphrodise." Les Études philosophiques:323-241.

Résumé : "Dans son De anima, Alexandre d'Aphrodise identifie l'intellect agent au premier moteur et décrit cette "cause premiere" comme forme sans matière et separée. Cet article tente de mesurer l'écart qui se creuse sur ce point entre le Philosophe et son Exegete. Le premier moteur n'est jamais defini par Aristote comme forme et la determination primordiale de son être est l'acte. Comment Alexandre, reputé pour sa fidelité à Aristote, peut-il soutenir une telle thèse qui semble dangereusement proche du platonisme ? On essaie de montrer ici que cette description du premier moteur comme pur visage (eidos) n'est pas un accident de la pensée alexandrinienne et qu'elle touche aussi bien a sa théorie de la connaissance qu'au cceur de sa métaphysique."

Abstract: "In his De anima, Alexander of Aphrodisias identifies the active intellect with the first mover and describes this "first cause" as an immaterial and separate form. This article aims at explaining to what extent, and why Alexander differs from Aristode on this point. Aristode never defines the first mover as a form: he claims that its being is actuality. How could Alexander, who became famous as "the Commentator" par excellence, assert a thesis that seems so dangerously close to Platonism? I intend to show that this description of the first mover as a pure "visage" (eidos) is not an accident in Alexander's thought and that it is linked up with his epistemological conceptions as well as with his metaphysics."

41. ———. 2012. Aux origines de la métaphysique : l’interprétation par Alexandre d’Aphrodise de la Métaphysique d’Aristote, Université de Lille; Université de Liège.

"Notre hypothèse générale est la suivante : l'oeuvre de l' « Exégète par excellence » a rendu possible la fondation de la métaphysique. Paradoxalement – mais le paradoxe n'est qu'apparent –, la possibilité même de « faire de la métaphysique », sans que cela signifie seulement commenter Aristote, a été assurée par le travail de ces commentateurs, et singulièrement d'Alexandre. Le processus de différenciation du travail exégétique et du travail du métaphysicien est un processus qui court sur un temps long. On a pu faire l'hypothèse qu'il était accompli seulement à la fin du Moyen Âge, par Suárez(30). Nous proposons d'en situer l'origine chez Alexandre d'Aphrodise. L'Exégète travaille à faire de la Métaphysique un livre, et de la métaphysique une science une. L'étude qu'on va lire porte sur cette double naissance, d'un livre et d'une science." (p.6)

(30) Cf. par exemple J.-P. Coujou [1999], p. 8-9, où l'on voit Suárez qui se pique de pointer les « défauts » de composition et de cohérence dans l'oeuvre aristotélicienne. Voir aussi la synthèse stimulante de P. Porro [2005] qui s'intitule de façon éloquente : « Dalla Metafisica alla metafisica, e ritorno : una storia medievale ».

Références

Coujou J.-P. 1999 Suarez et la refondation de la métaphysique comme ontologie, Louvain : Peeters.

Porro, P. 2005 « Introduzione. Dalla Metafisica alla metafisica, e ritorno : una storia medievale », Quaestio. Annuario di storia della metafisica, 5, p. IX-LI.

42. ———. 2013. "Racine et rejetons. Le pros hen selon Alexandre d’Aphrodise." Quaestio. Journal of the History of Metaphysics no. 13:39-60.

"Le problème aristotélicien de l’unité de la science de l’étant en tant qu’étant se laisse formuler dans un désormais classique trilemme, établi par P. Aubenque(1) : il y a une science qui étudie l’étant en tant qu’étant ; une science une porte sur un genre un ; l’étant n’est pas un genre. Le Commentaire d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise à Métaphysique Γ dénote une conscience du problème ainsi formulé, et, en ceci fidèle au texte, rappelle tour à tour ces trois thèses. Alexandre ne renie rien des deux premières propositions, voire accentue le caractère impératif de la deuxième. À titre de science la plus haute, la métaphysique se doit de porter sur un genre. Or l’étant, parce qu’il se dit en plusieurs sens, n’est pas un genre : la proposition inaugurale de Γ 2 semble contredire celle de Γ 1.

Mais, comme on sait, Aristote poursuit : « mais relativement à une unité et une unique nature » (1003a33-34). Chez nombre de lecteurs d’Aristote, le recours à cette unité référentielle a semblé fournir un moyen de résoudre le trilemme. De fait, pour paraphraser le Philosophe en 1003b12-14 : il y a une science une non seulement de ce qui se dit d’après une unité (« καθ’ἕν », c’està-dire pour ce qui forme un genre), mais aussi de ce qui se dit « relativement à une unique nature ». Cette thèse trace les contours d’un domaine possédant une certaine unité de sens, qui, quoique différente de l’unité générique, rend possible l’unité d’une science. Étant donné le maintien par l’Exégète des deux premières prémisses du trilemme, la conception alexandrinienne du πρὸς ἕν mérite qu’on s’y arrête." (p. 39)

43. ———. 2015. L'unitè de la métaphysique selon Alexandre d'Aphrodise. Paris: Vrin.

Présentation: "Aristote passe pour avoir fondé la métaphysique. Ce terme, pourtant, lui était inconnu. Les livres rassemblés sous le titre de Métaphysique semblent, de surcroît, manquer d’unité. La science qu’ils désignent, enfin, ne paraît pas obéir aux règles classiques de l’épistémologie aristotélicienne.

Le présent ouvrage part de l’hypothèse que la science métaphysique est historiquement née de la tradition des lectures et des reprises successives du projet aristotélicien, et, au premier chef, de celle d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise. Alexandre, connu depuis l’Antiquité comme « l’Exégète par excellence », est professeur de philosophie aristotélicienne à Athènes, au tournant des IIe et IIIe siècles de notre ère. Il rédige le premier commentaire à la Métaphysique qui nous ait été transmis. Mais, en s’efforçant de saisir l’unité littéraire de l’ouvrage qu’il commente, l’Exégète travaille aussi à dégager l’unité de la science recherchée. Science à la fois universelle et première, à la fois modèle et fondatrice des autres savoirs, elle a, selon lui, trois objets principaux : l’étant en tant qu’étant, la substance et le divin.

C’est en actualisant des potentialités du texte aristotélicien qu’Alexandre d’Aphrodise dessine ainsi une figure possible de la philosophie première. Alexandre est l’un de ces maillons qui, en la transmettant, font que la métaphysique gagne son histoire. Son interprétation déterminera, sur un temps long, la façon dont cette science architectonique s’est édifiée, et comment cette « reine des sciences » que deviendra la métaphysique a commencé d’accéder au pouvoir."

44. ———. 2017. "Analyse et axiomes : la connaissance du premier principe selon Alexandre d’Aphrodise." In Réceptions de la théologie aristotélicienne : d’Aristote à Michel d’Ephèse, edited by Baghdassarian, Fabienne and Guyomarc'h, Gweltaz, 59-83. Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters.

45. ———. 2017. "« Métaphysique » et « Organon » selon Alexandre d’Aphrodise : l’utilité de la logique pour la philosophie première." In Alexandre d’Aphrodise et la métaphysique aristotélicienne, edited by Balansard, Anne and Jaulin, Annick, 83-111. Leuven-la-Neuve: Peeters.

"si, comme on le dit, Alexandre d’Aphrodise travaille à «systématiser» l’oeuvre d’Aristote (en un sens qui reste pour partie à déterminer), il est légitime de s’interroger sur la façon dont il conçoit les frontières entre

les différentes disciplines dans la cartographie aristotélicienne des savoirs.

dans le cas de la métaphysique, ce sont les relations avec deux types de discours qui méritent en priorité un examen: d’une part, la physique, pour d’évidentes raisons internes à l’aristotélisme; d’autre part, la logique, pour des raisons qui tiennent aussi au contexte d’Alexandre. C’est à cette dernière que l’on souhaite s’intéresser ci-dessous. on voudrait plus précisément essayer d’éclairer le sens et la portée de trois passages du Commentaire à la Métaphysique, trois textes qui font explicitement se croiser logique et métaphysique." (p. 83)

Premier passage : Alexandre, in Met. 173, 27–174, 4.

Deuxième passage : Alexandre, in Met. 245, 33-35.

Troisièmew passage : Alexandre, in Met. 266, 18-25.

46. ———. 2017. "Alexandre d’Aphrodise et le Premier Moteur comme Principe." In Les principes cosmologiques du platonisme: Origines, influences et systématisation, edited by Gavray, Marc-Antoine and Michalewski, Alexandra, 143-165. Turnhout: Brepols.

"S’il est courant, dans les études aristotéliciennes, de s’interroger sur la causalité du premier moteur immobile – est-elle finale, motrice, voire formelle ? – il est néanmoins plus rare d’approcher ce point d’Archimède de l’univers aristotélicien en examinant son statut de principe.

Lire Métaphysique Λ comme une enquête sur les principes, comme une « archologie », est pourtant le plus à même de rendre compte de l’unité problématique de ce livre(1). Du reste, Alexandre d’Aphrodise, d’après le témoignage d’Averroès, comprend précisément le σκοπός de Λ en ce sens : après les développements des livres Z et H sur la nature de la substance et les principes de la substance sensible, le livre Λ accomplit l’enquête en la portant au niveau des principes de la substance première, ce qui permet d’achever l’enquête sur les principes de tout être(2). C’est moyennant un double mouvement de remontée de la série des causes et des principes, d’une part, et d’ascension dans l’échelle des êtres, d’autre part, qu’on passe d’une enquête sur l’être en tant qu’être à une enquête sur la substance, et de celle-ci à une étude de ce principe absolument premier qu’est le premier moteur." (p. 143)

(1) Voir par exemple Mét., A, 2, 983 a 8-9 ; Λ, 1, 1069 a 18-19 ; Λ, 8, 1073 a 23-25 ; et, pour une interprétation « archologique » extrêmement stimulante, F. Baghdassarian, La Question du divin chez Aristote. Discours sur les dieux et science du principe, Louvain, Peeters, 2016, par exemple p. 13 sq. et p. 305.

(2) Averroès, Commentaire à la Métaphysique, Tafsir Ma ba’d at-tabi’at, p. 1404 Bouyges, trad. angl. C. Genequand, Ibn Rushd’s metaphysics, A translation with introduction of Ibn Rushd’s commentary on Aristotle Metaphysics, Book lām, Leyde, Brill, 1986, p. 64.

47. ———. 2019. "Plaisir et Acte selon Alexandre d’Aphrodise." Chôra. Revue d’études anciennes et médiévales no. 17:1-18.

Abstract : "According to some testimonies, the Aristotelian ethics have been torn between a hedonist reading, as much as an anti-hedonist one, throughout Antiquity. From Critolaos to Verginius Rufus and Sosicrates, pleasure is considered both as “an evil [that] gives birth to many other evils” and as the first appropriate thing and the supreme good. This noteworthy disagreement stems from a famous difficulty within the Aristotelian corpus, raised by Aspasius, i.e. the alleged coexistence of two ‘definitions’ of pleasure in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics VII and X. In this paper, I offer a reconstruction of Alexander’s treatment of this difficulty, based on some passages from Alexander’s Ethical Problems and the Mantissa. I try to show that Alexander does not dismiss the so-called “definition A” of pleasure (the unimpeded activity of one’s natural state) as being spurious, although he obviously values more the definition B (according to which pleasure perfects the activity as a kind of supervenient end). Even if he never openly brands the definition A as “dialectic” (like Aspasius), Alexander takes it as a reputable endoxon, which however needs to be emended in that it blurs the distinction between pleasure and activity. Pleasure only supervenes on the activity to which it is appropriate, and this supervenience is precisely what accounts for the inaccuracy of the definition A. As much as the child conflates the apparent good and the good, so the hedonist takes pleasure to be identical with the activity and the telos of human life. On the contrary, for Alexander, pleasure is actually only a sign of happiness and the shadow of the activity."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliographie annotée des études en français sur Alexandre d'Aphrodise: Has - Z

Bibliographie

1. Hasnawi, Ahmad. 1994. "Alexandre d’Aphrodise vs Jean Philopon Notes sur quelques traités d’Alexandre ‘perdus’ en grec, conservés en arabe." Arabic Sciences and Philosophy no. 4:53-109.

Résumé : "Dans cet article, l'auteur fait état de nouvelles données à propos de trois traités attribués a Alexandre d'Aphrodise en arabe et dont on pensait qu'ils n'avaient pas de correspondant grec. II montre que le premier (D.8a) est une version adaptée – selon les normes du “cercle d'al-Kindi’ – de Quaestio I 21, à côte de la traduction plus tardive et plus exacte de cette même Quaestio due à Abù ‘Uṭmān al-Dimašqī (m. 900). II montre que les deux autres traités (D.9 et D.16), en revanche, ne sont pas d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise, mais qu'il s'agit de versions adaptées – toujours selon les normes du “cercle d'al-Kindi” – de passages du De Aeternitate mundi contra Proclum de Jean Philopon, empruntés respectivement à IV, 4–6 et IX, 11. On savait que cet ouvrage fut traduit en arabe. Mais, hormis quelques courts fragments dans al-Bīrūnī (m. 1048), c'est, semble-t-il, la première fois que l'on en met au jour des extraits adaptés de cette importance. Des jalons sont posés en vue de répondre à la question de la situation historique de l'epitomateur. Dans l'Appendice II, un autre traité attribué à Alexandre (D.27g) apparaît – provisoirement – comme un texte composite mêlant des éléments issus de Philopon et d'autres issus des textes néoplatoniciens en arabe. Enfin dans l'Appendice III, sont situées la manière dont Miskawayh (m. 1030) utilise D.16, et celle dont ‘Abdallaṭīf al-Baġdādī (m. 1231) utilise D.27g."

2. Hoffmann, Philippe. 2015. "Le σκοπός du traité aristotélicien Du Ciel selon Simplicius." Studia greco-arabica no. 5:27-34.

"Abstract: "A six-page Prologue introduces the commentary on Aristotle’s De Caelo written by Simplicius after 529 AD. As usual in the exegeses typical of the Neoplatonic schools of late Antiquity, this Prologue addresses a series of preliminary questions that are meant to steer the interpretation in its entirety, as well as to frame the text to be commented upon within the reading canon of the Aristotelian works, which were intended to provide the propaedeutics to the reading canon of Plato’s dialogues. Simplicius addresses the question of the scope of De Caelo, discussing the interpretations advanced by Alexander of Aphrodisias, Iamblichus, and Syrianus. According to Alexander, this treatise deals with the universe as a whole, as well as with the five simple bodies contained in it. It was with Iamblichus, who advocated the idea that for each Platonic dialogue there was only one σκοπός, that the unity of a philosophical work was raised to the rank of a general rule. According to Iamblichus, the σκοπός of the De Caelo is the divine body of heaven. As a consequence, the primary elements that depend upon the heavens are included in the treatise. Syrianus deepens the theological tendency implied in Iamblichus’ interpretation: for him, the σκοπός of the De Caelo is primarily the divine body of heaven, and only secondarily the set of sublunar elements. Simplicius treasures the commentary by Alexander; nevertheless, he questions the σκοπός assigned by him: Alexander underestimated the importance of the unity of the treatise, even though his intention to account for each and every question raised by Aristotle was laudable.

Contrarily, Syrianus was right in emphasizing the theological vein of the De Caelo, but focussed only on the section on the divine body of heaven, playing down books III and IV as if they were only ancillary, thus forgetting that the σκοπός must account for the whole of the treatise at hand. Between the two positions, Simplicius advocates the idea of a synthetical σκοπός, following in the footsteps of Iamblichus’ interpretation, but taking systematically into account the best of Alexander’s. The σκοπός of the De Caelo is the divine heaven, that “communicates” its perfections to the entire universe. Simplicius’ position is revealed to be very different with respect to that of other commentators like Ammonius and Philoponus, who both considered that the title was self-evident and required no special investigation."

3. Jaulin, Annick. 2008. "Remarques sur la construction de la nature dans les § 2-6 du De fato d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise." Les Études philosophiques:343-352.

Résumé : "Dans le § 6 du De fato, Alexandre d'Aphrodise déclare exposer la conception peripatéticienne du destin. II pose a cet effet l'identité de la nature et du destin. Le but de cet article est d'expliciter la détermination de la nature mise en oeuvre pour etablir cette identité et de la confronter a la théorie aristotélicienne. L'examen est mené d'un double point de vue : celui des procedures méthodologiques utiliseés et celui du concept de nature qui en resulte."

Abstract: "In De fato VI, Alexander of Aphrodisias states the Peripatetic theory of Fate, arguing that nature and Fate are identical. What notion of nature results from this statement? Is it still aristotelian? The question will be examined under two aspects, methodological and conceptual."

4. ———. 2017. "L'être et l'un selon le commentaire d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise à Γ 2." In Alexandre d’Aphrodise et la métaphysique aristotélicienne, edited by Balansard, Anne and Jaulin, Annick, 131-136. Leuven-la-Neuve: Peeters.

5. Jurasz, Isabela. 2023. "L'interprétation astrologique de la philosophie naturelle d'Aristote selon Alexandre d'Aphrodise et Bardesane le Syrien." Elenchos no. 44:119-151.

Abstract . "The existence of common points between Alexander of Aphrodise and Bardaisan the Syrian has been pointed out on various occasions. However, this question has not been explored in depth. The article proposes to analyse the cosmological ideas of Alexander and Bardaisan. Because both authors are known for their anti-determinist and anti-astrological polemics, it is preferable to place this comparison in the context of the astrological interpretation of Aristotle’s natural philosophy. The article discusses the Aristotelianism of Bardaisan, who may be the first representative of the reception of this doctrine in Syriac."

6. Koch, Isabelle. 2018. "Alexandre dʼAphrodise et la κίνησις ἀναίτιος." Anais de Filosofia Clàssica no. 12:72-87.

Résumé _ "Alexandre dʼAphrodise a défendu une conception aristotélicienne de la responsabilité, en particulier dans son traité Sur le destin, où il se propose de présenter « la doctrine d'Aristote sur le destin et sur ce qui dépend de nous » (De fato, 1), ainsi que dans des textes de la Mantissa ou dans certaines Quaestiones. Cette défense lʼa conduit à reprendre des arguments anti-déterministes traditionnels (par exemple lʼargument par les conséquences juridico-morales ou sociales) et à en proposer de nouveaux. Parmi ses arguments plutôt originaux et audacieux, on peut compter celui qui consiste à admettre lʼexistence dʼun «mouvement sans cause », kinesis anaitios. Il est développé notamment en Mantissa XXII, dans un texte dont lʼauthenticité est fortement discutée. Je chercherai à montrer que ce texte, même sʼil ne peut être attribué avec certitude à Alexandre, fait écho à des arguments authentiquement alexandriniens développés dans le traité Sur le destin."

7. ———. 2019. La causalité humaine : sur le De fato d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise. Paris: Garnier.

8. Labarrière, Jean-Louis. 2009. "De « ce qui dépend de nous »." Les Études Philosophiques no. 88:7-26.

"Alors, une nouvelle fois, malgré l’usage, Self, qu’est-ce à dire chez les Grecs ? Est-il approprié, même s’il faut bien pouvoir parler (« soyons charitables » !), de se servir de ce terme ou de « Je », « Moi », « Sujet » ? Telle est la question que je voudrais poser. Ainsi énoncée, ma question semblera bien plate : on ne m’a pas attendu pour la poser ! Même et peut-être surtout dans la littérature secondaire ! C’est pourquoi je voudrais, en un premier temps, relever certains des énoncés et des procédures de ladite littérature secondaire (je serai très sélectif, donc fort injuste) afin de parvenir à une question :quoi du eph’ hemin chez Aristote et Alexandre d’Aphrodise ? Je n’en dis pas plus à ce point." (p. 8)

(...)

"Pourquoi Alexandre d’Aphrodise dans son De fato, voire dans sa Mantissa ou certaines de ses Quaestiones(1), peut-il sembler si injuste envers sesadversaires, alors même qu’il intègre certaines de leurs innovations (à commencer par les termes sunkatathesis, « assentiment », et autexiouson, « liberté »), tout en leur déniant d’avoir su de quoi ils parlaient ? La réponse à cette question me semble ne faire guère de doute : devrait-on même accepter une conception large selon laquelle Alexandre se serait approprié des pans de doctrine entiers en provenance des Stoïciens, Alexandre n’a rien d’un auteur éclectique et, en aristotélicien orthodoxe, du moins à ses yeux, il est au contraire tout prêt à retourner ces « nouveaux outils » contre ceux qui les avaient forgés ! Allons plus loin, l’Exégète ne peut ni ne veut comprendre quelque distinction que ce soit entre soft determinism et hard determinism. Il ne peut non plus entendre qu’on puisse se passer de la notion de bouleusis, ce qui, selon lui, réduit à rien le eph’ hemin, donc la proairesis, qu’il comprend,

non sans quelque raison, nous venons de le voir chez Aristote lui-même, en un sens « libertarien ». C’est ce que je vais m’efforcer de montrer « textes à l’appui »." (p. 18)

(1) textes sont aisément à disposition dans Sharples (1983). Pour le seul De fato, voir, en grec et en français, Thillet (1984).

Références

Sharples Robert W, Alexander of Aphrodisias on Fate, London, Duckworth, 1983.

Thillet Pierre, Alexandre d’Aphrodise. Traité du destin, Paris, Les Belles Lettres (CUF), 1984.

9. ———. 2014. "Alexandre d’Aphrodise apiculteur : contre l’essaimage stoïcien." In Aitia II. Avec ou sans Aristote : le débat sur les causes à l’âge hellénistique et impérial, edited by Carlo, Natali. and Viano, Cristina. Leuven: Peeters.

10. Lafleur, Claude, and Carrier, Joanne. 2012. "Alexandre d’Aphrodise et l’abstraction selon l’exposé sur les universaux chez Boèce dans son Second commentaire sur l’« Isagoge » de Porphyre." Laval théologique et philosophique no. 68:35-89.

"Cette première traduction française d’une portion significative de l’In « Isagogen » Porphyrii Commentorum Editio secunda, en regard d’un texte latin reponctué en conséquence et accompagné d’annotations critiques, est précédée d’une présentation historico-doctrinale mettant en relief le rôle — à la fois central et problématique — de l’abstraction dans la solution boécienne, ouvertement rattachée à Alexandre d’Aphrodise (dont le traité De l’âme est ici examiné), du statut des genres et des espèces dans ce texte qui, à travers l’exégèse du célèbre questionnaire porphyrien, a fait connaître le problème des universaux à l’Occident latin et en est demeuré l’expression la plus achevée jusqu’au xiie siècle, où Abélard en a donné un méta-commentaire particulièrement brillant dans sa Logica « Ingredientibus » : Super Porphyrium, éditée, traduite et étudiée ci-après dans ce numéro thématique."

11. Lardelli, Giacomo. 2021. "Plotin contre Alexandre d'Aphrodise: une lecture de l'Ennéade VI, 8." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 39:207-249.

Résumé : "Cet article soutient que Plotin a écrit l’Ennéade VI 8 (39) pour mener ses élèves à voir que notre liberté est fondée sur l’Un, un but poursuivi par le biais d’une polémique avec le De fato et le De anima d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise. La première partie cherche à établir que le « discours téméraire » introduit au chapitre 7 est une interprétation de la position du De fato sur la liberté des dieux. Plotin lit la thèse de son adversaire en transférant au niveau de l’Un une structure tripartite constituée par la nature, la raison et le hasard, une structure qu’Alexandre utilisait pour expliquer les événements des réalités en devenir. La seconde partie propose de voir le traité comme un procédé dialectique. Plotin commence son enquête par le niveau de l’âme et celui de l’Intellect. Il arrive ensuite au discours sur l’Un, où il essaie de franchir progressivement les limites du langage en analysant les positions alternatives du point de vue du discours, des mots et enfin de la pensée. Ce faisant, il insiste sur le renversement des thèses d’Alexandre : l’Un est simple et donc il n’est pas contraint par sa nature, il est libre grâce à une volonté incapable de choisir parmi les contraires et tournée métaphoriquement vers elle-même."

12. Lavaud, Laurent. 2008. "Matière et privation chez Alexandre d'Aphrodise et Plotin." Les Études philosophiques:399-414.

Résumé : "L'influence d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise sur la pensée de Plotin reste encore a évaluer avec precision. Le projet de cet article est de confronter ces deux auteurs sur un point determiné qui est celui de la définition de la matière. Certains passages des Quaestiones d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise semblent avoir exercé une influence directe sur le traité II, 4 (12) de Plotin, intitulé Sur les deux matieres. Mais les différences restent profondes entre le péripateticien et le platonicien. Le premier voit dans la matière une quasi-substance distincte aussi bien de la qualité que de la privation. Le second identifie absolument matière et privation, et rattache la definition de la matière à la question de Texistence du mal."

Anìbtract: "Alexander of Aphrodisias' influence on Plotinus still remains to be estimated exacdy. The aim of this article is to compare these two authors on a precise point: the definition of matter. Some passages of Alexander's Quaestiones seem to have direcdy influenced the treatise II, 4 (12) of Plotinus, entided On two matters. But the differences remain important between the Peripatetic and the Platonist philosopher. Whereas the former considers matter as a quasi-substance different from quality as well as privation, the latter identifies without specification matter with privation, and connects the definition of matter with the question of the existence of evil."

13. Lefebvre, David. 2008. "Le commentaire d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise à Métaphysique, A, 9, 990 a 34 - b8. Sur le nombre et l'objet des idées." Les Études philosophiques:305-322.

Résumé : "On se propose de lire le commentaire par Alexandre de la première critique aristotelicienne aux Idees de Platon en Metaphysique, A, 9, 990 a 34 - b 8. Cette critique (rappelèe dans une première section de l'article) comprend deux parties : dans la première, Aristote voit dans les Idées une multiplication inutile d'êtres ; dans la seconde, il envisage la question du nombre des Idées et precise de quoi il y a des Idées. Le commentaire d'Alexandre, qui ne peut s'appuyer ici sur le traite perdu Sur les Idées, est dense et complexe. A partir de son étude, on propose d'abord (2e section) une hypothèse pour reconstituer le sens des lignes corrompues p. 76, 16-18. Dans une troisième section, on montre comment Alexandre hesite entre deux interprétations des Idées : sont-elles les causes des communs ou sont elles l'unité d'uneplicité et on degage ce que signifie cette difficulté a rticuler les Idées et les communs."

Abstract: "In his criticism of the theory of Ideas, Aristode starts with an argument (A, 9, 990 a 34 - b 8) against this type of platonic causes which has two parts : he first points out that Ideas are a useless multiplication of beings and then explains in a somehow obscure way why Ideas are so numerous and what are the objects of the Ideas (I). In his commentary on this text, Alexander of Aphrodisias is very cautious and propounds three different interpretations of the first part of Aristode's argument. We (II) submit an hypothesis in order to establish the meaning of two lines of the text that are corrupted {In Metaph., 76,16-18). In a third section (III), we show how Alexander does hesitate between two interpretations about the Ideas : are they the causes of the commons (ta koina) or are they a "one over many" (hen epi pollôn)? Even in this last case, Alexander says, they still are Ideas of the commons, because the commons are in the particulars."

14. ———. 2022. "La triade « ousia dynamis energeia » et l’antériorité logique en De anima II 4: sens et contresens." In Essence, puissance, activité dans la philosophie et les savoirs grecs, edited by Lecerf, Adrien, Casas, Ghislain and Hoffmann, Philippe, 63-98. Paris: Garnier.

15. Libera, Alain de. 1999. L’art des généralités : théories de l'abstraction. Paris: Aubier.

Chapitre premier: Alexandre d'Aphrodise, pp. 25-157.

"En philosophie, une histoire de longue durée ne peut être que locale. Tout médiéviste le sait : une histoire de « la » philosophie médiévale n'est qu'un choix plus ou moins bien articulé d'histoires sectorielles. Le point de départ de l'histoire qu'on va lire est donc un réseau de concepts porté par un réseau de textes. Je considère ce réseau là où il se constitue comme tel : chez celui qui est, à mes yeux, et plus que tout autre, l'« absent de l'histoire » de la philosophie médiévale - Alexandre d'Aphrodise.

Ce réseau aphrodisien a une durée propre, qui fait que tous ceux qui viennent s'y inscrire sont, en quelque manière philosophiquement contemporains, même si, pris hors de ce réseau, tout les sépare. Je veux parler de Porphyre et de Boèce. Pour désigner ce complexe, il me paraît légitime de forger l'expression d'« épistémé alexandrinienne ». De cette épistémé relèvent, selon moi, tous les auteurs qui, de Boèce au XIIe siècle, ont abordé sous des formes diverses le complexe de lieux, de thèmes et de problèmes que j'ai provisoirement indexés du terme abstraction. Pierre Abélard est de ceux là, si tant est, comme je le crois, que c'est chez lui que culminent, via Boèce et Porphyre, les choix philosophiques engagés par Alexandre." (p. 14)

(...)

"Alexandre d'AphrodiseParmi ses nombreuses oeuvres préservées en grec ou en arabe, certaines ont joué un rôle capital dans le réseau de problématiques lié à la question de l'abstraction : le Περὶ ψυχῆςç. bien sûr, mais aussi, et surtout, les Quaestiones (conservées en grec) et plusieurs questions ou traités transmis en arabe. L'hypothèse que nous suivrons ici, et nous efforcerons de vérifier, est que ces « questions » ont profondément influencé les doctrines philosophiques de Porphyre et de Boèce, avant de peser décisivement, par la suite, sur ce qui a pu apparaître comme l'une des innovations philosophiques les plus importantes d'Avicenne : la doctrine dite de l'« indifférence de l'essence »." (p. 26)

16. Longo, Angela. 2009. "La réécriture analytico-syllogistique d’un argument platonicien en faveur de l’immortalité de l’âme (Plat. Phaedr. 245c5-246a2). Alcinoos, Alexandre d’Aphrodise, Hermias d’Alexandrie." Philosophie Antique no. 9:1-13.

Résumé : "Les preuves de l’immortalité de l’âme, qui sont un des thèmes centraux de l’enseignement de Platon, ont fait l’objet d’une réflexion d’ordre logique et formel sur la manière dont elles sont (ou devraient être) exprimées. En particulier l’argument en faveur de l’immortalité de l’âme contenu dans le Phèdre (245c5-246a2), fondé sur la notion d’âme automotrice et principe de mouvement, a été assidûment analysé, pour ce qui est de sa formulation, par plusieurs représentants de la tradition platonicienne (Alcinoos, Hermias d’Alexandrie), ainsi qu’à l’intérieur de la tradition péripatéticienne (Alexandre d’Aphrodise). Par conséquent, il représente, à l’avis de l’auteur, un point privilégié d’observation de la façon dont les platoniciens s’approprient la logique aristotélicienne et récrivent, à partir de l’époque impériale, certains arguments platoniciens. En outre, il apparaît qu’Alexandre d’Aphrodise, bien qu’étant de tradition péripatéticienne, a grandement contribué à la reformulation des arguments de Platon selon les canons de la logique aristotélicienne par les platoniciens contemporains et postérieurs. Il semble aussi qu’Hermias, dans ses scholies sur le Phèdre, réagit justement à certaines affirmations d’Alexandre. Dans cet article, on montre quels sont les points de contact ainsi que les différences dans la réécriture analytico-syllogistique de l’argument du Phèdre en faveur de l’immortalité de l’âme par Alcinoos et Hermias, sans négliger l’apport d’Alexandre."

17. Louguet, Claire. 2017. "Les Présocratiques dan le commentaire d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise à la Métaphysique d'Aristote : un essai de typologie." In Alexandre d’Aphrodise et la métaphysique aristotélicienne, edited by Balansard, Anne and Jaulin, Annick, 25-82. Leuven-la-Neuve: Peeters.

18. Luna, Concetta. 2001. Trois études sur la tradition des commentaires anciens à la Métaphysique d'Aristote. Leiden: Brill.

Table des Matières: Avant-propos VII-VIII; Étude I: Les commentaires de Syrianus et du Ps. Alexandre sur la Mètaphysique. Essai de mise au point 1; Étude II: Le commentaire d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise comme source du commentaire de Syrianus 72; Étude III: Alexandre d'Aphrodise et Syrianus comme sources du commentaire d'Asclépius 99; Conclusions 187; Appendices I-IX 191-226; Index 227-251.

"Chargée de préparer une édition du commentaire de Syrianus sur Ia Métaphysique d'Aristote dans Ia Collection des Universités de France (ou Collection Budé, il m'a paru utile de commencer par préciser Ia situation exacte de ce commentaire dans Ia tradition exégètique antique, et ainsi de determiner l'apport critique des autres commentaires a l'établissement de son texte. De Ia sont neés ces trois éudes ou l'on essaie de definir, une fois pour toutes, Ia généalogie des commentaires anciens a Ia Métaphysique.

Dans les pages qui suivent, nous prendrons donc en consideration les quatre commentaires grecs a Ia Métaphysique qui nous sont parvenus, a savoir :

(1) Alexandre d'Aphrodise: livres A-Δ (ed. M. Hayduck, CAG I, 1891, p. 1-439).

(2) Syrianus: livres B Γ M N (ed. W. Kroll, CAG VI 1, 1902).

(3) Asclepius de Tralles : livres A-Z (il s'agit de Ia version απὸ φωνῆς du cours d'Ammonius ed. M. Hayduck, CAG VI 2, 1888).

(4) Ps. Alexandre: livres E-N (ed. M. Hayduck, CAG I, p. 440-837)."

19. Masai, François. 1963. "Le De fato d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise attribué à Pléthon." Byzantion no. 33:243-256.

"M. Pierre Thillet vient de nous donner une édition très soignée de la version latine médiévale du De fato d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise (1)." (p. 253)

(...)

"Au demeurant, qu'il soit dû à une erreur intelligente d'humaniste ou à un pur accident de transmission manuscrite, le rapprochement entre l'oeuvre d'Alexandre et celle de Pléthon garde sa valeur. L'une dépend de l'autre, et le Traité du Destin atteste la haute estime où le critique d'Aristote tenait la pensée de l'Exégète." (p. 256)

(1) Alexandre d'Aphrodise, De fato ad imperatores. Version de Guillaume de Moerbeke. Édition critique avec introduction et index par Pierre Thillet. Paris, Vrin, 1963, 8°, 178 pp. ( Études de philosophie médiévale, 51).

20. Moraux, Paul. 1942. Alexandre d'Aphrodise, exégète de la noétique d'Aristote. Paris: Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres e l'universite de Liège.

"Dans l’ensemble, la psychologie alexandriste mérite donc un intérêt spécial. Mais, plus que tous les autres chapitres, c’est la noétique de l’Aphrodisien qui s’impose à l’historien de la philosophie.

Elle constitue en effet l’explication d’un passage qui compte parmi les plus obscurs du corpus aristotelicum (De Anima, Γ, 4 et 5).

Ensuite, du point de vue doctrinal, elle soutient réellement toutes les voûtes de la pensée alexandriste : dans la perspective péripatéticienne, la construction philosophique procède d'une série d'opérations cognitives que couronnent les démarches de l’intelligence.

Or, il va de soi que la valeur épistémologique de ces démarches est presque exclusivement conditionnée par la structure ontologique de l’esprit et par le mécanisme de son fonctionnement.

Les diverses attitudes qui vont de l’innéisme au nominalisme, en passant par le réalisme, commandent donc autant de façons de concevoir l’univers, l’homme, la Divinité... C’est ainsi que l’étude de la noétique alexandriste ouvre la route à des enquêtes plus générales sur le système entier de l'Aphrodisien.

Enfin, du point de vue historique, elle présente un intérêt plus large encore. Alexandre inaugure les longues discussions sur l’intellect qui ont rempli non seulement le moyen âge chrétien, mais aussi les scolastiques grecque, byzantine, arabe et juive, la pensée de la Renaissance et même celle des temps modernes. Le Ich denke de Kant, l’Esprit de Hegel répondent à des préoccupations voisines de celles qui hantaient les exégètes grecs, Avicenne, Averroès Albert le Grand, Siger de Brabant, Thomas d'Aquin etc. A ce titre on ne peut sous-estimer l’importance d’Alexandre, le premier et le principal responsable après Aristote de cette polémique séculaire." (Préface, p. XVII)

21. ———. 1970. D'Aristote à Bessarion. Trois études sur l'histoire et la transmission de l'aristotélisme grec. Québec: Les Presses de l'Université de Laval.

"Chez Alexandre d’Aphrodisias, l’un des plus fameux parmi les commentateurs d’Aristote, nous allons trouver une théorie « aristotélicienne » de la providence assez différente des précédentes et beaucoup plus fouillée qu’elles. Alexandre avait écrit un traité Sur la Providence dont l’original grec est perdu, mais dont nous possédons une adaptation arabe et dont Cyrille d’Alexandrie nous a, en outre, conservé quelques extraits. Plusieurs petites pièces du recueil des Difficultés et solutions sont également consacrées au problème de la providence, mais elles n’offrent pas, hélas ! un traitement systématique et complet de la question. Peut-être même certaines d’entre elles ne sont-elles pas dues à Alexandre lui-même, mais à des membres de son école. Sans entrer dans tous les détails, je me propose d’examiner ici trois aspects de la doctrine alexandriste, à savoir la réduction de l’action providentielle à l’influence que Dieu exerce sur le monde, en fonction des besoins de ce monde, la jiortée de l’action èrovidentielle et ses limites, et enfin la finalité dans l’action providentielle." (p. 58)

22. Morel, Pierre-Marie. 2011. "Cardiocentrisme et antiplatonisme chez Aristote et Alexandre d’Aphrodise." In Plato, Aristotle, or Both? Dialogues Between Platonism and Aristotelianism in Antiquity, edited by Bénatouïl, Thomas, Maffi, Emanuele and Trabattoni, Franco, 63-84. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

"Mon propos est de comparer le cardiocentrisme tel qu’il est élaboré dans les traités psychologiques d’Aristote à celui qu’Alexandre d’Aphrodise expose et défend dans son propre De anima. Prenant la suite d’Aristote, Alexandre soutient que le coeur est le siège de la partie principale de l’âme et, comme le Stagirite, il le fait contre l’encéphalocentrisme notamment défendu par les platoniciens. Il mène cependant la polémique par un biais original et nuancé : fidèle à l’aspect proprement physiologique du cardiocentrisme d’Aristote, Alexandre le radicalise et l’enrichit dès lors qu’il l’envisage du point de vue des facultés de l’âme." (p. 63)

(...)

"J’insisterai enfin sur les enjeux pratiques de la polémique. Ce n’est pas le seul aspect du problème, car la thèse selon laquelle le coeur est le siège de la partie principale de l’âme a de nombreuses implications, notamment psychologiques. Les implications éthiques, en tout cas, sont particulièrement révélatrices du fond de la question : en situant la partie hégémonique dans le coeur, Alexandre montre que le désir, la faculté ou partie de l’âme qui est le plus étroitement associée au coeur, est proche de l’hégémonique et qu’elle n’en est pas séparée. Or, selon Aristote, c’est sous l’effet du désir que l’agent se meut et réalise des actions. L’éthique aristotélicienne est donc renforcée par la thèse de l’unité du désir et de la partie rationnelle dominante. Dans le contexte spécifique de la pensée d’Alexandre, l’argument permet de faire coïncider les deux dimensions de l’hégémonique : sa partie théorique et sa partie pratique. Il conduit donc à rejeter le modèle platonicien de la séparation des deux instances, l’instance rationnelle et l’instance désirante. La manière dont Alexandre présente et organise les facultés de l’âme lui permet également, nous le verrons, de se démarquer des positions stoïciennes." (p. 64)

23. Papadis, Dimitri. 1991. ""L'intellect agent" selon Alexandre d'Aphrodise." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 9:133-151.

"Depuis l'époque hellénistique jusqu'à ce jour prédomine l'opinion qu'Alexandre d'Aphrodise, dans son traité De l'âme, identifie l'"intellect agent" ("ποιητικός νους") à Dieu et qu'il existe, de ce fait, une différence essentielle entre Alexandre et Aristote, sur un sujet si important de leur psychologie. Vers le milieu du siècle dernier le célèbre historien de la philosophie grecque Eduard Zeller a contribué à consolider le bien-fondé cette opinion, que depuis lors tous les interprètes modernes mettent comme indubitable, voire même comme évidente. Le terme "intellect agent" nous le rencontrons pour la première fois dans le traité De l'âme d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise(2). Ce terme n'apparaît pas dans le traité du même nom d'Aristote où nous rencontrons néanmoins en plus de la substance, les propriétés: l'adjectif "ποιητικός"3 et l'infinitif "ποιεΐν"(4). Aristote parle de cet intellect (νους) par opposition à l'intellect en puissance ou patient. Bref, le terme "intellect agent" est substantiellement aristotélien, bien qu'il ait été crée par Alexandre." (pp. 133-134, une note omise)

(2) Voir De l'âme A 88.24, 89.6 et 89.10.

(3) Aristote, De l'âme Γ 5, 430al2.

(4) ibid. Γ 5, 430al5.

24. Rashed, Marwan. 1995. "Alexandre d'Aphrodise et la ‘Magna Quæstio’. Rôle et indépendance des scholies dans la tradition byzantine du corpus aristotélicien." Les Études Classiques no. 63:295-361.

Repris dans M. Rashed, L'Héritage aristotélicien. Textes inédits de l'Antiquité, Paris: Les Belles Lettres 2007, pp. 85-141.

25. ———. 1997. "Textes inédits transmis par l'Ambr. q 74 Sup. Alexandre d'Aphrodise et Olympiodore d'Alexandrie." Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques no. 81:219-238.

Repris dans M. Rashed, L'Héritage aristotélicien. Textes inédits de l'Antiquité, Paris: Les Belles Lettres 2007, p. 159-178.

Résumé : "L'édition et l'étude de deux textes grecs antiques jusqu'ici inédits (Alexandre d'Aphrodise et Olympiodore d'Alexandrie), transmis par l'Ambrosianus Q 74 sup., manuscrit byzantin de la fin du X' siècle, éclairent certains aspects méconnus du commentarisme antique. Le texte d'Alexandre, dirigé contre les Idées platoniciennes, a la particularité unique dans la tradition aristotélicienne conservée d'être un centon, dont l'analyse a permis d'exhumer un nouveau fragment du Protreptique d'Aristote; il est possible, en outre, que ce centon ait gardé trace d'un argument du traité d'Aristote Sur les Idées. Le second texte, consacré à la réfutation d'un développement d'Alexandre sur les universaux, constitue sans doute l'unique fragment connu à ce jour d'un commentaire d'Olympiodore au De anima."

26. ———. 2000. "Alexandre d’Aphrodise lecteur du Protreptique." In Les prologues médiévaux, edited by Hamesse, Jacqueline, 1-37. Turnhout: Brepols.

Repris dans M. Rashed, L'Héritage aristotélicien. Textes inédits de l'Antiquité, Paris: Les Belles Lettres 2007.

27. ———. 2007. Essentialisme. Alexandre d'Aphrodise entre logique, physique et cosmologie. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"J’ai suivi dans ce livre l’ordre sous-jacent à l’entreprise d’Alexandre, qui est avant tout une fondation de la théorie aristotélicienne de la substance. La première partie, consacrée à la logique de l’Exégète, est une tentative pour cerner les mérites et les limites d’une doctrine standard de la différence spécifiante des substances composées. Celle-ci ne trouve son fondement qu’en dehors de la logique, dans la physique de l’hylémorphisme. La deuxième partie est ainsi consacrée à montrer que l’inadéquation de principe d’une théorie exclusivement logique de la différence spécifiante reflète les conditions particulières de la relation matière-forme, en particulier son inaptitude à exprimer l’inversion de la prédication canonique sujet-prédicat en sorte que ce soit la forme qui devienne le sujet d’un nouveau type prédicationnel. Cette théorie physique de la forme du composé laisse cependant à son tour des problèmes ouverts, liés à la temporalité de la forme – est-elle ou non éternelle ?–, qu’Alexandre pense ne pouvoir dépasser que par une recherche

cosmologique, concentrée sur l’idée, encore innommée chez Aristote, de transmission (διαδοχή). Ce sera l’objet de la troisième partie, qui débouchera sur la conclusion que l’ontologie d’Alexandre, parce que fondationnelle, est primordialement une cosmologie, par bien des aspects plus proche du providentialisme du De mundo que de l’« ouranologie » du De caelo. Cette cosmologie comporte, paradoxalement, un certain retour à la saisie logique, par genre et différence, de la forme spécifique." (Avant-propos, p. VI)

28. ———. 2008. "Présentation. Alexandre d’Aphrodise. De l’eidocentrisme comme actualisation d'un aristotélisme possible." Les Études philosophiques:281-284.

"On peut donc affirmer que les trois grands domaines où Alexandre s’est montré le plus inventif – réflexion ontologique « pure » sur le statut de la forme immanente et son rapport à l’universel, réflexion psychologico-biologique sur le statut de l’âme humaine, réflexion cosmologique sur la Providence – sont parties intégrantes d’une refondation de l’ontologie aristotélicienne de l’eidos. Chaque âge a puisé, en fonction de ses intérêts philosophiques propres, à la partie du corpus alexandrique qui permettait le mieux de construire un certain aristotélisme, ou un certain morceau d’aristotélisme, fût-ce pour s’y opposer." (p. 282)

29. ———. 2014. "Priorité de l’εἶδος ou du γένος entre Andronicos et Alexandre: vestiges arabes et grecs inédits." Arabic Sciences and Philosophy no. 14:9-63.

Repris dans M. Rashed, L'Héritage aristotélicien. Textes inédits de l'Antiquité, Paris: Les Belles Lettres 2007.

"La première partie de cet article vise à enrichir cette bibliothèque logico-ontologique d’Alexandre d’une nouvelle Quaestio, consacrée elle aussi, on le verra, au rapport genre-espèces.

Ce texte, perdu en grec, nous a été transmis sous la forme d’une paraphrase du philosophe médecin ‘Abd al-Laṭīf al-Bag˙dādī.

L’analyse doctrinale de son contenu, c’est-à-dire de la théorie de l’εἶδος sous-jacente, nous conduira de la logique à la physique, plus particulièrement à un passage déterminé de la Physique d’Aristote (IV 3, 210 a 15–21). La pleine compréhension des préoccupations logiques d’Alexandre demandera que l’on restitue son exégèse de la Physique telle qu’elle se présente dans l’une des scholies grecques inédites tirées de son commentaire perdu.(4)"

(4) Cf. infra, pp. 34 sqq.

30. ———. 2017. "Alexandre d’Aphrodise sur la « chose » (πρᾶγμα) et le « quelque chose » (πρᾶγμά τι)." In Alexandre d’Aphrodise et la métaphysique aristotélicienne, edited by Balansard, Anne and Jaulin, Annick, 181-215. Leuven-la-Neuve: Peeters.

31. ———. 2022. "Philosophies universelles et philosophies premières selon Alexandre d’Aphrodise." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 22:71-87.

Abstract: "This article is devoted to the interpretation of the object of metaphysics and theoretical sciences proposed by Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. 200 AD). I shall propose two conjectures on crucial passages from his commentary on the Metaphysics (In Metaph. 245.37-246.6 et 246.6-13) and, on this new textual basis, defend the thesis according to which Alexander articulated a primary fundamental philosophy, devoted to immobile substances and treated by Aristotle in Metaphysics Λ, and a philosophy, if one can say so, more primary but less ontological, hence less fundamental, devoted to the general structure of being and treated by Aristotle in Metaphysics Γ. The latter seems to differ from the Categories, according to Alexander, in that in the Categories, Aristotle studies the general classes of beings as general, while in Metaphysics Γ, he studies them as beings."

32. Schniewind, Alexandrine. 2019. "Comment pensons-nous? Eléments de noétique antique grecque et médiévale arabe." Studia Philosophica no. 78:25-37.

Abstract: "This contribution shows the central influence of Aristotle on Ancient and Medieval noetics.

It examines various interpretations of the famous passage of the De Anima that sets two kinds of intellects. Alexander of Aphrodisias’ interpretation is set as being most influential and determining on later philosophers, such as Plotinus and then the Arabic philosophers al-Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes. The nodal question is how human intellect thinks and which stages of development it has to go through. Furthermore, the role of the Agent intellect is examined, as well as the question of the universal or individual status of the human intellect."

33. Sharples, Robert W. 1996. "Aristotélisme." In Le savoir grec: Dictionnaire critique, edited by Brunschwig, Jacques and LLoyd, G. E. R., 822-842. Paris: Flammarion.

"Le présent article est une version remaniée de ma contribution au volume II de la Routledge History of Philosophy, dirigée par David Furley. Je remercie les éditions Routledge de m’avoir autorisé à la reprendre dans cet ouvrage." (p. 842)

34. ———. 2008. "L'accident du déterminisme: Alexandre d'Aphrodise dans son contexte historique." Les Études philosophiques:285-303.

Resumé : "Alexandre d'Aphrodise a été étudié plus intensement en Europe continentale que dans le monde anglophone. Cet article s'interroge sur les raisons culturelles d'un tel fait. L'une des raisons de l'étude de la philosophie antique en general dans le monde anglophone est la volonté de montrer qu'elle est reliée, et peut rendre service, a des debats philosophiques contemporains. Un cas emblematique nous est fourni par le débat concernant le libre arbitre et le determinisme. Susanne Bobzien a defendu la thèse (dans son article "The inadvertent conception and late birth of the free-will problem", Phronesis, 43 [1998], p. 133-175) qu'alors que les termes du débat contemporain peuvent être décelés au IIe siecle après J.-C., et en particulier dans le traité d'Alexandre Sur le destin, il serait anachronique de les faire remonter a la periode hellénistique. La partie finale du present article se penche sur la façon dont elle rend compte de l'approche post-hellenistique de la question, vue comme le développement, a partir d'un certain nombre de textes aristoteliciens, d'une nouvelle doctrine de la contingence, refletée dans une serie de textes généralement décrits comme médioplatoniciens. On se demande, finalement, quelle relation il faut supposer entre ce développement et les changements, dans la forme et dans le fond, du determinisme stoïcien."

Abstract: "Alexander of Aphrodisias has been studied more intensively in continental Europe than in the English-speaking world. This paper examines the cultural reasons for this. One factor in the study of ancient philosophy generally in the English-speaking world is the pressure to show that it relates to, and can be of service in, contemporary philosophical debates. One such case is the debate concerning free-will and determinism. Susanne Bobzien has argued (in her "The inadvertent conception and late birth of the free-will problem", Phronesis, 43 [1998], 133-175) that while the terms of the contemporary debate can be recognised in the second century AD, and in particular in Alexander's treatise On Fate, it is anachronistic to read them back into the Hellenistic period. The latter part of the present paper examines her account of the origin of the new approach to the question in the development from a number of Aristotelian texts of a new account of contingency, reflected in a range of texts commonly described as Middle Platonist, and asks what relation we should suppose between this development."

35. Thillet, Pierre. 1960. "Un traité inconnu d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise sur la Providence dans une version arabe inédite." In L'homme et son destin d'après les penseurs du moyen âge. Actes du premier Congrès international de philosophie médiévale, Louvain-Bruxelles, 28 août-4 septembre 1958, 313-324. Louvain: Nauwelaerts.

36. ———. 1981. "Matérialisme et théorie de l'âme et de l'intellect chez Alexandre d' Aphrodise." Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger no. 171:5-24.

"Concluons : Alexandre n'est pas proprement matérialiste. Toutefois, sa conception de la genèse de l'âme à partir des corps élémentaires, sa théorie de la connaissance où un intellect matériel se constitue de lui-même en intellect en acte, enfin l'absence d'une doctrine de l'immortalité de l'âme, l'absence d'affirmation d'un statut de l'intellect comme substance spirituelle indépendante du corps, tout cela justifie à la fois ceux qui l'ont condamné comme matérialiste, et ceux qui ont trouvé dans ses écrits un contrepoids à des doctrines qui tendaient à nier la signification humaine de la vie de l'homme de chair." (p. 24)

37. ———. 1982-1983. "Éléments pour l'histoire du texte du De fato d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise." Revue d’Histoire des Textes no. 12-13:13-56.

Résumé : "Le texte grec du De fato d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise se lit, en entier ou en partie, dans dix-neuf manuscrits, qu'on date du IXe au XVIIe siècle. Le prototype, Marcianus gr. 258 = F, exemplaire de petit format de la collection philosophique, est une copie de translittération, et son modèle comptait environ seize lettres à la ligne. F a appartenu au traducteur dominicain Guillaume de Moerbeke, comme l'a signalé Miss L. Labowsky. Or, trois manuscrits latins (deux de la fin du XIIIe siècle, l'autre de 1423) nous ont conservé une traduction latine que ses particularités signalent comme une version de Guillaume. L'examen de cette version, sa comparaison avec le grec de F, permettent d'inférer que la traduction a été faite sur un autre modèle, une copie en onciales du De fato. La traduction latine n'a pas été faite sur F. Il faut penser que Guillaume l'a faite avant d'entrer en possession du Marcianus gr. 258. Gomme la version latine est une sorte de calque du grec, elle permet d'atteindre un archétype différent de celui qu'a utilisé le copiste de F. L'éditeur a ainsi pour tâche d'éditer deux archétypes perdus, le modèle de F, le modèle de la traduction.

Toutefois, le cardinal Bessarion a, par endroits, corrigé F (jusqu'à 176,26) qu'il possédait dans sa bibliothèque, et c'est aussi à lui qu'on doit probablement la plupart des variantes du Marcianus gr. 261, copié pour lui. Ces conjectures ne sont pas sans mérite et sauvent parfois le sens.

Les leçons qu'offrent les autres manuscrits sont plus hasardeuses : conjectures de copistes ou de lecteurs, elles n'ont que l'intérêt de montrer le souci de bien saisir les idées de l'Exégète. Certaines de ces copies reproduisent l'une ou l'autre des deux premières éditions du De fato dues à Victor Trincavelli (Venise, Aide, 1534 ; Zanetti, 1526)."

38. ———. 1985. "Alexandre d'Aphrodise et la poésie." In Aristoteles - Werk und Wirkung, Paul Moraux gewidmet, I: Aristoteles und seine Schule, edited by Wiesner, Jürgen, 107-119. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"L'Exegète d'Aristote, dont Paul Moraux a contribué avec tant de science ä faire connaître les doctrines, n'est certes en rien un poète. II ne paraît pas même avoir été, en tant que commentateur, soucieux de poétique. Mais il a cité ou evoqué des auteurs qui, eux, avaient puisé des exemples, peut-être aussi des thèmes doctrinaux, chez des poètes.

Alexandre d'Aphrodise n'est pas totalement «prosaique». Voilä qu'il apporte quelques bribes a une pièce perdue de l'un des grands Tragiques de l'aritiquité. Son nom pourrait desormais figurer dans les futurs Fragmenta Euripidis. Qui s'en etonnerait? Les Grecs, même à la fin du deuxième sieèle de notre ère, n'avaient-ils pas toujours Homère comme maître? La poésie grecque vivait encore." (p. 119)

39. Trego, Kristell. 2015. La liberté en actes: éthique et métaphysique d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise à Jean Duns Scot. Paris: Vrin.

40. Verbeke, Gérard. 1968. "Aristotélisme et stoïcisme dans le De Fato d'Alexandre d'Aphrodisias." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 50:73-100.

"Au cours de l'exposé qui precede, on a essayé e mettre en evidence les elements aristotéliciens et stoïciens qui se rencontrent dans le De Fato d'Alexandre. Que l'auteur ait l'intention d'exposer la doctrine d'Aristote, personne ne s'en etonnera(98): il l'affirme d'ailleurs lui-même explicitement. C'est pourquoi on voudrait plutôt, en guise de conclusion, relever les quelques traits d'origine stoïcienne qui s'y rencontrent:

1. Tout l'exposé d'Alexandre est basé sur un argument qui est pour ainsi dire toujours present en filigrane, sans que sa valeur demonstrative soit analysée ni justifiée: c'est l'argument du savoir anticipatif (πρόληψις) et du consensus universel; l'auteur y fait continuellement appel pour justifier ses prises de position. Qu'on nous comprenne bien: dans ses exposés philosophiques, surtout dans ses traités de morale, Aristote aussi se base sur des opinions courantes, surtout si elles sont anciennes et très repandues. Mais la manière dont l'argument est presenté chez Alexandre, est nettement stoïcienne: il se presente toujours comme un consensus provenant d'un savoir anticipatif. Ce langage n'est pas aristotelicien, bien que l'idée essentielle de cet argument se rencontre chez le Stagirite.

(...).

5. Les Stoïciens, contrairement aux Epicuriens, admettaient la providence divine: à leurs yeux, la divinité ne reside pas loin du monde et des hommes dans une tranquillité inaccessible; la divinité est présente dans le monde, elle est immanente à chaque être, elle réside surtout à l'intérieur de l'homme qui porte en lui une parcelle du logos divin. Alexandre ne s'oppose pas à la doctrine de la providence; il se demande simplement si Dieu peut connaître de façon déterminée le futur contingent et il semble estimer plutôt que pareille connaissance est impossible.

Le De Fato d'Alexandre est donc un exemple caractéristique de syncrétisme philosophique chez un auteur qui veut rester et se croit fidèle à la pensée d'Aristote." (pp. 99-100, une note omise)

(98) De Fato, c. 39, p. 232, 5. 99.

41. Viano, Cristina. 2015. "Alexandre et la « mixis » des vertus." In Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia: (« Questioni etiche » e « Mantissa »): metodo e oggetto dell’etica peripatetica, edited by Bonelli, Maddalena, 143-169. Napoli: Biblipolis.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliografia annotata degli studi in italiano su Alessandro di Afrodisia

Bibliografia

1. Abbamonte, Giancarlo. 1995. "Metodi esegetici nel commentario In Aristotelis Topica di Alessandro di Afrodisia." In Seconda miscellanea filologica, edited by Gallo, Italo, 249-266. Napoli: Arte Tipografica.

2. ———. 2000. "Aspetti della ricerca su Alessandro di Afrodisia." KJoinonia no. 24:153-197.

Abstract: "Negli ultimi 50 anni la figura di Alessandro di Afrodisia è stata studiata nella sua individualità di commentatore, appartenente alla scuola peripatetica, di cui ci sono giunte pochissime testimonianze. Il contributo passa in rassegna gli studi di questi ultimi anni che hanno distinto il pensiero di Alessandro dal Neoplatonismo e delinea le nuove prospettive della ricerca negli anni a venire."

3. ———. 2004. "Tipologie esegetiche nei commenti di Alessandro di Afrodisia: la parafrasi." In L' ultima parola: l'analisi dei testi. Teorie e pratiche nell'antichità greca e latina: atti del terzo colloquio italo-francese coordinato da Luigi Spina e Laurent Pernot: Napoli 13-15 marzo 2003, edited by Abbamonte, Giancarlo, Conti Bizzarro, Ferruccio and Spina, Luigi, 19-34. Napoli: Arte Tipografica.

4. Accattino, Paolo. 1985. "Alessandro di Afrodisia e Aristotele di Mitilene." Elenchos no. 6:67-74.

5. ———. 1987. "Ematopoiesi, malattia cardiaca e disturbi mentali in Galeno e in Alessandro di Afrodisia." Hermes no. 115:454-473.

6. ———. 1988. "Alessandro di Afrodisia e la trasmissione della forma nella riproduzione animale." Atti della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino. 2, Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche no. 122:79-94.

7. ———. 1992. "Alessandro di Afrodisia e gli astri: l'anima e la luce." Atti della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino. 2, Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche no. 126:39-62.

8. ———. 1995. "Generazione dell' anima in Alessandro di Afrodisia, "De anima" 2.10-11.13?" Phronesis no. 40:182-201.

"Sull' interpretazione della sezione iniziale del De anima di Alessandro di Afrodisia ha esercitato un'enorme influenza la lettura che ne fece Paul Moraux nel saggio dedicato alla noetica alessandrista(1). Moraux intitolava significativamente "l'origine de I'ame" la prima sezione del secondo capitolo, perché di fatto le prime pagine del trattato costituirebbero un vero e proprio trattato De generatione animae, dove Alessandro, muovendo dai principi basilari della fisica aristotelica, traccerebbe le linee di un processo spontaneo di generazione che, attraverso I'aggregazione dei corpi semplici nei composti, metterebbe capo niente meno che all'anima. In un lavoro precedente(2) avevo avanzato un dubbio su una delle conseguenze che Moraux credeva di poter trarre dalla trattazione delta "genesi dell'anima" e cioè che essa renderebbe superflua la teoria aristotelica della riproduzione. Credo di aver mostrato che, come per Aristotele, anche per Alessandro De an. 36.19 sgg. la riproduzione presuppone un principio agente, il seme, che trasmette al nascituro le facoltà psichiche possedute dal genitore. Credo ora di poter mostrare che vi sono buone ragioni per dubitare che la sezione di De an. 2.10-11.13 sia una sorta di trattazione della genesi dell'anima che implicherebbe tutti quei risvolti anti-aristotelici che vi ha letto Moraux." (p. 182)

(1) P. Moraux, Alexandre d'Aphrodise Exegete de la noetique d'Aristote, Liege-Paris 1942.

(2) P. Accattino, Alessandro di Afrodisia e la trasmissione della forma nella riproduzione animale, Atti della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, Cl. di Sc. mor. stor. e fil., 122 (1988), pp. 79-94.

9. ———. 2014. "Alessandro di Afrodisia interprete del De anima di Aristotele." Studia Graeco-Arabica no. 4:275-288.

"Tra i testi giunti nel corpus degli scritti di Alessandro, quelli utili a ricostruire la sua interpretazione della psicologia aristotelica sono sostanzialmente due, ossia De Anima e De Anima II; lascerei infatti qui da parte il Commento al De Sensu. De Anima II, meglio noto col nome di Mantissa, è in realtà una raccolta di venticinque brevi scritti che solo in parte (grossomodo la maggioranza dei primi sedici) hanno a che fare con tematiche psicologiche; qui parleremo soltanto del secondo scritto, intitolato De Intellectu.1 Oltre al De Anima, che è un trattato continuo, e alla Mantissa noi sappiamo dalle citazioni che ne fanno i commentatori posteriori (Temistio, Filopono, pseudo-Filopono e Simplicio) che Alessandro aveva anche redatto un commentario al De Anima che però non ci è giunto.2 Ora, proprio quelle citazioni dal commento perduto registrate da questi autori e che trovano un riscontro puntuale nel De Anima personale di Alessandro ci permettono di precisare il carattere di questo trattato. Si può con buona verosimiglianza affermare che Alessandro ha concepito il suo trattato personale come una esposizione continua e sistematica dei risultati acquisiti col lavoro di esegesi.3" (p. 275, note omesse)

10. ———. 2015. "Una difesa aristotelica del giusto per natura: Alessandro di Afrodisia, Mantissa 19 " In Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia : (« Questioni etiche » e « Mantissa »): metodo e oggetto dell’etica peripatetica, edited by Bonelli, Maddalena, 43-57. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

11. Becchi, Francesco. 1987. "Una testimonianza di Aristotele et di Alessandro di Afrodisia sulla dottrina platonica dei principi." Prometheus no. 13:233-245.

"valore e I'importanza della cosiddetta "oralità" di Platone - come si è soliti chiamare I'insegnamento orale di Platone attestato dalla uadizione indiretta - ai fini di una ricostruzione complessiva e del pensiero frlosofico di Platone e di particolari dottrine professate dal filosofo, sono stati autorevolmente ribaditi dal Kràmer (1), superando la posizione di chi aveva messo in dubbio la tradizione circa I'insegnamento orale di Platone." (p. 233)

(...)

"L'importanza della testimonianza di Alessandro è costituita dal fatto ch'egli ci trasmette un'altra lezione [del testo di Metafisica (A 6.988a.9-11], riportata da alcuni manoscritti e a noi non altrimenti nota, il che ha rappresentato un motivo di interesse per non pochi studiosi che hanno appuntato la loro attenzione su questo passo del commento di Alessandro. Ripercorrere oggi le tappe salienti che hanno segnato la storia dell'interpretazione di questo passo, riassumendo le differenti posizioni assunte al riguardo dagli studiosi, potrebbe anche apparire inutile dopo il dotto (27) articolo del Moraux che ha proposto una interpretazione innovativa della γράφή riferitaci da Alessandro. Pur rinviando all'articolo di Moraux, che, senza dubbio, rappresenta un superamento dell'interpretazione tradizionale, riteniamo utile riassumere, sia pur schematicamente, in stretta relazione con le precedenti interpretazioni, i risultati cui lo studioso berlinese era giunto." (p. 238)

(1) H. Kramer, Platone e i fondamenti della metaJisica, tr. ti., Milano 1982, 472pp.

(27) [P. Moraux, Eine Korrektur des Mittelplatonikers Eudoros zum Text der Metaphysik des Aristoteles, in Beiträge zu Alten Geschichte und deren Nachleben, Festschrift fúr F. Altheim, Berlin 1969, 492-504.

12. Berti, Enrico. 2000. "Il movimento del cielo in Alessandro di Afrodisia." In La filosofia in età imperiale. Le scuole e le tradizioni filosofiche, Atti del Colloquio, Roma, 17-19 giugno 1999, edited by Brancacci, Aldo, 225-243. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

13. Blundo, Livia. 2023. "Il Commento al primo libro della Metafisica di Alessandro di Afrodisia come fonte del trattato II 4 [12] delle Enneadi." Synthesis no. 3:131-160.

Abstract: "In chapter XIV of the Life of Plotinus, Porphyry tells us that Plotinus made use of Alexander of Aphrodisias' commentaries for his lectures. The scholarly debate focused on Alexander’s influence on Plotinus’ doctrine of intelligible matter as is exposed in Ennead II 4, with particular regard to Aristotle’s conception of nous in the De Anima. The main purpose of this paper is to further analyse the usefulness of Alexander’s Commentary on the first book of Metaphysics for understanding Ennead II 4. For if it is appropriate to read Plotinus’ doctrine of intelligible matter in light of the first book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, Alexander's mediation allows us to view additional elements that remain implicit in the Aristotelian text. In particular, Alexander's Commentary will prove to be useful in understanding three points. Firstly, the implicit doxographical references in the introductory chapter of Plotinus’ treaty. Secondly, the Plotinian genesis of an interpretation of Plato that clearly distinguishes between two sorts of matter: one sensible, substratum of bodies; the other intelligible, substratum of ideas. Finally, the different type of composition of form and matter in the sensible and the intelligible, illustrated by Plotinus in the third chapter of the treaty."

14. Bonelli, Maddalena. 2001. Alessandro di Afrodisia e la metafisica come scienza dimostrativa. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

"Quali sono i contributi filosofici che si trovano nel commentario al libro Gamma della Metafisica? E perché concentrarsi su questi? E perché, in generale, analizzare il commentario di Alessandro alla Metafisica? Inizierò col rispondere alla terza questione. La Metafisica di Aristotele si occupa di un argomento a mio parere fondamentale, quale è quello dello statuto e dell'oggetto della filosofia; e nel presentare uno studio su Alessandro, mi allineo con tutti coloro che riconoscono nella versione della filosofia peripatetica espressa nel suo commentario alla Metafisica un proprio interesse e importanza, non solo come veicolo di trasmissione della filosofia aristotelica, ma anche e soprattutto perché, tramite il genere del commentario, Alessandro praticò la filosofia, e vi contribuì.

Ora, sono essenzialmente due le ragioni che mi hanno portato a concentrarmi sul commentario al libro Gamma. La prima è che Alessandro ritenne i libri precedenti della Metafisica come introduttivi, mentre considerò il libro Gamma come l'esposizione della teoria aristotelica circa l'oggetto e lo statuto della filosofia. D'altra parte, il libro Delta è sui generis, poiché non è un vero e proprio trattato di filosofia, e dei libri successivi non possediamo il commentario autentico: mi è parso quindi giustificato considerare il commentario a Gamma, data la sua centralità riconosciuta appunto dallo stesso Alessandro. La seconda ragione mi permette di rispondere anche alla prima domanda: mi è sembrato importante concentrarmi principalmente sul commentario a Gamma (e soprattutto sulla prima parte di esso, cioè quella che precede le prove di confutazione degli avversari del principio di non-contraddizione) perché è proprio qui che Alessandro assume una posizione originale, fino ad oggi a mia conoscenza rimasta inesplorata, circa lo statuto della scienza filosofica." (pp. 14-15)

15. ———. 2001. "Alessandro di Afrodisia e la metafisica scientifica." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 12:61-83.

"In questo articolo presenterò la concezione della metafisica come scienza dell’ente in quanto ente, quale emerge in Alessandro di Afrodisia, celebre e ortodosso commentatore di Aristotele del II-III secolo d. C. Ciò significa che discuterò principalmente la prima parte del suo commento al libro Γ della Metafisica di Aristotele, perché in essa mi è sembrato di individuare dei contributi originali, fino ad oggi rimasti in ombra, circa la natura della metafisica. Alessandro fu un commentatore fedele, e il suo intento fu soprattutto esplicativo nei confronti dell'opera del suo maestro. Tuttavia, ciò che qui mi propongo è di dare un piccolo saggio di ciò che oggi è una verità che si sta imponendo: e cioè che il commento di Alessandro non è fondamentale solo come veicolo di trasmissione della filosofia aristotelica, ma anche e soprattutto come modo di praticare la filosofia e di contribuirvi." (p. 61)

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"Conclusioni

Il filo conduttore del presente lavoro è stato quello di presentare e discutere la concezione di Alessandro della filosofia. In tal senso, ho cercato di mostrare che egli la concepì come scienza che definisce il proprio oggetto e dimostra l’appartenenza ad esso di alcune proprietà essenziali. Constatata la naturalezza con cui Alessandro attribuisce alla filosofia la dimensione dimostrativa, mi sembra che sorga spontanea una domanda : è possibile trovare dei predecessori di questa teoria? Ma a questa domanda risulta particolarmente difficile rispondere : nel periodo che intercorre tra Aristotele ed Alessandro, infatti, la riflessione sulla natura della filosofia è, per quel che ne sappiamo, pressoché inesistente. Solo in Aspasio (commentatore di poco precedente Alessandro) è forse possibile trovare una traccia di questa riflessione. Egli fu certamente autore di un commento alla Metafisica di Aristotele(96); e nel suo commento all'Etica Nicomachea è possibile trovare qualche affermazione circa lo statuto scientifico e anche dimostrativo della filosofia(97).

Riguardo invece alla fortuna che questa concezione ha avuto in seguito, mi pare di poter affermare che l’idea della filosofia come scienza dimostrativa non sarà rivendicata solo da Alessandro: la si ritroverà, quantomeno come idea ben conosciuta, in tutta la storia della filosofia successiva." (pp. 82-83)

(96) Vedi J. Barnes, An Introduction to Aspasius, in Aspasius: thè Earliest Extant Commentary on Aristotle's Ethics, edd. A. Alberti - R. W. Sharples, De Gruyter, Berlin 1999, pp. 11-12.

(97) G. Heylbut (ed.), Aspasii in Ethica Nicomachea quae supersunt commentaria, CAG, voi. IX, Typis Reimeri, Berolini 1889, p. 37, 13 e 20-22.

16. ———. 2015. "Alessandro di Afrodisia esegeta di Aristotele: una buona esegesi?" In Studi su Aristotele e l’Aristotelismo, edited by Cattanei, Elisabetta, Fronterotta, Francesco and Maso, Stefano, 93-107. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.

"Allo stato attuale, la divisione tra opere personali e commenti pare oggi superata. Come che sia, qui verrà considerato solo il commento di Alessandro alla Metafisica, testo che, a mio parere, riveste un interesse

particolare per più ragioni. Innanzitutto perché è un lavoro ancora poco conosciuto, malgrado sia stata da qualche anno pubblicata la traduzione italiana, con testo greco a fronte, del commento integrale alla Metafisica tramandatoci sotto il nome di Alessandro, inclusa la parte inautentica(5). In secondo luogo, perché il commento di Alessandro rappresenta il primo vero tentativo compiuto nell’antichità di comprendere ‘la metafisica’ aristotelica, intesa non solo come opera, ma anche e soprattutto come disciplina(6). Infine perché Alessandro, con il suo metodo tendente a rendere chiara e sistematica tale disciplina, presenta a volte dei tentativi teoretici estremamente originali e articolati, che non esiterei a mettere sullo stesso piano (pur con le debite differenze di stile e di epoca) di quelli condotti dai commentatori aristotelici contemporanei." (pp. 93-94, una nota omessa)

(5) Alessandro di Afrodisia, Commentario alla Metafisica di Aristotele, a cura di G. Movia, Milano, Bompiani, 2007. Sul commentario inautentico, e sulla sua attribuzione a Michele di Efeso, vedi K. Praechter, recensione a Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca XXII 2, «Göttingische gelehrte Anzeingen», 11 (1906), pp. 882-899, e, più di recente, C. Luna, Trois études sur la tradition des commentaires anciens à la Métaphysique d’Aristote, Leiden, Brill, 2001, specialmente pp. 59-65; 197-212.

(6) Vedi ad esempio Alessandro di Afrodisia, in Metaph. (ed. Hayduck) 237.3-4 (Προθέμενος ἐν τῇ Μετὰ τὰ Φυσικὰ πραγματείᾳ, ἣν καὶ σοφίαν καὶ πρώτην φιλοσοφίαν, ἔστι δὲ ὅτε καὶ θεολογικὴν ἔθος αὐτῷ καλεῖν…)[*], in cui la formula ta meta ta physika non può essere intesa come il titolo del libro di Aristotele, ma come il termine di riferimento della disciplina.

[*] Essendosi proposto nella trattazione della metafisica, che Aristotele suole chiamare sapienza e filosofia prima e, talvolta, anche teologia, p. 567 della traduzione italiana,

17. ———, ed. 2015. Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia (Questioni Etiche e Mantissa). Metodo e oggetto dell’etica peripatetica. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

Indice: Introduzione: Alessandro di Afrodisia e la rilettura dell’etica aristotelica 11; Laura Castelli: Alexander of Aphrodisias: methodological issues and argumentative strategies between the Ethical Problems and the Commentary of Topics 19; Paolo Accattino: Una difesa aristotelica del giusto per natura: Alessandro di Afrodisia, Mantissa 19 43; Carlo Natali: La scuola di Alessandro su piacere e sofferenza (Quaest. Eth. 5/4, 6, 7, 16) 59; Jonathan Barnes: «That the virtues reciprocate»: Alexander, Ethical Problems 22 87; Jean-Baptsite Gourinat: La prudence et les vertus éthiques: le débat aristotélico-platonicien 115; Cristina Viano: Alexandre et la mixis des vertus 143; Bibliografia 171; Indice delle fonti 181; Indice dei nomi antichi 187; Indice dei nomi moderni 189.

18. D'Ancona, Cristina, and Serra, Giuseppe, eds. 2002. Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia nella tradizione araba. Padova: Il Poligrafo.

Atti del colloquio La ricezione araba ed ebraica della filosofia e della scienza greche Padova, 14-15 maggio 1999.

Indice: Presentazione 7; Abbreviazioni 17; Gerhard Endress: Alexander Arabus on the First Cause. Aristotle's First Mover in an Arabic Treatise attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias 19; Cecilia Martini: La tradizione araba della Metafisica di Aristotele. Libri α - Α 75; Carmela Baffioni: Una citazione di De Interpretatione, 9 in Abu Ma'sar? 113; Emma Gannagé: Matière et éléments dans le commentaire d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise In De Generatione et corruptione 133; Silvia Fazzo: Alessandro di Afrodisia sulle 'contrarietà tangibili' (De Gen. corr. 11 2): fonti greche e arabe a confronto 151; Marc Geoffroy: La tradition arabe du Περί νου d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise et les orzgines de la théorie farabienne des quatre degrés de l'intellect 191; Paola Carusi: Filosofia greca e letteratura nel Mā' al-waraqī di Ibn Umail al-Tamīmī (X secolo) 233; Marwan Rashed: La classifications des lignes simples selon Proclus et sa transmission au monde islamique 257; Heidrun Eichner: Ibn Rusd's Middle Commentary and Alexander's Commentary in their relationship to the Arab commentary tradition on the De Generatione et corruptione 281; Mauro Zonta: Le traduzioni di Zerahyah Gracian e la versione ebraica del De Generatione et corruptione 299; Giuseppe Serra: Note in margine a M. Zonta, Le traduzioni di Zerahyah Gracian e la versione ebraica del De Generatione et corruptione 319; Indice dei manoscritti 325; Indice degli autori antichi 327; Indice degli autori moderni 331-334.

19. Del Forno, Davide. 2019. "Alessandro di Afrodisia e Proclo sulla dialettica." Elenchos no. 40:165-197.

Abstract: "In this paper I compare Alexander of Aphrodisias’ and Proclus’ conceptions of dialectic by discussing a passage from Alexander’s commentary on Aristotle’s Topics and texts from Proclus’ Platonic Theology and commentary on Plato’s Parmenides. I show how Alexander takes up Aristotle’s view of dialectic as an argumentative technique that has no specific object but can be put in the service of philosophy e. g. to establish first principles. In a key passage, Alexander quotes some lines from the Parmenides to emphasize that this was also Plato’s view on dialectic. By contrast, Proclus uses the Parmenides as acrucial source for his conception of dialectic as the crowning glory of philosophy, and fiercely criticizes such interpretations of the Parmenides as that of Alexander, which reduce it to the illustration of a logical method. I argue that the difference in their conceptions of dialectic lies in Alexander’s positive and Proclus’ negative view on doxa and on its role in knowledge."

20. Donini, Pierluigi. 1968. "Il De Anima di Alessandro di Afrodisia e Michele Efesio." Rivista di Filologia e di istruzione classica no. 96:316-323.

21. ———. 1969. "Note al Περί ειμαρμένης di Alessandro di Afrodisia." Rivista di Filologia e di istruzione classica no. 97:298-313.

22. ———. 1971. "L'anima e gli elementi nel De anima di Alessandro di Afrodisia." Atti della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino. 2, Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche no. 105:61-107.

23. ———. 1974. Tre studi sull'aristotelismo nel II secolo d. C. Torino: Paravia.

1) Alessandro di Afrodisia e il platonismo tra il II e il III secolo; 2) il platonismo medio e l'interpretazione dell'etica aristotelica; 3) Psicologia ed etica in Galeno e in Alessandro di Afrodisia: il problema de determinismo.

24. ———. 1977. "Stoici e Megarici nel De fato di Alessandro di Afrodisia?" In Scuole socratiche minori e filosofia ellenistica, edited by Giannantoni, Gabriele, 173-194. Bologna: Il Mulino.

"Al trattato di Alessandro gli studiosi moderni hanno costantemente rivolto l'accusa di professare, nella sua parte costruttiva, una dottrina non genuinamente aristotelica, ma influenzata dallo Stoicismo, e di non riuscire nelle pagine polemiche ad argomentare in modo sempre pertinente contro gli Stoici : tutto questo, benché non una sola volta Alessandro nomini esplicitamente gli Stoici, o un qualsiasi stoico, nemmeno come bersaglio della sua polemica. È forse tempo, allora, di suggerire che la parte dello Stoicismo possa essere, nel de fato, minore di quella che comunemente si assume, soprattutto nella funzione di ispiratore di Alessandro, ma anche in quella di suo obiettivo polemico. Ed è poi importante domandarsi chi siano gli avversari di Alessandro, là dove sia dimostrato che non sono gli Stoici ." (p. 173)

25. ———. 1982. Le scuole, l’anima, l’impero. La filosofia antica da Antioco a Plotino. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier.

Parte seconda, Capitolo 5: L'aristotelismo; 1. Fino ad Alessandro 211; 2. Alessandro di Afrodisia 220-248.

26. ———. 1985. "Aristotelismo e indeterminismo in Alessandro di Afrodisia." In Aristoteles. Werk und Wirkung, Paul Moraux gewidmet, II: Kommentierung, Überlieferung, Nachleben, edited by Wiesner, Jürgen, 72-89. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Nel trattato De anima del grande commentatore aristotelico Alessandro di Afrodisia si incontra un capitolo sulla facoltä appetitiva e motrice dell'anima che non ha ancora ottenuto particolare attenzione dagli studiosi. Poiché nella ripresa degli studi alessandristi a cui abbiamo assistito negli ultimi anni il problema del determinismo e stato sì quello più ampiamente trattato, ma quasi unicamente a proposito dell'altra maggiore opera di Alessandro, il trattato De fato, è opportuno far notare che anche il capitolo del De anima ha forse qualche collegamento con la discussione sul determinismo; se questo collegamento esiste, alcune considerazioni di qualche rilievo possono poi essere avanzate, sia a proposito della filosofia di Aristotele che del pensiero di Alessandro." (p. 72, una nota omessa)

27. ———. 1987. "Il De fato di Alessandro di Afrodisia: question! di coerenza." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Teil II: Principat. Band 36.2: Philosophie, Platonismus [Forts.], Aristotelismus), edited by Haase, Wolfgang and Temporini, Hildegard, 1244-1259. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Lo scopo del trattato

Nessuno dei problemi maggiori di coerenza filosófica posti dal 'De fato' - i problemi che ho creduto di dover iIlustrare nelle pagine precedenti — ha direttamente a che fare con lo Stoicismo o con la discussione di tesi stoiche. Tutti nascono invece dal confronto fra Alessandro e la filosofía di Aristotele. Se si tiene contó del notevole sforzo (fino a un certo punto, come si è visto, anche felicemente riuscito) di reinterpretare le dottrine aristoteliche al fine di trovare loro una sistemazione coerente all'interno della discussione sul determinismo, meno che mai dovrebbe risultare adeguata alla situazione l'opinione comune che vede nel 'De fato' sostanzialmente uno scritto di polémica contro lo Stoicismo e negli stoici gli avversari che costantemente Alessandro avrebbe presentí. Ovviamente, so bene ehe sarebbe follia negare che lo Stoicismo abbia larghissima parte nello scritto e nella polémica di Alessandro; ma, accanto alla polémica contro lo Stoicismo, dovrebbe essere evidente un'altra preoccupazione preminente di Alessandro: quella, appunto, di riuscire a dar conto in modo coerente dell'aristotelismo come di una filosofía indeterministica. Più della ripetizione degli argomenti usuali, credo che valgano le considerazioni sopra svolte a confortare

l'idea che lo scritto di Alessandro è una riflessione complessiva e genérale sul problema del determinismo, in cui, come era lógico che accadesse, gli Stoici ottengono certo gran parte (non la totalità) dell'attenzione polémica dell'autore, ma in cui la polémica non è comunque tutto: almeno altrettanto importante era per Alessandro venire a capo di quelli che a lui parevano (quasi sempre a ragione) gli aspetti problematici della filosofía di Aristotele nel confronto con la grossa e ormai inevitabile questione." (pp. 1258-1259, una nota omessa)

28. ———. 1994. "Testi e commenti, manuali e insegnamento: la forma sistematica e i metodi della filosofia in etä postellenistica." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Teil II: Principat. Band 36.7: Philosophie (Systematische Thene; Indirekte Überlieferungen, AllgemeinesM Nachtrage), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 5027-5100. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Che per Alessandro la fisica occupi un rango inferiore alia metafisica non è cosa di cui si possa seriamente dubitare; non è altrettanto chiaro, invece, che la metafisica si identifichi per lui totalmente o direttamente con la teologia. In ogni modo, la teologia rimane al vertice della gerarchia o come scienza suprema, o come parte speciale della scienza suprema. Anche in questo caso nel testo aristotelico ci sono le basi minime per arrivare a una conclusione di tal genere: e evidente che Alessandro si fonda sul passo di 'Metafisica' E 1, 1026 a 18-23 dilatandone Pimportanza e generalizzandone I'applicazione." (p. 5044, due note omesse)

29. ———. 1995. "Alessandro e i metodi dell’esegesi filosofica." In Esegesi, parafrasi e compilazione in età tardoantica. Atti del 3º Congresso dell'Associazione di studi tardoantichi, edited by Moreschini, Claudio. Napoli: D'Auria.

Ristampato in P. Donini, Commentary and Tradition: Aristotelianism, Platonism, and Post-Hellenistic Philosophy, Berlin: Walte de Gruyter 2011, pp. 87-106.

Abstract: "The distinction between implicit assumptions and actual methods enables to see how Alexander developed his systematic interpretation of Aristotle. He approaches the Aristotelian texts with the firm conviction that they represent a unified and consistent system. Wherever contradictions seem to dwell, it will be up to the commentator to restore consistency, by interpreting an author out of himself. Examples of this procedure are drawn from the De anima. In some cases, faced with patent inconsistencies in Aristotle’s own writings, Alexander thought he could harmonize the meanings of the terms; on other occasions he suppressed a term of contradiction, or chose to leave them unchanged. Another form of intervention is the tendency to change the punctuation in the text. In so doing he was probably influenced by Aristotle himself; this technique probably already existed in the previous exegetical tradition.

In addition to this, perhaps as an extension of that same method, which allowed changing the syntax of the sentence and hence the possible meaning of the texts under scrutiny, Alexander also changes the word order by importing into the sentence some terms and even whole passages, albeit rarely. In light of these methods of interpretation one may seek to explain even those extreme cases where the philosophical reading set forth by Alexander seems to veer so strongly away from Aristotle’s thought as to be otherwise inexplicable. The two most glaring examples of such a situation will be examined: the theory on the origin of the soul as stemming from a blend of bodily elements at the beginning of De anima and, especially, the famous theory laid out at the end of that same treatise whereby the agent intellect is identified with the heavenly Unmoved Mover of the Metaphysics. One can therefore reasonably presume that, without in any way altering the reading of Chapter III 5 of Aristotle’s De anima, Alexander merely construed it with a different word order and a different syntax of the sentence, thus easily yielding a Greek text that shored up his own understanding and solved a number of manifest philosophical difficulties raised by the words of Aristotle."

30. ———. 1996. "Doti naturali, abitudini e carattere nel De fato di Alessandro di Afrodisia." In Polyhistor: Studies in the history and historiography of ancient philosophy presented to J. Mansfeld, edited by Algra, Keimoe A., van der Horst, Pieter W. and Runia, David T., 284-299. Leiden: Brill.

"Di Alessandro di Afrodisia lo studioso a cui e dedicato questo volume ebbe occasione di occuparsi più di una volta; tuttavia lo scritto De Fato è fra le opere del commentatore fino a oggi l'unica cui Jaap Mansfeld abbia dedicato un intero saggio. Non ripeterò qui quale importanza abbia quel lavoro in vista dell'interpretazione complessiva dello scritto; prenderò invece in considerazione un piccolo suggerimento, a mio giudizio estremamente fecondo, che Mansfeld diede in quelle pagine.[*]

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"Occorre in primo luogo ricordare i termini del problema, che concerne la possibilita di riconoscere ad Alessandro e al suo trattato una sostanziale coerenza di pensiero fra le due parti in cui lo scritto si articola (cioe i capitoli 1-62 contenenti la dottrina del fato che Alessandro considera aristotelica e la parte rimanente con la sua lunga polemica contro il determinismo)." (p. 284)

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"Siamo forse ora in grado di capire il ragionamento di Alessandro benche esso rimanga largamente implicito e possiamo finalmente rendere conto in modo coerente tanto delle affermazioni del cap. 6, quanto di quelle dei capitoli 27-29. E' verissimo, infatti, che in questa serie di capitoli, apparentemente contraddicendo il 6, si riconduce la formazione del carattere all'educazione, all'esercizio, alle abitudini e non più alla natura; rna si doveva aggiungere ( cosa che finora nessuno ha fatto) che in quei capitoli Alessandro intende parlare soprattutto e, anzi, quasi esclusivamente della formazione dei caratteri virtuosi, cioe del modo in cui si diventa φρόνιμοι: solo pochissimi e brevissimi sono gli accenni alia formazione dei caratteri viziosi (e di questi ci occuperemo in un secondo tempo). Se dunque il cap. 6--quando sia stato debitamente interpretato l'esempio di Socrate-concorda con 27-29 quanto all'ammissione che una personalità virtuosa, formata come tale dalle abitudini contratte con l'esercizio e l'educazione, e realmente un'occorrenza molto rara e rappresenta un'eccezione alla regola che dice che Ia maggioranza degli uomini e inferiore alla misura della virtu, tutto il discorso di Alessandro puo assumere una sua coerenza anche se lascia

implicite troppe cose e sorvola inoltre su difficolta tutt'altro che marginali. II significato complessivo potrebbe essere questo." (p. 290)

[*] J. Mansfeled, 'Diaphonia : the Argument of Alexander De Fato Chs.1-2', Phronesis 33 (1988) 181-207.

31. ———. 1996. "Θεια δυμανις in Alessandro di Afrodisia." In Dunamis nel neoplatonismo. Atti del II Colloquio Internazionale del “Centro di Ricerca sul Neoplatonismo”, svoltosi a Catania nel mese di Ottobre del 1994, edited by Romano, Francesco and Cardullo, R. Loredana, 11-30. Catania: CUECM.

Ristampato in P. Donini, Commentary and Tradition: Aristotelianism, Platonism, and Post-Hellenistic Philosophy, Berlin: Walte de Gruyter 2011, pp. 125-138.

Abstract: "The discussion on “divine power” developed by Alexander in one of his Quaestiones (II 3) should be connected with the debate that opposed Peripatetics, Platonists, and Stoics. The focus of the discussion is divine providence, which the other two schools had accused Aristotle of ignoring. Alexander’s Quaestio can be easily interpreted as a response to charges identical or very similar to those leveled against Aristotle by the Middle Platonist philosopher Atticus. Alexander provides two solutions that confer both upon the divine power derived from celestial bodies the ability to exert a providential influence on earthly matters, and especially on the origin of psychicality; their difference resides merely in the role played by Θεια δυμανις in the formation of elementary bodies. Under the first explanation, the nature of elementary bodies is already fully shaped and defined before being affected by the dynamis, which is cast upon them as a secondary nature only; whereas in the second solution the divine power firstly bestows upon the four elementary bodies their specific and different forms. But nothing in the text indicates that Alexander liked this second solution better; this one was probably devised ad hoc as a particularly effective riposte to Platonists, for it expands the influence of divine providence over the earthly world to a greater extent. As for the primary origin of psychicality and the latter’s differentiation in living bodies Alexander’s two explanations adopt the same argument: it makes no difference if divine power is cast upon simple bodies (elements) as a secondary nature or is responsible for the diversification of the actual forms of these bodies. Through its inclusion in the constitution of compounds (albeit in varying degrees) it establishes the different scale or level of psychicality in the compound. Since not all compounds are animated, Alexander comes to distinguish the organic from the inorganic, simply by assuming that compounds become animated only when the composition of their elements undergoes mixing processes and qualitative alterations (alloiosis). Should these processes fail to occur, we would only be left with inanimate bodies resulting from the mere juxtaposition of elementary bodies. A theory of this kind would overthrow the whole framework of Aristotle’s physical chemistry, but since it does not reappear in any of Alexander’s other texts, it should most likely be construed as another ad hoc argument devised both as a response to Platonists, and as an explanation for a phenomenon (the differentiation between organic and inorganic) upon which Alexander elsewhere maintains a conspicuous, perhaps embarrassed, silence. Furthermore, his discourse fails to clarify whether he regards Θεια δυμανις itself as a psychical force and how it should be set apart from the natural impulse of movement featured in elementary bodies."

32. ———. 2003. "Unità e oggetto della metafisica secondo Alessandro di Afrodisia." In Alessandro di Afrodisia e la «Metafisica» di Aristotele, edited by Movia, Giancarlo, 15-51. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

"Gli studi sul commentario di Alessandro alla Metafisica di Aristotele non sono molti e, quanto meno a proposito della questione dell’oggetto della scienza filosofica che noi chiamiamo appunto metafisica - e che anche Alessandro qua e là denominava già in questo modo(1) -, non sono molto convincenti. Si può con una certa sicurezza considerare superata e ormai improponibile la tesi di Philip Merlati(2), che identificava l’essere “in quanto essere” direttamente con la sostanza prima, intelligibile e divina e perciò considerava la teologia come il tema unico e proprio della metafisica aristotelica anche nell’interpretazione di Alessandro: la confutazione che di questa tesi fece qualche tempo fa C. Genequand(3) appare, infatti, adeguata." (p. 15)

(...)

"Come la proposta più costruttiva rimane allora quella del lavoro di Genequand ora ricordato, che attribuirebbe ad Alessandro un primo abbozzo della distinzione tipica della tarda scolastica tra una metaphysica generalis (la scienza generale dell’essere) e una metaphysica specialis (cioè la scienza specifica della sostanza divina, la teologia). Tuttavia anche questa interpretazione(5) non risulta a mio giudizio soddisfacente; essa coglie forse un aspetto della concezione di Alessandro, ma un aspetto soltanto secondario; l'idea fondamentale di Alessandro era un’altra ed è mio proposito descriverla in queste pagine. Intendo inoltre mostrare che la tesi di una distinzione di due livelli nella scienza che noi chiamiamo metafisica (distinzione peraltro solo episodicamente presente nelle pagine del commento) potrebbe essere compatibile con un’interpretazione strettamente unitaria dell’oggetto della metafisica aristotelica, che è invece e comunque la convinzione personale di Alessandro esposta nella grandissima parte della sua opera(6)." (p. 16)

(1) É una buona osservazione della tesi di dottorato di M. Bonelli, La filosofia come scienza dimostrativa: il commentario di Alessandro di Afrodisia al libro Gamma della Metafisica di Aristotele, Université de Genève, Faculté des Lettres 1999, pp. 33-34, che almeno in alcuni passi del commentario (p. es. a p. 237,3-7 H [Hayduck].) l’espressione ta meta ta physika non possa essere intesa come il titolo del libro di Aristotele, ma debba essere interpretata come il nome della disciplina(...)

(2) Metaphysik: Name und Gegenstand, «Journal ofHellenic Studies», 77 (1957), 87-92.

(3) L’objet de la Métaphysique selon Alexandre d’Aphrodisias, «Museum Helveticum», 36 (1979), 48-57.

(5) Che è stata in parte ripresa, anche se in un quadro complessivamente molto più ricco, più articolato e in definitiva piuttosto differente da quello di Genequand, da M. Bonelli, pp. 8, 56, 235 e 250 del lavoro citato sopra (in n. 1).(...)

(6) In questo lavoro non mi preoccuperò né di interpretare il testo aristotelico e nemmeno principalmente di decidere se la spiegazione che ne dà Alessandro sia quella corretta; mi interesserò essenzialmente della presentazione che egli fa dell’oggetto che ritiene trattato da Aristotele nelle pagine della Metafìsica e cercherò di stabilire se e quanto essa sia in sé coerente. La mia opinione in merito al testo aristotelico è esposta nel lavoro Introduzione alla Metafisica di Aristotele, Roma 1995.

33. Donini, Pierluigi, and Accattino, Paolo. 1994. "Alessandro di Afrodisia, De an. 90, 23 sqq., a proposito del οῦς ϑύραϑεν." Hermes no. 122:373-375.

Ristampato in P. Donini, Commentary and Tradition: Aristotelianism, Platonism, and Post-Hellenistic Philosophy, Berlin: Walte de Gruyter 2011, pp. 169-171.

Abstract; "This essays argues against the deletion of lines 90, 24-25 of Alexander’s De anima, suggested by Ivo Bruns. Two minimal changes are suggested that enable to restore the original text and convey an important point: Alexander emphasizes that none of man’s intellectual faculties are immortal, not even the thought that man may momentarily have regarding eternal and divine objects."

34. Fazzo, Silvia. 1988. "Alessandro d'Afrodisia e Tolomeo: aristotelismo e astrologia fra il II e il III secolo d. C." Rivista di storia della filosofia no. 43:627-649.

Summary: "The works of Alexander of Aphrodisias were written a few decades after the publication of the most successful astrology handbook in antiquity, Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos Syntaxis, which attempts to naturalize astrology, i.e. to make it agree with Aristotelian theory ofscience.

A comparison of the doctrines between the Tetrabiblos and some assages of Alexander's works on fate demostrates a noteworthy convergence of the two scholars, and probably a dependence of the last great greek Aristotle's exegete on the theories of Ptolemaic astrology, at least in reference to three points: theory of fate; justification of devining as a technical and natural conjecture about man's fate; analysis of the stars' influence on the sublunary world in physical and philosophical terms."

35. ———. 1999. "Frammenti da Alessandro di Afrodisia In De generatione et corruptione nel Kitab al-Tasrif: problemi di riconoscimento e di ricostruzione." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 10:195-203.

"Prima che se ne perdesse l'originale greco, il commento di Alessandro di Afrodisia al De generatione et corruptione di Aristotele era stato tradotto, forse per un intermediario siriaco, in lingua araba. Il Kitàb al-Fihrist di al-Nadim ne attribuisce una versione completa ad Abu Bisr Matta ibn Yunus(2)

Di fatto, il commento di Alessandro si trova citato ripetutamente da fonti arabe, ed è utilizzato largamente da Averroè nel suo proprio commento medio al De generatione. Allo stato attuale delle ricerche, anche la traduzione è perduta.

Le tracce più consistenti finora conosciute, limitatamente alla sezione di testo che corrisponde a parte degli attuali capitoli II.2-5, sono state segnalate da Paul Kraus nel Kitàb al-Tasrif, un'opera del corpus alchemico attribuita a Gàbir ibn I;Iayyàn, e precisamente nel ms. Paris. ar. 5099, ff. 129b-138b, che conserva il Kitàb al-Ta$rif ai ff. 128b-14 7b(3)."

(2) Kitab al-fihrist li-1-Nadlm, ed. Rida' Taguddud, Teheran s. d., p. 311.

(3) P. Kraus, Jabir ibn Hayyan, Contribution à l'histoire des idées scientifiques dans l'Islam, vol. II, Jabir et la science grecque, Le Caire 1942, rist. Les Belles Lettres, Paris 1986, (...)

36. ———. 2000. "La versione araba del περι προνοιασ di Alessandro di Afrodisia e i frammenti greci nel trattato contra iulianum di Cirillo Alessandrino." Aevum. Rassegna di Scienze Storiche, Linguistiche e Filologiche no. 74:399-419.

Sommario: "Perduto nell'originate greco, il trattato Sulla provvidenza di Alessandro di Afrodisia è conservato nella versione araba di Abu Bisr Matta ibn Yunus e in alcuni frammenti contenuti nel Contra Iulianum di Cirillo di Alessandria. Un confronto fra la versione e i frammenti conferma l'autenticità e la letteralità sia della versione che della maggior parte dei frammenti; induce inoltre a rilevare nell'opera di Cirillo un uso prevalentemente indiretto e "di repertorio" della letteratura greca non cristiana."

"Conclusioni

Riassumo i risultati di questa ricerca. L' autenticità dei frammenti del trattato περι προνοιασ di Alessandro di Afrodisia conservato da Cirillo e quella della versione araba del trattato tradotta da Abil Bisr Matta ibn Yilnus si confermano vicendevolmente in virtù della corrispondenza letterale di quasi tutti quei frammenti che Cirillo espressamente ascriveva al trattato, ad eccezione di uno solo.

Per quest'ultimo e inoltre per altri di Alessandro citati da Cirillo ma non ascritti precisamente a quell' opera, lo stile e la dottrina confermano come altamente probabile che Alessandro fosse l' autore, ma la provenienza resta ignota.

Il modo in cui i frammenti vengono citati puo suscitare qualche perplessità, soprattutto perche talora il senso generale ne viene distorto rispetto alle intenzioni originali dell'autore. Non c'e pero motivo di pensare a un deliberato travisamento da parte di Cirillo: il raffronto infatti fra queste citazioni e le altre citazioni di autori pagani nel Contra Iulianum di Cirillo fa pensare che l'autore non usi il testo di Alessandro direttamente, bens+ attinga a fonti indirette (non ultimo opere di altri autori ecclesiastici) forse per il tramite di un lavoro di schedatura che avrebbe ulteriormente offuscato le indicazioni di provenienza e aggravato il distacco fra i singoli frammenti e il contesto originale di produzione."

37. ———. 2002. "Alessandro di Afrodisia sulle 'contrarietà tangibili' ( De Gen. corr. II 2): fonti greche e arabe a confronto." In Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia nella tradizione araba, edited by D'Ancona, Cristina and Serra, Giuseppe, 151-189. Padova: Il Poligrasfo.

"Una ricostruzione per loci paralleli

La storia della tradizione aristotelica è anche storia piu o meno sommersa della fortuna dei commenti di Alessandro di Afrodisia alle opere di Aristotele. Prendiamo il caso della tradizione interpretativa del De Generatione et corruptione. Il commento originale di Alessandro, si sa, ora come ora è perduto. Restano come pilastri delle tradizioni esegetiche rispettivamente greca e araba, il commento di Filopono e il Commento Medio di Averroè (l' esegeta di Cordova non scrisse infatti alcun Commento Grande su questa opera di Aristotele, ma solo il Commento Medio e un'Epitome).

Ora, la natura e la frequenza dei riferimenti al magistero esegetico di Alessandro dei quali questi due commenti si trovano costellati sono tali, da suggerire che il commento di Alessandro - che i due autori utilizzarono indipendentemente - abbia costituito nella stesura di entrambi un termine costante di riferimento. Un modo relativamente agevole per verificare questa ipotesi consiste nel mettere in parallelo i due commenti, onde verificare se e in che misura esistano fra di essi punti di convergenza significativi, anche al di là e a prescindere dalle esplicite menzioni del nome di Alessandro. Questo corrisponde in parte a ciò di cui si intende qui dare specimen. C'è poi, oltre a questi, un testimone di più,[*] del tutto indipendente dai precedenti, che presenta prerogative in qualche modo eccezionali. Non copre l'intero trattato, ma soltanto, lacunosamente, alcune parti dei capitoli II 2-5; le quali diventano, con ciò stesso, punto di osservazione del tutto privilegiato.

Nelle pagine che seguono sceglieremo in particolare il capitolo II 2, la cui rilevanza sarà fra breve elucidata con particolare riferimento al suo ruolo fondativo per la dottrina aristotelica delle 'contrarietà tangibili'." (pp. 151-152, note omesse)

[*] Giabir (o Jabir) ibn Aflah al-Ishbīlī ( Siviglia, fine XI secolo – Siviglia, 1150) ms. Paris. ar., Bibl. Nat. 5099.

38. ———. 2002. Aporia e sistema. La materia, la forma, il divino nelle Quaestiones di Alessandro di Afrodisia. Pisa: Edizioni ETS.

"Di qui l’interesse di una ricerca specifica sulla funzione dell’aporia come aspetto caratterizzante e solo apparentemente marginale del magistero e dell’attività esegetica di Alessandro.

Una tale ricerca consente infatti di mettere a fuoco aspetti distintivi di quel determinato aristotelismo che è l’aristotelismo di Alessandro, caratterizzato da tensioni sistematiche molto forti e già pienamente espresse, ma non interamente risolte. È di queste tensioni non risolte che sono infatti documento le aporie.

Nei prossimi paragrafi di questa introduzione (§§ 2 ss.) anticiperò alcuni di questi aspetti distintivi, prefigurando quanto emergerà poi dettagliatamente dall’analisi dei testi nel corso dei quattro capitoli.

Se i quattro capitoli non copriranno tutte le Quaestiones, ma solo alcuni gruppi di testi, questo non sarà dovuto solo a ragioni di spazio e di praticabilità. È una raccolta di esplorazione relativamente recente, che

può apparire molto eterogenea, ed è sfuggita sinora a considerazioni d’insieme che rendessero ragione degli elementi di continuità fra testo e testo.

Eppure i fattori di continuità sono spesso evidenti. In particolare dove l’argomento è affine anche i testi che ne trattano tendono a costituire gruppi relativamente omogenei. È stata pertanto una scelta precisa quella di concentrare l’attenzione su aree problematiche alquanto coerenti, che si prestassero a linee di lettura più specifiche, dunque più efficaci, e che al tempo stesso offrissero un quadro sufficientemente ampio e significativo da poter contribuire alla comprensione dei trattati maggiori di Alessandro e del suo distintivo contributo alla storia dell’interpretazione di Aristotele." (pp. 13-14)

39. ———. 2002. "LAMBDA 7. 1072 B 2-3." Elenchos no. 23:357-375.

40. ———. 2003. "L'aristotelismo come tradizione esegetica." Paradigmi no. 21:367-382.

§ 3. Alessandro di Afrodisia: ìmpersonalità e tradizione 373; § 4. Sulla fortuna di Alessandro e dei commentatori 377-379.

"Partecipe delle tendenze archeologizzanti della cultura dei primi secoli dell'età imperiale, l'artistotelismo. si codifica e configura definitivamente entro l'epoca di Alessandro di Afrodisia come tradizione esegetica, legata al commento 'continuo' dei testi del maestro. Una tale tradizione si stratifica da un commentatore all'altro con fortissimi, ma per lo più impliciti, elementi di persistenza. L'operato individuale esce dall'ombra soprattutto nei casi di aporia o di intendimento controvertibile. Di qui le difficoltà della storiografia tradizionale nel rendere conto dell'apporto dei singoli commentatori; e per converso l'interesse delle più recenti prospettive di ricerca." (p. 367)

"La centralità di Alessandro si deve sia alla statura del personaggio in sé sia al ruolo cruciale che la sua opera viene di fatto a rivestire nella tradizione esegetica ai testi di Aristotele. Alessandro è il primo esegeta aristotelico del quale si possiedano interi commenti ad opere complete. In ragione infatti della tendenza sopra menzionata all'obliterarsi vicendevole e progressivo di questo genere di produzione, i commenti di Alessandro sostituirono quasi per intero il precedente patrimonio della letteratura di scuola.

La sua centralità consiste d'altronde nel fatto che oltre ad essere il primo ad essere conosciuto bene, in qualche modo Alessandro è anche l'ultimo autore di veri commenti strettamente aristotelici(6), Sebbene infatti una parte dei suoi commenti, fra il V e il VI secolo sia stata soggetta a rifacimento (per questo infatti andò poi perduta) gli autori di questi nuovi commenti non sono aristotelici in senso stretto. Di fatto, dopo Alessandro non abbiamo più traccia di una scuola aristotelica connotata come tale, contrapposta dunque in una relazione di concorrenza con le altre sette filosofiche." (p. 373)

(6) Temistio (IV sec.) scrisse non più commenti ma parafrasi. Fu forse l'ultimo filosofo antico a volersi presentare come seguace di Aristotele, almeno nella misura in cui glielo consentiva il contesto culturale, fortemente impregnato di neoplatonismo, cfr. Jr. J. Blumenthal, Themistius: the last Peripatetic Commentator on Aristotle?, in R. Sorabji, (a cura di), Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Co=entators and their influence», London, Duck:worth, 1990, pp. 113-123. Quanto ad Alessandro e al suo ruolo nella tradizione aristotelica posso rinviare a S. Fazzo, Aporia e sistema. La materia, la forma, il divino nelle Quaestiones di Alessandro di Afrodisia, in «Pubblicazioni della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell'Università di Pavia, 97, Pisa, ETS, 2002; id. (a cura dl), Alessandro di Afrodisia, La Provvidenza. Questioni sulla provvidenza, Milano, BUR, 1999, in part pp. 5-18.

41. ———. 2005. "Aristotelismo e antideterminismo nella vita e nell'opera di Alessandro di Afrodisia." In La catena delle cause. Determinismo e antideterminismo nel pensiero antico e in quello contemporaneo, edited by Natali, Carlo and Stefano, Maso., 269-295. Amsterdam: Hakkert.

"Ciò che qui si è voluto proporre è un'ipotesi provvisoria che potrà essere verificata, corretta, ulteriormente sviluppata (specie in riferimento alle eterogenee collezioni di opuscoli della Mantissa e delle Quaestiones), o smentita. In ogni caso suo scopo principale, va precisato, non è spiegare l'una o l'altra divergenza dottrinale all'interno del cmpus alessandrista. In linea di massima, in questo tipo di letteratura l'identità non garantisce sempre la coerenza, anche perché l'autore di volta in volta deve interagire con la tradizione esegetica dei singoli passi e problemi. E d'altra parte, vige fra i commentatori uno zelo di continuità dottrinale, tale per cui la coerenza non garantisce l'identità dell'autore.

Ci si propone, piuttosto, di esemplificare una possibile scansione cronologica e tipologica del corpus alessandrista, che ne metta le diverse parti in qualche relazione con l'evoluzione della scuola, per la quale il passaggio ad Atene, attestato (a quanto sembra) dal recente reperto archeologico, dovette comportare uno slittamento verso un livello di insegnamento meno specializzato e più generico - quello per l'appunto dei trattati. La precarietà stessa di questa, come di altre analoghe ipotesi sui rapporti fra i due 'Alessandri', potrà almeno servire a mettere in evidenza quante cose non sappiamo e quante certezze potrebbero restare più sfumate.

Di più infatti non è lecito per ora sapere né congetturare. Sulle fasi precedenti della tradizione grava, qui come sovente altrove, l'ombra di un anonimato voluto e creato dai maestri stessi, dei quali Alessandro di Afrodisia il padre, questo sconosciuto, appare figura emblematica e riassuntiva," (p. 295, una nota omessa)

42. ———. 2017. "Alessandro di Afrodisia e il sistema aristotelico in età imperiale: stato dell'arte e prospettive di ricerca." In Studi su ellenismo e filosofia romana, edited by Alesse, Francesca, Fermani, Arianna and Maso, Stefano, 123-151. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.

"Gli studi su Alessandro infatti da alcuni decenni conoscono un rinnovamento sostanziale, uscendo progressivamente da una certa difficoltà, quasi un’impasse della storiografia di fronte alla filosofia degli esegeti.

Comincerò dunque da una presentazione a grandi linee del problema storiografico di fondo, per poi mostrare come gli studi recenti aprano prospettive di almeno parziale sviluppo e superamento. Ciò comporterà, per tappe successive, una parziale rassegna bibliografica (inevitabilmente selettiva), atta a esemplificare e a mostrare, almeno per specimina, in che modo si sia arrivati a questo punto negli studi, quali siano le differenze maggiori rispetto al passato, e quali prospettive di sviluppo si possano individuare.

Come esito complessivo, fin d’ora lo stato dell’arte può ben dirsi evoluto: in assoluto, gli studi su Alessandro e sulla tradizione esegetica sono divenuti un settore di punta nella storiografia filosofica antica, suscettibile di progressi decisivi e inediti." (p. 124)

43. ———, ed. 2018. Alexander Arabus. Studi sulla tradizione greco araba di Alessandro di Afrodisia. Pistoia: Petite Plaisance.

Indice: Prefazione di Marwan Rashed; Introduzione: Perché ‘Alexander Arabus’?; Avvertenza; L’Alexandre Arabe et la génération à partir du néant; Alexander of Aphrodisias and the Kindī-circle by Silvia Fazzo and Hillary Wiesner; L’Alexandre Arabe contre Galien et la réaction des philosophes à l’hégémonie du galénisme; Frammenti da Alessandro in De generatione et corruptione nel Kitāb al-Taṣrīf; Alexander Arabus in Metafisica Lambda 1072 b 2-3?; L’«ente» nella Metafisica di Aristotele e i suoi avatar dal greco all’arabo; The first account of Aristotle’s Metaphysics in fourteen books: Alexander of Aphrodisias’ ‘fragment Zero’

di Silvia Fazzo e Mauro Zonta; In memoria di Mauro Zonta; Considerazioni conclusive: la tradizione aristotelica greco-araba come modello di mediazione tra culture; Indice dei nomi.

44. ———. 2018. "L’emergenza della Metafisica di Aristotele in età romana: problemi di costituzione del testo e il ruolo del commento di Alessandro di Afrodisia." In Da Stagira a Roma. Prospettive aristoteliche tra storia e filosofia, edited by Gastaldi, Silvia and Zizza, Cesare, 155-183. Pisa: ETS.

Abstract: "La tradizione esegetica della Metafisica, forma, insieme al testo stesso della Metafisica in quattordici libri, entro l’epoca di Alessandro di Afrodisia e dei suoi maestri. Nel corso del 2° secolo AD si può situare un periodo decisivo per la trasformazione del pensiero di Aristotele in aristotelismo, cioè la costituzione della filosofia di Aristotele come sistema. Il fenomeno è indubbiamente molto articolato,

strutturante e trasversale; è difficile da descrivere e definire secondo i criteri storiografici focalizzati sull’innovatività e originalità. In questa direzione si può rileggere, e potenzialmente risolvere, l’impasse della storiografia filosofica nel rendere conto del contributo di Alessandro di Afrodisia. Su Alessandro, in effetti, nonostante l’ampliarsi recente della bibliografia, manca ancora una monografia comprensiva di riferimento. Il ruolo di Alessandro, commentatore aristotelico e ortodosso per eccellenza, potrebbe essere stato importante proprio nella configurazione attuale della Metafisica e nella definizione del suo ruolo nel corpus aristotelicum.”

45. ———. 2018. "Perché ‘Alexander Arabus’." In Alexander Arabus. Studi sulla tradizione greco araba di Alessandro di Afrodisia, edited by Fazzo, Silvia, 17-33. Pistoia: Petit Pleasance.

"«L’ Alexander Arabus ... chi è? ... che cos’è? Come vedremo, non si tratta tanto di un “chi”, quanto piuttosto di un “che cosa”; una sorta di etichetta per designare il corpus di trattati conservati in arabo e attribuiti al

commentatore greco di Aristotele Alessandro di Afrodisia, che visse tra il secondo e il terzo secolo della nostra era (fl. 200 d.C. ca.). Sarebbe fin troppo semplice, infatti, voler attribuire questo corpus a una singola figura storica. Dovremmo probabilmente considerare il comune denominatore di questi trattati dal punto di vista della loro funzione culturale comune: e questa è un’ipotesi di lavoro che mi propongo di esaminare anche negli studi a venire». Così cominciava il mio primo intervento su questo tema, che presentavo nel marzo 1993 all’Institut du Monde Arabe di Parigi. Era il primo studio che avesse mai menzionato un ‘Alessandro Arabo’ in quanto significativamente diverso dalla somma dei possibili testi greci di Alessandro di Afrodisia tradotti o citati o menzionati nella tradizione araba. Da allora, ho perseguito quella pista ed ipotesi di lavoro per venticinque anni, senza vere interruzioni." (p. 17)

46. ———. 2018. "Un caso di cittadinanza privilegiata in epoca romana imperiale. Alessandro di Afrodisia." In Cittadinanza: chi è incluso e chi no, per gli antichi e i moderni, edited by De Luise, Fulvia, 144-164. Trento: Università di Trento.

"La cittadinanza romana di Alessandro di Afrodisia, massimo esponente della scuola in esame, è uno dei pochissimi dati fattuali di cui disponiamo nell’intero ambito di studi. In virtù del sistema dei tria nomina, che la cittadinanza conferiva, e che l’epigrafe di Karakasu restituisce (Chaniotis 2004, cfr. qui infra), si è in condizione di datare l’acquisizione della cittadinanza stessa nella genealogia familiare, risalendo di un paio di generazioni nella ascendenza patrilineare." (p. 262)

Riferimenti

A. Chaniotis, New inscriptions from Aphrodisias (1995-2001), «American Journal of Archaeology», 108 (2004), pp. 377-416.

47. Forcignanò, Filippo. 2018. "Sul significato dell’argomento ἀπὸ τοῦ νοεῖν del « De ideis » di Aristotele: (Alex. Aphrod. in Metaph. 81, 25-82) " Acme no. 71:43-55.

Abstract: "Nel presente contributo si discute l’argomento del Περὶ ἰδεῶν aristotelico noto come «argomento dal pensare» (ἀπὸ τοῦ νοεῖν), vale a dire l’argomento che afferma che le forme esistono perché possiamo pensare cose che sono e non sono particolari anche dopo che si sono corrotte. Si mostra qui come Aristotele muova non una, ma due obiezioni a tale argomento. Tali obiezioni si fondano su un significato di νοεῖν differente da quello attribuito ai platonici. Questo, infatti, prevede capacità di astrazione, mentre le critiche di Aristotele si limitano al pensiero di individui. Gail Fine ha distinto un significato broad del verbo νοεῖν (i.e. il pensiero genericamente inteso) da un significato high del verbo (i.e. la forma più alta di pensiero in senso tecnico). Su questa base ha sostenuto che l’argomento attribuito ai platonici sia diverso dal secondo degli «argomenti dalle scienze» perché adotta un significato broad di νοεῖν. Io sostengo invece che l’argomento ἀπὸ τοῦ νοεῖν è differente dal secondo degli «argomenti dalle scienze», nonostante adotti un significato high di νοεῖν. Infine, si prende in esame la connessione tra la memoria e le forme attribuita da Aristotele ai platonici, mostrando come si tratti verosimilmente di un argomento extra e intra-academico non attribuibile direttamente a Platone."

48. Gambi, Giovanni. 2021. "L’assimilazione a Dio in Alessandro di Afrodisia." Universa. Recensioni di filosofia no. 10:39-58.

Abstract: "This essay aims to show how Alexander of Aphrodisias uses the notion of “assimilation to God”, presented by Plato in the Theaetetus and codified during the subsequent platonic tradition, in relation to some fundamental issues of his philosophical system. This notion will turn out to be a key aspect of his thought, both in terms of his theological-cosmological and moral reflection, and in relation to his idea of providence which joins these two types of reflection."

49. Gannagé, Emma. 2002. "Matière et éléments dans le commentaire d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise In de generatione et corruptione." In Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia nella tradizione araba, edited by D'Ancona, Cristina and Serra, Giuseppe, 133-149. Padova: Il Poligrasfo.

"De manière générale, la mise au jour et l’examen des extrait du commentaire d’Alexandre In De Gen. corr. reproduits dans le K. al-Tasrīf aura permis de jeter un éclairage différent sur certains points doctrinaux de la philosophie de la nature d’Alexandre. Car, il faut le souligner, pour la première fois nous sommes en présence d’importants extraits d’un commentaire d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise en version arabe. Jusque là, c’est à la transmission du grec à l’arabe des Quaestiones d’Alexandre que l’histoire de la philosophie s’était intéressée. Or ces petits traités ont la particularité de présenter la pensée de l’Aphrodisien dans ce qu’elle a d'original, affranchie du devoir d’allégeance à la pensée du maítre. En outre, la recherche récente a montré avec éclat les manipulations que les versions arabes de ces traités avaient subies; c’est ainsi qu’on a mis au jour d’abord un ‘Proclus Arabus’ et puis un 'Philoponus Arabus’ «portant directement les habits d’Alexandre» (48) Cet aspect de la recherche, très fructueux au regard de la transmission des idées, a contribué à jeter un voile de suspicion sur ce qu’on appelle désormais communément ‘l’Alexandre Arabe'. L’helléniste chevronné y voit un zeste méprisant, le produit d'un syncrétisme néoplatonicien ne gardant de l’Alexandre grec, le vrai, que le nom et ne pouvant par conséquent apporter aucune contribution à la restitution de la pensée de ce dernier.

Or avec les extraits du commentaire d’Alexandre in De Gen. corr. c'est, d’une part, à l’activité d’exégète d’Alexandre que nous avons affaire et, d’autre part, à une traduction fidèle. Nous avons eu l'occasion de le constater au sujet de la lecture de certains lemmes qui nous ont révélé un état du texte aristotélicien plus ancien que celui des manuscrits du De Gen. corr. que nous possédons. Quant à l’apport philosophique de ces extraits, on pourrait s’interroger d’abord sur l’intérêt d’une exégèse qui prétend à l’orthodoxie, si ce n’est qu’il réside précisément dans la distance entre le commentaire et le texte qu’il entend éclairer." (pp. 148-149)

(48) Nous empruntons cette jolie métaphore à A. Hasnawi, qui a fait cette découverte dans un article remarquable, Alexandre d’Aphrodise vs Jean Philopon: Notes sur quelques traités d’Alexandre ‘perdus’en grec, conservés en arabe, «Ar. Sc. Phil.», 4 (1994), 53-109.

50. Geoffroy, Marc. 2002. "La tradition arabe du Περί νοῦ d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise et les origines de la théorie farabienne des quatres degrés de l'intellect." In Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia nella tradizione araba, edited by D'Ancona, Cristina and Serra, Giuseppe, 191-231. Padova: Il Poligrafo.

"C’est un trait commun à toutes les théories arabes orientales de l’intellect que d’attribuer à Aristote l’enseignement selon lequel il existe quatre degrés de l’intellect humain, de la puissance à l'acte pur. L’origine de ce lieu commun est difficile à préciser. On peut seulement constater que sur le fond de ce principe s’élaborent, d’al-Kindî à Avicenne, diverses doctrines de l’intellection humaine qui présentent entre elles des disparités considérables. Les filiations menant de la tradition exégétique tardo-antique du De Anima d’Aristote à sa réception arabe restent encore à retracer. De même le rôle précis de la tradition pseudo-aristotélicienne de la Théologie d’Aristote et du Livre des Causes dans le développement de ces théories. Tout cela constitue un essaim de questions trop vaste pour être même résumé ici. Et l’on pourrait moins encore proposer une réponse à chacune d’elles, le terrain étant encore pour la plus grande part inexploré. Dans ces conditions, le mieux à faire est d’essayer de le déblayer parcelle à parcelle, mais minutieusement, quitte à réserver les conclusions fortes et les synthèses pour l’avenir. C’est à ce type de déblayage partiel que l’on voudrait se consacrer dans les lignes qui suivent." (p. 191, une note omise)

51. Isnardi Parente, Margherita. 1995. "Analisi della testimonianza di Alessandro d'Afrodisia sul Perì tagathoû di Aristotele." Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche. Rendiconti no. 6:33-58.

52. ———. 2000. "Alessandro d'Afrodisia e il Περι τἀγαθοῦ di Aristotele." In La filosofia in età imperiale: le scuole e le tradizioni filosofiche: atti del colloquio, Roma, 17-19 giugno 1999, edited by Brancacci, Aldo, 245-270. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

53. Longo, Angela. 2016. "I paradossi nell’« Ippia minore » di Platone: la critica di Aristotele, Alessandro di Afrodisia e Asclepio." Humanitas no. 71:12-135.

54. Lucarini, Carlo Martini. 2007. "Per il testo di Alessandro di Afrodisiade e di Proclo." Orpheus no. 5:128-137.

55. Luna, Concetta. 2004. "Alessandro di Afrodisia e Siriano sul libro B della Metafisica: tecnica e struttura del commento." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 15:39-79.

56. Magris, Aldo. 2016. Destino, provvidenza, predestinazione. Dal mondo antico al cristianesimo. Brescia: Morcelliana.

Nuova edizioe riveduta (prima edizione 2008).

57. Maltese, Enrico Valdo. 1994. "Il commento di Alessandro d'Afrodisia ai « Sophistici elenchi » di Aristotele: una nuova testimonianza bizantina (Psell. Theol. 54, 48 ss. Gautier) " In Voce di molte acque: miscellanea di studi offerti a Eugenio Corsini, edited by Bàrberi Squarotti, Giovanni, 39-62. Torino: Zamorani.

58. Martorana, A. L. 1968. "Il maestro di Alessandro di Afrodisia." Sophia no. 36:365-367.

59. Militello, Chiara. 2013. "Il lessico dell'astrazione in Alessandro di Afrodisia." Giornale Critico della Filosofia Italiana no. 9:302-321.

Abstract: "This article is about the terms used in the works traditionally ascribed to Alexander of Aphrodisias to mean the process of abstraction through which intellect separates form and matter. The passages are studied in order to identify what nouns and verbs are used. Since in two works of dubious authorship aphaireô and aphairesis are found, the usage of these terms in the works that can be ascribed with certainty to Alexander is studied. The results obtained are examined in the light of the hypotheses about the authorship and chronology of the cited works formulated by scholars so far."

60. ———. 2017. Dialettica, genere e anima nel commento di Alessandro di Afrodisia al quarto libro dei Topici di Aristotele. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

"Il volume comprende una serie di saggi sui passi più significativi del commento di Alessandro di Afrodisia al IV libro dei Topici di Aristotele. In particolare, i saggi sono dedicati ai seguenti tre argomenti, su cui Alessandro espone tesi estremamente interessanti. Il primo tratta la dialettica, cioè l’argomento dei Topici; segue poi il genere, che costituisce l’argomento del IV libro in particolare; infine l’anima, le discussioni intorno alla quale costituiscono per il commentatore un esempio privilegiato per illustrare i “luoghi” dialettici via via discussi. È fornita ai lettori anche la traduzione integrale del commento di Alessandro al IV libro, supportata da note esplicative. Ai saggi di commento e alla traduzione è premessa un’introduzione in cui sono presentate brevemente la concezione aristotelica della dialettica, la figura di Alessandro di Afrodisia e le caratteristiche generali della sua esegesi dei Topici.

61. Minerbi Belgrado, Anna. 2019. "Filopono, Alessandro d’Afrodisia e l’entelechia." Studi Classici e Orientali no. 65:203-211.

Abstract: "Philoponus and Alexander of Aphrodisias on entelechyThe discussion about the notion of entelechy is perhaps the most apt toresume Philoponus’ opposition to Alexander’s conception of the soul.The paper analyses the first two books of Philoponus’ commentary onAristotle’s De anima, in order to show the precise relationships betweenPhiloponus’ and Alexander’s philosophical arguments about entelechy."

62. ———. 2020. "Hobbes e Alessandro di Afrodisia: a proposito dell’anima." Giornale Critico della Filosofia Italiana no. 16:384-392.

63. Molina, Elisa. 2006. "Alessandro di Afrodisia, Mantissa 20: strategie argomentative contro l'etica stoica." Rivista di storia della filosofia no. 61:457-468.

"Il tratto comune, che può apparire come una sorta di filo conduttore della raccolta di scritti di Alessandro di Afrodisia giuntaci col titolo di De anima II e che è stata rinominata Mantissa (aggiunta, supplemento) dall'editore ottocentesco(1), è il costante riferimento critico allo stoicismo: sono, infatti, scritti che te- stimoniano la polemica di Alessandro prevalentemente contro gli stoici, in difesa delle tesi aristoteliche." (p. 457)

(...)

"Alessandro fa notare che, se l'assenso viene negato, non segue nemmeno l'azione(59). E siccome, dal suo punto di vista, la felicità consiste in un'attività, se manca l'assenso, manca anche la felicità. In realtà, si è visto che per gli stoici la felicità non consiste nelle attività, ma nel solo possesso della virtù.

Quindi, anche senza concedere il suo assenso e senza agire, il saggio è felice, perché la sua felicità consiste in una disposizione interiore costante e non in singole attività. Quindi, come detto, in questo caso la strategia di Alessandro consiste nel prendere in considerazione, tra le differenti formulazioni del fine presenti nella riflessione stoica, quella che più si avvicina alla formulazione peripatetica e che, come tale, meglio si presta ad essere interpretata attraverso categorie aristoteliche senza tuttavia apparire deformata. Prendendo in considerazione, tra le varie formulazioni stoiche di fine, quella che più si avvicina alla formulazione peripatetica, egli riesce nell'intento di interpretarla attraverso categorie aristoteliche senza tuttavia farla apparire falsata e a combattere cosi gli avversari su un piano di maggiore familiarità.

Questa, dunque, l'intonazione generale presente nello scritto, questo lo spirito che sembra permeare tutta la costruzione argomentativa di Alessandro e che può essere preso ad esempio di come si poteva condurre una polemica contro una scuola rivale in epoca imperiale." (p. 468)

(1) Ivo Bruns, Supplementum aristotelicum 2.1, Reimer, Berlin 1887. La Mantissa occupa le pagine 101-186; il XX scritto le pp. 159.16 (...)

(59) Cfr. 161.35-37.

64. Montanari, Elo. 1971. "Per un'edizione del Περί κράσεως di Alessandro di Afrodisia." Atti e memorie dell'Accademia toscana di scienze e lettere La Colombaria no. 36:17-58.

65. ———. 1981. "Il primo capitolo del Περι κράσεως di Alessandro di Afrodisia." Prometheus no. 7:69-72.

66. Moraux, Paul. 1972. "Alessandro di Afrodisia: naturalismo o misticismo?" In Saggi e ricerche I, edited by Giacon, Carlo, 15-23. Padova: Antenore.

67. Movia, Giancarlo. 1970. Alessandro di Afrodisia: tra naturalismo e misticismo. Padova: Antenore.

68. ———. 1971. "L'anima e gli elementi nel De anima di Alessandro di Afrodisia " Atti della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino. 2, Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche no. 105:61-107.

69. ———. 2002. "La scienza dell'essere e i suoi principi: sul commento di Alessandro di Afrodisia al libro Γ della « Metafisica » di Aristotele." In ΕΝΩΣΙΣ ΚΑΙ ΦΙΛΙΑ = Unione e amicizia: omaggio a Francesco Romano, edited by Barbanti, Maria, Giardina, Giovanna Rita, Manganaro, Paolo and Berti, Enrico, 275-291. Catania: CUECM.

70. ———, ed. 2005. Alessandro di Afrodisia e la «Metafisica» di Aristotele. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

Sommario: Avvertenza 7; Indirizzo di saluto di Paolo Cugusi 9; Pierluigi Donini: Unità e oggetto della metafisica secondo Alessandro di Afrodisia 15; Raffaella Santi: Dialettica e metafisica in Platone secondo la testimonianza di Alessandro di Afrodisia (In "Metaph." A 6 e 9) 53; Giancarlo Movia: I problemi della metafisica. Sul commento di Alessandro di Afrodisia al libro B della Metafisica di Aristotele 79; Mario Mignucci: Alessandro interprete di Aristotele: luci e ombre del commento a Metaph. G 93; Kevin Flannery: Logic and Ontology in Alexander of Aphrodisias's Commentary on Metaphysics IV 117: Kevin Flannery: Logica e significato nel commento di Alessandro di Afrodisia a Metafisica IV 139; Carlo Natali: Causa formale e causa motrice in Alessandro di Afrodisia 153; Paolo Accattino: Processi naturali e comparsa dell'eidos in Alessandro di Afrodisia 167; Robert W. Sharples: Pseudo-Alexander on Aristotle, Metaphysics A 18; Robert W. Sharples: Lo Pseudo-Alessandro su Aristotele, Metafisica A 219; Elisabetta Cattanei: Gli enti matematici "per astrazione" secondo Alessandro di Afrodisia e lo Pseudo-Alessandro 255; Emidio Spinelli: Istanze anti-metafisiche nel pirronismo antico. Enesidemo, Sesto Empirico e il concetto di causa 277-306.

71. ———. 2009. "L' uno e i molti: l'essere e i suoi principi: sul commento dello ps. Alessandro ai libri « Iota » e « Kappa » della « Metafisica » di Aristotele " In Gli antichi e noi: scritti in onore di Antonio Mario Battegazzore, edited by Lapini, Walter, 199-223. Genova: Brigati.

72. Natali, Carlo. 1994. "Alessandro di Afrodisia. 'De fato' II-VI, in prospettiva aristotelica." Rivista di Storia della Filosofia no. 49:629-663.

"Qui discuteremo soprattutto cinque tra i capitoli iniziali del de fato, II- VI, in cui Alessandro ci dice di volere esporre la posizione di Aristotele, «della cui scuola filosofica io sono a capo, essendone stato proclamato maestro... intorno al destino e a ciò che dipende da noi» (164, 13-15). Tale esposizione verrà fatta in positivo, ed ad essa farà seguito poi la critica delle altre dottrine: «Poiché, peraltro, la difesa di alcune dottrine risulta più chiara attraverso la discussione contro chi sostiene tesi diverse... dopo avere parlato secondo la posizione di Aristotele, svilupperò il mio discorso contro coloro che non si sono espressi come lui su tali argomenti, perché dal confronto delle prese di posizione la verità vi risulti più chiara» (165, 1-5). I capitoli II- VI del de fato corrispondono alla prima parte del proposito di Alessandro, l'esposizione positiva della dottrina peripatetica del destino, ed i capitoli da VII a XXXVIII alla seconda parte, la difesa della dottrina peripatetica del destino, e il suo approfondimento, attraverso la discussione delle tesi degli avversari." (pp, 630-631, note omesse)

73. ———. 2002. "Il commento di Alessandro di Afrodisia a Meteorologica IV." In Aristoteles Chemicus. Il IV libro dei Meteorologica nella tradizione antica e medievale, edited by Viano, Cristina, 35-57. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

"Il commento di Alessandro al libro IV dei Meteorologica è continuo; ma non a tutte le parti del libro IV è accordata la stessa attenzione. Alcune sezioni, in particolare i capitoli 8 e 9, sono trattate molto cursoriamente ed a sette colonne Bekker (circa, da 384 b 24 a 388 a 10) sono dedicate poco più di sei pagine di commento (da 212, 33 a 219, 5); per di più, un’intera pagina (212, 33-213, 38) è dedicata alle sole dieci righe iniziali di IV 8, (384 b 24-34), il che lascia ben poco spazio per il resto del commento. L’abbreviazione è particolarmente significativa a partire dalla pagina 216, 12 sgg., che commenta il passo 385 b 27 sgg. Per contro, nel commento all’ultimo capitolo del libro IV, ove Aristotele affronta temi metafisicamente più interessanti, come la forma e il fine dei corpi anomeomeri, a circa due colonne Bekker sono dedicate quattro pagine e mezzo di commento (circa, da 223, 4 a 227, 22). Ne leggeremo più avanti qualche brano. In generale si può dire che Alessandro, rispetto ad Aristotele, ha una visione abbastanza moderna di cosa

sia “filosofia”, e che trova inutile soffermarsi sulle questioni particolari, mentre dedica molta cura al chiarimento dei principi metafisici di base." (p. 42)

74. ———. 2006. "La deliberazione nel « De fato » di Alessandro d'Afrodisia." Elenchos no. 27:73-99.

75. ———. 2015. "La scuola di Alessandro su piacere e sofferenza: (Quaest. Eth. 5/4, 6, 7, 16)." In Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia: (« Questioni etiche » e « Mantissa »): metodo e oggetto dell’etica peripatetica, edited by Bonelli, Maddalena, 59-86. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

76. Rescigno, Andrea. 2000. "Alessandro di Afrodisia e Plotino: il caso della θαλαττία νάρκη " Κοινωνία no. 24:199-230.

77. ———. 2013. "Aristotele, De Caelo A 9, 279a18-b3: da Alessandro di Afrodisia alla Scuola di Alessandria." In Aristoteles Romanus. La réception de la science aristotélicienne dans l’Empire gréco-romain, edited by Lehmann, Yves, 313-340. Turnhout: Brepols.

"Il passo del primo libro del De caelo di cui si esamina qui la storia interpretativa all’interno dell’aristotelismo di età imperiale e tardo antica è luogo tra i più criticamente documentati del Περὶ οὐρανοῦ; per esso sono infatti ricostruibili i tentativi esegetici di Alessandro di Afrodisia, Temistio, Ammonio, di alcuni anonimi e più recenti commentatori(1), e, infine, di Simplicio. Se si considera che di tutta l’attività interpretativa antica che riguarda il De caelo ci restano soltanto la Parafrasi di Temistio(2) e il commento di Simplicio, in questo caso la sopravvivenza di testimoni così numerosi costituisce un’eccezione."

(...)

"In questo tentativo di sondaggio della stratigrafia esegetica di cael. A 9, 279a18-b3, oltre che alla parafrasi di Temistio e al commentario di Simplicio, ricorrerò, da una parte, ad uno scolio tratto dal codice Parisinus Coisilinianus 166, per integrare la posizione di Alessandro e documentare quella di Ammonio; dall’altra, al Commentum magnum e, soprattutto, al Commentum medium di Averroé, per precisare quella assai determinante di Temistio. Alla fine di questa ricerca, sia detto in anticipo, emergerà ancora una volta l’isolamento a cui Alessandro fu destinato nella storia successiva dell’aristotelismo di scuola." (pp. 313-314)

(1) Se essi non devono essere identificati con Temistio e Ammonio; in questo caso, infatti, i nostri testimoni si ridurrebbero a quattro.

(2) Per giunta pervenutaci nella traduzione ebraica condotta sulla translatio araba, a sua volta basata sulla redazione siriaca del testo greco; vale a dire che la Parafrasi che leggiamo è ciò che risulta da un processo di triplice trasposizione. In più deve considerarsi che, in vista di questo studio, chi scrive è dovuto ricorrere ad un quarto stadio della trasmissione, vale a dire alla versione latina del testo ebraico, una revisione che Samuel Landauer, l’editore berlinese di Temistio, condusse sulla precedente traduzione di Mosé Alatino: cf. Themistius, In libros Aristotelis De caelo paraphrasis, hebraice et latine, ed. S. Landauer, Berolini 1902 (CAG V 4) ; Themistii peripatetici lucidissimi paraphrasis in libros quattuor Aristotelis de coelo nunc primum in lucem edita Moyse Alatino Hebraeo Spoletino medico ac philosopho interprete, Venetiis apud Simonem Galignanum 1574.

78. Salis, Rita. 2003-2004. "I movimenti dei corpi celesti nel commento dello pseudo-Alessandro alla Metafisica di Aristotele." Atti e memorie dell’Accademia Galileiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padova, già dei Ricovrati e Patavina no. 116:137-168.

"Conclusioni

All’inizio del presente lavoro, si è mostrato che il cap. 8 di Metaph. Λ si inserisce a pieno titolo nel contesto dell’intero libro. Ciò ha come conseguenza che la dimostrazione dell’esistenza di una pluralità di sostanze immobili e la successiva determinazione del loro numero rientra nell’ambito della ricerca annunciata nel cap. 1 e sviluppata nel corso del libro.

Riguardo alla questione dell’animazione delle sfere celesti, si è visto che la posizione di pseudo-Alessandro ricalca quella del vero Alessandro nell’ammettere che le anime delle sfere sono distinte dalle sostanze immobili, e si è altresì evidenziato come essa non sia priva di difficoltà e contraddizioni.

L’ammissione esplicita del primato del Motore immobile primo da parte di pseudo-Alessandro non aggiunge nulla a quanto ritroviamo in Aristotele, e non contribuisce perciò a chiarire il tipo di rapporto tra il primo Motore e le altre sostanze immobili. È certo comunque che, secondo pseudo-Alessandro, a distinguerli non sia un diverso tipo di immobilità.(...)" (p. 165)

79. ———. 2023. "Alessandro di Afrodisia e la nascita della dottrina dell'analogia del'essere." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. Online first:1-18.

Abstract: "This paper contributes to the debate on the origins of the doctrine of the analogy of being. The author argues that it was Alexander of Aphrodisias who started the process that was ultimately to lead, with Thomas Aquinas, to the complete formulation of the doctrine of the analogy of being.

Alexander’s decisive contribution appears to lie not in the overlap between the unity by analogy in Metaph. Δ 6 and the πρὸς ἕν of Metaph. Γ 2, as recently claimed by K.L. Flannery [*], but in the commentator’s having placed being as an intermediate between homonymous and synonymous.

Alexander’s distinction between the three terms seems to mark a turning point in the way Aristotle’s passage has been interpreted. By going beyond Aristotle, and placing being in an intermediate position, Alexander seems to pave the way towards the doctrine of the analogia entis, grasping the feasibility of it stemming from Aristotle’s own text."

[*] K.L. Flannery, Analogy in Alexander of Aphrodisias, in AA.VV., La dottrina dell’analogia dell’essere nella «Metafisica» di Aristotele e i suoi sviluppi nel pensiero tardo-antico e medievale, Il Poligrafo, Padova 2019, pp. 119-142.

80. Sgarbi, Marco. 2011. "Metaphysica Λ 7. 1072 B 10-13." Antiquorum Philosophia no. 5:165-176.

Abstract: "La presente ricerca parte da una riflessione sul passo di Metaphysica Λ 7. 1072 b 10-13 per sottolineare un aspetto trascurato dagli studi aristotelici, cioè che il primo motore per Aristotele è principio in quanto bene ed è ciò senza di cui il bene non sarebbe realizzabile. Solo a partire da questa idea del principio primo come bene fu possibile per Aristotele concepire una filosofia prima distinta dalla fisica."

81. Sharples, Robert W., and Vegetti, Mario. 1991. "Fato, valutazione e imputabilità: un argomento stoico in Alessandro, De fato 35." Elenchos no. 12:257-270.

82. Silvano, Luigi. 2017. "Un'edizione da rifare: i Problemata dello Pseudo-Alessandro di Afrodisia." Philologia Antiqua no. 10:19-29.

83. ———. 2017-2018. "La luna (piena?) e la decomposizione della carne. Nota a Pseudo-Alessandro di Afrodisisa, Probl. I, 66 Ideler." Revue des Études Tardo-Antiques no. 7:29-46.

Résumé : "L’article porte sur un des Problèmes faussement attribués à Alexandre d’Aphrodise (I, 66 Ideler), qui s’interroge sur les causes de l’action putréfiante des rayons de la lune : une question longuement débattue dans l’Antiquité, pour laquelle le Pseudo-Alexandre propose une solution semblable à celle avancée par Galien et Macrobe. On donne ici une nouvelle édition du problème, basée sur seize manuscrits."

84. Tassinari, Piero. 1991. "De febribus: un trattato medico attribuito ad Alessandro d'Afrodisia." Sileno no. 107:43-55.

85. Vegetti, Mario. 1991. "Fato, valutazione e imputabilità. Un argomento stoico in Alessandro, De fato 35." Elenchos no. 2:257-270.

86. Verde, Francesco. 2016. "Percezione, errore e residuo percettivo in Aristotele, Epicuro e Alessandro di Afrodisia." Giornale Critico della Filosofia Italiana no. 12:44-62.

Abstract "Questo articolo si occupa principalmente della nozione epicurea di ἐγκατάλειμμα τοῦ εἰδώλου (Epistola a Erodoto § 50). Gli scopi del presente studio sono i seguenti: (1) comprendere il significato di questa espressione nell’ambito della dottrina percettiva di Epicuro; (2) verificare la (probabile) origine epicurea del termine ἐγκατάλειμμα, esaminando in particolare le sue occorrenze in Alessandro di Afrodisia; (3) analizzare la possibilità che il concetto aristotelico di ὑ όλειμμα (cfr. e.g. Insomn. 461b 21) possa in qualche modo contribuire a chiarire la nozione di ἐγκατάλειμμα di Epicuro."

87. Zago, Giovanni. 2012. "Congetture al « De fato » di Alessandro di Afrodisia." Prometheus:248-254.

88. ———. 2012. "Contributi critici al testo del « De fato » di Alessandro di Afrodisia." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie no. 155:364-388.

"Secondo la ricostruzione stemmatica di P. Thillet,(1) 1'edizione del De fato di Alessandro di Afrodisia deve fondarsi su due testimoni, il cod. Ven. Marc. gr. 258 (= V), da cui derivano tutti gli altri codd. greci dell'opera, e la traduzione latina del De fato attribuita da Thillet stesso a Guglielmo di Moerbeke (= Lat). Tale traduzione(2) ha infatti alia base un esemplare greco indipendente da V, dal momento che V è in minuscola, laddove Lat deriva da un perduto ms. greco in onciale. Thillet ha dato seguito alle proprie importanti ricerche sulla tradizione manoscritta del De fato curandone un'edizione critica,(3) che però propone un testo spesso insoddisfacente (anche nell'interpunzione) e un apparato che in troppi casi tace palmari congetture. Per questo motivo, l'edizione di Thillet non puo costituire uno strumento affidabile per i filologi e gli storici della filosofia antica che intendano occuparsi del De fato." (p. 364)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Alexander von Aphrodisias: Bibliographie der Deutschen Studien

Bibliographie

1. Dietrich, Albert. 1964. "Die arabische Version einer unbekannten Schrift des Alexander von Aphrodisias über die differentia specifica." Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen no. 2:85-148.

2. Gaetje, Helmut. 1967. "Die arabische Übersetzung der Schrift des Alexander von Aphrodisias über die Farbe." Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen. 1, Philologisch-Historische Klasse no. 10:341-382.

3. Gatsioufa, Paraskevi. 2015. "Der Kommentar Alexanders von Aphrodisias zur « Metaphysik » im « codex sacromontanus »: textkritische Bemerkungen." In Lemmata: Beiträge zum Gedenken an Christos Theodoridis, edited by Tziatzi, Maria, Billerbeck, Margarethe, Montanari, Franco and Tsantsanoglou, Kyriakos, 370-393. Berlin: De Gruyter.

4. Grabmann, Martin. 1929. "Mittelalterliche lateinische Übersetzungen von Schriften der Aristoteles-Kommentatoren Johannes Philoponos, Alexander von Aphrodisias und Themistios." Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophish-Historische Klasse no. 7:1-72.

5. Hager, Fritz-Peter. 1975. "Proklos und Alexander von Aphrodisias über ein Problem der Lehre von der Vorsehung." In Kephalaion. Studies in Greek philosophy and its continuation offered to C. J. de Vogel, edited by Mansfeld, Jaap and de Rijk, Lambertusd Marie, 171-182.

6. Hahmann, Andree. 2007. "Mit Aristoteles gegen die Stoiker? Zufall und akzidentelle Verursachung in der Schrift « De fato » des Alexander von Aphrodisias." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 61:361-377.

7. Langerbeck, Hermann. 1936. "Zu Alexander von Aphrodisias' De fato c. X." Hermes no. 71:473-474.

8. Merlan, Philip. 1957. "Metaphysik. Name und Gegenstand." The Journal of Hellenic Studies no. 77:87-92.

9. ———. 1969. "Zwei Untersuchungen zu Alexander von Aphrodisias." Philologus no. 1113:85-91.

10. Moraux, Paul. 1967. "Aristoteles, der Lehrer Alexanders von Aphrodisias." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 49:169-182.

"Über die philosophische Ausbildung Alexanders von Aphrodisias sind wir ebenso schlecht informiert wie ber die sonstigen Umstände seines Lebens. Unter den zweifellos zahlreichen Schülern und Bewunderern

des berühmtesten aller griechischen Interpreten des Aristoteles fand sich leider keiner, der wie etwa Porphyrios für Plotin die wichtigsten Lebensdaten des Meisters in einem βιός piet tsvoll aufzeichnete. Das wenige, was wir von seinem Leben wissen, verdanken wir kurzen autobiographischen Angaben aus seinen eigenen Schriften. Aus einem Fragment seines Kommentars zu De caelo geht z. B. hervor, da er bei Herminos gehŏrt hatte.

In seinem Kommentar zur Meteorologie nennt er Sosigenes als seinen Lehrer; eine hnliche Auskunft begegnet bei Themistios und bei loannes Philoponos. Ferner wird ein dritter Lehrer des Exegeten in der kleinen Abhandlung ber den Intellekt erwähnt.

Simplikios und Kyrillos kennen ihn ebenfalls als den Lehrer des Exegeten. Da die Persŏnlichkeit, um die es sich dabei handelt, ziemlich rätselhaft ist, wollen wir zuerst die Testimonien in ihrem berlieferten Zustand betrachten." (s. 169,

11. ———. 1968. "Einige Aspekte des Aristotelismus von Andronikos bis Alexander von Aphrodisias." In Antiquitas Graeco-romana ac Tempora nostra. acta congressus internationalis habiti Brunae diebus 12-16 mensis Aprilis MCMLXVI, edited by Burian, J. and Vidman, L. Prague: Československá akademie.

12. ———. 1985. "Ein neues Zeugnis über Aristoteles, den Lehrer Alexanders von Aphrodisias." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 67:266-269.

13. Moraux, Paul, and Sharples, Robert W. 2001. Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen. Von Andronikos bis Alexander von Aphrodisias, Band 3: Alexander von Aphrodisias Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Die Arbeit an seinem „Aristotelismus bei den Griechen" hat Paul Moraux über 25 Jahre begleitet. Planungen und erste Vorarbeiten für dieses Werk wie auch für sein anderes großes Projekt, den andschriftenkatalog „Aristoteles Graecus", reichen bis in die zweite Hälfte der 50er Jahre zurück. Beide Vorhaben hat Moraux nicht mehr zum Abschluß bringen können. Wer freilich die Fülle seiner sonstigen Publikationen aus den Jahren 1960-1985 sowie seine vielfältigen universitären Verpflichtungen in Betracht zieht, kann für das Geleistete nur Respekt und Bewunderung empfinden. Der erste und zweite Band des „Aristotelismus" mit über 1400 Seiten erschienen 1973 bzw. 1984; etwa drei Viertel des dritten Bandes lagen vor, als 1985 ein vorzeitiger Tod dem rastlosen Wirken des großen Aristotelikers ein jähes Ende setzte.

Der Umfang des Nachgelassenen, nun über fünfhundert Seiten im Druck, macht bereits deutlich, daß dieses Konvolut kaum in der kurzen Zeitspanne zwischen dem Erscheinen des zweiten Bandes und dem Tod des Autors entstanden sein kann. In der Tat begann Moraux seine Arbeit für den „Aristotelismus" nicht sogleich mit dem ersten Band. Vielmehr hatte er auf Grund seiner Vertrautheit mit Alexander von Aphrodisias, dem zentralen Thema des dritten Bandes, in den 60er Jahren zunächst einige Kapitel über die Kommentare zur Naturphilosophie und zur Psychologie des Aristoteles entworfen, bevor er sich den Bänden I und II zuwandte. Manche Abschnitte des dritten Bandes sind also wesentlich früher als die Kapitel zur Analytik und zur Metaphysik, die nach Band I und II gegen Ende seines Lebens geschrieben wurden." (Vorvort, s. V)

14. Paul, Morauxl. 1967. "Alexander von Aphrodisias Quaest. 2.3." Hermes no. 95:159-169.

15. Ruland, Hans Jochen. 1976. Die arabischen Fassungen von zwei Schriften des Alexander von Aphrodisias. Über die Vorsehung und über das liberum arbitrium. Saarbrücken: Universität des Saarlandes.

16. ———. 1978. "Die arabische Übersetzung der Schrift des Alexander von Aphrodisias über die Sinneswahrnehmung " Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen no. 5:1-67.

17. ———. 1979. "Zwei arabische Fassungen der Abhandlung des Alexander von Aphrodisias über die universalia (Quaestio I 11 a)." Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen no. 10:246-274.

18. Weidemann, Hermann. 1997. "Ein drittes modallogisches Argument für den Determinismus: Alexander von Aphrodisias." In Das weite Spektrum der analytischen Philosophie: Festschrift für Franz von Kutschera, edited by Lenzen, Wolfgang, 429-446. Berlin: de Gruyter.

19. Wilpert, Paul. 1940. "Reste verlorener Aristotelesschriften bei Alexander von Aphrodisias." Hermes no. 75:369-396.

20. Zierl, Andreas. 1992. "Naturnotwendigkeit und menschliche Freiheit: zu einer peripatetisch-stoischen Debatte bei Alexander von Aphrodisias." In Naturgesetzlichkeit und Kosmologie in der Geschichte: Festschrift für Ulrich Grigull, edited by Bialas, Volker, 20-25. Stuttgart: Steiner.

21. Zimmermann, Fritz W. 1976. "Al-Farabi und die philosophische Kritik an Galen von Alexander zu Averroes." In Akten Des Kongresses Fur Arabistik Und Islamwissenschaft VII: Gottingen, 15. Bis 22. August 1974, edited by Dietrich, Albert, 401-414. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Boethius' Metaphysics of Being and Goodness

Introduction: An Overview of the Work of Boethius

"By writing the Consolation of Philosophy Boethius provided all educated people of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance with one of their principal classics, a work of both intellectual profundity and literary delight to be read not only in Latin by clerks in their study but also by laymen at leisure, and therefore often in the vernacular.

(...)

"His world is the old world of antiquity with an intellectual framework dominated by Ptolemaic ideas about the world, by Aristotle’s doctrines of substance and accidents, by a Platonic metaphysic setting asunder mind and matter, by Pythagorean ideas of mathematics and of musical proportion as the key to the structure of the cosmos."

(...)

"Boethius was by temperament a man who liked to strike out on his own. In all the fields that he touched he had some Latin predecessors. Apuleius anticipated him in writing a short guide to Aristotle’s difficult treatise on Interpretation. It is likely that Boethius knew Apuleius’ work, but he never mentions it by name. Apuleius also anticipated him in making an adaptation of the Arithmetic of Nicomachus of Gerasa, but Boethius sets about his own version of Nicomachus as if he had no predecessor. Marius Victorinus, the African rhetor of the mid-fourth century whose conversion to Christianity astonished high Roman society about 355, directly covered some of the ground that Boethius was to claim as his own. He made a translation of Porphyry’s Isagoge or introduction (Porphyry did not explain what he was introducing, but in the sixth century it was assumed to be an introduction to Aristotle’s Categories; a version, with eight books of commentary, of Aristotle’s Categories; a version of Aristotle on Interpretation; a tract on the hypothetical syllogism; and a commentary on Cicero’s Topics. Boethius acknowledges that Victorinus was the most eminent orator of his time, but loses no opportunity of drawing attention to Victorinus' blunders either in logic or in translation from the Greek. Nevertheless, it can hardly be accidental that the portion of Boethius’ dialectical work which became most widely known covers much the same area as that laid down as the standard curriculum by Victorinus in the fourth century. Although Boethius succeeded in making careful translations, which were then given a further meticulous revision, of both Analytics, Topics, and Sophistic Refutations, the transmission of these last treatises is a thin line. Until the twelfth century they were little known or not at all. Neither in his dialectical studies nor in his works on mathematics did Boethius claim to be original. For arithmetic he closely follows his Greek model in the Pythagorean Nicomachus of Gerasa. This study is intended as a preparation for the introduction to music, a much longer work dependent on Nicomachus and on Ptolemy. The Institutio Musica is transmitted incomplete in the manuscript tradition, which breaks off in the middle of a sentence half way through the fifth book. Originally the work must have run to six or seven books.

(...)

"In his logical treatises there stands one monograph which had special interest for him, namely, that on the hypothetical syllogism of the conditional form: ‘if A, then B; but A, therefore B’, or ‘if A, then B ; but not B, therefore not A.’ The school of Aristotle had begun the investigation of the logic of conditional statements of this kind. The Stoics had taken the matter considerably further, treating the variables AB as symbols not (as in Aristotle) for terms but for entire propositions. Cicero took some notice of this Stoic logic, so that it was not bringing out matter of which the Latin world knew nothing. But Boethius’ monograph is the most careful and detailed study in logic to come from his pen, and without it our knowledge of ancient propositional logic would be thin. To medieval logicians this treatise was not perhaps of the greatest interest. John of Salisbury regarded it without enthusiasm, but conceded that it was at least clearer than anything that Aristotle would have written on the subject, had he done so. In recent times modern logicians have shown a more benevolent interest in Boethius’ work in this complex field. John of Salisbury felt that some of Boethius’ logical studies were too abstract to be of any use. There is no doubt that his expositions of Aristotle are academic and detached, but written with the conviction that they train the mind to detect fallacies. In his second commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge he utters the warning: ‘Those who reject logic are bound to make mistakes. Unless reason shows the right path, the incorrupt truth of reality cannot be found’. In the commentary on Aristotle’s Categories he writes in pain of the threat to the survival of culture in his own time, and speaks of the imminent collapse of liberal studies unless drastic action is taken to preserve the values of the classical past. Knowledge is not only gained in the process of historical change; it is even more easily lost. Human culture can suffer impoverishment more readily than it can achieve enrichment. Hence Boethius’ sweat and toil in his study to make available to the Latin world those works which the best philosophers of his age regarded as the proper ladder of true education. They were Neoplatonists and set action far below contemplation. Their educational ideal was relatively little concerned with politics or economics or even ethics (though Boethius’ contemporary Simplicius wrote a commentary on the Enchiridion of Epictetus which must be reckoned a treatise on the moral life), but was directed towards what they called ‘theoria’, rendered by Boethius ‘speculatio’. Under the heading of speculative philosophy they wrote of physics, i.e. the scientific study of the natural order; or of mathematics; or of metaphysics and ‘theology'."

From: Henry Chadwick, Introduction to Margaret Gibson (ed.), Boethius. His Life, Thought and Influence, Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1981, pp. 1-5.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Boethius' Metaphysics. Studies in English: First Part: A - Gib

Studies in English

1. "Boethius." 2004. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 78:175-348.

Contents: Siobhan Nash-Marshall: Editor's Introduction 175; Claudio Micaelli: Boethian Reflections on God: Between Logic and Metaphysics 181; Joseph W. Koterski: Boethius and the Theological Origins of the Concept of Person 203; Siobhan Nash-Marshall: God, Simplicity, and the Consolatio Philosophiae 225; Jonathan Evans: Boethius on Modality and Future Contingents 247; M. V. Dougherty: The Problem of Humana Natura in the Consolatio Philosophiae of Boethius 273; John R. Fortin: The Nature of Consolation in the Consolation of Philosophy 293; Paul J. Lachance: Boethius on Human Freedom 309; John Marenbon: Boethius and the Problem of Paganism 329-348.

2. Acerbi, Ariberto. 2012. "Aquinas's Commentary on Boethius's De Trinitate." The Review of Metaphysics no. 66:317-338.

3. Adams, Marilyn McCord. 2012. "Evil as Nothing: Contrasting Construals in Boethius and Anselm." The Modern Schoolman:131-145.

Abstract: "Anselm inherited a Platonizing approach to philosophy from Augustine and Boethius. But he characteristically reworked what he found in their texts by questioning and disputing it into something more rigorous. In this paper, I compare and contrast Anselm's treatment of the trope 'evil is nothing, not a being' with Boethius's use of it in The Consolation of Philosophy. In the first section, I expose a fallacious argument form common to them both: paradigm Fness is identical with paradigm Gness; X participates in paradigm Fness and so is F; therefore, X participates in paradigm Gness and so is G. In the second section, I contrast Philosophy's "strong medicine"-'evil is nothing,' evil-doings are nothing,' evil humans do not exist'-with Anselm's development of the point that injustice is a privation and so parasitic on the beings that are deprived. By contrast with Boethius, Anselm emphasizes that the will-instrument, will-power, the will's action and turnings are something and so from God. Likewise, Anselm insists pace Boethius that Adam's fallen race is still the human race. In the final section, I turn to Anselm's distinction between injustice (iniustitia) and disadvantage (incommoda), his concession that some disadvantages are something, and his explanation of happiness in terms of advantage or bona sibi. For Anselm, happiness and justice break apart, so that it is possible in this world for the just to lack advantage. Moreover, in the world to come, the damned will suffer radical deprivation not only of the justice, which they deserted, but of advantages. I contrast this with Boethius's insistence (based on the argument in section I) that virtue suffices for happiness and vice for unhappiness, and that there is no such thing as bad fortune. I conclude by pondering why Anselm treated disadvantage as a something rather than as a misfit between somethings."

4. Albrecht, Michael von. 1997. A History of Roman Literature: From Livius Andronicus to Boethius. Leiden: Brill.

With special regard to his influence on world literature; revised by Gareth Schmeling and by the author.

Trans!ated with the Assistance of Frances and Kevin Newman.

Volume II: Fiffth Chapter: Literature of the Middle and Late Empire, pp. 1708-1738: Boethius.

5. Arlig, Andrew W. 2005. A Study in Early Medieval Mereology: Boethius, Abelard, and Pseudo-Joscelin, Ohio State University.

Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (available on line).

Chapter 3: Boethius and the Early Mereological Tradition, pp. 62-140.

"In what follows I will examine the mereological tradition founded by Aristotle and presented to the early medieval West by Boethius. Given the paucity of what was available from Aristotle's extensive opera, it is no surprise that some important concepts are not carried over to the early medieval period, or if they do appear, they often do so in a distorted form. Sometimes this omission and distortion is attributable to Boethius. Boethius' logical works are almost without exception introductory treatises. As one would expect from introductory textbooks, Boethius' treatment of mereology often glides over complexities, which a more advanced work would stop to address. Hence, Boethius' remarks about parts and wholes are often general and devoid of nuance.

It is by no means clear that Boethius actually has a theory of parts and wholes. He might, as some of his contemporary interpreters have urged, be merely parroting remarks he finds in elementary, (probably) neoplatonic textbooks without worrying whether these remarks are consistent. (49) I will not assume that this is the case from the start. Rather, I will attempt as best as I can to reconstruct Boethius' metaphysics of mereology. This reconstruction will require that I piece together stray remarks, think through the specific examples that he gives, and generally extrapolate from an admittedly sparse collection of rules, examples and hints. My method carries the risk of yielding not Boethius' theory of parts and wholes, but rather a Boethian theory. But this is the same risk that Abelard, Pseudo-Joscelin, and all the thinkers of the early medieval period took when attempting to piece Boethius' remarks into a coherent metaphysics of mereology." (pp. 64-65).

(49) Some have argued that Boethius’ De divisione is derived from Porphyry’s lost commentary on the Sophist. Andrew Smith reprints the entire De Div. as 169F in his edition of Porphyry’s fragments. On his reasons for inclusion consult his introduction (Frag. x-xii). Others suggest that Boethius had two sources, one being Porphyry’s commentary and the second being a treatise on division by Andronicus of Rhodes.

Magee concludes that Porphyry’s prolegomena to his Sophist commentary is the direct source of Boethius’ De divisione. However, he does not discount the possibility that Andronicus is an indirect source, nor does he discount the possibility that some of the material in De divisione is original to Boethius (1998, lv-lvii).

One of the reasons that scholars suspect that Boethius borrows from more than one source is that there are problems with Boethius’ presentation of the modes of division (Zachhuber 2000, 88-89).

References:

Zachhuber, J. 2000. Human nature in Gregory of Nyssa: Philosophical background and theological significance. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, no. 46. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

6. ———. 2009. "The Metaphysics of Individuals in the Opuscula sacra." In The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, edited by Marenbon, John, 129-154. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Three of the five treatises that comprise the Opuscula sacra [= OS] contain interesting philosophical material. (1) All three treatises attempt to make aspects of God intelligible using Greek philosophical concepts.

The treatise Quomodo substantiae (OS III) discusses how something can be essentially predicated of both God and His creatures. On the Trinity (OS I) and Against Eutyches and Nestorius (OS V) are concerned with the individuality and unity of, respectively, God and Christ. Along the way to formulating his solution to his chosen puzzles, Boethius presents some of the elements of a general theory of individuals.

In this chapter we will concentrate on the general theory of individuals that can be reconstructed from Boethius’ Opuscula. (2) The theological treatises are not the only places that he discusses individuals, and at times we will make use of Boethius’ commentaries on Aristotle and Porphyry to flesh out some of his remarks. (3)

Nonetheless, we will focus on the account of individuals that can be reconstructed from the theological treatises for two reasons. First, this account has exerted a tremendous influence on subsequent generations. Second, Boethius admits that his main role in the logical commentaries is to present a sympathetic elucidation of Aristotle’s or Porphyry’s views. (4) The doctrines in the Opuscula presumably are Boethius’ own.

After we have examined and reconstructed Boethius’ general treatment of individuals, we will finish this chapter by asking whether this general account of individuals can illuminate the nature of the Incarnation and the Trinity." (p. 129)

(...)

"Conclusion.

In his Opuscula sacra, Boethius presents some of the elements of a metaphysical theory of individuals. He does not flesh out his theory.

But what he does tell us is tantalizing. It is little wonder that Boethius’ brief and incomplete treatments of individuals captured the imagination of numerous medieval philosophers. (29) The elements of the theory of individuals that he presents in the Opuscula are marshaled in order to make the Incarnation and Trinity intelligible in so far as these Divine truths can be made intelligible to the unaided human intellect. Our assessment has been that Boethius comes up short. But then again, Boethius admits that his task is doomed to fail.

These inadequacies, however, should not detract from the importance of Boethius’ Opuscula. The student of medieval metaphysics should begin with Boethius. Boethius defines the problems that will inspire generations of philosophers, and he gestures toward many of the solutions that subsequent philosophers will offer." (p. 151)

(1) All references are to the Latin edition by Claudio Moreschini (Boethius 2000), in the format of number of the opusculum, followed by its section and the line of the edition. As an aid to students who do not have much Latin, citations of passages from the Opuscula will include a reference to the corresponding English passage in the Loeb edition (Boethius 1973).

The Loeb edition is still the only volume that contains a complete English translation of the Opuscula. For a good, recent English translation of Quomodo substantiae see MacDonald 1991b. A good, recent translation of On the Trinity is Kenyon 2004. There is a new French translation of Quomodo substantiae with commentary in Galonnier 2007. Galonnier’s translations of On the Trinity and Against Eutyches are to appear in a future volume [Opuscola sacra II, Louvain: Peeters, 2013].

(2) For this reason, we will not be able to touch upon many of the interesting and puzzling aspects of the Quomodo substantiae. The third theological treatise is an extremely difficult one, and there is significant disagreement over its structure and meaning. For introductions to Quomodo substantiae see Marenbon 2003a, 87–94 and Chadwick 1981, 203–11.

For detailed studies see De Rijk 1988; MacDonald 1988; and McInerny 1990, 161–98. There are book-length studies by Schrimpf (1966)) and Siobhan Nash-Marshall (2000), and a detailed commentary by Galonnier (2007). Pierre Hadot’s interpretation of Boethius has been extremely influential. See, in particular, Hadot 1963 and 1970. Recently there has been a lot of work on Boethius’ metaphysical Opuscula in Italian. For example, see Maioli 1978; Micaelli 1988 and 1995.

(3) For a survey of Boethius’ remarks on individuals and individuation that carefully considers not only the Opuscula sacra, but also the logical commentaries, see Gracia 1984, Chapter 2, 65–121.

(4) For example, in his famous discussion of universals Boethius announces that he has provided an Aristotelian solution to the problem because he is commenting on an Aristotelian treatise, not because it is the best solution (2IS [Second Commentary on Isagoge] 167.17–20; English translation in Spade 1994, 25).

(29) On Boethius’ influence in general see the next chapter. [Christophe Erismann, The medieval fortunes of the Opuscola sacra, pp. 155-177] For Boethius’ influence on medieval ruminations on the metaphysics of individuals, start by consulting Gracia 1984; Spade 1985 I, Chapter 23; and King 2000.

References

7. ———. 2020. "Boethius." In Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy Between 500 and 1500. Second Edition, edited by Lagerlund, Henrik, 289-298. Dordrecht: Springer.

8. Asbell, William J. 1998. "The Philosophical Background of Sufficientia in Boethius’s Consolation, Book III." Carmina Philosophiae no. 7:1-17.

Reprinted in Noel Harold Kaylor Jr., Philip Edward Phillips, (eds.), New Directions in Boethius Studies, Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications 2007, pp. 3-16.

9. Astell, Ann W. 1994. Job, Boethius, and Epic Truth. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

10. Bark, William. 1946. "Boethius’ Fourth Tractate, the So-Called De Fide Catholica." Harvard Theological Review no. 39:55-69.

Reprinted in Manfred Fuhrmann und Joachim Gruber (Hrsg.), Boethius, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1984, pp. 232-246.

"The exact status of the fourth tractate included among the Opuscula Sacra of Boethius is still uncertain, though the other theological works are now almost universally accepted as genuine. Boethian scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were generally inclined to reject Tractate IV. (1)" (p. 55)

(...)

"Another possibility, more prosaic, corresponds better with what we know about the treatise. Tr. IV is simple and brief, but it is not incomplete. It is so written, with energy, with conviction, and with sensitiveness, as to be exceedingly impressive. There are, in addition, definite indications of a didactic motive on the part of the author. (46) Because of these considerations, I wonder if it is not more likely that Boethius meant it to be a guide for the layman. We know that the doctrinal questions of Boethius' day, especially those of Oriental origin, were very confusing to ordinary Western Christians, who were interested in them but for obvious reasons could not always distinguish between the orthodox and the heretical. We know also that there were attempts both by the Scythians and by their opponents in Rome to win public support. (47) It has already been shown that Boethius' theology was very close to the Scythian; whether their alliance was openly avowed or not, we do not yet know. Boethius unquestionably understood the Eastern doctrines then being discussed so widely in Rome better than any of his countrymen. Perhaps he and his friends thought it advisable for him to turn from his highly specialized theological works to edify, to protect, and if possible, to win over the Romans. That would accord with the strange weaving together of Trinitarian doctrine and a compact narrative of Christian history. In that fabric nothing is clearer than the importance the writer put upon his Trinitarian teaching, which he proclaimed one of the fundamental doctrines of the Catholic

faith." (pp. 68-69)

(1) Viktor Schurr lists some of those for and against in Die Trinitiitslehre des Boethius im Lichte der "skythischen Kontroversen" (Paderborn, 1935), 8, n. 40. He mistakenly cites August Hildebrand as supporting the authenticity of the document.

(46) Lines 94-96 and 247-253. Note Schurr's comment, 8-9, n. 46.

(47) For that reason an unknown Scythian compiled the Collectio Palatina and in it appealed to the definitions of Nestorianism and Eutychianism patriot, John, bishop of Tomi, who was presumably John Maxentius. Dionysius Exiguus made his translations of theological documents for the same reason. Pope Hormisdas vigorously defended his rather hostile treatment of the Scythians and Maxentius replied. A senator, Faustus by name, asked the presbyter Trifolius to explain the Scythian formula and Trifolius gave an unfriendly interpretation of the Theopaschite position. Both sides energetically tried to win the support of senate and people.

11. Barrett, Helen M. 1940. Boethius: Some Aspects of his Times and Work. New York: Russell & Russell.

Reprint: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Contents: Preface VII; Chapter I. Introductory 1; II. Western Europe in the Fifth Century a.d. 9; III. Theodoric the Ostrogoth 18; IV. Boethius the Scholar 33; V. Boethius and Theodoric 44; VI. The Fall of Boethius 57; VII. The Consolation of Philosophy 75; VIII. The Philosophical Background of the Consolation 102; IX. Eternal Life 123; X. The Theological Writings 139; XI. Boethius and Christianity 153; XII. Conclusion 164; Bibliography 170; Index 173.

"In writing about Boethius and his work I have had in mind the general reader who is not equipped with any special knowledge of the Classics or of Philosophy; I have therefore given translations of all passages quoted from Greek and Latin authors. Though I am aware that footnotes are a cause of irritation to some readers, I have employed them for the double purpose of acknowledging my own indebtedness where it is due and of indicating the sources of fuller information.

But in addition to the references I make in the course of the book, I wish to express here my special sense of obligation to two writers, Dr H. F. Stewart and Dr E. K. Rand; to Dr Stewart for his valuable Boethius, An Essay (1891), a book now out of print, to Dr Rand for the chapter he devotes to Boethius in his Founders of the Middle Ages and for his article “ On the Composition of Boethius’ Consolatio Philosophiae ” in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. xv, and to Dr Stewart and Dr Rand jointly for giving in that volume of the Loeb Classical Library Series for which they are responsible the text and translation of Boethius’s theological writings. This is the only English translation so far as I know of these tractates. My indebtedness to these two writers is great in spite of the fact that on a number of points I have reached conclusions that are different from theirs." (Preface, VII-VIII)

12. Barrett, Sam. 2019. "Creative Practice and the Limits of Knowledge in Reconstructing Lost Songs from Boethius’s On the Consolation of Philosophy." The Journal of Musicology no. 36:261-294.

13. Beaumont, Jacqueline. 1981. "The Latin Tradition of the De Consolatione Philosophiae." In Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence, edited by Gibson, Margaret, 278-305. Oxford: Blackwell.

14. Belli, Margherita. 2014. "Boethius, disciple of Aristotle and master of theological method. The term indemonstrabilis." In Boethius as a Paradigm of Late Ancient Thought, edited by Böhm, Thomas, Jürgasch, Thomas and Kirchner, Andreas, 53-82. Berlin: de Gruyter.

15. Betsey, Andrew. 1991. "Boethius and the Consolation of Philosophy, or, how to be a good philosopher." Ratio no. 4:1-15.

16. Blackwood, Stephen. 2015. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy. New York: Oxford University Press.

17. ———. 2017. "Scriptural Allusions and the Wholeness of Wisdom in Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy." In Papers presented at the Seventeenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2015. 23. From the fourth century onwards (Latin writers), Nachleben, edited by Vinzent, Markus, 237-244. Leuven: Peeters.

Studia Patristica Vol. 97.

18. Böhm, Thomas, Jürgasch, Thomas, and Kirchner, Andreas, eds. 2014. Boethius as a Paradigm of Late Ancient Thought. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Contents: Vorwort 7; John Magee: Boethius’s Consolatio and Plato’s Gorgias 13; Monika Asztalos: Nomen and Vocabulum in Boethius’s Theory of Predication 31; Margherita Belli: Boethius, disciple of Aristotle and master of theological method. The term indemonstrabilis 53; Claudio Moreschini: Subsistentia according to Boethius 83; Thomas Jürgasch: Si divinae iudicium mentis habere possemus. Zu den formalen Argumentationszielen des Boethius in den Theologischen Traktaten und in der Consolatio Philosophiae 101; Jorge Uscatescu Barrón: Boethius’ Glückseligkeitsbegriff zwischen spätantikem Neuplatonismus und Christentum vor dem Hintergrund einer an Gott orientierten Ethik 147; Andreas Kirchner: Die Consolatio Philosophiae und das philosophische Denken der Gegenwart. Was uns die Philosophia heute noch lehren kann 171; Fabio Troncarelli: Boethius from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages 213; John Marenbon: Boethius’s Unparadigmatic Originality and its Implications for Medieval Philosophy 231; Elisabeth Schneider: Naturae rationalis individua substantia. Eine theologische oder juristische Definition der Person? 245-269.

19. Boschung, Peter. 2004. "Boethius and the early medieval quaestio." Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales no. 71:233-259.

20. Bradshaw, David. 2009. "The Opuscula sacra: Boethius and Theology." In The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, edited by Marenbon, John, 105-128. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"The Opuscula sacra are a collection of brief but dense and highly influential theological treatises. Their unquestioning commitment to Catholic orthodoxy, not to mention their concern over issues of dogma, has seemed to many to be at odds with the philosophical

detachment of Boethius’ other works. For a time in the nineteenth century scholars almost unanimously denied their authenticity, but this situation was reversed in 1877 with the publication of a fragment from a hitherto unknown work by Cassiodorus. The fragment states that Boethius “wrote a book concerning the Holy Trinity and certain dogmatic chapters and a book against Nestorius.”(1) This description corresponds nicely to the first, fourth, and fifth of the treatises that have come down to us. Although the others are not mentioned, since they are included in all the manuscripts, and all save the fourth are explicitly attributed to Boethius, there seems little reason to doubt them as well. Our concern here will be the relevance of the treatises for revealed theology, as distinct from their relevance for metaphysics (to be discussed in the next chapter [Andrew Arlig, The metaphysics of individuals in the Opuscula sacra]). Accordingly we will set aside the third treatise, the so-called Quomodo substantiae or De hebdomadibus, and focus upon the others." (p. 105)

(...)

"Conclusion.

I have observed that each of the four treatises discussed here is problematic. The problems derive in part from Boethius’ desire to treat theological issues using a purely philosophical method, and in part from his exclusive reliance on Augustine as a theological authority. In addition, there is a certain tendency to exaggerate the role of authority itself within theology, as if theology’s sole task were to make authoritative pronouncements which it is then the job of philosophy to render rationally coherent. This is not a very fruitful way to think of the relationship between the two disciplines. Despite such problems, however, the treatises remain a remarkable achievement.

Boethius almost single-handedly made philosophy into theology’s indispensable handmaiden, in the process raising theology to a new level of sophistication. (54) Anyone who finds his views unsatisfactory would do well to consider the challenge posed at the end of the Utrum Pater: “if you are in any point of another opinion, examine carefully what has been said, and if possible, reconcile faith and reason” [37)]." (pp. 124-125)

(54) As B. E. Daley [‘Boethius’s Theological Tracts and early Byzantine Scholasticism’, Mediaeval Studies 46, 1984, pp. 158–191] observes, this process occurred almost simultaneously with a similar movement in the Greek-speaking East, so that scholasticism had two more or less independent births.

21. Casey, Gerard. 1987. "An Explication of the De Hebdomadibus of Boethius in the Light of St. Thomas Commentary." The Thomist no. 51:419-434.

"Introduction

The writings of Ancius Manlius Severinus Boethius exercised a powerful influence on the nature and development of mediaeval philosophy. The extent of his influence was such that I think it fair to say that anyone seeking more than a superficial grasp of mediaeval philosophy must acquire some first-hand knowledge of his work. The trouble is, however, that while The Consolation of Philosophy is well-known and much commented upon, Boethius’s other works are relatively neglected. (1) Included in this latter group are the five theological tractates, one of which has this imposing title: Quomodo Substantiae In Eo Quod Sint Bonae Sint Cum Non Sint Substantialia Bona. This tractate also has the more manageable title De Hebdomadibus and it is as such that I shall refer to it throughout this article. (2) I have chosen to give an explication of the De Hebdomadibus for three reasons.

First the problem with which it deals (the nature of the relation between goodness and substance) is intrinsically interesting and Boethius’s solution to the problem is a model of philosophical analysis. Second, in addition to the fact that the philosophical status of the nine axioms listed in the tractate is a matter of some scholarly controversy, the answer to the obvious question of how these axioms function in the tractate as a whole is not at all clear. And third, this tractate is philosophically significant to those philosophers who take St. Thomas as their inspiration since it appears that St. Thomas’s existence/essence distinction is adumbrated here. I shall begin my explication by giving a brief overview of the main lines of the tractate. Then I shall lay out the arguments contained in the statement and resolution of the dilemma which Boethius constructs, indicating (by means of Roman numerals in parentheses) where I think particular axioms are meant to apply. Finally, I shall display the axioms as perspicuously as possible and comment on them." (pp. 419-420)

(1) I am obliged to Professor Ralph Mclnerny for awakening my interest in Boethius and for his suggestion that the De Hebdomadibus would repay careful study.

(2) All references are to the H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand edition of The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy, in the Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1973)

22. Caster, Kevin J. 1996. "The Distinction between Being and Essence according to Boethius, Avicenna, and William of Auvergne." The Modern Schoolman no. 73:309-332.

"A close analysis of William of Auvergne’s metaphysics reveals a distinction between being and essence that more closely approximates the celebrated real distinction of St. Thomas than has generally been recognized. Like St. Thomas, William maintained both a real distinction and a real composition between being and essence in the metaphysical structure of the concrete thing. Since William’s position thus represented a marked development in the history of philosophy with respect to this topic, it is obviously valuable to look at William’s sources, namely, Boethius and Avicenna. Of course, I am in no sense suggesting that the study of Boethius and Avicenna is valuable only for the insights it might lend to one’s perspective of William’s position. On the contrary, such study is eminently valuable in itself.

1. Boethius’s Contribution to the Doctrine of the Real Distinction

In his Opuscula Sacra, Boethius distinguishes between being (esse) and that which is (id quod est). Because William, who borrowed Boethius’s terminology for his own position, was especially influenced by the De hebdomadibus, one needs to look at this work in order to reach a more complete understanding of William. While the scholarly opinion on Boethius’s distinction is quite divergent, Pierre Hadot’s work — in my opinion — represents the best of the scholarly interpretations regarding this topic. Hadot not only seems best to capture Boethius’s doctrine, but his perspective of Boethius also highlights what William seemed to find in him.

In “La distinction de l’être et de l’étant dans le De Hebdomadibus de Boèce,” Hadot summarizes the differences between being (esse) and that which is (id quod est) as they appear in the axioms found in the De hebdomadibus. The characteristics of being (esse) and that which is (id quod est) may be translated as follows. Being: 1) “is not yet,” 2) “in no way participates in anything,” and 3) “has nothing besides itself added on.” That which is: 1) “has received the form of being,” 2) “has received being,” 3) “participates in that which is being,” 4) “is and exists,” 5) “is able to participate in something,” and 6) “is able to have something besides the fact that it is.” (1)

(1) See Pierre Hadot, “La distinction de l'être et de l’étant dans le De hebdomadibus de Boèce,” Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter, Miscellanea Mediavalia, 2 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1963), p. 147. The characteristics of esse: 1) “nondum est,” 2) “nullo modo aliquo participat,” and 3) “nihil aliud praeter se habet admixtum.” The characteristics of id quod est: 1) “accepit formam essendi,” 2) “suscipit esse,” 3) “participat eo quod est esse,” 4) “est atque consistit,” 5) “participare aliquo potest,” and 6) “potest habere aliquid praeterquam quod ipsum est.”

23. Chadwick, Henry. 1980. "The authenticity of Boethius's fourth tractate, De fide catholica." Journal of Theological Studies no. 31:368-377.

24. ———. 1980. "Theta on philosophy's dress in Boethius." Medium Ævum no. 49:175-179.

25. ———. 1981. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Contents: Abbreviations IX; Chronological Table X; Introduction XI; I Romans and Goths 1; II Liberal Arts in the Collapse of Culture 69; III Logic Part of Philosophy or a Tool of all Philosohy? 108; IV Christian Theology and the Philosophers 174; V Evil, Freedom, and Providence 223; Preservation and Transmission 254; Editions 258; Bibliography 261; Notes 285; Index 307-313.

"Born fifteen hundred years ago (within a reasonable approximation), Boethius wrote one of the dazzling masterpieces of European literature. But he has been seldom studied as a whole, and has been seen more through the eyes of those whom he influenced than in relation to the writers whom he had read and who influenced him.

The purpose of this book is to see the man in the setting of his own turbulent and tormented age, not to trace his large posterity in thought and literature. Moreover, the latter concern predominates in the collection of studies on Boethius by various authors, including myself, edited by Dr Margaret Gibson ([Boethius] Blackwell, 1981). Much is also said of that in the studies of Boethius by Pierre Courcelle ([La consolation de philosophie dans la tradition littéraire: antécedents et posterité de Boèce. Paris,] 1967). Modern reappraisal of Boethius, especially since the work of Klingner ([De Boethii Consolatione Philosophiae. Philologische Untersuchungen, 27. Berlin,]1921) and Courcelle ([Les lettres grecques en occident de Macrobe à Cassiodore. 2nd edn. Paris,] 1948. [Eng. tr. by H.E. Wedeck, Late Latin Writers and their Greek sources. Harvard, 1969.]), has concentrated on his debt to the late Platonists of Athens and especially of Alexandria. The present book continues that line, and adds fresh Neoplatonist evidence for the interpretation of the five tractates on Christian theology. On the other side, I have also found more affinity with Augustine than has been generally recognized, and therefore conclude with a portrait of Boethius simultaneously more deeply Neoplatonic and more deeply Augustinian than has been acknowledged. I have also tried to integrate the various constituent elements in his intellectual achievement. The substructure of the Consolation of Philosophy is only clear when one has also seen something of his arithmetic, music, and logic, the last being the grand obsession of his mind. It is then possible to make a fresh attack on the question of his religious allegiance, debated since the tenth century when Bovo of Corvey asked how the evidently Christian author of the theological tractates could write a work of so exclusively non Christian inspiration as the Consolation. The examination in the first chapter of the political tangle between the Gothic kingdom of Theoderic the Great and the Byzantine ambitions of Justinian leads me to conclude that it is quite wrong to exclude religion from the causes of his tragic arrest and execution." (Preface, p. V)

26. Chase, Micharel. 2014. "Time and Eternity from Plotinus and Boethius to Einstein." Schole no. 8:67-110.

Abstract: "This article seeks to show that the views on time and eternity of Plotinus and Boethius are analogous to those implied by the block-time perspective in contemporary philosophy of time, as implied by the mathematical physics of Einstein and Minkowski. Both Einstein and Boethius utilized their theories of time and eternity with the practical goal of providing consolation to persons in distress; this practice of consolatio is compared to Pierre Hadot’s studies of the “Look from Above”, of the importance of concentrating on the present moment, and his emphasis on ancient philosophy as providing therapy for the soul, instead of mere abstract speculation for its own sake. In the first part of the article, Einstein’s views are compared with those of Plotinus, and with the elucidation of Plotinus’ views provided in the Arabic Theology of Aristotle. The second part of the article studies Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, which, contrary to recent interpretations, is indeed a genuine consolation rather

than a parody thereof. The Consolation shows how the study of the Neoplatonic philosophical curriculum can lead the student along the path to salvation, by awakening and elaborating his innate ideas. To illustrate this doctrine, a passage from the little-known Pseudo-Boethian treatise De diis et praesensionibus is studied. Finally, after a survey of Boethius’ view on fate and providence, and Aristotle’s theory of future contingents, I study Boethius’ three main arguments in favor of the reconcilability of divine omniscience and human free will: the distinction between absolute and conditional necessity, the principle that the nature of knowledge is determined by the knower, and finally the doctrine that God lives in an eternal present, seeing past, present, and future imultaneously. This last view, developed primarily from Plotinus, is once again argued to be analogous to that advocated by contemporary block-time theorists on the basis of Eisteinian relativity. God’s supratemporal vision introduces no necessity into contingent events. Ultimate, objective reality, for Boethius as for Plotinus and Einstein, is atemporal, and our idea that there is a conflict between human free will and divine omniscience derives from a kind of optical illusion, caused by the fact that we cannot help but think in terms of temporality."

27. Claassen, Jo-Marie. 1999. Displaced Persons: The Literature of Exile from Cicero to Boethius. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

28. Collins, James. 1945. "Progress and Problems in the Reassessment of Boethius." The Modern Schoolman no. 23:1-23.

29. Cooper, Lane, ed. 1928. A Concordance of Boethius: The Five Theological Tractates and the Consolation of Philosophy. Cambridge: Medieval Academy of America.

30. Corrigan, Kevin. 1990. "A New Source for the Distinction between id quod est and esse in Boethius' De Hebdomadibus." Studia Patristica no. 18:133-138.

"In his treatise on how substances are good in virtue of their existence without being substantial goods (1) Boethius draws a distinction between the existing object (id quod est), composed of a subject and the forms it receives, and pure Being (esse), simple in itself. All things are good in their own substantial existence only because their ipsum esse derives from the First Good, whereas the First Good is good simply and solely in the fact that it exists. In several articles (2) Pierre Hadot has traced the roots of this distinction to two principal sources: (I) the distinction between absolute Being and determinate Being (respectively Being-infinitive, To είναι, and being — participle, Tò ov) found in the anonymous Commentary on the Parmenides (ascribed to Porphyry) and in Marius Victorinus (3). And (II) the late Neoplatonic distinction (of Proclus, Damascius (4) and Victorinus) between hyparxis (preexistence) and ousia (substance), i.e., between pure Being in its simplicity prior to all things and Substance, as the determinate subject taken together with all its accidents. I think Hadot is correct in his assessment of these sources, but what I shall do here is attempt to show firstly, that an earlier source is Plotinus himself and secondly, that the distinction is ultimately based upon something more general, but well-founded, in Graeco-Roman thought."

(1) In the middle ages this treatise was mistakenly entitled De hebdomadibus. On this and on the treatise in general see H. Chadwick, Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology and Philosophy (Oxford, 1981) pp. 203-211.

(2) P. Hadot, “La distinction de l’être et de l’étant dans le De hebdomadibus de Boèce”, in Miscellanea Mediaevalia, ed. P. Wilpert, 2 (Berlin, 1963), pp. 147-153; Id., “Forma essendi: interprétation philologique et interprétation philosophique d’une formule de Boèce”, Les Études Classiques, 38 (1970), pp. 143-156; Id., “L’être et l’étant dans le Néoplatonisme”; Revue de Théologie et Philosophie (1973), pp. 101-113.

(3) P. Hadot, Porphyre et Victorinus, 2 vols. (Paris, 1968). See Vol. 2: pp. 98-112. Marius Victorinus, Adversus Arium, Sources Chrétiennes, ed. P. Henry and P. Hadot (Paris, 1960), IV: 19,4ff.

(4) Damascius, Dubitationes et Solutiones, ed. C.E. Ruelle (Paris, 1889), Vol. 1, 120, p. 312, 11-121, p. 312,29. Proclus, The Elements of Theology, ed. E.R. Dodds (Oxford: 1933), props. 8-10.

31. Coster, Charles Henry. 1968. "The Fall of Boethius: His Character." In Late Roman Studies, edited by Coster, Charles Henry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

32. Courcelle, Pierre. 1969. Late Latin Writers and their Greek Sources. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

English translation by Harry E. Wedeck of Les lettres grecques en Occident. De Macrobe à Cassiodore; on Boethius see Part Third pp. 273-330.

Contents: Abbreviations XII; Introduction 1; Part One. The mainstream of Hellenism at the death of Theodosius.

1. Pagan Hellenism: Macrobius 13; 2. Christian Hellenism: St. Jerome 48;

Part II. Attempts at confrontation and the decline of Hellenism in the fifth century.4. Greek studies in Italy 131; St. Augustine and Hellenism in Africa 149; 5. Greek culture in Gaul 224;

Part III. The renaissance of Hellenism under the Ostrogoths.

6. The East to the rescue of Pagan culture: Boethius 273; Introduction 273 6.1. Boethius's scientific works 278; 6.2. Boethius' works on logic 280; 6.3. The neoplatonism of the De consolatione philosophiae 295; 6.4. Boethius' Christianity 318; 6.5. Symmachus' course of studies and his failure 322; 7. Hellenism in the service of monastic culture: Cassiodorus 331; 8. The monks in the service of Hellenism: Vivarium and the Lateran 361; Conclusion 410; Bibliography 425; Supplementary Bibliography 442; Index of Manuscripts 447; General Index 449-467.

33. Craig, William Lane. 1988. "Boethius on theological fatalism." Ephemerides theologicae Lovanienses no. 64:324-347.

Abstract: "Incarcerated and awaiting execution on a trumped up charge of treason, Boethius (d. 524) comforted himself by writing The Consolation of Philosophy. In book five of this work he deals with the problem of theological fatalism, an issue with which he had become familiar as a translator and commentator on Aristotle's De interpretatione. His discussion draws heavily upon the commentaryof Ammonius and the tradition of Plotinus and Proclus in order to frame his solution, which would have a profound effect upon medieval theology's conception of God and His knowledge of the world."

34. ———. 1988. The Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents from Aristotle to Suarez. Leiden: Brill.

Chapter III, Boethius, pp. 79-98.

"Summary: With regard, then, to the problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom, Boethius seems to have granted that future contingent propositions are as such neither true nor false because the corresponding states of affairs are indeterminate. Hence, they cannot as such be known by God. If He did know them to be antecedently true or false, then the corresponding states of affairs would have to occur necessarily. That does not, however, mean that God has no knowledge of future contingents. Though we cannot know them, the faculty of divine intelligence exceeds the faculty of human reason by virtue of its eternity. In His timeless eternity God has no past, present, or future, but only a timeless present. In this eternal "now" the whole course of time is present to God and known to Him. He knows, as if present, which events are occurring contingently and which necessarily. His knowledge imposes no absolute necessity on the things He knows, but only a conditional necessity: if He knows them, then they must exist—but there is no necessity that He know them. Therefore, events which for us lie in the future are known by God as present and as occurring contingently, in sofar as they are the product of our free decisions." (pp. 97-98)

35. Crooks, James. 2013. "Grief and Homecoming in Boethius's 'Consolation of Philosophy'." In Ideas under Fire. Historical Studies of Philosophy and Science in Adversity, edited by Lavery, Jonathan, Groarke, Louis and Sweet, William, 67-88. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

36. Cross, Richard. 2012. "Form and Universal in Boethius." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 20:439-458.

Abstract: "Contrary to the claims of recent commentators, I argue that Boethius holds a modified version of the Ammonian three-fold universal (transcendent, immanent, and conceptual). He probably identifies transcendent universals as divine ideas, and accepts too forms immanent in corporeal particulars, most likely construing these along the Aphrodisian lines that he hints at in a well-known passage from his second commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge. Boethius never states the theory of the three-fold form outright, but I attempt to show that this theory nevertheless underlies and gives structure to what Boethius has to say on the topic."

37. Crouse, Robert Darwin. 1985. "The Doctrine of Creation in Boethius. The De hebdomadibus and the Consolatio." Studia Patristica no. 16:501-510.

38. Curley III, Thomas F. 1987. "The Consolation of Philosophy as a Work of Literature." The American Journal of Philology no. 108:343-367.

39. Curran, Martin. 2011. "The Circular Activity of Prayer in Boethius’ Consolation." Dionysius no. 29:193-204.

40. d'Onofrio, Giulio. 1986. "Dialectic and Theology. Boethius' Opuscula sacra and Their Early Medieval Readers." Studi Medievali no. 27:45-67.

41. ———. 2008. Vera philosophia. Studies in Late Antique, Early Medieval, and Renaissance Christian Thought. Turnhout: Brepols.

42. Daley, Brian E. 1984. "Boethius' Theological Tracts and Early Byzantine Scholasticism." Mediaeval Studies no. 46:158-191.

For biographical as well as literary and philosophical reasons, then, the riddle of the depth and orientation of Boethius' Christianity remains important. I do not propose to solve it completely here, when so many others have failed. But I do think it helps us towards a solution to look more carefully at his theological writings, not just by themselves but in the context of the kind of theology being done in the first two decades of the sixth century, especially in the Greek-speaking East. The main point I want to make is simply that Boethius' theological work ‘fits’, far better than many modern students have supposed: fits organically into his own life and program of work, into his intellectual profile, precisely because it fits into a general pattern of philosophical and theological thinking that was just then beginning to emerge among Greek Christian writers, especially in Alexandria and Palestine. As a result, I believe Boethius deserves to be taken more seriously than he often is as a Christian thinker, and possibly even as an ecclesiastical politician." (p. 163)

(...)

"The point I have been making throughout this article - the closeness of Boethius' theological tracts, in method, style and content, to contemporary Greek 'scholastic' theology- leaves some central riddles still unsolved. What, for instance, was the 'home' of this new style of theological writing in the East? Where would Boethius or his informants have made its acquaintance? In what kind of 'school' was it originally done? Were there lecture halls, similar to that of Ammonius, where Christians carried on their theological debates and taught others how to take this dialectical approach to revelation and tradition?" (p. 185)

(...)

("That Boethius could find Lady Philosophy consoling in her own right during his final days should not surprise us, or cause us to doubt in the least the sincerity of his Christian faith. It should simply remind us of the respect he felt he owed her, and of the thoroughness with which he had made the Greek cultural tradition which nurtured her his own." (p. 191)

43. Daly, Gerald O. 1991. The Poetry of Boethius. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

44. Dane, Joseph A. 1979. "Potestas / Potentia: Note on Boethius's De Consolatione Philosophiae." Vivarium no. 17:81-89.

"Boethius's treatment of the two words potestas and potentia in the Consolatio is based on a hierarchical model, a model which finds both political and philosophical expression. In classical and medieval usage, potestas implies a legitimate realm of power, and is often the title of a particular office. Potentia, on the other hand, implies the exercise of power; its military applications further suggest the notion of external resistance. (5)" (p. 82)

(...)

"In Boethius's commentaries on Aristotle, a similar distinction appears in a philosophical context. In his commentary on Aristotle's De interpretatione (Editio secunda, ed. Meiser II, 459.19-464.4) potestas is used in conjunction with actus to express the abstract relation between potential and act. Potentia, however, appears to have a more concrete application. In Book III of In Categorias Aristotelis, potentia is used in the dichotomy potentia/ impotentia in relation to a physical ability to run or fight: quae ex quadam naturali potentia impotentia que proveniat (244C). The political distinction between "legitimate domain" or "office" ( potestas ) and "exercise of physical power" ( potentia ) clearly influences this latter usage. Both the political and philosophical contexts suggest an individual "potens" as intermediary. His legitimate power expressed in the epithet potensis derived from a realm ( potestas ) and is expressed concretely as physical power ( potentia )." (p. 83)

(...)

"What has taken place, then, is a redefining and refining of a verbal pair centering on the concept of power in such a way that the once vana nomina with their cumbersome worldly referents can participate in the final union asserted in Book V. Throughout the Consolatio, Boethius rigorously maintains the relation of potestas to potentia - a relation which in both political and philosophical contexts implies subordination of the second term. Once the connection of potentia with summum bonum is established, potestas cannot retain its specifically worldly connotations without denying the linguistic subordination of a now highly elevated potentia. When potestas does reenter the dialectic with a positive connotation, it relates to the psychological dimension on which the definitions of potentia and summum bonum itself depend.

Reversal or confusion of this proper relation is inevitable whenever notions of power are referred to various levels within a worldly hierarchy (potentia of kings or potestas of mice). Reorientation toward the spiritual leads to reestablishment of proper linguistic relations." (pp. 88-89)

(5) See v.Lübtow, "Potestas", Paulys Real-encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Band 22, I, Stuttgart 1953, cols.1040-46 and J.H. Heinr. Schmidt, Handbuch der lateinischen und griechischen Synonymik, 1889; (rpt. Amsterdam 1968), 351-68. See also Charles du Cange, Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, Vol. VI, (ed. 1883-87; rpt. Graz-Austria [1954]), 438-41 and Carlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, Oxford 1879, s.v.

References below to the Consolatio and Opuscula Sacra are to Boethius: Tractates, De Consolatione Philosophiae, ed. H. F. Stewart et al., The Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Mass. 1973. In the passages cited, no significant textual variants are listed in the editions of R. Pieper, Leipzig 1871 or L. Bieler, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, 94, Turnholt 957.

References to Boethius 's commentaries are to columns in Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina, vol. 64, ed. J.-P. Migne, Paris 1847.

45. Davies, Martin. 1983. "Boethius and others on divine foreknowledge." Philosophical Quarterly no. 64:313-329.

46. de Filippis, Renato. 2020-2021. "Essence and substance in Boethius: A matter of terminology." Chora. Journal of Ancient and Medieval Studies no. 18-19:289-304.

47. Dietrich, Julia. 2012. "Boethius's Reading of the "beati Augustini scriptis" in the Opuscula sacra." Carmina Philosophiae no. 21:43-65.

48. Dod, Bernard G. 1982. "Aristoteles Latinus." In The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy from the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism 1100-1600, edited by Kretzmann, Norman, Jenny, Anthony P. and Pinborg, Jan, 46-79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"All of Aristotle's works were translated into Latin in the Middle Ages and nearly all were intensely studied. The exceptions are the Eudemian Ethics, of which no complete translation survives, and the Poetics, which, although translated by William of Moerbeke, remained unknown. Most of the works were translated more than once, and two of them, the Physics and Metaphysics, were translated or revised no fewer than five times. The translations we are concerned with spanned a period of about 150 years; some were made from the Arabic, but the majority directly from the Greek. Some translations became popular and remained so; some became popular but were then superseded by other translations; others barely circulated at all." (p. 45)

(...)

"At the beginning of our period only two of Aristotle's logical works, the Categories and De interpretatione, were known in Latin, in Boethius' translation; these two works, which together with Porphyry's Isagoge became known as the 'logica vetus', had already become standard school texts in logic. One of the results of the quickening interest in logic in the early twelfth century was the recovery, from about 1120 onwards, of the rest of Boethius' translations of the logic: the Prior Analytics, Topics and Sophistici elenchi. How and where these translations, made some six centuries earlier, were found is not known. The logical corpus was completed by James of Venice's translation (from the Greek) of the Posterior Analytics; in 1159 John of Salisbury in his Metalogicon shows a familiarity with all these works. (He also quotes from a second translation of the Posterior Analytics, that of Ioannes, which otherwise remained virtually unknown.)" (p. 46)

49. Donato, Antonio. 2012. "Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy and the Greco-Roman Consolatory Tradition." Traditio no. 67:1-42.

"The aim of this study is to show that an adequate assessment of the literary genre of the Consolatio requires (i) a thorough analysis of features (topoi, themes, and methods) considered typical of the consolatory genre and (ii) a consideration of the goal of Greco-Roman consolations. (11)

It is only by following this approach that we can gain the knowledge and insights necessary to determine accurately the ways in which Boethius’s text resembles and differs from Greco-Roman consolations. (12)

The significance of an investigation into whether the Consolatio is a consolatory text is not only that of assessing its literary genre, but has further exegetical importance. Typically, an author’s choice of employing a specific literary genre — particularly in the case of ancient and medieval authors — is a telling sign of the purpose of the text, the way the content of the text is to be considered, and the author’s motivation to write it. (13) Thus, the exegetical importance of assessing the literary genre of the Consolatio is that, among other things, it crucially affects the way we interpret the text’s goal and its philosophical arguments. If we consider the Consolatio to be a consolatory text, then it is appropriate to focus on its overt meaning and consider its philosophical arguments as designed to offer consolation. On the other hand, if we think that the Consolatio is, for example, a “Menippean satire” we cannot stop at the overt meaning of the text but have to read between the lines in order to identify the text’s underlying agenda. (14)

This paper will be divided into seven parts. After a brief discussion of the origin of the Greco-Roman consolatory tradition, we shall examine, one by one, those features of the Consolatio which can be traced back to Greco-Roman consolations (sections 2–5) and those which seem to distinguish it from these texts (sections 6–7)." (pp. 3-4)

(11) Means and Phillips offer very persuasive arguments in support of the interpretation that the Consolatio is a consolation; yet they give no consideration to Boethius’s relation to Greco-Roman consolations (M. Means, The Consolatio Genre in Medieval English Literature [Gainesville, 1972], 18; P. Phillips, “Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae and the Lamentatio/Consolatio Tradition,” Medieval English Studies 9 [2001]: 5–27).

(12) The very significant number of consolatory texts composed before and immediately after the Consolatio makes it impossible to study, within the limited scope of a paper, the relation between the Consolatio and ancient as well as medieval consolatory texts. Thus, we shall limit our study to the investigation of the relation between the Consolatio and some well-known Greco-Roman consolations. Greco-Roman consolatory texts present several advantages for our study: 1) scholars such as Gruber (Kommentar zu Boethius) have persuasively demonstrated that Boethius knew these texts; 2) many of the consolatory strategies contained in these texts are very clearly spelled out and easy to recognize; 3) these texts are amongst the earlier examples of consolations and hence it is reasonable to start from them when investigating the place of the Consolatio within the consolatory tradition.

(13) R. B. Rutherford, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: A Study (Oxford, 1989); P. Hadot, “Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy,” Critical Inquiry 16 (1990): 483–505.

(14) The scholars who consider the Consolatio to be a “Menippean satire” believe that the goal of its philosophical arguments is not really to convey philosophical ideas, but to present flawed arguments that are supposed to illustrate the limitations (Marenbon) or failures (Payne, Relihan) of the discipline of philosophy. See Marenbon, Boethius; Payne, Chaucer and Menippean Satire; Relihan, The Prisoner’s Philosophy.

50. ———. 2013. Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy as a Product of Late Antiquity. New York: Bloomsbury.

Contents: Acknowldgements VII; Introduction 1; 1. Boethius and the Ideology of the Roman Senatorial Aristocracy 7; 2. The Hillness and the Healer 57; 3. How does Philosophy Convey her Therapy? 101; 4. Christiantity and the Consolation 163; Concluding Remarks 197; Bibliography 199; Index 217-221.

"In the last 50 years the field of Late Antiquity has advanced significantly. Today we have a picture of this period that is more precise and accurate than ever before. Nonetheless, the study of one of the most significant texts of this age, i.e. Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy (henceforth Consolation), did not sufficiently benefit from these advancements in the scholarship. This book aims to fill this gap by investigating how the study of the Consolation can profit from the knowledge of Boethius’ cultural, philosophical and social background that is available today.

The goal of this enterprise, however, is not simply that of placing the Consolation in its historical and cultural background, but to unlock its exegetical difficulties by employing an approach hitherto mostly unexplored. In this text, I show that some of the Consolation’s long-standing exegetical issues can be more adequately addressed by going beyond the text and investigating the extent to which the cultural, philosophical and social context of Late Antiquity informs Boethius’ last work.

In this book I explore the hypothesis that the Consolation is not simply influenced by the context of Late Antiquity, but is a ‘product’ of Late Antiquity. A text may be regarded as the ‘product’ of its age when (i) it does not simply contain individual views and features that are common to intellectuals of a particular age, but also (ii) presents elements that are specific to the mindset of the time in which it was written. The view that the Consolation is a product of Late Antiquity, however, does not imply that the text lacks originality and can be reduced to its background. On the contrary, it is by examining how Boethius receives, refashions and expresses literary, philosophical and cultural elements that are typical of his age that it is possible to fully appreciate the Consolation’s originality." (From the Introduction)

51. ———. 2013. "Forgetfulness and Misology in Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 21:463-485.

Abstract: "In book one of the Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius is portrayed as a man who suffers because he forgot philosophy. Scholars have underestimated the significance of this portrayal and considered it a literary device the goal of which is simply to introduce the discussion that follows. In this paper, I show that this view is mistaken since it overlooks that this portrayal of Boethius is the key for the understanding of the whole text. The philosophical therapy that constitutes the core of the ‘Consolation’ can in fact be properly evaluated only if we recognize the condition it is designed to cure. Through the portrayal of Boethius's forgetfulness, the ‘Consolation’ illustrates that it is the very nature of philosophical knowledge that makes it susceptible to being forgotten. Philosophical knowledge can (i) turn into misology, when it appears unable to solve certain problems, and (ii) be overrun by strong emotions. The therapy offered in the ‘Consolation’ is designed to make Boethius aware of the ‘fragility’ of philosophical knowledge and show him how to ‘strengthen’ it. He is taught how to more fully embody philosophy's precepts and that philosophy's inability to solve certain problems reveals not its failures but its limits."

52. Dougherty, M. V. 2004. "The Problem of Humana natura in the Consolatio Philosophiae of Boethius." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 78:273-292.

Abstract: "In Boethius's Consolatio Philosophiae one finds a rather unusual argument contending that human beings can lose their natures as the result of immoral or virtuous activity. A number of texts in the work argue that the polarities of beast and god serve as options for those who lead highly immoral or highly virtuous lives. This argument is examined in detail in light of its philosophical ancestry. The paper argues that those who think the Boethian doctrine is Platonic in origin tend to read the texts about the loss of human nature as metaphorical. The paper then suggests that if one places the argument in an Aristotelian context one is able to see it as a metaphysical argument, and more particularly, as part of Boethian psychology. This paper thus provides a new context for approaching Boethius's contention that human beings can lose their natures."

53. Erismann, Christophe. 2009. "The Medieval Fortunes of the Opuscula Sacra." In The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, edited by Marenbon, John, 155-177. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"The history of the medieval reception of the Opuscula sacra shows that, like late ancient philosophy, medieval philosophy was often a question of exegesis. Early medieval philosophy is characterised by its frequent reliance on ancient, late ancient and Patristic texts, as a basis for speculation. Commenting on an authority was often the occasion of expressing original thought, as noted by John Marenbon: ‘It is in commentaries that much of the most important philosophical work of the ninth to twelfth centuries was accomplished.’ (6)

Despite its particular rules, the practice of commentary did not restrain philosophical thought; on the contrary, it often stimulated it. Gilbert of Poitiers and Thomas Aquinas are good examples of this phenomenon.

I shall proceed in three stages: first, I shall give an historical overview of the medieval reception of the Opuscula sacra; I shall then consider the methodological and lexical influence of Boethius, and conclude with a presentation of some of the philosophical discussions

which Boethius initiated in the Middle Ages." (pp. 156-157)

(6) John Marenbon (‘Making Sense of the de Trinitate: Boethius and Some of His Medieval Interpreters’, in Studia Patristica 18, ed. E. A. Livingstone, Kalamazoo and Leuven: Cistercian Publications and Peeters, 446–52 1982) 446.

54. Evans, Jonathan R. 2001. The Boethian Solution to the Problem of Future Contingents and its Unorthodox Rivals, University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Unpublished Ph.D. thesis available at ProQuest, reference number 3034374.

Abstract: "One concern bothering ancient and medieval philosophers is the logical worry discussed in Aristotle's De Interpretatione 9, that if future contingent propositions are true, then they are settled in a way that is incompatible with freedom. Another is if we grant God foreknowledge of future contingent events then God's foreknowledge will determine those events in a way precluding freedom.

I begin by discussing the standard compatibilist solution to these problems as represented in Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy and then examine theories that allegedly deviate from the Boethian solution. Boethius's solution to these separate problems involves showing that both problems operate on an ambiguity in the scope of the modal operator ‘necessarily’ present in the articulation of the problem. Once the ambiguity is removed we see that both disambiguations fail to offer a sound argument against the compatibility of free action with either God's omniscience or future contingent proposition's being true. The only difference between the solutions is that before executing the scope distinction strategy in the theological problem, Boethius reminds us that God knows future contingents rather than foreknowing them, since God is timeless.

The rest of my discussion examines positions that allegedly deviate from the Boethian solution: positions held by Peter de Rivo, William Ockham and Plotinus. I argue that Ockham doesn't in fact deviate from the Boethian solution to the theological problem as is commonly held. Instead of offering a compatibilist position where God's omniscience includes foreknowledge, Ockham denies that God foreknows the future advocating instead a more sophisticated Boethian position. The other two philosophers, Rivo and Plotinus, deviate from Boethius, but unfortunately neither position appears philosophically plausible. Rivo's incompatibilist solution to the logical problem is inconsistent with his retention of the Boethian solution to the theological problem and is probably implausible on its own. Plotinus's compatibilist account fails not because it claims that necessity and freedom are compatible, but because the account of moral responsibility Plotinus offers to justify the compatibility fails."

55. ———. 2004. "Boethius on Modality and Future Contingents." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 78:247-271.

Abstract: "In The Consolation of Philosophy Boethius addresses two main problems posed by the problem of future contingents that shed important light on his conception of necessity and possibility: (1) a logical problem that alleges that if propositions about the future are true now then they are necessarily true, and (2) a theological problem that centers on a supposed incompatibility between divine foreknowledge and a contingent future. In contrast to established readings from the Consolation, this paper argues that a proper understanding of book 5 requires understanding the modal concepts employed there in atemporal terms. This interpretation requires revising the traditional understanding of the two problems present in the Consolation text, particularly in seeing how timeless knowledge or truth could be conceived as a threat to human freedom. It also stresses the importance of a strategy used by Boethius to disambiguate the scope of modal operators used in his opponent's arguments and how that strategy unifies his discussion in book 5."

56. ———. 2018. "Boethius and the Causal Direction Strategy." Ancient Philosophy no. 38:167-185.

Abstract: "Contemporary work on Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy often overlooks a discussion in CP.V.3 of a Peripatetic strategy for dissolving theological fatalism. Boethius’ treatment of this strategy and the lesson it provides about divine foreknowledge requires a reorientation of our understanding of the Consolation text. The result is that it is not foreknowledge nor any other temporally-conditioned knowledge that motivates Boethian concern but divine knowledge simpliciter."

57. Ford, Lewis S. 1968. "Boethius and Whitehead on Time and Eternity." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 8:38-67.

58. Fortin, John R. 2004. "The Nature of Consolation in the Consolation of Philosophy." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 78:293-308.

Abstract: "Does The Consolation of Philosophy console? Is Philosophy able to bring the prisoner not simply to an acceptance of and reconciliation with his situation, but further to move him beyond this to ultimate peace through philosophical activity? The Consolation does offer some consolation but only ironically and not in the way intended by the character Philosophy. Philosophy is attempting to bring the prisoner to a philosophical experience in which he will contemplate and enjoy eternal truths, and thereby be consoled. Nevertheless the prisoner will in the end reject this project which takes him away from what he perceives to be his life's work. Philosophy's failure to console the prisoner is disconsoling in part to herself because the prisoner ultimately rejects her invitation to become a martyr for her sake. It is disconsoling in part to the prisoner who seeks a consolation that would support his firmly held desire to remain engaged in public life."

59. Fournier, Michael. 2011. "Boethius pro se de magia." Dionysius no. 19:205-222.

60. Frakes, Jerold C. 1984. "The ancient concept of casus and its early medieval interpretations." Vivarium no. 22:1-34.

"Even after the Prisoner has accepted Philosophia’s specific arguments concerning fortuna, however, he is not yet prepared to accept the abstract principle necessitated by this analysis: i.e. that the all-encompassing divine ordo precludes the existence of any and all random events.

Thus Boethius presents in Cons. V, pr. 1 a brief analysis of the abstract concept of casus. This treatment is heavily dependent on the Aristotelian and post-Aristotelian analyses, but Boethius omits much of the traditional material and incorporates subtle alterations into his argument, especially in changing the emphases of the Aristotelian presentation, resulting to a certain degree in a new definition of chance. The concept naturally undergoes further modifications in the post-Boethian tradition. The first attempts to assimilate the system of the Consolatio in the vernacular were the translations by Alfred the Great in the ninth century into Old English and by Notker Labeo at the turn of the eleventh century into Old High German. They further modify the tradition derived from antiquity, not only by translating the text of the Consolatio, their principle source for that tradition, but also by attempting to translate Boethius’ system of thought in such a fashion as to render it accessible to their own cultures. The present study investigates the concept of casus as it is developed by Boethius, Alfred and Notker in the context of the tradition. The analysis must then begin by establishing this context, and thus Aristotle’s discussion of the topic must be briefly treated, since his was the first full examination of the problem, which then through Boethius’ adaptation became the basis for medieval analyses." (pp. 1-2)

(...)

"Boethius transforms the Aristotelian concept through his ‘metaphysical’ perspective; Alfred treats Boethius’ transformation with the reverence which he deemed appropriate for an ancient work of Christian philosophy, but in doing so transforms the concept again; and Notker presents an annotated translation/edition. One sees in the three texts three quite distinct methods and products, and thus three different stages in the interpretation and reception of the ancient philosophical concept of chance." (p. 33)

61. Gersh, Stephen. 1986. Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism. The Latin Tradition. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Volume II, Part II, Neoplatonism, Chapter 9: Boethius, pp. 647-718.

"That Boethius should be considered primarily as part of the Platonic tradition follows from a consideration of both his aims and his achievements. On the one hand, we have his projected but never completed program of translating with commentary all of Aristotle’s writings on logic, ethics, and physics; of translating with commentary all of Plato’s dialogues; and of demonstrating that the two philosophers are in agreement on the most fundamental questions. (2) This program should be understood in terms of the Alexandrian Neoplatonic one, in which Aristotle’s works were studied not for their own sake but as introductions to Plato's philosophy. (3) On the other hand, we ave the extant work De Consolatione Philosophiae which includes not only frequent allusions to passages in Plato’s Gorgias, Meno, Republic, and Timaeus (4) but also references to Plato as a profound philosophical authority. (5) This should be contrasted with the same work’s relatively limited appeal to Aristotle’s Protrepticus and Physics. (6) But Boethius was also a Christian, and this immediately leads to the question: how did he reconcile Platonism and Christianity? Here the influence of Augustine, who is explicitly cited on one occasion as a source, (7) is perhaps the crucial factor. Indeed, Boethius seems to have fashioned the synthesis along his redecessor’s lines, realizing clearly that this involved both a responsibility and an opportunity.

In the first place , only those aspects of Platonism consistent with the Christian teaching could be adopted. (8) Thus, Boethius made no place in his theory for the order of henads postulated by Proclus; he combined the first and second hypostases of the Neoplatonists: the One and Intellect, in order to remove a subordination element from the divinity; and he found little use for the Platonic doctrine of the world soul . (9) In requiring these modifications of the doctrine derived from contemporary philosophical schools, Christianity played an indirect role in determining the character of the system which finally emerged.

In the second place, it was possible to pursue Platonism independently of Christian teaching from a methodological viewpoint. (10) This was demonstrated when Boethius employed philosophical theories as additional support for dogmatic positions in De Trinitate and Contra Eutychen et Nestorium. (11) and in detachment from theological dogma in De Consolatione Philosophiae. (12) In permitting such elaborate discussion of philosophical questions to take place, Christianity assumed a subordinate role at least in the presentation of material.

That he is primarily a Platonist and that Christianity often plays merely an indirect or subordinate role in his arguments are two facts which make it imperative to include Boethius in our survey of the pagan philosophical tradition in late antiquity. In describing his teaching , we shall therefore take our starting point from its relation to the philosophical tenets of the pagan schools, although sometimes it will be necessary also to take account of peculiarly Christian transformations of the material." (pp. 651-654)

(2) Boethius: In De Interpr. ed II. 2, 3, 79, 1-80, 17.

(3) See for example Elias: In Categ. pr. 123, 7-11.

(4) See Boethius: De Consol. Philos. IV, pr. 2. 1 ff. (to Plato: Gorg. 466 a ff. on the respective powers of the good and the wicked); ibid. I. pr. 2, 13-14 ( to Plato: Meno 81 c ff . on learning as recollection ); ibid. I. pr. t , 18-21 (to Plato: Rep. V. i 7.3c-d on the need for philosopher-kings); ibid. III. pr. 9. 99-101 (to Plato: Tim. 27b on the need to pray for divine assistance); ibid. 111. pr. 12. 110-112 (to Plato: Tim. 29h on language and reality); and ibid. V , pr. 6, 31 ff. (to Plato: Tim. 37d on the perpetuity of the cosmos). On the passages in this work influenced by Plato see P. Courcelle: Late Latin Writers and their Greek Sources, translated by H . E. Wedeck (Cambridge, MA, 1969), pp. 296-297 and J. Gruber: Kommentar zu Boethius De consolatione philosophiae (Texte und¡ Commentate 9) (Berlin/New York, 1978), p. 36.

(5) In the passages mentioned above Philosophy refers to our Plato’ (Plato noster), to Plato’s decree' (Platone sanciente). and so on.

(6) See Boethius: De Consol. Philos. III, pr. 8, 23 together with lamblichus: Protr. 8. 47, 13 (to Aristotle: Protr. on the eyes of Lynceus); ibid. V, pr. 1, 33 ff. (to Aristotle: Phys. II, 4 , 195b 31 ff. on the relation between causation and chance); and ibid. V. pr . 6, 18-22 (to Aristotle: De Caelo II, 1. 283b26-31 on the world's eternity). On the passages in this work influenced by Aristotle see Courcelle: La Consolation de Philosophie dans la tradition littéraire. Antecedents et posterité de Boece, pp. 25-26 and 124-125; and Gruber: op. cit. , pp. 36-37.

(7) At De Trin. pr. 31 -.32 Boethius asks the addressee: ’ You should however examine whether the seeds of argument from Saint Augustine's works have borne any fruit in my writing' (Vobis tamen etiam illud inspiciendum est, an ex beati Augustini scriptis semina rationum aliquos in nos venientia fructus extulerint).

(8) Cf . Augustine: De Vera Relig. 4, 7 (CCSL 32, 192-193) where it is stated that the Platonists could become Christians by changing a few words and opinions. The kinds of modification required are described in texts like Conf. VII, 9 (CSEL 33/1, 154-157); Civ. Dei. X, 30 (CCSL 47. 307-308); etc.

(9) These doctrines will be discussed in detail below.

(10). Cf. Augustine: De Ord. II, 5, 16 (CCSL 29, 115-116) where two separate methodological routes to the doctrine of the Trinity are postulated: that of reason and that of faith. That the first method is prior in reality and the latter prior in time is stated at ibid. II, 9, 26 (CCSL 29. 121- 1 22).

(11) In accordance with this approach, certain chapters like Boethius: De trin. 2 and 4; Contra Eutych. et Nest. 1-3 are free of explicitly Christian content.

(12) In accordance with this approach, the only indisputable scriptural citation is that of Sap. 8: 1 at Boethius: De Consol. Philos. III , pr. 12. 63-64.

62. ———. 1998. "Dialectical and Rhetorical Space: The Boethian Theory of Topics and its Influence During the Early Middle Ages." In Raum und Raumvorstellungen in Mittelalter, edited by Aertsen, Jan A. and Speer, Andreas, 391-401. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"According to L. Obertello's chronology, Boethius' writings on topics: the commentary on Cicero's 'Topica' and the 'De Topicis Differentiis' date from the last few years of his life (ca. 518 — 524) (1). They do indeed reveal the maturity of reflection characteristic of a thinker who has translated and commented upon Aristotle's Organon and is perhaps on the threshold of elaborating the Platonic synthesis of which 'De Consolatione Philosophiae' stands as a poignant reminder. In this paper I hope to show how the notion of 'place' (locus) developed in Boethius' topical writings lies at the heart of important issues not only in rhetoric and dialectic but also in metaphysics." (p. 391)

(...)

"Boethius develops in response to Cicero two definitions of 'topic': a. A topic is the seat or foundation of an argument (24); and b. A topic is that from which one draws an argument (25). These formulations are of considerable interest because of the connection established with the notion of 'argument'.

Since for Boethius, an argument is a rather complicated phenomenon — on the surface it is simply a reason producing belief regarding something which is in doubt (26), yet on a deeper level it embraces the complementary aspects of being 1a. something expressed verbally (27) and 1b. something thought conceptually (28); and 2a. a connected set of propositions (29) and 2b. that through which propositions are connected (30) — then we must allow that this complexity arises from the topic as the argument's source. Thus, it may be that a topic is implicitly both verbal and conceptual, both connected and connecting (31)." (p. 395)

(1) See L. Obertello, Severino Boezio I, Genova 1974, 342. Cf. L. M. de Rijk, 'On the Chronology of Boethius' Works on Logic II', in: Vivarium 2 (1964), 159-161.

(26) De top. diff.. I, 1180 C; In Cic. Top. I, 1048 B.

(27) In Cic. Top. I, 1050 Β oratione prolatum. Strictly speaking, Boethius distinguishes I. 'argumentation' (argumentatio) which is verbal and II. 'argument' (argumentum) which is conceptual. See In Cic. Top. I, 1050B. However, the distinction having been made quickly breaks down in practice. See In Cic. Top. I, 1053 B.

(28) De top. diff. I, 1180 C ratio.

(29) In Cic. Top. I, 1050 Β propositionum contexione dispositum.

(30) In Cic. Top. I, 1051 A medietatis inventio. The mediating function of a topic is an important matter which cannot be pursued here. In brief, it operates in an argument by supplying either a middle term or a second premiss for a syllogism. See Stump, Boethius's De topicis differentiis, 183-204 for detailed discussion. Cf. O. Bird, 'The Formalizing of the Topics in Mediaeval Logic', in: Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 1 (1960), 138-149; id., 'The Tradition of Logical Topics. Aristotle to Ockham', in: Journal of the History of Ideas 23 (1962), 307-323; J. Pinborg, 'Topik und Syllogistik im Mittelalter', in: Sapienter Ordinare. Festgabe für E. Kleineidam, Leipzig 1969, 157-178; id., Logik und Semantik im Mittelalter. Ein Überblick, Stuttgart - Bad Cannstatt 1972, 21 sqq., 69 sqq.

(31) That the topic cannot be totally separated from its argument follows from the dynamic nature of both. See below.

63. ———. 2012. "The First Principles of Latin Neoplatonism: Augustine, Macrobius, Boethius." Vivarium no. 50:113-138.

Abstract: "This essay attempts to provide more evidence for the notions that there actually is a Latin (as opposed to a Greek) Neoplatonic tradition in late antiquity, that this tradition includes a systematic theory of first principles, and that this tradition and theory are influential in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. The method of the essay is intended to be novel in that, instead of examining authors or works in a chronological sequence and attempting to isolate doctrines in the traditional manner, it proceeds by identifying certain philosophemes (a concept borrowed from structuralist and post-structuralist thought and here signifying certain minimal units from which philosophical “systems“ can be constructed), and then studying the combination and re-combination of these philosophemes consciously and unconsciously by a selection of important medieval writers. These philosophemes occur in Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram; Augustine, De Trinitate; Augustine, De Vera Religione; Augustine, De Musica; Macrobius, Commentarius in Somnium Scipionis; and Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae. The sampling of medieval authors who use these philosophemes includes Eriugena, William of Conches, Thierry of Chartres, and Nicholas of Cusa."

64. ———. 2014. "Damascius and Boethius." In Interpreting Proclus: From Antiquity to the Renaissance, edited by Gersh, Stephen, 125-134. Cambridge: Cambridge Univesity Press.

65. Gibson, Margaret, ed. 1981. Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence. Oxford: Blackwell.

Table of Contents: Henry Chadwick: Introduction 1; John Matthews: Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius 15; Helen Kirkby: The scholar and his public 44; Jonathan Barnes: Boethius and the study of logic 73; Patrick Osmund Lewry: Boethian logic in the medieval West 90; John Caldwell: The De institutione arithmetica and the De institutione musica 135; David Pingree: Boethius' geometry and astronomy 155; Alison White: Boethius in the medieval quadrivium 162; John R. S. Mair: The text of the Opuscula sacra 206; Margaret Templeton Gibson: The Opuscula sacra in the Middle Ages 214; Anna M. Crabbe: Literary design in the De consolatione philosophiae 237; David Ganz: A tenth-century drawing of Philosophy visiting Boethius 275; Jacqueline Beaumont: The Latin tradition of the De consolatione philosophiae 278; Christopher Page: The Boethian metrum Bella bis quinis: a new song from Saxon Canterbury 306; Alastair J. Minnis: Aspects of the medieval French and English traditions of the De consolatione philosophiae 312; Nigel F. Palmer: Latin and vernacular in the northern European tradition of the De consolatione philosophiae 362; Anthony Grafton; Epilogue: Boethius in the Renaissance 410; Malcolm R. Godden: King Alfred's Boethius 419; Malcolm Beckwith Parkes: A Note on MS Vatican, Bibl. Apost., lat. 3363 425; Diane K. Bolton: Illustrations in manuscripts of Boethius' works 428-437.

66. ———. 1981. "The Opuscola Sacra in the Middle Ages." In Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence, edited by Gibson, Margaret, 214-234. Oxford: Blackwell.

"Ergo, domine, non solum es quo maius cogitari nequit, sed es quiddam maius quam cogitari possit. St Anselm, Proslogion c. 1078 (2)

Over five centuries earlier Boethius had made the same point: we cannot extend our thought and language to describe God. ‘Ten categories can be predicated of all things: substance, quality, quantity, relation, place, time, condition, position, being active or passive . . . But if you apply them to God, everything in the case is changed5. (3) For both the acknowledged master was Augustine. ‘When we think of God the Trinity, (5) he had written ‘our very thought itself is aware of how far it falls short of its object; it does not grasp God as he is, but through a glass darkly. (4) Yet Augustine persevered. Throughout the fifteen books of the De Trinitate he defined his linguistic tools and applied them to the nature of God. Within his own terms it is virtually complete: Boethius and Anselm say nothing that is not said in greater detail in the De Trinitate. Augustine was the catalyst, and the quarry of material, bold explorer of the divine and at the same time a sheltering authority. (5)

Given the dominance of the De Trinitate, we may well ask why the Opuscula Sacra had any future beyond the remote political infighting of the early sixth century. Boethius' prose has a hard clarity of expression that may seem more objective than Augustine’s, and here at least he is brief. Such qualities — and no doubt others which I have not discerned — commended the Opuscula as teaching texts, and it was principally in the schoolroom that they were to survive: as useful lo the electic scholars of the ninth century as to the sophisticated professionals of twelfth-century Paris and fifteenth-century Cracow." (pp. 214-215)

(2) Proslogion, cap. 15: Anseimi Opera, ed. F. S. Schmitt (Edinburgh, 1946), I. 112.

(3) Op. Sac. I. iv. 1-9.

(4) Augustine, De Trinitate V. i, ed. W. J. Mountain (Turnhout, 1968: CCSL 1), p. 206, quoting 1 Cor. 13. 12.

(5) Ex beati Augustini scriptis semina rationum ... in nos uenientia (Op. Sac. I praef. 31-3) ; Quapropter si cui uidebitur, quod in eodem opusculo aliquid protulerim, quod aut nimis nouum sit aut a ueritate dissentiat: rogo, ne statim me aut praesumptorem nouitatum aut falsitatis assertorem exclamet, sed prius libros praefati doctoris Augustini De trinitate diligenter perspiciat, deinde secundum eos opusculum meum diiudicet (Monologion prol. : Anselmi Opera, ed. cit. [note 2 above], I. 8).

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Boethius' Metaphysics. An Annotated Bibliography: Second Part: Gra - Mez

Studies in English

1. Gracia, Jorge J.E. 1981. "Boethius and the Problem of Individuation in the Commentaries on the Isagoge." In Congresso Internazionale di Studi Boeziani (Pavia, 5-8 ottobre 1980): Atti, edited by Obertello, Luca, 169-182. Roma: Editrice Herder.

"The paper I am going to read here consists of a section from a much longer study on which I am presently working. This longer study deals with the problem of individuation not only in relation to Boethius, but also discusses the views of other early medieval figures, such as John Eriugena, Gilbert of Poitiers and Abailard. Unfortunately, due to time constraints I cannot engage here in a presentation of the views of so many authors. My efforts, therefore, will be directed only to the presentation of Boethius’ views on the stated topic and to the defense of my interpretation of those views. (1) Moreover, again for reasons of time, I shall have to restrict my remarks to Boethius’ views as presented in the two editions of his Commentary on Porphyry's « Isagoge » (2)." (p. 169)

(1) I would like to express my appreciation to Eleonore Stump for reading an early draft of this paper and for bringing to my attention a number of ambiguities and infelicities present in the text.

(2) In « Isagogen » Porphyrii commentorum editio secunda, ed. Samuel Brandt, in Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum, vol. XXXXVIII (Vienna: Tempsky, 1906; rep. N.Y.: Johnson Rep. Corp., 1966), p. 135; PL 64, 71.

2. Gracia, Jorge J. E. 1984. Introduction to the problem of individuation in the Early Middle Ages. München: Philosophia Verlag.

Chapter II. Formulation of the Issues: Boethius, pp. 65-121.

3. Hall, Douglas C. 1992. The Trinity: An Analysis of St Thomas Aquinas’ Expositio of the De Trinitate of Boethius. Leiden: Brill.

Contents: I. Introduction 1; II. Boethius: The Theological Tractates 16; III. Aquinas: The Expositio of the De Trinitate 38; IV. Conclusion 112; Bibliography 124; Index of Authors 130-131.

"In the entire history of Western Trinitarian theology, one of the most bold attempts to logically and philosophically penetrate the De Trinitate of Augustine was, precisely, the Trinitas unus Deus ac non tres Dii (The Trinity is One God and not Three Gods) - also known as the De Trinitate - of Boethius; and the greatest medieval analysis of this theological tractate of Boethius was that of Thomas Aquinas. The purpose of the present study is to disclose the theological methodologies and the contents of this Boethian tractate and the Expositio of Aquinas." (p. 2)

4. Hankey, Wayne J. 1981. "The De Trinitate of St. Boethius and the Structure of the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas." In Congresso Internazionale di Studi Boeziani (Pavia, 5-8 ottobre 1980): Atti, edited by Obertello, Luca, 367-375. Roma: Editrice Herder.

"The paper I am going to read here consists of a section from a much longer study on which I am presently working. This longer study deals with the problem of individuation not only in relation to Boethius, but also discusses the views of other early medieval figures, such as John Eriugena, Gilbert of Poitiers and Abailard. Unfortunately, due to time constraints I cannot engage here in a presentation of the views of so many authors. My efforts, therefore, will be directed only to the presentation of Boethius’ views on the stated topic and to the defense of my interpretation of those views. (1) Moreover, again for reasons of time, I shall have to restrict my remarks to Boethius’ views as presented in the two editions of his Commentary on Porphyry's « Isagoge » (2)." (p. 169)

(1) I would like to express my appreciation to Eleonore Stump for reading an early draft of this paper and for bringing to my attention a number of ambiguities and infelicities present in the text.

(2) In « Isagogen » Porphyrii commentorum editio secunda, ed. Samuel Brandt, in Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum, vol. XXXXVIII (Vienna: Tempsky, 1906; rep. N.Y.: Johnson Rep. Corp., 1966), p. 135; PL 64, 71.

5. ———. 2018. "Ratio, Preces, Intuitus: Prayer’s Mediation in Boethius’ Consolation." In Praying and Contemplating in Late Antiquity: Religious and Philosophical Interactions, edited by Pachoumi, Eleni and Edwards, Mark, 71-96. Tübingen.

6. Hansen, Heine. 2020. "Boethius’ De topicis differentiis, Commentaries on." In Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy Between 500 and 1500. Second Edition, edited by Lagerlund, Henrik, 304-308. Dordrecht: Springer.

7. Harding, Brian. 2005. "Metaphysical Speculation and its Applicability to a Mode of Living: The Case of Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae." Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch Fur Antike Und Mittelalter no. 9:81-92.

Abstract: "This paper argues that Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae presents theoretical metaphysical speculation as having a direct bearing on the life of the metaphysician. Boethius accomplishes this through his depiction of Lady Philosophy’s ‘therapy’ wherein complex metaphysical arguments are utilized to pull Boethius out of his depression, returning him to what she calls his true self. I begin the paper by contextualizing this discussion in terms of the debate as to whether or not the ‘philosophic life’ of pagan antiquity is present in medieval thought. I then turn to a discussion of the therapeutic metaphysical arguments of Lady Philosophy and their effects on Boethius’ mental and emotional state. I conclude the essay by listing some questions raised and directions for further study."

8. Harpur, James. 2006. "Fortune's Prisoner: An Introduction to the Poems of Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy"." The Poetry Ireland Review no. 85:44-51.

9. Hatch Marshall, Mary. 1950. "Boethius' definition of persona and mediaeval understanding of the Roman theater." Speculum no. 25:471-482.

10. Heckman, Christina M. 2013. "The Order of the World: Boethius's Translation of Aristotle's "Categoriae" and the Old English "Solomon and Saturn" Dialogues." Carmina Philosophiae no. 22:35-64.

11. Helm, Paul. 2009. "Eternity and Vision in Boethius." European Journal for Philosophy of Religion no. 1:77 - 97.

Abstract: "Boethius and Augustine of Hippo and are two of the fountainheads from which the long tradition of regarding God's existence as timelessly eternal has flowed, a tradition which has influenced not only Christianity, but Judaism and Islam too. But though the two have divine eternality in common, I shall argue that in other respects, in certain crucial respects, they differ significantly over how they articulate that notion."

12. Herold, Christian. 1994. "Boethius’s Consolatio Philosophiae as a Bridge Between the Classical and Christian Conceptions of Tragedy." Carmina Philosophiae no. 3:37-52.

Reprinted in Noel Harold Kaylor Jr., Philip Edward Phillips, (eds.), New Directions in Boethius Studies, Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications 2007, pp. 17-31.

13. Humphrey, Illo. 2012. Boethius (*Rome, ca. 480 – †Pavia, ca. 524): His Influence on the European Unity of Culture: from Alcuin of York (†804) to Thierry of Chartres (†1154). Nordhausen: Traugott Bautz.

14. Jensen, Steven J. 2007. "Boethius and Three Kinds of Good." Carmina Philosophiae no. 16:51-70.

15. Jürgasch, Thomas. 2021. "Boethius: the first Christian philosopher in the Latin West?" In The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Philosophy, edited by Edwards, Mark, 584-596. New York: Routledge.

16. Kaldramova, Elitza. 2018. "Understanding and Truth in Boethius’s "The Consolation of Philosophy"." Archiv für mittelalterliche Philosophie und Kultur no. 24:47-54.

Abstract: "Understanding is associated with reason. It is correct when it corresponds to the truth and is incorrect when fallacy is mistaken as truth. The latter is considered as great value because it is necessary for achieving human’s ontological purpose, namely achieving the good. Truth also leads to understanding and is associated with light. Correct understanding provides information about the value of different things and thus striving for seemingly valuable and god things is avoided. It has a significant role in noticing the differences between truth and false opinion. Understanding and truth are necessary conditions for acquiring knowledge and have a two-way relationship between them. On the one hand, understanding is acquired by means of the spark of truth present in the human soul. On the other hand, truth leads to understanding different relations, for example the one between material and non-material world."

17. Karfíková, Lenka. 2019. "Providence, fate, and freedom according to Origen and Boethius." In Pronoia: the providence of God = die Vorsehung Gottes. Forscher aus dem Osten und Westen Europas an den Quellen des gemeinsamen Glauben ; Studientagung Warschau, 30. August - 4. September 2017, edited by Hainthaler, Theresia, Mali, Franz, Emmenegger, Gregor and Lenkaityté Ostermann, Manté, 263-282. Innsbruck.

18. Kaylor Jr., Noel Harold. 2012. "Introduction: The Times, Life, and Work of Boethius." In A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, edited by Kaylor Jr., Noel Harold and Phillips, Philip Edward, 1-46. Leiden: Brill.

19. Kaylor Jr., Noel Harold, and Phillips, Philip Edward, eds. 2007. New Directions in Boethian Studies. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications.

Contents: Noel Harold Kaylor Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips: Introduction XI;

Part I: Boethius’s Latin De Consolatione Philosophiae

William J. Asbell Jr: The Philosophical Background of Sufficientia in Boethius’s Consolation, Book 3 3; Christine Herold: Boethius’s Consolatio Philosophiae as a Bridge between Classical and Christian Conceptions of Tragedy 17; Krista Sue-Lo Twu: This is Comforting? Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, Rhetoric, Dialectic, and “Unicum Illud Inter Homines Deumque Commercium” 33;

Part II: Vernacular Translation of the Consolatio

J. Keith Atkinson: A Dit Contre Fortune, the Medieval French Boethian Consolatio Contained in MS Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, fr. 25418 53; Glynnis M. Cropp: An Italian Translation of Le Livre de Boece de Consolacion 75; Francesca Ziino: Some Vernacular Versions of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae in Medieval Spain: Notes on Their Relationship with the Commentary Tradition 83;

Part III: Boethius in Art and Literary History

Ann W. Astell: Visualizing Boethius’s Consolation as Romance 111; Christoph Houswitschka: The Eternal Triangle of Writer, Patron, and Fortune in Late Medieval Literature 125; Michael Masi: Boethius, the Wife of Bath, and the Dialectic of Paradox 143;

Part IV: Boethius in Religion and Mythography

Romanus Cessario: Boethius, Christ, and the New Order 157; Graham N. Drake: The Muses in the Consolation: The Late Medieval Mytholographic Tradition 169;

Part V: Reedition of The Boke of Coumfort of Bois

The Boke of Coumfort of Bois Bodleian Library, Oxford MS AUCT. F. 3.5: A Transcription with Introduction—Originally transcribed, edited and introduced by Noel Harold Kaylor Jr., Jason Edward Streed, and William H. Watts, Reedited here by Noel Harold Kaylor Jr., and Philip Edward Phillips 223-280.

20. ———, eds. 2012. A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages. Leiden: Brill.

Contents: Preface IX, Acknowledgments XV; Note on Contributors XIX; Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr.: Introduction: The Times, Life, and Work of Boethius 1; Stephen C. McCluskey: Boethius's Astronomy and Cosmology 47; Rosalind C. Love: The Latin Commentaries on Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae from the 9th to the 11th Centuries 75; Jean-Yves Guillaumin: Boethius's De institutione arithmetica and its Influence on Posterity 135; Siobhan Nash-Marshall: Boethius's Influence on Theology and Metaphysics to c. 1500 163; John Patrick Casey: Boethius's Works on Logic in the Middle Ages 193; Paul E. Szarmach: Boethius's Influence in Anglo-Saxon England: The Vernacular and the De consolatione philosophiae 221; Christine Hehle: Boethius's Influence on German Literature to c. 1500 255; Glynnis M. Cropp: Boethius in Medieval France: Translations of the De consolatione philosophiae and Literary Influence 319; Dario Brancato: Readers and Interpreters of the Consolatio in Italy, 1300-1500 357; Ian Johnson: Making the Consolatio in Middle English 413; Mark T. Rimple: The Enduring Legacy of Boethian Harmony 447; Ann E. Moyer: The Quadrivium and the Decline of Boethian Influence 479; Fabio Troncarelli: Afterword: Boethius in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages 519; Philip Edward Phillips: Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius: A Chronology and Selected Annotated Bibliography 551; List of Contributors; Index of Manuscripts Cited 591; Index 596.

21. Kijewska, Agnieszka. 2003. "Boethius' conception of the supreme good." In Metamorphoses of Neoplatonism: Being or Good?, edited by Kijewska, Agnieszka, 307-317. Lublin: Wydaw. KUL.

"Yet this reasoning, based on the dialectic of Platonic and Aristotelian tradition will remain paradoxical and difficult to accept from the standpoint of common-sense thinking. It is also hard to imagine such paradoxical dialectic bringing any real consolation to someone who is in plight like that of Boethius the prisoner. What, then, should we make of the encounter of Dame Philosophy and Boethius?

4. Suggestion of a solution

It is my opinion - and in this I am in full agreement with John Marenbon - that in trying to interpret the Consolation it is worthwhile to realize the importance of the literary genre in which this work was written, namely the Menippean satire. The cynical philosopher Menippus in his lost writings upheld stoical ideals and derided human vices and weaknesses. He made fun of philosophical theories by introducing personifications of abstract concepts and parodies of mythological and literary characters (32).

It seems, by the way, that element of comedy is not totally absent form the Consolation, as in the scene of chasing the Muses from Boethius’ bedside, though it is overshadowed by the pathos of Boethius’ fate. Now Dame Philosophy is a typical allegorical character personifying the Platonic and Aristotelian ideal of wisdom. Yet, impressive as she is, it seems she is not the principal character of the work. The focus seems to be rather on Boethius the prisoner, it is he that is the dynamic character of the piece, as he undergoes a radical metamorphosis.

We know of him that he received excellent education in philosophical schools of late antiquity, to which Dame Philosophy clearly testifies by saying that he had been nourished with Eleatic and Academic teachings (33). It is no longer doubtful that, like other Roman aristocrats, Boethius was a Christian and a Catholic, and that he took special interest in theological discussions. He put to good use his philosophical skills and experience in explaining and clarifying theological notions and in perfecting theological methods. Why, at the end of his life, faced with a violent death, should he look for consolation to philosophy rather than religion?

It may be the case that Boethius, in choosing this precise literary genre and in constructing his dialogue the way he did, wanted to call into doubt sufficiency of human reason alone, or human reason deprived of assistant from living, painful experience, in discovering the Supreme Good, that would give man his happiness. Philosophy demonstrates that there exists the Supreme Good that is both God and Providence, yet this supreme goodness is constantly found to be incommensurable with the expectations of the humans and thus philosophical reasoning and everyday thinking part company. As Karl Jaspers wrote: Philosophizing has, as it were, two wings, one that moves in the medium of communicable thinking, common theory, the other, whose medium is the individual existence. Only these two wings together are able to effect flight. And a number of lines above he affirms: Every essential philosophical idea points beyond itself to reality, without which it is not possible that the meaning of philosophizing be fulfilled. (35). Thus it is life experience coupled with philosophical reasoning that can provide a proof there existing a reality that, though not apparent, yet can be discovered by the philosopher, who may bear witness to this discovery even by a sacrifice of his own life; for this hidden reality is no other than the Supreme Truth and the Supreme Good. Consolation - writes von Albrecht - is merged in the comersion to God. His work is a προτρεπτικός είς θεόν rather than a consolatio, (36) Boethius came close to that reality under the guidance of the Dame Philosophy, yet he had to testify to the truth of his knowledge by laying down his life. As we know he was eventually executed in 524 or 525, some sources say that he had to undergo torture before his death. King Theoderic allegedly ordered his body to be cleared away in order to prevent spreading of the martyr’s cult, so claims in his History of the Wars (37) Procopius of Caesarea. Yet his scheme came to naught and Boethius has ever since been venerated as a martyr, his feast day being the 23 October, formally approved on the 15 December 1883." (pp. 316-317)

(32) Cf. Marenbon, Boethius, [2003] p. 160-161.

(33) Cf. Boethius, The Consolation I, 1, p. 133.

(34) In that way Bovo of Corvey read the text; Cf. Huygens, 'Mittelalterliche Kommentare zum O qui perpetua', [Sacris erudiri, VI (1954) pp. 373-427] p. 384.

(35) K. Jaspers, Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, München 1963, p. 471-472.

(36) M. von Albrecht, A History of Roman Literature, vol. II Leiden-New York-Köln 1999, p. 1715.

(37) Cf. Procopius of Caesarea, History of the Wars I, 1, 34, tr. By H. B. Dewing, Cambridge Mass., London 1953, p. 13: Symmachus and his son-in-law Boetius were men of noble and ancient lineage, and both had been leading men in the Roman senate and had been consuls. But because they practised philosophy and were mindful of justice in a manner surpassed by no other men (...) they attained great fame and thus led men of the basest sort to envy them. Now such persons slandered them to Theoderic, and he, believing their slanders, put these two men to death, on the ground that they were setting about a revolution, and made their property confiscate to the public treasury.

22. ———. 2013. "Boethius — Divine Man or Christian Philospopher?" In Divine Men and Women in the History and Society of Late Hellenism, edited by Dzielska, Maria and Twardowska, Kamilla, 75-89. Cracow: Jagiellonian University Press.

23. ———. 2014. "Divine Logos in the Heart of Boethius's Path Toward Summum Bonum." Revista Española de Filosofia Medieval no. 21:39-52.

Abstract: "This paper presents an outline of the way Boethius conceived the human path to the Supreme Good (Summum bonum). In order to achieve this goal one has first to specify the way he construed this Supreme Good, and this discussion is naturally related to the much-discussed problem concerning the Christian identity of Boethius: was he indeed a Christian? does his Consolation, from which any overt allusions to Christian faith are absent, provide us with any clue as to whether the Supreme Good of Boethius can be identified with the God of the Gospel? In the course of the analysis we propound a hypothesis that the message that Boethius puts forward through the means of his Consolation and the utterances he puts in the mouth of his dame Philosophy are not far removed from the advice offered by Fulgentius to Proba.

She, too, was encouraged to acknowledge her own weakness and lack of sufficiency, to be contrite, and to have humble trust in wisdom and guidance of God, who is the best of all doctors. Is dame Philosophy’s message not very similar? did not Alcuin, who regarded himself as a faithful «disciple» of Boethius, share a conception of philosophy as being the «teacher of virtues» and wisdom, as the one who leads man along the path of wisdom towards the divine light?"

24. King, Peter. 2007. "Boethius: First of the Scholastics." Carmina Philosophiae no. 16:23-50.

"Boethius was the first of the scholastics in much more than paraphrases and his word-for-word commentaries, Boethius also provided the mediæval world with an object lesson in how to think about it. His theological treatises set the style for later scholastic investigations of dogma: concise, tightly-reasoned chains of argument applied to matters of faith, rich enough to be commented on in their own right. His intellectual influence was so pervasive in the Middle Ages that we might be tempted to paraphrase Whitehead’s famous dictum (1) and declare mediæval philosophy to consist in a series of glosses on Boethius.

One work, however, has been left out of this accounting. While the influence and impact in the Middle Ages of Boethius’s translations, paraphrases, commentaries, and theological treatises has long been studied and is well known, the same cannot be said for his masterpiece, the Consolation of Philosophy. Yet it too received its ‘series of glosses’ in the Middle Ages. In what follows I propose to look into this neglected history, focusing primarily on the reception of the Consolation as a philosophical text by later mediæval thinkers.

Putting aside its literary qualities, then, we can ask: What did later scholastics make of the Consolation as a philosophical treatise? What philosophical problem did they take it to address, and how did they take it to solve that problem?

I’ll proceed as follows. In §1, I’ll describe the tradition of philosophical commentary on the Consolation, as far as it can be made out at present. In § 2, I’ll discuss the interpretation of the logical structure of the Consolation in the commentary tradition. In § 3, we’ll look at the particular question of how the issues and arguments given in Book 5 are related to the rest of the work, a question that has consequences for the unity of the Consolation as a whole.

In § 4, the medicinal metaphors Boethius uses to present the ‘therapeutic’ arguments will be looked at in detail as an example of how the commentary tradition can illuminate the logical structure of the text." (p. 23)

(1) Alfred Whitehead [Process and Reality. New York: Macmillan, 1929] 63: “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists in a series of footnotes to Plato.”

25. ———. 2011. "Boethius' Anti-Realist Arguments." Oxford Studes in Ancient Philosophy no. 40:381-401.

"Boethius opens his discussion of the problem of universals, in his second commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge, with a destructive dilemma: genera and species either exist or are concepts; but they can neither exist nor be soundly conceived; therefore the enquiry into them should be abandoned (In Isag. maior 1.10). Boethius’ strategy to get around this dilemma is well known. He follows the lead of Alexander of Aphrodisias, distinguishing several ways in which genera and species can be conceived, and he argues that at least one way involves no falsity. Hence it is possible to conceive genera and species soundly, and Porphyry’s enquiry into them is therefore not futile after all (1.11).

Boethius thus resolves the second horn of his opening dilemma.

Yet he allows the first horn of the dilemma, the claim that genera and species cannot exist, to stand. The implication is that he takes his arguments for this claim to be sound. If so, this would be a philosophically exciting and significant result, well worth exploring in its own right.

Yet there is no consensus, either medieval or modern, on precisely what Boethius’ arguments are, or even how many arguments he offers, much less on their soundness. (1) One reason for the lack of consensus is that Boethius’ arguments need to be understood in the light of their ancient philosophical sources — particularly his difficult regress argument, which can be reconstructed only in this light — and this is rarely done. (2) In what follows I shall try to establish Boethius’ dependence on his sources, and to show that Boethius offers three arguments as part of a unified dialectical strategy to establish that genera and species cannot be things (in some suitably robust sense of ‘things’)." (pp. 381-382)

(1) The secondary literature is sparse. Boethius’ arguments do not rate even a single mention in J. Marenbon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Boethius [Companion] (Cambridge, 2009). There is an analysis of Boethius’ entire discussion in M. Tweedale, Abailard on Universals [Abailard] (Amsterdam, 1976), and of these arguments in P. Spade, ‘Boethius against Universals’ [Boethius], which takes into account unpublished work by Spade and King. The brief treatment in A. de Libera, La Querelle des universaux de Platon à la fin du Moyen Âge [Querelle] (Paris, 1996), 128-30, is expanded in id., L’Art des généralités: théories de l’abstraction [L’Art] (Paris, 1999), 175-214. Some relevant material can be found in J. Barnes, Porphyry: Introduction [Introduction] (Oxford, 2003), 37-9. For Boethius’ works in general see J. Magee and J. Marenbon, ‘Boethius’ Works’, in Marenbon (ed.), Companion, 303-10, and the references given there.

(2) There is still controversy over Boethius’ relation to his ancient sources: see J. Shiel, ‘Boethius’ Commentaries on Aristotle’, in R. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and their Influence. (London, 1990), 349-72, and S. Ebbesen, ‘Boethius as an Aristotelian Commentator’, ibid. 373-91.

For the most recent overview of the debate see S. Ebbesen, ‘The Aristotelian Commentator’, in Marenbon (ed.), Companion, 34-55.

26. ———. 2013. "Boethius on the Problem of Desert." Oxford Studes in Medieval Philosophy no. 1:1-22.

27. Kirby, Helen. 1981. "The Scholar and His Public." In Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence, edited by Gibson, Margaret, 44-69. Oxford: Blackwell.

"Today, the Tractates are again generally accepted as Boethian. The turning point was the publication in 1877 of a fragment of Cassiodorus discovered by Alfred Holder in a Reichenau manuscript and edited by Hermann Usener. In this fragment, called the Anecdoton Holderi, (2) Cassiodorus remarks that Boethius wrote a book on the Holy Trinity, some chapters on dogma, and a book against Nestorius. (3) This list seemed to accord well with the topics covered by the works themselves. Specifically, the 'book on the Holy Trinity’ corresponded with Tractate I, and that 'against Nestorius’ with Tractate V. The 'chapters on dogma’ were taken as references to Tractates II and III, which deal respectively with the questions whether Father, Son and Holy Spirit may be predicated of God as substances; and how substances can be good simply by existing. The genuineness of Tractate IV, 'On the Catholic faith’, remained in doubt. E. K. Rand wrote a doctoral thesis to disprove its genuineness, (4) hut some years later ‘deemed it expedient to recant' and concluded that the work was after all by Boethius. (5) It now seems clear that it is to this tractate that the term ‘chapters on dogma’ most aptly applies; and it may therefore be reasonable to treat Tractates I, II and III as together constituting the ‘book on the Holy Trinity’. (6)

At all events, even if perhaps not yet irrefragable, (7) the authenticity of the Opuscula Sacra seems beyond reasonable doubt, and is assumed in what follows." (pp. 206-207)

(1) The text of the Tractates, with English translation, is most conveniently available in the Loeb Library revised edition by H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester (Cambridge, Mass./London, 1973), pp. 1-129. The Latin text in this edition is based upon Rand’s collations of all the important manuscripts (Introduction, p. VII), and is substantially the same as that printed in the first Loeb Library edition in 1918. See further below, p.211.

(2) H. Usener, Anecdoton Holderi, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Roms in ostgothischer Zeit [Festschrift zur Begrüssung der 32. Versammlung deutscher Philologen und Schulmänner zu Wiesbaden] (Bonn, 1877). The text of the Anecdoton is now conveniently available in Cassiodori. . . Opera I, ed. A. J. Fridh and J. W. Halporn (Turnhout, 1973: CCSL XCVI), pp. V-VI.

(3) Scripsit [Boethius] librum de sancta trinitate et capita quaedam dogmatica et librum contra Nestorium: op. cit., p.V.

(4) E. K. Rand, ‘Der dem Boethius zugeschriebene Traktat de fide catholica' Jahrbücher für classische Philologie: Supplement-band XXVI (1901), 401-61.

(5) Founders of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 1928), pp. 156-7, 315, η. 28; cf. the Loeb edition (note i above), p. 52, note a, and M. Cappuyns’ excellent article, ‘Boèce’, in DHGE [Dictionnaire d'Histoire et Géographie Eccllesiastique] I (Paris, 1937), 358-61; 371-2. Tractate IV is further discussed, and its authenticity affirmed, by Henry Chadwick in JTS [Journal of Theological Studies] XXXI (1980), 551-6.

(6) Cappuyns, op. cit., 371.

(7) For the view that excessive reliance may have been placed upon the Anecdoton Holderi see H. F. Stewart, Boethius (Edinburgh/London, 1891), pp. 11—14. A. Hildebrand, Boethius und seine Stellung zum Christentume (Regensburg, 1885), pp. 148-314, argued from internal evidence for the authenticity of the Tractates.

28. Koterski, Joseph W. 2004. "Boethius and the Theological Origins of the Concept of Person." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 78:203-224.

Abstract: "Boethius's famous definition of "person" as naturae rationabilis individual substantia (an individual substance of a rational nature) is frequently cited without reference to the specific theological purpose of his formulation (an attempt to provide some clarification about the mysteries of Christ and the Trinity). This article elucidates some of the theological issues that required philosophical progress on the nature of "personhood." It also considers some of the residual difficulties with the application of this definition to divine persons that have been raised by subsequent theologians such as Thomas Aquinas who are otherwise sympathetic to Boethius's definition of person when applied to human beings."

29. Kretzmann, Norman. 1985. "Nos Ipsi Principia Sumus: Boethius and the Basis of Contingency." In Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy. Islamic, Jewish and Christian Perspectives, edited by Rudavsky, Tamar, 23-50. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"Introduction. Boethius's two commentaries on Aristotle's De interpretatione contain an account of the metaphysical foundations of contingency in their discussions of Chapter 9. (1) For the countless medieval discussions of future contingents only De interpretatione 9 itself is of greater historical importance than Boethius's discussions of it. In this chapter, however, my concern is with the content of Boethius's theory of contingency and not with its historical sources or influences. In order to give his theory the kind of consideration I think it deserves, I need to extract it from the other material in the commentaries and expound it in its own right; I also want to examine some of its consequences. Because those tasks are the only ones I can undertake in this paper, I am not now concerned with what the later medievals thought about Boethius or with what Boethius thought about Aristotle or with what Aristotle thought about contingency, but only (or as nearly as possible only) with what Boethius thought about contingency in his two commentaries on De interpretatione. (2)" (p. 23)

(1) The Latin texts of the commentaries are published in Migne's Patrologia Latina, Vol. 64, cols. 329-342 and 487-518; and in the critical edition by C. Meiser, Boetii Commentarii in Librum Aristotelis II EPI EPMHNIA Σ, Leipzig: Teubner, 1877-1880 (2 vols.), Vol. I, pp. 103-126, and Vol. 11, pp. 185-250. All my references to and quotations from Boethius's commentaries in the notes will be taken from Meiser's edition. For the definitive edition of Boethius's translation of Aristotle see L. Minio Paluello (ed.), Aristoteles Latinus II 1-2: De Interpretatione vel Periermenias, Desclée de Brouwer, Bruges 1965.

(2) See also Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy in Boethius. The Theological Tractates and the Consolation of Philosophy, H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand (eds.), Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass 1968, Bk V, esp. Prose 1 and 2; and In Ciceronis Topica

in Ciceronis Opera, J. C. Orelli and G. Baiterus (eds.), Zurich 1833, Bk V, chs, 15.60-17.64. lowe the latter reference to Eleonore Stump.

30. ———. 1987. "Boethius and the Truth about Tomorrow's Sea Battle." In Logos and Pragma: Essays on the Philosophy of Language in Honour of Professor Gabriel Nuchelmans, edited by Rijk, Lambertus Marie de and Braakhuis, Henk A.G., 63-97. Nijmegen: Ingenium Publishers.

Reprinted in: D. Blank, N. Kretzmann (eds.), Ammonius on Aristotle On Interpretation 9 with Boethius on Aristotle On Interpretation 9, London: Duckworth, 1998, pp. 24-52 (cited from the reprint).

"Lukasiewicz’s interpretation of Aristotle’s response to determinism in Int. 9 has stood, in one version or another, at the center of the modem controversy that has its source in his 1930 article. (*)

(...)

"Recent commentators on Int. 9, whether they accept or reject the oldest interpretation, have tended to follow Hintikka’s lead in designating it ‘the traditional interpretation’. (5)" (p. 25)

(...)

"My concern here is with the principal ancient rival to the so-called traditional interpretation, a rival whose subsequent medieval career was so long and so eminent that it provides another reason for feeling uneasy about calling the simple denial of universal bivalence‘the traditional interpretation’. Since the one I am focusing on is the second-oldest on record, I will refer to it simply as the second-oldest interpretation and continue referring to the denial of universal bivalence as the oldest. I will also continue to refer to both of them as interpretations even when I am primarily interested in them as responses to logical determinism, regardless of their accuracy as interpretations of Aristotle. The second-oldest interpretation’s claim to preserve bivalence while rejecting determinism is what essentially distinguishes it from the oldest interpretation. Its details will emerge gradually." (p. 25)

(...)

"Boethius’ version of the second-oldest interpretation is based on his thoroughgoing Aristotelian correspondence theory of truth: ‘the nature of predicative [i.e. categorical] propositions is acquired from the truth and falsity of things, events, or states of affairs; for however they are, so will the propositions that signify them be’. (28) For that reason propositions 'about past and present things, events, or states of affairs are, indeed, like those things themselves, stable and definite; ... [and], for that reason, of that which has happened it is true to say definitely that it has happened ... And concerning the present as well: whatever is happening has a definite nature in that it is happening. It is necessary to have definite truth and falsity in the propositions, too; for of whatever is happening it is definitely true to say that it is happening, [definitely] false that it is not happening.’ (29)" (p. 29)

(*) [J. Lukasiewicz,‘Philosophische Bemerkungen zu mehrwertigen Systemen des Aussagenkalküls’, Comptes Rendus des Séances de la Société des Sciences et des Lettres de Varsovie, Classe III, vol. 23 (1930) pp. 51-77, translated by H. Weber as 'Philosophical Remarks on Many-Valued Systems of Propositional Logic' in Storrs Mc Call (ed.), Polish Logic 1920-1939, Oxford 1967, pp. 40-65.]

(5) R. Gaskin, The Sea Battle and the Master Argument. Aristotle and Diodorus Cronus on the Metaphysics of the Future, Berlin 1995. Chapter 12 is dedicated to the interpretation of the ancient commentators, especially Boethius and Ammonius.

(28) II 188,14-17: ‘praedicativarum autem propositionum natura ex rerum veritate et falsitate colligitur. quemadmodum enim sese res habent, ita sese propositiones habebunt, quae res significant.’

(29) II 189,5-7, 9-10, 13-18: ‘de praeteritis quidem et de praesentibus, ut res ipsae, stabiles sunt et definitae.... idcirco de eo quod factum est verum est dicere definite, quoniam factum est ... et de praesenti quoque: quod fit definitam habet naturam in eo quod fit, definitam quoque in propositionibus veritatem falsitatemque habere necesse est. nam quod fit definite verum est dicere quoniam fit, falsum quoniam non fit.’

31. LaChance, Paul Joseph. 2004. "Boethius on Human Freedom." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 78:309-327.

Abstract: "It is commonly asserted that Boethius defined free will as the judgment of the will or a rational choice. Accordingly, sin or evil is identified with ignorance or vice of the intellect, which prevents or distorts rational deliberation. However, Boethius adopted a more complex understanding of the self-motion of the soul and, consequently, articulated a more nuanced account of sin and the healing effects of Providence. Boethius treated human freedom as a complex including a natural motion, identified as the desire for happiness, the determination of reason following the judgment of deliberation, and the sovereignty of the will over its own acts and, to some extent, over other acts of the soul. Sin, therefore, involves mistaken ideas about reality but also deformations in the affective orientation of the will to the world and in the exercise of the will's control over the soul."

32. ———. 2011. "Transcendental Prediction in Boethius’ Signification Theory: De hebdomadibus in the Context of the Commentaries on Peri hermeneias." In Philosophy and Theology in the Long Middle Ages: A Tribute to Stephen F. Brown, edited by Emery, Kent jr., Friedman, Russell L. and Speer, Andreas, 248-274. Leiden: Brill.

"In this essay I shall set out the basic terms and relations for an explanatory account of the central meaning of Boethius’ De hebdomadibus. The basic terms and relations include bonum, esse and id quod est as well as the principle that terms which refer to objects that share a particular meaning but that subsist differently are analogically predicated. I shall argue that Boethius distinguished between the meaning of predicates and the mode or manner in which their referents are said to subsist.

Boethius offered only very brief and often tantalizing explanations of these concepts, leaving much room for interpretation as to their exact meaning. I will approach my interpretive task from two directions.

First, I shall investigate Boethius’ logical commentaries and treatises, in which he discusses foundational questions of human knowing and the manner in which the content of one’s predications may be brought closer to the meaning that one intends to communicate. Second, I shall adopt a hypothesis that locates Boethius’ third tractate in the context of trinitarian theology. What I have to offer with respect to the meaning of De hebdomadibus will not verify the hypothesis, but I think that the hypothesis sheds light on the possible intention and meaning of the tractate. Thus, the linking of the hypothesis and the data of the text will yield an advance in ‘understanding’. (1) (p. 248)

(1) Boethius commented on the importance of the task of understanding prior to judgment, noting that Aristotle treated the two parts of logic, understanding and judgment, whereas the Stoics neglected understanding. Cf. Commentaria In Topica Ciceronis, Lib. I–IV, PL 64, col. 1039–1174; english trans. by E. Stump, Ithaca 1988. Despite the fact that in this context judgment appears to be a logical activity concerned with the forms of arguments, evidence from the De divisione liber (cf. infra, n. 18) suggests that Boethius recognized the importance of a range of activities in the articulation of a definition. If we consider that predication involves not simply the synthesis of meanings but also the positing of a particular mode of subsistence (substantial, accidental, relational) or manner of occurrence (necessary, contingent, or free), then the discussion of contingency in the commentaries on Peri hermeneias takes on a greater importance in the articulation of Boethius’ epistemology.

33. Lazella, Andrew. 2008. "Creation, Esse, and Id Quod Est in Boethius's Opuscula Sacra." Carmina Philosophiae no. 17:35-56.

34. Lewftow, Brian. 1990. "Boethius on Eternity." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 7:123-142.

"The concept of eternity was prominent in medieval discussions of divine foreknowledge and human freedom and of God's relation to the world. Perhaps most importantly, the medievals took it to express the distinctive quality of God's life, experience and mode of being. For such writers as Boethius and Aquinas, the claim that God is eternal, properly understood, says most of what we can know about what it is like to be God. So an examination of the concept of eternity promises to repay our efforts with a better understanding of the history of philosophical theology and with insight into the concept of God.

Some thinkers see eternity as everlasting duration through time. Others liken it to a static, durationless instant, a timeless nunc stans. Language appropriate to both views occurs in such authors as Plato, Plotinus and Boethius, leading some scholars to conclude that these men wrote misleadingly, wavered between different views of eternity or were just inconsistent. (1) In a well-known article, Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann suggest another possibility. (2) On their view, when Boethius et al. seem to waffle between talk of a durationless now and talk of everlasting duration, they are actually trying to communicate a single thesis, that eternity is “atemporal duration." This paper will argue that at least as regards Boethius, Stump and Kretzmann are correct, though not for the reasons they give. Stump and Kretzmann have recently tried to defend the concept of atemporal duration against an attack by Paul Fitzgerald. (3) I will suggest that their defense is inadequate, then offer a different defense and a different view of atemporal duration." (p. 123)

(1) Thus Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 108-13.

(2) Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Eternity,” Journal of Philosophy, voi. 78 (1981), pp. 429-58.

(3) Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Atemporal Duration,” Journal of Philosophy, 84 (1987), pp. 214-19. They are responding to Paul Fitzgerald, "Stump and Kretzmann on Time and Eternity," Journal of Philosophy, voi. 82 (1985), pp. 260-69.

35. Lewis, C. S. 1964. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

On Boethius see pp. 75-90.

36. Liebeschütz, Hans. 1967. "Boethius and the Legacy of Antiquity." In The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, edited by Armstrong, Arthur Hilary, 538-564. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

37. Love, Rosalind C. 2012. "The Latin Commentaries on Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae From the 9th to the 11th Centuries." In The Brill Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, edited by Kaylor Jr., Noel Harold and Phillips, Philip Edward, 75-134. Leiden: Brill.

38. MacDonald, Scott. 1988. "Boethius’s Claim that all Substances are Good." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 70:245-279.

Appendix: Boethius's De Hebdomadibus (How Can Substances Be Good in Virtue of the Fact That They Have Being When They Are Not Substantial Goods?), translated by Scott MacDonald, pp. 274-279.

"Boethius's short treatise Quomodo substantiae, known in the Middle Ages as De hebdomadibus (DH), has been oddly neglected. (1) It deserves close attention for at least two reasons. First, in it Boethius presents a philosophically sophisticated defense of a provocative metaphysical position, viz., that all substances are good in virtue of the fact that they have being. Moreover, in the course of defending this position he lays out and attempts to resolve a deep philosophical problem the resolution of which appears to be necessary for any account of the nature of goodness, not just his own.

Second, DH deserves attention because of its historical significance.

The extant De hebdomadibus commentaries from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the number of references to DH in the works of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, for example, testify to the use made of it by later medieval philosophers.(2) In addition, the subject matter of the treatise places it in a long and distinguished philosophical tradition: Bocthius's thesis that all substances are good in virtue of the fact that they have being is clearly a near relative of the Augustinian view that everything which exists is good insofar as it exists and of Aquinas's claim that 'being' and 'good' have precisely the same referents although they differ in sense. (3) The fact that the account underlying Boethius's thesis is significantly different from either Augustine's or Aquinas's makes DH's

position in the philosophical tradition all the more interesting. In this paper I will offer a detailed analysis of DH in order to evaluate the support Boethius offers for his counter-intuitive thesis and identify the historical context into which his account of the nature of goodness fits." (pp. 245-246)

(1) I have provided a translation of De hebdomadibus in an appendix. All references to DH are to line numbers of this translation.

(2) The medieval commentaries on DH which have been edited are the ninth century glosses edited by E. K. Rand in Commentaria in Boethium, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters (München, 1906), the twelfth-century commentaries by Gilbert of Poitiers, Thierry of Chartres, and Clarenbald of Arras, all edited by Nikolaus M. Haering in (respectively) The Commentaries on Boethius by Gilbert of Poitiers (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1966), Commentaries on Boethius by Thierry of Chartres and his School (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1971), and Life and Works of CIarembald of Arras (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies. 1965), and the commentary of Thomas Aquinas edited by Fr. M. Calcaterra in the Marietti edition of Aquinas's works, Opuscula theologica II (Rome, 1954).

For Albert's use of DH, see his Summa de bono, vol. 28 in Opera omnia (Cologne edition), edited by Henricus Kuehle (Cologne, 1931), especially the first seven articles of the first question. For Aquinas's use of DH outside of his commentary, see especially Summa theologiae Ia.5 —6 and De veritate I and XXI.

(3) For a statement of Augustine's thesis, see, e. g., Confessiones VII. For Aquinas's claim, see Summa theologiae Ia.5.1—3.

39. Magee, John. 1987. "The Boethian Wheels of Fortune and Fate." Mediaeval Studies no. 49:524-533.

40. ———. 1988. "Note on Boethius, Consolatio I.1,5; 3,7: a new biblical parallel." Vigiliae Christianae no. 42:79-82.

41. ———. 1997. "Note on Boethius, "Consolatio Philosophiae" III 5,8." Hermes no. 125:253-257.

42. ———. 2005. "Boethius' "Consolatio" and the Theme of Roman Liberty." Phoenix no. 59:348-364.

43. ———. 2007. "Boethius, Last of the Romans." Carmina Philosophiae no. 16:1-22.

44. ———. 2009. "The Good and Morality: Consolatio 2–4." In The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, edited by Marenbon, John, 181-206. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

45. ———. 2010. "Boethius." In The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity, edited by Gerson, Lloyd, 788-812. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"It is difficult to determine how much of the corpus [of Boethian works] has disappeared. There may have been a translation, possibly with draft commentary, of the Physics. (15)

Boethius was acquainted with the Posterior Analytics, although it is uncertain whether he translated or commented on it; he certainly had access to Themistius’ paraphrases of both Analytics and to Praetextatus’ translation thereof (In Perih. 2.3.7–4.3; Div. 885d;In top. Cic. 1051b). A bucolic poem has evidently vanished, but the Liber de definitionibus transmitted under his name belongs to Victorinus (In top. Cic. 1098a; 1100b). Certain works are mentioned in such a way as to make it impossible to say whether they were merely planned, partially drafted, or actually completed. A treatise De ordine Peripateticae disciplinae was evidently written some time between the second Peri Hermeneias commentary and De divisione; another on the harmony of Plato and Aristotle was planned but may not have been written, and the same holds for a planned compendium of the Peri Hermeneias (In Perih. 2.80.1–6; 2.251.8–16; Div. 877b). Boethius obviously planned numerous projects in advance and must have worked on more than one at a time, and although some of his cross-references furnish reliable evidence for establishing relative chronology, others, having been penned with an eye only to his readers’ presumed order of study, carry no implication as to the order of composition. Boethius’ failure to mention a work, or his mentioning it in such a way as to suggest borrowing from a source, does not amount to proof that he had no direct knowledge of the same. For example, certain hints of De generatione et corruptione in the commentaries may well reflect mere borrowing from a source (e.g., In Cat. 262a (cf. Porph., In Cat. 141.14)), but the Consolatio, which draws from many sources but is a copy of none, suggests direct acquaintance with the treatise (cf. below, p. 802)." (p. 796)

46. ———. 2014. "Boethius’s Consolatio and Plato’s Gorgias." In Boethius as a Paradigm of Late Ancient Thought, edited by Kirchner, Andreas, Jürgasch, Thomas and Böhm, Thomas, 13-29. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Our understanding of Boethius the Platonist is remarkably less clear than that of Boethius the Peripatetic, owing to the fact that the precise range of Boethius’s later Platonic sources is difficult to ascertain from his extant writings, which include no translation of or commentary on a Platonic dialogue. (1) Although there has been much discussion of his interpretation of the Timaeus, especially as evidenced in Consolatio III,m9 (2), and although numerous allusions to other Platonic dialogues have been teased out of various Boethian works, the evidence is generally rather piecemeal. For example, does Boethius’s reference to Plato on the rule of philosopher-kings (3) indicate a direct knowledge of the Republic or is it merely echoing a commonplace? (4) And if the former, then how much of the Republic are we entitled to read into our interpretation of the Consolatio or of Boethius’s Platonism generally? The most notable exceptions to this rather sparsely populated terrain are perhaps Consolatio IV,2 and IV,4, prose sections which since Klingner have been taken to reflect direct engagement with Plato’s Gorgias. (5) The contrast between Boethius’s use of the Timaeus and his use of the Gorgias seems particularly striking. For if the Timaeus serves in the context of the Consolatio to affirm the essential goodness of creation and to foster hope for the mind’s ascent to the ordered serenity of the heavens, the Gorgias, with its pessimistic sense of a philosophical life desperately wagered (6) on hopes for improved conditions here on earth, is suggestive of much darker undercurrents within Boethius’s dialogue.

It seems worth reconsidering the case of the Gorgias, and in what follows I hope to shed some light on Boethius’s understanding of that great dialogue. Did he merely copy from it, or did he form an original interpretation? If the latter, then is it necessary to suppose that he had a copy of the Gorgias to hand when he wrote the Consolatio, or did he work from memory? And did he work exclusively from Plato, or did he consult a later intermediary?" (pp. 13-14)

(1) Cf. John Magee: “Boethius”, in: Lloyd P. Gerson (Ed.): The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity, vol. 2, Cambridge 2010, 798–810. I would like to thank my hosts in Freiburg, especially Dr. Thomas Jürgasch, for their hospitality and the invitation to present the paper on which the present essay is based.

(2) Cf. Friedrich Klingner: De Boethii consolatione philosophiae, (= Philologische Untersuchungen; 27), Berlin 1921, 38–67; Pierre Courcelle: La consolation de philosophie dans la tradition littéraire. Antécédents et postérité de Boèce, Paris 1967, 163–165; Pierre Courcelle: Late Latin Writers and their Greek Sources, transl. by Harry E. Wedeck, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 1969, 302–303; Helga Scheible: Die Gedichte in der Consolatio Philosophiae des Boethius, (= Bibliothek der Klassischen Altertumswissenschaften; 2/n. F. 46), Heidelberg 1972, 101–112; Henry Chadwick: Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy, Oxford 1981, 233–235; Béatrice Bakhouche: “Boèce et le Timée”, in: Alain Galonnier (Ed.): Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs: Actes du colloque international de la Fondation Singer-Polignac, Paris, 8–12 juin 1999, (= Philosophes médiévaux; 44), Louvain/Paris 2003, 5–22; Joachim Gruber: Kommentar zu Boethius, ‚De consolatione philosophiae‘, (= Texte und Kommentare; 9), Berlin/New York 22006, 275–288.

(3) Cf. Cons. I,4,5. All citations of the Consolatio are from Boethius: De consolatione philosophiae. Opuscula theologica, ed. C. Moreschini, (= Bibliotheca Teubneriana), München/Leipzig 22005. Internal divisions indicate prose passages unless marked by the letter “m” (e.g. III,9,3; III,m9,3). Plato’s Gorgias is cited according to the traditional Stephanus numbers.

(4) Cf. (e.g.) Pierre Courcelle: La consolation de philosophie dans la tradition littéraire, 60–62.

(5) Friedrich Klingner: De Boethii consolatione philosophiae, 84–88.

47. Magee, John, and Marenbon, John. 2009. "Boethius’s Works." In The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, edited by Marenbon, John, 303-310. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

48. Mair, John. 1981. "The Text of the Opuscola Sacra." In Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence, edited by Gibson, Margaret, 206-213. Oxford: Blackwell.

"Today, the Tractates are again generally accepted as Boethian. The turning point was the publication in 1877 of a fragment of Cassiodorus discovered by Alfred Holder in a Reichenau manuscript and edited by Hermann Usener. In this fragment, called the Anecdoton Holderi, (2) Cassiodorus remarks that Boethius wrote a book on the Holy Trinity, some chapters on dogma, and a book against Nestorius. (3) This list seemed to accord well with the topics covered by the works themselves. Specifically, the 'book on the Holy Trinity’ corresponded with Tractate I, and that 'against Nestorius’ with Tractate V. The 'chapters on dogma’ were taken as references to Tractates II and III, which deal respectively with the questions whether Father, Son and Holy Spirit may be predicated of God as substances; and how substances can be good simply by existing. The genuineness of Tractate IV, 'On the Catholic faith’, remained in doubt. E. K. Rand wrote a doctoral thesis to disprove its genuineness, (4) hut some years later ‘deemed it expedient to recant' and concluded that the work was after all by Boethius. (5) It now seems clear that it is to this tractate that the term ‘chapters on dogma’ most aptly applies; and it may therefore be reasonable to treat Tractates I, II and III as together constituting the ‘book on the Holy Trinity’. (6)

At all events, even if perhaps not yet irrefragable, (7) the authenticity of the Opuscula Sacra seems beyond reasonable doubt, and is assumed in what follows." (pp. 206-207)

(1) The text of the Tractates, with English translation, is most conveniently available in the Loeb Library revised edition by H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester (Cambridge, Mass./London, 1973), pp. 1-129. The Latin text in this edition is based upon Rand’s collations of all the important manuscripts (Introduction, p. VII), and is substantially the same as that printed in the first Loeb Library edition in 1918. See further below, p.211.

(2) H. Usener, Anecdoton Holderi, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Roms in ostgothischer Zeit [Festschrift zur Begrüssung der 32. Versammlung deutscher Philologen und Schulmänner zu Wiesbaden] (Bonn, 1877). The text of the Anecdoton is now conveniently available in Cassiodori. . . Opera I, ed. A. J. Fridh and J. W. Halporn (Turnhout, 1973: CCSL XCVI), pp. V-VI.

(3) Scripsit [Boethius] librum de sancta trinitate et capita quaedam dogmatica et librum contra Nestorium: op. cit., p.V.

(4) E. K. Rand, ‘Der dem Boethius zugeschriebene Traktat de fide catholica' Jahrbücher für classische Philologie: Supplement-band XXVI (1901), 401-61.

(5) Founders of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 1928), pp. 156-7, 315, η. 28; cf. the Loeb edition (note i above), p. 52, note a, and M. Cappuyns’ excellent article, ‘Boèce’, in DHGE [Dictionnaire d'Histoire et Géographie Eccllesiastique] I (Paris, 1937), 358-61; 371-2. Tractate IV is further discussed, and its authenticity affirmed, by Henry Chadwick in JTS [Journal of Theological Studies] XXXI (1980), 551-6.

(6) Cappuyns, op. cit., 371.

(7) For the view that excessive reliance may have been placed upon the Anecdoton Holderi see H. F. Stewart, Boethius (Edinburgh/London, 1891), pp. 11—14. A. Hildebrand, Boethius und seine Stellung zum Christentume (Regensburg, 1885), pp. 148-314, argued from internal evidence for the authenticity of the Tractates.

49. Malcolm, John. 1986. "Some Consolation for Boethius." The New Scholasticism no. 60:35-45.

"I should like to address myself to the contention of several contemporary commentators to the effect that there is a critical inconsistency between Boethius’s rejection of realism and his own solution to the “ problem of universals.” I shall propose an interpretation which will charge the time-honored transmitter with terminological laxity rather than basic conceptual confusion.

In his second commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge (1) Boethius takes as his starting point Porphyry’s question as to whether genera and species are extramental entities (subsistant) or are only concepts or mental entities. On pp. 161-163 he rejects the first option and concludes (p. 163) that the genus, or any other universal (which would, under Porphyry’s classification, be a species, differentia, property or accident), cannot be an entity existing in re. A realist theory of universale requires that one and the same thing exist in many at the same time as a whole, but Boethius adduces considerations which, he believes, show this to be impossible. The genus, for example, if present as a whole at the same time in several species, will lose its unity and fail to be as “ one over many .” (p. 35)

(1) All references to this work are to In Isagogen Porphyrii Commenta, ed. Schlepse and Brandt, CSEL, 48 (Vienna, 1900).

50. Marenbon, John. 1982. "Making Sense of the De Trinitate: Boethius and Some of His Medieval Interpreters." Studia Patristica no. 17:446-452.

51. ———. 1998. "Boethius: From Antiquity to the Middle Ages." In Routledge History of Philosophy. Volume III: Medieval Philosophy, edited by Marenbon, John, 11-28. New York: Routledge.

"Boethius is a difficult figure to place in the history of philosophy.

Considered just in himself, he clearly belongs to the world of late antiquity. Born in 480, at a time when Italy was ruled by the Ostrogoths under their king, Theoderic, Boethius was adopted into one of the most distinguished patrician families of Rome and benefited from an education which made him at home not only in classical Latin culture but also in Greek literature and philosophy. Although most historians doubt that Boethius actually went to Alexandria or Athens to study, he certainly knew the work of Greek neoplatonists of the immediate past: Proclus, Porphyry and probably Ammonius. Although a Christian, writing in Latin, he therefore falls into a tradition stretching back directly to Plotinus and, ultimately, to Aristotle and Plato. Yet considered as a late antique philosopher, his importance is limited. Most of Boethius’ ideas and arguments derive from his Greek sources; his own contribution lay more in choosing, arranging and presenting views than in original thinking.

By contrast, from the perspective of medieval philosophy, Boethius looms large. Only Aristotle himself, and perhaps Augustine, were more important and wide-ranging in their influence. Besides providing scholars in the Middle Ages with two of their most widely-read textbooks on arithmetic and music,(1) through his translations, commentaries and monographs Boethius provided the basis for medieval logic. His short theological treatises helped to shape the way in which logical and philosophical techniques were used in discussing Christian doctrine.

His Consolation of Philosophy, read and studied from the eighth century through to the Renaissance, and translated into almost every medieval vernacular, was a major source for ancient philosophy in the early Middle Ages and its treatment of goodness, free will and eternity continued to influence thirteenth- and fourteenth-century thinkers. In short, it would be hard to understand the development of philosophy in the medieval Latin West without looking carefully at Boethius’ work — and it is for this reason that, although he falls outside its chronological limits, a chapter on his work (with glances forward at its medieval influence) begins the present volume." (pp. 11-12)

(1) For these works (and possible works on geometry and astronomy), which fall outside the scope of this discussion, see Chadwick [1.12] 69–107 and the articles in Gibson [1.16] by Caldwell, Pingree and White.

References

1.12 Chadwick, H. Boethius: the Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology and Philosophy, Oxford, 1981.

1.16 Gibson, M. (ed.) Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence, Oxford, 1981.

52. ———. 2003. Boethius. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Contents: Abbreviations of Boethius’s Works XV; 1 Introduction 3; 2 Life, Intellectual Milieu, and Works 7; 3 Boethius’s Project: The Logical Translations and Commentaries 17; 4 The Logical Textbooks and Topical Reasoning: Types of Argument 43; 5 The Opuscula Sacra: Metaphysics, Theology, and Logical Method 66; 6 The Consolation: The Argument of Books I-V.2 96; 7 The Consolation, V.3-6: Divine Prescience, Contingency, Eternity 125; 8 Interpreting the Consolation 146; 9 Boethius’s Influence in the Middle Ages 164; Notes 183; Bibliography 219; Index Locorum 237; General Index 243-252.

"I shall argue that, in his theological treatises (Opuscula sacra) and in the Consolation, Boethius is an original and important thinker — one who fully deserves to have been treated by medieval readers as a great author. His individual arguments are often far more careful, sophisticated, and, in their own terms, successful than has usually been recognized, although it is certainly true that Boethius often bases himself on ideas taken from others. But Boethius’s especial distinction as a thinker lies in how he uses, combines, and comments on philosophical arguments. The Opuscula are innovative in their very approach to theology. The Consolation is, as its complex literary structure should immediately suggest, a work not just of but about philosophy: a subtle text which can be understood on various levels. The remaining writings — treatises on music and arithmetic, logical translations, commentaries — that make up Boethius’s oeuvre are not usually innovative, but they are at the least very competent examples of genres where originality was not sought. The logical monographs offer an insight into two branches of logic, hypothetical syllogistic and the theory of topical inferences, about which there are no other extensive treatises from late antiquity. The logical commentaries are remarkable for the way they continue the project of the first great Neoplatonic logician, Porphyry, rather than follow the more usual approach of Boethius’s contemporaries." (pp. 4-5)

53. ———. 2004. "Boethius and the Problem of Paganism." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 78:329-348.

Abstract: "The "problem of paganism" is my name for the set of questions raised for medieval thinkers and writers, and discussed by some of them (Abelard, Dante, and Langland are eminent examples), by the fact that many people--especially philosophers--from antiquity were, they believed, monotheists, wise and virtuous and yet pagans. This paper argues that Boethius, though a Christian, was himself too much part of the world of classical antiquity to pose the problem of paganism, but that his Consolation of Philosophy was an essential element in the way medieval writers saw and resolved this problem. In particular, because it was a text by an author known to be Christian which discusses philosophy without any explicitly Christian references, it opened up the way to treating texts by ancient pagan philosophers as containing hidden Christian doctrine."

54. ———, ed. 2009. The Cambridge Companion to Boethius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: List of contributors XI; List of abbreviations of Boethius' works XIV; List of abbreviations XV; John Marenbon: Introduction: Reading Boethius whole 1;

Part I. Before the Consolation 11;

1. John Moorhead: Boethius' life and the world of late antique philosophy 13; 2. Sten Ebbesen: The Aristotelian commentator 34; 3. Christopher J. Martin: The logical textbooks and their influence 56; 4. Margaret Cameron: Boethius on utterances, understanding and reality 85; 5. David Bradshaw: The Opuscula sacra: Boethius and theology 105; 6. Andrew Arlig: The metaphysics of individuals in the Opuscula sacra 129; 7. Christophe Erismann: The medieval fortunes of the Opuscula sacra 155;

Part II The Consolation 179;

8. John Magee: The Good and morality: Consolatio 2-4 181; 9. Robert Sharples: Fate, prescience and free will 207; 10. Danuta Shanzer: Interpreting the Consolation 228; 11. Lodi Nauta: The Consolation: the Latin commentary tradition, 800-1700 255; 12. Winthrop Wetherbee: The Consolation and medieval literature 279;

Appendix. John Magee and John Marenbon: Boethius' works 303; Bibliography: 311; Index: References to Boethius' works 340; General index 343-356.

55. ———. 2009. "Boethius." In The History of Western Philosophy of Religion. Volume 2: Medieval Philosophy of Religion, edited by Oppy, Graham and Trakakis, N. N., 19-32. Stocksfield: Acumen.

56. ———. 2013. "Divine Prescience and Contingency in Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy." Rivista di Storia Della Filosofia no. 1:9-21.

Abstract: "This article discusses Boethius’s argument in Consolation V.3-6 that divine omniscience of even the future is compatible with some things happening contingently. Section 1 argues that, according to Boethius, the kernel of the problem is not that God’s beliefs about the future are true, but that they must be incapable of turning out false – something which seems incompatible with the unfixedness of contingent events. Section 2 looks at the Modes of Cognition Principle (everything that is cognized is cognized, not according to its own power, but rather according to the capacity of those who are cognizing), one of the building blocks of Boethius’s solution, and contends that it is far bolder than anything Boethius may have found in his sources, putting forward as it does a limited relativism about knowledge. Section 3 argues that the other important building block, the view that all things, past, present and future, are present to God, should be understood epistemically (he knows them as if they were in his present) rather than metaphysically (God’s present is co-extensive with worldly past, present and future)."

57. ———. 2014. "Boethius’s Unparadigmatic Originality and its Implications for Medieval Philosophy." In Boethius as a Paradigm of Late Ancient Thought, edited by Böhm, Thomas, Jürgasch, Thomas and Kirchner, Andreas, 231-244. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"The title of this article needs an apology and an explanation. Not only is it unwieldy.

It also presents itself as a discordant rejection of the line of thinking about Boethius on which this volume, and the conference which gave rise to it, are based. But ‘paradigm’ is, in my view, a strange word to use in connection with Boethius. Rather than acting as a paradigm, he is a writer who seems to resist being fitted into any of the apparently appropriate existing paradigms. This exceptionality emerges even when trying to answer some of the simplest questions about him. Was he a Church Father (like, for instance, Jerome or Gregory of Nyssa) or an ancient philosopher (like his near contemporary Ammonius)? The answer is obviously neither — and both. Does he belong to the Middle Ages — his birth coincided with the deposition of the last Western Roman Emperor — or to antiquity, with which his cultural ties were so much closer than those of Augustine, a century earlier? Again, it would be wrong to choose either alternative, and the same would be true even if it were asked, simply, whether he fits best into Greek or into Latin culture." (p. 231)

58. ———. 2015. "Boethius." In Pagans and Philosophers: The Problem of Paganism from Augustine to Leibniz, edited by Marenbon, John, 42-53.

59. ———. 2017. "Boethius, Abelard and Anselm." In The Cambridge History of Moral Philosophy, edited by Golob, Sacha and Timmermann, Jens, 125-137. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

60. ———. 2021. "The Whole Boethius. What are the Links between the Consolation and Boethius’s Other Works?" Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 113:9-18.

Abstract: "This article aims to indicate the unity of Boethius’s thought, which is often overlooked. It focuses on how the contingency of some future events can be compatible with God’s foreknowledge of everything. It argues that the complex and elusive discussion of this issue in the last four prose sections of the Consolation of Philosophy is closely linked to discussions in two of Boethius’s earlier logical commentaries, the second commentary on Aristotle’s On Interpretation and the second commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge. A connected reading of the three texts shows that the notion of divine prescience in the Consolation should not be understood, as they are by most historians, in metaphysical terms, but rather in logical and epistemological ones: it is only relative to God’s eternal power of cognition that future events, which in themselves remain contingent, are known as if they were necessary."

61. Marshall, David J. 2002. "The Argument of De hebdomadibus." In Die Normativität des Wirklichen, edited by Buchheim, Thomas, Schönberger, Rolf and Schweidler, Walter, 35-73. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.

62. Marshall, Mary Hatch. 1950. "Boethius' Definition of Persona and Mediaeval Understanding of the Roman Theater." Speculum no. 25:471-482.

"In this paper, I wish to draw attention to a rather explicit source of information on ancient representation of formal comedy and tragedy, widely known in the Middle Ages, which has hitherto been ignored in histories of mediaeval drama — Boethius’ definition of persona in his fifth theological tract, De Duabus Naturis et Una Persona Jesu Christi, contra Eutychen et Nestorium, c.3. Cloetta mentioned the passage, but only to show that Boethius himself knew the old dramas, since he alluded familiarly to rôles in plays by Euripides and Seneca, Plautus and Terence. (10) This tract, longest and most interesting of Boethius’ Opuscula Sacra, was of fundamental importance to post-Augustinian conceptions of the Trinity; and the definition of persona, widely accepted but often contested or modified, was a crux of the Trinitarian controversy of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. (11)

One conservative monk of the eleventh century, Otloh of St Emmeram, in the preface of his Dialogus de Tribus Quaestionibus objected vehemently to dialecticians who put more credence in Boethius than in Holy Scriptures for some things, and who reproved him if he used persona in any but the Boethian theological sense. (12) Although criticized by conservatives, Boethius’ theological authority was second only to Augustine’s in the early scholastic period. Because Boethius’ definition of the important theological concept of ‘person’ refers to the ancient theatrical masks called personae and their uses, many men of learning with theological interests incidentally derived from it a reasonable idea of the representation of Roman plays by masked actors using voice and gesture. In the evidence to be presented here from Boethius and his mediaeval commentators and interpreters, it is clear that some understanding of the Roman theater was a great deal more common than we have thought, particularly in the twelfth century in France." (p. 472)

(10) W. Cloetta, Beiträge zur Literaturgeschichte des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (2 vols. in one, Halle, 1890-1892), I: Komodie und Tragodie im Mittelalter, 16-17.

(11) On the concept of persona in Boethius and in the Middle Ages, see A. Vacant and E. Mangenot, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, VII (Paris, 1922), cols. 369-437, s.v. Hypostase (A. Michel); M. Buchberger, Lexicon für Theologie und Kirche, VIII (Freiburg i/B., 1936), cols. 97-98, s.v. Person (A. Stohr); M. Grabmann, Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode, (2 vols., Freiburg i/B., 1909-1911), I, 173-175; K. Bruder, Die philosophischen Elemente in den Opuscula Sacra des Boethius (Leipzig, 1928), pp. 64, 67-72; J. de Ghellinck, ‘L’Histoire de “ persona” et d’ “ hypostasis” dans un ecrit anonyme porretain du xiie siècle,’ in Revue néoscolastique de philosophie, xxxvi (1934), Hommage à M. deWulf, pp.111-127; M.Bergeron, ‘La Structure du concept latin de personne . . . :Commentaire historique de Ia Pars, q. 29, a.4,’ in Etudes d’histoire littéraire et doctrinale du XIIIe siècle (Ottawa, 1932), pp. 121-161. The major recent semantic study is by H. Rheinfelder, Das Wort “ Persona” ; Geschichte seiner Bedeutungen mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des franzosischen und italienischen Mittelalters (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur romanische Philologie, LXXVII, Halle, 1928). I owe this reference to the kindness of Professor Robert J. Menner. See also the historical discussion by Gordon W. Allport,

Personality: A Psychological Interpretation (New York, 1937), pp. 25-36.

(12) Migne, PL, CXLVI, col. 60. B. Smalley, The History of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1941), p. 30.

63. Martindale, John Robet. 1980. "Boethius." In The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire II (A.D. 395–527), 233-237. Cambridge: Cambrdge University Press.

64. Mastrangelo, Marc. 2017. "The Early Christian Response to Platonist Poetics. Boethius, Prudentius, and the Poeta Theologus." In The Poetics of Late Latin Literature, edited by Elsner, Jaś and Lobato, Jesús Hernández, 391-423. New York: Oxford University Press.

65. Matthews, John. 1981. "Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius." In Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence, edited by Gibson, Margaret, 15-43. Oxford: Blackwell.

"Today, the Tractates are again generally accepted as Boethian. The turning point was the publication in 1877 of a fragment of Cassiodorus discovered by Alfred Holder in a Reichenau manuscript and edited by Hermann Usener. In this fragment, called the Anecdoton Holderi, (2) Cassiodorus remarks that Boethius wrote a book on the Holy Trinity, some chapters on dogma, and a book against Nestorius. (3) This list seemed to accord well with the topics covered by the works themselves. Specifically, the 'book on the Holy Trinity’ corresponded with Tractate I, and that 'against Nestorius’ with Tractate V. The 'chapters on dogma’ were taken as references to Tractates II and III, which deal respectively with the questions whether Father, Son and Holy Spirit may be predicated of God as substances; and how substances can be good simply by existing. The genuineness of Tractate IV, 'On the Catholic faith’, remained in doubt. E. K. Rand wrote a doctoral thesis to disprove its genuineness, (4) hut some years later ‘deemed it expedient to recant' and concluded that the work was after all by Boethius. (5) It now seems clear that it is to this tractate that the term ‘chapters on dogma’ most aptly applies; and it may therefore be reasonable to treat Tractates I, II and III as together constituting the ‘book on the Holy Trinity’. (6)

At all events, even if perhaps not yet irrefragable, (7) the authenticity of the Opuscula Sacra seems beyond reasonable doubt, and is assumed in what follows." (pp. 206-207)

(1) The text of the Tractates, with English translation, is most conveniently available in the Loeb Library revised edition by H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester (Cambridge, Mass./London, 1973), pp. 1-129. The Latin text in this edition is based upon Rand’s collations of all the important manuscripts (Introduction, p. VII), and is substantially the same as that printed in the first Loeb Library edition in 1918. See further below, p.211.

(2) H. Usener, Anecdoton Holderi, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Roms in ostgothischer Zeit [Festschrift zur Begrüssung der 32. Versammlung deutscher Philologen und Schulmänner zu Wiesbaden] (Bonn, 1877). The text of the Anecdoton is now conveniently available in Cassiodori. . . Opera I, ed. A. J. Fridh and J. W. Halporn (Turnhout, 1973: CCSL XCVI), pp. V-VI.

(3) Scripsit [Boethius] librum de sancta trinitate et capita quaedam dogmatica et librum contra Nestorium: op. cit., p.V.

(4) E. K. Rand, ‘Der dem Boethius zugeschriebene Traktat de fide catholica' Jahrbücher für classische Philologie: Supplement-band XXVI (1901), 401-61.

(5) Founders of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 1928), pp. 156-7, 315, η. 28; cf. the Loeb edition (note i above), p. 52, note a, and M. Cappuyns’ excellent article, ‘Boèce’, in DHGE [Dictionnaire d'Histoire et Géographie Eccllesiastique] I (Paris, 1937), 358-61; 371-2. Tractate IV is further discussed, and its authenticity affirmed, by Henry Chadwick in JTS [Journal of Theological Studies] XXXI (1980), 551-6.

(6) Cappuyns, op. cit., 371.

(7) For the view that excessive reliance may have been placed upon the Anecdoton Holderi see H. F. Stewart, Boethius (Edinburgh/London, 1891), pp. 11—14. A. Hildebrand, Boethius und seine Stellung zum Christentume (Regensburg, 1885), pp. 148-314, argued from internal evidence for the authenticity of the Tractates.

66. McInerny, Ralph. 1990. Boethius and Aquinas. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press.

Contents: Preface IX-XIV; Introduction: Two Italian Scholars 1; Part One. The Art of the Commentary. 1. Commenting on Aristotle 33; 2. Altissimum negotium: Universals 61; Parto Two: De trinitate. 3. Thomas Comments on Boethius 97; 4. Tres speculativae partes 121; 5. Metaphysics and Existence 148; Part Three. De hebdomadibus. 6. Survey of Interpretations 161; 7. The Exposition of St. Thomas 199; 8. More on the Good 232; Epilogue: Sine Thoma Boethius Mutus Esset 249; Appendix: Chronologies of Boethius and St. Thomas 255; Bibliography 259; Index 265-268.

"This volume has been a long time emerging from well over a decade of research aimed at writing “a book about Boethius,” a project I had the temerity to announce in an article devoted to Boethius and Saint Thomas which appeared in the 1974 commemorative volume of Rivista di filosofia Neo-Scolastica. Originally I thought of presenting the thought of Boethius in all its scope to English readers, by which I mean of course readers of English. J. K. Sikes’s book on Abelard and Gilson’s on Augustine and Scotus suggested models of what I might do. A chapter on Boethius in Volume 2 of the History of Western Philosophy I undertook with my late colleague A. Robert Caponigri was the first fruits of my labors. The work I wrote on Thomas for the Twayne series on world authors dwelt on the role Boethius had played in the formation of Thomas’s thought. And various papers, notably several read at the spring gatherings of medievalists in Kalamazoo at Western Michigan University, formed if only in my own mind pieces of the larger thing.

By 1974, I had made enough progress to permit me to refer in a footnote to a “work in progress, devoted to the thought of Boethius in its full scope.” However, that same year appeared the imposing two volumes of Luca Obertello’s Severino Boezio. Boethian studies would never be the same again. Here was a massive survey of the Boethian corpus along with the secondary literature on it accompanied by a full volume of bibliography. I will not say that my thunder had been stolen, since that would suggest that I could, then or now, achieve what Obertello had. But I did feel a bit deflated. My hopes began to revive when I considered that there are many who do not read Italian. And, after all, the book I planned was not at all like the one Obertello had written. And then in 1981 came the publication of Henry Chadwick’s masterful book on Boethius.

Chadwick’s book did, so much better than I ever could, what I had dreamt of doing that it forced a rethinking of my whole project. I leafed through the chapters I had written on Boethius’s Quadrivial Pursuits and acknowledged that the world would not be a poorer place if they were never published. But it was not until 1985, after I resigned as Director of the Medieval Institute, that I saw my way clear. The book I would write would be a focused monograph on the relation between Boethius and Thomas Aquinas." (pp. XII-XIII).

67. McKinlay, Arthur Patch. 1907. "Stylistic tests and the chronology of the works of Boethius." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology no. 18:123-156.

"Whoever undertakes to treat of Boethius finds himself in illustrious company. Potentates, churchmen, scholastics, and philosophers have busied themselves with this “ last of the Romans.”

It would appear that but little remains to be said on such a well worn subject. Much less does it seem fitting in a beginner to essay that little. Yet, as the recent researches of Usener and Brandt and the acute suggestions of Rand have marked an epoch in Boethiana, one may hope to gain still further insight into the character and mode of thought of the author of the Consolatio. With this purpose in view, by the help of the so-called stylistic method, I intend to examine the writings of Boethius, in case it may be possible more accurately to place works the dates of which are not yet certain. To be explicit, I hope to show that the De Arithmetica and the De Musica should be placed neither first nor together; more definitely to place certain other works; to throw light on the authenticity of the De Geometria and the De Fide Catholica, and incidentally to test the value of the so-called stylistic method in determining the relative chronology of an author’s writings.

For a definition of the meaning of stylistic method, and an illustration of its application, I may refer to the well-known work of Lutoslawski, entitled The origin and growth of Plato' s logic with an account of Plato's style and of the chronology of his writings, 1897." (p. 123)

(...)

"In the beginning of my paper I implied that any such study as I have undertaken, to be of value, must serve to give us a deeper insight into the character of our author. What have the present results contributed to this end? One thing at least. If the De Arithmetica and De Musica were not written first of Boethius’s works nor together, we must place a new estimate on our author’s temperament and habits." (pp. 154-155)

(...)

"For all must concede that before he had carried out his plan of translating and perhaps of commenting on all the works of Aristotle and Plato, he had begun to work on Cicero. In the same way, he may have undertaken the De Musica as a parergon." (p. 156)

68. McMahon, Robert. 1995. "The structural articulation of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy." Medievalia et Humanistica no. 21:55-72.

69. Meliadò, Mario. 2013. "Axiomatic Wisdom: Boethius' "De hebdomadibus" and the "Liber de causis" in Late-Medieval Albertism." Bulletin de philosophie médiévale no. 55:71-131.

70. Merlan, Philip. 1968. "Ammonius Hermiae, Zacharias Scholasticus and Boethius." Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies no. 92:193-203.

71. Mezel, Balasz M. 2009. "Boethius and the Unity of Human Persons." In Europäische Menschenbilder, edited by Gerl-Falkovitz, Hanna-Barbara, Gottlober, Susan, Kaufmann, René and Sepp, Hans Rainer, 277-286. Dresden: Thelem.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Boethius' Metaphysics. Studies in English: Third Part: Mic - Z

Studies in English

1. Micaelli, Claudio. 2004. "Boethian Reflections on God: Between Logic and Metaphysics." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 78:181-202.

Abstract: "This paper systematically reconstructs Boethius's reflections on God, attempting to find the common element to which all of the variations in these reflections can be retraced. This common element is constituted by the continuous tension between kataphatic and apophatic theology. Boethius apparently both kataphatically defines God in his logical works, and maintains that God can only be defined apophatically in his theological works. This tension can, at times, cause some incoherence as one moves from one level of discourse to another: that is, from the logico-linguistic to the metaphysical-ontological level of discourse. Boethius's thought manifests this incoherence. This incoherence is in part common to Neoplatonic thought and its sources, but would also seem to be dictated by the nature of the very operation of reflecting upon God."

2. Mignucci, Mario. 1989. "Truth and Modality in Late Antiquity: Boethius on future Contingent Propositions." In Atti del convegno internazionale di storia della logica. Le teorie della modalità, edited by Corsi, Giovanna, Mangione, Corrado and Mugnai, Massimo, 47-78. Bologna: CLUEB.

"As is well known, Aristotle's analysis of future contingents in De interpretatione, Chapter 9 has generated since ancient times a lot of discussion (1), which ranges from the interpretation of his own words to the philosophical meaning and adequacy of the solution proposed by him. Unfortunately, the former question is entailed by the latter and there is no agreement between scholars about the kind of answer that Aristotle gives to the question of determinism, despite the astonishing quantity of works dedicated to it. I would by no way like to be involved in the problem of Aristotle's interpretation. My task here is to illustrate the meaning and relevance of Boethius' analysis of future contingents, and I will consider his commentary on the De interpretatione for its own sake. In other words, I do not feel myself committed to evaluate the adequacy of Boethius' proposal with respect to Aristotle, even if, of course, he believed that his interpretation was faithful to the pages of the De interpretatione. Nor will I try to compare Boethius' solution with other solutions which have been proposed by ancient and modern interpreters who have tried to explain Aristotle's text. I will just consider one view different from that of Boethius, because Boethius himself discusses it, and his discussion is relevant to the understanding of his position." (p. 47)

(1) A bibliographical survey of the relevant books and papers until the year 1973 can be found in V. Celluprica, II capitolo 9 del De interpretatione di Aristotele. Rassegna di studi: 1930-1973, Bologna 1977. Further references are in D. Frede, "The-Sea Battle Reconsidered: A Defence of the Traditional Interpretation", Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 3 (1985), pp. 84-87 and J. Talanga, Zukunftsurteile und Fatum. Eine Untersuchung Über Aristoteles' De interpretatione 9 und Ciceros De fato mit einem Überblick Ober die spãtantiken Reimarmene-Lehre, Bonn 1986, pp. 169-185. The recent article of C. Kirwan, "Aristotle on the Necessity of the Present", Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 4 (1986), pp. 167-187 must be added.

3. Minnis, A. J., ed. 1987. The Medieval Boethius: Studies in the Vernacular Translations of De Consolatione Philosophiae. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.

4. Mohrmann, Christine. 1976. "Some Remarks on the Language of Boethius, "Consolatio Philosophiae" " In Latin Script and Letters A.D. 400-900. Festschrift Presented to Ludwig Bieler on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday, edited by O'Meara, John J. and Naumann, Bernd, 54-61. Leiden: Brill.

Reprinted in Manfred Fuhrmann und Joachim Gruber (Hrsg.), Boethius, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1984, pp. 302-310.

"The conclusion to be drawn from this short investigation could be, first of all, that Prof, de Vogel is right when she is of the opinion that there are certain Christian features in the >Consolatio<. But this statement can be completed: these Christian elements concern Christian piety and they seem to find their source particularly in the liturgy. Boethius has been rather successful in his attempt to ban Christian theology from his philosophical dialogue, but he failed to conceal that he was a pious Christian." (p. 61)

5. Moorhead, John. 2009. "Boethius’ Life and the World of Late Antiquity." In The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, edited by Marenbon, John, 13-22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

6. ———. 2018. "Boethius." In The History of Evil. Vol. 2: The History of Evil in the Medieval Age: 450-1450 CE edited by Pinsent, Andew, 23-35. New York: Routledge.

7. Moreschini, Claudio. 2014. A Christian in Toga. Boethius: Interpreter of Antiquity and Christian Theologian. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Contents: Foreword 7; 1. Boethius’ great cultural project 9; 2. Philosophy and Theology in Boethius’ Opuscula Theologica 35; 3. The Consolatio Philosophiae 92; 4. 4. Boethius’ Christianity 132; Bibliography 145; Selected Sources 145; Works Cited 146; Index nominum 153-155.

"The core of this book has its origin in the lectures I delivered at the University of Bremen in October 2011 during the annual graduate seminar “ Christentum als antike Religion” organized by Christoph Auffarth, Marvin Doebler, and Hinca Tanaseanu-Doebler.

(...)

As it may be inferred from it, this book is neither an introduction, nor a general study on Boethius, but is meant to investigate the question of Boethius’ Christianity, secular and at the same time theologically profound. Secular, because Boethius was a layman, who did not belong to the Church, and because he used almost exclusively the heritage of Greek (and partly Latin) Neo-Platonism together with those rational tools typical of a philosophical system. On the other hand, he was thoroughly interested in the issues of contemporary Christianity, starting from Augustine, whose legacy is perceivable even when not overtly mentioned. “ The last of the Romans” (as Martin Grabman called Boethius, a designation that has generally become accepted) was therefore able to produce a synthesis, the validity of which was acknowledged throughout the Middle Ages until the rediscovery of Aristotle." (p. 7)

8. ———. 2014. "Subsistentia according to Boethius." In Boethius as a Paradigm of Late Ancient Thought, edited by Kirchner, Andreas, Jürgasch, Thomas and Böhm, Thomas, 83-99. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"In Contra Eutychen et Nestorium (CEN), as is well known, Boethius offers a definition of persona and hypostasis. This definition is influenced by the dispute between the Western Christian tradition, which since Tertullian and the Arian debate normally employed persona for the persons of the Trinity, and the Greek tradition which used ‘hypostasis’. The debate was provoked by a misunderstanding, which is testified, for instance, by Gregory of Nazianzus (On The Great Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria 21, 35, delivered on 379 AD):

„We use in an orthodox sense the terms one Essence and three Hypostases, the one to denote the nature of the Godhead, the other the properties (ἰδιότητες) of the Three; the Italians (1) mean the same, but, owing to the scantiness of their vocabulary, and its poverty of terms, they are unable to distinguish between Essence and Hypostases, and therefore introduce the term Persons, to avoid being understood to assert three Essences. The result, were it not piteous, would be laughable. This slight difference of sound was taken to indicate a difference of faith. Then, Sabellianism was suspected in the doctrine of Three Persons, Arianism in that of Three Hypostases, both being the offspring of a contentious spirit.“ (2)

This was a momentous dispute between Oriental and Western Christianity. Boethius, thanks to his philosophical education, perceived much more than other Christian writers in the West the imprecision of the word persona: in CEN, since he is discussing the nestorian and Monophysitic Christology, he is compelled (so to say) by the Western tradition to employ persona, but he considers ‘hypostasis’ much more exact.

Introducing, therefore, persona in philosophical or theological vocabulary is, in his opinion, not without inconveniences, which he tries to avoid. Yet just for these reasons he has to face other difficulties." (p. 83)

(1) That is, the Western theologians when discussing Trinitarian problems.

(2) A Select Library of the Christian Church. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2. series: vol. 7: Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nazianzen, ed. by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, Peabody 1894, 279.

9. Morton, Catherine. 1982. "Marius of Avenches, the 'Excerpta valesiana' and the death of Boethius." Traditio no. 38:107-136.

10. Nash-Marshall, Siobhan. 2000. Participation and the Good: A Study in Boethian Metaphysics. New York: Crossroad.

Contents: Foreword IX; Preface XIII-XIV; Part One: The Boethian Doctrine of Participation: The Problem 1; 1. Participation in the Quomodo Substantiae 5; 2. Participation in the Consolatio Philosophiae 10; 3. A Survey of Possible Methodologies 18; 4. The Direct Theoretical Approach: The Good 31; Part Two: The Good 39; 5. The Definitions of the Good 41; 6. The Two Definitions of the Good and Their Paradoxes 69; 7. The Foundations of a Solution 73; 8. The Elements of a Solution 98; 9. Outline of the Solution 108; 10. Conclusion 114; Part Three: Boethius and the Good: The Quomodo Substantiae and Consolatio Philosophiae 117; 11. The Exitus: The Quomodo Substantiae 119; 12. The Consolatio Philosophiae 186; Part Four: Participation 223; 13. The Quomodo Substantiae 225; 14. The Consolatio Philosophiae 274; Part Five: Conclusion 291; Bibliography 299; Index 305-306.

"What Siobhan Nash-Marshall offers in this volume is a study in Hoethian metaphysics by focusing on participation and the good. Neither doctrine is unambiguous in the texts of Boethius — in fact, the prima facie claims seem contradictory and relatively obvious problems appear to go unresolved. Boethius never explicitly employs any of his axioms (let alone those that mention participation) in his explanation , of the ontological goodness of composite beings. Yet, he envisions participation as crucial for the resolution of the problem of how things can be good by virtue of their essences without thereby being substantial goodness (that is, God). The variety of definitions offered for the good in the Consolation of Philosophy sometimes invoke the notion of participation, for instance, in the claim that the human good re-stiles in one’s participation in the prime good, and yet the inclusion of such language seems directly at odds with other definitions, including the notion that the human good consists in the self-possession of one’s own being, for this cannot involve participation in anything other than one’s own nature.

By engaging in the thoughtful reconstruction of both of these key Boethian doctrines — participation and the good — Nash-Marshall proposes a credible and sustained case for better understanding the inner logic of Boethius. But in doing so she also offers an exceptional insight into the very problems that drew Boethius to begin to articulate his own views — whether so tersely in the succinct deductions of the Quomodo or so tantalizingly unreconciled a set of affirmations that undergird the conversations of the Consolation.

Central to her re-thinking of the issues is the assumption of the dialectic of exitus and reditus that Neoplatonists are always traversing, but to which they consciously advert as seldom as travelers do to the road itself when their minds are fixed on getting to their destination or getting back home. Yet, this simple distinction enables both the philosopher and the historian of philosophy to make better sense of the fragmentary comments in Boethius’s texts about participation. From this distinction too one gains a stance by which to reconcile the apparently contradictory claims Boethius makes about the substantive and teleological definitions of the good for composite beings. On the basis of the difference between exitus and reditus, Boethius needs to assign analogous meanings to participation which in turn help us to grasp why composite beings must already be good in their essence and yet still need to acquire the perfections appropriate to their existence by their participation in God and in their own essences.

To grasp the inner logic of Boethius’s reasoning on these issues entails a readiness to complete the articulation of a synthesis Boethius envisioned but was unable to provide. While some scholars have thought the project impossible, Nash-Marshall ventures a thoughtful reconstruction of the connections intrinsic to his positions." (from the Foreword by Joseph W. Koterski, pp. Xi-XII)

11. ———. 2004. "God, Simplicity, and the Consolatio Philosophiae." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 78:225-246.

Abstract: "One of the primary concerns of the Consolatio is to draw out many of the paradoxical conclusions concerning the relation between creation and God that stem from the premises of classical creationist metaphysics, and attempt to solve them. Once one accepts that God does exist, is omnipotent, omniscient, and simple, it becomes viciously difficult to explain: (1) how anything contrary to God's will--evil--can exist; (2) how any cause can act independently of God's will--human freedom; and (3) how "independent causes" can relate to God through their own agency--human prayer. This naturally begs the question: why should we accept the premises of classical creationist metaphysics? This paper addresses this question by analyzing and defending two of the central premises of Boethius's version of classical creationist metaphysics as they are addressed in Consolatio 3,10: (a) that God exists, and (b) that God is simple."

12. ———. 2008. "Boethius, Scholarship, and the Hebdomadibus's Axioms." Carmina Philosophiae no. 17:1-34.

13. ———. 2012. "Boethius’s Influence on Theology and Metaphysics to c. 1500." In A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, edited by Kaylor Jr., Noel Harold and Phillips, Philip Edward, 163-191. Leiden: Brill.

"My two general points here are meant not just to give an account of the current state of Boethian affairs. They are also a caveat of sorts: no article written at the present time can hope to give an exhaustive overview of Boethius’s influence on medieval metaphysical and theological thought. There is simply too much basic work left to be done to hope for a comprehensive overview. (22) It is also true that Boethius’s influence on medieval thought is so pervasive that no article would begin to do it justice.

In what follows, I will attempt merely to sketch a partial picture of that influence, based both on current manuscript work and, above all, on an impartial recognition of Boethius’s originality as a thinker. The sketch will be divided into two primary parts. In the first part, it will outline and broadly discuss the characteristics of Boethius’s thought and their significance with respect to the development of medieval thought. In the second, it will briefly present the history of the process through which medievals came to appropriate Boethian texts and thought. The second part will itself be divided into two sections, which will deal with the logical and the “theological” texts respectively." (p. 171)

(22) This is one of Troncarelli's complaints with respect to the status of studies of medieval manuscripts of the Consolatio. See, on this point, Fabio Troncarelli, Cogitatio Mentis. L'eredità di Boezio nell'alto Medioevo (Naples, 2005), p. 9: “Se esaminiamo, ad esempio, le edizioni critiche della Consolatio, ci rendiamo conto che un uso poco coerente dei manoscritti ha generato una condizione di confusione, in conseguenza della quale è assai difficile stabilire se alcune questioni siano irrisolvibili o, piuttosto, non siano state ancora risolte"... (If, for example, we examine the critical editions of the Consolatio, we will realize that the hardly coherent use of the manuscripts has generated a condition of confusion, the consequence of which mas made it very difficult to establish if certain questions are unrcsolvablc, or, on the other hand, have as yet to be resolved...]

14. O'Daly, Gerard. 1991. The Poetry of Boethius. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

"To label the poetry of the Consolation ‘didactic’ is too simplistic a response to its many functions, unless we are aware of the importance and value of moral and metaphysical reflection and instruction in Greek and Roman cultural life, and in literature as well as philosophy. This book has explored several of the traditions of which the Consolation is a beneficiary, and to which it contributes. It has attempted to show that a responsive reading of Boethius’ work depends upon a realization of the many kinds of allusiveness in that work. Virgil, Ovid, and Senecan tragedy, no less than Plato and the Neoplatonists, Cicero’s philosophical writings, and Epictetus, form the imaginative and intellectual world of the Consolation. In this world the art of poetry has its privileged place. We cannot know what sense Boethius may have had of writing at the end of a long tradition: it is unlikely that he saw with the clarity which historical hindsight has given us that he was, in Gibbon’s words, 'the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully could have acknowledged for their countryman’. The Consolation of Philosophy has often been regarded as the final chapter of ancient philosophy. This book has endeavoured to show that its cultural importance is much wider: when Boethius sought consolation in his captivity, he was also consoled by the idioms and images of Latin poetry, and his own poetry is a late and subtle flowering of that art form." (pp. 236-237)

15. O'Donnell, James J. 2011. "Why Boethius Had to Die." In "Omnium Magistra Virtututm": Studies in Honour of Danuta R. Shanzer, edited by Cain, Andrew and Hays, Gregory, 73-92. Turnhout: Brepols.

16. Obertello, Luca. 1981. "Proclus, Ammonius and Boethius on Divine Knowledge." Dionysius no. 5:127-164.

"Whoever undertakes to treat of Boethius finds himself in illustrious company. Potentates, churchmen, scholastics, and philosophers have busied themselves with this “ last of the Romans.”

It would appear that but little remains to be said on such a well worn subject. Much less does it seem fitting in a beginner to essay that little. Yet, as the recent researches of Usener and Brandt and the acute suggestions of Rand have marked an epoch in Boethiana, one may hope to gain still further insight into the character and mode of thought of the author of the Consolatio. With this purpose in view, by the help of the so-called stylistic method, I intend to examine the writings of Boethius, in case it may be possible more accurately to place works the dates of which are not yet certain."

(...)

"For a definition of the meaning of stylistic method, and an illustration of its application, I may refer to the well-known work of Lutoslawski, entitled The origin and growth of Plato' s logic with an account of Plato's style and of the chronology of his writings, 1897." (p. 127)

(...)

"Bearing in mind the foregoing facts, we are now ready to take up our chronological study of the writings of Boethius. Any such research must be based on the painstaking and masterly investigation (1) of Samuel Brandt. Utilizing all the references made by Boethius to his own writings, he has fixed beyond all question the chronology of most of the works.

He has made out an almost complete framework, leaving now and then a gap of more or less uncertainty which, I hope, may be at least partly supplied by my investigations." (p. 130)

(...)

"Having thus traversed the whole series of Boethius’s extant writings, I may briefly recapitulate the results of this examination. The so-called stylistic method is a recognized form of investigation, applied notably in the case of Plato. In any stylistic study of Boethius two traits must be taken into account. There is, first, the influence of translation on his style. Translation tends to explain new phenomena in style. It tends to unification of vocabulary. Its influence is more transient than one might anticipate. The second trait is Boethius’s marked desire for variety.

Bearing these influences in mind and basing my study on Professor Brandt’s researches as a framework, I have shown that works of a given period agree and works of a different period disagree. Then I classified them stylistically, giving up Professor Brandt’s classification, based on subject matter. I have shown that my criteria fit in exactly with all the arguments, inductive and deductive, that Professor Brandt has formulated." (p. 153)

(1) [Samuel Brandt,] 'Entstehungszeit und zeitliche Folge der Werke von Boethius', Philologus, LXII, [1903] pp. 141-154; 234-279. See also his edition of the Commentaries of Boethius on Porphyry’s Isagoge, 1906, pp. XXVI ff., LXXIX ff., and cf. below, p. 155.

17. Papahagi, Adrian. 2009. "The Transmission of Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae in the Carolingian Age." Medium Aevum no. 78:1-13.

18. Patch, Howard Rollin. 1929. "Fate in Boethius and the Neoplatonists." Speculum no. 4:62-72.

"The great figure of the orb of destiny in the Fourth Book of the Consolatio Philosophiae is the means used by Boethius to present his unusual conception of a mutable Fate. The stability of the centre is occupied by Providence; all else controlled by the turning sphere is subject to Fate, who, however, by this very fact is also subservient to God. The whole idea, justly famous and well known to later writers, immediately suggested to many the corresponding idea that Fate's more customarily fickle sister, Fortune, is also subject to God, and thus helped to give us the Christian conception of Fortune.' Brief study will show, nevertheless, that the mutability of Fate is probably not original with Boethius; and the whole passage has been traced, with apparent satisfaction among scholars, to the works of Proclus. It is my intention here to offer a different explanation, and to suggest that more important problems are involved than have so far been appreciated." (p. 62)

19. ———. 1935. The Tradition of Boethius: A Study of His Importance in Medieval Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

20. ———. 1935. "Necessity in Boethius and the Neoplatonists." Speculum no. 10:393-404.

" Necessity, one had always supposed, admits of no conditions. Release for man in this fashion is startling, and at first sight the solution may appear like a verbal device to escape from a logical dilemma. But it has a more dignified basis in reasoning than that. As a brief review of its history will show, Boethius did not invent the conception. His originality consisted rather in the way in which he adapted it to his purpose.

A study of the force of necessity in the scheme of things, as he saw it, will show that in his references to the frame of nature and the power of fate he is loyal to most of its implications and shows no willingness to ignore them. (3) For his sufferings in prison the idea would have afforded him a natural consolation. But his courage was too great and his moral integrity too vigorous to let the question rest there, and he pressed his search further until he found justification for a belief in some degree of human freedom although that also implies moral responsibility. In fact he obviously strove to justify such responsibility together with its appropriate reward of pleasure or pain. In his debate he was guided partly by the treatise De Prouidentia et Fato of Proclus; I have elsewhere pointed out hints for the plan of his discussion that were available to him there.1 But he added material from other sources, and Proclus did not give him his present solution. The process by which his theory of conditional necessity was first thought of and then elaborated may be possible to discover. In following something of the distinguished history of the phrase we may actually have the opportunity of seeing Boethius at work, and, although the centuries that intervene since his day must make anyone cautious about jumping at conclusions, some light may be thrown on his method in composing the book." (pp. 393-394)

(3) Cf. Contra Eutychen et Nest., i, 45 ff. (Boethius, etc. H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand, London, 1918, Loeb Libr., p. 80), and Cons. Philos., v, pr. iii.

21. ———. 1947. "The Beginnings of the Legend of Boethius." Speculum no. 22:443-445.

22. ———. 1967. The Goddess Fortuna in Mediaeval Literature. New York: Octagon Books.

23. Pessin, Sarah. 1999. "Hebdomads: Boethius Meets the Neopythagoreans." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 37:29-48.

"The thesis of this article si three-fold. First, I suggest, uncontroversially, that Boethius was in many ways influenced by Neopythagorean ideas. Second, I recommend that in light of our appreciation of his Neopythagorean inclinations in at least some of his writings, we understand his esoteric reference to the “ hebdomads” — at the outset of his treatise often called by that name — as a reference to something Neopythagorean. This I suggest in light of the fact that, as I will discuss, the “ hebdomad” plays an important role within the Neopythagorean literature of Nicomachus of Gerasa, an author with whose writings Boethius was intimately familiar. Lastly, I suggest— following Dillon’s analysis of the Triad and the Hebdomad within Nicomachus’ works [*] — an interpretation of the ‘hebdomad’ within the Neopythagorean corpus which, if correct, would make appropriate Boethius’ reference to it at the outset of a treatise on the nature of God and creation." (p. 29)

[* John Dillon, The Middle Platonists (New York: Cornell, 1977).]

24. ———. 2001. "Boethius and the Neoplatonic Good: Hebdomads and the Nature of God in the Quomodo Substantiae." Carmina Philosophiae no. 10:57-72.

25. Phillips, Edward Philip. 2001. "Boethius's De Consolatione Philosophiae and the Lamentatio/Consolatio Tradition." Medieval English Studies no. 9:5-27.

Abstract: "While some critics argue that Boethius's De Consolatione Philosophiae participates in the tradition of Menippean satire, this paper maintains that Boethius's masterpiece is primarily a consolation that employs topics of the lamentatio/consolatio tradition in order to dramatize the fallen narrator's educational journey from despair to hope, a journey facilitated by Lady Philosophy, who assumes the significant roles of Socratic teacher and spiritual physician. The paper argues, furthermore, that the Consolation is not a bitter, satirical work but rather a work of philosophical optimism whose consolation, both for the grieving narrator and for the reader, is based upon the premise that the universe is governed by eternal reason, a belief initially “forgotten” by the narrator but eventually restored through the application of Lady Philosophy's “gentler” and “stronger” remedies."

26. ———. 2014. "Boethius, the Prisoner, and The Consolation of Philosophy." In Prison Narratives from Boethius to Zana, edited by Phillips, Edward Philip, 11-33. New York: Palgrave Mcmillan.

27. Pinzani, Roberto. 2018. "Elements of Boethian Ontology." Noctua no. 5:1-31.

28. ———. 2018. The Problem of Universals from Boethius to John of Salisbury. Leiden: Brill.

29. Porwoll, Robert J. 2008. ""This Indeed May Seem Strange to Some": Boethius on the Non-Being and Inhumanity of "Evil Men"." Carmina Philosophiae no. 17:57-79.

30. Rand, Edward Kennard. 1904. "On the Composition of Boethius' Consolatio Philosophiae." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology no. 15:1-28.

Reprinted in Manfred Fuhrmann und Joachim Gruber (Hrsg.), Boethius, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1984, pp. 249-277.

"Hermann Usener whose justly admired interpretation of the Anecdoton Holderi (*) has done more than any single publication toward restoring Boethius to his rightful place among the Christian theologians, suggests in this work a theory with regard to the composition of the Consolatio, to which nobody hitherto has devoted the consideration it deserves." (p. 1)

(...)

"The object of the present paper is not to attempt an ultimate determination of the various writings from which Boethius drew inspiration, but merely, as a precursor to such a study, to discuss Usener’s theory regarding the composition of the Consolatio, Naturally we may best approach our subject by examining in turn the four elements into which Usener analyzes this work— the poetry, the prose introduction, the chapters from Aristotle’s Protreptikos, and the Neoplatonic section." (pp. 3-4)

(...)

"The Consolatio does not, like the Opuscula Sacra, deal directly with problems of Christian theology, but it is the work of a Christian theologian who holds fast the distinction between fides and ratio. There are naturally no traces of Christian doctrine in the Consolatio, for the reason that Philosophy speaks and not Faith. Boethius is trying by the unaided effort of the reason to establish a theodicy for which revelation has its own proofs, and for this reason, inevitably, recurs to the utterances of the schools and not the councils. But, be it noted, the solution at which he arrives, though expressed consistently in terms of Philosophy, is at one with the conclusion of Theology: reason could not prove something contradictory of faith. (1) Sometimes we meet a doctrine that would not have

been accredited by St. Thomas (that of the world’s perpetuity, for instance), because it had not been definitely excluded from orthodoxy when Boethius wrote. (2) Sometimes Boethius includes what would doubtless have been dangerous in contemporary theology, as, for instance, the Neoplatonic imagery in 5, pr. 2. But these are matters of detail. The general scheme of the Consolatio is in harmony with Christian theology.

Nor need we ponder why Boethius chose a philosophical rather than a theological consolation in his last hours. Schrockh remarks, (3) “ Unwiirdig waren sie (i. e. philosophische Trostgriinde) doch eines christlichen Gelehrten nicht. Es sind sehr nahe mit seiner Religion verwandte Grtinde; es ist der letzte und edelste Erfolg seiner vieljahrigen philosophischen Untersuchungen.” The fundamental aim of the work is to make the language of philosophy approach as closely as possible to the meaning of faith; for Boethius was neither a Pagan, nor a cold eclectic, nor a dilettante reviser of others’ texts, but the first of the scholastics." (pp. 27-28)

(*) Anecdoton Holderi, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Roms in ostgothischer Zeit, Bonn (Leipzig, Teubner), 1877 [A new edition of this text is available: Alain Galonnier, 'Anecdoton Holderi ou Ordo generis Cassiodororum, Introduction, édition, traduction et commentaire', Antiquité tardive, 4, 1996, pp. 299-312.]

(1) This point is clearly expressed in an admirable discussion of this matter by Schrockh, Christliche Kirchengeschichte, 1792, Theil 16, p. 99 ff., a work quoted by Nitzsch, Das System des Boethius, Berlin, i860, p. 33, and Dräseke, ['Ueber die theologischen Schriften des Boethius',] Jahrbuch für Protestantische Theologie, XII, 1886, p. 327, and deserving still wider recognition by students of Boethius.

(2) See Jahrbuch für Protestantische Theologie, Supplement. XXVI, p. 427.

(3) Op. cit., p. 118.

31. ———. 1928. Founders of the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Reprinted New York: Dover Publications, 1957; see Chapter 5, pp. 135-180.

32. Raudenbush Olmsted, Wendy. 1989. "Philosophical Inquiry and Religious Transformation in Boethius's "The Consolation of Philosophy" and Augustine's "Confessions"." The Journal of Religion no. 69:14-35.

33. Reiss, Edmund. 1981. "The Fall of Boethius and the Fiction of the "Consolatio Philosophiae"." The Classical Journal no. 77:37-47.

34. ———. 1982. Boethius. Boston: Twayne.

Contents: About the Author II; Preface III; Chronology VII; Chapter One: The Master of the Arts 1; Chapter Two: The Explorer of Language 28; Chapter Three: The Concerned Christian 55; Chapter Four: The Martyr and the Consolation of Philosophy 80; Chapter Five: The Argument of the Consolation 103; Chapter Six: Form and Method in the Consolation 131; Chapter Seven: The Boethian Legacy 154; Notes and References 163; Selected Bibliography 192; Index 198-203.

"For all of his acknowledged importance in the development of Western thought and literature, however, Boethius is at present hardly a household name in either Europe or America. It is difficult to think of any other literary figure who has plummeted from such heights of prestige to such depths of oblivion. Whereas from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century every educated person in the Western world knew Boethius’s name, now he is virtually unknown to all except advanced students of classical and medieval thought and literature. Because of this neglect, which has come about only in the twentieth century, it is necessary to insist on a greatness that would otherwise seem obvious. Still, Boethius is too important—and too interesting—to be known only by the few who have had occasion to come to him through their study of something else.

The principal barrier facing anyone wishing to study Boethius is not so much the remoteness of his age or the difficulty of his language—real as these hurdles are—but the need for expertise in mathematics, music, logic, rhetoric, theology, metaphysics, and poetry; and few modern scholars possess Boethius’s breadth and depth of knowlédge. Though readers of Boethius may find common ground in the Consolation of Philosophy, those interested in the thought and poetry, for instance, are not likely to make the effort to study the scientific and logical treatises. Understandable as this may be, the result is the present fragmented state of Boethian studies where historians, students of literature, logicians, theologians, musicologists, and medievalists concentrate on writings pertinent to their individual fields and have little to say to those working in the other areas. While the bibliography of scholarly writings on Boethius is large, few articles or books are concerned with his total literary output. For instance, the last full-length study in English of Boethius—published forty years ago—includes only two pages on the scientific writings and three pages on the logical works.

Although as a student of literature I cannot pretend to have the expertise or the interest necessary for explicating Boethius’s more technical and arcane treatises, I can at least try to make clear what each of these works is doing and relate them to each other in such a way that modern readers may acquire a sense of their meaning and accomplishment. And I can certainly suggest some of the many reassessments of Boethius and his work that have come about in the last forty years. My purpose is to introduce Boethius to the student and the general reader and to reaffirm his achievements and importance. While my particular interests are in understanding the interrelationship of the different writings and in examining how the Consolation of Philosophy, detached from the legend of Boethius the martyr, functions as a finely wrought piece of literature, I have tried to say something—and in some cases something new—about each work.

Chapter 1 concerns Boethius’s early life and scientific writings; Chapter 2, his logical treatises; and Chapter 3, his theological tractates. Chapter 4 examines his later life and its relationship to the Consolation of Philosophy; Chapter 3, the argument of the Consolation; and Chapter 6, Boethius’s patterning of his material in this work. Finally, Chapter 7 looks briefly at Boethius’s legacy and its importance to the Western world." (pp. (pp. IV-V)

35. Relihan, Joel C. 1990. "Old Comedy, Menippean Satire, and Philosophy's Tattered Robes in Boethius' Consolation." Illinois Classical Studies no. 15:183-194.

36. ———. 2007. The Prisoner's Philosophy. Life and Death in Boethius's "Consolation". Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Preface IX; Texts, Translations, Terminology, Dramatis Personae XIII; Chapter One. The Ironic Consolation and Its Reception 1; Chapter Two. Two Digressions and a Pointed Conclusion 15; Chapter Three. Universality and Particularity 34; Chapter Four. Consolation and the Genre of Consolation 47; Chapter Five. Death and Meditation 59; Chapter Six. The Odyssey of Consolation 75; Chapter Seven. Models and Rewritings 93; Chapter Eight. The Menippcan Boethius in the Personification Allegories of the Middle Ages, bv William E. Heise 111; Chapter Nine. The Wisdom of Boethius 127; Appendix I. Latin Texts: Consolation 4.1; 5.1; 5.6.44-48 137; Appendix 2. Boethius, In de interpretatione2 3.9, 221.27-227.12 Meiser 141; Appendix 3. Maximian, Elegy 3 147; Appendix 4.

Agathias Scholasticus, Greek Anthology. 11.354 155; Notes 158; References 206; Index 217.

"Both response and resistance to a dozen years of scholarly activity have proved fruitful. A number of works appeared immediately after the publication of Ancient Menippean Satire [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993]"

(...)

"Classicists and medievalists may be surprised to discover how popular the term Menippean satire has become in discussions of modern literature, and how many works have been claimed to fall under its influence, among them Tristram Shandy, Moby Dick, and Gravity's Rainbow. Such contemporary critical approaches to the genre offer welcome insight into the intellectual enterprise of Consolation, but Boethius rarely finds a place in them."

(...)

"Granted, Consolation is awkwardly poised between the usual traditions and divisions of Western literature, but the fundamental problem is the general lack of recognition that Consolation is critical of the intellectual synthesis that it both presents and undermines, that it is both philosophical and ironic. I wish to place Consolation in the genre’s vital center, which I understand more in terms of the parody of encyclopedic knowledge than in the exaltation of polyphony; my debts to Northrop Frye's anatomy are ultimately greater than those to Bakhtin. The questions that need to be raised and answered about Consolation have to do with plot and intertextuality, with irony and the presentation of wisdom, with literary history and a many-branched reception. Modernists must be called to take Boethius into account; classicists must be urged not to allow their knowledge of late antiquity and its philosophical and religious traditions to determine the interpretation of the text, but to let an understanding of the Menippean Consolation modify their understanding of late antique culture."

(...)

"I used to rake the Christian presence in Consolation more as a latent thing, as the path not taken, as the wav out of Philosophy’s labyrinth that is hinted at but never achieved. But, emboldened by the work of others, I now see it much more actively at work—the prayer advocated at the end is not the philosophical path to God that Philosophy had earlier intended the prisoner to travel, but a different, Christian path that the prisoner chooses, offered grudgingly by a Philosophy forced to admit that her intended approach docs not quite satisfy or console this particular patient, a Philosophy who wanted to lead but who ultimately only can point him to his true home. Boethius is truer to Plato by not being as optimistic as Augustine: there is no logical path, and certainly no trivial or quadrivial path, that leads from the world of human logic and perception to the divine realm. What is most remarkable about Consolation, in its relation to Platonic and Christian worlds, is that the author tries so hard to resist apocalypse, and that the narrator is neither an Er nor a Scipio nor a St. John nor a Plotinus. After all of its intellectual heavy weather, Consolation is about humble access to God through prayer, not revelation." (from the Preface, IX-XI).

37. Rijk, Lambertus Marie de. 1988. "On Boethius' Notion of Being. A Chapter of Boethian Semantics." In Meaning and Inference in Medieval Philosophy. Studies in Memory of Jan Pinborg, edited by Kretzmann, Norman, 1-29. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Reprinted as chapter I in: L. M. de Rijk, Through Language to Reality. Studies in Medieval Semantics and Metaphysics, edited by E. P. Bos, Northampton: Variourum Reprints, 1989.

"From Parmenides onwards, ancient and medieval thought had a special liking for metaphysical speculation. No doubt, speculative thought was most influentially outlined by Plato and Aristotle. However, what the Christian thinkers achieved in metaphysics was definitely more than just applying and adapting what was handed down to them. No student of medieval speculative thought can help being struck by the peculiar fact that whenever fundamental progress was made, it was theological problems which initiated the development. This applies to St Augustine and Boethius, and to the great medieval masters as well (such as Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus). Their speculation was, time and again, focused on how the notion of being and the whole range of our linguistic tools can be applied to God's Nature (Being).

It is no wonder, then, that an inquiry into Boethius's notion of being should be concerned, first and foremost, with his theological treatises, especially De hebdomadibus.

(...)

My final section aims at showing how Boethius's notion of being is clearly articulated in accordance with his semantic distinctions. This is most clearly seen in the main argument of De hebdomadibus where they may be actually seen at work.

As is well known, the proper aim of De hebdomadibus is to point out the formal difference between esse and esse bonum, or in Boethius's words: 'the manner in which substances are good in virtue of their being, while not yet being substantially good' (38.2-4). Its method consists in a careful application of certain formal distinctions, viz.:

(a) The distinction between an object 'when taken as a subsistent whole and id quod est = the constitutive element which causes the object's actually' being; it is made in Axiom II and used in Axiom IV.

(b) The distinction (closely related to the preceding one) obtaining between the constitutive element effecting the object's actual being (forma essendi, or ipsum esse) and the object's actuality as such (id quod est or ipsum est); it is made in Axioms VII and VIII.

(c) The distinction between esse as 'pure being' (= nihil aliud praeter se habens admixtum), which belongs to any form, whether substantial or incidental, and id quod est admitting of some admixture (lit. 'something besides what it is itself'); it is made in Axiom IV and in fact implies the distinction between esse simpliciter and esse aliquid.

(d) The distinction between 'just being some thing', tantum esse aliquid, and 'being something qua mode of being'. It is made in Axiom V and used in Axiom VI and is in fact concerned with a further distinction made within the notion of id quod est. It points out the differences between the effect caused by some form as constitutive of being some thing and that caused by the main constituent (forma essendi) which causes an object's being simpliciter.

(e) The distinction between two different modes of participation, one effecting an object's being subsistent, the other its being some thing, where the 'some thing' (aliquid) refers to some (non-subsistent) quality such as 'being white', 'being wise', 'being good', etc.

The application of these distinctions enables Boethius to present a solution to the main problem: although the objects (ea quae sunt, plural of id quod est) are (are good) through their own constitutive element, being (being good), nevertheless they are not identical with their constitutive element nor (a fortioriwith the IPSUM ESSE (BONUM ESSE) of which their constituent is only a participation." (pp. 1 and 22-23).

38. ———. 2003. "Boethius on De interpretatione (ch. 3): is he a reliable guide?" In Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs, edited by Galonnier, Alain, 207-227. Louvain-Paris: Éditions Peeters.

"There can be no doubt whatsoever about Boethius's exceptional merits for transmitting Aristotle's logic to us. But while 'Aristotelian' logic is in many respects synonymous with 'Aristotelico-Boethian' logic, the question can be raised whether Aristotle himself was an 'Aristotelian'. To give just one example: from Lukasiewicz onwards there has been much debate among scholars about the telling differences between traditional syllogistic and that of the Prior Analytics. (1)

In this paper I intend to deal with two specimens of Boethius's way of commenting upon Aristotle's text. They are found in his discussion of De interpretatione, chapters 2 and 3, which present Aristotle's views of ónoma and rhema. (2) One concerns the semantics of indefinite names, the other that of isolated names and verbs." (p. 227)

(1) Jan Lukasiewicz, Aristotle's Syllogistic from the Standpoint of Modern Formal Logic, Oxford, 1951. G. Patzig, Aristotle's Theory of the Syllogism. A Logico-Philological Study of Book A of the Prior Analytics, Dordrecht, 1969.

(2) Rhema properly stands for 'what is said of', including not only our 'verb' but also adjectives, when used in attributive position. One should realise, however, that 'verb' refers to a word class, rather than a semantic or syntactical category, as rhema does.

(...)

"Conclusion.

Returning now to Boethius' manner of commenting upon Aristotle's texts, the following points can be made:

[1] In the wake of Ammonius, (3) Boethius explains [De int.] 16b22-25 on the apophantic level, i.e. in terms of statement-making, instead of framing significative concepts, i.e. on the onomastic level.

[2] Whereas in Ammonius' report of the predecessors, Alexander and Porphyry, as well as his own exposition of the issue, there are many clues to the previous alternative reading and interpretation on the onomastic level, Boethius does not even refrain from cleansing the text (including his 'quotations'), by changing, at any occurrence, 'ens' into 'est'.

[3] In doing so, Boethius decisively influenced the commentary tradition on account of the purport of De int. 3, 16b19-25. He effectively contributed to the common verdict on this paragraph in terms of 'a curious medley'.

[4] As far as the semantics of the indefinite verb (3, 16b14-15) is concerned, Boethius' apparently adhering to the so-called 'Ammonii recensio' was far less desastrous for the common understanding of Aristotle on this score, and, in effect, merely provided us with some stimulating Medieval discussions of the semantics of term infinitation.

[5] Finally by way of speculative surmise, it might be suggested that both the fact that Boethius dealt with the 'Ammonii recognise' without reading it in his lemma of 16b14-15, as well as his rather ruthlessly interfering in the quotations of the pre-Ammonian sources, should make it more plausible that Boethius had extensive, but incomplete marginal notes to his Greek text of Aristotle at his disposal, rather than a full copy of Ammonius' commentary (or those of other Greek commentators).

To comment upon Aristotle's work naturally includes developing his lore. But nothing can ever guarantee that this will happen ad mentem auctoris. (4)"

(3) It is unmistakably plain that in De int. ch. 3, Boethius is strongly influenced by what he read in Ammonius (or in marginal notes on Ammonius' view).

(4) Cf. the interesting paper on this subject by Frans A.J. de Haas, "Survival of the Fittest? Mutations of Aristotle's Method of Inquiry in Late Antiquity" (forthcoming). [Conference: The Dynamics of Natural Philosophy in the Aristotelian Tradition (and beyond), Nijmegen, 16-20 August 1999.]

39. Rogers, Katherin. 2011. "Defending Boethius: Two Case Studies in Charitable Interpretation." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 51:241-257.

Abstract: "Among those who study medieval philosophy there is a divide between historians and philosophers. Sometimes the historians chide the philosophers for failing to appreciate the historical factors at work in understanding a text, a philosopher, a school, or a system. But sometimes the philosopher may justly criticize the historian for failing to engage the past philosopher adequately as a philosopher. Here I defend a philosophically charitable methodology and offer two examples, taken from John Marenbon’s book Boethius, as instances where exercising more philosophical charity would likely have resulted in more adequate or complete interpretations. The examples are taken from Marenbon’s analyses of the conclusion of Boethius’s discussion of freedom and divine foreknowledge and of Boethius’s argument against Euthyche’s understanding of the Incarnation."

40. Santamaria, Anthony. 2007. "In Pursuit of Happiness: The Platonic and Aristotelian Harmony in The Consolation of Philosophy." Carmina Philosophiae no. 16:71-99.

41. Scarry, Elaine. 1980. "The Well-Rounded Sphere: The Metaphysical Structure of The Consolation of Philosophy." In Essays in the Numerical Criticism of Medieval Literature, edited by Echardt, Caroline D., 91-140. Lewisburg: Bucnell University Press.

"The specific aesthetic structure of the Consolation has until recently been ignored. Earlier commentary on its structure tended to stress the generic influence of such classical forms as “consolation literature” (Cicero, Seneca), “incentives to philosophy” (Aristotle, Cicero), and "Menippean satire.” Emphasis on these genres has inevitably carried with it the implication that a hard center of thought and feeling must be made palatable by presentation in a leisurely style. Even E. K. Rand’s admiring consideration of the Consolation occasionally threatens to slip into the diminutive: “To vary the presentation, to break the flow of dialogue, a number of little poems are interspersed —thirty-nine in all—which now sum up the argument of the preceding prose section, and now themselves carry it on.”(1) While the leisurely element of the work should be recognized, the words of Boethius in Quomodo Substantia should be remembered: “[I] would rather bury my speculations in my own memory than share them with any of those pert and frivolous persons who will not tolerate an argument unless it is made amusing.” The “leisure” of the Consolation might be more accurately described as the grace with which Boethius presents a rigorously premeditated structure. It is in part by understanding the logic of that structure, its aesthetic integrity, that the passion of the author’s conviction and the power of his Consolation are made accessible to the contemporary reader.

As this essay will show, the structure of the work reflects and sustains the idea of the work. The circular relation of form and content is immediately suggested by the title “consolation of philosophy”: Philosophy originally consoles Boethius (book 1) so that he will be receptive to philosophy, by means of which he may eventually attain philosophy and so be consoled (book 5). Philosophy is the cause of its own consummation; philosophy is the cause of the consummation of consolation; consolation is the cause of its own consummation; consolation is the cause of the consummation of philosophy. Knowledge and happiness are one in the co-incidence of form (cause) and idea (end). The consistency with which form recapitulates idea will be shown after first suggesting Boethius’s attitude toward this circularity." (pp. 92-93, notes omitted).

42. Shanzer, Danuta. 1983. "'Me Quoque Excellentior': Boethius, De Consolatione 4. 6. 38." The Classical Quarterly no. 33:277-283.

43. ———. 1984. "The Death of Boethius and the 'Consolation of Philosophy'." Hermes no. 112:352-366.

44. ———. 2009. "Interpreting the Consolation." In The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, edited by Marenbon, John, 228-254. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

45. Sharples, Robert W. 2009. "Fate, Prescience and Free Will." In The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, edited by Marenbon, John, 207-227. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

46. Shiel, James. 1957. "Boethius and Andronicus of Rhodes." Vigiliae Christianae no. 11:179-185.

47. Silk, Edmund T. 1939. "Boethius's Consolatio Philosophiae as a Sequel to Augustine's Dialogues and Soliloquia." The Harvard Theological Review no. 32:19-39.

48. Silveira, Daniela. 2014. "God's Attributes in Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophiae and Opuscula Sacra." In Coexistence ad Cooperation in the Middle Ages: IV European Congress of Medieval Studies F.I.D.E.M. (Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales) 23-27 june 2009, Palermo (Italy), edited by Musco, Alessandro and Musotto, Giuliaa, 1421-1428. Palermo: Officina di Studi Medievali.

49. Simpson, Peter. 1988. "The Definition of Person: Boethius Revisited." The New Scholasticism no. 62:210-220.

"Persona est rationalis naturae individua substantia. So runs the classic definition of Boethius. (1) But is it a definition that is still of value? Or, to put it another way, is this the sort of definition that will serve for a philosophy of persons?

Certainly it is not Boethius’s definition that is operative in contemporary discussions about persons. (2)" p. 210

(...)

"In conclusion then, I think it may be said that Boethius’s definition is by no means an obvious non-starter for the philosophy of person. In fact in many respects it may be the best one. In which case a philosophy of person grounded on that definition is going to be

more accurate and more compelling than others. It will also direct attention back to key ideas such as nature, reason and substance, that are in particular need of close analysis, and which may yield more fruitful results than even the term ‘person’ by itself, or any of the moral and other features mentioned earlier. Such a philosophy of person may prove to be a better way to sort out the problems of person than any current alternative." (p. 220)

(1) “A person is an individual substance of a rational nature.” The definition is given in Boethius’s Liber de Persona et Duabus Naturis, ch. 3.

(2) It is notable that the most recent article on persons in The New Scholasticism rather summarily dismisses Boethius: D. O Dahlstrom, “Personal Pleasure”, The New Scholasticism, LX, 1986, pp. 276- 277. I respond to this article later.

50. Sommaggio, Paolo. 2005. "Boethius’ Definition of Persona: A fundamental Principle of Modern Legal Thought." In Epistemology and Ontology. IVR-Symposium Lund 2003, edited by Bankowski, Zenon, 163-170. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.

"The definition is set out in the Opuscula Sacra, which with all probability date back to 512. Amid the conflicts that followed the Council of Calcedon. and therefore in a period dense with intricate political and religious events, Boethius wrote these Opuscula. As he did so, he addressed the problem of giving rigorous definition to the concept of person.

The first of the Opuscula was De Trinitate, the second Utrum Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus substantialiter praedicentur, the third De hebdomadibus (Quomodo substantiae in eo quod sint bonae...); the fourth De fide catholica, and the fifth the Liber de persona et duabus naturis contra Eutychen et Nestorium, thereafter known more simply as Contra Eutychen et Nestorium.

The most interesting of the Opuscula for my purposes here is the last of them, because it contains the definition of person that made Boethius famous in his own lifetime (5).

The Council of Calcedon had laid down the celebrated formula that in Christ there are two natures and one person. In the introduction to his Treatise. Boethius points out that the premises established by the Council lead only to four possible conclusions: 1. that in Christ there are two natures and two persons, as Nestorius maintained: 2. that there is one nature and one person, as Eutychus claimed; 3. that there are two natures and one person, as the Catholic faith affirmed; 4. that there is one nature and two persons - though this conclusion, Boethius wrote, was so nonsensical that no heresy affirmed it. Boethius' main concern was to structure his work with clear and unambiguous language.

According to Boethius, it is entirely legitimate to enquire as to the unitary definition of the term person, in that the philosophy and theology of ancient Christianity had failed to give it a precise definition. In order to understand what was meant by the word, he analysed the concept of nature which, in fact, has a broader meaning than person and to some extent is its genus proximus." (p. 166)

(5) Boezio, Contra Eutychen et Nestorium, PL 64 1343, Caput III, 1-6. 'Quocirca si persona in solis substantiis est atque in his rationibus, substantiaque omnis natura est, nec in universalibus sed in individuabilibus sed in individuis constat, reperta personae est igitur definitio: persona est naturae rationa(bi)lis individua substantia'. See also Marshall, 'Boethius' Definition of Persona and Medieval Understanding of The Roman Theatre, in Speculum. Camb. (Mass.), vol. XXV (1950). pp. Q71-482."

51. Sorabji, Richard. 1983. Time, Creation, and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. London: Duckwoth.

See pp. 119-120 and pp. 253–267.

52. Spade, Vincent. Boethius against Universals: Arguments in the Second Commentary on Porphyry 1996.

Available on-line at pvspade.com/Logic/docs/boethius.pdf

"Apart from his Consolation of Philosophy, perhaps the most well known text of Boethius is his discussion of universals in the Second Commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge. In that passage, he first reviews the arguments for and against the existence of universal entities, and then offers a theory he attributes to Alexander of Aphrodisias, a kind of theory called in recent times “moderate realism,” according to which there are no universal entities in the ontology of the world, but nevertheless there is an objective, non-arbitrary basis for the formation of our universal or general concepts about that world. At the very end of the passage, Boethius adds the intriguing comment that he has presented this view not necessarily because it is his own, but because it is the one that fits Aristotle’s doctrine the best, and Porphyry’s Isagoge, the work Boethius is commenting on, is intended after all as an introduction to Aristotle’s Categories. (2)

There are many interesting things about this passage, not the least of which is that it is an early example of a form that would later be codified in the scholastic quaestio: a yes/no question is stated (or in general some question expressed in terms of an exclusive dichotomy), then arguments are presented on both sides, pro and con, the author gives his own answer to the question, and finally (although this part of what would become the classic form is missing from Boethius’ discussion) the arguments for the losing side of the question are answered.

I do not intend to discuss the whole of Boethius’ passage in this paper, and in fact will not even be saying very much about Boethius’ own theory of universals in the passage — if indeed it contains his own theory. What I want to focus on instead is just one part of the discussion’s quaestio structure: the preliminary statement of the case against universals." (pp. 1-2, note 1 omitted)

(2) See ibid., p. 25, § (37).

53. Speer, Andreas. 2011. "The Division of Metaphysical Discourses: Boethius, Thomas Aquinas and Meister Eckhart." In Philosophy and Theology in the Long Middle Ages: a tribute to Stephen F. Brown, edited by Emery, Kent jr., Friedman, Russell L. and Speer, Andreas, 91-116. Leiden: Brill.

"When one considers the history of metaphysics in the Latin West, there is at least one important forerunner, Boethius, who not only had provided the Latin speaking community up to the middle of the twelfth century with its only Latin translations of Aristotelian writings, namely of the Organon with the exception of the Posterior Analytics. Moreover, in his ‘theological treatises’, especially in the second chapter of his Liber quomodo Trinitas unus Deus ac non tres Dii (or De sancta Trinitate), he displays the division of the three theoretical sciences according to Book E of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. (3) In the twelfth century especially this divisio philosophiae became the point of reference for the epistemological enterprise, notably in the ‘Chartrian’ and ‘Porretanean’ schools, to establish a scientia naturalis based on reason and argument alone, and to establish theology as a deductive science, which proceeds more geometrico in a strong axiomatical order and provides the highest and most common principles (maximae or rationes communes) for the other sciences." (p. 93)

(...)

"According to McInerny, Boethius fits with Thomas’ endeavour to reconcile the thought of Aristotle and Christian faith; in fact, according to McInerny, “Boethius taught what Thomas said he taught.” Therefore, as McInerny concludes, “the Thomistic commentaries on Boethius are without question the best commentaries ever written on the tractates”. (6) This completely a-historical construction, which finds its expression in the dictum “sine Thoma Boethius mutus esset” (coined after Pico’s famous dictum “sine Thoma mutus esset Aristoteles” (7)), not only ignores the important commentary-tradition of the twelfth century but also overlooks the fact that Thomas, who surprisingly enough composed the only thirteenth-century commentaries on two of Boethius’ theological treatises (De hebdomadibus and De Trinitate, unfinished), (8) fundamentally dismissed the underlying idea of Boethius’ metaphysics. Here we come face-to-face with a division of metaphysical discourses. According to one ‘progressive’ narrative of the history of metaphysics, it would appear that at this dividing of the ways Thomas had successfully relegated Boethius’ conception to “the dust-bin of history”, as it were. But the story does not end here and has an unexpected sequel, when at the very beginning of the fourteenth century Meister Eckhart, in explaining his understanding of the first of the Aristotelian theoretical sciences, resumes the Boethian intuition and once more equates metaphysics and theology." (p. 94)

(3) For the theological Tractates, cf. the new edition of C. Moreschini, in: Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae—Opuscula Theologica [henceforth: DCPOT], Leipzig 2000 (Bibliotheca Teubneriana), pp. 163–241 (here esp. pp. 168 sq.), which we cite instead of the former standard edition of H. F. Stewart / E. K. Rand / S. J. Tester, Boethius, new ed., London 1973 (The Loeb Classical Library 74).

(6) R. McInerny, Boethius and Aquinas, Washington 1990, p. xiv.

(7) Cf. the title-heading of McInerny’s Epilogue to his book on Boethius and Aquinas (cf. n. 6), p. 249.

(8) Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Super Boetium de Trinitate and Expositio libri Boetii de ebdomadibus (ed. Leonina), vol. 50.

54. Stump, Eleonore. 1983. "Hamartia in Christian Belief: Boethius on the Trinity: Essays in honor of John M. Crossett." In Hamartia: The Concept of Error in the Western Tradition, edited by Stump, Donald V., Arieti, James A., Gerson, Lloyd and Stump, Eleonore, 131-148. New York: The Edwin Mellen Press.

55. Stump, Eleonore, and Kretzmann, Norman. 1981. "Eternity." Journal of Philosophy no. 78:429-458.

56. Sulowski, Jan. 1961. "The sources of Boethius' De consolatione philosophiae." Sophia no. 29:67-94.

57. Suto, Taki. 2015. "From Analysis of Words to Metaphysical Appreciation of the World. The Platonism of Boethius " Quaestio. Journal of the History of Metaphysics no. 15:321-331.

Abstract: "Anicius Manlius Seuerinus Boethius has been regarded one of the major sources of Platonism in the Middle Ages, and the influence of different Platonists on his thought has been widely discussed. In his Aristotelian commentaries, however, Boethius rejects Platonists’ opinions while saying that Aristotle and Plato essentially agree. Boethius may have intended to show the agreement he saw, but did not provide any explanation in his works. In this article, I consider how Boethius could have seen such an agreement. While reexamining past remarks about Platonism in Boethius, I conclude that he adopts Porphyry’s view that Aristotelian logic functions as a step toward the metaphysical appreciation of the universe, which Platonists consider to be the most essential form of philosophy. However, Boethius follows Iamblichus in holding that the highest level of metaphysical appreciation involves mathematization."

58. Sweeney, Leo. 1989. "Boethius on the "individual": Platonist or Aristotelian." In Daidalikon. Studies in Memory of Raymond V. Schoder, edited by Sutton Jr., Robert F., 361-373. Wauconda (Ill.): Bolchazy-Carducci.

59. Thorgeirsdottir, Sigridur. 2020. "Methodological Reflections on Women’s Contribution and Influence in the History of Philosophy." In The Torn Robe of Philosophy: Philosophy as a Woman in The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, edited by Thorgeirsdottir, Sigridur and Hagengruber, Ruth Edith, 83-95. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Symbolic figures like Sophia, Philosophia or Lady Reason represent feminine features in texts of the Western philosophical tradition that are often overlooked in their later interpretations. The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius (480–524), one of the mos twidely read philosophical texts ofmedieval times, includes a dialogue between the imprisoned Boethius who awaits his death sentence and Philosophia, a feminine personification of philosophy. In my interpretation of Philosophia, I analyze how the practice of philosophy she and Boethius stage in this text consists of working with and reflecting on the difficult emotions he struggles with. This argument is based on how ancient meanings of the noun sophia include practical, embodied, and sensual knowledge and not only theoretical knowledge. My interpretation hence involves underscoring feminine elements of philosophical reasoning that includes embodiment and emotions. Philosophia resurfaces in many philosophical texts, such as in Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies (1405), one of the greatest feminist books of the middle ages, where Lady Reason teaches the author to help her trust her feelings and judgements about women."

60. Torrijos-Castrillejo, David. 2020. "Divine foreknowledge and providence in the commentaries of Boethius and Aquinas on the De interpretatione 9 by Aristotle." Biblica et Patristica Thoruniensia no. 13:151-173.

Abstract: "Boethius represents one of the most important milestones in Christian reflection about fate and providence, especially considering that he takes into account Proclus’ contributions to these questions. For this reason, The Consolation of philosophy

is considered a crucial work for the development of this topic. However, Boethius also exposes his ideas in his commentary on the book that constitutes one of the oldest and most relevant texts on the problem of future contingents, namely Aristotle’s De interpretatione.

Although St. Thomas refers to Boethius many times in his systematic works and even devotes two commentaries to two of his theological opuscules, it is of special interest that both authors composed a commentary on the abovementioned work by Aristotle. The commentary of Saint Thomas does not interpret the whole book, but it does study the pages about future contingents in dialogue with Boethius. We will study such texts in our presentation. They constitute one of the greatest contributions of Aquinas to the problem of necessity and contingency and therefore to the vexata quaestio of divine intervention in the world and particularly in human free will. Not only Augustin but also Aristotle (read by Boethius) and Nemesius of Emesa will be decisive in Aquinas’ perception of this matter."

61. Troncarelli, Fabio. 2011. "Forbidden Memory: The Death of Boethius and the Conspiracy of Silence." Mediaeval Studies no. 73:183-206.

62. ———. 2014. "Boethius from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages." In Boethius as a Paradigm of Late Ancient Thought, edited by Kirchner, Andreas, Jürgasch, Thomas and Böhm, Thomas, 213-229. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Boethius, the Roman Boethius, the philosopher Boethius, invented himself as a theologian and invented, as well, Scholastic theology, as St. Thomas recognised in his commentary on the first Boethian theological treatise. Quoting Father Marie-Dominique Chenu, we can say that after Boethius: Theology is a science. The best medicine against Augustine and the poison of his deep pessimism.

1. Boethius inventing Boethius

But Boethius invented himself in another way, becoming, for the second time, the best antidote against Augustine, because he invented his death. The execution of an innocent was more than a crime: it was a murder, the murder of the “Civilization”, the murder of the last philosopher of Antiquity as well as the last of the Romans." (p. 218)

63. ———. 2014. "New Words on Boethius." Carmina Philosophiae no. 23:1-11.

64. Uhlfelder, Myra L. 2018. The « Consolation of philosophy » as Cosmic Image. Tempe (Arizona): Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

65. Vogel, Cornelia J. de. 1971. "Boethiana." Vivarium no. 9:49-66.

".A highly controversial problem is: whence did Boethius derive his Greek culture, from Athens, from Alexandria, - or have we to imagine that he simply worked in his library in Rome?

[Follow an examination of the opinions of Courcelle, Minio-Paluello, Shiel and de Rijk: Courcelle thinks that Boethius studied at Athens, the other authors are of the contrary opinion.]" (p. 49)

(...)

Summing up the result of this part of my inquiry I think I can make the following modest statements.

(1) On the basis of contemporary evidence it must be accepted as certain that Boethius spent his school years in Athens, say from the age of 9 or 10 up to about 17 or 18.

(2) It is very probable that immediately after that period he was Ammonius' student at Alexandria, from the age of 17 or 18 till about 20.

(3) Taking into the account that he was extremely precocious it is probable that he returned to Rome as early as the year 500 or a little later. There and about that date he composed the first of his mathematical treatises,the Institutio arithmetica and followed it up by the other three.

To these three points I add a fourth, concerning the period in which Boethius' other works were written. In the preceding pages I did not discuss the important article of C. H. Coster on The fall of Boethius, (34) which did not touch on my subject. However, the present account of Boethius' younger years which brings us up to the beginning of his own works may be duly concluded by a correction of the traditionally accepted final term of his life and work. I think that Coster's above-cited paper offers the grounds for such a correction. By a careful analysis of the contemporary sources the author comes to the conclusion that the execution of Boethius and Symmachus must have taken place in the summer of 526, shortly before Theodoric's death. If that is correct- and I think Coster's

arguments are solid -, the framework into which the list of Boethius'works is to be fitted will be enlarged by two years. Since a few years ago Dr. De Rijk drew up such a list in the pages of the present Journal, (35) it may not be out of place to mention the result of Coster's research at the end of this study.

What I have not done in these pages but wish to do in the next number of this Journal, is to reconsider Boethius' argument in the Consolatio more closely from the point of view of what does and what does not correspond to his own convictions." (pp. 65-66)

(34) C.H.Coster, The fall of Boethius: His character, in: Annuaire de l'Institut de Philologie et d'Histoire orientales et slaves, XII, (1952), pp. 45-81, (Mélanges H. Grégoire) Bruxelles 1953.

I dealt with this paper in section II of my contribution to the German work Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt , Band III,prepared atTübingen for1972.

(35) Vivarium II2,J964,p.i£9ff.

66. ———. 1972. "Boethiana II." Vivarium no. 10:1-40.

"So to Boethius, as it had been to St. Augustine, true philosophy and Christian faith tended in the same direction. To Augustine Christian faith had been the fulfilment of that which philosophy had promised.

He did not identify them. Did Boethius?" (p. 2)

(...)

"In fact, Courcelle thinks that Boethius tried to give a kind of synthesis of the Alexandrian Neoplatonism of Ammonius and Christianity, in the same way as later St. Thomas Aquinas proposed a synthesis of Aristotle's philosophy and Christian theology without mixing up the fields of reason and faith.Thus, we can understand that such an expression as the "prima divinitas", even on the lips of Philosophia, appears a lapsus to Courcelle. On the whole, again, I think his view of Boethius is right: in fact, the "last of Romans", who was a Christian, spent his life in the Neoplatonic philosophy of his age, and he did so rather technically. Even in his theological treatises he tackled the problems as a philosopher, applying the distinctions of Aristotle's logic to the terms used in theology.

Was it so strange then, that to him, when in prison, philosophy appeared to have a word to speak, a word which must have appealed to him the more since its tendency was in agreement with what he believed as a Christian.

No doubt this is the main-point. But there are a few unsettled problems. I wish to dispose them under the following three points.

1. Are there any clearly Christian features in the Consolatio? And if so, where and which are they?

2. What about the loci sacrae Scripturae, gathered by Fortescue and mentioned as parallels in Bieler' s new edition of the Consolatio? Are all of them either vague parallels or just a matter of coincidence, or will there be found one or two cases in which a very peculiar biblical thought or expression occurs in the Consolatio in precisely the same form? This would be an interesting thing to us. I think it has to be carefully checked.

3. In which form do the"pagan", non-Christian elements present themselves in the Consolatio? Are they confined to the part in which Philosophia is speaking, or do they sometimes occur in our Christian-philosopher's own part as well? Another question might be raised in this context: is it necessary to believe that Boethius accepted every word spoken by his Mistress without any reservation, or can he be supposed to have had some reservations with regard to certain details of her teaching?" (p. 3)

67. ———. 1972. "Amor, quo caelum regitur." Vivarium no. 1:2-34.

68. ———. 1973. "The Problem of Philosophy and Christian Faith in Boethius' Consolatio." In Romanitas et christianitas. Studia Iano Henrico Waszink A.D. VI Kal. Nov. A. MCMLXXIII XIII lustra complenti oblata, edited by den Boer, Willem, 357-370. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Reprinted in Manfred Fuhrmann und Joachim Gruber (Hrsg.), Boethius, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1984, pp. 286-301.

"Boethius, a catholic Christian, fallen in disgrace with the East Gothic king Theodoric, lies there in prison, bereft of all his earthly goods - his family, his friends, his home, his library and whatever comfort a well-to-do and cultivated man may be used to have at his disposal. What is left to a man in such a situation? When he is a deeply believing Christian, there is Christ and God -, nearer to him now by that very state of bereavement in which he finds himself. So the reader who takes up the Consolatio, might expect to find there a man who, outwardly speaking bereft of everything, turns to Christ and in Him feels himself near to God, nearer than ever, and thus at the bottom of his heart more and more quiet and at last, through the Light of the divine Presence, unutterably blessed.

Nothing of that in Boethius. Nor is there with him that perfect serenity and indifference towards earthly things which we find with Socrates on his last day, in prison and waiting for execution. Boethius is depressed, deeply depressed. At first, he seeks for some relief in the company of the Muses: he tries to give utterance to his grief in poems. But then, the majestic figure of Philosophy appears to him, and it is hers to draw his heart from earthly things - those seeming but no real goods - upward to the one and true Good which is not here but “yonder”.

So she does, and she does precisely according to the rules laid down for such a case by the philosopher Plotinus in that well-known first treatise of the fifth Ennead which opens with the question: “How does it come about that so many souls have forgotten God, their Father, and do not know any more whence they are?” Plotinus replied: these souls have turned to perishable things and attached a real value to them, thus, [358] in fact turning away from the true value. To the question of how to cure a man who is in this state of mind Plotinus replied: “That must be done by two kinds of λόγοι, one of which has to explain the non-value of those things in which that man has now put his trust, while the other must bring home to him what real value is and whence the soul takes its origin.” I noted elsewhere (1) that this is precisely the diagnosis and the therapy which Philosophia applied to Boethius in Cons. 1, pr. 6, 28-40 Bieler (the diagnosis) and the books II and III (the therapy).

Philosophia offers her consolation in the language suiting her person. Hence, we shall not wonder so much at finding in her lessons certain elements which have undoubtedly more to do with Plato or with Proclus than with Christ. (2) The presence of such elements in the Consolatio is, so to speak, known to everyone. What is perhaps less known is: that in these same lessons there are certain elements of syncretism, for instance, in that same Neoplatonic hymn O qui perpetua, where the summum bonum of philosophy is identified with the Creator of the world, - an identification which is neither found in Plato nor in Proclus or any other Neoplatonist. For the rest, the very formula terrarum caelique sator stems from Roman poets, not from Genesis." (pp. 357-358)

(1) In 'Boethiana I', Vivarium 9, 1971, 55.

(2) Such elements can be found, e.g. in the famous Neoplatonic hymn to the Good, O qui perpetua (Cons. 3, m. 9), which was again and again commented on in the Middle Ages, and was excellently treated by Fr. Klingner, De Boethii Consolatione Philosophiae, Berlin 1921; repr. 1966.

69. ———. 1980. "The Well-Rounded Sphere: The Metaphysical Structure of The Consolation of Philosophy." In Essays in the Numerical Criticism of Medieval Literature, edited by Eckhardt, Caroline D., 91-140. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press.

70. Walz, Matthew D. 2011. "Stoicism as Anesthesia: Philosophy's "Gentler Remedies" in Boethius's Consolation." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 51:501-520.

Abstract: "Boethius first identifies Philosophy in the Consolation as his medica, his "healer" or "physician." Over the course of the dialogue Philosophy exercises her medical art systematically. In the second book Philosophy first gives Boethius "gentler remedies" that are preparatory for the "sharper medicines" that she administers later. This article shows that, philosophically speaking, Philosophy's "gentler remedies" amount to persuading Boethius toward Stoicism, which functions as an anesthetic for the more invasive philosophical surgery that she performs afterwards. Seeing this, however, requires understanding how Philosophy draws out Boethius's spiritedness in the first book and how in the second book she sublimates it into an intellectual and volitional apathy toward the things of fortune, i.e., into a Stoic attitude toward that which is other. Significantly, though, the Stoicism to which Philosophy leads Boethius is of a mitigated sort, inasmuch as friendship is not included among the things of fortune to which Boethius is anesthesized, an exception that opens up Boethius to genuinewonder and, consequently, to genuine philosophizing."

71. ———. 2016. "Boethius and Stoicism." In The Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition, edited by Sellars, John, 70-84. New York: Routledge.

"The Stoics mistake a small part of Philosophy’s garment for the whole of her. Instead of possessing the fullness of philosophy, as did Plato and Aristode, the Stoics possess only a portion of its appearance.

Stoicism is philosophically superficial and incomplete. (2)

This severe take on Stoicism must be qualified, however, in light of a subsequent passage in Book 1, [of Consolation of Philosophy] in which Philosophy relates how not only Greek philosophers suffered for her sake, but Roman ones as well. The three Romans she names - Canius, Seneca, and Soranus - were all Stoics (Cons. 1.3, 31-7). The pieces of her garment that they snatched sufficed for facing adversity under tyranny in an exemplary fashion. (3) Something about Stoicism, then, is able to fortify human beings in times of distress.

This mixed review makes sense in the Consolation; for there Stoicism is presented as a necessary stage within the Prisoner’s philosophical development. Though it be superficial and incomplete, it is also indispensable. This dual characterization, moreover, illuminates

Boethius’s criticism of Stoicism in earlier works; (4) for it helps us see what those critiques are ultimately driving at, namely, the philosophical superficiality and incompleteness of Stoicism, which compares poorly with the multidimensional, expansive thinking Boethius finds in Plato and Aristotle.

In what follows we explore Boethius’s works chronologically in order to elucidate his twofold judgment of Stoicism. Beginning with references to the Stoics in his logical works (5) and then turning to the Consolation, we delineate the intelligible contours of Stoicism as

Boethius sees it, including the positive impetus Stoicism provides toward a philosophical apprehension of reality as well as its innate inadequacy for attaining the full measure of wisdom available to us through philosophical inquiry." (pp. 71-72, note 4 and 5 omitted)

(2) Indeed, in light of these passages, we can see why one might arrive at the judgment that in Boethius’s eyes “ the Stoics . . . in general are considered to be pseudo-philosophers” (Marenbon [Boethius] 2003: 154).

(3) Each of these Romans, like Boethius, suffered under the reigning authority: Canius was executed by Caligula; Seneca was forced to commit suicide by Nero; and Soranus was condemned to death by Nero and committed suicide. Canius is mentioned again at 1.4, 9; Seneca, at 3.5, 28-36. Soranus is not mentioned again.

72. Watson, Cristalle. 2020. "Timaean double-circle spiral structure in the « Consolatio Philosophiae »." Dionysus no. 38:36-70.

Abstract: "The poetry of Boethius's « Consolatio » has largely been neglected. Where they are treated, the poems are mined for textual and philosophical content, although poetry is a necessary element of the prisoner's cure. The rhythmic pattern of Cons. 3 carm. 9 reveals not a simple circle, but rather a double-circle spiral, a microcosmos reflecting its Timaean content and incorporating rectilinear and helical as well as circular motion. The prisoner's narrative motion similarly traces a double-circle spiral path, which – unlike the simple circle – returns upon itself while simultaneously preserving, rather than annihilating, the distance traveled. This blended mode of return to God perfects the individual identities of created beings while granting them participation in the circular motion characteristic of divine activity."

73. Wiitala, Michael. "Every Happy Man Is a God: Deification in Boethius." In Deification in he Latin Patristic Tradition, edited by Ortiz, Jared, 231-252. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press.

74. ———. 2010. "It Depends on What One Means by “Eternal”. Why Boethius is not an Eternalist." Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association no. 84:253-261.

Abstract: "Objections to the traditional view that God knows all of time eternally stand or fall on what one means by “eternally.” The widely held supposition, shared by both eternalists and those who oppose them, such as Open Theists, is that to say God knows all of time eternally entails that he cannot know all of time from a temporal perspective. In this paper I show that Boethius’s characterization of God’s eternal knowledge employs a different meaning of “eternal,” which is incompatible with this supposition. I argue that Boethius’s claim that “the most excellent knowledge is that which by its own nature knows not only its own proper object but also the objects of all lower kinds of knowledge” entails that God is not limited by perspective and so eternally and simultaneously knows every temporal event from a temporal as well as a timeless perspective."

75. Wiltshire, Susan Ford. 1972. "Boethius and the Summum Bonum." The Classical Journal no. 67:216-220.

"The definition of the summum bonum itself comes in the tenth prose section of book 3 [of The Consolation of Philosophy]. The main steps of Boethius’ argument are as follows:

1. Human beings agree that God, the ruler of all things, is good-and further, that he is perfectly good (3.pr.10.7).

2. But the perfect good is true happiness (sed perfectum bonum veram esse beatitudine» (3) constituimus (3.pr.10.10).

3. There cannot be two perfect, highest goods, because if one lacked anything of the other, it would not be perfect (3.pr.10.19).

4. Therefore true happiness and God, being both the same thing, arc both the summum bonum, and the supreme good is identical with supreme divinity (Atqui el beatitudinem et deum summum bonum esse collegimus; quare ipsam necesse est summam esse beatitudinem quae sit summa divinitas: 3pr.10.20). Later Boethius adds that a person becomes beatus by attaining divinity and that, while by nature there is only one God, there can be many by participation. (4)

Boethius’ identification here of the summum bonum with God is explicit." (p. 217)

(...)

"Boethius offers just such a preethical vision, a concept of the ideal good. True, it is one that leaves the hard questions of justice, morality, and mercy unsolved; but it does demand an ultimate framework within which the answers to penultimate questions are sought. His creation of this concept of the summum bonum, argued through dialogue, illustrated and enlarged through poetry, and presented with the powerful effect of drama throughout, suggests to us that in bis own life Boethius did achieve in the end some sense of the unity and goodness he sought." (p. 220)

(3) Boethius uses the terms beatitudo, felicitas, verum or perfectum bonum, and on one occasion (3.pr. 10.38) even bonitas all interchangeably with summum bonum.

(4) Cf. John 10:34: also 2 Peter 1:4.

76. Wippel, John F. 1973. "Commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate." The Thomist no. 37:133-154.

77. Wittala, Michael. 2019. "Every Happy Man Is a God: Deification in Boethius." In Deification in the Latin Patristic Tradition, edited by Ortiz, Jared, 231-252. Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press.

78. Wood, Laurence. 2010. "Divine omniscience: Boethius or open theism?" Wesleyan Theological Journal no. 45:41-66.

79. Zamora Calvo, José Maria. 2017. "Truth and modes of cognition in Boethius: a Neoplatonic approach." Schole no. 11:354-371.

Abstract: "Boethius does not accept the principle of realism that considers truth as the adaptation - or adequation - of the subject to the knowable object, and instead defends that knowledge should be studied by relating it to the capacity of the cognoscente subject. Thus, truth is relative to the faculty or level of knowledge in which we stand, since each faculty - each level of knowledge - has its own object: the material figure for the senses, the figure without matter for the imagination, the universal for reason and the simple form for intelli- gence. But this epistemological relativism is moderate, precisely because of its hierarchical character. Therefore, although in a sense truth is manifold, the perfect truth, proper to divine knowledge, includes and surpasses all others. In order to cement the architecture of this system of relativisation of knowledge, Boethius starts from a Neoplatonic interpretation of the simile of the line of the Republic (VI.510a-b) and Plato's Timaeus, but not completely tied to it. The beings endowed with

knowledge are ordered according to the Neoplatonic hierarchy of cosmic realities."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Boèce: Bibliographie sélective des traductions et des études en Français

Traductions

1. Guilaumin, Jean-Yves, ed. 1995. Boèce. Institution arithmétique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Texte établi et traduit par Jean-Yves Guillaumin.

"Table des matières: Introduction VII; Vie de Boèce, VII; L’œuvre de Boèce: la Consolation, XIV; L’œuvre de Boèce: les traités théologiques, XIX; L’influence de l’école d’Alexandrie, XXII; L’œuvre scientifique de Boèce, XXV; La géométrie, XXV; Un traité d’astronomie?, XXVIII; La musique, XXIX; L’arithmétique de Nicomaque, XXXI; Boèce et Nicomaque, XXXIX; Les buts de l’étude, XLIV; Les quatre sciences, XLVI; Arithmétique et logistique, L; Le quadriuium, LII; La destinée du traité, LVI; Le texte, LXI; Les manuscrits, LXV; Les éditions, XCII; Avertissement XCIV; Conspectus siglorum XCVII; Institution arithmétique. Livre I 1; Livre II 78; Notes complémentaires. Livre I 179; Livre II 207; Index verborvm et nominvm 227; Index graecvs 252.

"L’œuvre scientifique de Boèce.

Moins connue certainement que son œuvre philosophique et que la Consolation, l’œuvre scientifique de Boèce est de toute première importance par l’influence qu’elle a exercée au Moyen Age, même si elle nous est parvenue fort mutilée. Nous avons perdu l'Astronomie qu’il pouvait avoir rédigée comme quatrième ensemble de son travail sur le quadriuium; nous n’avons plus sous sa forme authentique sa Géométrie; mais il nous reste les deux autres traités mathématiques de Boèce, l'Institution Musicale (éd. Friedlein, Leipzig, 1867) et l'Institution Arithmétique dont la lecture devait précéder celle du traité sur la musique. Tous deux doivent l’essentiel de leur substance (l’intégralité, peut-on même dire, pour l'Institution Arithmétique) à l’œuvre arithmétique de Nicomaque de Gérasa. Bien que l’ordre pythagoricien auquel s’est conformé Boèce (cf. Inst. ar. 1,1) soit le suivant: arithmétique, musique, géométrie, astronomie, nous laisserons l’arithmétique pour la fin et considérerons d’abord les traités portant sur les trois autres sciences."

(...)

"Les buts de l'étude.

En définitive, le parti-pris de fidélité au texte de Nicomaque est évident chez Boèce, dont les compétences mathématiques, du reste, n’étaient sans doute pas assez développées au moment de la rédaction de l'Institution Arithmétique pour qu’il pût se permettre une véritable originalité. Il faut alors se demander pour quelles raisons l’auteur, encore si jeune, avait décidé de s’attaquer à ce difficile exercice. Les motivations, sans doute, ne lui manquaient pas. Malgré la véritable difficulté du contenu, le texte de Nicomaque était d’une grande valeur pédagogique, clairement structuré comme le montrent a contrario les quelques longueurs ajoutées par Boèce et, à ce titre, parfait pour une initiation. Une progression soigneusement réglée devait permettre au débutant de suivre l’exposé sans se décourager et sans lâcher prise. Au demeurant, l’intérêt de l’ouvrage de Nicomaque dépassait le domaine mathématique stricto sensu. Il permettait également une initiation commode à la philosophie de Platon, pour le contenu, et d’Aristote, pour les systèmes de classification. Il avait d’ailleurs toujours joué ce rôle avant Boèce et, comme on l’a souligné, il était devenu matière classique d’enseignement à Alexandrie. Aussi était-il investi d’une importance culturelle particulière."

(...)

L’Institution Arithmétique est donc la première pierre posée par Boèce pour la réalisation du grand dessein dont il partage la conception avec son beau-père. Dans la lettre de dédicace à Symmaque qui précède le traité, il affirme avec netteté sa volonté de rendre accessibles aux lecteurs latins les trésors de la culture grecque. En ce qui concerne la partie scientifique du programme, il était évident que la primauté traditionnellement reconnue à l’arithmétique, dans la classification pythagoricienne des mathématiques qui avait traversé le cours des temps, imposait de commencer par l’étude de cette science un cursus sérieux. Boèce fait lui-même cette expérience: c’est évidemment un tout jeune homme qui dédie ce traité, avec une piété filiale, à son beau-père dont il sollicite à la fois l’indulgence (ce travail lui a coûté tant de peines, tant de nuits de veille!) et la sévérité: il n’est pas question de publier un texte qui ne serait pas satisfaisant, et Symmaque est instamment prié d’user de l’encre rouge pour amender et émonder le travail de son beau-fils. C’est avec l’espoir d’une lecture sans complaisance que Boèce ose offrir à l’helléniste érudit ces prémices de son esprit." (pp. XLIV-XLVI)

L'Introduction arithmétique de Nicomaque de Gerase est disponible en français: traduction, introduction, notes et index par Janine Bertier, Paris: Vrin 1978.

2. Boèce. 2005. Traité de la musique. Turnhout: Brepols.

Texte Latin de l'édition publiée en 1867 par Gottfried Friedlein et traduction française par Christian Meyer.

3. ———. 2000. Traités théologiques. Paris: Garnier Flammarion.

Texte latin, présentation, traduction, chronologie, bibliographie et notes par Axel Tisserand.

Table: Introduction 7; Traités théologiques. Texte latin et texte français; Contre Eutychès et Nestorius 63; Comment les substances, en ce qu’elles sont, sont bonnes, bien qu’elles ne soient pas des biens substantiels 123; Comment la Trinité est un Dieu et non trois dieux 137; Si le Père, le Fils et le Saint-Esprit sont prédiqués substantiellement de la divinité 169; De la foi catholique 175; Notes 195; Annexes 247; Bibliographie 251; Chronologie 257-259.

4. ———. 2007. Opuscula sacra I. Louvain: Peeters.

Volume 1. Capita dogmatica (Traités II, III, IV).

Table des matières: Avant-propos 7; Préface de Jean Jolivet 11; Introduction générale 17; Index siglorum 19; Avertissement au lecteur 27; I. La vie de Boèce ou le christianisme comme donnée sociale 31; II. L'œuvre de Boèce ou le christianisme comme matière philosophique:121; Traité II - De praedicatione 249; Traité III - De hebdomadibus 285; ; Traité IV - [De fide catholica] 375; Bibliographie générale 443; Index nominum 479; Index verborum 501; Index codicum manu scriptorum 521; Index biblicus 523-526.

Texte latin de l'édition de Claudio Moreschini.

Introduction, traduction et commentaire par Alain Galonnier.

5. ———. 2013. Opuscula sacra II. Louvain: Peeters.

Volume 2. De sancta trinitate; De persona et duabus naturis (traités I et V).

Texte latin de l'édition de Claudio Moreschini.

Introduction, traduction et commentaire par Alain Galonnier.

Table des matières: Avant-propos 9; Index siglorum 17, Addenda et corrigenda au Volume 1 19; Traité I - De Trinitate 23; Traité V - De duabus naturis 179; Bibliographie Complémentaire 375; Index nominum 391; Index verborum 399; Index biblicus 425-426..

6. ———. 2008. La Consolation de la Philosophie. Paris: Le Livre de Poche.

Texte latin et traduction de Éric Vanpeteghem et Jean-Yves Tilliette.

7. ———. 2002. La Consolation de la Philosophie. Paris Les Belles Lettres.

Introduction, traduction et notes par Jean-Yves Guillaumin.

Études en Français

1. Bakhouche, Béatrice 2003. "Boèce et le Timée." In Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs, edited by Galonnier, Alain, 5-22. Paris: Peeters Publishers.

2. Beets, François. 2005. "« Nihil ex nihilo exsistere » : du hasard, de la causalité, de la providence et du libre-arbitre : sur le De consolatione philosophiae." In Logique et ontologie: perspectives diachroniques et synchroniques. Liber amicorum in honorem Huberti Hubiani edited by Beets, François and Gavray, Marc-Antoine, 19-34. Liège: Éditions de l'Université de Liège.

3. Bidez, Jacques. 1923. "Boèce et Porphyre." Revue Belge de Philosophie et d'Histoire no. 2:189-201.

Repris en traduction allemande dans: Manfred Fuhrmann & Joachim Gruber (eds.), Boethius, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1984 pp. 133-145.

4. Bragard, Roger. 1929. "L'Harmonie des Spheres selon Boèce." Speculum no. 4:206-213.

Abstract: "Lorsque Boèce écrivit son De Institutione Musica, il s'est manifestement inspiré des traités théoriques de Nicomaque de Gérase. Qu'il s'agisse du son, des consonances, de la voix, des instruments, de l'harmonie cosmique, nous retrouvons presque partout chez Boèce non seulement les théories de Nicomaque, mais aussi sa manière de les exposer. Souvent, Boèce cite Nicomaque comme étant sa source. Si nous ne trouvons pas toujours chez l'auteur grec l'équivalent des théories émises par l'auteur latin, la raison en est que nous avons perdu une partie des écrits du premier, notamment un Περί Μoυσικης dont il ne nous reste que des fragments. Dans ce cas, c'est toujours chez un théoricien de la même école, l'école pythagoricienne, que nous découvrirons ce qui nous manque chez Nicomaque. Ces quelques mots sont nécessaires pour comprendre ce qui va suivre."

5. ———. 1945. "Boethiana. Études sur le De institutione musica de Boèce." In Hommage à Charles van den Borren. Mélanges, edited by Clercx, Suzanne and van der Lindern, Albert, 84-139. Ambères: De Nederlandsche Boekhandel.

6. Brams, Jozef. 2000. "L'influence de l'Aristoteles latinus: Boèce et Jacques de Venise." In L'élaboration du vocabulaire philosophique au Moyen Age, edited by Hamesse, Jacqueline and Steel, Carlos, 203-219. Turnhout: Brepols.

7. Cappuyns, Maïeul. 1931. "Le plus ancien commentaire des Opuscula sacra et son origine." Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale no. 3:237-272.

8. ———. 1937. "Boèce." In Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques. Vol IX: Bishop-Bouilli, edited by Baudrillart, Alfred, Vogt, Albert and Rouziès, Urbain, 348-380. Paris: Letouzey et Ainé.

9. Conso, Danièle. 2001. "Remarques sur la terminologie du "Liber Péri Hermenias" et de la tradition logique de langue latine antérieure à Boèce." Latomus no. 60:944-961.

10. Côté, Antoine. 1994. "La question de l'"esse" chez Thomas d'Aquin et Boèce." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 92:327-335.

11. Courcelle, Pierre. 1935. "Boèce et l'école d'Alexandrie." Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire no. 52:185-223.

12. ———. 1939. "Étude critique sur les Commentaires de Boèce (IXe-XVe siècles)." Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge no. 12:5-140.

Repris dans P. Courcelle, La Consolation de philosophie dans la tradition littéraire. Antécédents et postérité de Boèce, (1967).

13. ———. 1948. Les lettres grecques en Occident. De Macrobe à Cassiodore. Paris: Boccard.

Nouvelle édition revue et augmentée (première édition 1943).

English translation: Late Latin Writers and their Greek Sources, translated by Harry E. Wedeck, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969.

14. ———. 1967. La Consolation de philosophie dans la tradition littéraire. Antécédents et postérité de Boèce. Paris: Études augustiniennes.

15. ———. 1970. "Le personnage de Philosophie dans la littérature latine." Journal des Savants no. 4:209-252.

16. De Rijk, Lambertus Marie. 1981. "Boèce logicien et philosophe: ses positions sémantiques et sa métaphysique de l'être." In Congresso Internazionale di Studi Boeziani (Pavia, 5-8 ottobre 1980): Atti, edited by Obertello, Luca, 141-156. Roma: Editrice Herder.

"Le grand historien Etienne Gilson a bien remarqué que c'est à propos du problème du Bien que la pensée de Boèce fut la plus personnelle et la plus féconde. Avec Platon et Saint Augustin, il identifie dans son opuscule Quomodo substantiae l'être au Bien (comme le Mal au non-être). Il est évident que dans l'opinion de Boèce la doctrine de l'être obtient une importance décisive comme base de la théorie du Bien. Aussi la solution du problème du Bien et du Mal fut esquissé dans sa métaphysique de l'être.

L'identification de l'être et du Bien implique que pour tout ce qui est, c'est une seule et même chose d'être et d'être bon. Mais si les choses sont substantiellement bonnes, en quoi diffèrent-elles du Bien en soi, qui est Dieu? Dans cette question la problématique du Sophiste de Platon a dû revivre. On sait que dans cette dialogue Platon a essayé de résoudre le problème fondamental de l'être des choses périssables par une analyse vraiment pénétrante des notions de «Même» (tauton) et «Autre» (heteron).

Il me semble que Boèce fait une chose comparable. Il n'est pas étonnant qu'il commence (dans De hebdomadibus = Quomodo substantiae etc.; voir l'édition de Stewart-Rand) ses exposés approfondis sur la notion de l'être par l'axiome qui a dû provoquer tant de commentaires pendant le moyen âge: diversum est esse et quit quod est (II 28-30: «il y a diversité entre "être" et "ce qui est"»). Cette formule, qui est valable pour tout être composé concerne la différence ontologique entre l'élément constitutif, ou la forme, de tout être composé d'un côté, et la chose elle-même, ou le tout établi par cette forme, de l'autre. Le tout doit son être à l'élément constitutif qui est la forme substantielle, sans laquelle il n'est pas du tout. Cependant la question sur son essence ne peut pas être résolue en désignant cette forme. (...)

Il semble être utile de prendre au sérieux la suggestion des commentateurs médiévaux et d'entreprendre la réponse à notre question du point de vue sémantique. Je propose de discuter d'abord (1) la notion de qualitas chez Boèce (2), ensuite son modèle sémantique (3), et ses idées sur le rôle (logico-sémantique) du nom et du verbe (4-5); enfin la signification exacte de sa notion de l'être (esse) sera discutée (6) et éclaircie en mettant en lumière le but et la méthode du traité Quomodo substantiae (7)." (pp. 141-142, notes omises).

17. Duhem, Pierre. 1917. "Digression au sujet d'un axiome de Boèce: l'esse, le quod est, le quo est." In Le système du monde. Vol. V, 285-316. paris: Hermann et Fils.

18. Engels, Joseph. 1963. "Origine, sens et survie du terme boécien "secundum placitum"." Vivarium no. 1:87-114.

19. Erismann, Christophe. 2004. "Originalité et latinité de la philosophie de Boèce. Note bibliographique." Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie no. 51:277-289.

Discussion de quelques ouvrages récents et étude de quatre thématiques: 1) l'originalité et la nature du projet philosophique de Boèce; 2) les sources grecques de l'œuvre logique de Boèce; 3) la solution boécienne au problème ontologique des universaux; 4) le néoplatonisme théologique des « Opuscula sacra ».

20. Follon, Jacques. 1992. "Pérennité de Boèce, philosophe et théologien." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 90:192-205.

21. Galonnier, Alain. 1996. "Anecdoton Holderi ou Ordo generis Cassiodororum: introduction, édition, traduction et commentaire." Antiquité tardive no. 4:299-312.

22. ———. 1997. ""Axiomatique" et théologie dans le De Hebdomadibus de Boèce." In Langages et philosophie. Hommage à Jean Jolivet, edited by Libera, Alain de, Elamrani-Jamal, Abdelali and Galonnier, Alain, 311-330. Paris: Vrin.

23. ———. 1997. Anecdoton Holderi, ou Ordo generis Cassiodorum: éléments pour une étude de l'authenticité boécienne des Opuscula sacra. Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters Publishers.

24. ———. 2000. "Le statut contrasté de la philosophie chez Boèce." Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge no. 67:51-69.

25. ———. 2003. "Boèce et la connaissance divine des futurs contingents." In Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs, edited by Galonnier, Alain, 571-597. Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters.

26. ———. 2004. "L'équivalence hermeneia - interpretatio dans le prologue du second commentaire de Boèce au ΠΕΡΙ ΕΡΜΗΝΕΙΑΣ d'Aristote." Chôra no. 2:21-36.

27. ———. 2004. "Boèce et les Éléments d'Euclide: quel maillon dans la chaîne des savoirs?" In De Zénon d'Élée à Poincaré. Recueil d'études en hommage à Roshdi Rashed, edited by Morelon, Régis and Hasnawi, Ahmad, 437-478. Louvain: Les Cahiers du MIDEO.

28. ———, ed. 2005. Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs. Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters.

Actes du Colloque International de la Fondation Singer-Polignac, Paris, 8-12 juin 1999.

Préface de Roshdi Rashed; Introduction de Pierre Magnard.

Table des matières: Avant-Propos VII; Roshdi Rashed: Préface IX; Pierre Magnard: En matière d’ouverture XI;

I. Boèce et son temps

A. La culture de Boèce

Béatrice Bakhouche: Boèce et le Timée 5; Umberto T0dini: Boezio, più ‘pagano’ di Lucrezio? 23; Claudio Micaelli: Il De Hebdomadibus di Boezio nel panorama del pensiero tardo-antico 33; Jean-Luc Solère: Bien, cercles et hebdomades: formes et raisonnement chez Boèce et Proclus 55;

B. L’écriture de Boèce

Gaëlle Jeanmart: Boèce ou les silences de la philosophie 113; Thomas Ricklin: Femme-philosophie et hommes-animaux: essai d’une lecture satirique de la Consolatio philosophiae de Boèce 131; John Magee: Boethius’ Anapestic Dimeters (Acatalectic),with Regard to the Structure and Argument of the Consolatio 147; Michel Lambert: Nouveaux éléments pour une étude de l’authenticité boécienne des Opuscula Sacra 171;

C. Le trivium

Monika Asztalos: Boethius on the Categories 195; Lambert-Marie De Rijk: Boethius on De interpretatione (ch. 3): Is he a reliable guide? 207; Jean Jolivet: Quand Boèce aborde Porphyre 229; Valentin Omelyantchik: Boèce et Ammonius sur la question d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise (Peri hermeneias, 16 a 1-2) 241; Sten Ebbesen: Boethius on the Metaphysics of Words 257;

D. Le quadrivium

Laurent Mitsakis: Enquête sur un vrai-faux Décret: le traité des Lacédémoniens contre Timothée de Milet cité par Boèce dans le De Institutione musica, I, 1 279; Max Lejbowicz: « Cassiodorii Euclides » : éléments de bibliographie boécienne 301; Jean-Yves Guillaumin: Boèce traducteur de Nicomaque: gnomons et pythmènes dans l'Institution Arithmétique 341; Ubaldo Pizzani: Du rapport entre le De musica de S. Augustin et le De Institutione musica de Boèce 357;

E. Philosophie et théologie

Giulio d’Onofrio: Boezio filosofo 381; Fabio Troncarelli: Le radici del cielo. Boezio, la Filosofia, la Sapienza 421; Axel Tisserand: Métaphore et translatio in diuinis: la théorie de la prédication et la conversion des catégories chez Boèce 435; Luca Obertello: Ammonius of Hermias, Zacharias Scholasticus and Boethius: eternity of God and/or time? 465; Anca Vasiliu: Nature, personne et image dans les traités théologiques de Boèce ou Personne dans le creux du visage 481;

F. Liberté, prescience et futurs contingents

Alessandra Di Pilla: L’elemento della preghiera nella discussione su prescienza e libertà nella Consolatio philosophiae di Boezio 507; John Marenbon: Le temps, la prescience et le déterminisme dans la Consolation de Philosophie de Boèce 531; François Beets: Boèce et la sémantique du regard 547; Alain Galonnier: Boèce et la connaissance divine des futurs contingents 571

II. La posterité de Boèce

Michael Bernhard: Die Rezeption der Institutio musica des Boethius im frühen Mittelalter 601; Michel Lemoine: Boèce modèle du philosophe? 613; Agnieszka Kisewska: Mathematics as a preparation for theology: Boethius, Eriugena, Thierry of Chartres 625; Vera Rodrigues: Thierry de Chartres, lecteur du De Trinitate de Boèce 649; Christian Meyer: Lectures et lecteurs du De institutione musica de Boèce au XIIIe siècle 665; Dominique Bertrand: Sur le fondement de la différence dans le De trinitate. Thomas d’Aquin interprète de Boèce 679; Graziella Federici Vescovini: L’exorde de l'Arithmetica de Boèce et le commentaire de l’averroïste Thaddée de Parme (1318) 697; C. H. Kneepkens: The Reception of Boethius’ De consolatione in the Later Middle Ages: The Wolfenbüttel Quaestiones and Buridan’s Quaestiones on the Ethics 713; Maryvonne Spiesser: L’arithmétique de Boèce dans le contexte de la formation mathématique des marchands au XVe siècle 741; Lodi Nauta: Some Aspects of Boethius’ Consolatio philosophiae in the Renaissance 767;

Index auctorum 779-786.

29. Gazziero, Leone. 2017. "“Vertendo vel etiam commentando in Latinam redigam formam” (In Aristotelis peri hermeneias commentarium. Editio secunda, II, 79.23 - 80.1). Boèce

ou l’art de bien traduire (en commentant) et de bien commenter (en traduisant)." Rursus no. 10:1-118.

Résumé: "Célébré comme l’égal des grands philosophes du passé, auxquels il aurait appris à parler Latin mieux qu’ils ne parlaient Grec, Boèce a caressé le rêve d’une émancipation radicale de la culture romaine vis-à-vis des modèles grecs qu’il se proposait de traduire et interpréter assez fidèlement pour que la comparaison avec les sources ne soit plus nécessaire. De son effort de livrer un Aristote et un Platon latins à la hauteur des originaux grecs, nous étudions l’étroite solidarité qui relie la traduction mot-à-mot des textes grecs et la restitution scrupuleuse de leur sens. Cette double tâche, que Boèce a conçue et menée d’un seul tenant, nous est dès lors apparue comme le reflet d’un philhellénisme sans complexes, tout aussi éloigné des sentiments ambivalents que

nourrissaient vis-à-vis des hellènes ses devanciers romains que des efforts visant à domestiquer l’héritage classique auxquels se livraient certains de ses contemporains de même confession que lui. Affranchis de tout rêve d’autonomie, les traductions et les commentaires de Boèce se conçoivent comme parfaitement autosuffisants. Ensemble ils constituent ce qu’il y a à la fois de franchement novateur et de profondément conservateur dans son projet de faire parler Latin les sources grecques."

30. ———. 2018. "Sicut Aristoteles loquitur sic exponit Boethius. Essai de 'simplification' archéologique." In Sujet libre. Pour Alain de Libera, edited by Cesalli, Laurent and Brenet, Jean-Baptiste, 149-154. Paris: Vrin.

31. Guillaumin, Jean-Yves. 1989. "La transformation d'une phrase de Nicomaque (Introduction Arithmétique 1, 18, 2) chez Boèce (Institution Arithmétique 1, 23)." Latomus no. 48:869-874.

32. ———. 1990. "Le statut des mathématiques chez Boèce." Revue des Études Anciennes no. 92:121-126.

33. ———. 1990. "Le terme quadrivium de Boèce et ses aspects moraux." L'antiquité classique no. 59:139-148.

34. ———. 1994. "La structure du chapitre 1, 4 de l'Institution Arithmétique de Boèce et le cours d'Ammonios sur Nicomaque." Revue d'histoire des sciences no. 47:249-258.

35. ———. 2003. "Boèce traducteur de Nicomaque: gnomons et pythmènes dans l’Institution Arithmétique." In Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs, edited by Galonnier, Alain, 341-355. Paris: Peeters Publishers.

36. Hadot, Ilsetraut. 1987. "La division néoplatonicienne des écrits d'Aristote." In Aristoteles. Werk und Wirkung. Paul Moraux zum 65 Geburtstag gewidmet - Band 2: Kommentierung, Uberlieferung, Nachleben, edited by Wiesner, Jürgen, 249-285. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

37. Hadot, Pierre. 1959. "Un fragment du commentaire perdu de Boèce sur les Catégories d'Aristote dans le codex Bernensis 363." Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge no. 26:11-27.

Repris dans P. Hadot, Plotin, Porphyre. Études néoplatoniciennes, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1999, pp. 383-410 et dans P. Hadot, Études de Patristique et d'histoire des concepts, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2010, pp. 323-343.

38. ———. 1963. "La distinction de l'être et de l'étant dans le De hebdomadibus de Boèce." In Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter. ihr Ursprung und ihre Bedeutung, edited by Wilpert, Paul, 147-153. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

39. ———. 1970. "Forma essendi. Interprétation philologique et interprétation philosophique d'une formule di Boèce." Les Études Classiques no. 38:143-156.

40. ———. 1973. "De Tertullien à Boèce. Développement de la notion de personne dans les controverses théologiques." In Problèmes de la personne, edited by Meyerson, Ignace, 123-134. The Hague: Mouton.

Repris dans P. Hadot, Études de patristique et d'histoire des concepts, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2010, pp. 385-397.

41. ———. 1985. "Les commentaires de Boèce et de Porphyre sur les Catégories d'Aristote." Annuaire de l'École Pratique des Hautes Etudes. V Section, Sciences Religieuses no. 93:335-337.

42. Hipp, Stephen A. 1996. "Structures métaphysiques de la définition boécienne de la personne." In Penser l'homme et la science. Essais en honneur du professeur Evandro Agazzi à l'occasion de ses 60 ans = Betrachtungen zum Thema Mensch und Wissenschaft : Beiträge zu Ehren von Professor Evandro Agazzi zu seinem 60. Geburtstag, edited by Schumacher, Bernard and Castro, Edgardo, 251-286. Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires.

43. Hudry, Françoise. 1997. "L' 'hebdomade' et les règles. Survivances du débat scolaire alexandrin." Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale no. 8:319-337.

44. Huh, Min-Jun. 2006. "Le premier commentaire de Boèce sur l'Isagoge de Porphyre: considérations générales." In Colloquia Aquitana II. Boèce: l'homme, le philosophe, le scientifique, son oeuvre, son rayonnement. Vol. I, edited by Humphrey, Illo, 363-381. Paris: Éditions Le Manuscrit.

45. ———. 2012. "Imaginatio. Synonymes et Homonymes chez Boèce." Camenae no. 10:1-10.

46. Humphrey, Illo. 2005. "Boethii De institutione arithmetica libri duo: Étude proto-philologique." Carmina Philosophiae no. 14:57-158.

47. ———. 2005. "Boethii De institutione musica libri quinque: auctor, opus, interpres." Carmina Philosophiae no. 14:167-176.

48. ———, ed. 2006. Colloquia Aquitana II. Boèce: l'homme, le philosophe, le scientifique, son oeuvre, son rayonnement. Paris: Éditions Le Manuscrit.

Deux volumes.

49. ———. 2006. "Quelques observations sur le processus cognitif chez Platon et chez Boèce." In Colloquia Aquitana II. Boèce: l'homme, le philosophe, le scientifique, son oeuvre, son rayonnement. Vol. I, edited by Humphrey, Illo, 407-440. Paris: Éditions Le Manuscrit.

50. Isaac, Jean. 1953. Le Peri hermeneias en Occident de Boèce à Saint Thomas. Histoire littéraire d'un traité d'Aristote. Paris: Vrin.

51. Jolivet, Jean. 2003. "Quand Boèce aborde Porphyre." In Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs, edited by Galonnier, Alain, 229-240. Paris: Peeters Publishers.

Repris dans J. Jolivet, Mediaevalia et Arabica, Paris: Vrin, 2013. pp. 93-102.

52. Lafleur, Claude, and Carrier, Joanne. 2012. "Alexandre d'Aphrodise et l'abstraction selon l'exposé sur les universaux chez Boèce dans son "Second commentaire sur l' ''Isagoge" de Porphyre." Laval théologique et philosophique no. 68:35-89.

"Cette première traduction française d’une portion significative de l’In « Isagogen » Porphyrii Commentorum Editio secunda, en regard d’un texte latin reponctué en conséquence et accompagné d’annotations critiques, est précédée d’une présentation historico-doctrinale mettant en relief le rôle — à la fois central et problématique — de l’abstraction dans la solution boécienne, ouvertement rattachée à Alexandre d’Aphrodise (dont le traité De l’âme est ici examiné), du statut des genres et des espèces dans ce texte qui, à travers l’exégèse du célèbre questionnaire porphyrien, a fait connaître le problème des universaux à l’Occident latin et en est demeuré l’expression la plus achevée jusqu’au XIIe siècle, où Abélard en a donné un méta-commentaire particulièrement brillant dans sa Logica « Ingredientibus » : Super Porphyrium, éditée, traduite et étudiée ci-après dans ce numéro thématique.

53. Lambert, Michel. 2003. "Nouveaux éléments pour une étude de l'authenticité boécienne des Opuscula Sacra." In Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs, edited by Galonnier, Alain, 171-191. Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters.

54. Lejbowicz, Max. 2003. "Cassiodori Euclides”: éléments de bibliographie boécienne." In Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs, edited by Galonnier, Alain, 301-340. Paris: Peeters Publishers.

55. Lemoine, Michel. 2003. "Boèce, modèle de philosophe?" In Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs, edited by Galonnier, Alain, 613-624. Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters.

56. Levet, Jean-Pierre. 1988. "Philologie et logique: Boèce traducteur des premiers chapitres du livre I des Analytica Priora d'Aristote." Revue d'Histoire des Textes no. 18:1-62.

57. Libera, Alain de. 1995. "Boèce et l'interprétation médiévale des Catégories. De la paronymie à la denominatio." In Aristotelica Secunda. Mélanges offerts a Christian Rutten, edited by Motte, André and Denooz, Joseph, 255-264. Liège: Université de Liège. Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres.

58. ———. 1999. L'art des généralités. Théories de l'abstraction. Paris: Aubier.

Table: Introduction, 5; 1. Alexandre d'Aphrodise, 25; 2. Boèce, 159; 3. Pierre Abélard, 281; 4. Avicenne 499; Conclusion 609; Appendice: Textes traduits de l'arabe par Marc Geoffroy, 637; Index: Auteurs anciens et médiévaux, 683; Auteurs modernes, 687; Thèses, 693.

59. ———. 2005. "L'onto-théo-logique de Boèce: doctrine des catégories et théorie de la prédication dans le De Trinitate." In Les Catégories et leur histoire, edited by Bruun, Otto and Corti, Lorenzo, 175-222. Paris: Vrin.

60. Marenbon, John. 2005. Le temps, l'éternité et la prescience de Boèce à Thomas d'Aquin. Paris: Vrin.

Chapitre II: Boèce pp. 21-54.

61. ———. 2012. "Boèce, Porphyre et les variétés de l’abstractionnisme." Laval théologique et philosophique no. 68:9-20.

62. Meyer, Christian. 2003. "Lectures et lecteurs du De institutione musica de Boèce au XIIIe siècle." In Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs, edited by Galonnier, Alain, 665-678. Paris: Peeters Publishers.

63. Minio-Paluello, Lorenzo. 1957. "Les traductions et les commentaires aristotéliciens de Boèce." Studia Patristica, II: Text Und Untersuchungen no. 64:358-365.

Repris dans L. Minio-Paluello, Opuscula. The Latin Aristotle, Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1972, pp. 328-335.

Traduction allemande dans: Manfred Fuhrmann & Joachim Gruber (eds.), Boethius, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1984, pp. 146-153.

64. ———. 1993. "Formation, transformations et anciennes éditions d'ouvrages de Boèce." In Luoghi cruciali in Dante. Ultimi saggi. Con un inedito su Boezio e la bibliografia delle sue opere, edited by Santi, Francesco, 133-148. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'Alto Medioevo.

65. Nédoncelle, Maurice. 1955. "Les variations de Boèce sur la personne." Revue des Sciences Religieuses no. 29:201-230.

66. O'Meara, Dominic J. 2006. "Les déchirures de la Philosophie." Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie no. 53:428-431.

67. Omelyantchyk, Valentin. 2003. "Boèce et Ammonius sur la question d'Alexandre d'Aphrodise (Peri hermeneias, 16 A 1-2)." In Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs, edited by Galonnier, Alain, 241-256. Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters.

"En nous fondant sur les témoignages de Boèce et d’Ammonius, nous nous proposons d’enquêter sur le sens de la question d’Alexandre d’Aphrodise, rapportée par Boèce, à propos de l’interprétation des premiers chapitres du Peri hermeneias. Nous suivrons d’abord le commentaire majeur de Boèce, pour tenter de comprendre le contexte dans lequel cette question apparaît. Nous examinerons ensuite la question elle-même, en précisant sa raison d’être à partir du commentaire d’Ammonius. Nous passerons ensuite à l’évaluation de sa pertinence pour une théorie du discours. Enfin, en guise de conclusion, nous essayerons de dégager/quelques remarques générales." (p. 241)

(...)

"À suivre Boèce, Porphyre développe une analyse générative du discours pour justifier l’idée que l’assertion simple se compose d’expressions simples (37), c’est-à-dire du nom et du verbe, qui sont les parties nécessaires et suffisantes de l’assertion simple (38). L’affirmation et la négation sont ainsi les deux éléments constitutifs du genre de l’assertion simple. Cette analyse conduit à associer à l’assertion simple une sémantique de l’inhérence (ύπαρχειν). Porphyre « projette », en quelque sorte, la structure syntaxique de l’assertion simple sur la structure ontologique de l’inhérence: l’affirmation signifie l’inhérence de quelque chose dans quelque chose, la négation, sa non-inhérence. Il a donc développé son analyse de la construction syntaxique complète en lien avec sa sémantique de l’inhérence empruntée aux Catégories. Cette construction syntaxique, Boèce l’appelle « assertion simple » ou « assertion catégorique » (39). On comprend alors que s’il se concentre sur l’assertion simple dans les premiers chapitres de son commentaire, c’est parce qu’il vise en fait la notion de complétude. Dès lors que l’assertion simple exprime l’inhérence ou la non-inhérence, Boèce enchaîne, après la question de la structure de l’assertion (ch. 4-6 du Peri hermeneias), sur le thème des universaux (ch. 7) (40), car la théorie de l’inhérence présuppose toujours la division des étants en particuliers et en universels (41). La deuxième partie du chapitre De oratione de Boèce, qui correspond au commentaire des chapitres 4-8 du Peri hermeneias, achève par conséquent l’exposé sur l’assertion simple (ou assertion catégorique) en traitant de Γ inhérence et de la non-inhérence." (pp. 254-255)

(37) Voir « Simplices quiddem idcirco quod quaelibet simplex parvissimaque oratio nomine et verbo coniungitur, quae sunt simplices dictiones » (84, 27-30).

(38) « In simplicibus enim orationibus huiusmodi partes sunt » (82, 23-5).

(39) « [S]ic in simplicibus propositionibus praedicatio vim obtinet, unde et Graece quoque tales propositiones κατηγορικαί, id est praedicativae, dicuntur, scilicet quae sunt simplices, quod in totam propositionem obtineat praedicatio » (Migne, PL 64, 447 B). « Igitur quoniam supra dixerat simplicem propositionem, quam κατηγορικαί Graeci dicunt, nos praedicativam interpretari possumus, semper verbi praedicatione constitui, non autem semper nomine subjecto, quod aliquoties quiddem vel infinitum nomen, vet casus nominis, vel verba subjecta sunt» 112, 10-16). C’est nous qui soulignons.

(40) « Necesse est autem enuntiare quoniam inest aliquid aut non, aliquoties quidem eorum alicui quae sunt universalia, aliquoties autem eorum quae sunt singularia, hujusmodi est tanquam si diceret: omnis quidem adfirmatio et negatio inesse aut non inesse demonstrat et quidquid enuntiatur, aut de eo quod est esse proponitur... aut de eo quod est, non inesse » (140, 22-141, 1).

(41) « Ergo quoniam necesse est, aut aliquid alicui inesse dicere, aut aliquid alicui non inesse, illud quoque necesse est ut intelligamus cui inesse aliquid dicimus, aut universale esse... aut certe particulare ac singulare » (141, 3-8).

68. Phillips, Philip Edward. 2006. "Boèce, le quadrivium, et la consolation de la philosophie." In Colloquia Aquitana II. Boèce: l'homme, le philosophe, le scientifique, son oeuvre, son rayonnement. Vol. I, edited by Humphrey, Illo, 183-202. Paris: Éditions Le Manuscrit.

69. Pizzani, Ubaldo. 2003. "Du rapport entre le De musica de S. Augustin et le De Institutione musica de Boèce." In Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs, edited by Galonnier, Alain, 357-478. Paris: Peeters Publishers.

70. Potiron, Henri. 1961. Boèce, théoricien de la musique grecque. Paris: Bloud & Gay

71. Solère, Jean-Luc. 2000. "Maître Eckhart, Proclus et Boèce: du statut des prologues dans l’“axiomatique” néoplatonicienne." In Les Prologues médiévaux, edited by Hamesse, Jacqueline, 535-571. Turnhout: Brepols.

72. ———. 2003. "Bien, Cercles et Hébdomades: formes et raisonnement chez Boèce et Proclus." In Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs, edited by Galonnier, Alain, 55-110. Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters.

73. ———. 2003. "L'ordre axiomatique comme modèle d'écriture philosophique dans l'Antiquité et au Moyen Âge." Revue d'histoire des sciences no. 56:323-345.

74. Sondag, Gérard. 2008. "Boèce et Duns Scot sur la transposition des prédicaments aristotéliciens dans la prédication divine." Revista portuguesa de filosofia no. 64:177-193.

75. Tisserand, Axel. 2003. "Métaphore et translatio in diuinis: la théorie de la prédication et la conversion des catégories chez Boèce." In Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs, edited by Galonnier, Alain, 421-433. Paris: Peeters Publishers.

76. ———. 2008. Pars Theologica. Logique et théologique chez Boèce. Paris: Vrin.

77. Trego, Kristell. 2006. "La liberté dans la Consolatio philosophiae de Boéce." Archives de Philosophie no. 69:187-202.

78. ———. 2012. "Substance, sujet, acte. La première réception latine d'Aristote: Marius Victorinus et Boèce." Les Études philosophiques no. 101:233-256.

79. ———. 2013. "Inhérence ou relation? L'ad aliquid et la doctrine catégoriale de la substance chez Boèce." Quaestio. Journal of the History of Metaphysics no. 13:125-148.

80. Tremblay, Bruno. 2005. "Boèce, In Cat.: proème et commentaire aux antepraedicamenta." Carmina Philosophiae no. 14:1-56.

81. Van de Meeren, Sophie. 2012. Lectures de Boèce: La consolation de la philosophie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.

82. Vasiliu, Anca. 2003. "Nature, personne et image dans les traités théologiques ou Personne dans le creux du visage." In Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs, edited by Galonnier, Alain, 481-504. Paris: Peeters Publishers.

83. Wronski, Stanislaw. 1978. "Un essai de caractériser la définition classique de la personne chez Boèce par son origine." Studia mediewistyczne no. 19:109-116.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Boezio: traduzioni italiane e Bibliografia degli studi sulla sua filosofia

Traduzioni

1. Boezio. 1969. Trattato sulla divisione. Padova: Liviana.

Testo latino e traduzione italiana con commento di Lorenzo Pozzi.

Indice: Avvertenza V; Introduzione 1; Nota bibliografica 17, Trattato sulla divisione 19; Appendice: Anitii Manlii Severini Boethi - De Divisione 105; Indice analitico 131-136.

"La traduzione è stata condotta sull'edizione di Venezia (sull'esemplare appartenente alla Biblioteca Palatina di Parma), che viene riportata in Appendice nel testo latino diviso in paragrafi per comodità di lettura e di commento. Un controllo eseguito sul Manoscritto conservato nella Biblioteca Antoniana di Padova (Scaff. XXII, 553, ff. 55r-68v) ha permesso di convalidare l'opinione corrente circa la superiorità dell'edizione di Venezia su quella di Basilea riprodotta dal Migne. Le poche varianti tratte dal manoscritto che miglioravano la stampa dell'incunabolo veneziano sono state direttamente introdotte nel testo, dandosene notizia in nota." (Avvertenza)

"La divisione, già fin dai tempi di Cicerone, era considerata una parte essenziale della logica, infatti nel De finibus bonorum et malorum (7) viene criticato Epicuro per non avere una logica: Iam in altera philosophiae parte, quae est quaerendi oc disserendi, quae λογική dicitur, iste vester piane, ut mihi quidem videtur, inermis ac nudus est. Tollit definitiones; nihil de dividendo ac partiendo docet; non, quomodo efficiatur concludatur que ratio, tradii; non, qua via captiosa solvantur, ambigua distinguantur, ostendit. Dal che si vede che vengono elencate queste quattro parti della logica e cioè la definizione, la divisione, il sillogismo o ragionamento, il sofisma o falso ragionamento.

Boezio, per quel che concerne la divisione, conosceva tre concezioni e cioè la platonica, l’aristotelica e la stoica, per cui è necessario accennare brevemente a tutte e tre.

Per Platone la divisione è il metodo che permette di costruire una corretta definizione ed è il secondo momento della dialettica. Il primo momento consiste nel ricondurre ciò che si deve definire ad un’idea, che, per la sua estensione, sia capace di includerlo totalmente.

(...)

Aristotele, negli Analitici Primi (14), critica la divisione platonica, che è per lui «un sillogismo impotente», in quanto a) chiede che sia concesso ciò che deve dimostrare e b) conclude sempre con un predicato superiore a ciò che deve essere provato. Aristotele considera il sillogismo nella sua funzione dimostrativa e perciò richiede che in esso il termine medio debba avere un’estensione minore dell’estremo maggiore ed un’estensione maggiore dell’estremo minore. Si considera evidentemente un sillogismo che concluda universalmente ed affermativamente, cioè della prima figura in cui il termine medio è il soggetto della premessa maggiore ed il predicato della premessa minore.

(...)

Nella dottrina stoica abbiamo una rivalutazione della divisione, rivalutazione che segue quella della dialettica. Gli Stoici definiscono la dialettica «la scienza di discutere rettamente su argomenti, per domanda e risposta» (18). Per questo si può affermare una certa dipendenza della concezione stoica dalla dottrina aristotelica, infatti anche per gli Stoici la dialettica si riferisce al dialogo e, punto essenziale, non ha riferimento all’essere, di cui non può produrre scienza.

(...)

Il trattato di Boezio è un’originale sintesi delle tre concezioni sopra esposte. (...)

Il trattato ha come punto di partenza lo stesso nome « divisione » e l’elenco delle diverse cose da esso significate. Scopo del trattato è infatti quello di indicare le proprietà di ciascuna divisione e le reciproche differenze. Egli innanzitutto distingue le divisioni secundum se da quelle secundum accidens: mentre nelle prime sono sostanze sia il dividendo che i divisi, nelle seconde o il dividendo o i divisi o entrambi sono accidenti. Sono divisioni secundum se quelle del genere nelle specie, del tutto nelle parti, e della voce nelle significazioni. Sono divisioni secundum accidens quelle del soggetto negli accidenti, dell’accidente nei soggetti e dell’accidente negli accidenti. Queste distinzioni hanno la funzione di evidenziare la divisione del genere nelle specie, che è la vera divisione logica, quella che permette di giungere alla definizione essenziale: motivo conduttore di tutto il trattato è la continua preoccupazione di distinguere la divisione del genere nelle specie dalle altre divisioni." (pp. 5-10)

(7) Libro I, cap. VII (22).

(14) An. Pr. I 46a 31 ss.

(18) Diogene Laerzio, Vite dei filosofi, a cura di M. Gigante, Bari 1962, Libro VIII, cap. I (Zenone), 42.

2. ———. 1969. De hypotheticis syllogismis. Brescia: Paideia.

Testo latino, traduzione italiana e commento di Luca Obertello.

3. Magnano, Fiorella. 2014. Il De topicis differentiis di Severino Boezio. Palermo: Officina di studi Medievali.

Prefazione di Luca Obertello.

4. Boezio. 1990. De institutione musica. Roma: Istituto italiano per la storia della musica.

Traduzione di Giovanni Marzi.

5. ———. 1979. La consolazione della filosofia - Gli opuscoli teologici. Milano: Rusconi.

A cura di Luca Obertello.

6. ———. 2010. La consolazione di Filosofia. Torino: Einaudi.

Testo latino a fronte.

A cura di Maria Bettetini, traduzione di Barbara Chitussi, note di Giovanni Catapano.

Studi in Italiano

1. Adamo, Luigi. 1967. "Boezio e Mario Vittorino traduttori e interpreti dell’ Isagoge di Porfirio." Rivista critica di Storia della Filosofia no. 22:141-164.

2. Belli, Margherita. 2008. "Polisemia di 'essentia' in Severino Boezio ed in alcuni suoi commentatori medievali." Bulletin Du Cange no. 66:213-236.

3. ———. 2012. Il centro e la circonferenza. Fortuna del De consolatione philosophiae di Boezio tra Valla e Leibniz. Firenze: Olschki.

4. Bernhard, Michael. 2007. "Il De institutione musica di Boezio nell'alto Medioevo." In Harmonia Mundi. Musica Mondana e Musica Celeste fra Antichità e Medioevo, edited by Cristiani, Marta, Panti, Cecilia and Perillo, Graziano, 77-93. Firenze: SISMEL, Edizioni del Galluzzo.

5. Brock, Stephen L. 2007. "La "conciliazione" di Platone e Aristotele riguardo alla partecipazione nell'essere. Osservazioni sul commento di Tommaso d'Aquino al De hebdomadibus di Boezio." Acta Philosophica.Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia no. 14.

Sommario: 1. Il progetto boeziano e il commento di Tommaso al De hebdomadibus. 2. La questione dell'essere boeziano e tommasiano. 3. La partecipazione. 4. Ci può essere partecipazione con o senza Idee platoniche. 5. L'essere stesso partecipa ad una causa. 6. L'essere non si partecipa come un genere e comunque inerisce alle cose. 7. L'essere si partecipa secondo le categorie e l'essere simpliciter è l'essere sostanziale. 8. L'essere partecipato appartiene per sè. 9. Conclusione.

Abstract: Several features of St Thomas's commentary on the De hebdomadibus suggest that he was taking quite seriously Boethius's view concerning the fundamental harmony between the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. The paper focuses on the commentary's treatment of the doctrine of participation in being (esse). There are several places where St Thomas seems to be working quietly to bring the doctrine in line with Aristotelian ontology. These have a bearing on the much disputed question of the relation between St. Thomas and Boethius on the distinction between esse and id quod est.

6. Chadwick, Henry. 1986. Boezio. La consolazione della musica, della logica, della teologia e della filosofia. Bologna: Il Mulino.

Indice: Prefazione 7; Introduzione 9: I. Rmani e Goti 17; II. Le arti liberali nello sfacelo della cultura 99; III. La logica 147; IV. la teologia cristian e i folosofi 227; V. Il male, la libertà e la provvidenza; Appendice: Tavola cronologica 321; La conservazione e la trasmissione degli scritti di Boezio 323; Bibliografia 335.

7. Conti, Alessandro D. 1983. "La teoria degli ad aliquid di Boezio: osservazioni sulla terminologia." In Atti del convegno internazionale di storia della logica, edited by Abrusci, Michele, Casari, Ettore and Mugnai, Massimo, 247-252. Bologna: CLUEB.

8. ———. 2001. "Boezio commentatore e interprete delle Categorie di Aristotele." In Scritti in onore di Girolamo Arnaldi: offerti dalla Scuola nazionale di studi medioevali edited by Degrandi, Andrea, 77-102. Roma: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo.

9. Crocco, Antonio. 1970. Introduzione a Boezio. Napoli: Liguori.

10. D'Onofrio, Giulio. 1986. Fons scientiae. La dialettica nell'Occidente tardo-antico. Napoli: Liguori.

Indice: Introduzione XIII; Avvertenza XXIII; Abbreviazioni XXIV-XXVI;

Parte prima: Ars artium et disciplina disciplinarum. Il metodo della scienza nelle fonti della dialettica tardo-antica.

I: Il corpus dialecticum tardo-antico (IV-IX see. d.C.) 3; II: La dialettica e le sue normae: Marziano Capella ed il De dialectica attribuito ad Agostino 23; III: La disciplina disciplinarum nei dialoghi filosofici di Agostino 37; IV: Dialettica e filosofia nei compendi dell’insegnamento tardo-antico: Cassiodoro e Isidoro 57; V: Nuovi elementi nella sistemazione tardo-romana della dialettica: le definizioni e i topica 79; VI: La fondazione dialettica della scienza in Boezio 99; VII: .Dialettica e scienza secondo Boezio: il sapere matematico ed il sapere teologico 125;

Parte seconda: Dialectica disciplina. Le regole dialettiche per la costruzione della scienza.

I: De loquendo: la dottrina del significato 159; II: De eloquendo: il discorso 195; III: De proloquendo: la formulazione del vero e la sua distinzione dal falso 207; IV: De proloquiorum summa: le forme della dimostrazione 219; V: La dialettica verso il fondamento noetico della scienza 257;

Parte terza: Disputandi disciplina, quae est veritas. Un esempio altomedievale di applicazione degli insegnamenti dialettici: il De divina praedestìnatione liber di Giovanni Scoto Eriugena 275; Conclusione: Probabilis scientia. Dialettica e scienza cristiana 321;

Indice degli Autori e opere 331; Indice dei termini e cose notevoli 335; Indice dei nomi 345-346.

11. ———. 1997. "Boezio e l'essenza del tempo." In Il tempo in questione. Paradigmi della temporalità nel pensiero occidentale, edited by Ruggiu, Luigi, 119-129. Milano: Guerini e Associati.

12. ———. 2001. "La scala ricamata. La Philosophiae Divisio di Severino Boezio, tra essere e conoscere." In La divisione della filosofia e le sue ragioni. Lettura di testi medievali (VI-XIII secolo). Atti del Settimo Convegno della Società Italiana per lo Studio del Pensiero Medievale: Assisi, 14-15 Novembre 1997, 11-64. Roma: Avagliano.

13. ———. 2005. "Boezio filosofo." In Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs, edited by Galonnier, Alain, 381-420. Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters.

14. ———. 2013. Vera philosophia. Studi sul pensiero cristiano in età tardo-antica, alto-medievale e umanistica. Roma: Città Nuova.

"Il presente volume è già apparso in lingua inglese (traduzione di John Gavin), quale primo numero della collana Nutrix, presso le edizioni Brepols (Vera philosophia. Studies in Late Antique, Early Medieval, and Renaissance Christian Thought, Turnhout 2008)." (p. 327).

Indice: Capitolo primo: Il pensiero ‘convertito’ 13; Capitolo 2: La veste di Filosofia 71; Capitolo 3: La missione teologica del sapiente 131; Capitolo 4: La logica divina 193; Capitolo 5: La rinascita della vera philosophia 243; Postfazione 325; Bibliografia 329; Indice dei nomi 357; Indice biblico 375; Summary 379.

15. di Mieri, Fernando. 1984. "Il De institutione arithmetica di Severino Boezio." Sapienza:179-202.

16. Giacone, Roberto. 1974. "Arti liberali e classificazione delle scienze. L'esempio di Boezio e Cassiodoro." Aevum no. 48:58-72.

17. Guzzo, Augusto. 1934. L’ «Isagoge» di Porfirio e i commenti di Boezio. Torino: L'Erma.

Ristampato in A. Guzzo, Concetto e saggi di storia della filosofia, Firenze: Le Monnier 1940, pp. 6-90.

18. Lluch-Baixauli, Miguel. 1997. Boezio. La ragione teologica. Milano: Jaca Book.

19. Lorenzetti, Eleonora. 2013. "Parole, concetti, cose: alcune teorie semantiche tra Severino Boezio e Pietro Abelardo." In Medioevo e filosofia: per Alfonso Maierù, edited by Lenzi, Massimiliano, Musatti, Cesare A. and Valente, Luisa, 55-86. Roma.

20. Magnano, Fiorella. 2007. "Essere ed esistenza nel pensiero di Severino Boezio." Aquinas no. 50:83-105.

21. Magrini, Sabina. 2008. "Programmi e manuali di « Logica antiqua » a confronto tra i secoli XII e XV." Segno & Testo no. 6:295-336.

22. Maioli, Bruno. 1978. Teoria dell'essere e dell'esistente e classificazione delle scienze in M. S. Boezio. Roma: Bulzoni.

23. Massera, Giuseppe. 1976. Severino Boezio e la scienza armonica tra l’antichità e il medio evo. Parma: Studium Parmense.

24. Matino, Giuseppina. 1995. "Nota alla traduzione dell'Organon aristotelico fatta da Severino Boezio." Cuadernos de Filología Clásica.Estudios Latinos no. 8:171-180.

"Lungi dal purismo classicista della Consolatio, la traduzione di Boezio è caratterizzata dalla frantumazione della compattezza dell'ordine classico delle parole mediante la frequente introduzione di moduli espressivi estranei alla tradizione latina, dal conio di calchi linguistici e semantici e dall'accetttazione di sintagmi propri del latino tardo. In questo modo Boezio cerca di risolvere i molti problemi di ordine esegetico, sintattico, di interpretazione ed espressione lessicale presenti nell'Organon aristotelico e spera di contribuire al progresso della letteratura latina."

25. Micaelli, Claudio. 1981. "Teologia e filosofia nel "Contra Eutychen et Nestorium" di Boezio." Studi classici e orientali no. 31:177-200.

26. ———. 1981. ""Natura" e "persona" nel "Contra Eutychen et Nestorium" di Boezio. Osservazioni su alcuni problemi filosofici e linguistici." In Congresso Internazionale di Studi Boeziani (Pavia, 5-8 ottobre 1980): Atti, 327-336. Roma: Herder.

27. ———. 1988. Studi sui trattati teologici di Boezio. Napoli: D'Auria.

Indice. Abbreviazioni bibliografiche 5; 1. Nuove ricerche sul De fide catholica attribuito a Boezio 7; 2. La cristologia del Contra Eutychen et Nestorium 43; 3. Forma, substantia e relatio in Dio. Problemi ontologici del De Trinitate e del De hebdomadibus 99; Indice di nomi e cose notevoli 127; Indice degli autori moderni 130.

28. ———. 1995. Dio nel pensiero di Boezio. Napoli: D'Auria.

29. ———. 2003. "Il De hebdomadibus di Boezio nel panorama del pensieo tardo-antico." In Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs, edited by Galonnier, Alain, 33-53. Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters.

"L’opuscolo teologico dal titolo Quomodo substantiae bonae sint in eo quod sint, cum non sint substantialia bona, comunemente indicato con il titolo abbreviate De hebdomadibus, è stato spesso oggetto di studio soprattutto in relazione al grande influsso ehe esso ha esercitato sul pensiero medievale, al punto che Gangolf Schrimpf ha potuto definire questo trattato, non a torto, come ‘Lehrbuch des Mittelalters’. (1)" (p. 33)

(...)

"...ma il più importante tentativo di inquadrare l’opuscolo teologico nell’ambito della tradizione filosofica tardo-antica è stato, senza dubbio, quello intrapreso da P. Hadot, il quale, concentrando la propria attenzione sulla celeberrima formula forma essendi, ha ipotizzato delle affinità tra la concezione boeziana dell’essere e quella di Porfirio, estendendo così i confini di un rapporto fino a quel momento delimitato agli scritti di logica. (5) Del contributo di Hadot vogliamo riprendere, allargandolo ad una prospettiva più ampia, il metodo di indagine, basato sulla ricerca di un equilibrio tra ‘interprétation philologique’ e ‘interprétation philosophique’, per esprimerci con le parole dello studioso: non partiremo, dunque, dall’esame di una singola affermazione, ma cercheremo di individuare i nuclei concettuali che costituiscono, per così dire, l’impalcatura di tutta l’opera. Le direttrici fondamentali della nostra ricerca saranno, pertanto, le seguenti : 1) la dottrina boeziana circa l’essere; 2) i concetti di somiglianza e partecipazione; 3) l’identità tra essere e agire di Dio. Nell’approfondimento di queste tematiche cercheremo anche di mettere in luce gli eventuali rapporti del De hebdomadibus con problemi di ordine non solo filosofico, ma concernenti anche aspetti del dogma cristiano." (pp. 33-34)

(...)

"A conclusione di questa nostra disamina, necessariamente breve ma, nel contempo, aperta ad una molteplicità di problematiche, abbiamo ancora una volta chiara, davanti ai nostri occhi, quella che ci pare una delle caratteristiche principali del filosofo romano, vale a dire una originalità di pensiero che non esclude l’apporto delle più varie tradizioni, dalle quali Boezio sa ricavare, con acume e senso critico, ciò che più si adatta alla soluzione dei problemi da lui affrontati: ciò che ne risulta non è un disomogeneo eclettismo, ma una costruzione speculativa che, pur con i limiti e le aporie da noi messi in luce, è dotata di una sua intrinseca coerenza. Si farebbe un torto a Boezio analizzando il suo pensiero con la pretesa di ‘quantificare’ le percentuali di platonismo e di aristotelismo in esso presenti: il De hebdomadibus è da ritenersi, a buon diritto, un trattato teologico, anche se non vi compaiono espliciti riferimenti a tematiche cristiane, perché nell’orizzonte culturale di Boezio, come abbiamo avuto modo di ribadire in altri nostri contributi, non esistono rigide separazioni tra la filosofia e la teologia, accomunate, per così dire, dal fatto di avere, come supremo oggetto della conoscenza, Dio e la sua relazione con il mondo. Di questa relazione l’opuscolo teologico indaga il fondamento ontologico, chiedendosi in quale modo le cose, pur non essendo Dio, abbiano la bontà come caratteristica costitutiva del proprio essere. Speriamo di aver contribuito, almeno in parte, ad una più precisa collocazione di quest’opera nel panorama filosofico del tardo-antico.£ (pp. 52-53)

(1) Cf. G. Schrimpf, Die Axiomenschrift des Boethius (De hebdomadibus) als philosophisches Lehrbuch des Mittelalters, Leiden, 1966. Il termine Axiomenschrift, impiegato dallo studioso, è indicativo di un’altra diffusa tendenza esegetica, per la quale l’attenzione degli interpreti si è spesso soffermata sui singoli enunciati assiomatici ehe costituiscono la premessa del trattato, senza considerarli nel contesto generale dell’opera.

(5) Cf. P. Hadot, “La distinction de Tètre et de Tétant dans le De Hebdomadibus de Boèce”, in Miscellanea Mediaevalia, vol. II, p. 147-153, Berlin 1963; “Forma essendi: interprétation philologique et interprétation philosophique d’une formule de Boèce”, Les Études Classiques, 38, 1970, p. 143-156.

30. Mignucci, Mario. 1987. "Boezio e il problema dei futuri contingenti." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 12:1-50.

31. Minio-Paluello, Lorenzo. 1958. "I Topici del X–XI secolo, due fogli del testo perduto della redazione boeziana definitiva. Altri frammenti dai libri I–IV e VIII della medesima

redazione. Nota X." Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica no. 50:97-116.

32. ———. 1958. "Le due redazione boeziane (carnutense e fiorentina) e la contaminazione vulgata (ambrosiana) dei Primi Analitici." Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica no. 50:212-218.

33. ———. 1962. "Note sull’Aristotele latino medievale. XV. Dalle Categoriae Decem pseudo–Agostiniane (Temistiane) al testo vulgato aristotelico boeziano." Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica no. 54:137-147.

Ristampato in L. Minio-Paluello, Opuscula. The Latin Aristotle, Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1972, pp. 448-458.

34. ———. 1972. "Nuovi impulsi allo studio della logica: la seconda fase della riscoperta di Aristotele e di Boezio." In La scuola nell'Occidente latino dell'alto Medioevo. Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull'alto Medioevo, 15-21 aprile 1971, 743-766. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'alto Medioevo.

35. Moreschini, Claudio. 1981. "Boezio e la tradizione del Neoplatonismo latino." In Congresso Internazionale di Studi Boeziani (Pavia, 5-8 ottobre 1980): Atti, edited by Obertello, Luca, 297-310. Roma: Editrice Herder.

36. Nasti de Vincentis, Mauro. 1998. "La validità del condizionale crisippeo in Sesto Empirico e Boezio (Parte I)." Dianoia no. 3:45-75.

37. ———. 1999. "La validità del condizionale crisippeo in Sesto Empirico e Boezio (Parte II)." Dianoia no. 4:11-43.

38. ———. 2002. Logiche della connessività. Fra logica moderna e storia della logica antica. Bern: Haupt.

Indice: Premessa 7; Introduzione 11; 1. L'interpretazione classica e le sue varianti 39; 2. La pars destruens: le difficoltà dell'interpretazione classica 69; 3. La pars construens: verso una nuova interpretazione 95; 4. Obbiezioni, risposte e conferme 123; 5. Implicazione crisippea e implicazione boeziana 151; 6. Considerazioni conclusive e problemi aperti 173; Appendice: La dottina boeziana della repugnantia - Scelta di testi 193; Riferimenti bibiografici 231-232.

39. ———. 2006. "Boethiana. La logica stoica nelle testimonianze di Boezio: nuovi strumenti di ricerca." Elenchos no. 27:377-407.

40. Obertello, Luca. 1971. "Boezio, le scienze del quadrivio e la cultura medievale." Atti dell’Accademia Ligure di Scienze e Lettere no. 28:152-170.

Ristampato in L. Obertello, Boezio e dintorni, pp. 157-177.

41. ———. 1974. Severino Boezio. Genova: Accademia Ligure di Scienze e Lettere.

Vol. I: La vita; Vol. II: Bibliografia boeziana. Bibliografia generale.

42. ———, ed. 1981. Congresso Internazionale di Studi Boeziani (Pavia, 5-8 ottobre 1980): Atti. Roma: Editrice Herder.

Indice: Luca Obertello, Giovanni Scanavino: Premessa 9;

Relazioni. I. Boezio e la teologia

A. Trapè: Boezio teologo e S. Agostino 15; C. J. Starnes: Boethius and the Development of Christian Humanism: the Theology of the Consolatio 27;

II. Boezio e Pavia

F. Gianani: « In agro Calventiano »: il luogo del supplizio di Boezio 41; C. Morton: Boethius in Pavia: the Tradition and the Scholars 49; L. Obertello: La morte di Boezio e la verità storica 59;

III. Boezio e la storia

L. Cracco Ruggini: Nobiltà romana e potere nell’età di Boezio 73; E. Demougeot: La carrière politique de Boèce 97; C. Leonardi: La controversia trinitaria nell'epoca e nell’opera di Boezio 109; G. Zecchini: La politica degli Anicii nel V secolo 123;

IV. Boezio e la filosofia

L. M. De Rijk: Boèce logicien et philosophe: ses positions sémantiques et sa métaphysique de l’être 141; L. Obertello: L’universo boeziano 157; J. J. E. Gracia: Boethius and the Problem of Individuation in the Commentaries on the « Isagoge » 169; A. Ghisalberti: L’ascesa a Dio nel III libro della Consolatio 183;

V. Boezio e la tradizione classica

C. J. De Vogel: Boèce, Consol. II m. 8: amour grec ou amour chrétien? 193; F. Della Corte: Boezio e il principio di Archimede 201; U. Pizzani: Il quadrivium boeziano e i suoi problemi 211; A. Quacquarelli: Spigolature boeziane 227;

VI. Boezio e il Medioevo

E. Stump: Boethius’ Theory of Topics and its Place in Early Scholastic Logic 249; M. Masi: Boethius’ De institutione arithmetica in the Context of Medieval Mathematics 263; F. Bertini: Boezio e Massimiano 273;

Comunicazioni

B. S. Bubacz: Boethius and Augustine on Knowledge of the Physical World 287; C. Moreschini: Boezio e la tradizione del Neoplatonismo latino 297; A. M. Crabbe: Anamnesis and Mythology in the De consolatione philosophiae 311; C. Micaelli: « Natura » e « persona » nel Contra Eutychen et Nestorium di Boezio: osservazioni su alcuni problemi filosofici e linguistici 327; F. Lucidi: A proposito di Cons. I, II, 6-12: una nuova testimonianza sul de institutione astronomica di Boezio? 337; G. d’Onofrio: Agli inizi della diffusione della Consolatio e degli Opuscula sacra nella scuola tardo-carolingia: Giovanni Scoto e Remigio di Auxerre 343; L. Mauro: Il problema del fato in Boezio e S. Tommaso 355; W. J. Hankey: The De Trinitate of St. Boethius and the Structure of the Summa theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas 367;

Tabula Auctorum 377.

43. ———. 1983. "Boezio e il neoplatonismo cristiano. Gli orientamenti attuali della critica." Cultura e Scuola no. 22:95-103.

44. ———. 1989. Boezio e dintorni. Ricerche sulla cultura altomedievale. Firenze: Nardini.

Indice: Prefazione 7; Creazione e redenzione nel pensiero di Agostino 13; L'universo boeziano 41; Proclo, Ammonio di Ermia e Boezio sulla conoscenza divina 67; Motivi dell'estetica di Boezio 125; Boezio, le scienze del quadrivio e la cultura medievale 157; Boezio, Garlando Compotista, Abelardo e la sillogistica ipotetica nel Medioevo 179; Indice dei nomi 201; Indice di concetti 205-207.

45. Pagallo, Giulio. 1958. "Per una edizione critica del "De hypotheticis syllogismis" di Boezio." Italia Medioevale e umanistica no. 1:69-104.

46. Paolucci, Paola. 2005. "Boezio traduttore di Nicomaco nel De institutione arithmetica." Athenaeum no. 93:227-242.

47. Pecere, Oronzo. 2014. "Cassiodoro e la protostoria di un corpus di scritti di Boezio." Segno e Testo no. 12:149-222.

"Il cod. A (Orléans, Bibliothèque municipale 267 + Paris, BNF, Nouv. acq. lat. 1611, 10° s.), allestito nell’abbazia benedettina di Fleury, trasmette integralmente un indice delle opere di Boezio contenute nel manoscritto; tale elenco costituisce una prova del fatto che già nell’antichità i testi del filosofo erano organizzati in un corpus, un’unità libraria a sè stante. Il riesame codicologico e paleografico del codice consente di identificare in Cassiodoro sia l’autore di una sottoscrizione tramandata a f. 51r di Aβ, sia il possessore nonché il revisore di un esemplare tardoantico del corpus usato nel monastero di Vivarium, copia del cosiddetto « codex Renati » (entrambi databili alla prima metà del 6° s.)."

48. Petretto, Maria Alessandra. 2003. "Per uno studio sul lessico latino della Harmonica Disciplina." Sandalion no. 23-25:65-93.

49. Pieri, Silvia. 1998. "Tra matematica e filosofia: il De institutione arithmetica di Boezio." Koinonia no. 22:91-125.

50. Pinzani, Roberto. 1981-82. "Per una lettura del De hypotheticis syllogismis di Boezio." Annali di discipline filosofiche dell'Università di Bologna no. 3:69-79.

51. ———. 2003. La logica di Boezio. Milano: Franco Angeli.

Indice: Ringraziamenti 7; Introduzione 9; 1. Linguaggio e significati 13; 2. Predicazione e quantificazione 51; 3. Participatio terminorum 73; 4. La sillogistica categorica 112; 5. La sillogistica ipotetica 143; Appendice: la forma logica degli enunciati assertivi 176; Abbreviazione e bibliografia, 201.

52. ———. 2008. "I commenti di Boezio a "Isagoge", 1, 9-13." Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale no. 19:53-87.

53. ———. 2010. "Prove e sillogismi topici in Boezio." In Les lieux de l'argumentation. Histoire du syllogisme topique d'Aristote à Leibniz, edited by Biard, Joël and Mariani Zini, Fosca, 119-140. Turnhout: Brepols.

54. Pizzani, Ubaldo. 1965. "Studi sulle fonti del De institutione musica di Boezio." Sacris erudiri no. 16:5-164.

55. ———. 1979. "Aureliano di Réôme e la riscoperta del De institutione musica di Boezio." Esercizi: Arte, musica, spettacolo no. 2:7-29.

56. ———. 1981. "Il quadrivium boeziano e i suoi problemi." In Congresso Internazionale di Studi Boeziani (Pavia, 5-8 ottobre 1980): aAtti, edited by Obertello, Luca, 211-226. Roma: Editrice Herder.

57. Pozzi, Lorenzo. 1974. "Il sillogismo ipotetico nella dottrina di Boezio." In Studi di logica antica e medievale, 75-102. Padova: Liviana.

58. Righi, Giulio. 1984. A. M. S. Boezio, «De syllogismo categorico». Studio sul I libro. Milano: Marzorati.

59. Spinosa, Giacinta. 2008. ""Natura": la nascita dell'essenza. Boezio e l'"Atistoteles latinus"." In Natura: XII colloquio internazionale, Roma, 4 - 6 gennaio 2007, edited by Giovannozzi, Delfina and Veneziani, Marco, 83-114. Firenze: Olschki.

60. Tarascio, Emanuela. 2000. "Aspetti del significato di topos da Boezio ad Abelardo." In Le parole per le parole. I logonimi nelle lingue e nel metalinguaggio. Atti del convegno, Napoli, Istituto Universitario Orientale, 18 - 20 dicembre 1997, edited by Vallini, Cristina, 147-164. Roma: Il Calamo.

61. Tozzi, Ileana. 2006. "L'eredità varroniana raccolta da Severino Boezio per il riordino delle Disciplinae liberales." In Colloquia Aquitana II. Boèce: l'homme, le philosophe, le scientifique, son oeuvre, son rayonnement. Vol. I, edited by Humphrey, Illo, 337-362. Paris: Éditions Le Manuscrit.

62. Troncarelli, Fabio. 1981. Tradizioni perdute: la 'Consolatio philosophiae' nell'Alto Medioevo. Padova: Antenore.

63. ———. 1983. "Philosophia: vitam monasticam agere. L’interpretazione cristiana della “Consolatio Philosophiae” tra IX e XII secolo." Quaderni Medievali no. 6:6-25.

64. ———. 1987. Boethiana aetas. Modelli grafici e fortuna manoscritta della 'Consolatio philosophiae' tra 11. e 12. secolo. Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso.

65. ———. 1987. "Boezio nel circolo d’Alcuino: le più antiche glosse carolinge alla "Consolatio Philosophiae"." Recherches Augustiniennes no. 22:223-241.

66. ———. 1988. "La più antica interpretazione della “Consolatio Philosophiae”." Nuova Rivista Storica no. 72:501-550.

67. ———. 2000. "Mentis cogitatio. Un prologo di Boezio in un prologo a Boezio?" In Les Prologues médiévaux, edited by Hamesse, Jacqueline, 39-86. Turnhout: Brepols.

68. ———. 2004. Cogitatio Mentis. L’eredità di Boezio nell’Alto Medioevo. Napoli: D'Auria.

Indice: Sommario: Introduzione – I: L’edizione tardoantica della «Consolatio Philosophiae» ed i suoi riflessi altomedievali - Formato e rigatura - Le intitolazioni - Elementi cassiodoriani - Revisione di testi e continuità intellettuale a Vivarium - Marginalia – II: La fortuna della «Consolatio» tra IX e XII secolo - Boezio associato a Boezio - Magnificus Boethius - La «Consolatio» nella cultura monastica altomedievale - Philosophia probabilis scientia – III: I codici della «Consolatio» tra IX e XII secolo - Censimento dei codici - Elenco dei codici compresi nel censimento - Quadro riassuntivo del censimento – Appendice: Il ms. 271 della Biblioteca Municipale di Cambrai - Analisi codicologica - Analisi paleografica - Attribuzione ed analisi del commento - Il racconto della morte di Boezio - Mentis cogitatio: Un prologo di Boezio in un prologo a Boezio - Il manoscritto - Il prologo nel prologo - Summa fidei -La trasmissione delle Opere teologiche di Boezio - Vat. Reg. Lat. 1424, cc. 95r-96v - Frammenti cassiodoriani nelle note altomedievali alla Consolatio - Indice degli autori - Indice dei manoscritti - Indice dei nomi degli autori e personaggi antichi, dei copisti, dei possessori dei manoscritti - Indice delle opere citate con abbreviazione.

69. ———. 2013. L'ombra di Boezio. Memoria e destino di un filosofo senza dogmi. Napoli: Liguori.

70. Valente, Luisa. 2006. ""Ens, unum, bonum": elementi per una storia dei trascendentali in Boezio e nella tradizione boeziana del XII secolo." In "Ad Ingenii Acuitionem". Studies in honour of Alfonso Maierù, edited by Caroti, Stefano, Imbach, Ruedi, Kaluza, Zénon, Stabile, Giorgio and Sturlese, Loris, 483-546. Louvain-la-Neuve: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales.

71. Zambon, Marco. 2003. "“Aristotelis Platonisque Sententias In Unam Revocare Concordiam”. Il progetto filosofico boeziano e le sue fonti." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 28:17-49.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Boethius: Übersetzungen und Studien in Deutsch

Übersetzungen

1. Boethius. 1988. Die theologischen Traktate. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.

Lateinisch-deutsch.

Übersetzt, eingeleitet und mit Anmerkungen versehen von Michael Elsässer.

I. Wie die Trinität ein Gott und nicht drei Götter ist; II. Ob Vater, Sohn und Heiliger Geist von der Gottheit substantial ausgesagt werden; III. Wie die Substanzen in dem, was sie sind, gut sein können, obwohl sie kein substantial Gutes sein können; IV. Über den katholischen Glauben; V. Gegen Eutyches und Nestorius.

2. ———. 2005. Trost der Philosophie. München: Deutscher taschenbuch Verlag.

Herausgegeben und mit einer Nachwort von Kurt Flasch. Übersetzt von Ernst Gegenschatz und Olof Gigon.

Studien auf Deutsch

1. Bächli, Andreas. 2001. "Bemerkungen zu Substanz und Wissen Gottes in Boethius Philosophiae consolatio." Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch Fur Antike Und Mittelalter no. 6:21-51.

2. Becker-Freyseng, Albrecht. 1938. Die Vorgeschichte des philosophischen Terminus 'contingens'. Die Bedeutungen von 'contingere' bei Boethius und ihr Verhältnis zu den Aristotelischen Möglichkeitsbegriffen. Heidelberg: F. Bilabel

3. Berka, Karel. 1968. "Die Semantik des Boethius." Helikon no. 8:454-459.

4. ———. 1982. "Die Aussagenlogik des Boethius." Philologus no. 126:90-98.

5. Bernard, Wolfgang. 1997. "Zur Begründung der mathematischen Wissenschaften bei Boethius." Antike und Abendland no. 43:63-89.

6. Bernhard, Michael. 1979. Wortkonkordanz zu Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, De institutione musica. München: ayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften.

7. Brandt, Samuel. 1903. "Entstehungszeit und zeitliche Folge der Werke von Boethius." Philologus no. 62:141-154.

8. ———. 1903. "Entstehungszeit und zeitliche Folge der Werke von Boethius (Schluss)." Philologus no. 62:234-275.

9. Brosch, Hermann Josef. 1931. Der Seinsbegriff bei Boethius mit besonderes Berücksichtigung der Beziehung von Sosein und Dasein. Inbsburck: Felizian Rauch.

10. Bühler, Axel, and Kann, Christoph. 2005. "Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius Teil I: Leben - Werk - Logik." In Lateinische Lehrer Europas. Fünfzehn Portraits von Varro Bis Erasmus von Rotterdam, edited by Ax, Wolfram, 165-191. Köln: Böhlau.

11. Craemer-Ruegenberg, Ingrid. 1969. Die Substanzmetaphysik des Boethius in den Opuscula sacra. Köln: Gouder u. Hansen,.

12. Cristescu, Vasile. 2009. "Das Problem der Person bei Boethius und Richard von Sankt Viktor." Journal for Interdisciplinary Research on Religion and Science, no. 4:63-82.

13. Folkerts, Menso, ed. 1970. Boethius’ Geometrie II. Ein mathematisches Lehrbuch des Mittelalters. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner.

14. Fuhrmann, Manfred, and Gruber, Joachim, eds. 1984. Boethius. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

Inhalt: Einleitung 1;

I. Biographie

William Bark: Theodoric vs. Boethius: Vindication and Apology (1943/44) 11; Johannes Mathwich: De Boethi morte (1960) 33; Hermann Tränkle: Philologische Bemerkungen zum Boethiusprozeß (1973) 52; Howard R. Patch: The Beginnings of the Legend of Boethius (1947) 64;

II. Gesamtwerk

Alfred Kappelmacher: Der schriftstellerische Plan des Boethius (1928) 71; Ferdinand Sassen: Boethius - Lehrmeister des Mittelalters (1938) 82;

III. Logische Schriften

Friedrich Solmsen: Boethius and the History of the "Organon" (1944) 127; Joseph Bidez: Boethius und Porphyrios (1923) 133; Lorenzo Minio-Paluello: Boethius als Übersetzer und Kommentator aristotelischer Schriften (1957) 146; James Shiel: Boethius' Commentaries on Aristotle (1958) 155;

IV. Theologische Schriften

Maurice Nédoncelle: Variationen über das Thema „Person“ bei Boethius (1955) 187; William Bark: Boethius' Fourth Tractate, the So-called "De fide catholica" (1946) 232;

V. "Consolatio"

1. Allgemeines und Tendenz

Edward Kennard Rand : On the Composition of Boethius’ "Consolatio Philosophiae" (1904) 249; Ernst Hoffmann: Griechische Philosophie und christliches Dogma bei Boethius (1955) 278; Cornelia Johanna de Vogel: The Problem of Philosophy and Christian Faith in Boethius’ "Consolatio" (1973) 286; Christine Mohrmann: Some Remarks on the Language of Boethius, "Consolatio Philosophiae" (1976) 302; Hermann Tränkle: Ist die "Philosophiae Consolatio" des Boethius zum vorgesehenen Abschluß gelangt? (1977) 311;

2. Erkenntnistheorie und Willensfreiheit

Ernst Gegenschatz: Die Freiheit der Entscheidung in der "Consolatio philosophiae" des Boethius (1958) 323; Günter Ralfs: Die Erkenntnislehre des Boethius (1965) 350;

3. Musik

David S. Chamberlain: Philosophy of Music in the "Consolatio" of Boethius (1970) 377;

4. Dichtung

Luigi Alfonsi: Boethius als Dichter (1954) 407;

5. Nachleben und Rezeption

Pierre Courcelle: Augustinus und Boethius - Über das Nachleben ihrer Meisterwerke (1969) 425;

Peter Dronke: Review of: Pierre Courcelle, La Consolation de la Philosophie dans la tradition littéraire: Antécédents et postérité de Boèce (Paris: Études Augustiniennes 1967) (1969) 436;

Bibliographische Hinweise 445; Register der Personennamen 461-466.

15. Gegenschatz, E. 1979. "Zufall, Friheit und Notwendigkeit - ein philosophiegeschichtlicer Exkurs im Kommentar des Boethus zur Aristotelischen Schrift De Interpretatione." In Erbe, das nicht veraltet, edited by Neukam, Peter, 5-61. Bayer: Schulbuch-Verlag,.

16. Glei, Reinhold F. 2013. "Die merk-würdigen Modi Baroco und Bocardo. Zur Axiomatik der Syllogismen bei Aristoteles, Boethius und den moderni (mit einem Ausblick auf Kant) " Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch Fur Antike Und Mittelalter no. 16:163-184.

17. Gruber, Joachim. 2006. Kommentar zu Boethius de Consolatione Philosophiae. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Second fully revised and extended edition (first edition 1978).

18. ———. 2011. Boethius: eine Einführung. Stuttgart: Hiersemann.

19. Heilmann, Anja. 2007. Boethius’ Musiktheorie und das Quadrivium. Eine Einführung in den neuplatonischen Hintergrund von «De institutione musica». Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

20. Hochadel, Matthias. 1998. "Zur Rezeption der "Institutio musica" von Boethius an der spätmittelalterlichen Universität. Fragen zur Wechselwirkung von 'Musica' und 'Philosophia' im Mittelalter." In Musik und die Geschichte der Philosophie und Naturwissenschaften im Mittelalter, edited by Hentschel, Frank, 187-206. Leiden: Brill.

21. Jansen, Ludger. 1999. "Sind nichtsequentielle mentale Aktivitäten möglich? Zu Kretzmanns und Stumps Verteidigung der Ewigkeitsdefinition des Boethius." In Vorträge des 5. Kongresses der Österreische Gesellschaft der Philosophie. Teil 2: Entwicklungslinien mittelalterlicher Philosophie, edited by Leibold, Gerhard and Löffler, Winfried, 232-245. Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.

22. Lorano, Millán Bravo. 1967. "Die Prägung des Terminus accidenter im Lateinischen durch Boethius." Vivarium no. 5:1-7.

23. Meier-Oeser, Stephan. 1997. Die Spur des Zeichens. Das Zeichen und seine Funktion in der Philosophie des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit. Berlin: Waltyer de Gruyter.

Zur Zeichentheorie bei Augustinus und Boethius, s. 1-41.

24. Pfligersdorffer, Georg. 1953. "Andronikos von Rhodos und die Postprädikamente bei Boethius." Vigiliae Christianae no. 7:98-115.

25. ———. 1953. "Zu Boëthius, De Interpr. Ed. Sec. I, p. 4,4sqq. Meiser nebst Beobachtungen zur Geschichte der Dialektik bei den Römern." Wiener Studien no. 66:131-154.

26. Pietzsch, Gerhard. 1929. Die Klassifikation der Musik von Boethius bis Ugolino von Orvieto. Halle: Max Niemeyer.

Studien zur Geschichte der Musiktheorie im Mittelalter, 1.

27. ———. 1929. Die Musik im Erziehungs- und Bildungsideal des ausgehenden Altertums und frühen Mittelalters. Halle: Max Niemeyer.

Studien zur Geschichte der Musiktheorie im Mittelalter, 2.

28. Schlapkohl, Corinna. 1999. Persona est naturae rationabilis individua substantia. Boethius und die Debatte über der Personbegriff. Marburg: Elwert.

29. Schmidt-Kohl, Volker. 1965. Die neuplatonische Seelenlehre in der Consolatio philosophiae des Boethius. Rusolstadt: Hain.

30. Schrade, Leo. 1932. "Die Stellung der Musik in der Philosophie des Boethius als Grundlage der ontologischen Musikerziehung." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 41:368-400.

31. Schrimpf, Gangolf. 1966. Die Axiomenschrift des Boethius (De hebdomadibus) als philosophisches Lehrbuch des Mittelalters. Leiden: Brill.

32. Seidl, Horst. 1985. "Metaphysische Erörterungen zu Boethius’ Person–Definition und ihrer Auslegung bei Thomas von Aquin." Salzburger Jahrbuch für Philosophie no. 30:7-27.

33. Sirchich von Kis-Sira, Andreas. 2012. Zum Eudämonologischen Konzept des Boethius: Eine Untersuchung Zur "Consolatio Philosophiae". München: Avm, Akademische Verlagsgemeinschaft.

34. Sonderegger, Erwin. 1994. "Boethius und die Tradition." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 48:558 - 571.

35. Striker, Gisela. 1973. "Zur Frage nach der Quellen von Boethius' de hypotheticis syllogismis." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 55:70-75.

36. von Lepel, Felix. 1958. Die antike Musiktheorie im Lichte des Boetius Eine Studie. Berlin-Charlottenburg: Selbstverlag.

37. Wald, Berthold. 1996. "Aristoteles, Boethius und der Begriff der Person im Mittelalter." Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte no. 39:161-179.

38. Wille, Günther. 1967. Musica romana. Die Bedeutung der Musik im Leben der Römer. Amsterdam: P. Schippers N.V.

Boethius als Musiktheoretiker, ss. 656-699.

Index of the pages on "Medieval Philosophy"

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

Boethius' Metaphysics of Being and Goodness

The Neoplatonic Commentators

The Neoplatonic Commentators on Aristotle's Metaphysics

Eriugena and the Neoplatonic Metaphysics in the Early Middle Ages

Eriugena: Dialectic and Ontology in the Periphyseon

The Arabic Rediscovery of Aristotle's Metaphysics

Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages: the Theology of Aristotle

Al-Kindi's Metaphysics: First Philosophy as the Study of God

Al-Farabi on the Scopes of the Aristotelian Metaphysics

Ibn Sina (Avicenna) on the Subject and the Object of Metaphysics

Averroes (Ibn Rushd) on the Divine as the Subject of Metaphysics

The 'Second Beginning' of Metaphysics

Introducing Aristotle in Middle Ages: the Latin Translations of the Metaphysics

Introducing Aristotle in Middle Ages: the Latin translations of the Metaphysics (under construction)

A Neoplatonic Metaphysics: the Liber de Causis (under construction)

The Place of Metaphysics in the Medieval Classification of Sciences (under construction)

Thomas Aquinas Doctrine of the Act of Being (Actus Essendi) (under construction)

Duns Scotus: Univocity of Being and the Subject of Metaphysics (under construction)

Properties of Being: the Medieval Doctrine of the Transcendentals (under construction)

Metaphysics or Ontology? The Debate about the Subject-Matter of First Philosophy

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Eriugena: Dialectic and Ontology in the Periphyseon

The philosophical relevance of John Scottus Eriugena

"Philosophy properly speaking begin in the ninth century with John Scottus Erigena." (p. 42)

G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy 1825-6. Volume III: Medieval and Modern Philosophy, Revised Edition, Translated and edited by George F. Brown, New York: Oxford University Press 2009.

"It is anachronistic to separate philosophy and theology in Eriugena. 'Speculation' would be a less misleading description of his thought than 'teaching'. But we must use words in any case. Although Augustine is the major source of Eriugena's doctrine, its characteristic features do not derive from the teaching of Augustine.

(...)

Platonism and Neoplatonism, that is to say the revival of Platonism especially by Plotinus in the third century A.D., were, on the other hand, freely embraced by the Eastern Fathers, by those precisely from whom Eriugena derived his distinctive thought, St Gregory Nazianzen, the brothers Saints Basil and Gregory of Nyssa and the great Origen. Here Eriugena found Christian authority for his negative theology ('one knows God best by not knowing Him'), for creation as being co-eternal with God, and for the final restoration of all things in the end. Curiously enough, as I have indicated elsewhere, Eriugena derives some Greek ideas from St Ambrose of Milan - but in fact this fits in with the new (but not, of course, on that account necessarily correct) view of St Ambrose presented by a number of our contemporaries and notably Courcelle.

The corpus of Eriugena's work is considerable commentaries, translations and original works, all making up one ponderous volume (number 122) of Migne's Patrologia Latina. The centerpiece of his achievement is the Division of Nature, written about 867, running to five books and a quarter of a million words. It deals ostensibly with the Creator, the first or primordial Causes, the created universe, and finally God as End. It considers five different and unrelated modes of being: things may be said to be according as we perceive them, according to their place in a hierarchy, according as they become actualized, according to the faculty by which they are perceived (sense or intellect for example), and fifthly according to their realization of God's image. These are truly unrelated, and illustrate the easy overlapping of what we optimistically call philosophy and theology. In the system of Eriugena the most important of these modes of being is the second, i.e. that according to a thing's place in a hierarchy.

Eriugena and his Greek predecessors, pagan and Christian, are essentially concerned with the greatest problem - or perhaps the second greatest problem - of all: assuming a Creator, how can He create? If He begins to create, He changes, is completed and has been imperfect - which imperfect - which is unacceptable. If He always has been creating, His creatures are as eternal and as infinite as Himself: they are Himself - which is pantheism. The contrast between Augustine and Eriugena is nowhere greater or more visible than in this. Augustine wrote the sixth to the tenth books of his imposing work, the City of God, on the problem of how, taking account of Neoplatonism, the creature can be united with the Creator, which is another version of the problem just mentioned. Characteristically, however practically, he looks at the matter from the point of view of man, the creature. He differs from the Neoplatonist Porphyry by accepting Christ as the great Mediator between God and man, but follows him in much consideration of mediation in general and a hierarchy of mediating demons, angels and heroes as well. It is only fair to say that he does not always take so practical a view of the problem. But how different, how more Plotinian, is Eriugena, who fixes his gaze on the Creator, scrutinizing His revelations of Himself, his 'theophanies' or 'appearances' as Eriugena calls them, for any clue; and searches the ineffable, incomprehensible and inaccessible clarity of the divine goodness for understanding, at least of what God is not. Almost the only images employed are air and light and fire, and these are used in contexts suggesting rarefaction and incandescence. The whole of the Division of Nature is essentially an exercise in trying to follow the descent, or possibility of descent, of creatures from the One, and their return to the One up the hierarchy of being. The return of all is the conversion of bodies to souls, of souls to causes (such as Goodness), and of causes to God.

One may ask if, after all, Eriugena is not a pantheist? Certainly he himself was aware that he might be thought so, but denied explicitly that he was. 'God', he says, 'is all in all. All things that are in God, even are God, are eternal.' 'We should not understand God', he writes, 'and the creatures as two things removed from one another, but as one and the same thing. For the creature subsists in God, and God is created in the creature in a wonderful and ineffable way, making himself manifest, invisible making himself visible.' But the divine nature, he finally insists, because it is above being, is different from what it create within itself.

Eriugena circles around the object of his thought insistently, patiently, lovingly. He can sustain prolonged concentration on the Creator, on that darkness, as he calls it, of incomprehensible and inaccessible light. One thinks of the nearly contemporary work of the great Irish metal-workers, sculptors and especially illuminators of manuscripts; the abstraction, the subtlety, the incredible detail. In the end Eriugena knows only that God is, not at all what He is. Of the creature he chooses to investigate for the most part only how he can be - for he refuses, under one aspect, to deny that the Creator and the creature are one thing. He cannot have truck with lower things. One might as well ask for practical considerations Teilhard de Chardin. He is sublime, he is subtle, but in a curious way his very openness, his lack of word-bound assertion may very well help us in our evolutionary age to approach an understanding of reality. Certainly he ennobles man, but still leaves him less than God.

These few words have been intended to convey something of Eriugena's characteristic thought. Circumstances have worked against his recognition in the area of the world in which he lived and wrote - the Latin world dominated by Augustine and Aquinas Even so he is the greatest philosopher in the ages that separate these two. Copleston writes of his system as 'standing out like a lofty rock in the midst of a plain'. Another of his biographers has described him as 'one of the greatest metaphysicians of all time'. Be that as it may, he is certainly an outstanding figure in the history of thought, a favourite of the mystics and one who may provide for the future a Christian synthesis, at once purified of anthropomorphism and capable of bringing ideas of evolution, the continuum and the relative to the focus of Infinite Being: this after all is what Eriugena attempts to do." (pp. XI-XIII)

From: John J. O'Meara, Introduction to: John J. O'Meara and Ludwig Bieler (eds.), The Mind of Eriugena, Dublin: Irish University Press 1973.

"The Western philosophical tradition has been characterised, in a somewhat misleading and over generalised manner, as centring on the concept of being from the time of the earliest Greek thinkers. Eriugena, inspired by Dionysius, departs from this tradition and regards non-being as equally as important as being in the study of the nature of reality as a whole. For Eriugena ontology is not the most fundamental or universal discipline; in fact, he develops a negative dialectic which counterbalances ontological affirmations and constructions with a radical meontology, giving the most detailed analysis of non-being since Plato's Sophist and Parmenides.

But Eriugena goes farther and anticipates many of the features of the modernist turn in philosophy begun by Descartes (1596-1650). Eriugena begins with a typical Carolingian psychology but is stimulated by Saint Augustine to develop an understanding of the cogito and a deep appreciation of inwardness, which was enriched by his encounter with the anthropology of the Greeks, especially Gregory of Nyssa. He does not stop there, however, but goes on to articulate, in his own terms, what might be called a philosophy of subjectivity. Eriugena sees the human subject as essentially mind. Everything is a product of mind -- material reality, spatiotemporal existence, the body itself. In this sense, Eriugena is a thoroughgoing idealist. Matter is a commingling of incorporeal qualities which the mind mistakenly takes to be corporeal; spatiotemporal reality is a consequence of the seduction of the mind by the senses, which is the true Fall of Adam; the body itself is an externalisation of the secret desires of the mind. But more than that, the true being of all things is their being in the mind. Eriugena takes this to be a consequence of the scriptural revelation that the human mind is an image of the divine mind, and that the divine mind contains in itself the ideal exemplars of all things.

Eriugena inserts this radical view of the human mind and of human nature into his account of the cosmos, his fourfold division of nature. The whole of nature, which includes God, proceeds or externalises itself in its multifarious forms through the operation of the human mind, which is pursuing its own course of intellectual development or enlightenment. In the four divisions of nature, we have not only a typical mediaeval cosmology of a hierarchy of being but also a dynamic process of subjectivity becoming objective, of the infinite becoming finite, the drama of God's and of human self-externalisation in the world, which anticipates the idealist systems of Schelling and Hegel." (Preface, pp. XIII-XIV)

(...)

How are we to interpret Eriugena's philosophy?

He made use of the logical and dialectical material available to the ninth century in his metaphysical discussions of the nature of essence, substance, accident, and the categories, but he stands above his contemporaries in offering a unique metaphysical system -- the four divisions of nature -- which introduced to the West not only a new cosmology but also the first important meontology, or study of non-being -- me on (με ον)." (p. 81)

From: Dermot Moran, The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena. A Study of Idealism in the Middle Ages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1989.

"While one may well attempt to write about the works of Eriugena, one can hardly as yet essay with any confidence to describe his life, so much in connection with him is legend or slender hypothesis. We can say that he was born in Ireland around the first quarter of the ninth century, and that he lived and worked for most of the third quarter of that century at the court of Charles the Bald in the general area of Laon, north-east of Paris. He would appear to have been a teacher who became a philosopher.

His greatest work, written in Latin, was the Periphyseon, known also as De divisione naturae, a comprehensive investigation into all things that are and all things that are not. Here the philosophical doctrines of Augustine in his understanding of Revelation (already significantly, if not consistently, indebted to Neoplatonism) are as far as possible brought into relation with the more direct and prevailing Neoplatonism of the Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, and the Greek Fathers. The result is a synthesis of what we might now call philosophy and theology where the influence of the Neoplatonists dominates. To theologians he is too philosophical; to philosophers, too theological. But as long as Plato is counted a philosopher, then Eriugena must be reckoned a philosopher too. His message is essentially optimistic, and it is conveyed in language that is subtle, often warm, and always distinguished.

Eriugena had more influence in western Christendom than is generally recognized, even if the spirit of the times, guilt by association, and finally a flood of Aristotelianism told against him. The mystics listened carefully to what he had to pass on from the Pseudo-Dionysius, and nineteenth-century German Idealists discovered in him a spirit and a thinking akin to their own." (Preface, p. VII)

From: John J. O'Meara, Eriugena, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1988.

The name of the philosopher

"The subject of this study was named by Archbishop Ussher in his Veterum epistolarum hibernicarum sylloge (Dublin, 1632) 'Scotus Erigena'. This is a pleonasm since, in the lifetime of the man in question and up to the eleventh or twelfth century, Scotus or Scottus meant 'Irish' and Erigena or Eriugena (1) meant 'of Irish birth'. Since he called himself Johannes, that is, John, the name John Scotus Erigena became fairly common after Ussher's time. This had the grave inconvenience of causing confusion between our Irish philosopher of the ninth century and John Duns Scotus, the better-known Scottish (in the present meaning of that term) Franciscan philosopher of the thirteenth.

Scholars nowadays, to avoid both pleonasm and confusion, have a tendency to call him Eriugena. This is the name that appears at the head of his translation of Dionysius the Areopagite: 'incipiunt libri sancti Dionysii Areopagitae, quos Ioannes Eriugena transtulit de graeco in latinum': 'Here begin the books of the holy Dionysius Areopagiticus which John Eriugena translated from Greek into Latin.' (2) Eriugena, not Erigena, is attested by the oldest manuscripts of this work. (3) But he was known to his contemporaries and in later times as Johannes Scottus, (4) where 'Scottus' refers to his origins rather than being used as a surname. He refers to himself usually and is also referred to by some of his contemporaries as simply Johannes. (5) We shall call him Eriugena." (p. 1)

Notes

(1) Formed on the model of Graiugena (Virgil, Aeneid, 3. 550), 'of Grecian birth'.

(2) Patrologiae Latinae 122, 1035 A-6 A.

(3) See M. Cappuyns, Jean Scot Érigène sa vie, son œuvre, sa pensée. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer 1933 p. 5 n. 10.

(4) Ibid. 3. 'Scotus' is also used.

(5) Ibid. p. 5 and n. 4.

From: John J. O'Meara, Eriugena, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.

The title of his main work

I

"In the development of Eriugena's De divisione naturae or Periphyseon (if you will allow me to introduce the alternative title right away) it is possible to distinguish a series of stages:

1. An essay in dialectic, possibly abandoned before completion, concerning the division of the genus Nature (defined as "all things that are and all things that are not") into four species: the Nature that creates but is not created, the nature that is created and creates, the nature that is created but does not create, and the Nature that neither is created nor creates. From this the work as we now have it derives its generally accepted title, De divisions naturae; and for convenience I shall refer to this primitive version as De divisione naturae A. Here Eriugena's sources may all have been Latin: chiefly, St. Augustine, Boethius, and Martianus Capella.

2. The next stage, the first of which there is MS evidence, already contains the substance of the full Periphyseon, but in a somewhat shorter form. It is found in the earliest extant MS, Rheims 875, which I shall call R. Whatever may have been the case with the De divisione naturae A, we have here already the great work running to five books(1), and already, from the end of Book I (which may not differ greatly from the primitive version) dependence on Greek sources predominates. It bears (or seems to bear) the Greek title περὶ φύσεως μερισμοῦ, and I shall refer to it as De divisions naturae B. But although the Four Divisions of Nature still remain as a framework for the whole, this scheme is of secondary importance to the Platonic notion of the Descent of the Soul from God and her Return, seen through the eyes of St. Gregory of Nyssa, the pseudo-Dionysius and St. Maximus the Confessor.

3. The next stage first appears on the margins of R in the form of extensive enlargements to the text which were incorporated in a copy perhaps made at Rheims, of which the first part (containing Books I—III) survives as MS Bamberg Ph. 2/1, which I shall call B.

4. Finally, similar marginalia, and in the same hand as the principal ones of R, but fewer, shorter, and less important, were added to B, and thus constitute a fourth stage in the development of the text. These in turn were incorporated, together with a small quantity of additional matter (none of which is undeniably authentic, while some of it is clearly unacceptable), in a group of Paris MSS which derive from B. They may be referred to collectively as P. In B and P the title is περὶ φύσεων.

II

All these MSS are of the 9th century, and could have been written during the author's life-time. Fifty years ago Traube made the interesting suggestion(2) that the hand responsible for most of the marginal enlargements in R and all in B was Eriugena's own. It cannot be said that this has been finally established, but it seems very likely. But whose-ever the hand that wrote them there can be little doubt that the matter is Eriugena's, even when, in R, the hand is not the "Eriugena" hand. Although they do not as a rule affect the main argument, being for the most part qualifications of assertions made in the test, or similes to illustrate the meaning, all bear the stamp of authority. To say that they were not by Eriugena would be to make the Periphyseon a work of collaboration.

III

It follows that everything in the "Eriugena" hand in B is authoritative. This will include not only the enlargements similar to those of R, but the very full set of lemmata, which here appear for the first time, and the new Greek title: περὶ φύσεων. Clearly, then, this was the title by which the author wished his work, in its final form, to be known. But the evidence does not rest on this one MS: he himself refers to his work by this name elsewhere; by this name it was known to his friends and his enemies, and generally, with a single vacillating exception, throughout the middle ages; and under this name it was eventually condemned.

In his Commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy Eriugena refers three times to this work, each time as περὶ φύσεων.(3) On a blank leaf of a MS of his translation of the Ambigua of St. Maximus, a 9th century hand has written out a list of the books belonging to Wulfad, the friend to whom he dedicated the Periphyseon. The list contains, among other works of Eriugena, the item: Libri perifision. I. I.(4)

(...)

Yet the fact remains that the oldest extant MS is headedπερὶ φύσεως μερισμοῦ, and the work is generally known today as De divisions naturae. There can, of course, be no doubt that Eriugena made use of that title — at one time: but it belongs to the earlier stages of the development of the text, and is perhaps an accidental survival from the earliest — that which I have called De divisione naturae A.

(...)

Gale chose the title De divisions naturae for his edition; reasonably enough, for he found this given as the Latin equivalent for peri fiseon merismou at the beginning of his MS. In doing so he established a precedent for his successors(5), and so it has come about that the title which Eriugena may have first adopted but certainly discarded subsequently, and which, after R, is only found in MSS of secondary importance (and even these do not speak with a certain voice) has been universally substituted for that which is found in MSS of the highest authority, and by which the work was known to all, including the, author himself, from the 9th to the 12th century.

IV

De divisione naturae is not only less well authenticated, it is less appropriate to the text in its developed from, in which the theme of the "division of nature" is largely overshadowed by speculations which reach beyond it. Indeed, a reading of Book I, where much of the primitive stage of the text seems to survive, suggests that the word divisio is used in the technical sense of substantial division of genus into species and that de divisione naturae A was a treatise on dialectic. In its final stage, however, it is very much more than this, comprising a whole philosophical system which embraces cosmology, metaphysics and theology. One can well understand why Eriugena seized the opportunity afforded by the re-copying of the text (MS B) to change its title, and why the name he chose should be of the kind traditionally given to books in which philosophical systems were expounded.(5)

Notes

(1) R itself is incomplete, ending in the middle of Book IV, but there are marginal references to a fifth book, and this book is found in MSS copied from R.

(2) Paläographische Forschungen V. Autographa des Johannes Scottus, aus dem Nachlass herausgegeben von E. K. Rand, Abhandlungen der kgl. Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse 26, I, München 1912.

(3) II 6 (PL 122, 168A); IV 4 (MS Douai 202f. 37 v.); H. Dondaine, "Les Expositiones super ierarchiam celestem" de Jean Scot Erigène, Archives d'Histoire doctrinale et littéraire de Moyen-âge 18, 1950-1951; XI 2 (PL 122, 230 B).

(4) Paris Mazarine 561, f. 219.

(5) περὶ φύσεων, de rerum natura: cf. the works attributed to Heracleitus (Diog. Laert. IX 5, Simpl., Phys. CLI 20 sq.), Xenophanes, and Diogenes of Apollonias; and the de rerum natura of Lucretius. See also Plato Phaedo 90 A 7, and Burnet, Early Greek Philosophers, ed. 3, London 1920, 10 n. 2; 115 n. 5.

From: I. P. Sheldon-Williams, "The Title of Eriugena's Periphyseon", Studia Patristica 3, 1961, pp. 297-302 [Sheldon-Williams thesis that Periphyseon Book One had emerged from an earlier ‘essay in dialectic’ is undemonstrated and had no followers]

The concept of Natura in the Periphyseon

"Introduction: Definition of φύσις-Natura (441A 1-441B 4).

Chapter I: περὶ φύσεως μερισμοῦ (441B 5-450B 2).

1. The four species of Nature (441B 5-10).

2. Classification of the species into pairs of opposites (441B 10-442A 12).

3. The need to discuss each species separately (442A 12-B 9).

4. Amplification of the Introduction, in which Nature was defined as comprising that which is and that which is not. This can be understood-in five different ways (442B 10-446A 3):

(i) That which is sensible or comprehensible is: that which is insensible or incomprehensible is not (443A 9-D 3).

(ii) In a hierarchy, if the superior order is said to be, the lower is said not to be, and vice versa (443D 4-444C 12).

(iii) The manifested effect is: the unmanifested cause is not (444C 13-445B 10).

(iv) That which is is: that which becomes and passes away is not (445B 11-C 2).

(v) Man in a state of grace is: man who has fallen from grace is not (445C 3-446A 3).

5. An objection to 4 (i): angels contemplate the primordial causes, and men may contemplate God in the Beatific Vision; therefore that which by this definition is not is yet comprehensible. Answer: these comprehend not the nature of what they contemplate, but theophanies of it (446A 3-451C 10). The section includes a digression on theophanies (449A 1-450B 2).

Chapter II: De natura creante et non creata (451C 11-462D 8).

1. God is φύσις and therefore non-creatus; and is the First Cause and therefore creans (451C 11-452A 7).

2. If God is said to be created, this is because He pervades all things and thus becomes manifest in all things, and so comes to being in them. If He did not they would have no being at all (452A 8-455A 6).

3. Therefore, although we cannot know God, we know three things about Him:

(i) that He exists, from the fact that His creatures exist; (ii) that He is wise, from the fact that they are rationally ordered; (iii) that He lives, from the fact that they are in constant motion. These three things are substantial to Him, and therefore we know that He is a Trinity consisting of Being, Wisdom, and Life, i.e. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (455A 6-D 3). 4. How the One God can be Three. His Unity does not exclude multiplicity, and therefore contains within itself the Unbegotten Substance, the Begotten Substance, the Proceeding Substance. The relation of the first to the second is the Father; that of the second to the first is the Son; that of the third to the first and second is the Holy Spirit (455D 3-457D 5).

5. There are two theologies: the Apophatic, which declares that nothing of God's creation can be predicated of Him literally; and the Cataphatic, which declares that all things can be predicated of Him metaphorically. The two are reconciled by adding to every predicate the prefix 'More-than-' (457D 6-462D 8).

Appendix (462D 8-524B 12).

(This appendix applies the principle of the two theologies to each of the ten Categories. It provides the opportunity for a little treatise on the Categories for which an appropriate title would be that which Hugh of St. Victor gave to the whole Book:(1) On the Ten Categories in relation to God. The new topic is really broached at 457D 6, where Alumnus breaks into the discussion on the Trinity with the irrelevant words: 'Nosse tamen aperte et breuiter per to uelim utrum omnes categoriae, cum sint numero decem, de summa diuinae bonitatis . . . essentia . . . possint praedicari.' [*] Nutritor insists on dealing with the two theologies first, and then deals with Alumnus' question at 462D 8. Within this appendix there is a long digression which deals with the first eight Categories in greater detail. So as not to obscure the structure of the dialogue, this digression will be analysed separately at the end.)

1. Introduction (462D 8-464A 10).

2. The Ten Categories (464A 10-524B 11)

(i) essentia (464A 10-13).

(ii) quantitas (464A 13-B 15).

(iii) qualitas (464B 15-C 7).

(iv) relatio (464C 8-465C 6).

(v) situs (465C 7-466A 1).

(vi) habitus (466A 2-468B 12).

(vii and viii) locus, tempus (468B 13-469A 4).

(Here follows the digression on the first eight Categories, 469A 4-504A 4.)

(ix and x) agere, pati (504A 5-524B 11).

Conclusion of Book I (524B 11-12).

Treatise on the First Eight Categories (469A 4-504A 4).

1. Introduction: Alumnus remarks that the nature of the Categories and their application to God have been sufficiently covered (although in fact only eight Categories have so far been dealt with) (469A 4-9).

2. The reduction of the ten Categories to the two higher Categories of status and motus, and of these to the universal genus, φύσις (469A I0-B I 1).

3. Doubts about habitus and relatio. They have been allocated to motus, but seem to be in status. Answer: That which subsists in another subject is in motion; habitus and relatio subsist in another subject; therefore they are in motion (469B 12-470B 3).

4. But this argument would equally apply to locus, quantitas, and situs, which have been allocated to status. Answer: locus, quantitas, and situs are not in the subject, but rather each is a subject in which other things are. Therefore they are at rest (470B 5-D 3).

5. But locus, quantitas, and situs s are accidents of essentia, and therefore cannot be self-sufficient subjects. Answer: there are two kinds of accidents, περισχαί and συμβάματα. The former enclose the subject and are its limits, and therefore are at rest. Locus, quantitas, and situ are always this kind of accident, and therefore at rest (470D 3-472B 10).

6. In the course of this discussion the Categories have been shown to be so closely interrelated that Alumnus is compelled to ask for their properties to be clearly distinguished (472B 11-C 3).

7. The properties of the Categories (472C 4-504A 4).

(i) essentia (472C 4-15).

(ii) quantitas (472C 15-D 9).

(iii) qualitas (472B 9-473B 1).

(iv) relatio (473B 2-C 8).

(v) situs (473C 9-474A 5)-

(vi) habitus (474A 6-B 5).

(vii and viii) locus, tempus (474B 6-504A 4). With this long section on locus and tempus the interpolated treatise comes to an end, for the passage on agere and pati which follows is concerned with the question whether these two Categories may be predicated of God, and therefore belongs to the main body of the Appendix." (pp. 28-22)

Notes

(1) Eruditionis didascalicon, iii, PL clxxvi. 765 De decem categoriis in Deum; cf. Cappuyns, [Jean Scot Érigène sa vie, son œuvre, sa pensée. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer 1933] p. 71, n. 2.

[*] But I should like to hear from you, clearly and succinctly, whether all the categories, - for they are ten in number - can truly and properly be predicated of the supreme One essence.

From: I. P. Sheldon-Williams, Introduction to Books I-III, in: Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae Periphyseon (De Diuisione Naturae). Liber Primus, Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies 1968.

The four division of Natura in the Periphyseon

The Periphyseon begins by setting out a fourfold division of universal nature (...) into: 1) that which is not created and creates, 2) that which is created and creates, 3) that which is created and does not create, and 4) that which is not created and does not create. God, as creator, constitutes 1); the primordial causes -- which are both like Platonic Ideas and the Stoic seminal reasons Eriugena learnt about in Augustine's Literal Commentary on Genesis -- make up 2); 3) is the created world of men, animals and things and 4), like 1), is identified with God, but God as the Final Cause to which all things return. The underlying course of universal history, seen as the progress from 1) to 4), is described in the five books of the work, which takes the form of a dialogue between master and pupil. Book I is mainly devoted to showing that God does not belong to any of Aristotle's ten categories. Drawing on pseudo-Dionysius' negative theology, Eriugena argues that God does not even belong to the first category, that of ousia (substance or essence) as Augustine had held. The remaining four books are structured round an exegesis of the story of creation and fall in Genesis, in which Eriugena discovers not only an account of divisions 2) and 3) but also that of the return of all things at the end of time to the uncreated and creating God of 4)." (pp. 120-121)"

From: John Marenbon, "Introduction" to: John Scottus Eriugena and Anselm of Canterbury, by Stephen Gersh, in: J. Marenbon (ed.), Medieval Philosophy, Routledge History of Philosophy, Vol. II, Chapter 6, New York: Routledge 1998.

The first book of the Periphyseon

"Introduction: Definition of φύσις-Natura (441A 1-441B 4).

Chapter I: Περί φύσεως µερισµού (441B 5-450B 2).

1. The four species of Nature (441B 5-10).

2. Classification of the species into pairs of opposites (441B 10-442A 12).

3. The need to discuss each species separately (442A 12-B 9).

4. Amplification of the Introduction, in which Nature was defined as comprising that which is and that which is not. This can be understood-in five different ways (442B 10-446A 3):

(i) That which is sensible or comprehensible is: that which is insensible or incomprehensible is not (443A 9-D 3).

(ii) In a hierarchy, if the superior order is said to be, the lower is said not to be, and vice versa (443D 4-444C 12).

(iii) The manifested effect is: the unmanifested cause is not (444C 13-445B 10).

(iv) That which is is: that which becomes and passes away is not (445B 11-C 2).

(v) Man in a state of grace is: man who has fallen from grace is not (445C 3-446A 3).

5. An objection to 4 (i): angels contemplate the primordial causes, and men may contemplate God in the Beatific Vision; therefore that which by this definition is not is yet comprehensible. Answer: these comprehend not the nature of what they contemplate, but theophanies of it (446A 3-451C 10). The section includes a digression on theophanies (449A 1-450B 2).

Chapter II: De natura creante et non creata (451C 11-462D 8).1

1. God is φύσις and therefore non-creatus; and is the First Cause and therefore creans (451C 11-452A 7).

2. If God is said to be created, this is because He pervades all things and thus becomes manifest in all things, and so comes to being in them. If He did not they would have no being at all (452A 8-455A 6).

3. Therefore, although we cannot know God, we know three things about Him:

(i) that He exists, from the fact that His creatures exist;

(ii) that He is wise, from the fact that they are rationally ordered;

(iii) that He lives, from the fact that they are in constant motion. These three things are substantial to Him, and therefore we know that He is a Trinity consisting of Being, Wisdom, and Life, i.e. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (455A 6-D 3).

4. How the One God can be Three. His Unity does not exclude multiplicity, and therefore contains within itself the Unbegotten Substance, the Begotten Substance, the Proceeding Substance. The relation of the first to the second is the Father; that of the second to the first is the Son; that of the third to the first and second is the Holy Spirit (455D 3-457D 5).

5. There are two theologies: the Apophatic, which declares that nothing of God's creation can be predicated of Him literally; and the Cataphatic, which declares that all things can be predicated of Him metaphorically. The two are reconciled by adding to every predicate the prefix 'More-than-' (457D 6-462D 8).

Appendix (462D 8-524B 12).

(This appendix applies the principle of the two theologies to each of the ten Categories. It provides the opportunity for a little treatise on the Categories for which an appropriate title would be that which Hugh of St. Victor gave to the whole Book:(1) On the Ten Categories in relation to God. The new topic is really broached at 457D 6, where Alumnus breaks into the discussion on the Trinity with the irrelevant words: 'Nosse tamen aperte et breuiter per to uelim utrum omnes categoriae, cum sint numero decem, de summa diuinae bonitatis . . . essentia . . . possint praedicari.' [*] Nutritor insists on dealing with the two theologies first, and then deals with Alumnus' question at 462D 8. Within this appendix there is a long digression which deals with the first eight Categories in greater detail. So as not to obscure the structure of the dialogue, this digression will be analysed separately at the end.)

1. Introduction (462D 8-464A 10).

2. The Ten Categories (464A 10-524B 11)

(i) essentia (464A 10-13).

(ii) quantitas (464A 13-B 15).

(iii) qualitas (464B 15-C 7).

(iv) relatio (464C 8-465C 6).

(v) situs (465C 7-466A 1).

(vi) habitus (466A 2-468B 12).

(vii and viii) locus, tempus (468B 13-469A 4).

(Here follows the digression on the first eight Categories, 469A 4-504A 4.)

(ix and x) agere, pati (504A 5-524B 11).

Conclusion of Book I (524B 11-12).

Treatise on the First Eight Categories (469A 4-504A 4).

1. Introduction: Alumnus remarks that the nature of the Categories and their application to God have been sufficiently covered (although in fact only eight Categories have so far been dealt with) (469A 4-9).

2. The reduction of the ten Categories to the two higher Categories of status and motus, and of these to the universal genus, τὸ πᾶν (469A I0-B I 1).

3. Doubts about habitus and relatio. They have been allocated to motus, but seem to be in status. Answer: That which subsists in another subject is in motion; habitus and relatio subsist in another subject; therefore they are in motion (469B 12-470B 3).

4. But this argument would equally apply to locus, quantitas, and situs, which have been allocated to status. Answer: locus, quantitas, and situs are not in the subject, but rather each is a subject in which other things are. Therefore they are at rest (470B 5-D 3).

5. But locus, quantitas, and situs s are accidents of essentia, and therefore cannot be self-sufficient subjects. Answer: there are two kinds of accidents, περισχαί and συμβάματα. The former enclose the subject and are its limits, and therefore are at rest. situ are always this kind of accident, and therefore at rest (470D 3-472B 10).

6. In the course of this discussion the Categories have been shown to be so closely interrelated that Alumnus is compelled to ask for their properties to be clearly distinguished (472B 11-C 3).

7. The properties of the Categories (472C 4-504A 4).

(i) essentia (472C 4-15).

(ii) quantitas (472C 15-D 9).

(iii) qualitas (472B 9-473B 1).

(iv) relatio (473B 2-C 8).

(v) situs (473C 9-474A 5).

(vi) habitus (474A 6-B 5).

(vii and viii) locus, tempus (474B 6-504A 4).

With this long section on locus and tempus the interpolated treatise comes to an end, for the passage on agere and pati which follows is concerned with the question whether these two Categories may be predicated of God, and therefore belongs to the main body of the Appendix.

Notes

(1) Eruditionis didascalicon, iii, PL clxxvi. 765 De decem categoriis in Deum; cf. Cappuyns, [Jean Scot Érigène sa vie, son œuvre, sa pensée. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer 1933] p. 71, n. 2.

[*] But I should like to hear from you, clearly and succinctly, whether all the categories, - for they are ten in number - can truly and properly be predicated of the supreme One essence.

From: I. P. Sheldon-Williams, Introduction to Books I-III, in: Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae Periphyseon (De Diuisione Naturae). Liber Primus, Dublin, The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968, pp. 28-32.

Ontology and Semiotics in the Periphyseon

"In some respects, Western medieval philosophy can be viewed as beginning with the brilliant and controversial ninth-century thinker John Scottus Eriugena. (1) Marenbon values him for his ability to reason abstractly yet criticizes his tendency to system building. However, it is Eriugena's notion of structure which perhaps makes him closer to modern writers than to other medieval ones.

Few would deny that a particular concept of 'structure' is one of the intellectual paradigms of our era. This involves a priority of relation to related terms, such relations being either of opposite to opposite where one opposite exists through or is understood through the other, or else of whole to part where the whole exists through or is understood through the part, or vice versa. (...) Although avoiding the term 'structure' itself, Eriugena builds his metaphysical system with identical components. Priority of relation is underlined by his discussion of the Aristotelian categorical doctrine in Periphyseon I where the category of 'relation' (relatio, ad aliquid) or of 'condition' (habitus) is found to be present in all the other categories. (2) Contrast of opposite with opposite is a recurrent theme of Eriugena's writing, as instanced by the negative and affirmative predicates applied to God (I. 458A-462D, II. 599B-600A, III. 684D-685A, etc.) and the five dichotomies constituting nature (II. 529C-545B); contrast of whole with parts is only slightly less frequent, an instance being God's status with regard to created things of which man's is the microcosmic reflection (IV. 759A-B. Cf. II. 523D-524D). Strict relatedness is clearly the writer's underlying assumption in such cases, since each binary term is said to be dependent ontologically and epistemologically on its counterpart (V. 953C-954A, V. 965A-B).

Eriugena exploits the notion of structure in developing his own variant of the classical Platonic Theory of Forms. The expression of this doctrine, acquired through intermediary Greek and Latin patristic sources, combines ontological and semiotic criteria.

From the ontological viewpoint, (3) there exists a set of transcendent i.e. atemporal and non-spatial principles. These are termed 'reasons' (rationes) in Latin, and 'Ideas' (ideai), 'prototypes' (prototypa), 'pre- destinations' (proorismata), or 'divine volitions' (theia thelêmata) in Greek. (4) They possess a metaphysically intermediate status since they depend upon a prior cause: God (the technical term for such dependence being 'participation' (participatio), while subsequent terms, created objects, depend on them. (5) According to Eriugenian textual exegesis, when the Bible describes God as making heaven and earth 'in the beginning', it means that the first principle establishes the reasons or Ideas of intellectual or sensible creatures within its Word. (6) Examples of the transcendent principles are Goodness, Being, Life, Wisdom, Truth, Intellect, Reason, Power, Justice, Salvation, Magnitude, Omnipotence, Eternity, and Peace (II. 616C-617A).

From the semiotic viewpoint, (7) Eriugena proposes an analysis of the term 'nature' (natura) using a combination of traditional logical principles like the square of opposition (8) and the division of genus into species versus the partition of whole into parts. (9) Within nature, four 'differences' (differentiae) are posited: creating (A), not created (D), created (B), and not creating (C), these combining to form four 'species' (species): creating and not created (1), both created and creating (2), created and not creating (3), and neither creating nor created (4). (10) The relations between 1 and 3 and between 2 and 4 are described as 'opposition' (oppositio), those between A2 and Al, between B3 and B2, between C3 and C4, and between D4 and D1 as 'similarity' (similitudo), and those between B2 and D1, between C3 and A2, between B3 and D4, and between C4 and Al as 'dissimilarity' (dissimilitudo) (I. 441A-442A, II. 523D-528B). This semiotic analysis is applied to metaphysics when species 1 is identified with God as the beginning of the cosmic process, species 2 with the reasons or Ideas, species 3 with the effects of the reasons or Ideas, and species 4 with God as end of the cosmic process (11)." (pp. 125-126, some notes omitted).

Notes

(1) The most useful books providing a general introduction to Eriugena's life and works are Cappuyns [1933] and Moran [1988]. See O'Meara and Bieler [1973], Allard [1986], Beierwaltes [1987] and [1990], Jeauneau [1987], for Essays on specific aspects of his thought. [for the complete references see the Annotated bibliography]

(2) Eriugena, Periphyseon I. 466A-467C. References to Eriugena's work give the column numbers of Floss's edition [6.1] which are reproduced in the modern editions and translations and so provide a standard form of reference. Because of his interpretation of pseudo-Augustine: The Ten Categories, Eriugena allows the separate Aristotelian categories of relation and condition to coalesce. On Eriugena's theory see Flasch [1971].

(3) In discussing both Eriugena's and Anselm's notions of structure, I shall distinguish 'ontological' and 'semiotic' components. By the former is meant any aspects of the metaphysical system stated in the texts, by the latter those aspects corresponding to elements in the notion of structure described earlier. Of course, neither Eriugena nor Anselm could have made such a distinction.

(4) II. 529A--C. Elsewhere, Eriugena calls these 'primordial causes' (causae primordiales). See III. 622Bff

(5) II. 616B. 'And they are said to be the principles of all things since all things whatsoever that are sensed or understood either in the visible or invisible creation subsist by participation in them, while they themselves are participations in the one cause of all things: that is, the most high and holy Trinity'. Cf. III. 630A--C, III. 644A--B, III. 646B--C, III. 682B--C.

(6) II. 546A--B. 'But on considering the interpretations of many exegetes, nothing strikes me as more probable or likely than that in the aforesaid words of Holy Scripture -- that is, within the meaning of "heaven" and "earth" -- we should understand the primordial causes of the entire creature which the Father had created before the foundation of all other things in his only begotten Son who is designated by the term "beginning", and that by the word "heaven" we should hold the primal causes of intelligible things and celestial essences to have been signified, but by the word "earth" those of the sensible things in which the entire corporeal world is completed'.

(7) That Eriugena was aware of the linguistic even if not semiotic starting point of his analysis is suggested by his reference to nature as a 'generic term' (general nomen) rather than as a generic entity. See Cristiani, [1981].

(8) The square of opposition was a classificatory schema applied by Greek writers of late antiquity to (a) substance and accident and (b) the numbers 1-10. Thus, in (a) four terms: of a subject (A), not in a subject (D), in a subject (B), not of a subject (C) are grouped into four combined terms: of a subject but not in a subject 1), both in a subject and of a subject 2), in a subject but not of a subject 3), neither of a subject nor in a subject 4) where 1 = universal substance, 2 = universal accident, 3 = particular accident, 4 = particular substance. See Porphyry, On the Categories 78, 25ff. In (b) four terms: generating (A), not generated (D), generated (B), not generating (C) are grouped into four combined terms: generating but not generated 1), both generated and generating 2), generated but not generating 3), neither generating nor generated 4) where 1 = the numbers one, two, three, and five, 2 = the number four, 3 = the numbers six, eight, and nine, 4 = the number seven. See Theo of Smyrna, Exposition of Mathematical Matters 103. 1-16. Such schemata were repeated in Latin texts and thereby transmitted to Eriugena and others: see Marius Victorinus, To Candidus 8. 1-21, Macrobius' commentary on Cicero's Dream of Scipio I. 5. 16, Martianus Capella, On the Marriage of Mercury and PhilologyVII. 738, Boethius, Commentary on Aristotle's Categories I. 169Bff. The square of opposition in antiquity has been discussed by P. Hadot, Porphyre et Victorinus, Paris, 1968 148ff., Libera, A. de, ' La sémiotique d'Aristote', in Structures élémentaires de la signification, ed. F. Nef, Brussels, 1976, pp. 28-55. The square of opposition in Eriugena has been examined most recently by D'Onofrio [1990] and Beierwaltes [1990] 17-38. An analogous schema applied to propositions was also traditional and certainly known to Eriugena; see Martianus Capella, On the Marriage of Mercury and Philology IV. 400-1.

(9) See Martianus Capella, On the Marriage of Mercury and Philology IV. 352-4.

(10) I. 441A-442B. Eriugena himself seems to envisage a diagram in the form:

The notation A, B ... 1, 2 ... is not provided by Eriugena.

(11) I. 442A--B, II. 525A, II. 526C-527A, II. 527C. The fourfold schema is repeated later in Periphyseon but with no additions to the basic doctrine. Cf. III. 688C-689A, IV. 743B--C, V. 1019A--B.

From: Stephen Gersh, Structure, Sign, and Ontology from Johannes Scottus Eriugena to Anselm of Canterbury. A reply to Marenbon, in: Reading Plato, Tracing Plato. From Ancient Commentary to Medieval Reception, Aldershot, Ashgate 2005, Essay XIII.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The Works of Eriugena: Editions and Translations

Works in chronological order

An updated and detailed examination of the manuscripts and editions can be found in the following essay (in Italian): Ernesto Sergio Mainoldi. Iohannes Scottus Eriugena. In La trasmissione dei testi latini del medioevo / Mediaeval Latin Texts and their Transmission. Edited by Chiesa Paolo and Castaldi Lucia. Firenze: SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo 2005, pp. 186-264.

1. De diuinae praedestinatione (On divine predestination) (ca. 850-851)

2. In Priscianum [also known as Glosa Prisciani] (ca. 850)

3. Annotationes in Marcianum (ca. 840-850)

4. Glosae Martiani (ca. 840-850)

5. Glossae divinae historiae (850-860)

6. Versio operum sancti Dionysii Areopagitae (translation of the works of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite) (before 860-864); revised (864-866)

7. Versio sancti Gregorii Nisseni Sermonis de imagine (translation of Gregory of Nyssa's On the Image of Man) (862-864)

8. Versio sancti Maximi Confessoris Ambigua ad lohannem (translation of Maximus the Confessor's Ambigua to John) (862-864)

9. Versio sancti Maximi Confessoris Quaestiones ad Thalassium (translation of Maximus the Confessor's Questions to Thalassius) (864-866)

10. Periphyseon (Concerning Nature) (862-866)

11. Expositiones in Ierarchiam Coelestem (Exposition on the Celestial Hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite) (864-870)

12. Vox spiritualis aquilae (Homily on the Prologue to St. John's Gospel) (870-872)

13. Commentarius in Iohannem (Commentary on St. John's Gospel) (875-877)

14. Carmina (Poems) (850-877)

15. Epistola "Domine Winiberte..."

Works of uncertain attribution

1. Pseudo-Ioannes, Chrysostomus. 1862. "Opus imperfectum im Matthaeum." In Patrologia Graeca. vol. 56, edited by Migne, Jacques Paul, 611-946. Paris.

English translation: Incomplete Commentary on Matthew (Opus imperfectum) with an introduction and notes by James A. Kellerman, edited by Thomas C. Oden; Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2010, two volumes.

The work is probably a compilation of different writings; two groups of homilies: (C1 = 24-31, Migne: 756-798 and C2 = 46b-54, Migne: 897-946) were attributed by Gustavo Piemonte (1996, 2002) to a lost work of Eriugena, the Tractatus in Matheum (a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew).

This attribution was accepted by Ernesto Sergio Mainoldi (2005), but has been challenged by Peter Dronke in his Introduction to the Italian translation of the first book of the Periphyseon (Giovanni Scoto, Sulle nature dell'universo. Libro I, Milano: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla - Arnoldo Modadori, 2012, pp. XXXI-XXXII.

See also Jean-Paul Bouhot, Adapatations latines de l'Homèlie de Jean Chrysostome sur Pierre et Elie (CPG 4513), Revue bénédictine, 112, 2002, pp. 201-235: according to the Author the part of the homilies corresponding to C1 and C2 was written in the Carolingian period.

Sigebert of Gembloux (c. 1030 - 1112) in his Catalogus Sigeberti Gemblacensis monachi de viris illustribus, Chapter LXV, wrote:

"Joannes Scotus, in exponendis divinis et humanis scripturis satis idoneus, fecit tractatus in Matthaeum. Scripsit librum De officiis humanis et alia quae ab aliis habentur." (John Scotus, in explaining the divine and human Scriptures, made a tractatus in Mattheum. He wrote the book of the human duties and other things which others have." (critical edition by Robert Witte, Bern, Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1974, p. 71; old edition in Migne, Patrologia Latina, 56, with the title Liber de scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, coll. 547-592).

For completeness, I give also the traditional view on the authorship of this work:

"The Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum is a set of fifty-four Latin homilies on the first gospel which throughout the Middle Ages were believed to be translations of Greek homilies by John Chrysostom. In reality, they are probably the work of an unidentified Arian bishop or priest writing in Latin in the fifth or sixth century. The great range of dates, authors, and places of origin that have been proposed for these homilies (up through the 1960s) is usefully summarized by Gauthier (1972 pp. 50-54). Dekkers (CPL 707) captures a dominant trend in the scholarship in advocating a date of composition in the mid-sixth century; however, Joop van Banning, the senior editor of a new edition in progress, believes the Opus was composed in the second or third quarter of the fifth century (CCSL 87B.v). Schlatter's (1988) suggestion that the author was Anianus of Celeda is deemed "attractive" yet "problematic" by Cooper (1993), who cautions against accepting this hypothesis without further evidence." (Thomas N. Hall).

Forthcoming in: Thomas N. Hall (ed.), Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture. Volume 5: Julius Caesar to Pseudo-Cyril of Alexandria, Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications.

References:

- Banning Joop van, 1988. Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum. Praefatio, Turnhout, Brepols.

- Cooper, Kate. 1993. "An(n)ianus of Celeda and the Latin Readers of John Chrysostom." Studia Patristica 27: 249-55.

- Dekkers Eligius, 1995. Clavis patrum latinorum: qua in corpus christianorum edendum optimas quasque scriptorum recensiones a Tertulliano ad Bedam, Third edtion, Turnhout, Brepols.

- Gauthier, Roland. 1972. La Vierge Marie d'après l''Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum'. in: De cultu mariano saeculis VI-XI: Acta Congressus Mariologici-Mariani Internationalis in Croatia anno 1971 celebrati, ed. Joseph Lécuyer et al., vol 3. pp. 49-66. 5 vols. Rome.

- Piemonte, Gustavo 1996. "Recherches Sur Les "Tractatus in Matheum" Attribués À Jean Scot." In Iohannes Scottus Eriugena. The Bible and Hermeneutics, edited by Riel, Gerd van, Steel, Carlos and McEvoy, James. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

- Piermonte, Gustavo 2002. "Some Distinctive Theses of Eriugena's Eschatology in His Exegesis of the Gospel According to St. Matthew." In History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time, edited by McEvoy, James and Dunne, Michael, 227-242. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

- Schlatter, Frederick W. 1988. "The Author of the Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum". Vigiliae Christianae 42: 364-75.

2. Priscianus, Lydus. 1853. "Solution des problèmes proposés par Chosroes: traité inédit de Priscien le philosophe." Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes no. 4:248-263.

3. Johannis, Scoti. 1868. "Defloratio de Macrobii libro De differentiis et societatibus Graeci Latinique verbi quam Iohannes (scilicet Scotus Eriugena) carpserat (Excerpta Parisina)." In Grammatici latini, Vol. 5, edited by Keil, Heinrich, 599-630. Lipsia: B. G. Teubner.

This edition is supersed by that of P. De Paolis (1990).

4. Macrobii, Theodosii. 1990. De verborum Graeci et Latini differentiis vel societatibus excerpta. Urbino: QuattroVenti.

Edizione critica a cura di Paolo De Paolis.

Lost works

1. Translation of the Ancoratus of Epiphanius of Salamis

2. Tractatus de uisione Dei

Modern editions

1. Johannis, Scoti. 1853. Opera quae supersunt omnia. Paris.

Jacques Paul Migne (ed.), Patrologia Latina, vol. 122, coll. 439-1022; reprint: Turnhout, Brepols, 1999.

The only complete edition, but superseded by the most recent critical editions.

2. Madec, Goulden, ed. 1978. Iohanni Scotti. De divina praedestinatione, Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis; 50. Turnhout: Brepols.

"Il ne revient pas à l’éditeur de donner des consignes de lecture. Qu’on me permette toutefois de préciser l’avertissement que Jean Scot adresse à ses lecteurs à la fin de sa préface et que je paraphrasais en commençant. La réfutation de la thèse sur la double prédestination est fondée sur le principe de la simplicité absolue de Dieu et sur une dialectique de l’être et du non-être (71). Il n’y a absolument pas de prédestination au mal ; car Dieu, être au suprême degré (summa essentia (72)), est la cause de tout ce qui est ; il n’est donc pas ni ne peut être la cause de ce qui n’est pas (73). Il n’a de contraire que le non-être ; et il n’a donc aucune part dans les modalités du non-être que sont le péché et les peines du péché: la mort et le malheur (74). Il n’y a, à parler strictement, de prescience et de prédestination au bien qu’en un sens impropre ; car scientia et destinatio sont des noms quasi-propres de Dieu, au même titre que essentia, ueritas, uirtus, sapientia (75). Mais le préfixe, dans praescientia et praedestinatio, implique l’idée d’une temporalité qui est évidemment étrangère à l’action et à l’être de Dieu: “De quel droit dirait-on que Dieu pré-sait quelque chose par pré-science ou pré-destine par pré-destination, lui pour qui rien n’est futur, puisqu’il n’attend rien, et rien n’est passé, puisque pour lui rien ne passe” (76). L’action divine n’est précédée d’aucune préparation ; elle est immédiate : "omnia semelet simulfecit” (77). Toutes choses sont toujours présentes dans le Verbe, “par qui toutes choses ont été faites et en qui toutes choses vivent immuablement, non seulement celles qui ont existé, mais aussi celles qui existeront. Du reste, en lui, elles n’ont pas existé ni n’existeront ; elles sont seulement ; et toutes sont un” (78).

Cette argumentation peut se recommander de nombreux textes d’Augustin (79) ; et M. Jacquin a pu écrire justement que “la doctrine augustinienne forme la trame de ce court traité et lui fournit les principaux arguments sur lesquels repose sa thèse” (80). Or c’est cette thèse ontologique qui autorise ou plutôt qui réclame l’interprétation des formules littéralement prédestinatianistes et, plus généralement, la critique de tout discours théologique, qu’il soit scripturaire ou patristique (81). L’intention fondamentale de Jean Scot me paraît donc être de réduire l’augustinisme de la prédestination par l’augustinisme de la simplicité divine et d’instaurer ainsi, dans l’intelligence de la foi, l’identité de la vraie religion et de la vraie philosophie (82)." (pp. XVI-XVII)

(71) Voir Praefatio 56-65.

(72) Voir Cap. 3, 83-85 ; 15, 98 ; 15, 180; 16, 179 et 183 ; 18, 105 ; 18, 147.

(73) Voir Cap. 3, 55-57; 9, 76.

(74) Voir Cap. 3, 55 ; 10, 97; 10, 138-155 ; 15, 180-184.

(75) Voir Cap. 9, 30-31.

(76) Voir Cap. 9, 106-110.

(77) Voir Cap. 9, 128.

(78) Voir Cap. 9, 130-134.

(79) Cf. G. Madec, L·'augustinisme de Jeun Scot dans le“De praedestinatione”, dans Jean Scot Erigène et l’histoire de la philosophie. Colloque de Laon, 1975, p. 183-190.

(80) M. Jacquin, le néoplatonisme de Jean Scot, [Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 1, 1907, pp. 674-685] p. 681.

(81) Voir Cap. 9, 5-7 et 25-38.

(82) Voir Cap. 1, 9-18.

3. Johannis, Scoti. 1982. De diuina praedestinatone, enumeratio formarum. Turnhout: Brepols.

Corpus Christianorum. Instrumenta Lexicologica Latina, 4.

4. Lutz, Cora E., ed. 1939. Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae. Annotationes in Marcianum. Cambridge: Mediaeval Academy of America.

Version ot the Commentary on the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercuri of Martianus Capella, based on the manuscript Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, fonds lat., MS 12960 folios 47r - 115v (known as Corbiensis), discovered by Jean-Barthélemy Hauréau: 'Commentaire de Jean Scot Erigene sur Martianus Capella,' Notices et Extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothéque Impériale, XX, 2, 1862, pp. 1-39.

Reprinted 2012.

5. Dutton, Paul Edward, and Luhtala, Anneli. 1994. "Eriugena in Priscianum." Mediaeval Studies no. 56:153-163.

This essay is about the discovery of a commentary In Priscianum, to be attributed to Eriugena. An appendix contains the edition of the accessus to the commentary.

"Squeezed between copies of Priscian’s Periegesis and Institutiones in the so-called Dubthach Codex, Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit B.P.L. 67 (henceforth L), is a late ninth-century copy of a set of Greek grammatical terms, definitions of grammar and rhetoric taken from an early redaction of Eriugena’s Periphyseon, and the incomplete commentary on Institutiones 1.1. The Leiden manuscript bears other traces of Eriugena’s direct possession and work, including glosses on the Institutiones written by the Irish writer known as i1. (5)

There is now new evidence to conclude that the L commentary on De uoce is entirely contained within a longer commentary on Priscian in Barcelona, Archivo de la Corona de Aragon, Ripoll 59, fols. 257v-288v (hereafter B), an eleventh-century manuscript of Catalan provenance. (6) Indeed the Caroline scribe who copied out the Eriugenian definitions and commentary on De uoce on fol. 8r-v of L also copied passages from the accessus of the longer commentary onto fol. 9r of L. He was joined—or perhaps preceded—by several Irish scribes who entered other materials from the commentary into the margins of fols. 9r-10r.

Thus it must follow that at least the accessus and the De uoce portions of the commentary In Priscianum date from the ninth century, and the arguments already made to connect the L commentary on De uoce to Eriugena also apply here. The evidence includes an overriding interest by the author in the priority of dialectic, an emphasis upon the superiority of usiadis definitio over ennoematice (or substantial over accidental definition), which is consistent with Eriugena’s emphasis in the Periphyseon, and shared cosmological terms and concepts. Moreover, the definitions of grammar and rhetoric found on fol. 8r of L and that of grammar found in the De uoce commentary (fol. 8v) are exactly the same as those added by i! to the working copy of the Periphyseon (Rheims, Bibliothèque Municipale 875, fol. 41r). At the next manifest stage of recension of the Periphyseon as found in Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek Msc. Phil. 2/1, fol. 26r, the wording of the definition of rhetoric was changed by the Irish scribe i2. (7) It can therefore be claimed that the De uoce portion of the commentary In Priscianum contains materials not only consistent with the work of Eriugena and his school but also particular to it. These probably date from the early stages of Eriugena’s career on the continent.

There is some evidence to suggest that the scribes who wrote in the first ten folios of L knew even more of the longer commentary In Priscianum." (pp. 154-155)

(5) Bernhard Bischoff first drew attention to the existence of i1’s glosses in L: see “Irische Schreiber im Karolingerreich,” reprinted with revisions in Bernhard Bischoff, Mittelalterliche Studien: Ausgewählte Aufsätze zur Schriftkunde und Literaturgeschichte, vol. 3 (Stuttgart, 1981), 52. See also Dutton, “Evidence that Dubthach’s Priscian Codex Once Belonged to Eriugena,” (1992) 15-45.

(6) See Marina Passalacqua, I codici di Prisciano, Sussidi eruditi 29 (Rome, 1978), 10-11. See also G. L. Bursill-Hall, A Census of Medieval Latin Grammatical Manuscripts (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1981), 26.

(7) Priscian, Epistola ad Iulianum, ed. Hertz I:1-4.

6. Luhtala, Anneli. 2000. "Early Medieval Commentary on Priscian's Institutiones grammaticae." Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen-Age Grec et Latin no. 71:115-188.

"Introduction.

This edition introduces grammatical commentary associated with the first encounter of Aristotelian logic and ancient grammatical heritage in the Middle Ages, which took place in the so-called Carolingian Renaissance. As a result, grammatical method was renovated so as to involve its interaction with dialectic, which continued throughout the medieval period. The principal object of philosophical commentary was Priscian's Institutiones grammaticae, which was introduced into the medieval curriculum by Alcuin of York, the key figure in the educational reform of Charlemagne. Priscian's philosophically-oriented grammar immediately appealed to Alcuin, who assigned a major importance to the study of dialectic in his reform of learning. He encouraged the assimilation of the dialectical and grammatical approaches to language study in his own grammar, which seems to have been pivotal in inspiring application of a new interdisciplinary approach to grammar. Far from remaining the preoccupation of few individual scholars, the new method became standard practice in the ninth and tenth centuries, as will be made plain by the material edited in this article.

The material edited below contains extracts from a newly-discovered Priscian commentary attributed to Eriugena as well as various sets of glosses copied anonymously in the margins of Priscian manuscripts in the ninth and tenth centuries. Some sixty Priscian manuscripts have come down to us from this period (M. Passalacqua, I codici di Prisciano, Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1978), many of which are heavily annotated and show philosophical influence. It is true that much of early medieval Priscian commentary is unsystematic and derivative, typically consisting of a quotation from the Categoriae Decem, the De nuptiis of Martianus Capella, or the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville; such glosses have been excluded from this edition. But many glosses contain highly relevant observations, and occasionally even important new developments. Such is the case, for instance, when an anonymous ninth century teacher introduces the dialectician's subject - predicate distinction into grammatical analysis. Only comments representing new developments of traditiohal grammatical concepts have been included in this edition." (p. 115).

7. Jeauneau, Edouard. 1978. "Le commentaire érigénien sur Martianus Capella (De Nuptiis, lib. I) d'aprés le manuscrit d'Oxford (Bod. Libr. Auct. T.2.19 fol. 1-31)." In Quatre thèmes érigéniens, 101-186. Paris: Vrin.

Conférence Albert-le-Grand 1974.

Version of the Annotationes in Marcianum based on the manuscript Oxford Bodleian Library Auct T.2.19, discovered by Lotte Labowsky, A New Version of Scotus Eriugena's Commentary on Martianus Capella, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies, 1, 1941-1943, pp. 187-193.

8. Gale, Thomas, ed. 1681. Joannis Scoti Erigenae. De Divisione naturae libri quinque diu desiderati; accedit appendix ex Ambiguis S. Maximi graece et latine. Oxford: Theatro Sheldoniano.

First printed edition.

Photographic reproduction, Minerva: Frankfurt, 1964.

9. Contreni, John J., and Ó Néill, Pádraig, eds. 1997. Glossae Divinae Historiae. The Biblical Glosses of John Scottus Eriugena. Tavarnuzze - Firenze: Edizioni del Galluzzo.

Contents: Acknowledgements VII; Abbreviations and Short Title IX; Bibliography XI;

Introduction: 1. Manuscripts 3; 2. Textual Relationships 10; 3. History 14; 4. Authorship 17; 5. Sources 29; 6. Biblical Text 36; 7. Glosses in Old Irish 40; 8. The Use of Greek in the Glosses 55; 9. The Glossae diuinae historiae and Carolingian Learning 58; 10. The Glossae and the Early Career of John Scottus 72; 11.The Edition 84; Sigla: 86;

GLOSSAE DIVINAE HISTORIAE 87;

Indices

Index Locorum Sacrae Scripturae 213; Index Fontium 221; Index Lemmatum 233; Index Verborum Hibernicorum 241; Index Manuscriptorum 243; Index Rerum 245-246.

"A century ago Bruno Güterbock suggested that a set of biblical glosses accompanied by the notation IO(H) in a ninth-century Vatican manuscript (Reg. lat. 215) should be attributed to lohannes Scottus, the celebrated Irish scholar who was active in the kingdom of Charles the Bald (840-877).(1) Since then, despite the discovery of further manuscript witnesses, neither the glosses nor Güterbock’s attribution has received much attention. The present work addresses these deficiencies and presents the first complete edition of the glosses.

The modest length and scope of the glosses (occupying only five folios in the most important manuscript witness) belie their intrinsic interest. The textual sources of the glosses, the version of the Bible which they gloss, the Old-Irish words among the predominantly Latin, and the use of Greek in the glosses all repay close attention. More broadly, the glosses also shed light on early medieval biblical studies and on Carolingian education. And they may even provide new evidence about the early career of John Scottus who, in the details of his background and life, remains “un personnage mystérieux”.(2)" (p. 3)

(...)

"To sum up the evidence. The probable date of the Glossae before 860 accords with the chronology of John Scottus’s scholarly career. Likewise, the textual history of the Glossae, especially its use by Martin Hiberniensis, its early diffusion in the diocese of Reims, its conflation with other glosses, a process perhaps executed by Heiric of Auxerre who had connections with both John Scottus and Haimo of Auxerre, fully accords with the locus and tempus of John Scottus. That the glossator was an Irishman is indicated by his use of Old-Irish words and his references to Irish flora, fauna, customs, and culture. The same conclusion is suggested by his frequent and relatively correct handling of Greek. Indeed, his bold use of that language sets him apart from other Irish and continental contemporaries and points to the preeminent scholar of Greek in the middle years of the ninth century, John Scottus. This indication is fully corroborated by the close and striking agreements in wording and content between the Glossae and the known works of John Scottus. Especially significant among these agreements are instances where the author of the Glossae went far beyond the customary requirements of a plain explanation to elaborate personal concerns that have close parallels in the later, discursive work of John Scottus.

The case for John Scottus’ authorship of the Glossae might have rested so, were it not for a recent discovery. In preparing an edition of the Scholica graecarum glossarum Professor Patrizia Lendinara came across the following note in an eleventh-century manuscript, Vatican, MS Barb., lat. 477 (f. 54V):

A conmentarius [sic] est secundum lohannem Scottum minister et custos librorum uel cartarum magister. Alii dicunt scriptorem annalium qui rerum gesta scribebant.(97)

The author of this note provides two definitions of a commentariis (from 2Sm 8, 16 and 1Par 18, 15, respectively) which are attributed to lohannes Scottus.

(The second sentence provides the traditional, Rz [*] definition). In fact, the source for the note must have been the Glossae diuinae historiae, since the first definition derives from gl. 222, “a commentariis, de libris minister”, and the second from gl. 518, “A commentariis, ab his qui cartas faciunt”. The Barberinus glossator’s skilful conflation of two different glosses on lemmata from two different parts of the Old Testament suggests a careful reading of the Glossae. All the more reason then to give full credence to the glossator’s attribution and accordingly, to expand the IOH abbreviation of the earlier manuscripts to Johannes (Scottus).

By the eleventh century or probably earlier, there was independent evidence that John Scottus was the author of the Glossae diuinae historiae. The qualifiers “doubtfully” or “wrongly” can at last be removed from the attribution to John Scottus and the Glossae can take its place among the authentic corpus of the great ninth-century scholar and teacher." (pp. 28-29)

(1) Bruno Güterbock, "Aus irischen Handschriften in Turin und Rom", ZvS [Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung] (1895), 103-5.

(2) To borrow the phrase of Dom Cappuyns, JSE [Jean Scot Érigène, 1933], 3.

96. See Homel. II-III (ed. Jeauneau, SC 151: 208-16).

97. The note occurs among a series of “Glosae Grecorum”; see Lendinara, “On John Scottus’s Authorship of the Biblical Glosses’’, SM [Studi medievali] 33 (1992), 571-9· The manuscript was copied in the south of France, perhaps near Avignon, early in the eleventh century, according to Bernhard Bischoff; see Kassius Hallinger, “Der Barberinus Latinus 477", Studia Anselmiana 63 (1975), 40-1, 47.

[*] Das Glossar Rz. Elias Steinmeyer ed. “Untersuchungen über die Bibelglossare: I. Rz und sein Einflussbereich”. In Elias Steinmeyer and Eduard Sievers eds., Die althochdeutschen Glossen, 5 vois. (Berlin, 1879-1922; repr. Dublin and Zurich, 1968-69), 5: 108-407.

10. Schlüter, Christoph Bernhard, ed. 1838. Johannis Scoti Erigenae. De divisione naturae libri quinque. Monasterii Guestphalorum: Librariae Aschendorffianae.

Editio recognita et emendata accedunt tredecim auctoris ad Carolum Calvum ex palinsestis Angeli Maii.

11. Floss, Heinrich Joseph, ed. 1853. Johannis Scoti. De divisione naturae libri quinque. Paris.

Jacques Paul Migne (éd.), Patrologia Latina, vol. 122, coll. 439-1022.

12. Eriugenae, Iohannis Scotti. 1968. Periphyseon (De divisione naturae), Scriptores Latini Hiberniae. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

Book First: Nature which creates and is not created (1968); Book Second: Nature which is created and creates (1972); Book Third: Nature which is created and does not create (1981).

Latin text established with the collaboration of Ludwig Bieler and English translation by Inglis Patrick Sheldon-Williams.

Book Fourth: On the man (1995) Latin text edited by Édouard A. Jeauneau with the assistance of Mark A. Zier; English translation by John O'Meara and I. P. Sheldon-Williams.

Book Five: Nature which neither is created nor creates (not published; see the critical edition by E. Jeauneau).

The edition of the Latin text by Sheldon-Williams has been criticized: see the reviews by P. Lucentini (1976), J. Marenbon (1982), A. Breen (1991), in the Annotated Bibliography on the Philosophical Work of Eriugena.

13. Jeauneau, Edouard, ed. 1996. Johannis Scotti seu Eriugenae. Periphyseon, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis. Turnhout: Brepols.

Critical edition of the Latin text in five volumes, with introduction in French to every volume.

Liber primus: Natura quae creat et non creatur (1996); Liber secundus: Natura quae creatur et creat (1997); Liber tertius: Natura quae creatur et non creat (1999); Liber quartus: De homine (2000); Liber quintus: Natura quae nec creat nec creatur (2003).

Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, voll. 161, 162, 163, 164, 165.

14. Allard, Guy-H., ed. 1983. Periphyseon. Indices generales. Paris: Vrin.

"Présentation

Les pages qui suivent contiennent le recensement complet des mots du Periphyseon de Jean Scot. Cet index général se subdivise en cinq index spécifiques (les mots latins, les auteurs et citations bibliques, les auteurs et citations non-bibliques, les noms propres et collectifs, les mots grecs) et a été préparé à l’aide de l’ordinateur et du logiciel JEUDEMO de l’Université de Montréal. Cet instrument de travail n’est pas une concordance ni un index lemmatisé; il n’a pas d’autre prétention que de permettre aux chercheurs le repérage rapide des mots, de leur fréquence et de leur localisation dans le texte, répondant ainsi à un voeu largement exprimé par les spécialistes de Jean Scot.

Edition utilisée

L’édition du Periphyseon utilisée est celle de Migne (PL, 122), que nous avons reproduite dans l’ordinateur avec la plus grande fidélité possible. Nous avons ainsi maintenu les graphies «latinisées» de certains mots grecs. Nous avons également respecté le découpage des séquences Maître/Disciple, sauf dans le cas de quelques erreurs évidentes où il nous a fallu nous en remettre soit à l’édition de Gale ou à celle de M. Sheldon-Williams (pour les trois premiers livres). En ce qui concerne les citations, nous les avons recensées conformément à l’édition de Migne, qui les signale par des caractères italiques. Mais fidélité n’est pas aveuglement. En effet, il nous est apparu nécessaire de corriger certaines coquilles (u.g. 478,26; 597,14; 602,5; 662,30; 681,1; 800,50; 806,35; 813,1; 815,34; 890,16), de supprimer certains mots inutilement répétés (u.g. 720,10) et de retrancher du texte la dernière ligne de la colonne 528 qui n’est manifestement pas à sa place et que l’ordinateur n’a pas su localiser." (p. V).

15. Jeauneau, Edouard, ed. 2007. Iohannes Scottus seu Eriugena, Periphyseon / curante CTLO, Centre "Traditio Litterarum Occidentalium". Turnhout: Brepols.

Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis. Instrumenta lexicologica latina. Series A.

Enumeratio formarum, concordantia formarum, index formarum a tergo ordinatarum. (Keyword concordance).

16. Jeauneau, Edouard, and Dutton, Paul Edward. 1996. The Autograph of Eriugena. Turnhout: Brepols.

17. Barbet, Jeanne, ed. 1975. Iohannis Scoti Eriugenae Expositiones in Ierarchiam Coelestem. Turnholt: Brepols.

Corpus christianorum. Continuatio Mediaeualis 31.

Contains also the Latin translation of Pseudo-Dyonisius the Areopagite De coelesti hierarchia made by Eriugena.

18. Jeauneau, Edouard, ed. 1969. Jean Scot. Homélie sur le Prologue de Jean. Paris: Éditions du Cerf.

Introduction, critical text, French translation and notes by Édouard Jeauneau (Sources chrétiennes, 151).

New edition of the Latin text: Turnhout, Brepols, 2008 [see the section "Editions"].

19. Jean, Scot. 1972. Commentaire sur l'évangile de Jean. Paris: Éditions du Cerf.

Introduction, critical text, French translation and notes by Édouard Jeauneau (Sources chrétiennes, 180).

Reprinted, with additions and corrections 1999.

New edition of the Latin text: Turnhout: Brepols, 2008.

20. Eriugenae, Iohannis Scotti. 2008. Johannis Scotti seu Eriugenae Homilia super "In principio erat Verbum"; et Commentarius in Evangelium Iohannis. Turnhout: Brepols.

Critical edition by E. Jeauneau and Andrew J. Hicks with Introductions in French.

21. Johannes, Scoti. 1896. "Carmina." In Monumenta Germanie Historica, Poetae latini aevi Carolini, III, edited by Traube, Ludwig, 518-556. Berlin: Weidmann.

This edition is superseded by that of M. W. Herren (1993).

22. Herren, Michael W., ed. 1993. Iohannis Scotti. Carmina. Dublin: School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

Latin and Greek text with English translation.

23. Eriugenae, Iohannis Scotti. 1972. "Epistola "Domine Winiberte..."." Le Moyen Âge.Revue d'Histoire et de Philologie no. 1:9-14.

In: John J. Contreni, 'A propos de quelques manuscrits de l'école de Laon au IXe siècle: découvertes et problèmes', Le Moyen Âge, 78, 1972, 5-39.

"The three mss in question are related to the study of Virgil and of Martianus Capella. MS Laon Bibl. Municipale 24 contains on fol. 1r a letter to a certain Winibertus, probably abbot of Schüttern in connection with the correction of a copy of the De nuptiis. The letter is in an Irish hand, possibly that of Eriugena. Winibertus (Wenebertus) was known for his scholarly activities which are documented in a poem by Walafrid Strabo. The author of this study emphasises the links between contemporary Irish scholarship in the Rhineland and at Laon. A second Laon ms, MS 468, is a handbook for the study of Virgil and of the liberal arts, from which the text of a poetic vita of Virgil is here transcribed (pp. 17-21), part of it identifiable as the Vita Ternensie, the remainder probably from Donatus. This manuscript had belonged to Martinus Scottus. Marginal notes in an Irish hand indicate knowledge of Isidore of Seville. The removal of manuscripts of classical texts from Laon in the 16th and 17th century renaissance resulted in discoveries in other libraries of texts related to e.g. MS Laon 444. The author discusses one Vatican manuscript of such probable origin (cf. C. Leonardi, 'Nuove voci poetiche tra secolo IX e XI', Studi medievali, 3a serie, II, 1961, 139-168) the authorship of which might be traced to Auxerre in the late 9th or early 10th century, and probably to Remigius." (B.).

Modern editions of Eriugena's Latin translations from Greek

1. Johannis, Scoti. 1853. "Ioannis Scoti Versio Operum s. Dioniysii Areopagitae." In Opera quae supersunt omnia, edited by Floss, Heinrich Joseph. Paris.

Patrologia Latina vol. 122, coll. 1023-1194.

2. Chevallier, Philippe, ed. 1937. Dionysiaca I-II. Bruges: Desclée de Brouwer.

Recueil donnant l'ensemble des traductions latines des ouvrages attribués au Denys de l'Aéropage.

Contains the Latin translation by Eriugena of the works of Pseudo-Dyonisius the Areopagite in two volumes I (1937); II (1950).

3. A Thirteenth-Century Textbook of Mystical Theology at the University of Paris. 2004. Leuven: Peeters Publishers.

The Mystical Theology of Dionysius the Areopagite in Eriugena's Latin translation, with the scholia translated by Anastasius the Librarian, and excerpts from Eriugena's Periphyseon.

Edition, translation, and introduction by L. Michael Harrington.

4. Laga, Carl, and Steel, Carlos, eds. 1980-1990. Maximi Confessoris Quaestiones ad Thalassium una cum latina interpretatione Ioannis Scotti Eriugenae iuxta posita. Turnhout: Brepols.

Greek text and Latin translation on opposite pages; editorial matter in French.

Vol. I. Quaestiones I-LV (1980); Vol. II. Quaestiones LVI-LXV (1990).

5. Jeauneau, Édouard, ed. 1988. Maximi Confessoris Ambigua ad Iohannem, iuxta Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae latinam interpretationem. Turnhout: Brepols.

Latin text with commentary in French.

6. Cappuyns, Maïeul. 1965. "Le De imagine de Grégoire de Nysse traduit par Jean Scot Érigène." Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale no. 32:205-262.

Publication of the Latin translation (made ca. 862-864) by John Scottus of the De hominis opificio XVI by Grégory of Nissa (P. L. 122, coll. 793C-797C), based on ms. Bamberg B. IV. 13.

Modern editions of the works of uncertain attribution

1. Pseudo-Ioannes, Chrysostomus. 1862. "Opus imperfectum im Matthaeum." In Patrologia Graeca. vol. 56, edited by Migne, Jacques Paul, 611-946. Paris.

English translation: Incomplete Commentary on Matthew (Opus imperfectum) with an introduction and notes by James A. Kellerman, edited by Thomas C. Oden; Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2010, two volumes.

The work is probably a compilation of different writings; two groups of homilies: (C1 = 24-31, Migne: 756-798 and C2 = 46b-54, Migne: 897-946) were attributed by Gustavo Piemonte (1996, 2002) to a lost work of Eriugena, the Tractatus in Matheum (a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew).

This attribution was accepted by Ernesto Sergio Mainoldi (2005), but has been challenged by Peter Dronke in his Introduction to the Italian translation of the first book of the Periphyseon (Giovanni Scoto, Sulle nature dell'universo. Libro I, Milano: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla - Arnoldo Modadori, 2012, pp. XXXI-XXXII.

See also Jean-Paul Bouhot, Adapatations latines de l'Homèlie de Jean Chrysostome sur Pierre et Elie (CPG 4513), Revue bénédictine, 112, 2002, pp. 201-235: according to the Author the part of the homilies corresponding to C1 and C2 was written in the Carolingian period.

Sigebert of Gembloux (c. 1030 - 1112) in his Catalogus Sigeberti Gemblacensis monachi de viris illustribus, Chapter LXV, wrote:

"Joannes Scotus, in exponendis divinis et humanis scripturis satis idoneus, fecit tractatus in Matthaeum. Scripsit librum De officiis humanis et alia quae ab aliis habentur." (John Scotus, in explaining the divine and human Scriptures, made a tractatus in Mattheum. He wrote the book of the human duties and other things which others have." (critical edition by Robert Witte, Bern, Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1974, p. 71; old edition in Migne, Patrologia Latina, 56, with the title Liber de scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, coll. 547-592).

For completeness, I give also the traditional view on the authorship of this work:

"The Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum is a set of fifty-four Latin homilies on the first gospel which throughout the Middle Ages were believed to be translations of Greek homilies by John Chrysostom. In reality, they are probably the work of an unidentified Arian bishop or priest writing in Latin in the fifth or sixth century. The great range of dates, authors, and places of origin that have been proposed for these homilies (up through the 1960s) is usefully summarized by Gauthier (1972 pp. 50-54). Dekkers (CPL 707) captures a dominant trend in the scholarship in advocating a date of composition in the mid-sixth century; however, Joop van Banning, the senior editor of a new edition in progress, believes the Opus was composed in the second or third quarter of the fifth century (CCSL 87B.v). Schlatter's (1988) suggestion that the author was Anianus of Celeda is deemed "attractive" yet "problematic" by Cooper (1993), who cautions against accepting this hypothesis without further evidence." (Thomas N. Hall).

Forthcoming in: Thomas N. Hall (ed.), Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture. Volume 5: Julius Caesar to Pseudo-Cyril of Alexandria, Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications.

References:

- Banning Joop van, 1988. Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum. Praefatio, Turnhout, Brepols.

- Cooper, Kate. 1993. "An(n)ianus of Celeda and the Latin Readers of John Chrysostom." Studia Patristica 27: 249-55.

- Dekkers Eligius, 1995. Clavis patrum latinorum: qua in corpus christianorum edendum optimas quasque scriptorum recensiones a Tertulliano ad Bedam, Third edtion, Turnhout, Brepols.

- Gauthier, Roland. 1972. La Vierge Marie d'après l''Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum'. in: De cultu mariano saeculis VI-XI: Acta Congressus Mariologici-Mariani Internationalis in Croatia anno 1971 celebrati, ed. Joseph Lécuyer et al., vol 3. pp. 49-66. 5 vols. Rome.

- Piemonte, Gustavo 1996. "Recherches Sur Les "Tractatus in Matheum" Attribués À Jean Scot." In Iohannes Scottus Eriugena. The Bible and Hermeneutics, edited by Riel, Gerd van, Steel, Carlos and McEvoy, James. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

- Piermonte, Gustavo 2002. "Some Distinctive Theses of Eriugena's Eschatology in His Exegesis of the Gospel According to St. Matthew." In History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time, edited by McEvoy, James and Dunne, Michael, 227-242. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

- Schlatter, Frederick W. 1988. "The Author of the Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum". Vigiliae Christianae 42: 364-75.

2. Priscianus, Lydus. 1853. "Solution des problèmes proposés par Chosroes: traité inédit de Priscien le philosophe." Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes no. 4:248-263.

3. Johannis, Scoti. 1868. "Defloratio de Macrobii libro De differentiis et societatibus Graeci Latinique verbi quam Iohannes (scilicet Scotus Eriugena) carpserat (Excerpta Parisina)." In Grammatici latini, Vol. 5, edited by Keil, Heinrich, 599-630. Lipsia: B. G. Teubner.

This edition is supersed by that of P. De Paolis (1990).

4. Macrobii, Theodosii. 1990. De verborum Graeci et Latini differentiis vel societatibus excerpta. Urbino: QuattroVenti.

Edizione critica a cura di Paolo De Paolis.

Translations

English

1. John, Scottus Eriugena. 1998. Treatise on Divine Predestination. Notre Dame: Indiana University Press.

Translated by Mary Brennan.

Contents: Mary Brennan: Foreword IX; Avital Wohlman: Introduction to the English Translation XV;

Preface 3; One: That Every Question Is Solved by the Fourfold System of the Four Rules of the Whole of Philosophy 7; Two: From the Argument of Necessity It Is Concluded That there Cannot Be Two Predestinations 11; Three: Reason Does Not Permit of Two Predestinations 17; Four: The One, True and Only Predestination of God 25; Five: No One Is Compelled to Do Good or to Do Evil by the Foreknowledge and Predestination of God 33; Six: Every Sin Has No Other Source Than the Free Choice of the Individual Will 41;

Seven: Free Choice of the Will Should Be Reckoned among the Good Things That God Bestows on Man, although He May Misuse It. What Is It That Causes Sin and Is Sin? 45; Eight: The Difference between Man's Nature and His Free Choice 51; Nine: Foreknowledge and Predestination Are Predicated of God, Not Properly but by a Similitude of Temporal Things 59; Ten: When God Is Said to Know in Advance and to Predestine Sins or Death or the Punishments of Men or Angels, It Is to Be Understood from the Contrary 65; Eleven: It Can Be Established by Divine and Human Authority That God's Predestination Concerns Only Those Who Are Prepared for Eternal Happiness 71; Twelve: The Definition of Predestination 77; Thirteen: What Can Be Inferred from the above Judgment of Saint Augustine 83; Fourteen: Collected Attestations of Saint Augustine by Which It Is Clearly Proved That There Is but One Predestination and It Refers Only to the Saints 87; Fifteen: What Kind of Expressions God Is Said to Have Foreknowledge of Sins since They Are Nothing, or to Predestine the Punishments of Them Which Likewise Are Nothing 93; Sixteen: No Nature Punishes Nature and the Punishments of Sinners Are Nothing Other Than Their Sins 101; Seventeen: Why God Is Said to Have Predestined Punishments although He Neither Makes nor Predestines Them 111; Eighteen: The Error of Those Whose Thinking on Predestination Disagrees with That of the Holy Fathers Has Grown Out of an Ignorance of the Liberal Arts 117; Nneteen: Eternal Fire 125;

Epilogue: Divine Predestination 129;

Bibliography 131-134.

2. Johannes, Scotus Erigena. 1976. Periphyseon. On the Division of Nature. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.

Translation of nearly half of Periphyseon by Myra Uhlfelder, with introduction and summaries by Jean A. Potter.

Reprint: Wipf & Stock Publishers, Eugene (Oregon), 2011.

Contents: Translator's Preface VII-VIII; Introduction IX-XLI; Selected Bibliography XLIII; Book I 1; Book II 107; Book III 123; Book IV 207; Book V 271-362.

"This work is an attempt to present Eriugena's Periphyseon: On the Division of Nature in a fuller translation than is now readily available in English. Where the text has not been translated, summaries have been inserted to give a precise and reasonably detailed idea of the content of passages deleted. The procedure ranges from a complete translation of Book 1 to a treatment of Book 2 almost entirely by summary except for the inclusion of a few brief excerpts. Books 3, 4, and 5 include fairly lengthy passages in translation joined by summaries.

The basic Latin text followed is Floss's edition, printed in volume 122 of Migne's Patrologia Latina. Sheldon-Williams's recent edition of Books 1 and 2 is based on earlier manuscripts and would have to be adopted by anyone concerned primarily with paleographical and textual problems. In several passages as noted, Sheldon-Williams's readings are helpful in establishing a controversial reading or correcting a faulty one. On the whole, however, it is encouraging to see how reliable the older text is. The future availability of a complete modern edition, desirable for a number of reasons, will fortunately not invalidate scholarship based on the earlier edition. For a translator who still needs the Floss text for the later books of the Periphyseon, this essential soundness of the Floss text is both important and heartening." (from the Translator's Preface).

3. John, Scottus Eriugena. 1987. Periphyseon (The Division of Nature). Montréal: Bellarmin.

Translation by I. P. Sheldon-Williams. Revised by John J. O'Meara.

"About this translation.

The first three books of this translation are a reproduction, with the minimum necessary adjustments, of that by Dr. I.P. Sheldon-Williams in the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies' edition of the Periphyseon, still in course of completion, for which due gratitude to the Institute is hereby expressed. To this has been added the publication of a draft translation of the remaining two books of the work, exactly as edited by H.J. Floss in Migne's Patrologia Latina 122, prepared by Sheldon-Williams and considerably revised by me - not however, for reasons of desirable continuity, to the extent of eliminating unusual elements of style and structure that indicate Sheldon-Williams' close and conscious affinity with Eriugena. The marginalia for books 4 and 5 are taken from MS Bamberg H.J.IV 6, as reproduced by M. Cappuyns in Jean Scot Erigene 207-13. The numbers and letters in the margins refer to the columns and sections of P.L. 122; the numbers (only) refer to the sequence of chapters there. The terms (N)utritor and (A)lumnus correspond to Master and Disciple. For all references, including Biblical, notes, and some help with the use of brackets (especially in the early books) the reader is referred, when it is available, to the Dublin Institute's edition." John J. O'Meara.

4. O'Meara, John J. 1988. "Homily of John Scot, the Translator of the Hierarchy of Dionysius." In Eriugena, 158-176. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

First English translation of the Homily on the Prologue to St John's Gospel.

5. Johannes, Scotus Erigena. 1990. The Voice of the Eagle. Homily on the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John.

Translation of Homilia in prologum Sancti Evangelii secundum Joannem, with an introduction and reflections by Christopher Bamford.

6. Rorem, Paul. 2005. Eriugena's Commentary on the Dionysian Celestial Hierarchy. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

"The book is a comprehensive study of John Scotus Eriugena's commentary (Expositiones) on the Pseudo-Dionysian Celestial Hierarchy, with special attention given to its literary form and theological content.

The order for introducing various aspects of the Expositiones follows the format of the work itself: first in John's own order comes the Dionysian text in translation, followed by a paraphrase or two and then by Eriugena's own comments, sometimes on particular sources, more often on the points of doctrine he wants to expound. Thus this book starts with the author, that is, John's perspective on Dionysius himself (Chapter I: "Dionysian Biographies").

For Eriugena, Dionysius was the Athenian Areopagite, but was he also the Parisian martyr Saint Denis? Turning to the text of The Celestial Hierarchy, the particular Greek codex John was working with contained its own variants and challenges (Chapter II: "The Greek Manuscript and Its Problems"). Next comes a study of John's "Patterns of Translation and Paraphrase" (Chapter III). After his multiple paraphrases, Eriugena often adds his own expository remarks, sometimes invoking other sources, especially the remaining works of the Dionysian corpus (Chapter IV).

Those interested primarily in John's philosophical theology could turn directly to the last three chapters, spanning the arc of "procession and return" so characteristic of the Periphyseon. The Expositiones show a particular interest in creation (Chapter V), anthropology (Chapter VI) and "Christ and Salvation" (Chapter VII). Eriugena's treatment of the doctrine of creation includes a particularly innovative understanding of creatio ex nihilo. His anthropology turns on the question of humanity's relationship to the divine, whether immediate (unmediated) or mediated or somehow both. The discussion of Christ includes skillful expansions of the biblical and Dionysian images for Christ, and a presentation of salvation as "theosis" or deification.

Translations of major sections of the Expositiones are appended [pp. 180-226], as well as John's prologue to his earlier translation of the Dionysian corpus [pp. 174-179]. The book also contains a bibliography, an index of premodern and modern names, a scriptural index, and an index to the works of Eriugena." (p. IV).

7. A Thirteenth-Century Textbook of Mystical Theology at the University of Paris. 2004. Leuven: Peeters Publishers.

The Mystical Theology of Dionysius the Areopagite in Eriugena's Latin translation, with the scholia translated by Anastasius the Librarian, and excerpts from Eriugena's Periphyseon.

Edition, translation, and introduction by L. Michael Harrington.

8. Iohannis, Scotti Eriugenae. 1993. Carmina. Dublin: School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

Latin and Greek text with English translation.

French

1. Érigène, Jean Scot. 1995. De la division de la nature. Periphyseon. Livre I. La Nature créatrice incréée. Livre II. La Nature créatrice créée. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Introduction, traduction et notes par Francis Bertin.

2. ———. 1995. De la division de la nature. Periphyseon. Livre III. La Nature créée incréatrice. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Introduction, traduction et notes par Francis Bertin.

3. ———. 2000. De la division de la nature. Periphyseon. Livre IV. La Nature créée incréatrice. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Introduction, traduction notes par Francis Bertin.

4. ———. 2009. De la division de la nature. Periphyseon. Livre V. La Nature incréatrice et incréée. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Introduction, traduction notes par Francis Bertin.

5. Jean, Scot. 1969. Homélie sur le Prologue de Jean. Paris: Éditions du Cerf.

Introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes de Édouard Jeauneau (Sources chrétiennes, 151).

Nouvelle édition du texte latine: Turnhout: Brepols, 2008 [voir la Section sur les Editions].

Table des matières: Liste des abréviations 7; Introduction 9

Chapitre premier : L’homme et l’œuvre 9; Chapitre II : L’homélie, son authenticité, ses sources, son contenu doctrinal 51; Chapitre III : Manuscrits et éditions 78; Chapitre IV : La fortune de l’homélie érigénienne 130;

Bibliographie 171; Conspectus siglorum 199; Texte et traduction 200; Appendices 319; Index 351; Table des planches 390; Table des matières 391.

La Vox spiritualis est une homélie. On entend par là un petit discours destiné à exposer une péricope évangelique, en d'autres termes, un bref passage extra1t du texte sacré pour la lecture liturgique. Cette définition s'appllque parfaitement à l'homélie érigénienne. On la rencontre souvent, en effet, dans des homiliaires, c'est-à-dire dans des recueils liturgiques d'homélies, Et, bien que les homiliaires qui nous l'ont conservée ne soient guère antérieur au XIIe siècle, donc, dans le cas présent, relativement tardifs, on est porté à croire qu'ils nous présentent la Vox spiritualis dans son cadre naturel, celui de l'office divin. Tout concourt à nous en convaincre : l'exorde et la conclusion du discours, son accent religieux et jusqu'à la modulation de aes phrases. Si telle est la destination de l'homélie érigènienne, il est facile de dire à quel jour de l'année liturgique elle devait trouver place. Il ne peut s'agir que du Jour de Noël. Ce jour-là, en effet, comme en tcmoigne l'homihaire de Paul Diacre (1), on cèlébrait trois messes et, par conséquent, on lisait trois péricopes évangéliques. A la troisième messe, celle du Jour, se lisait, comme on le fait encore aujourd'hui, le prologue de l'évangile selon samt Jean c'est-à-dire les versets 1-14 du premie chapitre de cet évangile. Ce sont précisément les versets que commente la Vox spiritualis. Celle-ci était donc destinée à exposer l'évangile de la troisième messe de Noël, dite "messe du Jour". C'est dans cette perspective liturgique qu'il convient de replacer et de lire l'homélie erigénienne., si on veut la comprendre et l'apprecier justement. Cependant, la destination liturgique de la Vox spiritualis ne nuit aucunement à sa valeur philosophique et théologique. Origène n'est pas moins Origène dans ses homélies que dans son Periarchon.

Quel est le contenu doctrinal de la Vox spiritualis?

Je sui tenté de répondre : "Prenez et lisez !" Le texte est court : on n'aura pas de peine à y reconnaître les grands thèmes erigéniens. Qunat à ce qui n'y sont pas mentionnés explicitement et qui pourtant s'y laissent deviner en filigrane -- causes primordiales, théophanies, divison des sexes, etc. -- je les ai signalés dans les notes doctrinales de l'édition : il est facile de s'y reporter.

Je me bornerai ici à indiquer sommairement le pla de l'homélie. Comme on peut s'y attendre, l'auteur suit, verset par verset, le texte du prologue johannique. Il ne faut pas perdre de vue, cependant. que nous avons affaire, non à un commentaire de type scolaire, mais à une pièce de rhétorique harmonieusement équilibrée et solidement construite. Il est possible et utile de dégager les grandes lignes de son architecture. La Vox spiritualis comence par un éloge de saint Jean l'Evangeliste ; elle se poursuit par le commentaire du prologue. Ce commentaire à son tour se divise en deux sections : 1° "La montagne de théologie" (versets 1-5) ; 2° "La vallée de l'histoire" (verstes 6-14). L'ensemble comprend donc trois grandes parties, elles mêmes subdivisées en parties plus petites." (pp. 73-74)

(1) PL 95, 1167 B-D ; éd. F. Wiegand, ["Das Homiliarium Karls des Grosse auf seine ursprüngliche Gestalt hin untersucht", dans Studiesn zur Geschichte der Theologie un der Kirche, Bd. 1 Heft 2 (Leipzig 1897)], p. 24-25. Sur l'homiliaire de Paul Diacre, comparé à celui d'Alain de Farfa, cf. J. Leclercq. "Tables pour l'inventaire des homiliaires manuscrits", dans Scriptorium, t. 2 (1948), p. 195-214 ; R. Grégoire, Les homiliaires du Moyen Age, Rome 1966.

6. ———. 1972. Commentaire sur l'évangile de Jean. Paris: Éditions du Cerf.

Introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes de Édouard Jeauneau (Sources chrétiennes, 18').

Nouvelle édition du texte latine: Turnhout: Brepols, 2008 [voir la Section sur les Editions].

Table des matières: Liste des abréviations 7; Références aux oeuvrs de Jean Scot 8; Chapitre I : Authenticité du Commentaire sur l'évangile de Jean 11; Chapitre II : Sources du Commentaire sur l'évangile de Jean 22; Chapitre III : Composition littéraire et contenu doctrinal 40; Chapitre IV : Index des manuscrits 469; Tables des planches 471.

.

Italian

1. Giovanni, Scoto. 2003. De praedestinatione liber. Dialettica e teologia all'apogeo della rinascenza carolingia. Firenze: Edizioni del Galluzzo.

Edizione critica, saggio introduttivo, traduzione e indici lessicali cura di Ernesto Sergio N. Mainoldi.

2. ———. 2012. Sulle nature dell'universo. Libro I (Periphyseon). Milano: Mondadori - Fondazione Lorenzo Valla.

Testo latino a fronte, basato sulla Versione II dell'edizione di Édouard Jeauneau (Turnhot, Brepols, 1996-2003), traduzione di Michela Pereira, introduzione e commento di Peter Dronke.

3. ———. 2013. Sulle nature dell'universo. Libro II (Periphyseon). Milano: Mondadori - Fondazione Lorenzo Valla.

Testo latino a fronte, basato sulla Versione II dell'edizione di Édouard Jeauneau (Turnhot, Brepols, 1996-2003), traduzione di Michela Pereira, introduzione e commento di Peter Dronke.

4. ———. 2014. Sulle nature dell'universo. Libro III (Periphyseon). Milano: Mondadori - Fondazione Lorenzo Valla.

Testo latino a fronte, basato sulla Versione II dell'edizione di Édouard Jeauneau (Turnhot, Brepols, 1996-2003), traduzione di Michela Pereira, introduzione e commento di Peter Dronke.

5. ———. 2016. Sulle nature dell'universo. Libro IV (Periphyseon). Milano: Mondadori - Fondazione Lorenzo Valla.

Testo latino a fronte, basato sulla Versione II dell'edizione di Édouard Jeauneau (Turnhot, Brepols, 1996-2003), traduzione di Michela Pereira, introduzione e commento di Peter Dronke.

6. ———. 2017. Sulle nature dell'universo. Libro V (Periphyseon). Milano: Mondadori - Fondazione Lorenzo Valla.

Testo latino a fronte, basato sulla Versione II dell'edizione di Édouard Jeauneau (Turnhot, Brepols, 1996-2003), traduzione di Michela Pereira, introduzione e commento di Peter Dronke.

7. Giovanni, Scoto Eriugena. 2013. Divisione della natura. Milano: Bompiani.

Testo latino dell'edizione Jeauneau a fronte. Presentazione di Giovanni Reale. Traduzione. introduzione, note e saggio integrativo a cura di Nicola Gorlani.

8. Scoto, Eriugena. 2011. Il cammino di ritorno a Dio. Il Periphyseon. Milano: Mimesis.

Antologia del V libro a cura di Vittorio Chieti.

9. Giovanni, Scoto. 1987. Omelia sul Prologo di Giovanni. Milano: Mondadori - Fondazione Lorenzo Valla.

Introduzione e traduzione di Marta Cristiani, testo latino dell'edizione di Jeauneau (con alcune varianti).

10. Eriugena, Giovanni Scoto. 2018. Omelia e Prologo sul Vangelo di Giovanni . Turnhout: Brepols.

Introduzione, traduzione e note a cura di Giovanni Mandolino.

11. Scoto, Eriugena, Remigio, di Auxerre, Bernardo, Silvestre, and Anonimi. 2006. Tutti i commenti a Marziano Capella. Milano: Bompiani.

Testo latino con traduzione italiana a fronte a cura di Ilaria Ramelli; presentazione di Giovanni Reale.

12. Scoto, Eriugena. 2014. Carmi: un capolavoro dell'epoca carolingia. Milano: Jaca Book.

Prefazione di Giulio D'Onofrio.

Introduzione, traduzione con testo a fronte e note di Filippo Colnago.

German

1. Johannes, Scotus Erigena. 1984. Über die Einteilung der Natur. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.

I. Erste Abteilung (Vorwort der Übersetzers und Übersetzung von Ludwig Noack des ersten, zweiten und dritten Buchs) Berlin, 1870; II. Zweite Abteilung (Buch vier bis Schluss des Werkes), Berlin, 1874.

Nachdruck mit einer Vorbemerkung und neuer Bibliographie von Werner Beierwaltes.

2. ———. 1988. Denken in Gespräch mit dem Engel. Stuttgart: Verlag Freies Geisteleben.

Translation of the Homily on the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John by Klünker,Wolf-Ulrich.

3. ———. 2000. Die Stimme des Adlers. Homilie zum Prolog des Johannesevangeliums. Zürich: Chalice Verlag.

Übertragen und kommentiert von Christopher Bamford.

Spanish

1. Juan, Escoto Eriúgena. 2007. Sobre las naturalezas (Periphyseon). Pamplona: Eunsa.

Introducción y notas de Lorenzo Velázquez; traducción de Lorenzo Velázquez y Pedro Arias.

Bibliographical resources about Eriugena

1. Brennan, Mary. 1977. "A Bibliography of Publications in the Field of Eriugenian Studies, 1800-1975." Studi Medievali no. 18:401-447.

Preface by Werner Beierwaltes.

Introductory note: "The bibliography which follows was initially compiled for the use of members of the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies established in 1970. While drawing attention to my major bibliographical sources, indicated in Section I. a., I wish to acknowledge my particular indebtedness to the following members of that Society: W. Beierwaltes, L. Bieler, J. J. Contreni, J. Garcia, E. Jeauneau, H. Liebeschütz and G. Schrimpf. Most particularly I would wish to acknowledge my great debt of gratitude to the late I. P. Sheldon-Williams for his guidance at the early stages of this work.

I should like also to express my thanks to the former librarian of University College, Dublin, Miss Ellen Power, as well as to assistant librarians R. Brennan and M. Dennigan Brown for much practical help. Finally, I want sincerely to thank Professor John O'Meara of University College under whose direction the work was undertaken and with whose encouragement it is now being published, as also the editor of Studi Medievali, Professor Claudio Leonardi, who has made publication possibile.

The bibliography attempts to cover a limited field. It has been necessary to make judgments in the matter of inclusion or exclusion of items of related interest. For any shortcomings in this regard I take sole responsibility."

The bibliography contains 520 titles plus 66 Addenda, Index of Authors pp. 443-447.

2. ———. 1989. Guide des études érigéniennes. Bibliographie commentée des publications 1930-1987 - A Guide to Eriugenian Studies. A Survey of Publications 1930-1987. Paris: Éditions du Cerf.

Summaries of 523 publications.

From the Introduction: "A short section of this survey (I (b): 14-19) draws attention to progress in Eriugenian studies and, in an attempt to illustrate such progress, the individual sections are ordered chronologically from 1930 to 1987 (alphabetically within each year). The year 1930 has been chosen as an appropriate starting point, barely introducing, as it does, the publication in 1933 of Jean Scot Erigène, sa vie, son oeuvre, sa pensée by Dom Maïeul Cappuyns (Louvain/Paris 1933; reprint Brussels 1964). That volume was a major contribution to Eriugenian studies in this century. If it does not figure in the body of this survey or in the indices this is because the present writer regards it as meriting a separate survey. One may repeat the judgement of G. Mathon (*) that it dispenses us for the most part from reading the literature that pre-dates it. Hence it seems advisable that any student of Eriugena should begin with Cappuyns. The volume is provided with important bibliography, effective indices and a wealth of analytic treatment within the text itself. It could be assigned to all sections of the present survey, apart from III, (b) Editions, and (c) Instrumenta Lexicologica. On the other hand, acknowledgement is also due to Migne, Patrologia Latina CXXII (Paris 1853) whose publication date lies outside the scope of this survey but which for over a century provided the sole printed edition of most of the works of Eriugena.

The present survey is intended as a guide for students and others who may be approaching the study of Eriugena from a great variety of perspectives. The compiler has striven to present summaries of the material read and not to pass judgement. Titles of books or articles are not always informative and the summaries, even when they may appear to run to some length, are intended only to indicate to the reader the main direction of the publication in question. In the case of books, published reviews have been listed or longer review articles summarised. Unpublished theses have not been included, with the single exception of the study of Greek sources by L. Vietorisz (**). Published Acta of conferences are listed both under the editor's name and the names of individual authors of papers. In only two cases is a publication by a single author listed twice, where two quite separate studies appeared in one volume. Where a publication that could be assigned to more than one section has been assigned to only one, the Indices which follow the survey are intended to expand on the information implied by the section headings and titles."

(*) Gérard Mathon, Jean Scot Erigène, in: G. Jacquemet (ed.), Catholicisme hier, aujourd'hui, demain, VI (1967) cols. 626-631.

(**) Lenke Vietorisz, Greek Sources in the 'Periphyseon' of John Scotus, called Eriugena, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, 1966.

The volume contains 523 titles.

3. Riel, Gerd van. 1996. "A Bibliographical Survey of Eriugenian Studies 1987-1995." In Iohannes Scottus Eriugena: the Bible and Hermeneutics. Proceedings of the Ninth International Colloquium of the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies held at Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve, June 7-10, 1995, edited by Riel, Gerd van, Steel, Carlos and McEnvoy, James, 367-400. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

"This bibliography is intended to complement the extensive bibliographical study of Mary Brennan [Guide to Erigenian studies], whose work covers the period from 1930 to 1987.

Among the sources we used, the most important are Medioevo Latino. Bollettino bibliografico della cultura europea dal secolo VI al XIII, a cura di C. Leonardi, Spoleto (Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo); the Répertoire Bibliographique de la Philosophie - Bibliografisch Repertorium van de Wijsbegeerte, Louvain-la-Neuve (Editions de l'Institut Supérieur de Philosophie) Leuven; and the Bibliography which Prof. J. McEvoy periodically published in Eriugena. The Annual Bulletin of SPES (1992 - ).

Contrary to M. Brennan's practice, we did not arrange the references by subject item. Instead, we used larger subdivisions: 1) Bibliographical Surveys, 2) Editions, 3) Translations, 4) Proceedings and Festschriften, 5) Collected Papers, 6) Monographs, and 7) Articles. All papers included in the volumes mentioned under the heading "Proceedings and Festschriften" figure also as separate articles in the corresponding section.

Summaries are given only when the reference to Eriugena is not clearly stated in the title. Reviews are listed under the sign 'I'. Items marked with an asterisk (*) refer to publications earlier than 1987, not present in the survey of M. Brennan.

I am deeply indebted to all the contributors to this volume (particularly to Prof. J. Contreni and É. Jeauneau), to Prof. W. Beierwaltes and D. Moran, for their willingness to revise the first draft of this survey, and for the additions they suggested. I also want to express my profound gratitude to Prof. C. Steel, for his support and sympathy. Magistro discipulus opusculum dedico." (p. 367)

List 302 titles.

4. ———. 2002. "Eriugenian Studies 1995-2000." In History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time. Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference of the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies - Maynooth and Dublin August 16-20, 2000, edited by McEnvoy, James and Dunne, Michael, 611-636. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

"The work of John Scottus Eriugena continues to interest modern scholars. The last lustrum saw the publication of a large amount of articles and books devoted to this early medieval thinker. The most important event in the field of Eriugenian studies was the textual edition, by Edouard Jeauneau, of the Periphyseon (de divisione naturae), which will soon be fully achieved. One can expect that this critical edition of Eriugena's major work will give an extra stimulus to the ever growing stream of publications on the Irish master.

This survey of Eriugenian studies completes the "Bibliographical Survey of Eriugenian Studies 1987-1995" [referred to as Van Riel 1996], which was published in the proceedings of the Ninth Colloquium of the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies (lohannes Scottus Eriugena. The Bible and Hermeneutics, ed. G. Van Riel, C. Steel, and J. McEvoy, Leuven, 1996, p.367-400). We have adopted the same subdivisions here (editions, translations, monographs, and articles).

The survey also contains an index (authors, topics, and manuscripts), which covers not only the present list of works, but also the "Bibliographical Survey 1987-1995" [the numbers 1-302 refer to items listed there]. This provides the reader with a complete and indexed survey of the period from 1987 to 2000." (p. 611)

List of 134 titles.

5. Sheldon Williams, Inglis Patrick. 1959. "A Bibliography of the Works of Johannes Scottus Eriugena." Journal of Ecclesiastical History no. 10:198-224.

"This bibliography is part of the preparation of an edition of Eriugena's Periphyseon (De diuisione naturae) for the series, Scriptores latini Hiberniae, published by the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies.

It supplements the shorter one contained in J. F. Kenney's Sources for the Early History of Ireland, I: Ecclesiastical (New York 1929), and, except in the lists of MSS., does not repeat what is contained there. The letter K against a MS. indicates that it is mentioned by Kenney. Dom Maieul Cappuyns's study, [Jean Scot Erigène: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa pensèe] published in 1933, would have afforded a broader and sounder foundation to build upon, but its bibliographical material, though ample, is not systematically arranged. Kenney supplies the form, Cappuyns the greater part of the matter, the rest of which derives from researches carried out since he wrote.

In the light of these researches Eriugena is shown to be the author of the following:

1. De Praedestinatione (851) .

2. A commentary on the De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of Martianus Capella (859/860).

3. A commentary on Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy III, met. 9 (between 859 and 862).

4. A translation of the works of Dionysius the Areopagite (between 86o and 862).

5. A translation of the Ambigua of Maximus the Confessor (between 862 and 864).

6. A translation of the De hominis opificio of Gregory of Nyssa (De Imagine) (between 862 and 864).

7. A translation of the De fide of Epiphanius.

8. Periphyseon (De diuisione naturae) (between 864 and 866).

9. Expositiones super Ierarchiam caelestem (between 865 and 870).

10. A revised version of the translation of Dionysius (between 865 and 875).

11.A homily on the Prologue to St. John's Gospel.

12. A commentary on St. John's Gospel.

13. Tractatus de uisione Dei.

14. Poems.

Of these fourteen works eight are included in Floss's edition in P.L., CXXII: De Praedestinatione, the translation of Dionysius (the earlier version, emended to some extent from the later), the translation of Maximus (incomplete), Periphyseon, Expositiones (incomplete), the homily and three of the four extant fragments of the commentary on the Fourth Gospel, and the poems (incomplete). A new and complete edition of the poems was published by Traube in 1896, and in recent years editions have appeared of the Boethius commentary, the missing portion of the Expositiones, and a commentary on Martianus Capella in which parts, at least, of Eriugena's work are included. The MSS. of the De Imagine and the rest of the translation of the Ambigua have been identified by Cappuyns (as, with less certainty, a fourth fragment of the commentary on St. John) but have not been published. The translation of Epiphanius and the Tractatus have not been discovered." (pp. 198-199).

6. ———. 1965. "A List of the Works Doubtfully or Wrongly Attributed to Johannes Scottus Eriugena." Journal of Ecclesiastical History no. 15:76-98.

"Eriugena made a name for himself both by his outstanding scholarship and by the boldness, not to say the heterodoxy, of his opinions. As a natural consequence of this, there has been since the Middle Ages a tendency to attribute to him works displaying these characteristics for which no more likely author could be found. My 'Bibliography' of Eriugena (*) was an attempt to give an account of his genuine writings purged of these accretions, and I made no reference to them in it. As, however, many of them have been published under his name in Migne's Patrologia and elsewhere, and as the literature in which their genuineness is questioned or refuted is not always easily accessible, it seemed that a supplement to the `Bibliography' containing a list of the works that were excluded from it with, where possible, the reasons for their exclusion might be useful. This supplement breaks no new ground: particularly, my debt to Dom Maïeul Cappuyns is greater than in the `Bibliography' for, whereas more Eriugena material has come to light since he wrote, I know of no work excluded by him from the Eriugena corpus which has since been proved to be genuine. Such value as this note has is that of convenience.

It cannot in all respects follow the shape of the 'Bibliography', in which I gave a catalogue of Eriugena's writings, as fully documented as possible and (except for the Poems) in chronological order. Pseudepigrapha do not require such documentation and do not lend themselves to chronological arrangement. But, since some sort of order must be adopted, I have tried to align them as far as possible with the stages of Eriugena's development as revealed in his genuine extant works, in which he shows himself first (in the De praedestinatione) as a controversialist, then (in the commentaries on Martianus Capella and Boethius) as a grammarian and logician, and finally, after reading the Greek Fathers, as a Christian Platonist philosopher. Among the works doubtfully or falsely attributed to him, apologetics are represented by a treatise on the eucharist, grammar and logic by works on Aristotle, Porphyry, the two Priscians, Macrobius, which, if they ever existed, would probably belong to this group; and philosophy by works related to, or influenced by, the translations of the ps.-Dionysius. As in the 'Bibliography' I have left poetical works to the end." (pp. 76-77)

(*) Journal of Ecclesiastical History, X (1959), 198-224.

Proceedings of the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenan Studies (SPES)

1. O'Meara, John J., and Bieler, Ludwig, eds. 1973. The Mind of Eriugena. Dublin: Irish University Press.

Papers of a Colloquium, Dublin, 14-18 July 1970.

Contents (every essay os followed by a Discussion): John J. O’Meara; Introduction VII; 1. I. P. Sheldon-Williams: Eriugena’s Greek Sources 1; 2. Jean Pépin: Mysteria et Symbola dans le commentaire de Jean Scot sur l’evangile de Saint Jean 16; 3. Robert Russell: Some Augustinian Influences in Eriugena’s De diuisione naturae 31; 4. Marta Cristiani: Le problème du lieu et du temps dans le livre Ier du ‘Periphyseon’ 41; 5. Hans Liebeschütz: The Place of the Martianus Glossae in the Development of Eriugena’s Thought 49;

6. René Roques: Traduction ou interpretation? Brèves remarques sur Jean Scot traducteur de Denys 59; 7. Paul Meyvaert: Eriugena’s Translation of the Ad Thalassium of Maximus: Preliminaries to an Edition of this Work 78; 8. Jeanne Barbet: La tradition du texte latin de la Hiérarchie céleste dans les manuscrits des Expositiones in Hierarchiam caelestem 89; 9. Jean Trouillard: Erigène et la théophanie creatrice 98; 10. Edouard Jeauneau: Influences érigénionnes dans une homélie d’Héric d’Auxerre 114; 11. Gangolf Schrimpf: Zur Frage der Authentizität unserer Texte von Johannes Scottus’ ‘Annotationes in Martianum’ 125; 12. Ludwig Bieler: Remarks on Eriugena’s Original Latin Prose 140; 13. Guy-H. Allard: La structure litteraire de la composition du De diuisione naturae 147; 14. Nikolaus M. Haring: John Scottus in Twelfth Century Angelology 158; 15. Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny: Une rencontre symbolique de Jean Scot Erigène et d’Avicenne. Notes sur le De causis primis et secundis et fluxu qui consequitur eas 170; 16. Yves Christe: Quelques portails romans et l’idee de théophanie selon Jean Scot Erigène 182; 17. Werner Beierwaltes: The Revaluation of John Scottus Eriugena in German Idealism 190-199.

2. Roques, René, ed. 1977. Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

Actes du II. Colloque international, Laon, 7-12 juillet 1975.

Table des matières : Suzanne Martinet: Aspect de la ville de Laon sous Charles le Chauve 23; Pierre Riche: Charles le Chauve et la culture de son temps 37; Bernhard Bischoff: Irische Schreiber im Karolingerreich 47; John J. Contreni: The Irish « Colony » at Laon during the time of John Scottus 59; Louis Holtz: Grammairiens irlandais au temps de Jean Scot : quelques aspects de leur pédagogie 69; Jean Jolivet: L’enjeu de la grammaire pour Godescalc 79; Terence A. M. Bishop: Autographa of John the Scot 89; Jean Vezin: A propos des manuscrits de Jean Scot : quelques remarques sur les manuscrits autographes du haut moyen âge 95; André Vernet: Fragment d’un manuscrit du « Periphyseon » de Jean Scot (xie siècle) 101; Bernhard Bischoff und Édouard Jeauneau: Ein neuer Text aus der Gedankenwelt des Johannes Scottus 109; R.. Le Bourdellès: Connaissance du grec et méthodes de traduction dans le monde carolingien jusqu’à Scot Érigène 117; Jeanne Barbet, Le traitement des « Expositiones in ierarchiam caelestem» de Jean Scot par le compilateur du Corpus dionysien du XIIIe siècle 125; Édouard Jeauneau: La traduction érigénienne des Ambigua de Maxime le Confesseur : Thomas Gale (1636-1702) et le Codex remensis 135; Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny: Les « Solutiones ad Chosroem » de Priscianus Lydus et Jean Scot 145; Jean Préaux, Jean Scot et Martin de Laon en face du De nuptiis de Martianus Capella 161; Claudio Leonardi: Glosse eriugeniane a Marziano Capella in un codice leidense 171; Goulven Madec: L’augustinisme de Jean Scot dans le « De praedestinatione » 183; John J. O’Meara: Eriugena’s Use of Augustine in his Teaching of the return of the Soul and the Vision of God 191; Joseph Moreau: Le Verbe et la création selon S. Augustin et J. Scot Érigène 201; Guy-H. Allard: Quelques remarques sur la « disputationis series » du « De divisione naturae » 211; Dominique O’Meara: L’investigation et les investigateurs dans le « De divisione naturae » de Jean Scot Érigène 225; Ludwig Bieler: Observations on Eriugena’s « Commentary on the Gospel of John »: a second Harvest 235; Peter Dronke, « Theologia veluti quaedam poetria » : quelques observations sur la fonction des images poétiques chez Jean Scot 243; Barbara Münxelhaus, Aspekte der musica disciplina bei Eriugena 253; Werner Beierwaltes: « Negati affirmatio »: Welt als Metapher. Zur Grundlegung einer mittelalterlichen Aesthetik 263; Marta Cristiani: La notion de loi dans le « De Praedestinatione » de Jean Scot 277; Gangolf Schrimpf: Die Sinnmitte von « Periphyseon » 289; Francis Bertin: Les origines de l’homme chez Jean Scot 307; Bernard Mc Ginn: The Negative Element in the Anthropology of John the Scot 315; Brian Stock: « Intelligo me esse »: Eriugena’s « Gogito » 327; Jean-Claude Foussard: Apparence et apparition : la notion de « phantasia » chez Jean Scot 337; Jean Trouillard: La notion d’« analyse » chez Érigène 349; Stanislas Breton: Langage spatial, langage métaphysique dans le néo-platonisme érigénien 357; Stephen Gersh: « Per se ipsum »: The Problem of Immédiate and Mediate Causation in Eriugena and his Neoplatonic Predecessors 367; Tullio Gregory: L’eschatologie de Jean Scot 377; Maurice de Gandillac: Anges et hommes dans le Commentaire de Jean Scot sur la « Hiérarchie céleste » 393; Paolo Lucentini: La « Clavis physicae » di Honorius Augustodunensis e la tradizione eriugeniana nel secolo XII 405; Jean Châtillon: Hugues de Saint-Victor critique de Jean Scot 415; Paul Vignaux: Jean de Ripa, Hugues de Saint-Victor et Jean Scot sur les théophanies 433; Michael Lapidge: L’influence stylistique de la poésie de Jean Scot 441; Gabrielle Sed-Rajna: L’influence de Jean Scot sur la doctrine du kabbaliste Azriel de Gérone 453; Elena Ofélia Bellinotto: Las cuatro naturalezas en Juan Escoto Eriùgena y Leon Hebreo 465; René Martin: À propos d’une remarque de Schopenhauer sur Jean Scot Érigène et la philosophie indienne 469; Yves Christe: Sainte-Marie de Compïègne et le temple d’Hézéchiel 477-481.

3. Beierwaltes, Werner, ed. 1980. Eriugena. Studien zu seinen Quellen, Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Vorträge des III. Internationalen Eriugena-Colloquiums, Freiburg im Breisgau, 27.-30. August 1979.

Inhalt: Werner Beierwaltes: Zur Einführung in das Freiburger Colloquium 1; Arthur Hilary Armstrong: Philosophy, Theology and Interpretation: the Interpretation of Interpreters 7; Guy H. Allard: Vocabulaire érigénien relatif à la représentation de l'Écriture 15;

Édouard Jeauneau: La division des sexes chez Grégoire de Nysse et chez Jean Scot Érigène 33; Stephen Gersh: Omnipresence in Eriugena. Some Reflections on Augustino-Maximian Elements in Periphyseon 55; Goulven Madec: Observations sur le dossier augustinien du „Periphyseon“ 75; Brian Stock: In Search of Eriugena’s Augustine 85; John J. O'Meara: „Magnorum Virorum Quendam Consensum Velimus Machinari“ (804 B). Eriugena’s Use of Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram in the Periphyseon 105; John Marenbon: John Scottus and the‘Categoriae Decem’ 117; Gangolf Schrimpf: Johannes Scottus Eriugena und die Rezeption des Martianus Capella im karolingischen Bikiungswesen 135; Marta Cristiani: L’espace de l'âme. La controverse sur la corporéité des esprits, le „De statu animae“ de Claudien Mamert et le „Periphyseon“ 149; Marie-Elisabeth Duchez: Jean Scot Érigène premier lecteur du „De institutione musica“ de Boèce? 165; Giulio d'Onofrio: A proposito del „magnificus Boetius“: un’ indagine sulla presenza degli „Opuscula sacra“ e della „Consolatio“ nell’ opera eriugeniana 159; Indices 201-206.

4. Allard, Guy-H., ed. 1986. Jean Scot écrivain. Paris: Vrin.

Actes du IV. Colloque international, Montréal, 28 aout-2 septembre 1983.

Table des matières : Guy-H. Allard : Présentation 9; Édouard Jeauneau : Jean Scot et l’ironie 13; Paul Dietrich; Donald F. Duclow : Paradise and Eschatology : Symbolism and Exegesis in « Peri-physeon V » 29; Paul E. Dutton : Eriugena the Royal Poet 51; Gustavo Piemonte : L’expression « quae sunt et quae non sunt » : Jean Scot et Marius Victorinus 81; John J. O'Meara : Translating Eriugena 115; Jean Pépin: Jean Scot, traducteur de Denys. L’exemple de la « Lettre IX» 129; Goulven Madec : Jean Scot et ses auteurs 143; Claudio Leonardi: Nouvelle présentation d’un vieux problème 187; Werner Beierwaltes: Language and its object 209; Giulio d'Onofrio: « Disputandi disciplina ». Procédés dialectiques et « logica vetus » dans le langage philosophique de Jean Scot 229; Michael Herren:

The Commentary on Martianus Attributed to John Scottus : its Hiberno-Latin Background 265; Padraig O'Neill : The Old-Irish Words in Eriugena’s Biblical Glosses 287; Colettte Jeudy: L’attitude de Rémi d’Auxerre face aux innovations linguistiques de Jean Scot 299;

Diane Desroisiers-Bonin : Etude des radicaux et de leur répartition dans le dialogue du « Periphyseon » 311; Gilles Touchette : L’affixation dans le « Periphyseon » : analyse générale et étude d’un cas-type 327; Christine Coallier : Le vocabulaire des arts libéraux dans le « Periphyseon » 343-360.

5. Beierwaltes, Werner, ed. 1987. Eriugena redivivus. Zur Wirkungsgeschichte seines Denkens im Mittelalter und im übergang zur Neuzeit, Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Vorträge des V. Internationalen Eriugena-Colloquiums Werner-Reimers-Stiftung Bad Homburg, 26-30. August 1985.

Inhalt: Vorbemerkung 9; John J. O'Meara: Eriugena’s Immediate Influence 13; Édouard Jeauneau: Le renouveau érigénien du XIIe siècle 26; Giulio d'Onofrio: Die Überlieferung der dialektischen Lehre Eriugenas in den hochmittelalterlichen Schulen 47; Claudio Leonardi: Der Kommentar von Johannes Scotus zu Martianus Capella im 12. Jahrhundert 77; Christel Meier: Über die Eriugena-Rezeption bei Hildegard von Bingen 89; Yves Christe: Influences et Retentissement de l’Oeuvre de Jean Scot sur l’Art Médiéval: Bilan et Perspectives 142; Stephen Gersh: Honorius Augustodunensis and Eriugena. Remarks on the Method and Content of the Clavis Physicae 162; Paolo Lucentini: L’eresia di Amalrico 174; James McEvoy: John Scottus Eriugena and Robert Grosseteste: An ambiguous Influence 192; Dominic J. O'Meara: Eriugena and Aquinas on the Beatific Vision 214; Guy-H. Allard: L’Attitude de Jean Scot et de Dante à l’Égard du Thème des Deux Infinis: Dieu et la Matière Première 237; Alois M. Haas: Eriugena und die Mystik 254; Gustavo A. Piemonte: Les Expositiones in Hierarchiam coelestem de Jean Scot et un opuscule hébreu pseudépigraphique du XIIIe siècle 279; Werner Beierwaltes: Eriugena und Cusanus 311; Indice 344-356.

6. Leonardi, Claudio, and Menstò, Enrico, eds. 1989. Giovanni Scoto nel suo tempo. L'organizzazione del sapere in età Carolingia. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'Alto Medioevo.

Atti del XXIV. Convegno storico internazionale: Todi, 11-14 ottobre 1987.

Indice: Premessa di Claudio Leonardi ed Enrico Menestò VII; Discorso inaugurale: Rudolf Schieffer: Regno e Chiesa sotto Carlo il Calvo 1;

Relazioni:

I Deug-Su, Agiografia e potere in età carolingia 27; John J. Contreni: The Carolingian School: Letters from the Classroom 81; Gangolf Schrimpf: Die systematische Bedeutung der beiden logischen Einteilungen (divisiones) zu Beginn von Periphyseon 113; Louis Holtz: L’einsegnement de la grammaire au temps de Charles le Chauve 153; Paolo Chiesa: Traduzioni e traduttori dal greco nel IX secolo: sviluppi di una tecnica 171; Rosamond McKitterick: Manuscripts and scriptoria in the reign of Charles the Bald, 840-877 201; Bernard McGinn: Eriugena Mysticus 235; Silvia Cantelli, L’esegesi al tempo di Ludovico il Pio e Carlo il Calvo 261; Marta Cristiani: Itinerari e potenzialità del pensiero cristiano in età carolingia: la teologia trinitaria di Giovanni Scoto 337; James McEvoy: 'Reditus omnium in superessentialem unitatem’: Christ as universal Saviour in Periphyseon V 365; Gian Luca Potestà: Ordine ed eresia nella controversia sulla predestinazione 383; Giulio d’Onofrio: I fondatori di Parigi. Giovanni Scoto e la teologia del suo tempo 413; Guy H. Allard: Un analyseur syntaxique du Periphyseon 457; Édouard Jeauneau: L ’edition du livre IV du Periphyseon 469; Mark A. Zier: The Shape of the Critical Edition of Periphyseon IV 487; Lesley Smith: The Manuscript Tradition of Periphyseon Book 4 499; Girolamo Arnaldi: Anastasio Bibliotecario, Carlo il Calvo e la fortuna di Dionigi l’Areopagita nel secolo IX 513; Michael W. Herren: Gli ebrei nella cultura letteraria al tempo di Carlo il Calvo 537; M. Elisabeth Duchez: Le savoir theorico-musical carolingien dans les commentaires de Martianus Capella. La tradition erigenienne 553;

Comunicazioni:

Willemien Otten, The Role of Man in the Eriugenian Universe: Dependance or Autonomy 595-609.

7. Beierwaltes, Werner, ed. 1990. Begriff und Metapher. Sprachform des Denkens bei Eriugena, Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Vorträge des VII. Internationalen Eriugena-Colloquiums Werner-Reimers-Stiftung Bad Homburg, 26.-29. Juli 1989.

Inhalt: Vorwort 11; Giulio d'Onofrio: Über die Natur der Einteilung. Die dialektische Entfaltung von Eriugenas Denken 17; Werner Beierwaltes: Duplex Theoria. Zu einer Denkform Eriugenas 39; Gangolf Schrimpf: Der Begriff des Elements in Periphyseon III 65;

Gustavo Piemonte: Image et contenu intelligible dans la conception érigénienne de la ‘diffusio dei’ 80; Guy-H. Allard: “Medietas” chez Jean Scot 95; Stephen Gersh: The Structure of the Return in Eriugena’s Periphyseon 108; Édouard Jeauneau: Jean-Scot et la Métaphysique des Nombres 126; Dominic O'Meara: The metaphysical Use of mathematical Concepts in Eriugena 142; James McEvoy: Metaphors of Light and Metaphysics of Light in Eriugena 149; Alois M. Haas: Homo-medietas. Sinn und Tragweite von Eriugenas

Metapher vom Menschen als einer 'dritten Welt’ 168; Rainier Brueren: Die Schrift als Paradigma der Wahrheit. Gedanken zum Vorbegriff der Metaphysik bei Johannes Scotus Eriugena 187; Willemien Otten: The Universe of Nature and the Universe of Man:

Difference and Identity 202; Peter Dronke: Eriugena’s Earthly Paradise 213; Indices 230-231.

8. McGinn, Bernard, and Otten, Willemien, eds. 1994. Eriugena: East and West. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Papers of the VIII. International Colloquium of the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies, Chicago and Notre Dame, 18-20 October 1991.

Contents: Contributors IX; Abbreviations XI; Introduction: Bernard McGinn: Eriugena: East and West ;

Part 1

Historical Background

Michael McCormick: Diplomacy and the Carolingian Encounter with Byzantium down to the Accession of Charles the Bald 15;

Part 2

Themes of the East-West Encounter

John Meyendorff: Remarks on Eastern Patristic Thought in John Scottus Eriugena 51; Willemien Otten: Eriugena’s Periphyseon: A Carolingian Contribution to the Theological Tradition 69; J. C. Marler: Dialectical Use of Authority in the Periphyseon 95; Giulio d’Onofrio: The Concordia of Augustine and Dionysius: Toward a Hermeneutic of the Disagreement of Patristic Sources in John the Scot’s Periphyseon 115; Deirdre Carabine: Eriugena’s Use of the Symbolism of Light, Cloud, and Darkness in the Periphyseon 141; James McEvoy: Biblical and Platonic Measure in John Scottus Eriugena 153; Jean Pépin: Humans and Animals: Aspects of Scriptural Reference in Eriugena’s Anthropology 179;

Part 3

Eastern Sources and Influences

Werner Beierwaltes: Unity and Trinity in East and West 209; Donald F. Duclow: Isaiah Meets the Seraph: Breaking Ranks in Dionysius and Eriugena? 233; Eric D. Perl: Metaphysics and Christology in Maximus Confessor and Eriugena 253; Oleg Bychkov: Russian Scholarship on the Interrelation of Eastern and Western Thought in John Scottus Eriugena 271

Index of Names 281; Index of Subjects 285-290.

9. Riel, Gerd van, Steel, Carlos, and McEvoy, James, eds. 1996. Iohannes Scottus Eriugena. The Bible and Hermeneutics. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Proceedings of the IX. International Colloquium of the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies held at Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve, June 7-10, 1995.

Table of Contents: Foreword V; List of Contributors VII; Abbreviations of Editions IX; James McEvoy: Introduction. News and Views on Eriugena’s Hermeneutics XIII; John J. Contreni: Carolingian Biblical Culture 1; Martin McNamara: The Irish Tradition of Biblical Exegesis, A.D. 550-800 25: Bernard McGinn: The Originality of Eriugena’s Spiritual Exegesis 55; Willemien Otten: The Parallelism of Nature and Scripture: Reflections on Eriugena’s Incarnational Exegesis 81; Thomas O’Loughlin: Biblical Contradictions in the Periphyseon and the Development of Eriugena’s Method 103; José Luis Canton Alonso: Le rôle herméneutique de la foi dans la pensée érigénienne 127; Jack C. Marler: Scriptural Truth in the Periphyseon 155; Agnieszka Kijewska: The Eriugenian Concept of Theology:

John the Evangelist as the Model Theologian 173; Deirdre Carabine: Five Wise Virgins: Theosis and Return in Periphyseon V 195; Robert D. Crouse: Primordiales Causae in Eriugena’s Interpretation of Genesis: Sources and Significance 209; Donald F. Duclow: Denial or Promise of the Tree of Life ? Eriugena, Augustine and Genesis 3:22b 221; Carlos Steel: The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil 239; Stephen Gersh: Eriugena’s Ars Rhetorica — Theory and Practice 261; Anneli Luhtala: Grammar and Dialectic: A Topical Issue in the Ninth Century 279; Michael W. Herren: John Scottus and the Biblical Manuscripts Attributed to the Circle of Sedulius 303; Gustavo A. Piemonte: Recherches sur les 'Tractatus in Matheum’ attribués à Jean Scot 321; Édouard Jeauneau: Artifex Scriptura 351; Gerd Van Riel: A Bibliographical Survey of Eriugenian Studies 1987-1995 367; Index 401-408.

10. McEvoy, James, and Dunne, Michael, eds. 2002. History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Proceedings of the X. International Conference of the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies, Maynooth and Dublin, August 16-20, 2000.

Table of Contents: Carlos Steel: Preface V; List of Contributors VII; Abbreviations of Editions IX; James McEvoy, Michael Dunne: Introduction XV;

Opening Lecture

1. Bernard McGinn: Eriugena Confronts the End. Reflections on Johannes Scottus’s Place in Carolingian Eschatology 3;

I. History and the Beyond

2. J.C. Marler: The Eriugenian Tension between History and Eschatology 33; 3. Francesco Paparella: La storia in Eriugena come autocoscienza divina 39;

II. Grammar

4. Catherine Kavanagh: “The Philosophical Importance of Grammar for Eriugena 61; 5. Anneli Luthala: Time and the Substantival Verb in Eriugena 77;

III. Discoveries and Identifications

6. John Contreni: John Scottus and Bede 91; 7. Paul Dutton: Eriugena’s Workshop: the Making of the Periphyseon in Rheims 875 141; 8. Carl Laga: A Complete Graeco-Latin Index of Maximus Confessor’s Quaestiones ad Thalassium 169; 9. James McEvoy: John Scottus Eriugena and Thomas Gallus, Commentators on the Mystical Theology 183; 10. Francesco Mosetti Casaretto: ‘Intuere coelum apertum’: l’esordio dell’ ‘epistola ad Grimaldum abbatem’ di Ermenrico di Ellwangen fra Ilduino di Saint-Denis e Giovanni Scoto 203;

11. Gustavo A. Piemonte: Some Distinctive Theses of Eriugena’s Eschatology in his Exegesis of the Gospel according to St. Matthew 227;

IV. The Irish Background

12. Thomas O’ Loughlin: Imagery of the New Jerusalem in the Periphyseon and Eriugena’s Irish Background 245; 13. Hilary Richardson: Themes in Eriugena’s Writings and Early Irish Art 261;

V. Eschatology of the De Praedestinatione

14. Armando Bisogno: “Essentia, voluntas et scientia”: esiti escatologici della gnoseologia del De Praedestinatione Liber 283; 15. Robert Crouse: Predestination, Human Freedom and the Augustinian Theology of History in Eriugena’s De Divina Praedestinatione 303;

16. Ernesto Sergio N. Mainoldi: Su alcune fonti ispiratrici della teologia e dell’escatologia del De Divina Praedestinatione Liber di Giovanni Scoto Eriugena 313;

VI. Return and Last Things

17. José Luis Cantón Alonso: Deus omnia in omnibus: les exempla naturalia dans le discours eschatologique de Jean Scot Érigène 333; 18. Paul A. Dietrich and Donald F. Duclow: Hell and Damnation in Eriugena 347; 19. Giulio d'Onofrio: 'Cuius esse est non posse esse’: la quarta species della natura eriugeniana tra logica, metafisica e gnoseologia 367; 20. Douglas Hadely: A twofold Problem in the twofold Eschatology of John Scottus Eriugena 413; 21. Alois Μ. Haas: Mystische Züge in Eriugenas Eschatologie 429; 22. Michael Harrington: Eastern and Western Psychological Triads in Eriugena’s Realized Eschatology 447; 23. Hilary Mooney: ‘Infinitus enim infinite, etiam in purgatissimis mentibus fonnatur’: Die Struktur der Begegnung mit dem unendlichen Gott nach Johannes Scottus Eriugena 463; 24. Dermot Moran: Time and Eternity in the Periphyseon 487; 25. Willemien Otten: The Pedagogical Aspect of Eriugena’s Eschatology: Paradise between the Letter and the Spirit 509; 26. Valery V. Petroff: Theoriae of the Return in John Scottus’

Eschatology 527; 27. Carlos Steel: The Return of the Body into Soul: Philosophical Musings on the Resurrection 581;

Bibliography: Gerd Van Riel: Eriugenian Studies 1995-2000 611; Index 637-646.

11. Otten, Willemien, and Allen, Michael I., eds. 2014. Eriugena and Creation. Turnhout: Brepols.

Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Eriugenian Studies, held in honor of Edouard Jeauneau, Chicago, 9-12 November 2011.

Table of Contents: Willemien Otten and Michael I. Allen, Introduction to the Volume IX; Abbreviations and List of Eriugena’s Works XVII; Paul Edward Dutton: Publications by Édouard Jeauneau 1991-2014 XIX-XXIX;

Section 1: Creation and Creativity: Eriugena and the Dynamics of Carolingian Culture

Paul Edward Dutton: Eriugena and Virgil 30; John J. Contreni: Women in the Age of Eriugena 31; Michael W. Herren: Cultures of Grace: Eriugena and Celtic Christianity 51; Jeremy C. Thompson: God’s Own Dwelling-Place: Oppositions in the Ninth-Century Predestination Debate 85; Michael I. Allen: Poems by Lupus, written by Heiric: An Endpaper for Édouard Jeauneau (Paris, BnF, lat. 7496, fol. 249v) 105;

Section 2: Cosmos and Physis: Eriugena’s Periphyseon in the Context of East and West

Édouard Jeauneau: From Origen’s Periarchon to Eriugena’s Periphyseon 139; Ernesto Sergio Mainoldi: Creation in Wisdom: Eriugena’s Sophiology beyond Ontology and Meontology 183; Vincent Giraud: Being as Sign: Note on the Eriugenian Ontology 223; Donald F. Duclow: The Sleep of Adam, the Making of Eve: Sin and Creation in Eriugena 235; Adrian Guiu: “Reading the Two Books”: Exegesis and Natural Contemplation in the Periphyseon 263; Carlos Steel: Maximus Confessor and John Scottus Eriugena on Place and Time 291;

Section 3: Eriugena’s Periphyseon and Medieval Concepts of Creation

Alfred K. Siewers: The Periphyseon, the Irish “Otherworld”, and Early Medieval Nature 321; John Marenbon, Eriugena, Aristotelian Logic and the Creation 349; Qaiser Shahzad: Being, God, and Creation in Eriugena and Ibn ‘Arabi: An Akbarian Reading of the Periphyseon 369; Agnieszka Kijewska: Eriugena and the Twelfth Century: The Concept of Ratio 393; Daniel Yingst: Quae Omnia Concorditer Consonant: Eriugena’s Universe in the Thought of Honorius Augustodunensis 427; Bernard McGinn: Exegesis as Metaphysics: Eriugena and Eckhart on Reading Genesis 1-3 463;

Section 4 : Eriugena’s Periphyseon and Modern Reception

Willemien Otten: Eriugena and Emerson on Nature and the Self 503; Adriaan T. Peperzak: Between John from Ireland and Hegel from Berlin 539; Stephen Gersh: En-Countering Periphyseon: An Essay in Reading Heidegger and Eriugena 559; Dermot Moran: Christian Neoplatonism and the Phenomenological Tradition: The Hidden Influence of John Scottus Eriugena 601; Joke Schakenraad: The Rational Mysticism of John Scottus Eriugena and Ludwig Wittgenstein 637; Jean-Luc Marion: Veluti ex nihilo in aliquid. Remarks on Eriugena’s path from apophasis to diuina philosophia 657; Thomas Carlson: Theophany and the Chiaroscuro of Nature: Eriugena and the Question of Technology 681;

Bibliography of Eriugenian Studies, 2000-2014 709; Notes on Contributors 735; Index 743-759.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated Bibliography on the Philosophical Work of Eriugena (First Part: A - Mad)

Bibliography

The publications by É. Jeauneau on Eriugena are cited in a separate page: Édouard Jeauneau sur la Philosophie Médiévale. Bibliographie Choisie.

N.B. Summaries cited from: Mary Brennan, A Guide to Eriugenian Studies. A Survey of Publications 1930-1987, are indicated with: (B.) and page number.

1. "John Scottus Eriugena." 2005. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 79.

Edited by Philipp W. Rosemann.

Contents: Editor's Introduction 521; David C. Greetham: Édouard Jeauneau's Edition of the Periphyseon in Light of Contemporary Editorial Theory 527; Paul Edward Dutton: Filiolitas: The Short History of One of Eriugena's Inventions 549; Catherine Kavanagh: The Influence of Maximus the Confessor on Eriugena's Treatment of Aristotle's Categories 567; Valery V. Petroff: Eriugena on the Spiritual Body 597; L. Michael Harrington: The Argument for Universal Immortality in Eriugena's "Zoology" 611; Avital Wohlman: John Scottus Eriugena, a Christian Philosopher 635; Philipp W. Rosemann: Causality as Concealing Revelation in Eriugena: A Heideggerian Interpretation 653-671.

2. "Erigène." 2013. Les Études philosophiques no. 104:3-141.

Edité par Willemien Otten.

Table des matières : Willemien Otten : Avant-propos 3; Bernard McGinn : Jean Scot Érigène. Une introduction 7; Édouard Jeauneau : Le Periphyseon: son titre, son plan, ses remaniements 13; Dermot Moran : Jean Scot Érigène, la connaissance de soi et la tradition idéaliste 29; Stephen Gersh : L'ordo naturalis des causes primordiales. La transformation érigénienne de la doctrine dionysienne de noms divins 57; Adrian Guiu : Le Periphyseon d'Érigène comme une extrapolation de l'Ambiguum de Maxime le Confesseur 79; Elizabeth Kendig : La forme dialogique dans le Periphyseon : recréer l'esprit 101; Willemien Otten : Le langage de l'union mystique : le désir et le corps dans l'oeuvre de Jean Scot Érigène et de Meister Eckhart 121-141.

3. Allard, Guy-H. 1973. "La structure littéraire de la composition du De diuisione naturae." In The Mind of Eriugena, edited by O'Meara, John Joseph and Bieler, Ludwig, 147-157. Dublin: Irish University Press.

"Tout se passe en effet comme si l’auteur du De divisione avait voulu élaborer un large commentaire des trois premiers chapitres de la Genèse et instaurer, à l’exemple de ses prédécesseurs, son propre Hexameron. Il me semble que ce soit le texte de la Genèse(7) qui ait commandé la mise en œuvre de toutes les ressources culturelles de l’auteur, qui ait organisé les éléments de son savoir et ordonné l’enchaînement des questions discutées. A plusieurs reprises, comme si la science du Maître était à bout de souffle et la patience du Disciple agacée par tant de prouesses théologico-philosophiques, on se met d’accord pour revenir à l’Écriture et en poursuivre le commentaire: ‘M. Redeamus ad Scrip-turam.—D. Tempus invitât’ ; et aussitôt l’auteur enchaîne sur un autre verset de la Genèse.(8) Ce constant effort de ne pas perdre de vue le fil conducteur de son projet (c’est-à-dire revenir à la Genèse) est secondé très souvent par la technique des rappels et des reprises de la division des livres précédents et de leur contenu.(9) C’est ainsi par exemple, qu’au début du livre IV, l’auteur nous rappelle (se rappelle) qu’il a traité au livre précédent des questions relatives au cinq premiers jours de la Genèse,(10) se réservant ce IVe livre pour le sixième jour.(11)

(...)

"Ainsi le livre I serait un commentaire de Deus et fecit, le livre II, un commentaire du In principio, et les trois derniers livres, explicitant l’expression caelum et terram, se déploient selon la distribution même de la Genèse, c’est-à-dire que le livre III porte sur les cinq premiers jours de la création, le livre IV, sur le sixième jour et le récit adamique, le livre V sur l’expulsion d’Adam du paradis. Mais il est temps de procéder à une rapide démonstration de cette hypothèse, et de faire voir comment les trois premiers chapitres de la Genèse servent de canevas au vaste déploiement rédactionnel du De divisione." (pp. 147-148)

(8) Comme c’est le cas par exemple en De divisione III 36; IV. 2.

(9) Sauf peut-être pour le livre V où on ne retrouve pas cette conscience réflexive, coutumière aux autres livres, par laquelle l’auteur se remémore le projet initial du livre et de l’ensemble do l’œuvre. Cette technique de composition n’est pas propre à notre auteur. C’est déjà une vieille coutume à l’époque, et saint Augustin s’était déjà signalé dans la maîtrise de cette technicalité, voir G.-H. Allard, ‘Pour une nouvelle interprétation de la Cité de Dieu’, dans Studia Patristica, 9 (1966), pp. 329-339.

(10) Ce qui était le projet principal du livre III (voir De divisione IV. 1, à la fin) quoiqu’il ait accordé beaucoup de place à des questions introductives, comme il le mentionne en III 23 (à la fin). Car il lui arrive souvent, en cours de discussion, d’oublier la question principale, I, 13 (à la fin).

(11) Où il est question de la production du genre ‘animal’ et de l’espèce humaine. (‘Sexta autem die non solum generis conditio, verum etiam trina divisio ipsius in species narratur', IV. 5). Voir IV. 3 et IV. 1 (à la fin).

4. ———. 1977. "Quelques rémarques sur la "disputationis series" du De divisione naturae." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 211-224. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

"This author fids that Eriugena in the Periphyseon does fulfil his promise of an internal order and coherence in the progress of his reasoning. But the order may be difficult to discern. The author proposes to survey the Periphyseon on three levels - logical, pedagogical and epistemological. The work is a vast logical definition of the phusis, entirely centred on the universitas. The ten categories are not merely the objects of Eriugena's discourse but the conditions thereof (p. 213). This author considers Eriugena's four divisions of nature and five modes of being in the light of that remark: even in these basic analyses there is a logical order of anteriority and posteriority. At the pedagogical level the Periphyseon is a debate and between the two participants in the dialogue there is the mediatory figure of Reason. The device of repetitio far from manifesting mere prolixity is a time-honoured element of rhetoric: it represents the gradual adaptation of the eye to the light (p. 218) and clarifies any obscurities remaining over from earlier exposition of a theme; the dialogue takes on the allure of a symphony. In Book I the discussion of the Categories is a propaedeutic to the principal theme. At the epistemological level the discussion moves from the deep obscurity of being/non-being to 'the less obscure and to epiphanies. This author emphasises the framework of the trivium to be discerned in the structure of the Periphyseon. The metaphor of a knot which is to be untied is recurrent; reasoning is a weave and God a weaver." (Brennan, p. 233).

5. ———. 1980. "Vocabulaire érigénien relatif à la repésentation de l'Écriture." In Eriugena. Studien zu seinen Quellen, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 15-32. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

"Les présentes recherches lexicographiques visent à déterminer la place occupée par la Bible dans l’économie générale du système de Jean Scot Erigène. Il s’agit en définitive de savoir comment il a perçu l’Ecriture, i. e. ce qu’il a retenu d’essentiel de son contact avec elle, une fois la lecture faite, le commentaire achevé, la citation empruntée. Or nous trouvons sous la plume de Jean, deux jugements de valeur qui vont retenir ici notre attention pour plusieurs raisons. Premièrement, lorsque Jean déclare d’une part que l’Ecriture est artificios(1)' et que d’autre part propter nos machinata est(2), il fait appel à des expressions fort complexes sur lesquelles on ne semble pas encore avoir fait le point si l’on considère le flottement de certaines traductions et le peu d’études systématiques de ce vocabulaire(3). Deuxièmement ces termes, reliés aux différents sens qu’a pris le mot technè à travers les âges, demandent à être explorés en fonction des significations qui ont cours dans la langue de Jean Scot, de ses contemporains et de ses prédécesseurs. Enfin ce vocabulaire, comme nous le verrons, n’est pas neutre ni innocent, mais au contraire il a l’inestimable mérite de nous révéler „la passion platonicienne“(4) de son auteur, vu les jugements métaphysiques qui s’y trouvent embusqués. L’étude lexicographique permettra donc de mieux saisir ce que peuvent bien signifier et connoter ces expressions: Scriptura artificiosa ou propter nos machinata est." (p. 15)

(1) De divisione naturae (DDN), 512A. A moins d'indication contraire, j'utilise l’édition de la Patrologie latine, 122.

(2) Expositiones..., (éd. Barbet), VII, 19.

(3) A propos de l’expression artificiosa scriptura, M. Sheldon-Williams dans sa traduction du Periphyseon parle de „Scripture in its ingenuity" tandis que M. Roques traduit par „l’art de l’Ecriture“; il serait même tenté de rendre par „l’artificieuse Ecriture“ si l’acception française du terme n’était pas péjorative (voir Libres sentiers . . ., Rome, 1975, p. 82 et la note 88 de la même page). On observe les mêmes hésitations et les mêmes ambiguités par rapport aux mots machina, machinamenta, machinatio (voir à ce sujet, par exemple, R. Roques, op. cit., p. 64. la note 53). A ma connaissance, des études systématiques de tout ce vocabulaire manquent.

(4) L’expression est de M.-T. d'Alverny, dans les Actes du Congrès de la SIEPM, Les arts libéraux au Moyen âge, Montréal, 1969, p. 66.

6. ———. 1981. "The Primacy of Existence in the Thought of Eriugena." In Neoplatonism and Christian Thought, edited by O'Meara, Dominic, 89-96. Albany: State University of New York Press.

"One can scarcely be mistaken in asserting that Neoplatonism - whether it be Christian or not - is fundamentally an "essentialist" philosophy; by that I mean that it is a system of thought at the core of which a universe of essences and intelligible beings is organized according to relationships of causality which are universal, timeless and necessary, a system in the face of which phenomenal realities possess little or no ontological density. In this respect the thought of Eriugena marks an important date in the history of Neoplatonism since it bears witness to a profound change in its customary perspectives. Indeed, the acute awareness that Eriugena has of the idea of existence, perceived as the ontological pole complementary to essence, leads him, so to speak, to shift the observation post of reality and to look in the other direction: the approach to being, to intelligible beings, is now mediated by existence, by "existents." Polarized in this way, thought succeeds in integrating quite naturally the spatiotemporal realities and in conferring on them not only a decisive gnosiological function, but also a new ontological status. This increased sensitivity towards the idea of existence, need we emphasize, does not of course entirely destroy the quite Neoplatonic structure of Eriugena's thought, but it does already suffice to shake the edifice to the extent to which Eriugenian thought sets out to distinguish, in the heart of being, between what is (quod est) and the crude radical fact of existing (esse). I shall certainly not be able within the framework of this paper to examine the various influences which affected the thinking of Eriugena on this question; but it does remain that the mental equipment which he inherited and which he transformed in such an original manner enabled him to make a completely new reading of the dogma of creation." (pp. 89-90).

7. ———. 1989. "Un analyseur syntaxique du Periphyseon." In Giovanni Scoto nel suo tempo. L'organizzazione del sapere in età carolingia, edited by Leonardi, Claudio, 457-467. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo.

8. ———. 1990. ""Medietas" chez Jean Scot." In Begriff und Metapher. Sprachform des Denkens bei Eriugena, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 95-107. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

9. ———. 1991. "Jean Scot et l'ordinateur: le traitement syntaxique du "Periphyseon"." In From Augustine to Eriugena. Essays on Neoplatonism and Christianity in honor of John O'Meara, edited by Martin, Francis X. and Richmond, John A., 1-11. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

"Le texte-témoin de notre recherche (subventionnée par le Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada) est le Periphyseon de Jean Scot, un corpus de 217,450 mots répartis en cinq livres. Dans un premier temps, nous nous sommes consacrés à des travaux purement lexicographiques : 1) au recensement de chaque mot (latin, grec, de citation biblique et autres) en fonction de sa localisation dans le texte et de sa fréquence soit par livre soit pour l’ensemble des livres; 2) à l'étude de sa “semmatisation”, de son affixation, de son appartenance au vocabulaire des arts libéraux. Ces recherches ont donné lieu à deux publications, une première en 1983 intitulée Indices générales, Institut d’études médiévales-Vrin, 639 pages, une deuxième qui vient de paraître dans Jean Scot écrivain, Bellarmin-Vrin, 360 pages, spécialement les pages 311 à 360.

Nous en sommes maintenant non plus à l’analyse du mot seul mais à celle de ses liaisons avec les autres éléments dans la proposition ainsi qu’à l’analyse de l’enchaînement propositionnel lui-même. Ce qui nous entraîne sur le terrain du traitement syntaxique de notre corpus." (p. 1).

10. ———. 1992. "Jean Scot et la logique des propositions contraires." In From Athens to Chartres. Neoplatonism and Medieval Thought. Studies in Honour of Edouard Jeauneau, edited by Westra, Haijo Jan, 181-193. Leiden: Brill.

"Les études sur la théologie négative chez Jean Scot ne manquent pas. A leui propos, deux remarques s’imposent: 1) on garde souvent l’impression, quand or parcourt les travaux des spécialistes, que les deux parties de la logique (ou de la théologie ) c.-à-d. la καταφατική et Γάποφατική, n’ont d’autre terrair d’application qu’en Dieu, comme si Jean Scot eût exclu leur actualisation à d’autres problèmes et à d’autres réalités. Nous verrons que Jean Scot n’a pas voulu cette exclusive réduction du phénomène et qu’au contraire, il lui a assuré la plus large extension qui soit; 2) une seconde impression a trait au réflexe presque automatique prédécesseurs en la matière (v.g. Aristote, le Parménide de Platon, Plotin, Proclus, Marius Victorinus, Damascius, Boèce, Augustin, Denys, Maxime, etc.), soit avec ses successeurs (Anselme, Thomas d’Aquin, Nicolas de Cues, maître Eckart, Hegel, Gadamer, etc.). L’idée en soi est certes bonne et utile, sauf qu’à trop insister ainsi sur les préfigurations et les survivances de sa pensée, on finit par en perdre l’originalité, par en escamoter les nuances et les manques, par en rater, en somme, l’exacte compréhension et la totale extension. C’est pourquoi les pages qui suivent n’ont d’autre objet que l’oeuvre érigénienne elle-même, y cueillant çà et là tout texte susceptible, tantôt d’exprimer une théorie, tantôt d’illustrer une pratique." (pp. 181-182, note omise)

(...)

"Le sens de cette logique

Que retenir de ce qui précède? Une idée simple, si évidente qu’il arrive parfois de l’oublier, à savoir la polyvalence de la pensée érigénienne. L’omniprésence dans l’oeuvre de cette logique des propositions contraires ainsi que la compréhension que nous nous en sommes donnée nous incitent à percevoir en elle une structure fondamentale du système par laquelle l’unidimensionalité de la pensée se voit, interdite. La hantise érigénienne de la contradiction ne rend pas pour autant le texte univoque. Bien au contraire le jeu de la contrariété donne tellement à l’écriture des allures paradoxales, aux propositions du texte un tel caractère amphibologique et à la pensée elle-même tant de mouvance que le lecteur, à l’instar du disciple du Periphyseon, passe son temps à tituber. On croit tenir l’opinion du maître au détour d’une affirmation, elle est tôt ou tard niée; on voudrait s’installer en toute sécurité dans un lieu de certitude, il est aussitôt remis en question; on s’accroche désespérément à des assertions apparemment définitives, peine perdue, la réflexion est rendue ailleurs, à un autre niveau sémantique, braquée sur des considérations inverses. De quoi décourager tout amateur d’univocité! Ce style de pensée dégage pourtant un air de liberté, fécond pour la pédagogie du savoir, propice à l’attitude prudente de la démarche intellectuelle, exigeant enfin du lecteur qu’il circule sans cesse dans le texte en toutes directions, de sa surface à sa profondeur variable, du début jusqu’à la fin de son élaboration. Voilà la leçon à tirer, à mon sens, de cette logique des propositions contraires." (pp. 192-193).

11. Alverny, Marie-Thérèse d'. 1953. "Le cosmos symbolique du XIIe siècle." Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen-Age:31-81.

Repris dans: M.-T. d'Alverny, Études sur le symbolisme de la Sagesse et sur l'iconographie, Aldershot: Variorum, 1993.

"Les mésaventures de Jean Scot, suspect de déviation doctrinale au sujet de la prédestination, et plus encore sans doute la difficulté de l'ouvrage, d'une richesse un peu confuse, ne lui avaient pas attiré beauconp d'adeptes, semble-t-il, à la fin de l'ère carolingienne(1).

On le vit resurgir au cours du XIIe siècle, et les causes d'une vogue qui paraît avoir atteint son point culminant au début du siècle suivant, et gagna, non seulement de nombreux théologiens, mais, par l'intermédiaire de clercs imprudents, des laïques peu instruits, nous échappent en partie.

Il est permis de supposer que l'un des agents de diffusion de la synthèse érigénienne fut l'un des plus remarquables vulgarisateurs d'un âge qui en a pourtant compté beaucoup : le « mystérieux » Honorius.

Les documents d'archives et les sources narratives actuellement connues ne contiennent pas de renseignements sur ce personnage, et les historiens en sont réduits à interpréter les quelques indications qu'il a bien voulu laisser, soit dans ses préfaces, soit dans la notice terminale de son catalogue d'écrivains ecclésiastiques, De Luminaribus Ecclesiae(2), consacrée à « Honorius Augustodunensis ecclesiae presbyter et scholasticus », auteur d'estimables ouvrages « non spemenda opuscula », parmi lesquels la Clauis Physicae.

12. ———. 1977. "Les "Solutiones ad Chosroem" de Priscianus Lydus et Jean Scot." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 145-160. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

Repris dans: M.-T. d'Alverny, La transmission des textes philosophiques et scientifiques au Moyen Age, Aldershot: Variorum, 1994.

13. Ansorge, Dirk. 1996. Johannes Scottus Eriugena: Wahrheit als Prozess. Eine theologische Interpretation von "Periphyseon". Innsbruck: Tyrolia Verlag.

14. Arfé, Pasquale. 2011. "Triplex modus theories de reditu. The Doctrine of Universal Return in Eriugena." Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen-Age no. 78:7-45.

"The central thread of Book V of John Scottus Eriugena’s Periphyseon is the theme of the reditus in unum, which is a characteristic paradigm of Neoplatonism. This theme provided a philosophical interpretation of a fundamental element of ancient worldviews, both Eastern and Western: the idea of an eternal cyclical process in the universe. At the end of late antiquity, this cyclical process was given a clear and precise philosophical formulation by Proclus: « Every effect remains in its cause, proceeds from it, and reverts upon it » (3). Three phases are distinguished here. First, all entities insofar as they exist are grounded in the absolute cause of the One, which constitutes the permanent basis and the original identity of their existence (μονή, manentia, remaining). Second, this state is followed by the unfolding of all entities into being in order to give rise to their appearance (προοδος, exitus, procession). Third, there is the process which brings all entities to the end of their existence by guiding them to return to the absolute cause (επιστροφή, reditus, reversion)." (p. 8)

(...)

"Book V of the Periphyseon offers several accounts of reditus, which have often generated interpretative difficulties for historians. It is my intention in this article to show that the hermeneutical key to the reditus is found in the recapitulatio totius operis, the final summary, placed at the end of the Periphyseon, where Eriugena clearly explains the correct way to interpret the phenomenon by presenting a triplex modus theoriae, that is, a threefold way of understanding it. This key will not only prevent us from misunderstanding

Eriugena’s thought, but will also clarify its anthropological foundation. The threefold way of seeing the universal return of all things resembles the threefold structure of spirit, soul, and body, according to St Paul’s anthropology, and enables us to comprehend the central Eriugenian idea of man as a microcosm." (pp. 9-10).

15. Armando, Bisogno. 2002. "'Essentia, voluntas, et scientia’: esiti escatologici della gnoseologia del De Praedestinatione Liber." In History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and his Time, edited by McEvoy, James and Dunne, Michael, 283-302. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

16. Armstrong, Arthur Hilary. 1991. "Apophatic-Kataphatic tensions in religious thought from the Third to the Sixth century A.D.: a background for Augustine and Eriugena." In From Augustine to Eriugena. Essays on Neoplatonism and Christianity in Honor of John O'Meara, edited by Martin, Francis X. and Richmond, John A., 12-21. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

"In considering the via negativa it is important to distinguish between the apophatic method of intellectual approach to God, or negative theology, and the experience of supreme transcendence (which is also deepest immanence) which impels to and is undergone in the search for (and, for those to whom it is given, the attainment of union with), the Divine mystery beyond speech or thought.(1)

(...)

"In this essay we shall be concerned with apophatic or negative theology in the strict sense of the negative intellectual approach to God, though it will be as well to remember throughout what has just been said. Now any genuine and serious negative theology presupposes a kataphatic or positive theology, and continually needs one to wrestle with and struggle to transcend.(2) Both the apophatic and the kataphatic ways must be continually present to the mind of the apophatic theologian, and there will be a certain tension and a certain oscillation between them. And this tension will also be felt by theologians who are by temperament and tradition strongly kataphatic, as long as the ultimate necessity of apophatic theology is generally admitted." (p. 12-13)

"Eriugena, in his very different world and with his very different position and professional concerns, did not share Augustine’s episcopal preoccupations. He did, on the other hand, share with Proclus that speculative intemperance common to all great system builders, the tendency to push logic far further than on his own principles it should go—a tendency that is not so evident in Augustine. But this no more prevented Eriugena than it prevented Proclus from accepting apophatic theology in its strongest and most radical form when he found it in Dionysius. And he did so, I think rightly, without feeling that he was separating himself in any fundamental way from Augustine. What he says as he passes from the kataphatic to the apophatic at the end of his on the whole very Augustinian exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity (“Neque enim talis unitas est seu trinitas qualis ab ulla creatura potest excogitari seu intelligi seu aliqua fantasia quamuis lucidissima et uerisimillima formari . . . siquidem plus quam unitas est et plus quam trinitas. Jubemur tamen aliquid de ea dicere et cogitare et intelligere . . . ut quodam modo materiam habeamus laudandi earn atque benedicendi”) (16) is no doubt inspired by the Mystical Theology of Dionysius. But it is also very near to the spirit of the great chapter in the Confessions that foreshadows the De Trinitate, which begins, “Trinitatem omnipotentem quis intelleget? et quis non loquitur earn, si tamen earn? rara anima, quaecumque de ilia loquitur, scit quod loquitur. Et contendunt et dimicant, et nemo sine pace videt istam visionem.”(17)" (p. 21)

(1) Cf. Pierre Hadot, "Apophatisme et théologie negative” in Exercices Spirituels et Philosophie Antique (Paris, Études Augustiniennes, 1981), 185-93.

(2) Cf. Raoul Mortley, “What is Negative Theology?" in Prudentia, Supplementary Number 1981, ed. D. W. Dockrill and R. Mortley (New Zealand, University of Auckland, 1981), 5-12.

(16) Eriugena, Periphyseon II, 614C: II p. 200, 1.30-37 Sheldon-Williams.

(17) Augustine, Confessions XIII. ii.

17. Arruzza, Cinzia. 2003. "«Ordo» e mediazione gerarchica nelle «Expositiones in ierarchiam coelestem» di Giovanni Scoto Eriugena." Studi medievali no. 44:117-145.

Abstract: "Il lavoro è svolto sull'edizione del testo realizzata da J. Barbet (Turnhout 1975; cfr. MEL IV 1751) sulla base del ms. Douai, BM, 202. L'Autore prende inoltre in esame il ms. Paris, BNF, gr. 437: questo codice, donato dall'imperatore Michele a Ludovico il Pio, contiene l'originale greco del corpus dionisiano utilizzato da Giovanni Scoto Eriugena.".

18. ———. 2013. "The Authority of Reason: on John Scottus Eriugena’s Periphyseon, I.508C-513C." Glossator no. 7:137-150.

"In what follows, I will first address the question of the relationship between ordo verborum and ordo rerum in Eriugena’s thought. Then I will analyze the arguments Eriugena provides in order to reach and support the claim that reason has priority over authority, paying particular attention to his peculiar use of the De divinis nominibus’s passage [I. 1] and of Dionysius’s authority." (pp. 139-140)

(...)

"Conclusion. By briefly commenting on this passage from the Periphyseon, I have tried to show Eriugena’s own freedom in using his sources, in this case, the short quotation from Augustine’s De ordine [II.9. 26] and the long passage from Book I of Dionysius’s De divinis nominibus. While being in agreement with Dionysius’s insistence on negative theology, Eriugena uses Dionyius’s text in order to reassure the Alumnus that reason and the liberal arts, which reason uses to carry out its investigations, are indeed the prominent source of authority—a conclusion which does not belong to Dionysius’ text. On the basis of this conclusion, Eriugena interprets the apophatic climax of negative theology not as an irrationalistic move, but rather as the necessary logical conclusion of correct and rigorous reasoning, in which reason exhausts itself and its representational capacities, and both authority and dialectics are suspended. Finally, by quoting and commenting on this passage from De divinis nomibus, Eriugena performatively grants to himself as a commentator the freedom he wants to grant to reason, which lies in the fidelity of reason to its own necessity, the necessity of truth." (pp. 149-150).

19. Athanasopoulos, Constantinos. 2004. "The Influence of Dionysius the Areopagite on Ioannes Scotus Eriugena and St. Gregorios Palamas: Goodness as Transcendence of Metaphysics." In Being or Good? Metamorphoses of Neoplatonism, edited by Kijewska, Agnieszka, 319-341. Lublin: Wydaw Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski.

Abstract: "The paper investigates the Platonist and Neoplatonist project of uniting metaphysics and ethics. This project is encapsulated in the position 'all that the God has made are good' and is based (for the Christian side) on Genesis 2, 31 ''And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." This position is expressed in both Byzantine and medieval philosophy and in particular in the relevant theories of (Pseudo-) Dionysius the Areopagite, Ioanncs Scotus Eriugena and St. Gregorios Palamas. The paper shall elaborate on the theory of Ps. Dionysios, and shall put forward the claim that Ioannes Scotus Eriugena's interpretation of it in medieval philosophy led to serious problems in both medieval ethics and medieval political philosophy. It will also prove that the interpretation of St. Gregorios Palamas on key passages from the Dionysian corpus are more close to the Dionysian positions and general theory and can escape the problems that Ioannes Scotus' interpretation presented. It will close the discussion with an investigation into some of the philosophically important ramifications for Palamas' theory of the Divine Energies.".

20. Barbet, Jeanne. 1973. "La tradition du texte latin de la Hiérarchie céleste dans les manuscrits des Expositiones in Hierarchiam caelestem." In The Mind of Eriugena, edited by O'Meara, John Joseph and Bieler, Ludwig, 89-96. Dublin: Irish University Press.

21. ———. 1977. "Le traitement des "Expositiones in ierarchiam caelestem" de Jean Scot par le compilateur du Corpus dionysien du XIIIe siècle." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 125-134. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

22. Beierwaltes, Werner. 1973. "The Revaluation of John Scottus Eriugena in German Idealism." In The Mind of Eriugena, edited by O'Meara, John Joseph and Bieler, Ludwig, 190-198. Dublin: Irish University Press.

Translated by F. Uehlein.

"The philosophical preoccupation with Eriugena in the nineteenth century may be styled a rediscovery, since his ideas, having been obscure and silent for a long time, came to life again by virtue of new philosophical impulses and were questioned and discussed intensively.

(...)

It is, however, impossible from any hermeneutical standpoint simply to add Eriugena's ideas to all kinds of idealism without critical inspection and mediating reasoning.(5) But it is worth considering whether there is an objective reason after all for the strong interest in Eriugena in nineteenth-century philosophy: whether there is a converging of identical questions, aspects of argumentation or ways of thinking,

In the following I will try to outline the pertinent reason for such a convergence by means of the concepts of speculation, pantheism and salvation, not in support, however, of the maxim that 'there is nothing new under the sun' but, being well aware of the hermeneutical difference, to work out the philosophical point of identity which is at all time concomitant with differing premises and differing consequences." (pp. 190-191)

(...)

"Apart from the problems mentioned above, the idealistic aspect could be revealing for further questions: the relation of being and thinking (of being real and being ideal) in Eriugena's philosophy, the idea of the intelligibility of all being, the positive value of the negation regarding God (the unity of affirmative and negative theology), and the possibility of intuition ('intellektuelle Anschauung'). (48)

The idealistic aspect shows not so much an evidently 'idealistic' structure in Eriugena's philosophy, but reveals the implications which could have developed into idealistic thought. These implications could therefore be identified with idealistic forms of thinking, which was quite legitimate as to the position of idealistic philosophy in the history of thought.

The idealistic reception of Eriugena is indeed a striking proof of his philosophical strength and enduring relevance." (p. 196)

(5) Cf. Christlieb, Leben und Lehrs des Johannes Scotus Erigena (Gotha 1860), pp. 460 seqq.

(48) As for the way of thinking and the place within the philosophical system an analogy could be shown between Eriugena.'s concept of the 'cognitio intellectualis, visio intellectualis, contemplatio intelligibilis' and Schelling's concept of intuition ('intellektuelle Anschauung').

The problems mentioned and discussed above are worked out more intensively in my book, Platonismus und Idealismus, Frankfurt, 1972.

23. ———. 1977. ""Negati affirmatio": Welt als Metapher. Zu Grundlegung einer milltelaterlichen Aesthetik." In Jean Scot Érigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 263-276. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

24. ———. 1986. "Language and Object. Reflexions on Eriugena's Valuation of the Function and Capacities of Language." In Jean Scot écrivain, edited by Allard, Guy-H., 209-228. Paris: Vrin.

Translated from German by Dominic J. O'Meara.

"A fundamental question lies at the heart of philosophies of the Absolute and of those theologies which not only describe the history of salvation, but also insist on the incommensurability of their object. This is the question of how their “highest concept” is to be expressed in words. If, within a shared metaphysical perspective, it is assumed that the first principle, God, cannot be grasped by means of the categories and forms of thought of a logic appropriate for what is limited, finite, created, then every effort must be made to produce at least a reasoned expression of the inexpressibility of the object. Thus the central concern of such philosophies and theologies leads them to the need to explain the function and capacities of language. They must address the question of the relation between thinking and speaking, as well as that of the relation between speech or word (name) and the object to which it refers. The explanation may be explicit, or it may remain implicit, yet opening the way towards an interpretation of the relevant function of language.

Among philosophies this situation obtains especially in Neoplatonic metaphysics. As for metaphysically characterized theologies, a paradigmatic instance of this may be found in the case of Eriugena.

We can approach Eriugena’s thought on this subject by reference to a series of questions, all of which, generically or specifically, have to do with the subjects I have mentioned: How does Eriugenian thought express what is in itself inexpressible? What degree of accuracy, certainty or truth does such language attain? To what extent does it correspond to the object it expresses and according to what criterion is this to be judged? What conception of thought and language is presupposed, explicitly or implicitly, by this speech as it occurs? To what extent does Eriugena show trust or distrust concerning the nature, capacities and function of language ? Of what significance to language is the scientific (logical, dialectical) grasp of the object achieved through discovery or interpretation of the truth, God’s truth mediated in nature and in Holy Scripture? What influence does this theoretical background have on literary form or on the use of specific rhetorical and dialectical terms and categories which relate closely to Eriugena’s general interest in philosophy of language?

Some of the questions that I have enumerated here will serve as guidelines in what follows, enabling us to achieve some insight into Eriugena’s basic assumptions concerning the subject as a whole." (pp. 209-210).

25. ———. 1987. "Eriugena und Cusanus." In Eriugena Redivivus. Zur Wirkungeschichte seines Denkens im Mittelalter und im Übergang zur Neuzeit, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 311-343. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Revised edition in: Eriugena. Grundzüge seines Denkens, pp. 266-312.

English translation: Cusanus and Eriugena, Dionysius, 13, 1989, pp. 115-152.

26. ———. 1989. "Cusanus and Eriugena." Dionysius no. 13:115-152.

"We can base our study of the relationship of Nicholas Cusanus to Eriugena - effective despite a time distance of six hundred years - upon a solid historical foundation: Cusanus had quite an intensive and accurate knowledge of a large part of Eriugena's work. This he documented less in direct quotations than through occasional references and marginalia to Eriugena's texts." (p. 115)

(...)

"Although in the preceding reflections I have by no means weighed up and dealt with all conceivable relationships between Eriugena and Cusanus, on the basis of what I have said the following can be suggested in thesis form concerning the central constellations of ideas characteristic of both thinkers: The thought of Eriugena found in Cusanus its most intense and most appropriate reception from the 12th century until German Idealism. Though on the whole not so productive and terminologically influential as for example the reception of Proclus, Dionysius, the Platonists of Chartres or Meister Eckhart, it shows the deep-rooted congeniality of both: they are united in a daring speculative force which in the Cusanian reception retains, through a prudently selective process in the context of a rather complex tradition, its own identity and remains true to its own aims. Looked at philosophically the strongest bond is an open or - in the case of Eriugena - a latent Platonism which is none the less effective for his being largely unaware of it; from a theological point of view, the strongest bond is the many-sided 'Dionysian' phenomenon which - both for Eriugena and Cusanus - in no way excludes the "Augustinian" element; but the philosophical idea in fact remains an essentially determining factor. Historically both thinkers stand at a point of upheaval in which new things - arising out of a past assimilated both reflectively and practically - are not only suggested but have already begun to develop." (p. 152).

27. ———. 1990. ""Duplex Theoria". Zu einer Denkform Eriugenas." In Begriff und Metapher. Sprachform des Denkens bei Eriugena, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 39-64. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Revised edition in: Eriugena. Grundzüge seines Denkens, pp. 82-114.

28. ———. 1990. "Unity and Trinity in Dionysius and Eriugena." Hermathena no. 157:1-20.

"During the long lasting and momentous process of the "Hellenizing of Christianity" the conceptuality of Greek metaphysics substantially conditioned the dogmatisation of Christian truth whether consciously or unconsciously." (p. 1)

(...)

"In the context of this long lasting 'serious game' played out between philosophy and theology in order to develop a concept of the Trinity, and as befits the occasion, I wish to turn to - among others -Eriugena. It is not least in this dimension of his thought that he can be seen as a mediator between the East and the West. In order to clarify both the difficulty and the productivity of this mediation, I shall develop the elements of Dionysius Areopagita's Trinitarianism as the presupposition for my discussion of Eriugena. Firstly, however, we must turn to a short recapitulation of the Neoplatonic conception of unity as a starting point, and the philosophical presupposition for the formation of, the theological thought (concept) of Tri-Unity." (p. 3).

29. ———. 1991. "Eriugenas Faszination. "...ut sua osculabuntur" ('Periphyseon', V 40)." In From Augustine to Eriugena. Essays on Neoplatonism and Christianity in honor of John O'Meara, edited by Martin, Francis X. and Richmond, John A., 22-41. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

Nachdruck in: Eriugena. Grundzüge seines Denkens, pp. 13-31.

Zusammenfassung: "Mein bisheriges philosophisches Leben gait dem Platonismus — einer philosophischen Theorie, die vom dialogischen Fragen Platons ausgehend in unter- schiedlicher Form und Intensität den geschichtlichen Gang des Denkens leitete und ihn auch als Lebensform prägte, bis in die Gegen wart. Die ursprüngliche Dynamik dieser Theorie blieb vor allem durch die Frage nach dem Einen, der Idee, dem göttlichen und welthaften Sein und den Möglichkeiten des Erkennens auch im philosophisch-theologischen Denken des Mittelalters lebendig. Eriugena, der wohl bedeutendste und spekulativ kraftvollste Denker im frühen Mittelalter, hat eine wissenschaftlich sich sichernde Verständigungsart über die Wirklichkeit im ganzen entwickelt, die — bewußt und zugleich durch die geschichtlichen Verhältnisse verdeckt — in einer extremen Form neu-platonisch zu begreifen ist.".

30. ———. 1992. "Eriugena's Platonism." Hermathena no. 149:53-72.

"The term 'Platonism' is a complex concept. In connection with Eriugena we shall confine it to the form of thought developed in late antiquity which we usually call 'Neoplatonism'. The question which I wish to discuss, at least in its outlines, is this: what position does Eriugena, the most important thinker in the early Middle Ages between Boethius and Anselm of Canterbury, assume in respect of the basic metaphysical questions of Neoplatonism? In so far as Eriugena's relation to Neoplatonism was not, and could not, be a direct one, the question should be raised to what extent he came into contact with just this sort of philosophy? This justifies the comparison of the two structures of thought. This comparison, along with the attempt to trace Eriugena's central concepts back to the fundamental metaphysical issues in Neoplatonic philosophy upon which it is based, and thus to reveal the reflexive structure of his thought, presupposes a close relationship between what we, at least since the time of Aquinas, can define more objectively and in more precise terminology as 'philosophy' and 'theology'." (p. 53).

31. ———. 1994. "Unity and Trinity in East and West." In Eriugena East and West, edited by McGinn, Bernard and Otten, Willemien, 209-231. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

32. ———. 1994. Eriugena. Grundzüge seines Denkens. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.

Translated in Italian as: Eriugena. I fondamenti del suo pensiero, traduzione di Enrico Peroli, Presentazione di Giovanni Reale, Milano, Vita e Pensiero, 1998.

33. ———. 1994. Eriugena. I fondamenti del suo pensiero. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

Traduzione di Enrico Peroli, presentazione di Giovanni Reale.

34. Bertin, Francis. 1977. "Les origines de l'homme chez Jean Scot." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 307-314. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

35. Bieler, Ludwig. 1973. "Remarks on Eriugena's Original Latin Prose." In The Mind of Eriugena, edited by O'Meara, John Joseph and Bieler, Ludwig, 140-146. Dublin: Irish University Press.

36. Bischoff, Bernhard. 1977. "Ein neuer Text aus der Gedankenwelt des Johannes Scottus." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 109-116. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

37. Bishop, Terence Alan Martyn. 1977. "Autographa of John the Scot." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 89-94. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

38. ———. 1980. "Periphyseon: An Episode in the Tradition." Transactions of Cambridge Bibliographical Society no. 7:411-426.

"Written at two distant centres at an interval of fifteen or twenty years, the manuscript H and part of the manuscript M of John the Scot's Periphyseon are copies of one and the same exemplar.(1)

Two witnesses of the Supplementary Copy.

Dom Cappuyns recognized a close relationship between that portion of Trinity College O.5.20 part I which contains the last three and a half books of Periphyseon and the whole of Avranches Bibl. Munie. 230 part I, containing the same large fraction of the work.(2) Avr. is the manuscript H, written at Mont-s. -Michel rather after the middle of the twelfth century. Beginning at 11.96,10 (Paterna siquidem....), H has been recognized as a descendant of what has been termed the Supplementary Copy: the second part or instalment - the so-called Uncompleted Copy being the first - of a lost manuscript having as its exemplar the earliest surviving witness of Periphyseon, the manuscript R (Rheims 875), written in the third quarter of the ninth century." (p. 411)

(1) Footnotes cite the following:

MSS. B Bamberg Ph 2/1 s. IX

D Berne 469 part I s. XII

H Avranches 230 part I s. XII

Hc scribe of some alterations in H s. XII

L Paris, B.N. lat.1764 (ff. 99-1 45) s. IX/X

M Cambridge, Trin. Coll. O.5.20 part I s. XII

Mc scribe of some alterations in M s. XII

P Paris, B.N. lat. 12964 s IX

R Rheims 875 s. IX

T London, B.L. Add.11035 (ff.9-85) s. X/XI

η exemplar of M (pp. 57-256)

Edition. I. P. Sheldon- Williams, with the collaboration of Ludwig Bieler, Johannis Scotti Eriugenae Periphyseon (De Diuisione Naturae) (Scriptores Latini Hiberniae vols. VII, IX); Dublin, The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies; Liber Primus, 1968; Liber Secundus, 1972. The edition of Books I-II is founded on RBP. References are to books, pages, lines of the text, notes; the text is on even-numbered pages, with a translation opposite.

(2) M. Cappuyns, Jean Scot Erigène, Paris, 1933, p. 195.

39. ———. 1982. "Periphyseon: The Descent of the Uncompleted Copy." In Ireland in Early Mediaeval Europe. Studies in Memory of Kathleen Hughes, edited by Whitelock, Dorothy, McKitterick, Rosamond and Dumville, David, 281-304. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"In this carefully elaborated study this author describes first a complete text of the Periphyseon to be found in a manuscript of 256 pages (now Cambridge, Trinity College 0. 5. 20, part I) written at Malmesbury in the second quarter of the 12th century by six scribes, the basis for Gale's 1681 edition. There is a distinct division at pp. 56/7 indicating two distinct traditions of the Periphyseon and two distinct states of the text. The term 'uncompleted' derives from Cappuyns (Jean Scot ... pp. 195-6) and is represented by MS Paris B.N. lat 1764, fols 99-145, saec. IX (originally 'complete') and Bern, Burgerbibliothek 469, saec. XII-XIII: the 'supplementary' copy continuing from the broken-off text is represented by Avranches, Bibi. Mun. 230 saec. XII. Referring to a Stemma (p. 287) based on the original ('primitive') manuscript now lost, he traces the process of intervention (including that of the scribes named i^1 and i^2) and correction which culminated in the Malmesbury manuscript, one of whose scribes was the librarian William himself who is assumed to have supervised the copying.

The article has most valuable footnotes." (Brennan, p. 94).

40. Bonfiglioli, Stefania, and Marmo, Costantino. 2007. "Symbolism and Linguistic Semantics. Some Questions (and Confusions) from Late Antique Neoplatonism up to Eriugena." Vivarium no. 45:238-252.

Abstract: "The notion of 'symbol' in Eriugena's writing is far from clear. It has an ambiguous semantic connection with other terms such as signification , 'figure, allegory, veil, agalma', 'form', shadow', mystery' and so on. This paper aims to explore into the origins of such a semantic ambiguity, already present in the texts of the pseudo-Dionysian corpus which Eriugena translated and commented upon. In the probable Neoplatonic sources of this corpus, the Greek term symbolon shares some aspects of its meaning with other words inherited from the ancient tradition, such as synthêma, eikõn, homoiotês. Some of them, such as eikõn and homoiotês, belong to the field of images and are associated with linguistic semantics in the Neoplatonic commentaries not only to Plato but also to Aristotle's logical works. Among the late ancient Neoplatonists, particular attention is paid to Proclus and to his use of the term agalma. In fact, the textual history of this word seems to be a privileged perspective from which to reconstruct the Neoplatonic semantic blending of symbol and image, as well as the main role played by linguistic issues in this conflation."

"Among the few occurrences of the term agalma in Dionysius' works, one, in the De divinis nominibus (IX, 1; PG 3: 909b), is in the plural and specified by the unusual epithet theõnymika. The resulting compound expression, which sounds almost as awkward as divine-name images, is curious in its association of linguistic questions with a non-ordinary image, as agalma is.(17)" (p. 242)

(17) 17) For the conception of agalma as a particular kind of image, cf. Kerenyi (1962); Criscuolo (1992), the latter expressly referring to Neoplatonic texts. See Bonfiglioli (2006a, 2006b) for a history of this notion in the Platonic tradition.

References

Bonfiglioli, Stefania (2006a) Agalma. Icone e simboli nel neoplatonismo tardoantico, Doctoral Thesis in Semiotics, University of Bologna.

Bonfiglioli, Stefania (2006b) 'Simboli o icone? I segni in limine della tradizione platonica in Avventure del simbolo. Icone e simboli tra Antichità e Medioevo, ed. S. Bonfiglioli, Versus: Quaderni di studi semiotici 102, 27-64.

Criscuolo, Ugo (1992) 'Iconoclasmo bizantino e filosofia delle immagini divine nel Neoplatonismo' in Gersh and Kannengiesser (eds.), (1992), Platonism in Late Antiquity, Notre Dame: Indiana University Press, 83-102.

Kerenyi, Karl (1962) 'ATAAMA, E1KΩN, EIΔΩΛON' in Demitizzazione e immagine , Archivio di Filosofia, 161-171.

41. Boulnois, Olivier. 2011. "La théologie symbolique face à la théologie comme science." Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques no. 95:217-250.

Résumé: "La théologie symbolique recouvre l’ensemble des images métaphoriques par lesquelles on peut désigner Dieu, d’abord dans l’Écriture sainte, puis dans un discours théologique. Dans le néoplatonisme, ces symboles sont avant tout des empreintes du divin qui permettent, par contact, de s’unir au divin dans un acte de théurgie. Denys insiste sur leur caractère de dissemblance, qui nous renvoie vers le divin par contact, et non par une relation représentative. Au Moyen Âge, Jean Scot Érigène intègre l’ordre symbolique au discours, sous le nom de théologie négative, mais il insiste déjà sur la nécessité de déchiffrer rationnellement les symboles en vue d’une intelligence du divin. Le traducteur de Denys, Jean Sarrazin, plaçait la théologie symbolique à la charnière entre théologie affirmative (des noms divins) et théologie mystique. Dès la Summa fratris Alexandri, la théologie symbolique n’est plus que le premier degré, inférieur à la théologie des noms divins et à l’union mystique. Albert le Grand et Thomas d’Aquin maintiennent le caractère médiateur

de la théologie symbolique entre l’affirmation et la mystique, tandis que Bonaventure suit Alexandre de Halès, mais tous maintiennent un « arraisonnement » de la théologie symbolique : la métaphore et le symbole impropres doivent pouvoir se ramener au concept propre. La théologie comme science l’a emporté.".

42. Breen, Aidan. 1991. "Iohannes Scottus, "Periphyseon": The Problems of an Edition." Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy.Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature no. 91C:21-40.

"The complex recensional history of "Periphyseon" poses especial difficulties for an editor, particularly in Books I-III. An outline of the ramifications of the problem is given here with respect to the palaeographical characteristics of the primary MSS, RB, the various recensions of the text represented in those MSS, the shortcomings in the text and apparatus of the printed edition (a sample list of errors from parts of Books I and III only), as well as other technical difficulties in the edition. A sample edition of a small portion of Bk IV is presented as an illustration of one solution to these problems.

I. Palaeography

The complex palaeographical problems relating to the earliest MSS of Periphyseon were very inadequately treated in the introduction to the edition of Book I (Sheldon-Williams 1968) and have not otherwise been fully analysed since then. Our understanding of the development of the various strata of the text, laid down by a succession of amending scribes over several years, is consequently still unclear. The present contribution will outline the ramifications of the problem and propose a few solutions. A sample edition of Book IV, up to the end of the third lemma in Recension II, is given for comparison with the published edition of Books I-III (Sheldon-Williams 1968; 1972; 1981). But what has been done cannot be undone: it was singularly unfortunate that the editor should have been permitted, without rigorous supervision, to continue with a project that was flawed at its basis and could only aggravate the burden of its errors with each succeeding publication." (p. 21).

43. Brennan, Mary. 1986. "Materials for the Biography of Johannes Scottus Eriugena." Studi Medievali no. 27:413-460.

Testimonia 1-37 with Latin text and English translation: pp. 416-457; Index of Topics and Authors: 457-460.

"Below are close on forty testimonia dating from the ninth to the seventeenth century, of which the first fourteen, of the ninth and tenth century, could be said to have been original evidence and have been so considered; the remainder appear (with the exception of that of John Bale who introduced new exotic information in the sixteenth century) to be largely an elaboration of the notable twelfth century accounts of William of Malmesbury. On the other hand, intimations of the Malmesbury version can already be found in tenth and eleventh century material (e.g. Testimonia 14, 15, 16) possibly originating with Asser, bishop of Sherborne, who died in 910 - thus almost 'contemporary' - but the subject of which « Johannes » cannot clearly be identified as Eriugena. This identification was, for a variety of reasons favoured by James Ussher, Lord Archbishop of Armagh in A Discourse of the Religion anciently professed by the Irish and British, first printed in 1631 (Ussher, The Whole Works, ed. C. R. Elrington, Dublin, 1847, IV, p. 285). Ussher is also credited with being the first to combine the surnames « Scottus » and « Eriugena » (Veterum epistolarum Hibernicarum sylloge, Dublin, 1632, p. 57), a nomenclature subsequently to be established by Thomas Gale in the first printed edition of the Periphyseon published at Oxford in 1681.

Unhappily, one is far from being able to proclaim the undoubted authenticity of those first fourteen contemporary or near-contemporary testimonia. The first four, contemporary, illuminating and interrelated, adduced by recent scholarship, are ultimately circumstantial pieces of evidence. The rebuke supposedly administered to Eriugena by Pope Nicholas I (Testimonium 10), accepted as authentic by William of Malmesbury and later writers, has been critically shown to have its origins no earlier than in the twelfth century. Hence there remains only the matter of eight testimonia (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14: 12 is of doubtful significance) to add little to what might be inferred from Eriugena's own writings - that he came from Ireland, that he was not only learned but holy, that he impressed many by his exceptional erudition, and particularly by his knowledge of Greek, but that his preference for the Greek view offended not a few of his western contemporaries. Eriugenian scholarship is nowadays more concerned, and rightly so, with the sources of his erudition and, as we shall see in the first four testimonia, with the many facets of this erudition and, whereas the slightest detail about his early life could contribute to the discovery of his sources, one cannot but continue to be intrigued by the question of where and when, rather than how he ended his days." (pp. 414-415).

.

44. Breton, Stanislas. 1977. "Langage spatial, langage métaphysique dans le néo-platonisme érigénien." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 357-366. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

45. Brueren, Rainier. 1990. "Die Schrift als Paradigma der Wahrheit. Gedanken zum Vorbegriff der Metaphysik bei Johannes Scotus Eriugena." In Begriff und Metapher. Sprachform des Denkens bei Eriugena, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 187-201. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

46. Cappuyns, Maïeul. 1933. Jean Scot Erigène sa vie, son oeuvre, sa pensée. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer.

Réimpression anastatique: Bruxelles, Culture et Civilisation, 1964.

Tabe des matières: Avant-propos VII; Travaux cités XI; Table analytique des matières XIX;

Première partie: La vie et l'œuvre de Jean Scot

Chapitre I. En Irlande. L’écolier 3; Chapitre II. En Gaule. Le «grammairien» 30; Chapitre III. Le controversiste 81; Chapitre IV. Le traducteur 128; Chapitre V. Le Penseur 180; Chapitre VI. La mémoire de Jean Scot 233;

Deuxième partie: La pesnée de Jean Scot

Chapitre I. Vérité et dialectique : la THEOLOGICA THEORIA 273; Chapitre II. La théologie descendante : la PROCESSIO ou CREATIO 316; Chapitre III. La théologie ascendante : la REVERSIO OU DEIFICATIO 360;

Conclusion 382; Appendice. Les auteurs cités par Jean Scot 387; Table des manuscrits cités 395; Table des noms cités 399-410.

"La vie, l’œuvre et la pensée de Jean Scot Érigène ont fait, depuis un siècle, l’objet de recherches nombreuses. La plupart des questions que posent ces sujets ont été étudiées à maintes reprises et résolues dans les sens les plus divergents. La forme même du nom Érigène a été mise en cause ; et si nous la conservons habituellement telle qu’elle est reçue dans la langue française, c’est par respect de l’usage et de l’euphonie. La biographie de Jean Scot, peu prodigue de faits authentiques, ne l’est pas davantage de dates certaines ou indiscutées. Il a fallu la remettre à l’étude avant d’entreprendre l’examen des écrits et de la doctrine. Parmi les écrits attribués à Jean Scot plusieurs le sont indûment, d’autres le paraissent être à première vue sans raisons suffisantes ; la plupart ne sont connus que par des textes dont la valeur semble discutable ou médiocre. Une critique sévère des conditions littéraires et textuelles de l’œuvre érigénienne s’imposait. Quant à la doctrine, les interprétations les plus fantaisistes et les plus contradictoires ont été soutenues. Nous avons dû leur opposer une analyse strictement objective ; assez sobre cependant pour ne pas faire paraître principal, le secondaire.

En dehors des écrits de Jean Scot, nous ne disposons pour établir sa biographie que de sources fort rares. Quelques mentions laconiques chez Hincmar de Reims, Prudence de Troyes, Florus de Lyon, Anastase le Bibliothécaire ; quelques notices tardives chez Sigebert de Gembloux, Guillaume de Malmesbury et les autres chroniqueurs : c’est tout ce qui peut entrer en ligne de compte. Les maigres renseignements fournis par ces auteurs n’auraient pas présenté grand intérêt, isolés de l’œuvre littéraire de notre écrivain. C’est pourquoi nous avons mené de front, dans notre exposé, le récit de sa vie et la description de ses écrits. C’est une première cause de disproportion entre les deux parties du présent ouvrage. Une deuxième tient à l’attention toute spéciale que nous avons accordée à l’étude des manuscrits. Comme une nouvelle édition des œuvres d’Érigène est depuis longtemps jugée indispensable, et que nous avons entrepris de combler nous-même cette lacune, il nous a semblé utile de soumettre dès aujourd’hui nos vues aux spécialistes, dans l’espoir qu’ils les complètent, les corrigent ou les corroborent. Une troisième cause de disproportion provient, et du but restreint poursuivi dans notre exposé doctrinal, et de la réserve que nous y imposent les déficiences de nos textes imprimés. L’étude doctrinale de Jean Scot ne pourra se faire, détaillée et définitive, qu’après la réédition critique de son œuvre maîtresse. En attendant, nous avons esquissé les principaux traits de la doctrine érigénienne, tels que la lecture impartiale des textes, — vérifiés, quant aux plus importants, sur les manuscrits, — nous l’ont fait connaître. Esquisse toute provisoire, mais que nous espérons assez convaincante pour que l’interprétation de notre auteur s’engage décidément à l’avenir sur une voie nouvelle, et consente à considérer Jean Scot lui-même comme un théologien, — et non plus seulement comme un philosophe, — dont on a dit trop de mal." (pp. VII-VIII).

47. ———. 1964. "Jean Scot Érigène et les Scoliae de Maxime le Confesseur." Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale no. 31:122-124.

"Dans les derniers livres de son De divisione naturae, Jean Scot cite explicitement ce qu'il appelle les Scoliae de Maxime le Confesseur(1) Il s'agit en réalité des Quaestiones ad Thalassium(2). Mais à cause de l'imprécision du titre, — Scoliae, — évoqué par Jean Scot, j'ai cru devoir conclure en 1933 que ce dernier empruntait, — en les traduisant sans doute lui-même, — ses citations à quelque chaîne de scolies patristiques(3). Dom P. Meyvaert vient de montrer dans une brillante étude(4) qu'il n'en est rien, que Jean Scot a traduit en entier l'Ad Thalassium, et que cette traduction nous est conservée dans au moins deux manuscrits : Monte Cassino 333 E, du XIe s., et Troyes 1234, du XIIIe." (p. 122)

(...)

"Le titre Scoliarum Maximi a été ajouté par le scribe du f. 219v quand tout le reste avait déjà été écrit et il n'y avait plus guère de place disponible, ni au f. 219v, ni au f. 220r déjà occupé par un poème, ni au f. 220v couvert de gloses diverses (In epistola ad philippenses, etc.), pour insérer une explication quelconque. Alors il s'est rabattu sur la marge supérieure du dernier folio et y a inscrit la glose que voici : Scoliae insignes sententiae sine excerpta uel abreuiata quando ea quae obscura et difficilia sunt summatim ac breuiter perstringuntur (11). A mon avis cette glose se rapporte au titre Scoliarum Maximi et constitue une nouvelle preuve de l'extraordinaire importance du manuscrit Mazarine 561." (p. 124)

(1) « Proponit itaque in quinto scholiorum capitulo... » (De div. nat. IV, 26; PL 122, 857A) ; « Idem itaque Maximus non solum in ambiguis verum etiam in scholiis... » (ibid. V, 20 ; 895C). Voir M. Cappuyns, Jean Scot Érigène, Louvain 1933, p. 172 et 392. Au mot scholiorum, l'apparat de Migne note : « CF scoliarum ». Effectivement, tous les anciens manuscrits portent scoliarum.

(2) Le titre exact est : Περι διαφόρων άπορων τής θείας γραφής. Voir M. Cap puyns, ibid. On trouvera le texte grec PG 90, 243-786. 3. Voir M. Cappuyns, ibid. 4. P. Meyvaert, The Exegetical Treatises of Peter the Deacon and Eriugena's Latin Rendering of the Ad Thalassium of Maximus the Confessor, dans Sacris Erudiri 14 (1963) p. 130-148.

(11) Ce texte est très difficile à déchiffrer. Je me suis aidé de la copie faite, peu avant 1681, par Mabillon et qui est conservée dans Cambridge Trinity Coll. 0.9.5. Voir, à ce sujet, l'article La « Versio Ambiguorum Maximi » de Jean Scot Érigène, dans Rech. Théol. anc. méd. 30 (1963) 324-329.

48. Carabine, Deirdre. 1990. "Apophasis and Metaphysics in the Periphyseon of John Scottus Eriugena." Philosophical Studies (Dublin) no. 32:63-82.

"Eriugena was the first Western philosopher to have afforded the neoplatonic theme of apophasis a prominent, indeed central place in the presentation of his own thought. Although the reader of the Periphyseon encounters the terms kataphatic and apophatic chiefly in Book I as systematic ways of speaking about the divine essence, I would like to demonstrate how apophasis, in its global ontological sense, is a key-concept in the understanding of the metaphysical schema of the Periphyseon. I preface this account of the nature of apophasis in the Periphyseon with a very brief outline of the two traditional ways of theology.

Apophasis has its origins in the speculative philosophy of late Platonism; in its Christian development we can distinguish two distinct points in its history. The first was the fusion of Platonic and Hebraic ideas in the writings of the first-century Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria; it was this unique synthesis, centering as it does upon the theme of the transcendence and immanence of the divine, which was adopted and developed by the Christian Alexandrian Fathers. The second, and perhaps more important moment, was the neoplatonic fertilization of Christian principles effected in the works of Dionysius the Areopagite. It is in the short, and very condensed treatise, De mystica theologia, that we find Dionysius setting down the distinctions between the two ways of theology. If we understand theology in its most basic sense as speech about God, then kataphatic, or positive theology, is the way which is towards speech, or relies on speech, and apophatic, or negative theology, is the way which indicates a moving away from speech.

Understood at its most basic level, the kataphatic approach states that man can attain to some knowledge of God, even though that knowledge be limited, by attributing all the perfections of the created order to him as its source. The apophatic approach, on the other hand, affirms Gods absolute transcendence and unknowability to such an extent that no affirmative concept, except that of existence, may be applied to him. Both ways, then, take creation as their point of reference: the one states that God can be known through creation, since that is of his making; while the other states that God transcends creation and cannot be known truly through it." (pp. 63-64).

49. ———. 1994. "Eriugena's Use of the Symbolism of Light, Cloud, aand Darkness in the Periphyseon." In Eriugena East and West, edited by McGinn, Bernard and Otten, Willemien, 141-152. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

50. ———. 1996. The Unknown God. Negative Theology in the Platonic Tradition: Plato to Eriugena. Louvain: Peeters Publishers.

Chapter Eleven: John Scottus Eriugena: a Negative Ontology, pp. 301-322.

"Apophasis and Kataphasis

Book I of the Periphyseon gives tbe initial impression that it will explain the first division of nature: creat et non creatur (that which creates but which is not created) In fact, this book turns out to be an elaboration and explanation of the inapplicability of the ten categories to the divine essence. However, this apparent digression on Eriugena's part turns out, in fact, to be no such thing, for he uses the categories as a methodical means of testing the workings of kataphatic and apophatic theology(11) According to Eriugena, definition is concerned solely with created effects, with coming into being, and he describes this process in a very Plotinian way: form is the measurement imposed on unformed matter which places it within the realm of limitation and, therefore, definability.(12)

Definition, then, pertains to the 'whatness' of a thing and its focus is finitude.(13) Therefore, what the human intellect can know about created things stems from the fact that these things are differentiated: they possess quantity, quality, relations, have a condition, are in place and time, and so on. In othet words, we are able to define things and come to a knowledge of them through the circumstantiae, the accidents and attributes which differentiate them and surround their hidden essences. (14) Like Gregory of Nyssa, Eriugena argues that the essentiae of things cannot be known without the clothing of accidents.(15)

Can we then use the ten categories to come to an understanding of the nature which creates but is not itself created? It would be rather surprising, to say the least, if Eriugena had answered this question in the affirmative. Since the categories do not properly pertain to the divine essence - we do not perceive God's quality, quantity and so on - it follows that we cannot know the divine essence at all; unclothed as it is by attribute (in Dionysian terms, unveiled without symbol), it remains inaccessible to the human mind. This approach, then, is not a superfluous exercise, for the dialectic operative between the terms created and uncreated, provides a starting point for the two theologies: the one pertains to affirmations (creat), and the other to negations (non creatur)." (pp. 303-304).

(11) 463A

(12) 590A-B

(13) 591B-C, 483C 590A-B and 484A ff.

(14) 4438-C; 487A-B; 586C-D. and 587A

(15) 487A.

51. ———. 2000. John Scottus Eriugena. New York: Oxford University Press.

Contents: PART I: Iintroduction

1The World of the Ninth Century 5; 2 Eriugena's Life and Intellectual Achievements 13;

PART II: The Way Down

3 The Structure of Reality 29; 4 Creator and Creation 45; 5 Human Nature in Paradise 67; 6 Human Nature in the World 79;

PART III: The Way Up

7 The Return 93;

In Retrospect 109; Notes 113; Suggestions for Further Reading 127; Index 129.

52. ———. 2022. "Occulti Manifestatio: the Journey to God in Dionysius and Eriugena." In The Oxford Handbook of Dionysius the Areopagite, edited by Edwards, Mark, Pallis, Dimitrios and Steiri, Georgios, 315-327. New York: Oxford University Press.

53. Chiesa, Paolo. 1989. "Traduzioni e traduttori dal greco nel IX secolo: sviluppi di una tecnica." In Giovanni Scoto nel suo tempo. L'organizzazione del sapere in età carolingia, 171-200. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo.

54. Cinato, Franck. 2011. "Marginalia témoins du travail de Jean Scot sur Priscien." In Arts du langage et théologie aux confins des XIe-XIIe siècles. Textes, Maîtres, Débats, edited by Irène, Rosier-catach., 539-563. Turnhout: Brepols.

55. Coallier, Christine. 1986. "Le vocabulaire des arts libéraux dans le "Periphyseon"." In Jean Scot écrivain, edited by Allard, Guy-H., 343-360. Paris: Vrin.

"Il nous reste cependant à découvrir, au sujet des arts libéraux chez Jean Scot Érigène, le versant opposé mais complémentaire de sa conception théorique, c’est-à-dire sa praxis des arts libéraux. Comment Jean Scot intègre-t-il à sa pratique des arts libéraux les idées théoriques qu’il a émises à leur sujet? La question à l’origine de nos recherches est la suivante : quelle utilisation, quelle application dans sa propre écriture, en particulier dans le Periphyseon, fait Jean Scot des arts libéraux ? Nous nous sommes donc fixés comme objectif d’explorer non pas la pensée de Jean Scot sur les arts libéraux, mais plutôt sa pratique, sa praxis des sept arts libéraux.

Nous savons tous que le Periphyseon porte sur la nature. Là où le voile n’a pas encore été levé, c’est sur la manière dont Jean Scot parle de cette nature. Nous savons en effet qu’il y a une différence entre l’objet d’un discours et la manière dont ce discours parle de son objet. Nous nous sommes donc demandé si Jean Scot disserte sur la nature avec le vocabulaire emprunté au grammairien, à l’astronome, davantage avec le vocabulaire du dialecticien qu’avec celui du physicien.

En répondant à cet ensemble de questions, nous chercherons à mettre en relief la variabilité des emprunts au vocabulaire des arts libéraux contenus dans les cinq livres du Periphyseon, à percevoir les modulations, les transformations, les développements affectant ce vocabulaire.

Précisons tout de suite que notre étude sera plus descriptive qu’analytique : nous nous limiterons presque exclusivement ici à offrir une exposition complète des résultats obtenus par le traitement informatique du texte. Nous n’analyserons pas ni n’interpréterons vraiment ces résultats, réservant aux chercheurs intéressés le soin de donner sens à ces informations." (pp. 343-344).

56. Colish, Marcia L. 1990. "Mathematics, the Monad, and John the Scot's Conception of "Nihil"." In Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy. Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy (S.I.E.P.M.) Helsinki 24-29 August 1987. Vol. II, edited by Knuuttila, Simo, Asztalos, Monika, Tyorinoja, Reijno and Ebbesen, Sten, 385-404. Helsinki.

57. Colnago, Filippo. 2009. Poesia e teologia in Giovanni Scoto l'Eriugena. Roma: Herder.

58. Contreni, John J. 1976. "The Biblical Glosses of Haimo of Auxerre and John Scottus Eriugena." Speculum. A Journal of Medieval Studies no. 51:411-434.

59. ———. 1981. "John Scottus, Martin Hiberniensis, the liberal arts, and teaching." In Insular Latin studies: papers on Latin texts and manuscripts of the British Isles, 550-1066, edited by Herren, Michael W., 23-44. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

60. Coulter, Cornelia C. 1951. "The Date of John the Scot's Annotationes in Marcianum." Speculum. A Journal of Medieval Studies no. 16:487-488.

61. Courtine, Jean-François. 1980. "La dimension spatio-temporelle dans la problématique catégoriale du De divisione naturae de Jean Scot Érigène." Les Études Philosophiques:343-367.

Repris avec le titre "Les catégories dans le De divisione naturae de Jean Scot Érigène" dans J.-F. Courtine, Les catégories de l'être. Études de philosophie ancienne et médiévale, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 2003, pp. 129-166.

62. Cristiani, Marta. 1973. "Le problème du lieu et du temps dans le livre Ier du "Periphyseon"." In The Mind of Eriugena, edited by O'Meara, John Joseph and Bieler, Ludwig, 41-48. Dublin: Irish University Press.

"C’est Mlle d’Alverny, dans son étude bien connue, Le cosmos symbolique du XIIe siècle,(1) qui a souligné en quelques pages l’importance et l’originalité de la doctrine érigénienne sur l’espace et le temps, telle qu’elle est exposée dans ce livre Ierdu Periphyseon dont Mr Sheldon-Williams nous a heureusement donné le texte critique. Cette doctrine, que nous allons analyser très rapidement, compte enu de sa complexité, doit être considérée comme l’un des aspects multiple tde la dialectique fini-infini, être-non être, ou plutôt être au delà de l’être, qui constitue le noyau, le principe dynamique de tout le système." (p. 41)

(...)

"L’idée de création théophanique, affirmée par Érigène dans toute son œuvre, se trouve bien souvent contrastante, d’une façon apparente ou réelle, avec une tradition chrétienne, qui est surtout la tradition latine: il n’en reste pas moins qu’il s’agit là d’une création au sens plein du mot, de laquelle l’idée de la transcendence divine se dégage dans toute sa force. La pensée divine ne se manifeste pas par une sorte de nécessité, comme il arrive dans d’autres systèmes néoplatoniciens, mais elle engendre, elle produit elle-même les conditions et les lois de sa propre manifestation.

Voilà les lignes essentielles d’une doctrine, d’une grande complexité, certes, mais, dans son ensemble, d’une originalité et d’une cohérence admirable, qui se conclut, d’ailleurs, avec une dernière hardiesse: l’affirmation la plus claire que le lieu s’identifie avec l’activité de l’intellect, humain, angélique, ou divin, qui localise et circonscrit les êtres, qui connaît la réalité grâce à cet acte même, à ce pouvoir de définition, considéré en même temps comme pouvoir de création.(20)" (pp. 46-47)

(20) 20. Cf. Periphyseon. I. 43-44, cols. 484D-486D, Sheldon-Williams. pp. 132-136.

63. ———. 1973. "Lo spazio e il tempo nell'opera dell'Eriugena." Studi Medievali:39-136.

"The author of this study suggests at the outset that she intends the term 'spazio' to be construed rather as `place' (locus) and proposes to deal with her theme in the context of Periphyseon Books I and V, that is in relation first to processio - in which Eriugena makes a coherent case -- and then to reditus -- where the clear-cut arguments cannot apply.

Section I (pp. 40-116) explores the question in relation to processio under the following headings: (1) the incognoscibility of Essence: Eriugena's (mis) translation of the ps-Dionysian dictum is adduced: Cognitio... eorum quae sunt, ea, quae sunt, est. In the formulation of his system his debt to Maximus Confessor and consequently to Gregory is emphasised. (2) "Terminus naturae": locus is one of the categories which though in describing a being necessarily delimits it yet renders it less unknowable; likewise the category tempus enjoys equal privilege. (3) The Unity of the Categories and the problem of "locus": the question of locus is discussed within the tradition of Plato and Porphyry as well as of the skeptic, Sextus Empiricus, all responding to the Categoriae of Aristotle. (4) The notion of place as a function of the intellect: Eriugena did not adhere to the strict hierarchical structure of the ps-Dionysius. The distinction between knowledge of quia est and quid est and the problem of the divine intellect as locus sui are discussed. The variety of his sources has complicated the problem. (5) Spatio-temporal unity: on the question of time Eriugena has a clearer view. Again sources are discussed, going back to the Stoics, with Maximus Confessor providing the principal inspiration. Knowledge must be expressed in terms of space and time (Periphyseon I, 39, col. 481BC). (6) Space and time, primordial conditions of the real: this heading indicates Eriugena's divergence from the views of Maximus. Eriugena held a more dynamic view of creation. The question of other sources is looked into, particularly concerning the interpretation of the biblical principium (arché) (7)' Conclusion: Space and Time perform the function of determining and circumscribing and stabilising the frontiers of being; they precede created nature; they are a function of the intellect in the cognitive act.

Section II (pp. 116-134) considers space and time in the perspective of the reditus. This author suggests that the imprecision of language on this question may seem to involve a paradox in Eriugena's exposition (Book V) but it does contain its own internal logic. The Pauline phrase tempora aetema is adduced in relation to the Primordial Causes. Eriugena has recourse to Augustinian texts to help him reconcile seemingly impossible contradictions. The author believes that even if Eriugena does seem to express views that are superficially negative, the recapitulatio profoundly demonstrates the ontological necessity of the incarnation of the Word (Periphyseon V, 29, col. 912 B). Eriugena's originality would seem to have been his characterisation of space and time as intellectual, not material categories." (Brennan, pp. 220-221).

64. ———. 1981. "Nature-essence et nature-language. Notes sur l'emploi du terme "natura" dans le Periphyseon de Jean Scot Erigène." In Sprache und Erkenntnis im Mittelalter. Akten des VI. Internationalen Kongresses für Mittelaterliche Philosophie der Société internationale pour l'étude de la philosophie médiévale 29. August - 3, September 1977 in Bonn. II Halbbandk, edited by Beckmann, Jan, 707-717. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

65. ———. 2000. "L'universo spazio-temporale di Giovanni Eriugena." In Sentimento del tempo e periodizzazione della storia nel Medioevo. Atti del XXXVI Convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 10-12 ottobre 1999, 73-105. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'alto Medioevo.

66. Crouse, Robert D. 1978. "Intentio Moysi: Bede, Augustine, Eriugena and Plato in the Hexaemeron of Honorius Augustodunensis." Dionysius no. 2:137-257.

67. ———. 1992. "Origen in the philosophical tradition of the Latin West: St. Augustine and John Scottus Eriugena." In Origeniana Quinta: Historica, Text and Method, Biblica, Philosophica, Theologica, Origenism and Later Developments. Papers of the 5th international Origen congress, Boston College, 14-18 August 1989, edited by Daly, Robert J., 565-569. Leuven: Peeters.

68. d'Onofrio, Giulio. 1980. "A proposito del "magnificus Boetius": un'indagine sulla presenza degli "Opuscola sacra" e della "Consolatio" nell'opera eriugeniana." In Eriugena. Studien zu seinen Quellen, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 189-200. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

"Come è noto vari tentativi sono stati operati nel corso del nostro secolo per attribuire a Giovanni Scoto alcuni commenti su queste due opere, in base soprattutto alle evidenti tracce di eriugenismo riscontrabili in alcune glosse di particolare interesse filosofico: ma un’attenta analisi di queste raccolte le riconduce tutte, come momento iniziale della loro diffusione, all’opera scolastica di Remigio di Auxerre, alla cui sola mediazione didattica è dovuto l'inserimento in esse di insegnamenti provenienti dall’Eriugena. Tutte queste tentate attribuzioni rientrano dunque nel progetto ancora non risolto di ricostruire un’ipotetica attività didattica del maestro irlandese sui testi boeziani: un insegnamento, cioè, sulla Consolatio e sugli Opuscula, simile a quello di cui rimane traccia nelle Annotationes di Giovanni Scoto su Marziano Capella, e che potesse essere collocato, come fonte dello stesso Remigio, alle origini dell’uso medievale di commentare analiticamente gli „auctores“." (pp. 189-190)

(...)

"Di questo studio e di questo insegnamento non sono rimaste tracce dirette ed esplicite, ma soltanto indizi che suggeriscono la possibilità di tentarne la ricostruzione in via ipotetica. Nessuna prova conferma a questo punto le ipotesi sull’esistenza di un commento eriugeniano sulle due opere. Ciononostante, ed anzi proprio per questo a maggior ragione, assumono qui un’importanza particolare le raccolte di glosse su di esse redatte da Remigio di Auxerre o alla sua scuola, profondamente imbevute dell’influenza eriugeniana. Tale influenza è, è vero, spesso settoriale, talvolta superficiale, e l’eriugenismo vi sembra a volte invocato fuori posto per illustrare passi di particolare interesse speculativo senza un’effettiva aderenza al pensiero né dell’Eriugena né di Boezio stessi. Il Periphyseon è per queste glosse una fonte come le altre, tra le altre, particolarmente utile per risolvere i problemi filosofici o teologici suscitati dal testo commentato. Eppure questa particolare applicazione che un glossatore fecondo e polivalente come Remigio fa dell’insegnamento di Giovanni Scoto proprio agli Opuscula e alla Consolatio, accanto ai risultati positivi della nostra indagine sulla loro presenza nelle opere eriugeniane, sembra offrire la prova più evidente che l’interesse vasto e diffuso che essi avrebbero suscitato soprattutto nelle scuole a partire dal X secolo, trova un significativo precedente e un probabile impulso iniziale proprio in quella certa attenzione didattica che il maestro irlandese deve aver rivolto su di essi nei propri corsi di studio, e di cui fin qui si è cercato, sulla base dei pochi elementi a disposizione, di disegnare i lineamenti." (p. 200).

69. ———. 1980. "Giovanni Scoto e Boezio: tracce degli Opuscula sacra e della Consolatio nell'opera eriugeniana." Studi Medievali no. 21:707-752.

70. ———. 1981. "Agli inizi della diffusione della Consolatio e degli Opuscula sacra nella scuola tardo-carolingia: Giovanni Scoto e Remigio di Auxerre." In Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Studi boeziani (Pavia, 5-8 ottobre 1980), edited by Obertello, Luca, 343-354. Roma: Herder.

71. ———. 1981. "Giovanni Scoto e Remigio di Auxerre: a proposito di alcuni commenti altomedievali a Boezio." Studi Medievali no. 22:587-693.

Abstract: "

La Consolatio e gli Opuscula sacra di Boezio furono conosciuti e recepiti nell'alto medioevo come un blocco unitario. L'analisi della tradizione manoscritta conferma questa situazione: delle quattro famiglie in cui Rand suddivideva i circa 170 mss. degli Opuscula, almeno due (quelle provenienti da Fleury e da Tours) testimoniano negli archetipi la presenza anche della Consolatio. È molto difficile ricomporre in un testo unitario i vari gruppi di glosse dei manoscritti dei secc. IX-XII a causa della particolare natura del commento medievale, che non è un genere letterario autonomo, quanto, piuttosto, uno strumento scolastico finalizzato alla lettura in cui confluisce il patrimonio di tutta una tradizione di cultura e di pensiero. Tuttavia, l'ipotesi dell'esistenza di un commento di Giovanni Scoto a Boezio, scaturita dall'osservazione di espressioni, concetti e dottrine eriugeniane nelle glosse a Boezio, ha aperto un dibattito fatto di attribuzioni, ricostruzioni e distinzioni di corpi unitari di glosse e annotazioni, che ha notevolmente arricchito la conoscenza dell'argomento. L'Autore passa in rassegna le posizioni degli studiosi di questo secolo (pp. 591-610): da Rand, che attribuì a Giovanni Scoto il più antico corpus di glosse agli Opuscula e, sulla base del cod. Trier 1903, individuò un commento alla Consolatio attribuibile a Remigio di Auxerre; a Courcelle, per il quale il presunto commento dell'Eriugena era in realtà una commistione, del sec. XI, dei commenti di Remigio e di Adalboldo di Utrecht; per arrivare agli studi più recenti di H. Silvestre e N.M. Haring. Le pp. 610-30 sono dedicate allo studio della presenza di influssi eriugeniani nei commenti altomedievali a Boezio; segue alle pp. 630-90 un'analisi delle tematiche eriugeniane, raggruppate per argomenti, dei commenti di Remigio secondo la problematica suggerita di volta in volta da Boezio: teologia negativa (647), dottrina trinitaria (657), interpretazione neoplatonica del processo creativo (663), l'essere e il tempo (676), antropologia ed escatologia (682). In appendice, alle pp. 690-3, un aggiornamento bibliografico.".

72. ———. 1986. ""Disputandi disciplina". Procédés dialectiques et "Logica Vetus" dans le langage philosophique de Jean Scot." In Jean Scot écrivain, edited by Allard, Guy-H., 229-263. Paris: Vrin.

"Ce fut peut-être justement dans le filigrane de cette présentation mythique esquissée par Martianus Capella au début du quatrième livre de son De nuptiis, que Jean Scot apprit initialement à connaître le pouvoir merveilleux de la dialectique : l’art qui donne au discours humain, fabriqué par la grammaire, et dignement habillé par la rhétorique, la force vitale du mouvement coordonné au moyen de règles certaines et efficaces. Il comprit alors le sens des formules augustiniennes qui désignent dans son ensemble ce patrimoine philosophique d’origine profane offrant la norme des procédés rationnels et de leur expression verbale : ars disputatoria, ou disputandi disciplina, ou bien, avec plus de précision, bene disputandi scientia(5)." (p. 230)

(...)

"Une familiarité évidente avec les termes de la logique classique et une application fréquente des principes et procédés correspondants sont de fait reconnaissables sans peine dans le langage érigénien(42). En outre Jean Scot lui-même nous dit avec clarté que pour lui ces matériaux logiques appartiennent à la compétence de la dialectique : à propos, par exemple, de la distinction des prédications « in subiecto» et « de subiecto », il dit de rapporter cette doctrine « iuxta dialecticorum opinionem »(43) ; une autre fois il affirme que lorsque la rhétorique prétend parler des « loci communes», c’est-à-dire, selon Boèce, des « topica», elle envahit le domaine de la dialectique(44). On est alors en droit de se poser la question de l’extension de ses connaissances logiques, et donc avant tout des textes et des instruments dont il dispose et fait usage. Mais il est peu prodigue en citations explicites : une, ou deux fois, il nomme le Categoriae decem du pseudo-Augustin(45) ; une fois seulement le Periermeneias d’Aristote, mais le renvoi est si générique (peut-être même un peu timide) qu’il n’offre aucune garantie d’une lecture directe(46). Pas un mot sur les textes logiques de Boèce, commentaires ou monographies. Maigre récolte, en définitive, mais elle ne nous éloigne pas de la situation universelle à l’époque carolingienne, où le corpus de la première logica vêtus ne comprend même pas le texte originaire des Categoriae d’Aristote, substitué par la paraphrase pseudo-augustinienne : ses autres trésors sont limités à l’introduction de Porphyre, au Periermeneias, aux Topica de Cicéron, ces derniers peut-être avec le commentaire de Boèce ; mais surtout ce sont les sommaires de Martianus, de Cassiodore et d’Isidore qui complètent ce programme d’études avec leurs expositions élémentaires de la syllogistique et de la doctrine victorinienne de la définition(47)." (pp. 242-243)

(5) Augustin, Soliloquio, II, xi, 19, P.L. 32, col. 894 («non nego vim peritiamque definiendi... disputatoriae arti tribui »), et col. 893 (« disciplina disputandi verane, an falsa est?»). La fameuse définition de la dialectique comme bene disputandi scientia ouvre l’opuscule attribué à saint Augustin, De dialectica liber (ou Principia dialecticae), I, P.L. 32, col. 1409 (cf. ed. B. Darrel Jackson & J. Pinborg, Dordrecht - Boston, 1975, «Synthèse Historical Library» 16, p. 83,2; sur la question de l’authenticité augustinienne cf. ibid. Introduction de Darrel Jackson ; et cf. H.-I. Marrou, Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique, Paris, 1938, p. 576-578). Cf. aussi le Periermeneias attribué à Apulée, I (je citerai d’après l’édition de P. Thomas, Leipzig, 1908 ; ici : p. 176, 3-4): « rationalis [philosophia], qua continetur ars disserendi».

(42) Il n’y a pas dans le Periphyseon une différence manifeste de langage ou de style, lorsque Jean Scot aborde une question purement philosophique ou des problèmes de théologie : en ce sens la quadripartition de la philosophie citée à la note précédente est par lui effectivement respectée.

(43) Cf. Periphyseon, I, col. 470 D6-7, p. 102, 11-12; cf. infra, la note 80.

(44) Cf. ibid., V col. 870 A4-6.

(45) Ibid., I, col. 493 A12-B13, p. 150, 31 - 152, 8 (= Categoriae decem, P.L. 42, col. 1427, §§ 71-72, p. 149, 4-17). L’autre citation, moins claire, se trouve dans les Annotationes in Marcianum, p. 84,23-24 (= Categoriae decem, col. 1424, § 45, p. 143, 10-13).

(46) Periphyseon, II, col. 597 C4-8, p. 162, 15-18 : « ... De quibus quisquis plene voluerit percipere légat Periermeneias hoc est De Interpretatione Aristotelem in qua aut de his solis, hoc est possibilibus et impossibilibus, aut maxime a philosophe disputatum est. » Je ne vois pas de raison pour citer à ce propos, comme le fait Sheldon-Williams, le commentaire boécien correspondant.

(47) Cf. L. Minio-Paluello, Nuovi impulsi allo studio della Logica : la seconda fase della riscoperta di Aristotele e di Boezio, dans La scuola nell’occidente Latino dell'Alto Medioevo, Spoleto, 1972 (« Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo» 19), II, p. 743-766 et 841-845.

73. ———. 1986. Fons scientiae. La dialettica nell'Occidente tardo-antico. Napoli: Liguori.

See in particular pp. 275-320 on dialectic.

74. ———. 1986. "Dialectic and Theology: Boethius' Opuscula sacra and Their Early Medieval Readers." Studi Medievali no. 27:45-67.

75. ———. 1987. "Die Überlieferung der dialektischen Lehre Eriugenas in den hochmittelalterlichen Schulen (9.-11. Jh.)." In Eriugena Redivivus. Zur Wirkungsgeschichte seines Denkens im Mittelalter und im Übergang zur Neuzeit, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 47-76. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

76. ———. 1989. "I fondatori di Parigi. Giovanni Scoto e la teologia del suo tempo." In Giovanni Scoto nel suo tempo. L'organizzazione del sapere in età carolingia, edited by Leonardi, Claudio, 413-456. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo.

Revised translation in: G. D'Onofrio, Vera Philosophia. Studies in Late Antique, Early Medieval. and renaissance Christin Thought, English Text by John Gavin, S.J., Turnhout, Brepols, 2008,.

77. ———. 1990. "Über die Natur der Einteilung. Die dialektische Entfaltung von Eriugenas Denken." In Begriff und Metapher. Sprachform des Denkens bei Eriugena, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 17-38. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Revised English translation in: G. D'Onofrio, Vera Philosophia, Turnhout, Brepols, 2008.

78. ———. 1993. "La concordia di Agostino e Dionigi. Per un'ermeneutica del dissenso tra le fonti patristiche nel Periphyseon di Giovanni Scoto Eriugena." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 19:1-25.

English translation: The concordia of Augustine and Dionysius. Toward a hermeneutic of the disagreement of Patristic sources in John the Scot's Periphyseon, translated by B. McGinn, in: B. McGinn & W. Otten, Eriugena: East and West, Notre dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1994, pp. 115-140.

79. ———. 1996. "Giovanni Scoto Eriugena." In Storia della teologia nel Medioevo. I: I principi, edited by D'Onofrio, Giulio, 243-294. Casale Monferrato: Edizioni Piemme.

Capitolo 4 (con bibliografia annotata, pp. 294-303).

80. ———. 2002. "'Cuius esse est non posse esse': la quarta species della natura eriugeniana, tra logica, metafisica e gnoseologia." In History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time, edited by McEvoy, James and Dunne, Michael, 367-412. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

"Per risolvere l’enigmaticità della prima presentazione della naturae species quae nec creai nec creatur è utile prendere le mosse da una verifica del valore semantico che nel linguaggio filosofico eriugeniano assumono i termini impossibile e impossibilitas. Ad un rapido esame delle loro ricorrenze appare con evidenza come la loro utilizzazione possa essere articolata, grosso modo, secondo tre diverse funzionalità espressive."(p. 371)

(...)

"Questa introduzione del termine impossibile in una prospettiva di ordine squisitamente teologico, non concepibile nell’ordine creaturale senza l’apporto della rivelazione, ne incrementa in modo stupefacente il significato: ciò che è voluto da Dio come una ‘realtà impossibile’ appartiene alla natura, ma solo in quanto, come effetto appunto dell’incondizionata volontà creatrice, rientra nell’ambito indicibile e incomprensibile della natura divina. Ed è ovvio che la connotazione logica di impossibilitas descrive in tale caso per la ragione umana non una limitazione della res, ma una condizione propria del soggetto quando ne contempla il mysterium senza essere illuminato dall’altitudo theologiae, ossia dalla profonda conoscenza che sgorga dalla rivelazione e dalla grazia(40)." (p. 381)

(...)

"La conclusione del Periphyseon propone un riepilogo complessivo del pensiero eriugeniano nella cui sinteticità l’autore ha modo di esprimere in una riformulazione essenziale, definitiva e chiarificatrice, il senso del processo che conduce al non posse esse della quarta natura122. La divisione quadripartita delle naturae appare ormai non altro che il risultato della duplice considerazione di Dio come causa prima e come fine, e della creatura come causa seconda e come effetto. La quarta natura è dunque conoscibile da parte dell’intelligenza creata nella misura in cui Dio, come fine, è il punto di arrivo di ogni moto-desiderio delle creature, nel quale tutte trovano il limite del loro movimento naturale(123)." (p. 410)

(40) Cfr. Commentarius in Evangelium lohannis (in seguito: Comm.), VI, 2, 341A (ed. É. Jeauneau, Paris 1972 [SC 180], p. 330,16-18): “[Bona actio et rationabilis scientia] (...) erudiendis in fide non sufficiunt, nisi eis altitudo theologiae addatur”.

(123) Cfr. Periphyseon 1019AC.

81. Desrosiers-Bonin, Diane. 1986. "Étude des radicaux et de leur répartition dans le dialogue du "Periphyseon"." In Jean Scot écrivain, edited by Allard, Guy-H., 311-325. Paris: Vrin.

"Cette analyse a pour unité de base le mot, mais le mot considéré comme l’énoncé d’une idée. En effet, afin d’appréhender l’œuvre en respectant les cadres épistémologiques dans lesquels elle fut élaborée, nous nous sommes conformée à la conception médiévale selon laquelle la pensée, antérieure au langage, se manifeste à travers un lexique, une syntaxe et leur aménagement ordonné selon une stratégie rhétorique particulière. Dans cette conception, le mot fonctionne comme l’instrument épiphanique de la pensée, ainsi qu’en témoigne Jean Scot à l’occasion des Expositiones in lerarchiam coelestem : « (...) vox imago est intellectus»(1).

Notre recherche, à son premier stade, ne porte donc pas sur la phrase ou sur des ensembles phrastiques. Elle ne se situe ni au niveau syntaxique, ni au niveau logique ou rhétorique sur lesquels nous concentrerons nos travaux ultérieurs. Enfin, notre étude ne repose pas sur une analyse de contenu ou une interprétation de sens. Nous nous proposons plutôt de fournir aux chercheurs un compte rendu descriptif des recherches de type quantitatif que nous avons menées au moyen de l’ordinateur.

Dans cette optique, notre contribution à l’étude du Periphyseon comporte deux volets. Nous verrons d’abord à établir la carte des idées sur lesquelles roule la dispute du Periphyseon, c’est-à-dire à cerner l’organisation générale des radicaux dans les cinq livres. Puis, nous éclairerons les caractéristiques du dialogue érigénien par une analyse quantitative et comparée des radicaux utilisés par le maître et le disciple, ainsi que ceux qui apparaissent dans les citations. Nous ferons ressortir leur degré de participation à l’ensemble du corpus, leur originalité lexicale et leur degré d’intégration, c’est-à-dire le vocabulaire qu’ils partagent(2)." (pp. 311-312)

(1) Expositiones in Ierarchiam coelestem (éd. J. Barbet), Cap. XV, 926.".

82. Madec, Goulven. 1977. "L'augustinisme de Jean Scot dans le "De praedestinatione"." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 183-190. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

83. ———. 1980. "Observations sur le dossier augustinien du "Periphyseon"." In Eriugena. Studien zu seinen Quellen, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 75-84. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

"Je distingue, en toute simplicité, trois opérations dans le traitement du texte érigénien: 1) l’établissement du texte, 2) l’investigation philologique, 3) l’interprétation doctrinale. La deuxième opération, à laquelle je veux me borner, concerne principalement l’inventaire des emprunts qui fait l’objet des notes de bas de pages; et je voudrais présenter ici une sorte de petite théorie de l’annotation.

Dans l’édition du De diuina praedestinatione, je me suis refusé l’usage de tout artifice typographique: guillemets ou caractères italiques, afin de préserver le texte de toute intrusion de l’érudition philologique. Dans le même esprit, j’estime que la détection des emprunts n’autorise pas d’elle-même, automatiquement, les conclusions d’ordre doctrinal. Le philologue en acte de repérage des emprunts est, en effet, selon moi, un lecteur anormal: il ne lit pas, il analyse, il décompose le texte. Pour être à même de porter un jugement doctrinal, il doit, ce me semble, se remettre en acte de lecture normale, suivre le courant du discours où les emprunts ont désormais la vie, le mouvement et l’être. Il faut considérer les emprunts comme des actes doctrinaux de Jean Scot, et non pas comme de simples signes de dépendance littéraire et doctrinale.

Les résultats du travail philologique doivent donc faire l’objet d’une attention critique; et je voudrais préciser d’entrée de jeu qu’un dossier augustinien du Periphyseon ne peut être que partiel et disparate.

Ce dossier est partiel: il ne fait pas un tout à lui seul, mais réclame les dossiers concurrents concernant toutes les œuvres, ecclésiastiques et profanes, exploitées dans le Periphyseon. Il faudrait, autrement dit, considérer la nomenclature des auteurs, dressée par Dom Cappuyns(4), comme un programme détudes. Une enquête biblique serait particulièrement utile, qui donnerait les références précises des citations et des réminiscences, en relevant les particularités textuelles, et qui étudierait les remarques de Jean Scot sur les textes hébreu, grec et latin(5)."

(4) M. Cappuyns, Jean Scot Érigène. Sa vie, son œuvre, sa pensée, Louvain-Paris, 1933; Bruxelles, 1964, p. 387-392.

(5) Dans mes notes sur „Jean Scot et les Pères latins“, Revue des études augustiniennes, 22, 1976, p. 134-142, il manque deux références à saint Jérôme, relatives au texte hébreu. Exp. in Hierarchiam caelestem, viii, 366-369: „Similiter de Serubet Seraphim dicendum; proprie tamen, ut sanctus leronymus docet, Cherubim et Seraphim et pluralis numeri et masculina nomina sunt“ (éd. J. Barbet, CC, Cont. Med. XXXI, p. 128); cette remarque de Jérôme se trouve en Comm, in Isaiam prophetam, lib. 1, cap. i (PL 24, 259B9-11; CC 73, p. 7). Exp. in Hierar- 1

chiam caelestem, xv, 1018-1023 (p. 213): „Bcatus autem leronymus . . . Eccc quod Dionisius posuit hebraice TEA, TEA, PEA, leronymus latine uolubiles interpretatus est“. Cf. Comm. in Ezechielem lib. II, cap. x (PL 25, 93C-94B; CC 75, p. 114). Je me console de ces omissions, en constatant que le travail à l’ordinateur peut aussi subir pareils accidents: dans l'index nominum, CC Cont. Med. XXXI, p. 365, sub uerbo: leronymus, il manque une référence à xiv, 31 (p. 185).

84. ———. 1980. "Le dossier augustinien du Periphyseon de Jean Scot (livres I-II)." Recherches Augustiniennes no. 15:241-264.

85. ———. 1983. "Le dossier augustinien du Periphyseon de Jean Scot (livres III-V)." Recherches Augustiniennes no. 18:183-223.

86. ———. 1986. "Jean Scot et ses auteurs." In Jean Scot écrivain, edited by Allard, Guy-H., 143-186. Paris: Vrin.

Index auctorum pp. 154-186.

"Mais mon propos n’est pas de traiter des emprunts tacites de Jean Scot, bibliques et autres. Cela excéderait ma compétence et ce devrait être un travail d’équipe. J’ai pensé, en revanche, que l’heure était peut-être venue de mettre à jour la nomenclature dressée par Dom Cappuyns à la fin de son grand ouvrage [*], dans l’appendice intitulé « Les auteurs cités par Jean Scot» (p. 387-392). Dom Cappuyns relevait « tous les passages où Jean Scot fait appel à quelque autorité, qu’il s’agisse d’auteurs profanes ou ecclésiastiques, de citations proprement dites ou de simples renvois» (p. 387). C’est aussi le parti que je prendrai ; mais cette formulation appelle quelques remarques. Premièrement, il y manque les auteurs bibliques ; j’y reviendrai. Deuxièmement, il faut observer que Dom Cappuyns employait le terme de citation au sens strict, ce qui est en effet indispensable dans ce genre de travail." (p. 144)

(...)

"La pratique des citations est générale chez les écrivains de l’époque. L’originalité de Jean Scot tient à son érudition ; et davantage à sa connaissance des Pères grecs, Denys, Grégoire, Maxime, qu’à sa culture classique, pour laquelle il faut compter avec l’intermédiaire des « maîtres-livres » de Martianus Capella, de Macrobe, de Calcidius et de Boèce (cf. É. Jeauneau, « L’héritage de la philosophie antique durant le haut Moyen Age» — La cultura antica nell’Occidente Latino dal vii all’xi secolo, Spoleto, 1975, p. 15-56), auxquels s’ajoute ici et là des renseignements pris dans la Cité de Dieu (pour Cicéron: Expositions in Ierarchiam caelestem 15, 612; pour Varron : Glosae Martiani p. 147, 149 et 156)." (p. 152)

[*] Jean Scot Erigène sa vie, son oeuvre, sa pensée (1933).

87. ———. 1988. Jean Scot et ses auteurs. Annotations érigéniennes. Paris: Études augustiniennes.

88. ———. 1991. "Theologia. Note augustino-érigénienne." In From Augustine to Eriugena. Essays on Neoplatonism and Christianity in honor of John O'Meara, edited by Martin, Francis X. and Richmond, John A., 117-125. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated Bibliography on the Philosophical Work of Eriugena (Second Part: Mai - McG)

Bibliography

The publications by É. Jeauneau on Eriugena are cited in a separate page: Édouard Jeauneau sur la Philosophie Médiévale. Bibliographie Choisie.

N.B. Summaries cited from: Mary Brennan, A Guide to Eriugenian Studies. A Survey of Publications 1930-1987, are indicated with: (B.) and page number.

1. Mainoldi, Ernesto Sergio. 2004. "Le fonti del De praedestinatione liber di Giovanni Scoto Eriugena." Studi Medievali no. 45:651-697.

2. ———. 2005. "Iohannes Scottus Eriugena." In La trasmissione dei testi latini del medioevo / Mediaeval Latin Texts and their Transmission, edited by Chiesa, Paolo and Castaldi, Lucia, 186-264. Firenze: SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo.

Le opere e la loro trasmissione, la tradizione manoscritta e le edizioni.

Indice: I. Opere speculative (teologico-fìlosofìche)

1. De praedestiatione liber; 2, Periphyseon;

II. Opere esegetiche e didattiche

3. In Priscianum; 4. Annotationes in Martianum; 5. Glosae Martiani; 6. Glossae diuinae historiae; 7. Tractatus in Mattheum; 8. Expositiones in Ierarchiam coelestem; 9. Omelia "Vox spiritualis aquilae"; 10. Commentarius in Iohannem;

III. Opera poetica

11. Carmina

IV. Versioni da greco

12. Versio operum sancti Dionysii Areopagitae; 13. Versio sancti Gregorii Nisseni Sermones de imagine; 14. Versio sancti Maximi Confessoris Ambiguorum ad Iohannem; 15. Versio sancti Maximi Confessoris Quaestionum ad Thalassum;

V. Epistolae

16. Epistola "Domine Uniniberte..."

Dubia

A. Versio Prisciani Lydii Solutiones ad Chosroem regem

B. Defloratio de libro Ambrosii Macrobii Theodosii De differentis et societatibus graeci latinique uerbi

Appendice: gli autografi eriugeniani.

3. ———. 2011. "Vox, sensus, intellectus chez Jean Scot Érigène. Pour une focalisation des sources possibles du débat theologico-grammatical au XIe siècle." In Arts du langage et théologie aux confins des XIe-XIIe sècles. Textes, Maîtres, Débats, edited by Rosier-Catach, Irène, 565-582. Turnhout: Brepols.

4. ———. 2014. "Creation in Wisdom: Eriugena’s Sophiology beyond Ontology and Meontology." In Eriugena and Creation. Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Eriugenian Studies, held in honor of Edouard Jeauneau, Chicago, November 9-12, 2011, edited by Otten, Willemien and Allen, Michael I., 183-222. Turnhout: Brepols.

5. Dillon, John. 1992. "The Roots of Reason in John Scottus Eriugena." Philosophical Studies (Dublin) no. 33:25-38.

Reprinted as Essay XXIII in: J. M. Dillon, The Great Tradition. Further Studies in the Development of Platonism and Early Christianity, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997.

6. Dionisotti, Anna Carlotta. 1988. "Greek Grammars and Dictionaries in Carolingian Europe." In The Sacred Nectar of the Greeks: The Study of Greek in the West in the Early Middle Ages, edited by Herren, Michael W. and Brown, Ann Shirley, 1-56. London: King's College.

"What this essay tries to offer you is not really an argument or thesis, but rather a map.(1) A somewhat primitive, medieval map to be sure, uncertain in scale and contour, and with large areas of "Here Be Dragons." But it seems worth trying, because Greek grammars and dictionaries are not easy to find one’s way around; yet for any Westerner they were potentially the best means of getting, and using, a knowledge of Greek. Potentially, because much of course depends on what sort of grammar, what sort of dictionary." (p. 1)

(...)

"Macrobius wrote his work [*] for a Western audience; so it gives quite a full account of the morphology of the Greek verb, how to distinguish its conjugations, moods and tenses, based on native Greek analysis. Unfortunately it was not written as a didactic handbook, but rather as a learned comparative discussion, aimed at cultured aristocrats like the characters in his own Saturnalia. The Greek content is in fact pretty basic, a symptom of the times, but the manner is discursive; he gives no paradigms, and indeed wholly omits aspects which are not common to the two languages, like the dual and, more seriously, the aorist. Nonetheless it would be of great value to anyone prepared to work through it.

One such was a certain Johannes, surely John the Scot, to whom indeed we owe most of our knowledge of the work. A single manuscript (J) preserves his defloratio of the text - all the parts, he explains in a colophon, relevant to Greek. There is then a paradigm of ΠΟΙΨ, followed by a brief introduction, saying that, besides the defloratio, he thought it would be useful to make a summary of the work, organized by lugations rather than by moods and tenses as in Macrobius. This was a very intelligent idea. Unfortunately, the summary breaks off near the beginning; either John left it unfinished or the scribe gave up." (pp. 20-21)

(1) I use abbreviations for the three works that are essential to this map: CGL = G.Goetz (ed.), Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum 1-7 (Leipzig, 1688-1923); GL = H.Keil (ed.), Grammatici Latini 1-8 (Leipzig, 1855-1880): in each case I give volume, page, +/- line; and Bischoff, "Das griechische Element" (+ page) = B. Bischoff "Das griechische Element in der abendländischen Bildung des Mittelalters," in his Mittelalterliche Studien 2 (Stuttgart, 1967), 246-275.

[*] GL 5:595-655; Cf.Dionisotti, "Latin Grammar for Greeks and Goths," Journal of Roman Studies 74 (1984), 206-207.

7. Dräseke, Johannes. 1902. Johannes Scotus Erigena und dessen Gewahrsmanner in seinem Werke De divisione naturae, libri V. Leipzig: Dieterich.

Nachdruck: Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1972.

8. Dronke, Peter. 1990. "Eriugena Earthly Paradise." In Begriff und Metapher. Sprachform des denkens bei Eriugena, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 213-229. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Reprinted in: P. Dronke, Sources of Inspiration. Studies in Literary Transformations, 400-1500, Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1997, pp. 37-59.

9. Duclow, Donald F. 1972. "Pseudo-Dionysius, John Scotus Eriugena, Nicholas of Cusa: An Approach to the Hermeneutic of the Divine Names." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 12:260-278.

10. ———. 1977. "Nature as Speech and Book in John Scottus Eriugena." Mediaevalia no. 3:131-140.

Reprinted as Essay III in: D. F. Duclow, Masters of Learned Ignorance: Eriugena, Eckhart, Cusanus.

11. ———. 1977. "Divine Nothingness and Self-Creation in John Scotus Eriugena." The Journal of Religion no. 57:109-123.

12. ———. 1980. "Dialectic and Christology in Eriugena's Periphyseon." Dionysius:99-117.

Reprinted as Essay IV in: D. F. Duclow, Masters of Learned Ignorance: Eriugena, Eckhart, Cusanus.

13. ———. 2006. Masters of Learned Ignorance: Eriugena, Eckhart, Cusanus. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Contents: Preface VII; Acknowledgments XI; Introduction. I. Pseudo-Dionysius, John Scottus Eriugena, Nicholas of Cusa: An Approach to the Hermeneutic of the Divine Names 3; Part I: John Scottus Eriugena. II. Divine Nothingness and Self-Creation in John Scottus Eriugena 23; III. Nature as Speech and Book in John Scottus Eriugena 41; IV. Dialectic and Christology in Eriugena's Periphyseon 49; V. Isaiah Meets the Seraph: Breaking Ranks in Dionysius and Eriugena? 67; VI. Denial or Promise of the Tree of Life?: - Eriugena, Augustine, and Genesis 3:22b 85; VII: Virgins in Paradise: Deification and Exegesis in Periphyseon V (co-authored with Paul A. Dietrich) 101; VIII. Hell and Damnation in Eriugena (co-authored with Paul A. Dietrich) 121-138.

14. Dutton, Paul Edward. 1980. "Raoul Glaber's 'De diuina quaternitate' An Unnoticed Reading of Eriugena's Translation of the Ambigua of Maximmus the Confessor." Mediaeval Studies no. 42:431-453.

15. ———. 1986. "Eriugena, the Royal Poet." In Jean Scot écrivain, edited by Allard, Guy-H., 51-80. Paris: Vrin.

16. ———. 1992. "Evidence that Dubthach' Priscian Codex Once Belonged to Eriugena." In From Athens to Chartres. Neoplatonism and Medieval Thought. Studies in Honour of Edouard Jeauneau, edited by Westra, Haijo Jan, 15-45. Leiden: Brill.

"Leiden B.P.L. 67 is a celebrated and much described codex containing three works of Priscian: the Periegesis (fols. 1-7), Institutiones grammaticae (9-207), and De nominibus et pronominibus (208-218). The last of these items was copied in the twelfth century, but the first two were written out by Irish scribes in the middle of the ninth century. One of these scribes was a certain Dubthach who claimed, in a clever inscription left at the end of the Periegesis, to have completed copying the book on 11 April 838 at exactly 3 p.m. Despite the final flourish, Dubthach seems to have been but one of several scribes who produced the Periegesis and Institutiones. His name, however, is an especially significant one since Traube associated him with Sedulius Scottus’ Irish circle, and the so-called Cryptogram of Dubthach in Bamberg reminds one of the playful inscription in Leiden. Dubthach and his fellow scribes seem to have copied out their collection of Prisciana on the continent, perhaps for the use of a colony of Irish scholars.

In piecing together the history of the Dubthach Codex (as I shall henceforth call fols. 1-207) an important element has been overlooked, for after its creation the codex seems to have passed into the possession of Eriugena and his school. The evidence for this is a series of fragments—a miscellany of notes, five poems, a list of Greek grammatical terms, an excerpt from the Periphyseon, a commentary on Priscian’s “De uoce,” and glosses by the Irish scribe known as i^1—that place the manuscript in the presence of the Irish philosopher and his circle between 853 and 866. A number of these fragments are edited here for the first time. These remnants of Eriugena and his school fall into three discrete parts of the Dubthach Codex and will be so presented and studied below." (pp. 15-16 notes omitted).

17. ———. 1997. "Minding Irish P's and Q's: Signs of the First Systematic Reading of Eriugena's 'Periphyseon'." In A Distinct Voice. Medieval Studies in Honor of Leonard E. Boyle, O.P., edited by Brown, Jacqueline and Stoneman, William P., 14-31. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

18. ———. 2002. "Eriugena's Workshop: the Making of the Periphyseon in Reims 875." In History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time, edited by McEvoy, James and Dunne, Michael, 141-168. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

19. Dutton, Paul Edward, and Luhtala, Anneli. 1994. "Eriugena in Priscianum." Mediaeval Studies no. 56:153-163.

20. Erismann, Christophe. 2002. "Generalis essentia. La théorie érigénienne de l' ousia et le problème des universaux." Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen-Age no. 69:7-37.

"La problématique philosophique d'Erigène - catégories, universaux, individuation - se noue autour de la notion d'ousia, comprise soit comme l'essence générale, genre suprême unique, soit comme substance particulière. En opposition aux Catégories, Jean Scot défend un réalisme radical, concevant l'individuation comme accidentelle et le particulier comme un rassemblement de propriétés universelles. Guillaume de Champeaux reprendra cette position dans sa théorie réaliste dite de l'essence matérielle.".

21. ———. 2002. ""Causa essentialis". De la cause comme principe dans la métaphysique de Jean Scot Erigène." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 2:187-215.

22. ———. 2003. "Erigène et la subsistance du corps." Studia Philosophica no. 62:91-105.

23. ———. 2004. "Processio id est multiplicatio. L'influence latine de l'ontologie de Porphyre: le cas de Jean Scot Érigène." Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques no. 88:401-460.

"Porphyre fait subir dans l' lsagoge une inflexion platonicienne au système ontologique des Catégories d'Aristote et investit les catégories d'une signification métaphysique. Plusieurs penseurs du haut Moyen âge - les réalistes - ont amplifié et explicité cette métaphysique. La lecture et l'usage ontologiques de l' Isagoge par Jean Scot Erigène, dans son Periphyseon, est à ce titre un cas d'école. Influencé par le néoplatonisme tardif de Proclus, Jean Scot se sert des outils conceptuels de l' Isagoge pour élaborer son système philosophique.".

24. ———. 2005. "Alain de Lille, la métaphysique érigénienne et la pluralité des formes." In Alain de Lille, le Docteur universel. Philosophie, théologie et littérature au XIIe siècle. Actes du XIe Colloque international de la Société internationale pour l'Étude de la Philosophie médiévale, Paris, 23-25 octobre 2003, edited by Solère, Jean-Luc, Vasiliu, Anca and Galonnier, Alain, 19-46. Turnhout: Brepols.

25. ———. 2006. "Dialectique, universaux et intellect chez Jean Scot Erigène." In Intellect et imagination dans la philosophie médiévale / Intellect and Imagination in Medieval Philosophy / Intelecto e imaginação na filosofia medieval, edited by Pacheco, Maria Cândida and Meirinhos, José Francesco, 827-840. Turnhout: Brepols.

Actes du XIe Congrès international de philosophie médiévale de la Société internationale pour l'Étude de la philosophie médiévale (S.I.E.P.M.), Porto, du 26 au 31 août 2002, vol. II.

26. ———. 2007. "The Logic of Being: Eriugena’s Dialectical Ontology." In The Many Roots of Medieval Logic: The Aristotelian and the Non-Aristotelian Traditions, edited by Marenbon, John, 203-218. Leiden: Brill.

Abstract: "In his major work, the Periphyseon, the ninth century Latin philosopher John Scottus Eriugena gives, with the help of what he calls “dialectic”, a rational analysis of reality.

According to him, dialectic is a science which pertains both to language and reality.

Eriugena grounds this position in a realist ontological exegesis of the Aristotelian categories, which are conceived as categories of being. His interpretation tends to transform logical patterns, such as Porphyry’s Tree or the doctrine of the categories, into a structure which is both ontological and logical, and to use them as tools for the analysis of the sensible world. Th e combination of dialectic interpreted as a science of being, capable of expressing truths about the sensible world as well as about discourse, with an ontological interpretation of logical concepts allows Eriugena to develop his metaphysical theory, a strong realism. Eriugena not only supports a theological realism (of divine ideas), but also, and principally, an ontological realism, the assertion of the immanent existence of forms. Eriugena claims that genera and species really subsist in the individuals: they are completely and simultaneously present in each of the entities which belong to them.".

27. ———. 2011. L'homme commun. La genèse du réalisme ontologique durant le haut Moyen âge. Paris: Vrin.

"Le présent livre propose l'étude de la constitution, durant le haut Moyen Âge latin, d'une position philosophique: le réalisme de l'immanence à propos des universaux. Cette position est fondée sur la conviction qu'il existe, dans le monde qui nous entoure, certes des individus particuliers -- ce tilleul, cette tortue --, mais aussi des entités universelles. Ces entités n'existent pas séparées des individus, mais intégralement réalisées en eux, sans variation ni degré. Cet engagement philosophique résulte d'une exégèse des Catégories d'Aristote, réinterprétées selon des philosophèmes issus de la pensée de Porphyre. La généalogie de cette position est ici retracée en abordant successivement ses sources tant grecques que latines et ses ancêtres patristiques (avant tout Grégoire de Nysse), puis son élaboration conceptuelle durant les premiers siècles du Moyen Âge latin jusqu'à la critique qu'en donnera Pierre Abélard, et ce, par l'analyse de l'ontologie des quatre philosophes qui l'ont soutenue: Jean Scot Érigène, Anselme de Canterbury, Odon de Cambrai et Guillaume de Champeaux. Ce parcours permet de dessiner les contours d'un projet philosophique: comprendre, analyser et décrire le monde sensible au moyen des concepts issus de la logique aristotélicienne.".

28. Eswein, Karl. 1930. "Die Wesenheit bei Johannes Scottus Eriugena. Begriff, Bedeutung und Charakter der "essentia" oder "ousía" bei demselben." Philosophisches Jahrbuch no. 43:189-206.

"This author's view is that even if it were to be conceded that Eriugena did not directly influence the solution to major universal questions posed by later philosophers, it must be conceded that he made an outstanding contribution to the development of later, and

particularly modern German, philosophy. Eriugena was not a precise writer: he employs dialectic adroitly to suit the point in hand, but his system must be studied in its totality. His christian platonism is fundamentally affected by Aristotelianism. His negative

theology is not pessimistic. Eriugena's particular interpretation of certain Aristotelian terms is discussed. In this discussion on essentia as treated by Eriugena, the author devotes 7 sections to the subject: 1 General; 2) Essence and Ideas or causae primordiales;

3) Essence and Being; 4) Essence and Substance; 5) Essence and Nature; 6) Essence and Body, Genus and Species; 7) Essence and Form, Matter." (Brennan, p. 170).

29. Faes de Mottoni, Barbara. 1979. Il platonismo medievale. Torno: Loescher.

30. Flasch, Kurt. 1971. "Zur rehabilitierung der Relation: die Theorie der Beziehung bei Johannes Eriugena." In Philosophie als Beziehungswissenschaft. Festschrift für Julius Schaaf, edited by Niebel, Wilhelm Friedrich and Leisegang, Dieter, 1-25. Frankfurt am Main: H. Heiderhoff.

"This article deals with the tradition of the term relatio, successively depreciated from Aristotle onwards, which is, according to St. Thomas, the least of entities. The article sets out to show that in endeavouring to apply the Aristotelian categories to God, in his

day Eriugena harked back to late Platonism, seeking to revise the status of the relation category ( otherwise habitus/habitudo in his terminology), but his negative theology complicates the exposition of his doctrine. The emphasis Eriugena gives to certain correlative

categories, particularly those of Rest and Motion, is discussed. The author draws attention to the inexactness at times of Eriugena's terminology. A connection is made early in the article with Copernicus through Nicholas of Cusa. Finally connection is also made with Bonaventure, as well as with William of Ockham, Raymond Llull, Meister Eckhart and Pico della Mirandola." (Brennan, p. 289).

31. Forrrai, Réka. 2008. "The Notes of Anastasius on Eriugena’s Translation of the Corpus Dionysiacum." The Journal of Medieval Latin no. 18:74-100.

32. Fournier, Michael. 2009. "Eriugena Five Modes (Periphyseon 443A-446A)." Heytrop Journal no. 50:581-589.

33. Foussard, Jean-Claude. 1977. "Apparence et apparition: la notion de "phantasia" chez Jean Scot." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 337-348. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

34. Frakes, Jerold C. 1988. "Remigius of Auxerre, Eriugena, and the Grec-Latin Circumstantiae-Formula of Accessus ad Auctores." In The Sacred Nectar of the Greeks: The Study of Greek in the West in the Early Middle Ages, edited by Herren, Michael W. and Brown, Ann Shirley, 257-276. London: King's College.

"Prefixed to seven of the commentaries attributed to Remigius of Auxerre are brief pedagogical prefaces, accessus, which introduce author and work, The various types of accessus found in the Remigian commentaries are distinguishable by the designated set of required topics of discussion. In the commentary on Priscian’s Institutio de nomine, pronomine, et verbo, a four-fold formula of accessus is found (persona, locus, tempus, causa scribendi); in the commentaries on Donatus’ Ars prima Bede’s De arte metrica and Eutyches’ De verbo, it is a three-fold formula (persona, locus, tempus); and in the commentaries on Sedulius’ Carmen Paschale and Martianus Capella’s De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, a seven-fold circumstantiae/periochae formula (puis, Quid, cur, quomodo, quando, ubi, quibus facultatibus); the commentary on the Disticha Catonis notes all three formulae." (p. 229 notes omitted)

(...)

"The pervasive influence on Remigius by his Irish forebears, especially Eriugena and Martin of Laon, is a scholarly commonplace, for which there are also abundant examples in regard to the present topic: Remigius, for instance, used the commentaries of both Eriugena and Martin/Pseudo-Dunchad on Martianus in his own commentary on the work. Further, in the Remigian commentary on Priscian, the four-fold accessus formula appears immediately after a reference to Eriugena. Eriugena seems not just to be his major source in this regard, but more generally a primary model of scholarly method. It is this type of influence which is of essential significance here, for around the middle of the ninth century one notes a gradual shift in emphasis in Irish scholarship on the continent, especially in the work of Sedulius Scottus and Eriugena, away from grammatical studies towards commentary on what were to become "school authors." It was in this nascent period of the formulation of a school canon that the accessus began to develop." (p. 240)

(...)

"However, instead of taking Remigius’ position in this generation of scholarly modification as prima facie evidence for his own invention or mediation of scholarly devices such as the accessus, and any and all occurrences thereof as evidence for Remigian authorship, it would perhaps be more to the point to consider another interpretive possibility, which in context seems more to the point than Lutz’s [*] rather strained thesis: the Irish background of the accessus. One example thereof has already been mentioned: Sedulius on Donatus, De octo partibus orationis In his Collectaneum in Apostolum, the substantive and interrogative forms of the seven circumstantiae also appear as determinative categories in the formation of the preface." (p. 241 note omitted)

[*] Cora E. Lutz, "One Formula of Accessus in Remigius' work", Latomus 19 (1960), 774-780.

35. Gautier Dalché, Patrick. 1991. "Deux lectures et un commentaire de Jean Scot : Censorinus, Aulu-Gelle (livres I et III) et Bède le Vénérable." Revue d'histoire des textes no. 21:115-133.

Résumé: "Dans Periphyseon, III, à propos de Gen., I, 14, Jean Scot développe des explications sur les intervalles des corps célestes où l'on reconnaît des échos de deux oeuvres considérées comme ayant peu ou pas circulé au IXe siècle : Censorinus, De die natali, 1 3 ; le premier livre d'Aulu-Gelle, dont il n'existe pas de ms. avant le XIIe siècle. L'article examine leur tradition (avec un excursus sur la Compilation de 809-810) et montre qu'ils furent connus dans des milieux proches de l'Érigène : les monastères de la région de la Loire (Loup et Heiric) ; Laon (les Scotti, et notamment Martin). Divers indices semblent en outre prouver que Jean Scot commenta le De temporum ratione de Bède.".

36. Gersh, Stephen. 1977. ""Per se ipsum": The Problem of Immediate and Mediate Causation in Eriugena and his Neoplatonic Predecessors." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 367-376. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

Reprinted in: S. Gersh, Reading Plato, Tracing Plato. From Ancient Commentary to Medieval Reception, Aldershot: Ashgate, Essay IX.

37. ———. 1978. From Iamblichus to Eriugena: An Investigation of the Prehistory and Evolution of the Pseudo-Dionysian Tradition. Leiden: Brill.

Italian translation: Da Giamblico a Eriugena. Origini e sviluppi della tradizione pseudo-dionisiana, Edizione italiana a cura di Marialucrezia Leone e Christoph Helmig, Bari, Edizioni di Pagina, 2009, with a new Preface by S. Gersh (pp. VII-IX) and a Supplement to the Bibliography (2008) pp. 424-457.

38. ———. 1980. "Omnipresence in Eriugena. Some Reflections on Augustino-Maximian Elements in Periphyseon." In Eriugena. Studien zu seinen Quellen, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 55-74. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Reprinted in: S. Gersh, Reading Plato, Tracing Plato. From Ancient Commentary to Medieval Reception, Aldershot: Ashgate, Essay X.

39. ———. 1987. "Honorius Augustodunensis and Eriugena. Remarks on the Method and Content of the Clavis Physicae." In Eriugena Redivivus. Zur Wirkungeschichte seines Denkens im Mittelalter und im Übergang zur Neuzeit, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 162-173. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Reprinted in: S. Gersh, Reading Plato, Tracing Plato. From Ancient Commentary to Medieval Reception, Aldershot: Ashgate, Essay XV.

40. ———. 1990. "The Structure of the Return in Eriugena's Periphyseon." In Begriff und Metapher. Sprachform des Denkens bei Eriugena, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 108-125. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Reprinted in: S. Gersh, Reading Plato, Tracing Plato. From Ancient Commentary to Medieval Reception, Aldershot: Ashgate, Essay XI.

"The ‘return’ has hitherto been among the less studied aspects of Eriugena’s doctrine. This single word is the English translation of various Latin technical terms (primarily reditus, redire and reversio, reverti) for the motion of created things towards their creator(1). As the counterbalance to the originative motion of the creature called ‘procession’ (processio, procedere), it is conceived at the same time as a cancellation and a development of the latter(2). This ambivalence makes the return one of the most difficult aspects of Periphyseon to interpret.

Analysis of the structure of the return begins from the notion of God representing the end of the process. According to the fourfold interpretation of Nature which dominates the text, God is both source and goal of all creative activity: this duality arising not in his objective nature but in our subjective perceptions of it. So God is named as end to the extent that he possesses such a ‘relation to created things’ (habitudo ad ea quae condita sunt)(3) or that we have this kind of ‘concept’ (ratio) of him(4). Here as elsewhere, the ideas of relativity and subjectivity are tightly interwoven in the texture of Eriugenian thought. According to the same fourfold schema, God is defined as that nature which neither creates nor is created. What this definition already implies is spelled out in various texts: after this world has reached its end in God, there will be no further productive act on the creator’s part(5), no further procession into intelligible and sensible multiplicity(6). In other words, a cyclic regeneration of the cosmos in the Origenistic manner is systematically excluded.

Such allusions to the notions of reversio - reditus are foundational in the sense that they raise the question of the transcendent ground of the process. However, the concept of return also implies the presence of an immanent divine principle not only in the culmination but also in the unfolding of the process. According to Eriugena, after the return of created things, God will be ‘all in all’ ('omnia in omnibus') in a manner analogous to that of light’s presence in air(7). But God is also ‘all in all’ at this moment, although the carnality of fallen man makes it difficult to conceive how this can be(8)."

(1) There seems to be no significant difference between the meanings of the pair reditus-redire and the pair reversio-reverti. Both sets of terms correspond roughly to the pair epistrophe-epistrephein in Pseudo-Dionysius - the basic source of Eriugena’s Neoplatonism in its developed form.

(2) The doctrine of procession has been studied in S. Gersh: From lamblichus to Eriugena. An Investigation of the Prehistory and Evolution of the Pseudo-Dionysian Tradition, Leiden 1978, passim.

(3) Eriugena: Periph. II. 528A.

(4) II. 527B. Cf. V. 1019A.

(5) V. 1019B.

(6) IV. 860 B.

(7) V. 935 C.

(8) III. 683C.

41. ———. 1996. Concord in Discourse: Harmonics and Semiotics in Late Classical and Early Medieval Platonism. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"The notion of “structure”(1) can be interpreted ontologically or semantically — that is, with the structured terms corresponding to existent things or to semantic properties(2) — and in modem times it is the second viewpoint which has predominated.(3) Why? Undoubtedly because structure itself is seen to be significant and signification itself to be structured." (p. 4)

(...)

"As originally suggested, the notion of “structure” can be interpreted ontologically or semantically — where the structured terms correspond to existent things or to semantic properties.(72) Although in modem times it is the second approach which has been dominant, in the ancient and medieval worlds the two approaches were pursued concurrently with the second dependent on the first.(73) Our project is therefore to employ the modem semantic notion of structure to interpret both the ancient ontological and the ancient semantic notions of structure in an intertextual reading.(74) But since the corresponding term structura is unknown or rare in the relevant passages, we must begin the detailed analysis with its primary surrogate.(75)" (p. 9)

(2) The structured terms can also be treated as mental concepts. See pp. 7-8. In practice, this approach frequently turns into a variant of the ontological.

(3) See Eco 1968: 63, 361, 395; Greimas 1970: 39; Eco 1976: 83-84; Greimas — Courtés 1979:311-313.

(72) See p. 4.

(73) See n. 3.

(74) The modem semantic theory of structure will be applied to the ancient ontological theory of structure in chapters two and three; and to the ancient ontological and semantic theories of structure in chapter four.

(75) According to L & S [Liddell & Scott, Greek–English Lexicon], in the classical period structura only signified a physical building. When Cicero occasionally applied it to the arrangement of words, he noted that this was a strictly figurative usage (quasi structura...) Cf. Lausberg 1960, 2: 818.

References

Umberto Eco 1968, La struttura assente, Milano, Bompiani 1968

Umberto Eco 1976, A Theory of Semiotics, Bloomington/IN: Indian University Press.

Algirdas J. Greimas 1970, Du sens. Essais sémiotiques, 2 volumes, Paris: Seuil.

Algirdas J. Greimas and Joseph Courtés 1979-1986, Sémiotique. Dictionnaire raisonné de la thérorie du langage. 2 volumes. Paris: Hachette.

On Eriugena see in particular:

Chapter: 2.1 Eriugena and the square of opposition 69-73; 2.3 Eriugena's theory of relation 77-86; 2. 5 Eriugena's theory of ratio 89-97; 2.6 Extensions of the Eriugenian theory of ratio 97-104; 3.5 Mediation in the cosmology and angelology of Eriugena 141-156; 3.6 The Eriugenian transcendent harmony 156-166; 4.1 Eriugena and the triad of signifier, signified, and signification 181-188; 4.3 Eriugena’s theory of signification 191-199; 4.5 Eriugena’s theory of symbolism 201-216; 4.6 Extensions of the Eriugenian theory of symbolism 216-220.

42. ———. 1996. "Eriugena 's Ars Rhetorica - Theory and Practice." In Iohannes Scottus Eriugena. The Bible and Hermeneutics, edited by Riel, Gerd van, Steel, Carlos and McEvoy, James, 261-278. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Reprinted in: S. Gersh, Reading Plato, Tracing Plato. From Ancient Commentary to Medieval Reception, Aldershot: Ashgate, Essay XII.

43. ———. 1998. "John Scottus Eriugena and Anselm of Canterbury." In Routledge History of Philosophy. Volume III: Medieval hilosophy, edited by Marenbon, John, 120-149. New York: Routledge.

44. ———. 1998. "Structure, Sign, and Ontology from Iohannes Scottus Eriugena to Anselm of Canterbury." In Routledge History of Philosophy. Vol. II: Medieval Philosophy, edited by Marenbon, John, 124-149. New York: Routledge.

45. ———. 2001. "Cratylus mediaevalis. Ontology and Polysemy in Medieval Platonism (to ca. 1200)." In Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages. A Festschrift for Peter Dronke, edited by Marenbon, John, 79-98. Leiden: Brill.

Reprinted in: S. Gersh, Reading Plato, Tracing Plato. From Ancient Commentary to Medieval Reception, Aldershot: Ashgate, Essay II.

46. ———. 2006. "The Role of the Human in the Procession and Return of the Cosmos from Plotinus to Eriugena." Dionysius no. 24:175-208.

47. ———. 2009. Da Giamblico a Eriugena. Origini e sviluppi della tradizione pseudo-dionisiana. Bari: Edizioni di Pagina.

Edizione italiana a cura di Marialucrezia Leone e Christoph Helmig con una nuova prefazione di Stephen Gersh (pp. VII-IX) ed un Supplemento alla Bibliografia (2008), pp. 424-457.

48. Gersh, Stephen, and Moran, Dermot, eds. 2006. Eriugena, Berkeley, and the Idealist Tradition. Notre Dame: Indiana University Press.

A collection of papers originally delivered at an international conference organized in Dublin in March 2002 by the University of Notre Dame and Trinity College Dublin.

Contents: Stephen Gersh and Dermot Moran: Introduction 1; Chapter 1: Vasilis Politis: Non-subjective idealism in Plato (Sophist 248e-249d) 14; Chapter 2: John Dillon: The platonic forms as Gesetze: could Paul Natorp have been right? 39; Chapter 3: Vittorio Hösle: Platonism and its interpretations: the three paradigms and their place in the history of hermeneutics 54; Chapter 4: Gretchen Reydams-Schils: The Roman Stoics on divine thinking and human knowledge 81; Chapter 5: Andrew Smith: The object of perception in Plotinus 95; Chapter 6:Jean Pépin: Saint Augustine and the indwelling of the ideas in God 105; Chapter 7: Dermot Moran: Spiritualis incrassatio: Eriugena's intellectualist immaterialism: is it an idealism? 123; Chapter 8: Stephen Gersh: Eriugena's fourfold contemplation: idealism and arithmetic 151; Chapter 9: Agnieszka Kijewska: Eriugena's idealist interpretation of paradise 168; Chapter 10: Peter Adamson: Immanence and transcendence: intellect and forms in al-Kindi and the Liber de causis 187; Chapter 11: Bertil Belfrage: The scientific background of George Berkeley's idealism 202; Chapter 12: Timo Airaksinen: The chain and the animal: idealism in Berkeley's Siris 224; Chapter 13: Karl Ameriks: Idealism from Kant to Berkeley 244; Chapter 14: Walter Jaeschke: Idealism and realism in classical German philosophy 269; Bibliography 285; Index 301-318.

49. Gersh, Stephen, and Stéphany, Cédric. 2013. "L’Ordo Naturalis des causes primordiales. La transformation érigénienne de la doctrine dionysienne des noms divins." Les Études philosophiques:57-78.

50. Gierer, Alfred. 1999. "Eriugena, Al-Kindi, Nikolaus von Kues - Protagonisten einer wissenschaftsfreundlichen Wende im philosophischen und theologischen Denken." Acta Historica Leopoldina no. 29:7-60.

With summarizing English version: Eriugena, Al-Kindi, Nicholaus of Cusa - Protagonists of Pro-scientific Cultural Change in Philosophical and Theological Thought.

"Ancient Greek philosophers were the first to postulate the possibility of explaining nature in theoretical terms and to initiate attempts at this. With the rise of monotheistic religions of revelation claiming supremacy over human reason and envisaging a new world to come, studies of the natural order of the transient world were widely considered undesirable. Later, in the Middle Ages, the desire for human understanding of nature in terms of reason was revived. This article is concerned with the fundamental reversal of attitudes, from "undesirable" to "desirable", that eventually led into the foundations of modern science. One of the earliest, most ingenious and most interesting personalities involved was Eriugena, a theologian at the Court of Charles the Bald in the 9th century. Though understanding what we call nature is only one of the several aspects of his philosophical work, his line of thought implies a turn into a pro-scientific direction: the natural order is to be understood in abstract terms of "primordial causes"; understanding nature is considered to be the will of God; man encompasses the whole of creation in a physical as well as a mental sense. Basically similar ideas on the reconciliation of scientific rationality and monotheistic religions of revelation were conceived, independently and nearly simultaneously, by the Arab philosopher al-Kindi in Bagdad. Eriugena was more outspoken in his claim that reason is superior to authority. This claim is implicit in the thought of Nicholas of Cusa with his emphasis on human mental creativity as the image of God's creativity; and it is the keynote of Galileo's "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina" some 800 years later, the manifesto expressing basic attitudes of modern science.".

51. Giltner, T. Alexander. 2016. "Intimae Theologiae. The Christocentric Cosmology of John Scottus Eriugena in the Homilia super « In principio erat Verbum »." Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge no. 83:7-32.

Abstract: "The Christology of John Scottus Eriugena has often been criticized as underdeveloped or ignored. This is because Eriugena has primarily been studied by scholars of philosophy and not theology, who focus almost exclusively on the Periphyseon. This article contends that this mischaracterization occurs because scholars are not looking for it in the right place : the Homily. Here Eriugena most clearly elucidates the contours of his Christological thought, which is truly a Christocentric cosmology."

(...)

"Conclusion: At the outset, I proposed that examining the Homilia in some depth could fill a lacuna in Eriugena scholarship in two ways : 1) this would give attention to an important work in understanding the thought of Eriugena that has been as of yet understudied in Eriugena studies; and 2) it would elucidate the central importance of Christology in Eriugena’s work. John Scottus Eriugena belongs, it seems, to that coterie of medieval thinkers such as Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas who have long been celebrated by philosophers, whereas the more theological trajectories have often been marginalized." (p. 31).

52. Gordon Moore, Kate. 1947. "Johannes Scotus Erigena on Imagination." The Journal of Psychology no. 23:169-178.

"It is in his philosophical and theological discussions that we must look for Erigena’s views on psychological topics. In the quality of his prayer we see his interest in intellect, and where he discusses the relation of reason to authority he clearly places reason first. The authority of the church is to be accepted because it is in conformity with reason, rather than reason to be accepted because it conforms to the church. Rational truth is as the genus, .with the truths of the church as species. He seems to subsume theology under philosophy.

The ideas which appear to have value for the student of the imaginative process are these: (a) The concept of creative goodness, which Erigena makes the center of his thought, (b) the relation between the thought and its object, (c) the idea of the union of minds, which he illustrates by esthetic experiences, and by social intellection. These will be the divisions of our discussion." (p. 171).

53. Gracia, Jorge J.E. 2007. "Ontological Characterization of the Relation between Man and Created Nature in Eriugena." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 16:155-166.

54. Graff, Eric. 2002. "A primitive text of Periphyseon V rediscovered. The witness of Honorius Augustoduniensis in Clavis physicae." Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales no. 69:271-295.

"Book V of Eriugena's Periphyseon presents new critical problems because of the lack of the Rheims manuscript, which contains the author's own revisions. The text which has been called Versio Prima in the first four books of Jeauneau's new edition is lacking for the final volume. Working from a transcription of the second portion of the Clauis Physicae, the epitome of the Periphyseon by Honorius Augustodunensis, the author reports that the unpublished Clauis II contains a text of Periphyseon V that is analogous to Versio Prima. This article first compares the transcription from Clauis II to Lucentini's notes on Honorius' work, then it analyses the difference between Clauis II and Versio Secunda in Periphyseon V. The relationship is found to be the same as that between the primitive text (Versio Prima) of Periphyseon in books I-IV and Eriugena's revised version (Versio Secunda). Consequently, Clauis II should be recognized as an essential witness to the early text of Periphyseon V.".

55. Greetham, David C. 2005. "Édouard Jeauneau's Edition of the Periphyseon in Light of Contemporary Editorial Theory." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 79:527-548.

"Textual criticism and the scholarly editions it produces have all too often been regarded by academics as well as general readers as “objective” (or even “scientific”) applications of a fixed set of procedures, designed to create a “definitive” text. But such editions are just as much a reflection of cultural and ideological expectations as are any other “critical” activities. Thus, the Jeauneau parallel-text edition of Eriugena’s Periphyseon, with its presentation of “matière en fusion” and its embrace of a continually evolving work in “perpétuel devenir” is to be seen as an appropriate postmodernist celebration of the “supplément,” the marginal, the incomplete, and the fragmented. In this promotion of the “scriptible” (or “open,” “writerly”) text over the “lisible” (“closed” or “readerly”), Jeauneau stands in contrast with the precedent edition of Eriugena by Sheldon-Williams, which is a modernist attempt to arrive at “satisfaction” and the positive." (p. 527).

56. Gregory, Tullio. 1963. Giovanni Scoto Eriugena. Tre studi. Firenze: Le Monnier.

Indice: I. Dall'Uno al Molteplice 1-26; II. Mediazione e incarnazione nella filosofia dell'Eriugena 27-57; III. 58-82.

57. Guiu, Adrian. 2013. "Le Periphyseon d’Érigène comme une extrapolation de l’Ambiguum 41 de Maxime le Confesseur." Les Études philosophiques:79-99.

58. ———, ed. 2019. A Companion to John Scottus Eriugena. Leiden: Brill.

59. ———. 2021. "Philosophical Dialogue and Contemplation of the Cosmos in Augustine, Boethius, and Eriugena." In Studia patristica. Vol. 122: Papers presented at the eighteenth international conference on patristic studies held in Oxford 2019 / ed. by Markus Vinzent. 19, Eriugena's Christian neoplatonism and its sources in patristic and ancient philosophy, edited by Ramelli, Ilaria L. E., 29-262. Leuven: Peeters.

Abstract: "In this essay I discuss the Periphyseon as a philosophical dialogue comparing it with two other philosophical dialogues that have preceded it: Augustine’s De ordine and Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae; the goal is to discern some common elements and differences in order to shed light on less obvious aspects of the Periphyseon. Moreover, this essay is part of a larger project that tries to retrieve the philosophical dialogue tradition.".

60. Hankey, Wayne J. 1998. "The Postmodern Retrieval of Neoplatonism in Jean-Luc Marion and John Milbank and the Origins of Western Dubjectivity in Augustine and Eriugena." Hermathena no. 165:9-70.

61. Heide, Daniel. 2015. "Ἀποκατάστασις: The Resolution of Good and Evil in Origen and Eriugena." Dionysius no. 33:195-213.

"Introduction: While the doctrine of apokatastasis, or universal return holds a central place in the thought of many Patristic writers, it has received relatively little scholarly attention. In what follows, I hope to redress this imbalance by analysing and comparing two of the greatest proponents of this doctrine: Origen (3rd cen.) and Eriugena (9th cen.). Although separated by obstacles of time, tradition, and language, the influence of the former upon the latter is well attested. Nowhere is this so evident as in Eriugena’s discussion of the universal return of human nature in Book V of the Periphyseon. In the course of this exposition, I hope to demonstrate both the deep continuity that exists between Origen and Eriugena – the former the greatest ancient advocate of apokatastasis and the latter its greatest mediaeval proponent – as well some crucial ways in which they differ. While Eriugena’s discussion of the return shows him to be a true, latter day disciple of the “blessed Origen,” his Augustinian influences result in significant qualifications to the apokatastasis doctrine. As such, Eriugena’s treatment of the universal return offers a unique example of the creative encounter between the Eastern and Western theological traditions." (p. 195).

62. ———. 2018. "σῶμα ψυχικόν, σῶμα πνευματικόν. The Fate of Bodies in Origen and Eriugena." Dionysius no. 36:53-65.

63. Herren, Michael W. 1986. "The Commentary on Martianus Attributed to John Scottus: its Hiberno-Latin Background." In Jean Scot écrivain, edited by Allard, Guy-H., 265-286. Paris: Vrin.

Reprinted in M. Herren, Latin Letters in Early Christian Ireland, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996, Essay IV.

"In the present paper I would like to try to shed some new light on the old problem of what John may have read in Ireland and what kinds of literary skills he may have acquired there, including such items as Greek grammar, Latin metrics, and Latin vocabulary. As it is generally believed that John came to the continent at some point in his adult life, it would seem likely that he did not acquire all the erudition that he displays from continental scholars (2). Of course, we have no way of proving what John did learn at home ; we are, however, in a reasonably good position to show what was available to the Irish - always bearing in mind that it is not easy to establish what aspects of Irish learning were available at home only, what in Irish centres on the continent only, and what in both places.

The so-called Annotationes in Marcianum obviously provide one of the best means of assessing John's reading and learning, since Martianus' encyclopedia embraces nearly all the areas of knowledge available to the ninth century. Moreover, the Annotationes frequently cite sources by name, and individual notes reveal a great deal about the technical learning of the author in such matters as astronomy, music, arithmetic, Greek grammar, and metrics. However, before we can undertake an assessment of John's learning in relation to this Irish background, it will be necessary to address the problem of the authenticity of the Annotationes - a problem that has puzzled students of Eriugena since their discovery and has become more complex with the discovery of more Carolingian commentaries or sets of scholia to Martianus." (pp. 265-266)

(2) For the little that is known of John's life, see the first two chapters of M. Cappuyns, Jean Scot Erigène: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa pensée (Brussels 1933).

64. ———. 1987. "Eriugena's Aulae siderae, the 'Codex Aureus', and the Palatine Church of St. Mary at Compiègne." Studi Medievali no. 28:593-608.

Reprinted in M. Herren, Latin Letters in Early Christian Ireland, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996, Essay IX.

65. ———. 1989. "St Gall 48: a copy of Eriugena's glossed Greek Gospel." In Tradition und Wertung. Festschrift für Franz Brunhölzl zum 65. Geburstag, edited by Berndt, Günter, Rädle, Fidel and Silagi, Gabriel, 97-105. Sigmaringen: J. Thorbecke.

Reprinted in M. Herren, Latin Letters in Early Christian Ireland, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996, Essay X.

66. ———. 1991. "Johannes Scottus Poeta." In From Augustine to Eriugena. Essays on Neoplatonism and Christianity in Honor of John O'Meara, edited by Martin, Francis X. and Richmond, John A., 92-106. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

67. ———. 1996. "John Scottus and the Biblical Manuscripts Attributed to the Circle of Sedulius." In Iohannes Scottus Eriugena. The Bible and Hermeneutics, edited by Riel, Gerd van, Steel, Carlos and McEvoy, James, 303-320. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

68. ———. 2022. "Teach Yourself Greek: The Textbook Example of John Scottus Eriugena." In "Omniun Magistra Virtutum": Studies in Honour of Danuta R. Shanzer, edited by Cain, Andrew and Hays, Gregory 373-390. Turnhout: Brepols.

69. Hibbs, Darren. 2011. "John Scottus Eriugena on the Composition of Material Bodies." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 19:385-393.

"This paper examines John Scottus Eriugena's account of material bodies. Some scholars have argued that Eriugena's account prefigures Berkeleyan idealism. The interpretation offered in the paper rejects the Berkeleyan interpretation on the grounds that Eriugena, unlike Berkeley, did not propose a thoroughly immaterialist view of reality.".

70. Hochschild, Paige E. 2007. "Ousia in the Categoriae decem and the Periphyseon of John Scottus Eriugena." In Divine Creation in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Thought. Essays Presented to the Rev'd Dr Robert D. Crouse, edited by Treschow, Michael, Otten, Willemien and Hannam, Walter, 213-222. Leiden: Brill.

"In this article I will show how Eriugena exploits the Categoriae decem, expanding the several notions of ousia contained therein and fitting them into a larger metaphysical framework. We shall see that Eriugena's understanding of ousia does not create confusion from what is obvious, as Marenbon suggests, but rather develops out of a legitimate reflection upon the philosophical content of the Latin paraphrase. While in no way diminishing the significance of more prominent influences on Eriugena's thought, the Categoriae decem may be the most important source for explaining Eriugena's notion of ousia, in its full, epistemological and potentially theological richness.(2) It is, however, a difficult and often merely suggestive source, as its varied and controversial history of interpretation indicates.

To this end, I will argue that what Eriugena finds in the Categoriae decem in the way of a doctrine of ousia is clearly that of Aristotle's Categories -- not I think, a radical claim. Moreover, Eriugena shows himself able to comprehend the limits of and distinctions between the several notions of ousia found in the Categoriae decem.(3) He is quite clear that the primary ousia of the Categoriae decem is not identical with the full philosophical content of the ousia of, for example, Augustine's De Trinitate or Gregory's De hominis officio. They are distinct but surely connected. Our task is to show how these several notions of ousia are connected for Eriugena and by what specific paths he arrives at their connection." (pp. 213-214)

(2) Anonymi Paraphasis Themistiana (Pseudo-Augustini Categoriae decem), in Aristoteles Latinus 1.1-5, Categoriae vel Predicamenta, ed. L Minio-Paluello (Bruges, 1961), pp. 133-175.

Citations will be from this edition and reference shall be made to paragraph, page, and line numbers respectively. Translations are my own. By an 'important' source we certainly do not mean an exhaustive one. By this means we simply limit the scope of our investigation.

(3) The assumption here is that the Categoriae decem is a faithful report of the content of Aristotle's Categories, though one which suggests directions of interpretation not explicit in Aristotle's text. Hence we occasionally use the term 'Aristotelian' loosely; as including a rich tradition of interpretation of which the Categoriae decem is a part.

71. Jacquin, Mannes. 1907. "Le néo-platonisme de Jean Scot." Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques no. 1:674-685.

72. Kabaj, Józef. 1977. "Homme et nature dans la cosmologie de Jean Scot Erigena." Studia Mediewistyczne no. 18:3-50.

"This article begins by tracing the history of the term phusis/natura from the earliest Greek philosophers onwards. The author finds the sources of Eriugena's four divisions in Augustine, Origen and Philo of Alexandria (p. 8) as also in Marius Victorinus. Another (tripartite) variation is to be found in Claudianus Mamertus or in Boethius. The author then analyses (pp. 12 ff.) Eriugena's synthesis of patristic and platonic views while finding Aristotelian elements within his exposition. At the outset this author has declared for a Marxist interpretation of Eriugena and much of section (3) Nature as seen by Eriugen is concerned with a review of mainly 20th century scholars' judgments of his work as either dualist i.e. orthodox in christian terms, or monist/pantheist i.e. unorthodox, which would be this author's own view: thus the major themes of the Periphyseon are discussed, his dialectic leading, inevitably, to monism and pantheistic emanationism. Two sections (4 and 5) 'Human nature in Eriugena' and 'Man and his Existence' treat of man as microcosm, again going back to Heraclitus to trace the reception of this theory: according to Eriugena man participates in both the second and third divisions of nature. The supposed ontological dualism of Eriugena is in fact pancosmic spiritualist monism. In section (6) 'Man's cosmic consciousness' the factor of 'vital motion' is discussed. The author holds (p. 38) that Eriugena needed a fifth 'complementary' book for his Periphyseon because the first four did not suffice to resolve the theory of his four divisions. In a final section (7) entitled 'Dialectic of human knowledge' the problem of man's ignorance of quid sit and of the relation between gnoseology and ontology are discussed; self-knowledge (quia sit) is existence." (Brennan, pp. 232-233).

73. Katz, Sheri. 1990. "Two Views on John Scottus Eriugena's Use of Aristotelian Categories." Medieval Perspectives no. 4-5:97-110.

Abstract: "The article examines the two opposing views on John Scottus Eriugena's use of the Aristotelian categories in "Periphyseon." It agrees with Eriugena's belief that "natura" is the name for all things under the concept of "nature." It also discusses the different divisions of nature according to Eriugena which correspond to various dogmas such as "ea quae sunt et ea quae non sunt" and "rationes aeternae" of Augustine. It also explores the position of John Marenbon in his "From the Circle of Alcuin to the School of Auxerre.".

74. Kavanagh, Catherine. 2002. "The Philosophical Importance of Grammar for Eriugena." In History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time, edited by McEvoy, James and Dunne, Michael, 61-76. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

"For the ancients and medievals, the discipline of grammar ultimately consisted of two parts: linguistic analysis and literary criticism.1 That linguistic speculation and textual exegesis were seen to be complementary aspects of a single Ars is due to the particular hermeneutical conception of reality which emerged from the Christian and Platonic speculation oflate antiquity and the early medieval period. Late antique — Stoic and Neoplatonic - belief in the patterning of the world according to the Aoyos·, or Word of God, implied a rational world which could be understood. This belief was assimilated by Christians to the account of creation given in the Book of Genesis, which in turn was read in conjunction with the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John, a text which explicitly states that all things that were made were made through the Word of God, which is God. Of course, Scripture is also the Word of God, and the identification of the Word of Creation with the Word of Scripture helped to reinforce the sense that reality is rational in being textual. Seeing as both are a product of the same intelligence, a similar logic underpins both.

Thus from a Patristic and Carolingian perspective, the world really could be understood by means of a certain hermeneutic."

(...)

"Thus, the question of the relevance of medieval grammar to Eriugena’s philosophical method is essentially a question of a certain kind of hermeneutic: either the obvious hermeneutic of textual study, or what one might call the metaphysical hermeneutic of linguistic structures. Certain significant features of his work are distinctively grammatical. First, there is the comparing and contrasting of several different texts from different authorities for the purposes of exegesis of a central text; second, the use of linguistic structures and grammatical figures as key devices, not only in the explication of difficult texts, but also in the establishment of important doctrines, and last, the close philological and philosophical work involved in the translations from Greek. At times Eriugena devises a new construction to serve the philological purpose of translation, which simultaneously introduces a new idea and sets up a new kind of metaphor, e.g. his use of subsilentii2 3 * and praetexta5, one apparently a hapax legomenon and the other a previously unknown metaphorical use of a standard word. This paper will concentrate on three important features of the grammatical tradition, dealing first with borrowings from grammatical authors, then at more length with figures of grammar and finally with issues arising out of Eriugena’s approach to translation before considering the problem as a whole, and concluding." (pp. 61-63)

(1) For a survey of ancient and medieval grammar which considers the origins and development of the discipline as a whole, see Ars minor/Ars major. Donat et la tradition de I’enseignement grammaticale. Etude sur I'Ars Donati et sa diffusion (IV-IXe siede) et edition critique, ed. Holtz, L., Paris, 1981. Introduction. Also Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft bei den Griechen und Römern mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Logik, Steinthal, H., 2 vols. Berlin, 1890, reprint Hildesheim/New York (Georg Olms Verlag), 1971. Also “Linguistics and Theology in the Early Medieval West” Luhtala, A., Handbuch der Sprachwissenschaft, (no. 83) Berlin/New York (De Gruyter), 2000. For an account of early medieval grammar in Britain and Ireland somewhat at odds with Holtz’s presentation, see The Insular Latin Grammarians, Law, V., Woodbridge, (Boydell Press), 1982 and “Linguistics in the earlier Middle Ages: the Insular and Carolingian Grammarians” Law, V., in Transactions of the Philological Society 83 (1985), pp. 171-193.

For the commentary on Priscian attributed to Eriugena, (Barcelona, Archivio de la Corona de Aragon, Ripoil 59), see “Eriugena in Priscianum,” Dutton P. E. and Luhtala, A., in Medieval Studies 56 (1994), pp.151-161; also “Evidence that Dubhthach’s Priscian Codex Once Belonged to Eriugena” Dutton P. E., in From Athens to Chartres. Neoplatonism and Medieval Thought. Studies in Honour of Edouard Jeauneau. Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 35. Westra, H. J. Leiden, New York, Köln, (E. J. Brill) 1992, also “Grammar and Dialectic: A Topical Issue in the Ninth Century” Luhtala, A in McEvoy J. ed. with Steel, C., and Van Riel, G., Johannes Scottus Eriugena The Bible and Hermeneutics Proceedings of the Ninth International colloquium of the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies Held at Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve June 7-10, 1995. Leuven, (University Press) 1996, pp. 279-301. For an account of the philosophical implications of the purely linguistic element in medieval grammar, see “Syntax and Dialectic in Carolingian Commentaries on Priscian’s Institutiones Grammaticae" Luhtala, A., Historiographia Linguistica XX:I (1993) pp.145-191 and “Priscian’s Definitions Are Obscure: Carolingian Commentators on the Institutiones grammaticae" Luhtala, A., in Linguists and Their Diversions. A Festschrift for R.H. Robins on His 75th Birthday. Ed. Law, V. et al. Münster, (Nodus Publikationen), 1996. “Carolingian Grammarians and Theoretical Innovation” Law, V., in Diversions of Galway: Papers from the fifth International Conference on the History of Linguistics. Ed. Ahlqvist, A. et al. Amsterdam, (Benjamins), 1992, pp. 27-38. For a more detailed presentation of the hermeneutical nature of early medieval thought, and of grammar’s place in it, see Kavanagh C., The role of the Trivium Arts in Eriugena’s Philosophical and Theological Method. Unpublished dissertation, Notre Dame IN, (University of Notre Dame), Spring 2002, Chapter 1.

75. ———. 2003. "Eriugenian Developments of Ciceronian Topical Theory." In Medieval and Renaissance Humanism. Rhetoric, Representation and Reform, edited by Gersh, Stephen and Roest, Bert, 1-30. Leiden: Brill.

76. ———. 2005. "The influence of Maximus the Confessor on Eriugena's treatment of Aristotle's Categories." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 79:567-596.

"The Aristotelian categories are a fundamental element in Eriugena's philosophical system on account of his realist view of dialectic. He received his texts concerning the categories from Boethius and the De decem categoriis, but key ideas in his treatment of them -- namely, the metaphysical importance of dialectic, the unknowability of essence, and the origin of being in place and time, ideas fundamentally rooted in Byzantine developments of the Christology of Chalcedon -- are taken from Maximus the Confessor. Eriugena's work on the categories represents an attempt, much misunderstood, to assimilate the richness of the Eastern tradition to Western philosophical and theological method. This paper examines the synthesis of Maximus's ideas with Ciceronian and Boethian elements in Eriugena's striking treatment of the Aristotelian Categories.".

77. ———. 2009. "John Scottus Eriugena and the Uses of Dialectic " In The Irish Contribution to European Scholastic Thought, edited by McEvoy, James and Dunne, Michael, 21-36. Dublin: Four Courts Press.

78. Kendig, Elizabeth, and Lamrani, Lila. 2013. "La forme dialogique dans le Periphyseon : recréer l’esprit." Les Études philosophiques:101-119.

79. Kijewska, Agnieszka. 2000. "El Fundamento del sistema de Eriúgena." Anuario filosófico no. 33:505-532.

80. ———. 2011. "The conception of the First Cause in Book Two of John Scottus Eriugena's Periphyseon." Anuario filosófico no. 44:29-52.

81. Kijewska, Agnieszka, Majeran, Roman, and Schwaetzer, Harald, eds. 2011. Eriugena - Cusanus. Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL.

Colloquia Mediaevalia Lublinensia, Vol. 1.

82. King-Farlow, John. 1992. "From Dionysius to Eriugena. A Bridge for Voluntarism of “Divine Freedom” ?" Laval théologique et philosophique no. 48:367-378.

Summary: "The moving style and apparent echoes of truly Christian Platonism left the works of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite long tempting to identify with nearly authoritative writings by a friend of Saint Paul. The latter would have really lived centuries before. Centuries later the genius of John Scotus Eriugena drew copiously on the Pseudo-Areopagite, Plato, the Scriptures, etc., to provide a dazzling system of philosophy and theology. While these systems are now recovering modern interest, their ontologically Monist character and their confused attempts to uphold God's omnipotence and other perfections by absorbing creatures, merit analytical reproof. Free Will and ontological Pluralism belong with the metaphysics of the Bible. It is hoped to re-introduce the visions of two often neglected heretics.".

83. Kristeller, Paul Oskar. 1976. "The Historical Position of Johannes Scottus Eriugena." In Latin Script and Letters A.D. 400-900. Festschrift presented to Ludwig Bieler on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday, edited by O'Meara, John Joseph and Naumann, Bernd, 156-164. Leiden: Brill.

"Eriugena’s example seems to show that an individual scholar and thinker may surpass the intellectual limits of his century, but that he will not perpetuate his best achievements unless they are transmitted through his pupils and embodied in the curriculum of a school that constitutes a kind of institutional tradition. It is the lack of such a school tradition before and after him, that makes of Eriugena a great but isolated figure. It took several more centuries before the acquaintance with Greek sources, this time especially with Aristotle, and the continued struggle with philosophical problems became a wide concern in the Western world. The narrow limits of the seven liberal arts were finally overcome. New institutions, the cathedral schools and universities, attracted a large number of teachers and students and thus assured a continuity and expansion of learning in a variety of subjects. Medicine and jurisprudence, philosophy and the sciences as well as dogmatic theology were constantly and widely taught, discussed and written about, and in the course of the discussions, the problems and the terminology became more and more refined. This tradition, nourished in many ways by Arabic and Latin as well as by Greek sources, has continued through many changes and transformations up to the present day. It is the everlasting glory of Eriugena that through him, and through him alone, the period from 500 to 900, interesting for a variety of political, artistic and scholarly contributions, also deserves a prominent mention in the history of philosophy." (p. 163).

84. Labowsky, Lotte. 1943. "A New version of Scotus Eriugena's Commentary on Martianus Capella." Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies no. 1:187-193.

85. Laga, Carl. 1996. "A Complete Graeco-Latin Index of Maximus Confessor's Quaestiones ad Thalassam." In Iohannes Scottus Eriugena. The Bible and Hermeneutics, edited by Riel, Gerd van, Steel, Carlos and McEvoy, James, 169-182. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

86. Le Bourdellés, R. 1977. "Connaissance du grec et méthodes de traduction dans le monde carolingien jusqu'à Scot Erigène." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

87. Lendinara, Patrizia. 1992. "On John Scottus’s Authorship of the Biblical Glosses." Studi medievali no. 33:571-579.

88. Leonardi, Claudio. 1977. "Glosse eriugeniane a Marziano Capella in un codice leidense." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 171-182. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

89. ———. 1986. "Martianus Capella et Jean Scot : nouvelle présentation d'un vieux problème." In Jean Scot écrivain, edited by Allard, Guy-H., 187-207. Paris: Vrin.

"Mais je ne veux pas maintenant faire la somme de toutes ces questions érudites, petites ou grandes, mais plutôt me reposer le problème du rapport entre Martianus et l’Érigène, en partant d’une autre base, c’est-à-dire de la signification du De nuptiis dans les premiers siècles du Moyen Age(4): considérer l’épisode de Jean Scot comme un épisode à l’intérieur d’une histoire, et en comprendre le sens seulement ainsi.

Il est vrai que, durant les trente dernières années, le De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii de Martianus a suscité l’intérêt des chercheurs, mais on ne peut pas dire que, confrontés à cette œuvre difficile, ils aient trouvé une clef d’interprétation sûre et unanime ; et l’on ne peut pas dire non plus que les étapes de son extraordinaire succès, tout au long du Moyen Age et jusqu’à la Renaissance, aient été dégagées et analysées." (pp. 187-188)

(...)

"L’Erigène est bien conscient du fait que le monde de Martianus est éloigné et différent du sien, et il lui est facile de noter que toute la mythologie du De nuptiis, toute l’Einkleidung de l’œuvre, n’est autre que poeticum deliramentum(65). Mais il n’y a pas seulement cet aspect dans son commentaire: « Martianus quippe Platonicus»(66) est aussi l’auteur antique qui transmet l’idée de l'anima mundi, « ex qua spéciales animae... in singulas mundani corporis partes... procedunt(67)» («de laquelle dérivent les âmes particulières dans les diverses parties du corps humain»).

Les gloses sur Martianus de l’Érigène sont donc le témoignage de sa confrontation avec le passé : il repousse le passé et en même temps il en assume le problème, il l’érige en preuve de sa propre autoconscience intellectuelle, à l’école et dans la vie(68). (pp. 202-203)

(4) Cette histoire n’a pas été écrite ; on peut voir, pour le moment, des introductions à cette histoire ou des chapitres plus ou moins provisoires ; cf. entre autres C. Leonardi, «I codici di Marziano Capella», dans Aevum, 33 (1959), p. 443-489; W.H. Stahl - R. Johnson, Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, 1, New York-London, 1971, p. 55-72 et passim.

(65) Iohannis Scotti, Annotationes in Marcianum, ed. C. Lutz, Cambridge, Mass. 1939, p. 17 (1. 34).

(66) Ibidem, p. 10 (ligne 19-22).

(67) Ibidem, p. 10(1.35).

90. Liebeschütz, Hans. 1960. "Zur Geschichte der Erklärung des Martianus Capella bei Eriugena." Philologus.Zeitschrift für die Klassische Altertum no. 104:127-137.

91. ———. 1973. "The Place of Martianus Glossae in the Development of Eriugena's Thought." In The Mind of Eriugena, edited by O'Meara, John Joseph and Bieler, Ludwig, 49-58. Dublin: Irish University Press.

"This paper deals with work Eriugena did as a grammarian. It is considered here as a preparatory stage in the growth of the theory by which he tried to understand man and world in a systematic way. In doing so, we shall try to argue that even in this beginning some flexibility of thought and expression and even some development can be traced. These questions must be seen against the problem which the historical phenomenon ‘Eriugena’ presents to us. There is a considerable anachronistic element in his appearance: he became the first philosopher of the medieval world in a cultural environment which did not seem to favour the rise of systematic thought. ‘The owl of Minerva only starts its flight at dusk.’ [**]

Moreover we know since Jacquin’s paper of 1907 [*] on De praedestinatione that Eriugena’s thought went through several phases. The topic of the Martianus glossae underlines the fact that Eriugena started as a grammarian at the court of Charles the Bald and forces us to face his link with Carolingian civilization. It is obvious that the great importance of royal patronage, which lasted throughout his career and has in this form not many parallels in the history of the following centuries of the Middle Ages, was a factor in shaping his mental attitude. Moreover I shall try to show that his original task as grammaticus had also some influence on his later work." (p. 49)

[*] M. Jacquin, "Le néo-platonisme de Jean Scot", in Revue de sciences philosophiques et théologiques, I (1907), pp. 674-685.

[**] G. W. F: Hegel, Philosophy of Right, (1820), Preface.

92. Limberger, Veronika. 2015. Eriugenas Hypertheologie. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

93. Lo Presti, Maria Gabriella. 1990. "La dialettica come "diffiniendi disciplina" nel I libro del De divisione naturae di Giovanni Scoto Eriugena." In Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy. Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy (S.I.E.P.M.) Helsinki 24-29 August 1987. Vol. II, edited by Knuuttila, Simo, Asztalos, Monika, Tyorinoja, Reijno and Ebbesen, Sten, 558-564. Helsinki.

94. Lucentini, Paolo. 1976. "La nuova edizione del "Periphyseon" dell'Eriugena." Studi Medievali no. 17:393-414.

"The 'new' edition referred to is the Sheldon-Williams edition of Books I and II for the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. This author reports on the manuscript tradition established in the early decades of this century through the studies of Traube, Rand and Cappuyns and offers some critical suggestions in relation to the completion of the Sheldon-Williams edition interrupted by his death in October 1973. He refers to some inexactitudes in the references to sources, in the description of manuscripts in the Introduction to the edition, as well as in the conclusions on the question of text transmission and of the Eriugenian autograph (which continues to be an open question). He finds that the editor does not succeed in his goal of presenting Eriugena's final text." (Brennan, p. 92).

95. ———. 1977. "La "Clavis physicae" di Honorius Augustodunensis e la tradizione eriugeniana nel secolo XII." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

96. ———. 1979. "Le thème de l'homme-microcosme dans la patristique grecque et chez Jean Scot Érigène." Diotima no. 7:111-115.

97. ———. 1980. Platonismo medievale. Contributi per la storia dell'eriugenismo. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

98. Luhtala, Anneli. 1993. "Syntax and Dialectic in Carolingian Commentaries on Priscian's Institutiones grammaticae." Historiographia Linguistica no. 20:145-191.

Also published in: Vivien Law (ed.), History of Linguistic Thought in the Early Middle Ages, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1993.

99. ———. 1996. "Grammar and Dialectic: A Topical Issue in the Ninth Century." In Iohannes Scottus Eriugena. The Bible and Hermeneutics, edited by Riel, Gerd van, Steel, Carlos and McEvoy, James, 279-301. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

"A new grammatical work, a sophisticated Priscian commentary from the ninth century, has recently been discovered. It is the only full Priscianus maior commentary from the Carolingian period, during which Priscian’s massive Institutiones grammaticae was studied mainly through glossing and excerpting. This commentary has been tentatively attributed to Eriugena(1). In this paper I will discuss the way in which this text was used by Eriugena’s contemporaries and by the immediately following generations of grammarians. It seems as if this sophisticated commentary as a whole has been practically unknown in the ninth and tenth centuries. The viewpoint that this commentary was not used by the Carolingians also finds support in the fact that it has survived only in one eleventh-century copy, Barcelona, Archivo de la corona de Aragon, MS Ripoil 59. However, certain parts of it became standard teaching material in Carolingian schools, as is attested by anonymous glosses to Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae. These glosses deal with the nature and status of grammar as a liberal art." (p. 279)

(...)

"The Septem periochae formula, etymologies concerning Priscian’s name as well as various introductory material —that is what the sophisticated In Priscianum commentary seems to have contributed to Carolingian teaching. The influence is on a practical and elementary level. Only one Carolingian teacher seems to have used the text because of its grammatical content. Paradoxically, the exhortation to employ the dialectician’s method to grammatical study was copied from one codex to another but the text itself, a prime example of the application of such a method, was not studied by the Carolingians. But one should not underestimate the importance of the teaching material that we have been examining. It deals with the highly topical issue of the nature and status of grammar in the scheme of the seven liberal arts and the disciplinary boundaries between the arts of the triuium. Such elementary teaching material served to integrate into Carolingian teaching the novel idea of the assimilation of the study of the arts of the triuium. It bears repeating just how radical a change was being introduced into the educational system, which had previously leaned on the differentiation of the various arts of discourse. But the task that Alcuin was proposing —to compare and synthesize the various aspects of language study— was by no means an easy one. He did not seem to know himself how to go about synthesizing the various methods.

The author of the new Priscian commentary knew better. He tackled Priscian’s doctrine in a scholarly fashion scrutinizing its philosophical foundation with a keen eye on its inconsistencies and parallelisms with Peripatetic dialectic. It is a prime example of the new philosophical orientation that the study of grammar took in the ninth century. Though there was not likely to be a large audience for this highly theoretical treatise, this method did bear some fruit in the Carolingian period and came to flourish a couple of centuries later. The Carolingian period is one in which diverse experimentation was being conducted but no one continuous accumulating tradition of philosophical grammar established itself. By the end of the eleventh century we have signs of a more solid tradition in the so called Glosule commentaries. Then there was no longer need to assert that the grammarian should discuss the uox in his grammar. But it was soon time to rethink the disciplinary boundaries for grammar and dialectic —a topical issue at the time of William of Conches and Petrus Helias." (pp. 295-296)

(1) For the attribution of this Priscian commentary to Eriugena, see P.E. Dutton - A. Luhtala, Eriugena in Priscianum, in Mediaeval Studies, 56 (1994), 151-161 and P.E. Dutton, Evidence that Dubthach 's Priscian Codex Once Belonged to Eriugena, in H.J. Westra (ed.), From Athens to Chartres. Neoplatonism and Medieval Thought. Studies in Honour of Édouard Jeauneau, Leiden (E.J. Brill), 1992, 15-45. This commentary has survived in one eleventh-century manuscript of Catalan provenance, Barcelona, Archivo de la Corona de Aragon, Ripoll 59, fols. 257v-288v. For this manuscript, see Μ. Passalacqua, I Codici di Prisciano (Sussidi eruditi, 19), Roma (Edizioni di storia e letteratura), 1978, 10-11.

100. ———. 2000. "Glosses based on Eriugena's Priscian commentary." Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae no. 7:199-213.

101. ———. 2002. "Time and the Substantival Verb in Eriugena." In History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time, edited by McEvoy, James and Dunne, Michael, 77-87. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

"In the Early Middle Ages efforts were made to create a thoroughly Christian art of grammar. The most famous representative of Christian grammar is Smaragdus (ca 805), who introduced approximately·750 biblical examples into his grammar. He also approached the grammatical text as if it were divinely inspired: it had a deeper meaning, comparable to the figurative sense of the sacred text."

(...)

"Another major influence on medieval grammar came from dialectic which began to penetrate the grammatical method in the Carolingian Renaissance. The interaction between grammar and dialectic goes back to the initiative of Alcuin who encouraged the use of the dialectical method even in doctrinal issues. Dialectic was applied to doctrinal issues most notably by Eriugena in the first Book of the Periphyseon which is devoted to a discussion of the applicability of the Aristotelian categories to divine issues. Eriugena is probably also the author of a newly discovered grammatical commentary which makes heavy use of the dialectical method. It is the first systematic Priscian commentary preserved from the Middle Ages, and simultaneously the most remarkable achievement Ages(1). Religious issues do not generally figure in this text at all; thus, the main linguistic theme of the Periphyseon, the inapplicability of the categories to God, is absent from it. However, there is one context which invites comparison with Eriugena’s main linguistic theme, namely the discussion of the substantival verb, which is the topic of this article. The substantival verb is compared with the Divine Nature, which — although permanent and timeless — is nevertheless said somehow to move in a similar way to our temporality. In the same way, the substantival verb signifies permanence, and yet expresses temporality by analogy with other verbs."

(...)

"The term substantival verb, verbum substantivum, occurs among the ancient authors only in Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae. Priscian also mentions its Greek equivalent, ρήμα ύπαρχτικόν(3), which he has probably adopted from his principal Greek source, Apollonius Dyscolus (2nd century A.D.), as he did his doctrine concerning the substantival verb in general." (pp. 77-78)

(...)

"Conclusion

Throughout his works, Eriugena was concerned with finding parallels between linguistic phenomena and the Divine Nature. Priscian offers a highly stimulating analysis of the twofold nature of the substantival verb, which was elaborated in Eriugena’s commentary on Priscian. It was moreover exploited in Eriugena’s two late works. Although similar themes occupy him even at the time of De divina praedestinatione and the Periphyseon, he never refers to Priscian’s view of the atemporal meaning of the verb esse in these works. This suggests to me that he might not have known Priscian’s analysis of the substantival verb at this time. The Periphyseon shows some knowledge of the Institutiones granunaticae2i, but it is worth asking whether Eriugena did the majority of work on his Priscian commentary only late in his career." (p. 87)

(1) P.E. Dutton - A. Luhtala, “Eriugena in Priscianum”, in Mediaeval Studies, 56 (1994), 151-161.

(3) Priscianus, Institutiones grammaticae, in H. Keil (ed.), Grammatici latini (= GL), Leipzig (Teubner), 1855-80, II, 414.14.

102. ———. 2003. "A Priscian Commentary Attributed to Eriugena." In History of Linguistics 1999. Selected papers frm the Eighth International Conference on the History of the Language Science, 14-19 September 1999, Fontenay-St. Cloud, edited by Auroux, Sylvain, 19-30. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

"The fact that Alcuin’s revival of scholarship also involved the use of logic in the study of grammar has received attention from scholars only recently (Vineis 1988; Law 1992; Luhtala 1993). This method, which came to be applied primarily to Priscian’s massive Institutiones grammaticae (launched into circulation probably by Alcuin himself), was applied highly competently by Eriugena in a text which has only recently been attributed to him (Dutton-Luhtala 1994). This text, which survives in a single eleventh century

manuscript of Catalan provenance (Barcelona, Archivo de la Corona d’Aragón, Ripoll 59, fols. 257v-288v), is the first systematic Priscian commentary preserved to us from the Middle Ages (see Luhtala 2000a, 2000b). It covers the first sixteen books of Priscian’s work, on the eight parts of speech, but its author also shows a knowledge of Priscian’s syntactic doctrine, which is contained in the last two books, seventeen and eighteen." (p. 20)

(...)

"I have thus given a brief overview of the philosophical interests of the Priscian commentary attributed to Eriugena. Although it is premature to try to assess Eriugena’s philosophy in this text as a whole, we are permitted to draw a couple of conclusions. Firstly, Eriugena has interpreted every occurrence of the term accidit as a philosophical term. It means that the categories are now applied even to the discussion on sound and letter because they have accidents; Priscian uses this vocabulary only as pertaining to the description of the noun and the pronoun. It also suggests that Eriugena regarded Priscian’s work as a source for philosophy, in which every philosophical term was taken seriously. Philosophical ends occasionally even outweigh the grammatical ones. This is the case when Eriugena chooses to support a somewhat unusual view such that the pronoun can be substituted for the nomina generalia. This point seems to have little relevance for grammar. It rather seems to be the case that the author uses the grammatical text as a

point of departure to argue a philosophical (or ultimately theological) case that is important to him, by equating the individuals with the species. Here and elsewhere, this text exhibits philosophical tendencies comparable to those in the Periphyseon." (p. 28)

References

Dutton, Paul E., Anneli Luhtala. 1994. ‘‘Eriugena in Priscianum’’. Mediaeval Studies 56:153–163.

Law, Vivien. 1992. ‘‘Carolingian Grammarians and Theoretical Innovation’’. Diversions of Galway: Papers from the Fifth International Conference on the History of Linguistics, ed. by Anders Ahlqvist et al, 27–38. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Luhtala, Anneli. 1993. ‘‘Syntax and Dialectic in Carolingian commentaries on Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae’’. Historiographia Linguistica 20:1.151–197.

Luhtala, Anneli. 2000a. ‘‘Glosses Based on Eriugena’s Priscian Commentary’’. Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae VII, 179–213.

Luhtala, Anneli. 2000b. ‘‘Early Medieval Commentary on Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae’’. Cahiers de l’institut du Moyen Âge Grecque et Latine 71, 115–188.

Vineis, Edoardo. 1988. ‘‘Grammatica e filosofia del linguaggio in Alcuino’’. Studi e Saggi Linguistici 28:403–429.

103. ———. 2012. "Eriugena's Commentary on Priscian's Definitions of the Noun and the Verb." In Arts du langage et théologie aux confins des XIe/XIIe siécles. Texts, maîtres, débats, edited by Rosier, Irène, 583-601. Turnhout: Brepols.

104. Marenbon, John. 1980. "John Scottus and the Categoriae Decem." In Eriugena: Studien zu seinen Quellen, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 116-134. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Reprinted in: John Marenbon, Aristotelian Logic, Platonism, and the Context of Early Medieval Philosophy in the West, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2000, Essay V.

105. ———. 1980. "A Florilegium from the Periphyseon." Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale no. 47:271-277.

106. ———. 1981. From the School of Alcuin to the School of Auxerre. Logic, theology and philosophy in the early Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

107. ———. 1981. "Wulfad, Charles the Bald and John Scottus Eriugena." In Charles the Bald: Court and Kingdom. Papers based on a colloquium held in London in April 1979, edited by Gibson, Margaret T. and Nelson, Janet Laughland, 375-383. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.

Reprinted in: John Marenbon, Aristotelian Logic, Platonism, and the Context of Early Medieval Philosophy in the West, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2000, Essay VI.

108. ———. 1983. Early Medieval Philosophy (480-1150). An Introduction. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

See in particular Chapters 6 and 7 (pp. 53-78).

109. ———. 1990. "John Scottus and Carolingian Theology: From the De Praedestinatione, its Background and its Critics, to the Periphyseon." In Charles the Bald: Court and Kingdom, edited by Gibson, Margaret T. and Nelson, Janet Laughland, 303-325. Aldershot: Variorum.

Reprinted in: John Marenbon, Aristotelian Logic, Platonism, and the Context of Early Medieval Philosophy in the West, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2000, Essay VII.

110. ———. 1993. "Carolingian Thought." In Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, edited by McKitterick, Rosamond, 171-192. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Reprinted in: John Marenbon, Aristotelian Logic, Platonism, and the Context of Early Medieval Philosophy in the West, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2000, Essay III.

111. ———. 2000. Aristotelian Logic, Platonism, and the Context of Early Medieval Philosophy in the West. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Essays related to Eriugena: III. Carolingian Thought; IV. Alcuin, the Council of Frankfort and the Beginnings of Medieval Philosophy; V. John Scottus and the Categoriae Decem; VI. Wulfad, Charles the Bald and John Scottus Eriugena; VII. John Scottus and Carolingian Theology: From the De Praedestinatione, its Background and its Critics, to the Periphyseon.

112. ———. 2005. "Les Catégories au début du Moyen Âge." In Les Catégories et leur histoire, edited by Bruun, Otto and Corti, Lorenzo, 223-244. Paris: Vrin.

113. ———. 2012. "Alcuin, the Council of Frankfort and the Beginnings of Medieval Philosophy." In Das Frankfurter Konzil von 794. Kristallisationspunkt karolingischer Kultur, edited by Rainer, Berndt, 603-615. Mainz: Selbstverlag der Gesellschaft für Mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte.

Reprinted in: John Marenbon, Aristotelian Logic, Platonism, and the Context of Early Medieval Philosophy in the West, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2000, Essay IV.

114. Marler, Jack C. 1994. "Dialectical Use of Authority in the Periphyseon." In Eriugena East and West, edited by McGinn, Bernard and Otten, Willemien, 95-114. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

115. ———. 2004. "Ammonius and Eriugena: on Matter and Predication." In Erkenntnis und Wissenschaft. Probleme der Epistemologie in der Philosophie des Mittelalters = Knowledge and science. Problems of epistemology in medieval philosophy, edited by Lutz-Bachmann, Matthias, Fidora, Alexander and Antolic, Pia. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

116. Martello, Concetto. 1984. "Sul platonismo di Giovanni Scoto. Tendenze storiografiche negli studi sulle fonti eriugeniane." In Momenti e problemi di storia del platonismo, 85-107. Catania: CUECM.

117. ———. 1986. Simbolismo e Neoplatonismo in Giovanni Scoto Eriugena. Catania: CUECM.

118. ———. 1990. Analogia e Fisica in Giovanni Scoto. Catania: CUECM.

119. ———. 2002. "Alle origini del lessico filosofico latino: hypostasis/substantia in Giovanni Scoto." In Hyparxis e Hypostasis nel neoplatonismo. Atti del I Colloquio Internazionale del Centro di Ricerca sul neoplatonismo (Catania, 1-3 Ottobre 1992), edited by Romano, Francesco and Taormina, Daniela Patrizia, 169-184. Firenze: Olschki.

120. ———. 2002. "Riflessi del Parmenide in Giovanni Eriugena." In Il Parmenide di Platone e la sua tradizione. Atti del Terzo Colloquio internazionale del Centro di ricerca sul neoplatonismo, edited by Barbanti, Maria and Romano, Francesco, 371-393. Catania: CUECM.

121. Martin, Francis X., and Richmond, John A., eds. 1991. From Augustine to Eriugena: Essays on Neoplatonism and Christianity in Honor of John O'Meara. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

The following essays are on Eriugena:

G.-H. Allard: Jean Scot et l'ordinateur: le traitement syntaxique du "Periphyseon" 1-11; A. H. Armstrong: Apophatic-Kataphatic tensions in religious thought from the Third to the Sixth century A.D.: a background for Augustine and Eriugena 12; W. Beierwaltes: Eriugenas Faszination 22-41; M. Herren: Johannes Scottus Poeta 92-106; E: Jeauneau: Vox spiritualis Aquilae: Quelques épis oubliées 107-116; G. Madec: Theologia: note augustino-èrigénienne 11-125.

122. Mathon, Gérard. 1955. "Le commentaire du Pseudo-Érigène sur la Consolatio philosophiae de Boèce." Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale no. 22:213-257.

123. ———. 1960. "Jean Scot Érigène, Chalcidius et le problème de l'âme universelle." In L'homme et son destin d'après les penseurs du moyen âge. Actes du premier Congrès international de philosophie médiévale, Louvain-Bruxelles, 28 août-4 septembre 1958, 361-375. Louvain: Nauwelaerts.

124. ———. 1964. L'anthropologie chrétienne en Occident de saint Augustin à Jean Scot Érigène. Recherches sur le sort des thèses de l'anthropologie augustinienne durant le haut moyen âge, Lille.

Thèse inédite, Université Catholique de Lille, Faculté de théologie.

Trois volumes: I. L'héritage et sa transmission; II. Terminos Patrum ne transgrediaris; III. Références e notes annexes.

125. ———. 1969. "Les formes et la signification de la pédagogie des arts libéraux au milieu du IXe siècle dans l'enseignement palatin de Jean Scot Erigène." In Arts liberaux et philosophie au Moyen Age. Actes du IVe Congrès International de Philosophie Médiévale, Montréal, 27/8 - 2/9 1967, 47-64. Paris: Vrin.

126. McEvoy, James. 1990. "Metaphors of Light and Metaphysics of Light in Eriugena." In Begriff und Metapher. Sprachform des Denkens bei Eriugena, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 149-167. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

"The theme of light in the writings of Eriugena is a vast one, representing as it does a vitally important strand of his dialectic. To think it away, if the effort could be made, would be to destroy not a part only, but in a way the whole of his thought; very much would have to be re-cast, re-thought or left unspoken, if the concepts clustering around light and developed in the context of light were to be omitted, or the symbol of light suppressed."

(...)

"An entire study could be devoted to each one of the strands that together make up the light-thematic of Eriugena. One could study the phenomena of sight, for instance the concept of the visual ray and the long history of its transmission, taking in at the same time colour and form, reconstructing the sources which were at the disposal of Eriugena and assessing the use which he made of them. Fire has proved to be a rich and rewarding area of investigation in Eriugena, as Edouard Jeauneau has ably demonstrated in his study of what he rightly calls 'la métaphysique du feu’(2). The sun, taken together with (or even without) the other planets, in its relationship to its origin (fire) and its products (light and heat), is of particular interest to Eriugena (as it had been to Plato, Philo, Plotinus, Basil, Ambrose and Augustine before him), and has an almost transcendent importance in Eriugena’s reflections on the physical universe, of which the sun is the ‘central’ body. The close connection between light and life, and the complementary symbolism of sight and object of sight, on the one hand, and hearing and the word, on the other (developed, for example, in the Homily') is also of great interest, as is the invocation of the authority of Scripture, so regularly made with regard to light and related subjects in Periphyseon and Expositiones: no systematic study has as yet been made of the employment of the dozen or so main scriptural texts which Eriugena expounds in connection with light and the symbolism of light and sight(3).

Since it would be unsatisfactory, and indeed next to impossible to give a digest of all these themes, I have adopted the following strategy, for simplicity as much as for hermeneutical purposes. I choose two broad themes within the dialectic of Eriugena, viz the sun as the chief source of light in the universe, and sight or vision. In a first approach, each of these is discussed ‘physically’ (or physiologically), in order to lay bare the basic concepts and their sources. A second approach addresses itself to the metaphors raised by Eriugena on the base of the concepts as outlined, once again with an eye being kept to his sources. A third demarche attempts to study conjointly the role of the concepts and metaphors within the dialectic, in order to show the specific contribution of both to the dialectical discourse so thoroughly characteristic of Eriugena’s personal thought." (pp. 149-150)

(2) Jeauneau, Ed., ‘Jean Scot et la métaphysique du feu’, in the same writer’s volume of collected studies, Etudes erigéniennes, Paris 1987, pp. 299-319.

(3) Among the favourite scriptural references to light of Eriugena are the following: Gen 1.3: Dixitque Deus: Fiat lux. Et facta est lux. Gen 1.4: vidit Deus lucem quod esset bona et divisit lucem a tenebris. Jn 1.5: Deus lux est, tenebrae in eo non sunt ullae. I Tim 6.16: qui solus habet immortalitatem, et lucem inhabitat inaccessibilem: quern nullus homo videt, sed nec videre potest. Ps 109.3: Ex utero ante luciferum genui te. To these may be added the Transfiguration narrative in the Synoptic Gospels: Matt 17.1-8; Mk 9.1-9; Lk 9.28-36.

127. ———. 1992. "Neoplatonism and Christianity: Influence, Syncretism or Discernment?" In The Relationship between Neoplatonism and Christianity, edited by Finan, Thomas and Twomey, Vincent, 155-170. Dublin: Four Court Press.

128. ———. 1994. "Biblical and Platonic Measure in John Scottus Eriugena." In Eriugena East and West, edited by McGinn, Bernard and Otten, Willemien, 153-178. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

129. ———. 1999. "Thomas Gallus, Abbas Vercellensis, and the commentary on the De Mystica Theologia ascribed to Iohannes Scottus Eriugena, with a concluding note on the second Latin reception of the Pseudo-Dionysius (1230-1250)." In Traditions of Platonism: Essays in Honour of John Dillon, edited by Cleary, John J., 389-406. Aldershot: Ashgate.

130. McGee, J. David. 1988. "Reflections of The Thought of John Scotus Erigena in some Carolingian and Ottonian Illuminations." Mediaevistik no. 1:125-143.

131. McGinn, Bernard. 1977. "The Negative Element in the Anthropology of John the Scot." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 315-326. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

132. ———. 1995. "The Entry of Dialectical Mysticism." In The Growth of Mysticism. Vol. II. The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, 80-118. London: SCM Press.

Part I: Early Medieval Mysticism. Chapter 3: The Entry of Dialectical Mysticism: John Scotts Eriugena.

"Foundations of Erlugenian Mysticism

The mystical theory of John Scottus Eriugena is inseparable from the whole philosophical-theological system presented in Periphyseon and underlying his commentaries on John’s Gospel and Dionysius’s Celestial Hierarchy. Hence it will be necessary to give a brief presentation of the foundational themes of his thought concerning processio, the self-manifestation of God, before turning to the more directly mystical themes mostly (but not solely) found in his treatment of reditus. I shall do so under three headings taken from his own words, the first two dealing primarily with processio, the third with reditus: (1) Deus est superessentialis (P 1 [460C]) the dialectical view of God; (2) Omnia lumina sunt (EI 1.1 [3.76-77] creation as the illuminating divine self-manifestation; (3) Donec veniamus in unum (EI 8.2 |133.550-l]) union with God through deifying contemplation." (pp. 97-98)

(...)

"What, then, does the Eriugenian reditus mean? What will change? What will the future state be like? John the Scot was always realistic enough to know what could be said and what could not be said about this final adunatio. The ultimate differentiating union will be a change in the awareness of all humanity. First, humanity will be absorbed back into the elements in death; then, in the general resurrection humankind will be brought to a state in which there will be no more divisions, with sexual differentiation being the first to go. Finally, after it has progressed through all the stages of sublimating unification, humanity will reach the final differentiation in unity of the cosmic Christ The Word stands at the beginning and end. But the end is different from the beginning, and it is perhaps in this aspect of his thought that John Scottus Eriugena proves himself not just a clever synthesizer of East and West, but one of the creative minds of the Christian tradition." (p. 117).

133. ———. 2002. "Eriugena Confronts the End. Reflections on Johannes Scottus’s Place in Carolingian Eschatology." In History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and his Time, edited by McEvoy, James and Dunne, Michael, 3-29. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

134. ———. 2014. "Exegesis as Metaphysics: Eriugena and Eckhart on Reading Genesis 1-3." In Eriugena and Creation. Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Eriugenian Studies, held in honor of Edouard Jeauneau, Chicago, November 9-12, 2011, edited by Otten, Willemien and Allen, Michael I., 463-499. Turnhout: Brepols.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on the Philosophical Work of Eriugena (Third Part: McK - Z)

Bibliography

The publications by É. Jeauneau on Eriugena are cited in a separate page: Édouard Jeauneau sur la Philosophie Médiévale. Bibliographie Choisie.

N.B. Summaries cited from: Mary Brennan, A Guide to Eriugenian Studies. A Survey of Publications 1930-1987, are indicated with: (Brennan) and page number.

1. McKitterick, Rosamond. 1992. "Knowledge of Plato's 'Timaeus' in the Ninth Century. The Implications of Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale MS 293." In From Athens to Chartres. Neoplatonism and Medieval Thought. Studies in Honour of Edouard Jeauneau, edited by Westra, Haijo Jan, 85-95. Leiden: Brill.

"There is no doubt that Plato’s Timaeus in Latin translation was known, at least to scholars, in the ninth century. John Scotus Eriugena and members of his circle, such as Remigius of Auxerre, reveal a familiarity with the content of this treatise, Calcidius’ translation is listed in the Reichenau catalogue of the second half of the ninth century, and it is Hucbald of St. Amand’s own copy of Chalcidius’ translation of, and commentary on, the Timaeus which survives in Valenciennes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 293. Nor is there any uncertainty as to the appeal such a text could have had in the Carolingian world. Its essentially philosophical and theological discussion of the divine creation of the world and natural phenomena, of elements of astronomy, the structure of matter and of human psychology and physiology, incorporates nevertheless a great deal of Greek scientific theory about the physical world. In a Christian context, there were obvious comparisons to be drawn with the creation story in Genesis, but its essentially scientific content was also in keeping with the other scientific and especially astronomical interests of Carolingian scholars." (p. 85, two notes omitted)

(1) Quite apart from the Platonic structure of the work in dialogue form, see John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon (De divisione naturae) I, ed. I.P. Sheldon-Williams (Dublin, 1968) 114 (on the reason of the visible world) and 168 (on formless matter) and Periphyseon III, ed. I.P. Sheldon-Williams (Dublin, 1981) 206 (on the sun) and 291 (on the motion of bodies) where he specifically cites the Timaeus of Plato and commentary by Calcidius; Johannis Scoti Annotationes in Marcianum, ed. Cora E. Lutz (Cambridge, Mass., 1939) 22 and 202 (13.23 and 490.15); Remigius of Auxerre, Remigii Autissiodorensis Commentum in Martianum, ed. Cora E. Lutz (Leiden, 1962) vol. I, 7.10, 32.7, 63-68, pp. 76 and 125-126 and 181; vol. II, 422-429, 490.14, pp. 236-237, 323. Compare M. Cappuyns, Jean Scot Erigène (Louvain, 1933) 392.

(2) P. Lehmann, Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge Deutschlands und der Schweiz I (Munich, 1911) 266, line 2: ‘Kalchidius in Thymeum Platonis I’.

2. Meyendorff, John. 1994. "Remarks on Eastern Patristic Thought in John Scottus Eriugena." In Eriugena East and West, edited by McGinn, Bernard and Otten, Willemien, 51-68. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

3. Meyvaert, Paul. 1963. "The Exegetical Treatises of Peter the Deacon and Eriugena's Latin Rendering of the Ad Thalassium of Maximus the Confessor." Sacris Erudiri. A Journal of Late Antique and Medieval Christianity no. 14:130-148.

4. ———. 1973. "Eriugena's Translation of the Ad Thalassum of Maximus: Preliminaries to an Edition of this Work." In The Mind of Eriugena, edited by O'Meara, John Joseph and Bieler, Ludwig, 79-87. Dublin: Irish University Press.

5. Michalowska, Monika. 2011. "The Concept of Language in Eriugena’s Thought." In Eriugena - Cusanus, edited by Kijewska, Agnieszka, Majeran, Roman and Schwaetzer, Harald, 17-30. Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL.

6. Mooney, Hilary A. 2009. Theophany: The Appearing of God According to the Writings of Johannes Scottus Eriugena. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

7. Moran, Dermot. 1978. "Wandering from the Path: Navigatio in the Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena." The Crane Bag no. 2:96-102.

8. ———. 1979. ""Natura quadriformata" and the beginnings of "Physiologia" in the philosophy of Johannes Scottus Eriugena." Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale no. 21:41-46.

9. ———. 1985. "Nature, Man and God in the Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena." In The Irish Mind: Exploring Intellectual Traditions, edited by Kearney, Richard, 91-106. Dublin: Wolfhound Press.

10. ———. 1989. The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena: A Study of Idealism in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Preface XI; Acknowledgments XV; Chronology XVI, List of abbreviations XVIII, 1. European intellectual culture in the ninth century 1; The monastic age in Ireland; 2. The predestination debate 27; 3. Eriugena’s life and early writings 35; 4. The Greek awakening 48; 5. The Periphyseon 58; 6. Eriugena as philosopher 81; 7. Eriugena’s sources 103; 8. Dialectic, philosophy, and the life of the mind 123; 9. The meaning of human nature 154; 10. Self-knowledge and self-definition: the nature of human knowing 186; 11. The meaning of non-being 212; 12. The meaning of nature 241; 13. Eriugena's influence on later mediaeval philosophy 269; 14. Conclusion 282; Bibliography 288; Index nominum 317; index rerum 324-333.

"In this book I seek not only to expound Eriugena’s philosophy in its historical and cultural context in ninth-century France but also to evaluate the enduring significance of his philosophical system as a whole. This will, I believe, show Eriugena at his most original and most brilliant.

The Western philosophical tradition has been characterised, in a somewhat misleading and overgeneralised manner, as centring on the concept of being from the time of the earliest Greek thinkers. Eriugena, inspired by Dionysius, departs from this tradition and regards non-being as equally as important as being in the study of the nature of reality as a whole. For Eriugena ontology is not the most fundamental or universal discipline; in fact, he develops a negative dialectic which counterbalances ontological affirmations and constructions with a radical meontology, giving the most detailed analysis of non-being since Plato’s Sophist and Parmenides.

But Eriugena goes farther and anticipates many of the features of the modernist turn in philosophy begun by Descartes (1596-1650). Eriugena begins with a typical Carolingian psychology but is stimulated by Saint Augustine to develop an understanding of the cogito and a deep appreciation of inwardness, which was enriched by his encounter with the anthropology of the Greeks, especially Gregory of Nyssa. He does not stop there, however, but goes on to articulate, in his own terms, what might be called a philosophy of subjectivity. Eriugena sees the human subject as essentially mind. Everything is a product of mind - material reality, spatiotemporal existence, the body itself. In this sense, Eriugena is a thoroughgoing idealist. Matter is a commingling of incorporeal qualities which the mind mistakenly takes to be corporeal; spatiotemporal reality is a consequence of the seduction of the mind by the senses, which is the true Fall of Adam; the body itself is an externalisation of the secret desires of the mind. But more than that, the true being of all things is their being in the mind. Eriugena takes this to be a consequence of the scriptural revelation that the human mind is an image of the divine mind, and that the divine mind contains in itself the ideal exemplars of all things.

(...)

In this book, therefore, I shall discuss Eriugena’s philosophy both in terms of its mediaeval origins and in terms of the manner in which it appears to anticipate the turn towards the subject and towards idealism which is found in the modern philosophies of Descartes and Hegel.

In interpreting Eriugena’s philosophy, I have concentrated almost exclusively on the Periphyseon, with the result that Eriugena’s later theological works, including his homily and his commentary on Dionysius, receive scant mention. I hope this book will contribute to the revival of interest in Eriugena which has taken place in this century, by offering a philosophical interpretation of his most important dialogue, the Periphyseon.".

11. ———. 1990. "Pantheism from John Scottus Eriugena to Nicholas of Cusa." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 64:131-152.

12. ———. 1992. "Time, Space and Matter in the Periphyseon. An Examination of Eriugena's Understanding of the Physical World." In At the Heart of the Real. Philosophical Essays in Honour of the Most Reverend Desmond Connell, Archbishop of Dublin, edited by O'Rourke, Fran, 67-96. Dublin: Irish Academic Press.

"Eriugena has unusual theories of space, time and matter, theories which have led him to be called an immaterialist in the manner of Berkeley, or a critical idealist in the manner of Kant.(1) He may properly be termed an immaterialist with regard to his theory that sensible corporeal bodies are only apparently corporeal—for him physical bodies are a collection or assembly of incorporeal, insensible properties. He is labelled an idealist for his theory of place and time as categories in the mind, prior to all objects, and within which all empirical objects are contained. On this basis, the claim has been made that Eriugena is an original thinker and that his views should be accorded a respectful place in the history of philosophy. This article will examine Eriugena’s originality with regard to his theory of the nature of the material world.2 It will emerge that Eriugena indeed holds an immaterialist account of matter and of physical things, but that there are nuances in his theory which need to be addressed." (p. 67)

(...)

"Conclusion. To conclude, the motif of beauty in Augustine’s writings has allowed us to see that the basis of friendship is situated firmly in the context of the desire for, or delight in, the love of God. The desire for unity, truth, order, peace, virtue and benevolent love all find their focus in the desire for beauty, and Augustine always recognized that God alone is truly beautiful. In addition, while agreeing with the classical tradition that the experience of likeness provided the only acceptable basis for the attraction of, or delight in friendship, he nevertheless insisted that this likeness always referred primarily to one’s likeness to God. For him, it was inconceivable that one could attain a likeness either to oneself or to another without first becoming like God, because ultimately the very existence of being is itself dependent upon, or is an expression of, this likeness to God. In this fashion, Augustine’s insistence on situating friendship in the context of the love of spiritual beauty points inescapably to a metaphysical and religious foundation for friendship, namely our ontological dependence on God." (p. 96)

(1) The nineteenth century commentators on Eriugena noticed the comparison with Kant. See T. Christlieb, Leben und Lehre des Johannes Scotus Erigena in ihrem Zusammenhang mit der vorhergehenden und unter Angabe ihrer Berührungspunkte mit der neueren Philosophie und Theologie (Gotha, 1860); see also W. Beierwaltes, 'The Revaluation of John Scottus Eriugena in German Idealism’, in J. J. O’Meara and L. Bieler, eds., The Mind of Eriugena (Dublin, 1973), pp. 190-9.

13. ———. 1992. "Origen and Eriugena. Aspects of Christian Gnosis." In The Relationship between Neoplatonism and Christianity, edited by Finan, Thomas and Twomey, Vincent, 27-53. Dublin: Four Court Press.

14. ———. 1996. "Eriugena's Theory of Language in the Periphyseon: Explorations in the Neoplatonic Tradition." In Ireland and Europe in the Early Middle Ages. IV. Learning and Literature, edited by Richter, Michael and Ní Chatháin, Proinseas, 238-258. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.

15. ———. 1999. "Idealism in Medieval Philosophy: The Case of Johannes Scottus Eriugena." Medieval Philosophy and Theology no. 8:53-82.

"In this article I wish to re-examine the vexed issue of the possibility of idealism in ancient and medieval philosophy with particular reference to the case of Johannes Scottus Eriugena (c. 800-c. 877), the Irish Neoplatonic Christian philosopher. Both Bernard Williams and Myles Burnyeat have argued that idealism never emerged (and for Burnyeat, could not have emerged) as a genuine philosophical position in antiquity, a claim that has had wide currency in recent years, and now constitutes something of an orthodoxy. (1) Richard Sorabji (instancing Gregory of Nyssa) and Werner Beierwaltes (citing Proclus and Eriugena), and Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson (discussing Plotinus), on the other hand, have all argued that idealism is to be found in the Neoplatonic tradition, a tradition neglected by Burnyeat. (2) Similarly, in a 1989 study, I argued not only that idealism was a genuine possibility in late classical and in medieval philosophy, but that that the ninth-century Carolingian philosopher Johannes Eriugena presents a striking example of an extremely radical, almost fantastical, idealism. (3) Of course, the whole discussion depends entirely on what is meant by 'idealism'. Burnyeat uses Berkeley's immaterialism as his standard for idealism, and it is this decision, coupled with his failure to acknowledge the legacy of German idealism, which prevents him from seeing the classical and medieval roots of idealism more broadly understood." (pp. 53-54)

(1) Myles Burnyeat, "Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed," Philosophical Review 91 (1982): 3-40, reprinted in Godfrey Vesey, ed., Idealism -- Past and Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 19-50.

(2) Richard Sorabji, "Gregory of Nyssa: The Origins of Idealism," in Time, Creation and Continuum. Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (London: Duckworth, 1983), pp. 287-96; Werner Beierwaltes, Denken des Einen. Studien zur neuplatonischen Philosophie and ihrer Wirkungsgeschichte (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1985). See also Beierwaltes, "Die Wiederentdeckung des Eriugena im Deutschen Idealismus," in Platonismus und Idealismus (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1972), pp. 188-201, and his "Zur Wirkungsgeschichte Eriugenas im Deutschen Idealismus und danach. Eine kurze, unsystematische Nachlese," in Eriugena. Grundzüge seines Denkens (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1994), pp. 313-330. Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson, "Cognition and its Object," in Lloyd P. Gerson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1996), pp. 217-49, esp. pp. 245-49. But see, Lloyd P. Gerson, Plotinus (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 227, n. 3, who maintains that Plotinus is not an idealist.

(3) Dermot Moran, The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena. A Study of Idealism in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

16. ———. 2002. "Time and Eternity in the Periphyseon." In History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time, edited by McEvoy, James and Dunne, Michael, 487-508. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

"In this paper I want to explore Johannes Eriugena’s characteristically rich and original treatment of one of the most central themes in the Platonic and Christian traditions, namely, the theme of time and eternity (or timelessness), in his massive cosmological dialogue, Periphyseon. Given the elaborate richness of his vision, in evaluating Eriugena’s commitment to Christian Platonism, we cannot then simply assume that he is repeating the accounts of time and eternity found, for example, in Plato’s Timaeus or in Augustine’s Confessiones. Eriugena is both a Platonist and a Christian, but he holds to both these doctrines in his own inimitable fashion, as a ninth-century author, heir to already ancient traditions." (p. 487)

(...)

"Conclusion

I have tried to sketch here the complex manner in which Eriugena combines his philosophical understanding (drawn from Platonic and Aristotelian sources) of the space and time as part of the procession and exitus of the divine nature, as the absolute marks of creation, as the boundaries of the physical world imposed by the fallen human understanding, with the message of Scripture concerning the passing away of all places and times in contrast to the abiding nature of eternal truth. What is significant is how far Eriugena will go to marry his grammatical interpretation of temporal verbs referring to historical events or stages in Scripture with his philosophical critique of temporal predicates in God, to more or less elide entirely the temporal and historical understanding, and to promote the true theoria which leads to theosis and to timelessness. There remains, however, an unresolved tension between time as part of the divine process and time as a consequence of the Fall. Eriugena himself, of course, feels that these accounts do not contradict but can be accommodated within duplex theoria. Finally, his discussion of time and space as frameworks of the mind, which are absent from the true nous, both of human nature and of God, again confirms his idealism." (p. 507).

17. ———. 2004. "An Original Christian Platonism: Eriugena's response to the Tradition." In Bilan et perspectives des études médiévales (1993-1998). Euroconférence Barcelone, 8-12 juin 1999. Actes du IIe Congrès européen d'études médiévales, edited by Hamesse, Jacqueline, 467-487. Turnhout: Brepols.

"In keeping with the theme of this FIDEM conference, « Medieval Studies Today and Tomorrow », in this contribution I want to report on the tremendous blossoming of studies in the philosophy of Johannes Scottus Eriugena, witnessed by the growth in critical editions, translations and critical discussions, over not just the past 10 years, but the past 30 years'. The man known to his contemporaries as Johannes Scottus (c.800 - c.877), and who signed himself ‘Eriugena’ (on the manuscript of his translation of Dionysius), is without doubt the most genuinely sophisticated philosopher of the Carolingian era, certainly to be ranked above such Carolingians as Alcuin1 2, and indeed, stands as the most important philosopher writing in Latin between Boethius and Anselm. He is also, though this parallel remains to be explored, more or less a contemporary of the Arab Neoplatonist Al-Kindi. Eriugena can also be seen as the most significant intellectual figure to emerge from monastic Ireland, the so-called Island of Saints and Scholars, between the sixth to the ninth century (in comparison with Sedulius Scottus or Columban), although his debt to early Irish culture remains much disputed, even allowing for the fact that he worked, at least in part, with Irish-speaking scholars." (p. 467).

18. ———. 2006. "Spiritualis Incrassatio: Eriugena's intellectualist immaterialism: is it an Idealism?" In Eriugena, Berkeley and the Idealist tradition, edited by Gersh, Stephen and Moran, Dermot, 123-150. Notre Dame: Indiana University Press.

19. ———. 2013. "Jean Scot Érigène, la connaissance de soi et la tradition idéaliste." Les Études philosophiques:29-56.

Traduction de Juliette Lemaire.

20. ———. 2021. " Eriugena on the Five Modes of Being and Non-Being: Reflections on his Sources." In Studia Patristica Vol. CXXII: Vol. 19: Eriugena's Christian Neoplatonism and its sources in Patristic and Ancient Philosophy, edited by Ramelli, Ilaria, 73-95. Leuven: Peeters.

Abstract: "In this article I examine the ‘five modes’ (quinque modi) of being and non-being of the ninth-century Irish Carolingian philosopher, Johannes Eriugena, as outlined in his dialogue, Periphyseon, especially in Books One and Three. Eriugena’s immediate Latin sources have been suggested as Augustine, Marius Victorinus, and Fredigedus, but he was also deeply influenced by passages in the Greek Christian Fathers, especially Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysius, and Maximus, particularly on God as ‘beyond being’, or as ‘non-being’, or ‘nothingness’ (nihilum). In this essay, I will review Eriugena’s bold and paradoxical claims about the non-being of the divine being and I shall evaluate the current research concerning its sources and its originality, and make the claim that the divine nothingness is Eriugena’s original contribution in the Periphyseon.".

21. Moulin, Isabelle, ed. 2016. Philosophie et théologie chez Jean Scot Érigène. Paris: Vrin.

Table des matières: Remerciements 7; Table des Abréviations 9; Isabelle Moulin: Introduction 11; Alain de Libera: La problématique catégoriale du Periphyseon 17; Olivier Boulnois: La rose du néant. Scot Érigène et la manifestation de l’invisible 55; Stephen Gersh: The Ordo naturalis of Primordial Causes. Eriugena’s Transformation of the Dionysian Doctrine of Divine Names 83; Willemien Otten: Eriugena on Nature (Created, Human and Divine): From Christian Platonic Metaphysics to Early-Medieval Protreptic 113; Isabelle Moulin: Adam et le Christ : unification et médiation de la nature humaine chez Jean Scot Erigène 135; John Marenbon: Eriugena on Damnation in De Praedestinatione 161; Dermot Moran: John Scottus Eriugena and the Idealist Tradition of Christian

Neoplatonism 179; Index Nominum 211; Liste des contributeurs 217.

22. Musto, Jeanne-Marie. 2001. "John Scottus Eriugena and the Upper Cover of the Lindau Gospels." Gesta no. 40:1-18.

23. Nuchelmans, Jan. 1991. "Hilduin et Jean Scot Erigène, traducteurs du Pseudo-Denys, devant l'infinitif substantivé grec." In Eulogia. Mélanges offerta à Antoon A. R. Bastiaensen à l'occasion de son soixante-cinquième anniversaire, edited by Bartelink, Gerard J.M., Hilhorst, A. and Kneepkens, Corneille H., 201-232. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.

24. O'Meara, Dominic. 1977. "L'investigation et les investigateurs dan la De divisione naturae." In Jean Scot Érigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 225-234. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

Reprinted in: D. O'Meara, The Structure of Being and the Search for the Good. Essays on Ancient and Early Medieval Platonism, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998, Essay XX.

25. ———. 1981. "The Concept of Natura in John Scottus Eriugena (De divisione naturae Book I)." Vivarium no. 19:126-145.

Reprinted in: D. O'Meara, The Structure of Being and the Search for the Good. Essays on Ancient and Early Medieval Platonism, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998, Essay XXI.

"In this article I shall attempt (I) to isolate as far as possible what Eriugena means by his concept of natura, by reviewing both the sources he was inspired by and his use of these sources in the elaboration of this concept. I shall then seek (II) to determine the bearing of this concept on the general inquiry conducted in the De divisione naturae by examining its relationship to conceptions presented immediately after it, i.e. the well-known fourfold division of nature and the fivefold classification of modes of being and non-being. Finally (III), the philosophical implications of Eriugena's conception of a study of natura (physiologia) will be discussed briefly insofar as this study is suggestive of an unusual metaphysical project.".

26. ———. 1990. "The Metaphysical Use of Mathematical Concepts in Eriugena." In Begriff und Metapher. Sprachform des Denkens bei Eriugena, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 142-148. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Reprinted in: D. O'Meara, The Structure of Being and the Search for the Good. Essays on Ancient and Early Medieval Platonism, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998, Essay XXIII.

"The importance of arithmology as a feature not only of Eriugena’s work but also of other medieval systems has been rightly stressed by Edouard Jeauneau(1). Medieval thinkers followed in this respect the practice of their ancient sources; arithmology had already played an important part, not only in late antique literature, but also in hellenistic thought, and is already attested in Aristotle’s reports on pre-Platonic Pythagoreanism(2).

“Arithmology”, as the term is used in modern scholarship, was made current especially, I believe, by Armand Delatte in the work he published toward the beginning of this century concerning ancient Pythagoreanism(3). He used the term in order to designate the associations made in ancient Pythagoreanism between numbers and various aspects of the world, of the gods and of human existence. Delatte regarded such associations as being a mixture of healthy scientific research and the (by implication unhealthy) phantasies of religion and philosophy. His judgement is clearly based on modern philosophical assumptions. It leaves open the question of how ancient thinkers (and their medieval successors) understood the sense of the associations they made between numbers and other things. It seems that here a wide spectrum of possibilities opens up, going from fairly arbitrary pairings of numbers with various phenomena to a developed philosophy of mathematics and its hermeneutic value for other sciences. Much depends on the background, if any, against which arithmology occurs in an ancient or medieval text."

(...)

"The questions which I propose to discuss briefly here concern Eriugena’s practice. How does he understand the arithmological associations he uses, as well as such associations as involve other mathematical objects like geometrical figures? Does his use have a philosophical background which explains and justifies it? What is the ultimate importance for him of such mathematical associations? Eriugena had access to some extent to the ideas on this subject of Proclus and of other ancient Neoplatonists through the works of Augustine and Boethius, Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus, among others(5). If the idiosyncrasies of the tradition of texts imposed certain limits on Eriugena’s access to late antique Neoplatonism, yet his philosophical capacity was such as to make him capable of recovering some of its profoundest ideas." (pp. 142-143)

(1) In his contribution to the present volume [Jean Scot et la métaphysique des nombres]. See also his “Mathématiques et Trinité chez Thierry de Chartres”, in Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter, ed. P. Wilpert {Miscellanea Mediaevalia Bd. 2), Berlin 1963, pp. 289-295.

(2) Cf. W. Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, Cambridge (Mass.) 1972; D. O’Meara, Pythagoras Revived. Mathematics and Philosophy in Late Antiquity, Oxford 1989.

(3) Etudes sur la littérature pythagoricienne, Paris 1915, pp. 139ff. Delatte finds the word used already in Greek in a manuscript of the 18th century. The Oxford English Dictionary gives it as an English word in a text of 1572.

(5) See Jeauneau’s paper in the present volume. Much information on Eriugena’s sources can also be found in Jeauneau’s editions, in particular in Jean Scot Commentaire sur l'évangile de Jean, Paris 1972, p. 291 n. 9, p. 345 n. 4 and elsewhere.

27. ———. 1998. The Structure of Being and the Search for the Good: Essays on Ancient and Early Medieval Platonism. Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum.

Essays on Eriugena: XX. L'Investigation et les investigateurs dans le De divisione naturae de Jean Scot Erigene; XXI. The Concept of Natura in John Scottus Eriugena (De divisione naturae Book I); XXII. The Problem of Speaking about God in John Scottus Eriugena; XXIII. The Metaphysical Use of Mathematical Concepts in Eriugena; XXIV. Eriugena and Aquinas on the Beatific Vision.

28. O'Meara, John Joseph. 1977. "Eriugena's Use of Augustine in his Teaching of the Return of the Soul and the Vision of God." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 191-200. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

29. ———. 1980. ""Magnorum Virorum Quendam Consensum Velimus Machinari' (804 B): Eriugena's Use of Augustine's De Genesi ad litteram in the Periphyseon." In Eriugena. Studien zu seinen Quellen, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 105-116. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

30. ———. 1983. "The Problem of Speaking about God in John Scottus Eriugena." In Carolingian Essays. Andrew W. Mellon Lectures in Early Christian Studies, edited by Blumenthal, Ute-Renate, 151-167. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

Reprinted in: D. O'Meara, The Structure of Being and the Search for the Good. Essays on Ancient and Early Medieval Platonism, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998, Essay XXII.

31. ———. 1986. "Translating Eriugena." In Jean Scot écrivain, edited by Allard, Guy-H., 115-128. Paris: Vrin.

"The use of Uhlfelder’s serviceable, but incomplete translation of Eriugena’s Periphyseon in the foregoing analysis was intended merely to help in measuring the value of Sheldon-Williams’ rendering. Sheldon-Williams reminds one of Stephen MacKenna, who, although he had, unlike Sheldon-Williams, no professional qualification in Greek or Latin, having discovered Plotinus devoted himself to his translation as a fidus Achates for evermore. Sheldon-Williams had a real passion for the kind of ideas found in Eriugena and in Greek theology. Joined to this he had a strong sense of rhetoric and of an ample balanced style. He rather liked ideas that were complex and, it seemed at times, because they were complex. Altogether, work on the text and translation of the Periphyseon was congenial to him and on it he spent a good deal of his life. He reminds one not only of Stephen MacKenna but also of another famous translator, Scott-Moncrieff, of another famous author, Proust. Scott-Moncrieff, as you will know, was engaged in translating A la recherche du temps perdu while Proust was still finishing it. His translation began to be so well known and admired that Proust became jealous of him. I do not wish to suggest that Sheldon-Williams’ translation of the Periphyseon is of the same class as MacKenna’s of Plotinus or Scott-Moncrieff s of Proust; but he has a similar affinity with his author and his opus magnum. This gives his translation a feeling which is hard to describe but is for all that perceptible. In the Foreword and Acknowledgements to the first volume of his edition of the Periphyseon Sheldon-Williams, despite my requesting him not to do so, thanks me for, among other things, “important criticisms which have improved the translation.” I could still find much to criticize in his translation — what translation is perfect ? —, but my judgment for what it is worth is that we now have in Sheldon-Williams’ rendering not only a workable English translation of the Periphyseon, but one of welcome affinity with the original." (p. 128).

32. ———. 1987. "Eriugena's Immediate Influence." In Eriugena Redivivus. Zur Wirkungeschichte seines Denkens im Mittelalter und im Übergang zur Neuzeit, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 13-25. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

33. ———. 1987. "Eriugena and Aquinas on the Beatific Vision." In Eriugena Redivivus. Zur Wirkungeschichte seines Denkens im Mittelalter und im Übergang zur Neuzeit, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 224-236. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Reprinted in: D. O'Meara, The Structure of Being and the Search for the Good. Essays on Ancient and Early Medieval Platonism, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998, Essay XXIV.

34. ———. 1988. Eriugena. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

35. ———. 1992. "Contrasting Approaches to Neoplatonic Immaterialism: Augustine and Eriugena." In From Athens to Chartres. Neoplatonism and Medieval Thought. Studies in Honour of Edouard Jeauneau, edited by Westra, Haijo Jan, 175-180. Leiden: Brill.

"In an earlier paper,(1) I drew a contrast between Augustine and Eriugena in their fundamentally different approaches to the interpretation of an important text from Genesis: et diuisit Deus lucem a tenebris (1.4): “For Augustine this signifies, Eriugena says, either the difference between the perfection of form on the one hand and the confusion of ‘informity’ on the other; or the separation of the faithful from the fallen angels. Eriugena here interprets Augustine as understanding that the ‘reasons’ or causes of things are eternal in God and in being created, from being light, become darkness. Eriugena for himself, however, takes so to speak, a diametrically opposite view of the matter. For him following, he says, Dionysius, darkness signifies the incomprehensibility of the eternal reasons in God as well as God himself; and light signifies the declaratio, manifestation or ‘theophany’ of these reasons in the effects that we see. This difference between Eriugena and Augustine, signalled by Eriugena himself, is, as I have said, fundamental . . . .” There is a profound and perhaps revealing difference between looking at darkness as a symbol of something transcendingly superior to light (Eriugena’s approach) and on the other hand greatly inferior to it (Augustine’s).

This kind of fundamental difference of approach is, I venture to suggest, also to be discerned in Eriugena’s handling of the question of predestination. His overriding view of the problem is, again, God-orientated—there can be no predestination: God’s simplicity precludes it. But he does address himself to Augustine’s opinions, and strains argument to discover a few texts in which Augustine appears to teach that there is only one predestination, to salvation, and to interpret the de facto overwhelming number of Augustine’s declarations on the subject (to the effect that there was predestination to salvation and damnation) through the employment of the figure of speech known as antiphrasis or e contrario: Augustine, he suggests rather desperately, actually means the opposite of what he says.

Repeatedly Eriugena gives this kind of unsatisfying explanation for texts of Augustine that he considers unworthy of his “Father”. A singular and important instance of this Eriugenian difficulty arises, as we shall see presently, with the question of Augustine’s teaching on the resurrection of bodies. This is a test-case of the real allegiance of each of them to purer Neoplatonic doctrine, and one possible reason for the actual general rejection of Eriugena in the West, where Augustine’s view has prevailed." (p. 169)

(1) “Magnorum Virorum Quendam Consensum Velimus Machinari”, Eriugena: Studien zu seinen Quellen, ed. W. Beierwaltes (Heidelberg, 1980) 107.

36. ———. 2011. Studies in Augustine and Eriugena.

Edited by Thomas Halton.

Section IV. Augustine and Eriugena. 17. Augustine's Understanding of the Creation and Fall 233; 18. Eriugena's Use of Augustine in His Teaching on the Return of the Soul and the Vision of God 244; 19. Eriugena's Use of Augustine in His Teaching on the Soul-Body Relationship 255; 20. Eriugena's Use of Augustine's De Genesi ad litteram in the Periphyseon 269-285.

37. Otten, Willemien. 1973. "The Role of Man in the Eriugenian Universe: Dependance or Autonomy." In Giovanni Scoto nel suo tempo. L'organizzazione del sapere in età carolingia, edited by Leonardi, Claudio, 595-609. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo.

38. ———. 1977. "The Influence of Eriugenian Thought: Report on the International Eriugena Colloquium, Bad Homburg, 26-30 August 1985." Studi Medievali no. 18:461-473.

Brief summaries of the papers presented at the colloquium.

39. ———. 1990. "The Universe of Nature and the Universe of Man: Difference and Identity." In Begriff und Metapher. Sprachform des denkens bei Eriugena, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 202-212. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

"In view of this volume’s theme, i.e. metaphor and philosophy in Eriugena, I would like to concentrate on the connection of these notions with each other. Through an analysis of the figure of man, whose significant role in the Periphyseon seems open to several interpretations, I want to show in this paper that in Eriugena metaphorical imagery and philosophical arguments are in fact closely interrelated. Thus, by focusing on one single figure in the context of one specific work, we can perhaps get a better impression of what may be considered the general atmosphere of Eriugena’s thinking: subtlety of reasoning corresponding with an unusual flexibility of language.

In the Periphyseon the role of man is important, but unfortunately it is not very well-defined. There is only one of the work’s five books which gives an explicit treatment of man, viz. Book IV(1).

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1 will therefore try to evoke a portrait of Eriugenian man in which this dual aspect will be given sufficient attention without, however, leading to a fragmented picture. It is my view that even the most scattered elements of Eriugena’s speculations about man still leave openings towards a more integral approach of the matter. The unique philosophical set-up of the work is ultimately responsible for this." (pp. 202-203)

(...)

"What then does this study of Eriugena's allegorical exegesis, notably Eriugena’s rational interpretation of it, imply for the interpretation of Eriugenian man? I think that once we have abandoned the static subject-object structure as a suitable model for analyzing Eriugena’s figure of man, it may help us see how much room Eriugeha actually leaves for man to play his own role within the vast universe of which he continues to form an integrated part. The observation of Eriugena’s handling of allegorical exegesis can help us qualify this role as a creative rational one. Though dependent of nature -man reflects nature’s development of processio and reditus - man appears also to be responsible for its execution. The dominance of the theme of the return of all things to God, which permeates the entire description of the Periphyseon's natura, as the collec-tio is implied in the divisio, is equally present in man as in the whole of nature. However. there is one difference, which gives man a slight lead over any other being in the Periphyseon. Whereas the universe of man longs for the realization of the return in the same manner as the whole of the universe, including God, it is still man whose rational nature must guarantee its success. Eriugena’s allegorization of paradise with its gradual but definite elimination of the damaging effects of sin can show us how far Eriugena is actually prepared to go to reach his goal." (P. 212)

(1) The text of P IV can be found in PL 122,741C-860D. The text of Books 1 to 3 is quoted from the Sheldon-Williams edition.

40. ———. 1990. "The Interplay of Nature and Man in the Periphyseon." Vivarium no. 28:1-16.

41. ———. 1991. The Anthropology of Johannes Scottus Eriugena. Leiden: Brill.

Contents: Preface VII; Introduction 1; 1. Division, definition and return. An inquiry into the Prologue of the Periphyseon 7; 2. Creation and God. An explanation of major themes in Eriugena's thinking 40; 3. From physiology to anthropology 82; 4. The universe of man. Its procession and return 118; 5. Back to God. The final reditus of man and nature 190; Latin Appendix 221; References 233; Index 239-242.

"... I have taken my starting-point in the Periphyseon's unbroken literary structure, thereby trying to give an analysis of the author’s overall ideas. In doing so, I have been led to choose one central theme, namely the study of Eriugena’s anthropology, (3) the scope of which I will I here try briefly to define.

The analysis of Eriugena’s Periphyseon is by nature a historical enterprise. As such it has resulted first of all in an assessment of the early-medieval Christian context of Eriugena’s views. Man in this early-medieval world was seen primarily as possessing a created, sinful state, and it is from this viewpoint that I have analyzed Eriugena’s ideas. However, defining my purpose simply as the study of Eriugena’s anthropology might suggest the analysis of man only in so far as he emerges as the clear object of the Periphyseon's text. However important man as a direct topic of discussion may be, it is not this aspect that has warranted my attention for so long. Rather, during the course of this study I have developed the view that in the Periphyseon there is a more veiled presence of man, influencing the whole text. I have tried to trace the origins of this view of man. Without assuming any judgement on the part of my readers, I want to make it clear that, for me, the position of man as the leading character in the vast universe Eriugena evokes was only gradually revealed. It resulted in a complete change in my initial perspective of the Periphyseon as a treatise of primarily metaphysical importance. For it put a definite stop to any distinction between man as the object and man as the subject of Eriugena’s thought, making him instead the overall centre of the Periphyseon's universe. With this unifying view of man as the central character in the Periphyseon's literary structure, I think we can legitimately regard the work as a coherent exposition of ideas.

Though one should always be careful about the impact of one’s descriptions, I think regarding the Periphyseon from an anthropological viewpoint may have some effect in counterbalancing attempts which have explained the Periphyseon too readily either as a modern, idealistic system comparable to a Heideggerian model for example,(4) or as a statically layered, Neoplatonic universe of Proclean design.(5) One should read and interpret my comparison between Eriugena’s confidence in man as he is positioned in an outstretched universe of divine origin, and the far more modern notion of Descartes’ self-awareness of the thinking subject along these same lines." (pp. 1-2)

(3) I have used the term ‘anthropology’ generally to indicate Eriugena’s view of man within the context of his written works. Although throughout this study it will gradually be made manifest what I mean by this term, I want to make it clear from the very beginning that, unlike in earlier literature, I do not want to interpret ‘anthropology’ as psychology, as appears to be the case in Karpp 1950 [Heinrich Karpp, Probleme altchristlicher Anthropologie. Biblische und philosophische Psychologie bei den Kirchenvätern des dritten Jahrhunderts, Gütersloh]; Mathon 1964 [Gérard Mathon, L'Anthropologie chrétienne en Occident de Saint Augustin à Joan Scot Erigène : recherches sur le sort des thèses de l'anthropologie augustinienne durant le Haut Moyen Age, Lille]

(4) In his outlook on Eriugena’s philosophy, Moran seems to be particularly interested in the relevance of his thought for modern, idealist philosophy, see Moran 1989: xii-xiv, 102, 184-185, 283-284.

(5) Cappuyns quotes Hauréau’s statement about Eriugena as “un autre Proclus a peine chrétien”, see Cappuyns 1933: 264. Hauréau’s judgement can be seen as representative for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth century scholarship on Eriugena.

42. ———. 1991. "The Dialectic of the Return in Eriugena's Periphyseon." Harvard Theological Review no. 84:399-421.

43. ———. 1992. "Between Damnation and Restoration. The Dynamics of Human Nature in Eriugens's Perphyseon and Alan of Lille's Anticlaudianus." In From Athens to Chartres. Neoplatonism and Medieval Thought. Studies in Honour of Edouard Jeauneau, edited by Westra, Haijo Jan, 329-350. Leiden: Brill.

"Introduction: Anthropology From a Theological Perspective

Approaching the learned literature of the pre-scholastic Middle Ages from a twentieth century viewpoint, one can make remarkable discoveries if willing to cross familiar boundaries. In this article I want to stress the continuity of the early-medieval intellectual tradition, that is to say until the twelfth century, by examining two important works. They were written by John Scottus Eriugena and Alan of Lille in the ninth and twelfth centuries respectively. While the historical connection between Eriugena and Alan may be a matter of scholarly debate, the general affinity between their ideas makes it definitely worthwile to undertake a comparison. The Platonic orientation of both authors accounts for some striking parallels, and offers us a penetrating insight into a strong intellectual undercurrent of the prescholastic Middle Ages." (P. 329)

(1) For a discussion of Eriugenian influence in the twelfth century, see P. Lucentini, Platonismo medievale. Contributi per la storia dell' eriugenismo (Florence, 1980). For Alan’s possible knowledge of Eriugenian metaphysics, one should think of Bernard Silvestris’ Cosmographia as an indirect link of transmission. On Bernard and Eriugena, see P. Lucentini, op. cit., 53, n. 150. P. Dronke has traced Eriugenian influence in Alan on the point of reason versus authority, see P. Dronke (ed.), A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy (Cambridge, 1988) Introduction, 8, n. 13.

(2) For a general overview of the Platonisms of the twelfth century, and the role of Eriugena in them, see M.D. Chenu, Nature, Man and Society in the Twelfth Century. Essays on New Theological Perspectives in the Latin West, transl. and ed. by J. Taylor and L.K. Little (Chicago, 1968/repr. 1983) 49-98. See also W. Wetherbee, “Philosophy, Cosmology and the Renaissance”, in P. Dronke (ed.), A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy, 21-53. In accordance with Chenu’s views, Wetherbee mentions Eriugena’s translations of Pseudo-Dionysius and his Periphyseon as the two main sources of the mystical, hierarchical Platonism, which coexisted with the ‘scientific’ Platonism of the early twelfth century (29). He also points out that Platonist cosmological thought increasingly influenced the production of imaginative literature. Alan and Bernard Silvestris occupy an important position in this movement of creative, allegorical poetry (43-53). See also n. 44 below.

(44) For the importance of integumentum in the rise of imaginative literature in the twelfth century, see W. Wetherbee, “Philosophy, Cosmology and the Renaissance”, in P. Dronke, A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy, 43-53. In his article Wetherbee points to three examples of this imaginative literature, namely Bernard Silvestris, John of Salisbury and Alan of Lille.

44. ———. 1993. "Eriugena's 'Periphyseon' and the Concept of Eastern versus Western Patristic Influence." In Studia Patristica. Vol. 28: XV. Nachleben of the Fathers, edited by Livingstone, Elizabeth A., 217-224. Leuven: Peeters Press.

45. ———. 1994. "Eriugena's Periphyseon: A Carolingian Contribution to the Theological Tradition." In Eriugena East and West, edited by McGinn, Bernard and Otten, Willemien, 69-94. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

46. ———. 1999. "In the Shadow of the Divine: Negative Theology and Negative Anthropology in Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius and Eriugena." Heytrop Journal no. 40.

"To analyze the tradition of negative theology, the article goes back to its prime architect, Pseudo-Dionysius. By comparing him to an author who preceded him, viz. Augustine, and one who followed him, viz. Eriugena, the article aims at giving a 'thicker' description of his position by framing it historically. In doing so it draws two conclusions. It first shows that the connection between negative theology and negative anthropology is indeed Dionysian; as such it is rightfully pointed to in postmodern thought. In contradistinction to postmodern applications, however, Dionysius' interest in negativity is shown to reflect before all a desire to wrestle with the overpowering presence of the divine instead of concluding to its absence.".

47. ———. 2002. "Realized Eschatology of Philosophical Idealism: The Case of Eriugena's Periphyseon." In Ende Und Vollendung. Eschatologische Perspektiven Im Mittelalter, edited by Aertsen, Jan A. and Pickavé, Martin, 373-387. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

48. ———. 2006. "Anthropology between Imago Mundi and Imago Dei: the Place of Johannes Scottus Eriugena in the Tradition of Christian Thought." In Studia Patristica.Vol.43: Augustine, other Latin Writers, edited by Young, Frances, Edwards, Michael and Parvis, Paul M., 459-472. Leuven: Peeters.

49. ———. 2016. "Eriugena on Natures (Created, Human and Divine): from Christian-Platonic Metaphysics to Early-Medieval Protreptic." In Philosophie et théologie chez Jean Scot Érigène, edited by Moulin, Isabelle, 113-133. Paris: Vrin.

50. ———. 2020. Thinking Nature and the Nature of Thinking: From Eriugena to Emerson. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

51. Paparella, Francesco. 2009. Le teorie neoplatoniche del simbolo. Il caso di Giovanni Eriugena. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

52. Perger, Mischa von. 2005. "Eriugenas Adaption der aristotelischen Kategorienlehre." In Logik und Theologie. Das Organon im Arabischen und im Lateinischen Mittelalter, edited by Perler, Dominik and Rudolph, Ulrich, 239-304. Leiden: Brill.

53. Petroff, Valery V. 1998. "The De Templo of Bede as the Source of and Ideal Temple Description in Eriugena's Aulae Sidereae." Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales no. 65:97-106.

54. ———. 2002. "Theoriae of the Return in John Scottus' Escahtology." In History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time, edited by McEvoy, James and Dunne, Michael, 527-580. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

55. Piemonte, Gustavo. 1968. "Notas sobre la creatio de nihilo en Juan Escoto Eriúgena." Sapientia no. 23:37-58.

"In this preliminary study the author, after briefly surveying the contradictory conclusions of scholars on the paradoxes inherent in Eriugena's writings, proceeds in two sections to address the problem of creation de nihilo as it occurs in Eriugena and in some other writers.

I. A large section of De divisione naturae III, chapters 5-23 is the subject of analysis. The problem is nihil by privation or alternatively by superexcellence. The Bible and the Fathers offer a solution through faith; reason offers an alternative. As the argument unfolds the author points out the sources of the responses of both master and pupil. The dialogue form admits of a discussion of controversial views, Eriugena expressing doubt through the words of the discipulus, a device which may have been responsible over the centuries for the imputation to him of various heresies. The antithesis of aeterna/facta is an overriding problem. In that context the author surveys the stages and extension of creation de nihilo. " (Brennan, pp. 211-212)

References

Gershom Scholem, 'Jüdische Mystik in West-Europa im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert', Miscellanea Mediaevalia 4. Judentum im Mittelalter. Berlin 1966, 37-54 reprinted in Scholem, Iudaica III, Studien zur jüdischen Mystik, Suhrkamp Verlag 1973. (also 'Il misticismo ebraico medievale', De homine, Centro di Ricerca per le Scienze Morali e Sociali, lstituto di Filosofia della Università di Roma 21 [Marzo 1967], 1-22).

56. ———. 1968. " Notas sobre la "creatio de nihilo" en Juan Escoto Eriúgena. II: Juan Escoto y la tradición gnostica en el judaísmo." Sapientia no. 23:115-132.

"II. This section is entitled 'John the Scot and the gnostic tradition in Judaism'. Common sources can be discerned in the work of Eriugena and that of Hebrew mystics of the later middle ages ( cf. Scholem, 481 below) e.g. in Provence and in Spain (as can neoplatonist influence in Shiite Islam of that period). This point is sustained by specific quotations and specific parallels from cabbalistic writers, who may indeed even have read Eriugena's text. It has to be remembered also that early christian writing owed much to earlier Jewish writing." (Brennan, pp. 211-212).

57. ———. 1986. "L'expression "quae sunt et quae non sunt": Jean Scot et Marius Victorinus." In Jean Scot écrivain, edited by Allard, Guy-H., 81-113. Paris: Vrin.

"L'expression double «quae sunt et quae non sunt», dont les membres antithétiques veulent embrasser la totalité du réel, revient souvent, comme on sait, dans les écrits de Jean Scot. Elle est présente, tout d'abord, dans le Periphyseon, et dès ses premières pages, consacrées à l'explication bien connue des manières d'entendre la distinction entre les «choses qui sont» et les «choses qui ne sont pas». Mais elle paraît aussi dans les autres ouvrages érigéniens ; on la trouve déjà — avec une signification qui ne coïncide qu'en partie avec celle que lui donneront les textes postérieurs — dans le De divina praedestinatione; on la rencontre également dans les Expositiones in ierarchiam coelestem et dans le Commentaire sur l'évangile de Jean, et même dans des pièces d'un genre littéraire très différent, moins techniques et destinées à un public plus large, comme l'Homélie sur le prologue de ce même évangile, ou les poèmes. C'est justement la première occurrence de cette expression dans la Vox spiritualis, au chapitre I, lignes 6 et 8-12, avec les problèmes textuels qu'elle a soulevés, qui m'a amené à l'étudier dans l'ensemble de l'oeuvre de Jean Scot, et à me poser la question des origines possibles d'une locution si typiquement érigénienne. Elle n'était probablement pas courante au temps de notre auteur, puisqu'il se donne plusieurs fois la peine de l'expliquer à ses lecteurs. Où Jean Scot avait-il trouvé l'inspiration pour cette formule d'apparence paradoxale, qui occupait souvent ses méditations et sur laquelle il exerçait toutes les forces de son intelligence («saepe mihi cogitanti diligentiusque quantum uires suppetunt inquirenti... ») ? Chez Denys et Maxime le Confesseur, oui, sans doute; l'Érigène le dit lui-même (4), et d'ailleurs il n'est pas difficile de retrouver, derrière les mots latins, les vocables grecs respectifs (tà ônta, tà me ônta) ; il s'agit bien d'un cas de traduction, et cela n'a rien d'extraordinaire. Mais on peut toujours se demander si notre auteur n'aurait pas suivi consciemment l'exemple de quelque prédécesseur dans son adaptation au latin de ces éléments de la terminologie philosophique grecque. Après avoir fait quelques recherches personnelles, je crois que l'opinion qu'expriment à cet égard, un peu en passant, certains historiens est juste, et que la réponse à la question posée doit être affirmative. Il me semble par ailleurs que l'influence du prédécesseur en question — je parle de Marius Victorinus — n'est pas limitée à ce seul point : elle s'étend aussi à d'autres thèmes, et la façon dont l'Érigène l'a assimilée pourrait nous dire quelque chose sur ses procédés de composition littéraire et en même temps éclaircir certains aspects de sa pensée." (pp. 81-83)

(...)

"Au terme de notre comparaison entre différents passages de Jean Scot et de Marius Victorinus, nous sommes donc en mesure d’affirmer que l’auteur irlandais a très probablement emprunté à ce difficile penseur chrétien du IVe siècle non seulement certaines idées qu’il a intégrées dans sa synthèse personnelle, mais encore des formules, des phrases où ces idées sont exprimées, c’est-à-dire des matériaux littéraires. C’était justement ce que Victorinus lui-même avait fait à l’égard de Porphyre et d’autres philosophes grecs, d’après P. Hadot, qui note que ce mode de composition est d’ailleurs commun à tous les écrivains latins de l’Antiquité finissante: «Tous utilisent pour ainsi dire des éléments préfabriqués.(93) (94) »" (p. 108)

(1) Cf. De praed., Praef., 60-65 ; 3, 88-90; 10,45-51, 139-143; 11, 21-24; Epil., 39-42. Expos., IV, 78-79; VII, 413-414. Comm. Jn., 304D (I, XXVII, 94-95); 327D (III, XI, 7), Hom., I, 6 et 8-12; VIII, 12-14. Carmina, éd. L. Traube (MGH, Poet. lat., III, Berlin, 1896), Pars. Il, II, 7-8 ; VIII, 15 (cf. aussi ibid., 29) ; voir également Pars. VIII, III, 20 (Préface de la Versio Maximi), «ON quod, quod non ON, denegat omne sitnul» (sur l’emploi du terme grec cf. ci-dessous III, b), 1), avec note 81).

(2) Sur l’ordre des lignes 10-12 du chap. I de VHom., cf. Comm. Jn., I, XXXII, n. 15, p. 187-188; JSEHP, p. 252.

(3) Periph., I, 441A (p. 36, 3-6).

(4) Cf. Hom., p. 204, n. 1.

(5) Cf. ci-dessous, note 38.

(93) Periph., III, 634B-C (p. 60, 24-26 et 31-34).

(94) P. Hadot, PV, [Porphyre et Victorinus, Paris: Institut d'études augustiniennes, 1968] p. 33 (voir l’ensemble des remarques de l’auteur sur la nécessité et les limites de la Quellenforschung, p. 31-39).

58. ———. 1986. ""Vita in omnia pervenit". El vitalismo eriugeniano y la influencia de Mario Victorino." Patristica et Mediaevalia no. 7:3-48.

59. ———. 1987. "Les Expositiones in ierarchiam coelestem de Jean Scot et un opuscule hébreu pseudépigraphique du XIIIe siècle." In Eriugena redivivus. Zur Wirkungsgeschichte seines Denkens im Mittelalter und im übergang zur Neuzeit, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 279-310. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

60. ———. 1990. "Image et contenu intelligible dans la conception érigénienne de la 'diffusio dei'." In Begriff und Metapher. Sprachform des Denkens bei Eriugena, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 80-94. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

61. ———. 1992. "'Ioannes Scotus vel Chrysostomus'. Acerca de la atribución de obras eriugenianas a Juan Crisóstomo." Stylos no. 1:37-58.

62. ———. 1996. "Recherches sur les "Tractatus in Matheum" attribués à Jean Scot." In Iohannes Scottus Eriugena. The Bible and Hermeneutics, edited by Riel, Gerd van, Steel, Carlos and McEvoy, James. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

63. ———. 2002. "Some Distinctive Theses of Eriugena's Eschatology in his Exegesis of the Gospel according to St. Matthew." In History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time, edited by McEvoy, James and Dunne, Michael, 227-242. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

64. Pinzani, Roberto. 2012. "Alle origini del realismo. Appunti sull’ontologia di Scoto Eriugena." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 23:107-142.

Abstract: "I would like to discuss in this article some issues concerning Scotus Eriugena’s ontology. I will focus on the De Divisione naturae and, in particular, on the concepts of ‘nature’, ‘essence/substance’, ‘matter’, ‘form’, ‘species’ and ‘genus’. I will also pay attention to the way in which Scotus deals with some traditional logic themes, like that of individuation and universals. The underlying assumption is that (realist) philosophers of the ‘twelfth Century renaissance’ take into some consideration elements of Scotus’ ontology when discussing the problem of universals.

I tried to read Scotus language in a ‘neutral’ way, by translating it literally, disregarding historical metaphysical interpretations (which are considered anyway in the footnotes), and by rendering metaphors and literary texts in a comprehensible way, as far as possible.".

65. Préaux, Jean. 1977. "Jean Scot et Martin de Laon en face du De nuptiis de Martianus Capella." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 161-170. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

66. Puxley, David. 2006. "The Role of the Human in the Procession and Return of the Cosmos from Plotinus to Eriugena." Dionysius no. 24:175-208.

"The first two parts of this study examine the formulations of Plotinus and Porphyry (Part 1) and of Iamblichus and Proclus (Part 2) with respect to the median and mediating nature of the human self in terms of its capacity for anagogé and énosis. Part 3 examines the early reception and transformation of the Iamblicho-Procline formulation. In Part 4 we see that in the «Periphyseon» of Eriugena an early and profound synthesis is to be found, with the result that in Eriugena the human soul or self is the agent of creation and thus central to the «exitus» and «reditus» of the cosmos.".

67. Ramelli, Ilaria. 2012. "Eriugena's Commentary on Martianus in the Framework of his Thought and the Philosophical Debate of his Time." In Carolingian Scholarship and Martianus Capella. Ninth-century Commentary Traditions on 'De nuptiis' in Context, edited by O'Sullivan, Sinead and Teeuwen, Mariken, 245-272. Turnhout: Brepols.

Abstract: "It is well known that the Carolingian royal family inspired and promoted a cultural revival of great consequence. The courts of Charlemagne and his successors welcomed lively gatherings of scholars who avidly pursued knowledge and learning, while education became a booming business in the great monastic centres, which were under the protection of the royal family. Scholarly emphasis was placed upon Latin language, religion, and liturgy, but the works of classical and late antique authors were collected, studied, and commented upon with similar zeal. A text that was read by ninth-century scholars with an almost unrivalled enthusiasm is Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, a late antique encyclopedia of the seven liberal arts embedded within a mythological framework of the marriage between Philology (learning) and Mercury (eloquence). Several ninth-century commentary traditions testify to the work’s popularity in the ninth century. Martianus’s text treats a wide range of secular subjects, including mythology, the movement of the heavens, numerical speculation, and the ancient tradition on each of the seven liberal arts. De nuptiis and its exceptionally rich commentary traditions provide the focus of this volume, which addresses both the textual material found in the margins of De nuptiis manuscripts, and the broader intellectual context of commentary traditions on ancient secular texts in the early medieval world.".

68. ———. 2013. The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena. Leiden: Brill.

On Eriugena see in particular: Shift to the West but on Geek Patristic Grounds: John the Scot Eriugena and Apokatastasis as Reditus, pp. 773-815.

69. ———, ed. 2021. Studia Patristica Vol. CXXII: Vol. 19: Eriugena's Christian Neoplatonism and its sources in Patristic and Ancient Philosophy. Leuven: Peeters.

70. Rand, Edward Kennard. 1920. "The Supposed Autographa of John the Scot." University of California Publications in Classical Philology no. 5:135-141.

71. ———. 1934. "The supposed Commentary of John the Scot on the « Opuscula Sacra » of Boethius." Revue néoscolastique de philosophie no. 36:67-77.

72. ———. 1940. "How Much of the Annotationes in Marcianum is the Work of John the Scot?" Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association no. 71:501-523.

73. Roques, René. 1973. "Traduction ou interprétation? Brèves remarques sur Jean Scot traducteur de Denis." In The Mind of Eriugena, edited by O'Meara, John Joseph and Bieler, Ludwig, 59-75. Dublin: Irish University Press.

74. ———. 1975. Libres sentiers vers l'érigénisme. Roma: Edizioni dell'Ateneo.

75. Rorem, Paul. 2005. Eriugena’s Commentary on the Dionysian Celestial Hierarchy. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

76. ———. 2008. "The Early Latin Dyonisius: Eriugena and Hugh of St. Victor." Modern Theology no. 24:601-614.

"This essay sketches how Eriugena and Hugh of St. Victor interpreted the Areopagite, emphasizing key passages for each. Eriugena's translation of the Corpus Dyonisianum and his Expositiones on The Celestial Hierarchy exerted a tremendous influence on subsequent Latin readers, including Hugh, and even survived the condemnation of his masterwork, the Periphyseon. The Victorine, whose own Augustinian inclinations were largely untouched by his encounter with the Areopagite, nevertheless exerted a distinctive influence by (falsely) attributing to Dionysius the view that in our pursuit of God, "love surpasses knowledge." Together, despite their stark differences, they bequeathed a lively Dionysian tradition to the high medieval authors, scholastics and mystics alike.".

77. Rorem.Paul. 2003. "Christ as Cornerstone, Worm, and Phoenix in Eriugena’s Commentary on Dionysius." Dionysius no. 21:183-196.

78. Rosemann, Philipp W. 1996. Omne agens agit sibi simile. A "Repetition" of Scholastic Metaphysics. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

"Chapter IV, "Eriugena -- Causality as Concealing Revelation" follows the great Irish philosopher in his reflections upon causality as a manifestation of the cause in and through its effect, a manifestation, however, which by its very nature cannot but conceal the cause at the same time as it discloses it. For the Christian thinker that is Eriugena, the Trinity constitutes the paradigm of this "concealing revelation". God, who is beyond being and, therefore, strictly speaking "no-thing", enters the domain of being -- "creates himself", as Eriugena puts it in daring terms -- in and through the Trinity, and then, derivatively, through the natural world. We can know God -- and, indeed, God can only come to "know" himself -- only through his effects; yet as in these effects God "alienates" himself from his "true" nature, which is "nothing", creation is as much an obstacle as an aid in our quest for God. Moreover, this ambiguity is not only a theoretical one, having as it does repercussions upon the moral quality of creation, which, as "revelation", serves as a signpost on the road to God, while as "concealment" it presents dangerous temptations, and the occasion of sin." (p. 27).

79. Rudnick, Ulrich. 1990. Das System des Johannes Scottus Eriugena. Eine theologisch-philosophische Studie zu seinem Werk. Bern: Peter Lang.

Aus dem Inhalt: Schöpfungs- und Trinitätslehre - Christologie und Soteriologie - Der Prozeß der Selbstverwirklichung Gottes und die Notwendigkeit der Schöpfung - Die eschatologische Dimension des Bösen - Das irisch-keltische Erbe.

80. Russell, Robert. 1973. "Some Augustinian Influences in Eriugena's De diuisione naturae." In The Mind of Eriugena, edited by O'Meara, John Joseph and Bieler, Ludwig, 31-40. Dublin: Irish University Press.

"In assessing the Latin sources in Eriugena, it goes without saying that St Augustine holds the first place.

In the first of his more original works, the De praedestinatione, composed in 851, and before his contact with the Corpus Dionysianum, the Bishop of Hippo is quoted no fewer than sixty times. Just how Eriugena made use of Augustine’s works on free will, grace, and predestination in that work has been shown by Professor Gérard Mathon in a Communication delivered during the Semaine Augustinienne in Paris in 1954, entitled ‘Utilisation des textes de saint Augustin par Jean Scot Érigène dans son De praedestinatione’.(2)

It must be acknowledged, however, that, despite its obvious importance, no definitive work has yet appeared on the overall influence exerted by the writings of the African bishop.

(...)

The present paper is offered as a modest attempt to supply in part for this notable lacuna in Eriugenian scholarship. I have chosen to restrict this inquiry to an examination of the De divisione naturae for several reasons. First, because of a limitation of time imposed by our programme; secondly, because the work itself is not only the most original of Eriugena’s writings but also the one which reflects the full maturity of its author. (...)

Thirdly, since it was composed after the author’s contact with the Corpus Dionysianum, it is possible to compare and evaluate Augustine’s role in the formation of Eriugena’s definitive teaching with this and other Greek sources. If one restricts this role to scriptural exegesis, the author of the De divisione naturae expressly states his preference for Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine as preeminent after Apostolic times: ‘. . . post sanctos Apostolos nullum apud Graecos fuisse in expositionibus divinae Scripturae maioris auctoritatis Gregorio theologo, nullum apud Romanos Aurelio Augustino’.(6) Again, in the field of theology, Augustine is ‘sanctissimus divinusque theologus’.(7) Of learning in general, he is ‘magnus divinarum humana-rumque rerum et solertissimus inquisitor et copiosissimus expositor’.(8) Finally, Augustine is quoted over forty times in this same work." (pp. 31-32)

(...)

"A fuller treatment of Augustinian influences on Eriugena’s De divisione naturae would have had to include, in addition to those already indicated, certain aspects of the doctrine of creation, such as materia informis and the rationes seminales; also, the problem of evil, and perhaps, where Augustine’s influence is strongest of all, Eriugena’s presentation of Trinitarian theology.

In conclusion, it need hardly be noted that Eriugena’s great respect for Augustine did not prevent him from departing consciously from his authority, a position fully justified by Eriugena’s conviction of the natural superiority of reason over all human authority. Gilson describes his attitude this way: ‘When a man speaks, even if his authority is universally recognized by other men, what he says is true only if reason approves of it.’(54) In a number of instances Eriugena rejects Augustine in favour of Greek authorities on such basic issues as authentic human nature, the constitution of corporeal reality, the status of original paradise, sexual differentiation, the nature of the glorified body, and many aspects of eschatology. In the final analysis, Eriugena’s importance and greatness do not lie in the fact that he compiled a Liber Sententiarum, but rather that he achieved a new and powerful philosophic-theological synthesis in an age which made such a feat all the more remarkable. The present Colloquium then is not only a fitting tribute to the memory of Eriugena but, hopefully, the beginning of a new era which will witness a richly productive renaissance of Eriugenian studies." (pp. 38-39)

(2) Augustinus Magister 3 (Paris 1954), pp. 419—428.

(6) De divisions naturae IV. 14, col. 804CD.

(7) Ibid. iv. 14, col. 803B.

(8) Ibid. v. 37, col. 992A.

(54) history of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York 1960), p. 114.

81. Savage, John J. 1958. "Two Notes on Johannes Scotus." Scriptorium no. 12:228-237.

82. Schrimpf, Gangolf. 1973. "Zur Frage der Authentizität unserer Texte von Johannes Scottus' 'Annotationes in Marcianum'." In The Mind of Eriugena, edited by O'Meara, John Joseph and Bieler, Ludwig, 125-137. Dublin: Irish University Press.

83. ———. 1977. "Wertung und Rezeption antker Logik im Karolingerreich." In Logik, Ethik, Theorie der Geisteswissenschaften. XI. Deutscher Kongress für Philosophie, Göttingen, 5 - 9 Oktober 1975, edited by Patzig, Günther, Scheibe, Erhard and Wieland, Wolfgang, 451-456. Hamburg: Meiner.

"In the years preceding the mid-9th-century Predestination controversy, the doctrine of the Church was defended, and taught, by means of the catena, that is by a survey of the teaching of the Fathers of the Church. In the middle of the 9th century a new method was resorted to by Eriugena, viz. the use of Logic. The author seeks to identify JSE's probable sources in ancient and late antique literature: these he lists, together with the provenance of the manuscripts to which JSE could have had access. He discerns three crucial stages in the dissemination of the relevant literature, viz. Charlemagne's circle and in particular Alcuin, the monastery of Fulda under Rhabanus Maurus, and the cathedral school at Laon in the period of Martinus Scottus and JSE - about 840-860. At the first stage Logic remained a theoretical school subject: at Fulda syllogistic argument began to be appreciated; in Eriugena's writings it became part of the very fabric, reflecting the inherent negative and positive aspects that he sought to express. This bries article is enriched by two valuable pages of footnotes." (Brennan, pp. 45-46).

84. ———. 1982. Das Werk des Johannes Scottus Eriugena im Rahmen des Wissenschaftsverständnisses seiner Zeit. Eine Hinführung zu Periphyseon. Münster: Aschendorff.

85. ———. 1989. "Die systematische Bedeutung der beiden logischen Einteilungen (divisiones) zu Beginn von Periphyseon." In Giovanni Scoto nel suo tempo. L'organizzazione del sapere in età carolingia, 113-151. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi dull'Alto Medieoevo.

86. ———. 1990. "Der Begriff des Elements in Periphyseon III." In Begriff und Metapher. Sprachform des Denkens bei Eriugena, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 65-79. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

87. ———. 1992. "Vita - anima - corpus spirituale. Ein Vorschlag zur Interpretation von Periphyseon III cap. 36-39 und V col. 978B-994B." In From Athens to Chartres. Neoplatonism and Medieval Thought. Studies in Honour of Edouard Jeauneau, edited by Westra, Haijo Jan, 195-221. Leiden: Brill.

"Johannes Scottus Eriugena stellt im dritten Buch seines Hauptwerks eine Verbindung zwischen den Begriffen Leben, Seele und Körper her, die ihm zu behaupten gestattet, nach dem Untergang der wahrnehmbaren Welt lebe jeder Mensch mit einem corpus spirituale weiter. Daß er mit diesem Gedanken die christliche Lehre von der Auferstehung des Fleisches als eine Behauptung nachweisen will, die widerspruchsfrei gedacht werden kann und daher eine reale Möglichkeit festhält, zeigt sich im fünften Buch. Um prüfen zu können, ob ihm dieser Nachweis gelungen ist, ist zunächst der systematische Ort zu bestimmen, den er dem der Begriff der Seele in Periphyseon zuweist; denn um seinetwillen wird der Gedanke entwickelt, der die drei genannten Begriffe miteinander verbindet. Sodann ist der Gedanke selbst darzulegen und ist zu klären, als was darin “Leben”, “Seele”, und vor allem corpus spirituale verstanden werden. Erst im Wissen darum kann untersucht werden, wie haltbar der entwickelte Gedanke ist." (s. 195).

88. ———. 2007. "Eine wissenschaftstheoretische Anwendung der "dialectica" bei Johannes Scottus Eriugena." In Dialektik und Rhetorik im früheren und hohen Mittelalter. Rezeption, Überlieferung und gesellschaftliche Wirkung antiker Gelehrsamkeit vornehmlich im 9. und 12. Jahrhundert, edited by Fried, Johannes, 51-72. München: R. Oldenbourg.

89. Sheldon-Williams, Inglis Patrick. 1961. "The Title of Eriugena's Periphyseon." In Studia Patristica. Vol. III, edited by Cross, F. L., 297-302. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

90. ———. 1967. "The Greek Christian Platonist Tradition from the Cappadocians to Maximus and Eriugena." In The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, edited by Armstrong, Arthur Hilary, 425-536. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

91. ———. 1973. "Eriugena's Greek Sources." In The Mind of Eriugena, edited by O'Meara, John Joseph and Bieler, Ludwig, 1-15. Dublin: Irish University Press.

"In the first part of this paper I should like to deal, briefly and on the whole dismissively, with the pagan sources, and in the second with the Christian sources, with an attempt to show how Eriugena first co-ordinated them into a single body of doctrine and then adapted that doctrine to purposes of his own." (p. 1)

(...)

"Plato, then, is known to Eriugena, as to others of his time, not as a writer with whose works he is immediately familiar, but as a kind of eponymous hero of Platonism revealed through the natural philosophers who were his successors: Plato philosophantium de mundo maximus.(20) Aristotle occupies a similar position in the field of dialectic: acutissimus apud Graecos naturalium rerum discretionis repertor.(21) He knew Boethius’s commentary on the De interpretatione, and therefore its Greek name, which Boethius gives,(22) but what he says of the work itself is as vague and inaccurate as his knowledge of the Timaeus. In the Annotationes he simply says that it is a work that treats of the noun, the verb, the connection between them, affirmation, negation and species.(23) In the Periphyseon, written when memory of his early reading has grown fainter, he is even less precise and recalls it as a treatise dealing wholly or for the most part with the possible and the impossible.(24) He also knows of the ten Categories, and devotes a long excursus to them in the first book of the Periphyseon, but his knowledge comes from the fourth-century Latin paraphrase of the De categoriis that was widely read in his time and commonly attributed to St Augustine. There is nothing, he says, that cannot be found in this paraphrase except that he knows from Martianus Capella of a divergent tradition which, in enumerating the Categories, places quality before quantity,(26) an order which he himself adopted in the first draft of the Periphyseon." (p. 2)

(...)

"At the beginning of the De praedestinatione, his earliest work, after re-stating St Augustine’s declaration that the only true philosophy is religion and the only true religion philosophy,(44) he describes philosophy as a quadriuium of which the four branches are διαιρετική, οριστική, αποδεικτική and αναλυτική.(45) These are the names given to the four branches of dialectic by the Peripatetic scholars of Alexandria: Ammonius in his commentary on the Prior Analytics,(46) the Pseudo-Ammonius in his commentary on Porphyry’s Isagoge(47) and David, called the Armenian, in the first recension of his commentary on the same work.(48)" (pp. 3-4)

(20) Eriugena, Periphyseon I. 31, p. 114, 24-25.

(21) Ibid., 14, p. 84, 17-18.

(22) Id., Annot., p. 93, 7; of. Boethius, In librum Aristotelis Peri hermeneias, I, ed. C. Meiser (Leipzig 1877), p. 32, 9.

(23) Ibid., p. 93, 7-9.

(24) Id., Periphyseon II. 29, 597 B10-C8.

(25) Id., Annot., p. 95, 11-17.

(44) Augustine, De uera religione V.

(45) Eriugena, De praedestinatione I. 1, 358A2-15; Prudentius, De praedestinatione 1, PL 115. 1011D; Floras, Lib. adu. Joh. Scot., I, PL 119 104A.

(46) Ammonius, In anal. pr., Prooem., Comm. Arist., graec. IV. 6, pp. 7, 26-8, 9.

(47) Ps.-Ammon., In isag., p. 24, 34 Busse.

(48) MS. Paris BN gr. 1939.

92. Silvestre, Hubert. 1952. "Le commentaire inédit de Jean Scot Érigène au mètre IX du livre III du De consolatione philosophiae de Boèce." Revue d'Histoire Ecclésiastique no. 47:44-122.

93. ———. 1956. "Jean Scot Érigène, commentateur de Prudence." Scriptorium no. 10:90-92.

94. Smith, Lesley. 1989. "The Manuscript Tradition of Periphyseon Book 4." In Giovanni Scoto nel suo tempo. L'organizzazione del sapere in età Carolingia, edited by Leonardi, Claudio, 499-512. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'Alto Medioevo.

95. ———. 1992. "Yet more on the Autograph of John the Scot: MS Bamberg Ph. 2/2 and Its Place in Periphyseon Tradition." In From Athens to Chartres. Neoplatonism and Medieval Thought. Studies in Honour of Edouard Jeauneau, edited by Westra, Haijo Jan, 47-70. Leiden: Brill.

"Perhaps because the newest critical edition of Johannes Scotus Eriugena’s Periphyseon reached only the end of book three before its editor’s [J. P. Sheldon-Williams] death, recent discussion of the manuscript tradition of the work has tended to centre around the codices important to the first three books and containing, by and large, the first and second versions of Eriugena’s text. Subsequently, those volumes containing only books four and five, or interesting particularly for versions three and four of the text, have been neglected. In this paper I should like to redress that balance somewhat, especially in regard to the Bamberg manuscript of books four and five, Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, MS Ph. 2/2 (HJ. IV 6) = J. As I, together with Dr. Mark Zier, am presently assisting Edouard Jeauneau with the edition of Periphyseon books four and five, in order to complete Sheldon-Williams’ critical edition, it seems appropriate to concentrate on this part of the textual tradition.

Against all expectations, Bamberg J has proved a singularly fascinating witness to the text and I shall concentrate on it in detail, particularly noting the light it brings to the thorny problem of Eriugena’s autograph and the contemporary circle of scholars in the area. Firstly, however, in order to set the scene, and for the sake of a clarity which previous editions have not fostered, if only because of constantly shifting nomenclature, I shall survey the manuscript tradition of the work as a whole." (p. 47)

(...)

"This study has been centred on one manuscript and really only one book of Periphyseon; it shows the limitations as well as the fruitfulness of such concentration. It highlights the importance of a new edition since knowledge of the text— the actual writing of and working over of these manuscripts—is crucial to the understanding of their makeup and use. In the meantime, J shows us at least one other, somewhat learned, reader of Eriugena’s text. It is becoming more and more evident that Johannes Scotus was not working in a vacuum but amongst a group of receptive and critical readers." (p. 70).

96. Steel, Carlos. 2014. "Maximus Confessor and John Scottus Eriugena on Place and Time." In Eriugena and Creation. Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Eriugenian Studies, held in honor of Edouard Jeauneau, Chicago, November 9-12, 2011, edited by Otten, Willemien and Allen, Michael I., 291-318. Turnhout: Brepols.

97. Stock, Brian. 1967. "The Philosophical Anthropology of Johannes Scottus Eriugena." Studi Medievali no. 8:1-57.

98. ———. 1967. "Observations on the use of Augustine by Johannes Scottus Eriugena." Harvard Theological Review no. 60:213-220.

"The ninth-century metaphysician, John the Scot, who came very probably from Ireland to write both polemics and philosophy at the court of Charles the Bald, is known to have read a number of Augustine's writings, and to have cited them in his major work, De Divisione Naturae or Periphyseon,(1) at times without showing much regard for the context of his quotations. He composed Periphyseon around 86o A.D., (2) in a period which was noted for the dissemination of traditional theological ideas to a large, poorly educated public, rather than for its innovations.(3) The influence of Greek ideas on John's mind, unusual in his day, but not quite so unusual as we used to believe, (4) gradually gave rise to the position, now commonly held by historians, that his thought was more or less dominated by Greek ideas to the exclusion of the Latins. This position has had to be modified, however, in the light of closer examination of his use of figures like the

Pseudo-Dionysius."

(1) A list of citations from Augustine in Periphyseon and other works is compiled by Dom M. Cappuyns, Jean Scot Erigène: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa pensée (Brussels, 1964 [reprint]), 388f.

(2) I. P. Sheldon-Williams, A Bibliography of Johannes Scottus Eriugena, Journal of Ecclesiastical History X' (1959), 198f.

(3) B. Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1952), 371.

(4) On the use of Greek in the theological literature of the period, see A. Siegemund, Die Überlieferung der griechischen christlichen Literatur in der lateinischen Kirche bis zum XII. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1949), and the occasional remarks of B. Bischoff in Wendepunkte in der Geschichte der lateinischen Exegese in] Frühmittelalter, Sacris Erudiri VI (1954), 189-281; on Eriugena's study of Greek, Cappuyns, op. cit., 128-46.

99. ———. 1977. ""Intelligo me esse": Eriugena's "Cogito"." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 327-336. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

100. ———. 1980. "In Search of Eriugena's Augustine." In Eriugena. Studien zu seinen Quellen, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 85-104. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

"My purpose is to suggest some new lines of direction in assessing the influence of Augustine on the Periphyseon.

To date, Augustine’s influence has been gauged by allusions, quotations, misquotations and points of opposition to works which we know for sure that the bishop of Hippo wrote. But the now extensive literature on the subject(1) has paid little attention to the conception Eriugcna himself had of Augustine. Eriugcna was not only acquainted with most of the Maurist canon(2); he also considered authentic later syntheses of Augustine’s doctrines like those of Bede and at least one spurious treatise, the anonymous fourth century Decem Categoriae. Eriugena’s assimilation and transformation of these texts, particularly in books one and two, coloured his interpretation of better known passages from such works as De Genesi ad Litteram, De Trinitate and De Civitate Dei. Their logical bent not only provided him with a rationale for harmonizing the views of the Latins and the Greeks secundum Augustinum. In combination with other works on the trivium actively studied at the ‘palace school’(3), they laid the foundation for a number of more general statements on language, reality and God’s word.

Augustine’s influence should therefore be viewed in two perspectives. The predominant role was played by the real Augustine. While some passages of the theological writings were undoubtedly read in the light of pseudo-Augustine, the majority were not. Nor is there any single key which will unlock the secrets of Eriugena's reading of Augustine as a whole. On the other hand, Eriugena should not be separated artificially from the intellectual milieu of the later Carolingian age. Alcuin, Rabanus Maurus, Heiric of Auxerre and others not only recognized Augustine as the central Latin father and philosopher of history but also as an incisive commentator on topics of ancient logic and grammar. Eriugena undoubtedly shared their views." (pp. 85-86)

(1) For a concise recent bibliography, sec G. Madec, “1.'Augustinisme de Jean Scot dans le De Praedestinatione”, in [R. Roques, ed.,] Jean Scot Érigène et l’histoire de la philosophie (Paris, 1977), 183 n 1. The subject is also dealt with in the following articles in the same volume: J. J. O'Meara, "Eriugena’s Use of Augustine in his Teaching of the Return of the Soul and the Vision of God,” 191-200; J. Moreau, “Le verbe et la création selon S. Augustin et J. Scot Erigène,” 201-09; B. McGinn, “The Negative Element in the Anthropology of John the Scot.” 315-25 and B. Stock, “Intelligo me Esse: Eriugena’s ‘Cogito’”, 327-34.

(2) See in general Dom M. Cappuyns, Jean Scot Érigène, sa vie, son œuvre, sa pensée, repr. (Brussels, 1964), 388-89 and, on the ratios of citations of Augustine to Greek authors in the Periphyseon, O'Meara, art. cit., 191-92.

(3) See G. Mathon, “Les formes et la signification de la pédagogie des arts libéraux au milieu du IXe siècle. L’enseignement palatin de Jean Scot Érigène,” in Arts libéraux et philosophie (Montréal and Paris, 1969), 47-64; on Eriugena’s biblical studies, see John J. Contreni, “The Biblical Glosses of Haimo of Auxerre and John Scottus Eriugena,” Speculum 51 (1976), 411-34; on the work of Irish scholars more generally, see Bernhard Bischoff, “Irische Schreiber im Karolingerreich,” Jean Scot Érigène, 47-58 and John J. Contreni, "The Irish 'Colony' at Laon during the Time of John Scottus,” ibid., 59-67. On the growth of interest in logic, sec the brief review of A. van der Vyver, “Les étapes du développement philosophique du haut moyen âge,” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 7 (1929), 435-40.

101. Théry, Gabriel. 1931. "Scot Erigène traducteur de Denys." Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen-Age:185-278.

"Pour sa traduction des écrits du Pseudo-Denys, Scot Erigène dispose déjà de la version d'Hilduin. D'ailleurs il y a tout lieu de croire que, dès 851, il compte parmi les hellénistes de son temps. Importance du vocabulaire de la version de Scot Erigène pour la connaissance du langage philosophique et théologique qui se crée en Occident au IX siècle. Les idées nouvelles introduites par Denys vont déterminer une langue nouvelle.".

102. ———. 1933. "Scot Erigène introducteur de Denys." The New Scholasticism no. 7:91-108.

103. Tomasic, Thomas Michael. 1988. "The Logical Function of Metaphor and Oppositional Coincidence in the Pseudo-Dionysius and Johannes Scottus Eriugena." The Journal of Religion no. 68:361-376.

104. Touchette, Gilles. 1986. "L'affixation dans le "Periphyseon". Analyse générale et èétude d'un cas type." In Jean Scot écrivain, edited by Allard, Guy-H., 327-341. Paris: Vrin.

105. Traube, Ludwig. 1912. Autographa des Iohannes Scottus. Aus dem Nachlass hrsg. von Edward Kennard Rand. Mit 12 Tafeln. Vorgelegt am 13. Januar, 1912. München: Verlag der Königlich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Extracted from Palaeographische Forschungen, V.

106. Trego, Kristell. 2008. "La subsistence des existants. La contribution de Jean Scot Erigène à la constitution d'un vocabulaire latin de l'être." Chora: Revue d'études anciennes et médiévales no. 6:143-180.

"S'il reprend des thèmes chers à la patristique, Erigène adapte ces notions théologiques afin de penser non plus tant l'être divin, que l'être créé, en sa condition même de créature. Ainsi Erigène reconnaît-il aux êtres créés, qu'il nomme «existants» (existentia), une subsistence qui, si elle se fonde dans l'essence divine, s'en distingue toutefois.

Quoi qu'il en soit du contexte néoplatonicien dans lequel intervient le terme subsistence (utilisé notamment pour traduire l'huparxis du Pseudo-Denys ou de Maxime le Confesseur), l'on ne saurait le réduire à la nomination de la venue à l'être (c'est l'existence qui évoque cette idée). Réinvestissant la notion de subsistence qui s'est construite chez ses prédécesseurs latins, notre auteur s'en sert pour faire signe vers l'idée d'une permanence de ce qui est au-delà de la procession qui lui a permis d'accéder à l'être.".

107. Trouillard, Jean. 1973. "Érigène et la théophanie créatrice." In The Mind of Eriugena, edited by O'Meara, John Joseph and Bieler, Ludwig, 98-113. Dublin: Irish University Press.

108. ———. 1977. "La notion d' "analyse" chez Érigène." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 349-356. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

109. ———. 1983. "Erigène et la naissance du sens." In Platonismus und Christentum. Festschrift für Heinrich Dörrie, edited by Blume, Horst-Dieter and Mann, Friedhelm, 267-276. Münster: Aschendoff.

"L'Auteur part de la distinction entre "Dieu" et la Déité chez Eckhart ("Dieu" nous cache la Déité), et montre que l'origine s'en trouve chez Erigène. Il présente ainsi le problème du "sens", c'est-à-dire de l'émergence de "Dieu", à partir du "non-sens originel" de la Déité, chez l'Erigène reconstruisant sa théorie des théophanies, sa théorie de la lumière et du néant, sa doctrine des mouvements de l'âme. Il conclut en inscrivant J. Scot dans le courant général du néoplatonisme. L'incarnation du verbe est le point d'articulation du non-sens originel avec le déploiement de la nature.".

110. Vernet, André. 1977. "Fragment d'un manuscrit du "Periphyseon" de Jean Scot (XIe siècle)." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 101-108. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

111. Vezin, Jean. 1977. "A propos des manuscrits de Jean Scot : quelques remarques sur les manuscrits autographes du haut moyen åge." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 95-100. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

112. Walker, G. S. M. 1966. "Erigena's Conception of the Sacraments." Studies in Church History no. 3:150-158.

113. Weiner, Sebastian Florian. 2007. Eriugenas Negative Ontologie. Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner.

"Recently, there has been an upsurge of interest in the work Periphyseon of the early medieval philosopher John Scot Eriugena. Previous research has classified the book either as a piece of Neoplatonic philosophy or as part of the Latin dialectic tradition, which has led to one-sided interpretations. The present publication focuses instead on the philosophical claims defended in the Periphyseon itself, examines its originality and discusses the soundness of its argumentation. As a result, a hitherto unnoticed basic thought of the work has been uncovered, namely the concept of a negative ontology, according to which all substance is completely incomprehensible. This notion constitutes the greatest innovation of Eriugena's thought. In keeping with his negative ontology, Eriugena downgrades the fourfold division of nature that he had presented at the beginning of his work. A critical survey of the current readings of Eriugena as a Neoplatonist and idealist completes this book.".

114. ———. 2008. "Eriugena's Innovation." Vivarium no. 46:1-23.

"John Scot Eriugena's work Periphyseon is commonly regarded as having introduced Neoplatonism into early medieval thinking. Eriugena's theory of the reunification of the Creator and his creation is then viewed as being based on the Neoplatonic scheme of procession and reversion. However, this interpretation falls short of Eriugena's intentions. Above all, he denies any ontological difference between Creator and creation without taking recourse to the Neoplatonic considerations of procession and reversion. Surprisingly, according to Eriugena's explanation, God is not only the Creator but he is also created. He is created insofar as he alone, possessing all being, is the essence of all created things. Moreover, the fourfold division of nature, presented at the beginning of the work, is not Eriugena's own innovation, but a common Carolingian concept. It is rather his aim to show that from an ontological point of view this division has to be resolved.".

115. Wilband, Marie Michelle. 2008. Ingenium veterum mirabile laudet. Eriugena's reception of the Aristotelian categories and their role in the Periphyseon.

Unpublished MA Thesis, Dalhousie University, Halifax, available at ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.

Contents: Abstract VI; Acknowledgments VII; 1. Introduction 1; 2. Th Early Tradition of the Categories from Aristotle to Ammonius 6; 3. Eriugena's Direct Sources - The Categories from Augustine to Alcuin 29; 4. Eriugena's Reception and Treatment of the Categories 48; 5. Conclusion 92; Bibliography 97-107.

"Eriugena's discussion of the Aristotelian categories in Book One of the Periphyseon has the appearance of a mere digression in the context of the work as a whole. Moreover, it is often seen as an incoherent interpretation of Aristotle's original doctrine put forward in the Categories. This thesis proposes to correct these views by reading Eriugena's treatment of the categories in the context of the Neoplatonic commentary tradition, as well as in Eriugena's own historical context. Eriugena's interpretation of the categories becomes coherent when read as a Carolingian development of the Late Antique commentators, Iamblichus in particular. The fruit of that development, namely Eriugena's unusual approach to the categories as generative intellectual realities, makes his treatment of them integral to his system, and the appropriate starting point for the Periphyseon as a whole."

.

116. Wohlmann, Avital. 1983. "L'homme et le sensible dans la pensée de Jean Scot Erigène." Revue Thomiste no. 83:243-273.

117. ———. 1983. "L'ontologie du sensible dans la philosophie de Scot Erigène." Revue Thomiste no. 83:558-582.

118. ———. 1987. L'homme, le monde sensible et le péché dans la philosophie de Jean Scot Erigène. Paris: Vrin.

Préface de Édouard Jeauneau.

119. Zier, Mark A. 1989. "The Shape of the Critical Edition of Perhyseon IV." In Giovanni Scoto nel suo tempo. L'organizzazione del sapere in età Carolingia, edited by Leonardi, Claudio, 487-498. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'Alto Medioevo.

120. ———. 1992. "The Growth of an Idea." In From Athens to Chartres. Neoplatonism and Medieval Thought. Studies in Honour of Edouard Jeauneau, edited by Westra, Haijo Jan, 71-83. Leiden: Brill.

"At a rather more microcosmic level, the earliest manuscript of Periphyseon, Reims, Bibl. mun., MS 875 (= R), provides a glimpse of how these themes unfolded in the mind of the author himself through a fascinating sequence of additions and emendations to the text that are presently being clarified in the critical edition of the fourth book of that work.

Taken together, the additions and emendations in R effectively constitute the second recension of the text. The additions are generally straightforward and intended to amplify the author’s argument. When the additions are brief, they accomplish that goal quite handily. But on several occasions the author chooses to amplify his text by means of lengthy citations of the authorities of the ancient church—Augustine, Boethius, Pseudo-Denis, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor—that occasionally do more to muddle than to clarify the author's point, as we shall see below.

Eriugena has emended his text, on the other hand, with an eye to reshaping his argument. In Book IV, which is cast as a commentary on the creation of human being and the events in Eden, it would seem to be the author’s eschatological vision of Book V, both in its anthropology and its understanding of deification, that stands behind most of the major emendations. The understanding of that vision, which only becomes clear for the author as he first describes it in Book V, compells him to reshape his earlier text according to his later conclusions. His understanding of the return of all things to God in and through human nature leads him to rework in Book IV his presentation of human nature as the image of God, to precise the noetic nature of that image, and to distinguish between the general redemption of human nature and the deification of the saints." (pp. 71-72)

(...)

"Has Scottus revised his description of the microcosm in Book IV before composing his understanding of the eschatological vision in Book V? It is perhaps more than coincidence that R gives evidence of significant emendation of some of the elements that will play a key role in his eschatological vision. Unfortunately the text in R terminates just prior to the end of Book IV, and provides no sure evidence. Nevertheless, it is entirely likely that as he worked out his understanding of the reditus in Book V, the implications of that understanding compelled him to return to his earlier work, especially his discussion of the nature of human being. And it is fitting that we can still trace in the manuscripts that preserve his thought this dialectical dimension in the mind of Eriugena, for whom dialectic was of the essence in the procession and return of the cosmos to God." (pp. 82-83).

121. Zuanazzi, Giovanni. 2003. "Dire l’indicibile. Negazione e trascendenza nel Periphyseon di Giovanni Scoto Eriugena." Acta Philosophica no. 12:89-121.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Avicenna (Ibn-Sina) on the Subject and the Object of Metaphysics

Introduction

"Ibn Sina (Arabic), also known as Avicenna (Latin) and Abu Ali Sina (Persian) was the most original and systematic Muslim philosopher. In this light he is mentioned by two celebrated historians of medieval western philosophy: A. Maurer states, "...his [ibn Sina's] philosophy is a highly personal achievement, ranking among the greatest in the history of philosophy;" and F. Copleston holds, "The greatest Muslim philosopher of the eastern group without doubt is Avicenna or ibn Sina (980-1037), the real creator of a scholastic system in the Islamic world." (1) Y. Mahdavi lists 244 texts attributed to him and G. A. Anawati lists 270. (2) These works envelop a multiplicity of topics such as metaphysics, poetics, animal physiology, minerals, rhetoric, mechanics of solids, Arabic syntax, meteorology, mystical treatises, and a medical treatise, and are translated into more than nineteen languages. The crown of his philosophical corpus is a set of encyclopedic collections of treatises, especially al-Shifa, al-Najàt, al-Isharatwa al-Tanbihàt and the Danish Nameh; each collection contains elaborate philosophical treatises on metaphysics, physics, psychology, and logic. A standard edition of the logical texts of al-Shifa' alone comprises more than one sixteen hundred double size (1600) pages.(3) (pp. 1-2)

Contemporary philosophies of logical syntax of a language distinguish between two types of primitives-one, designative types of sign, the other, rules for transformation, designation, and interpretation, and these distinctions can be applied to ibn Sina's system.

Ibn Sina's two primordial notions of the soul are 'being' (hasti, wujûd) and the modalities [of necessity (wajib), contingency (mumkin) and impossibility (mumtani )]. The notion of being is the core of his system, while the modalities specify the subset of beings that are existents. The notion of 'being' concatenated with 'necessity' point to 'the necessary being;' using the second version of the ontological argument, 'necessary being' results in 'the Necessary Existent.' The notion of 'being' concatenated with 'contingency' has two possible results: (a) if there is a cause for the case in question, then the contingency is an actual existent-for example, in the case of 'being a human,' persons are existents because they have parents; (b) in the case of absence of the cause, the results are non-actual contingencies such as unicorns. 'Impossibility' and 'being' lead to no existent, as illustrated by 'round squares,' and 'the largest number.' The key notions of ibn Sina's system are very clear: 'Being-qua-being' (hasti, wujûd) corresponds to Aristotle's notion of 'being-qua-being' in Metaphysica 1002a 20 (ὂν ἢ ὀν) and E. Moody's reading of Ockham's use of 'ens' in Summa Totius Logicae. (4) It signifies the most determinable concept. 'Non-being' is meaningless. We should note that all mental concepts (actual or not actual) signify a being. For this reason 'being' is different from 'existent'.

'Existent' (mawjûd) signifies actual entities, Aristotle's notion of first substance (πρώτη φιλοσοφία). There are no impossible existents. For ibn Sina there is only one Necessary existent, which is the ultimate cause of generation of other existents. 'Existence' itself is not an existent, but signifies those entities which are neither uncaused 'contingent beings' nor 'impossible entities.''Essence,' (mahyya) is used by ibn Sina in the sense of "ti esti" and in the secondary sense of "ousia" employed by Aristotle. (5) An existent partakes of an essence; for example, the feature of a basket-hall can be discussed in terms of the formal properties of a sphere. An unrealized entity such as a unicorn may have an essence but no existence." (pp. 20-21)

Notes

(1) A. Maurer, Medieval Philosophy, New York, 1962, p. 94; F. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, New York, 1962, vol. II pt. 1 p. 215.

(2) Y. Mahdavi, Bibliographie d'ibn Sina, Tehran, 1954; G. C. Anawati, Essai de bibliographie avicennienne, Cairo, 1950 [these Bibliographies are in Arabic]

(3) Al-Shifa'Al-Mantiq, ed. I. Madkour, et al. 4 vols. (Cairo, 1960).

(4) See A. Moody, The Logic of William of Ockham, New York, 1965 p. 137

(5) See P. Morewedge, The Metaphysica of Avicenna (ibn Sina), London, 1973 p. 313.

From: Parviz Morewedge, The Mystical Philosophy of Avicenna, Binghamton, Global Publications, 2001.

The relation betweein ontology and theology according to Avicenna

"The inspection of the llahiyyat reveals not only the importance of Metaph. α, 1-2 and Λ, 6-10, but also the particular way in which Avicenna reproduces these two loci of the Metaphysics in his work: first, the doctrines of α, 1-2 and Λ, 6-10 are somehow interconnected in the final section of the Ilahiyyat, the one dealing with philosophical theology (VIII, 1–X, 3); second, within this section the doctrine of α, 1-2 is placed before that of Λ, 6-10, and constitutes a sort of introduction to philosophical theology. It is possible that Avicenna read α, 1-2 and Λ 6-10 during his secondary education according to this same pattern. (...)

In sum, Avicenna's approach to the Metaphysics at the time of his secondary instruction had three main features: (i) it was not an extensive reading of this work in its entirety, but only of the essential parts of it, namely--on the basis of the evidence at our disposal--α, 1-2 and Λ, 6-10; (ii) these two loci were read in connection with one another, as elements of the theological part of the Metaphysics, in disregard of the ontological part of it; (iii) a was read as an introduction to Λ, 6-10 whereas books A, B-K of Aristotle's work were probably neglected." (pp. 57-58)

"The first specific endeavour of clarifying the relationship between ontology and theology within the [Aristotle's] Metaphysics took place, as far as we know, in Arabic philosophy. In post-Aristotelian Greek philosophy, this relationship was not perceived as problematic: it appears as a crucial issue neither in an independent "aporetic" treatise on metaphysics like Theophrastus' Metaphysics, nor in a reworking of the Metaphysics such as parts II and III of Nicholas of Damascus' Philosophy of Aristotle (at least judging from the extant portions of this latter work), nor in the commentaries on the Metaphysics by Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Syrianus and Ammonius/Asclepius. In Arabic philosophy the problem was determined by the "theologizing" interpretation of the Metaphysics offered by philosophers like al-Kindi, which derives proximately from the classifications of sciences of Late Antiquity and depends ultimately on Aristotle's perspective (iii) taken in isolation from the others. (*) Al-Farabi's reacted to al-Kindi's one-sided view of the Metaphysics: connecting himself with the commentatorial tradition of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius and Ammonius/Asclepius, he had a broader view of the Metaphysics and in the Fi Agrad he clarified that Aristotle's work contains not only a theology, but also an ontology. (**) The background of the entire discussion is the relationship of falsafa and Islam: whereas al-Kindi emphasizes the theological part of the Metaphysics in order to assimilate Aristotelian metaphysics (and Greek metaphysics in general) and Islamic theology, al-Farabi stresses the distinction of metaphysics and philosophical theology and assigns a broader scope (and, implicitly, a higher rank) to the former with regard to the latter. Avicenna further develops al-Farabi's point of view, somehow incorporating in it al-Kindi's perspective, and presents the fullest and most articulated account of the relationship of ontology and theology within metaphysics in the history of Medieval philosophy.

Avicenna regards as very important to determine the subject-matter of metaphysics: he starts the Ilahiyyat addressing this issue and adding the "subject-matter" (mawud), as we will see in Chapter 5, to the preliminary questions traditionally discussed by Aristotelian commentators at the beginning of their exegesis of Aristotle's works. He appears to be the first in the history of philosophy to have devoted to this issue a separate and articulated treatment, and his contribution in the first two chapters of Ilahiyyat (I, 1-2) has rightly attracted the attention of scholars. (***) In Avicenna's powerful synthesis, Aristotle's different perspectives on the issue are elucidated and harmonized. As we are going to see in the first part of the present chapter, the main elements of Avicenna's discourse are five. First, he starts with a notion of metaphysics that gathers points (iii) and (i), namely the idea that metaphysics deals with immaterial things and with the first causes and the absolute Prime Cause, i.e. God. Second, he adds point (ii) to point (i) by means of the distinction between the "subject-matter" of metaphysics and the "things searched" in it: according to Avicenna, "existent qua existent", rather than God or the first causes, is the subject-matter of metaphysics. God and the first causes are things searched in metaphysics, and can be taken into account by this discipline just because they are not its subject-matter, for the subject-matter of a discipline is something that is common to all the things searched by the discipline in question, without being itself one of them. Third, he brings to unity perspective (iii) and perspective (ii) by means of a peculiar notion of "existent", according to which this concept is immaterial in as much as it is not restricted to the sphere of material things. Conceived as immaterial, "existent" can be common to all the objects of research of metaphysics. Fourth, he reaches a synthesis between perspective (i) and perspective (ii) by stressing that the first causes and God are a part of "existent" and the principles of the "existent" that is caused. Fifth, he stresses that the first causes and God, despite not being the subject-matter of metaphysics, have nonetheless a fundamental function within this discipline: among the things searched by metaphysics, they are its "goal", namely the things whose knowledge is ultimately pursued." (pp. 113-114)

Notes

(*) See Chapter 2, 6-7.

(**) See Chapter 3, 2.

(***) See Fakhry [1984]; Davidson [1987], pp. 284-288; Hasnawi [1991]; Roccaro [1994]; Ramon Guerrero [1996]; Bertolacci [2001b] pp. 230-232, 259-261.

From: Amos Bertolacci, The Reception of Aristotle's Metaphysics in Avicenna's Kitab al-Sifa'. A Milestone of Western Metaphysical Thought. Leiden: Brill 2006.

"Martin Heidegger claims that the history of metaphysics is a history of the oblivion of being while propounding that his "fundamental ontology" presents a "genuine" account of the question of being that attempts to overcome metaphysics and its oblivion of being. Yet, it is perhaps doubtful that, for more than two thousand years (from Aristotle to Edmund Husserl), no philosopher was able to come up with a "genuine" approach to the question of being, and that no philosopher attempted to overcome the metaphysical history of the oblivion of being. This issue becomes more polemical and problematic, given that it is unlikely the case that in the global intellectual history of Chinese, Jewish, or Islamic philosophy, no philosopher or philosophical tradition has successfully attempted to overcome the history of the oblivion of being. In the case of Islamic philosophy, it is well documented that the Near Eastern Muslim world of the Middle ages has had an impact on the intellectual history of Western science and metaphysics. However, it is not yet well documented that the same Near Eastern Islamic philosophical tradition does indeed testify to the development of a phenomenological philosophical tradition that took the question of being to be the most central question of philosophical investigations. Considering the particular case of the physician, philosopher, and poet: Avicenna ([Ibn Sina] 980-1037), it is known that his influential al-Qanun fi al-tib (Book on medicine) was translated into Latin (Liber Canonis) and many other languages, and was in currency since the late Middle ages and early Renaissance in Europe. It is also known that Avicenna's philosophical works have had a strong impact on Thomism and on the works of Maimonides among others. Moreover, Avicenna's philosophical contributions constituted the milestones of a phenomenological mode of investigation in ontology that impacted subsequent philosophical developments in the Near East, up to the recent modem times, and some investigators have already depicted some of the phenomenological dimensions that characterize his views." (pp. XIII-XIV)

From: Nader El-Bizri, The Phenomenological Quest between Avicenna and Heidegger, Binghamton: Global Publications 2000.

Avicenna conception of metaphysics as the "science of being qua being"

"For Ibn Sina, metaphysics is basically the study of "being qua being", but he immediately adds that its most noble, although not its first object is God, the Necessary Being by virtue of itself. (3) All this implies that the existence of God is not self-evident, but has to be proven. In order to do so, Ibn Sina develops his theory of the essence/existence distinction. In God, His essence is His existence, while in all other Beings one has to sharply distinguish their existence from their essence. (4) In the latter case, he qualifies the existence as being not identical with, but "accidental" to essence. Ibn Rushd saw in it a simple affirmation of the pure accidentality of existence, and therefore vehemently criticized Ibn Sina on this point. (5) Till recent times, this latter interpretation remained the standard one in the West. F. Rahman seems to have been the first contemporary commentator to have seriously put into question such an understanding of Ibn Sina's affirmation. (6) However, it deserves to be stated that already Henry of Ghent, in the late thirteenth century, was aware of the fact that the restricted Aristotelian notion of "accidentality" was surely not involved here, but a larger one. (7)

Among the vast majority of the Latin scholastics who followed Ibn Rushd's line of interpretation, was Thomas Aquinas. However, he accepted as most valid Ibn Sina's distinction between essence and existence, (8) a fact already evident from the very title of his famous early work De ente et essentia. Thomas Aquinas uses Ibn Sina's theory in order to explain the composite nature of all creatures, especially the immaterial ones, i.e., the angels. He obviously rejects any kind of hylemorphic composition in them. Although he does not mention the Avicennian vocabulary of "necessary in virtue of itself', "necessary in virtue of another", and "possible", he clearly derived his view from Ibn Sina, and not from Aristotle, Boethius, or the Liber de Causis as he suggests. (9) But, on the other hand, Thomas wants to distance himself from what he considers to be Ibn Sina's "essentialism". For him, there is not only identity in God between essence and existence, but God is above all "esse subsistens", which clearly means that the priority is on the side of the existence. Thomas certainly believed that he thus was radically opposing Ibn Sina's view. Even if he misunderstood the accidentality of existence in the latter's thought, he was right in his opinion that Ibn Sina had not fully appreciated existence as a part of the integral ontological dimension of Beings. (pp. 1-2)

I have already stressed that for Ibn Sina, metaphysics was essentially the study of being qua being, i.e., an ontology, but that its most noble object of investigation is God, in other words it also includes theodicy. One may add that for Ibn Sina metaphysics is moreover the science that has to demonstrate the principles of the other sciences, which means that it also deals with the "archaeology" of the sciences. Although Aristotle's metaphysics entails elements of all three of these views, it never linked them together within a substantial unity. Based on the important preparatory work of his predecessor al-Farabi, for the first time in the history of philosophy Ibn Sina had worked out a metaphysical "system" as "system". In this respect this latter rightly deserves to be qualified as a kind of onto-theology even if it does not completely match Heidegger's – inspired by Duns Scotus – conception. In view of all this, metaphysics is certainly the highest and most valuable of all sciences, a fact particularly underlined by Ibn Sina when he discusses, in his Danesh-Nameh, metaphysics immediately after the "instrumental" science of logic, but before "physics", and such contrary to the customary habit, a habit he himself respects in his Arabic encyclopaedias, of presenting it as the latest of all sciences. While it is commonly designated as "meta-physics", i.e., the science of what comes after physics, an appellation sometimes used by Ibn Sina as well, he does not hesitate to call it Ilahiyyat, i.e. "(science) of the Divine Things" as well, and indeed prefers to do so." (pp. 6-7)

Notes

(3) This is a common doctrine in his writings, clearly expressed in his major writing al-Shifa, al-Ilahiyyat, vol. I, eds. G.C. Anawati and S. Zayed, Cairo, OGIG, 1960, book I, chapters 1-2. This text is also available in a mediaeval Latin translation, see S. Van Riet (ed.), Avicenna Latinus. Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina, I–IV, Louvain, Peeters; Leiden, Brill, 1977, Tractatus primus, capitula 1-2.

(4 )This idea is omnipresent in Ibn Sina's metaphysical works too. Again, I refer only to al-Shifa, al-Ilahiyyat, but now vol. II, eds. M.Y. Musa, S. Dunya and S. Zayed, Cairo, OGIG, 1960, book VIII, chapter 4; for the Latin translation, see S. Van Riet (ed.), Avicenna Latinus. Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina V-X, Louvain, Peeters; Leiden, Brill, 1980, Tractatus octavos, capitulum 4.

(5) See e.g., Ibn Rushd, Tafsir ma ba'd al-Tabia, ed. M. Bouyges, Beirut, 1938. Repr. Tehran, Int. Hikma, 1377 H.S., vol. I, commentary on book Gamma, C 3, p. 313; there exists a medieval Latin translation, see Averroes, Opera omnia, Venetiis, Junta, 1562, vol. VIII, f. 67 B.

(6) F. Rahman, "Essence and Existence in Avicenna", Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (1958), pp. 1-14; see also ID., "Essence and Existence in Ibn Sina. The Myth and the Reality", Hamdard Islamicus 41 (1981), pp. 3-14.

(7) See P. Porro, "Possibility ed esse essentiae in Enrico di Gand", in W. Vanhamel (ed.), Henry of Ghent. Proceedings of the International Colloquium on the Occasion of the 700th Anniversary of His Death (1293) (Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, Ser. I, vol. XV), Leuven, Leuven University Press, 1996, pp. 211-53, especially p. 215.

(8) There exists ample literature on this subject. For references, see my An Annotated bibliography on Ibn Sina (1970-1989) (Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, Ser. I, vol. XIII), Leuven, Leuven University Press, 1991, pp. 244-250 and my An Annotated bibliography on Ibn Sina. First Supplement (1990-1994) (FIDEM, Textes et études du moyen age, 12). Louvain-la-Neuve, FIDEM, 1999, pp. 137-161.

(9) See Thomas d'Aquin. Dietrich de Freiberg, L'être et l'essence. Le vocabulaire médiéval de l'ontologie. Traduction et commentaires par A. de Libera et C. Michon (Points. Essais, 339), Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1996, pp. 27-36.

From: Jules Janssens, Ibn Sina and His Influence on the Arabic and Latin World, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.

The subject of metaphysics

"...it behooves us to commence making known the ides of metaphysics. (...)

The philosophical sciences, as has been pointed out elsewhere in [our] books, are divided into the theoretical and the practical. The difference between the two has [also] been indicated. It has been mentioned that the theoretical are those wherein we seek the perfecting of the theoretical faculty of the soul through the attainment of the intellect in act -- this by the attainment of conceptual and verifiable knowledge through things that are [the things] they are, without [reference to their] being our [own] actions and states. Thus, the aim in these [things] is to attain an opinion and belief which is not an opinion and belief pertaining to the manner of an action, or to the manner of a principle of an action inasmuch as it is a principle of action. And [it has also been stated] that practical [philosophy] is that wherein one first seeks the perfection of the theoretical faculty by attaining conceptual and verifiable knowledge involving things that are [the things] they are in being our own actions -- thereby attaining, secondly, the perfection of the practical faculty through morals.

It was stated that theoretical knowledge is confined to three divisions -- namely, the natural, the mathematical, and the divine.

[It was also stated] that the subject matter of the natural is bodies, with respect to their being in motion and at rest, and [that] its investigation pertains to the occurrences that happen to them essentially in this respect.

[It was also stated] that the subject matter of mathematics is either that which is quantity essentially abstracted from matter, or that which has quantity -- the thing investigated therein being states that occur to quantity inasmuch as it is quantity and where one includes in its definition neither a species of matter nor a motive power.

[Finally, it was stated] that the divine science investigates the things that are separable from matter in subsistence and definition.

You have also heard that the divine science is the one in which the first causes of natural and mathematical existence and what relates to them are investigated; and [so also is] the Cause of Causes and Principle of Principles -- namely, God, exalted be His greatness.

This much is what you would have come to know from the books that have previously come to you. But from this it would not have become evident to you what the subject matter of metaphysics really is (except for a remark in the Book of Demonstration, if you remember it). This is because in the other sciences you would have something which is a subject; things that are searched after; and principles, [universally] admitted, from which demonstrations are constructed. But now you still have not truly ascertained what is the subject matter of this science -- whether it is the essence of the First Cause, so that what one seeks here is knowledge of His attributes and acts, or whether the subject matter is some other notion." pp. 2-3 (Book One, Chapter One).

"Hence, we must inescapably indicate the subject matter of this science so that the purpose that lies in this science becomes evident for us. (p. 7)

"Moreover, [the subject matter of metaphysics] cannot be specifically confined to any one category, nor can it be the attributes of any one thing except the existent inasmuch as it is an existent.

It is thus clear to you from this totality [of what has been said] that the existent inasmuch as it is an existent is something common to all these things and that it must be made the subject matter of this are for the reasons we have stated. And, moreover, because it is above the need either for its quiddity to be learned or for itself to be established so as to require another science to undertake to clarify [such] a state of affairs therein ([this] because of the impossibility of establishing the subject matter of a science and ascertaining its quiddity in the very science that has that subject), [it thus needs] only the admission of its existences and quiddity. The primary subject matter of this science is, hence, the existent inasmuch as it is an existent; and the things sought after in [this science] are those that accompany [the existent,] inasmuch as it is an existent, unconditionally." (pp. 9-10, Book One, Chapter Two).

From: Avicenna, The Metaphysics of the Healing. A Parallel English-Arabic Text Translated, Introduced and Annotated by Michael E. Marmura, Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press 2005.

The object of metaphysics

"What adheres necessarily to this science [therefore] is that it is necessarily divided into parts. Some of these will investigate the ultimate causes, for these are the causes of every caused existent with respect to its existence. [This science] will [also] investigate the First Cause, from which emanates every caused existent inasmuch as it is a caused existent, not only inasmuch as it is an existent in motion or [only inasmuch as it is] quantified. Some [of the parts of this science] will investigate the accidental occurrences to the existent, and some [will investigate] the principles of the particular sciences. And because the principles of each science that is more particular are things searched after in the higher science -- as, for example, the principles of medicine [found] in natural [science] and of surveying [found] in geometry -- it will so occur in this science that the principles of the particular sciences that investigate the states of the particular existents are clarified therein.

Thus, this science investigates the states of the existent -- and the things that belong to it that are akin [to being] divisions and species -- until it arrives at a specialization with which the subject of natural science begins, relinquishing to it this specialty; [and at a] specialization with which the subject matter of mathematics begins, relinquishing to it this specialty; and so on with the others. And [this science] investigates and determines the state of that which, prior to such specialization, is akin to a principle. Thus, [some of] the things sought after in this science are the causes of the existent inasmuch as it is a caused existent; some [of the things sought after] pertain to the accidental occurrences to the existent; and some [pertain] to the principles of the particular sciences.

This, then, is the science sought after in this art. It is first philosophy, because it is knowledge of the first thing in existence (namely, the First Cause) and the first thing in generality (namely, existence and unity).

It is also wisdom, which is the best knowledge of the best thing known. For, it is the best knowledge (that is, [knowledge that yields] certainty) of the best thing known (that is, God, exalted be He, and the causes after Him). It is also knowledge of the ultimate causes of the whole [of caused things]. Moreover, it is knowledge of God and has the definition of divine science, which consists of a knowledge of the things that are separable from matter in definition and existence. For, as has become clear, the existent inasmuch as it is an existent, and its principles and the accidental occurrences [it undergoes] are all prior in existence to matter, and none of them is dependent for its existence on [matter's] existence." (pp. 11-12, Book One, Chapter Two).

From: Avicenna, The Metaphysics of the Healing. A Parallel English-Arabic Text Translated, Introduced and Annotated by Michael E. Marmura, Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press 2005.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Translations of the Philosophical Works by Ibn Sina (Avicenna)

Bibliographical Resources

For a list of Avicenna's philosophical works see:

- Amos Bertolacci. The Reception of Aristotle's Metaphysics in Avicenna's Kitab al-Sifa'. A Milestone of Western Metaphysical Thought, Leiden: Brill 2006, Appendix C: Overview of the Main Works by Avicenna on Metaphysics in Chronological Order, pp. 581-591.

- Dimitri Gutas. Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, Second Edition, Brill: Leiden, 2014, Appendix: An Inventory of Avicenna'a Authentic Works, pp. 387-558.

I give a list of the translations in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish, in chronological order.

English Translations

1. Avicenna. 1951. Avicenna on Theology. Westport: Hyperion Press.

Translated by Arthur J. Arberry.

2. ———. 1952. Avicenna's Psychology. London: Oxford University Press.

An English translation of Kitab al-Najat, Book II, Chapter VI with historico-philosophical notes and textual improvements on the Cairo edition by Fazlur Rahman.

Reprinted: Westport, Hyperion Press, 1981.

3. ———. 1967. "Avicenna on the Divisions of the Rational Sciences." In Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, edited by Lerner, Ralph, Mahdi, Muhsin and Fortin, Ernest L., 95-97. New York: Free Press of Glencoe.

Partial translation.

Reprinted: Ithaca Cornell University Press, 1972.

4. ———. 1967. "The Healing, Metaphysics. First Treatise, Chapter 6. Sixth Treatise, Chapter 1, Chapter 2." In Philosophy in the Middle Ages. The Christian, Islamic and Jewish Tradition, edited by Hyman, Arthur and Walsh, James, 240-254. New York: Harper & Row.

5. ———. 1969. "On the Soul." Philosophical Forum no. 1:555-562.

"Translation by L E. Goodman of the opening pages of the psychological portion of Avicenna's Shifa. Avicenna argues for the substantiality of the soul on the grounds that the soul is in no way dependent on or existent in another thing. He defends this assertion with a thought experiment which provides a historical antecedent to the cogito of Descartes: imagining a spontaneously created soul to exist without senses in space. The conceivability of such a state, he argues, demonstrates the distinctness of the notion of soul from all others and the independence of the soul from all other entities on which its existence might be thought to depend."

6. ———. 1971. Avicenna's Treatise on Logic. (a Concise Philosophical Encyclopaedia) and Autobiography. The Hague: Nijhoff.

Part One of Danesh-name Alai.

Edited and translated from the original Persian by Farhaang Zabeeh.

7. ———. 1973. The Metaphysica of Avicenna (Ibn Sina). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

A critical translation-commentary and analysis of the fundamental arguments in Avicenn's Metaphysica in the Danish Nam-i al'i (The Book of scientific knowledge).

Reprinted Binghamton, Global Publications, Binghamton University 2001.

8. ———. 1973. The Propositional Logic of Avicenna. A Translation from Al-Shifa': Al Qiyas. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company.

Translated by Nabil Shehaby with introduction (pp. 1-28), commentary (pp. 213-281) and glossary.

9. ———. 1974. Avicenna's Commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle. Leiden: Brill.

A critical study with an annotated translation of the text by Ismail M. Dahiyat.

Translation of al-Shi'r, which forms the 9th part of al-Mantiq, itself the 1st section of the author's al-Shifa.

10. ———. 1974. The Life of Ibn Sina. Albany: State University of New York Press.

A critical edition and annotated translation, by William E. Gohlman.

Arabic text and English translation of the author's autobiography, Sirat al-Shaykh al-Ra'is, which was completed by his disciple al-Juzajani.

11. ———. 1980. Avicenna and the Visionary Recital. Irving: Spring Publications.

English translation by Willard R. Task.

Part Two of the original edition, a translation of the Persian commentary on the "Recital of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan" has not been included.

12. ———. 1984. Remarks and Admonitions. Part One: Logic. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

Translated from the original Arabic with an introduction and notes by Shams Constantine Inati.

13. ———. 1996. Ibn Sina and Mysticism. Remarks and Admonitions. Part Iv. London: Kegan Paul International.

An analysis and English translation of the fourth part (Sufism) of Avicenna's Remarks and admonitions.

14. ———. 1999. "Ibn Sina." In An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia. Vol. I Vol. 1: From Zoroaster to 'Omar Khayyam., edited by Nasr, Seyyed Hossein and Aminrazavi, Mehdi, 247-322. New York: Oxford University Press.

Part III. Early Islamic Philosophy : The Peripatetics: 12. Ibn Sina.

1. Metaphysics (from Danish-namah-yi 'ala'i) 247; 2. Creation Ex-Nihilo and Immediate Creation (from al-Isharat wa'l-tanbihat) 269; 3. On Theodicy and Providence I ( from al-Shifa') 277; 4. On Theodicy and Providence II (from al-Isharat wa'l-tanbihati) 289; 5. On Time ( from al-Shifa') 292; 6. The Stations of the Knowers (from al-Isharat wa'l-tanbihat) 303; 7. Living Son of the Awake (from Risalah Hayy ibn Yaqzan) 312; 8. Introduction (from Mantiq al-mashraqiyyin) 321-322.

15. ———. 2005. The Metaphysics of the Healing. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press.

A parallel English-Arabic text translated, introduced, and annotated by Michael E. Marmura.

16. ———. 2010. The Physics of the Healing. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press.

A parallel English-Arabic text translated, introduced, and annotated by Jon McGinnis (two volumes).

French Translations

1. ———. 1892. Le Livre Des Théorèmes Et Des Avertissements. Leyden: Brill.

First part. Arabic text edited and translated by J. Forget.

Reprinted by Institut für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften an der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfrurt am Main, 1999.

2. ———. 1933. Introduction À Avicenne: Son Épître Des Définitions. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer.

Translated with notes by Amélie-Marie Goichon and with a preface by Miguel Asin Palacios.

3. ———. 1951. "Les Notes D'Avicenne Sur La 'Théologie D'Aristote'." Revue Thomiste no. 51:346-406.

Translation by Georges Vajda.

4. ———. 1951. Livre Des Directives Et Remarques. Paris: Vrin.

Translated with an introduction and notes by Amélie-Marie Goichon.

Reprinted 1999.

5. ———. 1954. Avicenne Et Le Récit Visionnaire. Paris: A. Maisonneuve.

By Henry Corbin.

Vol. I: Étude sur le cycle des récits avicenniens. - Vol. II: Le Récit de Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, texte arabe, version et commentaire en persan attribués a Juzjany, traduction Français e, notes et gloses.

English translation by Willard R. Task: Avicenna and the visionary recital - Irving, Spring Publications, 1980.

"Part Two of the original edition, a translation of the Persian commentary on the "Recital of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan" has not been included."

6. ———. 1955. Le Livre De Science. Tome I. Logique, Métaphysique. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Translated by Mohammad Achena and Henri Massé; second revised edition 1986.

Reprinted by Institut für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften an der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfrurt am Main, 1999.

7. ———. 1958. Le Livre De Science. Tome Ii. Physique, Mathématiques. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Translated by Mohammad Achena and Henri Massé; second revised edition 1986.

Reprinted by Institut für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften an der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfrurt am Main, 1999.

8. ———. 1956. Psychologie D'ibn Sina (Avicenne) D'après Son œuvre as-Sifa. Praha: Éditions de l'Académie Tchécoslovaque des Sciences.

Two volumes (vol. I: Arabic text; vol. II: French translation).

Arabic text and French translation by Jan Bakos.

9. ———. 1963. Le Livre Des Définitions. Caire: Publications de l'Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale du Caire.

Edited and translated by Amélie-Marie Goichon.

10. ———. 1977. "Les Divisions Des Sciences Intellectuelles D'Avicenne." Mélanges de l'Institut Dominicain d'Etudes Orientales (MIDEO) no. 13:323-335.

Translated by Georges C. Anawati.

11. ———. 1978. La Métaphysique Du Shifa'. Livres I À V. Paris: Librairire philosophique J. Vrin.

Introduction, translation and notes by Georges C. Anawati.

12. ———. 1985. La Métaphysique Du Shifa'. Livres Vi À X. Paris: Librairire philosophique J. Vrin.

Introduction, translation and notes by Georges C. Anawati.

13. ———. 1980. "Les Sciences Physiques Et Métaphysiques Selon La Risâlah Fî Aqsâm Al-'Ulûm D'Avicenne. Essai De Traduction Critique." Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale no. 22:64-71.

Partial translation by Jean R. Michot.

14. ———. 1983. "De La Joie Et Du Bonheur. Essai De Traduction Critique De La Section Ii, 8 Des Isharat D'Avicenne." Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale no. 26:49-60.

Translation by Yahya R. Michot.

15. ———. 1984. "Épitre Sur Les Parties Des Sciences Intellectuelles D'abu 'Ali Al-Husayn Ibn Sina." In Études Su Avicenne, edited by Jolivet, Jean and Rashed, Roshdi, 143-151. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Translation by Rabia Mimoune.

16. ———. 1985. "Prophétie Et Divination Selon Avicenne. Présentation, Essai De Traduction Critique Et Index De L' Épitre De L'âme De La Sphère." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 83:507-535.

Translation by Yahya R. Michot.

17. ———. 1988. "L'eschatologie Dans Le "Livre De La Guidance" D'Avicenne. Présentation, Traductiuon Et Index De La Denièere Secition Du Kitab Al-Hidâya." Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale no. 30:138-152.

Translation by Yahya R. Michot.

18. ———. 1994. Livre De La Genèse Et Du Retour. Bruxelles.

Translation by Yahya R. Michot.

19. ———. 1997. "La Réponse D'Avicenne À Bahmanyar Et Al-Kirmani. Présentation, Traduction Critique Et Lexique Arabe-Français De La Mubahatha Iii." Le Muséon.Revue d'Études Orientales no. 110:143-221.

Translation by Yahya R. Michot.

20. ———. 2000. Lettre Au Vizir Abu Sa'd. Editio Princeps D'aprés Le Manuscrit De Bursa. Beyrouth: Éditions al-Bouraq.

Translated with introduction and notes by Y. Michot.

Italian Translations

1. ———. 1969. Epistola Sulla Vita Futura. Padova: Antenore.

Arabic text, Italian translation, introduction and notes by Francesca Lucchetta.

2. ———. 1994. "Il Soggetto Della Scienza Prima. Ibn Sina, as-Sifa'. Al-Ilahiyyat, I.1-2." Giornale di Metafisica no. 16:69-82.

Italian translation by Giuseppe Roccaro of Al-ilahiyyat, I.1-2.

3. ———. 1995. "La Metafisica Del Libro Della Guida. Presentazione E Traduzione Della Terza Parte ( Báb) Del Kitab-Al-Hidaya Di Avicenna." Le Muséon.Revue d'Études Orientales no. 108:367-424.

Presentation and translation by Olga Lizzini.

4. ———. 2002. Metafisica. La Scienza Delle Cose Divine (Al-Ilahiyyat) Dal Libro Della Guarigione (Kitab Al-Sifà). Milano: Bompiani.

Translated from Arabic, with introduction and notes by Olga Lizzini; with Arabic and Latin text.

Revised reprint 2006.

5. ———. 2008. Libro Della Guarigione. Le Cose Divine. Torino: UTET.

Italian translation by Amos Bertolacci of the Ilahiyyat of Avicenna's Kitab-al-Sifa', with introduction, corrections to the Arabic text and notes.

German Translations

1. ———. 1875. "Die Psychologie Des Ibn Sina." Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandische Gesellschaft no. 29:339-372.

German translation by Samuel Landauer of the Compendium on the Soul.

2. ———. 1907. Die Metaphysik Avicennas. Enthaltend Die Metaphysik, Theologie, Kosmologie and Ethik. Halle: Rudolf Haupt.

Translated by Max Horten.

Reprinted by Institut für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften an der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, 1999 and by Kessinger Publishing Co., Whitefish, MT.

3. ———. 2006. Cuestiones Divinas (Ilahiyyat). Textos Escogidos. Madrid: Editorial Biblioteca Nueva.

Texts selected, edited and translated by C. A. Segovia.

Spanish Translations

1. ———. 2006. Cuestiones Divinas (Ilahiyyat). Textos Escogidos. Madrid: Editorial Biblioteca Nueva.

Texts selected, edited and translated by C. A. Segovia.

Modern Editions of Latin Translations

1. Avicenna. 1992. Avicenna Latinus. Liber Primus Naturalium. Tractatus Primus. De Causis Et Principiis Naturalium. Louvain: Peeters Publishers.

Critical edition of the Latin medieval translation by Simone Van Riet.

With a doctrinal introduction by Gérard Verbeke.

2. ———. 2007. Avicenna Latinus. Liber Primus Naturalium. Tractatus Secundus. De Motu Et De Consimilibus. Louvain: Peeters Publishers.

Critical edition of the Latin medieval translation by Simone Van Riet.

3. ———. 1987. Avicenna Latinus. Liber Tertius Naturalium De Generatione Et Corruptione. Louvain: Peeters Publishers.

Critical edition of the Latin medieval translation and lexicon by Simone Van Riet.

With a doctrinal introduction by Gérard Verbeke.

4. ———. 1989. Avicenna Latinus. Liber Quartus Naturalium De Actionibus Et Passionibus Qualitatum Primarum. Louvain: Peeters Publishers.

Critical edition of the Latin medieval translation and lexicon by Simone Van Riet.

With a doctrinal introduction by Gérard Verbeke.

5. ———. 1972. Avicenna Latinus. Liber De Anima, Seu Sextus De Naturalibus I-Iii. Louvain: Peeters Publishers.

Critical edition of the Latin medieval translation by Simone Van Riet.

With an introduction on the psychological doctrine of Avicenna by Gérard Verbeke.

6. ———. 1968. Avicenna Latinus. Liber De Anima, Seu Sextus De Naturalibus Iv-V. Louvain: Peeters Publishers.

Critical edition of the Latin medieval translation by Simone Van Riet.

With an introduction on the psychological doctrine of Avicenna by Gérard Verbeke.

7. ———. 1977. Avicenna Latinus. Liber De Philosophia Prima Sive Scientia Divina. I-Iv. Louvain: Peeters Publishers.

Critical edition of the Latin medieval translation by Simone Van Riet.

With a doctrinal introduction by Gérard Verbeke.

8. ———. 1980. Avicenna Latinus. Liber De Philosophia Prima Sive Scientia Divina. V-X. Louvain: Peeters Publishers.

Critical edition of the Latin medieval translation by Simone Van Riet.

With a doctrinal introduction by Gérard Verbeke.

9. ———. 1983. Avicenna Latinus. Liber De Philosophia Prima Sive Scientia Divina.Tractatus I-X. Lexiques. Louvain: Peeters Publishers.

10. ———. 1994. Avicenna Latinus. Codices. Louvain: Peeters Publishers.

Codices descripsit M.-T. d'Alverny. Addenda collegerunt S. Van Riet et P. Jodogne.

11. ———. 1926. Avicennae Metaphysices Compendium (Al-Nagat). Roma: Pontificium Instituttum Orientalium Studiorum.

Translated in Latin with notes by Nematallah Carame.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated Bibliography on Avicenna's Logic and Metaphysics: First Part: A - K

For the studies on Avicenna the main bibliographical resources are:

- Janssens, Jules L. 1991. An Annotated Bibliography on Ibn Sina (1970-1989). Including Arabic and Persian publications and Turkish and Russian References . Leuven: Leuven University Press.

- ———. 1999. An Annotated Bibliography on Ibn Sina. First Supplement (1990-1994) . Louvain-La-Neuve: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études médiévales.

- ———. 2017. An Annotated Bibliography on Ibn Sina. Second Supplement (1995-2009). Temple (Arizona): ACMRS Publications.

Bibliography

1. Le livre du Millenaire d'Avicenne. 1956. Teheran: Imprimerie de l'Université de Téhéran.

Vol. IV: "Conférences des membres du Congrés d'Avicenne prononcées en langue allemande.anglaise et Français e sur la biographie, l'époque, les opinions et les œuvres d'Avicenne (2-7 Ordibehechte 1333; 22-27 Avril 1954)"

2. Adamson, Peter. 2005. "On Knowledge of Particulars." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 105:273-294.

"Avicenna's notorious claim that God knows particulars only 'in a universal way' is argued to have its roots in Aristotelian epistemology, and especially in the Posterior Analytics. According to Avicenna and Aristotle as understood by Avicenna, there is in fact no such thing as 'knowledge' of particulars, at least not as such. Rather, a particular can only be known by subsuming it under a universal. Thus Avicenna turns out to be committed to a much more surprising epistemological thesis: even humans know particulars only in a universal way."

3. ———, ed. 2013. Interpreting Avicenna. Critical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

4. Afnan, Soleil M. 1958. Avicenna. His Life and Works. London: George Allen & Unwin.

Reprinted Westport, Greenwood Press, 1980.

5. Ahmed, Asad Q. 2003. "Avicenna's treatment of Aristotelian modals. A study based on conversion rules and the Barbara problematic." In Before and after Avicenna. Proceedings of the First Conference of the Avicenna Study Group, edited by Reisman, David C. and Al-Rahim, Ahmed H., 3-24. Leiden: Brill.

6. Al-Ahwani, Ahmad Fuad. 1963. "Being and substance in Islamic philosophy. Ibn Sina versus Ibn Rushd." In Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter, edited by Wilpert, Paul, 428-436. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

7. Alonso, Alonso Manuel. 1957. "'Al-qiwam' y 'al anniyya' en las traducciones de Gundisalvo." Al-Andalus no. 22:377-405.

"En muchas de las obras traducidas se encontró Gundisalvo con la palabra al-qiwam. Vamos a recorrerlas transcribiendo los pasajes más representativos para darnos a entender su significado. (p. 381)

(...)

Después de haber señalado así la mayoría de los pasajes en que Gundisalvo, tanto en las traducciones como en sus propias obras emplea la palabra 'existentia' para traducir al-qiwam, y despues de haber visto que Gundisalvo quiere asi significar et 'esse' o 'quo est' como contradistinto de 'quod est', debemos preguntarnos ¿qué es lo que et propio Avicena entiende por al-qiwam? Desde luego tratamos del sentido correspondiente inmediato entre el concepto y la cosa significada, no de un sentido implicito o de un sentido consecuente al modo como al decir 'casa' significamos 'el techo' y significamos 'las paredes', y al designar et 'individuo' designamos su 'esencia especifica'.

Primeramente observemos que hoy por al-qiwam todo el mundo entiende la 'subsistentia' (traducción que tambien Gundisalvo aceptó, como hemos visto). Por esto dice A.-M. Goichon: «599. -'Qiwâm', subsistence, sens donné par Lane art. qiwam et rukn, mais qui n'est presque jamais rendu exactement par les traductions, pourtant des plus diverses». No podían traducir al-qiwam por 'subsistentia', porque el latin corriente de entonces carecía de esa palabra. No se encontrará vocabulario del rabe ni arabista entendido que haya visto en Avicena el uso de al-qiwam en el sentido de 'existencia' contrapuesta a la 'esencia' corno principia quibus de las cosas, ni Gundisalvo lo vió, ya que la 'existencia' para él no significa lo que en tiempos posteriores a los suyos vino a significar. Contra los que quieren ver en el al-qiwam de Avicena o en la `existentia' de Gundisalvo ese significado de tiempos posteriores, ya es bastante decir que nadie, conocedor del árabe, haya encontrado tal significado en dicho al-qiwam aviceniano.

En segundo lugar, la existencia en ese sentido posterior a los tiempos de Gundisalvo es algo simple en sí el acto último que entra en la composición de las cosas. Es, como veremos, algo del orden de la al-anniyya de Avicena. En cambio, el al-qiwam aviceniano es algo compuesto de 'acto' y `potencia', mas o menos simples (cada uno de por sí), o bien mas o menos determinados. (pp. 392-393).

(...)

Que ese 'acto' y esa 'potencia' pueden recibir (según la dottrina de Avicena) determinaciones, hasta convertirse en lo que Santo Tomas llamó 'materia' y `forma', es manifiesto por et mismo pasaje a que aludimos, ya que a continuación prueba Avicena que ese acro de al qiwam es en las plantas y animales ' et alma` y esa potencia del mismo al-qiwam es 'el cuerpo' . De aquí que ese al-qiwam sea ciertamente la 'constitucion' de la cosa, o sea su esencia específica, su mahiyya, como por otro nombre lo nombra el mismo Avicena, según luego vamos a ver. He ahí por que Gundisalvo, en la traduction de la Isagoge de Avicena equiparo el 'esse' (o 'quo est') de Boecio a la rnahiyya aviceniana, y la traduce cerca de cien veces por 'esse', y este 'esse', según el, se define: «Esse est existentia formae in materia». Esta existencia, pues, es la esencia específica o simplemente 'la esencia', dicha en abstracto, solo que latinistas posteriores a Gundisalvo cambiaron los conceptos que implicaban esas palabras.

De aquí que tengamos en Avicena pasajes que contradistinguen entre sí al-qiwam y ' existencia' ( al-wuyud) en cuanto se suele contraponer a 'la esencia'. (p. 394).

(...)

En otro artículo seguiremosn: con el estudio de al anniyya en las obras de Avicena. El hecho de que una palabra se apoderó del significado de la otra, al par que et confusionismo que de eso se siguió y aun vemos seguir, relacionó de un modo inconveniente los terminos al-qiwam y al-anniyya y sus mismos conceptos. Pero quizá con lo dicho y con lo que diremos después encontremos alguna mayor claridad en ese boscaje de traducciones e interpretaciones." (p. 405).

8. ———. 1958. "La 'al-anniyya' de Avicena y el problema de la esencia y existencia (fuentes literarias)." Pensamiento no. 14:311-346.

9. ———. 1959. "La 'al-anniyya' y el 'al-wuyud' de Avicena y el problema de la esencia y existencia. La essencialidad de la 'al-anniyya'." Pensamiento no. 15:375-400.

10. ———. 1962. "'Al-wuyud' y 'al-mahyya', existencia y esencia." Al-Andalus no. 27:299-342.

11. ———. 1963. "Accidente, accidental y número según Avicena." Al-Andalus no. 28:117-154.

12. al-Shahrastani. 2001. Struggling with the Philosopher. A Refutation of Avicenna's Metaphysics. London: I. B. Tauris Publishers.

A new Arabic edition and English translation of Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Karim b. Ahmad al-Shahrastani's Kitab al Musara'a, edited by Wilfred Madelung and Toby Mayer.

13. Alverny, Marie-Thèrese d'. 1959. "Anniyya - Anitas." In Mélanges offerts à Étienne Gilson, de l'Académie Français e, 59-91. Paris: Vrin.

Repris dans Avicenne en Occident (chapitre X).

14. ———. 1962. "Notes sur les traductions médiévales d'Avicenne." Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge no. 27:337-358.

15. ———. 1993. Avicenne en Occident. Paris: Vrin.

Receuil d'articles de Marie-Thérèse d'Alverny, réunis en hommage à l'auteur.

Avant-propos de Danielle Jacquart.

16. Anawati, Georges C. 1951. "La tradition manuscrite orientale de l'œuvre d'Avicenne." Revue Thomiste no. 51:407-440.

Repris dans: G. C. Anawati, Études de philosophie musulmane, Paris: Vrin, 1974, pp. 229-262.

17. ———. 1960. "Chronique avicennienne 1951-1960." Revue Thomiste no. 60:614-634.

18. ———. 1974. "St. Thomas d'Aquin et la Métaphysique d'Avicenne." In St. Thomas Aquinas 1274-1974. Commemorative studies, edited by Gilson, Étienne, 449-465. Toronto: Pontificial Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

19. ———. 1978. "Introduction historique à une nouvelle traduction de la Mètaphysique d'Avicenne." In Avicenne. La Métaphysique du Shifa. I-V., 11-79. Paris: Vrin.

Repris dans: Mélanges de l'Institut Dominicain d'Etudes Orientales (MIDEO) 13, 1977, pp. 171-252.

20. ———. 1992. "Quelques remarques sur les termes exprimant "l'existence" dans la philosophie et la théologie musulmanes." In En hommage au professeur Jean Maurice Fiey, edited by Anawati, Georges C., Arnaldez, Roger and Bredy, Michael, 75-98. Beyrouth: Araya Imprimerie catholique.

21. Ayada, Souâd. 2002. Avicenne. Paris: Ellipses.

22. Bäck, Allan. 1987. "Avicenna on Existence." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 25:351-367.

"In Islamic philosophy, in particular, with Ibn Sina (Avicenna), there appears, in quite explicit form, a view of predication at odds with many current interpretations of Aristotle and views of predication. That view is that the simple affirmative categorical proposition 'S is p' is to be read as 'S is (existent) as a p', and that for its truth it is required both that S be existent and that S be p. This paper sketches out the development of that view. It then shows how this view resolves such vexing problems in interpreting Aristotle's logic and ontology as the existential import assumption and his view of First philosophy."

23. ———. 1992. "Avicenna's conception of the modalities." Vivarium no. 30:217-255.

24. ———. 1993. "The ordinary language approach in Traditional logic." In Argumentationstheorie. Scholastische Forschungen zu den logischen und semantischen Regeln korrekten Folgerns, edited by Jacobi, Klaus, 507-530. Leiden: Brill.

25. ———. 1999. "The Ontological Pentagon of Avicenna." Journal of Neoplatonic Studies no. 7:87-109.

26. ———. 2001. "Avicenna and Averroes: Modality and Theology." In Potentialität und Possibilität. Modalaussagen in der Geschichte der Metaphysik, edited by Buchheim, Thomas, Kneepkens, Corneille Henri and Lorenz, Kuno, 125-145. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog.

27. ———. 2004. "Avicenna on the categorical assertion." In Medieval Theories on Assertive and Non-Assertive Language. Acts of the 14th European Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics - Rome, June 11-15, 2002, edited by Maierù, Alfonso and Valente, Luisa, 141-162. Firenze: Olschki.

28. Banchetti-Robino, Marina Paola. 2004. "Ibn Sina and Husserl on intention and intentionality." Philosophy East and West.

"The concepts of intention and intentionality were particularly significant notions within the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic medieval philosophical traditions, and they regained philosophical importance in the twentieth century. The theories of intention and intentionality of the medieval Islamic philosopher and physician Ibn Sina and the phenomenological philosopher and mathematician Edmund Husserl are examined, compared, and contrasted here, showing that Ibn Sina's conception of intention is naturalistic and, in its naturalism, is influenced by the medical professional culture to which Ibn Sina belonged. As well, Husserl's anti-naturalistic conception of intentionality is influenced by his background as a mathematician and by his desire to ground mathematics and the empirical sciences in a truly scientific philosophy. In conclusion, an argument is presented for the superiority of the Husserlian transcendentalist account of intentionality over the Avicennian naturalistic account, on the grounds that the latter falls prey to psychologism and reductionism, the two specters that according to Husserl must haunt all naturalistic accounts of consciousness."

29. Bertolacci, Amos. 1998. ""Subtilius speculando". Le citazioni della "Philosophia prima" di Avicenna nel Commento alla "Metafisica" di Alberto Magno." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 9:261-339.

30. ———. 1999. "Metafisica A 5, 986a 22-26 nell' Ilahiyyat del Kitab al-Sifa' di Ibn Sina." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 10:205-232.

31. ———. 2001. "From Al-Kindi to Al-Farabi. Avicenna's progressive knowledge of Aristotle's Metaphysics according to his autobiography." Arabic Sciences and Philosophy no. 11:257-295.

"The autobiography witnesses a significant evolution in Avicenna's approach to Aristotle's Metaphysics during the years of his education. It clearly shows that, at a certain point of his philosophical training, Avicenna faced the entire text of the Metaphysics, was puzzled by its extent and complexity, and found in a treatise by al-Farabi a guide for its understanding. But, albeit less perspicuously, the autobiography also suggests that this was not Avicenna's first encounter with the Metaphysics. Avicenna dealt with Aristotle's work in a previous stage of his studies as well. Then, however, he did not read the Metaphysics in its entirety, but, rather, focused only on its essential parts and some commentaries thereupon. The parts of the Metaphysics that Avicenna read in this earlier stage were books Alpha Elatton and Lambda, as constituting the natural theology of Aristotle's work. He neglected, on the contrary, the books corresponding to its ontological part. The special attention to Alpha Elatton and Lambda and the close connection between these two books in a theological context were peculiar traits of al-Kindi's approach to Aristotle's Metaphysics. Therefore, the evolving approach to Aristotle's Metaphysics that Avicenna's autobiography witnesses can properly be described as a passage from the Kindian to the Farabian way of interpretation."

32. ———. 2001. "Le citazioni implicite testuali della Philosophia prima di Avicenna nel Commento alla Metafisica di Alberto Magno: analisi tipologica." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 12:179-274.

33. ———. 2002. "The structure of Metaphysical Science in the Ilahiyyat (Divine Science) of Avicenna's Kitab-al-Sifa' (Book of the Cure)." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 13:1-69.

34. ———. 2002. "The doctrine of material and fornal causality in the Ilahiyyat (Divine Science) of Avicenna's Kitab al-Sifa' (Book of the Cure)." Quaestio.The Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 2:125-154.

35. ———. 2003. "Some texts of Aristotle's Metaphysics in the Ilahiyat of Avicenna's Kitab al-Šifa'." In Before and After Avicenna. Proceedings of the First Conference of the Avicenna Study Group, edited by Reisman, David C., 24-47. Leiden: Brill.

36. ———. 2004. "La ricezione del libro G ( Gamma) della Metafisica nell' Ilahiyyat del Kitab al-Šifa' di Avicenna." In Aristotele e I suoi esegeti neoplatonici. Logica e ontologia nelle interpretazioni greche e arabe.

Atti del Convegno internazionale Roma 19-20 ottobre 2001, edited by Celluprica, Vincenza and D'Ancona Costa, Cristina, 173-210. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

37. ———. 2004. "The reception of Book B (Beta) of Aristotle's Metaphysics in the Ilahiyat of Avicenna's Kitab al-Sifa'." In Interpreting Avicenna. Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islam. Proceedings of the Second Conference of the Avicenna Study Group, edited by McGinnis, Jon, 157-174. Leiden: Brill.

38. ———. 2005. "Il pensiero filosofico di Avicenna." In Storia della filosofia nell'Islam Medievale. Vol. II, edited by D'Ancona Costa, Cristina, 522-626. Torino: Einaudi.

39. ———. 2005. "Ammonius and al-Farabi: the sources of Avicenna's concept of metaphysics." Quaestio.The Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 5:287-305.

40. ———. 2005. "On the Arabic translations of Aristotle's Metaphysics." Arabic Sciences and Philosophy no. 15:241-275.

41. ———. 2006. The Reception of Aristotle's Metaphysics in Avicenna's Kitab al-Sifa'. A Milestone of Western Metaphysical Thought. Leiden: Brill.

Contents: Introduction VII; Abbreviations XV;

Part One. The Arabic reception of the Metaphysics before Avicenna.

Introduction 3; 1. The Arabic translations of the Metaphysics: a new assessment on account of the evidence provided by Avicenna 5; 2. Beyond al-Kindi and al-Farabi: Avicenna's position in the history of the Arab reception of the Metaphysics 37; 3. Between Ammonius and Avicenna: al-Farabi's treatise On the Goals of Aristotle's Metaphysics 65;

Part Two. The scientific profile of the Metaphysics according to Avicenna.

Introduction 107; 4. Avicenna' conception of the theme of the Metaphysics: "existent qua existent" as the subject-matter, the first causes and God as the goal of metaphysics 111; 5. Avicenna's reworking of the structure of the Metaphysics: metaphysics as the discipline dealing with the species, the properties and the principles of "existent" 149; 6. Avicenna's elaboration of the method of the Metaphysics: metaphysics as a demonstrative, analytical, non-dialectical science 213; 7. Avicenna's view of the relationship of the Metaphysics with the other parts of the Aristotelian corpus: metaphysics as the founding discipline 265;

Part Three. The content of the Metaphysics according to Avicenna.

Introduction 305; 8. The quotations of the Metaphysics in the Ilahiyyat 309; 9. The main source of Avicenna's conception of metaphysics as a science: book Gamma and its quotations 375; 10. Avicenna's attitude towards dialectic: book Beta and its quotations 403; 11. The other sources of the Ilahiyyat 441; Conclusion 471;

Appendices.

Appendix A: Towards a critical edition of the Ilahiyyat: list of corrections of the Cairo printed text 483; Appendix B: Index of authors and works quoted in the Ilahiyyat 559; Appendix C: Overview of the main works by Avicenna on metaphysics in chronological order 581; Appendix D: Names for Aristotle's Metaphysics and metaphysics as a discipline in Avicenna's works 593; Appendix E: The style of the Kitab al-Sifa' 607; Appendix F: The terminology for "property" in the Ilahiyyat 613;

Bibliography 617; Index of names and places 655; Index of Aristotle's works with passages cited 665; Index of Avicenna's works with passages cited 666; Index of manuscripts 669; Index of texts, outlines, tables 670-675.

42. ———. 2007. "Avicenna and Averroes on the proof of God' existence and the subject-matter of metaphysics." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 32:61-98.

43. ———. 2011. "The 'Ontologization' of Logic. Metaphysical Themes in Avicenna's Reworking of the Organon." In Methods and Methodologies. Aristotelian Logic East and West, 500-1500, edited by Cameron, Margaret and Marenbon, John, 27-52. Leiden: Brill.

44. Black, Deborah. 1997. "Avicenna on the Ontological and Epistemic Status of Fictional Beings." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 8:425-453.

45. ———. 1999. "Mental existence in Thomas Aquinas and Avicenna." Mediaeval Studies no. 61:45-81.

"In this article I examine how Aquinas employs the Avicennian notion of the mental or conceptual existence of the common nature. I first show how the characteristic features of Avicenna's cognitive psychology, in particular its occasionalist and emanationist framework, bear upon his understanding of mental existence. I then examine Aquinas's adoption of the notion of mental existence with special reference to his doctrine of the intelligible species, which are totally absent from Avicenna's cognitive psychology. I conclude that Aquinas dilutes the original Avicennian conception of mental existence in virtue of his making the intelligible species, rather than the common nature itself, the subject of mental existence."

46. Bloch, Ernst. 1952. Avicenna und die aristotelische Linke. Berlin: Rütten & Loening.

47. Bogoutdinov, A.M. 1950. "A notable philosophical production of the Tadjik people: Ibn-Sina's Donish-Nameh." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 11:25-39.

48. Booth, Edward. 1983. Aristotelian Aporetic Ontology in Islamic and Christian Thinkers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

See: Ibn Sina and the Reordering of Aristotle' Thought, pp. 107-126.

49. Brown, Stephen. 1965. "Avicenna and the Unity of the Concept of Being. The Interpretations of Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus, Gerard of Bologna and Peter Aureoli." Franciscan Studies no. 25:117-150.

"This article treats the question of the analogy and the univocity of being in Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, Hervaeus Natalis, Gerard of Bologna and Peter Aureoli. Each provides his own view of the concept of being and thus each gives a different interpretation to Avicenna's metaphysical starting point".

50. Burrell, David B. 1986. "Essence and Existence: Avicenna and Greek Philosophy." Mélanges de l'Institut Dominicain d'Etudes Orientales (MIDEO) no. 17:53-66.

51. Caster, Kevin J. 1996. "The Distinction between Being and Essence According to Boethius, Avicenna, and William of Auvergne." Modern Schoolman no. 73:309-332.

52. Ceylan, Yasin. 1993. "A critical approach to the Avicennian distinction of essence and existence." Islamic Studies no. 32:329-337.

53. Chahine, Osman. 1962. Ontologie et théologie chez Avicenne. Paris: A. Maisonneuve.

54. Collins, Joseph F. 1944. "Intentionality in the philosophy of Avicenna." Modern Schoolman no. 21:204-215.

55. Cruz, Hernandez Miguel. 1949. La metafísica de Avicena. Grenada: Universidad de Grenada.

56. ———. 1956. "La distincion aviceniana de la esencia y la existencia y su interpretacion en la filosofia occidental." In Homenaje a Millás-Vallicrosa. Vol. II, 351-374. Barcelona: Consejo superior de investigaciones científicas.

57. ———. 1959. "La noción de 'ser' en Avicena." Pensamiento no. 15:83-98.

58. ———. 1999. "El concepto de metafísica de Avicena." In Avicenna and His Heritage. Acts of the International Colloquium Leuven-Louvain-la-Neuve, September 8-September 11, 1999, edited by Janssens, Jules and Smet, Daniel de, 47-56. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

59. ———. 2002. "La doctrina del entendimiento en Avicena." Revista Espanola de Filosofia Medieval no. 9:11-17.

60. Cunningham, Francis A. 1974. "Averroes vs Avicenna on Being." New Scholasticism no. 48:185-218.

"Avicenna has been interpreted as having held the real distinction between 'esse' and 'essence'; Averroes as having criticized him on this point: "Avicenna made a big mistake here." A closer reading, however, will, I believe, reveal that Avicenna was talking about two intelligible notes, 'intentiones' or 'dispositiones', in the comprehension of a concept, whereas Averroes was pushing two different modes of understanding that same content. St. Thomas thought that Averroes "was closer to the truth." No Arabic scholar today would, so far as I can make out, read that real distinction into this context. Avicenna has also been accused of holding an independent order of possibles, just as Averroes was accused of holding a double truth theory. Both charges were libels."

61. D'Ancona Costa, Cristina. 2000. "Avicenna and the Liber de Causis: a contribution to dossier." Revista Espanola de Filosofia Medieval no. 7:95-115.

"Taking as a starting point the knowledge that the Arab world had of the neo-Platonic texts ascribed to Aristotle, such as the Pseudo-Theology and the Liber de Causis, the author of this study investigates the possible knowledge that Avicenna had of this under book, well-known in the Arab world under the title of Kalamfi mahd al-hayr. In order to demonstrate this, she provides an analysis of four passages that belong to the Metaphysics of the great philosophical encyclopaedia Al-Sifa' ("The cure").""

62. Davidson, Herbert Alan. 1979. "Avicenna's Proof of the Existence of a Being Necessarily Existent by Virtue of Itself." In Islamic Philosophical Theology, edited by Morewedge, Parviz, 165-187. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Reprinted in: H. A. Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987 pp. 281-310.

"The first philosopher known to use the concept of necessary existence in order to construct a proof of the existence of God was Avicenna. Avicenna's proof, it will appear, neither is, nor inevitably reduces itself to, an ontological proof. It is rather a certain kind of cosmological proof.

The concept of necessary existence is used by Avicenna to prove the existence of God in two works, at length in the Najat, briefly and somewhat obscurely in the Isharat. The concept is also discussed fully in two other works, the Shifa and Danesh Namesh, but there Avicenna employs it only to define the nature of God, not, as far as I can see, to establish His existence."

63. ———. 1992. Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect. Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect. New York: Oxford University Press.

64. Decorte, Jos. 2002. "Avicenna's ontology of relation: a source of inspiration to Henry of Ghent." In Avicenna and His Heritage. Acts of the International Colloquium Leuven-Louvain-la-Neuve, September 8-September 11, 1999, edited by Janssens, Jules and Smet, Daniel de, 197-224. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

65. Di Martino, Carla. 2008. Ratio particularis: La doctrine des sens internes d'Avicenne à Thomas d'Aquin. Paris: Vrin.

Contribution à l'étude de la tradition arabo-latine de la psychologie d'Aristote.

66. Druart, Thérèse-Anne. 2001. " Shay' or Res as Concomitant of 'Being' in Avicenna." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 12:125-142.

67. El-Bizri, Nader. 2000. The Phenomenological Quest between Avicenna and Heidegger. Bingamton: Global Publications, Binghamton University.

68. ———. 2001. "Avicenna and Essentialism." Review of Metaphysics no. 54:753-778.

69. Endress, Gerhard. 1997. "L'Aristote arabe. Réception, autorité et transformation du Premier Maître." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 23:1-42.

70. ———. 2006. "Reading Avicenna in the Madrasa. Intellectual genealogies and chains of transmission of philosophy and the sciences in the Islamic East." In Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy. From the Many to the One: Essays in Celebration of Richard M. Frank, edited by Montgomery, James E., 371-422. Leuven: Peeters.

71. Fakhry, Majid. 1963. "Notes on existence and essence in Averroes and Avicenna." In Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter: ihr Ursprung und ihre Bedeutung. Vorträge des 2. Internationalen Kongresses für mittelalterliche Philosophie, Köln, 31. August-6. September 1961, edited by Wilpert, Paul, 414-417. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Miscellanea Medievalia - Vol. 2.

72. ———. 1984. "The subject-matter of metaphysics: Aristotle and Ibn-Sina." In Islamic Theology and Philosophy. Studies in Honor of G. Hourani, edited by Marmura, Michael E., 137-147. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Reprinted in: M. Fakhry, Philosophy, Dogma, and the Impact of Greek Thought in Islam, Aldershot: Variorum (Essay XII).

73. Finianos, Ghassan. 1976. Les grandes divisions de l'être "Mawjud" selon Ibn Sina. Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires de Fribourg.

74. ———. 2007. De l'existence à la nécessaire existence chez Avicenne. Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux.

75. Gamarra, Daniel O. 1986. "Esencia, posibilidad y predicacion: a proposito de una distincion Aviceniana." Sapientia no. 41:101-120.

76. ———. 1990. Esencia y objeto. Bern: Peter Lang.

Esencia y possibilidad segun Avicena, o la raiz de un problema gnoseologico: la esencia tema de la objectividad. Planteamento historico, pp. 15-133.

77. García Marques, Alfonso. 1987. "La polemica sobre el ser en el Avicena y Averroes Latinos." Anuario Filosofico no. 20:73-103.

78. Gardet, Louis. 1951. La pensée religieuse d'Avicenna (Ibn Sina). Paris: Vrin.

79. Gaskill, Thomas Edward. 1992. Ibn Sina's Ontology in his Dänishnäma 'Ala'i, Vanderbilt University, Nashville.

Unpublished Ph.D thesis available at ProQuest Dissertation Express, ref. number 9230973.

80. Ghorab, A. A. 1972. "The Greek Commentators on Aristotle quoted in Al-' Amiris' "As-Sa'āda wa'l-Is'ād"." In Islamic Philosophy and the Classical Tradition. Essays Presented by His Friends and Pupils to Richard Walzer on His Seventieth Birthday, edited by Stern, S.M., Hourani, Albert and Brown, Vivian, 77-88. London: Bruno Cassirer.

81. Gilson, Étienne. 1927. "Avicenne et le point de départ de Duns Scot." Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge no. 2:402-408.

82. ———. 1929. "Les sources greco-arabes de l'augustinisme avicennisant." Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge no. 4:5-107.

83. ———. 1969. "Avicenne en Occident au Moyen Âge." Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge no. 44:89-121.

Repris dans: Étienne Gilson, Études Médiévales, Paris: Vrin, 1986, pp. 193-121.

84. Goichon, Amélie-Marie. 1937. La distinction de l'essence et de l'existence d'aprés Ibn Sina (Avicenne). Paris: Desclée de Brouwer.

Reprint: Institut für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften an der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfrurt am Main, 1999.

85. ———. 1938. Lexique de la langue philosophique d'Ibn Sina (Avicenne). Paris: Desclée de Brouwer.

Reprint: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, 1999.

86. ———. 1939. Vocabulaires comparés d'Aristote et d'Ibn Sina. Supplément au Lexique de la langue philosophique d'Ibn Sina (Avicenne). Reprint: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, 1999. ed. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer.

87. ———. 1942. La philosophie d'Avicenne et son influence en Europe médiévale. Paris: Maisonneuive.

Forlong Lectures 1940.

Deuxième édition, corrigée et augmentée 1984.

English translation: The Philosophy of Avicenna and Its Influence on Medieval Europe - Translated from the French with notes, annotations, and a preface by M. S. Khan - Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1969.

88. ———. 1952. "Avicenne, le philosophe de l'être." Revue de l'Institut des Belles Lettres Arabes no. 15:49-62.

89. ———. 1963. "La démonstration de l'existence dans la logique d'Avicenne." In Mélanges d'orientalisme offerts à Henri Massé à l'occasion de son 75ème anniversaire, 165-184. Téhéran: Imprimerie de l'Université.

90. ———. 1969. The Philosophy of Avicenna and Its Influence on Medieval Europe. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.

Translated from the French La philosophie d'Avicenne et son influence en Europe médiévale with notes, annotations, and a preface by M. S. Khan.

91. Goodman, Lenn. 1969. "A note on Avicenna's theory of the substantiality of the soul." Philosophical Forum no. 1:547-554.

92. ———. 1992. Avicenna. New York: Routledge.

Contents: Preface; List of abbreviations; 1. Life, times, writings 1; 2. Metaphysics 49; 3. Ideas and immortality 123; 4. Logic, persuasion, and poetry 184; Index 234.

93. Gutas, Dimitri. 1994. "Ibn Tufayl on Ibn Sina's Eastern Philosophy." Oriens.Journal of the International Society of Oriental Research no. 34:221-249.

94. ———. 1998. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture. The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abbasid Society (2nd-4th/8th-10th centuries). New York: Routledge.

Translated in Italian by Cristina D'Ancona Costa as: Pensiero greco e cultura araba, Torino: Einaudi, 2002.

95. ———. 2000. "Avicenna's Eastern ("Oriental") philosophy. Nature, contents, transmission." Arabic Sciences and Philosophy no. 10:159-180.

"An initial section traces the history of the development of these tendentious ideas first to Ibn Tufayl and then to the followers of his interpretation in the West in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Further sections discuss the title of the book, list its contents insofar as they can be reconstructed from Avicenna's statements and the extant portions, and provide additional information about its manuscripts and transmission. The style of the work is then analyzed and compared with that of the Sifa' in order to verify Avicenna's claim in the preface to the latter work that the difference between the two was merely stylistic. A final section gives a table of concordance between the contents of the extant part on physics and the corresponding sections in the Sifa', establishing the direct relationship and verbal congruity between the two works."

96. ———. 2002. "The heritage of Avicenna: the Golden Age of Arabic philosophy, 1000-ca. 1350." In Avicenna and His Heritage. Acts of the International Colloquium Leuven-Louvain-la-Neuve, September 8-September 11, 1999, edited by Janssens, Jules and Smet, Daniel de, 81-97. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

97. ———. 2002. Pensiero greco e cultura araba. Torino: Einaudi.

Traduzione italiana di Cristina D'Ancona Costa di Greek Thought, Arabic Culture (2008).

98. ———. 2006. "Imagination and transcendental knowledge in Avicenna." In Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy. From the Many to the One: Essays in Celebration of Richard M. Frank, edited by Montgomery, James E., 337-354. Leuven: Peeters.

99. ———. 2007. Avicenna e la tradizione aristotelica. Introduzione alla lettura delle opere filosofiche di Avicenna

Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition. Introduction to Reading Avicenna's Philosophical Works. Bari: Edizioni di Pagina.

Traduzione italiana di Marienza Benedetto di Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition (prima edizione, 2008).

100. ———. 2014. Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition. Introduction to Reading Avicenna's Philosophical Works. Leiden: Brill.

Second, Revised and Enlarged Edition, Including an Inventory of Avicenna’s Authentic Works.

First edition 1988, translated in Italian by Marienza Benedetto, Avicenna e la tradizione aristotelica. Introduzione alla lettura delle opere filosofiche di Avicenna, Bari: Edizioni di Pagina, 2007.

101. ———. 2014. Orientations of Avicenna's Philosophy: Essays on his Life, Method, Heritage. Aldershot: Ashgate.

A collection of seventeenth studies previously published.

Contents: I. Avicenna: biography 1-11; II. Avicenna's Madhab, with an appendix on the question of his date of birth 323-336; III. Texts from Avicenna's library in a copy by 'Abd-ar-Razzaq as-Signahi 1-25; IV. Avicenna's marginal glosses on De anima and the Greek commentatorial tradition 77-88; V. Avicenna's Eastern ("Oriental") philosophy: nature, contents, transmission 159-180; VI. The logic of theology (kalam) in Avicenna 59-72; VII. The empiricism of Avicenna 1-53; VIII. Medical theory and scientific method in the age of Avicenna 145-162; IX. Avicenna: the metaphysics of the rational soul 417-425; X. Intuition and thinking: the evolving structure of Avicenna's epistemology 1-38; XI. Imagination and transcendental knowledge in Avicenna 337-354; XII. Intellect without limits: the absence of mysticism in Avicenna 1-22; XIII. Avicenna: mysticism and the question of his "Oriental" philosophy 1-10; XIV. The heritage of Avicenna: the golden age of Arabic philosophy, 1000 - ca. 1350 81-97; XV. Philosophy in the twelfth century: one view from Baghdad, or the repudiation of al-Ghazali 9-26; XVI. Ibn Tufayl on Ibn Sina's Eastern philosophy 222-241; XVII. The study of Avicenna. Status quaestionis atque agenda 45-69.

102. Hasnawi, Ahmad. 1991. "Aspects de la synthèse avicennienne." In Penser avec Aristote, edited by Sinaceur, Mohammed Allal, 227-244. Toulouse: Erès.

103. ———. 1998. "Le mouvement et les catégories selon Avicenne et Averroès: l'arrière-fond grec et les prolongements latins médiévaux." Oriens-Occidens no. 2:119-122.

104. ———. 2001. "La définiiton du mouvement dans la Physique du Šifa d'Avicenne." Arabic Sciences and Philosophy no. 11:219-255.

105. ———. 2004. "Le statut catégorial du mouvement chez Avicenne: contexte grec et postérité médiévale latine." In De Zénon d'Élée à Poincaré. Recueil d'études en hommage à Roshdi Rashed, edited by Morelon, Régis and Hasnawi, Ahmad, 607-622. Louvain: Peeters Publishers.

106. Hasse, Dag Nikolaus. 2000. Avicenna's De Anima in the Latin West: the Formation of a Peripatetic Philosophy of Soul 1160-1300. London: Warburg Institute.

107. Hasse, Dag Nikolaus, and Bertolacci, Amos, eds. 2012. The Arabic, Hebrew and Latin Reception of Avicenna's "Metaphysics". Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

108. Herrera Ibáñez, Alejandro. 1990. "La distinción entre esencia y existencia en Avicena." Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofía no. 16:183-195.

"In this paper I examine (I) Avicenna's view that existence is an accident, (IIi) the status of the problem of the real distinction between essence and existence, and (III) the nature of Avicenna's essentialism. I conclude that Avicenna anticipated Frege and Russell in holding that existence is an accident of accidents. I also defend the view that Avicenna held that there is a real distinction between essence and existence. Finally, I hold that Avicenna's essentialism anticipates Meinong's view about nonexistent objects."

109. Hodges, Wilfrid. 2011. "Ibn Sina and Conflict in Logic." In Logic, Mathematics, Philosophy, Vintage Enthusiasms, Essays in Honour of John L. Bell, edited by DeVidi, David, Hallett, Michael and Clark, Peter, 35-68. Dordrecht: Springer.

110. Houser, Rollen Edward. 1981. "The place of the first principle of demonstration in Avicennian metaphysics." In Proceedings of the Patristic, Medieval and Renaissance (PMR) Conference. Vol. 6, 117-134. Villanova: Augustinian Historical Institute, Villanova University.

111. ———. 1999. "Let them suffer into the truth: Avicenna's remedy for those denying the axioms of thought." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 73:107-133.

"For those who are intransigent enough to deny even the principle of noncontradiction, Avicenna advises putting them to the fire or beating them, until they admit that pain is different from nonpain. This treatment may seem too severe, but illustrates theory and practice in his philosophy, and when viewed in that light even becomes reasonable. The paper has four parts: (1) how certain events in Avicenna's autobiography illustrate the interplay of philosophy, religion, and politics in his mind, (2) Avicenna's treatment of the principles of metaphysics in "Shifa', Met." 1, (3) Avicenna's reading of Aristotle on noncontradiction, (4) Avicenna's own treatment of noncontradiction in " Shifa'. Met." 1.8."

112. Hussain, Mohd. 1992. "The doctrine of Being in Ibn Sina's metaphysics." Islam and the Modern Age no. 23:176-182.

113. Inati, Shams. 1984. "Ibn Sina on single expressions." In Islamic Theology and Philosophy. Studies in Honor of G. Hourani, edited by Marmura, Michael E., 148-159. Albany: State University of New York Press.

114. Jalbert, Guy. 1960. "Le nécessaire et le possible dans la philosophie d'Avicenne." Revue de l'Université d'Ottawa no. 30:89-101.

115. Janssens, Jules. 1999. "L'Avicenne latin: particularités d'une traduction." In Avicenna and His Heritage. Acts of the International Colloquium Leuven-Louvain-la-Neuve, September 8-September 11, 1999, edited by Janssens, Jules and Smet, Daniel de, 113-129. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Repris dans: J. Janssens, Ibn Sina and His Infulence on the Arabic ans Latin World, Aldersoht: Ashgate, 2006.

116. ———. 2003. "Avicenne et sa "paraphrase-commentaire" du livre Lambda ( Kitab-alinsaf)." Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales no. 70:401-416.

117. ———. 2006. Ibn Sina and His Influence on the Arabic and Latin World. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Collection of articles already published with a new preface.

Contents: Preface; Ibn Sina, and his heritage in the Islamic world and in the Latin West; Ibn Sina's ideas of ultimate realities: Neoplatonism and the Qur'an as problem-solving paradigms in the Avicennian system; The problem of human freedom in Ibn Sina; Creation and emanation in Ibn Sina; Ibn Sina (Avicenne): un projet 'religieux' de philosophie?; Les Ta'liqat d'Ibn Sina: essai de structuration et de datation; Le Danesh-Nameh d'Ibn Sina: un texte à revoir?; Le ma'arij al-quds fi madarij ma'rifat al-nafs: un élément-clé pour le dossier Ghazzali-Ibn Sina?; Al-Ghazzali's Mi`yar al-'ilm fi fann al-mantiq: sources avicenniennes et farabiennes; Al-Ghazzali's Tahafut: is it really a rejection of Ibn Sina's philosophy?; Al-Ghazzali, and his use of Avicennian texts; Bahmanyar ibn Marzuban: a faithful disciple of Ibn Sina?; Mulla Sadra's use of Ibn Sina's Ta'liqat in the Asfar; L'Avicenne latin: particularités d'une traduction; L'Avicenne latin: un témoin (indirect) des commentateurs (Alexandre d'Aphrodise - Thémistius - Jean Philopon); Some elements of Avicennian influence on Henry of Ghent's psychology; Elements of Avicennian metaphysics in the Summa; Index.

118. ———. 2006. "Le vocabulaire d'Avicenne." In Le vocabulaire des philosophes. Suppléments. Vol. I, edited by Zarader, Jean-Pierre, 13-64. Paris: Ellipses.

119. Janssens, Jules, and Smet, Daniel de, eds. 2002. Avicenna and His Heritage. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Acts of the International Colloquium Leuven-Louvain-la-Neuve, September 8-September 11, 1999.

120. Jolivet, Jean. 1984. "Aux origines de l'ontologie d'Ibn Sina." In Études sur Avicenne, edited by Jolivet, Jean and Rashed, Roshdi, 11-28. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Repris dans Jean Jolivet, Philosophie médiévale arabe et latine, Paris: Vrin, 1995, pp. 221-236.

121. ———. 1991. "La répartition des causes chez Aristote et Avicenne: le sens d'un déplacement." In Lectionum varietates. Hommage à Paul Vignaux (1904-1987), edited by Jolivet, Jean, Kaluza, Zénon and Libera, Alain de, 45-65. Paris: Vrin.

Repris dans Jean Jolivet, Philosophie médiévale arabe et latine, Paris: Vrin, 1995, pp. 289-305.

122. ———. 1997. "L'épistémologie de Descartes dans les Regulae et celle d'Avicenne." In Descartes et le Moyen age, edited by Biard, Joël and Rashed, Roshdi, 187-197. Paris: Vrin.

123. ———. 1998. "From the Beginnings to Avicenna." In Routledge History of Philosophy. Volume III: Medieval Philosophy, edited by Marenbon, John, 29-48. New York: Routledge.

124. ———. 2000. "Le vocabulaire de l'être et de la création dans la Philosophia prima de l' Avicenna latinus." In L'élaboration du vocabulaire philosophique au Moyen Âge, edited by Hamesse, Jacqueline and Steel, Carlos, 35-49. Turnhout: Brepols.

Repris dans Jean Jolivet, Philosophie médiévale arabe et latine, Paris: Vrin, 1995, pp. 217-227.

"Aborder les thèmes de l'être et de la création chez Avicenne c'est, en principe, risquer une recherche immense à travers les concepts qui structurent trois dès domaines où les spéculations du grand philosophe sont les plus remarquables et aussi les plus difficiles: l'ontologie et la cosmologie, avec leur jointure. Les prendre tels qu'ils s'offrent dans le travail des traducteurs tolédans du 12e siècle, c'est tenter d'en saisir le fil tel qu'il pouvait apparaître à travers un ensemble lexical différent de celui de leur origine, constitué dans une langue d'un type différent et, a priori, moins riche; et d'autant moins que le fonds spécial dont disposaient ces traducteurs, leur vocabulaire technique, s'était constitué à partir de textes qui avaient assez peu à voir avec ceux que pratiquait Avicenne: c'étaient ceux de la philosophie latine, des Pères et de Boèce, quelque peu de Platon et de la logique d'Aristote, transposés en latin. D' autant plus remarquable, notons-le, est que les premiers lecteurs de ce corpus avicennien devenu accessible aient su en faire l'usage que l'on sait. On voudrait ici proposer seulement quelques remarques sur une partie du lexique ainsi constitué, en noter quelques correspondances plus ou moins réussies avec celui d'Avicenne, y accrocher quelques observations. Nous disposons pour cela d'un instrument de travail inestimable: les trois tomes de la Philosophia prima publiés par la regrettée Simone Van Riet et dont le troisième offre un double lexique: arabe-latin et latin-arabe, où est donc recueillie toute la matière de notre examen (1)." p. 35

(1) Avicenna Latinus. Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina, I-X. Lexiques, par S. Van Riet, Louvain-la-Neuve, E. Peeters - Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1983. Le texte latin se trouve dans les deux autres tomes (1977 et 1980), sous une numérotation des pages continue de l'un à l'autre (I, de 1 à 219 ; II, de 227 à 553). Le texte arabe est ici celui d'Ibn Sinâ, Al-Šifa. Ilahiyyât, 2 vol., Le Caire, Organisation générale des impressions gouvernementales, 1380/1960.

125. Jolivet, Jean, and Rashed, Roshdi, eds. 1984. Études sur Avicenne. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

126. Koutzarova, Tiana. 2009. Das Transzendentale bei Ibn Sina. Zur Metaphysik als Wissenschaft Erster Begriffs- und Urteilsprinzipien. Leiden: Brill.

"Following al-Farabi's approach, Ibn Sina undertakes a new foundation of the First Philosophy based on his own critical systematisation of the Aristotelian theory of science, yielding the result that metaphysics is only possible as a transcendental science, i.e. that not only the subject-matter of metaphysics and its properties but also the arguments by which the first principles of knowledge are defended must be transcendental."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated Bibliography on Avicenna's Logic and Metaphysics: L - Z

Bibliography

1. Lagerlund, Henrik. 2009. "Avicenna and Tusi on Modal Logic." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 30:227-239.

"In this article, the author studies some central concepts in Avicenna's and Tusi's modal logics as presented in Avicenna's Al-Isharat ( Pointers and Reminders) and in Tusi's commentary. In this work, Avicenna introduces some remarkable distinctions in order to interpret Aristotle's modal syllogistic in the Prior Analytics. The author outlines a new interpretation of absolute sentences as temporally indefinite sentences and argues on the basis of this that Avicenna seems to subscribe to the Principle of Plenitude. He also shows that he has no valid proof of the modal conversion rules and that he uses some rather ad hoc distinctions to show that Aristotle's modal syllogistic is correct. The author also notes some interesting differences between Avicenna's and Tusi's approaches to modal logic."

2. Langermann, Y.Tzvi, ed. 2010. Avicenna and his Legacy. A Golden Age of Science and Philosophy. Turnhout: Brepols.

3. Libera, Alain de. 1994. "D'Avicenne à Averroès et retour. Sur les sources arabes de la théorie scolastique de l'Un transcendental." Arabic Sciences and Philosophy no. 4:141-179.

4. ———. 1999. L'art des généralités: théories de l'abstraction. Paris: Aubier.

Chapter IV: Avicenne, pp. 499-636.

5. Lizzini, Olga. 2003. " Wugud-Mawgud / Existence-Existent in Avicenna. A key ontological notion in Arabic philosophy." Quaestio.The Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 3:111-138.

6. ———. 2005. "Utility and gratuitousness of metaphysics: Avicenna, Ilahiyyat I, 3." Quaestio.The Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 5:287-305.

7. ———. 2012. Avicenna. Roma: Carocci.

8. Madkour, Ibrahim. 1958. "Le traité des categories du Shifa'." Mélanges de l'Institut Dominicain d'Etudes Orientales (MIDEO) no. 5:153-178.

9. ———. 1961. "Introduction à la Métaphysique du Shifa'." Mélanges de l'Institut Dominicain d'Etudes Orientales (MIDEO) no. 6:281-308.

10. ———. 1966. "La théorie du syllogisme chez Avicenne." Mélanges de l'Institut Dominicain d'Etudes Orientales (MIDEO) no. 8:131-144.

11. Marmura, Michael E. 1962. "Some aspects of Avicenna's theory of God's knowledge of particulars." Journal of the American Oriental Society no. 82:299-312.

12. ———. 1963. "Avicenna Healing-Metaphysics X." In Medieval Political Philosophy. A Sourcebook, edited by Lerner, Ralph and Mahdi, Muhsin, 98-111. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe.

13. ———. 1975. "Avicenna's Chapter "On the relative" in the Metaphysics of his Shifa." In Essays in Islamic Philosophy and Science, edited by Hourani, George Fadlo, 83-99. Albany: State University of New York Press.

14. ———. 1979. "Avicenna's Chapter on Universals in the Isagoge of his Shifa." In Islam: Past Influence and Present Challenge, edited by Welch, Alford T. and Cachia, Pierre, 34-56. Albany: State University of New York Press.

15. ———. 1980. "Avicenna's Proof from Contingency for God's Existence in the Metaphysics of the Shifa'." Mediaeval Studies no. 62:337-352.

16. ———. 1980. "Avicenna on the Division of the Sciences in the Isagoge of his Shifa'." Journal for the History of Arabic Science no. 4:239-251.

17. ———. 1984. "Avicenna on primary concepts in the Metaphysics of his al-Shifa." In Logos Islamikos: Studia Islamica in Honorem Georgii Michaelis Wickens, edited by Savory, Roger and Agius, Dionisius, 219-239. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

18. ———. 1987. "Avicenna: Metaphysics." In Encyclopaedia Iranica. Vol. III, edited by Yarshater, Ehrsan, 73-79. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

19. ———. 1992. "Quiddity and universality in Avicenna." In Neoplatonism and Islamic Thought, edited by Morewedge, Parviz, 77-88. Albany: State University of New York Press.

20. ———. 2004. Probing in Islamic Philosophy. Studies in the Philosophies of Ibn Sina, al Ghazali and Other Major Muslims Thinkers. Binghamton: Global Academic Publishing.

"Part I is devoted to Ibn Sina (Avicenna), noted for his refining the distinction between essence and existence, which constitutes the basis for his proof of God's existence and for his significant theory of the universals. The second part is devotes to Avicenna's theologian critic, Ghazali, noted for his argument that a necessary causal connection between natural events can be proved neither logically nor empirically. The third part pertains to various central themes in Islamic philosophy and includes discussions of the thought of such philosophers as Kindi, Razi, Ibn Tufayl, and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). It concludes with a discussion of on the issues that divided the Islamic theologians, namely whether the value of the moral act is intrinsic to it or whether it is solely derived from the religious law."

Contents:

I. Avicennan studies

Preface VII; Avicenna's Division of the Sciences in the Isagoge of his Shifa 1; Avicenna's metaphysics (from Encyclopedia Iranica) 15; Avicenna's Chapter on Universals in the Isagoge of his Shifa' 31; Quiddity and universality in Avicenna 57; Some aspects of Avicenna's theory of God's knowledge of particulars 67; Avicenna and the Kalam 91; Avicenna's proof from contingency for God's existence in the Metaphysics of the Shifa' 123; Avicenna on primary concepts in the Metaphysics of his Shifa' 141; Avicenna and the problem of infinite number of souls 161; Avicenna's "Flying man" in context 169; Avicenna's theory of prophecy in the light of Ash'arite theology 185;

II. Ghazalian Studies

The logical role of the argument from time in the Tahafut's second proof for the world's pre-eternity 207; Ghazali and demonstrative science 217; Ghazali on ethical premises 247; Al-Ghazali on bodily resurrection and causality in the Tahafut and Iqtis'ad 253; Ghazali's Chapter on Divine power in the Iqtis'ad 279;

III. Other Studies

(With John Rist), Al-Kindi's discussion of divine existence and oneness 315; The fortuna of the Posterior Analytics in the Arabic Middle Ages 331; Divine Omniscience and future contingents in Alfarabi and Avicenna 349; The Islamic philosophers' conception of Islam 363; The philosopher and society: some medieval Arabic discussions 381; A medieval Islamic argument for the intrinsic value of the moral act 395.

21. ———. 2006. "Avicenna's critique of Platonists in Book VII, Chapter 2 of the Metaphysics of his Healing." In Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy. From the Many to the One: Essays in Celebration of Richard M. Frank, edited by Montgomery, James E., 355-369. Leuven: Peeters.

22. Maróth, Miklós. 1989. Ibn Sind und die Peripatetische Aussagenlogik. Leiden: Brill.

Translated from the Hungarian by Johanna Till.

23. McGinnis, Jon. 1999. "Ibn Sina on the Now (A new translation with commentary of a section of Avicenna's Physics)." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 73:73-106.

"Ibn Sina's Treatise on the Now is philosophically deep analysis of Aristotle's temporal theory.

The text is translated and discussed, with particular attention to both its un-Aristotelian and uniquely Avicennian aspects. Among the former is his conception of time as the flow of the now, a view found among Aristotle's later commentators, but absent from Aristotle himself. Ibn Sina's originality emerges most vividly in his solution to Aristotle's paradox against a "flowing" or changing now ("Physics" iv 10, 218a8-21). Ibn Sina's answer conceives of the now analogously to our contemporary mathematical notion of a limit."

24. ———, ed. 2004. Interpreting Avicenna. Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islam. Leiden: Brill.

Proceedings of the Second Conference of the Avicenna Study Group.

25. ———. 2006. "A penetrating question in the history of ideas: space, dimensionality and impenetrability in the thought of Avicenna." Arabic Sciences and Philosophy no. 16:47-69.

"Avicenna's discussion of space is found in his comments on Aristotle's account of place. Aristotle identified four candidates for place: a body's matter, form, the occupied space, or the limits of the containing body, and opted for the last. Neoplatonic commentators argued contra Aristotle that a thing's place is the space it occupied. Space for these Neoplatonists is something ossessing dimensions and distinct from any body that occupies it, even if never devoid of body. Avicenna argues that this Neoplatonic notion of space is untenable on the basis of three arguments. In general he maintains that bodies' impenetrability is explained by reverence to dimensionality. Avicenna argues that the method used to arrive at the possibility of space is illicit, and so Neoplatonist cannot show that space is even possible. Thus, concludes Avicenna, Aristotle's initial account must be correct. The paper outlines the historical context of this debate and then treats Avicenna's arguments against space in detail."

26. ———. 2010. Avicenna. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Nearly three hundred works have been attributed to Avicenna. Moreover, even if one limits oneself to Avicenna's philosophical encyclopedias, he wrote no less than three (extant) s ummas, whose content, organization, and presentation can at times differ significantly. Additionally, recent scholarship has begun making a case that Avicenna's thought underwent an evolution, and so the problems of dating leis works (even the encyclopedias) and determining what are his "mature" views arise. In order partly to address this last issue, I decided to focus primarily on Avicenna's philosophical system as it appears in his most extensive and well-known encyclopedic work, the Cure (ash-Shifa), albeit in places drawing significantly on his other extant encyclopedias-particularly the Salvation (an-Najat), and to a lesser extent Pointers and Reminders (al-Isharat wa-t-tanbihat) as well as his Canon of Medicine (Qanun fit-tibb). Unfortunately, this meant that I gave rather short shrift to Avicenna's shorter specialized treatises as well as his Discussions (Mubahathat) and Glosses (Ta'liqat), even though I recognize that these works frequently have a more fully developed presentation of certain technical and tricky points. Also because of this self-imposed limit, I have thought it prudent not to take up the issue of intellectual development, not because I deny that it occurred or that it is not important, but because in the end I think that presenting a roughly unified Avicennan system of thought as it is appears predominantly in the Cure will be more useful for those readers who are interested primarily in getting some initial sense of Avicenna's overall philosophy as well as providing a starting point for scholars who want to explore systematic developments in his thought.

Even limiting myself to the Cure, however, presented problems, for what one quickly discovers is that Avicenna is indeed a systematic thinker, weaving and interlacing a few very basic concepts, ideas, and arguments throughout a legion of diverse philosophical topics and problems. Consequently, in order to appreciate some move he makes, for example, in metaphysics, one must first understand the problem that he is addressing, which might have arisen initially in physics or medicine. Similarly, the value of some Avicennan notion, which might seem peculiar or even gratuitous-such as his doctrine of the Giver of Forms, which is virtually unique to his system-can be fully grasped only by seeing how it provides him with a single solution to a score of seemingly diverse philosophical problems that in fact Avicenna reveals to have a common ailment and so require a common cure. Moreover, often one cannot properly appraise Avicenna's philosophical contribution without first understanding the historical context and problematic to which he is responding. In short, what I had hoped to be a relatively concise presentation of Avicenna's philosophical system quickly grew into a somewhat lengthy tome as I tried to provide the necessary pieces needed to get some sense of the beautiful and, were it possible, almost seamless mosaic that is his system. I can only hope that the present work does justice to the systematic nature of Avicenna's unique philosophical mind." (From the Preface, XI-XII)

27. Mertz, Donald W. 1993. "Instance Ontology and Avicenna's Arguments." Modern Schoolman no. 70:189-199.

28. Mondin, Battista. 1999. "La metafisica di Avicenna." Sapienza no. 52:257-279.

"Avicenna is not only the greatest metaphysicians of Arabic philosophy, but through his excellent paraphrasis of Aristotle's "Metaphysics", he contributed to the knowledge of metaphysics among the Christian scholastics; and his influence on William of Auvergne, Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus was quite strong. The present article analyzes the object and properties of metaphysics according to Avicenna; then it explains the structure of metaphysics, the four causes, the real distinction between essence and existence, and between the necessary and the possible, the proof of God's existence the attributes of God and the meaning of divine names, the origin of the world through emanation, divine providence and the problem of evil. The study is mainly based on the Kitab al-Shifa."

29. Morewedge, Parviz. 1972. "Ibn Sina's Concept of the Self." Philosophical Forum no. 4:49-73.

30. ———. 1972. "Philosophical analysis and Ibn Sina's "essence-existence" distinction." Journal of the American Oriental Society no. 92:425-435.

Reprinted in: Parviz Morewedge, The Mystical Philosophy of Avicenna, Binghamton: Global Publications, 2001 pp. 33-55.

31. ———. 2001. The Mystical Philosophy of Avicenna. Binghamton: Global Publications, Binghamton University.

Contents: A introduction to Ibsn Sins's ontology 1; 1. Philosophical analysis and Ibn sina's essence-existence distinction 33; 2. The logic of Emanationism and Sufism in the philosophy of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) 57; 3. A third version of the ontological argument int eh Ibn Sinian Metaphysics 117; 4. The analysis of "Substance" un Tusi's Logic and in the Ibn Sinian tradition 165; 5. two senses of mysticism in the Neoplatonic and Sufic tradition 207-239.

"Summary: The enclosed collection of essays focuses on the ontology of the most important medieval Muslim philosopher, ibn Sina (980-1037), proffering the theses that: (a) his ontology is incompatible with monotheistic theologies; (b) his cosmogony is not derivable from either Aristotelian or Neoplatonic systems; and finally (c) the mystical dimension of his system is in accord with monistic "nature mysticism," as classified by R. C. Zaehner*. In contrast to the views of majority of contemporary scholars that ibn Sina's philosophy essentially follows monotheistic or Greek philosophical systems, this collection emphasizes his original contributions to ontology and meta-mysticism."

* [Robert Charles Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane. An Inquiry into Some Varieties of Praeternatural Experience, New York: Oxford University Press, 1961.]

32. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. 1989. "Existence ('wujud') and Quiddity ('mahiyyah') in Islamic philosophy." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 29:409-428.

"This paper deals with the meaning of "wujud" and "mahiyyah" in various schools of Islamic thought. It begins by turning attention to the significance of this subject for Islamic philosophy as well as theology and even certain schools of sufism. It traces the history of the subject from Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina to Suhrawardi, Fakhr al-din Al-Razi and later Islamic philosophers such as Mir Damad and Mulla Sadra. The essay then deals with the basic distinctions made by Ibn Sina between necessity, contingency and impossibility which forms the basis of the ontology of Islamic philosophers."

33. Owens, Joseph. 1992. "The relevance of Avicennean Neoplatonism." In Neoplatonism and Islamic Thought, edited by Morewedge, Parviz, 41-50. Albany: State University of New York Press.

34. Porro, Pasquale. 2002. "Universaux et esse essentiae: Avicenne, Henri de Gand et le "Troisième Reich"." Cahiers de Philosophie de l'Université de Caen no. 38-39:9-51.

35. ———. 2004. "Tommaso d'Aquino, Avicenna e la struttura della metafisica." In Tommaso d'Aquino e l'oggetto della metafisica, edited by Brock, Stephen, 65-87. Roma: Armando.

36. ———. 2004. "Duns Scot et le point de rupture avec Avicenne." In Duns Scot à Paris 1302-2002. Actes du colloque de Paris, 2-4 septembre 2002, edited by Boulnois, Olivier, Karger, Elizabeth, Solère, Jean-Luc and Sondag, Gérard, 195-218. Turnhout: Brepols.

37. Rahman, Fazlur. 1958. "Essence and existence in Avicenna." Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies no. 4:1-16.

38. ———. 1963. "Chapter XXV. Ibn Sina." In A History of Muslim Philosophy. Vol. One, edited by Sharif, M. M., 480-506. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.

39. ———. 1981. "Essence and existence in Ibn Sina. The myth and the reality." Hamdard Islamicus no. 4:3-14.

40. Ramón, Rafael Guerrero. 1996. "Sobre el objecto de la metafisica según Avicena." Cuadernos de Pensamiento no. 10:59-75.

41. Rashed, Marwan. 2004. "Ibn 'Adi et Avicenne: sur les types d'existants." In Aristotele e I suoi esegeti neoplatonici. Logica e ontologia nelle interpretazioni greche e arabe. Atti del Convegno internazionale Roma 19-20 ottobre 2001, edited by Celluprica, Vincenza and D'Ancona Costa, Cristina, 107-171. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

42. Reisman, David C. 2002. The making of the Avicennan Tradition. The Transmission, Contents, and Structure of Ibn Sina's al-Mubahatat (The Discussions). Leiden: Brill.

43. ———. 2002. "A New Standard for Avicenna Studies." Journal of the American Oriental Society no. 122:562-577.

This is a review article of: Ibn Sina, lettre au vizir Abu Sa'd: Editio princeps d'après le manuscrit de Bursa, traduction de l'arabe, introduction, notes et lexique, by Yahya Michot. Sagesses musulmanes 4. Beirut: Éditions al-Boraq. 2000.

"Yahya Michot's recent contribution marks an important advance in the study of Avicenna's life and thought, not only because it offers a critical edition, translation, and commentary of a relatively unknown letter by Avicenna (the Letter to the Vizier), but also because it emphasizes the importance of historiographical and philological methods. However, many of Michot's conclusions concerning the historical context of a number of Avicenna's works, as well as his decision to publish preliminary editions and translations of these works, are open to serious criticism. Many of these historical questions are addressed here, along with manuscript and recension studies of Avicenna's usul ilm wa-hikma and al-Ahd."

44. ———. 2009. "Avicenna's Enthymeme: A Pointer." Arabica no. 56:529-542.

"In reaction to earlier scholarship on the role of Aristotelian political theory among medieval Arabic-writing intellectuals, this paper argues that another approach of those intellectuals might more profitably be followed: that of the role of rhetorical speech. That political speech is investigated in Aristotle's Rhetoric makes it a suitable candidate for such a pursuit. However, what the present investigation concludes is that even this aspect of political theory by way of the Rhetoric also was not perceived to warrant investigation among medieval Arabic-writing intellectuals. In a review of all constituents of Greek political theory as it is now understood, this paper finds that there was one aspect of rhetorical speech that captivated the attention of these writers: the use of the enthymeme in speech patterns. Drawing on the writings of Avicenna, the author concludes that, instead of the application of the enthymemic construction of political rhetoric, Avicenna perceived yet another arena for its applicability: the training of philosophy students."

45. Reisman, David C., and Al-Rahim, Ahmed H., eds. 2003. Before and After Avicenna. Proceedings of the First Conference of the Avicenna Study Group. Leiden: Brill.

46. Rescher, Nicholas. 1963. "Avicenna on the logic of 'conditional' propositions." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 4:48-58.

47. ———. 1963. Studies in the History of Arabic Logic. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press.

"In the ten essays brought together in this volume, the author discusses different aspects and problems related to the intellectual history of Islam and centered around logical and philosophical issues. the guiding line is that Arabic logic is entirely western and has nothing to do with "oriental philosophy." Six of the essays have appeared in different journals. The first essay, written especially for this volume, gives a brief account of the history of Arabic logic. The other essays deal with particular texts and problems related to the writings of such thinkers as Al-FArabi, Al-Kindi, Avicenna, Abu 'l-Salt of Denia, Averroes. The book contains extensive bibliographical references, documentary and critical notes."

48. ———. 1964. The Development of Arabic Logic.

"The book begins with a chapter on the "First century" of Arabic logic which is understood to be a period of transmission, translation and assimilation of mainly Alexandrian Aristotelianism.

The author relates how toward the end of the development of Arabic logic the initial relationship which logic bore to medicine, mathematics and astronomy was replaced by a new kinship with the Islamic "sciences" of theology, law, philology and rhetoric."

49. ———. 1966. Temporal Modalities in Arabic Logic. Dordrecht: Reidel.

50. ———. 1967. "Avicenna on the Logic of Questions." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 49:1-6.

"In the past few years the Logic of Questions has come into its own as a branch of logical theory which has generated widespread interest and has been extensively cultivated (1). It is thus germane to call attention to the (relatively brief) treatment of the theory of questions by the famous Persian-Arabic philosopher Avicenna (980-1037) (2).

In several of his logical treatises, Avicenna takes up the task of providing an analysis and a systematic classification of questions (3)." p. 1

(1) A pioneer work of the recent discussions is M. and A. Prior, "Erotetic Logic", The Philosophical Review, vol. 64 (1955) pp. 43-59 . Three important monographs are: D. Harrah, Communication: A Logical Model, Cambridge Mass. 1963; N . D. Belnap, Jr., An Analysis of Questions: Preliminary Report, Santa Monica 1963; L. Aqvist, A New Approach to the Logical Theory of Interrogatives, Pt. I, Uppsala 1965.

(2) On Avicenna as a logician see N. Rescher, The Development of Arabic Logic, Pittsburgh 1964, especially pp. 149-155.

(3) Our principal sources are: (1) Danesh-name, anonymously edited in Teheran in 1331 A. H. (= 1912); tr. by M. Achena and M. Massi, Avicenne: Le Livre de Science, vol. I, Sections on logic and metaphysics; Paris 1955, pp. 84-85; (2) Kitab al-isharat wa-' l-tanbihat, ed. J. Forget, Leiden 1892; ed. with the commentary of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (b. 1201) by S. Dunya, Cairo 1960; tr. A. M. Goichon, Livre des Directives et Remarques, Paris 1951; see pp. 85-86 of the Forget text and pp. 234-238 of the translation; (3) Kitab al-najat, et. M. Kurdi, Cairo 1938; The material on questions is extracted and translated in a series of footnotes on pp. 235-237 of A. M. Goichon, op. cit.

51. ———. 1968. Studies in Arabic Philosophy. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press.

52. Rizvi, Sajjad. 2000. "Roots of an aporia in later Islamic philosophy. The existence-essence distinction in the metaphysics of Avicenna and Suhrawardi." Studia Iranica no. 29:61-108.

"The distinction between existence and essence in contingent beings is one of the foundational doctrines of medieval philosophy. Building upon the Aristotelian logical distinction between a thing and its existence, Avicenna posited the distinction as a proof for the radical contingency of creation. However, one Islamic philosopher, who had an enormous influence on the development of philosophical discourse in Iran, subverted the traditional Peripatetic vision of reality and disputed the ontological nature of existence. Through a critique of the Peripatetic notion of existence, Suhrawardi denied that the term had 'reference' and demonstrated the irrelevance of the distinction for metaphysical inquiry, which should, instead, rely upon an eidetic vision of the 'hierarchy of lights'. The synthesis of these two views led to the crystallisation of Mullâ Sadrâ Shirâzi's famous doctrine of the 'primacy and systematically graded nature of being'. "

53. ———. 2003. "Process metaphysics in Islam? Avicenna and Mulla Sadra on intensification in Being." In Before and After Avicenna. Proceedings of the First Conference of the Avicenna Study Group, edited by Reisman, David C., 233-248. Leiden: Brill.

54. Roccaro, Giuseppe. 1994. "Il soggetto della scienza prima. Ibn Sina, As-sifa'. Al-ilahiyyat, I.1-2." Giornale di Metafisica no. 16:45-69.

In appendice: Traduzione italiana di Al-ilahiyyat, I.1-2 (pp. 69-82).

55. Sabra, Abdelhamid I. 1980. "Avicenna on the subject matter of logic." Journal of Philosophy no. 77:757-764.

Reprinted in: A. I. Sabra, Optics, Astronomy, and Logic. Studies in Arabic Science and Philosophy, Aldershot: Variorum Reprints, 1994 (Essay XVII).

"Analysis of Avicenna's views on the subject matter of logic as presented in the introduction to the logical section of his "Kitab al-Shifa" -- the only part of this section that was translated into Latin in the Middle Ages. Attempts to clarify the distinctive character of Avicenna's account and point out Avicenna's emphasis on the intimate connection between logic and language. A brief historical introduction places Avicenna's view of the nature of logic in the context of Islamic."

56. Sebti, Meryem. 2000. Avicenne. L'âme humaine. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

57. ———. 2005. "Le statut ontologique de l'image dans la doctrine avicennienne de la perception." Arabic Sciences and Philosophy no. 15:109-140.

"Our goal in this article is to show that the analysis of Avicenna's doctrine of perception enables the isolation of two distinct concepts of the image. In the first part, we examine the passages in which Ibn Sina characterizes the image, in agreement with the ancient conception, as the material replica of a concrete reality formed in the faculty-organs by reification. We then undertake to read his doctrine of perception in the light of the discussion of the essence or common nature, which in itself is indifferent to unity and plurality. This reading enables us to show that for Ibn Sina, the common element of the various representations--sensible, imaginative, and intellective--is the quiddity as it is in itself. Each of these representations adds to the quiddity an intention of universality or of particularity."

58. Sezgin, Fuat, ed. 1999. Ibn Sina in the Western Tradition. Texts and Studies. Collected and Reprinted. Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the history of Arabic-Islamic science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University.

Contents of Vol. I. (pp. 338):

A. Jourdain (Ed., transl.): Dhikr-i shamma-i ahwâl-i Abû 'Alî Sînâ / Biographie abrégée d'Abou Aly Synâ ... (1813)

J. Forget: Un chapître inédit de la philosophie d'Avicenne. (1894)

A.F. Mehren: La philosophie d'Avicenne (Ibn-Sina) exposée d'après des documents inédits. (1882)

A.F. Mehren: Les rapports de la philosophie d'Avicenne avec l'Islam considéré comme religion révélée ... (1883)

A.F. Mehren: Vues d'Avicenne sur l'astrologie et sur le rapport de la responsabilité humaine avec le destin. (1884-85)

A.F. Mehren: Vues théosophiques d'Avicenne. (1885-86)

B. Carra de Vaux: La kaîda d'Avicenne sur l'âme. (1899)

L. Cheikho (Ed.): Risâlatâ at-tayr li r-ra'îs Ibn Sînâ wa-li sh-shaykh al-imâm al-Ghazâlî. (1901)

L. Cheikho (Ed.): Athar majhûl li-Ibn Sînâ. (1906)

C. Prantl: Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande. Einfluss der Araber. (1927)

Contents of Vol. II. (pp. 354):

C.A. Nallino: Filosofia "orientale" od "illuminativa" d'Avicenna? (1923-25)

F. Gabrieli: Estetica e poesia araba nell'interpretazione della poetica aristotelica presso Avicenna e Averroè. (1929-30)

G. Furlani: Avicenna e il Cogito, ergo sum di Cartesio. (1927)

G. Furlani: Avicenna, Barhebreo, Cartesio. (1927)

G. Furlani: La versione siriaca del Kitâb al-Isârât wat-tanbîhât di Avicenna. (1946)

M. Waliur-Rahman: The psychology of Ibn-i-Sînâ. (1935)

M. Amid: Essai sur la psychologie d'Avicenne. (1940)

E.L. Fackenheim (Transl.): A Treatise on Love by Ibn Sina. (1945)

S. Afnan: The commentary of Avicenna on Aristotle's Poetics. (1947)

J. Bakos: Introduction d'Avicenne à sa "Psychologie". Extrait de l'ouvrage as-Sifâ'. (1949)

Contents of Vol. III. (pp. 379):

A.-M. Goichon: Une logique moderne à l'époque médiévale. La logique d'Avicenne. (1947-48)

A.-M. Goichon: L'évolution philosophique d'Avicenne. (1948)

A.-M. Goichon: La place de la définition dans la logique d'Avicenne. (1951)

A.-M. Goichon: Le philosophe de l'être. (1952)

A.-M. Goichon: La personnalité d'Avicenne. (1952)

A.-M. Goichon: L'unité de la pensée avicennienne. (1952)

G. Vajda: Récentes études avicenniennes. (1952)

A.-M. Goichon: Réponse aux "Récentes études avicenniennes" de M. Georges Vajda. (1952)

A.-M. Goichon: Philosophie et histoire des sciences. (1955)

A.-M. Goichon: Le prétendu ésotérisme d'Avicenne dans le récit de Hayy Ibn Yaqzân. (1959)

A.-M. Goichon: La théorie des formes chez Avicenne. (1960)

A.-M. Goichon: Selon Avicenne, l'âme humaine est-elle créatrice de son corps? (1960)

H.A. Wolfson: Goichon's three books on Avicenna's philosophy. (1941)

H.A. Wolfson: Avicenna, Algazali, and Averroes on divine attributes. (1956)

A.F. El Ahwany: La théorie de la connaissance et la psychologie d'Avicenne. (1951)

A.F. al-Ahwânî: Nazarîyat Ibn Sînâ as-siyâsîya. (1955)

Y. Karam: La vie spirituelle d'après Avicenne. (1951)

S. Pines: Ibn Sina et l'auteur de la Risalat al-fusus fi'l-hikma: Quelques données du problème. (1951)

S. Pines: La "philosophie orientale" d'Avicenne et sa polémique contre les Bagdadiens. (1952/53)

S. Pines: La conception de la conscience de soi chez Avicenne et chez Abu'l-Barakat al-Baghdadi. (1954/55)

Contents of Vol. IV (pp. 324):

L. Gardet: Quelques aspects de la pensée avicennienne dans ses rapports avec l'orthodoxie musulmane. (1939)

L. Gardet: En l'honneur du millénaire d'Avicenne. L'importance d'un texte nouvellement traduit: Les gloses d'Avicenne sur la pseudo Théologie d'Aristote. (1951)

G. Vajda: Les notes d'Avicenne sur la "Théologie d'Aristote". (1951)

L. Gardet: L'expérience mystique selon Avicenne. Mystique et philosophie. (1951)

L. Gardet: Avicenne et le problème de sa "philosophie (ou sagesse) orientale". (1951)

L. Gardet: La connaissance suprême de Dieu (ma'rifat Allah) selon Avicenne. (1951)

L. Gardet: La connaissance mystique chez Ibn Sînâ et ses présupposés philosophiques. (1952)

L. Gardet: L'humanisme gréco-arabe: Avicenne. (1954-55)

Contents of Vol. V (pp. 318):

J.L. Teicher: Avicenna's place in Arabic philosophy. (1952)

G.M. Wickens: Some aspects of Avicenna's work. (1952)

F. Rahman: Avicenna's psychology. An English translation of Kitâb al-Najât, book II, chapter VI ... (1952)

G.E. von Grunebaum: Avicenna's Risâla fî 'l-'ishq and courtly love. (1952)

M.Y. Mûsâ: an-Nâhiya al-ijtimâ'îya wa-s-siyâsîya fî falsafat Ibn Sînâ. (1952)

L. Massignon: La philosophie orientale d'Ibn Sînâ et son alphabet philosophique. (1954)

D. Remondon: "Al-ahlâq wa-l-infi'âlât an-nafsâniyya". (1954)

W. Kutsch: Ein neuer Text zur Seelenlehre Avicennas. (1956)

A.-'A. 'Afîfî: Kitâb al-Burhân li-Ibn Sînâ wa-silatuhû bi-Burhân Aristû. (1954)

D.M. Dunlop: Communication relating to Rylands Arabic Ms. 375. (1955)

59. Smith, Gerard. 1943. "Avicenna and the possibles." New Scholasticism no. 17:340-357.

60. Stone, Abraham. 2001. "Simplicius and Avicenna on the essential corporeity of material substance." In Aspects of Avicenna, edited by Wisnovsky, Robert, 73-130. Princeton: Markus Wiener Press.

61. Street, Tony. 2001. "'The eminent later Scholar' in Avicenna's Book of the Syllogism." Arabic Sciences and Philosophy no. 11:205-218.

"Avicenna refers on a number of occasions in his Book of the Syllogism to "the eminent later scholar" ( al-fadil min al-muta'ahhirin). At least three recent studies have argued or assumed that this eminent later scholar is Alexander of Aphrodisias.

It is argued in this article that Avicenna is in fact referring to Alfarabi. This has consequences for reconstructing the lost first part of Alfarabi's Great Commentary on the Prior Analytics, for highlighting certain aspects of Alfarabi's logical doctrines, and for understanding more about the relation between Avicenna and Alfarabi in matters logical."

62. ———. 2002. "An Outline of Avicenna's Syllogistic." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 84:129-160.

"This study presents an outline of Avicenna's categorical syllogistic with divided modal premises. It is hoped that this will encourage further analysis of the system and, ultimately, the production of a formal semantics for it. The study also takes note of some of the problems in Avicenna's system which motivated the later logicians to introduce modifications into it. Finally, the study proposes translations for a number of the Arabic terms of art."

63. ———. 2002. "Avicenna and Tusi on the contradiction and conversion of the absolute." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 21:45-56.

64. ———. 2005. "Logic." In The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, edited by Adamson, Peter and Taylor, Richard C., 247-265. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

65. Verbeke, Gerard. 1968. "Le "De anima" d'Avicenne, à propos d'une édition critique." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 66:619-629.

"The article deals with the principles according to which the first critical edition of the Latin medieval translation of Avicenna's De anima IV-V has been prepared by Simone van Riet (University of Louvain, Belgium). The main topics are: the 'double readings', the choice of the basic manuscripts, the two critical apparatus and the two comparative vocabularies.

The article also provides a survey of the Latin medieval translations of Avicenna in general and indicates the main themes set forth by G. Verbeke in the introduction about the psychological doctrine of Avicenna."

66. ———. 1977. "Le statut de la Métaphysique." In Avicenna Latinus Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina I-IV. Louvain: Peters.

Intoduction doctrinale pp. 1*-122*.

67. ———. 1980. "Une nuovelle théologie philosophique." In Avicenna Latinus Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina V-X. Louvain: Peters.

Introduction doctrinale 1*-80*.

68. ———. 1982. "Transmission d'Avicenne a l'Occident Latin. Les cheminements l'histoire." Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie no. 114:51-64.

"During the last years a critical edition of two important works of Avicenna according to their Latin medieval translation has been published: "De anima" and "De philosophia prima". This translation dates back to the 12th century: as far as the "De anima" is concerned the translation was made wih the help of a Jewish philosopher, Ibn Daoud, who was probably assisted by Dominicus Gundisalvi. Both translations were very influential in the Latin West: the doctrines expressed in them were widely accepted (with some restrictions) and were never censured by the Church."

69. ———. 1982. "Deux étapes de la reflexion métaphysique: Aristote et Avicenne." In Vérité et Éthos: Recueil Commémoratif dédié à Alphonse-Marie Parent, edited by Danek, Jaromir, 57-86. Québec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval.

70. ———. 1983. Avicenna. Grundleger einer neuen Metaphysik. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.

71. Wickens, G.M., ed. 1952. Avicenna: Scientist and Philosopher. A Millenary Symposium. London: Luzac & Company.

72. Wisnovsky, Robert. 2000. "Notes on Avicenna's concept of thingness ( Say'iyya)." Arabic Sciences and Philosophy no. 10:181-221.

"Avicenna's appeals to thingness occur most densely in passages devoted to analyzing the relationship between efficient and final causes, an entirely Aristotelian topic. A philological question arises: should these passages be emended to real causality ( sababiyya) in place of thingness ( say'iyya)? I argue that the balance of evidence compels us to retain thingness. For Avicenna, thingness is the respect in which the final cause is prior to the efficient cause (as well as to the formal and material causes); existence, by contrast, is the respect in which the efficient cause is prior to the final cause. In fact, over the course of Avicenna's career a progression from the kalam problematic of say' v. mawgud to his own problematic of mahiyya v. wugud can be detected in his discussions of efficient and final causation."

73. ———, ed. 2001. Aspects of Avicenna. Princeton: Markus Wiener Press.

Edited by Robert Winovsky.

Contents: Acknowledgments; A note on transliteration and citation; Preface; Dimitri Gutas: Intuition and thinking: the evolving structure of Avicenna's epistemology 1; Dag Nikolaus Hasse: Avicenna on abstraction 39; Abraham D. Stone: Simplicius and Avicenna on the essential corporeity of material substance 73; David C. Reisman: Avicenna at the ARCE 131-182.

74. ———. 2003. Avicenna's Metaphysics in Context. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

75. ———. 2003. "Towards a history of Avicenna's distinction between immanent and transcendent causes." In Before and After Avicenna. Proceedings of the First Conference of the Avicenna Study Group, edited by Reisman, David C. and Al-Rahim, Ahmed H., 49-68. Leiden: Brill.

76. ———. 2005. "Avicenna and the Avicennian Tradition." In The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, edited by Adamson, Peter and Taylor, Richard, 92-136. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"My aim in this book is to present a history of the metaphysics of Abú `Ali al-Husayn ibn `Abdallah ibn Sinâ, known in the West by his Latinized name Avicenna.

Since 1937, when Amélie-Marie Goichon published La distinction de l'essence et de l'existence d'après Ibn Sinâ (Avicenne), no serious book-length study specifically devoted to Avicenna's metaphysics has appeared. This is surprising enough given how influential Avicenna's metaphysical ideas were, but what makes it astonishing is that tremendous advances have taken place since Goichon's time in fields relevant to this topic. Those fields include - from the ultimate to the proximate, to use Avicenna's terms - the study of late antique Greek philosophy and the study of classical Islamic doctrinal theology, or kalâm; the study of the Greco-Arabic philosophical translations and the study of the philosophy of al-Farabi; and the study of Avicenna's metaphysics and the study of his intellectual biography."

77. Wippel, John F. 1973. "Commentary of Boethius De Trinitate: Thomas Aquinas and Avicenna on the relationship between First Philosophy and the other theoretical sciences." Thomist no. 37:133-154.

78. ———. 1990. "The Latin Avicenna as a source for Thomas Aquinas's metaphysics." Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie:51-90.

79. ———. 1999. "Thomas Aquinas, Siger of Brabant, and their use of Avicenna in clarifying the subject of metaphysics." In Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of philosophy. Volume 2: Metaphysics, edited by Rockmore, Tom, 15-26. Bowling Green: Philosophy Documentation Center, Bowling Green State University.

"Both Aquinas and Siger were familiar with a fundamental disagreement within the earlier philosophical tradition concerning the subject of metaphysics: is it being as being, or is it divine being? if Avicenna represented one approach to this issue, and Averroes another, both Thomas and Siger were closer to Avicenna than to Averroes in their respective solutions. Nonetheless, each resolved the issue in a distinct way."

80. Zedler, Beatrice. 1948. "Saint Thomas and Avicenna in the De potentia." Traditio.Studies in Ancient and Medieval thought, history, and religion no. 6:105-159.

81. ———. 1976. "Another look at Avicenna." New Scholasticism no. 50:504-521.

82. ———. 1981. "Why are the possibles possible?" New Scholasticism no. 55:113-130.

83. Zghal, Hatem. 2004. "La connaissance des singuliers chez Avicenne." In De Zénon d'Élée à Poincaré. Recueil d'études en hommage à Roshdi Rashed, edited by Morelon, Régis and Hasnawi, Ahmad, 685-718. Louvain: Peeters Publishers.

84. ———. 2006. "La relation chez Avicenne." Arabic Sciences and Philosophy no. 16:237-286.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Metaphysics or Ontology? The Debate about the Subject-Matter of First Philosophy

Introduction

"As it now exists, the subject of metaphysics can be described by a distinction that became standard in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. (*) According to this distinction, metaphysics has two principal divisions: general metaphysics and special metaphysics. General metaphysics includes ontology and most of what has been called universal science; it is concerned, on the whole, with the general nature of reality: with problems about abstract and concrete being, the nature of particulars, the distinction between appearance and reality, and the universal principles holding true of what has fundamental being. Special metaphysics is concerned with certain problems about particular kinds or aspects of being. These special problems are associated with the distinction between the mental and the physical, the possibility of human freedom, the nature of personal identity, the possibility of survival after death, and the existence of God. The traditional subject of what is real as opposed to what is mere appearance is treated in both general and special metaphysics, for some of the issues relevant to it are more general or fundamental than others." (p.11)

Notes

(*) See, for example, Baruch Spinoza, "Thoughts on Metaphysics," in Earlier Philosophical Writings, trans. Frank A. Hayes (Indianapolis, 1963), pp. 107-61. See also the note on "Pneumatology" in G. W. von Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, trans. Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett (Cambridge, Eng., 1981), p. LXIV.

From: Bruce Aune, Metaphysics. The Elements, Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1986.

"The term 'metaphysics' as the name of the discipline is taken from the title of one of Aristotle's treatises. Aristotle himself never called the treatise by that name; the name was conferred by later thinkers. Aristotle called the discipline at work in the treatise first philosophy or theology and the knowledge that is the aim of the discipline, wisdom. Nonetheless, the subsequent use of the title Metaphysics makes it reasonable to suppose that what we call metaphysics is the sort of thing done in that treatise. Unfortunately, Aristotle does not give us a single account of what he is up to there. In some contexts, he tells us that what he is after in the treatise is a knowledge of first causes. This suggests that metaphysics is one of the departmental disciplines, a discipline with a subject matter distinct from that considered by any other discipline. What subject matter is identified by the expression 'first causes'? Perhaps, a number of different things; but central here is God or the Unmoved Mover. So what subsequently came to be called metaphysics is a discipline concerned with God, and Aristotle tells us a good bit about the discipline. He tells us that it is a theoretical discipline. (...)

But Aristotle is not satisfied to describe metaphysics as the investigation of first causes. He also tells us that it is the science that studies being qua being. As this characterization gets fleshed out, metaphysics turns out to be not another departmental discipline with a special subject matter of its own. It is rather a universal science, one that considers all the objects that there are. On this characterization, then, metaphysics examines the items that constitute the subject matter for the other sciences. What is distinctive about metaphysics is the way in which it examines those objects; it examines them from a particular perspective, from the perspective of their being beings or things that exist. So metaphysics considers things as beings or as existents and attempts to specify the properties or features they exhibit just insofar as they are beings or existents. Accordingly, it seeks to understand not merely the concept of being, but also very general concepts like unity or identity, difference, similarity, and dissimilarity that apply to everything that there is. And central to metaphysics understood as a universal science is the delineation of what Aristotle calls categories. These are the highest or most general kinds under which things fall. What the metaphysician is supposed to do is to identify those highest kinds, to specify the features peculiar to each category, and to identify the relations that tie the different categories together; and by doing this, the metaphysician supposedly provides us with a map of the structure of all that there is.(...)

In the medieval Aristotelian tradition, we continue to meet with this dual characterization of metaphysics; and like Aristotle, the medievals believed that the two conceptions of metaphysics are realized in a single discipline, one that aims both to delineate the categorial structure of reality and to establish the existence and nature of the Divine Substance. But when we reach the metaphysical writings of the Continental rationalists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we meet with a conception of metaphysics that expands the scope of the metaphysical enterprise.

Someone schooled in the Aristotelian tradition would be puzzled by this new use of the term 'metaphysics' and would likely charge that, in the hands of the rationalists, what is supposed to be a single discipline with a single subject matter turns out to be the examination of a hodgepodge of unrelated topics. Evidently, rationalists were sensitive to this sort of charge, and they sought to provide a rationale for their redrawing of disciplinary boundaries within philosophy. What ultimately emerged is a general map of the metaphysical terrain. (5) The claim was that there is a single subject matter for metaphysics; it is being. So the metaphysician seeks to provide an account of the nature of being; but there is a variety of different perspectives from which one can provide such an account, and corresponding to these different perspectives are different subdisciplines within metaphysics. First, one can examine being from the perspective of its being just that -- being. Since this represents the most general perspective from which one can consider being, the branch of metaphysics that considers being from this perspective was dubbed general metaphysics. But the rationalists insisted that we can also examine being from a variety of more specialized perspectives. When we do, we are pursuing this or that branch of what the rationalists called special metaphysics. Thus, we can consider being as it is found in changeable things; we can, that is, consider being from the perspective of its being changeable. To do so is to engage in cosmology. We can, as well, consider being as it is found in rational beings like ourselves. To consider being from this perspective is to pursue that branch of special metaphysics the rationalists called rational psychology. Finally, we can examine being as it is exhibited in the Divine case, and to examine being in this light is to engage in natural theology. Pretty clearly, the rationalist notions of general metaphysics and natural theology correspond to the Aristotelian conceptions of metaphysics as a thoroughly universal science that studies being qua being and as a departmental discipline concerned with first causes; whereas the claim that metaphysics incorporates cosmology and rational psychology as branches expresses the new and broader scope associated with metaphysics in the rationalist scheme." (pp. 2-5)

From: Michael J. Loux, Metaphysics. A Contemporary Introduction, third edition, New York: Routledge 2006.

Historical division of metaphysics in a nutshell

"Metaphysics (ta meta ta phusika) names a discipline practiced, from the 2nd cent. C.E. on, by the 'Peripatetic and Platonic schools, and also names two "classic" early Peripatetic texts, a long treatise by Aristotle and a short one by Theophrastus. The phrase ta meta ta phusika is first attested, as a title for both treatises, in Nicolaus of Damascus (1st cent. C.E.), but is probably earlier as a title for Aristotle's work. While the title comes from the arrangement of this treatise after Aristotle's physical works, this arrangement is determined by the perceived logical order of the subjects of Aristotle's different treatises and the recommended order for instruction; there is no basis for the modern legend that the title originates in a library catalogue. (The systematic arrangement of Aristotle's works is often credited to Andronicus of Rhodes [1st cent. B.C.E.], but the texts had clearly been given some systematic and pedagogical order before Andronicus' edition; it is controversial how far Aristotle himself intended this order.) The Phrase "ta meta ta phusika" is intended as equivalent to Aristotle's " wisdom," "first philosophy," and "theologikê." Its advantage over these ether names is that it is more specific. Thus the Stoics use "theologikê" to name the discipline that studies gods or divine things; but since these gods are themselves natural bodies, t theologikê is a part of physics, although it may be the final, crowning part of physics, and although Cleanthes distinguished it from physics in a stricter sense (D.L. 7.41). The title "ta meta ta phusika," for a discipline occupying the same place as Stoic theologikê, makes it clear that the divine objects to be studied (unlike the divine objects studied in Aristotle's De Caelo) are beyond the physical world.

Although Aristotle uses "wisdom" and "first philosophy" for the same discipline, these names are not interchangeable and are used in different contexts. "Wisdom" (discussed mostly in ethical contexts) designates a certain intellectual virtue, namely, whatever knowledge is most desirable for its own sake and not for any practical consequences. "First philosophy" specifies the object of this knowledge and contrasts it with other disciplines: If there were only physical substances, then "physics would be the first science" (Met. 1026a27-9), but if (as Aristotle thinks) there are eternal unchanging substances separate from matter, then first philosophy can be contrasted with physics as the science of the best and divine kind of substance. Aristotle thinks that none of the existing sciences will do as first philosophy. In the early Topics (105b19-29) Aristotle recognizes the tripartition of logic," "physics," and "ethics" elsewhere credited to his Academic contemporary Xenocrates, in which all theoretical philosophy (knowledge pursued only for its own sake) would fall under physics. But now Aristotle seeks a further theoretical discipline. One candidate would be Platonic dialectic, which, beyond examining hypotheses by question and answer, also classifies and defines and so seeks to grasp the eternal Forms of the definienda. Aristotle admires the practice of dialectic and the ideal of a universal presuppositionless science, but rejects Plato's exaggerated claims for dialectic. Aristotle contrasts dialectic (which aims at defending or refuting, before a general audience, the claim that S is P) with the specialized causal investigations (seeking the real reason why S is P), which alone can produce scientific knowledge. The knowledge (and the scientific definitions) of the forms of natural things can be grasped only by physics, not by dialectic; and the forms reached in this way are not separate eternal stances but depend for their existence on matter. If separate eternal substances do exist, then they can be known (if at all) only by another causal inquiry, which, unlike physics, would lead us from manifest sensible effects to a cause separate from sensible things.” (pp. 335-336)

From: Stephen P. Menn, "Metaphysical thought, Classical", in: Donald J. Zeyl (ed.), Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy, London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers 1997.

"Aquinas divided sapientia into metaphysica (being as being), prima philosophia (first principles), and theologia. This scheme remained intact until early modern times. It was replaced by Christian Wolff, who divided metaphysics into general and special, calling general metaphysics, the science of being as being, by the name ' ontologia' (...)

Special metaphysics was now divided into the three branches of rational theology, rational psychology, and rational cosmology, namely the (rational) sciences of God, souls and bodies respectively, which in fact correspond in subject matter to the divisions of Aristotle's second philosophy. Kant's 'metaphysics of nature', subordinated to epistemology, was divided similarly into a general part, ontology, opposed to the physiology of reason, itself divided into two 'transcendent' parts (rational theology, rational cosmology) and two 'immanent' parts (rational psychology and rational physics). Husserl gave the discipline of being the name of ontology, but divided it into formal ontology and several material or regional ontologies. Formal ontology deals with formal ontological concepts, those concerned with objects in general, as distinct from formal logical concepts, those concerned with truth and inference. Regional ontologies study the most general concepts and principles of the principal regions of being, including physical nature, consciousness, mathematics and the divine. Husserl himself spent much of his time on methodological issues and his regional ontologies were only sketched. Husserl's student Ingarden divided ontology into existential, formal and material. Existential ontology is concerned with what he called moments of existence, like forms of dependence, modality and temporality, which are combined into modes of being. Formal ontology studies different objects according to their form (thing, property, event, process, relation, state of affairs, system), material ontology according to their kind (spatio-temporal, psychological, divine'. For Ingarden 'metaphysics' denotes among all possible ontologies the one that is actual." (p. 312)

From: Peter Simons, "Metaphysics: definitions and divisions", in: Jaegwon Kim and Ernest Sosa (eds.), A Companion to Metaphysics, Oxford: Blackwell 1995.

The Debate about the Subject-Matter of First Philosophy in German Renaissance Philosophy

"The earliest German textbook on metaphysics was published by the Wittenberg professor Daniel Cramer in 1594, two years before Taurellus' Synopsis. Cramer's Isagoge in Metaphysicam is a very modest attempt to present the contents of Aristotle's Metaphysics, but the work is important because its basic structure was retained in other early German textbooks. After a preface on the subject-matter of metaphysics, he reversed the order of the two central sections of Aristotle's work, dealing in his book I with the properties of being (act and potency, ens per se and ens per accidens, the transcendentals), in his book II with its principles (the categories and the principles of natural substance) and finally in his book III with its species (the intelligences). Cramer's work was not strictly a commentary on the Metaphysics, but rather a textbook written in the form of questions and answers on points of metaphysical doctrine. The treatises of his successors were also independent of Aristotle's text and sought to apply and develop his thought. (...)

Decisive for the development of German metaphysics as the science of being was the publication of Suárez' Disputationes metaphysicae at Mainz in 1605, eight years after its first publication at Salamanca. Suárez' work was well suited to the purposes of the Lutheran thinkers. (...)

The influence of Suárez' approach may be observed as early as the works of Cornelius and Jakob Martini and most clearly in the Opus metaphysicum (1617) and Epitome metaphysica (1618) of Christoph Scheibler, professor of logic and metaphysics at Giessen.

In spite of such efforts to maintain the integral character of metaphysics, Lutheran writers came increasingly to regard an independent natural theology as a necessity. They distinguished between traditional metaphysics, as a discipline which had the task of explaining certain generally valid terms and principles, and a discipline which was often called pneumatologia because it dealt with the nature, properties and activities of spiritual being. (...)

Scheibler himself contributed to the distinction of the two subjects by publishing a separate textbook on T heologia naturalis (1621). In the preface to this work he gave a practical reason for treating the subject separately -- to limit the extent of his general treatment of metaphysics -- but the division was in fact a natural consequence of his own distinction between a metaphysica generalis and a metaphysica specialis. Also contributory to the separation of the two sciences was the publication at Cologne in 1595 of the De communibus onmium rerum naturalum principiis of the Jesuit Benito Pereira. The Wittenberg professor Johannes Scharf referred in the preface to his Pneumatica (1629) to Pereira's distinction between first philosophy as the science of being and metaphysics as the science of God, and maintained that it was well founded. (...)

The publication at Basle in 1594 of Jacopo Zabarella's Opera logica played an important role in this development. Whereas the theoretical sciences employ a synthetic method in the presentation of doctrine, drawing conclusions from first principles, the practical sciences make use of an analytic method -- described by Zabarella -- which takes as its point of departure the end or purpose of an action and seeks to discover the means and principles by which this end might be attained. (...)

Consequently, whereas Lutheran writers on metaphysics sought to maintain the unity of Aristotle's science and only reluctantly admitted the necessity of an independent natural theology, Calvinist authors tended to distinguish clearly between two sciences, a science of God to the extent that he is accessible to human reason and a science of being understood as a universal science which supplies the principles for all the particular sciences.

For the formulation of the distinction they turned to the Jesuit Benito Pereira. In the preface to his Isagoge in primam philosophiam (1598) the Marburg professor Rudolphus Goclenius spoke of two separate sciences, a universal science called 'first philosophy' and a particular science called 'metaphysics'. First philosophy deals with being, its properties and its principles; metaphysics studies the various types of immaterial being: God, the intelligences and the human soul. Goclenius composed no treatise on metaphysics as the science of God, but his Isagoge is an introduction to first philosophy as the science of being. The work has two parts, the second of which deals with individual questions in the form of disputations. The first part, entitled Praecepta metaphysica, contains his complete treatment of the science. The first chapter deals with the definition of first philosophy and the notion of being, chapter 2-15 take up the simple and conjunct properties of being and the last three chapters treat substance and accident as its principles.

Goclenius seems to have been aware of the difficulties involved in restricting the term 'metaphysics' to the science of God while speaking of the science of being as 'first philosophy'. In his Lexicon philosophicum (1613) he made a new and important addition to philosophical terminology. In the article on abstraction he divided the speculative sciences according to the types of abstraction from matter that characterise them; that employed in physics he described as 'physical', that made use of in the science of God and the intelligences as 'transnatural' and that used in the science of being and the transcendentals as 'ontological'.' (pp. 13-19) The term occurs here in its adjectival form, but it soon appeared as a noun. The term 'ontology' made it possible to recognise the claim of the science of being to be metaphysics just as much as the science of God. It was in this way that the term 'metaphysics' came to designate both the universal science of 'first philosophy' or 'ontology' and the particular or special science of 'natural theology'." (pp. 626-632, notes omitted).

From: Charles H. Lohr, "Metaphysics", in: Charles B. Schmitt (ed.), The Cambridge history in Renaissance philosophy Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 537-638.

"Lutheran Aristotelianism

(...) (31)

By appealing to the philosophical idea of God, Lutheran theologians were to be able to respond to the threat to Orthodoxy which came from some extremist theologians, who maintained not only that the doctrines of faith could not be proved, but also that they are contrary to reason. Distinguishing clearly between that which belongs to reason and that which belongs to revelation, Calixt (*) maintained that reason in its own sphere cannot contradict revelation. The philosophical idea of God which man is able to attain is not such that we can say that it conflicts with the revealed idea. This approach may be observed in the works of Cornelius and Jakob Martini and most clearly in the Opus metaphysicum (1617) and Epitome metaphysica (1618) of Christoph Scheibler, professor of logic and metaphysics at Giessen.(32)

In this way a new understanding in Lutheran Orthodoxy of the nature and method of revealed theology brought about a distinction between metaphysics as the science of being and metaphysics as natural theology. Lutheran writers came increasingly to regard an independent natural theology as a necessity. They distinguished between traditional metaphysics as a discipline which had the task of explaining certain generally valid terms and principles, and a discipline which was often called pneumatologia because it dealt with the nature, properties and activities of spiritual being. Scheibler contributed to the distinction of the two subjects by publishing a separate textbook on Theologia naturalis (1621).

This understanding of the relationship between philosophy and theology opened the way for the free development in Lutheranism of natural theology as a theoretical science -- using the synthetic method -- distinct from the practical science of revealed theology -- using the analytic method.

Calvinist Aristotelianism

The analytic method had little success in those German territories -- like the Palatinate, Nassau, Hesse-Kassel and several smaller principalities – which leaned towards Calvinism. In accordance with the architectonic spirit of Calvinist Scholasticism; (33) Reformed theologians at the universities of Heidelberg and Marburg and later at Herborn and Burgsteinfurt regarded their science as essentially speculative and followed the synthetic method in the presentation of doctrine. Rejecting the Lutheran transposition of the tracts on salvation and soteriology in systematic works on theology, they took the glory of God and predestination as their point of departure.

Reformed dogmatics began with God as the first cause and final goal of all things, and treated his eternal decrees of providence and predestination before taking up his government of the world in time. In this conception natural theology formed an integral part of the cognitio Dei perfecta at which theology aimed.

Consequently, whereas Lutheran writers on metaphysics only reluctantly admitted the necessity of an independent natural theology, Calvinist authors tended to distinguish clearly between two sciences, a science of God (to the extent that he is accessible to human reason) and a science of being (understood as a universal science which supplies the principles for all the particular sciences).

Thus the Marburg professor Rudolph Goclenius (34) in the preface to his Isagoge in primam philosophiam (1598), spoke of two separate sciences, a universal science called 'first philosophy' and a particular science called 'metaphysics'. First philosophy deals with being, its properties and its principles; metaphysics studies the various types of immaterial being: God, the intelligences and the human soul.

Goclenius seems to have been aware of the difficulties involved in restricting the term 'metaphysics' to the science of God while speaking of the science of being as 'first philosophy'. In his Lexicon philosophicum (1613) he made a new and important addition to philosophical terminology. In the article on abstraction he divided the speculative sciences according to the types of abstraction from matter that characterize them; that employed in physics he described as 'physical', that made use of in the science of God and the Intelligences as 'transnatural' and that used in the science of being and the transcendentals as 'ontological'. The term 'ontology' made it possible to recognize the claim of the science of being to be metaphysics just as much as the science of God. It was in this way that the term 'metaphysics' came to designate both the universal science of 'first philosophy' or 'ontology', and the particular or special science of 'natural theology'." (pp. 290-291)"

Notes

(*) [Georg Calixt (1586 – 1656), author of the Epitome theologiae (1619)]

(31) Concerning the Aristotelianism of Lutheran Orthodoxy, see Troeltsch (1891); Weber (1907), (1908); Petersen (1921); Wundt (1939), (1945); Dreitzel (1970); Sparn (1976); Leinsle (1985); Lohr (1988b), pp. 620-31; Wollgast (1993), pp. 128-220; Kusukawa (1995).

The influence of Spanish-Jesuit Aristotelianism on German Protestant philosophy is discussed by Eschweiler (1928); Lewalter (1935).

(32) Concerning these authors, see Lohr (1988a), pp. 247 (C. Martini), 247-248 (J. Martini), Petersen (1921), pp. 306-8; Wundt (1939), pp. 119-23 (Scheibler).

(33) Concerning Calvinist Scholasticism, see Althaus (1914); Lohr (1988b), pp. 631-638; Wollgast (1993), pp. 128-220.

(34) Concerning Goclenius, see Lohr (1988a), pp. 169-170.

[For the complete references see the Selected Bibliography on the Subject Matter of First Philosophy]

From: Charles H. Lohr, "Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy as Sciences: the Catholic and the Protestant Views in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries", in: Constance Blackwell, Sachiko Kusukawa (eds.) Philosophy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Conversations with Aristotle, Aldershot: Ashgate 1999, pp. 280-295.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated Bibliography on the Debate about the Subject Matter of First Philosophy

Bibliography of the studies in English

1. "Metaphysica - Sapientia - Scientia divina. The Subject and Status of First Philosophy in the Middle Ages." 2005. Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of the Metaphysics no. 5.

Edited by Pasquale Porro.

Contents: Pasquale Porro: Introduzione. Dalla Metafisica alla metafisica, e ritorno: una storia medievale IX-LI; I. Dalla Tarda Antichità al Medioevo: neoplatonismo, pensiero bizantino e letture prospettiche. Carlo Steel: Theology as First Philosophy. The Neoplatonic concept of metaphysics 3; Theo Kobusch: Epoptie -- Metaphysik des inneren Menschen 25; Olivier Boulnois: La métaphysique au Moyen Âge: onto-théologie ou diversité rebelle? 37; Katerina Ierodiakonou: Metaphysics in the Byzantine tradition: Eustratios of Nicaea on Universals 67; Rosanna Gambino: La metafisica dell' ousia in Massimo il Confessore e Teodoro Studita: analogie e differenze 83; II: L'Alto Medioevo latino. Giulio d'Onofrio: Quando la metafisica non c'era: Vera philosophia nell'Occidente latino 'pre-aristotelico' 103; Christophe Erismann: Une autre aristotélisme? La problématique métaphysique durant le haut Moyen Âge latin. À propos d'Anselme, Monologion 27 145; Andreas Speer: The hidden heritage: Boethian metaphysics and its medieval tradition 163; Francesco Papararella: Dialettica come metodo: struttura e limiti epistemici della filosofia prima eriugeniana 183; Concetto Martello: Sapientia Dei come "filosofia prima" in Berengario di Tours 201; Luisa Valente: "Illa quae transcendent generalissima": elementi per una storia latina dei termini trascendentali (XII secolo) 217; III. Filosofia ebraica e araba. Mauro Zonta: Metaphysics in medieval Hebrew tradition. A short historical sketch 243; Marienza Benedetto: Sapienza e filosofia nel Fons vitae di ibn Gabirol 259; Luciana Pepi: La "scienza divina" nel pensiero di Ja'aqov Anatoli 273; Amos Bertolacci: Ammonius and al-Farabi: the sources of Avicenna's concept of metaphysics 287; Olga Lizzini: Utility and gratuiitousness of metaphysics: Avicenna, Ilahiyyat I, 3 307; Giuseppe Roccaro: Soggetto e statuto della filosofia prima in Averroè 345; Patrizia Spallino: Il dibattito sulla scienza prima tra filosofia e mistica: la corrispondenza tra Nasir al-Din al-Tusi e Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi 363; IV. Filosofia scolastica e tardo-scolastica. Jan A. Aertsen: Metaphysics as a transcendental science 377; Alessandra Beccarisi: Statuto della metafisica e teoria dell'intelletto nelle opere di Alberto il Grande 391; Gabriele Galluzzo: Aquinas' interpretation of Metaphysics Book Beta 413; Leonardo Sileo: Il concetto di sapientia e la Filosofia prima. Le ragioni del dibattito e l'opzione di Bonaventura 429; Fabrizio Amerini: Alessandro di Alessandria su natura e soggetto della metafisica 477; Alessandro Palazzo: la sapientia nel De summo bono di Ulrico di Strasburgo 495; Marialucrezia Leone: Metaphysics, theology and the natural desire to know separate substances in Henry of Ghent 513; Giorgio Pini: Ex defectu intellectualis luminis: Giles of Rome on the role and limits of metaphysics 527; Dino Buzzetti: Common natures and metaphysics in John Duns Scotus 543; Marco Forlivesi: Impure ontology. The nature of metaphysics and its object in Francisco Suárez's texts 559; Marienza Benedetto e Lucrezia Iris Martone: La metafisica nel Medioevo: una bibliografia essenziale 587; Varia. Note Cronache Recensioni 605-672; Indice dei nomi: 673-688.

2. "Origins and Developments of Ontology (16th-21th Century) / Origini e sviluppi dell'ontologia (secoli XVI-XXI) / Naissance et développements de l'ontologie (XVIème-XXIème siècles) / Entstehung und Entwicklungen der Ontologie (XVI-XXI Jahrundert) / Origins and Developments of Ontology (16th-21st Century)." 2009. Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of the Metaphysics no. 9.

The volume, edited by Costantino Esposito with the cooperation of Marco Lamanna, contains the Acts of the International Congress Origin and Development of Modern Ontology, held at Università di Bari (Italy) 15-17 May 2008.

Indice: Costantino Esposito: Introduzione. Dalla storia della metafisica alla storia dell'ontologia VII-XXXI; I. Alle origini dell'ontologia moderna: l'orizzonte tardo-scolastico e rinascimentale. Joseph S. Freedman, The Godfather of Ontology? Clemens Timpler, "All that is Intelligible", Academic Disciplines during the Late 16th and Early 17th Centuries, and Some Possible Ramifications for the Use of Ontology in our Time 3; Mario S. de Carvalho: Tra Fonseca e Suarez: una metafisica incompiuta a Coimbra 41; Jacob Schmutz: Les innovations conceptuelles de la métaphysique espagnole post-suarézienne: les status rerum selon Antonio Pérez et Sebastiån Izquierdo 61; Paolo Ponzio: Notitia sui est esse suum. Nota sull'ente e sull'io nel pensiero metafisico di Tommaso Camapanella 101; II. L'età cartesiana e le metafisiche del razionalismo. Giulia Belgioioso: L'invenzione dell'ontologia cartesiana nelle interpretazioni del Novecento 113; Massimiliano Savini: Johannes Clauberg e l'esito cartesiano dell'ontologia 153; Michaël Devaux / Marco Lamanna: The Rise and Early History of the Term Ontology (1606-1730) 173; Filippo Mignini: Dell'ontologia in Spinoza 209; Stefano Di Bella: Crisi e rinascite della sostanza. L'eredità leibniziana nell'ontologia analitica da Russell a Kripke (e oltre) 225; Luigi Cataldi Madonna: L'ontologia sperimentale di Christian Wolff 253; Alexei N. Krouglov: Die Ontologie von Tetens und seiner Zeit 269; Riccardo Pozzo: L'ontologia nei manuali di metafisica della Aufklärung 285; Norbert Hinske: Ontologie oder Analytik des Verstandes? Kants langer Abschied von der Ontologie 303; Klaus Düsing: Grundformen der Ontologie bei Kant und bei Hegel 311; Stefano Poggi, Da Wolff a Herbart: l'ontologia di un soggetto inesistente 325; Giusi Strummiello: Beyond the Possible. The Overturning of Early Modern Ontology in Schelling 335; IV. Prospettive novecentesche. Jean-François Courtine: Husserl et la réhabilitation de l'ontologie comme ontologie formelle 353; Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann: Metaphysik und Ontologie in Heideggers fundamentalontologischem und ereignisgeschichtlichem Denken 379; Maurizio Ferraris: Documentalità e ontologia sociale 389; Varia. Note Cronache Recensioni 409; A Note from the Editors 453; Gli Autori 455; Indice dei nomi 459-469.

3. "The Debates on the Subject of Metaphysics from the Later Middle Ages to the Early Modern Age / I dibatitili sull'oggetto della metafisica dal tardo medioevo alla prima età moderna." 2010. Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 34.

Edited by Marco Forlivesi.

Contents: Marco Forlivesi: Presentazione 7; Marco Forlivesi: Approaching the debate on the subject of metaphysics from the later Middle Ages to the early Modern Age: the ancient and medieval antecedents 9; Claus A. Andersen, "Metaphysica secundum ethymon nominis dicitur scientia transcendens". On the etymology of "Metaphysica in the Scotist tradition 61; Antonino Poppi: L'oggetto della metafisica nella Quaestio de subiecto metaphysicae di Giacomino Malafossa (1553) 105; Isabelle Mandrella: Le sujet de la métaphysique et sa relation au conceptus entis transcendentissimi aux 16ème et 17ème siècles 123; Pier Paolo Ruffinengo: L'oggetto della metafisica nella scuola tomista tra tardo medioevo ed età moderna 141; Maria Muccillo: Un dibattito sui libri metafisici di Aristotele fra platonici, aristotelici e telesiani (con qualche complicazione ermetica): Patrizi, Angelucci e Muti sul soggetto della metafisica 221; Riccardo Pozzo: Cornelius Martini sull'oggetto della metafisica 305; Marco Lamanna, "De eo enim Metaphysicus agit logice". un confronto tra Pererius e Goclenius 315; Massimiliano Savini: Una metafisica sotto tutela: gnostologia, noologia e ontologia nel pensiero di Abraham Calov 361; Marco Sgarbi, "Unus, Verus, Bonus et Calovius". L'oggetto della metafisica secondo Abraham Calov 381; Sven K. Knebel: "Metaphysikkritik"? Historisches zur Abgrenzung von Logik und Metaphysik 399;

Note e Documenti

Claus A. Andersen: The Quaestio de subiecto metaphysicae by Giacomino Malafossa from Barge (ca 1481-1563). edition of the text 427; Daniel Heider: The unity of Suarez's metaphysics 475; Francesco Piro: Lo scolastico che faceva un partito a sé (faisait band à part). Leibniz su Durando di San Porziano e la disputa sui futuri contingenti 597; Abstracts 551; Indice dei nomi 545-561.

4. "Aquinas on Separate Substances and the Subject Matter of Metaphysics." 2011. Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale no. 22:347-382.

Abstract: "Scholars who consider Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysics have dedicated muchattention to his account of how the separate substance known as God is related to the subject matter of metaphysics, ens commune. Little attention, however, has been paid

to his account of how created separate substances, which theologians call ‘angels’, are related to this subject matter. Indeed, Thomas himself does not address this topic in detail. To the extent that he does, his considerations seem somewhat inconsistent. On

the one hand, he presents created separate substances as principles or causes of ens commune, suggesting that they are not included under this subject matter. On the other hand, he also treats them as substances or beings, suggesting that they are somehow included under ens commune. This article attempts to show that despite Thomas’s seemingly contradictory treatment of this topic, one can nevertheless discern in his writings a coherent and consistent account of how created separate substances are related to the subject matter of metaphysics."

5. Adamson, Peter, and Benevich, Fedor. 2023. The Heirs of Avicenna: Philosophy in the Islamic East, 12–13th Centuries. Metaphysics and Theology. Brill: Leiden.

Chapter 1: The Subject Matter of Metaphysics and Kalām, pp. 26-63.

6. Aertsen, Jan A. 2005. "Metaphysics as a Transcendental Science." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of the Metaphysics no. 5:377-389.

7. ———. 2011. "The Transformation of Metaphysics in the Middle Ages." In Philosophy and Theology in the Long Middle Ages: A Tribute to Stephen F. Brown, edited by Emery, Kent Jr., Friedman, Russell L. and Speer, Andreas, 19-39. Leiden: Brill.

8. ———. 2012. "Why Is Metaphysics Called "First Philosophy" in the Middle Ages?" In The Science of Being as Being: Metaphysical Investigations, edited by Doolan, Gregory T., 53-69. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

9. Andersen, Claus A. 2009. "«Metaphysica secundum ethymon nominis dicitur scientia transcendens». On the Etymology of ‘metaphysica’ in the Scotist Tradition." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 34:61-104.

10. ———. 2009. "The Queastio de subjecto metaphysicae by Giacomino Malafossa from Barge (1481ca.-1563). Edition of the text." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 34:427-474.

11. ———. 2019. "What is Metaphysics in Baroque Scotism? Key Passages from Bartolomeo Mastri’s Disputations on Metaphysics (1646–1647)." Analecta Romana Instituti Danici no. 44:49-71.

Abstract: "This contribution offers a first-hand impression of Bartolomeo Mastri’s Disputations on Metaphysics, the single most important work on metaphysics produced in the Scotist school during the Early Modern period.

I shall highlight a selection of key passages that convey an impression of this work’s historical-literary context, its subject matter, its main motifs, and scientific aims, but also its limitations. Notably, we see Mastri

emphasizing the theological aspect of metaphysics, though he in the end refrains from exploring this aspect of metaphysics within his work on metaphysics. I suggest that this discrepancy between Mastri’s concept

of metaphysics and his practice of metaphysics showcases the difficulty of organizing this discipline during the period of transition from the traditional commentary format, typical of medieval scholasticism, to the

Early Modern scholastic Cursus philosophicus literature."

12. ———. 2020. "Scotist Metaphysics in Mid-Sixteenth Century Padua. Giacomino Malafossa from Barge’s A Question on the Subject of Metaphysics." Studia Neoaristotelica no. 17:69-107.

Abstract: "For more than four decades around the middle of the sixteenth century, Giacomino Malafossa from Barge († 1563) held the Scotist chair of metaphysics at the University of Padua. In his A Question on the Subject of Metaphysics, in Which Is Included the Question, Whether Metaphysics Is a Science, he developed a remarkable stance on the subject matter of metaphysics. Metaphysics has two objects: being qua being and God. However, only when it deals with the latter object can it be said to be a science in a strict sense. The reason is that the strict Aristotelian notion of science presupposes that the object of any science has demonstrable properties, which is the case with God, but not with being as being. Although being qua being does have certain properties, namely the transcendentals, these cannot be truly demonstrated. Malafossa’s Quaestio bears witness both to the clash between Averroism and Scotism at the Italian Renaissance universities and to the complexity of the Scotist tradition itself. This introductory article highlights Malafossa’s sources and traces the critical reception of his views among later Scotist authors."

13. Anzen, Rüdiger. 2010. "Ibn Rushd on the Structure of Aristotle’s Metaphysics." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 21:375-410.

14. Bertolacci, Amos. 2006. The Reception of Aristotle's Metaphysics in Avicenna's Kitab al-Sifa'. A Milestone of Western Metaphysical Thought. Leiden: Brill.

15. ———. 2007. "Avicenna and Averroes on the Proof of God’s Existence and the Subject-Matter of Metaphysics." Medioevo no. 32:61-98.

16. ———. 2022. "On the Arabic Titles of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. The Case of “Book of Letters”." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 22:107-146.

Abstract: "The article has three interrelated aims. First, to document that the title “Book of Letters”, despite its fame, was far from being ‘traditional’ in Arabic philosophy, as it is often presented, but it rather served as a temporary designation of the Metaphysics inArabic. Apart from later derivatives, this title is attested only four times, in different forms, in writings of the IV/X century, with no trace beforehand and a life-span of a few decades, from the time of the translation activity of Abu- Bišr Matta- (d. 328H/940) until the composition of an ethical work by Miskawayh (written between 358H/968 and 360H/970) and of the Fihrist (377H/987-8). This title soon disappeared from the philosophical scenario in the course of the V/XI century, when it apparently lost currency in philosophical contexts.

The second aim is to shed some light on the origin of this expression. “Book of Letters” as a title of the Metaphysics comes, in fact, from a cultural environment different from the Arabic-Islamic one, namely from the Syriac tradition of Greek philosophy, or from its Pahlavi offshoots. The Syriac provenience is indicated by the first known user of this expression, Paul the Persian (VI c. CE). It is corroborated by the Syriac background of some parts of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ commentary on the Metaphysics preserved in Arabic, in which all the treatises of the Metaphysics are systematically designated through letters. The third aim is to explain the waning of the title under discussion with reference to Avicenna (Ibn Sı-na-, d. 428H/1037) and his renewal of philosophical nomenclature in the V/XI century.

The author of the Book of the Cure/Healing (Kita-b al-Šifa - ʾ) not only neglected the title at stake, as already others had done before him: in his masterpiece on metaphysics, he also proposed a new and alternative denomination of Aristotle’s eponymous work (“First Teaching”, al-ta ʿlı-m al-awwal), which condemned to irrelevance the textual content of the Metaphysics and a fortiori its material arrangement in distinct treatise designated by means of letters."

17. Biard, Joël. 2003. "God as First Principle and Metaphysics as a Science." In The Medieval Heritage in Early Modern Metaphysics and Modal Theory, 1400-1700, edited by Friedman, Russell L. and Nielsen, Lauge Olaf, 75-98. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"In Aristotelian "first philosophy" (prote philosophia), wisdom is defined as 'the search for first causes and first principles.' (1) Thus, first philosophy is defined as the highest, governing science, even before its object has been determined, i.e. before knowing the precise number and the nature of these first principles, whether nature (phusis), being (to on), God, or, as Aristotle himself is inclined to think in Metaphysics VII (Z), ousia.The very claim that God is first principle -- if such a principle exists -- emerged in the field of philosophy. Before Aristotle, Anaxagoras had already characterized the nous as divine. Further, as we have seen, the question of the nature and existence of a first principle is a crucial one for determining the status of the "highest science" for which Aristotle was looking in the Metaphysics. In a situation like this, a confrontation with the doctrine of the great revealed religions was unavoidable. This began in the period of the Alexandrian commentaries, continued in the Arabo-islamic world, and the Latin Middle Ages inherited this rich and complex tradition. In fact, for a long time, medieval Latin thinkers believed that Aristotle had written a theology, supposedly the continuation of Book XII of the Metaphysics. They thought that this was to be found in the small text derived from Proclus' Elements of Theology and entitled Liber de causis.Does the investigation of the natural world allow us to conclude the existence of a first principle? Following natural reason, what might prompt us to call this principle 'God'? In the highest part of philosophy, what functions does God as first principle play? Are we talking about the same God as the God of the Bible, or is this pure homonymy?

In the first part of this paper I sketch the thirteenth and fourteenth century debate concerning the object of metaphysics, which raised the question of whether God, insofar as he is first principle, is the object of this science. Then I investigate how the first principle can be apprehended and conceived as an integral part of a discipline that proceeds according to human reason. I consequently touch on how the question of the knowability of the first principle serves simultaneously to assign the limits of metaphysics and to determine fully the extent of its validity. Finally I show that Early Modern metaphysics, specifically René Descartes, while completely abandoning the peripatetic conception of knowledge prevalent in the Middle Ages, nevertheless retains certain aspects of the medieval tradition through the use that Descartes made of a philosophical conception of God that provided a foundation for the order of nature and guaranteed our knowledge." (pp. 75-76)

(1) Metaphysics A, 1, 981 b 27-28: "All men suppose what is called wisdom to deal with the first causes and the principles of things".

18. Booth, Edward. 1983. Aristotelian Aporetic Ontology in Islamic and Christian Thinkers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

19. Callus, Daniel A. 1963. "The Subject-Matter of Metaphysics according to some Thirteenth Century Oxford Masters." In Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter. Ihr Ursprung und ihre Bedeutung, edited by Wilpert, Paul and Eckert, Willehad Paul, 393-400. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

20. Chroust, Anton-Hermann. 1951. "The Definitions of Philosophy in the De divisione philosophiae of Dominicus Gundissalinus." New Scholasticism no. 25:253-281.

21. Crowe, Michael Bertram. 1963. "Peter of Ireland's Approach to Metaphysics." In Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter. Ihr Ursprung und Ihre Bedeutung, edited by Wilpert, Paul, 154-160. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

22. D'Ancona, Cristina. 1998. "Al-Kindi on the Subject-Matter of the First Philosophy. Direct and Indirect Sources of Falsafa al-ülä, Chapter one." In Was ist Philosophie im Mittelalter? - Qu'est-ce que la philosophie au Moyen Age? - What is Philosophy in the Middle Ages?, edited by Aertsen, Jan A. and Speer, Andreas, 841.855. Berlin: de Gruyter.

23. D'Ettore, Dominic. 2015. "A Thomist Re-consideration of the Subject Matter of Metaphysics: Chrysostom Iavelli on What is Included in Being as Being." Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association no. 89:209-223.

Abstract "Catholic Philosophy has long acknowledged the primary place of Metaphysics, and a primary question of metaphysicians is “what is Metaphysics about?” This paper engages this primary metaphysical question through the lens of Scholastic dispute over the adequate subject matter of Metaphysics. Chrysostom Iavelli defended the position that the subject of Metaphysics is real being common to God and creatures against the position of his predecessor Dominic Flandrensis who had argued that it is categorical being to the exclusion of uncreated being. I find Flandrensis’s position represented in the writings of notable contemporary Thomists, but not Iavelli’s. This paper, offers a sixteenth-century Thomist’s position on the subject matter of Metaphysics as a challenge to current Thomist consensus. It attempts to prompt a re-investigation of the reasons behind the current consensus both as a philosophical position and as an interpretation of St. Thomas Aquinas."

24. d'Onofrio, Giulio. 2005. "Quando la metafisica non c’era. “Vera philosophia”nell’Occidente latino ‘pre-aristotelico." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 5:103-144.

25. Darge, Rolf. 2015. "Suárez on the Subject of Metaphysics." In A Companion to Francisco Suárez, edited by Salas, Victor M. and Fastiggi, Robert L., 91-123. Leiden: Brill.

26. Di Giovanni, Matteo. 2011. "Averroes and the Logical Status of Metaphysics." In Methods and Methodologies: Aristotelian Logic East and West, 500–1500, edited by Cameron, Margaret and Marenbon, John, 53-74. Leiden: Brill.

27. Di Liscia, Daniel A. 2017. "The Subject Matter of Physics and Metaphysics in Jacques Legrand's Compendium utriusque philosophie." Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval no. 24:249-265.

28. Doig, James C. 1972. Aquinas on Metaphysics: A Historico-Doctrinal Study of the Commentary on the Metaphysics. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

29. Doolan, Gregory T. 2011. "Aquinas on Separate Substances and the Subject Matter of Metaphysics." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 22:347-382.

30. Evans, Gillian R. 2004. "The Discussions of the Scientific Status of Theology in the Second Half of the Twelfth Century " In Metaphysics in the Twelfth Century: On the Relationship among Philosophy, Science and Theology, edited by Lutz.Bachmann, Matthias, Fidora, Alexander and Niederberger, Andreas, 161-183. Tornhout: Brepols.

31. Fakhry, Majid. 1984. "The subject-matter of metaphysics: Aristotle and Ibn-Sina." In Islamic Theology and Philosophy: Studies in Honor of G. Hourani, edited by Marmura, Michael E., 137-147. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Reprinted in: M. Fakhry, Philosophy, Dogma, and the Impact of Greek Thought in Islam, Aldershot: Variorum 1994, Essay XII.

32. Fazzo, Silvia. 2012. "The Metaphysics from Aristotle to Alexander of Aphrodisias." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies no. 55:51-68.

33. Fidora, Alexander. 2013. "Dominicus Gundissalinus and the Introduction of Metaphysics into the Latin West." The Review of Metaphysics no. 66:691-712.

"It is in his influential encyclopedia De divisione philosophiae,(*) however, that Gundissalinus presents his most systematic discussion of metaphysics as a science."

(...)

"Accordingly, the following discussion is divided into three parts: firstly, an exploration of the history of the relevant terminology will show how, for the first time, Gundissalinus interpreted metaphysics as the name of a discipline (1); in a second step, I will analyze the epistemological foundation of metaphysics as an autonomous science in the chapter on metaphysics in De divisione philosophiae, paying particular attention to Gundissalinus’s criticism of twelfth-century philosophical theology (2); thirdly, I will examine a key text of the treatise on the division of the sciences, which has received little attention so far: Gundissalinus included a translation of a passage from Avicenna’s Kitâb al-burhân in his treatise, which discusses the difficult matter of the subordination of the philosophical disciplines under metaphysics (3)." (pp. 691-692)

(°) A Latin edition with German translation of the text may be found in: Alexander Fidora, and Dorothée Werner, De divisione philosophiae — Über die Einteilung der Philosophie, Herders Bibliothek der Philosophie des Mittelalters, vol. 11 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2007). Henceforth: Gundissalinus, De divisione.

34. ———. 2020. "The Arabic Influence on the Classification of Philosophy in the Latin West. The Case of the Introductions to Philosophy." In The Diffusion of the Islamic Sciences in the Western World, edited by Paravicini Bagliani, Agostino, 191-209. Firenze: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo.

"The Arabic divisions of the sciences mainly influenced the Latin West through translations from Arabic into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (1110-1190) and even more so through his own works, which rely heavily on the materials he translated1. Like other translators from the Iberian Peninsula, Dominicus Gundissalinus – who was by far the most philosophical of the Toledan translators of the twelfth century – began to translate from Arabic into Latin with the help of Jewish (Ibn Da¯ud) and Mozarabic assistants. These co-translators, who were proficient in Arabic, produced oral translations into vernacular which Gundissalinus then brought into Latin." (p. 191)

(...)

"How much Gundissalinus himself was influenced by al-Fārābī's work is evident in the fact that he took his translation or adaptation of it, called De scientiis, as the basis of his own seminal philosophical encyclopedia De divisione philosophiae. This work constitutes a hallmark of the history of philosophy, primarily because this synthesis introduces a number of hitherto unknown sciences into Latin philosophy, such as optics (de aspectibus) and statics (de ponderibus), while substantially redefining others, namely metaphysics and politics. This makes Gundissalinus the first (Latin) thinker to treat metaphysics as the name of a discipline rather than of a text (4)." (p. 192)

(4) 4. See A. Fidora, «Dominicus Gundissalinus and the Introduction of Metaphysics into the Latin West», The Review of Metaphysics, 66 (2013), 691-712.

35. Forlivesi, Marco. 2006. "Impure Ontology. The Nature of Metaphysics and its Object in Francisco Suarez's Texts." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 5:559-686.

36. ———. 2008. "Quae in hac quaestione tradit Doctor videntur humanum ingenium superare. Scotus, Andrés, Bonet, Zerbi and Trombetta Confronting the Nature of Metaphysics." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 8:219-277.

37. ———. 2009. "Approaching the Debate on the Subject of Metaphysics Between Later Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: The Ancient and Medieval Antecedents." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 34:9-59.

38. Furlong, Peter. 2009. "The Latin Avicenna and Aquinas on the Relationship between God and the Subject of Metaphysics." Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association no. 83:129-140.

39. Gabriel, Astrik. 1963. "Metaphysics in the curriculum of studies of the Mediaeval Universities." In Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter. Ihr Ursprung und Ihre Bedeutung, edited by Wilpert, Paul, 92-102. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

40. Galluzzo, Gabriele. 2004. "Aquinas on the Structure of Aristotle’s Metaphysics." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 15:159-226.

41. Gilson, Étienne. 1952. Being and Some Philosophers. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.

42. Glutz, Melvin A. 1956. "The Formal Subject of Metaphysics." The Thomist no. 19:59-74.

43. Goris, Wouter. 2004. The Scattered Field. History of Metaphysics In the Postmetaphysical Era. Leuven: Peeters.

Inaugural Address at the Free University of Amsterdam (January 16, 2004).

"Concluding remarks. We have to come to a close. The study of the history of metaphysics has been addressed from the perspective of the postmetaphysical era. We shied from reproducing the claims to self-evidence that the various metaphysical projects convey and, seeking for safer, more objective ground, rather investigated into the structures that underlie this self-evidence and induce its very production. This line of questioning brought us to consider a connection which is characteristic of the foundation of metaphysics in the Middle Ages, the one between the first object of thought and the subiectum of first philosophy. Without reducing the speculation on the first object of thought to the modern concept of subjectivity - both parties would resist their insertion in such a history of continuity -, the medieval discussion on the first object of thought proved to have an important feature in common with the later philosophy of subjectivity, insofar as an investigation into the horizon of knowledge settles the possibility of a homogeneous field and, therewith, of metaphysics. Yet these same structures which establish the homogeneous field of metaphysics are, in the 14th century, involved in its dispersion. This event, the dispersion of metaphysics at the beginning of the 14th century, was verified by four examples and clarified by the image of the scattered field: the collision of the homogeneous field of metaphysics with the object of knowledge made it disperse in a scattered field. Still, because of its foundation in an established distribution of subjectivity, the medieval dispersion of metaphysics remained entirely unproblematic. Only the explicit turn to the subject for the unfurling of the homogeneous field of metaphysics after the Middle Ages allowed a refreshed dispersion of subjectivity to damage the confidence in metaphysics and herald the postmetaphysical era.

Perhaps the question arises whether, in this way, metaphysics itself has indeed become impossible. Is it not rather a certain episode of its history that has come to a close, an episode in which this foundational scheme of subjectivity grew to full stature and then faded away? But it would be quite ahistorical to think that one could escape from this development and once more try, free now from the rise and fall of subjectivity, to establish a homogeneous field of metaphysics. This reality of which we are not the most creative part, is constituted, on a theoretical level, by structures of which we cannot dispose, structures that, historically determined, are imposed upon us and do not allow us - thus the diagnostics of our postmetaphysical era - to describe reality, like metaphysics intends to do, in terms of a homogeneous field.

This transition from the era of the philosophy of subjectivity to the post- metaphysical era was symbolized by the succession of those both catchwords `subjectivity' and 'structure'. Structural reflection on subjectivity reveals its constitutive vigor to be embedded in or even derived, not to say borrowed from more fundamental structures in the ordering of knowing, structures that propose and indeed define both the subject-positions to be occupied and the object-domains of metaphysics allegedly constituted by mutually irreducible instances of subjectivity.

Turning things round, a conclusion is reached to which we - rather on the sly, as must be admitted - were tacitly leading all this time. For if, by accepting the perspective of the postmetaphysical era and receiving the self-evidence of metaphysical projects not as something given, but as constituted by analyzable structures, we reached insight into tendencies of dispersion in the history of metaphysics, then, finally, also the self-evidence to which the postmetaphysical era appeals reveals itself to be produced and analyzable as to its constitutive structures -- with this analysis, thus we may conclude, we have made a beginning here." (pp. 63-64)

44. ———. 2008. "After Scotus. Dispersions of Metaphysics, of the Scope of Intelligibility, and of the Transcendental in the Early 14th Century." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 8:139-157.

45. ———. 2011. "The Foundation of the Principle of Non-Contradiction. Some Remarks on the Medieval Transformation of Metaphysics." Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale no. 22:527-557.

Abstract: "The epistemic constellation that underlies the transformation of metaphysics in the 13th and 14th century is legitimized by the identification of the subject of first philosophy with the first object of the intellect. In this epistemic constellation, a new thought presents itself: the foundation of Aristotle's unconditional starting point of thinking, i.e. the principle of non-contradiction, in the first known, transcendental concepts of the mind. The present article argues that, on the one hand, innovative attempts to found the principle of non-contradiction of the Franciscan Nicolaus Bonetus and the Carmelite John Baconthorpe demonstrate the stability of this epistemic constellation. It is true that, in their foundation of the principle of non-contradiction. Bonetus and Baconthorpe effect a dissociation of the subject of first philosophy and the first object of the intellect, which seems to challenge the very legitimizing strategy of the medieval transformation of metaphysics. But the very discourse that breaches the identification of the subject of metaphysics with the first object of the intellect, tacitly reproduces it by means of a division of first objects of the intellect. Its articulation of a first object of the intellect that surpasses the subject of first philosophy in generality, on the other hand, preludes tendencies in modern philosophy that, in presenting the thinkable as such as what grants access to reality, give full attention to the modes of being excluded from Aristotle's Metaphysics."

46. Hasse, Dag Nikolaus, and Bertolacci, Amos, eds. 2012. The Arabic, Hebrew and Latin Reception of Avicenna's "Metaphysics". Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

47. Honnefelder, Ludger. 1999. "Reconsidering the tradition of Metaphysics: the Medieval Example (Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Ockham)." In The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy. Volume 2 Metaphysics, edited by Rockmore, Tom, 1-13. Bowling Green: Philosophy Documentation Center.

48. ———. 2003. "Metaphysics as a Discipline: from the "Transcendental philosophy of the Ancients" to "Kant's notion of Transcendental philosophy"." In The Medieval Heritage in Early Modern Metaphysics and Modal Theory, 1400-1700, edited by Friedman, Russell L. and Nielsen, Lauge Olaf, 53-74. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"In the following, we will investigate metaphysics' status as a scientific discipline, through an examination of the medieval sources of the approach that most profoundly transformed modern metaphysics, i.e. Kantian transcendental philosophy. Starting with Kant's direct sources we will trace the discussion back to the ideas of John Duns Scotus (§ 1) and of Francisco Suarez (§ 2), in order to demonstrate with regard to its most important features just how Kant received (§ 3) and transformed (§ 4) these ideas."

49. Jagadeeswaraiah, Murala. 2018. "Western Understanding of Metaphysics up to Aquinas: A Survey of Literature." International Journal of Recent Research in Social Sciences and Humanities (IJRRSSH) no. 5:67-82.

Abstrct: "In this essay an attempt is made to bring out the importance of the understanding of metaphysics. The origin of the term is discussed and the implication in the ancient Greek philosophy and medieval period in the West are given some consideration. The Ancient Greek philosophers were metaphysicians with a scientific mind. Their search is to find out the one ‘stuff’ out of which the universe is made. Whereas the Pre-Socratics considered the ‘stuff’ as one or the other of the elements Socrates and Plato takes Ethics as one thing that is responsible for the universe. Aristotle names it as ‘the philosophy’ which is the ‘wisdom’ that inquires the first cause. It has implications on modern science."

50. Janos, Damien. 2024. Oneness, Essence, and Self-Identity: A New Interpretation of Avicenna’s Henology. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Chapter III: Oneness, existence, and the subject matter of metaphysics, pp. 96-136.

51. Kane, William H. 1955. "The Subject of Metaphysics." The Thomist no. 18:503-521.

52. Kielbasa, Jan. 2013. "What is First? Metaphysics as Prima Philosophia and Ultima Scientia in the Works of Thomas Aquinas." Philosophia no. 41:635-648.

Abstract: "The article analyzes the status of metaphysics in relation to other sciences, especially the sense and reasons behind its priority in the system of sciences, as conveyed in the works of Thomas Aquinas. The question of what comes first in the system of sciences has led to an exploration and justification of the criteria behind this priority. According to Thomas Aquinas, metaphysics is justly considered to be the first philosophy: on the one hand it is occupied with what comes first in the ontological order – the first causes of being, on the other hand, other sciences rely on it for their first principles. The article critically analyzes both substantiations of the idea of being first. The substantive criterion is questioned by the introduction of revealed theology into the system of sciences accepted by Aquinas; revealed theology is also occupied with what comes first, and does so with greater authority than metaphysics. The article focuses on the analysis of main doubts concerning metaphysics’ methodological criterion of priority: the idea that metaphysics, in relation to other sciences, is in a sense first and functions as a determinant, while also being last and determined by these very sciences. Metaphysics is first, as other sciences draw from it their first principles, and last, as it utilizes facts established by other sciences which come first in the process of knowledge acquisition. Hence the charge that Aquinas’ argumentation concerning metaphysics’ priority is circular in nature. The article analyzes various aspects of this difficulty and offers suggestions on how to overcome them."

53. King, Peter. 2003. "Scotus on Metaphysics." In The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus, edited by Williams, Thomas, 15-68. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

54. Kusukawa, Sachiko. 1995. The Transformation of Natural Philosophy. The Case of Philip Melanchton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

See Chapter I. The Way of Schoolmen, pp. 7-26.

55. Lohr, Charles H. 1976. "Jesuit Aristotelianism and Sixteenth-Century Metaphysics." In Παράδοσις. Studies in Memory of A. Quain, 203-220. New York: Fordham University Press.

56. ———. 1988. "Metaphysics." In The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, edited by Schmitt, Charles B. and Skinner, Quentin, 537-638. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Metaphysics as the Science of God pp. 538-584; Metaphysics as the Science of Being pp. 585-638.

"The subject-matter of metaphysics has been debated since the time when Aristotle first conceived the idea of the science. He himself speaks of 'the science we are seeking' and describes it differently in different places. In Metaphysics IV 1003a 21-6)) he speaks of a science which studies being as being and contrasts this science with the special sciences, like the mathematical disciplines, which investigate the attributes of a part of being. Two chapters later, IV.3 (1005b2), Aristotle speaks of a science which he calls 'first philosophy' because it grounds the first principles or axioms of the special sciences. But in book VI.1 ( 1026a18-1 9) he distinguishes three types of speculative science, physics, mathematics and 'divine science', so that one must ask how he understood the relationship between the general science of being, first philosophy and divine science. It is clear that divine science studies objects that are separate from matter and not subject to change. But Aristotle seems to have wanted to identify this science both with the investigation of being and with the science of the principles of the sciences, on the ground that divine science concerns itself with the highest principle of being in general and can for this reason preside over the special sciences. At the same time, each of these definitions of metaphysics must be understood in accordance with Aristotle's own idea of what science is. In his conception, scientific knowledge is attained by way of the definition of the essential natures of things and the demonstration of the attributes which necessarily belong to them. Basically, Aristotle understood reality as an ordered structure. Even where his definitions are definitions of events, these are understood not in their variability as a process, but rather as reified. His science of metaphysics deals therefore with all reality according to its fixed essences and their necessary attributes and has consequently a static character, like the ancient society which it reflected.

In the course of history it was Aristotle's conception of metaphysics as divine science that gave rise to the most difficulties. The encounter of his idea of God as first substance with divergent religious traditions often forced later thinkers to modify the conception of metaphysics as the science of being. In late antiquity those philosophers who came to the defense of the pagan gods tended to interpret metaphysics as the science of intelligible reality, arranged in hierarchical degrees, separate from matter, but mediating between the divine and the material worlds. In Islam the doctrine of God's oneness compelled philosophers and theologians to emphasise the great gulf which separates the necessary being of the creator from the radically contingent being of the created world. Medieval Latin Christianity learnt of both of these approaches through Avicenna and Pseudo-Dionysius. The notions of a necessary first substance and a hierarchy of intelligences readily found a place in the contemplative and ordered society of the Middle Ages. The Christian notion of a God active in himself as triune and active in the world as incarnate as the fundamental articles of a faith thought to be even more certain than scientific knowledge would seem to have demanded a new definition of science and a new definition of the reality which metaphysics studies. But, paradoxically, it was only with the revolutionary social changes that marked the period under consideration in this volume [the Renaissance] -- a period in which the medieval faith was breaking down - that a vision of reality as dynamic process and a new understanding of science emerged.

This new conception of reality appeared in various guises, as a new mathematics, as the idea of a magical control over nature, as a conflict between Plato and Aristotle, or in connection with the doctrine of God. It was resisted by scholastic authors, who sought for apologetical reasons to maintain Aristotle's static notion of being. But as more and more new sciences -- sciences connected with this new vision of reality and often undreamt of in antiquity -- carne to maturity, even thinkers in the Aristotelian tradition were forced to reopen the question of the definition of metaphysics and its relationship to the individual sciences. Since each of these problems -- the problem of God and the problem of the science of being -- had its own history, I shall treat them separately." (pp. 537-538)

57. ———. 1988. Latin Aristotle Commentaries. II. Renaissance Authors. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki.

58. ———. 1991. "The Sixteenth-century transformation of the Aristotelian division of the speculative sciences." In The Shapes of Knowledge from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, edited by Kellery, Donald R. and Popkin, Richard Henry, 49-58. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

59. Marion, Jean-Luc. 1986. "On Descartes' Constitution of Metaphysics." Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal no. 11:21-33.

Reprinted in: Tom Sorell (ed.), Descartes, Dartmouth: Ashgate 1999, pp. 57-69.

60. McGinnis, Jon. 2010. Avicenna. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 6: Metaphysics I: Theology. Introduction: The Subject Matter of Metaphysics, pp. 149-153.

61. McInerny, Ralph. 1993. "The Science We Are Seeking." The Review of Metaphysics no. 47:3-18.

62. Monahan, Arthur. 1954. "The Subject of Metaphysics for Peter of Auvergne." Mediaeval Studies no. 16:118-130.

63. Moreno, Angelo. 1984. "The Subject, Abstraction, and Methodology of Aquinas' Metaphysics." Angelicum no. 61:580-601.

64. Noone, Timothy B. 1989. "Richard Rufus of Cornwall and the Authorship of the Scriptum super Metaphysicam." Franciscan Studies no. 49:55-91.

65. ———. 1992. "Albert the Great on the Subject of Metaphysics and Demonstrating the Existence of God." Medieval Philosophy and Theology no. 2:31-52.

66. ———. 2003. "John Duns Scotus, Questions on the Metaphysics of Aristotle (ca. 1300). A New Direction for Metaphysics." In The Classics of Western Philosophy: A Reader's Guide, edited by E., Gracia. Jorge J., Reichberg, Gregory M. and Schumacher, Bernard N., 167-176. Malden: Blackwell.

"The Subject of Metaphysics

The Islamic commentators Avicenna and Averroes set the background to the questions that discuss this issue in Scotus's QM, namely Book I, q. 1, Book IV, q. 1, and Book VI, q. 1. Avicenna had concluded that the only way to reconcile the criteria for

scientific knowledge laid down in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics with the descriptions given and the procedures followed by Aristotle in the text of the Metaphysics was to take the subject of investigation within metaphysics to be being as being. In proposing

this manner of understanding the subject of metaphysics, Avicenna showed how only being as being could fit the Aristotelian requirements for scientific knowledge (Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 1.10, 76a31-76b23; 1.28, 87a38-87b4), the range of subjects

treated in metaphysics (truth, goodness, and unity; cause/effect; substance and accident; act and potency, as well as necessary and possible being), and, above all, the metaphysical proof of God's existence and the divine attributes (Avicenna, Metaphysics,

I.1.1 [IV 4: 64- 5: 81 ]; I.1.2 [IV 12: 14-22 ]). Fundamentally, Avicenna reasons that, since no science can prove the existence of its subject, if God's existence is shown in metaphysics, that science cannot have God as its subject.

Adopting the opposing standpoint, Averroes argued that, since no science proves the existence of its own subject, metaphysics must be about God as First Form and Substance or Last End. God's existence is not, contrary to Avicenna's claim, shown within metaphysics but in physics or natural philosophy and its treatment of the Unmoved Mover. Metaphysicians begin, then, with the proof of God's existence afforded them by the natural philosopher and hence the range of being displayed before them:

material and immaterial being. What metaphysical analysis strives to indicate is how all the beings of our experience are related to the First Form or God by way of final causality, while also attempting to show how we may meaningfully attribute certain

properties to God (Averroes, Physics I, t. 83 [ 1550, 22vb-23ra ]; Averroes, Metaphysics IV, t. 6 [1562, 145vM-146vM]; IV, t. 2 [71 vG-M]).

Scotus 's discussion in Book I, q. 1 involves a protracted treatment of the two Islamic interpreters and their conflicting claims. Though this particular question is one in which there are layers of revision on Scotus 's part and, at times, the discussion is a

strain to follow, the gist of Scotus's successive views becomes clear. In the earliest view expressed in the primitive text, Scotus held ultimately that metaphysics is a science that has being as being in the sense of substance as its subject (Questions I, q. 1, n. 91-2;

1997: 38-9). At this stage of his career he could see no greater unity to the concept of being than that of the ten categories of being and among these there is only a unity of attribution of the nine accidental categories to the category of substance. Since there is no common notion under which the full range of being can be treated, Scotus opted for the primary subject of the science as substance with the properties of accidents being treated in so far as they are dependent upon and exist for the sake of substance.

When we turn to the extras and additions found in Book I, q. 1, we encounter the more mature and developed position that is assumed in the later books of the QM and expounded at even greater length in Scotus's theological writings. The concept of

being is univocal not only to the whole of categorial being, the being of substance and the nine accidents, but to being as considered prior to its modal differentiation into finite being and infinite being. Such a notion allows God to enter into metaphysical

discourse as something falling under disjunctive propositions such as "Every being is either First or not-First" or "Every being is either in act or in potency" and hence under the disjunctive properties of being "finite/infinite" and "act/potency" respectively

(Questions I, q. 1, n. 156-7; IV, q. 1, n. 45; 1997: 57-8, 264). This position is one that engenders its own difficulties, troubles that would cause Scotus to continue to struggle with the senses in which being can be predicated of its own differences and would lead to conflicts among his followers for a considerable period of time after his premature death (Dumont, 1987); subsequent refinements of the position aside, however, the position itself was attractive to contemporaries because ofits ability to explain both the transcendental and theological dimensions of metaphysical discourse within the same framework." (pp. 168-169)

References

Scotus, John Duns (1997-8) Questions on the Metaphysics of John Duns Scotus, vols I and II, trans. Girard J. Etzkorn and Allan B. Wolter. St Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute.

Dumont, Stephen D. ( 1987) The univocity of being in the fourteenth century: John Duns Scotus and William of Alnwick. Mediaeval Studies, 49: 1-75.

67. ———. 2005. "Albert the Great’s Conception of Metaphysical Knowledge." In Albertus Magnus und die Anfänge der Aristoteles-Rezeption im lateinischen Mittelalter. Von Richardus Rufus bis zu Franciscus de Mayronis, edited by Honnefelder, Ludger, Wood, Rega, Dreyer, Mechthild and Aris, Marc-Aeilko, 685-704. Münster i. W.: Aschendorff.

68. ———. 2013. "Albert on the Subject of Metaphysics." In A Companion to Albert the Great: Theology, Philosophy, and the Sciences, edited by Resnick, Irven M., 543-553. Leiden: Brill.

69. Novotný, Daniel D., and Novák, Lukáš eds. 2014. Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics. New York: Routledge.

70. Pelletier, Jenny E. 2012. William Ockham on Metaphysics. The Science of Being and God. Leiden: Brill.

71. Pickavé, Martin. 2004. "Metaphysics as First Science: the Case of Peter Auriol." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 15:487-516.

72. Pini, Giorgio. 1995. "Scotistic Aristotelianism: Antonius Andreas’ Expositio and Quaestiones on the Metaphysics." In Via Scoti. Methodologica ad mentem Joannis Duns Scoti. Atti del Congresso Scotistico Internazionale Roma 9-11 marzo 1993, edited by Sileo, Leonardo, 375-389. Rome.

73. ———. 2010. "Scotus on Doing Metaphysics in statu isto." In John Duns Scotus, Philosopher. Proceedings of “The Quadruple Congress” on John Duns Scotus. Part 1, edited by Ingham, Mary Beth and Bychov, Oleg, 29-55. Münster: Aschendorff.

74. Poage, Nathan. 2012. "The Subject and Principles of Metaphysics in Avicenna and Aquinas." Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association no. 86:231-243.

75. Polloni, Nicola. 2020. The Twelfth-Century Renewal of Latin Metaphysics: Gundissalinus's Ontology of Matter and Form. Durham: Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies Durham University.

76. Rijk, Lambertus Marie de. 1997. "The Commentaries on Aristotle's Metaphysics." In L'enseignement des disciplines à la Faculté des Arts (Paris et Oxford, XIIIe-XVe siècles). Actes du Colloque International, edited by Weijers, Olga and Holz, Louis, 303-312. Turnhout: Brepols.

"Considering the rich survey Professor Lohr has presented this afternoon of Medieval commentaries on Aristotle's philosophical works including Metaphysics, there is no point in discussing in general terms the vicissitudes of this Aristotelian work at the Parisian Faculty of Arts. On top of that, in the lettre d'invitation of the organizers we were asked to say something about our own recent research in the field under discussion. Therefore I shall confine myself to John Buridan's (c. 1290-c. 1360) commentaries on Metaphysics. Fortunately, Buridan's activity as a commentator on Metaphysics may to a large degree be regarded as representative of the period. As we learn from Lohr's survey, from the fourteenth century only some five commentaries on this important Aristotelian writing are extant, quite unlike the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, from which a considerable amount of such works have survived. (*)" (p. 303)

(*) For the reception of the Metaphysics into the curriculum of the Parisian Faculty of Arts see A. L. Gabriel, Metaphysics in the Curriculum of Studies of the Mediaeval Universities. in P. Wilpert ed., Die Melaphysik im Mittelalter. lhr Ursprung and Ihre Bedeutung (Miscellanea Mediuevalia 2) Berlin, 1963, pp. 92-102 ; G. Leff, Paris and Oxford Universities in the XIIIth and XIVth Centuries, New York, 1988, p. 189 sqq.

77. Robiglio, Andrea A. 2004. "Breaking the Great Chain of Being. A note on the Paris condemnations of 1277, Thomas Aquinas and the proper subject of metaphysics." Verbum no. 6:51-59.

Abstract: "In the late 13th century Latin west, the problem of the proper subject of metaphysics (a legacy of the Avicenna Latinus) became relevant. Two candidates were open at the time: that of the `ens in quantum ens' as the proper subject of metaphysics, and that of the separate and most noble substances.

This transition allows for a deeper reading of the Condemnation of 1277. The structure of the Condemnation reveals an intriguing commitment on the part of the condemned articles concerning the separate substances (or angels) and the peculiar neoplatonic "chain of being" that was the underpinning of their accounts. Peter Olivi argued against the neoplatonic chain of being soon after 1277. Even if this polemic is still neglected in the secondary literature on 1277, Olivi's interpretation of the state of the debate reinforces the reading of the Paris Condemnation with regard to neoplatonistic chains of being, and the options available for characterizing the proper subject of metaphysics."

78. Saeedimehr, Mohammad. 2019. "Muslim Philosophers on the Relation between Metaphysics and Theology." Journal of Philosophical Theological Research no. 81:103-118.

Abstract: "In different parts of Metaphysics, Aristotle presents different (and apparently, conflicting) views on the nature and subject matter of the discipline in question. These different characterizations led to wide-ranging interpretations of the relation between metaphysics and philosophical theology. Muslim Philosophers adopted two different views. Al-Kindi and al-Farabi (in some of his works) endorsed the view that metaphysics is the same as theology as far as its subject matter is the First Cause (God) and it deals essentially with incorporeal entities. After Avicenna, however, a second view became dominant according to which metaphysics has a broader realm that embraces theology as its most noble part. The rationale behind this view is that the subject matter of metaphysics is “being qua being”, or unconditioned existent, in its broad sense so that philosophical theology can be taken as discussing some of the proper accidents of the unconditioned existent. This view requires that metaphysics cannot be a secular discipline and should be totally consistent with theology. It also provides us with a certain interpretation of what is usually called “Islamic philosophy"."

79. Sokolowski, Robert. 2012. " The Science of Being as Being in Aristotle, Aquinas, and Wippel." In The Science of Being as Being: Metaphysical Investigations, edited by Doolan, Gregory T., 9-35. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press.

80. Steel, Carlos. 2021. "Theology as First Philosophy. The Neoplatonic Concept of Metaphysics." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 5:3-21.

81. Strohschneider, Anna-Katharina. 2021. "Three Scotist Arguments Against Averroes. Antonius Andreas on the Subject Matter of Metaphysics." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 32:135-159.

Abstract: "The influential Scotist thinker Antonius Andreas (d. ca. 1333) ardently criticizes Averroes’ theory of the subject matter of metaphysics. In his Questions on the Metaphysics Antonius systematizes Averroes’ position and condenses it into three distinct statements, against each of which he argues. This paper presents Antonius’ own take on the subject matter of metaphysics, evaluates the success of his interpretation of Averroes, and analyzes his arguments against the Commentator. The disagreement between Antonius and Averroes is ultimately rooted in their vastly different theory of science and ontology. Averroes would have disagreed with many premises of Antonius’ arguments, whether regarding the conditions for unity or for priority of a science, or the univocity or analogy of being.

Surprisingly, however, the two thinkers agree on one central aspect, namely in their belief that sciences can provide certain demonstrations of the existence of their subject matter.

82. Strózewski, Wladislaw. 1990. "Metaphysics as a Science." In Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy: Vol. 1: Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy (S.I.E.P.M.), edited by Asztalos, Monika, Mordoch, John E. and Ilkka, Niiniluoto., 128-157. Helsinki: Acta Philosophica Fennica. Vol. 48.

83. Suárez, Francisco. 2004. A Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics (Index locupletissimus in Metaphysicam Aristotelis). Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Translated with an introduction (pp. 7-19) and notes by John P. Doyle.

The Index is the preface to the Disputationes Metaphysicae. Content: English translation: 20-247; Corresponding Latin texts: I. Ad lectorem 248; II. Disputatio II: Prooemium 250; III. Index Locupletissimus 252; IV. Index Disputationum 390; Persons Mentioned in the Index 410; Bibliography 413; Index of Names 424-426.

"Balancing the system in the Disputationes, the Index amounts to a late medieval commentary, “by way of question,” on the first 12 books of the Metaphysics. Shorter in length than, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas’ (1225–1274) commentary on the same 12 books, Suárez’s Ample Index more than makes up for that by cross-referencing the Disputationes itself hundreds of times. In fact, the Index and the Disputationes are exactly as Suárez intended them to be, complementary of one another and mutually supportive." (Doyle, p. 8).

"However, because there will be very many who will desire that this whole doctrine be collated with the books of Aristotle, not only in order to better perceive on what principles of the so great Philosopher it is based, but also in order that it be more easily and usefully employed for understanding Aristotle himself, I have also sought to provide the reader in this matter with an elaborate index, in which, if it is attentively read, most easily (if I am not mistaken) all those things which Aristotle treated in the books of Metaphysics can be comprehended and retained in memory. And again, [with that index] all questions can be at hand which are customarily raised among the expositors of these books." (Suárez, p. 21).

84. ———. 2021. Metaphysical Disputation I: On the Nature of First Philosophy or Metaphysics. Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press.

Translated and annotated, with corrected Latin text, by Shane Duarte.

"Section 1: Identifying the adequate object or subject of metaphysics.

Suárez classifies metaphysics or first philosophy as a natural science (scientia naturalis) (DM 1.2.17). In so classifying it, he in no way means to identify it with a branch of physics or natural philosophy. Rather,

“natural” is here contrasted with “supernatural,” so that in this sense of the expression mathematics also counts as a natural science, whereas sacred or supernatural theology, based on divine revelation, does not.

Suárez further classifies metaphysics as a real science (scientia realis), since it is about things (res) or real beings (DM 1.2.13). The implicit contrast here is with a rational science (scientia rationalis) such as logic,

which is not about any thing or real being, but is commonly thought to deal with objective second intentions (e.g., genus, species, subject, predicate, antecedent, consequent), which are beings of reason or items

existing only objectively in the mind as objects of thought. Suárez also classifies metaphysics as a theoretical or speculative science (scientia speculativa) (DM 1.2.13), since it has the contemplation of truth as its

highest end, unlike the practical and productive sciences, whose truths are ordered to some further goal (i.e., action or production)." (pp. XXVI-XXVII)

85. Wippel, John F. 1973. "Thomas Aquinas and Avicenna on the Relationship between First Philosophy and Other Theoretical Sciences: A Note on Thomas's Commentary on Boethius's De Trinitate, Q. 5, article 1, ad 9." The Thomist no. 37:133-154.

Reprinted as Chapter II in J. F. Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas, Washington, D.C., The Catholic University of America Press, 1984, pp. 37-53.

86. ———. 1974. "The Title "First Philosophy" According to Thomas Aquinas and His Different Justifications for the Same." The Review of Metaphysics no. 27:585-600.

Reprinted as Chapter III, "First Philosophy" according to Thomas Aquinas, in L. F. Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas, Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, pp.55-67-

87. ———. 1984. "First Philosophy’ according to Thomas Aquinas." In Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas, 55-67. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press.

88. ———. 1990. "The Latin Avicenna as a Source for Thomas Aquinas's Metaphysics." Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie no. 37:51-90.

Reprinted as Chapter II in J. F. Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas II, Washington, D.C., The Catholic University of America Press, 2007, pp. 31-64.

89. ———. 1999. "Thomas Aquinas, Siger of Brabant, and their use of Avicenna in clarifying the subject of metaphysics." In The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy. Volume 2 Metaphysics, edited by Rockmore, Tom, 15-26. Bowling Green: Philosophy Documentation Center.

90. ———. 2000. The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: from Finite Being to Uncreated Being. Washington D.C.: The Carholic University of America Press.

Chapter I. Aquinas on the Nature of Metaphysics. 1. Division of the Theoretical Sciences and the Place of Metaphysics, 4; 2 . The Subject of Metaphysics, 11; Chapter II. Our Discovery of the Subject of Metaphysics. 1. Our Knowledge of Being as Real, 23; 2 . Our Discovery of Being as Being, 44-62.

91. ———. 2000. "Aquinas on the Nature of Metaphysics." In The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being, 3-22. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press.

92. ———. 2004. "Thomas Aquinas' Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics." In Uses and Abuses of the Classics: Western Interpretations of Greek Philosophy, edited by Gracia, Jorge J. E. and Yu, Jiyuan, 137-164. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Reprinted as Chapter X in J. F. Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas II, Washington, D.C., The Catholic University of America Press, 1984, pp. 240-271-

93. ———. 2005. "Thomas Aquinas and Siger of Brabant on Being and the Science of Being as Being." The Modern Schoolman no. 82:143-168.

94. ———. 2019. "Aquinas on separatio and Our Discovery of Being as Being." In The Discovery of Being & Thomas Aquinas: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives, edited by Cullen, Christopher M. and Harkins, Franklin T., 11-42. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press.

95. Wood, Rega. 1998. "The Earliest Known Surviving Western Medieval Metaphysics Commentary." Medieval Philosophy and Theology no. 7:39-49.

96. ———. 2010. "First Entity as the Subject of Metaphysics." In Johannes Duns Scotus 1308–2008: Die philosophischen Perspektiven seines Werkes / Investigations into his Philosophy. Proceedings of »The Quadruple Congress« on John Duns Scotus Part 3, edited by Honnefelder, Ludger, Möhle, Hannes, Speer, Andreas, Kobusch, Theo and Bullido del Barrio, Susana, 87-106. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications.

97. ———. 2010. "The subject of the Aristotelian science of metaphysics." In The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy. Volume II, edited by Pasnau, Robert, 609-621. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Summary: "Aristotelian science conveys understanding by showing the necessary relationship between immediately evident first principles and conclusions about the natural world. To take a trivial example: induction from repeated experience teaches us that all broad-leaved plants are deciduous. We discover that grapevines have broad leaves. We infer that grapevines are deciduous, and thereby we also learn that they lose their leaves in winter because they are broad-leaved (see Aristotle, Post. An. II.16–17).

Aristotelian science explains a subject’s possession of an attribute (the explanandum) by identifying the possession of that attribute with membership in a species, and then citing as explanans the inclusion of that species within a prior genus. In the present example, the property is “losing its leaves in winter,” the species is “grapevines,” and the genus is “broad-leaved plants.” The explanation is then presented in the form of a syllogism. In the first premise an attribute (being deciduous) is predicated of a subject (broad-leaved plant). The second premise introduces a new subject that belongs to the class described by the subject of the first premise, allowing us to conclude that the second subject shares an attribute of the first.

Aristotle describes this demonstration as propter quid science because it explains why grape leaves fall. If the deduction were valid, but its premises were not explanatory, it would count as quia science: knowing a fact without understanding why it obtains (ibid., I.13, 78a22–b3) (see also Chapter 26)." (p. 609)

98. ———. 2013. "Duns Scotus on Metaphysics as the Science of First Entity." In Later Medieval Metaphysics: Ontology, Language, and Logic, edited by Bolyard, Charles and Keele, Rondo, 11-29. New York: Fordham University Press.

99. Yıldırım, Ömer Ali. 2020. "The Science of Metaphysics and Different Naming Conventions Ranging From Prote Philosophia to al-‘ilm al-ilāhī: An Analysis Centered on Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī." Ulum no. 3:393-410.

Abstreact: "Aristotle is considered to be the founding father of metaphysics. He specified the subject and scope of this science and used the names “first philosophy (prote philosophia)”, “theology” and wisdom (sophia) for it.

However, there have been some changes both in the scope and naming of this science after his time. Although it is generally accepted that the subject of metaphysics is “being qua being,” there has been a confusion about the relationship between metaphysics and theology. Philosophers such as al-Fārābī and Avicenna directly studied this issue to eliminate such confusions. Different names such as first philosophy, after-physics, al-‘ilm al-ilāhī and al-ilāhiyyāt have always been used to refer to it. This study discusses why the science of metaphysics is named in different ways, mainly based on the evaluations of Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī. It also questions if there is a relationship between different names and the scope of metaphysics and the method of analysis it uses? Do different names for the same scholarly area refer to the same science in terms of the subjects, areas of study and problems addressed, or does each name refer to different content than others? To achieve its intended aims, it also refers to the epistemology of Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī."

100. Zimmermann, Albert. 1992. "Some Aspects of the Reception of Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics in the Thirteenth Century." In Ad Littteram. Authoritative Texts and Their Medieval Readers, edited by Emery, Jr.Kent and Jordan, Mark D., 217-227. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on the Debate about the Subject Matter of First Philosophy (Second part)

Bibliography

Études en Français

1. André, Combes. 1963. "La métaphysique de Jean de Ripa." In Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter. Ihr Ursprung und ihre Bedeutung. Vorträge des II. Internationalen Kongresses für mittelalterliche Philosophie, edited by Wilpert, Paul, 543-555. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

2. Biard, Joël. 2005. "La métaphysique au Moyen Âge." In Y a-t-il une histoire de la métaphysique?, edited by Zarka, Yves Charles and Pinchard, Bruno, 99-117. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

3. Boulnois, Olivier. 1999. Être et représentation. Une généalogie de la métaphysique moderne à l'époque de Duns Scot, XIIIe-XIVe siècle. Paris: Press universitaires de France.

4. ———. 2002. "Le besoin de métaphysique. Théologie et structures des métaphysiques médievales." In La servante et la consolatrice. La philosophie dans ses rapports avec la théologie au Moyen Âge, edited by Solère, Jean-Luc and Kaluza, Zénon, 45-94. Paris: Vrin.

5. ———. 2003. "Abstractio metaphysica. Le séparable et le séparé, de Porphyre à Henri de Gand." In Die Logik des Transzendentalen. Festschrift für Jan A. Aertsen zum 65 Geburstag, edited by Pickavé, Martin, 37-59. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

6. ———. 2013. Métaphysiques rebelles. Genèse et structures d'une science au Moyen Âge. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

Chapitre 10. Naissance de l'ontologie (XVIe - XVIIe sècles), pp. 381-410.

7. Brisson, Luc. 1999. "Un si long anonymat." In La métaphysique. Son Historie, sa critique, ses enjeux, edited by Narbonne, Jean-Marc and Langlois, Luc, 37-60. Québec: Les presses de l'Université de Laval.

8. Côté, Antoine. 2000. "L'objet de la métaphysique est-il le même pour Heidegger et Thomas d'Aquin?" Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques no. 84:217-246.

9. Coujou, Jean-Paul. 1999. Suárez et la refondation de la métaphysique comme ontologie. Étude et traduction de l'Index détaillé de la Métaphysique d'Aristote de F. Suárez. Louvain-Paris: Éditions Peeters.

10. Couloubaritsis, Lambros. 1990. "La métaphysique s'identifie-t-elle à l'ontologie ?" In Herméneutique et ontologie. Mélanges en hommage à Pierre Aubenque, edited by Brague, Rémi and Courtine, Jean-François, 297-322. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

11. Courtine, Jean-François. 1979. "Le projet suarézien de la métaphysique. Pour une étude de la thèse suarézienne du néant." Archives de Philosophie no. 42:253-274.

Resumé: "La présente étude a pour visée ultime la détermination du sens de l'être comme « objectité » dans les Disputationes Metaphysicae de F. Suarez. La question est ici abordée indirectement à travers la mise au jour d'une thèse non thématique sur le néant ; les Disputationes, en leur projet même d'ontologie générale, et à travers leur architectonique, pointent en direction d'une métaphysique de l'objet encore indéterminé (aliquid-nihil) , métaphysique qui trouve son plein déploiement dans la Schulmetaphysik, et se maintient jusqu'à Kant ."

12. ———. 1985. "Ontologie ou métaphysique ? Pour l'histoire du mot "Ontologia"." Giornale di Metafisica no. 7:3-24.

Repris dans J.-F. Courtine, Suarez et le système de la métaphysique, Paris: Press universitaires de France 1990, pp. 436-457.

13. ———. 1986. "La métaphysique désaccordée. Les premières discussions dans la Compagnie de Jésus." Les Études Philosophiques:3-27.

14. ———. 1988. "Suárez et la tradition aristotelicienne de la métaphysique." In Aristotelianismus und Renaissance. In memoriam Charles B. Schmitt, edited by Kessler, Eckhard, Lohr, Charles H. and Sparn, Walter, 101-126. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.

15. ———. 1990. Suárez et le système de la métaphysique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Traduit en Italien par ostantino Esposito: Il sistema della metafisica. Tradizione aristotelica e svolta suareziana, Milano: Vita e Pensiero 1999.

16. ———. 1999. "Métaphysique et ontothéologie." In La métaphysique. Son histoire, sa critique, ses enjeux, edited by Narbonne, Jean-Marc and Langlois, Luc, 137-157. Paris: Vrin.

17. ———. 2003. Les catégories de l'être. Études de philosophie ancienne et médiévale. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

18. ———. 2005. Inventio analogiae. Métaphysique et ontothéologie. Paris: Vrin.

19. de Libera, Alain. 1999. "Genèse et structure des métaphysiques médiévales." In La métaphysique. Son Historie, sa critique, ses enjeux, edited by Narbonne, Jean-Marc and Langlois, Luc, 159-181. Québec: Les presses de l'Université de Laval.

20. Delaporte, Guy-François. 2023. "Jugement de séparation et sujet de la métaphysique." Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia no. 79:159-188.

21. Donini, Pieluigi. 2005. "L'objet de la métaphysique selon Alexandre d'Aphrodise." In La "Métaphysique" d'Aristote : Perspectives contemporaines edited by Narcy, Michel and Tordesillas, Alonso, 81-98. Paris: Vrin.

Repris dans P. Donini, Commentary and Tradition: Aristotelianism, Platonism, and Post-Hellenistic Philosophy, edited by Mauro Bonazzi, Berlin: de Gruyter 2011, pp. 107-123.

Abstract: "To our knowledge Alexander was the first who attempted to reconcile Aristotle’s (apparently conflicting) views regarding the object of that science which Alexander now and there already dubs “metaphysics”. For much of his commentary, in fact, Alexander acknowledges that the universal science of being qua being is identical to the science of first substances that are unchangeable, unmoved, and divine, i.e. that science which in Metaph. E 1 Aristotle once even dubbed “theology”. But this unified conception of Aristotle’s “first philosophy” is strangely marred in Alexander’s commentary by a few pages (pp. 245-246 H.), where a wholly different situation arises. In his effort to account for a text of Metaph. Γ 2 that differs from the one found in manuscripts and in modern critical editions, Alexander suggests that two different

levels of first philosophy should be distinguished, even though he applies the same designation to both levels: 1) the first and most universal level of first philosophy as a general science of being qua being, where being is regarded as a genre. This level of first philosophy is responsible for the partition of being into ten categories and for their distinction. In addition to that 2) a second-level science would address each of

the individual species of being (i.e. each category) that is conceived of as a species subject to the most universal science. Amid these special sciences of being, however, abides yet another “first philosophy” (“first” but subordinated to the other) operating at a second and thus lower degree of universality, namely, the science of first substance (the immovable and immaterial substance of the divine). Since all other substances

are subordinated to the first substance, in accordance with the Aristotelian principle of αφ' ενός kai προς έν, this science also deals with all the other substances and any properties belonging to them. The idea of a two-level first philosophy takes up limited space in the commentary and would not necessarily be contradictory in itself if only Alexander had squarely associated the general science of being qua being with just one of the two distinct levels. As this is not the case and both “first” philosophies are identified with the science of being qua being, the outcome is a confused and inherently inconsistent presentation. But more problems lie ahead in pp. 245-246: the biggest is that among the special sciences of being we find practical philosophy, whose object is hard to bring into line with or condense into any one (and if so, which?) of the ten categories. Moreover, the suggestion by those modern scholars, who would liken Alexander’s distinction between the two levels of first philosophy with the later distinction between general metaphysics and special metaphysics, appears somewhat flawed. In any case, identifying the doctrine of categories as the content of the more universal science of being almost seems typical of an age in which this doctrine was attacked or defended as if it were considered the mainstay and the cornerstone itself of Aristotelian philosophy."

[H. = Alexandri Aphrodisiensis In Aristotelis Metaphysica commentaria, ed . M. Hayduck, Berlin 1891]

22. École, Jean. 2001. "Une étape de l'histoire de la métaphysique: l'apparition de l'Ontologie comme discipline séparée." In Autour de la philosophie Wolffienne. Textes de Hans Werner Arndt, Sonia Carboncini-Gavanelli et Jean École, edited by École, Jean, 95-116. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

23. Fakhry, Majid. 1963. "L'Importance et l'Origine de la Métaphysique chez Al-Färäbi." In Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter. Ihr Ursprung und ihre Bedeutung. Vorträge des II. Internationalen Kongresses für mittelalterliche Philosophie, edited by Wilpert, Paul, 414-417. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

24. Gilson, Étienne. 1948. L'être et l'essence. Paris: Vrin.

Deuxième édition revue et augmentée 1962.

25. Guyomarc’h, Gweltaz. 2012. Aux origines de la métaphysique : l’interprétation par Alexandre d’Aphrodise de la Métaphysique d’Aristote, Université de Lille; Université de Liège.

26. Honnefelder, Ludger. 2001. "Raison et métaphysique: les trois étapes de la constitution de son objet chez Duns Scotus et Kant." Philosophie no. 70:30-50.

Traduit de l’allemand par Jacob Schmutz.

27. ———. 2002. La métaphysique comme science transcendentale entre le Moyen Âge et les Temps modernes. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Ouvrage traduit par Isabelle Mandrella, revu par Olivier Boulnois, Jean Gretsch et Philippe Capelle pour la publication.

28. Lafleur, Claude. "Dieu, la théologie et la métaphysique au milieu du xiiie siècle. Selon des textes épistémologiques artiens et thomasiens." Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques no. 89:261-294.

Avec la collaboration de Joanne Carrier.

29. Libera, Alain de. 1997. "Structure du corpus scolaire de la métaphysique dans la première moitié du XIIIe siècle." In L'enseignement de la philosophie au XIII siècle. Autour du "Guide de l'étudiant" du ms. Ripoll 109. Actes du Colloque International, edited by Lafleur, Claude and Carrier, Joanne, 61-88. Turnhout: Brepols.

30. ———. 1999. "Genèse et structure des métaphysiques médiévales." In La métaphysique. Son histoire, sa critique, ses enjeux, edited by Narbonne, Jean-Marc and Langlois, Luc, 159-81. Paris: Vrin.

31. Luna, Concetta. 2003. "Les commentaires grecs à la Métaphysique." In Dictionnaire des Philosophes antiques, Supplement, edited by Goulet, Richard. Paris: CNRS Editions.

32. Mandrella, Isabelle. 2009. "Le sujet de la métaphysique et sa relation au conceptus entis transcendentissimi aux 16ème et 17ème siècles." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 34:123-140.

33. Mansion, Suzanne. 1978. "L'intelligibilité mètaphysique d'après le Proemium du Commentaire de Saint Thomas à la Métaphysique d'Aristote." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 70:49-62.

34. Marion, Jean-Luc. 1999. "La science toujours recherchée et toujours manquante." In La métaphysique. Son Historie, sa critique, ses enjeux, edited by Narbonne, Jean-Marc and Langlois, Luc, 13-36. Québec: Les presses de l'Université de Laval.

35. Narbonne, Jean-Marc, and Langlois, Luc, eds. 1999. La métaphysique. Son Histoire, sa critique, ses enjeux. Paris: Vrin.

36. Rashed, Marwan. 2022. "Philosophies universelles et philosophies premières selon Alexandre d’Aphrodise." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 22:71-87.

Abstract: "This article is devoted to the interpretation of the object of metaphysics and theoretical sciences proposed by Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. 200 AD). I shall propose two conjectures on crucial passages from his commentary on the Metaphysics (In Metaph. 245.37-246.6 et 246.6-13) and, on this new textual basis, defend the thesis according to which Alexander articulated a primary fundamental philosophy, devoted to immobile substances and treated by Aristotle in Metaphysics Λ, and a philosophy, if one can say so, more primary but less ontological, hence less fundamental, devoted to the general structure of being and treated by Aristotle in Metaphysics Γ. The latter seems to differ from the Categories, according to Alexander, in that in the Categories, Aristotle studies the general classes of beings as general, while in Metaphysics Γ, he studies them as beings."

37. Saffrey, Henri-Dominique. 1963. "L'état actuel des recherches sur le Liber de causis comme source de la mötaphysique au moyen äge." In Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter. Ihr Ursprung und Ihre Bedeutung, edited by Wilpert, Paul, 267-281. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

38. Vuillemin-Diem, Gudrun. 1967. "Les traductions gréco-latines de la Métaphysique au Moyen-âge: le problème de la Metaphysica Vetus." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 49:7-71.

39. ———. 1987. "La traduction de la Métaphysique d’Aristote par Guillaume de Moerbeke et son examplaire grec: Vind. phil. gr. 100 (J)." In Aristoteles Werk und Wirkung. Band 2 (Kommentierung, Überlieferung, Nachleben), edited by Wiesner, Jurgen, 434-486. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

40. Wojcik, Kazimierz. 1993. "Le sujet de la métaphysique d'aprés le commentaire de Marsile d'Inghen sur la Mètaphysique d'Aristote." In Marsilius von Inghen. Werk und Wirkung, edited by Wielgus, Stanislaw, 217-226. Lublin: University of Lublin.

41. Zarka, Yves Charles. 2005. "L'exténuation de la question de l'être et la métaphysique au début des temps modernes." In Y a-t-il une histoire de la métaphysique?, edited by Zarka, Yves Charles and Pinchard, Bruno, 129-139. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

42. Zarka, Yves Charles, and Pinchard, Bruno, eds. 2005. Y-a-t-il une histoire de la métaphysique? Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Studi in Italiano

1. Amerini, Fabrizio. 2005. "Alessandro di Alessandria su natura e soggetto della metafisica." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 5:477-493.

2. Benedetto, Marienza. 2005. "Metaphysica sapientia scientia divina: soggetto e statuto della Filosofia Prima nel Medio Evo." Rivista di storia della filosofia no. 60:561-568.

3. Brock, Stephen L., ed. 2004. Tommaso d'Aquino e l'oggetto della metafisica. Roma: Armando.

4. Donini, Pierluigi. 2011. "Il libro Lambda della Metafisica e la nascita della filosofia prima." In Commentary and Tradition: Aristotelianism, Platonism, and Post-Hellenistic Philosophy, 17-35. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

5. Esposito, Costantino. 2010. "'al di sopra', 'attraverso', 'al di là'. Heidegger, Suarez, Tommaso nella storia della metafisica." Giornale di Metafisica no. 32:553-586.

6. Galluzzo, Gabriele. 2005. "Aquinas's Interpretation of Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book Beta." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 5:413-427.

7. ———. 2005. "Aquinas's Interpretation of Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book Zeta." Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales no. 74:423-481.

8. Ghisalberti, Alessandro. 1994. "Percorsi significativi della “Metafisica” di Aristotele nel Medioevo." In Aristotele. Perché la metafisica. Studi su alcuni concetti chiave della «filosofia prima» aristotelica e sulla storia dei loro influssi, edited by Reale, Giovanni, 451-470. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

Prima edizione in Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica, Vol. 85, No. 2/4 (aprile-dicembre 1993), pp. 585-604.

9. Kobau, Piero. 2008. "Ontologia." In Storia dell'ontologia edited by Ferraris, Maurizio, 98-145. Milano: Bompiani.

10. Lamanna, Marco. 2009. "«De eo enim Metaphysicus agit logice». Un confronto tra Pererius e Goclenius." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 34:315-360.

11. Marrone, Francesco. 2020. "La determinazione del soggetto della metafisica nelle Questiones metaphisicales di Egidio Romano." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 20:257-288.

12. Martini, Cecilia. 2002. "La tradizione araba della Metafisica di Aristotele: Libri α-Α." In Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia nella tradizione araba, edited by d'Ancona-Costa, Cristina and Serra, Giuseppe, 75-112. Padova: Il Poligrafo.

13. Miano, Vincenzo. 1963. "Nozione e oggetto della metafisica secondo R. Bacone." In Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter. Ihr Ursprung und ihre Bedeutung. Vorträge des II. Internationalen Kongresses für mittelalterliche Philosophie, edited by Wilpert, Paul, 504-513. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

14. Mondin, Battista. 2002. "L'oggetto e il metodo della metafisica secondo Aristotele e secondo S. Tommaso." Sapienza. Rivista internazionale di filosofia e di teologia no. 55:129-153.

15. Muccillo, Maria. 2009. "Un dibattito sui libri metafisici di Aristotele fra platonici, aristotelici e telesiani (con qualche complicazione ermetica): Patrizi, Angelucci e Muti sul soggetto della metafisica." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 34:221-304.

16. Müller, Paola. 2016. "Haec scientia est circa transcendentia: Giovanni Duns Scoto e il soggetto della metafisica." Antonianum no. 91:601-612.

17. Napoli, Valerio. 2012. "Le denominazioni della Metafisica e della sua scienza nella filosofia tardoantica." Peitho. Examina antiqua no. 3:51-82.

Abstract: "In late antiquity, in the context of the jagged tradition of Neo-Platonism, Aristotle’s Metaphysics and the specific science that is traced out in it are indicated with the current denominations of meta ta physika and theologikē pragmateia, which are seen as consistent with one another and closely interconnected. In this connection, the Metaphysics, in the wake of previous philosophical readings, is considered as a treatise on “theological science” — the most elevated among the sciences — and the denomination meta ta physika is seen in a specifically theological sense.

According to a widespread Neo-Platonic reading, the science thematized in the Metaphysics is “metaphysics” in that it is theological science, an epistemic discourse on divine realities, which, within the ordo rerum, transcend the physical ones, and, therefore, according to the ordo cognoscendi, must be studied after the latter."

18. Pascual, Rafael. 2008. "Lo statuto epistemologico della metafisica in Tommaso d’Aquino." In Creazione e actus essendi. Originalità e interpretazioni della metafisica di Tommaso d'Aquino, edited by Villagrasa, Jesús, 13-23. Roma: Edizioni ART.

19. Pini, Giorgio. 1991. "Una lettura scotista della «Metafisica» di Aristotele: l'«Expositio in libros Metaphysicorum» di Antonio Andrea." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 2:529-586.

Sommario: "Da lungo tempo è stato riconosciuto il carattere scotista dell'Expositio in libros Metaphysicorum di Antonio Andrea, a tal punto che essa figura tra le opere di Scoto nelle edizioni del Wadding e di Vivés. Anche ora che la paternità di Antonio Andrea per quest'opera è stata comunemente riconosciuta, accade spesso che si faccia ricorso all'Expositio al fine di illuminare questo o quel punto oscuro del pensiero di Scoto. Tuttavia, una volta analizzata, quest'opera mostra di essere un adattamento puntuale del commento alla Metafisica di Tommaso dal punto di vista delle teorie di Scoto. Attraverso l'introduzione sistematica nelle formulazioni di Tommaso delle nuove dottrine scotiste dell'univocità dell'ente e della natura communis, Antonio realizzò il progetto di fornire ai primi discepoli di Scoto un manuale della scienza dell'ente come scientia transcendens."

20. ———. 1996. "Notabilia Scoti super Metaphysicam: una testimonianza ritrovata dell’insegnamento di Scoto sulla Metafisica." Archivum Franciscanum Historicum no. 89:137-180.

21. ———. 2005. "Sulla fortuna delle Quaestiones super Metaphysicam di Duns Scoto: le Quaestiones super Metaphysicam di Antonio Andrea." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 6:69-110.

22. Poppi, Antonino. 2004. "Ontologia e scienza divina nel Commentario alle Sentenze di Francesco della Marca O. Min. (1319)." Miscellanea Francescana no. 104:100-120.

23. ———. 2009. "L’oggetto della metafisica nella Quaestio de subjecto metaphysicae di Giacomino Malafossa (1553)." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 34:105-122.

24. Porro, Pasquale. 2004. "Tommaso d’Aquino, Avicenna, e la struttura della metafisica." In Tommaso d’Aquino e la struttura della metafisica, edited by Brock, Stephen L., 65-87. Roma: Armando.

25. Pozzo, Riccardo. 2009. "Cornelius Martini sull’oggetto della metafisica." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 34:305-314.

26. Romera, Luis. 2006. "L'oggetto della metafisica secondo Tommaso." In Letture e interpretazioni di Tommaso d'Aquino oggi: cantieri aperti: atti del convegno internazionale di studio, Milano, 12 - 13 settembre 2005, edited by Ghisalberti, Alessandro, 71-102. Torino: Quaderni di Annali Chieresi.

27. ———. 2006. "L'oggetto della metafisica include Dio?" In Tommaso d'Aquino e l'oggetto della metafisica, edited by Brock, Stephen L., 115-148. Roma: Armando.

28. Ruffinengo, Pier Paolo. 2009. "L’oggetto della metafisica nella scuola tomista tra tardo medioevo ed età moderna." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 34:141-220.

29. Savini, Massimiliano. 2009. "Una metafisica sotto tutela: gnostologia, noologia e ontologia nel pensiero di Abraham Calov." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 34:361-380.

30. Sgarbi, Marco. 2009. "«Unus, verus, bonus et Calovius». L’oggetto della metafisica secondo Abraham Calov." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 34:381-398.

Studien in Deutsch

1. Althaus, Paul. 1914. Die Prinzipien der deutschen reformierten Dogmatik im Zeitalter der aristotelischen Scholastik. Eine Untersuchung zur altprotestantischen Dogmatik. Leipzig: Deichert.

Reprint: Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967.

2. Andersen, Claus A. 2016. Metaphysik im Barockscotismus. Untersuchungen zum Metaphysikwerk des Bartholomaeus Mastrius. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Mit Dokumentation der Metaphysik in der scotistischen Tradition ca. 1620-1750.

3. Conze, Eberhard. 1928. Der Begriff der Metaphysik bei Franciscus Suarez. Leipzig: Felix Meiner.

4. Eschweiler, Karl. 1928. "Die Philosophie der spanischen Spätscholastik auf den deutschen Universitäten des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts." In Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kulturgeschichte Spaniens. Vol. I, 1, edited by Finke, Heinrich, 251-325. Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung.

5. Folger-Fonfara, Sabine. 2005. "Franziskus von Marchia: Die erste Unterscheidung einer Allgemeinen und einer Besonderen Metaphysik." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 16:461-514.

Appendix von Russell L. Friedman: Franciscus de Marchia, In libros Metaphysicarum, Proemium pp. 502-514.

6. ———. 2008. Das 'Super'-Transzendentale und die Spaltung der Metaphysik. Der Entwurf des Franziskus von Marchia. Leiden: Brill.

"The history of modern metaphysics is essentially marked by its splitting up into a metaphysica generalis and a metaphysica specialis, a well-known distinction especially within Christian Wolff's systematic conception of metaphysics. This study investigates the actual origins of this significant development, which can be already found at the beginning of the 14th century. On the basis of a fundamentally revised doctrine of transcendentals the Franciscan theologian Francis of Marchia (~1290-1344) introduces for the first time a dissociation of the primum cognitum of the human intellect from the subject of metaphysics, according to which metaphysics is no longer one science in the sense of a scientia transcendens, as most of his predecessors claimed in the 13th century, but rather twofold: ontology and theology."

7. Honnefelder, Ludger. 1979. Ens inquantum ens. Der Begriff des Seienden als solchen als Gegenstand der Metaphysik nach der Lehre des Johannes Duns Scotus. Münster: Aschendorff.

8. ———. 1987. "Der zweite Anfang der Metaphysik. Voraussetzungen, Ansätze und Folgen der Wiederbegründung der Metaphysik im 13./14. Jahrhundert." In Philosophie im Mittelalter: Entwicklungslinien und Paradigmen, edited by Beckmann, Jan Peter, Honnefelder, Ludger, Schrimpf, Gangolf and Wieland, Georg, 165-186. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.

9. ———. 1990. Scientia transcendens. Die formale Bestimmumg der Seiendheit und Realitat in der Metaphysik des Mitt elalters und der Neuzeit (Duns Scotus - Suarez - Wolff - Kant - Peirce). Hamburg: Meiner.

10. ———. 1996. "Der zweite Anfang der Metaphysik. Voraussetzungen, Ansätze und Folgen der Wiederbegründung der Metaphysik im 13./14. Jahrhundert." In Philosophie im Mittelalter. Entwicklungslinien und Paradigmen, edited by Beckmann, Jan P., Honnefelder, Ludger, Sehrimpf, Gangolf and Wieland, Georg, 165-186. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.

11. Knebel, Sven K. 2009. "“Metaphysikkritik”? Historisches zur Abgrenzung von Logik und Metaphysik." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 34:399-424.

12. Leinsle, Ulrich Gottfried. 1985. Das Ding und die Methode. Methodische Konstitution und Gegenstand der frühen protestantischen Metaphysik. Augsburg: MaroVerlag.

I. Teil: Darstellung; II: Teil: Anmerkungen und Register.

13. Lewalter, Ernst. 1935. Spanisch-Jesuitische und Deutsch-Lutherische Metaphysik des 17. Jahrhunderts. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der iberisch-deutschen Kulturbeziehungen und zur Vorgeschichte des deutschen Idealismus. Hamburg: Ibero-Amerikanisches.

Reprint: Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1967.

14. Oring-Hanhoff, Ludger. 1963. "Die Methoden der Metaphysik im Mittelalter." In Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter. Ihr Ursprung und Ihre Bedeutung, edited by Wilpert, Paul, 71-91. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

15. Petersen, Peter. 1921. Geschichte der aristotelischen Philosophie im Protestantischen Deutschland. Leipzig: Felix Meiner.

Reprint: Stuttgart, Friedrich Frommann (Günther Holzboog), 1964.

16. Pickavé, Martin. 2001. "Heinrich von Gent über das Subjekt der Metaphysik als Ersterkanntes." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 12:493-522.

17. ———. 2007. Heinrich von Gent über Metaphysik als erste Wissenschaft. Leiden: Brill.

18. Ratzinger, Joseph. 1963. "Der Wortgebrauch von natura und die beginnende Verselbständigung der Metaphysik bei Bonaventura." In Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter. Ihr Ursprung und ihre Bedeutung. Vorträge des II. Internationalen Kongresses für mittelalterliche Philosophie, edited by Wilpert, Paul, 483-498. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

19. Schönberger, Rolf. 1986. Die Transformation des klassischen Seinsverständnisses. Studien zur Vorgeschichte des neuzeitlichen Seinsbegriffs im Mittelalter. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

20. Sparn, Walter. 1976. Wiederkehr der Metaphysik. Die ontologische Frage in der lutherischen Theologie des 17. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag.

21. Vollrath, Ernst. 1962. "Die Gliederung der Metaphysik in eine Metaphysica generalis und eine Metaphysica specialis." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 16:258-284.

22. ———. 1969. Die These der Metaphysik. Zur Gestalt der Metaphysik bei Aristoteles, Kant und Hegel. Wuppertal: Henn Verlag.

23. Weber, Emil August. 1907. Die philosophische Scholastik des deutschen Protestantismus im Zeitalter der Orthodoxie. Leipzig: Quelle und Meyer.

Reprint: Glacier National PARK (Montana), Kessinger Publishing, 2009.

24. Wollgast, Siegfried. 1988. Philosophie in Deutschland zwischen Reformation und Aufklärung. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

25. Wundt, Max. 1939. Die deutsche Schulmetaphysik des 17. Jahrhunderts. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).

26. ———. 1945. Die deutsche Schulphilosophie im Zeitalter der Aufklärung. Tübingen: Mohr.

Reprint: Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1964.

27. Zimmermann, Albert. 1966. "Allgemeine Metaphysik und Teilmetaphysik nach einen anonymen Kommentar zur aristotelischen Ersten Philosophie aus dem 14. Jahrhundert." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 48:190-206.

28. ———. 1966. "Allgemeine Metaphysik nach einem anonymen Kommentar zur aristotelischen Ersten Philosophie aus dem 14. Jahrhundert." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 48:190-206.

29. ———. 1998. Ontologie oder Metaphysik? Die Diskussion über den Gegenstand der Metaphysik im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert. Texte und Untersuchungen. Leuven: Peeters.

Second updated edition (first edition: Leiden: Brill, 1965).

"In the fourteenth century, a new version of the first solution makes its appearance. Unlike its thirteenth century predecessor, this version of the solution is aware of the notion of the formal object uniting the various discourses comprising a science, yet it rejects such a notion. This deconstruction of the problematic surrounding the subject of metaphysics may be seen most clearly in the writings of Ockham and Buridan. With this development, the medieval history of the problematic of the subject of metaphysics may be said to reach its apogee by returning to its origins. The notion of a formal unity in a science, a unity that transcends the merely logical unity of a particular demonstrative syllogism, is once again missing from the discussion.

In this, the second edition of his classic study, Albert Zimmermann has once again provided scholars with a remarkable collection of otherwise unavailable texts along with penetrating studies on that perennial metaphysical question: what is the subject of metaphysics. As indicated by the title, Zimmermann's treatment of the medieval discussion on the object of metaphysical knowledge ranges over the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, covering authors from the generation of Richard Rufus and Roger Bacon up to John Buridan. The new edition takes account of most of the considerable literature that has appeared since the original publication in 1965. (...)

Zimmermann's volume divides into two parts. The first presents texts drawn from medieval commentaries on Aristotle's Metaphysics in which the subject of metaphysics is discussed. The second part is subdivided into three chapters: the first sketches out the primary sources for the medieval discussion -- found chiefly in the writings of Aristotle, Avicenna, and Averroes; the second describes the advent of the three basic solutions proposed by medieval authors for the solution to the problem; and the final chapter shows the subsequent development of these three solutions. The study closes with reflections upon the medieval treatment of the problem and what impact the medieval discussion had upon the development of early modern philosophy as well as contemporary European thought.

Given the ambiguity of Aristotle's various statements on the subject of metaphysics, Avicenna and Averroes attempted to work out systematic accounts of the subject of metaphysics. Applying rigorously the model of scientific knowledge expressed in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, Avicenna concluded that being as being, understood as common to substance and accident, had to be the subject of metaphysics since God's existence was sought in metaphysics and no science proves the existence of its subject. Agreeing with many of the basic assumptions of Avicenna, Averroes came to the opposite conclusion: metaphysics has as its subject God since the existence of God is already shown in natural philosophy and thus may be assumed for the purposes of metaphysical investigation.

The medieval philosophers worked out three alternative solutions to the problem presented to them by the texts newly received at the outset of the thirteenth century. The first solution, clearly evidenced in the writings of Roger Bacon, proposed that there are various subjects for the science of metaphysics and thus diffused the disagreement between Avicenna and Averroes. In the case of Bacon, the three subjects are being as being, substance, and God, subjects that are treated successively in the sequence of books in the Aristotelian Metaphysics. As Zimmermann notes, this solution is not only too facile but indicates that its proponents had not developed the notion of a single, formal subject that unites all the features treated within the scope of a science; Bacon is an especially clear case in this regard since he located the unity of metaphysical knowledge in the reducibility of all metaphysical objects to the First Cause and not in any formal unity of the subject matter.

The second solution Zimmermann finds most fully expressed in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, though he sees adumbrations of it in the commentaries of Albert the Great and Richard Rufus. Unlike the defenders of the first solution, those advancing the second solution are distinctive in having a refined notion of the formal object of the science and positing the unity of the science to be derived from the formal object. According to this solution, being as being or being in general (ens in communi) is limited to the range of creaturely being, a notion of which we attain through our acquaintance with sensible substances. The existence of God is not presupposed for metaphysical science though some judgment (separatio) that being is separate in notion and reality from merely sensible things is required. Instead, God relates to metaphysical knowledge as the cause and the principle of the subject of the science or ens commune; hence, God's existence may be known in and through metaphysics, but the names derived from the concept of being that constitutes the object of the science can tell us little about His nature.

The final solution developed by medieval philosophers was also the one most commonly adopted by them. Positing being as being as the subject in the widest possible sense, these thinkers claimed that God falls under the subject of metaphysics in that sense, albeit they often qualified that claim by stating that the sense of being that applies to God and creature is only analogously the same. One of the earliest adherents of this view was the great Dominican theologian Robert Kilwardby, but the most famous of those subsequently defending the view were Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus. In many ways, as Zimmermann notes (p. 329), Scotus's systematic presentation of this view marked the culmination of its development and led to the form that the medieval discussion would have thereafter, connecting the discussion of the subject of metaphysics to distinctively Scotistic theses such as the univocity of being."

Timothy Noone, Review in: The Review of Metaphysics, 54, 2000, pp. 183-185.

Estudios en Español

1. Cabré Duran, Maria. 2022. "Notas sobre el primer sujeto de la metafísica según el comentario a la Metafísica de Antoni Andreu." Anuario Filosófico no. 56:59-77.

Resumen: En este artículo estudiaremos algunos elementos propios de la formulación del problema del sujeto de la metafísica tal y como aparece en el comentario de Antoni Andreu a la Metafísica aristotélica. Esta cuestión está estrechamente vinculada a la

concepción de la univocidad aplicada al ser transcendental, pero también a la inclusión de las sustancias separadas en el dominio de la metafísica. La afirmación de un concepto de ser unívoco y real como sujeto-objeto de la metafísica es la base del realismo metafísico propuesto por Antoni Andreu."

Abstract: "This article examines certain aspects of the problem of the subject-matter of metaphysics as presented in Antonius Andreae’s commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics.

This question is closely linked to the conception of univocal transcendental being, but also to the inclusion of separate substances into the domain of metaphysics.

The assertion of the univocal and real concept of being as the subject of metaphysics is the basis of metaphysical realism as proposed by Andreae."

2. Cumsille Marzouka, Kamal Andrés, and Figueroa Lackington, Benjamín Antonio. 2021. "Al-Farabi, 'Sobre los propositos de Aristoteles en la Metafisica'. Texto, traduccion y notas." MEAH, Sección Arabe-Islam no. 70:441-452.

Resumen: "El presente texto ofrece una nueva traducción al castellano del Maqāla fī agrāḍ al-ḥakīm fī kitāb Mā ba'd al-ṭabī'a (Tratado sobre los propósitos de “el Sabio” en el libro de la Metafísica) de Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī (m. 339/950-951). Desde un punto de vista filológico, nuestra versión toma por referencia los enfoques hermenéuticos de Jon McGinnis, David Reisman, Amos Bertolacci y, más considerablemente, de Dimitri Gutas, tanto en lo que refiere a la traducción de términos filosóficos técnicos como de reorganización del texto en parágrafos. En este sentido, hemos querido ofrecer al público hispanohablante una nueva traducción del Agrāḍ, basada en la edición de Friedrich Heinrich Dieterici, que tuviera en cuenta los avances más recientes en el campo de los estudios árabes y, en particular, en los estudios de la obra filosófica de al-Fārābī. Para facilitar la contrastación con el texto de Dieterici, hemos incluido aquí su versión transcrita, con puntuación y parágrafos reordenados."

Abstract: "This document offers a new Spanish translation of the Maqāla fī agrāḍ al-ḥakīm fī kitāb Mā ba'd al-ṭabī'a (Treatise on the Aims of „the Sage" in the Book of Metaphysics) written by Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī (d. 339/950-951). On a methodological level, our interpretation is mainly informed by the work of Jon McGinnis, David Reisman, Amos Bertolacci, and —more significantly— Dimitri Gutas, with regard to both the translation of key philosophical terms and to the rearrangement of the text in paragraphs. In this sense, we aim to provide a new Spanish translation of the Agrāḍ —based in Friedrich Heinrich Dieterici‘s

edition— that takes into account the latest developments in the field of Arabic studies and, particularly, in the study of al-Fārābī‘s philosophical oeuvre. To facilitate the comparison of the original and the translated text, we have included Dieterici‘s transcription with punctuations and rearranged paragraphs."

3. Fernández-Rodríguez, José Luis. 1979. "El objeto de la metafísica en la tradición aristotélica." Anuario Filosófico:65-101.

4. García-Lorente, José-Antonio. 2013. "El objeto de la Metafisica de Aristoteles en el Comentario de Tomas de Aquino a Epsilon 1." Acta Philosophica no. 1:73-88.

5. Guerrero, Rafael Ramón. 1996. "Sobre el objeto de la Metafisica en Avicena." Cuadernos de Pensamiento no. 10:59-75.

6. O'Reilly, Francisco. 2021. "La definición y el objeto de la metafísica en la Philosophia Prima del Avicena Latino." Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía no. 38:441-461.

Resumen "La Philosophia Prima de Avicena ocupa un lugar relevante en la historia de la metafísica. En sus primeros cuatro capítulos encontramos una definición de la metafísica como sabiduría y filosofía ciertísima. Avicena busca con todo ello destacar el carácter científico de la metafísica. En este mismo sentido, la elucidación del objeto propio de esta disciplina se inserta en el debate entre sus fuentes árabes (Al-Kindi y Al-Farabi), pero a su vez se extiende en la discusión histórica sobre el lugar de Dios y el ser en la metafísica.

En este artículo se presenta la definición de la metafísica como ciencia primera, y el establecimiento del ente como el objeto propio de la metafísica, y Dios como aquello buscado."

Abstract. "Avicenna’s Philosophia Prima occupies a relevant place in the history of metaphysics. In its first four chapters, we find a definition of metaphysics as wisdom and the more certain philosophy that highlights the scientific character that Avicenna seeks to

give metaphysics. The elucidation of the subject matter of this discipline is developed in the debate among its Arab sources (Al-Kindi and Al-Farabi), but at the same time, it extends in the historical discussion on the place of God and being in metaphysics. This article presents the definition of metaphysics as the first science, and the establishment of the being as the proper subject of metaphysics, and God as what is sought."

7. Pérez Fernández, Isacio. 1975. "Verbización y nocionización de la metafísica en la tradición latina." Estudios filosóficos no. 24:161-222.

8. ———. 1975. "Verbización y nocionización de la Metafísica en la tradición siro–árabe." Pensamiento no. 31:245-272.

9. ———. 1977. "Datos histórico-fiíotógicos sobre la denominación y noción primitivas de la Metafísica." Studium. Revista de Filosofía y Teología no. 17:455-485.

10. ———. 1979. "Influjo del árabe en el nacimiento del término latino-medieval metaphysica." In Actas del V Congreso Internacional de Filosofía Medieval. Vol. 2, edited by Gómez Nogales, Salvador, 1099-1107. Madrid: Editora Nacional.

11. Riesco Terrero, José. 1962. "Nicolas Bonet escribe una metafisica sistematica dos siglos y medio antes que Suarez." Salmanticenses no. 9:1-19.

12. Rodriguez, Victorino. 1965. "El Ser que es objecto del la metafisica segun la interpretacion tomista clasica." Estudios filosóficos no. 14:283-312.

13. ———. 1965. "El Ser que es objecto del la metafisica segun la interpretacion tomista clasica (Continuación)." Estudios filosóficos no. 37:461-492.

14. Vélez León, Paulo. 2015. "¿Ontología u Ontologías?" Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin no. 4:299-339.

15. ———. 2016. "Sobre el significado de la metafísica en Kant." Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin no. 5:267-281.

16. ———. 2017. τὸ ὂν ᾗ ὂν. Sobre el significado de la ontología. De la filosofía primera de Aristóteles a la metaphysica de Domingo Gundisalvo. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca.

17. ———. 2020. "El término «metafísica» en la tradición griega." Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin no. 9:243-275.

18. ———. 2020. "El término «metafísica» en la tradición sirio-árabe." Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin no. 9:209-227.

19. ———. 2022. "El término « metafísica » en la tradición latina." Pensamiento no. 78:1871-1882.

Resumen: "Los estudios sobre la constitución de la noción y el término «metafísica» han sido poco abordados por la historia de la filosofía, y sobre todo, por la tradición filosófica misma. Este trabajo, sobre la base de lo realizado por Pérez Fernández (1975), es una parte de una serie de publicaciones que pretende arrojar luz sobre este proceso. Concretamente, aquí se narra brevemente cómo el término «metafísica» fue mudando gradualmente su uso y grafía en la tradición latina. Sugeriré que Boecio usa las locuciones theologia y μετὰ τὰ φυσικὰ en dos sentidos, la primera la emplea para referirse al tema que es propio de los libros metafísicos de Aristóteles (i.e. teología filosófica), en tanto que la segunda locución la usa en un sentido bibliográfico. De este uso daría cuenta Abelardo en sus obras, que plausiblemente influyeron más tarde en la constitución definitiva del término en la Escuela de Toledo. Se incluyen imágenes de manuscritos para ilustrar lo apuntado."

Abstract: "Studies on the evolution of the notion and the term «metaphysics» have been scarcely addressed by the history of philosophy, and specially, by the philosophical tradition itself. This work, based on what was done by Pérez Fernández (1975), is part of a series of writings that aims to shed light on this process. Specifically, here I will briefly describe how the term «metaphysics» gradually changed its use and spelling in the Latin tradition. I will suggest that Boethius uses the locutions theologia and μετὰ τὰ φυσικὰ in two senses, the first one uses it to refer to the subject that is proper to the metaphysical books of Aristotle (i.e. philosophical theology), while the second locution uses it in a bibliographic sense. Of this last use, Abelard would give account in his works, which plausibly later influenced the definitive constitution of the term in the School of Toledo. Images of manuscripts are included to illustrate the point."

References

Pérez Fernández, Isacio, «Verbización y nocionización de la Metafísica en la tradición latina », en: Estudios filosóficos 24 (1975), pp. 161-177 [222]

Estudios en Portugues

1. Costa Sousa, Meline. 2023. "Avicena e o problema do sujeito da metafísica: a hipótese das causas." Veritas, Porto Alegre:1-11.

Resumo: "Um dos problemas com os quais os leitores da Metafísica de Aristóteles se deparam é a dificuldade de delimitação do sujeito da sabedoria. Avicena (séc. X), em seu tratado metafísico As coisas divinas (Ilāhiyyāt), põe-se a investigar cada um dos três candidatos à posição de sujeito dessa ciência (a dizer, Deus, as causas e o ser). Devido à amplitude da investigação, a análise que se segue se restringirá à segunda hipótese – se, em algum sentido, seria a filosofia primeira uma ciência sobre as causas (uma aitiologia). Desse modo, inicia-se com a exposição do contexto da Ilāh. I, que antecede à análise da hipótese das causas. Na sequência, aborda-se a hipótese, juntamente com os argumentos, para mostrar sua falsidade. Por fim, a conclusão apresenta a relação entre causalidade e ser, tendo em vista a resposta ontológica que será dada ao problema central e os problemas que decorrem dessa resposta."

Abstract: "An issue the readers of Aristotle’s Metaphysics must deal with is the delimitation of the subject-matter of the wisdom. An attempt to answer this problem was proposed by Avicenna (10th Century) in his metaphysical treatise On Divine Things (Ilāhiyyāt). In its first book, the philosopher investigates each one of the three candidates for the position of the subject-matter of this science (i.e., God, causes, and being). Having in mind the difficulties of this topic, the following analysis is limited to the second hypothesis, namely, if the first philosophy is the science of the causes (an aitiology). I will start contextualizing the Ilāh. I since it precedes the analysis of the hypothesis of the causes. Then, I will discuss the hypothesis of the causes and show Avicenna’s arguments against it. Finally, I will conclude this investigation discussing briefly the relation between causes and being in view of Avicenna’s ontological answer to the main problem and the problems emerging from it."

2. Martins, António Manuel. 1994. Lógica e ontologia em Pedro da Fonseca. Lisboa: Fundaçao Calouste Gulbenkian.

English abstract: "The aim of the dissertation is to show the place of Fonseca's work in the history of ontology. Starting with a close analysis of the texts connected with the core of classical metaphysics it is argued that the Commentarii in libros metaphysicorum Aristotelis far reacher than a mere textual commentary of Aristotle's text and represent one of the rare efforts to bring out a real synthesis of the main theoretical problems and questions emerging in the context of the aristotelian project of a first philosophy. This systematic work is carried out in the second half of the sixteenth century, just before the beginning of modern philosophy. Chapter one is dedicated to a brief account of Fonseca's work in his historical context. The remaining chapters explores some of the central topics of Fonseca's ontology. Chapter two, after a brief discussion of the aristotelian project of first philosophy, follows the transformation of this project in Fonseca's text discussing in particular his analysis of the concept of being under the heading ens commune and the meaning of the thesis of analogia entis as well as the distinction between a formal and an objective concept of being. In chapter three we discuss the question of the distinction between essence and existence in order to grasp the meaning of Fonseca's thesis of a modal distinction ex natura rei. Chapter four seeks to articulate Fonseca's interpretation of the classical doctrine of the transcendentals (unum, bonum, uerum). The wish to articulate the universality and transcendentality of the concept of being has taken us to introduce the problem of the categories in this chapter and a brief historico-critical survey beginning in Aristotle and ending in Kant. Finally, chapter five discusses the meaning of the principle of non contradiction in Aristotle and in Fonseca."

Capítulo 2. Determinação do objecto da metafísica, pp. 61-190.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Index of the pages on "Modern and Contemporary Philosophy"

Ontology in Modern Philosophy

The History of Ontology from Suárez to Kant

Jacob Lorhard (1561-1609): The Creator of the Term "Ontologia"

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries

I. From Fonseca to Poinsot (1560 - 1644)

II. From Scheibler to Lambert (1645 - 1777)

Editions and Translations of the Metaphysical Works of Francisco Suárez

The Philosophy of René Descartes

The Philosophy of René Descartes: An Overview

René Descartes. Bibliographie Chronologique et Annotée (Première Partie: 1616-1640)

René Descartes. Bibliographie Chronologique et Annotée (Deuxième Partie: 1641-1650)

Bibliographie des études sur les Regulae ad directionem ingenii et la recherche de la mathesis universalis

Ontology from Wolff to Kant

Christian Wolff's Ontology: Existence as "Complement of Possibility"

Selected Bibliography on the Metaphysics of Christian Wolff

Kant from the Critique of Metaphysics to Transcendental Philosophy

The Rediscovery of Ontology in Contemporary Thought

(under construction)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Birth of a New Science: the History of Ontology from Suárez to Kant

Introduction

"To begin with we want to state that ontology should be seen only as an interdiscipline involving both philosophy and science. It is a discipline which points out the problems of the foundations of the sciences as well as the borderline questions, and which further attempts to solve these problems and questions. Ontology is not a discipline which exists separately and independently from all the other scientific disciplines and also from other branches of philosophy. Rather, ontology derives the general structure of the world; it obtains the structure of the world as it really is from knowledge embodied in other disciplines. If one examines the history of philosophy one sees that ontology has never solved or attempted to solve the questions about the structures of our world independently, apart from the other philosophical disciplines or apart from the sciences. As is expressed by this symposium's topic, "Language and Ontology", ontology has derived the world's structure from other disciplines which describe reality, and has thus relied upon the languages of other disciplines. A common belief is that this derivation of the world's most general structures from the knowledge of other disciplines is ontology's only task. But now the belief is that in doing ontology one always selects the most important and most general laws from among all the laws which the various disciplines have to offer at any given time. Further, the ontologist interprets and generalizes those laws and must endeavor to establish certain of them as the most fundamental and general structures of our world.

If ontology is a discipline which uses knowledge from various other disciplines then it is obvious that, in the course of the history of philosophy, ontology must have developed in a most dramatic fashion. If we look at the actual history of ontology we find confirmation of our claim. Ontology mirrors, so to speak, the level of our knowledge of the world at any given time. For instance, Plato and the Platonists have assumed that one could derive our world's most general empirical structures from an ideal world of Platonic Forms. Of this world of Forms it is said that one can experience it intuitively and that its existence has to be presupposed a priori. For this derivation, one needs only two relations, methexis and parousia. "Methexis" means "participation" or what we would call "representation" "parousia" means "manifestation" (of the ideas in the world) or what we would call "interpretation". These ontological procedures are explained in Plato's Parmenides.

For Aristotle, the main task of philosophy was not to perceive the world of ideas, but to experience the empirical world and acquire knowledge about it (Metaphysics, Chapter 9). He created the first system of ontology in the form of an ontology of substances. Aristotle's search for the world's true structures is interestingly opposed to Plato's. For Aristotle the general properties of things, that is, those properties of things which constitute their invariant form, have to be found through a cognitive process. These general properties of things are universal structures or patterns. These universal patterns are to be defined and axiomatized. For this task one calls on logic for help. The end result is that universals become generally comprehensible.

Here one may ask as Porphyry did what universals really are. The answers that have been proposed are numerous. They include: Platonic ideas, substances residing in things, concepts or representations in the human mind (conceptualism), terms or predicates contained in our language (nominalism), and mathematical-theoretical constructs in the languages of present day theories. The question about the very nature of universals (general structures) has occupied philosophy and the sciences up to the present day as one can see in reading Heisenberg's dialogues with Schrödinger where this question is discussed at length.

In the Middle Ages the concern with universals continued. Various elaborate systems evolved, including, importantly, varieties of conceptualism and nominalism. A decisive turn in the history of ontology is connected with the writings of Goclenius, Wolff, and Leibniz. Goclenius needs to be mentioned for he is credited with the first use of the term 'ontology'. Like all ontologies, so also Wolff's, has to be made dependent upon the level of knowledge existing at his time. Knowledge for Wolff is logical knowledge. He established the interdisciplinary character of his ontology by deriving the most general laws of nature and of all things from the principles of a logic derived from Leibniz. According to Wolff, it is one of the basic ontological structures of everything that exists, that the principle of non-contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason are valid in all merely possible worlds in addition to the real world.

Kant rejected Wolff's logic as metaphysical and Platonistic. Therefore Kant rejected also Wolff's ontology. Instead of traditional logic, Kant introduced his own transcendental logic. This transcendental logic may be seen as a cognitively oriented method which is founded on concepts. If one wants to gain knowledge, then, according to Kant, only those categories (or most general concepts) may be used which fulfill certain spatio-temporal conditions when they are applied. These categories are of subjective origin, that is, created by the human mind. It is a scientific theory, namely, Newton's physics, which furnishes the natural laws which are the basis of Kant's ontology. In his epistemology (an "auxiliary discipline" of his ontology which is contained in the Critique of Pure Reason), Kant methodologically explains Newton's physics.

Leibniz's logic stands in the same relationship to Wolff's ontology, as the natural laws of Newton's physics and Kant's own epistemology stands to Kant's ontology. But for Kant it is not the world of things-in-themselves which determines his ontology but the spatio-temporal categorial system of relations of the phenomena. It is important that here ontology can be clearly separated from epistemology. Kant's epistemology is a metatheory of the cognitive presuppositions and methods of classical physics. Kant's categorial ontology derives from natural laws which are supported and confirmed by empirical evidence of the general structures of the world-the classical physical world, as we would say today. With this, ontology became an interdiscipline, since it is here that for the first time in the history of philosophy and science that scientific results were thoroughly (philosophically) generalized. This is also an important point in the development of the ontology of the sciences. The ontology of the sciences has progressed enormously in the twentieth century, since many scientific theories with their specialized, cognitively oriented languages and with their specialized mathematical methods did not originate before the twentieth century. Up to now, the ontology of the sciences is the last chapter of the history of ontology.

After Kant, ontology developed in several directions. Ontology of the sciences evolved in Neo-Kantianism, Positivism and Neo-positivism, the philosophy of the Vienna Circle, and in contemporary philosophy of science. On the other side stands phenomenological ontology. Phenomenological ontology expanded Kant's phenomenological "reduction" of the world. Its climax is Husserl's phenomenology in which the world itself becomes the (world) phenomenon. The world's basic structures exist exactly in that way in which they are experienced (phenomenologically) by human beings. The construction and the structure of the world "happen" in man's pure intentional consciousness vis-à-vis reality. According to Husserl, mathematics and logic also participate in the constitution of the world out of the phenomena. This constitution has a semantical character but happens, nevertheless, without language. Heidegger's fundamental ontology, on the other hand, speaks of an anti-logical and anti-scientific basic experience, which is said to be paramount to all scientific knowledge.

The next decisive step in the development of ontology was the result of another development, which had reached its climax in the twentieth century, the development of formal logic. Formal logic, and, in union with it, analytic philosophy, often show the tendency to dissolve epistemology into syntax and semantics, and even pragmatics. The syntactical semantic functions, the reference relation, etc., could, in turn, be based upon the respective functions of language, be it ordinary language or the language of the sciences. Wittgenstein's reduction of thinking to the linguistic medium became an object of a philosophical position whose task was to explain and clarify language. As a result, the ontology of the sciences acquires features which are best characterized by "regional linguistic ontology". An important result of Wittgenstein's reduction of thinking to language was the dissolution of conceptualistic ontology." ( Preface by the Editors, pp. 18-20)

From: Werner Leinfellner, Eric Kraemer and Jeffrey Schank (eds.), Language and Ontology. Proceedings of the Sixth International Wittgenstein Symposium. 23th to 30th August 1981 Kirchberg am Wechsel (Austria), Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1982.

The origin of a new Latin term: Ontologia"

Until 2003 the first appearance of the Latin word "ontologia" was known in two works published in 1613:

Rudolf Göckel (1547-1628) Latin Rudolf Goclenius, Professor of Logic in the University of Marburg: in his Lexicon philosophicum quo tanquam clave philosophiae fores aperiuntur, informatum opera et studio Rodolphi Goclenii, Frankfurt (reprinted by Georg Olms, second edition 1980) XII, 1143 pages) on the left margin of abstractio (the term is written in Greek);

Jacob Lorhard (1561-1609) Latin Jacobo Lorhardo or Jacobus Lorhardus, Professor at the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) in his Theatrum philosophicum, Basilea, SECOND edition.

Göckel's work was well known, but Lorhard's Theatrum philosophicum was first discovered by Joseph S. Freedman in the second edition of his Deutsche Schulphilosophie im Reformationszeitalter (1500-1650): ein Handbuch für den Hochschulunterricht, Münster, MAKS, 1985, and cited by Jean-François Courtine in his masterpiece Suárez et le système de la métaphysique, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1990, p. 410 n. 6.

Lorhard was an unknown author and the only reference I found to him is in the Syllabus auctorum, Vol. 9 of the Bibliographia Philosophica Vetus . Repertorium generale systematicum operum philosophicorum usque ad annum MDCCC typis impressorum by Wilhelm Risse, Zürich - New York, Georg Olms, 1998:

"Lorhardus, Jacobus (fl. 1597), praeceptor Durlaci, rector S. Galli"

Wilhelm Risse 's outstanding work contains a bibliography of the published titles on philosophy up to 1800 (about 18.000 titles!); I tried to find the FIRST edition of Lorhard's work, which was unknown.

In Vol. II, - "Logica" of Risse's work, Jacobus Lorhardus is cited twice: year 1597 and year 1606 (references are to the year of publication).

1597: Liber de adeptione veri necessarii, seu apodictici..., Tubingae, 1598, (p. 217)

1606: Ogdoas scholastica, continens diagraphen typicam artium grammatices, logices, rethorices... Sangalli, 1606, (p. 232)

The title of the second work puzzled me: Ogdoas means "composed of eight elements" and the title cited only three disciplines.

May 16, 2003, I discovered that this work was the first edition of the Theatrum philosophicum and that the word "ontologiae" appeared in the complete title:

Jacobo Lorhardo: Ogdoas Scholastica continens Diagraphen Typicam artium: Grammatices (Latinae, Graecae), Logices, Rhetorices, Astronomices, Ethices, Physices, Metaphysices, seu Ontologiae.

The frontispiece of the book Ogdoas Scholastica and of the Metaphysicae su Ontologiae Diagraphe.

"The first occurence of "ontology" (in German: Ontologie) in a dictionary of philosophy can be found in the first philosophical dictionary published in a modern language, the Philosophisches Lexicon by Johann Georg Walch (1693-1775): the first edition was published in 1726 (the second improved edition of 1733 has been reprinted in three volumes by Thoemmes in 2001).

July 15, 2005: I received new information about Jacob Lorhard from Peter Øhrstrøm, Institut for Kommunikation, Aalborg Universitet:

"Jacob Lorhard was born in 1561 in Münsingen in South Germany. In 1603 he became "Rektor des Gymnasiums" in the protestant city of St. Gallen. In 1606 he published his book Ogdoas scholastica, on the frontispiece of which the word "ontologia" appears - probably for the first time ever in a book. "Ontologia" is used synonymously with "Metaphysica". In 1607, i.e., the year after the publication of Ogdoas scholastica, Lorhard received a calling from Landgraf Mortiz von Hessen to become professor of theology in Marburg. At that time Rudolph Göckel (1547-1628) was also professor in Marburg in logic, ethics, and mathematics. It seems to be a likely assumption that Lorhard and Göckel met one or several times during 1607 and that they shared some of their findings with each other. In this way the sources suggest that Göckel during 1607 may have learned about Lorhard's new term "ontologia" not only from reading Ogdoas scholastica but also from personal conversations with Lorhard. For some reason, however, his stay in Marburg became very short and after less than a year he returned to his former position in St. Gallen. Lorhard died on 19 May, 1609. Later, in 1613, Lorhard's book was printed in a second edition under the title Theatrum philosophicum. However, in this new edition the word "ontologia" has disappeared from the front cover but has been maintained inside the book. In 1613, however, the term is also found in Rudolph Göckel's Lexicon philosophicum. Here the word "ontologia" is only mentioned briefly as follows: "ontologia, philosophia de ente" (i.e., "ontology, the philosophy of being"). It is very likely that Göckel included this term in his own writings due to inspiration from Lorhard."

October 27, 2006: Dr. Marco Lamanna, Bari University (Italy) send me some important details:

"In July 2006 I had the opportunity to consult a copy of the Ogdoas Scholastica (1606) of Lorhard in the University Library in San Marino. The neologism ontologia appears four times in the course of the work. On three occasions it occurs in the genitive singular (Ontologiae): on the frontispiece, in the title of the section on metaphysics, and at the end of this same section. Only on one occasion (in the dedicatory letter) does the word appear in the accusative case (Ontologiam). I was subsequently able to consult Lorhard's Theatrum philosophicum at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel. This work, the second (amplified) edition of the Ogdoas Scholastica, and appeared posthumously at Basel in 1613. The Theatrum philosophicum is made up of twelve parts (continens Grammaticen Latinam, Graecam, et Hebraeam, Logicen, Rhetoricen, Arithmeticen, Geometriam, Musicen, Astronomicen, Ethicen, Physicen, Metaphysicen seu Ontologiam). The parts that appear here in addition to the material in the Ogdoas are the sections on Hebrew grammar, arithmetic, geometry and music. In the dedicatory letter of the Theatrum philosophicum, Lorhardus writes "hancque Dodecada Scholasticam confeci" (i.e. a work of twelve parts), in contrast to what he had written in 1606: "hancque Ogodoada Scholasticam confeci" (i.e. a work of eight parts).

In September 2006 I confirmed that the part of the work dealing with metaphysics (Metaphysices seu Ontologiae Diagraphe) is identical in the Ogdoas and in the Theatrum, and also discovered that Lorhardus was not the author of this chapter. In fact, what Lorhard did was to create a diagrammatic representation, in the Ramist tradition, of the Metaphysicae Systema methodicum of Clemens Timpler, which ran through nine editions, including some unauthorized imprints (Steinfurt 1604, Lich 1604, Hanau 1606, Frankfurt a.M. 1607, Marburg 1607, Hanau 1608, Frankfurt a.M. 1612, Hanau 1612, Hanau 1616).

[See: Joseph S. Freedman, European Academic Philosophy in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. The life, significance and philosophy of Clemens Timpler (1563/4-1624). Hildesheim: Georg Olms 1988].

Since Lorhard finished working on his Ogdoas Scholastica (the dedicatory letter was dated 24 February 1606), he could presumably only have had the 1604 editions of Timpler's work to consult. Lorhard faithfully repeats most of the theorems with which Timpler had begun each of his chapters, except for a few minor differences, explicable by the fact that Lorhard was adapting Timpler's work to diagrammatic form and that the Ogdoas was a book for studiosis adolescentibus of the Gymnasium in Sankt Gallen where he was rector. The only important difference is that Lorhard introduces a new word, not found in Timpler, "Ontologia", by which he means all metaphysics. In the title page of the Ogdoas and in the title of his Ramistic diagram, Lorhard equates the two words with the phrases "Metaphysices, seu Ontologiae", and "Metaphysicae seu Ontologiae Diagraphe" respectively. (A similar phrase also occurs in the dedicatory letter).

I have also found another copy of the Ogdoas Scholastica (1606), in the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt in Halle, in addition to the four copies indicated on the website Ontology. Theory and History."

April 27, 2011: An update on Lorhard from Marco Lamanna:

Latest Findings on Jakob Lorhard and the Rise of the Term Ontology

"My latest finding at the Universitätsbibliothek Marburg of the Lysis duorum sophismatum pro omnipraesentia carnis Christi in Eius Persona by Jakob Lorhard, gives us the definitive confirmation of the presence of Lorhard in Marburg in 1607.

The work regards a public discussion held by Lorhard at the Faculty of Theology of Marburg’s Philipps-Universität in 1607. It contains two dedications: the first to Hermann Vultejus (1565-1634), professor of law and chancellor at University of Marburg, and the second to Gregor Schönfeld (1559-1628), professor of theology and superintendent in Hessen.

In the work, Lorhard for the most part discusses the theme of the omnipresence of Christ in the world, contrasting every pantheistic degeneration.

Lorhard’s “exoteric” approach is evident. He argues only on the basis of the literal exegesis of the Sacred Scripture, as evident also in his Kurtzer begriff Dess wahren ungefälschten Christenthumbs, completed on his return from Marburg to St. Gallen and published posthumously in 1610.

Probably, the unsuccess of his appointment as professor of theology in Marburg was caused by the distance of Lorhard’s theology from the esoteric and apocalyptic researches that were being affirmed in Marburg and at the court of the prince Moritz of Hessen in Kassel, for example with a theologian like Raphael Egli (1559-1622). Perhaps this is the reason that led his return to St. Gallen from Marburg, just four months later, in semptember 1607.

The publication in Marburg of the Lysis not only confirms the indications contained in the biography of Lorhard by Georg Leonhardt Hartmann, but also confirms above all the hypothesis formulated by Peter Øhrstrøm, Jan Andersen, Henrik Schaerfe (What has happened to Ontology, in F. Dau / M.-L, Mugnier, G. Stumme (eds.), Springer Verlag, Berlin-Heidelberg 2005): Rudoph Göckel most probably met Lorhard in Marburg between may and September of 1607, and from Lorhard thus renewed the neologism ontology.“

The first occurrence of ontology in English

According to the last printed edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (Second edition, 1989) the first occurrence of "ontology" was in An Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721) by Nathaniel Bailey (born ? - died 1742): "An Account of Being in the Abstract."

Isaac Watts (1674-1748) in his Logic, or the Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry after Truth. With a Variety of Rules to Guard against Error, in the Affairs of Religion and Human Life, as well as in the Sciences (1724) wrote: "In order to make due enquiries into all these, and many other particulars which go towards the complete and comprehensive idea of any being, the science of ontology is exceeding necessary. This is what was wont to be called the first part of metaphysics in the peripatetic schools" I. VI. 9.

The first book in English with "ontology" in the title is: Isaac Watts - "Philosophical Essays on Various Subjects, (...); With some Remark s on Mr. Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding. To which is subjoined a brief Scheme of Ontology, or the Science of Being in general with its Affections" (1733).

The on-line Draft Revision of the Oxford English Dictionary (September 2008) give as first occurrence (discovered by Fred R. Shapiro in a message to the Linguist List (December 25, 2005): Gideon Harvey (1636/7-1702): Archelogia philosophica nova; or, New principles of Philosophy. Containing Philosophy in general, Metaphysicks or Ontology, Dynamilogy or a Discourse of Power, Religio Philosophi or Natural Theology, Physicks or Natural philosophy - London, Thomson, 1663, Book II, Chapter One, pp. 17-18: "It is [Metaphysics] called also the First Philosophy, from its nearest approximation to Philosophy, its most proper Denomination is Ontology, or a Discourse of a Being."

The first occurrence of ontologia in a work written in German

The poet Christian Weise (1642 - 1708) in a novel published in German in 1675 with the pseudonym Catharinum Civilem made use of the Latin "ontologia":

"Denn durch die PHILOSOPHIE. wird allhier nicht eine DISPUTATION aus der ONTOLOGIA verstanden sondern die rechte PHILOSOPHIA PRACTICA, welche sich in dem Lichte der Natur und in denen Menschlichen Verrichtungen umbsiehet und dannen hero einen festen Grund der unverfälschten Klugheit gestellet hat." (Chapter VIII, p. 181)

Christian Weise, Die drey Klügsten Leute in der gantzen Welt, Leipzig, J. Fritzsch, 1675 (Critical edition in: Sämtliche Werke, XVIII, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005, p. 112)

The first occurrence of ontologie in Denmark

February, 24th 2004: I received this message from Dr. Jan Andersen (research assistant with Professor Peter Oehrstroem at the Department of Communication. Aalborg University, Denmark) on the origin of "ontology" in Denmark:

"The Danish-Norwegian author Jens Kraft (1720-1765) published a text book in Danish titled 'Ontologie' as a part of his 'Metaphysik' in 1751. When the book was published Kraft was a professor (mathematics and philosophy) at the Soroe University. 'Ontologie' was meant as a text book aimed at the students there. 'Ontologie' was a part of the larger work 'Metaphysik' which also contained 'Cosmologie' (1752), 'Psychologie' (1752) and 'Naturlig Theologie' (1753). Kraft was a dedicated admirer of Christian Wolff and had (before writing the book) attended Wolff´s lectures at Halle University, Germany, but, as opposed to Wolff, Kraft was an adherent of Newtonian theory, and is considered to be the prime spokesman and the introductor of Newton to Denmark and Norway (the two countries being one united kingdom at the time). Kraft is mentioned in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography (Charles Coulston Gillispie ed.) vol. VII, New York 1973, Charles Scribner's Sons, p. 490 in an article written by Kurt Moeller Pedersen. Kraft´s book can be found at the Statsbiblioteket in Aarhus, Denmark."

Jens Kraft, Ontologie', frontispiece of the Book.

Texts with the term ontologia from Lorhard to Clauberg (1606-1664)

1. Lorhard, Jacob. 1606. Ogdoas Scholastica, Continens Diagraphen Typicam Artium: Grammatices (Latinae, Graecae), Logices, Rhetorices, Astronomices, Ethices, Physices, Metaphysices, Seu Ontologiae. St. Gallen.

According to the Bibliographia philosophica vetus, Pars 1. Philosophia generalis, by Wilhelm Risse, the volume is available only in two German Libraries: the Staatsbibliothek Augsburg and the Lüneburg Ratsbibliotek, but I discovered a third copy, not cited by Risse, in the Kantonsbibliothek St. Gallen, Switerland.

From 1998, a fourth copy is available in the "Fondo Young sulla memoria e la mnemotecnica" (Morris N. Young's Fund on memory and mnemotechnics) at the Library of the San Marino University; a fifth copy was discovered by Marco Lamanna, University of Bari, Italy in the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt in Halle.

2. Wegelin, Thomas. 1608. Disputatio Theologica De Christo. Tubingae: Gruppenbach.

Dissertation. (Advisor: Johann Georg Sigwart), see p. 9.

Available at München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.

3. Lorhard, Jacob. 1613. Theatrum Philosophicum, Continens Grammaticen Latinam, Graecam, Et Hebraeam, Logicen, Rhetoricen, Arithmeticen, Geometriam, Musicen, Astronomicen, Ethicen, Physicen, Metaphysicen Seu Ontologiam. Basilea.

Second expanded edition of Lorhard (1606).

4. Rodolphus, Goclenius. 1613. Lexicon Philosophicum Quo Tanquam Clave Philosophiae Fores Aperiuntur. Frankfurt.

s.v. abstractio p. 16.

Reprint: Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1964 (with the Lexicon philosophicum Graecum).

5. Lobetantz, Matthias. 1613. Disputatio Ontologica De Bono Et Malo. Rostock.

Dissertation. (Advisor: Andreas Hojer).

A copy is available at the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek - Signature: 4 Diss. 2968#Beibd.24.

6. Alsted, Johann Heinrich. 1620. Cursus Philosophici Encyclopaedia Libris Xxvii: Complectens Universae Philosophiae Methodum, Serie Praeceptorum, Regularum & Commentariorum Perpetua. Herborn.

Two volumes; see vol. I p. 149.

Vol. II with the title: Septem artes liberales, quae constituunt tertium encyclopediae philosophicae tomum.

Reprint of the 1630 edition: Encyclopaedia. Septem tomis distincta - Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1989.

7. Capsius, Liborius. 1627. Sapientia (Vulgo Metaphysica) Idealis. Pro Acquirenda Philosopho-Theologica Akribeia. Erfurt.

See p. 28.

8. Calov, Abraham. 1636. Metaphysica Divina, Pars Generalis Praecognita Ii. Rostock.

See p. 4.

9. Segers, Johannes Christophorus. 1639. De Ontologia Generali. Erfurt.

Dissertation. (Advisor: Liborius Capsius).

Available at the Universitäts- und Forschungsbibliothek Erfurt / Gotha - Signature: LA. 4º 00261 (21).

10. Flottwel, Johann. 1640. Disputatio Prima Ontologica D.T.O.M.A. Et Consensu Amplissimae Facultatie Philosophicae Exercitii Et Indagandae Veritatis. Regiomonti: Johanni Reusneri.

Dissertation. (Advisor: Johann Hund).

A microfilm is available at the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek, Signature: Film R 2001.281,NWA-1267.

11. Caramuel y Lobkowitz, Juan. 1642. Rationalis Et Realis Philosophia. Louvain.

See p. 65.

12. Clauberg, Johannes. 1647. Elementa Philosophiae Seu Ontosophia. Scientia Prima, De Iis Quae Deo Creaturisque Suo Modo Communiter Attribuuntur, Distincta Partibus Quatuor. Groningen.

13. Micraelius, Johannes. 1653. Lexicon Philosophicum Terminorum Philosophis Usitatorum (First Edition). Jena.

s.v. Metaphysica.

14. Clauberg, Johannes. 1660. Ontosophia Nova, Quae Vulgo Metaphysica, Theologiae, Iurisprudentiae Et Philologiae, Praesertim Germanicae Studiosis Accomodata. Accessit Logica Contracta, Et Quae Ex Ea Demonstratur Orthographia Germanica. Duisburg.

15. Micraelius, Johannes. 1662. Lexicon Philosophicum Terminorum Philosophis Usitatorum (Second Edition). Stettin.

Reprinted with an introduction by Lutz Geldsetzer: Düsseldorf: Stern-Verlag Janssen & Co. 1966.

16. Mildeheupt, Christian Heinrich. 1663. Dissertatio Ontologica De Quaestione an Conceptus Entis Sit Unus. Lipsiae: Wittigau.

Dissertation. (Advisor: Dietrich von Wida).

Dresden Sächsische Landesbibliothe / Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek - Signature: Coll. diss.A.78,30.

17. Harvey, Gideon. 1663. Archelogia Philosophica Nova; or, New Principles of Philosophy. Containing Philosophy in General, Metaphysicks or Ontology, Dynamilogy or a Discourse of Power, Religio Philosophi or Natural Theology, Physicks or Natural Philosophy. London: Thomson.

The first occurrence of "ontology" in English.

18. Clauberg, Johannes. 1664. Metaphysica De Ente, Quae Rectius Ontosophia. Amsterdam.

Selection of studies on the origin of the Latin ontologia

"In the prolegomena to his Elementa philosophiae sive Ontosophiae (1647), Johannes Clauberg remarks: 'Since the science which is about God calls itself Theosophy or Theology, it would seem fitting to call Ontosophy or Ontology that science which does not deal with this and that being, as distinct from the others owing to its special name or properties, but with being in general.' This text may be held, in the present state of historical knowledge, for the birth certificate of ontology as a science conceived after the pattern of theology, yet radically distinct from it, since being qua being is held there as indifferent to all its conceivable determinations. 'There is, Clauberg says, a certain science which envisages being inasmuch as it is being, that is, inasmuch as it is understood to have a certain common nature or degree of being, a degree which is to be found in both corporeal and incorporeal beings, in God and in creatures, in each and every singular being according to its own mode.' Leibniz will later praise Clauberg for such an undertaking, but he will regret that it had not been a more successful one. The very word "ontology" occurs at least once in an undated fragment of Leibniz, (1) and one can expect accidentally to meet it later in various places, (2) but it is not until 1729 that it finally comes into its own with the Ontologia of Christian Wolff."

Notes

(1) Louis Couturat, Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz, (Paris 1903) p. 512

(2) For instance, in J.B. Duhamel Philosophia vetus et nova 2nd ed. 1681, according to P. Gény, Questions d'enseignement de philosophie scholastique (Paris 1913) p. 48

From: Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1952 p. 112-113. French edition: L'être et l'essence. Paris, Vrin,1948 (Second revised edition 1962).

"C'est un fait que l'Ontologia de WOLFF constitue une étape importante de l'histoire de la métaphysique, même s'iln'est pas vrai, comme on le dit trop souvent, qu'elle soit la toute première Ontologie. Avant lui déjà, en effet, CLAUBERG avait fait paraître à Amsterdam en 1656 une Metaphysica de ente quae rectius Ontosophia, aliarum Disciplinarum, ipsiusque quoque Jurisprudentiae et Litterarum, studiosis accomodata, car ainsi qu'il le déclare: sicuti...geosofia vel geologia dicitur quae circa Deum occupata est scientia: ita haec, quae non circa hoc vel illud ens speciali nomine insignitum vel proprietate quadam ab aliis distinctum, sed circa ens in genere versatur, non incommode Ontosophia vel Ontologia dici posse videatur (Opera omnia, Amstelodami, 1691 t. I, p. 281). De même, en 1669, le Père Réginald, dominicain, publia un ouvrage réédité à Paris en 1878 et intitulé: Doctrinae Divi Thomae Aquinatis tria principia, cum suis consequentiis, dont la première partie traite de l'être en général sous le titre: De Ontologia, cependant que Jean-Baptiste Du HAMEL, dans sa: Philosophia vetus et nova ad usum scholae accomodata, in regia Burgundia ohm pertractata, Parisiis, 1678, emploie le mot Ontologia dans le même sens, lorsque, dans le tome III de cet ouvrage, divisant la métaphysique en trois parties, il déclare: In primo quae ad entis ipsius naturam, principia, affectiones et primas velut species pertinent, exsequimur; adeo ut Ontologiam seu entis scientiam hoc tractatu complexamur. Atque haec est prima philosophia aut scientia generalis, ex qua reliquae dimanant (p. 10 et 11 de l'édition de 1687).

Mais ces auteurs ne sont pas les premiers à avoir frayé la voie de l'Ontologie. Le terme même semble avoir fait sa première apparition, tout au moins sous sa forme grecque, dans le Lexicon philosophicum quo tamquam clave philosophiae fores aperiuntur de Rudolph GOCLENIUS (Frankfurt, 1613), où l'on peut lire à l'article: abstractio, p. 16, dans la marge: οντολογία, et philosophia de ente, et dans le corps de l'article: οντολογία, idest philosophia de ente seu de transcendentibus.

Rudolf Göckel, Lexicon philosophicum quo tanquam clave philosophiae fores aperiuntur, informatum opera et studio Rodolphi Goclenii, Frankfurt, 1613: abstractio ('ontologia' is written in Greek).]

C'est encore sous sa forme grecque qu'on le rencontre chez Abraham CALOV qui, dans sa: Metaphysica divina a principiis eruta, in abstractione entis repraesentata ad S. S. Theologiam applicata, monstrans terminorum et conclusionum transcendentium usum genuinum abusum hereticum constans (Rostockii, 1636), déclare: Scientia de ente, Metaphysica appellatur communiter a rerum ordine, οντολογα rectius ab objecto proprio (Scripta philosophica, Lubecae, 1651, p. 145) et qui, tout au long de cet de cet ouvrage, appelle ainsi οντολογα la science de l'être; à tel point que sa Metaphysica divina... peut être considérée, dans l'état actuel de nos connaisances, comme la première ontologie. Quoi qu'il en soit, on peut bien dire qu'avec CALOV, l'Ontologie en tant que discipline est déjà née. Et c'est cette science de l'être en général que les scolastiques du XVII siècle se sont plu à ériger en une sorte d'introduction à la philosophie - d'où le nom de philosophie première qu'ils lui donnèrent encore -- et qu'ils réduisirent peu à peu à n'être qu'un vocabulaire ou un lexique philosophique, destiné à servir d'instrument de base à l'enseignement de la métaphysique, grâce à la définition des termes employés par celle-ci, comme nous l'apprennent: Johann Franz BUDDE dans une longue note de son ouvrage: Isagoge historico-theologica in theologiam universam singulasque ejus partes, Lipsiae, 1727, lib. I, cap. IV, 28, t. I, p. 252-261, et surtout Jacob THOMASIUS dans son: Historia variae fortunae quant Metaphysica jam sub Aristotele, jam sub Scholasticis, jam sub Recentibus experta est, ajoutée en appendice à ses Erotemata metaphysica pro incipientibus, Lipsiae, 1692, p. 19-87.

Ainsi donc, lorsque l'ouvrage de WOLFF parut, l'ontologie était une conquête de la philosophie vieille déjà d'à peu près cent ans. Mais, à défaut d'en avoir été le créateur, il peut bien être considéré comme son réformateur et son rénovateur. Car, indépendamment du fait qu'il a été le premier à lui donner des dimensions matérielles aussi considérables et à en faire un traité bien à part à côté des autres traités constituant l'ensemble de la métaphysique, il s'est élevé contre la prétention d'en faire purement et simplement un lexique philosophique et a tenté de l'ériger en authentique science première qua omnis cognitionis humanae principia continentur, comme le dit son titre. Il lui attribue, en effet, pour rôle d'établir les principes et de définir les concepts nécessaires aux autres disciplines, non seulement philosophiques, mais aussi scientifiques et utiles à la pratique de la vie, en même temps qu'il vise à y édifier une théorie générale de l'être, ainsi que le veut la définition qu'il en donne au 1: Ontologia seu Philosophia prima est scientia entis in genre, seu quatenus ens est. En un mot, pour être l'héritier des scolastiques du XVII siècle, et tout en adoptant leur réduction de la philosophie première à l'Ontologie, alors qu'elle était coextensive à toute la métaphysique chez ARISTOTE, WOLFF n'en a pas moins donné à celle-ci un statut à la fois plus ample et plus ferme. Et c'est ce qui fait que son nom est resté plus intimement lié que celui de ces derniers à son apparition." (p. 116).

From: Jean École, La Philosophia prima sive Ontologia de Christian Wolff: Histoire, doctrine et méthode, Giornale di metafisica, 1961/1 pp. 114-125 (reprinted in: Jean École, Introduction à l'Opus Metaphysicum de Christian Wolff, Paris, Vrin, 1985 pp. 8-19).

"Christian Wolff popularized (in philosophical circles) the word 'ontology' (ontologia, Ontologie). The word appears in the title of his Philosophia prima sive ontologìa methodo scientifica pertractata, qua omnes cognitionis humanae principia continentur, first published in 1730. Ontologia seu philosophia prima is defined as scientia entis in genere, quatenus ens est (op. cit., § 1). Ontology uses a "demonstrative [i.e., rational and deductive] method" (ibid., § 2), and purports to investigate the most general predicates of all entes as such (ibid., § 8). Following Wolff, Alexander Baumgarten (>Metaphysica, 1740) defined ontology (also called ontosophia, metaphysìca, metaphysica universalis, architectoníca, philosophia prima) as "the science of the most general and abstract predicates of anything" (op. cit., § 4), in so far as they belong to the first cognitive principles of the human mind (ibid., § 5). Kant launched an epoch-making attack against rational ontology in the sense of Wolff and Baumgarten; for ontology was to him both a pseudo-science and a temptation. He was convinced that he had succeeded in eliminating it by the "transcendental Analytic." The whole Critique of Pure Reason is, in a way, the work of a man who was obsessed, and deeply distressed, by ontology. On the other hand, the expression 'ontological proof (ontologischer Beweis) used by Kant is not a mere alternative expression to 'Anselmian proof; it is intended to emphasize the very nature of the proof. Since Kant is at the crossroads of modern thought, it is important to know what he had in mind when he decided to overthrow the ambitious projects of rational ontologists. An examination of the origins of the concept of ontology is an indispensable step in the clarification of Kant's thought.

Although the concept of ontology preceded the word 'ontology', it can be assumed that only when such a word (or the alternative word, 'ontosophy') carne into use, could philosophers begin to understand fully all the implications of the concept." (p. 36)

"Unless I have missed the pertinent texts, a new name for a new discipline of the character stated above -- which is at the same time 'a new name for some old ways of thinking' - occurred only in the Seventeenth Century. It was proposed by philosophers who did not belong to the Schools, but who had been directly or indirectly influenced by the Scholastic tradition supplemented by the modern rationalist tradition. A number of historians (Rudolf Eucken, Etienne Gilson, Hans PichIer, Max Wundt, Heinz Heimsoeth) mention Johannes Clauberg as the first philosopher who used the new term we are looking for: the term 'ontology.' This is not the case. The first instance occurs in Rudolf Goclenius (Lexicon philosophicum, quo tanquam clave philosophiae fores aperiuntur, Informatum opera et studio Rodolphi Goclenii. Francoforti, 1613). In his Worterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe, Rudolf Eisler refers to this instance, but fails to indicate its significance. In a way, Eisler was right, because it has no significance.(1) The word 'ontology' occurs in Goclenius's Lexicon on page 16 as follows: "οντολογα, philosophia de ente." This is all. Furthermore, it occurs on the left margin of the article "Abstractio," in which the author discusses the concept of abstractio materiae according to Alexander of Hales. lf this were not enough, Goclenius does not even include an article on Metaphysics or First Philosophy in his Lexicon. There is, indeed, an article on Philosophy (Philosophia) which contains various definitions, among them the following one: Philosophy can be understood per excellentiam as prima philosophia (definition 4). Therefore, if it is true that Goclenius actually used the word 'ontology' he did very little with it. Neither does he mention such a word in his Isagoge (Rod. Goclenii ... Isagoge in peripateticorum et Scholasticorum primam philosophiam quae vulgo dicitur Metaphysica, Francoforti, 1612). Here the expression prima philosophia is introduced as a technical term for the more "common" Metaphysica. Goclenius writes to this effect: '1. Duae sunt communissimae disciplinae liberales: Logica, Metaphysica, quae sapientia dicitur ... 3. Metaphysica seu prima philosophia cognitio communis est eorum, quae sunt altissimis causas & prima principia; ... 9. Prima philosophia scientia de Ente qua ens, hoc est, universaliter sumto' (P.A. 4). He therefore relapsed into a relatively long established tradition in philosophical terminology, but 'to relapse into' is probably too strong an expression when he had scarcely done anything to produce a new terminology. At any rate, his introduction of the word 'ontology' in the Lexicon does not seem to be the result of a careful plan; it looks more like a purely casual and inconsequential remark." (pp. 38-39).

Notes

(1) Jean École, in an article on Wolff's Ontologia (Rivista di metafisica, XVI [1961], 114-125) published after the present one was written, also mention Goclenius.

[École's article is the French version of the author's Latin "Introductio" to his critical edition of Wolff's Philosophia Prima sive Ontologia, Hildesheim: Olms, 1962].

From: José Ferrater Mora, "On the Early History of 'Ontology' ", in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 24, 1963 pp. 36-47.

"Wir gehen vom Titel "Ontologia" aus Dieser ist dem Christian Wolff ganz selbstverständlich. Er benutzt ihn, ohne über seine Herkunft Rechenschaft abzulegen. Dabei ist nicht die historisch verstandene Herkunft entscheidend, sondern die ausgewiesene Zugehörigkeit dieses Titels zum Wesen der in ihm ausgesprochenen Prima Philosophia aus gerade diesem Wesen. Bekanntlich ist der Titel "Prima Philosophia" ein von Aristoteles der Sache und dem Kern der Sache des Denkens verliehener Titel. Dieser Vorgang der Namensgebung ist kein beliebiger! Der Titel "Prima Philosophia", beziehungsweise "prothé filosofia" wird dem Denken beigegeben, als es die ihm zugehörige Gestalt aus seinem eigenen Wesen annimmt. Die ihm später zugetragenen Titel "Metaphysik" und "Ontologie" sind dagegen nur Nebentitel.

Johannes Micraelius (1597 - 1658) schreibt in seinem Lexicon Philosophicum: Metaphysicae objectum est Ens quatenus Ens est. Unde etiam vocatur aliquibus ; (1).Er spricht hier ausdrücklich von "einigen"! Einer davon ist Johannes Clauberg (1622 - 1665), der oft als der erste genannt wird, der den Titel "Ontologia" gebraucht. Dieser verfaßte ein Werk: Elementa philosophiae sive Ontosophia (Groningen 1647). 1660 kam das Buch, oder vielmehr sein Hauptteil, unter einem anderen Titel als: Ontosophia nova, quae vulgo Metaphysica (Duisburg) heraus; es konnte 1664 unter einem nochmals geänderten Titel erscheinen: Metaphysica de ente, quae rectius Ontosophia, Amsterdam. Bereits in der ersten Ausgabe von 1647 ist der Titel "Ontosophia" auch durch den Titel ,,Ontologia" verdeutlicht (2). Die dritte Ausgabe ist später in die Opera philosophica aufgenommen worden (1691). Dort lautet der Passus: Sicuti autem: Ontologia dicitur quae circa Deum occupata est scientia: ita haec, quae non circa hoc vel illud ens speciali nomine insignitum vel proprietate quaedam ab aliis distinctum, sed circa ens in genere versatur, non incommode Ontosophia vel Ontologia dici posse videatur (3).

Wenig später heißt es: Est quaedam scientia, quae contemplatur ens quatenus ens est, hoc est in quantum communem quandam intelligitur habere naturam vel naturae gradum, qui rebus corporeis et incorporeis, Deo et creaturis, omnibusque adeo et in singulis entibus suo modo inest. Ea vulgo Metaphysica, sed aptius Ontologia vel scientia Catholica, eine allgemeine Wissenschaft, et philosophia universalis nominatur. 13). Der Titel "Ontologia" findet sich jedoch noch vor Clauberg. Abraham Calov (1612 - 1686) hat ihn schon 1636 in seiner Metaphysica divina: Scienta de Ente Metaphysica appellatur communiter a rerum ordine, ' οντολογα; rectius ab objecto proprio (4). Und noch vor Calov benutzt ihn Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588 - 1638). Er gibt 1620 seinen Cursus philosophici Encyclopaedia heraus. Dort heißt es: Metaphysica est sapientia quae considerat ens qua ens: alias dicitur prima philosophia, et οντολογα in Lexico Goclenii pag. 16 (5). Alsted verweist hier auf den Schulmetaphysiker Rudolf Göckel (Goclenius, 1547 - 1628), der nach allem, was wir wissen, der erste gewesen ist, der den Titel "Ontologia" geprägt hat (6)." (pp. 265-266)

Notes

(1) Johannes Micraelius, Lexicon Philosophicum, Jena 1653, pag. 654.

(2) Johannes Clauberg, Elementa philosophiae sive Ontosophia, Groningen 1647, pag. 3.

(3) Johannes Clauberg, Opera omnia philosophica, partim antehac separatim, partim nunc primum edita ura Joh. Theod. Sehalbrudhii, Amsterdam 1691, pag. 281 a. a. O, p. 283.

(4) Abraham Calov, Metaphysica divina, Pars generalis, Rostok 1636, Praecognita II, pag. 4. In den Scripta philosophica wird der Pars specialis nachgeliefert (Rostok 1650/51). In beiden In den Scripta philosophica wird der Pars specialis nachgeliefert (Rostok 1650151). In beiden Teilen der Metaphysica divina findet sich der Titel 'ontologia' mehr als ein dutzendmal in Buch- und Kapitelüberschriften. Er ist stets in griechischen Buchstaben geschrieben. Es sieht Buch- und Kapitelüberschriften. Er ist stets in griechischen Buchstaben geschrieben. Es sieht ganz so aus, als ob Clauberg der erste ist, der den Titel Ontologia in lateinischen Buch staben schreibt.

(5) Cursus philosophici Encyclopaedia Libri XXVII, Opera et studio Johannis Henrici Alstedii, Herborn 1620, Liber V, Metaphysica, Pars prima, De Transcendentibus, Caput I Ens, pag. 149.

(6) Das hätte man schon immer im Eisler nachschlagen können: Rudolf Eisler, Wörterbuch der Philosophischen Begriffe, 4. Aufl., Berlin 1927, Artikel "Ontologie". Trotzdem hielt sich hartnäckig die Behauptung, Clauberg sei der Erfinder dieses Titels gewesen

From: Ernst Vollrath, "Die Gliederung der Metaphysik in eine Metaphysica Generalis und eine Metaphysica Specialis", Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung, April-June 1962, XVI, 2.

"La thèse de Goclenius qui sépare radicalement la prima philosophia et la metaphysica (1), nous paraît d'autant plus intéressante que son auteur est très vraisemblablement celui qui a forgé pour la première fois (2) le mot d'ontologie, destiné par la suite à nommer précisément cette philosophia prima comme science universelle, dans sa séparation de toute recherche théologique appréhendée désormais comme 'spéciale'. On peut lire en effet, sous la plume de Goclenius, mais encore sous sa forme grecque, le terme d' ontologia, non pas à vrai dire dans son Isagoge, mais dans le célèbre Lexicon philosophicum quo tanquam clave philosophiae fores aperiuntur, informatum opera et studio Rodolphi Goclenii, publié quelques années plus tard, à Francfort en 1613. (3) Il est très significatif de trouver cette première occurrence du terme à l'article abstractio. Nous avons déjà signalé (cf. chapitre III, p. 458 sq.) que Pérérius introduisait son opposition insolite entre philosophie première métaphysique à partir d'une réflexion critique sur la doctrine classique ('aristotélico-thomiste') de l'abstraction, et que Suárez développait le plus nettement l'orientation ontologique de son projet métaphysique en fonction de sa doctrine de l'abstraction et de la praecisio (Disputationes Metaphysicae, II, 2, 15-16)."

(1) Est-il besoin de souligner qu'une telle opposition est contraire à l'esprit de l'enquête aristotélicienne comme à l'élaboration terminologique des commentateurs les plus anciens?

(2) La prudence est ici plus que jamais de mise. Après avoir rédigé ces pages, nous avons été mis, grâce à l'obligeance de J. S. Freedman, à qui l'on doit un excellent travail (Deutsche Schulphilosophie im Reformationszeitalter 1500-1650, dact., Münster, 1984), sur la piste d'un auteur assez singulier et à la vérité peu connu, un certain Jacobus Lorhardus, recteur au Gymnasium de Saint-Galles, qui publie à Bâle en 1613, comme secunda editio un Theatrum philosophicum qui présente à la manière ramiste une série de tabelles à travers lesquelles se répartissent toutes les disciplines philosophiques. Or le 'diagraphe' qui introduit les divisions de la Métaphysique est précisément intitulé : Metaphysicae seu Ontologiae Diagraphe (p. 157). Et il se termine, après la division des ficta ou des êtres de raison, par ces mots : Finis Ontologiae. L'ouvrage de Lorhardus est très remarquable également dans sa définition la plus générale de la Métaphysique qui fait évidemment référence à Clemens Timpler (cf. supra, p. 265 sq.): " Metaphysicae (quae est epistheme tou noetoue noeton quatenus ab homine naturali rationis lumine sine ullo materiae conceptu est intelligibile) partes duae sunt... ! "(ibid.).

(3) Reprint Hildesheim, 1964. Signalons aussi qu'en revanche le terme ontologia n'apparaît pas, du moins à notre connaissance, dans le Lexicon philosophicum graecum de 1615 (Marbourg). (p. 410 n. 6)

From: Jean-François Courtine, Suárez et le système de la métaphysique, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1990.

Lutherans vs Calvinists on the subject matter of metaphysics

In Calvinism the idea of a synthetic presentation of doctrine was retained, but the encyclopedia of the sciences was enlarged and transformed into a system of systems, governed by a theory of the arts, a “technology”, according to which philosophical conclusions were presented as derived from nature and theological conclusions as derived from revelation. Whereas Lutheran thinkers - regarding their teaching as essentially practical - adopted the analytic order in presenting their theological teaching, Reformed theologians of the early seventeenth century in Germany regarded their science as the theoretical and used rather a synthetic order in the presentation of doctrine. In accordance with the architectonic spirit of Calvinist Scholasticism, Reformed dogmatics began, in accordance with the synthetic order, with the glory of God as the first cause and final goal of all things, and treated his eternal decrees of providence and predestination before taking up his government of the world in time.

In this conception natural theology formed an integral part of the cognition Dei perfecta at which theology aimed. Reformed writers tended, therefore, to distinguish clearly between natural theology and the doctrine of being - a distinction only reluctantly accepted by the Lutherans. Calvinist authors spoke of two sorts of doctrine, a doctrine of God to the extent that he is accessible to human reason and a doctrine of being which had the function of assigning to each of the particular disciplines its proper domain.

The Marburg professor Rudolph Clementius (d. 1628) distinguished two separate disciplines, a universal science called “first philosophy” or “ontology” and a particular science called “natural theology”. Ontology deals with being, its properties and its principles; natural theology studies the various types of immaterial being: God, the intelligences and the human soul. The term “metaphysics” was used to designate both. In the works of authors like Bartholomeus Keckckermann (d. 1609) of Heidelberg and Danzig, Clemens Timpler (d. 1624) of Heidelberg and Steinfurt, and Johann Heinrich Alsted (d. 1638) of Herbom there then appeared a new, unified vision of the encyclopaedia of the scientific disciplines in which ontology had the role of assigning to each of the particular disciplines its proper domain. This new vision was grounded in a conception of doctrine which was specifically a product of the Renaissance, a conception which set it apart from the Aristotelianism of both Catholic Scholasticism and Lutheran Orthodoxy. According to the traditional Aristotelian understanding, taken up by Catholic theologians, scientific knowledge was - as we have seen - made up of conclusions which are both true and certain, because they are the result of a demonstration based on an evident principle or cause. “Science” was the habit or faculty by which the mind is disposed to assent to such conclusions. Only necessary, universal statements can be scientific; there can be no demonstration of contingent, singular facts and no science of changeable things as such.

Calvinist writers departed from this traditional definition of scientific knowledge in a way which was conditioned by Reformed theology. Because they wanted to assure the truth and certainty of theological conclusions, they extended the range of scientific validity beyond the universal conclusions which natural theology can derive from the properties of things to the singular, contingent facts of history which are dependent on God’s providential care and which revealed theology holds, on the testimony of Scripture, to be principles of knowledge.

In the approach of men like Keckermann scientific doctrine was, for this reason, understood as a body of knowledge, systematically ordered so as to make it possible for a learned man to impart the habit of scientific knowledge to others by correct explanation. The notion of a corpus doctrinae differed from the Lutheran idea in a way which betrayed the influence of humanism. Whereas Lutheran writers concerned themselves primarily with theological doctrines and sought simply to show the logical connections between individual theological teachings, the Calvinists saw theological doctrine as part of the sum total of the knowledge which has been gained by man in the course of history and transmitted to the present generation by written and oral tradition. The task of the teacher was to order, to systematize, the doctrine of each of the disciplines and to relate them to one another in a new encyclopaedia of knowledge. In his Praeeognita philosophica (Hanau 1608) Keckermann presented a general theory of science - now we should probably say a theory of art - in which he appealed to the norms of certitude which had been proposed by Melanchthon: revelation, the universal sense experience of men, common innate notions and the orderly presentation of syllogistic conclusions (Opera, Corpus Reformatorum, XIII 149-53, De anima, Causae certitudinis).

Keckermann went beyond Melanchthon, however, by defining the « intellectus ordinis in syllogismo as a facultas artificialis acquisita per certam disciplinam ». By “faculty” he meant an internal source of certitude which is a habit or disposition - in accordance with the Aristotelian conception. By the “discipline” through which the habit is acquired, he meant the external, ordered body of doctrine handed down in the traditional liberal arts which must be mastered by the learned man.

The most significant word in Keckermann’s definition is the word “artificial”. He described the habit acquired by the learned man not as “scientific”, but rather as “artificial”, because it concerns conclusions which belong to all the liberal arts and includes both universal conclusions drawn from the nature of things and singular, contingent conclusions based on tradition, for the reason that knowledge of both types of conclusion can be gained by the systematic application of methodical principles. (pp. 127-129)

Charles H. Lohr, "Technologia: The Calvinist Theory of Science in the Renaissance", in Gregorio Piaia (ed.), La presenza dell'aristotelismo padovano nella filosofia della prima modernità, Roma-Padova: Editrice Antenore 2002, pp. 123-132.

Further developments of the history of ontology

"In 1620 the Calvinist Johannes Heinrich Alsted (1588-1638) takes up the term 'ontology' and identifies ontology with metaphysics or 'first philosophy' as 'general discipline of being'. This ontology has a general part which deals with transcendentia and a special part which deals with praedicamenta (categories). Alsted opposes this general discipline or ontology to inferior disciplines which are concerned with special beings such as physics with natural bodies, mathematics with quantity), as well as to the science of transnatural beings, which he calls pneumatica or pneumatologia, the science of God, angels, and separate souls. Metaphysics or ontology is the most general discipline, which cannot have a double subject (being and God) (Cursus philosophici Encyclopaedia, 1620, Lib. V-VI).

Johann Micraelius (I579-1658) departs from the reduction of metaphysics to the science of being as being and sees it as embracing also the special sciences of pneumatology (theology, angelography, psychology). These he opposes to ontology as the general part (see the articles 'Metaphysica' and 'Philosophia' in his Lexicon philosophicum of 1653). Micraelius thereby seems to coin the distinction between metaphysica generalis and metataphysica specialis, a distinction which has been current ever since. Thee notion of 'ontology' was also affected by Cartesianism. Johannes Clauberg distinguishes three kinds of entia: being as thinkable (ens cogitabile), being as something (aliquid), and being as thing or substantial being (res sive ens substantiale). Ontology or 'ontosophy' deals with being in the third sense and it presupposes the science of thinkable things, in other words metaphysics or 'first philosophy', as this is elaborated in Renée Descartes's Meditationes (Metaphysica de Ente, quae rectius Ontosophia, 1664, 1, 1-5).

Traces of this same distinction, between ontology and a science or method of thought, appear also in the 18th century, for example in the work of Christian Wolff and in Kant. According to Wolff, ontology deals with being in general, but it can also be termed 'first philosophy' in so far as it concerns first principles and notions 'which are used in reasoning' . The method of ontology conforms to that of mathematics (Philosophia prima sive Ontologia, 1730, 'Prolegomena')."Kant identifies ontology (the system of all those concepts and principles of reason which relate to objects in general) with the first part of the system of his metaphysics of nature. Ontology in this sense presupposes the method or propaedeutic of the critique of pure reason, the knowledge of the limits of human knowledge. Kant's reformed ontology is concerned only with objects which are accessible to human knowledge (appearing objects, ontology of 'immanent thought') and it is based on the principles of this knowledge developed by Kant in his 'analytic of the pure understanding' (CPR, Letter to Beck. 211 January 1792). (On the relations of methodology, metaphysics, and ontology, see also Johann Friedrich Herbart. for example Kurze Enzvklopädie der Philosophie, 1831, 11, 190, and Lotze).

Also in the 18th century. the German tradition tends sometimes to locate the object of ontology in the essence of things, rather than in the things themselves. In Wolff's work, this transformation becomes manifest in the fact that the first thing, conceived in being is not existence, but essence (Philosophia prima, 144). In Christian August Crusius, ontology becomes explicitly a science of the 'general essence of things', and he sees this essence as something to be analysed entirely a priori (Entwurf der notwendigen Vernunftwahrheiten, 1745, 1, 5: see also Georg Bernhard Bilfinger. (1693-1750), Johann Heinrich Lambert, and Hegel).

As for the relation between metaphysics and ontology, Wolff (Philosophia rationalis, 'Discursus praeliminaris', 79, 99), Crusius (Entwurf, 1, 5), and Kant (CPR, Reflection 4851) remain faithful to the distinction between general metaphysics (ontology) and special metaphysics (psychology or pneumatology, cosmology, theology).

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the evolution of the notion of 'ontology' can again be analysed in terms of the distinction between the object of ontology and the relation of ontology to other disciplines. The relation between ontology, 'epistemological' sciences and metaphysics is discussed by authors such as Rudolf Hermann Lotze, Nicolai Hartmann, and Günther Jacoby (1881-1969)."

From: Léo Freuler, "ONTOLOGY. I: History of Ontology", in: Hans Burkhardt & Barry Smith (eds.), Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, Philosophia Verlag GMBH, Munchen 1991, pp. 637-640.

"The study of being in so far as this is shared in common by all entities, both material and immaterial. It deals with the most general properties of beings in all their different varieties.

The books of Aristotle's Physics deal with material entities. His Metaphysics (literally 'what comes after the Physics'), on the other hand, deals with what is beyond or behind the physical world - with immaterial entities - and thus contains theology as its most prominent part. At the same time, however, Aristotle conceives this 'metaphysics' as having as its subject matter all beings, or rather being as such. Metaphysics is accordingly identified also as 'first philosophy', since it deals with the most basic principles upon which all other sciences rest.

From the very beginning, then, an alliance was established between theology and the science of being qua being, and this alliance was sustained successfully throughout the Middle Ages. By the seventeenth century, however, the two disciplines were beginning to fall apart, and there was effected a distinction between metaphysica generalis on the one hand - the science of the most general concepts or categories of being - and metaphysica specialis on the other - embracing not only theology but also other special sciences of being, including psychology (the science of finite mind) and cosmology.

'Ontology', now, is just another name for metaphysica generalis as thus conceived. The tern was introduced into philosophy by the German Protestant Scholastic Rudolphus Goclenius (Rudolf Göckel) in his Lexicon philosophicum (1613) and was given currency above all through the influence of Christian Wolff (1679-1754).

Where metaphysics had traditionally confined itself to the treatment of existent beings, Leibniz, Wolff and others dealt also in their metaphysical writings with the being of what is merely possible. It fell to Meinong in his ' Uber Gegenstandstheorie' (1904) to conceive the project of an absolutely general 'theory of objects', which would embrace within its subject matter not merely actual and possible objects, but also impossible objects, obtaining and non-obtaining states of affairs and other higher-order objects, merely hypothetical objects, and also objects 'beyond being and non-being' which are as it were awaiting realization.

In part under the influence of Meinong, in part also under the inspiration of contemporary work in logic and mathematics, Husserl put forward in his Logical Investigations (1913-21) the idea of a 'pure theory of objects' or 'formal ontology', a discipline which would deal with such formal-ontological categories as: object, state of affairs, property, genus, species, unity, plurality, number, relation, connection, series, part, whole, dependence, magnitude, open and closed set, boundary, manifold, and so on.

Formal ontology would deal also with the different formal structures manifested by entire regions of being. To each such formal structure there would then correspond in principle a number of alternative material realizations, each having its own specific material or regional ontology. The most important such material ontology relates to the natural world of spatio-temporally extended things, and thus includes ontological theories of space, time, movement, causality, material body, and so on.

Next in order of development is the material ontology of organic entities, followed by the material ontology of minds (of thinking bodies and of their mental acts and states), perhaps also by the material ontology of cultural and institutional formations." (pp. 373-374)

From: Barry Smith, Ontology, in: Jaegwon Kim & Ernest Sosa (eds.), A Companion to Metaphysics, Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1995.

"Tinology": an alternative to Ontology?

"In our contribution to the Festschrift in honour of Ruedi Imbach the focus will be on the term « tino-logia ». The notion is not mentioned in the most complete philosophical dictionary of our time, the Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophie, which appeared in 13 volumes from 1971-2007. The vocable was suggested by French scholars two decades ago in their analysis of the genealogy of Western metaphysics and has since then found acceptance. « Tinology » is meant to characterize an alternative for the traditional ontological model of metaphysics. Influential was an observation made by Jean-Francois Courtine at the end of his monumental study on the metaphysics of Francis Suárez : « En rigueur de termes, l'ontologie classique-moderne devrait donc plutot être caracterisée comme une 'tinologie' »(1). The emergence of this neologism and its historical place is the first thing that calls for attention.

The emergence of the notion

The notion « tinology » originated in the study of ancient philosophy, was next applied to modern philosophy and finally also assigned to medieval philosophy.

1. In the continuation of the conclusion just cited, Courtine refers to Pierre Aubenque for the phrase « tinology », but does not specify this reference (2). It turns out that Aubenque puts forward the expression and explains its philosophical significance in an essay on Plato's Sophist (3). The analysis of the text is reason for a summary of the basic features of Stoic ontology: (i) only bodies « are » and can be called « beings » ; (ii) there are incorporeal realities, which are not « beings », namely place, time, void and the lekton (« sayable ») ; (iii) bodies and incorporeals, which constitute the Stoic world, are joint members of a single supreme genus, which is called « something » (ti). It is the title for the most general determination, of which « being » is only a specification (4).

Aubenque's objective is to show the critical potential of the Stoic doctrine. In the history of ontology, the concept of « being » has again and again been found to be too determined and too limited, for instance, as « idea » or « substance », in proportion to the universal extension it claims. The Stoic « tino-logy » offer the possibility of « un dépassement de l'ontologie surdéterminée du substantialisme au profit d'une doctrine plus englobante du « quelque chose », c'est-e-dire, de la détermination en général » (3) Although the term « tinology » thus refers to a doctrinal development in ancient philosophy, its introduction has a general aim. It signifies an alternative model of metaphysics, insofar as it is based on a more encompassing notion than « being ».

2. In his study on Suárez, Courtine exploits the critical potential of the term. He applies the notion « tinology » to modern philosophy. He recognizes that the systematics underlying the Disputationes Metaphysicae is the Scholastic tradition of transcendental thought, but also highlights, the « modernity » of Suárez's metaphysics by presenting his thought as a « turn » (« le tournant Suárezien ») in the history of this discipline. The Disputationes Metaphysicae took a decisive step towards the early modern understanding of metaphysics, which devised an alternative for the Aristotelian ontological model.

One of its features is that knowability becomes the ultimate criterion of entity. At the end of this development metaphysics is no longer conceived as a science of (real) being, but as an « onto-logic », as a science of what is thinkable, a theory of « something (ti) in general », which can therefore be characterized as a « tinology » (6). In Courtine's reading, the most significant sign of this transformation is Suárez's identification of ens and res. The central notion of his ontology, becomes a new concept of « reality » (realitas), which does not refer to what actually « is », but to the more encompassing notion of res, less in the sense of « thing » than of « something » (aliquid) -- in an exemplary way expressed as « quelque chose » in French and « etwas » in German (7).

3. Courtine sees a prefiguration and preparation of the modern turn to a « tino-logical »understanding of metaphysics in medieval philosophy. He ascribes a partcular importance to Henry of Ghent's account of res, according to which « thing » is the most universal concept and « the first object of metaphysical thought » (8). His conclusion inspired Olivier Boulnois, who explicitly labels one of the forms of metaphysics in the Middle Ages as « tinology ». Duns Scotus's First Philosophy is a tinology rather than an ontology, since it is the science of res or aliquid, that is, of all that is not nothing (non-nihil). This notion is more encompassing than « being », because it includes real being as well as what is merely thinkable (9). In the next pages, we make some observations on the search for an alternative, tinological model of metaphysics in medieval philosophy." (pp. 729-730)

Notes

(1) J.F. Courtine, Suárez et le système de la métaphysique, Presses universitaires de France, Paris 1990, p. 536.

(2) Ibid. : « selon une heureuse suggestion de P. Aubenque ».

(3) P. Aubenque, « Une occasion manquée : la genèse avortée de la distinction entre l' 'étant' et le 'quelque chose' », in Id. (ed.), Etudes sur le Sophiste de Platon, Bibliopolis, Napoli 1991, p. 367-385.

(4) Ibid., p. 379-380. Cf. D. Sedley, « Hellenistic Physics and Metaphysics », in K. Algra et al. (eds.), The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2005, p. 355-411, in particular p. 382-411.

(5) Aubenque, « Une occasion manquée », p. 384-385.

(6) Courtine, Suárez et le système de la métaphysique, p. 535-536.

(7) Ibid., p. 537 ; p. 263-264.

(8) Cf. J.F. Courtine, « Res », in Historisches Wijrterbuch der Philosophie, VIII, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1992, col. 892-901 (on Henry : col. 896-898).

(9) O. Boulnois, Etre et répresentation. Une génealogie de la métaphysique moderne à l'époque de Duns Scot (XIIIe-XIVe siècle), Presses universitaires de France, Paris 1999, p. 512-514. Cfr Id., Heidegger, l'ontothéologie et les structures médiévales de la métaphysique », Quaestio 1 (2001), p. 379-406, in particular 402ff.

From: Jan A. Aertsen, "Tino-logia: An alternative for Ontology?" In Atucha Iñigo et al. (eds.), Mots médiévaux offerts à Ruedi Imbach, Turnhout: Brepols 2011, pp. 729-737.

See also: Jan A. Aertsen, 'Res' as Transcendental. Its Introduction and Significance, in: Graziella Federici Vescovini (ed.), Le problème des Transcendantaux du XIVe au XVIIe siècle, Paris: Vrin, 2002, pp. 139-155, in particular the final section: Medieval Metaphysics: (Supertranscendental) Tinology or (Transcendental) Ontology? pp. 153-155.

(to be continued...)

Suggested readings

An updated status quaestionis of the current research can be found in: Michaël Devaux / Marco Lamanna: The Rise and Early History of the Term Ontology (1606 - 1730) - in: Quaestio. Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics vol. 9, 2009, pp. 173-208. Turnhout: Brepols. (The volume, edited by Costantino Esposito with the cooperation of Marco Lamanna, contains the Acts of International Conference Origin and Development of Modern Ontology, held at Università di Bari (Italy) 15-17 May 2008).

Peter Øhrstrøm, Jan Andersen, Henrik Schärfe, "What has Happened to Ontology" in: Conceptual Structures: Common semantics for sharing knowledge. Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS 2005, Kassel, Germany, July 17-22, 2005, Berlin: Springer 2005, pp. 425-438

"Abstract: Ontology as the study of being as such dates back to ancient Greek philosophy, but the term itself was coined in the early 17th century.

The idea termed in this manner was further studied within academic circles of the Protestant Enlightenment. In this tradition it was generally believed that ontology is supposed to make true statements about the conceptual structure of reality. A few decades ago computer science imported and since then further elaborated the idea of ‘ontology’ from philosophy. Here, however, the understanding of ontology as a collection of true statements has often been played down. In the present paper we intend to discuss some significant aspects of the notion of ‘ontology’ in philosophy and computer science. Mainly we focus on the questions: To what extent are computer scientists and philosophers -- who all claim to be working with ontology problems -- in fact dealing with the same problems? To what extent may the two groups of researchers benefit from each other? It is argued that the well-known philosophical idea of ontological commitment should be generally accepted in computer science ontology."

Peter Øhrstrøm, Sara L. Uckelman Henrik Schärfe, "Historical and Conceptual Foundations of Diagrammatical Ontology", in: Simon Polovina, Richard Hill, Uta Priss (eds.), Conceptual Structures: Knowledge Architectures for Smart Applications. 15th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS (2007), Sheffield, UK, July 22-27, 2007, Dordrecht: Springer, 2007 pp. 374-386.

"Abstract: During the Renaissance there was a growing interest for the use of diagrams within conceptual studies. This paper investigates the historical and philosophical foundation of this renewed use of diagrams in ontology as well as the modern relevance of this foundation. We discuss the historical and philosophical background for Jacob Lorhard’s invention of the word ‘ontology’ as well as the scientific status of ontology in the 16th and 17th century. We also consider the use of Ramean style diagrams and diagrammatic ontology in general. A modern implementation of Lorhard’s ontology is discussed and this classical ontology is compared to some modern ontologies."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected bibliography on the History of Continental Ontology from Suárez to Kant

Bibliography

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Sommaire: Jean-Christophe Bardout et Vincent Jullien: Avant-propos 7; Jacob Schmutz: Qui a inventé les mondes possibles? 9; Jean-Christophe Bardout: Remarques sur l'impossibilité cartésienne des mondes possibles 47; Vincent Jullien: Le Monde, concept incertain du XVIle siècle. L'exemple de l'Aristarque contre le Monde cartésien 71; Gilles Olivo: "Le mystérieux critère de la distinction des vérités nécessaires et des vérités contingentes" ou l'embarras d'une solution: Leibniz et la question du meilleur des mondes possibles 93; Roland Lehoucq: La foire aux univers 131; Stéphane Chauvier: Les possibles sans les mondes 147-165.

2. "Origins and Developments of Ontology (16th-21th Century) / Origini e sviluppi dell'ontologia (secoli XVI-XXI) / Naissance et développements de l'ontologie (XVIème-XXIème siècles) / Entstehung und Entwicklungen der Ontologie (XVI-XXI Jahrundert) / Origins and Developments of Ontology (16th-21st Century)." 2009. Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of the Metaphysics no. 9.

The volume, edited by Costantino Esposito with the cooperation of Marco Lamanna, contains the Acts of the International Congress Origin and Development of Modern Ontology, held at Università di Bari (Italy) 15-17 May 2008.

Indice: Costantino Esposito: Introduzione. Dalla storia della metafisica alla storia dell'ontologia VII-XXXI; I. Alle origini dell'ontologia moderna: l'orizzonte tardo-scolastico e rinascimentale. Joseph S. Freedman, The Godfather of Ontology? Clemens Timpler, "All that is Intelligible", Academic Disciplines during the Late 16th and Early 17th Centuries, and Some Possible Ramifications for the Use of Ontology in our Time 3; Mario S. de Carvalho: Tra Fonseca e Suarez: una metafisica incompiuta a Coimbra 41; Jacob Schmutz: Les innovations conceptuelles de la métaphysique espagnole post-suarézienne: les status rerum selon Antonio Pérez et Sebastiån Izquierdo 61; Paolo Ponzio: Notitia sui est esse suum. Nota sull'ente e sull'io nel pensiero metafisico di Tommaso Camapanella 101; II. L'età cartesiana e le metafisiche del razionalismo. Giulia Belgioioso: L'invenzione dell'ontologia cartesiana nelle interpretazioni del Novecento 113; Massimiliano Savini: Johannes Clauberg e l'esito cartesiano dell'ontologia 153; Michaël Devaux / Marco Lamanna: The Rise and Early History of the Term Ontology (1606-1730) 173; Filippo Mignini: Dell'ontologia in Spinoza 209; Stefano Di Bella: Crisi e rinascite della sostanza. L'eredità leibniziana nell'ontologia analitica da Russell a Kripke (e oltre) 225; Luigi Cataldi Madonna: L'ontologia sperimentale di Christian Wolff 253; Alexei N. Krouglov: Die Ontologie von Tetens und seiner Zeit 269; Riccardo Pozzo: L'ontologia nei manuali di metafisica della Aufklärung 285; Norbert Hinske: Ontologie oder Analytik des Verstandes? Kants langer Abschied von der Ontologie 303; Klaus Düsing: Grundformen der Ontologie bei Kant und bei Hegel 311; Stefano Poggi, Da Wolff a Herbart: l'ontologia di un soggetto inesistente 325; Giusi Strummiello: Beyond the Possible. The Overturning of Early Modern Ontology in Schelling 335; IV. Prospettive novecentesche. Jean-François Courtine: Husserl et la réhabilitation de l'ontologie comme ontologie formelle 353; Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann: Metaphysik und Ontologie in Heideggers fundamentalontologischem und ereignisgeschichtlichem Denken 379; Maurizio Ferraris: Documentalità e ontologia sociale 389; Varia. Note Cronache Recensioni 409; A Note from the Editors 453; Gli Autori 455; Indice dei nomi 459-469.

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6. Boulnois, Olivier. 2013. Métaphysiques rebelles. Genèse et structures d'une science au Moyen Âge. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

Chapitre 10. Naissance de l'ontologie (XVIe - XVIIe sècles), pp. 381-410.

7. Caruso, Ester. 1979. Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza e la rinascita del nominalismo nella scolastica del Seicento. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

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10. Courtine, Jean-François. 1985. "Ontologie ou métaphysique? Pour l'histoire du mot "Ontologia"." Giornale di Metafisica no. 7:3-24.

11. ———. 1990. Suárez et le système de la métaphysique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

12. ———. 2005. Inventio analogiae. Métaphysique et ontothéologie. Paris: Vrin.

13. Devaux, Michaël. 2003. "Advancement & emendatio: les projets de Bacon et de Leibniz." Studia Leibnitiana no. 35:29-52.

"In 1694, Leibniz defines his metaphysical project in the Réflexions sur l'avancement de la métaphysique réelle, et particulièrement sur la nature de la substance expliquée par la force, a French translation of the De primae philosophiae emendatione et de notione substantiae. In the following pages, the history of the concept of advancement from Bacon and Glanvill to Leibniz is investigated. The notion moves from dignity to progress. The reasons why the translation of emendatio by advancement is not sufficient lead the reader to look, with accuracy, at the syntagma 'real metaphysics', used by Leibniz from 1691 on. The emendatio involves both ideas of progress and correction. The latter is echoed in the 'real' metaphysics. Thus, the first elements of the history of that real metaphysics, a formula that occurs until 1716, are presented here. As the translation of emendatio by 'advancement' and 'real' is disjunctive, I suggest a one-word translation with the French rétablissement."

14. ———. 2004. L'avancement de la métaphysique réelle selon G. W. Leibniz. Nomenclature et réalité de la métaphysique leibnizienne après l'iter italicum.

Thèse inédite, Université de Paris IV - Sorbonne.

15. Di Bella, Stefano. 2000. "Completeness and essentialism: two Seventeenth-century debates." Topoi.An International Review of Philosophy no. 19:123-136.

16. ———. 2005. The science of the individual: Leibniz's ontology of individual substance. Dordrecht: Springer.

17. ———. 2008. "L'astratto e il concreto. Hobbes, Leibniz e la riforma dell'ontologia." Rivista di Storia della Filosofia no. 53:313-350.

18. Di Vona, Piero. 1968. Studi sulla scolastica della Controriforma. L'esistenza e la sua distinzione metafisica dell'essenza. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

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Le tome II n'a pas été publié.

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"Medieval transcendentals are on the side of things while Kantian transcendentality is on the side of the knower. Is there a link between the two in the Seventeenth-Century scholastic understanding of 'supertranscendentals'? In the century before Kant, scholastic supertranscendental being was primarily identified with extrinsic intelligibility and regarded as a contribution of the knower. It was said to be the same as 'the object as such' (objectum ut tale). This seems very close to 'der Gegenstand uberhaupt' which Kant has called a 'missing concept' above the dichotomy of the possible and the impossible."

22. École, Jean. 1996. "Contribution à l'histoire des propriétés transcendentales de l'être." Filosofia Oggi no. 19:367-394.

Repris dans: Autour de la philosophie Wolffienne pp. 131-158.

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24. Eschweiler, Karl. 1928. "Die Philosophie der spanischen Spätscholastik auf den deutschen Universitäten des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts." In Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kulturgeschichte Spaniens. Vol. I, 1, edited by Finke, Heinrich, 251-325. Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung.

25. Federici Vescovini, Graziella, and Rignani, Orsola, eds. 2008. Oggetto e spazio. Fenomenologia dell'oggetto, forma e cosa dai secoli XIII-XIV ai post-cartesiani. Firenze: SISMEL - Edizioni del Galluzzo.

26. Ferrater Mora, José. 1963. "On the Early History of 'Ontology'." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 24:36-47.

27. Forlivesi, Marco. 2006. "Impure Ontology. The Nature of Metaphysics and Its Object in Francisco Suarez's Texts." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 5:559-686.

28. Freedman, Joseph S. 1984. Deutsche Schulphilosophie im Reformationszeitalter (1500-1650): ein Handbuch für den Hochschulunterricht. Münster: MAKS.

Zweite revidierte edition 1985.

29. ———. 1999. Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500-1700. Teaching and Texts at Schools and Universities. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Variorum Collected Studies Series.

Reprint of eight previously published studies with the addition of a new introduction (pp. 1-40).

30. Garcia Quadrado, José. 1999. "La renovación de la metafísica en el siglo de Oro: Suárez y Báñez (En el cuarto centenario de las Disputaciones metafísicas de Francisco Suárez)." Anuario Filosofico no. 13:59-78.

31. Giacon, Carlo. 1944. La seconda scolastica. Milano: Bocca.

Vol. I: I grandi commentatori di San Tommaso: il Gaetano, il Ferrarese, il Vitoria (1944); Vol. II: Precedenze teoretiche ai problemi giuridici. Toledo, Pereira, Fonseca, Molina, Suarez (1946); Vol. III: I problemi giuridico-politici: Suarez, Bellarmino, Mariana (1950).

32. Gilson, Étienne. 1948. L'être et l'essence. Paris: Vrin.

Deuxième édition revue et augmentée 1962.

33. ———. 1952. Being and some philosophers. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.

34. Gurr, John Edwin. 1959. The Principle of Sufficient Reason in some Scholastic Systems. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

35. Honnefelder, Ludger. 1990. Scientia transcendens. Die formale Bestimmung der Seiendheit und Realität in der Metaphysik der Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (Duns Scotus, Suárez, Wolff, Kant, Peirce). Hamburg: Felix Meiner.

36. ———. 2002. La métaphysique comme science transcendentale. Paris: Press Universitaires de France.

37. ———. 2003. "Metaphysics as a discipline: from the "Transcendental philosophy of the ancients" to Kant's notion of transcendental philosophy." In The medieval heritage in early modern metaphysics and modal theory, 1400-1700, edited by Friedman, Russell L. and Nielsen, Lauge O., 53-74. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Contents: 1. The point of departure of Kant's concept of metaphysics as "transcendental philosophy": metaphysics as scientia transcendens in the doctrine of John Duns Scotus; 2. The mediation of the Scotistic concept of metaphysics as scientia transcendens by Francisco Suárez' Disputationes metaphysicae; Kant's concept of "transcendental philosophy" ; 4. Kant's transformation of fundamental concept of the Scotistic scientia transcendens.

"In the following, we will investigate metaphysics' status as a scientific discipline, through an examination of the medieval sources of the approach that most profoundly transformed modem metaphysics, i.e. Kantian transcendental philosophy. Starting with Kant's direct sources we will trace the discussion back to the ideas of John Duns Scotus (§ 1) and of Francisco Suárez (§ 2), in order to demonstrate with regard to its most important features just how Kant received (§ 3) and transformed (§ 4) these ideas."

38. Hunter, Ian. 2001. Rival Enlightenments. Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

39. Kessler, Eckhard, and Maclean, Ian, eds. 2002. Res et Verba in der Renaissance. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

40. Knebel, Sven. 1998. "The early modern rollback of merely extrinsic denomination." In Meeting of the minds. The relations between medieval and classical modern European philosophy, edited by Brown, Stephen F., 317-331. Turnhout: Brepols.

41. Lamacchia, Ada, ed. 1995. La filosofia nel Siglo de Oro. Studi sul Tardo Rinascimento spagnolo. Bari: Levante.

42. Lamanna, Marco. 2006. "Sulla prima occorrenza del termine "Ontologia". Una nota bibliografica." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of the Metaphysics no. 6:557-570.

43. ———. 2012. "La "nascita" dell'ontologia nella Schulmetaphysik riformata e protestante dei secoli XVI e XVII " In Prospettive filosofiche. Ontologia, edited by Tatasciore, Carlo, Graziani, Perluigi and Grimaldi, Giorgio, 137-151. Acireale - Roma: Bonanno Editore.

44. ———. 2013. La nascita dell'Ontologia nella metafisica di Rudolph Göckel (1547-1628). Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

"Nel dibattito seguito al cosiddetto Ontological Turn della filosofia analitica contemporanea un posto di assoluto rilievo ha avuto, e continua ad avere, l’ipotesi di distinguere l’ambito dell’ontologia da quello della metafisica. Si tratta solo dell’ultima insorgenza di un dibattito epistemologico che ha conosciuto più riprese nel corso dei secoli, in contesti anche molto differenti tra loro. A livello strettamente terminologico, la prima distinzione dell’ontologia dalla metafisica si registra all’inizio del XVII secolo, all’interno della Schulmetaphysik riformata, in particolare calvinista. È in quell’ambito che un autore come Rudolph Gōckel (lat. Goclenius) potè intestarsi una simile operazione a seguito delle istanze scaturite dall’“importazione” dei modelli metafisici dell’aristotelismo gesuita (in particolare di Benet Perera, più che di Francisco Suárez) nella Germania protestante. Erano trascorsi quasi ottant’anni dall’interdetto pronunciato da Lutero contro la metafisica e le sue pretese epistemologiche. Il “ritomo” alla metafisica tra i calvinisti coincise pertanto con la nascita dell’ontologia come scienza propriamente detta e con la distinzione di quest’ultima dalla metafisica, intesa perlopiù come teologia: nel corso delle dispute tra riformati e protestanti si affinerà un modello che dominerà il dibattito scolastico in ambito continentale sino agli anni di Kant, determinando profonde conseguenze nel modo di pensare la realtà."

45. ———. 2014. "Ontology Between Goclenius and Suárez." In Suárez’s Metaphysics in Its Historical and Systematic Context, edited by Novák, Lukáš, 135-152. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Abstract: "From latest findings the “birth of ontology” has emerged as a debate in which three Reformed authors originally participated: Rudolph Goclenius, Clemens Timpler and Jakob Lorhard. Under this new label (“ontologia”), the Calvinist Goclenius aims to make the model of science of being first proposed by the Jesuit Benet Perera standard within Reformed scholastic philosophy. This paper focuses on the dispute between Goclenius and Timpler concerning the status of metaphysics and its subject-matter (ens). According to Timpler the subject of the universal part of metaphysics is not being qua being but the purely intelligible (intelligibile), a concept even more general than that of being. In this solution Timpler drew upon the Jesuit Pedro da Fonseca, who seemed to approve of the hypothesis that the concept of ens might be subordinated to aliquid, in a single passage of his Commentarii in libros metaphysicorum Aristotelis.

Unlike Timpler, Goclenius adopts the more traditional thesis according to which each noetic definition, however abstract and universal, has to be conceived “sub specie entis”. Still, Goclenius’ point of view is only seemingly “traditional”, just like the doctrine of being on which he builds his metaphysics – or rather his “ontology” –, which is based on a new elaboration of the concept of being and that of other transcendentals. In particular, Goclenius removes the concepts of res and aliquid from the list of transcendentals, and he puts them into extensional identity with the concept of ens. This philosophical choice of Goclenius is not new, but draws upon the doctrine of “synonymia entis”, proposed also by Suárez in the Disputationes metaphysicae (DM 3.2.5)."

46. Lamanna, Marco, and Esposito, Costantino. 2011. "Dalla metafisica all’ontologia. Storia di una trasformazione editoriale." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of the Metaphysics no. 11:213-246.

"The bibliographical history offers an interesting point of view for a better understanding of the rise and development of ontology, as an autonomous discipline, in early modern thought. After Luther’s interdict, the metaphysics was neglected in many protestant academies and excluded from the disciplinary classifications (§§ 1-2). The return of metaphysics, at the end of the 16th century, coincided, in many cases, with the affirmation of the new scholastic paradigm of ontology (§ 3). An illustrious precedent of this paradigm was constituted by the Jesuit Francisco Suárez and his Disputationes metaphysicae (§ 5). The Jesuit models - not only that by Suárez, but also those by Benet Perera and Pedro da Fonseca - represented the standard on which Calvinists and Lutherans built their own metaphysics in an ontological way. This paper provides a conspicuous number of case studies in which the passage from metaphysics to ontology becomes definitively clear: this debate takes place throughout the first handbooks, treatises, magisterial and doctoral disputations (§ 6) proposed by the Calvinist and Lutheran authors."

47. Leinsle, Ulrich Gottfried. 1985. Das Ding und die Methode. Methodische Konstitution und Gegenstand der frühen protestantischen Metaphysik. Augsburg: MaroVerlag.

I. Teil: Darstellung; II: Teil: Anmerkungen und Register.

48. ———. 1988. "Methodologie und Metaphysik bei den deutschen Lutheranern um 1600." In Aristotelismus und Renaissance. In memoriam Charles B. Schmitt, edited by Kessler, Eckhard, Lohr, Charles H. and Sparn, Walter, 149-162. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.

49. Lewalter, Ernst. 1935. Spanisch-Jesuitische und Deutsch-Lutherische Metaphysik des 17. Jahrhunderts. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der iberisch-deutschen Kulturbeziehungen und zur Vorgeschichte des deutschen Idealismus. Hamburg: Ibero-Amerikanisches.

Nachdruck Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1967.

Traduzione italiana: "Metafisica ispano-gesuitica e tedesco-luterana del XVII secolo. Un contributo alla storia dei rapporti culturali ibero-tedeschi e alla preistoria dell'idealismo tedesco", Cheiron: materiali e strumenti di aggiornamento storiografico, 14, 1997, pp. 263-338.

50. Llamzon, Benjamin. 1964. "The specification of 'Esse': a study in Bañez." Modern Schoolman no. 41:123-144.

51. Lohr, Charles H. 1976. "Jesuit Aristotelianism and Sixteenth-century metaphysics." In Paradosis. Studies in the Memory of Edwin A. Quain, S.J., 203-220. New York: Fordham University Press.

52. ———. 1988. "Metaphysics." In The Cambridge history of Renaissance philosophy, edited by Schmitt, Charles B., Skinner, Quentin and Kessler, Eckhard, 537-638. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

53. ———. 1999. "Metaphysics and natural philosophy as sciences: the Catholic and the Protestant views in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries." In Philosophy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries : conversations with Aristotle, edited by Blackwell, Constance, 280-295. Aldershot: Ashgate.

54. Mesnard, Pierre. 1948. "Comment Leibniz se trouva placé dans le sillage de Suaréz." Archives de Philosophie:7-32.

55. Meyer, Michel. 1999. Pour une histoire de l'ontologie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Première edition avec le titre: Pour une critique de l'ontologie, Bruxelles: Éditions de l'Université de Bruxelles, 1991.

56. Mora, José Ferrater. 1963. "On the early history of 'Ontology'." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 24:36-47.

57. Narbonne, Jean-Marc. 1992. "Note critique: Metaphysique et possibilité: A propos de "Suarez et le systeme de la metaphysique" de Jean-Francois Courtine." Laval Théologique et Philosophique no. 48:109-123.

58. Orrego Sanchez, Santiago. 2004. La actualidad del ser en la 'primera escuela' de Salamanca, con lecciones inéditas de Vitoria, Soto y Cano. Pamplona: EUNSA.

59. Petersen, Peter. 1921. Geschichte der aristotelischen Philosophie im protestantischen Deutschland. Leipzig: Felix Meiner.

Nachdruck Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann - Günther Holzboog, 1964.

60. Pozzo, Riccardo. 2004. "Logic and Metaphysics in German Philosophy from Melanchton to Hegel." In Approaches to Metaphysics, edited by Sweet, William, 57-66. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"The aim of this paper is to focus on the distinction between logic and metaphysics in German philosophy from Philipp Melanchthon to G.W.F. Hegel. Its scope is a temporal route that goes from the Renaissance to the 19th century, and which exhibits a movement from one extreme to another. Thus, Melanchthon -- owing to his nominalistic background -- was in fact repelled by metaphysical forms and chose not to include metaphysics among the philosophical sciences. For him, metaphysics was to be identified with logic. On the other hand, Hegel was repelled by logical formalism and did not include logic among the philosophical sciences. For Hegel, logic was to be identified with metaphysics. While Melanchthon and Hegel are the subjects, respectively, of the first and last parts of this paper, the second, the third, and the fourth parts are dedicated to the understanding of the relationship between logic and metaphysics in the work of Scheibler, Leibniz and Kant." (p. 57)

61. Prouvost, Géry. 1993. "La naissance de l'ontologie." Revue Thomiste no. 93:478-484.

"Le point de départ de cette réflexion est le livre de Jean-François Courtine, Suarez et le système de la métaphysique. Ce type de travaux manifeste un questionnement au sujet de la métaphysique, il s'agit d'en saisir le statut, l'objet et la nature en instaurant un dialogue avec la pensée de type historico-philosophique de Gilson. Ce dialogue est le signe d'un retour à la métaphysique où se prolonge la circularité entre philosophie et histoire."

62. Schmutz, Jacob. 2000. "Bulletin de scolastique moderne (I)." Revue Thomiste no. 100:270-341.

"Ce bulletin entend offrir un premier état des lieux de la recherche internationale dans le domaine de la théologie et de la philosophie scolastiques des XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Un liminaire général présente brièvement les approches historiographiques qui ont prévalu jusqu'aujourd'hui, propose ensuite une tentative de définition et enfin relève quelques caractères significatifs de cette tradition de pensée. Suivent alors les discussions critiques d'une trentaine de titres publiés au cours des cinq dernières années."

Voir en particuler la section C pp. 297-314:

Métaphysique ou ontologie?

1) Genèse et structure des métaphysiques modernes

2) Logique et ontologie chez Pedro da Fonseca

3) Suárez Gallicus

4) Théorie des distinctions et ontologie

5) Une métaphysique de la volonté: Antonio Pérez

63. Solana, Marcial. 1928. Los grandes escolásticos españoles de los siglos XVI y XVII : suas doctrinas filosóficas y su significación en la Historia de la Filosofia. Madrid: Jaime Ratès.

64. ———. 1940. Historia de la filosofia Española. Epoca del Renacimiento. Tomo terciero. Madrid: Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales.

65. Sparn, Walter. 1976. Wiederkehr der Metaphysik. Die ontologische Frage in der lutherischen Theologie des 17. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag.

66. Tommasi, Francesco Valerio. 2008. Philosophia transcendentalis. La questione antepredicativa e l'analogia tra la Scolastica e Kant. Firenze: Olschki.

67. Tonelli, Giorgio. 2006. A Short-Title List of Subject Dictionaries of the XVIth, XVIIth, and XVIIIth Centuries as Aids to the History of Ideas. Firenze: Olschki.

Extended edition revised and annotated by Eugenio Canone and Margherita Palumbo.

First edition: London, Warburg Institute, 1971.

68. Vollrath, Ernst. 1962. "Die Gliederung der Metaphysik in eine Metaphysica generalis und eine Metaphysica specialis." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 16:258-284.

69. Walton, Craig. 1969. "Malebranche's ontology." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 7:143-162.

70. Wille, Dagmar von. 1991. Lessico filosofico della Frühauflklärung. Christian Thomasius - Christian Wolff - Johann Georg walch. Roma: Edizioni dell'Ateneo.

71. Wollgast, Siegfried. 1988. Philosophie in Deutschland zwischen Reformation und Aufklärung. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

72. Wundt, Max. 1939. Die deutsche Schulmetaphysik des 17. Jahrhunderts. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).

73. ———. 1945. Die deutsche Schulphilosophie im Zeitalter der Aufklärung. Tübingen: Mohr.

Nachdruck Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1964.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Jacob Lorhard (1561-1609): The Creator of the Term "Ontologia" (1606)

Works by Jacob Lorhard

The first edition of his Ogdoas Scholastica contains the first occurrence of the Latin term"Ontologiae".

1. Disputatio de systasei actionum. Tubingae: Georg Gruppenbach, 1591.

2. Propositiones de vera et reali praesentia corporis et sanguinis Christi in s. coena. Tubingae: Gruppenbach, 1592.

3. Disputatio de vera et Aristotelica methodo demonstrandi. Dissertation. (Defender: Georg Johannes Peplis). Tubingae: Gruppenbach, 1592.

4. Liber de adeptione veri necessarii seu apodictici, in quo habes, candide lector, luculentam rationem et methodum conficiendi syllogismi necessarii, omnium philosophorum indefessis studiis et laboribus, ex obscurissimo Aristotele quaesitam. Tubingae: Gruppenbach, 1597.

5. Ogdoas Scholastica, continens Diagraphen Typicam artium: Grammatices (Latinae, Graecae), Logices, Rhetorices, Astronomices, Ethices, Physices, Metaphysices, seu Ontologiae. Sangalli: Straub, 1606.

6. Theatrum Philosophicum: In quo Artium Ac Disciplinarum Philosophicarum plerarumq[ue] omnium, Grammatices Latinae, Graecae, & Hebraeae: Logices; Rhetorices; Arithmetices; Geometriae; Musices; Astronomices; Ethices; Physices; Metaphysices; Praecepta, in perpetuis Schematismis ac Typis, tanquam in speculo, cognoscenda obiiciuntur. Basileae: Waldkirch, 1613. Second, expanded edition of Lorhard (1606).

Ogdoas Scholastica (1606): The Diagraph of Ontologia

Translation from: Peter Øhrstøm, Sara L. Uckelman, Henrik Schärfe, "Historical and Conceptual Foundations of Diagrammatical Ontology", in: Uta Priss, Simon Polovina, Richard Hill (eds). Conceptual Structures: Knowledge Architectures for Smart Applications, Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, Sheffield, UK, July 22-27, 2007, Berlin: Springer 2007, pp. 374-386.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography of the Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries (First part)

Philosophers in chronological order:

- Pedro da Fonseca (1528-1599)

- Benet Perera (Benedictus Pererius) (1535-1610)

- Diego de Zúñiga (1536-1597)

- Rudolf Göckel (Goclenius) (1547-1628)

- Francisco Suárez (1548-1617)

- Gabriel Vasquez (Vazquez) (1549-1604)

- Diego Mas (Didacus Masius) (1553-1608)

- Cristóbal de los Cobos (1553-1613?)

- Jacob Lorhard (1561-1609)

- Clemens Timpler (1563/4-1624)

- Cornelius Martini (1568-1621)

- Bartholomäus Keckermann (1572-1609)

- Francisco de Araujo (1580-1664)

- Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588-1638)

- Joannes a sancto Thoma (John Poinsot) (1589-1644)

Suggested readings: among the most important studies on this period, I suggest: Courtine (1990) (fundamental) and (2005), Freedman (1999), Honnefelder (1990) and (2002), Leinsle (1985), Lohr (1988, the best introduction in English), Marion (1975), (1981) and (1988), Schmutz (2000), Wundt (1939 and (1945), Zimmermann (1998).

For the complete references see: Selected Bibliography on the History of Continental Ontology from Suárez to Kant

Pedro da Fonseca (1528-1599)

Being (not God) is the subject of Metaphysics - Exclusion of accidental beings and beings of reason from Metaphysics

"Comprising four quarto volumes, Fonseca's In libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis Stagiritae(Commentary on the Books of Aristotle's Metaphysics) contains a critical Greek text which he himself established from the best available manuscripts and printed editions. (...)

After rejectirig opinions which bold that the subject of metaphysics is God, Aristotelian 'separate substances', or being in the categories, Fonseca says that the first and adeguate subject of metaphysics is being -- in so far as it is common to God and creatures ( In libros Metaphysicorum IV c.1 q.1 s.3). Understood in this way, being is analogous, although as said of species within one genus or of individuals within one species it is univocal. Between God and creatures, between created substance and accidents, between different classes of accident, and between real being and being of reason, being is analogous by analogies both of proportion and of attribution. As God is related to his being, so in proportion a created substance is related to its being. Likewise, as created substance and its being are related, so in proportion is an accident related to its being. Again, as one kind of accident is disposed to its existence so is each other kind of accident to its existence. And as real beings are disposed to their being, so beings of reason are to theirs ( Metaphysicorum IV c.2 q. l s.5, 7). An analogy of attribution obtains among accidents as an analogy of two things to a third (that is, created substance), while between accidents and substance it is analogy of one to the other. The same is true of beings of reason among themselves and then in comparison with real being; for beings of reason do not depend less upon real beings than do accidents upon substance. Again, a creature is being only by attribution or reference to God. Pursuing this, Fonseca distinguishes between formal and objective concepts. A formal concept is an 'actual likeness' ( actualis similitudo) of a thing that is understood, produced by the intellect in order to express that thing. An objective concept is that thing is understood in so far as it is conceived through the formai concept. Both the formal and the objective concept of being are one, but not perfectly so for the reason that they do not prescind perfectly from the concepts of the members which divide being. Being as such is transcendent as are also the concepts of thing, something, one, true and good ( Metaphysicorum IV c.2 q.2 s.1, 4-5; q.5 s.2).

In God alone there is a perfect identity of essence and existence. In every creature, essence is distinct from existence, but not as one thing from another. Rather, says Fonseca, a created essence is as distinct from its existence as a thing from its ultimate intrinsic mode. In this opinion, he tells us, he is following Alexander of Hales and Duns Scotus ( 12) ( Metaphysicorum, IV c.2 q.3 s.4). It is possible that here Fonseca has also to some extent anticipated the Suárezian doctrine of modes.

Excluded from the subject of metaphysics are accidental beings ( entia per accidens) and beings of reason. An accidental being, in the sense excluded, is a juxtaposition of two or more beings which lack any (intrinsic) relation to one another ( Metaphysicorum IV c.1 q.1 s.3). Beings of reason are those which exist only inasmuch as they are objects of understanding. Within such beings of reason, as they stand in contrast with mind-independent real beings, Fonseca distinguishes proper being of reason from one which is fictitious. Properly taken, a being of reason is one whose being depends upon the understanding in such way that it can still be said of real beings, for example, the concepts of genus, species, and the like. A fictitious being as such is a being whose essence depends upon the understanding in such way that it cannot be said of any real being, for example, a chimera, a goat-stag, or the like ( Metaphysicorum IV c.7 q.6 s.5).

From: John P. Doyle - Fonseca, Pedro da (1528-99) - in: Edward Craig (ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy - New York, Routledge, 1998 Vol. III, p. 689.

Texts

1. Fonseca, Pedro da. 1564. Institutionum Dialecticarum. Lisbon.

Reprint: Instituiões dialécticas. Institutionum dialecticarum libri octo, Introduão, estabelecimento do texto, traduão e notas por Joaquim Ferreira Gomes, Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, Instituto de Estudos Filosóficos, 1964 (2 voll.).

2. ———. 1577. Commentariorum in Libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis. Rome.

Original edition in 4 volumes (1615-1629).

Rome, 1577; Vol. II: Rome, 1589; Vol. III: Évora, 1604; Vol. IV: Lyon, 1612; (reprint: Cologne Voll. I-III, 1615; Vol. IV 1629).

Reprint of 1615-1629 edition: Commentarii in libros metaphysicorum Aristotelis Stagiritae, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1964 (2 volumes).

3. ———. 1591. Isagoge Philosophica. Lisbon.

Reprint: Isagoge Filosófica - Coimbra, Universidade de Coimbra, Instituto de Estudos Filosóficos, 1965.

Latin text and English translation by João Madeira in Appendix to his Ph. D. thesis: "Pedro da Fonseca's Isagoge Philosophica and the Predicables from Boethius to the Lovanienses" (2006).

Studies

1. "Pedro Da Fonseca." 1953. Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia no. 9.

2. Ashworth, Earline Jennifer. 1968. "Petrus Fonseca and Material Implication." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 9:227-228.

"I intend to show that the sixteenth century Jesuit, Petrus Fonseca, whose Institutionurn Dialecticarum libri octo (1564) was one of the most popular textbooks of the period, was well acquainted with [material implication].

Fonseca introduces the subject in his discussion of the appropriateness of the name hypothetical' as applied to compound propositions."

3. ———. 1997. "Petrus Fonseca on Objective Concepts and the Analogy of Being." In Logic and the Workings of the Mind. The Logic of Ideas and Faculty Psychology in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by A., Easton Patricia, 47-63. Atascadero: Ridgeview.

"Petrus Fonseca was a Portuguese Jesuit who lived from 1528 to 1599. He was one of those responsible for drawing up the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum which set the curriculum for Jesuit schools across Europe, and he was also responsible for initiating the production of the Coimbra commentaries on Aristotle, or Conimbricenses, which served as texts for many schools and universities in the seventeenth century. He was himself the author of two popular texts, an introduction to logic, and a commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics. His logic text was one of two alternatives prescribed by the Ratio Studiorum of 1599, and may have been used at La Flèche; his Metaphysics commentary was used at many Jesuit schools, and may also have been used at La Flèche.

In short, Fonseca was a leading figure in the Scholastic Aristotelian tradition of the lat e sixteenth century, a tradition which lies behind many of the developienis in early modem philosophy, and which in many ways is more important than the humanist tradition represented by Petrus Ramus.

I have chosen to discuss Fonseca on objective concepts and the analogy of being both because an examination of these issues will help us to understand how logic came to be bound up with the philosophy of mind and because the history of how these issues were treated helps solve a small problem about Descartes's sources. My paper has four parts. I shall begin by giving a historical outline of treatments of analogy and their relevance to Descartes. Secondly, I shall discuss late medieval theories of signification, particularly as they appear in Fonseca, in order to show how logicians turned away from spoken language to inner, mental language. Thirdly, I shall explain how it was that analogy, as a theory of one kind of language use, was particularly bound up with the discussion of concepts. Finally, I shall look at the distinctions Fonseca made while discussing the concepts associated with analogical terms." p. 47 (notes omitted).

4. Coxito, Amândio Augusto. 2004. "O Universal Lógico Em P. Da Fonseca E No Curso Conimbricense." Revista Filosófica de Coimbra no. 13:299-324.

5. Doyle, John P. 1998. "Fonseca, Pedro Da (1528-1599)." In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Craig, Edward, 688-690. New York: Routledge.

Vol. III.

6. Felipe, Donald. 1996. "Fonseca on Topics." In Studies on the History of Logic. Proceedings of the Iii. Symposium on the History of Logic, edited by Ignacio, Angelelli and Cerezo, Maria, 43-64. Berlin:

de Gruyter.

"Fonseca's treatment of topics in the rather substantial section on topics in Institutionum dialecticarum is of interest for at least three reasons. First, although the works of Bird, Stump, and Green-Pederson have shed a great deal of light on the tradition of the topics from Boethius to the 15th century, little is known about later scholastic views on topics in the late 16th and 17th centuries. The tract on topics in Fonseca's well-circulated logic book is certainly a good place to begin an examination of this obscure area. Second, in the tract on topics in ID a heavy dependence on Boethius's works De topicis differentiis and In Cicerona topica is very evident; a legitimate prima facie concern is that Fonseca's views on topics are unoriginal and not worth the trouble of careful study. I think it can be shown, however, that Fonseca's views on topics are very different from those of Boethius. Not only does Fonseca conceive of the primary purpose of topics in a different way from Boethius, but certain features of Fonseca's treatment of topics reflect the concerns of non-scholastic approaches to logic in the 16th century, e.g. the humanist concern for usefulness and relevance of logic, the humanist and Ramist concerns for pedagogy and easy memorization. What results is a rather unusual, hybrid treatment of topics. Finally, Fonseca's views on topics happen to provide some rather interesting background to Cartesian criticism that certain rules of dialecticians hinder the natural light of reason in the discovery of truth."

7. Ferreira da Silva, Custódio Augusto. 1960. Teses Fundamentais Da Gnoseologia De Pedro Da Fonseca. Lisboa: Tipografia da União Gráfica.

8. Ferreira, Joaquim Gomes. 1966. "Pedro Da Fonseca, Sixteenth Century Portuguese Philosopher." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 6:632-644.

9. Madeira, João. 2006. Pedro Da Fonseca's Isagoge Philosophica and the Predicables from Boethius to the Lovanienses, Leuven University.

Contains in Appendix the Latin text and an English translation of Fonseca's Isagoge Philosophica.

10. ———. 2006. "Bibliografia De E Sobre Pedro Da Fonseca." Revista Filosófica de Coimbra no. 15:195-208.

11. Maierù, Alfonso. 1999. "Metafisica Ed Enti Geometrici: Benito Pereyra, Pedro Fonseca, Francisco Suárez." In Sciences Et Religions De Copernic À Galilée (1540-1610), 47-62. Rome: École Francaise de Rome.

12. Martins, António Manuel. 1982. "Fonseca E O Objeto Da Metafísica De Aristóteles." Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia no. 38:460-465.

13. ———. 1991. "A Metafísica Inacabada De Pedro Da Fonseca." Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia no. 47:517-533.

"This paper starts from the fact that the fourth volume of Fonseca's "Commentariorum in Metaphysicorum Aristotelis Stagiritae libros" (CMA) contains no "quaestiones" to Met. XII. An analysis of several explicit remissions to topics and questions to be developed in the context of that Artistotelian script (Met. XII), made by Fonseca in several places in volumes I, II and III of his CMA, reveals that his project was, from the beginning, to develop in the IV volume the subjects related to the philosophical discourse about God, divine attributes, omnipotence and freedom, contingency as well as to the separate substances'. This indicates clearly that the metaphysics of Fonseca remained unfinished given the fact that the text on an important thematic cluster was not published notwithstanding the inclusion of such text in the original project of Fonseca. It is sustained that this fact should be taken in due consideration in any global interpretation of Fonseca's thought as well as in any comparison with other (finished) ontologies. Suarez is the most obvious case but not the only one."

14. ———. 1994. Lógica E Ontologia Em Pedro Da Fonseca. Lisboa: Fundaao Calouste Gulbenkian.

Indice Geral: 0. Introduão 9; 1. A obra de Fonseca 15; 2. Determinaão do objecto da metafisica 61; 3. Essência e existência 191; 4. Transcendentais e categorias 235; 5 O principio de não contradião 345; 6. Conclusâo 371 Bibliografia 377-386.

English abstract: "The aim of the dissertation is to show the place of Fonseca's work in the history of ontology. Starting with a close analysis of the texts connected with the core of classical metaphysics it is argued that the Commentarii in libros metaphysicorum Aristotelis far reacher than a mere textual commentary of Aristotle's text and represent one of the rare efforts to bring out a real synthesis of the main theoretical problems and questions emerging in the context of the aristotelian project of a first philosophy. This systematic work is carried out in the second half of the sixteenth century, just before the beginning of modern philosophy. Chapter one is dedicated to a brief account of Fonseca's work in his historical context. The remaining chapters explores some of the central topics of Fonseca's ontology. Chapter two, after a brief discussion of the aristotelian project of first philosophy, follows the transformation of this project in Fonseca's text discussing in particular his analysis of the concept of being under the heading ens commune and the meaning of the thesis of analogia entis as well as the distinction between a formal and an objective concept of being. In chapter three we discuss the question of the distinction between essence and existence in order to grasp the meaning of Fonseca's thesis of a modal distinction ex natura rei. Chapter four seeks to articulate Fonseca's interpretation of the classical doctrine of the transcendentals (unum, bonum, uerum). The wish to articulate the universality and transcendentality of the concept of being has taken us to introduce the problem of the categories in this chapter and a brief historico-critical survey beginning in Aristotle and ending in Kant. Finally, chapter five discusses the meaning of the principle of non contradiction in Aristotle and in Fonseca."

15. ———. 1999. "Tópica Metafísica: De Fonseca À Suárez." In Francisco Suárez (1548-1617). Tradiao E Modernidade, edited by Cardoso, Adelino, Martins, António Manuel and Ribeiro, Dos Santos Leonel, 157-168. Lisboa: Edioes Colibri.

16. ———. 1999. "Pedro Da Fonseca E a Recepão Da Metafísica De Aristóteles Na Segunda Metade Do Séc. Xvi." Philosophica: Revista do Departamento de Filosofia da Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa no. 14:165-178.

"It is claimed that in order to a better understanding of the reception of the text of the Metaphysics of Aristotle in the second half of the sixteenth century one must carefully distinguish the commentaries to the whole work from texts that treat particular questions. Although much work is still to be done, the great commentary of Pedro da Fonseca appears as the major original commentary to the Metaphysics produced during that period."

17. Romeo, Luigi. 1979. "Pedro Da Fonseca in Renaissance Semiotics: A Segmental History of Footnotes." Ars Semeiotica.An International Journal of Semiotics no. 2:187-204.

18. Slattery, Michael. 1957. "Two Notes on Fonseca." Modern Schoolman no. 34:193-202.

19. ———. 1957. "Fonseca on Logical Univocity." Modern Schoolman no. 34:193-202.

Benet Perera (Benedictus Pererius) (1535-1610)

"The problem that continues to haunt the commentators [of Aristotle] is how to reconcile philosophia prima as universal scientia de ente with philosophia prima as theologia . The latter appears to be a special science rather than a universal one, since it studies one particular being (albeit the highest one), whereas the former studies being qua being. Aristotle had already recognised this problem and had come up with a solution that proved so cryptic that it provoked even more discussion. (26)

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this discussion received an entirely new impulse in Protestant metaphysics. Although the early reformers had a very low opinion of Aristotelian metaphysics, by the end of the sixteenth century their successors had taken to writing textbooks on Aristotle's Metaphysics which copied the model of earlier commentaries. In fact, the Protestant scholasticism that emerged from the middle of the sixteenth century onwards drew heavily on the great Commentaries of the Counter Reformation, notably the ones composed by the Spanish Jesuits.(27) Faced with the institutional problem of how to teach theology and philosophy, the Protestant masters turned back to systematic Aristotelian philosophy of the familiar kind.(28) Moreover theological contorversies within Lutheranism and between Lutheranism and Calvinism "made precise definitions of terms like 'substance' and 'accident, 'nature' and 'person' absolutely imperative. (29)

This fuelled a keen interest in Aristotelian metaphysics. The Protestants were trying to construct a metaphysics conceived as a universal science of being, a scientia de ente . This meant the removal of all the heterogeneous elements of Aristotelian metaphysics that could only with difficulty be combined with this "pure" science of being. Hence we find in most Protestant metaphysicsa marked tendency to separate natural theology from metaphysics as a science of being qua being. Therefore, by separating true metaphysics as a universal science of being from natural theology as a scientia particularis, the ubiquitous problem of the subject matter of metaphysics was solved. The first to make this separation in the sixteenth century was actually a Jesuit, Benito Pereira (c 1535-1610). (30) His solution was taken up in various ways by Protestant scholastics, both Calvinist and Lutheran, such as Nicolaus Taurellus (1547-1606), Abraham Calov (1612-1686) and Rudolphus Goclenius the Elder (1547-1628). This tradition was not an isolated German phenomenon but also spread to England. By distinguishing between "first" or "summary philosophy" and natural theology, Francis Bacon clearly draws on this tradition as well."

From: Cees Leijenhorst - The mechanisation of Aristotelianism. The late Aristotelian setting of Thomas Hobbes' natural philosophy - Leiden, Brill, 2002 pp. 23-24.

(26) Aristotle, Met. VI (E), 1, 1026a29-32. For an interesting recent account of this problem see Michael Frede, The Unity of general and special metaphysics: Aristotle's conception of metaphysics, in: M. Frede, Essays in ancient philosophy, (Oxford, 1987), pp. 81-95. For a comprehensive overview of older postions, see Joseph Owens, The Doctrine of Being in Aristotelian "metaphysics". A study in the Greek background of Mediaeval thought, (Toronto 1951, Third revised edition Toronto, 1978) pp. 1-68.

(27) See Lewalter, Spanisch-jesuitische Metaphysik und deutsch-luterische Metaphysik des 17. Jahrunderts (Hamburg, 1935; Reprint Darmstadt, 1967).

(28) On Melanchthon's use of Aristotle, see Sachiko Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy. The case of Philip Melanchthon, (Cambridge, 1995)

(29) Charles Lohr, "Metaphysics," (1988) p. 620. See also Walther Sparn, Wiederkher der Metaphysik: die ontologische Frage in der lutherischen Theologie des frühen 17. Jahrunderts (Stuttgart, 1976) and Donnelly, "Calvinist Thomism," Viator, 7 (1976, pp-441-455), p. 442.

(30) On the sixteenth and seventeenth century debate conceming the relation between universal scientia de ente and particular theology, see Rompe, Die Trennung; and Leinsle, Das Ding und die Methode. For medieval "separatist" arguments, see Zimmermann, Ontologie oder Metaphysik, pp. 292-314; and Lohr, "Metaphysics," pp. 587-590.

Texts

1. Perera, Benet. 1576. De Communibus Omnium Rerum Naturalium Principiis Et Affectionibus Libri Quindecim. Romae.

2. Commentary on Aristotle's Physics; reprinted Paris, 1579; Lyon, 1585; Cologne, 1595.

Studies

1. "Benet Perera (Pererius, 1535-1610). A Renaissance Jesuit at the Crossroads of Modernity." 2014. Quaestio. Yearbook of the History of Metaphyisics no. 14:3-327.

Table of Contents: Paul Gilbert: La preparazione della Ratio studiorum e l’insegnamento di filosofia di Benet Perera 3; Christoph Sander: The War of the Roses. The Debate between Diego de Ledesma and Benet Perera about the Philosophy Course at the Jesuit College in Rome 31; Ulrich G. Leinsle: Der Widerstand gegen Perera und seine Physik in der oberdeutschen Jesuitenprovinz 51; Marco Lamanna: Mathematics, Abstraction and Ontology: Benet Perera and the Impossibility of a Neutral Science of Reality 69; Mário S. de Carvalho: Between Rome and Coimbra: A Preliminary Survey of two Early Jesuit Psychologies (Benet Perera and the Coimbra Course) 91; Francesco Marrone: Conoscenza e realtà. Benet Perera e la quaestio de primo cognito 111; Giovanni Ventimiglia: Magna est disceptatio tam inter Philosophos quam inter Theologos. Pererius e la questione della distinzione reale fra essenza ed esistenza 167; Costantino Esposito: La durata dell'essere. Benet Perera sul tempo 195; Paul Richard Blum: Platonic References in Pererius’s Comments on the Bible 215; Annalisa Cappiello, Marco Lamanna: Il principio dell’unicità del vero dalla bolla Apostolici regiminis (1513) alla Rivoluzione scientifica 229; Paolo Ponzio: Perera, Bellarmino, Galileo e il "concordismo" tra Sacre Scritture e ricerca scientifica 257-269.

2. Blackwell, Constance. 2003. "The Vocabulary for Natural Philosophy. The "De Primo Cognito" Question - a Preliminary Exploration: Zimara, Toletus, Pererius and Zabarella." In Lexiques Et Glossaires Philosophiques De La Renaissance, edited by Hamesse, Jacqueline and Marta, Fattori, 287-308. Louvain-la-neuve: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Etudes Médiévales.

3. ———. 2004. "Thomas Aquinas against the Scotists and Platonists. The Definition of Ens: Cajetano, Zimara, Pererio 1495-1576." Verbum.Analecta Neolatina no. 6:179-188.

"Thomas Aquinas is usually studied as a metaphysician, this is not the reading given to him by three Renaissance philosophers. At the turn of the sixteenth century there were at least two schools of Thomists, one influenced by Avicenna and Scotus, and the other influenced by Averroes, a reading of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas himself. The discussion below traces how the interpretation of Thomas' De ente et essentia was changed from being a text for metaphysics to one used for physics. One of the meanings of ens-being-was as a term that was coterminous with the object. As a result, the debate over the first thing thought or the De primo cognito debate centered around the meaning for the term ens, the following essay demonstrates how it moved from metaphysics to physics."

4. Blum, Paul Richard. 2006. "Benedictus Pererius: Renaissance Culture at the Origins of Jesuit Science." Science & Education no. 15:279-304.

Rerinted in R. P. Blum, Studies on Early Modern Aristotelianism, Leiden: Brill, 2012, pp. 139-182.

"Benedictus Pererius (1535-1610) published in 1576 his most successful book De principiis, after he had taught philosophy at the Roman College of the Jesuits. It will be shown that parts of this book are actually based on his lectures. But the printed version was intended as a contribution to the debate within his Order on how science should be conceived. Pererius redefined the meaning of scientific speculation to the effect that metaphysics was split into ontology and natural theology, and that further speculative sciences, such as physics, gained their own competence. Throughout this book, as well as in his warning against magic and in his commentaries on the Bible, the Jesuit addresses Renaissance strains of neo-Platonism, Aristotelianism, and syncretism."

5. De Pace, Anna. 1993. Le Matematiche E Il Mondo. Ricerche Su Un Dibattito in Italia Nella Seconda Metà Del Cinquecento. Milano: Franco Angeli.

Capitolo VII. Benedetto Pereira erede e critico di Piccolomini, pp. 75-120.

6. Giacobbe, Giulio Cesare. 1977. "Un Gesuita Progressista Nella 'Quaestio De Certitudine Mathematicarum' Rinascimentale: Benito Pereyra." Physis. Rivista internazionale di Storia della Scienza no. 19:51-86.

7. Giacon, Carlo. 1946. La Seconda Scolastica, Vol. Ii: Precedenze Teoriche Ai Problemi Giuridici, Toledo, Pereira, Fonseca, Molina, Suarez. Milano: Bocca.

Ristampa Torino: Nino Aragno Editore, 2004.

Capitolo II, pp. 31-66.

8. Lalla, Sebastian. 2007. "Benedictus Pererius Und Aristoteles." In Der Aristotelismus in Der Frühen Neuzeit, Kontinuität Oder Wiederaneignung?, edited by Frank, Günter and Speer, Andreas, 43-63. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

9. Lamanna, Marco. 2009. "‘De Eo Enim Metaphysicus Agit Logice’. Un Confronto Tra Pererius E Goclenius." Medioevo no. 34:315-360.

10. Rompe, Elisabeth Maria. 1968. Die Trennung Von Ontologie Und Metaphysik. Der Ablösungsprozess Und Seine Motivierung Bei Benedictus Pererius Und Anderen Denkern Des 16. Und 17. Jahrhunderts. Bonn: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität.

Diego de Zúñiga (1536-1598)

Texts

1. Zúñiga, Diego de. 1597. Philosophiae Prima Pars, Qua Perfecte Et Eleganter Quatuor Scientiae Metaphysica, Dialectica, Rhetorica Et Physica Declarantur, Ad Clementem Octavum Pontificem Maximum. Toledo.

Partial Spanish translation: Metafísica (1597), Introducción, traducción y nota de Gerardo Bolado, Pamplona: Eunsa 2008.

Studies

1. "Diego De Zúñiga." 1999. La Ciudad de Dios no. 212.

Contents: Modesto González Velasco: Fray Diego de Zúñiga (1536-ca.1598): biografía, escritos y bibliografía: 5-57; Victor Navarro Brotons: La recepción de la obra de Copérnico en la España del siglo XVI: el caso de Diego de Zúñiga: 59-104; Gerardo Bolado Ochoa: La "Física" de Diego de Zúñiga OSA: 105-147; Lera San José: Javier, Fray Diego de Zúñiga OSA, "In Iob commentaria", 1584: 149-182.

2. Arámburu Cendoya, Ignacio. 1961. "Diego De Zúñiga, Biografía Y Nuevos Escritos (I)." Archivo Agustiniano no. 55:51-103.

3. ———. 1961. "Diego De Zúñiga, Biografía Y Nuevos Escritos (Ii)." Archivo Agustiniano no. 55:329-384.

4. Bolado Ochoa, Gerardo. 1985. "Fray Diego De Zúñiga O.S.A.: Una Filosofía Como Enciclopedia De Las Ciencias Y Las Artes En El Siglo Xvi." Revista Agustiniana (Madrid) no. 26:105-150.

5. ———. 1989. "La Unión De Los Estudios Filosóficos Y Retóricos En La Enciclopedia De Fray Diego De Zúñiga (1536-1599?). Aproximación a La "Retórica"." Revista Agustiniana (Madrid):557-587.

6. ———. 1999. "La "Fisica" De Diego De Zúñiga, Osa." La Ciudad de Dios no. 212:105-147.

7. ———. 2000. Fray Diego De Zúñiga, Osa (1536-Ca. 1598). Una Aproximaciòn Biogràfica. Madrid: Revista Agustiniana.

8. ———. 2003. "Presentación De La "Dialéctica" De Diego De Zúñiga (1536 Ca.-1598)." Revista Agustiniana (Madrid):465-500.

9. Gallego Salvadores, Juan José. 1974. "La Metafísica De Diego De Zúñiga (1536-1597) Y La Reforma Tridentina De Los Estudios Eclesiásticos." Estudio Agustiniano no. 9:3-60.

10. González Velasco, Modesto. 1999. "Fray Diego De Zúñiga (1536 - C. 1598): Biografía, Escritos Y Bibliografía." La Ciudad de Dios no. 212:5-57.

Rudolf Göckel (Goclenius) (1547-1628)

"Goclenius is best described as a protestant Scholastic', his most important contribution to the metaphysics being terminological. He is the first philosopher to use the word ontologia [in Greek] (*) to describe general metaphysics (...) Strangely enough, this word does not appear in the Isagoge, but rather in the Lexicon . Still, his use of the word precedes that of Calovius by 23 years (...), and that of Jean-Baptiste Duhamel by 65 (...).

Although he does not use the term ontologia in the Isagoge, Goclenius does distinguish general metaphysics from special metaphysics in this work and a fortiori stood the concept of general metaphysics. The distinction between general and special metaphysics is not Goclenius's invention, however. The Spanish Jesuit Benito Pereira (c. 1535-1610) had already made it by 1562 (see Rompe Die Trennung von Ontologie und Metaphysik. Der Ablösungsprozess und seine Motivierung bei Benedictus Pererius und anderen Denkern des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts1968, pp. 7-13) and an earlier manuscript making the distinction has been found (Zimmermann Ontologie oder Metaphysik. Die Diskussion über den Gegenstand der Metaphysik an 13. und 14. Jahrundert 1965, p. 60).

Both Wundt and Vollrath seem to have discovered the distinction between general and special metaphysics only in the Praefatio of Goclenius's Isogoge and have remarked that this distinction does not appear in the main text of the work. This is incorrect, however. The second part of the Isagoge is a series of disputations, the first of which, entitled De ente Communi, ad omnes Categorias conseguente discusses this distinction (Rompe is aware of this and hers is at present the most trustworthy account of Goclenius's work) Goclenius says that some divide first philosophy ( prima philosophia ), which is usually called 'metaphysics', into two parts. The first is universal and studies the most general notion of being common to all things ( de Ente in communi ). The second part is particular and deals with God, divine spirits ( daemones ), and disembodied intellect ( intellectus separatus a corpore, p. 126). Goclenius ascribes this view to Aristotle and then goes on to say that he prefers to divide things up differently. Knowledge ( scientia ) should be divided into a universal and a particular part, and the universal part should be called 'first philosophy'. The particular part in turn should be divided into a 'transnatural' part which deals with God, and a 'natural' one, which deals with natural entities (pp. 126-7).

Goclenius's idea of knowledge, then, has a particular part which seems to contain every specific science. In contrast, Perera includes only theology, 'spiritology', and psychology, and Christian Wolff only theology, psychology, and cosmology, within special metaphysics. Thus Goclenius is proposing a way of cutting up the sciences such that prima philosophia is truly cast in the role of the queen of the sciences, lording over them all as the scientia universalis . On the face of it, Goclenius's taxonomy of metaphysics is more reasonable than that of Wolff or Pereira. If one is going to take seriously the notion of a 'superscience' which studies the most abstract idea of being which the objects of all specific sciences share, then one is compelled, I think, to include all of the particular sciences within specific metaphysics. This is true unless, of course, one has platonic misgivings about the possibility of being able to have knowledge about substances which have matter mixed up in them. However, a good Scholastic, wedded as he is to the spirit of Aristotle, has no such misgivings."

(*) The term ontologia was coined by Jacob Lorhard in 1606 [Note added by Raul Corazzon]

From: Goclenius, Rudolphus by Jeffrey Coombs - in: Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology - Edited by Barry Smith Barry and Hans Burkhardt. Munich: Philosophia Verlag 1991, pp. 312-313.

"Thus the Marburg professor Rudolph Goclenius in the preface to his Isagoge in primam philosophiam (1598), spoke of two separate sciences, a universal science called 'first philosophy' and a particular science called 'metaphysics'. First philosophy deals with being, its properties and its principles; metaphysics studies the various types of immaterial being: God, the intelligences and the human soul."

From: Charles H. Lohr - Metaphysics and natural philosophy as sciences: the Catholic and the Protestant views in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - in: Constance Blackwell, Sachiko Kusukawa (eds.) . Philosophy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries. Conversations with Aristotle - Aldershot, Ashgate, 1999, p. 291.

Texts

1. Göckel, Rudolf. 1591. Problemata Logica. Marburg.

Reprint: Frankfurt: Minerva, 1967.

2. ———. 1592. Physicae Disputationes in Septem Libros Distinctae. Frankfurt.

Partial translation in German: Rudolphus Goclenius, Disputationen zur Natur-Wissenschaft 1592, translated with introduction, notes and name index by Hans Günther Zekl, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007.

3. ———. 1598. Isagoge in Peripaticorum Et Scholasticorum Primam Philosophiam, Quae Dici Consuevit Metaphysica. Frankfurt.

Reprint: Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1976.

Translated in German: Rudolphus Goclenius, Isagoge. Einführung in die Metaphysik 1598, translated with introduction, notes and an essay on the author by Hans Günther Zekl, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2005.

4. ———. 1609. Conciliator Philosophicus. Cassellis.

Reprint: Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1977.

5. ———. 1613. Lexicon Philosophicum Quo Tanquam Clave Philosophiae Fores Aperiuntur. Frankfurt.

Reprint: Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1964 (with the Lexicon philosophicum Graecum).

6. ———. 1615. Lexicon Graecum Philosophicum. Marburg.

Reprint: Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1964 (with the Lexicon philosophicum quo tanquam clave philosophiae fores aperiuntur).

7. ———. 1625. Metaphysica Exemplaris. Wittenberg.

Studies

1. Lamanna, Marco. 2009. ""De Eo Enim Metaphysicus Agit Logice". Un Confronto Tra Pererius E Goclenius." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 34:315-360.

2. ———. 2013. La Nascita Dell'ontologia Nella Metafisica Di Rudolph Göckel (1547-1628). Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

"Nel dibattito seguito al cosiddetto Ontological Turn della filosofia analitica contemporanea un posto di assoluto rilievo ha avuto, e continua ad avere, l’ipotesi di distinguere l’ambito dell’ontologia da quello della metafisica. Si tratta solo dell’ultima insorgenza di un dibattito epistemologico che ha conosciuto più riprese nel corso dei secoli, in contesti anche molto differenti tra loro. A livello strettamente terminologico, la prima distinzione dell’ontologia dalla metafisica si registra all’inizio del XVII secolo, all’interno della Schulmetaphysik riformata, in particolare calvinista. È in quell’ambito che un autore come Rudolph Gōckel (lat. Goclenius) potè intestarsi una simile operazione a seguito delle istanze scaturite dall’“importazione” dei modelli metafisici dell’aristotelismo gesuita (in particolare di Benet Perera, più che di Francisco Suárez) nella Germania protestante. Erano trascorsi quasi ottant’anni dall’interdetto pronunciato da Lutero contro la metafisica e le sue pretese epistemologiche. Il “ritomo” alla metafisica tra i calvinisti coincise pertanto con la nascita dell’ontologia come scienza propriamente detta e con la distinzione di quest’ultima dalla metafisica, intesa perlopiù come teologia: nel corso delle dispute tra riformati e protestanti si affinerà un modello che dominerà il dibattito scolastico in ambito continentale sino agli anni di Kant, determinando profonde conseguenze nel modo di pensare la realtà."

3. Moreau, Pierre-Franois. 2002. "Wolff Et Goclenius." Archives de Philosophie no. 65:7-14.

Gabriel Vasquez (Vazquez) (1549-1604)

Texts

1. Vazquez, Gabriel. 1598. Commentariorum, Ac Disputationum in Primam Partem S. Thomae. Tomus Primus. Complectens Viginti Sex Quaestiones Priores. Alcalà.

2. ———. 1598. Commentariorum in Primam-Secundae S. Thomae. Alcalà.

Two volumes: second volume printed 1605.

3. ———. 1609. Commentariorum in Tertiam Partem. Alcalà.

Four volumes (1609-1615).

Studies

1. Baldini, Ugo. 2004. "Ontology and Mechanics in Jesuit Scholasticism: The Case of Gabriel Vazquez." In Scientiae Et Artes. Die Vermittlung Alten Und Neuen Wissens in Literatur, Kunst Und Musik. Vol. I, edited by Mahlmann-Bauer, Barbara, 99-142. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

2. Lapierre, Michael J. 1999. The Noetical Theory of Gabriel Vasquez, Jesuit Philosopher and Theologian (1549-1604). His View of the Objective Concept. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen.

Contents: Foreword I; Preface III; Acknowledgements VII; Introduction 1; 1. Historical overview 5; 2. Life and times of Gabriel Vasquez 11; 3. Concept and external world 21; 4. Cocept and truth 35; Concept and knowledge 55; 5. Concept and Being 75; 7. Concluding observations 93; Appendix A. Chronological table of Vasquez's life 97; Appendix B. List of the writings of Gabriel Vasquez 99; Bibliography 103; Index of names and subjects 109.

3. Schmutz, Jacob. 2002. "Le Miroir De L'univers: Gabriel Vazquez Et Les Commentateurs Jésuites." In Sur La Science Divine, edited by Bardout, Jean-Christophe and Boulnois, Olivier, 382-411. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

4. Wells, Norman J. 1994. "John Poinsot on Created Eternal Truths Vs. Vasquez, Suárez and Descartes." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 68:425-446.

Diego Mas (Didacus Masius) (1553-1608)

Texts

1. Mas, Diego. 1587. Metaphysica Disputatio De Ente Et Eius Proprietatibus. Valencia.

Critical edition of the Latin text and Spanish translation witgh the title: Disputación metafísica sobre el ente y sus propiedades (1587) - Pamplona, EUNSA, 2003. Parte I: traducción castellana; Parte II: Original latino.

Contains a reprint of the essay: El Maestro Diego Mas y su Tratado de Metafísca. La primera metafísica sistemática by Jordán Gallego Salvadores, pp. 17-88 (originally published in: Analecta Sacra Tarraconensia 43 (1970), pp. 3-92).]: 07

Studies

1. Bastit, Michel. 2004. "De L'intérêt D'une Lecture Traditionnelle De Saint Thomas: La Question De L' esse Chez Diego Mas." Revue Thomiste no. 104:447-468.

" Résumé. On essaie ici de tester sur un texte de Diego Mas la fécondité théorique d'une lecture traditionnelle thomiste, au sens de lecture au sein d'une école. À partir des questions concernant l'ordre de l'existence à la forme et à l'essence, on aperoit progressivement que la rigoureuse procédure scolastique utilisée par l'auteur du texte reconduit son lecteur à la question elle-même, et le met ainsi en mesure d'être philosophe en acte. En outre cette rigueur permet à une pensée de ce type d'entrer en rapport avec les développements de la philosophie exacte moderne et contemporaine où se manifeste aujourd'hui un regain d'intérêt pour la métaphysique et l'ontologie que l'on aurait tort de négliger."

2. Gallego Salvadores, Juan José. 1970. "El Maestro Diego Mas Y Su Tratado De Metafísica. La Primera Metafisica Sistematica." Analecta Sacra Tarraconensia no. 43:3-92.

Reprinted in: Diego Mas, Disputación metafísica sobre el ente y sus propiedades - Edited by Santiago Orrego and Juan Cruz Cruz - Pamplona, EUNSA, 2003, pp. 17-88.

3. ———. 1973. "La Aparición De Las Primeras Metafísicas Sistemáticas En La España Del Xvi. Diego Mas (1587), Francisco Suárez Y Diego De Zúñiga (1597)." Escritos del Vedat no. 3:91-162.

4. ———. 2004. "El Dominico Valenciano Diego Mas Y La Primera Metafísica Sistemática." In Francisco Suárez. "Der Ist Der Mann". Apéndice Francisco Suárez De Generatione Et Corruptione. Homenaje Al Prof. Salvador Castellote, edited by Schmutz, Jacob, 209-223. Valencia: Facultad de Teología San Vicente Ferrer.

Cristóbal de los Cobos (1553-1613?)

Texts

1. Los Cobos, Cristóbal. 1948. " In Metaphysicam Por Cristóbal De Los Cobos, S. J. Salamanca, 1582-1583 (Ms. Inédito) (*)." In Actas Del Iv Centenario Del Nacimiento De Francisco Suárez 1548-1948. Vol. I, 375-413. Madrid: Dirección General de Propaganda.

(*) De la colección de manuscritos estudiados durante los homenajes centenarios tributados al Doctor Eximio. (Edited by Eleuterio Elorduy).

Studies

Clemens Timpler (1563/4-1624)

"Within three of his writings, Timpler notes that the study and knowledge of metaphysics is required for the study and knowledge of all other philosophical disciplines. For this reason, Timpler's Metaphysics textbook merits examination here prior to consideration of his other philosophical writings. The basic components of Timpler's Metaphysics textbook can be outlined as follows:

Timpler considers the subject matter of metaphysics to be everything which is intelligible to human beings; therefore, All that is Intelligible ( omne intelligibile) is the all-inclusive category within which all component parts of Timpler's metaphysics are subsumed. Timpler divides the category All that is Intelligible into Something ( aliquid) and Nothing ( nihil). Each individual intelligible falls within one and only one of these two categories.

Timpler asserts that Nothing cannot be perfectly defined. His brief remarks concerning Nothing shall be presented within chapter 15 section 17 and within chapter 20 section 9. Timpler's "Something" ( aliquid) is equivalent to "Being" ( esse; est) in the broadest sense of the latter. Timpler's "Being" can be explained with the use of the following table:

"Being" (understood in its broadest sense) includes A and C yet excludes B.

The broadest and most basic distinction made within Timpler's Metaphysics textbook, therefore, is the distinction made between something (i.e., "Being" understood in its broadest sense) and Nothing (i.e., Non-Being). There is no medium between Something and Nothing; any given intelligible object falls into one and only one of these two categories. According to Timpler, these two categories are contradictorily opposed to one another. The principle which states this contradictory opposition--i.e., which states that it is absolutely impossible for an intelligible subject matter to be both Being and Non-Being simultaneously -- is the principle of contradiction; Timpler regards this principle to be indemonstrable and absolutely necessary. The principle of contradiction is the most important rule contained within Timpler's Metaphysics textbook; in so far as it comprises All that is Intelligible, it regulates the entire subject matter of that textbook.

Timpler also notes that the principle of contradiction is "that primary complex principle which is basic to all of the arts" (i.e., to both the liberal arts and the illiberal arts).

It must be emphasized that All that is Intelligible and the Principle of Contradiction (all sub-categories of the former are regulated by means of the latter) are the broadest, most general categories not only of Timpler's Metaphysics textbook, but of all of his other writings as well. These two categories embrace the entirety of Timpler's thought as expressed within his various philosophical writings. The study of metaphysics is basic to the study of all other disciplines partly due to the fact that it directly deals with these two general categories which are basic to every other discipline."

From: Joseph S. Freedman - European Academic Philosophy in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. The life, significance and philosophy of Clemens Timpler (1563/4-1624). Hildesheim: Georg Olms 1988, pp. 210-211 (notes omitted).

Texts

1. Timpler, Clemens. 1604. Metaphysicae Systema Methodicum. Steinfurt.

(Nine editions, including some unauthorized imprints (Steinfurt 1604, Lich 1604, Hanau 1606, Frankfurt a. M. 1607, Marburg 1607, Hanau 1608, Frankfurt a. M. 1612, Hanau 1612, Hanau 1616).

Studies

1. Freedman, Joseph S. 1988. European Academic Philosophy in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. The Life, Significance and Philosophy of Clemens Timpler (1563/4-1624). Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Two volumes.

Cornelius Martini (1568-1621)

Texts

1. Martini, Cornelius. 1605. Metaphysica Commentatio. Strasburg.

2. ———. 1619. De Analysi Logica Tractatus. Helmstedt.

Studies

1. Pozzo, Riccardo. 1989. "Kornelius Martini: De Natura Logicae: Prolegomeni Ad Un Corso Di Lezioni Del 1599." Rivista di Storia della Filosofia no. 44:499-527.

2. ———. 1998. " Res Considerata and Modus Considerandi Rem: Averroes, Aquinas, Jacopo Zabarella, and Cornelius Martini on Reduplication." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 24:251-267.

Bartholomäus Keckermann (1572-1609)

Texts

1. Keckermann, Bartholomäus. 1600. Systema Logicae, Tribus Libris Adornatum. Hannover.

2. ———. 1609. Scientiae Metaphysicae Compendium Systema. Hanau.

Studies

1. Freedman Joseph S. "The Career and Writings of Bartholomew Keckermann (D. 1609)." Proceedings, American Philosophical Society 141 (1997): 305-364.

Reprinted in: Joseph S. Freedman, Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500-1700, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999, Essay VII.

2. Muller Richard A. " Vera Philosophia Cum Sacra Theologia Nusquam Pugnat. Keckermann on Philosophy, Theology and the Problem of Double Truth." Sixteenth Century Journal 15 (1984): 341-365.

3. Zuylen Willem Hendrik van. Bartholomäus Keckermann. Sein Leben Und Werk. Leipzig: R. Noske, 1934.

Francisco de Araujo (1580-1664)

Texts

1. Araujo, Francisco de. 1617. Commentaria in Universam Aristotelis Metaphysicam Tomus Primus, Quinque Libros Complectens. Salamanca.

2. ———. 1631. Commentaria in Universam Aristotelis Metaphysicam Tomus Secundus, Septem Libros Complectens a Sexto Usque Ad Duodecium Inclusive. Salamanca.

Studies

1. Beuchot, Mauricio Puente. 1980. "La Doctrina Tomista Clásica Del Signo: Domingo De Soto, Francisco De Araujo Y Juan De Santo Tomás." Critica no. 36:39-60.

2. ———. 1987. Metafísica. La Ontología Aristotélico-Tomista De Francisco De Araújo. Ciudad de México: Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas UNAM.

3. Fernández-Rodríguez, José Luis. 1972. El Ente De Razón En Francisco Araújo. Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra.

4. O'Brien, Chrysostom. 1962. "El Enigma De Francisco De Araujo." La Ciencia Tomista no. 89:221-234.

5. Wells, Norman J. 1983. "Francisco Araujo, O.P., on Eternal Truths." In Graceful Reason. Essays in Ancient and Medieval Thought Presented to Joseph Owens C.Ss.R., edited by Gerson, Lloyd P., 401-417. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.

Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588-1638)

Texts

1. Alsted, Johann Heinrich. 1613. Metaphysica Tribus Libris Tractata Per Praecepta Methodica. Herborn.

2. ———. 1620. Cursus Philosophici Encyclopedia Libri Xxvi. Herborn.

Vol. I Praecognita disciplinarum; II. Philologia; III. Philosophia theoretica; IV. Philosophia practica; V. Tres superiores facultates; VI. Artes mechanicae; VII. Farragines disciplinarum.

Reprint of the 1630 edition: Encyclopaedia. Septem tomis distincta - Stuttgart, Frommann-Holzboog, 1989.

3. ———. 1625. Metaphysica Exemplaris. Wittenberg.

4. ———. 1999. Alsted and Leibniz: On God, the Magistrate, and the Millennium. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz in Kommission.

Texts edited with introduction and commentary.

Studies

1. Hotson, Howard. 2000. Johann Heinrich Alsted, 1588-1638: Between Renaissance, Reformation, and Universal Reform. New York: Oxford University Press.

2. Schmidt-Biggermann, Wilhelm. 1983. Topica Universalis: Eine Modellgeschichte Humanistischer Und Barocker Wissenschaft. Hamburg: Meiner.

On Alsted see pp. 100-139.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography of the Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries (Second part)

Philosophers in chronological order:

- Christoph Scheibler (1589-1653)

- Johannes Micraelius (1597-1658)

- Sebastian Izquierdo (1601-1681)

- Bartolomeo Mastri (1602-1673)

- Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz (1606-1682)

- Abraham Calov (1612-1686)

- Johannes Clauberg (1622-1665)

- Jakob Thomasius (1622-1684)

- Jean Baptiste Du Hamel (1624-1706)

- Jean Le Clerc (1657-1736)

- Johann Franz Budde (Buddeus) (1667-1729)

- Christian Wolff (1679-1754)

- Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-1762)

- Christian August Crusius (1715-1775)

- Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728-1777)

Suggested readings: among the most important studies on this period, I suggest: Courtine (1990) (fundamental) and (2005), Freedman (1999), Honnefelder (1990) and (2002), Leinsle (1985), Lohr (1988, the best introduction in English), Marion (1975), (1981) and (1988), Schmutz (2000), Wundt (1939 and (1945), Zimmermann (1998).

For the complete references see: Selected Bibliography on the History of Continental Ontology from Suárez to Kant

Christoph Scheibler (1589-1653)

Texts

1. Scheibler, Christoph. 1617. Opus Metaphysicum Duobus Libris Universum Hujus Scientiae Systema Comprehendens. Giessen.

Second edition Oxford 1633; definitive edition in Opera philosophica: Metaphysica duobus libris universum huius scientiae systema comprehendens. Opus, tum omnium facultatum tum in primis philosophiae & theologiae studiosis utile & necessarium. Premissa est Summaria methodus, ... Frankfurt 1665.

2. ———. 1654. Opera Philosophica. Frankfurt.

Four volumes (1654-1658): Opera philosophica ut sunt Opus logicum, quatuor partibus ... Opus metaphysicum, duobus libris ... Liber physicus de anima ... Adiectis ubique indicibus necessariis ... (reprinted 1665).

Studies

1. Pozzo, Riccardo. 2004. "Logic and Metaphysics in German Philosophy from Melanchton to Hegel." In Approaches to Metaphysics, edited by Sweet, William, 57-66. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

On Scheibler see pp. 63-65.

2. ———. 2005. "Die Transzendentalienlehre Bei Christoph Scheibler." In Das Geheimnis Des Anfangs, edited by Neuser, Wolfgang and Reichold, Anne, 73-78. Bern: Peter Lang.

3. Roncaglia, Gino. 2003. "Modal Logic in Germany at the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century: Christoph Scheibler's Opus Logicum." In The Medieval Heritage in Early Modern Metaphysics and Modal Logic, 1400-1700, edited by Friedman, Russell L. and Nielsen, Lauge O., 253-308. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Johannes Micraelius (1597-1658)

Texts

1. Micraelius, Johannes. 1653. Lexicon Philosophicum Terminorum Philosophis Usitatorum. Jena.

Revised edition: Stettin 1661 and 1662.

Reprint with an introduction by Lutz Geldsetzer: Düsseldorf, Stern-Verlag Janssen & Co. 1966.

Studies

1. Canone, Eugenio. 1997. "I Lessici Filosofici Latini Del Seicento." In Il Vocabolario Della République Des Lettres. Terminologia Filosofica E Storia Della Filosofia. Problemi Di Metodo. Atti Del Convegno Internazionale in Memoriam Di Paul Dibon (Napoli, 17-18 Maggio 1996), edited by Marta, Fattori, 93-114. Firenze: Olschki.

2. Geldsetzer, Lutz. 1966. "Über Das Philosophische Lexikon Des Johannes Micraelius Und Die Philosophische Lexikographie." In Lexicon Philosophicum Terminorum Philosophis Usitatorum, I-XXII. Düsseldorf: Stern-Verlag Janssen & Co.

Introduction to the anastatic reprint of the second edition (Stettin, 1662).

Sebastian Izquierdo (1601-1681)

Texts

1. Izquierdo, Sebastian. 1659. Pharus Scientiarum. Lyon.

Studies

1. Ceñal, Ramón. 1974. La Combinatoria De Sebastián Izquierdo: "Pharus Scientiarum" (1659), Disp. Xxix, De Combinatione. Madrid: Instituto de España.

Texto latino y traducción españols von una introducción: La Disputatio De Combinatione de Izquierdo en la historia de la aritmética combinatoria, desde Clavius a Bernoulli.

2. Di Vona, Piero. 1964. I Concetti Trascendenti in Sebastián Izquierdo E Nella Scolastica Del Seicento. Napoli: Loffredo.

3. Fuerte Herreros, José Luis. 1981. La Lógica Como Fundamentación Del Arte General Del Saber En Sebastián Izquierdo: Estudio Del Pharus Scientiarum (1659). Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, Instituto de Estudios Albacetenses.

4. Schmutz, Jacob. 2002. "Sebastián Izquierdo: De La Science Divine À L'ontologie Des États De Chose." In Sur La Science Divine, edited by Bardout, Jean-Christophe and Boulnois, Olivier, 412-421. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Traduction d'extraits de Le Phare des sciences pp. 422-435.

Bartolomeo Mastri (1602-1673)

Texts

1. Mastri, Bartolomeo. 1646. Disputationes in Xii Libros Metaphysicorum. Venezia.

2 volumes

Studies

1. Blum, Paul Richard. 2002. "La Métaphysique Comme Théologie Naturelle: Bartolomeo Mastri." Études Philosophiques:31-47.

2. Burkhardt, Hans. 1988. "Modalities in Language, Thought and Reality in Leibniz, Descartes and Crusius." Synthese no. 75:183-215.

3. Crowley, Bonaventure. 1948. "The Life and Works of Bartolomeo Mastri, O.F.M. Conv. 1602-1673." Franciscan Studies no. 8:97-152.

4. Forlivesi, Marco. 2002. Scotistarum Princeps: Bartolomeo Mastri (1602-1673) E Il Suo Tempo. Padova: Centro Studi Antoniani.

5. ———. 2002. "La Distinction Entre Concept Formel Et Concept Objectif Dans La Pensée De Bartolomeo Mastri." Études Philosophiques:3-30.

6. ———, ed. 2006. Rem in Seipsa Cernere. Saggi Sul Pensiero Filosofico Di Bartolomeo Mastri (1602-1673). Padova: Il Poligrafo.

Con introduzioni di Alessandro Ghisalberti e Gregorio Piaia.

7. Knebel, Sven K. 2002. "Entre Logique Mentaliste Et Métaphysique Conceptualiste: La Distinctio Rationis Ratiocinantis." Études Philosophiques:145-168.

"In the scholastic way of spelling out "A = A", some sort of distinction intervened between the relata, viz. the distinctio rationis ratiocinantis. To distinguish between the distinctio rationis ratiocinatae and ratiocinantis was commonplace from the sixteenth up to the eighteenth centuries. But how to make sense of a distinction that is without any foundation in the object itself? Mastri's account marks a crisis within Scotism, since his reception of Peter Aureol's conceptualism made it possible to give the d istinctio rationis ratiocinantis a metaphysical rather than a logical interpretation."

Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz (1606-1682)

Texts

1. Caramuel y Lobkowitz, Juan. 1642. Rationalis Et Realis Philosophia. Louvain.

Studies

1. Dvorák, Petr. 2008. "Relational Logic in Juan Caramuel." In Mediaeval and Renaissance Logic, edited by Gabbay, Dov and Woods, John, 645-666. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Handbook of the History of Logic, vol. 2.

2. Pastine, Dino. 1975. Juan Caramuel. Probabilismo Ed Enciclopedia. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

3. Schmutz, Jacob. 2001. "Juan Caramuel on the Year 2000: Time and Possible Worlds in Early-Modern Scholasticism." In The Medieval Concept of Time. The Scholastic Debate and Its Reception in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Porro, Pasquale, 399-434. Leiden: Brill.

4. ———. 2006. "Juan Caramuel Y Lobkowitz (1606-82)." In Centuriae Latinae Ii. Cent Et Une Figures Humanistes De La Renaissance Aux Lumières, À La Mémoire De Marie-Madeleine De La Garanderie, edited by Nativel, Colette, 182-202. Geneva: Droz.

5. Serrai, Alfredo. 2005. 'Phoenix Europae'. Juan Caramuel Y Lobkowitz in Prospettiva Bibliografica. Milano: Sylvestre Bonnard.

Abraham Calov (1612-1686)

"His most interesting metaphysical works are the Metaphysica divina pars generalis and the Metaphysica divina pars specialis . Calovius's logical / epistemological works, the Gnostologia and Noologia, may be of some interest, although as logic the works are weakened by the psychologism which is often found in logic texts of that period and school.

Calovius is a good example of the typical Protestant metaphysician of the 17th century. According tu Calovius, one's metaphysical studies should be guided by the truths of revealed faith, in this case orthodox Lutheranism. Without the guidance of the celestial light, all our travels into scholarly study are nothing more than pitiable wandering. But we cannot follow this celestial light unless we pay attention to both Scripture and nature. Calovius reveals himself to be a true scholastic by naming Aristotle the foremost philosopher. Thus, the main task of Calovius's work is to reconcile the revealed truths of orthodox Lutheranism with the principles of Aristotle's metaphysics. That one is so enabled to refute the errors of agnostic natural scientists, Socinians (a favourite target of Protestant attacks, this Protestant sect denied the doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ), Jesuits, Calvinists, and other heretics, so much the better. Still, both soumces of knowledge are required: without Aristotelian natural science, there will be factual errors; without Scripture, heresy. ( Hinc tot errores, tot haereses .)

Metaphysics, according to Calovius, is the wisdom of being qua being ( sapientia Entis qua Entis ). This definition should be understood as denoting one discipline, which is also called 'ontology' or 'transcendental wisdom' ( ontologia [in Greek] sive transcendentalis Sapientia ). The usual and improper sense of 'metaphysics' adopted by the Jesuit Benito Pereira (c. 1535-1610). according tu whom metaphysics is concerned with disembodied spirit, is rejected. Indeed, he says, they hallucinate who make the object of metaphysics either God or immaterial substance, and they plainly do not understand the nature of wisdom.

Thus, Calovius believes that the mistake of people like Pereira was to fail to acknowledge a notion of being which is general enough to be common both to spiritual and material beings. This, of course, may not be entirely fair to Pereira and other Thomists, since theological discomfiture may arise from claiming that God and creatures are subsumed under a general concept of being. Does this most general of concepts logically or ontologically precede God? Or is the dignity of God affected by sharing the notion of being with beings like you and me?

Metaphysics, fmally, must deal with what really is, not merely what could be. Calovius claims that truly and properly, metaphysics concerns itself with non-complex, essential, positive, real, actual being ( Ens incomplexum, per se, positivum, reale et actuale ).

Only in an attenuated sense does it contain complex, accidental, deprived beings, beings of reason, and potential beings ( Entia complexa, per accidens, privationes, Entia rationes et in potentia ). Calovius prefers to limit metaphysics tu the former, and we might not incorrectly cali him an 'actualist'. Atfer all, Calovius wonders, how does one abstract notion of being common to actual and potential being, if potential being is not truly being?"

From: Calovius, Abraham by Jeffrey Coombs - in: Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology - Edited by Barry Smith Barry and Hans Burkhardt. Munich: Philosophia Verlag 1991, pp. 112-113.

Texts

1. Calov, Abraham. 1636. Metaphysica Divina, Pars Generalis. Wittenberg.

Complete title: Metaphysica divina, a principiis primis eruta, in abstractione Entis repraesentata, ad S.S. Theologicam applicata, monstrans, Terminorum et conclusionum transcendentium usum genuinum abusum a hereticum, constans.

2. ———. 1651. Scripta Philosophica. Lubecca.

Reprint Wittenberg 1673. Contents: I. Gnostologia; II. Noologia seu habitus intelligentiae; III. Metaphysicae divinae pars generalis; IV. Metaphysicae divinae pars specialis; V. Enciclopedia Mathematica; VI. Methodologia; VII. Ideae encyclopaedias disciplinarum realium.

Studies

1. Appold, Kenneth G. 1998. Abraham Calov's Doctrine of Vocatio in Its Systematic Context. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Johannes Clauberg (1622-1665)

Texts

1. Clauberg, Johannes. 1647. Elementa Philosophiae Seu Ontosophia. Groningen.

2. ———. 1691. Opera Omnia Philosophica. Amsterdam.

Reprint: Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1968 (2 volumes).

3. ———. 2007. Logique Ancienne Et Nouvelle. Paris: Vrin.

Traduction de la Logica Vetus et Nova (1658).

Présentation, traduction et notes par Jacqueline Lagrée et Guillaume Coqui.

Studies

1. Balz, Albert G.A. 1934. "Clauberg and the Development of Occasionalism." Philosophical Review no. 43:48-64.

Reprinted in: A. G. A. Balz, Cartesian Studies, New York, Columbia University Press, 1951, pp. 158-194.

2. Bardout, Jean-Christophe. 2002. "Johannes Clauberg." In A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Nadler, Steven, 140-151. Malden: Blackwell.

3. Brosch, Pius. 1926. Die Ontologie Des Johannes Clauberg. Eine Historische Würdigung Und Eine Analyse Ihrer Probleme. Greifswald: L. Bamberg.

Inaugural Dissertation.

4. Carraud, Vincent. 1999. "L'ontologie Peut-Elle Être Cartésienne? L'exemple De L' ontosophia De Clauberg, De 1647 À 1664: De L' ens À La Mens." In Johannes Clauberg (1622-1665) and Cartesian Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century, edited by Verbeek, Theo, 13-38. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

5. École, Jean. 1999. "La Place De La Metaphysica De Ente, Quae Rectius Ontosophia Dans L'histoire De L'ontologie Et Sa Réception Chez Christian Wolff." In Johannes Clauberg (1622-1665) and Cartesian Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century, edited by Verbeek, Theo, 61-74. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Repris dans:Hans Werner Arndt, Sonia Carboncini-Gavanelli et Jean École (eds.), Autour de la philosophie Wolffienne, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2001, pp. 117-130.

6. Lagrée, Jacqueline. 2002. "Sens Et Vérité Chez Clauberg Et Spinoza." Philosophiques no. 29:121-138.

"This paper aims to show how the Spinozistic hermeneutical position in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus is founded in a particular tradition, that of Johannes Clauberg, which makes a strong distinction among the sensus genuinus (i.e., the meaning intended by the author), the true meaning, and the truth. L. Meyer, a physician and friend of Spinoza, accepts this distinction but he reduces the true meaning to the truth as it is understood in the philosophy of Descartes or Spinoza. Spinoza, however, maintains the distinction between true meaning and truth, and for him the Bible keeps its holy character as long as it helps man to practice justice and charity. Human reason brings out the universal moral teachings of the Bible and it fosters a community of those who genuinely seek the truth."

7. Mancini, Italo. 1960. "L' ontosophia Di Johannes Clauberg E I Primi Tentativi Di Soluzione Cartesiana." In Festschrift H. J. De Vleeschauwer, 66-83. Pretoria: University of South Africa.

8. Savini, Massimiliano. 2006. "L'insertion du cartésianisme en logique: la Logica vetus & nova de Johannes Clauberg." Revue de Métaphisique et de Morale:73-88.

"The Logica vetus & nova published by Johannes Clauberg (1654) is directly inspired by the works of Descartes. For this reason, this text is commonly considered as the first handbook of 'cartesian' logic. Which are, therefore, the Cartesian elements distinguishing this logic from the previous ones? Our aim is to show that there are two main aspects which Clauberg derives from the works of Descartes: on the one hand the foundation of logic on the perceptio clara et distincta; on the other the role of medicina mentis assumed by logic, on the basis of a philosophical theory of prejudices that has been derived from the Principia philosophiae (but also from Bacon). Clauberg's logic, anyway, does not accept the most radical innovations of Cartesian theory of knowledge: in this way it is still bound up with the scholastic tradition."

9. ———. 2011. Johannes Clauberg. Methodus Cartesiana Et Ontologie. Paris: Vrin.

10. Scheffel, Dieter. 1994. "Zur Grundidee Der Ontologie Bei Wolff Und Clauberg." In Aufklärung Und Erneuerung. Beiträge Zur Geschichte Der Universität Halle Im Ersten Jahrundert Ihres Bestehens (1694-1806), edited by Jerouschek, Günter and Sames, Arno, 157-162. Hanau: Dausien.

11. Trevisani, Francesco. 1993. "Johannes Clauberg E L'aristotele Riformato." In L'interpretazione Nei Secoli Xvi E Xvii. Atti Del Convegno Internazionale Di Studi Milano (18-20 Novembre 1991) Parigi (6-8 Dicembre 1991), edited by Canziani, Guido, 103-126. Milano: Franco Angeli.

12. Verbeek, Theo, ed. 1999. Johannes Clauberg (1622-1665) and Cartesian Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

13. Viola, Eugenio. 1975. "Scolastica E Cartesianesimo Nel Pensiero Di J. Clauberg." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 67:247-266.

14. Weier, Winfried. 2000. "Leibnitiana Bei Johannes Clauberg." Studia Leibnitiana no. 32:21-42.

"It is a much neglected fact that the young Leibniz expressed particular interest for the philosophy of Johannes Clauberg, a follower of Descartes with Aristotelian outlook who taught at the University of Duisburg. Indeed he found here, against the background of Cartesianism, important impulses and preconceptions for important basic positions of his, which in many respects can be understood as extensions and unfoldings of Claubergian approaches. In this way nothing less than a story of creation and development of Leibnizian thought is uncovered, e. g. from the gnoseological (symbolism of ideas; differentiation of nominal and real definitions, truths of reason and fact; the importance of real existence for the coherence of concepts) to the ontological area (the preparation of Leibnizian monadology through the question about the character of being in the innate ideas of Descartes; development of the concept of potency by means of that of facultas to that of virtus, of the petites perceptions of Leibniz and accordingly, for the first time in intellectual history, to his basic understanding of the unconscious): Further development of the anthropological question formulation through the idea of pre-established harmony."

Jakob Thomasius (1622-1684)

Texts

1. Thomasius, Jakob. 1665. Schediasma Historicum. Leipzig.

2. ———. 1670. Erotemata Metaphysica Pro Incipientibus. Accessit Pro Adultis Historia Variae Fortunae Quam Methaphysica Experta Est. Leipzig.

Reprint of the second edition (Leipzig 1678) in: J. Thomasius, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. III, edited by Walter Sparn, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2003.

3. ———. 1670. Erotemata Logica Pro Incipientibus. Accessit Pro Adultis Processus Disputandi. Leipzig.

Reprint of the second edition (Leipzig 1678) in: J. Thomasius, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. II, edited by Walter Sparn, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2003.

Studies

1. Mercer, Christia. 2004. "Leibniz and His Master: The Correspondence with Jakob Thomasius." In Leibniz and His Correspondents, edited by Lodge, Paul, 10-46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2. Micheli, Giuseppe. 1993. "The 'Historia Philosophica' in German Scholastic Thought." In Models of the History of Philosophy. Volume I: From Its Origins in the Renaissance to the 'Historia Philosophica', edited by Santinello, Giovanni, 371-473. New York: Springer.

On Jakob Thomasius see pp. 409-442 by Giovanni Santinello.

3. Santinello, Giovanni. 1978. "Jakob Thomasius E Il Medioevo." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 4:173-216.

Jean Baptiste Du Hamel (1624-1706)

Texts

1. Du Hamel, Jean-Baptiste. 1678. Philosophia Vetus Et Nova. Paris.

Reprint of the 1682 edition: Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2006.

Tomus prior, qui Logicam, Metaphysicam et Philosophiam moralem complectitur.

Tomus posterior, qui Physicam generalem et specialem tripartitam complectitur.

Studies

1. Wells, Norman J. 1999. "Jean Du Hamel, the Cartesians and Arnauld on Idea." Modern Schoolman no. 76:245-271.

Jean Le Clerc (1657-1736)

Texts

1. Le Clerc, Jean. 1692. Logica: Sive, Ars Ratiocinandi. [and] Ontologia; Sive De Ente in Genere. [And:] Pneumatologia Seu De Spiritibus. London.

Reprint in: Opera philosophica in quatuor volumina digesta, Vol. I: Logica & Ontologia, Amsterdam, 1704.

Studies

1. Pitassi, Maria Cristina. 1987. Entre Croire Et Savoir: Le Problème De La Méthode Critique Chez Jean Le Clerc. Leiden: Brill.

2. Schuurman, Paul. 2003. "The Empiricist Logic of Ideas of Jean Le Clerc." In The Early Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic, 1650-1750, edited by Bunge, Wiep van, 137-153. Leiden: Brill.

Selected papers of a Conference held at the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel 22-23 march 2001.

3. ———. 2003. Ideas, Mental Faculties and Method. The Logic of Ideas of Descartes and Locke and Its Reception in the Dutch Republic, 1630-1750. Leiden: Brill.

See the chapter V: Jean le Clerc: Lockean empiricism in textbook format (1692), pp. 70-88.

Johann Franz Budde (Buddeus) (1667-1729)

Texts

1. Budde, Johann Franz. 1703. Elementa Philosophiae Instrumentalis, Seu Institutionum Philosophiae Eclecticae. Tomus Primus. Halle.

Reprint in: Gesammelte Schriften - Vol. I - Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 2006.

2. ———. 1703. Elementa Philosophiae Theoreticae Seu Institutionum Philosophiae Eclecticae. Tomus Secundus. Halle.

Reprint in: Gesammelte Schriften - Vol. II - Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 2003.

3. ———. 1727. Isagoge Historico-Theologica Ad Theologiam Universam Singulasque Eius Partes. Leipzig.

Reprint in the VIII volume of his Gesammelte Schriften, edited and with a preface by Leonhard Hell, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1999.

Studies

1. Fabbianelli, Faustino. 2003. "Leibniz, Budde Et Wolff. Trois Modèles De Théodicée." Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 128:293-396.

"The paper deals with the limitations of creatures, namely, more precisely the relationship between man and God amid a universe wanted by the latter. It studies the several attempts by Leibniz, Budde and then Wolff to reconcile human freedom and divine nature. Several axes of analysis are to be set in order to wander along the several patterns of those three authors, i.e. the one which traditionally opposed voluntarism to rationalism and should be contrasted as well as the one which opposes anthropology and theology."

2. Masi, Serenella. 1977. "Eclettismo E Storia Della Filosofia in Johann Franz Budde." Memorie della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino:164-212.

Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche. Serie V. Vol. I.

3. Sparn, Walter. 2006. "Einleitung." In Elementa Philosophiae Instrumentalis, Seu Institutionum Philosophiae Eclecticae. Tomus Primus, I-LXII. Hildesheim: Gorg Olms.

Johann Franz Budde, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. I, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2006.

4. Wundt, Max. 1945. Die Deutsche Schulphilosophie Im Zeitalter Der Aufklärung. Tübingen: Mohr.

On Budde see pp. 63-75.

Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-1762)

"Baumgarten's basic argument for the existence of a special faculty of sensitive cognition leads back to the core of his metaphysics. To be aware of the material perfection of the world from a finite point of view is, he held, possible only in a sensitive way that is not overwhelmed by abstractive concepts of the intellect. For Baumgarten, beauty is the observable phenomenon representing this material perfection, and the finite created mind is able to gain consciousness of it because of its original disposition to represent the reality and order of the world by clear but confused perceptions. Baumgarten elaborates a set of conditions for the 'art of thinking beautifully' ( ars pulchre cogitandi ). He hereby relies on the doctrines of 'special metaphysics': cosmology, psychology, and the discipline yielding the ultimate ground of the relation between these, namely natural theology.

In his account of metaphysics Baumgarten in general follows Wolff. The first main part is 'ontology' or 'general metaphysics'. This sets out the 'predicates of being'. Baumgarten interprets the principle of contradiction in a way which yields the basic ontological concept 'something' or simply 'thing' (ens): what is not 'A and not-A', i.e. 'nothing' ( nihil ), is 'something' ( non-nihil ). The universal connection of all things is governed by the principle of ratio and rationatum : whatsoever B exist, is founded in something other A, and at the same time there is something other C which is founded in B. The further universal predicates are unum, ordo, verum, and perfectum, traditionally called the 'transcendental' predicates of being.

Baumgarten's ontology manifests much sophistication. Yet there are profound difficulties which cannot be ignored. How, for example, can the universal predicates be compatible with each member of such disjunctive predicates as: necessary/contingent; changeable/unchangeable; real/unreal; singular/universal; total/partial; finite/infinite; simple/composed; substance/accidence? The universal and disjunctive predicates constitute the internal determination of the ens qua ens . They differ altogether from such external (or 'relative') predicates as: similar and diverse, simultaneous, successive, cause and caused, etc. The ontological predicates then furnish the basic material for most of the arguments of special metaphysics. In two points Baumgarten proves especially his independence from Wolff: in his doctrine of monads as immaterial, inextended substances; and in his doctrine of pre-established harmony in the absence of influxus physicus .

He herewith reinstitutes the genuine ideas of Leibniz, more than any other of the Wolffians."

From: Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb by Kalus E. Kaehler - in: Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology - Edited by Barry Smith Barry and Hans Burkhardt. Munich: Philosophia Verlag 1991, pp. 77-78.

Texts

1. Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb. 1739. Metaphysica. Halle.

Reprint of the Seventh edition (1779): Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1969.

English translation by Courtney D. Fugate and John Hymers: Metaphysics. A Critical Translation with Kant's Elucidations, Selected Notes, and Related Materials, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.

2. ———. 1770. Philosophia Generalis. Edidit Cum Dissertatione Prooemiali De Dubitatione Et Certitudine Johann Christian Foerster. Halle.

Reprint: Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1968.

3. ———. 1998. Die Vorreden Zur Metaphysik. Frankfurt: Klostermann.

Introduction to the First (1739), Second (1742) and Third (1749) editions of the Metaphysica edited, translated in German and annotated by Ursula Niggli.

Studies

1. Casula, Mario. 1973. La Metafisica Di A. G. Baumgarten. Milano: Mursia.

2. ———. 1979. "A. G. Baumgarten Entre G. W. Leibniz Et Chr. Wolff." Archives de Philosophie no. 42:547-574.

"Historically Wolff recedes from Leibniz while Baumgarten, coming nearer to Leibniz, recedes from Wolff. If they are compared on two major issues: monadology and preestablished harmony, together with the principle of sufficient reason, concept of substance as force, concept of individual substance, it appears (as in our work on Baumgarten's metaphysics) that Baumgarten is more Leibnizian than Wolff. His metaphysics is the first Leibnizian-Wolffian philosophy; he assumes and develops, with the methodology of Wolff, the philosophy of Leibniz."

3. Pimpinella, Pietro. 2001. " Cognitio Intuitiva in Wolff E Baumgarten." In Vernunfkritik Und Aufklärung. Studien Zur Philosophie Kants Und Seines Jahrunderts. Norbert Hinske Zum Siebzigsten Geburstag, edited by Oberhausen, Michael, Delfosse, Heinrich and Pozzo, Riccardo, 265-294. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog.

4. Tonelli, Giorgio. 1975. "Casula on Baumgarten's Metaphysics." Kantstudien no. 66:242-243.

Review of Mario Casula (1973).

Christian August Crusius (1715-1775)

"Crusius, in his Entwurf der nothwendigen Vernunftwahrheiten ( Sketch of necessary rational truths; Leipzig, 1745), divided metaphysics into ontology, theology, cosmology, and pneumatology, in explicit opposition to Wolff's ordering of the metaphysical sciences.

Ontology begins, not with first principles, but with the notion of a thing in general, directly connected with the notion of a "really given thing'. Only after introducing these notions did Crusius discuss essence, existence, and causality. Crusius regarded existence as indefinable and as a primary notion arising from sensation.

In his discussion of causality, Crusius expounded a principle of determining reason, his version of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason. Crusius held, against Wolff, that a sufficient reason suffices only for free actions insofar as they are free. Rational truths and natural events not depending on free causes need a more cogent foundation, a determining reason. This principle does not derive from the principle of identity, but rather from what we must conceive or what we cannot conceive as united or separate, and thus from a new case of the principle of cogitabilitas. Crusius, aiming at a sharper distinction between mechanism and free actions, held that the real nature of causality is unknown and that our knowledge of causal connections is based on the constant conjunction of two events in experience. This, of course, cleared the path for the members of his school to accept the Humean critique of the causal connection.

Crusius's ontology reveals a general characteristic of his metaphysics. His was not a monolithic system beginning with a single principle and deducing from it all subsequent notions and propositions, as was Wolff's. Rather, it was founded both on several independent principles and on a multitude of elementary notions that could be defined only by an appeal to reality (by their concrete representation)--notions such as existence, space, time, and force; or, in psychology, the particular powers of the soul, some mental faculties, and pleasure and pain. Through Hoffman Crusius derived this view from Locke's doctrine of simple ideas, but he supposed that the number of elementary notions (which he once called categories) could be infinite."

From: Giorgio Tonelli - Crusius, Christian August. In The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edwards Paul. New York: Macmillan 1967. Vol 2, pp. 268-271.

Texts

1. Crusius, Christian August. 1964. Die Philosophische Hauptwerke. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

The main philosophical works, edited by Giorgio Tonelli in 4 volumes.

2. ———. 1964. Entwurf Der Nothwendigen Vernunft-Wahrheiten, Wiefern Sie Den Zufällligen Entgegen Gesetzt Werden. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Vol. 2: Sketch of the necessary truths of reason, insofar as they are opposed to contingent truths. Reprint of the edition published at Leipzig in 1775, (948 pages) [The metaphysical work].

3. ———. 1965. Weg Zur Gewissheit Und Zuverlässigkeit Der Menschlichen Erkenntnis. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Vol. 3: The way to the certainty and dependability of human knowledge. Reprint of the edition published at Leipzig in 1747, (1132 pages) [The logical work].

4. ———. 1969. Anweisung Vernunftig Zu Leben: Darinnen Nach Erklarung Der Natur Des Menschlichen Willens Die Naturlichen Pflichten Und Allgemeinen Klugsheitslehren Im Richtigen Zusammenhange Vorgetragen Werden. Hildesheim: Goerg Olms.

Vol. 1: Guide to rational living. Reprint of the edition published at Leipzig in 1744, with an introduction by Giorgio Tonelli (LXIV, 886 pages) [The ethical work].

5. ———. 1987. Kleinere Philosophische Schriften. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Vol. 4.1: Minor philosophical writings. Reprint of the edition published at Leipzig in 1749, (Edited by Sonia Carboncini and Reinhard Finster, with an introduction by Sonia Carboncini, XXXVI, 695 pages).

Studies

1. Beck, Lewis White. 1969. Early German Philosophy. Kant and His Predecessors. Cambridge: Belknap Press.

Chapter XVI: On the threshold of the critical philosophy. Crusius pp. 394-402.

2. Carboncini, Sonia. 1986. "Christian August Crusius Und Die Leibniz-Wolffsche Philosophie." In Beiträge Zur Wirkungs- Und Rezeptionsgeschichte Von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, edited by Heinekamp, Albert, 110-125. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.

Studia Leibnitiana vol. 26.

3. Fabbianelli, Faustino. 2004. "Christian August Crusius: I Presupposti Metafisici." Rivista di Storia della Filosofia no. 59:737-744.

4. Heimsoeth, Heinz. 1956. "Metaphysik Und Kritik Bei Chr. A. Crusius. Ein Beitrag Zur Ontologischen Vorgeschichte Der Kritik Der Reinen Vernunft Im 18. Jahrhundert." In Studien Zur Philosophie Immanuel Kants. Metaphysische Ursprünge Und Ontologische Grundlagen, 125-188. Köln: Kölner Universitätsverlag.

Originally published in 1926.

5. Koriako, Darius. 1999. "Crusius Über Unmöglichkeit Einer Letztbegründung Der Logik." Studia Leibnitiana.Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Philosophie und der Wissenschaften no. 31:99-108.

"In this paper we examine some passages of a logical treatise by Christian August Crusius. It seems that Crusius anticipated what might be called the circle of deduction, first discussed by Lewis Carroll.

The question now emerges: why was it possible for Crusius to have deeper logical insights than his contemporaries, given that he was not a brilliant logician? The answer here proposed traces these insights back to his very peculiar philosophical premisses, which have been important for Kant's development in his early career."

6. Krieger, Martin. 1993. Geist, Welt Und Gott Bei Christian August Crusius. Erkenntnistheoretisch-Psychologische Perspektiven Im Kontrast Zum Wolffschen System. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

7. Tonelli, Giorgio. 1967. "Crusius, Christian August." In The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Paul, Edwards, Vol. 2, 268-271. New York: Macmillan.

Vol. 2.

Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728-1777)

"A. Simple concepts. Simple, or fundamental, concepts ( Grundbegriffe) are a subclass of empirical concepts ( Erfahrungsbegriffe) and must be found by the Lockean method of collecting and inspecting ( Musterung) examples. But whereas empirical concepts may be erroneous (i.e., may have no object corresponding to them) and give only a mere delusory appearance of things, the fundamental concepts are derived from the experience of the sensu interno and must be granted even by the skeptic (the solipsist, der Egoist) who denies the existence of everything except himself and his experience.(45) The simple concepts can only be ostensively defined, not nominally. They can appear as predicates in a judgment whose subject is a complex empirical concept; but in this case the subject can be analyzed into simple concepts, and the original judgment will thereby be resolved into tautologies ("white is white"), simple negative propositions like Locke's intuited disagreements of ideas ("white is not black"), or relational propositions (such as "space has length, breadth, and height" or "motion has velocity and direction") .(46)

B. Combinations of simple concepts. Our knowledge of such propositions is a priori, for though experience is necessary if we are to have the concepts, we do not have to experience their combinations to see the truth of the propositions.(47) The various sciences are based upon some of the simple concepts (for example, geometry on that of space, chronometry on that of time, phoronomy on space and time, "agathology" on the concept of good), and Lambert builds up large and elaborate tables showing what simple concepts are involved in each of the branches of science and philosophy.(48)

But while Lambert is clear in his theory of simple concepts, his theory of their combination is no more satisfactory than that of Crusius. Lambert uses a weaker form of Crusius' criterion of what can or cannot be thought together, calling it the criterion of "thinkability" ( Gedenkbarkeit). But while thinkability is a test for a concept, something stronger is needed as a test for judgment; "not to be thought apart," or "must be thought together" as Crusius would say, are needed. This criterion of thinkability, or inseparability, applies to propositions whose predicate is included in the subject, as Leibniz thought; but obviously it will not work for that reason on propositions connecting simple subjects and predicates. Lambert sometimes appeals to the law of contradiction, which in turn is based upon the incredibility ( nicht-glauben-lassen) of contradictions(49) and sometimes to

the mere possibility of thinking a combination of ideas under maxim that "cogitabile is equal to possibile."(50) But if Gedenkbarkeit is too weak a test, the law of contradiction is too stringent, and Lambert must rightly confess that the "fons possibilitatis duos ideas combinandi has not been fully discovered."(51) It was to remain hidden until Kant clearly distinguished the synthetic a priori from the analytic; and to explain the kind of combinations Lambert and Crusius were concerned with required the whole labor of the Critique of Pure Reason.

The total system of all the simple concepts and their permissible combinations constitutes what Lambert calls the realm of truth.(52) It is equally the object of logic (i.e., the science of reason, Vernunftlehre) and ontology, which is therefore completely a priori, since it deals with objects only insofar as they are possible. Still, Lambert does not wish the realm of truth to be defined solely in formal terms as a set of non-contradictory propositions having simple concepts as their subjects. He speaks rather of a harmony(53) reigning in the realm of truth. Harmony is what later in the history of philosophy will be called "coherence." Each proposition in the system is not only consistent with all the others, but harmonizes with it in some more intimate fashion, supporting and being supported by all the others. Every erroneous proposition can be discovered by a stepwise process (Schritt für Schritt, as Lambert liked to say) of testing it against each of the others; but since every proposition is ultimately reducible to simple concepts which are always logically true, every error contains some truth which we are to discover by analysis. The most harmonious system is, by definition, the logically true system: wholly unified, with no contingencies, and completely comprehensive. Any lacuna is a warning, and any dissonance a sign of error.(54)"

(45) Criterium veritatis §§ 45, 80; Methode, Notanda § 14 and §5 36; Neues Organon I, §§ 653-656.

(46) N eues Organon I §§ 656, 659; II,, §§ 32, 33, 72, 73.

(47) Ibid., I, §§ 634-644, 656-657.

(48) "Table of the simple conceptual correlates of fundamental disciplines," Architektonic § 53.

(49) Neues Organon, II, § 162; Architektonic, 5 273.

(5o) Methode, Notanda 5 19, A.

(51) Ibid., p,

(52) Architektonic §§ 229, 231, 273; Methode, §§ 23-25; but the term is not used in the Criterium veritatis.

(53) Compare Neues Organon I S§662 and II §§ 160-161 with II, § 180.

(54) Ibid., II, §§ 191-240.

From: Beck Lewis White. Early German Philosophy. Kant and his Predecessors. Cambridge: Belknap Press 1969, pp. 406-407.

Texts

1. Lambert, Johann Heinrich. 1764. Neues Organon. Leipzig.

Anastatic reprint by H.-W. Arndt in Philosophische Schriften voll. 1-2.

Italian translation by Raffaele Ciafardone: Nuovo organo, Bari: Laterza 1977.

English translation of selected passages in: Eric Watkins, Kant's Critique of Pure rason, Background Source Materials, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 257-274.

The work is divide in four parts: I. Dianoiology, the laws of thought; II. Alethiology, the doctrine of truth; III. Semiotic, the doctrine of signs; 4. Phenomenology, the doctrine of appearances.

2. ———. 1771. Anlage Zur Architektonik Oder Theorie Des Einfachen Und Ersten in Der Philosophischen Und Mathematischen Erkenntniss. Riga.

Anastatic reprint by H.-W. Arndt in Philosophische Schriften voll. 3-4.

Italian translation by Raffaele Ciafardone: Disegno dell'architettonica, o teoria del semplice e del primo nella conoscenza filosofica e nella conoscenza matematica, Napoli: Ortothes, 2012.

3. ———. 1915. "Abhandlung Vom Criterium Veritatis (1761)." Kant-Studien no. 36:7-64.

First postumhous edition by Karl Bopp; partial English translation in: Eric Watkins, Kant's Critique of Pure rason, Background Source Materials, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 233-257.

4. ———. 1918. "Über Die Methode, Die Metaphysik, Theologie Und Moral Richtiger Zu Beweisen (1762)." Kant-Studien no. 42:1-36.

First postumhous edition by Karl Bopp.

5. ———. 1965. Philosophische Schriften. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Anastatic reprint of the editions Leipzig, 1764 (v. I-II); Riga, 1771 (v. III-IV); Berlin 1782-87 (v. VI-VII, IX) by Hans-Werner Arndt; v. X: Entwürfe und Rezensionen aus dem Nachlaß (in three tomes, with an Introduction by A. Emmel and A. Spree, edited by Lothar Kreimendahl, 2008.

Studies

1. Colloque International Et Interdisciplinaire Jean-Henri Lambert, Mulhouse, 26-30 Septembre 1977. 1979. Paris: Ophrys.

2. Basso, Paola. 1999. Filosofia E Geometria. Lambert Interprete Di Euclide. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

3. Bokhove, Niels W. 1991. 'Phänomenologie': Ursprung Und Hintergrund Des Terminus Im 18. Jahrhundert, University of Utrecht.

Distributed by Scientia Verlag (Aalen), 1992.

Review by Ignacio Angelelli, Review of Metaphysics, 47 (1993) pp. 360-62.

The Third Part is dedicated to the "Development of the term 'phenomenology' in the Eighteenth century" through the detailed study of four authors: Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702-1782), Lambert (pp. 191-231), Kant, and John Robison (1739-1805).

4. Ciafardone, Raffaele. 1975. J. H. Lambert E La Fondazione Scientifica Della Filosofia. Urbino: Argalia.

5. Debru, Claude. 1977. Analyse Et Représentation. De La Méthodologie À La Théorie De L'espace: Kant Et Lambert. Paris: Vrin.

6. Laywine, Alison. 2010. "Kant and Lambert on Geometrical Postulates in the Reform of Metaphysics." In Discourse on a New Method. Reinvigorating the Marriage of History and Philosophy of Science, edited by May, Domski and Michael, Dickson, 113-133. Chicago: Open Court.

7. Preite, Maria dello. 1979. L'immagine Scientifica Del Mondo Di Johann Heinrich Lambert. Razionalità Ed Esperienza. Bari: Dedalo.

8. Schiewer Gesine, Lenoire. 1996. Cognitio Symbolica. Lamberts Semiotische Wissenschaft Und Ihre Diskussion Bei Herder, Jean-Paul Und Novalis. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

9. Todesco, Fabio. 1987. Riforma Della Metafisica E Sapere Scientifico. Saggio Su J. H. Lambert (1728-1777). Milano: Franco Angeli.

Bibliografia lambertiana (1944-1987): pp. 257-326.

10. Wolters, Gereon. 1980. Basis Und Deduktion. Studien Zur Entstehung Und Bedeutung Der Theorie Der Axiomatischen Methode Bei J. H. Lambert (1728-1777). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

11. ———. 1985. "Some Pragmatic Aspects of the Methodology of Johann Heinrich Lambert." In Change and Progress in Modern Science. Papers Related to and Arising from the Fourth International Conference on History and Philosophy of Science, Blacksburg, Virginia, November 1982, edited by Pitt, Joseph C., 133-170. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Francisco Suárez on Metaphysics as the Science of Real Beings

Introduction

References to the Latin edition of the Disputationes Metaphysicae (= DM) are to the edition in two volumes edited by Charles Berton reprinted in the Luis Vivés edition (voll. 25-26).

"Suarez’s contributions are important in three areas in particular: philosophy, law, and theology. From a philosophical standpoint his most important works are: De anima, which contains much of his psychology, epistemology, and philosophy of mind; De gratia, which deals with issues of philosophical theology involving free will and determinism; and the monumental Disputationes metaphysicae. The last is undoubtedly one of the great works of Western philosophy. It is the first systematic and comprehensive treatise on metaphysics composed in the West that is not a commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Furthermore, it summarizes and evaluates the metaphysical thought of fifteen hundred years of medieval and scholastic metaphysical speculation. Indeed, it is to this day the most complete and comprehensive exposition of scholastic and Aristotelian metaphysics. Its fifty-four disputations cover every metaphysical topic known during Suarez's time. De legibus is Suarez’s most important work dealing with legal and political theory. In it he explores in detail the nature of law and of civil society. Suarez’s views on international law (ius gentium) make him one of its founders. Suarez’s contributions in theology are contained in his numerous books on the subject. He touched upon almost every aspect of sacred doctrine, from the Trinity to questions pertaining to the spiritual life. This has made his theological writings a standard source of Catholic theology. Moreover, his role in helping to shape the response of the Catholic Counter-Reformation to the rise of Protestantism, guarantees a prominent place for his ideas in history. Suarez’s place in the history of philosophy is frequently disputed. Some authors place him firmly in the medieval tradition, claiming that he should be seen as perhaps the last world-class figure of that tradition before modem philosophy changes the philosophical direction of the West. Others see Suarez as providing the foundation for some of the views that were going to form the core of modem philosophy. Under the latter interpretation he is seen as a precursor of modem philosophy, rather than as the term of a medieval process of development." (pp. 260-261, notes omitted).

From: Jorge J. E. Gracia, "Francisco Suárez: the Man in History", The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 65, 1991, pp. 259-266.

"Perhaps the most important enterprise of the Doctor eximius, the Disputationes metaphysicae is a complete résumé of his own and previous Scholastic thought on a myriad of questions, arranged in the form of fifty-four "Disputations" dealing with various topics systematically. (...)

In format, Suárez's Disputationes represented a radical departure from previous metaphysical treatises. Until its appearance, metaphysics had been explicitly treated either just incidentally in the form of Opuscula ("little works"), such as St. Thomas Aquinas's De ente et essentia ("On Being and Essence"), or in commentaries on the text of Aristotle. Both methods were clearly unsatisfactory, the one incomplete and the other shackled to the rambling obsolete order of Aristotle. So Suárez says that he intends to give, preparatory to theology, a complete exposition of metaphysics which, instead of following the text of Aristotle, will proceed in a systematic fashion.

In executing his intention, the Doctor eximius has divided his work into two main parts, to which correspond two tomes. After explaining in the first Disputation the object, the dignity, and the utility of metaphysics, he proceeds in the first part to treat of being in general, its properties and causes. In the second tome, he descends to items under being, considering them from a metaphysical viewpoint.

The first part studies the concept of being (Disputation 2) which, representing in some way everything that entails an order to existence, transcends all genera, species and differences. It will encompass everything real, from extrinsic denominations, through mere possibles, to the subsistent, purely actual, and necessary reality of God. Following this is a treatment of the essential properties of every being inasmuch as it is a being, namely, unity, truth and goodness. Under the discussion of unity, space is given to questions concerning the principle of individuation (Disputation 5), the reality of universal natures (Disputation 6), and the various kinds of distinction (Disputation 7). The discussion of truth (Disputation 8) is balanced by discussion of falsity (Disputation 9) and that of goodness (Disputation 10) by that of evil (Disputation 11) After the essential properties, there follows a consideration of the causes of being. Disputation 12 treats causes in general while Disputations 13-25 deal with various types of causes. Concluding this first part, Disputation 26 presents a comparison of causes with their effects and Disputation 27 considers the mutual relations of causes one to another.

The second part opens with the division of being into infinite and finite (Disputation 28). Infinite being, or God, is the subject of the next two Disputations. In Disputation 29, the existence and unicity of God is demonstrated metaphysically. Disputation 30 goes on to investigate, as far as unaided human reason can, the divine perfection, simplicity, immensity, immutability, wisdom, and omnipotence. With Disputation 31 Suárez begins his treatment of finite being. It is this Disputation which is the locus of the famed Suárezian denial of the real distinction between essence and existence in creatures. In Disputation 32, Suárez considers the distinction of substance and accident in general. Substance is treated in metaphysical detail through the next four Disputations while the different categories of accident are the subject matter of Disputations 37 to 53. The fifty-fourth Disputation, (...) concludes the whole work with a discussion of "beings of reason" including negations, privations, and reason-dependent relations -- all of which fall outside real being, the object of metaphysics." (pp. 8-10, notes omitted)

From: John P. Doyle "Introduction" to: Francisco Suárez, On Beings of Reason. (De Entibus Rationis). Metaphysical Disputation LIV. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press 1995.

"It is generally agreed that modern philosophy places greater stress on the subjectivity of the knower than on the objective reality of the known, as does medieval philosophy. Suárez, when faced with a basic problem of metaphysics, whether the concept of ''being" is one or multiple, decided, without any Scholastic precedent, to make a subjective state of mind (conceptus formalis entis) the criterion for establishing the unitary sense of objective reality (conceptus obiectivus entis). When problems like that of "being" became too difficult to resolve by the usual medieval objective" approach, Suárez recommended recourse to the "subjective" because it was better known (notior) to us than the objective, especially as the subjective is produced "by us and in us" (a nobis et in nobis). On the basis of the principle that "to one formal concept one objective concept necessarily corresponds;"uni conceptui formali unus conceptus obiectivus necessario respondet, Suárez, as never before in Scholasticism, made extra-mental reality dependent for its truth on in intra-mental concept, thus changing the main thrust of medieval philosophy. Descartes adopted the same approach when faced with he basic problem of his system, of establishing, through the resources of the intellect, knowledge that was objectively certain. Like Suárez, he made an intra-mental concept the criterion for determining extra- mental reality. The intra-mental concept was the thinker's "cogito"; the extra-mental reality was the thinker's existence, "sum"; with the certainty of the existence following as a necessary consequence, "ergo", from the intra-mental concept itself.

Suárez could not have become the founder of modern philosophy before he had worked out his own system, the technical vocabulary of which provided the groundwork for the emerging modern systems. This vocabulary was first needed to systematize metaphysics. The long subjection to the unmethodical text of Aristotle had delayed the attainment of this important philosophical object, realised at last in the Disputationes Metaphysicae.

In the two volumes of that great work, the philosophy of being was given a binary structure, characterized, though not by its author, as general (vol. 1) and special (vol. 2) metaphysics. General metaphysics has as its theme the common concept of being, its general attributes, and its causes; and s pecial metaphysics, the kinds of being contained under the common concept, (*) classified in two dichotomies, the primary of finite and infinite, and the secondary of substance and accident. Suárez also furnished the burgeoning modern systems with vocabulary as groundwork for their ideas, in many cases the vocabulary anomalously grew to be alien to the system that was its source. How was this possible? Through that system undergoing anamorphosis, a condition where something distorted occasionally appears to be regular; indeed so regular, that the distorted ideas seem to belong to the nature of anamorphosed thing itself. Which may explain why the realist Suárez is made out to be a crypto-idealist, and it may be that the philosophies of realism (Scholasticism) and idealism (modern philosophies) have some hidden affinity and are closer together than one would suppose." (pp. 27-28)

Notes

(*) Suárez describes general metaphysics and its "propriam et adaequatam rationem, ac deinde proprietates eius et causas." DM 2: 1, introductory paragraph [25: 64] "... de communi conceptu entis, illiusque proprietatibus, quae de illa reciproce dicuntur.' DM 28, introductory paragraph [26: 1]. He describes special metaphysics as "res omnes, quae sub ente continentur, et illius rationem includunt, et sub obiectiva ratione huius scientiae cadunt, et a materia in suo esse abstrahunt." DM 2: 1, introductory paragraph [25: 64] "... definitas rationes entium... divisiones varias ipsius entis et membrorum eius... primam et maxime essentialem divisionem entis in finitum et infinitum secundum essentiam seu in ratione entis." DM 28, introductory paragraph [26: 1].

From: José Pereira, Suárez Between Scholasticism and Modernity, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press 2007.

Overview of Suárez's Metaphysical Disputations

"The two large folio volumes of the Disputationes metaphysicae appeared in Salamanca in 1597. In his brief foreword, "Ad lectorem," Suárez indicates his reason for undertaking this project: "It is impossible for anyone to become a competent theologian unless he builds upon a solid metaphysical foundation." He develops this view in the Prooemium or prologue to his work. The science of metaphysics, he holds, is indispensable for a mastery of theology. More intimately than any other human field of knowledge, it is connected with theology; it has for its object the most universal and supreme principles which embrace all being and are the foundation of all knowledge. This function of metaphysics was for Suárez a compelling motive for interrupting his theological labors and producing, in one systematic, comprehensive work, the results of his metaphysical studies and investigations, begun many years before. The prologue reads as follows:

"Sacred and supernatural theology relies on divine illumination and on principles revealed by God. However, it is cultivated by human reasoning and investigation, and therefore enlists the aid of truths naturally known, using them as ministers and instruments to develop its deductions and to illustrate divine truths. But of all the natural sciences, that which holds the primacy and has won the name of first philosophy is most valuable for promoting sacred and supernatural theology. For among them all it approaches most closely to the science of divine things, and also explains and vindicates those natural principles which embrace the universe of being and in one way or another stand at the basis of all learning.

For this reason I wished to revise and expand what I have worked out for my students and publicly taught on various occasions during many years concerning this natural wisdom, so that the results of my reflections might be made available to the general public. Accordingly I am forced for a time to interrupt, or rather to postpone, the more weighty commentaries and disputations on sacred theology I am so busily engaged in, as well as the taxing labor required for their publication.

It often happened that while I was treating of divine mysteries, metaphysical problems would come up. Without a knowledge and understanding of these, the higher mysteries of Christianity can scarcely, if at all, be discussed as they deserve. Hence I had to mingle baser questions with supernatural subjects, a practice that is annoying to readers and is not very profitable for them; or else, to avoid this awkward procedure, I had briefly to propose my own opinion in such matters, and Its demand of toy readers a blind faith in my judgment. This was embarrassing for me, and could well seem out of place to them. Metaphysical principles and truths are so closely interwoven with theological conclusions and deductions, that if knowledge and full understanding of the former are lacking, knowledge of the latter must necessarily suffer.

Led on by such considerations, I yielded to repeated requests and decided to write the present work. I have arranged all the metaphysical disputations according to a method calculated to combine comprehensive treatment with brevity, and so to be of greater service to revealed wisdom. Hence it will not be necessary to divide the work into several books. For all that pertains to this doctrine and is suitable to its subject matter in the light of the method adopted, can be fully handled in a limited number of disputations. What belongs to "pure philosophy" or dialectics has, so far as possible, been left out as not in keeping with the scope of the work. I shall adhere to this norm, even though I am aware that other writers on metaphysics devote much space to such subjects. But before I begin to treat of the subject-matter of this doctrine I shall, God willing, discuss wisdom or metaphysics itself, its object, use, necessity and its attributes and rewards."

The work falls into two main parts, coinciding with the two volumes in which it was published. It comprises fifty-four disputations in all. The first volume treats of metaphysics in its broadest comprehension: being as such, and the properties and causes of being. The first disputation deals with the object of metaphysics; the second inaugurates an exposition of the concept of being. Disputations III to XI discuss the passions and transcendental properties of being. Disputations XII to XXVII embody the author's doctrine on causes.

The second volume opens with a consideration of infinite and finite being. Two disputations deal with natural knowledge of the existence, nature, and attributes of God. The remaining disputations are devoted to the metaphysics of finite being, distributed according to the Aristotelian categories.

As the title indicates, the work is cast in the form of disputations. The discussions follow a regular pattern. First, the problem is stated. Then the various solutions that have actually been proposed by philosophers are reviewed (Variae opiniones). Thirdly, Suárez gives what he considers to be the true doctrine or, as the case may be, the most probable theory (Vera sententia or Resolutio quaestionis). A refutation of opposing views often brings the disputation to a close." (pp. 6-7)

From: Cyril Vollert, "Introduction" to: Francisco Suárez, On the Various Kinds of Distinctions (Disputatio VII), translated from the Latin with an introduction by Cyril Vollert, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press 1947.

Outline of the Metaphysical Disputations

I. The nature of metaphysics (1)

II. The transcendentals: being and its attributes (2-11)

A. Being (2, 3)

B. One (4, 5- 7)

C. True (8, 9)

D. Good (10, 11)

III. The causes of being (12-27)

A. Causes in general (12)

B. The material cause (13, 14)

C. The formal cause (15, 16)

D. The efficient cause (17-19, 20-22)

E. The final cause (23, 24)

F. The exemplar cause (25)

G. Relation of the causes to their effects and to each other (26, 27)

IV. The division of being into infinite and finite (28-31)

A. The distinction between infinite and finite being (28)

B. The existence and nature of the First Being (29, 30)

C. Finite being (31)

V. The division of finite being into substance and accident (32-38)

A. The distinction between substance and accident (32)

B. Created substance in general (33)

C. Primary substance (or suppositum) (34)

D. Immaterial substance (35)

E. Material substance (36)

F. Accidents in general (37, 38)

VI. The division of accidents into the nine categories (39-53)

A. The division of accidents into the nine highest genera (39)

B. Quantity (40, 41)

C. Quality (42-46)

D. Relation (47)

E. Action (48)

F. Passion (49)

G. Time (5o)

II. Place (51)

I. Position (52)

J. Having (53)

VII. Real being versus being of reason (54)" (pp. XVI-XVII)

From: Alfred J. Freddoso, Introduction to: On Efficient Causality. Metaphysical Disputations 17, 18, and 19. New Haven: Yale University Press 1994.

The object of metaphysics in the three first Metaphysical Disputations

"In the twenty-seven Disputations which make up the first volume, Suárez is concerned with being in general while, symmetrically, in the twenty-seven Disputations of the second volume he descends to particular being -- in effect dividing metaphysics itself into a general and a special part.

In the very first Disputation (Opera omnia, Paris: Vivès [1856]: vol. 25, pp. 1-64), he tells us that the object of metaphysics is "being insofar as it is real being." Explaining this, in Disputation 2 (pp. 64-102) he uses two distinctions already familiar to Scholastic authors. The first is between the formal concept as an act of the mind and the objective concept as what is immediately the object of that act. This latter may be an individual thing or some common feature (ratio) of things. It may, further, be something mind-independent, whether actual or possible, or it may be something merely objective or mind-dependent. The second distinction is between being as a participle, which refers to actual existents and being as a noun, which refers to whatever is not a simple fiction but is true in itself and apt really to exist. The object of metaphysics is then identified with the "common objective concept of being as a noun." This precise object, which reflects Avicenna's (980-1037) understanding of Aristotelian metaphysics, abstracts from existence and, as common, transcends all categories, genera, species and differences to embrace everything real. This last runs a range from extrinsic denominations (such as "being right," "being left," "being known," or "being willed"), 9 through mere possibles (which reduce to non-contradiction), to actual created substances and accidents, to the subsistent, purely actual, necessary, untreated, and infinite reality of God. Over this range, the common concept of being as a noun is analogous with what Suárez will call "an analogy of intrinsic attribution." In this analogy, a unified concept of being is shared, in an order that is intrinsic to it, by different beings (God and creatures, substance and accidents) in such way that the being of what is posterior depends upon and indeed "demands" (postulat) the being of what is prior.

Disputation 3 (pp. 102-115) offers a general treatment of the transcendental properties, namely unity, truth, and goodness, which belong to every being insofar as it is a being." (pp. XI-XII, notes omitted)

From: John P. Doyle, "Introduction" to: Francisco Suárez, The Metaphysical Demonstration of the Existence of God. Metaphysical Disputations 28-29, South Bend: St. Augustine Press 2004, pp. IX-XXIV.

"To what extent Suárez, despite his token references to Thomas Aquinas, follows Scotus' approach is evident from the definition of the subject matter of metaphysics in the first of the 54 disputations. Here he discusses six possible solutions to the problem, but dismisses all of them as either too comprehensive or too restrictive. The subject matter of metaphysics is neither everything that is knowable nor the "supreme real being" (Suárez, Disp. Met. 1.1.9), i.e. God or the immaterial being; nor is it the finite being that is the subject matter of physics. Rather, the subject matter of metaphysics is "being as such" (ens inquantum ens), i.e. a common determination (ibid. 1.1.23 and 26) that is grasped in a concept that abstracts from all categorial determinations as well as from being finite/infinite, being caused/uncaused, and being material/immaterial. Metaphysics is, therefore, the "most general science" (ibid. 1.5.14), because it treats of the "rationes universales transcendentales" (ibid. 1.2.27). That is to say, metaphysics is a scientia transcendens in the Scotistic sense. Because the immaterial being (God) cannot be known except through previously known transcategorial attributes of being, metaphysics as transcendental science and metaphysics as theology coincide.

According to Suárez, metaphysics deals with the "formal" as well as the "objective" concept of being. By the formal concept of being, Suárez understands the act of knowing, which "ex unica et prima impositione" (ibid. 2.2.24) yields an intentional representation of the object; by the objective concept he designates that which is intentionally represented by that act. In other words, Suárez does not assume a theory of concepts characterized by a noetic-noematic parallelism of res and conceptus; rather he accepts Ockham's critical approach towards a strictly realistic interpretation of universal concepts. Since Scotus himself does not rely on that parallelism when it comes to the concept of being, Suárez can substantially follow Scotus and apply 'being' to a first and unified formal concept which, in virtue of its imposition, represents a first and unified objective concept of absolutely simple content that grasps all different beings in an indeterminate way, i.e. as being.

To the formal concept of being there corresponds an appropriate and immediate objective concept, which is explicitly neither substance nor accident, neither God nor creature, but which designates these in a unified way, i.e. inasmuch as they are similar and agree in being. (ibid. 2.2.8)

What does the objective concept that corresponds to the formal concept of being mean? According to Suárez, it is a determination that transcends the generality of the genus; this determination cannot be defined, but only explicated through its relationship to actual existence. 'Being' means "that which can exist" (id quod aptum est esse seu realiter existere: ibid. 2.4.7); the possibility of existence is grounded in an ontological disposition which (as we have seen before) appears in the non-contradiction of the internal contents constituting essences.

Because entity in the sense of being(ness) -- which in a concrete being is identical with the entity or being(ness) of that being -- is grasped indeterminately by the concept of being, that concept has an "illimitability and transcendence" (ibid.2.6.10) on account of which it precedes all more determinate modes. First among those more determinate modes, according to both Suárez and Scotus, is the classification "finite/infinite", which Suárez understands in terms of "intensity"; this allows him to interpret finite being as a non-determinate mode of an intensive quantity and infinite being as the "totally indivisible infinity of perfection which in itself is most real and complete" (ibid. 30.2.25)." (pp. 62-63)

From: Ludger Honnefelder, "Metaphysics as a Discipline: from the "Transcendental Philosophy of the Ancients" to "Kant's Notion of Transcendental Philosophy"."" In The Medieval Heritage in Early Modern Metaphysics and Modal Theory, 1400-1700, edited by Russell L. Friedman and Lauge Olaf Nielsen, Dordrecht: Kluwer 2003, pp. 53-74.

Exclusion of the "Beings of reason" from the subject of metaphysics

"As every historian of philosophy knows, Aristotle thought the subject of metaphysics was "being insofar as it is being" and from this subject he excluded "being as true". Centuries after Aristotle, Francisco Suárez, S.J., designated the subject of metaphysics more explicitly as "being insofar as it is real being".

The addition of "real" to Aristotle's formula highlighted the inclusion of all that can as well as does exist (4). Against the backdrop of two already well known distinctions - (1) between formal and objective concepts, and (2) between being as a participle and being as a noun -- for Suárez the subject so conceived was identical with "the objective concept of being as a noun" (5). Concurrently, while being was said to be analogous with regard to hierarchically ordered objects (God and creatures, substance and accidents) with an intrinsic attribution of the perfection it represented (6), such analogy presupposed a common, unitary, and all but univocal, concept (7). But from that concept and from the subject of metaphysics Suárez excluded "beings of reason" (8), which he subsumed under Aristotle's being as true (9), and of which impossible objects, in the sense of those that would be self-contradictory, furnished the paradigm case. (10)" (pp. 297-298)

Notes

(4) DM 2, 4, n. 3 (XXV, 88).

(5) Cf. DM 2, s. 4, n. 3 (XXV, p. 88). For the distinction between formal and objective concepts in writings available to Suárez, cf. Thomas de Vio, Cardinalis Caietanus, In "De ente et essentia", c. 1, qu. 2, ed. P. Laurent. Taurini, Marietti, 1934, pp. 25-28, and Pedro da Fonseca, S.J., In Metaphysicorum Aristotelis Stagiritae Libros, L. IV, c. 2, q. 2. ed. Coloniae, Sumptibus Lazari Zetzneri Bibliopolae, 1615, I, pp. 710-11. On being as a noun in contrast to being as a participle, see e.g. P. Fonseca, In Met. Arist., L. IV, ch. 2, qu. 2, s. 2 (I, p. 740). Also see the texts of Duns Scotus (1265-1308) given by M. Fernandez Garcia, O.F.M., Lexicon Scholasticum. Quaracchi, Ex Typographia Coll. S. Bonaventurae, 1910, p. 241. We may note that Scotus in one of the texts cited by Fernandez Garcia refers to the distinction as "antique": "Solet antiquitus dici, quod ens potest esse participium, vel nomen", Opus prim. super I Periherm., q. 8, n. 10. Before Scotus, cf. St. Thomas, Quodlib. II, q. 2, a. 1, ed. Spiazzi. Taurini, Marietti, 1956, p. 24.

(6) Cf. DM 28, s. 3 (XXVI, p. 13); ibid., d. 32, sec. 2 (XXVI, p. 319); ibid., d. 2,

s. 2, n. 14 (XXV, pp. 69-70); ibid., d. 12, s. 1, nn. 13-24 (pp. 378-82); also see his treatment of the analogous notion of "cause", ibid., d. 27, s. 1, nn. 9-11 (p. 952).

(7) Cf. DM 2, s. 2, n. 36 (XXV, p. 81).

(8) DM 1, s. 1, n. 6 (XXV, p. 4); ibid., n. 26 (p. 11); ibid., d. 4, s. 8, n. 4 (p. 138); ibid., d. 47, s. 3, n. 3 (XXVI, p. 794); and ibid., d. 54, prol. 1 (p. 1014).

(9) Cf. DM 54, s. 1, n. 4 (XXVI, p. 1016) where he is speaking about beings of reason in general; cf. ibid., s. 3, n. 1 (p. 1026); and ibid., s. 5, n. 16 (p. 1035), where he is immediately speaking about true statements regarding chimerae.

(10) On this, see my article, "Suárez on Beings of Reason and Truth (I)", in Vivarium, XXV, 1 (1987), esp. pp. 69-75. For Suárez's overall teaching on "beings of reason", cf. DM 54, De Entibus Rationis (XXVI, pp. 1014-41). For an English version, cf. Francisco Suárez, S.J.: On Beings of Reason (De Entibus Rationis Metaphysical Disputation LIV, translated with introduction and notes by J. P. Doyle, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1995. On impossible objects after Suárez see my article, "Another God, Chimerae, Goat-Stags, and Man-Lions: A Seventeen Century Debate about Impossible Objects", in The Review of Metaphysics, XLVIII (1995), pp. 771-808.

From: John P. Doyle, "Supertranscendental Being: On the Verge of Modern Philosophy", In: Stephen F. Brown (ed.), Meeting of the Minds. The Relation between Medieval and Classical Modern European Philosophy, Turnhout: Brepols 1998, pp. 297-315.

Heidegger appreciation of Suárez

"Heidegger reserves the place of honor in his exposition [of the Thesis of Medieval Ontology] for the Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suárez (1548-1617), a figure whose pre-eminence for Heidegger is both systematic and historical. Suárez is the bridge between the Middle Ages and the modern world (Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie 111-16/ English translation 79-83). It was through Suárez that the metaphysics of Scholasticism flowed into modern thinkers; his influence is clearly detectable in Descartes, Leibniz, Wolff, Schopenhauer, Kant, and Hegel. Suárez abandoned the format of the commentarium employed by the classical Scholastic thinkers and developed instead a strictly philosophical and systematic treatise entitled Disputationes metaphysicae. Although it was written in the seventeenth century, it is the first major systematic Scholastic treatise on metaphysics (GP 112/80). St. Thomas' major works, for example, are either commentaries or, when they are systematic, theological treatises. The Disputationes is divided into fifty-four tracts. The first twenty-seven treat of metaphysica generalis (or ontologia); the next twenty-six treat of special beings (metaphysica specialis); the fifty-fourth is devoted to beings of reason (entia rationis). In general metaphysics Suárez investigates the properties of the abstract concept of being in general. In special metaphysics, he investigates God and creatures, that is, infinite and finite beings. This distinction between general and special metaphysics was imported fully intact by Wolff and made its way to the center of Kant's architectonic -- to the distinction between the transcendental analytic and the transcendental dialectic -- in the Critique of Pure Reason." (p. 69)

From: John D. Caputo, Heidegger and Aquinas. An Essay on Overcoming Metaphysics, New York: Fordham University Press 1982.

"The first Disputatio treats: De natura primae philosophiae seu metaphysicae, of the essence of First Philosophy or metaphysics. Suárez begins in the introduction (3) by discussing the various designations of metaphysics (varia metaphysicae nomina), and does so with independent recourse to Aristotle. Here he finds that metaphysics is designated as sapientia (sophia), prudentia (phronesis), then as prima philosophia (proté philosophia), then as naturalis theologia(theologiké) -- which Suárez here interprets in a sense quite unlike that of antiquity (quoniam de Deo ac divinis rebus sermonem habet, quantum ex naturali lumine haberi potest 4) – and finally as metaphysica.

Suárez says that this natural theology or First Philosophy is called metaphysics because it deals with God (ex quo etiam metaphysica nominata est 5). He thereby gives the expression a different meaning from that of Aquinas. Aquinas uses the expression metaphysica insofar as it treats de ente in communi. Suárez, on the other hand, says it is called metaphysics because it is theology. He remarks that this title 'metaphysics' does not stem from Aristotle himself, but from his interpreters (quod nomen non tam ab Aristotele, quam ab ejus interpretibus habuit 6). However, he is of the opinion that Aristotle did put together this collection.

He explains the expression 'metaphysics' in a sense that deviates from the explanation given by Aquinas, and brings in another point of view which is significant in the history of metaphysics: de his rebus, quae scientias seu res naturales consequuntur. (7) (...)

The Metaphysics is not concerned, then, with such books as come after those about physics, rather 'coming after' is now taken in the sense of content: knowledge of the suprasensuous is later than that of the sensuous. In the order of appropriation, in the order in which knowledge of the suprasensuous arises, in the sequence of investigation, metaphysical knowledge is placed after knowledge of physics. Suárez stresses the méta in the sense of post and understands this post in the sense of the stages of knowledge proceeding from the sensuous to the suprasensuous. At the same time however he brings into play the interpretation in terms of content: méta, afterwards, that which comes afterwards, which exceeds the sensuous." (pp. 52-53)

Notes

(3) Suárez, Disputatones Metaphysicae. Disp I Opera Omnia Ed. C. Berton (Paris, 156ff.) vol. 25 pp. 1 ff.

(4) ibid.

(5) ibid.

(6) ibid.

(7) ibid.

From: Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. World, Finitude, Solitude, translated by William McNeill and Nicholas Walker, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1993.

"Suárez is the thinker who had the strongest influence on modem philosophy. Descartes is directly dependent on him, using his terminology almost everywhere. It is Suárez who for the first time systematized medieval philosophy and above all ontology. Before him the Middle Ages, including Thomas and Duns Scotus, treated ancient thought only in commentaries, which deal with the texts seriatim. The basic book of antiquity, Aristotle's Metaphysics, is not a coherent work, being without a systematic structure. Suárez saw this and tried to make up for this lack, as he regarded it, by putting the ontological problems into a systematic form for the first time, a form which determined a classification of metaphysics that lasted through the subsequent centuries down to Hegel.

In accordance with Suárez' scheme, distinctions were drawn between metaphysica generalis, general ontology, and metaphysica specialis, which included cosmologia rationalis, ontology of nature, psychologia, ontology of mind, and theologia rationalis, ontology of God. This arrangement of the central philosophical disciplines recurs in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Transcendental logic corresponds in its foundations to general ontology. What Kant deals with in transcendental dialectic, the problems of rational psychology, cosmology, and theology, corresponds to what modern philosophy recognized as questions. Suárez, who gave an exposition of his philosophy in the Disputationes metaphysicae (1597), not only exercised great influence on the further development of theology within Catholicism but, with his order colleague Fonseca, had a powerful effect on the shaping of Protestant Scholasticism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their thoroughness and philosophical level are higher by far than that which Melanchthon, for example, attained in his commentaries on Aristotle." (p. 80)

From: Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, translation, introduction, and lexicon by Albert Hofstadter. Revised edition, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. (Lecture course given at the University of Marburg in the summer of 1927).

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Editions and Translations of the Metaphysical Works of Francisco Suárez

Metaphysical works

The standard edition of Suárez's works is: André Michel and Charles Berton (eds.), R. P. Francisci Suárez e societate Jesu, Opera omnia, Parisiis apud Ludovicum Vivès (1856-1861) in 26 volumes, with two additional volumes of indexes (27-28).

The main philosophical works are:

a) Disputationes Metaphysicae (DM): The first edition was published in Salamanca (Spain) in 1597 (two wolumes) with the title Metaphysicarum disputationum, in quibus et universa naturalis theologia ordinate traditur, et quaestiones omnes ad duodecim Aristotelis libros pertinentes accurate disputantur, and reprinted Mainz 1605.

The standard edition, edited by Charles Berton who adopted the current title, is part of the edition of the Opera omnia, voll. 25 (I-XXVII) and 26 (XXVIII - LIV). This edition is reprinted by Georg Olms, Hildesheim, 2009.

b) Commentaria una cum quaestionibus in libros Aristotelis "De anima", Introduction and critical edition by Salvador Castellote, Spanish translation by C. Baciero and L. Baciero: vol. I (Disputations I-II) Madrid, Labor, 1978; vol. II (Disputations III-VII) 1981, vol. III (Disputations VIII-XIV), Fundación Xavier Zubiri, 1981.

c) De essentia, existentia et subsistentia in: Jesús Iturrioz, "Un primer opúscolo de Suárez, desconocido hasta ahora,"Estudios eclesiásticos 18: 330-359 (1944); reprinted in: J. Iturroz, Estudios sobre la metafísica de Francisco Suarez, S. J., Madrid, Ediciones Fax, 1949.

English translations of the Disputationes metaphysicae

1. Suárez, Francisco. 2004. A Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics (Index locupletissimus in Metaphysicam Aristotelis). Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Translated with an introduction (pp. 7-19) and notes by John P. Doyle.

The Index is the preface to the Disputationes Metaphysicae.

Content: English translation: 20-247; Corresponding Latin texts: I. Ad lectorem 248; II. Disputatio II: Prooemium 250; III. Index Locupletissimus 252; IV. Index Disputationum 390; Persons Mentioned in the Index 410; Bibliography 413; Index of Names 424-426.

"Balancing the system in the Disputationes , the Index amounts to a late medieval commentary, “by way of question,” on the first 12 books of the Metaphysics. Shorter in length than, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas’ (1225–1274) commentary on the same 12 books, Suárez’s Ample Index more than makes up for that by cross-referencing the Disputationes itself hundreds of times. In fact, the Index and the Disputationes are exactly as Suárez intended them to be, complementary of one another and mutually supportive." (Doyle, p. 8).

"However, because there will be very many who will desire that this whole doctrine be collated with the books of Aristotle, not only in order to better perceive on what principles of the so great Philosopher it is based, but also in order that it be more easily and usefully employed for understanding Aristotle himself, I have also sought to provide the reader in this matter with an elaborate index, in which, if it is attentively read, most easily (if I am not mistaken) all those things which Aristotle treated in the books of Metaphysics can be comprehended and retained in memory. And again, [with that index] all questions can be at hand which are customarily raised among the expositors of these books." (Suárez, p. 21).

2. ———. 2021. Metaphysical Disputation I: On the Nature of First Philosophy or Metaphysics. Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press.

Translated and annotated, with corrected Latin text, by Shane Duarte.

"Section 1: Identifying the adequate object or subject of metaphysics.

Suárez classifies metaphysics or first philosophy as a natural science (scientia naturalis ) (DM 1.2.17). In so classifying it, he in no way means to identify it with a branch of physics or natural philosophy. Rather, “natural” is here contrasted with “supernatural,” so that in this sense of the expression mathematics also counts as a natural science, whereas sacred or supernatural theology, based on divine revelation, does not.

Suárez further classifies metaphysics as a real science (scientia realis ), since it is about things (res ) or real beings (DM 1.2.13). The implicit contrast here is with a rational science (scientia rationalis ) such as logic, which is not about any thing or real being, but is commonly thought to deal with objective second intentions (e.g., genus, species, subject, predicate, antecedent, consequent), which are beings of reason or items existing only objectively in the mind as objects of thought. Suárez also classifies metaphysics as a theoretical or speculative science (scientia speculativa ) (DM 1.2.13), since it has the contemplation of truth as its highest end, unlike the practical and productive sciences, whose truths are ordered to some further goal (i.e., action or production)." (pp. XXVI-XXVII)

3. ———. 1982. Suárez on Individuation. Metaphysical Disputation V: Individual Unity and Its Principle (De unitate individuali, elusque principio). Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Translated from the Latin with introduction (pp. 1-27), notes, glossary (pp. 175-279), and bibliography (pp. 281-287) by Jorge J. E. Gracia.

"When thinking about an individual concrete thing such as a man or a tree, one may consider those features that the thing has or seems to have in common with other things, or alternatively, those features that are peculiar or unique to the thing under consideration. If the common features are part of what distinguishes the thing from a larger group of things and at the same time makes it part of a smaller group of things, the members of which can be distinguished only in terms of individual features, then one is thinking of what was commonly known in the Middle Ages as the thing's "nature." If, on the other hand, one considers those features that set a thing apart from all other things, including those falling together with it into a group, then one is considering the thing's individuality. In either case the content of the thought seems to be different. Take Peter, for instance. A consideration of his nature focuses on his humanity; that is, the feature or group of features such as rationality, capacity to laugh, etc., that make him human and in respect of which he is both indistinguishable from other human beings and distinguishable from non-human beings such as dogs, trees and rocks. A consideration of Peter's individuality, on the other hand, will focus only on that feature or group of features which separate Peter from Paul and any other individual being, whether human or not. In the first case we think of the ways in which Peter is the same as other human beings, In the second of the ways in which Peter is unique. The cluster of philosophical problems concerned with the nature of a thing is usually designated as "the problem of universals," those concerned with individuality are gathered under the term "the problem of individuation," Suárez's attention in Disputation V is directed toward the latter.

Contrary to a widespread misconception, the complexity of the problem of individuation was not ignored by scholastics. Most were aware that there is more than one issue related to individuality, and a few of them isolated and discussed the four most important ones. These are, in logical order: the nature of individuality, the extension of individuality, the ontological status of individuality in the individual and its relation to the nature, and, finally, the cause or causes that bring about individuality. When references to the medieval or scholastic problem of individuation are found in contemporary literature, it is usually the last that is meant. And not without reason because up to the fourteenth century one seldom finds a careful and clear distinction between these four different issues, and much more effort is put into the solution of the last than any of the others. Yet, it is also evident that as the age progresses they become more and more defined until we find late scholastics like Suárez carefully separating them in their discussions. Some never became quite independent in treatment, however. The first one, the nature of individuality, was usually discussed in the context of the second, the extension of individuality. And even the second does not become the subject of separate investigation until late in the Middle Ages. Only the last two issues, the ontological status of individuality and its cause or causes, were generally discussed in isolation from the others. Suárez's treatise is consistent with this practice. He deals with the nature of individuality in the context of its extension (Sect. I), giving separate analyses of the ontological status of individuality (Sect. II) and it cause in various entities (Sects. III-VII). The last two Sections of the Disputation take up a problem related to the individuality of accidents: whether numerically different accidents can be present in the same subject simultaneously and successively." (Introduction, pp. 1-2)

"In Conclusion I would like to stress four important points. The first is the completely philosophical character of Suárez's analysis. Although some theological considerations and examples creep in once in a while, the discussion is guided wholly by philosophical principles. The arguments given are philosophical, and the criteria by which various views and arguments are judged are also philosophical. Often Suárez will explicitly make the point that an argument is not philosophical enough, meaning that it is based on theological assumptions, or that a particular problem that had surfaced in the discussion is theological and therefore outside the scope of his discussion (Sect. II, §§ 30 and 37). It is clear, then, that at this time, and for Suárez at least, philosophy and in particular metaphysics had a place of its own among the sciences, independent of theology. In this Suárez is no less modern than Descartes or Leibniz who, as it is well known, read the Metaphysical Disputations avidly.

The second point is that Suárez's analysis of individuality is ontological in character. He is not primarily concerned with the discernibility of the individual and its cause, although he is aware both of the problems related to the knowledge of the individual and the epistemological problems related to the way we distinguish between two individuals (Sect. III, § 28 and VII, § 4). The roots of discernibility are always referred to by Suárez, as they are in the scholastic tradition dating back to Thomas, as "signs" or "indications" of individuality rather than its causes or principles.(38) The latter are prior to the former both logically and ontologically, even though the former are prior in human experience. This is why Suárez, like most of philosophers who put ontology before epistemology, cannot adhere to what in contemporary philosophy goes by the name of "the principle of identity of indiscernibles," since such a principle implies a reversal of what Suárez would regard as the proper order between these two sciences. His primary concern is with individuality as it independent of human consideration.

Thirdly, I would stress Suárez's contribution to the controversy surrounding the problem of individuation. Besides the subtlety and originality of many of the arguments he proposes, four factors stand out: (1) His identification of the nature of individuality as indivisibility, and of distinction as a result of individuality rather than a constituent of it. (2) His explicit discussion of the extension of individuality, a problem seldom treated separately by his predecessors, whose views on the subject were in many cases no more than implicit uncritical assumptions rather than explicitly discussed philosophical commitments. (3) His original interpretation of Scotus' doctrine of haecceitas as an answer to the problem of the ontological status of individuality rather than to the problem concerned with the cause individuality. (4) The merits of his own view on the causal analysis of individuality, which avoids some of the most obvious pitfalls of other views and presents a unified and economic solution to this most vexing philosophical problem. The numerous other merits of Suárez's analysis will become evident, no doubt, to the careful reader.

The fourth most important point I would stress in closing is the centrality of this problem within Suárez's metaphysics. This is evident from the place that the discussion of individuation has within the whole framework of the Metaphysical Disputations. As a kind of unity, individuality is discussed just after the general notion of transcendental unity in Disputation IV. This indicates that he considered it the most important kind of the first of the three basic attributes of being (unity, truth, goodness). Universal and formal unit are discussed only after individual unity, in Disputation VI. For it is individual unity that makes all other unity possible. As such, the Disputation V reveals the core of Suarecian metaphysics." (Introduction, pp. 23-24)

4. ———. 1964. On Formal and Universal Unity (Disputatio VI: De Unitate Formali et Universali). Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Disputation VI. Translated from the Latin with an introduction (pp. 1-27) by James F. Ross.

"The unity of the scholastic tradition on universals is illustrated by a list of metaphysical points on which Aquinas, Scotus, Occam, and Suárez all agree and an indication of the one or two major points on which there is substantial disharmony, although there existed a common tradition as to mode of discussion.

All four authors are agreed that: (1) There are no universals to be found existing independently both of the operations of the mind and of the existence of singular things; and further that such a notion is inconsistent. ( 2) Anything that really exists (that is, exists independently of consideration by the human mind and of any mind other than the Divine Mind) is a particular or singular thing, a primary substance. ( 3) Whatever is actually universal is an ens rations , a mental being called a "concept," whose existence ( analogically speaking) is derived from the operations of the conceiving mind. (4) There is a foundation in re and independently of the operations of the mind for the universality of the concept which is actually universal. (5) The foundation in re is, at least in part, the form found in the individual. (6) The foundation in re can be called a universal by extrinsic denomination, i.e., by analogy of attribution based upon the causal relation which holds between the foundation in re and the actual universal found in the mind.(48) (7) The universal concept is formed by the mind through a process called "abstraction"; (on this point there are many important distinctions and differences which will not be treated herein). (8) There is a real similarity in things of the same nature, a similarity which is the foundation of the "commonness" of the nature or quiddity.

Other than differences in psychology which we must gloss over, the chief discrepancies among these authors are found in the following areas: (1) the manner in which the forms in individuals are the foundation in re for the universal concept and (2) the analysis of the claim that two things are similar because they have something in common. There are several notions of commonness or community involved, several interpretations of the expression "common nature" and consequently several analyses of the expression "the form in the individual is the foundation in re for the universality of the concept." These two points are intimately connected, since for each of the four authors, and especially for Suárez, the explanation of the similarity of things is directly connected with the explanation of the foundation of universality.

In brief, Suárez and Scotus are very similar in their psychological doctrine of universals, whereas Aquinas, Occam, and Suárez are all much closer together on the metaphysics of the matter than any one of them is to Scotus, who stands closer to Plato and Augustine. Suárez's view is truly a syntheses of the work of his predecessors, and comparison with those writers should not be used to make him join some older "camp," but should function merely to clarify the various strands of tradition woven into his original design.(49)

Finally a comparison of starting points is useful:

1) Scotus says we must postulate community (which is a logical consequence of possibility) of natures and must seek causal explanations of universality and singularity, which are logically posterior to community.

2) Occam says we must postulate singularity as a principle of explanation, not itself explicable, and proceed to explain universality and community, which are logically posterior.

3) Suarez and Aquinas say we must have a principle of individuation to explain singularity and must also seek explanations of community and universality, which are logically posterior to the principles of composition (essence-existence, matter-form) through which we solve the problem of the one and the many. As a result, all three factors, universality, communicability, and individuation must be explained in terms of prior metaphysical principles." (Introduction , pp. 26-27).

(48) At first sight it might appear that Occam would deny this; but his statement that nothing extra-mental is to be called universal, clearly had in mind literal or proper predication. He had no interest in analogous talk and might still have resisted the point; but his own position compells acquiescence, since he holds for causal dependence of concepts upon particular things. Scotus, too, might seem to resist; but by the same arguments would have to agree, since his position is stronger and entails this one.

(49) The richness of Suárez's Disputation on Universals cannot be tapped in an introduction. A much more extensive analysis of Suárez's theory will be forthcoming from the author in a general history of the discussion of universals during the middle ages.

5. ———. 1947. On the Various Kinds of Distinctions (Disputatio VII: De variis distinctionum generibus). Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Translation from the Latin, with an introduction (pp. 1-15) by Cyril Vollert (reprinted 1976).

"Disputation VII has been chosen as a sample of the metaphysics of Suárez for two reasons. First, it is typical both of his method and of his philosophical thought; many of his characteristic doctrines are briefly treated in it, or at least are indicated. Secondly, it introduces his teaching on the modes, without which much of his philosophy is unintelligible, and above all propounds his theory on distinctions, a point of capital importance for a grasp of Suarezian metaphysics. As the views of Suarez on distinctions and modes are clearly brought out in the Disputation itself, there seems to be no need of a preliminary exposition of these tenets in survey form.(28)

Suarez treats of distinctions in the context of his discussion on the unity of being, Disputations IV to VII. Disputation IV deals with unum in general, Disputation V with individual unity and the principle of individuation, Disputation VI with universals, and Disputation VII with the various kinds of distinctions. The connection between the question of unity and that of distinctions is explained by Suárez himself in the introduction to Disputation VII. Section 3 of this Disputation, on "the same" and "other," is added to the treatise on distinctions in order to round out the general discussion of unity.

The main reason why a philosopher's theory of distinctions is important is that his solution to the problem of distinctions is a key to his concept of being. For distinctions are based on the nature of being; therefore a metaphysician's view of the nature of distinctions leads to an understanding of his doctrine of being itself.(29) In reading Disputation VII, the student can profitably ponder whether any ideas developed in it support the suggestion put forth by a scholar of our own day, who is both a profound philosopher and a shrewd appraiser of intellectual trends:

Everything is accounted for if we recall that Suarez lived in a nominalistic milieu, and that, despite his avowed reaction in favor of realism in logic, he did not fully succeed in keeping his metaphysics free from this influence.(30)"

Indispensable, too, for an appreciation of Suarezian metaphysics, is his modal theory. Suarez perceived that most things are highly complex, composed as they are of distinct entities, substantial and accidental. Hence he concluded that their essential union is tenuous, or even impossible, without some ultimate bond. This bond is a mode of being. He saw, further, that every created being is subject to numberless determinations which lie outside its essence, but do not contribute new reality to it. The mode supplies the complement of finality. It closes and terminates an essence; it is not a formal, but a completing act.

The Suarezian system is coherent in its complicated structure. Suarez remains faithful to his primary concepts of entity, unity, existence, and distinction, and traces out their implications to the ultimate conclusion. No greater mistake could be made than to attempt to "purify" the system by suppressing the modes. Take away the modes, and the Suarezian structure collapses; just as, in his view, without the unifying function of the modes, finite beings themselves would fall apart. Whether for a mind craving for reality the modes provide satisfying fare, is another question. A study of Disputation VII should help toward an answer." (Vollert, Introduction, pp. 12-13).

(28) A sufficiently detailed account of these two questions may be found in P. E. Nolan, "The Suarezian Modes," Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Convention of the Jesuit Educational Association (Chicago: Loyola U. Press, 1931), pp. 184-200.

(29) This point has been fully discussed by Michael V. Murray, S.J., in his hitherto unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Theory of Distinctions in the Metaphysics of Francis Suarez , Fordham University, 1944. Dr. Murray advances cogent reasons, well fortified by historical research, for his conclusion that Suarez was thoroughly imbued with the widespread nominalism of his time.

(30) J. Maréchal, Le point de depart de la métaphysique , I (2d. ed., Louvain: Museum Lessianum, 1927), p. 185.

6. ———. 1989. The Metaphysics of Good and Evil According to Suárez. Metaphysical Disputations X and XI and Selected Passages from Disputation XXIII and Other Works. München: Philosophia Verlag.

X: De Bono seu bonitate transcendentali; XI: De Malo; XXXIII: De substantia creata in communi.

Also contains translations of: Tractatus de divina substantia ejusque attributis , book III chapter 3, §§ 9-11; chapter 7 §10 and De divina praedestinatione et reprobatione, book 1, chapter 5, §§ 2-3; book 3, chapter 8, §§.1-2; book 5, chapter 4, §§ 1-3.

Translation, with introduction (pp. 17-101), notes and glossary (pp. 217-265) by Jorge J. E. Gracia, Douglas Davis.

"The subject matter of Disputations X an XI concerns the metaphysical issues that surrounds good and evil. Other matters, also of interest both to philosophers and theologians, such as the problem concerning the foundation of moral judgments, and the problem that the existence of evil poses for those who believe in the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and good supreme being, are largely omitted. These and related issues were as important in Suarez's times as they are today, and he addressed them explicitly and in some detail, but not in the Disputationes metaphysicae. Following his lead, we have in general omitted reference to these matters with one exception: in order to give the reader a more complete view of Suarez's overall doctrine of evil, we have selected from his opera various texts that address some theological issues which have received considerable attention in contemporary philosophical circles, and which reveal Suarez's views on these matters and complement the views presented in Disputation xi. These texts have been placed in the Appendix.

In spite of the relative brevity, systematic organization, and clarity of thought of Disputations X and XI, the text is not easy to understand for a modern reader. As in many scholastic texts of the late medieval and Renaissance periods, the discussion is carefully organized, but the issues and arguments are so intricate and the number of technical terms so large, that even those familiar with the philosophical literature of the times are likely to find the text difficult to follow at times. Since the translator should avoid altering the style and general tone of the text, we have had to use other means to facilitate its understanding: we have added an Introduction, notes where they seemed appropriate and, in order to keep their number down, a glossary of technical terms at the end. The Introduction has been kept general; it presents a summary and interpretation of Suarez's position and places it within a philosophical and historical framework. Its aim is propaedeutic. The purpose of the notes is primarily to identify the references to other authors made by Suarez, but in a few instances they are used also to solve particular problems that arise in the text or to clarify important uses of terms that appear infrequently in the Disputations. The texts contained in the Appendix are presented without notes, except for those that identify their origin, because they are fragments of works which may eventually appear in more complete translations; we leave their annotation then for the translator of the complete works. The Glossary, in contrast with the notes, deals with recurring difficulties of interpretation arising from the use of technical terminology. Its purpose is not only to clarify Suarez's use of these terms, but also to identify the common understanding of them by scholastics and, when possible, to point to their source in Aristotle or in his Latin commentators. It is intended primarily to help non-specialists, and thus also makes clear how particular Latin terms have been translated into English. In the English-Latin Index the reader will find the Latin equivalent or equivalents of the English terms used in the text, which in turn will facilitate the use of the Glossary. Finally, the Bibliography lists the works cited in order to help the location of references, and author and subject indexes should aid the reader in locating pertinent materials." Introduction , pp. 14-15).

7. ———. 2000. On the Formal Cause of Substance. Metaphysical Disputation XV (De Causa formali substantiali). Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Translated by John Kronen and Jeremiah Reedy; Introduction (pp. 7-16) and explanatory notes by John Kronen.

"The Specific Problems Addressed in Disputation XV

One of the things that made Suárez, a great thinker was his impatience with vagueness of any sort and his systematic thoroughness. In this regard Disputation XV is no exception. Never before or since has there been so thorough a treatment of the Aristotelian notion of form. In the course of the Disputation Suárez considered the existence and nature of substantial forms, their eduction, their causality and effect, and their unity. Finally, to be complete, Suárez, treated what he called the "metaphysical form," though this is only analogous to the substantial form in the proper sense. We shall briefly summarize Suárez's views with respect to each of these issues, and discuss the main reasons he gave for them. But we must warn the reader that no summary of Suárez, much less one this brief, can give any idea of the exhaustiveness and sophistication of his discussion of substantial form; to get the proper sense of these, one must turn to Suárez himself.

Section I: The existence of substantial forms

The first question Suárez treated in Disputation XV concerns the existence of substantial forms. This might seem a rather odd procedure. One might think it suitable first to give a definition of what substantial forms are, before attempting to prove their existence. Disputation XV does have a short section which presents a very thorough definition of substantial form, but it is the fifth section in Disputation XV. Why did Suárez wait so long to give this definition? The reason is simple: substantial forms are inferred entities, not observables. Their very nature, therefore, can only be established on the arguments which present reasons for believing they exist. Accordingly, Suárez first gave arguments for the existence of substantial forms, and answered objections to positing them, before defining them. Furthermore, he regarded some of these objections as important enough to merit sections of their own; hence, he did not give a definition of substantial forms until he had both argued for their existence and responded, to his own satisfaction, to objections against positing them.

The arguments Suárez gave for supposing substantial forms exist are of two sorts, a posteriori and a priori. The a posteriori arguments briefly are: 1) Human beings are constituted by matter and a substantial form; therefore, other material substances are as well; 2) Substantial forms are necessary to root the various essential properties of things; 3) Substantial forms are necessary to provide an explanation for the return of a thing to its connatural state after it has been altered from without; 4) Substantial forms are necessary to explain why the intense application of one power impedes the application of another power; and 5) Substantial forms are necessary to provide proper termini of substantial changes. The single a priori argument is that substantial forms are not intrinsically impossible, and are demanded by the order of the universe, the perfection of the universe, and the perfection and unity of material substances.

Sections 2-4: The eduction of substantial forms

Suárez gave several objections to positing the existence of substantial forms. The one he regarded as the most grave focuses on their origin. It takes the form of a dilemma: 1) If substantial forms exist, then they come to be either a) by creation or b) not by creation. Not (a), since this would require continual miracles. Not (b), since when substantial change occurs the form itself must come to be from nothing; but to come to be from nothing is to be created. Hence, there are no substantial forms.

Suárez accused this argument of laboring under a false dilemma since it fails to consider that forms could come to be without being either 1) created or 2) made out of something. In the course of making his case, Suárez argued that creation is opposed not only to making something out of something , but also to making something in something. Thus, though he admitted that substantial forms are not made out of anything, as that would lead to an infinite regress, he argued that they are made in something, that is, in a matter properly organized to receive a them. In so arguing Suárez gave a very clear notion of what it means for a substantial form to be educed from the potency of matter. It is for it to be made with a dependency, both in coming to be and being, in a properly disposed bit of matter.

After having given a clear account of the nature of eduction in general, Suárez took up some very particular problems concerning the eduction of substantial forms. The first problem is whether or not matter always temporally precedes form in every eduction, and the second is whether or not forms are made as such. Without going into his reasons here, Suárez's answer to the first question is that matter need not temporally precede form, but need only ontologically or logically precede it, insofar as matter is the subject of form. His answer to the second question is that form, as a proper part of a complete substance, is not made as such, though it is itself made from nothing, but rather the composite, which the form partially constitutes.

Section 5: The nature of substantial forms

Having given a barrage of arguments to prove forms exist, and having answered crucial objections against supposing that they exist, Suárez gave a very precise definition of substantial forms. According to Suárez, a substantial form is "a simple and incomplete substance which, as the act of matter, constitutes with it the essence of a composite substance." This differs from the traditional definition of form, which is "an intrinsic cause giving being to a thing." Though Suárez used this definition in defining formal causality in DM XII, he did not favor it here because of his disagreement with Thomistic metaphysics. For Suárez form completes the being of a composite, giving it powers particular to a specific sort of substance, but it does not give complete substantial being to a thing; in particular, it does not give the being of matter to a thing. Since, according to Suárez, the Thomists held that form channels the act of existing to matter and thus, in some sense, gives matter its own proper being,(11) Suárez decided not to give the traditional definition of form here, preferring instead one that is more in harmony with his own doctrine of a merely conceptual distinction between essence and existence in finite beings.

Sections 6-9: The causality and effects of substantial forms

In accordance with the general method Suárez adopted in treating the causes of being, after he proved the existence of substantial form and gave a clear definition of it, Suárez went on to treat, in a typically exhaustive manner, of its causality and its effects. The first topic Suárez discussed with respect to a form's causality is its principle of causing. The principle of causing of a thing is the faculty or power in virtue of which it causes when it causes. Thus the principle of causing of June Anderson's singing is her vocal chords and her trained musical ability. According to Suárez, the principle of causing of a form is nothing other than the form itself. This is related to the actual causality of the form. For Suárez form, as an intrinsic cause of being, does not cause by creating something distinct from itself in a composite substance; rather, it causes by simply uniting its own essence to the other constituent of the composite. Thus the causality of form is simply its union with matter.

The conditions required for a form to cause are: 1) its existence;(12) 2) its spatial proximity to its subject; and 3) appropriate dispositions on the part of its subject. The first two of these are absolutely necessary (i.e., not even God could bring it about that form causes in their absence); the last is only naturally necessary (i.e., in the natural order dispositions on the part of matter are necessary for the form to inform it, but God could bring it about that form informs in the absence of these. For example, He could bring it about that a human soul informs the body of a cat).

The effects of form are: 1) the actualization of matter and 2) the composite. These are in reality [ex natura rei ] the same effect taken from the point of view of different relations, in the way that getting a majority of the vote in the general election and being elected president are the same. That is to say, the actualization of matter's potency to be something, say a pig, is nothing other than the very constitution of the composite substance of a pig. For Suárez, form gives being to matter only in a certain respect. For example, it may give being to matter by actualizing its potential to be a pig. However, form does not give being to matter by giving matter its own being qua matter. In this, Suárez disagreed with the Thomists and their doctrine of the real distinction between essence and existence. Nevertheless, though form does not give being intrinsically to matter by actually constituting that being, matter has such a minimal existence that it cannot naturally exist without a dependency on form; only by the absolute and infinite causal power of God can matter exist denuded of all form.(13)

Section 10: The unicity of substantial form

A much debated question in the middles ages was whether or not there is more than one substantial form to each substance. The Franciscans held that there is more than one substantial form in higher substances such as human beings and animals.(14) Their reasons for holding this were diverse, and each of them was treated by Suárez in section 10. However, there seems to have been two main reasons for their doctrine. The first is that, as higher substances share certain powers and properties with lower beings but also possess powers peculiar to their own levels of being, several forms must be posited in them to account for their similarity with and difference from lower beings. The second main reason is that there is evidence that lower forms remain in compounds (e.g., it seems that water is present in plants, animals and humans); therefore, it would seem that compounds are characterized by the forms of the elements that make them up as well as by their own peculiar forms. Scotus added a new argument for the view that there is more than one form in humans based upon the metaphysical distance between the human soul and the body. The human soul, he reasoned, is too perfect to immediately inform naked prime matter; hence, in order for the soul to inform a certain piece of matter, it is necessary that matter be first informed with the form of corporeity, which gives it extension and the required organic structure. Scotus thought his theory confirmed by the fact that human bodies do not immediately corrupt after death.

The Franciscan tradition came under strong attack on these points from Thomas Aquinas and his followers. Aquinas argued, in the first place, that it is impossible for there to be more than one substantial form in a single composite since, as substantial form gives substantial being, a plurality of substantial forms yields a plurality substantial beings. But each substance can only have one substantial being since it is impossible for a single thing in a category to be many things in that category. Further, Aquinas argued that, as a higher form can do anything a lower can, there is no need to posit many substantial forms to account for the higher powers of humans and animals; one form will give the human being, for example, not only the higher powers of reason, but also the lower powers of sensation, growth, reproduction, etc.(15)

Suárez agreed with the Thomistic tradition in holding that there can only be one complete substantial form in each composite, and he further agreed with the reasons the Thomistic tradition gave in support of this view. However, Suárez disagreed with Aquinas and the Thomists in one major respect. Aquinas had argued that all substantial forms are simple and without entitative parts, apparently on account of their function as unifiers of the composite substance.(16) His view seemed to be that a substantial form cannot give substantial unity to a thing unless it is itself fully one. Suárez, however, held that all substantial forms other than the human are composed of parts, and he thought these parts are incomplete substantial forms. This disagreement with the Thomists probably is related to Suárez's view that essence and existence are not really distinct. Such a view forced Suárez to grant more independence to the parts making up a substance, for example, form and matter, and this made him more open to the possibility that a composite substance that is truly essentially one could be constituted out of really distinct, albeit incomplete, substantial parts.

Section 11: Metaphysical form

For the sake of completeness, Suárez rounded off his discussion of substantial form with an account of the nature and reality of metaphysical form. Suárez noted, however, that metaphysical form, in whatever sense it is taken, is not a true form because it is not an entity which, by informing some being really distinct from it, constitutes a complete substantial essence. Metaphysical form is, then, form only by analogy.

Suárez distinguished two sorts of metaphysical form. The first is the complete essential nature of a thing, taken as an individual. Thus, as a human nature is constituted out of form and matter, an individual person's metaphysical form is her body informed by her soul. Such a "form," though it could be said to give a person being, is not really distinct from the person whose form it is, and it does not constitute the being of anything by informing some subject really distinct from it. Nevertheless, Suárez did not hold that any individual's essence is precisely identical with her since she is constituted, not simply by her essence, but by a substantial mode terminating her essence and making it incommunicable to another in the way in which Christ's human essence was communicated to His Divine Essence. For Suárez complete individual essence along with substantial mode constitutes the supposite or hypostasis.

The second sort of metaphysical form Suárez discussed Is logical form. This form is equivalent to the difference in a "genus-difference" definition of a thing. Thus, in the traditional definition of human being as "rational animal," "animal" is the genus which is informed or determined by the difference "rational." So "rational" is said to be the formal element in the definition and "animal" the material element. But, as Suárez did not believe that universals really exist and held rather that they are mind-dependent relations, he did not think of differences as really combining with genera to form the real essences of things. Hence, he did not regard logical form as being a form in the true sense of the word. It is rather a form only by a kind of analogy with real, physical forms, i.e., with forms which actually exist and inform a subject really distinct from themselves." (Introduction, pp. 9-14).

(11) Whether or not Aquinas held this view, Suárez was less certain. But he was certain it was the view of the Thomists. See the present disputation, sect. 8, para. 2.

(12) It should be noted that the existence of the form, though necessary for it to cause, is not a causal condition in the most proper sense of the word, according to Suárez. The reason is that a causal condition must be really distinct from that of which it is a causal condition, and nothing, according to Suarez, is really distinct from its existence.

(13) For Suárez form gives matter the property "being actualized by such and such a form," and the property "being a human body"; it does not give it the property "being such and such a form" or the property "being the substance constituted by such and such a form and such and such matter." Thus my soul gives my body the property "being actualized by a human form," but it does not give it the property "being a human soul" or the property "being a human being."

(14) On this see Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy: Vol. 2, Medieval Philosophy , Part I (Garden City: The Newman Press, 1950), pp. 304-305.

(15) Summa theologiae , Part I, Q. 76, a. 4.

(16) Summa theologiae , Part 1, A. 76, a. 8. On this matter, see Thomas Harper, The Metaphysics of the School, Vol. II (New York: Peter Smith, 1881), pp. 655-672.

8. ———. 1994. On Efficient Causality. Metaphysical Disputations 17, 18, and 19. New Haven: Yale University Press.

XVII: De causa efficiente in communi; XVIII: De causa proxima efficiente, ejusque causalitate, et omnibus quae ad causandum requirit; XIX: De causis necessario, et libere seu contingenter agentibus, ubi etiam de fato, fortuna et casu.

Translated with an introduction (pp. XIII-XX) by Alfred J. Freddoso.

"Of the six disputations dealing with efficient causality, the first triad (17-19), contained in the present volume, is concerned mainly with creaturely efficient causality, while the second triad (20-22) deals with the three modes of God's efficient causality: namely, creation, conservation, and general concurrence. Disputations 17-19 constitute, as far as I know, the longest, most profound, and most thorough tract ever written on creaturely efficient causality from an Aristotelian perspective. Let me briefly describe each of these disputations.

Disputation 17, entitled "On the Efficient Cause in General," provides a general characterization of efficient causality and its various modes. In section 1 Suárez expounds and modifies Aristotle's definition of an efficient or agent cause as that "whence there is a first beginning of change or rest," carefully distinguishing the efficient cause from the other three Aristotelian causes: namely, the formal, material, and final causes. He concludes that an efficient cause is an extrinsic per se principle that communicates esse, or being of some sort, to an effect by the mediation of an action. In section 2 Suárez goes on to discuss the main divisions of efficient causes: namely, (i) per se versus per accidens , (ii) physical versus moral, (iii) principal versus instrumental, (iv) univocal versus equivocal, and (v) primary versus secondary. Along the way he also makes some illuminating remarks about the important distinction between agent causes or principles properly speaking and the sine qua non conditions required in order for those agents to exercise their causal power.

Disputation i8, entitled "On the Proximate Efficient Cause and on its Causality and on All the Things that it Requires in order to Cause," deals with the metaphysics of creaturely causation in general and especially with the efficient causality proper to material substances and their accidents. Section contains Suárez's reply to occasionalism and other theories that either deny that material substances are efficient causes at all or else severely limit the general range of effects that can be produced by them. Sections 2-6 treat general metaphysical issues concerning the efficient principles involved in the production of new substances and accidents. Then in sections 7-9 Suárez discusses the three most disputed sine qua non conditions for efficient causality: namely (i) the condition that the thing acting (agent) be distinct from the thing acted upon (patient), (ii) the condition that the agent be spatially proximate to the patient, and (iii) the condition that the agent be initially dissimilar to the patient. Having completed his treatment of the principles and prerequisites of efficient causality, he next (section 10) takes up the ontological question of what it is that formally constitutes a substance or accident as an actual efficient cause. Finally, in section 11 he lays out the metaphysics of destructive or corrupting efficient causality.

Disputation 19, entitled "On Causes that Act Necessarily and Causes that Act Freely or Contingently; also on Fate, Fortune, and Chance," turns to issues concerning causal necessity and contingency. In sections 1-3 Suárez gives a precise characterization of the distinction between causes that act by a necessity of nature and causes that act without necessity; in addition, he takes up the disputed question of whether there could be any causal contingency in the created world if, contrary to fact, God acted only by a necessity of nature. Sections 4-9 go into great depth on the nature of free choice and include an extended treatment of controversial issues surrounding the relationship between intellect and will in free action. Finally, sections 10-12 take up a series of questions concerning fate, fortune, and chance." (Introduction, pp. XVII-XIX).

9. ———. 2002. On Creation, Conservation, and Concurrence. Metaphysical Disputations 20, 21, and 22. South Bend: St. Augustine Press.

XX: De Prima Causa efficiente, primaque ejus actione quae est creatio; XXI: De Prima Causa efficiente, et alter ejus actione, quae est conservatio; XXII: De prima Causa, et alia ejus actone, quae est cooperatio, seu concursus cum causis secundis.

Translation, notes, and introduction (pp. XI-CXXIII) by Alfred J. Freddoso.

"Efficient causality in the Disputationes Metaphysicae : context and overview

I will now provide an overview of Suárez's treatment of efficient causality in Disputations 17-22. My intent is to give the reader some initial idea of the range of questions Suárez deals with and in this way to set a context within which to situate my later discussions of scholastic metaphysics and of the disputations on divine action. I will introduce a few technical terms here, but will defer an explication of them to Parts 2 and 3 of this introductory essay.

The treatment of efficient causality falls into the first half of the Disputationes Metaphysicae (Disputations 1-27), which treats of being in general prior to its division into infinite being and finite being and, a fortiori, prior to the further division of finite being into substance and accident. After the initial investigations into the nature of metaphysics in Disputation 1 and into the essential notion of being in Disputation 2, Suárez turns in Disputation 3 to a general discussion of the transcendental properties (passiones) of being, which he identifies as one (being as undivided in itself), true (being as an object of cognition) and good (being as an object of love and desire). Disputations 4-7 deal with oneness or unity, focusing on individual unity (or individuality), formal unity (or universality), and the various types of distinctions among beings. Disputations 8-9 deal with truth and falsity and Disputations 10-11 with good and evil.

It is at this juncture, in Disputation 12, that Suárez begins his treatment of the causes of being. Since metaphysical inquiry is often said to aim at a knowledge of the principles of being, he first discusses the notion of a principle and its relation to the notion of a cause. The term 'principle', he tells us, can be used in a wide sense to designate the first element in any sort of ordering, real or merely conceptual, and in this sense it is obviously more inclusive than the term `cause'. However, 'principle' is used most properly in a narrower metaphysical sense to designate "that which truly and directly communicates (influens ) some sort of being (esse ) to that of which it is the principle," or, in other words, that on which a real entity depends in some way for its existence.(31) Suárez is careful to point out, however, that even on this narrower reading the notion of a principle is still broader than the notion of a cause, since within the Blessed Trinity there is a communication of being without causality. For the Father is a true principle eternally 'generating' the Son, and the Father and Son together are true principles eternally 'spiraling' the Holy Spirit, despite the fact that these intraTrinitarian 'relations of origin' involve no causality, strictly speaking. The reason for this, Suárez explains, is that in these relations the principle's own being is in no way distinct from the being of which it is the source; that is, the being (or, nature) which the Son receives from the Father is the Father's very own being and nothing else, and the being (or nature) which the Holy Spirit receives from the Father and the Son is their very own being and nothing else.(32)

A cause, on the other hand, is a principle that communicates being or esse distinct from its own being to that of which it is a cause.(33) And a cause's causality is just "that influence or concurrence by which a cause, within its own genus, actually gives being to the effect."(34)

These definitions are meant to apply to every Aristotelian genus of cause material, formal, efficient, and final.(35) Material and formal causes are called 'intrinsic' causes because they do in a sense communicate their own being to the composite which they constitute by their union; however, they satisfy the notion of a cause because the being or esse of the composite substance which results from their union is distinct from the being of either the matter or the form. Efficient and final causes, by contrast, are wholly extrinsic to the entities to which they communicate being.(36)

)It is within this general framework that Suárez situates his tract on efficient causality, the longest and most meticulous such tract in the history of scholasticism. Of the six disputations dealing with efficient causality, the first triad (17-19) is concerned mainly with efficient causality as exercised by creatures,(37) while the second triad (20-22), contained in the present volume, focuses on the three modes of divine efficient causality that can be investigated by the natural light of reason, viz., creation, conservation, and general concurrence. I will now give brief descriptions of each of these six disputations, bearing in mind that in Parts 5-7 below I will be giving a more detailed analysis of the three disputations on divine action (20-22).

Disputation 17, entitled "On the efficient cause in general," provides a broad characterization of efficient causality and its various modes. In Section 1 Suárez expounds and modifies Aristotle's definition of an efficient or agent cause as that "whence there is a first beginning of change or rest," carefully distinguishing the efficient cause from the other three Aristotelian causes. An efficient cause, he concludes, is an extrinsic per se principle that communicates esse or being of some sort to an effect by means of an action. In Section 2 he lays out the main divisions of efficient causes, namely, (a) per se (immediate) vs. per accidens (mediate) causes, (b) physical vs. moral causes, (c) principal vs. instrumental causes, (d) univocal vs. equivocal causes, and (e) primary or first cause vs. secondary causes, where this last distinction is equivalent to the distinction between God as an agent and creatures as agents. Along the way he also makes some illuminating remarks about the important distinction between an agent cause or efficient principle, properly speaking, and the sine qua non conditions that are prerequisites for an agent's exercising its causal power.

Disputation 18, entitled "On the proximate efficient cause, and on its causality, and on all the things which it requires in order to cause," deals with the metaphysics of creaturely causality in general and especially with the efficient causality proper to material substances and their accidents. Section 1 contains Suárez's reply to occasionalism and other theories that either deny that material substances are efficient causes or else put severe a priori limitations on the range of effects that can be produced by them. Sections 2-6 treat certain metaphysical issues concerning the efficient principles involved in the production of new substances and accidents. Then in Sections 7-9 Suárez discusses in detail the three prerequisites for efficient causality that stand in most need of careful unpacking, namely, (a) the condition that the thing acting (agent) be distinct from the thing acted upon (patient), (b) the condition that the agent be spatially proximate to the patient, and (c) the condition that the agent be initially dissimilar to the patient. Having completed his treatment of the principles and prerequisites of efficient causality, he next (Section 10) takes up the ontological question of what it is that formally constitutes a substance or accident as an actually acting efficient cause. Finally, in Section 11 he propounds the metaphysics of destructive or corruptive efficient causality.

Disputation 19, entitled "On causes that act necessarily and causes that act freely or contingently, and also on fate, fortune, and chance," turns to issues concerning causal necessity and contingency. In Sections 1-3 Suárez gives a precise characterization of the distinction between agents that act by a necessity of nature and agents that act without necessity; in addition, he takes up the disputed question of whether there could be still be causal contingency in the created world if, contrary to fact, God acted only by a necessity of nature. Sections 4-9 go into great depth about the nature of free choice and include an exhaustive treatment of scholastic debates over the relation between intellect and will in free action. Finally, Sections 10-12 take up a series of questions concerning fate, fortune, and chance.

Disputation 20, entitled "On the First Efficient Cause and on his first action, which is creation," begins in Section 1 by asking whether natural reason can prove that creation ex nihilo is possible. Here Suárez argues that (a) there is no incoherence either in the concept of creation itself or in the concept of the power to create, and that (b) if we assume the existence of God, we can prove that such a power in fact exists and has been exercised. Along the way he tries to show, against the ancient philosophers, that matter is created, and he ends with an interesting discussion of whether Aristotle himself believed in creation ex nihilo. Section 2 takes up the disputed question of whether creation requires an absolutely unlimited power, or whether instead some creature could have the limited power to create at least some entities as a principal cause; and in Section 3 Suárez tries to answer the related, but distinct, question of whether any creature could act as an instrumental cause in God's creative action. Section 4 investigates the ontological status of the action of creation, an issue that will become clearer when I talk about the ontology of action in Part 3 of this introductory essay. Finally, Section 5 asks whether creation presupposes the prior non-existence of the thing created, or whether instead it is possible that some entities should have been created from eternity without any beginning.

Disputation 21, entitled "On the First Efficient Cause and on his second action, which is conservation," begins in Section 1 by investigating whether natural reason can prove that created beings depend for their existence on the continual actual influence of the First Cause. Section 2 explicates the relation between creation and conservation, while Section 3 asks whether conservation is a divine prerogative.

Disputation 22, entitled "On the First Cause, and on his third action, which is cooperation, or concurrence, with secondary causes," begins in Section 1 by asking whether in order for a created agent to act, it is necessary that God, in addition to creating and conserving that agent along with its causal powers, should also cooperate with it in its very acting. After concluding that the answer is affirmative, Suárez asks in Section 2 whether this cooperation on God's part consists in his giving to the secondary cause itself some power or principle of action that it did not previously have on its own, or whether instead God's actual cooperation has its terminus just in the effect produced by that agent. Section 3 pursues this matter further by asking how God's concurrence is related to the secondary cause's action and to the subject of that action. Section 4 turns to the manner in which God concurs. Here Suárez tries to show that God's manner of granting concurrence to freely acting agents must differ from his manner of grunting concurrence to naturally acting agents. Finally, in Section 5 Suárez gripes that secondary agents do not depend essentially in their acting on any beings other than God.

With this brief overview in hand, we are now ready to look more closely at the ontological framework within which Suárez works out his account of efficient causality in general and God's causality in particular." (Introduction, pp. XXV-XXIX).

(31) See DM 12.1.25.

(32) See especially DM 12.2.6-10. In a moment I will contrast this intra-Trinitarian communication of being with that of the 'intrinsic' causes of creatures.

(33) DM 12.2.4-7.

(34) DM 12.2.13.

(35) Suárez also asks whether exemplar causes — that is, the ideas that serve as paradigms for intellectual agents and specify their actions — constitute a separate genus of cause. He treats this matter at length in Disputation 25, which is devoted exclusively to exemplar causality. There he identifies the exemplar cause as a certain antecedent condition of efficient causality that precedes the actions of intelligent agents.

(36) In Disputation 23 Suárez argues for the claim that, despite their peculiarities, final causes fully satisfy the definition of a cause.

(37) An English translation of these three disputations is available in Francisco Suárez, On Efficient Causality: Metaphysical Disputations 17-19, translated by Alfred J. Freddoso (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994).

10. ———. 2004. The Metaphysical Demonstration of the Existence of God. Metaphysical Disputations 28-29. South Bend: St. Augustine Press.

XXVIII: De divisione entis in infinitum et finitum; XXIX: De Primo et increato Ente, an sit.

Translated and edited with an introduction (pp. X-XXIV) by John P. Doyle.

"A Summary of Disputation 28: (11)

As mentioned, the two Disputations that are translated in the present work open the second part of the Disputationes metaphysicae and mark the turn from being in general to particular beings. Their concern is with, first in Disputation 28, a comprehensive division of being in general, and after in Disputation 29, the existence of the principal member of this division, namely, that being which is God.

Disputation 28 is divided into three Sections, which ask about the legitimacy and the sufficiency of the division, as well as whether the dividend, i.e. being, is univocal or analogous between God and creatures. In the first Section (Vives: vol. 26, pp. 1-8), the question is whether being is rightly divided into infinite and finite being? Doubts arise from the fact that "infinite" and "finite" on their face do not appear to cover the whole range of being but rather look to be restricted to accidental being in the category of quantity (§ 1). In addition, the terms of the proposed division seem obscure, especially the term "infinite" (§ 2). Suárez's answer is to analyze the terms (§ 3) and then to defend the division as one that is good and necessary (§ 4) as well as first and most evident (§ 5). It is equivalent to other divisions such as being by itself (ens a se ) and being from another (ens ab alio ) (§§ 6-7) or, with clarifications, necessary being and contingent being (§§ 8-12). It is also equivalent to: essential being and being by participation (§ 13), created being and uncreated being (§ 14), or being in act and being in potency (§§ 15-16). Suárez next compares the first division with the rest (§ 17), explains the terms of the first division by comparison with quantity (§ 17), and closes the first Section (§ 18) with a reply to objections raised at its beginning.

Section 2 (vol. 26, pp. 8-13) opens with reasons for doubting the sufficiency of the division. These include that fact that relations, because they are found both in creatures and in God, seem to be neither finite nor infinite and do not therefore fit the division (§ 1). Something akin to this occurs from the case of Christ who is both finite and infinite inasmuch as he is both God and man (§ 2).

Again, there is question regarding the free acts of the Divine Will, which would apparently be at once both contingent and necessary (§ 3). Then there is an opinion of Duns Scotus to the effect that being should first be divided into quantified and non-quantified being, and that the division into finite and infinite is a subdivision of quantified being (§ 4). After addressing this last opinion (§§ 5-6), Suárez goes on to defend the sufficiency of the divisions proposed in Section 1, especially that in terms of being by itself and being from another (§ 7). He then gives extended expositions of and answers to the difficulties proposed about relations, Christ, and Divine free acts (§§ 8-16).

Section 3 of Disputation 28 (vol. 26, pp. 13-21) begins with a rejection of the view that the term being as used between God and creatures is simply equivocal (§ 1). A quite opposite view, which was held by Duns Scotus (1266-1308), is that being is said univocally of God and creatures (§ 2). After explaining the reasons for this view and for its opposition to analogy in this context (§§ 3-4), Suárez himself presents an opinion that the term being is indeed said analogously of God and creatures (§ 5), discusses arguments in support of this (§§ 6-8), and replies to objections that may be raised against these arguments (§ 9). Subsequently, he inquires about the kind of analogy that is present here (§ 10) and rejects Cajetan's doctrine that there is "a proper analogy of proportionality" between God and creatures (§ 11). Also rejecting any "analogy of attribution to a third thing," that is, any position that would affirm that God and creatures are called being only by reference to something else, he next affirms that there is here "an analogy of one to another," which is to say that creatures are being in reference to God and the term being is said more principally of God than of creatures (§ 12). At this point, he brings in the "Platonic" opinion that God is not being but rather above being, which occasions a brief explanation of the name of God in Exodus 3,14 (§ 13). Following this, he explains and affirms that the analogy of being here is intrinsic inasmuch as creatures are designated beings from their own intrinsic being and not just extrinsically from God (§§ 14-17). Finally, his reply to objections and arguments in support of univocity closes the third Section and the Disputation itself (§§ 18-22).

IV. A Summary of Disputation 29:

Though almost twice as long, Disputation 29 like the one before is again divided into three Sections. Section 1 (vol. 26, pp. 21-34) begins after two introductory paragraphs (§§ 1-2) in which Suárez gives reasons for the location of the subject matter of the Disputation in this place and remarks how he will leave aside as much as possible items which depend for their understanding on Revelation. The first Section then asks whether and/or by what means the existence of God can be demonstrated. Among the Scholastic Doctors, Peter d'Ailly (1350-1420) has denied the possibility of such a demonstration. To this Suárez makes the brief but revealing reply that already by the various divisions of being that have been presented in the previous Disputation the existence of "some being which is uncreated or not produced" has been proven (§ 1). The obvious implication is that by now the existence of God has in effect been proven. But immediately the question arises: by what means, physical or metaphysical, is this properly done? On one side, the opinion of Averroes is that the means is physical, namely the motion of the heavens (§ 2). The contrary opinion, that of Avicenna and later of Duns Scotus among others, holds that the means must be metaphysical (§ 3) — that is, not motion but being itself. A third and a fourth opinion hold in different ways that the task must belong to both physics, that is natural philosophy, and metaphysics (§§ 4-5). In different ways the means would thus be both physical and metaphysical. In Suárez's judgment the second opinion is certainly the true one but there can be some probability in the fourth position, if it is rightly explained (§ 6).

At this juncture, he examines at length the physical argument that proceeds by the medium of motion and for various reasons he finds it wanting (§§ 7-17). Then he considers another physical argument, from the operations and the essence of the rational soul (§ 18). This too comes up short, unless we first pose a question about the soul's being, which is a metaphysical question (§ 19). Here Suárez gives the metaphysical argument that is based upon a broader and deeper principle than the physical one, "Whatever is moved is moved by another." The metaphysical principle is "Whatever is made or produced is made by another" and the argument itself concludes to an unmade Maker (§§ 20-21). An objection of a possibly circular chain of causes is dismissed as every bit as inadmissible as a thing's causing itself (§ 22). Other objections involve an infinite number of causes that would preclude any arriving at a first uncaused or unmade cause. There are different ways to conceive such an infinity of causes. Suárez explains such ways in detail and shows their insufficiencies (§§ 23-40). The first Section ends (§§ 41-42) with a brief rehearsal of and summary judgment upon the opinions listed at the beginning.

Section 2 (pp. 34-47) gets more exact and asks: whether one can show in an a posteriori way that there is only one uncreated being which will in fact be God? The thought here is that although the basic demonstration has been displayed in the previous Section or even in the previous Disputation, it needs precision. For it might be the case that while by now an unmade or uncreated being has been proven to exist, perhaps there is more than one such, which would mean that we have not reached the true God, who is unique (§§ 1-2).

In a totally opposite direction is a position, which has been associated with St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), to the effect that the existence of God is self-evident and therefore need not and in fact cannot be demonstrated (§ 3). Suárez's own view is that the existence of God can be demonstrated but it is necessary first to be clear about what we mean by God, that is to say what it is we are attempting to demonstrate (§ 4). This he tells us is "a certain most noble being which both surpasses all the rest and from which as from a first author all the rest depend, which, accordingly, should be worshipped and venerated as the supreme deity" (§ 5). There are, he says, two ways to prove the existence of such a God: "one is completely a posteriori and from effects; the other is immediately a priori, although remotely it also is a posteriori" (§ 7). In the first way, "the beauty of the whole universe and the wonderful connection and order of all things in it sufficiently declare that there is one first being, by whom all things are governed and from whom they draw their origin" (ibid). Four objections are that (1) this may prove that there is one governor of the world but not necessarily that there is one creator, (2) this proof does not rule out a number of rulers who might govern the world by consensus, (3) it says nothing about spiritual beings themselves or their connection with the present material world, and (4) this proof does not foreclose on there being another world besides this one (§ 8). Suárez goes on in paragraphs following to answer these objections in detail. In reply to the first, he draws from the ancient Christian writer, Lactantius (ca. 240-320), the lesson that "the universe can be governed only by him by whose counsel and power it has been created" (§ 9). He then devotes eleven paragraphs (§§ 10-20) to further explain this in the cases of the elements, mixed bodies (more or less perfect), and especially the heavens. In this last regard, he pays special attention to the causality between the heavens and sublunar natural things. The second objection is met through nine paragraphs (§§ 21-29) in which Suárez argues that a number of world rulers would require that such be at once intelligent but also imperfect and liable to disagreement among themselves. The third objection is presented in more detail (§ 30) and answered over six paragraphs (§§ 31-36) in which Suárez treats the Aristotelian separate substances. From the motion of the heavens their existence is at best only probable, and even if they do exist they must be creatures of God. Finally, in reply to the fourth objection, Suárez shows the reasonable character of the Christian doctrine that God is not limited to making only one world and could indeed be the creator of any number of worlds besides this one, with the result that the objection has no force (§ 37).

Nevertheless, at this point Suárez tells us: "from this and the preceding objection I am convinced that the reasoning made to prove that there is only one unproduced being and that all the rest of beings have been made by that being does not conclude absolutely about all beings, but only about those which can fall under human cognition by way of natural reasoning or philosophy. Therefore, in order that the argument conclude universally, there necessarily must be employed a demonstration a priori, which ... we will pursue in the following Section" (ibid.)

Section 3 (pp. 47-60) first affirms the impossibility of demonstrating the existence of God in a priori manner from cause to effect, since obviously God has no cause (§ 1). Nevertheless, once He has been, in an a posteriori way, demonstrated to exist, it is possible secondarily to use a priori demonstrations to arrive at some of his properties or attributes (§ 2). However, this is not easy to do, as Suárez shows by rejecting an argument which has been offered to prove God's unicity on the basis that being can belong first and through itself only to a single unproduced being (§§ 3-7). He then proposes two more arguments that purport to prove that there cannot be several beings that exist of themselves. However, objections can be made to both of these arguments (§§ 8-10). A fourth argument, which Suárez finds "very probative," is to the effect that singularity must belong by nature to an unproduced being; therefore such a being cannot be multiplied (§ 11). While objection may be made to this reasoning, Suárez thinks it can be defended (§ 12) and indeed, if it is rightly understood, it may strengthen the first argument offered (§ 13). He further infers that being can belong to other things only by way of efficient causality or effective emanation from the first unproduced being (§ 14). Suárez then considers at length a fifth argument, which he thinks is "enough by itself and also confirms the preceding argument" (§ 15) to the effect that two or more unproduced beings could be neither the same nor diverse in species (§§ 15-22). This leads to an explanation of a text from Aristotle that seems at variance with this (§ 23). At this point, a sixth argument is introduced to show that a first unproduced being which is supreme and infinite in its perfection and most powerful in its acting produces "all things that are" (§ 24). An objection is raised to the effect that if it were to produce all things it would produce itself (§ 25), which, of course, is absurd. Suárez answers that it belongs to the perfection of that being and subsequently to its power "that it is not itself producible by itself' while all else is produced by it (§ 26). Yet another argument can be taken, says the Doctor eximius, "from the causality of the ultimate end" (§ 27) and objections to this are raised and answered (§§ 28-31). Now Suárez states his conclusion - "From all of this, it has been sufficiently demonstrated that God exists" - and reaffirms its metaphysical character (§ 32). "Lastly," he says, "from all that has been said it can be clear by, so to speak, a certain most evident experience how far from truth is the opinion ... which asserted that the existence of God is so self-evident that, for that reason, it could not be demonstrated" (§ 33). This occasions a final discussion of self-evident propositions (§ 34) as well as of reasons that could motivate such an opinion (§§ 34-37)." (Introduction, pp. XIV-XVIII).

(11) What follows is meant to be little more than an outline. Readers are advised to look at what Suárez has to say for himself, albeit in the present poor English version, rather than rely upon any synopsis of that.

11. ———. 1983. On the Essence of Finite Being as Such, on the Existence of That Essence and Their Distinction (Disputatio XXXI). Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

XXXI. De essentia entis finiti ut tale est, et de illius Esse, eorumque distinctione.

Translated from the Latin with an introduction (pp. 3-43) by Norman J. Wells.

"The bulk of Suárez's written work, edited as well as unedited, reflect his various teaching positions as philosopher and as theologian. However, a number are inspired directly by his state as a religious and a member of the Society of Jesus. Still others have their origin in the legal and political disputes of the day. The structure and contents of most of these works, their extent and quality, can be viewed with convenience in the twenty-six (or twenty-eight) volume edition of Vivés.

A. Disputationes Metaphysicae

It is against this over-all backdrop, especially the theological tracts, that Suárez's famous Disputationes Metaphysicae must be seen, if for no better reason than that this is the way Suarez viewed his metaphysical investigations themselves. For in both the Ad Lectorem as well as the Prooemium to this work, Suarez indicates the occasion and purpose of his metaphysical work with explicit consideration of its relation to his theological inquiries.

Sensitive to the pedagogical demands upon a discipline, Suarez confesses that in the course of his theological teaching, he has had to make rather spontaneous, frequent and extensive reference to metaphysical considerations. And this was required for the simple reason that "metaphysical principles and truths are so closely interwoven with theological conclusions and arguments, that if knowledge and full understanding of the former are lacking, knowledge of the latter must necessarily suffer."(Prooemium , XXV, 1ab) Such asides, Suárez finds, are not only burdensome to the legentes , but personally embarrassing, since it demanded of his hearers a blind faith in his judgment.

In addition to these immediate pedagogical problems, there are more substantive and overriding reasons presiding at the origins of the Disputationes Metaphysicae. Suárez sees clearly that, though sacred and supernatural theology is founded upon divine illumination and principles revealed by God, due to its human condition, such theology must utilize truths which are naturally known as well. It is in this latter area that metaphysics proves so indispensable, for of all the sciences known to man, it comes closest to the science of divine things. Moreover, without any proper knowledge of metaphysical problems, the Christian mysteries could scarcely be probed and discussed. In short, Suárez is convinced that "our philosophy ought to be Christian and the servant of divine theology." (DM, Ad Lectorem, XXV ).

In the matter of the internal organization of such a discipline as metaphysics, Suárez takes a stand that is significant both historically and methodologically. For he finds himself at odds with the then current practice in the history of Western metaphysics: the medieval technique of commenting on an authoritative text by way of the quaestio elaborated, somewhat erratically, within the context of the books of Aristotle's Metaphysics . By way of a methodological corrective, Suarez insists that the ordo doctrinae , required and demanded by the very object of this discipline, must be heeded in the sequence and hierarchical arrangement of problems and discussions. On this latter score, Suárez also finds himself quite disenchanted and critical of Aristotle's own method, sequence and organization. Consequently, observing the ordo doctrinae as Suárez sees it, the Disputationes Metaphysicae begin with an initial consideration of the object of the metaphysical enterprise, its dignity and utility. This is followed by an extensive consideration of the meaning and significance of that object, ens , its properties and its causes. This, in turn, is complemented by a consideration of the inferiores rationes of ens , i.e., the division of ens into creatum-creator and further divisions including all the special genera and grades of ens , closing with a consideration of ens rationis in Disputation 54.

B. Disputation Thirty-One

As part of this latter division, the thirty-first Disputation, comprised of fourteen separate sections of varying length, is explicitly concerned with laying bare the structure of finite being.

The first section serves as a general introduction to the historical as well as the doctrinal dimensions of this problem. Sections two to four constitute a more specialized introduction wherein Suarez's own basic and guiding principles are set down and established. Sections five to seven are, for the most part, of a critical character, negatively as well as positively. The remaining bulk of the discussion, comprising sections eight to fourteen, deal with the consequences and particular difficulties arising from the various historical traditions in this matter. Hence, they are meant to bolster and confirm, directly and indirectly, Suárez's own principles and conclusions as well as support his negative criticisms. (Introduction , pp. 4-6, notes omitted).

12. ———. 2006. On Real Relation (Disputatio Metaphysica XLVII). Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

XLVII: De relationibus realis creatis.

A translation from the Latin, with an introduction (pp. 9-35) and notes by John P. Doyle.

"Summaries of the Sections of Disputation 47.

This portion of my Introduction owes much to the summary given by Sergio Rabade Romeo and his associates in their edition with Spanish translation of the Disputationes metaphysicae.(95) As they correctly lay it out, the Forty-Seventh Disputation can be articulated as follows:

1. Relation in general — its existence, its essence, and its division (Sections

1-4).

2. Categorical Relation — its essential definition, its subject, foundation, and

terminus (Sections 5-9).

3. The Aristotelian division of relative beings, based on a threefold foundation (Sections 10-15).

4. The question of whether one relation can be the terminus of another (Section 16).

5. The structure of the category of relation (Section 17).

6. The properties of relation (Section 18).

And then descending to the different Sections in turn:

Section I

Beginning with the issue of the real existence of relation, Suárez enumerates up to five reasons for doubting such existence (paragraphs 1-7). He then presents three different opinions: (1) there are no true real relations (paragraph 8); (2) relations exist, but they do not constitute a special category of being (paragraph 9); and (3) in created things there are real relations, which make up a proper and special category (paragraph 10). This last is the most accepted opinion and it is demonstrated by the teachings of the Catholic Faith and by rational arguments (paragraphs 11-15).

Section II

This is the key Section, in which the reality of a relation is directly addressed. It is first necessary to clarify how a real categorical relation is distinguished from substance and all absolute accidents in order to explain the reality and the nature of created relations (paragraph 1). In this regard, Suárez presents and rejects four different opinions (paragraphs 2-10). He then lingers with another opinion—held by many, especially Nominalists—which defends a distinction of reason with a basis in reality between relation and its absolute foundation (paragraphs 11-17). Next, without approving the distinction between the "being in" and the "being toward" of a relation, he admits the indicated Nominalist opinion (paragraph 22). Finally, he answers the arguments of the other opinions (paragraph 23) and the arguments remaining from Section 1 (paragraphs 24-25).

Section III

The Third Section treats the divisions of relation (paragraph 1). The first division is into real relation and relation of reason. It is only real relation which constitutes the category "toward something" (paragraphs 2-5). The second division is into relation "according to being said" and relation "according to being" (paragraphs 6-9). The third division is into transcendental relation and categorical relation (paragraphs 10-13).

Section IV

Suárez tells us that it is very difficult to explain the difference between categorical and transcendental relations (paragraph 1). It is possible to think of some differences that should be rejected (paragraphs 2-8). Others can be admitted (paragraphs 9-15). From this the inference is that the category "toward something" includes only relations that are categorical in a proper sense (paragraph 16). The remaining paragraphs (17-21) of this Section contain the reply to a difficulty raised in Section 1.

Section V

In this Section the Doctor eximius explains the essence and the proper definition of a categorical relation (paragraphs 1-4), and also explains as well as resolves the difficulties which the mentioned division encounters (paragraphs 5-13).

Section VI

This short Section is limited to proving that a categorical relation requires a subject, a foundation, and a terminus (paragraphs 1-6).

Section VII

As was said in the just preceding Section, a categorical relation needs a foundation (paragraph 1), which in some way is distinguished from the subject of a relation (paragraphs 2-3). This foundation can be either an accident or the substance itself (paragraphs 4-9). Although the question is discussed, Suárez prefers not to separate a foundation from a reason for being founded (paragraphs 10-14).

Section VIII

For a categorical relation there is also required a real terminus (paragraph 1). But must this terminus exist in actuality? There are reasons to doubt that (paragraph 2), and one author has thought that a terminus that is real and really existing is not necessary (paragraph 3). Suárez maintains the contrary, and in so doing he follows the common opinion of philosophers and theologians (paragraphs 4-7). He answers the arguments of Gregory of Rimini (paragraph 8), and he rejects the opinion that the terminus belongs to the essence of a relation (paragraphs 9-12). Finally, he affirms that not even by the absolute power of God can a relation remain without a terminus (paragraphs 13-14).

Section IX

For a real relation it is necessary that the foundation and the terminus, formally considered, be distinguished with a real distinction, although this does not have to be equal in all cases (paragraphs 1-6).

Section X

Suárez proposes to examine the division which Aristotle has made of relation looking at a threefold foundation (paragraph 1). Having first explained the Aristotelian doctrine (paragraphs 2-4), he raises the two main questions which arise with respect to that doctrine: (1) whether each one of the members of the stated division is designated in a fitting manner, and (2) whether the division includes the whole range of categorical relations. With regard to the first, there are various arguments which present difficulty (paragraphs 5-10), and the same is true with regard to the second (paragraph 11). Nevertheless, the two questions are answered in the sense of approving the division which Aristotle has made (paragraphs 12-16).

Section XI

It is necessary to answer each one of the difficulties of the preceding Section (paragraph 1). Beginning with the first class of relations, which is founded on unity (paragraphs 2-3), it is affirmed that a relation of unity can be founded on the realities of all the categories (paragraph 4) and there is explained the sense in which one relation can be the foundation of another (paragraphs 5-13). In passing, he explains to which class relations of identity, similarity, and equality belong (paragraphs 14-15). The Section ends by affirming that generic unity can found a real relation (paragraphs 16-19) and by indicating the characteristics of relations of the first class (paragraphs 20-21).

Section XII

In order to treat the second class of relations (paragraph 1), the problem is tithed of whether all the relations of this class are real (paragraph 2). Suárez replies by setting up some distinctions (paragraphs 3-4). He concerns himself then with the proximate foundation of paternity (paragraphs 5-6), and of the relation of agent (paragraphs 7-8), whether it is in act (paragraph 9) or in potency (paragraphs 10-14).

Section XIII

Regarding the third class of relations, founded upon the character of measure paragraph 1), Suárez presents and resolves a difficulty about the authentic ought of Aristotle (paragraphs 2.9).

Section XIV

Is the Aristotelian division sufficient and adequate? (paragraph 1). To answer this question, Suárez indicates how all real relations are reduced to the three kinds, which make up the stated division (paragraphs 2-8).

Section XV

After indicating the double sense in which non-mutual relations can be taken (paragraph 1), Suárez makes a division between reciprocal and non-reciprocal relations (paragraph 2) and raises a difficulty in their regard (paragraphs 3-7). To resolve this difficulty, he affirms that there are some non-mutual relations, which are properly found in the third Aristotelian class of relations (paragraph 8). Then he replies to opposing arguments (paragraphs 9-12) and resolves difficulties proposed at the beginning (paragraphs 13-15). Next, he presents the opinion of the Nominalists about relations in God from time (paragraph 16) and, against them, denies that such relations are real (paragraphs 17-29).

Section XVI

This Section concerns the question of whether the formal terminus of one relation is another relation or has an absolute character (paragraph 1). Having explained the title of the Section (paragraph 2), Suárez presents and explains different opinions (paragraphs 3-5). He crystallizes his thought in the following assertions: (1) in non mutual relatives, the reason why one extreme is the terminus of the relation of the other is not a relation that is opposite to that of the other, but the very entity itself or a property of that terminus (paragraphs 6-13); (2) In mutual relations, the raison d'être of a terminus is also some absolute character that constitutes the formal foundation of the opposite relation (paragraphs 14-22). With this an answer is given to the bases of the other opinions, explaining the sense in which relatives are simultaneous in nature, in knowledge, and in definition (paragraphs 23-34), and finally treating of the termini of the divine relations (paragraphs 35-38), and of relative opposition (paragraphs 39-40).

Section XVII

It is proposed to treat the structuring of the category, "toward something" (paragraph 1). The first difficulty is in knowing how all relatives can be reduced to one single genus (paragraph 2). There is accepted the possibility of one single supreme genus which includes all relatives (paragraph 3) and there is adduced the solution which some offer to the motive for doubting (paragraphs 4-5). This solution is probable even though it supposes a false basis (paragraph 6). Suárez affirms that the relative in general Is not in an order to another as to its correlative (paragraphs 7-8), that the relative in general has a terminus in general which corresponds to it (paragraph 8), and that the common character of terminus does not constitute a proper category (paragraph 10). Afterwards, he raises the question of the contraction of the supreme genus of relatives into its inferiors (paragraphs 11-14), the question of the origin of the essential and specific difference of relations (paragraph 15), and the question of the simultaneity of various relations—which differ only numerically—in the same subject (paragraphs 16-23). He ends the Section by rejecting an opinion about the relation that a son has with respect to a father and a mother (paragraphs 24-28).

Section XVIII

This is the shortest Section. It designates as properties of all relatives: not having a contrary; being susceptible of more or less; receiving the designation of "convertibles"; being simultaneous in nature; and also being simultaneous in knowledge and definition (paragraphs 1-6)." (Introduction , pp. 28-33).

(95) Cf. Francisco Suárez, Disputaciones metafisicas, edicion y traduccion de Sergio Rabade Romeo, Salvador Caballero Sanchez y Antonio Puigcerver Zanon, 7 vols. (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1960-1966), vol. 6, pp. 631-4.

13. ———. 1995. On Beings of Reason (De Entibus Rationis). Metaphysical Disputation LIV. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Translated from the Latin with an introduction (pp. 1-56) and notes by John P. Doyle.

"B. The Prologue and Division of the Disputation:

In a brief prologue to his 54th Disputation, the Doctor Esimius notes that beings of reason are not real beings and that they are thus excluded from the direct and proper object of metaphysics. Along with this, however, he remarks how necessary their study is and offers some justification for their inclusion in his metaphysical work.(24) Of interest here is his assessment of them as "not true beings, but as quasi-shadows of being." As such, they have no intrinsic intelligibility, but must be known only indirectly through other things. Immediately flowing from this is the fact that they, like Meinong's later "homeless objects,"(25) are not of direct and primary concern for any science.

All the same, inasmuch as beings of reason are of use in a variety of sciences, they can be grasped and must be treated in some way. In fact, Suarez believes, their treatment is exclusively the concern of the metaphysician. For, even though beings of reason have no true being, they are, as mentioned, "shadows" of being. Like being then they have what he calls a "quasi-transcendentality,"(26) which by itself would remove them from the province of any science other than metaphysics. It is true that more particular disciplines, such as physics or logic, sometimes treat certain beings of reason (e.g., privation, the void, or second intentions such as species or genus ) in connection with their proper scientific objects. But only metaphysics is wide enough to consider, albeit obliquely and concomitantly with its proper object, the whole range of beings of reason as such.

After the Prologue , the Disputation splits into six Sections. Of these, the first two treat the existence, the nature, and the causes of beings of reason. Sections 3 and 4 consider how such beings of reason are divided. As Suárez sees it, the traditional listing of negations, privations, and relations of reason will exhaust the types that divide beings of reason. Section 5 will then more closely examine negations and privations and Section 6 will go on to treat relations of reason." Introduction , 20-21).

(24) For this exclusion and justification, see also DM 1, s. 1, n. 6; XXV, 3-4. For Aristotle's earlier exclusion of "being as true" from the concern of metaphysics, cf. note 10, above [See Metaphysics VI, c. 4, 1027b 34-1028a 3; ibid. , XI, c. 8, 10695a 22 ff.].

(25) For this, see A. Meinong, Ueber die Stellung der Gegenstandstheorie im System der Wissenschaften (Leipzig, 1907), pp. 8-27 and "Zur Gegenstandstheorie" in Die Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstsdarstellungen (Leipzig, 1923), translated as Appendix I, "Meinong's Ontology," by Reinhardt Grossmann, in Meinong (London, 1974), pp. 224-229. Also cf. Roderick M. Chisholm, Brentano and Meinong Studies (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1982), "Homeless Objects," pp. 37-52.

(26) Suárez's frequent employment of the prefix "quasi" is worth noting. Thus in the sections to follow, he will speak of "quasi-essence," "quasi-essential features," "quasi-essential foundation," "quasi-disposition," "quasi-difference," "quasi-passion," and a "quasi-material" cause of beings of reason (as well as imply quasi-formal and quasi-efficient causes for them). Again, he will speak of "quasi-induction" as well as "quasi-intrinsic," "quasi-extrinsic," and "quasi-common" characteristics in their regard. Without pushing it, I cannot help but think of Meinong (in Ueber Annahmen [Leipzig, 1910]), speaking of Quasi-Transzendenz (220, 228), Quasi-Wirklichkeit (224, 226, 263-4, 266), Quasibedeutung (59), Quasiinhalt (264, 277, 286, 312), etc.

14. ———. 2012. Selections from De Anima. Münich: Philosophia Verlag.

On the Nature of the Soul in General - On the Immateriality and Immortality of the Rational Soul.

Translated by John Kronen and Jeremiah Reedy.

Introduction and explanatory notes by John Kronen.

Table of Contents: Introduction 9; Disputation I: On the Substance of the Soul in General; Question 1: Whether the soul is act in the sense of being a substantial form 30; Question 2: Whether and in what way the soul is first act 45; Question 3: Whether the soul possesses an essential ordination to an organic body 65; Question 4: What the quidditative definition of the soul is and how one definition is proven through another 84; Disputation II 108; Question 3: Whether the principle of understanding in humans is something incorporeal, subsistent, and immortal 108; Bibliography 177-188.

"Suárez's De anima , like his Metaphysical Disputations , is not a commentary on Aristotle, though Suárez, in a general way, follows the order of topics laid out by Aristotle in his De anima , and he refers to Aristotle's seminal work with great frequency. In the first Disputation of Suárez's De anima , translated here in its entirety, Suárez treats of living beings taken as a whole. In this Disputation he links his psychology to his general metaphysics. This is particularly clear in the first question of the Disputation, which gives a brief proof of Aristotelian hylomorphism, as well as giving a proof of the existence of a special class of material substances which are distinguished from other material substances in that they are capable of immanent actions, i.e. actions which begin and end in the same substance.(9) Even plants, in this way, are "self moving" in the actions of nutrition and growth. In the later questions of this Disputation Suárez answers questions pertaining to the nature of the substantial form (i.e. the soul) characteristic of all living beings. Throughout the Disputation Suárez is chiefly committed to defending a substantivalist view of the nature of the soul and, hence, of the human person, against notions of the person that adumbrate the psychological concept of it found in Locke's writings, and that echo the ancient Buddhist "no-self" doctrine. But Suárez is equally committed to defending, against dualism, that the soul is an incomplete substance, which is by its nature ordered to informing an appropriately disposed matter in order to constitute with it a living substance.

We have translated all of Disputation I because it casts light on how Suárez, and the Scholastics in general, understood the science of the soul. They did not understand it to be an investigation of immaterial substances à la Descartes, because souls are not substances. They are, at best, incomplete substances which, with matter, constitute a living organism. In this respect it might be better to speak of "the science of living beings" or even of "biology", rather than of "the science of the soul". But even that would not be quite right either since, although the Scholastics were more interested than is often thought with the physical structures of living beings, as well as in the essential roles these structures play in explaining the powers of living beings,(10) they were not very advanced in these questions and, unlike most contemporary biologists, they did not conceive of the "principle of life" in living beings as a complex set of relations between inanimate substances, but as a "thing" or res. In short, though for them the soul is an incomplete substance, it is nevertheless an incomplete substance , not an instance of an especially complex way of arranging inanimate substances." (pp. 16-17)

(9) For an excellent account of the Scholastic notion of "immanent action" see Des Chene, Life's Form: Late Aristotelian Conceptions of the Soul (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 57-67. Des Chene notes that some Scholastics preferred to define living actions as "intrinsic", i.e. such that no being other than the being doing the action could produce the effect of the action. On this definition, for example, growth would not be a vital action since God could produce in the plant the result of the act of growing (i.e. He could produce the greater quantity), but seeing would be a vital action since not even God could do "my seeing" for me.

(10) See Des Chene, Life's Form , pp. 34-39.

15. ———. 1999. Suárez et la refondation de la métaphysique comme ontologie. Paris: Éditions Peeters.

Étude et traduction de l'Index détaillé de la métaphysique d'Aristot e de F. Suárez par Jean-Paul Coujou.

16. ———. 1998. Dispute Métaphysiques I, II, III. Paris: Vrin.

I: De natura primae philosophiae seu metaphysicae; II: De ratione essentiali seu conceptu entis; III: De passionibus entis in communi, et principiis ejus.

Text intégral présenté, traduit et annoté par Jean-Paul Coujou.

Introduction: Suárez et la Renaissance de la métaphysique pp. 7-45.

17. ———. 2009. Disputes métaphysiques XXVIII-XXIX. Grenoble: Jérôme Millon.

Traduit du latin, présenté et annoté par Jean-Paul Coujou.

Introduction pp. 7-89.

18. ———. 1999. La distinction de l'étant fini et de son être. Dispute Métaphysique XXXI. Paris: Vrin.

XXXI: De essentia entis finiti ut tale est, et illius esse, eorumque distinctione.

Texte intégral, présenté, traduit et annoté par Jean-Paul Coujou.

19. ———. 2001. Les êtres de raison. Dispute Métaphysique LIV. Paris: Vrin.

Traduction par Jean-Paul Coujou. Texte latin en vis-à-vis.

20. ———. 2007. Disputazioni Metafisiche I-III. Milano: Bompiani.

Introduzione, traduzione e note di Costantino Esposito. In appendice Le "disputazioni Metafisiche" nella critica contemporanea. Nuova edizione riveduta e ampliata (prima edizione, Milano, Rusconi, 1996)

21. ———. 1976. Über die Individualität und das Individuationsprizip. Fünfe metaphysische Disputaton. Hamburg: Meiner.

Translated with an Introduction by R. von Specht.

22. ———. 1960. Disputaciones metafìsicas. Madrid: Editorial Gredos.

Seven volumes edited and translated by Sergio Rabade Romeo, Salvador Caballero Sánchez, Antonio Piucerver Zanón (1960-1966).

Italian translation

1. ———. 2007. Disputazioni Metafisiche I-Iii. Milano: Bompiani.

Introduzione, traduzione e note di Costantino Esposito. In appendice Le "disputazioni Metafisiche" nella critica contemporanea. Nuova edizione riveduta e ampliata (prima edizione, Milano, Rusconi, 1996)

2. ———. 1976. Über Die Individualität Und Das Individuationsprizip. Fünfe Metaphysische Disputaton. Hamburg: Meiner.

Translated with an Introduction by R. von Specht.

German translation

1. ———. 1976. Über Die Individualität Und Das Individuationsprizip. Fünfe Metaphysische Disputaton. Hamburg: Meiner.

Translated with an Introduction by R. von Specht.

Complete Spanish translation

1. ———. 1960. Disputaciones Metafìsicas. Madrid: Editorial Gredos.

Seven volumes edited and translated by Sergio Rabade Romeo, Salvador Caballero Sánchez, Antonio Piucerver Zanón (1960-1966)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on the Metaphysics of Francisco Suárez. First Part: A - G

Bibliography

N.B. For the studies of John P. Doyle, see the Annotated bibliography of John P. Doyle

1. "Suárez en el cuarto centenario de su nacimiento (1548-1948)." 1948. Pensamiento no. 4.

Sumario: D. José Ibáñez Martín: Presentaciónl 7; D. Fidel García: Algunos principios diferenciales de la metafísica suareciana frente al tomismo, tradicional 11; Jesús Iturrioz: Fuentes de la metafisica de Suárez 31; Ramón Ceñal: Alejandro de Alejandría: su influjo en la metafísica de Suárez 91; José Hellin: Lineas fundamentales del sistema metafísico de Suárez 123; Juan Roig Gironella: La síntesis metafísica de Suárez 169; Luis Martínez Gómez: Lo existencial en la analogía de Suárez 215; Marcial Solana: Doctrina de Suárez sobre el primer principio metafísico: novedad que ofrece, juicio sobre la misma 245; Juan Francisco Yela Utrilla: El ente de razón en Suárez 271; Ignacio Alcorta: Problemática del tema de la creación en Suárez 305; Eleuterio Elorduy: El concepto objetivo en Suárez 335; José María Alejandro: La gnoseologia de lo universal en el Doctor Eximio y la dificultad criticista 425; Antonio Ferreiro: La naturaleza de la propiedad privada en las doctrinas de Suárez 449; Heinrich Rommen: Variaciones sobre la filosofía jurídica y política de Francisco Suárez 493; Antonio Alvarez de Uñera: La democracia en la doctrina de Suárez 509; Ignacio Gómez Robledo: Doctrina de Suárez sobre el origen y el sujeto de la autoridad civil 531; Eustaquio Guerrero: La verdadera doctrina de Suárez sobre el derecho de guerra 583; Jesús Iturrioz: Bibliografía suareciana 603; Indice onomástico 639.

2. "Francisco Suárez." 1991. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 65.

Table of Contents: Jorge J. E. Gracia: Francisco Suárez: The Man in History, 259-266; Carlos Noreña: Suárez and the Jesuits, 267-286; Jorge J. E. Gracia: Suárez's Conception of Metaphysics: A Step in the Direction of Mentalism? 287-310; John P. Doyle: Suárez on the Unity of a Scientific Habit, 311-334; John D. Kronen: The Importance of the Concept of Substantial Unity in Suárez Argument for Hylomorphism, 335-360; Douglas P. Davis: Suárez and the Problem of Positive Evil, 361-372; T. D. Sullivan and Jeremiah Reedy: The Ontology of Eucharist, 373-386; John L. Treloar, S. J. Moral Virtue and the Demise of Prudence in the Thought of Francis Suárez, 387-400.

"Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) is a major figure in the history of Western thought. His contributions to metaphysics, the philosophy of law, and Catholic theology are well recognized in Continental Europe and Latin America, but they are seldom acknowledged in the English-speaking world. Hopefully, this issue of the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly will help repair the long standing neglect of Suarez among English-speaking scholars.

This collection of articles attempts to present various aspects of Suarez’s thought, although it concentrates primarily on metaphysical topics, reflecting current interests in his philosophy. Suarez’s political philosophy and the philosophy of law are not represented because the articles commissioned on those topics never materialized, nor were there submissions in those areas. Thus, these important aspects of Suarez’s teaching do not receive the attention they deserve in this collection." (Preface by Jorge J. E. Gracia).

3. Aertsen, Jan A. 2012. Medieval Philosophy as Transcendental Thought. From Philip the Chancellor (ca. 1225) to Francisco Suárez. Leiden: Brill.

Contents: Preface XIX-XX; Introduction 1; One. The Concept of transcendens in Medieval Thought: What is beyond and what is common 13; Two: Conditions, Presuppositions and Sources of a Doctrine of the Transcendentals 35; Three. The Beginning of the Doctrine of the Transcendentals (ca. 1225): Philip the Chancellor 109; Four. The Doctrine of the Transcendentals in Franciscan Masters [Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure] 135; Five. Albertus Magnus: Different Traditions of thought and the Transcendentals 177; Six: Thomas Aquinas: A First Model 209; Seven. Henry of Ghent: The onto-theological transformation of the doctrine 273; Eighth. The German Dominican School: Dietrich of Freiberg and Meister Eckhart 315; Nine. Duns Scotus: A Turn in the Doctrine of the Transcendentals 371; Ten. Discussions on the Scotist Conception [Francis of Meyronnes, Peter Thomae, Nicholas Bonet, Francis of Marchia] 433; Eleven. The Doctrine of the Transcendentals in Nominalism [William of Ockham, John Buridan] 515; Twelve. Neoplatonic Critiques of Transcendental Metaphysics [Berthold of Moosburg, Nicholas of Cusa] 545; Thirteenth. The Doctrine of the Transcendentals in Renaissance Philosophy [Lorenzo Valla, Pico della Mirandola] 569; Fourteen. The "Metaphysical Disputations" of Francisco Suárez: Between Scholasticism and Modernity 587; Fifteenth. The Doctrine of the "Supertranscendentals": An Alternative Model? 635; Sixteen. Conclusion: The Importance of the transcendental way of thought for medieval philosophy 657; Bibliography 707; Index Nominum 741; Index Rerum 747-756.

4. Agostini, Igor. 2008. L' infinità di Dio. Il dibattito da Suàrez a Caterus (1597-1641). Roma: Editori Riuniti.

5. Aho, Tuomo. 2007. "Suarez on Cognitive intentions." In Mind, Cognition and Representation. The Tradition of Commentaries on Aristotle's De anima, edited by Bakker, Paul J.J.M. and Thijssen, J.M.M.H., 179-203. Aldershot: Ashgate.

6. Åkerlund, Erik. 2009. "Suárez on Forms, Universals and Understanding." Studia Neoaristotelica no. 6:159-182.

"The interpretations in the secondary literature of Suárez' position in the "classical" debate on the status of universals vary considerably. In this article, the problem is looked at from a slightly different angle: that of Suárez' basic metaphysics of substantial forms and his views concerning understanding and knowledge. These areas of Suárez' thought are thoroughly analysed and related to each other. Regarding the question of the status of universals it is argued that Suárez' thought in the areas of substantial forms and of understanding generally supports the reading of Suarez as a "moderate nominalist"."

7. Ashworth, Earline Jennifer. 1995. "Suárez on the analogy of Being. Some historical background." Vivarium no. 33:50-75.

"I argue that Suárez is best read as part of a tradition which predates Cajetan with respect to the classification of types of analogy, and which to some extent predates Scotus in its insistence on a concept of being which is both one and analogical. I draw on three Fifteenth century philosophers and theologians, Capreolus, Dominic of Flanders, and Soncinas, and one Sixteenth century writer, Domingo de Soto."

8. Aubenque, Pierre. 1999. "Suárez et l'avénement du concept d'être." In Francisco Suárez (1548-1617). Tradiçao e Modernidade, edited by Cardoso, Adelino, Martins, Antonio Manuel and Dos Santos, Leonel Ribeiro, 11-20. Lisboa: Ediçoes Colibri.

Réimprimé dans: P. Aubenque, Problèmes aristotéliciens. I. Philosophie théorique, Paris: Vrin 2009 pp. 331-340

9. Barrón, Jorge Uscatescu. 1995. "El concepto de metafisica en Suárez: su objeto y dominio." Pensamiento no. 200:215-236.

"Se trata de una interpretacion de la primera disputacion de las Disputationes metaphysicae de Suárez. El objeto de la metafisica es el ser real en general con exclusion del ente de razon y del ente "per accidens". Asi pues, el dominio de la metafisica es la totalidad de los entes reales por si. A continuacion se estudia cada uno de los temas que la metafisica debe tratar, lo cual se refleja en la estructura de la mencionada obra de Suárez: propiedades y principios del ser, etc. Al hacer de la inmaterialidad un rasgo del ser se desvirtua el caracter generalisimo de la metafisica, que de por si esta mas alla de la division del ser material e inmaterial. Por ultimo, se analiza la correspondencia entre los rasgos entresacados de la metafisica como ciencia y el ser real en general."

10. Barroso, Fernández Óscar. 2006. "Suárez, filósofo de encrucijada o del nacimiento de la ontología." Pensamiento no. 232:121-138.

"The present work studies the different interpretations proposed in the 20th century concerning the metaphysics of Francisco Suárez. They are divided in three groups: essentialist, existentialist, and

objectivist. The essentialist interpretation has been maintained fundamentally by Thomist authors, the most outstanding scholar among them being E. Gilson. The existentialist interpretation, headed by J. Hellín, can be analyzed as a reaction to the essentialist interpretation. The noetic-objectivist interpretation finds its inspiration in M. Heidegger, and its definitive impetus in the works of J. F. Courtine.

With Courtine, we will maintain that Suárez cannot be classified either as an essentialist or as an existentialist. Efforts to classify him as such will encounter concrete difficulties, since Suárez opens up a new realm for metaphysics, the ontological, situated within the perspective of intentionality and beyond the perspective of effectivity and creation within which medieval metaphysics moves."

11. Bastit, Michel. 1989. "Interprétation analogique de la loi et analogie de l'être chez Suárez: de la similitude à l'identité." Études Philosophiques no. 44:429-443.

12. Beuchot, Mauricio. 1992. "La esencia y la existencia en los escolásticos post-medievales. La lucha entre Francisco Suárez y Juan Martínez de Prado." Doctor Communis no. 45:153-161.

13. Blanchette, Olivia. 1999. "Suárez and the latent essentialism of Heidegger's fundamental ontology." Review of Metaphysics no. 53:3-19.

"Suárez is viewed by Heidegger and others as having set ontological problems in a form that has marked the whole of modern metaphysics or ontology. It is in this context that Heidegger himself came to his idea of ontological difference as redefining the question of being in a way that had never been seen before. In his Marburg lectures of 1927 Heidegger traces Kant's essentialist conception of being, or rather of reality, back to the late Scholastics who separated essence from existence, which he says was not the same as positing the ontological difference, but which could explain why Kant was unable to raise the question of being in the same way that Suárez would not allow for any real distinction between essence and existence. In his attempt to get beyond the essentialism of modern ontology as found in Kant as well as Suárez, however, Heidegger falls short because he continues to think of "Sein" in essentialist terms as different from being, without ever getting back to the ancient idea of being as act understood as transcending essence in finite being."

14. Burlando, Giannina. 2006. "Suárez on Intrinsic Representationalism." In Intellect et imagination dans la philosophie médiévale. Actes du XIe Congrès International de Philosophie Médiévale de la Société Internationale pour l'Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale (S.I.E.P.M), Porto, du 26 au 31 août 2002. Vol. III, edited by Pacheco, Maria Cândida and Meirinhos, José F., 1941-1957. Turnhout: Brepols.

"Does Suárez avoid the criticisms about nonintrinsic representations?

This paper tries to show how the ontological moves that avoid the Danto-Dennett (D-D) charges of circularity and regress are the ones Francisco Suárez (1548-1617) makes. The author argues that the rejection of the agent intellect, particularly its transduction function and, in general, his conception of conceptus objectivus constitutes Suárez's recognition of the D-D problems. Hence, the real issue about representations turns out to be over causation. Suárez's doctrines of harmony, and intrinsic representations are necessarily connected. Secondly, the article also shows that Dennett is confused at a certain point."

15. Cantens, Bernardo J. 1999. Suárez and Meinong on Beings of Reason and Non-Existent Objects, University of Miami.

Available at ProQuest Dissertation Express. Order number: 9938315.

16. ———. 2000. "The relationship between God and essences and the notion of eternal Truths according to Francisco Suárez." Modern Schoolman no. 77:127-143.

"An understanding of the relationship between God and the essences of His creatures is of vital importance for any contemporary theist in understanding the nature of God and the created world. Historically, this concern received a great deal of attention and has been an essential component of many philosophical systems (e.g. St. Augustine's, St. Thomas' and Ockham's). In contemporary circles, philosophers such as Plantinga have revived the discussion. The difficulties that have permeated the historical and contemporary discussions of this topic are: (1) the nature of essences (i.e. Are they eternal? Are they necessary? What is their ontological status? Do non-existent beings have essences?) and (2) how are essences related to God (i.e. Are they necessary because God willed them as such or is their necessity independent of God's will? Are they ontologically independent of God or are they part of God's intellect?). In this paper, I want to explore the notion of essence and its relation to God in the philosophy of Francisco Suárez and establish three conclusions. First, the major one is that Suárez presents an original doctrine, which differs from the more popular Thomistic doctrine, and can serve as a springboard for new thoughts on this topic. Second, I want to demonstrate that Suárez is able to reconcile the seemingly contradictory position of maintaining the special character of the necessity of essences while not delimiting God's freedom. Finally, I will point out the similarity between Suárez's notion of the necessity of essences, entailed in his doctrine of eternal truths, and Plantinga's "necessity of nature"."

17. ———. 2002. "Ultimate reality in the metaphysics of Francisco Suárez." Ultimate Reality and Meaning.Interdisciplinary Studies in thePhilosophy of Understanding no. 25:73-92.

"In this paper I examine Francisco Suárez's conception of ultimate reality in his metaphysics. First, I present a succinct biography on Francisco Suárez. Second, I discuss the structure, organization, style and influence of his major philosophical work, the Metaphysical Disputations. Finally, I explore Suárez's view on ultimate reality as real being (ens reale). I discuss Suárez's view on the relationship between real being (ens reale) and possible being (ens posible) and how these relate to being (esse). I conclude by discussing God's place in Suárez's conception of reality."

18. ———. 2003. "Suárez on Beings of Reason: What Kinds of Beings (entia) are Beings of Reason, and What Kind of Being (esse) Do They Have?" American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 77:171-187.

"Beings of reason or non-existent objects have always been a source of mind-boggling paradoxes that have vexed philosophers and thinkers in the past and present. Consider Bertrand Russell's paradox: 'if A and B are not different, then the difference between A and B does not subsist. But how can a non-entity be the subject of a proposition?' Or Meinong's paradox: 'There are objects of which it is true that there are no such objects.' At the root of these troubling conundrums are two basic questions: What are beings of reason? What kind of existence do they have? Francisco Suárez was well aware that a solution to the metaphysical questions concerning the essential character of beings of reason and their ontological status would serve as the key to solving the puzzles and paradoxes just described. A solution to these metaphysical questions would also bring about an understanding of how we talk about beings of reason and other problems that they give rise to in the philosophy of language. In this paper, I present Suárez's view on the nature and ontological status of beings of reason and clarify some of the following questions: What kind of beings (entia) are beings of reason? What kind of being (esse) do beings of reason have? This latter concern is related to the following metaphysical issues: What are real beings? What is the nature and ontological status of possible beings? What is the distinction between real beings, actual beings, and possible beings?"

19. Cardoso, Adelino, Martins, Antonio Manuel, and Dos Santos, Leonel Ribeiro, eds. 1999. Francisco Suárez (1548-1617). Tradiçao e Modernidade. Lisboa: Ediçoes Colibri.

Índice: Apresentação 7;

I

Pierre Aubenque: Suarez et l'avènement du concept d'être 11; José Enes: Suarez e o regresso ao momento ontológico de Parménides no dealbar da Modernidade 21; António Braz Teixeira: Suarez e o objecto e a natureza da metafísica 37; Mariano Alvarez Gomez: Sobre el concepto de individuo en F. Suarez 45; Mário Santiago de Carvalho: Suarez: tempo e duração 65; Robert Fastiggi: The proof for the existence of God in Suarez 81; Miquel Beltran: El Dios de Suarez y los espacios imaginários 93; Guillermo Hurtado: Entes e modos en las Disputaãones Metafísicas 99;

II

Joaquim Cerqueira Gonçalves: Francisco Suarez e a modernidade filosófica - a distinção essência-existência 121; José Pereira: The achievement of Suarez and the suarezianization of thomism 133; António Manuel Martins: Tópica metafísica: de Fonseca a Suarez 157; Giannina Burlando: Autoconocimiento intelectual en el De Anima de Francisco Suarez y Las Meditaciones sobre Filosofia Primem de Descartes 169: Claudia Lorena Garcia: Descartes y Suarez: sobre la falsedad non judicativa 187; Adelino Cardoso: A viragem glissoniana do pensamento de Francisco Suarez 207

III

José Barata-Moura: Uma nota sobre a praxis em Francisco Suarez 225; Amândio A. Coxito: Francisco Suarez: as relações entre a Igreja e o Estado 239; Pedro Calafate: A ideia de soberania em Francisco Suarez 251; Adolfo Garcia de la Sienra: El libre albedrío y la gracia: Molina, Suarez y Ia reforma 265; Mauricio Beuchot: La ley natural en Suarez 279; Jean-François Courtine: La raison et l'empire de la loi 289-310.

20. Carraud, Vincent. 2002. Causa sive ratio. La raison de la cause de Suárez à Leibniz. Paris: Press Universitaires de France.

Chapitre I pp. 103-166.

21. Cerqueira, Gonçalves Joaquim. 1999. "Francisco Suárez e a modernidade filosófica - a distinção essência-existência." In Francisco Suárez (1548-1617). Tradiçao e Modernidade, edited by Cardoso, Adelino, Martins, Antonio Manuel and Dos Santos, Leonel Ribeiro, 121-132. Lisboa: Ediçoes Colibri.

22. Conze, Eberhard. 1928. Der Begriff der Metaphysik bei Franciscus Suarez. Leipzig: Felix Meiner.

Einleitung 1-4; I. Der Gegenstand der Metaphysik 5

1. Die Metaphysik als Wissenschaft vom ens inquantum ens reale 5; 2. Die Metaphysik als die Wissenschaft von dem Sein, das dem Sein nach von der Materie abstrahiert 16; 3. Die Gliederung des Gegenstandsbereichs der Metaphysik 22; a. Schema der Gliederung 24; b. Einige Bemerkungen über die Einteilung der Metaphysik an einigen Wendepunkten des Peripatetismus 25;

II. Die Aufgaben der Metaphysik den Einzelwissenschaften gegenüber 28; 1. Der Primat der Metaphysik 28; 2. Die Metaphysik und die Prinzipien 38; 3. Die Metaphysik und die Objekte der Einzelwissenschaften 45; 4. Die Metaphysik und die Theologie 51;

III. Die literarische Form der Disputationes Metaphysicae 57; c. Angabe der Fragen, die Duns Scotus und Javellus an das Buch Theta der Aristotelischen Metaphysik knüpfen 61; Schluss: Der Gegenstandsbereich der Metaphysik bei Suarez und bei Wolff 64; Namenverzeichnis 71-72.

23. Copleston, Frederick Charles. 1953. A History of Philosophy. Vol. III: Ockham to Suárez. London: Burns Oates & Washbourne.

See Chapter XXII and XXIII pp. 353-405.

24. Coujou, Jean-Paul. 1999. Suárez et la refondation de la métaphysique comme ontologie. Étude et traduction de l'Index détaillé de la Métaphysique d'Aristote de F. Suárez. Louvain-Paris: Éditions Peeters.

25. ———. 2001. Le vocabulaire de Suárez. Paris: Ellipses.

26. ———. 2009. "Durée et existence chez Suárez." Revue Thomiste no. 109:589-620.

"In the Metaphysical Disputation L, Suárez draws insights from Aristotle and Saint Augustine in order to examine the ontological connection that could be established between duration and existence. This insight opens up into the metaphysical realm by raising an anthropological and theological inquiry about the body, life and death. Our own being is rooted in a sensible reality which is identical to the duration it manifests, simply because it endures in being. Suárez's concept of duration confirms the metaphysical principle according to which any being actually exists in virtue of the fact that it is individual and singular. Thus, the ability to be, which qualifies real being, appears under the mode of what is possible. This, in Suárez's work, is significant both with regards to politics and history."

27. ———. 2012. Pensée de l'être et théorie politique: le moment Suarézien. Louvain: Peeters.

Vol. I: "Cet ouvrage se propose d'examiner chez Suárez (1548-1617), comment la théorie du droit et de la loi prolonge la pensée de l'étant élaborée par la métaphysique en une compréhension ontologique du politique. Il s'agit précisément de mener à son terme, dans un système unifié du savoir, la détermination de l'étant en procédant à son extension à la question de l'être de l'homme et de l'être-en-commun propre à la société politique.

Au commencement du XVII° siècle, une autre direction pour l'accomplissement du projet ontologique non identifiable à celle d'une science mathématique de la nature se profile et préfigure une récurrence persistante des origines de la philosophie. Ainsi, on trouve dans le système suarézien la retranscription originale et réactualisée d'une ligne de force traversant la pensée antique: l'ontopolitique. Il devient alors nécessaire afin d'expliciter et de justifier cette orientation, de déterminer à la fois le fondement et la spécificité de la relation instaurée par Suárez entre l'ontologie, la théologie, l'anthropologie et le politique; ces domaines demeurent indissociables d'une crise et d'un renouveau de la philosophie première s'énonçant comme accomplissement éthique de la raison métaphysique."

Vol. II et III: "Au commencement du XVII° siècle, une autre direction pour l'accomplissement du projet ontologique non identifiable à celle d'une science mathématique de la nature se profile et préfigure une récurrence persistante des origines de la philosophie. Ainsi, on trouve dans le système suarézien la retranscription originale et réactualisée d'une ligne de force traversant la pensée antique: l'ontopolitique. Il devient alors nécessaire afin d'expliciter et de justifier cette orientation, de déterminer à la fois le fondement et la spécificité de la relation instaurée par Suárez entre l'ontologie, la théologie, l'anthropologie et le politique; ces domaines demeurent indissociables d'une crise et d'un renouveau de la philosophie première s'énonçant comme accomplissement éthique de la raison métaphysique. Cet ouvrage se propose d'examiner chez Suárez (1548-1617), comment la théorie du droit et de la loi prolonge la pensée de l'étant élaborée par la métaphysique en une compréhension ontologique du politique. Il s'agit précisément de mener à son terme, dans un système unifié du savoir, la détermination de l'étant en procédant à son extension à la question de l'être de l'homme et de l'être-en-commun propre à la société politique. Au commencement du XVII° siècle, une autre direction pour l'accomplissement du projet ontologique non identifiable à celle d'une science mathématique de la nature se profile et préfigure une récurrence persistante des origines de la philosophie. Ainsi, on trouve dans le système suarézien la retranscription originale et réactualisée d'une ligne de force traversant la pensée antique: l'ontopolitique. Il devient alors nécessaire afin d'expliciter et de justifier cette orientation, de déterminer à la fois le fondement et la spécificité de la relation instaurée par Suárez entre l'ontologie, la théologie, l'anthropologie et le politique; ces domaines demeurent indissociables d'une crise et d'un renouveau de la philosophie première s'énonçant comme accomplissement éthique de la raison métaphysique."

28. Courtine, Jean-François. 1976. "Nominalisme et pensée classique. La situation privilégiée de l'oeuvre de F. Suárez." Recherches sur le XVIIe siècle no. 1:21-34.

29. ———. 1979. "Le projet suarézien de la métaphysique. Pour une étude de la thèse suarézienne du néant." Archives de Philosophie no. 42:253-274.

"The ultimate aim of the present study is the determination of the sense of the Being as "objectity" in Suárez's Disputationes Metaphysicae. However the question is not directly approached, but by bringing to light a non-thematic thesis upon nothingness. The Disputationes in their ontological intention itself and through their architectonic point out in direction of a metaphysics of the yet undeterminated object (aliquid-nihil), metaphysics that will find its full development through the German Schulmetaphysik until Kant."

30. ———. 1980. "Le statut ontologique du possible selon Suarez." Cuadernos Salmantinos de Filosofia no. 7:247-268.

31. ———. 1983. "Le principe d'individuation chez Suárez et chez Leibniz." Studia Leibnitiana no. 23:174-190.

Supplementary volume

32. ———. 1985. "Ontologie ou métaphysique?" Giornale di Metafisica no. 7:3-24.

33. ———. 1988. "Suárez et la Tradition Aristotelicienne de la Métaphysique." In Aristotelismus und Renaissance. In memoriam Charles B. Schmitt, edited by Kessler, Eckhard, Lohr, Charles H. and Sparn, Walter, 101-126. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.

34. ———. 1989. "Différence ontologique et analogie de l'être. Le tournant suárezien." Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie:41-76.

35. ———. 1990. Suárez et le système de la métaphysique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

36. ———. 1996. "Théologie morale et conception du politique chez Suárez." In Les jésuites à l'âge braoque 1540-1640, edited by Giard, Lucie and Vaucelles, Louis de, 261-278. Grenoble: Jérôme Millon.

37. ———. 1999. Nature et empire de la loi. Études suaréziennes. Paris: Vrin.

38. ———. 2005. Inventio analogiae. Métaphysique et ontothéologie. Paris: Vrin.

Part III, chap. 2: L'analogia entis et sa situation dans la métaphysique de Suárez pp. 291-336; Part III, chap.. 3: Cajétan - Suárez pp. 337-357.

39. Cronin, Timothy J. 1960. "Eternal truths in the thought of Suárez and Descartes (first part)." Modern Schoolman no. 38:269-288.

40. ———. 1961. "Eternal truths in the thought of Suárez and Descartes (second part)." Modern Schoolman no. 39:23-38.

41. ———. 1966. Objective Being in Descartes and in Suárez. Roma: Gregorian University Press.

42. ———. 1966. "Objective reality of human ideas: Descartes and Suarez." In Wisdom in depth. Essays in honor of Henri Renard, S. J., edited by Daues, Vincent, Holloway, Maurice and Sweeney, Leo, 68-79. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co.

43. Cross, Richard. 2005. "Duns Scotus and Suárez at the origins of modernity." In Deconstructing radical orthodoxy. Postmodern theology, rhetoric and truth, edited by Hankey, Wayne J., 65-80. Aldershot: Ashgate.

44. Daniel, Stephen H. 2000. "Berkeley, Suárez, and the "esse-existere" distinction." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 74:621-636.

"For Berkeley, a thing's existence "esse" is nothing more than its being perceived "as that thing". It makes no sense to ask (with Samuel Johnson) about the "esse" of the mind or the specific act of perception, for that would be like asking what it means for existence to exist. Berkeley's "existere is percipi or percipere" thus carefully adopts the scholastic distinction between "esse" and "existere" ignored by Locke and others committed to a substantialist notion of mind. Following the Stoics, Berkeley proposes that, "as" the existence of ideas, minds "subsist" rather than "exist" and, accordingly, cannot be identified as independently existing things."

45. Darge, Rolf. 1999. "Grundthese und ontologische Bedeutung der Lehre von der Analogie des Seienden nach F. Suárez." Philosophische Jahrbuch no. 166:312-333.

46. ———. 1999. "Ens inquantum ens. Die Erklärung des Subjekts der Metaphysik bei F. Suarez." Recherches de Théologie et de Philosophie Médiévales no. 66:335-361.

47. ———. 2000. ""Ens intime transcendit omnia": Suárez' Modell der transzendentalen Analyse und die mittelalterlichen Transzendentalienlehren." Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie no. 47:150-172.

"The study seeks an approach to the proper outlines of Suárez's ontology in the context of the scholastic tradition of metaphysics. It shows, that Suárez synthesizes elements from different ontological traditions in a new explanation of the transcendentality of being. This explanation does not follow -- as the prevailing interpretation of Suárez's position suggests -- the 'via Scoti'; rather it is unfolded as a countermove to it on a common ground. In consequence of it Suárez replaces Scotus's model of the transcendental analysis by another conception, which takes up the pre-Scotistic doctrine of the transcendentals."

48. ———. 2000. "Suárez' Analyse der Transzendentalien 'Ding' und 'Etwas' im Kontext der scholastischen Metaphysiktradition." Theologie und Philosophie no. 75:339-358.

"Some scholastic authors count 'thing' and 'something' amongst the transcendental attributes of being. The study seeks to explain Suárez's analysis of these attributes with regard to the scholastic debate on the number of the passiones entis. It shows that Suárez integrates different traditions on the basis of an original understanding of 'being' or 'thing'. Recent interpretations of Suárez's ontological approach are questioned by the author's conclusion, that Suárez does not take up Henry of Ghent's and Scotus's scheme of the first conceptions and excludes from metaphysics the reduction of being to '"res"' in the sense of the mere thinkable or possibile logicum."

49. ———. 2000. "Die Grundlegung einer allgemeinen Theorie der transzendentalen Eigenschaften des Seienden bei F. Suárez." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 54:341-364.

"The study seeks to explain the central idea in Suárez's general theory of the transcendental properties of being with regard to its background in the medieval doctrine of the transcendentals. It questions the prevailing view that Suárez adopts Scotus's doctrine of the passiones entis and leads to the conclusion that Suárez -- within the new framework of his explanation of real being -- rather takes up and reshapes the pre-Scotist doctrine of the transcendentals."

50. ———. 2001. "Suárez' Begriff der transzendentalen Einheit." Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte no. 43:37-57.

51. ———. 2003. "Seinswahrheit und Erkenntniswahrheit. Francisco Suárez und die thomistische Lehre von der analogia veri." In Die Logik des Transzendentalen. Festschrift für Jan A. Aertsen zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Pickavé, Martin, 246-265. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"According to Thomas Aquinas 'true' is predicated essentially of things with reference to truth in the intellect. His reflections on the relation between transcendental and cognitive truth raise questions which in later scholasticism -- in connection with difficulties within the doctrine of analogy -- give rise to controversies on the structure and ontological meaning of the analogia veri. In the Thomistic tradition Cajetan's solution had a strong influence, although it reduces ontological truth to a mere extrinsic denomination of things.

Against this solution Suárez develops a new interpretation of the order of predication of 'true'. It confirms both (a) the Aristotelian doctrine according to which the original place of truth is the

intellect, and (b) the traditional doctrine of the transcendentals according to which true is not an extrinsic denomination of things, but their inner entity under a certain respect. The study seeks to

explain Suárez's solution against its historical background."

52. ———. 2003. "Eines oder Vieles. Zu einem Grundproblem der scholastischen Theorien über das Eine." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 57:27-52.

"On the background of the Aristotelian doctrine of the One which is convertible with being, scholastic theories of the One meet with a difficulty that challenges their underlying ontological principles: how can the doctrine of the convertibility of 'one' and 'being' be reconciled with the Aristotelian doctrine, according to which 'one' and 'many' are first differences or opposites of the first division of being? If one divides being, it cannot be converted with 'being' in a proposition, and vice versa. Among the attempts to solve the problem on the basis of the conception of an essential identity of being and one, two main types of solutions may be distinguished. The study seeks to characterize their outlines and ontological implications and explains, how the different approaches emerge within the framework of the Aristotelian tradition of metaphysics."

53. ———. 2004. Suárez' transzendentale Seinsauslegung und die Metaphysiktradition. Leiden: Brill.

54. ———. 2004. "Suárez' Theorie der ontischen Wahrheit und die Metaphysiktradition." Theologie und Philosophie no. 79:31-54.

55. ———. 2004. "Vom Guten der Dinge. Suárez' Theorie des ontischen Guten und die Metaphysiktradition." In Francisco Suárez. "Der ist der Mann". Apéndice Francisco Suárez De generatione et corruptione. Homenaje al Prof. Salvador Castellote, edited by Schmutz, Jacob, 133-159. Valencia: Facultad de Teología San Vicente Ferrer.

56. ———. 2006. "Kognitive und ontologische Wahrheit bei Suárez." In Intellect et imagination dans la philosophie médiévale. Actes du XIe Congrès International de Philosophie Médiévale de la Société Internationale pour l'Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale (S.I.E.P.M), Porto, du 26 au 31 août 2002. Vol. III, edited by Pacheco, Maria Cândida and Meirinhos, José F., 1929-1940. Turnhout: Brepols.

57. ———. 2007. ""Diese Lehre ist von allen die gewisseste". Die Radikalisierung der aristotelischen Seinslehre in der Hochschulmetaphysik der frühen Neuzeit." In Der Aristotelismus in der frühen Neuzeit, Kontinuität oder Wiederaneignung?, edited by Frank, Günter and Speer, Andreas, 16-42. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

58. Di Vona, Piero. 1968. Studi sulla scolastica della Controriforma. L'esistenza e la sua distinzione metafisica dell'essenza. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

59. Doig, James Conroy. 1977. "Suárez, Descartes, and the Objective Reality of Ideas." New Scholasticism no. 51:350-371.

60. Doyle, John Patrick. 2010. Collected Studies on Francisco Suárez S.J. (1548-1617). Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Contents: Editor's Foreword VII-IX; Introduction: The Theme of this Collection, its Contents, its Character and Rationale XIII-XVI; 1. Francisco Suárez, His Life, His Works, His Doctrine, and Some of His Influence 1; 2. Suárez on the Reality of the Possibles 21; 3. Suárez on the Analogy of Being 41; 4. Suarezian and Thomistic Metaphysics before the Judgment of Heidegger 89; 5. The Suarezian Proof for God's Existence 109; 6. Prolegomena to a Study of Extrinsic Denomination in the Work of Francis Suárez, S.J. 123; 7. Suárez on Beings of Reason and Truth 161; 8. Suárez on the Unity of a Scientific Habit 209; 9. Suárez on the Truth of the Proposition, "This is My Body" 235; 10. Suárez on Preaching the Gospel to People like the American Indians 257; 11. Francisco Suárez on the Law of Nations 315; 12. Suárez on Human Rights 333; 13. Francisco Suárez on the Interpretation of Laws 357; 14. Postscript and Prospectus 389; Bibliography 393; Index of Names 409; Index of Terms 413-416.

"The main theme in these studies is twofold. The first is theoretical, centering on the Suarezian conception of being and metaphysics. As Etienne Gilson pointed out in Being and Some Philosophers, this conception had its origin in Avicenna's understanding of Aristotelian metaphysics, an understanding which passed through Duns Scotus to Suarez and then on to Suárez's successors, notably Christian Wolff. I still accept Gilson's basic account of Suárez's lineage, which account was also basic for these studies in their original appearance. But now (in 2010) I would modify it along the line suggested by Rolf Darge, who has emphasized the difference of the Suarezian concept of being and its descent to its inferiors versus the Scotistic concept of being as simpliciter simplex as this descends to its inferiors by differences outside itself.(1) The second theme takes up the practical side of Suárez's philosophical and theological interests, including his views on human society, law and morality, Church and state, international law, and human rights. The first theme is represented in different metaphysical and epistemological dimensions through eight studies, while the second is the major concern of the last four essays.

The introduction to the collection attempts to give an overview of Suarez the man, his published writings, his philosophical thought, and some of his influence." (p. XI)

(1) For this, see Rolf Darge, Suárez transzendentale Seinsauslegung und die Metaphysik-tradition (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2004).

61. Esposito, Costantino. 1995. "Ritorno a Suárez. Le Disputationes Metaphysicae nella critica contemporanea." In La filosofia nel Siglo de Oro. Studi sul Tardo Rinascimento spagnolo, edited by Lamacchia, Ada, 465-573. Bari: Levante Editori.

Reprinted with additions as Le "disputazioni Meetafisiche" nella critica contemporanea - in the Italian translation of the three first Metaphysical Meditations: Francisco Suárez - Disputazioni metafisiche - Milano, Bompiani, 2007. pp. 747-853 (with a detailed bibliography pp. 711-744).

62. ———. 1999. "Das Seiende und das Gute. Francisco Suárez zwischen Thomas von Aquin und Martin Heidegger." In Vom Rätsel des Begriffs. Festschrift für F.-W. von Herrmann zum 65. Geburtstag., edited by Coriando, Paola-Ludovika, 341-356. Berlin: Duncker & Humboldt.

63. ———. 2001. "The concept of time in the metaphysics of Suárez." In The Medieval Concept of Time. The Scholastic Debate and Its Reception in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Porro, Pasquale, 383-398. Leiden: Brill.

64. ———. 2001. "Heidegger, Suárez e la storia dell'ontologia." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 1:407-430.

65. ———. 2003. "Existence, relation, efficience. Le noeud suarézien entre métaphysique et théologie." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 3:139-161.

Volume titled: Existence.

66. Fernandez Burillo, Santiago. 1992. "Introducción a la teoría del conocimiento de Francisco Suárez." Pensamiento no. 48:211-230.

67. ———. 1997. "Las Disputaciones metafisicas de F. Suárez S .J., su inspiracion y algunas de sus lineas maestras. En el IV centenario de la primera edicion (1597-1997)." Revista Española de Filosofia Medieval no. 4:65-86.

"Four centuries after the first edition of "Disputationes Metaphysicae" (1597), that vast work is still the greatest issue from the Spanish philosophy. F. Suárez is the author of one of the most important synthesis of the scholar philosophy. The key of everything he means and also of Disputationes", can be found in the idea of freedom in causality and action. From this concept, some topics are shown: act and potentiality, cause, creation, etc. We explain Suárez's metaphysics from an existential point of view and refuse the accusation of abstractism."

68. Ferrater, Mora José. 1953. "Suárez and modern philosophy." Journal of the History of Ideas no. 14:528-547.

69. Forlivesi, Marco. 2002. "La distinction entre concept formal et concept objectif: Suárez, Pasqualigo, Mastri." Études Philosophiques no. 60:3-30.

"This study shows how a theory of object, and of "objectity" is elaborated, from XIIIth century's scholasticism to the XVIIth century, through a series of conceptual creations and interpretative breaks. It runs into the opposition between formal and objective concept in the XVIIth century. From this rediscovered story follows a new assessment on the cartesian argument for God's existence."

70. ———. 2004. "Ontologia impura. La natura della metafisica secondo Francisco Suárez." In Francisco Suárez. "Der ist der Mann". Apéndice Francisco Suárez De generatione et corruptione. Homenaje al Prof. Salvador Castellote, edited by Schmutz, Jacob, 161-207. Valencia: Facultad de Teología San Vicente Ferrer.

71. ———. 2006. "Impure Ontology. The Nature of Metaphysics and Its Object in Francisco Suarez's Texts." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 5:559-686.

72. Gnemmi, Angelo. 1969. Il fondamento metafisico. Analisi di struttura sulle Disputationes metaphysicae di F. Suárez. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

73. Gómez Caffarena, José. 1959. "Sentido de la composición de ser y esencia en Suárez." Pensamiento no. 15:135-154.

74. Goudriaan, Aza. 1999. Philosophische Gotteserkenntnis bei Suárez und Descartes im Zusammenhang mit der niederländischen reformierten Theologie und philosophie des 17. Jahrunderts. Leiden: Brill.

"This volume deals with basic questions regarding the philosophical knowledge of God in Suarez and Descartes, two very different, but historically linked early-modern philosophers. It has two parts devoted to Suarez and Descartes respectively. Each section examines the path along which philosophy can acquire knowledge of God, the adequacy which is ascribed to this knowledge, as well as selected topics of the doctrine of God's attributes.

Special attention has been given to both critical and positive reactions to Suarez and Descartes on the part of seventeenth-century Dutch Reformed theologians.

The author argues that Descartes, in comparison with Suarez, reduced the theological interests of philosophy and also limited the starting points for attaining to a philosophical knowledge of God. On the other hand, Descartes elevated the presumed adequacy of this knowledge."

75. Gracia, Jorge J.E. 1979. "What the Individual Adds to the Common Nature According to Suárez." New Scholasticism no. 53:221-233.

"In Metaphysical Disputation V, section 2, Suárez criticizes the views of Thomas, Ockham and Scotus on what the individual adds to the common nature. Then he proceeds to state his own view as follows: (1) the individual adds something real to the common nature, (2) nonetheless, what the individual adds is not really or modally distinct from the common nature, (3) rather, it is conceptually distinct from it, since (4) a conceptual distinction does not require that what is added be conceptual. In this paper I examine briefly the nature of the problem at stake, Suárez's view, and the apparent inconsistency between (1), (2), (3) and (4) above. As a conclusion I submit (a) that Suárez's position is fully consistent, (b) although different from those of Thomas, Scotus and Ockham, with which it has been compared often and (c) that the apparent inconsistency is due to an ambiguity in the use of the term 'addition'."

76. ———. 1991. "Suárez Conception of Metaphysics: A Step in the Direction of Mentalism?" American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 65:287-309.

"Mentalism in metaphysics is the view that the object of study of metaphysics is something mental rather than something real. Suárez has been identified as a key figure in the development of mentalism in early modern philosophy. Contrary to this view I argue that Suárez did not take any unambiguous steps toward mentalism and that his position is concordant with the medieval Aristotelian tradition of realism. In the article I examine Suárez's view of the nature of metaphysics, its object, and the ontological status of that object."

77. ———. 1991. "Francisco Suárez: the Man in History." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 65:259-266.

"Suárez decided early in life that he would pursue an ecclesiastical career. Accordingly, he went to Salamanca to study canon law. While engaged in his studies there, he requested admission into the Society of Jesus. At first he was refused admission for reasons of health and what was perceived as a lack of proper intellectual capacity. Insistence paid off, however, and he was allowed to join the order in 1564. After completing his studies, he began a teaching career that would last for over fifty years, taking him to some of the most reknown institutions of his time: Segovia, Valladolid, Rome, Alcalá, Salamanca, and Coimbra. Suárez died in Lisbon, at the age of seventy, on September 25, 1617.

Suárez did not publish early in his life. His first work, De Incarnatione Verbi, appeared in 1590, when he was forty two years of age. After this initial publication, however, a steady stream of works followed: De mysteriis vitae Christi (1592), De sacramentis I (1595), Disputationes metaphysicae (1597), Varia opuscula theologica (1599), De sacramentis II (1602), De censuris (1603), De Deo uno et trino (1606), De virtute et statu religionis I and II (1608 and 1609), De legibus (1612), and Defensio fidei catholicae (1613). Several other works appeared posthumously: De gratia I and III (1619), De angelis (1620), De opera sex dierum, De anima (1621), and De fide, spe, et caritate (1621), De virtute et statu religionis III and IV (1624 and 1625), De ultimo fine (1628), De gratia II (1651), De vera intelligentia auxilii efficacis (1655), Opuscula sex inedita (1859), and Conselhos y pareceres (1948). Moreover, there are still numerous manuscripts awaiting editing and publication. Obviously, Suarez was a tremendously prolific author; his published works fill twenty-eight large volumes. A good number of Suarez’s works were presented as commentaries on Thomas’s Summa theologiae, a clear testimony to the importance that Suarez and his contemporaries attached to the Angelic Doctor. In fact, however, many of these works are largely independent treatises for which Thomas’s Summa is only a thematic occasion." (pp. 260-261).

78. ———. 1992. "Suárez and the doctrine of the Transcendentals." Topoi no. 11:121-134.

"This article discusses Suárez's views concerning the transcendentals, that is, being and those attributes of it that extend to everything. In particular it explores Suárez's notion of transcendentality and the way in which he conceived the transcendental attributes of being are related to it. It makes two claims: first, that Suárez has an intensional rather than an extensional understanding of transcendentality; and, second, that Suárez's understanding of truth and goodness, as expressing real extrinsic denominations based on real relations, appears to contain an inconsistency."

79. ———. 1993. "Suárez and metaphysical mentalism: the last visit." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 67:349-354.

"This article is a reply to N. J. Wells' article "Esse Cognitum and Suárez revisited" ("ACPQ" 67, 3 (1993): 339-348) prompted in turn by my article "Suárez's conception of metaphysics: a step in the direction of mentalism?" ("ACPQ" 65 (1991): 287-309). I argue that, contrary to what Professor Wells' believes: first, he has not clarified the status of the objective concept, and, second, he must accept that, if his interpretation were correct, metaphysics, for Suárez, would be concerned with what is in the mind, rather than with what is outside it."

80. ———. 1994. "Francis Suárez (b. 1548; d. 1617)." In Individuation in Scholasticism. The later Middle Ages and the Counter-Reformation (1150-1650), edited by Gracia, Jorge J.E., 475-510. New York: State University of New York Press.

"This article presents an analysis of Suárez's position on individuation. It discusses Suárez's views of transcendental unity and individual unity and their relations, the ontological status of individuality, the individuation of substances (by designated matter, form, existence, and entity), the individuation of accidents (by substance), and the presence of accidents differing only numerically in the same subject. It claims that Suárez's accomplishment is not only to be found in his systematic approach, but also in his abandonment of a reliance on faith in matters philosophical and in the introduction of various precisions which clarify the issues surrounding individuation."

81. ———. 1998. "Suarez (and later scholasticism)." In Routledge history of medieval philosophy, edited by Marenbon, John, 452-474. New York: Routledge.

82. ———. 1998. "The Ontological Status of the Transcendental Attributes of Being in Scholasticism and Modernity: Suarez and Kant." In Was ist Philosophie im Mittelalter?, Qu'est-ce que la philosophie au Moyen Age? What is Philosophy in the Middle Ages?. Akten des X. Internationalen Kongresses für mittelalterliche Philosophie der Société Internationale pour l'Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale, 25. Bis 30. August 1997 in Erfurt, edited by Aertsen, Jan A. and Speer, Andreas, 213-225. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

83. ———. 2003. "The language of Categories: from Aristotle to Ryle, via Suárez and Kant." In L'élaboration du vocabulaire philosophique au Moyen Âge, edited by Hamesse, Jacqueline and Steel, Carlos, 337-355. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

84. Gracia, Jorge J.E., and Novotný, Daniel D. 2014. "Trascendentales y categorías en la metafísica de Suárez." In Right and Nature in the First and Second Scholasticism. / Derecho y Naturaleza en la primera y segunda escolástica, edited by Culleton, Alfredo Santiago and Pich, Roberto Hofmeister, 449-458. Turnhout: Brepols.

85. Grosso, Giuseppe. 1995. "Sulla distinzione di essenza ed esistenza in Suárez." In La filosofia nel Siglo de Oro. Studi sul Tardo Rinascimento spagnolo, edited by Lamacchia, Ada, 415-427. Bari: Levante Editori.

86. Guy, Alain. 1979. "L'analogie de l'être selon Suárez." Archives de Philosophie no. 42:275-294.

"Counter to Scotus (who affirms the university of the being) and Peter Aureol (who sustains its equivocity), also against saint Thomas (who defends only the analogy of proportion), Suárez, in the 28th of the Disputationes Metaphysicae (third section), pleads for "the analogy of intrinsic attribution of the being." His realism is mixed with some Occamism."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on the Metaphysics of Francisco Suárez. Second Part: H - Z

Bibliography

1. Heider, Daniel. 2007. "Is Suarez's Concept of Being Analogical or Univocal?" American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 81:21-42.

"This article deals with the question of Suárez's conception of being, which prima facie seems to oscillate between a Scotistic univocal conception and a conception of being according to the analogy of intrinsic attribution. The paper intends to show that Suárez's doctrine can in no way be interpreted as representative of the univocal conception, and proceeds in six steps. First, it highlights the importance of the "uncommon doctor"'s theory of the unity of both the formal and the objective concepts of being. In the second part, the paper asks how the concept of being can, without any internal differentiation and structure, give rise to the different relations that it has to the natures subordinated to it. In the second and the third parts, this question receives an answer against the background of Suárez's critique of Scotus's conception, and with the help of his theory of the radical intimate transcendence of being. In the fourth section, there follows an exposition of Suárez's doctrine on the explication of the concept of being. The fifth section offers a brief presentation of the significance of esse for ratio entis.

In the last section, the author places his interpretation in the general context of the Metaphysical Disputations."

2. ———. 2009. "The Nature of Suárez's Metaphysics. Disputationes Metaphysicae and Their Main Systematic Strains." Studia Neoaristotelica no. 6:99-110.

"The paper presents seven basic features of Francisco Suárez's metaphysics. They are as follows: "Univocalization" of the concept of being and transcendental properties, "reification" of the act-potency doctrine, "ontologization" of individuality, "conceptualization" of the Scotist perspective, "existential" character of the concept of being, "epistemologization" and "methodologization" of metaphysics. Whereas the first five are indicated as remaining in the preserve of the traditional scholastic philosophy, the last two are taken as portending the methodological priority of the subjective states of affairs of early modern "main-stream" philosophy."

3. ———. 2009. "The unity of Suárez's metaphysics." Medioevo. Rivista di storia della filosofia medievale no. 34:475-505.

4. ———. 2014. Universals in Second Scholasticism: A Comparative Study with Focus on the Theories of Francisco Suárez S.J. (1548-1617), Joao Poinsot O.P. (1589-1644), and Bartolomeo Mastri da Meldola O.F.M. Conv. (1602-1673), Bonaventura Belluto O.F.M. Conv. (1600-1676). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

"This study aims to present a comparative analysis of philosophical theories of universals espoused by the foremost representatives of the three main schools of early modern scholastic thought. The book introduces the doctrines of Francisco Suarez, S.J. (1548-1617), the Thomist John of St. Thomas, O.P. (1589-1644), and the Scotists Bartolomeo Mastri da Meldola, O.F.M. Conv. (1602-1673) and Bonaventura Belluto, O.F.M. Conv. (1600-1676). The author examines in detail their mutual doctrinal delineation as well as the conceptualist tenet of the Jesuit Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza (1578-1641), whose thought constitutes an important systematic point of comparison especially with Suarez's doctrine. The book offers the first comparative elaboration of the issue of universals, in both its metaphysical and its epistemological aspects, in the era of second scholasticism."

5. Hellin, José. 1962. "El concepto formal en Suárez." Pensamiento no. 18:407-432.

6. Hill, Benjamin, and Lagerlund, Henrik, eds. 2012. The Philosophy of Francisco Suarez. New York: Oxford University Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments VII; List of Contributors VIII; List of Abbreviations IX; Bejamin Hill: Introduction 1; I. Background and Influence. 1. Michael Edwards: Suarez in a Late Scholastic Context: Anatomy, Psychology and Authority 25; 2. Roger Ariew: Descartes and Leibniz as Readers of Suárez: Theory of Distinctions and Principle of Individuation 38; II. Metaphysics. 3. Christopher Shields: Shadows of Being: Francisco Suárez's Entia Rationis 57; 4. Jorge Secada: Suárez on Continuous Quantity 75; III. Natural Philosophy. 5. Dennis Des Chene: Suárez on Propinquity and the Efficient Cause 89; 6. Helen Hattab: Suárez's Last Stand for the Substantial Form 101; IV. Mind and Psychology. 7. James B. South: Suárez, Immortality, and the Soul's Dependence on the Body 121; 8. Cees Leijenhorst: Suárez on Self-Awareness 137; 9. Marleen Rozemond: Unity in the Multiplicity of Suárez's Soul 154; V. Ethics and Natural Law. 10. Thomas Pink: Reason and Obligation in Suárez 175; 11. James Gordley: Suárez and Natural Law 209; Bibliography 230; index 291.

7. Hurtado, Guillermo. 1999. "Entes e modos en la Disputationes Metafísicas." In Francisco Suárez (1548-1617). Tradiçao e Modernidade, edited by Cardoso, Adelino, Martins, Antonio Manuel and Dos Santos, Leonel Ribeiro, 99-117. Lisboa: Ediçoes Colibri.

8. Ippolito, Benedetto. 2005. Analogia dell'essere. La metafisica di Suárez tra onto-teologia medievale e filosofia moderna. Milano: Franco Angeli.

9. Iturroz, Jesûs. 1948. "Fuentes de la metafisica de Suárez." Pensamiento no. 4:31-89.

10. ———. 1949. Estudios sobre la metafisica de Francisco Suárez, S.I. Madrid: Ediciones Fax.

11. Kainz, Howard P. 1970. "The Suárezian position on Being and the Real Distinction: a analytic and comparative study." Thomist no. 34:289-305.

"In elucidating the relationship between "existence" and "essence", it seems that two fundamental options are open: 1) to ground existence in existence itself; or 2) to ground existence in nothingness. Thomas Aquinas, in his doctrine on essence as potentiality, chooses the latter option, for all practical purposes. Suárez, in order to avoid grounding existence in nothingness, chooses the former option. One result of his choice is the purely mental "distinction" between essence and existence."

12. Karofsky, Amy D. 2001. "Suárez's doctrine of eternal truths." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 39:23-47.

"In this paper, I offer an interpretation of Suárez's doctrine of eternal truths expounded in Metaphysical Disputation XXXI, Chapter XII, Sections 38-47. There, Suárez considers and rejects several theories before developing his own. Because it is somewhat difficult to determine what view Suárez ultimately adopts, interpretations of this passage tend to vary. I argue that the interpretations of Norman Wells, Armand Maurer and John P. Doyle are inadequate, since Suárez wants a solution to the problem of eternal truths that does not depend upon the will of the divine being and one that avoids any ontological commitment to unactualized, possible success."

13. ———. 2001. "Suárez's influence on Descartes's theory of eternal truths." Medieval Philosophy and Theology no. 10:241-262.

"There is a philosophical problem, what I will call the problem of eternal truths, that can be stated as follows: If an unactualized, possible essence has no being and is, hence, absolutely nothing, then what grounds the eternal and necessary truth of propositions that purport to be about them? If there were no men, what would ground the necessary truth, "Man is a rational animal"? And what grounded the truth of that proposition prior to the creation of the world? (If it was in fact true at that moment?)"

14. Knebel, Sven K. 2011. Suarezismus. Erkenntnistheoretisches aus dem Nachlass des Jesuitengenerals Tirso González de Santalla (1624-1705). Abhandlung und Edition. Philadelphia: B.R. Grüner.

Text based on the partial edition of two Latin manuscripts in the Bibliotheca Universitaria de Salamanca: 1) Disputationes in octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis et in duo libros De Generatione et Corruptione and 2) Disputationes in Metaphysicam, et libros De Anima, quibus adiuncti sunt duo ultimi tractatus Logicae De Interpretatione, et de Priori, et Posteriori Resolutione.

15. Kronen, John. 1991. "Essentialism old and new: Suárez and Brody." Modern Schoolman:123-151.

"A revived interest in essentialism characterizes much recent Anglo-American philosophy. In this article I compare and contrast one of the most articulate and well-argued recent versions of essentialism, that of Baruch Brody, with that of the last great system builder of the Schoolmen, Francis Suárez. I argue that Suárez's account of essentialism has advantages over Brody's because in positing a form that is entitative or thing-like as the chief constituent of the essences of substances Suárez's account is better able to explain the substantial unity of substances."

16. ———. 1997. "Substances are not windowless: a Suárezian critique of monadism." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 71:5-81.

"Recently, Thomas Huffman has defended Leibniz's metaphysics of substance. In this paper I offer a critique of that metaphysics from the point of view of the metaphysics of Leibniz's near contemporary, Francis Suárez. In my critique I show that Suárez's Aristotelianism is better able to account for the existence of composite substances than is Leibniz's metaphysics and that Leibniz's implicit arguments against the Suárezian account of substance fail. I conclude, based upon this, that Suárez's metaphysics should be preferred to Leibniz's since it better accords with the common sense notion that things such as humans and cats are true substances and not mere aggregates."

17. Larrainzar, Carlos. 1977. Una introducción a Francisco Suárez. Pamplona: EUNSA.

18. Lejenhorst, Cees. 2007. "Cajetan and Suarez on Agent Sense: Metaphysics and Epistemology in Late Aristotelian Thought." In Forming the Mind Essays on the Internal Senses and the Mind/Body Problem from Avicenna to the Medical Enlightenment, edited by Lagerlund, Henrik, 237-262. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"In this paper I have to limit myself to only a few late Aristotelian authors.

I shall deal with Thomas de Vio (Cardinal Cajetan) and Francesco Suarez.

Cajetan was one of the key figues in the rise of the so-called seconda scolastica, the counter-reformational attempt to build a new Christian philosophy that fused revelation with Aristotelian thought. Moreover, his ideas about sense perception were heavily attacked by Suarez, who is

probably the best known and most influential Jesuit authors, who were so important in shaping late Aristotelianism. In this fashion, our sample of case studies is arguably limited, but nevertheless quite representative for sixteenth-century Aristotelian accounts of sense perception. By way of conclusion, this article ends with a brief exploration of how the debate on sense perception and its relation to the metaphysics of the chain of being changed with the advent of modern philosophy, in particular with Descartes." (p. 241)

19. Lohr, Charles H. 2002. "Possibility and Reality in Suárez's Disputationes metaphysicae." In Res et verba in der Renaissance. Proceedings of a Colloquium held at Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel in 1998, edited by Kessler, Eckhard and Maclean, Ian, 273-286. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

20. Lombardo, Mario Gaetano. 1995. La forma che dà l'essere alle cose. Enti di ragione e bene trascendentale in Suarez, Leibniz, Kant. Milano: Istituto Propaganda Libraria.

21. Lopez, Jesus Garcia. 1969. "La concepcion suarista del ente y sus implicaciones metafisicas." Anuario Filosofico no. 2:137-167.

22. Marion, Jean-Luc. 1996. "A propos de Suárez et Descartes." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 50:109-131.

23. ———. 1996. "Substance et subsistance. Suárez et le traité de la substantia dans les Principia I, § 51-54." In Questions cartésiennes II, 91-99. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Italian translation: Sostanza e sussistenza. Suárez e il trattato della substantia nei Principia I, 51-54, in: Jean-Robert Armogathe, Giulia Belgioioso (eds.), Descartes: Principia Philosophiae (1644-1994), Atti del convegno per il 350° anniversario della pubblicazione dell'opera, Parigi, 5-6 maggio 1994, Lecce 10-12 novembre 1994, Napoli: Vivarium.

"Étude de la conception cartésienne de la substance à la lumière d'un rapprochement avec la définition de la substance comme subsistance chez Suarez. Soulevant le problème de l'indétermination entre univocité et analogie, selon que le concept concerne le fini ou l'infini, l'Auteur examine le double paradoxe de la définition épistémologique et de la définition ontique de la substance."

24. Martins, Antonio Manuel. 1999. "Tópica metafísica: de Fonseca à Suárez." In Francisco Suárez (1548-1617). Tradiçao e Modernidade, edited by Cardoso, Adelino, Martins, Antonio Manuel and Dos Santos, Leonel Ribeiro, 157-168. Lisboa: Ediçoes Colibri.

25. Menn, Stephen. 1997. "Suárez, nominalism, and modes." In Hispanic philosophy in the Age of Discovery, edited by White, Kevin, 226-256. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

26. Miner, Robert C. 2001. "Suárez as founder of modernity: reflections on a "topos" in recent historiography." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 18:17-36.

"The aim of this paper is to query a notion that appears with increasing frequency in recent narratives of modern philosophy. The notion is that the secret founder of modernity is not Bacon, Descartes or Hobbes, but Francisco Suárez. This paper examines three attempts to make the case of Suárez as the founder of modern philosophy and finds each of them deficient. First, I examine the treatment of Suárez in Etienne Gilson's Being and Some Philosophers. Secondly, I consider Alasdair MacIntyre's characterization of Suárez as an essentially antihistorical thinker in Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry. Thirdly, I attempt to disambiguate several claims about Suárez that are characteristically bundled together by post-Heideggerian readings of Suárez as the founder of a new science of ontology. The conclusion is that while it would be premature to reject the possibility that Suárez is the founder of modern philosophy, the precise sense in which he would fit this description has not been persuasively delineated."

27. Nadler, Stephen. 1989. Arnauld and the Cartesian Philosophy of Ideas. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

On Suárez see: Chapter 18. Objective being in Suárez and Descartes, pp. 147-165.

28. Noreña, Carlos G. 1981. "Ockham and Suárez on the ontological status of universal concepts." New Scholasticism no. 55:348-362.

"Ockham's failure to explain the ontological conditions for the possibility of universal predication partially justifies the traditional view of him as a nominalist. Ockham rejected the basic aristotelian and Thomistic doctrines about common natures, the principle of individuation and relations. Suárez avoided both the Platonizing realism of Scotus and the nominalistic leanings of Ockham with his carefully articulated theories on the limitation of the act, the principle of individuation, and the difference between essence and existence. Scholastic thought on the ontological status of universal concepts centers on issues which are fundamental to the interpretation of Plato and Aristotle and which a comprehensive theory of knowledge cannot avoid."

29. ———. 1983. "Heidegger on Suárez: the 1927 Marburg Lectures." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 23:407-424.

"Heidegger's thought on Suarez has been studied for the most part by scholastic philosophers with a particular doctrinal intent, in the context of Heidegger’s views on the history of ontology, and on the narrow basis of a few passing remarks in some of Heidegger’s works.(1) The 1975 publication of Heidegger’s (Summer Semester, 1927) lectures on Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, and their recent translation into English by Professor Hofstadter, make possible a better documented and more conclusive analysis of the subject.(2) Unfortunately, other relevant sources still remain unpublished, such as Heidegger’s lectures and seminars on the history of philosophy from St. Thomas to Kant, medieval mysticism, St. Augustine, and Renaissance scholasticism. All of them, however, give a clear indication of Brentano’s influence upon Heidegger’s early thought and demonstrate an interest in medieval philosophy which one seldom finds among contemporary thinkers. In this essay we intend 1) to summarize Heidegger’s views on medieval scholastic philosophy in general and those of Suärez in particular, and(2) attempt to retrieve from the Marburg lectures what Heidegger left unsaid and unthought on the scholastic distinction between essence and existence." (p. 407)

(1) Some scholars have argued that Heidegger’s criticism of medieval ontology was fully justified when directed against Suárez, but radically unfair to St. Thomas. To this group belong: G. Siewerth, Das Schicksal der Metaphysik vom Thomas zu Heidegger (Einsideln, 1959); R. Echauri, Heidegger y la Metafísica Tomista (Buenos Aires, 1970); B. Rioux, L'être et la vérité chez Heidegger et Saint Thomas d'Aquin (Montreal-Paris. 1963); C. Fabro, Participation et causalité selon S. Thomas d'Aquin (Louvain. 1961); J. P. Doyle, “Heidegger and Scholastic Metaphysics," The Modem Schoolman, 49 (1972), 201-221; O. N. Derisi, “Approximaciones y diferencias entre la fenomenología existencialista de Martin Heidegger y la ontología de Santo Tomás,” Sapientia, 22 (1967), 185-192; W. R. Korn, “La question de l'être chez Martin Heidegger," Revue Thomiste, 71 (1971), 33-58.

More favorable toSuárez were H. Meyer, Heidegger und Thomas von Aquin (Munich, 1968); and M. Schneider, “Der angebliche Essentialismus des Suarez,” Wissenschaft und Weisheit, 24 (1961), 40-68.

Finally, there are those philosophers who think that both St. Thomas and Suárez fully deserve Heidegger's criticism. See. e.g., H. Siegfried, Die Warhrheit und Metaphysik bei Suárez (Bonn. 1967).

Heidegger’s references to Suárez can be found in Sein und Zeit (Gesamtausgabe, ed. by F. W. von Herrmann, vol. 2, Frankfurt am Main, 1977), 30; Die Frage nach dem Ding (Tübingen, 1962). 77; and Nietzsche (Pfullingcn, 1961), II, 418.

(2) The lectures Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (henceforth GP) were published in 1975 as vol. 24 of the Gesamtausgabe. They were reviewed by M. E. Zimmermann in the International Philosophical Quarterly, 17 (1977), 235-237. and in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 39 (1979). 537-550. Professor A. Hofstadter’s excellent translation was published in 1981 by Indiana University Press under the title Basic Problems of Phenomenology (henceforth BP). I want to thank both Indiana U. Press and Professor Hofstadter for their kind permission to quote the English translation.

30. ———. 1985. "Suárez and Spinoza: the metaphysics of modal Being." Cuadernos Salmantinos de Filosofia no. 12:163-182.

31. Novák, Lukáš, ed. 2014. Suárez’s Metaphysics in Its Historical and Systematic Context. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Table of Contents: Lukáš Novák: Regaining the Context for Suárez: An Introduction to the Volume 1-7; Note on Editorial Policies. List of Abbreviations 8-10; Part One. General Metaphysics 11; Marco Forlivesi: In Search of the Roots of Suárez's Conception of Metaphysics: Aquinas, Bonino, Hervaeus Natalis, Orbellis, Trombetta 13-37; Rolf Darge: Zum historischen Hintergrund der Transzendentalienlehre in den Disputationes metaphysicae 39-62; Giannina Burlando: Suárez on Translatio vocis 'Veritas' 63-86; Victor Salas: Francisco Suárez, the Analogy of Being, and its Tensions 87-104; Marko J. Fuchs: Univozität und Distinktion Metaphysische Grundstrukturen bei Duns Scotus, Suárez, Descartes und Spinoza 105-116; Costantino Esposito: The Hidden Influence of Suárez on Kant's Transcendental Conception of 'Being', 'Essence', and 'Existence 117-134; Marco Lamanna: Ontology between Goclenius and Suárez; 135-151; Jorge Uscatescu Barrón: Das Gedankending und der Gegenstant der Metaphysik: Eine Untersuchung zum Problem der Analogie zwischen dem Realen Seienden und dem ens rationis in den Disputationes metaphysicae des Suárez 153-181; Daniel D. Novotný: The Historical Non-Significance of Suárez's Theory of Beings of Reason: A Lesson from Hurtado 183-208; Parto Two. Speical Themes 209; Jorge Secada: Suárez's Nominalist Master Argument: Metaphysical Disputations 5, 1 211-236; Saverio Di Liso: The Efficient Cause in Domingo de Soto 237-257; Simo Knuuttila: The Connexions between Vital Acts in Suárez's Psychology' 259-274; Anna Tropia: Scotus and Suárez on Sympathy: The Necessity of the "connexio potentiarum" in the Present State 275-292; Stephan Schmid: Suárez and the Problem of Final Causation 293-308; Robert Fastiggi: Suárez in Relation to Anselm, Aquinas and Scotus on Proving God's Existence 309-323; Author Profiles 325-328; About the Editor 329-330; General Index 331-344; Index of Persons 345-348; Index of Greek Terms 348.

32. Novotný, Daniel D. 2013. Ens Rationis from Suárez to Caramuel. A Study in Scholasticism of the Baroque Era. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Beings of reason are impossible intentional objects, such as blindness and square-circle. The first part of this book is structured around a close reading of Suarez's main text on the subject, namely Disputation 54. The second part centers on texts on this topic by other outstanding philosophers of the time, such as the Spanish Jesuit Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza (1578-1641), the Italian Franciscan Bartolomeo Mastri (1602-73), and the Spanish-Bohemian-Luxembourgian polymath Juan Caramuel de Lobkowitz (1606-82)."

33. Olivo, Gilles. 1993. "L'homme en personne. Descartes, Suarez, et la question de l'ens per se." In Descartes et Regius. Autour de l'explication de l'esprit humain, edited by Verbeek, Theo, 69-91. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

34. ———. 1995. "L'impossibilité de la puissance: les conditions de la pensée de l'individu chez Suarez." In L'individu dans la pensée moderne XVIe-XVIIIe siècles / L'individuo nel pensiero moderno. Secoli XVI-XVIII, edited by Cazzaniga, Gian Mario and Zarka, Yves Charles. Firenze: ETS.

35. Owens, Joseph. 1957. "The number of terms in the Suárezian discussion on essence and being." Modern Schoolman no. 34:147-191.

36. Peccorini, Francisco. 1972. "Suárez's struggle with the problem of the one and the many." Thomist no. 36:433-471.

"The purpose of this article is to find out whether Suárez's attempt to reconcile analogy with the thesis of the perfect unity of the concept of 'ens' was successful. To this effect, Suárez's basic premises - his theory of the universals and his conception of existence as such - are discussed. The former is dismissed on the grounds that in it the would be link between conceptualism and realism is no link at all because it rests only on an inductive abstraction which in turn is unworkable inasmuch as it is incompatible with the basic Suárezian tenet that the first direct concept is of the individual only. It is shown also how Suárez nullifies his claims of analogy by accounting for the genesis of his concept of 'ens' in terms of his theory of the universals which necessarily opens up to a univocal format. Finally, the article tackles the second premise - Suárez's conception of existence as such understood as a thing and points to its equivocating effect on the concept of 'ens'."

37. ———. 1974. "Knowledge of the singular: Aquinas, Suárez, and recent interpreters." Thomist no. 38 (606):655.

"Given the decisive influence of Suárez's conception on modern and contemporary nominalism, a thorough criticism is carried out on different levels: (1) through a 'prima facie' logical analysis of his arguments; (2) through an exhaustive criticism of José M. Alejandro's interpretation of Suárez's position, which is bent upon updating his mentor's foundation; and finally (3) on the basis of an 'ad hominem' dialogue centered on Suárez's Thomistic claims. It is the contention of this article that through his eclectic solution Suárez jeopardized both the nature of the agent intellect -- by hollowing out its whole ontological value -- and the thesis of the primacy of the individual in epistemology -- by leaving our knowledge unexplained in its most fundamental respects and providing it only with unrealistic grounds. This makes it incumbent upon the author to show that the Thomistic thesis of indirect knowledge of the singular proves to be fully satisfactory if examined in the light of Bernard J Lonergan and Karl Rahner's writings."

38. Pereira, José. 1996. "John of St. Thomas and Suárez." Acta Philosophica no. 5:115-136.

"Classical Thomism, originated by Aquinas, developed by Cajetan and consummated by John of St. Thomas (1589-1644), had many critics, chief among them Francisco Suárez, the prime thinker of Baroque Scholasticism. His critique initiated changes in Thomism, leading John, among other Thomists, to abandon the commentarial method followed by the older Scholastics; to occasionally substitute the Suárezian metaphysical distinction for the real distinction characteristic of Thomism; to concede that the foundational Thomist tenet of the limitation of existence by essence is debatable; and to accept Suárez's definition of God as "ipsum intelligere subsistens" rather than as "ipsum esse subsistens". "

39. ———. 1999. "The achievement of Suárez and the suarezanisation of Thomism." In Francisco Suárez (1548-1617). Tradiçao e Modernidade, edited by Cardoso, Adelino, Martins, Antonio Manuel and Dos Santos, Leonel Ribeiro, 133-156. Lisboa: Ediçoes Colibri.

40. ———. 2004. "The existential integralism of Suárez, reevaluation of Gilson's allegation of Suárezian essentialism." Gregorianum no. 85:660-688.

"In declaring that 'existence as existence corresponds to being as such, and pertains to its intrinsic significance', Suárez accords to existence a preeminence perhaps not ascribed to it by any Scholastic philosopher. Conceptually distinct, existence and essence are really identical, their identity indicated by the term essentia realis, or 'existent essence'. Being (ens) is at once unitary in meaning and dyadic; it denotes existence that is both actual (ens ut participium) and aptitudinal (ens ut nomen). 'Actual' existence is realized extra-mentally, while the 'aptitudinal' is existence insofar it is intelligible to the mind, prescinding from but not denying any extra-mental realization. The terminology that Suárez employs is distinctly his own. Gilson, however, reads him Thomistically, and so interprets his essentia realis as a kind of Thomist reified concept affirming the preeminence of essence. More recent commentators, influenced by Heidegger, see in the Suarezian essentia realis no more than cogitabilitas."

41. ———. 2007. Suarez. Between Scholasticism and Modernity. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

42. Pérez San Martin, Héctor. 1999. "Determinación del objeto y estudio de la metafísica, sus límites y su correlato con el nombre de esta ciencia según el pensamiento del P. Francisco Suárez." Cuadernos Salmantinos de Filosofia no. 26:5-39.

43. Rinaldi, Teresa. 1998. Francisco Suarez. Cognitio singularis materialis: De Anima. Bari: Levante.

44. Riva, Franco. 1979. "La dottrina Suáreziana del concetto e le sue fonti storiche." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 71:686-699.

"Suárez's doctrine of concept while historically accepting the contribution of the mayor philosophical traditions of Middle Ages, has its own originality as it proceeds from the metaphysical fundamental, i.e., from the constant reference to the doctrine of power and act which is only typical of Suárez. Theoretically, Suárez (whom Descartes read at La Flèche) definitely reaffirms the intention of knowledge supporting the form of immediate realism. Beyond any gnosiological dualism he demonstrates by exclusion the identity of verbum and high intellective and proposes (differing in opinion with Thomas Aquinas) to define "the concept of id quo res concipitur", reducing it to pure instrument or mere sign, the reality of which all lies in the significance."

45. Robinet, André. 1980. "Suárez dans l'oeuvre de Leibniz." Cuadernos Salmantinos de Filosofia no. 7:191-209.

"Statistiquement, Suárez est l'un des auteurs les moins cités par Leibniz (quatorze mentions). Aucune étude directe ne lui est consacrée dans les manuscrits connus. Les références de Leibniz a Suárez sont étudiées autour de sept concepts (métaphysique, principe d'individuation, causalité, harmonie préetablie, de vinculo substantiale, eucharistie, scientia media) une étude comparative "fondée en realité textuelle" devient alors édifiable."

46. Roig Gironella, Juan. 1948. "La síntesis metafìsica de Suárez." Pensamiento no. 4:169-213.

47. ———. 1987. "La analogía del ser en Suárez." Espíritu Cuadernos del Instituto Filosófico de Balmesiana no. 36:5-48.

48. Ross, James F. 1962. "Suárez on "universals"." Journal of Philosophy no. 59:736-747.

"This is an exposition of Francis Suárez's treatment of the following two questions: (1) what sort of "community" obtains among things that are properly said to be of the same sort? (2) in what sense can any "reality" be correctly called universal? The paper explains Suárez's claims that there are real universals and that there is fundamentally but not formally a real community in reality. The pivotal problem is seen to concern the meaning of 'similarity', since it does "not" mean having something in common. The paper offers the only resolution of the problem reconcilable with Suárez's own statements, indicating that it commits him to a very novel (in his time) form of conceptualism."

49. Salas, Victor M., and Fastiggi, Robert L., eds. 2015. A Companion to Francisco Suárez. Leiden: Brill.

Table of contents: Preface; Victor Salas and Robert Fastiggi: Introduction: Francisco Suárez, the Man and His Work 1-28; Jean-Paul Coujou: Political Thought and Legal Theory in Suárez 29-71; Jean-François Courtine: Suárez, Heidegger, and Contemporary Metaphysics 72-90; Rolf Darge: Suárez on the Subject of Metaphysics 91-123; Costantino Esposito: Suárez and the Baroque Matrix of Modern Thought 124-147; Robert Fastiggi: Francisco Suárez as Dogmatic Theologian 148-163; Daniel Heider: Suárez on the Metaphysics and Epistemology of Universals 164-191; Simo Knuuttila: Suárez’s Psychology 192-220; John Kronen: Suárez’s Influence on Protestant Scholasticism: The Cases of Hollaz and Turretín 221-247; Daniel Novotný: Suárez on Beings of Reason 248-273; Paul Pace: Suárez and the Natural Law 274-296; Joseé Pereira: Original Features of Suárez’s Thought 297-312; Michael Renemann: Suárez’s Doctrine of Concepts: How Divine and Human Intellection are Intertwined 313-335; Victor Salas: Between Thomism and Scotism: Francisco Suárez on the Analogy of Being 336-362; Epilogue; List of Contributors; Bibliography; Index of Names; Index Rerum.

50. Sanz, Victor. 1989. La teoría de la posibilidad en Francisco Suárez. Pamplona: EUNSA.

51. ———. 1992. "La reducción suáreciana de los transcendentales." Anuario Filosofico no. 25:403-420.

"The notion of aliquid and res, excluded by Suárez from the transcendentals, nevertheless are of primary importance in the understanding of the notion of being, a key aspect of suárecian ontology."

52. Schmutz, Jacob. 2002. "Un Dieu indifférent. La crise de la science divine dans la scolastique moderne." In Le Contemplateur et les idées. Modèles de la science divine du néoplatonisme aux Temps modernes, edited by Boulnois, Olivier, Schmutz, Jacob and Solère, Jean-Luc, 185-221. Paris: Vrin.

53. ———. 2004. "¿Abatir o ensalzar a Francisco Suárez?" In Francisco Suárez. "Der ist der Mann". Apéndice Francisco Suárez De generatione et corruptione. Homenaje al Prof. Salvador Castellote, 5-16. Valencia: Facultad de Teología San Vicente Ferrer.

Preface to the volume.

54. ———. 2004. "Science divine et métaphysique chez Francisco Suárez." In Francisco Suárez. "Der ist der Mann". Apéndice Francisco Suárez De generatione et corruptione. Homenaje al Prof. Salvador Castellote, edited by Schmutz, Jacob, 347-379. Valencia: Facultad de Teología San Vicente Ferrer.

55. ———, ed. 2004. Francisco Suárez. "Der ist der Mann". Apéndice: Francisco Suárez De generatione et corruptione. Homenaje al Prof. Salvador Castellote. Valencia: Facultad de Teología San Vicente Ferrer.

56. Schöndorf, Harald. 2004. "La nada real. La doctrina de los entes posibles en la Disuputaciones Metafísicas de Fracisco Suárez." In Francisco Suárez. "Der ist der Mann". Apéndice Francisco Suárez De generatione et corruptione. Homenaje al Prof. Salvador Castellote, edited by Schmutz, Jacob, 381-403. Valencia: Facultad de Teología San Vicente Ferrer.

57. Schwartz, Daniel, ed. 2012. Interpreting Suárez. Critical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Notes on Contributors VII-VIII; Acknowledgements IX; Abbreviations and method of citation IX; 1. Daniel Schwartz: Introduction 1; 2. Jorge J.E. Gracia and Daniel D. Novotný: Fundamentals in Suárez's metaphysics: transcendentals and categories 19; 3. Christopher Shields: The reality of substantial form: Suárez, Metaphysical disputations XV 39; 4. Jorge Secada: Suárez on the ontology of relations 62; 5. Bernie Cantens: Suárez's cosmological argument for the existence of God 82; 6. Thomas Pink: Action and freedom in Suárez's ethics 115; 7. Terence H. Irwin: Obligation, rightness, and natural law: Suárez and some critics 142; 8.Daniel Schwartz: Suárez on distributive justice 163; 9. Gregory M. Reichberg: Suárez on just war 185; Bibliography 205; Index 214.

58. Seigfried, Hans. 1972. "Kant's thesis about being anticipated by Suárez?" In Proceedings of the Third International Kant Congress, edited by Beck, Lewis White, 510-520. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"The paper attempts to clarify a notion in Kant's philosophy which is much discussed today, by referring back to the doctrine of Suárez, an historically influential representative of traditional ontology. It tries to give a rational account of the Suárezian doctrine of possibility and reality by making explicit those assumptions which make it comprehensible and which were still, after some important modifications, the presuppositions underlying Kant's thesis that being is obviously not a real predicate or (a predicate which stands for) something real but merely the positing of a thing."

59. Sgarbi, Marco, ed. 2010. Francisco Suárez and His Legacy. The Impact of Suárezian Metaphysics and Epistemology on Modern Philosophy. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

Table of Contents: Preface 5; Victor Salas: Francisco Suárez: End of the Scholastic epistéme? 9; Salvador Castellote: El ‘túnel del tiempo’. Tiempo, movimiento y su medida, la teoría de los puntos y la indivisibilidad, según Suárez 29; Marco Forlivesi: Francisco Suárez and the rationes studiorum of the Society of Jesus 77; Anna Tropia: Suárez as a Scotist. The Portrait of the Doctor Eximius in Losada’s Commentary on the Soul 91; Daniel Heider: Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza’s (Mis)interpretation of Aquinas 105; Marco Lamanna: Tra Fonseca e Suárez. L’ingresso della nozione di ens reale nella Schulmetaphysik 141; Igor Agostini: Suárez, Descartes e la dimostrazione dell’esistenza di Dio 169; Stefano Di Bella: Tota sua entitate. Suárez and Leibniz on Individuation 205; Marco Sgarbi: Francisco Suárez and Christian Wolff. A Missed Intellectual Legacy 227; Valerio Rocco Lozano: L’eredità nascosta di Suárez nel sistema hegeliano 243; Jacopo-Niccolè Bonato: Le occorrenze di Suárez nell’opera di Brentano 261; Federico Baccaccini: Quasi umbrae entium. Suárez e Brentano sull’ens rationis 271-294.

60. Siewerth, Gustav. 1959. Das Schiksal der Metaphysik von Thomas zu Heidegger. Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag.

Reprinted in G. Siewerth, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4, Düsseldorf, Patmos, 1987.

See Chapter IX: Die Objektivierung ders Denkens, pp. 19-37.

61. South, James B. 2001. "Francisco Suárez on imagination." Vivarium no. 39:119-158.

"I discuss two themes in Suárez's account of internal sensation: the number of internal sense powers and the activities of the internal sense. I show that Suárez rejects a plurality of internal sense powers arguing that there need be only one such power. I then explore his account of the act of internal sensation showing its relation to both external sensation and intellectual knowledge. Most notably, I show why Suárez was compelled to posit an "agent internal sense" and how he manages to remain consistent with his view that there is only one internal sense power."

62. ———. 2001. "Suárez and the problem of external sensation." Medieval Philosophy and Theology no. 10:217-240.

63. Specht, Rainer. 1997. "Aspects 'cartésiens' de la théorie suarezienne de la matière." In Lire Descartes aujourd'hui, edited by Sepré, Olivier and Lories, Danielle, 21-45. Louvain: Peeters.

64. Svoboda, David. 2007. "Francisco Suárez on the Addition of the One to Being and the Priority of the One over the Many." Studia Neoaristotelica no. 4:158-172.

"Suárez's solution to the problem of the conceptual Addition of the One to being follows firstly the Aristotelian-Averroistic tradition mediated by Aquinas. According to this tradition, the One adds to being only a negative determination. Suárez claims that the One does not signify any positive perfection either really or conceptually distinct from being as such. Suárez's own solution to the problem is presented in a critical discussion with many different conceptions, but Suárez pays most attention to the theory of certain, mainly Franciscan, authors who hold that the One adds to being a positive perfection which is only conceptually distinct from being as such. The main argument for this thesis is based on the assumption that indivision is to be taken as a double negation, by which an affirmation is expressed. This concept of indivision was, according to Suárez, also defended by Aquinas, who holds that the negation which is expressed by the One negates the division of one being from another. Suárez rejects this solution and proposes his own conception, according to which the One does not negate the negative moment of the division of one being from another, but the positive moment of an essential division of a being in itself. The One thus negates a real positive division of being in itself. On the basis of this theory, Suárez further rejected Aquinas's (and the Thomistic) conception of a conceptual priority of the One over the Many, which was put forth as an answer to the old Aristotelian problem of a privative opposition between the One and the Many. Suárez defends the real priority of an indivision over a division as well as a real and conceptual priority of the One over the Many. Suárez's conception seems to us to be compatible with his concept of a negative Addition of the One to being. "

65. Teixeira, António Braz. 1999. "Suárez e o objecto e a naturaleza da metafísica." In Francisco Suárez (1548-1617). Tradiçao e Modernidade, edited by Cardoso, Adelino, Martins, Antonio Manuel and Dos Santos, Leonel Ribeiro, 37-44. Lisboa: Ediçoes Colibri.

66. Thompson, Augustine. 1995. "Francisco Suarez's theory of analogy and the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas." Angelicum no. 72:353-362.

67. Uscatescu Barron, Jorge. 1995. "El concepto de metafisica en Suarez: su objeto y dominio." Pensamiento no. 51:215-236.

"Se trata de una interpretacion de la Primera Disputacion de las Disputationes metaphysicae de Suarez. El objeto de la metafisica es el ser real en general con exclusion del ente de razon y del ente per accidens. Asi pues, el dominio de la metafisica es la totalidad de los entes reales por si. A continuacion se estudia cada uno de los temas que la metafisica debe tratar, lo cual se refleja en la estructura de la mencionada obra de Suarez: propiedades y principios del ser, etc. Al hacer de la inmaterialidad un rasgo del ser se desvirtua el caracter generalisimo de la metafisica, que de por si esta mas alla de la division del ser material e inmaterial. Por ultimo, se analiza la correspondencia entre los rasgos entresacados de la metafisica como ciencia y el ser real en general."

68. Vleeschauwer, Herman Jean de. 1949. "Un paralelo protestante a la obra de Suárez." Revista de Filosofia no. 8:365-400.

69. Volpi, Franco. 1993. "Suárez et le problème de la métaphysique." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 98:395-411.

"L'article attire l'attention sur l'importance du "tournant" Suárezien dans l'historie de la métaphysique conçue comme onto - théo - logie, mettant en lumière les decisions qui sont prises par Suárez par rapport aux "topoi" les plus importants de la pensée scolastique et de la pensée moderne. L'éxtraordinaire fortune de Suárez s'explique par le fait qu'il n'est pas seulement le dernier scolastique, mais aussi le premier moderne."

70. Wells, Norman J. 1955. The Distinction of Essence and Existence in the Philosophy of Francis Suárez.

Ph.D thesis submitted to the University of Toronto.

Abstract: "The name of Francis Suárez is a famous one in the history of philosophy, not to mention the histories of theology and law. Indeed, his position on the question of the distinction between essence and existence in creatures, the subject matter of this thesis, is especially notorious. However, though his final position on this question is quite well known, the philosophical milieu surrounding that decision and undoubtedly influencing it, is, in contrast, rather obscure. This dissertation is primarily concerned with the latter aspect of the problem.

Suarez himself is our best guide since he lists the three famous traditions on this question up to his day and cites men and arguments on behalf of each. The first tradition, that of the "Thomists", is the real distinction which maintains, for Suarez, that the essence and existence of a creature are really distinct as duae res or two beings, and mutually separable, each being able to exist apart from the other. The second tradition, that of the modal distinction, also holds for a similar real distinction in creatures as between a res or a being and its mode which are not mutually separable. The third tradition, the distinction of reason and the position of Suárez, rejects any kind of real distinction of essence and existence in a creature and affirms a distinction which is the work of the intellect and is not at all present in the thing.

Research into the sources of the five arguments Suárez attributes to the "Thomists" he lists has found that the first two are explicit in such "Thomists" as Giles of Rome, John Capreolus, Paulus Barbus Soncinas, Cajetan, Sylvester of Ferrara and Chrysostomus Javellus. The other three arguments are not found in the texts of these men noted by Suárez. But the common denominator of all the arguments is that they affirm a real distinction between an uncreated esse essentiae or essence and a created esse existentiae or existence. That is, for Suarez, these men distinguish what comes to be by an efficient cause, namely, existence, and what does not come to be by an efficient cause, namely, essence. Thus Suárez sees that the "Thomist" school undergoes the doctrinal influence of Avicenna and this Neo-Platonic tradition through St. Albert, Henry of Ghent, and possibly Meister Eckhart.

On behalf of the second tradition, Suarez cites some texts of John Duns Scotus, Henry of Ghent and Dominicus Soto which purportedly support this modal distinction. In this tradition, esse existentiae, according to Suarez, is a mode which is a positive existential entity in his own right as in the first tradition. However, unlike the latter, it cannot endure apart from the essence of which it is the mode. Thus, the second tradition differs from the first, not so much on the notion of essence which is the same, but on the degree of reality each will attribute to esse existentiae. Of interest is the fact that no such position is found in the texts of Scotus and Henry of Ghent. The texts of Soto do contain a doctrine of esse existentiae as a mode of essence but do not describe it as a positive existential reality.

The third tradition is manifested in the texts of the sixteen men cited by Suarez as its exponents although there is a variety of formulation as to the type of distinction of reason in question. However, this tradition is one in interpreting the real distinctions of the first two traditions to be between duae res or a res and its mode. It is also one in rejecting these two traditions. Moreover, this third tradition is one in holding that the essence and existence in question is the actual existing essence and esse in actu exercito. It is between these that there is only a distinction of reason. However, these men agree that the essence abstractly conceived or essence as possible is distinguished from actual existence or actual essence as non-being from being. The basic reason for their rejection of a real distinction is that something cannot be intrinsically constituted in the existential order by something really distinct from it. For each is a being in its own right as distinct from the other. More basic than this is the fact that there is no esse existentiae in addition to the esse essentiae of a creature. Existence means nothing more than the actual existing essence and in no way signifies an existential actus essendi nor any accidental accretion. The men of this third tradition are characterized for Suarez by the fact that they are all opponents to some extent of any kind of a Platonic realism within being which is the most manifest feature of the first two traditions on this question.

In explaining the principles behind this third tradition Suarez first lakes steps to remove any autonomous essential actuality apart from the divine intellect since he sees very clearly that the first two traditions follow from their doctrine of the divine ideas. For them, the divine ideas are the essences of creatures endowed with an esse essentiae in themselves as in Henry of Ghent. In Suarez' eyes this looks too much like the divine ideas enjoying some eternal existential status apart from God or that they have been created from eternity. As his first principle, and that of the third tradition, Suarez maintains that the essences of creatures, prior to their creation, are absolutely nothing in the sense of enjoying no real existential status. Though a critic of this Avicennian tradition on the divine ideas, Suarez still remains within that tradition since he endows the essences of creatures in the divine intellect with an esse possibile, an esse objectivum or an esse cognitum in much the same fashion as Duns Scotus in his critique of Henry of Ghent and as Durandus in his critique of the same doctrine. Thus, in his critique of any Platonic realism of essence Suarez remains within the tradition of Duns Scotus and Henry of Ghent but much farther along that doctrinal curve which leads to the nominalism of Ockham. Suarez, in his second principle, carries his critique of any realism of essence into the created order of existing things. For, this principle states that ens in potentia and ens in actu are immediately distinguished as non-being and being. In this Suarez counters those who maintained that ens in potentia or essence enjoys some positive mode of being, though diminished, within the existent creature and his critique follows the pattern of the defense of his first principle.

Suarez' criticisms even carry within the tradition on the distinction of reason, rejecting all except the one which enables him to deny that existence is of the essence of the creature. He finds this feature in what he calls a distinction of the reasoned reason -- a distinction of reason with a foundation in reality. Because a creature has been created or is contingent it can cease to be and can found a concept of itself as non-existent. This concept of a creature prescinded from existence outside its causes but apt to exist, unlike a chimera, is signified by essentia for Suarez. The same concept of that creature as existing and outside its causes is signified by existentia. Existentia is denied of essentia creaturae because the concept of the possible essence does not explicitly include what is signified by existentia or is included in the concept of the actual essence. In a word, the possible essence and the actual essence are mentally distinguished and the concept of the actual essence as possible and the concept of the same essence as actual are likewise so distinguished. Thus Suarez' distinction of reason is a result of a comparison between two concepts or rather, different degrees of contraction or adequation of one concept with respect to the actual existing essence, the one more confused and obscure and less contracted than the other. It is just such a distinction which enables Suarez lo deny existcntia of essentia creaturae. Hence, this distinction between essence and existence is said to be in the existent thing and founded on it by extrinsic denomination from the concepts of this one existent essence.

By way of this extrinsic denomination Suarez can maintain that the existent essence has some internal metaphysical structure of essence and existence. For, on the basis of the two concepts of essence and existence and their degrees of adequation 10 the existent essence, the concept of existence is said to contract and be contracted by the concept of essence. In this way existence is said to be added to essence. This conceptual structure of the contracted and the contracting is then imposed on the actual essence by extrinsic denomination from these concepts. Thus the constant insistence of Suarez on the intrinsic constitution of the actual essence by existence does not imply any metaphysical structure within the actual existent but is a conceptual structure imposed on this existent. Versus an order of essence within being uarez offers an order of a radically contingent essence which is being itself, impervious to any existential co principle as it is to any distinction within it. In this struggle against the Platonic realism of essence in the first two traditions, being, in the hands of Suarez, has lost its metaphysical dimension to the extent it has become an impenetrable, impervious, indistinct essence. Reality is only metaphysical by extrinsic denomination and the science of metaphysics itself becomes nothing more than an analysis of concepts."

71. ———. 1957. "The Number of Terms in the Suárezian Discussion on Essence and Being." Modern Schoolman no. 34:147-191.

72. ———. 1962. "Suárez, Historian and Critic of the Modal Distinction Between Essential Being and Existential Being." New Scholasticism no. 36:419-444.

73. ———. 1979. "Old Bottles and New Wine: A Rejoinder to J. C. Doig." New Scholasticism no. 53:515-523.

"This paper is a criticism of an article in the same journal by J. C. Doig, Suárez, Descartes and the objective reality of ideas. On the basis of primary and secondary source materials, it is made clear that Doig's exclusively extramental interpretation of Suárez's objective concept is insensitive to the obvious intramental dimensions of that teaching. Thus Doig's claim of a doctrinal discontinuity between Suárez and Descartes is found wanting due to a failure to consider Suárez's position on the realism of the possibles, their role in scientific knowledge in general, and the part they play in metaphysics."

74. ———. 1981. "Suárez on the Eternal Truths (Part I)." Modern Schoolman no. 58:73-106.

75. ———. 1981. "Suárez on the Eternal Truths (Part II)." Modern Schoolman no. 58:159-174.

76. ———. 1984. "Material Falsity in Descartes, Arnauld, and Suárez." Journal of Philosophy no. 22:25-50.

77. ———. 1990. "Objective Reality of Ideas in Descartes, Caterus, and Suárez." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 28:33-61.

78. ———. 1993. ""Esse Cognitum" and Suárez Revisited." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 67:339-348.

"The purpose of the work is to clarify the ambiguous use, in Suárez, of the terms "esse cognitum/esse objectivium" so that no charge of "mentalism" can be brought while, at the same time, it can be acknowledged that "res" enjoys an intramental mode of using, i.e., "objectively" ("conceptus objectivus") as well as an intramental "normal" mode of being ("conceptus formulis")."

79. ———. 1994. "Javelli and Suárez on the Eternal Truths." Modern Schoolman no. 72:13-35.

"An examination of Suárez's position on the Eternal Truths by bringing to bear upon it a controversy between Chrysostomus Javelli, O. P. (+1538) (who is defending Harvey Nedellec, a.k.a. Hervaeus Natalis, O. P. (+1323) and Paulus Barbus Soncinas, O. P. (+1494) on the issue of efficient causality with respect to necessary essential propositions and the distinction between a non-existential use of the copula "est" vs an existential use thereof."

80. ———. 1994. "John Poinsot on Created Eternal Truths vs Vasquez, Suárez and Descartes." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 68:425-446.

"An examination of John Poinsot's discussion of created eternal truths wherein he criticizes Gabriel Vasquez's interpretation of Aquinas' position on the eternal truths. What is taken to task is Vasquez's insistence upon a positive eternal aptitudinal truth on the part of necessary as well as contingent truths with regard to creatures. This is such that these truths are not eternal because known by God's eternal intellect. Rather, they are eternally true (aptitudinally) in themselves apart from the divine intellect. Linkage to Suárez's and Descartes' positions on created eternal truths is also considered."

81. ———. 1994. "Objective Reality of Ideas in Arnauld, Descartes, and Suárez." In The Great Arnauld and Some of His Philosophical Correspondents, edited by Kremer, Elmer J., 138-163. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

82. ———. 1998. "Descartes and Suárez on Secondary Qualities: A Tale of Two Readings." Review of Metaphysics no. 51:565-604.

83. Yela Utrilla, Juan F. 1948. "El Ente de Razón en Suárez." Pensamiento no. 4:271-303.

84. Zubimendi Martínez, Julián. 1984. "La teoría de las distincciones de Suárez y Descartes." Pensamiento no. 40:179-202.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

René Descartes. Bibliographie Chronologique et Annotée (Première Partie: 1616-1628)

Introduction

Cette bibliographie des œuvres de Descartes en ordre chronologique tient compte aussi des publications non comprises dans l'édition Adam-Tannery; dans les citations l'orthographe, qu'à la fin du XVIIe siècle n'était pas encore totalement fixée, est modernisée; pour chaque texte je donne la référence aux suivant éditions:

- AT = Charles Adam, Paul Tannery (éds.), René Descartes, Œuvres, Nouvelle présentation par J. Beaude, P. Costabel, A. Gabbey et B. Rochot, Paris: Vrin 1964-1974 (Édition du Jubilé, 1996, 11 volumes); première édition 1897-1913 (Les tomes I-V contiennent la Correspondance).

- B Op. I = Giulia Belgioioso (éd.), René Descartes, Opere 1637-1649, con la collaborazione di I. Agostini, F. Marrone, M. Savini, Testo francese e latino a fronte, Milano: Bompiani, 2009.

- B Op. II = Giulia Belgioioso (éd.), René Descartes, Opere postume 1650-2009, con la collaborazione di I. Agostini, F. Marrone, M. Savini, Testo francese e latino a fronte, Milano: Bompiani, 2009.

- CO = Vincent Carraud, Gilles Olivo (éds.), René Descartes, Étude du bon sens, La recherche de la vérité et autres écrits de jeunesse (1616-1631), Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 2013.

- O I = Jean-Marie Beyssade et Denis Kambouchner (éds.), René Descartes, Œuvres complètes I. Premiers écrits. Règles pour la direction de l'esprit, Paris: Gallimard, 2016.

- O III = Jean-Marie Beyssade et Denis Kambouchner (éds.), René Descartes, Œuvres complètes III. Discours de la Méthode et Essais, Paris: Gallimard, 2009.

Pour la Correspondance, je donne les réfèrences aux éditions Adam-Tannery (AT, volume et pages), Armogathe (O VIII, 1 et 2, volume et pages), Belgioioso (B, et le nombre de la lettre).

Pour la liste des éditions de références et des abréviations voir René Descartes. Outils de recherche: Biographies, Dictionnaires et Lexiques des Ses Œuvres

L'Inventaire des écrits de Descartes

- [Inventaire de Stockholm] Inventaire succinct des Écrits. 1656.

- AT X 5-12; Note manuscrite de Leibniz des papiers de Descartes (AT X 208-209).

Inventaire des papiers qu'il avait emportés en Suède; un autre inventaire, rédigé à Leyde n'a pas été retrouvé.

"A la mort de Descartes, 11 février 1650, un inventaire fut dressé à Stockholm, le 14 février, des papiers qu'il avait emportés en Suède, et un autre à Leyde, le 4 mars, de ceux qu'il avait laissés en Hollande. Baillet, dans sa Vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes 1691, t. II, p. 427-8, et 428-9), nous apprend, avec force détails, comment ont été faits les deux inventaires; mais il ne donne le texte ni de l'un ni de l'autre. Des recherches faites en Hollande (septembre 1894), pour retrouver le second, n'ont pas abouti. Et d'ailleurs nous savons, par des témoignages du temps, que Descartes avait emporté à Stockholm ses papiers principaux."

(Charles Adam, AT X, pp. 1-2, notes omises)

Une traduction latine abrégée de l'inventaire se trouve dans: Pierre Borel, Elenchus manuscriptorum Cartesii Stocholmi repertorum post Eius obitum anno 1650, in: Vitae Renati Cartesii summi philosophi compendium, Paris 1656, pp. 16-19; texte français publié en 1887 par Bierens de Haan et, dans un version révisée, par Charles et Henri Adam en 1894 (AT X pp. 5-12).

Dans l' Introduction à l'édition critique de la correspondance de l'an 1643, Theo Verbeek a montré que l'inventaire n'a pas été rédigé à Stockholm le 14 février 1650, mais à La Haye avec la collaboration de Christiaan Huygens à la fin du 1653 ou au début du 1654 (The Correspondence of René Descartes 1643, édité par Theo Verbeek, Erik-Jan Bos, Jeroen van de Vern, Utrecht, Zeno Institute for Philosophy The Leiden–Utrecht Research Institute, 2003, pp. XV-XXI).

"All this confirms that the ‘Stockholm inventory’ cannot date from 1650. In fact, it is likely that it was made in The Hague, with the help of Christiaan Huygens, somewhere at the end of 1653 or the beginning of 1654, that is, almost four years after Descartes’ papers came into Chanut’s possession." (p. XXI).

Bibliographie

1. Armogathe, Jean Robert, Carraud, Vincent, and Feenstra, Robert. 1616. "La Licence en droit de Descartes : un placard inédit de 1616." Nouvelles de la République des Lettres no. 2 (1988):123-145.

Retrouvée en 1981 à Poitiers, manque dans AT.

Édition critique du texte latin (pp. 125-131) avec la traduction en français, (pp. 131-133) de la thèse en droit soutenue à Poitiers le 21 décembre 1616.

Première édition : Jean-Robert Armogathe et Vincent Carraud, "Texte original et traduction française d'un inédit de Descartes: Dédicace du placard de la licence en droit", Archives de Philosophie, 50, 1987, Bulletin Cartésien XV, pp. 1-4.

Texte latin et traduction française, CO, pp. 21-29; texte latin et traduction italienne, B Op. II, 1454-1461; nouvelle traduction par Jean-Marie Beyssade et Michelle Beyssade avec la collaboration d'André Laingui, O I, 46-49.

Traduction anglaise dans : Kurt Smith, "Descartes' Life and Works", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), (URL = plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-works/).

"Les écrits authentiques du jeune Descartes sont rares : la lettre d'un jeune Descartes, «collégien à La Flèche», devant être attribuée à son frère Pierre, les premiers textes repérés remontent aux manuscrits décrits dans l'inventaire de Stockholm; ils ne nous sont parvenus que par les extraits traduits par A. Baillet dans sa Vie ou dans les textes, aujourd'hui perdus, publiés et traduits par Foucher de Careil.

Le document que nous présentons est donc important à double titre: par les renseignements biographiques nouveaux fournis sur une période encore mal connue de la vie de René Descartes, d'une part; par le texte lui-même, d'autre part. Nettement plus longue que les dédicaces habituelles des placards de thèses, la dédicace de 1616 se présente comme une autobiographie intellectuelle, et même comme une «histoire de [mon] esprit» (pour reprendre, en anticipant, l'expression de Guez de Balzac): c'est ce qui nous a autorisé, dans l'annotation, à citer fréquemment la première partie du Discours de la Méthode. « Le philosophe qui dit 'je' » est d'abord celui qui «représente sa vie» et écrit l'histoire de ses études jusqu'à ce qu'il fût «reçu au rang des doctes», l'histoire de son esprit. De cette dédicace, Descartes aurait déjà pu dire : «ne proposant cet écrit que comme une histoire»." (p. 123).

2. Descartes, René. 1618-19?; 1628? L'art de l'escrime (Extraits de Baillet).

Baillet I 35, II 407; AT X, 535-538; B Op. II, 916-917.

"Descartes passa l’hiver de la fin de 1612 et du commencement de 1613 dans la ville de Rennes, à revoir sa famille, à monter à cheval, à faire des armes, et aux autres exercices convenables à sa condition. On peut juger par son petit traité d'Escrime s’il y perdit entièrement son temps." Baillet I, VIII, 35.

"Nous trouvons aussi parmi les manuscrits de M. Descartes un petit traité touchant la manière de faire des armes sous le titre de l'Art d'escrime, où il paraît que la plupart des leçons qu’il y donne sont appuyées sur sa propre expérience. Après avoir dit quelque chose en général de la qualité de l'épée et de la manière de s’en servir, il divise son traité en deux parties.

Dans la première il fait « voir comme on peut s’assurer contre tous les efforts de l’adversaire, et en tirer de l'avantage pendant qu’on est en mesure longue, et comme on peut le mettre sûrement en mesure courte ». Dans la seconde il examine comment étant entré en mesure courte, on peut infailliblement vaincre. Et pour cela il suppose deux hommes d'égale grandeur, d’égale force, et d’armes égales, se réservant à marquer ensuite ce qu’il y a à faire en cas d’inégalité."

Baillet II, XX, 407 ; Abrégé 23 et 326.

Selon Paul Adam la date de composition de ce petit traité (aujourd'hui perdu) serait le 1628 ; selon Carraud et Olivo, 1618-1619 (CO, pp. 35-36) .

3. Beeckman, Isaac. 1618-19. Extraits du Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman.

Le Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman de 1604 à 1634, (abrégé CDW) a été publié en quatre volumes par Cornelis de Waard, La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1939-1953.

Texte latin AT X : I. Varia, 44-66; B Op. II, 1316-1335; II. Physico-mathematica, 67-78; B Op. II, 1336-1351; traduction par Frédéric de Buzon, O I, Notes du Journal (1618-1619), 85-97; Opuscules de Descartes insérés dans le Journal de Beeckman 98-106.

AT X, I. Varia : Angulum nullum esse male probavit Des Cartes 46 ; II. Turbo puerorum, id est een worptop, cur erectus flet, cùm vertitur 51 ; III. Chordae majores intactas minores et consonantes tactae movent 52 ; IV. Physico-mathematici paucissimi 52 ; V. Fistula fortius inflata cur in octavam abeat 53 ; VI. Testudinis (een lute) chordas disponere 53 ; VII. Quartâ à consonante chorda remota non tremit. — Quarta à quintâ dignoscere 54 ; VIII. Quadratum radici aequale datum 54 ; IX. Mr. Duperon 56 ; X. Bisectio in musicis facillima et gratissima 56 ; XI. Lapis cadens in vacuo cur semper celerius cadat 58 ; XI bis. Lapidis cadentis tempus supputatum 58 ; XII. Modi non dulces et iclus testimonio probati 61 ; XIII. Modi modorum argumento probati 62 ; XIV. Modi modorum ab objeftione defensi 63 ; XV. Ars Lulli cum Logicâ collata 63-66.

AT X, II. Physico-mathematica : I. Aquae comprimentis in vase ratio reddita à D. Des Cartes 67 ; II. Lapis in vacuo versus terrae centrum cadens quantum singulis momentis motu crescat, ratio Des Cartes 72-74.

"Une des découvertes les plus importantes pour la compréhension de l'évolution de la pensée cartésienne fut celle du Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman de 1604 jusqu'à sa mort, survenue le 19 mai 1637 (*). C. de Waard retrouva ce manuscrit à la bibliothèque de Middelburg en juin 1905; immédiatement avisé, Ch. Adam en tint compte dans le tome X des Œuvres de Descartes. Cela suppose une grande rapidité de travail : le tome X parut en 1908, mais l'Avertissement d'Adam est daté du 15 décembre 1905. D'autres fragments du Journal, beeckmaniens cette fois, paraissent dans l'édition que le même C. de Waard donne de la Correspondance de M. Mersenne à partir de 1933. On peut remarquer qu'à mesure que les textes de Beeckman sont connus, se modifie favorablement l'image de leur auteur ; il est vrai qu'elle était d'assez mauvaise qualité au rapport de certaines lettres de Descartes, et surtout de Baillet. Un témoin de cette évolution est A. Koyré, qui écrivait en 1939 dans les Études Galiléennes, p. 108-9 que « la publication par M. Cornelis de Waard de nouveaux fragments du Journal de Beeckman (...) a modifié sensiblement l'image que l'on se faisait, ou plus exactement que l'on ne se faisait pas du Physicien hollandais. En effet, Beeckman, on s'en rend compte maintenant, mérite pleinement l'appellation de vir ingeniosissimus dont l'avait gratifié Descartes ; et, ce qui plus est, il nous apparaît désormais comme un chaînon de première importance dans l'histoire de l'évolution des idées scientifiques ; enfin, son influence sur Descartes semble avoir été beaucoup plus profonde que l'on n'a pu le supposer jusqu'ici (...). » A fortiori, cette image s'améliore encore davantage grâce à la publication de la quasi intégralité du Journal par, encore et toujours, C. de Waard. Les quatre tomes de cette édition paraissent à La Haye entre 1939 et 1953 ; ils renferment avec l'indication du foliotage l'essentiel des notes scientifiques, à l'exception très notable de la copie que Beeckman fit faire du Compendium Musicae vers 1628, de quelques notes d'intérêt divers: détails familiaux, observations météorologiques, informations maritimes etc.

(...)

Le Journal est décrit avec une grande exactitude dans le premier tome de l'édition, pp. XXV-XXXIV ; il se compose d'environ cinq cents feuilles contenant de brèves notes de lecture, de pensées propres, et de remarques concernant les rencontres que faisait Beeckman. Les notes relatives à Descartes ont en premier attiré l'attention, et ceci justement. L'intérêt des renseignements fournis par Beeckman est en effet capital. Les textes cartésiens consignés sont les premiers que nous connaissons, et il apparaît invraisemblable que l'on en découvre d'antérieurs. D'autre part, ils occupent une position critique dans la vie du philosophe ; ils terminent les années d'étude, et débutent une production propre. Descartes rencontra Beeckman (1) le 10 novembre 1618 à Breda. Très rapidement une estime mutuelle s'installe : « Ce Poitevin a fréquenté beaucoup de Jésuites et autres hommes de science. Il dit cependant n'avoir jamais rencontré personne, à part moi, qui use, ce dont je me réjouis, de ce mode d'étude, et joigne exactement la physique avec la mathématique. Et moi, je n'ai jamais parlé qu'à lui de ce mode d'étude (2) ». A de nombreuses reprises les suites de cette rencontre ont été décrites (3); en particulier, les commentateurs mettent en relation les fragments cartésiens du Journal avec les Cogitationes Privatae. C'est le cas de l'ensemble des Premières Pensées de Descartes, que M. H. Gouhier publia en 1958 (Paris, Vrin). D'une façon générale, on peut dire cependant que les historiens des sciences ont fait porter l'accent sur des problèmes « nobles » tels celui de la chute des graves; en revanche, sauf exceptions, ont été négligés les problèmes relatifs à l'acoustique, que nous voudrions décrire avec quelques détails." (pp. 1-3; Frédéric de Buzon, Descartes, Beeckman et l'acoustique, Archives de philosophie, 44, 1981, pp. 1-8).

(1) La rencontre est racontée par Lipstorp puis Baillet, cités dans A-T, X, p. 47-51. Voir G. Rodis-Lewis, L'œuvre de Descartes, Paris, Vrin 1971, p. 25 et note p. 435.

(2) Nous reprenons la traduction de Mme Rodis-Lewis (op. cit., p. 26) en rétablissant, contre une suggestion d'A-T X, p. 52, le texte original: le g de gaudeo est parfaitement lisible sur le ms.

(3) Voir les notes bibliographiques de Mme Rodis-Lewis, op. cit., et C. L. Thiss-Schoute, Nederlands cartesianisme, Amsterdam 1954, pp. 557-560.

(*) [Beeckman était né le 10 décembre 1588]

"Examinons, dans cette masse énorme de documents, ceux qui se rapportent sans conteste à Descartes, puisqu'il y est nommé. Ils se trouvent en quatre endroits différents :

[1618-1619]

1. — Fol. 97 verso, à fol. 1 18.

2. — Fol. 160 recto, à fol. 178 verso.

3. — Fol. 287 verso, à fol. 290 verso.

[1628-1629]

4. — Fol. 333 recto, a fol. 334 recto, 1. 34. — Fol. 338 recto, 1. 9, à fol. 340 recto, 1. 24. — Fol. 341 verso, 1. i6-3o. — Fol.* 352 recto, 1. 8-24." (Charles Adam, AT X, Avertissement, p. 22).

4. Descartes, René. 1618. Musicae Compendium.

AT X, 89-141; B Op. II, 30-105; traduction française par Frédéric de Buzon, O I, 149-189.

Le manuscrit original est perdu ; première édition posthume: Musicae compendium, Trajecti ad Rhenum: Gisberti a Zyll & Theodori ab Ackersdijck, 1650.

Traduction française sur le manuscrit originel par Nicolas-Joseph Poisson (1637-1710) publiée dans : Traité de la mechanique composé par Monsieur Descartes. De plus l’abrégé de musique du mesme autheur mis en françois. Avec les éclaircissemens nécessaires (l'Abrégé est à pp. 53-98 ; les Elucidationes physicae in Cartesii musicam de N.-J. Poisson à pp. 101-127), Paris, 1668 (reprint: Abrégé de musique, suivi des Eclaircissements physiques sur la musique de Descartes, Paris, Méridiens Klincksieck, 1990, introduction et notes par Pascal Dumont, préface de Joseph-François Kremer).

Édition critique avec traduction, présentation (pp. 5-49) et notes par Frédéric de Buzon, Abrégé de Musique. Compendium Musicae, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1987.

C'est la première œuvre de Descartes, rédigée du 10 novembre au 31 décembre 1618 pour son ami Isaac Beeckman.

Le Journal de Beeckman contient "la copie du Compendium Musicae que Descartes, à Bréda, remit à Beeckman pour ses étrennes de 1619. Celui-ci le confia en 1627 au copiste qui écrivait en gothique et qui copia encore d'autres documents de la même époque (...). Lorsque Beeckman fit relier ses papiers en 1628, cet écrit et ceux du même lot devaient interrompre l'ordre chronologique des notes. Beeckman restitua l'original à Descartes en 1629. Depuis lors divers savants hollandais en prirent des copies : Constantin Huygens en 1637 et Van Schooten vers 1640, dont les exemplaires sont conservés respectivement à la Bibliothèque de l'Université de Leyde et à celle de l'Université de Groningue." (Cornelis de Waard, Avertissement au premier volume du Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman de 1604 à 1634. Tome 1 : 1604-1619, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1939, p. XXXVIII.)

Sur l'approche mathématique de Descartes à la musique, voir la lettre à Beeckman du 24 janvier 1619: "Si vous considérez cela, et le reste de ma Musique, (8) avec attention, vous verrez que tout ce que j'ai écrit des intervalles des consonances, des degrés et des dissonances s'y trouve démontré de façon mathématique, mais en gros, de manière confuse et beaucoup trop concise.

Mais en voilà assez pour aujourd'hui. Le reste à plus tard." (AT X 153; O VIII 2, 320; B 1).

(8) Le Compendium musicae, offert à Beeckman quelques semaines plus tôt.

"Comme l'indique son nom, le Compendium Musicae est un traité de musique, et non pas d'harmonie ; ce terme même n'apparaît pas. Cette remarque prend de l'intérêt lorsque l'on aperçoit que, situation unique à notre connaissance, le rythme est traité avant les consonances et les problèmes de hauteur. D'autre part, un ensemble de propositions préalables, les Praenotanda, définit les limites de l'objet musical, et plus généralement de l'objet esthétique ; ces propositions produisent également la théorie du rythme et la théorie de la consonance. On comprend aussi qu'on ait pu en inférer une esthétique cartésienne (10)." (Frédéric de Buzon, Présentation, p. 8).

(10). V. O. Revault d'Allones, L'esthétique de Descartes, Revue des Sciences humaines, n° 61, 1951.

"Les commencements d'une méthode.

Lorsqu'il publia une nouvelle édition du Discours de la Méthode le P. Poisson remplaça, en quelque sorte, la Géométrie par un traité de mécanique, l'Explication des machines et engins, et par la traduction de l'Abrégé. [*] Ces deux œuvres étaient donc promues au rang d'essais de la méthode, au même titre que la Dioptrique et les Météores. Il y a là un abus évident, puisque les Essais étaient avec le Discours œuvres publiques, alors que les opuscules ainsi annexés n'étaient pas évidemment destinés à être publiés ; et l'Abrégé moins encore, que son auteur destinait aux seules archives beeckmaniennes. De plus, si l'on admet que la méthode de Descartes est contenue initialement dans les Regulae, et si l'on date le plus probablement cet ouvrage autour de 1628, on ne peut croire que l'Abrégé soit la mise à l'épreuve d'une méthode que Descartes ne révélerait à lui-même que dix ans après.

Il reste que l'assimilation de Poisson fait signe vers un problème majeur, celui de la méthode de Descartes avant la méthode, qui pourrait contribuer à définir certaines constantes logiques, voire psychologiques à l'œuvre dès 1618. Quelques caractères peuvent sans doute être ainsi décrits.

En premier lieu, on peut noter qu'à la différence des traités de musique antérieurs — que Descartes n'a pas sous la main (43) —, et à l'unisson des productions scientifiques et philosophiques ultérieures, l'Abrégé néglige à peu près toute référence historique, et ne fonde jamais la vérité de son discours sur la moindre évocation des autorités passées; le traité est suffisant par rapport à la chose même, et comme dans la Géométrie, Descartes laisse à son lecteur le soin de tirer les conclusions des prémisses. Il n'y a là que l'essentiel. Ce qui explique à la fois l'importance du traité dans l'histoire de la théorie (44), et un certain mépris dans la musicologie classique (45).

De plus, si la méthode n'est jamais thématisée pour elle-même dans l'Abrégé, elle offre des analogies intéressantes avec la suite de l'œuvre. On a déjà souligné le fait que Descartes procède constamment du simple au complexe; mais on peut aussi considérer la corde, réduite à sa seule dimension de longueur, comme, précisément une dimensio, au sens de la Règle XIV, c'est-à-dire « le mode et la raison, selon laquelle on considère que quelque sujet est mesurable » (46), ou bien une nature simple. Autre nature simple, le temps, et ses divisions qui correspondent aux passions du corps ; l'Abrégé ainsi se borne à étudier les paramètres par lesquels la musique est mesurable, en négligeant les qualités (timbres, nuance forte / piano, etc.), laissés aux physiciens (47).

Enfin il est remarquable que Descartes réduise la connaissance de la nature réelle du son et de sa perception par l'oreille au minimum nécessaire à une théorie de l'art. Il y a d'ailleurs une continuité au plan même des exemples avec les textes ultérieurs ; la Règle XIII évoque la question discutée vers 1628 par Mersenne et Beeckman relative aux cordes de grosseur et de tension différentes; comme il l'avait fait en 1618, Descartes met entre parenthèses toute référence à la vibration de la corde, cette donnée n'étant pas conçue comme nécessaire (48).

Ainsi, l'écrit de circonstance qu'est le Compendium Musicae a des résonances précises dans l'œuvre ultérieure, tant du côté de l'application de la mathématique à la réalité physique que du côté de la physiologie et de la théorie des passions. C'est sur ce double registre que joue constamment Descartes ; si l'art a pour fin d'émouvoir les passions, définition commune à Descartes et à Caccini (49), il reste la tâche philosophique de connaître ces passions; les silences de Descartes sur les passions forment ainsi l'indication d'un programme (50).

Il resterait à définir la musique de Descartes après le Compendium; elle est connue par la correspondance, et l'on sait le talent de critique déployé par Descartes dans la querelle de Boësset et de J. A. Ban; mais l'ensemble paraît inachevé: « Si je ne meurs que de vieillesse, j'ai encore envie quelque jour d'écrire de la théorie de la musique » (51)." (Frédéric de Buzon, Abrégé de Musique, cit., Présentation, pp. 16-18).

[*] Discours de la Méthode, plus Dioptrique, les Météores, la Mécanique et la Géométrie, qui sont des essais de cette méthode, Paris: Ch. Angot, 1668.

(43). Descartes indique ne pas se rappeler certaines propriétés, AT X, p. 133 et p. 140.

(44). Dans une bibliographie abondante, on relèvera ici que W. C. Printz, dans l'Historische Beschreibung der Sing- und Klingkunst, Dresde, 1690, chap. XII, § 72, fait gloire à Descartes d'avoir le premier considéré la tierce majeure comme une consonance parfaite ; que Rameau, Traité de l'harmonie, Paris, 1722, dérive du Compendium la plupart des concepts initiaux. V. aussi les appréciations de H. Riemann, Geschichte der Musiktheorie, Berlin, 1921, p. 419-420.

(45). Le Descartes et la musique d'A. Pirro (Paris, Fischbacher, 1907, rééd. Genève, Vlinkoff, 1973) est un brillant exemple de mésinterprétation du projet cartésien, en ce qu'il néglige les enjeux physico-mathématiques, et favorise exagérément l'interprétation des règles de composition.

(46). Règles pour la direction de l'esprit, AT X, p. 447, trad. J.-L. Marion, La Haye, Nijhoff, 1977, p. 67.

(47). AT-X, p. 89.

(48). V., dans l'édition citée supra des Règles, l'Annexe v du P. Costabel sur la loi des cordes vibrantes.

(49). G. Caccini, Le nuove musiche, Florence, 1601. L'analogie des formules caccinienne et cartésienne est signalée par G. Rodis-Lewis, "Musique et Passions au XVIe siècle (Monteverdi et Descartes)", Dix-septième siècle, 1971, n° 92 (cette étude portant essentiellement sur la querelle Ban-Boësset, à partir du tome X de la Correspondance de M. Mersenne).

(50). AT-X, p. 111 et 140.

(51). Descartes à Constantijn Huygens (4 février 1647), AT IV, 791 [O VIII 2, 162; B 601).

5. ———. 1619. [Registre de 1619].

Le registre autographe de Descartes, légué par Clerselier à l’abbé Legrand, a été perdus après la mort de Legrand dès 1704.

Index des titres: Parnassus (18 fuillets); Praeambula (4 pages); Experimenta (cinq feuillets et demi); Democritica (sept ou huit lignes); Olympica.

CO, 50-83: Les fragments philosophiques sont édités (52-64), traduits (53-65) et annotés (67-83) dans : "<Registre de 1619> Parnassus, Democritica, Praembula, Experimenta; Parnasse, Démocritiques, <Notes:>, Préambules, Observations, <Inventer>.

"L'article C de l'Inventaire de Stockholm énumère plusieurs titres de petits traités, que Descartes avait écrits, ajoute-t-on, « en sa jeunesse ». Les textes originaux, remis comme nous savons à Clerselier, sont, à l'heure qu'il est, malheureusement perdus. Toutefois quelque chose, et même, on peut le dire, l'essentiel en a été conservé par deux voies différentes. Baillet eut ces textes entre les mains, et il en fît mention, et les traduisit même en plusieurs endroits, dans sa Vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes en 1691. D'autre part, les mêmes textes avaient été mis déjà par Clerselier à la disposition de Leibniz, pendant un séjour de celui-ci à Paris en 1675-76 ; Leibniz en avait pris une copie, et cette copie fut déposée plus tard avec ses papiers à la Bibliothèque royale de Hanovre." (AT X, Avertissement, p. 173).

"M. Chanut ambassadeur de France en Suède, et le baron de Kroneberg commis par la reine Christine, pour assister à l'inventaire de ce qu’il avait laissé à sa mort, trouvèrent parmi les écrits de sa composition un registre relié et couvert de parchemin, contenant divers fragments de pièces différentes auxquelles il paraît qu’il travailla pendant ce temps-là. C'était: 1. Quelques considérations sur les sciences en général [le titre du manuscrit est Parnassus]; 2. Quelque chose de l'algèbre, 3. Quelques pensées écrites sous le titre Democritica; 4. Un recueil d’observations sous le titre Expérimenta; 5. Un traité commencé sous celui de Preambula: Initium sapientiæ timor Domìni; un autre en forme de discours, intitulé Olympica, qui n’était que de douze pages, contenait à la marge, d’une encre plus récente, mais de la même main de l’auteur, une remarque qui donne encore aujourd’hui de l’exercice aux curieux. Les termes auxquels cette remarque était conçue portaient: XI Novembris 1620, cœpi intelligere fondamentum Inventi mirabilis, dont M. Clerselier ni les autres cartésiens n’ont encore pu donner l’explication. Cette remarque se trouve vis-à-vis d'un texte qui semble nous persuader que cet écrit est postérieur aux autres qui sont dans le registre, et qu’il n’a été commencé qu’au mois de novembre de l’an 1619. Ce texte port ces termes latins: X Novembris 1619, cùm plenus forem Enthoumsiasmo, & mirabilis scientiæ fundamenta reperirem &c.

Mais le principal de ces fragments, et le premier de ceux qui se trouvaient dans le registre était un recueil de Considérations mathématiques, sous le titre de Parnassus, dont il ne restait que trente-six pages. Le sieur Borel a cru que c’était un livre composé l’an 1619, sur une date du premier jour de janvier, que M. Descartes avait mise à la tête du registre. Mais il se peut faire que la date n’ait été que pour le registre en blanc, et qu’elle n’ait voulu dire autre chose, sinon que M. Descartes aura commencé à user de ce registre le premier de janvier 1619, pour continuer de s’en servir dans la suite des temps selon ses vues et sa volonté. L’opinion du sieur Borel n’en est pourtant pas moins probable, puisque M. Chanut a remarqué dans l’Inventaire de M. Descartes que tous les écrits renfermés dans ce registre (a) paraissent avoir été composés en sa jeunesse." (Baillet I, 50-51)

(a) Coté C de l'Inventaire.

"Descartes est mort à Stockholm le 11 février 1650 ; trois jours après, le 14, un inventaire fut dressé des papiers qu'il avait emportés en Suède (*). Il en reste deux copies ; l'une, assez fautive appartenait à Constantin Huygens et se trouve à la Bibliothèque de l'Université de Leyde; l'autre, qui est à la Bibliothèque nationale, vient sans doute de la collection Clerselier. Charles Adam a soigneusement édité ce texte au début du tome X des Œuvres.

Cet inventaire contient vingt-trois articles, A à Z, les lettres I et J ne comptant que pour une, et de même U et V. Les écrits les plus anciens de Descartes se trouvent à l'article C (1).

Il s'agit d' « un petit registre en parchemin, quotté en dedans de la couverture: Anno 1619 Kalendis Januarii ». Ceci veut dire que Descartes a décidé, le 1er janvier 1619, de se servir de ce registre.

Ouvrons-le. Il se présente ainsi :

1° « 18 feuillets de considérations mathématiques sous un titre : Parnassus. »

2° « six feuillets vides »

3° « six feuillets écrits »

4° « En prenant le livre d'un autre sens, le discours intitulé Olympica, et à la marge : XI Novembris coepi intelligere fundamentum inventi mirabilis. »

5° « Reprenant le livre en son droit sens, sont deux feuillets écrits, de quelques considérations sur les sciences ; »

6° « puis une demi-page d'algèbre »

7° « puis douze pages vides »

8° « puis sept ou huit lignes intitulées Democritica »

9° « huit ou dix feuillets blancs » (2)

10° « cinq feuillets et demi écrits, mais en tournant le livre, sous ce titre Experimenta »

11° « douze feuilles blanches »

12° « quatre pages écrites sous ce titre : Praeambula. Initium sapientiae timor Domini. »

« Tout ce livre cotté C, ajoute l'auteur de l'inventaire, paraît avoir été écrit en sa jeunesse. »

L'examen de ce registre montre deux choses :

D'abord, la plupart de ces écrits semblent n'être que des commencements destinés à recevoir une suite sur les pages blanches que le jeune homme laisse après chacun d'eux.

Ensuite, le cahier a été commencé par les deux bouts."

(1) AT X, p. 7-8.

(2) Les mots « huit ou dix feuillets » peuvent paraître étranges ; en fait, il y a huit feuillets blancs + le verso de la feuille dont le recto porte les Democritica + le verso du dernier feuillet des Experimenta.

Henri Gouhier, Les premières pensées de Descartes, Paris, Vrin, 1979 pp. 11-12.

(*) Sur la date voir la note a l'Inventaire succinct des écrits [Inventaire de Stockholm].

6. ———. 1619. [Registre de 1619:] Parnassus (Ms. de Leibniz : Cogitationes privatæ).

Première édition (texte latin et traduction française) : Foucher de Careil I, 2-56; AT X, 213-248; B Op. II, 1060-1095; traduction par Frédéric de Buzon et André Warusfel, O I, 198-214.

"Je terminerai complètement mon traité avant Pâques, et si je trouve des libraires et s'il me paraît digne, je le publierai comme je l'ai promis aujourd'hui, 1620, 23 février" (AT X, p. 218, original en latin): nous ne savons pas à quel écrit se réfère Descartes.

"Nous pensons comme Henri Gouhier que la partie physique et mathématique des Cogitationes privatae a de bonnes chances de reproduire le Parnassus, qui s'ouvre avec le souvenir de la rencontre de Beeckman du 10 novembre 1618 (AT X, 219, 5). "

(CO, p. 67).

"Le texte de ces dernières notes surtout, tel que l'a donné Foucher de Careil, est des plus défectueux. Et comme le manuscrit manque, pour contrôler ce texte et y faire les corrections nécessaires, grand a été notre embarras. Le regretté Paul Tannery eût sans aucun doute réussi à déchiffrer ces énigmes; mais nous l'avons perdu trop tôt, et avant qu'il eût pris la peine d'y regarder de près. Nous avons dû nous adresser ailleurs. Par bonheur, une des lettres à Beeckman, qui viennent d'être retrouvées, nous fournissait la preuve que Descartes s'était encore servi, en ces premières années, de caractères cossiques (voir ci-avant, p. 155-156)."

(...)

"Gustav Enestrom, directeur de la Bibliotheca Mathematica, à Stockholm, possède en pareille matière la plus incontestable autorité. Fort obligeamment, il voulut bien se mettre à l'œuvre, et travailler pour Descartes : comme on pouvait s'y attendre, il remit tout en ordre et expliqua fort bien les passages déclarés ailleurs inexplicables. Nous le désignerons, à la fin des notes qu'il a rédigées pour cette édition, par les initiales de son nom G. E."

(Charles Adam, AT X, pp. 211-212).

"Charles Adam avait publié les Cogitationes privatæ respectant la structure du texte donné par Foucher de Careil, certes en l'amendant fortement, mais sans tenter de distinguer entre les différents ensembles de notes pour se rapprocher de la description de l'inventaire de Stockholm. Celui-ci, de même que la lecture de Baillet (Vie, I, p. 50-51), permet cependant de distinguer des centres d'intérêt et autorise le regroupement des notes scientifiques sous le titre qui les désignait. La question de savoir ce qui était précisément contenu dans le Parnassus est cependant indécidable dans son détail, en raison de l'état des sources et parce que l'on doit reconnaître avec Henri Gouhier que « Leibniz n'a [...] pas suivi l'ordre du registre quand on l'ouvre du côté de la couverture datée » (Les Premières Pensées de Descartes, p. 15 : en effet, les premières remarques transcrites par Leibniz ne relèvent pas des mathématiques, même en prenant le terme au sens le plus large, c'est-à-dire associant mathématiques pures et appliquées. L'éditeur doit écarter les textes qui, visiblement, dépendent des autres ensembles du recueil." (Frédéric de Buzon et André Warusfel, Présentation, O I, 194).

7. ———. 1619. [Registre de 1619:] Praeambula (Ms. de Leibniz : Cogitationes privatæ).

AT X, 213-248; B Op. II, 1060-1095; traduction par Michelle Beyssade, O I, 198-220 et 270-274.

"Les papiers de Descartes, remis par Chanut à son beau-frère Clerselier, et qui n'ont pas été retrouvés, ne nous sont pas connus seulement par les extraits qu'en a donnés Baillet, dans sa Vie du philosophe (voir ci-avant, p. 173-177). Le même Baillet prévient le lecteur que, pour l'aider dans sa tâche, l'abbé Nicaise a pris la peine « d'écrire à Rome, d'où M. Auzout, qui a vu M. Descartes à Paris, et M. Leibnitz, qui a eu communication des originaux chez M. Clerselier, ont envoyé ce que la mémoire a pu leur suggérer sur ce sujet ». (Vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes, 1691, Préface, p. xxvi.) Leibniz fut, en effet, à Paris en 1675 et 1676; curieux de tout ce qui se rapportait au philosophe français, non seulement il obtint communication des papiers qui restaient de lui, mais il en fit copier et en copia lui-même au moins une bonne partie. Ses copies, qui portent des dates en plusieurs endroits (24 février et 1er juin 1676), furent déposées après sa mort, avec bien d'autres manuscrits, à la Bibliothèque Royale de Hanovre, et y demeurèrent longtemps ignorées. Ce fut seulement vers le milieu du xix siècle, que le comte Foucher de Careil, mis sur cette piste par l'indication de Baillet rappelée ci-dessus, et par quelques déclarations de Leibniz lui-même dans sa correspondance, réussit à les découvrir enfin. Il les publia aussitôt, avec quelques autres documents (lettres à Wilhem, Huygens, La Thuillerie, etc.), en deux volumes d'Œuvres inédites de Descartes (Paris, Auguste Durand, in-8, cxvii-158 et xxii-238 pages, 1859-1860)." (AT X, Avertissement, p. 207).

"Cogitationes privatae est le titre que Foncher de Careil met en tête de ces fragments. L'avait-il trouvé dans le MS. de Leibniz, ou bien est-ce un titre de son invention? Cette dernière hypothèse est la plus vraisemblable. — Le même éditeur ajoute en note : « Leibniz, qui a copié ce manuscrit, nous avertit en marge qu'il l'a découvert et qu'il en a pris copie le 1er juin 1676, c'est-à-dire pendant son séjour à Paris. » — Nous reproduisons, en haut des pages, la pagination de Foucher de Careil : comme il donne en regard du latin une traduction française, les pages du latin n'ont que des numéros pairs, et les autres des numéros impairs." (AT X, Avertissement, p. 213).

8. ———. 1619. [Registre de 1619:] Experimenta.

AT X, 189-190; Baillet I, 102-103; B Op. II, 892-895; traduction par Michelle Beyssade, O I, 259-260.

"Le fragment intitulé Experimenta n'avait que « cinq feuillets et demi » (p. 8 ci-avant, l. 6-7). Peut-être donc l'avons-nous aussi tout entier, dans les deux grandes pages de Baillet, t. I, p. 102-103 ; au moins en avons-nous l'essentiel. Et là encore l'abondance et la précision des détails permettent de croire que le biographe de Descartes a traduit fidèlement, bien qu'on ne puisse jurer qu'il n'a rien ajouté. — Quant à la date, elle se détermine approximativement ainsi. Descartes raconte une aventure de sa traversée, par mer, d'Allemagne en Hollande, exactement, du port d'Embden en West -Frise, peut-être à Amsterdam. Nos idées sur cette première période des voyages du philosophe sont un peu changées depuis la découverte du Journal de Beeckman. Nous savons maintenant qu'en 1619, pour se rendre des Pays-Bas dans la Haute-Allemagne, au lieu de prendre par terre directement, il fit un grand détour par le Danemark, la Pologne, la Hongrie, la Bohême et l'Autriche (ci-avant p. 159, l. 2-6, et p. 162, l. 8-13), et s'embarqua le 29 avril à Amsterdam pour Copenhague. Il craignait que les mouvements de troupes entre les Pays-Bas et la Bavière ne rendissent la route peu sûre. Mais elle ne l'était sans doute pas davantage au retour. Faut-il donc croire que Descartes sera revenu, sinon tout à fait par le même chemin, au moins par la Silésie, le Brandebourg, le Mecklembourg, qui est l'itinéraire que Baillet lui fait suivre, enfin Hambourg et Embden ? Enfin, comme nous savons, par une lettre de lui, que, le 3 avril 1622, il était à Rennes (t. I, p. 1), son retour en France a dû s'effectuer l'automne de 1621, et c'est alors sans doute qu'eut lieu l'aventure, dont le récit fait le principal si non l'unique objet des Expérimenta." (AT X, 175-176).

9. ———. 1619. [Registre de 1619:] Democritica.

"On sait que Democritica est le titre de « 7 ou 8 lignes » contenues dans le fameux petit registre en parchemin ouvert en 1619 et coté C dans l’inventaire de Chanut (1), contenant également le Parnassus, les Experimenta et les Praeambula. Rien n’est connu de ce texte, en particulier on ignore s’il s'agit de notes de lecture ; Democritica semble signifier, par analogie avec d’autres auteurs, des opinions inspirées de Démocrite (2), et rien chez Beeckman n’indique à l’époque une lecture de la doxographie démocritéenne. Peut-être alors faudrait-il revenir sur la composition du mot et donc sa signification : Demo-critica ?" (p. 41, Frédéreic de Buzon, "Democritica: la réfutation cartésienne de l'atomisme", dans: Jean Salem (éd.), J.Salem (ed.) L'atomisme aux XVIIème et XVIIIème siècles, Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1999, pp. 27-41)

(1) A.T., X, 8.

(2) Democritici signifie, chez Leibniz notamment, les auteurs s’inspirant de Démocrite. — Voir en partic., le fragment Corpus non est substantia qui s'applique parfaitement à Descartes (pour la seule première phrase !) : Intelligo autem per corpus non id quod Scholastici ex materia et forma quadam intelligibili componunt sed quod molem alias Democritici vocant. Hoc ajo non esse substantiam. («J'entends par corps non ce que les scolastiques composent à partir de la matière et d'une forme intelligible, mais ce qu'autrement les Democritici nomment masse. Je dis que ce n'est pas une substance»); in Leibniz (G. W. F.), Nouvelles Lettres et opuscules inédits, éd. Foucher de Careil, Paris, 18S7 (réimpression: Hildesheim, 1971), p. 171. —Voir aussi les notes sur Cudworth (VE 406 p. 1887).

Selon J. Sirven "La seule hypothèse plausible est donc, que l'allusion au songe de 1619 nous donne tout ce que nous connaissons des Democritica, tandis que les autres morceaux d'allure psychologique se rattachent à des préoccupations scientifiques. On s’explique sans peine, alors, que Leibniz ait transcrit d'abord la phrase relative à l’année 1620, qui se trouvait dans les Expérimenta (2), puis nous ait donné une ou deux lignes des Democritica et enfin deux fragments de la section qu'il rencontrait en continuant ses extraits. Mais, quand il passa aux Olympica, il trouva en marge la réflexion signalée par Baillet, « écrite d'une ancre plus récente, mais toujours de la même main de l'auteur ». Se souvenant alors qu'il venait d'écrire une phrase à peu près identique tirée des Experimenta, il se contenta d'ajouter lui-même en marge de sa copie : « Olympica. X. nov. coepi intelligere fundamentum inventi mirabilis (3). »"

(2) La place de cette réflexion dans les Experimenta coïncide très bien avec l'hypothèse faite par Milhaud sur la nature de la découverte du 11 nov. 1620, dont nous parlerons plus loin.

(3) Leibniz a transcrit : X Nov., tandis que Baillet donne la date du : XI Nov. Est-ce une faute de Baillet, de Leibniz, ou plus probablement de Foucher de Careil ? Le manuscrit de Leibniz ne se trouvant plus à Hanovre, on ne saurait le dire.

Les annéues d'apprentissage de Descartes (1596-1628) Albi: Imprimerie cooperative du Sud-Ouest 1928, p. 68.

Selon cette hypothèse les sept ou huit lignes des Democritica sont identifiées avec le texte de AT X, 216 l. 19-25.

10. ———. 1619. Olympica (Extraits de Baillet).

Première édition: Baillet I, 50-61 / 80-86 / 120; AT X, 179-188; B Op. II, 879-891; CO, 99-108; traduction par Michelle Beyssade, O I, 252-259.

Fernand Hallyn, dans Les Olympiques de Descartes, Genève: Droz, 1995, donne trois textes: I. Le premier récit de Baillet, (I, pp. 80-86), II. Le deuxième récit de Baillet, (Abrégé, pp. 37-39), III. Cogitationes privatae. Pensées pour moi-même, (Foucher de Careil, I, 10-12) : "On ne reprend ici que ceux qui faisaient partie des Olympica selon l'hypothèse d'Henri Gouhier (Les premières pensées de Descartes, Paris, Vrin, 1958 et 1979)." p. 41.

Ce texte contient le récit de trois songes de Descartes la nuit du 10 au 11 novembre 1619 : "s'étant couche tout rempli de son enthousiasme, et tout occupé de la pensée d'avoir trouvé ce jour-là les fondements de la science admirable". (Baillet I, p. 80).

"Les « Songes » de Descartes

Le texte se trouve dans la biographie de Baillet qui le tire des Olympica. Plus exactement, Baillet en donne une traduction paraphrasée avec quelques citations de l'original latin. Il s'agit du morceau qui ouvre le « discours » écrit sous le titre Olympica sur le « petit registre en parchemin ». Les pages qui nous le font connaître laissent supposer un récit bien conduit et rédigé avec un certain souci littéraire, non une suite de notes hâtivement griffonnées.

Baillet ouvre donc le cahier de Descartes et écrit : « Il nous apprend que le dixième de Novembre mil six cent dix-neuf, s'étant couché tout rempli de son enthousiasme, et tout occupé de la pensée d'avoir trouvé ce jour-là les fondements de la science admirable, il eut trois songes consécutifs en une seule nuit, qu'il s'imagina ne pouvoir être venus que d'en hauts (80). » (Gouhier, op. cit., pp. 32-33).

(80) Baillet, t. I, p. 81; AT t. X, p. 181. Remarquons que « ce jour là » semble ajouté par Baillet qui traduit le texte latin donné plus haut, p. 32.

"Les historiens de Descartes parlent comme s'il n'y avait qu'un seul texte sur les rêves de novembre 1619 : le récit des Olympica tel que Baillet nous l'a transmis (86). Or il y en a deux. Ceci résulte de la comparaison entre un fragment lu dans la copie de Leibniz et les passages des Olympica qu'il rappelle.

Voici le fragment tel que Foucher de Careil l'a présenté (87) :

Anno 1620, intelligere coepi fundamentum inventi mirabilis.*

Somnium 1619, nov. in quo carmen 7 cujus initium:

Quod vitae sectabor iter?...

Auson

*[En marge :] Olympica, X nov. coepi intelligere fundamentum inventi mirabilis.

Ce fragment ne vient pas des Olympica.

1° La première ligne avec sa note rappelle évidemment le début des Olympica :

X novembris 1619, cum plenus forem enthousiasmo, et mirabilis scientiae fundamenta reperirem (88)... Baillet nous dit qu'en marge, « d'une encre plus récente, mais toujours de la même main de l'Auteur », on lisait: XI Novembris 1620, coepi intelligere fundamentum inventi mirabilis (89).

La première ligne du fragment n'est pas exactement semblable à celle que Baillet a lue dans la marge des Olympica et qu'il déclare être de la main de Descartes. C'est même pourquoi quelqu'un a transcrit en face la phrase lue dans les Olympica, substituant involontairement X à XI: est-ce Descartes? ne serait-ce pas plutôt Leibniz? Peu importe : que ce soit l'un ou l'autre, le fragment est tiré d'une page du petit registre qui n'est pas celle où commence le récit des songes.

2° La seconde ligne rappelle l'épisode final du troisième songe : là aussi le rêveur lit le vers d'Ausone. Mais, dans notre fragment, il s'agit d'une simple note sans verbe : « Songe, nov. 1619, là, poème 7 qui commence : Quel chemin de la vie suivrai-je ? Auson. » Ces lignes n'ont pu être découpées dans le récit visiblement rédigé que suit Baillet, même en tenant compte des enjolivements.

Le vers du poète latin, d'ailleurs, n'apparaît lié à une date dans aucun des trois passages où le traducteur le cite ; la première fois, le rêveur « tombe » sur lui en ouvrant au hasard un corpus poetarum, la seconde, il essaie vainement de le retrouver dans le même recueil; la troisième, il y reconnaît un « bon conseil » (90). On ne voit vraiment pas comment l'un de ces morceaux pourrait bien être le contexte du fragment.

Le fragment ne vient pas des Olympica. D'où vient-il ?

La série B du registre est faite de trois groupes de textes sous les rubriques : Praeambula, Experimenta, Olympica. Ces lignes se trouvent sur la copie avant le premier fragment incontestablement extrait des Olympica, mais séparées de celui-ci par deux autres « pensées ». Si, comme c'est vraisemblable, Leibniz suit l'ordre du registre, cette situation porte à croire qu'elles viennent des Experimenta.

(...)

Ce fragment serait-il donc une note sur un cas d'experimentum ?

Il y a tout lieu de croire que ces deux courts alinéas constituaient un tout sur le petit registre comme sur la copie de Leibniz telle que nous la connaissons par Foucher de Careil. Il s'agit donc d'une note qui rapproche deux faits et c'est le rapprochement de ces deux faits qui est l'objet même de la note.

(...)

La note sur le rêve des Experimenta n'est pas un morceau de fable : elle rappelle deux faits et l'un de ces faits est un songe de la nuit du 10 au 11 novembre 1619.

Tout n'est donc pas fictif dans le récit des Olympica.

A la fin du troisième rêve, selon le récit, Descartes se réveille en train d'interpréter le vers : Quod vitae sectabor iter? Souvenir immédiat qui effleure la conscience et dont elle part pour rappeler ce qui le précède, c'est, dans le rêve reconstruit, le morceau le plus pur du rêve rêvé. Or, d'après la note des Experimenta, c'est là aussi le souvenir d'un rêve réellement rêvé dans la nuit du 10 au 11 novembre 1619.

Tout le reste du récit serait-il une fable, cela n'empêcherait pas qu'un fragment de vrai rêve ne se trouve au centre, à l'instant où, en droit, tout aboutit et d'où, en fait, tout part dans le déroulement des pseudo-rêves." (Gouhier, op. cit., pp. 40-41).

(86) Sauf Sirven, Les Années d'apprentissage de Descartes (1596-1628), Paris, Vrin, 1928 p. 65 sq.; mais sa restitution du petit registre est tout à fait différente de celle qui a été proposée ici, de sorte que nos interprétations sont divergentes.

(87) Cogitationes privatae, AT t. X, p. 216 ; Foucher de Careil, t. I, p. 8.

(88) Baillet, t. 1, p. 50 (AT t. X, p. 179) et p. 81 (AT t. X, p. 181).

(89) Ibidem, t. I, p. 51 (AT t. X, p. 179) ; sur ce texte, voir plus loin, ch. IV, p. 74.

(90) Baillet, t. I, p. 83 et 84 (AT t. X, p. 184).

11. ———. 1619 (automne) - 1623 (printemps). Studium Bonae Mentis (Extraits de Baillet).

Première édition: Baillet II 406; Baillet I 26 / 34 / 87-91 / 109-110; II 66 / 477 / 479 / 486-487 / 531 / 545; AT X, 191-204; B Op. II, 897-915; traduction par Michelle Beyssade, O I, 260-268; CO, 127-140 (l'édition la plus complète).

"Un autre ouvrage latin que M. Descartes avait poussé loin, et dont il nous reste un ample fragment est celui de l'Étude du bon sens, ou de l'Art de bien comprendre, qu’il avait intitulé Studium bonae Mentis. Ce sont des considérations sur le désir que nous avons de savoir, sur les sciences, sur les dispositions de l’esprit pour apprendre, sur l’ordre qu’on doit garder pour acquérir la sagesse, c’est-à-dire la science avec la vertu, en joignant les fonctions de la volonté avec celles de l'entendement. Son dessein était de frayer un chemin tout nouveau ; mais il prétendait ne travailler que pour lui-même, et pour l’ami à qui il adressait son traité sous le nom de Museus, que les uns ont pris pour le sieur Is. Beeckman principal du collège de Dordrecht, d’autres pour M. Mydorge ou pour le P. Mersenne."

Baillet VII, chapitre 20, p. 406.

"On peut interpréter d'abord ce terme au sens général d'entreprise, ou d'œuvre, et non au sens d'un ouvrage littéraire ou philosophique particulier. Mais il semble bien que Descartes ait conçu dès ce moment le projet de consigner le fruit de ses réflexions dans un livre et de le publier. En tout cas, il s'est promis à lui-même, quelques mois plus tard, d'achever un livre avant Pâques 1620 et de l'éditer : « Omnino autem ante Pascha absolvam tractatum meum, et si librariorum mihi sit copia dignusque videatur, emittam, ut hodie promisi, 1620, die 23 Febr. » (*) Cogit. privatae, t. X, p. 218, 1. 3-5.

On ignore ce que peut avoir été ce traité, mais rien ne s'opposerait à ce que ce fût le Studium bonae mentis (t. X, p. 191-203), dont ce que nous savons correspond exactement aux préoccupations méthodologiques et morales de Descartes à cette époque : Ce sont des considérations sur le désir que nous avons de savoir, sur les sciences, sur les dispositions de l'esprit pour apprendre, sur l'ordre qu'on doit garder pour acquérir la sagesse, c'est-à-dire la science avec la vertu, en joignant les fonctions de la volonté avec celles de l'entendement. Son dessein était de frayer un chemin tout nouveau ; mais il prétendait ne travailler que pour lui-même et pour l'ami à qui il adressait son traité sous le nom de Museus, que les uns ont pris pour le sieur J. Beeckman, principal du collège de Dordrecht, d'autres pour M. Mydorge ou pour le P. Mersenne (A. Baillet, t. II, p. 406 ; AT X, p. 191). Ces identifications de personnages sont purement conjecturales et il n'y a pas à en tenir compte, d'autant moins que Museus pourrait fort bien n'avoir été qu'un interlocuteur imaginaire ; mais tout le reste s'accorde avec l'élaboration de la méthode et de la morale provisoire que Descartes situe entre novembre 1619 et mars ou avril 1620."

Gilson, Discours de la méthode. Texte et Commentaire, Paris: Vrin, 1925 (deuxième édition revue 1926), p. 181 (note a AT VI, p. 17, l. 8 ".. l'ouvrage..." [O III, 92]).

(*) J'ajoute la traduction et les notes de Fernand Hallyn : "D'autre part, je terminerai complètement mon traité avant Pâques, et si j'ai matière à livres (1) et si le traité en paraît digne, je le publierai, comme je l'ai promis aujourd'hui, le 23 septembre (2) 1620".

(1) Leçon de Foucher de Careil (« librorum »). AT corrige en « librariorum » en se fondant sur la version de Baillet (« libraires »). Gouhier, La pensée religieuse de Descartes, Paris: Vrin 1979, p. 105 (première édition 1924) traduit par « copistes ». Aucune des traductions proposées jusqu'à présent (« livres », au sens courant, pour « librorum », « libraires » ou « copistes » pour « librariorum ») n'est vraiment satisfaisante dans le contexte. Je propose de maintenir « librorum », mais de comprendre le mot au sens de « parties d'un ouvrage », les « livres » dont devrait se composer le traité projeté.

(2) « Février » chez Baillet. Cf. l'introduction (p. 25), où est adoptée la leçon de Baillet mais aussi, ici-même, la contribution de G. Rodis-Lewis, qui maintient « septembre ».

"« La vraie philosophie dépend de l'entendement. » Le Studium ne institue pas seulement, comme Étienne Gilson l'avait remarqué, un petit traité De la philosophie; il est le premier traité de philosophie de Descartes, ouvrant la voie au traité de « vraie philosophie » que seront les Regulae ad directionem ingenii. Libérant ce champ inédit pour Descartes est la philosophie, le Studium bonae mentis s'avère donc être un texte décisif, en dépit de son inachèvement et de son démembrement — décisif dans son échec même. C'est pourquoi il constitue la pierre de touche la présente édition. C'est un texte difficile aussi, puisque seules les Regulae délivrent pleinement le sens de cet échec : à ce titre, le Studium et les Regulae constituent véritablement un tout indissociable. En charge de li présenter et de l'exploiter tant qu'il restait inédit, Baillet aura baissé les bras, alors même que l'intelligence du Studium lui eût ouvert de tout autres perspectives sur le jeune Descartes. Nous osons espérer que les propositions avancées ici pour en restituer le projet parviendront à esquisser la figure d'un Descartes devenant philosophe.

Observons cependant d'emblée que l'ordre et les objets des considérations qui suivent sont encore manifestement d'origine aristotélicienne. Descartes commence en philosophie en répétant à sa manière le livre A de la Métaphysique, c'est-à-dire en faisant un De philosophia — ce qu'Étienne Gilson avait vu, moyennant un rapprochement avec la Lettre-préface aux Principes (AT IX-2, 2-8 et 4, 23): Baillet «aurait dû traduire [Studium Bonae mentis] par: Étude de la sagesse, ou même, plus simplement, De la philosophie » Commentaire, p. 82, selon AT IX-2, 3 qui reprend en français l'Epistola dedicatoria des Principia, AT VIII-1, 4, 24, studium sapientiae), suivi à juste titre par Jacques Sirven : «Il y avait là [sc. dans les considérations sur le désir que nous avons de savoir du Studium] comme un ressouvenir du premier livre des Métaphysiques d'Aristote » (Les Années d'apprentissage de Descartes (1596-1628), Albi: 1928 p. 293). Il ne sera donc pas étonnant que peu après Descartes écrive sa propre Peri tès alètheias theoria, De veritate quidem theoria (Aristotle, Métaphysique α 1993 a 30), protreptique qui deviendra recherche de la vérité, veritatis inquisitio. Dans la mesure où la Lettre-préface obéit à une terminologie scolaire, conformément au genre du manuel, on peut considérer qu'elle reprend le projet du Studium comme commencement de la philosophie — à quelque vingt-cinq ans de distance, ces deux textes se répondent silencieusement : c'est pourquoi le livre A y est présent, quoique différemment." Vincent Carraud, note 2 à l'Étude du bon sens, dans CO, p. 141.

Dans une lettre à Beeckman du 26 mars 1619 Descartes expose son projet :

"Je suis arrivé ici [à Bréda] il y a six jours, et je me suis remis au culte des Muses avec plus de zèle que jamais. J'ai établi en ce court laps de temps, à l'aide de mes compas (2), quatre démonstrations remarquables et tout à fait neuves.

(...)

C'est autre chose que je cherche maintenant pour l'extraction des racines d'une somme (de plusieurs quantités incommensurables entre elles); si j'y parviens, comme je l'espère, je mettrai bien en ordre toute cette science, à condition de vaincre mon indolence et si le destin m'en donne le loisir.

Pour ne rien vous cacher de ce que j'entreprends, je voudrais donner au public non pas un Ars brevis comme Lulle (7), mais une science toute nouvelle (8), par laquelle on puisse résoudre tous les problèmes possibles, en n'importe quel genre de quantité, continue or discontinue."

(...)

C'est une entreprise infinie, et qui dépasse un seul homme, projet incroyablement ambitieux mais j'entrevois un je-ne-sais-quoi de lumineux dans l’obscur chaos de cette science et je pense pouvoir par ce moyen dissiper les ténèbres les plus épaisses."

(AT X, 156-158, O VII, 2, 321-322; B 2).

(2) Les compas sont ceux que Descartes décrira dans la Géométrie II et III (AT VI 391 et 443 [O III, 430 et 471]).

(7) R. Lull, Artificium sive Ars brevis ad absolvendam omnium artium encyclopœdiam, ou encore Ars brevis, quae est imago Artis generalis, écrit en 1308, imprimé à Barcelone, 1481, souvent réimprimé ensuite (voir sa mention dans Beeckman = AT X 63-65).

(8) Note en marge : « méthode générale [ars generalis] pour résoudre toutes les questions » (Beeckman IV 59, n. 7).

12. ———. 1619-20 ou 1623?-1625 - hiver 1627-28. Regulae ad directionem ingenii.

Rédaction initiée en Allemande en 1619-1620 où à Paris en 1623, interrompue et reprise en France en 1626-1628 et jamais complétée.

AT X 359-469; B Op. II, 684-815; traduction et notes par Jean-Marie Beyssade et Michelle Beyssade, avec la collaboration de Frédéric Buzon et Denis Kambouchner, O I, 324-497.

Une copie (non autographe) du texte latin avec les seize premières Règles (*), a étée découverte à la Cambridge University Library en 2011 par Richard Serjeantson, qui en prépare une édition.

(*) manque la deuxième partie de la Règle IV [sur la mathesis universalis].

Je donne en parenthèse les abréviations communément utilisées pour les manuscrits et les éditions anciennes.

(N) = Première publication : Jan Hendrik Glazemaker (1620-1682) traduit le manuscrit latin en néerlandais vers le 1680 ; la traduction fut publiée à Amsterdam en 1684, avec le titre R. Des Cartes Regulen van de bestieringe des verstants.

(A) = La première édition du texte latin fut publiée en 1701 in R. Des-Cartes Opuscula posthuma, physica et mathematica, Amsterdam : P. & J. Blaeu ; l'édition Adam-Tannery ne tient pas compte de la traduction néerlandaise.

(O) = Le manuscrit original est perdu.

(H) = Nous avons une copie de l'original (manuscrit de Hanovre : première édition par Charles Adam, "Ren. Cartesii Regulae de inquirenda veritate", Revue Bourguignonne de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 11, 1901, pp. 1-89) fait en 1678 et acheté par Leibniz.

(L) = Cette copie contient de nombreuses erreurs et Leibniz l'a corrigée.

(R) = Une autre copie faite vers 1680 et qui appartenait à Johannes de Raey (1622-1701), probablement utilisée pour les premières éditions, est aujourd'hui perdue.

Éditions critiques des Regulae:

Regulae ad directionem ingenii, Texte critique établi par Giovanni Crapulli avec la version hollandaise du XVIIème siècle, La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966.

Regulae ad directionem ingenii, Kritisch revidiert und herausgegeben von Heinrich Springmeyer, Lüder Gäbe und Hans Günter Zekl, Hamburg: Meiner, 1973.

Regulae ad directionem ingenii. Cogitationes privatae, Übersetzt und herausgegeben von Christian Wohlers, Hamburg Felix Meiner, 2011.

Traductions:

Règles pour la direction de l'esprit, Traduction et notes par Joseph Sirven, Paris: Vrin, 1945.

Règles pour la direction de l'esprit, Traduction et notes par Jacques Brunschwig. Préface, dossier et glossaire par Kim Sang Ong-Van-Cung, Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 2002 (première édition de la traduction dans F. Alquié (éd.), René Descartes, Œuvres philosophiques, Paris: Garnier, I, 1963, pp. 67-204).

Règles utiles et claires pour la direction de l'esprit en la recherche de la vérité, Traduction selon le lexique cartésien, et annotation conceptuelle par Jean-Luc Marion. Avec des notes mathématiques de Pierre Costabel, La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977.

La première mention se trouve dans l'Inventaire de Stockholm des écrits de Descartes à la lettre F: "Neuf cahiers reliés ensemble, contentant partie d'un traité des règles utiles et claires pour la direction de l'Esprit en la recherche de la Vérité". (AT X, p. 9).

"En plusieurs endroits de sa Vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes (1691), Baillet donne une traduction française de passages des Regulae. Le texte latin qu'il avait sous les yeux n'était pas celui que nous avons publié, et qui se trouvait en Hollande et ne fut imprimé qu'en 1701, mais le texte original, qui venait de Clerselier, et qui a disparu depuis lors. La traduction de Baillet n'en est que plus précieuse, puisqu'elle atteste à la fois l'existence de ce texte primitif et sa conformité avec la copie qui nous en a été conservée.

« ...M. Clerselier... s'est trouvé le possesseur unique de tout ce que M. Descartes avait jamais écrit, tant de ce qui était fini que de ce qui n'était que commencé. Mais, après une recherche exacte qui s'est faite de cette Logique prétendue parmi ses papiers, il ne s'est rien trouvé... qui puisse passer pour Logique, si l'on en excepte ses Règles pour la direction de l'esprit dans la recherche de la vérité (en marge: C'est un manuscrit latin, non achevé, qui est entre nos mains), qui peuvent servir de modèle pour une excellente Logique, et qui font sans doute une portion considérable de sa Méthode, dont ce que nous avons d'imprimé à la tête de ses Essais, ne fait qu'une petite partie. »

(Baillet I, p. 282.)

« Parmi ceux (les de M. Descartes) que les soins de M. Chanut ont fait échoir à M. Clerselier, il n'y en a point de plus considérable ni peut-être de plus achevé, que le traité latin qui contient des Règles pour conduire nôtre esprit dans la recherche de la vérité. C'est celui des manuscrits de M. Descartes, à l'impression desquels il semble que le Public ait le plus d'intérêt. On est déjà prévenu sur sa valeur et son prix par la lecture que M. Clerselier en a communiquée à quelques curieux, et par le témoignage que le célèbre Auteur de l'Art de penser (en marge : Part. 4, chap. 2) a rendu du bon usage qu'on en peut faire. »

(AT X, 477).

Clerselier a montré le manuscrit aux auteurs de la Logique de Port Royal qui l'ont utilisé pour la deuxième édition : "La Logique de Port-Royal contient un long passage, qui correspond à une partie des Règles XIII et XIV. Comme nous l'avons expliqué dans l'Avertissement (p. 351-2), ce passage a pour nous la valeur d'un témoin : il atteste l'existence d'un texte original, que nous n'avons plus, mais que Clerselier avait encore et qu'il a communiqué à Arnauld pour le traduire. On chercherait d'ailleurs en vain cette traduction dans la première édition : La Logique ou L'Art de penser contenant, outres les règles communes, plusieurs observations nouvelles propres à former le jugement. (A Paris, chez Jean de Launay, sous le Porche des Escoles de Sorbonne, M,DC.LXII. In-12, pp. 473, plus 5 p. Extrait du Privilège, 1er Avril 1662: Permis au sieur Le Bon... Achevé d'imprimer, 6 juillet 1662.) Le passage qui nous intéresse n'apparaît que dans la seconde édition : La Logique ou L'Art de penser: contenant etc. (comme précédemment). Seconde édition, revue et augmentée. (A Paris, chez Charles Savreux, au pied de la Tour de Nostre Dame, à l'enseigne des Trois Vertus, M.DC.LXIV.) C'est aussi un in-12; le passage en question s'y trouve, p. 391-397, avec cette note: « La plus grande partie de ce que l'on dit ici des questions, a été tirée d'un manuscrit de M. Descartes, que M. Clerselier a eu la bonté de prester. » Cette note et le passage visé se retrouvent dans toutes les éditions postérieures de la Logique de Port-Royal, à partir de la deuxième, Partie IV, chapitre II." (AT X 470).

Voir l'édition critique : Antoine Arnauld et Pierre Nicole, La logique ou l’art de penser (dite Logique de Port-Royal), édité par Dominique Descotes, Paris: Champion, 2011.

"Le passage suivant du P. Poisson atteste aussi l'existence d'un texte des Regulae, autre que celui que nous avons donné ; et cet autre texte était l'original, tandis que le nôtre n'est qu'une copie.

Observation sur la troisième règle de la Méthode de Descartes : Conduire par ordre mes pensées, etc. (Tome VI de la présente édition, p. 18, l.27) :

«... j'ay rencontré dans un Manuscrit, qu'il avait commencé dés les premières années qu'il s'appliqua sérieusement à l'étude, que pour venir à bout de toutes les difficultés qu'on propose, il faut:

1, les connaître distinctement chacune en particulier ;

2, les dépouiller de tout ce qui ne leur est point essentiel dans le sens auquel on les considère ;

3, les réduire et les diviser en petites parties ;

4, examiner avec attention chacune de ces parties, commençant par les plus simples ;

5, il faut rapporter toutes ces parties, en les comparant les unes aux autres.

Voilà à quoi aboutit toute la finesse des méthodes qu'on a trouvées et qu'on trouvera jamais. Elle est également nécessaire dans la Physique et dans la Géométrie. L'article de ces règles le plus difficile à mettre en pratique, c'est ce dernier : tant parce qu'on ne connait pas assez les termes qu'on doit comparer, qu'à cause qu'on a besoin d'un Moyen, qu'on appelle Medium dans l'École, qui n'est pas aisé à trouver. »

(Commentaire ou Remarques sur la Méthode de René Descartes, par L. P. N. I. P. P. D. L., à Vendôme, M.DC.LXX. Partie II, 6e observation, p. 76.)

(AT X, 476).

En 1676 Leibniz rencontrait Clerselier : "J'ai été aujourd'hui avec Mons. de Tschirnhaus, pour lui donner la connaissance de Mons. Clerselier, et pour lui faire voir les relies de Mons. des Cartes.

Il nous montra un discours de Mons. des Cartes de la recherche de la vérité; il y avait environ 22 règles expliquées e illustrées. En Latin." (AT X, 208).

Leibniz et Ehrenfried Tschirnhaus (1651-1708) transcrivirent tous les deux des manuscrits : "en particulier Tschirnhaus qui entre 1676 et 1682 en fit parvenir des copies en Hollande à des amis qui appartenaient au cercle spinoziste, et à Hanovre à Leibniz qui avait quitté Paris en novembre 1676. Durant cette période, le projet d'une édition des mss. à dû mûrir chez les deux amis sous l'impulsion ou du moins avec les encouragements de Clerselier. Nous suivons la trace de ce projet, qui en définitive n'aboutit pas, d'abord à Paris, puis à Amsterdam. Ce dont nous sommes en tout cas certains c'est que Leibniz s'est trouvé dès novembre 1676 en possession d'une copie des Regulae et que Tschirnhaus dès 1678 montre qu'il a pris connaissance directement du texte.

(...)

A partir des premières années du XVIIIe siècle nous ne possédons plus de renseignements au sujet des mss. cartésiens, passés des mains de Legrand à celles de Marmion, professeur de philosophie au Collège des Grassins, et nous perdons par conséquent la trace du ms. original des Regulae." (Giovanni Crapulli, Introduction à l'édition critique, René Descartes, Regulae ad directionem ingenii, La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966, p. XIII)

13. ———. 1619-20. De Solidorum Elementis (Ms. de Leibniz).

Le texte originel de Descartes "Environ seize feuillets in octavo sous ce titre : Progymnasmata de solidorum elementis" (Inventaire succinct des écrits, lettre M, AT X 10), est perdu, mais nous possédons la copie faite par Leibniz à Paris en 1672-1676 et publiée pour la première fois par Foucher de Careil, vol. II, pp. 214-226.

AT X 265-276; Additions in AT XI 690-692; nouvelle édition par Pierre Costabel dans la Nouvelle présentation de AT (1966) X 276 et 687-689; B Op. II, 1224-1237; traduction par André Warusfel, O I, 221-231.

Nouvelle édition avec traduction en anglais par Pasquale Joseph Federico, Descartes on Polyhedra. A Study of the De Solidorum elementis, New York, Springer, 1982.

Édition critique, avec introduction, traduction, notes et commentaires par Pierre Costabel, René Descartes. Exercices pour les éléments des solides. Essai en complément d'Euclide. Progymnasmata de solidorum elementis, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1987.

"Le présent ouvrage est le résultat d'une longue histoire.

Le manuscrit mathématique de Descartes qui est ici l'objet d'une restitution a eu un sort tourmenté. Conservé dans les papiers de l'auteur pendant plus d'un demi-siècle, il a disparu peu de temps après avoir eu la chance d'être lu par Leibniz à Paris. Mais la transcription effectuée par ce lecteur exceptionnel a connu le silence des pièces d'archives jusqu'au milieu du XIXe siècle, et elle n'est sortie de l'ombre que pour tomber entre les mains de lecteurs plus avertis de la mathématique de leur temps que des précautions à prendre avec des textes anciens. Elle a ainsi davantage retenu l'attention par les suggestions qu'elle paraissait fournir à un moment de l'évolution de la pensée mathématique, moment caractérisé par la prise de conscience de l'importance de l'analyse de la situation (Analysis situs), et si elle a joué un rôle dans les réflexions consécutives, elle n'a pas tardé, au début du siècle actuel, à être objet de graves réserves, réserves dont la pointe acérée n'a cessé de se préciser. Manque de rigueur, absence de point de vue authentiquement topologique, les raisons de renvoyer ce texte au silence sont aujourd'hui pressantes aux yeux de quelques-uns.

L 'effort de restitution du texte lui-même, qui a été entrepris vers 1894 et réalisé en 1908 avec le tome X de la grande édition des Œuvres de Descartes par Charles Adam et Paul Tannery, est donc survenu dans une ambiance peu favorable à sa consistance propre et à sa réception. Affaire d'érudition cartésienne il est apparu dès le début, et il l'est resté jusqu'à la récente mise à tour de l'édition susdite en 1966.

Principal acteur de cette mise à jour, dans les limites de notes correctrices à apporter à la première édition, le présent éditeur savait dès cette époque qu'il y avait lieu de procéder à une prise en charge réellement convenable et il en a fixé les traits à l'occasion de divers articles tout en préparant l'édition nouvelle, séparée, délivrée des conditions restrictives imposées par l'insertion dans des Œuvres complètes monumentales. Il y a près de dix ans que cette édition était prête, mais publier était une autre affaire que d'établir la matière de la publication. Il fallut trouver un éditeur au sens ordinaire et français du terme." (Pierre Costabel, René Descartes. Exercices pour les éléments des solides, Avertissement, pp. V-VI).

14. ———. 1628. Censura quarundam epistolarum Domini Balzacii.

AT I, 7-11; CO, 194-202, traduction du XVIIe siècle, pp. 195-203; B 14; traduction par Michelle Beyssade et Denis Kambouchner, O I, 285-289; O VIII 2 345-349 (traduction du XVIIe siècle).

Première édition : Claude Clerselier (éd.), Lettres de mr. Descartes, Paris, Charles Angot, vol. I, 1657, lettre C (février-mars 1628), pp. 462-471.

1628 est la datation proposée par Clerselier; Balzac en remercia Descartes le 30 mars 1628.

Pour les Lettres de Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac (1597-1654), Paris, 1624 (réédition : Les premières lettres de Guez de Balzac, voir l'édition critique précédée d'une introduction par H. Bibas et K.-T. Butler, Paris: Droz 1933-34, 2 volumes).

La Censura (ou Jugement de quelques Lettres de Balzac) de Descartes est aussi publiée dans Guez de Balzac, Socrate chrétien [1652], édition critique de Jean Jehasse, Paris: Champion, 2008, avec une nouvelle traduction, pp. 243-249.

15. ———. 1628. [De la Divinité].

CO pp. 214-216; ce texte n'a pas été retrouvé.

"Ce fut durant cet été [1628] qu'il voulut écrire De la Divinité, voyez ci-après au livre III, chap. Ier." (Baillet I, 153, en marge).

"C'était la chaleur du climat de son pays qu'il ne trouvait point favorable à son tempérament par rapport à la liberté de son esprit, dont la jouissance ne pouvait être quelque trouble, lorsqu'il était question de concevoir des vérités, où l'imagination ne devait point se mêler. Il s'était aperçu que l'air de Paris était mêlé pour lui d'une apparence de poison très subtil et très dangereux ; qu'il le disposait insensiblement à la vanité; et qu'il ne lui faisait produire que des chimères. C'est ce qu'il avait particulièrement éprouvé au mois de juin de l'année 1628, lorsque, s'étant retiré de chez M. Le Vasseur pour étudier loin des compagnies, il entreprit de composer quelque chose sur la divinité. Son travail ne put lui réussir faute d'avoir eu les sens assez rassis ; outre n'était peut-être pas d'ailleurs assez purifié ni assez exercé pour pouvoir traiter un sujet si sublime avec solidité." (Baillet I, 171).

16. ———. 1628? [De deo Socratis].

CO, pp. 173-179; ce texte n'a pas été retrouvé.

« L'on nous parle encore d'un autre traité de M. Descartes, intitulé De Deo Socratis, où il examinait ce que pouvait être cet esprit familier de Socrate, qui fait le sujet de l'entretien des curieux depuis tant de siècles. Mais il parait que c'était un bien déjà aliéné, lorsque son Auteur fit le voyage de Suède. Aussi ne se trouva-t-il point parmi les autres dans l'Inventaire que l'on fit de ses écrits après sa mort. Comme il est tombé en d'autres mains que celles de M. Clerselier, nous ne pourrons contribuer à sa publication que par des prières, pour porter ceux qui en sont devenus les maîtres à lui procurer le jour. Voici par avance ce que M. Descartes pensait de cet esprit familier de Socrate, et ce qu'il en mandait à la princesse Palatine sa disciple : « Et ce qu'on nomme communément le génie de Socrate, n'a sans doute été autre chose, sinon qu'il avait accoutumé de suivre ses inclinations intérieures, et qu'il croyait que l'événement de ce qu'il entreprenait serait heureux, lorsqu'il avait quelque secret sentiment de gaieté, et au contraire qu'il serait malheureux lorsqu'il était triste. Il faut avouer néanmoins qu'il y aurait de la superstition à s'attacher à cette opinion autant qu'on dit qu'il y était attaché. Car Platon rapporte de lui qu'il demeurait même au logis toutes les que son génie ne lui conseillait pas d'en sortir. Mais touchant les actions importantes de la vie, lorsqu'elles se trouvent si douteuses que la prudence ne peut enseigner ce qu'on doit faire, il me semble qu'on a grande raison de suivre les conseils de son génie; et qu'il est utile d'avoir une forte persuasion que les choses que nous entreprenons sans répugnance et avec la liberté qui accompagne d'ordinaire la joie ne manqueront pas de nous bien réussir. » (Baillet II, 408: lettre à Elisabeth du novembre 1646, AT IV, 530; O VIII 2, 270; B 578).

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

René Descartes. Bibliographie Chronologique et Annotée (Deuxième Partie: (1628-1637)

Bibliographie

Pour la liste des éditions de références et des abréviations voir René Descartes. Outils de recherche: Biographies, Dictionnaires et Lexiques des Ses Œuvres

1. Descartes, René. 1628 (automne) - 1629 (été). [Traité de métaphysique].

CO, 217-227; ce traité en latin, aujourd'hui perdu, (son premier projet de métaphysique) est mentionné par Descartes dans :

a) la lettre à Gibieuf du 18 juillet 1629: "Je me réserve à vous importuner lorsque j'aurai achevé un petit traité que je commence (5), duquel je ne vous aurais rien mandé qu'il ne fût fait, si je n'avais peur que la longueur du temps vous fît oublier la promesse que vous m'avez faite de le corriger et y ajouter la dernière main ; car je n'espère pas en venir à bout de deux ou trois ans, et peut-être après cela me résoudrai-je de le brûler, ou du moins il n'échappera pas d'entre mes mains et celles de mes amis sans être bien considéré ; car si je ne suis assez habile pour faire quelque chose de bon, je tâcherai au moins d'être assez sage pour ne pas publier mes imperfections." (AT I 17; O VIII 2, 790-791; B 17);

(5) Les commentateurs rapprochent ce « petit traité » du « petit Traité de Métaphysique, lequel j'ai commencé étant en Frise, et dont les principaux points sont de prouver l'existence de Dieu, et celle de nos âmes, lorsqu'elles sont séparées du corps, d'où suit leur immortalité », Descartes écrit à Mersenne, 25 novembre 1630 (AT I 182, [O VIII 1, 85] B 36); voir aussi à Mersenne, 15 avril 1630 (AT I 136, [O VIII 1, 67] B 30).

les lettres à Mersenne du:

b) 15 avril 1630: "Pour votre question de Théologie, encore qu'elle passe la capacité de mon esprit, elle ne me semble pas toutefois hors de ma profession, parce qu'elle ne touche point à ce qui dépend de la révélation, ce que je nomme proprement Théologie; mais elle est plutôt métaphysique (*) et se doit examiner par la raison humaine. Or j'estime que tous ceux à qui Dieu a donné l'usage de cette raison, sont obligés à le connaître, et à se connaître eux-mêmes. C'est par là que j'ai tâché de commencer mes études ; et je vous dirai que je n'eusse su trouver les fondements de la physique, si je ne les eusse cherchés par cette voie. Mais c'est la matière que j'ai le plus étudiée de toutes, et en laquelle, grâce à Dieu, je me suis aucunement satisfait ; au moins pensé-je avoir trouvé comment on peut démontrer les vérités métaphysiques, d'une façon qui est plus évidente que les démonstrations de géométrie ; je dis ceci selon mon jugement, car je ne sais pas si je le pourrai persuader aux autres. Les 9 premiers mois que j'ai été en ce pays, je n'ai travaillé à autre chose, et je crois que vous m'aviez déjà ouï parler auparavant que j'avais fait dessein d'en mettre quelque chose par écrit ; mais je ne juge pas à propos de le faire, que n'aie vu premièrement comment la physique sera reçue. (**)" (AT I 143-144; O VIII 1, 72; B 30);

(*) [Première occurrence du terme métaphysique dans les écrits de Descartes]

(**) [Descartes se réfère ici au Monde, qui ne sera pas publié en raison de la condamnation de Galilée en 1633]

c) 25 novembre 1630 : "J'éprouverai en la Dioptrique si je suis capable d'expliquer mes conceptions, et de persuader aux autres une vérité, après que je me la suis persuadée: ce que je ne pense nullement. Mais si je trouvais expérience que cela fût, je ne dis pas que quelque jour je n'achevasse un petit traité de métaphysique, lequel j'ai commencé étant en Frise, et dont les principaux points sont de prouver l'existence de Dieu, et celle de nos âmes, lorsqu'elles sont séparées du corps, d'où suit leur immortalité." (AT I 182; O VIII 1, 85: B 36);

d) Mersenne, vers le 20 avril 1637: "Il y a environ huit ans que j'ai écrit en latin un commencement de Métaphysique (4) (...) et si l'on fait une version latine de ce livre (5), comme on s'y prépare, je l'y pourrai faire mettre." (AT I 350; O VIII 1, 139; B 104).

(4) En 1629 (à Gibieuf, 18 juillet 1629, AT I 17 1. 7, [O VIII 2, 790] B 17; à Mersenne, (15 avril 1630, AT I 144 l. 19, [O VIII 1, 72] B 30).

(5) La traduction latine du Discours et des Essais (sauf la Géométrie), œuvre d’Étienne de Courcelles, n’apparut qu’en 1644. CM suggère qu'un projet a pu se constituer dès 1637 avec le jeune Van Schooten, qui publia en 1649 une traduction latine de la Géométrie.

2. Beeckman, Isaac. 1628-29. Extraits du Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman.

AT X, 331-348; treize extraits mathématiques en latin de 1628-1629; B Op. II, 1352-1379; traduction française par Frédéric de Buzon, O I, Notes de (1628-1699), 107-120.

I. Historia Des Cartes ejusque mecum necessitudo. — Docti cur pauci 331 ; II. Algebrae Des Cartes specimen quoddam 333 ; III. Angulus refractionis à Des Cartes exploratus 335 ; IV. Chordarum musicarum crassitiei ratio 337 ; V. Solis radijs comburere remotissima 338 ; VI. Ellipsis in quâ omnes radij paralleli concurrunt in puncto medij densioris 338 ; VII. Hyperbola per quam radij in unum punctum concurrunt 340 ; VIII. Ellipsis pars per quam radij in aère exacte concurrunt 340 ; IX. Hyperbola per quam omnes radij paralleli in unum punctum exacte incidant demonstrata 341 ; X. Parabolâ duo média proportionalia inveniri posse demonstratur 342 ; XI. Parabolâ œquationes Cosicas lineis exponere 344 ; XII. Lunae an litterae inscribi possint absentibus legendae 347 ; XIII. Consonantias omnes ex continua chordae bisectione 348.

3. Descartes, René. 1629. Anatomica quaedam ex M.to Cartesii. Problemata (Ms. de Leibniz).

Anatomica quaedam ex M.to Cartesii AT XI, pp. 549-621; B Op. II, 1104-1197; Problemata AT XI, 621-634; B OP. II, 1197-1219.

Première édition du texte latin avec une traduction française dans Foucher de Careil: vol. I. Observationes Meteorologicae, 72-100 (AT XI-621-634); Physiologia 100-155; Vol. II Partes similares, et excrementa, et morbi 66-85; Anatomica quaedam 86-134; Observationum anatomicarum 134-209.

Nouvelle édition dans René Descartes, Écrits physiologiques et médicaux, Présentation, textes, traduction, notes et annexes de Vincent Aucante, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2000.

Dans cette édition la première partie, La génération des animaux, contient les fragments 1-44 de 1630-1632, 45-72 de 1637, 73-76 de 1648.

4. ———. 1629. Remedia, et vires medicamentorum (Ms. de Leibniz).

Première édition du texte latin avec une traduction française dans Foucher de Careil, vol. II, 210-213.

AT XI, pp. 641-644; B Op. II, 1216-1219.

Nouvelle édition dans René Descartes, Écrits physiologiques et médicaux, Présentation textes, traduction, notes et annexes de Vincent Aucante, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2000.

Dans cette édition la deuxième partie, Fragments de thérapeutique, contient les fragments T1-T9 de 1628 (Remèdes et forces des médicaments) et T10-T14 de 1631.

5. ———. 1629; 1638-40. Excerpta ex mss. R. Des-Cartes (Ms de Leibniz).

Première édition dans R. Des-Cartes Opuscula posthuma, physîca & mathematica, Amsterdam 1701, pp. 1-17 (publié à la fine du volume, avec une nouvelle numération).

AT X, pp. 285-324; B. Op. II, 994-1051; O III, pp. 532-562.

I. Polygonorum inscriptio 285 ; II. Horum Usus Trigonometricus 289 ; ni. Numeri Polygoni 297 ; IV. De Partibus Aliquotis Numerorum 300 ; V. Radix Cubica Binomiorum 302 ; VI. Circuli Quadratio 304 ; VII. Tangens Cycloïdis 305 ; VIII. Tangens Quadratariae per Cycloïdem 307 ; IX. Aequationum Asymmetriae Remotio 308 ; X. Ovales Opticae Quatuor 310 ; XI. Earum Descriptio et Tactio 313-324.

"Le volume intitulé : R. Des-Cartes Opuscula posthuma, physîca & mathematica (Amstelodami, ex typographia P. & J. Blaeu, MDCCI), donne à la fin, avec une pagination spéciale (p. 1-17), une série de fragments mathématiques sous la rubrique : Excerpta ex MSS. R. Des-Cartes." (AT X, p. 279).

Il s'agit de 12 fragments, la plupart écrits en 1638-1640; le plus étendu, sur les Ovales, a été écrit avant 1629.

6. ———. 1629-48. Primae cogitationes circa generationem animalium. De saporibus.

Première édition latine dans R. Des-Cartes Opuscula posthuma, physîca & mathematica, Amsterdam 1701, pp. 1-23.

AT XI, pp. 505-538; 539-542; B Op. II, 936-983; 984-987.

Nouvelle édition dans René Descartes, Écrits physiologiques et médicaux, Présentation, textes, traduction, notes et annexes de Vincent Aucante, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2000.

Voir aussi: Annie Bitbol-Hespériès, "Sur quelques errata dans les textes biomédicaux latins de Descartes, AT XI", Bulletin cartésien XLIV 2013, Archives de Philosophie, 2015/1 Tome 78, pp. 45-55: "En préparant l’édition des textes médicaux de Descartes, à paraître dans le volume II des Œuvres complètes de Descartes chez Gallimard (coll. Tel), dirigées par Jean Marie Beyssade et Denis Kambouchner, j’ai été conduite à proposer la correction de quelques coquilles figurant dans les éditions des textes latins des Primae cogitationes circa generationem animalium et des Excerpta anatomica et reprises dans les traductions. " (p. 45).

7. ———. 1629 (octobre) - 1633. Le Monde, ou Traité de la lumière.

AT XI, 3-118; B OP. II, 214-359.

Premières publications :

1) Le Monde de Mr. Descartes ou le Traité de la Lumière, et des autres principaux objets des Sens. Avec un Discours du Mouvement local, et un autre des Fièvres composez selon les principes du même Auteur, Paris: Jacques Le Gras, 1664 (le texte est basé sur un copie de l'original, les deux Discours placés à la suite ne sont pas de Descartes).

2) Clerselier 1677, pp. 405-511.

Édition critique : Le Monde, l'Homme, Introduction de Annie Bitbol-Hespériès; textes établis et annotés par Annie Bitbol-Hespériès et Jean-Pierre Verdet, Paris: Seuil, 1996.

Titres de chapitres introduits par Clerselier dans son édition du Traité du monde : I. De la différence qui est entre nos sentiments et les choses qui les produisent ; II. En quoi consiste la chaleur et la lumière du feu ; III. De la dureté et de la liquidité ; IV. Du vide, et d'où vient que nos sens n'aperçoivent pas certains corps ; V. Du nombre des éléments, et de leurs qualités ; VI. Description d'un nouveau monde, et des qualités de la matière dont il est composé ; VII. Des lois de la nature de ce nouveau monde ; VIII. De la formation du soleil et des étoiles de ce nouveau monde ; IX. De l'origine et du cours des planètes et des comètes en général, et en particulier des comètes ; X. Des planètes en général, et en particulier de la terre et de la lune ; XI. De la pesanteur ; XII. Du flux et du reflux de la mer ; XIII. De la lumière ; XIV. Des propriétés de la lumière ; XV. Que la face du ciel de ce nouveau monde doit paraître à ses habitants toute semblable à celle du nôtre ; XVI-XVII [Ces Chapitres n'ont pas été retrouvés] ; Pour le XVIII Chapitre, voir L'Homme.

"Le plan du Monde décrit dans le Discours

La cinquième partie du Discours est consacrée, à un résumé du Monde, à la faveur duquel Descartes brosse à larges traits les principaux chapitres et le mouvement général de ce livre où il comptait déposer ses connaissances en physique. De manière schématique, voici la table des matières reconstituée de ce Monde qui n’a jamais vu le jour, sinon plus tard dans les Principes.

1. Description de la matière.

2. Les lois de la nature.

3. Description des différentes combinaisons possibles de cette matière originelle selon les lois dégagées au deuxième paragraphe, ce qui donne les différents éléments : cieux, terre, planètes, comètes, soleil, étoiles fixes, lumière, etc.

4. Description du monde visible, en général de tous les phénomènes qui sont au-dessus de la terre (mouvements et qualités des Cieux).

5. Description des phénomènes terrestres : pesanteur, flux et reflux des océans, origine des mers, montagnes, etc., métaux, plantes, sable, feu, verre — métamorphose apparente des éléments.

6. Les êtres animés : les animaux, l’homme, ses fonctions, son anatomie. (*)

7. La conclusion est centrée sur l’immortalité de l’âme humaine que Descartes établit par la différence entre l’homme et l’animal-machine.

Ce plan est guidé par un mouvement ascendant qui, trouvant son origine dans la matière inanimée, s’achève par révocation de l’immortalité de l’âme. L’esprit reconstruit probablement l’univers, en partant de l’évidence fournie par le spectacle de la matière elle-même régie par les lois de la mécanique, et achève son chemin en affirmant sa différence, c’est-à-dire son immortalité.

Une étroite correspondance peut être établie entre cette organisation et celle des Principes : à la deuxième partie des Principes (« Des principes des choses matérielles ») correspondent les chapitres que nous avons numérotés 1, 2 et 3; à la troisième partie (« Du monde visible ») le chapitre 4; et à la quatrième partie (« De la terre ») le chapitre 5. Les racines métaphysiques de la première partie des Principes sont dispersées dans les quatre premières parties du Discours, à condition d’en retirer la morale par provision et les textes biographiques qui expliquent leur genèse."

* A ce moment du développement s’intercale l’explication détaillée de la circulation du sang.

Pierre-Alan Cahné, Un autre Descartes. Le philosophe et son langage, Paris: Vrin, 1980, pp. 257-258.

Le Monde est commencé en octobre 1629 : "Je ne laisse pas de vous en avoir très grande obligation, et encore plus de l'offre que vous me faites de faire imprimer ce petit traité que j'ai dessein d'écrire; mais je vous dirai qu'il ne sera pas prêt de plus d'un an. Car depuis le temps que je vous avais écrit il y a un mois, je n'ai rien fait du tout qu'en tracer l'argument, et au lieu d'expliquer un phénomène seulement, je me suis résolu d'expliquer tous les phénomènes de la nature, c'est-à-dire toute la physique. Et le dessein que j'ai me contente plus qu'aucun autre que j'aie jamais eu, car je pense avoir trouvé un moyen pour exposer toutes mes pensées en sorte qu'elles satisferont à quelques-uns et que les autres n'auront pas occasion d'y contredire." (lettre à Mersenne du 13 novembre 1629, AT I 70; O VIII 1, 33; B 23).

Le 22 juillet 1633 "Mon traité (9) est presque achevé, mais il me reste encore à le corriger et à le décrire (10) ; et parce qu'il ne m'y faut plus rien chercher de nouveau, j'ai tant de peine à travailler, que si je ne vous avais promis, il y a plus de trois ans, de vous l'envoyer dans la fin de cette année (11), je ne crois pas que j'en pusse de longtemps venir à bout ; mais je veux tâcher de tenir ma promesse (12)." (lettre à Mersenne, AT I, 268; O VIII 1, 107; B 59).

(9) Le Monde.

(10) Comprendre : à le transcrìre (ou bien, comme le suggère AM, lire récrire ?).

(11) Voir à Mersenne, 15 avril 1630 (AT I, 137 l. 16-17; [O VIII 1, 67] B 30) et novembre 1630 (AT I, 179 l. 12-13; [O VIII 1, 83] B 36).

(12) Une lettre de Golius à Huygens (1er novembre 1632, Brwg, [De Briefwisselìng van Constantjin Huygens, (1608 1687), 6 voll., ‘s-Gravenhage, Martinus Nijhoff, 1911-1917] t. 1, 375) indique que Descartes en est à rédiger la philosophie de l'âme humaine, qu'il fait remonter à Dieu ; Descartes, dit-il, s'est retiré à Deventer pour rédiger en paix. Dans le Discours, celui-ci indique : « J'avais décrit, après cela, l'âme raisonnable et fait voir qu'elle ne peut aucunement être tirée de la puissance de la matière, ainsi que les autres choses, mais qu'elle doit expressément être créée », et il poursuit : « Il y a maintenant trois ans que j'étais parvenu à la fin du traité qui contient toutes ces choses » (AT VI, 59-60 [O III, 430 et 471]).

"... je ne vous promets pas de mettre ici des démonstrations exactes de toutes les choses que je dirai, ce sera assez que je vous ouvre le chemin par lequel vous les pourrez trouver de vous-même, quand vous prendrez la peine de les chercher. (...) Et pour faire ici un tableau qui vous agrée, il est besoin que j'y emploie de l'ombre aussi bien que des couleurs claires. Si bien que je me contenterai de poursuivre la description que j'ai commencée, comme n'ayant autre dessein que de vous raconter une fable." (AT XI, 48).

Dans le Discours de la méthode, en se référant au Monde: " ... pour ombrager un peu toutes ces choses, et pouvoir dire plus librement ce que j'en jugeais, sans être obligé de suivre ni de réfuter les opinions qui sont reçues entre les doctes, je me résolus de laisser tout ce monde ici à leurs disputes, et de parler seulement de ce qui arriverait dans un nouveau, si Dieu créait maintenant quelque part, dans les espaces imaginaires, assez de matière pour le composer, et qu'il agitât diversement et sans ordre les diverses parties de cette matière, en sorte qu'il en composât un chaos aussi confus que les poètes en puissent feindre, et que, par après, il ne fît autre chose que prêter son concours ordinaire à la nature, et la laisser agir suivant les lois qu'il a établies » (AT VI, 43).

Dans la lettre à Mersenne du 15 avril 1630, après avoir exposé sa théorie de la création des vérités éternelles, Descartes écrit: "J'espère écrire ceci, même avant qu'il soit 15 jours, dans ma Physique;" (AT I, 146; O VIII 1, 73; B 30); on trouve un écho de ces pensées à la fine du chapitre VI et dans le chapitre VII: "Si j'y mettais la moindre chose qui fût obscure, il se pourrait faire que parmi cette obscurité il y aurait quelque répugnance (**) cachée dont je ne me serais pas aperçu, et ainsi que, sans y penser, je supposerais une chose impossible; au lieu que, pouvant distinctement imaginer tout ce que j'y mets, il est certain qu'encore qu'il n'y eût rien de tel dans l'ancien monde, Dieu le peut toutefois créer dans un nouveau, car il est certain qu'il peut créer toutes les choses que nous pouvons imaginer.

(...)

Et il est facile à croire que Dieu, qui comme chacun doit savoir est immuable, agit toujours de même façon. Mais, sans m'engager plus avant dans ces considérations métaphysiques, je mettrai ici deux ou trois des principales règles suivant lesquelles il faut penser que Dieu fait agir la nature de ce nouveau monde et qui suffiront, comme je crois, pour faire connaître toutes les autres." (AT XII, 36-38).

(**) Au XVIIe siècle, répugnance signifie déjà dégoût, mais aussi contrariété, opposition et contradiction, et c'est le sens qu'il faut ici retenir. (Note de A. Bitbol-Hespériès, Le Monde, l'Homme, cit., p. 24).

Le Chapitre VII donne la définition de Nature : "Sachez donc, premièrement, que par la Nature je n'entends point ici quelque Déesse, ou quelque autre sorte de puissance imaginaire, mais que je me sers de ce mot pour signifier la Matière même en tant que je la considère avec toutes les qualités que je lui ai attribuées comprises toutes ensemble, et sous cette condition que Dieu continue de la conserver en la même façon qu'il l'a créée. Car de cela seul qu'il continue ainsi de la conserver, il suit de nécessité qu'il doit y avoir plusieurs changements en ses parties, lesquels ne pouvant, ce me semble, être proprement attribués à l'action de Dieu, parce qu'elle ne change point, je les attribue à la Nature ; et les règles suivant lesquelles se font ces changements, je les nomme les lois de la Nature." (AT XI, 36-37).

La "fable" du Monde.

C'est dans la lettre à Mersenne du 25 novembre 1630 que Descartes use pour la première fois cette expression : "Et je ne pense pas après ceci me résoudre jamais plus de faire rien imprimer, au moins moi vivant : car la fable de mon Monde (10) me plaît trop pour manquer à la parachever". (AT I, 179; O VIII 1, 83; B 36).

(10 Voir à Mersenne, 13 novembre 1629 (AT I, 70; [O VIII 1, 33] B 23).

Au terme du chapitre V et au débout du Chapitre VI Descartes écrit : "Il me reste ici encore beaucoup d'autres choses à expliquer, et je serais même bien aise d'y ajouter quelques raisons pour rendre mes opinions plus vraisemblables. Mais afin que la longueur de ce discours vous soit moins ennuyeuse, j'en veux envelopper une partie dans l'invention d'une fable, au travers de laquelle j'espère que la vérité ne laissera de paraître suffisamment, et qu'elle ne sera pas moins agréable à voir que si je l'exposais toute nue.

Chapitre VI

Permettez donc pour un peu de temps à votre pensée de sortir hors de ce monde pour en venir voir un autre tout nouveau que je ferai naître en sa présence dans les espaces imaginaires (*). Les Philosophes nous disent que ces espaces sont infinis, et ils doivent bien en être crus puisque ce sont eux-mêmes qui les ont faits. Mais afin que cette infinité ne nous empêche et ne nous embarrasse point, ne tâchons pas d'aller jusqu'au bout ; entrons-y seulement si avant que nous puissions perdre de vue toutes les créatures que Dieu fit il y a cinq ou six mille ans, et après nous être arrêtés là en quelque lieu déterminé, supposons que Dieu crée de nouveau tout autour de nous tant de matière que, de quelque côté que notre imagination se puisse étendre, elle n'y aperçoive plus aucun lieu qui soit vide." (AT XI, 31-32).

(*) ...espaces imaginaires... "dans la philosophie scolastique, où le monde est considéré comme fini, les espaces fictifs que l'imagination seule conçoit au-delà des limites du monde et de l'espace réels. Cf. Index scolastico-cartésien, pp. 96-97." (Etienne Gilson, Discours de la méthode. Texte et commentaire, Paris: Vrin, 1925, p. 383); voir aussi Francisco Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae, XXX, 7, 28: "extra hunc autem mundum nihil est, nam spatium imaginarium non est, sed imaginatione fingitur (au-delà de ce monde, il n'y a rien; car l'espace imaginaire n'existe pas, mais est forgé par l'imagination)."; voir aussi Disputationes metaphysicae, LI, De "ubi", passim.

"... je vous prie me mander s'il n'y a rien de déterminé en la religion, touchant l'étendue des choses créées, savoir si elle est finie ou plutôt infinie, et qu'en tous ces pays qu'on appelle les espaces imaginaires il y ait des corps créés et véritables ; car encore que je n'eusse pas envie de toucher cette question, je crois toutefois que je serai contraint de la prouver." (lettre à Mersenne du 18 décembre 1629, AT I, 86; O VIII 1, 41; B 25).

Descartes a renoncé à la publication après la condamnation de Galilée (cfr. la lettre à Mersenne 28 novembre 1633: "Mais comme je ne voudrais pour rien au monde qu’il sortît de moi un discours, où il se trouvât le moindre mot qui fut désapprouvé de l’Eglise, aussi aimé-je mieux le supprimer, que de le faire paraître estropié. (10)" (AT I, 270-271; O VIII 1, 108; B 60).

(10) Rapprocher du récit de la sixième partie du Discours (dont la rédaction se poursuivit jusqu'en mars 1636, AT VI, 60 l. 4-61 l. 2 [O III, 121]) Il est peu crédible de mettre en doute la sincérité de Descartes : le protestant Claude Saumaise écrivait le 7 mars 1638 à l’abbé Ismaël Bouillard à propos du Monde que si Descartes « était moins bon catholique, il nous l’aurait déjà donné, mais il craint de publier une opinion qui n'est pas approuvée à Rome » (ce qui, de surcroît, aurait été contre-productif pour l'adoption de son système en France et chez les jésuites), texte inédit cité par Henk J. M. Nellen, « Ismaël Boulliaud (1605-1694) : astronome, épistolier, nouvelliste et intermédiaire scientifique; ses rapports avec les milieux du libertinage érudit », in Études de l'Institut Pierre Bayle, Nimègue, 24, APA-Holland University Press, 1994, p. 70.

"Pendant l'été 1634, Descartes écrit à Beeckman au sujet de la propagation de la lumière. Aucune lettre connue de Descartes ne date du début de l'année 1635. Mais le 16 avril 1635, Descartes écrit à Golius qu’il a lu à M. de Zuilichem, c’est-à-dire à Constantin Huygens qu’il vient de rencontrer, « une partie de sa Dioptrique (282) ». En mai, il réfléchit à «la cause de la lumière (283) » et évoque les couronnes et les parhélies. Puis, dans les mois qui suivent, il écrit que, « depuis la condamnation de Galilée », il a « entièrement séparé de son Monde le traité sur “les lunettes” », et qu’il l'a « revu et entièrement achevé ». Il se « propose de le faire imprimer seul dans peu de temps ». Il ajoute également qu’il « juge maintenant hors de saison» de « faire voir son Monde avec le mouvement défendu » (284).

Ces indications sont très précieuses parce qu’elles montrent d’une part que Descartes abandonne l’idée de publier Le Monde, et d’autre part qu’il se consacre maintenant à La Dioptrique, en vue de sa publication. De sorte que la composition de La Dioptrique a alors évolué, et qu’elle s’est notamment augmentée d’un approfondissement des réflexions inaugurales du Monde sur la lumière, mais plus encore des analyses du chapitre XVIII du Monde consacré à L’Homme. En effet, les références directes à La Dioptrique figurant dans Le Monde incluant L’Homme permettent de voir quel en était le noyau initial. Ainsi, Le Monde renvoie directement à La Dioptrique pour l’explication de la réflexion et de la réfraction (285), qui se trouve au discours second de l’Essai de 1637. L’Homme se réfère explicitement à La Dioptrique au sujet de la taille des verres (objet de la réflexion de Descartes depuis 1629), parce que la figure du cristallin ressemble à celle d’un verre hyperbolique (286), dont les particularités sont exposées au discours huitième de l’Essai de 1637.

L’Homme cite à nouveau La Dioptrique en ce qui concerne le mécanisme de la vision (287), exposé dans les discours troisième et sixième de l’Essai de 1637."

(282) AT 1, 314. [O VIII 1; 647; B 71]

(283) AT I, 318. [O VIII 1; 648; B 74]

(284) AT I, 322. [O VIII 1; 121; B 75] Lettre datée de l’automne 1635 dans AT et de juin ou juillet 1635 dans Alquié, et probablement adressée à Mersenne.

(285) AT XI, 9, 102, 106, 116.

(286) AT XI, 153, 156.

(287) AT XI, 187.

Introduction de Annie Bitbol-Hespériès à R. Descartes, Le Monde, l'Homme, Paris: Seuil, 1996, pp. XXXV.

"Pour les lunettes, je vous dirai que depuis la condamnation de Galilée (4), j'ai revu et entièrement achevé le Traité que j'en avais autrefois commencé (5) ; et l'ayant entièrement séparé de mon Monde, je me propose de le faire imprimer seul dans peu de temps (6). Toutefois parce qu'il s'écoulera peut-être encore plus d'un an, avant qu'on le puisse voir imprimé, si M. N. (7) y désirait travailler avant ce temps-là, je le tiendrais à faveur, et je m'offre de faire transcrire tout ce que j'ai mis touchant la pratique, et de lui envoyer quand il lui plaira." (lettre à Mersenne (?) mars 1635 ?, AT I, 322; O VIII 1, 121; B 75)

(4) Descartes est souvent revenu dans ses lettres à Mersenne sur la condamnation de Galilée (1633) : fin novembre 1633 (AT I, 270-273, [O VIII 1, 107-109;] B 60); février 1634 (AT I, 281-282, [O VIII, 1; 109-110] B63); 15 mai 1634 (AT I, 298-299, [O VIII 1, 114-118] B 66).

(5) La rédaction de la Dioptrique, dont Descartes a souvent entretenu Mersenne (25 novembre 1630, AT I 182 1. 13 sq., [O VIII 1, 82-85] B36; juin 1632, AT I, 254 l. 3 sq., [O VIII 1, 102-104] B 55).

(6) En effet, Descartes écrit à Golius le 16 avril 1635 : « Monsieur de Zuyleichem [Huygens], que j'ai eu l'honneur de voir ces jours à Amsterdam, après avoir eu la patience d'ouïr lire une partie de ma Dioptrique... » et envoie à Huygens une copie du texte le 25 avril 1635 (AT I, 585-586; [O VIII 2, 13-14] B 72).

(7) Cl-Inst : de Beaune (suivi par AT ? et AM ?); CM V 125 n. 5 suggère Mydorge, « plutôt que Ferrier, à qui Descartes avait déjà donné ses instructions depuis longtemps ».

8. ———. 1629 (octobre) - 1633. L'Homme.

AT XI, 119-215; B Op. II, 362-507. Ce traité est le XVIIIe Chapitre du Monde.

Premières publications :

1) Traduction latine de Florent Schuyl : Renatus Des Cartes De Homine, figuris et latinitate donatus a Florentio Schuyl, Leyden: P. Leffen & F. Moyardum. 1662.

2) Édition du texte original : Clerselier 1677, pp. 1-98.

Édition critique : Le Monde, l'Homme, Introduction de Annie Bitbol-Hespériès; textes établis et annotés par Annie Bitbol-Hespériès et Jean-Pierre Verdet, Paris: Seuil, 1996.

Dans une lettre à Mersenne du 18 décembre 1629 Descartes écrit : "je veux commencer à étudier l'anatomie. (44)" (AT I, 102; O VIII 1, 49; B 25).

(44) Première mention des études d'anatomie de Descartes : on retrouve ce souci dans à Mersenne, 15 avril 1630 (AT I, 137 l. 5-6 [O VIII 1, 68; B 30]), 20 février 1639 (AT II, 525 l. 14-18 [O VIII 1, 326; B 204]) et 13 novembre 1639 (AT II, 621 l. 3-15 [O VIII 1, 351; B 224]); Descartes en parle aussi au médecin Plempius le 15 février 1638 (AT I, 523, l. 1-3 [O VIII 1, 407; B 146]) ; voir aussi le Traité de l'Homme (AT XI 120 l. 25-121 l. 9) et le Discours (AT VI, 47 l. 1-8 [O III, 112]).

"Le plan suivi dans le Traité de l’Homme.

Ce traité, qui est une description systématique de la machine qu’est le corps, est très construit, de manière concertée et révélatrice d’une hiérarchie et du constant souci de totalité de Descartes. Car, encore que toute cette machine soit régie, en toutes ses fonctions, par les mêmes principes issus de la mécanique la plus élémentaire, Descartes ne laisse pas de suivre un ordre qui reproduit, dans le microcosme du corps, la structure générale de l’exposé qu’il utilise pour décrire le macrocosme du monde.

Mais d’abord, les données : le plan du Traité de l’Homme est le suivant.

En un premier temps, c’est le cours du sang qui guide le développement, depuis son origine jusqu’à sa métamorphose en une autre substance :

— la digestion des viandes, le circuit des aliments, le foie, le sang ;

— la respiration ;

— la circulation du sang ;

— la croissance ;

— la raréfaction du sang, origine des esprits animaux.

La deuxième partie du développement suit maintenant le cours des esprits animaux, ce qui conduit Descartes à décrire les systèmes nerveux, moteur et sensible :

— le système nerveux, moteur, les nerfs-tuyaux et les muscles ;

— le système nerveux sensible, les nerfs-filets ;

— le mécanisme des sentiments intérieurs (faim, soif, etc.) ;

— les esprits animaux et les passions.

Enfin, une dernière parties2 est centrée sur les fonctions du cerveau:

— les fonctions de la veille (imagination, mémoire, etc.) ;

— les fonctions du sommeil (les songes).

La conclusion insiste sur l’identité entre cette machine créée par la nature et celle issue de l’industrie humaine (horloge)."

Pierre-Alan Cahné, Un autre Descartes. Le philosophe et son langage, Paris: Vrin, 1980, pp. 259.

"Les notes de cette édition du traité de L’Homme montrent les points de rencontre nombreux entre le chapitre XVIII du Monde et La Dioptrique. La convergence de ces textes ne doit d’ailleurs aucunement surprendre, puisque, nous l’avons vu, ils ont été élaborés dans les mêmes années. Mais, à plusieurs reprises, des phrases identiques se retrouvent d’un texte à l’autre, ce qui laisse penser qu’après la condamnation de Galilée Descartes a inséré dans La Dioptrique plusieurs passages du traité de L’Homme consacrés à l’explication du sens de la vue. Ce qui est intéressant à remarquer, c’est que l’esprit qui anime Descartes n’a pas changé entre le début de la rédaction de L’Homme et de La Dioptrique, et le remaniement du texte de La Dioptrique à partir de 1635, en vue de sa publication." Introduction de Annie Bitbol-Hespériès à René Descartes, Le Monde, l'Homme, Paris: Seuil, 1996, pp. XXXV-XXXVI.

Voir aussi: Sylvain Matton, "Un témoignage oublié sur le manuscrit du Traité de l'homme de Descartes", Bulletin cartésien XXXVI, Archives de philosophie, 68, 2005, p. 7-8 et Franco A. Meschini, "Filologia e scienza. Note per un’edizione critica de L’Homme di Descartes", in F. A. Meschini (éd.), Le opere dei filosofi e degli scienziati. Filosofia e scienza tra testo, libro e biblioteche, Firenze, Olschki, 2011, p. 165-204.

9. ———. 1630. [La théorie de la création des vérités éternelles].

La théorie de la création des vérités éternelles comme fondement métaphysique de la physique.

Cette théorie est formulée pour la première fois dans une lettre à Mersenne : le débat commence le 15 avril 1630, en posant comme thème, en réponse à des lettres perdues de Mersenne, “les vérités mathématiques que vous appelez éternelles”. La même année, le philosophe en discute aussi bien avec lui dans deux autres lettres, qu'avec Beeckman dans une lettre du 17 octobre de la même année. Le débat se prolonge jusqu'en 1649 : il est présent dans la correspondance avec Arnauld, dans la lettre à Mersenne du 27 mai 1638 et, surtout, dans celle à Mesland du 2 juin 1644. On peut considérer que le débat se termine le 5 février 1649 avec la discussion entamée avec More sur les vérités contradictoires. Dans les œuvres imprimées, la théorie ne sera publiée que dans les Responsiones (AT VII, 380 et 435-436). Vagues allusions dans le Discours de la méthode, V (AT VI 41 ll. 12-13 [O III, 108]) et dans les Principia philosophiae (I, §§ 22 et 24; AT VIII-1, 13-14).

10. ———. 1630-31 (?). La recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle.

AT X, 495-527; B Op. II, 826-871; CO 249-341; dialogue (incomplet) écrit en français, dont l'original est perdu.

Les sources existant sont :

1) une copie (partielle) en français, conservée à Hanovre (H) faite par Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (1651 - 1708) sur le manuscrit en possession de Clerselier, datée 16 novembre 1676 et envoyée à Leibniz en février 1677 (AT X pp. 495-514).

2) la traduction néerlandaise complète (N): Amsterdam 1684.

3) la traduction latine complète (A): Inquisitio veritatis per lumen naturale, in Opuscola posthuma, physica et mathematica, Amsterdam 1701, pp. 67-90 (AT X, 514-527).

CO donne le texte française pour la partie existante, la traduction latine et le texte néerlandaise avec la première traduction française de cette version (par Corinna Vermeulen).

Édition critique : René Descartes, La Recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle, sous la direction de Ettore Lojacono, textes établis par Erik Jan Bos, lemmatisation et concordances du texte français par Franco A. Meschini, index et concordances du texte latin et néerlandais par Francesco Saita, Milano: Franco Angeli, 2002, avec un essai de Ettore Lojacono. Pour une interprétation et une datation de La Recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle de René Descartes, (pp. VII-XL) et une note "La présente édition", par Erik-Jan Bos (pp. XLI-LXV).

Ettore Lojacono donne un bilan complet des débats consacrés à la datation du texte (pp. 161-201).

Traductions :

La recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle, Introduction, Appendices, Notice biographique et bibliographique par Ettore Lojacono, Introduction et commentaire historique et conceptuel, textes revus par Massimilano Savini, Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2009.

La recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle, traduction et notes par Emmanuel Faye, Paris: Librairie Générale Française, (Le Livre de Poche), 2010.

"La première édition de la Recherche de la vérité fut publiée à Amsterdam, en 1684, dans une traduction néerlandaise. Sous le titre de Onderzoek der waarheit door 't naturelijk licht (N) le texte fut ajouté, avec une traduction des Regulae, à l'édition néerlandaise du vol. III de la Correspondance de Descartes, telle qu'elle avait été publiée par Clerselier. Enfin, dans le même volume on trouve une traduction du Traité de la lumière ou Le Monde. Le traducteur de la Correspondance et du Monde était J. H. Glazemaker. L'identité du ou des traducteurs de la Recherche et des Regulae est inconnue. Rieuwertsz avait commencé l'impression de la correspondance en l'automne de 1682. Elle était achevée au printemps de 1684." (La Recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle, "La présente édition", p. LIV).

"La version latine de la Recherche, Inquisitio veritatis per lumen naturale (A), due à un traducteur inconnu, fut publiée en 1701 dans le recueil des Opuscula posthuma, qui constituent le vol. IX (le dernier) des Opera omnia de Descartes, commencés en 1692 par une « Société de libraires ». Dans cette édition, A couvre 23 pages, la première de 28 lignes la dernière de 27, les autres de 38. Au sein des Opuscula posthuma A forme une unité typographique propre, avec sa propre pagination et sa propre page de titre : Regulae ad directionem ingenii, ut et Inquisitio veritatis per lumen naturale : Regulae, pp. 1-66; Inquisitio veritatis, pp. 67-90). Dans la Préface on ne trouve aucune indication sur la provenance des copies. En fait, l'éditeur anonyme s'est acquitté de sa tâche en donnant simplement quelques citations de Baillet." (La Recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle, "La présente édition", p. LVI).

"Dans la présente édition on trouve le texte intégral des trois sources, H, N et A. Le texte de H, comme source principale du texte français, a été imprimé avant les autres. Il a été établi sur la base d'un collationnement du texte imprimé dans G. W. Leibniz, Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, Zweiter Band : 1676-1679, Berlin, 1987 avec des photocopies de H. Enfin, on a collationné ce texte avec l'original de Hanovre. Dans l'édition de H pour une certaine mesure (voir § 3.1) le texte a été normalisé et en plusieurs passages on a préféré la leçon de N et A à celle de H (voir § 3.2). Pour N et A les textes de base ont été les exemplaires de la Bibliothèque universitaire d'Utrecht, collationnés avec quatre autres exemplaires (voir §§ 2.2 et 2.3). Pour l'édition de N et de A nous avons suivi les critères présentés ci-dessous. Pour faciliter une étude comparative de ces textes ils sont imprimés l'un en regard de l'autre." (La Recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle, "La présente édition", p. LIX).

Voir aussi: Siegrid Agostini, "2002-1013 : une décennie d'édition de La Recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle", Bulletin cartésien XLIII, Archives de philosophie, 77, 2014, p. 163-170.

11. ———. 1637. Discours de la méthode. Pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences. Plus la Dioptrique. Les Météores. Et la Géométrie. Qui sont des essais de cette Méthode. Leyde: Imprimerie Ian Maire.

AT VI, 1-515; B Op. I, 24-653; O III, 81-508.

Avertissement V; Frontispice des Essais XIII; Discours de la méthode 1; La Dioptrique 79; Les Météores 229; La Géométrie 367; Avertissement 486; Tables des principales difficultés qui sont expliquées dans La Dioptrique 487; Tables des principales difficultés qui sont expliquées aux Météores 498; Table des matières de la Géométrie 511; Privilège 515.

Première édition anonyme : 8 juin 1637 (réimpression anastatique Lecce: Conte Editore, 1987).

Discours de la méthode : AT VI, 1-78.

Date de composition : hiver 1635-36 - printemps 1637 (sur la chronologie de l'œuvre voir les études de Gilbert Gadoffre, Láscaris Comneno, Elie Denissoff et Edwin Curley, dans ma bibliographie sur les sources de la pensée de Descartes).

Après avoir renoncé à publier Le monde, Descartes entreprend en 1635 un nouveau projet, qui sera terminé en mars 1637 et aboutira dans la publication du Discours : "Pour le traité de physique dont vous me faites la faveur de me demander la publication (5), je n'aurais pas été si imprudent que d'en parler en la façon que j'ai fait, si je n'avais envie de le mettre au jour, en cas que le monde le désire, et que j'y trouve mon compte et mes sûretés. Mais je veux bien vous dire, que tout le dessein de ce que je fais imprimer à cette fois, n'est que de lui préparer le chemin, et sonder le gué. Je propose à cet effet une méthode générale (6), laquelle véritablement je n'enseigne pas, mais je tâche d'en donner des preuves par les trois traités suivants (7), que je joins au discours où j'en parle, ayant pour le premier un sujet mêlé de philosophie et de mathématique (8), pour le second, un tout pur de philosophie (9); et pour le 3e, un tout pur de mathématique (10), dans lesquels je puis dire que je ne me suis abstenu de parler d'aucune chose, (au moins de celles qui peuvent être connues par la force du raisonnement), parce que j'ai cru ne la pas savoir; en sorte qu'il me semble par là donner occasion de juger que j'use d'une méthode par laquelle je pourrais expliquer aussi bien toute autre matière, en cas que j'eusse les expériences qui y seraient nécessaires, et le temps pour les considérer. Outre que pour montrer que cette méthode s'étend à tout, j'ai inséré brièvement quelque chose de métaphysique, de physique et de médecine dans le premier discours (11). Que si je puis faire avoir au monde cette opinion de ma méthode, je croirai alors n'avoir plus tant de sujet de craindre que les principes de ma physique soient mal reçus; et si je ne rencontrais que des juges aussi favorables que vous, je ne le craindrais pas dès maintenant." (lettre à [Germain Habert, abbé de Cérisy], [avril ?] 1637, AT I 370-371; O VIII 2, 833; B109).

(6) Seule occurrence du syntagme « méthode générale » dans le corpus cartésien.

(7) Les trois Essais (Dioptrique, Météores, Géométrie).

(8) La Dioptrique.

(9) Les Météores (rappelons que « philosophie » signifie « philosophie naturelle », c'est-à-dire ce que nous appelons la « physique »).

(10) La Géométrie.

(11) Dans les 4e et 5e parties du Discours (AT VI, 31-60 [O III, 102-121]).

En 1636 Descartes, qui se trouve à Leyde, confie l'impression du livre à Mersenne : "Il y a environ cinq semaines que j'ai reçu vos dernières du dix-huit janvier, et je n'avais reçu les précédentes que quatre ou cinq jours auparavant. Ce qui m'a fait différer de vous faire réponse, a été que j'espérais de vous mander bientôt que j'étais occupé à faire imprimer. Car je suis venu à ce dessein en cette ville (2); mais les [Elzevier (3)] qui témoignaient auparavant avoir fort envie d'être mes libraires, s'imaginant, je crois, que je ne leur échapperais pas lorsqu'ils m'ont vu ici, ont eu envie de se faire prier, ce qui est cause que j'ai résolu de me passer d'eux (4); et quoique je puisse trouver ici assez d'autres libraires, toutefois je ne résoudrai rien avec aucun, que je n'aie reçu de vos nouvelles, pourvu que je ne tarde point trop à en recevoir. Et si vous jugez que mes écrits puissent être imprimés à Paris plus commodément qu'ici, et qu'il vous plût d'en prendre le soin, comme vous m'avez obligé autrefois de m'offrir (5), je vous les pourrais envoyer incontinent après la vôtre reçue. (...) Et afin que vous sachiez ce que j'ai envie de faire imprimer, il y aura quatre Traités tous français, et le titre en général sera: Le Projet d'une Science universelle qui puisse élever notre nature à son plus haut degré de perfection. Plus la Dioptrique, les Météores, et la Géométrie ; où les plus curieuses Matières que l'Auteur ait pu choisir, pour rendre preuve de la Science universelle qu'il propose, sont expliquées en telle sorte, que ceux mêmes qui n'ont point étudié les peuvent entendre. En ce Projet je découvre une partie de ma Méthode, je tâche à démontrer l'existence de Dieu et de l'âme séparée du corps, et j'y ajoute plusieurs autres choses qui ne seront pas, je crois, désagréables au lecteur." (lettre à Mersenne du mars 1636 AT I, 338-339; O VIII 1, 135; B 83).

Le 1 avril 1636 Descartes donne à lire son manuscrit à Constantin Huygens : "Je ne manquerai de me trouver demain à votre logis incontinent après votre dîner, puisqu'il vous plaît me faire la faveur de me le permettre (2); et je porterai avec moi tous ceux de mes papiers qui seront assez au net pour les pouvoir lire, afin que vous en puissiez choisir ceux dont la lecture vous sera le moins ennuyeuse, et que j'aie le bonheur de savoir au vrai le jugement que vous en ferez." (lettre à Huygens du 31 mars 1636 AT I, 605; O VIII 2, 21; B 86).

Dans le contrat d'édition avec l'imprimeur Jean Maire (Leyde, 2 décembre 1636) le titre change : "le dit DES CARTES mettra entre les mains du dit LE MAIRE toute la copie d'un livre intitulé: La méthode etc. plus la Dioptrique, les Météores et la Géométrie" (le contrat est publié dans Gustave Cohen, Écrivains français en Hollande dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle, Paris: Champion, 1920, pp. 503-504).

L'expression "Discours de la méthode" fait sa parution dans deux lettres à Huygens et à Mersenne:

Lettre à C. Huygens du 25 février 1637: "Monsieur Golius m'avertit dernièrement de votre part que vous jugiez le mot de "discours" superflu en mon titre, et c'est l'un des sujets de remerciement que j'ai à vous faire. Mais je m'excuse sur ce que je n'ai pas eu dessein d'expliquer toute la méthode mais seulement d'en dire quelque chose, et que je n'aime pas à promettre plus que je ne donne, c'est pourquoi j'ai mis « Discours de la Méthode »; au lieu que j'ai mis simplement «la Dioptrique» et «les Météores», parce que j'ai tâché d'y comprendre tout ce qui faisait (6) à mon sujet. Que si cette raison ne vous contente et que vous m'obligiez de m'en faire savoir votre jugement, je le suivrai comme une loi inviolable. Il me semble aussi que je dois ôter toute la glose que j'avais mise à la fin (7) et laisser seulement ces mots « Discours de la Méthode etc. plus la Dioptrique, les Météores et la Géométrie qui sont des essais de cette méthode »." (AT I, 620-621; O VIII 2, 26; B 104).

(6) « Faire à » : convenir.

(7) Descartes avait proposé à Mersenne en mars 1636 le titre [déjà cité : Le Projet d'une Science universelle, etc.]

Lettre à Mersenne du 20 avril 1637: "Mais je n'ai su bien entendre ce que vous objectez touchant le titre; car je ne mets pas Traité de la Méthode, mais Discours de la Méthode, ce qui est le même que Préface ou Avis touchant la Méthode, pour montrer que je n'ai pas dessein de l'enseigner, mais seulement d'en parler. Car comme on peut voir de ce que j'en dis, elle consiste plus en pratique qu'en théorie, et je nomme les traités suivants des Essais de cette Méthode, parce que je prétends que les choses qu'ils contiennent n'ont pu être trouvées sans elle, et qu'on peut connaître par eux ce qu'elle vaut : comme aussi j'ai inséré quelque chose de métaphysique, de physique, et de médecine dans le premier discours, pour montrer qu'elle s'étend à toutes sortes de matières." (AT I, 349; O VIII 1, 139; B 83).

Le titre définitif ressemble à une œuvre de Jacopo Aconcio (1492 - 1567), De Methodo, hoc est de recta investigandarum tradendarumque artium ac scientiarum ratione, Basilée 1558, réimprimé en 1617 à Leyde par le même éditeur du Discours, mais une influence directe n'est pas démontrée.

Dans cette œuvre Descartes réutilise des écrits précédents :

La Première partie du Discours (AT VI, 1-11 [O III, 81-87]) reprend le projet d'une Histoire de mon esprit dont parle Guez de Balzac dans la lettre à Descartes du 30 mars 1628: "Au reste, Monsieur, souvenez-vous, s'il vous plaît, de l'Histoire de Votre Esprit. Elle est attendue de tous nos amis, et vous me l'avez promise en présence du Père Clitophon, qu'on appelle en langue vulgaire Monsieur de Gersan. Il y aura plaisir à lire vos diverses aventures dans la moyenne et dans la plus haute région de l'air ; à considérer vos prouesses contre les Géants de l'École, le chemin que vous avez tenu, le progrès que vous avez fait dans la vérité des choses, etc." (AT I 570; B 15).

La Deuxième partie (AT VI, 11-22 [O III, 88-95]) est une adaptation et une rectification des certain thèmes des Règles pour la direction de l'esprit: "Pendant les dix années qui s'écoulèrent entre les deux , Descartes a très sensiblement modifié ses vues méthodologiques: les Regulae proposaient une mathématique universelle qui assimilait à des segments de droite — soit à une dimension spatiale — tout ce qui est susceptible de mesure, alors que la Géométrie achemine le lecteur vers une notion de mathématiques pures, vers une « géométrie qui est avant tout une algèbre ». Un pas décisif a été franchi, et Léon Brunschvicg (*) montre sans peine que le deuxième chapitre du Discours s'en trouve par là même éclairé : certains développements sont si étroitement liés qu'ils ne s'expliquent que l'un par l'autre. De même que la sixième partie est une introduction à la Dioptrique et aux Météores, la deuxième est une introduction à la Géométrie." (Gilbert Gadoffre, La chronologie des six parties, in : Nicolas Grimaldi et Jean-Luc Marion (éds.), Le Discours et sa méthode, Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1987, p. 21.)

(*) Léon Brunschvicg, Mathématiques et métaphysique chez Descartes, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, juillet 1937, [pp. 277-324; repris dans: L. Brunschvicg, Écrits philosophiques, tome I, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1951, pp. 11-54].

La Troisième partie (AT VI 22-31 [O III, 96-101]) contient la morale provisoire; sur les raison de cette inclusion, voir la lettre à Henricus Reneri pour Alphonse de Pollot d'avril ou mai 1638 : "Au reste j'ai été obligé de parler de cette résolution et fermeté touchant les actions, tant à cause qu'elle est nécessaire pour le repos de la conscience, que pour empêcher qu'on ne me blâmât de ce que j'avais écrit que, pour éviter la prévention, il faut une fois en sa vie se défaire de toutes les opinions qu'on a reçues auparavant en sa créance : car apparemment on m'eût objecté que ce doute si universel peut produire une grande irrésolution et un grand dérèglement dans les mœurs. De façon qu'il ne me semble pas avoir pu user de plus de circonspection que j'ai fait, pour placer la résolution, en tant qu'elle est une vertu, entre les deux vices qui lui sont contraires, à savoir l'indétermination et l'obstination.

Il ne me semble point que ce soit une fiction, mais une vérité, qui ne doit point être niée de personne, qu'il n'y a rien qui soit entièrement en notre pouvoir que nos pensées ; au moins en prenant le mot de pensée comme je fais, pour toutes les opérations de l'âme, en sorte que non seulement les méditations et les volontés, mais même les fonctions de voir, d'ouïr, de se déterminer à un mouvement plutôt qu'à un autre etc., en tant qu'elles dépendent d'elle, sont des pensées. Et il n'y a rien du tout que les choses qui sont comprises sous ce mot, qu'on attribue proprement à l'homme en langue de philosophe : car pour les fonctions qui appartiennent au corps seul, on dit qu'elles se font dans l'homme, et non par l'homme." (AT II, 35-36; O VIII 2, 542; B 164).

Voir aussi l'Entretien avec Burman :

"III. Texte 64. AT VI 22, l. 29 [O III, 96] une moral par provision, qui ne consistait qu'en trois ou quatre maximes, DONT JE VEUX BIEN VOUS FAIRE PART (que je veux bien AJOUTER À MON ÉCRIT).

L'auteur n'écrit pas volontiers touchant la morale (6), mais les Régents et autres pédants l'on contraint d'ajouter à son écrit ces règles parce que, autrement, ils prétendraient qu'il n'a ni religion ni foi, et que, par le biais de sa méthode, il veut les renverser (7)." (Burman 144; AT V, 178).

La Quatrième partie (AT VI, 31-40 [O III, ]102-108) est dédiée à la métaphysique et utilise le Petit traité de métaphysique (perdu) de 1629 : "Descartes présente lui-même la Quatrième Partie du Discours comme un abrégé par rapport à ce manuscrit latin qui, au contraire, semble être une sorte de première rédaction par rapport aux Méditations ou du moins par rapport à celles qui ouvrent l'ouvrage». Ainsi il y avait dans la pensée de Descartes plus que dans son texte lorsqu'il écrivait la Quatrième Partie du Discours. Quant à savoir quel est ce « plus », des hypothèses différentes sont permises : ce qui est certain, c'est que, en ce qui concerne l'épreuve critique du commencement, l'évolution de la pensée n'est pas seule en cause." (Henri Gouhier, La pensée métaphysique de Descartes, Paris: Vrin, 1962, p. 67).

Cette partie a été ajouté au moment de l'impression : "Il est vrai que j'ai été trop obscur en ce que j'ai écrit de l'existence de Dieu dans ce traité de la Méthode, et bien que ce soit la pièce la plus importante, j'avoue que c'est la moins élaborée de tout l'ouvrage ; ce qui vient en partie de ce que je ne me suis résolu de l'y joindre que sur la fin, et lorsque le libraire me pressait. Mais la principale cause de son obscurité vient de ce que je n'ai osé m'étendre sur les raisons des sceptiques, ni dire toutes les choses qui sont nécessaires ad abducendam mentem a sensibus: car il n'est pas possible de bien connaître la certitude et l'évidence des raisons qui prouvent l'existence de Dieu selon ma façon, qu'en se souvenant distinctement de celles qui nous font remarquer de l'incertitude en toutes les connaissances que nous avons des choses matérielles; et ces pensées ne m'ont pas semblé être propres à mettre dans un livre, où j'ai voulu que les femmes mêmes pussent entendre quelque chose, et cependant que les plus subtils trouvassent aussi assez de matière pour occuper leur attention. J'avoue aussi que cette obscurité vient en partie, comme vous avez fort bien remarqué, de ce que j'ai supposé que certaines notions, que l'habitude de penser m'a rendu familières et évidentes, le devaient être aussi à un chacun; comme par exemple, que nos idées ne pouvant recevoir leurs formes ni leur être que de quelques objets extérieurs, ou de nous-mêmes, ne peuvent représenter aucune réalité ou perfection, qui ne soit en ces objets, ou bien en nous, et semblables; sur quoi je me suis proposé de donner quelque éclaircissement dans une seconde impression. (8)" (lettre à Antoine Vatier du 22 février 1638, AT I, 560; O VIII 1, 574-575; B 149).

(8) C'est dans les Méditationes (1641) que Descartes pourra préciser sa définition des idées.

Descartes était bien conscient des limites de sa première publication sur la métaphysique: "Pour votre seconde objection, à savoir que je n'ai pas expliqué assez au long, d'où je connais que l'âme est une substance distincte du corps, et dont la nature n'est que de penser, qui est la seule chose qui rend obscure la démonstration touchant l'existence de Dieu (3), j'avoue que ce que vous en écrivez est très vrai, et aussi que cela rend ma démonstration touchant l'existence de Dieu malaisée à entendre. Mais je ne pouvais mieux traiter cette matière, qu'en expliquant amplement la fausseté ou l'incertitude qui se trouve en tous les jugements qui dépendent du sens ou de l'imagination, afin de montrer ensuite quels sont ceux qui ne dépendent que de l'entendement pur, et combien ils sont évidents et certains. Ce que j'ai omis tout à dessein, et par considération, et principalement à cause que j'ai écrit en langue vulgaire, de peur que les esprits faibles venant à embrasser d'abord avidement les doutes et scrupules qu'il m'eût fallu proposer ne pussent après comprendre en même façon les raisons par lesquelles j'eusse tâché de les ôter, et ainsi que je les eusse engagés dans un mauvais pas, sans peut-être les en tirer. Mais il y a environ huit ans que j'ai écrit en latin un commencement de Métaphysique (4), où cela est déduit assez au long, et si l'on fait une version latine de ce livre, comme on s'y prépare, (5) je l'y pourrai faire mettre. Cependant je me persuade que ceux qui prendront bien garde à mes raisons touchant l'existence de Dieu, les trouveront d'autant plus démonstratives, qu'ils mettront plus de peine à en chercher les défauts, et je les prétends plus claires en elles-mêmes qu'aucune des démonstrations des géomètres en sorte qu'elles ne me semblent obscures qu'au regard de ceux qui ne savent pas abducere mentem a sensibus, suivant ce que j'ai écrit en la page 38 (6).". (lettre à Mersenne du 20 avril 1637, AT I, 349-350; O VIII 1, 139; B 104).

(4) En 1629 (à Gibieuf, 18 juillet 1629, AT I, 17 l. 7, B17; à Mersenne, 15 avril 1630, AT I, 144 l. 19, B30).

(5) La traduction latine du Discours et des Essais (sauf la Géométrie), œuvre d'Étienne de Courcelles, n’apparut qu’en 1644. CM suggère qu’un projet a pu se constituer dès 1637 avec le jeune Van Schooten, qui publia en 1649 une traduction latine de la Géométrie.

(6) AT VI, 37 [O III, 105] (« qu’ils n’élèvent jamais leur esprit au-delà des choses sensibles »). Voir les objections soulevées par Petit (lettre des 17-27 mai 1638, AT II, 144, l. 13-21; [O VIII 1, 187] B 167).

La Cinquième partie (AT VI 40-60 [O III, 108-121])est un résumé du Monde et de ses études de physiologie, "particulièrement l'explication du mouvement du cœur" (AT VI, 1 [O III, 81]) commencés en 1629 ("je veux commencer à étudier l'anatomie", lettre à Mersenne du 18 décembre 1629, AT I, 102), après la découverte par William Harvey de la circulation du sang (Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus, Francfurt 1628), cfr. la référence au "médecin d'Angleterre" (AT VI, 51 [O III, 115]).

"La première mention d'un «médecin», dans la correspondance de Descartes, figure dans la lettre au Père Mersenne du 8 octobre 1629, [AT I, 25; O VIII 1, 30; B 19] où Descartes écrit: «Pour la raréfaction, je suis d'accord avec ce médecin (27), et (28) ai maintenant pris parti touchant tous les fondements de la Philosophie ; mais peut-être que je n'explique pas l'œther comme lui. (29)»".

(27) Selon AT (I 30n), il s'agirait du médecin Christophe Villiers (1596-1661/70); mais CM (II 302 n. 2) propose Sébastien Basson, qui introduisit dans une physique corpusculaire l'hypothèse de l'éther pour expliquer les phénomènes de raréfaction et, de façon plus générale, le vide (Philosophiae naturalis adversus Aristotelem librì XII, Genève, 1621). Il fut lu par Beeckman (au printemps 1623, Beeckman II 243), et par Merline (Quaestiones in Genesim, 1623, col. 1838 ; Impiété des déistes, 1624, I, p. 238) ; Descartes le cite (parmi les novatores, entre Giordano Bruno (Giulio Cesare Vanini) dans une lettre à Beeckman (lettre du 17 octobre 10, AT I, 158, B 34). Dans les Regulae (AT X, 424 1. 13), Descartes envisage au-delà de l'air un éther très pur sur le modèle de Basson. Descartes nie le vide dans le Monde (il y travaille à partir de la fin de 1629) et dans ses lettres de février-avril 1630. C'est probablement de lui que Descartes écrit à Huygens : « Il n’est vaillant qu'à détruire les opinions d'Aristote » 8 mars 1636, AT I, 603; [O VIII 2, 20] B 84).

(28) Clerselier Lettres : « ai pris parti là-dessus, comme sur presque tous les fondements de la Physique ».

(29) Clerselier Lettres : « Lorsque j'aurai l'honneur de vous voir, nous aurons moyen de nous en entretenir plus particulièrement », add.

La Sixième partie (AT VI 40-78 [O III, 121-133]) a été rédigée dans les derniers mois du 1635, comme préface de la Dioptrique et des Météores.

"Or comme ce n'est pas des racines, ni du tronc des arbres, qu'on cueille les fruits, mais seulement des extrémités de leurs branches, ainsi la principale utilité de la Philosophie dépend de celles de ses parties qu'on ne peut apprendre que les dernières. Mais, bien que je les ignore presque toutes, le zèle que j'ai toujours eu pour tâcher de rendre service au public est cause que je fis imprimer, il y a dix ou douze ans, quelques essais des choses qu'il me semblait avoir apprises. La première partie de ces essais fut un Discours touchant la Méthode pour bien conduire sa raison et chercher la vérité dans les sciences, où je mis sommairement les principales règles de la Logique et d'une Morale imparfaite, qu'on peut suivre par provision pendant qu'on n'en sait point encore de meilleure. Les autres parties furent trois traités : l'un de la Dioptrique, l'autre des Météores, et le dernier de la Géométrie." Lettre-Préface aux Principes de philosophie (AT IX-2, 15).

12. ———. 1637. La Dioptrique.

AT VI, 81-226; B Op. I, 118-311; O III, 148-262.

La Dioptrique est le premier essai composé par Descartes : les premières notes sur l'optique et la réfraction sont dans les Cogitationes privatae de 1619-20 (AT X, 242-247); en 1632 Descartes écrit à Golius "je fis tailler un verre, il y a cinq ans" lettre du 2 février 1632 (AT I, 239, note; O VIII 1, 1023, n. 36; B 50) ; la composition de la Dioptrique pourrait donc être initiée en 1628. (Sur les relations de La Dioptrique avec Le Monde et L'Homme voir les notes à ces textes).

Dans le XVII siècle avec le terme Dioptrique était utilisé pour la théorie de la réfraction: "La troisième [partie de l'Optique] enseigne comment nous voyons par rayons qui sont rompus, comme quand nous regardons un bâton qui est partie dans l'eau, partie dans l'air et se nomme Dioptrique, ou Mesoptrique, parce qu'elle considère la façon par laquelle les rayons passent par les milieux divers, comme quand il traversent l'air, l'eau, et le verre en même instant: on pourrait ainsi nommer cette partie Anaclastique, ou Diaclastique. L'art de la peinture dépend de ces 3 parties." Marin Mersenne, La Vérité des sciences contre les Septiques [sic] ou Pyrrhoniens, Paris: 1625, pp. 229-230 (édition moderne: La Vérité des sciences contre les Sceptiques ou Pyrrhoniens. Édition et annotation par Dominique Descotes, Paris: Champion, 2003.

Descartes la cite dans une lettre à Mersenne du 25 novembre 1630: "J'y veux insérer un discours où je tâcherai d'expliquer la nature des couleurs et de la lumière, lequel m'a arrêté depuis six mois, et n'est pas encore à moitié fait ; mais aussi sera-t-il plus long que je ne pensais, et contiendra quasi une physique tout entière (8) ; en sorte que je prétends qu'elle me servira pour me dégager de la promesse que je vous ai faite, d'avoir achevé mon Monde dans trois ans (9), car c'en sera quasi un abrégé. Et je ne pense pas après ceci a me résoudre jamais plus de faire rien imprimer, au moins moi vivant : car la fable de mon Monde (10) me plaît trop pour manquer à la parachever, si Dieu me laisse vivre assez longtemps pour cela; mais je ne veux point répondre de l'avenir. Je crois que je vous enverrai ce Discours de la lumière, sitôt qu'il sera fait, et avant que de vous envoyer le reste de la Dioptrique" (AT I, 179; O VIII 1, 83; B 36).

(8) Voir à Mersenne, 13 novembre 1629 (AT I, 70 l. 6-11, B 23) et 18 décembre 1629 (AT I, 85 l. 6-86 l. 1; [O VIII 1, 33] B 25).

(9) Voir à Mersenne, 15 avril 1630 (AT I 137 l. 15-17; [O VIII 1, 68] B 30).

(10) Voir à Mersenne, 13 novembre 1629 (AT I 70; [O VIII 1, 33] B 23).

"En fait, il semble que Descartes, loin d'avoir envoyé ce Discours de la lumière « avant le reste de la Dioptrique », en ait ajourné la mise au point ; car au cours de l'année 1632, il qualifie à deux reprises de « première partie » ce qui, dans la rédaction définitive, constitue le Discours second, consacré à la réfraction (15). Par contre, ce Discours de la lumière, qui devait être un abrégé du Monde, prend de telles proportions qu'il devient bientôt un Traité de la Lumière appelé à couvrir tout le champ de la Physique (16).

Dernière remarque enfin : le Monde est « presqu'achevé » en juillet 1633 (17), la Dioptrique « entièrement », dans le courant de 1635 (18), les Météores, repris en main une fois la Dioptrique terminée, en 1636 (19). Ces détails chronologiques un peu vétilleux, pour ne pas dire fastidieux, permettent d'affirmer qu'entre 1629 et 1636, Descartes a mené de front les trois traités, quitte à interrompre l'un pour se consacrer à tel autre (20)." (pp. 290-291), Simone Martinet, "Rôle du problème de la lumière dans la construction de la science cartésienne", XVIIe siècle, n° 136, 1982, pp. 285-309.

(15) Voir [à Golius], [janvier 1632], I, p. 235 [O VIII 1, 644-645; B 49], et à Mersenne, [juin 1632], I, p. 255 [O VIII 1, 102-103; B 55].

(16) Voir à Mersenne, 23 décembre 1630 : « Je vous dirai que je suis maintenant après à démêler le chaos pour en faire sortir de la lumière, qui est l'une des plus hautes et plus difficiles matières que je puisse jamais entreprendre, car toute la physique y est presque comprise (5)», I, p. 194 [O VIII 1, 88; B 40].

(5) Descartes est en train de rédiger son Monde, ou Traité de la lumière : Il insiste sur son importance à plusieurs reprises (à Mersenne, 13 novembre 1629, AT I, 70 l. 6-11, [O VIII 1, 33] B 23; 25 novembre 1630, AT I, 179 l. 10, [O VIII 1, 83] B 36, et au P. Vatier, 22 février 1638, AT I 562 l. 10 sq., [O VIII 1, 576] B 149).

(17) À Mersenne, 22 juillet 1633, AT I, p. 268 [O VIII 1, 107] B 59].

(18) Voir à Mersenne, date difficile à préciser [mars 1635 ?], AT I, p. 322 [O VIII 1, 121; B 75], et à Huygens, 1 novembre 1635, AT I, p. 591 [O VIII 2, 14; B 77].

(19) Voir à Huygens, 1 novembre 1635, AT I, p. 591 [O VIII 2, 14; B 77], et Météores, Disc. VI, p. 298, qui relate une observation personnelle « faite l'hiver passé 1635 ».

(20) De telle sorte qu'il n'est pas étonnant qu'il soit fait référence à la Dioptrique, dans le Monde, achevé pourtant antérieurement (cf. Traité de la Lumière ou Monde, ch. II, p. 9, ch. XIV, p. 102, ch. XV, p. 106) et dans les Météores, commencés, sinon terminés plus tôt (Météores, Disc. I, p. 233 et p. 234 ; Disc. V, p. 279; Disc. VIII, p. 331 et p. 337). Et que, inversement, Descartes se retranche volontiers derrière le « Traité qui contient tout le corps de [sa] Physique », soit pour justifier le statut des « suppositions « qui sont avancées au début de chacun des Essais (cf. Discours de la méthode, VI partie, p. 76), soit pour répondre à des questions ou à des objections qui lui sont adressées après la publication des Essais, cf. [à Vatier], [22 février 1638], AT I, p. 562 [O VIII 1, 575; B 149] ; à Ciermans, [23 mars 1638], AT II, p. 71 et p. 74 [B 159] ; à Morin, [13 juillet 1638], AT II, p. 201 [O VIII 2, 466-467; B 172] ; à Mersenne, 9 janv. 1639 et 19 juin 1639, AT II, p. 483 [O VIII 1, 310-311; B 200] et p. 564 O VIII 1, 336-337; B 216].

En janvier 1632 la première partie (Discours I et II) est terminée : "Au reste pour ce que vous me mandez, et que M. H[ortensius] (4) me témoigne que vous désirez voir de ma Dioptrique, je vous en envoi la première partie (5), ou j'ai tâché d'expliquer la matière des réfractions, sans toucher au reste de la philosophie." (lettre à Golius du janvier 1632, AT I 235; O VIII 1, 644-645; B 49).

(4) Clerselier-Lettres: "H." ; AT complète par le nome de Martin Van de Hove (Hortensius, 1605-1639), mathématicien et astronome.

(5) Dioptrique I et II (AT VI 81-105 [O III, 148-262])

Dans l'automne 1635 Descartes écrit : "Pour les lunettes, je vous dirai que depuis la condamnation de Galilée (4), j'ai revu et entièrement achevé le Traité que j'en avais autrefois commencé (5) ; et l'avant entièrement séparé de mon Monde, je me propose de le faire imprimer seul dans peu de temps (6)." (lettre à X (Mersenne?), AT I 322 [O VIII 1, 121; B 75).

(4) Descartes est souvent revenu dans ses lettres à Mersenne sur la condamnation de Galilée (1633) : fin novembre 1633 (AT I 270-273, [O VIII 1, 107-109] B 60); février 1634 (AT I 281-282, [O VIII 1, 109-110] B 63); 15 mai 1634 (AT I 298-299, [O VIII 1, 117-118] B 66).

(5) La rédaction de la Dioptrique, dont Descartes a souvent entretenu Mersenne (25 novembre 1630, AT I 182 l. 13 sq., [O VIII 1, 85] B 36; juin 1632, AT I 254 l. 3 sq., [O VIII 1, 102] B 55).

(6) En effet, Descartes écrit à Golius le 16 avril 1635 [AT I 314-316; O VIII 1, 647-648; B 71] : « Monsieur de Zuylichem (4), que j'ai eu l'honneur de voir ces jours à Amsterdam (5), après avoir eu la patience d'ouïr lire une partie de ma Dioptrique... » et envoie à Huygens une copie du texte le 25 avril 1635 (AT I 585-586, [O VIII 2, 13-14] B 72).

(4) Descartes venait de rencontrer Constantin Huygens (Monsieur de Zuylichem) à Amsterdam, du 29 mars au 6 avril 1635 (Dagboek [Dagboek Van Constantijn Huygens, éd. J. H. W. Hunger, Bijlage Van Oud-Holland, IIIe année, viii-88-14-viii pages, Amsterdam 1885], p. 26).

(5) Voir à Wilhem, 23 mai 1632 (AT I, 253-254, [O VIII 2, 1] B 54), et à Huygens, 11 décembre 1635 (AT I, 597-601, [O VIII 2, 17-19] B 80).

Le texte est terminé en 1635 : lettre à Golius du 16 avril 1635, AT I 314-316; O VIII 1, 647-648; B 71.

"En la Dioptrique, la matière des réfractions et l'invention des lunettes, j'y parle aussi fort particulièrement de l'Œil, de la Lumière, de la Vision, et de tout ce qui appartient à la Catoptrique et à l'Optique." (lettre à Mersenne du mars 1636 AT I, 338-340; O VIII 1, 134-136; B 83).

"Par la Dioptrique, j'eus dessein de faire voir qu'on pouvait aller assez avant en la Philosophie, pour arriver par son moyen jusques à la connaissance des arts qui sont utiles à la vie, à cause que l'invention des lunettes d'approche, que j'y expliquais, est l'une des plus difficiles qui aient jamais été cherchées. Par les Météores, je désirai qu'on reconnût la différence qui est entre la Philosophie que je cultive et celle qu'on enseigne dans les écoles où l'on a coutume de traiter de la même matière." Lettre-Préface aux Principes de philosophie (AT IX-2, 15).

13. ———. 1637. Les Météores.

AT VI, 231-376; B Op. I, 314-487; O III, 284-390.

L'origine des Météores est le phénomène des parhélies (faux soleils) observé a à Frascati le 20 mars 1629 par le Jésuite Christoph Scheiner (1573-1650).

"Le 20 de mars on avait vu dans cette ville cinq soleils en même temps, c'est-à-dire quatre parhélies ou faux soleils autour du Soleil. Le P. Scheiner jésuite allemand, qui était pour lors à Rome, en avait fait l'observation avec quelques autres mathématiciens du lieu ; et le cardinal Barberin qui était toujours fort zélé pour l'avancement des sciences en avait envoyé une description à M. de Peiresc conseiller au parlement de Provence, avec la figure du phénomène. Monsieur Peiresc en avait fait faire plusieurs copies, pour communiquer la chose à tous les savants de sa connaissance, et pour les exciter à donner leurs réflexions sur le phénomène." (Baillet I, 188).

"C'est à cette observation des parhélies, que le public est redevable en partie du beau traité des Météores que M. Descartes lui donna quelques années après. Il interrompit ses Méditations métaphysiques, pour examiner par ordre tous les météores ; et il travailla plusieurs jours sur cette matière, avant que d'y trouver de quoi se satisfaire. " (Baillet I, 191).

Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637), ayant reçu la relation directement de C. Scheiner en donna des copies à Pierre Gassendi.

Ayant reçu une copie de Gassendi, Henri Reneri la publia avec le titre Phaenomenon rarum et illustre Romae observatum 20 Martij Anno 1629, (Amsterdam 1629) et en envoya une copie manuscrite à Descartes en juillet 1629 : "Car je n'ai point l'esprit assez fort, pour l'employer en même temps à plusieurs choses différentes, et comme je ne trouve jamais rien que par une longue traînée de diverses considérations, il faut que je me donne tout à une matière, lorsque j'en veux examiner quelque partie. Ce que j'ai éprouvé depuis peu, en cherchant (4) la cause de ce phénomène duquel vous m'écrivez (5) ; car il y a plus de deux mois (6) qu'un de mes amis (7) m'en a fait voir ici une description assez ample, et m'en ayant demandé mon avis, il m'a fallu interrompre ce que j'avais en main (8), pour examiner par ordre tous les Météores, auparavant que je m'y sois pu satisfaire. Mais je pense maintenant en pouvoir rendre quelque raison, et suis résolu d'en faire un petit traité (9) qui contiendra la raison (10) des couleurs de l'arc-en-ciel (11), lesquelles m'ont donné plus de peine que tout le reste, et généralement tous les phénomènes sublunaires." (lettre à Mersenne du 8 octobre 1629, AT I, 22-23; O VIII 1, 29-30; B19).

(4) Clerselier-lettres : "pour trouver".

(5) Le jésuite romain Scheiner avait observé quatre parhélies (faux soleils) à Frascati le 20 mars 1629. Ces observations ont été connue de toute l'Europe savante par le relais de Peiresc, à qui le cardinal Barberini avait fait parvenir une copie. Gassend, informé par les frères Dupuy, s'employa à les expliquer, en particulier auprès de Peiresc, et au cours de son voyage en Flandres et aux Pays-Bas (été 1629), de Beeckman et de Reneri. La « description assez ample » dont parle Descartes peut être son explication Phaenomenon rarum et illustre Romæ observatum, dont le texte imprimé semble n'avoir été diffusé qu'en novembre-décembre 1629, mais qui fut remis par Gassend à Reneri le 14 juillet (voir lettre de Gassend à Peiresc, 21 juillet 1629, CM II 244 et 247n).

(6) Clerselier-lettres : « trois mois ».

(7) Henri Reneri, en juillet 1629. Il s'inscrit comme étudiant à Leyde le 13 octobre 1629.

(8) Le « petit traité de métaphysique », « commencé en Frise », dont Descartes parle à plusieurs reprises (à Mersenne, 15 avril 1630; AT I 136, [O VIII 1, 67] B 30; 25 novembre 1630, AT I 182, [O VIII 1, 85] B 36; vers le 20 avril 1637 AT I 350, [O VIII 1, 139] B 104; à Gibieuf, 18 juillet 1629, AT I 17, [O VIII 2, 790] B 17) est soit une première version des Meditationes, soit un « traité sur la divinité » (Baillet I, 170-171 et 190).

(9) Le huitième discours des Météores (qui paraîtra dans les Essais de 1637) ; le dixième discours porte sur les parhélies.

(10) Clerselier-lettres : « l'explication ».

(11) Descartes avait pu voir en Italie les arcs-en-ciel artificiels des fontaines de Tivoli.

Descartes retourne sur le sujet dans une lettre à Mersenne du 13 novembre 1629 : "Je suis bien marri de la peine que je vous ai donnée de m'envoyer ce phénomène (2), car il est tout semblable à celui que j'avais vu. Je ne laisse pas de vous en avoir très grande obligation, et encore plus de l'offre que vous me faites de faire imprimer ce petit traité que j'ai dessein d'écrire ; mais je vous dirai qu'il ne sera prêt de plus d'un an. Car depuis le temps que je vous avais écrit il y a un mois, je n'ai rien fait du tout qu'en tracer l'argument, et au lieu d'expliquer un phénomène seulement, je me suis résolu d'expliquer tous les phénomènes de la nature c'est-à-dire toute la physique. Et le dessein que j'ai me contente plus qu'aucun autre que j'aie jamais eu, car je pense avoir trouvé un moyen pour exposer toutes mes pensées en sorte qu'elles satisferont à quelques-uns et que les autres n'auront pas occasion d'y contredire." (AT I 70; O VIII 1, 32-33; B 23).

(2) Sur les parhélies, comme sur le « petit traité », voir la lettre 4 (AT I, 23; [O VIII 1, 29] B 19.

Lettre à Constantin Huygens du 1 novembre 1635 : "J'ai dessein d'ajouter les Météores à la Dioptrique, et j'y ai travaillé assez diligemment les deux ou trois premiers mois de cet été (4), à cause que j'y trouvais plusieurs difficultés que je n'avais encore jamais examinées, et que je démêlais avec plaisir. Mais il faut que je vous fasse des plaintes de mon humeur : sitôt que je n'ai plus espéré d'y rien apprendre, ne restant plus qu'à les mettre au net, il m'a été impossible d'en prendre la peine, non plus que de faire une préface que j'y veux joindre (5); ce qui sera cause que j'attendrai encore deux ou trois mois avant que de parler au libraire." (AT I, 592; O VIII 2, 15; B 77).

(4) Dès février 1635, il avait noté des observations sur la chute de la neige (voir F. C. Frank, « Descartes' Observations on the Amsterdam Snowfalls of 4, 5, 6 and 9 February 1635 », Journal of Glaciology, 13, 1974, p. 535-539).

(5) [Première allusion au Discours de la méthode :] Le livre envisagé devait réunir la Dioptrìque, les Météores et une préface (qui deviendra le Discours de la méthode). Descartes annoncera l’addition de la Géométrie dans la lettre à Mersenne de mars 1636 (AT I, 339 l. 16, [O VIII 1, 135; B 83) et racontera au P. Deriennes : « [...] c'est un traité que je n'ai quasi composé que pendant qu’on imprimait mes Météores, et même j'en ai inventé une partie pendant ce temps-là » (AT I, 457-458, à Deriennes 22 février 1638, [O VIII 2, 578-579] B 147).

"Au reste, si M. Gassendi a quelques autres remarques touchant la neige, que ce que j'ai vu dans Kepler, et remarqué encore cet hiver, de Nive sexangula et grandine acuminata (7), je serai bien aise de l'apprendre ; car je veux expliquer les météores le plus exactement que je pourrai (8)." (lettre à Mersenne, 4 mars 1630, AT I, 127 O VIII 1, 62; B 28).

(7) Kepler a publié en 1611 le traité De nive sexangula et grandine acuminata.

(8) Descartes a dû connaître (par Mersenne) l'observation de Gssend; (à la fin de son Examen du 4 février 1629 : voir Gassend 4 février 1629 (CM II 196-199).

Dans une lettre à Chanut du 6 mars 1646, Descartes écrit : "Une seule observation que je fis de la neige hexagone, en l'année 1635, a été cause du traité que j'en fait (5)." (AT IV, 377; O VIII 2, 668; B 545).

(5) Dans les Météores VI (AT VI 298 1. 8 sq. [O III, 329]); (observation du 5 février 1635 (voir AT XI, 623-624 et 626-627) ; voir à Mersenne, 4 mars 1630 (AT I, 127, [O VIII 1, 62] B 28) et 30 août 1640 (AT III 166, [O VIII 1, 404] B 269 : longue note dans E. Lojacono (éd.), Opere scientifiche di René Descartes, t. 2, Turin, Classici UTET, 1983, p. 434.

Voir AT XI, p. 635 : "Par un vent du nord, avec neige et verglas la veille. Les grains de neige étaient de cette grosseur, ils ressemblaient à l'humeur cristalline de l'œil, étaient transparents, et j'en ai remarqué un ou deux qui avaient autour d'eux six rayons très-courts, tirant sur le blanc pâle, et surpassant la glace. Ce même jour, 5 février [1635], j'ai noté une grande diversité d'étoiles de neige. D'abord quelques lames solides taillées en hexagone, d'une parfaite transparence, polies et minces, de grandeurs égales." (texte en latin; traduction de Foucher de Careil, p. 81).

"Aux Météores, je m'arrête principalement sur la nature du Sel, les causes des Vents et du Tonnerre, les figures de la Neige, les couleurs de l'Arc-en-Ciel, où je tâche aussi à démontrer généralement quelle est la nature de chaque Couleur, et les Couronnes, ou Halones, et les Soleils, ou Parhelia, semblables à ceux qui parurent à Rome il y a six ou sept ans." (lettre à Mersenne, mars 1636, AT I 340; O VIII 1, 135; B 83).

"Par les Météores, je désirai qu'on reconnût la différence qui est entre la Philosophie que je cultive et celle qu'on enseigne dans les écoles où l'on a coutume de traiter de la même matière." Lettre-Préface aux Principes de philosophie (AT IX-2, 15).

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

René Descartes. Bibliographie Chronologique et Annotée (Troisième Partie: (1637-1644)

Bibliographie

Pour la liste des éditions de références et des abréviations voir René Descartes. Outils de recherche: Biographies, Dictionnaires et Lexiques des Ses Œuvres

1. Descartes, René. 1637. La Géométrie.

AT VI, 368-485; B. Op. I, 490-653; O III, 415-512.

Une traduction latine par Frans Van Schooten (le jeune) (1615-1661) paru à Leyde: Maire 1649.

La Géométrie est le seul ouvrage mathématique publié par Descartes et résume les résultats de 19 années de recherches ; sa rédaction l'a occupé dans les premiers mois de 1637: "C'est un traité que je n'ai quasi composé que pendant qu'on imprimait mes Météores, et même j'en ai inventé une partie pendant ce temps-là (4); mais je n'ai pas laissé de m'y satisfaire, autant ou plus que je ne me satisfais d'ordinaire de ce que j'écris." (lettre à Jean Deriennes du 22 février 1638 (AT I, 458; O VIII 1, 578-579; B 147).

(4) La Dioptrique était prête pour l'impression dès octobre 1635 (Huygens à Descartes, 28 octobre 1635, AT I, 588 l. 5-6, B 76).

Lettre à Mersenne, fin décembre 1637: "Et je ne suis pas bien aise d'être obligé de parler avantageusement de moi-même; mais parce qu'il y a peu de gens qui puissent entendre ma Géométrie, et que vous désirez que je vous mande quelle est l'opinion que j'en ai, je crois qu'il est à propos que je vous dise qu'elle est telle, que je n'y souhaite rien davantage; et que j'ai seulement tâché par la Dioptrique et par les Météores de persuader que ma méthode est meilleure que l'ordinaire, mais je prétends l'avoir démontré par ma Géométrie." (AT I, 477; O VIII 1, 149; B 136).

Sur la difficulté de l'œuvre voir:

l'Avertissement : "Jusques ici j'ai tâché de me rendre intelligible à tout le monde ; mais, pour ce traité, je crains qu'il ne pourra être lu que par ceux qui savent déjà ce qui est dans les livres de Géométrie: car, d'autant qu'ils contiennent plusieurs vérités fort bien démontrées, j'ai cru qu'il serait superflu de les répéter, et n'ai pas laissé, pour cela, de m'en servir." (AT VI 368)

et la lettre à Florimond de Beaune du 20 février 1639: "J'ai été extrêmement aise de voir vos Notes (*) sur ma Géométrie (2); et je puis dire, avec vérité, que je n'y ai pas trouvé un seul mot qui ne soit entièrement selon mon sens. En sorte que j'ai admiré que vous ayez pu reconnaître des choses que je n'y ai mises qu'obscurément (3), comme en ce qui regarde la généralité de la méthode, et la construction des lieux plans et solides, etc.

(...)

Toutefois je puis assurer que je n'ai rien omis de tout cela qu'à dessein, excepté le cas de l'asymptote que j'ai oublié. Mais j'avais prévu que certaines gens, qui se vantent de savoir tout, n'eussent pas manqué de dire que je n'avais rien écrit qu'ils n'aient su auparavant, si je me fusse rendu assez intelligible pour eux ; et je n'aurais pas eu le plaisir, que j'ai eu depuis, de voir l'impertinence de leurs objections. Outre que ce que j'ai omis ne nuit à personne ; car pour les autres, il leur sera plus profitable de tâcher à l'inventer d'eux-mêmes, que de le trouver dans un livre. Et pour moi, je ne crains pas que ceux qui s'y entendent m'imputent aucune de ces omissions à ignorance ; car j'ai partout eu soin de mettre le plus difficile, et de laisser seulement le plus aisé." (AT II, 510-512; O VIII 2, 691-692; B 203).

(2) Voir à Mersenne, 9 février 1639 (AT II, 499 l. 20-24, [O VIII 1, 320] B 202). Les Notes brèves de Debeaune [dans le texte originel français] ont été publiées dans AM III 353-401 (voir aussi la lettre de Debeaune à Schooten, 1648-1649 dans AM III 321-322).

(*) [Ces Notes seront publiées dans la traduction latine de la Géométrie en 1649: In geometriam Renati Descartes notæ breves, Amsterdam, 1659.]

Après la publication, Descartes ne montre plus d'intérêt pour la géométrie : "Mais n'attendez plus rien de moi, s'il vous plaît, en géométrie; car vous savez qu'il y a longtemps que je proteste de ne m'y vouloir plus exercer, et je pense pouvoir honnêtement y mettre fin." (à Mersenne, 12 septembre 1638, AT II, 361-362; O VIII 1, 273-274; B 187).

"Enfin, en la Géométrie, je tâche à donner une façon générale pour soudre tous les problèmes qui ne l'ont encore jamais été. Et tout ceci ne fera pas, je crois, un volume plus grand que de cinquante ou soixante feuilles (8). Au reste, je n'y veux point mettre mon nom, suivant mon ancienne résolution (9), et je vous prie de n'en rien dire à personne, si ce n'est que vous jugiez à propos d'en parler à quelque libraire, afin de savoir s'il aura envie de me servir, sans toutefois achever, s'il vous plaît, de conclure avec lui, qu'après ma réponse ; et sur ce que vous me ferez la faveur de me mander, je me résoudrai." (lettre à Mersenne du mars 1636, AT I, 340; O VIII 1, 136; B 136).

(8) Le volume imprimé fera 66 feuilles, dont 10 pour le Discours.

(9) Voia à Mersenne, 25 novembre 1630 (AT I, 179-180; [O VIII 1, 83-64] B 36.

"Enfin, par la Géométrie, je prétendais démontrer que j'avais trouvé plusieurs choses qui ont été ci-devant ignorées, et ainsi donner occasion de croire qu'on en peut découvrir encore plusieurs autres, afin d'inciter par ce moyen tous les hommes à la recherche de la vérité." Lettre-Préface aux Principes de philosophie (AT IX-2, 15).

2. ———. 1637. Explication des engins par l'aide desquels on peut avec une petite force lever un fardeau fort pesant [Traité de mécanique].

AT I, 435-447; B 129; O III, 568-577.

Le texte est annexe à la lettre à Constantin Huygens du 5 octobre 1637 ; la première édition est celle publiée en 1668 par Nicolas Poisson avec le Compendium musicae.

3. ———. 1638. Calcul de Mons. Des-Cartes.

AT X 659-680; édition critique par Fréderic de Buzon in B Op. II, 1472-1528.

Dans le dernier paragraphe d'une lettre à Claude Mydorge du 1 mars 1638, Descartes écrit: "Si vous désirez que je vous envoie quelques adresses particulières touchant le calcul, j'ai ici un ami qui s'offre de les écrire (27), et je m'y offrirais bien aussi, mais j'en suis moins capable que lui, à cause que je ne sais pas si bien remarquer en quoi on peut trouver de la difficulté." (AT II 23; O VIII 1, 672; B152).

(27) Il s'agit de l'Introduction à la Géométrie, ou Introduction au Calcul de Monsieur Descartes, attribuée à Godefroid Van Haestrecht [1592/93 - 1659] (voir la présentation de F. de Buzon, in B Op. II, 1465-1529).

De ce document, il y a trois manuscrits :

1) H : retrouvé par Charles Adam dans la Bibliothèque Royale de Hanovre parmi les papiers de Leibniz et publié dans AT X.

2) L : retrouvé par Cornelis de Waard en 1917 parmi les papiers de Charles Cavendish et publié dans Charles Adam et Gaston Milhaud (éds.) René Descartes. Correspondance, Paris, Alcan 1936-, vol. III, pp. 323-352.

3) M : retrouvé par Frédéric de Buzon parmi les manuscrits de Marcus Meibom à la Bibliothèque Royale de La Haye et publié dans B Op. II, 1473-1529 avec le titre: Recueil du Calcul, qui sert à la Géométrie du Sieur Des-Cartes.

4. ———. 1639? De refractione.

AT XI, 645-646; B Op. II, 1390-1393.

La date précise de composition est incertaine.

5. ———. 1640. Invention de la racine cubique des nombres binomes.

AT III 188, l. 3 - 190, l. 19; nouvelle édition reprise de l'édition Costabel: AT V 612-615; B Op. II, 1440-1447.

Première édition : Pierre Costabel, "Descartes et la racine cubique des nombres binômes", Revue d'histoire des sciences, 22, 1969, pp. 97-116 (texte au pp. 99-102); repris dans P. Costabel, Démarches originales de Descartes savant, Paris, Vrin, 1982, pp. 122-126.

"Le document illustre la phase ultime du débat engagé en 1639 entre Stampioen et Waessenaer, celui-ci agissant pour le compte de Descartes. "(p. 97).

6. ———. 1641. Meditationes de prima Philosophia in qua Dei existentia et animae immortalitas demostrantur. Parisiis: Michaelem Soly.

AT VII : Epistola 1; Praefatio ad Lectorem 7; Synopsis sequentium sex Meditationum 12; Meditatio I-VI 17-90; Objectiones Primae 91; Responsio Authoris 101; Objectiones Secundae 121; Responsio 128; Rationes Dei existentia et animae a corpore distinctionem probantes, more geometrico dispositae 160; Objectiones Tertiae cum Responsionibus Authoris 171; Objectiones Quartae 196; Objectiones Quintae 256; Responsio 347; Disquisitio metaphysica Gassendus Sorberio 392; Objectiones Sextae 412; Responsio 422; Objectiones Septimae cum Notis Authoris 464; Epistola ad patrem Dinet 563-603.

B Op. I, 680-799; Objectiones cum Responsionibus, 800-1395.

Les VII Objectiones et l' Epistola ad patrem Dinet sont ajoutées dans la deuxième édition.

Date de composition : octobre 1639 - mars 1640.

Première édition : 28 août 1641.

Deuxième édition revue avec le titre : Meditationes de prima philosophia, in quibus Dei existentia, et animae humanae a corpore distinctio, demostrantur. Amstelodami: Ludovicum Elzevirium, 1642 (réimpression anastatique Lecce, Conte Editore, 1992).

Après le Traité de métaphysique de 1628-29 (qui n'a pas été conservé) et la Quatrième partie du Discours de la méthode c'est le premier texte publié par Descartes sur la métaphysique (La Recherche de la Vérité a été publié seulement en 1684).

La première mention de l'œuvre est dans la lettre à Mersenne du 13 novembre 1639 : "Les opinions de vos Analystes, (*) touchant l'existence de Dieu et l'honneur qu'on lui doit rendre, sont, comme vous écrivez, très difficiles à guérir ; non pas qu'il n'y ait moyen de donner des raisons assez fortes pour les convaincre, mais parce que ces gens-là, pensant avoir bon esprit, sont souvent moins capables de raison que les autres. Car la partie de l'esprit qui aide le plus aux mathématiques, à savoir l'imagination, nuit plus qu'elle ne sert pour les spéculations métaphysiques. J'ai maintenant entre les mains un discours, où je tâche d'éclaircir ce que j'ai écrit ci-devant sur ce sujet ; il ne sera que de cinq ou six feuilles d'impression; mais j'espère qu'il contiendra une bonne partie de la métaphysique. Et afin de le mieux faire, mon dessein est de n'en faire imprimer que vingt ou trente exemplaires, pour les envoyer aux vingt ou trente plus savants théologiens dont je pourrai avoir connaissance, afin d'en avoir leur jugement, et apprendre d'eux ce qui sera bon d'y changer, corriger ou ajouter, avant que de le rendre public." (AT II, 622; O VIII 1, 351-352; B 224).

(*) [Les géomètres de Paris]

La rédaction est terminée en mars 1640 : "Je ne ferai point imprimer mon essai de Métaphysique (14) que je ne sois à Leyde, où je pense aller dans cinq ou six semaines (15)" lettre à Mersenne, 11 mars 1640 (AT III, 35-36; O VIII 1, 367-368; B 246).

(14) Ls Meditationes seront imprimés à Paris en 1641, puis à Amsterdam en 1642.

(15) Descartes date de Leyde toute une série de lettres écrites entre le 7 mai 1640 et le 18 mars 1641.

En novembre 1640 le livre est envoyé à l'imprimeur: "Le peu que j'ai écrit de métaphysique est déjà en chemin pour aller à Paris (5), où je crois qu'on le fera imprimer, et il ne m'en est resté ici qu'un brouillon si plein de ratures, que j'aurais moi-même de la peine à le lire, ce qui est cause que je ne puis vous l'offrir ; mais sitôt qu'il sera imprimé, j'aurai soin de vous en envoyer des premiers, puisqu'il vous plaît me faire la faveur de le vouloir le lire, et je serai fort aise d'en apprendre votre jugement." Lettre à Colvius du 14 novembre 1640, AT III, 248; O VIII 2, 586; B 287).

(5) Voir à Mersenne, 11 novembre 1640 (AT III 238-239, [O VIII 1, 424] B 285) « [...] je vous envoie enfin mon écrit de Métaphysique... »

Descartes envoie une copie du manuscrit à Huygens et Mersenne :

- Constantin Huygens : "J'ai envoyé dès hier ma Métaphysique à Monsieur de Zuylichem pour vous l'adresser ; mais il ne l'enverra que dans huit jours, car je lui ai donné ce temps pour la voir. Je n'y ai point mis de titre, mais il me semble que le plus propre sera de mettre Renati Descartes Meditationes de prima Philosophia; car je ne traite point en particulier de Dieu et de l'âme, mais en général de toutes les premières choses qu'on peut connaître en philosophant. Vous verrez assez, par les lettres que j'y ai jointes, quel est mon dessein; et je n'en dirai ici autre chose, sinon que je crois qu'il n'y aura pas de mal, avant que de la faire imprimer, de stipuler avec le libraire qu'il nous en donne autant d'exemplaires que nous en aurons de besoin, et même qu'il les donne tout reliés ; car il n'y a pas plaisir d'acheter ses propres écrits, et je m'assure que le libraire pourra bien faire cela sans y perdre. Je n'aurai besoin ici que d'environ trente exemplaires ; pour Paris, c'est à vous de juger combien il nous en faudra." Lettre à Mersenne du 11 novembre 1640 (AT III, 235-236; O VIII 1, 424; B 283).

- Marin Mersenne : "Je vous envoie enfin mon écrit de Métaphysique, auquel je n'ai point mis de titre, afin de vous en faire le parrain, et vous laisser la puissance de le baptiser (2). Je crois qu'on le pourra nommer, ainsi que je vous ai écrit par ma précédente, Meditationes de prima Philosophia; car je n'y traite pas seulement de Dieu et de l'âme, mais en général de toutes les premières choses qu'on peut connaître en philosophant par ordre. Et mon nom est connu de tant de gens que, si je ne voulais pas le mettre ici, on croirait que j'y entendrais quelque finesse, et que je le ferais plutôt par vanité que par modestie (3).

Pour la lettre à Messieurs de Sorbonne (4), si j'ai manqué au titre, ou qu'il y faille quelque souscription, ou autre cérémonie, je vous prie d'y vouloir suppléer, et je crois qu'elle sera aussi bonne, étant écrite de la main d'un autre, que de la mienne. Je vous l'envoie séparée du traité, à cause que, si toutes choses vont comme elles doivent, il me semble que le meilleur serait, après que le tout aura été vu par le P. Gibieuf (5), et, s'il vous plaît, par un ou deux autres de vos amis, qu'on imprimât le traité sans la lettre, à cause que la copie en est trop mal écrite pour être lue de plusieurs, et qu'on le présentât ainsi imprimé au Corps de la Sorbonne, avec la lettre écrite à la main; en suite de quoi il me semble que le droit du jeu sera qu'ils commettent quelques-uns d'entre eux pour l'examiner (6) ; et il leur faudra donner autant d'exemplaires pour cela qu'ils en auront besoin, ou plutôt autant qu'ils sont de docteurs (7), et s'ils trouvent quelque chose à objecter, qu'ils me l'envoient, afin que j'y réponde ; ce qu'on pourra faire imprimer à la fin du livre. Et après cela il me semble qu'ils ne pourront refuser de donner leur jugement, lequel pourra être imprimé au commencement du livre, avec la lettre que je leur écris. Mais les choses iront peut-être tout autrement que je ne pense ; c'est pourquoi je m'en remets entièrement à vous et au P. Gibieuf, que je prie par ma lettre (8) de vouloir vous aider à ménager cette affaire : car la Vélitation que vous savez (9) m'a fait connaître que, quelque bon droit qu'on puisse avoir, on ne manque pas d'avoir toujours besoin d'amis pour le défendre. L'importance est en ceci que, puisque je soutiens la cause de Dieu, on ne saurait rejeter mes raisons, si ce n'est qu'on y montre du paralogisme, ce que je crois être impossible, ni les mépriser, si ce n'est qu'on en donne de meilleures, à quoi je pense qu'on aura assez de peine." Lettre du 11 novembre 1640 (AT III, 239-240; O VIII 1, 424-425; B 285).

(2) Voir à Mersenne, 18 mars 1641 (AT III 340, [O VIII 1, 457] B 305) : « vous en serez, s'il vous plaît, le parrain ».

(3) L'ouvrage, comme on sait, parut sous le titre Renati Descartes Meditationes de prima philosophia, in qua Dei existentia et animae immortalitas demonstratur.

(4) L'Epistola dedicatoria (AT VII 680-686) : en se tournant vers la faculté de théologie, Descartes montrait avoir renoncé à attendre un soutien de ses anciens maîtres jésuites.

(5) Clerselier Lettres : « Le P. G. », et ailleurs.

(6) Ce qui fut fait le 1er août 1641, avec la nomination de quatre docteurs (« commissaires »), Chastelain, Potier, Hallier et Cornet, « pour examiner la Métaphysique de Monsieur Descartes ». Il n'en est plus question par la suite, l'assemblée du 2 septembre se bornant à approuver les conclusions de l'assemblée précédente (l'achevé d'imprimer des Meditationes est du 28 août) ; voir J.-R. Armogathe, « L'approbation des Meditationes par la faculté de théologie de Paris 1641 », Bulletin cartésien XXI-XXII, p. 1-3, Archives de philosophie 57, 1, 1994.

(7) C’était la procédure habituelle, qu'on trouve par exemple appliquée au livre de Pierre Dabillon, De la divinité défendue contre les athées, Paris, 1642, approuvé quelques semaines plus tôt par la Faculté.

(8) À Gibieuf, 11 novembre 1640 (AT III, 238 l. 8-9, [O VIII 2, 792] B 284).

(9) Sur l'affaire des thèses du P. Bourdin, voir lettre 76, n. 2, p. 940 et dossier Jésuites, lettre 6, [O VIII 1, 582-591] B 261.

7. ———. 1641. Propositio demonstrata.

Première édition: Clerselier, III, 1667, 475-479.

AT III, 708-714 (CCXLIII bis); O III, 519-524.

La proposition démontrée est la suivante : "Étant donné une section conique quelconque et un point situé comme on veut hors de son plan, on cherche un cercle qui soit une base du cône que décrit une droite tournant, à partir du point donné comme sommet, autour de la section conique donnée; car il n'est pas douteux que la surface ainsi décrite ne soit conique, et une fois qu'on a trouvé le cercle qui est une base, cela peut se démontrer facilement."

"Entre avril et septembre 1641, Descartes rédigea (ou fit rédiger) en latin une solution à un vieux problème géométrique qui aurait été reproposé à la communauté mathématique par Desargues. Mydorge et Roberval sont censés avoir donné également chacun la leur (dont on ne sait rien aujourd’hui).

Notre Annexe X montre que Fermat s’est aussi intéressé à la question.

Le texte de cette Propositio a été publié pour la première fois, sous le titre indiqué plus haut, par Claude Clerselier en 1667 dans le volume III de la Correspondance de Descartes, pages 475-479 (en annexe à la lettre LXXXIII du 12 octobre 1648. Le manuscrit semble perdu, et nul ne sait si, par exemple, les six figures qui y sont insérées sont plus ou moins de la main de Descartes, ou fortement interprétées - et dégradés - par son éditeur.

(...)

Une nouvelle traduction française de ce texte figure dans l’Annexe I. "

André Warusfel, L’œuvre mathématique de Descartes dans La Géométrie: de la résolution des équations algébriques à la naissance de la géométrie analytique, thèse de doctorat, 2010, disponible en ligne à l'adresse: philosophie.ac-creteil.fr/IMG/pdf/Geometrie.pdf (pp. 576-577, notes omises).

8. ———. 1642. Meditationes De Prima Philosophia, In quibus Dei existentia, et animae humanae à corpore distinctio, demonstrantur. Amstelodami: Ludovicum Elzevirium.

AT VII : deuxième édition de l'œuvre publiée en 1641.

"De quelle façon maintenant convient-il d’utiliser les éditions anciennes, soit pour le contenu du présent volume, soit pour l’établissement du texte ?

Pour le contenu, la seconde édition, celle de 1642, doit évidemment faire loi. La première édition, en effet, est incomplète : il y manque les septièmes Objections, qui n’avaient pas été envoyées à temps pour y figurer, et qui d’ailleurs ont été faites, non pas, comme les autres, sur une copie manuscrite adressée avant toute impression par Mersenne aux théologiens ou philosophes dont il provoquait les critiques, mais sur le volume imprimé dès le 28 août 1641, et que le P. Bourdin, auteur des septièmes Objections, étudia de lui-même à seule fin de le critiquer. Descartes ayant joint, en outre, à ces septièmes Objections, accrues de ses propres Notes, la Lettre qu’il écrivit ensuite au P. Dinet, nous ne les séparerons pas non plus dans le présent volume." (AT VII, Avertissement à l'édition de 1983, p. XI).

"La différence la plus notable entre la première et la deuxième édition "est un assez long passage qui termine les Réponses de Descartes aux quatrièmes Objections d’Antoine Arnauld : ce passage très important sur l’Eucharistie, envoyé d’abord en 1640 à Mersenne, n’avait point paru dans la première édition, en 1641, sans doute afin d’obtenir plus aisément l’approbation de la Sorbonne ; il fut rétabli naturellement dans l’édition de 1642 (voir ci-après, p. 252, l. 22, à p. 256, l. 8)." (AT VII, Avertissement à l'édition de 1983, p. XIII).

9. ———. 1642. [Epistola] Ad Reverendo Patri Dinet. Amstelodami: Ludovicum Elzevirium.

AT VII, 563-603; B Op. I 1426-1475.

Traduction française par Claude Clerselier dans la deuxième édition des Méditations Métaphysiques (1661).

Nouvelle traduction par Theo Verbeek dans : René Descartes et Martin Schoock, La Querelle d'Utrecht, Paris: Les impressions nouvelles, 1988, pp. 131-151.

Table des matières : Jean-Luc Marion : Préface 7; Theo Verbeek: Introduction 19; Narration Historique de la manière dont la philosophie nouvelle a été soutenue d'abord, puis abolie, précédée du Témoignage de l'Académie d'Utrecht 71; René Descartes : Lettre à Dinet 125; Martin Schoock : L'Admirable Méthode 153; René Descartes : Lettre à Voet 321; René Descartes : Lettre Apologétique aux Magistrats d'Utrecht 401; Theo Verbeek : Notes 439-540.

Sur l'histoire de la Querelle, voit l'Introduction de Theo Verbeek, pp. 19-66.

Theo Verbeek a traduit en français les pièces principales de la controverse entre Descartes et Gijsbert Voet (1589-1676) dans La Querelle d'Utrecht, cit. :

"...d'abord la Lettre au Père Dinet, qui, publiée en appendice à la seconde édition des Meditationes (1642) déclenche, en mentionnant les attaques de G. Voet contre Regius et Descartes, un conflit ouvert ; ensuite la réplique de Schoock, suscitée par G. Voet, sous le titre de La Méthode Admirable de la nouvelle philosophie cartésienne (1643) qui attire, en retour, la Lettre à G. Voet où, pour la première fois (mai 1643), Descartes accepte le combat direct ; la réponse prendra l'aspect d'une Narration historique (octobre 1643), suivant de peu un arrêt pris par les magistrats d'Utrecht contre Descartes (13 septembre 1643), précédant aussi de peu une intervention en faveur de Descartes de M. de la Thuillière, Ambassadeur de France. La querelle fut cependant assez vive pour que Descartes adresse encore, un an et demi plus tard, une Lettre apologétique aux Magistrats d'Utrecht (juin 1645) et tienne à la publier en mars 1648. L’importance du dossier se marque au nombre des pièces qui le composent (et de nombreuses lettres pourraient s’y adjoindre), mais aussi au temps que lui consacre Descartes — pourtant si soucieux de son loisir et de son repos : pendant près de six ans, tout son temps de travail (et il s'agit des Principia puis des Passions de l'âme) sera conquis sur la distraction et l'inquiétude d’une polémique de plus en plus âcre et dangereuse. Il paraît donc impossible, au simple vu de ces titres et de ces dates, de sous-estimer, encore plus d'ignorer, un épisode aussi important et importun de la vie de Descartes. Le travail de Theo Verbeek se justifie donc entièrement, ne fût-ce que d’un point de vue historique ; il contribuera, comme un document indispensable, à la connaissance du premier cartésianisme hollandais."

(Jean-Luc Marion, Préface à La Querelle d'Utrecht, p. 8).

"Les Jésuites semblaient être un peu plus partagés que les pères de l’Oratoire sur la philosophie de M. Descartes ; et la diversité des opinions était grande dans leur Compagnie sur ses Méditations métaphysiques. Les uns se contentaient de goûter ses principes et ses raisonnements, ou de louer ses bonnes intentions et ses efforts, sans aller au-delà, comme le P. Noël, le P. Fournier, le P. J. François, le P. Grandamy, le P. Dinet, qui était provincial de France à Paris, le P. Charles son parent, qui était assistant du général de la Compagnie de Rome. Le P. Dinet qui avait été autrefois son préfet à La Flèche, ayant fait un voyage à Rome sur la fin de la même année [1642], ne manqua point d’entretenir le P. Charlet du livre de ses Méditations; et il voulut donner avis au philosophe de tout ce qui s’était dit de plus obligeant entre eux à son sujet, par une lettre qu’il lui en écrivit de Rome vers le commencement de l'avent. M. Descartes crut devoir faire part de la joie qu'il en reçut au P. Mersenne dans le même temps des étrennes de l’année suivante. Il lui marqua aux termes du P. Dinet l’estime que le P. Charlet faisait de ses études, et qu’il avait pour sa personne ; croyant que ce père n'attendait à se déclarer ouvertement pour sa philosophie qu'après la publication de ses Principes."

Baillet II, chapitre VIII, 159-160.

"De plus, je ne voudrais pas qu'on me croie sur parole lorsque je parle de la vérité des écrits que je promets, mais qu'on en juge par les Essais que j'ai déjà donnés. Car loin d'y avoir expliqué une ou deux questions, j'en ai discuté des centaines qui auparavant n'avaient pas été traitées de la sorte. Et quoique beaucoup de personnes aient lu mes écrits d'un œil jaloux et aient fait de leur mieux pour les réfuter, personne, autant que je sache, n'a été à même d’y trouver autre chose que de la vérité. Qu'on fasse la liste de toutes les questions qui, depuis tant de siècles où il y a des philosophies, ont été résolues par leur moyen : on n'en trouvera probablement ni beaucoup, ni de très importantes. J'ose même prétendre qu'il n'y a jamais eu de question dont je ne pourrais montrer que la solution qu'on en a donnée à partir des principes propres à la philosophie péripatéticienne est fausse et mal fondée. Qu'on en fasse l'épreuve : qu'on les propose, non pas toutes il est vrai, car je ne crois pas qu'elles vaillent la peine d'y employer beaucoup de temps, mais quelques-unes des plus spéciales. On verra que je tiendrai mes promesses (42). Ma seule restriction, que je fais pour prévenir tout sujet de chicane, est que si je dis "principes propres à la philosophie péripatéticienne", je ne veux pas parler de ces questions dont la solution est tirée soit de l’expérience commune de tous les hommes, soit de la considération des figures et du mouvement qui est le fait des mathématiciens, soit enfin de ces notions métaphysiques qui sont généralement reçues et que j'admets comme les autres : on les trouvera dans mes Méditations.

Qu'on me permette encore ce qui paraîtra un paradoxe : en tant que cette philosophie est jugée péripatéticienne, et différente des autres, elle ne contient rien qui ne soit pas nouveau ; et la mienne rien qui ne soit pas ancien. Car en ce qui concerne les principes, je n'admets que ceux qui, jusqu'ici, ont été partagés par tous les philosophes et qui de ce fait sont les plus anciens de tous. Et en ce qui concerne ce que j'en déduis par après, je ne fais que montrer ce que contenaient ceux-là d'une façon implicite, mais cela d'une façon tellement claire qu'on voit que cela aussi, se trouvant naturellement dans l'esprit des hommes, est en réalité très ancien. D'autre part, les principes de la philosophie ordinaire étaient de toute façon nouveaux à l'époque où ils furent inventés par Aristote ou par d'autres. Ils ne sont pas maintenant meilleurs qu'ils n'étaient jadis. On n'en déduit rien qui ne soit pas controversé, et qui ne puisse être changé ou adapté à la façon d'une École ou au gré du premier philosophe venu. Par conséquent il n'y a rien qui soit plus nouveau, puisqu'on la renouvelle tous les jours (43)." (Lettre à Dinet, traduction de Theo Verbeek, La Querelle d'Utrecht, cit., p. 140, AT VII, 580).

(42) Voir le commentaire de Schoock, Admiranda Methodus, section II chap. 4.

(43) Voir pour tout ce passage, d’une part ce que dit Descartes dans son Discours (VI, AT VI, 77 ; [O III, 132-133]), d'autre part le commentaire mordant de Schoock dans l'Admiranda Methodus, section Π, chap. I. C'est à partir d'une notion pareille que certains cartésiens amorceront la "philosophia novantiqua", synthèse originale d'aristotélisme et de cartésianisme ; voir A. Heereboord, Meletemata Philosophica (Lugd. Bat., 1654) ; Philosophia Naturalis cum commentariis Peripateticis (Lugd. Bat., 1663) ; J. de Raei, Clavis Philosophiae Naturalis Aristotelico-Cartesianae (Lugd. Bat., 1654) ; De Sapientia Veterum (Amstel., 1669) ; et en général J. Bohatec, Die Cartesianische Scholastik in der Philosophie und reformierten Dogmatik des 17. Jahrhunderts, Leipzig, 1912.

10. ———. 1642. Excerpta P. Kircher, De magnete.

AT XI, 635-639; B Op. II 1386-1389.

Annotations à l'œuvre d'Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) De magnete sive de arte magnetica Romae: L. Grigarani, 1641.

Lettre du 5 janvier 1643 à Constantin Huygens : "... j'espère qu'elle ne retardera point l'impression de ma Philosophie, en laquelle j'approche de l'endroit où je dois traiter de l'aimant (8). Si vous jugez que le gros livre que vous avez de cette matière, duquel je ne sais point le nom (9), m'y puisse servir, et qu'il vous plaise de me l'envoyer, je vous en aurai obligation" (AT III 801; O VIII 2, 107; B379)

(8) Il s'agit des §§ 133-183 des Prìncipia IVa (AT VIII-1 275-311).

(9) Le Magnes d'Athanase Kircher (Rome, 1641, 916 p. in-4° ; Cologne, 1643, 797 p. in-4°); Huygens l’envoie à Descartes avec sa réponse du 7 janvier 1643 et un commentaire acerbe contre les jésuites : « Voici d'ailleurs l'Aimant de Kircherus, où vous trouverez plus de grimace que de bonne étoffe, qui est l’ordinaire des jésuites. Ces écrivasseurs pourtant vous peuvent servir en des choses quœ facti sunt, non jurìs [qui sont d’ordre du fait et non du droit]. Ils ont plus de loisir que vous à se pourvoir d’expériences : on se peut prévaloir au besoin de leurs rapports » (AT III 802, B380).

11. ———. 1643. Epistola Renati Des-Cartes Ad celeberrimum Virum D. Gisbertum Voetium. Amstelodami: Ludovicum Elzevirium.

La première édition est suivie de la traduction néerlandaise : Brief van Rene Des Cartes aen den vermaerden D. Gisbertus Voetius, Amsterdam 1643.

AT VIII-2, 1-194; B Op. I 1493-1691.

Traduction de Victor Cousin dans son édition des Œuvres de Descartes, vol. XI, Paris: Levrault, 1825, pp. 3-198 ; cette traduction a été reprise par Theo Verbeek dans La Querelle d'Utrecht, Paris: Les impressions nouvelles, 1988, pp. 327-399, avec l'omission de la sixième partie.

"C'est ainsi que, croyant écrire une lettre, l'abondance de la matière a produit un livre. Je l'ai divisé en neuf parties, afin que chacune pût se lire à part, et peut-être avec moins d'ennui.

Dans la première, je réponds à l'introduction du livre sur la Philosophie Cartésienne [1], dans laquelle l'auteur a voulu faire l'énumération sommaire de mes vices.

Dans la seconde, je récompense M. Voet en racontant quelques-unes de ses actions qui m'ont d'abord fait connaître ses vertus.

Dans la troisième, je parcours le premier et le second chapitre du même livre sur la Philosophie Cartésienne.

Dans la quatrième, j'expose mon sentiment sur l'usage des livres et la doctrine de Voet.

Dans la cinquième, je traite brièvement des autres chapitres de ce livre, c'est-à-dire du reste des deux premières sections.

Dans la sixième, j'examine le livre de la Confrérie de la Vierge.

Dans la septième, je considère les mérites de M. Voet, et l'exemple de charité chrétienne et de probité qu'il a donné dans cet ouvrage.

Dans la huitième, je reviens au livre sur la Philosophie Cartésienne, et j’en réfute la préface (que je n'avais pas encore vue) et la troisième section.

Dans la neuvième, je réponds à la quatrième et dernière section du même livre, et je montre en même temps que ses auteurs sont coupables de la calomnie la plus odieuse et la plus inexcusable."

(AT VIII-2, 11-12; La Querelle d'Utrecht, cit., p. 330).

[1] Martin Schoock (1614-1669, élève de Voetius), Admiranda Methodus Novae Philosophiae Renati De Cartes, Ultrajecti [Utrecht] : ex officina Joannis van Waesberge, 1643 (traduction française par Theo Verbeek, dans La Querelle d'Utrecht. cit., pp. 157-320).

"Il paraît d'abord incontestable que, dans ses trois textes polémiques, Descartes retrouve et parfois développe certaines des thèses caractéristiques de sa philosophie.

1. Il invoque, contre Voet, la bona mens (AT VIII-1, 45, ll. 12-13), pour la mettre en équivalence avec l'humana sapientia (43, ll. 15-17), sur le modèle de la Regula I (AT X, 359, l. 6 - 360, l. 15).

2. Cette bona mens définit à son tour le domaine de la lumière naturelle, où la théologie révélée ne peut intervenir (AT VII, 598, ll. 5-11), conformément à une distinction déjà fixée par la Regula III (AT X, 370, ll. 16-25) et le Discours de la Méthode (AT VI, 28, l. 16 [O III, 100]) : ce départ entre les deux lumières, naturelle (raison) et révélée (foi, volonté), devient d’ailleurs aussitôt un argument contre ceux qui prétendent censurer des thèses philosophiques au nom de l'autorité religieuse ; car Voet passe d’une facultas (théologie) à une autre (médecine ou philosophie) par une faute de méthode, avant tout abus de pouvoir : "... censuram tuam theologicam absque ullo rationis praetextu ad quaestiones pure philosophicas extendere volueris..." (*) (VIII-2, 132, ll. 17-19). La ratio naturalis (51, l. 31) régente absolument le domaine qu'elle suffit à définir (3). Ainsi, face au décret de l'Université qui impose aux professeurs en débat théorique d'être "...contentos modica libertate disserendi in singularibus nonnullis opinionibus...” (AT VII, 593, ll. 11-12), de se contenter d'une liberté restreinte de discussion sur plus d'une opinion, il faut revendiquer sans concession la liberté philosophique, absolue dans les limites de la raison : "... liberum enim semper fuit philosophari." (AT VIII-2, 3, ll. 11-12).

3. Par suite, Descartes mentionne aussi ici sa Methodus ad quaerendam veritatem (53, 4-5), dans les termes mêmes de la Regula IV, qu'il oppose, comme le faisaient les Regulae III et X, à la logique de l’Ecole : la bona mens ne peut s’exprimer en syllogismes (43, 17 sq.), sauf à sombrer dans la Sophistarum Dialectica (46, 16), "...puerilis illa Dialectica, cujus ope olim Sophistae, nulla scientiam habentes, de qualibet re copiose disserebant ac disputant’’** (50,19-22). Et, conformément à la Regula IV, la méthode ne disqualifie les figures du syllogisme que parce qu’elle utilise, comme autant de modèles de la vérité, les figures mathématiques (AT VII, 596, 19). Aucune "magie" (ibid.) ne peut lui être honnêtement opposée, puisque c’est elle qui élimine la magie des formes substantielles (4). Il convient aussi de noter d’autres thèses, directement liées aux Meditationes, dont elles offrent un commentaire indispensable. Ainsi la réponse à G. Voet nous donne-t-elle successivement une nouvelle définition de l’innéisme comme ce que "...ex proprii ingenii viribus cognoscere possimus" (AT VIII-1, 166, 24-25, et 166, 15-167, 14), une remarquable définition de ens "...ab essendo sive existendo...” (60, 13), une très éclairante distinction entre le verus Deus et l'aliquis deceptor summe potens de la Meditatio I (60, 16-26) (5). Enfin la cause habituelle de l'erreur trouve, dans le même texte, une détermination temporelle, qui anticipe sur la question de la liberté d’indifférence : "Si vero loquimini de diversis temporibus, quia ille qui nunc habet veram fidem, vel evidentem alicujus rei naturalis scientiam, potest alio tempore illam non habere : hoc inferi tantum infirmitatem humanae naturae, quae semper iisdem cogitationibus non immoratur, non autem quod in ipsa scientia ullum dubium debeat esse" (AT VIII-1, 170, 8-14)***. Quelques mois plus tard, nous retrouvons en effet cet argument, d'abord dans la discussion avec le P. Mesland — " la nature de l'âme est de n'être quasi qu'un moment attentive à la même chose"—, puis dans l'entretien avec la princesse Elisabeth : "... nous ne pouvons être continuellement attentifs à la même chose, quelque claires et évidentes qu'aient été les raisons qui nous ont persuadé ci-devant quelques vérités..." (6) ; ce thème, qui provient certes de la Meditatio V (AT VII, 69, 18-20), trouve donc dans la polémique avec Voet un relais sur le chemin de son ultime développement. Ainsi, ces écrits de circonstances appartiennent-ils pourtant indiscutablement à l’œuvre théorique de Descartes : ils en mobilisent explicitement maints thèmes récurrents, qu'ils amplifient et qui, en retour, les confirment (7)." (Jean-Luc Marion, Préface à La Querelle d'Utrecht, cit., pp. 9-10)

(*) "...comment vous avez voulu étendre, sans l'ombre d'une raison, votre censure théologique à des questions purement philosophiques... "

(**) "cette Dialectique puérile à l'aide de laquelle les anciens Sophistes, sans posséder aucune instruction solide, dissertaient et disputaient avec une admirable faconde sur n'importe quel sujet"

(***) "Si vous voulez parler d'instants différents, entendez-vous que celui qui a, maintenant, une foi véritable ou une connaissance évidente de quelque objet naturel pourrait ne pas l'avoir à un autre moment."

(3) G. Voet ne cesse, au contraire, de passer illégitimement d’un domaine à l'autre (AT VIII-1, 32,12-13 ; 33,12-18 ; 75,4-9; 88, 8-12 ; 132,15-20 ; 133,17-22 ; 242,18-243,14). Lorsque Descartes lui reproche d’usurper le rôle d'un prophète - "Sic ergo edam Voetius inter Prophetas" (103,27) -, il reprend en fait la mise en garde du Discours de la Méthode à propos de la théologie, pour laquelle "...il est besoin d'avoir quelque extraordinaire assistance du ciel, et d'être plus qu'homme.“ (D.M., AT VI, 8, 16-17 [O III, 86]), et dont il faut s'abstenir "...nisi quatenus modo extraordinario et supernaturali a Deo impellebantur" (AT VIII-1, 124, 13-14). Mais "...omnes homines sumus" (VIII-1, 91, 28), "...des hommes purement hommes..." (D.M., AT VI, 3, 21-22 [O III, 82]).

(4) Les formes substantielles sont discutées, durant la querelle d'Utrecht, en AT VII, 587, 6 sq., et AT VIII-1, 32, 10 ; 26,13 ; et 62, 18.

(5) Il faut insister sur l'importance de cette remarque pour l'interprétation des définitions successives de Dieu dans les Meditationes (voir notre analyse dans Sur le prisme métaphysique de Descartes, Paris, 1986, § 16, p. 223 sq.).

(6) Voir successivement Á Mesland, 2 mai 1644, AT IV, 116, 6-8 [O VIII 1, 612; B 454], et Á Élisabeth, 15 septembre 1645, AT IV 295, 24-28 [O VIII 2, 228; B 521].

(7) On relèvera aussi l'étonnante validation du cogito dans l'hypothèse où l'on conclurait seulement à sibi videri existere (AT VIII-1, 165, 11 - 166, 6).

12. ———. 1644. Specimina philosophiae: seu Dissertatio de methodo rectè regendae rationis et veritatis in scientiis investigandae: Dioptrice, et Meteora. Amstelodami: Ludovicum Elzeverium.

"Ex Gallico translata, et ab Auctore perlecta, variisque in locis emendata."

AT VI, 517-720.

Édition critique avec une introduction en anglais par Corinna Lucia Vermeulen, René Descartes, Specimina philosophiae. Introduction and Critical Edition, Utrecht, "Quaestiones Infinitae", volume 53, (2007).

"La présente édition critique remplace la seconde partie du volume VI de l’édition d’Adam et Tannery, très insuffisante et manifestement constituée avec peu de soin : C. Vermeulen y a distingué plus d’une centaine d’erreurs (cf. p. 73)." Kavier Kieft, Bulletin cartésien XXXVIII (2009), Archives de philosophie, 2010/1 (Tome 73), p. 33.

"Ces essais, que j’ai moi-même écrits en français [...] ont été, quelque temps après, traduits en latin par un de mes amis ; la version m’a été transmise afin que je puisse changer, à discrétion, tout ce qui ne me plaisait pas [...] ce que j’ai fait en plus d’un endroit ; mais, peut-être, en ai-je laissé passer beaucoup d’autres ; et ces derniers seront facilement reconnaissables, par rapport aux autres, parce que, presque partout, le traducteur fidèle s’est efforcé de faire du mot à mot, tandis que j’ai souvent changé le sens des phrases, et j’ai cherché à corriger non pas ses mots, mais mon sens." (Note de Descartes après l'Index, traduction par Giulia Belgioioso).

"Le sieur Elzevier voyant avancer son impression des Principes de M. Descartes vers la fin fit solliciter l’auteur de lui permettre d'imprimer en même temps la traduction latine de ses Essais, après laquelle les étrangers qui n'avaient point l'usage de la langue française aspiraient depuis la première édition de ces Essais. Cette traduction avait été faite depuis peu de mois par M. [Étienne] de Courcelles, l'ancien ministre et théologien français, retiré en Hollande comme M. Rivet, M. Desmarets, M. Blondel, M. de Saumaise, et plusieurs autres savants calvinistes de France. M. de Courcelles avait embrassé le parti des arminiens, et avait même donné lieu à quelques zélés gomaristes de le soupçonner de socinianisme. Il était originaire d’Amiens en Picardie, mais il était né à Genève le 2 de mai 1586. Après avoir été quelque temps ministre des réformés en France, il avait passé en Hollande, et avait succédé à Simon Episcopius dans la chaire en théologie des remontrants à Amsterdam, où il eut Arnaud de Poelenbourg pour successeur, | et après lui Philippe de Limborch. Il mourut à Amsterdam le 22 de mai de l'an 1659."

(...)

"Il mit en latin le Discours de la méthode, la Dioptrique, et le traité des Météores. Mais il ne toucha point à la Géométrie, soit qu’il la jugeât au-dessus de sa portée, soit qu’il eût avis que M. Schooten se fût chargé de la traduire.

M. Descartes, ayant donné son consentement pour l’impression de la traduction des trois traités, fut prié de la revoir auparavant, pour juger de sa conformité avec son original. Il ne refusa point d’user de son droit d’auteur, et se servit de cette occasion pour y faire quelques changements, comme nous avons remarqué qu’il fît à ses Méditations sur la traduction française de M. le duc de Luynes. Ce fut donc sur ses propres pensées qu’il fit des corrections, plutôt que sur les paroles du traducteur latin, à qui il rendit le témoignage d’avoir été fidèle et scrupuleux, jusqu’à s’efforcer de rendre le sens de l’auteur mot pour mot. Ce témoignage de M. Descartes en faveur de M. de Courcelles se trouvant à la tête de la traduction latine a dû satisfaire toutes les personnes raisonnables, qui auraient été en peine de savoir la raison des différences qui se trouvent entre le français et le latin; et il peut servir à condamner la mauvaise foi du sieur Jacques de Rèves, dit Revius, (*) qui à prétendu faire un crime d'infidélité à M. de Courcelles de tous ces changements, et qui a fait injure à M. Descartes en soutenant que tous ces endroits n'exprimaient point sa pensée." (Baillet II, chapitre XIV, 213-215.)

(*) [Jakob Reefsen (1586 - 1658). Voir l'édition moderne de son œuvre éditée par Aza Goudriaan: Jacobus Revius, A Theological Examination of Cartesian Philosophy. Early Criticisms (1647), Leyden, Brill 2002.]

"Le caractère propre du Discours de la méthode peut se rechercher aussi dans une deuxième direction : les conditions de sa réception. En effet le " projet ” implique, en 1637, l'ambition d’une réception, d'autant plus qu’il s'agit d'une très large réception pour laquelle Descartes renonce au latin et se confie au français : « Et si j'écris en français, qui est la langue de mon pays, plutôt qu'en latin, qui est celle de mes précepteurs, c'est à cause que j’espère que ceux qui ne se servent que de leur raison naturelle toute pure, jugeront mieux de mes opinions, que ceux qui ne croient qu'aux livres anciens » (Discours de la Méthode, [AT VI] 77, 24-30 [O III, 97]).

(...)

Lors de sa première parution, rien ne laisse supposer que l'usage du français en ait accru la diffusion, bien au contraire. Ainsi, selon A. Baillet, c'est son éditeur lui-même qui suscita, en 1644, une traduction latine du Discours et des Essais (amputés de la Géométrie), les fameux Specimina.

(...)

On ne saurait mieux avouer que le vrai public scientifique - " les étrangers " -, que l'éditeur, mieux peut-être que l’auteur, connaît et devine, n'avait pas encore lu le Discours et les thèses avant 1644. Bref, s'il fallait encore «... traduire les Essais de sa philosophie en une langue qui put contribuer à rendre toute la terre cartésienne », c’est que, justement, le texte français n’avait pas encore suffi à rendre toute cette terre cartésienne. Cet aveu en demi-teinte trouve une indiscutable confirmation dans le nombre comparé des différentes éditions ; alors qu'entre 1637 et la fin du siècle, le Discours et les Essais ne comptent, en français, que cinq éditions ( Leyde 1637 ; Paris 1657, 1658, 1668 deux fois ), les Specimina, à partir de 1644, en connaissent dix (Amsterdam 1644, 1650, 1656 deux fois, 1664, 1672, 1685, 1692 et Francfort s/M. 1692) ; ainsi les Specimina ne font que retrouver l'étiage habituel des autres latins de Descartes : les Meditationes reçoivent quatorze éditions jusqu'en 1709 ( tandis que leur traduction française n’en offre que quatre ) (2). La publication du Discours remonte certes à 1637, mais l'on peut soutenir l’hypothèse que sa lecture et sa réception ne commencent vraiment qu'en 1644, avec les Specimina Philosophiae seu Dissertatio de Methodo Recte regendae rationis et veritatis in scientiis investigandae ; Dioptrice et Meteora. Ex Gallico translata et ab Auctore perlecta, variisque in locis emendata.

Cette double publication, et donc le retard qu'elle impose à la réception du Discours de la méthode et des Essais, produit plusieurs paradoxes qui ouvrent autant de questions à la recherche. - Les Specimina n'offrent pas seulement une simple traduction latine d'un texte français de référence : ils se donnent comme une édition révisée par l'auteur et par lui ?) corrigée, ab Auctore perlecta, variisque in locis emendata. Sans surévaluer la portée de cette indication, que son éditeur a parfaitement pu introduire sans l'avis ou la collaboration de Descartes, il faut relever certaines modifications et ajouts que l'on peut, raisonnablement, attribuer à l'auteur ; ne serait-ce, par exemple, que la célèbre définition marginale de l'idée comme «... omni re cogitata, quatenus habet tantum esse quoddam objectivum in intellecto » [AT VI, 559]. L'étude systématique des variantes entre le texte français et sa version en latin n'a été, jusqu'ici, qu’esquissée ( en particulier par E. Gilson ) ; elle seule déterminera quel texte a effectivement été lu par le public philosophique." (Jean-Luc Marion, Ouverture, dans: Henry Méchoulan (éd.), Problématique et réception du Discours de la méthode et des Essais, Paris: Vrin 1988, pp. 18-20)

(2) Nous suivons ici les indications fournies par A. J. Guibert, Descartes. Bibliographie des œuvres de Descartes publiées au XVIIème siècle, Paris, C.N.R.S., 1976. Sur ces questions, on tiendra compte des remarques de P. Costabel, ” Propos de bibliographie matérielle. Editions et émissions des œuvres de Descartes de 1657 à 1673 ", in Bulletin Cartésien V, Archives de Philosophie, 1976, p. 445-456.

13. ———. 1644. Cartesius (Ms. de Leibniz).

Bibliothèque Royale de Hanovre. MS. de Leibniz. Catalogué par Eduard Bodemann, p. 54 de son ouvrage cité p. 549 ci-avant (*), note a avec l'indication : « Bl. 19-22, ohne Uebersch., fehlerhafte, z. Th. von L. corrig. Abschr. ».

(*) [Die Leibniz-Handschriften der Kôniglichen ôffentlichen Bibliothek zu Hannover, von Dr. Eduard Bodemann (Hannover und Leipzig, 1895)]

AT XI, 647-653; B Op. II, 1394-1405.

Édition critique par Vincent Carraud: "Cartesius", Bulletin Cartésien XV, Archives de Philosophie, 1985, 3, pp.1-6; "Cartesius, ou les pilleries de Mr. Descartes" présentation, traduction et annotation par Vincent Carraud, Philosophie, mai 1985, pp. 3-19.

Cette copie MS. remplit deux grandes feuilles, dont chacune est pliée en deux : soit en tout quatre feuillets, ou huit pages d'écriture. Elle comprend deux parties bien distinctes, dont la seconde seule porte un titre : Annotationes quas videtur D. des Cartes in sua Principia Philosophiae scripsisse. Cette seconde partie commence au tiers environ de la 6e page, et continue jusqu'à la fin de la 8e. Tout ce qui précède, pp. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 et 6 (premier tiers de celle-ci), se compose de pensées ou réflexions détachées, dont chacune est séparée de la suivante par un signe : deux petits traits horizontaux, barrés de deux petits traits verticaux. (Le même signe sépare encore la seconde partie de la première.) Cette première partie porte seulement en tête le nom, écrit après coup et au crayon, de Cartesius. Les huit pages sont de la même écriture, qui n'est plus celle de Leibniz ; mais celui-ci a fait, de sa main, quelques corrections à des endroits fautifs. Le fait qu'il ait corrigé lui-même ce texte, montre qu'il y attachait une certaine importance, et qu'il le croyait sans doute de Descartes.

Est-ce bien cependant un texte authentique de notre philosophe ? Nous n'oserions l'assurer. Toutefois, dans la première partie, la date d'une observation astronomique, 20 sept. 1642 (p. 65o), serait un argument favorable, et de même quelques renvois aux Principes, dans la seconde partie. (Voir ci-avant, p. 545.)" (AT XI, p. 647).

"Cette série de notes, découverte tardivement, constitue une énigme pour les chercheurs. Geneviève Rodis-Lewis a plaidé énergiquement en faveur de son authenticité (166), verdict que Pierre Costabel confirme sans hésitation (167), alors que Vincent Carraud y voit un assemblage éclectique et semble incliner à croire à une série de notes de lecture que Descartes aurait prise sur d’autres auteurs (168), plutôt que vers un ensemble de pensées appartenant au corpus philosophique cartésien." (Vlad Alexandrescu, Croisées de la Modernité. Hypostases de l’esprit et de l’individu au XVIIe siècle, Bucarest: Zeta Books 2012, p. 110)

(166) G. Rodis-Lewis, « Cartesius », Revue philosophique, 2, 1971, p. 211-220.

(167) P. Costabel, Recension sur l’article de G. Rodis-Lewis cité ci-dessus, 1973, p. 444-446.

(168) V. Carraud, « Cartesius ou les pilleries de Mr Descartes », Philosophie, 6, mai 1985, p. 3-19.

"Avant d’aborder les points les plus originaux de ces pages, il convient donc de se demander quelle pourrait être leur provenance.

Le caractère fragmentaire des pensées, leur insertion parmi certaines observations scientifiques répondent bien au nom de miscellanea qu’emploie Leibniz, pour évoquer les registres que Clerselier lui a communiqués, ainsi qu’à « Mons. de Tschirnaus » (5). Or Tschirnhaus est l’auteur de cette copie Cartesius, revue et corrigée de la main de Leibniz (6). Leibniz parle de « deux volumes de miscellanea, reliés l’un en in-4°, l’autre en in-8°, où il y a beaucoup de choses physiques, des expériences et observations anatomiques de Mons. des Cartes, quelques expériences sur les métaux, et en fait de médecine (... lacune ). Je m’étonne pourtant, ajoutait-il, qu’il n’y a rien davantage de cette nature » (7). Les indications de Leibniz correspondent parfaitement à la description du « registre en petit

quarto », coté E dans l’ « Inventaire succinct des Ecrits qui se sont trouvés dans les coffres de Monsr. Descartes après son décès à Stockholm en feb. 1650 » (8) : tableau des angles de réfraction selon Vitellio, poids des métaux, remarques sur l’aimant, et plusieurs séries de feuillets sur la génération des animaux, les « remèdes et vertus des médicaments », et « prenant ledit registre de l 'autre côté, il y a seize pages d observations sur la nature des plantes et des animaux »." pp. 213-214 (Geneviève Rodis-Lewis, "Cartesius", Revue philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger, 2, 1971, pp. 211-220)

(5) AT X, 208-209, écrit de la main de Leibniz, Bibliothèque de Hanovre, Tschirnhaus, n° 159.

(6) Bibliothèque de Hanovre, manuscrit IV, vol. I, 4 k Bl. 19-22 : « Ce manuscrit est sans doute de la main de Tschirnhaus » (P. Costabel, Appendice à la réédition du t. XI d'Adam-Tannery, p. 730 ; le P. Costabel nous a communiqué la photocopie de ce manuscrit, et nous a confirmé l'intérêt scientifique de plusieurs de ces notes).

(7) AT X, 208-209.

(8) AT X, 5-12, et 8-9 pour le registre E.

"Une note du registre Cartesius (AT XI 650/BC XIV, Liminaire 1) relate une expérience d’observation d’étoile fixe en date de septembre 1642." Sur cette note voir: Édouard Mehl, "Note complémentaire sur une observation astronomique et la recherche d'une parallaxe stellaire (septembre 1642)", dans Bulletin cartésien XLV (2014), Archives de philosophie, 2016/1 (Tome 79), pp. 189-193.

14. ———. 1644. Principia philosophiae.

AT VIII-1, 1-329; la première édition est précédée d'une lettre-dédicace à la princesse Élisabeth de Bohême (1618-1680); B Op. 1706-2211.

Traduction : Principes de la philosophie, Première partie, sélections d'articles des parties 2, 3, et 4 et Lettre-Préface, Texte latin de Descartes. Texte français de l'abbé Picot. Traduction nouvelle par Denis Moreau. Introduction et notes par Xavier Kieft, Paris: Vrin 2009.

Descartes utilise pour la première fois l'expression "principes de ma philosophie" dans la lettre du février 1634 à Mersenne : "Pour la cause qui fait cesser le mouvement d’une pierre qu’on a jetée, elle est manifeste ; car c’est la résistance du corps de l’air, laquelle est fort sensible. Mais la raison de ce qu’un arc retourne étant courbé est plus difficile, et je ne la puis expliquer sans les principes de ma Philosophie, desquels je pense être obligé dorénavant de me taire." (AT I, 287; O VIII 1, 112; B 65).

"Que signifie « philosophie » ? Qu’est-ce qu’un cours de philosophie ? Comme l’indique la ratio studiorum des collèges jésuites, et plus généralement la très grande majorité des cours de philosophie, la philosophie comprend quatre parties distinctes : la logique, la physique, la métaphysique et la morale (2). Témoignent de la quadripartition de la philosophie le cours que Descartes a choisi de lire en 1640, celui d’Eustache de Saint-Paul, Summa Philosophiae quadripartita de rebus Dialecticis, Moralibus, Physicis et Metaphysicis (Paris, 1609) (3) ou encore, parmi bien d’autres en latin, le premier cours complet de philosophie en langue française, celui de Scipion Dupleix : Corps de Philosophie contenant la Logique, la Physique, la Métaphysique et l’Ethique (4). La philosophie dont Descartes livre les Principia désigne donc, conformément à son projet initial, le « corps de philosophie tout entier » (AT IX-2, 17 ; Alquié III, 782). C’est pourquoi Descartes peut l’appeler sa Philosophie (5) ou sa Summa philosophiae (6), selon une appellation également scolaire. Une somme ne désigne pas un traité complet et qui descend dans les détails (c’est-à-dire « approfondit ») (7), mais au contraire une présentation d’ensemble, sommaire au sens propre, un abrégé. Au demeurant, le texte de la Lettre-préface aux Principes attribue-t-il à la philosophie la même étendue et une répartition analogue, selon la comparaison célèbre : « Ainsi toute la philosophie est comme un arbre, dont les racines sont la Métaphysique, le tronc est la Physique, et les branches qui sortent de ce tronc sont toutes les autres sciences, qui se réduisent à trois principales, à savoir la Médecine, la Mécanique et la Morale » (AT IX-2, 14 ; Alquié III, 779-780)." (Fréderic de Buzon, Vincent Carraud, Descartes et les « Principia » II. Corps et mouvement, Paris: Presses universitaires de France 1994, p. 10)

(2) Voir la présentation donnée par Etienne Gilson dans ses Commentaires au Discours de la méthode, Paris, Vrin, 6e éd., 1987, p. 117-119.

(3) Plusieurs fois réédité jusqu’en 1626 : voir AT III, 196, et les art. Eustache de Saint-Paul (par R. Ariew et F. Ferrier) du Dictionnaire des philosophes et de l’Encyclopédie philosophique, Paris, PUF, 1993 et 1992. Pour Abra de Raconis, Totius philosophiae, hoc est Logicae, Moralis, Physicae et Metaphysicae... tractatio, voir AT III, 236. Pour les Conimbres, Tolet et Rubius, voir AT III, 194-196, et Etienne Gilson, Index scolastico-cartésien, Paris, Vrin, 1979, p. VIII-IX.

(4) Titre de 1632, qui reprend les éditions des parties séparées de 1600,1603, 1607 et 1610, souvent rééditées jusqu’en 1645. La collection du « Corpus des œuvres de philosophie en langue française » (Paris, Fayard) a publié ce Corps de philosophie (la logique, la physique, la métaphysique et l’éthique sont parues respectivement en 1984,1990,1992 et 1994, les trois dernières éditées par Roger Ariew). Deux motifs au moins rendent ces cours tout à fait intéressants. D’une part, ils permettent de prendre conscience de la nouveauté de la physique cartésienne et de son intérêt philosophique propre — tout en mesurant le très grand nombre de questions que Descartes ne traite pas. D’autre part, ces manuels imposent pour plusieurs siècles le vocabulaire technique de la philosophie en français. Voir les art. « Scipion Dupleix » [1569 - 1661] (par R. Ariew et J.-R. Armogathe) des dictionnaires cités ci-dessus.

(5) Par exemple dans les Lettres à Mersenne du 3 décembre 1640, ou du 2 février 1643 (AT III, 252, [O VII, 1, 429; B 289] AT III 615 [O VIII 1, 502; B 385]; Alquié III, 15).

(6) Lettre à Huygens du 31 janvier 1642 (AT III, 782; [O VIII 2, 99; B 342] Alquié II, 920).

(7) « Approfondir » ne signifie pas « remonter » aux principes, mais « descendre » dans toutes les conséquences, ou, comme dit Pascal, « pénétrer vivement et profondément les conséquences des principes » (fr. 511 [édition Lafuma des Œuvres complètes, coll. « L’Intégrale », Paris, Seuil, 1963]. Au demeurant Pascal « trouve bon qu’on n’approfondisse pas l’opinion de Copernic » (fr. 164). Les Principia, au moins dans leurs deux premières parties, n’approfondissent pas (fr. 553). Voir Vincent Carraud, Pascal et la philosophie, Paris, PUF, 1992, chap. III.

Dans une lettre à Mersenne du 30 septembre 1640 (avant même l’envoi du manuscrit des Meditationes) Descartes écrit : "Je ne ferai point encore mon voyage pour cet hiver (11) ; car, puisque je dois recevoir les objections des jésuites dans 4 ou 5 mois, je crois qu'il faut que je me tienne en posture pour les atteindre.

Et cependant j'ai envie de relire un peu leur philosophie, ce que je n'ai pas fait depuis 20 ans (12), afin de voir si elle me semblera maintenant meilleure qu'elle ne faisait autrefois. Et pour cet effet, je vous prie de me mander les noms des auteurs qui ont écrit des cours de philosophie et qui sont le plus suivis par eux, et s'ils en ont quelques nouveaux depuis 20 ans ; je ne me souviens plus que des Conimbres (13), Toletus (14) et Rubius (15).

Je voudrais bien aussi savoir s'il y a quelqu'un qui ait fait un abrégé de toute la philosophie de l'École, et qui soit suivi ; car cela m'épargnerait le temps de lire leurs gros livres. Il y avait, me semble, un Chartreux ou Feuillant qui l'avait fait ; mais je ne me souviens plus de son nom (16)." (AT III, 185; O VIII 1, 409; B 272)

(11) Voir à Mersenne, 30 juillet 1640 (AT III, 127; [O VIII 1, 389; B 262] : Descartes renonçait au voyage envisagé pendant l'été 1640.

(12) Clerselier-Lettres : « depuis 20 ans », omis.

(13) Il s'agit des Commentaires sur Aristote, qui constituaient un cours complet de philosophie, établis et publiés à partir de 1592 par des professeurs jésuites du collège de Coimbra, au Portugal (E. Goës, C. de Magellhães et S. Couto) sur la demande du général Claudio Aquaviva et du provincial du Portugal Pedro de Fonseca.

(14) Francisco Toledo (Toletus, 1532-1596), jésuite espagnol, en 1593, enseigna au Collège romain ; il publia à partir de 1561 de nombreux commentaires d'Aristote.

(15) Clerselier-Lettres : « Toletus et Rubius », omis. Antonio Rubio (Ruvius, 1548 - 1615), jésuite espagnol, auteur de plusieurs commentaires d'Aristote.

(16) Eustache de Saint-Paul (Asseline), religieux feuillant, Summa Philosophica quadripartita, Paris, 1609; voir à Mersenne, 11 novembre (AT III, 233 l. 11, [O VIII 1, 421] B 283), 3 décembre 1640 (AT III, 251 l. 15, [O VIII 1, 421] B 289 et 22 décembre 1641 (AT III, 470 l. 7 sq., [O VIII 1, 481] B 334). Voir aussi Benoist Pierre, La Bure et le Sceptre. La congrégation des Feuillants dans l'affirmation des États et des pouvoirs princiers (vers 1560-1660), Paris, 2006 (CD-Rom, annexe III).

Première annonce du livre dans la lettre du 11 novembre 1640 à Mersenne : "Pour la philosophie de l'École, je ne la tiens nullement difficile à réfuter, à cause des diversités de leurs opinions ; car on peut aisément renverser tous les fondements desquels ils sont d'accord entre eux ; et cela fait, toutes leurs disputes particulières paraissent ineptes. J'ai acheté la Philosophie du Frère Eustache de Saint-Paul, qui me semble le meilleur livre qui ait jamais été fait en cette matière ; je serai bien aise de savoir si l'auteur vit encore (7).

(...)

Je répondrais très volontiers à ce que vous demandez touchant la flamme d'une chandelle, et choses semblables ; je vois bien que je ne vous pourrai jamais bien satisfaire touchant cela, jusqu'à ce que vous ayez vu tous les principes de ma philosophie, et je vous dirai que je me suis résolu de les écrire avant que de partir de ce pays, et de les publier peut-être avant un an. Et mon dessein est d'écrire par ordre tout un cours de ma philosophie en forme de thèses, où, sans aucune superfluité de discours, je mettrai seulement toutes mes conclusions, avec les vraies raisons d'où je les tire, ce que je crois pouvoir faire en fort peu de mots ; et au même livre, de faire imprimer un cours de la philosophie ordinaire, tel que peut être celui du Frère Eustache, avec mes notes à la fin de chaque question, où j'ajouterai les diverses opinions des autres, et ce qu'on doit croire de toutes, et peut-être à la fin je ferai une comparaison de ces deux philosophies (9). Mais je vous supplie de ne rien encore dire à personne de ce dessein, surtout avant que ma Métaphysique soit imprimée ; car peut-être que, si les Régents le savaient, ils feraient leur possible pour me donner d'autres occupations, au lieu que, quand la chose sera faite, j'espère qu'ils en seront tous bien aises. Cela pourrait aussi peut-être empêcher l'approbation de la Sorbonne, que je désire, et qui me semble pouvoir extrêmement servir à mes desseins : car je vous dirai que ce peu de métaphysique que je vous envoie contient tous les principes de ma physique.

(...)

Je verrai aussi le cours de philosophie de Monsieur de Raconis (12), qui, je crois, se trouvera ici : car s'il était plus court que l'autre (13), et aussi bien reçu, je l'aimerais mieux. Mais je ne veux rien faire en cela sur les écrits d'un homme vivant, si ce n'est avec sa permission, laquelle il me semble que je devrais aisément obtenir, lorsqu'on saura mon intention, qui sera de considérer celui que je choisirai, comme le meilleur de tous ceux qui ont écrit de la philosophie, et de ne le reprendre point plus que tous les autres. Mais il n'est point temps de parler de ceci, que ma Métaphysique n'ait passé." (AT III, 230-234; OT VIII, 1, 421-423; B 283)

(7) Eustache de Saint-Paul Asseline, religieux feuillant (1573 - 26 décembre 1640), est l'auteur d'une Summa philosophica quadripartita (Paris, 1609) (*). Sur lui, voir l'article de M. Standaert (Dictionnaire de spiritualité, t. 4-2, Paris, 1961, col. 1701-1705).

(9) On sait que le projet, considérablement modifié, donnera en 1644 les Principia philosophiae.

(12) Charles-François Abra de Raconis [1580 - 16 juillet 1646], Totius Philosophiae hoc est Logicae, Moralis Physicae et Metaphysicae : brevis & accurata tractatio, Paris, 1637 [première édition 1617].

(13) La Summa d'Eustache de Saint-Paul.

(*) [Le premier volume de la Summa philosophica quadripartita, de rebus Dialecticis, Moralibus, Physicis et Metaphysicis, contenait la logique et l'éthique, le second la physique et la métaphysique.]

"En réalité, les Principia, annoncés dans cette lettre pour la première fois, seront un livre d’une conception totalement différente. Il ne s’agit pas d’une brève série de thèses, mais d’un grand livre de 300 pages (in-4°) (2); il ne contient pas un texte de philosophie scolastique comme point de comparaison; et, par conséquent, sa composition était un travail d’au moins trois années (3). Nous n’avons aucune idée de la raison qui conduisit Descartes à abandonner son premier projet ; sa correspondance reste silencieuse sur ce point (4). Mais sa première déclaration reste très importante, parce qu’elle nous rappelle qu’on doit lire les Principia comme un livre de classe, un manuel. C’était une aide-mémoire d’instruction, qui portait comme un défi à une légion (toujours croissante) de publications scolastiques contemporaines et notamment, en France, aux deux manuels dont la correspondance de Descartes signale la lecture à l’automne de 1640, avant de se mettre à écrire les Principia: celui du feuillant Eustache de Saint-Paul (1573-1640), et celui d’un client de Richelieu, évêque de Lavaur, François d’Abra de Raconis (mort en 1646) (5)." (Lawrence W.B. Brockliss, "Rapports de structure et de contenu entre ls Principia et les cours de philosophie des collèges", dans : Jean-Robert Armogathe, Giulia Belgioioso (éds.), Descartes: Principia philosophiae (1644-1994), Napoli, Vivarium 1996, pp. 491-492)

(2) Dans l’édition latine de 1644 in-4°.

(3) Les Principia ont été écrits au château d’Endegeest près de Leyde.

(4) Selon sa correspondance, il avait abandonné ce projet en décembre 1641, mais il est possible qu’il ait pris la décision beaucoup plus tôt : voyez A.T., n, p. 470: à Mersenne 22 décembre 1641.

(5) Eustache Asseline dit Eustachius de Sancto Paulo, Summa philosophiae quadrapartita, Paris, C. Chastellain, 1609; De Raconis, Totius philosophiae brevis tractatio, 4 parties en deux volumes, Paris, De la Noue, 1622. Il y avait des éditions de tous les deux à Paris jusqu’en 1640. Ils furent lus par Descartes en novembre 1640 : voyez AT III, pp. 233, 251: correspondance avec Mersenne, 11 novembre et 3 décembre [O VIII 1, 424-425; B 283; O VIII 1, 427-429; B 289].

"En résumé : les Principia appartiennent à une tradition bourgeonnante, une tradition toujours relativement neuve, celle du manuel de philosophie. Cependant aux mains de Descartes, cette tradition fut développée dans une direction nouvelle. Les sciences de la philosophie étant réduites à deux, la physique devenait une science inorganique, et la méthode syllogistique, scolastique et historique était remplacée par une méthode quasi-euclidienne. Donc, les Principia n’étaient pas un manuel de type traditionnel. Mais, en revanche, il s’agissait certainement d’un manuel dont la structure, le contenu et la méthode d’argumentation étaient déterminés par le besoin de produire un ouvrage manifestement nouveau, mais suffisamment traditionnel pour retenir l’intérêt des lecteurs aristotéliciens et susceptible de gagner leurs esprits comme un travail plus solide et plus moderne que ses concurrents. C’est-à-dire, pour comprendre les Principia comme texte, on doit réaliser qu’il s’agit d’un livre étroitement associé avec la philosophie des écoles, et pas simplement parce que Descartes restait dans une certaine mesure sous l’influence d’Aristote.

Il est en effet possible qu’un événement dans l’enseignement de la philosophie puisse expliquer pourquoi Descartes a composé les Principia au début des années quarante. Il semble qu’il prit la décision d’écrire un manuel pendant le mois d’octobre 1640, à la suite d’une première décision de lire des livres de philosophie scolastique, annoncée à Mersenne le 30 septembre. Cependant la décision de composer un manuel n’était pas une conséquence inévitable de sa lecture d’Eustache, parce que son dessein original était seulement de se préparer mieux pour répondre à une attaque lancée par les jésuites de Paris contre sa Dioptrique et ses Météores de 1637, attaque que Descartes avait du reste provoquée (52). Il est probable que cette seconde décision peut être attribuée aux activités du médecin mécaniste à l’université d’Utrecht, Henri Regius (1598-1679). Regius se disait disciple de Descartes : il avait été autorisé à expliquer les problèmes de physique à Utrecht en mai de 1640 et le 10 juin il organisa une soutenance publique où on discuta des mérites d’une physiologie mécaniste. Son enthousiasme lui gagna l’hostilité des autres professeurs, surtout du théologien Voetius, qui croyait que la philosophie mécaniste menaçait la foi : Descartes, pendant l'été, fut obligé de défendre son acolyte devant les autorités universitaires (53). On ne peut pas douter que Regius fût un esprit fort, qui développait le mécanisme dans une direction matérialiste et anti-cartésienne (54). En conséquence, on peut suggérer que Descartes se trouva forcé de préparer son manuel pour révéler au monde (hollandais d’abord) quelle était en réalité sa physique et pour démontrer sa compatibilité avec la foi chrétienne (calviniste ou catholique). On doit rappeler que les Principia furent publiés d’abord à Amsterdam en latin et que dans le paragraphe final Descartes soumettait son livre au jugement de l’Eglise, pas spécifiquement l’Eglise catholique (55)." (Lawrence W.B. Brockliss, op. cit., pp. 508-510)

(52) Un jésuite parisien, Bourdin, avait organisé une soutenance au collège de Clermont à Paris où les idées de Descartes étaient critiquées, et Descartes, par Mersenne, avait demandé que la Société lui communiquât ses objections directement : voyez AT III, pp. 160-85: lettres à Mersenne, 30 août, 15 et 30 septembre [1640; O VIII 1, 401-405; B 269; O VIII 1, 405-408; B 271; O VIII 1, 408-414; B 272].

(53) AT II pp. 568-9 [lettre de Regius à Descartes du 14 juillet 1639; B 217], 616-7 [lettre de Regius à Descartes, octobre-novembre 1639; B 223] , 624-5 [lettre de Regius à Descartes du 3 décembre 1639 B 229]; III, pp. 1 [lettre de Regius et Emilius à Descartes, janvier 1640; B 238], 60-1 [lettre de Regius à Descartes du 5 mai 1640; B 251], 63-72 [lettre de Regius à Descartes du 5 mai 1640; B 251], 202-3 [lettre de Regius à Descartes du 7 octobre 1640; B 276]: correspondance entre Descartes et Regius, 1639-40.

(54) Regius continuait à soutenir une physique mécaniste à l’Université d’Utrecht en 1641 et Descartes commençait à critiquer plus fortement les idées de son admirateur : voyez AT III, pp. 365-75, 443 , 462-4. Aujourd’hui on considère Regius comme un mécaniste dont les idées se développaient indépendamment de Descartes : voyez P. Dibon, Der Cartesianismus in den Niederlanden, in Der Philosophie des 17. Jahrhunderts, hrsg. von J.-P. Schobinger, Basel, Schwabe, 1992, vol. II, pp. 357-358.

(55) AT IX-2, p. 325. Il est intéressant de constater que dans la lettre à Mersenne où Descartes annonçait son intention d’écrire un manuel (11 novembre), il passa sa colère sur Voetius et informa Mersenne de la tentative du théologien hollandais pour réduire Regius au silence : AT IX-2, p. 231.

Descartes apprend que le Père Eustache est mort : "Je suis désolé de la mort du Père Eustache ; car encore que cela me donne plus de liberté pour faire mes notes sur sa philosophie, j'eusse toutefois mieux aimé le faire avec sa permission, et de son vivant. (22)" (AT III, 286; O VIII 1, 445; B 299)

(22) Voir à Mersenne, décembre 1640 (AT III, 259, [O VIII 1, 433-434] B 291). Eustache de Saint-Paul est mort le 26 décembre 1640.

Le projet originel est abandonné dans la lettre à Mersenne du 22 décembre 1641 : "Je vous renvoie la lettre du Père Bourdin, que j'ai trouvée peu judicieuse ; mais je n'en ai pas voulu toucher un seul mot, à cause que vous me l'aviez défendu (5). Je crois bien que son Provincial l'a envoyé, pour vous demander s'il était vrai que j'écrivisse contre eux, mais non pas pour me menacer de choses qu'ils savent bien que je ne crains pas, et qui peuvent bien plus m'obliger à écrire que m'en empêcher. Il est certain que j'aurais choisi le Compendium du Père Eustache, comme le meilleur, si j'en avais voulu réfuter quelqu'un; mais aussi est-il vrai que j'ai entièrement perdu le dessein de réfuter cette philosophie; car je vois qu'elle est si absolument et si clairement détruite, par le seul établissement de la mienne, qu'il n'est s besoin d'autre réfutation; mais je n'ai pas voulu leur en rien écrire, ni leur rien promettre, à cause que je pourrai peut-être changer de dessein, s'ils m'en donnent occasion. Et pendant je vous prie de ne craindre pour moi aucune chose ; car je vous assure que, si j'ai quelque intérêt d'être bien avec eux, ils n'en ont peut-être pas moins d'être bien avec moi, et de ne se point opposer à mes desseins : car, s'ils le faisaient, ils m'obligeraient d'examiner quelqu'un de leur cours, et de l'examiner de telle sorte, que ce leur serait une onte à jamais." (AT III, 470; O VIII 1, 481; B 334)

(5) Le P. Bourdin avait donc remis à Mersenne un écrit confidentiel, pensant bien que Descartes en aurait connaissance ; et celui-ci envoie à Mersenne une lettre destinée à être lue par le P. Dinet (voir dossier Jésuites).

Lettre à Constantin Huygens du 29 juillet 1641 : "Pour la Physique, ou plutôt le Sommaire de toute la philosophie, dont il vous plaît me demander des nouvelles, |e ne saurais le faire si tôt imprimer à cause qu’il n’est que peu commencé (6) mais je suis résolu de n’entreprendre aucune autre chose jusqu’à ce qu’il soit achevé. L’épreuve que j’ai faite jusqu'ici des jugements et des objections qu’on me peut faire me donne espoir que je n’aurai pas beaucoup de peine à maintenir mes opinions lorsque je les aurai publiées, et que cela ne me détournera point du dessein que j’ai de continuer à chercher ce que j’ignore." (AT III, 773; O VIII 2, 95; B 323)

(6) Descartes écrivait déjà à Mersenne le 11 novembre 1640 (AT III 233, [O VIII 1, ] B 283) : « Mon dessein est d’écrire par ordre tout un Cours de ma philosophie en forme de Thèses, où, sans aucune superfluité de discours, je mettrai seulement toutes mes conclusions, avec les vraies raisons d'où je les tire, ce que je crois pouvoir faire en fort peu de mots », et encore : 31 décembre 1640 (AT III 276, [O VIII 1, 441] B 293) : « J’ai résolu d’employer à écrire ma Philosophie en tel ordre quelle puisse aisément être enseignée. »".

Lettre à Constantin Huygens du 31 janvier 1642 : "Peut-être que ces guerres scolastiques seront cause que mon Monde se fera bientôt voir au monde (24), et je crois que ce serait dès à présent, sinon que je veux auparavant lui faire apprendre à parler latin; et je le ferai nommer Summa Philosophiæ (25), afin qu'il s'introduise plus aisément en la conversation des gens de l'École, qui maintenant le persécutent et tâchent à l'étouffer avant sa naissance, aussi bien les Ministres (26) que les jésuites". (AT III, 782; O VIII 2, 99-100; B 342)

(24) Le jeu de mots est de Huygens : voir à Descartes, 15 (AT II, 679, B 212) et 28 mai 1639 (AT II, 680, B 214).

(25) Voir à Mersenne, 22 décembre 1641 (AT III 465, [O VIII 1, 480-481] B 333).

(26) Les pasteurs calvinistes.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

René Descartes. Bibliographie Chronologique et Annotée (Quatrième Partie: (1645-1650)

Bibliographie

Pour la liste des éditions de références et des abréviations voir René Descartes. Outils de recherche: Biographies, Dictionnaires et Lexiques des Ses Œuvres

1. Descartes, René. 1645. Lettre apologétique aux Magistrats de la ville d'Utrecht Contre Messieurs Voëtius, Père et Fils.

Première publication : traduction latine Querela apologetica ad amplissimum Magistratum Ultrajectinum, Vristadium: L. Misopodem, 1656; texte français dans: Claude Clerselier (éd.), Lettres de Mr. Descartes ( 3 vols.) Paris : Charles Angot, III : 1667, pp. 1-49.

AT VIII-2 201-273; B Op. II, 117-193.

"La Lettre Apologétique, adressée non pas exactement "aux Magistrats" mais à la Municipalité ou Corps de Ville d'Utrecht (1) est le dernier mot de Descartes sur l'affaire et la suite immédiate du procès de Groningue. D'après Baillet, en effet, Descartes "envoya incontinent ces Actes (c'est-à-dire le procès verbal de l'action contre Schoock) aux Magistrats d'Utrecht sans prétendre néanmoins leur reprocher leur mauvaise conduite, ou se constituer parti contre Voetius et Dematius, mais pour voir s'ils feraient quelque chose en réparation du passé." (Baillet, Vie de M. Descartes, vol. II, p. 257) (2). Mais la Municipalité, sans doute lassée de l'affaire et craignant de nouvelles polémiques, se contenta de réitérer son interdiction de publier des écrits pour ou contre Descartes (Kernkamp I [G. W. Kernkamp, éd., Actea et Decreta Senatus ; Vroedschapsresolutiën en andere bescheiden betreffende de Utrechtsche Academie, vol. I, Utrect, 1936], p. 218 ; cf. Baillet II, p. 257-258) et envoya une copie de ce décret à Descartes. Cette nouvelle interdiction était dirigée contre les adversaires de Descartes : Voetius était en train de résumer l'impression de la lettre ouverte de Schoock à Descartes, apparemment afin de discréditer le jugement de Groningue (Baillet II, p. 258). Mais le geste ne fut pas compris. Descartes expédia immédiatement la Lettre Apologétique, prête probablement depuis longtemps. Elle arriva Utrecht le 13 juin 1645, la lettre étant datée d'Egmond le 16 juin selon le nouveau calendrier : on suivait aux Pays-Bas le style "ancien", rejetant par anti-papisme le calendrier grégorien). Dans les Actes, en effet, on fait état d'un "latijnse missiv van Des Cartes aen Burgermeesteren ende Vroetschap deser Stadt, gedateert t'Egmond den XVIen deser, stilo novo" ("une missive latine de Descartes au Bourgmestres et à la municipalité de cette ville, en date d'Egmond, le 11 de ce mois, selon le style nouveau" Kernkamp, I, p. 219). On demanda au Secrétaire de la traduire, non pas parce que sans cela on ne pourrait en prendre connaissance (la plupart doivent avoir bien connu le latin (3) ), mais probablement pour faire traîner les choses en longueur.

Ce premier texte était en latin, et c'est également en latin que la Lettre fut, pour la première fois publiée, en 1656. Toutefois, en 1648, Descartes avait fait faire deux traductions, l'une en néerlandais l'autre en français, qu'il envoie encore à Utrecht où elles sont reçues le 24 mars. De ces deux textes le premier seul a été conservé. Descartes a noté sur la dernière page :

"J’ai fait traduire cet écrit en flamand ; mais pour ce que c’est une langue que j’entends fort peu, je prie ceux qui le liront, d’avoir principalement égard au français, duquel seul je puis répondre." (AT ΥΠΙ-2, 275).

Cette missive aussi est ignorée, et Descartes lui-même part, tout d'abord pour la France et, en 1649, pour la Suède où il mourra en 1650. Excepté le texte néerlandais dont nous avons parlé, les originaux envoyés à Utrecht sont perdus. Cependant Descartes en avait conservé des copies qui, dans l'inventaire dressé après sa mort, figurent ainsi :

’’L.- Renati Descartes querela apologetica ad amplissimum Magistratum Ultrajectinum contra Voetium et Dematium.

O.- Un écrit contenant neuf cahiers en forme de Lettre à Messieurs... contre le Sr Voetius.’’ (voir AT VIII-2, vii.)

Aussi est-ce sous le titre de Querela Apologetica qu'on publiera en 1656 le texte latin. L'occasion de cette édition est, comme le précise la page de titre, la Theologia Naturalis de Paul Voet, publiée également en 1656, dans laquelle celui-ci est revenu sur des questions vieilles de dix ans. Dans cet ouvrage, en effet, Paul, pour protester une nouvelle fois de l'honneur de son père, avait publié (p. 253-264) les témoignages de l'Académie, et du Consistoire, attestant de sa probité, le décret de la Municipalité qui avait déclaré la Lettre à Voet un "écrit diffamatoire", un jugement des trois professeurs de droit de Leyde sur le procès de Groningue, et le jugement de la Cour d'Utrecht sur le procès de Voetius et de Dematius contre Schoock (4). C'est pour répondre à ces accusations "des Voet et des Voetiens", dont il est dit dans la Préface qu'ils semblent vouloir "surpasser les flammes éternelles de l'Etna et du Vésuve", qu'on publie maintenant ce petit ouvrage inconnu du public. D'après le préfacier, on satisfait ainsi un désir de Descartes qui, en quittant les Pays-Bas pour la Suède, en avait laissé une copie chez des amis avec l'intention de la faire publier, au cas où il serait impossible d'obtenir sans éclat la réparation qu'il cherchait. Cette Préface pose par ailleurs un problème de critique textuelle, en avançant que le texte original avait été écrit en français et que le texte latin était une traduction faite par un ami. Sur ce point, cependant, les Actes de la Municipalité sont formels : la première missive était en latin. Dès lors, ou bien l'éditeur, qui est d'ailleurs inconnu (5), se trompe, ou bien il a travaillé sur la traduction française que Descartes avait fait faire et qui se trouvait également parmi les papiers décrits dans l'inventaire. Ainsi le texte latin pourrait bien ne pas être celui envoyé par Descartes à Utrecht.

Quant au texte français, il a été publié par Clerselier en 1667, dans le cadre de son édition des Lettres de Descartes, où la Lettre Apologétique aux Magistrats d'Utrecht figure dans le vol. III. C'est ce texte que nous avons retenu." (Theo Verbeek (éd.), René Descartes et Martin Schoock, La Querelle d'Utrecht, Paris: Les impressions nouvelles, 1988, pp. 403-405)

(1) C'est-à-dire Gysbertus Voetius et son fils Paul.

(2) Il s'agit du jugement du 16 mars 1642 (voir notre "Introduction" et Narration, p. 121-122).

(3) C'est effectivement ce qui est suggéré dans la brochure néerlandaise Aengevangen Proceduuren et qui a conduit Descartes à insister auprès des Etats de Groningue en 1644.

(4) Officiellement l'action contre Descartes n'a jamais été arrêtée ; on l'a étouffée pour complaire aux Etats, au Stathouder et à l'ambassadeur de France.

(5) Reneri était mort le 16 mars 1639 ; l’oraison funèbre avait été prononcée le 18 mars suivant par le professeur d'histoire Antonius Æmilius. Le texte avait été imprimé par l'imprimeur de l'Académie (des exemplaires se trouvent dans la Bibliothèque Universitaire d'Amsterdam et dans la British Library de Londres) et réimprimé dans le recueil des Orationes d'Æmilius [Antonius Æmilius, Orationes, quarum pleraeque tractant argumentum politicum: Accedunt nonnulla eiusdem in utraque lingua Poemata. Utrecht 1651.]

2. ———. 1647. Les Méditations métaphysiques de René Des-Cartes touchant la première philosophie dans lesquelles l'existence de Dieu, et la distinction réelle entre l'âme et le corps de l'homme, sont démontrés. Paris: Chez la Veuve Jean Camusat et Pierre Le Petit.

AT IX, 1 : Le Libraire au Lecteur 1 ; [Épitre] à Messieurs les Doyen et Docteurs de la Sacrée Faculté de Théologie de Paris 4 ; Abrégé des six méditations suivantes 9 ; Méditations touchant la première philosophie 13 ; Premières Objections 73 ; Réponses 81 ; Secondes Objections 96 ; Réponses 102 ; Exposé géométrique 124 ; Troisièmes Objections et Réponses 133 ; Quatrièmes Objections 153 ; Réponses 170 ; Avertissement de l'Auteur touchant les Cinquièmes Objections 198 ; Avertissement du traducteur 200 ; Lettre de Descartes à Clerselier 202 ; Sixièmes Objections 218 ; Réponses 225 ; Privilège 245-246.

B Op. I: Avertissement de l'Auteur touchant les Cinquièmes Objections, 1396-1397; Lettre de Monsieur Descartes à Monsieur C.L.R., 1398-1411; Avertissement du traducteur, 1412-1413; Le Libraire au Lecteur, 1414-1417.

"Traduites du Latin de l'Auteur par Mr. le D.D.L.N.S. [Charles d'Albert, Duc de Luynes] Et les Objections faites contre ces Méditations par divers personnes très-doctes, avec les réponses de l'Auteur. Traduites par Mr. C.L.R. [Claude Clerselier]."

"Malgré le désir de Descartes, Clerselier avait publié les cinquièmes objections et réponses, en les rejetant à la fin du volume, après les sixièmes. Elles étaient suivies d’une lettre de Descartes répondant au recueil d’instances de Gassendi. Mais les septièmes objections et réponses et la lettre au P. Dinet ne figurèrent que dans la seconde édition française que Clerselier fit paraître en 1661. Plus exigeant que l’auteur lui-même, Clerselier avait revu et corrigé non seulement sa traduction des objections et réponses, mais aussi et surtout celle du duc de Luynes agréée pat Descartes." (Geneviève Rodis-Lewis, Introduction à R. Descartes, Meditationes De Prima Philosophia - Méditations Métaphysiques, Texte latin et traduction du Duc de Luynes, Paris: Vrin 1978, p. XII).

"Il [Descartes] écrivit à Chavagnes le 11 de Septembre [1644] à l’abbé Picot qui lui avait mandé dans sa dernière qu’il avait déjà traduit les deux premières parties de ses Principes, et il lui marqua que pour lui il n’avait pas encore trouvé depuis son départ de Paris le temps de lire la traduction française de ses Méditations faite par M. le duc de Luynes (5), qu'il avait apportée dans la pensée de s’en faire une occupation agréable dans le cours de son voyage." (Lettre à Picot, 11 septembre 1644; Baillet II, 220; AT IV 138; O VIII 2, 507; B464)

(5) Voir à Clerselier, 10 avril 1645 (AT IV 193, [O VIII 2, 714-715] B490)

"M. Descartes recevait de fréquentes nouvelles des grands fruits que faisait lecture de son dernier livre à Paris, où on l'assurait que personne ne s’était encore élevé contre sa doctrine (11). Ses progrès n’étaient pas moindres en Hollande : et dès le mois de Février M. de Hoogheland lui avait envoyé trois thèses différentes soutenues depuis peu à Leyde (12), et ne contenant que ses opinions. Ces succès le firent songer à faire imprimer les traductions Françaises de ses Méditations et de ses Principes. N’ayant pas remarqué tout l’empressement possible dans Elzevier pour ces éditions en notre langue (13), il prit des mesures avec Monsieur Clerselier et Monsieur Picot, pour les faire faire à Paris. Mais la version des Principes n’était pas encore achevée." (Lettre à Picot, 9 février 1645; Baillet II 265; AT IV 176; O VIII 2, 509; B484)

(11) Note en marge dans Baillet : « lettre MS à Picot du 9 février 1645. Lettre MS à Clerselier du même jour ».

(12) Voir à Pollot, 8 janvier 1644 (AT IV 77, [O VIII 2, 564-565] B441).

(13) Note en marge dans Baillet : « Elzevier se plaignait du peu de débit des Principes, comme Maire [de Leyde] s'était plaint au sujet des Essais. »

"Monsieur de Sorbière s'était habitué à Leyde (4) pour étudier plus particulièrement les défauts de Monsieur de Saumaise. Mais il ne s'occupait pas tellement de la considération de ce grand homme qu'il ne retournât souvent à Eyndegeest par manière de promenade, et qu'il n'en rapportât toujours quelque nouveau prétexte d'animer Monsieur Gassendi à écrire contre Monsieur Descartes. Mais pour donner un contrepoids au tort que la plume de cet excellent homme pourrait faire aux Méditations de Monsieur Descartes, Dieu permit qu'un Seigneur de la Cour de France entreprît de faire une traduction Française des mêmes Méditations, pour en faire connaître plus particulièrement le mérite dans le Royaume, et en procurer la lecture à tous ceux qui n'ayant pas l'usage de la langue des savants, ne laisseraient pas d'avoir de l'amour et de la disposition pour la Philosophie. Il faut avouer que la fin de l'auteur de la traduction n'avait été que la satisfaction particulière qu'il trouvait à exercer son style sur de grands sujets, sans songer à rendre service au Public. Mais sa traduction ayant été recueillie et envoyée à Monsieur Descartes par sa permission, elle fut jugée propre à faire beaucoup honneur à notre Philosophe et à donner un grand relief à sa Philosophie, et Monsieur le Duc de Luynes son auteur fut prié d'en souffrir la publication (5).

Peu de jours après Monsieur Clerselier, l'un des plus zélés et des plus vertueux amis de Monsieur Descartes entreprit de traduire aussi en notre langue les objections faites à ces Méditations avec les réponses de Monsieur Descartes. Cette traduction était excellente aussi bien que celle de Monsieur le Duc de Luynes. Mais l'un et l'autre jugèrent que si elles devaient voir le jour, il fallait qu'elles fussent revues auparavant par l'auteur même des Méditations, afin qu'en les confrontant avec ses pensées il pût les mettre le plus près de leur original qu'il serait possible et leur en imprimer le caractère. Monsieur Descartes fut obligé de se rendre à un avis si important. Mais, sous prétexte de revoir ces versions, il se donna la liberté de se corriger lui-même, et d'éclaircir ses propres pensées. De sorte qu'ayant trouvé quelques endroits (6) où il croyait n’avoir pas rendu son sens assez clair dans le Latin pour toutes sortes de personnes, il entreprit de les éclaircir dans la traduction par quelques petits changements, qu'il est aisé de reconnaître à ceux qui confèrent le Français avec le Latin. Une chose qui semblait avoir donné de la peine aux traducteurs dans tout cet ouvrage, avait été la rencontre de plusieurs mots de l'art, qui paraissant rudes et barbares dans le Latin même, ne pouvaient manquer de l'être beaucoup plus dans le Français, qui est moins libre, moins hardi, et moins accoutumé à ces termes de l'École (7). Ils n'osèrent pourtant les ôter partout, parce qu'ils n'auraient pu le faire sans changer le sens dont la qualité d'interprètes devait les rendre religieux observateurs. D'un autre côté Monsieur Descartes témoigna être si satisfait de l'une et de l'autre version, qu'il ne voulut point user de la liberté qu'il avait pour changer le style, que sa modestie et l'estime qu'il avait pour ses traducteurs lui faisait trouver meilleur que n’aurait été le sien. De sorte que par une déférence réciproque qui a retenu les traducteurs et l'auteur, il est resté dans l'ouvrage quelques-uns de ces termes scolastiques, malgré le dessein qu'on avait eu de lui ôter le goût de l'école en le faisant changer de langue. Cet éclaircissement touchant la traduction des Méditations et des Objections est nécessaire, non seulement pour justifier les traducteurs sur les changements dont l’auteur est le seul responsable, mais pour faire voir aussi que la traduction Française vaut mieux que l’original Latin, parce que Monsieur Descartes s'est servi de l'occasion de la revoir pour retoucher son original en notre langue. C'est un avantage qu'a eu aussi dans la suite la version française des Principes de Monsieur Descartes faite par l’Abbé Picot (8). De sorte que tous ses Français tant originaux que traduits sont préférables à ceux qui sont Latins. C'est-à-dire que toutes les traductions qu'il a revues valent mieux que ses originaux mêmes.

Pour ne rien omettre de ce qui peut regarder la traduction des Méditations, il suffit de remarquer qu'encore qu'elle ait été faite en 1642, néanmoins la révision ou la correction par Monsieur Descartes ne s’en fit qu'en 1645, et que la première impression qui en fut faite à Paris ne fut en état de paraître que pour les étrennes de l'an 1647." (Baillet II 171-173; AT IV 193-195; O VIII 2, 715-716; B 490)

(4) Note en marge dans Baillet : « Lettr(es) et Disc(ours) de Sorb(ière) ».

(5) Il est souvent question de cette traduction des Meditationes dans la correspondance : voir à Picot, 11 septembre 1644 (AT IV 138, [O VIII 2, 507] B464) et 9 février 1645 (AT IV 177, [O VIII 2, 508-509] B484); à Clerselier, 10 avril 1645 (AT IV 192-195, [O VIII 2, 714-716] B490), 20 décembre 1645 (AT IV 338-339, [O VIII 2, 716-717] B531), 12 janvier 1646 (AT IV 357-358, [O VIII 2, 717] B539), 23 février 1646 (AT IV 362, [O VIII 2, 718] B542) et 9 novembre 1646 (AT IV 563-564, [O VIII 2, 725] B585); et enfin à Picot encore, 8 juin 1647 (AT V 63-64, [O VIII 2, 515-516] B626).

(6) Note en marge dans Baillet : « Lettr(e) MS de Desc(artes) à Clersel(ier) du 10 d'Avril 1645. »

(7) Note en marge dans Baillet : « Ibid. lettr(e) à Clerselier MS ».

(8) Voir à Picot, 17 février 1645 (AT IV 180-181, [O VIII 2, 509-510] B 486).

Michelle Beyssade et Jean-Marie Beyssade ont publié une nouvelle édition des Méditations métaphysiques. Objection et Réponses, Paris: Garnier-Flammarion 1979 (édition revue et corrigée 2011) :

"Les textes retenus ont été établis à partir des deux éditions Adam et Tannery (AT) et F. Alquié, mentionnées dans la bibliographie. Nous les avons vérifiés sur les éditions originales, latines (1641 et 1642) et française (1647). Pour la commodité des lecteurs, nous indiquons toujours la pagination correspondante dans l’édition AT à laquelle les commentateurs modernes font tous référence : soit que notre texte reproduise le texte d’AT, soit qu‘il en donne une traduction (quand l’original latin n’a pas été traduit du vivant de Descartes, ou que la traduction n’a pas été revue et autorisée par lui, auquel cas elle ne figure pas dans l’édition AT).

Même revues et autorisées par Descartes, les traductions de Luynes et de Clerselier s’écartent souvent de l‘original latin. Nous n’indiquons ni les dédoublements (deux mots français rendant un mot latin) ni les additions qui visent à expliciter une expression : nous ne signalons que les différences qui modifient le sens. Pour les Méditations, nos notes reprennent en caractères droits le dernier mot français qu’une traduction exacte garderait et ajoutent la suite en italiques.

Quand elles n’ont pas été revues et autorisées par Descartes, nous avons pourtant retenu de préférence les traductions de l’époque, en particulier celle de Clerselier, et nous en avons corrigé les inexactitudes les plus manifestes.

Nous avons modernisé l’orthographe, et modifié la ponctuation. Nous avons également retouché, pour le texte latin des Méditations, la répartition en alinéas, incertaine dans les éditions originales (dont Descartes a lui-même dénoncé de ce point de vue les insuffisances) et refaite arbitrairement dans l’édition AT. Nous avons respecté les alinéas du texte français, sauf en de rares endroits où nous avons retenu les améliorations apportées par Clerselier dans l’édition de 1661.

Aux Méditations, et aux Objections et Réponses qui les suivent, nous joignons quatre lettres, écrites par Descartes entre la rédaction des Méditations et l’édition latine de 1642 : elles constituent autant de réponses à des objections, qui n’ont pas trouvé place dans l’œuvre publiée." (Note sur le texte de cette édition, pp. 31-32)

Michelle Beyssade a donné une nouvelle traduction du texte latin : Descartes Méditations métaphysiques. Meditationes de prima philosophia. Texte latin accompagné de la traduction du Duc de Luynes. Méditations de philosophie première. Présentation et traduction de Michelle Beyssade, Paris : Le Livre de Poche, 1990.

3. ———. 1647. Les Principes de la philosophie écrits en latin par René Descartes et traduit en François par un de ses Amis. Paris: Henry Le Gras.

AT IX-2, 1-325; traduction de Paul Picot (1614 - 1668).

Lettre à Picot du 11 septembre 1644 : "Ce fut au Crévis qu'il [Descartes] apprit que les exemplaires imprimés de ses Principes étaient enfin arrivés de Hollande à Paris ; Monsieur Picot lui manda qu'il n'avait point trouvé d'expédient plus propre à se consoler de son absence, que la traduction française de cet ouvrage, qu'il avait commencée dès son départ de Paris sur l'exemplaire imparfait (2) qu'il avait apporté par avance de Hollande dans sa valise.

(...)

Il écrivit à Chavagnes le 11 de Septembre [1644] à l’abbé Picot qui lui avait mandé dans sa dernière qu'il avait déjà traduit les deux premières parties de ses Principes, et il lui marqua que pour lui il n'avait pas encore su trouver depuis son départ de Paris le temps de lire la traduction française de ses Méditations faite par Monsieur le duc de Luynes (5), qu'il avait apportée dans la pensée de s'en faire une occupation agréable dans le cours de son voyage." (Baillet II, 219-220; AT IV, 138; O VIII 2, 507; B 464)

(2) Note en marge de Baillet : « sans figures ».

(5) Voir à Clerselier, 10 avril 1645 (AT IV, 193; [O VIII 2, 714-716] B 490).

Lettre à Picot du 8 novembre 1644 : "Après la fête de saint Simon (2), le P. Mersenne délivré de l'impression du gros recueil de pièces physiques et mathématiques qu'il intitula Cogitata Physico-Mathematica, et n'ayant plus rien au départ de Monsieur Descartes qui pût le retenir à la Ville, partit pour un voyage de huit ou neuf mois en Italie (3) ; et Monsieur Descartes, ayant le reste des exemplaires de ses Principes, sous la disposition de Picot, chez la veuve Pelé, libraire de la rue Saint-Jacques (4), prit la route de Calais pour retourner en Hollande (5). Il fut arrêté par les vents dans cette ville pendant près de quinze jours, où il ne put s'occuper d'autre chose que de la lecture de la version français que l'abbé Picot son hôte avait faite de son livre des Principes et dont il avait apporté les deux premières parties avec lui. Il en écrivit au traducteur le 8 de novembre pour lui marquer qu'il la trouvait excellente, et qu'il ne pouvait la souhaiter meilleure." (Baillet II, 246-247; AT IV 147; O VIII 2, 508; B 468)

(2) Le 28 octobre.

(3) Constantin Huygens recommande Mersenne à Jean-Louis Calandrini à Genève, le 30 août 1644 (Brwg [De Briefwisselìng van Constantjin Huygens, (1608-1687), 6 voll., ‘s-Gravenhage, Martinus Nijhoff, 1911-1917] 55, vol. 4, n. 3723) et le même jour (n. 3724) à J. Van Santen, lieutenant du prince d'Orange, pour lui laisser visiter le château d'Orange.

(4) Sur la veuve Pelé et ses relations avec les Elzevier, voir H.-J. Martin, Livre, pouvoir et société à Paris au XVII siècle, 3e éd., Genève, éd. 1999, t. I, p. 315.

(5) Note en marge dans Baillet : « lettre à Picot du 8 novembre 1644 ».

Lettre à Picot du 9 février 1645 : "L'abbé Picot ne lui [à Descartes] envoya la troisième partie (2) que le mois de Février de l'année suivante, et il n'en parut pas moins satisfait (3). L'abbé l'ayant accompagnée de quelques difficultés dont il de demandait l’explication, Monsieur Descartes en lui envoyant cette explication lui manda que ces difficultés mêmes, de la manière dont il les lui a proposées, faisaient honneur à sa traduction et montraient que le traducteur entendait parfaitement la matière ; parce qu'elles n'auraient pu tomber dans l'esprit d'une personne ne l'aurait entendue que superficiellement (4)." (Baillet II, 246-247; AT IV 147; O VIII 2, 508; B 468)

(2) De la traduction française des Prìncipia.

(3) Note en marge dans Baillet : « t. 3 des Lettres p. 612 du 17 février [c’est la lettre suivante]; item lettre MS de Descartes à Picot du 9 février 1645 ».

(4) Note en marge dans Baillet : « lettre MS à Picot du 1er juin 1645 ».

Changements dans la traduction française :

"L'historique de cette traduction se trouve a sa place dans la Vie de Descartes, [de Paul Adam] au dernier volume de l'ancienne édition. (*) On ne donnera donc ici que les renseignements relatifs au texte même.

L'édition française de 1647, comparée a l'édition latine de 1644, offre d'abord une particularité importante. Entre l'Épitre ou la Dédicace a la princesse Elisabeth, placée en tête dans l'une comme dans l'autre, et les Principes proprement dits, Descartes a inséré, dans la traduction, une Lettre de l'Auteur à celui qui a traduit le Livre, laquelle, ajoute-t-il, peut ici servir de Préface." (p. III)

(...)

"De qui ce texte est-il exactement ? De l'abbé Picot seul, qui est, comme on sait, « l'ami de Descartes », qui a traduit le livre des Principes ? Ou bien, en certains endroits, de Descartes lui-même, qui a revu la traduction ? Ou même peut-être, car on serait tenté ' aller jusque-là, de Descartes seul, qui aurait alors récrit en français, pour une partie, sinon en entier, ses Principia Philosophiæ ?

Pour la traduction des Principes, nous n'avons guère qu'une phrase, la première de la Lettre-préface à l'abbé Picot : « La version que vous avez pris la peine de faire de mes Principes est si nette et si accomplie, quelle me fait espérer qu'ils seront lus par plus de personnes en Français qu'en Latin, et qu'ils seront mieux entendus.» (Ci-après, p. 1, l. 5-9.)" (p. VII)

(...)

"Deux témoignages, l'un et l'autre du XVIIe siècle, semblent d'abord trancher définitivement la question. Le premier se trouve dans un vieil exemplaire de la première édition des Principes en français, celle de 1647 : les marges des pages donnent un assez bon nombre de notes manuscrites, de trois ou quatre écritures différentes; l'une est certainement de l'abbé Legrand, qui prépara, nous l'avons vu, une édition nouvelle des Œuvres de Descartes, mais mourut en 1704, sans avoir eu le temps de rien publier. Plusieurs de ces notes (non pas celles de Legrand, il est vrai), remontent a l'année 1659 ; c'est la date donnée par l'une d'elles, que nous reproduisons à la page 119 ci-après." (Avertissement aux Principes de la philosophie, AT 9-2, p. X)

"En regard de cet article, on lit à la marge de l'exemplaire annoté : « La version est ici de Mr D. (Note MS. d'une première main, peut-être celle de Clerselier ? Ce qui suit est d'une autre main, surement celle de Legrand) Ce que nous jugeons ainsi à cause de l'original que nous en avons entre les mains écrit de sa propre main (primitivement de la propre main de Mr Desc., ces derniers mots barrés). Et il n'est pas croyable que si cette version n'était pas de lui, il se fut donné la peine de la transcrire, lui qui d'ailleurs était si accablé d'affaires. » Cette note si importante a été discutée dans notre Avertissement."

Note de Paul Adam au § 41 de la Troisième partie : Que cette distance des Étoiles fixes est nécessaire pour expliquer les mouvements des Comètes (AT IX-2, p. 121)

"La première édition Adam-Tannery comportait ici la phrase :

« au premier volume de la présente édition », ce qui indiquait que l'intention initiale des éditeurs avait été de placer la Vie de Descartes en tête de leur publication et situait le commencement de la réaction du présent Avertissement à une époque antérieure à 1896. En fait, l’intention ne fut pas suivie d’effet, puisque la Vie de Descartes par Ch. Adam (datée de 1910) se trouve dans le dernier tome, numéroté XII, de ce qui est devenu maintenant l'ancienne édition Adam-Tannery.

D'où la correction introduite par nous dans le texte.

Voici l’essentiel de ce que l'on trouve au tome XII p. 360-361 concernant l'historique de la traduction évoqué en ce début de l'Avertissement des Principes.

« Sitôt les Principes publiés en latin, Picot se mit à les traduire.

Descartes était alors en France ; avant de retourner en Hollande, il avait déjà reçu la première et la seconde partie, mises en français.

Le reste vint le rejoindre à Egmond. Et à ce propos, une question encore se pose. Il a existé de cette traduction un manuscrit aujourd’hui perdu, manuscrit autographe qui commençait à l'article 41 de la troisième partie : ce manuscrit pouvait faire croire qu’a partir de là jusqu’a la fin, la traduction était de Descartes lui-même, et non de Picot ; bien mieux, ce n’était plus une traduction, mais le propre texte, et un texte français du philosophe (1). De fait, nous savons que quelques parties peut-être, ne fut-ce que celle qui est relative à l'aimant, ont été au moins résumées par lui en français pour son ami Pollot, qui ne savait pas le latin (2). Et nous savons aussi que la traduction française contient de nombreuses additions, lesquelles sans doute Picot n’eût point osé faire de son autorité, et qui, par conséquent, sont de Descartes. C'est même ce qui permet de résoudre le problème. Qui donc, en effet, pouvait insérer, chacune à sa place, toutes ces additions dans le texte déjà traduit, sinon l'auteur, et nul autre que lui ? Et il l'aura fait en recopiant le tout de sa main, travail délicat que lui seul encore pouvait faire, ce qui explique qu'il en ait pris la peine. C'est ainsi que nous avons deux textes pour les Principes de la Philosophie : le texte latin, publié d’abord en 1644, et un texte français, publié en 1647, traduction du premier pour la plus grande part, et pour le reste addition de Descartes lui-même. Il ne sera pas sans intérêt de noter, chemin faisant, en quel sens ont été faites ces additions : quelle préoccupation ou arrière-pensée ne révèlent-elles pas ça et là ? »

On ne peut qu’être surpris de la différence de ton que cet « historique » (publié en 1910) présente avec les p. X a XVIII du présent Avertissement qui porte la signature de Ch. Adam à une date (décembre 1904) toute proche de la mort de P. Tannery (27 novembre).

Tandis que ces pages aboutissent à des conclusions très nuancées en raison des constatations concernant la traduction des règles du choc, l' « historique » se fait affirmatif pour l'attribution à Descartes lui-même de toutes les additions par rapport au texte latin. C'est donc un fait qu'entre 1904 et 1910 Ch. Adam n’a pas cru devoir conserver la prudence qui s’exprime si remarquablement à la fin de l'Avertissement p. XX.

Le lecteur qui suivrait l’invitation de ce premier paragraphe de l'Avertissement et se fierait a la version de l' « historique » telle qu'elle apparait dans le tome XII de la précédente édition Adam-Tannery, risquerait d'être induit en erreur. Les nuances et la prudence que nous soulignons comme les qualités majeures de l'Avertissement sont à observer soigneusement.

Conformément à la suggestion de la page XVIII et à l’attention portée par Paul Tannery aux règles du choc, la comparaison attentive du texte latin et de la version française pour les articles 43 à 52 de la IIe partie est révélatrice. Mais, tandis que pour les articles 46 à 52 les corrections et additions sont pertinentes, pour les articles 43 à 45 les modifications par rapport au texte latin introduisent des non-sens flagrants que l'on ne saurait en aucune manière attribuer à Descartes. Cf. Pierre Costabel « Essai critique de quelques concepts de la mécanique cartésienne », Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, t. XX, N° 80, 1967, p. 235-252.

La critique interne impose au moins pour le passage indiqué la certitude d’une situation étrange : à savoir la juxtaposition, dans l’édition française des Principes, d’éléments corrigés et d’éléments abandonnés par l’auteur au jugement infirme de son traducteur.

L’histoire de la traduction est donc encore à faire et garde ses secrets.

Pour Picot, traducteur des Principes, voir la notice biographique au tome IV de la Correspondance de Descartes par Adam et Milhaud p. 402 et pour Pollot la notice au tome I de la même publication p. 459.

Notons encore que les remarques relatives au style de Picot, que le présent Avertissement contient p. VIII et IX, sont confirmées par la récente découverte d’une lettre de Picot a Carcavi, du 5 août 1649. Cette lettre ou Picot est consulté en tant que commentateur autorisé des Principes est actuellement en cours de publication par les soins de J. Beaude pour le dernier numéro du tome XXIV (1971) de la Revue d'Histoire des Sciences (P.U.F.). [*]" (Appendice de Bernard Rochot à la nouvelle édition de AT 9-2, Paris: Vrin 1989, pp. 354-355)

(1) cf. infra, p.121, note a.

Voir pour ce qui suit, l'Avertissement, p. X-XVIII.

(2) A.T., IV, p. 73, l. 37 ; du 1er janvier 1644. Pollot (Pallotti) était d’origine italienne. cf. AT XII, p. 360, note.

[*] Joseph Beaude, "Lettre inédite de Picot à Carcavi relative à l'expérience barométrique (5 août 1649)", Revue d'Histoire des Sciences, 24, 1971, pp. 233-246.

4. ———. 1647. Lettre de l'Auteur à celui qui a traduit le livre laquelle peut ici servir de Préface Paris: Henry Le Gras.

Première édition : Appendice à la traduction des Principes de la philosophie par Paul Picot.

AT IX-2, 1-20; B Op. I, 2214-2237.

Lettre-préface des Principes de la philosophie, présentation et notes par Denis Moreau, Paris: GF-Garnier-Flammarion 1996.

La préface est annoncée dans la lettre à Étienne Charlet du 4 décembre 1646 : "Les lettres que j'ai eu l'honneur de recevoir de la part de Votre Révérence m'ont extrêmement obligé (2), et j'aurai soin d'empêcher, autant qu'il sera en mon pouvoir, qu'aucun de mes amis ne fasse rien contre les bons conseils que j'y trouve. Ce m'est beaucoup quelles m'apprennent que vous ne trouverez point mauvais, si, sans attaquer personne en particulier, on dit son sentiment, en général, de la philosophie qui s'enseigne communément partout. C'est un sujet auquel il est malaisé de s'abstenir de tomber; mais, parce que avait été commencé par un de mes amis, ne m'a pas satisfait, je l'ai prié de ne point continuer ; et afin de pouvoir mieux user de toute la circonspection et retenue qui sera requise pour faire que cela n'offense personne, je pense que je prendrai moi-même la plume, non point pour en écrire un long discours, mais pour mettre seulement par occasion, dans une préface (3), les choses dont il me semble que ma conscience m'oblige d'avertir le public. Car je puis dire, en vérité, que si je n'avais suivi que mon inclination, je n'aurais jamais rien fait imprimer, et que je n'ai point d'autre soin que de m'acquitter de mon devoir, ni d'autre passion que celle qui est excitée par le souvenir des obligations que je vous ai, et me fait être... " (AT IV, 587-588; O VIII 1, 638; B 594)

"M. Descartes partit de La Haye le 7 de juin [1647] pour Rotterdam, d’où il écrivit le lendemain à l’abbé Picot sur le point de passer à Middelbourg pour s’embarquer le jour suivant à Flessingues, dans l’espérance d’arriver au bout de quinze jours à Paris, où il fut reçu et logé par cet ami, qui depuis le premier voyage de M. Descartes en France avait quitté la rue des Écouffes pour celle de Geoffroy-l’Ânier, où il avait pris une maison conjointement avec Mme Scarron de Mandine. Son dessein était de passer en Bretagne dès le commencement de juillet, pour régler les affaires qui servaient de prétexte à son voyage. Mais l’édition française de ses Principes qui s’achevait entre les mains de leur traducteur son hôte lui donna occasion de différer de quelques jours, tant pour y faire une préface, que pour voir entièrement débarrassé de cette occupation un homme qui devait être de sa compagnie dans son voyage." (Baillet II, 323)

5. ———. 1648. Notae in programma quoddam sub finem anni 1647 in Belgio editum, cum hoc titulo: Explicatio mentis humanae, sive animae rationalis, ubi explicatur quid sit, et quid esse possit. Amstelodami: Ex Officina Ludovici Elzevirii.

Remarques sur une œuvre de Henricus Regius (Hendrik De Roy, 1598-1679).

AT VIII-2, 341-369; B Op II, 2250-2287.

Traduction française de Claude Clerselier: Remarques de René Descartes sur un certain placard imprimé aux Pays-Bas vers la fin de l’année 1647, qui portait ce titre : Explication de l’esprit humain, ou de l’âme raisonnable : où il est montré ce qu’elle est, et ce qu’elle peut être, dans Clerselier-Lettres, t. I, p. 434-462, repris Alquié, t. III (1643-1650), pp. 787-820.

Descartes. Lettres à Regius et Remarques sur l'explication de l'esprit humain, Texte latin, traduction, introduction et notes par Geneviève Rodis-Lewis, Paris: Vrin 1959.

Table des matières : Introduction 7-19; Lettres de Descartes à Regius (texte latin et traduction) [16 lettres de Descartes à Regius; 2 lettres de Regius à Descartes) 21-141; Notes sur le Placard de Regius : XIX. Lettre d'envoi de Descartes [à Hogelande ?], [décembre 1647] 142; Remarques de R. Descartes sur un certain placard... intitulé : Explication de l'Esprit humain ou de l'Ame raisonnable, où il est montré ce qu'elle Est et ce qu'elle peut être 143; Texte de Regius 146; Examen du placard 154;

Appendice.

I. Extraits de l’Epître de Descartes à Voet [mai 1643] (sur quelques objections à sa métaphysique)

A. 190; B. 192;

II. Textes choisis de Regius (Philosophia naturalis...)

A. Critique du privilège du Cogito 196; B. Rapports de la pensée et de l'étendue 196; C. Douter du corps n'implique pas que l'esprit en soit réellement distinct 198; D. L'âme peut aussi bien être mode corporel, attribut ou substance 200; E. L'âme ne pense pas toujours en acte : sa dépendance des conditions organiques 202; F. Certitude et révélation divine 202; G. Critique des idées innées et des preuves cartésiennes de l'existence de Dieu 206-213.

"Ces divers textes, ainsi rapprochés, sont rendus plus accessibles au grand public par la confrontation avec l'original latin d'une traduction française suffisante pour la compréhension d'ensemble du texte. Des versions anciennes utilisées (5) sont assez lâches et devraient inciter le lecteur à interpréter plus strictement le détail du latin : pour l'y aider nous les avons revues de près, mis entre crochets dans le texte français les additions et paraphrases dont Clerselier surtout est coutumier, souligné par des caractères gras, les divergences portant sur un ou deux mots, corrigé directement sans le mentionner à chaque fois quelques erreurs de détail incontestables, et indiqué en note une traduction plus précise dans les seuls cas où cette rectification pouvait embarrasser un débutant." (pp. 17-18, notes omises)

(5) Dans le premier volume des Lettres de Descartes publié en 1657, Clerselier donne le texte latin des lettres à Regius, qu'il nomme M. De Roy : lettres n° 81-99, suivies pour les « Remarques sur un certain placard... » par une version « faite autrefois » (préface), sans le texte original. C'est cette traduction des Notae qui est ici reproduite et pour les lettres à Regius, celle des éditeurs parisiens de 1724-1725, t. II, p. 228-482, 1. n0· 12-30 (cf. notre édition des Lettres à Arnauld et Morus, Vrin, 1953, Introduction, p. 8-9). Pour les deux passages de l'Epistola ad Voetium, qui n’avait jamais été traduite avant l’édition V. Cousin (1825, t. II), la parenté du style des éditions anciennes avec celui de Descartes ne jouant plus, nous proposons notre propre version, comme pour les textes de Regius traduite en Appendice.

Une traduction inédite du texte latin sous la direction de Denis Moreau est disponible à l'adresse : caphi.univ-nantes.fr/Traduction-inedite-du-texte-latin

"« Opuscule des plus rares, dont L. Elzevier a été l’éditeur, mais qui sort des presses de Fr. Hackius à Leyde », ajoute Alphonse Willems, p. 269-270 de son ouvrage, Les Elzevier (Bruxelles, 1880).

Dès 1650, le même texte fut reproduit, au volume des Méditations en latin, après les sixièmes Objections et Réponses, dans les cinq éditions successives des Elzevier, 1650, 1654, 1663, 1670 et 1678, et plus tard dans celles des Blaeu, à Amsterdam, à partir de 1683. (Voir notre t. VII, p. IX-XII.)

Cependant Clerselier avait donné, au tome I, p. [542-571], de ses Lettres de Mr Descartes, 1657, à la suite de la lettre 99, une version française des Notæ in Programma, sous le titre suivant : REMARQUES DE RENÉ DESCARTES, Sur un certain Placard imprimé aux Pays-Bas vers la fin de l'année 1647, qui portait ce titre : Explication de l'Esprit humain, ou de l’Ame raisonnable, où il est montré ce qu’elle est et ce qu’elle peut être. Version. Clerselier avertit, dans la Préface de ce tome I, qu’il a fait autrefois cette version lui-même. (Voir notre t. V, p. 625, l. 25-28.) N’étant donc qu'une version de Clerselier, elle n'a pas à figurer dans une édition des Œuvres de Descartes, et nous n’avons à nous occuper que de l’original, qui est le texte latin." (AT VIII, 2, Avertissement, p. XI.)

"Sur la fin de l’année 1647 l’on vit paraître en Hollande deux écrits latins auxquels il semblait que M. Descartes ne devait point se montrer indifférent. Le premier était directement contre lui, et était intitulé Considération sur la méthode de la philosophie cartésienne. Il avait pour auteur ce Revius théologien de Leyde qui, n’ayant pu réussir à faire condamner les écrits de M. Descartes, n’avait su faire autre chose que d’appliquer à ses chagrins le remède qu’il avait entre ses mains, et de prendre la voie des satires et des libelles, pour se donner une satisfaction, qu’il n’avait pu recevoir de ses supérieurs. M. Descartes ayant remarqué que ce libelle n’était rempli que de cavillations inutiles, et de calomnies trop noircies pour pouvoir être crues de personne, jugea qu’il devait plutôt en rendre grâce à son auteur que de s’en tourmenter, parce que cet auteur montrait assez par là qu’il n’avait rien trouvé dans ses écrits qu’il pût reprendre avec quelque apparence de justice, et qu’ainsi il en confirmait mieux la vérité, que s'il avait entrepris de les louer publiquement.

L’autre écrit latin qui parut en même temps le toucha davantage, quoiqu’il ne s’adressât à lui qu’indirectement, et qu’il pût dissimuler la chose sans intéresser sa réputation. Il avait pour titre Explication de l’Esprit humain ou de l’Ame raisonnable, où l’on montre ce qu’elle est et ce qu’elle peut être. Il fut imprimé à Utrecht, premièrement en forme de petit livre sous le nom de M. Regius son ancien disciple, et ensuite en feuille étendue par manière de programme ou placard pour être affiché dans les places et les rues, sans nom d’auteur ni d’imprimeur. M. Descartes l’ayant reçu de cette seconde forme reconnut aussitôt l’auteur par le style et par le bruit commun. Il y remarqua plusieurs opinions qu’il jugeait fausses et pernicieuses ; et parce qu’on était encore assez communément persuadé que M. Regius était toujours dans les sentiments qu’il lui avait inspirés autrefois, il se crut obligé de découvrir les erreurs de cet écrit, de peur qu’elles ne lui fussent imputées par ceux qui, n’ayant pas lu ses , et surtout ses Méditations, tomberaient par hasard sur la lecture de cet écrit de Regius. Il en composa la réfutation en latin sur la fin du mois de décembre, et elle fut imprimée à Amsterdam avant qu’il en sût (a) rien, et sans sa participation, avec des vers et une préface qui n’eurent point son approbation, quoique les vers fussent de son ami M. Heydanus (b) qui n’avait pas jugé à propos d’y mettre son nom (c). Nous avons aujourd’hui cette réfutation traduite en français au premier volume de ses lettres précédée de l’écrit ou placard de M. Regius, contenant vingt et un articles ou assertions par manière de thèses sur l’Ame raisonnable, où cet auteur avait mis pour conclusion ce que M. Descartes avait dit autrefois dans l’Épître dédicatoire de ses Principes, qu'il n’y a point de gens qui parviennent plus aisément à une haute réputation de piété que les superstitieux et les hypocrites. M. Regius fit une réponse assez modeste aux observations que M. Descartes avait faites sur son placard. Mais toute sa modération ne fut point capable d’attirer une réplique de M. Descartes." (Baillet II, 334-335)

(a) a. Sous le titre de Nota in Programma quoddam, etc.

(b) Je croirais que c’est plutôt M. Huyghens.

(c) Tome I, p. 434, 439.

Sur ce texte de Descartes voir :

Theo Verbeek, Descartes et Regius. Autour de l'Explication de l'esprit humain, Amsterdam-Atlanta: Rodopi 1993.

Table des matières : Th. Verbeek: Préface V-IX; Th. Verbeek: Le contexte historique des Notae in programma quoddam 1; G. Rodis-Lewis: Problèmes discutés entre Descartes et Regius: L’âme et le corps 35; A. Bitpol-Hespéries: Descartes et Regius: leur pensée médicale 47; G. Olivo: L’homme en personne 69; H. H. Kubbinga: Le concept d’ » individu substantiel « chez Beeckman et chez Descartes 93; Bibliographie 105; Index 113-114.

Alain de Libera, Remarques sur un placard : Descartes contre Regius, dans Julein Dutant, Davide Fassio, Anne Meylan (éds.), Liber Amicorum Pascal Engel, Genève: Université de Genève, Faculté des Lettres, pp. 647-673 /disponible en aligne à l'adresse : unige.ch/lettres/philo/publications/engel/liberamicorum/ ("Le « sujet cartésien » est sorti du placard en janvier 1648, avec les Notae in Programma publiées en réponse au libelle de Regius, et mises à l’Index dès 1663." (p. 656).

6. ———. 1647/1648. La description du corps humain et de toutes ses fonctions.

Première publication : Clerselier 1664, pp. 99-154 avec le titre "La formation du fœtus", qui est de Clerselier: voir l'Avertissement dans AT XI p. 219.

AT XI 223-286; B Op. II, 510-597.

Préface de Claude Clerselier aux éditions 1664 et 1677 du Monde et de l'Homme, AT XI, pp. XI-XXIV; B Op. II, 598-669.

Première partie : Préface 223 ; Seconde partie : Du mouvement du Cœur et du Sang 228 ; Troisième partie : De la Nutrition 246 ; Digression, dans laquelle il est traité de la formation de l'Animal. Quatrième partie : Des parties qui se forment dans la semence 253 ; Cinquième partie : De la formation des parties solides 273-286.

L'Inventaire de Stockholm, à la lettre G donne cette description du manuscrit : "Un traité intitulé La Description du corps humain, où il y a quatre feuillets de suite, et deux autres feuillets dont la suite ne se trouve point jointe, aussi un (en blanc), contenant le titre des chapitres d'un traité à faire de la nature de l'homme et des animaux. A cette liasse ont été joints dix ou douze feuillets, en partie interrompus, qui traitent du même sujet, mais sans qu'il paraisse de liaison avec les précédents." (AT X, 9-10).

"L'inventaire des papiers de Descartes indique, à la lettre G, un Traité MS. intitulé : La Description du corps humain. Voir t. X, p. 9, l. 17.) Une lettre MS. de Clerselier, que nous avons aussi imprimée (ibid. p. 13-14) , en donne le commencement.

Or ce commencement est identique aux premières pages d'un Traité que Clerselier a publié, dans son volume de 1664, à la suite du Traité de l'Homme, sous le même titre initial de La Description du Corps humain, bien qu'il imprime en haut des pages ce titre différent De la Formation du Fœtus.

L'authenticité de cette publication est donc assurée incontestablement.

A vrai dire, ce double titre de Clerselier demande explication. Mais c'est que le Traité, d’ailleurs inachevé, comprend aussi deux parties distinctes : la première, en effet, entreprend une description du corps humain, ou plutôt de ses fonctions, avec un programme complet que s’était tracé Descartes (p. 112-113, édit. Clerselier), et qu'il n’a fait qu'entamer ; la seconde apparaît comme une digression, et c’est bien ainsi que Clerselier la présente (ibid., p. 137) ; elle explique la formation de l’animal. Mais entre les deux la soudure existe, et non pas une soudure artificielle : Descartes l’a faite lui-même de sa main.

Toutefois le second titre de Clerselier : De la Formation du Fœtus, semble bien être de l'éditeur ; outre qu’il ne convient pas à l’ensemble du traité, et ne désigne réellement que la seconde partie, la « digression » , Descartes aurait intitulé celle-ci De la Formation de l'animal; et c’est aussi le titre que nous mettrons en haut des pages, pour cette seconde partie, réservant pour la première : Description du Corps humain." (AT XII, 219-220)

Lettre à la princesse Élisabeth du 31 janvier 1648 : "... j'ai maintenant un autre écrit entre les mains, que j'espère pouvoir être plus agréable à Votre Altesse : c'est la description des fonctions de l'animal et de l'homme." (AT V, 112 = Baillet II, 337-338; O VIII 2, 292; B642).

7. ———. 1648. Projets d'une école des arts et métiers (Extraits de Baillet).

Baillet II 433-434; AT XI, 659-660; B Op. II, 918-921.

"Une offre d'un autre ami, M. d'Alibert lui plut davantage. Celui-ci songeait à fonder une École des arts et métiers, dont il aurait fourni les frais, et qui devait être ouverte en dehors des heures ou des jours de travail, aux artisans et ouvriers désireux de s'instruire. L'idée répondait bien aux vues de Descartes sur l'union de la théorie et de la pratique, ou de la science et de ses applications : la science toute seule reste sans effets utiles, et l'art ou le métier, sans la science, n'est qu'une routine aveugle, incapable de se perfectionner." (Charles Adam, Vie et œuvres de Descartes, Paris: Cerf, 1910, p. 470.)

8. ———. 1648. [Entretien avec Burman] Responsiones Renati Des Cartes ad quasdam difficultates ex Meditationibus ejus, etc., ab ipso haustae.

Première édition dans : Revue Bourguignonne de l'Enseignement supérieur, 1896, pp. 1-52.

AT V, 146-179; B Op. II, 1246-1307.

Traductions :

Entretien avec Burman. Manuscrit de Göttingen, Texte présenté, traduit et annoté par Charles Adam, Paris: Boivin 1937 (Seconde édition Paris: Vrin, 1975).

L'entretien avec Burman, Édition, traduction et annotation par Jean-Marie Beyssade, Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1981.

Table des matières : Avertissement 5; Chronologie des éditions antérieures 10; Liste des abréviations 11;

L'ENTRETIEN AVEC BURMAN

Méditations métaphysiques 13; Remarques sur un Placard 94; Principes de la philosophie 96; Discours de la méthode 134;

RSP OU LE MONOGRAMME DE DESCARTES

Philosophie, histoire de la philosophie, 153 De l'âme à l'homme, 160 L’intellection de l’infini, 171 L’ontologie cartésienne, 181 L’interprétation des signes, 190

Index 209-212.

Éditions utilisées par Burman :

Renati Descartes, Meditationes De Prima Philosophia, In quibus Dei existentia et animae humanae a corpore distinctio demonstrantur. His adiunctae sunt variae objectiones doctorum virorum in istas de Deo et anima demonstrationes; Cum Responsionibus Authoris. Secunda editio septimis objectionibus antehac non visis aucta. Amstelodami, Apud Ludovicum Elzevirium, 1642);

Renati Des-Cartes, Principia Philosophiae, Amstelodami, Apud Ludovicum Elzevirium, Anno 1644);

Renati Descartes, Notae in Programma quoddam, sub finem anni 1647 in Belgio editum cum hoc titulo: Explicatio mentis humanae sive animae rationalis, ubi explicatur quid sit et quid esse possit, Amstelodami, Apud Ludovicum Elzevirium, 1648

Renati Des Cartes, Specimina Philosophiae seu Dissertatio De Methodo... Amstelodami, apud Ludovicum Elzevirium 1644).

"Ce sont donc des difficultés proposées de vive voix à Descartes par Burman, avec les réponses recueillies par le même Burman de la propre bouche du philosophe, à Egmond, le 16 avril 1648. Quelques mots du feuillet 88, recto, I. 6-7, permettent de reconstituer la scène : ce fut une conversation pendant le repas ; on était à table et ou causait en mangeant (jam ego concipio et cogito simul me loqui et edere, dit Descartes donnant comme exemple ce qu'il fait en ce moment). Ailleurs, ayant à citer, (f. 36 verso, l. 5) deux noms de ville, les premiers qui lui viennent è l'esprit sont Alcmaer, la ville la plus proche d’Egmond, et Leyde, la ville natale de sou interlocuteur.

François Burman, en effet, était né à Leyde, en 1688. Fils de pasteur, il devint lui-même pasteur ; on le trouve un an à Hanovre, en cette qualité, puis un an à Leyde sous-régent au collège des Etats, enfin professeur de théologie à Utrecbt où il mourut le 21 novembre 1679 ; son oraison funèbre fut prononcée par Grævius, dont nous avons rencontré le nom tout à l'heure, dans le même cahier, avec la date de 1691. Burman était donc un tout jeune homme en 1648 : il n'avait que vingt ans, et ou ne sait ce qu’on doit le plus admirer des difficultés qu’il propose à cet âge ou de la complaisance avec laquelle lui répond le philosophe, âgé de cinquante-deux ans déjà, et de plus auteur du Discours de la méthode, des Méditations métaphysiques et des Principes de Philosophie. Peut-être aussi Descartes avait-il connu le père à Leyde ; on s'expliquerait alors qu’il causât eu toute liberté devant le fils d’un ami. Il parle, en effet, sans ménagement aucun, des théologiens et même de Saint Thomas ; il dit son mot sur Aristote et sur la Bible ; il met enfin ce petit étudiant dans la confidence de ses derniers travaux, l'hiver de 1647-1648, et même de son régime de vie, régime intellectuel (s'occuper de physique surtout, bien plutôt que de métaphysique) et régime du corps ; bien des détails intimes et tout personnels viennent ainsi confirmer ou compléter ceux que l'on connaissait déjà sur Descartes.

De retour à Amsterdam, Burman y rencontre Clauberg, qui, né en 1623, n'était sou ainé que de six ans, et lui fait part de cette conversation. Avait-elle été rédigée déjà, séance tenante, par Burman seul ? ou bien les deux jeunes gens s’entendirent-ils pour la rédiger ensemble, le 10 avril, c'est-à-dire quatre jours après la date même de la conversation, qui avait eu lieu le 16 avril ?

Sont-ce enfin les propres paroles de Descartes, en quelque sorte sténographiées par son interlocuteur, ou seulement le souvenir qu'il en avait gardé, et qu’il a peut-être arrangé avec un ami préoccupé comme lui des doctrines cartésiennes ? Les mots : responsiones Renati des Cartes... ab ipso haustœ réponses recueillies de la bouche même de Descartes, et pour ainsi dire puisées à la source), ainsi que l’indication exacte de plus de soixante pages ou articles avec une ligne de chacun textuellement citée rendent la première supposition des plus vraisemblables. Eu tout cas Clauberg prit lui-même copie du texte ainsi rédigé, et c'est la copie de Clauberg qui a été copiée ensuite à Dordrecht, le 13 et 14 juillet, on ne sait en quelle année ni par qui. Clauberg mourut à Duisbourg, le 31 janvier 1665 ; en 1691, parut à Amsterdam une édition de ses Opera philosophica, 2 vol. in-4, où ne se trouve pas cette conversation de Descartes et de Burman. Faut-il conjecturer de là qu'elle aurait été copiée pour compléter l'édition, et vers le même temps, cette année 1691 étant aussi mentionnée dans le cahier manuscrit, au feuillet 21, comme date d’une lettre à Grævius ? Le cahier ne serait d’ailleurs entré que plus tard dans la bibliothèque de Crusius [*] (né lui-même en 1715, peut-être seulement à la date de 1751, inscrite, nous l’avons vu, en haut de la première page." (Charles Adam, "Manuscrit de Gottingen. Descartes (Méditations, Principes, Méthode)", Revue Bourguignonne de l'Enseignement supérieur, 1896, pp. 2-3)

"Le MS. est paginé seulement au recto des feuilles ; f. 27 à f. 43 inclus. Il comprend trois parties : objections et réponses, 1° sur les Méditations, 2° sur les Principes, 3° sur le Discours de la Méthode.

Les passages sont indiqués avec renvois aux pages de la seconde édition latine des Méditations (Amsterdam, Louis Elsevier, 1642), aux articles de chaque livre des Principes, et aux pages de la traduction latine du Discours de la Méthode, etc. (Amsterdam, Louis Elsevier, 1644). Après l'indication de chaque passage se trouve ordinairement une objection, puis la réponse de Descartes, puis une nouvelle objection, puis une nouvelle réponse, etc. Les réponses sont le plus souvent annoncées par la lettre R, tandis que rien n’annonce les objections. Cela n’a pas d’inconvénient, lorsqu’il n’y a qu’une objection et aussi qu’une réponse à la suite. Mais, s’il y a deux, ou trois, ou même quatre objections successives, il a fallu trouver l'endroit où chacune d’elles commence et se détache de la réponse qui précède. Nous avons indiqué cet endroit par la lettre O entre crochets (O désignant les objections, comme R les réponses). (Charles Adam, AT V, 150).

[*] "Le cahier catalogué à Göttingen Cod. Ms. philol. 264, fit partie de la bibliothèque d’un Crusius (on lit au verso du premier feuillet : « Ex Bibl. M. Crusii »).

"Adam (2), suivi par John Cottingham (3) et Jean-Marie Beyssade (4), estime qu’il doit s’agir de Christian August Crusius (1715-1775), adversaire de Leibniz et Wolff, qui devint professeur de théologie à Leipzig en 1750. Mais en réalité, comme l’indique Hans Werner Arndt (5), il doit plus vraisemblablement s’agir de Magnus Crusius (1697-1751), le livre paraissant être entré dans l’actuelle Niedersächsische Staats und Universitätsbibliothek où M. Crusius était théologien, l’année même de sa mort, comme l’atteste la date 1751 inscrite sur le premier feuillet où apparaît également un cachet Ex Bibliotheca Acad. Georgiæ Augustæ - George Auguste étant le nom de l’Université, fondée en 1737." (Xavier Kieft, "L'Entretien de Descartes avec Burman : un malentendu historico-philosophique", Klesis. Revue philosophique, 11, 2009, pp. 108–134)

(2) Édition de 1896, p. 1 et Adam [1937], p. VIII.

(3) Descartes’ Conversation with Burman, translated with introduction and commentary by J. Cottingham, Oxford, Clarendon, 1976 (désormais cité « Cottingham »), p. XII.

(4) Beyssade [1981], p. 5.

(5) R. Descartes, Gespräch mit Burman, Übersetzt und herausgegeben von H. W. Arndt, Hambourg, Meiner, 1982 (désormais cité « Arndt »), p. I et pp. XXVII-XXVIII. Arndt pense même avoir identifié l’écriture du dit Magnus Crusius.

Johannes Clauberg cite un passage de l'Entretien avec Burman (AT V 177) dans le chapitre XVIII de sa Defensio cartesiana, Amstelodami, 1652 (repris dans Opera Omnia Philosophica, Amstelodami 1691, p. 1000, réedition Hildeshein: Georg Olms 1968)

9. ———. 1648. [Traité de l'érudition].

Dans une lettre à Descartes du 5 décembre 1647 Élisabeth de Bohême, princesse Palatine, écrivait :

"Cela vous montre combien le monde a besoin du Traité de l'Érudition, que vous avez autrefois voulu faire. Je sais que vous êtes trop charitable pour refuser une chose si utile au public, et que, pour cela, je n'ai pas besoin de vous faire souvenir de la parole que vous [m']en avez donnée." (AT V 97, 4-19 = Baillet II, 337; B636).

Le 31 janvier 1648 Descartes répond :

"J'ai reçu les lettres de votre Altesse du 23 décembre presque aussitôt que les précédentes, et j'avoue que je suis en peine touchant ce que je dois répondre à ces précédentes, à cause que votre Altesse y témoigne vouloir que j'écrive le Traité de l'Érudition, dont j'ai eu autrefois l'honneur de lui parler. Et il n'y a rien que je souhaite avec plus de zèle, que d'obéir à vos commandements ; mais je dirai ici les raisons qui sont cause que j'avais laissé le dessein de ce traité, et si elles ne satisfont à votre Altesse, je ne manquerai pas de le reprendre. (2) La première est que je n'y saurais mettre toutes les vérités qui y devraient être, sans animer trop contre moi les gens de l'École, et que je ne me trouve point en telle condition que je puisse entièrement mépriser leur haine (3). La seconde est que j'ai déjà touché quelque chose de ce que j'avais envie d'y mettre dans une préface qui est au-devant de la traduction française de mes Principes, laquelle je pense que votre Altesse a maintenant reçue. La troisième est que j'ai maintenant un autre écrit entre les mains, que j'espère pouvoir être plus agréable à Votre Altesse : c'est la description des fonctions de l'animal et de l'homme." (AT V, 111-112 = Baillet II, 337-338; O VIII 2, 292; B642).

(2) On peut se demander s'il ne s'agit pas ici des Regulae (voir Descartes, Écrits de jeunesse, éd. V. Carraud, Paris, 2013).

(3) Allusion à ses démêlés à Leyde (avec Revius) et à Utrecht (avec Voet).

10. ———. 1649. Les passions de l'âme. Paris: Henry Le Gras.

AT XI, 301-488; B Op. I, 2300-2527.

Traduction latine : Passiones animae per Renatum Des-Cartes: Gallice ab ipso concriptae, nunc autem in exterorum gratiam Latina civitate donatae ab H.D.M.I.V.L., Amstelodami apud L Elzevirium, 1650 (la traduction est de Henricus Des-Marets, fils de Samuel Desmarets (1599-1673); voir : Paul Dibon, "La Traduction latine des Passions de l'âme", dans Regards sur la Hollande du siècle d'or, Napoli, Vivarium, 1990, pp. 523-550.)

Premières références au thème des "passions de l'âme" dans les écrits de Descartes :

"En ce qui concerne la variété des passions que la musique peut exciter par la variété de la mesure, je dis qu’en général une mesure lente excite en nous également des passions lentes, comme le sont la langueur, la tristesse, la crainte, l’orgueil, etc., et que la mesure rapide fait naître aussi des passions rapides, comme la joie, etc. Il faut en dire autant des deux genres de battue : la mesure carrée, qui se résout toujours en membres égaux, est plus lente que celle qui est battue en triplât, c’est-à-dire celle qui se compose de trois parties égales. La raison en est que celle-ci occupe davantage le sens parce qu’il y a en elle plus de membres à remarquer — à savoir trois —, tandis qu’il n’y en a que deux dans l’autre. Mais une recherche plus exacte de cette question dépend d’une excellente connaissance des mouvements de l’âme, et je n’en dirai pas davantage." (AT X 95; traduction du latin par Frédéric de Buzon, Abrégé de Musique. Compendium Musicae, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1987, 62).

"A la suite de cela, il faudrait maintenant parler des diverses vertus des consonances à exciter les passions ; mais une recherche plus exacte de cette manière peut être tirée de ce qui a été dit, et dépasserait les limites d’un abrégé. Car ces vertus sont si variées et dépendent de circonstances si légères qu’un volume entier ne suffirait pas à épuiser la question." (AT X, 111; Abrégé de Musique cit., 88)

"De là, et d’autres choses semblables on pourrait déduire plusieurs choses concernant la nature des degrés, mais cela serait long. Il suit que je devrais traiter maintenant de chaque mouvement de l’âme qui peut être excité par la musique, et je pourrais montrer par quels degrés, consonances, rythmes et choses semblables ils doivent être excités ; mais cela dépasserait les limites d’un abrégé." (AT X, 140; Abrégé de Musique, cit., 138)

"Il y a dans tout esprit certaines parties qui, touchées même légèrement, excitent des passions fortes.

Ainsi un enfant qui a l'âme généreuse, si on le gronde, ne pleurera pas, mais il s’emportera ; un autre versera des larmes.

Si l’on nous dit que de grands malheurs sont arrivés, nous nous attristerons ; si l’on ajoute qu’il y avait en cause quelque méchant, nous nous mettrons en colère. Le passage d une passion à une autre se fait par les passions voisines ; quelquefois pourtant il y a des passages violents par les contraires : supposez par exemple que la nouvelle d’un grand malheur se répande tout à coup au milieu de la joie d’un festin.

De même que l’imagination se sert des figures pour concevoir les corps ; de même l’intelligence emploie certains corps sensibles pour figurer les choses spirituelles, comme le vent, la lumière. Une philosophie plus profonde peut élever l’esprit par la connaissance à des hauteurs sublimes." (Cogitationes privatæ, AT X 217 (traduction du latin par Foucher de Careil, I, 11).

"Premièrement, pour ce qui est des esprits animaux, ils peuvent être ou moins abondants, et leurs parties plus ou moins grosses, et plus ou moins agitées, et plus ou moins égales entre elles une fois que l'autre (138) ; et c’est par le moyen de ces quatre différences, que toutes les diverses humeurs ou inclinations naturelles (139) qui sont en nous (au moins en tant qu’elles ne dépendent point de la constitution du cerveau, ni des affections particulières de l’âme) sont représentées en cette machine. Car, si ces esprits sont plus abondants que de coutume, ils sont propres à exciter en elle des mouvements tout semblables à ceux qui témoignent en nous de la bonté, de la libéralité et de l'amour; et de semblables à ceux qui témoignent en nous de la confiance ou de la hardiesse, si leurs parties sont plus fortes et plus grosses ; et de la constance, si avec cela elles sont plus égales en figure, en force, et en grosseur ; et de la promptitude, de la diligence, et du désir, si elles sont plus agitées ; et de la tranquillité d’esprit, si elles sont plus égales en leur agitation. Comme, au contraire, ces mêmes esprits sont propres à exciter en elles des mouvements tout semblables à ceux qui témoignent en nous de la malignité, de la timidité, de l'inconstance, de la tardiveté (a), et de l'inquiétude, si ces mêmes qualités leur défaillent (b).

Et sachez que toutes les autres humeurs ou inclinations naturelles sont dépendantes de celles-ci (140). Comme l'humeur joyeuse est composée de la promptitude et de la tranquillité d’esprit ; et la bonté et la confiance servent à la rendre plus parfaite. L'humeur triste est composée de la tardiveté et de l’inquiétude, et peut être augmentée par la malignité et la timidité. L'humeur colérique est composée de la promptitude et de l'inquiétude, et la malignité et la confiance la fortifient. Enfin, comme je viens de dire, la libéralité, la bonté, et l’amour dépendent de l’abondance des esprits, et forment en nous cette humeur qui nous rend complaisants et bienfaisants à tout le monde. La curiosité et les autres désirs dépendent de l’agitation de leurs parties ; et ainsi des autres." (AT XI, 166-167; Le Monde, l'Homme, Introduction de Annie Bitbol-Hespériès; textes établis et annotés par Annie Bitbol-Hespériès et Jean-Pierre Verdet, Paris: Seuil, 1996, pp. 146-147)

Le 11 juin 1640 Descartes écrit à Mersenne : "J'écrirai à Monsieur de Zuylichem (84) pour lui demander le livre de Monsieur de la Chambre (85) et vous en dirai mon sentiment." (AT III 87; O VIII 1, 383; B 255).

(84) Lettre à Huygens perdue (Huygens était alors en campagne militaire en Flandre).

(85) Marin Cureau de La Chambre [1594 - 1669], Les Caractères des passions, 1640 (privilège du 15 décembre 1639) ; il s'agit des Passions pour le bien; un second volume, Les Passions courageuses, paraîtra en 1645.

Lettre à Mersenne du 28 janvier 1641 : "J'ai reçu, il y a déjà quelques semaines, le livre de Monsieur de la N. (9), et un autre du dixième livre d'Euclide mis en français (10). Mais pour vous avouer la vérité, sur ce que Monsieur de Zuylichem m'avait dit, avant de me les envoyer, qu'ils ne contenaient rien de fort exquis, et que j'avais d'autres occupations, je les ai laissé reposer, après avoir lu deux ou trois heures dans le premier, sans rien y trouver que des paroles."

(9) Peut-être les Caractères de Marin Cureau de La Chambre, dont il est déjà question dans à Mersenne, 11 juin 1640 (AT III 87, [O VIII 1, 383] B 255) et 28 octobre 1640 (AT III 207, [O VIII 1, 415-416] B 278).

(10) Le Traité des quantités de J.-A. Le Tenneur.

En 1645 Descartes suggère à la princesse Élisabeth de lire le De vita beata de Sénèque (lettre du 21 juillet, (AT IV 253; O VIII 2, 208; B511) ; voir aussi les lettre du 4 août 1645 : "Lorsque j'ai choisi le livre de Sénèque De vita beata, pour le proposer à Votre Altesse comme un entretien qui lui pourrait être agréable, j'ai eu seulement égard à la réputation de l'auteur et à la dignité de la matière, sans penser à la façon dont il la traite, laquelle ayant depuis considérée, je ne la trouve pas assez exacte pour mériter d'être suivie." (AT IV, 263, [O VIII 2, 209] B 514), et du 18 août 1645 : "J'ai dit ci-devant ce qu'il me semblait que Sénèque eût dû traiter en son livre ; j'examinerai maintenant ce qu'il traite." (AT IV, 271-272; O VIII 2, 224; B 517).

Descartes expose les premières esquisses de sa théorie des passions dans trois lettres à Élisabeth : 1 septembre 1645 (AT IV 281-287; O VIII 2, 219-223; B 524) ; 15 septembre 1645 (AT IV, 290-296; O VIII 2, 225-2231; B 519) ; 6 octobre 1645 (AT IV, 304-317; O VIII 2, 231-239; B526).

Le commencement du livre est annoncé dans la lettre à la princesse du 3 novembre 1645 : "J'ai pensé ces jours au nombre et à l'ordre de toutes ces passions, afin de pouvoir plus particulièrement examiner leur nature ; mais je n'ai pas encore assez digéré mes opinions, touchant ce sujet, pour les oser écrire à Votre Altesse, et je ne manquerai de m'en acquitter de plus tôt qu'il me sera possible." (AT IV, 331; O VIII 2, 242; B 529).

Un première version du livre est terminée au début de 1646 (lettre d'Élisabeth du 25 avril) : "Cela m'a empêché jusqu'ici de me prévaloir de la permission, que vous m'avez donnée, de vous proposer les obscurités que ma stupidité me fait trouver en votre Traité des passions (3), quoiqu'elles sont [sic] en petit nombre, puisqu'il faudrait être impassible, pour ne point comprendre que l'ordre, la définition et les distinctions que vous donnez aux passions, et enfin toute la partie morale du traité, passent tout ce qu'on a jamais dit sur ce sujet." (AT IV 404; O VIII 2, 252; B 554).

(3) Descartes s'était rendu le 7 mars à La Haye (à Chanut, 6 mars 1646, AT IV, 376 l. 11, [O VIII 2, 252] B 545) et avait pu y laisser à la princesse une copie manuscrite de son Traité des passions de l'âme.

Voir aussi la lettre à Élisabeth du mai 1646: "Je reconnais, par expérience, que j'ai eu raison de mettre la gloire au nombre des passions (2) ; car je ne puis m'empêcher d'être touché, en voyant le favorable jugement que fait Votre Altesse du petit traité que j'en ai écrit (3) Et je ne suis nullement surpris de ce qu'elle y remarque aussi des défauts, parce que je n'ai point douté qu'il n'y en eût en grand nombre, étant matière que je n'avais jamais ci-devant étudiée, et dont je n'ai fait que tirer le premier crayon (4), sans y ajouter les couleurs et les ornements qui seraient requis pour la faire paraître à yeux moins clairvoyants que ceux de Votre Altesse." (AT IV 407; [O VIII 2, 254] B 556).

(2) Passions de l'âme III § 204 (AT XI, 482).

(3) Voir lettre à Élisabeth, 25 avril 1646 (AT IV, 404; [O VIII 2, 252] B 554).

(4) Au sens d' « esquisse ».

Le 20 novembre 1647 Descartes envoi une copie manuscrite de son livre à la Reine Christine de Suède : "J'ai appris de Monsieur Chanut (2) qu'il plaît à Votre Majesté que j'aie l'honneur de lui exposer l'opinion que j'ai touchant le Souverain Bien, considéré au sens que les philosophes anciens en ont parlé ; et je tiens ce commandement pour une si grande faveur, que le désir que j'ai d'y obéir me détourne de toute autre pensée, et fait que, sans excuser mon insuffisance, je mettrai ici, en peu de mots, tout ce que je pourrai savoir sur cette matière." (AT V, 81-82; O VIII 2, 311; B 631).

(...)

"J'omets encore ici beaucoup d'autres choses, parce que, me représentant le nombre des affaires qui se rencontrent en la conduite d'un grand royaume, et dont Votre Majesté prend elle-même les soins, je n'ose lui demander plus long audience. Mais j'envoie à Monsieur Chanut quelques écrits (4), où j'ai mis mes sentiments plus au long touchant la même matière, afin que, s'il plaît à Votre Majesté de les voir, il m'oblige de les lui présenter, et que cela aide à témoigner avec combien de zèle et de dévotion, je suis..." (AT V 87-88; O VIII 2, 314; B 631).

(2) Voir lettre de Chanut, 21 septembre 1647 (AT V, 89-90, B 628; lettre résumée par Descartes à Élisabeth, 20 novembre 1647, AT V 89-92, [O, VIII, 2, 289-290] B633).

(4) Les Passions de l’âme et plusieurs lettres envoyées à Élisabeth (21 juillet 1645, AT IV 251-253, [O VIII 2, 207-209] B511 ; 4 août 1645, AT IV 263-268, [O VIII 2, 209-212] B514; 18 août 1645, AT IV 271-278, [O VIII 2, 214-218] B517; 1er septembre 1645, AT IV, 281-287, [O VIII 2, 219-223] B517; 15 septembre 1645, AT IV, 290-296, [O VIII 2, 225-229] B521, et, en partie, 6 octobre 1645, AT IV, 304-317, [O VIII 2, 231-239] B 526); à Élisabeth, 20 novembre 1647 (AT V, 90 l. 25-91 l. 3, [O VIII 2, 289-290] B 633).

Descartes fait ses dernières modifications entre avril et août 1649 : "Pour le traité des Passions, je n'espère pas qu'il soit imprimé qu'après que je serai en Suède (3); car j'ai été négligent à le revoir et y ajouter les choses que vous avez jugé y manquer, lesquelles l'augmenteront d'un tiers ; car il contiendra trois parties, dont la première sera des passions en général, et par occasion de la nature de l'âme, etc., la seconde des six passions primitives, et la troisième de toutes les autres." (AT V, 354; O VIII 2, 725; B 697).

"L’accroissement d’environ un tiers n’implique pas nécessairement que le contenu de la troisième partie y ait été ajouté en totalité : les développements sur la générosité, et les conclusions générales du Traité n’étaient-ils pas au moins ébauchés dans cette « partie morale » qui satisfaisait si fort Élisabeth (3) ? Mais les observations de détail de la Princesse concernaient essentiellement la seconde partie actuelle (4)." (Genèvieve Rodis-Lewis, Introduction à son édition de Les passions de l'âme, Paris: Vrin, 2010, p. 26 (première édition 1994).

(3) 25 avril 1646, AT IV, 404 [O VIII 2, 252; B 554].

(4) Ch. Adam avait d’abord rapporté une remarque d’Élisabeth à l’art. 170 (AT IV, 414, note), mais la langueur est déjà évoquée dans les articles 119 à 121 (AT XI, 298). La seconde partie, sous sa forme définitive, amorce plusieurs renvois à la troisième, précisément à propos de la générosité (art. 83, 145).

11. ———. 1649. La naissance de la paix. Ballet.

Texte d'un ballet dansé au château royal de Stockholm le jour de la naissance de Christine de Suède le 18 décembre 1649.

AT (nouvelle édition) V 616-627; B op. II, 1412-1435.

La première édition (Stockholm, Jean Janssonius, 1649 disponible à l'adresse : diglib.hab.de/wdb.php?dir=drucke/20-4-quod-2f-6) à été découverte par Johan Nordström dans la Bibliotheca Carolina Rediviva de Uppsala et publiée par lui et Albert Thibaudet avec le titre: Un Ballet de Descartes. La Naissance de la Paix, Revue de Genève, pp. 173-185 (avec une introduction de A. Thibaudet (pp. 161-170) et une note de J. Nordström (pp. 171-172).

L'authenticité de cet écrit a été déniée par Richard A. Watson, "René Descartes n'est pas l'auteur de la Naissance de la paix", Archives de Philosophie, 53, 1990, pp. 389-401 et Descartes's Ballet. His Doctrine Of the Will and His Political Philosophy, St. Augustine's Press, South Bend, 2007 (avec la traduction du texte) et par Matthijs van Otegem, A Bibliography of the Works of Descartes (1637-1704), Utrecht: Proefschrift Universiteit, 2002, vol. II, pp. 731-735.

Geneviève Rodis-Lewis a défendu l'authenticité de l'œuvre (contra Watson) dans: "Gli ultimi scritti di Descartes", traduit en italien par Leon Ginzburg, Discipline Filosofiche, 1993, pp. 15-42, version française dans : G. Rodis-Lewis, Le développement de la pensée de Descartes, (recueil d'articles), Paris: Vrin, 1997, pp. 203-223.

12. ———. 1649. Projet de comédie (Extraits de Baillet).

Baillet II, 407-408 (le texte est perdu); AT XI 661-662; B Op II, 922-923.

"Nous avons pareillement une espèce de Comédie française, qu'il fit en prose mêlée de quelques vers, pendant son séjour à la Cour de Suède. Ce fut l'un des fruits de l'oisiveté où la Reine le retint durant l'absence de l'Ambassadeur de France, dont elle attendait le retour. La pièce est imparfaite, et le quatrième Acte ne paraît pas même achevé. Elle a tout l'air d'une Pastorale ou Fable bocagère. Mais quoiqu'il semble avoir voulu envelopper l'amour de la Sagesse, la recherche de la Vérité, et l'étude de la Philosophie, sous les discours figurez de les personnages ; on peut dire que tous ces mystères seront assez peu importants au Public, tant qu'il jouira des autres écrits, où M. Descartes s'est expliqué sans mystères. » (Baillet II, 407)

13. ———. 1650. Projet d'une académie à Stockholm (Extraits de Baillet).

AT XI 663-665; Baillet II, 411-413; B Op. II, 925-929.

C'est le dernier écrit de Descartes (1 février 1650).

"...La Reine, qui ne songeait à rien moins qu'à l'incommoder, l'obligea, dans le fort de la maladie de M. l'Ambassadeur, de retourner encore au Palais après-midi pendant quelques jours, pour prendre avec elle la communication d'un dessein de Conférence ou d'Assemblée de Savants, qu'elle voulait établir en forme d'Académie, dont elle devait être le chef et la protectrice. Elle regarda M. Descartes comme l'homme du meilleur conseil qu'on put écouter sur cet établissement, et elle le choisit pour en dresser le plan et pour en faire les règlements. Il lui porta le mémoire qu'il en avait fait, le premier jour de Février, qui fut le dernier qu'il eut l'honneur de voir la Reine." (Baillet II, p. 411).

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

René Descartes. Outils de Recherche en Français

Introduction

Cette page contient une liste annotée des biographies, dictionnaires, concordances et répertoires bibliographiques sur Descartes en langue Français e; pour les études en anglais voir:

Descartes. Bibliographies, Concordances, Dictionaries, Lexica

Abréviations

Note su les éditions de la Correspondance de Descartes:

L'édition Adam-Tannery est devenue obsolète après la publication de nouvelles éditions par G. Belgioioso (texte original latin ou Français et traduction italienne, lettres dans l'ordre chronologique) et par J.-R. Armogathe (lettres en latin publiées en traduction Français e, groupées par correspondant), pour un total de 735 lettres; cette édition donne seulement "la correspondance active (les lettres de Descartes), en donnant en note les éléments de correspondance passive (parfois des lettres entières) nécessaires à la bonne compréhension." (O VIII, 1, p. 22)

Je cite les lettres de Descartes après l'édition de Armogathe (O VIII, 1 et 2), mais je donne aussi la référence à l'édition Adam-Tannery (AT I-V, X: Supplément à la Correspondance, pp. 538-632) et le numéro de la lettre dans l'édition Belgioioso (B); pour la correspondance passive, je cite le texte de l'édition Belgioioso, avec la référence à l'édition AT.

- Abrégé = Adrien Baillet, La vie de mr. Des-Cartes. Réduite en abrégé, Paris: G. de Luynes, 1693.

- Alquié = Ferdinand Alquié (éd.), Descartes, Œuvres philosophiques, Paris: Garnier: Tome I (1618-1637), 1963; Tome II (1638-1642), 1967; Tome III (1643-1650), 1973; édition revue 2010.

- AM = Charles Adam, Gérard Milhaud (éds.), Descartes. Correspondence publiée avec une introduction et des notes, Vol. 1-2 Paris: Alcan; vol. 3-8 Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1935-1963.

- AT = Charles Adam, Paul Tannery (éds.), René Descartes, Œuvres, Nouvelle présentation par J. Beaude, P. Costabel, A. Gabbey et B. Rochot, Paris: Vrin 1964-1974 (Édition du Jubilé, 1996, 11 volumes); première édition 1897-1913 (Les tomes I-V contiennent la Correspondance).

- B = Giulia Belgioioso (éd.), René Descartes, Tutte le lettere, con la collaborazione di I. Agostini, F. Marrone, F. A. Meschini, M. Savini e J.-R. Armogathe, Testo francese, latino e olandese a fronte, Milano: Bompiani, 2009.

- B Op. I = Giulia Belgioioso (éd.), René Descartes, Opere 1637-1649, con la collaborazione di I. Agostini, F. Marrone, M. Savini, Testo francese e latino a fronte, Milano: Bompiani, 2009.

- B Op. II = Giulia Belgioioso (éd.), René Descartes, Opere postume 1650-2009, con la collaborazione di I. Agostini, F. Marrone, M. Savini, Testo francese e latino a fronte, Milano: Bompiani, 2009.

- BAB = Giulia Belgioioso, Jean-Robert Armogathe (éds.), René Descartes, Isaac Beeckman, Marin Mersenne. Lettere 1619-1648, Testi latini e francesi a fronte, Milano: Bompiani, 2015.

- Baillet = Adrien Baillet, La vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes, 2 vols., Paris: D. Horthemels, 1691.

- Burman = René Descartes, L'entretien avec Burman, Édition, traduction et annotation par Jean-Marie Beyssade. Suivi d'une études sur RSP ou Le monogramme de Descartes Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1981.

- Clerselier 1664 = Claude Clerselier (éd.), L'Homme de René Descartes et un Traité de la formation du foetus du mesme autheur. Avec les remarques de Louys de La Forge, ... sur le Traité de l'homme de René Descartes et sur les figures par lui inventées. [Suivi de la version de la préface que M. Schuyl a mise au devant de la version latine qu'il a faite du traité de l'homme.], Paris: C. Angot, 1664.

- Clerselier 1677 = Claude Clerselier (éd.), L'homme de René Descartes, et La formation du foetus. Avec les remarques de Louis de La Forge. A quoy l'on a ajouté Le Monde ou Traité de la lumière du mesme autheur. Deuxième édition revue et corrigée, Paris: Theodore Girard, 1677.

- Clerselier Lettres = Claude Clerselier (éd.), Lettres de M. Descartes, trois volumes, Paris: Charles Angot, I (1657), II (1659), III (1667).

- Cl-Inst = Claude Clerselier (éd.), Lettres de M. Descartes, trois volumes, Paris: Charles Angot, I (1657), II (1659), III (1667), exemplaire de l'Institut de France, ée. J.-R. Armogathe et G. Belgioioso, 3 vol. + 3 fasc., Lecce: Conte Editore.

- CM = Marin Mersenne, Correspondnce du P. Marin Mersenne, réligieux minime, commencée par Mme Paul Tannery, publiée et annotée par Cornelis De Waard, 17 vol. Paris: CNRS, 1932-1988.

- CO = Vincent Carraud, Gilles Olivo (éds.), René Descartes, Étude du bon sens, La recherche de la vérité et autres écrits de jeunesse (1616-1631), Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 2013.

"Le présent ouvrage réunit donc l'ensemble des écrits de Descartes, de 1616 à 1631, excepté, bien sûr, les œuvres qui lui ont été attribuées mais dont nous ne connaissons que le titre, ou au contraire celles qui ont déjà fait l'objet d'éditions et de commentaires séparés, mais dont des pages signets marquent simplement l'emplacement: le Compendium musicae, le De solidorum elementis et les Regulae ad directionem ingenii. Portant sur la genèse de la pensée philosophique de Descartes, il n'inclut pas davantage ses essais scientifiques, que d'autres, plus compétents que nous en la matière, éditeront de leur côté. Il comprend donc les écrits philosophiques du jeune Descartes, précédés, pour des raisons que l'originalité de sa dédicace fera apparaître en son lieu propre, du placard de sa licence en droit, soit:

— un ensemble de notes que l'on peut attribuer ou rattacher aux diverses parties du Registre de 1619;

— les Olympica, qui font mémoire de la découverte des «fondements de la science admirable»;

— le Studium bonae mentis, essai de restitution;

— la Censura quarumdam Epistolarum Domini Balzacii, texte latin et traduction Français e de Clerselier;

— La recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle, fragment Français conservé dans les papiers de Leibniz, traduction néerlandaise de 1684, première traduction Français e de la traduction néerlandaise, traduction latine de 1701." p. 8.

- Corr. 1643 = Theo Verbeek, Erik-Jan Bos, Jeroen van de Ven (eds)., The Correspondence of René Descartes 1643, Quaestiones Infinitae Volume XLV, Utrecht: Zeno Institute for Philosophy, 2003. (First volume of a new critical edition of the Correspondence).

- Corr. Regius = Erik-Jean Bos (ed.), The Correspondence between Descartes and Henricus Regius, Utrecht: The Leiden-Utrecht Research Institute of Philosophy, 2002.

- Foucher de Careil = Louis-Alexandre Foucher de Careil (éd.), Œuvres inédites de Descartes, précedèes d'une introduction sur la méthode, 2 vols., Paris: Auguste Durand, I, 1859, II, 1860.

- O I = Jean-Marie Beyssade et Denis Kambouchner (éds.), René Descartes, Œuvres complètes I. Premiers écrits. Règles pour la direction de l'esprit, Paris: Gallimard, 2016.

- O III = Jean-Marie Beyssade et Denis Kambouchner (éds.), René Descartes, Œuvres complètes III. Discours de la Méthode et Essais, Paris: Gallimard, 2009.

- O VIII, 1 = Jean-Robert Armogathe (éd.), René Descartes, Œuvres complètes VIII. Correspondance, 1, Paris: Gallimard, 2013.

- O VIII, 2 = Jean-Robert Armogathe (éd.), René Descartes, Œuvres complètes VIII. Correspondance, 2, Paris: Gallimard, 2013.

- Opuscula posthuma = Opuscula posthuma, physica et mathematica, Amstelodami: P. & J. Blaeu, 1701

- Querelle = Theo Verbeek, (ed.), La Querelle d'Utrecht, Paris: Les impressions nouvelles, 1988. (Table des Matière: Jean-Luc Marion: Préface 7; Theo Verbeek: Introduction 18; Narration historique 71; René Descartes: Lettre à Dinet 125; Martin Schoock: L'Admirable Méthode 153; René Descartes: Lettre à Voet 321; René Descartes: Lettre Apologétique aux Magistrats d'Utrecht 401; Theo Verbeek: Notes 439-539).

Biographies anciennes (jusq'au 1950)

1. Beeckman, Isaac. 1939. Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman de 1604 à 1634, publié avec une introduction et des notes. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Le Journal tenu par Isaac Beeckman de 1604 à 1634, a été publié en quatre volumes par Cornelis de Waard, La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1939-1953: Tome I: 1604-1619; (1939) Tome II: 1619-1627 (1942); Tome III: 1627-1634 [1635] (1945); Tome IV: Supplément (1953).

Les passages sur Descartes ont été publiés dans l'édition Adam-Tannery des Œuvres de Descartes:

I. Varia: 15 extraits (AT X, 41-66); II. Physico-Mathematica: 1) Aquae comprimentis in vase ratio reddita à D. Des Cartes (AT 67-74; 2) Lapis in vacuo versus terrae centrum cadens quantum singulis momentis motu crescat, ratio Des Cartes (AT X, 75-78).

Voir aussi dans AT X. Beeckman et Descartes (1618-1619). Avertissement (1905), par Adam Tannery, pp. 17-39.

Lettres de Descartes à Beeckman:

1619: I. 24 janvier, II. 26 mars, III. 20 avril, IV. 23 avril, V. 29 avril;

1630: VI. septembre, VII. 17 octobre;

1634: VIII. 22 août.

Lettre de Beeckman à Descartes:

1619: 6 mai.

Édition de la correspondance entre Descartes, Beeckman et Mersenne: Giulia Belgioioso et Jean-Robert Armogathe (éds.), René Descartes, Isaac Beeckman, Marin Mersenne. Lettere 1619-1648, édition intégrale avec traduction italienne en face, Milan: Bompiani, 2015.

2. Lipstorp, Daniel. 1653. Specimina philosophiae cartesianae, quibus accedit eiusdem authoris Copernicus redivivus, seu de vero mundi systemate liber singularis. Lugduni Batavorum: Elsevier.

Contient la première biographie de Descartes.

"Au défaut d’une Vie parfaite, il s’est trouvé des auteurs qui ont au moins tenté d’en donner des abrégés ou des fragments. Celui qui semble y avoir le moins mal réussi est le sieur Daniel Lipstorpius de Lübeck professeur dans l’université de son pays. Cet auteur, n’ayant pas voulu laisser perdre les particularités de la vie de M. Descartes qu’il avait apprises en Hollande tant de M. Schooten l’ancien que de M. de Raey docteur en médecine, nous a donné en deux feuilles d’impression plus que l’on aurait dû attendre d’un étranger qui n’a travaillé que sur des relations subreptices. Quoique ce soit très peu de chose par rapport à la vie de M. Descartes, on doit lui savoir gré de ce qu’il a dit, sans lui reprocher ses omissions ou ses négligences. Quelque grand que soit le nombre de ses fautes, il est louable de n’en avoir pas fait encore davantage. C’est à M. de Raey qu’il était particulièrement redevable de tout ce qu’il a dit de meilleur; mais parce qu’il a oublié de le reconnaître au moins publiquement, je me crois obligé de suppléer à ce défaut, et de rendre à M. de Raey la justice qui lui était due par M. Lipstorpius. Il est bon que l’on sache que ’a été à l’insu de M. de Raey et sans sa participation que M. Lipstorpius a publié ce qu’il en avait appris touchant la vie de M. Descartes. M. de Raey avait un disciple nommé M. van Berhel jeune homme de beaucoup d’esprit et de grande capacité, à qui il avait donné divers petits mémoires curieux. M. Lipstorpius, ayant reu de M. van Berhel quelques-uns de ces mémoires qui regardaient M. Descartes, les avait donnés de bonne foi au public, sans examiner s’il avait besoin du consentement de M. de Raey, ou s’il devait les autoriser de son nom.

Ce fragment de la Vie de M. Descartes fut imprimé à Leyde l’an 1653 parmi les Essais de D. Lipstorpius touchant la philosophie cartésienne."

Adrien Baillet, La vie de Monsieur Descartes, (1691), Préface, pp. XIII-XV.

"Au tome I, Lipstorp donne, dans un Appendix, une courte biographie de Descartes, p. 69-94; encore les cinq dernières pages sont-elles remplies par le texte des inscriptions ou épitaphes en l'honneur du philosophe, si bien que quinze pages et demie tout au plus sont consacrées au récit de sa vie." (Charles Adam, Vie et Œuvres de Descartes. Étude historique, Paris: Léopold Cerf, 1910, p. VI).

"En dehors de la France, Daniel Lipstorpius, professeur à l’Université de Lubeck, a publié en 1653 un fragment sur la vie de Descartes dans ses Specimina philosophiae in-4° Ludg.-Batav., et Jean Tepelius a fait paraître à Nuremberg, en 1664, Historia philosophiae cartesianae, in-12, qui n'est qu’une brochure et dont un seul chapitre, fort incomplet comme tout le reste, est consacré à la vie de Descartes."

Francisque Bouillier, Histoire de la Philosophie Cartésienne, Paris, 1868, p. 31.

"Le volume se divise en trois parties, auxquelles il faut ajouter l’essai conclusif en forme de défense de la théorie copernicienne: le Copernicus redivivus. Les trois parties qui composent les Specimina contiennent, respectivement, une justification de la méthode mathématique suivie par Descartes, une exposition des règles du mouvement more geometrico demonstratas, et, enfin, un traité sur l'air."

Massimiliano Savini, Johannes Clauberg. Methodus cartesiana et ontologie, Paris: Vrin, 2011, p. 281. (voir aussi Les Specimina philosophiae cartesianae de Daniel Lipstorp, pp. 281-292.)

3. Borel, Pierre. 1656. Vitae Renati Cartesii, Summi philosophi compendium. Paris: Ioannem Billaine et Mathurini Dupuis.

"Mais sur la fin de la même année [1653] l’on vit paraître à Castres en Languedoc une espèce d’abrégé de la même Vie composé par le sieur Pierre Borel médecin du roi, et dédié à M. Pélisson. Il fut réimprimé à Paris trois ans après; puis à Francfort et à Leipzig en 1670 et en 1676. Et enfin inséré parmi les Mémoires du sieur Henning Witte imprimés à Francfort l’an 1677. Il paraît que l’auteur de ce petit Abrégé n’a écrit que sur ce qu’il pouvait avoir appris de son ami M. de Villebressieu qui avait demeuré pendant quelque temps avec M. Descartes. De sorte que si on en excepte quelques faits généraux, comme sont ordinairement ceux qu'on ne retient qu’en gros pour les choses passées dont on ne tient point de registre, il semble qu’il n’y ait point de sûreté dans tout le reste. L’auteur ne s’est pas fort embarrassé des circonstances particulières qui pouvaient servir à vérifier ses faits. Il ne s’est assujetti à aucun ordre ni pour les temps ni pour les espèces. Il n’a donné à son écrit ni style ni forme; et la manière dont il a confondu toutes choses peut nous faire juger qu’il n’y a rien dans son Abrégé qui soit plus remarquable que l’industrie avec laquelle il a su entasser tant de fautes dans un si petit espace.

M. Borel s’est fait la justice de ne regarder son écrit que comme une ébauche imparfaite et comme un simple prélude d’une juste histoire qu’il semblait promettre, au cas qu’il se trouvât suffisamment pourvu de facultés, et du secours nécessaires à un ouvrage de cette nature. Et M. Lipstorpius a eu la modestie de s’excuser d’une semblable entreprise sur les difficultés qu’il y trouvait tant de son côté que de celui de M. Descartes.

Mais vingt ans après il s’est rencontré un autre Allemand plus courageux, qui sans s’épouvanter des obstacles qui rebutaient les autres, a voulu enfin donner au public le grand ouvrage qu’on attendait depuis tant de temps. Il le fit paraître à Nuremberg l’an 1674 sous le titre magnifique de M. Johannis Tepelii Historia Philosophia Cartesiana. C’est un ouvrage de quatre petites feuilles d’impression, divisé en six chapitres, dont il n’y a que le premier qui regarde précisément la vie de M. Descartes. Il serait peut-être plus utile s’il était moins superficiel, ou s’il avait pu se garantir des fautes de ceux qu’il a copiés. Mais on ne peut disconvenir que le sieur Gérard de Vries n’ait eu très grande raison de l’estimer très peu, et de regarder ce petit écrit comme une pièce tout à fait indigne de son grand titre. M. Tepelius a cru peut-être en rehausser l’éclat par une pompeuse dédicace, dont le seul titre occupe six pages pour étaler les noms et qualités de cinq officiers de justice à la tête de son épître. Ce qui nous fait regarder tout le corps de l’ouvrage comme un petit monstre plus capable de nous faire rire que de nous effrayer. "

Adrien Baillet, La vie de Monsieur Descartes, (1691), Préface, pp. XV-XVII.

"Avant Baillet, un autre Français , Pierre Borel, médecin de Castres, avait écrit une vie de Descartes: Renati Cartesii summi phîlosophi Compendium, publié à Castres en 1653. Mais cette vie est très-courte, incomplète, sans ordre; elle a été rédigée sur oui dire et n’a de remarquable que l’enthousiasme de l’auteur pour Descartes."

Francisque Bouillier, Histoire de la Philosophie Cartésienne, Paris, 1868, p. 31

Cette première édition n'est pas citée dans la liste de ses œuvres que Borel a publié dans son Trésor de recherches et antiquitez gauloises et franoises réduites en ordre alphabétique (1655); en outre à p. 26 et p. 47 Borel cite l'ouvrage de Lipstorp (1653) et d'autres ouvrages datés de 1654: la première édition est donc très probablement celle de 1656.

Repris dans Roger Ariew, Daniel Garber (eds.), Descartes in Seventeenth-Century England, Bristol: Thoemmes, 2002, vol. 3: Biographies of Descartes: Pierre Borel, A Summary or Compendium, of the Life of the Most Famous Philosopher Renatus Descartes (1670); Marcus Zurius Boxhorn, Epitome of the Life of Descartes, in: Pierre Borel, A Summary or Compendium, of the Life of the Most Famous Philosopher Renatus Descartes (1670); Adrien Baillet, The Life of Monsieur Des Cartes (1693).

Le livre contient la première édition de l'inventaire des manuscrits de Descartes retrouvés à Stockholm après sa mort: Elenchus manuscriptorum Cartesii Stocholmi repertorum post Eius obitum anno 1650 (pp. 16-19).

"Si cette biographie se ressent des lacunes de sa documentation, elle vaut toutefois par sa date même de parution, un an avant les publications de Clerselier, comme par ses annexes, puisque, à côté des épitaphes de la tombe de Descartes à Stockholm, on y trouve la liste des ouvrages imprimés ou manuscrits de Descartes, ainsi qu'une dizaine de lettres au P. Mersenne et deux à l'Électeur Palatin." (Pierre Chabbert, Pierre Borel (1620 ?-1671). In: Revue d'histoire des sciences et de leurs applications, tome 21, n°4, 1968. pp. 303-343).

4. Baillet, Adrien. 1691. La vie de monsieur Des-Cartes. Paris: D. Horthmels.

Deux volumes.

Réimpression anastatique: Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1972; Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 2010; nouvelle édition en un volume: La vie de monsieur Descartes par Adrien Baillet suivi de Abrégé de la vie de M. Baillet par Bernard de La Monnoye, Paris: Les Cinquante / Éditions des Malassis, 2012. [l'auteur de la vie de de Baillet est son neveu, Augustin Frion: cfr. Jean-Pierre Niceron, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des hommes illustres dans la république des lettres avec un catalogue raisonné des leurs Ouvrages, Paris: Briasson, 1730, vol X, p. 127]

Sur Baillet voir: Leonard J. Wang, The Life and Works of Adrien Baillet, [1649-1706] thèse inédite, Columbia University, 1955, 298 pages (disponible en format PDF chez ProQuest Dissertation Express, ref. n. 0012074).

"Pour moi j’avoue l’intention que j’ai eue de faire tout sérieusement la vie de M. Descartes, et même l’histoire du cartésianisme jusqu’à la mort de son auteur; et je comprends aisément que j’aurais mauvaise raison de vouloir décliner le jugement de ceux qui voudront examiner mon ouvrage sur toutes les règles d’une vraie histoire.

Afin de leur faciliter les voies, je crois devoir leur montrer du doigt les sources où j’ai puisé, et leur indiquer les personnes qui pourraient garantir ce qui m’est venu par leur canal. Je déclare d’abord que je n’ai donné l’exclusion à aucun livre imprimé tel qu’il pût être; et que je me suis servi aussi utilement des écrits composés par les ennemis et les adversaires de M. Descartes, que des ouvrages faits par ses amis et ses sectateurs. Mais on me permettra de dire que rien ne s’est trouvé plus à mon usage que les œuvres même de notre philosophe; et que parmi ces œuvres il n’y en a point eu de plus propres à mon dessein que les trois volumes de ses lettres (*) avec son Discours de la méthode. J’ai retiré aussi de grands avantages des manuscrits qu’il avait laissés en mourant entre les mains de l’ambassadeur de France en Suède; et de plusieurs autres papiers qui se sont heureusement conservés chez quelques-uns de ses amis. J’ai tâché de mettre en œuvre les témoignages de tous ceux qui ont eu quelques relations avec M. Descartes, et surtout des personnes de probité, qui ayant vu et connu notre philosophe à Paris, en Hollande, et en Suède, sont encore au monde pour pouvoir prêter leur ministère à la vérité."

Adrien Baillet, La vie de Monsieur Descartes, (1691), Préface, pp. XX-XXI.

(*) Claude Clerselier. Lettres de Mr Descartes, 3 vols., Paris, Charles Angot, 1657, 1659, 1667 (réimpression anastatique de la troisième édition (1666-1667) de l'exemplaire de l'Institut de France avec les annotations autographes de Jean-Baptiste Legrand et Adrien Baillet, par les soins de Jean-Robert Armogathe et Giulia Belgioioso, Lecce: Conte Editore, 2005).

"Baillet a publié eu 1691 une Vie de Descartes, en 2 vol. in-4°, dont il a donné l’année suivante un abrégé en 1 vol. in-12. Baillet est de beaucoup le meilleur et le plus complet de tous les biographes de Descartes.

Il a eu le concours de tous les amis de Descartes; il a puisé aux sources les plus sûres et dans les pièces originales. Aussi son histoire abonde-t-elle- en détails intéressants, en renseignements précieux sur la vie, sur la personne et sur les ouvrages de Descartes. Mais malheureusement Baillet, qui est tout à fait dépourvu d’esprit philosophique et de sens critique, mêle à son récit une foule do hors-d’œuvre, de plates réflexions, de minuties, tandis que souvent il omet ce qu’il nous importerait le plus de savoir pour l’histoire de la philosophie de Descartes. Nous ne dirons donc pas avec M. Cousin que l’ouvrage de Baillet est excellent, mais, d’un autre côté, nous ne saurions approuver ce jugement trop sévère qu'en porte Malebranche: « La Vie de M. Descartes par M. Baillet n’est propre qu’à rendre ridicules ce philosophe et sa philosophie. » (Correspondance inédite publiée par l’abbé Blampignon, p. 13.) (**)"

Francisque Bouillier, Histoire de la Philosophie Cartésienne, Paris, 1868, p. 31.

(**) Nicolas Malebranche, Œuvres complètes, sous la direction d'André Robinet, Paris: Vrin, 1978, vol. XIX, Correspondance et actes (1690-1715), p. 561.

5. ———. 1692. La vie de mr. Des-Cartes. Réduite en abrégé. Paris: G. de Luynes.

Deuxième édition révisée, Paris, 1693.

Édition moderne: Vie de Monsieur Descartes, Paris, La Table Ronde, 1946, réimpression 1992). Cette édition omit l' épitre à Monseigneur le Chancelier et l' Avertissement, pp. 1-2.

English translation: Life of Monsieur Descartes, Containing the History of His Philosophy and Works, London: R. Simpson, 1693.

Traduzione italiana di Lelia Pezzillo: Vita di Monsieur Descartes, Milano, Adelphi, 1996.

"Je ne me suis pas contenté de suivre dans cet Abrégé l’ordre que je m’étais prescrit dans l’histoire de la vie de M. Descartes, et d'en observer l’économie dans la même division des livres et des chapitres. Je me suis encore assujetti autant que j’ai pu à ne le composer que des mêmes expressions, afin qu'on y puisse retrouver la vie de M. Descartes toute entière, mais en petit, comme une miniature représente un portrait qui se trouve ailleurs dans un grand tableau."

Adrien Baillet, Avertissement.

"M. Baillet était déterminé à laisser en repos ses Auteurs déguisés, aussi bien que la suite de ses Jugements des savants, en attendant que la Providence lui présentât l’occasion indispensable d’en continuer la publication, lorsque M. l’abbé Legrand l’engagea avec quelques autres intéressés à ranger par ordre les mémoires qu’il avait recueillis sur la vie et la philosophie du célèbre philosophe de nos jours M. Descartes. En bien moins d’un an elle fut mise sous la presse, dès le 19 février 1691 le libraire Hortemels chargé de ce livre trouva fort son compte avec les étrangers, et en trois mois de temps il leur envoya plus de la moitié de l’édition. Si la mort ne l’avait enlevé, il se flattait d’en donner une seconde. Cependant comme on était bien aise d’avoir en France une Vie de Descartes qui fut courte et à bon marché, et qu’on menaait de réduire en abrégé celle qui y paraissait dans une juste étendue, M. Baillet, docile aux remontrances de ses amis, se mit à renfermer en un petit in-12 les deux in-4° de la vie de son philosophe."

Augustin Frion (neveu de Baillet), Abrégé de la vie de M. Baillet, dans le premier volume de Adrien Baillet, Jugemens des savans sur les principaux ouvrages des auteurs, revus, corrigés et augmentés par M. [Bernard] de La Monnoye, Paris: C. Moette, 1722, Amsterdam 1726, pp. 19-20.

6. Millet, Joseph. 1867. Histoire de Descartes avant 1637; suivi de L'analyse du Discours de la méthode et des Essais de philosophie. Paris: Didier.

"La vie de Descartes, esquissée d’abord d’une manière imparfaite et tout à fait insuffisante par Lipstorpius (1) et Borel (2), a été écrite ensuite par Baillet (3) d’une manière beaucoup moins incomplète, mais d’un style lourd, prétentieux, emphatique, qui seul justifierait notre tentative.

Cet ouvrage a d’autres défauts: « il renferme beaucoup d’inutilités et de minuties (4), il est rempli d’anachronismes (5), et Huyghens (6) en a relevé quelques-uns. Leibniz (7) a également signalé plusieurs erreurs dans ce travail dont l’auteur « est dépourvu de sens critique et d’esprit philosophique (8).» L’auteur, fort ignorant en toutes choses, est surtout effrayé des épines de l’Algèbre; la Géométrie est pour lui lettre close, et il est incapable de discuter les idées métaphysiques de Descartes, il néglige une chose qui est cependant de la plus haute importance quand on écrit la biographie d’un savant inventeur et d’un philosophe: il oublie de nous donner la filiation des idées et des inventions, de retracer l’histoire psychologique du penseur et du chercheur. Ce travail était donc à faire: la beauté et la grandeur du su jet nous ont tentés, et sans nous laisser décourager par les difficultés et les périls de l’entreprise, nous avons voulu reproduire d’une manière complète et exacte, et replacer sous les yeux de tous, avec sa physionomie vraie, l’une des plus grandes figures du XVIIe siècle et de tous les siècles. Descartes est l’un des pères de la pensée moderne, nul n’a fait plus que lui pour renouveler et transformer nos idées sur le monde et sur Dieu; ce sera donc un spectacle curieux et instructif que d’assister à l’évolution de son génie.

Pour écrire cette histoire rien ne nous a été plus utile que les ouvrages mêmes de Descartes, particulièrement les lettres et les ouvrages de sa jeunesse publiés en 1860 par M. Foucher de Careil (9). Nous mettrons en seconde ligne Baillet lui-même, dont l’ouvrage est une mine où il faut savoir puiser. Nous avons emprunté aussi quelques détails à Lipstorpius et à Borel. Lipstorpius tenait tous ses renseignements de Raey, ami de Descartes, et de Van Berhel, disciple de Raey.

Pierre Borel avait appris ce qu’il nous a donné de M. de Villebressieux, dont nous parlerons plusieurs fois, qui avait connu Descartes à Paris, et avait été demeurer avec lui pendant plusieurs années en Hollande. Je n’ai pu me procurer l’ouvrage de Tépelius: Historia Philosophiae cartesianae, qui n’était du reste, selon Baillet, qu’un ouvrage superficiel et tout à fait indigne de son titre." (XVII-XIX)

(1) V. Specimina, Phil. cartes. Leyde, 1653.

(2) V. Centuries et observ. medico-phys. Castres, 1653; Francfort, 1670.

(3) Vie de M. Desc., 1691, 2 vol.; abrégé, 1 vol., 1692.

(4) V. Niceron, Mém., vol. XXXI, p. 314.

(5) V. Lettre de l’abbé Nicaise, dans les Fragm. de phil. mod. de M. Cousin, p. 91.

(6) V. Remarques de Huyghens, dans le même vol. de M. Cousin, p. 47 sqq.

(7) Remarques de Leibniz sur l’Abrégé de la vie de Descartes, par Baillet, manuscrit de la Bibliothèque royale de Hanovre.

(8) V. Bouillier, Hist. de la phil. cart., t. I, p. 31, note.

(9) V. éd. des lettres de Clerselier, et celle de 1724; V. l’exemplaire de l’éd. de Clerselier, qui est à la bibliothèque de l’institut; V. les posthumes, éd. 1701, Amsterdam; l’éd. des Œuvres de Descartes, par Cousin; — les Inédites de Descartes, par le comté F. de Careil.

7. ———. 1870. Descartes: son histoire depuis 1637, sa philosophie, son rôle dans le mouvement général de l'esprit humain. Paris: C. Dumoulin.

Ce deuxième volume a aujourd'hui seulement un intérêt historique.

"Nous touchons au terme de la carrière que nous voulions parcourir. Nous avons fait connaître, autant que cela a dépendu de nous, l’âme et la doctrine de Descartes. Mais comme les détails en toute chose font d’ordinaire perdre la vue de l’ensemble, il nous reste à réunir les traits épars de cette physionomie à la fois énergique et tendre, héroïque et méditative, à rassembler dans un cadre restreint les éléments essentiels de cette philosophie et à en apprécier la valeur et le rôle historique.

Les deux traits dominants de l’âme de Descartes sont la force de la volonté et l’étendue de la raison. Cette force de volonté enfante les résolutions énergiques et persévérantes, et d’abord la résolution mère et inspiratrice de toutes les autres celle de bâtir en philosophie sur des fondements nouveaux, de refondre complètement et comme d’un seul jet la science tout entière. Cette entreprise, l’une des plus vastes qui aient jamais été tentées, il la poursuit sans relâche depuis sa seizième année jusqu’à sa mort; nul accident ne l’arrête ou ne le fait dévier, nul obstacle ne le rebute, nul mauvais vouloir, nulle persécution n’est capable de l’ébranler, ni seulement d’altérer la calme sérénité de son âme. De là vient la sincérité, parfois un peu rude, et la loyauté absolue de son caractère. Qu’aurait-il à cacher, ne voulant que le vrai et le bien, et le voulant avec résolution? L’âme de Descartes est d’une sincérité parfaite avec les autres et, ce qui est plus rare, avec elle-même. (pp. 355-356).

8. Adam, Charles. 1910. Vie et Œuvres de Descartes. Étude historique. Paris: Léopold Cerf.

Supplément à l'édition Adam-Tannery des œuvres de Descartes.

Nouvelle édition, abrégée et révisée, Paris: Boivin & Cie, 1937.

"Comme cette édition est à l'usage de ceux que l'histoire de la philosophie intéresse, nous en avons fait un instrument de travail aussi utile que possible, n'hésitant pas à y prodiguer les renseignements sans compter: chaque lecteur saura bien y choisir ce qui lui convient, et laisser là le reste. Néanmoins, quantité de documents n'ont pu être utilisés de la sorte, qui méritaient d'être publiés aussi; leur place était donc indiquée dans une Étude sur la vie et les œuvres de Descartes.

Ce titre a paru préférable à tout autre. C'est, en effet, une étude sur Descartes seulement, que nous avons voulu donner, et non pas sur le Cartésianisme. Aussi n'avions nous que faire de cette longue liste de livres qui se sont succédé depuis plus de deux siècles et demi, et qui ont pour objet le commentaire ou la critique de la philosophie cartésienne, sans ajouter un document à ceux que possédait déjà le XVIIe siècle sur la personne de Descartes: chacun de ces livres nous expose la pensée, sans doute fort intéressante, de son auteur propre, bien plus que celle du philosophe lui-même, et sous une apparence historique, il a toujours en réalité un caractère plus ou moins dogmatique. (Et nous craignons bien de n'apporter aussi, en dépit de nos efforts, qu'un livre de plus qui ne sera pas exempt de cet inévitable défaut, un livre à prétentions objectives, mais qui sera seulement peut-être un peu moins subjectif que les précédents.) Pourtant nous étudierons, non pas l'œuvre de Descartes, son œuvre de philosophe, ou son influence sur les siècles suivants et qui dure encore aujourd'hui, mais plutôt ses ouvrages, et les conditions et circonstances dans lesquelles chacun a été composé et publié.

Le présent volume n'est pas un livre de philosophie, à proprement parler, mais un livre d'histoire: ajoutons, si l'on veut, d'histoire de la philosophie, et aussi de la science, ou plus simplement une contribution à l'histoire des idées en France et de l'esprit Français au XVIIe siècle.

La seule Vie de Descartes, un peu complète, que l'on eût jusqu'alors, était celle d'Adrien Baillet; et elle date de 1691 (1). Lui-même raconte, dans sa Préface, que Chanut, bien mieux que personne, eût écrit cette vie, et après Chanut, Clerselier, qui avait aussi connu « intérieurement » le philosophe. Après eux, il nomme un Oratorien, le P. Nicolas Poisson, qui en fut vivement sollicité par la reine Christine et par Clerselier lui-même, et qui se contenta de donner, en 1670, un petit livre de Commentaires ou Remarques sur la Méthode de René Descartes. Enfin, il nomme encore l'abbé Jean-Baptiste Legrand, devenu, après la mort de Clerselier en 1684, le dépositaire des papiers du philosophe, et qui préparait une nouvelle édition de ses œuvres; Legrand s'empressa de mettre à la disposition de Baillet tous les documents qu'il avait recueillis déjà. (2)

Nous pouvons dire que les deux tomes publiés par Baillet sont passés presque en entier dans les onze volumes de notre édition et dans ce volume XII. C'était, pour une bonne part, un assemblage de documents, dont les originaux sont maintenant perdus, et que nous ne connaissons que par les extraits qu'il en a imprimés: bien des pages ont été découpées, pour être mises chacune à sa place au cours de la correspondance ou des œuvres, comme il a été dit dans l'Introduction du tome I (3)." (pp. II-IV)

(...)

"La principale différence entre l'œuvre de Baillet et la nôtre sera dans l'esprit général qui anime chacune d'elles.

Mais les grandes lignes restent à peu près les mêmes, et de nombreux détails se trouvent confirmés, avec d'autres qui s'y ajoutent, grâce à une documentation nouvelle.

Celle-ci consiste d'abord dans des pièces d'archives, publiques et privées, notamment sur la famille de Descartes: bon nombre ont été découvertes et publiées, ces cinquante dernières années, par des érudits de Touraine, de Poitou, de Bretagne. Quelques-unes ont été recueillies en Hollande. On les trouvera, chacune à sa place, avec l'indication de leur provenance. Puis nous avions la correspondance complète (ou peu s'en faut) du philosophe, et surtout rétablie dans l'ordre chronologique, ce qui la rend bien plus instructive, et permet de suivre pus à pas la marche de sa pensée. En outre, plusieurs collections de lettres ont été retrouvées et imprimées, que Baillet n'a point connues: lettres de Pollot (publiées en 1869), et de la princesse Elisabeth (en 1879), lettres de Constantin Huygens le père, de Brégy, de Chanut, de Brasset, de Beeckman, la plupart publiées dans cette édition pour la première fois.

Sans doute la physionomie générale de Descartes n'en est point changée du tout au tout; mais elle est mieux éclairée, et bien des particularités curieuses s'y révèlent ou y apparaissent dans un meilleur jour." (pp. IX-X)

(1) La Vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes. (A Paris, Chez Daniel Horthemels, rue Saint Jacques, au Mécénas. M.DC.XCI.) « Épître à Monseigneur » Le Chancelier », signée : A. B. (6 pages, non numérotées). Ce Chancelier était Louis Boucherat, exécuteur de la révocation de l'Édit de Nantes. Préface, p. i-xxxvi. Tables, p. xxxvii-lix. Privilège du 1er mars 1691, au sieur Adrien Baillet. Achevé d'imprimer, 6 juillet 1691.

Première partie, in-4, pp. 417; seconde partie, pp. 602. Abrégé du même ouvrage en 1693, pet. in-12, pp. 318. — Adrien Baillet naquit à La Neuville-en-Hez, près de Beauvais, le 13 juin 1649, et mourut à Paris, le 21 janvier 1706, bibliothécaire de M. de Lamoignon depuis 1680, et prêtre depuis 1676. Publications, entre autres: Traité de la dévotion à la Sainte Vierge, 1693; Traité de la conduite des âmes, 1694; et surtout Les Vies des Saints, 17 vol. in-8, de 1695 à 1701.

(2) Baillet, l oc. cit., préface : pp. X-XI (Chanut), XI-XII (Clerselier), XII-XIII (Poisson), et XII-XIII (Legrand).

(3) Ibid., pages XLIX-L.

9. Cohen, Gustave. 1921. Écrivains Français en Hollande dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle. Paris: Champion.

Reprint Geneva: Slatkine, 1976.

Table des matières: Introduction 7; Livre I: Régiments Français au service des États 14; Livre II: Professeurs et étudiants Français à l'université de Leyde (1575 à 1648) 141; Livre III: La philosophie indépendante. René Descartes en Hollande 357; Pièces justificatives 693; Index 721-756.

Le livre III contient une biographie complète de Descartes, pp. 357-691.

"Que Descartes ait séjourné en Hollande, c'est un fait connu de tous nos écoliers, qu'il n'a pas laissé de surprendre un peu, mais l'étonnement des étudiants hollandais, en l'apprenant, n'était pas moindre, surtout en entendant parler des endroits choisis par le grand philosophe pour les plus longs de ses séjours: Franeker, Endegeest, Egmond, lieux si éloignés des centres de la vie néerlandaise qu'ils n'éveillaient en leur esprit que des souvenirs assez vagues et beaucoup d'entre eux ne les connaissaient souvent même que de nom.

Pourquoi Descartes les avait préférés, ces lieux et d'autres, au cours de sa vie errante, quelle trace il y avait laissée de son passage, voilà ce qu'il importait de rechercher. Partout je me suis efforcé de le suivre; j'ai refait pieusement toute la série des pèlerinages cartésiens: parfois, comme à Egmond ou à Franeker, je n'ai plus même trouvé les pierres de sa maison, mais à Endegeest, je me suis arrêté quelques minutes dans la salle où peut-être il a rêvé. En tout cas, le cadre est resté le même, l'aspect du site n'a point changé, et l'on peut laisser errer ses regards sur les champs où sa pensée flotta.

Certes, bien des faits que l'on trouvera dans ce Livre III ne sont pas une révélation: c'est à l'active et ingénieuse patience de M. Adam, de ses collaborateurs et de ses prédécesseurs qu'on les doit. A lui et à M. Tannery revient l'honneur de nous avoir dotés d'une édition monumentale de Descartes mais, justement parce qu'elle est un monument dans tous les sens du mot, ses treize gros in-4° demeurent inaccessibles au grand public, voire aux lettrés et aux savants qui n'ont pas une bibliothèque à leur disposition. Pourtant, quelle œuvre magistrale que cette biographie de Descartes par M. Ch. Adam, qu'on lit au tome XII.

C'est une étude presque définitive, on n'aura pas la vanité de la recommencer ici, mais, en même temps qu'une biographie, elle est surtout une analyse de l'œuvre et cette œuvre, en tant qu'elle ne traite pas proprement de la Hollande ou qu'elle n'est pas déterminée directement par elle, ne nous concerne point.

C'est d'ailleurs souvent un inconvénient de mêler l'œuvre et la vie. Nous voudrions nous borner uniquement à celle-ci, et dans celle-ci, avant tout, à ses périodes hollandaises, les principales et les décisives il est vrai, ce qui, par conséquent, ne sera peut-être pas sans utilité.

Et d'abord, s'il est infiniment précieux et fécond de repenser les systèmes des philosophes, il ne l'est pas moins, car l'histoire de la philosophie n'est parfois que l'histoire des philosophes, de revivre leur existence, de tâcher de s'ennoblir par elle, surtout quand ils l'ont exclusivement consacrée à la perfection de leur intelligence et à la recherche de la vérité.

Ensuite, à étudier les séjours en Hollande de Descartes, non pas séparément, ce qui les fait prendre pour une fantaisie incompréhensible, mais dans le cadre des présentes études, consacrées à l'attraction qu'a exercée sur tous les Français de la fin du XVIe et du commencement du XVIIe siècles la République des Provinces-Unies, ces séjours semblent tout à fait naturels, presque nécessaires, ces voyages et cet établissement apparaissent comme une marche presque attendue vers le pays de la Liberté.

Le fait que Descartes est et veut rester catholique (nous aurons à y insister encore) souligne la valeur et l'extension de cette liberté: c'est le moment de renouveler cette affirmation que la Hollande n'est pas seulement le Refuge protestant, qu'elle est aussi le refuge catholique, ou, si l'on préfère, le Refuge de la pensée indépendante. Aussi aura-t-elle offert asile à deux des plus grands créateurs de systèmes du XVIIe, un Français : René Descartes, et un juif d'origine espagnole: Baruch d'Espinoza. Ce n'est pas le moindre prestige de cette terre féconde en miracles." (pp. 357-358).

10. Sirven, Jacques. 1928. Les années d'apprentissage de Descartes (1596-1628). Albi: Imprimerie Coopérative du Sud-Ouest.

Reprint: New York, Garland, 1987.

Table des matières: Préface 9; I. Les premières influences 23; II. Les premiers écrits de Descartes 56; III. L'orientation décisive du cartésianisme 114; IV. L'orientation décisive du cartésianisme (suite) 169; V. L'orientation décisive du cartésianisme (suite et fin) 226; VI. Tentatives nouvelles 290; VII. Le Regulae 342; Conclusion 443; Bibliographie 463; Table des noms propres 491-496.

"Il est presque de règle, dans l'histoire de la philosophie et dans celle des sciences, d'affirmer que Descartes ne doit rien ou à peu près rien à ses devanciers. Ce « postulat » est admis sans contestation, même par des philosophes très avertis.

(...)

'y a-t-il pas là, comme l'ont déjà remarqué un certain nombre de penseurs, un de ces « préjugés » qu'on accepte d'autorité sur la foi d'une tradition scolaire? N'y a-t-il pas là encore une manifestation de cette tendance intellectuelle vers le moindre effort qui explique la tyrannie rigide que les systèmes font peser sur les individus? Le cas qui nous occupe vaut la peine d'être examiné avec le plus grand soin, en tenant compte de toutes les ressources que les historiens et les penseurs modernes mettent à notre disposition. Mais il n'est pas possible de le faire avec fruit, sans avoir résolu auparavant un ensemble de problèmes historiques dont quelques-uns ont à peine été abordés. C'est pourquoi il nous semble inutile pour l'instant d'examiner les raisons sur lesquelles on a pu se fonder pour faire du cartésianisme une exception aussi considérable dans l'histoire des idées. Il vaut mieux avouer que ces thèses générales méconnaissent beaucoup trop d'aspects d'une réalité infiniment complexe, qui n'est jamais débrouillée qu'en partie.

Au fond, le travail le plus utile consiste à rechercher comment se sont transmises les diverses théories philosophiques ou scientifiques, à suivre les fils d'une trame ininterrompue sur bien des points et à noter les endroits où elle a pu se briser. La tâche qui s'impose à nous de ce point de vue plus modeste et en procédant par ordre, comme l'eût recommandé Descartes, sera donc de bien voir les liens qui unissent le système cartésien à la pensée des auteurs qui l'ont influencé. Nous n'envisagerons même pas l'ensemble de ce système, mais seulement la première forme qu'il a revêtue, jusqu'au moment où notre philosophe s'est retiré en Hollande pour en établir les principes définitifs. Notre sujet ainsi délimité, il nous reste à fixer la marche à suivre pour dégager la véritable originalité de Descartes, durant ces années de méditations fécondes où son esprit conut le dessein d'une science universelle et fit à proprement parler l'apprentissage de ses forces. (pp. 9-10)

(...)

"Dans le cas qui nous occupe, il nous faudra surtout examiner les rapports de Descartes avec les scolastiques, et, lorsque nous parlerons de l'École ou de la scolastique, nous n'entendrons pas l'ensemble des philosophes qui ont vécu au Moyen-Âge, mais seulement les auteurs que Descartes a connus. C'est pourquoi nous citerons les manuels qui étaient utilisés dans les classes des PP. Jésuites à son époque, plutôt que saint Thomas ou les philosophes antérieurs (3). Il semble bien en effet que Descartes n'ait consulté saint Thomas qu'après 1628, au moment où il voulait achever sa métaphysique, et pour recourir à la source des conceptions qu'on lui avait enseignées durant ses études.

Nous laisserons de côté par suite la question de savoir si ces manuels reproduisent exactement le thomisme: c'est un problème tout à fait en dehors de notre point de vue. Il faut d'ailleurs reconnaître que ces manuels sont plus fidèles qu'on ne le reconnaît d'ordinaire à l'esprit de saint Thomas et que les anathèmes lancés parfois contre « la scolastique décadente des XVe et XVIe siècles » seraient à réviser sur bien des points. Quoi qu'il en soit, il nous reste maintenant à examiner quels textes nous serviront comme sources de notre exposé historique et pourquoi nous avons limité cet exposé à l'année 1628. (pp. 15-16)

(3) A moins que nous n'ayons évidemment à légitimer un emprunt direct à quelqu'un de ces philosophes.

Biographies récentes

1. Gouhier, Henri. 1958. Les premières pensées de Descartes. Contribution à l'histoire de l'Anti-Renaissance. Paris: Vrin.

Table des matières: Avant-propos 7; I. Un petit registre en parchemin 11; II. Du Parnasse à l'Olympe 19; III. 10 et 11 novembre 1619; IV. L'hiver 1619-1620 59; V. Une pensée de jeunesse abandonnée par l'âge mur 86; VI. Polybe le Cosmopolite 104; VII. Descartes et les Rose-Croix 117; Conclusion 142; Appendice: Le roman Rosi-Crucien 150, Notes 158; Additions et correction de la deuxième édition (1979) 163; Index 167; Index des additions 170.

"En révisant La Pensée religieuse de Descartes en vue d’une seconde édition, nous avons été frappé par l’obscurité qui enveloppe « les années d’apprentissage de Descartes », même après l’intéressant ouvrage de l’abbé J. Sirven. De là l’idée d’écrire une Jeunesse de Descartes. Mais, pour mériter ce titre, l’ouvrage devrait comprendre deux gros chapitres pour lesquels le temps et la compétence nous feraient défaut; il faudrait, en effet, reprendre l’étude des enseignements philosophiques et littéraires au Collège de La Flèche, puis celle des milieux scientifiques parisiens pendant le premier tiers du XVIIe siècle. Le présent ouvrage apportera simplement des matériaux à cette Jeunesse de Descartes dont nos lacunes mêmes feront sentir la nécessité.

Une exégèse des premiers textes, une critique de quelques sources biographiques, des indications pour situer certains personnages de l’histoire, peut-être trouvera-t-on le livre bien gros pour des questions aussi particulières et pour des réponses aussi hypothétiques. C’est pourtant ainsi que se fait l’histoire des présocratiques ou des anciens stoïciens. Les méthodes qui ont été éprouvées en histoire de la philosophie ancienne doivent être bonnes en histoire de la philosophie moderne, lorsque les textes modernes posent les mêmes questions que les textes anciens: restitution d’ouvrages perdus, établissement de chronologie, critique des traditions et de témoignages qui ne sont pas ceux de témoins.

Une telle étude sera, en un sens, un commentaire des trois premières parties du Discours de la Méthode. Il n’est certes pas question de présenter le jeune Descartes tel que le voit, ou le veut faire voir le philosophe de 1637. Bien au contraire, il s’agit de montrer d’où vient l’auteur du Discours et des Méditations: pour connaître l’homme qui cherche « le chemin de sa vie », on commencera donc par oublier ce qu’il a trouvé au bout du chemin. D’ailleurs, les trois premières parties du Discours ne ressemblent ni à des mémoires ni à des confessions: Descartes raconte « l’histoire de son esprit »; il écarte volontairement les anecdotes et les scènes de la vie privée; d’autre part, de « l’histoire de son esprit », il extrait ce qui lui paraît essentiel à la lumière de l’œuvre déjà accomplie, il efface donc les ratures, coupe les longueurs, oublie les hésitations. Ceci admis, il reste pourtant qu’il travaille une matière faite de souvenirs: une méthode comparative est alors requise pour faire apparaître ce qui vient de la mémoire dans la vision rétrospective et détacher ce que la biographie peut retenir de l’arrangement autobiographique (1).

Il ne suffît d’ailleurs pas de retrouver les faits et les pensées dans leur vérité originelle, pré-cartésienne, avant que la mémoire du philosophe ne les ait organisés: il y a aussi une autre mémoire à considérer, la tradition qui les conduit jusqu’à nous. L’historien commence aujourd’hui sa recherche non pas dans le monde où respirait René Descartes mais dans celui où la bibliographie le conduit et le guide; là le philosophe ne chemine plus au milieu de ses contemporains; il dialogue avec les philosophes qui l’ont interprété, avec les historiens qui l’ont expliqué. Ainsi, les faits ont maintenant pour contexte autant la vie posthume de Descartes que sa vie réelle; les pensées ne sont plus liées à des paroles prononcées pour certains hommes d’une certaine époque, mais leur universalité a en quelque sorte dé-temporalisé leur expression; nous les recevons à travers un langage historiquement usé, que les premiers lecteurs comprenaient à la lumière de leurs souvenirs scolaires et de l’actualité littéraire, religieuse ou sociale, mais que, trois siècles plus tard, les lecteurs comprennent dans la mesure où justement il paraît capable de communiquer des idées sans date. L’histoire de l’histoire sera ici partie importante de la critique historique.

En tête d’un ouvrage qui doit tant à ceux de ses prédécesseurs, est-il besoin de prévenir un contre-sens? Essayer de retrouver en histoire des données aussi immédiates que possible est une chose; faire table rase de tout le travail des interprètes et des chercheurs en est une autre. La première est une exigence méthodologique; la seconde ne serait qu’une absurdité. L’histoire doit simplement tenir compte d’un fait indiscutable: le philosophe ne survit pas dans le monde où il a vécu." (pp. 5-6)

(1) Sur le problème de la valeur historique du Discours, voir : Paul Janet, Descartes, son caractère et son génie, dans Revue des Deux-Mondes, 15 janvier 1868; Alfred Espinas, Descartes et la Morale, Bossard, 1925, t. I, ch. II et III, notamment p. 21-22, 55-57; G. Cantecor, La vocation de Descartes, dans Revue philosophique, novembre 1923; L’oisive adolescence de Descartes, deux articles de la Revue d’Histoire de la Philosophie, 1930; Et. Gilson, Commentaire, p. 98-100, 101-102; Henri Gouhier, Essais sur Descartes, 1937. Appendice I.

2. Tillmann, Alexandre. 1976. L'itinéraire du jeune Descartes. Lille: Atelier reproduction des thèses Université Lille III.

Contenu: Introduction I-V; En Hollande 890; Les "Regulae ad directionem ingenii" 913; "Le Monde" 1166; "L'Homme" 1292; Appendice. Descartes et l' "affaire" Galilée. Excerpta 1397; Table des hors-texte 1417; Notices 1418; Index de noms; Addenda et Corrigenda.

Thèse présentée devant l'Université de Paris IV le 19 avril 1975.

Il s'agit du quatrième volume (pp. 885b - 1418e, le seul publié) d'une œuvre en six volumes.

"Ce volume, que nous nous permettons de présenter comme thèse principale de Doctorat ès Lettres en Sorbonne (Etat), entreprise sous la direction de Monsieur le Professeur Henri Gouhier, membre de l'Académie des sciences morales et politiques, fait pairie d'un travail en six volumes - déjà rédiges et dactylographiés - consacrés à René Descartes.

Il est le quatrième volume de ce travail, si on y englobe les "prolégomènes à une étude sur Descartes" qui forme la thèse complémentaire de Doctorat ès Lettres, entreprise sous la direction de Monsieur le Professeur Olivier Lacombe, thèse qui a été enregistrée et a reu le permis d'imprimer de la Sorbonne dès 1968 et le troisième volume si on se reporte seulement au travail intitulés "L’Itinéraire du jeune Descartes", ce dernier contenant cinq volumes." (pp. I-II).

3. Rodis-Lewis, Genèvieve. 1995. Descartes. Biographie. Paris: Calmann-Levy.

Traduction anglaise: Descartes. His Life and Thought, translated by Jane Marie Todd, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998.

Traduction italienne: Cartesio. Una biografia, traduzione di Gennaro Auletta e Mathilde Anquetil, Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1997.

"Une biographie du philosophe doit éclairer certains points, proprement historiques et souvent mal connus, mais aussi s’efforcer d’approcher cette personnalité exceptionnelle. Vigoureux et rigoureux, sûr de lui jusqu’à mépriser trop souvent ceux qui refusent ses interprétations, Descartes s’est aussi montré patient, capable de surmonter les différends dès qu’une bonne volonté se manifeste, accueillant aux gens de condition modeste, désirant s’instruire, chaleureux en quelques profondes amitiés, tout en fuyant comme importuns les curieux et les conversations purement mondaines. La « franchise » qu’il fait « profession d’observer en toutes ses actions », « sans aucune dissimulation ni artifice », vient après cet aveu: sa « principale finesse » est de n'en point avoir (a).

Son abondante correspondance, au ton parfois très libre, est la meilleure source pour mieux dévoiler ce caractère complexe, avec ses enthousiasmes et ses violences, sa patience aussi et ses réserves quand il éprouve quelque défiance. Nous en avons multiplié les citations. Leurs références, appelées par des lettres (a, b...') figurent au bas des pages, afin de permettre aux curieux d’en voir éventuellement le contexte, sans que ce soit nécessaire. Et nous avons reporté à la fin du volume des notes (appelées par des chiffres) qui permettront d'approfondir, voire de discuter, certains points: elles sont plutôt destinées aux spécialistes, mais aussi à ceux qu'embarrasserait un détail. Il serait préférable de les réserver pour une seconde lecture, et de suivre d’abord le conseil de Descartes, quand il a préfacé la traduction Français e des Principes de la philosophie, son ouvrage le plus technique, exposant l’essentiel de sa métaphysique et les principales questions de la physique: le parcourir « d’abord tout entier ainsi qu’un roman, sans forcer beaucoup son attention, ni s’arrêter aux difficultés qu'on y peut rencontrer »; puis, si on a « la curiosité » d’en savoir plus, on peut le reprendre en soulignant les difficultés, dont de nouvelles lectures apporteront sans doute la solution". (pp. 8-9)

(a) À Élisabeth, janvier 1646; AT IV, 357.

L'enseignement au temps de Descartes

1. Rochemonteix, Camille de. 1889. Un collège de jésuites aux XVIIe & XVIIIe siècles: le Collège Henri IV de La Flèche. Le Mans: Leguicheux.

Tome I: Préface I-IV; Première partie: Histoire; Pièces justificatives 201-309;

Tome II: Chapitre I: Pensionnat et externat: Ratio studiorum 1; Chapitre II: Éducation religieuse 103; Pièces justificatives 175-332;

Tome III: Chapitre I: Enseignement littéraire à La Flèche, principalement du Latin et du Grec 1; Chapitre II: La langue Français e à la Flèche 131; Pièces justificatives 215-353;

Tome IV: Chapitre I: Théologie, philosophie, sciences, histoire et géographie à la Flèche 1; Chapitre II: Séances théologiques, philosophiques, littéraires, dramatiques; examens, distributions des prix 149: Chapitre III: Action religieuse en dehors du collège 213; Chapitre IV: Expulsion des Jésuites du collège de La Flèche en 1762 285; Pièces justificatives 321-441.

Index détaillé du tome IV, Chapitre I: Théologie, philosophie, sciences, histoire et géographie à La Flèche: Aristote et saint Thomas. Circulaires de St. Franois de Borgia et d'Aquaviva.- Enseignement de la théologie à La Flèche; principaux professeurs. Le P. Philippe Thibault. Cours de philosophie: sa durée, inscription des élèves. - Exercices divers: leons, répétitions, sabbatines, menstruales, disputes philosophiques. Programme des trois années de philosophie. - Les Pères Gandillon, Challemoux, Le Breton, Gaultruche, Pajot. René Descartes à La Flèche: ses œuvres philosophiques, ses partisans et ses adversaires. - Les Jésuites et Descartes; les Pères Véron, Noël, Charlet, Binet, Bourdin, Vatier, Denis Mesland, etc. - Ouvrages de Descartes et de Malebranche mis à l'Index. Le Malebranchisme dans la Compagnie de Jésus. Les Pères André et du Tertre à La Flèche. Les trente propositions du P. Michel-Ange Tamburini. Étude et progrès des Sciences mathématiques, de l'Histoire et de la Géographie.

"Nous nous proposons de faire connaître un collège de Jésuites aux XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècles, d'en reproduire la physionomie. Nous dirons comment il se fondait, quelle éducation on y recevait, quels usages et quel règlement on y suivait, ce qu'on y enseignait. Aucun livre de ce genre n'a été composé; les preuves et les documents peu connus ou nouveaux, que nous apportons à l'appui de ce travail, seront lus avec plaisir, croyons-nous, de ceux qui s'intéressent aux questions d'instruction publique. Raconter les faits, éviter, autant que possible, de les discuter et de les apprécier, telle sera notre ligne de conduite; la simple exposition de la vérité historique a plus de force et d'empire sur les esprits pour les éclairer et les convaincre, que l'écrit polémique où la passion s'insinue, presque toujours par quelque endroit." (tome I, p. II.)

"Nous avons vu les conditions d'admission des pensionnaires au collège royal de La Flèche; suivons-les maintenant pas à pas dans leur vie de chaque jour. Le règlement différait sensiblement de celui de nos internats actuels; la journée de l’écolier n’était pas celle d’aujourd’hui.

En arrivant au collège, le pensionnaire, s’il était fils de famille, déposait son épée dans la chambre des armes. A chaque épée on attachait une fiche de bois, portant le nom du propriétaire; le P. Ministre avait dans sa chambre un jeton semblable, et ce jeton servait d' exeat les jours de sortie.

Le gentilhomme, en quittant l’épée, faisait oublier sa naissance. Plus de distinction entre le noble, le bourgeois et le roturier, car il y avait là aussi quelques roturiers, dont la pension était payée par des prélats ou de grands seigneurs, et qui se destinaient à l’état ecclésiastique. Pas d’autre supériorité entre ces jeunes gens de toutes les classes sociales que celle du mérite et du succès. Descartes, qui vécut plus de huit ans dans ce milieu, garda toujours le souvenir du remarquable esprit d’égalité qu’il y vit régner, et du fond de la Hollande, trente ans après, il écrivait à un de ses amis : « Il y a à La Flèche quantité de jeunes gens de tous les quartiers de la France. L'égalité que les Jésuites mettent entre eux, en ne traitant guère d'autre faon les plus relevés que les moindres, est une invention extrêmement bonne pour leur ôter la tendresse et les autres défauts qu'ils peuvent avoir acquis par la coutume d'être chéris dans les maisons de leurs parents (*). » (tome II, pp. 27-28)

(*) Vie de Descartes, par Adrien Baillet. Paris, 1691, p. 33. [lettre à un ami inconnu du 12 septembre 1638, AT II, 377-379; B 190].

2. Actes du Colloque Universitaire de la Flèche "La Formation de Descartes". 1997. La Flèche: Prytanée National Militaire.

Table des matières: Avant-propos 3; Programme du colloque 4;

Première partie: Allocutions d’ouverture 7;

Deuxième partie: Actes du Colloque 21,

Geneviève Rodis-Lewis: Un élève du Collège jésuite de La Flèche: René Descartes 25; Yves-Marie Bercé: Vocation militaire, vie dans les armées au temps de Descartes 37; Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron: Le problème de l’ego chez Bérulle, Descartes et Poussin 55; Antonella Romano: L’enseignement des mathématiques à La Flèche dans les années de la formation de Descartes 75; Laurence Renault: Descartes et la scolastique ou la critique cartésienne du thaumazein 105; Frédéric de Buzon: La formation musicale de Descartes et sa première œuvre, le Compendium musicae 149; Pierre Lefebvre: Dans quelle mesure Descartes influena-t-il la médecine de son temps? 163; Denise Leduc-Fayette: Descartes et l’idée de Dieu 179; Luce Giard: Le système éducatif des jésuites à l’époque de Descartes 199;

Allocution de clôture du Colloque Descartes à La Flèche 227;

Troisième partie:

Daniel Potron: La Flèche, aperu historique 239; Jean Petit: La Flèche, Descartes et le Prytanée 243; Épitaphe latine de Descartes 245; Traduction Français e de l'épitaphe latine 246.

Index et Concordances

1. Gilson, Étienne. 1979. Index scholastico-cartésien. Paris: Vrin.

Seconde édition revue et augmentée, avec un Supplément (pp. 337-357) et une Postface (1966, pp. 358-370), seule autorisée par l'auteur (Première édition 1913).

"Il convient de remarquer d’abord que cet ouvrage ne porte pas comme titre: L’influence de la scolastique sur Descartes; ni même: Descartes et la scolastique. C’est qu’en effet nous ne nous proposons ni de mesurer cette influence ni de chercher les rapports de la philosophie cartésienne avec celle de l’École. Un travail de ce genre ne pourrait être entrepris que partiellement et, pour dire toute notre pensée sur ce point, il ne conduirait à aucun résultat définitif ni surtout complet. Pour expliquer historiquement la pensée de Descartes il est nécessaire de la considérer à la fois en elle-même, dans ses rapports avec la scolastique, et aussi dans ses rapports avec certaines sources théologiques qui ne sont pas toujours d’origine scolastique. C’est pourquoi un travail qui supposerait comme base unique les rapports de la philosophie cartésienne avec celle de l’École serait nécessairement unilatéral et plus propre à voiler la vérité historique qu’à la découvrir.

(...)

Notre but pourrait donc se définir de la faon suivante: donner un relevé aussi complet que possible des expressions et conceptions qui-sont passées de la philosophie scolastique dans le texte de Descartes.

(...)

Nous ajouterons qu’il voudrait être un instrument de travail utile. A cet égard nous avons eu une double préoccupation: lui assurer une valeur historique, et le rendre pratique.

En ce qui concerne le premier point la voie était toute tracée. On sait que pour la théologie la base de l’enseignement de la Flèche était saint Thomas, et que, d’ailleurs, Descartes n’a jamais cessé de le consulter. C’est donc dans l’enseignement de saint Thomas que nous avons cherché les textes théologiques qu’il convenait de rapprocher de ceux de Descartes [Voir sur ce point G. de Rochemonteix, Le collège Henri IV de la Flèche, tome IV, passim]. En ce qui concerne la philosophie proprement dite nous avions à consulter, outre saint Thomas qui là encore était le maître à peu près incontesté, Suárez. Nous avons rappelé ailleurs que Descartes en a connu quelque chose, et à coup sûr il en a été influencé indirectement. Les Metaphysicæ disputationes étaient pour la métaphysique le « livre du maître » des professeurs de Descartes; c’est pourquoi nous avons cru nécessaire d’y recourir [Pour les éditions des ouvrages écrits par des PP. Jésuites nous renvoyons à Sommervogel (*), dont il nous a semblé inutile de transcrire ici les longues colonnes]. Une source plus importante est cependant sans conteste l’ensemble des commentaires ou manuels alors utilisés dans l’enseignement. Descartes en cite un certain nombre qu’il dit avoir connus à la Flèche [AT III, 185, 11-18] : ce sont les Commentarii collegii conimbricensis, et les commentaires de Toletus et Ruvio [Voir Sommervogel, aux articles cités]. A ces ouvrages composés par des Pères de la Compagnie il convient de joindre le petit manuel du Feuillant E. de saint Paul que Descartes a connu et qui résume fidèlement, et surtout avec une concision rare pour l’époque, l’enseignement de l'École." (pp. II-V).

(*) Carlos Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, (9 volumes), Bruxelles - Paris, 1890-1900.

2. Janowski, Zbigniew. 2000. Index Augustino-Cartésien. Textes et Commentaire. Paris: Vrin.

"Notre travail ne consiste pas à restituer les conditions de la réception de la philosophie de Descartes parmi ses contemporains, ni à déterminer la ressemblance conceptuelle entre la métaphysique cartésienne et la théologie augustinienne. Il s’agit plutôt de voir quelle influence réelle et directe la lecture des œuvres de saint Augustin a exercé sur Descartes et sur la formation de sa métaphysique. Aussi notre travail est-il tributaire des études d’Etienne Gilson (22) et d’Alfred Espinas (23) qui ont initié l’enquête sur le rapport entre Descartes et saint Augustin. La thèse de Gilson, qui consistait avant tout à démontrer l’existence d’un lien entre certains thèmes cartésiens et l'augustinisme du Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle, a été soumise aux critiques d’Henri Gouhier (24) et, plus récemment, à celles de Jean-Luc Marion (25)." (p. 16)

(...)

"C’est précisément cette question d’un emprunt possible que nous allons poser à notre tour afin d’établir jusqu’à quel point l’existence d’une telle relation est avérée. C’est dans ce cadre que s’inscrit l’index que nous avons établi des passages des œuvres de saint Augustin qui trouvent un écho dans la métaphysique de Descartes. Une des principales difficultés de ce travail réside dans la détermination certaine des arguments, concepts ou fragments que Descartes a empruntés aux œuvres de saint Augustin; à ce propos, il est important de souligner que, fréquemment, ce qui, chez ce dernier, occupe quelques dizaines de pages, ne représente chez Descartes qu’un seul paragraphe ou une seule phrase. Et inversement, ce qui, chez saint Augustin, est une phrase ou une remarque faite en passant, prend chez Descartes la forme d’un argument élaboré. Par ailleurs, on ne peut pas négliger le fait que la pensée de Descartes est postérieure de douze siècles à celle de saint Augustin, et qu’entre temps, le méticuleux travail philosophique des penseurs scolastiques a transformé le latin parlé en un langage technique et précis. De plus, saint Augustin n’était pas philosophe, au sens scolastique du terme: son langage est souvent vague et manque de cette précision si caractéristique des penseurs scolastiques et de Descartes lui-même. Il est ainsi difficile de déterminer jusqu’à quel point certaines idées de Descartes ne sont pas la transcription, en un latin cartésien technique, de termes augustiniens. Pour notre part, nous nous en sommes tenus, dans l’index, aux fragments dont nous pouvons affirmer avec certitude que Descartes les connaissait." (p. 17)

(...)

"Nous avons divisé l’index en deux parties: la première correspond aux emprunts incontestables; la seconde, à ceux qui ne le sont pas. La première partie ne comprend quasiment que des citations littérales. En ce qui concerne les emprunts possibles, nous les avons insérés dans la section « Des additions ». Puisque le plus grand nombre des emprunts de saint Augustin se retrouve presque exclusivement dans les Méditations, ou plus exactement dans la Première, Deuxième, Quatrième, et Sixième Méditation, nous avons créé un index qui correspond à l’ordre numérique des Méditations, en intégrant la doctrine des vérités éternelles, et à la pagination de ces mêmes Méditations. Une telle classification, par opposition à la structure thématique, permet de mesurer, avec le plus de précision possible, l’influence de saint Augustin sur Descartes alors qu’il rédigeait son œuvre principale. Nous avons fait cependant quelques exceptions à cette classification: nous avons, par exemple, inclus quelques fragments des Principes (1644) ou des lettres de Descartes, mais uniquement en tant que ces fragments renvoyaient à des arguments déjà présents dans les Méditations." (pp. 18-19)

(22) Etienne Gilson, La liberté chez Descartes et la théologie, (Paris, Felix Alcan, 1913). Voir la critique de la méthodologie de Gilson de Jean-Luc Marion, Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes (Paris, PUF, 1981 ), p. 140-160. La rôle de la thèse de Gilson dans la développement d’études cartésiennes est discutée dans son article « L’instauration de la rupture: Gilson à la lecture de Descartes », in Etienne Gilson et Nous: La philosophie et son histoire (Paris, Vrin, 1979), p. 13-34.

(23) A. Espinas, Descartes et la morale (Paris, Éditions Bossard, 1925), t. I, chap. IV, p. 184-211; « Pour l’histoire du Cartésianisme », in Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (1906); « L’idée initiale de la philosophie de Descartes », in Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (1917).

(24) Henri Gouhier, La pensée religieuse de Descartes, (Paris, Vrin, 1924).

(25) Jean-Luc Marion, Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes, (Paris, PUF, 1981).

3. Armogathe, Jean-Robert, and Marion, Jean-Luc, eds. 1976. Index des Regulae ad directionem ingenii de René Descartes. Roma: Edizioni dell'Ateneo.

Lessico Intellettuale Europeo, vol. 10.

"L'Index des Regulae ad directionem ingenii est le premier instrument de travail publié par l’Equipe Descartes (C.N.R.S.), qui poursuit depuis plusieurs années des recherches sur l'œuvre de Descartes.

(...)

La méthode suivie est celle que le Laboratoire d’Analyse Statistique des Langues Anciennes (L.A.S.L.A., Liège, Belgique) a employée, depuis plusieurs années, pour produire de nombreux index d’auteurs classiques, en particulier de textes de Sénèque. Rappelons brièvement qu’à partir d’un enregistrement du texte en lecture continue (mots et ponctuation), l’ordinateur propose pour chaque item un lemme (3) et une analyse grammaticale codée." (p. XI)

(3) Par lemme, nous entendons le mot tel qu’il figure au dictionnaire.

"L’édition critique d’Adam et Tannery, parue en 1908 dans le tome X des Œuvres de Descartes, reposait sur deux sources du traité: un manuscrit conservé à la Königliche öffentliche Bibliothek (actuellement Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek) de Hanovre (H), qui avait appartenu à Leibniz, et l' editio princeps du traité dans les Opuscula posthuma physica et mathematica de Descartes, parus à Amsterdam en 1701 chez P. et J. Blaev. La version hollandaise établie par J. H. Glazemaker publiée en 1684, c’est-à-dire plus de quinze ans avant le texte original latin, dans le tome III des R. Descartes Brieven chez J. Rieuwertsz d’Amsterdam, bien que connue des éditeurs des Œuvres de Descartes, n’avait jamais été prise en considération.

Nous avons tenté dans le passé de reconstruire les phases du travail préparatoire de Charles Adam pour l’édition de 1908 (5), édition qui est à la base de l’ Index verborum que nous présentons; cette recherche nous a permis d’une part d’en relever les défauts et les limites, presque inévitables dans une entreprise aussi vaste et complexe que celle d’une édition moderne intégrale des écrits de Descartes, et d’autre part de tirer des indications utiles pour une nouvelle édition critique.

L’édition que nous avons établie (6), parue en 1966 en même temps que la réédition du tome X des Œuvres de Descartes (7) repose essentiellement sur une nouvelle collation directe des deux sources H et A, avec la rectification de quelques attributions erronées et la récupération de variantes qui avaient échappé à Adam, sur la distinction entre les leons originales du manuscrit (H) et les interventions dues à la main de Leibniz, qui corrigeait les formes erronées ou qu’il jugeait telles ou encore essayait de remédier aux omissions et aux lacunes, sans recourir directement à une autre source (L) (Adam note rarement la distinction et n’identifie jamais les interventions comme étant de Leibniz), et sur l’exploitation, jamais faite jusqu’alors, de la version hollandaise de Glazemaker (N), qui d’ailleurs grâce à un examen comparatif avec H et A permet de remonter à l’existence d’un manuscrit différent de H et de celui sur lequel reposait l’ editio princeps. (G. Crapulli)" (pp. XV-XVI)

(5) G. Crapulli, Note all'edizione critica di Adam-Tannery delle ‘Regulae ad directionem ingenij’ di Descartes, “Rivista critica di storia della filosofia”, XIX (1964), I, pp. 54-61.

(6) R. Descartes, Regulae ad directionem ingenii, texte critique établi par Giovanni Crapulli avec la version hollandaise du XVIIème siècle (“Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idées”, 12), La Haye 1966.

(7) Le texte et l’apparat critique restent les mêmes que ceux de l’édition de 1908. Dans un Appendice dû à M. Bernard Rochot et au R. P. Pierre Costabel sont rectifiées quelques notes de l’apparat critique et sont présentées quelques modifications au texte d’Adam sur la base de remarques d’Hamelin, Gouhier, Le Roy, Alquié.

4. Cahné, Pierre-Alain, ed. 1977. Index du Discours de la Méthode de René Descartes. Roma: Edizioni dell'Ateneo.

Lessico Intellettuale Europeo, vol. 12.

"L’Equipe Descartes (1) poursuit, avec la publication de l’index lemmatisé du Discours de la Méthode, le travail d’indexation des œuvres de Descartes commencé avec la publication, dans la même collection, de l’index des Regulae ad directionem ingenii. En raison des difficultés que l’on rencontre lors de l’établissement d’un tel index sur texte Français , une brève présentation s’impose.

1 - Le Discours de la Méthode a d’abord fait l’objet d’une indexation automatique des formes, sur les programmes du Centre de lexicologie politique de l’École Normale Supérieure de Saint-Cloud, Equipe de Recherches Associée au C.N.R.S. n° 56 (Pierre Lafon, ingénieur). Le texte retenu était celui publié par Adam et Tannery au tome 6 des Œuvres de Descartes (1ère édition 1902; édition revue par B. Rochot: 1973). Le traitement informatique a été fait à la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (Paris), sur un terminal relié à l’ordinateur IBM 370-168 du centre de calculs d’Orsay.

2 - A partir de cette liste alphabétique des formes, accompagnées du total de leurs occurrences et de leurs références, une lemmatisation manuelle a été pratiquée selon les principes suivants:

a. en raison des variations orthographiques constatées dans les textes du XVIIème siècle, il a été décidé de suivre, pour les lemmes, l’orthographe des entrées du Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue Français e de Paul Robert. Les formes sont pour leur part reproduites dans l’orthographe de l’édition de référence (2).

b. les substantifs sont lemmatisés sous le masculin singulier; les verbes sous l’infinitif; les adjectifs sous le masculin singulier; les comparatifs et superlatifs synthétiques doivent être recherchés sous l’adjectif au -positif; les pronoms personnels déclinés se trouvent sous le cas sujet.

c. nous avons lemmatisé certaines locutions conjonctives dont les éléments sont disjoints. Ainsi on trouvera Si... que, encore ... que ...

d. nous avons établi un glossaire de mots à prédicativité faible ou nulle, pour lesquels nous ne donnons que le nombre total d’occurrences. Ce glossaire a été établi en fonction de la spécificité du texte étudié: nous avons estimé qu’ÊTRE, pour trois de nos usages, méritait de figurer parmi les mots prédicatifs, donc avec toutes les références. De même les 864 occurrences du pronom personnel de la première personne du singulier ont été données (3).

e. les homographes sont distingués par un indice numérique; ils sont présentés dans l’ordre suivant: substantif, adjectif, adverbe, préposition, conjonction. Ainsi PRATIQUE 1 est le substantif, tandis que PRATIQUE 2 est l’adjectif; BIEN 1 est le substantif, BIEN 2 est l’adverbe, etc. Six homographes parmi les items fonctionnalisés, n’ont pas été désambiguïsés: en, le, ou, que, qui, un.

Cinq emplois d’ÊTRE ont été distingués:

ÊTRE 1: emploi nominal

ÊTRE 2: emploi absolu

ÊTRE 3: emploi locatif

ÊTRE 4: auxiliaire

ÊTRE 5: copule

ÊTRE 4 et ÊTRE 5 figurent dans le glossaire.

Pour SI, nous avons séparé l’emploi de SI, adverbe d’intensité, de celui de SI adverbe engagé dans une relation consécutive:

SI 1: conjonction de subordination introduisant l’interrogation indirecte

SI 2: adverbe d’intensité

SI 3: conjonction introduisant l’hypothèse Les formes sous le lemme sont rangées dans l’ordre alphabétique (4).

f. le texte indexé contient 22.688 formes regroupées en 1630 lemmes." (pp. IX-X)

(1) Equipe associée à l’Equipe de recherches 56 du C.N.R.S. (Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques), directeur: M. le professeur René Taton.

(2) Le lemme, créé par la nécessité de l’indexation, n’appartient pas au texte cartésien: notre solution s’impose donc et sur le plan pratique et sur le plan théorique.

(3) L’Equipe Descartes peut fournir, sur demande, les références pour toutes les occurrences des mots du glossaire.

(4) Les difficultés de la lemmatisation manuelle ont introduit quelques rares exceptions à ce principe.

5. Marion, Jean-Luc, Massonie, J.-Ph., Monat, P., and Ucciani, L., eds. 1996. Index des Meditationes de prima Philosophia de R. Descartes. Besanon: Annales Littéraires de l'Université de Franche-Comté.

Sommaire: J.-L. Marion: Préface IX-XIII; L. Ucciani: Avant-propos XV-XVII; Texte des Méditations 1-89; Index lemmatisé 91-211; Concordances partielles 213-252; J.-Ph. Massonie: Édition électronique 253-275.

"Puisque Descartes pense qu'il faut faire un index, nous en avons fait un - celui des Meditationes. Ce n'est évidemment pas le premier. Sans remonter à Paraphrasis in Cartesii Meditationes de Clauberg (Duisbourg, 1657), ni au Lexicon rationale sive Thesaurus philosophicus de Chauvin (Rotterdam, 1692), on doit reconnaître un rôle de pionnier à E. Gilson, dont l' Index scolastico-cartésien parut au début du siècle (Alcan, Paris, 1913, nouvelle édition J. Vrin, 1979): encore manuel, donc sélectif, il offre pourtant la première esquisse d'une indexation par concepts de l'œuvre entière de Descartes, correspondance comprise; il remplit aujourd'hui encore, en sus des comparaisons qu'il voulait permettre avec les scolastiques, une fonction d'indexation purement cartésienne. Mais les premiers indices automatiques (sauf la lemmatisation, manuelle ou contrôlée manuellement) n'apparurent que récemment. D'abord J.-R. Armogathe et J.-L. Marion, Index des Regulae ad directionem ingenii de René Descartes, Lessico Intellettuale Europeo X, Corpus Cartesianum 1, Edizioni dell'Ateneo, Rome, 1976, XXII-163 p., élaboré avec la collaboration du LASLA (Prof. L. Delatte, Université de Liège) et du Prof. G. Crapulli (voir «Bulletin Cartésien VII», Archives de Philosophie, 1997/3, p. 15). Puis P.-A. Cahné, Index du Discours de la Méthode de René Descartes, Lessico Intellettuale Europeo XII, Corpus Cartesianum 2, Edizioni dell'Ateneo, Rome, 1977, X-90 p., qui avait bénéficié du programme d'indexation automatique élaboré par P. Lafon (Centre de lexicologie politique, E.N.S. Saint-Cloud, E.R.A. - C.N.R.S. 56, voir «Bulletin Cartésien VIII», Archives de Philosophie, 1979/4, p.26-27). Dans les deux cas, aucune concordance ni liste de co-occurrences n'accompagnait l'index (1).

On doit à A. Robinet (CNRS/Université Libre de Bruxelles) d'avoir tenté à la fois de dépasser cette limitation et de s'appliquer aux Meditationes - ou plutôt, et c’est qui rendait encore insatisfaisant ce travail pourtant précieux, les Méditations Métaphysiques. En effet, il ne s’agissait dans «Cogito 75». René Descartes. Méditations Métaphysiques (Paris, J. Vrin, 1976) que de traiter la traduction du duc de Luynes, parue en 1647, voire sa révision par F. Alquié: malgré le sous-titre, le texte utilisé, à la lettre non cartésien, n'avait donc rien de «définitif» : il ne suivait d'ailleurs même pas la pagination d'AT IX-1 (nouvelle mise en page et numérotation continue des lignes par Méditation). Néanmoins, à condition de remonter au latin de 1641/2 par AT VII et d'y contrôler le Français , ce lexique devenait très utile, augmenté qu'il était d'un choix d'une dizaine de concordances, de cooccurrences et de listes de fréquences. Le traitement du texte latin des Meditationes, entrepris dès 1978 par l'Équipe Descartes (essentiellement par J.-R. Armogathe) et par d'autres centres devait longtemps buter sur des difficultés diverses (de lemmatisation surtout). Il vient enfin d'aboutir avec la récente Concordance to Descartes' Meditationes de Prima Philosophia. Prepared by Katzuzo Murakami, Meguru Sasaki and Tetsuichi Nishimura. Preface by Takefumi Tokoro, qui vient de paraître chez Olms/Weidmann, Hildesheim, 1995^2. Seul l'usage montrera les mérites de ce magnifique outil de travail; on notera cependant ses deux options massives: il se borne au support papier, donc se ferme à l'exploration d'un hyper-texte, il privilégie fortement la concordance sur l'index. Deviendront-elles ses deux limites? La tentative de l'Université de Besanon se caractérise au contraire (comme l'indique L. Ucciani) par 1) le privilège accordé au lexique, exhaustif et lemmatisé, suivant à la fois la pagination et les lignes d'AT VII et une numérotation continue de ces mêmes lignes afin de faciliter le repérage; 2) des co-occurrences, en nombre limité, mais où l'on a privilégié des termes à forte technicité métaphysique; 3) le complément du support-papier par une disquette (consultable avec HyperCard sur Macintosh), ouvrant ainsi des possibilités d'interrogation beaucoup plus nombreuses et souples; 4) l’économie de moyens (donc de coût), qui devrait permettre à un public individuel (et non pas seulement institutionnel) d’utiliser cet outil d'accès privilégié au texte de Descartes. Nous espérons que ces caractéristiques permettront à cet index - qu'il fallait donc faire - de tenir son rôle, parmi ceux qui sont déjà disponibles et surtout ceux, plus nombreux, qui viendront très vite s’y adjoindre." (pp. IX-XI)

(1) Des esquisses de résultats accompagnèrent ces publications: P. Costabel et P.-A. Cahné, «L'étude textuelle automatique appliquée aux œuvres de Descartes: état présent des travaux», «Bulletin Cartésien III», Archives de Philosophie, 1974/3, p. 453-8; J.-L. Marion, «A propos d'une sémantique de la méthode». Revue internationale de Philosophie, 103/5, 1975; P. Costabel et J.-R. Armogathe, «Premiers résultats de l’Équipe Descartes», I° Colloquio Internationale del Lessico Intellettuale Europeo. Atti a cura di Marta Fattori e Massimo Bianchi, Rome, 1976; Equipe Descartes, «Sémantèse d'ordre-ordo chez Descartes», II° Colloquio Internationale del Lessico Intellettuale Europeo. Atti a cura di Marta Fattori e Massimo Bianchi, Rome, 1979, p. 282 sq.

(2) Un utile travail l'avait d'ailleurs préparée: T. Tokoro, Les textes des «Meditationes», Cuo U.P., Tokyo, 1994, qui collationne non seulement les éditions de 1641, 1642 et les corrections de Descartes (AT V, 36-37), mais celles d’AT 1904, d’AT 1973, de G. Rodis-Lewis 1945 et d'Alquié 1967.

6. Robinet, André, ed. 1976. Cogito 75. René Descartes. Méditations métaphysiques. Paris: Vrin.

Table des matières: André Robinet: Introduction I-VIII;

Les Méditations métaphysiques par René Descartes 1;

INDEX I: Index statistique 66; INDEX II: Index des occurrences 68; INDEX III: Index de fréquence décroissante des formes 115; INDEX IV: Index des coefficients de fréquence 117; INDEX V: Extraits des tables de concordance 121; INDEX VI: Tableaux de co-occurrences 133-140.

"Après, MONADO 74, (*) voici une nouvelle opération informatique appliquée aux textes de philosophie: COGITO 75. Nos premiers balisages prenaient pour cible deux textes célèbres de Leibniz: les présents dépouillement concernent les Méditations métaphysiques de Descartes.

Nous présentons plusieurs résultats portant sur l’examen lexicographique du texte Français . Nous avons suivi pour ce faire l'édition classique qu’a fait paraître Monsieur Alquié, car elle reconstitue le Français ancien en orthographe moderne. Cependant, nous avons maintenu les majuscules qui figurent dans la reproduction de l’original par Adam-Tannery (Soleil, Géométrie etc... ), ainsi que certaines locution qui ne nous paraissaient pas devoir être modernisées (pour ce que...; ou bien des imparfaits mis à la place des passés simples originaux). Cette traduction date de 1647; elle fut l’œuvre du duc de Luynes et reut approbation et correction de la part de Descartes. La référence au texte latin de 1640 reste nécessaire si l’on approfondit les question soulevées dans ces deux écrits, dont les reliefs lexicographiques ne sont pas exactement les mêmes. La frappe de ce texte a été effectuée de manière à permettre la perforation ligne à ligne qui conduit nos index à diriger le consultant vers le repérage précis des termes recherchés." (pp. V-VI)

(*) Anne Becco, Du simple selon G. W. Leibniz. Discours de métaphysique et Monadologie. Étude comparative critique des propriétés de la substance appuyée sur l'opération informatique "Monado 74", préface par Yvon Belaval, Paris: Vrin, 1975.

7. Meschini, Franco Aurelio, ed. 1996. Indice dei «Principia Philosophiae» di René Descartes. Indici lemmatizzati, frequenze, distribuzione dei lemmi. Firenze: Olschki.

Lessico Intellettuale Europeo, vol. 67.

Indice: Introduzione XI; Lettere, sigle, simboli XIX; Index locorum et verborum del testo 1; Index locorum et verborum dei titoletti a margine 311; Index locorum et verborum dei marginalia 353; Distribuzione dei lemmi del testo 357; Distribuzione dei lemmi dei titoletti a margine 391; Lista di frequenza decrescente de lemmi del testo 405; Lista di frequenza decrescente dei lemmi dei titoletti a margine 429; Lista di frequenza in ordine alfabetico dei lemmi del testo 439; Lista di frequenza in ordine alfabetico dei lemmi dei titoletti margine 463.

8. ———. 2001. "Concordances lemmatisées du texte Français ." In La recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle de René Descartes, édité par Lojacono, Ettore, 66-288. Milano: Franco Angeli.

Textes établis par Erik Jan Bos; lemmatisation et concordances du texte Français par Franco A. Meschini; index et concordances du texte latin et néerlandais par Francesco Saita.

"Le texte Français lemmatisé est celui qu’Erik-Jan Bos a établi pour le présent volume. Cette édition a été la première à prendre en considération, dans la phase de recensio, la traduction néerlandaise (Amsterdam, 1684). Elle constitue un précieux instrument pour le spécialiste de Descartes, en tant qu’elle présente en plusieurs endroits une lecture nouvelle par rapport au texte édité par Charles Adam en 1906 (2)."

(...)

"Le présent travail est publié vingt-quatre ans après l’index du Discours de la méthode dans la collection Corpus cartesianum du Lessico Intellettuale Europeo (3); ayant parfois pris des options différentes, nous devons au lecteur quelques explications. Pour être, nous avons distingué seulement trois lemmes (verbe-copule, verbe auxiliaire et substantif). Nous n’avons pas retenu comme lemmes ni les locutions conjonctives ni les locutions prépositives, mais nous les avons décomposées par éléments. À la différence des travaux du Corpus cartesianum qui se limitent à un index verborum lemmatisé, nous présentons ici les concordances lemmatisées.

Pour le reste, nous avons suivi les mêmes critères que ceux établis dans les volumes de J.R. Armogathe et J.L. Marion (pour les Regulae), P.A. Cahné (pour le Discours) et moi-même (pour les Principia) dans la même collection (4) l’entrée du lemme (ou lexème, qui est une abstraction par rapport au texte) a été prise dans un dictionnaire de référence, le Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue Français e de Paul Robert (5), les formes étant celles du texte de Descartes (6). Nous donnons la totalité des occurrences pour chaque lemme, ainsi que les formes suivies de leur quantité (nombre d’occurrences) et de leur adresse (page et ligne)."

(...)

"Le texte indexé contient 4943 occurrences, le total des formes est de 1269, réparti entre 796 lemmes."

(...)

"L’intérêt lexical de la Recherche est multiple: à commencer par la métaphore du gué pour désigner la méthode, inconnue - me semble-t-il -du reste du corpus, qui peut être une réminiscence de Montaigne (11) et fait penser, plus directement, au vadum des Septimae objectiones et responsiones, expression comme «la consummation (sic!) des siècles», expression inusité dans le discours cartésien, qui semble provenir d’un emprunt ou d’une influence, et qui peut fournir un indice de lecture ou de citation, utile éventuellement pour aider à la datation. Autre hapax cartésien, enfin, personne neutre, qui rappelle le fréquent emploi de neuter chez le P. Bourdin. Dans le même contexte des Objectiones septimae, rappelons, dans la partie de notre texte traduit du Français en latin, le mot battologia.

A un lecteur attentif, le lexique de la Recherche donne l’impression d’avoir intégré des matériaux pour ainsi dire étrangers ou hétérogènes. Cela ne doit pas sembler étrange: nous retrouvons le même phénomène dans les Responsiones, dont le genre littéraire appelle la contagion avec des termes utilisés par les objecteurs, ou bien encore les Météores, où la présence d’ hapax cartésiens signale les emprunts opérés par Descartes.

La clé de la Recherche, et la vexata quaestio de sa datation, semblent devoir être cherchées en dehors de Descartes, mais non pas, comme l’ont proposé d’illustres interprètes, dans les circonstances ou rencontres biographiques de Descartes, mais peut-être dans les pages de ses interlocuteurs."

(2) Dans cette note je ne prends en considération que le texte Français , mais la collatio du texte latin et du texte néerlandais a donné des résultats tout aussi intéressants pour la partie parvenue uniquement dans la traduction, pour lesquels cfr. les notes de Bos en bas du texte latin, son introduction dans le présent volume et son article ( La première publication de La Recherche de la Vérité en 1684), publié dans «Nouvelles de la République des Lettres », 1999, 1, pp. 13-26. Sur un point où je m’écarte de l’interprétation de Bos cfr. Postilla cartesiana. Note di lessicologia e filologia cartesiana, dans «Physis», 2000 (1), pp. 151-165: 160-163.

(3) P.A. Cahné, Index du Discours de la Methode de René Descartes, (Lessico Intellettuale Europeo, 12), Roma, Edizioni dell'Ateneo, 1977.

(4) Cfr. F.A. Meschini, Indice dei Principia Philosophiae di René Descartes, (Lessico Intellettuale Europeo, 67), Firenze, Olschki, 1996.

(5) P. Robert, Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue Français e, Paris, Le Robert, 1985^2.

(6) Cfr. S. Govaerts, J. Denooz, La codification d’un texte latin sur cartes mécanographiques IBMI, in «Revue de l’organisation internationale pour l’étude des langues anciennes par ordinateur», 1974, p. 7 et J.R. Armogathe, J.L. Marion, Index des Regulae ad directionem ingenii de René Descartes, (Lessico Intellettuale Europeo, 10), Roma, Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1976, p. XI.

(11) Montaigne, Essais, I, 50. Je suis débiteur à E. Lojacono de cette indication.

Resources bibliographiques

1. "Bulletin cartésien." 1972. Archives de Philosophie.

Fondé en 1972 par l'équipe Descartes dirigée par Pierre Costable, est publié dans la revue Archives de Philosophie chaque année et vise à dresser une liste de tous les ouvrages et articles sur Descartes offrant une recension plus ou moins détaillée selon l'importance du texte enregistré.

"Pour la période 1800-1960, les chercheurs disposent de la Bibliographia Cartesiana de Gregor Sebba (Nijhoff: La Haye 1964). Ce Bulletin annuel va tenter de remédier à l'absence de bibliographie courante des études sur Descartes. Nous ne pouvons envisager pour l'instant de répertorier systématiquement tous les philosophes « cartésiens»: notre but essentiel étant de rendre service, notre méthode sera plus souple que rigoureuse en dehors des études sur Descartes lui-même. Nous avons renoncé à couvrir la décennie 1960-1969, sans perdre pour autant l'espoir de publier une bibliographie de cette période, avec la collaboration de Gregor Sebba et Wolfgang Rod.

A quelques exceptions près, nous n'avons retenu ici que des études et des textes publiés en 1970; nous avons suivi dans la présentation un ordre thématique, l'ordre alphabétique étant rétabli dans la Table publiée au 4e cahier des Archives." ( Archives de Philosophie 35, 1972, 263)

2. Guibert, Albert-Jean. 1976. Bibliographie des œuvres de René Descartes au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Éditions du CNRS.

Table des matières: Introduction 9; 1637. Discours de la Méthode 11; 1637. Géométrie 23; 1641. Les Méditations Métaphysiques 39; 1643. Lettres de Mr. Descartes 11; 1644. Specimina Philosophiae 101; 1644. Principes de la Philosophie 115; 1648. Notae in programma 143; 1649. Les Passions de l’âme 147; 1649. La Naissance de la Paix 175; 1650. Abrégé de la Musique 179; 1656. Magni Cartesii manes 189; 1662. L’Homme 193; 1664. Le Monde 209; 1668. La Mécanique 215; 1701. Opuscula posthuma 219; 1861. Mathematica de solidorum elementis 223. Recueils collectifs factices. (Opera Philosophica) 227.

"Une Bibliographie est une création continue. A peine l’ouvrage est-il publié qu’apparaissent miraculeusement ici et là des éditions jusqu’alors inconnues que leurs propriétaires signalent à l’attention de l’auteur.

Ces éditions, enfouies dans les bibliothèques privées, peuvent ne jamais voir le jour. Mais, si par suite de circonstances familiales malheureuses, une vente publique vient disperser tout ou partie de ces livres, pourtant jalousement conservés depuis plusieurs générations, on voit alors surgir des éditions du plus haut intérêt.

Il en est de même lorsque, par bonheur, le possesseur est un bibliophile ou un collectionneur lettré. Il se fait alors un devoir de les signaler et souvent même de les communiquer.

C’est exactement ce qui s’est passé pour les Bibliographies de J.B.P. Molière et de Jean Racine. Il en résulte qu’un travail de ce genre n’est presque jamais complet lorsqu’il est publié pour la première fois.

La Bibliographie de Descartes que nous proposons n’échappe pas à la règle. Néanmoins, nous nous sommes efforcé, avec les matériaux que nous possédons ou que nous avons pu consulter, de rassembler en un tout cohérent tous les travaux de Descartes publiés au XVIIe siècle.

(...)

Or, notre ambition, bien que limitée aux ouvrages publiés au XVIIe siècle, était de créer un ensemble ordonné et le plus complet possible de toutes les éditions tant Français es que latines éditées à cette époque.

Nous nous sommes gardé de céder à la tentation d’empiéter sur le domaine littéraire, scientifique ou philosophique, ce qui n’est pas le rôle d’un bibliographe. Ce domaine immense de synthèse et d’analyse a été admirablement étudié par Messieurs Adam et Tannery dans leur édition monumentale de 1910 rééditée tout récemment par les soins du C.N.R.S. et par d’éminents philosophes. Il ne nous appartenait pas d’y revenir sinon de nous y reporter pour certaines particularités.

La Bibliographie que nous proposons est en réalité la première des Œuvres de Descartes. Elle s’arrête au début du XVIIIe siècle car nous estimons que les publications ultérieures, dont nous ne méconnaissons pas l’importance et l’efficacité, ne présentent pas aux yeux du bibliophile ou de l’homme de sciences ou de lettres le même intérêt que celles éditées du vivant de l’auteur ou de ses contemporains.

Nous voulons donc croire et espérer que ce travail suscitera d’heureuses vocations et incitera les possesseurs d’éditions inconnues à nous révéler leur existence et à enrichir ainsi notre patrimoine bibliographique." ( Introduction, pp. 9-10).

3. Armogathe, Jean-Robert, and Carraud, Vincent. 2003. Bibliographie cartésienne (1960-1996). Lecce: Conte Editore.

Avec la collaboration de Michaël Devaux et Massimiliano Savini.

"Le présent ouvrage a pour objet de continuer la présentation bibliographique raisonnée des travaux sur Descartes entreprise par Gregor Sebba pour la période antérieure à 1960 ( Bibliographia cartesiana, La Haye, 1964). Livres et articles ont été répertoriés et indexés par des mots clés permettant des enquêtes bibliographiques précises.

(...)

La Bibliographie cartésienne est divisée en trois sections: Opera, Thesaurus et Corpus.

La première section: Opera

Un souci d’utilité pour l’usager a conduit à retirer du Corpus, pour les présenter à part, les écrits de Descartes (éditions et traductions), qui constituent la première section ( Opera). Nous avons éliminé de cette section les publications à usage scolaire et les morceaux choisis. Pour les traductions, nous avons essayé de présenter une sélection d’ouvrages, ne retenant que ceux qui sont tenus pour “classiques” dans les différentes langues. Par commodité, enfin, nous avons joint à cette section Opera quelques instruments bibliographiques et lexicologiques (qui ne figurent donc pas dans le Corpus). Un Index particulier renvoie aux œuvres publiées ou traduites dans cette section.

La seconde section: Thesaurus

Une bibliographie de grande taille peut se révéler totalement inutilisable si des indications sur l’importance relative des items ne sont pas données au lecteur candide. Au fil des quatre mille références, nous avons retenu celles qui nous ont semblé devoir faire l’objet d’une mention particulière. Il ne s’agit pas d’un palmarès; le choix du Thesaurus réunit 323 items qu’il nous a semblé utile de signaler. Un critère décisif fut la réception et l’influence des ouvrages ou articles dans la communauté scientifique. Ces items se trouvent donc mentionnés à deux reprises: dans le Thesaurus, d’une part, mais aussi, à leur place alphabétique dans le Corpus. C’est cependant dans le Corpus seul que l’on trouvera, en outre, les discussions auxquelles les items retenus dans le Thesaurus ont donné lieu, ainsi que leurs traductions.

Les items retenus dans cette section ont fait l’objet d’un dépouillement plus poussé, avec l’établissement d’un plus grand nombre de mots clefs pour chaque titre analysé. Leur numéro est celui de leur ordre dans le Corpus, il est imprimé en chiffres gras dans l’index des mots clés, permettant ainsi de retrouver, pour une recherche rapide, les principales références.

La troisième section: Corpus

Cette section réunit par ordre alphabétique (d’auteurs et de titres pour les collectifs) plus de quatre mille items, ouvrages et articles, complétant la Bibliographia cartesiana de Gregor Sebba jusqu’à l’année 1996 incluse, la date du quatrième centenaire de la naissance de Descartes représentant un terminus ad quem symbolique et bibliographique pertinent. L’année 1996 semble être une date charnière (3): le nombre annuel de publications est resté extrêmement élevé dans les années suivantes.

(3) Une idée de l’importance numérique des publications qui ont suivi l’année 1996 peut être tirée de l’inventaire établi par Michaël Devaux, “Le quatrième centenaire de la naissance de Descartes: présentation des colloques et des communications”, Bulletin cartésien XXVI, Archives de philosophie, 1998, 1, pp. 1-25.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The Philosophy of Descartes. A List of Bibliographical Tools in English

Introduction

This page gives a list of the main biographies, dictionaries, lexica and bibliographies on Descartes in English; for the resources in French see:

Descartes: Biographies, Bibliographies, Dictionnaires, Lexiques

Ancient biographies

1. Boxhorn, Marcus Zuerius. 1670. A Summary or Compendium of the Life of the Most Famous Philosopher Renatus Descartes, written originally in Latin by Peter Borellus ... ; to which is also added an epitome of his life by Marcus Zurius Boxbornius London: George Palmer.

Translation of Pierre Borel, Vitae Renati Cartesii, Summi philosophi compendium, Paris, 1656.

Epitome by Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn (1612-1653) pp. 58-107.

"This Translation, or rather Collection, out of Peter Borellus, Physician to the French King; and Marcus Zurius Boxhornius Historiographer in the University of Leyden, presents you with the Life of the Famous Monsieur Descartes, giving you an account of his Parentage and Education, during his Minority, as well as the Course and Method of his Study, in his Riper Years; together, with an exact Catalogue of all his Manuscripts, which were found at Stockholm in Sweden, after his Death; and the names of all his Books that have been Published, with the Places where they were Printed; as also the several Epitaphs that were bestowed upon him by his Contemporaries, after his Decease. If this Epitome receive a kind entertainment; 'tis very probable (when the Author, according to promise, exposed a larger Treatise to public View, concerning this Subject) that it may be also taught to speak English, for the satisfaction of those who want the advantage of the Latin, and are only skilled in our Mother-Tongue. This Compendious Discourse of the Life of so Eminent a Person, and great a Light in the Firmament of Learning, is all that we can furnish you with at present, till we meet with an opportunity to gratify you with a more Complete Relation in a larger Volume."(orthography slightly modernized)

Pierre Bayle dedied to Boxhorn the article "Zuerius Borxhonius" in his Dictionnaire historique et critique, fifth edition, Amsterdam, 1740, vol. IV, pp. 560-568.

Reprinted in Roger Ariew, Daniel Garber (eds.), Descartes in Seventeenth-Century England, Bristol: Thoemmes, 2002, vol. 3: Biographies of Descartes: Pierre Borel, A Summary or Compendium, of the Life of the Most Famous Philosopher Renatus Descartes (1670); Marcus Zurius Boxhorn, Epitome of the Life of Descartes, in: Pierre Borel, A Summary or Compendium, of the Life of the Most Famous Philosopher Renatus Descartes (1670); Adrien Baillet, The Life of Monsieur Des Cartes (1693).

2. Baillet, Adrien. 1693. The life of Monsieur Des Cartes containing the history of his philosophy and works: as also the most remarkable things that befell him during the whole course of his life. London: R. Simpson.

English translation of Adrien Baillet, La vie de mr. Des-Cartes. Réduite en abregé, Paris, 1692.

3. Sebba, Gregor. 1982. "Adrien Baillet and the Genesis of His Vie de M. Des-Cartes." In Problems of Cartesianism, edited by Lennon, Thomas M., Nicholas, John M. and Davis, John W., 9-60. Kingston & Montreal: McGill's Queens University Press.

"The story of the Vie de M. Des-Cartes begins with the unexpected death of Descartes in Stockholm in 1650, when the French ambassador Chanut his friend and host, took possession of the philosopher's unpublished manuscripts. He later turned them over to Claude Clerselier who published three volumes of correspondence, with enough manuscript left over to make one more. At his death in 1684 he left his material to Abbé Legrand with a sum of money for publishing this volume. (94) Instead of doing so, Legrand planned a new complete edition of the works and correspondence of Descartes.

A Life was to be added presumably a relatively brief one since it was to be part of this edition, Adam has described Legrand's editorial work in detail, using the information given in Baillet's preface. Legrand made a thorough and quite successful search for missing correspondence and sought out persons who had known Descartes. There is no indication that his biographical work went beyond writing minutes of the information he collected. Legrand seems to have been an excellent, careful editor, but he could never come to an end.

He worked for twenty years, died in 1704, and still nothing had been published.

The biography would have shared the fate of Legrand’s edition had it not been lifted out of its status as an introductory piece. The idea of making it an independent work cannot have come from Legrand, judging from his way of working. He had no sense for what was urgently needed at the time, or else he would have published Descartes’s inedita without delay, following them up with the Life of Descartes. There is no doubt that Cartesians of all types kept abreast of Legrand's plans and work. Unlike Legrand they were not concerned with editorial problems. A new edition including material as yet unknown would be a philosophical event, but the event took its time and the need for action was pressing. Somehow Descartes needed to be disengaged from the theological entanglement he had so carefully avoided in his own lifetime. When, where, and how the answer was found we do not know. But we can say what it was: the germ of an idea, embedded in a technicality. Detach the "Vie de Mr. Descartes" from the "Œuvres de Descartes" and make it a book in its own right, in the language and spirit of the Discours de la méthode not of the Meditationes de prima philosophia. Taking the biography out of the context of the "Œuvres" changed the concept and function of the proposed life of Descartes. The change made it necessary to find a swifter writer than Legrand." (pp. 48-49)

(...)

"Thanks to Baillet’s hints, the pieces begin to fall into place. We know already from Frion that Baillet did the actual writing in “less than a year” before giving the manuscript to the printer at the end of February 1691; since it had to be submitted to the censor, actual writing would have begun between January and March 1690. He was able to complete the writing in such a short time thanks to his systematic way of putting “un peu d’ordre“ into the material he had accumulated, so that the writing task consisted chiefly in producing a continuous narrative. The preparation of the material while waiting for information must have taken much longer than the writing itself." (p. 51)

"Perhaps it is not amiss to close with a word about the auteur malgré lui. Baillet preserved invaluable texts and information that would have been lost without him, but he preserved them in his own fashion. A thorough study of his style, his manner of translating and paraphrasing, and his scholarship is needed in attempting to reconstruct lost texts for which he is the only source. This requires following his development from the Jugemens to the Vie. As to his so-called hagiographic bias, we need to quote only one text. It stands in the second volume of the Vie de Mr. Des-Cartes, on p. 381. Speaking of Pascal, he says : “... au lieu de borner ses vues à la recherche de tout ce qui peut contribuer à la félicité temporelle de cette vie, comme avoit fait M. Descartes, il s'éleva ... jusqu’à celle des vérités de notre Religion, où M. Descartes ne s’était jamais jugé capable d’atteindre.” It is as simple as that. One cannot rise to the “verities of our Religion” without putting the “temporal felicity of this life” down where it belongs. To the peasant scholar from Beauvais this was an indisputable fact, but he had enough discipline to make his confession of faith where nobody would look for it, instead of allowing his religious radicalism to distort his portrait of Descartes." (pp. 59-60)

(94) See Adam's summary in AT 1 XLII ff. and Baillet, Vie de M. Des-Cartes, I :XXII.

Adam's judgment of the value of Baillet's work is still the best we have (AT, I :XLV).

The mass of detail piled up by Baillet "sans faire grâce aux lecteurs de tant de menus faits" has become invaluable to the modem historian because of "ce souci minutieux du réel qui caracterise Baillet". This is a very different tone from that of Ménage, La Monnoye, and Boschet, but Baillet had learned meticulous scholarship in the hard school of the Jugemens. He now knew what to guard against.

Modern biographies

1. Haldane, Elizabeth Sanderson. 1905. Descartes. His Life and Times. London: J. Murray.

Reprint Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1992.

"Any Life of Descartes is, of course, mainly dependent upon his very considerable correspondence, principally written and framed with a view to future publication.

Of Descartes' Letters as MM. Adam and Tannery tell us, the first important edition is that of Clerselier, in three volumes, published at Paris by Charles Angot in 1657-67. Clerselier had at his disposal Descartes' manuscripts, copies of many of his letters and notes, taken by him to Sweden and enumerated in a catalogue made just after his death. These had been given to Chanut, the French ambassador in Sweden, and Descartes' great friend, who contemplated publishing them. This task, however, he handed over to Clerselier, his brother-in-law, and likewise the author's friend. The packet was duly dispatched to France, which, after many delays, it reached in 1653. It travelled by Rouen, and was entrusted to a vessel which made its way to Paris by river. Unluckily, near Paris, the boat was wrecked, and for three days the precious manuscripts remained submerged in water. Wonderful to relate, "by Divine permission," the papers were recovered some distance off, and were duly hung up in various rooms to dry; but since this was done by unintelligent servants, much confusion resulted, as can easily be imagined. (*) In endeavouring to rearrange the manuscripts, the greatest difficulty was experienced; and more especially was this so in reference to the Letters. The papers, all of which had not been used, were finally bequeathed by Clerselier, in 1684, to Legrand, who assisted Baillet in writing his Life of Descartes. Baillet and Legrand set about their work of writing the Life with the greatest vigour. Legrand, not content with handing over to Baillet Descartes' manuscripts and Clerselier's memoirs, made it his business, Baillet tells us, to go to see everyone in Paris from whom he might receive the slightest help.

He wrote to Brittany, Touraine, Languedoc, Holland, Sweden, and Germany, in order to interest his friends and relations in the project, and recovered certain communications from Regius of Utrecht, and the greater part of those from Descartes to the Abbé Picot, to Clerselier, to Tobie d'André; as also some from Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, Chanut, etc. Baillet also acknowledges the help received from Descartes' nephews, M. de Kerleau and M. de Chavagne (both Descartes' brothers being dead), and also from his niece, M.lle Catherine Descartes. These provided family papers regarding the philosopher's ancestry and private life, while the sons of Clerselier and Chanut supplied all that they could of what was useful in their fathers' manuscripts. M. le Vasseur, son of Seigneur d'Etioles, the relative, friend, and host of Descartes while in Paris, supplied what material he could, as did many others whose names Baillet gratefully quotes in his Preface." ( Prefatory note, pp. VIII-IX)

(...)

For a Life of Descartes, besides the Letters and the most interesting bit of autobiography in the " Method," the Life of Baillet is naturally the source from which all others have been derived, and its value is largely due to its simplicity and accuracy. Baillet tells us that he aimed at saying what he had to say simply, telling just what his subject thought, saw, and did without adornment, and this is exactly what he accomplished. He does not aspire to criticise, but tries to tell his tale with exactitude and fidelity, not indulging in over-much laudation nor concealing faults where present. Baillet has no false estimation of his own powers. He regrets deeply that Chanut, who knew Descartes so well, and who was, in his eyes, so well fitted for the work, did not see his way to undertake the writing of Descartes' life. Failing Chanut, Baillet would have liked Clerselier to undertake the task. Clerselier knew Descartes; he had the material and leisure necessary, besides the ability, but he did not do more than collect and preserve his writings. The Queen of Sweden, seeing- that these two refused, endeavoured to procure the services of Père Poisson of the Oratory, who had written on the " Method." Clerselier offered to assist him as far as material was concerned, but the plan fell through." (pp. X-XI)

(...)

"The only English life of Descartes of any importance is the excellent little book by Professor [John Pentland] Mahaffy, [ Descartes] published as one of Blackwood's Philosophical Classics in 1880. Norman Smith's Studies in Cartesianism, 1903, is an acute criticism of his philosophy; and there is, of course, besides, the well-known article on Cartesianism in the Encyclopedia Britannica, by the Master of Balliol." (p. XI)

(*) Vie de M. Descartes par Adrien Baillet, 1691, vol. II., p. 428.

2. Shea, William R. 1991. The Magic of Numbers and Motion. The Scientific Career of René Descartes. Canton (MA): Science History Publications.

Contents: Preface IX-X; 1. The young man from Poitou 1; 2. The early physics 15; 3. The Mathematical Breakthrough 35; 4. The Quest for musical harmony 69; 5. Descartes and the Rosicrucian enlightenment 93; 6. The Search for method and Rules for Direction 121; 7. The Optical triumph (1625-1628) 149; 8. Metaphysical Meditations 165; 9. Unweaving the rainbow 191; 10. The Action of Light 227; 11. Matter and motion in a new world 251; 12. The Laws and rules of motion 279; 13. Publish or perish 317; Conclusion 341;

Appendix: Chronology or Descartes’ life 351; Bibliography 355; index 365-371.

"My goal has been to follow Descartes in his journey, and to provide a comprehensive, but by no means exhaustive, survey of his scientific career from his student days at the Jesuit College of La Flèche to his departure for Sweden where he had been summoned by Queen Christina. I have tried to follow Descartes’ injunction to be clear (but not clear at all costs), and I am sanguine enough to hope that the reader will be sufficiently stimulated and intrigued by what he finds in this book to turn to Descartes’ own works. I have kept my discussion of mathematics in Chapter Three as simple as possible, but anyone who wishes to skip this section at first reading has not only my sympathy, but the assurance that the gist is summarized in a few pages at the end. A chronology of the main events of Descartes’ life will be found in the Appendix.

My work could not have been undertaken without the pioneering efforts of Gaston Milhaud ( Descartes Savant, 1921), Paul Mouy ( Le Développement de la Physique Cartésienne, 1934), and J. F. Scott, ( The Scientific Work of René Descartes, 1952)." (pp. IX-X).

(...)

"We have seen how Descartes called upon God to vouchsafe the reliability of our knowledge of the external world. Likewise he appealed to the simplicity and immutability of God’s action to justify his laws of nature. The Second Law, for instance, “only depends on God conserving each thing by his continuous action, hence at the very instant that he conserves it. It so happens that among motions, only straight motion is entirely simple and such that its nature is comprised in an instant.” (25) I believe that it is in passages such as these that we gain our best insight into Descartes’ deeply entrenched belief in the basic unity of science, metaphysics, and natural theology. Whatever change is brought about in the world, it is caused by mechanical action, but this does not make it less marvelous. God implants simple and self-evident notions of matter and motion in the human mind at the very instant that he creates it. Likewise God produces and sustains the motion of bodies at each and every instant that they are moving. Without these God-given notions, we would be unable to perceive motion, and without God’s direct intervention, there would be no motion to be perceived. The magic of numbers and motion is rooted in the transcendental rationality of the Ultimate Mind." (p. 349)

(25) The World, Chap. 7, p. 45.

3. Gaukroger, Stephen. 1995. Descartes. An Intellectual Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Contents: Chronological Table XIV; Introduction 1; 1. 'A Learned and Eloquent Piety' 15; 2. An Education in Propriety, 1606-1618 38; 3. The Apprenticeship with Beeckman, 1618-1619 68; 4. The Search for Method , 1619-1625 104; 5. The Paris Years, 1625-1628 135; 6. A New Beginning, 1629-1630 187; 7. A New System of the World 1630-1633 226; 8. The Years of Consolidation , 1634-1640 293; 9. The Defence of Natural Philosophy , 1640-1644 354; 10. Melancholia and the Passions, 1643-1650 384; Notes 418; Biographical Sketches 471; Select Bibliography 481; Index 489-499.

"I have a vivid and happy memory of my first reading of Descartes, for it was with unbounded enthusiasm that I devoured the Discourse on Method, sitting in the shade of a tree in the Borghese Gardens in Rome in the summer of 1970, just before I started studying philosophy at university. But I cannot honestly say that my enthusiasm was fuelled by my subsequent undergraduate courses on Descartes, which simply followed the trade winds, in an obsessive but completely de-contextualized way, through the tired old questions of the cogito and the foundations for knowledge. So it was that my interest in the early seventeenth century came to be stimulated by Galileo rather than Descartes, and it was to Galileo that I devoted my main attention while a research student at Cambridge in the mid-1970s. While there, however, Gerd Buchdahl and John Schuster revealed to me a different Descartes, a more authentic and vastly more engaging one, whom I only began to explore properly ten years later. It is this Descartes who is the subject of this book, and I warn readers—if ‘warn’ is the right word, as some may breathe a sigh of relief—that it is not the Descartes from whom philosophers have made such a good living for decades that they will find here. But I have not simply set out to write the history of science or cultural history. Descartes is, after all, the figure who stands at the beginning of modern philosophy, just as Plato stands at the beginning of ancient philosophy. While I shall argue that his philosophical achievements are much more intimately linked to his interest in what subsequently have been considered ‘scientific’ questions than is commonly realized, my aim is not thereby to take Descartes out of the realm of philosophy, but rather to throw light on how he did philosophy.

It is with some trepidation that I pursued this goal through the genre of intellectual biography, even though my own early interest in philosophy had been fired by Simone de Beauvoir’s incomparable intellectual autobiography. People read intellectual biographies with different expectations, from the naïve attempt to understand, at a distance as it were, how a ‘great mind’ works, to attempts to model one’s own thought and career on that of someone one admires. Perhaps the most famous example of modelling is Thomas Mann, who evidently tried to mirror in his own intellectual development the stages in Goethe’s intellectual development, although I think there are very many less explicit cases, and that biography generally has played an important role in ‘self-fashioning’ since the nineteenth century. This makes it a rather delicate genre, both from the point of the view of the reader and from that of the writer. Self-fashioning is part of the rationale behind reading, and perhaps behind writing, intellectual biographies, but any self-fashioning will have to be very indirect in the present case. While the thesis of Jacques Le Goff, that modernity did not begin and the Middle Ages did not effectively cease until the French and Industrial Revolutions, is stronger than anything I would wish to argue in this book, I have no doubt that the culture in which Descartes lived and worked is much more remote from our own than is commonly recognized. This has consequences for biography, because a biography explores the emotional life of its subject, and the more removed from our own culture our subject is, the deeper the problems about how we are to succeed in this exploration. I have tried to be more responsive than my predecessors to the difficulties that these issues raise, with the result that there is much greater concentration on the culture in which Descartes worked than one finds in earlier biographies. But I am also very conscious of the problems of over-contextualization, and I have tried to make sure that neither the subject of my biography, nor his contribution, slips out of focus." ( Preface, pp. VII-VII)

4. Watson, Richard. 2002. Cogito, Ergo Sum. The Life of René Descartes. Boston: Godin.

"There are two main traditions of Descartes biography. In his La Vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes (1691), Adrien Baillet started the French Catholic apologetic tradition, the goal of which is to establish that Descartes’s life is worthy of the Great Metaphysician. It has been continued most recently by Geneviève Rodis-Lewis in her Descartes: His Life and Thought (1998). Baillet was recommended by the fact that he was undertaking a seventeen-volume Lives of the Saints. He demurred that he knew little about Descartes, but then he threw himself into the task with the zeal of a full-fledged member of the Saint Descartes Protection Society. The founder of this society (this joke probably goes back at least to Descartes’s death in Stockholm in 1650) was the French ambassador to Sweden, Hector-Pierre Chanut, who refused to allow Descartes’s remains to be buried in a Lutheran cemetery. Descartes’s reputation was then managed for many years by Chanut’s brother-in-law, Claude Clerselier.

Clerselier edited Descartes's letters, deleting passages that conflict with church doctrine and adding passages of his own composition where they were most needed to illustrate the faith proper to a pious Catholic philosopher. This can be checked, however, only against a few letters of which there are independent copies, for none of the original manuscripts, papers, notes, and letters that Clerselier and Baillet had are extant today. They were given to Jean-Baptist Legrand, and after he died, to his mother in 1706. Despite many searches, that is the last we ever hear of them.

The second main line of Descartes biography has most recently been continued by Stephen Gaukroger in his Descartes: An Intellectual biography (1995). In this tradition, the stress is on the analysis of Descartes’s works to show him as the Great Scientist who founded not only Modern Philosophy but also Modern Science.

The present work belongs to neither the religious nor the scientific apologetic tradition. Given how much paper has been lost since the seventeenth century, I cannot look at original sources for much of the story I tell, but must depend on editors and chroniclers such as Clerselier and Baillet, who are not fully trustworthy. The result is a skeptical biography, as full of doubt about tradition and authority as was Descartes himself.

Here. then, is the life of René Descartes. It is the first biography of Descartes since 1920 that is based on substantial new research, and the only one ever written for general readers. It is the story of the man, not of the monument." (pp. 22-23)

5. Clarke, Desmond M. 2006. Descartes. A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Preface and Acknowledgments VII; Note on Texts and References IX; Descartes Family Tree X; Introduction 1; 1. A Lawyer’s Education 6; 2. In Search of a Career (1616-1622) 37; 3. Magic, Mathematics, and Mechanics: Paris, 1622-1628 67; 4. A Fabulous World (1629-1633) 97; 5. The Scientific Essays and the Discourse on Method (1633-1637) 126; 6. Retreat and Defence (1637-1639) 156; 7. Metaphysics in a Hornet’s Nest (1639-1642) 184; 8. The French Liar’s Monkey and the Utrecht Crisis 218; 9. Descartes and Princess Elizabeth 248; 10. The Principles of Philosophy (1644) 276; 11. The Quarrel and Final Rift with Regius 307; 12. Once More into Battle: The Leiden Theologians (1647) 337; 13. Thoughts of Retirement 366; 14. Death in Sweden 394; Appendix 1: Descartes’ Principal Works 419; Appendix 2: Places Where Descartes Lived 421; Notes 425; Bibliography 489; Index 503-507.

"Descartes died in Sweden in 1650, a few weeks before his fifty-fourth birthday. He had spent most of his adult life in relative seclusion in what is now the Netherlands, while the Thirty Years’ War waxed and waned around him. By 1667, when some French Cartesians arranged for the return of his remains to Paris, they had begun to publicize his works, to develop a characteristically Cartesian philosophy, and to be identified by critics as a ‘sect’. These early supporters included many philosophers who, apart from Nicolas Malebranche, are probably remembered today only as marginal figures in the history of Western thought. The name of Descartes, however, remains readily recognizable. He has entered the canon of Western philosophy so securely that that there is no longer any dispute about his significance.

Why was he important? Hardly for the phrase by which he is popularly remembered today, both by students of philosophy and by other readers: ‘ I think, therefore I am’. This was not an original insight on his part, and it had a relatively minor role in his work. During the past century, Descartes has often been read as a metaphysician or, perhaps as frequently, as a philosopher who took seriously the arguments of sceptics. Alternatively, he is classified as a philosopher of subjectivity, as someone who outlined an internal map of the human mind and defended the irreducibility of conscious experiences. Finally, there are those, especially feminist critics, who think of Descartes as having exaggerated the significance and capacity of reason at the expense of the emotional life. For them, Descartes was a mere ‘rationalist’.

Descartes’ life reveals a much more complex and interesting character than any of these labels suggests. As an intellectual in the early seventeenth century, he might have directed his energies toward political philosophy (as Hobbes did), to theological disputes (as Pascal did), or to the renewal of humanistic and classical learning for which Erasmus had earlier provided an outstanding model. Alternatively, he might have channeled his genius exclusively into mathematics (as his contemporaries Fermat and Roberval did); had he done so, he would surely have exceeded by far the novelty and ambition of their achievements. Although all these interests featured to some extent in his life, Descartes’ primary focus was elsewhere. He is best characterized as a philosopher of the Scientific Revolution." (pp. 1-2)

6. Nadler, Steven. 2013. The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Contents: Illustrations IX; Acknowledgments XIII; 1. Prologue: A Tale of Two Paintings 1; 2. The Philosopher [René Descartes] 8; 3. The Priest [Augustijn Alsten Bloemaert, (1585-1659)] 36; 4. The Painter [Frans Hals, (1580-1666)] 55; 5. "Once in a Lifetime" 87; 6. A New Philosophy 111; 7. God in Haarlem 143; 8. The Portrait 174; Notes 199; Bibliography 219; Index 227-230.

"Exploring such art historical and biographical questions about a painting [*] might seem an odd way to frame a book about a philosopher. But Hals’s image of Descartes, now the image of Descartes (primarily by way of the Louvre copy), has become quite familiar. Indeed, it has become too familiar. While Descartes’s famous phrase “I think, therefore I am” has been transformed by overuse, parody, and misunderstanding into a kind of all purpose slogan easily adapted for a variety of occasions, philosophical and otherwise, Hals’s depiction of the philosopher has been devalued almost to the point of anonymity by seemingly endless reproduction and caricature in a wide variety of media: innumerable book covers, works of fine and decorative art, commercial and editorial illustrations, even lowbrow entertainment.

One of the goals of this book is to restore to Hals’s portrait of Descartes some of its originality and luster by reconstructing the biographical and historical contexts of its production. At the same time, such a project is a prime opportunity for presenting Descartes and his philosophy to a broad audience. The true story behind Hals’s painting, as familiar as that image has become, can well serve as the scaffolding for an accessible study of Descartes himself. Just as “I think, therefore I am” represents only the starting point of a grand philosophical project that became the dominant intellectual paradigm of the seventeenth century, Hals’s small painting can provide entrée to the life and mind of the ambitious thinker it so effectively portrays.

This is not a biography in the conventional sense. Most of Descartes’s life, including much that happened during the decade on which this book is focused, lies outside the scope of its story. Nor is this book intended to be another detailed analytic study of Descartes’s philosophy. There are many scholarly monographs exploring Descartes’s work in epistemology, metaphysics, natural philosophy, and mathematics; there are also a number of fine general introductions to his thought, as well as several recent biographies. As valuable as such academic studies are, I would rather take my lead from Hals. The Haarlem artist has given us a small, intimate portrait of a great thinker. I want to do the same: a presentation of Descartes and his ideas in the form of a small, intimate portrait, a rendering of those years that culminated in some groundbreaking philosophical doctrines and a modest but intriguing work of art.

Descartes belongs as much to the intellectual culture of the Dutch Golden Age as he does to the grand history of Western philosophy whose development he so strongly influenced. It thus seems perfectly appropriate, if a bit unorthodox, to use a seventeenth-century Dutch painting as a portal into his world." (pp. 6-7)

[*] The portrait of Descartes made by Frans Hals in 1649.

Dictionaries, lexica and concordances

1. Cottingham, John. 1993. A Descartes Dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell.

Contents: Preface VII; Note on the use of this book 1; Abbreviations 3; Introduction: Descartes' Life and Works 5; DICTIONARY ENTRIES A-Z 11; Bibliography 170; Index 175-187.

"The secondary literature on Descartes is gigantic. Since almost all the topics covered in the entries that follow have been the subject of scores of learned articles, if not entire books, any attempt to aim for completeness in discussing the issues involved would be self-defeating. In what follows I have tried to trace out the main outlines of Descartes' thought, attempting as far as possible to let the Cartesian texts speak for themselves (though specialist readers will be well aware of the compression and selectivity that the demands of concision have inevitably required). Although Descartes is an astonishingly lucid writer, that very lucidity can be a pitfall, since terms whose sense at first appears transparent may in fact carry connotations or presuppositions whose import is far from straightforward; in such cases I have tried to show something of the intellectual background which shaped Descartes' ideas, despite his claim to be 'starting afresh'. Apart from citations from such early sources, and some writings from contemporaries or near contemporaries of Descartes, individual entries have been kept clear of references to the works of commentators and critics; a selection of some of the most important of these secondary works will be found in the Bibliography." (p. 1)

2. Ariew, Roger, Des Chene, Dennis, Jesseph, Douglas M., Schmaltz, Tad M., and Verbeek, Theo. 2003. Historical Dictionary of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy. Lanham: Scarecow Press.

Reprinted in 2010 with the title: The A to Z of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy.

Contents: Jon Woronoff: Editor’s Foreword IX; Preface XI; Chronology XIII; Introduction 1; THE DICTIONARY 13; Bibliography: Introduction 261; Texts and Editions: Descartes 265; Texts and Editions: Other Writers 267; Works on Descartes 281; Works on Cartesians and Other 17th-Century Figures 293; About the Authors 303.

"This Historical Dictionary of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy, as befits a dictionary, includes many entries on Descartes’s writings, concepts, and findings. Since it is historical, there are other entries on those who supported him, those who criticized him, those who corrected him, and those who together formed one of the major movements in philosophy: Cartesianism. To better understand the period, there is a brief chronology, and to see how Descartes and Cartesianism fit into the general picture, there is a helpful introduction and a biography. Since everything cannot be summed up in one volume, there is an ample bibliography that directs readers to numerous other sources on issues of particular interest." (p. IX)

3. Smith, Kurt, ed. 2015. The Descartes Dictionary. London: Bloomsbury.

Contents: Acknowledgments VI; About this dictionary VII; Introduction 1; A sketch of Descartes’s life 1; A sketch of Descartes’s philosophical system 5; Descartes in the classroom 24; Terms and names 29; Bibliography 123-131.

"This dictionary has been geared specifically for undergraduate students. The terms and philosophical concepts included are those that have typically proven difficult for students coming to Descartes’s writings for the first time.

Descartes’s philosophical career spanned almost his entire adult life. He was a living, breathing human being, warts and all. We need to remind ourselves of this because human beings, real human beings, change and grow. This includes what they think about, how they think about those things, and so on. It would be unreasonable, then, when examining the entire span of Descartes’s philosophical writings to expect to find a single, unified, perfectly consistent view.

We must allow for the likelihood of a change in mind. It would be equally unreasonable to expect to find just one set of terms whose meanings remained the same over that same span of work. An important aim of this dictionary is to track these sorts of changes if and when they occur.

(...)

When provoked by critics, Descartes (on occasion) admits that he was using certain philosophical terms differently from how they were used in the Schools. Johannes Caterus (1590–1657), for example, author of the First Set of Objections of the Meditations, expressed concerns over what he took to be Descartes’s odd use of certain terms. He asks Descartes, for instance, to explain what he had meant by the terms “idea,” “objective being,” and “nothing.” Later in the First Set of Objections, he expresses concern over Descartes’s use of “real distinction.” Caterus complains that Descartes uses these terms very differently from the way the Schools used them.

Descartes’s replies to such critics are not always that illuminating, for he will sometimes simply shrug off the concern, or simply admit that he is using a term differently than it had been used by others.

Even so, he usually says enough in other places that allow us to figure out what he meant by the term in question. In light of this, where appropriate, the then-standard usage of a term will be noted in an entry, so as to help the reader better understand the import of Descartes’s change in its usage.

Since Descartes wrote almost exclusively in Latin and in French (though he wrote some letters in Dutch), it is sometimes helpful to the English reader to see the actual words he used. To this end, when helpful, this dictionary will include the Latin and French terms that Descartes actually used. They will be provided directly following the term to be defined, and in many cases they will appear in the entry itself. Concerning “definitions,” it should be noted that it is rare that a one-liner will suffice. In many cases, if not most, determining what a term means requires some discussion of other texts. Even in cases where Descartes provides an actual definition, simply repeating it will not be enough to understand the full philosophical import of the term defined. So, the reader should think of each entry not so much as a definition proper, but as a discussion of the term in question.

The following entries are based entirely on Descartes’s writings—on the actual texts. Even so, the entries have been informed (and improved!) by looking to the secondary literature. It is worth noting that a careful study of the secondary literature reveals that there is, not surprisingly, no ultimate consensus on Descartes’s views. Rather, one finds many interesting interpretations in scholarly competition with one another. With this in mind, and in trying to provide the reader with some sense of the array of interpretations available, the relevant secondary literature has been incorporated into certain entries, these influences provided at the end of each entry. But even here, these references are not definitive. They are only suggestions about where one might begin the next step in one’s research." (pp. VII-IX)

4. Nolan, Lawrence, ed. 2016. The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: List of Figures XIV; List of Contributors XVII; Abbreviations XXIII; Introduction and Notes on How to Use This Work XXV; Acknowledgments XXIX; Chronology XXXI; Descartes’ Life and Works XXXV; Annotated Bibliography LXVII-LXVIII; Entries 1-767; Index 769-778.

"The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon is more like an encyclopedia or a compendium than a traditional dictionary, both in its scope and in its content. Many of the entries are fairly lengthy, especially those devoted to important subject terms such as “Cogito Ergo Sum,” “Free Will,” “God,” “Human Being,” “Idea,” “Law of Nature,” and “Representation.” Most of the subject entries are also “scholarly” in the sense that they introduce readers to debates in the secondary literature. The authors of these entries sometimes present these debates without defending their own views, but in many cases they take an interpretive stand. Authors of overlapping entries were encouraged to stake out opposing positions (see, e.g., “Body,” “Individuation,” and “Substance”). The result is that by reading just a few pages, readers can familiarize themselves with almost any given scholarly dispute and get a sense of the arguments and textual evidence for various interpretations.

(...)

In addition to the 149 subject entries – which include articles on Descartes’ individual works such as the Discourse on Method and the Principles of Philosophy – there are 107 intellectual biographies of various figures, including official objectors to the Meditations such as Arnauld, Gassendi, and Hobbes; notable contemporaries and immediate successors such as Leibniz, Locke, Newton, and Spinoza; medieval and Scholastic predecessors such as Augustine, Aquinas, Eustachius, Scotus, and Suárez; important correspondents such as Princess Elisabeth, Constantijn Huygens, and Mersenne; and followers such as Desgabets and Régis. The intellectual biographies briefly sketch each figure’s life and accomplishments and then discuss the relation of that person’s thought to Descartes’. They also trace Descartes’ influences, record the reception of his ideas by critics, and discuss the ways in which his acolytes developed or adapted his views. All of the entries are written in a lucid style and thus accessible to a wide audience, including philosophers generally, those working in related disciplines, and students. Written by the largest and most distinguished team of Cartesian scholars ever assembled for a collaborative research project (ninety-one contributors from ten countries), the Cambridge Descartes Lexicon aspires to serve as the definitive and most comprehensive reference source on Descartes and Cartesianism." (pp. XXV-XXVI)

5. Murakami, Katsuzo, Sasaki, Meguro, and Tetsuichi, Nishimura., eds. 1995. Concordance to Descartes’ Meditationes de Prima Philosophia. Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann.

Preface by Takefumi Tokoro.

"The present volume is a Concordance-Index to Descartes’ Meditationes ( Meditationes de Prima Philosophia, in Volume VII of the Œuvres de Descartes, published by Charles Adam & Paul Tannery), accompanied by a brief grammatical analysis of its text.

This Concordance-Index, for the main body of its text, relies basically on the standard edition of Descartes’ works, the one just cited above (hereafter abbreviated as AT). Assisted by First Computer, Tokyo (Yoshiaki YOSHIDA), we first translated it into machine-readable form, and then, using the OCP (Oxford Concordance Program) in operation at the Computer Centre, Tokyo University, made various attempts to obtain a series of outputs. This enabled us to base our further treatment of the text on a version which, while on the whole remaining that of the AT edition, is superior to it in a number of respects. The strategy we adopted might be in need of some explication.

It must be emphasized in the first place that conformity to the AT text does not necessarily mean conformity to the work of Descartes himself. As is well known, a simple comparison of the AT text with several editions of the Meditationes published in the seventeenth century suffices for illustrating many points where the former departs from the latter. This is particularly noticeable as regards indentation and punctuation. (The AT creates many new paragraphs of its own and has a tendency to cut Descartes’ long sentences into a number of shorter sentences.) And, of course, differences in indentation and punctuation result in differences in the use of capital letters. Furthermore, the use of diacritics even within the AT text falls short of being consequent in itself (for instance, no rule seems to govern the distinction of multo and multò, both used as adverbs). In the second place, however, we did not consider that these facts should prevent us from choosing the AT text as the basis of our project. On the contrary, in the absence of a rigorous critical edition of the Meditationes, upon a thoroughly exhaustive comparison of its First and Second editions, the AT text rightly remains the standard reference for every serious student of Descartes and no other choice could be reasonably conceived. It is thus hoped that the present Concordance-Index will prove itself to be an indispensable tool for the preparation of a future revised edition of the Meditationes. These are the considerations behind our strategy.

Almost every inflectional word, as well as every indeclinable word judged to be of some interest to students of Descartes, are presented in context. Indeclinable words judged otherwise are presented in the word index format, i. e., without their contexts. Thus, in refusing to omit any word-forms actually occurring in Meditationes, we hope that the present volume will be useful to students not only of philosophy but also of language. Each word is accompanied by a brief grammatical comment, placed at the context headings of its inflectional variants. It is noted through a system of abbreviation and following an order of rank according to which these variants are arranged. The system of abbreviation and the rules governing the order of rank will be stated in the Explanatory Notes.

In the actual process of grammatical analysis, our first concern was to be as rigorous and precise as possible, to distinguish, for instance, the first person singular form of the future indicative from that of the present subjunctive, or the nominative case from the accusative case even when, for some verbs, nouns and adjectives, they happen morphologically to be the same. But after having kept unwaveringly to this principle, we finally decided to temper this rigour in the style of exposition, lest the inevitable subtleties it sometimes leads to should hinder, rather than help the reader, from having easy and natural access to our work. Thus, regarding nouns, adjectives and relatives, we give no indication to the case in which they are put in a given context, retaining the distinction only of number for nouns, and only of gender for adjectives and relatives. The distinction of degree is noted for adverbs only. With verbs, we had to be even more sparing of grammatical distinctions. For each verb entered as a lemma (except for SVM - see below), all of its occurrences are arranged in the simple order of their appearances within the text of Meditationes." (pp. I-II)

6. Janowski, Zbigniew. 2004. Augustinian Cartesian Index. Texts and Commentary. South Bend: St. Augustine Press.

Expanded English translation of: Index Augustino-Cartésien. Textes et Commentaire.

Augmented Augustinian citations, and added indices and commentaries for Saint Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, Francis Bacon, and Montaigne.

"The present work was intended as a literal translation from the French original. I however, as I was working on it, I realized the considerable impact the Works of Francis Bacon have had on the formation of Cartesian philosophy. Although The Augustinian-Cartesian Index is, as the title suggests, devoted to Augustine's influence on Descartes, it is at the same time a work that is primarily concerned with the study of the sources of Descartes's philosophy. The inclusion of an appendix on Bacon is only consistent with the character of such a work. (In Appendix 4, I have included most of the passages identified by André Laland in his seminal article, "Sur quelques textes de Bacon et de Descartes," in Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1911 [19, pp. 296 - 311]. These are marked as XI-XVI.) Likewise, the inclusion of an appendix on Montaigne seemed to me justified. In contradistinction to St. Augustine or Bacon, Montaigne's influence on Descartes has been recognized for a long time. A number of passages have been identified by Cartesian scholars in the past. However, they are dispersed through learned books and journals, and have never been collet led in a handy form for comparative purposes.

While working on The Augustinian-Cartesian Index, I was finishing my Cartesian Theodicy: Descartes' Quest for Certitude, (*) in which I present an Augustinian reading of Descartes's Meditations. Although the topic and scope of the two works are different, I have included a few fragments from The Cartesian Theodicy in my commentary to the Index." (p. XI).

(*) Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000.

Bibliographies

1. Sebba, Gregor. 1964. Bibliographia Cartesiana. A Critical Guide to the Descartes Literature, 1800-1960. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Contents: Notes to the User VII; Preface IX; From the Preface to Descartes and his Philosophy (1959) XIII; Acknowledgments XV;

PART ONE. INTRODUCTION TO DESCARTES STUDIES [1-562] 1; PART TWO. ALPHABETICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 1800-1960 [1001-3612] 149; PART THREE. INDICES 419;

Systematic Index 421; Analytical Index 434; Abbreviations 502-510.

"This book offers a new type of working tool for Cartesian studies. It presents the literature of the last 160 years in alphabetical order (Part Two), combined with a systematic analytical survey (Part One) and a detailed topical index to the whole (Part Three). This organization makes it possible to turn bibliography from a repository of references into a workshop of research. The systematic survey of Part One and the topical index of Part Three, together, offer a mise au point of Descartes studies over their full historical and topical range.

The results have often been surprising and illuminating to the author, and if his experience is any guide, the reader, too, will begin to wonder about certain seemingly well-settled points, or marvel at the Protean shapes which our elusive philosopher assumes when mighty commentators force him to reveal his true nature.

(...)

Part I ( Introduction to Descartes Studies) divides the field into eleven broad areas.

It offers critical notices and references to the bulk of significant contributions, covering as much as one-fifth of the whole literature. Other useful items which could not be incorporated in Part I for technical or other reasons will be found annotated in Part II; they are of course fully indexed. Each main title in Part I is annotated; in addition I have listed all reviews I could locate, discussions in books and articles as well as book reviews proper; condensed but detailed tables of content indicate the scope of works that cover a great variety of topics. If I could rewrite Part I in the light of the understanding I gained by making the detailed topical index, selection and emphasis as well as my evaluations of some contributions would be different. But the changes would not be decisive. Part I would still include every undoubtedly indispensable work, and most of the works I did select as being exceptionally useful. I would still add important older works of no great current value because they give the necessary historical perspective to the picture of Descartes scholarship. And I would still emphasize contributions neglected because they appeared where the Descartes scholar would hardly look for them, because they were written in a minor language, or because they just had bad luck. Nor would I tone down the language of my notices: I do not think that grey is the only color suitable for painting the Cartesian rainbow.

As to my critical evaluations, they are no better than my judgment: caveat emptor. The user will form his own better judgment anyway, and to him the literature will look different, if only because there will be even more of it: "majoremque habemus rerum experientiam," as Descartes said when he was a very young man.

Part II ( Alphabetical Bibliography) is a comprehensive listing of all the literature on Descartes from 1800 to 1960 which I could locate, including the material contained in Part I. The total is close to 3000. I doubt that anything of major significance has been overlooked, but complete coverage cannot be claimed; besides, the limits of this type of compilation cannot be precisely drawn.

Part III contains the indices that serve as key to the material presented in Part I and II. The Systematic Index gives a synopsis of the Analytical Index and draws attention to useful entries that might be overlooked. The Analytical Index is quite detailed. Every topic that appears in a title, notice, or table of contents (but not under reviews) has been indexed, with extremely few exceptions ( minima non curat praetor). In addition, many books and articles of importance have been indexed from the original, including major works by Alquié, Bouillier, Gilson, Gouhier, Gueroult, Norman Kemp Smith, Thijssen-Schoute and others." (pp. (IX-X)

2. Chappell, Vere, and Doney, Willis, eds. 1987. Twenty-Five Years of Descartes Scholarship, 1960-1984. A Bibliography. New York: Garland.

Contents: Introduction VI; Sources XI; Abbreviations XIII; Twenty-Five Years of Descartes Scholarship; Appendix: Editions and Translations of Descartes's Own Writings 163; Index 175-183.

"Scholarly interest in the work of René Descartes has burgeoned in the last twenty-five years. Much of the resulting literature has been produced by philosophers, who have approached Descartes not only as historians concerned to understand and interpret the Cartesian texts, but also as metaphysicians and epistemologists preoccupied with the same problems that confronted Descartes. But Descartes was not just a philosopher in the restricted twentieth-century sense of the word. He also made important contributions to the sciences—mathematics, physics, and biology. And his writings have influenced dramatists, poets, and novelists. Thus Cartesian studies have been pursued by recent historians of science and literary scholars as well as by philosophers.

Our aim in this bibliography has been to document the entire scholarly literature on Descartes, from 1960 through 1984, in most of the languages in which it has been produced and in all of the fields in which Descartes is currently a subject of interest. We took 1960 as our starting point because that is the last year covered by Gregor Sebba in his monumental Bibliographia Cartesiana. Our reason for stopping with 1984 is simply that we had collected enough items by then to fill a sizeable volume.

The items we have included are written in Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. We have listed a few items in other languages in cases where a published translation into one of the above-mentioned languages exists. In the course of our investigations, we found references to a number of works on Descartes in Polish, Russian, and Japanese; to a few in other Slavic languages; and to one or two each in Hungarian, Romanian, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic. We have also been told of some recent studies in Chinese. Since we lacked the resources to verify these references, however, we have left them out of our list." (p. VI)

(...)

"It is interesting to note that, during our period, more items of Cartesian scholarship were published in English than in any other language. Of the 2,502 entries in our main list, 1,141 or 46% are in English. The next most prevalent language is French, with 747 entries (29%). Then come German, Italian, and Spanish, with 215, 214, and 116 (9%, 9%, and 4%), respectively.

The work of Descartes had a strong impact on the philosophers, scientists, and writers who succeeded him. A good deal of Cartesian scholarship deals with these later “Cartesians” as well as, or instead of, with Descartes himself. It is impossible to draw a clear line between studies which are primarily devoted to Descartes himself and those in which the primary emphasis is on some other Cartesian thinker or thinkers. But we have sought to include everything that might reasonably be thought to belong in the former category; and we have deliberately excluded some items that we judged to fall in the latter. We have not in any case made a systematic survey of works in which Cartesian writers other than Descartes himself are the main object of concern." (p. VII)

3. Van Otegem, Matthijs. 2002. A Bibliography of the Works of Descartes (1637-1704). Utrecht: Zeno institut for Philosophy.

Two volumes.

"With this thesis a complete bibliography has become available of all works of Descartes published in the seventeenth century, regardless the country or the language the book was published in. Most of the texts are not preserved in manuscript so there was a strong need of a bibliography of the printed works. Half of the seventeenth-century editions of Descartes were published in the Netherlands. Descartes spent most of his philosophical career in the Low Countries and in this period Dutch printers controlled the larger part of the European book trade. Naturally, many of Descartes’ works were published in France as well, but also editions were printed in England, Italy and Germany.

In this bibliography not only editions are described as such but also features of individual copies are recorded. By making detailed descriptions of the copies textual differences are discovered in the texts preserved, which is of interest to the study of Descartes’ philosophy. Van Otegem not only visited Dutch libraries, but also libraries in England, France, Germany and Italy. Each text of Descartes’ published separately is described in its own chapter, in which all editions are listed and their mutual relationships are determined. Each chapter starts with an introduction dealing with the historical context.

The results of this research are threefold. Firstly, the bibliography offers a complete survey of all editions of Descartes published in the seventeenth century. 15 previously unknown editions were found; 14 published in Latin and 1 in French. Secondly, the historical context is stressed in which all editions came about. New facts are unveiled about the involvement of Descartes and others in the printing of his works and about Descartes efforts to stimulate the reception of his works by distributing presentation copies. Finally, many variants are found between the collated copies, not only offering insight in the printing practices in the seventeenth century but also providing new leads for the study of the texts themselves. It has become clear that new scholarly editions are needed of some of Descartes’ works." (From the Summary of the dissertation)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Choix Bibliographique des études en Français sur la philosophie de René Descartes

Introduction

Après une section introductive, cette bibliographie est divisée en deux parties: la première suit la chronologie des œuvres de Descartes, la deuxième un ordre thématique :

- Études d'ensemble sur la philosophie de Descartes ;

Première partie :

- 1616-1619: Premiers écrits : Licence end Droit, Compendium musicae, Extraits de Baillet ;

- 1620-1628: Regulae ad directionem ingenii : La recherche de la mathesis universalis ;

- 1629-1636: Le Monde, L'Homme et autres écrits biologiques, La Recherche de la Vérité ;

- 1637: Discours de la méthode ; le cogito ;

- 1637-1639: Essais de cette méthode et autres écrits scientifiques ;

- 1640-1643: Meditationes de prima philosophia ;

- 1644-1648: Principia philosophiae et écrits polémiques ;

- 1649-1650: Les passions de l'âme ; derniers écrits.

Deuxième partie :

- La défi su scepticisme ;

- L'argument ontologique ;

- La notion de substance ;

- La vérité ;

- La généalogie du sujet moderne.

Bibliographie

Études d'ensemble sur la philosophie de Descartes

1. Descartes. Cahiers de Royaumont. 1957. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit.

Reprint New York: Garland 1987.

Table des matières: Introduction de MM. Gueroult et Gouhier 7; F. Alquié: Expérience ontologique et déduction systématique dans la constitution de la métaphysique de Descartes 10; Discussion: MM. Gueroult, Alquié, Leslie, Beck, Mme Prenant, Mlle Hersch, MM. Jean Wahl, Brandestein, Goldschmidt et Goldmann 32; Fin de la discussion générale portant sur le cogito: MM. Jean Wahl, Alquié, Gueroult, MMmes Rodis-Lewis, Prenant et M. Gouhier 58; H. Gouhier: L'ordre des raisons selon Descartes 72; Discussion: MM. Gueroult, Gouhier, Mme Prenant, MM. Perelman, Leslie Beck, Alquié, Hyppolite, Lefebvre, Boehm et Mlle Hersch 88; M. Gueroult: La vérité de la science et la vérité de la chose dans les preuves de l'existence de Dieu 108; Discussion: MM. Gouhier, Gueroult, Hyppolite, Jean Wahl, Vuillemin, Mmes Prenant et Rodis-Lewis, MM. Alquié, Mesnard et Goldmann 121; E. W. Beth: Le savoir déductif dans la pensée cartésienne 141; Discussion: MM. Perelman, Beth, Leslie Beck, Mme Prenant, M. Gueroult 154; J. Hyppolite: Du sens de la géométrie de Descartes dans son œuvre 121; Discussion: MM. Perelman, Beth, Leslie Beck, Mme Prenant, M. Gueroult 154; Discussion: MM. Lenoble, Hyppolite, Beaufret, Gouhier, Gueroult, Mme Prenant, M. Lefebvre 178; 492; Mlle G. Dreyfus: Physique et Géométrie chez Descaries et chez Malebranche 187; Discussion: M. Perelman, Mlle Dreyfus, MM. Beaufret et Lenoble 200; G. Rodis-Lewis: Maîtrise des Passions et Sagesse chez Descartes 208; Discussion: M. Mesnard, Mme Rodis-Lewis, M. Guéroult 228; H. Lefebvre: De la morale provisoire à la générosité 237; Discussion : MM. Béra, Goldmann, Lefebvre, Dreyfus, Alquié, Mlle Dreyfus, M. Mesnard, Mlle Hersch, MMmes Rodis-Lewis et Prenant 257; Th. Spoerri: La puissance métaphorique de Descartes 273; Discussion: MM. Perelman, Spoerri, Lefebvre, Goldmann, Gueroult, Béra, Morel, Beth, Zeraffa, Amrouche, Mlle Dreyfus, M. Alquié, Mlle Hersch, M. Boehm 288; R. Lenoble : Liberté cartésienne ou liberté sartrienne 302; Discussion: Mme Rodis-Lewis, M. Lenoble, Mme Prenant, Mlle Dreyfus, MM. Alquié, Gueroult, MM. Vuillemin, Mesnard, Perelman, Jean Wahl 325; P. Mesnard: L'arbre de la sagesse 336; Discussion: MM. Lenoble, Gueroult, Beth, Mesnard, Lefebvre, Perelman, Alquié, Mme Rodis-Lewis, M. Goldmann 350; J. Wahl: Exemple d'une régie inconnue: le verbe « être » chez Descaries; Deuxième, Troisième et Quatrième Méditations 360; A. Banfi : Galilée, Descartes et Vico 376; L. Beck: L'unité de la pensée et de la méthode 393; L. Prenant: Rôle et limite de la psychologie dans la méthode et la philosophie de Descartes 412; M. Roland-Manuel: Descartes et le Problème de l'expression musicale 438; Discussion générale: MM. Perelman, Spoerri, Alquié, Gueroult, Lefebvre, Goldmann, Mesnard, Collé, Hyppolite, Mlle Antonelli, MM. Gouhier et Jean Wahl 443; (Nous regrettons de ne pouvoir donner ici l’exposé de M. Castelli, ni la discussion qui a suivi, la transcription des textes ayant été rendue impossible par suite d’incidents techniques.).

2. Descartes et son œuvre aujourd'hui. 1998. Bruxelles: Pierre Mardaga.

Table des matières: Bernard Bru et Michel Schreiber: Préface 5; Jean Frézal: Introduction 11; Chapitre 1. Geneviève Rodis-Lewis: Descartes à la recherche de la vérité 17; Chapitre 2. Annie Bitbol-Hespériès: Descartes, Harvey et la tradition médicale 29; Chapitre 3. Enrico Giusti: La révolution cartésienne en géométrie 47; Chapitre 4. Olivier Houdé: L’esprit, le cerveau et le corps. Descartes face aux sciences cognitives 63; Chapitre 5. Jacques Bouveresse: La mécanique, la physiologie et l’âme 83-120.

3. Alquié, Ferdinand. 1950. La découverte métaphysique de I'homme chez Descartes. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

4. Beyssade, Jean-Marie. 1979. La philosophie première de Descartes. Le temps et la cohérence de la métaphysique. Paris: Flammarion.

5. ———. 2001. Descartes au fil de l'ordre. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

6. ———. 2001. Études sur Descartes. L'Histoire d'un esprit. Paris: Seuil.

7. Buzon, Frédéric de, Cassan, Élodie, and Kambouchner, Denis, eds. 2015. Lectures de Descartes. Paris: Ellipses.

Plan général: Avant-propos 7; Les auteurs 13; Principales abréviations 17; 1. Denis Moreau: L'idée de la philosophie 19; 2. Édouard Mehl: Les années de formation 41; 3. David Rabouin: Mathesis, Méthode, Géométrie. Les Regulae et leur place dans la philosophie de Descartes 67; 4. Élodie Cassan: Descartes et la logique 97; 5. Stefano Di Bella: Le programme métaphysique de Descartes 121; 6. Laurence Devillars: L'idée de Dieu 151; 7. Frédéric de Buzon: Le concept de la physique 181; 8. André Charrak: Matière, éléments, monde 213; 9. Delphine Antoine-Mahut: La machine du corps 229; 10. Philippe Desoche: Ego sum res cogitans. La philosophie de l’esprit chez Descartes 253; 11. Frédéric de Buzon, Denis Kambouchner: L’âme avec le corps: les sens, le mouvement volontaire, les passions 279; 12. Laurence Renault: La constitution de la morale cartésienne 329; 13. Frédéric Lelong: Civilité, rhétorique, publication 359; 14. Denis Kambouchner: L’horizon politique 385; 15. Theo Verbeek (traduction: Élodie Cassan): Le cartésianisme hollandais 413; 16.

Jean-Christophe Bardout: De Descartes aux cartésianismes. La réception Français e de 1650 à 1770 435; Principales dates de la vie de Descartes 483; Bibliographie 489; Index des noms 501; Index des œuvres de Descartes 509; Index des matières 511-515.

8. Carraud, Vincent. 2002. Causa sive ratio. La raison de la cause de Suárez à Leibniz. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

9. Cossutta, Frédéric, ed. 1996. Descartes et l'argumentation philosophique. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

10. Depré, Olivier, and Lories, Danielle, eds. 1997. Lire Descartes aujourd'hui. Louvain: Éditions Peeters.

Table des matières: O. Depré et D. Lories: Avant-propos V; Liste des abréviations IX; J.-F. Courtine: La doctrine cartésienne de l’idée et ses sources scolastiques 1; R. Specht: Aspects «cartésiens» de la théorie suarezienne de la matière 21; Cl. Troisfontaines: La définition de la philosophie dans la Lettre-préface des Principes 47; G. Olivo, La sagesse des principes: la mathesis universalis dans les Principiae philosophiae de Descartes 69; R. Cobb-Stevens: La géométrie des Regulae: mathesis et ontologie 85; Fr. Bonicalzi: La causalité dans la science cartésienne 109; V. Carraud: Descartes appartient-il à l’histoire de la métaphysique? 153; J.-L. Marion: La «règle générale» de vérité. Meditatio ΙΠ, AT VII, 34-36 173; M. Henry, Le commencement cartésien et l’idée de la phénoménologie 199; Index nominum 213; Œuvres citées 217-226.

11. Fichant, Michel. 1998. Science et métaphysique dans Descartes et Leibniz. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Table des matières: Préface V-XI; Sigles utilisés pour les références aux sources principales XIII-XIV; I. L’ingenium selon Descartes et le chiffre universel des Règles pour la direction de l’esprit 1; IL La géométrisation du regard: Réflexions sur la Dioptrique de

Descartes 29; III. La «Fable du Monde» et la signification métaphysique de la science cartésienne 59; IV. L’origine de la négation 85; V. Leibniz et l’universel 121; VI. De l’individuation à l’individualité universelle 143; VII. Mécanisme et métaphysique: le rétablissement des formes substantielles (1679) 163; VIII. De la puissance à l’action: la singularité stylistique de la dynamique 205; IX. La notion de système dans la physique de Leibniz 245; X. «Pour la beauté et pour l’harmonie»: le meilleur de la dynamique 267;

XI. Les axiomes de l’identité et la démonstration des formules arithmétiques: "2 + 2 = 4" 287; XII. Leibniz et l’exigence de démonstration des axiomes: "La partie est plus petite que le Tout" 329; XIII. Ernst Cassirer et les commencements de la science classique 373;

Indications bibliographiques 405; Index nominum 407-410.

12. Gouhier, Henri. 1962. La pensée métaphysique de Descartes. Paris: Vrin.

13. Grimaldi, Nicolas. 2010. L'expérience de la pensée dans la philosophie de Descartes. Paris: Vrin.

14. Gueroult, Martial. 1953. Descartes selon l'ordre des raisons. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne.

Tome I: L'âme et Dieu; Tome II: L'âme et le corps.

15. ———. 1970. Études sur Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche et Leibniz. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

16. Kambouchner, Denis. 2013. Le style de Descartes. Paris: Éditions Manucius.

17. Laporte, Jean. 1950. Le rationalisme de Descartes. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

18. Lauth, Reinhard. 2004. La conception cartésienne du système de la philosophie. Paris: Champion.

Traduction par Christophe Bouriau de: Descartes' Konzeption des Systems der Philosophie, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1998.

19. Rodis-Lewis, Geneviève, ed. 1987. Méthode et métaphysique chez Descartes. Articles en Français . New York: Garland.

20. Spallanzani, Mariafranca. 2009. L'arbre et le labyrinthe. Descartes selon l'ordre de Lumières. Paris: Honoré Champion.

Avec une préface de Jean Dagen.

En deux sections. La première, traduite de l'italien par Martin Rueff, constitue la version augmentée du livre Immagini di Descartes nell'Encyclopédie; la seconde et les scolies sont complètement nouvelles. Martin Rueff a tout révisé en collaboration avec l'auteur.

21. ———. 2015. Descartes. La règle de la raison. Paris: Vrin.

22. Suoual, Philippe, and Veto, Miklos, eds. 1997. Chemins de Descartes. Colloque de Poitiers. Paris: L'Harmattan.

Table des matières: Mikios Vetö: Introduction 7; G. Rodis-Lewis: Descartes, l'homme et le développement de la pensée 13; A. Tranoy: René Descartes, étudiant à Poitiers 33; M. Kobayashi: Réception et critique de Descartes au Japon - Le cas de Kitarô Nishida 41; D. Garber: Descartes et la physique métaphysique 57; J.-L. Marion: Notes sur les modalités de l’ego 81; D. Kambouchner: Descartes et la perfection de la morale 95; J.-M. Beyssade: Descartes politique? 119; Index 139.

"Ce volume reproduit le plus souvent les communications, en leur laissant dans leur style oral, comme elles ont été prononcées. Ces textes eux-mêmes sont très différents selon la taille et la conception. Ils vont de la courte note sur René Descartes, étudiant poitevin jusqu’à des études relativement longues sur la morale ou sur la fondation métaphysique de la physique. Quant à l’apparat d’érudition, Descartes politique est une méditation décantée, allégée quasiment de toute référence savante tandis que les Notes sur les Modalités de l’ego se livrent à une permanente analyse textuelle. Finalement, quant à l’ordre selon lequel les sept articles se suivent, il ne reproduit pas celui de leur succession effective lors du colloque. Nous avons modifié cet ordre et ce fut d’ailleurs l’unique changement que nous nous sommes permis d’effectuer dans la présentation de ce recueil." (p. 8)

23. Van Damme, Stéphane. 2002. Descartes. Essai d'histoire culturelle d'une grandeur philosophique. Paris: Presses de Science PO.

24. Vinciguerra, Lucien. 2013. La représentation excessive. Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Pascal. Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septenrtion.

1616-1619: Premiers écrits : Licence end Droit, Compendium musicae, Extraits de Baillet

1. Armogathe, Jean Robert. 1979. "Vers un autre Descartes. État présent des recherches sur la formation et la réception de la pensée cartésienne." In Travaux récents sur le XVIIe siècle. Actes du 8. Colloque de Marseille (janvier 1978), 188-198. Marseille: Archives communales.

2. Buzon, Frédéric de. 1990. "Fonctions de la mémoire dans les traités théoriques au XVIIe siècle." Revue de Musicologie no. 76:163-172.

3. ———. 1997. "La formation musicale de Descartes et sa première œuvre, le Compendium musicae." In Actes du Colloque Universitaire de la Flèche "La Formation de Descartes", 149-162. La Flèche: Prytanée National Militaire.

4. Cavaillé, Jean-Pierre. 1994. "« Le plus éloquent philosophe des derniers temps ». Les stratégies d'auteur de René Descartes." Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales no. 49:349-367.

5. Giard, Lucie. 1997. "Le système éducatif des jésuites à l'époque de Descartes." In Actes du Colloque Universitaire de la Flèche "La Formation de Descartes", 199-225. La Flèche: Prytanée National Militaire.

6. Hallyn, Fernand. 1990. "Olympica: Les songes du jeune Descartes." In Le songe à la Renaissance. Colloque International de Cannes, 29 - 31 Mai 1987, edited by Charpentier, Franoise, 41-51. Saint-Etienne: Université de Saint-Etienne.

7. ———, ed. 1995. Les Olympiques de Descartes.

Études et textes réunis par Fernand Hallyn.

Table de matières: Avant-propos 5; I. Introduction 9; Fernand Hallyn: Les Olympiques: un manuscrit trouvé et perdu 11; II. Textes 29; Note 31; I. Le premier récit de Baillet 33; II. Le deuxième récit de Baillet 39; III. Cogitatione privatae -- Pensées pour moi-même 41; III. Études 45; Annie-Bitbol-Hespériès: Les Olympica et la vocation scientifique de Descartes 47; Jean-Pierre Cavaillé: L'itinéraire onirique de Descartes: de l'âge des songes aux temps du rêve 73; Fernand Hallyn: Une "feintise" 91; Julien Quakelbeen: Freud et les psychanalystes devant les rêves de Descartes 113; Geneviève Rodis-Lewis: Les aspects religieux des Olympica 127; Gérard Simon: Les Olympica dans le premier dix-septième siècle 141; Sigles 159; Bibliographie 161-172.

8. ———. 2006. Descartes: Dissimulation et ironie. Genève: Droz.

9. Marion, Jean-Luc. 1983. "Les trois songes ou l’éveil du philosophe." In La passion de la raison. Hommage à Ferdinand Alquié, edited by Nicolas, Gérard, 55-78. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

Repris avec le titre: La pensée rêve-t-elle ? Les trois songes ou l’éveil du philosophe dans: J. L. Marion, Questions cartésiennes I, Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1991, p. 7-36.

10. Maritain, Jacques. 1932. Le songe de Descartes. Suivi de quelques essais. Paris: Corrêa.

English translation by Mabelle L. Anderson: Three Dream of Descartes together with Some other Essays, New York: Philosophical Library, 1944. 13-223.

Repris dans J. Maritain, Œuvres Complètes, édition publiée par le Cercle d'études Jacques et Raïssa Maritain, Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires - Paris: Éditions Saint-Paul, 1982-2007, vol. V, 1982, p. 13-223.

11. Mehl, Édouard. 2001. Descartes en Allemagne, 1619-1620. Le contexte allemand de l'élaboration de la science cartésienne. Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg.

Préface de Michel Fichant.

12. Rodis-Lewis, Geneviève. 1997. "Descartes, l'homme et le développement de la pensée." In Chemins de Descartes. Colloque de Poitiers, edited by Suoual, Philippe and Veto, Miklos, 15-32. Paris: L'Harmattan.

13. ———. 1997. Le développement de la pensée de Descartes. Paris: Vrin.

14. ———. 1997. "Un élève du Collège jésuite de la Flèche: René Descartes." In Actes du Colloque Universitaire de la Flèche "La Formation de Descartes", 25-36. La Flèche: Prytanée National Militaire.

"De tous les élèves de ce collège, René Descartes est le plus célèbre: tentons de préciser comment ces années studieuses ont contribué à orienter sa pensée. Le collège de La Flèche fut ouvert par les Jésuites au début de 1604: Henri IV leur avait donné à cette intention le « Châteauneuf » qui venait de sa grand-mère et où lui-même avait fait plusieurs séjours.

(...)

Contre les erreurs de Baillet et d’Adam (au T. XII des Œuvres Complètes, non réimprimé) nous avons bien établi (en faisant vérifier dans les archives des jésuites que le P. Charlet est arrivé à La Flèche seulement en octobre 1606) son entrée à Pâques 1607: à cause de sa santé fragile « on avait attendu la fin de l’hiver et du carême », mais Charles Adam avait d’abord suivi Baillet qui croyait que René avait ainsi suivi de peu son aîné Pierre, entré dès l'ouverture du collège au début de 1604.

Puis dans les additions et corrections, voyant enfin que les dates de Baillet sont contestables, pourquoi Adam retient-il Pâques 1606 à 1614 après avoir mentionné entre parenthèses « (sinon peut-être de Pâques 1607 à 1615) » sans jamais réexaminer ce dernier point ?

Il pouvait savoir par Sommervogel que Charlet avait encore prêché à Paris en 1606, probablement pendant le carême, ce qui exclut qu’il ait pu être à La Flèche pour Pâques. Adam savait aussi (c'est dans une note sans commentaire) que Pierre Descartes, sorti en 1612, avait passé la même semaine à Poitiers en 1613, baccalauréat et licence en droit; il ne se demandait pas alors pourquoi René ne l’y aurait pas suivi; et pour ce dernier, il sait (ce qu’ignorait Baillet) qu’il a passé ces deux examens la même semaine en novembre 1616. Si, comme il le suppose, le jeune homme est resté deux ans à Poitiers, n’aurait-il pas acquis séparément ces deux grades en 1615 et 1616 ? Adam suggère que durant ces deux années, Descartes aurait pu commencer à étudier la médecine, alors qu’on n'a aucun signe d’intérêt pour cette discipline avant qu’à la fin de I629 où il commence à étudier l'anatomie, pour construire la science des vivants. Quand il rencontre Beeckman à l’automne de 1618, celui-ci vient d’être reu Docteur en médecine (à Caen): il n’en est jamais question entre eux... Tout concorde donc pour ne plus remettre en question ces dates.

Ainsi, les trois dernières années étant consacrées, selon l’usage, à la philosophie, les élèves ont eu pour professeur le Père Étienne Noël auquel Descartes envoie dès le 14 juin 1637 le Discours de la méthode, avec une lettre personnelle qui le remercie de son enseignement: il lui offre ce « fruit (...) duquel vous avez jeté les premières semences en mon esprit, comme je dois aussi à ceux de votre Ordre tout le peu de connaissance que j’ai des bonnes lettres » (I, 823). Quand ils anticipaient de trois ans sa scolarité, et parce que le nom de Noël, alors recteur de La Flèche, convenait bien au destinataire que l’auteur priait de faire lire ce livre par ceux « qui en avaient le plus de loisir », Adam et Tannery supposaient que Descartes aurait connu Noël comme simple « répétiteur » (en se trompant d’ailleurs sur celui qui aurait enseigné la philosophie en 1609-1612). Une seconde lettre en octobre le remercie de son « souvenir » et de son « affection ». Quand il reporte enfin à 1611-1614 ces trois dernières années à La Flèche, Adam (dans l’édition Adam et Milhaud de la Correspondance, avec traduction des lettres latines, revient à l’enseignant qui précédait Noël, le Père Fournet (repris également par F. Alquié). Mais cela fait double emploi avec l’exemplaire que Descartes lui avait fait remettre par Plemp (Plemp à Descartes, 15 septembre 1637; I, 399) sans avoir eu les mêmes relations personnelles qu’avec son propre professeur, Descartes l’avait connu lors des discussions mensuelles qui réunissaient les élèves des trois classes de philosophie (1)." (p. 27-29)

(1) Tout cela est bien établi par Sirven dès 1928 dans Les années d'apprentissage de Descartes et adopté par Gilson dans l’édition de 1930 de son Commentaire.

15. ———. 1999. "Descartes: sa vocation et son caractère." In La biografia intellettuale di René Descartes attraverso la Correspondance, edited by Armogathe, Jean-Robert; Belgioioso, Giulia; Vinti, Carlo, 663-669. Napoli: Vivarium.

16. Romano, Antonella. 1995. "Du Collège romain à La Flèche: problèmes et enjeux de la diffusion des mathématiques dans les collèges jésuites (1580-1620)." Mélanges de l'Ecole Français e de Rome. Italie et Méditerranée no. 107:575-627.

17. ———. 1997. "L'enseignement des mathématiques à La Flèche dans les années de la formation de Descartes." In Actes du Colloque Universitaire de la Flèche "La Formation de Descartes", 76-103. La Flèche: Prytanée National Militaire.

18. Saisset, Émile. 1862. Précurseurs et disciples de Descartes. Paris: Didier et C.ie.

Table des Matières: Avant-propos I-XV; I. Roger Bacon après des nouveaux documents 1; 11. — La réforme de Ramus 59; III. Descartes, sa vie et son œuvre 81; IV. Les origines du panthéisme de Spinoza 185; V. Malebranche, sa personne et son caractère, d'après deux biographies et une correspondance inédites 353; VI. Leibniz et la dernière philosophie allemande 401-466.

19. Serfati, Michel. 2011. "Le développement de la pensée mathématique du jeune Descartes. (L'éveil d'un mathématicien)." In De la méthode. Recherches en histoire et philosophie des mathématiques, edited by Serfati, Michel, 43-77. Paris: Press Universitaire Franche-Compté (PUFC).

Seconde édition, revue et augmentée (première édition 2002).

English Summary: "Descartes, the awakening of a mathematician.

This paper is devoted to the young Descartes and to the development of his mathematical thought from 1618 to 1629, since the meeting with Beeckman until his departure towards Holland. His period of dreaming, that has been crucial in the development of his personality, is also evoked. One can distinguish various steps in the progressive maturation of the mathematical thought of Descartes in these earlier Cartesian mathematics, previous to the Géométrie. The mathematical features of some Cartesian texts of the time are examined: "the" letter to Beeckman and the Cogitationes Privatae, then the Rules for the direction of the mind (Regulae), and finally the discovery of the construction of the solutions of equations of the third and fourth degree, which as been conclusive for the "awakening" of Descartes as a mathematician. A figure of thought, the so-called "medium term" which is central in young Descartes, as well as three of his mathematical embodiments, proportional means, Cartesian compasses, and "ruler-and-slide", are especially highlited. The following papers III, IV, V), dealing with three Cartesian discoveries and using modern mathematic symbolism, complete this paper." (p. 43)

20. Tanaka, Hitohiko. 1987. "Voyage de Descartes en Allemagne." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 92:89-101.

21. Trasnoy, Alain. 1997. "René Descartes, étudiant à Poitiers." In Chemins de Descartes. Colloque de Poitiers, edited by Suoual, Philippe and Veto, Miklos, 35-39. Paris: L'Harmattan.

"Lorsque je parle ici de Descartes « l’homme », je m’emploierai à approcher sa personne, et non à l’étudier dans le sens de son ouvrage intitulé « L’Homme ». C’est à partir de la biographie que j’ai publiée fin 1995 que je voudrais présenter, de faon beaucoup plus simple que les très belles méditations que vous venez d’écouter, quelques problèmes pour lesquels je présente des hypothèses, (en soulignant que ce ne sont que des hypothèses, ou assez exceptionnellement des rectifications d’erreurs trop souvent répétées par des gens éminents), et ceci malgré certaines corrections de la grande Vie de Descartes par Baillet: elle reste irremplaable par les documents qui ont depuis disparu et qu’il nous a transmis; mais il n’a pas assez distingué ce qui est sûr et ce qui est contestable ou même faux." (p. 15)

22. Van Wymeersch, Brigitte. 1996. "L'esthétique musicale de Descartes et le cartésianisme." Revue Philosophique de Louvain:271-293.

23. ———. 1999. Descartes et l'évolution de l'esthétique musicale. Sprimont: Mardaga.

1620-1628: Regulae ad directionem ingenii

Bibliographie des études sur les Regulae ad directionem ingenii et la recherche de la mathesis universalis

1629-1636: Le Monde, L'Homme et autres écrits biologiques, La Recherche de la Vérité

1. "Actes de la journée d'études: René Descartes, La Recherche de la Vérité." 1999. Nouvelles de la République des Lettres no. 1.

Table des matières: Claudio Buccoli, Michaël Devaux: Nota dei curatori 9; Jean-Luc Marion, Pierre-Franois Moreau: Avant-propos 11; Eric-Jan Bos: La première publication de la Recherche de la vérité en 1684: Onderzoek der waarheit door't naturelijk licht 13; André Charrak: Expérience et logique dans la Recherche de la vérité 27; Michaël Devaux: L'invention du manuscrit hanovrien de la Recherche de la vérité 41; Ettore Lojacono: La recherche de la vérité par la lumière naturelle: enjeux philosophiques de la datation 55; Edouard Mehl: La question du premier principe dans la Recherche de la vérité 77; Geneviève Rodis-Lewis: Discussion des arguments pour dater la Recherche de la vérité 99-107.

2. Aucante, Vincent. 2006. La philosophie médicale de Descartes. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Voir le Chapitre II. Les sources de la connaissance médicale de Descartes, p. 51-78.

3. Bitbol-Hespériès, Anne. 1990. Le Principe de vie chez Descartes. Paris: Vrin.

4. ———. 1998. "Descartes, Harvey et la tradition médicale." In Descartes et son œuvre aujourd’hui, edited by Bitbol-Hespériès, Anne, 29-46. Sprimont: Mardaga.

5. Cavaillé, Jean-Pierre. 1991. Descartes. La fable du monde. Paris: Vrin.

6. Clavelin, Maurice. 2012. "Galilée, Descartes, et la nouvelle vision du monde." Galilaeana no. 9:3-28.

7. Kolesnik-Antoine, Delphine. 2010. La physique de l’homme chez Regius suivi de En quoi le Traité de l’Homme de Descartes peut-il être lu comme un texte matérialiste ? Laval: Presses de l'université de Laval.

8. Lojacono, Ettore. 1998. "Le Ciel d'Aristote et le Monde de Descartes (sur le monologue d'un péripatéticien éclairé face au "Monde" cartésien)." Nouvelles de la République des Lettres no. 1:73-93.

9. ———. 1999. "La Recherche de la Vérité par la lumière naturelle: enjeux philosophiques de la datation." Nouvelles de la République des Lettres no. 1:55-76.

10. Mehl, Édouard. 1996. "Le méchant livre de 1630." In Libertinage et philosophie au XVIIe siècle (I), 53-67. Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne.

11. ———. 2015. "Les années de formation." In Lectures de Descartes, edited by Buzon, Frédéric de, Cassan, Elodie and Kambouchner, Denis, 41-65. Paris: Vrin.

12. Tanaka, Hitohiko. 1985. "La "Recherche de la Vérité de Descartes". Sa date et sa genèse." Revue d'études Français es no. 19:73-95.

1637: Discours de la méthode ; le cogito

1. "Figures du Cogito." 2014. Cahiers de philosophie de l’Université de Caen.

Édité par Xavier Kieft.

2. Ariew, Roger. 1997. "Critiques scolastiques de Descartes: le cogito." Laval Théologique et Philosophique no. 53:587-603.

Version anglaise dans: R. Ariew, Descartes and the Last Scholastics, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999, p. 188-205.

3. Blanchet, Léon. 1920. Les antécédents historiques du "Je pense, donc je suis" de Descartes. Paris: Alcan.

4. ———. 1933. "La préparation du Cogito cartésien dans la philosophie de l'antiquité." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 40:187-230.

5. Bourgeois-Gironde, Sacha. 2001. Reconstruction analytique du cogito. Paris: Vrin.

6. Cassan, Elodie, ed. 2014. Bacon et Descartes. Genèses de la modernité philosophique. Lyon: ENS éditions.

7. Cavaillé, Jean-Pierre. 1990. "Une histoire, un discours, des méditations: récit, éloquence et métaphysique dans le Discours de la Méthode." In Descartes: Il Metodo e i Saggi, edited by Belgioioso, Giulia, Cimino, Guido, Costabel, Pierre and Papuli, Giovanni, 185-200. Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana.

8. Denissoff, Élie. 1956. "Les étapes de la rédaction du Discours de la Méthode." Revue philosophique de Louvain no. 54:254-282.

Repris dans É. Denissoff, Descartes, premier théoricien de la physique mathématique.

9. ———. 1959. "L'énigme de la science cartésienne: la physique de Descartes est-elle positive ou déductive ? (Essai d'interprétation de deux extraits du Discours de la Méthode)." Revue philosophique de Louvain no. 61:31-75.

Repris dans É. Denissoff, Descartes, premier théoricien de la physique mathématique.

10. ———. 1968. "La nature du savoir scientifique selon Descartes et l' « Histoire de mon esprit », autobiographie intellectuelle." Revue philosophique de Louvain no. 66:5-35.

Repris dans É. Denissoff, Descartes, premier théoricien de la physique mathématique.

11. ———. 1970. Descartes, premier théoricien de la physique mathématique. Trois essais sur le « Discours de la méthode ». Paris: Béatrice-Nauwelaerts.

12. Derrida, Jacques. 1963. "Cogito et histoire de la folie." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 68:460-494.

Repris dans J. Derrida, L'écriture et la différence, Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1967, pp. 51-97.

13. Gadoffre, Gilbert. 1941. "Introduction au Discours de la méthode." In Discours de la méthode. Manchester: Éditions de l'Université de Manchester.

Rééditions 1942, 1945, 1949, 1961, 1969, 1974.

Table des matières: Introduction V-XLV; Texte du Discours 3; Panorama chronologique 73; Remarques 75; Glossaire 87-94.

14. ———. 1942. "Corneille et Descartes." In Traditions de notre culture, 76-91. Paris: Cerf.

15. ———. 1943. "Sur la chronologie du Discours de la Méthode." Revue d'histoire de la philosophie et d'histoire générale de la civilisation:45-70.

Repris et révisé dans La Chronologie des six parties du Discours de la Méthode.

16. ———. 1948. "Réflexions sur la genèse du Discours de la Méthode." Revue de synthèse no. 65:11-27.

17. ———. 1948. "Le Discours de la Méthode et l’histoire littéraire." French Studies no. 2:301-314.

18. ———. 1969. "Le Discours de la Méthode et la Querelle des Anciens." In Modern Miscellany presented to Eugène Vinaver, 79-84. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

19. ———. 1987. "La chronologie des six parties." In Le Discours et sa méthode: colloque pour le 350e anniversaire du Discours de la méthode, edited by Grimaldi, Nicolas and Marion, Jean-Luc. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

20. Garber, Daniel. 1988. "Descartes, les aristotéliciens et la révolution qui n'eut pas lieu en 1637 " In Problématique et réception du Discours de la méthode et des Essais, edited by Méchoulan, Henri, 199-212. Paris: Vrin.

21. ———. 2011. "Descartes contre les matérialistes, ou comment la confrontation de Descartes avec le matérialisme lui a fait rejeter la métaphysique." In Descartes et ses critiques, edited by Charles, Sébastien and Malinowski-Charles, Syliane, 95-114. quebec: Presses de l’Université Laval.

22. Gilson, Étienne. 1930. Études sur le rôle de la pensée médiévale dans la formation du système cartésien. Paris: Vrin.

Deuxième partie des Études de Philosophie Médiévale, revue et considérablement augmentée.

23. Grimaldi, Nicolas, and Marion, Jean-Luc, eds. 1987. Le Discours et sa méthode: colloque pour le 350e anniversaire du Discours de la méthode. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

Sommaire: Nicolas Grimaldi: Avant-propos 7; Henri Gouhier: Ouverture 15;

I - L’UNITÉ ET LES MÉTHODES DU DISCOURS.

Gilbert Gadoffre: La chronologie des six parties 19; Edwin M. Curley: Cohérence ou incohèrence du Discours? 41; Daniel Garber: Descartes et la Méthode en 1637 65; Wolfgang Röd: L'explication rationnelle entre méthode et métaphysique 89; Charles Larmore: L'explication scientifique 109;

II - LA SCIENCE ET LES ESSAIS.

Allister C. Crombie: La Dioptrique et Kepler 31; Jean-Robert Armogathe: L'arc-en-ciel dans les Météores 145; André Pessel: Mersenne, la pesanteur et Descartes 163; Geneviève Rodis-Lewis: Descartes et les mathématiques au collège. Sur une lecture possible de J.-P. Camus. Suivi de Clavius, extraits des Prolégomènes aux disciplines mathématiques (traduits par Michelle Beyssade) 187; Pierre Costabel: Les Essais de la Méthode et la réforme mathématique 213;

III - LE « JE PENSE » ET LA MORALE.

Jean-Claude Pariente: Problèmes logiques du cogito 229; Robert Spaemann: Le sum dans le cogito sum 271; Michel Henry: Descartes et la question de la technique 285; Nicolas Grimaldi: La morale provisoire et la découverte métaphysique de l'homme chez Descartes 303;

IV - L’ÉVIDENCE ET LA MÉTAPHYSIQUE

Willis Doney: Les preuves de l'existence de Dieu dans la quatrième partie du Discours 323; Jean-Marie Beyssade: Certitude et fondement. L'évidence de la raison et la véracité divine dans la métaphysique du Discours de la Méthode 341; Jean-Luc Marion: La situation métaphysique du Discours de la Méthode 365; Harry Frankfurt: Les désordres du rationalisme 395;

Liste des souscripteurs 413.

24. Guenancia, Pierre. 2000. Lire Descartes. Paris: Galimard.

25. Joseph, Beaude. 1988. "Baillet historien du Discours de la méthode." In Problématique et réception du Discours de la méthode et des Essais, edited by Méchoulan, Henri, 25-29. Paris: Vrin.

26. Lalande, André. 1911. "Sur quelques textes de Bacon et de Descartes." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 19:296-311.

27. Lojacono, Ettore. 1996. "Epistémologie, Méthode et procédés méthodiques dans la pensée de R. Descartes." Nouvelles de la République des Lettres no. 1:39-105.

28. Marion, Jean-Luc. 1980. "L'instauration de la rupture: Gilson à la lecture de Descartes " In Étienne Gilson et nous: la philosophie et son histoire, edited by Couratier, Monique, 13-34. Paris: Vrin.

29. Méchoulan, Henri, ed. 1988. Problématique et réception du Discours de la méthode et des Essais. Paris: Vrin.

Actes du colloque organisé par l’équipe de recherche 75 du CNRS.

Tbale des matières: Henry Méchoulan 7; Jean-Luc Marion: Ouverture 9;

I - L'ŒUVRE ET SON HISTOIRE

Joseph Beaude: Ego scriptor: rhétorique et philosophie dans le Discours de la méthode 31; Masashi Miwa: Rhétorique et dialectique dans le Discours de la méthode 47;

II - LES TROIS ESSAIS SCIENTIFIQUES: LA RÉCEPTION DES ESSAIS ET SA DIMENSION ÉPISTÉMOLOGIQUE

Pierre Costabel: La réception de la Géométrie et les disciples d'Utrecht 59; Howard J. Wickes et Allistair C. Crombie: A Propos de la Dioptrique: L’expérience dans la philosophie naturelle de Descartes 65; Yves-Charles Zarka: La matière et la représentation: Hobbes lecteur de la Dioptrique de Descartes 81; Geneviève Rodis-Lewis: L’Accueil fait aux Météores 99;

III - GÉOGRAPHIE DE LA RÉCEPTION

Richard A. Watson: La réception du Discours de la méthode dans les Provinces-Unies et la réception de Descartes par les Provinces-Unies 111; Jean-Pranois Battail: La réception du Discours et des Essais en Scandinavie 121; Leslie Armour: L'Homme cartésien:

Jacques Odelin et le Discours de la méthode 141; Gianni Micheli: Le Discours de la méthode et la science cartésienne chez les scientifiques italiens du XVIIe siècle 153; Luigi Pepe: La réception de la Géometrie en Italie (1637-I748) 171; Mimoune Rabia: Le Discours de la méthode dans le monde arabe 179;

IV - PHILOSOPHIE ET MÉTHODE DE LA PHILOSOPHIE

Michelle Beyssade: La problématique du cercle et la métaphysique du Discours 189; Daniel Garber: Descartes, les aristotéliciens et la révolution qui n'eut pas lieu en 1637 199; Pierre Guenancia: La signification de la technique dans le Discours de la méthode 213;

Michio Kobayashi: La position de la philosophie naturelle du Discours dans les ceuvres de Descartes 225;

V - LA CONSTITUTION DE L'HÉRITAGE

Aloyse-Raymond NDiaye: La réception du Discours et des Essais chez Arnauld 239; Pierre-Franois Moreau: La réception du Discours et des Essais dans le cercle spinozien 247; José Luis Fuertes: L'Influence de la méthodologie cartésienne chez Sébastien Izquierdo (1601-1681) Pour la construction d'une philosophie baroque 253; Frédéric de Buzon: La réception du Discours de la méthode dans les écrits théoriques de Jean-Philippe Rameau 277; Emilia Giancotti: Philosophie et méthode de la philosophie dans les polémiques sur Descartes entre le XVIIe et le XVIIIe siècle 283;

VI - LES CHANGEMENTS D'ÉCLAIRAGE

Piene Magnard: "Descartes inutile et incértain" 303; Bruno Pinchard: De la physique des formes à la métaphysique de l'informe Gianbattista Vico (1668-1744) lecteur de Descartes et du Discours de la méthode 319; Mariafranca Spallanzani: "On peut considérer Descartes comme Géomètre ou comme Philosophe" : Le Discours de 1a méthode et les Essais dans l'Encyclopédie 335-344.

30. Vannier, Marie-Anne. 1997. "Les anticipations du cogito chez S. Augustin." Revista Agustiniana no. 115-116:665-679.

"Descartes devait connaître les textes où Augustin esquisse les linéaments du Cogito; de manière paradoxale, il a mieux saisi le dynamisme de la pensée d'Augustin que les augustiniens du XVIIe siècle. Descartes a radicalement montré que la pensée est la certitude première et qu'elle implique l'existence. Il a distingué nettement substance pensante et substance étendue et surtout, il a fait du Cogito la clef de voûte, le principe de son système, alors que celui-ci contribuait surtout chez Augustin à l'avènement du sujet en dialogue avec son créateur. Cependant, Augustin reste à l'origine de l'idée de constitution du sujet."

1637-1639: Essais de cette méthode et autres écrits scientifiques

1. Allard, Jean-Louis. 1963. Le Mathématisme de Descartes. Ottawa: Éditions de l'Université d'Ottawa.

Table des matières: Avant-propos 7; Introduction. Chapitre I: L'évolution intellectuelle de Descartes : des mathématiques au mathématisme 11; Première partie. Le mathèmatisme méthodologique: La méthode universelle de caractère mathématique. Chapitre II: Conception mathématique de la connaissance scientifique 35; Chapitre III: La méthode de la science. L'essence de la méthode : l'ordre 65; Deuxième partie: La science universelle de type mathématique: La preuve et l'épreuve de la méthode de Descartes. Chapitre IV: La métaphysique, fondement de la science 91; Chapitre V: Les mathématiques, domaine privilégié de la méthode 141; Chapitre VI: La physique géométrique, épreuve décisive de la méthode cartésienne 163; Conclusion. Chapitre VII: La source première de l'échec de la philosophie de Descartes 201-222.

"Nous nous proposons tout simplement d’offrir au lecteur une synthèse des éléments essentiels du Mathématisme de Descartes, c’est-à-dire de la tentative cartésienne de construire une science universelle de caractère mathématique à partir d’une méthode qui se présente comme une généralisation de la méthode mathématique (2).

(...)

Afin de mieux situer le mathématisme cartésien, notre étude sera précédée d’une brève esquisse de la vie intellectuelle de Descartes : 1° son évolution intellectuelle à partir du premier « enchantement de son esprit » lorsqu’il apprenait les mathématiques au Collège de La Flèche jusqu’à l’envoûtement qui s’exprime dans le songe où Descartes prend conscience de sa vocation, à savoir la réalisation d’une science universelle de caractère mathématique pour le bien de l’humanité; 2° les grandes étapes parcourues par Descartes dans la réalisation de ce projet.

L’étude historique sera suivie d’une critique de structure et d’un jugement de valeur qui signaleront les difficultés congénitales du mathématisme cartésien.

Vu l’ampleur d’une telle étude, nous avons dû nous limiter à l’essentiel et passer sous silence plusieurs problèmes importants. Nous avons conscience aussi du caractère quelque peu schématique inhérent à toute synthèse. Nous savons de plus que la pensée de Descartes contient des richesses et des virtualités qui dépassent les cadres du système cartésien comme tel; il n’était pas dans notre propos d’en faire l’inventaire. Seul le mathématisme cartésien, la philosophie de Descartes considérée comme système, a fait l’objet de notre étude et de notre critique.

En effet, considérée de ce point de vue, la philosophie cartésienne « universellement baignée d’une clarté mathématique (6) » est le premier exemple — et peut-être le plus évident — dans l’histoire de la pensée moderne, de l’insuffisance d’une philosophie qui tente arbitrairement de réduire la pensée humaine à l’une ou l’autre de ses dimensions." (pp. 7-8)

(2) Dans le cinquième chapitre de son ouvrage The Unity of Philosophical Experience (New-York, Scribner, 1952, p. 125-151), M. Gilson pose d’une faon précise, quoique succincte, le problème du mathématisme de Descartes. C’est dans le même esprit que celui de cet éminent historien de la philosophie, que nous voulons poursuivre le présent travail.

(6) J. Maritain, Le Songe de Descartes, Paris, Editions Corrêa, 1982, p. 75.

2. Costabel, Pierre. 1982. Démarches originales de Descartes savant. Paris: Vrin.

3. Dubouclez, Olivier. 2013. Descartes et la voie de l'analyse. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

4. Gibson, Boyce. 1896. "La 'Géometrie' de Descartes au point de vue de sa. méthode." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 4:386-398.

5. Giusti, Enrico. 1998. "La révolution cartésienne en géométrie." In Descartes et son œuvre aujourd’hui, edited by Bitbol-Hespériès, Anne, 47-62. Sprimont: Mardaga.

6. Herreman, Alain. 2012. "La fonction inaugurale de La Géométrie de Descartes." Revue d'Histoire des Mathématiques no. 18:67-156.

7. Jullien, Vincent, and Charrak, André. 2002. Ce que dit Descartes touchant la chute des graves: de 1618 à 1646, étude d'un indicateur de la philosophie naturelle cartésienne Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.

8. Kobayaschi, Michio. 1993. La philosophie naturelle de Descartes. Paris: Vrin.

9. Martinet, Simone. 1982. "Rôle du problème de la lumière dans la construction de la science cartésienne." XVIIe siècle no. 136:285-309.

Repris dans: Geneviève Rodis-Lewis (éd.), La Science de Descartes (études en Français ), New York: Garland, 1987, pp. 79-104.

10. Mehl, Édouard. 2011. "Descartes a-t-il critiqué les lois de Kepler ?" In Kepler: La physique céleste: Autour de l' Astronomia Nova (1609), edited by Mehl, Édouard and Roudet, Nicolas, 64-92. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

11. ———. 2012. "Théorie physique et optique des comètes de Kepler à Descartes." In Novas y cometas entre 1572 y 1618. Revolución cosmológica y renovación política y religiosa, edited by Granada, Miguel Á., 255-274. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona.

12. ———. 2013. "Comètes et taches solaires en Allemagne (1610-1630): l’aile hétérodoxe (Faulhaber, Mayr, Mögling) et le point de départ de la ‘fable du monde’ cartésienne." In Celestial Novelties on the Eve of the Scientific Revolution (1540-1630) edited by Tessicini, Dario and Boner, Patrick J., 231-255. Firenze: Olschki.

13. Meinel, Christophe. 1988. "Les Météores de Froidmont et le Météores de Descartes." In Libert Froidmont et les résistances aux révolutions scientifiques, edited by Bernés, Anne-Catherine. Haccourt: Association des Vieilles Familles de Haccourt.

14. Milhaud, Gaston. 1921. Descartes savant. Paris: Alcan.

Reprint: New York: Garland, 1987.

15. Mouy, Paul. 1934. Le développement de la physique cartésienne, 1646-1712. Paris: Vrin.

Reprint: 1983.

16. Rodis-Lewis, Geneviève, ed. 1987. La science chez Descartes: Études en Français . New York: Garland.

Table des matières: Geneviève Rodis-Lewis: Introduction p. 1-6;

ACOUSTIQUE

Frederic de Buzon, “Descartes, Beeckman et l’acoustique”, Archives de philosophie, 44, 1981, p. 1-8

MATHÉMATIQUES

L. Brunschvicg, “La mathématique universelle de Descartes et la Physique”, Les étapes de la philosophie mathématique, Paris, Alcan, 1912, p. 105-123

Gino Loria, “Descartes géomètre", Revue de métaphysique et de morale, “Descartes”, 1937, p. 199-220

J. Vuillemin, “La quatrième règle du ‘discours’ comme reflexion sur la méthode”. Mathématiques et métaphysiques chez Descartes, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1960, p. 135-141

Pierre Costabel, “Descartes et la mathématique de l’infini”, Historia Scientiarum, Tokyo, janvier 1986, p. 37-49

OPTIQUE

Simone Martinet, “Rôle du problème de la lumière dans la construction de la science cartésienne”, La société d’étude du dix-septième siècle: Matière et lumière au dix-septième siècle, juillet-septembre 1982, No. 136, p. 285—309

PHYSIQUE GÉNÉRALE MÉCANIQUE

Patti Tannery, “Descartes physicien”, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 1896, p. 478—488

A. Koyré, “Galilée et la loi d’inertie”, Études galiléennes III, Paris, Hermann, 1939, p. 317-331

Dominique Dubarle, “Sur la notion cartésienne de quantité de mouvement”, Mélanges A. Koyré, Paris, Hermann, 1964, t. II, p. 118—128

COSMOLOGIE ET GÉOLOGIE

R. Dugas, “La pensée mécanique de Descartes”, La mécanique au dix-septième siècle, Paris, Neuchâtel, 1954, p. 179-196

F. de Dainvllle, “Des nuées cartésiennes", La géographie des humanistes, Paris, Beauchesne, 1940, p. 231-255

BIOLOGIE

Pierre Mesnard, “L’esprit de la physique cartésienne”, Archives de philosophie, 1937, p. 181-220

J. Roger, “Ver les idées claires”, Les science de la vie dans la pensée Français e du dix-huitième siècle, de Descartes à l’Encyclopédie, Paris, A. Colin, 1971, p. 140-160

A. Souques, “Descartes et l’anatomo-physiologie du système nerveux”. Revue de neurologie, 1938, p. 221-245

MÉDECINE

H. Dreyfus-Le Foyer, “Le conceptions médicales de Descartes”, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, “Descartes”, 1937, p. 237—286

MÉTHODOLOGIE, DÉDUCTION, EXPÉRIENCES, HYPOTHÈSES

L. Liard, “Du rôle de l’expérience dans la physique cartésienne”, Descartes, Paris, Germer-Baillière, 1882, p. 111-138

M. Martinet, “Science et hypothèse chez Descartes”, Archives internationales d’histoire des sciences, 1974, p. 319—339

GÉNÉRAL

F. Le Lionnais, “Descartes et Einstein”, Revue d’histoire des sciences, 1952, p. 139—150.

17. Romano, Antonella. 1999. La contre-réforme mathématique. Constitution et diffusion d'une culture mathématique jésuite à la Renaissance (1540-1640). Roma: École Français e de Rome.

Voir: "Le cas Descartes", p. 482-491.

18. Serfati, Michel. 1998. "« Pour Descartes » : Mathématiques et physique cartésiennes. Introduction." Revue d'histoire des sciences no. 51:171-182.

19. ———. 1998. "Descartes et la constitution de l'écriture symbolique mathématique." Revue d'histoire des sciences no. 51:237-290.

20. ———. 2008. "Constructivismes et obscurités dans la Géométrie de Descartes. Quelques remarques philosophiques." In Mathématiciens Français du XVIIe siècle: Pascal, Descartes, Fermat, edited by Serfati, Michel; Descotes, Dominique, 11-44. Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal.

21. Serfati, Michel, and Descotes, Dominique, eds. 2008. Mathématiciens Français du dix-septième siècle. Descartes, Fermat, Pascal. Clermont-Ferrand: Presses universitaires Blaise Pascal.

Table des matières: Dominiques Descotes & Michel Serfati: Introduction 7; Michel Serfati: Constructivismes et obscurités dans la Géométrie de Descartes. Quelques remarques philosophiques 11; Ivo Schneider: Trends in German mathematics at the time of Descartes’ stay in southern Germany 45; Mateus Araujo Silva: L 'imagination dans la Géométrie de Descartes: Retour sur une question ouverte 69; Bruno Cagneux: La règle des signes de Descartes: le long cheminement d’une imprécision 129; Maryvonne Spiessek: Pierre Fermat. Profil et rayonnement d'un mathématicien singulier 167; Claude Merker: La pensée des ordres dans les traités sur la roulette de Pascal 199; Dominique Descotes: L'instruction du triangle arithmétique de Pascal 239-280.

22. Spallanzani, Mariafranca. 2012. ""Trouver quelques vérités dans les sciences". Les Essais de Descartes entre méthode et découverte scientifique " Cahiers Philosophiques de Strasbourg no. 32:47-76.

23. Vuillemin, Jules. 1960. Mathématiques et métaphysique chez Descartes. Paris: Presses Universitares de France.

Deuxième édition 1987.

1640-1643: Meditationes de prima philosophia

1. Ariew, Roger. 1999. "Descartes, Basson et la scolastique renaissante." In Descartes et la Renaissance, edited by Faye, Emmanuel, 295-309. Genève: Slatkine.

2. Armogathe, Jean-Robert. 1977. Theologia Cartesiana. L’explication physique de l’Eucharistie chez Descartes et dom Desgabets. La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff.

3. ———. 1983. "Les sources scolastiques du temps cartésien." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 146:326-336.

4. Armogathe, Jean Robert. 1999. "La Correspondance de Descartes comme laboratoire intellectuel." In La biografia intellettuale di René Descartes attraverso la Correspondance, edited by Armogathe, Jean-Robert; Belgioioso, Giulia; Vinti, Carlo, 5-22. Napoli: Vivarium.

5. Aubenque, Pierre. 2002. "La transformation cartésienne du concept aristotélicien de substance." In Le style de la pensée. Recueil de textes en hommage à Jacques Brunschwig, edited by Canto-Sperber, Monique and Pellegrin, Pierre, 490-501. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Repris dans: P. Aubenque, Problèmes aristotéliciens. I. Philosophie théorique, Paris: Vrin 2009, p. 341-350.

6. Bardout, Jean-Christophe. 1999. "Représentation et existence, éléments d'un débat entre Descartes et les Scolastiques." In Descartes et la Renaissance, edited by Emmanuel, Faye, 249-270. Paris: Champion.

Repris dans: Jean-Luc Marion (ed.), Descartes, Paris: Bayard, 2007, p. 293-324.

7. Beyssade, Jean-Marie. 2009. "En quête d’une ontologie cartésienne: sur trois formules à corriger." Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie no. 141:1-28.

8. Beyssade, Jean-Marie, and Marion, Jean-Luc, eds. 1994. Descartes. Objecter et répondre. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Actes du colloque "Objecter et répondre" organisé par le Centre d'études cartésiennes à la Sorbonne et à l'École normale supérieure du 3 au 6 octobre 1992, à l'occasion du 350° anniversaire de la seconde édition des Méditations.

9. Beyssade, Michelle. 2000. "Les alinéas dans la traduction des Mèditations de Descartes." In Traduire le philosophes, edited by Moutaux, Jacques and Olivier, Bloch, 21-33. Paris Cedex: Publications de la Sorbonne.

10. Biard, Joël, and Rashed, Roshdi, eds. 1997. Descartes et le Moyen Age. Paris: Vrin.

Table des matières: Roshdi Rashed: Préface 7;

Géométrie, algèbre.

Roshdi Rashed: La Géométrie de Descartes et la distinction entre courbes géométriques et courbes mécaniques 11; Christian Houzel: Descartes et les courbes transcendantes 27; Chikara Sasaki: Descartes as a Reformer of the Mathematical Disciplines 37; Giovanna Cifoletti: Descartes et la tradition algébrique (XVe-XVIe siècles) 47; Eberhard Knobloch: Sur le développement de la géométrie pratique avant Descartes 57;

Nature, lois, causalité.

Michio Kobayashi: Création et contingence selon Descartes et Duns Scot 75; Gilles Olivo: L’efficience en cause: Suarez, Descartes et la question de la causalité 91; Gérard Simon: La théorie cartésienne de la vision, réponse à Kepler et rupture avec la problématique médiévale 107; Graziella Federici Vescovini: Descartes et les sciences curieuses: le raisonnement ex suppositione et le Moyen Âge 119;

Intuition, perception.

Dominik Perler: Descartes, critique de la théorie médiévale des species 141; Lilli Alanen et Mikko Yrjönsuuri: Intuition, jugement et évidence chez Ockham et Descartes 155; Jean-Robert Armogathe: Les sens: inventaires médiévaux et théorie cartésienne 175;

Théorie de la connaissance.

Jean Jolivet: L’épistémologie de Descartes dans les Regulae et celle d’Avicenne 187; Laurence Renault: Descartes et les théories médiévales de l’abstraction. Quelques points de repères 199; Kim Sang Ong-Van_Cung: Substance et distinctions chez Descartes, Suarez et leurs prédécesseurs médiévaux 215; André Robinet: Dialectiques et regulae: lieux et concepts 231;

Morale et liberté.

Christian Trottmann: Le libre arbitre selon Bernard de Clairvaux et Descartes 243; Vincent Carraud: Morale par provision et probabilité 259;

Dieu et l'ego.

Ahmad Hasnawi: La conscience de soi chez Avicenne et Descartes 283; Alain Galonnier: Descartes et Saint Anselme: du Proslogion à la Meditatio tertia 293;

Substance, attributs, modes.

Pierre Magnard: Ipséité ou subjectivité 309; Dennis Des Chene: L’immatérialité de l’âme: Suarez et Descartes 319; Jean-Luc Solère: Descartes et les discussions médiévales sur le temps 329; Joël Biard: La conception cartésienne de l’étendue et les débats

médiévaux sur la quantité 349; Index nominum 362; Index rerum 368; Auteurs 376.

11. Blanchard, Jean-Vincent. 2005. L'optique du discours au XVIIe siècle. De la rhétorique des jésuites au style de la raison moderne (Descartes, Pascal). Ottawa: Les Presses de l'Université Laval.

Table des matières: Table des illustrations XI; Remerciements XIII; Introduction 1; Première partie. Probabilisme, méthode et rhétorique de l'emblème dans la culture jésuite de la Contre-Réforme 13; Deuxième partie: L'invention de l'invisible 99; Troisième partie: Dispositions en perspective 155; Quatrième partie: Le corps sociale de Descartes 219; Conclusion 265; Bibliographie 275; Index nominum 305-309.

12. Bouchilloux, Hélène. 2003. La question de la liberté chez Descartes. Libre arbitre, liberté et indifférence. Paris: Honoré Champion.

13. ———. 2011. L'ordre de la pensée. Lecture des "Méditations métaphysiques" de Descartes. Paris: Hermann.

14. Boulad-Ayoub, Josiane. 1996. "Les récurrences du platonisme chez Descartes." Philosophiques no. 23:405-415.

15. Cahné, Pierre-Alain. 1980. Un autre Descartes: Le philosophe et son langage. Paris: Vrin.

16. Carraud, Vincent. 1997. "Descartes appartient-il à l'histoire de la métaphysique ?" In Lire Descartes aujourd'hui, edited by Depré, Olivier and Lories, Danielle, 153-171. Louvain: Peeters.

17. ———. 2000. "‘La matière assume successivement toutes les formes’. Note sur le concept d’ordre et sur une proposition thomiste de la cosmogonie cartésienne." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale:57-79.

18. Cassan, Elodie. 2007. "La raison chez Descartes, puissance de bien juger." Le Philosophoire no. 28:133-145.

19. ———. 2009. "Aborder la philosophie cartésienne en termes génétiques: Pourquoi? Comment?" Klésis. Revue Philosophique no. 11:93-107.

20. Cavaillé, Jean-Pierre. 2001. "Descartes et les sceptiques modernes: une culture de la tromperie." In Le scepticisme au XVIe et au XVIe siècle. Le retour des philosophies antiques à l'âge classique. Tome II, edited by Moreau, Pierre-Franois, 334-347. Paris: Albin-Michel.

21. ———. 2003. "Scepticisme, tromperie et mensonge chez La Mothe Le Vayer et Descartes." In The Return of Scepticism. From Hobbes and Descartes to Bayle, edited by Paganini, Gianni, 115-131. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

22. Courtine, Jean-Franois. 1996. "Á propos de Suárez et Descartes." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 50:109-131.

23. ———. 1997. "La doctrine cartésienne de l'idée et ses sources scolastiques." In Lire Descartes aujourd'hui, edited by Depré, Olivier and Lories, Danielle, 1-20. Louvain: Peeters.

Repris dans: J.F. Courtine, Les catégories de l'être. Etudes de philosophie ancienne et médiévale, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, p. 241-265.

24. Crapulli, Giovanni. 1976. "La rédaction et les projets d'édition des Meditationes de Prima Philosophia de Descartes." Les Études Philosophiques:423-441.

25. Dalbiez, Roland. 1929. "Les sources scolastiques de la théorie cartésienne de l’être objectif (à propos du Descartes de M. Gilson)." Revue d’Histoire de la Philosophie no. 3:464-472.

26. Devillairs, Laurence. 2001. "La première Méditation de Descartes et le de beata vita d'Augustin." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale:119-132.

27. ———. 2004. "“Ce que ces mots de saint Augustin expriment fort bien”. L’augustinisme de la thèse cartésienne de la création." In Il Seicento e Descartes. Dibattiti cartesiani, edited by Del Prete, Antonella, 25-42. Firenze: Le Monnier.

28. ———. 2004. "L’augustinisme des preuves cartésiennes de l’existence de Dieu." Archives de Philosophie no. 67:23-51.

29. ———. 2004. Descartes et la connaissance de Dieu. Paris: Vrin.

30. Dutens, Louis. 1766. Recherches sur l'origine des découvertes attribuées aux modernes. Paris: Chez la Veuve Duchesne.

Deux volumes.

Sous-titre: Où l'on démontre que nos plus célèbres philosophes ont puisé la plupart de leurs connaissances dans les ouvrages des anciens et que plusieurs vérités importantes sur la religion ont été connues des sages du paganisme.

31. Faye, Emmanuel. 1998. Philosophie et Perfection de L'homme. De la Renaissance ā Descartes. Paris: Vrin.

Tables des matières: Avant-propos 7; Introduction 11; Première partie: La "science de l'homme" de Raymond Sibiuda 45; Deuxième partie: L'idée de l'homme dans la philosophie de Charles de Bovelle 75; Troisième partie: Montaigne, l'humaniste et les théologiens 163; Quatrième partie: La "vraie science de l'homme" selon Pierre Charron 241; Cinquième partie: Descartes et la perfection de l'homme 289; Conclusion 351; Épilogue 365; Bibliographie 369; Index des noms 389-394.

32. ———, ed. 1999. Descartes et la Renaissance. Paris: Honoré Champion.

Actes du Colloque international de Tours des 22-24 mars 1996.

Table des matières: Avant-Propos 7;

I. PRÉSENTATION DE LA QUESTION

1. Emmanuel Faye: Descartes et la Renaissance: philosophie de l’homme, méthode, métaphysique 11;

Π. DESCARTES ET LA RAMÉE

2. Nelly Robinet-Bruyere: Les Règles III et IV des Regulæ face à la Dialectique de La Ramée 57; 3. André Robinet: L’axe La Ramée-Descartes: position dans la Règle IV de la «mathesis universalis» 67;

III. MONTAIGNE, CHARRON, DESCARTES DU DOUTE HUMAIN À LA TOUTE-PUISSANCE DIVINE

4. Geneviève Rodis-Lewis: Montaigne, Charron, Descartes et le doute 79; 5. Thierry Gontier: D’un paradoxe à l’autre: l’intelligence des bêtes chez Montaigne et les animaux-machines chez Descartes 87; 6. Kim Sang Ong-Van-Cung: L’instant chez Montaigne et Descartes: fragilité de l’être entre les actes ? 103; 7. Vincent Carraud: L’imaginer inimaginable: le Dieu de Montaigne 117; 8. Pierre Magnard: Une logique de la puissance 145;

IV. CONTINUITÉS OU RUPTURES DE LA RENAISSANCE À DESCARTES

9. Jean-Claude Margolin: L'homme de la Renaissance et l’homme de Descartes 163; 10. Cesare Vasoli: Le rapport entre les Olympica et la culture de la Renaissance 187; 11. Bruno Pinchard: Désenchantement et fondation. Fonctionnement de l’esprit selon Descartes 209; 12. Maurice De Gandillac: Nicolas de Cues précurseur de la Méthode ? 231;

V. SIMILITUDE ET REPRÉSENTATION

13. Stefan Otto: Représentation et ressemblance. Stratégies de la «repraesentatio mundi» dans les modes de pensée de la Renaissance et dans la philosophie cartésienne 235; 14. Jean-Christophe Bardout: Représentation et existence, éléments d’un débat entre Descartes et la Scolastique 249; 15. Leen Spruit: Applicatio mentis. Descartes’ philosophy of mind and Renaissance noetics 271;

VI. PHYSIQUE, MÉCANIQUE ET MÉDECINE

16. Roger Ariew: Descartes, Basson et la scolastique renaissante 295; 17. Giorgio Stabile: Machinisme renaissant et processus de simplification chez Descartes 311; 18. Annie Bitbol-Hespériès: Descartes, Harvey et la médecine de la Renaissance 323;

VII. ENQUÊTES HERMÉNEUTIQUES ET CONFRONTATIONS DOCTRINALES

19. Olivier Remaud: Connaissance et mémoire: Descartes, Vico et la Renaissance 351; 20. Christian Trottmann: De l’ipsum esse à l’ego cogito, le libre arbitre entre Bernard et Descartes: médiations renaissantes 375; 21. Fosca Mariani Zini: De la calomnie. Remarques sur Descartes entre Humanisme et Lumières 389; 22. Saverio Ricci: La fortune de Giordano Bruno en France à l’époque de Descartes 407;

Index des noms 441-450..

33. ———. 1999. "Descartes et les philosophes Français de la Renaissance " L’Enseignement Philosophique no. 49:27-71.

34. ———. 1999. "Descartes et la Renaissance: philosophie de l'homme, méthode, métaphysique." In Descartes et la Renaissance, edited by Faye, Emmanuel, 11-54. Paris: Honoré Champion.

35. ———. 2001. "Dieu trompeur, mauvais génie et origine de l'erreur selon Descartes et Suarez." Revue philosophique de la France et de l'étranger:61-72.

36. Garin, Pierre. 1931. Thèses cartésiennes et thèses thomistes. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer.

37. Gilson, Étienne. 1913. La liberté chez Descartes et la théologie. Paris: Alcan.

Deuxième édition avec un Avertissement de Jean-Luc Marion (p. I-V), Paris: Vrin, 1987.

38. Gouhier, Henri. 1951. "Pour une histoire des Méditations métaphysiques." Revue des Sciences Humaines no. 16:5-29.

Repris dans H. Gouhier, Études d'histoire de la philosophie Français e, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1976, p. 7-31.

39. ———. 1972. La pensée religieuse de Descartes. Paris: Vrin.

40. Gregory, Tullio. 1982. "La tromperie divine." Studi medievali no. 23:517-527.

Repris dans: T. Gregory, Mundana Sapientia. Forme di conoscenza nella cultura medievale, Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1992, p. 389-399).

41. ———. 2000. "Dieu trompeur et malin génie." In Genèse de la raison classique de Charron à Descartes, 291-347. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Préface de Jean-Robert Armogathe, traduction de l'italien par Marilène Raiola.

“Ne concerne directement le cartésianisme que le célèbre article « Dieu trompeur et malin génie » [Chapitre X]. En se référant à des thèses développées par Gabriel Biel et Grégoire de Rimini (mentionnées par Mersenne, AT VII, 125, elles sont aujourd’hui rendues accessibles en Français dans Olivier Boulnois (éd.), La Puissance et son Ombre. De Pierre Lombard à Luther, Paris, Aubier, 1994), l’Auteur donne un contenu précis à la vetus opinio mentionnée dans la Meditatio Ia: Deum esse qui potest omnia. Ceci permet de repenser à nouveaux frais le rapport entre Dieu trompeur et malin génie, et montre s’il le fallait encore qu’une connaissance précise des traditions médiévales est indispensable à la bonne intelligence de l’ordo rationum.” (Edouard Mehl, Bulletin Cartésien, XXXI).

Édition originale: "Dio ingannatore e genio maligno. Nota in margine alle Meditationes di Descartes", Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, 53, 1974, p. 477-516 (repris dans: T. Gregory, Mundana Sapientia. Forme di conoscenza nella cultura medievale, Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1992, p. 401-440).

42. Gress, Thibaut. 2012. Descartes et la précarité du monde. Essai sur les ontologies cartésiennes Paris: Éditions du CNRS.

43. Heimsoeth, Heinz. 1913. "Sur quelques rapports des Règles de Descartes avec les Méditations." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 21:526-536.

44. Kambouchner, Denis. 2005. Les Méditations métaphysiques de Descartes, I: Introduction générale, Méditation I. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

45. Macherey, Pierre. 2014. Querelles cartésiennes. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion.

46. Marion, Jean-Luc. 1976. "L'ambivalence de la métaphysique cartésienne." Les Études Philosophiques:443-460.

47. ———. 1986. Sur le prisme métaphysique de Descartes. Constitution et limites de l'onto-théo-logie dans la pensée cartésienne. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Deuxième édition, corrigée, 2004.

English translation by Jeffrey L. Kosky: On Descartes' Metaphysical Prism. The Constitution and the Limits of Onto-theo-logy in Cartesian Thought, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999.

48. ———. 1991. Questions cartésiennes I. Méthode et métaphysique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

49. ———. 1993. "Esquisse d'une histoire du nom de Dieu dans la philosophie du XVIIème siècle." Nouvelles de la République des Lettres no. 2:7-46.

50. ———. 1994. "Le concept de métaphysique chez Mersenne." Les Études Philosophiques:129-143.

Repris dans: J.-L. Marion, Questions cartésiennes II. Sur l'ego et sur Dieu, Parsi: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996, p. 369-392.

"Il ne faut ni surestimer, ni sous-estimer l'importance de la réflexion menée par Mersenne pour élaborer une définition vraiment cohérente du concept de métaphysique. Ne pas la surestimer : Mersenne, nous le verrons, reprend pour l'essentiel des positions traditionnelles, issues de la scolastique thomiste par l'intermédiaire de Suárez, le plus souvent comme des évidences mentionnées sans aucune source ni discussion, tant elles paraissent aller de soi. D'ailleurs ces positions n'ont rien d'original, si l'on les compare, ne fût-ce que rapidement, à celles d'autres contemporains, surtout parmi les minores. Mais c'est paradoxalement pour ces mêmes raisons qu'il ne faut pas sous-estimer la contribution de Mersenne. Au double titre d'ancien élève de La Flèche et de correspondant principal, voire presque unique durant les premières années, de Descartes, il apparaît un témoin privilégié pour mesurer à sa juste dimension l'originalité en progrès de l'auteur des Meditationes. En offrant un état de la question d'une définition du concept de métaphysique, Mersenne permet d'abord une description équilibrée de l'opinion philosophique dominante au début du siècle et, ensuite, par ses hésitations et ses contradictions, un diagnostic sur la difficulté du problème ainsi désigné. Car il faut bien reconnaître ici une réelle aporie, qui rend seule intelligible l'originalité de la solution cartésienne."

51. ———. 1996. Questions cartésiennes II. L’ego et Dieu. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

52. ———. 1996. "A propos de Suárez et Descartes." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 50:109-131.

"Étude de la conception cartésienne de la substance à la lumière d'un rapprochement avec la définition de la substance comme subsistance chez Suarez. Soulevant le problème de l'indétermination entre univocité et analogie, selon que le concept concerne le fini ou l'infini, l'Auteur examine le double paradoxe de la définition épistémologique et de la définition ontique de la substance."

53. ———. 2013. Sur la pensée passive de Descartes. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

54. Mehl, Édouard. 1999. "Les méditations stoïciennes de Descartes. Hypothèses sur l'influence du stoïcisme dans la construction de la pensée cartésienne." In Le stoïcisme au XVIe et au XVIe siècle. Le retour des philosophies antiques à l'âge classique. Tome I, edited by Moreau, Pierre-Franois, 251-280. Paris: Albin-Michel.

55. ———. 2013. "Le paradigme scotiste de la métaphysique à l’âge classique (I). L’existence de Dieu comme première vérité: Descartes s’est-il forgé un adversaire scotiste ?" In La postérité de Duns Scot/Die Rezeption des Duns Scotus/Scotism through the Centuries. The Quadruple Congress on John Duns Scotus, Volume IV, edited by Dreyer, Mechtild and Mehl, Edouard. Münster: Aschendorff.

Archa Verbi. Subsidia 6.

56. Moyal, Georges J.D. 1992. "La première "Critique" de Descartes." Kant-Studien no. 83:257-267.

57. Natorp, Paul. 1896. "La métaphysique. Le développement de la pensée de Descartes depuis les Regulae jusqu'aux Méditations." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 4:416-432.

58. Ong-Van-Cung, Kim Sang. 2012. L'objet de nos pensées. Descartes et l'intentionnalité. Paris: Vrin.

59. Paganini, Gianni. 2008. Skepsis. Le débat moderne sur le scepticisme. Paris: Vrin.

Chapitre V: Du bon usage du doute. Descartes et les sceptiques modernes, p. 229-348.

60. Pickavé, Martin. 2005. "La notion d'a priori chez Descartes et les philosophes médiévaux." Les Études Philosophiques:433-454.

61. Renault, Laurence. 1997. "Descartes et la scolastique ou la critique cartésienne du thaumazein." In Actes du Colloque Universitaire de la Flèche "La Formation de Descartes", 105-147. La Flèche: Prytanée National Militaire.

62. ———. 2000. "La réalité objective dans les Premières objections aux Méditations métaphysiques: Ockham contre Descartes." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale:29-38.

63. Robinet, André. 1976. "La specificité du langage philosophique au XVIIe siècle " In Atti del I Colloquio Internazionale del Lessico Intellettuale Europeo, edited by Fattori, Marta and Bianchi, Massimo Luigi, 65-85. Roma: Edizioni dell'Ateneo.

64. ———. 1999. Descartes, la lumière naturelle: intuition, disposition, complexion. Paris: Vrin.

65. Rodis-Lewis, Geneviève. 1972. L'œuvre de Descartes. Paris: Vrin.

Deux volumes: I: Texte (p. 1-415); II. Notes: (p.416-575); réédition en un volume 2013.

Voir la première partie (p. 15-213) su la genèse de la pensée de Descartes.

66. ———. 1986. "Hypothèses sur l'élaboration progressive des Méditations de Descartes." Archives de Philosophie no. 50:109-123.

67. ———. 1988. "Le dualisme platonisant au début du XVIIe siècle et la révolution cartésienne." Rivista di Storia della Filosofia no. 38:677-696.

68. ———. 1997. "Descartes: l’homme et sa recherche de la vérité." Laval Théologique et Philosophique no. 53:497-505.

69. Scribano, Emanuela. 2001. "Descartes et les fausses idées." Archives de Philosophie no. 64:259-278.

"Descartes présente la doctrine de la ‘fausseté matérielle’ des idées dans sa Troisième Méditation (TM). Dans ses quatrièmes objections Arnauld critiquera cette doctrine, qui va disparaître dans les ouvrages de Descartes. Les interprétations récentes se sont concentrées sur le problème de la cohérence de la théorie et de la compatibilité entre la formulation de la TM et celle des réponses aux objections. Cet article reprend ce sujet à la lumière de la discussion scolastique de la vérité et de la fausseté. La doctrine de Descartes, telle qu’elle est présentée dans la TM, manifeste, sous plusieurs aspects, son incompatibilité avec la formulation des réponses à Arnauld. Ce qui amène à conclure dans le sens d’une incompatibilité des deux formulations de la ‘fausseté matérielle’. Et pourtant, il paraît insoutenable qu’il faille rechercher la raison du changement de Descartes dans la force des objections elles-mêmes, étant donné que le cadre conceptuel de la doctrine scolastique de la représentation, dont les objections d’Arnauld s’inspirent, fournissait à Descartes les moyens de défendre sa propre doctrine sans la modifier. D’où l’hypothèse qu’il faut rechercher les raisons de ce changement ailleurs, et notamment dans la volonté de Descartes d’éviter les dangereuses conséquences pour la fondation de la science impliquées dans la formulation de la doctrine de la fausseté matérielle telle qu’elle paraissait dans le texte de la TM."

70. Solère, Jean-Luc. 1997. "Descartes et les discussions médiévales sur le temps." In Descartes et le Moyen Age, edited by Biard, Joël and Rashed, Roshdi, 329-348. Paris: Vrin.

71. Staquet, Anne. 2011. "Descartes et Hobbes: rhétorique et philosophie dans les troisièmes objections et leurs réponses." L'Enseignement Philosophique:27-48.

72. Wahl, Jean. 1957. "Exemple d'une règle inconnue: le verbe "être" chez Descartes (Deuxième, Troisième et Quatrième Médiations)." Cahiers de Royaumont: Descartes:360-366.

Reprint: New York: Garland, 1987.

73. Weber, Dominique, ed. 2005. Hobbes, Descartes et la métaphysique. Paris: Vrin.

Actes du Colloque tenu en Sorbonne le 8 juin 2002.

Table des matières: Michel Fichant, Jean-Luc Marion et Dominique Weber: Préface, 7; Table des abréviations 11; Erich Marquer: Ce que sa polémique avec Descartes a modifié dans la pensée de Hobbes: histoire d'une controverse 15; Dominique Weber: La philosophia prima de Hobbes. Sur une alternative supposée au « système de la métaphysique » 33; Jean-Luc Marion: Hobbes et Descartes: l'étant comme corps 59; Cees Leijenhorst: La causalité chez Hobbes et Descartes 79; Karl Schuhmann: La question de Dieu chez Hobbes 121; Annie Bitbol-Hespériès: L'Homme de Descartes et le De Homine de Hobbes 155; Index nominum 187-189.

74. Wolff, Francis. 1997. "Le principe de la métaphysique d’Aristote et le principe de la métaphysique de Descartes." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 51:417-443.

1644-1648: Principia philosophiae et écrits polémiques

1. Ariew, Roger. 1996. "Les Principia et la Summa philosophica quadripartita." In Descartes Principia Philosophiae (1644-1994), edited by Armogathe, Jean-Robert; Belgioioso, Giulia;, 473-490. Napoli: Vivarium.

La Summa Philosophica Quadripartita de Rebus Dialecticis, Moralibus, Physicis et Metaphysicis de Eustachius a Sancto Paulo (1573-1640), publiée à Paris (1609).

2. Armogathe, Jean Robert, and Belgioioso, Giulia, eds. 1996. Descartes: Principia philosophiae (1644-1994). Napoli: Vivarium.

Atti del Convegno per il 350° anniversario della pubblicazione dell'opera. Parigi, 5-6 maggio 1994 - Lecce, 10-12 novembre 1994.

Indice: Jean-Robert Armogathe, Giulia Belgioioso: Premessa XI; Jean-Robert Armogathe: Liminaire XIII-XXX;

I METAFISICA 3

Jean-Marie Beyssade: Scientia perfectissima. Analyse et synthèse dans les Principia 3; Michelle Beyssade: Des Principia aux Principes: variations sur la liberté 37; Francesca Bonicalzi: Sensi, infanzia e il sapere del corpo 53; Gianfranco Cantelli: La terza nozione primitiva e l’analisi dei sensi esterni e interni svolta nei Principia, IV, 188-199 67, Guido Canziani: Ego cogito, humanum corpus, nostrae mentis natura: la conoscenza dell’unione anima-corpo nei Principia 105; Vincent Carraud: L’esistenza dei corpi è un principio della fisica cartesiana? 153; Alessandro Ghisalberti: La dottrina delle distinzioni nei Principia: tradizione e innovazione 179; Jean-Luc Marion: Sostanza e sussistenza. Suarez e il trattato della substantia nei Principia, I, 51-54 203; Gilles Olivo: Descartes critique du dualisme cartésien ou l’homme des Principia: union de l’âme et du corps et vérités éternelles dans les Principia, I-IV, 188-198 231; Roberto Perini: Circa la specificità del discorso metafisico e l'alternativa analisi/sintesi 255;

Laurence Renault: Concept commun de substance et théorie des distinctions dans la première partie des Principia 283;

II SCIENZA 301

Frédéric de Buzon, La mathesis des Principia: remarques sur II, 64 303; Desmond M. Clarke: The Concept of Vis in Part III of the Principia 321; Daniel Garber: Descartes on Knowledge and Certainty: from the Discours to the Principia 341; Kiiko Hiramatsu-Hiromitsu: En quel sens la physique cartésienne pourrait-elle être qualifiée de ‘mathématique’? 365; Michio Kobayashi, L’articulation de la physique et de la métaphysique dans les Principia 381; Ettore Lojacono: L’attitude scientifique de Descartes dans les Principia 409; Wolfgang Rôd, Il concetto di legge naturale nel quadro della metafisica dei Principia 435; William R. Shea, The Difficult Path to Inertia: the Cartesian Step 451;

ΠΙ DIFFUSIONE E TRADUZIONE 471

Roger Ariew: Les Principia et la Summa philosophica quadripartita 473; Laurence W.B. Brockliss: Rapports de structure et de contenu entre les Principia et les cours de philosophie des collèges 491; Alan Gabbey: The Principia Philosophiae as a Treatise in Natural Philosophy 517; Ettore Lojacono: Cenni sulle lingue di Descartes e considerazioni sulla traduzione dei Principia in lingua italiana 531; Franco Aurelio Meschini: Materiali per un’analisi comparata del testo latino e francese dei Principia 577; Valentine Watson Rodger: L'original latin de 1644 et la version Français e de 1647: Descartes bilingue? 603; Roger Ariew: Les Principia en France et les condamnations du cartésianisme 625; Giulia Belgioioso: Un dibattito sui Principia: Pierre Sylvain Régis, Pierre-Daniel Huet, ]ean Du Hamel, Nicolas Malebranche 641; Daniel Garber: ]ean-Baptiste Morin and Descartes’ Principia 685; Theo Verbeek: Les Principia dans la culture néerlandaise du XVIIe siècle 701;

Indice dei nomi 713-724.

3. Beyssade, Jean-Marie. 1976. "L'ordre dans les Principia." Les Études Philosophiques:387-403.

4. Buzon, Frédéric de, and Carraud, Vincent. 1994. Descartes et les Principia II: corps et mouvement. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

5. Cléro, Jean-Pierre, and Faye, Emmanuel, eds. 2011. Descartes des Principes aux phénomènes. Paris: Armand Colin.

Table des matières: Emmanuel Faye: Avant-propos 5; Jean-Pierre Cléro; Préface 7; 1. Emmanuel Faye: La définition de la pensée et la conscience dans les Principia I, 9 et La Recherche de la Vérité par la lumière naturelle 15; 2. Kim Sang Ong-Van-Cung: Notions et choses chez Descartes. À propos de Principes I, 48 29 ; 3. Philippe Drieux: Des principes d’une union « libre » ; l’union des Méditations aux Principes 47; 4. Chantal Jaquet: L’Erreur dans les Principes de la philosophie de Descartes de Spinoza, I, XV 61; 5. Olivia Chevalier-Chandeigne: Descartes et le principe d’inertie: un corrélat de la réforme cartésienne de la géométrie 79; 6. Jean Seidengart: La connaissance du Monde dans les Principes de Descartes : Métaphysique, Physique et Astronomie 93; 7. Anne Staquet: Lire les Principes comme un roman 121; 8. Pierreo Cléro: Les Principes de la philosophie, Le Traité du monde et les fictions 145-185.

6. Dambska, Izydora. 1957. "Sur certains principes méthodologiques dans les Principia Philosophiae de Descartes." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale:57-66.

7. Dross, Juliette. 2011. "Les métamorphoses de l'arbre de la philosophie, de l'ancien stoïcisme à Descartes." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 29:75-96.

8. Kieft, Xavier. 2009. "L’Entretien de Burman avec Descartes: Un malentendu historico-philosophique." Klésis. Revue Philosophique no. 11:108-134.

9. Libera, Alain de. 2014. "Remarques sur un placard : Descartes contre Regius." In Liber Amicorum Pascal Engel, edited by Dutant, Julien, Fassio, Davide and Meylan, Anne, 647-673. Genève: Université de Genève.

10. Martinet, Monette. 1978. "Un manuel subversif, la "Somme philosophique" de René Descartes " Europe:28-36.

11. Mehl, Édouard. 2009. Descartes et la visibilité du monde. Les Principes de la philosophie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

12. Rodis-Lewis, Geneviève. 1971. "« Cartesius »." Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 161:211-220.

13. Verbeek, Theo, ed. 1988. La Querelle d'Utrecht. Paris: Les impressions nouvelles.

Table des Matière: Jean-Luc Marion: Préface 7; Theo Verbeek: Introduction 18; Narration historique 71; René Descartes: Lettre à Dinet 125; Martin Schoock: L'Admirable Méthode 153; René Descartes: Lettre à Voet 321; René Descartes: Lettre Apologétique aux Magistrats d'Utrecht 401; Theo Verbeek Notes 439-539.

14. ———, ed. 1993. Descartes et Regius. Autour de l'Explication de l’esprit humain. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Table des matières: Th. Verbeek: Préface V-IX; Th. Verbeek: Le conteste historique des Notae in programma quddam 1; G. Rodis-Lewis: Problèmes discutés entre Descartes et Regius: l'âme et le corps; 35; A. Bitbol-Hespéries: Descartes et Regius: leur pensée médicale 47; G. Olivo: L'homme en personne 69; H. H. Kubbinga: Le concept d' «individu substantiel» chez Beeckman et chez Descartes 93; Bibliographie 105; Index 113.

1649-1650: Les passions de l'âme ; derniers écrits

1. Arbib, Dan. 2014. "La métaphysique, dernier mot de la morale cartésienne? Descartes et les émotions intérieures." Les Études philosophiques no. 2:219-236.

2. Baudry, Hervé. 2015. Le Dos de ses livres. Descartes a-t-il lu Montaigne? Paris: Honoré Champion.

3. Belgioioso, Giulia. 2004. "Philosopher, méditer: l’expérience philosophique chez Descartes." Quaestio Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics:197-227.

4. Beyssade, Jean-Marie. 1983. "La classification cartesienne des passions." Revue International de Philosophie no. 146:278-287.

5. Brochard, Victor. 1880. "Descartes stoïcien. (Contribution à l'histoire de la philosophie cartésienne)." Revue Philosophique no. 5:548-552.

Repris dans: V. Brochard, Études de philosophie ancienne et de philosophie moderne, Pairs: Alcan, 1912, p. 320-326. (reprint Paris: Vrin, 1954).

6. Brunschvicq, Léon. 1942. Descartes et Pascal lecteurs de Montaigne. Neuchâtel: Éditions de la baconnière.

7. Deprun, Jean. 1988. "Qu'est-ce qu'une passion de l'ame ? Descartes et ses prédécesseurs." Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger no. 178:407-413.

8. Kolesnik-Antoine, Delphine, and Pellegrin, Marie-Frédérique, eds. 2014. Élisabeth de Bohême face à Descartes : deux philosophes ? Paris: Vrin.

9. Mesnard, Pierre. 1936. Essai sur la morale de Descartes. Paris: Boivin et C.ie.

10. Olivo, Gilles. 1999. ""Une patience sans espérance ?" Descartes et le stoïcisme." In Le stoïcisme au XVIe et au XVIe siècle. Le retour des philosophies antiques à l'âge classique. Tome I, edited by Moreau, Pierre-Franois, 234-250. Paris: Albin-Michel.

11. Renault, Laurence. 2000. Descartes ou la félicité volontaire. L'idéal aristotélicien de la sagesse et la réforme de l'admiration. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

12. Rodis-Lewis, Geneviève. 1957. La morale de Descartes. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

13. Talon-Hugon, Carole. 2002. Descartes ou Les passions rêvées par la raison. Essai sur la théorie des passions de Descartes et de quelques-uns de ses contemporains Paris: Vrin.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

An annotated bibliography of recent studies in English on the philosophy of Descartes

Bibliography

1. Aalderink, Mark Jan Herman. 2010. Philosophy, Scientific Knowledge, and Concept Formation in Geulincx and Descartes. Utrecht: Quaestiones Infinitae.

2. Aczel, Amir D. 2005. Descartes' Secret Notebook. New York: Broadway Books.

3. Alanen, Lilli; Knuuttila, Simo. 1988. "The Foundations of Modality and Conceivability in Descartes and his Predecessors." In Modern Modalities. Studies of the History of Modal Theories from Medieval Nominalism to Logical Positivism, edited by Knuttila, Simo, 1-69. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"Descartes's view of modality is analyzed by contrast to two earlier models: the ancient realist one, defended by Boethius, where possibility and necessity are connected to natural potency, and the modern intensionalist one, which dissociates necessary and possible truths from any ontological foundation, treating them as conceptual, a priori given preconditions for any intellect. The emergence of this view is traced from Gilbert of Poitiers to Duns Scotus, Ockham and Suarez. The Cartesian theory of the creation of eternal truths, it is argued, involves a rejection of this idea of absolute conceivability and can be seen as a constructivist view of intelligibility and rationality."

4. Ariew, Roger. 1992. "Descartes and Scholasticism: The Intellectual Background to Descartes' Thought." In The Cambridge Companion to Descartes, edited by Cottingham, John, 58-90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Revised version in: R. Ariew, Descartes and the Last Scolastics, pp. 7-35.

5. ———. 1992. "Descartes and the Tree of Knowledge." Synthese no. 92:101-116.

"Descartes' image of the tree of knowledge from the preface to the French edition of the Principles of Philosophy is usually taken to represent Descartes' break with the past and with the fragmentation of knowledge of the schools. But if Descartes' tree of knowledge is analyzed in its proper context, another interpretation emerges. A series of contrasts with other classifications of knowledge from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries raises some puzzles: claims of originality and radical break from the past do not seem warranted. Further contrasts with Descartes' unpublished writings and with school doctrines lead to the ironic conclusion that, in the famous passage, Descartes is attempting to appeal to conventional wisdom and trying to avoid sounding novel."

6. ———. 1999. Descartes and the Last Scholastics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

"Parts of chapter 1 were published as “Descartes and Scholasticism: the Intellectual Background to Descartes’ Thought,” in Cambridge Companion to Descartes, ed. John Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992), pp. 58-90. Much of chapter 3 was published as “Ideas, in and before Descartes,” Journal of the History of Ideas 56 (1995): 87-106, and some of chapter 4 as “The Cartesian Destiny of Form and Matter,” Early Science and Medicine 3 (1997): 300-325, both co-authored with Marjorie Grene. Portions of chapter 6 appeared as “Theory of Comets at Paris during the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992): 355-372. An earlier version of chapter 9 was issued as “Damned if you do: Cartesians and Censorship, 1663-1706,” Perspectives on Science (1994): 255-274. Portions of chapters 5, 7, 8, and 10 were initially published in French -- chapter 5 as “Descartes, Basson et la scolastique rénaissante,” in Descartes et la Renaissance, ed. Emmanuel Faye and chapter 7 as “Les premières tentatives vers une scolastique cartésienne: la Correspondance de Descartes et les Jésuites de La Flèche sur l’Eucharistie,” in Momenti della biografia intellettuale di Descartes nella Correspondance, ed. Jean-Robert Armogathe and Giulia Belgioioso. A portion of chapter 8 was published as “Les Principia en France et les condamnations du cartésianisme,” in Descartes: Principia Philosophiae (1644-1994), ed. Jean-Robert Armogathe and Giulia Belgioioso (Naples: Vivarium, 1996), pp. 525-640, and of chapter 10 was issued as “Critiques scolastiques de Descartes: le cogito,” Laval Théologique et Philosophique 53, no. 3 (1997): 587-604." (pp. IX-X).

7. ———. 1999. "The First Attempts at a Cartesian Scholasticism: Descartes’ correspondence with the Jesuits of La Flèche." In La biografia intellettuale di René Descartes attraverso la Correspondance, edited by Armogathe, Jean-Robert; Belgioioso, Giulia; Vinti, Carlo, 263-286. Napoli: Vivarium.

8. ———. 1999. "Descartes and the Late Scholastics on the Order of the Sciences." In Philosophy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Conversations with Aristotle, edited by Blackwell, Constance; Kusukawa, Sachiko, 350-364. Aldershot: Ashgate.

9. ———. 2002. "Descartes and the Jesuits: Doubt, Novelty, and the Eucharist." In Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters, edited by Feingold, Mordechai, 157-194. Cambridge: MIT Press.

10. ———. 2006. "Descartes, the first cartesians and logic." Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy no. 3:241-260.

Revised English translation of: "Descartes, les premiers cartésiens et la logique", Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1, 2006, p. 55-71.

11. ———. 2009. "Descartes, Leibniz, and Some Scholastics on The Principle of Individuation." In Branching Off. The Early Moderns in Quest for the Unity of Knowledge, edited by Alexandrescu, Vlad, 95-115. Bucarest: Zeta Books.

Abstract: "I discuss the various principles of individuation promulgated by G. W. Leibniz, in his 1663 bachelor’s thesis at Leipzig, Disputatio Metaphysica de Principio Individui, in his early treatise on transubstantiation, and in his mature work (Nouveaux Essais, etc.). I compare these treatments with René Descartes’ principle of individuation for ensouled creatures, from the Letters to Mesland on transubstantiation, and with the theses of various late scholastics (those of Scipion Dupleix, Antoine Goudin, René de Ceriziers, and Théophraste Bouju, among others). I conclude that whatever might have appeared novel in the proposals of Descartes and Leibniz for the principle of individuation were also traditional options; in this respect, the difference between early modern and medieval philosophy does not seem to have been philosophical at bottom."

12. ———. 2010. "Descartes and Humanism: Historical Method, Anti-Syllogism, and (Neo) Stoic Ethics in the Discourse On Method." Revue Roumaine de Philosophie no. 54:163-174.

"I discuss René Descartes’ relation to some key characteristics of Renaissance Humanism, from the espousal of an historical method to the rejection of scholastic or Aristotelian logic, to the revival of Stoic ethics. Basically, this discussion corresponds with topics treated by Descartes in the first half (or first three parts) of his Discourse on Method. I conclude that, in all three cases, Descartes’ adoption of Humanistic method is only partial. He flirts with humanistic views in his battles against scholasticism, but does not adopt them fully. "

13. ———. 2011. Descartes Among the Scholastics. Leiden: Brill.

Second, revised and expanded edition of Descartes and the Last Scholastics.

14. ———. 2012. "Descartes and Leibniz as Readers of Suárez: Theory of Distinctions and Principle of Individuation." In The Philosophy of Francisco Suarez, edited by Hill, Benjamin; Lagerlund, Henrik, 38-53. New York: Oxford University Press.

15. Ariew, Roger; Cottingham, John; Sorell,Tom, ed. 1998. Descartes' Meditations. Background Source Materials. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Preface IX; Abbreviations XI; John Cottingham: General Introduction XIII-XVIII; 1. Petrus Ramus: Dialectic 1; 2. Francisco Sanches: That Nothing is Known 8; 3. Christopher Clavius: The promotion of mathematics 24; 4. Francisco Suárez: Metaphysical Disputations 29; 5. Pierre Charron: Wisdom 51; 6. Eustachius a Sancto Paulo: A Compendium of Philosophy in Four Parts 68; 7. Scipion Dupleix: Corpus of Philosophy 97; 8. Marin Mersenne: The Use of Reason, The Impiety of the Deists, and The Truth of the Sciences 136; 9. Pierre Gassendi: Unorthodox Essays against the Aristotelians 166; 10. Jean de Silhon: The Two Truths, and The Immortality of the Soul 176; 11. Franois de La Mothe le Vayer: Dialogue on the Diversity of Religions, and Little Skeptical Treatise 201; 12. Charles Sorel: Universal Science 219; 13. Jean-Baptiste Morin: That God Exists 230; Appendix: Condemnations of Cartesianism 252; Bibliography 261; Index 265-269.

16. Ariew, Roger; Grene, Marjorie, ed. 1995. Descartes and His Contemporaries. Meditations, Objections and Replies. Chicago: Unversity of Chicago Press.

Contents: List of Abbreviations VII; Marjorie Grene and Roger Ariew: Prologue 1; Jean-Luc Marion: The Place of the Objections in the Development of Cartesian Metaphysics 7; Theo Verbeek: The First Objections 21; Jean-Robert Armogathe: Caterus’ Objections to God 34; Peter dear: Mersenne’s Suggestion: Cartesian Meditation and the Mathematical Model of Knowledge in the Seventeenth Century 44; Daniel Garber: J.-B. Morin and the Second Objections 63; Tom Sorell: Hobbes’s Objections and Hobbes’s System 83; Edwin Curley: Hobbes versus Descartes 97; Vincent Carraud: Arnauld: From Ockhamism to Cartesianism 110; Steven Nadler: Occasionalism and the Question of Arnauld’s Cartesianism 129; Margaret J. Osler: Divine Will and Mathematical Truth: Gassendi and

Descartes on the Status of the Eternal Truths 145; Thomas M. Lennon: Pandora; or, Essence and Reference: Gassendi’s Nominalist Objection and Descartes’ Realist Reply 159; Stephen Menn: The Greatest Stumbling Block: Descartes’ Denial of Real Qualities 182; Roger Ariew: Pierre Bourdin and the Seventh Objections 208; Marjorie Grene: Epilogue 227; Bibliography 239; Contributors 253; Index 255.

17. Ariew, Roger; Grene Marjorie. 1995. "Ideas, in and before Descartes." Journal of the History of Ideas no. 57:87-106.

Reprinted in: R. Ariew, Descartes and the Last Scolastics, pp. 58-76.

18. Armour, Leslie. 1993. "Descartes and Eustachius a Sancto Paulo: Unravelling the Mind-Body Problem." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 1:3-21.

19. Arthur, Richard. 2007. "Beeckman, Descartes and the Force of Motion." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 45:1-28.

20. Ashworth, Earline Jennifer. 1972. "Descartes' Theory of Clear and Distinct Ideas." In Cartesian Studies, edited by Butler, Ronald Joseph, 89-105. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

"It is widely agreed that Descartes took ideas to be the objects of knowledge and that his theory of clear and distinct ideas arose from his attempt to find a way of picking out those ideas whose truth was so certain and self-evident that the thinker could be said to know them with certainty. To say of an idea that it is clear and distinct was, he believed, to say of it both that it was certainly true and that any claim to know it was justified. No other criterion need be appealed to. It is at this point, however, that most of those who set out to expound Descartes' theory of knowledge are brought to a standstill. The part played by clear ideas is obvious enough, but what did Descartes mean by `clear and distinct'? This paper is an attempt, not to make an original contribution to the study of Descartes, but to elucidate his terms and evaluate his criterion in the light of what both he and others have written." (p. 89)

(...)

"The fact that Descartes adopted the word ‘idea’ is itself significant. When scholastic philosophers discussed human cognition, they spoke of the mind as containing concepts (species, intentiones). They claimed that these concepts originated through our sense perceptions, and hence that they stood in some relation to external objects. The term ‘concept’ was contrasted with the term ‘idea’. Ideas were the eternal essences or archetypes contemplated by God, and the question of their external reference did not arise. They were an integral part of God’s mind. God could create instances of one of his ideas, but his idea was in no way dependent upon the existence of such instances. Descartes took the word ‘idea’ and applied it to the contents of the human mind because he wanted to escape the suggestion that these contents must be in some sense dependent on the external world as a causal agent. (9) He wished to establish the logical possibility that a mind and the ideas contained within it are unrelated to other existents, and can be discussed in isolation from them.

Descartes saw the term ‘idea’ as having a very wide extension.

He said “ . . . I take the term idea to stand for whatever the mind directly perceives,”(10) where the verb ‘perceive’ refers to any possible cognitive activity, including sensing, imagining and conceiving.(11) Thus a sense datum, a memory, an image, and a concept can all be called ideas. This, of course, leads to the blurring of distinctions. For Descartes, “I have an idea of red” may mean that I am now sensing something red, or that I have a concept of the colour red, even if I am not now picking out an instance of that concept. Moreover, when Descartes speaks of an idea, he may be taking it as representative of some object or quality in the physical world, as when he says “I have an idea of the sky and stars,” or he may be referring to the meaning he assigns to a word, as when he says “I have an idea of substance.” Nor does he make any distinction between “having an idea” and “entertaining a proposition.” Such statements as “Nothing comes from nothing” and “The three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles” are categorized as ‘common notions’,(12) and are included among the contents of the mind. Descartes does remark that in some cases an idea may be expressed by a name, in other cases by a proposition,(13) but he does not bother to pursue this line of inquiry.

One of the characteristics of an idea is 'objective reality’, a scholastic phrase which Descartes adopted, but used in a new way. In scholastic writings the terms ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ have meanings which are the reverse of the modem meanings. An object like a table exists subjectively or as a subject if it has spatio-temporal existence, if it is real or actual. In contrast, the concept of a table can be looked at as having two kinds of existence. The concept qua concept has formal existence, but the concept as having some specifiable content is said to have objective existence, or existence as an object of thought. The concepts of a table and of a chair are formally similar but objectively different. So far as subjective realities were concerned, the scholastics assigned them different grades of reality according to their perfection and causal power. For instance, a substance is more perfect and causally more efficacious than an accident, hence a man has a higher grade of reality than the colour red.

It was also held that every effect had a cause with either an equal or a higher grade of reality. These doctrines were not seen as having any relevance to concepts. As formally existent, a concept has of course to have some cause, but the content of the concept was not seen as having any independent reality. Descartes, however, felt that the objective reality could be considered independently of its formal reality, and that it must be graded just as subjective reality was graded. The idea of a man, he felt, has more objective reality than the idea of a colour. Moreover, the cause of the idea containing a certain degree of objective reality must have an equal or greater degree of subjective reality. For instance, the idea of God has so high a degree of objective reality that only God himself is perfect enough to be the cause of such an idea.(14)" (pp. 91-93)

(...)

"Although Descartes struggled to defend his criterion, his struggles ended in an impasse. He had made the mistake of trying to prove too much. He had wanted to develop an introspective technique by which he could be sure of recognizing those ideas which were objects of certain knowledge; but such an enterprise was doomed from the start. He could only escape from the objection that nothing about an idea can justify us in making judgment about its external reference by entering into an uneasy and unjustifiable alliance with God; and by such an alliance he negated his claim that a single criterion for true and knowable ideas could be found." (p. 105)

(9) E. S. Haldane, G. R. T. Ross (eds.) , The Philosophical Works of Descartes, (Cambridge, 1911) [cited as 'HR'] vol. II, 68.

(10) HR II, 67-8.

(11) HR I, 232.

(12) HR I, 239.

(13) C. Adam P. Tannery, Oeuvres de Descartes (Paris 1897-1913) [cited as 'AT'] AT III, 395.

(14) HR I, 161-170.

21. ———. 1975. "Descartes' Theory of Objective Reality." New Scholasticism no. 49:331-340.

"In the Third Meditation Descartes, who is at the beginning sure only of his own existence, presents a complex proof for the existence of God which is based on the fact that he finds within himself an idea of God. I intend to ignore the supplementary proof which deals with the conservation of his existence, and to focus on his discussion of the properties of ideas, for it is here that Descartes is most difficult to comprehend yet most vulnerable to criticism. With the exception of Gassendi's remarks in the fifth objection, I shall concentrate upon what Descartes himself had to say, for a thorough survey of all the secondary sources often serves only to obscure the main issue." (p. 331)

(...)

"Descartes reinforced his arguments with various claims about the nature of predicates and the way in which we come to understand them. He thought, mistakenly, that one could not only distinguish between negative and positive predicates, but that one could demonstrate the logical priority of such positive predicates as 'infinite' or 'perfect' by showing that one can only understand the finite or imperfect in the light of a prior acquaintance with the infinite or perfect. (29) However, although he seems now to be talking about epistemology rather than ontology, it turns out that his claims rest upon the same assumptions about the content and causation of ideas as are involved in the main proof, so they do not need to be discussed further.

However liberal one is in granting Descartes his desired premises, I think it is fair to conclude that his arguments do not prove what they purport to prove. This seems to be a strong indication that one will lose nothing by being illiberal from the very beginning." (p. 340)

(29) E. Haldane and G. Ross, The Philosophical Works 0f Descartes (Cambridge, 1968), I, 166.

22. ———. 1998. "Antonius Rubius on Objective Being and Analogy: One of the Routes from Early Fourteenth-Century Discussions to Descartes's Third Meditation." In Meetings of the Minds. The Relation between Medieval and Classical Modern European Philosophy, edited by Brown, Stephen F., 43-62. Turnhout: Brepols.

"In this paper I shall use Rubius's tract on analogy to show how a rich medieval tradition survived into the seventeenth century and to shed some light on the problem of Descartes's sources for the notion of an idea's objective reality. I shall proceed as follows. First, I shall state the problem as it has been set out in recent secondary literature. Second, I shall trace the distinction between formal and objective concepts from the early fourteenth century to the early seventeenth century in the context of the discussion of analogical terms. Third, I shall examine the analogical use of terms as it was presented by Rubius. Fourth, I shall explain why a theory of language use and a theory of concepts carne to be linked together. Finally, I shall discuss what Rubius had to say about formal and objective concepts, and I shall suggest a relationship between this account and Descartes's own attitude towards mental contents and simple natures."

23. Belgioioso, Giulia. 2006. "Signs and Cyphers and Symbols in Descartes." Nouvelles de la République des Lettres

des Lettres no. 1:7-22.

24. ———. 2009. "The Hyperbolic Way to the Truth from Balzac to Descartes: "Toute Hyperbole tend là, de Nous Amener à la Vérité par l'excès de la Vérité, c'est-à-dire par le Mensonge" " In Skepticism in the Modern Age: Building on the Work of Richard Popkin, edited by Maia Neto, José Raimundo; Paganini, Gianni; Lursen, John Christian, 269-294. Leiden: Brill.

"The Latin word “hyperbole” comes from the Greek verb υπερ-βάλλω, a composite form of hypér (behind) and bállein (throw, throw further, behind and therefore to go further).

The goal of the essay is to clarify the use and the meaning of this concept in the XVIIth century especially considering the figures of René Descartes (1596-1650) and one of his most famous correspondents, the French writer Louis Guez de Balzac (1597-1654). The essay is divided into four parties. In the first one, it focuses on the relationships between Descartes and Balzac and their intellectual formation. In the second part, some relevant examples of definitions given in the XVIIth century of geometrical and rhetorical hyperboles are proposed. The third part of the essay is devoted to the transformation of the figure of the hyperboles achieved by Guez de Balzac. In the fourth part of the essay is analysed the uses of the hyperboles in Descartes; a particular attention is here devoted to the texts of the Third and Fourth Replies to Hobbes and Arnauld, in connection to the final part of the Sixth Meditation."

French version with the title: «Toute hyperbole tend à nous amener à la vérité par l’excès de la vérité, c’est-à-dire par le mensonge»: les parcours hyperboliques qui amènent à la vérité de Balzac à Descartes, in: Vlad Alexandrescu (ed.), Branching Off. The Early Moderns in Quest for the Unity of Knowledge, Bucarest: Zeta Books, 2009, pp. 256-288.

25. Berkel, Klaas van. 2013. Isaac Beeckman on Matter and Motion: Mechanical Philosophy in the Making. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

26. Blackwell, Constance. 2009. "Sources of Cartesian doubt. Aristotle's perplexity becomes Descartes's doubt: Metaphysics 3, 1 and methodical doubt in Benito Pereira and René Descartes." In Skepticism in the Modern Age: Building on the Work of Richard Popkin, edited by Maia Neto, José Raimundo; Paganini, Gianni; Lursen, John Christian, 231-248. Leiden: Brill.

27. Bos, Henk J. M. 2001. Redefining Geometrical Exactness. Descartes' Transformation of the Early Modern Concept of Construction. New York: Springer.

28. Brockliss, Laurence. 1981. "Philosophy Teaching in France, 1600–1740." History of Universities no. 1:131-168.

29. ———. 1981. "Aristotle, Descartes and the New Science: Natural philosophy at the University of Paris, 1600–1740." Annals of Science no. 38:33-69.

"The article discusses the decline of Aristotelian physics at the University of Paris in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. A course of physics remained essentially Aristotelian until the final decade of the seventeenth century, when it came under the influence of Descartes. But the history of physics teaching over this period cannot be properly appreciated if it is simply seen in terms of the replacement of one physical philosophy by another. Long before the 1690s, the traditional Aristotelianism of the Schools had been forced to come to terms with the New Science to some degree, while the Cartesianism of the early eighteenth century was always alive to the challenges to Descartes's particular physical theories. Except in the early seventeenth century the physics course at Paris was always in a state of change. The replacement of Aristotelian by Cartesian physics too involved the development of a novel epistemology. Although both Aristotelian and Cartesian professors believed that natural philosophy was a science of causes based upon a priori principles, the latter had a far more probabilist conception of physics."

30. ———. 1995. "Discoursing on Method in the University World of Descartes's France." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 3:3-28.

31. Buzon, Frédéric de. 2013. "Beeckman, Descartes and Physico-Mathematics." In The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy, edited by Garber, Daniel and Roux, Sophie, 143-158. Dordrecht: Springer.

32. Carr, Thomas M. Jr. 1990. Descartes and the Resilience of Rhetoric. Varieties of Cartesian Rhetorical Theory. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

The Second Chapter (p. 6-26) is on Descartes and Guez de Balzac.

33. Cassan, Elodie. 2011. "The Influence of Scholastic Logic on Descartes' Theory of Judgment." In Departure for Modern Europe. A Handbook of Early Modern Philosophy (1400-1700), edited by Busche, Hubertus, 887-897. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.

34. Clarke, Desmond M. 1981. "Descartes' Critique of Logic." In Truth, Knowledge and Reality. Inquiries into the Foundations of Seventeenth Century Rationalism, edited by Parkinson, George H. R., 27-35. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner.

A symposium of the Leibniz-Gesellschaft, Reading, 27-30 July 1979 (Studia Leibnitiana. Sonderhefte, 9).

35. Clemenson, David. 1991. Seventeenth Century Scholastic Philosophy of Cognition and Descartes' Causal Proof of God's Existence.

Unpublished Ph.D. thesis at the Harvard University, available at ProQuest Dissertation Express, UMI publication number 9131929.

36. ———. 2007. Descartes' Theory of Ideas. London: Continuum.

37. Cole, John R. 1992. The Olympian Dreams and Youthful Rebellion of René Descartes. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

38. Cottingham, John. 1992. "A New Start? Cartesian Metaphysics and the Emergence of Modern Philosophy." In The Rise of Modern Philosophy, edited by Sorell, Tom, 145-166. Oxford: Oxford University Pres.

Reprinted as Chapter 2 in: J. Cottingham, Cartesian Reflections. Essays on Descartes's Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 53-74.

39. Cozzoli, Daniele. 2008. "Beyond Mixed Mathematics: How a Translation changed the Story of Descartes' Philosophy of Mathematics." In Beyond Borders: Fresh Perspectives in History of Science, edited by Simon, Josep and Herran, Néstor, 35-59. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

40. Craig, Martin. 2013. "Causation in Descartes’ Les Météores and Late Renaissance Aristotelian Meteorology." In The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy, edited by Garber, Daniel and Roux, Sophie, 217-236. Dordrecht: Springer.

41. Cronin, Timothy J. 1966. Objective Being in Descartes and in Suárez. Roma: Gregoriana University Press.

42. ———. 1966. "Objective Reality of Ideas in Human Thought: Descartes and Suárez." In Wisdom in Depth. Essays in Honor of Henri Renard S. J., edited by Daues, Vincent F., Holloway, Maurice R. and Sweeney, Leo, 68-79. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company.

43. Curley, Edwin. 1978. Descartes Against the Skeptics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

44. de Pitte, Frederick Van. 1988. "Some of Descartes' Debts to Eustachius A Sancto Paulo." The Monist no. 71:487-497.

45. Dear, Peter. 1988. Mersenne and the Learning of the Schools. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

46. Des Chene, Dennis. 1996. Physiologia: Philosophy of Nature in Descartes and the Aristotelians. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

47. ———. 2000. "Descartes and the Natural Philosophy of the Coimbra Commentaries." In Descartes’ Natural Philosophy, edited by Gaukroger, Stephen, Schuster, John and Sutton, John, 723-735. New York: Routledge.

48. ———. 2000. Life’s Form: Late Aristotelian Conceptions of the Soul. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

49. ———. 2001. Spirits and Clocks. Machine and Organism in Descartes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

50. Des Chenes, Dennis. 2013. "From Habits to Traces." In A History of Habit. From Aristotle to Bourdieu, edited by Sparrow, Tom and Hutchinson, Adam, 113-122. Lanham: Lexington Books.

51. Edwards, Michael. 2013. Time and the Science of the Soul in Early Modern Philosophy. Leiden: Brill.

Contents: Acknowledgments IX; Introduction 1; Part One. Aristotelian and Late Scholastic Theories of Time and the Soul; 1 Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy 15; 2 Psychology, the Science of the Soul 65; Part Two. Time and the Scince of the Soul in the New Philosophy; 3 Descartes 119; 4 Hobbes 163; Conclusion: Time and the Science of the Soul between Disciplines 207; Bibliography 209; Index 219-224.

52. Federico, Pasquale Joseph. 1982. Descartes on Polyhedra, A Study of the De solidorum elementis. New York: Springer.

53. Fine, Gail. 2000. "Descartes and ancient skepticism: reheated cabbage?" Philosophical Review no. 109:195-234.

54. Fuchs, Thomas. 2001. The Mechanization of the Heart: Harvey and Descartes. Rochester: The University of Rochester Press.

Translated from the German Die Mechanisierung des Herzens: Harvey und Descartes - Der vitale und der mechanische Aspekt des Kreislaufs, Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1992, by Marjorie Grene.

55. Garber, Daniel. 1988. "Descartes, the Aristotelians, and the Revolution that did not happen in 1637." The Monist no. 77:471-486.

Reprinted in Tom Sorell (ed.), Descartes, Aldershot, Ashgate, 1999, pp. 39-56.

56. ———. 2010. "Philosophia, Historia, Mathematica: Shifting Sands in the Disciplinary Geography of the Seventeenth Century." In Scientia in Early Modern Philosophy. Seventeenth-Century Thinkers on Demonstrative Knowledge from First Principles, edited by Sorell, Tom, Rogers, G.A.J. and Kraye, Jill, 1-17. Dordrecht: Springer.

"Something very important happened in our knowledge of the physical world in the seventeenth century. A number of very smart people made discoveries about the natural world that fundamentally changed our way of looking at things. But as important as the individual accomplishments of individual seventeenth-century scientists were, an important part of the story lies in the disciplinary and institutional history of that important century. What was new and important was not only Copernicus and Kepler, Descartes and Galileo, Leibniz and Newton, but the changes that happened in the larger framework in which they work. In particular, I think that there was a major change in what might be called the disciplinary geography, the way in which the disciplines that deal with our knowledge of the natural world changed in their relations with respect to one another. This involves not only intellectual changes, but, perhaps as importantly, changes in the institutions that involve the investigation of nature and the dissemination of new knowledge and points of view.

The story is very big and very complex, and I cannot hope to tell it all in a single article. But in this short essay I would like to give a bare outline of what the whole story might look like. I will begin with an overview the state of the disciplines that are concerned with the natural world ca. 1600. I will then trace through the way in which the disciplinary geography changes over the course of the century."

57. Gaudemard, Lynda. 2011. "Descartes’ use of ‘idea’ in his early work: a revisited interpretation." Methodus. Revista Internacional de Filosofía Moderna no. 1:7-27.

58. Gaukroger, Stephen. 1988. "Descartes' Conception of Inference." In Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Essays in Honour of Gerd Buchdahl, edited by Woolhouse, Roger, 101-132. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

59. ———. 1989. Cartesian Logic. An Essay on Descartes’ Conception of Inference. New York: Oxford University Press.

60. ———. 1992. "Descartes' Early Doctrine of Clear and Distinct Ideas." Journal of the History of Ideas no. 53:585-602.

61. ———. 1994. "The Sources of Descartes' Procedure of Deductive Demonstration in Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy." In Reason, Will and Sensation. Studies in Cartesian Metaphysics, edited by Cottingham, John, 47-60. New York: Oxford University Press.

62. Gedzelman, Stanley David. 1989. "Did Kepler’s Supplement to Witelo Inspire Descartes’ Theory of the Rainbow?" American Meteorological Society no. 70:750-751.

63. Glauser, Richard. 2002. "Descartes, Suárez, and the theory of distinction." In The Philosophy of Marjorie Grene, edited by Auxier, Randall E. and Hahn, Lewis Edwin, 417-445. New York: Open Court.

Reply by Marjorie Grene, pp. 446-450.

64. Grene, Marjorie. 1985. Descartes. Brighton: Harvester Press.

Second edition, with a new introduction, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998.

See in particular the Part Two: Descartes and His Contemporaries, pp. 113-192.

65. ———. 1991. Descartes among the Scholastics. The Aquinas Lecture 1991. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

"The part of this lecture that deals with substantial forms was given in a somewhat different form, and different language, as a lecture at the University of Bern and published in Dialectica [1986, 40, pp. 309-322], under the title Die Einheit des Menschen: Descartes unter den Scholastikern." p. VII.

66. ———. 1999. "Descartes and Skepticism." Review of Metaphysics no. 52:553-571.

67. Groarke, Leo. 1984. "Descartes' First Meditation: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 22:281-301.

68. Hankey, Wayne J. 2001. "Between and beyond Augustine and Descartes: more than a source of the self." Augustinian Studies no. 32:65-88.

69. Hattab, Helen. 1998. "One cause or many? Jesuit influence on Descartes’s division of causes." In Meeting of the Minds. The Relations between Medieval and Classical Modern European Philosophy, edited by Brown, Stephen F., 105-120. Turnhout: Brepols.

70. ———. 2003. "Conflicting Causalities: The Jesuits, their Opponents, and Descartes on the Causality of the Efficient Cause." Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy no. 1:1-22.

71. ———. 2009. Descartes on Forms and Mechanisms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

72. ———. 2011. "Suárez and Descartes. A Priori Arguments Against Substantial Forms and the Decline of the Formal Cause." Studia Neoaristotelica no. 8:143-162.

73. Hettche, Matt. 2010. "Descartes and the Augustinian Tradition of Devotional Meditation: Tracing a Minim Connection." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 48:283-311.

"Contemporary discussions on the literary format of Descartes's Meditations typically focus on two issues. The first is whether Descartes's text resembles and is possibly influenced by the genre of religious devotional exercises, and the second is whether the stylistic devices employed by Descartes are philosophically significant. Building upon the efforts of Gary Hatfield, Bradley Rubidge, and Martial Gueroult, I argue that Descartes is influenced by an Augustinian tradition of spiritual exercise and that this influence is philosophically important for how we understand the cogito. I examine, in particular, the relevance of Marin Mersenne's recently rediscovered treatise L'usage de la raison (1623). This work exhibits features of an Augustinian style of religious meditation, and it is a text that can be easily connected to Descartes."

74. Heyd, Michael. 1995. “Be Sober and Reasonable”. The Critique of Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries. Leiden: Brill.

Chapter 4. Descartes and the Cartesian Philosophy: A Manifestation of Enthusiasm?, pp. 109-143.

75. Hoffman, Paul. 2002. "Descartes's Theory of Distinction." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 64:57-78.

76. Huet, Pierre-Daniel. 2003. Against Cartesian Philosophy (Censura Philosophiae Cartesianae). Amherst: Humanity Books.

Edited, Translated, Annotated and Introduced by Thomas M. Lennon.

77. Hwang, Joseph Wook. 2008. Descartes and the Metaphysics of Sensory Perception.

Unpublished Ph.D. thesis at the University of California, available at ProQuest Dissertation Express, UMI publication number 3332527.

78. ———. 2011. "Descartes and the Aristotelian Framework of Sensory Perception." Midwest Studies in Philosophy no. 35:111-148.

79. Janowski, Zbigniew. 2000. Cartesian Theodicy. Descartes’ Quest for Certitude. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

80. ———. 2001. "How to Read Descartes’ Fourth Meditation: Augustinian Sources of Cartesian Metaphysics." Dionysius no. 19:167-186.

81. Jolley, Nicholas. 2010. "Scientia and Self-knowledge in Descartes." In Scientia in Early Modern Philosophy. Seventeenth-Century Thinkers on demonstrative Knowledge from First Principles, edited by Sorell, Tom; Rogers, G:A:J:; Kraye, Jill, 83-97. Dordrecht: Springer.

82. Jones, Matthew L. 2001. "Descartes's Geometry as Spiritual Exercise." Critical Inquiry no. 28:40-71.

83. Kennington, Richard. 1961. "Descartes' Olympica." Social Research no. 28:171-204.

Reprinted in: R. Kennington, On Modern Origins. Essays in Early Modern Philosophy, Edited by Pamela Kraus and Fran Hunt, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2004, pp. 79-104.

84. Lachterman, David Rapport. 1989. The Ethics of Geometry. New York: Routledge.

Contents: Preface IX; Acknowledgments XVII; 1: Construction as the Mark of Modern 1; 2. The Euclidean Context: Geomentria more ethico demonstrata 25; 3. Descartes' Revolutionary Paternity 124; Notes 206; Bibliography 233; Index 251-255.

85. Larivière, Anthony D. 2009. "Cartesian Method and the Aristotelian-Scholastic Method." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 17:463-486.

86. Lee, Richard A., Jr. 2006. "The Scholastic Resources for Descartes's Concept of God as 'Causa Sui'." Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy no. 3:91-118.

87. Lennon, Thomas M. 2011. "Descartes and the Seven Senses of Indifference in Early Modern Philosophy." Dialogue. Canadian Philosophical Review no. 50:577-602.

88. ———. 2013. "Descartes and Pelagianism." Essays in Philosophy no. 14:194-217.

89. Levi, Anthony. 1964. French Moralists: The Theory of the Passions 1585 to 1649. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

90. Lindenboon, G.A. 1979. Descartes and Medicine. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

91. Maia Neto, José Raimundo;. 2003. "Charron's epoché and Descartes' cogito: the sceptical base of Descartes' refutation of scepticism." In The Return of Scepticism. From Hobbes and Descartes to Bayle, edited by Paganini, Gianni, 81-113. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

92. Mancosu, Paolo. 1996. Philosophy of Mathematics and Mathematical Practice in the Seventeenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 3: Descartes' Géométrie pp. 65-91.

93. Mannning, Gideon. 2013. "Descartes’ Healthy Machines and the Human Exception." In The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy, edited by Garber, Daniel and Roux, Sophie, 237-262. Dordrecht: Springer.

94. Marion, Jean-Luc. 1986. "On Descartes Constitution of Metaphysics." Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal no. 11:21-33.

Reprinted in: Tom Sorell (ed.), Descartes, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999, pp. 57-69.

95. ———. 1999. On Descartes' Metaphysical Prism. The Constitution and the Limits of Onto-Theology in Cartesian Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Eglish translation by Jeffrey L. Kosky of Sur le prisme métaphysique de Descartes, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1986.

96. ———. 1999. Cartesian Questions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

English translation of Questions cartésiennes. Méthode et métaphysique, Paris: Press Universitaires de France, 1991.

Foreword by Daniel Garber.

97. Maritain, Jacques. 1944. The Dream of Descartes, together with some other Essays. New York: Philosophical Library.

Translated by Mabelle L. Anderson.

98. Matthews, Gareth B. 1992. Thought's Ego in Augustine and Descartes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

99. Menn, Stephen. 1998. Descartes and Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

100. Moreno, Jairo. 2004. Musical Representations, Subjects and Objects. The Construction of Musical Thought in Zarlino, Descartes, Rameau and Weber. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Chapter 2. The Representation of Order: perception and the Early Modern Subject in Descartes's Compendium musicae, pp. 50-84.

101. Mori, Gianluca. 2012. "Hobbes, Descartes, and Ideas: A Secret Debate." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 50:197-212.

"The author proposes that the anonymous letter dated May 19, 1641, which Mersenne delivered to Descartes, should be attributed to Thomas Hobbes. Although the text is known, it is usually considered not so much in itself as for Descartes’s two replies, which contain important clarifications on the proof of God’s existence. Hobbes’ hand is revealed by various thematic, conceptual, and lexical analogies and, above all, by the presence of two doctrines characteristic of his thought: 1) the denial of the existence of intellectual ideas; 2) the assertion that the nature of God can only be described by the proposition “God exists”. Attribution to Hobbes of the May 19th 1641 letter throws new light on the debate that followed Descartes’s Meditations as well as on Mersenne’s role."

102. Normore, Calvin G. 1986. "Meaning and Objective Being: Descartes and His Sources." In Essays on Descartes’ Meditations, edited by Okseberg Rorty, Amélie, 223-241. Berkeley: University of California Press.

103. ———. 1993. "The Necessity in Deduction: Cartesian Inference and Its Medieval Background." Synthese no. 96:437-454.

"Although we now dismiss Kant's suggestion that logic was already essentially a completed science, we ourselves embrace its ghost, the idea that the conception of logical inference with which we are most familiar is just the common conception of our illustrious philosophical ancestors. This ghost works mischief. It causes us to think whiggishly of the history of logic and so lends respectability to the thought that only since 1879 has there been great logic. More concretely, I shall argue here, the idea that were is and always has been a single dominant conception of valid inference (ours) blinds us to part of Descartes's project. By setting that project against its medieval background I hope to revive our sense of both its strangeness and its possibilities."

104. O'Mahoney, Paul. 2013. "Christian Inspiration in Descartes' Olympic Dreams." Heythrop Journal no. 54:371-384.

105. Paganini, Gianni. 2009. "Descartes and Renaissance Skepticism: The Sanches Case." In Skepticism in the Modern Age: Building on the Work of Richard Popkin, edited by Maia Neto, José Raimundo; Paganini, Gianni; Lursen, John Christian, 249-267. Leiden: Brill.

106. ———. 2011. "The Quarrel over Ancient and Modern Scepticism: Some Reflections on Descartes and His Context." Revista Estudos Hum(e)anos no. 2:32-50.

Abstract. "Like every original and fruitful research programme, that of Richard Popkin has inspired other interpretations that ended up by appearing as rivals to the History of Skepticism. It is certainly not by chance that only after Popkin had rediscovered the importance played by the rebirth of skepticism, an intense debate rose about the differences, the values and the possible superiority of the moderns over the ancients concerning the extent of doubt: a kind of a querelle des anciens et des modernes in order to establish whether and how the former or the latter outdid each other in coherence and radicality. One could object that this dispute has already been articulated in our modern philosophical archetypes, going back at least to Hegel and his critic Kierkegaard: the first, as is well known, supported the ancients, claiming in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy that Greek skepticism had been much deeper and all- encompassing than Cartesian doubt, whereas the second, starting with Johannes Climacus’s pseudoepigraphic work, backed up the moderns, stressing the break between the era of modern and the astonishment or immediacy typical of the Greeks. De omnibus dubitandum est: by this Cartesian quote Kierkegaard characterized the modern age whose novelty could be summarized for him in three sentences: “1) Philosophy starts in doubt; 2) Doubt is required in order to practice philosophy: 3) Modern philosophy begins in doubt”."

107. Panza, Marco. 1997. "Classical Sources for the Concepts of Analysis and Synthesis." In Analysis and Synthesis in Mathematics. History and Philosophy, edited by Otte, Michael and Panza, Marco, 365-414. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

108. Perler, Dominik. 2013. "What are Faculties of the Soul? Descartes and his Scholastic Background." In Continuity and Innovation in Medieval and Modern Philosophy. Knowledge, Mind, and Language, edited by Marenbon, John, 9-38. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Descartes famously claimed that a human soul is a single substance without any parts. But he also affirmed that the soul has two faculties, namely intellect and will, which act as ‘two concurrent causes’. This looks quite puzzling. How can there be two causes in a single and indivisible substance? What is their ontological status? And how do they act? This chapter discusses these questions, paying particular attention to Descartes' scholastic background. It argues that there was no unified scholastic doctrine. Descartes rejected Suárez's theory, which took faculties to be really distinct parts and inner agents of the soul, while defending Ockham's theory, which considered them to be mere ways of acting of a single soul. The two explanatory models gave rise to different accounts of the unity of the soul."

109. Perrin, Casey. 2008. "Descartes and the Legacy of Ancient Skepticism." In A Companion to Descartes, edited by Broughton, Jane and Carriero, John, 52-65. Malden: Blackwell.

110. Popkin, Richard Henry. 1954. "Charron and Descartes. The Fruits of Systematic Doubt." Journal of Philosophy no. 51:831-837.

111. Pyle, Andrew. 2013. "Faculties of the Soul: Response to Dominik Perler." In Continuity and Innovation in Medieval and Modern Philosophy. Knowledge, Mind, and Language, edited by Marenbon, John, 39-50. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Descartes famously claimed that a human soul is a single substance without any parts. But he also affirmed that the soul has two faculties, namely intellect and will, which act as ‘two concurrent causes’. This looks quite puzzling. How can there be two causes in a single and indivisible substance? What is their ontological status? And how do they act? This chapter discusses these questions, paying particular attention to Descartes' scholastic background. It argues that there was no unified scholastic doctrine. Descartes rejected Suárez's theory, which took faculties to be really distinct parts and inner agents of the soul, while defending Ockham's theory, which considered them to be mere ways of acting of a single soul. The two explanatory models gave rise to different accounts of the unity of the soul."

112. Rabouin, David. 2010. "What Descartes knew of mathematics in 1628?" Historia Mathematica no. 37:428-459.

113. Reif, Patricia. 1969. "The Textbook Tradition in Natural Philosophy, 1600-1650." Journal of the History of Ideas no. 30:17-32.

114. Robertson, Neil, McOuat, Gordon, and Vinci, Tom, eds. 2008. Descartes and the Modern. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

115. Ross, George MacDonald. 1988. "Hobbes and Descartes on the relation between language and consciousness." Synthese no. 75:217-229.

116. Rozemond, Marleen. 1998. Descartes's Dualism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

117. Sabra, Abdelhamid I. 1981. Theories of Light from Descartes to Newton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter One: Descartes' Theory of Explanation and the Foundation of His Theory of Light, 17; Chapter Two: Descartes' Doctrine of the Instantaneous Propagation of Light and his Explanation of the Rainbow and Colours 46; Chapter Three: Descartes' Explanation of Reflection. Fermat's Objections 69; Chapter Four: Descartes' Explanation of Reflection. Fermat's 'Refutations' 105-115.

118. Sasaki, Chikara. 2003. Descartes's Mathematical Thought. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Review by Emily Grosholz, Philosophia Mathematica, 13, 2005, pp. 337-342.

119. Scaglione, Aldo. 1990. "The Origins of Syntax: Descartes or the Modistae?" In History and Historiography of Linguistics. Vol. I, edited by Niederehe, Hans-Josef and Koerner, Konrad, 339-347. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

120. Schmaltz, Tad M. 1997. "Descartes on Innate Ideas, Sensation, and Scholasticism: the Response to Regius." In Studies in Seventeenth-Century European Philosophy, edited by Stewart, M. A., 33-73. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

121. ———. 2008. Descartes on Causation. New York: Oxford University Press.

122. ———. 2014. "Efficient Causation: From Suárez to Descartes." In Efficient Causation. A History, edited by Schmaltz, Tad M., 139-164. New York: Oxford University Press.

123. Schuster, John. 2012. "Physico-mathematics and the search for causes in Descartes’ optics – 1619-1637." Synthese no. 185:467-499.

"One of the chief concerns of the young Descartes was with what he, and others, termed “physico-mathematics”. This signalled a questioning of the Scholastic Aristotelian view of the mixed mathematical sciences as subordinate to natural philosophy, non explanatory, and merely instrumental. Somehow, the mixed mathematical disciplines were now to become intimately related to natural philosophical issues of matter and cause. That is, they were to become more ’physicalised’, more closely intertwined with natural philosophising, regardless of which species of natural philosophy one advocated. A curious, short-lived yet portentous epistemological conceit lay at the core of Descartes’ physico-mathematics—the belief that solid geometrical results in the mixed mathematical sciences literally offered windows into the realm of natural philosophical causation—that in such cases one could literally “see the causes”. Optics took pride of place within Descartes’ physico-mathematics project, because he believed it offered unique possibilities for the successful vision of causes. This paper traces Descartes’ early physico-mathematical program in optics, its origins, pitfalls and its successes, which were crucial in providing Descartes resources for his later work in systematic natural philosophy. It explores how Descartes exploited his discovery of the law of refraction of light—an achievement well within the bounds of traditional mixed mathematical optics—in order to derive—in the manner of physico-mathematics—causal knowledge about light, and indeed insight about the principles of a “dynamics” that would provide the laws of corpuscular motion and tendency to motion in his natural philosophical system."

124. Schuster, John A. 1977. Descartes and the Scientific Revolution, 1618-1644. An Interpretation.

Unpublished Ph. Dissertation, available at ProQuest Dissertation Express ref. number: 7800287.

125. ———. 1986. "Cartesian Method as Mythic Speech: A Diachronic and Structural Analysis." In The Politics and Rhetoric of Scientific Method. Historical Studies edited by Schuster, John A. and Yeo, Richard R., 33-95. Dordrecht: Reidel.

126. ———. 2013. Descartes-Agonistes. Physico-mathematics, Method & Corpuscular-Mechanism 1618-33. New York: Springer.

127. Sebba, Gregor. 1987. The Dream of Descartes. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Assembled from manuscripts and edited by Richard A. Watson.

128. Secada, Jorge. 2000. Cartesian Metaphysics. The Late Scholastic Origins of Modern Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

129. Sepper, Dennis. 1996. Descartes's Imagination: Proportion, Images, and the Activity of Thinking. Berkeley: University of California Press.

130. Shapiro, Lisa. 2011. "Descartes on Human Nature and the Human Good." In The Rationalists: Between Tradition and Innovation, edited by Fraenkel, Carlos, Perinetti, Dario and Smith, Justin E.H., 13-26. Dordrecht: Springer.

131. Shapiro, Lionel. 2012. "Objective Being and “Offness” in Descartes." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 84:378-418.

132. Smith, A. Mark. 1987. Descartes' Theory of Light and Refraction: A Discourse on Method. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society.

133. Sorell, Tom. 2010. "Scientia and the Sciences in Descartes." In Scientia in Early Modern Philosophy. Seventeenth-Century Thinkers on demonstrative Knowledge from First Principles, edited by Sorell, Tom; Rogers, G:A:J:; Kraye, Jill, 71-82. Dordrecht: Springer.

134. Spruit, Leen. 1994. Species intelligibilis from Perception to Knowledge. Leiden: Brill.

Volume One: Classical Roots and Medieval Discussions (1994); Volume Two: Renaissance Controversies, Later Scholasticism, and the Elimination of the Intelligible Species in Modern Philosophy (1995).

On Descartes see: Volume Two, Chapter XI. Modern Philosophy: From Species to Idea 1. Descartes: Innatism and perceptual ideas pp. 353-390.

135. ———. 1999. "Applicatio mentis: Descartes' Philosophy of Mind and Renaissance Noetics." In Descartes et la Renaissance, edited by Emmanuel, Faye, 271-291. Paris: Champion.

136. Thorndike, Lynn. 1958. "The Cursus Philosophicus or Physicus before Descartes." In A History of Magic and Experimental Science. Vol. VII, 372-425. New York: Columbia University Press.

137. Trentman, John A. 1982. "Scholasticism in the Seventeenth Century." In The Cambridge History of Later Medieval philosophy. From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism, 1100-1600, edited by Kretzmann, Norman; Kenny, Anthony; Pinborg, Jan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

138. Van Berkel, Klaas. 2000. "Descartes's debt to Beeckman: inspiration, cooperation, conflict." In Descartes' Natural Philosophy, edited by Gaukroger, Stephen and Schuster, John A., 46-69. New York: Routledge.

139. Ven, Jeroen van de. 2004. "Se nihil daturum -- Descartes’s Unpublished Judgement of Comenius’ Pansophiae Prodromus (1639)." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 12:369-386.

140. Wells, Norman J. 1961. "Descartes and the Scholastics Briefly Revisited." New Scholasticism no. 2:172-190.

Reprinted in: Willis Doney (ed.), Eternal Truths and the Cartesian Circle, New York, Garland, 1987, pp. 52-71.

141. ———. 1965. "Descartes and the Modal Distinction." Modern Schoolman no. 43:1-22.

142. ———. 1966. "Descartes on Distinction." In The Quest for the Absolute, edited by Adelmann, Frederick J., 104-134. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

"In view of some recent research, (1) the stage would seem to be set to make a beginning with a long-standing suggestion of Professor Gilson to compare Descartes' doctrine on distinctions with that of Francis Suarez. (2) Accordingly, one would expect that the immediate point of departure for such a comparison would be their respective interpretations of the formal distinction of Duns Scotus. This would then introduce the more formal discussion of distinctions in each man. A closing consideration should then be devoted to the doctrine of each on essence and existence since this is the context in which Descartes frames a very important statement of his position on distinctions. In short, then, one should confront Descartes on Scotus, then on distinctions and finally on essence and existence. The same confrontation should then be made with Suarez." (p. 104)

(...)

"In regard to Descartes, the primary focus will be first on his reply to the objections of Caterus to his Meditations; (4) then on his Principles (5) and finally on one of Descartes' letters. (6)" (p. 105)

(1) T. J. Cronin, S.J., "Eternal Truths in the Thought of Suarez and of Descartes," The Modern Schoolman, XXVIII (1961), 269-288; XXXIX (1961), 23-38. See also his briefer statement "Eternal Truths in the Thought of Descartes and of His Adversary," Journal of the History of Ideas, XXI (1960), 553-559. My own article, "Descartes and the Scholastics Briefly Revisited," The New Scholasticism, XXXV (1961), 172-190 goes behind Suarez to the Thomistae. Leonhard Gillen, S.J., "Uber die Beziehungen Descartes' zur zeitgenössischen Scholastik," Scholastik, XXXII (1957), 41-66. These articles concern Descartes' knowledge of Suarez and Scholasticism. Another article of mine "Suarez, Historian and Critic of the Modal Distinction Between Essential Being and Existential Being," The New Scholasticism, XXXVI (1962), 419-444, contains information on Suarez' ambiguous position in regard to Scotus’ formal-modal distinction. This is important for any ultimate comparison with Descartes' attitude on the same question and for his doctrine on distinction in general.

(2) Index scolastico-cartésien, (Paris: Alcan, 1913), p. 87, where, in the context of the term, Distinction, wherein Descartes has insisted that the formal distinction of Scotus "non differre a modali" and following a text of Suarez on this point in Scotus, Professor Gilson notes: "C’est sans aucun doute à cette interprétation de la distinction formelle de Duns Scot qu'il faut rapporter le texte [AT] IV, 350, 13-16, où Descartes pose trois distinctions: 'Realem, Modalem et Formalem, sivc rationis ratiocinatae,’ Si l'on remarque en outre qu’au texte [AT] VII, 120, 15 et 24-25, Descartes réduit comme Suarez cette même distinction formelle à la distinction modale; si l’on remarque enfin que, parmi toutes les classifications possibles des distinctions. Descartes choisit précisément celle de Suarez, on sera conduit à penser que Suarez peut être considéré comme la source probable de Descartes en ce qui concerne la doctrine des distinctions...".

(4) Resp. Iae; VII. 120.15 - 121.14. All references to works of Descartes are to the Adam-Tannery edition. So the above reference indicates Descartes’ reply to the first objections to his Meditations, ed. Adam-Tannrry, vol. VII, page 120, line 15 to page 121, line 14.

(5) Prin. Phil., I, 60-62; VIII. 28.18-30.25.

(6) To X; IV. 348.7 - 350.29. [Lettre à Mesland [?] , Egmond 154 ou 1646, O VIII, 1, pp. 634-635; B 536.]

143. ———. 1967. "Objective Being: Descartes and His Sources." Modern Schoolman no. 45:49-61.

144. ———. 1977. "Suárez, Descartes, and the Objective Reality of Ideas." New Scholasticism no. 51.

145. ———. 1979. "Old Bottles and New Wine: A Rejoinder to J. C. Doig." New Scholasticism no. 53:515-523.

"This paper is a criticism of an article in the same journal by J. C. Doig, Suárez, Descartes and the objective reality of ideas. On the basis of primary and secondary source materials, it is made clear that Doig's exclusively extramental interpretation of Suárez's objective concept is insensitive to the obvious intramental dimensions of that teaching. Thus Doig's claim of a doctrinal discontinuity between Suárez and Descartes is found wanting due to a failure to consider Suárez's position on the realism of the possibles, their role in scientific knowledge in general, and the part they play in metaphysics."

146. ———. 1984. "Material Falsity in Descartes, Arnauld, and Suárez." Journal of Philosophy no. 22:25-50.

147. ———. 1990. "Objective Reality of Ideas in Descartes, Caterus, and Suárez." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 28:33-61.

148. ———. 1993. "Descartes' Idea and Its Sources." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 67:513-535.

"An examination of the sources of Descartes' remark to Hobbes that his use of the term "idea" derives from the use of it by the philosophers to designate the "forms of perception" in the divine mind. The texts of Fonseca and Suárez on exemplary causality on both human and divine levels are analyzed and presented as available proximate sources of Descartes' allusion. The role played the distinction between the formal and objective concepts in both sources is examined and related to Descartes' use of the same distinction."

149. ———. 1994. "Objective Reality of Ideas in Arnauld, Descartes, and Suárez." In The Great Arnauld and Some of His Philosophical Correspondents, edited by Kremer, Elmer J., 138-183. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

150. ———. 1998. "Descartes and Suárez on Secondary Qualities: A Tale of Two Readings." Review of Metaphysics no. 51:565-604.

151. ———. 2002. "Eustache of St. Paul and Eternal Essences." Modern Schoolman no. 74:277-304.

152. ———. 2003. "The Conimbricenses, Descartes, Arnauld, and the Two Ideas of the Sun." Modern Schoolman no. 81:27-56.

153. ———. 2008. "Descartes and the Coimbrans on Material Falsity." Modern Schoolman no. 85:271-316.

154. Wilson, Catherine. 2008. "Descartes and Augustine." In A Companion to Descartes, edited by Broughton, Jane and Carriero, John, 33-51. Malden: Blackwell.

155. ———. 2008. "Soul, Body and World: Plato's Timaeus and Descartes's Meditations." In Platonism at the Origins of Modernity. Studies on Platonism and Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Hedley, Douglas and Hutton, Sarah, 177-191. Dordrecht: Springer.

156. Yrjönsuuri, Mikko. 1999. "The Scholastic Background of ‘Cogito ergo sum’." Acta Philosophica Fennica no. 64:47-70.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Christian Wolff's Ontology: Existence as "Complement of Possibility"

Being and Existence

"Let us open Wolff's Ontology and read his Preface: "Prime Philosophy (namely, metaphysics) was first laden by the Scholastics with enviable praise, but, ever after the success of Cartesian philosophy, it fell into disrepute and has become a laughing stock to all." (10) What Wolff clearly sees then is that, since the time when Descartes "grew weary of metaphysics," there still may have been metaphysicians, but there has been no metaphysics. As a distinct science, metaphysics has simply ceased to be. And Kant himself was only echoing Wolff when he wrote in his Preface to the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason: "There was a time when metaphysics used to be called the queen of sciences ... Now, in our own century, it is quite fashionable to show contempt for it." Our own century here is the eighteenth century, which was the century of both Wolff and Kant.

When he made up his mind to put a stop to that technical decadence in the field of philosophy, Wolff was keenly conscious of carrying on the work of the great Scholastics. What they had done was not perfect, but that was the thing to do, and, since it could be done better, Wolff himself was going to do it all over again. Let us be as precise as possible. Wolff did not wish to be reproached with bringing back a Scholastic philosophy that was dead. In point of fact, that was not what he wanted to do. But he was claiming the right to retain at least Scholastic terminology, for all there was to be done about it was, keeping the same terms, to build up better definitions and more exactly determined propositions. (11)

This is what Wolff set about doing first with the term "being," and it is typical of his attitude that he can reach it only through the notion of possibility. "Being," Wolff says, "is what can exist and, consequently, that with which existence is not incompatible: Ens dicitur quod existere potest, consequenter cui existentia non repugnat. (12) In other words, what is possible is a being: Quod possible est, ens est. (13) Besides, Wolff adds, this is a metaphysical notion which is accepted by all, and which exactly tallies with common language. "Being," "something," "possible;" here are so many words that are practically synonymous, and metaphysics does nothing more than bring their implicit meanings out in the open. True enough, what is commonly called a "being" is something that exists, but he who understands that a A is being because it exists will as easily understand that, if A exists, it is because it can exist.(14) Possibility then is the very root of existence, and this is why the possibles are commonly called beings. The proof of it is that we commonly speak of beings past or future, that is, of beings that no longer exist or that do not yet exist. In any case, their being has nothing to do with actual existence; it is, though a merely possible being, yet a being.

In order to probe more deeply into the knowledge of being, what we have to do is to inquire into the causes of its possibility. The first one is, of course, the one we have already mentioned, namely, the absence of inner contradiction; but this is not enough. In order to posit a being, one must ascribe to its notion such constituent parts as are not only compatible among themselves, but are its primary constituent parts. The primary constituents of a being are those which are neither determined by some element foreign to that being, nor determined by any one of the other constituent elements of the same being. If an element supposedly foreign to some being were determining with respect to any one of those elements which enter its constitution, then it would not be foreign to it; it would be one of its constituent elements. On the other hand, if some of the constituent elements of a being determine each other, then we must retain only the determining elements as constituent parts of that being.(15) In short, every being is made up of such elements as are both compatible and prime. Such elements shall be called the "essentials" of being (essentialia), because they constitute the very essence. Hence this conclusion, whose full significance it is superfluous to stress: Essence is what is conceived of being in the first place and, without it, being cannot be.(16) Thus, the essence of the equilateral triangle is made up of the number three and of the equality of its sides; again, the essence of virtue is made up of a habit (habitus) of the will and of the conformity with natural law of the acts which follow from that habit. Let any one of those conditions be altered, there is left neither equilateral triangle nor virtue; let them be all posited, then there is equilateral triangle and virtue. The presence of the "essentials" of the thing is therefore both necessary and sufficient to define its essence. Those "essentials" always entail certain properties which are inseparable from them and, since a thing never is without its "essentials," it is also inseparable from the thing. Such properties are called the "attributes" of being. As to its "modes," they are such ulterior determinations which are neither determined by the essence nor contradictory with it. The attributes of a being are always given with it, but not its modes, which are what the Scholastics used to call "accidents."

In a being so conceived, the "essentials" obviously are the very core of reality. Taken as non-contradictory, they ensure the possibility of being. It is through its "essentials" that a being is possible: Per essentialia ens possibile est. Now, since the essence of being is one with its possibility, he who acknowledges the intrinsic possibility of a thing knows also its essence. We are saying "acknowledges," and rightly so, for it is possible to account for the attributes of being from the "essentials" of that being, but there is no accounting for the fact that those "essentials" belong to it. Since they are prime, there is nothing above them from which they could be deduced. As to the modes, they cannot be deduced from their essence either. For, what makes up an essence accounts for the fact that such and such a mode may belong to a certain being; it does not account for the fact that such a mode actually does belong to it. The reason for the actual presence of modes in a given being must always be looked for outside that being. We call "external" those beings which constitute the sufficient reason for the actual presence, in a given being, of modes which cannot be sufficiently accounted for by its essence alone. The essence then is for any being the sufficient reason for the actual presence of its attributes and of the possible presence of its modes(17) Hence its nominal definition: "Essence is that which is conceived of a being in the first place, and in which is to be found the sufficient reason why all the rest either actually belongs to it or else may belong to it: Essentia definiri potest per id quod primum de ente concipitur et in quo ratio continetur sufficiens, cur caetera vel actu insint, vel finesse possint." (18)

The scrupulously exacting method which Wolff was using in his determination of being was entirely his own, but the results achieved by that method had really nothing new. And Wolff himself was clearly aware of it." (pp. 114-116)

Notes

(10) Wolff, Ontologia, beginning of the Preface. Cf.: "Si Cartesius non fastidio philosophiae primue correplus fuisset ..."

(11) Wolff, Ontologia, n. 12, pp. 4-5

(12) Ibid., n. 134, p. 60

(13) Ibid., n. 135, p. 60

(14) Ibid., n. 139, p. 61

(15) Ibid., n. 142, p. 62

(16) Ibid., n. 144, p. 63

(17) Ibid., n. 167, p. 77

(18) Ibid., n. 168, p. 72

References

Christian Wolff, Philosophia prima sive Ontologia methodo scientifica pertractata ua omnis cognitionis humanae principia continentur, edit. nova (Veronae, 1789), [first edition 1730].

From: Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies 1952 (Second edition corrected and enlarged; first edition 1949).

"In Christian Wolff we have a Leibniz purged of poetry, but also purged of some exaggerated conceptions, for example, the drowsy or slumbering monads, and the phenomenal character of space. All is built into an immense, systematic exposition, magnificent in its formal rigour and clarity, and building on, though also improving, the ontological, cosmological, and theological doctrines of the Aristotelian schoolmen and, in particular, of Suárez. (The improvements are possibly due to Platonizing influences, which modified the ingrained love of the individual instance so characteristic of the Aristotelians.) Christian Wolff expounded his systematization both in a German version (the Logic, Metaphysics, Ethics, Politics, Natural Theology, etc.), and also in a Latin version (a Logic (1728), an Ontology (1730), a Cosmology (1731), a Psychology (1732 and 1734), a Natural Theology (1736-7), and a Universal Practical Philosophy (1738-9)). There are also many political writings of interest. To this vast system, with its innumerable Epigonoi -- Bilfinger, Meier, Rüdiger, Baumgarten, Tetens, Crusius, and so on -- Kant made his great emendations, which have been exaggerated into the idealisms, and later the positivisms, by which the thought and even the public policy of Europe has been bemused. What is, however, amazing is the immense volume and solid merit of Wolff's works, and the almost total misunderstanding and neglect that has since enshrouded them, so that copies of Wolffian books are hardly to be found in libraries outside of Germany.

(...)

Wolff's Ontology begins (27) with the assertion of the two laws of contradiction and sufficient reason, both fundamental to the assertion that something is, or that it is not. The former requires that what is must be free from inner conflict, the latter that, if it does not, like a necessary being, have a reason for being in its own nature, it must depend on such a reason in something other than itself. The law of causation, as we ordinarily understand it, is for Wolff only a special form of the law of sufficient reason, pertinent to temporal, changeable things and their states (71). From these principles Wolff proceeds to the consideration of the metaphysical modalities, of which the most fundamental is the possible, the negation of the self-contradictory, or logically impossible. Everything actual, he holds, is by the law of contradiction possible, but he here embraces some invalid theorems, for instance, that a possible consequence can only have possible premisses. Obviously, modal logic is still insecure, though Wolff's treatment of apagogic proof in 98 is of some interest. From Wolffian principles it follows that the notion of an entity not wholly determinate is 'imaginary', and that the indeterminate is only what is for us determinable, and that it will have to be determined by a sufficient reason (111, 117). There is no room in Wolffianism, any more than in Leibnizianism, for radical alternativity: Kant, however, will diverge from this position under the influence of Crusius.

All this leads, however, to Wolff's treatment of what he calls an entity: an entity is defined as any thing which can exist, to which existence is not repugnant. Thus warmth in this stone is a something, an entity, since a stone certainly can be warm or a warm stone can exist. There does not need to be any actual stone-warmth for us to have an entity before us. An entity is, however, rightly called fictitious or imaginary, if it lacks existence, which does not, however, make it less of an entity. These near-Meinongian positions are of great contemporary interest, and form the spring-board for much of Kant's later criticisms of the ontological proof, which is Wolffian enough to treat 100 possible dollars as if they certainly vere something. Wolff goes on to draw the distinctions of essential features and attributes, on the one hand, which always must belong to an entity, and its modes, on the other hand, which are merely the characters that it can have and also can not have. Obviously, however, something must be added to possibility to raise it to full existence, and this Wolff is simply content to call the possibility-complement ( 174). It rather resembles the modal moment of Meinong. He proposes to deal with this possibility-complement separately in his discussions of different spheres, for example, theology, cosmology, and psychology, since the intrinsically sufficient reason which makes God an actual existent is not at all like the extrinsically sufficient reason which underlies existence in the cosmological sphere. It is deeply characteristic, and deeply interesting, that Wolff should make actuality a mere enrichment of the possible, not the latter an impoverished abstraction from the former. The efforts of Wittgenstein, Carnap, Ryle, Quine, and so on have shown the hopelessness of trying to elucidate the possible in terms of the actual: the traditional priority may well prove more successful. Both tendencies are of course manifest in Kant's treatments of possibility, the 'modern' in, for example, the Postulates of Empirical Thought, and the Wolffian in many 'transcendental' contexts. Individuation does not, for Wolff, represent a going beyond the possible. It merely occurs where we have the complete determination which the logico-ontological laws require, and there are, accordingly, imaginary and fictitious as well as real ones. The latter may be far more determinate than any characters in fiction, but they will still lack a final nuance of determination. There are, likewise, incompletely determinate specific and generic properties of individuals, all of which must rank among imaginary entities, though some, connected with actual instances, will obviously be less imaginary than others. Wolff has here developed points which Meinong was later to develop in his doctrine of complete and incomplete objects, and there are also many anticipations of the modern theory of possible worlds." (pp. 38-41)

From: John Niemeyer Findlay, Kant and the Transcendental Object. A Hermeneutic Study, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1981.

"One cannot plunge directly into Wolffian natural theology, however, since it must be viewed within the closely knit context of a certain conception of philosophy and ontology. From Wolff's opening definition of philosophy as 'the science of possibles, in so far as they can be' or have an essential nature, it is evident that his is a system of possibility and essence in which the role of existence is a subordinate one. It is not a totally de-existentialized philosophy; it is one in which knowable and systematically exploitable being primarily means the possible essence and in which existence is admitted only by virtue of some correlation it has with this essence. What does not stand out so clearly is the reason why Wolff settled upon this essentialist viewpoint and yet never totally submerged the distinctive reality of existence.

Part of the explanation comes from Wolff's complex intellectual heritage. He was just as thoroughly familiar with the critical work of the skeptics and empiricists as with the rationalist tradition. The skeptical arguments convinced him of the impossibility of demonstratively defending our knowledge of the existing external world, either through a rationalist deduction or through an empiricist inference. Hence he concluded that it was too risky to base his philosophy upon the thesis of the reality of the material universe; his fundamental definitions remained deliberately neutral about the independent existence of a world corresponding with our ideas. This skeptically generated neutrality inclined him to focus upon the essential and the possible, without making any primary commitments about sensible existents. Nevertheless, the British scientists and philosophers also convinced him of the danger of entirely ignoring the existential aspect.

As a compromise, Wolff calls for a union in holy matrimony of three kinds of human knowledge: historical, philosophical, and mathematical. Historical knowledge means the empirical assurance, gained mainly through sense experience and experiments, that certain things exist or occur. Wolff hails it as the foundation of all philosophy and the constant guide of all inferential reasoning. Yet he wavers between saying that empirical knowledge assures us indubitably that certain things actually do exist and saying that it merely makes us reflectively aware of having the ideas of things that can exist or come to be. This ambiguity about the import of sense experience stems from his basic epistemological neutrality and leads him to depreciate its certainty. Experiential certainty concerns the bare fact (real or ideal) and does not extend to the sufficient reason for the fact. Hence philosophical certainty must be non-experiential in its own proper form. Every ounce of it (to use Wolff's own emphatic phrase) derives from the use of the mathematical method, which risks nothing on the real existent but concentrates upon the determinate quantity of possible objects and essential relations. This method enables philosophy to determine with perfect certainty the reasons why objects may come to be or why being is possible. Hence philosophy is primarily a study of the internal essentialia, or essential components, and the external reasons, or causes of the possibility of these essential components. Existence is studied properly in philosophy only to the extent that it can be drawn out with certainty from the known essential structure.

Wolff never removes the radical dichotomy between empirical and mathematico-philosophical certainties, between knowledge of fact and of possible essence. Their matrimonial bond is not based upon some unifying doctrinal principle but rests solely upon Wolff's personal awareness of the need for both approaches. His desire to found philosophy on an existential basis in experience is blocked by the skeptical critique, and he is thereby forced to locate philosophical certainty in the possible essences and their sufficient reasons. And yet he is also unwilling to follow 'Leibniz in overcoming the distinction between truth's of fact and truths of essence by means of the principle of sufficient reason. Leibniz accords the primacy to this principle, since it expresses the dynamic law of quasi-autonomous essences, to which God must give a consent decree governing His creation of the existing world. For Wolff, however,,the essences are unequivocally grounded in the divine intellect and enjoy no quasi-independence. Hence the principle of sufficient reason can give essential connections or reasons for facts, but it cannot furnish any deductive certitude concerning the actual facts themselves or existential productions of the divine will, There is no objectively determining ground which shapes God's existential decisions and closes the gap in man's philosophical system. Hence the principle of sufficient reason must remain subordinate to the principle of contradiction, which provides an indubitable certainty, at least, about the internal consistency and possibility of the essential traits as such.

In conformity with this view of philosophy, Wolff then defines ontology as the science of being, i.e., of that which can exist or that to which existence is not repugnant. In the main, it is the science of essence, namely, "that which is first of all conceived about being, and in which is contained the sufficient reason why other aspects either actually belong to it or can belong to it." Ontology is a strict science precisely because it confines itself to a general study of being as possible or essentially constituted -- he sphere where a mathematically rigorous certitude is obtainable. Existence figures in ontology either obliquely, as the complement of possibility, or negatively, as the furnisher of a norm of non-repugnance. As the directly known act of a thing, it does not come within the scope of ontology, which remains a nonexistential discipline. Because of the nonexistential character of ontology or general metaphysics, Wolff requires three special parts of metaphysics to determine the principles of the possibility of existence in the three main areas of being. Cosmology studies the reasons of being in the contingent, material world; psychology deduces the soul as the sufficient reason for the existence of mental acts; natural theology demonstrates God as the ground of existence for His own attributes and modes, as well as for the existence of the world. Natural theology presupposes these other sciences. From ontology, it draws its general principles and orientation; from cosmology, a factual basis in the material world; from psychology, a basis in the soul and also some special insight into the spiritual perfections which help us to know God's nature.". (pp. 134-136, notes omitted)

From: James Collins, God in Modern Philosophy, Chicago: Henry Regnery Company 1959.

An overview of Philosophia prima sive ontologia

"Wolff's Ontology is a long, systematic treatise of what had been generally called before him "metaphysics" or "first philosophy." The term 'ontology' to refer to this rather traditional discipline had antecedents before Wolff used it in the title of his book, however. In 1647 Clauvergius [Johannes Clauberg] published a treatise with the title Elementa philosophiae sive ontosophia in which he explicitly argued in favor of a more precise name for what was generally called "metaphysics." The primary reason behind the shift of terminology had to do with the object of study of the discipline, which Clauvergius identified with being in general.(10) Wolff, following suit, titled his book Philosophia prima sive ontologia (1729), defining the subject of study as the science of being in general, that is, of being insofar as it is being.(11)

The Ontology, in comparison with the extensive systematic metaphysical treatises of late Scholastics, is fairly short. It is divided into three sections: a section entitled "Prolegomena" and two parts. The Prolegomena deals with the nature of ontology and of the terms and notions with which it concerns itself. In the first of the two parts into which the rest of the treatise is divided, Wolff discusses the notion of being in general and the properties that follow from it. In the second part, he is concerned with the various species of being. The first part is divided in turn into three subsections, dealing respectively with the principles of ontology, the essence and existence of being, and the general attributes of being. After Wolff discusses identity and similarity in Chapter 1, he then deals with singular and universal being in Chapter 2. Thus, the discussion of singularity, which for Wolff is equivalent to individuality, precedes the discussion of necessity, contingency, quantity, quality, relation, truth, perfections, and related notions.(12) It is also worthy of note that in the chapter devoted to individuality and universality, individuality is listed and discussed first.

The relative position that individuality occupies in relation to other fundamental metaphysical notions, including universality, indicates the importance that Wolff attached to it as well as its more fundamental and central role in the Ontology. Not that such importance and central role were something new. Throughout the Middle Ages there had been a progressive shift of emphasis from universality to individuality, which is clearly evident as early as the thirteenth century when Duns Scotus discussed universals in the context of individuals in the Opus oxoniense, contrary to what had been customary before him. This shift is most evident in Suárez's Disputationes metaphysicae, where individuality is given separate, prior, and more extensive treatment than all the other common properties of being.

What is most significant and different structurally speaking about Wolff's Ontology, vis-à-vis the later Scholastic tradition, is something else, namely, the epistemic and methodological considerations that are contained in the beginning of the work. They are found in two places. In the Preface Wolff presents some general statements about his modus operandi, indicating among other things that his aim is to make clear notions that are only confusedly found in common as well as in previous philosophical discourse, and also pointing out that he intends to follow the rigorous mathematical method popular among other modern philosophers. In Section 1, he begins the discussion with an examination of the methodological principles that guide his investigation. The principles in question are the "principle of contradiction" and the "principle of sufficient reason." The methodological concerns expressed both in the Preface and in Section 1 are certainly an indication of the epistemic bent that Wolff gave to the Ontology and that do not seem to have affected the work of many late Scholastics. Suárez's Disputationes, for example, go directly from a discussion on the nature of metaphysics to the discussion of the common properties of being and do not contain in the Preface the kind of procedural comments that characterize the Ontology. What distinguishes Wolff's Ontology, then, is that between the discussion of the nature of metaphysics and of the common properties of being he adds a section on methodological principles and that he prefaces the whole work with a series of remarks on the same topic.

Thus, although the Ontology aims to be a work of metaphysics, from its very beginning we are confronted with epistemic and methodological considerations. Does this mean that its contents suffered from the epistemologism that characterize most other modern metaphysical works? I argue yes at least as far as individuation is concerned." (pp. 222-223)

Notes

(10) Etienne Gilson has discussed at length the implications that Clauvergius's definition of metaphysics and change of terminology had for the discipline in Being and Some Philosophers (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1952), pp. 112ff.

(11) Ontologia, par. 1, p. 1: "Ontologia seu Philosophia prima est scientia entis in genere, seu quatenus ens est." The emphasis in all Latin texts is that of Wolff.

(12) Not all authors use the terms 'singularity' and 'individuality' interchangeably. As far back as the early Middle Ages, Gilbert of Poitiers and others introduced distinctions in their meaning. See my Introduction to the Problem of Individuation in the early Meddle Ages, Munich, Philosophia Verlag, 1986, Chapter 3.

From: Jorge J. E. Gracia, "Christian Wolff on Individuation", in: Kenneth F. Barber and Jorge J. E. Gracia (eds.), Individuation and Identity in Early Modern Philosophy. Descartes to Kant, Albany: State University of New York Press 1994, pp. 219-243.

Christian Wolff - Philosophia prima sive Ontologia (1730)

The Preliminary Discourse on the Philosophy in General (1728)

"The Preliminary Discourse on Philosophy in General presents Wolff's master plan for the synthesis of knowledge. Written in 1728, it was intended to serve as the general introduction to his Latin survey of the branches of systematic philosophy, with subsequent volumes on logic, cosmology, empirical psychology, rational psychology, ontology, natural theology, and moral philosophy. Though in writing the Preliminary Discourse Wolff used many notions he intended to develop more fully in these later volumes, the book nevertheless is a basically self-contained discussion; in fact, this work contains Wolff's clearest presentation of his theory of the division and method of the sciences, and its main historical interest lies along these lines.

The overall outline of Wolff's theory is presented in Chapter One of the Preliminary Discourse. He defines history as knowledge of the facts pertaining to both the material world and the world of consciousness, and as such, history provides the empirical foundation of the sciences. But as Aristotle had pointed out centuries earlier, knowledge of the facts is one thing and knowledge of the reason of the facts is quite another thing. This latter constitutes the proper province of philosophy. His third major division of natural knowledge, namely, mathematics, which deals with our knowledge of the quantity of things, employs a method of extraordinary power which is applicable to philosophy; insofar as philosophy shares in the values of mathematical method, it attains to complete certitude. Thus Wolff recognizes the importance of both the empirical methods of historical knowledge and the rational methods of the mathematical sciences. And for him, philosophy is the common meeting ground of these two methods.

The definition of philosophy presented in Chapter Two is of considerable interest. As the science of the possibles insofar as they can be, philosophy must concern itself both with the intelligibility of the world of the possibles and also with the reasons why certain of these possibles become actual. The former is governed by the Principle of Contradiction while the latter is controlled by the Principle of Sufficient Reason. What this means in brief is that for something to be possible it must be internally consistent. The criterion for determining this mutual consistency and intelligibility of the component elements of a possible is the Principle of Contradiction. However, this principle alone does not explain the fact that some possibles are actual while others are not; the mere internal consistency of a possible does not confer actuality upon it. A full understanding of the actual must go beyond the Principle of Contradiction to include an explanation of why this possible rather than another is actual. This further explanation is what is demanded by the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Furthermore, existence is understood by Wolff to be the final complement in the order of possibility." As a result, all philosophical problems for Wolff deal with the constitution and ordering of possibilities or essences. The two great principles are adequate to govern all of these essentialistic relationships, and the door is thus opened for the casting of the entire philosophical enterprise into the formal, deductive pattern outlined in Chapter Four.

Both the order of demonstration within each individual science and the proper subordination of the various sciences to each other are determined by the demands of one continuous deductive sequence. Wolff explains these relationships in great detail in Chapters Three and Four. The individual parts of philosophy are distinguished exclusively on the basis of subject matter or material object divisions, as is clear from the summary on the following page, and each branch of philosophy is carefully located in its proper place of subordination to the more basic disciplines. Further, according to Wolff, the methods of deductive logic apply universally to all these disciplines." (pp. IX-XI)

From: Richard J. Blackwell, "Introduction" to: Christian Wolff, Preliminary Discourse on Philosophy in General, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill 1963.

Christian Wolff's Classification of Sciences in the Preliminary Discourse to Philosophy in General (1728).

Twin pillars of philosophy: the principles of contradiction and sufficient reason

Wolff's explicit presentation of the Principle of Sufficient Reason occurs at the beginning of his Ontologia. (44) His approach to this Principle and the Principle of Contradiction is not by way of the notion of being and a deduction therefrom, although a cursory glance at the arrangement of his text might lead one to think so, especially after familiarity with later manuals which follow this development. Rather, Wolff makes these "twin pillars of philosophy” more intuitional than deductive; they are the given of the rationalistic mind generating its own data and starting points.(45)

Systematically, the Principle of Sufficient Reason is preceded by the Principle of Contradiction, and Wolff places the foundation of this latter in an obvious experience of mental life: While we are judging something to be, it is impossible at the same time to judge it not to be(46) From this conscious experience of the nature of our minds, we concede without need of proof the proposition enunciated in general terms as the Principle of Contradiction: It cannot happen that one and the same thing be and at the same time not be. Or, another form of the same: If A is B, it is false that the same A is not B.(47)

To demonstrate the fecundity of this basic axiom, Wolff explores its logical implications and leaves little doubt that the principle for him is a purely formal one, a kind of aliquid to which subsequent concepts in his system may be tied. If it were not a true principle, he argues, then the same predicate could and could not pertain to the same subject under the same determinations, and the same proposition could be both false and true at the same time.(48) Besides "contradiction is simultaneity in affirming and denying,"(49) it is contained in two propositions, of which "one takes away what the other posits."

The important point is that the process of building concepts and working out demonstrations is insured by this principle against logical failure. Negatively, it is important to note that while this treatment is placed under ontology and the subject of being in general, yet with no systematic reference to or involvement of existential judgment or sensation, it is not possible to denote this principle as anything more than logical.

Proceeding next to the Principle of Sufficient Reason, Wolff does not make any detailed reference to the question of its relation to the Principle of Contradiction. To anyone following through within the system itself, the question of whether it reduces to the Principle of Contradiction is answered by the fact that the latter is the one systematically prior, and this priority makes reduction possible.(50)

Clearly, the dual sovereignty granted these principles by Leibniz no longer holds. Leibniz had located the relation between the Principle of Contradiction and the Principle of Sufficient Reason in the realm of the rational through his distinction between necessary and contingent truths. Wolff unified that realm of the rational around the Principle of Contradiction.(51) Again we can note the lack of existential reference in the fact that this realm remained distinct from that of the singular concrete sensible data of experience. Under the influence of Locke and the rise of empirical science, Wolff and his successors heightened the reality of this latter realm and deepened the realization and the value of its experience. But the systematic failure to incorporate it into an existential union with the realm of the rational will continue to haunt modern philosophy.

Unity in the order of essence, however, is impressively systematic. The possible as the non-contradictory, we shall see, gives to the Principle of Contradiction a primacy which it can share with no other. The ratio or reason whereby things are understood is ultimately explicable in terms of the opposition between "nothing" and "something," the latter being the systematic coherence of clear and distinct ideas whose right to, and precise determination of, a place in the system ultimately depends on the Principle of Contradiction. The Non-Contradictory is "something."(52)

This application of the primacy of essence to a theory of method grants priority to the Principle of Contradiction over the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and to the Principle of Sufficient Reason over causality. In other words, when Wolff has defined philosophy in terms of possibles rather than causes, he must use ratio instead of causa to describe the object of the metaphysical search, and it is one of the inevitabilities of such a system that "reasons grow more rational and logical; causes, more empirical and real."(53) The deductive method of mathematics becomes the unique method of philosophy, and here-and-now existential reference is obtained by "common sense" joined sometimes with a pious use of Sacred Scripture.

By "Sufficient Reason," Wolff meant whatever explains why something is; it is "that whence it is understood why anything is."(54) He gives two examples: The three sides of the triangle, or rather, its three-sidedness is sufficient reason for the three angles because this suffices for us to understand the triangle as having three angles.(55) In the order of motivation and action he further instances the case of a man rising to his feet out of respect for some person who has just entered the room. From the fact of this entry, plus the reverence due the newcomer, it can be understood why the man in the room rises to his feet and hence a sufficient reason for the action is assigned.

In keeping with his methodology of building notions and demonstrations from previously established concepts, it is now necessary to define the meaning of "nothing" and "something" as involved in the notion of "sufficient reason." This is very simply managed in terms of the basic building block itself, the notion or concept. We call that "nothing" to which no notion corresponds. And "something" is that to which some notion can be attributed or corresponds.(56)" (pp. 35-38)

Notes

(44) Wolff, Philosophia prima, No. 70 ff.

(45) Part I of the Ontologia bears the title, "Concerning Being in General and the Properties Which Flow Therefrom." But this first part immediately divides into two parts: Section 1, "Concerning the Principles of First Philosophy," and Section II, "Concerning Essence and Existence and certain related notions of being." Section I is composed of two chapters devoted to the two Principles, Contradiction and Sufficient Reason. It is only in Section II that he takes up the discussion of being and its notions, a discussion which proceeds by way of the possible and impossible, determined and indetermined, to Chapter III, "Concerning the Notion of Being."

It is within this framework as taken over by the successors of Wolff that we see the Principle of Sufficient Reason migrate back and forth as to relative position in the subject matter. In Bü1lfinger (Dilucidationes), for instance, the Principles come after the treatment of the possible-impossible, necessary and contingent. In John G. Feder's lnstitutiones logicae et metaphysicae (Editio quarta; Gottingen: J. Dietrich, 1797 preface 1777), No. 63, they appear in the Logic, part II, "Concerning the right use of the intellect in seeking truth," Chapter I, "Concerning the principles of truth and the various modes of knowing them." To this migratory characteristic of the Principle of Sufficient Reason we shall return in Chapter Six.

(46) Wolff, Philosophia prima, sive ontologia, No. 27. So also with the Principle of Sufficient Reason, as we shall see below.

(47) "Naturae igitur mentis nostrae nobis conscii ad exempla attendentes sine probatione concedimus propositionem terminis generalibus enunciatem: Fieri non potest, ut idem simul sit & non sit, seu quod perinde est, si A sit B, falsum est idem A non esse B, sive A denotet ens absolute consideratum, sive sub data conditione spectatum." Ibid., No. 28. "Propositio haec: Fieri non potest, ut idem simul sit & non sit, dicitur Principium Contradictionis, ob rationem mox adducendam. Principium autem Contradictionis jam olim adhibuit Aristoteles eodem usi sunt Scholastici in philosophia prima instar axiomatis generalis." Ibid., No. 29.

(48) Ibid., Nos. 30, 31.

(49) Ibid., No. 30.

(50) Wilbur Urban, "The History of the Principle of Sufficient Reason: Its Metaphysical and Logical Formulations,"Princeton Contributions to Philosophy, I, No. 3 April, 1900, p. 27. Urban sees in paragraphs Nos. 66-70 a statement of the Principle of Sufficient Reason as a logical law by means of deduction from the law of contradiction; he finds Wolff, in confusing real grounds with the grounds of knowledge, guilty of a petitio principii. Hans Pichler, Über Christian Wolff's Ontologie (Leipzig, Durr'schen Buchhandlung, 1910), p. 7, calls Wolff's proof a word-play.

(51) Émile Bréhier, Histoire de la philosophie (Paris: Alcan, 1934), Vol. II, part II, 361.

(52) Wolff, Philosophia prima, Nos. 59-59.

(53) Norman Wilde, Friedrich Henrich Jacobi: A Study in the Origin of German Realism (New York: Columbia College, 1894), p. 27.

(54) Wolff, Philosophia prima, No. 56.

(55) The triangle example is reminiscent of Spinoza, and a favorite example with rationalists. Like Leibniz, Wolff was still faced with the threat of Spinozism. With no systematic distinction between the true and the real that is supported by existential reference, his only escape from being pushed into Spinoza's universe-version of "everything that exists has a cause or reason why it exists" was to assert as a starting point the reality of the possible. The primacy of essence has a way of becoming the primacy of the logically necessary, where what is not impossible is necessary, i.e., is.

(56) “Nihilum dicimus, cui nulla respondet notio.” Wolff, Philosophia prima, No. 57; cf. Nos. 59 and 60.

From: John Edwin Gurr, The Principle of Sufficient Reason in some Scholastic Systems 1750-1900, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press 1959.

Existence is a mode of finite beings

"Because the being of Wolff's metaphysics is possible being, existence is not one of its essential determinants. In fact, Wolff defines existence as "... The complement of possibility. And existence is also called Actuality." (44) Because existence is neither an essential of being nor an attribute inseparable from it, existence must be regarded as a mode. Hence it will depend upon a cause outside the being which possesses it. Therefore, as Gilson observes, in the philosophy of Christian Wolff, "the sufficient reason for the actual existence of any finite being is never to be found in that being itself; it always is to be found in another one." (45)

All this is necessary for a proper understanding of Wolff's definition of substance as a subject which is modifiable and perdurable. Because substance in Wolff's ontology is a possible being, it can be readily seen why Wolff calls it a subject which is modifiable rather than modified. The being of Wolff's metaphysics is possible being, not actual or existent being. Modes are characteristics or determinations of existent being, consequently while a substance is conceived as capable of having modes (capax aliorum), these accidental determinations are never actually possessed by it in its ontological or possible existence."

"And this is why, in the philosophy of Christian Wolff, existence is completely excluded from the field of ontology. There are special sciences to deal with all the problems related to existence and none of them is ontology. Are we interested in finding out the sufficient reason for the existence of God or for that of the world? Natural theology will give the answer. Do we want to know how those beings which make up the material world are, though contingent, yet determined? Cosmology will inform us about it. Are we wondering how, in the human mind, the possibles are drawn from potency to act? Psychology holds the key to that problem. When today we make use of the term, 'ontology,' what it means to us is just the same as 'metaphysics.' Not so in the philosophy of Wolff, who needed a new word to designate a new thing. Strictly speaking, an ontology is a metaphysics without natural theology, because it is a metaphysics without existence." (pp. 28-29)

Notes

(44) Wolff, Philosophia prima, No. 174.

(45) Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, p. 119.

From John V. Burns, Dynamism in the Cosmology of Christian Wolff. A Study in Pre-Critical Rationalism, New York: Exposition Press 1966.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Christian Wolff's Metaphysical Works: An Annotated Bibliography

A selection of Wolff's metaphysical works

A complete bibliography of the works by Christian Wolff can be found in:

École Jean. La métaphysique de Christian Wolff. Hildesheim: Georg Olms 1990.

Bibliographie des œuvres de Christian Wolff. In Jus Naturae. Edited by Thomann Marcel. Hildesheim: Georg Olms 1972. pp. LXV-LXXXI.

The Gesammelte Werke [= GW] by Christian Wolff are published in three series (German [22 volumes in 30 tomes, 1965-1983], Latin [37 volumes in 42 tomes, 1962-1983] and Materials under the direction of Jean École (for the philosophical works) by Georg Olms, Hildesheim; the following is a list of the most important metaphysical works.

1. Wolff, Christian. 1712. Vernünftige Gedanken Von Den Kräfften Des Menschlichen Verstandes (Deutsche Logik). Halle.

Reprint of the 1754 edition by Hans Werner Arndt (1965).

2. ———. 1719. Vernünfftige Gedanken Von Gott, Der Welt Und Der Seele Des Menschen, Auch Allen Dingen Überhaupt (Deutsche Metaphysik). Frankfurt-Lipsia.

Reprint of the 1751 edition with an introduction by Charles A. Corr (1983).

3. ———. 1724. Anmerkungen Über Die Vernünftige Gedanken Von Gott, Der Welt Und Der Seele Des Menschen. Frankfurt.

Reprint of the 1740 edition with an introduction by Charles A. Corr (1983).

4. ———. 1728. Philosophia Rationalis Sive Logica (Latin Logic). Praemittitur Discursus Praeliminaris De Philosophia in Genere. Frankfurt-Lipsia.

Reprint of the 1740 edition with introduction, notes and index by Jean École (1983).

5. ———. 1730. Philosophia Prima, Sive Ontologia (Latin Metaphysics). Frankfurt-Lipsia.

Reprint of the 1736 edition by Jean École (1962).

6. ———. 1731. Cosmologia Generalis. Frankfurt-Lipsia.

Reprint of the 1737 edition with an introduction by Jean École (1964).

7. ———. 1732. Psychologia Empirica. Frankfurt-Lipsia.

Reprint of the 1738 edition by Jean École (1968).

8. ———. 1734. Psychologia Rationalis. Frankfurt-Lipsia.

Reprint of the 1740 edition with introduction, notes and index by Jean École (1972).

9. ———. 1736. Theologia Naturalis. Pars Prior, Integrum Systema Complectens, Qua Existentia Et Attributa Dei a Posteriori Demonstrantur. Frankfurt-Lipsia.

Reprint of the 1739 edition with introduction, notes and index by Jean École (1978).

10. ———. 1737. Theologia Naturalis. Pars Posterior Qua Existentia Et Attributa Dei Ex Notione Entis Perfectissimi Et Natura Animae Demonstrantur, Et Atheismi, Deismi, Fatalismi, Naturalismi, Spinosismi, Aliorumque De Deo Errorum Fundamenta Subvertuntur. Frankfurt-Lipsia.

Reprint of the 1741 edition with introduction, notes and index by Jean École (1981).

11. ———. 1738. Philosophia Practica Universalis, Pars Prior. Frankfurt-Lipsia.

Reprint of the 1738 edition with introduction, notes and index by Jean École (1971).

12. ———. 1739. Philosophia Practica Universalis, Pars Posterior. Frankfurt-Lipsia.

With a Postscrit by Winfried Lenders (1979).

13. ———. 1750. Philosophia Moralis, Sive Ethica. Halle.

Second volume 1753. With a Postscrit by Winfried Lenders (two volumes, 1970-1973).

14. ———. 1729. Horae Subsecivae Marburgenses. Frankfurt.

Reprint in three volumes of the edition: Frankfurt 1729, Leipzig 1732, Renger 1735, with an introduction (pp. V-CXXXVIII) by Jean École (1983).

15. ———. 1983. Opuscula Metaphysica. De Differentia Nexus Rerum Sapientis Et Fatalis Necessitatis, Nec Non Systematis Harmoniae Praestabilitae Et Hypothesium Spinosae Luculenta Commentatio, in Qua Simul Genuina Dei Existentiam Demonstrandi Ratio Expenditur Et Multa Religionis Naturalis Capita Illustrantur. - Monitum Ad Commentationem Luculentam De Differentia Nexus Rerum Sapientis Et Fatalis Necessitatis, Quo Nonnulla Sublimia Metaphysicae Ac Theologiae Naturalis Capita Illustrantur. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Critical edition with introduction, notes and index by Jean École.

Translations

English

1. Wolff, Christian. 2003. Logic, or Rational Thoughts on the Powers of the Human Understanding with Their Use and Application in the Knowledge and Search of Truth, Translated from the German of Baron Wolfius, to which is Prefixed a Life of the Author. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Reprint of the original edition of 1770.

2. ———. 1963. Preliminary Discourse on Philosophy in General. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.

Translated with an introduction and notes by Richard J. Blackwell.

Contents: Introduction VII; Selected bibliography XV-XVIII; Chapter One: The thre types of human knowledge: history, philosophy, and mathematics 3; Chapter Two: Philosophy in general 17; Chapter Three: The parts of philosophy 33; Chapter Four: The method of philosophy 59. Chapter Five: The style of philosophy 79; Chapter Six: The freedom to philosophize 88; Index 121-122.

3. ———. 1966. "Selections from Reasonable Thoughts on God, the Word, the Soul of Man, and Things in General." In Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, edited by Beck, Lewis White, 217-222. New York: Free Press.

4. ———. 2017. The Law of Nations Treated According to the Scientific Method. Carmel (Indiana): Liberty Fund.

Translated by Joseph H. Drake; translation revised by Thomas Ahnert; edited and with an Introduction by Thomas Ahnert.

5. ———. 2022. First Philosophy, or Ontology: Treated According to the Scientific Method, Containing the Principles of All Human Cognition Part I §§ 1-78. Thompson (Connecticut): Spring Publications.

6. Richard, Robert J. 1980. " Christian Wolff's Prolegomena to empirical and rational psychology: translation and commentary." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society:227-239.

French

1. Wolff, Christian. 1736. La Logique. Ou réflexions sur les forces de l'entendment humain, et sur leur légitime usage, dans la connaissance de la vérité. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Traduite de l'Allemand sur la cinquième édition, et revue sur toutes les suivantes. Reprint 2000.

2. ———. 2005. "La pensée esthétique de Christian Wolff (Extraits de la Psychologia empirica)." In Aux sources de l'ésthétique, Les débuts de l'ésthétique philosophique, edited by Goubet, Jean-François and Raulet, Gérard, 80-99. Edition de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme.

3. ———. 2006. Discours préliminaire sur la philosophie en général. Paris: Vrin.

Introduction, traduction et notes sous la direction de Th. Arnaud, W. Feuferhahn, J.-F. Goubet et J.-M. Rohrbasser.

Italian

1. ———. 1968. "L'Illuminismo tedesco. II. Christian Wolff." In Grande antologia filosofica. Parte IV. Il pensiero moderno. Vol XV, 1398-1438. Milano: Marzorati.

Antologia di testi scelti da Bruno Bianco estratti dalle seguenti opere: Metafisica tedesca, Metafisica latina, Morale tedesca, Cosmologia generale.

2. ———. 1978. Logica Tedesca. Bologna: Patron.

Traduzione di Raffaele Ciafardone.

Nuova edizione Milano, Bompiani, 2011.

3. ———. 1999. Metafisica Tedesca. Milano: Rusconi.

Testo originale a fronte e traduzione italiana di Raffaele Ciafardone.

4. ———. 2003. Metafisica Tedesca con le Annotazioni alla Metafisica Tedesca. Milano: Bompiani.

Testo originale a fronte e traduzione italiana di Raffaele Ciafardone.

5. De Felice, Federica. 2008. Wolff e Spinoza. Ricostruzione storico-critica dell'interpretazione wolffiana della filosofia di Spinoza. Roma: Aracne.

In Appendice il volume contiene estratti della Theologia Naturalis II di Christian Wolff con testo latino e traduzione italiana a fronte (pp. 194-311).

Spanish

1. ———. 2000. Pensamientos racionales acerca de Dios, el Mundo y el Alma del Hombre, así como sobre todas las cosas en general (Metafísica Alemana). Madrid: Akal Ediciones.

German translations of the Latin works

1. Wolff, Christian. 1996. Einleitende Abhandlung über Philosophie im allgemeinen. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog.

Critical edition of the Latin text with an introduction and a German translation by Günter Gawlick and Lothar Kreimendah.

2. ———. 2005. Erste Philosophie oder Ontologie. Lateinisch-Deutsch. Hamburg: Meiner.

Latin text and German translation of the Introduction and the First and Second Chapters (until § 78) by Dirk Effertz.

Bibliography

A complete bibliography (1305 titles) can be found in:

Biller Gerhard. Wolff nach Kant. Eine Bibliographie. Hildesheim: Georg Olms 2004, with a preface by Jean École (Second updated edition 2009).

This is a selection of studies about Wolff's metaphysics; for the contributions by Jean École see the Bibliographie choisise de Jean École (in French) 1961-1982 and 1984-2008 (with extensive abstracts).

1. "Wolff et la métaphysique." 2002. Archives de Philosophie no. 65.

Table des matières:

Pierre-François Moreau et Jean-Marie Lardic: Présentation 5;

Wolff dans l'histoire de la métaphysique.

Pierre-François Moreau: Wolff et Goclenius 7; Jean-Marie Lardic: Hegel et la métaphysique wolfienne 15;

Quelle place accorder à la psychologie empiriquer dans la métaphysique?

Thierry Arnaud: Le critère du métaphysique chez Wolff. Pourquoi une Psychologie empirique au sein de la métaphysique? 35; Wolf Feuerhahn: Comment la psychologie empirique est-elle née? 47;

L'ontologie et le système.

Jean-Paul Paccioni: L'aptitude à exister et la métaphysique wolfienne 65; Jean-François Goubet: Fondement, principes et unité de la connaissance. Sur la notion wolffienne de système 65;

Science première, physique et morale.

Jacques Croizer: 'Nihil est sine ratione sufficiente cur potius sit quam non sit'. Le principe de raison suffisante et son application dans les Elementa Mechanica de Wolff 105; Stéfanie Buchenau: La connaissance des principes moraux chez Christian Wolff 133-149.

2. "Christian Wolff." 2003. Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 128.

Table des matières: Jean-François Goubet: Psychologie et métaphysique. Autour de Christian Wolff 275; Wolf Fueuerhahn: Entre métaphysique, mathématique, optique et physiologie: la psychométrie au XVIIIe siècle 279; Faustino Fabbianelli: Leibniz, Budde et Wolff. Trois modèles de théodicée 293; Jean-Paul Paccioni: Wolff, l'expérience et la raison non pure 307; Thierry Arnaud: Dans quelle mesure l'Ontologie est-elle fondamentale dans la Métaphysique allemande de Wolff? 323; Jean-François Goubet: Force et facultés de l'âme dans la Métaphysique allemande de Wolff 337; Olivier-Pierre Rudolph: Mémoire, réflexion et conscience chez Christian Wolff 351-360.

3. "Christian Wolff et la pensée encyclopédique européenne. Autour du Discours préliminaire sur la philosophie en général." 2008. Lumières no. 12.

Table des matières:

Introduction.

J.-F. Goubet, F. Fabbianelli et O.-P. Rudolph: Christian Wolff et la pensée encyclopédique européenne. Autour du Discours préliminaire sur la philosophie en généra»;

1. La théorie wolffienne de la connaissance en débat.

M. Favaretti-Camposampiero: Homo inter bestias educatus. Langage et raison à partir du Discursus praeliminaris; P. Girard: La conception de la science selon Wolff et Vico; J.-P. Paccioni: Condillac, Wolff et les principes de la connaissance; O.-P. Rudolph: La connaissance métaphysique chez Wolff et Kant; F. Fabbianelli: Les formes de la connaissance. Une comparaison entre Wolff, Reinhold et Fichte.

Méthode et système.

J. Park: Le problème du système dans le Discours préliminaire et la métaphysique latine; J. I. Gómez Tutor: Ordre et système dans le Discursus; P. Basso: Rien de mathématique dans la methodus mathematica wolfienne. La méthode "mathématique" de Wolff et les objections de Lambert.

Sciences, arts et techniques.

A.-L. Rey: Leibniz et Newton dans Wolff : un précurseur pour les Lumières européennes ?; A. Firode: Euler critique de Wolff : métaphysique wolffienne et physique newtonienne sont-elles compatibles ?; J.-F. Goubet: Wolff et la technologie; S. Buchenau: Le statut méthodique des arts dans les discours encyclopédiques français et allemands; A. Falkenhagen: La conception wolffienne de la science, le classement des parties de la philosophie et certains problèmes d'une poétologie philosophique.

Une philosophie à l'usage de la vie.

J.-M. Rohrbasser: Wolff et le probable; Th. Arnaud: La place de la philosophie pratique dans l'œuvre de Christian Wolff; W. Feuerhahn: La liberté de philosopher: de Halle à Marbourg.

Index nominum; Bibliographie générale.

4. Anderson, R. Lanier. 2008. "The Wolffian paradigm and its discontents: Kant's containment definition of analyticity in historical context." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 87:22-74.

"I defend Kant's definition of analyticity in terms of concept "containment", which has engendered widespread skepticism. Kant deployed a clear, technical notion of containment based on ideas standard within traditional logic, notably genus/species hierarchies formed via logical division. Kant's analytic/synthetic distinction thereby undermines the logico-metaphysical system of Christian Wolff, showing that the Wolffian paradigm lacks the expressive power even to represent essential knowledge, including elementary mathematics, and so cannot provide an adequate system of philosophy. The results clarify the extent to which analyticity sensu Kant can illuminate the problem of a priori knowledge generally."

5. Arnaud, Thierry. 2002. "Le critère du métaphysique chez Wolff: pourquoi une Psychologie empirique au sein de la métaphysique?" Archives de Philosophie no. 65:35-46.

6. ———. 2003. "Dans quelle mesure l'Ontologie est-elle fondamentale dans la Métaphysique allemande de Wolff?" Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 128:323-336.

"The first chapter of the German Metaphysics gathers only nine paragraphs and seems to represent but some kind of a preamble. Hence one may feel that metaphysics begins only with paragraph 10 opening the ontological part of the text with the contradiction principle.

Yet Wolff already mentions a few considerations in this first part that are extremely close to the beginning of his philosophy: he presents from the start something very similar to a cogito. Moreover the assets of this first chapter are recaptured whenever every one of the five following chapters opens. Would there be therein sufficient matter at stake to evidence that the Wolffian Metaphysics is grounded in a psychological experience?

Hence the author tests here such a hypothesis through the successive analysis of the status of Ontology, of Logics and of empirical Psychology, through a joint reading of the German Metaphysics and of the German Logics."

7. ———. 2004. "Où commence la Métaphysique allemande de Christian Wolff?" In Die Psychologie Christian Wolffs. Systematische und historische Untersuchungen, edited by Rudolph, Oliver-Pierre and Goubet, Jean-François, 63-76. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

8. Arndt, Hans Werner. 1965. "Christian Wolffs Stellung zur Ars characteristica combinatoria." Filosofia:743-752.

Reprinted in: Autour de la philosophie Wolffienne, pp. 299–308.

9. ———. 1971. Methodo scientifica pertractatum. Mos geometricus und Kalkülbegriff in der philosophischen Theorienbildung des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

See Chapter V: 'Methodus scientifica' und 'Mathesis Universalis' in der Methodenlehre Christian Wolffs pp. 125-147.

10. ———. 1979. "Die Semiotik Christian Wolffs als Propädeutik der ars characteristica combinatoria und der ars inveniendi." Zeitschrift für Semiotik no. 1:325-331.

11. ———. 1983. "Rationalismus und Empirismus in der Erkenntnislehre Christian Wolffs." In Christian Wolff 1679-1754. Interpretationen zu seiner Philosophie und deren Wirkung mit einer Bibliographie der Wolff-Literatur, edited by Schneiders, Werner, 31-47. Hamburg: Meiner.

Reprinted in: J. École (ed.), Autour de la philosophie wolfienne, pp. 11-27.

12. ———. 1989. "Zu Christian Wolffs Theorie möglicher Welten." Il Cannocchiale.Rivista di Studi Filosofici no. 2-3:175-191.

Reprinted in: S. Carboncini, L. Cataldi Madonna (eds.), Nuovi studi sul pensiero di Christian Wolff, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1989.

13. ———. 1995. "Zum Wahrheitsanspruch der Nominaldefinition in der Erkenntnistheorie und Metaphysik Christian Wolffs." In De Christian Wolff à Louis Lavelle. Métaphysique et histoire de la philosophie. Recueil en hommage à Jean École à l'occasion de son 75 anniversaire, edited by Theis, Robert and Weber, Claude, 34-46. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

14. Arndt, Hans Werner, Carboncini-Gavanelli, Sonia, and École, Jean, eds. 2001. Autour de la philosophie Wolffienne. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Inhalt: Hans Werner Arndt: Rationalismus und Empirismus in der Erkenntnislehre Christian Wolffs (1983) 11-27; Hans Werner Arndt: Zum Wahrheitsanspruch der Nominaldefinition in der Erkenntnistheorie und Metaphysik Christian Wolffs (1995) 28-40; Hans Werner Arndt: Die Hermeneutik des 18. Jahrhunderts im Verhältnis zur Sprach- und Erkenntnistheorie des Klassischen Rationalismus (1994) 41-54; Jean École: Des rapports de la métaphysique de Wolff avec celle des Scolastiques (2001) 55-69; Sonia Carboncini: L’ontologia di Christian Wolff tra Scolastica e Cartesianismo (1989) 70-94; Jean École: Une étape de l’histoire de la métaphysique: l’apparition de l’Ontologie comme discipline séparée (2001) 95-116; Jean École: La place de la Metaphysica de ente, quae rectius Ontosophia dans l’histoire de l’Ontologie et sa réception chez Christian Wolff (1999) 117-130; Jean École: Contribution à l’histoire des propriétes transcendentales de l’être (1996) 131-158; Hans Werner Arndt: Zu Begriff und Funktion der "moralischen Erfahrung" in Christian Wolffs Ethik (2001) 159-171; Jean École: Wolff était-il un Aufklärer? (1998) 172-185; Sonia Carboncini: Christian Wolff in Frankreich. Zum Verhältnis von französischer und deutscher Aufklärung (1993) 186-200; Sonia Carboncini: L’Encyclopedie et Christian Wolff. A propos de quelques articles anonymes (1987) 201-216; Hans Werner Arndt: Die Logik von Reimarus im Verhältnis zum Rationalismus der Aufklärungsphilosophie (1980) 217-232; Hans Werner Arndt: Erste Angriffe der Thomasianer auf Wolff (1989) 233-244; Sonia Carboncini: Die thomasianisch-pietistische Tradition und ihre Fortsetzung durch Christian August Crusius (1989) 245-262; Sonia Carboncini: Christian August Crusius und die Leibniz-Wolffsche Philosophie 263-278; Sonia Carboncini: Der Briefwechsel zwischen Leibniz und Christian Wolff (1988) 279-286; Hans Werner Arndt: Philosophische Systematik im Anschluß an Leibniz (1995) 287-298; Hans Werner Arndt: Christian Wolffs Stellung zur Ars characteristica combinatoria (1965) 299-308.

15. Barber, William Henry. 1955. Leibniz in France. From Arnauld to Voltaire. A study in French reactions to Leibinizianism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

See: Christian wolff and his followers pp. 123-140 (reprint: New York, Garland, 1985).

16. Beck, Lewis White. 1969. Early German philosophy. Kant and his predecessors.

Chapter XI: Two founders of the German Enlghtnement 243; Thomasius 247; Wolff 256; Chapter XII: A generation of epigoni 276-305.

Reprinted Bristol. Thoemmes Press, 1966.

17. ———. 1993. "From Leibniz to Kant." In The Routledge History of Philosophy. Volume VI: The Age of German Idealism, edited by Solomon, Robert C. and Higgins, Kathleen M., 5-39. New York: Routledge.

On Wolff see pp. 7-15.

18. Berka, Karel. 1980. "Christian Wolff und Bernard Bolzano." In Christian Wolff als Philosoph der Aufklärung in Deutschland, edited by Gerlach, Hans-Martin, Schenk, Günter and Thaler, Burchard, 57-62. Halle-Wittenberg: Wissenschaftspublizistik der Martin-Luther-Universität.

Hallesches Wolff-Kolloquium 1979 anlässlich der 300. Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages.

19. Biller, Gerhard. 1986. "Die Wolff-Diskussion 1800 bis 1985. Eine Bibliographie." In Christian Wolff 1679-1754. Interpretationen zu seiner Philosophie und deren Wirkung mit einer Bibliographie der Wolff-Literatur, edited by Schneiders, Werner, 321-346. Hamburg: F. Meiner.

Second edition (First edition 1983).

20. ———. 2004. Wolff nach Kant. Eine Bibliographie. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Preface by Jean École.

21. Bissinger, Anton. 1970. Die Struktur der Gotteserkenntnis. Studien zur Philosophie Christian Wolffs. Bonn: Bouvier.

22. Blackwell, Richard. 1961. "The structure of Wolffian philosophy." The Modern Schoolman no. 38:203-218.

23. ———. 1961. "Christian Wolff's doctrine of the soul." Journal of the History of Ideas no. 22:339-354.

24. Bouton, Christophe. 1996. "Ontologie et logique dans l'interprétation hégélienne de Christian Wolff." Études Philosophiques:241-260.

25. Bruna, María Jesús Soto. 1991. "El significado de la monadologia leibniciana en Christian Wolff." Anuario Filosofico no. 24:349-366.

"Christian Wolff's understanding of Leibniz's monadology, framed out from his own underlying philosophical principles, had a definite and direct influence on the Eighteenth-century new elaboration of the "physical monad" theory."

26. Buchenau, Stephanie. 2004. "Sinnlichkeit als Erkenntnisvermögen. Zum Begriff der Vernunftähnlichen in der Psychologie Christian Wolffs." In Die Psychologie Christian Wolffs. Systematische und historische Untersuchungen, edited by Rudolph, Oliver-Pierre and Goubet, Jean-François, 197-212. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

27. Burns, John V. 1966. Dynamism in the cosmology of Christian Wolff. A study in pre-critical rationalism. New York: Exposition Press.

Contents: Introduction 9; I. Substance 17; II. Bodies 51; III. The elements 83; IV Conclusion 101; Bibliography 111; Index of proper names 115; Subject index 117-122.

"Dynamsim is the theory that bodies are composed of inextended points of force. In the manuals of Scholastic philosophy this theory is listed and refuted as a fallacious attempt to account for the constitution of bodies by explaining away matter. The theory of Dynamism "culminates in the system of Leibniz, who reduced corporeal substance to units of a spiritual character (monads) analogous to souls. For Leibniz, extension, indeed sensible reality as a whole, is nothing more than an appearance or a symbol, and the corporeal world as such is absorbed in the spiritual.." (1)

In this analysis it is our intention to present a study of Christian Wolff's dynamic theory of substance and in particular his metaphysical foundations of the material universe.

To realize this purpose we intend first to treat Wolff's notion of (a) substance, (b) simple substance and its characteristics, and (c) composed being or compound substance and its characteristics, especially as these are in contrast with the characteristics of simple substance.

The second chapter will deal with bodies and their apparent constituents: matter and motor force, as these are explained by Christian Wolff.

The third chapter will be devoted to the "elements," which Wolff contends are the true and ultimate constituent principles of bodies." p. 17

(1) Jacques Maritain, An Introduction to Philosophy, trans. E. I. Watkin (New York: Sheed and Ward, n.d. [1931]), p. 166.

28. Cacciatore, Giuseppe, ed. 1999. La filosofia pratica tra metafisica e antropologia nell'età di Wolff e Vico = Praktische Philosophie im Spannungsfeld von Metaphysik und Anthropologie bei Wolff und Vico. Napoli: Guida.

Atti del Convegno internazionale, Napoli, 2-5 aprile 1997.

29. Campo, Mariano. 1939. Cristiano Wolff e il razionalismo precritico. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

Two volumes. Reprint in one volume: Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1980

30. Capozzi, Mirella. 1982. "Sillogismi e proposizioni singolari: due aspetti della critica di Wolff a Leibniz." In La grammatica del pensiero. Logica, linguaggio e conoscenza nell'età dell'Illuminismo, edited by Buzzetti, Dino and Ferriani, Maurizio, 103-150. Bologna: Il Mulino.

31. ———. 2006. "Biangoli rettilinei e centauri: l'ontologia di Wolff e Meinong." In Le ragioni del conoscere e dell'agire. Scritti in onore di Rosaria Egidi, edited by Calcaterra, Rosa, 44-56. Milano: Franco Angeli.

32. Carboncini, Sonia. 1991. Transzendentale Wahrheit und Traum. Christian Wolffs Antwort auf die Herausforderung durch den cartesianischen Zweifel. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog.

33. Carboncini, Sonia, and Cataldi Madonna, Luigi, eds. 1992. Nuovi studi sul pensiero di Christian Wolff. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Originally published in the journal Il Cannocchiale. Rivista di Studi Filosofici, 2-3, (1989); reprinted as a volume with a preface by Jean École.

Contents: Introduzione 3; I. Sistema e metodo.

Ferdinando L. Marcolungo: Wolff e il problema del metodo 11; Werner Schneiders: Christian Wolff über Verstand und Vernunft 39; Cornelis-Anthonie van Peursen: Cognitio symbolica in the Philosophy of Christian Wolff 61; Günther Mühlpfordt: Die organischen Naturwissenschaften in Wolffs empiriorationalischer Enzyklopädistik 77; Luigi Cataldi Madonna: Wolff, Bolzano e la probabilità 107;

II: Filosofia teoretica.

Sonia Carboncini: L'ontologia di Wolff tra scolastica e cartesianesimo 131; Jean École: La notion d'être selon Wolff ou la "Désexistentialisation de l'essence" 157; Hans Werner Arndt: Zu Christian Wolffs Theorie möglicher Welten 175; Hans-Jürgen Engfer: Von der leibnizischen Monadologie zur empirischen Psychologie Wolffs 193;

III: Filosofia pratica.

Eberhard Günther Schulz: Wolffs Moralprinzip und Kants kategorischer Imperativ 217; Michael Albrecht: Die Tugend und die Chinesen. Antworten von Christian Wolff und die Frage nach dem Verhältnis zwischen Religion und Moral 239; Cornelia Buschmann: Gesellschaft und Geschichte als philosophisches Problem bei Christian Wolff 263-284.

"Ce recueil est la reprise du numéro spécial que la revue Il Cannochiale a consacré à Wolff en 1989 (n0 2-3), à l'initiative de deux jeunes chercheurs italiens: Sonia Carboncini et Luigi Cataldi Madonna (...).

Il a trouvé tout naturellement sa place dans la troisième série de notre réédition des Gesammelte Werke de Wolff qui, à côté des études les plus importantes publiées de son temps, en contiennent d'autres plus récentes. Car il est composé de douze articles aussi intéressants que variés répartis en trois sections intitulées: Le système et la méthode, La philosophie théorique, La philosophie pratique. Sept ont trait à sa métaphysique, deux à sa morale, les trois autres respectivement à sa méthode, à sa physique et à sa conception de la société. Le tout est précédé d'une introduction dans laquelle Sonia Carboncini et Luigi Cataldi Madonna retracent l'histoire de cette réédition et celle de la partie philosophique de son oeuvre, dont ils présentent de façon claire et précise les grandes lignes dans leurs rapports avec celles de ses prédécesseurs et de ses successeurs.

Ces articles, qui ont pour auteurs sept allemands, trois italiens, un hollandais et un français, appartenant à des horizons philosophiques fort différents, attestent que l'actuel regain d'intérêt pour la pensée de Wolff n'est pas seulement le fait de quelques rares spécialistes isolés. Et l'on peut voir là le signe qu'après avoir été éclipsée par la philosophie kantienne et postkantienne, celle de Wolff, sans jamais plus connaître l'énorme succès qu'elle eut de son vivant et immédiatement après sa mort, est enfin en train de trouver sa juste place dans l'histoire des idées.

C'est en tous les cas grâce à de tels travaux qu'elle y parviendra pleinement. Et il est à souhaiter qu'ils continuent à se multiplier, afin qu'elle soit de mieux en mieux connue et qu'en particulier, pour ce qui ce du domaine métaphysique, `on cesse d'en parler à partir des critiques de Kant qui ne connaissait guère celui-ci qu'a travers les exposés trop succincts et souvent déformants des Wolffiens infidèles que sont Baumgarten, Baumeister et Gottsched."

Et c'est dire que le champ des recherches sur Wolff, loin d'être clos, reste largement ouvert, d'autant que son oeuvre est immense et véritablement encyclopédique." (From the Preface by Jean École).

34. Carboncini-Gavanelli, Sonia. 2001. "L'ontologia di Wolff tra scolastica e cartesianesimo." In Autour de la philosophie wolffienne, edited by Arndt, Hans Werner and Carboncini-G, Sonia, 70-94. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

35. Cataldi Madonna, Luigi. 1984. "La metodologia empirica di Christian Wolff." Il Cannocchiale.Rivista di Studi Filosofici no. 1-2:59-93.

Reprinted in: L. Cataldi Madonna, Christian Wolff und das System des klassisschen Rationalismus. Die 'philosophia experimentalis universalis', pp. 12-46.

36. ———. 1989. "Wolff, Bolzano e la probabilità." Il Cannocchiale.Rivista di Studi Filosofici:107-130.

Reprinted in: S. Carboncini, L. Cataldi Madonna (eds.), Nuovi studi sul pensiero di Christian Wolff, Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1989.

37. ———. 1994. "Christian Wolff e l'ermeneutica filosofica dell'illuminismo tedesco." Intersezioni.Rivista di Storia delle Idee no. 14:393-414.

Reprinted in: L. Cataldi Madonna, Christian Wolff und das System des klassisschen Rationalismus. Die 'philosophia experimentalis universalis', pp. 175-196.

38. ———. 1999. "Il connubio della ragione con l'esperienza come fondamento e scopo del programma filosofico wolffiano." In La filosofia pratica tra metafisica e antropologia nell'età di Wolff e Vico, edited by Cacciatore, Giuseppe, Gessa-Kurotschka, Vanna, Poser, Hans and Sanna, Manuela, 111-129. Napoli: Guida.

Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Napoli, 2-5 aprile 1997.

39. ———. 1999. "Teoria e critica della ragione nella filosofia di Christian Wolff." Studi Settecenteschi no. 19:9-34.

Reprinted in: L. Cataldi Madonna, Christian Wolff und das System des klassisschen Rationalismus. Die 'philosophia experimentalis universalis', pp. 230-255.

40. ———. 2001. Christian Wolff und das System des klassischen Rationalismus: Die 'philosophia experimentalis universalis' / Christian Wolff e il sistema del razionalismo classico: la philosophia experimentalis universalis. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

41. Ciafardone, Raffaele. 1973. "Le origini teologiche della filosofia wolffiana e il rapporto ragione e esperienza." Il Pensiero no. 18:54-78.

42. ———. 1978. L'Illuminismo tedesco. Metodo filosofico e premesse etico-teologiche. Rieti: Il Velino.

Chapter IV: Ragione ed esperienza in Christian Wolff pp. 89-114; Appendix: Christian Wolff pp. 236-251.

43. ———. 1983. "Von der Kritik an Wolff zum vortkritischen Kant. Wolff-Kritik bei Rüdiger und Crusius." In Christian Wolff 1679-1754. Interpretationen zu seiner Philosophie und deren Wirkung mit einer Bibliographie der Wolff-Literatur, edited by Schneiders, Werner, 289-305. Hamburg: Meiner.

44. ———. 1998. "Ontologia e scienze empiriche in Christian Wolff." Colloquium Philosophicum.Annali del Dipartimento di Filosofia no. 3:239-256.

45. Corr, Charles A. 1970. "Certitude and utility in the philosophy of Christian Wolff." Southwestern Journal of Philosophy no. 1:133-142.

"Christian Wolff is frequently caricatured as a pedant wholly devoted to rational clarity and certitude. My thesis is that Wolff's obvious interest in mathematical method, the "natural logic" of the human mind, and the rehabilitation of the categorical syllogism is in terms of their service to practical and scientific utility. This contention is supported by the way in which Wolff finds room for probability and the hypothesis in philosophy. The present article sets forth these themes."

46. ———. 1972. "Christian Wolff's treatment of scientific discovery." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 10:323-334.

"Recent interest in a 'logic of discovery' recalls similar themes in the early 18th century. One philosopher who discussed such a problem was Christian Wolff (1679-1754). Wolff sought to formulate an 'ars inveniendi' or art of discovery to supplement his logic. This article describes Wolff's incomplete notion of an art of discovery and suggests that, although he did not achieve his goal, his sensitivity to the many dimensions of the problem may continue to be helpful today."

47. ———. 1973. "The existence of God, natural theology, and Christian Wolff." International Journal for Philosophy of Religion no. 4:105-118.

"This article examines some elements of 'natural theology' as conceived by one of its principal proponents, the German philosopher Christian Wolff. Topics considered are Wolff's explicit comments on the character of this discipline and its role in his philosophy, together with his twin a posteriori and a priori proofs of the existence of God. The intention is both historical, in elucidating Wolff's philosophy and some of its implications for the thought of other philosophers of his time, and problematical, in terms of the adequacy of the natural theology paradigm for a contemporary philosophical approach to the existence of God."

48. ———. 1974. "Did Wolff follow Leibniz?" In Akten des IV. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, Mainz, 6-10 April 1974, edited by Finke, Gerhard, 11-21. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Vol. II Section I.

49. ———. 1975. "Christian Wolff and Leibniz." Journal of the History of Ideas no. 36:241-262.

"This article contends that the familiar stereotype of Christian Wolff as little more than a systematizer and popularizer of the doctrines of Leibniz is unsatisfactory both in itself and in the light of the available evidence. This thesis is argued by citing Wolff's own statements concerning his relationship to Leibniz, by noting some historical evidence involving the two men, and by surveying a variety of doctrinal points of difference, largely taken from Wolff's methodology and metaphysics. The effect is not so much to settle the matter but to describe the state of the problem and to call for further study."

50. ———. 1975. "Christian Wolff's distinction between empirical and rational psychology." In Akten des II. Internationalen Leibniz-Kongresses Hannover 17-22 Juli 1972, 195-215. Wiesbaden: Steiner.

Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa 14 (vol. 3).

51. ———. 1980. "Christian Wolff's German Metaphysics volumes, their revisions, and Leibniz." In Theoria cum Praxi. Zum Verhältnis von Theorie und Praxis im 17. und 18. Jahrundert. Band III, edited by Heinekamp, Albert and Finster, Reinhard, 231-239. Wiesbaden: Steiner.

Akten des III. Internationalen Leibniz-Kongresses Hannover, 12.-17. November 1977.

Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa 21.

52. ———. 1982. "The Deutsche Metaphysik of Christian Wolff. Text and transitions." In History of philosophy in the making. A symposium of essays to honor Professor James D. Collins on his 65th birthday by his colleagues and friends, edited by Thro, Linus J., 149-164. Washington: University Press of America.

53. ———. 1983. "Cartesian Themes in Wolff's German Metaphysics." In Christian Wolff 1679-1754. Interpretationen zu seiner Philosophie und deren Wirkung mit einer Bibliographie der Wolff-Literatur, edited by Schneiders, Werner, 113-120. Hamburg: Meiner.

54. Croizer, Jacques. 2001. Les héritiers de Leibniz. Logique et philosophie, de Leibniz à Russell. Paris: L'Harmattan.

I. L'Aufklärung 1. 'Le Maître des allemands' pp. 35-66; 2. Le mouvement de l'Aufklärung pp. 67-73.

55. ———. 2002. "'Nihil est sine ratione sufficiente cur potius sit quam non sit'. Le principe de raison suffisante et son application dans les Elementa Mechanica de Wolff." Archives de Philosophie no. 65:105-131.

56. De Felice, Federica. 2008. Filosofia e matemarica nell'Illumismo tedesco. Roma: Aracne.

Capitolo III. Christian Woff: l'identità di metodo matematico e metodo filosofico, pp. 37-42.

57. ———. 2008. Wolff e Spinoza. Ricostruzione storico-critica dell'interpretazione wolffiana della filosofia di Spinoza. Roma: Aracne.

In Appendice estratti della Theologia Naturalis II di Christian Wolff con testo latino e traduzione italiana a fronte (pp. 194-311).

58. de Freitas Araujo, Saulo, Pereira, Thiago Constâncio Ribeiro, and Sturm, Thomas, eds. 2021. The Force of an Idea: New Essays on Christian Wolff’s Psychology. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

59. Drechsler, Wolfgang. 1997. "Christian Wolff (1679-1754) A Biographical Essay." European Journal of Law and Economics no. 4:111-128.

"This essay narrates chronologically the life of Christian Wolff (1679-1754), arguably the most eminent German philosopher between Leibniz and Kant, and an important figure in the development of thought about the state and its tasks as well as about the national economy. It is the first longer biographical sketch of Wolff in English, other than skeletal encyclopedia entries, since 1934, and the first original English one since 1910. Special attention is paid to Wolff''s formal honors, academic calls, salary questions, and the political, historical, and academic background, and particularly to his ennoblement, as Wolff may well have been the first scholar to receive such a high Imperial recognition on the basis of his scholarly work alone."

60. Eichards, Robert J. 1980. "Christian Wolff's Prolegomena to empirical and rational psychology: translation and commentary." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society no. 124:227-239.

61. Engfer, Hans-Jürgen. 1982. Philosophie als Analysis. Studien zur Entwicklung philosophischer Analysiskonzeptionen unter dem Einfluss mathematischer Methodenmodelle im 17. und fruhen 18. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog.

See Chapter V. Synthetische und analytische Methodenansätze bei Wolff pp. 219-263.

62. ———. 1983. "Zur Bedeutung Wolffs für die Methdendiskussion der deutschen Aufklärungsphilosophie. Analytische und synthtische Methode bei wolff und beim vorkritischen Kant." In Christian Wolff 1679-1754. Interpretationen zu seiner Philosophie und deren Wirkung mit einer Bibliographie der Wolff-Literatur, edited by Schneiders, Werner, 48-65. Hamburg: Meiner.

63. Euler, Werner. 2004. "Bewusstsein, Seele, Geist. Untersuchungen zut Transformation der Cartesischen 'Cogito' in der Psychologie Christian Wolffs." In Die Psychologie Christian Wolffs. Systematische und historische Untersuchungen, edited by Rudolph, Oliver-Pierre and Goubet, Jean-François, 11-50. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

64. Favaretti Camposampiero, Matteo. 2009. Conoscenza simbolica. Pensiero e linguaggio in Christian Wolff e nella prima età kantiana. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

65. ———. 2012. "Dividing Fiction from Reality: Existence and Nature in Christian Wolff’s Metaphysics." In Existence and Nature New Perspectives, edited by Favaretti Camposampiero, Matteo and Plebani, Mario, 65-97. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

66. ———. 2019. "Mereology and mathematics: Christian Wolff's foundational programme." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 27:1151-1172.

Abstract: "How did the traditional doctrine of parts and wholes evolve into contemporary formal mereology? This paper argues that a crucial missing link may lie in the early modern and especially Wolffian transformation of mereology into a systematic sub-discipline of ontology devoted to quantity. After some remarks on the traditional scholastic approach to parts and wholes (Sect. 1), Wolff’s mature mereology is reconstructed as an attempt to provide an ontological foundation for mathematics (Sects. 2–3). On the basis of Wolff’s earlier mereologies (Sect. 4), the origin of this foundational project is traced back to one of Wolff’s private conversations with Leibniz (Sect. 5) and especially to the former’s appropriation of the latter’s notion of similarity as a means to define quantity (Sect. 6). Despite some hesitancy concerning the ultimate characterization of quantity (Sect. 7), Wolff’s contribution was historically significant and influential. By developing a quantitative, extensional account of mereological relations, Wolff departed from the received doctrine and paved the way for the later revival of mereology at the intersection of ontology and mathematics."

67. Feuerhahn, Wolf. 2002. "Comment la psychologie empirique est-elle née?" Archives de Philosophie no. 65:47-64.

68. Findlay, John Niemeyer. 1981. Kant and the transcendental object. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Chapter II. The historical background of Kant's critical teaching. 1. The metaphysical principles of Leibniz and Wolff from the abiding background of Kant's thought, even when they are only used to prove certain characters of experienced objects to be phenomenal 29; II. Main points in Wolff's ontology 38; III. Main points in Wolff's cosmology and rational psychology 46; IV. Main points in Wolff's rational theology 52-57.

69. Fossati, Lorenzo. 2006. "La “Weltweisheit” da Wolff a Bolzano." In Tradurre e comprendere. Pluralità dei linguaggi e delle culture, edited by Pititto, Rocco and Venezia, Simona, 201-217. Roma: Aracne.

"Lo studio offre un esempio di storia comparata dei concetti, esaminando l’origine e l’uso del termine tedesco «Weltweisheit», posto in alternativa al successivo «Philosophie», partendo dalle prime occorrenze in Lutero e, poi, in Wolff, per giungere a Kant, agli idealisti speculativi e, infine, a Bolzano e a Husserl. Una volta che si è affermato il prestito dal greco, quando si incontra «Weltweisheit» è perché è stata compiuta una precisa scelta lessicale: perché ci si vuole riferire (più o meno polemicamente) all’uso linguistico precedente o in particolare alla filosofia wolffiana; oppure perché si vuole porre l’accento sulla filosofia come indagine del mondo, e quindi usa «Weltweisheit» come sinonimo di filosofia (idealista) della natura, per il riferimento alla «Welt» che si perde in «Philosophie»; o ancora perché si intende evidenziare l’aspetto pratico o sapienziale, e a tal fine «Weisheit» risponde allo scopo tanto nella sua valenza prevalente di saggezza, quanto in quella comunque presente di sapienza.

70. Frängsmyr, Tore. 1975. "Christian Wolff's mathematical method and its impact on the Eighteenth century." Journal of the History of Ideas no. 36:653-668.

"Christian Wolff is often regarded to be one of the most influential philosophers of the 18th century, but yet he is ignored or treated very briefly in modern histories of philosophy. This paper will try to give an answer to this problem and also to specify what kind of influence Wolff had."

71. Gawlich, Günter. 1999. Wolff-Index. Stellenindex und Konkordanz zu Christian Wolffs "Discursus praeliminaris de philosophia in genere". Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog.

72. Gerlach, Hans-Martin, ed. 2001. Christian Wolff - seine Schule und seine Gegner. Hamburg: Meiner.

Inhalt: Hans-Martin Gerlach: Einleitung: Christian Wolff – seine Schule und seine Gegner. 3-8;Hans-Martin Gerlach: Eklektizismus oder Fundamentalphilosophie? Die alternativen Wege von Christian Thomasius und Christian Wolff im philosophischen Denken der deutschen Frühaufklärung an der Universität Halle 9-26; Boguslaw Paz: Christian Wolffs Ontologie: ihre Voraussetzungen und Hauptdimensionen (mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Philosophie von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz) 27-49; Detlef Döring: Der Wolffianismus in Leipzig. Anhänger und Gegner 51-76; Günter Mühlpfordt: Christian Wolffs Lehre im östlichen Europa 77-100; James Jakob Fehr: Franz Albert Schultz (1692-1763) 101-144.

73. Gerlach, Hans-Martin, Schenk, Günter, and Thaler, Burchard, eds. 1980. Christian Wolff als Philosoph der Aufklärung in Deutschland. Halle-Wittenberg: Wissenschaftspublizistik der Martin-Luther-Universität.

Hallesches Wolff-Kolloquium 1979 anlässlich der 300. Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages.

74. Gilson, Étienne. 1948. L'être et l'essence. Paris: Vrin.

Second revised edition 1962.

See the Appendix: Aux origines de l'ontologie pp. 141-183.

75. ———. 1949. Being and some philosophers. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

Second revised edition 1952.

Chapter IV. Existence versus Being pp. 108-155.

76. Gómez Tutor, Juan Ignacio. 2004. Die wissenschaftliche Methode bei Christian Wolff. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

"The scientific method stands at the centre of all Wolff's work. It forms the programme which gives his whole philosophy its decisive characteristics. This monograph offers the first comprehensive analysis of Wolff's method. It enables us to understand that Wolff's conception of his scientific method was the result of a long process which was still not complete even in his later works. Such a finding contradicts both the prevalent myth of Wolff as a monolithic figure who never underwent any intellectual development and the easy verdict of much scholarship that Wolff's Latin works are simply a repetition of his German ones. At the same time this book emphasises Wolff's importance for the theory of method and broadens our current perspective on the scientific method."

77. Goubet, Jean-François. 2002. "Fondement, principes et utilité de la connaissance. Sur la notion wolffienne de système." Archives de Philosophie no. 65:81-103.

78. ———. 2003. "Psychologie et métaphysique. Autour de Christian Wolff." Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 128:275-277.

79. ———. 2003. "Force et facultés de l'âme dans la Metaphysique allemande." Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 193:337-350.

80. ———. 2005. "La traduction de la métaphysique allemande du XVIIIe siècle." Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 195:523-536.

"The major works of XVIIIth century German metaphysics (Wolff, Crusius, Bilfinger, Baumgarten, Meier, Lambert) have not been recently translated into French. The translation of those texts must first take into account the circulation between languages (Latin, German, French) which characterizes them but, above all, should let the proper metaphysical meaning of the notions surge. Thus, one should be led to specify more precisely the meaning of Deutlichkeit and Evidenz, to distinguish between Vermögen and Kraft, and to tell whether Beschaffenheit means something like Wesen or something like Natur. One will also have to ponder over Zusammenhang, Erklärung, auseinandersetzen, etc. Such is the price to be paid so as to be able to drag away Wolff and others like him from the unfair disrepute they fell."

81. ———. 2005. "Logique et philosophie chez Christian Wolff (1679-1754)." Corpus.Reuve de Philosophie no. 49:101-131.

82. Gracia, Jorge J.E. 1993. "Christian Wolff on individuation." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 10:147-164.

Reprinted in: Kenneth F. Barber and Jorge J. E. Gracia (eds.) - Individuation and identity in early modern philosophy - Albany, State University of New York Press, 1994 pp. 219-244.

"This article is divided into three parts. First, I examine briefly the nature of Wolff's "Ontology", its method, and the place that the discussion of individuality and individuation occupies in the overall structure of the text. Second, I present and characterize Wolff's view of individuation. Finally, I explore the extent to which Wolff's theory of individuation displays the influence of the epistemologism prevalent in modern philosophy. I defend two main theses. First, I claim that Wolff's theory of individuation is a bundle view with a strong accidental component. Second, I argue that the

influence of the epistemologism of modern philosophy is one of the factors that led Wolff to adopt the view of individuation that he did."

83. Grapotte, Sophie, and Prunea-Bretonnet, Tinca, eds. 2011. Kant et Wolff. Héritages et ruptures. Paris: Vrin.

84. Gurr, John Edwin. 1959. The principle of sufficient reason in some Scholastic systems 1750-1900. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

The point of departure in Leibniz and Wolff, pp. 11-49.

"In this treatment of Wolff we will consider his use of the Principle of Sufficient Reason under three general headings suggested by his own arrangement of the matter, especially in the Ontology. 1. We shall see it presented as one of the twin pillars of philosophy, functioning as an axiom basic to his system, but subordinate to the Principle of Contradiction, and with the ultimate meaning of ratio derived from the system itself. 2. This will be followed by a quick glance at Wolff's history of the Principle and his theory of its origin. 3. The analysis will conclude with a view of the Principle in the overall context of Wolff's metaphysics and method." (p. 35)

85. Heimsoeth, Heinz. 1956. Studien zur Philosophie Immanuel Kants. Metaphysische Ursprünge und ontologische Grundlagen. Karlsruhe: Müller.

See: Christian Wolffs Ontologie und die Prinzipienforschung Immanuel Kants. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Kategorienlehre pp. 1-92

86. Hinske, Norbert. 1983. "Wolffs Stellung in der deutschen Aufklärung." In Christian Wolff 1679-1754. Interpretationen zu seiner Philosophie und deren Wirkung mit einer Bibliographie der Wolff-Literatur, edited by Schneiders, Werner, 306-319. Hamburg: Meiner.

87. ———. 1999. "La psicologia empirica di Wolff e l'Antropologia pragmatica di Kant. La fondazione di una nuova scienza empirica." In La filosofia pratica tra metafisica e antropologia nell'età di Wolff e Vico, edited by Cacciatore, Giuseppe, Gessa-Kurotschka, Vanna, Poser, Hans and Sanna, Manuela, 207-224. Napoli: Guida.

Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Napoli, 2-5 aprile 1997.

88. ———. 1999. "Die Philosophie Christian Wolffs und ihre Langfristolgen." In Aufklärung und Interpretation. Studien zu Kants Philosophie und ihren Umkreis.Tagung aus Anlass de 60. Geburstages von Reinhardt Brandt, edited by Klemme, Heiner F., Bernd, Ludwig, Pauen, Michael and Stark, Werner, 29-37. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

89. Honnefelder, Ludwig. 1990. Scientia transcendens. Die formale Bestimmung der Seiendheit und Realität in der Methaphysik des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (Duns Scotus, Suárez, Wolff, Kant, Peirce). Hamburg: F. Meiner.

See: Dritter Teil. Metaphysik als Ontologie: Die Explickation der Seiendheit als non contradictio bei Christian Wolff pp. 295-381.

90. Kim, Chang Won. 2004. Der Begriff der Welt bei Wolff, Baumgarten, Crusius und Kant. Eine Untersuchung zur Vorgeschichte von Kants Weltbegriff von 1770. Bern: Peter Lang.

Contents: Ch. Wolff: Der Glaube an die Macht der Vernunft in seiner Metaphysik - Die Bedeutung des Begriffs «allgemein» in seiner allgemeinen Kosmologie - Seine Kosmologie liefere sowohl der natürlichen Theologie als auch den Naturwissenschaften sichere Grundlagen - Die Analysis seiner Weltbegriffe - Die Gründe für die Veränderungen innerhalb der Definition des Weltbegriffs - Der Einwand Joachim Langes - A. G. Baumgarten: Der Begriff der Welt - Die negative Formulierung des Totalitätsbegriffs als series, quae non est pars alterius - Der Wegfall der Begriffe inter se connexum, simultanea und successiva - Das Problem seiner Verwendung des Begriffs actuale bei der Definition der Welt - Ch. A. Crusius: Der wesentliche Unterschied seiner neuen «metaphysischen Kosmologie» von der Wolffschen - Der Weltbegriff und der Begriff der realen Verknüpfung - Kant: Die Frage nach dem Kontext der Definition der Welt in der Dissertation von 1770 - Das Hauptthema der Dissertation - Die ältere Version des Begriffs des Grundes der Form der Welt - Die veränderte Auffassung vom Raum - Die Unterscheidung zwischen dem Sensibilen und dem Intelligibilen - Der Grund der Form der Verstandeswelt und die Gründe der Form der Sinnenwelt - Die Definition der Welt in der Dissertation von 1770.

91. Kirsten, Günther. 1970. Die Kategorienlehre von Christian Wolff und Hegel. Ein Vergleich ihrer Bestimmung und methodischen Entwicklung. Frankfurt: Druck Bildstelle der J. W. Goethe Universität.

92. Kobau, Pietro. 2004. Essere qualcosa. Ontologia e psicologia in Wolff. Torino: Trauben.

93. Kühn, Manfred. 1997. "The Wolffian background of Kant's transcendental deduction." In Logic and the working of the mind. The logic of ideas and faculty psychology in early modern philosophy, edited by Easton, Patricia A., 229-250. Atascadero: Ridgeview.

94. ———. 1999. "Der Objektbegriff bei Christian Wolff und Immanuel Kant." In Aufklärung und Interpretation. Studien zu Kants Philosophie und ihren Umkreis.Tagung aus Anlass de 60. Geburstages von Reinhardt Brandt, edited by Klemme, Heiner F., Bernd, Ludwig, Pauen, Michael and Stark, Werner, 39-56. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

95. Lach, Donald F. 1953. "The Sinophilism of Christian Wolff (1679-1754)." Journal of the History of Ideas no. 14:561-574.

Reprinted in: Julia Ching and Willard G. Oxtoby (eds.) - Discovering China. European interpretations in the Enlightenment - Rochester, University of Rochester Press, 1992, pp. 117-130.

(The first study in English about Wolff).

96. Lamarra, Antonio. 2007. "Contexte génétique et première réception de la Monadologie. Leibniz, Wolff et la doctrine de l'harmonie préétablie." Revue de Synthèse no. 128:311-324.

97. Lenders, Winfried. 1971. "The analytic logic of G. W. Leibniz and Chr. Wolff: a problem in Kant research." Synthese no. 23:147-153.

"The background of the paper is the question after the sources of Kantian philosophy in the field of logic. This question refers to a second question whether Kant knew the consequences of the analytic logic of Leibniz directly from Leibniz's writings or indirectly from the logic of Christian Wolff and his adherents. As a result of the investigation it colud be demonstrated that there are basic differences between Leibniz and Wolff in the field of logic and that these differences are based in fundamentally different positions of the two philosophers."

98. ———. 1971. Die analytische Begriffs- und Uteilstheorie von G. Leibniz und Chr. Wolff. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

99. Lorenz, Andreas. 2001. "Nihil est sine ratione sufficiente. Wolffs Begründung der Ontologie un Leibniz' Scientia de aliquid et de nihilo." In Nihil sine ratione. Mensch, Natur und Technik um Wirken von G. W. Leibniz, edited by Poser, Hans, Asmuth, Christoph, Goldenbaum, Ursula and Li, Wenchao, 744-751. Hannover: Gottfired-Wilhelm-Leibniz Gesellschaft.

VII. Internationaler Leibniz-Kongress; Berlin 10-14 September 2001. Vorträge.

100. Malter, Rudolf. 1979. "L'analyse comme procédé de la métaphysique. L'opposition à la méthodologie wolfienne dans la "Preisschrift" de Kant en 1763 (1764)." Archives de Philosophie no. 42:575-591.

101. Marcolungo, Ferdinando. 1975. "Le radici del possibile. Note per un'interpretazione problematica della filosofia di Wolff." In Logica e semantica e altri saggi, edited by Giacon, Carlo, 199-218. Padova: Antenore.

102. ———. 1975. "Principi e sistema. Saggio sui rapporti Wolff - Leibniz." In Storiografia e filosofia del linguaggio, edited by Giacon, Carlo, 85-121. Padova: Antenore.

103. ———. 1977. "I primi principi della metafisica di Christian Wolff." In Ermeneutica, logica e altri saggi, edited by Giacon, Carlo, 195-232. Padova: Antenore.

104. ———. 1982. Wolff e il possibile. Padova: Antenore.

105. ———. 1989. "Wolff e il problema del metodo." Il Cannocchiale.Rivista di Studi Filosofici:11-38.

Reprinted in: S. Carboncini, L. Cataldi Madonna (eds.), Nuovi studi sul pensiero di Christian Wolff, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1989.

106. ———. 2021. Esperienza e ragione in Christian Wolff. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

107. Merker, Nicolao. 1967. "Cristiano Wolff e la metodologia del razionalismo (prima parte)." Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia no. 22:271-293.

108. ———. 1968. "Cristiano Wolff e la metodologia del razionalismo (seconda parte)." Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia no. 23:21-38.

109. Michaelis, Annelise. 1937. Der ontologische Sinn des Complementum Possibilitatis bei Christian Wolff. Berlin: F. W. Kalbfleisch.

110. Moreau, Pierre-François. 2002. "Wolff et Goclenius." Archives de Philosophie no. 65:7-14.

111. Morrison, James C. 1993. "Christian Wolff's criticism of Spinoza." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 31:405-420.

112. Mugnai, Massimo. 2005. "Logic and mathematics in the 18th century: before and after Christian Wolff." In Wolffiana 1: Macht und Bescheidenheit der Vernunft: Beiträge zur Philosophie Christian Wolffs; Gedenkband für Hans Werner Arndt, edited by Cataldi Madonna, Luigi, 97-109. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

113. Paccioni, Jean-Paul. 2002. "L'aptitude à exister et la métaphysique wolffienne." Archives de Philosophie no. 65:65-80.

114. ———. 2003. "Wolff, l'expérience et la raison non pure." Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 128:307-322.

"This paper analyzes how experience, both a priori and a posteriori knowledge, are articulated in Christian Wolff's work. It thus shows that the pattern opposing rationalism to empiricism cannot be applied to the latter. After having studied Tschirnhaus' influence, then Leibniz' on Wolff, the research carries forward on how the latter considers intuitive knowledge. Thus does appear the part played according to Wolff by perception in the building of notions and the status he grants to the latters. Hence the status of both meaning of, and part played by, the "non pure" reason."

115. ———. 2003. "Dieu dans le miroir. Leibniz, Wolff et l'actualisation du monde." Études Philosophiques no. 66:371-387.

"This study aims to show how Wolff differs from Leibniz, in the context of Deutsche Metaphysik regarding the theme of world actualization. In this new context, the mirror metaphor must be applied more traditionally to all creatures, and the workings of the best of all possible worlds principle must be reviewed. It is on the basis of these transformations that the theory of universal harmony and the causality problem were transmitted to Kant."

116. ———. 2004. ""Wolff est-il le vrai inventeur de la psychologie rationelle?" L'expérience, l'existence actuelle et la rationalité dans le projet wolffien de psychologie." In Die Psychologie Christian Wolffs. Systematische und historische Untersuchungen, edited by Rudolph, Oliver-Pierre and Goubet, Jean-François, 77-100. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

117. ———. 2006. Cet ésprit de profondeur. Christian Wolff l'ontologie et la métaphysique. Paris: Vrin.

118. ———. 2007. "Leibniz, Wolff et les monades science et métaphysique." Revue de Synthèse no. 128:275-278.

119. ———. 2007. "Leibniz, Wolff et la métaphysique traitée selon la méthode scientifique." Revue de Synthèse no. 128:295-310.

"Wolff's philosophy is often defined by commentators as 'dogmatic Leibnizism'. However, if we try to read the expression in a positive light, we discover what exactly distinguishes Wolff's metaphysics from that of Leibniz, thereby establishing Wolff's real contribution to the history of thought. First of all, the notion of 'dogma' presented in Wolff's philosophy is analyzed. This notion recalls the demonstrative model provided by mathematics and especially, Euclid's Elements. According to axiomatic patterns, ontology is thought of as the 'first philosophy'. This aspect cannot be separated from the function of a posteriori knowledge in Wolff's thinking. This permits us to comprehend the function of ontology, Wolff's cosmology, and his invention of the notion of 'teleology'."

120. Paganini, Gianni. 1994. "Psychologie et langage chez Ch. Wolff." In Aufklärung und Erneuerung. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Universität Halle im ersten Jahrundert ihres Bestehens (1694-1806), edited by Jerouschek, Günter and Sames, Arno, 118-124. Hanau: Dausien.

121. Paolinelli, Marco. 1971. Fisico-teologia e principio di ragion sufficiente. Boyle, Maupertuis, Wolff, Kant. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

122. ———. 1974. "Metodo matematico e ontologia in Christian Wolff." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 66:3-39.

123. Pape, Ingetrud. 1966. Tradition und Transformation der Modalität. I. Möglichkeit - Unmöglichkeit. Hamburg: Meiner.

Christian Wolff, pp. 174-216.

124. Park, Jeongwoo. 2007. "Le débat wolffien sur l'idéalisme de Leibniz lors de la première diffusion de la Monadologie latine." Revue de Synthèse no. 128:325-340.

125. Paz, Boguslaw. 2001. "Christian Wolffs Ontologie: ihre Voraussetzungen und Hauptdimensionen (mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Philosophie von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz)." In Christian Wolff. Seine Schule und seine Gegner, edited by Gerlach, Hans-Martin, 27-49. Hamburg: Meiner.

126. Peursen, Cornelis-Anthonie van. 1983. "Ars inveniendi in Rahmen der Metaphysik Christian Wolffs. Die Rolle der ars inveniendi." In Christian Wolff 1679-1754. Interpretationen zu seiner Philosophie und deren Wirkung mit einer Bibliographie der Wolff-Literatur, edited by Schneiders, Werner, 66-88. Hamburg: Meiner.

127. ———. 1987. "Christian Wolff's Philosophy of Contingent Reality." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 25:69-82.

"Was the rejection by Wolff of the classification of the "Leibniz-wolffian philosophy" justified? This article draws attention to the notion of "contingency" in Wolff as distinguishing him from Leibniz. The "possible worlds" of Leibniz are overpopulated with events, those of Wolff are empty. For Leibniz contingent existence is the highest grade of possibility, for Wolff it needs, however, a "complementum possibilitatis." Wolff is not a pure rationalist but he defends the "marriage between ratio and experience"."

128. Pichler, Hans. 1910. Über Christian Wolffs Ontologie. Leipzig: Dürr.

129. Pimpinella, Pietro. 1984. ""Spiritus" nella Psychologia rationalis di Christian Wolff." In Spiritus. IV Colloquio Internazionale Roma, 7-9 gennaio 1983, edited by Fattori, Marta and Bianchi, Massimo, 429-447. Roma: Edizioni dell'Ateneo.

Lessico Intellettuale Europeo, vol. 32.

130. ———. 2002. "Experientia/Erfahrung in Chr. Wolff e A. G. Baumgarten." In Experientia. X Colloquio Internazionale, Roma, 4-6 gennaio 2001, edited by Veneziani, Marco, 367-397. Firenze: Olschki.

Lessico Intellettuale Europeo, 91

131. ———. 2004. "Ontologia e logica in Christian Wolff." In Metafisica logica filosofia della natura. I termini delle categorie aristoteliche dal mondo antico all'età moderna, edited by Canone, Eugemio, 343-373. Sarzana: Agorà Edizioni.

132. Poli, Roberto. 1992. "Twardowski and Wolff." In Theories of Objects: Meinong and Twardowski, edited by Pasniczek, Jacek, 45-56. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Slodowskiej.

133. Poser, Hans. 1975. "Zum Begriff der Monade bei Leibniz und Wolff." In Akten des II. Internationalen Leibniz-Kongresses Hannover 17-22 Juli 1972, 383-395. Wiesbaden: Steiner.

Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa 14 (vol. 3).

134. ———. 1979. "Die Bedeutung des Begriffs "Ahnlichkeit" in der Metaphysik Christian Wolffs." Studia Leibnitiana no. 11:62-81.

"The concept of similarity is used to exemplify in what way Wolff conveys a new content to a traditional concept. Similarity functions in his system as a link between a priori ontology and a posteriori knowledge, because it is similarity on which relies Wolff's theory of abstraction, his doctrine of order (which also includes the concepts of perfection, of space and time) and even his characterization of human faculties of knowing (e. g., expectation of similar events, wit and penetration)."

135. ———. 1983. "Mögliche Erkenntnis der Möglichkeit. Die Transformation der Modalkategorien der Wolffschen Schule in Kants kritischer Philosophie." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 20:129-147.

136. ———. 2005. "Zwischen Kants Kritik und Leibniz' Lösung : Christian Wolffs "complementum possibilitatis"." In Wolffiana 1: Macht und Bescheidenheit der Vernunft: Beiträge zur Philosophie Christian Wolffs; Gedenkband für Hans Werner Arndt, edited by Cataldi Madonna, Luigi, 185-203. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

137. Pozzo, Riccardo. 2007. "La logica di Wolff e la nascita della logica delle facoltà." In Christian Wolff tra psicologia empirica e psicologia razionale, edited by Marcolungo, Ferdinando, 45-52. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

"Cosa ha a che fare la logica con l’esperienza umana? Nulla, è la risposta che più ci si aspetta, poiché la logica è una scienza riguardante esclusivamente le proprietà formali della consistenza e dell’implicazione e dunque interamente a priori, mentre l’esperienza umana è contingente e soggettiva e può essere conosciuta solo a posteriori. Voler a tutti i costi legare le due cose porta con sé la costituzione di una prospettiva non solo impervia, ma anche di cattiva fama: lo psicologismo. Eppure, dal punto di vista della psicologia, la logica è una teoria del tutto legittima, una teoria del ragionamento (1). A sua volta, il ragionamento non è altro che l’attività di organismi intelligenti e dei loro strumenti, che sono poi le loro facoltà; e arrivo così all’oggetto che ho indicato dal titolo e al ruolo svolto da Christian Wolff nel proporne una considerazione logica. Il periodo coperto da questo contributo va dal 1690, l’anno di nascita, nello Essay concerning Human Under standing, di quella che si suole definire la logica delle facoltà (facultatìve logic), fino al 1800, l’anno di pubblicazione della kantiana Logik a cura di Gottlob Benjamin Jäsche. Il primo paragrafo parte dalle definizioni, si potrebbe dire “metafisiche”, delle facoltà date da Wolff nella Psychologia empirica e nella Psychologia rationalis, due testi degli anni trenta, il secondo considera Locke e Thomasius come fonti di Wolff, il terzo e il quarto si occupano della “logica” delle facoltà, rispettivamente, nella logica tedesca e nella logica latina; il quinto paragrafo, infine, offre uno sguardo conclusivo sui pensatori dell’illuminismo tedesco più influenzati da Wolff, ovvero Baumgarten, Meier e, appunto, Kant."

(1) Cfr. Wayne M. Martin, Introduction, Logic and Human Experience, Topoi, 22 (2002=, pp. 1-4, qui p.1.

138. Puech, Michel. 1990. Kant et la causalité. Étude sur la formation du système critique. Paris: Vrin.

II. La question de la causalité dans la métaphysique allemande; 2. Le système de Wolff pp. 72-91; 3. Les manuels des wolffiens pp. 91-106; 4. Les arguments des anti-wolffiens pp. 106-117; 5. L'éclectisme des post-wolffiens pp. 117-127.

139. Rey, Anne-Lise. 2004. "Ontologie et psychologie dans la pensée de Christian Wolff: la raison de l'actualisation." In Die Psychologie Christian Wolffs. Systematische und historische Untersuchungen, edited by Rudolph, Oliver-Pierre and Goubet, Jean-François, 101-122. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

140. Ricken, Ulrich. 1989. Leibniz, Wolff und einige sprachtheoretische Entwicklungen in der deutschen Aufklärung. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

141. Risse, Wilhelm. 1970. Die Logik der Neuzeit. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog.

Vol. II: 1640-1780.

Wolff und seine Schule, pp. 579-659.

142. Rudolph, Oliver-Pierre. 2003. "Mémoire, réflexion et conscience chez Christian Wolff." Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 128:351-360.

143. ———. 2004. "Die Psychologie Christian Wolffs und die scholastische Tradition." In Die Psychologie Christian Wolffs. Systematische und historische Untersuchungen, edited by Rudolph, Oliver-Pierre and Goubet, Jean-François, 243-256. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

144. Rudolph, Oliver-Pierre, and Goubet, Jean-François, eds. 2004. Die Psychologie Christian Wolffs. Systematische und historische Untersuchungen. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

145. Ruello, Francis. 1963. "Christian Wolff et la Scolastique." Traditio.Studies in Ancient and Medieval History no. 19:411-425.

146. Rumore, Paola. 2007. L'ordine delle idee. La genesi del concetto di "rappresentazione" in Kant attraverso le sue fonti wolffiane (1747-1787). Firenze: Le Lettere.

147. Rutherford, Donald. 2004. "Idealism declined: Leibniz and Christian Wolff." In Leibniz and his Correspondents, edited by Lodge, Paul, 214-237. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

148. Saine, Thomas. 1987. "Who's afraid of Christian Wolff?" In Anticipations of the Enlightenment in England, France, and Germany, edited by Kors, Alan Charles and Korshin, Paul J., 102-133. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

149. Scaglione, Aldo. 1980. "Direct vs. inverted order: Wolff and Condillac on the necessity of the sign and the interrelationship of language and thinking." Romance Philology no. 33:496-501.

150. Schenk, Günter. 1980. "Zur Stellung der Logik in der Aufklärung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Christian Wolffs "Philosophia rationalis sive logica"." In Christian Wolff als Philosoph der Außlärung in Deutschland, edited by Gerlach, Hans-Martin, Schenk, Günter and Thaler, Burchard, 48-56. Halle-Wittenberg: Wissenschaftspublizistik der Martin-Luther-Universität.

151. Schierbaum, Sonja, Walschots, Michael, and Walsh, John, eds. 2024. Christian Wolff's German Ethics: New Essays. New York: Oxford University Press.

152. Schneiders, Werner, ed. 1983. Christian Wolff 1679-1754. Interpretationen zu seiner Philosophie und deren Wirkung mit einer Bibliographie der Wolff-Literatur. Hamburg: Meiner.

Reprinted 1986.

153. ———. 1983. Auflkärung und Vorurteilskritik. Studien zur Geschichte der Vorurteilstheorie. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog.

IV. Gnoseologische Vorurteilskritik 155-202; V. Pragmatische Vorurteilskritik 203-262.

154. ———. 1983. "Deus est philosophus absolute summus: Über Christian Wolffs Philosophie und Philosophiebegriff." In Christian Wolff 1679-1754. Interpretationen zu seiner Philosophie und deren Wirkung mit einer Bibliographie der Wolff-Literatur, edited by Schneiders, Werner, 9-30. Hamburg: Meiner.

155. ———. 1989. "Christian Wolff über Verstand und Vernunft." Il Cannocchiale.Rivista di Studi Filosofici:39-59.

Reprinted in: S. Carboncini, L. Cataldi Madonna (eds.), Nuovi studi sul pensiero di Christian Wolff, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1989.

156. Schnepf, Robert. 2007. "Allgemeine Metaphysik als erste Philosophie. Zum Problem kategorialer Begriffsbildung in Christian Wolffs Ontologie." In Wolffiana II. Christian Wolff und die europäische Aufklärung. Teil 1, edited by Stolzenberg, Jürgen and Rudolph, Oliver-Pierre, 181-203. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

157. Schonfeld, Martin. 2002. "Christian Wolff and Leibnizian monads." Leibniz Review no. 12:131-135.

158. Schüssler, Ingeborg. 2006. "Critique et réfondation de la métaphysique chez Kant: Les progrès de la métaphysique et la critique du système leibniziano-wolffien." Archives de Philosophie no. 69:567-599.

"In his late writing, The Progresses of Metaphysics (1791) Kant is summarizing all his metaphysics whilst criticizing traditional metaphysics and, above all, the Leibniz-Wolff's system (which is, according to him, its summit). Because finiteness of human thinking is occurring, traditional metaphysics -- affair of reason and logic -- is revealed to be void. Kant then refunds metaphysics on that what is given (the pure intuitions, the moral law of liberty and, in a certain sense, the empiricism of sensible world) for to hinder its "sinking into the nothing". He distinguishes three states of metaphysics: its "sure progress" in critical transcendental "ontology", its "skeptical stop" in speculative cosmology and its moral practical progress to the supersensible ideas (before all of God and immorality). Metaphysics, elevating so itself to the supersensible and considering from it the sensible world, is then proving itself to be a knowledge which is fundamentally different from all ontical empirical knowledge."

159. Senn, Peter. 1997. "What is the place of Christian Wolff in the history of the social sciences?" European Journal of Law and Economics no. 4:147-232.

Reprinted in: Jürgen Backhaus (ed.) - Christian Wolff and Law and Economics. The Heilbronn Symposium - Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1998, pp. 37-122.

"This paper explores the place of Christian Wolff in the history of social science in English. The "Introduction" places Wolff in the context of the pre-history of modern social science. Samples are given of the great range of subjects on which he wrote. The importance of the German context is stressed. The second part is devoted to a sample of what the literature contains by and about Wolff. It emphasizes philosophy and science. Part three is a survey of works in the history of the social sciences that mention Wolff. He has a substantial place in political science and psychology, a much smaller place in economics and history, virtually none in anthropology, geography, and sociology. In the applied social sciences, he is found in the history of education. Possible reasons are given. Part four is devoted to the relationships of philosophy and philosophers in the pre-history of the social sciences. They were important in several different ways because they both shaped and reflected how many people thought about science and social problems. The "Summary and Conclusion" describes the present status. His contributions are summarized. He was a pivotal figure in the making of the German conception of social science. This is a preliminary study emphasizing the issues and problems that a more detailed examination would require. Several conventional judgments are challenged and possibilities for further research suggested."

160. Stiening, Gideon. 2004. ""Partes Metaphysicae sunt duae: Deues & Mentes". Anmerkungen zur Entstehung und Entwicklung der Psychologie als Metaphysica specialis zwischen Rudolph Goclenius und Christian Wolff." In Die Psychologie Christian Wolffs. Systematische und historische Untersuchungen, edited by Rudolph, Oliver-Pierre and Goubet, Jean-François, 213-232. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

161. Theis, Robert. 2004. "Significations et limites de la pensée du fondement chez Christian Wolff." Études Germaniques no. 59:41-61.

162. ———. 2010. "Du savoir, de la foi et de l’opinion de Wolff à Kant." Archives de Philosophie no. 73:211-228.

163. ———. 2013. De Wolff à Kant. Études / Von Wolff zu Kant. Studien. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Table des matieres/Inhaltsverzeichnis: Avant-propos/Vorwort IX; Avertissement/Zur Zitierweise XIII-XIX;

I. Wolff

La question du fondement chez Christian Wolff 3; Philosophie und Offenbarung: ein "mirus Consensus" 35; Penser la « creatio ex nihilo » 61;

II. Wolff - Kant

Kants frühe Theologie und ihre Beziehungen zur Wolff sehen Philosophie 73; Du savoir, de la foi et de l'opinion de Wolff à Kant 109;

III. Kant

Stationen des Kantischen Reformprojekts der Metaphysik 129; "Es ist ein Gott". Kants Weg vom Wissen zum Glauben 145; L’esperance dans les limites de la simple raison 171;

Index nominum 191; Index rerun 195; Sources/Quellennachweise 203.

164. Theis, Robert, and Alchele, Alexander, eds. 2018. Handbuch Christian Wolff. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

Inhalt: Vorwort 1; 1 Gerhard Biller: Biographie und Bibliographie 5; 2 Quellen 33; 2.1 Christian Leduc: Sources of Wolff’s Philosophy: Scholastics/Leibniz 35; 2.2 Sébastien Neveu: Secondary Authors’ Influence on the Formation of the Wolffian “System Of Truths” 55; 3 Juan Ignacio Gómez Tutor: Philosophiebegriff und Methode 73; 4 Luigi Cataldi Madonna: Logik 93; 5 Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero: Philosophy of Language . 115; 6 Metaphysik 137; 6.1 Dirk Effertz: Ontologie 139; 6.2 Jean-François Goubet: Rationale Psychologie 153; 6.3 Paola Rumore: Empirical Psychology 175; 6.4 Sebastian Simmert: Kosmologie 197; 6.5 Robert Theis: Theologie 219; 7 Praktische Philosophie 251; 7.1 Clemens Schwaiger: Ethik 253; 7.2 Alexander Aichele: Naturrecht 269; 7.3 Birger P. Priddat & Christoph Meineke: Ökonomie 291; 7.4 Annika Büsching: Politik 315; 8 Simone De Angelis: Physik 335; 9 Paola Cantù: Mathematics. Systematical Concepts 357; 10 Kontroversen und Rezeption 381; 10.1 Anna Szyrwińska: Die Pietisten 383; 10.2 Stefanie Buchenau: Wolffs Rezeption in der Ästhetik 405; 10.3 Michael Albrecht: Wolff an den deutschsprachigen Universitäten 427; 10.4 Sonia Carboncini: Wolffrezeption in Europa 467; Abstracts 497; Autorinnen und Autoren 507; Personenregiste. 511;

Sachregister 517-519.

165. Tonelli, Giorgio. 1967. "Christian Wolff." In The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edwards, Paul, 340-344. New York: Macmillan.

Volume 8.

166. ———. 1971. "The 'weakness of reason' in the age of Enlightenment." Diderot Studies no. 14:217-244.

167. ———. 1975. "The problem of the classification of the sciences in Kant's time." Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia no. 30:243-294.

On Wolff see pp. 243-250.

168. ———. 1976. "Analysis and synthesis in XVIIIth century philosophy prior to Kant." Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte no. 20:178-213.

169. Ungeheuer, Gerold. 1983. "Sprache und symbolische Erkenntnis bei Wolff." In Christian Wolff 1679-1754. Interpretationen zu seiner Philosophie und deren Wirkung mit einer Bibliographie der Wolff-Literatur, edited by Schneiders, Werner, 89-112. Hamburg: Meiner.

170. Verducci, Daniela. 1982. "Esperienza e ragione nella Metafisica latina di Christian Wolff." Filosofia Oggi no. 5:485-504.

171. Vieillard-Baron, Jean-Louis. 1973. "A propos des manuscrits d'Émile Ravier sur Wolff." Giornale di Metafisica no. 28:39-44.

"Émile Ravier, auteur de la celebre bibliographie de Leibniz, a laissé un très riche ensemble de manuscrits sur Wolff, ainsi qu'une traduction complete en français de l'ouvrage de Mariano Campo, Cristiano Wolff e il razionalismo precritico. On a montré les rapports de Wolff à Leibniz d'apres les manuscrits d'Émile Ravier, qui revelent que Wolff ne voulut jamais être le porte-parole de la pensée leibnizienne en Allemagne. Il serait possible à partir de là de detruire le mythe du "leibniziano-wolffisme" dont parle Kant pour le refuter."

172. Vitadello, Anna Maria. 1973. "Experience et raison dans la psychologie de Christian Wolff." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 71:488-511.

"Cet éxposé de la psychologie de Christian Wolff adopte un point de vue descriptif et épistémologique. Le but de l'auteur fut de saisir la psychologie wolffienne dans l'intentionalité de son langage, qui, tout en restant philosophique et même substantialiste, laisse entrevoir une direction assez nette dans l'ensemble. Celle-ci prefigure, d'une façon lointaine mais significative, la psychologie de laboratoire; c'est-a-dire une science qui traite empiriquement de l'expérience psychologique au moyen de l'introspection et sur le modèle des sciences de la nature, en s'appuyant sur un dualisme tranché. Tout en suggerant les apories où s'engage une methode introspective en psychologie, cette analyse s'est tenue cependant a un propos introductif."

173. Vleeschauwer, Herman Jan de. 1932. "La genèse de la méthode mathématique de Wolff. Contribution à l’histoire des idées au XVIIIe siècle." Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire no. 11:651-677.

174. Wille, Dagmar von. 1991. Lessico filosofico della Fruhaufklarung: Christian Thomasius, Christian Wolff, Johann Georg Walch. Roma: Edizioni dell'Ateneo.

175. Zedler, Heinrich. 2001. "Wolff (Christian)" und "Wolffische Philosophie". Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Two articles from H. Zendler's Universal-Lexicon aller Wissenschaften und Künste (Leipzig and Halle 1748). Preface by Jean École.

176. Zingari, Guido. 1980. "Die philosophie von Leibniz und die "Deutsche Logik" von Christian Wolff." Studia Leibnitiana no. 12:265-278.

"In this paper the possibility of comparing some speculative positions of Leibniz and Wolff concerning logic and theory of knowledge is considered on the basis of a reading of the Deutsche Logik especially as it refers to Leibniz. The affinities and above all the diversities of the conclusion, to which the two philosophers come, emerge from this reading. Theoretical presuppositions, such as the reduction of the critical exigency to Wolff's method or the method of analysis in Leibniz, are to be seen against Cartesian teaching. While undeniably ignoring the most original acquisitions of Leibniz's logic and theory of knowledge, from the symbolic assumption to implicit thoughts, and under the influence of English empiricism, Wolff elaborates a complex notion of experience which aims at is own autonomous validity."

Wolffiana: A mult-volume collection of Essays on Christian Wolff

1. Cataldi Madonna, Luigi, ed. 2005. Wolffiana I. Macht und Bescheidenheit der Vernunft. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Beiträge zur Philosophie Christian Wolffs. Gedenkband für Hans Werner Arndt, mit acht Rariora.

Vorwort; Hans Werner Arndt: Nachruf; Einleitung; Ehrenpromotion von Jean École; Plenums- und Abendvorträge.

"Christian Wolff to whom Hans Werner Arndt devoted an important part of his life's work provides the thematic frame for this collection of commemorative essays. The articles deal with the role Wolff played in the history of philosophy, and various aspects of his metaphysics, logic, epistemology and practical philosophy. Thus, the collection becomes part of the Wolff revival initiated by Hans Werner Arndt about two decades ago.

The authors, who share Arndt's commitment to the German philosopher, pay tribute to Arndt for the rediscovery of Christian Wolff and his work, which he made available to philosophical research.

The supplement of this volume consists of eight lesser-known essays by Arndt. They are to demonstrate the scope of his interest in philosophy, which went far beyond Christian Wolff."

2. Stolzenberg, Jürgen, and Rudolph, Oliver-Pierre, eds. 2007. Wolffiana II. Christian Wolff und die europäische Aufklärung. Teil 1. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Akten des 1. Internationalen Christian-Wolff-Kongresses, Halle (Saale), 4-8 April 2004.

Vorwort, Nachruf auf Hans Werner Arndt, Einleitung, Ehrenpromotion von Jean Ecole, Plenums- und Abendvorträge.

3. ———, eds. 2007. Wolffiana II. Christian Wolff und die europäische Aufklärung. Teil 2. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Akten des 1. Internationalen Christian-Wolff-Kongresses, Halle (Saale), 4-8 April 2004.

System der Metaphysik. Logik. Ontologie. Psychologie.

Inhalt: Sektionsvorträge. SEKTION i: SYSTEM DER METAPHYSIK. Oliver-Pierre Rudolph: Das Fundament des Wolffschen Systems der Philosophie 15; Thierry Arnaud: La fondation de la Theologie naturelle dans le systeme de la Métaphysique allemande 25; Henry Alexander Henrysson: Purposes, Possibilities and Perfection. The Metaphysical System of Leibniz and Wolff 39; Violetta L. Waibel: Die Systemkonzeptionen bei Wolff und Lambert 51; Jindrich Karásek: Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft. Zur systematischen Begründung des Systems der Metaphysik bei Wolff und Kant 71; Cornelia Buschmann: Scientia affectiva practica - scientia practica universalis - scientia possibilium. Wolffs Wissenschaftsbegriff - Prolegomenon oder Abbreviatur der Metaphysik? 99; SEKTION 2: LOGIK. Juan Ignacio Gómez Tutor: Die wissenschaftliche Methode bei Christian Wolff 113; Ursula Neemann: Der Zusammenhang zwischen formalen und ontologischen Aspekten in der Urteilstheorie von Christian Wolff 124; Jean-Francois Goubet: Das Verhältnis zwischen mathematischer Methode und Logik 141; Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero: Usage des mots et connaissance symbolique chez Christian Wolff 153; Luigi Cataldi Madonna: Erfahrung und Intuition in der Philosophie von Christian Wolff 173; Vadim Kurpakov: Zum Einfluss von Wolff und Wolffianem auf die Kantische Logik 195; Hanno Birken-Bertsch: Erfahrung, Subreption und Idealismus. Von Wolff zu Kant 205; Konstantin Pollok: Christian Wolffs Begriffs- und Urteilstheorie als Vorläufer einer inferentiellen Semantik 219; SEKTION 3: ONTOLOGIE. Anne-Lise Rey: La lecture wolffienne de la Dynamique leibnizienne. Un moyen d'identifier la specificité de la notion de substance chez Wolff 237; Boguslaw Paz: Methode und Wahrheit bei Wolff 219; Vitaly Ivanov: Principium omnium primum. Zur Frage nach der Stellung des Widerspruchsprinzips in der Ordnung der Explikation des Begriffs des Seienden in der Wissenschaft der Ontologie 273; Jeongwoo Park: Metaphysik des Spielraums. Wolffs Neubestimmung des Eventusbegriffs hinsichtlich des Seienden, des Systems und der Freiheit, insbesondere gegen Spinoza 291; Carlos Morujäo: Wolff, Kant und der Begriff der Existenz 301; Nelly Motroschilova: Kritik des 20. Jahrhunderts am ontologischen Projekt Christian Wolffs 311; SEKTION 4: PSYCHOLOGIE.

Angelica Nuzzo: A Problem for Psychology. Kant and Wolff on Soul and Space 321; Pietro Pimpinella: Symbolische Erkenntnis bei Christian Wolff 339; Faustino Fabbianelli: Tatsachen des Bewusstseins und "nexus rerum" in Christian Wolffs Psychologie 355; Falk Wunderlich: Christian Wolff über Bewusstsein, Apperzeption und Selbstbewusstsein 367; Udo Thiel: Zum Verhältnis von Gegenstandsbewusstsein und Selbstbewusstsein bei Wolff und seinen Kritikern 377; Frank Grunert; Erinnerung als Kreation. Zur Gedächtnistheorie von Christian Wolff und der Wolff-Schule 391; Raffaele Ciafardone: Kraft und Vermögen bei Christian Wolff und Johann Nicolaus Tetens mit Beziehung auf Kant 405; Siglenverzeichnis 415-420.

4. ———, eds. 2007. Wolffiana II. Christian Wolff und die europäische Aufklärung. Teil 3. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Akten des 1. Internationalen Christian-Wolff-Kongresses, Halle (Saale), 4-8 April 2004.

Kosmologie. Theologie. Praktische Philosophie.

5. ———, eds. 2007. Wolffiana II. Christian Wolff und die europäische Aufklärung. Teil 4. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Akten des 1. Internationalen Christian-Wolff-Kongresses, Halle (Saale), 4-8 April 2004.

Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften. Ästhetik und Poetik.

6. ———, eds. 2010. Wolffiana II. Christian Wolff und die europäische Aufklärung. Teil 5. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Akten des 1. Internationalen Christian-Wolff-Kongresses, Halle (Saale), 4-8 April 2004.

Wolff und seine Schule. Wirkungen Wolffs. Wolff in Halle. Verttreibung und Rückkerhr.

7. Marcolungo, Ferdinando, ed. 2007. Wolffiana III. Christian Wolff tra psicologia empirica e psicologia razionale. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Atti del seminario internazionale di studi, Verona, 13-14 maggio 2005.

"The comparison of Psychologia empirica and Psychologia rationalis is one of the themes which are of fundamental importance to the understanding of Christian Wolff's philosophy. As is generally known, the terms themselves go back to the two major Latin works first published in 1732 and 1734. Contrary to the prevalent opinion which has viewed the difference between Psychologia empirica and Psychologia rationalis as purely a matter of tradition, here it is viewed rather as a distinction formulated in a specific way for Wolff and arising from the encounter between modern metaphysics and new scientific methods. Following the celebrations in 2004 to mark the 250th anniversary of Wolff's death, a scholarly conference took place at the University of Verona in 2005 with the aim of reconstructing this theme for the interpretation of a way of thinking which is too easily interpreted as the clearest example of an abstract and dogmatic rationalism. In the essays published here attention is drawn instead to the central role of experience which allows a continual comparison of psychic facts and philosophical considerations. From this comes the importance of the comparison with Locke and Malebranche, as well as analyses of what are known as ideales sensuales or typical processes of imagination and of symbolic language, and the possibility of the application of mathematics to psychometrics. Historically-based comparisons (Alsted, Baumgarten, Meier, Kant, Herbart) are also present, illuminating the afterlife of a way of thinking which surely prepared the ground for the development of a new philosophical anthropology."

Indice: Sigle 1; Ferdinando Luigi Marcolungo: Introduzione 9; Axel Bühler: Ad Hans Werner Arndt (1930-2004), in memoriam 13; Ferdinando Luigi Marcolungo: Christian Wolff e il progetto di una psicologia filosofica 15; Jean-Francois Goubet: L'usage de la raison selon Wolff: entre logique, psychologie et anthropologie 35; Riccardo Pozzo: La logica di Wolff e la nascita della logica delle facoltà 45; Oliver-Pierre Rudolph: Aussenwelt und Aussenweltbewusstsein in der Psychologie Christian Wolffs 53; Davide Poggi: L'Essay di J. Locke e la Psychologia empirica di Christian Wolff 63; Manuela Mei: Sensazioni e Ideae sensuales nella filosofia di Christian Wolff 95; Luigi Cataldi Madonna: Immaginazione e arte geroglifica nella psicologia cognitiva di Christian Wolff 113; Ivan Valbusa: Psicologia e sistema in Alsted e in Wolff 131; Antonio Moretto: Matematica e psicologia empirica in Wolff 145; Clemens Schwaiger: Das Problem des Handelns wider besseres Wissen bei Wolff, Baumgarten und Meier 167; Paola Rumore: Materiali per la ricostruzione della prima diffusione e ricezione tedesca della psicologia empirica di Wolff 177; Stefano Poggi: Ontologia e psicologia: Herbart contro Wolff 195; Riccardo Martinelli: Wolff, Kant e le origini dell' antropologia filosofica 205.

8. Fabbianelli, Faustino, Goubet, Jean-François, and Rudolph, Oliver-Pierre, eds. 2011. Wolffiana IV. Zwischen Grundsãtzen und Gegestãnden. Untersuchungen zur Ontologie Christian Wolffs. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

"This volume embodies the new and lively interest in Christian Wolff which has been continuously developing over recent decades. It also bears witness to the rediscovery of ontology, a field of knowledge which has become increasingly visible, especially in recent years, in international philosophical reflection. The volume contains papers in German, French and Italian given at the international conference "Età dei Lumi e filosofia. L'ontologia di Christian Wolff", held in Parma from 19-21 February 2009. It is divided into six sections: "Structure and properties of Wolff's ontology", "'Signs'", "'Designation' and 'Ficta'", "Ontology in Wolff's thought", "Ontological debates", "The fate of Wolff's ontology" and "Wolff's ontology in the 20th century". The essays are complemented by an editors' introduction, an extensive bibliography and an index of names and subjects."

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Siglen und Abkürzungen VII; Faustino Fabbianelli, Jean-François Goubet, Oliver-Pierre Rudolph: Einleitung XI.

I. Teil. Struktur und Beschaffenheit der Ontologie Wolffs.

1. Ferdinando Luigi Marcolungo: Wolff e l'ontologia 3; 2. Oliver-Pierre Rudolph: Christian Wolffs Ontologie als Wissenschaft des Möglichen 11; 3. Jean-Paul Paccioni: Sur la Würcklichkeit: "würcken" et "Würcklichkeit" 23;

II. Teil.: "Zeichen", "Bezeichnung" und "Ficta".

1. Luigi Cataldi Madonna: Segno e designazione nell'ontologia wolffiana 41; 2. Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero: Wolfius in fabula. L 'ontologia dei ficta 51;

III. Teil: Die Ontologie innerhalb von Wolffs Denken.

1. Manuela Mei: "Vis" e "facultas": i presupposti ontologici della psicologia cognitiva wolffiana 67; 2. Jean-François Goubet: Qu'y a-t-il d'ontologique dans la logique wolffienne ? Sur la verior logica 79; 3. Paola Basso: La filigrana ontologica del metodo matematico wolffiano 89;

IV. Teil: Ontologische Auseinandersetzungen.

1. Federica De Feiice: La critica wolffiana dell'Ethica di Spinoza nella Theologia naturalis II 103; 2. Davide Poggi: Tra psicologia e ontologia: Wolff, Locke e il principio di non contraddizione 115; 3. Robert Schnepf: Kausale Begriffe und die Probleme kategorialer Begriffsbildung bei Wolff und Crusius 129; 4. Andreas Brandt: Wolffs Raum- und Zeittheorie zwischen Leibniz, Newton und Kant 143; 5. Sophie Grapotte: La réfutation kantienne de la preuve 'woljftenne' de l'existence de Dieu 155;

V. Teil: Das Schicksal von Wolffs Ontologie.

1. Marco Sgarbi: Il destino dell'ontologia. Johann Joachim Spalding interprete di Christian Wolff 171; 2. Beatrice Centi: Ontologie und Psychologie - von Wolff zu Brentano 183;

VI. Teil: Wolffs Ontologie im XX. Jahrhundert.

1. Paola Rumore: L'ontologia di Wolff: un'ombra lunga sulla teoria dell'oggetto 203; 2. Faustino Fabbianelli: Ontologie und Gegenstandstheorie. Elemente zu einer Gegenüberstellung von Wolff und Meinong 215; 3. Tinca Prunea-Bretonnet: L'ontologie wolfßenne: modèle implicite de la pensée métaphysique de Kant? 229; 4. Giuseppe D'Anna: Essere, ente ed oggetto. Christian Wolff tra Nicolai Hartmann e Hans Pichler 241;

Bibliographie 255; Personenverzeichnis 285; Sachverzeichnis 291.

9. Neveu, Sébastien. 2017. Wolffiana V. L'a priori, l'a posteriori, le pur, le non pur chez Christian Wolff et ses maîtres. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

10. Pelletier, Arnaud, ed. 2017. Wolffiana VI. Christian Wolff's German Logic: Sources, Significance and Reception. Hildeseheim: Georg Olms.

11. Marcolungo, Ferdinando, ed. 2017. Wolffiana VII. Christian Wolff e l'ermeneutica dell'Illuminismo. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

12. Cataldi Madonna, Luigi. 2019. Wolffiana VIII: Erfahrung und Wissenschaftstheorie bei Christian Wolff. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

13. Marcolungo, Ferdinando. 2021. Wolffiana IX. Esperienza e ragione in Christian Wolff. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The Rediscovery of Ontology in the Twentieth Century Philosophy

(This page is under construction)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Index of the section "Bibliographies of Historians of Philosophy"

Annotated Bibliographies of Historians of Philosophy

Jan A. Aertsen:

Writings in English

Writings in German

John P. Doyle:

1966 - 2016

Jean École:

1961 - 1983

1984 - 2008

Joseph S. Freedman:

1984 - 1997

1999 - 2008

2009 - 2022

Édouard Jeauneau:

1954 - 2013

Giorgio Tonelli:

Works in Italian - Scritti in Italiano

Works in English

Works in French - Écrits en Français

Works in German - Essays in deutscher Sprache

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography of Jan A. Aertsen. Writings in English

Introduction

Jan Adrianus Aertsen (Amsterdam, 1938 - 2016), formerly professor of Medieval Philosophy and Modern Catholic Philosophy at the Free University of Amsterdam (since 1984), was the director of the Thomas Institute in Cologne (Germany) until 2003; his areas of interest were the history of transcendentals, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and Meister Eckhart.

A complete bibliography of his writings up to 2002 was published by Sabine Folger-Fonfara in:

Martin Pickavé (ed.), Die Logik des Transzendentalen. Festschrift für Jan A. Aertsen zum 65. Geburstag, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003, (Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 30), pp. XXIII-XXXII.

I give an updated bibliography with the omission of the publications in Dutch and of some minor writings.

Books authored

1. Aertsen, Jan A. 1984. Medieval Reflections on Truth. Adaequatio rei et intellectus. Amsterdam: VU Boekhandel.

Inaugural address on the occasion of his taking up the chair of Medieval philosophy of the Free University in Amsterdam on November 9, 1984.

"There are certain basic words which form the undertone of our thinking and of the manner in which we experience things. These basic words are not unchangeable; they often receive a different content . . . One such basic word is 'truth'."

This is the start of the report of the Synod of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, issued in 1981, "On the nature of the authority of Scripture".(1) How does it happen that the Bible is read so differently? In searching for an answer to this problem, the report adopts a course remarkable within the. Reformed tradition. It poses a truly philosophical question: "What is truth?" That the Bible is read differently is related to the fact that not all people mean the same by what they call "truth".

If I want to raise this same question today, then I am in good company - though I must add at once that it is the matter rather than the company that motivates me. From the outset, that is, as early as with the Greeks, philosophy and truth are seen in an intimate connection. Aristotle, for example, describes philosophy as the "theory" of truth.(2) It is in the Middle Ages, however, that for the first time treatises appear under the title of De veritate, where truth itself is explicitly made the object of reflection. I would like to draw your attention to medieval observations on the query about truth.

'Adaequatio rei et intellectus' as the medieval formula of truth and the criticism of it.

Is an exposition on this theme worthwhile, though? Do we not already know what truth was in the Middle Ages? Probably there is no formulation in scholastic thought that has become more widely known. Even those who did not enjoy the privilege of a classical education are able to say that truth is adaequatio rei et intellectus. What is meant by that seems to be clear. The formula appears to express the "natural" idea of truth, i.e., the correspondence between thought and reality. The determination of truth as adaequatio has become so self-evident that, as the Handbuch philosophischer Grundbegriffe states, it is the point of depart and reference for all contemporary discussions on truth.(3) It can be added that this occurs mostly in a critical sense. Two examples may suffice.

In the above-mentioned synodal report the first chapter sketches the changes in the concept of truth over the course of time. The so-called subject/object relation underlies the entire exposition, apparently from the unquestioning presupposition that this relation is fundamental to the phenomenon of truth as such. The changes in the concept of truth, then, are described in three phases. Successively the report speaks of "objective truth", "subjective truth" (in systems of thought like idealism and existentialism), and finally, of a newer conception called the "relational" concept of truth - the objective and the subjective in one. This means that "truth always occurs within a relation, within the 'relatedness' of man to something else."(4) As the report claims, moreover, this relational concept of truth links up with what the Bible calls truth.

The objective concept of truth - the most current idea of truth - is represented by the medieval formula, phrased "truth is the correspondence of the human way of picturing things with the matters themselves." The human way of imagining things, the human consciousness, is like a mirror able to reflect "the objective state of affairs". This conception of truth is not only ascribed to Thomas Aquinas, but to a great variety of people: " . . . Greek philosophers, . . . the classical Reformed theologians, . . . the logician Bertrand Russell, . . . the Marxist Lenin". The drawback of this conception, in the assessment of the report, is that man is very passive. Does knowing the truth not demand man's activity, research; and wrestling? Without a human spirit there is no truth.

An entirely different criticism can be found in Heidegger, who dealt most thoroughly with the western conception of truth. The lectures he delivered at the University of Freiburg during the winter semester of 1942-43 appeared in 1982 in the Gesamtausgabe of his works under the title Parmenides.(5) Strictly speaking, the title is misleading for actually these lectures deal with the essence of truth, the identical subject that engaged Heidegger in writing Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, which dates from the same time. In the lectures, however, there is "a more direct confrontation with the history of western thought".(6) In his view a change in the essence and "locus" of truth has evolved in philosophy. Truth becomes "rightness" (Richtigkeit) of knowing and asserting; it is no longer "unconcealedness" (aletheia) of being, as it was for the early Greek thinkers. The medieval formulation fixes this essential transformation. " `Veritas est adaequatio intellectus ad rem' Im Sinne dieser Umgrenzung des Wesens der Wahrheit als Richtigkeit denkt das gesamte abendländische Denken von Platon bis zu Nietzsche. "(7) Truth becomes a characteristic of a mental act within man. Inevitably the problem then arises how a psychical process in the inner man can be brought into agreement with things outside.(8) This traditional and current conception of truth, however, is derivative (abkünftig). Parmenides' thought reveals "the road of truth, far away from the beaten track of men". (Fragm. B 1, 27). It can give us a reminder of the forgotten "primordial" sense of truth, the unhiddenness of being, which is the ground of the possibility of rightness.

But when the proper function of philosophy is to "re-mind", we are also allowed to ask of this twofold criticism: do we recall the meaning of truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus at all? Does it have a merely derivative sense, i.e., the rightness of thought? On the other hand, does the formula imply that truth is "reflection" and leave the human mind out of account? These questions lead, me this afternoon to focus on medieval views of truth, in which the idea of the adaequatio plays a central role." (pp. 3-5)

Concluding observations.

Looking back over the course of this discussion, we may conclude that the criticism of the medieval adaequatio-formula, outlined at the beginning, did not grasp its original meaning. Neither is this conception concerned with truth in a merely derivative sense, nor does it ignore man's activity. For in the previous analysis we observed that Thomas's notion of true includes first, transcendentality, second, relationality, third, anthropocentrism, fourth, the fulfilment in an act of the intellect, fifth, the necessity of a norm and measure, sixth the intrinsic connection with the word, seventh, the relation to the divine Logos, and finally, the identity with God Himself. These moments are implicitly or explicitly expressed in the formula adaequatio rei et intellectus, in which every term is charged with meaning.

Compared to the breadth of this conception, modern theories appear to be a reduction of the integral process of truth. It is philosophically important to note that in the medieval approach what is fundamental to truth is not the duality of subjective and objective from which then their togetherness has to be conceived. Rather, it is the primordial conformity of being and intellect that is fundamental to truth. Indeed, as we have seen, being and thinking are the same in the Origin.

Another remarkable aspect in this medieval view is the attempt to integrate philosophical and religious truth. This endeavour runs parallel to the philosophical introduction of the synodal report of the Reformed Churches, with which I began this address. Its intention is that the "relational" concept of truth links up with what the Bible calls truth. Thomas's conception lies concretely in the notion of word, a good example of the way in which his understanding of truth is deepened by a theological reflection. But that which fundamentally enables the integration is the basic idea of the transcendentality of truth. This conception underlies his entire discussion.

The medieval doctrine of the transcendentals - being, one, true, good, and beautiful - forms "the heart of scholastic ontology and metaphysics."(93) This doctrine will be the subject of my research over the coming years. Today I wanted to present you with a sample of it.(94)

Notes:

(1) In the Dutch original, the report carries the title God met ons . . . over de aard van het Schriftgezag, published in: Kerkinformatie, nr. 113 (Febr. 1981). The report was translated into English by the Secretariat of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod, Grand Rapids, Mich., U.S.A.

(2) Metaphysica II, c. I, 993 a 30. Cf. 993 b 20.

(3) L.B. Puntel - Wahrheit, in: Handbuch philosophischer Grundbegriffe III, München, 1974, 1651. Cf. Th. de Boer - De eindigheid van de mens en de oneindigheid van de waarheid. De geschiedenis van het fenomenologisch waarheidsbegrip van Brentano tot Levinas, in: De eindige mens?, Bilthoven, 1975, 55 f.

(4) o.c., 10 (in the English translation).

(5) Frankfurt am Main, 1982 (Gesamtausgabe II. Abteilung, Bd. 54).

(6) Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, in: Wegmarken, Frankfurt am Main, 1967, 73-97. See also for Heidegger's view of truth Sein und Zeit, VIII ed., 1957, 212 f.; Vom Wesen des Grundes, in: Wegmarken, 25 f.; Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, in: id., 109-144; Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, Frankfurt am Main, III ed., 1965, 31 f.; 107 f.; 112 f.

Cf. W. Brettschneider - Sein und Wahrheit. Über die Zusammengehörzgkeit von Sein und Wahrheit im Denken Martin Heideggers, Meisenheim, 1965; J. van der Hoeven - Heidegger, Descartes, Luther, in: Reflecties, Opstellen voor Prof. dr. J.P.A. Mekkes, Amsterdam, 1968, 71-116; Th. de Boer - o.c., 78 f.; E. Tugendhat - Heideggers Idee von Wahrheit, in: G. Skirbekk (Hrsg.) - Wahrheitstheorien. Eine Auswahl aus den Diskussionen fiber Wahrheit im 20. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt am Main, 2nd edition, 1980, 431-448.

(7) Parmenides, 73.

(8) id., 74.

(93) J.B. Lotz - Zur Konstitution der transzendentalen Bestimmungen des Sein nach Tomas von Aquin, in: Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter (Hrsg. P. Wilpert), Berlin, 1963, (Miscellanea Mediaevalia Bd. 2) 334.

(94) Cf. my essay "The Convertibility of Being and Good in St. Thomas Aquinas" to be published in The New Scholasticism [59, 1985, pp. 449-470]

2. ———. 1988. Nature and Creature. Thomas Aquinas's Way of Thought. Leiden: Brill.

Translated by Herbert Donald Morton from the Dutch Dissertation Natura en Creatura. De denkweg van Thomas van Aquino (Amsterdam, 1982) .

Contents: List of Abbreviations XI; Preface XIII; Introduction 1; 1. From questioning towards knowing 7; 2. By the way of predication ( Per via predicationis): Definition and participation 54; 3. By the way of causality ( Per viam causalitatis) 92; 4. The way of truth ( Via veritatis); 5. By the way of reason ( Per viam rationis) 191; 6. Hodo-logy 230; 7. Principium 279; 8. Finis 337; Epilogue 391; Bibliography 397; Index Rerum 409-413.

"The study presented here is the revised version of a doctoral dissertation that was submitted to the Central Interfaculty (Faculty of Philosophy) of the Free University in Amsterdam in fulfillment of the requirements of the Doctorate of Philosophy and defended publicly on April 16, 1982. That this dissertation was originally published at a Protestant university may be considered a sign of common responsibility for a Doctor of the still undivided western Christendom." (from the Preface).

"Our aim was to develop an interpretation of the inner coherence and direction of Thomas's philosophizing. This objective was pursued by following his way of thought and by seeking to fathom the motives of his quest for intelligibility. Now that this inquiry has been brought to an end, it turns out that our investigation of Thomas's way of thought has proceeded according to the order of the transcendentals "being," "true," and "good." Their logical order, which Thomas sketches, is that "being" is the first and that "the true" and "good" come after it, in this order. For, so he argues in S. Th. I, 16, 4, "knowledge naturally precedes the appetite." "Being" is the first, "good" the ultimate.

From the triad "being"-"true"-" good," their convertibility, and their conceptual nonidentity a number of coherences can be brought to light that were not always signalized or worked out by Thomas himself. They are nonetheless most illuminating for the movement of Thomas's thought, and also for the course of our investigation. These coherences show that in what has preceded, a multiplicity of themes has been traversed according to a definite pattern." (p. 391)

(7) The result of Aristotle's exposition in Metaph. II is the thesis: "There is the same disposition of things in being and in truth" (4.3.1.). On the analogy of this thesis Thomas himself frames the statement: "There is the same disposition of things in goodness and in being" (8.1.1.). A hierarchical order can be found in being, the true, and good. Whatever is in any way and is true and is good is to be reduced to the first Being, to the maximally True and to the ultimate Good, namely, God. The causal relation of God to the world is therefore threefold. He is 'causa efficiens', 'exemplaris', and 'finalis'. With this threefold causality Thomas connects the triad of transcendental determinations 'ens (or: unum) - verum - bonum'.

This coherence of the transcendentals with the divine causality makes clear that the "anthropocentrism" in Thomas's doctrine is to be specified: man is marked by a transcendental openness, certainly, is "in a certain sense all things," but not in a constitutive sense. It is typical of the medieval approach to inquire into the origin of being, into the ground of the truth and goodness of things. This origin and ground is conceived as "creation." Every being is true and good because it is thought and willed by the Creator. The relational character of the transcendentals "true" and "good" is ultimately founded in the relation to the divine intellect and will.

The divine foundation of the transcendentals is connected by Thomas with the circulation in God Himself, the eternal coming forth of the Persons. "Being" (or: "one") is attributed by appropriation to the Father, "true" to the Son, and "good" to the Spirit. This connection with the divine Trinity provides the basis for developing a trinitarian interpretation of that which is creaturely. In the conceptual nonidentity of the transcendentals ' ens - verum - bonum' the threefold structure of that which is comes to expression. Viewed in the light of the Triune causality, the different components of that which is concur into a unity.

"Being," "true," and "good" are not only common names but also divine names. The relation of what is common to what is proper to the Transcendent is conceived by Thomas in terms of "participation." He subscribes to Aristotle's criticism of this Platonic idea by stating that there

are no separate, self-subsisting Forms of natural things. But Thomas, in the prologue to his commentary to pseudo-Dionysius's De divinis nominibus, recognizes the legitimacy of this doctrine with regard to what is most common. Only in the case of transcendental forms can a first be posited which is the perfection essentially and as such subsistent. All else must consequently be understood as participation in this perfection. Against this background it becomes understandable that Thomas conceives "creation" preeminently as "participation."

The doctrine of the transcendentals is found to have an important, integrating function in Thomas's way of thought. In man's quest for intelligibility, the transcendentals present a comprehensive perspective on nature and creature. Their circular ways come to an end in the return to the Origin, in which "being," "true," and "good" are perfectly one." (pp. 395-396).

3. ———. 1996. Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals. The Case of Thomas Aquinas. Leiden: Brill.

Contents: Preface IX-X; Introduction 1; One. The Beginnings of the Doctrine of the Transcendentals 25: Two. Thomas's General Account of the Transcendentals 71; Three. Metaphysics and the Transcendentals 113; Four. Being as the first Transcendental 159; Five. One as Transcendental 201; Six. True as Transcendental 243; Seven. Good as Transcendental 290; Eight. Beauty: A forgotten Transcendental? 335; Nine. Transcendentals and the Divine 360; Conclusions 416; Bibliography 439; Index Nominum 455; Index Rerum 459-467.

Spanish translation: La Filosofía medieval y los trascendentales. Un estudio sobre Tomás de Aquino, Pamplona: Eunsa 2003.

"The title of this book speaks of "Medieval Philosophy" and "the Transcendentals." It can be read as affirming that there is a philosophy in the Middle Ages and that this philosophy encompasses a doctrine of the transcendentals alongside many others.

But our aims in this work are more ambitious. Our title means to suggest a more intrinsic relation between the terms "Philosophy" and "Transcendentals" than mere juxtaposition. We want to show that philosophy in the Middle Ages expresses itself as a way of thought which can be called "transcendental." The present book may therefore be seen as a contribution to the discussion of the question: what is philosophy in the Middle Ages? A recent review of literature offers a telling example of the relevance of this question: "Unmistakably philosophical research about the Middle Ages has fallen into a crisis ( ... ) It is even impossible to reach agreement on the premise what philosophy means in the Middle Ages.(1) '"

(1) A. Speer and J.H.J. Schneider, "Das Mittelalter im Spiegel neuerer Literatur", in: Theologische Quartalschrift 172 (1992), p. 235.

(...)

In this introductory chapter I want first to analyze three different answers to the question "Is there a medieval philosophy?" that are (or were) important for the place of the Middle Ages in the history of philosophy. This analysis affords me an opportunity to take stock of the current study of medieval philosophy (0.1.-0.3.), I will then explain how I myself approach the period, indicating what, in my view, is constitutive for the thought of the Medium Aevum (0.4.). This final section will clarify the intention of this book." (pp. 1-2).

(...)

"Is there a medieval philosophy? Thus far I have discussed three significant conceptions, those of Gilson, of the Cambridge History and of De Libera. They have made substantial contributions to the study of medieval philosophy, but I have formulated objections to all three because they do not provide sufficient insight into the philosophical dimension of medieval thought. Now in order t0 make some progress in this question, I am interested in statements by medieval writers in which they personally indicate what they consider to be fundamental to their thought or what they regard as decisive for the possibility of philosophy. Such "ego" statements are relatively rare among Scholastic authors, but they are not altogether absent. I mention four examples, all taken from theologi. [The authors discussed are Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and Meister Eckhart.] (p. 17).

"The transcendental way of thought is neglected in the conceptions of medieval philosophy discussed above. Although the doctrine of the transcendentals is the core of medieval metaphysics, the doctrine is not considered at all in Gilson's The Spirit. In the Cambridge History it receives only one brief reference (p. 493), and it remains outside of consideration in De Libera's determination of the place of medieval philosophy. One of the objectives of the present study is to show not only that the "forgotten" doctrine is important for our understanding of medieval philosophy, but also that the idea of medieval philosophy as a transcendental way of thought does not exclude the other conceptions, but incorporates them.

The conception of medieval philosophy as transcendental thought expresses already in its terminology a moment of continuity with modern philosophy, for the term 'transcendental' is generally reserved for the way of thought inaugurated by Kant.

Kant brings the project of his three Critiques together under the title of "Transcendental Philosophy," but he himself recognizes that this notion has a long tradition. In the Critique of Pure Reason (B 113) he points to the 'transcendental Philosophy of the Ancients" and quotes the proposition "so famous among the Schoolmen: quodlibet ens est unum, verum, bonum," At the same moment, however, he distances himself from the traditional conception. 'These supposed transcendental predicates of things are nothing else but logical requirements and criteria of all knowledge of things in general" (B 114 ) . 'Transcendental' in the Kantian sense is concerned with the mode of our cognition of objects, insofar as this mode of cognition is possible a priori.

The Kantian perspective has strongly affected the study of medieval transcendental thought. An example of the connection of medieval thought with "modernity" is to be found in Kurt Flasch's important study on Nicholas of Cusa which contains a chapter, entitled "Metaphysics and Transcendental Thought in the Middle Ages. (56) Flasch does not refer here to the doctrine of the transcendentals, for he wants to take the term 'transcendental' exclusively in a Kantian sense, that is, as transcendental-logical. (57) Every transcendental philosophy, in his view, is based on the idea that the world of objects is constituted by the human mind. Transcendental thought in the Middle Ages is therefore related to those thinkers who acknowledge a constitutive function of the human mind, such as the German Dominican Dietrich of Freiberg (d.

after 1310), They show "a much more modern Middle Ages than it is generally supposed. "(58)

Yet this transcendental-logical approach seems questionable from a historical point of view. It makes the Kantian position the exclusive criterion for determining what transcendental thought is in the Middle Ages. Medieval philosophers, however developed their own concept of transcendentality, and it is this way of thought that Kant called the 'Transcendental Philosophy of the Ancients'.

It would be more appropriate historically and philosophically to consider the medieval doctrine as a distinctive form within the tradition of transcendental philosophy.

The French scholar S. 8reton wrote in 1963 that the doctrine of the Transcendentals is "classic and yet poorly known."·(59) His observation still holds. We only possess two general studies on this subject, the first by H. Knittermeyer, the other by G. Schulemann.

Both studies go back to the 1920's and must be regarded as out of date. Their main shortcomings are that they do not pay sufficient attention to the historical and doctrinal background of the formation of the doctrine in the thirteenth century and fail to give an explicit analysis of the notion of transcendentality. A new history of transcendental thought in the Middle Ages is required.(61)

The focus in this book will be on Thomas Aquinas ( 1 224/5-1274), a representative of medieval thought, whose importance for the transcendental way of thought is often neglected or underestimated. Although libraries have been written on his thought, and although we possess various studies of some aspects of his doctrine of the transcendentals, it is striking that a comprehensive study of Aquinas's doctrine is lacking. This book will till this lacuna and wants to show that the doctrine of the transcendentals is not, as has been suggested, "a small, rather insignificant part' of his metaphysics," (62) but is of fundamental importance for his thought. By the same token, the study will substantiate in an exemplary way the claims made in this section concerning the conception of medieval philosophy as a transcendental way of

thought.

Thomas Aquinas was, however, not the first to formulate the doctrine of the transcendentals. The beginning of the doctrine is t0 be located in the first half of the thirteenth century; it coincides with the introduction of a voluminous body of new philosophical literature into the Latin West. Not only the entire corpus aristotelicum, but also the writings of Arabic philosophers become available in translation at this time. In the first chapter we will analyze the beginning of the doctrine of the Transcendentals. It is, of course, a requirement of modern scholarship on Thomas t0 place his philosophy in its proper historical context. The first chapter provides the background for Thomas's transcendental thought and enables us to see its traditional and innovative aspects," (pp. 21-24)

(56) K. Flasch, Die Metaphysik des Einen bei Nikolaus von Kues. Problemgeschichtliche Stellung und systematische Bedeutung, Leiden 1973, pp. 105 ff.

(57) See the extensive note in ibid., p. 103.

(58) Ibid., p. 156. Cf. on Dietrich of Freiberg K. Flasch, "Kennt die mittelalterliche Philosophie die konstitutive Funktion des menschlichen Denkens? Eine Untersuchung zu Dietrich von Freiberg", in: Kantstudien 63 (1972), pp. 182·206.

(59) S. Breton, "L'idée de transcendantal et la genèse des transcendantaux chez Saint Thomas d'Aquin". in: Saint Thomas d'Aquin aujourd'hui, Paris, 1963. p. 45.

(60) H. Knittermeyer, Der Terminus Transzendental in seiner historischen Entwicklung bis Kant, Marburg 1920; G. Schulemann, Die Lehre der Transzendentalen in der scholatischen Philosophie (Forschungen zur Geschichte der Philosophie lind der Pädagogik, vol. IV,2), Leipzig 1929.

(61) Cfr. J..A. Aertsen, "The Medieval Doctrine of the Transcendentals: The Current State of Research", in: Bulletin de la Philosophie médiévale, 33 (1991), Pl'· 130-147. See also the special issue of Topoi 11 (1992). devoted to the 'Transcendentals in the Middle Ages," (ed. J.J.E. Gracia) It contains contributions by J..J.E. Gracia, S. Dumont, J. Marenbon, J.A. Aersten and S. MacDonald.

(62) L. Honnefelder, "Die Rezeption des scotischen Denkens im 20. Jahrhundert", in: Theologische Realenzycklopedie vol IX, sV. "Duns Sd0tus/Scotisumus II, Berlin/New York 1982, p. 233; id., Transzedentalität und Moralität. Zum mittelartelichen Ursprung zweier zentraler Topoi der neuzeitlichen Philosophie, in: Theologissche Quartalschrift 172 (1992). p. 184.

4. ———. 2012. Medieval Philosophy as Transcendental Thought. From Philip the Chancellor (ca. 1225) to Francisco Suárez. Leiden: Brill.

Contents: Preface XIX-XX; Introduction 1; One. The Concept of transcendens in Medieval Thought: What is beyond and what is common 13; Two: Conditions, Presuppositions and Sources of a Doctrine of the Transcendentals 35; Three. The Beginning of the Doctrine of the Transcendentals (ca. 1225): Philip the Chancellor 109; Four. The Doctrine of the Transcendentals in Franciscan Masters [Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure] 135; Five. Albertus Magnus: Different Traditions of thought and the Transcendentals 177; Six: Thomas Aquinas: A First Model 209; Seven. Henry of Ghent: The onto-theological transformation of the doctrine 273; Eighth. The German Dominican School: Dietrich of Freiberg and Meister Eckhart 315; Nine. Duns Scotus: A Turn in the Doctrine of the Transcendentals 371; Ten. Discussions on the Scotist Conception [Francis of Meyronnes, Peter Thomae, Nicholas Bonet, Francis of Marchia] 433; Eleven. The Doctrine of the Transcendentals in Nominalism [William of Ockham, John Buridan] 515; Twelve. Neoplatonic Critiques of Transcendental Metaphysics [Berthold of Moosburg, Nicholas of Cusa] 545; Thirteenth. The Doctrine of the Transcendentals in Renaissance Philosophy [Lorenzo Valla, Pico della Mirandola] 569; Fourteen. The "Metaphysical Disputations" of Francisco Suárez: Between Scholasticism and Modernity 587; Fifteenth. The Doctrine of the "Supertranscendentals": An Alternative Model? 635; Sixteen. Conclusion: The Importance of the transcendental way of thought for medieval philosophy 657; Bibliography 707; Index Nominum 741; Index Rerum 747-756.

"The present work represents the completion of a research project that has engaged me intensively throughout my scholarly life. Its origins reach back to my inaugural address on the occasion of taking up the Chair of Medieval Philosophy at the Free University of Amsterdam (1984). At the end of this lecture, Medieval Reflections on Truth, 'Adaequatio rei et intellectus', I concluded that the idea of the transcendentality of truth underlies these reflections and announced that the medieval doctrine of the transcendentals "will be the subject of my research over the coming years".

This programmatic statement, typical of an ambitious new professor, turned out to be a fortunate choice. The choice had been motivated by a twofold interest. Historically, the doctrine of the transcendentals is an innovative contribution of the Middle Ages to the history of philosophy; the origin of transcendental thought is not to be sought in modern philosophy but is medieval. Systematically, the transcendental terms "being", "one", "true" and "good" concern what is first in a cognitive respect and what is fundamental; they express "basic" words of philosophy.

The project resulted in a large number of studies, including the monograph Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals. The Case of Thomas Aquinas (1996). In the Introduction, I advanced the provocative thesis of an intrinsic connection between medieval philosophy and transcendental thought, already suggested by the main title of the book. My argument was that the theory of the transcendentals is essential for insight into the properly philosophical dimension of medieval thought, which is often developed in a theological context; medieval philosophy can be regarded as a way of transcendental thought. The thesis provoked critical comments and questions: does it not presuppose an "essentialist" conception of medieval philosophy and ignore its real diversity? In my view, the critique was based on a misunderstanding, which could only be removed by providing a complete history of the doctrine of the transcendentals that shows the multiplicity of transcendental thought in the Middle Ages.

In 2003, on the occasion of my retirement as Director of the Thomas Institute at the University of Cologne, thirty-five colleagues, friends and students offered me an impressive Festschrift with the title Die Logik des Transzendentalen. The editor of the volume expressed the hope (p. XXI) that the various contributions would stimulate the realisation of the planned history of the doctrine of the transcendentals in a not too remote future. The Festschrift was indeed both a tribute and a stimulus." (from the Preface)

Books edited

1. Aertsen, Jan A., and Speer, Andreas, eds. 1995. Die Bibliotheca Amploniana. Ihre Bedeutung im Spannunsfeld von Aristotelismus, Nominalismus und Humanismus. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Miscellanea Mediaevalia 23.

2. ———, eds. 1996. Individuum und Individualität im Mittelalter. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Miscellanea Mediaevalia 24.

3. ———, eds. 1998. Raum und Raumvorstellungen im Mittelalter. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Miscellanea Mediaevalia 25.

4. ———, eds. 1998. Was ist Philosophie im Mittelalter? = Qu'est-ce que la philosophie au Moyen Âge? = What is philosophy in the Middle Ages? Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Miscellanea Mediaevalia 26.

Akten des X. Internationalen Kongresses für mittelalterliche Philosophie der Société internationale pour l'étude de la philosophie médiévale, 25. bis 30. August 1997 in Erfurt.

5. Aertsen, Jan A., ed. 1999. Albert der Grosse in Köln. Gehalten auf der Feierstunde zur 750sten Wiederkehr der Einrichtung des Kölner Generalstudiums der Dominikaner am 6. November 1998. Köln: Universität zu Köln.

6. Aertsen, Jan A., and Endress, Gerhard, eds. 1999. Averroes and the Aristotelian Tradition. Leiden: Brill.

Sources, Constitution and Reception of the Philosophy of Ibn Rushd (1126-1198).

Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium Averroicum (Cologne, 1996).

7. Aertsen, Jan A., Emery, Kent Jr., and Speer, Andreas, eds. 2001. Nach der Verurteilung von 1277. Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität von Paris im letzen Viertel des 13. Jahrunderts. Studien und Texte. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Miscellanea Mediaevalia 28.

English title: After the Condemnation of 1277. Philosophy and Theology at the University of Paris in the Last Quarter of the Thirteenth Century. Studies and Texts

8. Aertsen, Jan A., and Speer, Andreas, eds. 2001. Geistesleben im 13. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Miscellanea Mediaevalia 27.

9. Aertsen, Jan A., and Pickavé, Martin, eds. 2002. Ende und Vollendung. Eschatologische Perspektiven im Mittelalter. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Miscellanea Mediaevalia 29.

Mit einem Beitrag zur Geschichte des Thomas-Instituts der Universität zu Köln anlässlich des 50. Jahrestages Institutsgründung.

10. Pickavé, Martin, ed. 2003. Die Logik des Transzendentalen. Festschrift für Jan A. Aertsen zum 65. Geburstag. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Miscellanea Mediaevalia 30.

11. Aertsen, Jan A., and Pickavé, Martin, eds. 2004. 'Herbst des Mittelalters'? Fragen zur Bewertung des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Miscellanea mediaevalia 31.

Essays in English

Abbreviations: DT = Doctrine of the Transcendentals

1. Aertsen, Jan A. 1985. "The Convertibility of Being and Good in St. Thomas Aquinas." New Scholasticism no. 59:449-470.

"In many medieval thinkers, e.g. Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, the statement can be found: " being and good are convertible " (ens et Comm convertuntur).(1) That is to say, " being " and " good " are interchangeable terms in predication (converti enim est conversim praedicari).(2) Wherever " being " is predicated of something, the predicate " good " is involved as well.

That must imply that " good " is here not a concept that adds a real content or a new quality to " being ", as a result of which " being " is restricted. For in that case there would be no question of convertibility.(3) " Good " is an attribute which pertains to every being, it is a property of being as such, a "mode that is common, and consequent upon every being." In other words, " good " is coextensive with " being ", it is one of the so-called transcendentie which, since Suarez, are usually referred to as " transcendentals ".

(1) Alexander of Hales, Summa I, Inq. 1, Tract. 3, q. 3, membrum 1, c. 1, a. 1, "An idem sit bonum et ens "; Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 1, p. 1, a. 1, q. 1, fundam. 5, "Ens et bonum eonvertuntur, sicut volt Dionysius ", d. 34, a. 2, q. 3, fundam. 4; Albert the Great, De Bono q. 1, a. 6; Summa Theol. tract. 6, q. 28; Thom. Aquinas, In I Sent. 8, 1, 3; De Ver. XXI, 2; In De Hebdomadibus, lect. 3; Summa Theol. I, 18, 3.

(2) Thomas Aquinas, De Ver. I, 2 obj. 2.

(3) De Pot. IX, 7 ad 5: Bonum quod est in genre qualitatis, non est bonum quod convertitur cum ante, quod nullam rem supra ens addit.

(4) De Ver. I, 1: modus generaliter consequens omne ens.

(5) Comp. Albert the Great, Summa Theologiae tract. 6, q. 27, c. 3: Bonum dicit intentionem communem et est de transcendentibus omne genus sicut et ens.

2. ———. 1986. "The Circulation-Motive and Man in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas." In L'homme et son univers au moyen âge. Actes du septième congrès international de philosophie médiévale, 30 août - 4 septembre 1982, Vol. I, edited by Wenin, Christian, 432-439. Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters.

"Little attention is usually paid to this divine circular motion in the interpretation of Thomas' work, even though Thomas himself says in the prologue to the first book of his Commentary on the Sententiae that this bringing forth is the «reason» (ratio) of every subsequent process. The circulatio within God is the archetype of the work of creation. A trinitarian interpretation of Thomas' thought, albeit unusual, finds support in this idea. And his reflections on the originating order of the Trinity could also open up fruitful perspectives for further thought about (the problematics of) his thought.

In his explanation of the Trinity, Thomas gives a new elaboration of the concept of relation. In the divine circulatio there are relation of primordiality which are subsistent : «In God relation and essence do differ in being from each other, but are one and the same» (S. Th., I 28, 2). Relation is not an accidental category of substance; being and relation belong « originally» together.

This idea has remained outside of Thomas' metaphysics of creation. But it is this model of relation,which is philosophically important for a renewed reflection on created being. The relation of the creature to God is not accidental as Thomas claimed (18), but for the creature to be is to be in relation. At precisely this point a more comprehensive notion of finite being can be developed. There is the three-foldness in the creature: of subsistent-being, what-being, and act-being. These components agree in esse, which is a being from, through, and to God. In relationship to the Triune-Origin there is unity.

In man the Trinity is represented in a distinctive way, viz., according to the identical character of activity (secundum eamdem rationem rationis, De potentia, 9, 9). The processes of intellection and volition are found in man. Man, who is a person, is therefore imago Trinitatis. It la in this idea that the «anthropocentrism» of medieval thought most clearly comes to the fore.

The manner, however, in which man's movement to God is worked out by Thomas, formed a second «crux» in his thinking. Here again we find in his elaboration of the idea of relation, possibilities for giving his penetrating intuition of the circular motion of egress and return a more integral meaning.

Man is destined to one purpose, viz., communion with God. His drama consists not so much in the natural inability to close the circle through knowing, as in the aversion from his own essentially relational mode of existence. The circular motion thereby comes to stand in a concrete salvation history. This moreover offers the possibility of doing justice to the internal coherence of the structure of the Summa Theologiae. In the prologue to bk. 1, 2, Thomas indicates this design: the first part deals with God, and «the procession of all creatures from Him»; the second with the movement of the rational creature toward Him; and the third with Christ who as man is the way (via) of our tending to God. The second person of the Trinity, the Word, became flesh in order to show mankind the way (back) to its Origin. True human-being is possible only by God's grace.

In summary: the new perspective which Thomas' reflection on the faith mystery of the divine process opens up, is philosophizing oriented to the perfection of being-itself in being toward something else." (pp. 438-439)

(18) De potentia, 3,3 ad 3.

3. ———. 1987. "Natural Law in the Light of the Doctrine of Transcendentals." In Lex et Libertas. Freedom and Law according to St. Thomas Aquinas. Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium on St. Thomas Aquinas' philosophy, Rolduc, November 8-9, 1986, edited by Elders, Leo and Hedwig, Klaus, 99-112. Città del Vaticano: Pontificia Accademia di S. Tommaso e di Religione Cattolica.

4. ———. 1989. "Method and Metaphysics: The v ia resolutionis in Thomas Aquinas." New Scholasticism no. 63:405-418.

5. ———. 1990. "Aquinas and the Classical Heritage: A Response." In Christianity and the Classics. The Acceptance of a Heritage, edited by Helleman, Wendy E., 83-89. Lanham: University Press of America.

Reply to the essay by Arvin Vos: As the Philosopher Says: Thomas Aquinas and the Classical Heritage, same volume, pp. 69-82.

"Arvin Vos has written an excellent paper on Thomas Aquinas and the classical heritage. His paper shows admiration for and affinity with Aquinas's achievement. I share this admiration; Aquinas is a great thinker. Now it is a mark of great thinkers that the content of their thought is so full and rich that one can put emphasis on different aspects. And this is what I intend to do in my response by making some comments and raising some questions. My reflections, stressing a number of underlying ideas, are primarily meant as a supplement to what has been said.

In order to present my remarks in a systematic and coherent way, I take as a starting point a statement of Aristotle which I will develop in four steps, more or less related to the main parts of Vos's paper: (1) the background of the thirteenth century; (2) Thomas's attitude towards Aristotle; (3) the relationship between faith and reason; and (4) the conclusion concerning the question whether the classical heritage can be integrated in the Christian position." (p. 83)

6. ———. 1990. "The Eternity of the. World: The believing and the philosophical Thomas. Some Comments." In The Eternity of the World in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas and his Contemporaries, edited by Wissink, Jozef, 9-19. Leiden: Brill.

7. ———. 1990. "Method and Metaphysics: The via resolutionis in Thomas Aquinas." In Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy. Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy (S.I.E.P.M.), Helsinki 24-29 August 1987, Vol. 3, edited by Tyôrinoja, Reijo, 3-12. Helsinki: Yliopistopaino.

8. ———. 1991. "The Medieval Doctrine of the Transcendentals. The Current State of Research." Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale no. 33:130-147.

"An important, new development in medieval philosophy was the constitution of the doctrine of the transcendentals (DT) in the thirteenth century. The term « transcendental » - the medievals themselves speak of transcendens -- suggests a kind of surpassing. What is transcended are the special modes of being that Aristotle called the « categories », in the sense that the transcendentals are not restricted to one determinate category. « Being » and its « concomitant conditions », such as « one », « true » and « good », « go through (circumeunt) all the categories » (to use an expression of Thomas Aquinas). DT is thus concerned with those fundamental philosophical concepts which express universal features of reality.

The doctrine played a prominent role in later medieval thought. The study of it is essential for our understanding of philosophy in this period, since, according to J.B. Lotz, [« Zur Konstitution der transzendentalen Bestimmungen des Seins nach Thomas von Aquin », in P. Wilpert(ed.), Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter (Miscellanea Mediaevalia, Vol. 2). Berlin 1963, pp. 334-340] p. 334), DT is « the core of Scholastic ontology and metaphysics ». Remarkably, however, research on this doctrine has hitherto been rather limited. The observation, made by the French scholar S. Breton [« L'idée de transcendental et la genèse des transcendentaux chez Saint Thomas d'Aquin » in Saint Thomas d'Aquin aujourd'hui. Paris 1963, pp. 45-74] p. 45) in 1963, that DT is « classic and yet poorly known », still holds. An example of its neglect is the Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (ed. N. Kretzmann, 1982) that contains only one brief reference (p. 493, to Ockham). In this contribution I want to take stock of the current state of research on DT, to assemble and discuss the relevant literature, to indicate certain lacunas, and to make some suggestions for further research." (p. 130).

9. ———. 1991. "Good as Transcendental and the Transcendence of the Good." In Being and Goodness, edited by MacDonald, Scott, 56-73. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

"Conclusion.

In ST Ia.6.4 ("Whether all things are good by the divine goodness?") Thomas concludes that the Platonic view appears to be unreasonable in affirming that there are separate forms of natural things subsisting of themselves; still, it is absolutely true that there is something first that is essentially being and essentially good which we call God. Hence, everything can be called 'good' and 'being,' insofar as it participates in the first being, which is essentially good. To this conclusion Thomas still adds, however, an important remark. That every being is good through an external cause by no means excludes each things being called through a goodness that is formally its own goodness. "And so of all things," Thomas ends, "there is one goodness, and yet many goodnesses."

This text can serve as a summary of our analysis, which is focused on the relation between the good as transcendental and the transcendence of the Good. I want to emphasize four points of philosophical importance in Thomas's reflection on the good.

First, Thomas really understands the good transcendentally by establishing an intrinsic connection between being and goodness. To be is the actuality of everything and thereby a good proper to each thing. Things are called good in virtue of an inner goodness. It is characteristic of finite things that although being and good are convertible, there is in them nonetheless a nonidentity between being absolutely and good absolutely.

Second, because the good is transcendental, Thomas applies to it the predication essentially or by participation. This predication expresses the transcendence of the divine goodness and the creaturely character of the goodness of other things. That which is in any way good must be reduced to what is good by its essence as to its origin. That things are good through an intrinsic goodness is not incompatible with their dependence on that which is the good itself.

Third, from a historical point of view, Thomas effects a kind of synthesis between the Aristotelian way of thought and Aristotle's conception of the good, on the one hand -- the good is something common and the essential forms of things are inherent in them -- and the Platonic way of thought and Plato's conception of the good, on the other hand -- the Form of the Good is "separate" from particular goods.

Fourth, Thomas effects a synthesis in still another respect. Characteristic of Boethius's position, according to MacDonald,(29) is the creation approach to explaining the relation between being and goodness. Aristotle's view, in contrast, exemplifies what might be called the nature approach. This approach explains what it is for a thing to be good by referring to the nature of the thing. "The historical significance of DH [Boethius's De Hebdomadibus] MacDonald says, "consists largely in its offering an interesting account of the nature of goodness which is possibly incompatible ... with the sort of account medieval philosophers found in Aristotle." Thomas's reflection on the claim that all things are good and on question how they are good can be regarded as a philosophically original synthesis of the nature approach and the creation approach."(30) The nature approach explains the intrinsic goodness of things, for 'nature' says what beings are in themselves; it always refers to an intrinsic principle. Now, it is Thomas's transcendentality claim that everything is good, insofar as it is. Things are good (in a certain respect) in virtue of their own being. So all things owe their being good to their nature. The creation approach explains that everything is called 'good' through an external cause, for 'creature' says being-related to the Origin of things. Creation expresses that things received their being and goodness from another. Their goodness consists in their relation to the transcendent good, that is, in their participation in what is goodness itself." (pp. 72-73)

(29) MacDonald "Boethius's Claim That All Substances Are Good." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 70:345-79, 1988. (See also the Introduction in this volume.)

(30) The relation between nature an creature in Thomas is the central theme of Aertsen 1988a [ Nature and Creature]

10. ———. 1991. "Beauty in the Middle Ages: A Forgotten Transcendental?" Medieval Philosophy and Theology no. 1:68-97.

11. ———. 1991. "Thomas Aquinas (1224/5-1274). The natural desire for knowledge and its supernatural fulfillment." In Bringing into Captivity every Thought. Capita selecta in the History of Christian Evaluations of non-Christian Philosophy, edited by Klapwijk, Jacob, Griffioen, Sander and Groenewoud, Gerben, 95-122. Lanham: University Press of America.

12. ———. 1992. "Truth as Transcendental in Thomas Aquinas." Topoi.An International Journal of Philosophy no. 11:159-171.

"Aquinas presents his most complete exposition of the transcendentals in De veritate 1, 1, that deals with the question "What is truth?". The thesis of this paper is that the question of truth is essential for the understanding of his doctrine of the transcendentals.

The first part of the paper (sections 1--4) analyzes Thomas's conception of truth. Two approaches to truth can be found in his work. The first approach, based on Aristotle's claim that "truth is not in things but in the mind", leads to the idea that the proper place of truth is in the intellect. The second approach is ontological: Thomas also acknowledges that there is truth in every being. The famous definition of truth as "adequation of thing and intellect" enables him to integrate the two approaches. Truth is a relation between two terms, both of which can be called "true" because both are essential for the conformity between thing and intellect.

The second part of the paper (sections 5--7) deals with the manner in which Thomas gives truth a place in the doctrine of the transcendentals, and shows that his conception of truth leads to important innovations in this doctrine: the introduction of relational transcendentals and the correlation between spirit and being. If "truth" is transcendental, it must be convertible with "being". Sect. 6 discusses objections that Thomas advances himself to this convertibility.

Sect. 7 deals with a difficulty in his account of truth as a relational transcendental. Ontological truth expresses a relation to an intellect but the relation to the human intellect is accidental for the truth of things. Essential for their truth can only be a practical intellect that causes things. In this way, Thomas argues, the divine intellect relates to all things." (p. 159)

13. ———. 1992. "Ontology and Henology in Medieval Philosophy (Thomas Aquinas, Master Eckhart and Berthold of Moosburg)." In On Proclus and His Influence in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Bos, Egbert Peter and Meijer, Pieter A., 120-140. Leiden: Brill.

"In this contribution I would like to investigate whether and in which way the opposition between ontology and henology took shape in medieval thinkers and was a subject of discussion. I will focus my inquiry on three Dominicans of different generations, namely, Thomas Aquinas, Master Eckhart and Berthold of Moosburg. The last one is the least well known of the three. Yet I want to begin with him, since we find in his work not only a justification but also a philosophical deepening of our question." (p. 122)

(...)

5. Conclusion

In my paper I first presented a medieval version of the question: "Metaphysics of Being or philosophy of the One?" - namely, the interpretation of Berthold of Moosburg. In his commentary on Proclus [*] he traces the opposition between ontology and henology to the different structures of thought associated with Aristotelianism and Platonism, which we have indicated with the keywords "transcendentality" and "transcendence" of the first. I then proceeded to use Berthold's model to elucidate the thought of Thomas Aquinas and Master Eckhart. To this analysis I would add three concluding observations.

First, we can ascertain that for Thomas and Eckhart the transcendental and transcendent approaches do not form an absolute opposition. Thomas posits a causal relation between God and the maxime communia. Transcendentals are to be traced to God as their cause. Eckhart identifies. God and the transcendentia. That which is most general is God.

Secondly, both in Thomas and in Eckhart the doctrine of transcendentals is found to have an integrating function. That is notable, because Berthold regards this doctrine as typical of the Aristotelian position. Now this theory certainly contains anti-Platonic elements, as we observed in Thomas, such as the emphasis on predicative generalness. But transcendentals have yet another aspect, which Berthold does not mention, an aspect which played an essential role in the development of the doctrine. Generally, the Summa de bono of Philip the Chancellor, written about 1230, is regarded as the first treatise on transcendentals. In the prologue of this work Philip observes that "being," "one," "true" and "good" are not only that which is most common but are sometimes also "appropriated," that is, treated as "proper" to something. For in Scripture these names are attributed pre-eminently to God, they are also divine names. (90) The attention given this second kind of naming is undoubtedly influenced by pseudo-Dionysius, who functions in Berthold as an eminent witness for the Platonic view. Thus we see that in the context of the doctrine of transcendentia themselves the question must arise concerning the relation between the most general which goes through all categories, and the divine which surpasses all categories.

Thirdly, the medieval doctrine of transcendentals is pluriform. The solutions of Thomas and Eckhart diverge. Philosophically more important, however, is that in which they agree. Characteristic of philosophy is a transcending movement. It surpasses the concrete things of experience in quest of a first, from which reality can be understood. The answer to the question of what this first is can be sought in different directions. Berthold sketches two options: the first is the most general, which is the precondition for man's intellectual knowledge; or the first is the cause of the being of things but is not itself of the nature of the caused. Thomas and Eckhart represent a type of philosophical thought in which the two options in question are connected. That is their contribution to the debate about what philosophy should be: ontology or henology." (pp. 139-140)

[* See note 16:] Berthold von Moosburg, Expositio super Elementationem theologicam Procli: Prologus. Propositiones 1-13 (Corpus Philosophorum Teotonicorum Medi Aevi VI, 1) ed. by M.R. Pagnoni-Sturlese and L. Sturlese, Hamburg 1984. The first volume contains a valuable ?Einleitung' by K. Flasch (XI - XXVIII). See also A. de Libera, Introduction à la mystique rhénane d'Albert le Grand à Maître Eckhart, Paris 1984.

(90) Philippi Cancellarii Parisiensis Summa de bono (ed. N. Wicki), Bern 1985, 4 - 5. Cf. H. Pouillon, 'Le premier traité des propriétés transcendantales. La Summa de bono du Chancellier Philippe', Revue neoscolastique de philosophie 42 (1939), 40 - 77.

14. ———. 1992. "The Platonic Tendency of Thomism and the Foundations of Aquinas's Philosophy." Medioevo no. 18:120-140.

15. ———. 1993. "Aquinas's Philosophy in its Historical Setting." In The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, edited by Kretzmann, Norman, 12-37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"In this chapter Aquinas's attitude towards philosophy, his leading sources, and the aims of his philosophical interest are clarified in two complementary ways. First, his writings, which are very voluminous in spite of his relatively early death, will be placed within the historical context of the thirteenth century. An overview of his work and its philosophical relevance will be provided in connection with the most important intellectual developments in this period -- the rise of the university, the reception of Aristotle, and the conflict between the faculties (sections II-IV). Subsequently, Aquinas's view of philosophy and of its relationship to theology will be elaborated in a more systematic way (sections V-X)." (p. 14)

16. ———. 1995. "The Beginning of the Doctrine of the Transcendentals in Philip the Chancellor (ca. 1230)." In Quodlibetaria. Miscellanea studiorum in honorem Prof. J. M. da Cruz Pontes Anno Iubilationis suae Conimbrigae MCMXCV, edited by Santiago de Carvalho, Mario A., 269-286. Porto: Fundaão Eng. António de Almeida.

A revised version of this study form the Chapter Three of Medieval Philosophy as Transcendental Thought. From Philip the Chancellor (ca. 1225) to Francisco Suárez (2012), pp. 109-133.

"Our comparative inquiry does not allow any other conclusion than that Philip the Chancellor, in the introductory questions of his Summa de bono, really presents something new. His intention of going back into the "ground of thought" by reducing our understanding of questions to the communissima results in the earliest systematic formulation of a doctrine of the transcendentals. The doctrine is introduced as the philosophical answer to the dualism of Manichaeism. For the first time, Philip brings together four basic notions, "being", "one", "true", and "good", and investigates their mutual relations. But his account bears the marks of a first draft; it is rather terse and sometimes little explicit.

Viewed from a historical perspective, his doctrine has an atypical aspect, insofar as it is centered in a metaphysics of the good. The context of the doctrine generally is a conception of metaphysics, in which "being" is the proper subject of this science. Philip recognizes that ens is the first concept, but he does not say much about it. His interest concerns "the good", a notion that is richer than (habundat) "being". Two elements of Philip's doctrine were especially directive for subsequent discussions of the transcendentals. The first is his view of the twofold relation between the communissima: there exists a real identity between them -- they are convertible according to their supposits --, but they differ according to their concepts. The other element concerns the order of the most common notions, which is based on the notion of "indivision". It is somewhat paradoxical that Philip does not deal separately with unum, whereas the ratio of "one" determines his understanding of bonum and verum.

The Summa de bono was attentively read and frequently used, especially in the Franciscan milieu. The influence of Philip's account of the communissima is manifest in two works that were composed about twenty years after his Summa, namely, in the Franciscan Summa theologica attributed to Alexander of Hales, and in De bono, an early writing of the Dominican Albert the Great." (pp. 132-133)

17. ———. 1995. "Tendencies and Perspectives in the Study of Medieval Philosophy." In Bilan et perspectives des études médiévales en Europe. Actes du premier Congrès européen d'Études Médiévales, Spoleto, 27 -29 mai 1993, edited by Hamesse, Jacqueline, 107-128. Louvain-la-Neuve: Fédération internationale des instituts d'études médiévales.

18. ———. 1996. "Transcendental Thought in Henry of Ghent." In Henry of Ghent. Proceedings of the International Colloquium on the Occasion of the 700th Anniversary of his Death (1293), edited by Vanhamel, Willy, 1-18. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

"From the account of the relation between res and ens it is possible to draw a number of conclusions pertinent to Henry's way of thought and his point of departure.

I. The first conclusion is that it is incorrect to say that in his thought there is an insoluble tension between the primacy of being and that of thing. Henry describes the relation between the first concept, that of "thing" in the most general sense, and the second concept, that of "being," as a relation of foundation. "Something cannot have the character of being unless it first has the ratio of thing in the sense of reor, reris, in which the ratio of that being is founded (fundatur). (46)

2. The firstness of res is not an a priori condition of knowledge, that is, a "transcendental form" in the Kantian sense. It can be an idle concept, such as an imaginary thing. The firstness is related, as appeared from the discussion of the seventh Quodlibet, to the way in which the human intellect is "moved" by reality. The relation of foundation between res and ens is worked out by Henry in two respects, from the angle of the theory of science and ontologically.

3. From the angle of the theory of science, the relation is that between the precognition of a quiddity and intellectual knowledge of it. At the first level, res in the sense of reor, reris is the most general concept, the communissimum of the seventh Quodlibet. At the second level, "being" is the first and most general concept. Henry's statement that ens is the first that is scientifically known (scita) must be understood in this precise sense.

In ontological respect, the relation between the first and the second concept is the relation between the still undetermined thing and the thing that is determined by its essence. The quidditative being however is not determined to this or that thing, to creator or creature, to substance or accident. It is understood, Henry states, under the aspect of being that is the subject of metaphysics. (47) Not the first mode of "thing" but the second mode is the point of departure of metaphysics.

The level of quidditative being is the level of the transcendentals. Henry's identification of res, ratitudo with ens is the answer to the question (see section 3, above) why res is not named in Henry's account of the transcendentals. It is the concept that lies at the basis of his doctrine of being and of the most general intentiones. In comparison to his predecessors, the novelty of Henry's doctrine is the central place he attributes to Avicenna's notion of "thing." That res, ratitudo lies at the basis of Henry's doctrine explains the fact that he, otherwise than in the tradition, understands truth as a real relation to the exemplar.

Another distinctive feature of Henry's doctrine of the transcendentals is its being preceded by a more general concept, the cognition of "thing" in the broadest sense. For the clarification of this relation one may utilize a distinction that emerged in post-medieval philosophy. In a study of the concept of res, Ludger Oeing-Hanhoff has called attention to the fact that in the seventeenth century transcendental concepts were opposed to "super-transcendental" concepts, which are said not only of real but also of fictitious beings. Examples of these super-transcendental concepts are cogitabile and opinabile.(48) Henry's notion of res may be regarded as an anticipation of such concepts." (pp. 17-18).

(46) Summa 34.2 (ed. R. Macken, p. 175): "Et tamen rationem esse nihil potest habere, nisi prius habendo rationem rei dictae a reor, in qua fundatur ratio esse ilius."

(47) Cf. Summa 24.3 (fol. 138v P).

(48) L. Oeing-Hanhoff, "Res comme concept transcendental et sur-transcendental", in: M. Fattori and M. Bianchi (ed.), Res (III Colloquio Internazionale del Lessico Intellettuale Europeo), Rome 1982, pp. 285-296.

19. ———. 1997. "Thomas Aquinas: Aristotelianism versus Platonism?" In Néoplatonisme et philosophie médiévale. Actes du Colloque international de Corfou 6-8 octobre 1995 organisé par la S.I.E.P.M., edited by Benakis, Linos G., 147-162. Turnhout: Brepols.

20. ———. 1998. "What is First and Most Fundamental? The Beginnings of Transcendental Philosophy." In Was ist Philosophie im Mittelalter?, Qu'est-ce que la philosophie au Moyen Age? What is Philosophy in the Middle Ages?. Akten des X. Internationalen Kongresses für mittelalterliche Philosophie der Société Internationale pour l'Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale, 25. Bis 30. August 1997 in Erfurt, edited by Aertsen, Jan A. and Speer, Andreas, 177-192. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

21. ———. 1998. "Being and One: The Doctrine of the Convertible Transcendentals in Duns Scotus." In John Duns Scotus (1265/6-1308). Renewal of Philosophy. Acts of the Third Symposium organized by the Dutch Society for Medieval Philosophy Medium Aevum (May 23 and 24, 1996), edited by Bos, Egbert Peter, 13-26. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"In the prologue of his commentary on the Metaphysics, Duns Scotus explains the name 'metaphysics' as transcendens scientia, that is, the science that is concerned with the transcendentia.(1) This explanation is indicative of the prominent place Scotus ascribes to the doctrine of the transcendentals, which was formulated for the first time in the Summa de bono of Philip the Chancellor that is datable about 1225. The connection between the object of first philosophy and the transcendentals is not in itself new, although the identity posed by Scotus is more radical than in his predecessors.(2) Yet it is no exaggeration to say that Scotus's philosophy marks a new phase in the history of the doctrine of the transcendentia.

Scotus understands the concept 'transcendental' differently than his predecessors did. To thinkers of the thirteenth century, transcendental properties are communissima. 'Being, 'one,'true' and 'good' 'transcend' the Aristotelian categories because they are not limited to one of them but are common to all things. According to Scotus, however, it is not necessary that a transcendental as transcendental be predicated of every being; it is not essential to the concept transcendens that it has many inferiors. In his Ordinatio he determines the concept negatively: 'what is not contained under any genus' or 'what remains indifferent to finite and infinite'. (3) This definition makes possible a vast extension of the transcendental domain; the most important innovation is formed by the so-called disjunctive transcendentals, which are convertible with being, not separately but as pairs.

The fact that the transcendental properties are not necessarily identical with the communissima is, I suspect, the reason why the expression transcendentia, which occurs only sporadically in thinkers like Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent, gains the upperhand in Scotism and becomes the usual term.

About Scotus's doctrine of the transcendentals, in contrast to that of other medieval thinkers, we are well informed by Allan B. Wolter's pioneering study, The Transcendentals and Their Function in the Metaphysics of Duns Scotus (1946). Yet there are aspects of his doctrine that have thus far received little attention in scholarly literature. One of them is Scotus's treatment of the transcendentals 'one, 'true' and 'good,' which as such are convertible with being. In my contribution I want to show that with respect to the traditional transcendentals, too, Scotus breaks new ground and approaches critically the views of his thirteenth-century predecessors. Because he discusses most extensively the relation between being and one, I foals on this discussion." (pp. 13-14)

* The original version of this study will appear in T. Noone and G. A. Wilson (eds.), Essays in Honor Girard Etzkorn: Franciscan Texts and Traditions, Franciscan Studies 56 (1998) [pp. 47-64].

(1) Quaestiones subtilissimae super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis, prol., n. 18: Et hanc scientiam vocamus metaphysicam, quae dicitur a 'meta', quod est 'trans', et 'ycos', 'scientia', quasi transcendens scientia, quia est de transcendentibus.

(2) Albert the Great, Metaphysica I, tract. 1, ch. 2 (Opera omnia XVI, 1, ed. B. Geyer, 5, 13-14), who uses the phrase prima et transcendentia in his analysis of the subject matter of metaphysics. For Thomas Aquinas's doctrine, see J.A. Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals. The Case of Thomas Aquinas, Leiden, Brill 1996, 113-158.

(3) Ordinatio I, dist. 8, part t, q. 3, nn. 113-114 (ed. Vaticana IV, 206).

22. ———. 1998. "Being and One: The Doctrine of the Convertible Transcendentals in Duns Scotus." Franciscan Studies no. 56:47-64.

23. ———. 1998. "The Philosophical Importance of the Doctrine of the Transcendentals in Thomas Aquinas." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 52:249-268.

24. ———. 1998. "Beauty: Medieval Concepts." In Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. Vol. I, edited by Kelly, Michael, 249-251. New York: Oxford University Press.

25. ———. 1999. "The Medieval Doctrine of the Transcendentals. New Literature." Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale no. 41:107-121.

"In 1597 Francisco Suarez published his Disputationes Metaphysicae, a work that had an incredible influence on seventeenth century philosophy. The most salient feature of his metaphysics is the central position of the transcendentia or transcendentalia (Suarez uses these terms as synonyms) : Disp. 2-11 deal with being, unity, truth and goodness. In comparison with Aristotle's conception of a science of being, metaphysics had acquired a « transcendental » character. As Suarez knew very well, this transformation had taken place in the Middle Ages.

In the Bulletin 33 (1991), pp. 130-147, I analyzed the current state of research on the medieval doctrine of the transcendentals (= DT), which is essential for our understanding of philosophy in this period. In the present article I will assemble and discuss the relevant literature of the last decade, adding some older publications that were not mentioned in the first report." (p. 107)

[The first report listed 104 titles, the current report 84].

26. ———. 1999. "Is There a Medieval Philosophy? I. The Case of Thomas Aquinas. II. The Case of Meister Eckhart." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 39:387-412.

27. ———. 1999. "Thomas Aquinas on the Good. The Relation between Metaphysics and Ethics." In Aquinas's Moral Theory. Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzmann, edited by Scott, MacDonald and Stump, Eleonore, 235-253. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

28. ———. 2000. " Transcendens - Transcendentalis. The Genealogy of a Philosophical Term." In L'élaboration du vocabulaire philosophique au moyen âge. Actes du Colloque internationale de Louvain-la-Neuve et Leuven 12-14 septembre 1998 organisé par la S.I.E.P.M., edited by Hamesse, Jacqueline and Steel, Carlos, 241-255. Turnhout: Brepols.

"In the study of medieval philosophy it is customary to speak of the doctrine of the « transcendentals » (1). We have to realize, however, that this term comes from the vocabulary of modern philosophy. The medieval authors themselves speak of transcendentia. What is the significance of this fact ? What is in those names ? By way of introduction, we consider the two terms, « transcendent » and « transcendental », more closely in order to make clear that the interference of the conceptual language of modem philosophy with that of medieval philosophy is not coincidental. The difference in terminology points to a doctrinal evolution. (p. 241)

(...)

"By way of conclusion, let me sum up the main results of our inquiry into the genealogy of the term transcendentia (in the sense of transcendentals »).

(i) The first philosophical account of a doctrine of the transcendentals is presented in Philip the Chancellor's Summa de bono. This work did not use the term transcendentia, but later in the thirteenth century Roland of Cremona, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas applied the term to a systematic doctrine of the communissima. The origin of the doctrine is not the Platonic-Augustinian idea of « transcensus », but rather the Avicennian tradition of primary notions.

(ii) The term transcendentia already existed before the emergence of a systematic doctrine. Albert the Great's commentaries and some texts from the Logica modernorum strongly suggest that the term originates in logical discussions, focussing on the distinctive nature of certain (« transcendental ») terms." (p. 255)

(1) I myself wrote a book with the title Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals. The Case of Thomas Aquinas, Leiden - New York, 1996.

29. ———. 2002. "'Res' as Transcendental. Its Introduction and Significance." In Le problème des Transcendantaux du XIVe au XVIIe siècle, edited by Federici Vescovini, Graziella, 139-155. Paris: Vrin.

"The history of res as a transcendental term is an intriguing one: it could be described in terms of a success-story: from "nothing" to "king". In the first account of a doctrine of the transcendentals, the Summa de bono written by Philip the Chancellor ca. 1225-28, res is not mentioned at all. In the prologue Philip states that « most common (communissima) are these : ens, unum, verum, bonum », whose mutual relations he investigates in the next questions (1). Res is also absent in the expositions by Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure and Albert the Great: they restrict the number of transcendentals to the four that Philip had listed in his Summa (2).

Thirty years after Philip, however, the picture changes. In his account of the transcendentals in De veritate q. 1, a. 1 -- the most extensive one in the thirteenth century --, Thomas Aquinas incorporated res into the doctrine. He distinguishes six transcendentia, in the order ens, res, unum, aliquid, verum and bonum (3). Yet the role of the new transcendental res in Thomas and the Thomistic tradition in general remains somewhat marginal. A good illustration offers a treatise from the 14th century, the Tractatus de sex transcendentibus, composed by Franciscus de Prato (who was lector in Perugia from 1343-45). The treatise is an attempt to systematize the doctrine on the basis of Thomas's teachings. Contrary to the order in De veritate, res holds the last place in this work, and its treatment is substantially briefer than those of the traditional transcendentals (4).

But in the generation after Thomas Aquinas, res started, as we shall see a splendid career. A notable reaction against Thomas's doctrine is Lorenzo Valla's philosophical mainwork Dialecticae disputationes (first version 1439) (5) In these disputations, Valla critically inquires into the basic notions of traditional philosophy, starting with the six primordial prin ciples (primordia) which the Aristotelians called transcendentia. They regarded these principles as the "princes of princes" or the "kings", but according to Valla a plurality of firsts is impossible ; only the monarchy is good. He will therefore investigate which among the six is the true rex imperator, that is, the most comprehensive (capacissima) notion (6).

Valla's conclusion is that only res can claim this title. It is evident unum is to be understood as "one res", aliquid as "another res", etc. But how about the notion ens, to which the Aristotelians give a place honour? In Valla's view, the term does not have a universal force of its own, but its force is wholly borrowed from another, namely from res (7) His arguments are marked by the (humanistic) linguistic turn; they are mainly philological. Ens is a participle that is to be resolved into a relative pronoun and a verb : id quod est. Id is to be resolved into ea res, so that finally ens can be reduced to ea res que est (8). When we say, for instance "the stone is being" (lapis est ens), the expression means "the stone is thing (res) which is". But does such a formula make any sense, when simpler and clearer to say "the stone is a res"? The words "that which is" cannot mean that the stone is "the thing that is", because only God "is" in the proper sense (Exodus 3,14). When therefore it is said of something else than God that it is "being" (ens), one uses an inappropriate way of expression (9).

The dignity of a transcendental was given only to res (10). To illustrate its position, Valla alludes to a story, reported by Herodotus in his Historiae (III, 86), a work that Valla translated into Latin. Six Persians contested the empire, but when Darius managed to become the king of the Persians, the other five descended from their horses and rendered hommage to the king. Similarly the other five transcendentals descend in order to honor res (11).

With respect to the remarkable history of "thing" I want to raise three questions: How did res come into philosophy, why did it enter philosophy and what did it bring about in philosophy, for our understanding of "reality" (12)?" (pp. 139-141 notes renumbered)

(1) Philippus Cancellarius, Summa de bono, prol. (ed. N. Wicki, t. I, Bern, 1985, p. 4).

(2) Cf. J.A. Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals. The Case of Thomas Aquinas, Leiden-New York-Köln 1996, p. 25-70.

(3) Thomas Aquinas, De veritate q. 1, a. 1 (ed. Leonina t. XXII, 1, Roma, 1970, p. 3-8).

(4) Cf. the recent edition by B. Mojsisch « Franciscus de Prato, Tractatus de sex transcendentibus », Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike and Mittelalter 5, 2000, p. 177-217.

(5) The different versions were edited by G. Zippel in two volumes : Lorenzo Valla Repastinatio dialectice et philosophie t. I, Retractatio totius dialectice cum fundamentis universe philosophie; t. II, Repastinatio dialectice et philosophie, Padova, 1982. [A new edition is now available: Lorenzo Valla, Dialectical Disputations, Latin text and English translation by B. P. Copenhaver and L. Nauta. (I Tatti Renaissance Library), Harvard University Press, 2012 (two volumes).]

Cf. S.I. Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla, Umanesimo e teologia, Firenze 1972, p. 153-162. M. Laffranchi, « L'interpretazione "retorica" del linguaggio dei trascendentali in Lorenzo Valla » in A. Ghisalberti (ed.), Dalla prima alla seconda Scolastica. Paradigmi e percorsi storiografici, Bologna 2001, p. 167-199.

(6) Lorenzo Valla, Retractatio I, cap. 1,n. 9 (ed. Zippel I, p. 11) : « Ea numero sex dicuntur : "ens", "aliquid", "res", "unum", "verum", "bonum". Que quoniam sunt altiora principia et velut principum principes et quasi (ut istis videtur) quidam imperatores et reges (...), de his prius ordine ipso dicendum est 0. Cap. 2, n. 1 : « Iam primum non plures esse debere imperatores ac reges, sed unum (...). Ergo quod ex his vocabulum, sive que vocabuli significatio sit imperator et rex, idest omnium capacissima (...), inquiramus ».

(7) Lorenzo Valla, Retractatio I, cap. 2, n. 12 (ed. Zippel I, p. 14) : « Quo palam est, omnem vim non naturalem habere, sed, ut sic dicam, precariam ac mutuo sumptam ». Repastinatio I, cap. 2, n. 9 (ed. Zippel II, p. 369) : « Quare quis non videt "ens" non habere suapte natura aliquam universalem vim, sed omnem mutuari ab illo 'res' ? ».

(8) Lorenzo Valla, Retractatio I, cap. 2, n. 11 (ed. Zippel I, p. 14) : « Igitur si "ens" ita resolvitur : "id quod est", et "id" resolvitur "ea res", profecto "ens" ita resolvetur : "ea' que est" ».

(9) Lorenzo Valla, Retractatio I, cap. 2, n. 12 (ed. Zippel I, p. 14-15) : « Quid enim sibi vult verbi causa "lapis est ens", id est "ea res, quae est' ? Quid faciunt ille voces "ea que est", cum sit et apertius et expeditius et satius, "lapis est res' ? (...) cum presertim absurda videatur oratio: "lapis est ea res que est", sive "lapis est res que est", quasi nihil sit proprie nisi solus lapis, aut quicquid erit illud, de quo dicemus ipsum esse "rem, que est" : que oratio de solo Deo propria est ( ...). Itaque cum de alia re quam de Deo dicitur quod sit "ens", inepte dicitur ».

(10) Lorenzo Valla, Repastinatio I, cap. 2, n. 12 (ed. Zippel II, p. 370) : « Quo fit ut solum sit "res", quod transcendentis dignitate donetur ».

(11) Lorenzo Valla, Retractatio I, cap. 2, n. 2 (ed. Zippel I, p. 11-12) : « Apud me autem ex his sex que nunc quasi de regno contendunt, non aliter "res" erit rex, quam Darius Hystaspis filius futurus rex erat ex illis sex Persis, qui regnum sorti permisere ». Cap. 2, n. 16 (ed. Zippel I, p. 15).

(12) There does not exist a comprehensive study on res as a philosophical concept. A good overview is offered by J. F. Courtine, Res, in Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 8, Basel 1992, p. 892-901. The volume Res. Atti del III (Colloquio internazionale del Lessico intellettuale europeo, ed. by M. Fattori and M. Bianchi, Rome 1982 (Lessico intellettuale europeo, 26), contains two interesting contributions : J. Hamesse, Res chez les auteurs philosophiques du XIIe et XIIIe siècles ou le passage de la neutralité a la spécificité (p. 91-104); L. Oeing-Hanhoff, Res comme concept transcendental et sur-transcendental (p. 285-296). See also R. Darge, "Suarez" Analyse der Transzendentalien "Ding" und "Etwas" im Kontext der scholastischen Metaphysiktradition », Theologie und Philosophie 75, 2000, p. 339-358.

30. ———. 2002. "Truth in Thomas Aquinas." In The Contemporary Debate on the Truth. Proceedings of the II. Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor Communis II, n. s., 50-54. Vatican City: Pontifica Academia Sncti Thomae Aquinatis.

"When I was invited to comment upon the theme of the section -'Truth in Thomas Aquinas' - I pondered on the best way of meeting the request. I asked myself: What is most important in his conception of truth? The following comments are designed to be an answer to that question and are based on Thomas's remarks in De veritate. As such, my answer does not pretend to be definitive, but is based on personal reflections that are indebted to on-going discussions in the German academic world to which I belong. That said, I would hope that my comments possess some general relevance to other students of Thomas. It is my view, that the salience of Thomas's view of truth can be appreciated by means of highlighting four substantive points.

1. First and foremost we should attend to Thomas's approach to the question quid sit veritas.

(...)

2. Having considered the transcendentality of the truth, Thomas then solicits an answer to the question as to what it is.

(...)

3. There is truth in things; 'truth' is also predicated of the intellect.

What, then, is the primary 'locus' of truth: the thing or the intellect?

In his reply to this question ( De veritate q. 1, a. 2) Thomas advances the idea of the analogy of the true; this predicate is said of many things according to an order of priority and posteriority, that is, in relation to one (thing) that possesses the ratio of the predicate primarily. The classical application

of the doctrine of analogy concerns the term 'being'. The novelty of Thomas's thinking here is to be seens in his application of the analogy to the predicate 'true', in order to determine the relation between the truth of being and the truth of the intellect.

(...)

4. At De veritate 1,4 Thomas poses the question that dominates the first systematic account of truth in the history of philosophy, Anselm of Canterbury's work De veritate: 'Is there only one truth by which all things are true?' Anselm had answered this question affirmatively; there is only one truth in the proper sense ( proprie), the divine truth. Thomas's reply is more differentiated: truth is properly found in the human or divine intellect; primarily in the divine intellect; secondarily in the human intellect. A human truth, too, is truth in the proper sense.

The power of truth manifests itself in its claim of having absolute force; it holds without respect of persons. Thomas gives a remarkable example of that in his Commentary on the Book Job. He interprets the dispute between Job and God after the model of a medieval disputation. But Thomas wonders whether such a disputation is appropriate, since God is far superior to any human being. Truth does not change because of the difference of persons.

When somebody speaks the truth, he cannot therefore be defeated, irrespective of the person, with whom he disputes ( cum aliquis veritatem loquitur, vinci non potest cum quocumque disputat). (8)

In summary, four ideas are most important in Thomas's conception of truth: the transcendental character of truth; its relationality (truth as adequation); the primary 'locus' of truth is the mind; and a human truth also is a truth in the proper sense. Seen together, they reflect the novelty of his philosophical thought and its relevance." (pp. 50-54)

(8) Expositio super Iob c. 13 (ed. Leonina vol. XXVI, 1965, 87).

31. ———. 2003. "Meister Eckhart." In A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, edited by Gracia, Jorge J.E. and Noone, Timothy B., 434-442. Oxford: Blackwell.

32. ———. 2003. "The Transcendentality of the Good: Its Historical Context and Philosophical Significance." Doctor Communis no. 1:32-43.

33. ———. 2004. "The Concept of "Transcendens" in the Middle Ages: What is Beyond and What is Common." In Platonic Ideas and Concept Formation in Ancient and Medieval Thought, edited by Van Riel, Gerd and Macé, Caroline, 133-154. Leuven: Leven University Press.

34. ———. 2005. "Metaphysics as a Transcendental Science." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of the Metaphysics no. 5:377-389.

35. ———. 2005. "Aquinas and the Human Desire for Knowledge." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 79:411-430.

"This essay examines Aquinas's analysis of the human desire to know, which plays a central role in his thought. (I.) This analysis confronts him with the Aristotelian tradition: thus, the desire for knowledge is a "natural" desire. (II.) It also confronts him with the Augustinian tradition, which deplores a non-virtuous desire in human beings that is called "curiosity." (III.) Aquinas connects the natural desire with the Neoplatonic circle motif: principle and end are identical. The final end of the desire to know is the knowledge of God. (IV.) Aquinas also connects the end of the natural desire to know with Christian eschatology, teaching that man's ultimate end is the visio Dei. This end, however, is "supernatural." (V.) Duns Scotus severely criticizes central aspects of Aquinas's account. (VI.) As a rejoinder to Scotus's objections, we finally consider Aquinas's view on the proper object of the human intellect."

36. ———. 2006. "The Triad "True-Good-Beautiful". The Place of Beauty in the Middle Ages." In Intellect et imagination dans la Philosophie Médiévale. Actes de XIème Congrès International de Philosophie Médiévale, Porto, 26 au 30 août 2002 organisé par la Société Internationale pour l'Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale, edited by Pacheco, Maria Cândida and Meirinhos, José F., 415-436. Turnhout: Brepols.

37. ———. 2007. "Is Truth "Not" a Transcendental for Aquinas?" In Wisdom's Apprentice. Thomistic Essays in Honor of Lawrence Dewan, O.P., edited by Kwaniewski, Peter A., 3-12. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

38. ———. 2008. "Avicenna's Doctrine of the Primary Notions and its Impact on Medieval Philosophy." In Islamic Thought in the Middle Ages: Studies in Text, Transmission and Translation, in Honour of Hans Daiber, edited by Akasoy, Anna and Raven, Wim, 21-42. Leiden: Brill.

39. ———. 2010. "Truth in the Middle Ages: Its Essence and Power in Christian Thought." In Truth. Studies of a Robust Presence, edited by Pritzl, Kurt, 127-146. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

40. ———. 2010. "Scotus' Conception of Transcendentality: Tradition and Innovation." In Johannes Duns Scotus 1308-2008. Die philosophischen Perspektiven seines Werkes = Johannes Duns Scotus 1308-2008. Investigations into his Philosophy. Proceedings of "The Quadruple Congress" on John Duns Scotus. Part 3, edited by Möhle, Hannes, Speer, Andreas, Kobusch, Theo and Bullido del Barrio, Susana, 107-123. Münster: Aschendorff.

41. ———. 2010. "Platonism." In The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy. Vol. I, 76-85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

42. ———. 2011. "The Transformation of Metaphysics in the Middle Ages." In Philosophy and Theology in the Long Middle Ages. A Tribute to Stephen F. Brown, edited by Emery, Kent Jr., Friedman, Russell L. and Speer, Andreas, 19-39. Leiden: Brill.

43. ———. 2011. "The Goodness of Being." Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales no. 78:281-295.

"This essay in honour of Carlos Steel examines a fundamental thesis behind the medieval metaphysics of the good, namely the «goodness of being» thesis, according to which everything that is is good. The basic text used is a Quodlibet disputed by the Parisian master Gerard of Bologna at the beginning of the fourteenth century, in which he discusses various determinations of the nature ( ratio) of the good. This discussion reveals the difficulties to which the metaphysics of the good can lead: is it really the case that every being is good?"

44. ———. 2011. "Tino-logia: An alternative for Ontology?" In Mots médiévaux offerts à Ruedi Imbach, edited by Atucha, Iñigo, Clama, Dragos, König-Pralong, Catherine and Zavattero, Irene, 729-737. Turnhout: Brepols.

"In our contribution to the Festschrift in honour of Ruedi Imbach the focus will be on the term « tino-logia ». The notion is not mentioned in the most complete philosophical dictionary of our time, the Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophie, which appeared in 13 volumes from 1971-2007. The vocable was suggested by French scholars two decades ago in their analysis of the genealogy of Western metaphysics and has since then found acceptance. « Tinology » is meant to characterize an alternative for the traditional ontological model of metaphysics. Influential was an observation made by Jean-Francois Courtine at the end of his monumental study on the metaphysics of Francis Suarez : « En rigueur de termes, l'ontologie classique-moderne devrait donc plutot être caracterisée comme une 'tinologie' »(1). The emergence of this neologism and its historical place is the first thing that calls for attention." (p. 729)

45. ———. 2012. "Why Is Metaphysics Called "First Philosophy" in the Middle Ages?" In The Science of Being as Being: Metaphysical Investigations, edited by Doolan, Gregory T., 53-69. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

46. ———. 2013. "Albert's Doctrine on the Transcendentals." In A Companion to Albert the Great, edited by Resnick, Irven Michael, 611-618. Leiden: Brill.

47. ———. 2013. "The Human Intellect: "All things" and "Nothing". Medieval Readings of De anima." In Medieval Perspectives on Aristotle's De anima, edited by Friedman, Russell L. and Counet, Jean-Michel, 145-160. Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters.

Essays in French

1. ———. 2012. "La doctrine des transcendantaux de maître Eckhart " In Maître Eckhart, edited by Casteigt, Julie, 21-39. Paris: Les éditions du Cerf.

Essays in Italian

1. ———. 2004. "La scoperta dell'ente in quanto ente." In Tommaso d'Aquino e l'oggetto della metafisica, edited by Brock, Stephen L., 35-48. Roma: Armando.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Kommentierte Bibliographie Jan Aertsen Beitrag zur Geschichte der Transzendentalen Etüden

Aufsätze

Abkürzungen: DT = Lehre der Transzendentalen

1. Aertsen, Jan A. 1985. "Der wissenschaftstheoretische Ort der Gottesbeweise in der Summa Theologie des Thomas von Aquin." In Mediaeval Semantics and Metaphysics. Studies Dedicated to L. M. de Rijk, Ph. D. on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday, edited by Bos, Egbert Peter, 161-193. Nijmegen: Ingenium Publishers.

2. ———. 1986. "Transzendental versus Kategorial: die Zwiespaltigkeit von Thomas 'Philosophie'? Eine Kritische Studie." Vivarium no. 24:143-157.

3. ———. 1987. "Ockham, ein Transzendentalphilosoph? Eine kritische Diskussion mit G. Martin." In Ockham and Ockhamists. Acts of the Symposium organized bt the Dutch Society for Medieval Philosophy Medium Aevum on the occasion of its 10th anniversary (Leiden, 10-12 September 1986), edited by Bos, Egbert Peter and Krop, Henri A., 3-13. Nijmegen: Ingenium Publishers.

[ This study is a discussion of three contribution by Gottfried Martin. ]

An outstanding place in the history of the Doctrine of the Transcendentals was attributed to William of Ockham by a study of the German scholar G. Martin (37). His thesis is that Ockham's denial of the reality of the categories except that of substance and quality must be understood as « transcendental philosophy ». Ockham regarded quantity and relation as general conditions that do not add a distinct reality to things, that is, as « transcendental being ». In Martin's later publications (38 and 39), we encounter again the view that Ockham was a vital link in the tradition of transcendental philosophy from Aristotle's Metaphysics to Kant, Martin's Ockham-interpretation has hardly been discussed." (from J. A. Aertsen, Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale, 33 1991, p. 138).

(37) Wilhelm von Ockham. Untersuchungen zur Ontologie der Ordnungen. Berlin, 1949.

(38) Immanuel Kant. Ontologie und Wissenschaftstheorie. Berlin, 1950 (4th ed., 1969), pp. 115-134.

(39) Allgemeine Metaphysik. Ihre Probleme und ihre Methode. Berlin, 1965, pp. 82-89.

4. ———. 1988. "Die Lehre der Transzendentalien und die Metaphysk. Der Kommentar von Thomas von Aquin zum IV. Buch der Metaphysica ." Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie no. 35:293-316.

"In still another, more fundamental, respect the introduction of Aristotle's works in the West was of importance. The reception of his Metaphysics led to independent reflection on the question of the proper subject of this science. Not without reason, L. Honnefelder, « Der zweite Anfang der Metaphysik. Voraussetzungen, Ansatze und Folgen der Wiederbegriindung der Metaphysik im 13./14. Jahrhundert », in J.P. Beckmann e.a. (ed.), Philosophie im Mittelalter. Entwicklungslinien and Paradigmen. Hamburg, 1987, pp. 165-186, has characterized this development as « the second beginning of metaphysics ». It is noteworthy that the Middle Ages did not adopt the theological conception of metaphysics that prevailed among the Greek commentators on Aristotle. In the commentaries of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus we find a decidedly « ontological » view. Against the background of this conception of metaphysics, the interest in the transcendentals becomes understandable, for they are the universal properties of being. Metaphysics becomes scientia transcendens -- the term appears for the first time in Scotus' Commentary on the Metaphysics (prol., n. 5)." (from J. A. Aertsen, Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale, 33 1991, p. 132).

5. ———. 1988. "Die Transzendentalienlehre bei Thomas von Aquin in ihren historischen Hintergründen und philosophischen Motiven." In Thomas von Aquin. Werk und Wirkung im Licht neuerer Forschungen, edited by Zimmermann, Albert, 82-102. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"A by medieval standards extensive systematics of DT is presented by Thomas Aquinas in De veritate, qu. 1, art. 1. This text includes an important new element, namely, the introduction of relational transcendentals. Through this innovation Thomas departs from Philip the Chancellor's version of DT. A transcendental is not necessarily expressed by a negation, an indivision, as Philip meant, but can also be determined by something positive, a relation. Thomas understands the transcendentals « true » and « good » in relation to the two faculties of a spiritual substance, that is, to intellect and will. Although we possess various studies concerning some aspects of Aquinas's DT, the general significance of this doctrine for his philosophy seems to be underestimated." (from J. A. Aertsen, Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale, 33 1991, p. 135).

6. ———. 1991. "Die Frage nach der Transzendentalität der Schönheit im Mittelalter." In Historia Philosophiae Medii Aevi. Studien zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters. Festschrift für Kurt Flasch zu seinem 60. Geburtstag. (vol. I), edited by Mojsisch, Burkhard and Pluta, Olaf, 1-22. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: B. R. Grüner.

7. ———. 1991. "Natur, Mensch und der Kreislauf der Dinge bei Thomas von Aquin." In Mensch und Natur im Mittelalter. Band 1, edited by Zimmermann, Albert and Speer, Andreas, 143-160. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Miscellanea Mediaevalia. Band 21.

8. ———. 1992. "Schöne, Das II." In Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Band VIII, edited by Ritter, Joachim, 1351-1356. Sarmstadt: Schwabe.

9. ———. 1992. "Warheit, II B." In Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Band XII, edited by Ritter, Joachim, 64-68. Sarmstadt: Schwabe.

10. ———. 1993. "Der Satz vom Widerspruch in der mittelalterlichen Philosophie. Baron von Münchhausen, Thomas von Aquin und Nikolaus von Kues." In Argumentationstheorie. Scholastische Forschungen zu den logischen und semantischen Regeln korrekten Folgerns, edited by Jacobi, Klaus, 707-727. Leiden: Brill.

11. ———. 1994. "Gibt es eine mittelalterliche Philosophie?" In Philosophie und geistiges Erbe des Mittelalters. Symposion zum 65. Geburtstag von A. Zimmermann am 9. Juli 1993, edited by Aertsen, Jan A., Speer, Andreas and Zimmermann, Albert, 13-30. Köln: Kölner Universitätsreden.

12. ———. 1994. "Was heisst Metaphysik bei Thomas von Aquin?" In Scientia und ars im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter, edited by Craemer-Ruegenberg, Ingrid, Speer, Andreas and Zimmermann, Albert, 217-239. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

13. ———. 1995. "Ein einziges Individuum übertrifft alle Universalien in der Welt. Die Entdeckung des Individuums im Mittelalter." Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft no. 1:45-48.

14. ———. 1995. "Gibt es eine mittelalterliche Philosophie?" Philosophische Jahrbuch no. 102:161-176.

15. ———. 1996. "Albert der Grosse und die Lehre von den Transzendentalien. Ein Beispiel der Vermittlung von Tradition und Innovation." In Omnia Disce. Kunst und Geschichte als Erinnerung und Herausforderung. Willehad Paul Eckert OP zum 70 Geburstsag und Goldenen Professjubiläum, edited by Senner, Walter, 159-168. Köln: Wienand.

16. ———. 1996. "Albertus Magnus und die mittelalterliche Philosophie." Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie no. 21:111-128.

17. ———. 1996. "Die Thesen zur Individuation in der Verurteilung von 1277, Heinrich von Gent und Thomas von Aquin." In Individuum und Individualität im Mittelalter, edited by Aertsen, Jan A. and Speer, Andreas, 249-265. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

18. ———. 1996. "Thomas von Aquin und das Corpus Dionysiacum (das Prooemium seines Kommentars zu De Divinis Nominibus )." Archiv für mittelalterliche Philosophie und Kultur no. 3:11-19.

19. ———. 1996. "Über das Schöne ( Lect. 5)." Archiv für mittelalterliche Philosophie und Kultur no. 3:97-103.

20. ———. 1996. "Einleitung: Die Entdeckung des Individuums." In Individuum und Individualität im Mittelalter, edited by Aertsen, Jan A. and Speer, Andreas, IX-XVII. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

21. ———. 1997. "Transzendentalien." In Lexikon des Mittelalters. Band VIII, edited by Auty, Robert, 953-955. München: Artemis & Winkler.

22. Aertsen, Jan A., and Speer, Andreas. 1997. "Die Philosophie Bonaventuras und die Transzendentalienlehre." Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales no. 64:32-66.

23. Aertsen, Jan A. 1998. ""Speculum Musicae" als Spiegel der Philosophie." In Musik und die Geschichte der Philosophie und Naturwissenschaften im Mittelalter. Fragen zur Wechselwirkung von 'musica' und 'philosophia' im Mittelalter, edited by Hentschel, Frank, 305-321. Leiden: Brill.

24. ———. 1998. ""Über das Schône": Alberts des GroBen Kôlner Vorlesungen zu Dionysius Areopagita." In Dombau und Theologie im mittelalterlichen Köln. Festschrift zur 750-Jahrfeier der Grundsteinlegung des Kölner Domes und zum 65. Geburtstag von Joachim Kardinal Meisner, edited by Honnefelder, Ludwig, Trippen, Norbert and Wolff, Arnold, 417-427. Köln: Kölner Dom.

25. ———. 1998. "Transzendental II: Die Anfänge bis Meister Eckhart." In Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Band X, edited by Ritter, Joachim, 1360-1365. Sarmstadt: Schwabe.

26. ———. 1999. "Albertus Magnus und seine Bedeutung." In Albert der Grosse in Köln. Gehalten auf der Feierstunde zur 750sten Wiederkehr der Einrichtung des Kölner Generalstudiums der Dominikaner am 6. November 1998, edited by Aertsen, Jan A., 7-13. Köln: Universität zu Köln.

27. ———. 1999. "Meister Eckhart: Eine ausserordentliche Metaphysik." Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales no. 66:1-20.

28. ———. 1999. "Die Transzendentalienlehre bei Dietrich von Freiberg." In Dietrich von Freiberg. Neue Perspektiven seiner Philosophie, Theologie und Naturwissenschaft. Freiberger Symposion: 10. -13. März 1997, edited by Kandler, Karl-Hermann, Burkhard, Mojsisch and Stamkötter, Franz-Bernhard, 23-47. Amsterdam: B. G. Grüner.

29. ———. 2000. ""Eros" und "Agape". Dionysius Areopagita und Thomas von Aquin über die Doppelgestalt der Liebe." In Die Dionysius-Rezeption im Mittelalter. Internationales Kolloquium in Sofia vom 8. bis 11. April 1999, edited by Boiadjiev, Tsocho, Kapriev, Georgi and Speer, Andreas, 373-391. Turnhout: Brepols.

30. ———. 2000. "Thomas von Aquin. Alle Menschen verlangen von Natur nach Wissen." In Philosophen des Mittelalters. Eine Einführung, edited by Kobusch, Theo, 186-201. Darmstadt: Primus.

31. ———. 2000. "Mittelaterliche Philosophie: ein unmögliches Projekt?" In Geisteleben im 13. Jahrhundert, edited by Aertsen, Jan A. and Speer, Andreas, 12-28. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

32. ———. 2001. "Fröhliche Wissenschaft: Wahrheit im Mittelalter." In Ende und Vollendung: eschatologische Perspektiven im Mittelalter, edited by Aertsen, Jan A. and Pickavé, Martin, 48-65. Berlin: de Gruyter.

33. ———. 2001. ""Von Gott kann man nichts erkennen, miner dass er ist" (Satz 215 der Pariser Verurteilung). Die Debatte über die (Un-)möglichkeit einer Gotteserkenntnis quid est ." In Nach der Verurteilung von 1277. Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität von Paris im letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts, edited by Aertsen, Jan A., Emery, Kent Jr. and Speer, Andreas, 22-37. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

34. ———. 2001. "Die Frage nach dem Ersten und Grundlegenden. Albert der Grosse und die Lehre von den Transzendentalien." In Albertus Magnus. Zum Gedenken nach 800 Jahren: Neue Zugänge, Aspekte und Perspektiven, edited by Senner, Walter, 91-112. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

35. ———. 2001. "Die Transzendentalität des Wahren in der mittelalterlichen Philosophie." In Bene Scripsisti... philosophy since the Middle Ages to modern times: Proceedings of the seventieth birthday of Stanislav Sousedík, edited by Benes, Jiri, Glombicek, Peter and Urbanek, Vladimir, 49-62. Prague: Filosofia.

36. ———. 2002. "Die Umformung der Metaphysik. Das mittelalterliche Projekt der Transzendentalien." In Prudentia und Contemplatio. Ethik und Metaphysik im Mittelalter. Festschrift für Georg Wieland zum 65. Geburstag, edited by Brachtendorf, Johannes, 89-106. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh.

37. ———. 2002. "Einleitung." In Ende und Vollendung. Eschatologische Perspektiven im Mittelalter, edited by Aertsen, Jan A. and Pickavé, Martin, 69-75. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Miscellanea Mediaevalia 29.

Mit einem Beitrag zur Geschichte des Thomas-Instituts der Universität zu Köln anlässlich des 50. Jahrestages Institutsgründung.

38. ———. 2003. "Heinrich von Gent und Thomas von Aquin über die Transzendentalien. Ein Textvergleich." In Henry of Ghent and the Transformation of Scholastic Thought. Studies in Memory of Jos Decorte, edited by Guldentops, Guy and Steel, Carlos, 101-125. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

39. ———. 2005. "Ethikbegründung bei Thomas von Aquin." In Ethikbegründungen zwischen Universalismus und Relativismus, edited by Heidemann, Dietmar H. and Engelhard, Kristina, 65-85. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

40. ———. 2005. "Der 'Systematiker' Eckhart." In Meister Eckhart in Erfurt, edited by Speer, Andreas and Wegener, Lydia, 189-230. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Miscellanea Mediaevalia 32.

41. ———. 2005. "Die Rede von Gott. Die Fragen ob Er ist und was Er ist : Wissenschaftslehre und Transzendentalienlehre (S. Th. I, qq. 1-12)." In Thomas von Aquin: Summa Theologiae. Werkinterpretationen, edited by Speer, Andreas, 29-50. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

42. ———. 2006. ""Transcendens" im Mittelalter. Das Jenseitige und das Gemeinsame." Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales no. 73:291-310.

43. ———. 2007. "Vernunftskritik und Offenbarung. Duns Scotus' Kritik an Thomas von Aquin." In De usu rationis. Vernunft und Offenbarung im Mittelalter. Symposium des Philosophischen Seminars der Leibniz-Universität Hannover vom 21. bis 23. Februar 2006, edited by Mensching, Günther, 91-101. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

44. ———. 2012. "Die Transzendentalität der Wahrheit im Mittelalter. Probleme und Perspektiven." In Wahrheit und Geschichte: die gebrochene Tradition metaphysischen Denkens. Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag von Günther Mensching, edited by Mensching-Estakhr, Alia and Städler, Michael 181-194. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

45. ———. 2012. "Die Bedeutung der Transzendentalbegriffe für das Denken Meister Eckharts." In Wie denkt der Meister? Philosophische Zugänge zu Meister Eckhart edited by Schönberger, Rolf and Grotz, Stephan, 27-40. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated Bibliography of John P. Doyle (1966-2016)

Introduction

John Patrick Doyle (September 14, 1930 - July 2, 2016) was Professor Emeritus of philosophy at Saint Louis University and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in Shrewsbury, Missouri; his main area research was late medieval philosophy; he has published eighth volumes of translations from Latin, two volumes of Collected Studies and over fifty articles, essays, and encyclopedia entries.

Abbreviations:

CSS = John P. Doyle, Collected Studies on Francisco Suárez S.J. (1548-1617). Edited by Victor M. Salas, Leuven: Leuven University Press 2010

BBK = John P. Doyle, On the Borders of Being and Knowing. Late Scholastic Theory of Supertranscendental Being. Edited by Victor M. Salas, Leuven: Leuven University Press 2012

Complete bibliography

1. Doyle, John Patrick. 1966. The Metaphysical Nature of the Proof for God's Existence According to Francis Suárez S.J., University of Toronto.

Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation.

2. ———. 1967. "Suárez on the Reality of the Possibles." The Modern Schoolman no. 44:29-48.

Reprinted as Chapter 2 in CSS."The first of twelve essays which follow the introduction ("Suarez on the Reality of the Possibles") agrees with Etienne Gilson's view of Suárez as an heir to the Avicennian doctrine of the possibles, while it adds the refinement that a possible here equates with a not-impossible or with a non-self-contradictory essence. The key to this is provided by the Scotist doctrine that "What is not non-being, is being" (Quod non est non-ens est ens). The main distillate from Suárez's teaching is a lowest common denominator concept of being which is found everywhere from mere possibles to the most actual being of God." (CS p. XI).

"This article shows that for Francisco Suarez the core reality of possible beings is their non-self-contradiction. Their intrinsic claim to inclusion under the common concept of Being and the Suarezian analogy of Being resides in the fact that as non-repugnant they are not non-being. So understood, they are actually nothing but still more than mere beings of reason. Of themselves, they are eternally true and apt to be known, even if there were no God. Far beyond this, their reality is such that if they were not what they are, there would be no God and, 'a fortiori', none of the actual creatures which depend upon him."

3. ———. 1969. "Suárez on the Analogy of Being (First part)." The Modern Schoolman no. 46:219-249.

Reprinted as Chapter 3 in CSS. The next essay ("Suarez on the Analogy of Being") presents the ground plan of Suarezian metaphysics and gives a more detailed account of Suárez's thoughts on the formal and objective concepts of being, as well as on being as a participle and being as a noun. Coupled with this is his identification of the subject of metaphysics with the one common objective concept of being as a noun. This in turn is identified with what is apt to exist - what is non-contradictory of itself and what importantly excludes beings of reason. The basic Suarezian analogy of intrinsic attribution presupposes this common concept and works within it. The essay goes on to show the main program of Suárez's metaphysics, which is to treat the general concept of being and then to follow its internal demand for partition into God and creatures. In this, real being for Suarez is one, but neither a genus nor simpliciter simplex in the manner of Scotus. In creatures as well as in God, its common denominator is aptitude for existence in the sense of intrinsic non-contradiction. This marks the difference between possibles and beings of reason and reduces real being in the widest sense to that which is "not nothing." Then despite the gradation in their analogous sharing of being, God and creatures, including mere possibles, are equal in their lack of intrinsic contradiction." (CS p. XII).

4. ———. 1969. "Suárez on the Analogy of Being (Second part)." The Modern Schoolman no. 46:323-341.

Reprinted as Chapter 3 in CSS.

"Francis Suárez doctrine of the analogy of being requires that one common character of being be found intrinsically but unequally, according to an order of prior and posterior, in those inferiors of which the one, common, objective concept of being as a noun is predicated.

Problems are that the requirement of intrinsicality has forced Suarez to give a shadow reality to merely possible things while the need for inequality has militated against the all important unity of the common character or concept of being."

5. ———. 1972. "Heidegger and Scholastic Metaphysics." The Modern Schoolman no. 49:201-220.

Reprinted as Chapter 4 in CSS. "The third essay ("Suarezian and Thomistic Metaphysics before the Judgment of Heidegger" - which is a change from the original title, "Heidegger and Scholastic Metaphysics"), contends that Heidegger's criticism of medieval metaphysics is aimed directly at the Avicennian-Scotistic-Suarezian metaphysics rather than at that of St. Thomas Aquinas. While written from a Thomistic viewpoint, for present purposes this essay highlights the difference between the Suarezian science of being as the non-contradictory and the Thomistic metaphysics of esse. For the Suarezian metaphysics, the essay notes nuances and raises questions linked with: the Scotistic equation of being and thinkability; the rooting of thinkability in non-contradiction; using the passiones disjunctae entis as the basis of a progression in metaphysics; justifying any progression in a metaphysics of the non-contradictory; and Heidegger's rejection of any speech-governed metaphysics as well as his accusation of "Seinsvergessenheit." This essay might be improved by an addendum that would take into account Heidegger's famous Marburg lectures, which were not available at the time I composed my original text." (CSS p. XII).

"Regarding Heidegger's appraisal of Scholastic metaphysics, we have asked: (1) is he right about the sort of metaphysics represented by Scotus and Suarez? and (2) is he correct in equating all medieval metaphysics with this type of Scotistic-Suarezian metaphysics?

We have answered the first question in the affirmative and have replied negatively to the second."

6. ———. 1972. "Person: a Christian Contribution." Social Justice Review no. LXV:184-186.

7. ———. 1972. "A Suggested Modification of the Critical Text of the Ordinatio of John Duns Scotus " Manuscripta. A Journal for Manuscript Research no. 16:30-32.

8. ———. 1973. "Ipsum Esse as God-Surrogate: The Point of Convergence of Faith and Reason for St. Thomas Aquinas." The Modern Schoolman no. 50:293-296.

"Since, for St. Thomas Aquinas, "cognita sunt in cognoscente secundum modum cognoscentis," even revealed truths must be phrased in terms which we can naturally understand. But the very best term which we can naturally muster for God-talk is "ipsum esse," a term to which we come across the medium of a demonstration "quia" from the being of creatures. As such, it has obvious limitations.

It does not supply us with an immediate knowledge of the divine reality, but it is, instead, a surrogate for God who remains unknown in himself. This surrogate then is employed in theology not only at the level of "de Deo uno" but also at the very heart of "de Deo trino". As so employed, it is patently the point of convergence of faith and reason for St Thomas."

9. ———. 1974. "Saint Bonaventure and the Ontological Argument." Medieval Studies no. 52:27-48.

"For St Bonaventure the self-evident truth of God's existence can be shown forth by 'intellectual exercises' like that of St Anselm.

Such exercises are not simple-minded transits from the ideal to the real order. Rather they are based upon a sophisticated metaphysics; they involve the experience of common intelligibility.

With Plato, they accept the 'really real' character of that intelligibility. Implicitly, they also accept a plurality and a one-way hierarchy of intelligibles leading up to a 'First'. Turning then precisely upon the unprincipiated nature of this 'First', they spread before us its absolute necessity both in reality and for thought."

10. ———. 1979. "Some Thoughts on Duns Scotus and the Ontological Argument." New Scholasticism no. 53:234-241.

"Duns Scotus has substituted the notion of a "highest thinkable" for Anselm's "that than which a greater cannot be thought." For Scotus, the touchstone of "thinkability" is non-contradiction. He resumes the non-contradictory and therefore the thinkable character of God. He then shows God's existence in two steps: (1) from thinkability to essential reality, and (2) from essence to existence. The first step involves Scotus in some inconsistency and also comes close to making man's mind the very rule of reality. The second step entails a confusion of internal possibility with total possibility, which ordinarily, beyond internal possibility, includes an external potency."

11. ———. 1982. "The Suarezian Proof for God's Existence." In History of Philosophy in the Making. A Symposium of Essays to Honor Professor James D. Collins on his 65th Birthday, edited by Thro, Linus J., 105-117. Washington: University Press of America.

Reprinted as Chapter 5 in CSS.

"Essay four after the introduction ("The Suarezian Proof for God's Existence") pursues the entailment of the common concept of being as a noun as it is divided into God and creatures. Fundamentally, the essay argues that Suárez's metaphysical proof for God's existence, which is the pivotal point of his metaphysics and whose Avicennian roots he has expressly embraced, amounts to an ontological argument of the type later criticized by Kant." (CSS p. XII).

12. ———. 1984. "Prolegomena to a Study of Extrinsic Denomination in the Work of Francis Suárez S.J." Vivarium no. 22:121-160.

Reprinted as Chapter 6 in CSS. In the next essay ("Prolegomena to a Study of Extrinsic Denomination in the Work of Francis Suarez, S.J."), I looked to discover in Suárez's use of extrinsic denomination rules which might adumbrate the Kantian a priori. While I found that in regard to extrinsic denomination Suarez did observe conventions which I was able to catalog, these did not in any clear way anticipate Kant. Indeed, I may have discovered the opposite. For although, on its face, extrinsic denomination might seem to be simply a matter of names imposed by us on things, my study showed that Suarez thought it to be a feature of things themselves, anterior to any operation of ours. In this, it clearly stood on the side of real being as opposed to being of reason." (CS p. XII-XIII).

"At times, extrinsic denomination for Suarez seems close to, if not synonymous with, a mere naming from the outside. But at other times, it is regarded as a feature of things themselves. In this article, there is some description and some examples of extrinsic denomination according to Suarez. Following this, are some of his reasons for and sources of such denomination. Special attention is paid to his use of extrinsic denomination in connection with the properties and categories of being. Finally, there are listed conventions and other items observed in Suarez's use of extrinsic denomination."

13. ———. 1984. "The Unborn as Person." In Restoring the Right to Life: The Human Life Amendment, edited by Bopp, James Jr., 81-88; 218-221. Provo, Utah.

14. ———. 1985. "The Conimbricenses on the Relations Involved in Signs." In Semiotics 1984, edited by Deely, John, 567-576. New York: University Press of America.

"Conimbricenses is the name of a group of Jesuit professors of philosophy at the University of Coimbra during the latter half of the sixteenth century. It is also the name given to a five volume set of philosophical commentaries on Aristotle which they edited and published between 1592 and 1606. The last volume to appear was a Logic entitled: Commentarii in universam dialecticam Aristototelis (Friedrich Stegmuller, Filosofia e teologia nas universidades de Coimbra e Evora no seculo XVI, Coimbra, Universidade de Coimbra, 1959 pp. 95-96).

(...)

The particular work, with which I am now concerned, is their commentary on Aristotle's De Interpretatione. More precisely, my concern is with the first chapter of that commentary. Entitled De signo (On the Sign), it runs over 60 pages in quarto. While some treatment of signs at this place in Aristotelian commentary was common among the Scholastics, these pages of the Conimbricenses represent, as far as I know, the first really major treatise on signs as such which we have from the Scholastic period. The table of contents of the chapter gives a pretty fair indication of its character.

Principal issues raised are four: (1) On the nature and conditions common to signs; (2) On the divisions of signs; (3) On the signification of spoken words (voces) and of writing; (4) Whether some concepts in our minds are true or false, and others devoid of truth and falsity. Along the way there are sub-questions about the essence of a sign, the possibility of something being a sign of itself, signs as actual or aptitudinal, the relations involved in signs, et cetera. Although this commentary is a work of logic, the Conimbricenses explicitly aware of further epistemological, psychological, metaphysical, and theological questions which can be raised with regard to signs and signification. At the same time, they also display a remarkable understanding of the breadth and scope of semiotics itself.

Some of the items which they have touched on different ways are the following: language, syntactical speech, laughing, nodding, coughing, persons talking in sleep, persons lying, persons emitting words without thought. They consider the signification of negative words, of syncategorematic words such as "if", nonsense words like "Blictri", and words like "chimaera" and "goat-stag" to which no real things correspond. They are interested in the signs involved in writing and reading, especially voiceless reading. Coupled with a discussion of the physiological bases of speech and hearing, they treat the relation of deafness and an inability to speak or communicate." pp. 567-568.

15. ———. 1987. "Suárez on Truth and Mind-Dependent Beings: Implications for a Unified Semiotic." In Semiotics 1983, edited by Jonathan, Evans and Deely, John, 121-133. New York: University Press of America.

16. ———. 1987. "Suárez on Beings of Reason and Truth (First part)." Vivarium no. 25:47-75.

Reprinted as Chapter 7 in CSS and as Chapter 2 in BBK.

"The sixth essay after the introduction ("Suárez on Beings of Reason and Truth"), against a background view of truth as a function of being, considers Suárez's response to the question of truth where there is no real being independent of the mind. If truth consists in a conformity between the mind and reality, how can there be any truth where there is no independent reality? Most of all, how can there be any truth where something would be impossible of realization? In last analysis, Suárez's reply turns upon the significative cast of the words involved in the expression of beings of reason, especially so called impossible objects. Because, unlike mere nonsense words such as "Blytiri" or "scyndapsus," words like "goat-stag" or "chimera" have signification, there is in their regard, and in regard to the beings of reason they express, the possibility of some statements being true even as others are false." (CSS p. XIII).

17. ———. 1987. "Peter John Olivi on Right, Dominion, and Voluntary Signs." In Semiotics 1986, 419-429. New York.

18. ———. 1988. "Suárez on Beings of Reason and Truth (Second part)." Vivarium no. 26:51-72.

Reprinted as Chapter 7 in CSS and as Chapter 2 in BBK.

"From Parmenides on, it has been a commonplace in the Western philosophical tradition that truth is a function of being. One need only remember the general Platonic doctrine of Forms, which are at once 'really real' and the locus of intelligibility of truth. Francis Suarez has passed on the common teaching of the Schoolmen that truth is threefold. (1) There is a truth in words, in writing, and in what he calls 'non-ultimate concepts' which is termed truth 'in signifying'. (2) There is a truth in the intellect knowing things, which is called truth 'in knowing'. And (3) there is a truth in things, which is a truth 'in being'."

"This is the completion of a two-part article which considers Suarez's reply to the question of truth where there is no real being independent of the mind. That reply turns upon the significative cast of the words expressing beings of reason, especially "impossible" beings. Because such words, unlike nonsense syllables, have signification, there is in their regard, and in regard to the beings of reason they express, the possibility of some statements being true even as others are false."

19. ———. 1988. "Thomas Compton Carleton S.J.: On Words Signifying More Than Their Speakers or Makers Know or Intend." The Modern Schoolman no. 66:1-28.

"For Carleton (1591-1666) words have power to signify independent of their speakers. Moreover, while first wordmaker may control the extension of his words, he cannot control their intension. Words can signify something more clearly to a hearer than that same thing was understood by the one who first established a word to express it. Carleton clearly demarcates the roles of speakers and wordmakers and foreshadows current concerns about extension versus intension of words."

20. ———. 1990. "Extrinsic Cognoscibility: a Seventeenth Century Supertranscendental Notion." The Modern Schoolman no. 68:57-80.

Reprinted as Chapter 3 in BBK.

"This essay explores the area of intentionality in late Scholasticism. For Suarez the subject of metaphysics is 'real being' which is transcendental but exclusive of beings of reason. After Suarez, the Calvinist Clemens Timpler says that the subject of metaphysics is 'the intelligible,' which encompasses both real and unreal, even impossible, beings. Also for 17th century Jesuit logicians what seems common to real beings and beings of reason, including impossible objects, is 'cognoscibility.' More precisely, this is 'extrinsic cognoscibility,' which is labeled 'supertranscendental.' In Timpler and the Jesuits I see anticipations of Meinong's Gegenstandstheorie (Theory of objects)."

21. ———. 1991. "Suárez on the Unity of a Scientific Habit." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 65:311-334.

Reprinted as Chapter 8 in CSS. The next essay ("Suárez on the Unity of a Scientific Habit") explores Suárez's reply to the question: how is a science such as geometry somehow undivided in itself and divided off from arithmetic, or from other speculative sciences such as physics and metaphysics? Is there a basis in things themselves for such indivision and division? Or is it something entirely or in part supplied by the knower? Connected with this is a question about the growth of a habit of science. Suárez's view is that any collection of conclusions making up a scientific habit will have at best only an artificial unity but nevertheless one which in some way rests on an aptitude in things to be so unified. However, as the essay shows, this view plainly raises as many questions as it answers, and Suárez's admitted perplexity is understandable." (CS p. XIII).

22. ———. 1991. "Francisco Suárez: On Preaching Gospel to People Like the American Indians." Fordham International Law Journal no. 15:879-951.

Reprinted as Chapter 10 in CSS. The ninth essay after the introduction ("Francisco Suarez: On Preaching the Gospel to People like the American Indians") was written in commemoration of the 5ooth anniversary of the European discovery of America. As its title suggests, the essay considers Suárez's doctrine on evangelization against the background of a new situation, a new opportunity, and new obligations for European Christians. On the basis of related passages and themes in his Opera omnia it attempts to fathom some of his deepest thoughts with respect to the personhood and rights of the American Indians in face of Christ's last command that his followers teach all nations. Along the way, it presents a fairly extended study of Suárez's views on the basic equality of all human beings, the character of human society (domestic and especially political), morality and law (Eternal, natural, and civil, including the "law of nations" [jus gentium]), sovereignty, jurisdiction, war and conquest, Church and state, as well as a host of other issues." (CS p. XIV).

23. Doyle, John Patrick, and Charron, William C. 1993. "On the Self-Refuting Statement 'There is no Truth'. A Medieval Treatment." Vivarium no. 31:241-266.

"It is commonly known that 14th and 15th century logicians were deeply interested in the properties of self-referring statements.

Perhaps, however, it could be better known that medieval theologians were also interested in them. In this regard, one important discussion centered around the proposition ''There is no truth'' ("Nulla Veritas est"). Construed as a universal negative about an entire class of items of which it itself is a member, it is partially self-referring. And just because it is self-referring it also seems to be self-refuting: if it is true, then it is false; if it is false, then something is true. Thus, its contradictory is necessarily true, namely "There is some truth".

The history here goes back many centuries through a line of theologians and ultimately to St. Augustine. (1) Following him, St. Anselm, St. Bonaventure, and others claimed to have found in the self-refutation of the denial of truth a foundational premise adequate

to support other claims about God and immortality. But this was not without opposition from theological colleagues and successors, including Aquinas, Scotus, and in the post medieval period, Cajetan, and Toletus. Criticism came at either of two points: the critics

objected(a) that the self-referring character of the denial of truth does not entail the truth of what is claimed, or (b) that the truth which the self-refutation is purported to establish is not itself sufficient to found the metaphysical constructions it is further claimed to found.

An unraveling of this ancient debate -- beginning our story with Augustine in the 4th century and ending it with Toletus in the 16th reveals the appreciation among these theologians of ever more powerful tools of logical analysis, tools that have proven to be of lasting use." (pp. 241-242)

(1) Interest in self-refutation is common among ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers. SextusEmpiricus provides a notable statement of the alleged self refutation of the proposition in which we are interested. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians , I 398-9, II 55, ed. and tr. R.G. Bury, Loeb Classical Library , Cambridge 1935, II, 213, 265. "Now as to those who assert that all things are false,... they are confuted. For if all things are false, the statement 'All things are false,' being one of the 'all things', will be false. And if the statement 'All things are false' is false, its contradictory, 'Not all things are false,' will be true. Therefore, if all things are false, not all things are false." (p. 265) For the history of the notion of self- refutation, see M. F. Burnyeat, 'Protagoras and Self- Refutation in Later Greek Philosophy', in: The Philosophical Review, 85 (1976), 44-69.

24. Doyle, John Patrick. 1994. "Poinsot on the Knowability of Beings of Reason." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 68:337-362.

"John Poinsot (a.k.a. Joannes a sancto Thoma (1589-1644) was heir to a common division of beings into these that are in themselves real and those which are entirely dependent upon human reason. Those division went back to Aristotle's split between being as found in the categories and being as true. In the Middle Ages and thorough the period of the Spanish Revival, it was found, mutatis mutandis, in Averroes (d. 1198), St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Henry of Ghent (1217?-1293), John Duns Scotus (1266-1308), Francisco Suárez (1548-1617), and just about everyone else in the Scholastic tradition.

One of the very few exceptions that I know to this general rule was Francis of Mayronnes, O.F.M. (d. ca. 1325), who denied the existence of beings of reason. Not only an heir, Poinsot himself embraced and transmitted the common view. For him, beings were either real or rational. Real beings (res extra animam) were those which exist, or can exist, independently of the human mind and which belong in the Aristotelian categories. Rational beings, or beings of reason, in the sense which contrasts with this, were those which do not belong to the categories, and which cannot exist outside human understanding. That there are such beings of reason was not for Poinsot a matter of doubt."

25. ———. 1995. "Another God, Chimerae, Goat-Stags, and Man-Lions: a Seventeenth Century Debate About Impossible Objects." The Review of Metaphysics no. 48:771-808.

Reprinted as Chapter 4 in BBK and as Post-Scriptum in: Victor M. Salas (ed.), Hircocervi & Other Metaphysical Wonders. Essays in Honor of John P. Doyle, Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 2013, pp. 329-367.

"This article concerns a 17th Century debate over whether there are self-contradictory impossible objects of understanding or whether there is no intellectual object which is not some actual or possible being. The debate, which has its roots in the Greek and Scholastic traditions, is presented especially between two Jesuits: Thomas Compton Carleton and John Morawski, respectively, a proponent and an opponent of impossible objects. The article itself does not take sides in the debate, but, inasmuch as he wrote later, Morawski is presented as espousing his own view and answering arguments in support of Carleton's position."

26. Suárez, Francisco. 1995. On Beings of Reason (De Entibus Rationis). Metaphysical Disputation LIV by Francisco Suárez. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Translated from the Latin with an introduction and notes by John P. Doyle.

"Suárez's Disputationes metaphysicae is to this day the most comprehensive and systematic treatise on metaphysics written from an Aristotelian perspective. It addresses every metaphysical issue raised by medieval and Renaissance scholastics and discusses the views of all important figures who preceded Suárez. As such it is a treasure-trove not only for the metaphysician but also for the historian and has exercised enormous influence on early modern philosophy, particularly in Continental Europe. (...) The Disputation deals with mental entities and, therefore, contains relevant discussions to the philosophy of mind and the ontological status of intensional objects."

Jorge J. E. Gracia - State University of New York at Buffalo.

"In a finely wrought and philosophically intelligible translation of this 54th Disputation of Suárez, John P. Doyle has documented with care the ancient Greek and Medieval sources of Suárez's discussion, its influence upon many hitherto unknown late Scholastic writers and the relevance of Suárez's intentionality theory to such prominent figures in early, middle and late Modern thought as Descartes, Berkeley, Leibniz, Kant, Brentano, Husserl, Meinong, B. Russell, Heidegger and others."

Norman J. Wells, Boston College.

27. Doyle, John Patrick. 1996. "Silvester Mauro, S.J. (1619-1687) on Four Degree of Abstraction." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 36.

Reprinted as Chapter 7 in BBK.

"Mauro says there are four degrees of abstraction. The lowers is 'physical', abstracting from material singulars. The second is 'mathematical', abstracting not just from singulars, but also from sensible and changeable matter as such. A third is 'metaphysical', abstracting from all matter and opening on to real immaterial being. Peculiar to Mauro and marking a departure from orthodox Aristotelianism is the last and highest degree, which is 'logical'. At this level, we consider intentional being -- which he says is more immaterial than real being, including that studied by metaphysics, in as much as 'being known' is identical with being elevated from matter."

28. ———. 1997. "Between Transcendental and Transcendental: The Missing Link?" The Review of Metaphysics no. 50:783-815.

Reprinted as Chapter 8 in BBK.

"Medieval transcendentals are on the side of things while Kantian transcendentality is on the side of the knower. Is there a link between the two in the Seventeenth-Century scholastic understanding of 'supertranscendentals'? In the century before Kant, scholastic supertranscendental being was primarily identified with extrinsic intelligibility and regarded as a contribution of the knower. It was said to be the same as 'the object as such' (objectum ut tale). This seems very close to 'der Gegenstand uberhaupt' which Kant has called a 'missing concept' above the dichotomy of the possible and the impossible."

29. ———. 1997. "Two Thomists on the Morality of a Jailbreak." The Modern Schoolman no. 74:95-115.

30. ———. 1997. "Vitoria on Choosing to Replace a King." In Hispanic Philosophy in the Age of Discovery, edited by White, Kevin, 45-58. Washington D. C.: Catholic University of America Press.

"Anyone familiar with the development of Hispanic philosophy in the Age of Discovery must be aware of the importance of Francisco de Vitoria (c. 1492-1546). Perhaps, however, that person will be surprised to hear that Vitoria, the holder of the Catedra de Prima in theology at the University of Salamanca, never published any of his own works. Instead, it was through his teaching that, during and after Spain's golden century, Vitoria influenced countless disciples, especially in areas of ethical and political thought. There are estimates of up to one thousand auditors attending some of his lectures. He himself in one place comes close to confirming that figure. But more than this, in the decades that followed, almost all the great moralists of the age looked back to Vitoria as their foremost authority. Their names read like the honor roll of Spanish and Counter-Reformation Scholasticism. But also outside Spain and Catholic Scholastic circles, in the dawning age of international jurisprudence, Vitoria exercised patent influence on important figures such as Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) and Alberico Gentili (1552-1608). Looking at all his influence and at the dearth of work published while he lived, it was with perfect truth that Domingo Bañez (1528-1604) could refer to him as "another Socrates"."

31. ———. 1997. "Reflections on Persons in Petri Dishes." Linacre Quarterly no. 64:62-76.

32. Vitoria, Francisco de. 1997. On Homicide and Commentary on Summa Theologiae IIa-IIae Q. 64 (Thomas Aquinas)a. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Marquette University Press.

"A. "Relection."

Literally a "re-lecture," the term "relection" refers to the practice in which professors at Salamanca were required to represent in a formal manner some ropic treated in their lecture courses each year. In ways a successor to the medieval Quaestio quodlibetalis, a Salamanca relecrion was open ro the whole university community. Unlike its medieval forerunner, however, the relection took the form of a set speech, rather than a question and reply exchange between the master and his students or those in attendance. The custom was for the master to prepare his own manuscript and read from it for the space of two hours, measured by a water clock. At Salamanca the pracnce went back ro 1422 when it was sanctioned by Pope Martin V ( pope: 1417-1431}.

After Viroria, 1t was continued by Domingo Soto ( 1494-1560) and others." (p. 14, notes omitted)

Translated from the Latin with an introduction and notes by John P. Doyle.

Table of Contents: Foreword 9; Introduction 11; I Vitoria's Life, Work and Influence 11; II. The Relection "On Homicide" 14; III The Commentary on Summa Theologiae IIa-IIae, qu 64, aa 1-82 24; IV. Some Remarks on the Translation 39; Notes to the Introduction 40;

The Texts of Vitoria.

I The Relection "On Homicide" 49; A. Contents 51; B The Text of the Relection 57; [Introduction] 57; [The First Conclusion] 57; [First Proof of the First Part of the Conclusion] 57; [Second Proof of the First Part of the Conclusion] 79; [Third Proof of the First Part of the Conclusion] 85; [Fourth Proof of the First Part of the Conclusion] 85;

Notes to the Latin Text 106; Endnotes to the Translation 107;

II. The Commentary on Summa Theologiae IIa-IIae, qu. 64, aa 1-8.

Article One. Whether it is unlawful to kill any living things at all 121;

Article Two: Whether it is lawful to kill sinners 139;

Article Three: Whether it is lawful for a private person to kill a sinful man 155;

Article Four: Whether it is lawful for clerics to kill felons 163;

Article Five: Whether it is lawful for anyone to kill himself 169;

Article Six: Whether it is lawful in some case to kill an innocent person 185;

Article Seven: Whether it is lawful to kill someone in self defense 193;

Article Eight: Whether someone who kills a man by chance is guilty of homicide 205;

Notes to the Latin Text 208; Notes to the Translation 209;

The Text of St. Thomas in Summa theologiae IIa-IIae, qu. 64 239;

Appendix A 253; Appendix B 259; Appendix C 260; Bibliography 261; Subject Index 263; Name Index 266-269.

33. Doyle, John Patrick. 1998. "The 'Conimbricenses' on the Semiotic Character of Mirror Images." The Modern Schoolman no. 76:17-31.

"Seneca distinguished two theories about images in a mirror. The first is that we see 'simulachra' and through their mediation we pass to things. The second is that in the mirror we immediately see things. The 'Conimbricenses', Jesuits at the Sixteenth-Century University of Coimbra, regarded mirror images as signs and, aware of Seneca's distinction, they favored the second theory. In so doing, they contrasted formal and instrumental signs and thought mirror images to be formal signs. All of this put them at odds with Thomas Aquinas who apparently favored Seneca's first theory. It also puts them at odds with the present-day semiotician, Umberto Eco, who says that mirror images are not signs."

Translated in Russian by Lada Tsipana as: 'Koimbrskie scholastiki o semioticheskom charaktere zerkalnich otrazhenij', Verbum (St. Petersburg Society of Philosophy), 5, pp. 93-109.

34. ———. 1998. "Supertranscendental Nothing: A Philosophical Finisterre." Medioevo no. 24:1-30.

Reprinted as Chapter 9 in BBK.

"For the innocent of geography, let me first explain that Finisterre is a cape in northern Spain at the westernmost point of the Spanish mainland. It marks an end of Europe; beyond Finisterre there is only the ocean. As readers of this essay may see, 'supertranscendental nothing' is arguably a philosophical Finisterre which was a farthest point of speculation reached by European philosophers in the seventeenth century. But what readers also may see is that this apparently ultimate item of seventeenth-century European philosophy was possibly pushed even farther out, at what might then to some have seemed beyond Spain and Europe the very end of the earth itself, in Santiago, Chile [by Miguel Viñas, S. J. (1642-1718)]."

35. ———. 1998. "Supertranscendental Being: On the Verge of Modern Philosophy." In Meeting of the Minds. The Relation between Medieval and Classical Modern European Philosophy, edited by Brown, Stephen F., 297-315. Turnhout: Brepols.

"As every historian of philosophy knows, Aristotle thought the subject of metaphysics was «being insofar as it is being» and from this subject he excluded «being as true». Centuries after Aristotle, Francisco Suarez, S.J., (1548-1617) designated the subject of metaphysics more explicitly as «being insofar as it is real being» (*).

The addition of «real» to Aristotle's formula highlighted the inclusion of all that can as well as does exist. Against the backdrop of two already well known distinctions -- (1) between formal and objective concepts, and (2) between being as a participle and being as a noun -- for Suarez the subject so conceived was identical with "the objective concept of being as a noun". Concurrently, while being was said to be analogous with regard to hierarchically ordered objects (God and creatures, substance and accidents) with an intrinsic attribution of the perfection it represented, such analogy presupposed a common, unitary, and all but univocal, concept. But from that concept and from the subject of metaphysics Suarez excluded "beings of reason", which he subsumed under Aristotle's being as true, and of which impossible objects, in the sense of those that would be self-contradictory, furnished the paradigm case.

On at least one occasion, Suarez did use the word "supertranscendental" to label a notion wide enough to cover both a transcendental and a predicamental relation (**) -- but not to signify anything common between real beings and beings of reason. Nevertheless, there does seem to be some kind of supertranscendent community here. Real being is transcendent, but real beings and beings of reason are in some more than transcending way the same inasmuch as they both can be objects of cognition. Yet Suarez will allow only a community of name and not of concept between real being and being of reason. At the same time, he has distinguished between being which is the object of metaphysics and being which is the object of cognition generally." (notes omitted)

(*) Cf. Disputationes Metaphysicae (hereafter DM), d. 1, s. 1, n. 26, Opera omnia, ed. C. Berton. Paris, Vivés, 1856-1866, XXV, p. 11.

(**) 11 DM 48, s. 1, n. 5 (XXVI, p. 869).

36. ———. 1999. "Francisco Suárez on the Law of Nations." In Religion and International Law, edited by Janis, Mark W. and Evans, Carolyn, 103-120. London.

Reprinted as Chapter 11 in The tenth essay ("Francisco Suarez on the Law of Nations") repeats a great deal of what is found in the ninth essay both in content and even style. Its inclusion in the present volume was considered justified, however, since its focus is much narrower than the ninth essay, not to mention that there are nine years separating the two essays and both were written for different audiences. "Francisco Suarez on the Law of Nations" concerns the law of nations, which for Suarez was a quasi-medium between natural law and the positive human law of individual states. Closely following upon the natural law, the law of nations is not as necessary as that law. In truth, it has the character of positive law. Yet its precepts differ from those of civil law inasmuch as they are unwritten and have been established by the customs not of a single state or province but rather by those of all, or almost all, nations. In this way, like the state itself, the jus gentium has its origin in human consensus. Along the way here we will see Suárez's general teaching with regard to "jus" which in different contexts he translates as "law" or as "right." This will then lead into the next essay." ( CS p. XIV).

37. ———. 2000. "Suárez on the Truth of the Proposition: "This is my Body"." The Modern Schoolman no. 77:145-163.

Reprinted as Chapter 9 in CSS.

"Essay eight in order ("Suarez on the Truth of the Proposition, `This is My Body-) treats a problem coming from Suárez's Aristotelian doctrine of truth vis-a-vis the Council of Trent's dogma of Transubstantiation. The model case of truth is offered by a present indicative proposition which correctly affirms the identity of its subject with its predicate. "This is my Body" aims to do that. But the dogma requires in this proposition a basic non-identity between its subject and predicate. So it appears that the subject is bread, while the substantially different predicate is Christ's Body. Suarez considered earlier opinions and then advanced his own soution to the problem, a solution which gives us insight into not only his doctrine respecting truth but also his understanding of objectivity." (CS p. XIII-XIV).

"Best known for his systematic study of metaphysics and his teaching on law, Francisco Suarez was arguably the greatest theologian in the history of the Jesuits. While the particular doctrine that I am now treating was published in 1587 in the wake of his teaching sacramental theology at Alcali de Henares, there is no indication that he ever changed his mind on it.

My precise present focus is on Suarez's treatise, De Eucharistia, Disputation 58, Sections 4 to 9, which cover pages 322-336, in Volume 20 of the Vivès edition (Paris, 1856-78) of his Opera omnia. In that place, he is commenting on St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, Part III, Question 78, and is raising questions with regard to the formula of Eucharistic consecration: most specifically, the words: This is my Body." p. 145.

38. ———. 2001. "Francisco Suárez, S.J. on Human Rights." In Menschenrechte: Rechte und Pflichten in Ost und West, edited by Wegmann, Konrad, Ommerborn, Wofgang and Roetz, Heiner, 105-132. Muenster: LIT Verlag.

Reprinted as Chapter 12 in CSS. The eleventh study ("Suarez on Human Rights") addresses a controverted matter in Scholastic philosophy - the doctrine of subjective rights which has been generally associated with Suarez. In fact, Suarez here accented something already in the Scholastic tradition, something which then later came to be termed a "subjective right." Suarez himself called it a "moral faculty" - understanding "moral" as intentional rather than physical and "faculty" as a power, an authority, a claim, a warrant, or a license. Moreover, he did not reject the earlier "objective" notion of rights, with its understanding of "jus" as the object of the virtue of justice. Rather, he presupposed a common objective order of justice upon which ultimately all rights would be grounded. But he did emphasize and to a certain extent modify something that existed in the tradition before himself, namely, the thought that :ndividuals can be the bearers of personal rights, not in opposition to but in distinction from the common "right" which is the object of justice. An added nuance here is that subjective rights may be understood not just over against an objective right but also as moral faculties which are possessed by persons who are subject to human authority opposite that authority to which they are subject." (CS p. XIV-XV).

"For most observers, the American Declaration of Independence is a milestone in the history of human rights. From its promulgation in 1776 down to present time it has served as a philosophical base for various democratic systems of government and as a logical, if not an always demonstrably historical, starting point for the expansion of human rights claims in such current-century documents as the United Nations Universal Declaration and the. Geneva Conventions. However, it has long been recognized that the Declaration of Independence has its own philosophical antecedents, most notably perhaps in the work of John Locke (1632-1704). Our aim now is to go back before Locke and to show such antecedents in the Scholastic philosophy which Locke himself imbibed as a young student at Oxford where he first enrolled in 1652. More specifically, I will point to their presence in the work of arguably the greatest Jesuit philosopher-theologian of all time, Francisco Suárez (1548-1617). (*)

(*) For a recent overview of Suarez, the man, his work, and his influence, See John P. Doyle, "Suárez, Francisco," Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London and New York, 1998), vol. 8; pp. 189-196.

39. ———. 2001. The Conimbricenses: Some Questions on Signs. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Translated with introduction and notes by John P. Doyle.

"The Conimbricenses were late sixteenth and early seventeenth century Jesuit philosophy professors at the University of Coimbra. Chief among them were Emmanuel de Goes (1542-1597), Cosmas de Magelhães (1551-1624), Balthasar Alvarez (1561-1630), and Sebastian do Couto (1567-1639). Although not usually numbered among the Conimbricenses, their confrere in the Society, Pedro da Fonseca (1528-1599), had promoted the novel idea of a philosophical cursus authored by the Jesuits of Coimbra.

The treatise De Signo (On the Sign) is the commentary to the first chapter of Aristotle's De Interpretatione. The work raises five principal questions: (1) On the nature and conditions common to signs; (2) On the division of signs; (3) On the signification of spoken words and of writing; (4) Whether concepts are the same among all and whether spoken words are different; then (5) Whether some concepts in our minds are true or false, and others devoid of truth or falsity."

40. ———. 2001. "On the Pure Intentionality of Pure Intentionality." The Modern Schoolman no. 79:57-78.

Reprinted as Chapter 5 in BBK.

"With his own intention of instructing novices, Luis de Lossada, S.J. (1681- 1748), has summarized the new, yet old, terminology of the disputed Scholastic doctrine of intellectual intentionality. (*) Although the Scholastics (and I to entitle the present essay) have ambiguously used the term 'intention' -- first in relation to will and then to understanding, in executing his intention Lossada has employed it simply to designate an act of the human intellect. Such an act may be either first or second, depending upon whether it directly represents the physical reality of its object or reflexly represents an object as already known or insofar as it has some being derived from the intellect. From these intellectual acts, the words which signify things as first and directly conceived are called `terms of first intention,' while those which signify things as secondly and reflexly known are called 'terms of second intention,' that is to say terms corresponding to a second intending by the intellect. Examples of the former terms may be 'man,' 'animal,' or 'sun,' while terms like 'universal, 'genus,' 'species,' 'subject,' or 'predicate' are examples of the latter. Moreover, since objects are customarily named from the knowledge they terminate, both first and second intentions (whether one looks at acts of understanding or the words which express them) may be either 'formal' or 'objective'."

(*) Cursus philosophici Logica. Tr. I disp. 2 c. 4, n.1; ed. Barcinonae: Apud Vid. et Fil. J. Subirana, 1883 [originally: Salamanca, 1724], vol. I, p. 204. (Notes omitted).

41. ———. 2003. "Gedankendinge und Imagination bei den Jesuiten des 17. Jh." In Imagination -- Fiktion -- Kreation: Das kulturschaffende Vermögen der Phantasie, edited by Dewender, Thomas and Welt, Thomas, 213-228. München - Leipzig: K. G. Saur - Verlag.

Translated in German by Thomas Dewender.

The original English version is published as Chapter 6 in BBK with the title: Beings of Reason and Imagination.

42. ———. 2003. "The Borders of Knowability: Thoughts from or Occasioned by Seventeenth-Century Jesuits." In Die Logik des Transzendentalen. Festschrift für Jan A. Aerstsen zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Pickavé, Martin, 643-658. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter.

Reprinted as Chapter 11 in BBK.

"This essay concerns the upper and the lower borders between what is and what is not knowable for human beings, particularly as these borders were variously considered by some seventeenth-century Jesuit thinkers. Expanding, let me say that the boundary above is reached when one confronts the reality of God, who while He may be evidently knowable in Himself is not so, at least in this life, for us. In contrast, the lower boundary seems to run between that which is in itself knowable and that which is totally unknowable either for us or for God. This lower boundary is reached at the level of what is intrinsically impossible and what to that extent fails of being and of being knowable.

A further refinement is suggested from geography. Take the Alps as a natural boundary between Italy and France. As any tyro knows, this boundary has a double face, inasmuch as we can view it either from the side of Italy or of France, that is from either a cisalpine or a transalpine perspective. Apply this to the borders of knowability. The cisalpine side of the upper border is somehow supplied by our human knowledge groping toward God - especially through negative theology in the wake of Pseudo-Dionysius and through what seventeenth-century Scholastics termed the metaphysical essence of God. The transalpine side is the reality of God in Himself which is beyond the present grasp of a human mind. The lower border will be at the interface of the possible and the impossible. More exactly, its cisalpine side will enclose both the possible and the impossible. Its transalpine side will in some way exclude both the possible and the impossible.

For what follows I will use Jesuit sources in the wake of Francisco Suarez, S. J. (1548-1617), but I will principally focus on one Jesuit, Maximilian Wietrowski (1660-1737), whom I have treated in other places. This will occasion forays into Jesuits between him and Suarez, most singularly: Thomas Compton Carleton (1591 -1666), Sylvester Mauro (1619-1687), and André Semery (1630-1717), as well as one publishing after, Miguel Viñas (1642-1718). At times I will go outside Jesuit writings to clarify or to confirm points and finally I will suggest conclusions against the backdrop of Thomistic theology, which the Jesuits, by their "Constitutions" and "Ratio Studiorum", were obliged wherever possible to follow." (notes omitted)

43. ———. 2004. "Wrestling with a Wraith: André Semery, S. J. (1630-1717) on Aristotle's Goat-Stag and Knowing the Unknowable." In The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern Philosophy, edited by Pozzo, Riccardo, 84-112. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

Reprinted as Chapter 10 in BBK.

44. Suárez, Francisco. 2004. The Metaphysical Demonstration of the Existence of God. Metaphysical Disputations 28-29 by Francisco Suárez, S.J. South Bend: St. Augustine Press.

Translated and edited from the Latin with an introduction and notes by John P. Doyle.

"The two Disputations that are translated in the present work open the second part of the Disputationes metaphysicae and mark the turn from being in general lo particular beings. Their concern is with, first in Disputation 28, a comprehensive division of being in general, and after in Disputation 29, the existence of the principal member of this division, namely, that being which is God.

Disputation 28 is divided into three Sections, which ask about the legitimacy and the sufficiency of the division, as well as whether the dividend, i.e. being, is univocal or analogous between God and creatures. In the first Section (Vivès: vol. 26, pp. 1-8), the question is whether being is rightly divided into infinite and finite being? Doubts arise from the fact that "infinite" and "finite" on their face do not appear to cover the whole range of being but rather look to be restricted to accidental being in the category of quantity (§ 1). In addition, the terms of the proposed division seem obscure, especially the term "infinite" (§ 2). Suarez's answer is to analyze the terms (§ 3) and then to defend the division as one that is good and necessary (§ 4) as well as first and most evident (§ 5). It is equivalent to other divisions such as being by itself (ens a se) and being from another (ens ab alio) (§§ 6-7) or, with clarifications, necessary being and contingent being (§§ 8-12). It is also equivalent to: essential being and being by participation (§ 13), created being and uncreated being (§ 14), or being in act and being in potency (§§ 15-16). Suarez next compares the first division with the rest (§ 17), explains the terms of the first division by comparison with quantity (§ 17), and closes the first Section (§ 18) with a reply to objections raised at its beginning." p. XIV.

"Though almost twice as long, Disputation 29 like the one before is again divided into three Sections. Section 1 (vol. 26, pp. 21-34) begins after two introductory paragraphs (§§ 1-2) in which Suarez gives reasons for the location of the subject matter of the Disputation in this place and remarks how he will leave aside as much as possible items which depend for their understanding on Revelation. The first Section then asks whether and/or by what means the existence of God can be demonstrated. Among the Scholastic Doctors, Peter d'Ailly (1350-1420) has denied the possibility of such a demonstration. To this Suarez makes the brief but revealing reply that already by the various divisions of being that have been presented in the previous Disputation the existence of "some being which is uncreated or not produced" has been proven (§ 1). The obvious implication is that by now the existence of God has in effect been proven. But immediately the question arises: by what means, physical or metaphysical, is this properly done? On one side, the opinion of Averroes is that the means is physical, namely the motion of the heavens (§ 2). The contrary opinion, that of Avicenna and later of Duns Scotus among others, holds that the means must be metaphysical (§ 3) -- that is, not motion but being itself. A third and a fourth opinion hold in different ways that the task must belong to both physics, that is natural philosophy, and metaphysics (§§ 4-5). In different ways the means would thus be both physical and metaphysical. In Suarez's judgment the second opinion is certainly the true one but there can be some probability in the fourth position, if it is rightly explained (§ 6).

At this juncture, he examines at length the physical argument that proceeds by the medium of motion and for various reasons he finds it wanting (§§ 7-17). Then he considers another physical argument, from the operations and the essence of the rational soul (§ 18). This too comes up short, unless we first pose a question about the soul's being, which is a metaphysical question (§ 19). Here Suarez gives the metaphysical argument that is based upon a broader and deeper principle than the physical one, "Whatever is moved is moved by another." The metaphysical principle is "Whatever is made or produced is made by another" and the argument itself concludes to an unmade Maker (§§ 20-21). An objection of a possibly circular chain of causes is dismissed as every bit as inadmissible as a thing's causing itself (§ 22). Other objections involve an infinite number of causes that would preclude any arriving at a first uncaused or unmade cause. There are different ways to conceive such an infinity of causes. Suarez explains such ways in detail and shows their insufficiencies (§§ 23-40). The first Section ends (§§ 41-42) with a brief rehearsal of and summary judgment upon the opinions listed at the beginning." pp. XV-XVI.

45. ———. 2004. A Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics (Index locupletissimus in Metaphysicam Aristotelis) - by Francisco Suárez. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Translated from the Latin with an introduction and notes by John P. Doyle.

"As the reader will see, the following volume is divided into translations and the corresponding Latin texts. The translations are in order:

(1) Suarez's Plan for his Metaphysical Disputations. This is his preface to the 1597 edition. It is an address to his reader in which he lays out his intention as a Christian theologian to pursue a Christian philosophy, specifically a metaphysics which will be at the service of his theology. This metaphysics will be in two main parts. The first of these will be what will shortly after be called an "ontology" or a general science of being, in which after establishing "real being insofar as it is being" as the object of metaphysics, he will proceed to study its properties, its principles, and its causes. The second part will then descend from the general concept of being to study those beings, God and creatures, substances and accidents, which are contained under that concept. Finally, it should be noted that in this preface he speaks of the present Index and gives his reader some idea of its purpose.

(2) The Proemium to the Second Metaphysical Disputation. This short piece is important. After again indicating the systematic plan of the Disputationes, it contrasts that with the disorganized text of Aristotle and commentaries on it. But then he says that, in order to satisfy "students of Aristotle," he has added the present Index which follows the order of the Metaphysics and which gives cross-references to the Disputations. It will also, he tells us, comment at times directly on the text of Aristotle and will explore matters which for whatever reasons have not been covered well enough in the Disputations.

(3) Next comes the Most Ample Index itself. In this Suarez, as he promised, follows the order of the Metaphysics, essentially commenting on it as I have said, "by way of question." To appreciate this Index, a modem reader should have some familiarity with Aristotle's text and the main problems interpreters have encountered with it. To facilitate that, I have at he start of most Books added a summary of the remarks of Jules Tricot, the important French translator of the Metaphysics. I chose Tricot's remarks for a number of reasons. First, they were succinct. Second, they were the thoughts of an authentic scholar. Third, while Tricot's scholarship may be a few decades old, it is still valuable for understanding the main nineteenth and twentieth-century debates about the composition and the meaning of Aristotle's Metaphysics, debates which often bear on problems which Suarez and the medievals encountered. Finally, there is something which will not be evident from the summaries I gave, but which was in the background of my choosing Tricot. This is that he, unlike many contemporary writers, extends his interest out beyond the text of Aristotle to the traditions of his Greek and Latin commentators. In short, Tricot pursues understanding of Aristotle in a way which I am certain Suarez would endorse.

(4) An Index of Disputations: This amounts to a Table of Contents for the fifty-four Disputations which comprise the main portion of Suarez's work. To make it easier for readers to find these Disputations I have added volume and page numbers to Suarez's list. A further benefit of this may be that a reader will be able to see at a glance the relative importance which Suarez attached to each Disputation from the number of pages he allotted to it. In passing I did notice minor variations between some of the Section headings in the main text of the Disputationes and the Index of Disputations. Generally, in my notes I ignored such variations and mentioned them only on rare occasions.

Following the translations, the next portion of the current volume is devoted to the Latin texts. Thus I have transcribed in their original language the Preface to the whole work, the Prologue to the Second Disputation, the Most Ample Index itself, and the Index of the Disputations. The most important notes that I added contain the Latin translations mentioned above, i.e., those of Moerbeke, Argyropoulos, Bessarion, and Fonseca. On this score, let me say that I deliberately separated the Greek of Aristotle from the Latin of Suarez and these others. My purpose in this was to allow interested persons to compare the Latin translations without the immediate distraction of the Greek. At the same time, the Greek will be available and matched directly to my English translation of Suarez's Latin. My hope is that this is clear and that it makes some sense to interested readers.

The volume includes a Dramatis Personae, that is, a list of and a few facts about persons whom Suarez mentions in the Ample Index. Again, I have added a bibliography of sources in various languages to which readers may go for more in depth understanding of the issues raised in the translated texts."

46. Doyle, John Patrick. 2005. "Two Sixteenth-Century Jesuits and a Plan to Conquer China. Alonso Sanchez and José de Acosta: An Outrageous Proposal and its Rejection." In Rechtsdenken: Schnittpunkte West und Ost. Recht in den gesellschafts- und staatstragenden Institutionen Europas und Chinas, edited by Wegmann, Konrad and Holz, Harald, 253-273. Münster: LIT Verlag.

"I. The Plan of Alonso Sanchez SJ.

II. The Great Plan in Detail: Ten Sections of Preparing, Pursuing, and Safe-Guarding the Conquest of China

III. The Opponent of he Plan: José de Acosta S.J.

IV. Several Reasons, Technico-practical and Moral, against the Plan

V. The Royal Decision: Renunciation of the Plan.

I. The Plan of Alonso Sanchez S. J. of Conquering China

The first of our two Jesuits, Alonso Sânchez (1547-1593), has been called “a Jesuit like no other.” (1) Born in the province of Guadalajara in Spain, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1565 at the age of 17. (2) In 1571 he was ordained a priest and in 1579 he was sent by his Order to Mexico and then on to the Philippine Islands, where he disembarked in September of 1581 at the city of Manila, which had been founded ten years earlier by Miguel Lopez de Legazpe (1510-1572). In the years that followed, Sânchez gained prominence in the Philippines and made two trips from there to China.

His first trip, in 1582, was to the Portuguese enclave at Macao. (3) His purpose was to acquaint the Portuguese with, and to gain their acceptance of, the fact that Philip II of Spain had in 1580 also assumed the throne of Portugal and that now the whole Iberian peninsula was united under one rule. In this Sânchez was most successful and upon returning to the Philippines he was acclaimed as a skilled diplomat. Well known for his virtue, his learning, and his zeal for souls, (4) he still became a figure of controversy even within the Jesuits. (5) This last was largely because of his penchant for crossing the line between affairs of church and state and in particular for his view with regard to China. (6)

(1) "Un jésuite tel qu'il n'y a en eut jamais de semblable: Alonso Sanchez." H. Bernard, SJ, "La Théorie du protectorat civil des missions en pays infidèle: ses antécédents historiques et sa justification théologique par Suarez," Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 64 (1937), pp. 261-93, esp. p. 266.

(2) For dates in Sànchez’s life, cf. Joseph Dehergne, SJ., Répertoire des Jésuites de Chine de 1552 à 1800 (Roma: Institution Historicum, SJ., 1973), pp. 238 - 9; also, cf. F. Zubillaga, "Sánchez, Alonso (Alfonso). Misionero," in Diccionario histôrico de la Compañia de Jésus: biogrqfico-temático, Charles E. O'Neill, Joaquin Ma. Dominguez, directores (Roma: Institutum Historicum, S.I.; Madrid: Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2001 vol. 4, pp. 3486-7.

(3) The Portuguese had had a trading station at Macao since 1537.

(4) Cf. Antonio Astráin, SJ., Historia de la Compañia de Jésus en la asistencia de España, 7 vols. (Madrid: Razón y Fe, 1912 -1925), vol. 3, pp. 549 - 50.

5 For some modem reflection of this, cf. “Il Sanchez faceva profusione di consacrare un tempo eccessivo adorazione, ma sembra essere stato un uomo piuttosto portato agli eccessi." Fonti Ricciane: Documenti originali concernenti Matteo Ricci e la storia delle prime relazioni tra l'Europa e la Cina (1579 - 1615), cd. Pasquale M. D'Elia, S.I., tomo 1 (Roma: La Libreria dello Stato, 1942), p. 214, n. 5. For an extended and reasonably balanced view, see W.C. Repetti, SJ., History of the Society of Jesus in the Philippine Islands, (Manila: Good Shepherd Press, 1938), pp. 77 - 79.

(6) Cf. Zubillaga, p. 3487.

47. ———. 2006. "Hervaeus Natalis, O.P., (d. 1323) On Intentionality: Its Direction, Context, and Some Aftermath." The Modern Schoolman no. 83:85-124.

"It is generally known that Franz Brentano (1828-1917) came through a tradition Aristotelian-Scholasticism to a philosophy which stood in opposition to Kant and to the main stream of German idealism after. It is also often thought that nothing in that tradition was more influential than its intentionality doctrine. Central for Brentano's early development, intentionality was a doctrine whose Scholastic origin he himself indicated, when in 1874, he wrote:

"Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the scholastics of the Middle Ages referred to as the intentional (and also mental) inexistence of the object, and what we, although with not quite unambiguous expressions, would call relation to a content, direction upon an object (which is not here to be understood as a reality) or immanent objectivity."

Since 1874, for proponents, opponents, and simple observers of Brentano and of intentionality doctrine, whatever else may be at issue the general consensus has been that the term "intentionality" indicates a direction from knower to known. Mutatis mutandis, so understood, intentionality continued to be important for various phenomenological philosophies which stemmed from Brentano. In this vein, Brentano's most recognized disciple, Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), who is credited with introducing the term itself into modern philosophy, has described its basic signification as "the property of being conscious of something." This direction from consciousness to the object (which Brentano himself influenced by the problem of non-existent objects later at least in part rejected in his famous Abkehr vom Nichtrealen has been regarded as central in Husserl's work even by critics. The same direction appears in the work of others dependent upon Brentano and a glance at secondary sources will confirm its almost universal acceptance as the common view.

In the Middle Ages, from the Latin Avicenna on, the term "intention" (intentio) can be found throughout the thirteenth century. However, to my knowledge, somewhat surprisingly, the actual word, "intentionality" (intentionalitas), first appears only when we come to the fourteenth-century writing of Hervaeus Natalis. It was a bigger surprise for me to find that Brentano in one place actually mentioned Hervaeus and listed three of his works. But the biggest surprise was to discover that for Hervaeus the direction of intentionality as such was not from knower to known but rather opposite wise -- from known to knower! My purpose now is to recount and perhaps to sharpen that discovery as well as to go further and touch on some of its possible Wirkungsgeschichte." pp. 85-86 (notes omitted).

48. ———. 2006. "Francisco Suárez, S. J. (1548-1617) on the Interpretation of Laws." The Modern Schoolman no. 83:197-222.

Reprinted as Chapter 13 in CSS.

"The twelfth and final essay ("Francisco Suarez on the Interpretation of Laws") will serve to bring out some of the breadth and depth of Suarez's great work, De Legibus. For that I have picked out just one of its 246 chapters and have given a brief exposition of that chapter against the civil and canon law background before which it was written. In this, I have followed Suarez to speak generally of interpretation of the words of a law, the mind of the lawgiver, and the reason for the law, in the two directions of expanding and of restricting that law. Along the way, I have treated such issues as various types of law which Suarez recognized, the legal codes he had to cope with, the interpreters on whom he relied, the absence of any written constitution, yet, at the same time, some de facto practices and principles substituting for that. I have also highlighted his own skills at interpretation in other contexts. Lastly, I have added an Appendix here which using particular laws will show more concretely some of the points made in the essay." (Cs p. XV).

49. ———. 2006. "Mastri and Some Jesuits on Possible and Impossible Objects of God's Knowledge and Power." In Rem in seipsa cernere: saggi sul pensiero filosofico di Bartolomeo Mastri (1602-1673), edited by Forlivesi, Marco, 439-468. Padova: Il Poligrafo.

"Why are some things possible while others are not? Is possibility and/or impossibility ultimately from God Himself? If so, how can this be understood? Is it, as St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) thought, stemming from God's intellect in such way that creatures are possible inasmuch as the divine essence is thought by God to be imitable in various ways? Accordingly, God's intellect rather than possible creatures would be the cause of their multiplicity. But further obstacles are posed by the Divine simplicity. St Thomas himself has addressed the question of how can the absolutely simple Divine intellect understand at once many things? Or how can what is simple be imitable in various ways? How can what is perfectly one be the last ground of plurality? This last difficulty was highlighted in the time between Plato and St. Thomas by those to whom it seemed, at best, that from what is simply one, necessarily only one thing could proceed.

Contrasted with this, perhaps the final ground for things being many as well as possible or impossible might be that God has freely willed them so. This seems to have been the view of Henry of Ghent (1217-1293) when he said that the passive potency of creatures and the active power of God are correlative. It was also the thought of William of Ockham (ca. 1290-1349), whose disciple, Gabriel Biel (1410?-95), has gone even more decidedly along this path. Are possibilities themselves, then, creatures of God, depending on His will to make them as they are? If yes, is it in God’s power to make other things possible and then to create them - things which are now impossible? Could God make square circles or a second God? Without restraint from what is beforehand possible, could God abrogate the present moral order and substitute another in its place?

(Or can there be a third, on its face more Platonic, position which would find the source of multiplicity, possibility, and impossibility in other beings which are equally independent with God? Other Gods or “Semi-gods”? Like Plato’s Demiurge, could the Christian God be bound by a set of antecedent possibilities which are not other Gods and which are not His creatures but which are simply “there”, governing His action? We might recoil from such a position, but that won’t solve problems.

2. Some sources

The 17th century Conventual Franciscan, Bartolomeo Mastri, (1602-1673), came to such problems chiefly as a continuator and an interpreter of Duns Scotus (1266-1308), for him “the Doctor”. (17) But between Mastri and the Subtle Doctor centuries had intervened, during which there were other interpreters and different lines of thought about possibles and impossibles. The present paper is confined to Mastri’s views both personal and as an interpreter; and it will try to relate these views to those of some 17th-century Jesuit thinkers whose works were known to him.

Primary sources for Mastri’s doctrine will be in his (so posthumously called) Cursus integer of philosophy, the first three volumes of which he co-authored with his friend and fellow Franciscan, Bonaventura Belluto (1601-1678), (18) whereas the last two, which contain his metaphysical disputations, he afterwards produced alone. (19) My emphasis will be on his metaphysical Disputation 8 (On the Essence and Existence of Finite Being) and, from their joint logic, Disputation 3, question 6 (On Beings of Reason). I will also draw on Mastri’s later Disputationes theologicæ which contain his mature doctrine. (20) The remote source for Mastri’s views will be the writings of his master, Duns Scotus, especially the Ordinatio, most particularly, Book I, distinctions 35, 36, and 43. (21) Someone always present will be the Irish Franciscan, John Punch (Poncius, 1603-1672/3), who was over decades Mastri’s principal opponent. (22)". (pp. 440-443, many notes omitted).

(17) On Mastri, see M. Forlivesi, “Scotistarum princeps”. Bartolomeo Mastri (1602-1673) e il suo tempo, Padova: Centro studi antoniani, 2002. In English, cf. B. Crowley, “The Life and Works of Bartholomew Mastrius, O.F.M. Conv. 1602-1673”, in Franciscan Studies, 8 (1948), pp. 97-152.

(18) I have used the following edition: Mastrius - Bellutus, Philosophise ad mentem Scoti cursus integer, Venetiis: Apud Nicolaum Pezzana, 1727.

(19) Here I have used Mastrius, Disputationes in XII Aristotelis Stagiritæ libros Metaphysicorum, 2 vols., Venetiis: Typis Marci Ginammi, 1646-1647.

(20) For this I have used: Mastrius, Disputationes theologicæ, I In primum librum Sententiarum, Venetiis: Apud Ioannem Iacobum Hertz, 1675 (archetypal edition Venetiis: Apud Ioannem Iacobum Hertz, 1655). In addition, I have had access to: Mastrius, Disputationes theologicæ, I In primum lihrum Sententiarum, Venetiis: Ex Typographia Balleoniana, 1719. From what I have seen, I would judge the 1675 edition to be better.

(21) In Joannes Duns Scouts, Opera omnia, ed. Commissio scotistica, Civitas Vaticana: Typis polyglottis vaticanis, 1950-.

(22) I. Poncius, Philosophiae ad mentem Scoti cursus integer, Lugduni: Sumptibus Laurentii Arnaud et Petri Borde, 1672. On Punch, cf. M.J. Grajewski, “John Punch, Franciscan Scotist of the Seventeenth Century”, in Franciscan Studies, 6 (1946), pp. 54-92. For Punch versus Mastri here, see J. Coombs, “The Possibility of Created Entities in Seventeenth-Century Scotism”, in The Philosophical Quarterly, 43 (1993), pp. 447-459; St. Sousedík, “Der Streit um den wahren Sinn der scotischen Possibilienlehre”, in John Duns Scotus. Metaphysics and Ethics, eds. L. Honnefelder, R. Wood and M. Dreyer, Leiden - New York - Köln: E. J. Brill, 1996, pp. 191-204; and T. Hoffmann, “Creatura intellecta”. Die Ideen und Possibilien bei Duns Scotus mit Ausblick auf Franz von Mayronis, Poncius und Mastrius, Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2002, especially ch. 7, pp. 263-304.

50. Suárez, Francisco. 2006. On Real Relation (Disputatio Metaphysica XLVII) by Francisco Suárez. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Translated from Latin with an introduction and notes by John P. Doyle.

"There are two main places in which Aristotle has dealt with the category of relation. These are: (a) Categories, Chapter 7, and (b) Metaphysics, Book V, Chapter 15. As will become apparent, these places will be central for Suarez's treatment of relation in Disputation 47." p. 19.

"At very least, without pinning the matter down at all points, it is safe to say that relation is central to any overall understanding of Aristotle's doctrine of the categories and even more to any understanding of his wider doctrine beyond.

As I have mentioned, there are two principal places in the Disputationes metaphysicae (DM) in which Suarez treats relation. These are the present Disputation 47 and then Disputation 54, Section 6. The obvious dividing line between them is that between real being in the categories and "being as true" which by Suarez's time has come to be identified with being of reason. (77) But even as we say this, it is important once again to note that real relation extends beyond the category of relation and also that in the Second Section, Paragraph 22, of Disputation 47 Suarez will come exceedingly close to a reduction of real relation to a simple act of the knower, that is, a connotation.

There are other places in the Disputationes where in various ways Suarez has touched upon relation. While I have not explored them all in the present work, they do frequently shine added light on this work. For examples, let me mention his treatment of "prior and posterior" in the Index locupletissimus at Book Five, Chapter 11; (78) his discussion-in the context of his treatment of distinction -- of relation and its terminus; (79) his discussion of relation in the context of truth; (80) various points he makes about relation in treating transcendental goodness; (81) his contrast of finite created relations and infinite divine relations as regards the essences in which they are found; (82) the divine relations of paternity and filiation as dissimilar; (83) or within a context of his discussion of quantity, a further discussion of the characters of "measure" and "measured," (84) etc.

As may be gathered from some of the examples just mentioned, there are Christian dimension of relation both in Suarez's sources and in his own teaching. These are linked particularly with the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. On both these themes, besides what he has said in the Disputationes, (85) he has written special works, which contain much on the subject of relation." pp. 26-27.

(77) For some of the history of this identification, cf. Theo Kobusch, "Ens inquantum ens und ens rationis: ein aristotelisches Problem in der Philosophie des Duns Scotus und Wilhelm von Ockham," in Aristotle in Britain during the Middle Ages: Proceedings of the International Conference at Cambridge, 8 -11 April 1994 organized by the Société internationale pour l'Étude de la philosophie médiévale, edited by John Marenbon (Turnhout, Brepols, 1996), pp. 157-175, esp. 158-9.

(78) See Index ..., V, c. 11, q. 1, vol. 25, p. xxii; Francisco Suarez, A Commentary ..., pp. 89-90.

(79) DM 7, 2, n. 26, vol. 25, p. 270.

(80) DM 8, 2, nn. 3-9, vol. 25, pp. 278-9.

(81) For example, cf. DM 10, 1, nn. 3-5, vol. 25, p. 329; ibid., 3, nn. 11-15, pp. 350-51

(82) DM 28, 2, nn. 5,6, 8-13, vol. 26, pp. 9-12.

(83) DM 29, 3, nn. 16-17, vol. 26, p. 53.

(84) DM 40, 3, nn. 9-10, vol. 26, pp. 540-41.

(85) As regards relation and the Trinity, cf. DM 7, 2, n. 27, vol. 25, p. 270; DM 10, 3, nn. 16-18, pp. 351-2; DM 28, 2, nn. 5,6, 8-13, vol. 26, pp. 9-12; DM 29, 3, nn. 16-17, vol. 26, p. 53; and DM 47, 4, n. 21, below. As regards relation and the Incarnation, sec., e.g.: DM 47, 4, n. 9, below.

51. Doyle, John Patrick. 2007. "Hispanic Scholastic Philosophy." In The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, edited by Hankins, James, 250-269. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Hispanic scholastic philosophy in this chapter designates a sixteenth and seventeenth-century stream of philosophy which flowed out of medieval universities, increased to a torrent on the Iberian peninsula, then poured into other regions of Europe, America, Africa, and Asia. Arising in the wake of Spanish and Portuguese explorations and conquests, which at the end of fifteenth and through the sixteenth century brought radically new, and usually bloody, encounters between European and non-European peoples, it was at its core concerned with such encounters. Other background were furnished by the Counter-Reformation, especially the reforms of the Council of Trent (1545-63) and its aftermath; the late Renaissance debates among philosophers, humanists and skeptics; and the revival of Thomistic texts and thought. Two subjects stand out as particularly important and influential: (1) moral and juridical philosophy centering on "the law of nations" (the jus gentium) and (2) theoretical philosophy, which included Aristotelian physics but culminated in metaphysics.

For present purposes the birth year of Hispanic philosophy was 1526, when Francisco de Vitoria, OP (1492-1546), was elected to the Cátedra de Prima, in theology at Salamanca and began lectures on the "Second Part of the Second Part" (IIa-IIae) of the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas. This introduced the Summa as the principal textbook in theology and also inaugurated a Thomistic revival in theology and in philosophy at Salamanca, then elsewhere. Choosing a terminal date for Hispanic philosophy here is more arbitrary, but a plausible one is 1718, when Miguel Viñas, SJ (1642-1718) died. It may immediately be noted that while Vitoria taught in Spain and belonged to the older religious order of the Dominicans, Viñas was a Jesuit who taught at Santiago in Chile. In the period under discussion two salient facts are the passage of philosophical leadership from the Dominicans to the Jesuits, and the spread of Hispanic philosophy overseas from the Iberian peninsula, especially to Latin America. The development of that philosophy between 1526 and 1718 occurred within this broader context of a general shift from an old to a new religious order and from the Old World to a New. What follows is a very limited sketch of figures and themes in that development." pp. 250-251.

52. Hervaeus, Natalis. 2008. A Treatise of Master Hervaeus Natalis (d.1323) The Doctor Perspicacissimus On Second Intentions. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Volume One - An English translation and Volume Two - A Latin edition by John P. Doyle.

"These volumes present a first critical Latin edition and an English translation of an important, but very difficult to read and understand, medieval treatise. As almost everyone knows, the notion of intentionality comes from the Middle Ages. What is less known is that Hervaeus Natalis, O.P. (d. 1323) was the first one explicitly to consider it as such. Even less known is the fact that he carne to it not immediately from the Aristotelian De Anima, but rather from the division in Aristotle's Metaphysics between "being as being" and "being as true." Least of all known is the fact that Hervaeus, who uses the term"intentionality" in the present work 235 times, regards its significance as a relation of reason which runs in the direction of known or knowable to knower. Apart from its exceedingly obscure Latin style, what particularly makes this work difficult to understand is its multi-layered reflection on things and non-things, its reflection on Hervaeus thinking itself, and its reflection on his thinking about his thinking about things and non-things."

53. Doyle, John Patrick. 2009. "Hervaeus Natalis On Intentionality: its Direction and Some Aftermath." In Philosophical Debates at Paris in the Early Fourteenth Century, edited by Brown, Stephen F., Dewender, Thomas and Kobusch, Theo, 261-283. Leiden: Brill.

A longer version of this article appeared in The Modern Schoolman, 83, 2006, pp. 85-124.

54. ———. 2010. Collected Studies on Francisco Suárez S.J. (1548-1617). Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Edited by Victor M. Salas.

Contents: Editor's Foreword VII-IX; Introduction: The Theme of this Collection, its Contents, its Character and Rationale XIII-XVI; 1. Francisco Suárez, His Life, His Works, His Doctrine, and Some of His Influence 1; 2. Suárez on the Reality of the Possibles 21; 3. Suárez on the Analogy of Being 41; 4. Suarezian and Thomistic Metaphysics before the Judgment of Heidegger 89; 5. The Suarezian Proof for God's Existence 109; 6. Prolegomena to a Study of Extrinsic Denomination in the Work of Francis Suárez, S.J. 123; 7. Suárez on Beings of Reason and Truth 161; 8. Suárez on the Unity of a Scientific Habit 209; 9. Suárez on the Truth of the Proposition, "This is My Body" 235; 10. Suárez on Preaching the Gospel to People like the American Indians 257; 11. Francisco Suárez on the Law of Nations 315; 12. Suárez on Human Rights 333; 13. Francisco Suárez on the Interpretation of Laws 357; 14. Postscript and Prospectus 389; Bibliography 393; Index of Names 409; Index of Terms 413-416.

"The main theme in these studies is twofold. The first is theoretical, centering on the Suarezian conception of being and metaphysics. As Etienne Gilson pointed out in Being and Some Philosophers, this conception had its origin in Avicenna's understanding of Aristotelian metaphysics, an understanding which passed through Duns Scotus to Suarez and then on to Suárez's successors, notably Christian Wolff. I still accept Gilson's basic account of Suárez's lineage, which account was also basic for these studies in their original appearance. But now (in 2010) I would modify it along the line suggested by Rolf Darge, who has emphasized the difference of the Suarezian concept of being and its descent to its inferiors versus the Scotistic concept of being as simpliciter simplex as this descends to its inferiors by differences outside itself.(1) The second theme takes up the practical side of Suárez's philosophical and theological interests, including his views on human society, law and morality, Church and state, international law, and human rights. The first theme is represented in different metaphysical and epistemological dimensions through eight studies, while the second is the major concern of the last four essays.

The introduction to the collection attempts to give an overview of Suarez the man, his published writings, his philosophical thought, and some of his influence." (p. XI)

(1) For this, see Rolf Darge, Suárez transzendentale Seinsauslegung und die Metaphysik-tradition (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2004).

55. ———. 2010. "Suárez and some Precursors on Lex and Ius." In Politische Philosophie und Rechtstheorie des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit. Abteilung II: Untersuchungen: Lex und Ius. Band I, edited by Fidora, Alexander, Lutz-Bachmann, Matthias and Wagner, Andreas, 393-427. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann Holzboog.

56. ———. 2011. "St. Thomas Aquinas On Theological Truth." In Philosophy and Theology in the Long Middle Ages: A Tribute to Stephen F. Brown, edited by Emery, Kent, Friedman, Russell L. and Speer, Andreas, 571-590. Ledien: Brill.

"Aquinas (1225-1274) clearly recognized two kinds of theology, namely, that of the philosophers, which is metaphysical, and that based upon divine revelation, which is "sacred doctrine" (sacra doctrina). Each will be in its way a science with its own distinctive subject matter and procedure. At the same time, there will be continuity between the two theologies inasmuch as faith, grace, and supernature presuppose nature. However, both philosophical and sacred theology have different subjects and relate to God in different ways. As it is ostensibly part of metaphysics, philosophical theology has common being (ens or esse commune) as its subject and relates to God as the extrinsic principle of that subject. Sacred theology has God and divine things as the subject to which it seems immediately to relate. To the degree that both theologies are conceived as scientific, each, in line with the norms of the Posterior Analytics, will need to presuppose the existence and essence of its subject and then explore the attributes and/or principles of that subject. In the case of philosophical theology, the subject of metaphysics will be the being that is commonly experienced in this sensible world and God will be established as its extrinsic principle. In the case of sacred theology, God will be the subject of the science, which will then go on with the help of revelation to consider his nature and attributes. In this, God and the articles of faith will be first principles of sacred theology. To prove its principles, sacred theology will not have a way intrinsic to itself, but neither will it reject the common principles of human reasoning itself." (pp. 571-573, notes omitted).

57. ———. 2011. "The Falling Dog and the Numerical Unity of Motion." In Tolle Lege. Essays on Augustine and on Medieval Philosophy in Honor of Roland J. Teske, SJ, edited by Taylor, Richard C. , Twetten, David and Wreen, Michael, 253-276. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

"In his Physics, Aristotle tells us that the numerical unity or, in today’s talk, the diachronic identity of local motion depends upon three things: something which is in motion, something, such as a place or a quality, within which the motion occurs, and some time in which it occurs (Physics 5.4, 227b23–26). Without all of these there is no singular unified motion. And without such singular motion, Plato notwithstanding, there will be no universal motion (Nicomachean Ethics 6.12, 1143b4–5) and a fortiori no science of things in motion (Metaphysics 11.1, 1059b26; 11.2, 1060b20–21; Physics 3.1, 206b14–15). If then any one of the three requirements of motion is in doubt, the whole of the Aristotelian physics may seem in jeopardy. In what follows, concentration is on the requirement of a continuous unitary subject of motion, on one medieval

objection to this requirement, and on replies to that objection" (p. 255, a note omitted)

58. ———. 2012. On the Borders of Being and Knowing. Late Scholastic Theory of Supertranscendental Being. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Edited by Victor M. Salas.

Table of Contents: Editor's Foreword VII-IX; Introduction XIII-XVI; 1. Sprouts from Greek Gardens: Antisthenes, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics (first publication) 1; 2. Suarez on Beings of Reason and Truth 19; 3. Extrinsic Cognoscibility 67; 4. Impossible Objects 95; 5. The Teleology of Impossible Objects 127; 6. Beings of Reason and Imagination 151; 7. Four Degrees of Abstraction 167; 8. From Transcendental to Transcendental 185; 9. Supertranscendental Nothing 215; 10. Wrestling with Wraith 243; 11. The Borders of Knowability 273; 12. Conclusion 293; Bibliography 301; Indices 319-326.

"Sylvester Mauro, S.J. (1619-1687) noted that human intellects can grasp what is, what is not, what can be, and what cannot be. The first principle, 'it is not possible that the same thing simultaneously be and not be,' involves them all.

The present volume begins with Greeks distinguishing 'being' from 'something' and proceeds to the late Scholastic doctrine of 'supertranscendental being,' which embraces both. On the way is Aristotle's distinction between 'being as being' and 'being as true' and his extension of the latter to include impossible objects. The Stoics will see 'something' as the widest object of human cognition and will affirm that, as signifiable, impossible objects are something, more than mere nonsense. In the sixteenth century, Francisco Suárez will identify mind-dependent beings most of all with impossible objects and will also regard them as signifiable. By this point, two conceptions will stand in opposition. One, adumbrated by Averroes, will explicitly accept the reality and knowability of impossible objects. The other, going back to Alexander of Aphrodisias, will see impossibles as accidental and false conjunctions of possible objects. Seventeenth-century Scholastics will divide on this line, but in one way or another will anticipate the Kantian notion of 'der Gegenstand überhaupt.' Going farther, Scholastics will see the two-sided upper border of being and knowing at God and the negative theology, and will fix the equally double lower border at 'supertranscendental being' and 'supertranscendental nonbeing,' which non-being, remaining intelligible, will negate the actual, the possible, and even the impossible."

59. Wade, William Ligon. 2013. On the Teacher: Saint Augustine & Saint Thomas Aquinas. A Comparison. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

A Dissertation Presented in 1935 to the Faculty of the Graduate School of St. Louis University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by William Ligon Wade, SJ (1906-1968), edited by John P. Doyle.

60. Doyle, John Patrick. 2023. John of St. Thomas (Poinsot) on Sacred Science: Cursus Theologicus I, Question 1, Disputation 2. South Bend: St. Augustine Press.

Edited by Victor M. Salas and translated by John P. Doyle.

Other publications: Encyclopedia entries

Nineteen articles in Academic American Encyclopedia, Princeton, Aretê Publishing Co., 1998:

1. Bacon Francis vol. III pp. 13-14

2. Bayle, Pierre vol. III p. 113

3. Bodin, Jean vol. III p. 356;

4. Bruno, Giordano vol. III p. 525

5. Cambridge Platonists vol. IV p. 52

6. Descartes, René vol. VI pp. 125-126

7. Ficino, Marsilio vol. VIII p. 70

8. Hobbes, Thomas vol. X p. 192

9. Innate Ideas vol. XI p. 178

10. Malebranche, Nicolas vol. XIII p. 87

11. Occasionalism vol. XIV p. 320

12. Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni vol. XV p. 294

13. Ramus, Petrus vol. XVI; p. 82

14. Rationalism vol. XVI pp. 92-93

15. Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, vol. XVII p. 234

16. Spinoza, Baruch vol. XVIII pp. 187-188

17. Suárez, Francisco vol. XVIII p. 312

18. Telesio, Bernardino vol. XIX p. 83

19. William of Ockham vol. XX pp. 154-155.

Six articles in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (edited by Edward Craig) New York, Routledge 1998:

1. Collegium Conimbricense vol.II pp. 406-408

2. Fonseca, Pedro da (1528-1599) vol. III pp. 688-690

3. John of St. Thomas (1589-1644) vol. V pp. 117-120

4. Soto, Domingo de (1494-1560) vol. IX pp. 37-40

5. Suárez, Francisco (1548-1617) vol. IX pp. 189-196

6. Toletus, Franciscus (1533-1596) vol. IX pp. 433-435

Supertranszendent, Historische Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Forschungsprojekt der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Edited by Joachim Ritter & Karlfried Gründer, Basel, Schwabe AG. Verlag, 1999, vol. X cols. 643-649.

Suárez, Francisco, New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 2. Supplement, 2010, pp. 1043-1047.

Hervaeus Natalis, Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy, New York, Spriner, 2011, pp. 472-473.

Translation

"Peter John Olivi (1248-1297): A Disputed Question: 'What Does Right or Dominion Posit?' or 'About Voluntary Signs'."

Translated from: "Question de P. J. Olivi 'Quid ponat ius vel dominium' ou encore 'De signis voluntariis'", ed. P. Ferdinand Delorme, O.F.M., Antonianum, XX (1945) pp. 309-330. Published by the Translation Clearing House, Department of Philosophy, Oklahoma State University.

Festschrift

Victor M. Salas (ed.), Hircocervi & Other Metaphysical Wonders. Essays in Honor of John P. Doyle, Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 2013.

Table of Contents: Victor M. Salas: Editor's Foreword 9; 1. Stephen Brown: The Eternity of the World According to Peter of Candia 31; 2. Rolf Darge: Suarez & Medieval Transcendental Thought 65; 3. Thomas Dewender: John Buridan, Albert of Saxony, Marsilius of Inghen on Chimerae, & Impossible Objects 95; 4. Marco Forlivesi: "Ut ex etymologia nominis patet? John Punch on the Nature & the Object of Metaphysics 121; 5. Jennifer Hart-Weed: Actions Speak Louder Then Words: What Aquinas Learned from Maimonides 157; 6. Daniel Heider: Abstraction, Intentionality, & Moderate Realism: Suárez & Poinsot 177; 7. Ludger Honnefelder: John Duns Scotus's Approach to Metaphysics 213; 8. Jack Marler: Thomistic Ornithology: A Brief Note 229; 9. Daniel Novotný: Twenty Years after Suárez: Francisco de Araújo on the Nature, Existence, & Causes of Entia rationis 241; 10. Michael Renemann: Man's Ability to Understand His Own Understanding: Aquinas, Kant, & Modern Physics 269; 11. Victor M. Salas: Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus, & Edith Stein on Essential Being 285; 12: Roland Teske, S.J.: Augustinian Abstraction & Henry of Ghent's Metaphysical Argument 309; John Patrick Doyle: Post Scriptum: Hircocervi & Other Metaphysical Wonders 329; About the Contributors 369; Index of Names 373; Index of Terms 377-384.

The twelve essays contained in this volume are a tribute to the career and scholarship of John Patrick Doyle offered by his former students, colleagues, and friends. Chapter 1, an edition of Peter of Candia's Commentarium in II librum Sententiarum, d. 1, q. 1, a. 3, which pertains to the question of the eternity of the world, is Stephen Brown's contribution to this volume. In chapter 2 Rolf Darge discusses Suarez's understanding of the transcendental character of being and takes pains to distinguish it from Scotus's conceptus entis simpliciter simplex. In chapter 3 Thomas Dewender offers an examination of a subject near and dear to Doyle, impossible objects, according to the logical and semantic analyses of John Buridan and his followers, Albert of Saxony and Marsilius of Ingham. Marco Forlivesi's contribution, chapter 4, considers the role epistemology plays for John Punch in determining the proper object of metaphysics. Chapter 5 offers Jennifer Hart-Weed's consideration of how Moses Maimonides's account of divine actions informs much of Thomas Aquinas's analogical theory of religious language. Chapter 6 is Daniel Heider's contribution, wherein it is argued that Suárez's ontological theory of universals, even when compared to John Poinsot's theory of universals, proves to be an equivalent — if not stronger — form of moderate realism than that of the Thomists. Ludger Honnefelder's essay, chapter 7, identifies the nature, scope, and peculiar features of Duns Scotus's metaphysics, identifying it as a truly transcendental science. Jack Marler's contribution, chapter 8, on the De ente et essentia's, 'phoenix example' argues that Thomas's intention is to show how even (created) individuals that are one of a kind, like the phoenix, are such that their essence too is really distinct from their esse. In chapter 9 Daniel Novotny places Francisco de Araújo's theory of entia rationis into opposition with that of Suárez and argues that, while the former is not exactly the philosophical equal of the latter, nonetheless, Araújo improves upon and ultimately holds a more consistent theory than Suárez. Chapter 10, Michael Renemann's contribution, argues that self-consciousness according to Thomas Aquinas is not nerely as anemic as those sympathetic to Kant might consider it to be is but a truth-revealing power that has significant implications in contemporary experimental science. My own contribution, chapter 11, examines the notion of essential being as a point of convergence between the medieval metaphysics of Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus, on the one hand, and, on the other, the phenomenology of Edith Stein. Finally, in chapter 12 Roland Teske, S.J., discusses Henry of Ghent's metaphysical argument for God's existence and finds it problematic because of a faltering effort to synthesize a fundamentally Platonic Augustinian abstraction theory with an Aristotelian analogy of being. The volume concludes with a post scriptum featuring a reprint of one of Doyle's own articles on imaginary beings. In this essay Doyle, the consummate historian of philosophy, traces the lineage of beings of reason from a cast off of the Aristotelian metaphysics (i.e., being as true) to the vexing centerpiece of late Scholastic metaphysics. Questions pertaining to the metaphysical status of such "shadowy" beings eventually give rise to that topic which would eventually preoccupy much of Doyle's scholarship, namely, supertranscendental being."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliographie Choisie de Jean École (tous les écrits sur Christian Wolff). Première partie: 1961-1983

Introduction

Jean École (2 mars 1920 - 8 septembre 2015) était professeur de métaphysique à l'Université Catholique d'Angers de 1957 à 1969; il a publié l'édition critique des Œuvres latines de Christian Wolff (1679-1754).

Une bibliographie complète au 1994 est contenue dans: Robert Theis et Claude Weber (eds.) - De Christian Wolff à Louis Lavelle: métaphysique et histoire de la philosophie: recueil en hommage à Jean École à l'occasion de son 75e anniversaire - Hildesheim, Georg Olms 1995 (VIII, 313 pages) - (Studien und Materialen zur Geschichte der Philosophie, 39).

Cette page contient tous le livres de Jean École et ses articles sur la philosophie wolffienne; pour la bibliographie de Christian Wolff (de 1791 à 2004) voir: Gerhard Biller (Éditeur / Herausgegeber) - Wolff nach Kant. Eine Bibliographie - Mit einem Vorwort von Jean École - Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 2004 (IX, 251 pages, 3105 titres).

Essais sur Christian Wolff

1. École, Jean. 1961. "La "Philosophia prima, sive Ontologia" de Christian Wolff. Histoire, doctrine et méthode." Giornale di Metafisica no. 16:114-125.

Repris dans: Introduction à l'Opus Metaphysicum de Christian Wolff, pp. 8-19.

"Philosophie première, en ce sens qu'il faut commencer par elle pour avancer ensuite dans les divers domaines de la connaissance, l'Ontologia de Wolff serait tout aussi bien dénommée philosophie générale, étant donné son universalité. En tant que science de l'être pris dans toute son extension, elle étudie, en effet, outre les principes qui dirigent la connaissance de l'être, tout ce qui appartient ou peut appartenir à l'être, ainsi que les diverses formes qu'il peut revêtir et les rapports que peuvent avoir entre elles ces diverses formes; et c'est pourquoi, après avoir examiné le principe de contradiction et celui de raison suffisante, elle envisage, tour à tour, la nature de l'être et ses propriétés ou ses affections, à savoir l'identité et la similitude, la singularité et l'universalité, la nécessité et la contingence, la quantité, la qualité, l'ordre, la vérité et la perfection, puis sa différenciation en être composé et en être simple, à laquelle se rattache la considération de l'étendue, de l'espace, du temps et du mouvement, ensuite sa division en être fini et en être infini, enfin les relations de ces divers êtres, notamment sous la forme de la causalité. Car comme tout est soit de l'être, soit propriété de l'être, elle s'intéresse nécessairement à tout ce que l'être est ou peut-être, même s'il est vrai qu'elle se contente souvent de déblayer le terrain pour les autres disciplines du savoir auxquelles elle sert d'introduction.

C'est ainsi, par exemple, que l'analyse des notions d'identité, de similitude, de quantité, d'infiniment grand et d'infiniment petit, est destinée à servir de fondement aux mathématiques. Il faut en dire autant de tout ce qui trait à la singularité et à l'universalité de l'être, par rapport à la logique qui a aussi beaucoup à prendre dans le chapitre consacré à la notion de déterminé. Tout ce qui concerne la qualité, la nature de l'être composé et de l'être simple, l'étendue, le continu, l'espace, le temps et le mouvement, sert de toute évidence de préparation en partie à la psychologie, en partie à la cosmologie et aux sciences physiques, de même que les considérations relatives à l'infini métaphysique défrichent la voie de la théologie naturelle. Mais toutes ces analyses, qui peuvent à première vue, sembler très disparates, font partie intégrante de la théorie générale de l'être, qui leur sert de cadre en formant l'armature de l'ontologie wolffienne. A vrai dire même, la question de la nature de l'être y commande toutes les autres ou leur est sous-jacente; d'où son importance qui est d'autant moins indéniable qu'elle est non seulement la part centrale, mais aussi la plus originale et la plus inédite de tout l'ouvrage.

Pour Wolff, en effet, l'être s'identifie à l'essence définie par la possibilité conue comme l'absence de contradiction, et l'essence est constituée par les essentialia qui ont en eux-mêmes leur raison suffisante, tout en contenant celle des attributs et des modes, lesquels forment, avec les essentialia, ce qu'on pourrait appeler les éléments constitutifs de l'être. Car les essentialia ne sont pas autre chose que les tout premiers éléments de l'être, du fait qu'ils ne sont pas contradictoires entre eux et ne sont pas déterminés par d'autres, pas plus qu'ils ne se déterminent mutuellement, cependant qu'ils déterminent les attributs qui, comme eux, appartiennent toujours à l'être, en même temps qu'ils contiennent aussi en eux la raison suffisante des modes qui peuvent affecter l'être. Tout être, de ce point de vue, c'est-à-dire ramené à l'essence ou, si l'on veut, aux essentialia avec lesquels l'essence s'identifie, a donc en soi sa raison suffisante; mais cela n'implique pas pour autant, qu'il soit nécessaire, tout au moins absolument, puisque, hormis l'être dont l'essence est la raison suffisante de l'existence, tous les autres, dont l'existence est un mode de l'essence, ne le sont qu'hypothétiquement.

Nous sommes donc placés d'emblée en face d'un véritable primat de l'essence. Et c'est ce qui explique tout d'abord, que presque toute la doctrine wolffienne de l'être, qu'il s'agisse, par exemple, de la détermination des genres et des espèces, de l'analyse des qualités ou de la nature de la substance et des accidents, tourne autour de l'agencement des essentialia et de leurs déterminations: attributs et modes, si l'on peut ainsi s'exprimer, car, à proprement parler, les modes ne trouvent dans les essentialia que la raison de leur possibilité et non celle de leur actualité qui est à chercher, selon les cas, dans les modes antécédents ou dans un autre être, ou encore en partie dans les premiers, en partie dans le second. Cela explique encore qu'elle soit entièrement fondée sur les deux principes de contradiction et de raison suffisante. Car les essences sont en premier lieu régies par la loi de non-contradiction, en tant qu'elles doivent tout d'abord être possibles, c'est-à-dire non contradictoires. Et si l'on veut ensuite les expliquer, il n'est pas d'autre moyen que d'en chercher la raison suffisante, c'est-à-dire de leur appliquer le principe leibnizien soigneusement distingué du principe de causalité. Car, comme Wolff l'a parfaitement vu et démontré, le principe de causalité concerne l'existence ou, si l'on veut, l'essence actualisée, et ne joue pas dans le domaine de l'essence pure, dont on ne peut rendre compte qu'en recherchant la raison suffisante de ce qu'elle est et de ce qui lui appartient ou peut lui appartenir. Et comme on ne peut remonter au-delà de l'essence considérée en elle-même, on ne peut trouver cette raison suffisante qu'en elle, c'est-à-dire dans les essentialia qui la constituent et en lesquels se situe en même temps la raison suffisante des attributs et des modes qui en découlent ou peuvent en découler. D'où la triple affirmation de la nécessité, de l'éternité et de l'immutabilité des essences; car ces trois propriétés ne sont que des conséquences du fait qu'elles ont en elles-mêmes leur raison suffisante.

Ainsi la science de l'être et, par le fait même, toute l'Ontologie de Wolff, est-elle essentiellement et uniquement une science des essences, d'où la considération de l'existence est, en fait, bannie ou presque. Car, lorsqu'il lui arrive de parler de cette dernière, c'est très rapidement et sans s'y arrêter, comme à propos de la contingence et de la causalité, sous le biais du rattachement des êtres contingents à l'être nécessaire et de celui des causes secondes à la cause première, ou d'une manière tout à fait implicite, comme dans la définition du temps et de l'espace, le premier comme ordre des êtres successifs, et le second comme ordre des êtres coexistants. En un mot, Wolff mène toute son Ontologie, comme s'il n'était pas de son ressort de traiter de l'existence qui n'est, selon sa définition lapidaire, que le complementum possibilitatis (§ 74).

Or c'est par là surtout qu'elle fait date dans l'histoire de la métaphysique, puisque c'est la première fois, semble-t-il, depuis Avicenne qui faisait déjà de l'existence une sorte d'accident de l'essence, qu'a été poussée aussi loin l'exorcisation de l'existence. Quoi qu'il en soit, d'ailleurs, c'est en tous les cas ce primat exclusif attribué à l'essence qui a permis à Wolff de couper radicalement, comme cela n'avait jamais encore été fait, l'ontologie de la théologie naturelle; car, dans une telle perspective, l'étude des conditions générales de l'être se suffit à elle-même, sans qu'il soit besoin d'y insérer l'examen de sa source, que requiert nécessairement la considération de son existence. Et c'est ce qui permet d'affirmer qu'il a été beaucoup loin que Suárez et les scolastiques post-suaréziens dans l'essentialisation de l'être, dont la philosophie aura tant de mal à se défaire après lui." (pp. 117-120)

2. ———. 1963. "Un essai d'explication rationnelle du monde ou la "Cosmologia generalis" de Wolff." Giornale di Metafisica no. 18:622-650.

Repris dans: Introduction à l'Opus Metaphysicum de Christian Wolff, pp. 20-48.

" On ne peut certes contester que la publication de la Cosmologia Generalis constitue un évènement digne d'intérêt pour l'histoire de la philosophie. Car si Wolff n'a pas été, comme on l'affirme souvent à tort, le fondateur de l'Ontologie, qui a été érigée en discipline distincte des autres parties de la philosophie, sans doute au XVIe siècle, par les auteurs des premiers manuels de philosophie, (*) il a créé le terme Cosmologia generalis et a écrit le premier traité paru sous ce titre, ainsi qu'il le revendique hautement." (...) p. 21

"Le propre de la Cosmologia generalis n'est d'ailleurs pas seulement de servir de science rectrice par rapport à la physique et à la cosmologie expérimentale, mais aussi de fournir à la théologie naturelle les instruments indispensables pour la démonstration de l'existence de Dieu et l'analyse de ses attributs (p. 11x, 12x, et § 6). L'étude du nexus rerum, de l'ordre du monde et de lois qui régissent les changements qui y surviennent, découvre, en effet, la contingence foncière de l'univers, qui appelle un fondement extérieur à lui et nécessaire, dont il appartient à la théologie naturelle d'établir l'existence et d'éclairer la nature. C'est même là, à en croire Wolff, l' uberrimus fructus de cette nouvelle science (not. § 6), qu'il s'honore d'avoir créée.

Mais tout ceci apparaîtra plus clairement au fur et à mesure que nous avancerons dans l'inventaire des principaux thèmes de cet ouvrage, qu'on peut ramener à cinq : I) le nexus rerum, 2) l'union du mécanisme et du dynamisme, 3) la transposition de l'atomisme et sa combinaison avec la philosophie corpusculaire, 4) l'essai de mécanique a priori, 5) l'ordre de la nature et la possibilité du miracle." (pp. 23-24)

(...)

"Il nous est, en effet, possible de porter un jugement d'ensemble sur elle, maintenant que nous en avons dégagé les thèmes essentiels. L'ouvrage de Wolff porte la marque des grands courants de pensée du XVIIe et du XVIIIe siècles. Tantôt il les combat vigoureusement, comme dans l'analyse du nexus rerum, de la contingence des lois du mouvement et de la possibilité du miracle, directement dirigée contre Spinoza. Tantôt il cherche, dans la ligne de Leibniz, à en faire la synthèse, comme dans tout ce qui a trait à l'atomisme à la philosophie corpusculaire, au mécanisme et au dynamisme. A vrai dire même, sur ce dernier point, Wolff prolonge davantage Leibniz qu'il ne le suit à proprement parler, de même que dans son essai de mécanique a priori, dont Leibniz avait certes jeté les fondements, mais sans lui donner d'aussi amples développements. On peut être surpris, voire rebuté, au premier abord, par l'appareil impressionnant de définitions et de démonstrations qui s'enchaînent les unes aux autres, employé par Wolff pour traiter de ces questions. Mais si l'on ne se laisse pas arrêter par cette faon de procéder, qui le rendit célèbre et dont on ne peut contester la rigueur et la précision, on est entrainé, par la lecture de la Cosmologia generalis au plus fort de la passionnante mêlée qui a opposés philosophes et savants de cette grande époque. Et l'on ne peut pas être insensible à l'effort courageux tenté par Wolff pour la dominer." (p. 47)

(*) Cf. notre introduction à la nouvelle édition de la Philosophia prima sive Ontologia, p. VII-IX.

3. ———. 1964. "Cosmologie wolffienne et dynamique leibnizienne. Essai sur les rapports de Wolff avec Leibniz." Etudes Philosophiques:3-9.

Repris dans: Études et documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 177-183.

"Si paradoxal que cela puisse être, il en est en philosophie comme en bien d'autres domaines, les slogans qui entretiennent les préjugés et les erreurs ont la vie dure et sont presque indestructibles. Le cas de Wolff en offre un exemple typique. Comme le dit très justement M. Gusdorf, Wolff «est une des victimes de l'histoire de la philosophie qui, concentrant toute la lumière sur les personnalités reconnues comme des génies, laisse dans l'ombre tout le reste. (1) ». Certes, tous les traités et manuels d'histoire de la philosophie le mentionnent toujours, mais en le présentant, la plupart du temps, comme le compilateur et le vulgarisateur des thèses de Leibniz. Et, comme on ne le lit plus depuis longtemps, cette opinion se transmet fidèlement, de génération en génération, aux étudiants en philosophie. Il est vrai qu'elle a des racines profondes et déjà deux fois centenaires; car, dès le vivant de Wolff, on prit coutume de parler, comme d'un seul bloc, de la philosophie Leibnizio-Wolffienne (2), et bon nombre de ceux qui le combattirent lui reprochèrent de ne pas faire autre chose que de reprendre les grandes lignes de la philosophie de Leibniz, comme Joachim Lange, par exemple, son ennemi acharné, qui l'accusait, entre autres, de ne pas proposer d'autre conception des éléments que celle de Leibniz. Or Wolff, non seulement n'admit jamais ce reproche global, comme en témoignent maints passages de son œuvre, mais il se défendit encore vigoureusement contre cette accusation précise de Lange, avec une netteté qui rie laisse rien à désirer).

Une telle attitude ne peut qu'inciter à y regarder de plus près, afin de se rendre compte si oui ou non Wolff a fait plus que synthétiser et vulgariser la doctrine de Leibniz. Et c'est ce que nous nous proposons de faire, en limitant notre étude aux données de la Cosmologie wolffienne. Cela nous permettra d'examiner l'accusation de Lange, à l'instant évoquée, et de nous faire une idée exacte de la position de Wolff par rapport au monadisme leibnizien, ce qui est d'une importance capitale. Car, s'il est démontré que Wolff, comme il le prétend, ne l'admet pas et ne suit pas Leibniz sur ce point fondamental, comment pourra-t-on encore soutenir qu'il est le disciple fidèle de celui qu'il n'aurait cependant pas refusé de reconnaître comme son maître?" (pp. 3-4 notes omises).

(1) Introduction aux sciences humaines. Essai critique sur leurs origines et leur développement, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 196o (Publications de la Faculté des Lettres de l'Université de Strasbourg, fasc. 14o), p. 180.

(2) Deux titres d'ouvrages, entre beaucoup d'autres, en attestent : celui de Georg Volckrnar Hartmann, A Einleitung zur Historie der Leibnizisch-Wolffischen Philosophie, und der darinnen von Herrn Prof. Langen erregten Controvers, Frankfurt und Leipzig, 1737, et celui de Carl Günther Ludovici, Neueste Merküivirdigkeiten der Leibnitz-Wollfischen Weltweisheit, Frankfurt und Leipzig, 1738.

4. ———. 1966. "Des rapports de l'expérience et de la raison dans l'analyse de l'âme ou la "Psychologia empirica" de Christian Wolff." Giornale di Metafisica no. 21:589-617.

Repris dans: Introduction à l'Opus Metaphysicum de Christian Wolff, pp. 49-77.

"Or il faut dire tout d'abord que c'est Wolff qui a définitivement introduit le terme Psychologia pour désigner la science de l'âme, même s'il est vrai qu'il ne l'a pas créé. Rares, en effet, sont ceux qui, avant lui, l'ont employé." (p. 590)

(...)

"Or, avec l'emploi qu'en fait Wolff, et grâce au succès éclatant de son enseignement, le terme Psychologia, comme précédemment ceux d' Ontologia, et de Cosmologia, acquiert droit de cité dans le vocabulaire philosophique et devient très rapidement usuel. Si donc Wolff n'en peut être dit le père, il en peut du moins être considéré comme le parrain.

Mais il n'a pas seulement assuré définitivement l'usage du terme Psychologia, il a, en outre, été le premier, semble-fil, à diviser la psychologie en deux traités distincts: la Psychologia empirica et la Psychologia rationalis (*)." (p. 592)

(...)

D'une part donc, une analyse de l'âme fondée sur une mise en ordre des données de l'expérience et visant, comme l'explique encore la préface de la Psychologia empirica (p. 11x, 13x), à découvrir les lois selon lesquelles s'exercent ses facultés; de l'autre, à partir du concept de l'âme, une détermination a priori de ses facultés et de la raison qui fait que leurs lois sont telles que l'expérience nous les révèle. (p. 593)

(...)

"Tel est ramené à l'essentiel, l'ensemble des questions traitées par Wolff dans sa Psychologia empirica, qu'il considère non seulement comme un complément apporté à la Logica, à propos de opérations de l ' intellectus (p. 12x, § 9), mais aussi comme l'aide indispensable de la Theologia naturalis dans la détermination des attributs divins dont la notion ne peut être éclairée qu'à partir de celle des facultés de l'âme humaine (p. 15x, 16x, § 7 et not.), enfin et surtout comme la base indispensable de toute la philosophie pratique, qui ne peut prétendre régir la vie humaine, qu'en se fondant sur une connaissance nette et précise de ces facultés et tout particulièrement de ce qui est ou non en notre pouvoir (p. 13x-15x, § 8 et not.).

Peut-être trouvera-t'on que, dans l'examen de ces questions, Wolff n'apporte rien qui ne fut déjà connu et exploré avant lui. Mais, si l'on n'en peut disconvenir, il reste que sur plusieurs points, tout en utilisant largement ses devanciers, il les dépasse cependant par son effort d'approfondissement des questions, par exemple dans son étude de la mémoire, dans celle de l'emploi des signes, et dans son analyse de la marche que suit l' intellectus vers la découverte de la vérité. Comment ne pas reconnaître encore un effort de renouveau dans sa description des affectus, qui mérite de retenir l'attention non seulement en raison de la clarté de la classification qu'elle en propose, mais aussi à cause des nombreuses notations fines qu'elle contient et dont nous n'avons pu faire ressortir la richesse? Comment enfin ne pas admirer la rigueur avec laquelle il définit les rapports de l'appétit et de l'aversion avec la connaissance du bien et du mal? Mais ce qui fait surtout l'intérêt de la Psychologia empirica, c'est le tableau d'ensemble qu'elle présente des facultés de l'âme et qui met si bien en lumière leur unité et leur continuité. Sans doute peut-on regretter que cette synthèse laisse délibérément de côté les conditions et les manifestations somatiques de leur exercice. Mais Wolff garde le mérite d'avoir, le premier, dressé un bilan aussi complet des résultats de l'observation portant sur l'esprit humain.

Or ceci ajouté à sa volonté de séparer la psychologie empirique de la psychologie rationnelle, et au projet, qu'il n'a pas réalisé, mais qui était nouveau à cette époque, de calquer la psychologie empirique sur le type de la physique expérimentale, et d'exprimer stilo mathematico (not. § 522) la mesure des phénomènes psychiques, contribue à faire de la Psychologia empirica un ouvrage qui marque, dans l'histoire de la psychologie, une étape importante; au point qu'un historien récent (**) des sciences humaines a pu écrire qu'elle est "le premier traité de psychologie digne de ce nom et publié sous ce nom." (p. 617)

(*) Wolff ne revendique pas la paternité des termes: Psychologia empirica et Psychologia rationalis; mais nous ne les avons pas trouvés chez ses prédécesseurs.

(**) Gusdorf, Introduction aux sciences humaines, Paris, 1960, troisième partie, c. 4, p. 181.

5. ———. 1969. "De la nature de l'âme, de la déduction de ses facultés, de ses rapports avec le corps, ou la "Psychologia rationalis" de Christian Wolff." Giornale di Metafisica no. 24:499-531.

Repris dans: Introduction à l'Opus Metaphysicum de Christian Wolff, pp. 79-111.

"Dans la Psychologia empirica), Wolff s'était donné pour tâche de dresser l'inventaire des facultés de l'âme et des lois auxquelles elles obéissent. Il s'agissait, pour lui, d'y présenter une analyse de l'âme basée sur l'expérience privilégiée que constitue, en ce domaine, la conscience de ce qui se passe en nous, sans toutefois négliger l'observation externe, et en faisant appel aussi au raisonnement pour mettre en lumière comment ces facultés dépendent les unes des autres. La méthode de la Psychologia empirica était donc déjà rationnelle en même temps qu'expérimentale; mais la raison n'y avait d'autre rôle que d'établir avec rigueur l'enchainement des faits observés.

Dans la Psychologia rationalis, Wolff entreprend de rendre compte a priori de ces faits. Il se sert ici de la raison pour montrer, à partir du concept ou, si l'on veut, de l'essence de l'âme, pourquoi celle-ci possède les facultés décrites dans la Psychologia empirica, et pourquoi ces facultés obéissent aux lois énoncées dans ce traité. Mais cette déduction n'est cependant pas l'œuvre de la raison pure, car Wolff y fait perpétuellement appel aux données de l'expérience.

Or, à l'en croire, jamais encore pareille entreprise n'avait été tentée. Et c'est parce qu'il craignait que sa nouveauté ne rebutât ses lecteurs, qu'il se décida à présenter séparément l'analyse empirique des facultés de l'âme et leur déduction a priori, afin que les résultats de la première ne fussent pas rejetés en bloc avec les propositions de la seconde. D'où ses deux traités de psychologie qui forment cependant un seul tout indissociable, du fait qu'il n'est possible de rendre compte a priori que de ce qui est connu d'abord a posteriori.

On ne peut donc attendre de la Psychologia rationalis un acroissement de nos connaissances sur l'âme; tout au plus la déduction a priori peut-elle permettre de découvrir des détails de notre vie intérieure que par la seule observation nous ne réussirions pas à déceler (§ 8, 9, not. 227). Tout le but de la Psychologia rationalis est d'éclairer davantage les données déjà certaines, puisqu'elles sont celles de l'expérience, recueillies dans la Psychologia empirica, en cherchant à expliquer pourquoi elles sont telles (§ 7).

Dans ces conditions, le plan de la Psychologia rationalis s'impose de lui- même. Il s'agit d'abord d'analyser et de définir avec le plus grand soin possible l'essence et la nature de l'âme (sect. 1, c. 1). Puis il convient de montrer comment chacune de ses facultés, distinguées dans la Psychologia empirica, trouve son explication dans cette essence et cette nature: les facultés de connaissance d'abord, c'est-à-dire: la facultas sentiendi (c. 2), l'imagination (c. 3, § 178-276), la mémoire (c. 3, § 277-332, 350-356), la facultas fingendi (c. 3, § 333-349), l'attention (c. 4, § 357-379), la réflexion (c. 4, § 380-387), l'intellectus (c. 4, § 388-479); les facultés d'appétition ensuite, c'est-à-dire: l'appétit et l'aversion sensibles (sect. 2, c. 1), l'appétit et l'aversion rationnels (c. 2).

Dans ces deux premières sections Wolff édifie ce qu'il appelle à diverses reprises sa théorie de l'âme, qu'on peut bien considérer comme la première partie de ce traité, bien qu'il ne le divise pas ainsi, et dans laquelle il met aussi en lumière la correspondance harmonique des opérations de l'âme et des mouvements du corps. Après quoi il examine les différents systèmes qui tentent d'expliquer cette correspondance, puis analyse les principaux attributs de l'âme.

D'où les deux autres sections qui suivent, et qui constituent comme deux autres parties: la première où il étudie ces systèmes, d'une faon générale d'abord (sect. 3, c. 1), puis chacun en particulier: celui de l'influx physique (c. 2), celui des causes occasionnelles (c. 3), celui de l'harmonie préétablie (c. 4); la seconde où il disserte de la nature de l'esprit et de la spiritualité de l'âme (sect. 4, c. 1), de son origine, de son union avec le corps et de son immortalité (c. 2), enfin de l'âme des bêtes (c. 3)." (pp. 500-502 omises nombreuses notes).

6. ———. 1973. "De la démonstration "a posteriori" de l'existence et des attributs de Dieu, ou la "Theologia naturalis, Pars I" de Christian Wolff (Première partie)." Giornale di Metafisica:363-388.

Repris dans: Introduction à l'Opus Metaphysicum de Christian Wolff, pp. 113-138.

"Après les prolégomènes, qui servent d'introduction générale à cet ensemble, et dans lesquels Wolff définit sa conception de la théologie naturelle, la première partie, que nous analyserons seule ici, est divisée en sept chapitres où il est traité tour à tour: de l'existence et des attributs de Dieu en général (c. 1); de l'intelligence, des idées et de la science de Dieu (c. 2); de la volonté, de la puissance divines et de la permission du mal (c. 3); de la sagesse de Dieu, de sa bonté et de l'utilisation du mal (c. 4); de la création, de la conservation, du concours de Dieu au mal, de son gouvernement et de la Providence (c. 5); du droit de Dieu sur les créatures (c. 6); de quelques autres attributs de Dieu et de son essence (c. 7). La seconde partie, elle, est subdivisée en deux sections dont la première a pour but de rendre raison a priori tant de l'existence (c. 1), que des attributs divins: intelligence (c. 2), volonté (c. 3), création, providence et puissance (c. 4), et dont la seconde contient l'examen critique des différentes erreurs relatives à Dieu: athéisme (c. 1); fatalisme, déisme et naturalisme (c. 2); anthropomorphisme, matérialisme et idéalisme (c. 3); paganisme, manichéisme, spinosisme et épicurisme (c. 4).

Alors qu'on définit communément la théologie naturelle comme la science de Dieu et des choses divines. Wolff en propose cette autre définition: «scientia eorum, quae per Deum possibilia sunt, hoc est, eorum, quae ipsi insunt, et per ea, quae ipsi insunt, fieri posse intelliguntur» (§ 1), tout en faisant remarquer qu'elle ne s'oppose pas à la première, puisqu'il faut entendre par choses divines ce qui est possible du fait que Dieu existe et qu'il a tels attributs. Il précise, en outre, qu'il s'agit d'une discipline philosophique, acquise par les lumières de la raison, et qu'elle se distingue par là, sans confusion possible, de la théologie surnaturelle, qui s'appuie sur la révélation (not. § 1, 9 et not.).

Parce qu'elle est une science rationnelle et aussi parce qu'on ne peut obtenir d'une autre faon la connaissance de ce qui ne tombe pas sous les sens, la théologie naturelle doit démontrer que Dieu existe, quels sont ses attributs, et quelles choses sont possibles par ceux-ci (§ 2, 3 et not. § 4). Or, dans ce but, il lui faut partir d'une définition nominale de Dieu. Car, d'une part, pour démontrer l'existence de Dieu, encore faut-il connaître la signification de ce terme (§ 5, 9), et, d'autre part, de cette définition, doivent être déduits tous les attributs divins (§ 6); d'où il suit que cette définition ne doit rien contenir de plus que ce qui est nécessaire à cette déduction (§ 7). En plus de cette définition, on ne peut utiliser dans la Theologia naturalis, d'autres principes que ceux qui reposent sur une expérience incontestable ou sur d'autres démonstrations (§ 8), comme celles des traités qui l'ont précédée (§ 11 et not., Discursus praeliminaris, § 96), et qui tendent vers elle comme vers leur but (p. 25x lignes 11-13). Ainsi faut-il y admettre tout particulièrement: la nécessité des essences définie dans l'Ontologia, § 299-303, le nexus rerum, la théorie des éléments et la perfection du monde établis dans la Cosmologia, sect. 1, c. 1, sect. 2, c. 2-3, sect. 3, c. 2, de même que l'existence des âmes démontrée dans la Psychologia empirica, pars I, sect. 1, c. 1 (p. 22x ligne 4 - p. 24x ligne 16).

En ce qui concerne plus spécialement la démonstration de l'existence de Dieu, Wolff souligne qu'un seul argument suffit pour acquérir la certitude en ce domaine, et que point n'est besoin, par conséquent, de les multiplier. Ce qui serait d'ailleurs une complication inutile, car chacun d'eux nécessiterait une définition nominale différente dont il faudrait déduire les attributs divins, à moins de démontrer que c'est le même être dont les divers arguments prouvent l'existence (§ 10 et not.).

Par la preuve que Dieu existe, la théologie naturelle apporte la réfutation de l'athéisme (§ 12). Mais elle doit aussi fournir la notion distincte de ses attributs (§ 13). Et, pour ce faire, elle doit utiliser les termes qui servent à désigner ceux-ci selon leur signification communément admise (§ 14), et notamment selon les sens qu'ils ont dont l'Écriture. Car le but de cette discipline est de convaincre les athées qu'existe l'Être que l'Écriture appelle Dieu; et d'ailleurs, quand on parle de Dieu, note Wolff, c'est toujours dans le sens où l'Écriture emploie ce terme (§ 15-16)." (pp. 465-367)

7. ———. 1973. "De la démonstration "a posteriori" de l'existence et des attributs de Dieu, ou la "Theologia naturalis, Pars I" de Christian Wolff (Deuxième partie)." Giornale di Metafisica no. 28:537-560.

Repris dans: Introduction à l'Opus Metaphysicum de Christian Wolff, pp. 139-162.

"Telle est la face du Dieu de Wolff, dont tout l'exposé précédent montre qu'il ressemble beaucoup à celui de Leibniz, au point que d'aucuns seront peut- être tentés de conclure que Wolff n'a fait ni plus ni moins, dans la Theologia naturalis, pars I, que reprendre à son compte l'ensemble des thèmes de la théologie leibnizienne. Cela est indéniable au sujet des deux points qui commandent le reste de la doctrine: la formation des idées des choses dans l'intelligence divine, et le choix du meilleur monde.

Pour Wolff, comme pour Leibniz, l'intelligence divine, étant toujours en acte et même acte pur, ne peut pas ne pas former les idées des choses; ce qui revient à dir que ces idées existent nécessairement en elle, sans éclairer toutefois le comment de leur formation. Mais il faut noter que Wolff, bien avant d'écrire la Theologia naturalis, avait proposé de l'expliquer en disant, un peu à la manière des Thomistes (148), que Dieu forme les idées des choses, lorsqu'en contemplant les perfections de son essence, il conoit toutes les faons possibles de les représenter hors de lui, comme en témoigne sa Lettre à Leibniz du 2 Décembre 1705 (149). Et il a repris et développé cette explication dans la seconde partie de la Theologia naturalis, 102 et not.

Quant à la création du monde, selon Wolff comme selon Leibniz, il ne convient pas à Dieu, en raison de la perfection de son intelligence et de sa volonté, d'en choisir un autre que le plus parfait et le meilleur, bien qu'il aurait pu cependant en créer un autre; ce qui à leurs yeux sauvegarde la liberté de la création. Et lorsqu'il s'agit d'expliquer l'existence du mal dans le monde le meilleur ou, plus exactement lorsqu'il s'agit de concilier la thèse du meilleur des mondes avec le déploiement du mal en son sein, Wolff, pas plus que Leibniz, n'apporte d'argument convaincant en faveur de l'Optimisme.

A noter que, comme Leibniz, Wolff fait siennes beaucoup de thèses de la doctrine scolastique, et notamment thomiste, sur Dieu." (pp. 558-559)

8. ———. 1976. "De quelques difficultés à propos des notions 'd'a posteriori' et 'd'a priori' chez Wolff." Teoresi no. 31:23-34.

Repris dans: Études et documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 132-143.

"Comme l'indique le titre de cet article, nous n'entendons pas exposer ici, de faon exhaustive, la doctrine de Wolff sur les rapports de l'a posteriori et de l'a priori, ce qui reviendrait à développer sa théorie générale de la connaissance, à laquelle nous consacrerons une autre étude, mais seulement signaler les difficultés auxquelles se heurte l'interprétation de certaines de ses affirmations et aussi de certains de ses silences à propos de ces deux notions, tant dans sa classification des différentes sortes de connaissance que dans son exposé des preuves de l'existence de Dieu. Pour ce qui est de la première question, il note que tout ce que nous connaissons, nous l'acquérons soit a posteriori, soit a priori, c'est-à-dire soit par l'expérience, soit par le raisonnement, en précisant que la connaissance a posteriori s'opère par le moyen des sens pour tout ce qui est extérieur à nous, grâce à l'aperception pour ce qui se passe en nous, et que la connaissance a priori est l'oeuvre de l'entendement discursif, c'est-à-dire de la raison.

D'une part donc, l'expérience sensible qui consiste dans l'attention prêtée à nos perceptions tant externes qu'internes et se ramène à l'intuition, sans englober les jugements qui portent directement sur celles-ci; d'autre part, la raison qui, de propositions déjà connues, en déduit d'autres qui ne l'étaient pas. La première porte sur les singuliers, puisque nous ne percevons que ceux-ci; la seconde a pour objet les vérités universelles dont la raison, a pour fonction de découvrir le lien.

A ces deux formes de connaissance, il en ajoute une troisième: la connaissance mixte, acquise en partie a posteriori, en partie a priori, c'est-à-dire à la fois par l'expérience et par la raison, en donnant comme exemple la conclusion du raisonnement qui, à partir des effets du soleil connus a posteriori, et grâce à la médiation de la notion de feu, permet d'affirmer que le soleil est un feu.

Il distingue par ailleurs deux sortes de raison : la raison pure et la raison non pure. La raison est pure, lorsqu'on n'admet dans le raisonnement que des définitions et des propositions connues a priori, c'est-à-dire acquises elles-mêmes par le raisonnement, comme c'est le cas en arithmétique, en géométrie et en algèbre. Elle n'est pas pure, lorsqu'on admet aussi dans le raisonnement des définitions et des propositions connues a posteriori, c'est-à-dire par l'expérience, comme en physique et en astronomie par exemple." (pp. 23-25 nombreuses notes omises)

9. ———. 1977. "De la démonstration "a priori" de l'existence et des attributs de Dieu, et des erreurs sur Dieu, ou la "Theologia naturalis, Pars II" de Christian Wolff (Première partie)." Giornale di Metafisica no. 32:85-109.

Repris dans: Introduction à l'Opus Metaphysicum de Christian Wolff, pp. 163-187.

"Dans les prolégomènes de la Theologia naturalis, Pars I, qui servent d'introduction générale à l'ensemble de sa théologie naturelle, Wolff avait défini avec beaucoup de rigueur sa conception de celle-ci, tant du point de vue de l'objet que de celui de la méthode, en la distinguant nettement de la théologie révélée. Point n'était donc besoin, pour lui, d'y revenir dans la Theologia naturalis, Pars II, mais seulement de préciser la raison de cette seconde partie et ce qui la différencie de la première. Il s'en explique dans la préface de ce nouveau traité.

Alors qu'il s'était efforcé, dans la première partie, de démontrer l'existence et les attributs de Dieu à partir de la considération du monde (9), son but, dans la seconde, est d'effectuer cette démonstration à partir de la notion de l'être très parfait et de la nature de l'âme (10); ou, comme il dit encore, de démontrer l'existence de Dieu à partir de la notion de l'être très parfait et de déduire ses attributs de la considération de notre âme (11). Ces formules se complètent plus qu'elles ne s'opposent. Car, souligne-t-il, nous ne pouvons connaître la nature de l'être très parfait qu'à partir de celle de notre âme et il s'ensuit que démontrer l'existence de Dieu à partir de la notion de l'être très parfait revient à le faire à partir de la connaissance de notre âme (12).

Aussi se croit-il autorisé à conclure que cette preuve, qu'on dénomme a priori, parce qu'elle consiste à inférer l'existence nécessaire de Dieu de sa définition comme l'être très parfait (13), est non moins a posteriori que celle qui s'appuie sur la considération du monde (14).

Nous aurons à revenir sur cette affirmation qui ne laisse pas de surprendre. Mieux vaut, pour le moment, suivre l'exposé de Wolff. Or il indique qu'il s'agit, malgré tout, d'une autre sorte de preuve qui implique une autre faon de démontrer les attributs divins et commande un autre système de théologie que celui contenu dans la première partie (15). Il précise par exemple (§627 et not.) que, dans celle-ci, on confère à Dieu les attributs qui permettent de rendre compte de l'existence des âmes et du monde, alors que, dans la seconde, on connaît ses perfections, en lui attribuant au degré suprême et per modum actus, ce qui appartient à l'âme per modum facultatis. Encore faut-il noter que, dans la seconde partie, il ne se borne pas à démontrer autrement ce qui l'a déjà été dans la première, mais y traite de questions qu'il n'a pas abordées dans celle-ci (16) et que nous aurons l'occasion d'indiquer. Toutefois, parce qu'il considère comme complet (17) le système de théologie qui y est exposé et qui s'appuie sur la définition de Dieu comme l'être nécessaire, raison suffisante de tout ce qui est, il n'est pas question, pour lui, d'en développer, dans la seconde partie. un autre aussi complet, fondé sur la notion de l'être très parfait, mais d'en démontrer seulement les thèses principales (18).

Or, s'il a consacré à celles-ci les quatre chapitres de la première section, qui couvrent la moitié de la Theologia naturalis, Pars II, bien qu'il ait affirmé, dans la Theologia naturalis, Pars I (19), qu'il n'est pas besoin de démontrer l'existence de Dieu de plusieurs faons, c'est à n'en pas douter à cause du succès remporté par la preuve a priori après que Descartes l'eût illustrée à la suite de saint Anselme (20), et parce qu'il entendait lui conférer une force qu'à son avis Descartes n'a pas réussi o)à lui donner (21). Mais une autre raison l'y a sans doute également poussé, qu'il indique lui-même (22) lorsqu'il affirme qu'il est plus facile de déduire les attributs divins de la connaissance de notre âme que de celle du monde.

4. Quoiqu'il en soit, la Theologia naturalis, Pars II se divise en deux sections très distinctes: - la première dans laquelle il analyse la notion de l'être très parfait et démontre a priori l'existence de Dieu (c. 1), ainsi que ses principaux attributs: entendement (c. 2), volonté (c. 3), création, providence et puissance (c. 4); la seconde dans laquelle il se livre à un examen critique des erreurs fondamentales sur Dieu: Athéisme (c. 1), Fatalisme, Déisme, Naturalisme (c. 2), Anthropomorphisme, Matérialisme, Idéalisme (c. 3), Paganisme, Manichéisme, Spinozisme, Épicurisme (c. 4).

Autant de points que nous allons envisager tour à tour; et, tout d'abord, le problème de la preuve a priori." (pp. 87-88)

(9) Theologia naturalis, Pars I, praefatio, p. 24*, lignes 8-16, Theologia naturalis, Pars Il, praefatio, p. 11*, lignes 10-13, § 429, 627.

(10) Theologia naturalis, Pars II, page de litre, dedicatio, p. 7*, lignes 3-6, § 429.

(11) Ibid., praefatio, p. 12*, lignes 1-4.

(12) Ibid., praefatio, p. 12*, lignes 7-14, p 13*, lignes 10-12.

(13) Ibid., praefatio, p. 12*, lignes 4-7.

(14) Ibid., praefatio, p. 13*, lignes 10-11.

(15) Ibid., praefatio, p. 14*, lignes 2-12, not. 5 82, p. 53. Il avait déjà signalé dans la première partie, not. 5 302, p. 302, qu'il ne se bornerait pas dans la seconde à répéter ce qu'il a déjà démontré dans celle-ci.

(16) Theologia naturalis, Pars II, praefatio, p. 11*, lignes 5-10, not. § 113, Theologia naturalis, Pars I, not. § 302.

(17) Dans la page de titre et la préface de la Theologia naturalis, Pars I, p. 20*, lignes 8-19, ainsi que dans la préface de la Theologia naturalis, Pars /1, p. 11*, lignes 2-3, il le qualifie d'integrum. Et chaque fois que, dans la seconde partie, il renvoie à la première, c'est toujours sous l'appellation: in systemate ou: in systemate nostro, afin de bien marquer qu'il n'a édifié qu'un seul système de théologie naturelle et non pas deux.

(18) Cf. not. §20, p. 15, not. §35, p. 23, not. § 47, p. 28, not. § 100, p. 75, not. § 117,

p. 86, not. § 369, p. 330, § 404, p. 363.

(19) Theologia naturalis, Pars I, § 10, p. 12-13, Theologia naturalis, Pars II, praefatio, p. 14*, lignes 14-16.

(20) Cf.: Descartes, Discours de la méthode, V (Adam-Tannery, VI, p. 36), Med. V, Primae Responsiones, Secundae Responsiones, Rationes ..., prop. 1, Quintae Responsiones, in Med. V (VII, p. 114-120, 149-152, 166-167, 382-383), Principia philosophiae, I, 14 (VIII-1, p. 10), - saint Anselme, Proslogion, proemium, c. 2, 3, Liber pro insipiente, 1, 2, 4, 5.

(21) Theologia naturalis, Pars II, dedicatio, p. 9*, lignes 8-11, praefatio, p. 14*, lignes 1-2, Theologia naturalis, Pars I, not, § 1094, p. 1057.

(22) Theologia naturalis, Pars II, praefatio, p. 14*, lignes 21 - p. 15*, lignes 5.

10. ———. 1977. "De la démonstration "a priori" de l'existence et des attributs de Dieu, et des erreurs sur Dieu, ou la "Theologia naturalis, Pars II" de Christian Wolff (Deuxième partie)." Giornale di Metafisica no. 32:238-272.

Repris dans: Introduction à l'Opus Metaphysicum de Christian Wolff, pp. 187-222.

"Arrivés au terme de notre analyse de la Theologia naturalis, Pars II, il nous reste à dresser le bilan de son apport. Wolff a raison d'affirmer qu'elle n'est pas la simple répétition sous une autre forme des thèses qu'il a démontrées dans la Theologia naturalis, Pars I.

C'est évident pour toute la seconde section où il procède à l'examen critique des erreurs sur Dieu; les quatre chapitres qu'elle comporte sont absolument neufs. Ils répondent à coup sûr au besoin de se justifier contre les attaques des théologiens piétistes de Halle et notamment de Joachim Lange, son ennemi acharné, qui l'accusait de verser dans les unes et les autres, à l'exception du Manichéisme. Mais, par-delà ce souci apologétique, ils manifestent un indéniable effort de clarté et de rigueur en une matière où régnait à l'époque une grande confusion. On peut certes regretter qu'il n'ait pas cru bon de se référer à des sources précises pour les exposer et les critiquer, sauf en ce qui concerne le Spinozisme, qu'il a tort de taxer d'athéisme, mais au sujet duquel il a dénoncé avec beaucoup de vigueur les difficultés que soulève la thèse de l'unicité de la substance.

Cela est non moins vrai de la première section. On peut le montrer négativement, en énumérant les points de la Theologia naturalis, Pars I sur lesquels Wolff ne revient pas, comme la science de simple intelligence et la science de vision, le droit de Dieu sur ses créatures, sa sainteté, sa justice et son essence, ainsi que ceux qu'il ne fait qu'effleurer alors qu'il les avait abondamment développés, comme l'Optimisme et le problème du mal, l'organisation des fins par la sagesse divine, de décret de Dieu et son mode de présence. Mieux vaut le faire positivement en insistant sur ce qui est nouveau dans cette section et qu'on peut ramener à trois points principaux: la preuve a priori de l'existence de Dieu, l'origine des idées dans son entendement et la détermination des affectus qui peuvent lui être attribués.

Son exposé de la preuve a priori vient heureusement compléter la Theologia naturalis, Pars I dans laquelle il n'avait fait état que de la preuve a posteriori et plus exactement de la preuve par la contingence. Le fait qu'il ait tenu à en traiter à part souligne l'intérêt qu'il lui portait, malgré ses réserves quant à la présentation qu'en a fait Descartes. Celles-ci le situent dans le sillage de Leibniz, mais il a présenté cette preuve de faon plus détaillée et plus didactique que ce dernier." pp. 268-269.

"Dans ces conditions, il est possible malgré tout de conclure que la seconde partie de la Theologia naturalis apporte des compléments à la fois importants et intéressants à la première, avec laquelle elle forme un ensemble remarquablement complet des question relatives à Dieu, envisagées à la lumière de la raison. Dans la préface à cette seconde partie (p. 21 C, lignes 2-5), Wolff se targue d'avoir été plus loin en ce domaine que ses prédécesseurs. Le compliment qu'il s'adresse ainsi n'est pas démérité. Car, dans la foulée de Descartes, il a contribué, plus que quiconque, à l'élaboration d'une théologie naturelle proprement dite, c'est-à-dire d'une métaphysique de Dieu, libérée de la tutelle de la théologie révélée, tant dans sa méthode que dans les questions dont elle traite." (p. 272)

11. ———. 1978. "La conception wolffienne de la philosophie d'après le "Discursus praeliminaris de philosophia in genere"." Filosofia Oggi no. 1:403-428.

Repris dans: Études et documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 163-222.

"Le Discursus praeliminaris est composé de 6 chapitres où il est traité tour à tour: -- des trois formes historique, philosophique et mathématique, de la connaissance humaine (c. 1), -- de la définition et des caractéristiques de la philosophie (c. 2), -- de ses différentes parties (c. 3), -- de sa méthode (c. 4), du style qu'il convient d'y employer (c. 5); -- enfin de la "libertas philosophandi", c'est-à-dire des possibilités d'expression qui doivent être reconnues au philosophe (c. 6).

L'ensemble constitue un véritable manifeste, dans lequel Wolff exprime sa conception de la philosophie, dont nous allons tenter de dégager les principaux points, marqués par les titres de ces six chapitres, mais en regroupant leurs paragraphes lorsqu'ils relèvent d'un même thème.

Nous pouvons, selon Wolff, exercer trois sortes de connaissance ou, plus exactement, exercer notre connaissance de trois faons. La première, qu'il dénomme historique, consiste dans la découverte de ce qui existe ou se produit dans le monde matériel et en nous (§ 1-2), c'est-à-dire dans la saisie pure et simple des faits (§ 7, 17). La seconde, dite philosophique, est la recherche de la raison de ces faits; ce qui revient à dire qu'elle tend à expliquer pourquoi ces faits existent ou se produisent ( § 4-7, 17). La troisième, qu'il appelle mathématique, cherche à déterminer la quantité c'est-à-dire, dans son esprit, le degré en plus ou en moins qui affecte tout ce qui est fini, tant dans le domaine matériel que dans celui de l'âme (§ 13 et not., 14, 17).

Au sujet de la première, il précise qu'elle est acquise par les sens, soit externes, soit internes (§ 1). A propos de la seconde, il est facile d'inférer de ses propos qu'elle est l'oeuvre de l'entendement discursif ou de la raison (§ 9). Quant à la troisième, elle requiert certes la mesure, mais aussi la démonstration (not. § 14, 19). Si bien que ces trois formes de la connaissance humaine pourraient, selon leur origine, c'est-à-dire du point de vue des moyens mis en œuvre, être regroupées en deux catégories: d'une part la connaissance historique ou sensible, d'autre part la connaissance philosophique et la connaissance mathématique qui font appel à la raison, si les développements de Wolff au sujet de la première ne s'y opposaient.

2. Il considère, en effet, comme en faisant partie, ce que nous apprenons par ouï-dire, par exemple que les enfants élevés parmi les animaux ne savent pas exercer leur raison (not. § 1). 11 explique, en autre, comme Descartes (4), qu'il y a une connaissance historique des vérités philosophiques et mathématiques, lorsqu'on les connaît sans pouvoir les démontrer (§ 9, 15-16, 19, 50-53, 156). Il distingue enfin de la connaissance historique, qu'il appelle commune et à laquelle suffit l'attention prêtée aux donnée des sens, la connaissance historique, qu'il qualifie de secrète ("arcana") et dans laquelle la raison doit suppléer aux sens (§ 20 et not., 21), bien qu'elle puisse être ramenée à la première, grâce aux arts et à l'expérimentation ( § 24, 25).

Autrement dit, il désigne, sous l'appellation générale de connaissance historique, des réalités fort différentes qui ne se laissent pas ramener à la pure activité des sens, à part la connaissance historique commune, laquelle se confond avec la connaissance vulgaire ( § 23) (5) et constitue le plus bas degré de la connaissance humaine (§ 22). L'exemple de connaissance par ouï-dire qu'il donne relève déjà de l'entendement, non discursif s'entend. A combien plus forte raison cela est-il vrai des vérités philosophiques et mathématiques que nous ne pouvons démontrer, mais que nous comprenons cependant, et c'est pourquoi il emploie le verbe "intelligere" à propos des premières ( § 50, 54). Quant aux faits cachés, sur lesquels porte la connaissance historique secrète, comme la composition de la lumière établie par Newton (6), il faut non seulement les découvrir, mais aussi les démontrer ( § 20 et not.), ce qui requiert l'intervention de la raison" (pp. 404-405)

12. ———. 1979. "De la notion de philosophie expérimentale chez Wolff." Etudes Philosophiques (4):397-406.

Repris dans: Études et documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 53-62.

"Wolff s'est beaucoup intéressé à la philosophie expérimentale, comme le prouve le fait qu'il a publié une vingtaine d'articles' et deux ouvrages' sur des sujets relevant de cette discipline, dont il parle, en outre, très souvent dans ses autres écrits, dans deux desquels il lui consacre tout un chapitre. Dans ces articles, ces deux ouvrages et ces deux chapitres, la philosophie expérimentale ne fait qu'un, pour lui comme pour Newtons, avec la physique expérimentale. Les descriptions d'expériences et d'instruments qu'il y donne, ainsi que les considérations qui accompagnent ces descriptions, ne présentent plus guère d'intérêt aujourd'hui, sinon pour l'historien des sciences; aussi ne nous y arrêterons-nous pas. Par contre, les diverses notations dont il parsème ses autres écrits au sujet de la nature et surtout du domaine de la philosophie expérimentale méritent l'attention; car elles dénotent une conception de celle-ci, pour le moins originale, que nous nous proposons d'examiner.

L'essentiel de cette conception peut se résumer d'un mot : au lieu de cantonner la philosophie expérimentale dans les limites de la physique, comme on l'a fait jusqu'alors, il faut l'étendre à toutes les parties de la philosophie. C'est là un point sur lequel Wolff revient à diverses reprises, en indiquant à et là quelques autres disciplines susceptibles de faire appel à l'expérience, à savoir, selon l'ordre chronologique des textes : la théologie, la morale, la politique, la psychologie, l'ontologie et la cosmologie générale." pp. 397-398.

"Quoi qu'il en soit, Wolff ne s'explique pas sur ces points pourtant importants. Et ce manque de précision, qui traduit un manque de netteté dans sa conception de la nature de la philosophie expérimentale, est sans doute à l'origine de ses déclarations contradictoires au sujet de la psychologie empirique. En effet, tantôt il affirme qu'elle ne ressortit pas à la connaissance historique, tantôt au contraire il prétend qu'elle est une pure histoire de l'âme, et cela de faon d'autant plus incompréhensible que la première affirmation se rencontre dans le Discursus praeliminaris et la seconde dans la Philosophia rationalis sive Logica, qui ont été publiés en un seul volume.

Aussi en arrive-t-on à la conclusion que la conception wolffienne de la philosophie expérimentale, si originale et intéressante soit-elle, n'en laisse pas moins d'être imprécise. Et la raison en est à chercher dans le fait que les rôles respectifs de l'expérience et de la raison n'y sont pas suffisamment délimités. Autrement dit, nous retrouvons là le problème des rapports de l'a posteriori et de l'a priori, que Wolff, nous l'avons montré ailleurs, n'est pas parvenu à éclairer pleinement.

Mais il reste que cette conception s'appuie sur une notion large et souple de l'expérience, sous ses deux formes, qui permet d'étendre son emploi à toutes les parties de la philosophie, en respectant la diversité de la nature de leurs objets. Et c'est là ce qui mérite d'en être retenu et qui est du plus haut intérêt. Car il ne fait pas de doute que l'emploi conjugué de l'expérience et de la raison, comme il le dit fort bien, «ad certitudinem cognitionis plurimum facit, et progressum in scientiis juvat». Seulement, afin d'éviter toute ambiguïté, en raison de l'usage, établi avant Wolff et retenu après lui, de considérer le terme de philosophie expérimentale comme synonyme de physique expérimentale, mieux vaudrait parler, pour caractériser ce qui est non seulement l'essentiel de son enseignement sur ce point, mais aussi la marque spécifique de sa méthode, d'une extension de l'emploi de l'expérience, plutôt que d'une extension de la philosophie expérimentale, à tous ces domaines. N'est-ce pas d'ailleurs ce qui ressort de ce qu'il dit des rapports de la connaissance philosophique et de la connaissance historique qui ne fait qu'un avec l'expérience" ? 1l affirme, en effet, que la première ne peut se passer de la seconde, qui lui sert de fondement indispensable, en même temps que parfois de confirmation", et ajoute : «Nobis per omnem philosophiam sanctum est utriusque connubium».

En tous les cas, cet aspect de sa philosophie est d'autant plus digne de remarque qu'il est l'un des représentants les plus authentiques et les plus célèbres du rationalisme, et que l'histoire a surtout retenu l'usage qu'il a fait de la méthode démonstrative, c'est-à-dire a priori. C'est au point qu'on a souvent porté contre lui l'accusation d'avoir pratiqué un rationalisme outrancier; ce qui, on le voit, est à la fois faux et injuste. Car, par son souci de faire partout appel à l'expérience pour établir les points de départ de ses démonstrations ou pour confirmer les conclusions de celles-ci, il a tracé, entre le rationalisme pur qui n'attribue de valeur qu'à la déduction a priori, et l'empirisme strict qui ne fait fond que sur l'expérience, une voie médiane permettant d'éviter les écueils de l'un et de l'autre". (pp. 397-398)

13. ———. 1979. "En quel sens peut-on dire que Wolff est rationaliste?" Studia Leibnitiana no. 11:45-61.

Repris dans: Études et documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 144-160.

"Objet d'une vogue considérable de son vivant et durant les premières années qui suivirent sa mort, Wolff fut très vite éclipsé par Kant et les Post-Kantiens, dont le succès le relégua, non pas dans l'oubli, car on n'a jamais cessé de parler de lui, mais parmi les auteurs qu'on ne lit plus. Et c'est ce qui explique que tant d'ouvrages d'histoire de la philosophie aient pu colporter et colportent encore sur son compte des contrevérités aussi tenaces que regrettables, par exemple qu'il n'a fait que systématiser et vulgariser la pensée de Leibniz', qu'il ramène toutes les démonstrations de l'existence de Dieu à la preuve ontologique', ou qu'il a soutenu un rationalisme outrancier et si absolu qu'il ne laisse aucune place à l'expérience dans la constitution du savoir.

C'est ce dernier point que nous nous proposons d'examiner ici, du moins pour une part. Car le rôle qu'il attribue à la raison dans l'acquisition de la connaissance intellectuelle permet de distinguer un autre sens dans lequel on peut dire qu'il est rationaliste. Et c'est pourquoi le titre de cette étude est exprimé au pluriel." (p. 144)

14. ———. 1979. "Les preuves wolffiennes de l'existence de Dieu." Archives de Philosophie no. 42:381-396.

Repris dans: Études et documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 184-199.

"Wolff a exposé trois preuves de l'existence de Dieu, qu'il dénomme respectivement : a posteriori, par l'ordre de la nature, et a priori. Par preuve a posteriori, il entend celle qui part de la démonstration de la contingence de l'existence de l'âme et du monde et en cherche la raison suffisante dans un être nécessaire distinct de l'une et de l'autre. La preuve par l'ordre de la nature est une variante de la précédente, en tant qu'elle procède, de la même faon, à partir de la démonstration de la contingence des lois du mouvement. Quant à la preuve a priori, elle requiert non seulement la démonstration de la possibilité de l'être très parfait, mais aussi celle de l'existence de l'être nécessaire avec lequel il ne fait qu'un, pour conclure qu'il ne peut pas ne pas exister. Ces preuves supposent, en outre, qu'on démontre que conviennent les attributs conférés à Dieu par l'Écriture: dans les deux premiers cas, à l'être nécessaire; dans le troisième, à l'être très parfait." ( Résumé, p 381)

15. ———. 1981. "Logique formelle et logique de la vérité dans la "Philosophia rationalis sive Logica" de Christian Wolff. Première Partie." Filosofia Oggi (4):339-373.

Repris dans: Études et documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 65-131.

"La Philosophia rationalis sive Logica (1) est le premier des grands traités latins de Wolff. Son texte, précédé de celui du Discursus praeliminaris de philosophia in genere, comporte deux parties après les "Prolegomena" où il expose sa conception de la nature et de l'objet de la logique. La première, qu'il qualifie de théorique, correspond à ce qu'on a pris coutume d'appeler logique mineure, comme il le fait lui-même (not. 5 1125), ou encore logique formelle, et est divisée en quatre sections dans lesquelles il traite tour à tour des présupposés psychologiques et ontologiques de la logique (sect. 1), des notions (sect. 2), des jugements (sect. 3) et des raisonnements (sect. 4). La seconde, qu'il dénomme pratique, comprend six sections. Les deux premières, consacrées au discernement du vrai et du faux, du certain et de l'incertain (sect. 1), aux moyens de découvrir la vérité (sect. 2), se rapportent à la logique, dite par opposition, majeure ou matérielle (2). Dans les trois suivantes, il fixe les règles de la rédaction, de l'examen, et de la lecture des livres (sect. 3), celles de la communication de la vérité, qu'il s'agisse de convaincre, de réfuter, de se défendre, de mener une dispute ou d'enseigner (sect. 4), et celles de l'estimation des forces nécessaires dans chacun des domaines précédents (sect. 5). Dans la dernière, il éclaire l'usage de la logique dans la pratique de la vie et la faon de l'apprendre (sect. 6). Autrement dit, les deux premières sections de la seconde partie relèvent de ce qu'on peut appeler la logique de la vérité et les quatre dernières de la méthodologie.

De cet ensemble, nous n'analyserons que la logique formelle et la logique de la vérité, après avoir examiné, sous forme de préliminaires, la définition que donne Wolff de la logique, ainsi que les notions psychologiques et métaphysiques qu'il considère comme ses fondements.

Wolff définit la logique: la science qui dirige l'esprit humain dans la connaissance de la vérité (§ 1-2), c'est-à-dire la science des règles qu'il doit suivre pour la découvrir (§ 3)." (pp. 339-340)

(1) Philosophia rationalis sive Logica, methodo scientifica pertracta et ad usum scientiarum atque vitae aptata, Francofurti et Lipsiae, 1728, 1732, 1740.

(2) Alors que les appellations: logique formelle et logique matérielle sont devenues courantes seulement depuis Kant, celles de logique mineure et de logique majeure semblent avoir fait leur apparition chez les Scolastiques du XVIIème siècle, qui se servaient aussi des termes: petite logique et grande logique, cependant que des auteurs comme Jungius et Micraelius utilisaient ceux de logique générale et de logique spéciale.

16. ———. 1982. "Des différentes parties de la métaphysique selon Christian Wolff." In Christian Wolff 1679-1754. Interpretationen zur seiner Philosophie und deren Wirkung. Mit einer Bibliographie der Wolff-Literatur, edited by Schneiders, Werner, 121-128. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag.

Repris dans: Nouvelles études et nouveaux documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 15-22.

"Dans le Discursus praeliminaris de philosophia in genere, situé en tête de la Philosophie rationalis sive Logica, et où il brosse le programme d'ensemble de la philosophie, Wolff indique, comme il l'avait déjà fait dans la Ratio praelectionum Wolffianarum in Mathesin et Philosophiam universam, que la métaphysique comporte quatre parties qui doivent être traitées dans l'ordre suivant: Ontologie, Cosmologie générale, Psychologie, Théologie naturelle. Et il justifie cet ordre en soulignant que, dans la métaphysique comme en tout autre domaine, doivent précéder les parties dont les autres tirent leurs principes; ce qui est le cas de l'Ontologie par rapport à toutes les autres, de la Cosmologie générale par rapport à la Psychologie, ainsi que de ces deux dernières par rapport à la Théologie naturelle.

Or telles sont les quatre disciplines métaphysiques qu'il a développées successivement dans ses traités latins, en scindant la Psychologie en Psychologie empirique et en Psychologie rationnelle, et la Théologie naturelle en deux sous-parties aussi: la première a posteriori, la seconde a priori; ce qui donne la classification suivante: Ontologie, Cosmologie générale, Psychologie empirique, Psychologie rationnelles, Théologie naturelle a posteriori et Théologie naturelle a priori.

Mais, dans les Vernünfftige Gedancken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt, qui constituent sa métaphysique allemande, il avait, sans employer ces appellations, adopté un autre ordre, plaant la Psychologie empirique avant la Cosmologie générale, parce qu'il jugeait celle-là plus facile pour ceux qui débutent dans l'étude de la philosophie, comme il l'explique dans l' Ausführliche Nachricht von seinen eigenen Schrifften . . . Et ce n'est qu'après que Thümmig, dans ses Institutiones philosophiae Wolffianae in usus Acatlemicos adornatae, eût présenté la métaphysique wolffienne en situant la Cosmologie générale avant la Psychologie empirique, et que Bilfinger eût fait de même dans les Dilucidationes philosophicae de Deo, Anima et Mundo et generalibus rerum affectionibus, que Wolff fit sienne cette répartition.

Cela ne change rien à vrai dire à sa conception d'ensemble de la métaphysique, que l'on n'est pas dès lors étonné de le voir définir comme la science de l'être, du monde en général et des esprits, c'est-à-dire de l'âme et de Dieu. Mais ce qu'il faut noter, c'est que, ce faisant, il lui attribue un champ d'investigation beaucoup plus vaste qu'Aristote et les Scolastiques d'une part, Descartes d'autre part." p. 121

"Telle est dans toute son ampleur et toute sa richesse la classification wolffienne des différentes parties de la métaphysique. Nouvelle et originale par son insertion de la Cosmologie générale à côté de la Psychologie, déjà introduite par Descartes dans le schéma aristotélico-scolastique réduit à l'Ontologie et à la Théologie naturelle, elle l'est non moins par celle de l'Ontologie expérimentale, de la Cosmologie générale expérimentale, de la Psychologie empirique et de la Théologie naturelle expérimentale à côté des parties dogmatiques correspondantes. Car, par ce double élargissement du domaine de la métaphysique, Wolff a profondément transformé la conception de la nature de celle-ci, nous l'avons dit, et celle de sa méthode, en mettant en plus vive lumière qu'on ne l'avait fait avant lui le rôle que doit jouer l'expérience en union avec la raison dans sa constitution, comme dans celle de tout le reste du savoir. Et, ce faisant, il a rappelé avec un rare bonheur aux métaphysiciens qu'il n'est pas d'autre voie possible pour eux que ce qu'il dénomme si justement et si joliment le connubium rationis et experientiae." (p. 128 notes omises).

17. ———. 1982. "Logique formelle et logique de la vérité dans la "Philosophia rationalis sive Logica" de Christian Wolff. Deuxième Partie." Filosofia Oggi no. 5:71-102.

Repris dans: Études et documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 65-131.

"Il nous reste à porter un jugement sur ces deux parties de la logique de Wolff que nous venons d'analyser.

1. Pour ce qui est de la première, qu'il appelle logique théorique, il va sans dire qu'elle n'est pas formelle au sens où l'on entend aujourd'hui ce terme; car s'il y utilise les variables littérales dans l'énoncé des syllogismes pour désigner les termes concrets, il n'exprime pas les constantes logiques par des symboles, malgré sa formation mathématique et son intérêt pour le projet leibnizien d'une caractéristique universelle. Mais il est possible d'affirmer qu'elle l'est au sens défini par Kant (*), à savoir que les notions, les jugements et les raisonnements y sont étudiés abstraction faite de leur contenu. Et il faut même souligner que, de ce point de vue, elle est plus formelle que beaucoup de traités scolastiques, ainsi que la logique de Jungius et celle de Port-Royal, par son souci de renvoyer à la logique de la vérité le soin d'établir les relations des propositions opposées et des conclusions des syllogismes avec la vérité et la fausseté, de même que l'analyse des démonstrations.

Toutefois Wolff n'expose pas la logique formelle ainsi conue dans son intégralité, mais seulement ce dont la connaissance est indispensable pour formuler les règles de la logique pratique, ainsi qu'il l'indique à diverses reprises (§ 115 et not., not. § 299, § 397, 408) et conformément à sa définition de la logique comme la science directrice de l'esprit dans la connaissance de la vérité. Et c'est ce qui explique les lacunes de cette partie de son traité et la rapidité avec laquelle il traite certaines questions. (...)

2. Ce qui vient d'être dit de la logique formelle vaut également de la logique de la vérité. On y retrouve l'appel aux mêmes notions ontologiques dans l'analyse des jugements tant intuitifs que discursifs et dans celle des définitions nominales. La définition de la vérité logique comme la possibilité de déterminer le prédicat par la notion du sujet constitue une explicitation et un approfondissement dignes de remarque de celle proposée par Tschirnhaus, et à travers elle de celle de Descartes dont Tschirnhaus s'est inspiré. L'importance du lien établi par Wolff entre la démonstration et la découverte de la vérité ou, plus exactement, la saisie de la raison de la vérité, car la seule observation peut suffire pour découvrir la vérité, n'échappera à personne.

La logique de la vérité présente encore l'avantage de contenir, ainsi d'ailleurs que le chapitre sur les fondements psychologiques de la logique, les linéaments d'une théorie de la connaissance, qu'il serait intéressant d'expliciter, en les complétant à l'aide des notations a et là éparses dans ses autres traités et ses articles. Pour nous borner à ce qu'il en dit ici, rappelons: - 1) qu'il attribue deux sources à toutes nos connaissances: l'expérience sensible et le raisonnement, qui portent respectivement sur les êtres singuliers et sur les notions universelles; ce qu'il exprime en affirmant que toute connaissance est soit a posteriori, soit a priori, la seconde étant l'apanage exclusif de l'entendement discursif; - 2) qu'il explique que nous passons de la représentation de l'individuel à celle de l'universel, soit en réfléchissant sur ce qui est peru, soit en séparant ce qui est commun à plusieurs notions, soit en déterminant ce qui ne l'est pas ou en déterminant autrement ce qui l'est déjà d'une certaine faon dans une notion donnée ou, si l'on veut, soit par la réflexion, soit par l'abstraction, soit par une détermination arbitraire. D'où suit: - 1) que la connaissance a priori s'enracine dans la connaissance a posteriori; - 2) que l'abstraction n'est qu'un des moyens qui assurele passage de celle-ci à celle-là." (pp. 98-99)

"Ajoutons seulement qu'il résulte de ce qui vient d'être exposé à partir de la Logica, que l'objet de la connaissance intellectuelle est entièrement constitué par les notions des genres et des espèces. Car si l'on ne fait pas appel à l'entendement intuitif, en tant que faculté indépendante de la raison, il est seulement possible d'envisager les idées selon leur extension, puisqu'on obtient dès lors la notion distincte des choses en les rattachant à leur genre et à leur espèce grâce au raisonnement et non en cherchant à avoir une vue compréhensive de leur essence grâce à l'intuition abstractive. Aussi ne peut-on s'étonner de voir Wolff en définitive tenir pour synonymes les deux appellations: notions et notions universelles.

De là ne suit pas pour autant que sa logique formelle, pour en revenir à elle, soit extensiviste. Bien au contraire, elle est plutôt compréhensiviste. Qu'il suffise d'en apporter pour preuve le fait qu'il y traite les propositions comme des attributives et ramène les catégoriques aux hypothétiques d'une part, et d'autre part qu'il y utilise, pour exprimer celles qui sont universelles, les adjectifs: omnis ou omne et non les adjectifs: omnes ou omnia." (p. 102)

18. ———. 1983. "Les rapports de la raison et de la foi selon Christian Wolff." Studia Leibnitiana no. 15:205-214.

Repris dans: Études et documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 229-238.

"Lorsqu'on traite du rationalisme de Wolff, on a d'ordinaire en vue la faon dont il conoit les rapports de la raison et de l'expérience. Mais ce n'est là qu'une des facettes du problème qui ne peut être pleinement élucidé que si l'on envisage aussi comment il comprend ceux de la raison et de la foi. Or c'est là un aspect méconnu de sa pensée, sans doute parce que dans ses traités latins il n'y fait que de brèves allusions et que l'on néglige trop souvent les Horae subsecivae Marburgenses où il s'en explique.

Ce point mérite d'autant plus l'attention que les Piétistes, comme Joachim Lange, son collègue de la Faculté de théologie de Marburg, l'ont accusé de détruire la religion révélée et que certains auteurs récents lui reprochent de ne pas reconnaître d'autres vérités que celles qui sont fondées sur l'évidence rationnelle.

Autrement dit, on retrouve à propos de ces seconds rapports la même appréciation négative qu'au sujet des premiers, laquelle repose sur le même préjugé que Wolff est un rationaliste intransigeant ne reconnaissant pas plus des vérités transcendant la raison qu'un concours de l'expérience à l'établissement des vérités rationnelles. Or ce jugement est complètement faux et ne tient pas compte de ses affirmations les plus explicites, ainsi que nous nous proposons de le démontrer en nous appuyant surtout sur les Horae subsecivae, mais sans négliger l'apport de ses autres ouvrages.

Une remarque préalable s'impose. Wolff à vrai dire ne traite pas directement et pour eux-mêmes des rapports de la raison et de la foi, mais à travers ceux de la philosophie et de la théologie' avec lesquels il les confond. C'est là une position discutable, mais que nous acceptons telle quelle, nous bornant à dégager de l'examen de ces derniers rapports sa conception de ceux de la raison et de la foi.

A cette fin nous délimiterons d'abord le domaine de la foi, tout en analysant le mode de connaissance dont elle relève, à partir de ce qu'il dit de l'objet de la théologie et de ses différentes parties. Puis nous expliquerons en quoi consiste la méthode qu'il préconise d'appliquer à la théologie, afin de préciser comment elle doit y être utilisée, car c'est surtout cette utilisation qui soulève la question des rapports de la raison et de la foi. Après quoi nous tirerons les conclusions auxquelles conduira notre exposé." (pp. 229-230)

19. ———. 1983. "Les "Opuscola metaphysica" de Christian Wolff." Filosofia Oggi no. 6:213-243.

Repris dans: Introduction à l'Opus Metaphysicum de Christian Wolff, pp.223-252.

"Sous ce nom d'Opuscula metaphysica, nous désignons deux petits écrits de Christian Wolff, intitulés,

-- le premier: De differentia nexus rerum sapientis et fatalis necessitatis, nec non systematis harmoniae praestabilitae et hypothesium Spinosae luculenta commentatio, in qua simul genuina Dei existentiam demonstrandi ratio expenditur et multa religionis naturalis capita illustrantur, Halae Magdeb., 1723, 1737,

-- le second: Monitum ad commentationem luculentam de differentia nexus rerum sapientis et fatalis necessitatis, quo nonnulla sublimia metaphysicae ac theologiae naturalis capita illustrantur, Halae Magdeb., 1723, 1737 (1).

Bien qu'il ne les range pas sous cette étiquette, ils appartiennent à la catégorie de ce qu'il appelle ses «Schutzschrifften». Car ils contiennent ses réponses à des critiques formulées par Joachim Lange, professeur de théologie à Halle, où il enseignait aussi à l'époque, contre ses thèses métaphysiques exposées dans la Ratio praelectionum Wolffianarum in Mathesin et Philosophiam universam, Halae, Magdeb., 1718, et surtout dans les Vernünfftige Gedancken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt, den Liebhabern der Wahrheit mitgetheilet, Franckfurt und Leipzig, 1720." (pp. 213-214)

(...)

"Nous en avons fini avec la présentation de la Luculenta commentatio et du Monitum. Il faut maintenant dresser le bilan de leur apport.

Pour enchaîner avec ce qui précède, nous commencerons par sa critique du Spinosisme. Elle tourne tout entière autour du fatalisme universel. Mais certaines conséquences qu'il en tire, comme la négation de la perfection des choses, celle de la liberté divine et humaine, la confusion de Dieu avec la nature, appellent des réserves.

Il n'a pas vu que si Spinoza rejette la perfection apparente attribuée aux choses en fonction de leur finalité, il n'en reconnaît pas moins la perfection plus profonde de leur essence, qui tient au fait qu'elles ont été produites avec une souveraine perfection, puisqu'elles suivent nécessairement de l'essence divine qui est absolument parfaite.

Il n'a pas tenu compte que Spinoza, tout en refusant à Dieu et à l'homme la liberté conue comme un libre arbitre, affirme cependant que Dieu est parfaitement libre du fait qu'il existe et agit en vertu de l'absolue perfection de son être conformément aux lois de sa nature raisonnable, se rapproche de la perfection et se libère de la servitude du corps.

Il n'a pas enfin été sensible au sens pourtant si vif qu'a Spinoza de la distance infinie qui sépare, si l'on peut ainsi s'exprimer, la substance de ses modes ou, si l'on veut, de la différence radicale de nature qui existe entre l'absolument infini et tout ce qui est fini, comme l'atteste la difficulté qu'il éprouve à dériver le second du premier. Faute de quoi, il n'a pas compris que Spinoza était habité par un authentique sens de Dieu qui s'oppose à ce qu'on l'accuse d'avoir confondu Dieu avec la nature.

Il est vrai qu'il était poussé à attaquer Spinoza sur ces trois points par le besoin de se défendre contre les accusations dont il était lui-même l'objet. Il est vrai aussi qu'il s'y trouvait en accord avec la plupart des philosophes et des théologiens de son temps. Il est certain enfin qu'il y déduit des conséquences qui étaient en germe dans les principes posés par Spinoza. Mais il reste que son tempérament dogmatique et logicien lui a fait méconnaître la complexité de la doctrine de celui-ci et l'a empêché de voir qu'elle ne se laisse pas ramener à un schéma unique.

Ceci dit, il faut cependant reconnaître que l'ensemble de sa critique du Spinosisme, outre certains aspects nouveaux, comme le rapprochement entre Spinoza et les partisans des idées arbitraires au sujet du fondement des possibles, ne laisse pas d'être rigoureuse et pertinente, en tant qu'elle se situe au niveau de ce qu'il appelle les raisons métaphysiques." (pp. 240-241 notes omises)

(1) Nous les désignerons désormais comme suit: Luculenta commentatio et Monitum dans le texte, et: L.C. et M. dans les notes.

20. ———. 1983. "A propos du projet de Wolff d'écrire une "Philosophie des Dames"." Studia Leibnitiana no. 15:46-57.

Repris dans: Études et documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 217-228.

"Quoi qu'il en soit, si l'on se rappelle le but ultime assigné par Manteuffel à la « Philosophie des Dames » (*), à savoir oeuvrer pour le bonheur de l'humanité, en essayant de rendre les femmes raisonnables et par elles les hommes, il apparaît que ce projet de Wolff n'est pas étranger à son dessein de rendre la philosophie utile à la pratique de la vie tant publique que privée.

C'est là un aspect de sa pensée qui n'a pas été assez remarqué. On le considère la plupart du temps comme un théoricien pur, faute d'avoir prêté suffisamment attention au fait que la Philosophia rationalis sive Logica n'est pas seulement ad usum scientiarum, mais aussi ad usum vitae aptata, ainsi que l'indique son titre, et que sa partie pratique est beaucoup plus développée que sa partie théorique, d'une part; d'autre part, que ses traités de métaphysique ouvrent tous la voie à sa philosophie pratique qui, avec les deux tomes de la Philosophia practica universalis, les huit du Jus naturae, les cinq de la Philosophia moralis sive Ethicam, celui du Jus gentium et celui de l'Oeconomica, constitue la part de son œuvre la plus importante quantitativement. Ce préjugé vient aussi de ce qu'on rélègue d'ordinaire au second plan derrière ces traités les Horae subsecivae Marburgenses, sans relever la portée pourtant très significative de leur titre: quibus philosophia ad pubiicam privatamque utilitatem aptatur.

Ces Horae subsecivae sont destinées à montrer l'aide irremplaable apportée par la philosophie à la théologie révélée, au droit et à la médecine, c'est-à-dire aux disciplines enseignées dans les Facultés supérieures qui préparent à la vie publique", en leur proposant sa propre méthode dont l'emploi les rendra rigoureuses, ainsi que les notions directrices qui leur permettent d'affiner et de préciser les leurs. Mais elles fourmillent aussi de notations plus practico-pratiques, si l'on peut ainsi s'exprimer." (pp. 565-566 notes omises)

(*) Lettre du 8 Mai 1739.

21. ———. 1983. "Des rapports de Wolff avec Leibniz dans le domaine de la métaphysique." In Leibniz, Werk und Wirkung. IV Internationaler Leibniz Kongress, Hannover, 14-19 November 1983. Vorträge., 153-163. Hannover: Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Gesellschaft.

Repris dans: Beiträge zur Wirkungs- und Rezeptionsgeschichte von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Studia leibnitiana, Supplementa XXVI). Hannover 1986, pp. 88-96.

"A propos des rapports de Wolff avec Leibniz dans le domaine de la métaphysique, est née de son vivant l'opinion qu'il n'a fait qu'y systématiser les thèses de celui-ci. Quoi qu'il en soit de sa valeur, elle présente l'intérêt d'inviter à tenter une approche d'ensemble du problème, comme d'ailleurs sa propre déclaration en réaction contre elle qu'il s'est très peu inspiré du philosophe de Hannovre.

Pour en juger, nous apporterons d'abord quelques précisions sur l'origine de cette opinion. Puis, à partir de la déclaration de Wolff, nous passerons en revue les questions sur lesquelles il s'est écarté de Leibniz. Nous relèverons ensuite celles à propos desquelles il a reconnu explicitement sa dépendance vis-à-vis de lui. Nous examinerons aussi les emprunts qu'il lui a faits, en les taisant, dans la solution de quelques autres. Enfin nous prendrons en considération la faon dont il a utilisé ses sources leibniziennes reconnues ou pas. Le tout, en nous en tenant aux données les plus importantes que fournit son œuvre latine sur ces divers points." (p. 153)

(...)

"Si rapide et partielle soit l'enquête que nous venons de mener, elle a fait apparaître que les rapports de Wolff avec Leibniz dans le domaine de la métaphysique ne se laissent pas enfermer dans l'alternative que nous évoquions au début. S'il s'écarte de l'héritage leibnizien sur beaucoup de points, celui-ci n'en est pas moins présent dans son élucidation de nombreux autres, même et y compris lorsqu'il n'en fait pas état. Aussi ne peut-on souscrire à sa déclaration qu'il y a "paucissima Leibnitii" dans sa métaphysique et doit-on l'interpréter comme l'expression de son irritation en face des allégations de Lange. Il faut au contraire affirmer, en le paraphrasant, qu'il y a utilisé "-multa Leibnitii", mais de faon si personnelle qu'il est faux de prétendre avec ce dernier qu'elle n'est qu'une systématisation de celle de Leibniz.

Cette wolffianisation, si l'on peut dire, des thèses leibniziennes, est un point important à noter. Il serait facile de le prouver à partir de son illustration du principe de raison suffisante qu'il a tenté de démontrer et dont il a fait le grand principe d'explication sur lequel reposent toutes les parties de sa métaphysique, à partir aussi de sa théorie du nexus rerum qu'il a tirée de la définition leibnizienne du monde et qui sert de fondement à sa cosmologie générale, cependant qu'elle aide entre autres à délimiter les contours de la représentation de l'univers dans la connaissance humaine et à illustrer la doctrine des fins voulues par Dieu, partir encore de sa défense de l'Optimisme qu'il s'est efforcé d'établir du double point de vue de la volonté et de la puissance de Dieu, de sa sagesse et de sa bonté.

Dans ces trois cas, et l'on pourrait en citer beaucoup d'autres, il a si bien inséré et fondu dans sa propre métaphysique ses emprunts à Leibniz, qu'ils en font véritablement partie et qu'on peut dire qu'il a construit avec son propre système. Peut-être est-ce parce qu'il en avait conscience qu'il a tu certains d'entre eux.

En terminant nous citerons une autre de ses déclarations qui nous semble bien résumer ses rapports avec Leibniz en métaphysique, comme d'ailleurs dans tout le reste de sa philosophie, car elle met en lumière leur commun dénominateur et montre, du même coup, que leur complexité est plus apparente que réelle, tout en les situant dans l'ensemble de ceux qu'il a entretenus avec les autres philosophes dont il s'est aussi approprié certains thèmes: "Usus sum principiis Leibnitii, quando ceteris erant consona et veritas eorum mihi patebat, quemadmodum scholasticorum et aliorum." (p. 163 notes omises).

22. ———. 1983. "La critique wolffienne du Spinozisme." Archives de Philosophie no. 46:553-567.

Repris dans: Études et documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 200-215.

"Pour l'apprécier équitablement, il faut certes tenir compte de l'état de l'interprétation du Spinozisme au XVIIe siècle et des motifs, sinon des mobiles, qui ont amené Wolff à le combattre. Tout le portait à la sévérité. Mais l'on ne peut s'empêcher de regretter que sa critique soit entièrement négative. Il n'a relevé que les difficultés de cette philosophie qui lui en ont caché la beauté et la grandeur. De plus son tempérament dogmatique et logicien lui a fait méconnaître, à diverses reprises, sa complexité, notamment sur trois points flagrants: la perfection des choses, la liberté divine et humaine, la nature de Dieu et ses rapports avec les autres êtres.

Sur le premier point, il n'a pas vu que si Spinoza rejette la perfection apparente attribuée aux choses en fonction de leur finalité, il n'en reconnaît pas moins la perfection plus profonde de leur essence, qui tient au fait qu'elles ont été produites avec une souveraine perfection, puisqu'elles suivent nécessairement de l'essence divine qui est absolument parfaite".

Sur le second, il n'a pas tenu compte que Spinoza, tout en refusant, à Dieu et à l'homme, la liberté conue comme un libre-arbitre, affirme cependant que Dieu est parfaitement libre, du fait qu'il existe et agit en vertu de la perfection de son essence", et que l'homme, dans la mesure où il tend à persévérer dans son être, conformément aux lois de sa nature raisonnable, se rapproche du même coup de la perfection et se libère de la servitude du corps".

Sur le troisième, obnubilé par l'affirmation que les choses particulières sont des modifications des attributs de Dieu, il n'a pas été sensible au sens pourtant si vif qu'a Spinoza de la distance infinie qui sépare, si l'on peut s'exprimer ainsi, la substance de ses modes ou, si l'on préfère, de la différence radicale de nature qui existe entre l'absolument infini et tout ce qui est fini, comme l'atteste la difficulté qu'il éprouve à dériver le second du premier'''. Faute de quoi, Wolff n'a pas compris que Spinoza était habité par un authentique sens de Dieu, qui s'oppose à ce qu'on l'accuse aussi bien d'avoir confondu Dieu avec la nature, que d'être athée.

Mais ces graves réserves exprimées, il faut ajouter que sur beaucoup d'autres points, notamment dans ce qui a trait à la conception du nécessaire, du possible, de la substance et de ses attributs, la critique qu'a faite Wolff de la philosophie de Spinoza ne manque ni de pertinence, ni de rigueur. A vrai dire, il a même dénoncé les difficultés de celle-ci avec plus d'à propos et de sérieux que beaucoup de ceux qui l'ont précédé dans cette voie, en évitant leurs exagérations, même s'il a pu s'inspirer d'eux et, ce, parce que sa propre critique se situe, comme cette philosophie elle-même, en l'y suivant, au niveau de ce qu'il appelle les raisons métaphysiques'". Qui plus est, il y fait même preuve parfois de nouveauté, par exemple avec le rapprochement qu'il opère entre Spinoza et les partisans des idées arbitraires au sujet du fondement des possibles. Et c'est pourquoi elle ne mérite pas l'oubli dans lequel elle est tombée." (pp.565-567)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliographie Choisie de Jean École (tous les publications sur Christian Wolff). Deuxième partie: 1984-2008

Essais sur Christian Wolff

1. ———. 1984. "Wolffius redivivus." Revue de Synthèse no. 116:483-501.

Repris dans: Études et documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 5-23.

"La méthode de la philosophie, telle qu'il la conoit, est donc à la fois démonstrative et expérimentale, qu'il s'agisse de la philosophie théorique ou de la philosophie pratique, pour reprendre la grande division proposée par les premiers historiens de sa pensée, comme Ludovici.

De la philosophie pratique, composée de la philosophie pratique universelle, du droit naturel, de la morale, de la politique, du droit des gens et de l'économique, nous ne dirons rien non plus, parce que nous la connaissons mal.

Reste la philosophie théorique, c'est-à-dire la logique, la métaphysique et la physique dans laquelle il fait rentrer, outre la physique expérimentale et dogmatique, la physiologie animale et végétale, et la téléologie.

Si, en ce qui concerne la physique expérimentale et la physiologie, il est parfaitement au courant des recherches de son temps, il va sans dire que l'intérêt de son apport en ces domaines n'est plus aujourd'hui que d'ordre historique aussi.

La logique, qu'il divise en deux parties : la logique théorique et la logique pratique, en contient en fait trois. Car la seconde se subdivise en logique de la vérité et en méthodologie. Dans la première qui correspond à la logique formelle, il prend soin de considérer les notions, les propositions et les raisonnements en faisant strictement abstraction de leur contenu, et il renvoie à la logique de la vérité la tâche d'établir les relations des propositions opposées et des conclusions des raisonnements avec la vérité et la fausseté, de même que l'analyse de la démonstration. Si bien que si la partie théorique de sa logique n'est pas formelle au sens actuel du terme, car il n'exprime pas les constantes logiques par des symboles, malgré son goût pour le projet leibnizien d'une caractéristique universelle, elle l'est au sens encore admis par Kant, et de faon beaucoup plus pure que nombre de manuels scolastiques. Dans la partie méthodologique, il expose en détail les règles de la transmission de la vérité par les écrits et l'enseignement oral, ainsi que de son accueil. L'ensemble contient, en outre, les linéaments d'une théorie de la connaissance qu'il n'a jamais développée explicitement, mais qu'on peut tenter de reconstituer en s'appuyant aussi sur son analyse psychologique des fonctions de connaissance et les multiples notations dont sont parsemés ses ouvrages de métaphysique.

Or la métaphysique constitue la pièce centrale de son système. Elle suit la logique et est tout entière orientée vers la philosophie pratique ; ce qui montre que se sont également trompés ceux qui le tiennent pour un théoricien pur. Cependant, s'il ne cultive pas la théorie pour elle-même, il ne laisse pas d'y exceller. Et l'on peut dire que sa métaphysique est, de ce point de vue, en dépit des longueurs des traités latins, un monument remarquable, d'autant plus digne d'attention qu'elle joue, si l'on peut dire, le rôle de plaque tournante entre la philosophie scolastique, celles de Descartes et de Leibniz, d'une part, la philosophie kantienne et celles qui l'ont suivie, d'autre part.

Elle est composée de l'ontologie, de la cosmologie générale, de la psychologie empirique, de la psychologie rationnelle et de la théologie naturelle. Cette division, reprise par Kant qui l'a léguée à la postérité, en refusant toutefois d'y maintenir la psychologie empirique, nous semble aujourd'hui toute naturelle. Mais elle ne s'est pas imposée d'emblée. Chez les Aristotélico-Scolastiques, la métaphysique comprenait seulement l'ontologie et la théologie naturelle. Si certains Scolastiques post-suaréziens y faisaient rentrer timidement la psychologie, c'est Descartes qui l'y a définitivement introduite, mais il en supprimait ou presque l'ontologie. En redonnant plein droit de cité à celle-ci, Wolff renoue avec la tradition aristotélico-scolastique, mais il garde l'apport cartésien en ce qui concerne la psychologie, et surtout il lui ajoute la cosmologie générale ; ce que personne n'avait jamais encore tenté.

Or cet élargissement du champ de la métaphysique est lié à une conception de sa nature tout autre que celle de ses prédécesseurs. D'abord science de l'être en tant qu'être et de sa source, puis science des êtres immatériels, si l'on s'en tient, pour résumer, aux grands courants, elle devient avec Wolff la science de l'être en général et des différentes sortes d'êtres que sont le monde, l'âme humaine et Dieu." (pp. 498-500)

2. ———. 1984. "De la méthode universelle selon Christian Wolff." Filosofia Oggi no. 7:179-192.

Repris dans: Études et documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 161-174.

""Le méthode, il n'est pas un seul philosophe du XVIIème siècle qui n'en ait parlé dans le sillage de Descartes, et durant la première moitié du suivant s'est développée la controverse au sujet de l'emploi de la méthode des mathématiques en philosophie (*). Le climat intellectuel de l'époque était tellement marqué par cette question, que Wolff ne pouvait manquer de l'aborder. Il s'en est même beaucoup préoccupé, comme en attestent les nombreux endroits de son œuvre où il en parle. Les plus importants sont sans contredit: le chapitre 4 du Discursus praeliminaris de philosophia in genere, les écrits divers: lettres, préfaces à des ouvrages d'autres auteurs, programmes de cours, qui ont été réunis dans les Meletemata Mathematico-Philosophica, et beaucoup d'articles des Horae subsecivae Marburgenses. Mais alors qu'il se contente, dans le Discursus, de codifier les règles à suivre pour que la philosophie soit claire, rigoureuse et certaine, et dans les écrits des Meletemata d'affirmer que l'application des mêmes règles conduit aux mêmes résultats dans toutes les autres disciplines, notamment dans la théologie, le droit et la médecine, dans les Horae subsecivae, tout en rappelant les dites règles, il explique pourquoi leur portée est universelle et montre comment à partir d'exemples pris en ces trois domaines. Autrement dit, c'est dans les Horae subsecivae que Wolff livre l'ensemble de sa conception de la méthode et c'est donc à cet ouvrage qu'il faut recourir pour l'exposer dans son intégralité, sans toutefois négliger de faire appel aux autres textes qui éclairent certains de ses détails en soulignant l'importance qu'ils revêtaient à ses yeux.

Le plan de cet exposé est imposé par ce qui vient d'être dit. Parce que Wolff s'emploie d'abord à préciser la méthode de la philosophie et montre ensuite l'utilité et la nécessité de son utilisation partout où s'exerce la recherche de la vérité, nous commencerons par examiner la nature de cette méthode, ses réquisits, son fondement et les résultats qu'elle procure, puis nous nous attacherons à éclairer son universalité à partir de l'application qu'il en fait à la théologie, au droit et à la médecine." (pp. 179-180 notes omises)

(*) Sur l'histoire des doctrines concernant la méthode aux XVIIème et XVIIIème siècles, cf.: Hans Werner Arndt, Methodo scientifica pertractatum. Mos geometricus und Kalküllbegriff in der philosophischen Theorienbildung des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, Berlin, New York, 1971, Walter de Gruyter; et sur la controverse en question: Giorgio Tonelli, Der Streit über die mathematische Methode in der Philosophie in der ersten Halte des 18. Jahrhunderts und die Enstehung von Kants Schrift über die Deutlichkeit, in Archiv für Philosophie, 1959, Heft 9/1, 2, p. 37-68.

3. ———. 1986. "Du rôle de l'entendement intuitif dans la conception wolffienne de la connaissance." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 68:280-291.

Repris dans: Nouvelles études et nouveaux documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 55-66.

"Wolff, pas plus qu'aucun autre philosophe avant Kant, n'a élaboré une théorie de la connaissance. Mais cela ne l'a pas empêché de s'intéresser, comme la plupart d'entre eux, aux divers problèmes que pose la connaissance, notamment celui de son origine, c'est-à-dire des facultés qu'elle met en jeu. On trouve de nombreuses notations à ce sujet dans la Philosophia rationalis sive Logica, dans la Psychologia empirica, dans deux articles intitulés, le premier: Solutio nonnullarum diffïcultatum circa mentem humanam obviarum, ubi simul et agitur de origine notionum et facultate ratiocinandi (1707), le second: Leges experientiarum fundamentales (1708), quelques-unes aussi dans ses autres traités latins et dans les Horae subsecivae Marburgenses, pour nous borner à son Corpus latinum.

Or si nous nous reportons au premier des traités qui viennent d'être indiqués, il y affirme on ne peut plus nettement qu'il y a deux sources, et seulement deux, de toutes nos connaissances: les sens et la raison. (...)

Ainsi assimile-t-il la connaissance acquise par les sens, qu'il dénomme encore expérience, à la connaissance a posteriori, d'une part; la connaissance obtenue en raisonnant, donc grâce à l'entendement discursif, à la connaissance a priori, d'autre part; et semble du même coup exclure toute autre source.

Pour achever de caractériser l'une et l'autre, il précise que la première est intuitive et a pour objet ce qui est singulier, c'est-à-dire les individus; que la seconde, qui est discursive, porte sur les notions universelles. Si bien qu'on en arrive à la double équation: connaissance sensible ou a posteriori, intuitive et singulière; connaissance intellectuelle ou a priori, discursive et universelle.

Il faut signaler encore que, sous le nom de connaissance intuitive, il range à la fois celle acquise par les sens et celle due à l'imagination. Après l'avoir définie de faon générale: « quae ipso idearum intuitu absolvitur», et expliqué: « rem intuitive cognoscere dicimur, quatenus ideae ejus, quam habemus, nobis sumus conscii», il en donne comme exemples tant la saisie par les sens d'un arbre qui nous est présent, que la représentation d'un triangle par l'imagination. (...)

L'affirmation de la dépendance de l'imagination par rapport à la facultas sentiendi se comprend aisément, puisqu'elle ne fait que reproduire la représentation des choses perues par les sens, en leur absence. D'où le nom commun de perceptions qu'il donne tant aux sensations qu'aux actes de l'imagination, ainsi qu'aux représentations qui en résultent, tout en appelant idées sensuelles celles acquises par les sens et phantasmes celles produites par l'imagination.

Mais les termes dans lesquels il s'exprime ne font que poser avec plus d'acuité le problème de l'existence de l'entendement intuitif, puisqu'il identifie purement et simplement la connaissance intuitive et la connaissance sensible entendue en un sens large, et l'oppose radicalement à celle obtenue par l'entendement discursif, sans faire la moindre place au premier.

Il y a là une difficulté que nous avions signalée dans notre introduction à la réédition de la Philosophia rationalis sive Logica, en remettant à plus tard de la résoudre. Et c'est ce que nous nous proposons de faire dans l'étude présente." (pp. 280-281 notes omises)

4. ———. 1986. "Contribution à l'histoire des premiers principes. Exposé de la doctrine wolffienne." Filosofia Oggi no. 9:225-239.

Repris dans: Nouvelles études et nouveaux documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 83-97.

"Comme Jean-Baptiste du Hamel, dont il s'est peut-être inspiré, Wolff place n tête de son Ontologia l'examen des principes de contradiction et du tiers-exclu, auxquels il ajoute celui de raison suffisante qu'ignorait celui-ci. Et il les appelle «principia philosophiae primae».

Il est bien connu que le principe de raison suffisante a été formulé expressément et ainsi dénommé par Leibniz, alors que les deux premiers étaient utilisés depuis toujours. Mais l'on a peu remarqué que les expressions servant à désigner ceux-ci sont d'origine tardive. On ne les rencontre pas encore, en effet, au XVIème siècle chez Fonseca et Suárez par exemple, ni même au XVIIème chez Descartes, Clauberg et Bayle, pas plus que chez les auteurs de lexiques philosophiques, comme Goclenius, Chauvin et Micraelius. Mais Jungius, dans la Logica Hamburgensis qui date de 1638, parle de «duo principia contradictionis», en rangeant sous cette dénomination ce que nous appelons maintenant principe de contradiction et principe du tiers-exclu. Et l'on sait que Leibniz utilise le terme principe de contradiction dans le sens actuel, ainsi que parfois celui de principe d'identité, qu'on lui doit sans doute, en le traitant comme synonyme du premier. Quant à l'appellation principe du tiers-exclu, nous ne l'avons pas rencontrée avant Wolff; mais il l'emploie de faon si naturelle qu'on peut penser qu'elle existait déjà chez des petits scolastiques aujourd'hui oubliés.

Nous exposerons tout à tour sa conception des principes de contradiction et du tiers-exclu d'abord, celle du principe de raison suffisante ensuite, en les situant par rapport aux doctrines antérieures, puis la faon dont il explique les rapports et la portée du premier et du troisième, avant de mettre en lumière sa dépendance et son originalité dans toute cette question." (p. 225)

(...)

"Avant de terminer, nous voudrions tenter de mieux situer la conception de Wolff par rapport à celles qui l'ont précédée, en regroupant les notations dont nous avons émaillé notre exposé.

Tout d'abord, de faon générale, malgré la formule si typique: « Eam experimur mentis nostrae naturam », qu'il employe pour préparer l'énoncé des premiers principes, il n'en fait pas, comme Descartes, de pures lois de la connaissance, mais les tient, à la manière d'Aristote et de Thomas d'Aquin, pour les lois de l'être qui, en tant que telles, dirigent la connaissance.

Pour ce qui est plus particulièrement du principe de raison suffisante, il est à peine besoin de dire qu'il doit beaucoup à Leibniz dont il s'est fait l'écho. Mais il importe de souligner ce par quoi il en diffère. D'abord, il a très nettement distingué ce principe de celui de causalité dont Leibniz semble parfois le rapprocher. Ensuite, alors que celui-ci n'a fait que le poser, sans tenter d'en donner la moindre preuve, Wolff, tout en reconnaissant qu'on peut l'admettre comme un axiome, s'est efforcé, plus ou moins bien il est vrai, de le démontrer tant a priori qu' a posteriori. Il l'a de plus formulé de faon plus générale et même absolue. Par ailleurs, il l'a appliqué à Dieu plus explicitement. A quoi il faut ajouter qu'il écrit parfois, par exemple dans la Cosmologia generalis, «principium convenientiae sive rationis».

Or Leibniz conoit le principe de convenance, qui régit les choix de la sagesse divine, comme une application du principe de raison suffisante et ne l'identifie pas avec. Enfin Wolff, plus que Leibniz, dans la pratique, a fait de ce principe le fondement et la pierre de touche de toute sa philosophie, notamment des différentes parties de sa métaphysique. Et l'on peut noter qu'à propos de l'usage qu'il en fait dans l'ontologie, mais cela vaut aussi de la cosmologie générale, de la psychologie et de la théologie naturelle, il déclare: « An vero Leibnitius eodem modo usus fuerit hoc principio, ego non dixerim, cum Leibnitianas circa philosophiam primam meditationes huc usque viderim nullas. »

En un mot, Wolff ne s'est pas contenté de répéter Leibniz, ni même de systématiser ce qu'il connaissait de sa pensée. Il a précisé et développé la doctrine du principe de raison suffisante, il a étendu ses applications. Et il a su si bien lui imprimer sa marque personnelle et l'intégrer dans son propre système, que son nom y reste à jamais attaché comme celui de Leibniz. (*)

(*) Cette étude était déjà à l'impression, quand le Professeur Hans Werner Arndt de Mannheim nous a indiqué que Leibniz a lui aussi tenté de donner une démonstration a priori du principe de raison suffisante dans un texte inédit publié par Zocher dans Leibniz Erkenntnislehre, in Leibniz zu seinen 300. Geburstag, Berlin, 1952, p. 15. La voici, telle que ce dernier l'a retranscrite: « Propositio: Nihil est sine ratione sufficiente seu quicquid est habet rationem sufficientem. Def. 1: Ratio sufficiens est qua posita res est. Def. 2: Requisitum est quo non posito res non est. Demonstratio: Quicquid est, habet omnia requisita. Uno enim non posito non est per def. 2. Positis omnibus requisitis res est. Nam si non est, deerit aliquid quo minus sit, id est requisitum. Ergo omnia requisita sunt ratio sufficiens per def. 1. Igitur quicquid est habet rationem sufficientem. q.e.d.»." (pp. 238-239)

5. ———. 1986. "Wolff et la Bible." In Le siècle des Lumières et la Bible (Bible de tous les temps), edited by Belaval, Yvon and Bourel, Dominique, 805-822. Paris: Beauchesne.

Repris dans: Nouvelles études et nouveaux documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 194-211.

"Dans son Eigene Lebensbeschreibung (1) Wolff nous apprend que ses parents l'habituèrent à lire la Bible chaque jour dès son enfance. Une telle pratique ne pouvait que lui donner une connaissance remarquable du texte sacré, dont attestent les multiples références et les nombreuses citations qui parsèment ses ouvrages. Nous en dresserons d'abord, la liste (2) de leur importance et de leur variété.

Puis nous nous emploierons à éclairer la faon dont il les utilise. Mais ses rapports avec la Bible ne se réduisent pas à la connaissance qu'il en a et à l'utilisation qu'il en fait. Il a en outre proposé de suivre dans l'interprétation dc l'Ecriture la méthode qu'il préconise pour parvenir, en tout domaine, à la clarté et à la certitude. Et c'est là un troisième point que nous examinerons, avant de dire quelques mots de son explication de quelques passages du Nouveau Testament à l'aide de cette méthode." (p. 805)

(1) Rédigée en 1743 et publiée seulement en 1841 par Heinrich Wuttke sous le titre Christian Wolffs eigene Lebensbesschreibung. Herausgegeben mit einer Abhandlung über Wolff, Leipzig 1841, elle a été rééditée par Hans Werner Arndt avec les deux biographies dues respectivement à Friedrich Christian Baumeister et à Johann Christoph Gottsched dans un recueil intitulé Biographie in Christian Wolff, Gesammelte Werke, Abteilung I, Band 10, Hildesheim 1980, où sont respectées les paginations de ces trois ouvrages. Le passage en question se trouve p. 112 de l' Eigene Lebensbeschreibung.

(2) Dans notre Index auctorum et locorum Scripturae sacrae ad quo Wolffius in opere metaphysico et logico remittit, Hildesheim 1985, pp. 181-196 ( Ges. Werk., Abt. III, Band 10), et dans notre Introduction à la réédition des Horae subsecivae Marburgenses, Hildesheim 1983, vol. I, pp. CVII-CX ( Ges. Werk., Abt. II, Band 34) nous avons indiqué où se trouvent toutes ces références et toutes ces citations dans les ouvrages de Wolff.

6. ———. 1987. "La critique wolffienne des systèmes d'explication des rapports de l'âme et du corps." Il Cannocchiale no. 1-2:3-21.

Repris dans: Nouvelles études et nouveaux documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 175-193.

"Le débat autour des systèmes d'explication des rapports 4e l'âme et du corps était encore très vif au XVIIIème siècle. Après avoir penché, dans sa jeunesse, pour les causes occasionnelles à cause des difficultés de l'influx physique', Wolff l'abandonna rapidement, mais sans prendre parti pour l'harmonie préétablie malgré sa préférence pour celle-ci. C'est surtout dans la Psychologia rationalis qu'il examine ces trois systèmes. Il porte sur chacun d'eux un jugement dénué de tout esprit partisan et qui, parce qu'il est basé sur une information fort vaste à défaut d'être toujours solide, offre une vue d'ensemble sur la question. Aussi est-il intéressant de le connaître." (p. 3)

7. ———. 1989. "Note sur la définition wolffienne de la philosophie." Studia Leibnitiana no. 21:205-208.

Repris dans: Nouvelles études et nouveaux documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 171-174.

"Il est notable que, de la définition donnée par Wolff de la philosophie en général, on n'a la plupart du temps retenu que son énoncé brut: la science des possibles, de tous les possibles, sans se préoccuper des explications dont il l'accompagne sur ce qu'il entend par possibles et sur la faon dont à son avis la philosophie doit les envisager. Or, cette faon de faire, surtout si l'on rapproche cette définition, prise telle quelle, du climat indéniablement essentialiste de sa métaphysique de l'être, risque de conduire à lui prêter d'exclure de l'objet de la philosophie tout ce qui est actualisé, et ce serait là une erreur regrettable.

Afin de le montrer, nous commencerons par collationner les différentes formulations qu'il a proposées de cette définition, sans les séparer des éclaircissements susdits.

On trouve la première en 1709 dans la préface des Aërometriae Elementa (1): "Philosophiam ego definire soleo (2) per rerum possibilium, qua talium, scientiam." (3) Il explique aussitôt après: "Philosophi igitur est, non solum nosse, quae fieri possint, quae non; sed et rationes perspicere, ob quas aliquid fieri potest, vel esse nequit", en ajoutant: "Quaenam vero dicis possibilia? Nonne, quae vel sunt, vel esse possunt." (4)

La seconde se rencontre en 1712 dans le Vorbericht von der Welt-Weisheit, §1, situé en tête de la Deutsche Logik (5) : "Die Welt-Weisheit ist eine Wissenschaft aller möglichen Dinge, wie und warum sie möglich sind." A sa suite, § 3, il déclare: "Möglich nenne ich alles, was seyn kan, es mag entweder wurcklich da seyn, oder nicht.", puis, § 4, de ce que: "Alles hat einen Grund, warum es ist.", il conclut, § 5: "Solchergestalt muss ein Welt-Weiser nicht allein wissen, dag etwas möglich sey, sondern auch den Grund anzeigen können, warum es seyn kan." (6) Dans la version latine qu'il a effectuée lui-même de cet ouvrage (7), il traduit ainsi ce qui précède: § 1: "Philosophia est scientia possibilium, quatenus esse possunt.", § 3: "Possibile hic appello, quod contradictionem nullam involvit, seu, quod existere potest, sive acte existat, sive minus.", § 4: "Necessitas rationis sufficientis", § 5: "Ea de causa philosophus non solum nosse debet, esse quid possibile. Sed rationem quoque reddere tenetur, cur quid esse vel fieri possit." (8)

La troisième figure dans le Discursus praeliminaris de philosophia in genere, qui précède le texte de la logique latine (9) publiée en 1728, "Philosophia est scientia possibilium, quatenus esse possunt.", au § 29 dans la note duquel il retrace brièvement l'histoire de cette définition, mais sans faire allusion à la Deutsche Logik. A la suite de quoi il explique, § 31: "In philosophia reddenda est ratio, cur possibilia actum consequi possint." (10) et précise, § 32: "Quodsi ergo plura fuerint, quorum unum perinde possibile est ac cetera, philosophia docere debet, cur illud potius fiat aut fieri debeat, quam cetera." (11)." (pp. 171-172)

(1) Aërometriae Elementa, in quibus aliquot Aëris vires cic proprietates juxta methodum Geometrarum demonstrantur, Lipsiae, 1709, Hildesheim, 1981, praefatio, p. 13-14 (non paginées).

(2) En ce sens qu'il a proposé cette définition dès 1703 dans ses leons privées à l'Université de Leipzig, et qu'il en a discuté en 1705 dans une correspondance, malheureusement perdue, avec Caspar Neumann, Inspecteur des églises et des écoles de la Confession d'Augsburg à Breslau; cf.: Discursus praeliminaris de philosophia in genere, not. § 29, p. 13.

(3) Il répète deux autres fois cette formule dans cette même préface, p. 14, 15.

(4) Ibid., p. 14-15.

(5) Halle im Magdeb., 1712, Hildesheim, 1965, p. 115.

(6) Ibid.

(7) Cogitations rationales de viribus intellectus humani earumque usu legitimo in veritatis cognitione cum iis, qui veritatem amant, communicatae et nunc ex sermone Germanico in Latinum translatae, Francofurti et Lipsiae, 1730, 1735, 1740, 1765, Hildesheim, 1983, p. 1.

(8) Ibid., p. 2.

(9) Philosophia rationalis sive Logica, methodo scientifica pertractata et ad usum scientiarum atque vitae aptata. Praemittitur Discursus praeliminaris de philosophia in genere, Francofurti et Lipsiae, 1728, 1732, 1740, Hildesheim, 1983, p. 13.

(10) Ibid., p. 14.

(11) Ibid., p. 14.

8. ———. 1990. "La notion d'être selon Wolff ou la "désexistentialisation de l'essence"." Il Cannocchiale no. 2-3:157-173.

Repris dans: Sonia Carboncini & Luigi Cataldi-Madonna (eds.), Nuovi studi sul pensiero di Christian Wolff, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1992 et dans: Nouvelles études et nouveaux documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 98-114.

"La première tâche de la théorie de l'être que se propose de construire Wolff dans la Philosophia prima sive Ontologia est de préciser ce qu'il faut entendre par être. Mais, d'après lui, cette notion n'est pas primitive: celle d'impossible la transcende et celle de détermination sert à la déduire. Aussi fait-il précéder son analyse de celle de l'impossible et du possible, de l'indéterminé et du déterminé.

I. Impossible et Possible. Indéterminé et Déterminé.

A) Définitions de l'impossible et du possible

1. Il considère la notion d'impossible comme la plus simple de toutes et en donne cette définition: «quicquid contradictionem involvit».

Or cela revient à affirmer que, dans l'impossible, «idem simul esse, et non esse ponitur». Et, comme la nature de notre entendement est telle que nous ne pouvons juger que la même chose en même temps est et n'est pas, il s'ensuit que nous ne pouvons nous représenter l'impossible, donc qu'aucune notion véritable ne lui correspond, et qu'il se confond avec le néant.

2. Le possible, lui, parce qu'il est ce qui n'est pas impossible, n'enveloppe aucune contradiction. Aussi est-il quelque chose et, de ce fait, une notion lui correspond.

Wolff assimile le possible au non-contradictoire, comme les mathématiciens avec lesquels il souligne son accord sur ce point x; il le fera aussi à propos de l'indéterminé et du déterminé. Il n'envisage donc ici que ce que saint Thomas appelait la possibilité absolue qui résulte «ex habitudine terminorum» , et que, pour sa part, il dénomme la possibilité de la chose. Il indique d'ailleurs que sa définition est conforme à celle de l'Aquinate: «possibile est, quod si ponatur in esse, non sequitur impossibile».

Mais à cela ne se réduit pas sa doctrine de la possibilité qu'il va compléter bientôt en précisant les rapports de la possibilité ainsi conue avec ce qu'il appelle la possibilité intrinsèque et la possibilité extrinsèque d'exister. Et, dans la Theologia naturalis, il l'enrichira encore en distinguant entre les possibles absolute spectata et ceux qui le sont in systemate redacta, ainsi qu'entre les possibles primitifs premiers et seconds et les possibles dérivatifs.

Pour le moment lui est nécessaire et lui suffit la définition du possible par la non-contradiction, laquelle, nonobstant sa forme négative, est, à son avis, la seule qui permet de reconnaître sans risque d'erreur ce qui est possible, si du moins on prend soin de démontrer qu'il n'y a pas de contradiction, comme il est indispensable d'établir aussi qu'une chose est contradictoire pour pouvoir la déclarer impossible." (pp. 157-158)

(...)

"Les composants de la notion d'Être

A) L'être et le possible

Pour éclairer la notion d'être, Wolff se sert d'abord de celles d'impossible et de possible.

Ce qui est impossible étant contradictoire ne peut exister, en vertu du principe de contradiction. C'est un non-être.

Par contre, du fait que le possible n'enveloppe pas la contradiction, il n'y a pas de raison suffisante pour qu'il n'existe pas. Aussi, malgré le rejet de la première définition critiquée ci-dessus, on peut cependant dire que ce qui est possible peut exister, si on ne le rapporte pas à sa cause, car la non-répugnance à exister est une propriété strictement interne.

Or, fait-il remarquer, on appelle être ce à quoi l'existence ne répugne pas, ainsi que cela ressort du langage commun où on désigne sous ce nom, non seulement les choses qui existent, mais aussi celles qui ont existé et celles qui existeront, et on peut dès lors considérer le possible comme un être.

Mais on ne peut conclure de là, ainsi que l'ont fait certains que Wolff tient l'être et le possible pour une seule et même chose. Car, souligne-t-il y, la notion d'être ajoute à celle du possible, qui ne connote que la possibilité de la chose ou sa non-contradiction, la non-répugnance à exister qui constitue ce qu'il appelle la possibilité intrinsèque d'exister, laquelle suit de la première.

Ainsi donc, et c'est un point très important à noter, la notion d'être en général implique, pour lui, non pas l'existence, mais seulement la possibilité d'exister." (p. 162 notes omises)

9. ———. 1991. "De la connaissance qu'avait Kant de la métaphysique wolffienne, ou Kant avait-il lu les ouvrages métaphysiques de Wolff?" Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 73:261-276.

Repris dans: Nouvelles études et nouveaux documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 152-167.

"Selon l'opinion courante, la philosophie critique s'est formée en réaction contre la métaphysique de Wolff. Mais, parce que Kant attribue à celui-ci des thèses qu'il n'a pas professées, comme l'harmonie préétablie et le monadisme, parce qu'aussi il lui adresse certains reproches injustifiés, par exemple de n'avoir proposé qu'un critère logique de distinction entre la connaissance sensible et la connaissance intellectuelle, et de n'avoir présenté qu'une preuve a priori de l'existence de Dieu, force est d'admettre qu'il n'avait pas lu ses textes s'y rapportant. Et, comme il est possible de trouver la source de ces assertions et de la plupart des autres de Kant concernant la métaphysique de Wolff dans les manuels de Baumgarten surtout, mais aussi de Baumeister et de Gottsched, on en arrive à la conclusion qu'il ne devait guère connaître cette métaphysique qu'à travers ceux-ci qui la déforment souvent." ( Sommaire).

" Conclusion

I. Nous voici arrivés au terme de notre enquête et en mesure d'en tirer les conclusions.

Parmi les textes que nous avons collationnés, il en est deux: celui où il est question de la force morte des corps tirés ou poussés, et cet autre où l'existence est qualifiée d'omnimoda determinatio, dont nous ne pouvons affirmer qu'ils ne supposent pas la lecture des ouvrages métaphysiques de Wolff.

Il faut aussi reconnaître que ceux qui contiennent des déclarations vagues, de même que celui où Kant fait allusion au « somnio objective sumto », ceux encore où il garde le silence sur le « connubium rationis et experientiae » et sur l'insertion de la cosmologie générale parmi les disciplines métaphysiques, celui enfin où il a pu parler de la possibilité de Dieu d'après Baumeister, ne peuvent non plus rendre certaine cette conclusion. Mais ils forment avec ceux que nous allons rappeler aussi un ensemble qu'on ne peut dissocier et dont l'analyse conduit vers elle.

En effet, les renvois à Baumgarten en même temps qu'à Wolff à propos de la démonstration du principe de raison suffisante et de la définition de l'existence d'une part, d'autre part la ressemblance de la définition de la raison avec celle qu'en propose Baumeister, donnent à penser que Kant a pu effectuer cette critique à partir de la Metaphysica du premier, et emprunter cette définition aux Institutiones metaphysicae du second. Parce que la faon dont il présente la preuve de l'unicité du monde actuel et celle de l'existence de Dieu rappelle l'exposé de celle-là par Baumgarten et le résumé de celle-ci par Gottsched, on peut penser encore qu'il en parle d'après eux, en se servant de plus du vocabulaire de Baumgarten pour formuler la seconde. Quant au critère de distinction entre la connaissance sensible et la connaissance intellectuelle, il a dû l'emprunter à Baumgarten qui ne retient qu'une partie, la moins importante, des explications de Wolff. Enfin, au sujet de l'harmonie préétablie et de la monadologie, il n'aurait pas soutenu que celui-ci en est partisan, s'il avait lu ses déclarations dans la Deutsche Metaphysik et dans l'Opus metaphysicum.

Ce regroupement des textes de Kant met en lumière que l'examen des trois derniers vient seulement renforcer la conviction acquise peu à peu au cours de celui des précédents - à l'exception des deux tout premiers - qu'il n'avait pas une connaissance directe de la métaphysique de Wolff. A cause des deux textes en question et parce que d'autres ont pu nous échapper, nous ne pouvons certes pas prétendre qu'il n'avait strictement rien lu des ouvrages où elle est exposée. Mais, parce que ceux que nous avons retenus ont trait à des thèses aussi variées qu'importantes, il nous semble possible d'affirmer qu'il ne devait guère connaître autre chose de cette métaphysique que ce que lui en avaient appris les manuels dans lesquels on peut trouver la source de ses jugements sur elle." (pp. 274-275 notes omises)

10. ———. 1993. "Les pièces les plus originales de la métaphysique de Christian Wolff (1679-1754), le "Professeur du genre humain"." In Aufklärung als Mission. La mission des Lumières. Akzeptanzprobleme und Kommunikationsdefizite. Accueil réciproque et difficultés de communication. Actes du Colloque de Luxembourg, 1989, edited by Schneiders, Werner, 103-114. Marburg: Hitzeroth.

Repris dans: Nouvelles études et nouveaux documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 23-33.

"L'oeuvre de Wolff peut être qualifiée d'encyclopédique, tant il est vrai qu'il a traité «de omni re scibili» à son époque ou peu s'en faut, sans qu'on puisse alléguer là-contre qu'on la divise d'ordinaire en deux parties correspondant à ses ouvrages de mathématiques et à ceux de philosophie. Car, dans les premiers, il n'expose pas seulement l'arithmétique, l'algèbre, la géométrie et la trigonométrie, mais encore, comme c'était la coutume alors, des disciplines aussi diverses que l'astronomie, la mécanique, l'aérométrie, l'hydraulique, l'hydrologie, l'optique, la dioptrique, la chronologie, l'architecture, pour n'en citer que quelques-unes; et, dans les seconds, il aborde les questions relevant de la logique, de la métaphysique, du droit naturel, de la morale, du droit des gens, de l'économique, ainsi que de la physique conue comme comprenant, outre la physique au sens actuel du terme, la physiologie, l'anatomie, la botanique et la chimie, il fait aussi rentrer dans la philosophie l'étude rationnelle des arts tant manuels que libéraux, celle encore de la jurisprudence, enfin la méthodologie de la théologie révélée dogmatique, morale et scripturaire.

Le tout tient en un corpus énorme de 34 ouvrages en 58 volumes, de 34 opuscules et de 40 articles, les uns en allemand, les autres en latin, sans compter les préfaces, les comptes rendus et les lettres.

(...)

C'est sans contredit la partie philosophique de son œuvre et plus particulièrement sa métaphysique qui l'a rendu célèbre.

(...)

Elle se situe au confluent des doctrines scolastique, cartésienne, leibnizienne et lockienne, dont elle est un essai de synthèse. Mais si cette tentative, beaucoup plus que les 4600 pages de l'Opus metaphysicum, en fait un véritable monument et s'inscrit en faux contre l'accusation sans cesse répétée qu'il n'a fait que vulgariser les thèses de Leibniz, l'originalité de Wolff en ce domaine se manifeste davantage par son apport sur certains points particuliers, parmi lesquels nous retiendrons les trois où elle est la plus éclatante: l'introduction de l'étude du monde et des corps dans la métaphysique, la transposition et la synthèse de la Philosophie corpusculaire, de l'Atomisme et du Monadisme dans l'explication des corps, la libération de la théologie naturelle par rapport à la tutelle de la théologie révélée.

Qu'il ait innové dans chacune de ces questions, c'est ce que nous nous proposons de montrer, en nous appuyant sur les traités de l' Opus metaphysicum, paree qu'ils expriment l'état définitif de sa pensée et qu'ils sont beaucoup plus élaborés que l'esquisse de la Deutsche Metaphysik. Toutefois, en ce qui concerne la première, c'est au Discursus praeliminaris de philosophia in genere, situé en tête de la Philosophia rationalis sive Logica, que nous ferons appel, car c'est là qu'il s'explique le plus complètement sur l'objet de la métaphysique." (pp. 103-104)

11. ———. 1994. "De la nature de la raison, de ses rapports avec l'expérience et la foi selon Christian Wolff." In Vernunftbegriffe der Moderne. Stuttgarter Hegel-Kongress 1993, edited by Fulda, Hans Friedrich and Hortsmann, Rolf-Peter, 127-139. Stuttgart.

Repris dans: Nouvelles études et nouveaux documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 67-79.

"Il est normal que Christian Wolff, dont Hegel dit, dans ses Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, ' dass [er] ... erst das Philosophieren in Deutschland einheimisch gemacht hat', ait sa place dans un Congrès qui porte sur le concept de raison dans la philosophie moderne et dont le premier Colloque est consacré au rationalisme précritique, car il ne fait pas de doute qu'il est l'un des principaux représentants de celui-ci.

La chose est tellement connue qu'il est inutile d'insister. Mais on se contente la plupart du temps de l'enregistrer, sans chercher à approfondir ce qu'il entend exactement par raison, alors qu'il en propose deux conceptions qui, de prime abord, semblent s'opposer, et c'est ce que nous nous proposons de faire en premier lieu. Ensuite on s'est trop longtemps plu - et Kant n'a pas fait exception - à le présenter comme un rationaliste pur ne faisant fond que sur la déduction et s'il est vrai qu'on a pris conscience de nos jours qu'il a beaucoup fait appel aussi à l'expérience, il reste que sa conception d'ensemble des rapports de la raison et de l'expérience a rarement été dégagée, et c'est ce que nous allons tenter dans un second temps. Mais, à ces deux premières questions ne se ramène pas tout le problème de son rationalisme; il y en a une troisième relative à la faon dont il a envisagé les rapports de la raison et de la foi et à laquelle on s'est fort peu intéressé, alors qu'il est indispensable de faire également la lumière sur ce point si l'on veut avoir une vue aussi complète que possible de sa doctrine sur la raison." (p. 127)

12. ———. 1995. "Des rapports de l'essence et de l'existence selon Wolff." In Aufklärung und Skepsis. Studien zur Philosophie und Geistesgeschichte des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. Günter Gawlick zum 65. Geburstag, edited by Kreimendahl, Lothar, Hoche, Hans-Ulrich and Strube, Werner, 72-79. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog.

13. ———. 1996. "La définition de l'existence comme le complément de la possibilité et les rapports de l'essence et de l'existence selon Christian Wolff." Etudes Philosophiques:261-273.

Repris dans: Nouvelles études et nouveaux documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp.115-127.

"Mon exposé s'appuiera surtout sur la Philosophia prima, sive Ontologia, beaucoup plus complète et plus élaborée que le deuxième chapitre de la deutsche Metaphysik qui a trait à l'ontologie. Pour plus de brièveté, j'indiquerai seulement le numéro des paragraphes de ce traité, sans rappeler à chaque fois son titre. Sous le nom de note, je désignerai le texte en petits caractères de ces paragraphes.

Être, possible, essence, existence

1. La définition de l'existence comme le complément de la possibilité se rattache à la question des rapports de l'essence et de l'existence qui, chez Wolff comme chez tous les représentants de la métaphysique de l'être, se situe elle-même au cœur d'une théorie générale de l'être. Aussi est-il indispensable, si l'on veut éclairer ce point de sa doctrine, de présenter d'abord les lignes de faîte de cette théorie avec lesquelles cette définition et cette question entretiennent des rapports étroits.

Pour construire cette théorie, il ne part pas de l'expérience qui nous impose sa présence ou, si l'on veut, son existence, mais de l'analyse de sa notion. Et c'est ce qui l'a immanquablement conduit à voir dans l'essence ce qui est d'abord connu dans l'être et à la fois ce qui sert de fondement à toutes ses propriétés (§ 168). Voyons comment.

Se référant au langage commun dans lequel on parle aussi bien, fait-il remarquer, des êtres passés et futurs que des êtres présents ou actuels, il en conclut que l'être peut être défini, de faon générale, ce à quoi l'existence ne répugne pas, c'est-à-dire comme ce qui peut exister (§ 134, 139). Or telle est aussi la définition générale du possible qu'il rappelle juste auparavant (§ 133). Et c'est ce qui a fait que certains, comme Étienne Gilson (L'être et l'essence, Paris, Vrin, 1948, c. 5, p. 170), ont pu penser qu'il tient l'être et le possible pour une seule et même' chose. Mais, ainsi qu'il le souligne: «Possibile... et ens non prorsus synonyma sunt» (not. § 135) et, pour s'en convaincre, il suffit de passer en revue les différentes sortes de possibilités qu'il distingue.

3. La première d'entre elles est constituée par la propriété de n'être pas contradictoire. Il s'agit là de ce que Thomas d'Aquin, auquel il se réfère dans la Luculenta commentalio... (§, 7), appelait la possibilité absolue en indiquant qu'elle résulte « ex habitudine terminorum» (In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum lib. 9, lect. 2, n° 1807). Il la dénomme pour sa part : «possibilitas rei» (not. § 99, not. § 103, not. § 135). A ce stade, le possible, c'est donc essentiellement ce qui n'enveloppe pas la contradiction et, par conséquent, comme il le dit encore, ce qui n'est pas impossible (§ 85).

Or, à la notion du possible ainsi conu, celle d'être, du moins celle d'être en général ajoute, poursuit-il, la non-répugnance à exister qui ne se confond pas avec la non-contradiction, mais s'ensuit, en tant que de celle-ci ne découle aucune raison suffisante pour que le possible ne soit pas actualisé ou, si l'on préfère, aucune raison suffisante pour qu'il n'existe pas« (§'133). A cette non-répugnance à exister qui est la caractéristique de l'être en général, Wolff donne, dans un premier temps, le nom de « possibilitas existendi» (not. § 134, not. § 135), puis celui plus précis de « possibilitas intrinseca existendi» (not. § 175), lorsqu'il traite de l'être en puissance, c'est-à-dire tel qu'il l'entend, de l'être qui peut avoir la raison suffisante de son existence en d'autres êtres, afin de la distinguer de la possibilité propre à celui-ci, qu'il qualifie de «possibilitas extrinseca existendi».

Entre ces deux dernières sortes de possibilités, il y a toute la différence qui existe entre une, propriété appartenant à l'être envisagé en lui-même, c'est-à-dire, ainsi qu'il, sera précisé ultérieurement, en vertu de son essence, et une autre propriété qui lui vient de ses rapports avec la ou les causes pouvant le poser dans l'existence.

4. Ainsi apparaît-il que ce n'est pas seulement la, notion de possible, mais aussi celle d'être, qui est plus complexe qu'on pourrait le croire au premier abord, d'autant qu'il distingue de l'être en général, outre l'être en puissance, l'être en acte ou, qui existe, en les considérant l'un et l'autre comme les deux espèces en lesquelles se divise l'être en général considéré comme leur genre (not. § 175).

Quoi qu'il en soit, pour nous en tenir à ce dernier dont nous sommes partis et qui constitue, selon Wolff, l'objet de l'Ontologia (§ 1), il est clair que, s'il ne se confond pas avec la «possibilitas rei» définie par la non- contradiction, par, contre, il s'identifie à la « possibilitas intrinseca existendi». Et de là suit que l'existence est exclue de sa notion (not. § 134); ce qui revient à prétendre qu'il n'est qu'essence. Ainsi, faut-il expliciter ce que connote pour lui le terme essence, si l'on veut pénétrer plus avant dans la compréhension de ce qu'il entend par être en général et de ses rapports avec l'existence." (pp. 263-264)

14. ———. 1996. "Contribution à l'histoire des propriétés transcendentales de l'être." Filosofia Oggi no. 19:367-394.

Repris dans: Autour de la philosophie Wolffienne, pp. 131-158.

"Les propriétés transcendentales de l'être, comment l'énoncé de ce titre n'évoquerait-il pas aussitôt la fameuse formule scolastique: «Ens, unum, verum, bonum convertuntur», à laquelle on ramène trop souvent à tort la doctrine de ces propriétés, qui est beaucoup plus complexe que le donne à penser la dite formule? Je n'entreprendrai pas d'en exposer toutes les composantes, mais seulement un point précis, à savoir l'extension de cette appellation à beaucoup d'autres déterminations que l'unité, la vérité et la bonté, qui s'est fait jour dès le Moyen Age, mais s'est beaucoup accrue à partir de la fin du XVIème siècle.

Dans un premier temps, je m'appliquerai à brosser le tableau des principaux types de conceptions de ces propriétés qui ont été proposées au cours de l'histoire de la haute scolastique et de la scolastique tardive, et je clôturerai mon enquête avec Christian Wolff qui n'appartient ni à l'une, ni à l'autre, parce que sa propre conception apparaît comme le point extrême auquel ont conduit celles des petits Scolastiques qui ont élargi considérablement le domaine de ces propriétés. Dans un second temps, je tenterai d'éclairer pourquoi et comment s'est produit cet élargissement." (p. 367)

15. ———. 1997. "La doctrine wolffienne de la nécessité et son enracinement dans la tradition." In Nouvelles études et nouveaux documents photographiques sur Wolff, 35-53. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Conférence donnée au Colloque Tradition et émancipation, Vianden, 30 juin - 3 Juillet 1991 (Inédit).

"Notre titre peut pas ne pas faire penser aux critiques du théologien piétiste Joachim Lange contre la métaphysique de Christian Wolff, car il est bien connu qu'il les a centrées sur la question de la nécessité. Mais on a peu remarqué que, ce faisant, il a fortement contribué â mettre en lumière la place importante qu'y tenait cette question et il faut lui en donner acte.

Pourtant nous n'avons pas l'intention de retracer les étapes de cette âpre et longue controverse -- elle dura plus de treize ans -- qui aviva les passions dans les milieux non seulement universitaires, mais aussi politiques et amena Frédéric-Guillaume Ier, circonvenu par Linge, à chasser Wolff de son royaume. Point n'est question pour nous non plus de brosser le tableau complet et détaillé des objections inlassablement répétées par Lange et ses partisans dans un nombre considérable de volumes et de libelles, car elles portent à faux en tant qu'elles visent à accréditer l'idée que Wolff n'a fait que professer un spinozisme déguisé n'osant s'afficher ouvertement.

Ce que nous nous proposons, c'est d'exposer la doctrine wolffienne de la nécessité pour elle-même, tant dans ses principes que dans ses applications et d'en éclairer les sources." (p. 35)

16. ———. 1997. "Wolff était-il leibnizien?" In Nouvelles études et nouveaux documents photographiques sur Wolff, 131-151. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

"Vaste question que celle-ci, tant l'oeuvre de Wolff, comme celle de Leibniz, est véritablement encyclopédique; ils ont, en effet, traité, l'un et l'autre, «de omni re scibili» ou presque à leur époque. Et c'est pourquoi je vous propose de la restreindre au domaine de la métaphysique, qui en est la partie la plus intéressante pour les philosophes que nous sommes.

Or très vite, du vivant de Wolff qui est né en 1679 et est mort en 1754, s'est fait jour l'idée, qu'on s'est plu ensuite à colporter, alors qu'on ne le lisait plus, jusqu'à nos jours où on commence à le redécouvrir, qu'il n'a guère fait que vulgariser en les systématisant les grandes thèses de la métaphysique de Leibniz.

Aussi importe-t-il de retracer, au moins dans les grandes lignes, l'origine et l'histoire de cette opinion, avant de faire appel aux textes de Wolff pour essayer de déterminer si elle est ou non justifiée." (p. 131)

(...)

"Nous revenons par là aux réflexions de tout à l'heure sur son éclectisme. Chez Leibniz, comme chez ses autres prédécesseurs, Wolff a choisi ce qui lui semblait conforme à la raison et qu'il pouvait démontrer, pour en faire un ensemble nouveau et cohérent. On peut certes parler à ce sujet de systématisation. Mais cette systématisation, loin d'avoir seulement pour objet les thèses de Leibniz, s'étend aussi à celles des autres auteurs dont il s'est également inspiré et surtout elle consiste davantage dans l'édification de ce nouvel ensemble que dans l'explicitation de la métaphysique leibnizienne. En un mot, Wolff n'est le pur disciple ni de Leibniz, ni de ceux-ci. On ne peut même pas prétendre qu'il avait une plus grande affinité intellectuelle avec Leibniz qu'avec les Scolastiques, par exemple du fait qu'il a développé et approfondi l'enseignement de celui-là, alors qu'il a contracté et résumé les thèses de ceux-ci. Mais on peut voir dans cette faon différente de traiter le premier et les seconds la marque d'une indépendance d'esprit qui est la preuve d'une indéniable, quoique relative, originalité et d'une réelle vigueur intellectuelle. L'une et l'autre s'affirment d'ailleurs dans cette dernière déclaration de Wolff dans le Monitum de sua philosophandi ratione..., qu'on peut citer en guise de conclusion : « Ego magna Leibnitii in scientiam merita veneror, non tamen instar idoli colo, cum... nihil admitto, nisi quod notionibus meis conforme deprehendo» (*)." (p. 151)

(*) In: Meletemata Mathenzatico-Philosophica... Sect. 1, n. 37, p. 171.

17. ———. 1998. "Christian Wolff était-il un Aufklärer?" In Aufklärung als praktische Philosophie. Werner Schneider zum 65. Geburstag, edited by Grunert, Frank and Vollhardt, Friedrich, 31-44. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

Repris dans: Autour de la philosophie Wolffienne, pp. 172-185.

18. ———. 1999. "La place de la Metaphysica de ente, quae rectius Ontosophia dans l'histoire de l'Ontologie et sa réception chez Christian Wolff." In Johannes Clauberg (1622-1665) and Cartesian Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century, edited by Verbeek, Theo, 61-74. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Repris dans: Autour de la philosophie Wolffienne, pp. 117-130.

"Que Wolff ait lu la Metaphysica de ente, quae rectius Ontosophia, c'est ce que prouve le fait qu'il en parle de faon précise, qu'il indique toujours, sauf une fois, le paragraphe et le plus souvent la page, que de plus il en cite trois fois le texte "expressis verbis". Ajoutons qu'il s'y réfère au moins onze fois, dont dix dans la Philosophia prima, sive Ontologia ... publiée en 1730 à Frankfurt et Leipzig où elle fut rééditée en 1736, et une autre dans les Horae subcesivae Marburgenses ... de 1731, parues aux mêmes endroits en 1735.

Il notes à son propos que, malgré l'effort qu'y a tenté Clauberg, en 1664, d'améliorer l'ontologie, Leibniz n'en a pas moins appelé en 1693, dans le De primae philosophiae emendatione ...," à réformer cette discipline, puis prétendu, dans un propos recueilli par Joachim Friedrich Feller dans l' Otium Hannoveranum... qui date de 1718, qu'elle était toujours "inter quaerenda". Et l'on peut penser que c'est parce que Wolff partageait cette opinion qu'il a écrit sa Philosophia prima, sive Ontologia.

Toujours est-il que, outre ce jugement général, il en porte d'autres, pour la plupart critiques aussi, sur quelques-unes des définitions de Clauberg.

Si l'on suit l'ordre dans lequel il s'y réfère, on trouve d'abord celle du possible. À son propos, il fait remarquer qu'en le définissant: ce qui peut être produit par une cause quelconque, du moins par Dieu, Clauberg confond la possibilité absolue constituée par la propriété de n'être pas contradictoire avec la possibilité extrinsèque d'exister, celle de l'être qui peut avoir en un autre la raison de son existence. Il ajoute qu'en affirmant que c'est là ce que notre esprit peut comprendre clairement et distinctement, Clauberg s'en tient certes au critère cartésien de la distinction du vrai et du faux, mais qu'il aurait dû définir le possible: ce dont on peut démontrer qu'il peut être produit par une cause quelconque, du moins par Dieu, car il aurait alors proposé une notion claire et distincte de la possibilité de produire, avec à charge de prouver ensuite que quelque chose peut être ainsi produit.

Il passe ensuite aux définitions de l'essence et de la nature, à propos desquelles il rappelle d'abord que Clauberg déclare que toutes les propriétés qui peuvent être attribuées à une chose, une seule est première, principale, interne et embrasse en quelque sorte les autres ou en est comme la racine et le fondement et que c'est là ce qu'on appelle l'essence, ainsi que nous l'avons déjà vu; cependant qu'on lui donne le nom de nature eu égard aux propriétés et aux opérations qui découlent de cette chose. Puis il lui donne acte d'avoir bien vu qu'essence et nature sont parentes, mais il lui reproche de ne pas avoir suffisamment marqué ce en quoi elles conviennent et ce en quoi elles diffèrent.

(...)

La conclusion qu'on peut tirer des propos de Wolff sur la Metaphysica de ente, c'est qu'il ne la tenait pas dans une très grande estime, car il en dit somme toute peu de bien. Il ne s'agit pourtant pas d'une critique purement négative. Avec Clauberg, comme avec les autres auteurs auxquels il se réfère, il fait preuve d'éclectisme, en ne retenant de sa doctrine que ce qui lui semble conforme à la raison et qu'il peut démontrer. Aussi peut-on cependant affirmer que la lecture de la Metaphysica de ente a été pour lui une occasion d'affiner sa pensée.

Rien ne permet de prétendre qu'il a connu les deux premières éditions de l ' Ontosophia, puisqu'il ne parle que de la troisième et ne donne de références qu'à celle-ci.

Mais on ne peut pas ne pas être frappé par l'étroite parenté qui existe entre cette affirmation de la " Praefatio ad lectorem" de la première, à savoir que, dans cette doctrine générale de l'être, "omnis cognitionis et scientiae, naturali lumine partae, fundamenta et semina continentur", et le titre de la Philosophia prima, sive Ontologia ... qua omnis cognitionis humanae principia continentur.

Enfin, si l'on note que, parmi les manuels d'ontologie parus après celui de Clauberg, Wolff ne se réfère ni à celui de du Hamel, ni à celui de Budde, qu'il connaissait pourtant à coup sûr, par comparaison avec les dix fois qu'il fait appel à la Metaphysica de ente, on peut voir là une preuve de plus qu'il lui reconnaissait malgré tout une certaine importance." (pp. 68-70 notes omises)

19. ———. 2001. "Une étape de l'histoire de la métaphysique: l'apparition de l'Ontologie comme discipline séparée." In Autour de la philosophie Wolffienne. Textes de Hans Werner Arndt, Sonia Carboncini-Gavanelli, Jean École, edited by École, Jean, 95-116. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

"Après avoir connu une certaine éclipse due sans doute au succès de la philosophie kantienne et des doctrines post-kantiennes qui ont pratiquement éliminé la discipline qu'il désigne, le terme ontologie est redevenu un terme courant du vocabulaire philosophique, grâce en partie à Husserl et à Heidegger. On connaît la distinction du premier entre l'ontologie formelle et les ontologies matérielles ou régionales, et la tentative du second' pour constituer la métaphysique du «Dasein» en une ontologie fondamentale. On sait aussi que Sartre a sous-titré L'être et le néant': «Essai d'ontologie phénoménologique», et que Lavelle a publié un petit traité intitulé Introduction à l'ontologie. Pour nous limiter à ces quelques exemples, tous ces auteurs ont gardé à ce terme son sens étymologique de science de l'être, tout en concevant cette-ci de faons fort différentes que connaissent leurs lecteurs.

Mais peu d'entre eux ont une idée de l'événement qu'a constitué l'apparition des premières ontologies. Les historiens de la philosophie eux-mêmes y ont prêté peu d'attention parce que les acteurs de cette apparition étaient de petits représentants de la Scolastique tardive qui ont consacré à cette discipline des manuels à l'usage de leurs élèves. Pourtant l'apparition et la multiplication de ces manuels est une étape de l'histoire de la métaphysique qui présente de l'intérêt pas seulement pour les érudits, mais pour tous ceux qui sont soucieux d'obtenir une vue d'ensemble complète des idées en ce domaine. Et c'est ce que nous nous proposons de montrer." (p. 95 notes omises)

20. ———. 2001. "Des rapports de la métaphysique de Wolff avec celle des Scholastiques." In Autour de la philosophie Wolffienne. Textes de Hans Werner Arndt, Sonia Carboncini-Gavanelli, Jean École, edited by École, Jean, 55-69. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

"En faisant de l'ontologie une discipline séparée de la théologie naturelle et qui joue le rôle d'introduction générale aux autres parties de la métaphysique, ainsi qu'aux autres disciplines philosophiques en tant qu'elle affine les notions et établit les principes nécessaires à l'ensemble du savoir d'une part, et d'autre part se présente comme une théorie générale de l'être, Wolff se situe indéniablement dans la lignée des petits Scolastiques qui, dés la fin du XVIème siècle, pendant tout le XVIIème et encore au XVIIIème, ont envahi le devant de la scène philosophique, et qui firent tant et si bien qu'à leur époque elle avait définitivement acquis droit de cité.

Mais, alors que ces auteurs n'avaient publié que des manuels souvent réduits à l'état de lexiques philosophiques, en se bornant à disserter de faon abstraite sur l'essence et les propriétés de l'être, ainsi qu'il le déplore - et c'est ce qui explique son rejet par Descartes et l'appel de Leibniz, déjà évoqué, à l'améliorer, -- Wolff, pour sa part, a fait de sa Philosophia prima sive Ontologia, un grand traité beaucoup plus élaboré et beaucoup plus complet. En appelant cette discipline «Ontologia seu Philosophia prima», il suit certains de ces auteurs comme Jean-Baptiste du Hamel qui expliquait, comme il le fait, qu'elle est appelée «Ontologia» en tant qu'elle contient une théorie générale de l'être, et «Philosophia prima» en tant qu'elle définit les notions et établit les principes en usage dans le raisonnement.

Tout donne à penser que c'est aussi de Jean-Baptiste du Hamel qu'il s'inspire en ouvrant son traité sur l'étude des premiers principes, même s'il est vrai qu'aux deux seuls retenus par celui-ci: le principe de contradiction et celui du tiers exclu, il ajoute le principe de raison suffisante.

II ne fait pas de doute non plus qu'il a repris des Scolastiques les divisions de la cause efficiente en: principale et instrumentale, prochaine et éloignée, immédiate et médiate, et celles de la cause finale en: principale et secondaire, prochaine et éloignée, déjà effectuées en totalité par Thomas d'Aquin, en partie par Suarez.

Quant à la distinction entre les signes naturels et artificiels, primitifs et dérivatifs, elle avait déjà été proposée par Thomas d'Aquin entre autres, et Clauberg en avait retenu le premier couple." (p. 63 notes omises)

21. ———. 2007. "Remerciement. "Le professeur du genre humain". Discours sur le Métaphysique de Wolff." In Wolffiana II. Christian Wolff und die europäische Aufklärung. Teil 1, edited by Stolzenberg, Jürgen and Rudolph, Oliver-Pierre, 27-37. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Akten des 1. Internationalen Christian-Wolff-Kongresses, Halle (Saale), 4-8 April 2004.

"... je voudrais ajouter quelques mots sur Wolff lui-même que des Français , -- dont il parle dans une de ses lettres (2) au Comte Ernst von Manteuffel son protecteur, sans malheureusement préciser de qui il s'agit --, ont dénommé le "Professeur du genre humain", appellation que Heinrich Wuttke dans l'introduction à son édition de la Christian Wolffs eigene Lebensbeschreibung, (3) a latinisé en le qualifiant de "Professor universi generis humani".

"Professeur du genre humain", Wolff pourrait être appelé aussi "Docteur universel", non seulement en raison de son rayonnement extraordinaire dans tout l'Europe du XVIIIème siècle et de l'intérêt qu'il suscite encore aujourd'hui un peu partout dans le monde, comme le révèle ce congrès, mais aussi parce qu'il est le type même de l'esprit encyclopédique qui a en fait, traité "de omni re scibile" ou presque à son époque, qu'il s'agisse -- et ce ne sont là que quelques-uns des domaines du savoir qu'il a investis --, qu'il s'agisse des mathématiques proprement dites, de l'astronomie, de la mécanique, de la physique, de le physiologie, de la médicine, du droit, de la politique, de la théologie surnaturelle, de l'exégèse et de toutes les parties de la philosophie: logique, métaphysique et morale.

Or pour ce qui est de ces dernières, si l'on a unanimement reconnu qu'il fut un grand professeur, très grand même, on lui a la plupart du temps refusé le titre de grand philosophe. Sans doute ne peut-il être mis sur le même pied que Leibniz, Descartes, Spinoza par exemple. Mais, pour ne retenir que le domain métaphysique, force est de reconnaître qu'il a fait preuve d'ingéniosité et d'innovation dans chacune de ses parties, comme on peut le montrer facilement à l'aide de quelques exemples.

Tout d'abord, c'est à lui, que nous devons leur nombre et leur répartition toujours admise de nos jours: l'Ontologie, la Cosmologie générale, la Psychologie et la Théologie naturelle, et nul avant lui n'avait systématisé avec autant de rigueur l'enseignement de chacune d'elles et l'ordre de succession qui les unit: l'Ontologie servant de propédeutique à toutes les autres en leur fournissant les principes et les notions directrices dont s'édifier, la Cosmologie servant de base, entre autres, à la preuve a posteriori de l'existence de Dieu avec la démonstration de la contingence du monde. et la Psychologie à l'analyse de ses attributs à partir de celle de nos facultés, l'une et l'autre dans la Théologie naturelle.

Son Ontologie apparaît comme la réalisation du vœu formulé par Leibniz (4) de voir cette discipline réformée, améliorée, tant elle tranche par son ampleur et la profondeur de ses analyses avec les manuels des petits Scolastiques du XVIIIème siècle qui l'ont séparée de la Théologie naturelle à laquelle elle était étroitement liée jusqu'à eux (5) et qui se contentaient le plus souvent d'y donner des définitions en leur ajoutant des notations rapides. Sans doute se situe-t-il dans la lignée de Suarez en y proposant une conception de l'être accordant à l'essence la primauté par rapport à l'existence: mais, en faisant de celle-ci ce qui, dans les êtres contingents, s'ajoute à l'essence pour la faire passer de l'état de possibilité à celui d'actualité, (6) il en vient à poser entre l'une et l'autre, chez ceux-ci, une distinction réelle, alors que Suarez, en les concevant comme les deux éléments constitutifs de ce qu'il appelle l 'essentia realis, (7) ne reconnaissait entre elles qu'une distinction de raison. Il y différencie aussi beaucoup mieux que Leibniz le principe de raison suffisante de celui de causalité en expliquant que la cause est ce dont dépend l'existence d'une chose, son source directe; la raison suffisante, ce qui permet de comprendre pourquoi cette chose existe (8) et, pour éclairer ceci, il allègue l'exemple des êtres contingents qui ont leur cause dans leur série en tant qu'ils sont déterminés par ceux qui les précèdent, mais dont on ne peut rendre pleinement compte qu'en les rattachant à un être nécessaire extérieur à cette série, qui en est la raison suffisante. (9) Son traité d'Ontologie se singularise encore par l'introduction, en tête de son explication des propriétés des êtres composés, d'un chapitre sur la nature de l'étendue, de l'espace, du lieu, de la position, du temps et du mouvement, (10) d'ordinaire rattaché à la Philosophie de la nature, et cette introduction est d'autant bien venue qu'Il est impossible de comprendre l'être composé sans faire appel à ces notions." (pp. 29-30)

(2) Cité par Wuttke dans son introduction à la Wolffs eigene Lebensbeschreibung In: Wolff, Bibliographie, note 1 p. 72 [Leipzig: Weidmann 1841; reprint Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1982]

(3) Ibid., note 1, p. 72

(4) De Philosophiae primae emendatione et notione substantiae (GER., Phil., IV, p. 468).

(5) Cf. mon étude: Une étape de l'histoire de la métaphysique: l'apparition de l'Ontologie comme discipline séparée, 2001, p. 85-116.

(6) Wolff, Ontologia, § 132-178, p. 113-147.

(7) Disp. 2, sect. 4, § 7, Disp. 31, sect. 1, § 12-13.

(8) Wolff, Ontologia, § 56, p. 39, § 881, p. 622.

(9) Ibid., § 321-324, p. 252-257.

(10) Ibid., Pars II, Caput 2, p. 425-477.

Essais en traduction Allemande

1. ———. 1998. "War Christian Wolff ein Leibnitianer?" Aufklärung no. 10:29-46.

Version originale: Wolff était-il leibnizien? dans: Nouvelles études et nouveaux documents photographiques sur Wolff, pp. 131-151.

2. ———. 2001. "Christian Wolffs Metaphysik und die Scholastik." In Vernunftkritik und Aufklärung. Studien zur Philosophie Kants und seines Jahrhunderts: Norbert Hinske zum siebzigsten Geburtstag, edited by Pozzo, Riccardo, Oberhausen, Michael and Delfosse, Heinrich, 115-128. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog.

Version originale: Des rapports de la métaphysique de Wolff avec celle des Scholastiques dans Autour de la philosophie wolffienne, pp. 55-69.

Livres

1. École, Jean. 1957. La métaphysique de l'être dans la philosophie de Louis Lavelle. Paris: Éditions Nauwelaerts.

Thèse principale.

2. ———. 1959. La métaphysique de l'être dans le philosophie de Maurice Blondel. Paris: Éditions Nauwelaerts.

Thèse complémentaire.

3. ———. 1985. Introduction à l'Opus Metaphysicum de Christian Wolff. Paris: Vrin.

Recueil d'articles.

Table des matières:

La Philosophia prima sive Ontologia de Christian Wolff 8

Un essai d'explication rationnelle du monde ou la Cosmologia generalis de Christian Wolff 20

Des rapports de l'expérience et de la raison dans l'analyse de l'âme ou la Psychologia empirica de Christian Wolff 49

De la nature de l'âme, de la déduction de ses facultés, de ses rapports avec le corps, ou la Psychologia rationalis de Christian Wolff 79

De la démonstration a posteriori de l'existence et des attributs de Dieu ou la Theologia naturalis, Pars I de Christian Wolff 113

De la démonstration a priori de l'existence et des attributs de Dieu, et des erreurs su Dieu ou la Theologia naturalis, Pars II de Christian Wolff 163

Les Opuscula metaphysica de Christian Wolff 223-252.

4. ———. 1985. Index auctorum et locorum Scripturae Sacrae ad quos Wolffius in opere metaphysico et logico remittit. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Avec une préface de Yvon Belaval; 213 pages.

5. ———. 1988. Êtudes et documents photographiques sur Wolff. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Recueil d'articles.

Table des matières:

Première Partie - Etudes wolffiennes

I. En guise d'introduction

Wolffius redivivus 5

II. De la philosophie en général

La conception wolffienne de la philosophie d'après le Discursus praeliminaris de philosophia in genere 27

De la notion de philosophie expérimentale selon Wolff 53

III. Logique, méthodologie et philosophie de la connaissance

Logique formelle et logique de la vérité dans la Philosophia rationalis sive Logica de Christian Wolff 65

De quelques difficultés à propos des notions d'a posteriori et d'a priori chez Wolff 132

En quels sens peut-on dire que Wolff est rationaliste? 144

De la méthode universelle selon Christian Wolff 161

IV. Métaphysique et histoire de la philosophie

Cosmologie wolffienne et dynamique leibnizienne 177

Les preuves wolffiennes de l'existence de Dieu 184

La critique wolffienne du Spinozisme 200

V. Varia

A propos du projet de Wolff d'écrire une "Philosophie des Dames" 217

Les rapports de la raison et de la foi selon Christian Wolff 229

Documents photographiques sur Wolff 240.

6. ———. 1990. La métaphysique de Christian Wolff. Hildeshein: Georg Olms.

Deux volumes: 1. Texte; 2: Notes.

Table des matières:

Avant-propos 7

Première Partie: Préliminaires sur la vie et l'oeuvre de Wolff, sa personnalité, sa conception d'ensemble de la métaphysique, la controverse autour de celle-ci 13

Chapitre I. Christian Wolff. La vie, l'oeuvre et l'homme 15

Chapitre II. La place de la métaphysique dans la philosophie de Wolff 51

Chapitre III. La controverse autour de la métaphysique wolffienne 81

Deuxième Partie: La théorie de la connaissance 93

Chapitre I. Jalons pour la théorie de la connaissance 95

Chapitre II. La connaissance sensible 103

Chapitre III. La connaissance intellectuelle 113

Chapitre IV. Récapitulations et compléments 135

Troisième Partie: La théorie de l'être in général 139

Chapitre I. Théorie de l'être in général et ontologie 141

Chapitre II. Les principes de l'être et de sa connaissance 143

Chapitre III. La notion d'être 155

Chapitre IV. les affections de l'être 167

Chapitre V. Les différents espèces d'être 191

Chapitre VI. Les rapports des êtres 209

Chapitre VII. Des rapports de Wolff aves ses prédécesseurs dans la théorie de l'être 219

Quatrième Partie. La théorie du monde en général 221

Chapitre I. Théorie du monde en général et cosmologie générale 223

Chapitre II. Le nexus verum et l'essence du monde 225

Chapitre III. Les composants du monde 235

Chapitre IV. Le monde et la nature. Le surnaturel et le miracle 247

Chapitre V. La Cosmologie générale. Ses caractéristiques: sa place dans l'ensemble de la métaphysique 257

Cinquième Partie. La théorie de l'âme 261

Chapitre I. Théorie de l'âme, psychologie empirique et psychologie rationnelle 263

Chapitre II. Les points de départ de la théorie de l'âme 265

Chapitre III. L'essence et la nature de l'âme 279

Chapitre IV. L'explication a priori des facultés de l'âme 285

Chapitre V. Les systèmes d'explication des rapports de l'âme et du corps 299

Chapitre VI. Spiritualité, origine et immortalité de l'âme humaine. de l'âme des bêtes 317

Chapitre VII. La théorie de l'âme, ses sources et son originalité 325

Sixième Partie. La théorie de Dieu 327

Chapitre I. Théorie de Dieu et théologie naturelle 329

Chapitre II. Les preuves de l'existence de Dieu 335

Chapitre III. Première approche vers la détermination des attributs divins 349

Chapitre IV. L'entendement divin 355

Chapitre V. La volonté de Dieu et sa toute-puissance 369

Chapitre VI. La sagesse et la bonté de Dieu 383

Chapitre VII. La création, la conservation, le concours et le gouvernement divins, la Providence 391

Chapitre VIII. Les autres attributs de Dieu et son essencb4 03

Chapitre IX. Tradition et nouveauté dans la théorie de dieu. Son apport et ses limites 417

Conclusions 421-428.

7. ———. 1994. Métaphysique de l'ëtre, doctrine de la connaissance et philosophie de la religion chez Louis Lavelle. Genova: L'Arcipelago.

Recueil d'articles.

8. ———. 1997. Nouvelles études et nouveaux documents photographiques sur Wolff. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Table des matières:

Avertissement 7

Première partie: Études wolfiennes

I. Coup d'oeil d'ensemble sur la métaphysique

Des différentes parties de la métaphysique selon Christian Wolff 15

Les pièces les plus originales de la métaphysique de Christian Wolff (1679-1754), le "Professeur du genre humain" 23

La doctrine wolffienne de la nécessité et son enracinement dans la tradition 35 (Inédit: Conférence donnée au Colloque Tradition et émancipation, Vianden, Luxembourg, 30 juin - 3 juillet 1991)

II. Métaphysique de la connaissance

Du rôle de l'entendement intuitif dans la conception wolffienne de la connaissance 55

De la nature de la raison, de ses rapports avec l'expérience et la foi selon Christian Wolff 67

III. Métaphysique de l'être

Contribution à l'histoire des premiers principes. Exposé de la doctrine wolffienne 83

La notion d'être selon Wolff ou la "désexistentialisation de l'essence" 98

La définition de l'existence comme le complément de la possibilité et les rapports de l'essence et de l'existence selon Christian Wolff 115

IV: Histoire de la philosophie

Wolff étail-il leibnizien? 131 (Conférence donnèe aux Universités de Nice, Mannheim et Siegen).

De la connaissance qu'avait Kant de la métaphysique wolffienne, ou Kant avait-il lu les ouvrages métaphysiques de Wolff? 152

V. Varia

Note sur la définition wolffienne de la philosophie 171

La critique wolffienne des systèmes d'explication des rapports de l'âme et du corps 175

Wolff et la Bible 194

Deuxième partie. Documents photographiques sur Wolff 214-231.

"Des treize études que nous avons réunies dans ce volume onze ont déjà paru dans des revues ou des actes des congrès, deux sont inédits. (...) Tous ces études ont été réprises telles qu'elles ont été publiées ou prononcées. D'où quelques inévitables rédites que nous prions le lecteurs d'excuser." ( Avertissement, pp. 9-10).

9. ———. 1997. Louis Lavelle et le renouveau de la métaphysique de l'ëtre au XXe siècle. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

10. ———, ed. 2001. Autour de la philosophie Wolffienne. Textes de Hans Werner Arndt, Sonia Carboncini-Gavanelli, Jean École. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Table des matières:

Avant-propos de Jean École 9

Hans Werner Arndt

Rationalismus und Empirismus in der Erkenntnislehre Christian Wolffs (1983) 11

Zum Wahrheitsanspruch der Nominaldefinition in der Erkenntnistheorie und Metaphysik Christian Wolffs (1995) 28

Die Hermeneutk des 18. Jahrhunderts im Verhältnis zur Sprach- und Erkenntnistheorie des Klassischen Rationalismus (1994) 41

Jean École

Des rapports de la métaphysique de Wolff avec celle de Scolastiques 55

Sonia Carboncini-Gavanelli

L'ontologia di Christian Wolff tra Scolastica e Cartesianesimo (1989) 70

Jean École

Une étape de l'histoire de la métaphysique: l'apparition de l'Ontologie comme discipline séparée 95

La place de la Metaphysica de ente, quae rectius Ontosophia dans l'histoire de l'Ontologie et sa réception chez Christian Wolf 117

Contribution à l'histoire des propriétés transcendentales de l'être 131

Hans Werner Arndt

Zu Begriff und Funktion der "moralischen Erfahrung" in Christian Wolffs Ethik (2001) 159

Jean École

Christian Wolff était-il un Aufklärer? 172

Sonia Carboncini-Gavanelli

Christian Wolff in Frankreich. Zum Verhältnis von französischer und deutscher Aufklärung (1993) 186

L'Éncyclopédie et Christian Wolff. A propos de quelques articles anonymes (1987) 201

Hans Werner Arndt

Die Logik von Reimarus im Verhältnis zum Rationalismus der Auklärungsphilosophie (1980) 217

Erste Angriffe der Thomasiener auf Wolff (1989) 233

Sonia Carboncini-Gavanelli

Die thomasianisch-pietistiche Tradition und ihre Fortsetzung durch Christian August Crusius (1989) 245

Christian August Crusius und die Leibniz-Wolffsche Philosophie (1986) 263

Der Briefwechsel zwischen Leibniz und Christian Wolff (1988) 279

Hans Werner Arndt

Philosophische Systematik im Anschluss an Leibniz (1995) 287

Christian Wolffs Stellung zur "Ars characteristica combinatoria" (1965) 299.

Avant-propos de Jean École: "J'ai déjà publié dans cette méme série des Gesammelte Werke de Christian Wolff deux recueils (a) de mes études sur sa pensée. A la composition de celui-ci se sont associés Hans Werner Arndt et Sonia Carboncini-Gavanelli, bien connus par leurs savants travaux sur cet auteur. D'où la plus grande richesse de ce troisième volume en raison des intéréts différents de nous trois pour telle ou telle partie de la philosophie wolffienne.Y sont envisagés tour à tour: la théorie de la connaissance (Arndt), la métaphysique et plus spécialement l'ontologie (Carboncini-Gavanelli, École), la morale expérimentale (Arndt), les rapports de Wolff avec les Scolastiques (Carboncini-Gavanelli, École), et Leíbniz (Arndt, Carboncini-Gavanelli), les réactions de Reimarus (Arndt), Crusius (Carboncini-Gavanelli), et des Piétistes, notamment Thomasius (Arndt, Carboncini-Gavanelli), à ses positions logiques pour ce qui est du premier, métaphysiques en ce qui concerne les autres.Toutes ces études (19 en tout, dont 8 de Hans Werner Arndt, 6 de Sonia Carboncini-Gavanelli, et 5 de moi) ne portent pas exclusivement sur Wolff, mais s'y rapportent en tant qu'elles tendent à le situer dans l' histoire des idées; ce qui explique le titre retenu pour ce recueil: Autour de la philosophie wolfienne.A l'exception de trois d'entre eux, ces textes ont paru dans des revues, des volumes d'hommage ou des actes de congrès indiqués dans la Table des matières. Le premier: Zu Begriff und Funktion der 'moralischen Erfahrung' in Christian Wolffs Ethik de Hans Werner Arndt n'est cependant inédit que quant à la langue, car une traduction italienne en a été publiée sous le titre: Concetto e funzione dell' 'Esperienza morale' nell'Etica di Christian Wolff. (b) Il en est de même du deuxième: Des rapports de la métaphysique de Wolff avec celle des Scolastiques, qui faut partie des miens et a été traduit en allemand sous ce titre: Christian Wolffs Metaphysik und die Scolastik (c). Quant au troisième: Une étape de l'histoire de la métaphysique: l'apparition de l'ontologie comme discipline séparée, il n'est inédit qu'en partie du fait qu'it est une contraction et une synthèse de deux autres de mes écrits: La place de la Metaphysica de ente quae rectius Ontosophia dans l'histoire de l'Ontologie et sa réception chez Wolff, et: Contribution à l'histoire des propriétés transcendentales de l'étre. Malgré les répétitions que cela occasionne, j'ai cru bon de ne pas l'éliminer, parce que seul il donne une vue complète de l'état de cette discipline à ses origines et jusq'à Wolff."

a) Études et documents photographiques sur Wolff, 1988. - Nouvelles études et nuoveau documents photographiques sur Wolff, 1997.

b) In: La Filosofia Pratica tra Metafisica e Antropologia nell'era di Wolff e Vico, Studi Vichiani vol. 29, ed. G. Cacciatore, V. Gessa-Kurotschka, H. Poser, M. Senna, p. 269-294.

c) In: Vernunftkrink und Aufklärung. Studien zur Philosophie Kants und seines Jahrhunderts, herausgegeben von Michael Oberhausen unter Mitwirkung von Heinwich P Delfosse und Riccardo Pozzo, 2001 Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Fromann-Holzboog, p. 115-128.

11. ———. 2003. Les grandes notions de la métaphysique lavellienne et son vocabulaire. Genova: L'Arcipelago.

12. ———. 2004. Louis Lavelle et l'histoire des idées. Index des auteurs auxquels il se réfère. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography of Joseph S. Freedman on Philosophy in Central Europe (1500-1700): First Part

Books

1. Freedman, Joseph S. 1984. Deutsche Schulphilosophie im Reformationszeitalter (1500-1650). Ein Handbuch für den Hochschulunterricht. Münster: MAKS Publikationen.

148 pages. Second edition revised edition (1985), 171 pages.

"This short textbook was published in connection with my seminars on the Reformation Era and Central European schools and universities during the 16th and early 17th centuries."

Inhalt: Abbildungen 7; Verzeichnis der Abbildungen 15; Vorwort der Herausgeber 17; Vorwort - Technischer Hinweis 19; Kapitel 1. Einleitung, zugleich ein Schlußwort 21; Kapitel 2. Der historische Hintergrund 27; Kapitel 3. Schulen und Universitäten im Reformations Zeitalter: Organisation, Studiengang und Lehrstoff 31; Kapitel 4. Der philosophische Lehrbetrieb und philosophische Unterrichtsmethoden 47; Kapitel 5. Die berufliche Laufbahn des Schulphilosophen 55; Kapitel 6. Die philosophischen Fächer: Einige Einteilungen 59; Kapitel 7. Theoretische Philosophie: Metaphysik, Physik und Mathematik 67; Kapitel 8. Praktische Philosophie: Ethik, Oeconomia und Politik 81; Kapitel 9. Philologie: Logik, Rhetorik und Grammatik 97; Kapitel 10. Theologie als Gegenstand der Schulphilosophie 107; Kapitel 11. Die verschiedenen Richtungen der Philosophie (Sectae Philosophorum) 115; Kapitel 12. Die Schulphilosophie im Reformationszeitalter: Quellen und Ausstrahlungen 121; Zeichen und Abkürzungen 130; Auswahlbibliographie 131-148.

2. ———. 1988. European Academic Philosophy in the Late Sixteenth and early Seventeenth centuries. The life, significance, and philosophy of Clemens Timpler (1563/4-1624). Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Table of Contents:

Volume 1.

Foreword I; Preface V-XIX; Chapter 1: Introduction 1; Chapter 2-6: The Life of Clemens Timpler.

Chapter 2: Timpler's Childhood, Education, and Early Activity as a Private Teacher (1563/4-1592) 7

Chapter 3: Timpler at Heidelberg (1592-1595) 24

Chapter 4: Timpler as Professor at the Gymnasium Illustre Arnoldinum in Steinfurt/Westphalia (1595-1624) 34

Chapter 5: The Steinfurt Gymnasium Illustre Arnoldinum From its Beginnings in 1588 Until the Pillaging of the School in 1635 46

Chapter 6: Timpler's Personality and Religious Views 66

Chapter 7-9: Timpler's Historical Significance.

Chapter 7: Timpler' s Importance Within Seventeenth Century Europe 86

Chapter 8: Authorities Cited Within Timpler's Writings 125

Chapter 9: Timpler, Aristotle, and "Aristotelianism": Timpler' s Philosophy as School Curriculum 162

Chapter 10-20: Timpler's Philosophy.

Chapter 10: A. The Organization of Timpler's Individual Philosophical Writings. B. Timpler's Short Treatise on the Liberal Arts (Technologia). C. The Interrelatedness of Academic Disciplines Within Timpler's Thought: Mathematics and Theology Within Timpler's Writings 187

Chapter 11: Metaphysics 210; Chapter 12: Physics 249; Chapter 13: Logic 278; Chapter 14: Rhetoric 307; Chapter 15: Ethics 326; Chapter 16: Family Life 351; Chapter 17: Politics 363; Chapter 18: Timpler's Practical Philosophy: Some Conclusions 387; Chapter 19: Optics 403; Chapter 20: Signs and Human Physiognomy 412; Chapter 21: Conclusions 427

Volume 2.

Annotated Table of Contents to the Text of Chapters 1-21 b-n

Footnotes to the Preface XX

Footnotes to chapter 1-21 451

Bibliography 737; Contents listed : 737; Part I: Clemens Timpler 738; Part II: General Bibliography 771; Notes to the Bibliography 843; List of Illustrations XXII ; Illustrations XXV; Index of Persons and Places.

"This monograph is a substantially revised version of my Ph.D. dissertation, which was defended at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on September 16, 1982; it bore the title, "The Life, Significance, and Philosophy of Clemens Timpler (1563/4-1624)." It was written and researched while residing in the Federal Republic of Germany for the ten years previous to its completion. In its present revised form, chapter 11, 12, 17, and 20 of the dissertation have been completely rewritten. Chapters 7 and 18 have been rewritten in part. Minor alterations and corrections have been undertaken in all of the remaining chapters. The bibliography has been expanded in order to include the multitude of additional seventeenth century works discussed in chapter 7 as well as to list relevance secondary literature which has appeared since 1982.

(...)

Clemens Timpler (1563/4-1624) has been chosen as the subject matter of this study principally because the quality of his philosophical writings stands out very noticeably in comparison to that of works written by other late sixteenth and early seventeenth century academic philosophers. Indeed, it could be argued that he was one of the most talented philosophers active in Europe between 1550 and 1650. However, he was less influential than some of his contemporaries (e.g., his own disciple Bartholomaeus Keckermann); one explanation for this shall be ventured in chapter 7 section 16 of this monograph.

Clemens Timpler not only exemplifies the highest standards of late sixteenth and early seventeenth century European academic philosophy, but his works also provide an excellent survey of its scope and content. Timpler published textbooks on metaphysics, physics, logic, rhetoric, ethics, family life (oeconomica), politics, optics, and human physiognomy presented well systematized and very detailed presentations of the major philosophical disciplines studied in his day (barring mathematics and grammar). Therefore, the examination of Timpler's philosophy also serves as a very useful vehicle to gain a general understanding of the parameters of and topics discussed within late sixteenth and early seventeenth century European philosophy considered as a whole. For this reason, the specialized as well as the general scope of this monograph is reflected in its title." (From the Foreword)

Six reviews of this monograph (in French, German, and Italian) have appeared.

3. ———. 1999. Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500-1700. Teaching and Texts at Schools and Universities. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Variorum Collected Studies Series.

"This is a collection of seven of my published articles and an introductory article titled “The Study of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Writings on Academic Philosophy: Some Methodological Considerations.” (pp. 1-40)."

Contents: Preface VII-VIII; Introduction. The Study of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth- Century Writings on Academic Philosophy: Some Methodological Considerations 1-40 (First Publication); II. Philosophy Instruction within the Institutional Framework of Central European Schools and Universities during the Reformation Era 117-166 (1985); III. Cicero in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth- Century Rhetoric Instruction 227-254 (1986); IV. The Diffusion of the Writings of Petrus Ramus in Central Europe, c. 1570-c. 1630 98-152 (1993); V. Aristotle and the Content of Philosophy Instruction at Central European Schools and Universities during the Reformation Era (1500-1650) 213-253 (1993) VI. Encylopedic Philosophical Writings in Central Europe during the High and Late Renaissance (ca. 1500-ca. 1700) 212-256 (1994); VII. Classifications of Philosophy, the Sciences, and the Arts in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe 37-65 (1994); VIII. The Career and Writings of Bartholomew Keckermann (d. 1609) 305-364 (1997); Index of Academic Institutions 1-3; Index of Authors and Persons (Pre-AD 1800) 1-10; Index of Concepts/Terms and People/Places 1-9.

4. Feingold, Mordechai, Freedman, Joseph S., and Rother, Wolfgang, eds. 2001. The Influence of Petrus Ramus. Studies in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Philosophy and Sciences. Basel: Schwabe.

Schwabe Philosophica 1.

Contents: Mordechai Feingold, Joseph S. Freedman, Wolfgang Rother: Preface, 7; Wolfgang Rother: Ramus and Ramism in Switzerland 9; Theo Verbeek: Notes on Ramism in the Netherlands 38; Thomas Elsmann: The Influence of Ramism on the Academies of Bremen and Danzig: A Comparison 54; Joseph S. Freedman: Melanchthon’s Opinion of Ramus and the Utilization of Their Writings in Central Europe 68; Riccardo Pozzo: Ramus’ Metaphysics and its Criticism by the Helmstedt Aristotelians 92; Erland Sellberg: The Usefulness of Ramism 107; Mordechai Feingold: English Ramism: A Reinterpretation 127; Elizabethanne Boran: Ramism in Trinity College, Dublin in the Early Seventeenth Century 177; Kees Meerhoff, “Beauty and the Beast”: Nature, Logic and Literature in Ramus 200; Guido Oldrini, The Influence of Ramus’ Method on Historiography and Jurisprudence 215; Ian Maclean: Logical Division and Visual Dichotomies: Ramus in the Context of Legal and Medical Writing 228; Nicholas Jardine and Alain Segonds: A Challenge to the Reader: Ramus on Astrologia without Hypotheses 248; Index of Names 267-285.

5. Freedman, Joseph S., Strohm, Christoph, and Selderhuis, Herman J., eds. 2006. Späthumanismus und reformierte Konfession. Theologie, Jurisprudenz und Philosophie in Heidelberg an der Wende zum 17. Jahrundert. Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck.

Spätmittelalter und Reformation. Band 31.

Inhaltsübersicht: Eike Wolgast: Geistiges Profil und politische Ziele des Heidelberger Späthumanismus; Cornel A. Zwierlein: Heidelberg und "der Westen" um 1600; Joseph S. Freedman: The Influence of Petrus Ramus in Heidelberg from 1572 through the Early Seventeenth Century; Don R. Sinnema: Johann Jungnitz on the Use of Aristotelian Logic in Theology; Günter Frank: Ethik bei Viktorin Strigel und Abraham Scultetus; Kees Meerhoff: Bartholomew Keckermann and the Anti-Ramist Tradition at Heidelberg;

Willem van 't Spijker: Heidelberger Gutachten in Sachen Vorstius; Herman J. Selderhuis: Das Recht Gottes. Der Beitrag der Heidelberger Theologen zu der Debatte über die Prädestination; Theodor Mahlmann: Die Prädestinationslehre Georg Sohns (1551-1589) juristisch gelesen; Detlef Döring: Samuel Pufendorf und die Heidelberger Universität in der Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts; Christoph Strohm: Weltanschaulich-konfessionelle Aspekte im Werk Heidelberger Juristen.

6. Lorenz, Sönke, Köpf, Ulrich, Freedman, Joseph S., and Bauer, Dieter R, eds. 2012. Die Universität Tübingen zwischen Scholastik und Humanismus. Ostfildern: Thorbecke.

Tübinger Bausteine zur Landesgeschichte, 20.

Inhalt: Sönke Lorenz, Ulrich Köpf, Joseph S. Freedman, Dieter R. Bauer: Vorwort 9; Sönke Lorenz: Scholastik und Humanismus. Zur Genese der Fachprofessur an der Tübinger Artistenfakultät (1477-1568): Eine Einfuhrung 11; Reinhold Rieger: Konrad Summenharts »Physikkommentar« 95; Stefan Kötz: Geldtheorie an der Universität Tübingen um 1500: Die Traktate De potestate et utilitate monetarum des Gabriel Biel (nach 1488/89) und des Johannes Adler gen. Aquila (1516) 117; Stephen G. Burnett: Christian Hebraism at the University of Tübingen from Reuchlin to Schickard 161; Oliver Haller: Die Auswirkungen der Reformation auf Lehre und Wissenschaft an der Tübinger Juristenfäkultät 173; Ulrich Köpf: Die Anfänge einer evangelischen Dogmatik in Tübingen: Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Wirkungsgeschichte der theologischen Loci Philipp Melanchthons 191; Günter Frank: Der Gegenstand der Metaphysik: Jakob Schegks Begründung der Einheit und Allgemeinheit der Metaphysik 221; Walter Redmond: Aristoteles und Scholastik: Die Logik bei Jacob Schegk 237; Joseph S. Freedman: Georg Liebler’s Textbook on Physics (1561) in the Context of His Academic Career 251; Marco Toste: The teaching of Moral Philosophy in Sixteenth-Century Protestant Universities and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: The Case of Tübingen 299; Joachim Kremer: Musik an der Universität Tübingen um 1600: Reichard Mangons wieder aufgefundene Gratulatio ad Pulchieriam Augustam im bildungsgeschichtlichen Kontext 337; Silke Schöttle, Gerd Brinkhus: ... ein Schatz der nit allweg zubekhommen: Überlegungen zur Rekonstruktion der Bibliothek des Ludwig Gremp von Freudenstein 389; Stefan Kötz, unter Mitarbeit von Miriam Eberlein: Die Matrikel der Medizinischen Fakultät der Universität Tübingen von der Reformation bis zum Ende des Dreißigjährigen Kriegs (1539-1646) 403; Personen- und Ortsindex 491.

7. Freedman, Joseph S., ed. 2016. Die Zeit um 1670: Eine Wende in der europäischen Geschichte und Kultur? Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Essays

1. Freedman, Joseph S. 1984. "16th and 17th Century Classifications of Philosophical Disciplines: Leibniz and some of his predecessors." In Leibniz, Werk und Wirkung. IV. Internationaler Leibniz Kongress. Vortrage , 193-202. Hannover: Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz Gesellschaft.

"A very large yet currently undetermined number of 16th and 17th century philosophers presented classifications of what they conceived to be the various philosophical disciplines.(1) Leibniz also presented a number of such classifications; Leibniz's classifications show strong similarity with those devised by many of his 16th and 17th century predecessors." (p. 193)

(...)

"Leibniz's own attempts to classify philosophical disciplines span at least four decades. These classifications are scattered throughout his writings; it is quite possible that one or more such classifications remain undiscovered." (p. 196)

(...)

"Leibniz’s classifications (like those of his predecessors) assign a number of different names to philosophical disciplines. At various points Leibniz (a) refers to individual philosophical disciplines as sciences and arts without using the term philosophy itself, (b) includes the sciences within the category of philosophy, (c) includes philosophy within the realm of the sciences, (d) equates philosophy with the sciences while regarding the sciences as well as the arts as part of habitus, and (e) refers to philosophical disciplines simply as such.(33)

Leibniz apparently does not waver in excluding philology from the realm of philosophy. However, he sometimes separates logic from philology and in most cases he regards the former as part of philosophy.(34) Leibniz's classifications generally assign substantial importance to logic yet do so in very different ways.(35)

Like his predecessors, Leibniz lists a large number of disciplines which fall within theoretical philosophy and places relatively few disciplines within the realm of practical philosophy.(36) He usually mentions the discipline of metaphysics.(37) His individual classifications contain many disciplines which are placed within the domain of mathematics and/or physics. Ethics and/or politics are usually considered as part of practical philosophy.(38)

It might be argued that Leibniz's classifications introduce some previously unknown discipline(s) This may or may not be true; too little is known about 16th and 17th century European philosophy in order to adequately document this hypothesis at the present time. One or more of these disciplines may have been presented by some previous author(s).(40) Once a large quantity of these classifications originating in the medieval and early modern periods have been discovered, collected, analyzed, and compared it will be possible to place this aspect of Leibniz's thought within its proper historical perspective." (pp. 196-198)

(1) Classifications of philosophical disciplines are found within the writings of hundreds (and perhaps thousands) of 16th, 17th, and 18th century authors (i.e., both philosophers and non-philosophers). I am currently collecting these classifications for the purpose of an extensive study on this subject.

(33) a. Leibniz (1679); b. Leibniz (1676); c. Leibniz (before 1699); d. Leibniz (1667); e. Leibniz (1697); Leibniz (after 1696).

(34) See Leibniz (1667), Leibniz (before 1699), Leibniz (1697) and Leibniz (after 1696).

(35) See tables 3a-3e.

(36) For example, see Leibniz (1679), Leibniz (before 1699), and Leibniz (after 1696).

(37) See tables 3a, 3b, 3d, and 3e; metaphysics is not mentioned in Leibniz (1679) or in Leibniz (after 1696).

(38) Oeconomica is part of natural philosophy in Leibniz (before 1699); logic is part of practical philosophy in Leibniz (1676) and in Leibniz (after 1696).

(39) For example, Leibniz (1679) contains what might have been among the first mentions of the term geopolitica. ”Decima sexta est [Cosmopolitica] Geopolitica, nempe [Status Generis humani] de statu Telluris nostrae ad genus humanum relato, quae Historiam omnem et Geographiam civilem comprehendit.” Couturat, Opuscules inédits de Leibniz , p. 4o.

(40) Many of the medieval, 16th century, and 17th century authors mentioned within Leibniz’s own writings may have themselves given such classifications; most of these authors have been neglected for centuries.

References

1667: Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, ed., Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Philosophische Schriften , vols. 1- (Darmstadt: Otto Reichl/ Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1950- ), 1 (Darmstadt: 1930): 259-261, 274, 280-289; this classification has been simplified slightly in order to meet space requirements.

1676: Leibniz Philosophische Schriften, 3 (Berlin: 1980): 637.

1679: Couturat, Opuscules inedits de Leibniz , pp.30-41; this classification is presented here in slightly modified form.

after 1696: Louis Couturat, Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz (Paris: 1903; reprint ed., Hildesheim: 01ms, 1961), pp. 524-527.

1697: Ludovicus Dutens, Gothofredi Leibnitii Opera omnia in sex tomos distributa , 7 vols. (Genevae: Fratres de Tournes, 1768), 6: 246 ( 23, Sign.: Li 4860); this classification is dated 1/11 February 1697 and shall be referred to as Leibniz (1697).

before 1699: Joachimus Fridericus Fellerus, Otium Hanoveranum sive miscellanea ... Godofr. Guilielmi Leibnitii (Lipsiae: Joannes Christianus Martinus, 1718), pp. 125-138 ( 23, Sign.: Li 4862). Table 3d has been constructed on the basis of the two classifications (one being a synopsis of the other) given on pp.128-138 of this work. Joachim Friedrich Feller was Leibniz’s personal secretary; in 1698 Feller ceased to work for Leibniz yet kept many of the latter’s papers. See Kurt Müller and Gisela Krönert, eds., Leben und Werk von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1969)» pp.140, 148, 155. Therefore, this classification must have been devised by Leibniz before the year 1699 (assuming that Feller did not devise it himself or take it from the writings of some third person); it shall be referred to here as Leibniz (before 1699). Like Possevini (1593), Leibniz (before 1699) appears to have been conceived as a library classification system.

1593:Antonius Possevinus, Bibliotheca selects qua agitur de ratione studiorum (Romae: Ex typographia Apostolica Vaticana, 1593), 1st pagination, pp .63-64, 2nd pagination, p .61 ( la , Sign.: A 4778 ).

2. ———. 1985. "Philosophy Instruction within the Institutional Framework of Central European Schools and Universities during the Reformation Era." In History of Universities. Vol. 5 , 117-166. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Reprinted as Essay II in: Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500-1700 .

"In order to assess the place which philosophy instruction had within the organisational framework of schools and universities in Central Europe during the Reformation era (c.1500-1650), one should first briefly take a closer look at the concept of philosophy. This concept is very frequently discussed in philosophical encyclopedias, in textbooks on metaphysics, physics, mathematics, ethics, politics and logic, and in other kinds of works as well. Within the context of these discussions philosophy is usually divided into various disciplines. Three classifications of philosophical disciplines by Central European authors are presented in tables a , b, and c.

Detailed discussion of such classifications lies beyond the scope of this paper. Only the following points need concern us here. Physics, mathematics, ethics, family life (oeconomica ), and politics appear in virtually all of these classifications made during the 1500-1650 period. Metaphysics is occasionally omitted, especially in those classifications presented by some sixteenth-century Protestant philosophers. Family life is sometimes considered as a sub-category of politics. The seven liberal arts (i.e. grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy) are usually included within these classifications. Arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy normally fall within the realm of mathematics. Increasingly from about the year 1550 onwards some authors argue that philology (i.e. logic, rhetoric, grammar, and sometimes poetry and/or history) is not properly speaking a part of philosophy, but rather preparation for and an instrument of the same. This latter development -- as we shall see -- was reflected within the philosophy curriculum of Central European academic institutions during the Reformation era." p. 117

"Metaphysics played an important role in the philosophical curriculum of fifteenth-century Central European universities. By the 1520s, however, metaphysics instruction began to be removed from the curriculum.(97) This was especially true at Protestant universities (e.g. Basel, Leipzig, Rostock, Tubingen, and Wittenberg).(98) Yet at some Catholic universities -- e.g. Ingolstadt (1526), Vienna (1537), and Heidelberg (1551) -- metaphysics instruction was also absent. Beginning in the second half of the sixteenth century, metaphysics instruction was strongly emphasised at Jesuit academic institutions (e.g. the University of Dillingen) and at those universities where the Jesuits were able to influence or determine the philosophy curriculum (e.g. Cologne, Ingolstadt). At some Protestant universities metaphysics instruction slowly resurfaced in the course of the late sixteenth and early seventeeth centuries.(99) Sometimes subject matter taken from the discipline of metaphysics was taught as part of physics and/or ethics and/or logic instruction." (pp. 124-125)

(97) No easy explanation can be given for this development; this problem will be discussed in another article.

(98) Metaphysics was taught at the University of Leipzig through the year 1542 but not thereafter; see Leipzig (1502-1558), pp. 667-669.

(99) Max Wundt held to this opinion; see Max Wundt, Die deutsche Schulmetaphysik des 17. Jahrhunderts (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck, 1939), pp. 5, 12-13, 34-69. To date little evidence has been produced to the contrary. At the Altdorf Academy in 1586 and 1589 and at the University of Giessen in 1607 the professor of logic also taught metaphysics; by 1618 in Altdorf and by 1629 in Giessen there was a professor of logic and metaphysics. See Altdorf (1586), fol. B1 Altdorf (1589), fol. B1r; Altdorf (1618); table 1.

3. ———. 1985. "Classification and Definition within 16th and 17th Century Philosophy." In Studien zur Klassifikation, Systematik und Terminologie. Theorie und Praxis. Akten der 6. Jahrestagung des Münsteraner Arbeitskreises für Semiotik, Münster 25. und 26. September 1984 , edited by Dutz, Klaus D., 321-354. Münster: Institut für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft und MAkS Publikationen.

4. ———. 1986. "Cicero in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Rhetoric Instruction." Rhetorica no. 4 (3):227-254.

Reprinted as Essay III in: Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500-1700 .

"Any systematic attempt to investigate the role of Cicero within rhetoric instruction in 16th- and 17th-century Europe will uncover an overwhelming amount of relevant source material in printed and manuscript form extant in hundreds -- if not thousands -- of European archives and libraries. The assertion that Cicero was used within this rhetoric instruction amounts to little more than the statement of a self-evident fact. Less evident is how and why Cicero's writings were used to teach rhetoric during the period from 1500 to 1700. A variety of source materials will be examined here in order to arrive at tentative answers to these two questions." (p. 227)

(...)

"A thorough investigation of the use of Cicero's writings at European schools and universities during the 16th- and 17th-centuries will require work with printed and manuscript material pertaining to a substantial number of schools and universities within the various regions of Europe. (55) Printed and archival source materials pertaining to individual academic institutions must be located, collected, and carefully evaluated. These sources contain information concerning a wide variety of subject matters, including the use of Cicero's writings. On the basis of the facts presented in tables g through m the following two hypotheses can be ventured at this time. (56)

First, in school instruction Cicero's works on rhetoric were studied alongside with his works on other subject matters. At most schools rhetoric was taught in connection with other subjects, e.g., logic, grammar, history, ethics, and politics. (57) Cicero's works on subject matters other than rhetoric were often read in this connection. Interdisciplinary collections of commonplaces such as the Ciceronianus of Petrus Ramus could also be utilized. (58) At Jesuit schools Cicero's writings were used at all pre-philosophy levels of instruction; at Protestant schools they were normally used in the more advanced grades but not in elementary instruction. (59) At universities and within university-level instruction held at other academic institutions, however, Cicero's works generally were utilized within rhetoric instruction but only infrequently within other parts of the curriculum. (60)

Second, at 16th- and 17th-century schools and universities Cicero was usually not the only author read within the theoretical component of rhetoric instruction. Use was made there of writings by Aristotle, Cicero, Hermogenes, and Quintilian as well as of works by more "modem" rhetoricians such as George of Trebizond (1395-1472/3?), Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560), and Cyprianus Soarez (1524-1593). (61) At most academic institutions Cicero appears to have been read alongside many other authors within this theoretical instruction. Yet in most cases Cicero was the principal or only author used within the practical component of rhetoric instruction." (pp. 238-239)

(55) A large number of such academic institutions are discussed in Joseph S. Freedman, "Philosophy Instruction within the Institutional Framework of Central European Schools and Universities during the Reformation Era," History of Universities, 5 (1986), (forthcoming).

( 56) Tables h through m are based upon the following sources: h: Rudolf Kink, ed., Geschichte der kaiserlichen Universität zu Wien , vo1. 2: Statutenbuch der Universität (Wien: 1854; reprint ed., Frankfurt: Minerva, 1969), pp. 376-383; i: Leges Academiae Genevensis (Genevae: Oliva Roberti Stephani, (1559)), fol. Clr-C2r, C3v-C4v [Wolfenbüttel HAB: Pd 72); j: Verzameting van Stukken, die Betrekking hebben tot Overijsselsch Regt en Geschiedenis , Tweede Afdeeling, Zevende Stuk (Deventer: J. De Lange, 1872), pp. 77-83; k: Catalogus librorum ad quorum explicationem academici professores Collegii Mussi Pontani Societatis Iesu aggredientur ad festum S. Lucae anno domini 1605 (Prostant exemplaria apud Melchiorem Bemardum serenissimi Lotharingiae Ducis, & Universitatis typographum, 1605) (Dillingen/Donau, Studienbibliothek: XV y 13, fol. 244); 1: Hans Georg Gundel, ed.. Statuta Academiae Marpurgensis deinde Gissensis de anno 1629 (Marburg: Eiwert, 1982), pp. 103, 126-127, 139, 154-167, 213-217 (especially pp. 166, 213-216) [based on the original in Giessen UA: Hs 33b); Reinhold Vormbaum, ed., Die evangelischen Schulordnungen des siebenzehnten Jahrhunderts (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1863), pp. 375-383.

(57) For example, one rhetoric textbook by Melchior Junius presents systematically arranged lists of commonplaces taken from the disciplines of ethics, family life, politics, and history. See Melchior Junius, Methodus eloquentiae comparandae, scholis rhetoricis tradita (Argentinae: Per Lazarum Zetznerum, 1592), pp. 113-125 [Mainz StB: 1 / w / 859 (1)].

(58) Also see no. 2a in table c.

(59) An outline of instruction held at the Jesuit University of Dillingen (Danube) each year from 1564 until 1614 can be constructed on the basis of extant timetables. Works by Cicero were utilized at every level through the Rhetoric grade but at no level higher than that latter grade. See Catalogus lectionum, 1564-1614 [Dillingen/ Donau, Studienbibliothek: XV y 134, fol. 192-243].

(60) Occasionally Cicero's writings were also used to teach ethics at the university level; for example, see Rector et professores Academiae lenensis . . . lectiones theologicae . . . iuridicae . . . medicae . . . philosophicae (Ienae: 27 lunij 1564) [Wolfenbiittel HAB: 95.10 Quodl. 2° (245)].

(61) Concerning Trebizond see John Monfasani, George of Trebizond. A Biography and a Study of his Rhetoric and Logic (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976), pp. 4, 234. On Soarez see Lawrence Flynn S.J., "De arte rhetorica of Cyprian Soarez S.J.," Quarterly Journal of Speech 42 (1956), 367-74 and 43 (1957), 257-65.

5. ———. 1986. "Signs Within 16th and 17th Century Philosophy: The Case of Clemens Timpler (1563/64-1624)." In Geschichte und Geschichtsschreibung der Semiotik. Fallstudien. Akten der 8. Arbeitstagung des Münsteraner Arbeitskreises für Semiotik, Münster 2.-3.10.1985 , edited by Dutz, Klaus D. and Schmitter, Peter, 101-118. Münster: MAkS Publikationen.

6. ———. 1988. "Die Karriere und Bedeutung von Clemens Timpler (1563/4-1624)." In 400 Jahre Arnoldinum 1588-1988. Festschrift , 69-77. Greven: Eggenkamp.

7. ———. 1992. "Aristotelianism and Humanism in Late Reformation German Philosophy: The Case of Clemens Timpler, 1563/64-1624." In The Harvest of German Humanism: Papers in Honor of Lewis W. Spitz , edited by Fleischer, Manfred, 213-232. St. Louis: Concordia Press.

"Clemens Timpler (1563/64-1624), a German Calvinist philosopher and professor at the Gymnasium illustre Arnoldinum in Steinfurl/West-phalia from 1595 to 1624, is an unknown to most scholars of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Tables 1, 2, and 3 present some basic information concerning him in summary form. In Table 1 (2) Timpler’s family ties and career are outlined. Like most other German philosophers of the Late Reformation period—here we shall speak of the period between c.1550 and c.1650—he taught philosophy as his profession." (p. 213)

(...)

"It is Timpler’s philosophical writings—and in particular the sources cited therein— which are of primary concern for us here. These sources are summarized in Table 3. (10) As is evident from this table, Aristotle was by far the author most often cited by Timpler. Furthermore, many of the late 16th and early 17th century authors whom Timpler himself cites— e.g., John Case, Bartholomew Keckermann, Francesco Piccolomini, Amandus Polanus, Jacopo Zabarella—do likewise within their own writings.(11) Aristotle’s writings were used in philosophy instruction at all or almost all German academic institutions during the Late-Reformation period (see Tables 7, 8, and 9).

Indeed, those German academic philosophers of the Late-Reformation philosophers of the Late-Reformation era who studied and used Aristotle’s writings virtually comprise a universal set Therefore, the term “Aristotelianism”—which itself was not used in this period— only provides us with a very limited amount of information concerning these philosophers. (12) More important and more difficult is the problem of how individual Late-Reformation German philosophers used Aristotle within their own writings." (p. 215)

(...)

"The term Aristotelianism , therefore, can be understood so as to refer to almost all of Late-Reformation German philosophy. The same uppears to be the case with humanism . Like Aristotelianism, the term humanism was not used in the Late-Reformation period. Walter Ruegg has traced the first known use of the German term Humanismus back to the year 1808. (19) Here I shall speak of two basic ways of understanding the terms humanism and Humanismus: 1. that of Jacob Burckhardt and 2. that of Paul Oskar Kristeller.

Among the major characteristics which are attributed by Jacob Burckhardt to “Renaissance humanist” Italian civilization of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries are 1. the development of the human individual and 2. the centrality and dignity of man. (20) On the basis of Table 6 (21) it is clear that man has central importance within the philosophy of Clemens Timpler. All that is intelligible to man is the subject matter of metaphysics. (22) Man was created for God’s sake; however, all other creatures were created by God for man’s sake. Timpler makes a number of statements to the effect that man must preserve him- or herself. " (p. 217)

(...)

"In his article “The Humanist Movement,’ ’ Paul Oskar Kristeller notes that the term “Renaissance Humanism” ultimately is derived from the Latin studia humanitatis ; in the 15th and 16th centuries, the studia humanitatis stood for a concise group of scholarly disciplines (i.e„ for grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy). (24) According to Kristeller, therefore, the studia humanitatis during these two centuries essentially constituted an educational curriculum. Considered in this way, humanism also has an integral place within the curriculum of German schools and universities during die Late-Reformation period." (p. 218)

(2) See Joseph S. Freedman, European Academic Philosophy in the Late 16th and Early 17th Centuries. The Life, Significance, and Philosophy of Clemens Timpler (1563-1564) , 2 vols. (Hildesheim et al.; Georg Olms, 1988), chapters 2, 3, 4 (pp. 7-45, 454-88) and pp. 738-39.

(10) See Freedman, Academic Philosophy / Timpler , pp. 128-31, 134, 142, 563-68; Table 3 presents this material in abridged form.

(11) Concerning John Case see the following monograph: Charles B. Schmitt, John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1983).

(12) The terms Aristotelici and Peripatetici are occasionally used in philosophical wotks during this period, though the precise meaning of these two terms is rarely or never explained. Johann Heinrich Alsted mentions the Peripatetici within his classification of the various philosophical schools; see Johannes-Henricus Alstedius, Philosophia digne restituta (Herbomae Nassoviorum: 1612), p. 93 [Marburg UB: XIV c 136],

(19) Walter Ruegg, Cicero und der Humanismus (Zürich: Rhein-Veriag, 1946), pp. 2-3.

(20) Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 2 vols., introduction by Benjamin Nelson and Charles Trinkaus, translated by S.G.C. Middlemore (New Yoric: Harper and Row, 1958), 1: 143-50; 2: 351-52.

(21) These statements are summarized in Freedman, Academic Philosophy / Timpler, pp. 445-46, 733-34.

(22) For Timpler, All that is Intelligible (omne intelligible) is all that which man can leam by means of the human intellectual process; see Ibid., pp. 210-12, 412, 604-05, 714.

(24) Paul Oskar Kristeller, “The Humanist Movement,“ Renaissance Thought. The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanistic Strains (New Yoik: Harper, 1961), pp. 9-10,19-20.

8. ———. 1993. "Aristotle and the Content of Philosophy Instruction at Central European Schools and Universities during the Reformation Era (1500-1650)." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society no. 137:213-253.

Reprinted as Essay V in: Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500-1700 .

"The philosophy of the late Middle Ages and the Reformation Era, i.e., of the period between 1350 and 1650, has been largely ignored by historians of philosophy. A few philosophers of this period i.e., Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) and Francis Suarez (1548-1617) - have frequently been studied by twentieth-century historians of philosophy. However, thousands of philosophers of that three-hundred-year period have been neglected. The writings of those philosophers arose from their academic instruction at schools and universities scattered throughout Europe. One general fact is known concerning a large portion of these writings: they make substantial use of Aristotle's works. How should one proceed in attempting to understand these writings and the manner in which they utilize Aristotle?

Generally, there has been a tendency to place these authors within the framework of the "Aristotelian tradition" or "Aristotelianism." It is the purpose of this article to examine the merits of that tendency. To what extent do these two concepts help us to, or deter us from, understanding European philosophy of the late fourteenth through the early seventeenth centuries?

This article will focus on the manner in which Aristotle's writings were utilized in Central Europe during the second half of this period, i.e., between 1500 and 1650. At individual Central European schools and universities during this period, philosophy instruction included some or all of the following disciplines: metaphysics, physics, mathematics, ethics, family life (oeconomica ), politics, logic, rhetoric, grammar, poetics, and history. Texts by Aristotle were usually utilized to some extent in the instruction of metaphysics, physics, ethics, family life, politics, logic, rhetoric, and poetics. In concentrating on Central Europe during these one and one-half centuries, extant sources can be utilized in order to answer the following three questions: 1. In what ways are Aristotle's texts utilized at individual academic institutions during the Reformation era? 2. In what manner do individual philosophers use Aristotle's writings during this period? 3. How does a group of sixteenth and seventeenth-century philosophers interpret Aristotle when discussing individual philosophical concepts?" (2)

(2) The focus of this article is limited to Central Europe during the Reformation Era for the following two reasons: 1. The curriculum of Central European schools and universities during the Reformation Era can be discussed on the basis of primary sources extant both in manuscript and printed form; however, such sources are much harder to find for schools and universities in other parts of Europe. 2. Central European philosophical works of the late Middle Ages are largely in manuscript form. These works are scattered throughout Europe; the vast majority of them have not yet been read or in many cases even been sifted. The following article discusses-and gives primary source bibliography for- a large number of these Central European institutions: Joseph S. Freedman, "Philosophy Instruction within the Institutional Framework of Central European Schools and Universities during the Reformation Era," History of Universities vol. 5 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985): 117-166. (some notes omitted)

9. ———. 1993. "The Diffusion of the Writings of Petrus Ramus in Central Europe, c. 1570 - c.1630." Renaissance Quarterly no. 56 (1):98-152.

Reprinted as Essay IV in: Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500-1700 .

"For what reasons di Academicians select to use or not to use any given textbook for their own classroom instruction during the Renaissance? To what extent did ideological or pragmatic considerations influence such decisions? In this article these questions are posed to examine the use of the writings ofPetrus Ramus (1515- 1572) and Omer Talon (ca. 1510- 1562) at schools and universities in Central Europe during the six decades between 1570 and 1630. Did "Ramist" academicians of this period make use in the classroom of writings by these two authors because of some fundamental agreement with their views? Or were these two authors preferred during these six decades because their writings could be used eclectically and/or they fit well into specific parts of the curriculum at certain academic institutions?

In the period between 1570 and 1630 there were over 30 universities and hundreds of schools in the German-language area of Europe. A large amount of curricular information-largely in the form of annual, semi-annual, or occasional outlines of instruction as well as personal or official correspondence-exists for many of these schools and universities. Textbooks and printed disputations arising from instruction held at these academic institutions are also extant. This assessment of the use of writings by Ramus and Talon in Central European academic institutions is based on the examination of a substantial portion of this evidence. The task of finding and evaluating such evidence pertaining to other parts of Europe must be left for a separate study." (p. 98)

"It was the period between 1570 and 1630, therefore, which saw the most extensive use of the writings of Petrus Ramus and Omer Talon at Central European schools. Among the points made by Walter J. Ong in his monograph on Ramus are the following.125 First, opposition to Ramus from university-level academics was strong and often very well articulated. Second, Ramus's works on logic and rhetoric were relatively uncomplicated in their content. And third, Ramus's writings were best received by, and to a large extent intended for, younger students. Ramus's influence in Central Europe between 1570 and 1630 can be explained within the context of these three points. In Central Europe during these six decades the writings of Ramus found their most extensive use within the realm of the pre-university level curriculum.

On the basis of the evidence presented in this article, it would appear that it was largely for pragmatic reasons that Ramus was used at some individual academic institutions but not at others in Central Europe during the period between 1570 and 1630. It is difficult to use ideology to explain these developments. Ramus's disciples and commentators generally used Ramus's writings eclectically. Some Ramus commentators (e.g., Friedrich Beurhusius, Severinus Sluterus) also published commentaries on Aristotle, Cicero, or some combination of these and/or other authors. The opinions of individual "Ramists" on a given topic -- e. g. , the classifications of philosophical disciplines, the concept of method -- differed markedly. In fact, it is difficult to make any sense at all of the term "Ramist" when discussing the use of Ramus's writings in Central Europe between 1570 and 1630. The extent to which "Ramism" can or cannot be used as a viable category to explain the use of writings by Ramus and Talon at schools and universities beyond Central Europe is a topic which merits further attention." p. 144 (notes omitted)

10. ———. 1994. "Instruction in Philosophy and the Arts in Early Modern Central Europe: Some Thoughts Concerning the Reproduction of Select Primary Source Materials." Chloe.Beihefte zum Daphnis no. 25:961-974.

Conference Proceedings, "Editionsdesiderate zur frühen Neuzeit. Beiträge zur Tagung der Kommission für die Edition von Texten der Frühen Neuzeit" held at Wolfenbüttel, Germany, October 4-7, 1994 (Zweiter Teil).

"The bulk of the textbooks used in sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century Europe which are extant have survived as printed works. This is especially true in the case of editions of works by Aristotle, Cicero, and other ancient as well as modem authors; the same also applies to most commentaries and independently titled textbooks.

Student lecture notes usually have survived as manuscripts. Disputations did not begin to be commonly published in Central Europe until the latter decades of the sixteenth century. Academic correspondence generally is extant in manuscript form, though some collections of such correspondence were published during the early modem period.

Reference works, official academic orations, and announcements of lecture offerings for the coming semester or year were normally published, while curriculum plans frequently were not. Some printed works contained important handwritten addenda such as owner's marks, autographs, student notes, and corrections; some broadsheets and other short printed works have survived due to the fact that they were inserted between leaves of manuscripts.

All of these various types of sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century works written on diverse philological and philosophical subject-matters together constitute a very large quantity of extant printed and manuscript material. How can one determine which samples of these materials should be edited and/or reproduced in print or non-print formats? In order to provide an answer to this question, three preliminary questions can be posed here: 1. At which libraries and archives are these materials found and how thoroughly have these materials been catalogued there? 2. Which bibliographies of these early modem philological and philosophical works are available? 3. What works have already been made edited and/or reproduced in some format?

Germany does not have a national library having a role comparable to that of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and of the British Library in London. But Germany does have hundreds of libraries and archives that house sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth- century printed works and manuscripts. The Duke August Library in Wolfenbuttel and the Bavarian State Library in Munich are among the most important repositories of philological and philosophical materials from this time period. The Duke August Library has been especially active in publishing catalogs describing its own sixteenth- and seventeenth-century printed works and in making its own bibliographic records accessible electronically. And its holdings - together with those of the Bavarian State Library - form the core of the multivolume Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachbereich erschienenen Drucke des 16. Jahrhunderts [VD 16]." (pp. 965-966)

11. ———. 1994. "Classifications of Philosophy, the Arts, and the Sciences in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe." The Modern Schoolman no. 72 (1):37-65.

Reprinted as Essay VII in: Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500-1700 .

"One aspect of the history of philosophy which has received relatively little attention is how the philosophy concept itself has been classified into parts and how these classifications have evolved over the centuries. A few studies have focused on the development of these classifications in the ancient and medieval West; several other studies have discussed their development in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. Classifications of philosophy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been almost completely neglected; during those two centuries the manner in which philosophy -- and related concepts such as the arts, the liberal arts, the sciences, and encyclopedia -- was divided into parts underwent some significant changes.

Philosophy was taught at universities and schools throughout Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and served to prepare students for study of theology, medicine, and jurisprudence.' A large volume of writings -- both in printed and in manuscript form -- was produced in conjunction with this philosophy instruction. Many textbooks on metaphysics, physics, mathematics, ethics, logic, and other subjects written during this period contained a section on the concept of philosophy, while some writings were devoted specifically to that latter topic. When examining the philosophy concept, most authors provided a definition or definitions thereof before proceeding to classify its parts. Some authors also included discussion of the various schools (sectae) of philosophers.

Despite the fact that many attempts were made to define philosophy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, these definitions generally do not provide us with much information concerning the philosophy concept itself.

This is partially due to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century views with respect to definitions. During those two centuries, definition theory was normally discussed within logic textbooks and within short treatises specifically devoted to the subject matter of both definition and classification or just definition alone." p. 37 (notes omitted)

This article has its origin in a lecture given at the Fourth International Leibniz Congress at Hannover, Germany in November of 1983 [*]; it appears here in expanded and revised form.

[* Published in Leibniz Werk und Wirkung. IV Internationale Leibniz-Kongress. Vorträge , Hannover, 14. bis 19. Novembre 1983, Hannover: Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Gesellschaft, 1984, pp. 193-202.]

12. ———. 1994. "Encyclopedic Philosophical Writings in Central Europe during the High and Late Renaissance (c. 1500 - c. 1700)." Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte no. 37:212-256.

Reprinted as Essay VI in: Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500-1700 .

"The history of encyclopedias begins in the ancient world and extends up to the present day. What is an encyclopedia? What kinds of encyclopedias are there? And to what extent are encyclopedias intended for pupils at schools, for students at universities, or for some other, non-academic groups of people?

This article will attempt to provide answers to these questions within the limited context of Central Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.(*) It is important to keep in mind that the Latin. term encyclopaedia was only one of many terms that were used during that period in order to denote or describe such works. And a few of these terms -- such as method (methodus ) and system (systema ) -- can be regarded as very significant for the development of encyclopedias in Central Europe during these two centuries.

Some sixteenth- and seventeenth-century encyclopedias intended to cover all academic subjects, including theology, jurisprudence, medicine, and philosophy. Other encyclopedias only covered one or several of these areas; still others covered the mechanical arts, occult science, or popular subject matter. This article focuses primarily on the area of philosophy, that is, on encyclopedic writings on philosophy that are "interdisciplinary" insofar as they discuss at least two philosophical disciplines." (pp. 212-213, notes omitted)

"The first years of the seventeenth century saw three concurrent developments in Central Europe. First, the metaphysics emerged as a preeminent philosophical discipline. Second, the the term systema began to be used in the titles of comprehensive textbooks on many philosophical as well as non-philosophical disciplines. Third, there was a sharp increase in the number of encyclopedic philosophical writings. Shortly before the year 1620, there was a virtual explosion in the number of such writings, which then continued to appear commonly in Central Europe through the seventeenth century and thereafter.

As indicated earlier, the discipline of metaphysics contains concepts relevant to all other philosophical disciplines. Just as works on metaphysics and interdisciplinary philosophical works disappeared together in the early sixteenth century, they began to reappear together at the end of that same century. Systematic textbooks on individual disciplines intended to cover the entire scope of those disciplines. This new emphasis on the comprehensive coverage of individual academic disciplines from the year 1600 onwards went hand-in-hand with the reemergence of encyclopedic philosophical writings which were intended as comprehensive philosophical textbooks." (p. 234)

(*) It is within the context of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Central Europe that a sufficient diversity and quantity of primary source materials -- including both philosophical texts by individual authors and detailed information concerning the curricula of individual academic institutions -- could be found in order to arrive at conclusions concerning the evolution of encyclopedic philosophical writings.

13. ———. 1997. "The Career and Writings of Bartholomew Keckermann (d. 1609)." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society no. 141:305-364.

Reprinted as Essay VIII in: Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500-1700 .

"In conclusion, the following three questions can be posed with respect to Keckermann and his writings. First, what was Keckermann's contribution to intellectual history? Second, why was Keckermann so famous during the early seventeenth century? And third, which of these first two questions should concern us most, and why?

With regard to the first question, Keckermann can be considered to have made at least three contributions to intellectual history. First, Keckermann was one of the earliest Western thinkers to use the term "system" to describe academic treatises; his detailed discussion of the component parts of systematic textbooks appears to be the first of this kind and may have been without parallel during the entire seventeenth century. Second, Keckermann was exceptional in so far as he stressed that each academic discipline -- barring metaphysics -- has its own history. Keckermann documented the history of individual disciplines by including chronologically and systematically arranged bibliographies within writings on some of those disciplines. In his multi-volume history of logic, Wilhelm Risse refers to Bartholomew Keckermann as the first historian of logic. (81) Keckermann's bibliographies, which are evidence of his broad knowledge of scholarship in his time, can still be used today to identify the names of many important sixteenth-century authors of academic works.

Third, Keckermann was able to integrate discussion of rhetoric, history, collections of aphorisms, dictionaries, emblems, and other "humanist" subject matter within logically arranged and systematically organized treatises. He stressed the relevance of this humanist subject matter to public life. It could be argued that Keckermann made a valuable contribution to early modern European intellectual history insofar as he was successful in incorporating a form of civic humanism within a scholastic framework. (82)

Turning to the second question, at least eight reasons can be given in order to help explain Bartholomew Keckermann's fame during the seventeenth century. First, his academic career and the publication of his many writings began at an opportune time; higher education had been expanding in Central Europe during the late sixteenth century and continued to do so through the first quarter of the following century. (83)

Second, academic encyclopedias and encyclopedic collections of academic writings began to appear in Central Europe in about the year 1600; they were published -- and used within academic instruction -- with increasing frequency during the following decades. (84) The author of the preface to the 1614 edition of Keckermann's collected works pointed to their encyclopedic scope and to their enhanced usefulness as a result of that scope. (85) Keckermann published works on almost all of the academic disciplines taught by his contemporaries.

Third, Keckermann began his career by publishing primarily in the discipline of logic, for which there was a tremendous demand at Central European schools and universities during his time. His many types of logic textbooks were able to be used in logic instruction at various levels. Fourth, the years around 1600 saw the introduction of a number of new textbook formats in Central Europe; with his Systema and his Prolegomena, Keckermann belonged to that group of scholars at the forefront of these new developments.

Fifth, he used the writings of Aristotle eclectically and the writings of Ramus critically at a time when many other school and university professors chose to do likewise. Sixth, he won the enthusiastic support of colleagues, friends, and students, who edited and published many of Keckermann's works both before and after his early death. Seventh, published attacks directed against Keckermann's writings -- beginning in the year 1599 -- by a host of enemies helped to make him better known. And eighth, Keckermann's reputation had a snowball effect. Some academic institutions and individual professors chose to use his writings in part because of their reputation and of their relative availability in a period when libraries and the book trade functioned less effectively than they do today.

Turning to the third question, I would like to suggest that the study of Keckermann's contribution to intellectual history deserves less attention than does the study of his career and of his systematically-written works. Thousands of professors and other teachers published their writings during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Most of the writings of these authors have been unread for centuries; many of these writings have yet to be rediscovered, assuming that they are still extant at all. So while Keckermann appears to have made several important contributions to European intellectual life within the context of schools and universities, one cannot completely exclude the possibility that he was at least partially preempted by thinkers whose works are still unread or unknown. And it should also be noted that originality was not valued by Keckermann's contemporaries in the same way as it is by twentieth-century scholars. It was not uncommon in Keckermann's time for the authors of academic writings to defend themselves against -- or to attack others with -- the charge of "unwarranted novelty. (86)

On the other hand, if we pose the question how Keckermann's career was so successful, our answer also provides us with information concerning the academic and intellectual environment of his time. The general parameters affecting Keckermann's academic career also pertained to thousands of other individuals who were pursuing such careers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Certain paths led to successful careers at academic institutions; as part of this process, a professional scholar such a Keckermann might fail to receive the offer of a certain academic position but might also decline to accept another position. (87)

In addition, Keckermann's academic writings generally appear to have differed relatively little in content from the content of writings of other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors, including the hundreds of sixteenth-century authors whom he cited as well as those seventeenth-century authors who made use of Keckermann's writings within their own. (88) In studying Keckermann's writings on metaphysics, physics, mathematics, ethics, family life, politics, logic, rhetoric, and history, we are looking at a corpus of learned views that -- barring a relatively small number of controversial points of doctrine -- basically represented the curriculum in the arts and the sciences during his time.

To summarize, the value of studying Keckermann's career and writings lies not so much in the fact that he was original in some scientific, or intellectual sense of that word. Instead, while studying Keckermann we are also provided with a wealth of information concerning academic life in his time as well as concerning a large body of knowledge taught to tens of thousands of students at European schools and universities. It could be argued that the study of the career and writings of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European professional scholars pertains more to social history or cultural history in some broad sense than it does to intellectual history." (pp. 323-325)

(81) Wilhelm Risse, Die Logik der Neuzeit, vol. 1, 1500-1640 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann Verlag / Gunther Holzboog, 1964), 9.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography of Joseph S. Freedman on Philosophy in Central Europe (1500-1700): Second Part

Articles

1. Freedman, Joseph S. 1999. "Philipp Melanchthon's Views Concerning Petrus Ramus as Expressed in a Private Letter Written in 1543: A Brief Assessment." In Melanchthon und die Marburger Professoren. Vol. II , edited by Mahlmann-Bauer, Barbara, 841-848. Marburg: Universitätsbibliothek.

2. ———. 1999. "Introduction: The Study of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth- Century Writings on Academic Philosophy: Some Methodological Considerations." In Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500-1700. Teaching and Texts at Schools and Universities , 1-40. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"Instruction in philosophy and the arts was a normal part of the university-level and secondary education routinely received by students in late medieval and early modem Europe. Yet the study of this instruction has received relatively little attention by modem scholars. The articles in this collection focus on this largely neglected area of research with a primary focus on Central Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The purpose of article I is to bring together as well as to expand upon many of the topics discussed and conclusions stated in articles II through VIII; in doing so, the concepts of classification and definition as well as some sixteenth- and seventeenth-century views concerning "schools of philosophers" (sectae ) are discussed. Article II draws a connection between the evolving role of philosophy instruction within the institutional framework of Central European schools and universities between ca. 1500 and ca. 1650 and the evolution of the philosophy concept during that same period. Article III is devoted to discussion of how and why Cicero's writings were used to teach rhetoric at European schools and universities during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Article IV begins by presenting evidence - published by Walter Ong - that the writings of Petrus Ramus and Omer Talon were printed most often in Central Europe than anywhere else, and mainly between c. 1570 and c. 1630; this article then examines why that was the case, and attributes this not to the influence of ideology, but instead mainly to pragmatic decisions made at individual Central European academic institutions.

Article V focuses on the manner in which Aristotle's writings were utilized in Central Europe during the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth; it is argued that individual philosophers and individual academic institutions elected to utilize Aristotle's writings largely due to practical considerations and not because of any general affinity for "Aristotelianism" or "Aristotelian" views. Article VI examines the evolution of the encyclopedic philosophical writings produced in Central Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; in doing so, attention is given to the decline and subsequent rebirth of the discipline of metaphysics, to the concepts of method and system, to the writings of Petrus Ramus and Omer Talon, to the evolution of philosophical curricula at Central European schools and universities, and to the manner in which encyclopedia and related concepts are utilized in writings of this period. Article VII focuses on classifications of philosophy, the sciences, and the arts during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; attention is given to definitions of philosophy, mention of individual philosophical disciplines, discussions of the liberal arts, and the evolution of the philosophy concept itself. Article VIII provides new biographical and bibliographical material concerning Bartholomew Keckermann (d. 1609); it also discusses Keckermann's contributions to intellectual history as well as why and how he became so famous in academic circles during the early seventeenth century." (from the Preface)

"1. Topics discussed within this collection of articles; 2. Definitions and classifications within the context of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century thought and beyond; 3. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writings on philosophy normally arose within the context of academic instruction; principal philosophical subject matters (academic disciplines) and genres of philosophical writings during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; 4. Academic philosophical writings vs. academic writings on jurisprudence, medicine and theology; 5 . Academic philosophical writings vs. non-academic treatises; 6 . Schools of philosophers (sectae ) as discussed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; ideological constructs and the study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century academic philosophy; 7. To what extent was religious confession a major factor within sixteenth- and seventeenth-century academic philosophy? 8 . To what extent were there variations between different regions of Europe with regard to academic philosophy? 9. Complex philosophical concepts (e.g., nature, signs, theory of knowledge) and the parameters of individual academic disciplines in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; 10 . Due to the rudimentary state of our knowledge concerning sixteenth- and seventeenth-century philosophy, the conclusions arrived at in this volume are stated in cautious terms; the primary aim of this volume is to further research in this subject area.

1. Articles II through VIII of this collection all pertain to texts on philosophy and the arts as utilized at schools and universities during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with an emphasis on Central Europe. These seven articles focus on three kinds of topics: 1. authors of these texts, 2. the academic institutions at which those authors taught and produced texts in published and unpublished form, 3. terms, concepts, and subject areas discussed within texts. The three indices which accompany this collection are devoted to 1., 2., and 3. above.

The authors mentioned in this collection represent a small sampling of the thousands of such authors who taught at Central European schools and universities - or whose writings circulated there - during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. An addition, four separate articles (III, IV, V, and VIII) focus on how educators of the High and Late Renaissance discussed two ancient authorities (i.e., Aristotle and Cicero) and two more "recent" ones (i.e., Petrus Ramus and Bartholomew Keckermann). Curriculum plans and texts specifically intended for or used at individual academic institutions in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Central Europe are the principal sources used in order to discuss those same academic institutions; one article (II) focuses primarily on curriculum plans.(1) The concepts of philosophy (via "classifications of philosophical disciplines") and encyclopedia (via "encyclopedic philosophical writings") are discussed within two separate articles in this collection (VI and VII). The concepts of classification, definition, nature, and sign are discussed within sections 2 and 9 of this introductory article.

(1 )Article VIII, however, also makes extensive use of some additional kinds of primary source materials (e.g., academic correspondence, dedications/prefaces to published textbooks, and the minutes of faculty governing bodies at the University of Heidelberg) as sources of biographical information." (pp. 1-2)

3. ———. 2001. "Melanchthon's Opinion of Ramus and the Utilization of their Writings in Central Europe." In The Influence of Petrus Ramus: Studies in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Philosophy and Sciences , edited by Feingold, Mordechai, Freedman, Joseph S. and Rother, Wolfgang, 68-91. Basel: Schwabe.

"Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560) and Petrus Ramus (1515-1572) can be considered as two of the sixteenth century's most significant educators. To what extent were the writings of these two authors utilized in Central European schools and universities during the sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries? Were Melanchthon and Ramus regarded as complementary or as contrary authorities? The search for answers to these two questions requires examination of the ways in which writings on the arts by Ramus (i.e., logic, rhetoric, grammar, arithmetic, and geometry) and Melanchthon (i.e., logic, rhetoric, grammar, physics, the soul, and ethics) were utilized during that period. This article will attempt to provide such answers through discussion of the following ten points:

1. the demand for Ramus' writings on logic as well as other arts disciplines;

2. the demand for Melanchthon's writings on logic and the other arts;

3. adoption of, and commentaries on, Melanchthon's writings on the arts;

4. adoption of, and commentaries on, Ramus' writings on the arts;

5. polemical writings against Ramus' writings on the arts;

6. the lack of extant polemical writings against Melanchthon's writings on the arts;

7. the frequency with which sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writings on the arts authored by both Lutherans and Calvinists utilized works by Ramus in combination with works by Melanchthon;

8. the eclectic and independent manner in which Melanchthon, Ramus, Aristotle, and other authors were utilized by late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century writings on the arts;

9. revised versions of Ramus' and Melanchthon's writings on the arts;

10. differences between individual commentaries on Ramus' and Melanchthon's writings on the arts." (pp. 68-69)

4. ———. 2001. "'Professionalization' and 'Confessionalization': The Place of Physics, Philosophy, and Arts Instruction at Central European Academic Institutions During the Reformation Era." Early Science and Medicine no. 6:334-352.

Abstract: "During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, physics was regularly taught as part of instruction in philosophy and the arts at Central European schools and universities. However, physics did not have a special or privileged status within that instruction. Three general indicators of this lack of special status are suggested in this article. First,teachers of physics usually were paid less than teachers of most other university-level subject-matters. Second, very few Central European academics during this period appear to have made a career out of teaching physics. And third, Reformation Era schools and universities in Central Europe emphasized language instruction; such instruction not only was instrumental in promoting the confessional-i.e., Calvinist, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic agendas of those same schools and universities, but also helped to prepare students for service in nascent but growing state governments."

"Why did Central European academic institutions place primary emphasis on language - and not physics - within their instruction on philosophy and the arts during the Reformation Era? Two answers to this question will be ventured here. First, the nascent development of state governments - at the local, regional, and supra-regional levels as well as by secular and ecclesiastical authorities - during this period went hand-in-hand with the need for individuals who could use language training (especially the ability to speak and write well) in the service of these governments. Second, it could be argued that competition between Calvinists, Lutherans, and Roman Catholics had a major impact within Central European education during this period, and especially from the mid-sixteenth century onwards.The establishment of new schools by Protestants in the decades after 1550 had its counterpart in the establishment of Jesuit educational institutions beginning in the middle of the sixteenth century.(56) And while Lutherans and Calvinists established (or expanded some already existing Protestant schools into) multi-level, consolidated schools, Jesuits kept pace with that development by gradually adding upper-level grades to some of their own Central European schools. (57) The establishment or expansion of a Calvinist, Lutheran, or Roman Catholic academic institution at a given locality was sometimes matched by the establishment or expansion of an academic institution representing an opposing confession at a nearby location. (58) One could make the case that this expansion and confessional competition in the realm of Central European education actually increased as the Thirty Years' War approached and began. It appears that this confessional competition gave birth to some pedagogical innovations in the early decades of the seventeenth century; these innovations included the introduction of comprehensive encyclopedic instruction-accompanied by the publication of encyclopedic philosophical writings intended for students-at the school level, by the development of a large number of new academic subject-matters (usually referred to as "disciplines"), by the introduction of the term "system" as a name for methodically ordered textbooks (*), and by what appears to have been the increasing emphasis placed on the development of curricular materials for students at various academic levels.(59) And two of Europe's best known educational innovators from the early modern period - i.e., Wolfgang Ratke (1571-1635) and Johannes Amos Comenius (1592-1670)--were active during this same period.(60)" (pp. 350-351)

(56) Refer to Freedman (1999), I (12-13), II (121-22).

(57) The gradual expansion of the Luzern Jesuit Academy from 1574 onwards can be traced through the extant Catalogi personarum et officiorum a prima origine Collegii nostri Lucernensis , 1574 [-1773] [Luzern SA:Cod KK70]; also see the following general study pertaining to this same topic: Karl Hengst, Jesuiten an Universitaten und Jesuiten universittten , Quellen und Forschungen aus dem Gebiet der Geschichte, Neue Folge, 2 (Paderborn, 1981).

(58) The very close proximity of a Protestant Academyin Lauingen (Danube) to the Jesuit University of Dillingen (Danube) is mentioned in Freedman (1999), II (146, 148-49). The Gymnasium illustre Arnoldinum in Steinfurt (Westphalia) appears to have been largelyintended as a Calvinist counterweight to a Jesuit Academy in nearby Miinster (Westphalia); refer to the discussion given in Freedman (1988), 46-48, 489-90.

(59) Refer to Freedman (1999), VI; concerning the introduction of such new subject-matters see Freedman (1999), VII (46-47). Bartholomew Keckermann's publication of logic textbooks at various academic levels of difficulty is discussed in Freedman (1999), VIII (317-18).

(60) See Freedman (1999), I (13, 39-40).

(*) [On the introduction of the term systema , see J. S. Freedman, The Career and Writings of Bartholomew Keckermann (d. 1609) , pp. 312-314.]

5. ———. 2002. "Philosophical Writings on the Family in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe." Journal of Family History no. 27:292-342.

"Recent research on the early modern European family has largely been based on archival sources that are extant for relatively few localities during this same period. This research can be augmented by examining discussions of the family contained within academic writings on theology, jurisprudence, medicine, and philosophy during the early modern period. This article focuses on philosophical writings that arose in connection with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century academic instruction. These writings routinely discuss the proper relationship between husband and wife, between parents and children, and between masters and servants; also discussed are various categories of domestic possessions and how these possessions should be acquired and administered. Within these philosophical writings, one controversial issue pertaining to family life is sometimes raised: whether servants are more essential to the family than children. These writings uniformly equate the family with the nuclear family; in doing so, they provide collaboration for similar findings by social and demographic historians."

6. ———. 2003. "When the Process is Part of the Product: Searching for Latin-Language Writings on Philosophy and the Arts used at Central European Academic Institutions during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries." In Germania latina Latinitas teutonica. Politik, Wissenschaft, humanistische Kultur vom späten Mittelalter bis in unsere Zeit. (Band II) , edited by Kessler, Eckhard and Kuhn, Heinrich C., 565-591. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag.

"While Central Europe witnessed a growing trend towards the use of the vernacular during the 16th century, Latin still remained the dominant language in Central European academic institutions well into the 18th century. This paper will discuss Latin language writings on philosophy and the arts which arose in connection with academic instruction at those academic institutions. More specifically, this paper will focus on the following six questions (1-6): 1. What are the various subject-matters which comprised "philosophy and the arts" at Central European academic institutions during the 16th and 17th centuries? 2. What are the various genres of writings -- and the component parts of these genres -- that comprised philosophy and the arts? 3. How does one find such writings at individual libraries and other information repositories within as well as beyond Germany? 4. What are some of the factors and problems involved in searching for such writings? 5. How does this search process enable us to gain knowledge concerning 16th- and 17th-century writings on philosophy and the arts? 6. Can this search process provide us with additional insights pertaining to yet other areas of inquiry?" (p. 565)

(...)

"Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writings on philosophy and the arts - which normally arose in connection with academic instruction both in and beyond Central Europe - have generally remained unstudied to up the present day. One principal reason for this can be suggested here: the process involved in finding such writings is quite complex but rarely understood. Yet it would be a mistake to focus only on the published results of such research; when undertaking the study of these writings, the research process usually cannot be clearly separated from the resulting product.(54)

Much of the knowledge one has concerning these writings on philosophy and the arts is derived from one's own research in progress, i.e., from that stage or stages when one is in the process of finding primary source materials, some of which may be used in one or more publications. This knowledge can often be used to assist other researchers, including professional colleagues as well as students. And this process - with its many facets and variations - will have to be revisited as a necessary component of all future research and publication pertaining to this same genre of writings." (p. 591)

(54) The importance of process as a part of product has been recognized by many individuals from the business world and well as by academics in some fields; for example refer to the following serial articles: Edwin E. Bobrow, »Successful New Products ar Product of Process,« Marketing News 28, no. 9 (April 25, 1994): E10; Samuel S. Myers, Performance Reading Comprehension - Product or Process,«Educational Review 43, no. 3 (1991): 257-272.

7. ———. 2004. "Academic Philosophical and Philological Writings on the Subject-Matter of Women, c. 1670-c. 1700." In Geschlechterstreit am Beginn der europäischen Moderne. Die Querelle des Femmes , edited by Engel, Gisela, Hassauer, Friederike, Rang, Brita and Wunder, Heide, 228-244. Königstein/Ts: Verlag Ulrike Helmer.

Kulturwissenschaftliche Gender Studies, Vol. 4.

"Suzanne Hull begins the preface to her exemplary book titled »Women According to Men: The World of Tudor-Stuart Women« with the following paragraph:

The goal of this book is to provide an introduction to the world of English women from 1525 to 1675, using the written words of men of that time. It was an era recorded, in print, almost exclusively by men. More than 99 percent of all publications were by male authors (1).

Hull’s point applies aptly to discussions of women and gender in philosophical and philological writings which arose in connection with instruction held at schools and universities in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. In fact, no such writings authored by women are known to have survived (2). And furthermore, it was not until about the year 1670 that men began to publish – in relatively moderate quantities – writings on the subject matter of women; these publications on women appear to have been limited – with no, almost no or very few exceptions – to Central Europe and Scandinavia.

This article addresses the following four questions.

– What kinds of philosophical and philological writings discussed women and gender during the 16th and 17th centuries?

– Which sorts of specific topics pertaining women and gender were discussed within these writings?

– Why did an increased number of academic writings written on the subject-matter of women begin to be published from shortly before the year 1670 onwards?

– Why do such writings have been published only – or overwhelmingly – in Central Europe and in Scandinavia through the year 1700?" (p. 228)

(...)

"Two volumes on family life (oeconomica ) by Christian Wolff (1679-1754) were published in the years 1754 and 1755, respectively (74). Wolff subordinates the wife to the husband within the household. He states that it is in accordance with order and with the nature of things that the husband occupy himself with tasks which are masculine and more difficult while the wife should concern herself with tasks which are feminine and easier (75).

The four primary qualities – which had been used during the 16th and 17th centuries to justify prejudicial attitudes towards women – appear to have had no presence within Wolff’s philosophical writings; did some other philosophical concept(s) stand in for the four primary qualities in this regard? His occasional references to »physical capability« (habilitas physica ) and »virtue« (virtus ) may have been meant to serve in part to serve this purpose (76). But more detailed examination of the views expressed within philological and philosophical writings by Christian Wolff and other 18th century academic authors lies outside the scope of the present study (77)." (p. 236)

(1) Suzanne W. Hull, Women according to Men. The World of Tudor-Stuart Women, Altamira Press 1996, 9.

(2) This is not to say that there were no philosophical and philological writings authored by women during these two centuries. For example, refer to the following: Olympia Fulvia Morata, Omnium eruditissimae latina et graeca, quae haberi potuerunt, monumenta (Basileae: Apud Petrum Pernam, 1558) [Heidelberg UB: D 8544 Res]; Anna Maria a Schurman, Opuscula hebraea, graeca, gallica, prosaica & metrica (Lugduni Batavorum: Ex officina Elsevirorium, 1648) [Hannover LB: Ba-A 1717]; (Margaret) [Cavendish], Duchess of Newcastle, Grounds of natural philosophy: divided into thirteen parts ... The second edition, London, (1668). [Berlin SB: 40 Nl 144272].

(74) Christianus L. B. de Wolff, Oeconomica methodo scientifica pertractata. Pars prima in qua agitur de societatibus minoribus, conjugali, paterna, et herili (Halae Magdeburgicae: Prostat in officina Libraria Rengeriana, 1754) [Erlangen UB: 40 Phs. I, 47 Qu], (Reprint edition: Hildesheim und New York, Georg Olms, 1972). Christian Wolff Gesammelte Werke. II. Abteilung. Lateinische Schriften. Band 27. Oeconomica; Christianus L. B. de Wolff, Oeconomica methodo scientifica pertractata pars reliqua, in qua agitur de societatibus minoribus, conjugali, paterna, et herili. Post fata beati autoris continuata et absoluta a Michaele Christoph. Hanovio (Magdeburgicae: Prostat in officina Libraria Rengeriana, 1755) [Erlangen UB: 40 Phs. I, 47 Qu] (Reprint edition: Hildesheim und New York: Georg Olms, 1972) Christian Wolff Gesammelte Werke . II. Abteilung. Lateinische Schriften. Band 28. Oeconomica .

(75) »Ordini & naturae rerum nihil est convenientius, quam ut maritus praesit actionis masculinis & difficilioribus, uxor femininis potissimum facilioribusque ...« Wolff, Oeconomica ... pars reliqua (1755) (cf.73), 603 (§767).

(76) Wolff, Oeconomica ... pars prima (1754) (cf. 73), 52-53 (§37), 378 (§225).

(77) I am currently preparing to publish an article devoted to Christian Wolff’s two treatises on family life (oeconomica ), (cf. 74).

The following abbreviations are used:

HAB = Herzog August Bibliothek / Duke August Library; KB = Kunglige Biblioteket /Royal Library; LB = Landesbibliothek / Provincial Library; SB = Staatsbibliothek State Library; StB = Stadtbibliothek / Municipal Library; U of Ill, U-C: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Special Collections; UB = Universitätsbibliothek / University Library; ULB = Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek / University and Provincial Library; UStB = Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek / University and Municipal Library; ZB = Zentralbibliothek.

8. ———. 2004. "The Soul (anima ) according to Clemens Timpler (1563/4-1624) and Some of His Central European Contemporaries." In Scientiae et artes. Die Vermittlung alten und neuen Wissens in Literatur, Kunst und Musik , edited by Mahlmann-Bauer, Barbara, 791-830. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrasowitz.

"This paper will focus on the concept of the soul as expounded within the extant writings of Clemens Timpler (1563/4- 1624)" (p. 791)

"Timpler’s views on the soul will be placed into the context of some selected views on that same subject-matter presented by sixty of his Central European contemporaries, i. e. by Calvinist, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic authors who taught philosophy and the arts at Central European schools and universities between 1590 and 1625. (4) These views on the soul have survived within published writings (principally disputations, textbooks, and orations) as well as within manuscripts (mainly lecture notes). (5)

Timpler’s views on the soul are contained for the most part within his textbooks on metaphysics and animate physics (Empsychologia ) - first published in the years 1604 and 1607, respectively - as well as within five published disputations - published in the years 1594, 1597, ca. 1597, 1609, and 1611 - over which he presided; some material contained within his textbooks on general physics, inanimate physics (Apsychologia ), ethics, logic, and human physiognomy as well as within his collection of philosophical exercises also pertain to this subject matter. (6) It is mainly short disputations on the concept of the soul published by Timpler’s Central European contemporaries that will be utilised in this article in order to place some of his views on this subject-matter into a broader context. (7)" (pp. 792-793)

(4) In arriving at the sum of sixty authors here I have only counted each praeses of any given disputation as its author. If one was to count the praeses as well as the respondens in the case of each disputation listed in the bibliography, the number of authors would be considerably higher than sixty. General discussions concerning Renaissance notions on the soul have been published by Kessler (1988) and Park (1988); Kennedy (1980), Kuhn (1996), and Spruit (1997) discuss aspects of the concept of the soul as understood by two Italian authors, Bernardino Telesio (1509 - 1588) and Cesare Cremonini (1550 - 1631). See section E of the bibliography in this article.

(5) Here it should be noted that Central European Roman Catholic authors published very few philosophical textbooks during the period between 1590 and 1625. The bulk of textbooks pertaining to philosophy and the arts that were utilized by Roman Catholic academic institutions in Central Europe during this period were written by Italian, Portuguese and Spanish authors. Some lecture notes in manuscript form — written by Central European Roman Catholic professors as well as by their own students - are extant; for example, see Wenk and Zurcher (1623). Yet printed disputations provide us with the bulk of philosophical source material for Roman Catholic philosophy instruction held between the years 1590 and 1625.

(6) See section A of the bibliography for the known publishing history of these writings by Timpler as well as Freedman (1988). Timpler’s names for his textbooks on “inanimate” physics (Apsychologa ) and “animate" physics (Empysckologi a) may have been his own creations. In the course of the seventeenth century such new names for treatises - as well as sections of treatises- were not uncommon. Refer to the discussion given in Freedman (1999), VII, pp. 37-65 (no. 47). In his textbook on metaphysics (first published in the year 1604) he also refers - in M: L.4C.5Q.9 (pp. 461-462)- to his own Anthropologia , which apparently was never published separately; it was published as Book 3 of his textbook on Animate Physics in the year 1607. Previous to the year 1607, an Anthropologia authored by Timpler possibly circulated at the Steinfurt Academy in manuscript form.

(7) In the case of Timplers Roman Catholic Central European contemporaries, such short disputations serve as our main body of extant source material (refer back to footnote 5 above). And due to the complexity of the anima concept it has been deemed best to place Timpler's views on this subject-matter in context by focusing on a small number of relatively clear issues that appear within short writings as well as within longer ones.

Nonetheless, a few longer writings by Timpiers Lutheran and Calvinist Central European contemporaries devoted in whole or in part to the concept of soul have been utilized here as well; see Alstedius (1620), Casmannus (1594), Ulianus (1598), Caufungerus/ Magirus (1603), Hippius (1603), Hotstius (1607), Keckermannus (1614), Lorhardus (1613), Magirus (1600), Scheiblerus (1614), Strigelius (1590) and Wolfius (1590). Two short orations by Lutheran authors - i. e., Rhesius (1600) and Granius (1608) - have also been used.

[Works cited]

Freedman, Joseph S.: Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500— 1700. Teaching and Texts ac Schools and Universities, Aldershot/ UK et al.: Ashgate/ Variorum 1999.

(Variorum Collected Studies Series CS 626). (I.: Introduction. The Study of Sixteenthand Seventeenth-Century Writings on Academic Philosophy: Some Methodological Considerations [pp. 1- 40]); (VII.: Classifications of Philosophy, the Sciences and the Arts in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe. The Modern Schoolman 72, no. 2 [1994]: pp. 37-65.

Freedman, Joseph S.: European Academic Philosophy in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. The Life, Significance, and Philosophy of Clemens Timpler (1563/4 - 1624), 2 Vols, Hildesheim, Zurich and New York: Georg Olms 1988 (Studien und Materialien zur Geschichte der Philosophic 27).

Kennedy, Leonard A.: Cesare Cremonini and the Immortality of the Human Soul, in: Vivarium 18, no. 2 (1980), pp. 143- 158.

Kessler, Eckhard: The Intellective Soul, in: Schmitt, Charles, B. ec al. (eds.), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge ec al.: Cambridge University Press 1988, pp. 485 -534.

Kuhn, Heinrich C.: Venetischer Aristotelismus am Ende der aristotelischen Welt. Aspekte der Welt und des Denkens des Cesare Cremonini (1550- 1631), Frankfurt am Main et al.: Peter Lang 1996 (Europaische Hochschulschriften. Series 20: Philosophy. Volume 490).

Park, Katharine: The Organic Soul, in: Schmitt, Charles, B. et al. (eds.), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge ec al.: Cambridge University Press 1988, pp. 464- 484.

Spruit, Leen: Telesios Reform of the Philosophy of Mind, in: Bruniana & Campanelliana 3, no. 1 (1997), pp. 123-143.

9. ———. 2005. "Disputations in Europe in the Early Modern Period." In Hora Est! On Dissertations , 30-50. Leiden: Universiteitsbibliotheek Leiden.

Kleine publicaties van de Leidse Universiteitsbibliotheek, Nr. 71.

"During the early modern period, disputations constituted a major component of the curriculum at schools and universities scattered throughout Europe. Disputations and disputation theory are the subject matter of a number of recent publications. (1) A number of recent scholarly writings on university history have also included detailed discussion of this same topic. (2)

The present article intends to highlight some results of this recent research (including my own as Scaliger fellow in Leiden) and place it within the context of the abundant and valuable holdings at the Leiden University Library.

A working definition of disputation can be constructed by looking at the theory as well as the practice of disputations. (3) The disputations were frequently examined within the context of textbooks and other writings on logic. (4) Beginning in about the year 1550, writings devoted specifically to the subject-matter of disputations were published in Europe. (5) Curriculum plans, instructional schedules, and statutes frequently discuss disputations that are to be held, often mentioning genres and categories thereof. (6) And most importantly, one can examine actual extant disputations themselves, though it is possible to become almost overwhelmed by the sheer mass and variety of them which are extant in European and non-European libraries Within this complex context, disputations during the early modern period can be understood here as logical exercises – held on a very wide range of possible subject-matters – which were held by two or more participants as part of academic instruction at European schools and universities. (7)

These disputations were almost invariably held in Latin and were known by a variety of different names. Disputatio and dissertatio were especially common; exercitatio / exercitationes and thesis / theses were among other terms which was sometimes used. (8) To date, a multi-institutional or multiregional pattern for the use of these various terms has yet to be identified.

At Leiden University, the inaugural disputation in philosophy – i.e., the disputation held in partial fulfillment of requirements for the terminal degree in philosophy and the arts – apparently was known as a disputatio philosophica inauguralis until the 1720s, when the name seems to have changed to dissertatio philosophica inauguralis . (9)" (p. 30)

(1) Among recent encyclopedia articles, books/monographic treatises, journal articles and bibliographies pertaining to this topic the following can be mentioned here: Hanspeter Marti, ‘Dissertation’ and ‘Dissertation’, Gert Ueding, ed., Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik, vol. 2 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer,1994): pp. 866–884; Margreet J. A. M. Ahsmann, Collegium und Kolleg. Der juristische Unterricht an der Universität Leiden 1575–1630 unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Disputationen, aus dem Niederländischen übersetzt von Irene Sagel-Grande (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2000); Donald Leonard Felipe, The Post-Medieval Ars Disputandi Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Texas, Austin (USA): 1991); Hanspeter Marti, ‘Die Wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Dokumentationswert alter Dissertationen,’ Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres 1 (1981): pp. 117-132; Ferenc Postma and Jacob van Sluis, Auditorium Academiae Franekerensis: Bibliographie der Reden, Disputationen und Gelegenheitsdruckwerk der Universität und des Athenäums in Franeker 1585-1843 (Leeuwarden: Fryske Akademy, 1995); Hanspeter Marti, Philosophische Dissertationen deutscher Universitäten (München et al.: K. G. Saur, 1982). The following older study is still valuable: Ewald Horn, Die Disputationen und Promotionen an den deutschen Universitäten vornehmlich seit dem 16. Jahrhundert, Elftes Beiheft zum Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen (Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1893; reprint ed.: Nendeln / Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint / Wiesbaden: Otto Harrossowitz, 1968).

2. Disputations and their place in instruction during the 16th and 17th centuries – primarily in Central Europe – are frequently mentioned within the following collection of articles: Joseph S. Freedman, Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500–1700. Teaching and Texts at Schools and Universities, Variorum Collected Studies Series CS 626 (Aldershot et al.: Ashgate / Variorum, 1999), Index 3.

A very valuable discussion of disputations, together with a detailed list and analysis of philosophy disputations held at the University of Basel during the 17th Century is given in Wolfgang Rother, Die Philosophie an der Universität Basel im 17. Jahrhundert. Quellen und Analyse (Dr. phil. Dissertation, Universität Zürich, 1980), pp. 62-66, 97-99, 326-330, 450-451.

3. The concept of definition was itself a subject-matter that was regularly discussed as part of academic instruction on logic during the early modern period; the concept of definition – including various kinds of definitions – was also usually examined in published writings on logic. For example, refer to the following: Cornelius Valerius, Tabulae, quibus totius dialecticae praecepta maxime ad usum disserendi necessaria breviter & summatim exponuntur, ordine perspicuo digestae (Antwerpiae: Ex officio Christophori Plantini, 1575), pp. 27-32 [UBL 191 E 26: 2]; Johannes Rudolphus Faber, Totius logicae Peripateticae corpus ... Nec-non totius organi Aristotelico-Ramei compendium (Aurelianae: Apud viduam & haeredes Petri de la Roviere, 1623), pp. 537-542 [UBL 546 B 12]; Daniel Wyttenbachius, Praecepta philosophiae logicae (Amstelodami: Apud Caearem Noëlem Guerin, 1781), pp. 142-166 [UBL 652 B 11]. Definition itself was considered by early modern academic authors as a problematic concept. A detailed discussion of the concepts of classification and definition is given in Freedman, Philosophy and the Arts (see footnote 2), I: 2-7.

4. Hundreds of examples could be given in this connection, including the following: Bartholomaeus Keckermannus, Gymnasium logicum, id est, de usu et exercitatione logicae artis absolutiori & pleniori, libri III. Annis ab hinc aliquot in Academia Heidelbergensis privates praelectionibus traditi (Hanoviae: Apud Guilliemum Antonium, 1608), pp. 122-152 [UBL 650 D 9: 2]; Faber, Totius logicae [...] compendium (see footnote 3), pp. 537-542; P[etrus] van Musschenbroek, Institutiones logicae praecipue comprehendentes artem argumentandi. Conscriptum in usum studiosae juventutis (Lugduni Batavorum: Apud Samuelem Luchtmans et filium academiae typographus, 1748), pp. 197-206 [UBL 652 B 8]; Wyttenbachius, Praecepta (see footnote 3), pp. 235-238. The above-mentioned work by Keckermann was first published in the year 1605; refer to Joseph S. Freedman, ‘The Career and Writings of Bartholomew Keckermann (d. 1609)’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 141, no. 3 (September 1997): pp. 305-364 (343).

5. These also included disputations held on the subject-matter of disputations themselves; for example, see Joh. Nagelius (praes.) & Leonh. Appoltus (resp.): Specimen academicum [...] de modo disputandi. Altorfii, 1737 [UBL 17 B 68]. The topic of this disputation – the manner in which Jewish teachers in Nuremberg and in Regensburg conduct disputations when teaching their students – is very unusual during the early modern period. The text thereof is written in Latin but contains many passages in Hebrew.

6. The following detailed discussion of disputations within a curriculum description for a school in Duisburg published in the year 1561 can be mentioned here: Henricus C. Geldorpius, De optimo genere interpretandae philosophiae, in quo explicatur simul ratio atque ordo Scholae Dusburgensis (s.l.: 1561) [UBL 20643 F 16]. Numerous curriculum plans in which disputations are discussed and cited within Joseph S. Freedman, ‘Philosophy Instruction within the Institutional Framework of Central European Schools and Universities during the Reformation Era,’ History of Universities 5 (1985): pp. 117-166.

7. Hanspeter Marti’s definitions of disputatio (German: Disputation) and dissertation (German: Dissertation) point to the difficulties involved in any attempt to define each concept. His definitions are given here in full: ‘Allgemein versteht man unter D[isputation] ein Streitgespräch oder eine Streitschrift, speziell die seit dem hohen Mittelalter bis zum späten 18. Jh., an Universitäten und anderen Schulen neben der Vorlesung (lectio) verbreitete, institutionell festverankerete Art des gelehrten Unterrichts. Die Vielfalt der Erscheinungsformen sowohl der mündlichen wie der schriftlichen D[isputation] lässt keine allgemeingültige Beschreibung ihres Ablaufs bzw. ihrer Gattungsmerkmale zu. Typisch für die Bedeutungsvielfalt des Begriffs <D[isputation]> ist, daß damit nicht bloß das Streitgespräch und die schriftliche Thesenbehandlung (Dissertation), sondern auch, obwohl selten, der Gegenstand des mündlichen Disputationsaktes bezeichnet wird.’ Marti, ‘Disputation’ (see footnote 1): 866; ‘Unter einer D[issertation] wird heute einzig die Inauguraldissertation, Hauptbedingung für den Erwerb des Doktorgrades an den Universitäten, verstanden.

Deshalb wird hier vor allem auf sie und ihre Geschichte eingegangen. Bis ca. 1800 wurde jede Abhandlung <D[issertation]> genannt, die den Gegenstand einer mündlichen, auch bloß übungshalber veranstalteten Disputation vorstellte und in der Regel dem Streitgespräch als Einladungsschrift zugrundelag. Als D[issertation] konnte damals auch eine akademische Streitschrift bezeichnet werden, über die nicht disputiert wurde oder, seltener, eine Rede sowie der ganze Disputationsakt.’

Marti, ‘Dissertation’ (see footnote 1): 880.

8. See the various title pages reprinted in this publication.

The online catalog of Leiden University Library provides with extant information concerning this transition of names. An online search conducted on January 12, 2005 provided the following information. An ‘any word’ search for disputatio philosophica inauguralis produced inaugural disputations held at Leiden University in the years 1642, 1660, 1661, 1662, 1663, 1664, 1665, 1667, 1669, 1670, 1671, 1672, 1676, 1679, 1680, 1681, 1684, 1685, 1688, 1690, 1693, 1698, 1702, 1703, 1707, 1721 and 1728. An ‘any word’ search for dissertatio philosophica inauguralis resulted in finding inaugural disputations held at Leiden University in the years 1725, 1728, 1730, 1734, 1743, 1745, 1751, 1753, 1764, 1766, 1769, 1774, 1780, 1790, 1808, 1818, 1822 and 1831.

10. ———. 2005. "A Neglected Treatise on Scientific Method (methodus scientifica ) published by Joannes Bellarinus (1606)." In Geschichte der Hermeneutik und die Methodik der textinterpretierenden Disziplinen , edited by Schönert, Jörg and Vollhardt, Friedrich, 43-82. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Historia Hermeneutica. Series Studia Band 1.

"The text consists ofan introduction and four 'Books' [libri]. In the introduction, Bellarinus equates scientific method [methodus scientifica] with the practice of the sciences [praxis scientiarum].

In Book 1 [Concerning science and the knowable], Bellarinus defines science [scientia ] in terms of cognition [cognitio].

In Book 2 [Concerning rules of logic], it is noted that science focuses on universals.

In Book 3 [Concerning the instruments of knowledge], is stated that ten instruments [instrumenta], through which cognition [cognitio] is made certain [certa] and evident [evidens].

In Book 4 [Concerning method] Bellarinus defines method [methodus] as the correct way to discover, 'be taught' and teach [scientific] knowledge [recta ratio scientiam inveniendi, discendi, atque docendi]; he equates method with scientific method when this knowledge is perfect knowledge."

"As common as discussions of method - and of scientific method in particular -are in recent scholarship and pedagogy, our knowledge of the early evolution of these two concepts is still relatively scant.(1) This article will highlight a neglected treatise on the concept of scientific method - published by Joannes Bellarinus in the year 1606 (*) - which appears to be the first known published treatise bearing this title. This treatise can be placed in the context of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century discussions of method, definition theory, classification theory, and the classification of academic disciplines. Such early discussions of scientific method and related concepts can be used to provide useful insights pertaining to recent scholarly discussions on these same subject-matters.

The history of the concept of method during late middle ages has not yet been studied extensively. And while this concept was mentioned occasionally within some writings during the early sixteenth century, it was not until mid-century that the concept of method begins to be accorded direct and extensive discussion. Such discussions of method are very numerous from the 1550s onward. The bulk of these discussions - contained within treatises on method itself, within treatises on logic, and within treatises on other subject-matters -have yet to be studied; the authors of many treatises containing such discussions on method have been forgotten for centuries.

(...)

A thorough examination of the concept of method during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries would require a separate study extending well beyond the parameters of this article. Here the following summary points can be made concerning discussions of method during this period (I - III): (I) the distinction between method and order was sometimes discussed during this period, as was the distinction between method and reason (ratio); (II) the concept of method was often understood as having various degrees of perfection and/or imperfection; (III) the concept of method was often explained with the aid of the concepts of definition and/or classification and/or demonstration.(5) As shall be elucidated shortly, all three of these points pertain to the content of Joannes Bellarinus's treatise on scientific method." (pp. 43-45, some notes omitted)

(*) Joannes Bellarinus: Praxis scientiarum, seu methodus scientifica practice considerata, ex Aristotele potissimum accepts. Mediolani: Apud haer. Pontij & Joan. Baptistam Piccaleum impressores archiep. I606.

(1) The books by Henry Batter and Lutz Danneberg cited in this article provide bibliographical information on recent studies pertaining to method and scientific method. Henry H. Bauer: Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method. Urbana and Chicago 1992; Lutz Danneberg: Methodologien. Struktur, Aufbau und Evaluation. (Erfahrung und Denken 71). Berlin 1989. -- The following older but still very valuable study examines the concept of method as discussed by selected Italian, English, and German authors during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: Neal W. Gilbert: Renaissance Concepts of Method. New York 1960.

(5) The concept of method as examined by numerous Central European authors during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries is discussed in Joseph S. Freedman: Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500-1700. Teaching and Texts at Schools and Universities. (Variorum Collected Studies Series, CS626). Alderhot u.a. 1999 - see here particularly my articles: The Diffusion of the Writings of Petrus Ramus in Central Europe, c.1570-c.1630, pp. 106-111; Encyclopedic Philosophical Writings in Central Europe during the High and Late Renaissance (ca. 1500-ca. 1700), pp. 222.223, p. 232, p. 245 (Table L) and pp. 251-252 (Table R). The concept of method was discussed - from the middle of the sixteenth century onwards - within treatises specifically devoted to method as well as within general treatises on the subject-matter of logic: for example, refer to the following: Hieronymus Borrius: De Peripatetica docendi atque addiscendi methodo. Florentine: Apud Bartholomacum Sermattellium 1584. [Chicago, Illinois. USA, Newberry Library: Case / B / 235 / .1034); Augustinus Hunnius: Dialectica seu generalia logices pracepta (...) consueverunt. Lovanii: Apud Hieronymum Wellaeum 1561 (pp. 165-171: de methodo). [Municipal Library / Stadtbibliothek (StB) Trier: Ao / 80 / 20 (2)1 Many additional writings from this period pertaining to the concept of method are mentioned in the monograph Renaissance Concepts of Method by Neal Gilbert (fn. 1).

11. ———. 2006. "Ramus and the Use of Ramus at Heidelberg within the Context of Schools and Universities in Central Europe, 1572-1622." In Späthumanismus und reformierte Konfession. Theologie, Jurisprudenz und Philosophie in Heidelberg an der Wende zum 17. Jahrundert , edited by Strohm, Christoph, Freedman, Joseph S. and Selderhuis, Herman J., 93-126. Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck.

"The brief residence of Petrus Ramus (1515-1572) in Heidelberg (1569-1570) is a matter of record; detailed examination thereof has also been given by Kees Meerhoff, both in a previous publication as well as in his contribution to this volume (1). Yet very little is known concerning the extent to which Ramus's writings were utilized in Heidelberg during the five decades following his death. In this article, extant evidence concerning the utilization of Ramus's writings in Heidelberg between 1572 and 1622 is evaluated within the context of how Protestant academic institutions in Central Europe made use of those writings in the course these same decades (2)." (p. 93)

(1) Kees Meeerhoff, Ramus et l'Université. De Paris à Heidelberg (1569-1570) , in: Idem/Michel Magnien (eds.), Ramus et l'Université , Paris: Editions Rue d'Ulm, 2004, 89- 120.

(2) The year 1572 has been chosen here since it is the year of Ramus's death.

"In an earlier publication I have argued that there does not appear to have been a "Ramist" position with regard to the following two selected points of doctrine: the classification of philosophical disciplines and the concept of method. Tables V-XI will be utilized in order to investigate whether or not one can speak of a "Ramist" and/or a "Non-Ramist" position with regard to a third point of doctrine: the concept of definition. Definition was an important concept that was regularly discussed within writings on logic during the 16th and 17th centuries (56).

Table V provides a synopsis of how Wilhelm Roding discusses the concept of definition within his 1574 edition of the logic of Petrus Ramus; Roding republished this edition in 1576, i.e. while a teacher in the Paedagogium in Heidelberg". At the top of Table V, the manner in which definition - together with conjugate, notatio and distributio - is subsumed within the subject-matter of logic is evident. Notatio is the category Ramus uses to refer to nominal definition. For Ramus, definition is synonymous with what many other authors referred to as "real definition" (definitio rei ). Ramus's distinction between perfect and imperfect definition (the latter considered as synonymous with "description") appears to have been adopted by the vast majority of authors who discuss the concept of definition during the late 16th and early 17th centuries.(58) Roding's own commentary pertaining to Ramus's "that which is defined" (definition) is presented in full at the bottom of Table V; this commentary includes a positive comment concerning Aristotle (see Table V: C.)

Tables VI and VII contain dichotomous charts - which outline sub-categories of definition given by Petrus Ramus and Philipp Melanchthon - within a text on logic published in Lemgo by Rupertus Erytropilus in the year 1588. (59) On the basis of these two sub-categories of definition, the following three points can be made. First, Ramus's categories of definition are much simpler than Melanchthon's. Melanchthon's categorization includes a list of laws and conditions as well as a list of rules, all of which serve to regulate the making of good definitions; Ramus's categorization, on the other hand, presents some examples of definitions but no regulations that govern them.

Second, Melanchthon divides definition into definitio nominis and definitio rei ; for Ramus, definitio is equivalent to definitio rei . And third, both Ramus and Melanchthon distinguish between perfect definition and imperfect definition.

Yet Ramus equates imperfect definition with description while Melanchthon does not." (pp.106-107, some notes omitted)

(56) Refer to the discussion of definition (and the related concept of classification) in the following article: Joseph S. Freedman, The Study of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth Century Writings on Academic Philosophy: Some Methodological Considerations , in: IDEM, Philosophy and the Arts, I: 1-40, 2-7. 24-28.

12. ———. 2007. "Christian Wolff's Two-Volume Philosophical Treatise on the Family (Oeconomica ) in Context." In Christian Wolff und die europäische Aufklärung , edited by Stolzenberg, Jürgen and Rudolph, Oliver-Pierre, 217-231. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Akten des 1. Internationalen Christian-Wolff-Kongresses, Halle (Saale), 4.-8. April 2004.

Teil 3: Sektion 5: Kosmologie; Sektion 6: Theologie; Sektion 7: Praktische Philosophie.

"The past decades have witnessed a steadily increasing interest in the career and philosophy of Christian Wolff.(1) The focus of the current study is a work which Christian Wolff began to publish shortly before his death: his two-volume philosophical treatise on family life (oeconomica ). (2) This treatise has not been accorded attention within scholarship pertaining to Wolff nor within the very sparse existing literature pertaining to philosophical writings on the family.(3) Yet this same treatise not only provides discussion and insights concerning a number of points of doctrine extending beyond the subject matter of oeconomica, but also presents some hereto neglected biographical information concerning Christian Wolff himself.

Table 1 (p. 229 f. below) presents a section and chapter synopsis of Christian Wolffs two-volume philosophical treatise on family life and also gives full bibliographical references for each volume of this treatise. The treatise as a whole is divided into four sections. Section 1 (consisting of three chapters) and the first two chapters of section 2 were published in 1754 within the first volume of this treatise; chapters 3 through 5 of section 2, section 3 (chapters 1 through 3), and section 4 (chapters 1 through 3) were published in 1755 within the second volume.

Originally published in 1754 and 1755, respectively, these two volumes appear not to be been republished or reissued until 1972 (as part of the scholarly Olms edition of Christian Wolffs writings). The entire text of the treatise consists of a total of 900 axioms, which correspond to the treatise’s short introduction (Prolegomena ) together with the content of sections 1 through 4." (p. 217)

(...)

"Before proceeding to discussion of Wolffs philosophical treatise on family life, brief attention should be given to the first volume - originally published in the year 1728 - of Wolffs three-volume treatise on logic. (4) This first volume actually is devoted to the subject-matter of philosophy considered generally. (5) In this work, Wolff divides that subject-matter into the following general parts: logic, metaphysics, practical philosophy, physics, and what he refers to as “philosophy of the arts” (philosophia artium). (6) Metaphysics consists of ontology, general cosmology, empirical psychology, rational psychology, and natural theology; included within philosophy of the arts are grammar, rhetoric, and poetics. (7) Wolff places oeconomica - along with universal practical philosophy, natural law (jus naturae ), ethics, politics, and the “law of nations” (jus gentium ) - within the category of practical philosophy.

In the introduction to the first volume of his Oeconomica Wolff notes the dependence of this same discipline on psychology and ethics; he also notes that ethics itself presupposes ontology, psychology, natural theology, universal practical philosophy, and cosmology.8 Wolff states that Oeconomica discusses the actual practice of that subject-matter which is demonstrated in theory within his own treatise on natural law. Missing from this list is politics, and Wolff considers oeconomica as a separate acadmeic discipline therefrom." (pp. 218-219)

(...)

"Wolffs philosophical treatise on the family contains very frequent citations, however, from some of his other philosophical writings. In the introduction to his Oeconomica Wolff names the philosophical disciplines which serve as the foundation for family life. Yet conversely, Wolffs Oeconomica provides valuable discussion concerning a number of other philosophical topics; these topics include (1) the concept of scientific method and (2) two ontologically basic categories - habilitas physica and (natural) virtue -which rest at the foundation of human generation and subsequent growth, and (3) a number of concepts which fall within the general realm of epistemology. His Oeconomica is worthy of examination not only because it presents a detailed, philosophical, systematic treatment of the family as well as education within a domestic framework, but also - and perhaps more importantly for historians of philosophy - because it provides interesting and valuable discussion of some points of doctrine the significance of which extend beyond the domains of family and domestic life." (pp. 226-227)

(1) 1305 titles are listed within Biller’s bibliography on Christian Wolff; title numbers 1050 through 1305 were published between 1998 and 2004 while title numbers 495 through 1049 were published between 1980 and 1997; see Biller, [Wolff nach Kant. Eine Bibliographie , Hildesheim: Georg Olms,] 2004.

(2) See Table 1, p. 229 f. below.

(3) Some professional literature on natural law within Wolff s writings touches tangentially on selected topics which also are discussed within Wolff s Oeconomica', see Biller, 2004, p. 81 (448), 114 (681-682), 194 (1229), 198 (1250); also refer to footnote 16 below.

(4) Logica, 1.

(5) The full title of this general treatise on the subject-matter of philosophy is given within footnote 14 below.

(6) Logica, 1, §§ 55-75; in § 39 in this same work Wolff seems to argue that philosophy of law and philosophy of medicine might also be included within the realm of philosophy.

(7) Logica, 1, §§ 40, 71. Also included here within philosophy of the arts is a subject-matter referred by Wolff as Technica; here (§ 71) Wolff appears to indicate that these subject-matters often are excluded from philosophy.

(8) Oeconomica, 1, § 4.

(Some notes omitted)

13. ———. 2007. "The 'Melanchthonian Encyclopedia' (1597) (*) of Gregor Richter (1560-1624)." In Fragmenta Melanchthoniana. Band 3: Melanchthons Wirkung in der europäischen Bildungsgeschichte , edited by Frank, Günther and Lalla, Sebastian, 105-141. Ubstadt, Heidelberg, and Basel: Verlag Regionalkultur.

(*) Judicia florentis scholae Melanchthonis (1592); Criseis Melanchthonianae (1597).

14. ———. 2008. "An Extraordinary Broadsheet on Natural Philosophy: The Theatrum universitatis rerum (1557) by Christophorus Mylaeus." In Sol et homo. Mensch und Natur in der Renaissance. Festschrift zum 70.Geburtstag für Eckhard Kessler , edited by Ebbersmeyer, Sabrina, Pirner-Pareschi, Helga and Ricklin, Thomas, 241-315. München: Wilhelm Fink.

Humanistische Bibliothek: Texte und Abhandlungen. Reihe I: Abhandlungen. Band 59.

"The present study is devoted to a broadsheet consisting mainly of an extensive series of such dichotomous charts pertaining principally to the subject-matter of natural philosophy. This broadsheet -- bearing the title "Theatre of the Universe of Things" (Theatrum universitatis rerum ) -- was published in the year 1557 by Christophorus Mylaeus [Christophe Milieu] d. 1570). Only one published copy thereof is known to have survived."(*) (p. 242)

"The very top of the broadsheet presents the title of the work -- Theatrum universitatis rerum as well as the division of its subject-matter (universitas rerum ) into Natura ipsa and Natura altera . The bulk of the broadsheet consists of dichotomous charts that also include longer and shorter text segments. These dichotomous charts and accompanying texts focus mainly on natural philosophy and include discussion -- contained pages A through O -- of incorporeal things, celestial heavens, stars, the four elements (fire, air, water, and earth), inanimate 'corporal things (e.g., stones, metals), plants (e.g., roots, herbage, fruits, trees), beasts (e.g., fish, birds, mammals), the human being considered with respect to his/her component parts, and the human being considered as a whole. Captions placed above selected segments of these dichotomous tables briefly summarize the content of those segments; this content is also supplemented by texts that are placed below -- and linked to -- other segments of these same dichotomous tables.

(...)

Table C (I.-VI.) summarizes the content of the dichotomous tables that together serve to constitute the bulk of his own Theatrum universitatis rerum . Its principal subject-matter is universitas rerum , which Mylaeus describes as 1. that variety of all things to be found in nature and 2. the unity, harmony, and consensus brought to this diversity and discord (through God). In the Theatrum universitatis rerum , Mylaeus notes (I. of Table C) that "the universe of things" (universitas rerum ) consists of five components without clearly listing what they are. These five components, however, clearly correspond to the titles to the five "Books" (libri ) contained within the 1551 edition of Mylaeus's treatise on historiography (Table B): 1. De natura , 2. De prudentia , 3. De principatu (principatus) , 4. De sapienti a, and 5. De literatura .

In the Theatrum universitatis rerum, these five components are paired with two distinct categories of nature. The first (natura ipsa ) corresponds directly to natura; the second (natura altera ) comprises prudentia, principatus, sapientia , and literatura . The terms "nature" (natura ) and "natural" (naturalis ) were used in a multitude of ways within philosophical writings during the sixteenth century; the prominence which Mylaeus gives to these two uses of the term nature in this broadsheet was probably less common He describes both natura ipsa and natura altera at some length, and states that the latter is the "imitator, assistant, and vicar" (imitatrix, adiuntrix, & vicaria ) of the former.' On the basis of Mylaeus's description of natura altera, it could be understood as equivalent to -- or: roughly equivalent to -- human nature. Humans are made -- by virtue of the goodness of "that same superior, providing, and ingenious nature" (i.e., God) -- with a body that empowers us to act and a mind that empowers us to contemplate." (pp. 244-245, notes omitted)

(*) Christophorus Mylaeus, Theatrum universitatis rerum. Basileae: Ex officina Johannis Oporini, 1557 mense Martio. The only known extant copy is owned by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munchen and has the call number 20 Enc. 19m / Res [a digital copy is now available at the Münchener Digitalisierungszentrum (MDZ)].

15. ———. 2008. "Die Debatte um Frauen und Gender in der Schulphilosophie des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts. Der Fall Clemens Timpler (1563/4-1624)." In Heißer Streit und kalte Ordnung. Epochen der "Querelles des femmes" zwischen Mittelalter und Gegenwart , edited by Hassauer, Friederike, 206-217. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag.

[The Debate on Women and Gender in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Academic Philosophy: The Case of Clemens Timpler (1563/4-1624)].

"Philosophie wurde im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert an Schulen und Universitäten in ganz Europa gelehrt. In den einzelnen akademischen Institutionen verstand man darunter das Studium einiger oder aller der folgenden wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen: Metaphysik, Physik, Mathematik, Ethik, Familienleben (oeconomica ), Politik, Logik, Rhetorik, Grammatik, Poetik und Geschichte. (1) Im Rahmen jeder dieser Disziplinen wurde ein breites Spektrum an verschiedenen Themen mehr oder minder eingehend erörtert. Die meisten philosophischen Texte, die in diesen zwei Jahrhunderten – sowohl druckschriftlich wie manuskriptschriftlich – zirkulierten, entstanden in Verbindung mit der genannten akademischen Lehre.

Zwei eng miteinander verknüpfte Themen werden in diesem Artikel von besonderem Interesse sein: Frauen und Gender. Sie werden in den veröffentlichten Schriften eines in dieser Epoche tätigen Philosophielehrers erörtert: Clemens Timpler (1663/4-1624). (2)" (p. 205)

(...)

"Es wurde erwähnt, daß einige von Timplers Ansichten über Frauen auch von anderen akademischen Philosophen des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts vertreten wurden.(53) Timpler scheint zu einer großen Gruppe jener Philosophen gehört zu haben, deren Ansichten über Frauen vielleicht am genauesten als Mittelgröße zwischen zwei Extremen beschrieben werden können. Timpler hätte sich sicherlich nicht der Meinung angeschlossen, daß Frauen keine Menschen seien (54) – eine Auffassung, die im Zeitraum zwischen 1500-1700 einige Anhänger zu haben schien. Timpler hätte ebensowenig die Meinung akzeptiert, daß Frauen keine moralischen Tugenden hätten. (55) Gleichwohl wäre er wohl kaum so weit gegangen, in seinen Schriften den Frauen ausführliches Lob zu spenden.56 Eine eingehendere Untersuchung des Konzepts von ›Frauen und Gender‹ innerhalb einer großen Anzahl philosophischer Werke des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts werden vonnöten sein, sollen Timplers Ansichten zu diesem Thema präziser in einen größeren Zusammenhang gestellt werden." (p. 216)

(1) Der folgende Aufsatz erörtert Fachgebiete der Philosophie als Gegenstände des Philosophieunterrichts in Zentraleuropa: Freedman, Joseph S.: »Philosophy Instruction within the Institutional Framework of Central European Schools and Universities during the Reformation Era«, in: History of Universities, 5, 1985, S. 117-166 (Nachdruck in: Freedman, Joseph S.: Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500-1700. Teaching and Texts in Schools and Universities, Aldershot u.a. 1999, II (Variorum Collected Studies Series, CS 626)).

(2) Vgl. Freedman, Joseph, S.: European Academic Philosophy in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. The Life, Significance, and Philosophy of Clemens Timpler (1563/4-1624) , 2 Bde., Hildesheim u.a. 1988 (Studien und Materialien zur Geschichte der Philosophie, Bd. 27). Im folgenden Buch ist Clemens Timpler kurz erwähnt: Maclean, Ian: The Renaissance Notion of Woman , Cambridge u.a. 1983. Einige Titel aus der inzwischen zahlreichen Literatur zu Frauen und Gender in der Frühen Neuzeit (in umgekehrter chronologischer Reihenfolge): Richards, Penny u. Munns, Jessica: Gender, Power, and Privilege in Early Modern Europe, Women and men in history, Harlow 2003; Jansen, Sharon: The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe, New York 2002; Wunder, Heide: He is the Sun, She is the Moon: Women in Early Modern Germany . Übers. v. Thomas Dunlap, Cambridge, MA 1998; Hull, Suzanne W.: Women according to Men: the World of Tudor-Stuart Wogen, Walnut Creek, CA 1996); Weisner, Merry E.: Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe , Cambridge u.a. 1993; Schiebinger, Londa: The Mind has no Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science , Cambridge, MA 1989. Vgl. auch die Titel in Anm. 56.

(53) Vgl. nochmals die in den Anm. 11, 23, 27, 31, 46, 48, 51 und 52 erwähnten Schriften.

(54) Vgl. Fleischer, Manfred S.: »›Are Women Human?‹ The Debate of 1595 between Valens Acidalius and Simon Gediccus«, in: Sixteenth Century Journal, 12, no. 2, Summer 1981, S. 107-121. Es wurde darauf hingewiesen, daß Timpler – ähnlich wie viele andere Philosophen des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts – die Vorstellung von Frau als Sklavin des Mannes ablehnte; vgl. Anm. 31.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography of Joseph S. Freedman on Philosophy in Central Europe (1500-1700): Third Part

Articles

1. Freedman, Joseph S. 2009. "Necessity, Contingency, Impossibility, Possibility, and Modal Enunciations within the Writings of Clemens Timpler (1563/4-1624)." In Spätrenaissance-Philosophie in Deutschland 1570-1650. Entwürfe zwischen Humanismus und Konfessionalisierung, okkulten Traditionen und Schulmetaphysik , edited by Mulsow, Martin, 293-318. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"The four modal concepts of necessity, contingency, possibility, and impossibility are examined within Timpler's textbook on metaphysics. Section 8 of Timpler's collection of philosophical exercises is devoted to discussion of necessity and contingency. Timpler's textbook on logic discusses necessary and contingent formal enunciations and also presents brief treatment of the concept of modality itself.

In discussing modal concepts and modality Timpler cites a variety of sources. Most frequently cited are Aristotle, Sacred Scripture, "scholastics" (scholastici), Franciscus Piccolomineus (1520-1604), Francisco Suárez (1548-1617), and Jacob Zabarella (1533-1589 ). Timpler's discussions of modal concepts also include citations of other authorities, including Cicero, St. Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, Averroes, Chrysostomus Javellus, Julius Caesar Scaliger, Benedictus Pererius (c. 1535-1610), Petrus Ramus (1515-1572), and Bartholomew Keckermann (d. 1609). In the case of some of the questions (quaestiones) and problems (problemata) contained in Timpler's writings pertaining to modal concepts, however, no sources are cited at all.

With regard to Timpler's citations of sources the following two points should be mentioned. First Timpler may have relied on some authorities more heavily that his infrequent citations of them would suggest. And second, Timpler was usually quite eclectic in his use of such authorities. In many cases for example, when arguing in his textbook on metaphysics that something is possible which nonetheless never was nor will be -- Timpler uses Aristotle in order to support his own view. Yet when arguing that absolute necessity does not conflict with free will, Timpler cites several passages from Aristotle to the contrary; yet Timpler concludes that Aristotle's testimony is not sufficient in this case. In his textbook on metaphysics, Timpler argues that Jacob Zabarella incorrectly defines necessary and contingent things; in doing so, Timpler notes that Zabarella misinterprets Aristotle. On the other hand, Timpler agrees with Zabarella's distinction between that which is possible and that which is absolutely necessary.

Timpler appears to have regarded himself primarily as a metaphysician, and he makes metaphysics central to his thought. Most of Timpler's views on modality are elucidated within his textbook on metaphysics. The most basic ontological components of this latter textbook are diagrammed in Table A1." (pp. 295-296).

2. ———. 2009. "The Godfather of Ontology? Clemens Timpler, "All that is Intelligible", Academic Disciplines during the Late 16th and Early 17th Centuries, and Some Possible Ramifications for the Use of Ontology in our Time." Quaestio.Yeabook of the History of Metaphysics no. 9:3-40.

Paper read at the International Conference Origin and Development of Modern Ontology , held at the Università di Bari (Italy) 15-17 May 2008.

"The first known mention of the term ontology (ontologia ) occurs in a short encyclopedic treatise – within the section therein that examines metaphysics – first published by Jacob Lorhard in the year 1606 (1). Lorhard’s discussion of metaphysics – which he equates with ontology – is excerpted directly from a textbook on metaphysics first published by Clemens Timpler in the year 1604 (2). What was (and: is) the significance of this new concept, and what part did the metaphysics of Timpler play in its introduction? This article will endeavor to place possible answers to these questions into the following four broader contexts: 1) the scope of academic disciplines taught during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; 2) concepts that could/should be considered as being ontologically basic/important – and those academic disciplines which discussed them – during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; 3) the emergence of encyclopedic academic writings and the concept of «All that is Intelligible» (omne intelligibile) during the early seventeenth century; 4) ontology as understood in the early seventeenth century as well as some potential applications of ontology in our time. This contextual material includes philosophical texts and curricular information with a primary (but not exclusive) focus on Central Europe." (p. 3)

(1) J. LORHARDUS, Ogdoas scholastica: continens diagraphen typicam artium: grammatices latinae, grammatices graecae, logices, rhetorices, astronomices, ethices, physices, metaphysices, seu ontologiae , Apud Georgium Straub, Sangalli 1606 [Halle ULB: Gc 6]. Concerning this work by Jacob Lorhard, refer to the following doctoral dissertation (Department of Philosophy, University of Bari, Italy): M. LAMANNA, La nascita dell’ontologia. L’opera metafisica di Rudolph Göckel (1547-1628) , Dipartimento di Filosofia - Università degli Studi di Bari, 2008 [now published: Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2013]. Also refer to the following web site: www.formalontology.it [now moved to www.ontology.co].

(2) C. TIMPLERUS, Metaphysicae systema methodicum , Excudebat Theoph[ilus] Caesar, Steinfurti 1604 [Marburg UB: XIV b 100]. The following additional imprints of this textbook are extant (listed here by place and date of publication): Lich 1604, Hanau 1606, Frankfurt a.M. 1607, Marburg 1607, Hanau 1608, Frankfurt a.M. 1612, Hanau 1612, and Hanau 1616. Timpler’s short treatise on the liberal arts (Technologia ) was included with all of these extant imprints from the year 1606 onwards. In this article, the

1616 imprint will be cited: C. TIMPLERUS, Metaphysicae systema methodicum [...] in principio accessit eius technologia; hoc est tractatus generalis et utilissimus de natura et differentiis artium liberalium , Apud Petrum Antonium, Hanoviae 1616 [Freiburg/Br. UB: B 2272 bi]. A full bibliography of all of the imprints of all of Timpler’s extant published writings is given in J.S. FREEDMAN, European Academic Philosophy in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries: The Life, Significance, and Philosophy of Clemens Timpler, 1563/64-1624 , 2 vols., Olms, Hildesheim-Zürich-New York 1988 («Studien und Materialien zur Geschichte der Philosophie», 27), vol. 2, pp. 740-768.

3. ———. 2009. "A Complex and Largely Unstudied Concept: The History of "Scientific Method" during the Early Modern Period and its Relevance for K-12 Education Today." In 2006 -2007 Procedings of the Society for the Philosophical Study of Education , edited by Helfer, Jason, 111-126. Bloomington: AuthorHouse.

"Scientific method appears to have evolved as a sub-category of the concept of method. Method (methodus) began to be discussed as an independent concept -- mostly in writings by Protestant authors -- from about the year 1550 onwards.(3)

Jacobus Zabarella (1533-1589), a professor at the University of Padua, uses the term scientific method (methodus scientifica ) within his treatise De methodis, which appeared in print by no later than the year 1578; it is possible that other sixteenth-century authors mentioned this term as well.(4)

The first known work published specifically on the subject-matter of scientific method appeared in the year 1606.(5) Its author, Joannes Bellarinus, was an Italian, Roman Catholic cleric whose writings -- first published during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth-centuries -- were largely theological in content.(6)" (pp. 111-112)

(2) Tens of thousands of academic writings from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries (most of which were written in Latin) are extant -- in published and in manuscript form -- at libraries in and beyond Europe. Most of these writings have not been used beyond the eighteenth century. Rare book holdings in European libraries are not completely accessible via online catalogs. Research done in connection with this article included extensive searches for writings on the subject-matter of scientific method; it is possible, however, that additional extant writings on this same subject-matter will be located at some later date.

(3) The first published work -- or one of the first published works -- devoted specifically to the concept of method is Jodocus Willichius, De methodo omnium artium et disciplinarum informanda opusculum, una cum muftis utilibus et necessarijs exemplis (Francofordii ad Viadrum: Johannes Eichorn, 1550); I have used the copy owned by the Berlin (Germany) Prussian State Library with the call number A 1573 (nr. 1); the best general survey concerning the concept of method during this period remains Neal Ward Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960). Also refer to the following two discussions of method: Joseph S. Freedman, "The Diffusion of the Writings of Petrus Ramus in Central Europe, c.1570-c.1630," Renaissance Quarterly 46, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 98-152 (107-111); Joseph S. Freedman, "Encyclopedic Philosophical Writings in Central Europe during the High and Late Renaissance (c. 1500 - c. 1700)," Archiv for Begriffsgeschichte 37 (1994): 212-256 (221-223, 245-246). These two articles have been reprinted in Joseph S. Freedman, Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500-1700 (Aldershot et al.: Ashgate/Variorum, 1999), IV and V, respectively. Also see Joseph S. Freedman, ''A Neglected Treatise on Scientific Method (methodus scientifica) published by Joannes Bellarinus (1606), " Jorg Schonert und Friedrich Vollhardt, eds., Geschichte der Hermeneutik und die Methodik der textinterpretierenden Disziplinen , Historia Hermeneutica. Series Studia 1 (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2005): 43-82 (43-45, 65-66).

(4)... duae igitur scientificae methodi oriuntur, non plures, nec pauciores, altera per excellentiam demonstrativa methodus dicitur ... altera ... resolutiva nominatur ... ," Jacobus Zabarella, Opera logica ... affixa praefatio ]oannis Ludovici Hawenreuteri ... editio tertia (Coloniae: Sumptibus Lazari Zetzneri, 1597), reprinted with an edition by Wilhelm Risse (Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1966), cols. 133-334 (De methodis libri quatuor ): 230E, The earliest edition of this work that I have been able to locate is Jacobus Zabarella, Opera logica (Venetiis: Apud P. Meietum, 1578); I have used the copy owned by the Duke August Library in Wolfenbiittel (Germany) with the call number H: 0 28. 20 Helmst. Concerning the career and writings of Jacobus Zabarella refer to Charles H. Lohr, "Renaissance Latin Aristotle Commentaries: Authors So-Z," Renaissance Quarterly 35, no. 2 (Summer 1982): 164-256 (233-242). Concerning the possibility of finding additional discussions of scientific method by sixteenth-century authors refer to footnote 2 above.

(5) This work is cited in footnote 8 below.

(6) Concerning Joannes Bellarinus and his theological writings refer to the writings listed in Freedman, "Bellarinus" (see footnote 3), p. 47.

(8) 8 Joannes Bellarinus, Praxis scientiarum, seu methodus scientifica practice considerata, ex Aristotele potissimum accepta (Mediolani: Apud haer. Pontij & Joan. Baptistam Piccaleum impressores archiep., 1606); I have used the copy owned by Saint Louis University (Missouri) Library with the call number 1606.2 Bellarinus.

4. ———. 2010. "Published academic disputations in the context of other information formats utilized primarily in Central Europe (c. 1550-c. 1700)." In Disputatio 1200-1800. Form, Funktion und Wirkung eines Leitmediums universitärer Wissenskultur , edited by Gindhart, Marion and Kundert, Ursula, 89-128. Dordrecht: Springer.

"What is – or: what can be understood to fall under the umbrella of – an academic disputation? An answer to this question can be approached by placing such disputations within the context of other information formats – which could also be referred to in this context as instructional media – that were utilized in academic instruction (held primarily in the German language area of Europe) during the period between 1550 and 1700. (1)

When comparing disputations to other information formats / instructional media the following two general questions arise: 1. What is meant by – and what is included within the context of – information formats / instructional media? 2. To what extent can and/or should disputations be considered to include (a) published disputations as well as (b) disputations that were held orally but concerning the content of which we have relatively little – or no – written information?

The constituent parts of academic instruction during this period canbe placed within two broad categories: 1. the presentation of accepted knowledge and doctrines falling within subject-matters belonging to the academic curriculum and 2. academic exercises ntended to provide students with basic skills pertaining to that curriculum. Accepted knowledge and doctrines normally were orally delivered to students in the form of lectures. Many of these lectures have survived in written form, either as unpublished manuscripts (as lecture manuscripts and as notes taken by students) or in published form (usually as textbooks). (2) Also extant – both in published and unpublished form – are collections of commonplaces, encyclopaedias, lexicons and other book-length writings generally intended to supplement lectures and published textbooks. (3)" (pp. 89-90)

(1) (...) 1547 is the earliest publication date of any disputation that could be located in the course of research done for this study (and previous studies by this author). Manuscript records of such disputations from the early sixteenth century do exist; two such manuscript collections can be mentioned. Disputations held at the University of Leipzig in partial fulfilment of the Master of Arts degree from 1512 through 1553 are extant at Leipzig UA: Urkundliche Quellen B 066 (1512–1527), B 067 (1527–1539), B 068 (1540–1553). A collection of public and private disputations held at the University of Heidelberg Faculty of Arts during the years 1537 and 1538 is extant in manuscript form: Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican Library, Vatican City) Pat. Lat. 201; a film of this collection is available at Saint Louis (Missouri / USA), Vatican Film Library: Film Roll 3638.

One may ask why there do not appear to be any (or: hardly any) published disputations prior to this date. It could be argued that opposition to intricately organized (i.e., »scholastic«) disputations by some (»humanist«) authors active in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries (e.g., Desiderius Erasmus, Juan Luis Vives) served as a factor here, cf. the relevant discussion given in Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang, From Oral Disputation to Written Text. The Transformation of the Dissertation in Early Modern Europe , in: History of Universities 19 (2004), pp. 129–187 (159–161, 184). The earliest examples of published disputations found here were published in connection with instruction at the University of Königsberg in the late 1540s (see the first title cited within fn. 36 as well as A. in Table 13). It could also be argued that Jesuit academic institutions played a leading role holding published disputations during the second half of the sixteenth century, cf. the following publications: Ulrich G. Leinsle, Dilinganae disputationes. Der Lehrinhalt der gedruckten Disputationen an der Philosophischen Fakultät der Universität Dillingen 1555–1648 , Regensburg 2006; Gerhard Stalla, Bibliographie der Ingolstädter Drucker des 16. Jahrhunderts , Baden-Baden ²1977.

(2) Refer to the following article: Ann Blair, Note-Taking as an Art of Transmission , in: Critical Inquiry 31 (2004), pp. 85–107.

(3) Refer to the following publications (monograph, article, and bibliography): Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought , Oxford 1996; reviewed by Joseph S. Freedman in Scientia poetica 2 (1998), pp. 222–242; Joseph S. Freedman, Encyclopedic Philosophical Writings in Central Europe during the High and Late Renaissance (c. 1500 – c. 1700) , in: Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 37 (1994), pp. 212–256 as reprinted in Joseph S. Freedman, Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500–1700 . Teaching and Texts at European Schools and Universities during the High and Late Renaissance, Aldershot / Brookfield 1999, VI; Giorgio Tonelli, A short-title list of subject dictionaries of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries as aids to the history of ideas, London 1971, exp. ed., rev. and annot. by Eugenio Canone, Firenze 2006.

5. ———. 2011. "Religious Confession and Philosophy as Taught at Central European Academic Institutions During the Late 16th and Early 17th Centuries." In Universität, Religion und Kirchen , edited by Schwinges, Rainer Christoph, 375-430. Basel: Schwabe.

Veröffentlichungen der Gesellschaft für Universitäts- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte 11.

"To what extent was there a correlation between religious confession and academic (or: <scholastic>) philosophy - that is, philosophy as taught at academic institutions - in Central Europe during the late 16th and early 17th centuries? (1) The meaning of philosophy during this period will be discussed shortly; the term (religious) confession will be examined later. Here <religious confession> is used to refer to the adherents of those religions generally considered dominant in Central Europe during this period, that is, to Reformed Protestants/Calvinists, Lutherans, and Roman Catholics.(2) (p. 375)

(...)

"While metaphysics appears to have had a distinct place within Roman Catholic philosophical curricula (both Jesuit and non-Jesuit) in Central Europe from the mid-sixteenth century onwards, this seems not to have been the case at Protestant schools until near the end of that century (22). Metaphysics is not mentioned in the 1589 curricular document for the Altdorf Academy summarized in Table D-3 (23). In contradistinction to Ingolstadt and Dillingen curricula (D-1 and D-2), in Altdorf logic and rhetoric were taught within the faculty of philosophy and the arts (α.) as well as within the preparatory grade-levels (classes) 1 and 2 thereto (β.) (24).

The philosophy (arts) curriculum published for the University of Freiburg im Breisgau in the year 1593 (D-4) shows some similarities with Protestant as well as with Jesuit philosophy curricula. As in Jesuit curricula, 1. logic, physics, and metaphysics are emphasized within the philosophy curriculum and 2. rhetoric, poetics (often referred to as humanitas in Jesuit curricula), and grammar are emphasized - with grammar at the lower level progressing up to rhetoric - at the elementary level. As in many Protestant curricula, logic appeared both within the philosophy curriculum as well as within the lower level curriculum (a. and y. in D-4) (25)." (pp. 381-382)

(1) The term <scholastic philosophy> is not used here because it can be taken to refer to a relatively small number of academic disciplines (e.g., metaphysics and logic) but not to others (e.g., ethics, poetics, rhetoric, and history). For this reason, the term <academic philosophy> - which is intended to have a broader focus - is utilized in its stead.

(2) Here reference can be made also to general surveys of church history such as Karl Heussi, Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte , 12th ed. Tübingen 1960, pp. 268-381 (Reformation und Gegenreformation, 1517-1689) as well as Karl B. Bihlmeyer and Hermann Tüchle, Church History, translated from the 17th German edition, Vol. 3, Modern and Recent Times , Westminster 1966, pp. 1-206 (First-Period, 1517-1648).

(22) In the case of the Jesuit University of Dillingen, however, Ulrich Leinsle questions the importance of metaphysics in the curriculum there: «Die Metaphysik, oft als «Gipfel und Höhepunkt» der gesamten Philosophie gepriesen, fällt durch eine eher bescheidene und nach außen hin fragmentarisch wirkende Behandlung auf». Ulrich G. Leinsle, Dilingae disputationes. Der Lehrinhalt der gedruckten Disputationen an der philosophischen Fakultät der Universität Dillingen 1555-1648 , Regensburg 2006, p. 530.

(23) Ordo sive brevis descriptio praelectionum et exercitationum academiae Altorphinae (Altorphii: Apud Christophorum Lochnerum et Johannem Hofmannum typo-graphos academicos, 1589), fol. A4v-B2v, (Philosophicae et artium facultatis), B3v-B4r [Wolfenbüttel HAB: 202 Quodl. (7)]. In this Altdorf Academy curriculum, the philosophy faculty is synonymous with the arts faculty; concerning the gradual renaming of Central European arts faculties as philosophy faculties refer to back to footnote 19. Some authors placed selected arts disciplines at a lower level than selected philosophical disciplines but considered other arts disciplines as part of philosophy; for example, refer to Matthias Flacius, Opus logicum in organon Aristotelis Stagiritae ... constans libris XIII (Francoforti: Ex officina typo-graphica Nicolai Bassaei, 1593), pp. 1 and 4 [Wolfenbüttel HAB: O 75a 8° Helmst.]; also refer to the classifications of philosophy and the arts given - in 1610 and 1611, respectively - by Georgius Clainerus SJ as outlined in Joseph S. Freedman, Aristotle and the Content of Philosophy Instruction at Central European Schools and Universities during the Reformation Era (1500-1650) , pp. 215, 237.

(24) In the 1589 Altdorf curriculum, the Professor of Latin also taught rhetoric and history, while the Professor of Greek also taught poetics; see Ordo... Altorphinae (footnote 23), fol. B1r.

(25) Refer to Tables D-3, D-6, and D-7 as well as the following article: Joseph S. Freedman, The Diffusion of the Writings of Petrus Ramus in Central Europe, c. 1570-C.1630, in: Renaissance Quarterly 46/1 (1993), pp. 98-152; this article has been reprinted in Freedman, Philosophy and the Arts (footnote 3): IV. As mentioned earlier (when discussing Tables B-l through B-4), <philosophy> is understood in the context of this article to include all academic disciplines falling within the domains of theoretical philosophy, practical philosophy, and philology, comprising all of the subject-matters at all levels of the Freiburg Arts Faculty curriculum as summarized in Table D-4.

6. ———. 2012. "Johann Kahl's Collection of Writings on Practical Philosophy (1595) in Context." In Philosophie der Reformierten , edited by Frank, Günther and Selderhuis, Herman J., 241-298. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstat: Frommann-Holzboog.

PP = Johann Kahl, Propaideia Practica (1595).

"Johann Kahl (Joannes Calvinus or Calvus) is best known as an author of legal treatises. (1) His Law Dictionary – first published in 1600 with the title »Lexicon juridicum« – continued to be republished into the second half of the 17th century. (2)

He also authored two treatises and two orations pertaining largely to practical philosophy, all of which were published in the year 1595. (3) These two treatises and two orations – as well as their relevance for jurisprudence and to Kahl’s own commitment to Christianity – serve as the focus of this study." (p. 241)

(...)

"In commenting Kahl’s writings on practical philosophy, the following five general Conclusions can be ventured. First, logic and Christianity are both given substantial emphasis – and also are closely interrelated – within Kahl’s writings. (111) Kahl

specifically emphasizes the importance of logic for all academic disciplines, and notes its particular importance for jurisprudence.(112) Kahl uses logic – as evident of his use of »method« (methodus), »logical analysis« (analysis logica), and other logical

concepts (e.g., causality) – throughout his writings.(113) And Kahl refers to prudence, the arts, intelligence, science, and wisdom as »logical« virtues(s) (virtus logica). (114)"

(...)

"Second, it has already been noted that Clemens Timpler utilized – and may have been the first person to introduce (in the year 1604) – the concept of »morality« (honestas ); for Timpler, honestas is goodness that is normative »in and through itself« (in se et per se ) within a specific social environment – as opposed to moral (i.e., universally valid) goodness. (122) Kahl did not make this distinction, yet it would appear that some components thereof can be ascertained within several statements found within his writings. In his discussion of the virtue of beneficence (when considered as a sub-category of virtue), Kahl notes the nothing is more pleasant and more unifying than the »similarity of good morals« (morum similitudo bonorum ) among family members, citizens, and people (generally speaking). (123)

(...)

Third, Kahl appears to place substantial emphasis on the subject-matter of war. (125)

He regards it to be of the highest priority for a commonwealth (respublica ) to keep intact the right to wage war. (126) In the synopsis (Synopsis politices brevissima ) that precedes the text of Kahl’s Commentary on Aristotle’s »Politics« war and peace is

mentioned within one of his three definitions of the commonwealth. (127)"

(...)

"Fourth, one can ascertain an independent outlook within Kahl’s philosophical writings. Kahl’s use of logical analysis provides him with a mechanism that (for example) he can use to organize commentary on Aristotle and Cicero in an independent manner; this also provides contexts for independent statements and judgments. "

(...)

"And fifth, a number of topics discussed – and positions taken – within Kahl’s philosophical writings serve as indications not only of his interest in jurisprudence, but also of the importance of the former for the latter. (132)" (pp. 262-267)

(1) Recent literature that mentions Johann Kahl includes the following [Bibliography, G.]: STROHM: Calvinismus and Recht [Calvinismus und Recht. Weltanschaulich-konfessionelle Aspekte im Werk reformierter Juristen in der Frühen Neuzeit, Tübingen 2008 (Spätmittelalter, Humanismus, Reformation. Studies in the Late Middle Ages, Humanism, and the Reformation 42).] as well as the articles authored by MAHLMANN/STROHM and ZWIERLEIN within STROHM/FREEDMAN/SELDERHUIS (Eds.): Späthumanismus [und reformierte Konfession. Theologie, Jurisprudenz und Philosophie in Heidelberg an der Wende zum 17. Jh . Spätmittelalter und Reformation, Vol. 31, Tübingen 2006.]

(2) Refer to the editions [Bibliography, D.] published in 1600, 1610, 1611, 1619, 1664, 1665, 1670, 1683, 1734, and 1759.

(3) Refer to the citations of these philosophical writings in Table C; in Bibliography [D.] these writings are also cited along with three philosophical disputations – published in 1599, 1600, and 1602 – in which Kahl is listed as the presider thereof.

(111) Kahl sometimes appears to use the terms »theology/theological« and »religion« as synonymous

with Christianity; for example, see PP 71; 77 (and V. in Table E.) as well as PP, 111 (and IV. in Table F). The importance of both logic and Christianity in Kahl’s »Themis Hebraeo-Romana […] Iurisprudentia Mosaica […] methodice digesta« (1595) is discussed – with the aid of extensive quotations from that legal treatise – in STROHM: Calvinismus und Recht [Bibliography, G.] 136 – 139.

(112) »Dialectica tam necessaria est […] nedum in Iurisprudentia, inter omnes satis vaga & dispersa, evaserit, nisi forte peculiare ab ipsa natura lumen atque acumen logicum singulari Dei benedictione sortitus fuerit. Atque hinc plures Topica legalia, in usum Iuris studiosorum iam pridem exhibuerunt.« PP, 5. One additional indication of Kahl’s emphasis on the importance of logic for jurisprudence is evident from the title of his »Jurisprudentiae Romanae […] synopsis methodica« (1595) [Bibliography, G.] as well as from the title of his treatise cited in footnote 111 above.

(113) For example, see PP, 2 – 73; 77; 97; 104 ff; 107 f (as quoted in III. C. of Table F); 128; 131(– 147);

168 and II. in Table G; also see PP3, fol.*5 r, lines 1 ff; fol.*5 v, lines 2 – 24, 44 f.

(114) See PP, 111 (and IV. in Table F)

(122) Refer to footnotes 109 and 110, to the corresponding passages in the text of this article, and to Table P.

(123) PP, 136 f. Also see footnote 56 and the corresponding passage in the text of this article.

(125) Kahl, of course, was not alone in discussing war within academic writings during this period; for example, two editions of a treatise on war by Albericus GENTILIS (Alberico Gentili) are cited in E. of the Bibliography. Philosophical writings devoted to – or containing sections on politics normally devoted some attention to the subject-matter of war; refer to the following writings (cited in E. of the Bibliography):FREIGIUS: Quaestiones oeconomicae et politicae , 151; HOCKENHAFFEN: Axiomata disciplinae moralis , 150 – 153 (nos. 38 – 63); KIRCHNERUS/VELBRUGGEN: Philosophiae practicae synopsin , fol. D2 v – D4 r (nos. 160 – 175); TIMPLERUS: Philosophiae practicae […] politicam , 454 – 506.

(126) In this context, Kahl also notes that war should be waged in accordance with the following guide lines: »In respublica autem maxime quoque conservanda sunt iura belli (quod suscipiendum est eam solum ob causam, ut sine iniuria in pace vivatur) nec post victoriam crudeliter tractandi devicti, verum tuendi, ait.« PP, 135 f.

(127) »Respublica vero seu politia est ad populi legitime consociati salutem iuste facta ordinatio: quicumque demum casus, seu pacis, seu belli, inciderit.« PP3, fol.*6 r. All three of Kahl’s definitions of respublica are quoted within footnote 74.

(132) It has already been noted that (i.) Kahl’s interest in jurisprudence probably began prior to his return to Heidelberg in 1586 and (ii.) he began to teach jurisprudence and publish legal writings well before he became a professor of jurisprudence in 1605; refer back to footnotes 16 and 17 as well as to the corresponding passages in the text of this article. An introductory section in one of Kahl’s treatises on jurisprudence discusses the importance of philosophy (including logic and rhetoric) for the study of jurisprudence: CALVINUS, De jurisprudentiae Romanae studio recte conformando (1600) [Bibliography, D.] 1 – 48.

7. ———. 2012. "Johann Heinrich Alsteds, 'Philosophia digne restituta‘ (1612). Ein kurzer Überblick über Inhalt und Bedeutung des Werkes." Nassauische Annalen no. 123.

Johann Heinrich Alsted's Philosophia digne restituta (1612): A Brief Overview at Its Contents and Significance.

Wiesbaden: Verein für Nassauische Altertumskunde und Geschichtsforschung.

8. ———. 2012. "Georg Liebler’s Textbook on Physics (1561) in the Context of His Academic Career." In Die Universität Tübingen zwischen Scholastik und Humanismus , edited by Lorenz, Sönke, Köpf, Ulrich, Freedman, Joseph S. and Bauer, Dieter R., 249-296. Ostfildern: Thorbecke.

Tübingen Bausteine zur Landesgeschichte 20.

"Instruction in the academic discipline of physics during the sixteenth century has received relatively little attention. (1) The textbook on physics first published by Georg Liebler in 1561 – and subsequently republished in expanded form in the year 1573 – appears to have been widely disseminated during the last four decades of the sixteenth century. (2)

The 1561 edition of Liebler’s textbook – in the context of his own career and of writings published by his own contemporaries – serves as the focus of the current study." (p. 249)

(...)

"Among the most difficult concepts mentioned within academic writings on physics – and also within other philosophical subject matters – during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries is the concept of nature. The terms “nature” (natura ) and “natural” (naturalis ) had a wide range of different meanings within individual academic writings during this period; individual authors sometimes did not explain all, some, or any of the ways in which they used these two terms.

In a broadsheet largely devoted to natural philosophy that was published in the year 1557 by Christophorus Mylaeus (Table I), a central distinction is made between “nature itself” (natura ipsa ) and natura altera. (46) The latter is apparently equivalent (or: roughly equivalent) to human nature; the former – which is not directly defined or described – serves as the subject matter of his broadsheet. However, the terms nature and natural appear to have been utilized in (at least) eleven additional ways by Mylaeus in this broadsheet (C in Table I). (47)"

(...)

"The following general comments concerning the 1561 edition of Liebler’s textbook on physics can be ventured here. First, Liebler appears to adopt a rather rigid disciplinary approach in his textbook on physics; he appears to avoid discussion of issues and questions that are interdisciplinary in scope.123 Second, he seems constrained by – or at least conscious of – the need to avoid too much discussion of detailed subject matter in his textbook.124 And third, it would appear that he sometimes struggles with the task of writing his textbook, which – as mentioned earlier – could be described as not being particularly well organized. (125)

Any real or perceived problems with Liebler’s textbook on physics notwithstanding, his textbook was republished – in its original or expanded version – at least ten times following its initial publication in the year 1561. (126) And the expanded version of this textbook – published for the first time in 1573 – may have been the only extant textbook containing extensive commentary on the physics of Petrus Ramus. (127) An examination of this expanded, 1573 version of Liebler’s textbook on physics, however, falls beyond the scope of the present study."

(1) The 1561 edition of Liebler’s textbook on physics (Epitome philosophiae naturalis ) will be referred to here as Liebler (1561).

This edition of Liebler’s textbook on physics contains two separate paginations. The first pagination comprises the title page, the dedication, and a page of verse; the second pagination (pages 1 through 301) contains the actual text. In citing the text, the appropriate page numbers (without reference to the fact that they are contained within the second pagination) are given.

A copy of this 1561 edition owned by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München has been used to prepare the text, footnotes, and tables of this article; a copy hereof owned by the Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen is the source of the four pages from that same work that have been reproduced as illustrations in this article.

Refer to the following literature (cited in full in G of the Bibliography): Des Chene [Dennis. Physiologia: Natural Philosophy in late Aristotelian and Cartesian Thought . Ithaca, New York [et alia]: Cornell Univ. Press,] (1996); Freedman, “Professionalization” (2001); Freedman, “Mylaeus” (2008); Grafton and Siriasi [eds., Natural particulars : nature and the disciplines in Renaissance Europe . Dibner Institute studies in the history of science and technology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,] (1999); Leinsle [Ulrich G. Dilinganae disputationes. Der Lehrinhalt der gedruckten Disputationen an der Philosophischen Fakultät der Universität Dillingen, 1555–1648 . Jesuitica. Vol. 11. Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner,] (2006).

(2) Refer to a. A.-B. in Table B as well as A. 1.–2. in the Bibliography.

(46) Mylaeus, Theatrum universitatis rerum (1557) [Bibliography, F] as cited fully in Freedman, “Mylaeus” [Bibliography, G], p. 245, footnote 29; the relevant texts from this broadsheet are quoted there on pages 302–312. The 1551 edition of Christophorus Mylaeus’s treatise on historiography consists of five “Books” (libri); Book 1 is devoted to natura ipsa (which also is the subject matter of his Theatrum universitatis rerum ). Natura altera is the focus of the remaining four Books; Books 2, 3, 4, and 5 discusses prudentia, principatus, sapientia, and literatura , respectively. See Mylaeus, De scribenda universitatis scribendae (1551) [Bibliography, F]. Concerning natura altera also refer to relevant texts as discussed, cited, and quoted in Freedman, “Mylaeus” [Bibliography, G], pp. 245, 282 (Table B), 312 (Table L, nos. 48–51).

(47) Mylaeus, Theatrum universitatis rerum (1557) [Bibliography, F] as cited fully in Freedman, “Mylaeus” [Bibliography, G], pp. 268–269, footnote 182.

(125) The following passage would appear to suggest that Liebler felt overwhelmed when attempting to discuss simple natural bodies: “Hactenus de primis et simplicibus naturae corporibus disservimus: nunc ad ea quae ex illis componuntur, nostra sese convertet oratio: ... Quorum omnium causas brevissime, sequentes vestigia Aristotelis, explicare conabimur.” Liebler (1561), p. 253. A very brief, single-page table of contents was included in the 1563 imprint (and all subsequent extant imprints) of Liebler’s textbook on physics; a (longer) subject-index accompanied all extant imprints thereof from 1586 onwards; refer to a. in Table B as well as to A. 1.–2. in the Bibliography.

(126) See a. in Table B as well as A. 1.–2. in the Bibliography.

(127) The writings – mainly on logic, rhetoric, grammar, geometry, and arithmetic – of Petrus Ramus and Omer Talon appear to have spread most widely in Central Europe from 1570 onwards; refer to the documentation and discussion given in the following article: Freedman, “The Diffusion of the Writings of Petrus Ramus” [Bibliography, G].

9. ———. 2012. "Philosophy Instruction, the Philosophy Concept, and Philosophy Disputations Published at the University of Ingolstadt, c. 1550 - c. 1650." In Dichtung - Gelehrsamkeit - Disputationskultur. Festschrift für Hanspeter Marti zum 65. Geburtstag , edited by Sdzuj, Reimund B., Seidel, Robert and Zegowitz, Bernd. Köln, Wien, und Weimar: Böhlau.

"In the year 1981, Hanspeter Marti published an article on the value of published philosophical disputations (that is, disputations published in connection with philosophy instruction at academic institutions) for research on topics pertaining to Early Modern European studies. (2) The following year, this article was followed by his publication of an extensive bibliography of philosophical disputations published in Central Europe between the years 1660 and 1750. (3) His bibliography has been widely utilized in the three decades following its publication; in part due to the publication thereof, increased attention has also been accorded to disputations as an important academic genre. (4)

The present study is focused on philosophical disputations published in Ingolstadt – in connection with academic instruction held at the University there – during the hundred-year period between c. 1550 and c. 1650. Here, provisional answers will be given to the following five questions. First, what was the scope of philosophy instruction at the University of Ingolstadt during the period between c. 1550 and c. 1650? Second, how did this scope evolve during that same period? Third, what were those subject-matters falling within the parameters of philosophy, the sciences, and the arts at the University of Ingolstadt during the period? Fourth, what can be said concerning the content of this Ingolstadt philosophy instruction? And fifth, to what extent can published philosophical disputations help provide answers to these first four questions?

One additional, more general question must also be posed here. During the 16th and 17th centuries, which academic subject-matters were generally understood to fall within the parameters of European academic philosophy? An answer can be ventured here on the basis of discussions of this same matter found in literally hundreds of philosophical writings published during these two centuries. (5)" (pp. 316-317)

(2) Marti: Der wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Dokumentationswert (1981) as cited in full in the Bibliography [In: Nouvelles de la République des Lettres 1 (1981): 117–132.]. „Philosophical Disputations“ here refer to philosophical disputations and dissertations published in connection with academic instruction. No attempt will be made here to distinguish between disputations and dissertations; refer to Hanspeter Marti’s articles on the same in: Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik (1994) as cited in the Bibliography. [Tübingen: Niemeyer]

(3) Marti: Philosophische Dissertationen (1982) as cited in the Bibliography. [Philosophische Dissertationen deutscher Universitäten 1660–1750. Eine Auswahlbibliographie , unter Mitarbeit von Karin Marti. München: K.G. Saur, 1982.]

(4) Refer to Freedman: Published academic disputations in the context of other information formats used primarily in Central Europe (c. 1550–c.1700) (2010) and Freedman: Disputations in Europe in the Early Modern Period (2005); these two articles were published in volumes (cited here in the Bibliography) that are devoted to the subject-matter of disputations (and dissertations).

(5) Freedman: Classifications (1994) discusses classifications of philosophy, the sciences, and the arts during the 16th and the 17th centuries.

10. ———. 2012. "Central European Academic Text on Preaching and Sermons during the Final Quarter of the Seventeenth Century: In the Service of Pietist Preaching?" In Aus Gottes Wort und eigener Erfahrung gezeiget , edited by Soboth, Christian and Sträter, Udo, 227-255. Halle: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen.

Erfahrung - Glauben, Erkennen, and Gestalten im Pietismus. Beiträge zum III. Internationalem Kongress für Pietismusfoschung 2009.

11. ———. 2014. "The History of ‘Scientific Method’ (methodus scientifica) in the Early Modern Period and its Relevance for School-Level and University-Level Instruction in Our Time." In Renaissance Now! The Value of the Renaissance Past in Contemporary Culture , edited by Dooley, Brendan. Bern: Peter Lang.

"Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is often associated with the concept of scientific method (methodus scientifica ); however, it cannot be documented that he directly refers to it within his writings. (1) Yet it does appear that this concept began to be mentioned and discussed no later than during Bacon's lifetime. (2)

Scientific method was discussed by what appears to have been a relatively small number of authors during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. (3) Yet these early discussions of this concept are relevant to present day debates concerning the utilization of the scientific method when placed in the context of academic instruction at the school - and university - levels.

Scientific method appears to have its origin as a sub-category of the concept of method. Method [methodus ] apparently began to be discussed as an independent concept from about the year 1550 onwards. (4) Textbooks on logic frequently (if not usually) contained a chapter or a section on method; monographic treatises and disputations devoted to this same concept are also extant. Method was often considered to have (at least) the two basic sub-categories of synthetic method and analytic method.

The concept of scientific method itself is mentioned no later than in the year 1578, when Jacob Zabarella briefly discusses it within his published treatise on method [De methodis ]. (7) According to Zabarella, scientific method has two component parts, one of which is 'synthetic' [demonstrativa ] and the other 'analytic' [resolutiva ]. It is possible that other sixteenth-century authors - prior to, in, or after the year 1578 - utilized this concept as well. (9)

The first known work published specifically on the subject-matter of scientific method appeared in the year 1606. Its author, Joannes Bellarinus, was an Italian, Roman Catholic cleric whose writings - first published during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries - were largely theological in content. (10) He published a large work which included a compilation of Tridentine doctrine and Roman Catholic catechism; that work apparently was first published in 1607 and went through at least twelve editions, including one from the year 1877. His treatise on scientific method, on the other hand, appears to only have been republished once (in 163o); very few copies of the 16o6 edition of this treatise appear to have survived. (11)

Bellarinus's treatise on scientific method, which was first published in Milan in 16o6, has the following title: Praxis scientiarum, seu methodus scientifica practicae considerata. Ex Aristotele potissimum accepta . It consists of a dedication, a detailed table of contents, a short index, and the text. The text consists of an introduction and four 'Books' [libri ]. In the introduction, Bellarinus equates scientific method [methodus scientifica ] with the practice of the sciences [praxis scientiarum ]. (13)" (pp. 287-292?

(...)

"One can conclude by making the following two general points. First, the scientific method can be utilized in elementary level instruction in order to teach logical ways of solving problems, analytical / critical thinking, and deductive reasoning, that is, general skills that transcend (natural) science instruction proper. Analogously late 16th-, 17th- and 18th-century discussions of scientific method are closely linked to the domain of logic.

They also focus on 'science' [scientia ] insofar as science is understood to comprise a wide range of academic disciplines beyond [natural] science. (101)

One could make the case that the manner in which scientific method has often been utilized in instruction at the elementary school level over the past twenty-five years has its historical precedents dating back to the earliest known published discussions of this concept.

And second, while one might argue that logical thinking and deductive reasoning - both of which can be linked to the scientific method - do not themselves directly result in discovery; they also are not without relevance thereto.

Louis Pasteur's assertion, 'Chance only Favours the Prepared Mind' summarizes this point. Many of our simple, routine tasks - which we sometimes do so regularly that we are no longer conscious of them - are actions informed in great part by logic, thereby providing basic parameters for our more complex undertakings. We generally utilize methods - some of which we may or may not regard (or label) as scientific - in order to increase our chances of making discoveries and/or reaching other goals.

In the context of research, we endeavour to employ rational strategies for what we might refer to when we use constructs such as 'the systematic search for chance finds'." (pp. 314-316; some notes omitted)

(1) While Chapter 2. of Book 6 of Bacon's De dignitate & augmentis scientiarum is devoted to the subject-matter of method, he does not mention scientific method as such; see Francis Bacon, Opera Francisci Baronis de Verulamio [... tomus primus: qui continet de dignitate & augmentis scientiarum libros IX . (Londini [London]: In officina Joannis Haviland, 1623) [hereafter Bacon (1623)], 284-92.

(...)

At the beginning (135) of Book 3 Chapter 1 of that same work, Bacon divides 'science' [scientia ] into theology and philosophy; the latter is divided into natural theology [numen ], natural philosophy [natura ], and the study of man [homo ], which includes a range of additional subject-matters beyond theologyand natural philosophy; also see pages 141, 144, 145, and 181-2 with regard to Bacon's classification of the subject matters falling within the (broad) scope of science.

(2) Scientific method is apparently not mentioned in any of the three works by Francis Bacon - The Twoo Books of Francis Bacon. On the proficence and advancement of learning, divine and humane (London: Printed [byThomas Purfott and Thomas Creede] for Henrie Tomes, 16o5.) [hereafter Bacon (16o5)], Francis Bacon [=Franciscus de Verulamio], Instauratio magna . (Pars secunda, Novum organum.) Apud Joannem Billium typographum regium, 162o. [Oxford, Bodleian Library: Arch. A. c. 5] [hereafter Bacon (1620], and Bacon (1623) - cited in fn. 1. But here the following point must be noted. The subject-matter of the present study limits itself to those writings where 'scientilic method' - and its Latin-language equivalent, methodus scientifica - are specifically mentioned. One could argue that a discussion of the history of the scientific method should not be so limited. In that case, however, one would need to find a viable and defensible way of deciding what does and does not fall within the framework of scientific method over a given extended period of time.

(3) This assertion is to be understoodwith respect to the tens of thousands of academic writings from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries (almost all of which were written in Latin) that are extant - in published and in manuscript form - at libraries in and beyond Europe. The overwhelming majority of these writings have not been utilized beyond the eighteenth century (or earlier).

(4) The first published work - or one of the first published works - devoted specifically to the concept of method is Jodocus Willichius, De methodo omnium artium et disciplinarum informanda opusculum, una cum multis utilibus et necessarijs exemplis. Francofordii ad Viadrum [Frankfurt/Oder]: Johannes Eichorn, 1550. Berlin SB: A 1573 (nr. 1) [hereafter Willichius, De methodo (155o)]. The best general survey concerning the concept of method during this period remains Neal Ward Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method (New York: Columbia University Press, I96o). Also referto the following two discussions of method: Joseph S. Freedman, 'The Diffusion of the Writings of Petrus Ramus in Central Europe, c.1570 - c.163o' Renaissance Quarterly 46, no. I (Spring 1993), 98-152: 107-11; Joseph S. Freedman, 'Encyclopedic Philosophical Writings in Central Europe during the High and Late Renaissance (c. 15oo-c.1700), Archiv for Begriffgeschichte 37 (1994), 212.-56, 221-3, 245-6. These two articles have been reprinted in Joseph S. Freedman, Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500-1700 Variorum Collected Studies Series, CS626 (Aldershot, UK and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate Variorum, 1999), IV and V, respectively.

(7) See Jacobus Zabarella, Opera logica . (Venetiis [Venice]: Apud P. Meietum, 1578) [hereafter Zabarella (1578)]; here the 1597 edition of Zabarella's Opera Logica (as reprinted in 1966) has been used; see id., Opera logica [...] affixa praefatio Joannis Ludovici Hawenreuteri [...] editio tertia . (Coloniae [Cologne]: Sumptibus Lazari Zetzneri, I597; reprinted with an edition by Wilhelm Risse. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, I966), [hereafter Zabarella (1597)]. It is possible that Zabarella utilized this term elsewhere in a work (in printed or manuscript form) prior to the year 1578.

(9) Refer to the point made in footnote 3·

(10) Joannes Bellarinus's treatise on scientific method is discussed in detail - together with brief discunssion of his theological writings - in the following article: Joseph S. Freedman, 'A Neglected Treatise on Scientific Method (methodus scientifica) published by Joannes Bellarinus (16o6)' Jorg Schönert und Friedrich Vollhardt, eds., Geschichte der Hermeneutik und die Methodik der textinterpretieren den Disziplinen , Historia Hermeneutica. Series Studia 1 (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 2oo5), 43-82: 43-5, 65-6.

(11) The only copy of Bellarinus published in 163o that I have located to date is Joannes Bellarinus, Speculum humanae atque divinae sapientiae, seu Praxis scientiarum et methodus scientifica . (Mediolani [Milan]: Apud haeredes P. Pontii, 163o) [Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale: Z 11253]. Concerning extant copies of the 16o6 edition, refer to Freedman, 'Bellarinus' (fn. 10), 43.

(13) Bellarinus (I6o6), 3 (Num. 4).

(101) Bellarinus uses the term scientia to mean 'knowledge' as well as to mean 'science: In the latter sense, scientia is not identified with what would be referred to as natural science in the United States today. During the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, scientia usually denotes a wider or narrower range of academic disciplines (or is understood more broadly to mean 'knowledge'); refer to the following: Freedman, 'Bellarinus' (fn. 10), 46 (fn. 8), 48, 69; Joseph S. Freedman, 'Classifications of Philosophy, the Arts, and the Sciences in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe' TheModern Schoolman, vol. 72, no. 1 (November 1994), 37-65 and reprinted in Freedman, Philosophy and the Arts (fn. 4), VII; Giorgio Tonelli, 'The Problem of the Classification of the Sciences in Kant's Time' Rivista critica di storia della flosofia 30 (1975), 243-95. Concerning Francis Bacon's use of the term scientia refer to footnote 2 in this article.

12. ———. 2016. "The Three Operations of the Mind (tres operationes mentis) and the Compendium logisticae by Erhard Weigel, Bonde Humerus, and Albertus Wahler (1691/1706) - An Overview, Discussion, Some Contextual Information, and a Brief Assessment." In Erhard Weigel (1625–1699) und seine Schüler. Beiträge des 7. Erhard-Weigel-Kolloquiums 2014 , edited by Habermann, Katharina and Herbst, Klaus-Dieter, 143-171. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen.

"In the year 1691, a treatise – ostensibly on arithmetic (logistica ) – was published by Erhard Weigel and two of his students: Bonde Humerus and Albertus Wahler.(2)

But it also contains a lengthy “preface” (prooemium) devoted to discussion of the three operations of the mind. This preface – together with related content added elsewhere in this treatise – places arithmetic (and mathematics generally) in broader contexts that are worthy of examination." (p. 143)

(...)

"In the Preface to the Compendium logisticae , this discussion of the three operations of the mind in the realm of logica is followed by discussion – summarized in [A] of Table E (cf. page 159) – of these same three operations within the framework of logistica.16 The first operation (simpliciter ) is either (α) a “unity” (unum ) that is complete by virtue of itself (totum pro se) or (β) a unity that is linked with “another” (altero ) or “others” (alteris ) while nonetheless remaining whole.(17)

The second operation (combinate ) corresponds to the subject matter – including addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division – of arithmetic; the latter falls within the parameters of logistica.(18)

The third operation (Combinato combinate seu proportionaliter ) applies logistica to much broader contexts: to [a] physics, [b] civil society and government, and [c] poetry and orations.(19) Considered within the realm of logistica, these three operations are also regarded as applicable not only to arithmetic and algebra, but also to geometry, to the remaining mathematics disciplines, to theoretical philosophy, to practical philosophy, and – generally speaking – to the world at large.(20)" (p. 145)

(2) While research focusing specifically on Bonde Humerus and Albertus Wahler has not been undertaken, the following publication can be cited here: Humerus and Jacobi, Stemma Sueonum in Coelo Heraldico (1691).

(17) Compendium logisticae , pp.11–12. It would appear here that (within the realm of logistica) propositions can be included within the parameters of the first operation. But this also appears to be the case in at least some late 17th-century publications on logic; refer to fn. 73.

(18) This is clear from the definition of logistica – Ars computandi numeros – given at the beginning of the preface (on page 1) of this treatise and in [E] in Table A.

(19) Refer to [A] 3. [a], [b], and [c] in Table E as well as to Compendium logisticae , p.14.

(20) Compendium logisticae , p.15. Logistica is also directly applicable to ethics, which is referred to, cf. [C] of Table E and Compendium logisticae , p.19, as aretologistica, a term that clearly links the two. A discussion by Erhard Weigel of individual mathematical disciplines is presented in Weigelius: Idea matheseos universae . (1669), pp. 33–68 (Caput VII–XXI), 69–84 (Mathematische Kunst=¨Ubungen). That Weigel applies arithmetic broadly to practical philosophy and civil life is can also be deduced from the full titles of Weigel: Methodi novantiquae . . . collegio . . . arithmetico-morali . . . (1673) and Weigel: Arithmetische Beschreibung der Moral=Weißheit. (1674).

(73) During the second half of the 17th century, the first operation of the mind, as discussed in (at least some) writings on logic devoted to one or more of the three operations – was understood in such a manner that propositions could be included within the scope of simple apprehension.

If so, then cogito, ergo sum , a proposition, could be said to fall within the scope of the first operation of the mind. (...)"

13. ———. 2016. "Introduction: The Period Around 1670. Some Questions to Consider." In Die Zeit um 1670: Eine Wende in der europäischen Geschichte und Kultur? , edited by Freedman, Joseph S., 7-73. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

14. ———. 2016. "The Transition (Übergang) of the Great Chain of Being as Reflected in 16th-Century Writings on Philosophy and the Arts." Wolfenbütteler Renaissance-Mitteilungen no. 37:39-76.

15. ———. 2017. "The ‘Unexpected’ in the Context of Philosophy and the Arts as Taught at 16th- and 17th-Century Academic Institutions." In You Were No Expected To Do This: On th Dynamics of Production , edited by Blanga-Gubbay, Daniel and Ruchaud, Elisabeth, 95-110. Düsseldorf: Düsseldorf University Press.

16. ———. 2018. "All You Need is Love? Emotion (Gefühl) and Norm in the Synopsis (Tabulae synopticae : 1728) of Philosophical Writings by Johann Franz Buddeus (1667–1729)." Pietismus und Neuzeit no. 44:13-30.

"Johann Franz Buddeus (1667-1729) was Professor of Practical Philosophy and Morals at the University of Halle (1693-1705), where he taught not only Practical Philosophy but also (beginning no later than the 1698-1699 academic year) a much broader range of philosophy subject-matters. Among his writings published during the year 1703 in connection with his academic instruction was a three-volume series on philosophy (Instrumental Philosophy, Theoretical Philosophy, and Practical Philosophy) intended to provide a comprehensive survey of philosophy as a whole.(1) A detailed and very useful Synopsis thereof in outline format - containing a supporting preface by Buddeus - was published by Johannes Jacobus Schatzius in the year 1728 (2). Here the concepts of emotion (Gefühl ) and norm as presented by Schatzius within is Synopsis of Buddeus's philosophy will be examined." (p. 13)

(1) The Practical Philosophy of Buddeus was first published in 1697: Joh[annes] Franciscus Buddeus : Elementa philosophiae practicae quibus ethica, jurisprudents naturalis, jurisprudentia gentium, et politica, tum generalis, tum specialis succincte traduntur, in usum praelectionum academicarum edita. Halle Magdeburgicae: Sumptibus Johann. Frid. Zeidlcri, 1697. [Berlin, Staatsbibliothek: Np 3252]. Buddeus’s Philosophia Instrumentalis and his Philosophia theoretica were first published in 1703 and are cited (together with the 1703 edition of the Practical Philosophy which serves as the third volume of that three-volume series) in note 6.

(2) Tabulae Synopticae Philosophiae D. Johannis Francisci Buddei eclecticae in usum studiosae juventutis adornatae et cum praefatione ipsius celeberrimi auctoris editae a Μ. Johanne Jacobo Schatzio Argentinensi & p. t. illustris gymnasii Isenachensis Directore & Bibliothecario. Budingae:Typis & impensis Job. Frider. Regelin, 1728. [Dresden, Staats-, Landes-, und Universitätsbibliothek: Phil.A.93.s] Buddeus’s supportive preface is found on fol. a2r-a2v. Concerning the life and career of Johann Jakob Schatz (1691—1760), who was Rector at a Gymnasium illustre in Eisenach from 1728 until 1738, refer to CERL (www.dat.cerl.org / last accessed on 22 March 2019). No additional biographical research concerning him has been undertaken. Here this Synopsis by Schatz will be referred to in subsequent notes as Buddeus-Schatzius (1728). Here the use of italics in the Synopsis is reflected each time that italics are used within individual notes.

(6) Joh[annes] ranciscus Buddeus : Elementa philosophiae Instrumentalis seu institutionum philosophiae eclecticae tomus primus. Halae Saxonum: Typis et impensis Orphanotrophii Glaucha-Halensis, 1703. [Halle ULB: Fa 2008 (})\,Jolhannesl Franciscus Buddens: Elementa philosophiae theoreticae seu institutionum philosophiae eclecticae tomus secundus. Halae Saxonum: Typis et impensis Orphanotrophii Glaucha-Halensis, 1703. [Regensburg, Staatliche Bibliothek: Philos. 818], Joh[annes] ranciscus Buddeus : Elementa philosophiae practicae seu institutionum philosophiae eclecticae tomus tertius. Halae Magdeburgicae: Apud Joh. Fridericum Zeitlerum, 1703. [München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek: Ph.u.67-3]

17. ———. 2020. "Footnotes (as Annotations) in Historical Context and Their Relevance for Digital Humanities in Our Time." In Annotations in Scholarly Editions and Research , edited by Nantke, JUlia and Schlupkothen, Frederik, 109-129. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Abstract: "This chapter focuses on early uses of footnotes (as one category of annotations) in Central Europe during the second half of the seventeenth century.

Attention is also accorded to what can be regarded as an institutional context for these early footnotes: the precursors of the Humanities (mainly: Ancient Languages and Literatures) as well as the roles of academic disciplines and interdisciplinarity at Central European academic institutions during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. That institutional context is used to call attention to issues pertaining to (inter-)disciplinarity in our time and the relevance of these issues to collaboration between colleagues in the Humanities and the Digital Humanities. Mentioned is the possibility that innovative uses of footnotes (often along with other forms of annotations) during the late seventeenth century by little known authors might serve as a catalyst for innovation in the Digital Humanities."

18. ———. 2020. "The literary production of philosophy professors 16th- andd 17th- century Central Europe: a brief overview." Acta Universitatis Carolinae no. 40:209-217.

Abstract: "The submitted study deals with various types of works written by 16th- and 17th-century Central European philosophy professors. Their intensive production is examined with the use of the following nine categories: 1. lectures, 2. disputations, 3. academic exercises, 4. polemical writings, 5. translations, 6. editions of ancient and post-ancient writings, 7. monographs, including commentaries, 8. auxiliary writings, and 9. other kinds of writings. These categories form the basis of further content analysis."

19. ———. 2021. "The Origin and Evolution of the ius archivi concept in Early Modern Central Europe." Archivalische Zeitschrift no. 97:15-52.

"One can venture to assume that individuals responsible for the management of archival information from ancient times onwards have theorized concerning issues pertaining thereto. However, our historical knowledge of archival theory – theorizing about archives and/or information that is found in archives – is best based on extant written records. Archival theory during the ancient and medieval periods is not accorded direct discussion here.2 However, relevant in the present context are the following two points. First, some medieval European jurists discussed the legal validity of documents located in archives. And second, many of those medieval discussions are cited or mentioned within legal writings published in Central Europe – regarded here as roughly corresponding to Holy Roman Empire – during the 16th century and thereafter. Here the principal focus is on discussions concerning archives – archival theory – within Central European writings published from the year 1597 up to the end of the Holy Roman Empire in the year 1806.

From the 16th through the first half of the 18th centuries discussions and mentions of archives were found in Latin-language, Central European publications on jurisprudence. This includes (usually brief ) entries on

archives in published lexicons on jurisprudence; archives are mentioned there using a variety of terms, including archivum, chartophylacium, grammatophylacium, scrinium, tabularia, and tablina. Archives are also

mentioned in 16th-, 17th-, and early 18th century Latin language editions of the Justinian civil law corpus." (pp. 15-16, notes omitted)

20. ———. 2021. "The Good Arts, the Bad Arts, and Nature According to Georg Stengel (1584-1651)." In Early Modern Disputations and Dissertations in an Interdisciplinary and European Context , edited by Friedenthal, Meelis, Marti, Hanspeter and Seidel, Robert, 397-422. Leiden: Brill.

Summary: "Georg Stengel (1584–1651) is best known for his work as a theologian and a dramatist.

But worthy of attention here are the contents of disputations over which he presided as a professor of philosophy at the University of Dillingen from 1614 to 1617. Stengel’s biography is briefly presented along with some additional documentation (mostly through the year 1617) in large part on the basis of manuscript sources. While at the University of Dillingen he presided over nine disputations containing seven distinct texts. The first of these nine disputations, On Good or Bad Syllogisms (1616) was republished in greatly expanded form (as two volumes) in 1618, 1623, 1649, and 1662. Each of the remaining disputations focus on the arts (ars ), on nature (natura), or on both. And in all of these individual disputations, the arts, the effects of nature, and syllogisms all are either good or bad. In these disputations, however, that which is “bad” might best be described as that which is not good in a number of different ways.

Here special attention is accorded to the disputation On the Good Arts in General (1616), which focuses on nature as well as on the arts. The distinction is made there between 1. the liberal arts and 2. those arts that pertain to the use of the body. But the numerous examples of individual arts presented within this disputation all can be referred to as corporeal arts. Nature is understood there to have two meanings: (1) The ordinary course of nature and (2) physical causality (physics). It is noted that physics results in knowledge (scientia) while the arts do not. But is emphasized that while the arts require nature, they also perfect nature. Discussed here – as well as in the disputations On the Good Arts in Particular and On the Bad Arts – are ways in which the arts can be misused. But in On the Good Arts in General it is also noted is that the (good) arts, with their focus on experience, induction, and singulars, connect to occult forces and can also participate in divinity. In the concluding phrase to this disputation, God (while not directly mentioned) is said to be “the first and highest artisan” (primus et summus artifex )."

21. ———. 2022. "Keckermann, Bartholomaeus." In Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy , edited by Sgarbi, Marco, 1784-1787. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Abstract: "Bartholomaeus Keckermann (d. 1609) was a Reformed Protestant who taught at the University of Heidelberg and thereafter at the Gymnasium Athenaeum in Danzig (Gdańsk).

Innovative was the publication of his writings on logic in multiple formats and his use of the concept of the systematic textbook (systema ).

Although he did not publish an encyclopedia, his publications cover a very wide range of subject matters; most of his monograph-length publications are included within two separate two-volume collections (1613 and 1614) of his publications as well as a separate collection (1617) of his publications falling within the parameters of mathematics. Keckermann’s writings were widely read for many decades after his death."

22. ———. 2022. "Timpler, Clemens." In Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy , edited by Sgarbi, Marco, 3263-3266. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Abstract: "Clemens Timpler (1563/4–1624) was a Reformed Protestant and professor of philosophy at the Gymnasium illustre Arnoldinum in Steinfurt (Westphalia). He was an independent and innovative thinker. His textbook on metaphysics, first published in 1604 and reprinted at least eight times by 1616, was his most influential work. He was best known for his view that All that is Intelligible (omne intelligible) – and not an entity (ens) – is the subject matter of metaphysics. His influence was hampered in part because virtually none of his contemporaries agreed with his views concerning All that is Intelligible. His writings were cited – both critically and uncritically – during his lifetime and for many decades following his death."

23. Freedman , Joseph S. 2022. "All that is Intelligible, Ontology, and Charts: A Brief Assessment of the Birth of Ontology." Journal of Knowledge Structures & Systems no. 3:57-60.

Abstract: "In this commentary motivated by Øhrstrøm & Uckelman (2022; this issue), I provide important remarks concerning All that is Intelligible and Ontology - "and how both concepts evolved."

"In a departure from prior common consensus, Clemens Timpler asserted - in his treatise on metaphysics (1604) - that All that is Intelligible (and not entity) was the subject-matter of metaphysics. With very few exceptions, his contemporaries {including Rudolph Goclenius the Elder - continued to regard entity as the subject-matter of metaphysics. One exception was Jacob Lorhard, who in 1606 also referred to metaphysics as ontology. Evidence documenting a connection (if any) between Lorhard and Goclenius needs to be presented. It would be best not to closely link Lorhard to Petrus Ramus or to "Ramists." As initially conceived, Timpler's All that is Intelligible as well as Lorhard's adoption thereof as the subject-matter of ontology both appear to have been short lived. In what follows, I draw on Freedman (1988, 1993, 2001, 2009)." (p. 57)

References

Freedman, J. S. (1988). European academic philosophy in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: The life, significance, and philosophy of Clemens Timpler, 1563/64-1624 . 2 vols. Studien und Materialien zur Geschichte der Philosophie, 27. Hildesheim, Zurich, & New York: Georg Olms.

Freedman, J. S. (1993). The diffusion of the writings of Petrus Ramus in Central Europe, c. 1570-c.1630. Renaissance Quarterly , 46 (1), 98-152.

Freedman, J. S. (2001). Melanchthon's opinion of Ramus and the utilization of their writings in Central Europe. In M. Feingold, J. S. Freedman, &W. Rother (eds.), The influence of Petrus Ramus (pp. 68-91). Schwabe Philosophica, 1. Basel: Schwabe Verlag.

Freedman, J. S. (2009). The Godfather of Ontology? Clemens Timpler, "All that is Intelligible," academic disciplines during the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and some possible ramifications for the use of ontology in our time. Quaestio. Yearbook on the History of Metaphysics, 9, 3-40.

Øhrstrøm, P. Uckelman S. L. (2022). Lorhard, Ramus, and Timpler and "The birth of ontology". Journal of Knowledge Structures & System s, 3 (2), 48-56.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Édouard Jeauneau sur la Philosophie Médiévale. Bibliographie Choisie

Introduction

Édouard Jeauneau (1924 - 2019) ancien Professeur de Philosophie au séminaire de Chartres et au Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies à Toronto, directeur de recherches au CNRS, a publié des éditions critiques de Guillaume de Conches, Jean Scot Érigène et Maxim le Confesseur.

Je donne une bibliographie de ses écrits sur la philosophie médiévale.

Pour une bibliographie complète voir:

- Paul Edward Dutton, Publications par / by Édouard Jeauneau, dans: Haijo Jan Westra (ed.), From Athens to Chartres. Studies in Honour of Édouard Jeauneau, Leiden: Brill 1992, pp. XVII - XXVII (132 titres).

- Paul Edward Dutton, Édouard Jeauneau: Publications 1991-2014, dans: Willemien Otten, Michael I. Allen (eds.), Eriugena and Creation: Proceedings of the eleventh International Conference on Eriugenian Studies, held in honor of Edouard Jeauneau, Chicago, 9 - 12 November 2011, Turnhout: Brepols 2014, pp. XIX - XXIX (80 titres).

Livres

1. Jeauneau, Édouard. 1963. La philosophie médiévale. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Deuxième édition mise à jour 1967, troisième édition 1975.

2. Jeauneau, Édouard, and de Gandillac, Maurice, eds. 1968. Entretiens sur la Renaissance du XII siècle. Paris, La Haye: Mouton.

Cerisy-la-Salle, 21-30 juillet 1965.

3. Jeauneau, Édouard. 1973. "Lectio Philosophorum". Recherches sur l'École de Chartres. Amsterdam: Hakkert.

Table des matières: Introduction XI; Première partie: Maîtres chartrains 1; I. Les écoles de Chartres 3; II. Bernard de Chartres 51; III. Thierry de Chartres 75; IV. Guillaume de Conches 101; V. Jean de Salisbury 117; Deuxième partie: "Lectio Philosophorum" 123; I. L'interprétation allégorique des auteurs profanes 125; II. Le Timée de Platon 193; III. Le 'Commentaire' de Macrobe sur le 'Songe de Scipion' 265; IV. La 'Consolation de Philosophie' de Boèce 309; V. Les 'Institutions' de Priscien 333; Index des manuscrits 373; Index des auteurs anciens 379-395.

4. ———. 1978. Quatre thèmes érigéniens. Paris: Vrin.

Conférence Albert-le-Grand 1974.

Contient Le commentaire érigénien sur Martianus Capella (De Nuptiis lib. I) d'aprés le manuscrit d'Oxford (Bod. Libr. Auct. T.2.19 fol. 1-31), pp. 101-186.

Les pages 19-90 ont été reprises dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 213-286.

5. ———. 1987. Études érigéniennes. Paris: Études augustiniennes.

Recueil d'articles.

Table des matières: Introduction 1; Jean Scot. L'homme et l'œuvre [Introduction à Jean Scot. Homélie sur le prologue de Jean. Introduction, Texte critique, Traduction et Notes, Sources chrétiennes, n° 151, Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1969] 9; “Les écoles de Laon et d’Auxerre au IXe siècle” 55; “Jean Scot Erigène et le grec 85; L’héritage de la philosophie antique durant le haut Moyen Age 133; Pseudo-Dionysius, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximus the Confessor in the Works of John Scottus Eriugena 175; Jean l’Erigène et les Ambigua ad lohannem de Maxime le Confesseur 189; Quatre thèmes érigéniens 213; Le symbolisme de la mer chez Jean Scot Erigène 287; Jean Scot et la métaphysique du feu (inédit) 297; Jean Scot et l’ironie 321; La division des sexes chez Grégoire de Nysse et chez Jean Scot Erigène 341; Le thème du retour (inédit) 365; La bibliothèque de Cluny et les oeuvres de l’Erigène 397; La traduction érigénienne des Ambigua de Maxime le Confesseur: Thomas Gale (1636-1702): et le Codex Remensis 423; Quisquiliae e Mazarinaeo codice 561 depromptae 435; Guillaume de Malmesbury, premier éditeur anglais du Periphyseon 489; Influences érigéniennes dans une homélie d’Héric d’Auxerre 525; Dans le sillage de l’Erigène: une homélie d’Héric d’Auxerre sur le prologue de Jean 537; Un ‘dossier’ carolingien sur la création de l’homme (Genèse I, 26-III, 24) 559; En collaboration avec Bernhard Bischoff: "Ein neuer Text aus der Gedankenwelt des Johannes Scottus" 581; En collaboration avec Paul Edward Dutton: "The Verses of the Codex Aureus of Saint-Emmeram" 591; Pour le dossier d’Israël Scot 693-706.

6. ———. 1995. L'âge d'or des écoles de Chartres. Chartres: Éditions Houvet.

7. ———. 1995. "Translatio studii". The Transmission of Learning. A Gilsonian Theme. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 1-58.

8. Jeauneau, Édouard, and Dutton, Paul Edward. 1996. The Autograph of Eriugena. Turnhout: Brepols.

Contents: Acknowledgements 9; Table of Figures 11; Chapter I: A History of the Question 13-33; Chapter II: A Description of the Manuscripts pp. 35-46; Chapter III: A Palaeographical Approach 47-82; Chapter IV: A Philological Approach 83-104; Chapter V: The Hand of Eriugena 105-116; Table of Plates 117-123; Plates pp. 125-223.

"Writing chapters I and IV was primarily the responsibility of E.J. whereas chapters II and III were in the first instance that of P.D.; we both participated actively in writing the Conclusion, Chapter V. Each of us counts himself responsible for the work in its entirety." (p. 9)

"In short, the conclusion of Rand’s article [*] was twofold : i. that there were two Irish hands (i^1 and i^2) entering corrections, additions, and enlargements in Eriugena’s manuscripts; 2. that neither i^1 nor i^2 is Eriugena’s hand. The first conclusion is now commonly accepted by all scholars who study these manuscripts. If this conclusion is a solid one, that is, that two Irish hands worked to enlarge and correct Eriugena’s writings, then four hypotheses are theoretically possible concerning the relation of these two hands to the author:

Hypothesis I : neither i^1 nor i^2 is Eriugena’s hand.

Hypothesis II : both i^1 and i^2 are Eriugena’s hand.

Hypothesis III : i^2 is Eriugena’s hand.

Hypothesis IV : i^1 is Eriugena’s hand.

These seem to be the only possible hypotheses regarding the Irish handwriting associated with Eriugena." (p. 20)

[*] E.K. Rand, “The Supposed Autographa of John the Scot”, in University of California Publications in Classical Philology, 5 (1918—1923), no. 8 [13 October 1920, pp. 135-141, with 11 plates].

(...)

"Terence Alan Martyn Bishop, after studying carefully the Irish script contained in the manuscripts of Eriugena’s works, concluded that, of the two Irish hands distinguished by Rand, i^2 could not be Eriugena’s autograph, while i^1 had the better claim to be so. (51)" (p. 26)

(51) T.A.M. Bishop, “Autographa of John the Scot”, in Jean Scot Érigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, Laon, 7-12 juillet 1975, Paris, C:N.R. S. 1977, pp. 89-94.

9. Jeauneau, Édouard. 2007. "Tendenda vela". Excursions littéraires et digressions philosophiques à travers le moyen âge. Turnhout: Brepols.

Tables des matères: Avant-propos VII-XVII; Première partie: Libres variations sur le thème du transfert de la culture 1-58; Deuxième partie: Sources bibliques 59-108; Troisième partie: Sources patristiques 109-280; Quatrième partie Sources profanes 281-346; Cinquièem partie: Autour de Jean Scot Érigène 437-656; Sixième partie. Autour de l'École de Chartres 657-734; Addenda et Corrigenda 735-738.

Cinquième partie: Autour de Jean Scot Érigène

Chapitre 1. Le renouveau érigénien du XIIe siècle (1987) 439-460;

Chapitre 2. Jean Scot et la Métaphysique des Nombres (1990) 461-477;

Chapitre 3. Heiric d’Auxerre disciple de Jean Scot (1991) 479-498;

L’École carolingienne d’Auxerre de Murethach à Remi, 830-908. Entretiens d’Auxerre 1989 publiés par Dominique logna-Prat, Colette Jeudy, Guy Lobrichon. Préface de Georges Duby de l’Académie Française, Paris (Beauchesne), 1991, pp. 353-370.

Chapitre 4. Vox spiritualis Aquilae: quelques épis oubliés (1991) 499-510

Chapitre 5. The Neoplatonic Themes of Processio and Reditus in Eriugena (1991) 511-539;

Chapitre 6. Le “Cogito” érigénien (1995) 541-558;

Chapitre 7. De l’art comme mystagogie (le Jugement dernier vu par Erigène) (1996) 559-568;

Chapitre 8. L’influence des traductions érigéniennes sur le vocabulaire philosophique du Moyen Age: simples remarques (2000) 569-583;

Chapitre 9. Nisifortinus: le disciple qui corrige le maître (2001) 585-603;

Chapitre 10. Erigène entre l’Ancienne et la Nouvelle Rome. Le Filioque (2002) 605-639;

Chapitre 11. The Neoplatonic Theme of Return in Eriugena (2003) 641-656.

10. ———. 2009. Rethinking the School of Chartres. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Traduction d'un texte inédit par Claude Paul Desmarais.

Articles

1. Jeauneau, Édouard. 1954. "Un représentant du platonisme au XIIe siècle: Maître Thierry de Chartres." Mémoires de la Société archéologique d'Eure-et-Loir no. 20:1-12.

Repris dans: Lectio philosophorum, pp. 77-86.

2. ———. 1954. "Le Prologus in Eptatheucon de Thierry de Chartres." Mediaeval Studies no. 16:171-175.

Repris dans: Lectio philosophorum, pp. 87-91.

3. ———. 1957. "Glane chartraine dans un manuscrit de Rouen." Mémoires de la Société archéologique d'Eure-et-Loir no. 21:17-30.

Repris dans: Lectio philosophorum, pp. 103-116.

4. ———. 1957. "L'usage de la notion d'integumentum à travers les gloses de Guillaume de Conches." Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age no. 24:35-100.

Repris dans: Lectio philosophorum, pp. 127-192.

5. ———. 1959. "Un commentaire inédit sur le Chant 'O qui perpetua' de Boèce." Rivista critica di storia della filosofia no. 14:60-80.

Repris dans: Lectio philosophorum, pp. 311-331.

6. ———. 1960. "Gloses de Guillaume de Conches sur Macrobe. Note sur les manuscrits." Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age no. 17:17-28.

Repris dans: Lectio philosophorum, pp. 267-278.

7. ———. 1960. "Macrobe source du platonisme chartrain." Studi Medievali:3-24.

Repris dans: Lectio philosophorum, pp. 279-300.

8. ———. 1960. "Deux rédactions des gloses de Guillaume de Conches sur Priscien." Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale no. 27:212-247.

Repris dans: Lectio philosophorum, pp. 335-370.

9. ———. 1962. "Gloses sur le Timée et Commentaire du Timée dans deux manuscrits du Vatican." Revue des Etudes augustiniennes no. 8:365-373.

Repris dans: Lectio philosophorum, pp. 195-203.

10. ———. 1963. "Mathématiques et Trinité chez Thierry de Chartres." In Miscellanea mediaevalia. Band 2: Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter. Ihr Ursprung und ihre Bedeutung, edited by Wilpert, Paul, 289-295. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Repris dans: Lectio philosophorum, pp. 93-99.

11. ———. 1964. "Note sur l'Ecole de Chartres." Studi Medievali no. 5:821-865.

Réimprimé dans le Bulletin de la Société archéologique d'Eure-et-Loir: Mémoires 23, 1964, pp. 1-45.

Repris dans: Lectio philosophorum, pp. 5-49.

12. ———. 1966. "A la mémoire de Jean de Salisbury." Bulletin des Sociétés archéologiques d'Eure-et-Loir.Chroniques no. 110:79-82.

Repris dans: Lectio philosophorum, pp. 119-122.

13. ———. 1966. "L'édition des Gloses sur le Timée de Guillaume de Conches." Bulletin des Sociétés archéologiques d'Eure-et-Loir.Chroniques no. 110:94-96.

Repris dans: Lectio philosophorum, pp. 205-207.

14. ———. 1966. "Gloses marginales sur le Timée de Platon du manuscrit 226 de la Bibliothèque municipale d'Avranches." Sacris Erudiri no. 17:71-89.

Repris dans: Lectio philosophorum, pp. 209-227.

15. ———. 1966. "Gloses sur le Timée du manuscrit Digby 217 de la Bodléienne. à Oxford." Sacris Erudiri no. 17:365-400.

Repris dans: Lectio philosophorum, pp. 229-264.

16. ———. 1967. "Nani gigantum humeris insidentes. Essai d'interprétation de Bernard de Chartres." Vivarium no. 5:79-99.

Traduction italienne de Francesco Lazzari, Nani sulle spalle di giganti, Napoli Guida, 1969.

Repris dans: Lectio philosophorum, pp. 53-73.

17. ———. 1968. "Nains et géants." In Entretiens sur la Renaissance du XII siècle, edited by de Gandillac, Maurice and Jeauneau, Édouard, 21-38. Paris, La Haye: Mouton.

Discussion pp. 39-52.

18. ———. 1970. "Dans le sillage de l'Érigène: une homélie d'Héric d'Auxerre." Studi Medievali no. 11:937-950.

Repris dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 537-557.

19. ———. 1971. "La lecture des auteurs classiques à l'Ecole de Chartres durant la première moitié du XIIe siècle. Un témoin privilégié: les 'Glosae super Macrobium' de Guillaume de Conches." In Classical Influences on European Culture, A.D. 500-1500, edited by Bolgar, Robert Ralph, 95-102. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Repris dans: Lectio philosophorum, pp. 301-308.

20. ———. 1971. "Le symbolisme de la mer chez Jean Scot Erigène." In Le Néoplatonisme. Colloque international de Royaumont 9-13 juin 1969, 385-394. Paris: Editions du C.N.R.S.

Repris dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 287-296.

21. ———. 1972. "Les écoles de Laon et d'Auxerre au IXe siècle." In La Scuola nell'Occidente latino dell'Alto Medioevo, 495-522. Spoleto: Centro Italino di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo.

Repris dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 55-84.

22. ———. 1973. "Influences érigéniennes dans une homélie d'Héric d'Auxerre." In The Mind of Eriugena, edited by O'Meara, John Joseph and Bieler, Ludwig, 114-124. Dublin: Irish University Press.

Repris dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 525-535.

23. ———. 1975. "La bibliothèque de Cluny et les œuvres de l'Érigène." In Pierre Abélard, Pierre le Vénérable. Les courants philosophiques, littéraires et artistiques en Occident au milieu du 12. siècle. Abbaye de Cluny, 2 au 9 juillet 1972, edited by Louis, René and Jolivet, Jean. Paris: Éditions du C.N.R.S.

Repris dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 397-421.

24. ———. 1975. "L'héritage de la philosophie antique durant le haut Moyen Age." In La cultura antica nell'Occidente Latino dal VII all'XI secolo. Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull'alto Medioevo, 18-24 aprile 1974, 15-56. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'alto Medioevo.

Repris dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 133-172.

25. ———. 1977. "La traduction érigénienne des Ambigua de Maxime le Confesseur: Thomas Gale (1636-1702) et le Codex Remensis." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 135-144. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

Repris dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 423-434.

26. ———. 1977. "Ein neuer Text aus der Gedankenweit des Johannes Eriugena." In Jean Scot Erigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, edited by Roques, René, 109-116. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

En collaboration avec Bernhard Bischoff.

Repris dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 581-590.

27. ———. 1977. "Extraits des Glosae super Platonem de Guillaume de Conches dans un manuscrit de Londres." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes no. 40:212-222.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 333-345.

28. ———. 1978. "Le commentaire érigénien sur Martianus Capella (De Nuptiis, lib. I) d'après le manuscrit d'Oxford (Bod. Libr. Auct. T.2.19 fol. 1-31)." In Quatre thèmes érigéniens, 101-186. Paris: Vrin.

Conférence Albert-le-Grand 1974.

Version des Annotationes in Marcianum basée sur le manuscript Oxford Bodleian Library Auct T.2.19, dècouvert par Lotte Labowsky, A New Version of Scotus Eriugena's Commentary on Martianus Capella, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies, 1, 1941-1943, pp. 187-193.

29. ———. 1978. "Quisquiliae e Mazarinaeo codice 561 depromptae." Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale no. 45:79-129.

Repris dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 435-487.

30. ———. 1979. "Jean Scot Érigène et le grec." Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi no. 41:5-50.

Repris, avec additions et corrections, dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 85-132.

"C'est sur l'ordre de Charles le Chauve qui encourageait l'étude des Pères que Jean Scot s'est mis à traduire et cette cour était un milieu propice. C'est par le Ps.-Denys qu'il a été introduit à la patristique grecque. Il est passé ensuite naturellement à Maxime le Confesseur et à Grégoire de Nysse. Il n'eut sans doute entre les mains aucune œuvre profane. Il a fait œuvre de philosophe en même temps que de traducteur."

31. ———. 1979. "Plato apud Bohemos." Mediaeval Studies no. 41:161-214.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 347-402.

32. ———. 1980. "Guillaume de Malmesbury, premier éditeur anglais du Periphyseon." Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale:148-179.

Numéro spécial: 'Sapientiae doctrina'. Mélanges de théologie et de littérature médiévales offerts à Dom Hildebrand Bascour O.S.B.

Repris dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 489-521.

33. ———. 1980. "La division des sexes chez Grégoire de Nysse et chez Jean Scot Érigène." In Eriugena. Studien zu seinen Quellen, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 33-54. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Repris dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 341-364.

34. ———. 1980. "Jean de Salisbury évêque de Chartres." Notre-Dame de Chartres no. 11:4-13.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 659-673.

35. ———. 1981. "Pierre Abélard à Saint Denis." In Abélard en son temps. Actes du Colloque international organisé à l'occasion du IXe centenaire de la naissance de Pierre Abélard. (14-19 mai 1979), edited by Jolivet, Jean, 161-173. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 167-181.

36. ———. 1982. "Jean l'Érigène et les Ambigua ad Iohannem de Maxime le Confesseur." In Maximus Confessor. Actes du symposium sur Maxime le Confesseur, Fribourg, 2-5 septembre 1980, edited by Heinzer, Felix and Schönborn, Christoph, 343-364. Fribourg: Éditions universitaires.

Repris dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 189-210.

37. ———. 1982. "Un 'dossier' carolingien sur la création de l'homme (Genèse I, 26-III, 24)." Revue des Etudes augustiniennes no. 28:112-132.

Repris dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 559-580.

38. ———. 1982. "Gloses et commentaires de textes philosophiques (IXe-XIIe s.)." In Les genres littéraires dans les sources théologiques et philosophiques médiévales. Définition, critique et exploitation. Actes du Colloque International de Louvain-la-Neuve 25-27 mai 1981, 117-131. Louvain-la-Neuve: Publications de l'Institut des Etudes médiévales.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 283-299.

39. ———. 1983. "Pseudo-Dionysius, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximus the Confessor in the Works of John Scottus Eriugena." In Corolingian Essays. Andrew W. Mellon Lectures in Early Christian Studies, edited by Blumenthal, Ute-Renate, 137-149. Washington: Catholic University Press of America.

Repris dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 175-187.

40. ———. 1983. "The Verses of the Codex Aureus of Saint Emmeram." Studi Medievali no. 24:75-120.

En collaboration avec Paul Edward Dutton.

Repris dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 591-638.

41. ———. 1984. "Jean de Salisbury et la lecture des philosophes." In The World of John of Salisbury, edited by Wilks, Michael, 77-108. Oxford: Blackwell.

Publié aussi dans la Revue des Études augustiniennes, 29, 1983, pp. 145-173.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 301-332.

42. ———. 1985. "Pour le dossier d'Israël Scot." Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age no. 52:7-72.

Repris dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 639-706.

43. ———. 1986. "Jean Scot et l'ironie." In Jean Scot écrivain, edited by Allard, Guy-H., 13-27. Paris: Vrin.

Repris dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 321-337.

44. ———. 1987. "Le renouveau érigénien du XII siècle." In Eriugena Redivivus. Zur Wirkungeschichte seines Denkens im Mittelalter und im Übergang zur Neuzeit, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 26-46. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 439-460.

"Je me contenterai d'étudier le rôle joué par le douzième siècle dans la transmission des textes érigéniens. Pour ce faire, il me paraît indispensable d'examiner individuellement chacune des oeuvres de l'Erigène. Chacune d'elles, en effet, a eu son destin propre, sa fortune particulière, qui ne coïncident pas toujours - ou plutôt, qui coïncident rarement - avec la fortune et le destin des autres oeuvres.

Je ne dirai rien des 'Annotationes in Martianum' dont la fortune est riche certes, mais qui soulèvent des problèmes d'authenticité quasiment insolubles(4). Du 'De praedestinatione', il n'y a rien à dire. En effet, comme le remarque son récent éditeur, "il n'en est fait aucune mention ... dans la littérature théologique du Moyen Age", et il ne sera "exhumé qu'au XVIIe siècle, lors de la controverse janséniste"(5).

Des traductions érigéniennes, au contraire, il y aurait beaucoup à dire, moins en ce qui concerne Grégoire de Nysse et Maxime le Confesseur, qu'en ce qui concerne le pseudo-Denys. Mais, exception faite de la 'Hiérarchie céleste', nous n'avons pas d'édition critique de la traduction de Denys par Jean Scot; et si l'histoire de la tradition dionysienne en Occident a déjà été explorée par d'excellents pionniers, il s'en faut, et de beaucoup, qu'elle nous soit en tout point connue. Pour ces raisons, je vous prie de m'excuser si je passe sous silence cet important aspect de l'influence érigénienne au douzième siècle. Enfin, j'écarte de mon propos les 'Carmina'.

(,,,)

Mon champ d'investigation se limitera à cette partie de l'oeuvre érigénienne que Dom Cappuyns aimait se représenter sous la forme d'un triptyque: sur le panneau central le 'Periphyseon', sur l'un des volets l'homélie 'Vox spiritualis' et le commentaire sur l'évangile de Jean, sur l'autre volet les 'Expositiones in Hierarchiam caelestem'(8).

(4) H. Liebeschütz. “The Place of the Martianus ‘Glossae’ in the Development of Eriugena’s Thought”, dans The Mind of Eriugena. Papers of a Colloquium, Dublin, 14-18 July 1970, édit. J. J. O’Meara - L. Bieler, Dublin 1973, pp. 49-58. G. Schrimpf, “Zur Frage der Authentizität unserer Texte von Johannes Scottus‘Annotationes in Martianum’”, ibid., pp. 125-139. C. Leonardi, “Glosse eriugeniane a Marziano Capella in un codice Leidense”, dans Jean Scot Erigène et l’histoire de la philosophie, édit. R. Roques, Paris 1977, pp. 171-182. On consultera les communications faites par Μ. Claudio Leonardi au colloque Jean Scot écrivain tenu à Montréal en 1983 (édit G.-H. Allard) et au colloque Eriugena rediuiuus tenu à Bad Homburg en 1985 [dans ce volume pp. 77-88).

(5) G. Madec, Edit. lohannis Scotti de diuina praedestinatione liber, CCM 50, Turnhout 1978, pp. IX et X.

(8) Μ. Cappuyns, Jean Scot Erigène, sa vie, son oeuvre, sa pensée, Louvain - Paris 1933, p. 182.

45. ———. 1987. "Jean Scot et la métaphysique du feu." In Études érigéniennes, 297-319. Paris: Études augustiniennes.

46. ———. 1987. "Le thème du retour." In Études érigéniennes, 365-394. Paris: Études augustiniennes.

47. ———. 1988. "Jean Scot traducteur de Maxime le Confesseur." In The Sacred Nectar of the Greeks: The Study of Greek in the West in the Early Middle Ages, edited by Herren, Michael W. and Brown, Ann Shirley, 257-276. London: King's College.

"Jean Scot, surnommé l’Erigéne, s’est distingue, au IXe siècle, non seulement comme penseur, mais comme traducteur. Les principaux textes grecs traduits par lui sont: les oeuvres complétés de Denys l’Arëopagite, une oeuvre de Grégoire de Nysse, le De imagine (vulgairement appelé De opificio hominis), et deux oeuvres de Maxime le Confesseur, les Quaestiones ad Thalassium et les Ambigua ad Iohannem. L'art de traduire, tel que Jean Scot l’a pratiqué, a fait l’objet de plusieurs études. A l’exception d’un article, qui porte sur la traduction de Grégoire de Nysse,(1) ces études s’appuient sur la traduction de Denys.(2) La raison en est simple: les seules traductions érigéniennes qui aient été éditées jusqu’ici sont précisément celles de Grégoire de Nysse et du pseudo-Denys.(3) La version érigénienne des Quaestiones ad Thalassium, en partie publiée,(4) et celle des Ambigua ad Iohannem, qui doit être publiée prochainement,(5) devraient permettre d’élargir l’enquête. Ayant consacré une bonne dizaine d’années à préparer l’édition de la version érigénienne des Ambigua, j’ai pu, en marge de mon travail d’éditeur, faire certaines observations sur la traduction de Jean Scot, ses mérites et ses déficiences. Les remarques qui suivent sont le résultat de ces observations. Il ne faut pas y chercher un exposé systématique des problèmes relatifs à Jean Scot traducteur. Ce sont des notes de lecture, rien de plus." (p. 257)

(...)

"En bref, la traduction érigénienne des Ambigua ad Iohannem n’intéresse pas seulement le philologue; elle interésse aussi - j’allais dire surtout - l’historien des idées. Car la découverte de Maxime a joué un rôle prépondérant dans la formation de la pensée philosophique de Jean Scot. Or, c'est en le traduisant, que Jean Scot a découvert Maxime. Ne voir dans les traductions érigéniennes que les non-sens, les contresens et les a-peu-près, c’est regarder les choses par le petit bout de la lorgnette, et oublier l’essentiel: un homme est là, aux prises avec une pensée entièrement nouvelle pour lui, luttant contre la gangue du langage qui la dérobe â ses yeux. De ce combat inégal, lutte de Jacob contre l’Ange, l’Erigène, en dépit de quelques erreurs de tactique, est finalement sorti avec honneur." (p. 272)

(1) P. Levine, "Two Early Latin versions of St. Gregory of Nyssa’s περὶ κατασκευης ἀνθρώπουv," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 63 (1958), 473-492.

(2) G. Théry, "Scot Erigène traducteur de Denys," Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi 6 (1931), 185-278. R. Roques, "Traduction ou interprétation? Brèves remarques sur Jean Scot traducteur de Denys," dans J.J. O’Meara et L. Bieler (éds.), The Mind of Eriugena. Papers of a Colloquium, Dublin, 14-18 July 1970 (Dublin 1973), 59-76; reproduit dans R.Roques, Libres sentiers vers l’érigénisme (Rome, 1975), 99-130. J.Pépin, "Jean Scot traducteur de Denys: l’exemple de la Lettre IX," dans G.H. Allard (éd.), Jean Scot écrivain. Actes du IVe Colloque international, Montreal, 28 août - 2 septembre 1983 (Montréal et Paris, 1986), 129-141.

(3) Notons, toutefois, que l’étude de Philip Levine, citée ci-dessus (n. 1) a paru avant l'édition de la version erigénienne: M.Cappuyns, "Le De imagine de Grégoire de Nysse traduit par Jean Scot Erigène," Recherches de Théologie ancienne et médiévale 32 (1965), 205-262.

(4) C. Laga et C. Steel (éds.), Maximi Confessoris Quaestiones ad Thalassium, I. Quaestiones l-LV, una cum latina interpretatione loannis Scotti Eriugenae iuxta posit a, CCSG 7, (Turnhout, 1980). Le second volume (Quaestiones LVI-LXV) est sous presse [1990].

(5) E. Jeauneau (éd.), Maximi Confessoris Ambigua ad iohannem iuxta Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae latinam interpretationem CCSG 18 (sous presse) [1988].

48. ———. 1988. "Berkeley, University of California, Bancroft Library MS 95 (Notes de lecture)." Mediaeval Studies no. 50:438-456.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 675-698.

49. ———. 1989. "L'édition du livre IV du Periphyseon." In Giovanni Scoto nel suo tempo. L'organizzazione del sapere in età Carolingia, 469-486. Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'Alto Medioevo.

50. ———. 1989. "Jean Scot Érigène: grandeur et misère du métier de traducteur." In Traduction et traducteurs au Moyen Age. Actes du colloque international, Institut de recherche et d'histoire des textes, 26-28 mai 1986, edited by Contamine, Geneviève, 99-108. Paris: Editions du C.N.R.S.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 231-242.

51. ———. 1990. "Jean Scot et la métaphysique des nombres." In Begriff und Metapher. Sprachform des Denkens bei Eriugena, edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 126-141. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 461-477.

"Parmi les disciplines que les penseurs antiques et médiévaux ont pratiquées avec ferveur, celles qui déroutent le plus le lecteur moderne sont probablement l’étymologie et l’arithmologie. Il est tenté de voir en elles des tics ou des manies, excusables chez des gens qui ont eu la malchance de naître en des temps moins éclairés que le sien: dans le meilleur des cas il les excuse, il a de la peine à les prendre au sérieux. Nos ancêtres, cependant, voyaient différemment les choses. Ni l’étymologie ni l’arithmologie n’étaient pour eux jeux puérils. A leurs yeux, l’une et l’autre étaient des voies privilégiées pour accéder à la connaissance du réel.

(...)

On pourrait dire que, pour toute une famille d’esprits, tant dans l’antiquité tardive que dans le Moyen Age, l’étymologie était la métaphysique des noms, cependant que l’arithmologie était la métaphysique des nombres6. Comment Jean Scot a-t-il pratiqué cette dernière? C’est ce que je me propose d’examiner ici." (p. 126)

(...)

"J’ai promis de revenir sur la division quadripartite de la nature. Le nombre quatre, avons-nous dit, est le nombre de l’univers, d’un univers ordonné. Ce nombre, selon les Pythagoriciens, “contient les racines de la nature éternelle”(127). Il convient donc parfaitement à une division de la nature. Mais pourquoi précisément la division de la nature telle que Jean Scot l’a formulée au début du Periphyseon? Les quatre membres de cette division sont: I. Nature qui crée et n’est pas créée IL Nature qui est créée et qui crée III. Nature qui est créée et qui ne crée pas IV. Nature qui ne crée pas et qui n’est pas créée(128). Inglis Patrick Sheldon-Williams n’avait pas manqué d’observer que cette division de la nature n’est pas sans analogie avec une division quadripartite des nombres, que l’on trouve chez Philon d’Alexandrie(129). Si l’on examine les nombres qui sont contenus dans les limites de la décade, on constate que ces nombres se répartissent en quatre catégories: I. Nombres qui engendrent et ne sont pas engendrés II. Nombres qui sont engendrés et qui engendrent III. Nombres qui sont engendrés et qui n’engendrent pas IV. Nombres qui n’engendrent pas et ne sont pas engendrés(130). Il va sans dire que Jean Scot n’a pas lu Philon d’Alexandrie. Mais la division quadripartie des nombres a pu lui arriver par d’autres intermédiaires. Sheldon-Williams proposait Macrobe et saint Augustin. Sans exclure entièrement ces derniers, il me semble que Martianus Capella est un meilleur candidat(131). La seule différence remarquable entre les deux divisions concerne le verbe: creare chez Jean Scot, generare (γεννάν) chez Philon. En fait, la différence est moins importante qu’on pourrait croire. Martianus Capella considère les verbes gignere et procreare comme pratiquement interchangeables; et, parlant de la tétrade (quatre), il écrit: “Tétras autem et créât et creatur”(132). Faut-il conclure que les spéculations pythagoriciennes sur les nombres ont pu donner à Jean Scot l’idée de sa division quadripartite de la nature? Ce n’est là qu’une hypothèse. Si elle était démontrée, elle confirmerait l’opinion que j’ai essayé de formuler dans ce petit essai, à savoir que la “métaphysique des nombres” peut déboucher parfois sur la métaphysique tout court." (p. 141)

127 πηγήν άενάου φύσεως φιζώματ' Εχονσαν (Sextus Empiricus, Aduersus arithmeticos, 2. Cf. ci-dessus, n. 78.

128 Periphyseon, I, 36.21-24; PL 122, 441B.

129 Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae Periphyseon, lib. I, ed. I. P. Sheldon-Williams, Dublin 1968, p. 222-223.

130 Philon d'Alexandrie, De opificio mundi, 99 (Cohn-Wendland, editio minor, vol. 1, Berlin 1896, p. 27,28-31; traduction de R. Arnaldez, Paris 1961, p. 207).

131 E. Jeauneau, Etudes érigéniennes, Paris 1987, p. 367-368.

132 “Namque omnes numeri intra decadem positi aut gignunt alios aliisque gignunturaut procre-antur; hexas, ogdoas generantur tantummodo, tétras autem et créât et creatur, heptas uero quod nihil gignit eo peruirgo perhibetur, sed quod a nullo nascitur hinc Minerva est.” (Martianus Capella, De Nuptiis, VII, 738; éd. A. Dick - J. Préaux, p. 372-373). Pour un texte corrigé on consultera l’édition de James Willis [*], p. 266-267.

[*] De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, Leipzig : B.G. Teubner 1983,

52. ———. 1991. "The Neoplatonic Themes of Processio and Reditus in Eriugena." Dionysius no. 15:3-29.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 511-539.

"Needless to say my purpose is not to draw up an inventary of all the Neoplatonic elements which Eriugena could cull from the works of Pseudo-Dionysius. As I have said before, I shall concentrate on two themes, those of Processio (Procession) and Reditus (Return), and examine how - successfully or not - these Neoplatonic themes have been integrated into the Eriugenian synthesis." (p. 8)

(...)

"In fact, these two notions constitute the leitmotiv of Eriugena's major work, the Periphyseon. According to him, they are also among the most important themes developed by Maximus the Confessor in his Ambigua ad Iohannem, for in this book, the reader may discover

what the Procession is, namely the multiplication of divine Goodness through all beings, from the supreme to the lowest, beginning with the general Essence of all things first, descending then to the most general genera, then to the less general of them, then from the less special species to the most special of them through differences and properties; again what is the Return - i.e., unification - of divine Goodness, through the same steps, from the infinitely various multiplicity of all beings up to the supreme unity of all things, that is in God and is God. And so God is all things, and all things are God. (30)" (p. 10)

(...)

"Periphyseon is not only a discourse about the division (or Procession), but also, and at the same time, a discourse about unification (or Return).

And if the two themes, Procession and Return, cannot be considered independently from each other, it is because neither can be understood separately from the third member of the triad, i.e., Immanence. Books III and IV of Periphyseon belong to the literary

genre called Hexaemeron, meaning a treatise on creation, in which the author follows the narrative of the six days of Genesis. The purpose of Eriugena, however, is not to show the temporal unfolding of the created multiplicity from the creating Unity. If it were that, his Periphyseon would be a Biblical commentary, not a philosophical dialogue. The purpose of Eriugena is not to give an historical account of creation, but rather to establish firmly its rational foundations." (p. 11)

(30) Maximi Confessoris Ambigua ad Iohannem iuxta Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae latinam interpretationem, Epistula ad Karolum Regem, 27-35 (CCSG 18, p. 4). Cf. Plotinus, Enneads, I.3.4.

53. ———. 1991. "Vox spiritualis Aquilae. Quelques épis oubliés." In From Augustine to Eriugena. Essays on Neoplatonism and Christianity in honor of John O'Meara, edited by Martin, Francis X. and Richmond, John A., 107-116. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 499-510.

"Lorsque, en 1969, j’éditai l’homélie érigénienne Vox spiritualis Aquilae, je la fis précéder d’une introduction dans laquelle, entre autres choses, j’esquissais à grands traits la fortune de ce texte.(1) Depuis, de nouveaux témoignages de cette fortune sont venus à ma connaissance. Ce sont eux que je voudrais présenter ici. Avant toute autre chose, je tiens à dire que la plupart de ces témoignages m’ont été signalés par des collègues ou des amis. La glane que j’en ai faite n’a pu être rassemblée que grâce à leur concours. Elle est un des fruits du mouvement d’intérêt pour la pensée érigénienne que le professeur John J. O’Meara a su capter et auquel il a réussi à communiquer une nouvelle et vigoureuse impulsion; il est juste de lui en faire hommage.

La preuve la plus évidente de la fortune de la Vox spiritualis est le grand nombre des manuscrits qui nous en ont conservé le texte. On en comptait cinquante-quatre en 1969. Depuis lors, seize témoins nouveaux ont été découverts, ce qui porte à soixante-dix le nombre des manuscrits qui, en tout ou en partie, contiennent l’homélie érigénienne.2 A cela s’ajoutent les bréviaires, dans lesquels cette homélie, réduite à quelques lignes il est vrai, est cependant représentée." (p. 107)

"Un autre témoin de l’influence de la Vox spiritualis à l’époque carolingienne est un commentaire sur les Opuscula sacra de Boèce qu’Edward K. Rand a publié sous le nom de Jean Scot.(9) En réalité, ce commentaire, le plus ancien que nous possédions sur les opuscules théologiques de Boèce, n’est pas de Jean Scot, mais d’un auteur anonyme, incontestablement influencé par lui.(10)" (pp. 108-109)

(1) Jean Scot, Homélie sur le Prologue de Jean, Coll. Sources chrétiennes, 151 (Paris, 1969), 130-67.

(9) E. K. Rand, Johannes Scottus. I. Der Kommentar des Johannes Scottus zu den Opuscula sacra des Boethius (Quellen und Untersuchungen zur lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters 1,2), Munich 1906.

(10) M. Cappuyns, “Le plus ancien commentaire des Opuscula sacra et son origine,” dans RTAM[Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale] 3 (1931), 237-72. H. Silvestre, “La Consolation de Boèce et sa tradition littéraire,” dans Revue d‘Histoire ecclésiastique 64 (1969), 27-28 [23—36]. C. Leonardi, “La controversia trinitaria nell’ epoca e nell’opera di Boezio,” dans Atti del Congresso internazionale di studi boeziani (Rome, 1981), 109, n. 5 [109-22].

54. ———. 1991. "Heiric d'Auxerre disciple de Jean Scot." In L'Ecole carolingienne d'Auxerre de Murethach à Rémi, 830-908: Entretiens d'Auxerre 1989, edited by Iogna-Prat, Dominique, Jeudy, Colette and Lobrichon, Guy, 353-370. Paris: Beauchesne.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 479-498.

"Bien des facteurs interviennent dans la formation d’un grand écrivain ou d’un grand penseur. Le moindre d’entre eux n’est pas le génie, condition sine qua non à laquelle aucune école, aucune technique ne sauraient suppléer. Cependant, ni l’art d’écrire ni l’art de penser ne sont donnés au berceau. Ils se cultivent, ils se développent, si le terrain est propice : c’est à quoi servent les écoles et les maîtres. Le talent littéraire d’Heiric d’Auxerre force l’admiration. Comment s’est-il formé, et sous l’influence de quels maîtres ? Nous pouvons sans crainte d’erreur en citer trois : Haymon d’Auxerre, Servat Loup, et Jean Scot surnommé l’Erigène. Heiric a lui-même reconnu sa dette envers les deux premiers dans la préface à ses Collectanea : à Loup il se dit redevable de sa culture profane, à Haymon de sa culture théologique(1). Il ne mentionne pas le troisième, auquel il est redevable de ce que, non sans anachronisme, nous appelons sa culture philosophique. D’après la « Généalogie des lettrés » (Grammaticorum Διαδοχή) de Gautbert, c’est l’Irlandais Hélie, devenu par la suite évêque d’Angoulême, qui aurait initié Heiric à la pensée de Jean Scot(2). Le Frère Quadri a fait justement remarquer qu’un tel intermédiaire n’est pas indispensable. On a tout lieu de croire en effet qu’Heiric a connu Jean Scot personnellement au cours d’un séjour à Saint-Médard de Soissons(3). Si l’Erigène n’est pas nommé dans la préface des Collectanea, c’est sans doute parce que cette œuvre ne lui doit rien." (p. 353)

(...)

"L’influence érigénienne est particulièrement évidente en trois passages de la Vita sancii Germani : l’Inuocatio, la préface du livre VI, les vers 536-566 du livre VI. Hâtons-nous de dire que le caractère érigénien de ces passages est connu depuis longtemps. Ludwig Traube, en rééditant en 1896 dans les Monumenta Germaniae Historica, [M.G.H.] Poetae Latini Aeui Carolini, III, la Vita sancti Germani (éditée une première fois par les Bollandistes et reproduite par la Patrologie latine, tome 124, colonnes 1131-1208), eut la bonne idée de publier les scholies qui accompagnent les vers d’Heiric dans le manuscrit latin 13757 de la Bibliothèque Nationale. Or, plusieurs de ces scholies ne sont rien d’autre que des extraits du Periphyseon. Hauréau fut sans doute le premier à identifier les citations érigéniennes véhiculées par les scholies de la Vita sanctii Germani(24). Mais c’est à Traube que revient le mérite de l’avoir fait de façon systématique. Les notes de son édition contiennent les références au Periphyseon (édité par Floss dans le tome 122 de la Patrologie latine). Il suffit donc, pour étudier l’érigénisme de la Vita sancti Germani, d’utiliser les références données par Traube, en les complétant, et en les corrigeant à l’occasion. C’est ce que j’ai essayé de faire, en comparant l’édition des Monumenta Germaniae Misterica avec le manuscrit qui a servi à l’établir." (356)

(1) Préface aux Collectanea, vers 11-14 (M.G.H., Poetae III, p. 427).

(2) Texte cité par L. Traube dans M.G.H., Poetae III, p. 422, n. 2.

(12) B. Hauréau, Histoire de la philosophie scolastique (cit. n. 12), Ie partie, Paris 1872.

(24) B. Hauréau, Histoire de la philosophie scolastique (cit. n. 12), Ie partie, p. 181-184.

55. ———. 1991. "Note critique sur une récente édition de la Theologia 'Summi Boni' et de la Theologia 'Scholarum' d'Abélard." Revue des Etudes augustiniennes no. 37:151-158.

56. ———. 1992. "Le De paradiso d'Ambroise dans le livre IV du Periphyseon." In Sophies maietores (Chercheurs de sagesse). Hommage à Jean Pépin, edited by Goulet-Cazé, Marie-Odile, Madec, Goulven and O'Brien, Denis, 561-571. Paris: Institut d'études Augustiniennes.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 217-229.

57. ———. 1994. "Θεoτoκία grecs conservés en version latine." In Philohistor. Miscellanea in honorem Caroli Laga septuagenarii, edited by Schoors, Antoon and Van Deun, Peter. Leuven: Peeters.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 255-279.

58. ———. 1994. "De l'art comme mystagogie (Le Jugement dernier vu par Érigène)." In De l'art comme mystagogie. Iconographie du Jugement dernier et des fins dernières à l'époque gothique, edited by Christe, Yves, 1-8. Poitiers: Centre d'Études supérieures de Civilisation médiévale.

Actes du colloque de la Fondation Hardt tenu à Genève du 13 au 16 février 1994.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 559-568.

Résumé: "Lorsqu'il aborde le thème des fins dernières, Érigène dénonce sans ménagement, parfois avec sarcasme, les représentations sensibles qui en sont proposées dans la prédication courante, voire dans les homélies des Pères. Aurait-il condamné, s'il avait pu les connaître, les grandioses compositions qui ornent les porches de nos cathédrales ? Ne le concluons pas trop vite. En effet, on trouve chez cet auteur les linéaments d'une esthétique sacrée. Cette esthétique pourrait se résumer en un mot, emprunté à Denys l'Aréopagite et à Maxime le Confesseur : mystagogie (introduction aux mystères). Loin d'exclure l'art, Érigène lui assigne un rôle primordial, celui de frayer la voie à la contemplation théologique. L'erreur qu'il dénonce consiste à s'arrêter en chemin, à prendre le vestibule pour le sanctuaire."

59. ———. 1995. "Le 'Cogito' érigénien." Traditio no. 50:95-110.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 541-558.

"Qu'il y ait un Cogito érigénien, personne, je pense, n'y contredira. Que la source ultime en soit saint Augustin, personne non plus ne le contestera. Mais ce Cogito est-il vraiment une anticipation, une première ébauche du Cogito cartésien? Cela est beaucoup moins sûr. Pour en décider, le mieux est de relire les textes dans lesquels Érigène a formulé son Cogito. Assurément, cela a déjà été entrepris par d'excellents chercheurs, notamment par celui auquel je dédie amicalement ces lignes.(7) Mon excuse pour rouvrir le dossier est la suivante. Je viens de préparer une édition du livre 4 du Periphyseon.(8) A cette occasion j'ai dû relire le passage dans lequel a été formulé le Cogito érigénien. Or, pour des raisons que j'exposerai dans un instant, l'établissement du texte ne va pas sans difficulté. Avant de discuter du Cogito lui-même, il importe de s'assurer de la fiabilité du texte qui le contient. Je me propose de procéder en deux temps: 1) La formulation du Cogito érigénien; 2) Sa portée philosophique. (p. 96)

"Le Cogito érigénien se trouve formulé au livre 4 du Periphyseon, 776 BC.

Dans le manuscrit le plus ancien (Reims, Bibliothèque municipale MS 875, fol. 291r), exemplaire de travail, chargé, voire surchargé de grattages, de ratures, de corrections, et d'additions de toute sorte, le passage qui nous intéresse a été remanié. La plupart de ces remaniements sont dus à l'une des deux mains irlandaises que l'on rencontre dans les manuscrits érigéniens, très précisément la main que l'on appelle "i^1" et qu'à juste titre on considère comme étant celle d'Érigène lui-même. Je considérerai ce point comme acquis et parlerai de "la main d'Érigène" là où de plus prudents que moi parleraient de "la main i1."

Disons tout de suite que les remaniements apportés par Érigène à la formulation de son Cogito sont d'ordre plus littéraire que doctrinal. Ils n'en ont pas moins dérouté les lecteurs et les éditeurs du Periphyseon. Il n'est donc pas superflu de les examiner. Je reproduirai d'abord le texte tel qu'on le lit dans le manuscrit de Reims; je rappellerai ensuite comment les différents éditeurs du Periphyseon l'ont compris; enfin je dirai comment, à mon avis, on doit le lire." (p. 96)

"En bref, la triade essentia, uirtus, operatio (ούσία, δύναμις, ένέργεια) n'est introduite que pour acheminer vers une autre triade, mens, ratio, sensus interior (voùç, λόγος, διάνοια), qui est, en l'homme, l'image de la Trinité créatrice.(74)

Sur ce point comme sur plusieurs autres, Érigène se plaît à souligner l'accord de Denys l'Aréopagite et d'Augustin d'Hippone.

(...)

Ce recours aux autorités patristiques montre bien que nous sommes sortis du champ philosophique du Cogito et entrés dans le champ de la réflexion théologique, celui de la Fides quaerens intellectum. Mais cela ne remet pas en question ce que le Cogito érigénien a établi: "L'âme humaine sait qu'elle est une nature douée de raison et d'intellect; elle ne connaît l'essence ni de l'intellect ni de la raison". (78)" (p. 110)

(7) Brian Stock, "lntelligo me esse: Eriugena's Cogito," Jean Scot Érigène et l'histoire de la philosophie, éd. R. Roques (Paris, 1977), 328-35. Willemien Otten, The Anthropology of Johannes Scottus Eriugena (Leyden, 1991), 184-89, 207-08, 210-11.

(8) Collection "Scriptores Latini Hiberniae," 13 (Dublin, 1995).

(74) Periphyseon 1. 486BC, 489C-489D, 505C-D; 2. 567AB; 4 825C.

(77) Periphyseon 5. 941D-942B.

(78) Periphyseon 4. 776C.

60. ———. 1995. "Some remarks on the Muckle translation of Abelard's Adversities." Mediaeval Studies no. 57:337-343.

En collaboration avec Edward A. Synan.

61. ———. 1996. "Artifex Scriptura." In Iohannes Scottus Eriugena. The Bible and Hermeneutics, edited by Van Riel, Gerd, Steel, Carlos and McEvoy, James, 351-365. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 67-83.

62. ———. 1996. ""Sensus" dans l'exégèse biblique du haut Moyen Âge (IXe-XIIe siècle)." In Lessico Intellettuale Europeo 66: Sensus-Sensatio. VIII Colloquio Internazionale. Roma 6-8 Gennaio 1995, edited by Bianchi, Luigi Massimo, 25-35. Firenze: Olschki.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 85-97.

63. ———. 1997. "Néant divin et théophanie (Érigène disciple de Denys)." In Langages et philosophie. Hommage à Jean Jolivet, edited by de Libera, Alain, Elamrani-Jamal, Abdelali and Galonnier, Alain, 331-337. Paris: Vrin.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 137-145.

64. ———. 1997. "Denys l'Aréopagite, promoteur du néoplatonisme en Occident." In Néoplatonisme et philosophie médiévale, edited by Benakis, Linos G., 1-23. Turnhout: Brepols.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 111-135.

65. ———. 1997. "L'abbaye de Saint-Denis introductrice de Denys en Occident." In Denys l'Aréopagite et sa postérité en orient et en Occident, edited by de Andia, Ysabel, 361-378. Paris: Institut d'Études augustiniennes.

Actes du colloque international, Paris, 21-24 septembre 1994.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 147-166.

66. ———. 1997. "Jean de Salisbury et Aristote." In Aristote, l'École de Chartres et la Cathédrale. Actes du colloque des 5 et 6 juillet 1997, edited by Faloci, Roger, 33-39. Chartres: Association des Amis du Centre Médiéval Européen de Chartres.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 403-411.

67. ———. 1997. "La place de la Consolation de Philosophie de Boèce dans les "Manuels de l'Étudiant" en la première moitié du treizième siècle." In L'enseignement de la philosophie au XIII siècle. Autour du "Guide de l'étudiant" du ms. Ripoll 109. Actes du Colloque International, edited by Lafleur, Claude and Carrier, Joanne, 181-201. Turnhout: Brepols.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 413-435.

68. ———. 1997. "Les Maîtres chartrains." In Monde médiéval et société chartraine. Actes du colloque tenu à Chartres, 8-10 septembre 1994. Paris: Picard.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 699-715.

69. ———. 1997. "L’École de Chartres." In “Dedens mon livre de pensée...”. De Grégoire de Tours à Charles d’Orléans, une histoire du livre médiéval en région Centre, edited by Holtz, Louis, Rabel, Claudia and Lalou, Elisabeth, 54-74. Paris: Somogy éditions d’art.

70. ———. 1998. "Érigène et Grégoire de Nysse." In Du copiste au collectionneur. Mélanges d'histoire des textes et des bibliothèques en l'honneur d'André Vernet, edited by Nebbiai-Dalla Guarda, Donatella and Genest, Jean-François, 57-69. Turnhout: Brepols.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 201-215.

71. ———. 2000. "Le commentaire de Guillaume de Lucques sur les Noms divins." In Die Dionysius-Rezeption im Mittelalter, edited by Boladjev, Tzotcho, Kapriev, Georgi and Speer, Andreas, 177-195. Turnhout: Brepols.

Internationales Kolloquium in Sofia von 8. bis 11. April 1999 unter der Schirmherrschaft der Société Internationale pour l'Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 183-200.

72. ———. 2000. "La figure de Melchisédech chez Maxime le Confesseur." In Autour de Melchisédech. Mythe - Réalités - Symbole. Actes du colloque européen des 1er et 2 juillet 2000., 51-59. Chartres: Association des Amis du Centre Médiéval Européen de Chartres.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 243-253.

73. ———. 2000. "L'influence des traductions érigéniennes sur le vocabulaire philosophique du Moyen Âge : simples remarques." In L'élaboration du vocabulaire philosophique au Moyen Âge, edited by Hamesse, Jacqueline and Steel, Carlos, 157-169. Turnhout: Brepols.

Actes du Colloque international de Louvain-la-Neuve et Leuven, 12-14 septembre 1998, organisé par la Société internationale pour l'étude de la philosophie médiévale.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 569-583.

"Que les traductions érigéniennes de Denys l’Aréopagite et de Maxime le Confesseur aient pu influencer le vocabulaire philosophico-théologique du Moyen Âge latin, tout le monde, je pense, est disposé à l’admettre. Quant à juger cette influence, dire précisément dans quelle mesure et avec quel succès les néologismes créés par Érigène au neuvième siècle pour le besoin de ses traductions sont entrés dans le langage philosophique des siècles suivants, c’est là une entreprise qui demanderait un long examen. Disons tout de suite que je n’ai eu ni le temps ni la force de m’y livrer. Dans ces conditions, il me faut confesser que, ne pouvant traiter à fond le sujet que je m’ étais imprudemment proposé, je me limiterai à quelques remarques, que je distribuerai en deux catégories, suivant qu’Érigène, pour ses traductions, a dû recourir à des néologismes ou qu’il s’est contenté d’adapter, en leur insufflant un sens nouveau, des mots latins qui existaient déjà. Commençons par la partie la plus visible de l’iceberg, les néologismes." (p. 157)

"Il est au moins un mot du vocabulaire philosophico-théologique créé par Érigène qui a survécu, et même a connu un franc succès, à savoir supernaturalis. Le P. de Lubac, qui a consacré un livre entier à la notion de « surnaturel » et à son développement historique, écrit : « C’est bien en tout cas au IXe siècle, par les traductions carolingiennes du pseudo-Denys, celle d’Hilduin et celle de Jean Scot Érigène, que supernaturalis fait sa véritable entrée dans la théologie. Encore au XIIe siècle, les divers Sententiaires l’ignorent, comme l’ignorait saint Anselme, comme l’ignorent saint Bernard et beaucoup d’autres »(48). Bien entendu, le sens donné par les théologiens modernes au mot supernaturalis diffère notablement de celui que lui donnait Érigène. Mais s’il s’agit du mot lui-même, il semble bien que Jean Scot — et accessoirement Hilduin, dont la traduction eut une diffusion limitée(49)—soit responsable de l’introduction de supernaturalis dans le vocabulaire théologique latin."

(48) H. de Lubac, Surnaturel. Études historiques, Paris, 1946, p. 327.

(49) La traduction d’Hilduin [des traités du Pseudo-Denys l'Aréopagite] fut utilisée par Guillaume de Lucques et par quelques porrétains.

74. ———. 2001. "Nisifortinus: le disciple qui corrige le maître." In Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages. A Festschrift for Peter Dronke, edited by Marenbon, John, 113-130. Leiden: Brill.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 585-603.

"Dans la courte monographie que Paul Dutton et moi-même avons consacrée aux autographes érigéniens, nous nous sommes efforcés de démontrer que l’écriture de i^2 n’est pas celle d’Erigène.(5) Ce point semble bien établi désormais. Il s’ensuit que la Version III, contenue dans le manuscrit B (Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Ms. Phil. 2,1) et dont i^2 est responsable, n’a probablement pas reçu le ‘Bon à tirer’ de l’auteur. Le manuscrit B a été exécuté par d’excellents copistes carolingiens, qui avaient pour tâche de recopier, sous la surveillance de i^2, le manuscrit R (Reims, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 875), exemplaire de travail de l’auteur. Le rôle de i^2 dans la confection de B a été celui d’un ‘éditeur’ : il a ajouté des titres et des gloses dans les marges, et, là où l’auteur avait renvoyé de façon vague au Periphyseon, il a pris soin de préciser de quel livre il s’agit.(6) C’est lui aussi, sans doute, qui a décidé d’intégrer les notes marginales au texte principal.(7) Mais ses interventions ne s’arrêtent pas là : il a pris avec le texte d’Erigène des libertés qu’un auteur moderne ne serait certainement pas disposé à accorder à son éditeur.(8)

Nous voilà avertis. La Version III, celle du manuscrit B, a été ‘arrangée’ par i^2 : nous ne pouvons pas lui faire entière confiance. La Version IV, ‘édition revue et corrigée’ de la Version III, est encore moins fiable." (p. 114)

(...)

"Le rôle joué par i^2 dans la transmission du texte du Periphyseon est si important, ses interventions si fréquentes qu’on se sent mal à l’aise de ne pouvoir désigner le personnage autrement que par un sigle : i^2 (l’Irlandais numéro 2). À défaut d’un nom, ne pourrait-on lui donner un surnom ? J’ai pensé à Nisifortinus, sobriquet qui évoque la manière par laquelle cet Irlandais introduit certaines de ses remarques personnelles concernant la pensée de son compatriote Jean Scot Érigène." (p. 120)

(5) É. Jeauneau - P. E. Dutton, The Autograph of Eriugena, pp. 108-110.

(6) É. Jeauneau - P. E. Dutton, The Autograph of Eriugena, pp. 85-93.

(7) Periphyseon III, ed. É. Jeauneau (Turnhout 1999) (CCCM 163), pp. xvi—xix.

(8) Pour quelques exemples de cette manière de faire, cf. ibid., pp. xxi-xxiii.

75. ———. 2002. "Érigène entre l'Ancienne et la Nouvelle Rome. Le Filioque." In Chemins de la pensée médiévale. Études offertes à Zénon Kaluza, edited by Bakker, Paul J.J.M., Faye, Emmanuel and Grellard, Christophe, 289-321. Turnhout: Brepols.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 605-639.

"Le neuvième siècle est une période d’affrontement entre l’Ancienne et la Nouvelle Rome (Constantinople). Les relations entre les deux parties de l’empire, toujours difficiles, se détériorent alors de façon spectaculaire. Les causes en sont multiples. Les Byzantins s’inquiètent de la montée en puissance de la dynastie carolingienne ; les interventions fréquentes des monarques francs en Italie les indisposent; le couronnement impérial de Charlemagne par le pape, le 25 décembre 800, met un comble à leur irritation. A cela s’ajoutent les querelles théologiques, en premier lieu la querelle des images.

(...)

L’autre querelle théologique entre F Ancienne Rome et la Nouvelle est celle du « Filioque ». Le Symbole de la foi chrétienne dit « Symbole de Nicée-Constantinople » (381) s’exprime ainsi à propos de la troisième personne de la sainte Trinité: «(Je crois) aussi à l’Esprit-Saint, Seigneur et vivifiant, qui procède du Père». Or, en Espagne, depuis la fin du sixième siècle au moins, on avait pris l’habitude d’ajouter: «et du Fils» («Filioque»). Cette habitude s’était progressivement étendue à d’autres parties du monde latin, non point à Rome toutefois, où l’on était resté fidèle au texte authentique, non contaminé, du Symbole de la foi. Cependant, la cour franque avait adopté le « Filioque » : on le chantait à Aix dans la chapelle impériale. Avec le temps, les clercs latins en étaient arrivés à considérer le « Filioque » comme partie intégrante du Symbole de Nicée-Constantinople." (pp. 289-290)

(...)

"Sur la question débattue de la procession du Saint-Esprit Erigène est allé dans la direction des Grecs aussi loin qu’un Latin de son temps et de son milieu pouvait le faire, peut-être plus loin même qu’aucun Latin ne le fera par la suite. Cela signifiait pour lui naviguer à contre-courant, aller à l’encontre des idées reçues, au risque de déplaire au prince qui l’honorait de son estime et de sa protection. Cependant, il s’est efforcé de concilier les points de vue divergents. C’est là un trait de son caractère. Bien que sa carrière ait commencé par une controverse sur la prédestination - controverse où on l’avait poussé plus qu’il ne s’y était engagé vraiment -, il est un homme de conciliation. Là réside, me semble-t-il, l’intérêt de sa position par rapport aux nombreux controversistes, grecs ou latins, qui ont traité de la procession du Saint-Esprit et du « Filioque». Pour conciliante qu’elle fût, cependant, sa solution avait peu de chance d’aboutir à un accord : les adversaires n’avaient pas envie de se réconcilier." (p. 320=

76. ———. 2002. "Les Sirènes dans le chœur des Vieillards." In Religion, Text, and Society in Medieval Spain and Northern Europe: Essays in Honor of J. N. Hillgarth, edited by Burman, Thomas E., Meyerson, Mark D. and Shopkow, Lea, 319-334. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 717-734.

77. ———. 2003. "The Neoplatonic Theme of Return in Eriugena." In Patristica. Proceedings of the Colloque of the Japanese Society for Patristic Studies. Vol. 7, 1-14.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 641-656.

"Among the many triads dear to Neoplatonists, one of the best known is probably that which they use to explain how the universe is regulated by harmonious relations between the cause and its effects. These relations are formulated by Proclus (d. 485) in proposition 35 of his Elements of Theology: “Every effect remains in its cause, proceeds from it, and reverts upon it” Hence, in Greek the three parts of the triad are: monê (immanence in the cause, rest), proodos (procession from the cause), epistrophê (return to the cause, conversion). This famous triad, with many other Neoplatonic teachings, found its way into Christian thought, thanks to a skillful writer who claimed to be Dionysius the Areopagite. But the man in question could not have been the same one who had converted to Christianity upon hearing the discourse of Saint Paul before the Areopagus of Athens in the year 51 A.D. In fact, an analysis of writing style and vocabulary demonstrates that the text attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite could not have been written before the end of the fifth century. The “forgery,” however, was clever, for to attribute writings strongly and deeply influenced by the “pagan" philosophy of Proclus to Dionysius the Areopagite, the first bishop of Athens, was the surest way to protect them against any suspicion of heresy. Who could contradict the convert of Paul, depositary of an esoteric teaching which complemented the exoteric teaching delivered by the Apostle to the Gentiles in his Epistles? Translated from Greek into Latin, first by Hilduin in the second quarter of the ninth century, then by John Scottus Eriugena in the third quarter of the same century, the works of Dionysius the Areopagite were increasingly made available to Latin readers through the centuries. Certainly, important elements of Neoplatonic philosophy borrowed by the Latin Fathers, notably by Saint Augustine, had already entered the Latin world. However, thanks to Eriugena’s Latin rendering of the works of Dionysius, a new stream of Neoplatonic philosophy penetrated the Western part of the Christian world. While the Augustinian stream was mostly indebted to Plotinus and Porphyry, the Dionysian one owed much to Proclus.

Yet Eriugena’s importance is not exhausted by his role as translator from Greek to Latin. The inventive nature of his thought created, for the first time in history, an original synthesis of the two main streams of Neoplatonism, the one originating in Plotinus and the other in Proclus. The work in which this synthesis is presented is a philosophical dialogue between a Master and his Disciple, which the author entitled Periphyseon. The general framework of this dialogue is the famous triad of which we spoke above, or, more precisely, the last two parts of it Procession (procession and Return (reditus, reuersio). The Procession, which is also multiplication (multiplicatio) and division (divisio), is the movement by which all things descend from Divine Goodness. The Return, which is also unification (congregatio, adunatio), is the movement by which all things return to the supreme unity, God. The plan itself of the Periphyseon faithfully follows this twofold movement. Books I, II, III and IV correspond to the movement of Procession: From “Nature which creates and is not created” (Book I), we descend to “Nature which is created and also creates” (Book II) , and then to “Nature which is created and does not create" (Books III and IV). Book V is entirely dedicated to the movement of return, a return whose end is “Nature which neither creates nor is created.”

Procession and Return are the warp and the woof from which this marvellous tapestry, the Periphyseon, is woven." (pp.. 1-2, notes omitted)

78. ———. 2003. "Thomas of Ireland and his De tribus sensibus sacrae scripturae." In With Reverence for the Word. Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, edited by McAuliffe, Jane Dammen, Walfish, Barry D. and Goering, Joseph W., 284-291. New York: Oxford University Press.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 99-107.

79. ———. 2003. "Prière pour obtenir l'intelligence des Écritures." In Xenium Natalicium. Corpus Christianorum 1953-2003: Fifty Years of Scholarly Editing, edited by Leemans, Johan, 296-299. Turnhout: Brepols.

Traduction et commentaire d'un texte de Jean Scot Erigène, Periphyseon V, 1010BD; CCCM 165, pp. 210-211.

Repris dans: Tendenda vela, pp. 61-65.

80. ———. 2005. "Du désordre à l'ordre (Timée 30a)." In Platons Timaios als Grundtext der Kosmologie In Spätantike, Mittelalter und Renaissance / Plato's Timaeus and the Foundations of Cosmology in Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Renaissance, edited by Leinkauf, Thomas and Steel, Carlos, 253-264. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

81. ———. 2007. "La conclusion du Periphyseon. Comment un dialogue devient un monologue." In Divine Creation in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Thought. Essays Presented to the Rev'd Dr Robert D. Crouse, edited by Reschow, Michael, Otten, Willemien and Hannam, Walter, 223-234. Leiden: Brill.

82. ———. 2008. "Nature et Natures dans le Periphyseon." In Natura. XII Colloquio Internazionale del Lessico Intellettuale Europeo (Roma, 4-6 gennaio 2007), edited by Giovannozzi, Delfina and Veneziani, Marco, 115-128. Firenze: Olschki.

83. ———. 2008. "Fulbert, notre vénérable Socrate." In Fulbert de Chartres, précurseur de l'Europe médiévale?, edited by Rouche, Michel, 19-32. Paris: Presses de l'Université Paris-Sorbonne.

84. ———. 2011. "Quand un médécin commente Jouvenal." In Guillaume de Conches. Philosophie et science au XIIe siècle, edited by Obrist, Barbara and Caiazzo, Irene, 111-122. Tavarnuzze (Firenze): Edizioni del Galluzzo.

85. ———. 2013. "Le Periphyseon: son titre, son plan, ses remaniements." Les Études philosophiques no. 104:13-28.

86. Jeauneau, Édouard, and Pelle, Stephen. 2013. "A Fragment of an Anonymous Commentary on Priscian Inserted into a Manuscript of the Glosae super Priscianum of William of Conches." Mediaeval Studies no. 75:345-350.

87. Jeauneau, Édouard. 2014. "From Origen's Periarchon to Eriugena's Periphyseon." In Erugena and Creation. Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Eriugenian Studies, held in honor of Edouard Jeauneau, Chicago, 9-12 November 2011, edited by Allen, Michael I. and Otten, Willemien, 139-182. Turnhout: Brepols.

Éditions critiques

1. Guillelmus de Conchis. Glosae super Platonem. 1965. Paris: Vrin.

Texte critique, avec introduction, notes et tables par Édouard Jeauneau (nouvelle édition 2006).

2. Guillelmi de Conchis Glosae super Platonem. 2006. Turnhout: Brepols.

Nouvelle édition critique mise à jour par Édouard Jeauneau.

Opera omnia 3. Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 203.

3. Johannis Scotti seu Eriugenae Periphyseon. Liber primus. 1996. Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis. Turnhout: Brepols.

Edition critique du texte latin en cinq volumes, avec introduction en français pour chaque volume.

Liber primus: Natura quae creat et non creatur; Liber secundus: Natura quae creatur et creat; Liber tertius: Natura quae creatur et non creat; Liber quartus: De homine; Liber quintus: Natura quae nec creat nec creatur.

Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, voll. 161, 162, 163, 164, 165.

4. Johannis Scotti seu Eriugenae Periphyseon. Liber secundus. 1997. Turnhout: Brepols.

5. Johannis Scotti seu Eriugenae Periphyseon. Liber tertius. 1999. Turnhout: Brepols.

6. Johannis Scotti seu Eriugenae Periphyseon. Liber quartus. 2000. Turnhout: Brepols.

7. Johannis Scotti seu Eriugenae Periphyseon. Liber quintus. 2003. Turnhout: Brepols.

8. Jean Scot. Homélie sur le Prologue de Jean. Introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes. 1969. Paris: Éditions du Cerf.

Sources chrétiennes, 151; nouvelle édition du texte latin: Turnhout, Brepols, 2008.

L'introduction, Jean Scot. L'homme et l'œuvre, est reprise dans: Études érigéniennes, pp. 11-54.

9. Jean Scot. Commentaire sur l'évangile de Jean. 1972. Paris: Éditions du Cerf.

Introduction texte critique, traduction et notes d'Édouard Jeauneau (Sources chrétiennes, 180); réimprimé avec additions et corrections, 1999.

Nouvelle édition du texte latin: Turnhout, Brepols, 2008.

10. Johannis Scotti seu Eriugenae Homilia super "In principio erat Verbum"; et Commentarius in Evangelium Iohannis. 2008. Turnhout: Brepols.

Edition critique par E. Jeauneau et Andrew J. Hicks avec Introductions en français.

11. Maximi Confessoris Ambigua ad Iohannem, iuxta Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae Latinam interpretationem. 1988. Turnhout: Brepols.

Corpus Christianorum. Series Graeca, 18.

Texte Latin avec commentaire en français.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Giorgio Tonelli: Writings on Kant and the Philosophy of the Eighteenth Century (1961-1974)

Bibliography

1. Tonelli, Giorgio. 1961. "Critiques of the Notion of Substance Prior to Kant." Tijdschrift voor Filosofie no. 23:285-301.

"The Ages of Reason and Enlightenment aimed not only to advance knowledge but also tried to distinguish carefully between things which can and cannot be known. Characteristic of those ages is the manner in which metaphysical speculation was reduced by the sciences or brushed aside by the leading philosophical schools.

The general problem of the limits of human understanding became one of the leading philosophical themes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Doubts about the possible scope of human reasoning concerned not only God, the spirits, and the nature of the human soul, (1) but also went to the very core of that reality which man was then trying to subdue intellectually; several conceptual elements were discovered whose nature many thinkers found mysterious and inaccessible to the mind. In fact, beside a clear awareness of the limits of human understanding in general, the notions of mathematical infinity, (2) force, (3) and substance were considered by many philosophers to be above man’s reason. The purpose of the present paper is to study the criticisms which were directed against the last of these notions, criticisms which played a rather important role in the famous "Copernican revolution" of 1769 at the start of Kant's critical period. (4) We shall consider not only criticisms of the notion of substance itself, but also those of the closely related notions of essence and materia prima ; these often include the notion of substance, or serve as a foundation for." (pp. 285-286)

(1) For opinions about the human soul in that period see: G. Tonelli, Elementi melodologici e metafisici in Kant precritico (1745-1768), Cap. VII, § 30 and foll. About God's unintelligibility, Ibid., Cap. VII, § 17 (In the II Vol., to be published in short. Vol. I, Torino 1959).

(2) See G. Tonelli, Le problème des bornes de l'entendement humain au XVllle siècle et la genèse du criticisme kantien particulièrement par rapport à la question de l’infini , "Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale", 1959.

(3) See Tonelli, Elementi, Cap. VII, § 21 and foll.

(4) A not very thorough history of the notion of substance is in K. Heidmann, Der Substanz-Begriff von Abälard bis Spinoza, Berlin 1889, (Dissertation).

2. ———. 1963. "The Law of Continuity in the Eighteenth Century." Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century no. 24-27:1619-1638.

"Some excellent research has been made into the eighteenth-century attitude towards the assumption that nature’s ways are essentially simple, and towards the principle of least action (1). But another methodologically fundamental principle, upon which the learned men of the time concentrated their attention, and which caused them much bitter argument, namely the law of continuity, has not yet been studied with a more systematic and modem approach. The only historical survey of the question is G. Ploucquet’s old dissertation, published in 1761, which one very rarely meets nowadays, for it is almost completely forgotten*.

The purpose of the present paper is to fill this gap. We shall first summarise the question as it stood in the seventeenth century, and we shall try to expound in greater detail the vicissitudes the problem suffered during the period in which we are chiefly interested.

The topics treated by A. O. Lovejoy in his well-known work The Great chain of being (1933; the Cambridge, Mass. 1957 edition is quoted), show some important similarities to the question we propose to study. Our problem is in fact much more precise and limited, but this will not prevent us from recalling from time to time some pertinent elements from Lovejoy’s book." (p. 1619)

(1) for a bibliography of these works, and an original contribution to the history of that problem, see G. Tonelli, Elementi metafisici e metodologici in Kant dal 1745 al 1768, Torino 1959, i. cap.l, nota (80) and cap.u, nota (3).

* G. Ploucquet, Dissertatio historìco-cosmologica de lege continuitatis sive gradationis leibnitiana (Tübingen 1761).

(...)

"Conclusion.

The case of the principle of continuity in the eighteenth century is very interesting indeed in the history of ideas. It is a good example of a badly defined and exceedingly general principle, whose multifarious applications extended the dispute to widely different fields. One has the feeling that its acceptance or rejection was never based on an independent discussion of its purely theoretical side—whose very imprecision led to a very elastic interpretation, making any abstract examination practically useless; no, they were rather motivated by the more or less welcome consequences which could be drawn from the principle in a specific case, about which an author usually had preconceived ideas, in case, that is, he was not motivated merely by personal hostility towards its real or pretended supporters or detractors. Many of the people partaking in the discussion seemed, wittingly or unwittingly, to ignore at least some of the opinions previously expressed in die dispute, and attacked positions which nobody had thought of defending, and which really only represented a rough vulgarisation of the principle.

The climax of the dispute (the Berlin Academy against Wolff) seems to have been brought about for merely personal motives. In fact at both earlier and later periods the principle played a fairly important rôle in some fields of science more or less independently of theoretical discussions about it, and after the waning of those discussions." (p. 1638)

3. ———. 1966. "Kant's Early Theory of Genius (1770-1779): Part I." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 4:109-131.

Italian translation in: G. Tonelli, Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, Napoli: Prismi, 1987, pp. 183-203.

"The importance of the theory of genius in Kant's philosophy was realized comparatively early in the history of Kantforschung, and several works have been devoted to this subject (1) But nobody has, until now, tried to reconstruct the development of Kant's ideas on genius utilizing the materials contained in his Nachlass, published by Adickes. (2) This is what I shall attempt in the present paper, limiting the study to the period from 1770 to 1779, coinciding with Kant's preliminary works for the elaboration of the Critique of Pure Reason .

First I shall try to establish Kant's opinions on genius in the aforesaid span of time, second, to trace the sources of such opinions in Kant's cultural background." (p. 109)

(1) See especially: K. Hoffman, Die Umbildung der Kantischen Lehre vom Genie in Schellings System des transscendentalen Idealismus (Bern: 1907, Berner Studien zur Philos. u. ihrer Geschiehte, LIII); R. Schlapp, Kants Lehre vom Genie und die Entstehung der "Kritik der Urteilskraft" (G6ttingen: 1901); O. Schöndörffer, "Kant's Definition vom Genie," Altpreussische Monatsschrift, 1893, xxx; O. Wichmann, "Kant's Begriff vom Genie und seine Bedeutung" Deutsche Akademische Rundschau, Jhg. II, 12 Sem., Folge N. 2; 7, 15 Jan. 1925.

Schlapp's work, utilizing Kant's Kolleghefte (or notes taken from his lectures), is peculiarly important.

(2) In Kants Gesammelte Schriften, published by the Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften. This is the edition we refer to in our quotations. We give only the number of the volume and the page for the printed works of Kant, and the number of the volume and that of the Reflexion for the Nachlass . We refer to the last issue of the Preussische Akademie Ausgabe edition. We intend to utilize Kant's Nachlass following the same criteria as in: G. Tonelli, Kant, dall'estetica metafisica all'estetica psicoempirica. Studi sulla genesi del criticismo (1754-1771) e sulle sue fonti (Torino: 1955), Memorie della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, Serie 35 Tomo 3, Parte III. See pp. 7-10, 192, 253-255.

4. ———. 1966. "Kant's Early Theory of Genius (1770-1779): Part Ii." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 4:209-224.

Italian translation in: G. Tonelli, Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, Napoli: Prismi, 1987, pp. 203-234.

5. ———. 1969. "Divinae Particula Aurae; Genial Ideas, Organism, and Freedom: A Note on Kant's Reflection N. 938 ." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 7:192-198.

Italian translation in: G. Tonelli, Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, Napoli: Prismi, 1987, pp. 237-245.

"In § 21 of my article "Kant's Early Theory of Genius (1770-1779)," published in this journal (1) two years ago, I quote from Kant's Reflection N. 938, of which the complete text is as follows:

Spirit is referred to the universal, because it is a kind of divinae particula aurae, and it draws from the Universal Spirit. Therefore, Spirit [in itself] has no particular characters; but it vivifies in different ways, following the different talents and sensitivities [of men] it meets, and, as these are so multifarious, every [human] Spirit has something peculiar. One should not say: geniuses. [But: there is only one genius.] It is the unity of the Soul of the World. (2)

Kant refers to this Spirit as the source of both genial or "original" ideas in the human mind and of organic life in the ouside world (KETG, §§ 22, 23). This theory derives of course from the ancient Platonic-Stoic-Hermetic-etc. doctrine of the Soul of the World, which had a tremendous diffusion not only in the Middle Ages (School of Chartres, etc.) but also from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century and even later, especially among Stoic, Cabbalistic, Hermetic, Pansophic, and Mosaic philosophers, both in psychology (where the human soul was taken as a part of the soul of the World) and in natural philosophy among the opponents of mechanism (either in general or in connection with living organisms only) (3)."

(1) IV (1966), 209; the article is printed in two parts, pp. 109-131 and 209-224 (cited hereafter as KETG).

(2) "Weil der Geist aufs allgemeine geht, so ist er so zu sagen divinae particula aurae und aus dem allgemeinen Geist geschöpft. Daher hat der Geist nicht besondere Eigenschaften, sondern nach den verschiedenen Talenten und Empfindsamkeiten, worauf er fallt, belebt er verschiedentlich und, weil diese so mannigfaltig seyn, so hat ieder Geist was eigenthtimliches. Man muss nicht sagen: Die genie's. Es ist die Einheit der Weltseele" (Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte Schriften [Berlin: Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften], XV [1923], part 1, 416). This Reflection is a note on Baumgarten's Metaphysica . According to Adickes, it was probably written between 1776 and 1778, less probably in 1772. s See "World Soul" (with bibliographical references, by T. Gregory and G. Tonelli) in the 1967 ed. of the New Catholic Encyclopedia. A still useful, although very partial, historical account of this doctrine is given by A. Rechenberg (praeses) and J. D. Gilttner (Auctor & Respondens), De mundi anima dissertatio (Lipsiae, 1678). See also KETG, note 153.

6. ———. 1971. "The "Weakness" of Reason in the Age of Enlightenment." Diderot-Studies no. 14:217-244.

Reprinted in Scepticism in the Enlightenment (1997), pp. 35-50.

Italian translation in: G. Tonelli, Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, Napoli: Prismi, 1987, pp. 21-41.

"Among the different aspects of the problem of limits I have been surveying, hardly one may be found where eighteenth-century thought had not been heralded in some aspects at least by thinkers of the proceeding century. This happens, of course, in all ages and for all problems. In some cases, as for the critique of the notions of substance and of that of infinity, eighteenth-century philosophers were, in the main, repeating old arguments. But on the whole, the Anglo-French Enlightenment gave to these attitudes an importance and a diffusion previously unknown: opposition to ontology, and partially to logic, agnosticism in respect of transcendent subjects in general, claimed ignorance of the inner texture and properties of bodies and of the first causes. Opposition to hypotheses and to general systems not founded on experience are, both in their extention and in their stress, a basic novelty in modern philosophy. For this, seventeenth-century philosophy was much more an Age of Reason than was the Enlightenment; and this “reason” was unmasked by the Enlightenment as a specious and obnoxious pretension of the human mind. The Enlightenment’s reason sometimes merely paid lip service to Revelation; however this outer limit of reason was replaced by an inner and more effective one, which could also be reconciled with Revelation, with the advantage, perhaps, of a clearer “separation of powers”.

The German Enlightenment was, as it were, more “traditionalist”, especially in Wolff’s case: only a few of the limiting attitudes were accepted by Wolff. On he other hand, the school of Thomasius and Crusius represented, for very special reasons, a kind of via media, and was the catalyzer of a creative synthesis between the Anglo-French and the German approach. In this way, positions which could appear “Traditional” as sponsored by Wolff became the foundation of future German philosophy; “traditionalism” and “modernism” in the history of thought are nothing but relative terms.

If we may still speak of “traditionalism” then, the Enlightenment was on the whole much less revolutionary that it has sometimes been represented; this has already become clear concerning its political theory, but should also be extended to other aspects of the century’s thought.

The Anglo-French Enlightenment, with its intellectual modesty and respect for its heralds in the preceding century, shows one side of this attitude, an attitude matched in the practice of a very real quest for discovery, but exalted, at the same time, by an equal respect for science. Philosophy, certainly, is no longer the servant of theology, but it partially becomes the servant of science. And this is shown, among other things, by the basic impact of Newtonianism on the problem of limits, an impact which has not been as yet sufficiently clarified. In fact, it is a commonplace in our day to talk about Newton’s role in the development of philosophy, but as soon as this role is clearly defined, an escape is found in some vague and frequently erroneous statement.

The German Enlightenment, less humble in its intentions, showed its modesty by facts: it refrained from relegating to the scrap-heap many basic attitudes of eighteenth-century thought, and reshaped them into formulas pregnant with future developments.

In contrast to romantic philosophy’s frenzy for originality at any cost, the Enlightenment philosophy was not haunted by a quest for novelty for novelty’s sake. In fact it gave full regard to its predecessors while simultaneously opening up numerous new directions for science to follow in the ensuing centuries." (pp. 243-244)

7. ———. 1971. A Short-Title List of Subject Dictionaries of the Xvith, Xviith, and Xviiith Centuries as Aids to the History of Ideas . London: Warburg Institute.

Second extended edition revised and annotated by Eugenio Canone and Margherita Palumbo, Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 2006.

Contents: Introduction 1; Symbols for names of libraries 5; List I: Sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century dictionaries as aids to the history of ideas 7; Chronological-systematic index of dictionaries included in List I 37; List II: Pseudo-dictionaries, dictionaries not ordered alphabetically, or of minor importance 43; List III: Dictionaries not located 53; Index of names 57; Index of anonyma 64.

"Introduction.

Historians of sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century ideas are realizing increasingly that dictionaries contemporary with the period under consideration are in many cases a basic aid to their work. Some of these reference books are well-known, and are currently used by scholars in all fields. Nevertheless, a more careful inquiry into this kind of source discloses an unsuspected number of works which are mostly unknown or difficult to locate.

The aim of this bibliography is to provide for the first time an extensive list of these dictionaries and their basic locations in Europe, together with some information concerning their doctrinal affiliations, diffusion and present usefulness. I have been collecting and examining these materials in the major European libraries during the past fifteen years. I acknowledge my debt of gratitude to Professor Enrico de Angelis, Professor Alberto Martino, Dr. P. F. Mugnai (who received a grant from the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche in Rome for this purpose), and my wife, Dr. Grazia Tonelli, all of whom helped me during the final stage of work on this bibliography by research in several libraries; to Miss Pamela Sargent, for revising and typing the manuscript, and to Miss Susan Cabral for typing the indexes.

I hope that my work may stimulate interest in the history of lexicography. Studying the development of the criteria and methods of lexicography, the connexion of dictionaries with doctrinal trends contemporary to them, and their influence on the evolution and diffusion of thought should be a basic field in the history of ideas, as well as a further contribution towards a more adequate use of this kind of source in general research. (a)

This Bibliography is divided into three lists.

The FIRST LIST includes those dictionaries which, first, meet the basic criteria of selection, and second, have been located and examined.

(I) Criteria of selection:

(a) Only dictionaries disposed in alphabetical order have been included. In fact, many encyclopaedias are ordered systematically, and cannot be used as dictionaries any more than any general treatise can. Since the only basic criterion which has proved to be generally effective in making a distinction is that of alphabetical order, some works which are strictly related to dictionaries but which do not fulfil this condition have been excluded from the first list (but included in the second).

(b) Only subject dictionaries have been included. Onomastic dictionaries (historical, geographical, etc. which do not list terms, but only names of persons and/or places) have beeen excluded.

(c) Subject indexes to works, compiled either by authors or by editors, have been excluded, with the exception of a few of major importance, which are traditionally known or frequently referred to as dictionaries.

(d) Works bearing the name of dictionaries, or usually referred to as such, although they are not dictionaries but treatises, have been excluded from the first list (but included in the second).

(e) Dictionaries prior to 1500 or posterior to 1800 have been excluded in general, with the following exceptions: first, of a few dictionaries prior to 1500 which were still influential (and eventually reprinted) after that date; secondly, of a few dictionaries immediately posterior to 1800 which echo ideas of the preceding century.

(f) Ana, which are collections of memorabilia or excerpts from the works of a single author (many of which are alphabetically ordered) have been excluded, because they are listed in already existing extensive bibliographies. (b)

(g) Dictionaries answering to the previously listed criteria, but which are of minor importance, such as bi-lingual dictionaries and compendious dictionaries and encyclopaedias for practical use only, dictionaries of merely linguistic interest, and purely technical dictionaries (e.g., of legal cases, chemical formularies, collections of medical prescriptions, etc.) have been excluded from the first list. Some of them have been included in the second list, because their notoriety or their title might mislead one into considering them useful to the history of ideas. Comprehensive lists of these dictionaries may be found in existing bibliographies of dictionaries. (3)

(II) Location. All items included in the first list have been checked as to their presence (1) in the major Roman libraries (as listed below in the list of library symbols); (2) in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (N.P.) ; (3) in the British Museum (B.M.) ; and (d) in the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen (G.). Normally, locations in other libraries are given only for items which are not to be found in any of the above-mentioned libraries.

N.B. All editions of the same work are listed which have either been examined or identified through library catalogues or general and special bibliographical works and studies. Differences among titles or contents of different editions have been referred to in so far as they could be established in the above ways.

A chronological-systematic index, attached to the first list, and referring to it-only, allows a general view of all items as ordered (1) by centuries, (2) by categories of dictionaries within a century, (3) by the date of the first edition within a category. It is followed by a list of dictionaries devoted to a single author.

The SECOND LIST includes items which have been located and seen, but which do not answer to the criteria of selection listed above. The purpose of this second list is: (a) to give an account of items which were seen, but excluded from the first list, in order to establish that they have not been overlooked; (b) to point out that some of them may nevertheless be used as dictionaries. In this case, the location is given.

The THIRD LIST includes items which could not be located, although they are listed in bibliographies, or referred to elsewhere. Therefore, their character and utility could not be established. This third list is intended as an aid to further research.

It may be interesting to know that microfilms of dictionaries included in the first list, and not present in Roman libraries, are being collected at the Istituto di Filosofia of Rome University.

(a) Attempts in this direction are: E. H. Lehmann, Geschichte des Konversationslexikons, V, Leipzig 1934; B. Wendt, Idee und Entwicklungsgeschichte der enzyklopädischen Literatur, Würzburg-Aumühle 1941 ; K. W. Krauss, ‘Zur Lexikologie der Aufklärung’, in Romanische Forschungen, LXVT, 1955 ; W. Gerber, sub voce ‘Philosophical Dictionaries and Encyclopedias’, in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by P. Edwards, New York-London 1967; L. Geldsetzer, Einleitung to J. Micraelius, Lexicon philosophicum terminorum philosophis usitatorum (reprint), Düsseldorf 1966. See also Zischka’s work, quoted below. For the history of juridical lexicography, see H. E. Dirksen, System der juristischen Lexikographie, Leipzig 1834.

(b) H. W. Lawätz, Handbuch für Büche freunde und Bibliothekare, T. I, Bd. III, Halle 1789, pp. 476fF. ; Jacques Lacombe, Encyclopédiana, ou Dictionnaire des 'Ana’, Paris 1791; A, F. Aude, Bibliographie critique des ana, Paris 1910. Some titles of this kind do not end in ana, for instance: [J. C. Scaliger], Electa Scaligerea, h.e. J. C. Scaligeri Sententiae, Praecepta, Definitiones, Axiomata, ex universis illius operibus selecta, et per certas Locorum Communium classes disposita . . ., Hanoviae 1634.

(c) See Durey de Noinville, Table alphabétique des Dictionnaires en toutes sortes de langues, Paris 1758; W. Marsden, A Catalogue of Dictionaries, Vocabularies, Grammars, and Alphabets, London 1796; N. Trubner, A Catalogue of Dictionaries and Grammars of the Principal Languages and Dialects of the World, London 1872, ed. K. W. Hiersemann, London 1882; J. R. Hulbert, Dictionaries: British and American, London 1955; W. Zaunmülier, Bibliographisches Handbuch der Sprachwärterbücher, New York, London, Stuttgart 1958; G. A. Zischka, Index lexicorum, Wien 1959. Many of the items listed in my bibliography are unknown to all these authors.

8. ———. 1972. "Early Reactions to the Publication of Leibniz's "Nouveaux Essais"." In Proceedings of the Third International Kant Congress561-567. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Revised version as: Leibniz on Innate Ideas and the Early Reactions to the Publication of the "Nouveaux Essais" (1765) .

"Leibniz’ Nouveaux Essais, written in 1703-05 (cited in the following as: N E), were posthumously published by Raspein 1765, at the beginning of a moderately significant Leibniz revival. Now, as the great upheaval in Kant’s thought took place in 1769, and as one of the main characteristics of this upheaval was the rejection of sensibility as the sole source of knowledge, it is easy to infer that Kant’s reading of the N E may have been one of the elements which prompted him to adopt his new solution.

It is not my ambition to answer this difficult question at this time but I will try to clear the ground for an answer to it by inquiring into the early reactions of philosophical circles, especially German, to the appearance of the N E. If the peculiarity of the doctrines of the N E concerning the origin of knowledge was widely noticed, and if the picture of Leibniz’ philosophy was modified accordingly, Kant could have been stimulated by such a widespread reaction to pay special attention to the problem." (p. 561)

9. ———. 1972. "A Contribution Towards a Bibliography on the Methodology of the History of Philosophy." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 10:456-458.

"A recent issue of the Monist (53, 4, October, 1969) was devoted to the "Philosophy of the History of Philosophy." The articles were prefaced by an "Introduction and Bibliography" by Lewis White Beck. The following list is an addition to that bibliography, omitting those contributions not contained in it but quoted in other places in the same issue of the Monist ." (p. 456)

(...)

I also wish to point out that, obviously, the methodology of the history of philosophy would greatly profit from taking into consideration methodological research in other branches of history. This includes not only general history, history of science, and the sociology of knowledge (which are rather easy to reach bibliographically), but also those branches of history less obviously connected with our interest or less well-known in English-speaking scholarship:

(1) Hermeneutic. This ancient approach, employed again by Joachim Wach ( Das Verstehen, Ttibingen, 1926. Reprinted, Hildesheim, 1966), was revived with major changes by Emilio Betti ( Teoria generale dell'interpretazione, 2 vols., Milano, 1955). It evoked a tremendous response in Germany, culminating in the famous work by Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, Tübingen, 1960. The ensuing debate about this work brought forth a very large number of subsequent contributions.

(2) Special attention should be paid to the methodology of etymology, onomasiology and semasiology -- branches of philology closely related to the history of ideas. The most important contributors to this field are Kurt Baldinger and Helmut Gipper. The point of view of the latter was summed up by H. Gipper and H. Schwarz in the "Introduction" to their Bibliographisches Handbuch zur Sprachinhaltsforschung (Kön und Opladen, 1962). The Handbuch itself, an indispensable tool for all historians of ideas, has not yet been completely published.

(...)

(3) Also to be kept in mind is the methodology of the history of art, especially useful in connection with the problem of periodization. In this respect, after the well-known W. Pinder's Das Problem der Generation (reprinted, Munich, 1961), it is necessary to mention E. H. Gombrich's Norma e forma: Critica valutativa e morfologia stilistica nella storia dell'arte (Torino, 1963. Quaderni della "Biblioteca filosofica di Torino," No. 6), and the discussion on "Criteria of Periodization in the History of European Art," in New Literary History 1 (1970)." (pp. 457-458)

10. ———. 1973. "A Contribution to the Bibliography of General Subject Indexes." Studi internazionali di filosofia no. 5:211-214.

"Professor Archer Taylor, the famous bibliographer and historian of bibliography, published a history of the General Subject-Indexes Since 1548, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966, 335 p.

This work is a new pioneering enterprise of its author: in fact it is the first in its field. It is a detailed study of the development of general bibliographical subject-indexes of books since the Renaissance, i.e, it lists and discusses all those bibliographies: (a) which are ordered by subjects, alphabetically or systematically; (b) but which are general, i.e., not limited to a particular held (e.g., Theology only, Medicine only, etc.). General subject-indexes limited to a single nation and/or language are included, as well as a few specialized general indexes, e.g., subject-indexes to journals. The subject catalogs of some libraries are included, as they are practically identical with general subject-indexes. Some of the works considered are manuscripts. The author also studies some plans for subject-indexes which never were actualized at all, some subject-indexes which never were completed, and some theoretical discussions on the methodology of the indexes in question. I do not understand why the author does not also take into consideration the basic works on bibliotheconomy, in as far as they concern theoretical discussions on the classification of books, or provide classified lists of books to be used as a blueprint for organizing a library; in fact, the problems and the lists in question are identical to those belonging to a general subject-index, as one can see e.g., in the well-known writings on the subject by E. Edwards (1859), J. Petzhold (1866), A. Maire (1896), E. C. Richardson (1901), Berwick-Sayers 41954), etc.

This is an important contribution to the history of ideas from three points of view: first, because as a history of a branch of bibliography it studies a significant aspect of the development of the organization of learning; second, because it is in many cases a study of an aspect of the history of the systematization of knowledge, i.e., of the classification of the sciences and of their sections; third, because many of the works described are still very useful as bibliographical instruments for the scholars of our time. In fact, many of these works have not been superseded by more recent compilations, and are still basic sources of reference for some periods and areas. Professor Taylor's descriptions are frequently very helpful in determining their present utility although this is not the major aim of this book, the scope of which is first and foremost historical.

I am listing here some titles which should be added to Professor Taylor's study, but I must warn the reader that as the index of names (Compilers of Subject-Indexes and Kindred Works ) at the end of Professor Taylor’s book only lists a few of the names actually mentioned in his work, it is possible that some of the titles in question are mentioned, but escaped my attention. All the works listed below, if they are not described as plans or theoretical discussions of a classification, are general subject-indexes ordered systematically, i.e., in none of them the basic organization is alphabetical, although their sub-sections may occasionally be ordered alphabetically. In many of them the classification merely consists in a few general headings, and under each heading the entries are listed alphabetically by the names of the authors." (p. 211)

11. ———. 1974. "Leibniz on Innate Ideas and the Early Reactions to the Publication of the "Nouveaux Essais" (1765)." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 12:437-454.

Revised version of Early Reactions to the Publication of Leibniz's "Nouveaux Essais" (1972).

Italian translation in: G. Tonelli, Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, Napoli: Prismi, 1987, pp. 111-136.

"Leibniz' Nouveaux Essais, written in 1703-1705 (cited hereafter as NE), were posthumously published by Raspe (1) in 1765, at the beginning of a Leibniz revival which was also marked by the large Dutens edition of 1768. As the great upheaval in Kant's thought took place in 1769, and as this upheaval had as one of its main characteristics the rejection of sensibility as the sole source of knowledge, (2) it is easy to infer that Kant's reading of the NE may have been one of the elements prompting him to adopt his new solution. It is not the ambition of this paper to answer that difficult question: rather it is an attempt towards clearing the ground for an answer to it, by inquiring into the early reactions of philosophical circles, especially German, to the appearance of the NE. To what extent was the significance of the particular doctrines expounded in the NE noticed? To what extent did contemporary philosophers realize that these were to profoundly modify the picture of Leibniz' psychological tenets? And, therefore, to what extent could Kant have been stimulated by a widespread reaction to pay special attention to the pecu!iarities of that work? In conformity with this purpose, I shall focus my research on the question of the origin of knowledge. As it is my task to reconstruct a general philosophical atmosphere, I will not confine my research to philosophic reactions prior to 1769, but will also take into consideration some attitudes of the following decade. As frequently happens in the history of ideas, the impact of a certain event may be noticed almost immediately after its occurrence, but the documentation of its effects may be available only after a certain delay. But they are nevertheless indicative of that prior impact. Before starting this enquiry, I shall: (1) point out the difference between the doctrine in question as it is expounded in the NE and as it appeared in the previously published works of Leibniz; (2) examine the interpretations of Leibniz' psychology prior to 1765, especially as represented in the version which was accepted by Wolff and incorporated into his system." (p. 437)

(1) œuvres philosophiques latines et Français es du feu Mr. de Leibniz tirées de ses Manuscrits qui se conservent dans la Bibliothèque royale à Hanovre et publiées par M. Rud. Eric Raspe. Avec une preface de Mr. Kaestner, Professeur en mathématique à Göttingue (Amsterdam et Leipzig, 1765).

(2) Tonelli, "Die Umwälzung von 1769 bei Kant," Kant-Studien, LIV (1963), 369 ff.

12. ———. 1974. "Kant's Ethics as Part of Metaphysics: A Possible Newtonian Suggestion? With Some Comments on Kant's "Dream of a Seer" " In Philosophy and the Civilizing Arts. Essays Presented to Herbert W. Schneider, edited by Walton, Craig and Anton, John P., 236-263. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Italian translation in: G. Tonelli, Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, Napoli: Prismi, 1987, pp. 259-282.

"One of the most remarkable traits of Kant's system of philosophy is the fact that Ethics is classified as a part of Metaphysics, as it appears in the titles of two of Kant’s major works: The Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals and Metaphysics of Morals . It is just too bad that no commentator, as far as I know, ever stressed the importance of this fact, and of the underlying problems; the fact was taken for granted, the problem ignored. It is high time to call some attention to it.

Actually, this is one of the most dramatic changes Kant introduced into the structure of philosophy as a whole; before him, a subordination of Ethics to Metaphysics was, as far as I know, totally unheard of. Metaphysics had been subordinated to Ethics by Spinoza, probably under the influence of the later developments of Stoicism, but the opposite had never been attempted.

This of course does not mean that before Kant Ethics never had been founded on Metaphysics; on the contrary, this foundation of Ethics is certainly one of the most generally accepted positions. Nevertheless, Ethics had been considered all the same as an independent science, and not as a part of Metaphysics.

On the other hand, if Kant considers Ethics as a part of Metaphysics, this does not mean that in his thought the dependency of Ethics on Metaphysics is increased; on the contrary, Ethics becomes systematically totally independent of Metaphysics stricto sensu ; but, as we shall see, it becomes a part of Metaphysics because it is transformed into a foundation of it, and this is quite new.

The expression “Metaphysics of Morals” ( Metaphysik der Sitten ) appears, as far as I know, for the first time in Kant’s letter to Herder of May 9, 1768, where Kant states that he is working on a Metaphysics of Morals which should be completed within that year. But, in a letter to Lambert of December 31, 1765, Kant had already announced a work on the “Metaphysical Foundations of Practical Philosophy.” The expression “Metaphysics of Morals” is repeated in Kant’s letter to Lambert of September 2, 1770, (1)1 where our author states that he is busy right then writing a treatise (which never was published) on that subject, without adding any further comments.

In the Logik Blomberg (1771) and in the Logik Philippi (1772), moral philosophy is not subordinated to the general heading of metaphysics.(2) In the Metaphysik L1 (1775-1780), Metaphysics and Moral philosophy are said to be the two pure philosophical sciences, (3) and in the Lectures on Ethics of 1780-1781, philosophy is divided into theoretical and practical philosophy, (4) but a Metaphysics of Morals is not mentioned. In his lectures Kant frequently takes a more conservative stand than in his private correspondence, in his personal notes or in his published works.

In a letter to Herz, written towards the end of 1773, Kant announces a detailed plan for his own work: he intends to write a treatise on “transcendental philosophy,” which would be a Critique of Pure Reason ; afterwards, he intends to publish a Metaphysics, which would be divided into a Metaphysics of Nature and a Metaphysics of Morals . The last one would appear first. (5)

Towards the end of the decade, in his lectures on Philosophical Encyclopaedia (1777-1780), (6) Kant expounds his new notion of ethics even in class. Practical philosophy should be divided, in his saying, into: (1) transcendental practical philosophy, dealing with the use of freedom in general; (2) practical rational philosophy viz. Metaphysics of Morals, dealing with the good use of freedom; (3) practical anthropology . (7) We need not consider (3) here, because this section clearly does not belong to pure philosophy. (8) As for (1), it is easy to identify it with that section or aspect of a Critique of Pure Reason which deals with the transcendental foundations of morality. (9) Therefore (2) corresponds to the Metaphysics of Morals properly.

It is well known that in the section on Architectonic of the Critique of Pure Reason metaphysics is divided into Metaphysics of Nature and Metaphysics of Morals . But Kant felt the need of adding a few words of explanation for a denomination so unusual:

The term ‘metaphysics,’ in its strict sense, is commonly reserved for the metaphysics of speculative reason. But as pure moral philosophy really forms part of this special branch of human and philosophical knowledge derived from pure reason, we shall retain for it the title ‘metaphysics’. (10)

Still, in the Prolegomena (1783), Metaphysics and Morals lire mentioned separately. (11) But in a Reflection dated by Adickes in 1783-84, Metaphysics is divided again into Metaphysics of Nature and of Morals. (12) In the Metaphysik Volckmann (1784-85), Kant expands on this distinction. (13)

In 1785, the publication of the Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals lends a final official character to this denomination, referring to a science belonging to pure philosophy in as far as this is limited to particular objects of the understanding.(14) The need for a special Critique of Pure Practical Reason is also acknowledged. (15)

The question, in fact, is settled from now on. In the later years, only after 1790, Morals is distinguished from Metaphysics in the division of the parts of a certain conception of philosophy in general, called “cosmopolitan,” which conception seems to have been unknown before, and which seems not to replace, but to flank, the older conception and division. (16) In fact, the established denomination reappears in the Metaphysics of Morals published in 1797. (pp. 236-240)

(1) I. Kant, Gesammelte Schriften, Akademie-Ausgabe (Berlin und Leipzig), X (2nd edition), pp. 74, 56 and 97. Professor Norbert Hinske called my attention to the letter of 1768, and to another letter from Hamann to Herder of February 16, 1767, where Hamann states: “Kant arbeitet an einer Metaphysik der Moral” (J. G. Hamann, Briefwechsel, Wiesbaden 1956, Vol. II, p. 390); in another letter to Herder of August 28, 1768, Hamann writes: “Kantens Metaphysik der Moral hält mich in Erwartung” (ibid., p. 421).

(2) Op. cit ., XXIV, 1,1 pp. 31, 314.

(3) Op. cit ., XXVIII, 5,1, p. 173.

(4) I. Kant, Eine Vorlesung Kants über Ethik, hrsg. v. P. Menzer (Berlin, 1924), p. 1.

(5) Kant, Ges. Schr., X, p. 145.

(6) For the correct datation, see my review of its edition, Filosofia, XIII (1962), pp. 511-514.

(7) I. Kant, Vorlesungen über Enzyklopädie und Logik, Bd. I, Vorlesungen über Philosophische Enzyklopädie (Berlin, 1961), p. 38. (This edition of Kant’s lectures, although published by the Berlin Academy, is not a part of the Gesammelte Schriften . This edition was discontinued after Vol. 1.) Nevertheless, on p. 67, Moral and Metaphysik seem to be distinguished.

(8) See ibid., p. 68.

(9) It is well known that Kant realized the need to write a Critique of Practical Reason only after 1781. The Critique of Pure Reason was supposed, at least until 1785, to take care of the transcendental foundation of both the Metaphysics of Nature and the Metaphysics of Morals.

(10) B. 870. I quote the Critique of Pure Reason using the pagination of the second edition (B). Where the second edition (1787) does not conform to the first, that will be pointed out. For translation into English, I follow N. Kemp Smith.

(11) Kant, Ges. Schr ., IV, p. 363 (§60).

(12) Op. cit ., XVIII, pp. 284-85 (Refl. #5644).

(13) Op. cit., XXVIII, 5,1, p. 364. On p. 362 a justification of sorts is given for the presence of metaphysics in ethics; but it cannot serve our purpose because, according to this justification, metaphysics is present in all rational sciences, including mathematics (p. 363).

(14) Op. cit ., IV, p. 388. Kant adds: “Auf solche Weise entspringt die Idee einer zweifachen Metaphysik, einer Metaphysik der Natur und einer Metaphysik der Sitten ” ( ibid .). But what precedes hardly can be considered a clear explanation of this conclusion.

(15) Loc. cit ., p. 391.

(16) The first appearance of this doctrine which can be dated with certitude is that in the Metaphysik L2 of 1790-91 (op. cit., XXVIII, 5, 2,1, pp. 532-33). The same notion of “cosmopolitan” philosophy reappears in the Wiener Logik of 1794-96 (op. cit., XXIV, I, 2, pp. 798-99), but there is no division. This leads me to think that the section of the Logik J'dsche expounding the same doctrine, and giving the same division (op. cit., IX, pp. 24-25), derives from the Kollegheft of 1790 which, along with another from 1782, was used by Jäsche to compile his text.

13. ———. 1974. "Pierre-Jacques Changeux and Scepticism in the French Enlightenment." Studia leibnitiana no. 55:106-126.

Reprinted in Scepticism in the Enlightenment (1997), pp. 51-68.

"In the year 1767 Pierre-Jacques Changeux published a work entitled Traité des Extremes, ou des éléments de la science de la réalité (Amsterdam, 2 vol.). In the “Avertissement” the author states that his work had been undertaken at first as an article commissioned by the Encyclopédie, but that it had expanded so much that it had not been finished in time (I, p. V). In fact, the volume of the Encyclopédie with the letter R had been published in 1765, and included an article “Réalité” which was completely insignificant, which had nothing to do with Changeux’s ideas.

A summary of Changeux’s books by Vallet was published in the Encyclopédie d’Yverdon, (1) under the heading of "Extrèmes" (vol. XVIII, 1772). At the end of the article more about Changeux’s work was promised in an article “Réalité”, but this article never was published (it should have appeared in vol. XXXVI, 1774). We do not know the reason for this omission, but it is quite possible that the dangerous character of Changeux’s work had been noticed in the meanwhile, and that timid de Felice had preferred to suppress that article.

Vallet’s article was reproduced in the Supplément of Diderot’s Encyclopédie (Paris-Amsterdam 1776-77), and incorporated in the later editions of the Encyclopédie ; but the new article “Réalité”, still promised in Vallet’s article did not appear." (pp. 106-107).

(...)

"In my opinion, Changeux's main work deserves some attention for two reasons. The first, and the most peculiar, is his notion of the " Ex trèmes "; the second is the fact that he is a rather typical (and comparatively late) representative of that major sceptical trend in French XVIIIth Century philosophy whose importance has been hitherto almost entirely ignored. Changeux's most peculiar thesis is that everything man is, or man can know, lies in the middle of two extremes, which are an infinity of magnitude and an infinity of smallness. All things, or their qualities, are extremes, in as far as they are extended or diminished as much as the imagination allows it (I, 1). The extremes are nothing but words expressing relationships (I. vi). In the present constitution of man, the extremes meet each other, without merging: and reality lies in the middle (I, vi, 8). The extremes are not only terms connected with relationships: they are relative to the different minds thinking them. They also correspond to infinity as applied to all kinds of knowledge - but infinity is conceived differently by the different men (I, vi, viii). The extremes do not contradict each other (I, 3-4): in fact, the universe subsists through an opposition of contraries (I, 9). The middle point (milieu ) is the highest degree of reality (I, 14), although this middle point is not the same for all men (I, 17); there are infinite middle points which are only apparent (I, 18)." (p. 108)

(...)

"I will consider now the second basic aspect of Changeux's work, i.e., its scepticism, whose importance can be assessed only in connection with the general development of this school of thought in XVIIIth Century France. The only survey of Enlightenment scepticism we have is a well known article by R. H. Popkin (12), which provides a broad frame of reference, but which neglects many details. Using some research recently produced by other scholars, and adding some elements of my own, I will try to draw a very summary picture of XVIIIth Century French scepticism prior to Changeux. It will appear that scepticism was much more largely diffused in France in that time than it has been hitherto realized: so much, that it is probably justified to consider it as the methodological trend by far dominating in that area. In comparison, German contemporary scepticism was an extremely limited phenomenon (13); as for British scepticism, although it was represented by high ranking personal- ities such as Hume and Bolingbroke, it does not seem to have mastered many other adepts (14)." (pp. 110-111)

(1) B. De Felice, Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire universal raisonné des connaissances humaines, 42 vol. Yverdon 1770-1775.

(12) R. H. Popkin, Scepticism in the Enlightenment, in: Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, XXVI, 1963, pp. 1321 ff.

(13) See my essay, Kant und die antiken Skeptiker, in: Studien zu Kant's philosophischer Entwicklung, hrsg. v. H. Heimsoeth, Hildesheim 1967, p. 109 (and footnotes referred to it).

(14) I must remark for the sake of objectivity that my search of the British philosophy of that time was not as extensive by far as that of French and German philosophy, and so this side of the picture is not yet quite clear in my mind. But I suspect that a further inquiry would not significantly change the present perspective.

14. ———. 1974. "Lumières - Aufklärung: A Note on Semantics." Studi internazionali di filosofia no. 6:166-169.

"There are few periods in the intellectual history of the weslern world which were hypostatized more than the one called « Enlightenment ». Considering this era as a whole determined in time (1700 to 1800?) and in space (Central and Western Europe?) is an historical device whose use certainly was expedient in E. Cassirer’s and P. Hazard’s time, hut which is quite inadequate now (1). It is very encouraging to notice that some of the best research workers are moving towards a more intensive, and less extensive inquiry in this field: such are for example Norbert Hinske and Frieder Lötzsch (2).

But, to begin with, it is necessary to establish when the terms of « Lumières », « Aufklärung » (and their synonyms) appeared, and what they meant at that time. The general historical problems connected with « light » as a metaphor for « knowledge » were pointed at e.g., by H. Blumenberg almost two decades ago (3). But it is only recently that some precise answers to this question were given, not in general, but exactly in connection with the period in question: F. Schalk and R. Mortier provided the outline of a solid background for the French « Lumières » (4). Schalk’s and Mortier’s papers are extremely interesting and instructive: still, I think that another dimension of the problem should be explored (both for «Lumières» and «Aufklärung»): the connection between « light of nature » and « right reason », « universal reason », « good sense » and « common sense », expressions which were synonyms for centuries. Inquiring into this side of the question could possibly clarify the need for a further inquiry into the connection between what is traditionally called « Enlightenment » and what is called « Common Sense Philosophy »; a connection which would probably prove not to be entirely accidental (5).

Another obvious direction of expansion of the problem is the exploration of the connections between « lumières », « Aufklärung », and « The Age of Reason », « le siècle philosophique », « das kritische Jahrhundert », and other denominations of that era, in order to establish in how far they simply overlap, and in how far they reveal different aspects of that very complex phenomenon.

As for the German « Aufklärung », apart from the data offered also on this theme by Schalk in the paper mentioned above, some interesting elements are provided by Th. Mahlmann (6), and an even more thorough and important investigation was produced by Horst Stuke, in his article « Aufklärung », in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (7).

It is my intention to list here a few elements which might tentatively prove to be useful for gaining a more detailed view of the problems involved." (p. 166)

(1) I present the reason for my misgivings about the protracted use of this approach in my article: « The Weakness of Reason in the Age of Enlightenment »), Diderot Studies, 1971, and in: « La philosophie allemande de Leibniz a Kant », in Histoire de la Philosophie, vol. II, ed. by Y. Belaval, Paris 1973.

(2) Was ist Aufklärung? Beiträge aus der Berlinischen Monatsschrift . In Zusammenarbeit mit M. Albrect ausgewählt, eingeleitet ... von Norbert Hinske; F. Lötzsch, « Zur Genealogie der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?: Mendelssohn, Kant und die Neologie », in: Theokratia, 11, 1970-1972. See also: Aufklärung (Volk und Wissen, volkseigener Verlag), Berlin 1971.

(3) H. Blumenberg, « Licht als Metapher der Wahrheit », Studium Generale, X, 1957.

(4) F. Schalk, « Zur Semantik von Aufklärung in Frankreich », Festschrift W. v. Wartburg zum 80. Geburtstag, hrsg. v. K. Baldinger, Tübingen 1968, vol. I; R. Mortier, « Lumière et lumières. Histoire d'une image et d'une idée », in: R. Mortier, Clartés et ombres du siècle des Lumières, Genève 1969.

(5) I will provide an outline of the history of this question in my article « Gesunder Verstand - Gesunde Vernunft », to be published in the Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, hrsg. v. J. Ritter, Basel-Stuttgart. This article will offer further reference to studies in this field.

(6) In his article in the Historisches Wörterbuch, cit., vol. I, 1971, pp. 633-634, s.v. « Aufklärung ».

(7) Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, hrsg. v. O. Brunner, W. Conze, R. Kosellek, vol. I, Stuttgart 1971, p. 243ff. Stuke promises to produce a monograph entirely devoted to this subject.

15. ———. 1974. "More About General Subject Indexes." Studi internazionali di filosofia no. 5:185-186.

"In the last issue of this yearbook I published « A Contribution to the Bibliography of General Subject Indexes », dealing with works other than those studied by Archer Taylor in his book General Subject - Indexes since 1548, Philadelphia 1966.

The following are new additions to the same, according to the same criteria, collected by me during the last year, in particular at the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris). I saw the works followed by the acrostic BN at the Bibliothèque Nationale." (p. 186)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Giorgio Tonelli: Writings on Kant and the Philosophy of the Eighteenth Century (1975-1995)

Bibliography (1975-1995)

1. Tonelli, Giorgio, 1975. "The Problem of the Classification of the Sciences in Kant's Time." Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia no. 30:243-294.

"In order to understand the meaning and the originality of Kant’s classification of the parts of philosophy in the Critique of Pure Reason, and the status of the Critique itself within Kant’s system, it is necessary to survey briefly the history of this problem, at least in the years immediately preceding the formation of Kant’s doctrines.

It would be impossible here to inquire farther back into the history of this question, which would require not one but several volumes in order to be adequately expounded. So that I shall begin a detailed examination of the developments of this problem after the well known classification of the Encyclopédie, prefixing only a few precedents indispensable for understanding the further course of the dispute. As the history of this problem is only one of the prerequisites needed for understanding Kant’s classification, and the status of the first Critique, I shall refrain on this occasion from drawing conclusions in connection with Kant.

The problem of the classification of the parts of philosophy is frequently conceived as an aspect of the more general question of the classification of the sciences at large: therefore I shall have in many cases to enlarge accordingly the field of my inquiry." (p. 243)

[The works discussed are:

§ 1. Christian Wolff (1679-1754), Philosophia rationalis sive Logica, Francofurti et Lipsiae 1728. (The basic discussion is to be found in the Discursus praeliminaris de philosophia in genere preceding the work).

§ 2. Samuel Christian Hollmann (1696-1787), Dissertatio philosophica de vera Philosophiae Notione: ... pars prior, Vitebergae 1731; ... pars posterior, Vitebergae 1733; Dissertatio philosophica de definiendis justis scientiarum philosophicarum limitibus prior, Gottingae 1736.

§ 3. Joachim Georg Darjes (1714-1791), Introductio in artem seu Logicam theoretico-practicam, Jeane 1742.

§ 4. Christian August Crusius (1715-1775), Weg zur Gewissheit und Zuverlässigkeit der menschichen Erkenntnis (1747), in Die philosophischen Hauptwerke, hrsg. v. G. Tonelli, Vol. III, Hildesheim 1965.

§ 5. David Hume (1711-1776), Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals (1748) ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, Oxford 1951, §§ 131-132.

§ 6. The diffusion of the classification of the "Encyclopédie".

§ 7. German classifications, 1753-1779.

§ 8. Condillac (1775), D'Alembert and the new "metaphysics".

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714-1780), Cours d'études (1775) dans Oeuvres philosophiques (3 voll.), Paris 1947-1951: A regular division of the sciences is expounded at the beginning of the Art of Reasoning (I, pp. 617-620); Jean le Rond D'Alembert (1717-1783), Discours préliminaire de l'Encyclopédie (1751) ed. Ducros, Paris 1930.]

2. ———. 1975. "Kant's Critique of Pure Reason within the Tradition of Modern Logic." In Akten des 4. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses (6-10 April 1974), 186-191. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Reprinted in: Giorgio Tonelli, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason Within the Tradition of Modern Logic. A Commentary on Its History, edited by David H. Chandler, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1994, pp. 1-10.

Italian translation in: G. Tonelli, Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, Napoli: Prismi, 1987, pp.285-291.

"It is obviously impossible to understand a book correctly, if it is not clear what that book is about. It may seem strange, considering how much work has been done on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, that it has not yet been finally established what the subject matter of this treatise is. According to an earlier interpretation, dating from the beginning of the nineteenth century, and still accepted in the English-speaking countries, it is a treatise on the theory of knowledge. According to an interpretation dating from the twenties of our century, and originating from Nicolai Hartmann, Max Wundt and Heinz Heimsoeth, it is a treatise on metaphysics. It is my contention that the subject matter of the Critique of Pure Reason cannot be properly defined as theory of knowledge (gnosiology, epistemology), and that defining it as metaphysics is correct, but only partially: in fact it is, in my opinion, a treatise on logic as much as on metaphysics.

I. The Critique of Pure Reason is not a treatise on the theory of knowledge for the simple reason that a particular science called theory of knowledge neither existed in Kant’s time, nor existed before as an independent discipline; and Kant certainly did not introduce it, since it does not exist in his vocabulary. I do not know when this new philosophical science was established, but I suspect that it was brought about in the early nineteenth century within the Kantian school, by some philosophers who tried, misunderstanding Kant’s teaching, to establish a status for their own interpretation of his doctrines, according to which logic was identified with what Kant calls general logic: thus, the methodological parts of logic had to be given a status of a new science, and the Critique of Pure Reason was wrenched from its original context and made into a theory of knowledge. This had, among other baneful consequences, that of leading students to consider the Critique as a gnosiology in general, and not only, as expressly stated by Kant, as a methodology of pure knowledge. Kant certainly had to refer in his Critique to mixed knowledge as well, but this happened only incidentally in connection with the proper theme of the inquiry." (pp. 1-2)

(...)

II. In fact, the Critique is a work on methodology, and, more exactly, on the methodology of metaphysics. It has been argued that the statement: “it is a treatise on method,” appears only in the Preface to the second edition (1787). But, for those who are familiar with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century terminology, this fact is spelled out very clearly on many occasions in the first edition, when Kant compares the Critique to the “King’s road” or “high-road” of metaphysics (Weg, Königlicher Weg, Heeresstraße, Heeres-Weg, sometimes Fußsteig): the terms way, road, high road, et cetera traditionally and unequivocally referred, for obvious etymological reasons, to method. And the study of method belonged to logic.

A careful reading of the Critique shows that this work is one of the “special logics” for the particular sciences, which Kant opposes, as methodologies, to “general logic.” These special logics are assigned to the sciences in question as part and parcels of them: ;)ut still, they are the special logics (or methodologies) of those sciences. That Kant did not make this more clear, can be explained by the fact, in the first place, that it seemed to him that he had made it clear enough to those who understand the philosophical language of his time; and, in the second place, that he usually cared very little to explain what seemed very clear to him.

But conclusive evidence for this view is given by Kant’s Reflection 5644 (AK.-Ausg. XVIII, pp. 285-286), dated by Adickes in 1784-1785. There we read:

Transcendental philosophy precedes metaphysics, which, like logic, does not deal with objects, but with the possibility, the content and limits of all knowledge of pure reason. It is the logic of pure rational knowledge (...). Critique is what inquires into the possibility of the object of metaphysics.

The dating and the status of this statement are confirmed by a passage in a course on metaphysics offered by Kant in 1784-1785, the so-called Metaphysik Volckmann (op. cit., p. 363), where Kant dictated in class, in the introductory part of the course:

Transcendental philosophy is in connection with metaphysics what logic is in connection with philosophy as a whole (...).

In connection with the pure use of reason, a special logic will be necessary, which is called transcendental philosophy; here no objects are considered, but rather our reason itself, as it happens in general logic. Transcendental philosophy could also be called transcendental logic.

Here it should be noticed that transcendental philosophy (or ontology) is identified with the Critique: it is well known that Kant identified them in the nineties, but actually this identification occurred much earlier—in fact, it is also in some Reflections prior to 1781. I shall add that the two statements quoted are by no means isolated: only, they are those where the fact under consideration is stated most clearly." (pp. 4-5)

3. ———. 1975. "Conditions in Königsberg and the Making of Kant's Philosophy." In Bewusst sein. Gerhard Funke zu eigen, edited by Bucher, Alexius J., Druë, Hermann and Seebohm, Thomas M., 126-144. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag H. Grundmann.

Italian translation in: G. Tonelli, Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, Napoli: Prismi, 1987, pp. 149-168.

"Obviously, general political and religious conditions in Prussia strongly infgluenced Kant's political and religious thought, and this also needs some further study. But I want to consder here is the intellectual situation in Königsberg in the years of the early development of Kant's philosophy, beginning with those precedent that are necessary in order to understand it. In fact Königsberg and hisuniversity in particular, the Albertina, were the scene of some acrimonious struggles of religious-philosophical parties, which cannot have left no trace n Kant's philosophical perspective, nurtured in that environment. The fact in question have been ignored as a signficant pattern by Kant's biographers, inclusive of Vorländer, who did not realize their importance, and was attitude was not conducive to understanding it, as the predominantly hagiographic inspiration of their works did not incline them to look into some unpleasant intrigues, ot to attach them any importance in connection wirh Kant." (p. 127)

4. ———. 1976. "Analysis and Synthesis in XVIIIth Century Philosophy Prior to Kant." Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte no. 20:178-213.

"I can not inquire here into the history of these notions, as prior to the XVIIIth Century, although the knowledge of that history is essential in order to fully understand its XVIIIth Century developments. Fortunately, I can refer to some studies on the subjects which, at least, partially describe the precedents of the issues in question (1). It is noteworthy, that XVIIth Century philosophy had already very much simplified these issues, in comparison, e. g., with their treatment during the Renaissance (2). The XVIIIth Century introduces, comparatively, a further simplification, although this problem is still amply debated and connected with many basic questions.

However, after Kant loaded these terms with multifarious and mostly new meanings, they underwent a revival which has lasted until our days. But, in order to understand these developments, it is essential to reconstruct their immediate historical premises, which only can make them adequately intelligible.

It can be said in general that, according to an ancient tradition, the analysis or resolutio (Auflösung) is that cognitive procedure which, beginning from sensible and/or complex representations, aims at establishing their constituent parts, and, furthermore, the constituent parts of these parts, until some “simple” or “irresoluble” elements, or the “causes” of the “effects”, are reached, which are the "elementary notions” or the “first principles”.

The synthesis or compositio (Zusammensetzung), on the contrary, begins with those elementary notions and first principles, and, combining them and deducing from them, elaborates more complex notions and propositions, viz. derives the “effects” from the “causes”, until it reaches, if it can complete its procedure, at least a part of those representations which were at the foundation of the analytical process, and, also, new representations not offered by experience. Thus, both processes coincide at least partially in their results, as the basic two scientific methods proceeding in opposite directions, which are called to perform different tasks, but also to confirm each other.

Their nature and function raise, of course, many controversies. The basic problems are the following: 1) What is the nature of the elementary ideas and of the first principles which the analytical method aims to reach, and which lie at the foundation of the synthetic process; 2) What are the proper aim and use of the two methods in philosophy. The answer given to these questions shall fundamentally affect the conception of both methods as understood by the different philosophers.

It is also necessary to keep in mind that the terms in question are not only used in philosophy. They are also currently part and parcel of the chemical terminology, and mathematicians used the term “analysis” since the Greek antiquity. These different meanings sometimes interfere with the philosophical ones: therefore I shall occasionally refer to them, in particular when this interference occurs." (pp. 178-179)

(1) See L. M. Regis, "Analyse et synthèse dans l’oeuvre de Saint Thomas”, Studia Mediaevalia in honorem ad. Rev. P. R. J. Martin, Brugis Flandr. 1948, pp. 303 ff. ; H. Schepers, A. Rüdigers Methodologie und ihre Voraussetzungen, Köln 1959 (Erg.-Hefte der Kant-Studien, N. 78), pp. 18 ff.; S. E. Dolan, "Resolution and Composition in Speculative and Practical Discourse,” Laval théologique et philosophique, VI, 1950; H. J. de Vleeschauwer, More seu ordine geometrico demonstratum, Pretoria 1961 (Mededelings van die Universiteit van Suid-Afrika, C. 27); N. W. Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method, New York, 1960; J. H. Randall jr., The School of Padua and the Emergence of Modern Science, Padova 1961; E. de Angelis, Il metodo geometrico nella filosofia del Seicento, Pisa 1964 (p. 59 ff. in particular); A. Crescini, Le origini del metodo analitico. Il Cinquecento, Udine 1965; H. Schüling, Die Geschichte der axiomatischen Methode im 16. und beginnenden 17. Jahrhundert, Hildesheim—New York 1969; W. Röd, Geometrischer Geist und Naturrecht. Methodengeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur Staatsphilosophie im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, München 1970 (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, Abhandlungen, Neue Folge, H. 70.); H. W. Arndt, Methodo scientifica pertractatum, Berlin—New York 1971; Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed. by J. Ritter, Vol. 1, Basel—Stuttgart 1971, s. v. "Analyse/Synthese”, by L. Oeing-Hanhoff; C. B. Boyer, "Analysis: Notes on the Evolution of a Subject and a Name”, The Mathematics Teacher, XLVII, n. 7, Nov. 1954; A. Crescini, Il problema metodologico alle origini della scienza moderna, Roma 1972.

The most comprehensive XVIIth century treatise devoted to the subject is M. Eifler, Methodologia particularis, Regiomonti 1639. It is also essential to realize that there were many discussions about the methods in question in Protestant theology: the so-called Lutheran orthodoxy was committed to the analytic method, although it conceived it in a different way from that of the philosophers. See E. Weber, Die analytische Methode der lutherischen Orthodoxie, Habil.-Schr. Halle, Naumburg a. S. 1970; id., Der Einfluß der Protestantischen Schulphilosophie auf die orthodox-lutherische Dogmatik, Leipzig 1908, I Hpt.

(2) De Angelis, Op. cit., pp. 116—117; Arndt, Op. cit., passim.

5. ———. 1976. "The Philosophy of d'Alembert. A Sceptic beyond Scepticism." Kant Studien no. 67:353-371.

"D’Alembert’s philosophical work is studied very little in our time, with the sole exception of his Discours préliminaire whidi, for obvious reasons, cannot be so easily ignored (1). We are now provided with an excellent modern biography of our author (2), whose scientific work has also been studied recently (3), but as for his philosophy we still have to rely on Muller’s monograph, on a little known, onesided but penetrating study by Misch, and on a few more recent contributions (4).

D’Alembert originally expounded his philosophical views in his Eléments de Philosophie (1759; Eclaircissements, 1767) (5), which I consider the most authentic expression of his thought, whereas, as it could be expected, his philosophical articles in the Encyclopédie (6) evaded many dangerous questions. However, also in the Eléments our author did not speak his mind entirely (7). More daring views are expressed in some posthumous Eclaircissements to the Eléments, and in some letters to Frederick II. Obviously, d’Alembert’s Discours préliminaire of 1751 is also a document of basic importance.

What I contend is (1°) that d’Alembert’s philosophy is a radical form of scepticism, in the spirit of what is in my opinion the main trend in French Enlightenment philosophy, as represented by Quesnay, Condillac, Maupertuis, Buffon, etc. (8). And (2°) that d’Alembert simultaneously strove towards a kind of rationalistic phenomenism which, potentially at least, tended to overcome scepticism in its traditional form.

D’Alembert’s scepticism, as that of most French philosophers of his age, had not been hitherto adequately evaluated. Grimsley, Casini, Hankins, and others prior to them, had been aware of it, but they failed to put this view in the correct perspective — simply because this perspective had not yet been introduced. As for G. Klaus, this is his main contention against Ley’s materialistic interpretation, but his perspective is strictly Marxistic, and is limited to some general statements.

But I do think that this is the key for understanding d’Alembert’s individuality as a philosopher, and for finding a solution for what has recently been called “the problem d’Alembert”. From this standpoint, I think that I can show that d’Alembert as a philosopher was not an alter ego either of Voltaire, or of Diderot, or of Condillac: Voltaire and Diderot merely underwent temporary sceptical crises, and Condillac was nothing more than a half-sceptic (9), whereas d’Alembert was in fact much closer to Maupertuis. Still, d’Alembert’s views can not be reduced to those of Maupertuis for plenty of good reasons: among which, I want to stress, is his attempt towards overcoming that scepticism which, most probably, has originally been his basic philosophical motivation; this attempt probably corresponds to what some scholars call d’Alembert’s “rationalism”, but this could not be correctly interpreted as long as it was not located into the perspective of d’Alembert’s scepticism.

I certainly do not mean that this perspective, and in particular the account I shall give of it in this paper, could exhaustively describe d’Alembert’s personality as a philosopher: there is obviously much more to it. But this view, if further developed, could provide an hitherto missing individualized nucleus for an adequate foundation of a -renewed exploration of d’Alembert’s contribution to philosophy."

(1) See: R. McRae, The Problem of the Unity of the Sciences: Bacon to Kant, Toronto 1951, p. 107 f.; M. Da Ponte Orvieto, L’unità del sapere nell’Illuminismo, Padova 1968. H. Dieckmann, The Concept of Knowledge in the Encyclopédie, in: Essays in Comparative Literature, ed. by H. Dieckmann, Levy and Motekat, St. Louis, Mo. 1961. A new edition of F. Venturi’s book of 1946, Le origini dell’Enciclopedia, was published Torino 1963.

(2) R. Grimsley, Jean d’Alembert (1717—83), Oxford 1963.

(3) Th. L. Hankins, Jean d’Alembert. Science and the Enlightenment, Oxford 1970. Hankins pays very little attention to d’Alembert’s philosophy, whose importance he explicitly denies. W. L. Scott, in his The Conflict Between Atomism and Conservation Theory 1644—1860, London — New York 1970, devotes several pages to d’Alembert’s views on the subject. F. Diaz, in his Filosofia e politica nel Settecento francese, Torino 1962, studies rather extensively d’Alembert’s political position.

(4) M. Muller, Essai sur la philosophie de Jean d’Alembert, Paris 1926; G. Misch, Zur Entstehung des französischen Positivismus, Berlin 1900; see also: M. Förster, Beiträge zu Kenntnis und Charakter der Philosophie d’Alemberts, Diss. Jena 1892; A. Körbel, D’Alemberts Vorrede zur Enzyklopädie, Progr., Bielitz 1907; L. Kunz, Die Erkenntnistheorie d’Alemberts, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, XX, 1907; M. Schintz, Die Anfänge des französischen Positivismus 1: D’Alemberts Erkenntnislehre, Straßburg 1914; A. Carrigós, Juan d’Alembert, artifice de la filosofia de la moral, Revista de Correos y Telégrafos, XLII, 1941; H. Ley, Zur Bedeutung d’Alemberts, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift, I, 1951—1952; G. Klaus, D’Alembert und die Materialisten, ibid., II, 1952—1953; H. Ley, D’Alembert und die Idealisten, ibid., II, 1952—1953; G. Klaus, Bemerkungen zur Erkenntnistheorie d’Alemberts, ibid., Ill, 1953—1954; R. E. Butts, Rationalism in Modern Science, d’Alembert and the esprit simpliste, Bucknell Review, VIII, 1959; R. Grimsley, D’Alembert and Hume, Revue de Littérature comparée, XXXV, 1961; M. Retzler, The d’Alembert Question: a Study in Problematics, Diderot Studies VI, 1964; P. Casini, D’Alembert epistemologo, Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia, XIX, 1964; O. P. Arvesen, Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, Det Kongelinge Norske Videnskabers Selskabs, Forandeling Bd. 42, 1969, Trondheim 1970; P. Casini, Il problema d’Alembert, Rivista di Filosofia, LXI, 1970; id., Introduzione all’Illuminismo, Bari 1973.

(5) I refer as EPh to the edition of the Eléments published in d’Alembert’s Œuvres, vol. II, Paris 1805. This edition was reprinted by Olms, Hildesheim 1965, with the title Essai sur les Eléments de Philosophie, with introduction, notes and index by R. N. Schwab, who in his notes lists the variants of the original edition, and refers to the analogous passages in the articles of the Encyclopédie and in other works by d’Alembert. (Ecl. refers to the Eclaircissements (1767) contained in EPh.) I refer as DP to the Discours Préliminaire from the edition by L. Ducros, Paris 1930, as E to the first edition (1751—1765) of the Encyclopédie, for d’Alembert’s articles and Preface to vol. III, and, for his other works, as OE to the edition of the Œuvres published by A. Belin, Paris 1821 f., 5 vol., and as OF for the Lettres et correspondences inédites, ed. Ch. Henry, Paris 1789. TD refers to the Traité de Dynamique, Paris 1743.

(6) The most important are: Corps, Cosmologie, Démonstration, Dictionnaire, Egoisme, Elément des sciences, Expérimental, Genève, Géomètre, Géométrie, Système.

(7) Frédéric II, Œuvres, Berlin 1846—1849, vol. XXIV, p. 457 (letter to Frederick of Dec. 12, 1766).

(8) For a survey of this trend see my article J.-P. Changeux and French Enlightenment Scepticism, Studia Leibnitiana, LV, 1974, where I also discuss the question of a definition of XVIIIth Century scepticism. I discuss another general aspect of this question, viz. its connection with the problem of the limits of the human mind, in The Weakness of Reason in the Age of Enlightenment, Diderot Studies, XIV, 1971.

(9) See my article quoted in Note 8.

6. ———. 1978. ""Critique" and Related Terms Prior to Kant: A Historical Survey." Kant Studien no. 69:119-148.

"Incredible as it may seem, the boundless secondary literature about Kant does not offer one single account of the history of the term “Critique” prior to its appearance in his works. This neglect probably stems from the feeling that the meaning of the term in question can be taken as a matter of course, and that, after all, this term is so widely used that it has not much of a specific meaning left, — albeit in its derivation “Criticism”, as one of the denominations of Kant’s school of thought, i. e. as a synonym of “Transcendental Idealism” or of “Kantianism”.

This feeling is only partially justified. In fact, in European languages, during the XVIIIth Century the terms “Critique” (and “Criticism”), with the related “critic” (formerly “critick”), “critical” and “to criticize” were extremely fashionable ones, lavishly and promiscuously used. The same happened, e. g. with “reasonable” (vernünfftig) during the first half of the XVIIIth Century, and “pragmatical” (pragmatisch) during the second half of that Century, which were in Germany most popular catch words among intellectuals. However, in the first place, “Critique” etc. were at that time loaded with a greater significance than in ours, as symbols of a general intellectual and social change which partially had taken place, and partially was more or less utopically called for: Kant himself claimed, in the Preface to the first edition of his Critique of Pure Reason, that “Our age is specifically the age of Criticism (Kritik), to which everything must submit” (2); and he was by no means the only one who held this opinion. Now, this has to be taken into account, if we do not want to miss some important rational and emotional connotations implied by these terms in the XVIIIth Century, while in our time they became anodyne words of the common language, having lost their prior charge of sophisticated intellectual belligerency. In the second place, the XVIIIth Century was still close to a time when the meaning of these terms had been much more specific, and occasionally they still retained, or at least echoed this heritage of the past. In the third place, they were developing in the XVIIIth Century a few new specific meanings, to which, as it will appear, Kant’s use of “Critique” was significantly related; thus, “Critique” etc. were used by Kant not just casually, as obvious fashionable terms of his time, but also, and, I think, primarily, in a hitherto unsuspected meaningful way which will offer important indications for a better understanding of Kant’s work.

Still, the field in question has been partially explored. E. Gudemann (s.v. "Kritikos" in A. F. Pauly, G. Wissowa, W. Kroll, Real-Enzyklopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. XI, Stuttgart 1921) and J. E. Sandys (A History of Classical Scholarship, 3 vols., New York 1958, I, p. 6-11) gave some account of the grammatical and literary uses of this terminological complex in Antiquity; R. Wellek ("The Term and Conceptof Literary Criticism", in: R. Wellek, Concepts of Criticism, New Haven and London 1953) offered an excellent outline of its development as “literary criticism”, and R. Kosellek (Kritik und Krise. Ein Beitrag zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt, Freiburg-München 1959, p. 87 ff.) briefly examined some aspects (chiefly the scriptural and the political) of its role in the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries. I will not duplicate Gudemann’s, Sandys’ and Wellek’s research, which I shall briefly summarize, while basically considering different aspects of the problem." (pp. 120-121)

(...)

"Thus, it can be assumed that if Kant selected the title of “Critique” for his major work, this not only reflected the prestige of a term very fashionable in that time, and the generical meaning of that term in philosophy: but, in accordance with the spirit of his enterprise, he selected it as a qualification of his work as a work primarily on Logic, and in particular on a Logic centered on verification and correction (226). And this is perhaps the sole probably direct influence of Catholic thought of that time on Kant’s major work." (p. 147)

(226) See G. Tonelli, Kant’s “Critique of pure Reason” within the Tradition of Modern Logic, Part II, Ch. IV, in preparation [1994], on the term “Critique” in Kant.

7. ———. 1978. "Themiseul de Saint Hyacinthe (H. Cordonnier, 1684-1746). A Smiling Sceptic." International Studies in Philosophy no. 10:163-166.

"Although he is completely unknown from this viewpoint, Saint Hyacinthe is not only interesting, but surprising. Humorous and embattled, this journalist and erudite had to emigrate to Holland where he died (2). In 1743 he published his Recherehes Philosophiques (3), a quite remarkable work, particularly for the considerable knowledge of ancient philosophy it shows, as well as of the philosophy of the XVIIth Century: a knowledge which at least in part undoubtedly is direct.

St. Hyacinthe, for example, certainly read Descartes very carefuIly. This stock of knowledge, with their finesse and rigour, are set to work, as we shall see, with the art of a great juggler.

S1. Hyacinthe belongs to that sceptical trend which was one of the major features of the French Enlightenment, echoes and adapts to his own ends preceding doctrines, and opens the path for future developments (2).

The Recherches bear a dedication to the King of Prussia, Frederik III (sic), who already had made a reputation as a protector of the unbelievers, and this may have fostered some hopes on the part of the author. But either our author was not very informed of the genealogy of the King, or this is one more joke, perhaps a revenge for help denied.

The work begins with a detailed discussion of the different philosophical systems, all of them rejected for whatever reasons. But in saying, that he intends to establish a philosophy as solid as mathematics, in going out of his way in order to stress the need for an exact terminology, and in discussing the problems arising from this view, our author is especially hard on the sceptics. When we see later how solid he considers mathematics to be, and what sleights-of-hand he performs with the terms he uses, we will have some good reason to believe that these initial protestations are a manifestation of the author's sense of humor rather than of his speculative preoccupations." (p.163)

(...)

"What does all this mean? It is clearly empty talk: if we establish that we do not know the « ground of the existence» of all things « as they are in themselves », because all we know are the properties of these things, coming thereupon to the conclusion that, therefore, these properties are « the thing itself as much », and they « allow to know» the ground of its existence, we run into a patent non sequitur: all is saved, with the exception of logic.

In so doing, our author revives a similar theses supported by Brunet, transforming it into a caricature (5).

On this shaky foundation, St. Hyacinthe triumphantly proceeds to prove God's existence (pp. 323-355) and that of the finite beings; we also learn that the soul is different from matter (p. 487), and some more edifying truths.

The pleasurable reading of this book, which is of a remarkable intellectual standing, is only limited by the afterthought that the author could have developed (if it is licit to say « could have» while dealing with history), on the foundation of his scepticism, a revolutionary subjective phenomenism, instead of intrenching himself into the caricature of traditional metaphysics. Perhaps he was prevented from doing this either by the conditions of his time, or by his own stand as a radical sceptic. However, St. Hyacinthe's philosophy represents an extreme case which can not be ignored if we want to understand the atmosphere of his time, and the presuppositions for the rise of a much more solid kind of scepticism: that of Maupertuis and D'Alembert, although we can not be assured that they knew St. Hyacinthe's work, and, if so, whether they profited from it." (p. 166)

For a survey of French XVIIIth Century scepticism see my article « Pierre Jacques Changeux and Scepticism in the French Enlightenment», in Studia Leibnitiana, VI, 1974, p. 112 ff.

(2) See: P. M. Horsley, « The de Saint Hyacinthe», Comparative Literature Studies, IV, 1943.

(3) Recherches philosophiques sur la nécessité de s'assurer par soi-même de la vérité... , Rotterdam et La Haye 1743.

(5) Claude Brunet, Journal de Médecine, Août, Septembre, Octobre 1686, pp. 209-285.

8. ———. 1979. "The Scepticism of François Quesnay." International Studies in Philosophy no. 11:77-89.

"François Quesnay (1694·1774), professionally a surgeon and physician, is famous for his works on Economics, as one of the major figures of the Physiocratic school; also his medical work has been given some attention, but his philosophical stand has been entirely neglected, although it seems to me to be very remarkable. The ideas Quesnay deals with certainly exerted an important influence on Quesnay's friends Diderot, d'Alembert, Helvetius, Buffon, Turgot, etc., and certainly did not escape Maupertuis' attention.

A first statement of Quesnay's philosophical views can be found in his Essai physique sur l'économie animale, first published in 1736 in one volume; we will study it in the much enlarged three-volume edition of 1747. This work is sometimes quoted by XVlllth Century experts, but its basic meaning and its importance have not been recognized. "Animal economy" meant, in the language of that time, "physiology" in a very wide sense; but only vol. II of this work deals with physiology proper, while vol. I provides a general philosophical foundation, and vol. III examines the psychical powers of man." (p. 77)

(...)

"In conclusion, Quesnay does not question the metaphysical notion of "cause," but he asserts that we can not know causes as they are in themselves; however, this does not prevent us from establishing them phenomenally in order to give a foundation to empirical knowledge." (p. 81)

(...)

"Volume VI of the Encyclopédie (1756) contains an article "Evidence (métaphysique)" by Quesnay, (6) which in fact is a short survey of the basic points of philosophy in general. Here, our author tries to convey his scepticism in a more subtle way than in the Traité, and several times pretends to fight against Pyrrhonism (p. 765, 779, 785). Besides other differences, he seems to lean toward Malebranchism much more than in the Traité, and this is easy to understand if we realize that Malebranche's thought provided excellent

ammunition for the sceptics, as the examples of Foucher, Lanion, etc., prove.

This attitude is certainly explained by the fact that this article appeared in a collective and already very famous work: a more open stand could have compromised other people and the entire enterprise which, as facts would show very soon, already contained sufficient grounds for scandal." (p. 83)

(...)

"Comparing the doctrines of the article "Evidence," with those of the Traité, we can notice some interesting particular differences, besides the peculiar general tone described at the beginning of this section. The activity of the mind, still accepted in the Traité, is reduced in the article to almost complete passivity. The more daring tone of the Traité finds its expression in the doubt cast on the difference between dream and reality and on the hypothesis of the vision in God, in the possibility of the inherence of motion to matter, of' the materiality of the soul, and in the foundation of the immortality of the soul in divine justice only - all these points are abandoned in the article of the Encyclopédie.

A few more interesting philosophical doctrines can be found in the Recherches philosophiques sur l'evidence des vérités géometriques (Paris 1773).

To this late work Quesnay prefixed an introduction entitled Examen des advantages de la géometrie sur la métaphysique. Here our author introduces a distinction between demonstrative geometry, which is evident because its propositions are founded on sensation, and the geometry "of the imperceptibles" (p. V) or "indeterminables" (p. XXIV), (10) also called "metaphysical geometry" (p. 111): no metaphysical ideas can be demonstrated (p. IX; cf. p. XLIII). The senses can found the truths of demonstrative geometry because

geometrical points are sensible, and not merely ideal as mathenlatical points (p. XIII); although they are not physical points, because they are not divisible (p. XIV), they are extended (p. XXXI). The finite, not the infinite, is the object of geometry (p. XXXIV-XXXV). Obviously, this view of geometry is similar to that of Hume, and could have been suggested by him." (p. 88)

Editor's note: The author completed a first draft of th is paper on the day before his death. Mrs. Grazia Tonelli and the editors have made minimal stylistic corrections, but otherwise publish it as he left it.

(6) Quoted from F. Quesnay, Oeuvres économiques et philosophiques, ed. Oncken, Francfort 1888 (reprint Aalen 1965).

(10) For "Indeterminable Geometry" see: Ch. Hutton, Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary, London 1795 (reprint Hildesheim-New York 1973), art. "Indeterminable."

9. ———. 1994. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason within the Tradition of Modern Logic. A Commentary on its History. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Edited from the Unpublished Works of Giorgio Tonelli by David Chandler.

"The world of Kant scholarship was electrified in 1974, when Giorgio Tonelli presented a brief summary of his life’s work. His was a meticulous study: the plethora of sources shaping Kant’s world, particularly the nature and scope of logic. Tonelli found widely held interpretations of Kant to be inadequate, even wrong.

At the end of that brief summary, given at the Fourth International Kant Congress in Mainz, Tonelli promised to publish a book with the detailed justification for this rethinking of Kant. Here is that book.

Tragically Tonelli’s life was cut short. Though he had hoped to include more chapters, the evidence Tonelli provides is ample in the three he was able to complete. Kant scholars will find it necessary to reconsider received interpretations and assumptions in light of this ground-breaking work.

The richness, complexity and development of Kant’s thought can never be exhausted. New paradigms are indispensable in order to deepen our understanding. This is perhaps the central significance of Giorgio Tonelli’s life-long scholarly endeavors. Providing the historical and conceptual details that suggest new interpretations and approaches, it becomes possible to question some widely accepted assumptions and interpretations. What is undoubtedly most valuable for English-speaking Kant scholarship is that this brings us ever closer to understanding ideas and their development in Kant and his predecessors in their original historical context. Such a hermeneutical principle is crucial in approaching any text. Very specific studies in the original sources must be the foundation of scholarship. On the other hand, the critical scholar must distinguish carefully a source of an idea from merely the historical background for an idea. This distinction was perhaps occasionally blurred in Tonelli's corpus." (pp. XII-XIII)

(...)

"At virtually every mention of the Jäsche Logic Tonelli includes the dates 1782 and 1790. Referring to two notebooks from these years shows that Tonelli does not seem to understand the source of the Jasche Logic. The work of Terry Boswell provides the most current estimate vis-a-vis the sources of this work. They likely include students’ notes, Kant’s reflections, editorial additions by Jäsche and material from Meier’s compendium on logic, which text Kant used in his logic courses for some forty years. See Boswell’s “On the Textual Authenticity of Kant’s Logic,” History and Philosophy of Logic 9 (1988), pp. 193-203; and his Quellenkritische Untersuchungen zum Kantischen Logikhandbuch (Frankfurt am Main, Bern, New York, Paris: Peter Lang, 1991; in the series Studien zur Philosophie des 18. Jahrhunderts, vol. 3).

At the time Tonelli wrote, the widely accepted date for the Wiener Logik and the Logik Pölitz was 1790. Thanks to subsequent computer analysis of word usage and frequency, the best estimate today is that they were written in the early 1780s. The most helpful resource on this issue is Norbert Hinske’s “Einleitung” in Kant-Index, vol. 14: Personenindex zum Logikcorpus, ed. Norbert Hinske, et al. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, Günther Holzboog, 1991; in the series Forschungen und Materialien zur deutschen Aufklärung, Abteilung III: Indices, vol. 18), pp. ix-cv. Consequently, all Tonelli’s references to the dates of these works have been dropped." (pp. XV-XVI)

10. Popkin, Richard H., De Olaso, Ezequiel, and Tonelli, Giorgio, eds. 1997. Scepticism in the Enlightenment. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Table of Contents: Acknowledgements VIII; Introduction IX; Bibliographic Details XIII; 1. Richard H. Popkin: Scepticism in the Enlightenment 1; 2. Richard H. Popkin: Scepticism and Anti-Scepticism in the Latter Part of the Eighteenth Century 17; 3. Giorgio Tonelli: The “Weakness” of Reason in the Age of Enlightenment 35; 4. Giorgio Tonelli: Pierre-Jacques Changeux and Scepticism in the French Enlightenment 51; 5. Giorgio Tonelli: Kant and the Ancient Sceptics 69; 6. Ezequiel de Olaso: Leibniz and Scepticism 99; 7. Ezequiel de Olaso: The Two Scepticisms of the Savoyard Vicar 131; 8. Ezequiel de Olaso: Scepticism, Old and New 147; 9. Richard H. Popkin: New Views on the Role of Scepticism in the Enlightenment 157; 10. Richard H. Popkin: Popkin: Berkeley in the History of Scepticism 173; Index of Names 187-192.

"This volume contains a discussion between three scholars in the history of philosophy, myself [R. H. Popkin], the late Giorgio Tonelli and the late Ezequiel Olaso. What started the discussion was a brash paper I gave on “Scepticism in the Enlightenment” at the first international congress on the Enlightenment, held in Geneva in the summer of 1963. Soon thereafter two brilliant younger scholars, Giorgio Tonelli and Ezequiel de Olaso, started publishing studies leading from what I had said, and showing areas that I had not probed, and offering interpretations that went much further than what I had originally presented.

Tonelli, in one of the essays published here, said, “The only survey of Enlightenment scepticism we have is a well known article by R.H. Popkin, which provides a broad frame of reference, but which neglects many details”. Olaso called my study a pioneering one, “the first all-embracing survey of [scepticism] of the period”. But both of these scholars pointed out right away that there was much more to said on the subject than what I had presented.

“Scepticism” is a loose term that has been used to apply to any kind of doubts, and particularly, doubts about certain aspects of the Judeo-Christian religion. It also applies to a rigorous epistemological doubt about the possibility of attaining knowledge that cannot be questioned. It is this latter sense that we were concerned with, the legacy of the Greek sceptical traditions of the Pyrrhonists and the Academics during the eighteenth century. We had many discussions in person and in writing on this subject. For a decade I continued my original view, that eighteenth century scepticism was primarily and almost exclusively the view of David Hume and those he influenced. However, over time I was overwhelmed by the strength of the arguments and new materials and interpretations that Tonelli and Olaso offered, showing a much richer canvas of epistemological sceptical discussions than I had considered."

(...)

"Giorgio Tonelli was born in 1928 in Italy. He did his undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Pisa, where he received his doctorate in 1947. He supplemented his studies at the Sorbonne, Basel, Naples and many German institutions. He became professor of German literature at Pisa, and later moved to the United States in 1969 where he became a professor of the history of philosophy at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He published extensively on Kant and on the background of his philosophy, on the German intellectual world of the eighteenth century, and on the philosophical views of many of the philosophes. He sometimes published in French, German, Italian or English. He was also a great initiator of projects to further the study of the history of philosophy. He founded the journal, now called, International Studies in Philosophy: he founded the important series Studien und Materialen zur Geschichte der Philosophie. He was very active in committees and conferences in America and Europe on topics in the history of philosophy and the history of the Enlightenment. He played a most significant role in opening up new topics and outlooks in the history of ideas, and he encouraged many budding scholars in America and Europe." (pp. IX-XI)

11. Tonelli, Giorgio. 1997. "Kant and the Ancient Sceptics." In Scepticism in the Enlightenment, edited by Popkin, Richard H., De Olaso, Ezequiel and Tonelli, Giorgio, 69-98. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

English translation by John C. Laursen of Kant und die antiken Skeptiker in: H. Heimsoeth, D. Henrich, and G. Tonelli (eds.), Studien zu Kants philosophischer Entwicklung, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1967, pp. 93-123.

"The historical problematic of the sceptical tradition since the Renaissance has been raised again recently in a splendid book by Richard Popkin. (1) The author traces the relationships between the revival of ancient scepticism and the new sceptical attitudes from Erasmus to Descartes, and promises a future continuation of his work that will reach down to Kierkegaard. Our investigation here is intended as a contribution to the penultimate steps of that continuation. We shall not be raising the general problem of Kant’s relationship to scepticism: a decision about this far-reaching question will first be possible when its presuppositions (namely, the progress of the sceptical tradition up to Kant) have been clarified. We will therefore mainly limit ourselves to one part of the problem: Kant’s relationship with the ancient sceptics, with special attention to terminological questions.

It goes without saying that one should not believe that this part of the problem can be considered wholly in isolation. One reason for this is that in all likelihood Kant’s knowledge of ancient scepticism was not based on a firsthand study of the ancient Greek texts, (2) but rather on the received image of the Greek sceptics, mainly as it was to be found in the modern sceptics, their opponents, and the historians of philosophy of the times. It will therefore be necessary to allude to some aspects of the history of modern scepticism; especially to Pierre Bayle and his followers in the eighteenth century.

An evaluation of the attitude of Kant toward the ancient sceptics naturally also presupposes an assessment of his relationship with scepticism in general, and especially to the scepticism of his times. But in respect to this question, as in the case of the previous one, we will limit ourselves to generally accepted features and certain special indications and particulars, in order not to go too far out of the range of our problem." (p. 69)

(...)

"What, then, is the state of the case with Kant’s “scepticism”? First, one must distinguish between the pre-Critical and the Critical periods. At the end of the first, and indeed between 1765 and 1768, the “zetetic” attitude of 1765 and many places in the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer signal a certain approximation to scepticism, with respect to which Hume probably played a certain role, although not one which can be ascertained any more exactly. (138) But Kant should still not be considered as a follower of mitigated (and even less of radical) scepticism in this period according to the traditional meaning of this characterization, just as little as he should be considered an empiricist at that time. Kant had indeed excluded from the realm of human knowledge many areas of metaphysics and established that other areas were knowable only empirically. He had also rejected all abstract and purely a priori grounded metaphysics through his grounding “in concreto” of philosophy. But through his proofs “in concreto” he thought he could reach some metaphysical truths of absolute and not purely of empirically universal validity. His position thus belonged to the problematic of the limits of human understanding, and not to the classical problematic of scepticism. His undeniable bent toward scepticism of this period was thus only selective and partial (in that in connection with some problems concerning supersensible objects he was a radical sceptic; in connection with other objects that are knowable purely empirically he was a mitigated sceptic; and in connection with further problems concerning metaphysically knowable objects, he was not sceptical at all). That is, his doubts should be understood as preliminary (Cartesian) doubts. Kant’s position thus should not be considered sceptical in the true sense.

In the Critical period, Kant’s rejection of ancient scepticism and of every “radical” scepticism stands as a final result. It is true that he sharply defined the limits of our knowledge, and everything beyond the empirical was excluded. But significant chief indicators distinguish his position from “mitigated” scepticism. He was convinced that he had constructed a firmly founded system.

He maintained that men were capable of universal and necessary knowledge within the realm that was left to them, although this may not correspond to the most basic being of things.

Apart from all the other recognized differences that separate Kant from mitigated scepticism, these two above-mentioned chief indicators should be sufficient to demonstrate that his expressed personal attitude should not be considered a palingenesis of the scepticism of his times, and that Kant’s protestations that he fought scepticism by using the sceptical method should be taken as earnest, and not only with respect to radical but also with respect to mitigated scepticism. Thus, Kant not only broke a middle way (as Bacon, Gassendi, Bayle (139) and many others, especially in Kant’s time, had tried to do), but broke a new way between dogmatism and scepticism, in which the old opposition between the two positions was for the first time set up on a fully new plane, even if it was not finally transcended.

Also with reference to its sources, Kant’s philosophy ought not to be considered as a development or even a fundamental renovation of the empirical scepticism of his age. The Critique of Pure Reason owes too many of its basic concepts to the German scholastic tradition, especially as it had been developed in the 1760’s and 1770’s by the students of Crusius, Hollmann, and Darjes (as we hope to show in another place), for it to be considered simply as a product of “modern forces”. It is rather a creative synthesis of the “old” and the “new”, where “old” and “new” are concepts that are purely relative and subject to easy reversal." (pp. 85-86)

(1) Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes, Assen 1960; see the review by G. Tonelli, Filosofía XV, 2, 1964, [pp. 327-332] (also appearing separately under the title Un libro sallo scetticismo da Erasmo a Descartes, Torino 1964) for a detailed discussion of the special methodological problems of this theme. Further: M.L. Wiley, The Subtle Knot. Creative Scepticism in XVIIth Century England, London 1952; H.G. Van Leeuwen, The Problem of Certainty in English Thought 1630-1690, The Hague 1963; R.A. Watson, The Downfall of Cartesianism, 1673-1712, The Hague 1966; R.H. Popkin, “Scepticism and Counter-Reformation in France”, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, LI, 1960; R.H. Popkin, “The High Road to Pyrrhonism”, American Philosophical Quarterly, II, 1965; R.H. Popkin, “The Traditionalism, Modernism, and Scepticism of René Rapin’’, Filosofia, XV, 1964; and especially R.H. Popkin, “Scepticism in the Enlightenment”, Studies on Voltaire and the XVIII Century, XXVI, 1963, where the author simplifies the perspective set forth in his book, taking into account only “absolute scepticism” and the reactions against it.

(2) We have indeed found no grounds for assuming that Kant had even read Sextus Empiricus. See, in general: A. Samson, Kants kennis der Grieksche philosophie, Alphen a. d. Rijn, 1927 (Utrecht Dissertation).

(138) Compare Tonelli, “Die Anfänge von Kants Kritik der Kauzaibeziehungen”, Kant-Studien 57, 1966, pp. 417-456.

(139) Compare Gassendi, Opera, op. cit., I, p. 79; Van Leeuwen, op. cit, pp. 6,105.

Giorgio Tonelli, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason within the Tradition of Modern Logic (1994)

Detailed Table of Contents

Chapter I. Organon, Canon, Discipline, Doctrine in Kant

I. INTRODUCTION 37

1. Importance of the four terms. — 2. The Announcement of 1765: logic as critique and logic as organon; discipline and doctrine. Kant’s letter to Mendelssohn of 1766: the reform of metaphysics through a catharticon; practical method. — 3. The Dissertation of 1770: a propaedeutic or method for metaphysics, as ars docimastica or negative criterion. Metaphysics and mathematics as organons for knowledge.

II. KANT’S LECTURES 1770-1780 41

4. Preliminary considerations. The Logik Blomberg of 1771: logic as dogmatic and as critical. Theoretical logic; doctrine and discipline. — 5. The Logik Philippi of 1772. Natural and artificial logic. Natural logic as critique and catharticon; artificial logic as doctrine and organon. The distinction between natural and artificial logic abandoned. - 6. Transition between them. Theory. Logic as catharticon of common sense and as an organon. — 7. Critique: amateurish, expert, masterly. Theoretical logic, and practical (empirical) logic (discipline). Epicurus and Locke. - 8. The Metaphysik L1 1775-1780. Metaphysics as the logic of the pure use of reason, as organon of pure rational concepts. Ontology and transcendental philosophy. — 9. The Lectures on Philosophical Encyclopaedia of 1777-1780 (?). Philology as the organon of the historical sciences. [General] logic is not an organon, but contains a canon. Analytic and dialectic. Particular organons. The critique of pure reason, analytic and dialectic. Metaphysics as an organon. The Ethik Menzer, 1780-1781: discipline and doctrine.

III. KANT’S REFLECTIONS 1769-1778 49 10. In 1769. Critique of pure reason, metaphysics, ontology versus logic (doctrine). — 11. In 1772. Critique of pure reason or transcendental philosophy. General logic as an organon; the sciences as organons. Metaphysics as organon of wisdom and as critique of science; metaphysics not an organon. — 12. From 1773-1775. General logic as a canon for doctrine; not an organon (dialectic). No practical logic. Transcendental philosophy as a canon for transcendental logic. — 13. From 1775-1778. Transcendental philosophy and its subdivisions. Critique of pure reason, ontology, metaphysics, organon, discipline, canon, architectonic. -- 14. Transcendental analytic and dialectic, logic of truth (as a doctrine) and of illusion (as a critique). The criterion. — 15. Doctrine, discipline, canon. -- 16. Organon, canon, architectonic.

IV. THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON: GENERAL VERSUS TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC 59 17. Critique. General and particular logic. Organon. Pure and applied catharticon. The general form of knowledge versus its content. - 18. General form versus content of knowledge. General logic as a canon versus organon. Analytic and dialectic. - 19. Transcendental logic. Transcendental form versus matter of knowledge. Organon and transcendental dialectic. Transcendental analytic as a canon for the understanding and for Judgment, not for reason. General logic is a canon for the understanding and for reason, not for Judgment. Reason in transcendental logic. Definition of canon. — 20. Transcendental analysis as a canon for the understanding and for Judgment. Mathematics needs no canon.

V. A COMMENTARY ON A 10-16 66 21. The difficulties of A 10-16. Vaihinger’s interpretation. Cautions about Kant’s procedure. — 22. Critique, organon, the system of pure reason, propaedeutic. — 23. Kant’s options. — 24. Elimination of some options. Transcendental philosophy and its relationship to the critique. — 25. Its relationship to the system of pure reason. — 26. Possible confusion between critique and transcendental philosophy. — 27. The subject matter of these sciences. Analysis and synthesis. - 28. Critique, canon and organon. One-sided definition of the critique as merely negative. More on its relationship to the organon and to transcendental philosophy. 29. Definition of organon. Transcendental aesthetic as an organon.

VI. THE CRITIQUE AS A SPECIAL LOGIC 80 30. General versus transcendental logic. Misinterpretation of their relationship. Transcendental logic as a special logic. Grounds for this interpretation. — 31. More on the notion of organon. Meanings of this term after 1781. Other similarities between special and transcendental logic. — 32. Later statements on the Critique of Pure Reason as a special logic. 33. What are the other kinds of special logic? Philology as an organon for the historical sciences. Mathematics as an organon and the theory of method in the Jasche Logic. Each science contains its particular logic. A two-tier conception of organon. Some organons do not belong to logic. - 34 Practical and special logic. Dictionary and methodology.

VII. THE CANON IN THE CRITIQUE 92 General logic as a canon. Critique and canon. Definition of canon. The canon in the Theory of the Elements. — The Theory of Method. General form of knowledge versus content; transcendental form versus matter; materials and formal conditions within the transcendental form. — 37. The canons in the Critique. The Critique as the methodology of metaphysics. Elemental factors. -- 38. More about the relationship between critique and transcendental philosophy. Structural versus procedural factors in the Critique. Logic and ontology: their eventual merger.

VIII. DISCIPLINE AND DOCTRINE IN THE CRITIQUE 98 39. Definitions of discipline: a discipline for reason. — 40. Discipline in the Theory of Method. — 41. Transcendental logic as a discipline. Discipline versus organon. — 42. Censure and discipline. — 43. Discipline versus canon. More about the function of a canon. — 44. Discipline versus doctrine. Doctrine versus critique. The Analytic of Principles as a doctrine.

IX. TERMINOLOGICAL SURVEY 105 45. Organon 1765 to 1776. — 46. Organon 1775 to 1780. -- 47. Organon in the Critique (1781) and later. — 48. Survey of results. -- 49. Canon in 1773-1781. -- 50. Canon after 1781. — 51. Epicurus’ Canonica, 1772-1796. Conclusion. — 52. Discipline and doctrine until the Critique. - 53. Discipline, doctrine, censure, critique, in the Critique. Discipline from 1781 to the Opus postumum. — 54. Doctrine in the Critique. The Analytic of Principles as a doctrine. — 55. Doctrine to 1790. — 56. Doctrine from 1789-1790 to the Opus postumum.

CONCLUSION TO PART ONE 123 57. Origin of the meanings of organon: Kant, Lambert and Bacon. — 58. Kant, Lambert and special logics; the three- tier conception of organon. — 59. Philology and mathematics as organons: various historical premises. Ontology as a dictionary. The tradition of Christian Thomasius. The relationship between metaphysics and logic, a problem never solved by Kant. — 60. Precedents in modem Aristotelian- ism. Kant’s Critique basically constructed as a treatise on special logic, although profoundly molded by metaphysical elements. — 61. Canon. — 62. Criterion, discipline, doctrine.

CHAPTER II Terminological and Conceptual Precedents to Kant’s Use of the Terms Organon and Canon

[I. ORGANON IN THE ARISTOTELIAN AND BACONIAN TRADITIONS] 133 1. Introduction. - 2. The Aristotelian tradition of organon. — 3. Bacon’s Novum Organum within his methodology. — 4. Bacon’s Novum Organum in particular. Bacon’s influence. — 5. Other works entitled Organon. Some meanings of the term in German philosophy.

[II. LOGIC GROUPED IN THREE WAYS] 145 6. Reusch and his grouping of logic, mathematics and philology as instrumental sciences. Convergence of three different traditions. — 7. The connection between logic and philology. The seventeenth century: Bacon, the System- atics, the Pansophists. — 8. Ramists, Aristotelians, Eclectics. — 9. The eighteenth century. — 10. The connection between logic and mathematics. --11. The connection between logic, mathematics and philology.

[III. ORGANON IN LAMBERT] 158 12. Lambert’s New Organon: its four parts and its general approach. -- 13. Different meanings of organon for Lambert. The organon as methodology. -- 14. Kant’s special logics and Lambert’s Architectonic. — 15. D’Alembert and special metaphysics. British and French philosophical problems and their influence on Lambert and Kant. — 16. Disputed ground between logic and metaphysics in the Aristotelian tradition. — 17. Noology and gnostology. — 18. The Architectonic, ontology and logic. -- 19. Relationship with the New Organon. The two-tier or three-tier organon. — 20. Ontology as a dictionary in Lambert, in Thomasius and his school. — 21. Meaning of this doctrine. -- 22. Origin of this doctrine. Kant’s Analytic as a dictionary. The methodology of Kant’s general logic as a dictionary. Ontology and mathematics for Tetens.

[IV. THE HISTORY OF THE TERM CANON] 178 23-24. Canon in Antiquity. — 25-26. Canon and criterion in ancient philosophy in the tradition of the history of philosophy: Diogenes Laertius, Justus Lipsius, Gassendi, Stanley, Walch, Brucker, Daijes. — 27. The different meanings of canon in modem times. Canon in seventeenth-century philosophy: it belongs to logic and ethics. — 28. Other uses of canon. Canon in the eighteenth century.

[V. CRITERION, DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE] 188 29. Criterion. — 30. Doctrine and discipline.

Canon in the Seventeenth Century. Canon in the Eighteenth Century. Criterion. Doctrine. Discipline.

VI. APPENDICES]

APPENDIX A: Canon in the Seventeenth Century.

APPENDIX B: Canon in the Eighteenth Century.

APPENDIX C: Criterion

APPENDIX D: Doctrine

APPENDIX E: Discipline

CHAPTER III The Evolution of Kant’s Plan for a System of Philosophy and the Institutional Situation of the Critique of Pure Reason

I. THE PLAN UNTIL 1780 225 Introduction. — 2. The classification of the sciences 1769 to 1771. -- 3. In 1772. -- 4. Kant’s letter to Herz of February 21, 1772. -- 5. Interpretation. — 6-7. Kant’s letter to Herz at the end of 1773. The Reflections of 1775-1778. - - 8. The Metaphysik L, (1775-1780). — 9. The Lectures on Philosophical Encyclopaedia (1777-1780?).

II. A COMMENTARY TO THE ARCHITECTONIC OF THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 241 10. Introductory remarks. Survey of the Architectonic. - Meaning of an architectonic; system, idea, whole; construction work and biological metaphor. — 12. The problem of generation in Kant’s time. — 13. Kant’s solution; Pre- formism and Architectonic. — 14. The term architectonic in the philosophical tradition since Descartes. — 15. Conclusion. God as an architect. — 16. System, whole, end (internal and external; essential and ultimate), idea. - 17. Schema; the architectonical procedure in philosophy, and the Architectonic. — 18, Terminological precedents of schema, schematism. — 19. Casual versus providential development of a schema. -- 20. The tree of science. Rational and historical knowledge. — 21. Philosophical and mathematical knowledge. Learning philosophy and learning to philosophize. The true philosophy. — 22. The scholastic and the cosmic concept of philosophy; the ideal of a philosopher. -- The mathematician, the naturalist and the logician versus the philosopher; the essential ends of human reason. — The ultimate end in philosophy. Philosophy of nature and of morals. Empirical philosophy and philosophy of pure reason. Critique and metaphysics. -- 25. Metaphysics of nature and of morals. Ethics as a part of metaphysics. — 26. Kant’s attack against the “traditional definition” of metaphysics. -- 27. Kant mistakenly takes Baumgarten’s definition as a traditional definition of metaphysics. — 28. Further subdivision of philosophy. - 29. The term physiology. -- 30. Hyperphysic, immanent. -31. Transcendental, transcendent. - 32. Precedents and originality of Kant’s classification. — 33. Comparison with earlier classifications by Kant. The place of logic. -- 34. The place of rational psychology, cosmology and theology. Cosmology and rational physics. — 35. Applied philosophy, empirical physics, and empirical psychology.

III. THE PLAN AFTER 1781 300 36. Reflection 5644. The Prolegomena (1783). The Metaphysik Volckmann (1784-1785). — 37. The Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785): the tripartition of the Greeks, and Kant’s new classification. — 38. Comparison with the Architectonic; the place of the critique of pure reason. — 39. Other differences. The critique of practical reason. Later references to the tripartition of the Greeks. — 40. The Metaphysical Principles of Natural Science (1786) and the classification of the knowledge of nature. - 41. The Metaphysik von Schön (1785-1790?). The Jäsche Logic', the new cosmic concept of philosophy. - 42. The Metaphysik L2 (1790-1791): cosmopolitan classification, and recurrence of the classification of the Architectonic -- 43-44. The First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment (1790); the system of the critique of pure reason. The evolution of the place of aesthetics in Kant’s classification of the parts of philosophy. — 45. Practical versus technical: there is a practical psychology. — 46. The Second Introduction (1790). Comparison with the First. The critique of pure reason as a system of its own. — 47. Difficulties arising from the place of logic in the First Introduction. — 48. The Logik Dohna (1792). - 49. The Metaphysik Dohna (1792-1793), and the Metaphysik K2 (after 1793). - 50. The Metaphysik K3 (1794-1795?), and the Prize Essay on the Progresses of Metaphysics (1791- 1795).

Tables 325

Table I: Classification of the Sciences in 1769

Table II: Classification of the Sciences in the Dissertation of 1770

Table III: Classification of Reflection 4163 (1769-1770)

Table IV: Classification of Metaphysics in Reflection 4168 (1769-1770)

Table V: Classification of Reflection 4161 (1769-1770)

Table VI: Classification of Philosophy According to the Logik Blomberg (1771)

Table VII: Classification of Philosophy According to the Logik Philippi (1772)

Table VIII: Classification of Philosophy in Reflection 4150 (1769-1772)

Table IX: Classification of Philosophy in the Reflections of 1775-1778

Table X: Classification of the Sciences According to Metaphysik L, (1775-1780) Table XI: Subdivision of Transcendental Philosophy in Metaphysik L, (1775-1780)

Table XII: Classification of the Sciences in the Lectures on Philosophical Encyclopaedia (1777-1780?)

Table XIII: Classification of die Sciences According to the Critique of Pure Reason (1781)

Table XIV: Classification of Philosophy According to the Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)

Table XV: Classification of the Knowledge of Nature in the Metaphysical Principles of Natural Science (1786) Table XVI: Classification of Philosophy in Metaphysik K3 (1794-1795?)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Giorgio Tonelli: Bibliografia degli Scritti su Kant e la Filosofia del Settecento (1954-1987)

Bibliografia

Giorgio Tonelli è stato uno dei maggiori studiosi della storia della filosofia nel Settecento; i suoi scritti, pubblicati in italiano, inglese, francese e tedesco sono apparsi in volumi e riviste e solo in piccola parte raccolti in volume.

Questo passo della Prefazione al suo primo libro contiene una sintesi della sua metodologia di ricerca: "Una monografia storica è veramente degna di tale nome allorché non soltanto vi si muta il quadro del soggetto trattato, ma allorché essa anche contribuisce in qualche modo a cambiare la mentalità con cui è opportuno scrivere monografie storiche concernenti un cerchio di soggetti assai più vasto del proprio. Se non ci illudiamo di avere con questo libro introdotto delle notevoli innovazioni in materia, speriamo però che esso valga almeno a dimostrare la necessità e la fruttuosità di un metodo storiografico che dovrebbe essere noto ma che, in storia della filosofia, viene applicato solo in una trascurabile minoranza di casi. Un atteggiamento fondamentale della nostra ricerca, e che implica tutta una particolare messa in valore del materiale a disposizione, consiste nel non considerare lo sviluppo nel tempo dei vari motivi, come interessante solo agli effetti dei chiarimenti che esso possa gettare su una qualche opera maggiore che essi preparano, considerando quest’ultima come un tutto concluso. È senza dubbio significativo che un Autore abbia voluto redigere ad un certo punto una certa parte delle proprie idee in un’opera di notevole importanza, ed è opportuno esaminare le ragioni per cui ciò avviene, e lo spirito di sistema secondo cui ciò avviene; spirito di sistema in generale ben diverso dai motivi reali che hanno portato l’Autore a quelle tali idee. Ma è ugualmente importante cercare di comprendere come siano nate tali idee, interessandosi alla dinamica del pensiero dell’Autore di per sé, indipendentemente dall’interesse per le sistemazioni occasionali, la cui giustificazione storica dipende proprio dallo studio di quella dinamica. Perché la dinamica del pensiero di un Autore ci rivela dei fatti psicologici e culturali importanti, indipendentemente dai risultati «definitivi» raggiunti due o venti anni dopo dall’Autore stesso." Kant, dall'estetica metafisica all'estetica psicoempirica (1955), p. 9.

Una Bibliografia completa (fino al 1979) è stata pubblicata da Claudio Cesa nel Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, 1980, pp. 40-46 ed in una versione aggiornata al 1987 nel volume a cura di Claudio Cesa e Norbert Hinske in collaborazione con Sonia Carboncini, Kant und sein Jahrundert. Gedenkschrift für Giorgio Tonelli Berna: Peter Lang, 1993, pp. 187-204.

In questa versione ho omesso le numerose recensioni ed alcuni scritti minori, ma ho aggiunto quelli apparsi dopo il 1987; la Bibliografia è suddivisa in quattro sezioni in base alla lingua: scritti in italiano, francese, inglese e tedesco.

1. Tonelli, Giorgio. 1954. "La formazione del testo della Kritik der Urteilskraft ." Revue Internationale de Philosophie :423-448.

"La Kritik der Urteilskraft è nota per essere una delle più oscure opere di Kant; quantunque esista una notevole quantità di studi sull’argomento, ben pochi di essi valgono a gettare qualche raggio di luce su tale amalgama di materiale almeno in apparenza eterogeneo e contradditorio. — La ragione di ciò è la stessa, per cui la maggioranza degli scritti di storia della filosofia è di scarso aiuto alla comprensione dei testi che essi riguardano: e cioè che si tratta il più sovente di divagazioni speculative sull’argomento, da un preteso punto di vista teorico, piuttosto che di una paziente ricostruzione delle idee dell’autore nel loro esatto significato storico in rapporto al loro tempo, nelle loro origini e nel loro sviluppo. E la situazione resterà invariata fino a che non sarà chiaro a tutti che un testo, filosofico non è uno scritto esoterico da affrontarsi con un presunto dono di illuminazione interiore, ma è nè più nè meno che uno speciale tipo di documento delle idee di una persona e di un’epoca, che deve essere esaminato secondo la mentalità ed il metodo filologici e storici propri di ogni ricerca di storia delle idee.

La mancanza di un simile tipo di considerazione si fa particolarmente sentire a proposito della Kritik der Urteilskraft . Di essa, come di tutti gli altri scritti di Kant, esistono ottime edizioni critiche, ma la questione della formazione e della cronologia interna del testo è stata quasi completamente negletta. Tale problema è tanto più importante in quanto principalmente da indicazioni ottenute per questa via possiamo sperare di comprendere qualcosa della connessione del vario e discordante materiale che essa contiene. Quasi tutti gli interpreti se ne sono accorti, ma essi hanno in generale fornito giustificazioni teoretiche non documentate e in generale del tutto immaginarie per la volta a volta affermata o negata coerenza fondamentale dell’opera. Ricordiamo che i testi di Kant presentano tutti molto chiaramente segni ben conservati di una stratificazione successiva non eliminata da una rielaborazione finale; i più chiari esempi di ciò sono la Kritik der reinen Vernunft , la Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten , e la Kritik der praktischen Vernunft , la cronologia interna delle quali è stata più o meno studiata.

La possibilità di un tale tipo di ricerca in Kant è data dal suo modo di redigere, dipendente sia dal suo carattere che dalla sua epoca. Egli stesso ce ne ha lasciato una testimonianza, conservata nella Anthropologie Brauer (Collegium Antropologicum [sic]... gesammelt von Th. Fr. Brauer... 13 Oct. incept. 1779) proveniente dal 1779-1780. — Se si vuole scrivere un’opera, egli dice, è necessario lasciar libero corso alla immaginazione. Bisogna anzitutto fissare bene in testa l’idea principale, poi frequentare la società, o leggere libri divertenti su soggetti del tutto diversi — l’immaginazione ne è cosi eccitata, e parecchie idee nascono." (pp. 423-424)

(...)

"La base di tale analisi è, abbiamo detto, filologica, e cerca di evitare per quanto è possibile l’appello ai molto dubbi « inneren Gründe ». Ma bisogna onestamente precisare che non ci si può fondare qui sul fatto lingua in senso stretto, cioè su di una semplice statistica dell’uso dei vocaboli e delle forme grammaticali e sintattiche; la quale ricerca non darebbe nel caso nostro, come è evidente dato il breve periodo esaminato (dal 1787 al 1790), alcun frutto. Si tratta invece di isolare una serie di termini tecnici caratteristici, mediante una analisi molto elementare che ciascun lettore attento può agevolmente ripetere, ed osservarne l’impiego nelle diverse parti della Kritik der Urteilskraft , supponendo che, data appunto la loro importanza concettuale, la loro assenza o presenza sia indizio abbastanza sicuro per definire le diverse fasi dello sviluppo del pensiero di Kant.

Premesso questo, appare quanto sia vano cercare di creare artificialmente in molte opere di Kant una inesistente congruenza assoluta di tutti i particolari, e insieme come sia ingiustificato il trasformare le evoluzioni e le oscillazioni in inconseguenze e contraddizioni." (p

p. 426-427).

2. ———. 1955. "Kant, dall'estetica metafisica all'estetica psicoempirica. Studi sulla genesi del Criticismo (1754-1771) e sulle sue fonti." Memorie dell'Accademia delle Scienze di Torino .

"Le ricerche, dei cui risultati in questo volume non esponiamo che una prima parte, nacquero, diversi anni or sono, da un problema di cui non potevamo prevedere, allora, la vasta portata. Il nostro interesse verteva sull’esatto significato della terza Critica kantiana. Cioè principalmente sulla questione del rapporto dei diversi e, apparentemente almeno, eterogenei motivi contenuti in essa, e del rapporto tra essa e gli altri scritti di Kant. Il che equivale, in breve, a domandarsi perché Kant abbia scritto una Critica del Giudizio, e perché l'abbia scritta proprio in quel modo.

La nostra intenzione era ed è, si è già capito, puramente ed esclusivamente storica. Ove con questo s’intenda però anche ed eminentemente la storia di quell’aspetto della cultura che è il pensiero speculativo, nella sua viva connessione con gli altri aspetti delle idee e degli eventi della persona e del tempo studiati.

Un simile atteggiamento ci ha, come è ovvio, portato a cercare una soluzione del nostro problema in una ricostruzione dello sviluppo delle idee, e principalmente delle idee estetiche, di Kant, anteriormente al 1790.

Questo ci ha avviato a considerare la personalità di Kant filosofo principalmente da un punto di vista lasciato finora quasi completamente in ombra: quello da cui egli appare il depositario e il rielaboratore della tradizione della Psychologia empirica fondata da Wolff e dai suoi seguaci e avversari, con le sue implicazioni e corrispondenze in sede, tra l’altro, di logica.

Tra i risultati delle nostre ricerche, uno dei più rilevanti è forse che il considerare il nostro Autore da una tale quinta prospettica, opportunamente combinata a quelle tradizionali, ci avrebbe permesso di superare il dilemma esegetico, ormai inveterato nella Kantforschung , tra Kant als Erkenntnisstheoretiker e Kant als Metaphysiker, permettendoci di rintracciare un importante motivo unitario nella complessa personalità kantiana, che congiunga i suoi interessi metodologici da un lato e ontologico-metafisici dall’altro, traducendoli sul piano comune dell’epistemologia.

Non vogliamo affermare di avere così rintracciato il centro della personalità teoretica di Kant, ma un centro non meno importante degli altri, trascurato in generale sinora dagli storici, che hanno avuto il torto di prendere troppo alla lettera la polemica del Kant critico contro la psicologia, negligendo così di considerare quanto egli di fatto dovesse a tale scienza.

Siamo stati dunque condotti a ricercare i rapporti tra lo sviluppo delle idee estetico-psicologiche di Kant, e quello delle sue idee gnoseologiche, logiche, metafisiche, e morali. Andavamo incontro a dei risultati di cui noi stessi eravamo i primi ad essere sorpresi: venivamo portati ad un riesame di buona parte delle principali questioni della filosofia kantiana, che apparivano spesso rischiarate da una luce totalmente diversa da quella tradizionale. Venivamo così condotti ad una revisione e ad una riformulazione di molte delle idee correnti sulla carriera filosofica di Kant, che, integrate alle altre prospettive più tradizionali, vogliono ormai essere un elemento indispensabile alla comprensione globale della genesi del criticismo.

Esponiamo così nel presente volume un primo segmento temporale dei filoni studiati. Incontriamo in Kant, intorno al 1754, i primi sparsi accenni di estetica, la cui importanza è, in tale momento, puramente subalterna. Assistiamo quindi ad un graduale spostamento di contenuti e di visuali che porta il motivo estetico-psicologico, nell’ambito della evoluzione generale della personalità kantiana, a divenire sempre più importante e, almeno ad un certo momento, assolutamente dominante. Ed è un momento di non scarso rilievo, perché si tratta nientemeno che della rivoluzione dell’anno 1769, il cui interrogativo ci pare finalmente di aver chiarito. Con l’esame della parte avuta da una tale problematica nella elaborazione della Dissertatio del 1770, la cui interpretazione ne esce più o meno capovolta, concludiamo questa sezione delle nostre ricerche. Speriamo di poter dare presto alle stampe il resto dei nostri risultati." (Prefazione , pp. 1-2).

(...)

"IV. I nostri risultati. — Vogliamo ora richiamare brevemente l’attenzione sui principali punti a proposito dei quali il nostro lavoro presume apportare un contributo originale.

In generale, saranno utili agli studiosi di letteratura comparata e di filosofia settecentesca le indagini particolari ambientali che abbiamo dedicato a molti concetti caratteristici. Basti ricordare quelli di bellezza intellettuale, di grazia, di individuo, di subordinazione, di giuoco e molti altri. Ci è inoltre occorso di mettere in luce diverse importanti personalità della storia dell’estetica, ingiustamente trascurate dagli studiosi contemporanei. Ricordiamo solo Leone Ebreo, [Antoine Gombaud, Chevalier de] Mère, [François] Cartaud de la Vilate.

In particolare e rispetto a Kant, abbiamo tentato nel primo capitolo di mostrare l’interesse di certe sue dottrine estetiche giovanili, normalmente trascurate, come contenenti degli interessanti germi di sviluppi posteriori.

Nel secondo capitolo abbiamo fornito la più ampia analisi e ricostruzione culturale esistente dei motivi fondamentali delle Beobachtungen [Considerazioni sul sentimento del bello e del sublime ], compiendo un passo decisivo verso una valutazione globale dell’operetta giovanile di Kant. Abbiamo dedicato speciale cura alla delimitazione degli influssi, particolarmente inglesi e tedeschi, ossia del ruolo giocato principalmente da Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Mendelssohn, Cartaud de la Vilate, oltre che Rousseau e forse anche Burke.

Abbiamo inoltre analizzato le Bemerkungen [alle Considerazioni sul sentimento del bello e del sublime ] nel modo più ampio che sia stato sinora fatto: ne sono emersi dei motivi, specialmente morali, sinora trascurati.

Nel terzo capitolo siamo venuti anzitutto rivedendo e precisando, mediante una più precisa aderenza alle Riflessioni e una più ampia ricostruzione dell’ambiente, le teorie del Baeumler sui rapporti tra estetica e logica in Kant e sulla questione dell’individuo e del passaggio tra universale e singolo. Il nostro apporto è stato principalmente caratterizzato da un approfondimento del rapporto tra Kant, Baumgarten e Lambert. Abbiamo mostrato, contro il Baeumler (1), l’influenza della Aesthetica del primo sull’evoluzione della mentalità kantiana. Abbiamo poi messo in luce l’importanza capitale della Logica del Crusius, di cui non era stato studiato che l’influsso su Kant rispetto alla metafisica (Max Wundt, Kant als Metaphysiker. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie im 18. Jahrhundert , Stuttgart, 1924, Heimsoeth, Metaphysik und Kritik bei Chr. A. Crusius, Berlin 1926).

Abbiamo quindi ricostruito una fase transizionale sinora ignorata della estetica kantiana, quella '65-'69 e analizzato più a fondo sin nei più sottili motivi la fase ’69-’71, trovando spiegazioni nuove per diversi suoi atteggiamenti.

Questo ci ha portato a ricostruire una fase totalmente trascurata ed assai interessante della morale di Kant, quella ’69-'70; il cui legame con l’estetica dello stesso periodo è uno dei grandi motivi unitari del pensiero kantiano che ci è stato dato di mettere in luce. E abbiamo rintracciato in Crusius e Mendelssohn l’ispirazione di tali dottrine.

Finalmente, nel quarto capitolo abbiamo aumentato il corredo di fonti delle dottrine gnoseologiche precritiche; anche qui è emersa preponderante l’influenza del Crusius logico. Abbiamo proceduto ad una reinterpretazione, nei rapporti dell’estetica, di diverse operette di Kant Abbiamo posto l’accento sulla spesso trascurata Nachricht (2), restituendole la sua originalità e il suo valore programmatico; modificato l'inquadramento e proposto nuove istanze esegetiche per lo scritto sulle Gegenden (3); ricostruito la totalmente ignorata e fondamentale fase gnoseologica del ’69, avanzando una ipotesi esatta per spiegare la grande rivoluzione intercorsa nel pensiero di Kant; studiate le egualmente trascurate Riflessioni della fase ’69-’70; capovolto la interpretazione tradizionale della Dissertatio , che da scritto d’avanguardia viene ad essere considerato fondamentalmente come un ripiegamento su posizioni più prudenziali nei confronti della rivoluzione del ’69; chiarito e reinterpretato, alla luce del materiale precedentemente raccolto, una serie dei concetti e degli atteggiamenti fondamentali della Dissertatio stessa; e finalmente rintracciato un altro grande motivo unitario del pensiero kantiano, nelle rispondenze tra gnoseologia ed estetica (nonché morale), quale agente degli avvenimenti del '69 e del ’70. Una delle più importanti manifestazioni di tale motivo unitario si riscontra nella assodata derivazione della teoria della sensibilità della Dissertatio dall’estetica come critica del gusto. Questo ci mette sulla via di una reinterpretazione, che tenteremo in altra sede, della Estetica Trascendentale della Kritik der reinen Vernunft , rintracciandone i nessi con la contemporanea e successiva Critica del Gusto di Kant.

Il quadro del più nevralgico periodo del Kant precritico ne esce così profondamente mutato.

In generale, i motivi che veniamo perseguendo ci scoprono un caso assai caratteristico ed interessante nella storia delle idee: cioè il caso di un motivo, quello estetico, che mantenendo immutato il proprio oggetto esteriore (cioè il bello naturale e d’arte), muta profondamente il proprio apparato concettuale e terminologico, la propria importanza, il proprio posto e la propria funzione nella struttura concettuale speculativa di Kant, e nella sua dinamica, e sinanco il suo valore nell’ambito della personalità di Kant uomo. Nata marginalmente dalla tradizione metafisico-psicoempirica, l’estetica ha all’inizio un posto secondario. Per venire poi subitamente distaccata, sulle orme degli inglesi, dalla tradizione precedente, ed essere inserita in quella antropologica e morale; perdendo così quasi completamente contatto col mondo speculativo di Kant, per occupare invece la ribalta di Kant Philosoph für die Welt e delle razionalizzazioni semiletterarie dei suoi pratici atteggiamenti sociali.

Riassorbita poco dopo nel mondo speculativo della evoluzione ulteriore di Kant teoretico, e da essa inserita in senso nuovo nella tradizione psicoempirica, l’estetica è improvvisamente investita, in tale connubio, da una impressionante dinamica interna, che conduce, nel ’69, ad una brusca ristrutturazione di tutto il mondo speculativo di Kant, ad una esplosione da cui poco esce che non sia transvalutato o modificato nel breve giro di alcuni mesi.

Dopo di ciò, il focus dell’interesse di Kant, e il centro evolutivo del suo pensiero, si spostano ad altri argomenti che evolvono indipendentemente, e l’estetica entra in una fase nettamente conservatrice che durerà fino al ’75-’76, mostrando appena i germi delle grandi rivoluzioni successive.

Assistiamo del pari a diverse fasi di integrazione della personalità speculativa di Kant. Fino al ’69 i vari filoni del suo pensiero si sviluppano in relativa indipendenza tra loro, o tutt’al più a coppie: metafisica e morale, estetica e metafisica, morale ed estetica, gnoseologia ed estetica. Ma nel ’69 un motivo unitario, non sappiamo fin dove chiaramente formulato, e fin dove invece puramente riducibile ad un atteggiamento del background o forma mentis (non ci pare che l’aggettivo « subconscio », con le sue gravi implicazioni, sia qui appropriato, o che almeno sia imprudente usarlo), viene a dominare ed a produrre uno sviluppo contemporaneo, coerente e interconnesso di estetica, gnoseologia, e morale; quindi il potenziale dinamico si concentra nell’indagine gnoseologica, e gli altri due motivi passano, per un certo periodo, all’immobilità di un secondo piano. Abbiamo tentato, per quanto ci è stato possibile in base al materiale a disposizione, alle ricerche collaterali, e agli strumenti mentali che possediamo, di fornire alcune spiegazioni di tali eventi.

Di passaggio, ci è avvenuto di smontare, o almeno di intaccare, il mito di un Kant fanatico ammiratore della natura, luogo comune della Kantforschung . Le sue espressioni in proposito sono state mostrate quali derivazioni di puro riflesso di una moda letteraria in gran voga nell’ambiente.

Al contrario, abbiamo notato che un reale interesse personale e sociale di Kant, quello per la «bella conoscenza» o per la popolarità, veicolo di educazione per un più largo strato della popolazione, e di una maggior comprensione tra gli uomini, ha certo contribuito a spingerlo ad affermare l’universale validità delle rappresentazioni umane come fondata su fattori estetici." (pp. 11-14)

(1) Alfred Baeumler, Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft. Ihre Geschichte und Systematik , Band 1, Halle: Niemeier 1923, p. 115.

(2) Nachricht von der Einrichtung seiner Vorlesungen im Winterhalbenjahre von 1765-1766 («Akademie Ausgabe », Bd. II).

(3) Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume , 1768 («Akad. Ausg.», Bd. II).

3. ———. 1956. "L'origine della tavola dei giudizi e del problema della deduzione delle categorie in Kant." Filosofia no. 7:129-138.

Tradotto in tedesco come: Die Voraussetzungen zur Kantischen Urteilstafel in der Logik des 18. Jahrunderts in: Friedrich Kaulbach, Joachim Ritter (Hrsg.), Kritik und Metaphysik. Studien. Heinz Heimsoeth zum 80. Geburtstag , Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1966, S. 134-158.

"È noto come il problema della formazione delle tavole dei giudizi e delle categorie di Kant sia uno dei più delicati e discussi della Kantforschung . Il de Vleeschauwer (1) ha riassunto egregiamente le controversie in proposito, tentando una soluzione personale del problema. Secondo quanto egli viene a concludere, la tabella delle categorie kantiana deriverebbe in parte da Aristotele, in parte da Hume, in parte da Newton (op. cit., pp. 219-20) (2). Kant non avrebbe semplicemente tratto la tavola delle categorie da quella dei giudizi, ma avrebbe sviluppato contemporaneamente entrambe (p. 232). La tavola dei giudizi, poi, è tratta, come Kant stesso dichiara, dalia tradizione logica (p. 244). Kant avrebbe modificato le tavole di giudizi allora correnti, aggiungendo a ciascuno dei tipi generali di giudizio una terza forma speciale (ibidem). Il de Vleeschauwer presenta quindi in un quadro sinottico le tabelle di giudizi elaborate da diversi predecessori e contemporanei di Kant, da Melantone a Wolff, sulle quali i precedenti Kantforscher avevano già richiamato l’attenzione. Un esame di tale quadro sinottico mena il de Vleeschauwer alla evidente conclusione, che Kant non segui in particolare nessuna delle tabelle che aveva a disposizione, ma che operò una specie di sintesi tra esse. Ciò che resta perfettamente misterioso è il principio, mediante il quale Kant avrebbe operato tale sintesi selettiva, ovvero la ragione che lo spinse ad elaborare la sua particolare tabella di categorie.

Chiedendoci quale potrebbe essere la soluzione di simile problema, ci siamo immediatamente resi conto della non completezza del quadro sinottico presentato dal de Vleeschauwer. Anzitutto citare Melantone come unico precedente della filosofia del ’700 tedesco è fare un torto a quella legione di aristotelici del XVII secolo, la cui importanza, ancora lungi dall’essere riconosciuta appieno, consiste principalmente nell’aver mantenuto in vita e sviluppato, al di fuori e contro gli attacchi del cartesianesimo e dell’empirismo e platonismo inglesi, una tradizione metafisica, senza tener conto della quale è impossibile comprendere sia Leibniz, che il grande idealismo tedesco dei secoli XVIII e XIX.

Ora, gli aristotelici tedeschi del ’600 avevano ampiamente sviluppato sia una logica (e una teoria del giudizio), che una metafisica (con relativa discussione dei concetti, ontologici fondamentali). Vogliamo solo rammentare uno dei padri della filosofia tedesca, il Göckel, il quale, discutendo l’Organo di Aristotele (3), discetta « de Quantitate », « de Qualitate », « de Relatis » (p. es. « Maritas euim non potest esse, nisi & uxor eius fit, et altero intereunte alterum relativum nomine pristino excidit »), « de Alicubi », e « de Aliquando », « de Situ » (« stare, pendere, supra et infra »).

Un’ampia ricostruzione delle categorie e delle forme di giudizio nel ’600 tedesco sarebbe senz’altro un compito interessante, per quanto non privo di difficoltà. Ma dubitiamo molto della sua utilità nei riguardi della ricostruzione del pensiero di Kant, tenendo conto del fatto che Kant stesso ignorava quasi certamente la filosofia tedesca anteriore all’era del Thomasius, e che è persino difficile rintracciare in Kant qualche eco del pensiero dei primi thomasiani, cioè di quelli che precedettero il sorgere della scuola wolffiana. Per quanto sia interessante notare come in tempi già vicinissimi a Kant, tale tradizione perdurasse ancora. Il gesuita tedesco Mayr (4), ad esempio, continua la tradizione aristotelica e tomistica, e menziona illustrandole ampliamente, nella sua Logica, le categorie aristoteliche: substantia, quantitas, relativ, qualitas, actio, passio, ubicatio, duratio, situs, habitus.

Ma a noi basterà, come stiamo per mostrare, completare il quadro sinottico per quello che concerne il XVIII secolo tedesco, per fare un decisivo passo innanzi verso la soluzione del nostro problema. E non intendiamo neppure citare tutti i logici del ’700 tedesco che il de Vleeschauwer trascura, ma solo quelli, da noi selezionati, che presentano uno speciale interesse riguardo a Kant." (pp. 129-130)

(4) Antonio Mayr, S.J.: Philosophia peripatetica antiquorum principiis et recentiorum experimentis conformata . Ingolstadii, 1789, I Logica, 708 sgg.

[Gli autori esaminati nel resto dell'articolo sono:

- Samuel Christian Hollmann (1696-1787) , In universam philosophiam introductio , Vitembergae, 1734, I, pp. 119-135;

- Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768), Die Vernunftlehre , [1756] citato dall'edizione di Hamburg und Kiel, 1790;

- Christian August Crusius (1715-1775), Weg zur Gewissheit und Zuverlässigkeit der menschlichen Erkenntniss , Leipzig, 1747 [reprint: Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1965];

- Christian Wolff (1679-1754), Philosophia rationalis sive logica , Frankfurt und Leipzig, 1728 [reprint: Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1983];

- Georg Friedrich Meier (1718-1777), Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre , Halle, 1752 [si tratta di una versione abbreviata della Vernunftlehere (1752) su cui si veda: Riccardo Pozzo: Georg Friedrich Meiers "Vernunftlehre": eine historisch-systematische Untersuchung , Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holboog, 2000];

- Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728-1777), Neues Organon , Leipzig, 1764 [traduzione italiana: Nuovo Organo , a cura e con un'introduzione di Raffaele Ciafardone, Bari: Laterza, 1977].

"Ci sembra quindi di aver fornito una spiegazione sufficiente — salvo i chiarimenti complementari che ci proponiamo di dare in altra sede, riguardo al sorgere del Duisburgischer Nachlass [(1755) traduzione italiana: Fondo Duisburg, Pisa: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali, 2000] — della via seguita da Kant per elaborare la sua tavola di giudizi; e ci risulta che egli non fece che operare una semplificazione della tavola di Crusius, sia eliminandone alcuni elementi che corrispondevano a strutture diverse del suo sistema, sia epurandone il portato metafisico di alcuni titoli (che pur non poteva abbandonare in quanto strettamente corrispondenti a concetti metafisici che gli erano assai cari) col renderne il significato più strettamente logico (17).

Con ciò ci sembra anche di avere compiuto un passo avanti nella spiegazione della genesi della tavola delle categorie. Evidentemente, solo uno studio approfondito del Duisburgischer Nachlass potrà portarci a giustificare i correlati categoriali dei giudizi di quantità e di qualità, e l’importanza assunta per Kant dalle categorie di relazione e modalità. Ma crediamo, intanto, di avere anche addotto elementi atti a chiarire l’apporto alla formazione della tavola delle categorie della scoperta dell’analogia tra concetti puri e giudizi, per quanto cioè le categorie si siano disposte e plasmate secondo uno schema quaternario e tricotomico ispirato a Crusius, e la cui correlazione con alcuni gruppi categoriali già organati da Kant nel Duisburgischer Nachlass è stata certo una ragione, se non la ragione, della costruzione dell’analogia stessa tra categorie e giudizi." (pp. 134-136)

(17) Il problema, come lo abbiamo ricevuto, è molto chiaramente riassunto dal de Vleeschauwer nei termini seguenti: « Kant n’a pas posé en révolutionnaire; il a bien pu avoir l’impression qu’il s’appuyait sur un travail collectif et, quant à l’essentiel, définitif. Il a inventé la relation comme rubrique de jugements, vraisemblablement par analogie avec la table des catégories; il a rompu avec l’habitude (purement formale) de mettre la qualité avant la quantité, mais il n’a inventé aucune forme spéciale de jugement. Toutes le formes dont il parle étaient présentes dans les manuels de l’époque qu’il avait sous la main, mais aucun manuel, par contre, ne renferme le schème, qui est donc une construction personnelle de Kant. Il faut l’attribuer à un schème de catégories antérieurement construit, dont il fallut faire usage pour les jugements afin de faire éclater la parfaite correspondence entre eux. L’étude de notre tableau comparatif indique, d’autre part, combien il est malaisé de dire où s’est adressé Kant pour compléter les lacunes qu’il avait pu remarquer dans la tradition des écoles » (p. 248). Dalla nostra ricerca risulterebbe una maggiore influenza della tavola dei giudizi sulla tavola delle categorie, e sarebbe chiaro che il modello che Kant ha seguito per « colmare le lacune » non è che quello di Crusius. Questa soluzione avvierebbe ad una più piana e storicamente più sicura comprensione del sorgere della tavola dei giudizi, senza dover ricorrere, come ad esempio K. Reich (Die Vollständigkeit der kantischen Urteilstafel, Diss., Rostock.-Berlin, 1932), ad una complicata giustificazione speculativa completamente priva di conferma documentaria.

4. ———. 1957. "Lo scritto kantiano sulla "Vera valutazione delle forze vive" (1747)." Filosofia :621-662.

Ristampato in Elementi ... (1959) pp. 1-42.

"Il proposito principale di Kant nei Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte. .. (1747), quello di risolvere una particolare, per quanto importante, diatriba concernente i principi della meccanica, non ci interessa in questa sede. Ci sembra plausibile il suggerimento di [Mariano] Campo, che Kant abbia scelto tale tema di laurea — uno dei più controversi della fisica del suo tempo, e pel quale erano stati versati veri fiumi d’inchiostro — su suggerimento del suo maestro Knutzen (1). Quello che è significativo dal nostro punto di vista, è di notare alcune posizioni metafisiche che Kant assume nel corso della discussione, nonché alcune distinzioni metodologiche che Kant viene via via facendo, e dalle quali dipende fino ad un certo punto la soluzione stessa, che egli dà del problema centrale.

L’operetta presenta un bell’esempio di esposizione caotica e involuta, soprattutto nella prima delle sue tre parti; i cambiamenti di argomento e le digressioni sono all’ordine del giorno. Comunque, le prime pagine contengono una serie di premesse o fondamenti metafisici della susseguente trattazione, che ci rivelano i primi atteggiamenti di Kant in materia (2).

Il filo del ragionamento, come abbiamo detto, è piuttosto imbrogliato. Kant espone pêle-mêle una serie di concetti metafisici tradizionali, tentando di dar loro una fisionomia personale, ma senza seguire un rigoroso ordine espositivo. Il discorso vaga rimbalzando tra diversi scogli, indulgendo in discontinuità e ripetizioni. Piuttosto che seguirlo passo per passo sarà quindi opportuno tentare di sintetizzare i punti di arrivo." (p. 1)

(...)

"La formazione filosofica di Kant risulta da un fondo aristotelico-leibniziano, cui si vengono combinando degli apporti dei newtoniani e degli avversari di Wolff. Con Wolff stesso la posizione di Kant presenta certo delle analogie, ma si tratta in generale di elementi aristotelici o leibniziani comuni a Wolff e ad altre personalità non wolffiane; se qualche apporto specifico di Wolff ha luogo, Kant pare non rendersene conto; comunque egli mostra contro Wolff una notevole animosità specifica, oltre a difendere più o meno implicitamente delle posizioni nettamente anti-wolffiane, quali l’influsso fisico e la forza di attrazione, nonché la critica al metodo matematico in filosofia e allo spirito di sistema.

La posizione del giovane pensatore è quindi largamente autonoma: è impossibile farlo rientrare in alcuna delle scuole del suo tempo. Da tutti egli attinge liberamente ciò che gli accomoda, respingendo ciò che non lo soddisfa.

Terminiamo ricordando come una recensione alle Forze Vive sia apparsa sui Nova Acta Eruditorum del 1752. Si tratta di un violento attacco; dato il trattamento inflitto da Kant a Wolff nel suo scritto, non c’era invero nulla di meglio da attendersi dai giornalisti lipsiensi.

La recensione si occupa esclusivamente dell’aspetto metafisico dell’operetta: e i due punti messi in discussione sono la natura della forza, e l’arbitrarietà della tridimensionalità dello spazio. Quel misto di influsso fisico e di attrazione newtoniana, da Kant patrocinato, non poteva non destare scandalo; e scandalo ancor maggiore destava la relativizzazione della geometria. I giornalisti lipsiensi pare non si rendano conto che se Kant, nella sua giovanile avventatezza, aveva assunto senza troppa riflessione delle posizioni di punta, non gli mancavano però alcune buone ragioni ed alcuni autorevoli precedenti." (p. 32)

(1) M. Campo, La genesi del criticismo kantiano , Varese 1953, p. 4.

(2) Questo tipo di redazione involuta ed erratica, che antepone nel testo dottrine cronologicamente posteriori a dottrine che rappresentano una fase speculativa anteriore, senza modificare queste ultime; e che procede esponendo verità parziali per giungere poi a verità definitive, senza modificare in base a queste ultime la struttura delle prime, è una caratteristica di molte opere kantiane, il cui significato storico illustrammo in un nostro articolo: cfr. G. Tonelli, La formazione del testo della « Kritik der Urteilskraft , « Revue Internationale de Philosophie », XXX (1954).

5. ———. 1958. "La tradizione della categorie aristoteliche nella filosofia moderna sino a Kant." Studi Urbinati di Storia Filosofia e Letteratura (Serie B) no. 32:121-143.

"Introduzione.

L’attenzione di coloro che si interessano alla filosofia di Kant si è spesso concentrata sul problema dell’origine storica della tavola delle categorie, che si incontra nella Kritik der reinen Vernunft . Come è noto, la natura delle singole categorie e la loro distribuzione nella tabella si spiega in buona parte attraverso il parallelismo con la tavola dei giudizi, la origine della quale abbiamo avuto occasione di studiare in altra sede (1). Ma restano con ciò ancora aperte altre questioni non prive d’importanza, cioè: da dove siano derivate l’idea che si diano in metafisica alcuni concetti fondamentali irriducibili gli uni dagli altri, e l'esigenza di dedurre rigorosamente tali concetti riducendoli ad una precisa tabella, nonché, per qual via sia giunto a Kant il termine aristotelico ’’categoria”, raramente usato nel XVIÍI secolo.

Alcuni importanti lavori sono stati già dedicati a questo tema: Trendelenburg (2) e Ragnisco (3) scrivevano delle storie della dottrina delle categorie dall’antichità greca sino a Kant ed oltre, Rosmini (4) tornava, più superficialmente, sullo stesso tema, e Heimsoeth (5) concentrava recentemente la sua attenzione sui rapporti tra le categorie di Kant e i termini ontologici di Wolff.

Ciò che ci spinge a tornare sull’argomento è il fatto, che le ricerche di Trendelenburg e Ragnisco diventano molto sbrigative a partire dal XVI secolo, cioè proprio dall’epoca che prelude al pensiero kantiano. Ci proponiamo quindi di riassumere brevissimamente quanto è stato stabilito da tali Autori a proposito dell’antichità e del medio evo, e di allargare la ricerca a partire dal tardo Rinascimento, per renderla vieppiù particolareggiata coll’avvicinarsi al tempo di Kant, e specialmente per quel che riguarda la Germania. Non ci proponiamo che di esaminare alcuni autori più importanti, e di considerare solo alcuni aspetti generali del problema: addentrarsi nella discussione della evoluzione di ogni singola categoria renderebbe il nostro compito enorme, e sarebbe per di più inutile allo scopo che stabilimmo rispetto a Kant. Solo per quel che riguarda la prima metà del XVIII secolo la nostra ricerca aspira ad una certa completezza." (pp. 121-122)

(...)

"Ci sembra quindi di poter affermare, in conclusione, che è estremamente probabile che Kant abbia elaborato la propria dottrina delle categorie riferendosi per diversi rispetti alla dottrina degli aristotelici in materia; dottrina ancora viva in certe tradizioni tedesche ai tempi di Kant, attraverso le quali egli poteva agevolmente risalire ai più importanti testi del secolo precedente concernenti tale soggetto. Simile riferimento ci aiuta sia a comprendere meglio la genesi della teoria kantiana, sia ad apprezzarne alcuni particolari aspetti." (p. 143)

(1) G. Tonelli, L'origine della tavola dei giudizi e del problema della deduzione delle categorie in Kant , Torino 1956 (anche in «Filosofia», 1956-VII, 1).

(2) A. Trendelenburg, Geschichte der Kategorienlehre , Berlin 1846. [traduzione italiana in due volumi separati: Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, La dottrina delle categorie in Aristotele , Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1994; La dottrina delle categorie nella storia della filosofia , Monza: Polimetrica, 2004]

(8) P. Ragnisco, Storia critica delle categorie dai primordi della filosofia greca sino a Hegel, Firenze: M. Cellini 1871.

(4) A. Rosmini-Serbati, Saggio storico sulle categorie e la dialettica , Torino 1883.

(5) H. Heimsoeth, Studien sur Philosophie Immanuel Kants , Köln 1956, Chr. Wolffs Ontologie und die Prinzipienforschung I. Kants, Ein Beitrag sur Geschichte der Kategorienlehre . Vedere anche, dello stesso Autore: Zur Geschichte der Kategorienlehre , in: Nicolai Hartmann, der Denker und sein Werk , Göttingen 1952.

6. ———. 1958. "La polemica kantiana contro la teleologia cosmologica (1754-1756)." Filosofia :633-569.

Ristampato in Elementi... (1959) pp. 43-126.

"Dopo avere evidentemente abbandonato il proposito di continuare lo scritto sulle Forze Vive (1), Kant pubblicava nel 1755 una ponderosa opera cosmologica che ci apprestiamo ora a considerare secondo i nostri speciali interessi: la Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels .

Il proposito generale dello scritto è né più né meno quanto Kant aveva, di passaggio, annunciato qualche anno prima (2): spiegare tutti gli eventi naturali mediante poche leggi universali semplici e comprensibili, riducendo al minimo indispensabile l’intervento divino nella struttura e nel corso del mondo. Principio, di per sé, molto chiaro; ma la cui dimostrazione dà luogo, come c’è da aspettarsi, a parecchi grossi e complicati problemi.

L’opera, infatti, copre, direttamente o indirettamente, i più svariati argomenti di metafisica e di cosmologia. La cosmologia sembra però (come la fisica nelle Forze Vive ) avere, nella determinazione delle soluzioni particolari, una parte dominante.

L’origine del proposito generale sopra enunciato quale lo si incontra già nelle Forze Vive (3) non è di per sé chiara: è dubbio cioè se esso sia emerso dalle riflessioni sul problema delle forze vive, o se esso risponda, già nel 1747, a un preannunciarsi della problematica della Naturgeschichte . Bisogna però riconoscere che la formulazione datagli nel 1747 (quantunque perfettamente applicabile alla posizione del 1755) è cosi generica, da ammettere le precisazioni più svariate, e eventualmente più discordanti da quelle della Naturgeschichte . Inoltre bisogna riconoscere che l’impostazione di molti problemi è, nella Naturgeschichte , cosi diversa che nelle Forze Vive , che se nel 1747 un corrispondente dei problemi cosmologici particolari del 1755 già esisteva, esso doveva essere in veste ben diversa da quella ricevuta otto anni dopo." (p. 43)

(1) Proposito espresso nella lettera ad Haller (?) del 23 Ag. 1749 (X, 2).

(2) Cfr. il mio precedente studio Lo scritto kantiano sulla « Vera valutazione delle forze vive » (1747), § 49.

(3) Cfr. Lo scritto kantiano cit., §§ 49 e 55. Tale proposito generale si può scindere in due aspetti fondamentali di significato ben distinto: il primo corrisponde alla vecchia massima « principia sine necessitate non sunt multiplicanda », il secondo corrisponde al principio della semplicità delle vie, o della via più breve, nato in una occasione ben precisa, la polemica sulle leggi dell’ottica tra Fermat e Clerselier (cfr. Lo scritto kantiano cit., nota 80). Il primo aspetto implica anzitutto che la natura è basata su pochi e semplici principi, i quali sono molto fecondi, dai quali cioè è possibile dedurre l’immensa varietà dei fenomeni naturali; in secondo luogo, che tale immensa varietà di fenomeni è ordinabile in tipi, ovvero in un sistema di leggi, e non è una infinita varietà caotica; perché la natura, sebbene presenti un grandissimo numero di tipi di fenomeni differenti, si comporla rispetto ad ogni tipo di fenomeni sempre nello stesso modo, in maniera semplice e costante (dando luogo cioè a leggi naturali e non a una sequela di eventi singoli in cui non è possibile generalizzare nulla). Il secondo aspetto, particolarmente sottolineato da Leibniz e Malebranche, implica che la natura, in ciascuno dei suoi fenomeni, si comporterà sempre nella maniera più semplice, ovvero sceglierà la via piu breve per raggiungere un certo effetto (lex parsimoniae ): da ciò Maupertuis svilupperà poi il principio della minima quantità d’azione. In effetti, il secondo aspetto non è probabilmente che uno sviluppo del primo, il quale viene in generale insieme sostenuto da coloro che sostengono il secondo, p. es. Fermat, Leibniz, Malebranche, onde di fatto la distinzione dei due aspetti talora è assai difficile. In Kant, nella Forze Vive , sono presenti entrambi gli aspetti; nella Naturgeschichte invece Kant si fonderà principalmente sul primo aspetto. Ci chiedemmo altrove quale fosse stata l’origine della posizione kantiana in proposito nella Forze Vive , posizione che poi divenne d’importanza centrale nella Naturgeschichte sotto l’influenza di certi testi di Maupertuis, che sostenevano entrambi gli aspetti del principio (cfr. § 15 e Lo scritto kantiano ecc., note 80 c 87); testi che però erano apparsi posteriormente alla Forze Vive .

Sarà quindi opportuno accennare a qualche altro precedente di tali dottrine, per comprendere più esattamente la posizione di Kant. R. Boyle, in A free inquiry into the vulgarly received Notion of Nature (Works , London 1744, IV, p. 404) accoglie il principio «Natura semper agit per vias brevissimas », ma limitandolo; più in là il principio sembra acquistare un significato anche piu ampio (p. 417): « And it seems very suitable to the Divine Wisdom, that is so excellently displaved in the fabrick and conduct of the universe, to imploy in the world, already framed and compleated, the fewest and most simple means, by which the phaenomena, designed to be exhibited in the world, couìd be produced ». Newton stesso, come vedemmo (Lo scritto kantiano ecc., nota 80) raccomandava di non moltiplicare inutilmente le cause dei fenomeni naturali, e assicurava (cfr. nota 54 del presente studio) che i fenomeni naturali derivano da due o tre leggi universali, e che il corso della natura è semplice e uniforme. Wolff e Crusius accettavano la lex parsimoniae (cfr. Joh. G. H. Feder, Institutiones Logicae et Metaphysicae , Göttingcn 1781, § 60; Logik und Metaphysik , Göttingen 1786, p. 319). Castel affermava la semplicità della natura (Traité de Physique , Paris 1724, I, p. 380); Privat de Molières sosteneva che non bisogna moltiplicare i principi senza necessità, e che bisogna dedurre gli effetti naturali dalle supposizioni più semplici (Leçons de Physique , Paris 1734, I, p. 3); Joh. Bernoulli ribadiva il principio della semplicità: la natura non fa nulla invano (Opera omnia , Lausannae & Genevae 1742, IV, p. 24).

Si può giungere quindi alla conclusione che il principio, quale fu da Kant enunciato nella Forze Vive , rispondeva ad una opinione generica molto diffusa, e che egli lo impiegò solo estrinsecamente in funzione antiwolffiana, poiché Wolff stesso in certo modo lo accettava, soprattutto come lex parsimoniae . Il contenuto intrinsecamente antiwolffiano del principio derivò quindi poi dall'influsso di Maupertuis. È curioso però notare come Mairan e più tardi D’Alembert (cfr. note 38 e 41 del presente studio) accusassero (e forse non senza fondamento) il principio della via più semplice e più breve di introdurre le cause finali in fisica, mentre tale principio era invece sostenuto da antiteleologisti dichiarati, quali Malebranche, Maupertuis e Kant. Giacché siamo in argomento, vogliamo accennare a qualche sviluppo della questione. Notissima è la polemica tra Maupertuis e König sulla questione della paternità del principio della minima azione, e le discussioni a cui presero parte D’Arcy, D’Alembert e Euler (cfr. P. Brunet, Étude historique sur le principe de la moindre action , Paris 1938, soprattutto pp. 26 sgg.). Il Gesetz der Sparsamkeit si ritrova in H. S. Reimarus (Abhandlungen von den vornehmsten Wahrheiten der natürlichen Religion , Hamburg [1754] 1781, p. 288 sgg.); J. B. Scarella enuncia il principium brevissimae viae (Physicae generalis methodo mathematica tractatae. .. Tomus III, 1757, p. 420), che anche G. Ploucquet riprende (Fundamenta philosophiae speculativae , Tubingae 1759, § 812), che ricorre in Lambert c Buffon (cfr. Feder, loc. cit.), ed al quale J. N. Tetens dedica un apposito saggio (Commentatio de principio minimi, Buezzovii et Vismariae 1769). Vedere inoltre, in generale, J. F. Montucla, Histoire des Mathématiques , III, Paris 1802, p. 643 sgg., e A. Kneser, Das Prinzip der kleinsten Wirkung von Leibniz bis zur Gegenwart , Leipzig 1929; su Leibniz, L. Couturat, La logique de Leibniz , Paris 1901, p. 229; su Malebranche, M. Guéroult, Malebranche , T. II, 1, Cap. VII, § 10 (di prossima pubblicaz. [1958]); su Maupertuis, P. E. B. Jourdain, Maupertuis and the Principle of least action , «Monist», XXII (1912); M. Guéroult, Dynamique et Métaphysique leibnitiennes , Paris 1934, pp. 215 sgg.; R. Dugas, Le principe de la moindre action dans l'oeuvre de Maupertuis, « La Revue Scientifique », LXXX (1942); su Kant, J. Vuillemin, Physique et métaphysique kantiennes , Paris 1955, p. 100 (nota). Per l’aspetto del principio che si riferisce alla costanza e uniformità (semplicità) delle leggi della natura, vederne l’ampia trattazione in G. Tonelli, Kant, dall'estetica metafìsica all'estetica psicoempirica , Torino 1955 (« Memorie della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino », Serie 3, Tomo 3, P. 1), § 87.

7. ———. 1959. Elementi metodologici e metafisici in Kant dal 1745 al 1768. Saggio di sociologia della conoscenza . Torino: Edizioni di "Filosofia".

Indice: Prefazione V; Introduzione XV-XXIII; Lo scritto kantiano sulla "Vera valutazione delle forze vive" 1; A. Motivi metafisici 1; B. Motivi metodologici 18; La polemica kantiana contro la teleologia cosmologica (1754-1756) 43; A. "Storia Naturale e teoria generale del cosmo" (1755): Motivi metafisici 43; B. Motivi metodologici 79; C. Gli scritti minori 91; Il primo tentativo ontologico (1755) 127; A. Motivi metafisici nella "Nova Dilucidatio"127; B. Motivi metodologici nella "Nova Dilucidatio"146; Appendice: La dottrina dell’ente e delle sue determinazioni nelle scuole tedesche 151; Kant dal 1756 al 1762 173; A. La "Monadologia physica" (1756) 173; B. Lo scritto sul "Moto e la Quiete" (1758) 193; G. Le "Considerazioni sull'ottimismo" (1759) 198; D. Lo scritto sul Sillogismo (1762) 204-236.

"Presentiamo in questo libro il frutto di una nuova serie di ricerche sulla formazione della filosofia kantiana. Queste ricerche sono in un certo senso parallele e complementari a quelle da noi precedentemente pubblicate sotto il titolo: Kant, dall'estetica metafisica all'estetica psicoempirica - Studi sulla genesi del criticismo (1754-1771) e sulle sue fonti, Torino 1955 (Memorie della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, Serie 3°, Tomo 3°, Parte II). Ciò non toglie che il presente libro costituisca un tutto perfettamente autonomo.

L'impossibilità di procedere verso lo studio del Kant più maturo senza avere ben chiari i termini del suo sviluppo giovanile è stata da lungo tempo compreso dalla Kantforschung . L’ultimo, e il miglior risultato come monografia d’insieme, in questo senso, è dato dal recente lavoro di M. Campo, La genesi del criticismo kantiano , I-II, Varese 1953, che copre il periodo fino al 1768.

Nel nostro lavoro sopra citato abbiamo approfondito lo studio sopratutto dei motivi estetici e psicologici (e in parte antropologici) di Kant precritico, che non ci parevano essere stati adeguatamente trattati nelle numerose precedenti ricerche. L'ultimo capitolo di tale lavoro conteneva anzitutto un rapido sguardo sulla metafisica e metodologia kantiana sino al 1768 ispirato alle monografie esistenti sull'argomento, quindi il primo tentativo di una ricostruzione della rivoluzione del 1769 fondata su materiali sinora mai studiati, e una reinterpretazione della Dissertatio da tale punto di vista.

Procedendo ulteriormente nello studio del pensiero kantiano, ci sentimmo tosto insoddisfatti del quadro offertoci dalle precedenti monografie, per quanto importanti e valide esse fossero, della metafisica e della metodologia kantiana fino al 1768, e ci decidemmo a rivedere a fondo per nostro conto tali questioni. Il presente libro contiene una esposizione completa dello sviluppo del pensiero di Kant dagli inizi al 1768, per quanto concerne la metafisica e la metodologia (che comprende anche la logica), eccetto il problema metodologico dei rapporti tra universale e singolo, che ci sembra essere stato adeguatamente trattato nel nostro precedente lavoro. In effetti, buona parte del presente libro concerne problemi di filosofia naturale se non addirittura di storia della scienza: abbiamo dovuto infatti studiare a fondo anche molti aspetti di Kant Naturforscher , che sono in qualche modo collegati col suo pensiero metafisico; mentre abbiamo tralasciato lo studio di quelle sue dottrine fisiche e cosmologiche che non interessano che la storia delle scienze naturali.

La completezza della nostra monografia non esigeva che ripetessimo per disteso certi risultati delle ricerche precedenti; spesso li abbiamo riassunti rapidamente, rinviando in proposito sopratutto al volume di Campo, che li espone e completa sempre con eccellente perspicuità; ma questo concerne in generale dei particolari estrinseci, o dei riferimenti ad aspetti di Kant precritico esorbitanti dai limiti precisi della nostra ricerca." (pp. V-VI)

8. ———. 1959. "Il primo tentativo ontologico di Kant (1755)." Filosofia :241-274.

Ristampato in Elementi... (1959) pp. 127-171.

La Nova Dìlucidatio veniva redatta, come il De Igne , per scopi accademici; ma la prova da superare era più importante, e l’argomento scelto più impegnativo. Per la prima volta Kant si allontana dai consueti argomenti di filosofia naturale, per affrontare di petto i più ardui problemi ontologici. Ci è impossibile dire se questo nuovo orientamento non abbia avuto come ragione contingente il consiglio di qualche suo patrono accademico: ma sta di fatto che tale interesse più puramente metafisico, comunque esso sia stato suscitato, doveva ormai diventare profondo e stabile accanto agli altri, vecchi e nuovi, naturalistici ed estetico-antropologici; e affermarsi, nel decennio successivo, assieme al motivo psicoempirico, come il centro della personalità scientifica di Kant.

Bisogna però notare che l’urgenza di certi problemi metafisici era stata sentita da Kant sin dall’inizio, e che la discussione di essi aveva serpeggiato attraverso le maggiori questioni degli scritti di filosofia naturale. Il fatto che ora l’ontologia si imponga in primo piano può dunque in parte derivare da un bisogno, finalmente sentito da Kant, di discutere a fondo certe premesse, dalla esatta determinazione delle quali egli aveva visto cosi strettamente discendere l’interpretazione cosmologica del mondo.

Sarebbe però un errore considerare la Nova Dìlucidatio come un semplice approfondimento dei problemi metafisici che abbiamo sin qui incontrati. Se la mentalità generale che regge quei problemi e la Nova Dìlucidatio , è fondamentalmente la stessa, o se per lo meno (come mostreremo più oltre) nello sviluppo di tale mentalità non vi è frattura, non bisogna dimenticare che i problemi metafisici precedenti saranno, invero, discussi nella nuova sede, ma solo in una parte di essa; e che si affermeranno invece ivi molti problemi ontologici, nuovi per la penna di Kant. Sarà ora nostro compito cercare di chiarirne la derivazione.

Vogliamo aggiungere qualche parola sulla forma letteraria dell’operetta: come quattro delle cinque dissertazioni preparate da Kant per necessità accademiche, essa è redatta in latino, a onor del vero irsuto e claudicante oltre ogni dire. Essa è, come le tre sorelle, divisa in brevi paragrafi, e, come le due più prossime nel tempo, ordinata in proposizioni e dimostrazioni more geometrico , nel più arcigno stile scolastico. Non è certamente un caso che Kant abbia redatto in tedesco, e in una più sciolta forma saggistica, tutte le opere e operette non destinate ad essere presentate amplissimae facultati philosophicae (1). La forma scolastica sapeva troppo del passato, mentre l’essay era la moda d’avanguardia dell’ambiente di Kant giovanile, sulle tracce dei francesi e degli inglesi. (Vedere anche § 27). Non è dunque per libera scelta che Kant stese la Nova Dilucidatio in questo modo; né sappiamo poi addirittura se in generale avrebbe scritto tale opera se fosse stato libero di scegliere (2)." (pp. 127-128)

(1) Unica eccezione saranno i Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft , scritti more geometrico , trattandosi di un’opera di filosofia naturale. Si noti però che l’opera sulle Forze Vive , dissertazione di dottorato, era stata redatta in tedesco, ma secondo l’ordinamento per brevi paragrafi accompagnati da una indicazione di contenuto marginale proprio dei trattati scolastici tradizionali tedeschi.

(2) Cfr. K. Vorländer, I. Kant, der Mann und das Werk , Leipzig 1924, I, p. 94.

9. ———. 1959. "Eclettismo di Kant precritico." Filosofia :560-573.

Ripreso ed ampliato in Elementi... (1959) pp. 173-192.

"Pochi mesi dopo la conclusione della Nova Dilucidatio , Kant presentava alla Facoltà Filosofica della Università Albertina una nuova dissertazione, intitolata Metaphysicae cum geometria iunctae usus in philosophia naturali, cuius specimen I continet monadologiam physicam , necessaria per permettergli di ottenere un insegnamento effettivo come Magister o libero docente al posto del defunto M. Knutzen (cfr. I, 579).

L’atteggiamento metodologico enunciato nella prefazione dell’opuscolo (I, 475-76) è assai chiaro: la filosofia naturale deve, per non perdersi in vane elucubrazioni, fondarsi sull’aiuto dell’esperienza ed aiutarsi mediante la geometria; questo tutti lo riconoscono, ma alcuni si rifiutano di ammettere altre cose che quelle che experientiae testimonio immediate innotescunt ; in questo modo è invero possibile exponere le leggi della natura, ma non l’origine e la causa di tali leggi.

Kant allude qui evidentemente al dichiarato agnosticismo metafisico di Newton (1).

Per quest’ultimo scopo, è necessario giovarsi della metafisica, che sola può far conoscere le cause prime e la natura vera e propria dei corpi, che stanno alla base dei fenomeni esperibili.

Una simile presa di posizione è, dopo quanto abbiamo visto precedentemente, comprensibile senza fatica. Se, infatti, nelle Forze Vive Kant proclamava la superfluità dell’esperienza, egli sosteneva al tempo stesso quella distinzione tra geometria e metafisica, che qui è chiaramente mantenuta.

La Naturgeschichte implicitamente, e il De Igne esplicitamente, facevano invece valere energicamente, in senso newtoniano, la necessità di affiancare alla geometria l’aiuto dell’esperienza, sembrando lasciar da parte la metafisica, che però di fatto non mancava di ispirare numerose considerazioni fondamentali. Abbiamo giustificato altrove un simile cambiamento di prospettiva (2)." (p. 173)

(1) Cfr. G. Tonelli, La question des bornes de l'entendemenl humain au XVIIIe siècle, et la genèse du criticisme kantien, particulièrement par rapport au problème de l'infini in corso di stampa, § 5.

(2) Cfr. Cap. II, § 71.

10. ———. 1959. "Bibliografia degli appunti dei corsi universitari tenuti da Kant, sinora pubblicati e della letteratura pertinente." Giornale critico della filosofia italiana no. 38:492-499.

"A. Corsi di lezioni pubblicati integralmente o per estratti (1).

N.B. I seguenti Corsi di lezioni sono citati nell’ordine cronologico stabilito dalla critica. Accanto ad ogni indicazione si troveranno i rinvii alle monografie e studi che stabiliscono la datazione, e che si occupano in generale delle altre questioni del testo o di esegesi. Qualora le datazioni proposte siano parecchie, è stata scelta la più attendibile, tenendo conto dei risultati degli studi più recenti, ma vengono addotte anche le altre. Una discussione, caso per caso, sulla datazione prescelta è qui impossibile, sia in quanto esorbita dai compiti di questa bibliografia, sia perché sarebbe utile solo se fondata su di un contatto diretto coi manoscritti, ora purtroppo inaccessibili.

Tale datazione è quindi qui proposta a puro titolo indicativo in base agli argomenti addotti dalla critica, raggiungibili sempre mediante i rimandi di cui sopra.

I titoli dei Corsi non sono quelli originali, ma rispondono alla denominazione corrente ormai divenuta tradizionale. Segue il titolo originale, ove esista. Da questa lista sono escluse le lezioni stampate o fatte stampare da Kant stesso e comprese nella Preußische Akademie Ausgabe .

[segue un elenco di 34 testi]

B. Studi principalmente filologici e riguardanti la storia del testo, sulle "Vorlesungen" edite inedite .

[segue un elenco di 67 studi]

(1) La maggior parte degli originali o delle sole trascrizioni esistenti di tali Corsi è andata perduta durante la seconda guerra mondiale. Quelli ancora in possesso della Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften verranno editi a cura del valente kantista Dr. G. Lehmann. [cfr. volume XXIV dell'edizione]

11. ———. 1960. "Bibliografia dei corsi universitari tenuti da Kant. Addenda." Giornale critico della filosofia italiana no. 39:160.

[7 studi, da aggiungere ai 67 citati nel precedente articolo].

12. ———. 1975. "Kant e i caratteri delle nazioni." Filosofia :129-138.

"È noto che Kant fu animato, durante il corso dell’intera sua carriera intellettuale, da un vivo interesse per la psicologia empirica o, come allora veniva anche chiamata, per l’antropologia. Questo interesse riguardò anche il campo più specifico di quella che nei nostri giorni è detta psicologia differenziale delle nazioni, cioè lo studio comparato delle caratteristiche psicologiche dei diversi popoli.

Con questo Kant non faceva che continuare una millenaria tradizione culturale, i cui primi documenti conservatici risalgono all’antica Grecia, e i cui cultori furono sia viaggiatori e geografi, sia storici, filosofi e poligrafi. Basti ricordare Erodoto, lo pseudo Polemo, Teofrasto, i fisionomi greci, Plinio il Vecchio, Plutarco, Stefano di Bisanzio. L’enciclopedismo medievale raccolse questa tradizione, che fu sviluppata più tardi da Cusano, Montaigne, Hall, Overbury, Deserpz, de Bruyn, Charron e molti altri, fino a quel classico del genere che è l’Icon animorum di John Barclay (Londra 1614), ove si incontra la tipica affermazione generale: « Saecula pene singula genium habere, diversumque a ceteris. Esse praeterea cuilibet regioni proprium spiritum, qui animas indigenarum, in certa studia et mores quodammodo adiget » (Cap. II) (1).

La tradizione in questione è affiancata da un’altra, ad essa relata: quella del « primitivismo », o della esaltazione del carattere e dei costumi talora della umanità primeva, talaltra di alcuni popoli « selvaggi », in contrasto con la « corruzione » dei popoli civilizzati: anche in questa corrente si definisce, o si esplora, lo spirito di una certa età del genere umano (1’« età dell’oro », il « paradiso terrestre », lo « stato di natura ») o di certe determinate popolazioni (i Germani, gli Indiani d’America, i montanari Svizzeri, ecc.) (p. 129)

(...)

"Uno studio complessivo delle caratteristiche nazionali secondo Kant (6) sarà possibile solo allorché tutti quelli che ci sono rimasti tra i quaderni di appunti presi alle sue lezioni di antropologia saranno stati pubblicati nell’àmbito dell’edizione generale degli scritti kantiani. Per il momento dobbiamo accontentarci di qualche sondaggio preliminare, cercando di paragonare le sue primissime opinioni in proposito, tramandateci nelle Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönes und Erhabenen (1764), con le più tarde, espresse nella Anthropologie Dohna (1791) e nella Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (scritta nel 1796-1797). Il lungo tratto di tempo, e i molti avvenimenti intercorsi, ci permetteranno di mettere in evidenza una certa evoluzione del pensiero kantiano. (p. 133)

(...)

"Scorrendo queste pagine, il lettore non avrà potuto resistere alla tentazione di paragonare le descrizioni settecentesche, e particolarmente kantiane, del carattere dei diversi popoli, con le immagini di tali popoli che sono diffuse ai nostri giorni, e con quanto gli ultimi due secoli di storia ci hanno insegnato su di essi; e si sarà talora stupito di certe coincidenze, e talaltra avrà sorriso di certe radicali divergenze di giudizio o da qualche errata previsione. E si sarà forse convinto che, se una conclusione non solamente storica può trarsi da quanto precede, questa è che tali immagini, nel modo in cui esse venivano e vengono ancora elaborate, non sono che il frutto di un fenomeno o di fabulazione, o di percezione sociale altamente relativo e arbitrario, cristallizzato in molti casi dal successo di una tradizione pubblicistica che lo diffonde e lo perpetua — per cui la « prova dei fatti » conferma tali immagini non pili di quanto confermi i pronostici dell’astrologia." (p. 138)

(1) Non esiste alcuna storia generale di questa tradizione. Utili elementi possono essere ricavati da: J. C. Spener, Historia doctrinae de temperamentis hominum , Halle 1704; H. Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism. A Study in its Origin and Background , New York 1948; M. T. Hodgen, Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and the Seventeenth Centuries, Philadelphia 1964; G. Cocchiara, Storia del Folklore in Europa , Torino 1952; A. Collignon, Le 'Portrait des esprits' de Jean Barclay , Nancy 1906.

13. ———. 1987. Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento . Napoli: Prismi Editrice.

A cura di Claudio Cesa.

Indice: Prefazione di Claudio Cesa 11; La «debolezza» della Ragione nell’età dell’Illuminismo 19; La discussione sui limiti dell’intelletto umano nel Settecento e la genesi del criticismo kantiano, con particolare riferimento al problema dell’infinito 43; La disputa sul metodo matematico nella filosofia della prima metà del Settecento e la genesi dello scritto kantiano sull’ ‘evidenza’ 79; La concezione leibniziana delle idee innate e le prime reazioni alla pubblicazione dei Nouveaux Essais (1765) 109; Zabarella ispiratore di Baumgarten o l’origine della connessione tra estetica e logica 137; L’ambiente storico-culturale di Königsberg e la formazione della filosofia kantiana 147; La ricomparsa della terminologia dell’aristotelismo tedesco durante la genesi della Critica della ragion pura 169; Primi sviluppi della teoria del genio in Kant (1770-1779) 181; Divinae particula aurae . Idee geniali, organismo e libertà. Una nota sulla Riflessione 938 di Kant 235; Due fonti inglesi dimenticate della morale kantiana 247; L’etica kantiana parte della metafisica: una possibile ispirazione newtoniana? Con alcune osservazioni su «I sogni di un visionario» 257; La Critica della ragion pura di Kant nel contesto della tradizione della logica moderna 283; Cos’è la storia della filosofia? 293; Indice dei nomi 311-318.

"I saggi qui presentati, come del resto gli altri lavori di Tonelli, sono densi di richiami alle tradizioni, ed ai contesti (le dispute teologiche, filosofiche, scientifiche, e magari anche le beghe universitarie) che hanno influito, o che possono aver influito, nell’orientare un pensatore in una direzione piuttosto che in un’altra. Ma il lettore si accorgerà agevolmente che non viene proposto né un livellamento né un determinismo: c’è, anzi, una cura minuziosa a delineare i tratti distintivi dei personaggi, anche di terz’ordine, che vengono evocati, ed è proprio la estrema ricchezza delle combinazioni a rendere impensabile ogni forma di determinismo. Tanto più che, come egli notò proprio a proposito di Kant, « la storia della filosofia si trova spesso nella necessità di prendere in considerazione vari elementi esplicativi di carattere irrazionale o semi-irrazionale », situati fuori, insomma, da quella « consequenzialità » che il pensatore riconosceva, ed alla quale si era magari richiamato nelle sue proprie argomentazioni.

Sulla metodologia della storia della filosofia Tonelli rifletté a lungo; l’articolo presentato in chiusura di questo volume è il compendio di un lavoro molto più vasto, rimasto inedito. Rispetto alle metodologie filosoficamente motivate, egli proponeva una metodologia « storica », e, come puntigliosamente precisava, relativa « ad uno solo dei numerosi punti di approccio complementari (o livelli di lavoro) »: gli elementi, cioè, che occorre possedere per mettersi in grado di comprendere correttamente un testo filosofico. Sarebbe qui fuori luogo riassumere; basterà dire che l’articolo di Tonelli è articolato sulla distinzione tra l’ordine genetico delle dottrine, l’ordine sistematico (cioè l’organizzazione di un nucleo teorico sulla base di certi princìpi costruttivi o fondanti) e l’ordine espositivo volta ripartito in specifici momenti). Se il dichiarato proposito è di indicare le condizioni di una adeguata comprensione di un testo particolare, questa è in realtà soltanto il punto di arrivo di una ricerca che investe primariamente l’autore e l’epoca. Ma non è da perdere di vista, inoltre, che quel che si vuol raggiungere è una conoscenza completa del sistema concettuale, nella quale dovrebbero trovare spiegazione anche quelle che al lettore sembrano aporie (o che l’autore stesso considerò, in altra fase del suo pensiero, aporie); per le quali non basta appellarsi a motivi « psicologici » o « sociologici », perché questi illustrano soltanto « alcuni » dei caratteri di un pensiero, e in « certi » momenti del suo svolgimento.

Quando tutti questi elementi saranno stati vagliati, occorrerà tirar le somme studiando la struttura del testo. E, a questo proposito, ho l’impressione che la procedura di Tonelli, in tanti dei suoi scritti, sia stata più attenta alle strutture sistematiche di quanto egli non abbia dichiarato nel suo articolo metodico. Non credo comunque si tratti di una contraddizione. Era ovvio che, in via di principio, Tonelli dichiarasse che nessun sistema concettuale abbia una « validità universale », e che nessun passaggio da una idea all’altra vada considerato come « una deduzione consequenziale in senso stretto ». Ma, chiarito questo, l’argomentare del filosofo (quando è un filosofo serio) merita attenta considerazione: la genesi, insomma, avvia alla comprensione del testo, non la sostituisce. E l’attenzione che Tonelli ha sempre dedicato alla struttura sistematica delle opere di Kant (ma esempi analoghi si potrebbero moltiplicare) mostra come vivo in lui fosse il senso per le « ragioni » della filosofia. È anche per questo, credo, che lo si debba a buon diritto dire storico delle idee filosofiche, e non semplicemente storico delle idee." (dalla Prefazione di Claudio Cesa, pp. 16-17)

14. ———. 1987. "La «debolezza» della Ragione nell’età dell’Illuminismo." In Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento , 19-41. Napoli: Prismi Editrice.

Traduzione di The "Weakness" of Reason in the Age of Enlightenment , in Diderot-Studies, XIV, 1971, pp. 217-244.

"La concezione tradizionale dell’Illuminismo è stata già messa in questione; essa è stata criticata nel suo complesso, ad esempio da Funke, ed in senso parziale, relativamente ad uno specifico ambito, da Vyverberg (1). Assai significativo qui è soprattutto l’approccio di R. H. Popkin al problema dello scetticismo settecentesco (2); quella dello scetticismo fu infatti una delle questioni principali dibattute in quell’epoca, e Hume non costituì affatto un caso isolato. Benché, tuttavia, io personalmente propenda a riconoscere allo scetticismo settecentesco una diffusione ancora più larga di quanto non faccia lo stesso professor Popkin (3), quello scettico non può venir considerato un orientamento comune (e tanto meno tipico) del XVIII secolo; anche la corrente anti-scettica fu, è evidente, di capitale importanza, raggiungendo il suo momento culminante in Inghilterra con la scuola del senso comune e, in Germania, con Kant. Viceversa, l’accentuazione dei limiti dell’intelletto umano può considerarsi (con poche, ma importanti eccezioni) un’attitudine diffusa e, in certa misura, persino tipica, del XVIII secolo.

Vorrei ora esporre brevemente l’ovvia differenza di fondo tra la posizione scettica e la posizione volta a stabilire i confini dell’intelletto umano, anche se ciò può comportare alcune eccessive semplificazioni.

Lo scetticismo mette in dubbio la possibilità, per la ragione umana, di raggiungere una qualsivoglia verità assoluta con certezza dimostrativa (e, in alcuni casi, anche con certezza morale: il pirronismo « storico »); per lo scetticismo, l’essenziale è la « qualità » della conoscenza, il genere di certezza possibile per l’uomo.

La posizione volta a stabilire i limiti della ragione umana, al contrario, si interessa dell’estensione della conoscenza razionale (di qualsiasi genere).

Entrambe le posizioni, naturalmente, possono essere complementari. Per uno scettico assoluto il problema dei limiti non esiste neppure, ma uno scettico moderato, che ammetta la possibilità della conoscenza probabile, è in genere interessato a determinare i limiti di questa conoscenza. Molti pensatori, tuttavia, pur orientandosi verso la determinazione dei confini dell’intelletto, non sono affatto scettici; essi possono ritenere la certezza dimostrativa possibile entro i limiti dell’intelletto umano (o, per meglio dire, possono di fatto fissare dei confini diversi per la conoscenza, uno per la conoscenza certa, l’altro per quella probabile), e possono in tal modo pensare che la verità assoluta (o perlomeno la conoscenza necessaria ed universale) sia, in parte, alla portata dell’uomo." (pp. 21-22)

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" Questa rassegna, in verità assai incompleta, delle posizioni filosofiche del XVIII secolo volte a determinare i limiti dell’intelletto umano, necessita almeno di un’aggiunta finale, che funga da esempio di un tipo di limitazione che non deriva, come negli esempi precedenti, dai confini imposti alla ragione dalla autorità dell’esperienza, ma dalla intrinseca debolezza della ragione stessa per quanto concerne le sue capacità concettuali. Si tratta del concetto di infinito. L’infinito, da questo punto di vista, non implica direttamente l’idea di esistenza — ed è perciò in qualche misura indipendente dalle leggi dell’esperienza.

Esistono due tipi radicalmente diversi di infinito: l’infinito qualitativo degli attributi di Dio, e l’infinito quantitativo della creazione. L’esistenza del primo tipo di infinito non può essere considerata un problema particolare a sé stante, poiché essa è già implicita nell’esistenza di Dio; il secondo tipo di infinito è considerato esistente non attualmente, ma solo potenzialmente. Bisogna fare un’eccezione per alcuni pensatori, d’estrazione per lo più spinoziana, come Raphson o Terrasson, i quali consideravano il mondo infinito in atto.

Il problema essenziale è tuttavia se questo infinito — sia esso esistente in Dio o in potenza nel mondo — possa o meno venir concepito dalla ragione umana. È quasi superfluo ricordare che questo rappresenta uno tra i tanti problemi che l’Illuminismo aveva ereditato dalla tradizione plurimillenaria della filosofia occidentale. Nell’Età della Ragione predomina, nell’affermazione di un’intrinseca debolezza della ragione, un atteggiamento negativo. L’uomo, in quanto è un essere finito, può avere solo un’idea negativa o imperfetta dell’infinito, benché questa idea sia utile ed indispensabile in molti ambiti, dalla teologia alla matematica, e benché la sua verità debba essere rivendicata anche se non può venire direttamente compresa. In Gran Bretagna Raphson, Clarke, Collier, Berkeley, Hume e Madaurin concordavano su questo punto; in Francia, Crousaz, Buffon, d’Alembert, Robinet. In Germania Wolff, l’apostolo della potenza della ragione, tentò di imporre una soluzione di compromesso, ma venne contestato da Crusius, Reimarus, Lambert e Kant." (p. 38)

(1) Vedi G. Funke, Das sokratische Jahrhundert , Introduzione all’antologia, da lui curata, Die Aufklärung , Stuttgart, 1963; H. Vyverberg, Historical Pessimism in the French Enlightenment , Cambridge Mass., 1958.

(2) R. H. Popkin, Scepticism in the Enlightenment , in « Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century », XXVI, 1963.

(3) Vedi il mio studio Kant und die antiken Skeptiker , in Studien zu Kants philosophischer Entwicklung , hrsg. v. H. Heimsoeth, Hildesheim, 1967.

15. ———. 1987. "La discussione sui limiti dell’intelletto umano nel Settecento e la genesi del criticismo kantiano, con particolare riferimento al problema dell’infinito." In Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento , 43-78. Napoli: Prismi Editrice.

Traduzione di La question des bornes de l'entendement humain au XVIIe siècle et la genèse du criticisme kantien, particulièrement par rapport au Problème de l’infini, in « Revue de Métaph ysique et de Morale », LXV, 1959, pp. 396-427.

"Hume e Kant non sono stati i primi a proclamare la necessità di ammettere che lo spirito umano non può conoscere tutto, e ad imporre il rispetto dei suoi limiti: troppo spesso lo si dimentica, quando si cerca di ricostruire le origini della filosofia kantiana. Per questo ci proponiamo di delineare qui un quadro molto sintetico del problema all’epoca della formazione filosofica di Kant.

Se dovessimo trattare in maniera esaustiva il tema da noi affrontato ci troveremmo dinanzi ad un compito smisurato, il cui assolvimento andrebbe ben al di là di ciò ch’è necessario per una comprensione migliore della personalità di Kant. In effetti si tratterebbe in primo luogo di scrivere nientemeno che la storia dello scetticismo, su cui d’altronde sono state pubblicate diverse opere (1) ma non saremmo che all’inizio, poiché è evidente che numerosi pensatori i quali non possono essere considerati in nessun modo degli scettici hanno riconosciuto che la capacità umana di conoscere non è illimitata. Occorrerebbe infine parlare di tutti quei mistici che tendevano a sminuire o a negare il valore della conoscenza razionale al solo scopo di far posto alla fede o all’illuminazione interiore.

Ciò che ci proponiamo qui dunque è soltanto la descrizione dell’aspetto del problema nei suoi tratti più generali nel corso della prima metà del Settecento, il che ci costringe ad occuparci anzitutto rapidamente di quei grandi pensatori del Seicento che esercitavano ancora un influsso importante nel secolo successivo. Rinunciamo dunque a studiare certi pirroniani veramente caratteristici del Seicento, come La Mothe Le Vayer, Huet, Glanville, ecc. (2), la cui importanza non va oltre i confini della loro epoca.

Il problema che ci accingiamo a trattare presenta naturalmente parecchi aspetti differenti: in effetti si può cercare di stabilire l’estensione delle conoscenze possibili nelle direzioni più divergenti e si possono concepire in maniera molto diversa i limiti di queste conoscenze.

Ci accontenteremo pertanto di dividere il nostro tema in due parti principali: nella prima ci occuperemo del problema dei limiti in generale; nella seconda esporremo più in particolare il problema specifico dei limiti dello spirito umano in rapporto all’infinito, problema che assorbiva all’epoca la parte maggiore delle discussioni dedicate al nostro tema. Trascureremo dunque consapevolmente diversi aspetti più specifici della questione, come il dubbio dei cartesiani circa la validità della conoscenza sensibile e le crisi delle nozioni di sostanza e di forza; si trattava, per questi ultimi, di problemi riconosciuti nel Settecento tra quelli di più difficile soluzione per l’uomo (3). In particolare i newtoniani moderati ammettevano che la forza d’attrazione era qualcosa di misterioso e d’inesplicabile dal punto di vista della filosofia meccanica (4). Allo stesso modo in teodicea gli avversari dell'ideologismo dichiaravano ch’era impossibile penetrare i disegni della saggezza divina e ch’era meglio spiegare i fenomeni mediante le cause efficienti (5); per non parlare poi delle incertezze riguardo al problema della libertà.

Eviteremo così pure di discutere certe forme d’idealismo che, più che i limiti dell’intelletto umano, presuppongono che non si possa conoscere nulla del mondo sensibile perché, in realtà, il mondo sensibile non esiste." (pp. 45-46)

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"Kant ha cominciato abbastanza presto ad occuparsi della questione dei limiti dell’intelletto umano. Nella Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels [Storia naturale universale e teoria del cielo] del 1765 esprime i suoi dubbi sulle capacità conoscitive dell’uomo per le ragioni seguenti: anzitutto i sensi s’ingannano; in secondo luogo è impossibile per l’uomo cogliere ciò ch’è smisurato (189). Tuttavia la possibilità d’applicare le matematiche alla cosmologia conferisce a questa scienza un valore di certezza che compensa la debolezza dei nostri sensi (190). È vero però che la branca della cosmologia di cui Kant in modo particolare si occupa, cioè la cosmogonia, può essere matematizzata solo fino ad un certo punto, essendo fondata piuttosto su un ragionamento analogico (191). E questo perché tale branca è fondata su principi metafisici, principi che non sono suscettibili di certezza, in quanto hanno a che fare con nozioni implicanti l’infinità sia quantitativa, sia metafisica: e solo Dio può concepire l’infinito (192). Esiste d’altra parte un altro oggetto che presenta almeno pari difficoltà dell’infinito alla conoscenza: l’organismo vivente (193).

È evidente che il dubbio concernente la conoscenza sensibile, dubbio superato mediante la conoscenza matematica, dipende più o meno direttamente dalla ben nota formulazione cartesiana. Il dubbio riguardante le conoscenze fondate su nozioni infinite dev’essere attribuito in parte ad un atteggiamento antiwolffiano ispirato dai pietisti, e da Crusius in particolare; in parte all’influsso metodologico di un ispiratore della Naturgeschichte , Wright of Durham (194). D’altra parte, in generale, il fatto che si avanzino delle riserve riguardo ai limiti delle conoscenze umane è un atteggiamento polemico nei confronti dell’ortodossia wolffiana. La difficoltà di conoscere l’organismo vivente è un tema molto diffuso nel Settecento. Appunto perché si riconosce l’impossibilità della spiegazione meccanica degli esseri viventi (dottrina anch’essa antiwolffiana), si proclama misteriosa la natura di questi ultimi, rifiutando la teleologia come spiegazione razionale soddisfacente (195).

Il tema dell’incomprensibilità dell’infinito metafisico ritorna nella Nova Dilucidatio del 1755 (196); ma è nel Beweisgrund [L’unico argomento possibile per una dimostrazione dell’esistenza di Dio] del 1762 che si annuncia un tema nuovo: vi sono delle nozioni composte ch’è impossibile (per l’uomo) analizzare (197); questo tema riappare nel saggio sulla Deutlichkeit [Ricerca sull’evidenza dei primi principi della teologia naturale e della morale] del medesimo anno (198). Abbiamo visto che tale dottrina è di derivazione crusiana.

I Träume eines Geistersehers [Sogni di un visionario spiegati coi sogni della metafisica] del 1776 recano delle novità importanti: Kant fa rilevare che vi sono nozioni le quali non sono fondate, direttamente « indirettamente, su nessun dato, e che possono essere pensate solo negativamente: queste nozioni, che appartengono in generale alla pneumatologia, sono puramente immaginarie (199). Anche la nozione della natura spirituale di Dio è soltanto negativa (200). In realtà tutto ciò che riguarda la natura spirituale, la libertà e la predestinazione rientra in questa categoria (201). In più, vi sono dei rapporti fondamentali inerenti a ciò ch’è dato che non si possono concepire (einsehen ), poiché la loro natura non è fondata sull’identità; per esempio, la forza di attrazione. Questi rapporti possono essere conosciuti soltanto sulla base dell’esperienza (202). La nozione kantiana dei limiti è dunque, nel 1766, molto complessa e molto differenziata. L’importanza attribuita da Kant all’esperienza dipende certamente dall’atteggiamento di Newton e Locke al riguardo, atteggiamento sottolineato da alcune tendenze filosofiche del tempo, rappresentate soprattutto da Baumgarten e da Lambert; tendenze che avevano portato Kant ad esigere dalla metafisica un procedimento in concreto, vale a dire un controllo sperimentale continuo mediante esempi reali (203). La diffidenza riguardo alle teorie pneumatiche è ispirata forse più precisamente da Locke. Quanto all’insufficienza dell’identità per spiegare certi rapporti reali, si tratta di una teoria che Kant aveva tratto da Crusius nel suo scritto sulle Negative Grössen [Saggio per introdurre in matematica il concetto delle grandezze negative]; Crusius tuttavia non ne faceva un motivo di dubbio, o di limitazione dell’intelletto: questo sviluppo è in Kant originale. Bisogna comunque notare che ai tempi di Kant l’attrazione era in genere considerata ima forza misteriosa.

Rinunciamo a discutere lo sviluppo ulteriore del problema dei limiti dell’intelletto in Kant: ci basta aver raccolto qui la documentazione necessaria per affrontare questo problema; il suo esame approfondito ci condurrebbe troppo lontano e richiederebbe l’analisi di un numero ben maggiore di fattori che qui non abbiamo potuto prendere in considerazione, in altra sede (204) abbiamo parlato dei cambiamenti di prospettiva nella questione dei limiti al tempo della rivoluzione copernicana del 1769 ed abbiamo mostrato l’interesse che questo problema destava nello stesso periodo in Lambert." (pp. 64-65)

(1) C. F. Stäudlin, Geschichte und Geist der Skeptizismus , 2 Bde., Leipzig, 1794; J. F. I. Tafel, Geschichte und Kritik des Skeptizismus , Tübingen, 1834; H. Was, Geschiedenis van het Scepticisme , I, England, Utrecht, 1870. [cfr. ora gli scritti di Richard H. Popkin, in particolare The History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle (terza edizione ampliata), Oxford University Press, 2003 e la traduzione italiana della prima edizione (1960), Storia dello Scetticismo , Milano: Bruno Mondadori, 2008]

(2) Cfr. Stäudlin, op. cit., II vol.

(3) Cfr. il nostro articolo Critiques of the Notion of Substance prior to Kant , d’imminente pubblicazione in « The Journal of the History of Ideas » [cfr. invece «Tijdschrift voor Philosophie», 1961, pp. 285-301].

(4) G. Tonelli, Elementi metafisici e metodologici in Kant precritico , Torino, 1959, vol. I, cap. II, 28 e sgg.

(189) I. Kant, Schriften . Preussische Akademie-Ausgabe, Bd. I, Berlin, 19102, p. 229.

(190) Ibid. , p. 230.

(191) Ibid., pp. 235-236.

(192) Ibid , p. 256 e pp. 309-310. i» Ibid., pp. 229-230.

(193) Ibid , p. 229-230

(194) Cfr. G. Tonelli, Elementi metafisici e metodologici ..., cap. II, S 53.

(195) Ibid ., cap. II, § 17.

(196) Ibid ., p. 405.

(197) Kant, Schriften , ed. cit., Bd. II, 19122, p. 70 [trad. ìt. di P. Carabellese, riv. e accresciuta da R. Assunto e R. Hohenemser, Bari, 1953, p. 109].

(198) Ibid , p. 280 [trad. it. dt., pp. 227-228].

(199) Ibid ., pp. 351-352 [trad. it. dt., p. 404].

(200) Ibid ., p. 321 [trad. it. dt., p. 371].

(201) Ibid., pp. 369-371 [trad. it. dt., pp. 423-425].

(202) Ibid ., pp. 370-371 [trad. it. cit., pp. 424-425].

(203) Cfr. G. Tonelli, Kant, dall’estetica ..., cit., SS 82-90 e 136-137.

(204) Ibid ., cap. IV, prima sezione.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Giorgio Tonelli: Bibliografia degli Scritti su Kant e la Filosofia del Settecento (1987-1995)

Bibliografia

1. Tonelli, Giorgio. 1987. "La disputa sul metodo matematico nella filosofia della prima metà del Settecento e la genesi dello scritto kantiano sull’ ‘evidenza’ " In Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, 81-107. Napoli: Prismi Editrice.

Traduzione di Der Streit über die mathematische Methode in der Philosophie in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts und die Entstehung von Kants Schrift über die 'Deutlichkeit', in « Archiv für Philosophie », IX, 1959, pp. 37-66.

"Nel presente articolo viene proposta un’indagine sulle premesse storiche e sullo spunto della dottrina kantiana sul metodo matematico del 1762. A questo scopo ci sembra necessario considerare brevemente la problematica del Seicento, con la speranza che il nostro tentativo di trattare in poche pagine un problema tanto vasto non appaia troppo arrischiato: un’indagine approfondita di tale questione importante richiederebbe uno spazio ben maggiore, ma qui ci limiteremo a richiamare ciò ch'è indispensabile per la comprensione della trattazione kantiana del problema. A tal fine ricorreremo anche alle opinioni di diversi filosofi di grandezza minore, che sotto questo riguardo solitamente vengono trascurati ma che tuttavia sono molto interessanti nell’insieme: e ciò per ricreare l'atmosfera in cui il problema è stato affrontato da Kant.

L’applicabilità e la sufficienza del metodo matematico in filosofia divengono già nel Seicento una delle questioni più dibattute della filosofia europea. (1) Già all’inizio del secolo Morin aveva cercato di dimostrare con un procedimento di tipo matematico l’esistenza di Dio (2), ed è noto come Descartes abbia introdotto nella filosofia in generale il metodo matematico (3). Naturalmente questa impostazione incontrò una vivace opposizione da parte degli aristotelici. Come esponente caratteristico della reazione anticartesiana sotto questo aspetto può essere forse considerato J. B. Du Hamel, il quale sosteneva che i concetti della geometria avevano un mero carattere immaginario e che pertanto era sbagliato introdurli nella fisica (4). Il problema del carattere immaginario o reale dei concetti geometrici era naturalmente vivo fin dall’antichità. In Suarez, ad esempio, si trova un’ampia esposizione delle diverse opinioni scolastiche in proposito, le quali discutono la questione in maniera molto più approfondita c complessa di quanto non sia avvenuto in epoca posteriore (5). Anche nel Seicento venne sottolineata la differenza tra i concetti di estensione geometrica e fisica, ad esempio da Sennert e da Gassendi (6); Ledere richiamò pure con vigore la differenza tra matematica e filosofia (7).

Il più importante fautore dell’introduzione nella metafisica del metodo e del modo d’esposizione euclideo è stato, com’è noto, Spinoza, in quanto prosecutore e innovatore della tradizione cartesiana. Nonostante il sospetto di ateismo che per tal motivo accompagnava il matematismo metafisico, il metodo matematico fu accolto proprio dagli avversari di Spinoza specialmente in Francia, dove fu impiegato per respingere le dottrine dell’ebreo olandese. Il primo della serie di questi avversari (1679) è stato Huet (8), seguito da Fénelon, Silléry, Lamy, Régis, Langehart, Bayle e Mairan (9)." (pp. 81-82)

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"Già nel suo primo scritto sulle ‘forze vive’ Kant aveva sottoli-nèato la differenza tra il concetto fisico e quello matematico di corpo (138), una differenza che — ovviamente — non può essere considerata originale. Egli sosteneva che la sua metafisica avrebbe raggiunto la medesima evidenza e rigore dimostrativo della matematica. Nel’Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels [Storia naturale universale e teoria del cielo] e nella dissertazione De Igne Kant aveva impiegato la matematica nella filosofia della natura secondo il modello newtoniano. Lo stesso discorso va fatto per la posteriore Monadologia physica e per il saggio sul movimento e la quiete: si tratta di scritti di filosofia della natura, ma anche nella contemporanea Nova Dilucidatio di contenuto ontologico e metafisico Kant applica almeno esteriormente il metodo matematico (139).

La situazione invece è diversa nell 'Einzig möglicher Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes [Unico argomento possibile per una dimostrazione dell’esistenza di Dio] del 1763, in cui Kant afferma essere attualmente impossibile servirsi del metodo matematico in filosofia: ciò provocherebbe solo una sorta di ‘mania del metodo’ suscettibile delle peggiori conseguenze. A suo avviso questa impossibilità dipende dal fatto che i concetti metafisici non sono stati ancora analizzati esaurientemente: non si sa perciò con precisione il loro contenuto e di conseguenza non si può procedere con essi col metodo matematico. La « certezza matematica » in metafisica è ciononostante pur sempre una meta ideale della metodologia kantiana: se un giorno si riuscirà ad analizzare compiutamente i concetti metafisici, cioè a renderli del tutto chiari e distinti, allora si potrà Cominciare finalmente a costruire la vera metafisica, ch’è capace di certezza matematica (140). Il contrasto col metodo wolffiano è ora chiaro: una metafisica secondo il modello matematico è da considerarsi al presente impossibile ed inutile.

Tuttavia una chiarificazione metodologica fondamentale di questi problemi compare appena nello scritto Über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral [Ricerca sull’evidenza dei primi principi della teologia naturale e della morale] del 1762. Kant è impegnato ad approfondire lo iato tra metafisica e matematica: i concetti matematici vengono definiti mediante una composizione arbitraria (sinteticamente); la definizione dei concetti metafisici può avvenire invece soltanto per via analitica, dal momento che qui si ha a che fare con enti reali, che bisogna assumere cosi come sono e considerare poi attraverso la risoluzione o analisi più accurata nei loro elementi semplici. Inoltre i segni matematici (simboli o figure) sono idonei a ridare l’essenza dei concetti matematici; in questi segni ci si può rappresentare in maniera sensibile tali concetti ed è dunque possibile procedere in matematica in concreto, vale a dire sensibilmente (mediante esempi chiari e dimostrazioni evidenti, accessibili e comprensibili a tutti).

I segni o termini metafisici non sono invece idonei ad un simile trattamento, poiché non li si può risolvere nei loro elementi semplici: i segni metafisici non possono essere combinati secondo regole semplici e chiare, e dunque una combinatoria metafisica è impossibile. La metafisica può procedere solo in abstracto, cioè in maniera intellettuale.

Ancora: la matematica è costruita sopra un numero determinato di concetti fondamentali: i concetti-base metafisici sono invece senza numero, e lo stesso vale per gli assiomi o principi indimostrabili. La matematica dunque è facile, semplice, comprensibile; la metafisica invece difficile e confusa. La metafisica deve allo stato presente limitarsi all’analisi dei concetti: solo quando questa analisi sarà giunta a compimento la metafisica potrà procedere per via sintetica, secondo il modello matematico (141).

Kant non intendeva però dire con questo che la matematica per il momento è indifferente per la metafisica in generale. Di fatto egli impiega all’occasione concetti e dimostrazioni matematiche nello scritto cronologicamente contiguo sulle grandezze negative (142), e ciò non va considerato in contraddizione con le teorie dello scritto sull’evidenza. In realtà lo schema delle grandezze negative non è di tipo matematico: gli elementi matematici degli esempi e delle dimostrazioni occasionali costituiscono un’aggiunta esteriore.

Le dottrine dello scritto sull’evidenza hanno certamente avuto la loro origine nelle prese di posizione dell’Accademia prussiana, tuttavia anche l’influsso di Crusius è stato sicuramente determinante: Kant cita esplicitamente di preferenza Crusius piuttosto che altri pensatori. La polemica contro la combinatoria è certamente affiorata già nella Nova Dilucidatio, tuttavia la tesi dell’infinità numerica dei principi metafisici fondamentali proviene da Tonnies e da Tetens (143).

Kant dunque non ha rifiutato totalmente il metodo matematico in filosofia: vi si rinuncia per il momento, ma rimane pur sempre come obbiettivo per il futuro. La venerazione per Newton impedì verosimilmente il rigetto completo della matematica. Alla presa di posizione sul problema presente nell’Unico argomento e nello scritto sull’evidenza è probabile che Kant sia stato spinto unicamente perché i suoi due padrini sul piano filosofico, Crusius e Maupertuis, s’erano espressi positivamente al riguardo. Ciò può spiegare perché Kant solo relativamente tardi abbracciò questa tesi, cioè dopo che anche l’ambiente dell’Accademia berlinese s’era espresso in tal senso. La sua precedente considerazione per la matematica non può essere in alcun modo ricondotta ad un riguardo per Wolff, giacché la polemica nei suoi confronti fu in Kant fin dagli inizi ben decisa. Basta solo pensare a quale considerazione aveva acquistato un uso moderato del metodo matematico grazie ad uomini come Leibniz e Newton e si comprenderà facilmente perché Kant appena così tardi e con simili riserve si è distaccato dal metodo geometrico." (pp. 92-93)

(138) Cfr. G. Tonelli, Elementi metodologici..., Cap. I, §§ 36-37, 41-43.

(139) Ibid., Cap. IV, SS 1-2.

(140) Ibid., Cap. V, A.

(141) Ibid., Cap. VI, A.

(142) Ibid., Cap. VI, B.

(143) G. Tonelli, La tradizione delle categorie aristoteliche nella filosofia moderna sino a Kant, in «Studi Urbinati», Serie B, 1958.

2. ———. 1987. "La concezione leibniziana delle idee innate e le prime reazioni alla pubblicazione dei Nouveaux Essais (1765)." In Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, 111-136. Napoli: Prismi Editrice.

Traduzione di Leibniz on Innate Ideas and the Early Reactions to the Publication of the « Nouveaux Essais » (1765), in «Journal of the History of Philosophy », 1974, pp. 437-454.

"I Nouveaux Essais di Leibniz, scritti nel periodo 1703-1705 (e d’ora in poi citati come NE), furono pubblicati postumi da Raspe (1) nel 1765, all'inizio di una rinascita di interesse per Leibniz di cui è segno anche la grande edizione Dutens del 1768. Poiché la grande svolta nel pensiero di Kant si produsse nel 1769, e fu contrassegnata in particolare dal rifiuto della sensibilità quale fonte unica della conoscenza (2), è facile concludere che proprio la lettura dei NE possa essere stata uno tra gli elementi determinanti che spinsero Kant ad adottare la sua nuova soluzione.

Non è pretesa di questo studio rispondere a tale difficile questione: Il nostro tentativo è piuttosto quello di preparare il terreno per un’eventuale risposta al problema, muovendo dall’analisi delle prime reazioni che si ebbero nei circoli filosofici, in special modo tedeschi, alla comparsa dei NE. In che misura vennero afferrati l’importanza ed il significato delle particolari dottrine esposte nei NE? Fino a che punto i filosofi contemporanei si resero conto che esse avrebbero profondamente modificato il quadro complessivo dei principi della psicologia di Leibniz? E, per conseguenza, fino a che punto avrebbe potuto Kant venir spinto da una reazione generalizzata a prestare particolare attenzione alla peculiarità di quell’opera? Per rispondere a questi interrogativi, focalizzerò la mia ricerca sul problema della origine della conoscenza.

Poiché il mio intento è quello di ricostruire un’atmosfera filosofica nel suo complesso, non limiterò la mia indagine alle reazioni filosofiche precedenti al 1769, ma prenderò in considerazione anche alcune posizioni del decennio successivo. Come frequentemente accade nella storia delle idee, mentre la forza d’urto di un certo evento può venir riconosciuta già nei momenti immediatamente successivi al suo accadimento, la documentazione dei suoi effetti nel tempo può rivelarsi accessibile solo dopo un certo periodo. Tali effetti sono da considerarsi nondimeno indicativi di quella forza d’urto che li ha preceduti.

Prima però di dare inizio a quest’indagine, desidero chiarire due punti preliminari: intendo infatti, in primo luogo, mettere in luce le diverse modalità di trattamento della dottrina in questione nei NE e nelle opere di Leibniz pubblicate in precedenza in cui essa compare; passerò poi, in secondo luogo, ad esaminare le interpretazioni della psicologia di Leibniz precedenti al 1765, e, in particolar modo, la versione che di essa venne accolta da Wolff e incorporata nel suo sistema." (pp. 111-112)

(...)

"Se dunque un’eventuale lettura dei NE ha realmente inciso sulla rivoluzione filosofica di Kant del 1769, questo non è stato per effetto di una reazione positiva collettiva seguita alla comparsa dei NE, poiché per lungo tempo ancora dopo il 1769 questa reazione non ebbe, semplicemente, luogo. L’influsso dei NE su Kant può spiegarsi dunque soltanto in base a ragioni d’ordine personale, a differenza di molte altre posizioni filosofiche assunte da Kant tra il 1769 e il 1780. Esso può però, almeno parzialmente, spiegarsi anche grazie all’influenza esercitata da Crusius su Kant. Sebbene infatti Kant in principio non accettasse il moderato innatismo di Crusius, la conoscenza della teoria di Crusius può aver richiamato la sua attenzione sull’analoga dottrina di Leibniz, e l’influenza congiunta di entrambe le concezioni può aver costituito un importante elemento nella celebre svolta del 1769.

Non credo che la forma ormai antiquata d’innatismo difesa da pochi filosofi cattolici tedeschi (93) possa aver svolto alcun ruolo. E questo vale anche per alcuni fattori non sensibili presenti nella teoria dell’Ideale di Winckelmann e di Wieland (94): questa teoria si riferiva specificamente all'estetica, ed influenzò certamente Kant, ma più tardi, ed in un’area del tutto differente (95)." (pp. 126-127)

(93) Qualche forma di innatismo è presente specialmente tra i Benedettini, come I. Graw (1749. Vedi W. A. Mühl, Die Aufklärung an der Universität Fulda mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der philosophischen und juristischen Fakultäten [Fulda, 1961], p. 41) e G. Cartier (vedi B. Jansen, Philosophen katholischen Bekenntisses in ihrer Stellung zur Philosophie der Aufklärung, in «Scholastik», XI [1936], p. 10). Ma anche il gesuita Redlhammer era sostenitore della dottrina delle idee innate (vedi C. Werner, Der Heilige Thomas von Aquin, III [Regensburg, 1889], p. 637).

(94) Questa teoria compare in un’opera postuma (scritta nel 1759) di Winckelmann, e, nel 1764, nella sua Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums. Wieland espose la stessa concezione in un saggio del 1777. Si veda, per entrambi, G. Tonelli, « Ideal », voce in Dictionary of thè History of Ideas, ed. Philip Wiener [New York, 1973].

(95) Vedi G. Tonelli, Kant's Early Theory of Genius, 1770-1779, in « Journal of thè History of Philosophy », IV (1966). [Ora tradotto in italiano e raccolto nel presente volume. N. d. T.].

3. ———. 1987. "Zabarella ispiratore di Baumgarten o l’origine della connessione tra estetica e logica." In Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, 139-146. Napoli: Prismi Editrice.

Traduzione di Zabarella inspirateur de Baumgarten ou l’origine de la connexion entre esthétique et logique, in « Revue d’Esthétique », IX, 1956, pp. 182-192.

"Non occorre ricordare il posto che occupa, nella storia dell’estetica, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-1762): tutti sanno che l’estetica gli deve il proprio nome. E noi abbiamo avuto l’occasione di richiamare altrove (1), recentemente, il suo influsso su Kant, in quel periodo molto delicato della storia del criticismo che va dal 1765 al 1770. Uno dei punti importanti di questa dottrina è il rapporto tra teoria del bello e logica." (p.139)

(...)

"Queste idee di Baumgarten hanno, ci pare valga la pena di rilevarlo, dei precedenti molto interessanti in un pensatore italiano del Cinquecento: Zabarella (1553-1589), l’autore del De rebus naturalibus e di commenti importanti su Aristotele, che professò a Padova un tomismo molto evoluto in direzione dell’umanesimo rinascimentale (3). Zabarella infatti pretende di essere il primo a dimostrare la connessione tra logica e ‘poetica’, e non abbiamo degli elementi che ci spingano a dubitare del suo diritto di priorità. Retorica e poetica sono, secondo Zabarella, partes logicae et philosophiae instrumenta; ciò che nessuno fino ad allora aveva sostenuto (nomo hactenus declaravit: l. II, cap. XIII, p. 78). Retorica e poetica, a dire il vero, non fanno parte né della filosofia ‘contemplativa’ né della morale (cap. XIV, p. 78). Esse sono anzitutto, come la grammatica, facoltà strumentali e più precisamente instrumenta civilis disciplinae, ossia sono utili all’azione (ibid. e cap. XV, p. 82); si direbbe, con linguaggio odierno, che non hanno né un valore speculativo né un valore etico, bensì un valore pragmatico. In effetti la retorica contribuisce a inculcare la moralità (p. 83), la poetica a correggere i costumi (p. 84). Inoltre esse fanno parte della logica che, a sua volta, non è né scienza né morale, ma disciplina instrumentalis come la grammatica (1. I, cap. X, p. 22) (4). Ora retorica e poetica non fanno parte della logica generale, che « insegna la forma stessa del ragionamento » (docet ipsam ratiocinandis formami): fanno parte invece della logica particolare che permette che, « volendo usare il discorso per questo o quel fine, sappiamo a quale materia, cioè a quali proposizioni occorre applicare tale forma; e che troviamo le proposizioni stesse, quando occorra, e le abbiamo a disposizione » (5)." (pp. 140-141)

(...)

"In conclusione, anche se la teoria baumgarteniana (che si trova nella Metaphysica) dell’estetica o scienza del bello, come scienza della facoltà inferiore o della conoscenza sensibile in generale, può essere agevolmente spiegata prescindendo da una dipendenza diretta dal testo di Zabarella (15), l’influenza del filosofo padovano ci sembra estremamente probabile riguardo alla dottrina specifica (che s’incontra nell’Aesthetica di Baumgarten) dell’induzione estetica e dell’esempio, come complemento di un ragionamento razionale insufficiente. Baumgarten avrebbe notato una certa analogia tra la propria posizione e quella dell’italiano ed avrebbe utilizzato alcuni suoi suggerimenti ben precisi, conferendo loro una funzione indubbiamente originale nell’insieme di un sistema ben diverso. Questo intreccio di tradizione cartesiano-leibniziana e di tradizione averroista avrebbe costituito una nuova piattaforma di cui Kant, sensibile anche ad altre suggestioni e problemi, doveva in seguito far rilevare la debolezza: il suo tentativo di chiarificazione del problema doveva condurre alla rivoluzione del 1769.

È interessante altresì notare che il discepolo più importante di Baumgarten, G. F. Meier, in un’opera di estetica (16) comparsa dopo la Metaphysica di Baumgarten, ma prima dell’Aesthetica di questi, sviluppa, muovendo dalle posizioni speculative della Metaphysica del suo maestro, una teoria del sillogismo estetico e dell’induzione estetica che non è molto lontana dalle dottrine esposte in seguito da Baumgarten stesso nella aua Aesthetica, benché meno vicina alla dottrina zabarelliana di Baumgarten." (p. 144)

(1) G. Tonelli, Kant dall'estetica metafisica all’estetica psicoempirica, Torino, 1955, spec. cap. IV.

(3) Lo citeremo qui da J. Zabarella, Opera Logica, ed. postrema, Francofurti, 1626: De Natura Logicae, libri duo. [di quest'opera è disponibile una nuova edizione a cura di Dominique Bouillon con testo latino e traduzione francese a fronte: Jacques Zabarella, La nature de la logique, Parigi: Vrin, 2009]

(4) Una disciplina instrumentis dev’essere distinta anche dall’arte. Infatti è « quidem habitus animi; non tamen effectivus alicujus operis extra animum, sed ipsomet animo: adeo ejus operatio est immanens » (l. I, cap. VII, pp. 16-17); diversamente sarebbe un’arte.

(5) Ut ad alium et allumi scopum discursum uri volentes, sciamus cui materiae, id est, quibus propositionibus ea forma applicanda sit, ipsasque propositiones, quando opus fuerit, inveniamus, et in promptu habeamus (l. II, cap. IX, p. 85).

(15) Infatti, come abbiamo mostrato altrove, l’ambiente offriva molteplici stimoli in questa direzione: più di una volta, e specialmente in Leibniz, si riscontra una identificazione della bellezza con una conoscenza chiara ma confusa (non distinta). Ed alcuni pensatori tedeschi del Settecento ripresero prima di Baumgarten, per la verità molto superficialmente, la connessione tra scienza del bello e logica, probabilmente sotto l’influsso di Zabarella. Su tutti questi punti cfr. G. Tonelli, op. cit., cap. IV.

(16) G. F. Meier, Anfangsgründe aller schönen Wissenschaften, 3 Bde., Halle, 1748-1749-1750.

4. ———. 1987. "L’ambiente storico-culturale di Königsberg e la formazione della filosofia kantiana." In Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, 149-168. Napoli: Prismi Editrice.

Traduzione di Conditions in Königsberg and the Making of Kant’s Philosophy, in « Bewusstsein. Gerhard Funke zu eigen », Bonn: Bouvier, 1975, pp. 126-144.

"Circa vent’anni fa (1) Gerhard Lehmann faceva notare che, per quanto strano potesse sembrare, c’era un numero davvero limitato di studi sulla vita di Kant, e quelli esistenti avevano per di più il difetto di non prendere nella dovuta considerazione alcuni aspetti fondamentali del problema, primo fra tutti quello dei possibili rapporti rinvenibili tra la vita di Kant come semplice essere umano e ciò che egli, come filosofo, aveva prodotto. A quel tempo questo corrispondeva al vero, se si eccettuano quel tanto di attenzione solitamente riservata, nella maggior parte delle biografie di Kant, ai suoi insegnanti e alla sua educazione, e qualche studio dedicato ai suoi gusti letterari e alle sue esperienze del bello nella natura e nell’arte, fattori, questi, che avrebbero condizionato le sue idee in materia di estetica (2). Quell’osservazione risulta tuttavia oggi ancor più pertinente, poiché da quando, nel 1954, vennero avanzate dallo stesso Lehmann alcune proposte di ricerca in quella direzione, non è stato fatto in realtà alcun passo avanti.

Con la sua esortazione Lehmann intendeva suggerire la opportunità di indagare in modo più approfondito lo sviluppo della personalità kantiana in quanto strettamente connesso alla sua evoluzione filosofica; personalmente, però, ritengo ci sia anche qualcosa in più da dire a proposito del generale ambiente intellettuale di Königsberg, e dell’eventuale influenza che esso esercitò su alcuni aspetti del pensiero di Kant; bisogna, in altri termini, favorire un accostamento al problema che non muova soltanto da una prospettiva psicologica, ma utilizzi anche quella della sociologia della conoscenza. Questo non significa ovviamente che la filosofia di Kant possa venire, in tal modo, « spiegata »; significa soltanto che un’indagine di questo tipo può fornire qualche chiarimento per quanto riguarda alcuni caratteri più o meno generali di quella filosofia, relativi a certi momenti della sua evoluzione.

Ovviamente, le generali condizioni politiche e religiose della Prussia esercitarono senza dubbio un forte influsso sul pensiero politico e religioso eli Kant, ed anche questo aspetto richiederebbe uno studio approfondito (3). Ciò che in questo contesto desidero tuttavia prendere in considerazione, è la situazione intellettuale a Königsberg negli anni che videro i primi sviluppi della filosofia kantiana, muovendo da un esame preliminare di quei presupposti storici che sono indispensabili per comprendere una tale situazione. Königsberg e in particolare la sua università, l’Albertina, costituirono infatti lo scenario di alcune aspre lotte tra fazioni filosofico-religiose, che non possono non aver lasciato traccia sulla iniziale prospettiva filosofica di Kant, formatasi in quell’ambiente. I fatti in questione non sono stati ritenuti significativi dai biografi di Kant, Vorländer incluso: essi non hanno afferrato la loro importanza, né hanno favorito la loro comprensione; l’ispirazione a carattere prevalentemente agiografico dei loro lavori ha inoltre impedito loro di andare a fondo di certe intricate e controverse questioni, o ha fatto sì che essi non vi annettessero alcuna importanza in relazione a Kant." (pp. 149-150)

(1) G. Lehmann, Kant’s Lebenskrise, in « Neue deutsche Hefte », 1954, p. 510 sgg. (Rist. in G. Lehmann, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Interpretation der Philosophie Kants, Berlin, 1969).

[N.B. Gli argomenti trattati in questo saggio sono stati ripresi ed approfonditi da Marco Sgarbi, Logica e metafisica nel Kant precritico. L'ambiente intellettuale di Königsberg e la formazione della filosofia kantiana, Bern: Peter Lang, 2010.

Riassunto del volume a cura dell'autore:

"Nel suo pionieristico lavoro Conditions in Königsberg and the Making of Kant’s Philosophy (1975), Giorgio Tonelli lamentava l’assenza di un’indagine approfondita sull’ambiente intellettuale di Königsberg e dell’eventuale influenza che esso esercitò su alcuni aspetti del pensiero di Kant, al di là di lavori biografici di evidente carattere agiografico che hanno spesso impedito agli studiosi di andare a fondo di controverse questioni dalle quali la filosofia kantiana avrebbe tratto origine. La presente ricerca mira a colmare questa lacuna esaminando la situazione intellettuale di Königsberg negli anni che videro emergere i primi tentativi filosofici kantiani, partendo dall’assunto che Königsberg con la sua università costituirono lo scenario privilegiato di riferimento dal quale Kant di fatto attinse fondamentali idee e problemi. In particolare l’attenzione è posta sulla tradizione aristotelica, sulla Schulphilosophie, e sulla corrente dell’eclettismo, le quali dominarono l’ambiente regiomontano sino all’avvento della filosofia critica kantiana.

La metodologia seguita è quella elaborata da Norbert Hinske della Begriffsgeschichte e della Quellengeschichte come anche quella dell’intellectual history e della storia dei problemi. Il lavoro è fondato su documenti nuovi, originali, inediti o ritrovati, come i Vorlesungsverzeichnisse 1703-1719, le Einladungsschriften, e i manuali aristotelico-scolastici adottati ufficialmente all’Albertina.

Nell’introduzione si cerca di giustificare l’importanza di un lavoro sull’impatto dell’ambiente intellettuale regiomontano sul Kant precritico rispetto soprattutto ai risultati già ottenuti dalla ricerca, mentre nel primo capitolo è esamina la storia della cattedra di logica e metafisica a Königsberg dagli inizi del XVIII secolo sino a Kant. Il secondo capitolo tratta il problema della logica delle facoltà in Kant rispetto alla tradizione aristotelica di Königsberg, in particolare in relazione alle discipline della noologia e della gnostologia. Il terzo e il quarto capitolo esaminano i primi interessi kantiani per la metafisica e il passaggio dall’ontologia alla logica alla luce della tradizione della Schulphilosophie di Königsberg. Il quinto e il sesto capitolo trattano delle prime riflessioni logico-metodologiche di Kant con particolare riferimento alla tradizione metodologica regiomontana e ai problemi legati alla sillogistica e all’ars combinatoria.

Il risultato del lavoro mostra come dai fallimenti dei progetti logici e metafisici precritici legati alle influenze ricevute dall’ambiente intellettuale di Königsberg, Kant abbia tratto le idee e gli spunti per la stesura della Kritik der reinen Vernunft." (p. 11)]

5. ———. 1987. "La ricomparsa della terminologia dell’aristotelismo tedesco durante la genesi della Critica della ragion pura." In Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, 171-180. Napoli: Prismi Editrice.

Traduzione di Das Wiederaufleben der deutsch-aristotelischen Terminologie bei Kant während der Entstehung der 'Kritik der reinen Vernunft’, in « Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte », IX, 1964, pp. 233-242.

"In questa relazione presenterò alcuni risultati cui sono pervenuto nell’ambito delle mie ricerche sulla genesi della Critica della ragion pura. Poiché tali ricerche non sono ancora concluse, quanto è qui esposto va considerato come provvisorio (1).

Le mie ricerche si riferiscono agli anni tra il 1769 e il 1781, cioè al periodo che intercorre tra la ‘gran luce’ del 1769 e la Critica della ragion pura. Sono stati usati come fonti le Reflexionen dal Nachlass e gli appunti delle lezioni di quegli anni, unitamente alle opere a stampa ed alle lettere. La datazione delle Reflexionen proposta dall’Adickes s’è confermata finora nel complesso attendibile, anche in rapporto alle altre fonti.

In relazione a questo convegno il mio interesse è principalmente terminologico. Non è mia intenzione perciò in questa sede di esaminare il vero e proprio sviluppo del pensiero kantiano dal punto di vista della problematica (sto preparando a tal riguardo una monografia apposita); mi limiterò invece a cercar di chiarire l’origine dei nuovi termini che Kant assume in questo periodo. Per ‘nuovi termini’ intendo termini che Kant in precedenza non ha affatto usato, oppure usato solo occasionalmente e in maniera non sistematica (2).

Fino al 1768 Kant ha fatto uso, in metafisica e nella metodologia, della terminologia abituale nelle scuole tedesche della prima metà del Settecento. Ma già nel 1769 compaiono importanti innovazioni, senza dubbio in corrispondenza con la grande svolta nel pensiero avvenuta in quell’anno; e nel periodo successivo continuano ad apparire nuovi termini, sicché alla fine il vocabolario della Critica della ragion pura presenta un quadro profondamente mutato rispetto al periodo precritico.

Kant non amava introdurre propri neologismi, preferendo piuttosto accogliere spesso termini da altre lingue.

Le fonti per i nuovi termini kantiani posteriori al 1769 sono affatto eterogenee. È tuttavia possibile delimitare in certo qual modo due grandi gruppi: al primo appartengono i termini provenienti dall’Essay di Locke e dai Nouveaux Essais di Leibniz, al secondo quelli derivanti dalla tradizione dell’aristotelismo tedesco. I termini del primo gruppo s’incontrano soprattutto negli anni 1769-1770, quelli del secondo nel periodo successivo.

Ritengo causa determinante della svolta del 1769 la pubblicazione nel 1765 dei Nouveaux Essais leibniziani. Essi fecero indubbiamente un’impressione profonda su Kant e lo indussero, forse per la prima volta, ad uno studio accurato dell’Essay lockiano. Le dottrine di Locke e di Leibniz, unitamente ad alcuni saggi di Hume, diedero a Kant la possibilità di trovare una nuova soluzione ad una problematica molto complessa che già da anni lo vedeva impegnato (3)." (pp. 171-172)

(...)

"Le categorie di Kant (che peraltro non sono affatto genera summa) non sono certo riconducibili alle categorie aristoteliche, ma ai Grundbegriffe [concetti elementari] o unauflösliche Begriffe [concetti non risolvibili] che compaiono in Crusius, Tönnies, Tetens, Lambert e altri (14). Probabilmente Kant ha deciso dopo il 1770-1771 di chiamare categorie i suoi concetti elementari seguendo uno spunto di Crusius, il quale in una sua lunga nota afferma che le proprie categorie hanno il medesimo significato di quelle aristoteliche, purché queste ultime vengano rettamente intese, anzitutto come illimitate quanto al numero, che può essere addirittura infinito (15). Certo Kant, a questo riguardo, ha di mira piuttosto la costruzione di una tavola delle categorie conclusa (deduzione delle categorie): quest’esigenza, che non compare in lui prima almeno del 1770-1771, deriva a sua volta indubbiamente dalla tesi che Lambert, nella sua Architektonik del 1771, sosteneva con grande energia, e cioè che la Grundlehre [Dottrina elementare] o metodologia deve contenere un elenco completo dei ‘concetti elementari semplici’ (einfache Grundbegriffe) (16). A far accogliere comunque quest’esigenza nell’Architektonik (che negli anni Settanta ha esercitato su Kant un influsso durevole e profondo, senz’altro ben più dell'Organon di Lambert, che a questo proposito è molto più noto e viene più spesso citato) può avere concorso in Kant anche il ricordo delle critiche che a partire dal Rinascimento erano state indirizzate alle categorie aristoteliche, il cui nome egli ha trasferito ai suoi concetti elementari." (pp. 173-174)

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"Si può comunque affermare che la maggior parte dei termini nuovi che Kant adotta dal 1769 fino alla Critica della ragion pura appartengono piò alla tradizione della scolastica tedesca del Seicento che alla filosofia dell’epoca immediatamente precedente Kant. Si tratta di termini che, molto in uso nel Seicento, erano stati poi trascurati dalle scuole antiaristoteliche del Settecento, oppure di termini che, noti ma non molto diffusi nel Seicento, nel secolo successivo erano pressoché caduti in dimenticanza. L’attenzione di Kant è stata attirata su alcuni di questi termini dai suoi contemporanei, ma il fatto stesso ch’egli abbia accolto con particolare predilezione simili rimandi al linguaggio scolastico degli aristotelici, e che poi abbia attinto anche da sé nuovi termini dalla medesima fonte, ha sicuramente un significato storico che trascende il mero aspetto linguistico.

In effetti Kant, dopo il 1769, era perfettamente consapevole che le sue tesi metodologiche erano del tutto nuove e comportavano una rottura col passato. Per sottolineare la sua originalità, e per evitare nello stesso tempo confusioni tra i propri concetti e quelli dei contemporanei, Kant si è sentito costretto in molti casi ad introdurre per i suoi nuovi concetti dei termini anch’essi nuovi. Forse vocaboli o trasposizioni originali sarebbero stati la soluzione migliore, ma sarebbero potuti apparire un segno di presunzione agli occhi dei contemporanei, o almeno avrebbero potuto suscitare diffidenza e disagio. Kant ha preferito perciò richiamarsi a quell’antica e rispettabile tradizione ch’era l’aristotelismo, la cui terminologia non era certo più in voga, ma nell’ambiente accademico era pur sempre ancora comprensibile — e ciò specialmente a Königsberg, dove l'aristotelismo s’era mantenuto vivo ben dentro il Settecento (21).

In tal modo era evitato il pericolo di una confusione con le dottrine dei contemporanei ed anche i termini, pur riempiti di un contenuto interamente nuovo, non avevano un suono estraneo alle orecchie del lettore.

Nella scelta e nella formulazione del suo vocabolario Kant si è comportato in maniera completamente diversa rispetto ai filosofi dell’inizio del Settecento, che seguendo il modello wolffiano nelle loro opere in lingua tedesca avevano sostituito o tradotto i termini greci e latini con composti, all’occorrenza appositamente coniati, di origine germanica: Kant preferisce trasporre semplicemente in una forma soltanto esteriormente tedesca termini greci e latini, come usavano fare alcuni dei suoi immediati contemporanei.

È bensì vero che i concetti di Kant sono, sul piano del contenuto, molto lontani dai loro omonimi aristotelici; tuttavia in alcuni casi è possibile affermare che i riferimenti terminologici esteriori stabiliti da Kant hanno sviluppato un certo influsso intrinseco. A questo proposito abbiamo già accennato al problema della deduzione delle categorie; inoltre si può supporre, ad esempio, che l’adozione dei termini analitica e dialettica per designare due gruppi di problemi della metodologia ha provocato anche una separazione di questi problemi, che d’allora in poi, secondo il modello della Introductio in artem inveniendi [1742] di Darjes, dovettero essere trattati in due sezioni diverse (mentre nella Dissertatio [del 1770] erano apparsi ancora in connessione reciproca): ciò ha comportato indubbiamente importanti trasformazioni strutturali." (pp. 179-180)

(1) La forma espositiva comporta l’impossibilità di presentare la documentazione in tutta la sua ampiezza. Alcuni problemi sono già stati da me trattati in articoli appositi e spero di poter presto pubblicare in altra forma ulteriori ricerche.

(2) Per la terminologia di Kant nell’epoca precedente il 1769 cfr. G. Tonelli, Kant, dall'estetica metafisica all’estetica psicoempirica. Studi sulla genesi del criticismo (1754-1771) e sulle sue fonti, in «Memorie della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino», serie 3, Tomo 3, Parte II. Torino, 1955 e Id., Elementi metodologici e metafisici in Kant dal 1745 al 1768, voi. I, Torino, 1959.

(3) Per il tentativo di una spiegazione della ‘rivoluzione copernicana’ del 1769 cfr. G. Tonelli, Kant, dall’estetica..., cit., SS 149-164, in cui peraltro non trattiamo l’influsso di Locke e di Leibniz, ma soltanto l’occasionale problematica che ha reso Kant disponibile all’influsso di Locke e di Leibniz; cfr. anche G. Tonelli, Die Umwälzung von 1769 bei Kant, in « Kant-Studien », 1963 (LIV), pp. 369-375.

(15) C. A. Crusius, Weg zur Gewissheit und Zuverlässigkeit der menschlichen Erkenntnis, Leipzig, 1762, § 137, Anmerkung.

(16) J. H. Lambert, Anlage zur Architektonik, oder Theorie des Einfachen und des Ersten in der philosophischen und in der mathematischen Erkenntniss, 2 Bde., Riga, 1771, I, § 34.

(21) M. Wundt, Die deutsche Schulphilosophie im Zeitalter der Aufklärung, Tübingen, 1945 [rist.: Hildesheim, 1964], p. 117 e sg

6. ———. 1987. "Primi sviluppi della teoria del genio in Kant (1770-1779)." In Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, 183-234. Napoli: Prismi Editrice.

Traduzione di Kant’s Early Theory of Genius (1770-1779), in « Journal of the History of Philosophy », IV, 1966, diviso in due parti, rispettivamente alle pp. 109-131 e pp. 209-224 della rivista.

Prima parte:

"L’importanza della teoria del genio nella filosofia di Kant venne riconosciuta relativamente presto nella storia della Kantforschung, e all’argomento sono stati dedicati diversi lavori (1). Nessuno ha tuttavia, fino ad oggi, tentato di ricostruire lo sviluppo delle idee di Kant sul genio utilizzando il materiale contenuto nel suo Nachlass, pubblicato da Adickes (2). Questo è appunto quanto io tenterò di fare nel presente lavoro, limitando la mia analisi agli anni a cavallo tra il 1770 e il 1779, durante i quali Kant venne svolgendo gli studi preliminari alla elaborazione della Critica della ragion pura.

Cercherò dapprima di definire quali fossero le idee di Kant sul genio nel suddetto arco di tempo, ed in secondo luogo tenterò di rintracciarne le origini nel retroterra culturale di Kant." (p. 183)

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"Se tentiamo ora di trarre qualche conclusione circa la funzione dello spirito, possiamo dire che esiste un senso più generale del termine, in base al quale lo spirito viene definito principio vivificante dell’animo (intelletto più sensibilità) per mezzo di un’idea (concetto a priori, regola universale). Il termine spirito viene poi usato in due sensi più ristretti. In un primo senso lo spirito, in quanto elemento pertinente al talento (e nella misura in cui il talento viene distinto dal genio), vivifica un oggetto mediante un’idea precedentemente data; in questo senso esso è vivificante e può essere, in certa misura, nuovo, dal momento che il talento è una facoltà produttiva di qualcosa di nuovo (o di un nuovo espediente) conformemente però a regole conosciute (vedi sopra parr. 3 e 4). Lo spirito non è però, in questo senso, originale. Questa prima accezione più ristretta del termine è illustrata in modo sommario e per lo più poco chiaro nel materiale in esame, e i caratteri più precisi della sua fisionomia vengono soltanto desunti, per necessità di chiarezza, da altri elementi del tipo di quelli analizzati nei parr. 3, 4 e 7.

In un secondo senso particolare, illustrato in modo assai più ampio da Kant, lo spirito, inteso non più soltanto come spirito spontaneo, ma anche come spirito originale, viene considerato sinonimo di genio, o un elemento di esso. Uno spirito originale di questo tipo è creatore di nuove idee. Tuttavia, nei contesti pertinenti, il significato dello spirito come elemento del genio viene per lo più generalmente circoscritto alla sua funzione vivificante, mentre l’elemento propriamente creativo viene più spesso chiamato genio (nel senso di costellazione di facoltà), e non spirito. Solo in poche Riflessioni lo spirito viene totalmente identificato col genio." (pp. 188-189)

(1) Vedi in particolare: K. Hoffman, Die Umbildung der Kantischen Lehre vom Genie in Schellings System des transscendentalen Idealismus (Bern, 1907, Berner Studien zur Philos. u. ihrer Geschichte, LIII); R. Schlapp, Kants Lehre vom Genie und die Entstehung der « Kritik der Urteilskraft » (Göttingen, 1901); O. Schondorffer, Kant’s Definition vom Genie, « Altpreussische Monatsschrift », 1893, XXX; O. Wichmann, Kant’s Begriff vom Genie und seine Bedeutung, « Deutsche Akademische Rundschau », Jhg. II, 12 Sem., Folge N. 2; 7, 15 Jan. 1925. Lo studio di Schlapp, che si avvale dei Kolleghefte di Kant (appunti presi dalle sue lezioni), è particolarmente importante.

(2) Nei Kants Gesammelte Schriften, pubblicati dalla Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften. A questa edizione rinviano le nostre citazioni. Indichiamo solo il numero del volume e la pagina per le opere pubblicate di Kant, e il numero del volume e quello della Riflessione per quel che riguarda il Nachlass. Facciamo riferimento all’ultima edizione degli scritti nella Preussische Akademie Ausgabe. Intendiamo utilizzare il Nachlass di Kant secondo gli stessi criteri definiti in G. Tonelli, Kant, dall’estetica metafisica all'estetica psicoempirica. Studi sulla genesi del criticismo (1754-1771) e sulle sue fonti, (Torino, 1955), Memorie della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, Serie 3*, Tomo 3, Parte III. Vedi pp. 7-10, 192, 253-255.

Seconda parte:

"In sostanza, il genio (o spirito) rappresenta una facoltà spirituale davvero straordinaria. Esso è una forza creativa, i cui prodotti possono trovarsi nell’esperienza, e neppure dedursi razionalmente leggi universali della mente; il genio è spontaneo, è libero, è quale di cui non si può render ragione (si potrebbe dire, spiritus fiat ubi vult) è una facoltà che rende l’uomo capace di arrivare a certe nozioni, diversamente inattingibili, che sono analoghe alle idee di Dio, analoghe cioè alle strutture trascendentali del mondo quale dovrebbe propriamente essere. « L’uomo stesso non conosce questo spirito peculiare, e non i moti di esso in proprio potere », scrive in un passo Kant (Rifl. 93 XV). Altrove tuttavia egli sembra offrire qualche elemento ulteriore di chiarificazione di questa forza misteriosa contrapponendola all’arte (non geniale). L’arte (107), come già sappiamo, è come un giardino, in cui tutto è disposto metodicamente secondo regole: il genio è invece come un bosco in cui la natura libera e feconda sparge i propri doni (Rifl. 734 XV). Nel genio, la natura rende superflua l’arte (Rifl. 922, XV); il genio è fecondato dalla natura plastica (= creativa) (Rifl. 936, XV); lo spirito non è soggetto alla volontà dell’uomo, ma i suoi moti provengono dalla natura (Rifl. 831, XV). Come si è visto in precedenza (par. 4), lo spirito non è una facoltà singola, ma è l’universale vivificazione di tutte le facoltà. Nella Rifl. 938, XV, Kant tenta una spiegazione metafisica di questo carattere psicoempirico dello spirito: « Lo spirito, essendo rivolto all’universale, è, per così dire, divinae particula aurae, e viene attinto dallo spirito universale. C’è un solo genio: è l’unità dell’anima del mondo (die Einheit der Weltseele) » (108).

È noto che, a partire dal 1770, il mondo costituisce per Kant un phaenamenon la materia del quale è data dai sensi, mentre i diversi tipi di forme e strutture intellettuali che gli ineriscono derivano dal soggetto. La « natura » tende inoltre a venir riguardata come una sorta di livello più profondo del soggetto stesso; la « natura umana » di quest’ultimo è solo un concetto empirico, contrapposto come tale ad un altro concetto empirico, quello di « mondo esterno »: all’origine tanto della natura umana che del mondo esterno sembra esserci una « natura » genericamente indifferenziata, effetto diretto della potenza creatrice di Dio. Ora, per spiegare il mondo fenomenico nella sua interezza e, a maggior ragione, per soddisfare bisogni morali trascendenti, nulla di quanto nel mondo fenomenico è suscettibile di spiegazione dal punto di vista del soggetto empirico è, di per sé, sufficiente.

I concetti empirici e le regole dell’arte hanno infatti un raggio d’azione limitato. Al di là di essi, le strutture della realtà e del dovere morale possono venir colte soltanto se il livello più profondo del soggetto (quello che rappresenta al tempo stesso l’origine del soggetto e del mondo, vale a dire l’anima del mondo) riesce ad emergere aprendosi un varco entro l’intelaiatura costituita dalle forme pure e dalle strutture intellettuali, suscitando in tal modo una nuova consapevolezza che deriva direttamente dallo spirito di Dio; è la Natura in personam, nella sua veste più segreta e solenne e nel suo giusto anelito verso la perfezione, che si rivela nell’uomo e viene da esso realizzata.

Questo retroterra metafisico è da raccomandare particolarmente, come esempio istruttivo, all’attenzione di coloro che sono soliti considerare Kant un pensatore di freddo raziocinio, alieno da qualsivoglia divagazione di natura trascendente." (pp. 204-205)

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"In conclusione, si può osservare che quasi nessuna delle idee di Kant sul genio può definirsi originale per quel che riguarda la sua fisionomia culturale di superficie. Persino alcune divergenze di opinione che caratterizzavano il suo ambiente, come ad esempio l’ambiguità della posizione che dichiarava il genio libero dalle regole e, ciò malgrado, rispettoso di esse, o, ancora, il rapporto mai del tutto definito tra spirito e genio, vengono rispecchiate dalle corrispondenti oscillazioni del pensiero di Kant.

E tuttavia, il modo particolare in cui Kant selezionò e rimodellò alcuni di quei tratti del genio, spesso tra loro contrastanti, che avevano trovato espressione nelle teorie elaborate dai suoi contemporanei, deve essere compreso solo sulla base della sua personale evoluzione, e non può spiegarsi tramite la semplice rilevazione statistica di quelle caratteristiche che venivano prevalentemente attribuite al genio nel suo ambiente. Inoltre, la struttura sistematica che Kant diede all’insieme di questi tratti, e ad ognuno di essi singolarmente, si colloca, per la sua profondità, molto al di sopra del livello di quella che seppero elaborare i suoi contemporanei, ed è sostanzialmente originale. Non è possibile a questo punto investigare la genesi di questa selezione e di questa sistematizzazione; essa dipende in larga misura dallo sviluppo della teoria dell’idea (tanto nel campo estetico, che in quello della metodologia della metafisica) che si determinò negli anni compresi tra il 1770 e il 1780, e che verrà preso altrove in esame; dobbiamo quindi, per il momento, contentarci di esporre semplicemente i risultati cui pervenne Kant, visti sullo sfondo dell’ambiente che gli era proprio." (p. 216)

(107) Bisogna ricordare che il termine « arte » privo di attributi sta ad indicare un concetto molto ampio che comprende tanto le arti meccaniche, o mestieri, che l’aspetto tecnico dell’arte del bello.

(108) Come si è visto nella nota 36, Kant aveva fatto riferimento molti anni prima, ma in un diverso senso, ad un Weltgeist [spirito del mondo].

7. ———. 1987. "Divinae particula aurae. Idee geniali, organismo e libertà. Una nota sulla Riflessione 938 di Kant." In Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, 237-245. Napoli: Prismi Editrice.

Traduzione di Divinae Partícula Aurae; Genial Ideas, Organisation and Freedom: A Note on Kant's Reflection N. 938, in « Journal of the History of Philosophy », 1969, pp. 192-198.

"1. Nel par. 21 del mio articolo « Kant's Early Theory of Genius (1770-1779) » (1), cito dalla Riflessione 938 di Kant, il cui testo completo è il seguente:

Lo spirito, essendo rivolto all’universale, è, per così dire, , e viene attinto dallo spirito universale. Pertanto lo spirito [in se stesso] non ha proprietà particolari, ma, a seconda dei diversi talenti e delle sensibilità [dell’uomo] cui viene attribuito, vivifica nei modi più diversi; e dato che questi sono del più vario genere, ogni spirito ha qualche cosa di peculiare. Non si deve dire: i geni [c’è, invece, un solo genio], È l’unità dell’anima del mondo (2).

Kant si riferisce a questo spirito come alla fonte tanto delle idee geniali o « originali » nella mente umana, quanto della vita organica nel mondo esterno (PSGK, parr. 22, 23).

Questa teoria deriva naturalmente dall’antica dottrina platonico-stoico-ermetica dell’Anima del Mondo, che ebbe un’enorme diffusione non soltanto nel Medioevo (Scuola di Chartres etc.), ma anche dal Rinascimento fino al diciottesimo secolo e perfino più tardi, specialmente tra filosofi stoici, cabbalisti, ermetici, pansofici e mosaici, tanto in psicologia (dove l’anima umana veniva intesa come una parte dell’anima del Mondo) che nella filosofia naturale tra gli oppositori del meccanicismo (inteso o in generale, o in relazione soltanto agli organismi viventi) (3).

Nella Germania all’inizio del diciottesimo secolo, questa dottrina era ancora sostenuta, nel campo della filosofia naturale, da Christian Thomasius (4), e da alcuni dei suoi allievi, quali Lange e Rüdiger; essa ricopriva anche un ruolo importante in generale nella teoria di Swedenborg della vita e dell’anima, e Swedenborg era, naturalmente, molto noto a Kant (e nella Germania in genere, dove Oetinger era uno dei suoi più ferventi apostoli). Non è dunque sorprendente che Kant faccia riferimento ad una tradizione tanto diffusa, impiegandone la terminologia in un modo che non può essere considerato interamente metaforico, quantunque all’interno del sistema di Kant i concetti corrispondenti subissero molti mutamenti fondamentali, fino al momento in cui riapparvero, in una forma in verità irriconoscibile, nella Critica del giudizio.

Nondimeno, la formula « divinae particula aurae » non era stata frequentemente impiegata nella sterminata letteratura sull’Anima del Mondo, e può essere ai qualche interesse chiarire la sua origine (soprattutto poiché questo ci consentirà di esaminare il retroterra della dottrina kantiana dello spirito). Quando Kant inseriva del latino nel contesto tedesco delle sue Reflexionen, ciò avveniva o perché stava citando qualche testo latino o perché (caso assai più frequente) aveva la sensazione che la terminologia filosofica latina corrente al suo tempo si prestasse ad un miglior uso di quella tedesca. In quest’ultimo caso, Kant soleva ricombinare liberamente i vecchi termini in nuove frasi (o latine, o per metà tedesche e per metà latine).

Entrambe le ipotesi possono venire considerate per la formula in questione. Cominciando dalla seconda, è piuttosto facile ritrovare espressioni simili, quantunque non identiche, all’interno della letteratura sulla Anima del Mondo. Soprattutto nella corrente stoica di questa tradizione, era piuttosto usuale definire l’anima (intesa o specificamente come anima umana, o, in generale, come il principio della vita) una particella o ima scintilla dello spirito di Dio (5). J. C. Sturm, ad esempio, sebbene non fosse uno stoico, chiamava l’anima « efficaciae divinae quasi particula » (6), e Christian Wolff osteggiava l’opinione di alcuni filosofi antichi, e di Spinoza, secondo la quale l’anima è una « partícula mentis divinae » (7)." (pp. 237-238)

(1) G. Tonelli, Kant’s Early Tbeory of Genius (1770-1779), in «Journal of the History of Philosophy», IV (1966), p. 209; l’articolo è pubblicato in due parti, pp. 109-131 e pp. 209-224. [Ora tradotto in italiano e riportato in questo stesso volume sotto il titolo Primi sviluppi della teoria del genio in Kant (1770-1779). A tale articolo si farà d’ora innanzi riferimento nel testo con la sigla PSGK. N. d.T.].

(2) « Weil der Geist aufs allgemeine geht, so ist er so zu sagen divinae particula aurae und aus dem allgemeinen Geist geschöpft. Daher hat der Geist nicht besondere Eigenschaften, sondern nach den verschiedenen Talenten und Empfindsamkeiten, worauf er fällt, belebt er verschiedentlich und, weil diese so mannigfaltig seyn, so hat jeder Geist was eigenthümliches. Man muss nicht sagen: Die genie’s. Es ist die Einheit der Weltseele » (Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte Schriften [Berlin, Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, XV (1923), parte 1, p. 416]. Questa Riflessione è una nota sulla Metaphysica di Baumgarten. Secondo Adickes, venne probabilmente scritta tra il 1776 e il 1778, meno probabilmente nel 1772.

(3) Vedi la voce « World Soul » (con riferimenti bibliografici, a cura di T. Gregory e G. Tonelli), nell’ed. del 1967 della New Catholic Encyclopedia. Un resoconto storico ancora utile, quantunque molto parziale, di questa dottrina è dato da A. Rechenberg (praeses) e J.D. Güttner (Auctor & Respondens), De mundi anima dissertatio (Lipsiae, 1678). Vedi anche PSGK, nota 153.

(4) Si vedano i miei Elementi metodologici e metafisici in Kant dal 1745 al 1768 (Torino, 1959), I, pp. 97-98. Christian Thomasius era stato influenzato, sotto questo aspetto, tanto dall’interesse di suo padre (Jakob Thomasius) per la filosofia stoica (v. sotto), quanto dalla tradizione tedesca comeniana e pansofica del diciassettesimo secolo — una tradizione collegata in vari modi con il pietismo. Christian Thomasius aveva avuto rapporti con il pietismo nel corso di un’importante fase della sua evoluzione, ed i suoi allievi erano pietisti.

(5) Lo spirito di Dio è l’Anima del Mondo e non, beninteso, lo Spirito Santo della Trinità, perlomeno per la tradizione cristiana occidentale, fatta eccezione per alcuni eretici. Indubbiamente in diversi casi (come per Sturm, v. sotto) autori dell’Occidente cristiano usarono simili espressioni in riferimento a Dio stesso, e non all’Anima del Mondo, perché generalmente, a loro modo di vedere, l’anima umana e la vita organica sono prodotte direttamente da Dio (e non dalla Natura meccanica); questi autori, ovviamente, non credevano nell’esistenza di un’Anima del Mondo.

(6) Physica electiva (Norimbergae, 1697), I, p. 193: «gloriati insuper & laeta mente nobis subinde gratulati, quod qui sumus, vivimus & movemur, in ipso (Deo) vivamus, moveamur, & simus, h. e. per illam ipsam efficaciae divinae quasi particulam, quam corpori nostri fabricae specificae, & sic aliorum admirabiliter variantibus structuris singulis, applicatam... ».

(7) Theologia naturalis (Francofurti et Lipsiae, 1737), II, par. 708: « Corpora & animae non sunt in Deo tanquam partes in toto, nec dici possunt particulae Dei... Schol. Fuere inter philosophos veteres, qui animam dixere particulam mentis divinae... ».

8. ———. 1987. "Due fonti inglesi dimenticate della morale kantiana." In Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, 249-256. Napoli: Prismi Editrice.

Traduzione di Deux sources britanniques oubliées de la morale kantienne, in Mélanges A. Koyré, publiés à l'occasion de son soixante-dixième anniversaire, Paris: Hermann 1964, vol. II, pp. 469-505.

"Parecchi studi sono stati dedicati all’esame delle dottrine morali di Kant nel loro sviluppo (1), ma il quadro generale che ne risulta presenta ancora delle lacune molto gravi: (2) Wolff, Crusius, Baumgarten, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Rousseau e diversi altri moralisti sono stati studiati in una maniera più o meno soddisfacente nel loro rapporto con la morale kantiana, ma restano ancora da compiere molte esplorazioni di nuove fonti e molte indagini precise sulle fonti rintracciate fino ad ora.

Intendiamo qui portare un piccolo contributo a questo compito che appare ancora immenso, richiamando alcune dottrine di due moralisti inglesi, David Fordyce e Richard Price, che hanno avuto probabilmente un certo influsso sullo sviluppo della morale kantiana tra il 1762 e il 1775.

L’opera di Fordyce, Elements of Moral Philosophy, uscì a Londra nel 1754; una traduzione francese di Jancourt fu pubblicata all’Aia nel 1756 col titolo Éléments de philosophie morale, e una traduzione tedesca, Anfangsgründe der Sittenlehre, comparve a Berlino nel 1757. Quel che c’interessa in Fordyce è l’importanza da lui attribuita alla nozione d’obbligo, che acquista una struttura razionale precedente il piacere morale. Esiste in verità un « senso morale », una sorta d’« istinto » che impone delle valutazioni necessarie (3) che costituiscono l’obbligo; l’obbligo morale è per così dire « l’impronta della mano di Dio » su di noi (4) (beninteso, in quanto imposizione interiore e spontanea); si tratta perciò di una « voce distinta e ben forte della natura » (5). Ma quest’obbligo non nasce « da un semplice legame tra certe passioni » (6); d’altronde il piacere morale è posteriore all’idea di obbligo (7); la virtù, in definitiva, non è che la ragione, in quanto « percepisce la simmetria che esiste in una simile economia di facoltà e di passioni » (8)." (p. 249)

(...)

"L’opera di Fordyce c’interessa in ultima analisi soprattutto come veicolo probabile di diffusione del pensiero di [John] Balguy in Germania.

Nessuna traduzione è stata fatta, in francese o in tedesco, dell’opera di Richard Price A Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals [Esame delle questioni e difficoltà principali in morale] (London, 1758), ma il suo rapporto con certe dottrine di Kant è così stretto ch’è indispensabile studiarla in relazione al filosofo di Königsberg (21). Si può affermare che Kant abbia conosciuto direttamente l’opera di Price? Le analogie che vedremo lo lasciano sospettare. È vero che il problema di sapere se Kant era capace di leggere, sia pure con difficoltà, la letteratura filosofica in inglese, non è stato ancora risolto; ma anche nel caso si neghi questa possibilità è un fatto ben noto che tra i suoi migliori amici Kant contava dei commercianti scozzesi residenti a Königsberg, persone molto colte con cui intratteneva dei rapporti intellettuali su un piano molto elevato (22). Per esempio uno di questi amici, J. Green, era stato incaricato da Kant, in occasione di un viaggio a Stoccolma, di fare una specie di intervista a Swedenborg: quest’ultimo eccitava in quel momento la curiosità di Kant, che pubblicherà ben presto i Träume eines Geistersehers [Sogni di un visionario] (usciti nel 1765) (23). Si può dunque concludere che nell’epoca che ci interessa esisteva una sorta di collaborazione intellettuale tra Kant e almeno un amico scozzese, che avrebbe potuto assai facilmente tradurgli o riassumergli le novità letterarie inglesi.

La posizione di Richard Price in morale deriva certamente in parte da quella di Balguy; ma Price aggiunge altri elementi di grande interesse.

Il fattore razionalista è indubbiamente importante in lui, ma se l’intelletto è la fonte delle idee del giusto e dell’ingiusto (24), a differenza di S. Clarke e dei moralisti della perfezione, la percezione di queste idee è da lui considerata immediata e indipendente da ogni ragionamento (25)" (p. 251)

(1) La citazione di questi studi si troverà nell’opera recente di J. Schmucker, Die Ursprünge der Ethik Kants, Meisenheim a. G., 1962, ad eccezione di: J. Bohatec, Die Religionsphilosophie Kants in der ‘Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft’, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung ihrer theologisch-dogmatischen Quellen, Hamburg, 1938 [ristampa: Hildesheim, 1966]; G. Tonelli, Kant, dall'estetica metafisica all’estetica psicoempirica. Studi sulla genesi del criticismo (1754-1771) e sulle sue fonti, Memorie dell’Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, Serie 3, Parte II, Torino, 1955; D. Henrich, Der Begriff der sittlichen Einsicht und Kants Lehre vom Faktum der Vernunft, in: Die Gegenwart der Griechen im neueren Denken, Festschrift für H.-G. Gadamer, Tübingen, 1960. Per le dottrine sull’ottimismo cfr.: G. Tonelli, Elementi metodologici e metafisici in Kant dal 1745 al 1768, vol. I, Torino, 1959, pp. 198 e sgg.

(2) Si vedano a questo proposito le lunghe discussioni contenute nella nostra recensione dell’opera di Schmucker citata, recensione d’imminente pubblicazione presso Filosofia [1962 (XIII), pp. 670-678],

(3) Citiamo dalla traduzione francese, p. 53.

(4) p. 58.

(5) p. 47.

(6) p. 40.

(7) p. 57.

(8) pp. 38-39.

(21) Esiste un’edizione moderna di quest’opera, a cura di D. Daiches Raphael, Oxford, 1948. Nella sua prefazione l’editore rileva l’analogia tra le dottrine di Price e quelle di Kant, ma non si pone il problema di un influsso. Su Price cfr. L. Aquist, The Moral Philosophy of Richard Price, Lund-Kobenhavn, 1960.

(22) Cfr. K. Vorländer, I. Kant, der Mann und das Werk, 2 Bde., Leipzig, 1924, I, p. 122; sul problema cfr. Tonelli, Kant, dall’estetica..., cit., p. 134.

(23) Cfr. C. O. Sigsted, The Swedenborg Epic. The Life and Work of E. S., New York and London, 1952, p. 303.

(24) Citiamo dall’edizione originale, p. 60.

(25) p. 59: « Il giusto e l’ingiusto denotano idee semplici e devono essere perciò attribuiti ad una facoltà di percezione immediata dell’intelletto umano ».

9. ———. 1987. "L’etica kantiana parte della metafisica: una possibile ispirazione newtoniana? Con alcune osservazioni su «I sogni di un visionario» " In Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, 259-282. Napoli: Prismi Editrice.

Traduzione di Kant’s Ethics as a part of Metaphysics: a possible newtonian Suggestion? with Some Comments on Kant’s « Dream of a Seer », in « Philosophy and the Civilizing Arts. Essays Presented to Herbert W. Schneider », ed. by C. Walton and J. P. Anton, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1974, pp. 236-263.

"Uno degli aspetti più notevoli del sistema filosofico kantiano è rappresentato dal fatto che l’etica viene in esso classificata come parte della metafisica, come si vede dai titoli di due tra le opere più importanti di Kant, la Fondazione della metafisica dei costumi e la Metafisica dei costumi. È davvero un peccato che nessun commentatore abbia mai, per quanto almeno mi risulta, sottolineato l’importanza di questo fatto e dei problemi ad esso sottesi; il fatto è stato dato per scontato, il problema ignorato. È tempo dunque di richiamare l’attenzione su di esso.

Si tratta in realtà di uno dei mutamenti più radicali apportati da Kant alla struttura della filosofia nel suo complesso; prima di lui, per quanto io ne sappia, non si era sentito mai parlare di una subordinazione dell’etica alla metafisica. La metafisica era stata subordinata all’etica da Spinoza, probabilmente sotto l’influsso dei tardi sviluppi dello stoicismo, ma il tentativo opposto non era mai stato compiuto.

Questo non significa ovviamente che prima di Kant l’etica non fosse mai stata fondata sulla metafisica; al contrario, questa fondazione dell’etica rappresentava senza dubbio una delle posizioni più comunemente adottate. Malgrado ciò però, l’etica era stata sempre considerata una scienza indipendente, e non una parte della metafisica.

Non si deve d’altro canto pensare che per Kant considerare l’etica parte della metafisica equivalga ad ammettere una maggiore dipendenza dell’etica dalla metafisica stessa: l’etica diviene, al contrario, totalmente e sistematicamente indipendente dalla metafisica strictu sensu; ma, come vedremo, diviene parte della metafisica in quanto si trasforma appunto in fondazione di essa: è questo che rappresenta dunque la vera novità.

L’espressione « metafisica dei costumi » (Metaphysik der Sitten) compare, per quanto mi risulta, per la prima volta nella lettera di Kant a Herder del 9 maggio 1768, in cui Kant afferma di stare lavorando ad una metafisica dei costumi che dovrebbe esser finita entro l’anno. Ma in una lettera a Lambert del 31 dicembre 1765, Kant aveva già preannunziato un lavoro sui « fondamenti metafisici della filosofia pratica ». L’espressione « metafisica dei costumi » viene ripetuta nella lettera di Kant a Lambert del 2 settembre 1770 (1), in cui il nostro autore dichiara di essere al momento occupato nella stesura di un trattato (che non venne mai pubblicato) su quell’argomento, senza fornire però ulteriori indicazioni in proposito.

Nella Logik Blomberg (1771) e nella Logik Philippi (1772), la filosofia morale non è ricondotta sotto il titolo generale di metafisica (2). Nella Metaphysik L1 (1775-1780), la metafisica e la filosofia morale vengono chiamate le due scienze filosofiche pure (3), e nelle Lezioni di etica del 1780-1781, la filosofia viene suddivisa in filosofia teoretica e filosofia pratica (4), ma non viene fatta alcuna menzione di una metafisica dei costumi. Nelle sue lezioni Kant adotta spesso posizioni più conservatrici di quelle espresse nella sua corrispondenza privata, nelle sue osservazioni personali o nei lavori dati alle stampe.

In una lettera a Herz, scritta verso la fine del 1773, Kant annuncia un piano dettagliato del proprio lavoro: egli ha in mente di scrivere un trattato di « filosofia trascendentale », che costituirebbe una Critica della ragion pura, e intende in seguito pubblicare una Metafisica, che verrebbe suddivisa in una Metafisica della natura e in una Metafisica dei costumi. Quest’ultima parte sarebbe la prima a vedere la luce (5).

Verso la fine degli anni ’70, nelle sue lezioni sull'Enciclopedia filosofica (1777-1780) (6), Kant espone la sua nuova concezione dell’etica anche in classe. La filosofia pratica dovrà suddividersi, a suo parere, in: 1) filosofia pratica trascendentale, che tratta dell’uso della libertà in generale; 2) filosofia razionale pratica, ovverosia Metafisica dei costumi, che tratta del buon uso della libertà; 3) antropologia pratica (7). Non è necessario, in questa sede, prendere in esame il punto 3), dal momento che esso chiaramente non fa parte della filosofia pura (8). Quanto al punto 1), esso è facilmente identificabile con quella sezione, o aspetto, della Critica della ragion pura che tratta dei fondamenti trascendentali della moralità (9). Per conseguenza, il punto 2) corrisponde propriamente alla Metafisica dei costumi.

È noto che nella sezione della Critica della ragion pura dedicata all'Architettonica la metafisica è suddivisa in metafisica della natura e metafisica dei costumi. Kant sentì tuttavia il bisogno di aggiungere qualche parola di spiegazione ad una denominazione tanto inconsueta:

La metafisica della ragione speculativa, è ciò che si vuol dire in senso stretto metafisica; ma in quanto la morale pura appartiene a un ramo a parte della conoscenza umana e filosofica derivante dalla ragion pura, noi le vogliamo mantenere quella denominazione (10).

Nei Prolegomeni (1783), tuttavia, metafisica e morale vengono menzionate separatamente (11). In una Riflessione datata da Adickes agli anni 1783-1784, la metafisica viene però suddivisa nuovamente in metafisica della natura e metafisica dei costumi (12). Nella Metaphysik Volckmann (1784-1785), Kant tratta ampiamente di questa distinzione (13).

Nel 1785, la pubblicazione della Fondazione della metafisica dei costumi conferisce un definitivo carattere di ufficialità a questa denominazione, riferendosi con questo titolo ad una scienza che appartiene alla filosofia pura nella misura in cui questa è circoscritta a determinati oggetti dell’intelletto (14). Viene inoltre riconosciuta la necessità di una speciale Critica della ragion pura pratica (15).

La questione è dunque, d’ora in avanti, definita. Negli anni successivi, solo dopo il 1790 la morale verrà nuovamente distinta dalla metafisica, allorché si tratterà di procedere alla suddivisione in parti di un certo concetto della filosofia in generale, chiamato « cosmo-politico » [ weltbürgerlich ], che sembra fosse sconosciuto in precedenza, e che non pare sostituirsi, ma piuttosto affiancarsi al vecchio concetto e alla vecchia suddivisione (16). L’unificazione ormai consolidata ricompare infatti nel titolo della Metafisica dei costumi, pubblicata nel 1797." (pp. 259-261)

(1) I. Kant, Gesammelte Schriften, Akademie-Ausgabe (Berlin und Leipzig), X (2ed.), pp. 74, 56 e 97. Il prof. Norbert Hinske ha richiamato la mia attenzione sulla lettera del 1768, e su di un’altra lettera di Hamann a Herder, datata 16 febbraio 1767, in cui Hamann dichiara: « Kant sta lavorando ad una metafisica della morale » (J. G. Hamann, Briefwechsel, Wiesbaden, 1956, voi. II, p. 390); in un’altra lettera a Herder, del 28 agosto 1768, Hamann scrive: « La metafisica della morale di Kant mi tiene in attesa» (ibid., p. 421).

(2) Op. cit., XXIV, 1, 1, pp. 31, 314.

(3) Op. cit., XXVIII, 5, 1, p. 173.

(4) I. Kant, Eine Vorlesung Kants über Ethik, hrsg. von P. Menzer, Berlin, 1924, p. 1 [cfr. I. Kant, Lezioni di etica, tr. it. di A. Guerra, Bari, 1971, p. 3].

(5) Kant, Ges. Schr., X, p. 145.

(6) Per l’esatta datazione, si veda la mia recensione dell’edizione delle lezioni in «Filosofia», XIII, (1962), pp. 511-514.

(7) I. Kant, Vorlesungen über Enzyklopädie und Logik, Bd. 1, Vorlesungen über Philosophische Enzyklopädie (Berlin, 1961), p. 38. (Quest’edizione delle lezioni di Kant, benché pubblicata dall’Accademia di Berlino, non fa parte delle Gesammelte Schriften. La pubblicazione di quest’edizione è cessata dopo il vol. I). Ciò nonostante, a p. 67, morale e metafisica sembrano venir distinte.

(8) Vedi ibid., p. 68.

(9) È noto che Kant riconobbe la necessità di scrivere una Critica della ragion pratica solo dopo il 1781. Fino almeno al 1785, Kant riteneva che dovesse essere la Critica della ragion pura ad occuparsi della fondazione trascendentale tanto della metafisica della natura che della metafisica dei costumi.

(10) B. 870. Cito dalla Kritik der reinen Vernunft seguendo la paginatura della seconda edizione (B) dell’opera (cfr. I. Kant, Ges. Schr., voi. III, Berlin und Leipzig, 1911). Verranno indicati gli eventuali punti in cui la seconda edizione (1787) si differenzia dalla prima (1781). [Per la trad. it. dei passi kantiani citati, rinviamo a I. Kant, Crìtica della ragion pura, trad. it. di G. Gentile e G. Lombardo Radice, ed. riveduta e con glossario a cura di V. Mathieu, Bari, 1972. Nel caso presente, la citazione rinvia al voi. II, p. 636. N.d.T.].

(11) Kant, Ges. Schr., IV, p. 363, par. 60 [cfr. I. Kant, Prolegomeni ad ogni futura metafisica, trad. it. di P. Carabellese, ed. riveduta a cura di R. Assunto, Bari, 1979, pp. 132-133. N.d.T.].

(12) Op. cit., XVIII, pp. 284-285 (Riflessione 5644).

(13) Op. cit., XXVIII, 5, 1, p. 364. A p. 362 viene presentata una sorta di giustificazione per la presenza della metafisica nell’ambito dell’etica; tale giustificazione non può tuttavia servire ai nostri scopi, giacché in base ad essa risulterebbe che la metafisica è presente in tutte le scienze razionali, compresa la matematica (p. 363).

(14) Op. cit., IV, p. 388. [Cfr. I. Kant, Fondazione della metafisica dei costumi, trad. it. a cura di P. Chiodi in I. Kant, Scritti morali, Torino, 1970, p. 44. N.d.T.] Kant aggiunge: « Sorge così l’idea di una duplice metafisica, della natura e dei costumi » (trad. it., op. cit., ibid.). Difficilmente però quanto precede può considerarsi una chiara dimostrazione di questa conclusione.

(15) Loc. cit., p. 391 [I. Kant, Fondazione della metafisica dei costumi, op. cit., trad. it., p. 47].

(16) Nella Metaphysik L 2 del 1790-1791 (Kant, op. cit., XXVIII, 5, 2, 1, pp. 532-533) si ha la prima comparsa — databile con sicurezza — di questa dottrina. La stessa idea di una filosofia « cosmo-politica » si ritrova nella Wiener Logik del 1794-1796 (op. cit., XXIV, 1, 2, pp. 798-799), ma non c’è, in questo caso, alcuna suddivisione. Questo fatto mi fa pensare che quella sezione della Logik Jäsche che espone la medesima dottrina e presenta la medesima partizione (op. cit., IX, pp. 24-25 [trad. it. parziale in I. Kant, Che cosa significa orientarsi nel pensare, trad. e introduzione di M. Giorgiantonio, Lanciano, 1930 (1975, 2* ed.), pp. 91-93. N.d.T.], derivi dal Kollegheft del 1790, che venne usato da Jäsche, assieme ad un altro Kollegheft del 1782, per stendere il suo testo.

10. ———. 1987. "La Critica della ragion pura di Kant nel contesto della tradizione della logica moderna." In Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, 285-291. Napoli: Prismi Editrice.

Traduzione di Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason Within the Tradition of Modem Logic, in « Akten des 4. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses. Mainz, 6-10 April 1974 », G. Funke, J.Kopper (Hrsg.). Kant-Studien 65, 1975, Sonderheft.

"È evidentemente impossibile comprendere un testo correttamente, se non è chiaro ciò di cui esso parla. Se si pensa a quanto lavoro è stato sinora dedicato all’analisi della Critica della ragion pura di Kant, potrà dunque sembrare strano che non si sia ancora giunti a stabilire quale sia in definitiva l’argomento di quest’opera. Secondo una prima e più antica interpretazione, che risale all’inizio del XIX secolo e viene tuttora accettata nei paesi di lingua inglese, la Critica sarebbe un trattato di teoria della conoscenza. Secondo un’interpretazione che risale agli anni venti del nostro secolo, e deriva da Nicolai Hartmann, Max Wundt e Heinz Heimsoeth, la Critica sarebbe invece un trattato di metafisica. Secondo il mio punto di vista, l’argomento della Critica della ragion pura non può propriamente definirsi in termini di teoria della conoscenza (gnoseologia, epistemologia), e definirlo in termini di metafisica può essere corretto, ma soltanto in parte: in effetti la Critica è, a mio giudizio, un trattato tanto di logica che di metafisica." (p. 285)

(...)

"La Critica è in realtà un’opera di metodologia e, più esattamente, di metodologia della metafisica. E stato fatto notare che l’affermazione kantiana secondo cui « essa è un trattato del metodo » compare in effetti solo nella Prefazione alla seconda edizione (1787). Per coloro tuttavia che hanno una qualche familiarità con la terminologia del XVII e del XVIII secolo, quest’idea è già chiaramente rinvenibile in più d’un passo della prima edizione dell’opera, laddove Kant paragona la Critica alla « via regia » o alla « strada maestra » della metafisica [Weg (via), Königlicher Weg, (via regia), Heeresstrasse, Heeres-Weg (strada militare, via strategica), talvolta Fussteig (sentiero, cammino pedonale)]: i termini « via », « strada », « strada maestra », etc. venivano tradizionalmente ed inequivocabilmente riferiti al « metodo », per evidenti ragioni etimologiche. E lo studio del metodo faceva parte della logica.

Un’attenta lettura della Critica rivela che quest’opera costituisce una di quelle « logiche speciali » proprie delle scienze particolari che Kant contrappone, come metodologie, alla « logica generale ». Queste « logiche speciali » sono ascritte alle scienze in questione come loro parti integranti: ma nondimeno esse costituiscono le logiche speciali (o metodologie) di quelle scienze. Che Kant non chiarisse meglio questo punto può spiegarsi, da una parte, col fatto che poteva sembrargli di averlo già sufficientemente chiarito per coloro che erano in grado di comprendere il linguaggio filosofico del tempo; e, dall’altra, col fatto che egli era solito preoccuparsi ben poco di spiegare ciò che a lui sembrava essere tanto evidente. Una testimonianza decisiva in tal senso è offerta tuttavia dalla Riflessione 5644 (Akademie-Ausgabe XVIII, pp. 285-286), datata da Adickes agli anni 1784-1785, in cui si legge: « La filosofia trascendentale precede la metafisica, la quale, come la logica, non si occupa di oggetti, ma della possibilità, del contenuto e dei limiti di ogni conoscenza della ragion pura. Essa è la logica della conoscenza razionale pura [...]. La critica è quella che indaga la possibilità dell’oggetto della metafisica ». La datazione ed il carattere di questa affermazione trovano conferma in un passo di un corso di metafisica tenuto da Kant nel 1784-1785, la cosiddetta Metaphysik Volkmann, dove Kant dettò in classe, nella sezione introduttiva del corso: « La filosofia trascendentale è, in rapporto alla metafisica, ciò che la logica è in rapporto alla filosofia nel suo insieme. In relazione all’uso puro della ragione, sarà necessaria una logica speciale, che è chiamata filosofia trascendentale; in essa non si prende in considerazione alcun oggetto, ma piuttosto la nostra stessa ragione, così come avviene nella logica generale. La filosofia trascendentale potrebbe chiamarsi anche logica trascendentale ». Si dovrebbe osservare come, in questo passo, la filosofia trascendentale (o ontologia) venga identificata con la critica: è noto che Kant le identificò negli anni ’90, ma in realtà questa identificazione aveva avuto luogo assai prima — ricorrendo, in effetti, anche in qualche Riflessione anteriore al 1781. Aggiungerò che le due affermazioni sopra citate non sono in alcun modo affermazioni isolate: esse sono soltanto quelle in cui l’argomento in esame è formulato nel modo più chiaro." (pp. 287-288)

11. ———. 1987. "Cos’è la storia della filosofia?" In Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, 295-309. Napoli: Prismi Editrice.

Traduzione di Qu’est-ce que l’histoire de la Philosophie?, in « Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger », CLII, 1962, pp. 289-306.

"Quel settore fondamentale della storia della filosofia che ha per oggetto lo studio monografico di un testo particolare sembra non tener debito conto, in generale, di alcune premesse metodologiche essenziali per la posizione dei problemi storici che ogni studioso in possesso della forma mentis dello storico dovrebbe porsi.

È nostro intento qui esporre in modo molto succinto alcune prospettive fondamentali che dovrebbero guidare ogni analisi in questo settore. Ci limitiamo qui — vogliamo sottolinearlo — a descrivere le categorie principali di uno solo dei numerosi punti d’approccio complementari (o livelli di lavoro) seguendo i quali si potrebbe organizzare una ricerca storica di questo tipo." (p. 295)

(...)

(Abbiamo rilevato l’utilità e l’urgenza di elaborare una storia dell’evoluzione dello spirito consequenziale nel pensiero filosofico. Allo stesso modo bisognerebbe porsi più chiaramente il problema dell’evoluzione dello spirito letterario, dello spirito sistematico e dello spirito di comunicazione e probatorio nel pensiero filosofico. Nei filosofi i mutamenti della forma letteraria, di quella sistematica e della forma di comunicazione e di prova sono strettamente legati ai mutamenti dottrinali, cosicché non si può immaginare una storia della filosofia scientificamente concepita che non tenga conto di questi fattori. Sarebbe dunque importante elaborare delle storie speciali in cui questi elementi siano specificamente studiati in un modo più adeguato, il che permetterebbe d’avere a propria disposizione delle prospettive generali a partire dalle quali lo studio specifico dei testi verrebbe reso più facile." (p. 308)

12. ———. 1995. "Organo, canone, disciplina, dottrina in Kant (1765-1780)." Studi Kantiani no. 8:11-30.

"Quando Kant cerca di spiegare che cosa vuol essere la sua Critica della ragion pura, egli di solito usa due coppie di termini opposti, «canone» opposto a «organo» e «disciplina» a «dottrina»: la Critica è un canone, non un organo; è una disciplina, non una dottrina.

Lo scopo principale di questo lavoro è di chiarire il significato di questi termini per Kant, nel suo sviluppo fino alla prima edizione della Critica della ragion pura nel 1781.

Agli inizi degli anni Sessanta, Kant definisce ancora la logica come uno «strumento» (1) e, di essa, ha una concezione tradizionale. Nell ’Annuncio dei suoi corsi, pubblicato nel 1765, Kant distingue due tipi di logica. Il primo è una critica ed una prescrizione (Vorschrift) del senso comune (gesunden Verstandes), come una introduzione alla scienza (logica naturalis, nella terminologia delle scuole). Il secondo è una critica ed una prescrizione per la scienza vera e propria (logica artificialis), di cui costituisce l’organo, al fine di rendere regolare il procedimento (Verfahren) della scienza e di comprendere la natura della disciplina, unitamente ai mezzi usati per il suo sviluppo. L’esposizione della metafisica sarà seguita da alcune considerazioni sul metodo particolare di questa scienza, come suo organo. Questo dovrà seguire e non precedere l’esposizione della metafisica in un corso di filosofia, perché sarebbe impossibile spiegare questo organo se prima non sono stati offerti esempi della sua applicazione. Altrimenti Kant, in questo corso, esporrà soltanto il primo tipo di logica (2). I termini «disciplina» e «dottrina» vengono usati come sinonimi di «scienza» (3).

In una lettera a Mendelssohn dell’8 aprile 1766, Kant scrive che egli considera la metafisica come una disciplina (disciplin) molto importante, ma che trova necessario toglierle le sue dogmatiche vesti, trattando le sue sedicenti dottrine in maniera scettica. Questo procedimento negativo è una preparazione per un progresso positivo in questa scienza. Un senso comune incorrotto ed ingenuo ha bisogno di un organo; ma le false dottrine di un talento pervertito (come sono quelle della metafisica) richiedono un catartico (4). Egli pensa di aver sviluppato importanti vedute volte a fissare il metodo (Verfahren) di questa disciplina della metafisica, vedute che sono non soltanto prospettive (Aussichten) generali, ma che possono essere usate praticamente (in der Anwendung) come modelli adeguati di valutazione (Richtmaas) delle dottrine metafisiche (5).

Il significato di queste prese di posizione è chiaro per coloro che hanno familiarità con la terminologia filosofica del Settecento. Affrontare lo studio del metodo scientifico, appartiene in linea di principio alla scienza della logica, che include la metodologia. I precetti metodologici, che possono essere messi in pratica, appartengono a quella sezione della logica che si chiama «logica pratica», una sezione che viene spesso identificata con la metodologia, sicché Kant qui sottolinea semplicemente il fatto che i precetti che ha in mente costituiscono una metodologia genuina per il semplice fatto che possono essere messi in pratica. Inoltre questa metodologia non sarà un «organo», uno strumento di invenzione, volto all’acquisto di una conoscenza positiva, ma un modello di verità mirante a purificare la metafisica (come un catartico) dalle sue dottrine erronee. Essa quindi ha una funzione negativa, preliminare alla elaborazione di una metafisica genuina. In altri termini, essa è principalmente un criterio di valutazione, o, come vedremo in seguito, un «canone».

In realtà, per alcuni anni Kant sarà indeciso nel giudicare quale sia il modo migliore per classificare questa metodologia. Come tale, essa appartiene alla logica, e sarà alla fine definita come logica. Ma, nella misura in cui è una metodologia speciale per la metafisica, può anche essere considerata come appartenente alla metafisica in quanto preparazione ad essa. Questa definizione della logica come parte della metafisica può anche essere giustificata con il significato attribuito alla metafisica da Condillac e da d’Alembert, che la identificavano con lo studio delle facoltà conoscitive della mente umana, o con la metodologia (6)."

(1) Logik Herder, 1762-1764, AK.-Ausg. XXIV.1, p. 3.

(2) AK.-Ausg., II, pp. 310-311.

(3) AK.-Ausg., II, pp. 307-310, 312. «Disciplina» è già stata usata col significato di «scienza» nel 1762 (pp. 280-281), e ritornerà con lo stesso significato nel 1768 e nel 1770 (pp. 377, 410). «Dottrina» è già stata usata come «scienza» nel 1755 (I, p. 416). Vedi anche la Riflessione 1575 (XVI, p. 15,1766-1769?) e la Riflessione 1579 (XVI, p. 19, 1. 1-2, 1760-1770?). Una distinzione tra una «dottrina», una «disciplina» ed una «scienza» è introdotta nella Metaphysik Herder (1762-1764), XXVIII. 1, p. 156, ma non viene data nessuna spiegazione su di essa. Un’altra distinzione tra 1° critica, 2° disciplina come dottrina o istruzione (Unterweisung) e 3° scienza è presente nella Riflessione 626 (XV, pp. 271-272), ma la datazione di questa Riflessione è molto incerta (1762-1772?). La logica come organo è menzionata nella Riflessione 1567 (XVI, p. 7). Nella Riflessione 1579 (XVI, p. 18, 1. 28 - p. 19, 1. 4), la logica del senso comune (= logica naturale) viene definita come una critica, mentre la logica come scienza (= logica artificiale) è una dottrina. La prima è un catartico del senso comune, come la grammatica, la seconda è un organo. Ulteriori aggiunte alla stessa Riflessione, che contengono una distinzione tra dottrina e disciplina, hanno una datazione molto incerta. Esse suggeriscono che la logica intesa come disciplina è una critica, intesa come dottrina è un organo.

(4) La nozione psicologica platonica e aristotelica di catartico sembra che sia stata poco usata nella filosofia del diciassettesimo e diciottesimo secolo. Vedi anche il mio articolo ‘Critique’ and Related Terms Prior to Kant: A Historical Survey, in «Kant-Studien», LXIX, 2, 1978, § 2. Kant talvolta usava l’ortografia «catharcticon», che io trascriverò con «catharticon».

(5) AK.-Ausg., X, pp. 70-71.

(6) Vedi il mio articolo The Problem of the Classification of the Sciences in Kant’s Time, in «Rivista critica di storia della filosofia», XXX, 3, 1975.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Giorgio Tonelli (1928-1978): Bibliographie des écrits sur Kant e la Philosophie du XVIIIe Siècle

Bibliographie

1. Tonelli, Giorgio. 1956. "Zabarella inspirateur de Baumgarten ou l'origine de la connexion entre esthétique et logique." Revue d'Esthétique:182-192.

Traduction italienne dans: G. Tonelli, Da Leibniz a Kant. Studi sul pensiero del Settecento, Napoli: Prismi, 1987, pp. 139-146.

2. ———. 1959. "La nécessité des lois de la nature au XVIIIe siècle et chez Kant en 1762." Revue d'histoire des sciences et de leurs applications no. 12:225-241.

"II n'est pas besoin de souligner l'importance de la question des lois du mouvement aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Il ne manque d'ailleurs pas d'exposés détaillés des théories diverses qui se sont suivies, à savoir des différentes lois et « mesures » élaborées par Galilée, Descartes, Huygens, Leibniz, etc. (1). Mais ce qui manque c'est une recherche particulière sur un caractère spécial de ces différentes lois: le degré de nécessité qui leur était attribué. Cette question acquiert une importance particulière dans l'étude de la philosophie kantienne, car, on le verra, on rencontre chez Kant, dans la période précritique, un revirement soudain à propos de ce problème, revirement qui ne peut être compris en ignorant les précédents historiques de ce dernier.

Nous nous proposons donc d'ébaucher ici rapidement les positions des principaux philosophes du XVIIe siècle sur ce point, et de décrire avec plus d'exactitude l'état de la question au XVIIIe siècle, en particulier dans le cas de l'Allemagne.

Les termes du problème (que nous énonons maintenant dans la formulation qu'ils ont reue dans les écoles allemandes du XVIIe siècle) sont les suivants: quel est le degré de nécessité qu'il faut attribuer aux lois du mouvement, lois qui s'identifient d'ailleurs avec les lois générales de la nature (2) ? Tout le monde était d'accord sur le fait que ces lois étaient nécessaires par rapport à la nature: en fait, des lois contingentes ne sont pas des lois, car rien ne garantirait alors l'uniformité des opérations de la nature, ou, plus exactement, il n'y aurait pas d'uniformité de ces opérations, donc il n'y aurait pas de lois et, à proprement parler, il n'y aurait même pas de nature : le monde ne serait qu'un miracle perpétuel.

Ces lois doivent donc être nécessaires par rapport à la nature; si Dieu veut les interrompre, il s'agit d'une intervention extraordinaire, à savoir d'un miracle." (p. 225)

(1) Le meilleur exposé est peut-être encore celui qu'on rencontre chez J. K. Fischer, Geschichte der Physik.... (8 vol., 1801-1808), surtout t. II, pp. 316 sq. ; t. IV, pp. 88 sq.

(2) Voir par exemple, J. M. Verdries, Conspectus philosophiae naturalis, Gissae, 1720, pp. 8-9 : « Leges naturae sunt rationes resistentiae et motus, quibus corpora se invicem afïîciunt, et quas constanter, necessitate naturae, pro essentiali dispositione et inseparabilibus proprietatibus observant. »

3. ———. 1959. "La question des bornes de l'entendement humain au XVIIIe siècle et la genèse du criticisme kantien, particulièrement par rapport au problème de l'infini." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 65:396-427.

Traduction italienne dans: G. Tonelli, Da Leibniz a Kant. Studi sul pensiero del Settecento, Napoli: Prismi, 1987, pp. 45-78.

"Hume et Kant n'ont pas été les premiers à proclamer la nécessité d'admettre que l'esprit humain ne peut pas tout connaître, et d'imposer le respect de ses bornes: voilà ce qu'on oublie trop souvent, lorsqu'on tâche de reconstruire les origines de la philosophie kantienne. C'est bien pour cela que nous nous proposons d'ébaucher ici un tableau très sommaire de la question au temps de la formation philosophique de Kant. Si nous devions traiter à fond le thème que nous affrontons, nous nous trouverions en présence d'une tâche énorme, dont l'exécution dépasserait largement ce qui est nécessaire à une compréhension meilleure de la personnalité de Kant. En fait, il s'agirait d'abord de n'écrire rien moins que l'histoire du scepticisme, sur laquelle plusieurs ouvrages ont d'ailleurs été publiés (*); mais ceci ne serait que le commencement, car il est évident que de nombreux penseurs, qu'on ne peut d'aucune faon considérer comme des sceptiques, ont reconnu que la capacité humaine de connaître n'est pas illimitée. Il faudrait enfin parler de tous ces mystiques, qui ne tendaient à affaiblir ou à nier la valeur de la connaissance rationnelle que pour faire place à la foi ou à l'illumination intérieure. Ce que nous nous proposons de faire ici n'est donc que de décrire l'état de la question dans ses aspects les plus généraux au cours de la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle ; ce qui nous force à nous occuper d'abord rapidement de ceux, parmi les grands penseurs du XVIIe siècle, qui exeraient encore une influence importante au siècle suivant. Nous renonons donc à étudier certains pyrrhoniens très typiques du XVIIe siècle, tels que La Mothe Le Vayer, Huet, Glanville, etc. dont l'importance ne dépasse pas les bornes de leur époque. La question que nous allons traiter a naturellement plusieurs aspects différents: en fait, on peut chercher à établir l'extension des connaissances possibles dans les directions les plus divergentes, et on peut concevoir les bornes de ces connaissances d'une faon très variée. Nous nous limiterons pourtant à diviser notre thème en deux parties principales : dans la première, nous nous occuperons du problème des bornes en général ; dans la deuxième, nous exposerons plus particulièrement la question spéciale des bornes de l'esprit humain par rapport à l'infini, question qui absorbait à l'époque la plus grande partie des discussions consacrées à notre thème. Nous négligerons donc consciemment plusieurs aspects plus particuliers de la question, tels que le doute des cartésiens quant à la validité de la connaissance sensible, et les crises des notions de substance et de force; ces dernières étaient parmi les problèmes qu'on reconnaissait, au XVIIIe siècle, être les plus difficiles à résoudre pour l'homme (2). En particulier, les newtoniens modérés reconnaissaient que la force d'attraction était quelque chose de mystérieux et d'inexplicable du point de vue de la philosophie mécanique (3). De même, en théodicée, les adversaires du téléologisme déclaraient qu'il était impossible de pénétrer les desseins de la sagesse divine, et qu'il valait mieux expliquer les phénomènes au moyen des causes efficientes (4); pour ne pas mentionner les incertitudes en ce qui concerne le problème de la liberté. Nous éviterons, de même, de discuter certaines formes d'idéalisme qui présupposent, plutôt que des bornes de l'esprit humain, le fait qu'on ne peut rien connaître du monde sensible, car, en vérité, il n'y a pas de monde sensible." (pp. 396-397)

(...)

"La polémique sur les bornes des connaissances acquit en Allemagne une importance particulière du fait qu'elle devînt un des grands thèmes des disputes entre wolffiens et antiwolffîens. L'origine culturelle de l'opposition contre Wolff était sans doute théologique; mais la querelle se transposa aussitôt en métaphysique, en gardant peu de traces apparentes de son origine religieuse. Il faut d'ailleurs reconnaître que les limitations des connaissances demandées par les antiwolffiens n'eurent comme effet direct que la renonciation à discuter certains mystères religieux; pour le reste, il y avait peu de domaines où les antiwolffîens fussent résignés à l' « ignoramus »; en vérité, ils n'étaient pas beaucoup plus prudents que leurs adversaires. Cependant, l'affirmation des bornes de l'entendement entraînait une série de conséquences vis-à-vis des principes ontologiques et de la conception méthodologique de la connaissance, qui exerceront les influences les plus remarquables sur la formation philosophique de Kant. Kant lui-même ne venait à s'intéresser que peu à peu au problème des bornes de l'entendement; évidemment il avait absorbé celui-ci parmi les autres éléments de sa polémique antiwolffienne; mais la mise en termes initiale qu'il donne au problème est plutôt éclectique, pour ainsi dire cosmopolite, plutôt que typiquement antiwolffienne. Pour la suite, son attitude ne change pas: il continue à s'approprier soit des éléments tirés de l'antiwolffisme allemand, soit des éléments plus ou moins analogues aux premiers, qui lui étaient offert par l'Angleterre et par la France. Ce n'est que plus tard que, surtout sous l'influence de Locke et de Hume, le thème des bornes acquiert chez Kant l'importance centrale qu'on lui connaît, et que ce thème n'avait eu jusqu'alors que chez les empiristes anglais; mais il ne faut jamais oublier les polémiques locales de l'Allemagne du XVIIIe siècle, qui ont éveillé chez Kant un intérêt pour un monde différent, et des sympathies pour ce qu'il trouvait dans ce monde d'analogue à ces polémiques; cela devait contribuer si puissamment à former sa personnalité philosophique, en pleine réaction contre le dogmatisme et le rationalisme wolffîens." (pp. 426-427)

(*) Carl Fried. Stäudlin, Geschichte und Geist des Skeptizismus, 2 Bde, Leipzig, 1794 ; J. F. I. Tafel, Geschichte und Kritik des Skeptizismus, Tübingen, 1834 ; H. Was, Geschiedenis van hat Scepticisme, 1, England, Utrecht, 1870.

(1) Voir Stäudlin, op. cit.. 11 vol.

(2) Voir notre article Critiques of the Notion of Substance prior to Kant, à paraître dans « The Journal of the History of Ideas ».

(3) G. Tonelli, Elementi metafisici e metodologici in Kant precritico, Torino, 1959, Vol. I, cap. II, SS 28 et suiv.

(4) Ibid., Cap. II, §§12 et suiv.

4. ———. 1962. "Qu'est-ce que l'histoire de la philosophie ?" Revue philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 152:289-306.

Traduction italienne dans: G. Tonelli, Da Leibniz a Kant. Studi sul pensiero del Settecento, Napoli: Prismi, 1987, pp. 295-309.

"Il semble que ce secteur fondamentaule l'histoire de la philosophie, qui a pour objet l'étude monographiqe d'un texte en particulier ne tient pas assez compte, en général, de certaines prémisses méthodologiques essentielles à la position des problèmes historiques que tout chercheur doué de la forma mentis de l'historien devrait se poser.

Nous nous proposons d 'exposer ici d'une faon très succincte quelques perspectives fondamentales qui devraient diriger toute analyse en ce domaine. On ne vise ici, nous tenons à le faire remarquer, qu'à décrire les catégories principales d'un seul parmi les nombreux points d'approche complémentaires (ou niveaux de travail), suivant lesquels on pourrait organiser une recherche historique de ce genre." (p. 289)

5. ———. 1964. "Deux sources britanniques oubliées de la morale kantienne." In Mélanges Alexandre Koyré, publiés à l'occasion de son soixante-dixième anniversaire. Vol. II: L'aventure de l'esprit, 469-505. Paris: Hermann.

Traduction italienne dans: G. Tonelli, Da Leibniz a Kant. Studi sul pensiero del Settecento, Napoli: Prismi, 1987, pp. 249-256.

6. ———. 1973. "La philosophie allemande de Leibniz à Kant." In Histoire de la Philosophie, Tome II: De la Renaissance à la Révolution kantienne, edited by Belaval, Yvon, 728-785. Paris: Gallimard.

Encyclopédie de la Pléiade, 36.

"La période que nous allons étudier est d’habitude définie comme l’ « âge des Lumières » ( Aufklärung), mais nous tâcherons d’employer ce terme aussi peu que possible: il donne lieu à trop de controverses. L' Aufklärung, quand commence-t-elle ? Avec Thomasius, avec Wolff, ou plus tard? Et quand finit-elle? Est-ce que Kant en marque le couronnement ou la fin? Et comment séparer nettement l' Aufklärung de certaines tendances qui, tout en s’opposant manifestement à elle, appartiennent quand même à l’esprit du temps et la pénètrent parfois profondément?

Il ne nous, reste qu’à nous réfugier dans des critères chronologiques: nous nous occuperons d’abord de la philosophie thomasienne-piétiste (jusqu’en 1725-1730), ensuite du wolffîsme (jusqu’en 1750-1755), enfin de la philosophie populaire, avec sa floraison d’intérêts nouveaux, et de la néologie (jusqu’à 1780), sans pourtant négliger les groupes d’opposition, ou les isolés de marque. Nous ne pourrons toutefois étudier le Sturm und Drang (1770-1780), car son épanouissement, aussi violent qu’éphémère, ne trouve son sens et ne pénètre en profondeur qu’à l’époque suivante; de même, il nous faudra négliger, complètement ou en partie, des personnalités remarquables, telles que Platner, Lichtenberg, Jacobi, Herder, Pestalozzi, qui ne donneront que plus tard le meilleur de leur œuvre." (p. 728)

"La période précritique de Kant.

Si Immanuel Kant était mort avant 1781, nous ne devrions consacrer ici que quelques lignes à son œuvre philosophique. Mais sa grandeur future demande un examen sommaire des ouvrages de sa période précritique, indispensable pour comprendre la formation du criticisme.

Fils d’un artisan, Kant ne put continuer ses études que grâce à des bourses gagnées par ses mérites, et par des sacrifices assez durs. Issu d’une famille piétiste, Kant fut éduqué au lycée Fridericianum, imbu de l’esprit piétiste. Cela a suggéré aux historiens beaucoup de spéculations sur des composantes « piétistes » de la pensée kantienne; en fait, on n’en trouve trace ni dans sa morale, ni dans sa philosophie de la religion; nous verrons plus loin ce que cela peut signifier.

Il est essentiel de se rendre compte de l’état de l’université de Königsberg à cette époque. Les piétistes étaient parvenus à dominer les universités de l’Allemagne protestante autour de 1710; mais les aristotéliciens avaient résisté à Königsberg, à Wittenberg et à Rostock. À Königsberg, piétistes et wolffiens représentaient une sorte d’opposition extra-universitaire: ce n’est qu’en réunissant leurs forces, et avec l’aide de Frédéric-Guillaume Ier, qu’ils purent s’emparer, en 1725, du pouvoir académique. Mais leur alliance fut éphémère. Les piétistes avaient à peine gagné la partie qu’ils se retournèrent contre leurs alliés wolffiens: aucun wolffien orthodoxe ne fut toléré dans l’université, aucun wolffien, même modéré, ne reut jamais un poste de titulaire. Toutefois le roi, voulant maintenir la paix entre les deux partis, encore menacés par les vieux aristotéliciens, envoya à Königsberg le théologien Fr. Alb. Schultz, piétiste qui avait reu une formation wolffienne: nommé d’abord directeur du Fridericianum, Schultz devint, en 1732, recteur de l’université, qu’il domina presque sans interruption jusqu’à sa mort. Mais ses sympathies pour les wolffiens étaient en fait assez tièdes: il les toléra sans les aider.

Donc la situation de l’université de Königsberg pendant les études de Kant, et par la suite, est assez claire: elle était dominée par des piétistes, qui avaient abandonné la philosophie thomasienne piétiste au cours de leur alliance avec les wolffiens; le wolffisme orthodoxe était officiellement condamné; des wolffiens non orthodoxes, tel M. Knutzen, n’étaient que tolérés. L’influence de Knutzen sur Kant, d’ailleurs, a été exagérée; elle a laissé bien peu de traces; Knutzen lui-même n’était certainement qu’un philosophe médiocre.

Le milieu de Königsberg suggérait donc surtout un éclectisme antiwolffien indéterminé, nécessairement ouvert à la possibilité d’influences nouvelles: et voilà, autour de 1745, l’épanouissement de l’Académie de Berlin, avec son newtonianisme, et l’affirmation de la philosophie de Crusius, l’antidote par excellence contre le wolffisme. C’est de Maupertuis et de Crusius que Kant va se nourrir dès ses débuts: son « wolffisme » de jeunesse est un mythe qu’il est temps de détruire. Et son « piétisme » se réduit au fond à ses sympathies pour la philosophie crusienne, dernière expression importante de l’école de Thomasius.

Kant s’intéressa d’abord à des problèmes de philosophie naturelle, mais son approche révèle des intérêts métaphysiques très prononcés. Son livre Sur la véritable estimation des forces vives (1747) est l’une des premières démarches pour introduire l’attractionnisme newtonien en Allemagne, et la première tentative de lui donner une fondation métaphysique d’origine leibnizienne. L’esprit antiwolffien de cet ouvrage n’est que trop clair: les éléments leibniziens qu’il contient étaient assez largement acceptés à l’époque, et n’étaient nullement une marque de wolffianisme. Il en sera de même des autres éléments « wolffiens » que nous trouverons chez Kant.

L' Histoire naturelle et théorie générale de l'univers de 1755, avec les travaux mineurs publiés dans le même temps, sont surtout un plaidoyer pour la conception mécanique de l’univers matériel, à la suite de Maupertuis, et contre cette physicothéologie que Wolff avait dû accepter. L’attractionnisme est accentué davantage; mais il est accompagné d’une cosmogonie qui reste fidèle au mécanisme cartésien, que Newton n’aurait jamais acceptée.

La Nova Dilucidatio (1755), dissertation peu originale, révèle une influence crusienne très remarquable. Dans sa Monadologia physica (1756), Kant adopte des positions assez analogues à celles de Boscovich: une fois de plus, c’est une conciliation entre Newton et Leibniz. Dans ses Considérations sur l’optimisme (1759) Kant défend — en éclectique — une position wolffienne, acceptée d’ailleurs par plusieurs non-wolffiens, et qu’il abandonnera bientôt.

Dans sa Démonstration de l’existence de Dieu (1762), Kant nous donne pour la première fois une contribution assez intéressante à l’ontologie, contribution qui ne restera pas sans suite dans son développement ultérieur. Nous ne voulons que mentionner une thèse capitale de cet ouvrage : la nécessité absolue des lois du mouvement. C’est, au fond, du spinozisme: mais Bernoulli et d’Alembert avaient soutenu la même position.

Kant a montré jusqu’ici un intérêt particulier pour la métaphysique ou pour la philosophie naturelle. L’année 1762 marque un tournant capital: l’ouvrage sur les Fondements de la théologie naturelle et de la morale est surtout méthodologique; et l’influence de Crusius est plus forte que jamais.

Les Observations sur le sentiment du beau et du sublime (1764) et le Programme (1765) vont encore plus loin: Kant, en dépit de toute méfiance souvent exprimée contre elle, est bien proche de la « philosophie populaire »: descriptions anthropologiques, démonstrations in concreto; c’est par ce moyen qu’il espère réformer la métaphysique traditionnelle. C'est un programme déclaré, d’ailleurs, depuis 1762: mais les moyens méthodologiques de la réforme sont maintenant plus à la page; la rupture avec la forme d’esprit dominante est définitive. De plus, l’influence des Anglais et de Rousseau devient capitales: elle sera désormais à la base de la morale et de l’esthétique de Kant.

Voilà l’esprit qui dicte, en 1766, les Rêves d’un voyant, dirigés contre Swedenborg aussi bien que contre Wolff: les rêves d’un voyant (Swedenborg) ne valent guère plus que les rêves d’un métaphysicien (Wolff): c’est la crise de la notion de causalité, et de la métaphysique classique en général.

L’article sur les Régions de l’espace, de 1768, ne doit pas nous tromper: c’est une autre application, bien qu’éphémère, de la méthode in concreto.

La Dissertatio de 1770 (avec les Réflexions qui la précèdent et qui la suivent) marquera la fin de cet état d’esprit, tout en étant sa conséquence: mais nous voilà au seuil de la philosophie « critique ». Kant revient aux spéculations abstraites, mais elles seront dictées en grande partie par les expériences des années précédentes." (pp. 772-775)

7. ———. 1974. "Introduction. Bibliographie et histoire du texte." In Pierre Louis Maupertuis, Oeuvres, I, V-LXXXIII. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

8. ———. 1975. "Maupertuis et la critique de la métaphysique." In Actes de la Journée Maupertuis. Créteil, 1-12-1973, 79-90. Paris: Vrin.

Repris dans La pensée philosophique de Maupertuis. Son milieu et ses sources (1987), pp. 8-16.

"Maupertuis est, d’abord, un philosophe de la nature: nous voulons donc commencer par l’examen de sa conception métaphysique de ce monde extérieur, a l’étude duquel il a consacré la plus grande partie de sa vie. Cela nous réserve quelques surprises: ce naturaliste est, en fait, un ultraphénoméniste. La réduction des qualités primaires aux qualités secondaires est complète. La dureté, l’étendue, n’appartiennent pas aux objets pas plus que l’odeur, le son et le goût. L’étendue n’a que la prérogative d’être perue par deux sens différents, le toucher et la vue; prérogative illusoire: “L’étendue, comme ces autres, n’est qu’une perception de mon âme transportée à un objet extérieur, sans qu’il y ait dans l’objet rien qui puisse rassembler à ce que mon âme apperoit”. D’ailleurs, les idées de la durée et de l’étendue ne sont pas “plus distinctes” que celles des autres qualités, et elles sont perues de la même faon; elles n’ont donc pas plus de “réalité” que celles-ci: dans le monde extérieur, tous les “objets ne sont que de simples phénomènes” (1). Maupertuis se réfère explicitement à Berkeley sur ce point. En admettant cela, on “anéantit toute distinction qu’on voudroit faire entre deux manières d’exister, l’une dans l’esprit, l’autre au dehors” (2). Mais procédons par degrés, et considérons d’abord que “des êtres inconnus excitent dans notre âme tous les sentiments, toutes les perceptions qu'elle éprouve; & sans ressembler à aucune des choses que nous appercevons, nous les représentent toutes” (3). Les objets extérieurs nous sont donc complètement inconnus en eux-mêmes; pourtant, il y a peut-être des objets extérieurs. Lesquels? On peut supposer tout au plus que “Le choc de quelques corps peut bien en être la cause ou l’occasion [des sentiments]” (qu’on remarque l’expression “occasion”); mais le choc est un mouvement: et “comment une perception rassembleroit-elle à un mouvement?” (4)." (pp. 8-9)

(1) Œuvres , Lyon 1768, II, 230-234 ( Lettres 1752). Voir aussi, œuvres, I, 273, 281-282 ( Réflexions philosophiques sur l'origine des langues, 1748).

2) Œuvres, I, 298 ( Réponse à Boindin, 1756).

3) Œuvres, II, 234 ( Lettres, 1752).

4) Œuvres, II, 228-229 ( Lettres, 1752).

9. ———. 1987. La pensée philosophique de Maupertuis. Son milieu et ses sources. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Édition posthume par Claudio Cesa.

Table des matières: Préface 1; Introduction 3; Première partie. La vie et l’oeuvre: I. La vie 6; II. La critique de la métaphysique 8; III. L’existence de Dieu 16; IV. Origine et valeur de la connaissance 25; V. La méthode de la connaissance 34; VI. La philosophie naturelle 44; VII. La morale 50; VIII. La religion de Maupertuis 54; Deuxième partie. La place de Maupertuis dans l’histoire de la pensée et les sources de ses doctrines: IX. Maupertuis et les grands philosophes du passé 57; X. Quelques nouvelles perspectives historiques de la pensée maupertuisienne 63; XI. Les sources des doctrines particulières 90; XII. Origine et méthode de la connaissance 131-144.

"Au moment de sa mort (28. 4. 1978) Giorgio Tonelli ne travaillait plus depuis quatre ans au volume sur Maupertuis. Cela ne signifiait pas qu’il avait abandonné définitivement l’espoir de le terminer ou qu’il ne s’intéressait plus au sujet. Au contraire il revenait souvent à l’idée d’écrire une histoire du scepticisme au XVIIIème siècle. Il en avait du reste donné d’avance deux chapitres sous forme d’articles consacrés à P.-J. Changeux (1974) et à D’Alembert (1976).

Il avait été attiré par Maupertuis une dizaine d’années auparavant, à l’occasion d’une réimpression anastatique — due à ses soins — des œuvres dans l’édition de Lyon 1768 (G. Olms Verlag, Hildesheim— New York, 4 tomes, 1964—1975). Il avait songé d’abord à écrire une introduction philosophique comme celle qu’il avait rédigée pour Die philosophischen Hauptwerke de Ch. A. Crusius; mais son texte finit par prendre les dimensions d’un volume. Il décida alors de se borner pour l’Introduction du premier tome des œuvres à une histoire du texte et à une bibliographie, en se réservant d’achever son ouvrage sur la pensée philosophique de Maupertuis en des temps meilleurs. Ces temps meilleurs n’arrivèrent jamais. Il fit lui-même publier seulement quelques dizaines de pages de son manuscrit sous forme d’articles: Maupertuis et la critique de la métaphysique, dans Actes de la journée Maupertuis — Créteil 1. XII. 1973 (Paris, Vrin, 1975, pp. 79—90); Themiseul de Saint Hyacynthe. A smailing sceptic et The scepticism of Franois Quesnay, dans "International Studies in Philosophy”, 1978 (X), pp. 163-166 et 1979 (XI), pp. 77-89 respectivement (le dernier en partie remanié et augmenté par rapport à l’état du manuscrit que nous publions).

Le volume que nous présentons maintenant au public n’est pas terminé. Il manque au dernier chapitre la conclusion, qui, d’après une note manuscrite, aurait dû traiter des réflexions de Maupertuis sur l’innéisme. Un autre chapitre, qui aurait dû traiter des polémiques de Maupertuis avec Wolff et son école, manque complètement. Le reste était prêt, avec son apparat de notes complet, mis à jour pour l'année 1970 à peu près.

L’auteur avait fait dactylographier la première partie, qui correspond aux chapitres 1—8; la deuxième partie, plus étendue, est restée manuscrite et je l’ai dactylographiée moi-même. Je prends sur moi toute la responsabilité des erreurs et malentendus éventuels. Une mise à jour bibliographique serait tombée tout à fait mal à propos, à cause, entre autre, de la manière très personnelle de travailler de Giorgio Tonelli.

Je remercie Madame Grazia Olivieri Tonelli, qui, en me confiant le manuscrit, a bien voulu honorer une amitié de plus de trente ans, née entre Giorgio et moi dès les années de l’université; je remercie Pierre Quillet, vieil ami de Gioigio, qui a bien voulu relire les épreuves; et je remercie aussi l’éditeur Georg Olms, qui a accueilli le volume dans une collection que Giorgio Tonelli avait fondée et dirigée pendant plusieurs années." (Préface de Claudio Cesa, p. 1)

"En 1752 Maupertuis recueillait pour la première fois une partie de ses ouvrages dans un volume intitulé œuvres. En 1753 paraissaient ses œuvres en deux volumes, et en 1756 en quatre volumes. Cette édition était réimprimée en 1768, après la mort de l’auteur. Maupertuis mourut de la tuberculose à l’âge de 60 ans et dix mois, en 1759; en 1756 sa santé était précaire, telle qu’elle l’avait été depuis longtemps, mais rien ne nous fait penser qu'il considérât sa fin comme imminente. Ses intérêts philosophiques étaient encore bien vivants: en 1756 il avait écrit un Mémoire sur la preuve de l’existence de Dieu (qui parut en 1758, et qui ne fut donc inclus ni dans l’édition des œuvres de 1756, ni dans sa réimpression de 1768); encore en 1756, il avait fait annoncer par l’Académie de Berlin un concours pour l’année 1758, dont le thème était philosophique. Notre auteur avait sans doute l’intention de développer dans d’autres ouvrages ses idées philosophiques, biologiques, etc., et il aurait réuni par la suite ces ouvrages dans des éditions ultérieurement élargies des œuvres, y incluant le Mémoire de 1756. La mort l’en a empêché. Nous devrons donc considérer l’édition de 1756 (avec l’addition du Mémoire de 1756) comme définitive, par rapport à l’état de la pensée de Maupertuis à la fin de sa vie.

Cette édition n’est certainement pas complète. Elle représente surtout le tableau que Maupertuis, en ce moment là, voulait donner de son œuvre: un tableau décidément influencé par des événements qui avaient modifié assez profondément son attitude dans une direction bien facile à établir.

Ayant débuté comme “géomètre”, Maupertuis fut nommé en 1746 président de l’Académie des Sciences et Belles Lettres de Berlin, la seule qui eut, en ce temps-là, une classe de philosophie. Cette classe avait été établie au cours de la réorganisation de l’Académie, voulue par Frédéric II de concert avec Maupertuis, qui entre 1740 et 1746 séjourna fréquemment a Berlin.

Maupertuis se trouva donc à la tête d’une Académie particulièrement “philosophique” - soit qu’il ait désiré lui-même de lui donner ce caractère, soit qu’il ait cédé au désir du monarque. Le président d’une telle Académie devait donc être un philosophe lui-même. Maupertuis se trouva dès lors obligé de développer ses talents philosophiques. A cela il faut ajouter le fait que, se trouvant alors dans un pays, l’Allemagne, profondément consacré à la philosophie spéculative, surtout wolffienne, notre auteur dut élargir le domaine de sa mission intellectuelle en élaborant des doctrines d’une importance plus générale, dans le but d’éclairer une nation qui, de son point de vue, était encore plongée dans une sorte de barbarie métaphysique.

Nous ne devrons donc pas nous étonner si, dans ses œuvres, Maupertuis renona à réimprimer quelques travaux purement scientifiques qui, tout en étant bien importants, auraient alourdi le recueil, et dilué sa signification “philosophique”. Ce n’est pas que Maupertuis ait renié son illustre passé de savant, qui est d’ailleurs assez représenté dans les œuvres: mais son but est surtout de donner une image de lui-même qui soit conforme à sa fonction de président de l’Académie de Berlin.

Eh bien, en dépit de ce que ses contemporains — et surtout Voltaire — en ont dit, Maupertuis, en tant que philosophe, a une valeur incontestable: soit par rapport à l’Age des Lumières en France, soit — et surtout - par rapport à son influence en Allemagne. Entre autres choses, il exera sur la période précritique de Kant une influence qui, à notre avis n’a pas été assez remarquée.

Sa personnalité philosophique, si contestée, ne manque point de traits saillants: nous en étudierons plusieurs par la suite. Pour l’instant, nous insisterons sur un élément qui nous paraît fondamental. Maupertuis philosophe a été surtout accusé d’ambiguités, d’incertitudes, bref, d’un développement trop dynamique, et trop désordonné, pour être cohérent. Mais nous ne sommes pas de cet avis. Au contraire, nous croyons, et nous nous» efforcerons de démontrer, que sa pensée, en général, présente des caractères systématiques constants, qui dominent tout a fait sur une évolution qui, tout en étant incontestable, ne représente qu’un facteur secondaire. L’illusion d’un Maupertuis philosophe “incohérent” dépend surtout, à notre avis, de sa personnalité de savant; celle-ci impose à ses doctrines philosophiques une méthodologie qui donne lieu à des malentendus. En fait, Maupertuis échelonne une hiérarchie d’hypothèses qu’il ne faut pas hypostasier en tant que doctrines métaphysiques arrêtées. ’ Il part dans une certaine direction possible (tout en tenant compte des autres possibilités), en épuisé les développements, et se replie souvent, par un processus familier aux savants, sur un autre direction qui lui paraît promettre des meilleurs résultats. Tout en ne-reniant- pas la possibilité abstraite des directions écartées, aussitôt qu’il s’est rendu compte qu’elles ne sont que des culs-de sac, ou qu’elles ne sont pas suffisamment établies, il poursuit une voie differente. Il ne s’agit donc pas tellement de revirements et de révisions, il s’agit plutôt de l’esprit méthodologique d’un homme de science, qui croit de son devoir d’explorer à fond les voies différentes, avant de se décider à en poursuivre une. Voilà, croyons — nous le secret des “repentirs” de sa pensée, qui au fond n’en sont pas. D’après un plan assez précisément arrêté, probablement à partir du début, il développe des thèses différentes, pour parvenir à la fin à des conclusions qui, tout en n’étant que probables, constituent pourtant un système harmonique qui mérite une place d’honneur dans son époque.

Mais parfois Maupertuis ne croit pas pouvoir se décider entre plusieurs alternatives hypothétiques: en ce cas il poursuit l’une ou l’autre, d’après ce que les circonstances lui suggèrent; souvent, il en poursuit plusieurs en même temps. Les contrastes qui en résultent ne sont en général qu’apparents: comme chacune des alternatives n’est qu’une conjecture, il est parfaitement licite de développer des conjectures inconciliables entre elles, pour en déceler les implications, dans le but d’en évaluer la probabilité relative. Ceci est, encore une fois, un processus qui est familier aux savants.

Par dessus le marché, nous nous rendrons bientôt compte du fait que Maupertuis, en tant que philosophe, est un “sceptique académique” parfait; et la stratégie philosophique que nous venons de décrire est bien typique de l’école sceptique.

Il serait bien difficile de décider si le scepticisme de Maupertuis n’est qu’une conséquence de son esprit scientifique, ou si les deux se sont développés ensemble. Du point de vue de la chronologie des œuvres, Maupertuis philosophe est sans doute postérieur à Maupertuis savant. Mais il nous reste à considérer l’influence des philosophes sceptiques de l’époque sur la formation de la méthodologie scientifique maupertuisienne: notre auteur connaissait sans doute l’oeuvre de Bayle, et nous verrons que les doctrines de Quesnay présentent des analogies profondes et frappantes avec celles de Maupertuis. Il se peut donc que l’origine de l’esprit de la philosophie maupertuisienne soit pour le moins autant philosophique que scientifique. Malheureusement, nous n’avons aucun élément qui nous permette d’établir l’époque, et la portée, de ces influences. Par dessus le marché, le fait que Maupertuis ait connu — à quelque époque que ce soit — l’oeuvre de Quesnay n’est qu’une conjecture très probable.

A la rigueur, dans une perspective historique plus vaste, ce problème devient si compliqué, qu’il serait absurde de vouloir le résoudre d’une faon tranchante. Au cours des dernières décennies on s’est de plus en plus rendu compte du fait que l’école sceptique, des le début du XVIIe siècle, a contribué puissamment à la naissance de l’esprit scientifique “moderne”, et qu’en même temps les succès tangibles remportes dans les sciences naturelles par ceux qui étaient animés par cette forma mentis a joué un rôle important dans l’affermissement ultérieur de la philosophie sceptique. Nous sommes donc en présence d’un phénomène d’interaction, si non d’identification, de deux méthodes, l’une philosophique, l’autre scientifique: il sera probablement impossible d’évaluer exactement la contribution respective des deux facteurs à l’évolution des idées en question, prises dans leur ensemble. Cette incertitude ne fait que compliquer ultérieurement le problème par rapport à Maupertuis: et il n’est pas raisonnable de se poser des problèmes que l’on doit considérer comme insolubles. Nous voulons nous consacrer ici, nous le répétons, a l’étude de la pensée-philosophique de Maupertuis, si intéressante et si négligée. Maupertuis savant a été largement étudié dans la monographie classique de Brunet, et les recherches successives ont ajouté bien peu au tableau qu’il en a donné sauf pour ce qui concerne les études de Guéroult sur les lois du mouvement, et de Roger pour la biologie. Nous ne sommes d’ailleurs pas compétents pour approfondir ces problèmes. Mais Brunet s’est contenté de traiter d’une faon sommaire, parfois bien superficielle et naïve, la pensée philosophique de son auteur: et Guéroult et Roger n’ont approfondi que des problèmes particuliers. Notre contribution sera donc centrée sur cet aspect de la pensée maupertuisienne." ( Introduction, pp. 3-5)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Giorgio Tonelli (1928-1978): Bibliographie der Schriften von Kant und die Philosophie des XVIII. Jahrhunderts

Bibliographie

1. Tonelli, Giorgio. 1957. "Von den verschiedenen Bedeutungen des Wortes Zweckmäßigkeit in der Kritik der Urteilskraft." Kant-Studien no. 49:154-166.

"Vorwort. Der Begriff „Zweckmäßigkeit" ist bekanntlich unter den wichtigsten, aber auch den schwersten der Kritik der Urteilskraft (1), da seine verschiedenen speziellen Bedeutungen im Laufe des Vortrages nicht beständig gehalten werden. Verschiedene Versuche sind in der Vergangenheit gemacht worden, um ihren Gebrauch zu einem kohärenten allgemeinen Schema zurückzuführen. Aber auch der letzte und ernstere, der Versuch Marc-Wogaus (2), gerät aus der Abstraktheit seiner historischen Einstellung in manche Ungereimtheiten und Dunkelheiten. Es ist von uns schon anderswo dargestellt worden (3), wie der Text der Kritik der Urteilskraft eine schwierige und kontrastreiche Entstehung gehabt habe, wie die verschiedenen Änderungen des allgemeinen Entwurfes im Laufe der Redaktion es zeigen —; Änderungen, deren tiefe Spuren in der Terminologie und in der eigentlichen Struktur des Werkes geblieben sind. Es ist also ein nicht nur unhistorischer, sondern auch nutzloser Versuch, eine künstliche Zusammenstimmung zu schaffen, wo wir es mit Lehren, die in verschiedenen Zeiten und unter verschiedenen Standpunkten entstanden sind, zu tun haben; Die einzige annehmbare Weise, die Frage anzugehen, ist eine Geschichte der Entwicklung der verschiedenen Begriffe und der Termini, in denen sie ausgedrückt weiden, zu entwerfen, wobei das Hauptproblem nicht die Zusammenstimmung, sondern die Entwicklung ist.

Wir werden diesen Versuch für den Terminus Zweckmäßigkeit unternehmen, und zwar mit Beschränkung auf die rein terminologische Fragestellung. Anderswo hoffen wir eine historische Interpretation dieser philologisch bestimmten data anbieten zu können (4).

Die Reihenfolge der Redaktion der verschiedenen Teile der Kritik der Urteilskraft ist, wie wir früher dargelegt haben (5), die folgende gewesen: 1) Analytik des Schönen; 2) Deduktion der reinen ästhetischen Urteile; 3) Dialektik der ästhetischen Urteilskraft; 4) Erste Einleitung; 5) Analytik des Erhabenen; 6) Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft; 7) [Zweite] Einleitung und Vorrede. Wir werden also in unserer Analyse dieser Ordnung folgen." (ss. 154-155)

(..)

"IX. Schlußwort. Versuchen wir jetzt, die entstandenen Schemata kurz au vergleichen, um besser die einzelnen Änderungen zu bemerken. Im I. und II. Schema findet man die subjektive, formale Zweckmäßigkeit ohne Zweck nur im Sinne der Schönheit; im III, Schema erscheint neu die Zweckmäßigkeit der empirischen Naturgesetze, formale, logische Zweckmäßigkeit genannt, während die Naturschönheit zur realen, absoluten Zweckmäßigkeit zu gehören scheint. Im IV., V. und VI. Schema ist die Schönheit subjektive, formale Zweckmäßigkeit-, als solche wird, sie im V. mit der Zweckmäßig¬keit der empirischen Gesetze zusammengelegt, nur wird sie im VI. als innere Zweckmäßigkeit von der äußeren des neuentstandenen Erhabenen unterschieden; und beide werden als a priori im betreffenden Urteile von der anderen subjektiven Zweckmäßigkeit, der Annehmlichkeit, unterschie¬den. Die letztere ist gegenüber der ersteren als nicht bloß formal im VII. Schema bestimmt, das übrigens mit dem VI. übereinstimmt, van der bei¬gefügten Benennung „ästhetische Zweckmäßigkeit“ und von der Auslas-sung der Termini innere und äußere zur Unterscheidung von Schönheit und Erhabenheit abgesehen. Das Erhabene wird in den Schemata VIII und IX noch nicht berücksichtigt, wo die Schönheit als subjektive Zweckmäßig¬keit sich noch mit der Zweckmäßigkeit der empirischen Gesetze zusam¬menfindet.

Die objektive Zweckmäßigkeit (auch „Materie des nexus finalis") ist im I. Schema etwas ziemlich Unbestimmtes. Tatsächlich vermag ihre Dichotomie als Nützlichkeit und Vollkommenheit solche Termini nicht völlig klarzumachen. Nur aus den Zusammenhängen, die uns Kant in seiner Schrift über den Gebrauch ... darbietet, können wir annehmen, daß Vollkommenheit dort schon mit dem Organismus zu tun hatte; der Text aber erwähnt nur die Produkte der menschlichen Kunst (in der anhängen¬den Schönheit), und früher, in der Analytik des Schönen, war der Ter¬minus Vollkommenheit nur auf die moralische Güte eines Gegen¬standes bezogen. Auch das Wort Nützlichkeit wird nicht klar entweder auf das menschliche Tun .und Lassen oder möglicherweise auf eine äußere Naturzweckmäßigkeit bezogen. Das Schema II nennt entschieden solche Zweckmäßigkeit material, aber nur die anhängende Schönheit betreffend. Im III. Schema scheint der Organismus mit der Naturschönheit als reale, absolute Zweckmäßigkeit zusammengestellt zu werden, und real wird er auch im V. genannt. Vom IV. Schema ab betrifft die objektive Zweck¬mäßigkeit grundsätzlich den Organismus, aber im VI. und VIII. wird sie als innere bzw, Vollkommenheit von der äußeren bzw. Nützlichkeit (im VI. relativ genannt) unterschieden. Im VIII. Schema wird sie als material von der empirischen der menschlichen Kunst wie von dem neuen Begriff der intellektuellen bloß formalen Zweckmäßigkeit der geometrischen Fi¬guren unterschieden. In dem IV. und IX. Schema kommt sie als Zweck¬mäßigkeit der Form eines Gegenstandes vor, und material wird sie in den Schemata [I], II und VIII genannt. Im VIII. und IX. Schema erscheint die Moralität als eine besondere Art Zweckmäßigkeit bzw. als innere Be¬stimmung des Menschen.

Wenn wir nun unsere Ergebnisse mit den A- und B-Schemata, die von Marc-Wogau (S. 71 des zitierten Buches) angegeben werden, vergleichen, so -erhellt, daß beide aus einer artifiziellen Verallgemeinerung entstanden sind, die keiner wirklichen Stufe des Kantischen Denkens entspricht. (Man konnte vielleicht das Schema B als eine unpräzise Vereinfachung unseres VI. Schemas betrachten.) Was das Schema A betrifft, ist zu bemerken, I. daß die Zweckmäßigkeit der geometrischen Figuren vor allem ob¬jektiv ist, als der subjektiven Zweckmäßigkeit entgegengesetzt; 2. daß die Annehmlichkeit vor allem subjektiv oder ästhetisch ist, als der objektiven Zweckmäßigkeit entgegengesetzt; 3. daß das moralisch Gute als absichtlich, bzw. als innere Bestimmung des Menschen gar keine objek¬tive, reale Zweckmäßigkeit ist, da es nicht, auch nicht hypothetisch, em¬pirisch verifizierbar ist; daß das relativ Gute, nämlich das Nützliche des menschlichen Wirkens, nicht praktisch, sondern bloß technisch ist

Trotzdem können einige der von Marc-Wogau klargestellten Unter¬scheidungen als eine nützliche Vervollständigung unserer Ergebnisse be¬trachtet werden. Schließlich wollen wir noch einmal empfehlen, keine willkürlichen allgemeinen Schemata zu bilden, sondern jede Stelle aus dem näheren Zusammenhang zu interpretieren. Künstliche allgemeine Schemata entsprechen nur einer ungerechtfertigten Rationalisierung -und nicht den Absichten Kants; sie ändern die wirkliche Ordnung der Begriffe, sie in einen einzigen Zusammenhang zwingend und schwere Verwirrungen in den Beziehungen zwischen Allgemeinerem und Besonderem verursachend; und wenn man solche Schemata zur Interpretation des Textes anwendet, so wird der Sinn dadurch verstellt, daß man schon anfangs einige Be¬ziehungen zu Begriffen setzt, die wirklich erst später in der Entwicklung des Textes entstehen; und vice versa.“ (ss. 165-166)

(1) Die Kritik der Urteilskraft wird aus der (Ist) Originalausgabe zitiert. Die Erste Einleitung aus der Ausgabe Lehmanns im XX. Band der Preußischen Akademie Ausgabe. Die übrigen Werke Kants aus der Preußischen Akademie Ausgabe, wenn andere Angaben fehlen.

(2) S. K. Marc-Wogau, Vier Studien zu Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft, Uppsala-Leipzig, 1938, wo (S. 69, Anm.) die vorhergehenden Versuche zitiert werden.

(3) In unserem Aufsatze: La formazione del testo della Kritik der Urteilskraft. Revue Internationale de Philosophie, Bruxelles, Okt. 1954.

(4) In einer Monographie, die wir über die Kritik der Urteilskraft vorbereiten.

(5) Vgl. La formazione del testo della Kritik der Urteilskraft.

2. ———. 1959. "Der Streit über die mathematische Methode in der Philosophie in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrunderts und die Entstehung von Kants Schrift über die Deutlichkeit." Archiv für Philosophie no. 9:37-66.

Italienisch Übersetzung: G. Tonelli, Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, Napoli: Prismi, 1987, ss. 81-107.

3. ———. 1962. "Der historische Ursprung der kantischen Termini "Analytik" und "Dialektik"." Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte no. 7:120-139.

"Bekanntlich sind zwei Hauptteile der „Kritik der reinen Vernunft“ mit „transzendentale Analytik“ und „transzendentale Dialektik“ überschrie¬ben. Die Termini Analytik und Dialektik sind selbstverständlich keine Neologismen. Jedoch hat noch niemand bisher untersucht, aus welcher Tradition Kant hier geschöpft hat, und immerhin könnte man annehmen, daß er diese Ausdrücke willkürlich der älteren Philosophie entnommen und ihnen eine neue Bedeutung beigelegt hätte. Im folgenden werden wir dagegen zeigen, daß beide Termini und ihr spezifischer Gebrauch bei Kant aus der deutschen Tradition des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts stammen. Kant hat sie freilich mit einer neuen Bedeutung erfüllt, blieb dabei aber ganz im Rahmen einer heimischen Überlieferung.

Eine zusammenfassende Übersicht über die Entwicklung der beiden fraglichen Termini wird unsere kurze Untersuchung einleiten (1)." (s. 120)

(...)

“III. Die Einteilung der Kritik der reinen Vernunft in Transzendentale Analytik und Transzendentale Dialektik ist zweifellos nach dem Vorgang von Darjes vorgenommen worden. Kant kannte die Darjes’sche Philoso¬phie sehr gut, er hatte sich mit ihr mehrfach auseinandergesetzt und stand in einigen Einzelheiten unter dem Einfluß von Darjes und seiner Schule (104).

Der Inhalt der kantischen transzendentalen Analytik und Dialektik ist deutlich ein ganz anderer als der der gleichnamigen Teile der aristote¬lischen Handbücher; doch der hypothetische und antithetische Charakter der transzendentalen Dialektik entspricht wohl dem Begriffe der logica probabilium bzw. disputatrix. Diese Analogie dürfte Kant bewogen haben, den aristotelischen Terminus zu übernehmen. Der Stand der Philosophie¬geschichtsschreibung zu seiner Zeit läßt uns mit Gewißheit annehmen, daß Kant dabei den Terminus Dialektik völlig bewußt der aristotelischen Tradition gemäß verwendet und nicht im Sinn der platonisch-ramistischen. — Mit dem Terminus Analytik konnte er schon deshalb direkt an Aristo¬teles anknüpfen; da dieser Ausdruck ohnehin allein im aristotelischen Sinn im Gebrauch war.

Kant hat in seinem Streben, für seine neuen philosophischen Begriffe passende Termini zu finden, die geeignet wären, diese von den wolffischen und anderen zu seiner Zeit geläufigen scharf zu differenzieren, auch in anderen Fällen mehrmals auf die ältere aristotelische Tradition in Deutsch¬land zurückgegriffen: seine Übernahme des Terminus Kategorie bietet ein weiteres Beispiel dafür (105). Diese seine Terminologie vereinigt in sich die Vorteile, zu Kants Zeit nicht allzu gewöhnlich zu sein und dabei doch durch eine glänzende Vergangenheit zugleich geadelt und allgemeinverständlich geworden zu sein. Der Unterschied der kantischen Begriffe von ihren ari¬stotelischen Entsprechungen war dabei auffallend genug, daß eine Gefahr der Verwechslung nicht bestand.“ (s. 139)

(1) Vgl. im allg. G. Capone Braga, Della Dialettica, „Giornale di Metafisica“ IX, 1954; G. Losacco, Storia della dialettica I (bei den Griechen), Firenze 1922; N. Abbagnano, E. Paci, C. A. Viano, E. Garin, P. Chiodi, P. Rossi, N. Bobbio, Studi Sulla dialettica, Torino 1958; L. Sichirollo, Aristotelica, Urbino 1961, „Recenti ricerche sulla dialettica aristotelica“; für weitere Hinweise, s. Materialien zur Begriffsgeschichte, „Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte“, Bd. 5, 1960, siehe Artikel „Dialektik“.

(104) Siehe G. Tonelli, Elementi metafisici e metodologici in Kant (1745-1768), Vol. I, Torino 1959, passim und: A crisis in the Notion of Substance in the XVIII Century, „Tijdschrift voor Philosophie“, 1961, XXIII.

(105) Siehe G. Tonelli, La tradizione delle categorie aristoteliche nella filosofia moderna sino a Kant, „Studi Urbinati“, 1958, XXXII.

4. ———. 1963. "Die Umwälzung von 1769 bei Kant." Kant Studien no. 54:369-375.

"Es ist hier unsere Absicht, die von uns schon einmal vorgetragene Erklärungshypothese zur Umwälzung der Kantischen Philosophie im Jahre 1769 weiterzubilden und zu berichtigen. Diese Hypothese wurde in ihrer ersten Form in unserem Band Kant dall'estetica metafisica all'estetica pslcoempirica (Torino, 1955, „Memorie della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, Serie 3a, Tomo 3, Parte II") dargestellt; sie soll in einem weiteren und fast vollendeten Werk über die Entstehung der Kritik der reinen Vernunft ihre endgültige Gestalt erreichen. Diese historische Erklärung und Interpretation gründet sich sowohl auf Kants Druckschriften wie auf die Nachlaßreflexionen. Nur das Wesentliche, von dem, was wir, dem gegenwärtigen Stand unserer Untersuchungen entsprechend, feststellen zu können glauben, sei hier angedeutet.

Das bedeutendste Merkmal der Umwälzung vom Jahre 1769 ist, unserer Ansicht nach, die damals völlig zur Geltung gekommene Trennung der Sinnlichkeit vom Verstände. Die Deutung von Raum und Zeit als reine Formen der Anschauung, von einigen metaphysischen Grundbegriffen als synthetische Begriffe des Verstandes, dürfte nur eine Folge der erwähnten Trennung sein. Die Voraussetzungen für diese Trennung treten schon seit der Schrift über die Negativen Größen (1763) allmählich in Erscheinung. Kant hatte in seiner Dissertation über die Deutlichkeit (1762) behauptet (in Übereinstimmung mit der Meinung der deutschen philosophischen Schulen seiner Zeit), daß es möglich sei, das Mannigfaltige der Empfindung (das Reale) in seine Elemente zu analysieren, und diese Elemente wieder aufzulösen, bis die ihnen zugrunde liegenden einfachen Grundbegriffe erreicht weiden: und zwar so, daß die Erkenntnis der empfundenen Dinge durch diese Analyse ihre Deutlichkeit gewinnt, wogegen die nicht weiter auflösbaren Grundbegriffe ihre Deutlichkeit durch den entgegengesetzten Prozeß erreichen, nämlich durch die Synthese, indem sie, miteinander zusammengesetzt, nochmals zur Mannigfaltigkeit des ' Wirklichen kommen, die man als Ausgangspunkt genommen hatte. Kant) behauptete jedoch, und dieses gegen die Meinung der Schulen, daß man in Wahrheit immer noch weit entfernt davon war, die besprochenen Grundbegriffe analytisch festgestellt zu haben.

Die Welt war also damals für Kant, der Terminologie der Schulen gemäß, ein System von Gattungen und Arten, die nach, dem Satz der Identität einander subordiniert sind. Dieser Satz, obwohl zur Begründung des Realen unzureichend (denn dazu war auch der Satz des zureichenden Grundes notwendig, welcher, den Ansichten von Crusius gemäß, vom Satze der Identität grundverschieden war — wie Kant in der Nova Dilucidatio behauptet hatte), fand doch in dieser Welt nichts, das seiner Form fremd war." (ss. 369-370)

5. ———. 1964. "Das Wiederaufleben der deutsch-aristotelischen Terminologie bei Kant während der Enstehung der "Kritik der der reinen Vernunft"." Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte no. 9:233-242.

Italienisch Übersetzung: G. Tonelli, Da Leibniz a Kant. Saggi sul pensiero del Settecento, Napoli: Prismi, 1987, ss. 171-180.

"In diesem Bericht sollen einige Einzelergebnisse dargestellt werden, zu denen ich im Rahmen meiner Untersuchungen über die Entstehung der Kritik der reinen Vernunft gekommen bin. Da diese Untersuchungen noch nicht abgeschlossen sind, ist das hier Vorgetragene als vorläufig anzu sehen(1). Meine Untersuchungen beziehen sich auf die Jahre von 1769 bis 1781, nämlich auf die Periode zwischen dem „großen Licht" von 1769 bis zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Die Reflexionen aus Kants Nachlaß und die Kolleghefte aus diesen Jahren wurden mit den Druckschriften und Briefen zusammen als Quellen benutzt. Die Datierung der Reflexionen, wie Adickes sie vorgeschlagen hat, hat sich bisher, auch im Vergleich zu den anderen Quellen, als im Großen und Ganzen zuverlässig erwiesen. Im Zusammenhang mit dieser Tagung ist mein Interesse in der Haupt sache terminologisch. Ich beabsichtige also nicht, hier die eigentliche pro blematische Entwicklung des kantischen Gedankenganges zu verfolgen (hierzu bereite ich eine besondere Monographie vor), sondern ich werde ausschließlich den Ursprung der neuen Termini, die Kant in dieser Zeit aufnimmt, klarzulegen versuchen. Als „neue Termini" bezeichne ich solche, die Kant vorher entweder gar nicht oder nur gelegentlich und unsyste matisch gebraucht hat(2). In der Zeit bis 1768 hat Kant in der Metaphysik und in der Methodologie die Terminologie benutzt, die in den deutschen Schulen der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts üblich war. Aber schon 1769 treten wichtige Veränderungen ein, die zweifellos der großen begrifflichen Wende ent sprechen, die in diesem Jahre stattgefunden hat; und in der folgenden Zeit erscheinen immer weiter neue Termini, so daß sich am Ende im Wort schatz der „Kritik der Reinen Vernunft" ein Bild ergibt, das der vor kritischen Zeit gegenüber tief verändert erscheint. Kant liebte es nicht, Neologismen selber einzuführen; geläufig war ihm demgegenüber die Übernahme von Termini aus anderen Sprachen. Die Quellen für die neuen kantischen Termini nach 1769 sind durchaus verschieden. Jedoch lassen sich zwei Hauptgruppen einigermaßen ausgren zen: Erstens die Termini, die aus Lockes Essay und aus Leibnizens Nouveaux Essais stammen, und zweitens die Termini, die aus der deutsch aristotelischen Überlieferung übernommen sind. Den ersteren begegnet man hauptsächlich in den Jahren 1769-1770, den letzteren in der Folgezeit. Als auslösende Ursache der Wende von 1769 sehe ich die Veröffent lichung der Nouveaux Essais von Leibniz im Jahre 1765 an. Die Essais machten auf Kant zweifellos einen tiefen Eindruck und riefen, vielleicht zum ersten Mal, ein eingehendes Studium von Lockes Essay hervor. Die Lehren von Locke und Leibniz, zusammen mit einigen Beiträgen von Hume, boten Kant die Möglichkeit, eine neue Lösung für eine sehr kom plizierte Problematik zu finden, die ihn schon jahrelang beschäftigt hatte(3)." (ss. 171-172)

(1) Die Vortragsform bringt es mit sich, daß das Belegmaterial nicht in vollem Umfang ausgebreitet werden kann. Einige Fragen sind auch bereits in besonderen Aufsätzen von mir behandelt, weitere Untersuchungen werden hoffentlich bald in anderer Form erscheinen.

(2) Zur Terminologie Kants in der Zeit vor 1769 cf. G. Tonelli, Kant, dall'estetica metafisica all'estetica psicoempirica, studi sulla genesi del criticismo (1754-1771) e sulle sue fonti. In: Memorie della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, Serie 3, Tomo 3, Parte II. Torino 1955, und: G. Tonelli, Elementi metodologici e metafisici in Kant dal 1745 al 1768. Vol. I. Torino 1959.

(3) ) Für den Versuch einer Erklärung der „Kopernikanischen Revolution" vom Jahre 1769 ci. G. Tonelli, Kant, dall'estetica ...,§§ 149-164, wo wir allerdings den Einfluß von Locke und Leibniz nicht behandeln sondern nur die vorhergehende Problematik untersuchen, die Kant für die Einflüsse Lockes und Leibnizens empfänglich gemacht hat; und G. Tonelli, Die Umwälzung von 1769 bei Kant, „Kant-Studien", LN, 1963.

6. ———. 1966. "Die Voraussetzungen zur Kantischen Urteilstafel in der Logik des 18. Jahrhunderts." In Kritik Und Metaphysik Studien. Heinz Heimsoeth Zum Achtzigsten Geburtstag, edited by Kaulbach, Friedrich and Riiter, Joachim, 134-158. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Deutsch Übersetzung von L'origine della tavola dei giudizi e del problema della deduzione delle categorie in Kant, Filosofia, 7, 1956, ss. 129-138.

7. ———. 1966. "Die Anfänge von Kants Kritik der Kausalbeziehungen und ihre Voraussetzungen im 18. Jahrhundert." Kant Studien no. 57:419-456.

"Dem gegenwärtigen Zustand der Kantforschung gemäß darf man sowohl sagen, daß die Anfänge von Kants Kritik der Kausalität den Kern des Problems der Beziehungen zwischen Kant und Hume, wie daß die Beziehungen Kant/Hume den Kern des Problems von den Anfängen von Kants Kausalitätskritik bilden. Das Ziel dieser Untersuchung wird hauptsächlich eine Umgestaltung einer solchen Sachlage sein: und zwar dadurch, daß wir zeigen werden, wie Kants Kritik der Kausalbeziehungen aus einer Problematik entsprang, die in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts so verbreitet war (und die wiederum mit der Gesamtlage der philosophischen Entwicklung jener Zeit in Verbindung war), daß sowohl eine ausschließliche wie eine vorzügliche Beziehung auf Hume in diesem Bezug kaum noch einen Sinn hat. Dadurch werden auch die Grenzen unserer Untersuchung bestimmt: es ist hier nicht unsere Ansicht, die Frage zu erörtern, welche Rolle das Kausalitätsproblem in der Entstehung von Kants Kritizismus gespielt habe; eine Frage, die wir schon bei anderen Gelegenheiten besprochen haben (1), Die bisherigen Behandlungen der Geschichte des Kausalitätsproblems (2) beleuchten nur die Hauptepisoden seiner Entwicklung und bieten daher keiner Anhalt für unsere Besprechung; zumal da wir diese Entwicklung aus der besonderen Perspektive der Krise des Kausalbegriffes studieren sollen. Man darf zwischen dem Ende des 17. und dem Anfang des 18, Jahrhunderts vier verschiedene kritische Einstellungen zum Kausalitätsproblem als typisch betrachten. Wir werden erstens den Okkasionalismus Malebranches und die vorherbestimmte Harmonie Leibnizens, ihren weitreichenden Unterschieden zum Trotz, zusammennennen. Als zweite typische Einstellung betrachten wir die Methodologie der Naturwissenschaft, wie Newton sie verstanden hat. Als dritte den relativen metaphysischen Skeptizismus der thomasisch-pietistischen Philosophenschule, in Beziehung auf die Kausalitätslehre Rüdigers und besonders Aug. Fried. Müllers. Als vierte und letzte die Erkenntnislehre Burthogges. Wir wollen nun diese verschiedenen Fragestellungen einzeln betrachten." (ss. 419-420)

(1) Siehe: G. Tonelli, Kant, dall'estetica metafisica all'estetica psicoempiriea, Torino 195! (Memorie della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, Serie 3", Tomo 3, Parte II), S. 248ff Die Umwälzung von 1769 bei Kant, in: Kant-Studien 54 (1963), s. 369ff.

(2) E. König, Die Entwicklung des Causalproblem, Leipzig 1888; E. Wentscher, Ge schichte des Kausalproblems in der neueren Philosophie, Leipzig 1921; E. Cassirer, Das Et kenntnisproblem, Bd. II, Berlin 1922.

8. ———. 1967. "Kant und die antiken Skeptiker." In Studien zu Kants philosophischer Entwicklung, edited by Heimsoeth, Heinz, Henrich, Dieter and Tonelli, Giorgio, 93-123. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Englisch Übersetzung: Kant and the Ancient Sceptics, in R. H. Popkin, E. De Olaso, G.Tonelli (Hrsg.), Scepticism in the Enlightenment, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997, ss. 69-98.

9. ———. 1969. "Einleitung." In Christian August Crusius, De philosophischen Hauptwerke. Band I, V-LXV. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

10. ———. 1969. "Einleitung." In Johann Georg Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste, V-XIX. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Index of the section "Theory of Ontology"

Definitions of Ontology by Leading Philosophers

What is Ontology? - First Part (From Christian Wolff to Edmund Husserl)

What is Ontology? - Second Part (From Nicolai Hartmann to the Present Time)

Key Terms in Ontology

Introductory remarks (Origin and development of some fundamental concepts with a selection of the most relevant texts)

Being (Linguistic and philosophical perspectives)

Selected Bibliography on Being in Linguistics and Philosophy

Existence (Definitions from some leading philosophers)

Selected Bibliography on Existence in Philosophy

Selected bibliography on the history of the concept of Existence

The Problem of Nonexistent Objects

Bibliography on the Problem of Nonexistent Objects

Bibliography on the History of Nonexistent Objects: Studies in English

Bibliography on the History of Nonexistent Objects: Studies in French, Italian, Spanish, German

Substance (The evolution of the concept from Ancient Greeks to Modern Times)

Selected Bibliography on the History of the Concept of Substance

Selected Bibliography on the Definition of Substance in Contemporary Philosophy

Mathesis universalis: the Search for a Universal Science

Selected Bibliography on the History of Mathesis Universalis

Bibliographie sur René Descartes et la recherche de la mathesis universalis

Metaphysical Explanation

Annotated bibliographies:

Metaphysical fundamentality: A-Gia

Metaphysical fundamentality: Gib-P

Metaphysical fundamentality: R-Z

Contemporary metaphysical grounding: A-Col

Contemporary metaphysical grounding: Cor-Fin

Contemporary metaphysical grounding: Fis-lan

Contemporary metaphysical grounding: Lar-Pic

Contemporary metaphysical grounding: Ple-Ski

Contemporary metaphysical grounding: Sko-Z

History of metaphysical grounding: A-M

History of metaphysical grounding: N-Z

Ontological dependence: A-K

Ontological dependence: L-Z

History of ontological dependence

Language and Ontology

Linguistic Relativism (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) vs. Universal Grammar

Selected Bibliography on Linguistic Relativity (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis)

Universal Ontology vs. Ontological Relativity

Semiotics and Ontology

The Rediscovery of John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas)

Selected Bibliography on John Poinsot

John Deely. An Annotated Bibliography:

1965 - 1998

1999 - 2010

Modern Theories of Predication

The Frege-Russell 'Is' Ambiguity Thesis

Selected bibliography on Existence and Predication

Language as Calculus vs. Language as Universal Medium (two traditions in 20th century philosophy)

Selected Bibliography on Language as Calculus vs. Language as Universal Medium

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Definitions of Ontology. From Christian Wolff to Edmund Husserl

Defining "Ontology"

a) One of the best available dictionaries gives the following definition of Ontology:

"1. A science or study of being: specifically, a branch of metaphysics relating to the nature and relations of being; a particular system according to which problems of the nature of being are investigated; first philosophy.

2. a theory concerning the kinds of entities and specifically the kinds of abstract entities that are to be admitted to a language system."

Webster's Third New International Dictionary, s.v. "ontology".

b) The first sense is commonly used in the philosophical tradition:

"In contemporary philosophy, formal ontology has been developed in two principal ways. The first approach has been to study formal ontology as a part of ontology, and to analyse it using the tools and approach of formal logic: from this point of view formal ontology examines the logical features of predication and of the various theories of universals. The use of the specific paradigm of the set theory applied to predication, moreover, conditions its interpretation."

The second line of development returns to its Husserlian origins and analyses the fundamental categories of object, state of affairs, part, whole, and so forth, as well as the relations between parts and the whole and their laws of dependence - once all material concepts have been replaced by their correlative form concepts relative to the pure 'something'. This kind of analysis does not deal with the problem of the relationship between formal ontology and material ontology." (p. 199)

Liliana Albertazzi, "Formal and Material Ontology" in: Roberto Poli and Peter Simons (eds.), Formal Ontology, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1996, pp. 199-232.

c) The second sense is used in research on Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Representation; one of the best known definitions is Tom Gruber's:

"An ontology is an explicit specification of a conceptualization.

The term is borrowed from philosophy, where an ontology is a systematic account of Existence. For knowledge-based systems, what “exists” is exactly that which can be represented. When the knowledge of a domain is represented in a declarative formalism, the set of objects that can be represented is called the universe of discourse. This set of objects, and the describable relationships among them, are reflected in the representational vocabulary with which a knowledge-based program represents knowledge. Thus, we can describe the ontology of a program by defining a set of representational terms. In such an ontology, definitions associate the names of entities in the universe of discourse (e.g., classes, relations, functions, or other objects) with human-readable text describing what the names are meant to denote, and formal axioms that constrain the interpretation and well-formed use of these terms." (pp. 199)

Tom Gruber, "A Translation Approach to Portable Ontology Specifications" in: Knowledge Acquisition, 5, 1993, pp. 199-220.

This definition has been criticized by Guarino and Giaretta that, after examining seven possible interpretations of ontology, (1) write:

"A starting point in this clarification effort will be the careful analysis of the interpretation adopted by Gruber. The main problem with such an interpretation is that it is based on a notion of conceptualization (introduced in: Genesereth, Michael R. and Nilsson, L. "Logical Foundation of Artificial Intelligence" Morgan Kaufmann, Los Altos: California, 1987) which doesn't fit our intuitions, (...): according to Genesereth and Nilsson, a conceptualization is a set of extensional relations describing a particular state of affairs, while the notion we have in mind is an intensional one, namely something like a conceptual grid which we superimpose to various possible state of affairs. We propose in this paper a revised definition of a conceptualization which captures this intensional aspect, while allowing us to give a satisfactory interpretation to Gruber's definition." (p.26)

Notes

The definitions are:

1. 1. Ontology as a philosophical discipline

2. 2. Ontology as a an informal conceptual system

3. 3. Ontology as a formal semantic account

4. 4. Ontology as a specification of a conceptualization

5. 5. Ontology as a representation of a conceptual system via a logical theory

6. 5.1 characterized by specific formal properties

7. 5.2 characterized only by its specific purposes

8. 6. Ontology as the vocabulary used by a logical theory

9. 7. Ontology as a (meta-level) specification of a logical theory

Nicola Guarino, Pierdaniele Giaretta, "Ontologies and Knowledge Bases. Towards a Terminological Clarification", in: N.J.I. Mars (ed.), Towards Very Large Knowledge Bases, Amsterdam: IOS Press 1995, pp. 25-32.

Guarino gives this definition: "Since this paper is deliberately addressed to an interdisciplinary audience, it is advisable to pay attention to some preliminary terminological clarifications, especially because some crucial terms appear to be used with different senses in different communities (4). Let us first consider the distinction between "Ontology" (with the capital "o"), as in the statement "Ontology is a fascinating discipline" and "ontology" (with the lowercase "o"), as in the expressions "Aristotle's ontology" or "CYC's ontology". The same term has an uncountable reading in the former case, and a countable reading in the latter. While the former reading seems to be reasonably clear (as referring to a particular philosophical discipline), two different senses are assumed by the philosophical community and the Artificial Intelligence community (and, in general, the whole computer science community) for the latter term.

In the philosophical sense, we may refer to an ontology as a particular system of categories accounting for a certain vision of the world. As such, this system does not depend on a particular language: Aristotle's ontology is always the same, independently of the language used to describe it. On the other hand, in its most prevalent use in AI, an ontology refers to an engineering artifact, constituted by a specific vocabulary used to describe a certain reality, plus a set of explicit assumptions regarding the intended meaning of the vocabulary words. This set of assumptions has usually the form of a first-order logical theory (5), where vocabulary words appear as unary or binary predicate names, respectively called concepts and relations. In the simplest case, an ontology describes a hierarchy of concepts related by subsumption relationships; in more sophisticated cases, suitable axioms are added in order to express other relationships between concepts and to constrain their intended interpretation.

The two readings of ontology described above are indeed related each other, but in order to solve the terminological impasse we need to choose one of them, inventing a new name for the other: we shall adopt the AI reading, using the word conceptualization to refer to the philosophical reading. So two ontologies can be different in the vocabulary used (using English or Italian words, for instance) while sharing the same conceptualization." (p. 4)

Notes

(4) I elaborate here on some material already published in Guarino, N. and Giaretta, P. 1995. "Ontologies and Knowledge Bases: Towards a Terminological Clarification". In N. Mars (ed.) Towards Very Large Knowledge Bases: Knowledge Building and Knowledge Sharing 1995. IOS Press, Amsterdam: 25-32.

(5) In this case, an ontology is sometimes called a formal ontology, although we shall use the expression "formal ontology" only to refer to a philosophical research field.

From: Nicola Guarino "Formal Ontology and Information Systems", in: N. Guarino (ed.), Formal Ontology in Information Systems. Proceedings of the First International Conference, Trento, Italy, 6-8 June 1998 Amsterdam: IOS Press 1998, pp. 3-15.

Descriptive, formal and formalized ontoloy

"I shall distinguish descriptive, formal and formalized ontology. Each of these ontologies comes in two guises: domain-dependent and domain-independent. Domain-dependent ontologies concern categorically closed regions of being; on the other hand, a domain independent ontology may be properly called general ontology. (...) Descriptive ontology concerns the collection of such prima facie information either in some specific domain of analysis or in general.

Formal ontology distills, filters, codifies and organizes the results of descriptive ontology (in either its local or global setting). According to this interpretation, formal ontology is formal in the sense used by Husserl in his Logical Investigations. Being 'formal' in such a sense therefore means dealing with categories like thing, process, matter, whole, part, and number. These are pure categories that characterize aspects or types of reality and still have nothing to do with the use of any specific formalism.

Formal codification in the strict sense is undertaken at the third level of theory construction: namely that of formalized ontology. The task here is to find the proper formal codification for the constructs descriptively acquired and formally purified in the way just indicated. The level of formalized constructions also relates to evaluation of the adequacy (expressive, computational, cognitive) of the various formalisms, and to the problem of their reciprocal translations.

The close similarity between the terms 'formal' and 'formalized' is somewhat unfortunate. One way to avoid the clash is to use 'categorical' instead of 'formal'.

Most contemporary theory recognizes only two levels of work and often merges the level of the formal categories either with that of descriptive or with that of formalized analysis. As a consequence, the specific relevance of categorical analyses is too often neglected.

The three levels of ontology are different but not separate. In many respects they affect each other. Descriptive findings may bear on formal categories; formalized outcomes may bear on their twin levels, etc. To set out the differences and the connections between the various ontological facets precisely is a most delicate task." (p. 183)

From: Roberto Poli, "Descriptive, Formal and Formalized Ontologies", in: Denis Fisette (ed.), Husserl's Logical Investigations Reconsidered, Dordrecht: Kluwer 2003, pp. 183-210.

"The idea of a formal ontology arose around the turn of the present century in the work of Edmund Husserl. It coincides in many respects with what is nowadays sometimes called 'analytic metaphysics' or with attempts to use formal methods to solve classical philosophical problems relating to the notions of being, object, state of affairs, existence, property, relation, universal, particular, substance, accident, part, boundary, measure, causality, and so on. Formal ontology thus includes several sub-disciplines, of which the most developed is the theory of part and whole, as sketched by Husserl in the third of his Logical Investigations and later worked out as a formal theory by Leśniewski. Formal-ontological ideas are present also in much contemporary work on naïve physics and in the formal theories of the common-sense world canvassed by workers in the field of artificial intelligence research.

The idea of a formal ontology is placed in a network of conceptual oppositions: it admits of different senses according to which of its two constituent elements is given priority. If the emphasis is placed on 'ontology' then the principal distinction is between 'formal' and 'material' (that is between 'formal ontology' and 'material ontology'); if instead the emphasis falls on 'formal', the contrast is between 'ontology' and 'logic' ('formal ontology' vs. 'formal logic'). This situation raises some important questions: When one speaks of 'ontology', how can its formal aspects be distinguished from its material ones? When we talk about the 'formal', how can we distinguish between logic and ontology?" (Foreword by the Editors, p. VII)

From: Roberto Poli and Peter Simons (eds.), Formal Ontology, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1996.

"One hundred years ago, Edmund Husserl was perhaps the first philosopher to pay any interest to the formal treatment of some of the most fundamental questions of ontology. Powerful tools of logic were developed in those days, and this new development inspired in a natural way various attempts to use these techniques within this prestigious area of philosophical inquiry. Through Husserl's younger colleague, Roman Ingarden, and in the light of related ideas of Leśniewski and other members of Lwow-Warsaw School, these ideas spread rapidly, particularly in the Polish scientific community.

Philosophical inquiries into ontology in an advanced formal setting were put forward first by Stanislaw Leśniewski. Inspired by the contemporary discussion on the foundations of mathematics, Leśniewski was interested in finding a formal framework appropriate for the ontological grounding of both mathematics and logic. The basic system was Mereology, i.e. the general theory of collective sets. Ontology itself arises from Protothetic. All his axiomatic systems came about in an elegant yet somewhat exotic notation. (1) Leśniewski's mereology was intended to play the part of an alternative to set theory. Later -- as an axiomatic 'calculus of individuals' -- it appears to be a proper extension of set theory rather than a competitive calculus. Thomas Mormann's article 'Topological Representations of Mereological Systems' (2) can be seen as a recent example of that line of research. He shows that nothing is lost when a reasonable mereological system is substituted by its topological model. That brings mereology into contact with well developed mathematical theories and may help mereology, as Mormann concludes, "to leave its present state of theoretical immaturity". In any case, mereology can be treated as a contribution to formal ontology only if it carries a meaningful theory of (the construction of) universes. The same holds for (pure) set theory itself, which is sometimes taken to be the most usable and convenient base for any formal ontological system (cf. Quine's discussion of this topic in various places, and for several other approaches see e.g. Poli and Simons (eds.), Formal Ontology Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996; Scheffler and Urchs, "Ontologic. Essays on Formal Ontology", Logic and Logical Philosophy, Torun, Copernicus University Press, vol. 2, 1995)." (p. 11)

Notes

(1) Tadeusz Kotarbinski served as a faithful translator of Leśniewski's rather esoteric writings for the broader public. Most of Leśniewski's successors both within and outside the Lwow-Warsaw School set out their own considerations on formal ontology in the spirit of his systems. They often, however, use Kotarbinski's explication of these ideas.

(2) [Same volume, pp. 463-486].

From: Jan Faye, Uwe Scheffler and Max Urchs, "Philosophical Entities. An Introduction", in: Jan Faye, Uwe Scheffler and Max Urchs (eds.), Things, Facts and Events, Amsterdam: Rodopi 2000, pp. 1-64.

Definitions by somea leading philosophers

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)

There are three occurrences of the term ontologia in Leibniz:

"Ontologiam seu scientiam de Aliquo et Nihilo, Ente et Non ente, Re et modo rei, Substantia et Accidente" ("Ontology or the science of something and of nothing, of being and not-being, of the thing and the mode of the thing, of substance and accident."

From: Louis Couturat, Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz, Paris: Alcan 1903. Reprinted Hildesheim: Georg Olms 1961, p. 512 (Introductio ad Encyclopaediam Arcanam) (Now in: G. W. Leibniz Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, VI Sektion: Philosophische Schriften, Band IV, Text n. 126 p. 527.)

In a fragment titled by the Editors De duobus systematis scientiarum (1693?) on the classification of books in a library Leibniz in a deleted paragraph wrote: "Philosophici doppelt unterstr. (aaaa) Dida (bbbb) Logicam, Mnem (cccc) Didacticam, (aaaaa) Mnemonicam, (bbbbb) Logicam (aaaaaa) Rhet (bbbbbb) oratoriam seu (aaaaaaa) Persuasoriam (bbbbbbb) partem Rhetoricae persuasoriam, Mnemonicam; (aaaaaaaa) Metaphysicam, (bbbbbbbb) Ontologiam". (Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2004, Reihe IV, Bd. V, p. 592, ad. l. 25.

The third occurrence was published by Nicholas Jolley, "An Unpublished Leibniz MS on Metaphysics", Studia Leibnitiana, 7 (1975), 2, p. 179, l. 81 and var. ad l. 81: "Scientiam autem genera lis quam vulgo Ontolog...", but he later altered his text to read: "Scientia autem generalis quam dicam Metaphysicam vocant".

(See: Michaël Devaux, Marco Lamanna, "The Rise and Early History of the Term Ontology (1606-1730)", Quaestio. Yearbook of the History of the Metaphysics, 9, 2009, pp. 173-208 (on Leibniz see pp. 197-198).

Christian Wolff (1679-1754)

"If you wish to study philosophy fruitfully, then logic must be given the very first place. Logic treats the rules which direct the cognitive faculty to the knowledge of truth. Now we should study philosophy in such a way as to acquire complete certitude. Hence, he who studies philosophy should know how to proceed in the knowledge of truth. Consequently, he should be acquainted with logic. Hence, logic must be given the very first place.

It might also be mentioned that those who are beginning in philosophy overcome their inexperience by studying logic. We have already given the reason for this. He who is unacquainted with logic does not know how to examine definitions and demonstrations with rigor. Therefore, he easily admits as certain things which greatly disagree with evidence. And he often thinks he understands things which he has not examined.

However, if everything in logic is to be demonstrated, then principles must be borrowed from ontology and psychology. Logic treats of the rules which direct the intellect in the knowledge of all being, for the definition of logic does not restrict it to any species of being; therefore, it ought to teach us what to look for in order to know things. Now that which pertains to the general knowledge of being is derived from ontology. Hence it is clear that, in order to demonstrate the rules of logic, principles must be taken from ontology.

Furthermore, since logic explains how to direct the intellect in the knowledge of truth, it ought to teach how the operations of the intellect are used in knowing truth. Now we must learn from psychology what the cognitive faculty is and what its operations are. Hence it is also clear that, in order to demonstrate the rules of logic, principles must be taken from psychology.

This will be clearer when you have learned logic and have compared it with ontology and psychology. We have experienced this many times while carefully investigating the rules of logic and their reasons.

If all things in logic are to be rigorously demonstrated with genuine proofs, then logic must come after ontology and psychology. Logic derives its principles from ontology and psychology. Now the parts of philosophy should be ordered in such a way that those parts come first which provide principles for other parts. Therefore, ontology and psychology should precede logic if everything in logic is to be rigorously demonstrated and if its rules are to be genuinely proven.

Demonstrative method requires that logic be treated after ontology and psychology. However, the process of learning requires that logic precede all the other parts of philosophy, including ontology and psychology. Both methods cannot be observed. Weighing this more carefully, we should realize that he who does not know logic cannot be usefully acquainted with ontology and psychology. However, the principles of ontology and psychology which pertain to logic can be easily explained in logic. Therefore, we choose the method of learning in preference to the method of demonstration.

Another reason why this approach is preferable is that ontological principles are definitions and psychological principles are established from experience. Consequently, ontological principles can be understood and admitted as true, even though the other things which are treated in ontology have not yet been examined. And the presuppositions of logic which can be demonstrated in psychology can be grasped a posteriori." (p. 17)

"Philosophy is the science of the possibles insofar as they can be." (ibid., pp. 39-40)

"There are some things which are common to all beings and which are predicated both of souls and of natural and artificial bodies. That part of philosophy which treats of being in general and of the general affections of being is called ontology, or first philosophy. Thus, ontology, or first philosophy, is defined as the science of being in general, or insofar as it is being.

Such general notions are the notions of essence, existence, attributes, modes, necessity, contingency, place, time, perfection, order, simplicity, composition, etc. These things are not explained properly in either psychology or physics because both of these sciences, as well as the other parts of philosophy, use these general notions and the principles derived from them. Hence, it is quite necessary that a special part of philosophy be designated to explain these notions and general principles, which are continually used in every science and art, and even in life itself, if it is to be rightly organized. Indeed, without ontology, philosophy cannot be developed according to the demonstrative method. Even the art of discovery takes its principles from ontology." (ibid., pp. 45-46)

From: Christian Wolff, Preliminary Discourse on Philosophy in General 1728), translated, with an introduction and notes, by Richard J. Blackwell, Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. 1963.

Alexander Baumgarten (1714-1762)

“Prolegomena to Metaphysics [ 1-3]

1. METAPHYSICS is the science of first principles in human cognition.

2. Ontology, cosmology, psychology, and natural theology belong to metaphysics.

3. NATURAL METAPHYSICS is the cognition of matters treated in metaphysics that are attained through the mere use of these matters. If artificial [metaphysics] explained in 1 is also added to it, then it is useful (1) for the development of its concepts, (2) for the determination and conception of its first principles, and (3) for the continuation and certainty of its proofs, etc.

PART ONE: ONTOLOGY [ 4-35c]

Prolegomena [ 4-6]

4. ONTOLOGY (ontosophy, metaphysics, cf. 1, universal metaphysics, architectonic, first philosophy) is the science of the general predicates of a thing.

5. The predicates of a thing that are more general are the first principles of human cognition, thus ontology belongs ( 2), with reason, to metaphysics ( 1, 4).

6. Ontology contains the predicates of a thing ( 4), (I) [that are] internal, (I) universal, which are in each thing, (2) disjunctive, one of which is in each thing; (II) relative.” (p. 89)

Translated from Alexander Baumgarten, Metaphysica (Frankfurt, 1757, 4th ed., 1739 1st ed.), reprinted at 15:4-54 and 17:23-226 of Immanuel Kant's Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Königlich-Preussischen Akademe der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1902-).

From: Eric Watkins, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Background Sources Materials, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

"In the course of the present semester which has just begun, I propose to hold private lectures on the following science, which I intend to handle in an exhaustive fashion.

1. Metaphysics. (...) I hope that I shall be able in the near future to present a complete account of what may serve as the foundation of my lectures in the aforementioned science. Until that time, however, I can easily, by applying gentile pressure, induce A. G. Baumgarten, the author of the text book on which this course will be based [the Metaphysica (1739)] -- and that book has been chosen chiefly for the richness of its contents and the precision of its method -- to follow the same path. Accordingly, after a brief introduction, I shall begin with empirical psychology, which is really the metaphysical science of man based on experience. (...)The second part of the course will discuss corporeal nature in general. (...) Since everything in the world can be subsumed under these two classes [organic and inorganic], I shall then proceed to ontology, the science, namely, which is concerned with the more general properties of all things." (pp. 294-295)

From: M. Immanuel Kant's Announcement of the Programme of His Lectures for the Winter Semester 1765-1766, translated and edited by David Walford in collaboration with Ralf Meerbote in: Immanuel Kant, Theoretical Philosophy 1755-1770, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992.

"The Transcendental Analytic accordingly has this important result: That the understanding can never accomplish a priori anything more than to anticipate the form of a possible experience in general, and, since that which is not appearance cannot be an object of experience, it can never overstep the limits of sensibility, within which alone objects are given too us. Its principles are merely principles of the exposition of appearances, and the proud name of an ontology, which presumes to offer synthetic a priori cognitions of things in general in a systematic doctrine (e.g., the principle of causality), must give way to the modest one of a mere analytic of the pure understanding. ( A 247 / B 303)" (p. 345)

From: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998.

"Thus all pure a priori cognition, by means of the special faculty of cognition in which alone it can have its seat, constitutes a special unity, and metaphysics is that philosophy which is to present that cognition in this systematic unity. Its speculative part, to which this name has been especially appropriated, namely that which we call metaphysics of nature and which considers everything insofar as it is (not that which ought to be) on the basis of a priori concepts, is divided in the following way. (a)

Metaphysics in this narrower sense consists of transcendental philosophy and the physiology of pure reason. The former considers only the understanding and reason itself in a system of all concepts and principles that are related to objects in general, without assuming objects that would be given (Ontologia); the latter considers nature, i.e., the sum total of given objects (whether they are given by the senses or, if one will, by another kind of intuition), and is therefore physiology (though only rationalis). (A 845 / B 873)"

(a) Inserted in Kant's copy of the first edition:

"I would divide it in accordance with the classes of the categories, so that in the third category, which contains the other two, yields the idea of the science:

“1. General ontology [Allgemeine Wesenlehre]; 2. Theory of nature; 3. Cosmology [Weltwissenschaft]; 4. Theology." (E CLXXXIII, p. 54; 23:43). This is the last emendation Kant made in his copy of the first edition.

"Accordingly, the entire system of metaphysics consists of four main parts. 1. Ontology. 2. Rational Physiology. 3. Rational Cosmology. 4. Rational Theology. The second part, namely the doctrine of nature of pure reason, contains two divisions, physica rationalis and psychologia rationalis. (A 847 / B 875)" (pp. 698-699)

From: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781), translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998.

"We now begin the science of the properties of all things in general, which is called ontology. (...) One easily comprehends that it will contain nothing but all basic concepts and basic propositions of our a priori cognition in general: for if it is to consider the properties of all things, then it has as an object nothing but a thing in general, i.e., every object of thought, thus no determinate object. Thus nothing remains for me other than the cognizing, which I consider. (The science that deals with objects in general, will deal with nothing but those concepts through which the understanding thinks, thus of the nature of the understanding and of reason, insofar as it cognizes something a priori. - That is transcendental philosophy, which does not say something a priori of objects, but rather investigates the faculty of the understanding or of reason for cognizing something a priori; thus with regard to content it is a self-cognition of the understanding or of reason, just as logic is a self-cognition of the understanding and of reason with regard to form; the critique of pure reason belongs necessarily to transcendental philosophy. But since one used to treat ontology without a critique - what was ontology then? An ontology that was not a transcendental philosophy. Thus one philosophized back and forth without asking: can one do that? Transcendental philosophy is the result of critique, for if I can represent the extent and the sources in a connection then the connected representation of the a priori principles is transcendental philosophy, and if I take all the consequences that flow from that, then that is metaphysics; without critique I do not know whether the concepts of pure reason and pure understanding are all there or whether some are still missing - because I have no principles. One set no boundaries to reason, and thereby went as far as one was able. They indeed comprehend that in matters of experience they cannot mix everything together, but a priori they can comprehend everything, and that because no one can refute them)." (pp. 140-141)

From: Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Metaphysics, Part III Metaphysik Mrongovius (1782-1783), translated and edited by Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997.

"Philosophy, like mathematics as well, can be divided into two parts, namely into the pure and into the applied. - Metaphysics is the system of pure philosophy. The word metaphysics means a science which goes beyond the boundaries of nature. (Nature is the summation of all objects of experience.)

A principle principium is a general rule, which again contains other rules under it. lf we take together all pure concepts which can be entirely separated from the empirical ones, then we attain thereby a science.

Philosophical cognition consists of mere concepts a priori.

Physics is the philosophy of nature insofar as it depends on principles from experience; but metaphysics is the philosophy of nature insofar as it depends on a priori principles. Moral philosophy teaches us the practical principles of reason. The concepts toward which everything seems to be aimed is the concept of a highest being and of another world.

Metaphysics is necessary. Its ground is reason, which is never to be satisfied by empirical concepts. Reason finds satisfaction neither in the consideration of things, nor in the field of experience, i.e, in the sensible world. The concepts of God and of the immortality of the soul, these are the two great incentives on whose account reason went out beyond the field of experience.

A major question is: how are a priori cognitions possible? The whole pure mathematics is a science which contains only a priori concepts, without its supporting their ground on empirical concepts. That there are thus actual a priori cognitions is already proved; indeed, there is a whole science of sheer pure concepts of the understanding. But the question arises: how are the a priori cognitions possible? The science that answers this question is called critique of pure reason. Transcendental philosophy is the system of all our pure a priori cognitions; customarily it is called ontology. Ontology thus deals with things in general, it abstracts from everything particular. It embraces all pure concepts of the understanding and all principles of the understanding or of reason.

The main sciences that belong in metaphysics are: ontology, cosmology, and theology.

(...)

Ontology is a pure doctrine of elements of all our a priori cognitions, or: it contains the summation of all our pure concepts that we can have a priori of things." (pp. 307-308)

From: Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Metaphysics, Part V. Metaphysik L2 (1790-1791?), translated and edited by Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997.

"Ontology is the first part that actually belongs to metaphysics. The word itself comes from the Greek, and just means the science of beings, or properly according to the sense of the words, the general doctrine of being.

Ontology is the doctrine of elements of all my concepts that my understanding can have only a priori.

ON THE POSSIBLE AND THE IMPOSSIBLE. The first and most important question in ontology is: how are a priori cognitions possible? This question must be solved first, for the whole of ontology is based on the solution of this question. Aristotle decided the proposition in that he rejected all a priori cognitions, and said that all cognitions were empirical, or that they were based on the first principles of experience. For his main proposition was: nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses . Through this he overturned all a priori cognitions. But Plato said that all our a priori cognitions arose from an original intuition.

We have no innate concepts at all, but rather we attain them all, or we receive acquired concepts. The understanding acquires concepts by its paying attention to its own use. All that can be said of that is this: that there are certain a priori cognitions, even when it seems that they are taken from experience, or that they are used beyond the boundaries of experience. There is in our reason a certain dialectic, that is: a certain art of illusion, which shows me either something true or false. A good dialectician must maintain at the same time and with the same facility thesis and antithesis of a matter, or he must at the same time prove the truth and falsity of a matter, or be able to say yes or no. Dialectic contains a conflict which indicates that it is impossible to proceed dogmatically here in metaphysics." (p. 309)

From: Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Metaphysics - Part V. Metaphysik L2 (1790-1791?), translated and edited by Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997.

"Ontology is that science (as part of metaphysics) which consists in a system of all concepts of the understanding, and principles, but only so far as they refer to objects that can be given to the senses, and thus confirmed by experience. It makes no allusion to the super-sensible, which is nevertheless the final aim of metaphysics, and thus belongs to the latter only as a propaedeutic, as the hallway or vestibule of metaphysics proper, and is called transcendental philosophy, because it contains the conditions and first elements of all our knowledge a priori.

In this field there has not been much progress since the days of Aristotle. For as grammar is the resolution of a speech-form into its elementary rules, and logic a resolution of the form of thought, so ontology is a resolution of knowledge into the concepts that lie a priori in the understanding, and have their use in experience; a system whose troublesome elaboration we may very well be spared, if only we bear in mind the rules for the right use of these concepts and principles, for purposes of empirical knowledge; for experience always confirms or corrects it, which does not happen if our design is to progress from the sensible to the super-sensible, for which purpose an assessment of the powers of understanding and its principles must indeed be carried out with thoroughness and care, in order to know from whence, and with what props and crutches, reason can venture upon its transition from the objects of experience to those that are not of this kind.

Now the celebrated Wolf has rendered an incontestable service to ontology, by his clarity and precision in analysing these powers; but not by any addition to our knowledge in that area, since the subject matter was exhausted.

However, the above definition, which merely indicates what is wanted of metaphysics, not what there needs to be done in it, would simply mark it out from other doctrines as a discipline belonging to philosophy in the specific meaning of the term, to the doctrine of wisdom, and prescribe its principles to the absolutely necessary practical use of reason; though that has only an indirect relation to metaphysics considered as a scholastic science and system of certain theoretical cognitions a priori, which are made the immediate topic of concern. Hence the explanation of metaphysics according to the notion of the schools will be that it is the system of all principles of purely theoretical rational knowledge through concepts; or in brief, that it is the system of pure theoretical philosophy." (p. 354)

From: Immanuel Kant, What Real Progress Has Metaphysics Made in Germany Since the Time of Leibniz and Wolff? (1793/1804) - in: Theoretical Philosophy After 1781, edited by Henry Allison and Peter Heath, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002.

"The first stage of metaphysics can be called that of ontology, since it does not teach us to investigate the essence of our concepts of things by a resolution into their elements, which is the business of logic; it tells us, rather, what concepts of things we frame to ourselves a priori, and how, in order to subsume thereunder whatever may be given to us in intuition generally; which in turn could not happen save insofar as the form of a priori intuition in space and time makes these objects knowable to us merely as appearances, not as things-in-themselves. In this stage, reason sees itself obliged, in a series of conditions, subordinated one to another and each in turn conditioned without end, to progress incessantly towards the unconditioned, since every space and every time can never be represented as anything but part of a still larger given space or title, in which the conditions for what is given to us in each intuition must still be sought, in order to attain to the unconditioned." (p. 376)

From: Immanuel Kant, What Real Progress Has Metaphysics Made in Germany Since the Time of Leibniz and Wolff? (1793/1804), in: Theoretical Philosophy After 1781, edited by Henry Allison and Peter Heath, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002.

Salomon Maimon (1753-1800)

"After what has already been said, it is easy to think that I associate a quite different concept with the word ontology than the concept usually associated with it. That is to say, for me ontology is not a science that is applicable to the thing in itself, but only to appearances. It cannot have a wider domain. Here I will deal specifically with those points where I differ from the Wolffians, and hence also from Kant; for to say what others have already said would be superfluous, My exposition follows Baumgarten's paragraph ordering, so that the reader may more easily grasp the difference between our approaches). (1)

Ontology is the science of the most general properties of things; that is to say, not the properties of a thing in general (of a thing determined through no condition), but the properties of every a priori determined thing. As a part of metaphysics., it differs from logic as much as from the doctrine of nature as follows: logic relates merely to the form of thinking., without relation to any determined object whether determined a priori or a posteriori), while the doctrine of nature relates itself only to an object determined a posteriori. For example, the form of hypothetical propositions in logic is expressed like this: if one thing is supposed then another thing must necessarily be supposed. Here the subject (thing) is determined only by the predicate (relation of antecedent to consequent). In physics the form is expressed like this; 'heat expands ails.: here the subject of the relation ([between] heat and air) is determined by means of a posteriori conditions, In metaphysics, on the other hand, it is expressed like this: if A comes first, and B follows it according to a I rule, then the supposition of A makes it necessary to suppose B. In this case the subject of the relation of cause and effect) is determined by means of a time-determination (succession according to a rule) that is a priori. So the concept or principle of cause belongs to metaphysics. The objects of logic can be compared to transcendental magnitudes (which are not determined in relation to one another by any algebraic equation), while the objects of metaphysics can he comparcd to variable magnitudes (which are determined only by means of their relation to one another), and the objects of physics to continuous magnitudes." (pp. 126-127)

Notes

(1) Maimon's paragraph numbering in fact follows not the original Latin text of Baumgarten's Metaphysica but that of Georg Friedrich Meter's abridged German translation: Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Metaphysica trans. G. F. Meier, (Halle: 1783).

From: Salomon Maimon, Essay on Transcendental Philosophy (1790), translated by Nick Midgley et. al., London-New York: Continuum 2010.

Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848)

" I therefore think that mathematics could best be defined as a science which deals with the general laws (forms) to which things must conform in their existence. By the word 'things', I understand here not merely those which possess an objective existence independent of our awareness, but also those which simply exist among our ideas, either as individuals i.e. intuitions, or simply as general concepts, in other words, everything at all which can be an object of our perception. Furthermore, if I say that mathematics deals with the laws to which these things conform in their existence, this indicates that our science is concerned not with the proof of the existence of these things, but only with the conditions of their possibility. When I call these laws general, I mean it to be understood that mathematics never deals with a single thing as an individual, but always with whole genera. These genera can of course be higher or lower, and on this will be based the classification of mathematics into individual disciplines.

The definition given here will certainly not be found too narrow, for it clearly covers everything that has previously been counted in the domain of mathematics. But I am more afraid that it might be found rather too wide, and the objection might be made that it leaves too little for philosophy (metaphysics), as the latter will be limited by my definition to the single concern of proving, from a priori concepts, the real existence of certain objects. Mathematics and metaphysics, the two main parts of our a priori knowledge, would, by this definition, be contrasted with each other so that the first deals with the general conditions under which existence of things is possible; the latter, on the other hand, seeks to prove a priori the reality of certain objects (such as the freedom of God and the immortality of the soul). Or, in other words, the former concerns itself with the question, how must things be made in order that they should be possible? The latter raises the question, which things are real -- and indeed (because it is to answered a priori) -- necessarily real? Or still more briefly, mathematics would deal with hypothetical (1) necessity, metaphysics with absolute necessity." (p. 183)

Notes

(1) However, not all its propositions have this hypothetical form, because the condition, especially in chronometry and geometry, where it is the same for all propositions, is tacitly assumed.

From: Bernard Bolzano, "Contributions to a Better-Grounded Presentation of Mathematics" (1810), translated by William Ewald in: From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of Mathematics, vol. I, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1996.

Franz Brentano (1838-1917)

"The Fourfold Distinction of Being.Being is a homonym. Its several senses fit into the fourfold distinction of accidental being: being in the sense of being true, being of the categories, and potential and actual being.

'Being is said in various ways' [to de on legetai men pollachos], says Aristotle in the beginning of the fourth book of his Metaphysics (Met. IV. 2 1003a33). He repeats this in Books VI and VII and several more times in other places. In these passages he enumerates a number of concepts, each of which, in different ways, is called a being. In Met. IV. 2 1003b6 he says "one thing is said to be because it is substance, another because it is an attribute of substance, still another because it is a process toward substance, or corruption of substance, or privation of substantial forms or quality of substance, or because it produces or generates substance or that which is predicated of substance, or because it is a negation of such a thing or of substance itself. For this reason we also say that non-being is non-being." The various sorts of being which are here enumerated can be reduced to four kinds: (1) Being which has no existence whatever outside the understanding (privation, negation; stereseis, apophaseis); (2) The being of movement and of generation and corruption (process toward substance, destruction; hodos'eis ousian, phthora); for though these are outside the mind, they do not have complete and perfect existence (cf. Physics III.1.201a9); (3) Being which has complete but dependent existence (affections of substance, qualities, things productive and generative; pathe ousias, poietika, genetika); (4) The being of the substances (ousia). Another enumeration of concepts to which the appellation "being" is attached in different ways is given in Met. VI. 2 1026a33. In that passage, one kind of being is said to be accidental being, another being in the sense of being true, whose opposite is non-being in the sense of being false. Besides, there is said to be another kind of being which divides into the categories, and, in addition to all of them, potential and actual being. It will be noted that this division, too is fourfold, but does not consistently correspond to that in Book IV.

Thus the distinction of being given in Book VI will provide the organization of our investigation. We shall deal, first of all, with the accidental being, then with the being in the sense of being true and non-being in the sense of being false, then with potential and actual being and finally with the categories. In his Metaphysics Aristotle dealt with the last two in opposite order. He first had to acquaint us with substance [ousia] and with its form and matter (Met. VIII) in order to be able to speak afterwards of potential and actual being. Since our essay is not intended to become a complete ontology, the first order is more suitable to our purposes, and the subsequent development itself will justify its adoption." (pp. 3-5)

From: Franz Brentano, On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle (1862), translated by Rolf George, Berkeley: University of California Press 1975.

"A metaphysical theory may begin with the following explication of words: By that which is, when the expression is used in the strict sense, we understand a thing; for example, a body, a mind, or a topoid of more or fewer than 3 dimensions. A part of a body or of a topoid may also be called a thing. And so a number of things taken together may also be called a thing. But it would be wrong to suppose that the two parts of a thing taken together constitute an additional third thing. For where we have an addition the things that are added must have no parts in common. Thus we may say, for example, that a triangle has three angles, but not that it has three pairs of angles: angles A and B form a pair, as do B and C, and also C and A, but each of these pairs has a part in common with each of the others.

(...)

The expression ' that which is' is also used in various extended senses:* (a) The resources of language enable us to form an abstractum for every concretum. For the concretum, that which is, there is the abstractum, being; for body, there is the abstractum corporeality, for mind, there is spirituality or mentality, for lover, there is love; for which knows, there is knowledge; for that which is formed, there is form; and so on. What do these abstracta denote? Obviously not the same things as do the corresponding concreta; this would be a pointless duplication of names. Sometimes the relation between the concrete and abstract terms is explained by saying: "That which is formed is formed in virtue of its form. For example, that which is round is round in virtue of its roundness; and whatever is a body is a body in virtue of its corporeality or its corporeal nature." It has also been said that the roundness is in that which is round and that the corporeal nature is in the body. This seems to suggest that the concretum is related to the abstractum as part to whole. Indeed, the abstractum has been called the formal part of the concretum; the concretum is then said to be that which is denoted by the concrete term because it contains the abstractum as part.

(a) If abstracta were in fact thus parts of concreta there would be no objection to including abstracta among those things which are in the proper sense. But actually they are not parts. A division of the concretum into two parts one of which is the form corresponding to the abstractum is plainly impossible. This division is purely fictive: it amounts to saying that a thing has as many parts as there are predicates that apply to it. Using abstracta in this way, one says that a thing is round because roundness is included among its parts just as one says that an animal is hairy because hair is included among its parts. But whereas an animal's hair is a real thing which can be separated from the animal both in fact and in thought, the contrary is true of the so-called roundness, which can neither exist by itself nor be thought of by itself. Fictions of this sort are often harmless, and they may even be useful, as when mathematicians treat circle as a regular polygon with an infinite number of sides or assume that parallel lines meet in infinity. If such fictions served no purpose whatever, they would hardly have come into use. But what has been expressed by abstract terms can always be expressed by concrete ones, without recourse to fictions. Leibniz pointed out that by such rephrasing a number of difficulties that baffled the Scholastic philosophers are easily disposed of. So far as linguistic usage is concerned, we can say, not only that there is something round, but also that there is such a thing as roundness; but we must bear in mind that the "is" in the latter statement is used in an extended sense, and that the only thing that can properly be said to be here is the thing which is round.

(b) Instead of saying that a thinker is thinking of something, one can also say that there is something which is thought about by him. Here, again, we are not dealing with what may be said to be in the proper sense - indeed, the person in question may himself deny that what he is thinking about is something that there is. Even a contradiction in terms, something that is plainly impossible. can be something that is thought about. We have just said that not roundness but that which is round is in the strict sense; similarly, not the contemplated round thing, but the person contemplating it is what is in the strict sense. This fiction, that there is something which exists as a contemplated thing, may also prove harmless, but unless one realizes that it is a fiction, one may be led into the most glaring absurdities. Things which exist as objects of thought do not constitute a subspecies of genuine being, as some philosophers have assumed. Once we have translated statements about such fictive objects into other terms, it becomes clear that the only thing the statement is concerned with is the person who is thinking about the object. What I have said here with general reference to that which is contemplated or thought about also applies, of course, to that which is affirmed.

(c) If one says, something is past or something is future, one is making an affirmation. But one is not thereby affirming or accepting something as being. One is making an affirmation in the temporal mode of the past or the future instead of the temporal mode of the present. If one were to say "The past Caesar is," instead of saying "Caesar is past" he would be using is in an extended sense. The case would be analogous to that in which, instead of saying that there can be no such thing as a round square, one says that a round square is an impossibility. Once again, a different phrasing would be a suitable way of showing that we are not dealing with a strict interpretation of being.

(d) Many other examples of improper use of the - is - could be cited. Consider, for example, the statement that there is a time that has neither beginning nor end or the statement that there is a three-dimensional space indefinitely in all directions. It is easy to see on the basis of what has been said already that such statements do not refer to anything than can be in the strict sense. Time and space seem to belong to the abstracta. This means that what is in the strict sense, is not space or time, but rather that which is spatial and that which is temporal. Instead of speaking of space and time, we should speak of "things that are spatial, "things that are spatially different," "things that are temporal," "things that are simultaneous," and so on. Those philosophers who say that there is an infinite space as precondition of everything spatial conceive of this space as a thing. But this doctrine has no basis; indeed it is demonstrably false and absurd. Similarly, what philosophers have called time would be a thing if it actually existed. But time, thus considered as a thing, is a philosophical aberration. And this is so even if it is true that there is a thing that had no beginning and will always be, a thing that is continuously undergoing changes and producing changes in everything outside itself, thus making indirectly necessary the uniformity of the temporal process in things. Such an entity would not correspond to the thing that philosophers have thought of as being time." (pp. 16-19 notes omitted)

From: Franz Brentano, The Theory of Categories (1933), translated by Roderick M. Chisholm and Norbert Guterman, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1981.

Alexius Meinong (1853-1920)

"We must turn, in the first place, to a philosophical discipline which is not as yet part of the tradition, which is therefore in a certain sense new, and about which I have said some things which were intended to be of a fundamental nature. To begin with, it is impossible to give a regular definition of entity [Gegenstand]; for genus and differentia are lacking, since everything is an entity. However, the etymology of the word ' gegenstehen' yields at least an indirect characteristic, since it points to the experiences which apprehend entities; but these experiences must not be thought of as somehow constituting the entities. Every inner experience, at least every sufficiently elementary one, has such an entity; and insofar as the experience finds an expression - hence first of all in the words and sentences of language - this expression has a meaning [Bedeutung], and this meaning is always an entity. All knowledge, too, deals therefore with entities.

But large and important groups of entities have found no home in the traditional sciences; these sciences, moreover, are for the most part exclusively concerned with a knowledge of reality [Wirklichen], while even unreal things with being, things without being, possibilities, and even impossibilities can be objects of knowledge, namely, of a knowledge which is of interest to the as yet theoretically naive person only, as it were, when it promises to serve as a means for knowledge of reality. In contrast to such a preference for reality, which, in fact, has been overcome so far in no science, there exists the obvious need for a science which deals with entities without any restriction, especially without restriction to the special case of existence, so that it can be called existence-free [daseinsfrei].This science about entities as such, or about pure entities, I have called the theory of entities.

Much of what belongs to this theory has already been studied under the title 'Logic' (especially: 'Pure Logic'); and that modem mathematical logic belongs completely to the realm of the theory of entities is only concealed by its goal of being a calculus, which seems to favor an extensive externalization [Veräusserlichung] in the sense of the logic of extensions, while it is just a complete internalization [Verinnerlichung] which the theory of entities strives for and makes possible. People have dealt with topics from the theory of entities since antiquity under the heading of 'Metaphysics,' and, especially, under the heading of 'Ontology' as a part of metaphysics; and they have not always failed to recognize the characteristic feature of freedom from existence. But as a goal in itself, the concept of a theory of what is free from existence has, so far as I can see, never been espoused. According to this concept, there belongs to the theory of entities everything that can be made out about entities irrespective of their existence (for example, whatever it is that holds for the class of all colors which make up the 'color space,' as distinguished from the 'color body' which is restricted to the psychologically given); hence, everything that is a matter of a priori knowledge, so that the a priori can be treated as a defining characteristic of the kind of knowledge of which the theory of entities consists.

What belongs to the theory of entities is thus what is rational. Insofar [as it is that], it is therefore anything but a newly discovered country, but rather, in regard to one of its most important parts, mathematics, the justly admired standard of scientific precision. What is new is, perhaps, an insight into the peculiarity of this country and into the nature of its boundaries - unless one should rather speak of its boundlessness. In this respect, it is a kind of companion piece to metaphysics which tries to comprehend the totality of reality, while the theory of entities, because of its freedom from existence, tries to encompass also everything that is not real. Naturally, this freedom from existence does not mean that entities as such cannot have existence in the true sense. The fact that the kind of consideration and knowledge peculiar to the theory of entities therefore also appears where it can be applied to existents, constitutes one of the main values of the postulation of the new science.

Just as the concept of an entity in general is to be determined, at least cum grano salis, with an eye on apprehension, so are the main groups of entities characterized in regard to the main groups of apprehending experiences; and apprehensions are, as mentioned, all elementary experiences. Corresponding to the four main groups of the latter - to presentation [Vorstellen],thought [Denken], emotion [FühIen],and desire [Begehren] - there are, therefore, four main groups of entities: objects [Objekte], objectives [Objektive], dignitatives [Dignitative], and desideratives [Desiderative]. However, the characteristics of the latter are not derived from the characteristics of the apprehending experiences. For this reason, nothing stands in the way of assigning to the immeasurable realm of objects, for example, also the inner experiences, even though these inner experiences cannot be given through presentations, but can only be apprehended through self-presentation or with the help of imagination." (Appendix I, pp. 224-225)

From: Alexius Meinong, "Self-Presentation" (1921), translated in: Reinhardt Grossmann, Meinong, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1974.

Kazimierz Twardowski (1886-1938)

"In order to explain the meaning of the word 'object' further, one can also - as we have done already - point to the linguistic designation and assert that everything which is designated is an object. Such designation uses either nomina understood in a grammatical sense, or it uses phrases consisting of nomina and other expressions, or, finally, it uses other parts of speech, assuming that they have been converted into nouns. One can, therefore, say that everything which is designated by a noun or by an expression which is used as a noun is an object in the sense here adopted.

Now, since everything can be object - object of presentation - the subject of the presentation itself not excluded, those who conceive of the object as the summum genus are justified. Everything which is, is an object of a possible presentation; everything which is, is something. And here, therefore, is the point where the psychological discussion of the difference between content and object of presentations turns into metaphysics.

The objects of presentations have indeed been viewed from a meta physical point of view up to the present time. In calling them onta [in Greek], entia [in Latin], one revealed the way which led to them. However, that the Aristotelian on - like the ens of medieval philosophy - is nothing else but the object of presentations is shown by the fact that all doctrines about the ens, as far as they are correct, hold for the object of presentations. We shall confine ourselves here to the most famous of these doctrines.

1. The object is something different from the existent; some objects have existence in addition to their objecthood [Gegenständlichkeit], that is, in addition to their property of being presented (which is the real sense of the word 'essentia'); others do not. What exists is an object (ens habens actualem existentiam), as is also what merely could exist (ens possibile); even what never can exist but what can only be conceived of (ens rationis) is an object; in short, everything which is not nothing, but which in some sense is "something," is an. object. (1). In fact, the majority of scholastics maintain that "aliquid" is synonymous with "ens," in contrast to those who conceive of the former as an attribute of the latter.

2. Object is summum genus. Scholastics express this by the statement that the concept of ens is not a generic concept, but is a transcendental concept, because it "omnia genera transcendit."

3. Every object of a presentation can be object of a judgment and object of an emotion. This is the meaning of the scholastic doctrine that every object of a presentation is "true" and "good." The (metaphysical) truth of an object does not consist in being judged in a (logically) true judgment; as little as its "goodness" depends on whether the feeling concerning it is good in the ethical sense or not. Rather, an object is called true inasmuch as it is object of a judgment, and it is called good inasmuch as it is related to an emotion. (...)

4. An object is called true with regard to its ability to be judged; it is called good with regard to its ability to be the object of an emotion. The question could be raised whether the object has, in an analogical manner, an attribute which expresses its conceivability and which, therefore, would be a name of the object inasmuch as it is presented. Now, medieval philosophy knows of a third attribute of the object; every ens, according to this philosophy, is not only verum and bonum, but also unum. We shall investigate in a different context - since this question will arise there quite naturally - what this unity means for the presentation of an object, especially whether we may see in it the analogue in the sphere of presentations to truth in the sphere of judgments and goodness in the sphere of emotions.

5. If the object of presentations, judgments, and feelings is nothing else but the Aristotelian-scholastic ens, then metaphysics must be definable as the science of objects in general, taking this word in the sense here proposed. And this is indeed the case. The particular sciences, too, deal with nothing else but the objects of our presentations, their changes, their properties, as well as the laws according to which objects affect each other. Only, the particular sciences always deal with a more or less limited group of objects, a group which is formed by the natural context or a certain purpose. The natural sciences, in the widest sense of the word, for example, are concerned with the peculiarities of those objects which one calls inorganic and organic bodies; psychology investigates the properties and laws characteristic of mental phenomena, of mental objects. Metaphysics is a science which considers all objects, physical - organic and inorganic - as well as mental, real as well as non-real, existing objects as well as non-existing objects; investigates those laws which objects in general obey, not just a certain group of objects. What we here mean is expressed by the venerable definition of metaphysics as the science of being [Seienden] as such.(2) The backward glance at some of the points of the scholastic doctrine of ens is supposed to characterize as precisely as possible the meaning which we connect, in the present investigation, with the word 'object'. Summarizing what was said, we can describe the object in the following way. Everything that is presented through a presentation, that is affirmed or denied through a judgment, that is desired or detested through an emotion, we call an object. Objects are either real or not real; they are either possible or impossible objects; they exist or do not exist. What is common to them all is that they are or that they can be the object (not the intentional one!) of mental acts, that their linguistic designation is the name, (...) and that considered as genus, they form the summum genus which finds its usual linguistic expression in the word 'something.' Everything which is in the widest sense "something" is called "object," first of all in regard to a subject, but then also regardless of this relationship." (pp. 34-37)

Notes

(1) Some philosophers, like Suárez, withhold the name ens from what has merely a "ficta" or "chimaerica essentia" and give it only to the "essentia realis." However, this restriction seems to involve an inconsistency. Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae II, sect. 4.

(2) Compare Brentano, On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle vol. I, chapter 1, par. 1.

From: Kazimierz Twardowski, On the Content and Objects of Presentations (1894), translated and with an introduction by Reinhardt Grossmann, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 1977.

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938)

"Section 5. The concept of Pure logic as MATHESIS UNIVERSALIS (the unity of the "analytic doctrine of forms for that which can be an object on the one hand with the categories of meaning on the other). The "Positivity" of logic and the philosophical Problem of its phenomenological elucidation. - Positive science in general and phenomenology.

I turn now to the misinterpretations having to do with my idea of a "pure logic:" which present themselves in various ways depending on the standpoint from which the philosophical reader approaches the Logical Investigations. It might be best here if I meet these misinterpretations by pointing out positively what is essential to my position with special emphasis upon the points which have not received enough attention.

"Pure logic," in its most comprehensive extension characterizes itself by an essential distinction as "mathesis universalis." It develops through a step-by-step extension of that particular concept of formal logic which remains as a residue of pure ideal doctrines dealing with "propositions" and validity after the removal from traditional logic of all the psychological misinterpretations and the normative-practical goal positings [Zielgebungen]. In its thoroughly proper extension it includes all of the pure "analytical" doctrines of mathematics (arithmetic, number theory, algebra, etc.) and the entire area of formal theories, or rather, speaking in correlative terms, the theory of manifolds [M annigfaltigkeitslehre] in the broadest sense. The newest development of mathematics brings with it that ever new groups of formal-ontological laws are constantly being formulated and mathematically treated which earlier had remained unnoticed. "Mathesis universalis" as an idea includes the sum total of this formal a priori. It is, in the sense of the "Prolegomena," directed toward the entirety of the "categories of meaning" [Bedeutungskategorien] and toward the formal categories for objects correlated to them or, alternatively, the a priori laws based upon them. It thus includes the entire a priori of what is in the most fundamental sense the "analytic" or "formal" sphere - a sense which receives a strict specification and clarification in the third and sixth investigations." (pp. 28-29)

From: Introduction to the Logical Investigations. A Draft of a Preface to the Logical Investigations (1913), edited by Eugen Fink, translated with introductions by Philip J. Bossert and Curtis H. Peters, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1975.

"Region and Category. The Analytic Region and its Categories

(...)

Let us start from formal ontology (always as pure logic in its full extent as mathesis universalis) which, as we know, is the eidetic science of any object whatever. Anything and everything is an object in the sense proper to formal ontology, and an infinity of various truths, distributed among the many disciplines of mathesis, can be established for it. But they all lead back to a small stock of immediate or "fundamental" truths which function as "axioms" in the disciplines of pure logic. We define now as logical categories or categories of the logical region, any object whatever: the fundamental concepts of pure logic which occur in those axioms - the concepts by means of which, in the total set of axioms, the logical essence of any object whatever becomes determined, or the concepts which express the unconditionally necessary, and constituent determinations of an object as object, of anything whatever in so far as it can be something at all. Because the purely logical, in the sense delimited by us with absolute exactness, determines that concept of the "analytic" (25) as contrasted with the "synthetic," which alone is important (but which is important fundamentally) to philosophy, we may also designates these categories as >analytic." (pp. 21-22)

(...) "apophantic logic," although it makes statements exclusively about significations, is nevertheless part of formal ontology in the fully comprehensive sense. Still one must set the signification-categories apart as a group by themselves and contrast them with the others as the formal objective categories in the pregnant sense. (26)" (p. 22)

Notes

(25) AUTHOR FOOTNOTE: cf. Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. II, “Third Investigation,” §§ 11 ff.

(26) AUTHOR FOOTNOTE: On the division of logical categories into signification-categories and formal-ontological categories, cf. Logische Untersuchungen vol. I 67 [Logical Investigations pp. 236f.] The entire "Third Investigation" specifically concerns the categories of whole and part. A that time I did not venture to take over expression "ontology" which was objectionable on historical grounds; rather I designated this investigation (p. 222 of the first edition) as part of an “apriorische Theorie der Gegenstande als solcher"" [“apriori theory of objects as objects”] a phrase contracted by Alexius Meinong to make the word "Gegenstandtheorie" ["object-theory"]. Now that times have changed, however, I consider it more correct to rehabilitate the old expression, "ontology".

From: Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology (1913), translated by F. Kersten, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1982.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Definitions of Ontology. From Nicolai Hartmann to the Present Time

Nicolai Hartmann (1882-1950)

"All ontology has to do with fundamental assertions about being as such. Assertions of this sort are precisely what we call categories of being. Like the Kantian categories - which, as far as content is concerned, are also precisely this: fundamental assertions about being - they have the character of universal constitutive principles comprising all more specialized ontological assertions. Hence, the new ontology might be expected to provide a transcendental deduction also of these ontological assertions. Otherwise, it is argued, it could not guarantee their objective validity. That, however, would mean that this ontology in its turn was in need of an epistemological foundation which would have to provide the justification of a priori principles of an even wider scope.

Thereby a way for ontology is traced, and this way once more follows the scheme of the old deductivity. But it is here that the roads of the old and the new ontology part. Just as in regard to the problem, of being it is today no longer a question of substantial forms and of the teleological determination of actual processes by these forms, so also the problem at issue is no longer that of a post factum justification of a priori principles. The categories with which the new ontology deals are won neither by a definition of the universal nor through derivation from a formal table of judgments. They are rather gleaned step by step from an observation of existing realities. And since, of course, this method of their discovery does not allow for an absolute criterion of truth, here no more than in any other field of knowledge, it must be added that the procedure of finding and rechecking is a laborious and cumbersome one. Under the limited conditions of human research it requires manifold detours, demands constant corrections, and, like all genuine scholarly work, never comes to an end.

Here one may truly and literally speak of new ways of ontology. The basic thesis can possibly be formulated like this: The categories of being are not a priori principles. Only such things as insights, cognitions, and judgments can be a priori. In fact the whole contrast between a priori and a posteriori is only an epistemological one. But ontology is not concerned with knowledge, much less with mere judgments, but with the object of knowledge in so far as this object is at the same time "transobjective," that is, independent of whether or to what extent being is actually transformed into an object of knowledge. The principles of the object in its very being are in no way eo ipso also cognitive principles. In some fields they can be quite heterogeneous, as the manifold admixtures of the unknowable in nearly all basic problems of philosophy amply prove. From this alone it follows that the principles of being cannot be a priori principles of our intellect, that they, as a matter of fact, are just as indifferent to the dividing line between the knowable and the unknowable as the being whose principles they are." (pp. 13-14)

From: Nicolai Hartmann, New Ways of Ontology (1949), translated by Reinhard C. Kuhn, Chicago: Henry Regnery Company 1953.

"The true characteristics of reality do not depend on the categories of space and matter but on those of time and individuality. Ontologically considered, time and space are not categories of equal worth: Time is by far more fundamental than space. Only material things and living beings, including the processes through which their existence flows, are spatial. But spiritual and psychic processes, as well as material processes, are temporal. For everything real is in time and only a part of it in space --we might say, only one half of the real world, its lower forms.

Inseparably joined with temporality is individuality. This consists in nothing but singleness and uniqueness. The real is perishable and thereby also unrepeatable. The same sort of thing recurs, never the same identical thing. This holds true of historical events as well as of cosmic motions, of persons as well as of things. Only the universal recurs, for, considered by itself, it is timeless, always existing, eternal. This timelessness was once considered in the old ontology to be a being of a higher order, indeed, even the only true being. But, in truth, it is rather a dependent, a merely ideal being, and the universal has reality nowhere else but in the real particulars which are both temporal and individual. What once was considered a kingdom of perfection, the kingdom of essences, whose faint copies things were supposed to be, has proved itself to be a kingdom of incomplete being which becomes independent only through abstraction. In the recognition of this lies perhaps the most striking contrast of the new ontology to the old.

That is why the new ontology can very well grapple with the deep problems of German idealism, why it can deal with the spirit and freedom, social life and history, just as well as with the cosmos and the organism. Hence new light may be expected to be shed by it on the characteristic situation and activity of man as a spiritual being within a non-spiritual, law-determined world.

These reflections are but a small section from a chapter on categorial analysis. Here they are only sketched. They justly demand a much more exact discussion of space, time, process, psychic act, reality, and so forth. Particularly reality, the pure mode of being of the structures and processes which form the world, is a very difficult subject for analysis. In order to understand reality the philosopher must start with an examination of the relationship of possibility and actuality -- for centuries the fundamental problem of ontology. And the revolution in the whole problem of being extends even to these very foundations of being. For what the old ontology teaches about potency and act -- a relationship according to which everything real is a realization of a pre-existing disposition and all being is destined to become what it is by disposition -- proves to be far from adequate in view of the broadened problem of reality. It is incumbent upon us to introduce a new concept of 'real possibility' (Realmöglichkeit) which no longer coincides with essential possibility but which signifies the totality of conditions present at a given time within the real context. To this must correspond just as novel a concept of 'actual reality' (Realwirklichkeit) which is no longer thought of as the goal of an anthropomorphically conceived tendency, as if the processes in the cosmos were tied to the activity of an intelligence. Rather such actual reality must in every case be considered to be the complex result of a far-flung context of determinants. A whole science concerns itself with these inner relationships of reality considered as a mode of being. It forms the core of the new ontology, and, in contrast to an analysis of categories directed toward the structural content, it may be called modal analysis." (pp. 25-27)

From: Nicolai Hartmann, New Ways of Ontology (1949), translated by Reinhard C. Kuhn, Chicago: Henry Regnery Company 1953.

Stanislaw Leśniewski (1886-1939)

"Leśniewski's system of logic consists of two theories, which he called Protothetic and Ontology. Of these the former is perhaps the most comprehensive Logic of Propositions which has ever -been devised. It goes beyond the classical Calculus of Propositions in several respects. It allows for instance for functorial variables for which constant functors of the Calculus of Propositions can be substituted.' It provides for the use of the universal quantifier to bind both the propositional and the functorial variables. It has a rule of definitions, which enables us to extend at will the variety of semantical categories within the field of the Logic of Propositions, and, in addition, it has a rule of extensionality; but the most significant point about Protothetic is that with its aid we can derive theses which enable us to dispose of the-usual rules for operating with the universal quantifier in any deductive theory of loser generality. In the edifice of the possible deductive theories Protothetic forms the very base. It requires no more fundamental theory than itself whereas other deductive theories, not included in it, have to be built on it or on a part of it. This is the case with Ontology.

If Protothetic is the most comprehensive Logic of Propositions then Ontology is the most comprehensive Logic of Names. Roughly speaking, it comprises the traditional logic in its modernized form and has counterparts of the Calculus of Predicates, the Calculus of Classes, and the Calculus of Relations including the Theory of Identity.

(...) At first sight Leśniewski's use of the term Ontology may seem curious and daring, but it should become clearer as we proceed that he was eminently justified. In fact his whole conception of logic was ontological through and through in a truly classical sense. (...)Contrary to the widely accepted practice Leśniewski intended his logic to be an interpreted system. He attached definite meanings to his constants and regarded the theses of his deductive theories as true propositions in the sense in which propositions of empirical sciences are accepted as true. It is with this in mind that we should approach his theories. Ontology has been described as the most comprehensive Logic of Names because its most characteristic expressions belong to the semantical category of names, just as the most characteristic expressions of Protothetic belong to the semantical category of propositions. If, however, we take into account the contents of Ontology then it would be more appropriate to describe it as a theory of what there is. Just as astronomy tells us something about heavenly bodies, the theses of Ontology tell us something about things, or objects if one prefers, or individuals. Since in accordance with Leśniewski's intentions theses of Ontology are to be regarded not as mere 'well formed formulae' but as meaningful propositions which can be examined for their truth or falsity, it is essential that we should understand as clearly as possible the ontological vocabulary. Only when we have mastered this vocabulary can a further step be made, namely the one which consists of a critical study of those ontological theses which are already at our disposal. Finally, we may try to discover new truths, which we can formulate in terms of the ontological vocabulary, and assign them their proper places in the theory by deducing them from the axiom or establishing their independence." (pp. 124-126 of the reprint, note omitted)

From: Czeslaw Lejewski, On Leśniewski's Ontology, in: Ratio vol. I, n. 2, 1958, pp. 150-176 (Reprinted in: Jan T. J. Srzednicki, V. F. Rickey (eds.), Leśniewski' Systems. Ontology and Mereology, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1984, pp. 123-148.

Roman Ingerden (1893-1970)

"The ontological analyses of works of art affected Ingarden's entire ontology. Its best elaboration is contained in Spór o istnienie swiata (The controversy over the existence of the world, 1947-48). A being, i.e., an object, can be considered in three different respects: (1) the material one, (2) the formal one, and (3) the existential one (modes of being). Ingarden understands ontology as based on eidetic insight and intuitive analyses of the contents of ideas, i.e., upon the EIDETIC METHOD, which enables one to discover the necessary and purely possible relations between the pure ideal qualities. Ontology is for him the most general theory of objects. He distinguishes it from metaphysics, which fulfills the role of an applied theory of objects and which, being based on ontology, considers the nature and essence of factual beings. The eidetic character distinguishes metaphysics from the so-called real sciences.

Ontology aims at obtaining a general spectrum of eidetic possibilities and necessities with reference to any objects whatever. In the frame of an existential ontology, which has nothing to do with Martin Heidegger's FUNDAMENTAL ONTOLOGY, Ingarden distinguishes and clearly defines four mutually exclusive pairs of moments of being: something can be (1) existentially autonomous or heteronomous, (2) existentially original or derivative, (3) existentially separate or not separate, and (4) existentially self-dependent or contingent. Considerations connected with the analysis of the second pair has led Ingarden to an original interpretation of the relation of causality. His analysis of time has brought some additional pairs of existential moments, such as actuality and non-actuality; persistence and fragility; and fissuration and non-fissuration. These differentiations enables him to distinguish and describe four basic modes of being (consisting of non-contradictory combinations of existential moments). These are: (I) absolute being (autonomous, original, separate, self-dependent); (2) temporal (real) being; (3) ideal (extra-temporal) being; and (4) purely intentional (quasi-temporal) being. We cannot experience any existing object without its mode of being.

In epistemology Ingarden distinguishes: (1) the pure theory of knowledge, which is actually a part of ontology, because he describes it as an a priori analysis of the general idea "knowledge"; (2) criteriology, which researches such epistemic values as objectivity and adequacy; and (3) the critique of knowledge, which evaluates factually obtained results of scientific and philosophical cognition." (pp. 348-349)

From: Andrzej Przylebski, Roman Ingarden, In: Lester Embree, and alii (eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1997, pp. 348-350.

Mario Bunge (1919-2020)

"ONTOLOGY The serious secular version of metaphysics. The branch of philosophy that studies the most pervasive features of reality, such as real existence, change, time, chance, mind, and life. Ontology does not study constructs, i.e., ideas in themselves. These are studied by the formal sciences and epistemology. Hence the expression 'ontology of mathematics' makes sense only in the context of objective idealism (such as Pythagoras's and Plato's). By contrast, the question 'What is the ontological status of mathematical objects?' is meaningful in all contexts, and in a fictionist philosophy of mathematics it has a simple answer: None. (...) Ontology can be classed into general and special (or regional). General ontology studies all existents, whereas each special Ontology studies one genus of thing or process-physical, chemical, biological, social, etc. Thus, whereas general ontology studies the concepts of space, time, and event, the ontology of the social investigates such general sociological concepts as those of social system, social structure, and social change. Whether general or special, ontology can be cultivated in either of two manners: speculative or scientific. The ontologies of Leibniz, Wolff, Schelling, Hegel, Lotze, Engels, Mach, W. James, H. Bergson, A. N. Whitehead, S. Alexander, L. Wittgenstein, M. Heidegger, R. Carnap, and N. Goodman are typically speculative and remote from science. So is the contemporary possible worlds metaphysics. Warning: the expression 'the ontology of a theory' is sometimes misleadingly employed to designate the reference class or universe of discourse of a theory. The expression is misleading because ontologies are theories, not classes." (pp. 200-201)

From: Mario Bunge, Dictionary of Philosophy, Amherst: Prometheus Books 1999.

Fred Sommers (1923-2014)

"The main object of the ensuing analysis is to tie together several seemingly disparate topics. These include: (a) a theory of types (that is, a theory describing the way terms are conjoined to form category correct statements in a natural language); (b) a formal theory of ontological categories and ontological features; (c) a theory of predication (that is, a theory accounting for the subject-predicate distinction and one which provides certain formal characteristics of the binary relation 'is predicable of'); (d) a procedure for enforcing ambiguity.

The results of the analysis support the main features of the Russell program. I take these to be that (a) clarification of natural language is ontologically revealing and discriminatory of the sorts of things there are; (b) linguistic structures and ontological structures are isomorphic. The meaning of 'ontology' in what immediately follows is 'the science of categories.'(...)

The ontologist is interested in categories; he is, qua ontologist, not interested in whether a thing is red or whether it is green but in whether it is colored. Even this is not altogether accurate: he is interested in its character of being colored or colorless. For the ontologist 'colored' means | red | which is the same thing as colored or colorless. A toothache is neither, but water can be either red or not red or colored or colorless.

We speak as ontologists when, for example, we say that points belong to the category of extension even though they belong to the class of extensionless things. The category of extension is defined by the predicate | extended | and points belong to it. Concepts do not belong to it since they are neither extended nor extensionless. Space (spatial) is another category word since it has no complement which is not categorial. And if the word 'color' is taken to include that 'color' we call 'colorless,' it too is a category word. (pp. 351-352).

From: Fred Sommers, "Types and Ontology"The Philosophical Review, 72, 1963, pp. 327-363.

Sommers defines 'ontology' as the 'science of categories' ('Types and Ontology,' p. 351). More specifically, it is the systematic attempt to say what categories are, how they are determined, and how they are related to one another. Ontology is, of course, nothing new. Plato's theory of forms, Aristotle's Categories, Russell's theory of types are three quite obvious examples of attempts at a science of categories. But it is Sommers' own theory which comes closest to a complete, workable theory of categories.

So what is a category? It is a group of things, a class--but a special kind of class. We saw above that a class consists of all those things of which some given term is true. The notion true of is the source of one of the problems with classes. Consider how we negate. Modern logicians take all the kinds of negation which can occur in a natural language sentence as amounting to the negation of the entire sentence.

(...)

Let us make a distinction between what a term is true of and what it spans ('Types and Ontology,' p. 329). A term spans whatever either it or its negation could be used to sensibly characterize. And all the things spanned by a given term constitute the category with respect to that term. Thus, while the lowest prime is in the counter-class of 'married,' it is not in the category determined by 'married.' While a term and its negation exclusively and exhaustively divide the world, a term and its negation both determine the same category, which need not exhaust the world. This is because whatever can be sensibly characterized by a term can be sensibly characterized by its negation. Spanning is not defined in terms of truth. While a term and its negation are never true of the same things, they both span the same things. For example, whatever can be sensibly characterized as married can equally well be characterized (though perhaps falsely) as unmarried. It would be false, but nonetheless sensible, to characterize Queen Elizabeth as unmarried. On the other hand, neither 'married' nor 'unmarried' can be used to characterize the lowest prime number. To characterize it in either way would be senseless, nonsense, category mistaken.

While classes are defined in terms of truth, categories are defined in terms of spanning (which in turn is defined in terms of sense). A category with respect to a term 'X' will include the class of X things and some (usually not all) of the counter-class of X things. The class of married things has in it me, the Queen, my wife, etc. The counter-class has my son, the Pope, the Moon, Mars, etc. (viz. anything of which 'married' is not true). The category with respect to 'married' has me, the Queen, my wife, my son, the Pope, etc., but not the Moon, Mars, etc. For, while 'married' is false of, say, both my son and Mars, it spans only the former and not the latter." (pp. 4-5)

From: George Englebretsen, A Reintroduction to Sommers' Tree Theory, in Essays on the Philosophy of Fred Sommers, Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press 1990, pp. 1-32.

Ernst Tugendhat (1930-2023)

"Lecture 3. Ontology and semantics.

It is at the beginning of Book IV of his Metaphysics that Aristotle first introduces his new conception of philosophy. 'There is a science which studies being as being.' Indeed the special character of this science vis-à-vis the other sciences is supposed to consist in the fact that whereas the latter investigate a particular sphere of being philosophy investigates being as being. (1) What distinguishes the concept of being, for Aristotle, is that it is the most general concept. (2) For of everything and anything one can say that it is. Everything and anything, therefore, can be called being.

Clearly Aristotle arrives at his new conception of philosophy by dropping the aspect of justification from the preliminary conception developed at the beginning and settling exclusively for the aspect of highest generality. The highest, pre-eminent science, called philosophy, is universal, but does not have a justificatory role in relation to the particular sciences. This conception, since it is orientated towards the concept of being (on), leads to the conception of philosophy as ontology. (..)An explicitly semantic enquiry was, however, unknown to Aristotle. This is why he called predicative determinations both onta (beings) and legomena (something said). (3) In the Middle Ages this undecidedness became the starting-point of the nominalism controversy. Aristotle refused to follow Plato in treating the meaning of predicates as an independent object. However, because he failed to perceive the semantic dimension he inevitably objectified their meaning. The result is a peculiar extension of the concept of being (on). It is - together with the concepts of the one and of something - more comprehensive than that of an object (tode ti).

The title 'ontology' now begins to iridesce. It would have an unequivocal sense if one were to define it, as I initially did, and as is usual in analytical philosophy, in terms of the concept of an object, or, which amounts to the same thing, in terms of the concept of being in the sense of existence; 'ontology' would then mean 'theory of objects'. In contrast to this the introduction of ontology by Aristotle, which became standard in the tradition, contains a tension which was not resolved in the tradition. This tension is a consequence of Aristotle's dual orientation: on the one hand, to the - objectual - formula 'being as being'; on the other hand, to the verbal form 'is'. He lets himself be guided by this verbal form even where it does not connote being in the sense of existence, i.e. where the 'is' is not the 'is' of a being; and since the formula 'being as being' nonetheless remains the guiding principle, the formalizing approach, which in itself would have led away from the restriction to the problem of objects, is again being cast into an objectual terminology. Aristotelian ontology transcends the formal theory of objects in the direction of a formal semantics, but in such a way that what emerges is misinterpreted in terms of an object-oriented perspective, owing to the lack of awareness of the semantic dimension.

Thus if one views the traditional elaboration, essentially determined by Aristotle, of the idea of a philosophical fundamental discipline as ontology from a language-analytical perspective (one of reflection on the meaning of words) it turns out to be unsatisfactory in regard to both of the aspects in Aristotle's preliminary conception of philosophy. Firstly, in regard to its justification: the object-orientated Aristotelian formal discipline lacks a foundation in a method of reflection; such a foundation would be provided by a formal semantics (though whether this is the only possible foundation we do not yet know). Secondly, in regard to its scope: its claim to universality could only seem convincing so long as one remained orientated to objects. But the orientation to everything (and that means: to all objects) appears itself restricted as soon as one focusses on the realm of the formal itself. The perspective on objects then corresponds to just one semantic form among others." (p. 21)

Notes

(1) 1003 a22-25, 1025 b7-10.

(2) 998 b220f.

(3) cf. e.g. 1045 b30 f.

From: Ernst Tugendhat, Traditional and Analytical Philosophy. Lecture on the Philosophy of Language, translated by P. A. Gorner, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1982.

Reinhardt Grossmann (1931-2010)

"Ontology asks and tries to answer two related questions. What are the categories of the world? And what are the laws that govern these categories? In chemistry, by comparison, we search for chemical elements and the laws which they obey; and in physics we try to discover the elementary particles and their laws. But ontology is not a science among sciences. Its scope is larger; its viewpoint, fundamentally different.

When Anaximander speculated that everything is made up from the four elements -- fire, earth, air, and water -- he proposed, in effect, a rudimentary theory of chemistry. And so did Anaximenes when he maintained that everything consists of various densities of air. Ontology was born when someone realized that any view of this sort implies a distinction between individual things, on the one hand, and their properties, on the other. Ontology was born when someone realized that there are, not only different kinds of individual thing, but also different kinds of entity. This realization must have led almost immediately to a number of distinctly ontological questions. How, precisely, do individuals and properties differ? How are they related to each other? Are there perhaps any other kinds of entity? And so on. Plato's theory of forms deals with just these sorts of questions, and we think of it, therefore, as one of the first ontological inquiries. (...)But properties are not the only kind of abstract entity, as we shall see. There are numbers and, hence, there is arithmetic. There are sets and, hence, there is set theory. There are several kinds of abstract entity and, hence, several further kinds of inquiry, distinct both from the natural sciences and from ontology. And this fact raises a number of new questions for ontology. How do these kinds of abstract entity differ from each other? How are they connected with each other? And how are they related to individual things? What looks at the beginning of the ontological enterprise like the fundamental dichotomy, namely, the distinction between individuals and properties, turns out to be just one of many equally basic distinctions.

A particular ontological theory must of course strive to accommodate all of these differences and connections. It must attempt to present us with a complete list of categories. Everything there is must find a place in the system. The theory is unsatisfactory if it is incomplete, that is, if there are entities which are not categorized. It may be argued, for example, that classes have no place within the Aristotelian framework of substance and modification of substance. But it is not enough that everything should find a category in the theory. Everything must be fitted to the proper category. An ontological theory is also faulty if it assigns entities to the wrong categories. For example, a Cartesian would contend that Aristotelians misplace the mind: A mind is a substance in its own right and not, as Aristotelians claim, a mere modification of a substance. Or it might be argued, to turn to the present, that natural numbers are, not classes of classes, but quantifiers of a certain kind. Nor, finally, must the ontology contain distinctions that make no differences. Categorial distinctions must not be made capriciously. Categories are not to be multiplied arbitrarily. Aristotelian ontology may be accused of introducing a spurious distinction by separating so-called essential from accidental properties.

Hand in hand with the discovery of categories goes the discovery and formulation of categorial laws. To discern the former is, in a sense, to find the latter; for these laws specify how the categories differ from each other and resemble each other. There is again a similarity to the natural sciences. In physics, the fundamental laws describe the behavior of elementary particles. In ontology, similarly, the fundamental laws describe the behavior of categories. For example, individuals are subject to change, while properties are not. Individuals, furthermore, even though they exemplify properties, are never exemplified by anything. Laws of this nature distinguish between different categories; and the second law mentioned also shows how they establish connections between categories. Properties are connected with entities by means of what I shall call "the nexus of exemplification." Classes, on the other hand, are connected with entities by the membership relation. And it may be thought, mistakenly as we shall see, that properties and classes determine each other mutually." (pp. 3-5)

From: Reinhardt Grossmann, The Categorial Structure of the World, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1983.

Nino Cocchiarella (1933-)

"Metaphysics consists of the separate disciplines of ontology and cosmology, each with their respective methodologies.

Formal ontology connects logical categories -- especially the categories involved in predication -- with ontological categories.

The goal of a formal ontology is the construction of a lingua philosophica, or characteristica universalis, as explicated in terms of an ars combinatoria and a calculus ratiocinator as part of al formal theory of predication.

A formal ontology should serve as the framework of a characteristica realis, and hence as the basis of a formal approach to science and cosmology. It should also serve as a framework for our commonsense understanding of the world." (p. 23)

From: Nino Cocchiarella, Formal Ontology and Conceptual Realism, New York: Springer 2007.

"Comparative formal ontology is the study of how different informal ontologies can be formalized and compared with one another in their overall adequacy as explanatory frameworks. One important criterion of adequacy of course is consistency, a condition that can be satisfied only by formalization. Formalization also makes explicit the commitments of an ontology.

There are other important criteria of adequacy as well, however, in addition to consistency and transparency of ontological commitment. One major such criterion is that a formal ontology must explain and provide an ontological ground for the distinction between being and existence, or, if the distinction is rejected, an adequate account of why it is rejected. Put simply, the problem is: Can there be things that do not exist? Or is being the same as existence? Different formal ontologies will answer these questions in different ways.

The simplest account of the distinction between being and existence is that between actualism and possibilism, where by existence we mean physical existence, i.e., existence as some type of physical object; and by being we mean possible physical existence, i.e., physical existence in some possible world. According to possibilism, there are objects that do not now exist but could exist in the physical universe, and hence being is not the same as existence. In actualism being is the same as existence.

Possibilism: There are objects (i.e., objects that have being or) that possibly exist but that do not in fact exist.

Therefore: Existence = Being.

Actualism: Everything that is (has being) exists.

Therefore: Existence = Being.

Now the implicit understanding in formal ontology of both possibilism and actualism is that the objects that the quantifier phrases in these statements range over are values of the variables bound by the first-order quantifiers ? and ? (for the universal and existential quantifiers, respectively), and hence that what has being (on the level of objects) is a value of the (object) variables bound by these quantifiers. In other words, to be (an object, or thing) in both actualism and possibilism is to be a value of the bound object variables of first-order logic. This means that in possibilism,where being is not the same as existence, existence must be represented either by different quantifiers or by a predicate, e.g., E!, which is the predicate usually chosen for this purpose.

Another criterion of adequacy for a formal ontology is that it must explain the ontological grounds, or nature, of modality, i.e., of such modal notions as necessity and possibility, and in particular the meaning of possible physical existence. If the modalities in question are strictly formal, on the other hand, as is the case with logical necessity and possibility, then it must explain the basis of that formality.

This criterion cannot be satisfied by a set-theoretic semantics alone, especially one that allows for arbitrary sets of possible worlds (models) and so-called accessibility relations between those worlds. Such a semantics may be useful for showing the consistency of a modal logic, or perhaps even as a guide to our intuitions in showing its completeness; but it does not of itself provide an ontological ground for modality, or, in the case of logical modalities, explain why those modalities are strictly formal.

We restrict our considerations here to how physical existence, both actual and possible, is represented in a formal ontology. This does not mean that the formal ontologies considered here cannot be extended so as to include an account of how abstract objects might be represented as well, if allowed at all." (pp. 105-106)

Nino Cocchiarella, Actualism versus Possibilism in Formal Ontology, in: Roberto Poli, Johanna Seibt (eds.), Theory and Applications of Ontology. Vol 1: Philosophical Perspectives., Dordrecht: Springer 2010, pp. 105-118.

Jerzy Perzanowski (1943-2009)

"2. Ontology and its parts.

Ontology is the theory of what there is, the theory of being. It considers the full ontological universe, all items that are possible, describing and classifying them and searching for the principles of this universe, principles of taking together the plurality of ontic objects, particular beings, into one -- the Being.

Thus two questions govern ontological investigations: what is possible and why? The second question, concerning the being's principles, may be strengthened to the deepest -- last in logical order -- question: how that which is given, or rather what there is, is possible? The question about principles of being, i.e. general laws of nature, plus the question hat makes possible what there is and renders impossible what there isn't?Because of its matter and problematic ontology is the most general discursive discipline. It is the general theory of possibility. By the nature of its questions it is also very modal.

3. Ontology has two sides: descriptive -- phenomenological, and theoretical -- formal.

Hence, it is divided into three parts: onto-ontics (In brief: ontics), ontomethodology and ontologic.

4. Ontics is devoted to the selection of ontological problems and notions, their differentiation, classification and analysis. Doing ontics we construe the conceptual net of a given ontological theory, i.e. its categories. It is also one of the tasks of ontics to state ontological hypotheses, based on the previous analysis of concepts.

Ontics, being a part of ontology, is itself complex. Its further description depends on the general idea of ontology, on accepted classification of ontological concepts. For example, Ingarden has distinguished three parts of ontology: the material ontics, the formal ontics and the existential one. Notice that his ontology is, in our terms, ontics!5. Ontomethodology concerns ways of doing ontology, methods and types of ontological constructions as well as principles of choice between ontological statements and theories. Examples of such ontomethodic principles are: tine principle of non-contradiction, the principle of sufficient reason, and Ockham's razor.

Indication and discussion of the appropriate principles is necessary for sure for any critique of ontological theories, particularly the critique of the logical means used in ontology.

6. Ontologic is a logic of the ontic realm, It is an investigation of ontological connections, concerning particularly logical relations between pieces of optic information. Also, it is a theory of the fundament of ontic relations.

Ontologic considers the organization of the ontological universe, trying to describe its mechanism. It describes the complexity of the Being, looking for its laws and base - the Logos.

7. Ontics is a purely descriptive and analytical discipline, ontologic is speculative and formal. They are, however, closely connected and interrelated disciplines, affecting one another. The product of ontics is a description, usually complex, of the ontological universe, whereas ontologic supplies different theories of this universe.

Certainly, at present ontic considerations are more common. In ontology we have many descriptions and claims, but not as many theories.

Among Polish ontologists, for instance, Ingarden may be regarded as a typical ontics reasoner, while Leśniewski should be treated as a typical ontologician." (pp. 23-24)

From: Jerzy Perzanowski, Ontologies and Ontologics in: Ewa Zarnecka-Bialy (ed.), Logic Counts, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1990, pp. 23-42.

"2. Beings, the Being and Being.

2.1 Ontology is the discipline of being. It is the theory of what there is, why and how.

As the tradition makes clear, the verb 'to be' used here is ambiguous. It refers either to the domain of existing objects, depending therefore on an appropriate theory of existence, or to what really exists (in a metaphysical sense) - to logos which is behind existing items and behind the facts. The latter realm emerges when emphasis is placed on the second part of the above definition, i.e., on the questions: why and how?The answer we are looking for is of the form: there is x because x is possible and in addition for existing objects x satisfies certain specific conditions of existence. Possibility is frequently explained as a matter of consistency or coherence, whereas existence conditions are specified in terms of stability, homeostasis, actualization, etc.

2.2 Ontology is distinguished by its extreme generality and by the richness and fertility of its basic notions.

The most basic ontological notions are notions of a particular being and the being. Both notions can be approached in at least three ways: possibilistically, connectionally (or qualitatively), and through what we shall call verb-type-ontologies.

2.3 In the verb-type-approach both notions - of a being and the being - are obtained from the verb 'to be' by transformations and nominalizations.

The theory behind the latter is quite complicated, much more than is the grammar of the verb 'to be' itself, and this is complicated enough. In most Indo-European languages we must distinguish at least eleven variants of the verb 'to be', which leads to a rather rich variety of verb-type-ontologies.

A being here is defined as any item which is in a sense specified according to an appropriate variant of the verb 'to be'.

The verb 'to be' has its basic form in the context 'S is P', where it denotes a binary relation. The most general verb-type-ontology is therefore the general theory of relations. By specification of variants of the verb 'to be' we obtain variants of the verb-type-ontology, for example the ontology of things and properties and the set-theoretic ontology.

2.4 In the possibilistic approach a being is defined as any possible object, hence the ontological universe is understood as the space of all possibilities. Its ontology is therefore the general theory of possibility.

2.5 The qualitative or connectional approach deals with the most traditional concept of a being, defined as any item having some quality (or as a subject of qualities).

Here at least three topics need further elaboration: the ontological connection itself and the items connected: qualities and subjects. In consequence, there are four variants of this type of ontology: the qualitative one, stressing qualities, the subjective one, putting emphasis on subjects (individuals); the connectional one, stressing the formal side of the ontological connection, and the eclectic one, which tries to develop all three factors in unison.

In the present essay I shall consider several fundamental topics of connectional ontology." (pp. 64-65)

From: Jerzy Perzanowski, The Way of Truth, in: Roberto Poli, Peter Simons (eds.), Formal Ontology, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1996, pp. 61-130.

Jorge J. E. Gracia (1942-2021)

"I must now make a few brief comments about the principal parts of metaphysics. This is necessary because often particular authors confuse metaphysics with some of its parts, thus unnecessarily restricting the scope of the discipline. The discussion of such a taxonomy, then, prevents confusions which may obscure the nature of metaphysics.

Some of the parts of metaphysics with which it is most frequently confused are ontology, etiology, philosophical anthropology, theology, and philosophy of language. There are many others, but for the sake of brevity I shall use only these as examples.

Consider those philosophers who identify metaphysics with ontology. Ontology is concerned with the study of the most fundamental categories of being and with the relations among them. This naturally explains the use of the term "ontology" and suggests that the discipline deals with being, a traditional description of the object of metaphysics. The use of the term "ontology" to refer to metaphysics appears in early modern philosophy and is still with us. Indeed many contemporary metaphysicians speak of their discipline as ontology.

Yet, if ontology involves only the subject matter mentioned, it is clear that it excludes much that metaphysicians discuss. For example, much of what is discussed in the philosophy of mind falls outside ontology, for it does not concern the development of the fundamental categories of being and the exploration of the relations among them. It concerns rather the categorization of the mind and the description of its relations to various categories, and this does not seem to be a part of ontology." (pp. 147-148, notes omitted)

From: Jorge J. E. Gracia, Metaphysics and Its Task. The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge, Albany: State University of New York Press 1999.

Kit Fine (1946-)

"An ontology consists of all those items which are, in an appropriate sense, accepted. There are different views as to what it is for an item to be accepted into an ontology. For some, it is merely a matter of existence or being; for others, it is a matter of real existence or being, where this is something which stands in contrast to ordinary existence or being. This is an issue which, important as it is, will not concern me here; for most of what I have to say will remain correct under any reasonable understanding of the term. However, it is perhaps worth pointing out that I do not require the term to have any psychological connotations. An item is accepted into an ontology because it should be there, not necessarily because someone puts it there. It is, if you like, the ontology which accepts the item and not the person who endorses the ontology.

An ontology is total; it includes everything that is accepted. By contrast, we may talk of a partial ontology or of a subontology, which includes some, but perhaps not all, of what is accepted.

An ontology is actual; it includes everything that it is correct to accept. By contrast, we may talk of a possible ontology, which consists of everything that might be accepted (as the total ontology).

One might take a sceptical stand on either of these two distinctions. One might hold that there is no such thing as a total, as opposed to a partial, ontology; for any ontology there is always a larger ontology within which it is contained. (The paradoxes have led some to hold such a view for the ontology of sets). And one might also hold that there is no such thing as an actual, as opposed to a possible, ontology. There is nothing which counts as the correct ontological stand; there are merely different, equally legitimate, stands.

I shall not engage with the first form of scepticism, though what I have to say can, to some extent, be made to accommodate it. However, I shall engage with the second form. I shall attempt to see how absolutist notions might be eschewed in the description of an ontology.

This is not because I endorse the second form of scepticism. It is more that I am interested in the distinction on which the position rests rather than with the position itself. The sceptic draws a line. But one may be interested in the line without accepting it as a boundary." (p. 265)

From: Kit Fine, "A Study of Ontology", Noûs 25, 1991, pp. 263-294.

Dale Jacquette (1953-2016)

"The word ontology has four established meanings in philosophy.

There are two intersecting sets of distinctions. Pure philosophical ontology is different from applied scientific ontology, and ontology in the applied scientific sense can be understood either as a discipline or a domain.

Ontology as discipline is a method or activity of enquiry into philosophical problems about the concept or facts of existence. Ontology as a domain is the outcome or subject matter of ontology as a discipline. Applied scientific ontology construed as an existence domain can be further subdivided as the theoretical commitment to a preferred choice of existent entities, or to the real existent entities themselves, including the actual world considered as a whole, also known as the extant domain. Ontology as a theoretical domain is thus a description or inventory of the things that are supposed to exist according to a particular theory, which might but need not be true. Ontology as the extant domain, in contrast, is the actual world of all real existent entities, whatever these turn out to be, identified by a true complete applied ontological theory. As a result, we must be careful in reading philosophical works on ontology, when an author speaks of "ontology" without qualification, not to confuse the intended sense of the word with any of the alternatives." (pp. 2-3)

From: Dale Jacquette, Ontology, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press 2002.

Roberto Poli (1955-)

"Ontology is the theory of objects. And it is so of every type of object, concrete and abstract, existent and non-existent, real and ideal, independent and dependent. Whatever objects we are or might be dealing with, ontology is their theory. Object is used in this sense as synonymous with the traditional term Being."

"THESIS 1. An ontology is not a catalogue of the world, a taxonomy, a terminology or a list of objects, things or whatever else. If anything, an ontology is the general framework (= structure) within which catalogues, taxonomies, terminologies may be given suitable organization. This means that somewhere a boundary must be drawn between ontology and taxonomy.

THESIS 2. An ontology is not reducible to pure cognitive analysis (in philosophical terms, it is not an epistemology or a theory of knowledge). Ontology represents the 'objective' side (= on the side of the object), and the theory of knowledge the subjective side (= on the side of the knowing subject) of reality. The two sides are obviously interdependent, but this is not to imply that they are the same (exactly like the front and rear of a coin). In order to conduct ontological analysis, it is necessary to 'neutralize', so to speak, the cognitive dimension, that is, to reduce it to the default state. I assume that the default state is the descriptive one, where the dimensions of attention, of interest, etc., are as neutral as possible (= natural attitude). It is of course possible to modify the default state and construct ontologies of the other cognitive states as well, but this involves modifications of the central structure.

THESIS 3. There is nothing to prevent the existence of several ontologies, in the plural. In this case too, ontological study is useful because, at the very least, it renders the top categories explicit and therefore enables verification of whether there are reasonable translation strategies and of which categorization can serve best to achieve certain objectives." (p. 313)

From: Roberto Poli, "Ontology for Knowledge Organization", in Rebecca Green (ed.), Knowledge Organization and Change, Indeks, Frankfurt, 1996, pp. 313-319.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Key Terms in Ontology. Introductory Remarks

Introduction

The following pages are an attempt to give a synthetic panorama of the current research on some main concepts of ontology, both from an historical and from a theoretical point of view.

The main authors who contribute to the philosophical refinement of the concepts will be cited, with special attention paid to the relevant contributions from linguistics, when appropriate, and bibliographical references for further study; attention will be given to the linguistic relativity hypothesis: i.e. what influence (if any) the structure and lexicon of language had on the thought.

The "question of being" initially evolved in Greece and India (1), (Greek and Sanskrit are both Indo-European languages), but not in China or Islam (the difficulties of translating the concept of "being" in Arabic are illustrated by the well-known Al-Farabi's chapter in his "Kitab-al-huruf" - The book of Letters) (2).

Philosophers, with few exceptions (e.g. Wilhelm von Humboldt, or Adolf Trendelenburg's work on the grammatical origin of Aristotelian Categories) have generally neglected this problem, or have spoken of the excellence of Greek language to explain the historical origins of metaphysics (e.g. Martin Heidegger: "For along with the German language, Greek (in regard to the possibilities of thinking) is at once the most powerful and the most spiritual of languages") (3). I think that a consideration of the recent results of linguistic research would provide a better evaluation of the question.

In some cases an attempt will be made to give a brief information about the equivalent concepts of Arabic, Chinese and Indian philosophy to offer a comparative vision of the problems.

I will made these additions only with much hesitation; I am not an Orientalist and my only justification is the lack of relevant information available on the Internet about this important subject; perhaps experienced scholars will supply more advanced contributions to complete, and if necessary to correct, my job.

I hope to add other items in future; suggestions and criticism are equally welcome.

Notes

(1) "There is no equivalent to the Aristotelian project of a 'science of being qua being' in the Indian philosophical tradition, nor the Platonic perplexity about being and nonbeing; nor is there an explicit counterpart to Wolff's conception of 'ontology'. Yet being is one of the central and pervasive themes of Indian thought. It is the object of intense reflection, discussion, and disagreement, and a catalyst of debate among the competing schools of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. "Wilhelm Halbfass, On Being and What There Is, New York: State University of New York Press, 1992, p. 21.

(2) See: Amina Rachid, "Dieu et l'être selon Al-Farabi: le chapitre de 'l'être' dans le Livre des Lettres", in: Centre d'Étude pour la Religion du Livre (ed.), Dieu et l'Être. Exégèses d'Exode 3,14 et de Coran 20.11-24, Paris: Études augustiniennes 1978, pp. 179-190.

(3) Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, New Haven: Yale University Press 2000 p. 60.

Some resources for Asian philosophy

1. Reyna Ruth. Dictionary of Oriental Philosophy. Philadelphia: Coronet Books 1977.

2. Grimes John. A Concise Dictionary of Indian Philosophy: Sanskrit Terms Defined in English. Albany: State University of New York Press 1996.

3. Leaman Oliver. Key Concepts in Asian Philosophy. New York: Routledge 1999.

4. Dainian Zhang. Key Concepts in Chinese Philosophy. New Haven: Yale University Press 2002.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Key Terms in Ontology: Being

The concept of being in linguistics

"Any linguistic study of the Greek verb be is essentially conditioned, and perhaps ultimately motivated, by the philosophic career of this word. We know what an extraordinary career it has been. It seems fair to say, with Benveniste, that the systematic development of a concept of Being in Greek philosophy from Parmenides to Aristotle, and then in a more mechanical way from the Stoics to Plotinus, relies upon the pre-existing disposition of the language to make a very general and diversified use of the verb einai. Furthermore, insofar as the notions expressed by on, einai, and ousia in Greek underlie the doctrines of Being, substance, essence, and existence in Latin, in Arabic, and in modern philosophy from Descartes to Heidegger and perhaps to Quine, we may say that the usage of the Greek verb be studied here forms the historical basis for the ontological tradition of the West, as the very term "ontology" suggests.

At the same time it is generally recognized that this wide range of uses for the single verb eimi in Greek reflects a state of affairs which is "peculiar to Indo-European languages, and by no means a universal situation or a necessary condition." (1) The present monograph series on "the verb 'be' and its synonyms" shows just how far the languages of the earth may differ from one another in their expression for existence, for predication with nouns or with adjectives, for locative predication, and so forth. The topic of be can itself scarcely be defined except by reference to Indo-European verbs representing the root *es-. The question naturally arises whether an historical peculiarity of this kind can be of any fundamental importance for general linguistics and, even more pressing, whether a concept reflecting the Indo-European use of *es- can be of any general significance in philosophy." (p. 1)

Notes

(1) Émile Benveniste, "Catégories de pensée et catégories de langue" (1958), in: Problèmes de linguistique générale, (Paris, 1966) p. 73.

From: Charles H. Kahn, The Verb 'Be' in Ancient Greek, Dordrecht: Reidel 1973, reprinted Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003 with a new Introduction).

The concept of being in Western philosophy before Heidegger

"The great intellectual adventure that is Greek philosophy may be regarded, on a somewhat simplistic view, as structured around three basic questions, occurring historically in the following order: What is the world made of? or What is there?; What should we do?; How can we know? These may be soon as lying behind what were later distinguished (perhaps first, in a formal way, I,. Plato's pupil Xenocrates as the three main divisions of Greek philosophy, physics, ethics, and logic.

I am here concerned only with the first and most basic question, since that constitutes the inquiry about being. Before beginning a historical survey, it would be well to attempt a definition of the concept with which we are concerned. In the context of Greek thought, then, 'being" (often characterized by the additional qualification "real" or "true") denotes sonic single, permanent, unchanging, fundamental reality, to which is habitually opposed the inconstant flux and variety of visible things. This reality is initially seen simply as a sort of substratum out of which the multiplicity of appearances may evolve, but progressively there come to be added to it other features, such as absolute unity (or, conversely, infinite multiplicity), eternity (ultimately timelessness), incorporeality for, conversely, basic corporeality), and rationality (or, conversely, blind necessity). in short, "being" (on, or ousia) becomes in Greek philosophy the repository of all the concepts that can be thought up to characterize the idealized opposite of what we see around us -- its counterpart, which comprises all aspects of the everyday physical world, being termed "becoming" (genesis)." (p. 51)

From: John Dillon, The Question of Being, in: Jacques Brunschwig, Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd (eds.), Harvard: Harvard University Press 2000 pp. 51-71.

In a first acceptation, the word being is a noun. As such, it signifies either d being (that is, the substance, nature, and essence of anything existent), or being itself, a property common to all that which can rightly be said to be. In a second acceptation, the same word is the present participle of the verb 'to be.' As a verb, it no longer signifies something that is, nor even existence in general, but rather the very act whereby any given reality actually is, or exists. Let us call this act a 'to be,' in contradistinction to what is commonly called 'a being.' It appears at once that, at least to the mind, the relation of 'to be' to 'being' is not a reciprocal one. 'Being' is conceivable, 'to be' is not. We cannot possibly conceive an 'is' except as belonging to some thing that is, or exists. But the reverse is not true. Being is quite conceivable apart from actual existence; so much so that the very first and the most universal of all the distinctions in the realm of being is that which divides it into two classes, that of the real and that of the possible. Now what is it to conceive a being as merely possible, if not to conceive it apart from actual existence? A 'possible' is a being which has not yet received, or which has already lost, its own to be. Since being is thinkable apart from actual existence, whereas actual existence is not thinkable apart from being, philosophers will simply yield to one of the fundamental facilities of the human mind by positing being minus actual existence as the first principle of metaphysics." (pp. 2-3)

From: Étienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Second edition, 1952.

"When the early Greek thinkers initiated philosophical speculation, the very first question they asked themselves was: What stuff is reality made of? Taken in itself, this question was strikingly indicative of the most fundamental need of the human mind. To understand something is for us to conceive it as identical in nature with something else that we already know. To know the nature of reality at large is therefore for us to understand that each and every one of the innumerable things which make up the universe is, at bottom, identical in nature with each and every other thing. Prompted by this unshakable conviction, unshakable because rooted in the very essence of human understanding, the early Greek thinkers successively attempted to reduce nature in general to water, then to air, then to fire, until one of them at last hit upon the right answer to the question, by saying that the primary stuff which reality is made of is being.

The answer was obviously correct, for it is not at once evident that, in the last analysis, air and fire are nothing else than water, or that, conversely, water itself is nothing else than either air or fire; but it cannot be doubted that, whatever else they may be, water, air and fire have in common at least this property, that they are. Each of them is a being, and, since the same can be said of everything else, we cannot avoid the conclusion that being is the only property certainly shared in common by all that which is. Being, then, is the fundamental and ultimate element of reality.

When he made this discovery, Parmenides of Elea at once carried metaphysical speculation to what was always to remain one of its ultimate limits; but, at the same time, he entangled himself in what still is for us one of the worst metaphysical difficulties. It had been possible for Parmenides' predecessors to identify nature with water, fire or air, without going to the trouble of defining the meaning of those terms. If I say that everything is water, everybody will understand what I mean, but if I say that everything is being, I can safely expect to be asked: what is being? For indeed we all know many beings, but what being itself is, or what it is to be, is an extremely obscure and intricate question. Parmenides could hardly avoid telling us what sort of reality being itself is. In point of fact, he was bold enough to raise the problem and clear-sighted enough to give it an answer which still deserves to hold our attention." (pp. 6-7)

From: Étienne Gilson, Being and some philosophers Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Second edition, 1952.

The concept of being according to Heidegger

"If for us Being is just an empty word and an evanescent meaning, then we must at least try to grasp fully this last remnant of a connection. So we ask, to begin with: 1. What sort of word is this anyway -- Being -- as regards its formal character as a word? 2. What does linguistics tell us about the originary meaning of this word? To put this in scholarly terms, we are asking 1) about the grammar and 2) about the etymology of the word Being.

The grammatical analysis of words is neither exclusively nor primarily concerned with their written or spoken form. It takes these formal elements as clues to definite directions and differences in direction in the possible meanings of words; these directions dictate how the words can be used within a sentence or within a larger discursive structure. (...)We can easily see that un the formation of the word Being, the decisive precursor is the infinitive 'to be.' This form of the verb is transformed into a substantive. The character of our word Being, as a word, is determined, accordingly, by three grammatical forms: verb, infinitive, and substantive. Thus our first task is to understand the meaning of these grammatical forms. Of the three we have named, verb and substantive are among those that were first recognized at the start of Western grammar and that even today are taken as the fundamental forms of words and of language in general. And so, with the question about the essence of the substantive and of the verb, we find ourselves in the midst of the question about the essence of language. For the question of whether the primordial form of the word is the noun (substantive) or the verb coincides with the question of the originary character of speech and speaking. In turn, this question entails the question of the origin of language. We cannot start by immediately going into this question. We are forced onto a detour. We will restrict ourselves in what follows to that grammatical form which provides the transitional phase in the development of the verbal substantive: the infinitive (to go, to come, to fall, to sing, to hope, to be, etc.).

What does "infinitive" mean? This term is an abbreviation of the complete one: modus infinitivus, the mode of unboundedness, of indeterminateness, regarding the manner in which a verb exercises and indicates the function and direction of its meaning. (...).

Above all we must consider the fact that the definitive differentiation of the fundamental forms of words (noun and verb) in the Greek form of onoma and rhema was worked out and first established in the most immediate and intimate connection with the conception and interpretation of Being that has been definitive for the entire West. This inner bond between these two happenings is accessible to us unimpaired and is carried out in full clarity in Plato's Sophist. The terms onoma and rhema were already known before Plato, of course. But at that time, and still in Plato, they were understood as terms denoting the use of words as a whole. Onoma means the linguistic name as distinguished from the named person or thing, and it also means the speaking of a word, which was later conceived grammatically as rhema. And rhema in turn means the spoken word, speech; the rhetor is the speaker, the orator, who uses not only verbs but also onomata in the narrower meaning of the substantive.

The fact that both terms originally governed an equally wide domain is important for our later point that the much-discussed question in linguistics of whether the noun or the verb represents the primordial form of the word is not a genuine question. This pseudo-question first arose in the context of a developed grammar rather than from a vision of the essence of language, an essence not yet dissected by grammar." (pp. 55-60, notes omitted)

From: Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics New translation by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt, New Haven: Yale University Press 2000.

The history of the verb "Be" in Ancient Greek

"On the other hand, by means of the so-called noun clause the Hebrew language is much better able to express the 'static' or 'that which is' in its logical sense than the Greek and our modern languages permit with their copula and their verbs of inaction. We shall define the noun clause in agreement with Gesenius-Kautzsch, in order to be able to understand the 'being' expressed in it. Every sentence, the subject as well as the predicate of which is a noun or noun equivalent is called a noun clause, while in a verbal clause the predicate is a finite verb. This distinction is indispensable for more subtle understanding of Hebrew syntax (as of Semitics in general) because it is not merely a matter of an external, formal distinction in meaning but of one that goes to the depths of the language. The noun clause, the predicate of which is a substantive, offers something fixed, not active, in short, a 'being'; the verbal clause on the other hand asserts something moving and in flux, an event and an action. The noun clause with a participial predicate can also assert something moving and in flux, except that here the event and action is fixed as something not active and enduring, as opposed to the verbal clause. For our purpose, it is not necessary to discuss all the various kinds of noun classes, and in particular not those with participial predicates which should logically be considered as verbal clauses." (pp. 35-36, some notes omitted)

Notes

(1) Friedrich Heinrich Wilhelm Gesenius (1786-1842) and Emil Friedrich Kautzsch (1841-1910), Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar. Edited and enlarged by E. Kautzsch Translated and revised from the German 28th edition by Arthur Ernest Cowley. 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910. [Reprinted by Oxford University Press in 1995].

From: Thorleif Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, English updated translation by Jules Moreau, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960; reprinted by W. W. Norton & Company, 2002. Original edition: Das hebräische Denken im Vergleich mit dem griechischen, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1952 (second revised edition 1954).

"What is the basic fact of 'being' for the Israelites will result from the analysis of the verb hayah that follows.

A) The verb hayah: We must devote special attention to this verb not only because it occurs most frequently but also because the verbal problems discussed above are concentrated in this verb and appear in it in their most difficult form. (...) The most important meanings and uses of our verb 'to be' (and its equivalents in other Indo-European languages) are: (1) to express being or existence; (2) to serve as a copula. Now, as we have shown above, Hebrew and the other Semitic languages do not need a copula because of the noun clause. As a general rule, therefore, it may be said that hayah is not used as a copula; real or supposed exceptions to this rule will be cited later. The characteristic mark of hayah, in distinction from our verb 'to be', is that it is a true verb with full verbal force. The majority of formal considerations as well as the actual ones lead to this conclusion:

I. The peculiarity of emphasizing the verbal idea by use of the infinitive absolute before finite verbs;

II. the occurrence of the passive form Niph'al;

III. its frequent occurrence in parallel with other verbs whose verbal force is beyond doubt; this is so frequent an occurrence that a few examples will suffice: Jahveh hurled a great wind, and a mighty tempest was ( Jonah 1.4); God created (made, spoke) and the corresponding thing was ( Gen. 1.3, 9, 11); its parallel use with qûm = 'be realized' (Isa. 7.7; 14.24); the messengers of the king command the prophet Micaiah to prophesy safety and victory, 'Let thy word be as the word of one of them (i.e. the prophets of good fortune)', ( I Kings 22.13).

The meaning of hayah is apparently manifold; hayah has thus been considered to some extent a general word which can mean everything possible and therefore designates nothing characteristic. Closer examination reveals, however, that this is not the case. It is therefore necessary to establish the many meanings and shades of meaning of hayah and to find their inner connexion. We shall use first the results of Ratschow (1) who has examined the occurrences of hayah in the Old Testament with a thoroughness hardly to be excelled and in whose work is to be found extensive evidence. He found three principal meanings: 'to become', 'to be', and 'to effect'; but these are related internally and form a unity. In the main this will be right, and it agrees with our understanding of Hebrew thought; we must object, however, to details." (pp. 38-39, notes omitted).

Notes

(1) Carl H. Ratschow, Werden und Wirken, Eine Untersuchung des wortes hajah als Beitrag zur Wirklichkeitserfassung des Alten Testaments ("Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft", 70), Berlin: A. Töpelmann, 1941.

From: Thorleif Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, English updated translation by Jules Moreau, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960; reprinted by W. W. Norton & Company, 2002. Original edition: Das hebräische Denken im Vergleich mit dem griechischen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1952 (second revised edition 1954).

"In modern biblical theology it is commonly held that the Israelites were not interested in 'existence' as distinct from active existence, action or life; and correspondingly that the language has no means of expressing mere existence. The same seems to be the opinion of Boman, who several times says that a static being is a nothing to the Israelites.

It was mentioned earlier that 'the verb 'to be' as copula or existential was one of the subjects of the questionnaire circulated by Basson and O'Connor and reported on in their article. On this question they got an answer, and they report as follows: 'Semitic languages have in general no copula, but Hebrew and Assyrian both have a special word for "exists" '.1 Does this contradict the opinion I have just described?There are at least three linguistic phenomena which are relevant to the discussion of 'to be' in Hebrew:(a) The ordinary type of sentence where the copula 'is' is used in English, such as 'David is the king', 'he is the man', has no verb as copula in Hebrew. Hebrew uses the nominal sentence, which is a mere juxtaposition of the two elements 'David' and 'the king'. The nominal sentence is a very well-established feature of Semitic syntax. A common addition is the pronoun 'he' or 'she' introduced after the subject, giving the sentence 'David-he-the-king'. Since this pronoun is not indispensable and is indeed very frequently not so inserted, I think it can be neglected in a discussion of the copula.

(b) The verb hayah 'to be'. This is discussed at length by Boman, and I shall later make some remarks about his treatment of it. For the present we have to make clear only the most important fact for the co-ordination of hayah with other terms corresponding to English 'to be': it is only at certain points that this verb coincides in function with 'to be as copula or existential'. In a very large number of its occurrences it will be well translated by 'come to be' or 'come to pass'. Or, conversely, English sentences using 'is' in the present tense either as copula or as existential will seldom be rendered into Hebrew with hayah; they will much more normally use the nominal sentence, or the particle yel 'there is'. We are not on the other hand justified in removing hayah altogether from the sphere of what is relevant to English 'is' and making it equivalent (say) to English 'become'. For example, a statement like 'the earth is waste' will have the nominal sentence, and no verb; but if we put it in the past and say 'the earth was waste (and is no longer so)', then the verb hayah is used, as in Gen. I: 2. It would be quite perverse to insist on the meaning 'became' here, and so a certain overlap with 'be' has to be observed. In fact the sense of 'come to he' or 'come to pass' is not to be explained by going over to 'become' as the basic sense, but by noticing that very frequent uses have an ingressive element which with a verb meaning 'be' will lead to a sense roughly of 'come to be' or 'come to pass'.

(c) The word yeš; 'there is' and the opposite 'ayin or 'en 'there is not'. This is of course the 'special word for exists ' mentioned in the report above. Boman in his discussion of 'being' does not mention this frequent and important word at all. Moreover, a considerable complication is introduced into the discussion by this word. Basson and O'Connor (1) are right in saying that it is a 'special word for 'exists', in the sense that it is not normally used as a copula in sentences like 'David is the king'. You use it in sentences like 'There is a dish on the table' or 'There is a God in heaven'.

The complication to which I refer is that this word, which we might describe rather vaguely as a particle, is certainly not a verb, has some of the characteristics of the noun and may be translated 'being, existence' in a rather over-literal rendering.

(...)

"Now another point of some importance can be illustrated from this word. The point I wish to make is that the question whether the Israelites laid any emphasis on 'mere' existence as distinct from active existence of some kind is a different one from the question whether their language had words that could express 'mere' existence. The word yeš; can be well translated by 'there is', and as in English 'there is' we press too far if we try to find in it the expression of 'mere' existence. In fact many cases which use it have also some locality indicated: 'There is bread in my house', 'There is Yahweh in this place'. This is no doubt the 'existential' sense of 'is' as against the 'copula' type. Nevertheless 'exists' would not be a good translation in these sentences, since we would not normally say 'Bread exists in my house' or 'There exists a dish on the table'. In other words, the 'existential' use of the word 'is' does not coincide semantically with 'exists' and does not raise the problem of 'mere' existence, especially when a locality is indicated."(pp. 58-61, some notes omitted)

Notes

(1) A. H. Basson, and D. J. O'Connor, "Language and Philosophy: Some Suggestions for an Empirical Approach", Philosophy, XXII (1947) pp. 49-65.

From: James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961.

The meaning of "είναι" AND "τὸ ὄν" in Ancient Greek

"BEING. The closest equivalent to the word "being" in ancient Greek is to on, the present participle of einai, to be (ON, ONTA). The first part of Parmenides' poem has as its focus esti, the third person singular of einai, and to eon, the equivalent of to on in Parmenides' dialect. For Parmenides, "being"(to on) is one, timeless and changeless, and this, he says, is "the truth"; all talk about plurality and change is "opinion"(doxa), and not the truth about "being."

Since to on and to onta are, in ordinary Greek, often used as stand-ins for names of one or more individual things, other Greek philosophers looked for other locutions to talk about "being" in ontologically loaded contexts. One of Plato's favorite locutions to refer to the forms (eide) is to ontos on, using the adverb made from the participle to intensify its meaning, literally, "the beingly being," but typically translated into English as "the really real." Ontos was in common use to mean, roughly, "really" or "actually" or "in fact" but combining it with the participle seems to be Plato's coinage.

Plato also adopts the abstract noun built on the same participle, ousia, the stem ont -- plus the abstract noun ending -- sia. In ordinary Greek, this word must have some of the resonance that "existence" has in ordinary English, but it is most often used, outside of philosophical contexts, to talk about property or wealth or about important personal characteristics. In English translations of Plato's dialogues, the word ousia is sometimes rendered "Reality" and sometimes "being," while in English translations of Aristotle the word "being" fairly reliably translates "to on," and ousia is typically translated "substance" or "entity"(see OUSIA).

Thus, in those of Plato's dialogues where the forms play a role the distinction between being and becoming is equivalent to the distinction between forms and phenomena (phainomena), or between Object of knowledge (epistemë) and object of opinion (doxa).

Aristotle does not use the locution to ontos on; apart from his exceedingly widespread use of the word ousia. We may note the locution to on he on,typically translated "being qua being," and to on haplos (that which simply is). More generally, Aristotle frequently talks of the many senses of "being": in one way, "being" (to einai, the infinitive, or to on) has as many senses as the categories (i.e., 10), but there is also a distinction between potential and actual being, between essential and accidental, and an equation of being and truth.

The Stoics tend to use the word hyparchein for both existence and predication." (pp. 67-68)

From: Anthony Preus, Historical Dictionary of Ancient Greek Philosophy, Lanham: Scarecow Press, 2007.

"einai: to be, to exist; to on: that which is, the real; ousia: being, essence. This verb caused great philosophical difficulty to the Greeks and consequential difficulties for us. Much of the trouble arises from the fact that one can say Platôn esti - Plato exists - or Platôn esti philosophos -- Plato is a philosopher - making use of the same verb, whereas in English 'Plato is' is at best an unidiomatic way of saying that he exists. This double use led some earlier Greek philosophers to think that a sentence beginning Platôn ouk esti... must deny the existence of Plato even if the next word is barbaros. This leads to translation difficulties for us, as for instance with the sentence ei ti phaneiê hoion hama on to kai mê on, to toiouton metaxu keisthai tou eilikrinôs ontos kai tou pantôs mê ontos (Plato Rep. 478d), which might be translated either as 'if something should appear such as both to have and not to have a certain predicate [we said that] such a thing would lie between being clearly of that sort and not being so at all' or as 'if something should appear such that it simultaneously exists and does not exist [we said that] such a thing would lie between clearly existing and not existing at all'. It was presumably these difficulties that led Parmenides to say such things as khrê to legein to noein t'eon emmenai esti gar einai, mêden d'ouk estin - that of which one can speak and think must be: for it is possible for it, but not for nothing, to be (Parmenides in Simplicius, Physics 117.4). In an impersonal use esti frequently means 'it is possible' as in estin adikounta mêpô adikon einai - it is possible to do what is unjust without being an unjust person (Aristotle N.E. 1134a 17), and in the quotation from Parmenides above. There are also adverbial expressions such as estin hote, sometimes, and estin hôs, in some ways.".

"on: to on, in the widest sense, is everything that is and, as such, is contrasted with to mê on, that which is not; in a narrower use to on, sometimes called for clarity to ontôs on, the really real, is unchanging and imperishable and eternal, and is contrasted with the gignomenon that is changing and perishable. In the dispute between Parmenides and the atomists it is hard to doubt that to mê on as the non-existent is confused with empty space: oute gar an gnoiês to ge mê on: ou gar anuston -- you cannot know that which is not; it is impossible (Parmenides, fr. 2); ouden gar estin ê estai allo parex tou eontos -- nothing other than what is either is or will be (Parmenides, fr. 8). But Simplicius reports Leucippus as saying ouden mallon to on ê to mê on huparkhein -- there is that which is no more than that which is not (Simplicius, Physics 28.12); here to mê on seems to be the kenon, void; cf. the den of Democritus. In the narrower use, to men pantelôs on pantelôs gnôston -- the completely real is completely knowable (Plato Rep. 477a); ei gar panta to onta tou agathou ephietai, dêlon hoti to prôtôs agathon epekeina esti tôn ontôn -- for if everything that is aims at the good, it is clear that the primary good transcends things that are (Proclus, Elements of Theology 8); to gar houtôs on proteron têi phusei tou gignomenou esti - that which is in this [narrow] way is prior in its nature to the becoming. (Simplicius, Physics 1337.4)." (pp. 49-50)

From: James Opie Urmson, The Greek Philosophical Vocabulary London: Duckworth 1990.

"on ónta (pl.): being, beings.

1. The question of the nature of being first arose in the context of Parmenides' series of logical dichotomies between being and nonbeing (me on): that which is, cannot not be; that which is not, cannot be, i.e., a denial of passage from being to nonbeing or genesis (q.v.; fr. 2), and its corollary, a denial of change and motion (fr. 8, lines 26-33, 42-50; for the theological correlatives of this, see nous 2). Secondly, being is one and not many (fr. 8, lines 22-25) . And finally, the epistemological premiss: only being can be known or named; nonbeing cannot (fr. 3; fr. 8, line 34); see doxa. Being, in short, is a sphere (fr. 8, lines 42-4g) . Most of the later pre-Socratics denied this latter premiss (cf. stoicheion and atomon), as did Plato for whom the really real (to ontos on) were the plural eide, and who directed the latter half of the Parmenides (137b-166c) against it.

2. The solution to the nonbeing dilemma (for its epistemological solution, see doxa and heteron) and the key to the analysis of genesis began with Plato's positing of space (see hypodoche) in which genesis takes place, and which stands midway between true being and nonbeing (Tim. 52a-c). For Plato, as for Parmenides, absolute nonbeing is nonsense (Sophist 238c), but there is a relative grade illustrated not only by the Receptacle cited above, but by sensible things (aistheta) as well (Sophist 240b; Timaeus. 35a, 52c). Among the Platonic hierarchy of Forms, there is aneidos of being; indeed it is one of the most important Forms that pervade all the rest (Sophist 254b-d; compare this with the peculiar nature of on in Aristotle, Metaphysics 1003a) . Further, Plato distinguishes real beings (ontos onta) from those that have genesis, and in Timaeus 28a he works out an epistemological-ontological correlation: onta are known by thought (noesis) accompanied by a rational account (logos); generated beings are grasped by opinion (or judgment, see doxa) based on sensation (aisthesis).

3. Since being is the object of the science of metaphysics (Metaphysics 1031a) Aristotle's treatment of on is much more elaborate. The first distinction is between "being qua being" (to on he on), which is the object of metaphysics, and individual beings (onta), which are the objects of the other sciences. This is the view in Metaphysics 1003a, but Aristotle is not consistent on the point: elsewhere (see Metaphysics 1026a; Physics 192a, 194b; De an. 403b) he states that metaphysics studies being that is separate and unmoving (see theologia). Again, 'being' is peculiar in that it is defined not univocally or generically, but analogously through all the categories (Metaphysics 1003a), and in this it is like 'one' (hen) (Metaphysics 1053b ) and 'good' (agathon) ( ibid. Nichomachean Ethics I, 1096b ) ; see katholou. There follows a basic distinction (ibid. 1017a-b): something 'is' either accidentally, or essentially, or epistemologically, or in the dichotomy act (energeia) / potency (dynamis). The epistemological 'being' (see doxa) is dealt with elsewhere ( see Metaphysics 1027b-1028a, 1051a-1152a), as is potency/act (see Metaphysics Theta passim), so Aristotle here concentrates his attention on what 'is' essentially. It is something that falls within the ten kategoriai (Metaphysics 1017a) and is, primarily, substance (ousia; ibid. 1028a-b). A somewhat different point of view emerges from Aristotle's breakdown of the various senses of nonbeing (me on) in Metaphysics 1069b and 1089a: something is not either as a negative proposition, i.e., a denial of one of the predicates, or as a false proposition, or finally, kata dynamin, i.e., by being something else only potentially but not actually. It is from this latter that genesis comes about ( see also dynamis, energeia, steresis) .

4. In the Plotinian universe the One (hen) is beyond being (Enneads V, 9, 3; compare Plato's description of the Good beyond Being in Republic 509b and see hyperousia). The realm of being begins on the level of nous since both being and nous are contained in nous (ibid. V, 5, 2; V, 9, 7). Nonbeing is treated in much the Platonic and Aristotelian fashion: matter (hyle) that is only a replica (eikon) of being is only quasi-being ( Enneads I, 8, 3). Philo, with his strongly developed feeling of divine transcendence (see hyperousia), restricts true being to God alone (Quod deterius potiori insidiari soleat. 44., 160), arid introduces into the discussion the metaphysical interpretation of the famous phrase in Exodus 3, 14: 'I am who am'; see hypodoche, hyle, genesis." (pp. 141-142)

From: Francis Edwards Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms. A Historical Lexicon New York: New York University Press, 1967.

"There can be no doubt that Parmenides' Goddess's philosophy course is concerned with 'being.' But saying this is not saying anything. In Greek, as in Spanish [or English], 'to be' is a verb and, like any verb it can be used as a noun, and then we can speak of 'being' (used as a noun). But this verbal noun is essentially different in Greek than it is in other languages, and so we cannot ignore the problem. This specificity is one of the results of the flexibility of the Greek language, which permits all kinds of juggling. E. Benveniste wrote that "the linguistic structure of Greek created the predisposition for the notion 'to be' to have a philosophical vocation." (1) Indeed, the use of the verb 'to be' as a noun absolutely does not mean what Philosophers call 'being' (the noun). To use an infinitive as a noun in Spanish it must be preceded by an article, in this case 'el' ['the']. Then the infinitive 'ser"'['to be'] becomes 'el ser' ['the being'] used as a noun, in Greek 'tò eînai.' However, this formula never figured among the concerns of the Greek philosophers. No Greek philosopher who inquired into what today we might call 'the being of things,' or even 'certain types of beings,' including the supreme being, ever asked 'what is tò eînai?' literally 'what is being?' As we know, especially since the Aristotelian systemization, the formula used by all Greek philosophers to ask the question of being is tí esti tò ón (to eon in Parmenides), 'What is being?' 'Tò eon' is the present participle of the verb to be, used as a noun. The difficulty of grasping the scope of this neuter present participle (since there is also a masculine and a feminine present participle) has always given rise to all kinds of misunderstandings, since its use as a noun, represented by the neuter article 'tó,' is deceptive, and so Parmenides avoids it whenever he can. Indeed, just as verbal-noun infinitives always have a dynamic character, something similar occurs with the participle tò on, which as a present participle means that which is being,' that which engages in the act of being now. In all that I have said up till now, philosophy is absent: I have only summarized, perhaps too superficially, what Benveniste calls 'un fait de langue,"' (2) a fact about Greek simply as a language.

It is upon this linguistic fact that Parmenides reflects. In Greek the word for 'things' is ónta. Even in current everyday language, things are 'beings,' 'something(s) that is (are),' 'that which is being.' Philosophy has not yet come into it: that's the way the Greek language is. But why do we call something that is a 'being'? Because the fact of being manifests itself in that which is; if there is that which is, then the fact of being is assumed. Without the fact of being, there would not be things that are. This sort of platitude will constitute the nucleus of Parmenides' philosophy. And that is the reason why his thinking starts from an analysis of the notion of the fact of being, arrived at from the evidence that 'is' is occurring. If there is something undeniable for anyone who is, it is 'is.' If Greek syntax allowed the formula, we could say, with R. Regvald, that the basic question would be 'tí esti ésti,' 'What is 'is'?" (pp. 59-60, some notes omitted)

Notes

(1) Emile Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique générale, Paris: Gallimard, 1959 p. 73.

(2) ibid. p. 71 note 1.

From: Néstor-Luis Cordero, By Being, It Is. The Thesis of Parmenides Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2004.

"It is an understatement to claim that 'being' is one of the central concepts of ancient Greek metaphysics. Unfortunately, there is a split between contemporary commentators as to what is under discussion when being is the topic. On one side are those who think that these discussions are basically about existence; what exists, the various sorts of existence, what can be inferred from the fact that something exists, etc. On the other side are those who believe that these discussions are investigations into the nature of predication; of being something or other, the various ways a thing can be what it is, what can be inferred from the fact that a thing is something or other, etc. Obviously these are two quite different topics. For example, on the existence interpretation, as I shall call it, one of Parmenides' main points is that we cannot (meaningfully) speak of what does not exist. His mistake is to think that words and phrases which purport to refer but which do not refer are meaningless. On the predication approach, Parmenides is correctly pointing out that we cannot speak about nothing (what is not anything at all) and still be speaking. His mistake is to confuse not being something or other with not being anything at all. (1) On the existence interpretation, it is perhaps fair to say that Plato's distinction between real being and a lesser sort is a distinction between kinds of existence. On the predication approach, it is a distinction between really being this or that and being in a way or qualifiedly this or that. One's view of Greek metaphysics is going to be strongly influenced by which approach one takes. A little can be said about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches without getting into the details where, as we all know, the devil dwells. In philosophical discussions of being we frequently find the Greek, 'èsti', occurring without a completion. On the predication approach, sentences of the form, 'x is', are understood as meaning much the same as, 'x is something or other', in the way that, 'x sees', means much the same as, 'x sees something or other'. Furthermore, 'x is something or other', is understood as different in meaning from, 'x exists'. For example, Centaurs do not exist but they are mythical creatures, discussed, thought of and sometimes believed in. Thus, they are something or other though they do not exist. The problem for the predication approach is that there is no unambiguous use of, 'x is', to mean, 'x is something or other', in ordinary Greek. Such sentences can, however, mean, 'x exists'. This is a significant point in favor of the existence reading. This would probably be the end of the story were it not for the fact that in the metaphysical texts in question examples are given or inferences are drawn which make it clear that predication is in some way involved. For example, in the Theaetetus, 152 a ff., Socrates introduces Protagoras' relativism as follows: "Man is the measure of all things - of the things that are that they are and of the things that are not that they are not." Though an existential reading is perfectly natural, it is all but contradicted by what follows. Socrates illustrates the quoted dictum by pointing out that a wind may be chilly to one person and not chilly to another, i. e., that a thing may be thus and so to one person and not be that to another. Existence seems not to be in question. The strength of the predication approach stems from the fact that frequently the philosophical texts in question require us to somehow understand the verb,'ἐστί', as the copula."

"Mohan Matthen, "Greek Ontology and the 'Is' of Truth", presents and defends what is perhaps the most detailed and well worked out existence approach in the literature.(2) After pointing out that Greek philosophers sometimes use the verb, 'einai', in such a way that it seems to express both existence and predication, he presents an interesting account of this phenomenon which allows us to read absolute occurrences of the verb as neither the copula nor as (con)fused but as meaning simply, 'exists'. The assimilation of these occurrences to the copula is achieved by arguing that speakers of ancient Greek were committed to the existence of a type of entity which is unfamiliar to us and which he calls a 'predicative complex'.(3) These are entities which exist as long as, and only as long as, a corresponding predicative sentence is true." (pp. 321-322)

Notes

(1) Richard J. Ketchum "Parmenides on What There Is", Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 20/2 (1990), 167-190.

(2) "Greek Ontology and the 'Is' of Truth", Phronesis, 28/2 (1983), 113-135.

(3) Matthen sometimes writes as if his thesis is restricted to philosophical Ancient Greek as opposed to Ancient Greek generally. For example, the task he sets for himself is to explain why Greek Ontologists accepted some principles which he in turn uses to account for the apparent ambiguity (p. 116). I shall assume here, however, that this thesis is intended to cover Ancient Greek generally. Greek ontologists other than Aristotle were at least sometimes writing for the general public. If the principles in question were accepted only by the ontologists, the various uses of 'shat' would have been as confusing to the ancient Greek as they are to us. If we restricted the thesis to ontologists, we would also need some explanation as to why the ontologists assumed principles of which the ordinary Greek was unaware."

From: Richard J. Ketchum, "Being and Existence in Greek Ontology", Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 80, 1998, pp. 321-332.

From Greek to Latin: Seneca's Epistle 58

"Today more than ever I understood how impoverished, indeed destitute, our vocabulary is. When we happened to be discussing Plato, a thousand things came up which needed names but lacked them; but there were some which, though they used to have names, had lost them owing to our fussiness. But who would tolerate fussiness in the midst of destitution?

(...)

6. You're asking, 'What is the point of this introduction? What's the purpose?' I won't hide it from you. I want, if possible, to use the term 'essentia' with your approval; but if that is not possible I will use the term even if it annoys you. I can cite Cicero as an authority for this word, an abundantly influential one in my view. If you are looking for someone more up-to-date, I can cite Fabianus, who is learned and sophisticated, with a style polished enough even for our contemporary fussiness. For what will happen, Lucilius [if we don't allow essentia]? How will [the Greek term] ousia be referred to, an indispensable thing, by its nature containing the foundation of all things? So I beg you to permit me to use this word. Still, I shall take care to use the permission you grant very sparingly. Maybe I'll be content just to have the permission

7. What good will your indulgence do when I can find no way to express in Latin the very notion which provoked my criticism of our language? Your condemnation of our Roman limitations will be more intense if you find out that there is a one-syllable word for which I cannot find a substitute. What syllable is this, you ask? To on. You think I am dull-witted -- it is obvious that the word can be translated as 'what is'. But I see a big difference between the terms. I am forced to replace a noun with a verb. But if I must, I will use 'what is'

8. Our friend, a very learned person, was saying today that this term has six senses in Plato. I will be able to explain all of them to you, if I first point out that there is such a thing as a genus and so too a species. But we are now looking for that primary genus on which other species depend and which is the source of every division and in which all things are included. It will be found if we start to pick things out, one by one, starting in reverse order. We will thus be brought to the primary [genus]." (pp. 3-4)

From: Seneca, Selected Philosophical Letters, Translated with an Introduction and Commentary by Brad Inwood, New York: Oxford University Press 2007.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected bibliography in English on the definition of "Being"

Theory

1. Benardete, José A. 1954. "On Being and Nothing." The Review of Metaphysics no. 7:363 - 367.

"We are launching in this essay an inquiry into first principles, in an endeavor to answer, if only in part, the presiding question of all metaphysics: What is it to be? Metaphysics is here projected as a demonstrative science, demonstrative in the strictest of senses, quite as Aristotle and Spinoza, to name but two philosophers, envisaged the discipline." (p. 363)

(...)

"For us the decisive question is not, Why is there Being at all? Why not far rather Nothing? Our question is: Since some (but not all) possibles must be enacted, why this possible and not that one? The answer to our question cannot be found in the schedule of possibles itself where all the entries are equally indifferent to enactment. The agency of coercion must be sought outside of the mere possibles, in a necessary ground of all being and of all non-being." (p. 367)

2. Berti, Enrico. 2002. "Being and Essence in Contemporary Interpretations of Aristotle." In Individuals, Essences and Identity. Themes of Analytic Metaphysics , edited by Bottani, Andrea, Carrara, Massimiliano and Giaretta, Pierdaniele, 79-107. Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media.

3. Blanchette, Oliva. 2003. Philosophy of Being: A Reconstructive Essay in Metaphysics . Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University Press of America.

4. Cann, Ronnie. 2008. "Towards a Dynamic Account of BE in English." In Existence: Semantics and Syntax , edited by Comorovski, Ileana and von Heuseinger, Klaus, 13-48. Berlin: Springer Science.

Abstract: "This paper presents an analysis of the there be construction in English in which these words are taken to project a radically underspecified propositional structure which is updated by postcopular material. The analysis takes as its point of departure the hypothesis that the copular verb itself projects a semantically underspecified one-place predicate and shows how this hypothesis can be used to provides traightforward analyses of elliptical, predicative and existential focus constructions involving be, using the framework of Dynamic Syntax. It is argued that different interpretations of there be constructions depends on the interaction of pragmatic and syntactic processes mediated by the properties of the expressions with which the string is collocated."

5. Charles, David. 2002. "Some Comments on Prof. Enrico Berti's Paper "Being and Essence in Contemporary Interpretations of Aristotle"." In Individuals, Essences and Identity. Themes of Analytic Metaphysics , edited by Bottani, Andrea, Carrara, Massimiliano and Giaretta, Pierdaniele, 109-126. Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media.

6. Chisholm, Roderick M. 1972. "Beyond Being and Nonbeing." In Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein , edited by Haller, Rudolf, 25-33. Graz: Akademische Druck u. Verlagsanstalt.

Reprinted in R. M. CHisholm, Brentano and Meinong studies , Amsterdam: Rodopi 1982, pp. 53-67.

7. Clarke, W. Norris. 2001. The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics . Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

8. Cobb-Stevens, Richard. 1990. "Being and Categorial Intuition." The Review of Metaphysics no. 44:43-66.

9. Francis, Diana-Abasi Ibanga. 2016. "Being And Non-Being: Implication For Conflict Resolution." IOSR Journal of Humanities And Social Science no. 21:1-6.

Abstract: "Traditional philosophical problem arises from the distinction between being and non-being, something and nothing, what is and what is not. The objective of this paper is about proving that the distinction can be a framework for conflict resolution, by showing the problem to be a result of misunderstanding of the logical relations of the units. Two study questions are developed to guide the research: (i) what is the nature/structure of the logical relation between being and non-being, and (ii) how does an understanding of that relation feed into conflict and peace discourse. The two research questions are contextualized or articulated under the following conceptual frameworks: (i) Parmenidian disjunctive ontology, and (ii) Heideggerian conjunctive ontology. In conclusion, the paper proves Hedeggerian conjunctive ontology to be adequate framework for negotiation of conflict, by showing conflict to be a result of the Parmenidian error of misunderstanding the logical relation of being and non-being as disjunctive rather than conjunctive."

10. Gochet, Paul. 2002. "Quantifiers, Being, and Canonical Notation." In A Companion to Philosophical Logic , edited by Jacquette, Dale, 265-280. Malden: Blackwell.

11. Graham, Angus Charles. 1959. "Being in Western Philosophy Compared with shih/fei and yu/wu in Chinese Philosophy." Asia Major no. 7:79-112.

Reprinted in: A. C. Graham, Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature , Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990, pp. 322-359.

12. ———. 1965. "'Being' in Linguistics and Philosophy: a Preliminary Inquiry." Foundations of Language no. 1:223-231.

"Although the first language of Western philosophy was Greek, its main stream passed through Semitic languages (Syriac, Arabic, Hebrew) before returning to Indo-European languages (scholastic Latin, French,

English, German). It was in Arabic, which sharply separates the existential and copulative functions, that the distinction between existence and essence emerged.(4)

An adequate account of the development of theWestern concept of Being in its linguistic context would require the co-operation of specialists in many disciplines. But it may be useful to offer a preliminary sketch, as a focus for future criticism and inquiry. I shall therefore cover much ground in a little space, and intrude into several fields within which I am not an authority." (p. 223)

(...)

"A philosopher therefore cannot adapt his use of 'Being' to the functions of 'to be' in English grammar; he must either stick bravely to the conviction that there is a single concept of Being behind the different functions of einai, which is hidden by the grammars of non-Indo-European languages, and which even among the languages of Western philosophy is perfectly displayed only in Greek and Latin, or he must discard the verbal noun 'being' as incurably ambiguous. However difficult he may find it to choose the second alternative while he is thinking in the living language with its deep roots in the past, the artificial language of symbolic logic enables him to make the choice without even noticing what he is doing. In symbolic logic the verb 'to be' dissolves into the sign of existence (∃), which is not a predicate but a quantifier, and

three separate copulae, the signs of identity (=), class membership (∈) and class inclusion (⊆)." (p. 231)

(4) Cf. E. Gilson, Le Thomisme , Paris 1948, p. 55; M.-D. Roland-Gosselin, Le 'De ente et essentia' de S. Thomas d'Aquin , Paris 1948, pp. xix, xx, 150-56; Soheil M. Afnan, Avicenna , London 1958, pp. 115-21.

13. Grondin, Jean. 2005. "Why Reawaken the Question of Being?" In Heidegger’s Being and Time. Critical Essays , edited by Polt, Richard, 15-31. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

14. Haaparanta, Leila, and Koskinen, Heikki J., eds. 2012. Categories of Being: Essays on Metaphysics and Logic . New York: Oxford University Press.

15. Kahn, Charles H. 1973. The Verb 'Be' and its Synonyms. Philosophical and Grammatical Studies. Vol. 6: The Verb 'Be' in Ancient Greek . Dordrecht: Reidel.

Reprinterd with a new Introductory Essay, Indianapolis: Hackett 2003.

Table of Contents of the reprint: Introduction VII; Editorial Preface VII; Preface XLV; Analytic Table of Contents LI-LXVII; Chapter I. The problem of the verb 'Be' 1; Chapter II. Subject, predicate, copula 38; Chapter III. Application of the transformational analysis to Greek 60; Chapter IV. Description of the copula uses 85; Chapter V. The theory of the copula 184; Chapter VI. The verb of existence 228; Chapter VII. The veridical use 331; Chapter VIII. The unity of the system of 'Be' in Greek 371; Appendix A. On the accent of esti and its position in the Sentence 420; Appendix B. On the theory of nominal sentence 435; Appendix C. The nominalized forms of the verb: to ón and ousía 453; Bibliography 463; Index of Passages Cited 468; Index of Proper Names 479; Subject Index 481-486.

16. Kerr, Gaven. 2015. "Thomist Esse and Analytical Philosophy." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 55:25-48.

Abstract: "In this paper I seek to consider the project of analytical Thomism with particular regard to Aquinas’s metaphysics of esse . My overall conclusion is that Thomas’s thought on esse is part and parcel of a way of philosophizing that is alien to analytical philosophy and is such that analytical philosophy is constitutionally unable to come to terms with it. In order to argue for such a conclusion, I begin with a presentation of Aquinas’s metaphysics of esse . I then respond to the objection that arguably some analytical philosophers have already arrived at the same thought at which Aquinas arrived, thereby blocking the way to my denial of the possibility of an encounter between analytical philosophy and Thomist ess e. Having removed that obstacle, I argue that analytical philosophy is constitutionally unable to come to terms with Thomist esse ."

17. Knasas, John. 2003. BEING and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists . New York: Fordham University Press.

18. Li Vecchi, Joseph P., Scalambrino, Frank, and Kovacs, David K. 2020. The Philosophy of Being in the Analytic, Continental, and Thomistic Traditions: Divergence and Tradition . New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

19. Maritain, Jacques. 1939. A Preface to Metaphysics: Seven Lectures on Being . New York: Sheed & Ward.

20. McDaniel, Kris. 2009. "Ways of Bering." In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology edited by Chalmers, David, Manley, David and Wasserman, Ryan, 290-319. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

21. ———. 2010. "Being and Almost Nothingness." Noûs no. 44:628-649.

22. ———. 2013. "Degrees of Being." Phiosopher's Imprint no. 13:1-18.

23. ———. 2017. The Fragmentation of Being . New York: Oxford Unviersity Press.

24. McInerny, Ralph M. 1986. Being and Predication: Thomistic Interpretations . Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press.

25. Owens, Joseph. 1963. An Elementary Christian Metaphysics . Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company.

Reprinted Houston, Center for Thomistic Studies, 1985.

26. Puntel, Lorenz B. 2008. Structure and Being: A Theoretical Framework for a Systematic Philosophy . University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Translated from German by and in collaboration with Alan White.

27. Rosen, Stanley. 1991. "Is Metaphysics Possible?" The Review of Metaphysics no. 45:235-257.

28. ———. 1993. The Question of Being: A Reversal of Heidegger . New Haven: Yale University Press.

29. Sadler, Ted. 1996. Heidegger and Aristotle: The Question of Being . London: The Athlone Press.

30. Sørensen, Holger Steen. 1959. "A Analysis of 'To Be' and 'To Be True': A Linguist's Approach to the Problem." Analysis no. 19:121-131.

31. Ventimiglia, Giovanni. 2020. Aquinas after Frege . Cham (Switzerland): Palgrave Macmillan.

32. Verhaar, John W.M., ed. 1967. The Verb 'Be' and its Synonyms. Philosophical and Grammatical Studies . Dordrecht: Reidel.

"The present volume is the first of a series of studies analysing the verb 'to be' and/or synonyms in a number of languages. It is expected that these studies will provide some of the necessary foundational material for research in logic, the theory of knowledge, and ontology; and possibly in other philosophical disciplines. The concluding volume of the series will attempt to assess the linguistic and philosophical impact of all the contributions.

There is no definite principle of arrangement of the contributions, which are published in the order in which they reached the editor's desk." (FEditorial Preface by John W. M. Verhaar)

Two projected volumes were never published in this series: a study on 'to be' in biblical Hebrew and biblical Greek by James Barr (*) and a concluding volume with an attempt to asses the linguistic and philosophical impact of all the contributions).

(*) On the subject see: James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961, Chapter 4. Verbs, action and time - (d) - The Verb 'To Be' , pp. 58-71.

33. ———, ed. 1967. The Verb 'Be' and its Synonyms. Philosophical and Grammatical Studies. Vol. 1: Classical Chinese. Athapaskan. Mundari . Dordrecht: Reidel.

34. ———, ed. 1968. The Verb 'Be' and its Synonyms. Philosophical and Grammatical Studies. Vol. 2: Eskimo. Hindi. Zuni. Modern Greek. Malayalam. Kurukh . Dordrecht: Reidel.

35. ———, ed. 1968. The Verb 'Be' and its Synonyms. Philosophical and Grammatical Studies. Vol. 3: Japanese. Kashmiri. Armenian. Hungarian. Sumerian. Shona . Dordrecht: Reidel.

36. ———, ed. 1969. The Verb 'Be' and its Synonyms. Philosophical and Grammatical Studies. Vol. 4: Twi. Modern Chinese. Arabic . Dordrecht: Reidel.

37. ———, ed. 1972. The Verb 'Be' and its Synonyms. Philosophical and Grammatical Studies. Vol. 5: Urdu / Turkish / Bengali / Amharic /Indonesian / Telugu / Estonian . Dordrecht: Reidel.

38. Williams, Christopher J. F. 1992. Being, Identity, and Truth . Oxford University Press.

39. Woodward, Richard. 2013. "Towards Being." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 86 (1):183-193.

40. Yuasa, Yasuo. 2005. "Image-Thinking and the Understanding of "Being": The Psychological Basis of Linguistic Expression." Philosophy East and West no. 55:179-208.

41. Żełaniec, Wojciech. 1998. "Is "Being" Predicated in Only One Sense, After All?" Logic and Logical Philosophy no. 6:241-258.

Abstract: "In this essay, I argue that for sentences of form “A is B” there is a distinction between identity and “mere” predication to be made, and that Leśniewski’s Ontology puts us in a better position to make this distinction than first-order predicate logic. I also gesture at how Ontology could help us to decide questions of identity. The nub of the matter seems to be a “primordial” sense of the copula that Ontology has at its basis."

History

1. Adamson, Peter. 2002. "Before Essence and Existence: al-Kindī's Conception of Being." Journal of History of Philosophy no. 40:297-312.

"It would appear that al-Kindī considered the study of metaphysics to be primary in his endeavor to reconstruct Greek thought. His most significant remaining work, On First Philosophy, assimilates metaphysics or “first philosophy” to theology, the study of “the First Truth Who is the Cause of every truth.” His survey of the works of Aristotle likewise confirms that the Metaphysics studies God, His names and His status as the First Cause.

(...)

We might suspect, then, that al-Kindī took Aristotle’s aim in the Metaphysics of studying “being qua being” as central to his own undertaking, and indeed as central to an adequate philosophical understanding of God.

In this paper I shall try to confirm this suspicion through a study of al-Kindī’s corpus, focusing specifically on his conception of being, or, rather, on his conceptions of being; for as we shall see there are two competing treatments of being in al-Kindi. First, in common with the Arabic Plotinus and the Liber de Causis, he has a conception that emphasizes the simplicity of being, and opposes being to predication.

Second, he has a complex conception of being indebted to Aristotle. These two conceptions can be reconciled: simple being, I will argue, is prior to and underlies complex being. Finally, I will suggest that al-Kindī’s simple conception of being anticipates Avicenna’s distinction between existence and essence, but only to a limited extent." (pp. 298-299 Notes omitted)

2. Aertsen, Jan A. 1985. "The Convertibility of Being and Good in St. Thomas Aquinas." The New Scholasticism no. 59:449-470.

"In many medieval thinkers, e.g. Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, the statement can be found: " being and good are convertible " (ens et Comm convertuntur).(1) That is to say, " being " and " good " are interchangeable terms in predication (converti enim est conversim praedicari).(2) Wherever " being " is predicated of something, the predicate " good " is involved as well.

That must imply that " good " is here not a concept that adds a real content or a new quality to " being ", as a result of which " being " is restricted. For in that case there would be no question of convertibility.(3) " Good " is an attribute which pertains to every being, it is a property of being as such, a "mode that is common, and consequent upon every being." In other words, " good " is coextensive with " being ", it is one of the so-called transcendentie which, since Suarez, are usually referred to as " transcendentals ".

(1) Alexander of Hales, Summa I, Inq. 1, Tract. 3, q. 3, membrum 1, c. 1, a. 1, "An idem sit bonum et ens "; Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 1, p. 1, a. 1, q. 1, fundam. 5, "Ens et bonum eonvertuntur, sicut volt Dionysius ", d. 34, a. 2, q. 3, fundam. 4; Albert the Great, De Bono q. 1, a. 6; Summa Theol. tract. 6, q. 28; Thom. Aquinas, In I Sent. 8, 1, 3; De Ver. XXI, 2; In De Hebdomadibus, lect. 3; Summa Theol. I, 18, 3.

(2) Thomas Aquinas, De Ver. I, 2 obj. 2.

(3) De Pot. IX, 7 ad 5: Bonum quod est in genre qualitatis, non est bonum quod convertitur cum ante, quod nullam rem supra ens addit.

(4) De Ver. I, 1: modus generaliter consequens omne ens.

(5) Comp. Albert the Great, Summa Theologiae tract. 6, q. 27, c. 3: Bonum dicit intentionem communem et est de transcendentibus omne genus sicut et ens.

3. ———. 1998. "Being and One: The Doctrine of the Convertible Transcendentals in Duns Scotus." In John Duns Scotus (1265/6-1308). Renewal of Philosophy. Acts of the Third Symposium organized by the Dutch Society for Medieval Philosophy Medium Aevum (May 23 and 24, 1996), edited by Bos, Egbert Peter, 13-26. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"In the prologue of his commentary on the Metaphysics, Duns Scotus explains the name 'metaphysics' as transcendens scientia, that is, the science that is concerned with the transcendentia.(1) This explanation is indicative of the prominent place Scotus ascribes to the doctrine of the transcendentals, which was formulated for the first time in the Summa de bono of Philip the Chancellor that is datable about 1225. The connection between the object of first philosophy and the transcendentals is not in itself new, although the identity posed by Scotus is more radical than in his predecessors.(2) Yet it is no exaggeration to say that Scotus's philosophy marks a new phase in the history of the doctrine of the transcendentia.

Scotus understands the concept 'transcendental' differently than his predecessors did. To thinkers of the thirteenth century, transcendental properties are communissima. 'Being, 'one,'true' and 'good' 'transcend' the Aristotelian categories because they are not limited to one of them but are common to all things. According to Scotus, however, it is not necessary that a transcendental as transcendental be predicated of every being; it is not essential to the concept transcendens that it has many inferiors. In his Ordinatio he determines the concept negatively: 'what is not contained under any genus' or 'what remains indifferent to finite and infinite'. (3) This definition makes possible a vast extension of the transcendental domain; the most important innovation is formed by the so-called disjunctive transcendentals, which are convertible with being, not separately but as pairs.

The fact that the transcendental properties are not necessarily identical with the communissima is, I suspect, the reason why the expression transcendentia, which occurs only sporadically in thinkers like Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent, gains the upperhand in Scotism and becomes the usual term.

About Scotus's doctrine of the transcendentals, in contrast to that of other medieval thinkers, we are well informed by Allan B. Wolter's pioneering study, The Transcendentals and Their Function in the Metaphysics of Duns Scotus (1946). Yet there are aspects of his doctrine that have thus far received little attention in scholarly literature. One of them is Scotus's treatment of the transcendentals 'one, 'true' and 'good,' which as such are convertible with being. In my contribution I want to show that with respect to the traditional transcendentals, too, Scotus breaks new ground and approaches critically the views of his thirteenth-century predecessors. Because he discusses most extensively the relation between being and one, I foals on this discussion." (pp. 13-14)

* The original version of this study will appear in T. Noone and G. A. Wilson (eds.), Essays in Honor Girard Etzkorn: Franciscan Texts and Traditions, Franciscan Studies 56 (1998) [pp. 47-64].

(1) Quaestiones subtilissimae super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis, prol., n. 18: Et hanc scientiam vocamus metaphysicam, quae dicitur a 'meta', quod est 'trans', et 'ycos', 'scientia', quasi transcendens scientia, quia est de transcendentibus.

(2) Albert the Great, Metaphysica I, tract. 1, ch. 2 (Opera omnia XVI, 1, ed. B. Geyer, 5, 13-14), who uses the phrase prima et transcendentia in his analysis of the subject matter of metaphysics. For Thomas Aquinas's doctrine, see J.A. Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals. The Case of Thomas Aquinas, Leiden, Brill 1996, 113-158.

(3) Ordinatio I, dist. 8, part t, q. 3, nn. 113-114 (ed. Vaticana IV, 206).

4. al-Kutubi, Eiyad S. 2015. Mulla Sadra and Eschatology: Evolution of Being. New York: Routledge.

5. Allen, Elliott B. 1960. "Hervaeus Natalis: An Early "Thomist" on the Notion of Being." Mediaeval Studies:1-14.

6. Anderson, James F. 1965. St. Augustine and Being: A Metaphysical Essay. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

7. Bechtle, Gerald. 2000. "The Question of Being and the Dating of the Anonymous Parmenides Commentary." Ancient Philosophy no. 20:393-414.

"This article was originally intended to precede the publication of my book (Bechtle 1999a) devoted to the extant fragments of the anonymous commentary on Plato's Parmenides, also known as Anonymus Taurinensis.' The aim of this article was then-and it still is now-to make the scholarly world acquainted with some of the main reasons, i.e., my view of `the question of being', for my novel thesis of a pre-Plotinian date for this Commentary which has almost unanimously been ascribed to Porphyry. Since the thesis of the Porphyrian authorship goes back to the great French scholar P. Hadot (see in particular Hadot 1961, 1965, 1968a, and 1968b), one can say that his thesis has been generally accepted for some thirty years or, at least, it has not been seriously challenged. This fact is easily explained since neither before nor after Hadot has there been a thorough and critical examination of the evidence. Hadot's thesis concerning the identity of the author being the only serious one in more than a century since research on the Commentary first started, my idea was that probably a lot of questions had not been answered. Reconsidering all of Hadot's evidence and adding some new elements, I determined that the Commentary is very likely of pre-Plotinian date. Additional work on lamblichus and post-Plotinian Platonism negatively confirms this thesis since one can virtually exclude Iamblichus and any of the major Platonists following him as possible authors of the Commentary." (p. 393)

8. Benardete, Seth. 1977. "The Grammar of Being." The Review of Metaphysics no. 30:486-496.

Critical study of Charles H. Kahn, The Verb "Be" in Ancient Greek (Reidel: 1973).

9. Bernasconi, Robert. 1987. "Descartes in the History of Being: Another Bad Novel?" Research in Phenomenology no. 17:75-102.

10. Berti, Enrico. 2001. "Multiplicity and Unity of Being in Aristotle." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 101:185-207.

Abstract: "I. In analytic philosophy, so-called 'univocalism' is the prevailing interpretation of the meaning of terms such as 'being' or 'existence', i.e. the thesis that these terms have only one meaning (see Russell, White, Quine, van Inwagen). But some analytical philosophers, inspired by Aristotle, maintain that 'being' has many senses (Austin, Ryle). II. Aristotle develops an argument in favour of this last thesis, observing that 'being' and 'one' cannot be a single genus, because they are predicated of their differences (Metaph. B 3). III. But 'being' for Aristotle has also a unity, i.e. 'focal meaning', which coincides with substance (Metaph. F 2), and substance has not only an ontological priority, but also a logical priority, in respect to the other beings, as was shown by G. E. L. Owen. IV. This 'focal meaning' cannot be identified with primary substance, i.e. with the unmovable mover, as some interpreters pretend, because this latter has only an ontological, not a logical, priority in respect to the world. V. The impossibility of this interpretation results from Aristotle's rejection of an essence and a substance of being (Metaph. B 4), i.e. the rejection of what the Christian philosophers called esse ipsum subsistens."

11. Bobik, Joseph. 1965. Aquinas on Being and Essence: A Translation and Interpretation. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

12. Bolton, Robert. 1975. "Plato's Distinction between Being and Becoming." The Review of Metaphysics no. 29:66-95.

13. Boman, Thorleif. 1960. Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Translated by Jules L. Moreau from the German Das hebräische Denken im Vergleich mit den Griechischen (second edition; first edition 1952), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1954, with the author's revisions to January 1960.

14. Bos, Egbert Peter. 2000. "Nature and Number of the Categories and the Division of Being According to Domingo de Soto." In Medieval and Renaissance Logic in Spain, edited by Angelelli, Ignacio and Pérez-Ilzarbe, Paloma, 327-353. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

15. Bos, Egbert Peter, and van der Helm, A.C. 1998. "The Division of Being Over the Categories According to Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus." In John Duns Scotus (1265/6-1308): Renewal of Philosophy, edited by Bos, Egbert Peter, 183-196. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Acts of the Third Symposium organized by the Dutch Society for Medieval Philosophy Medium Aevum (May 23 and 24, 1996).

16. Bradshaw, David. 1999. "Neoplatonic Origins of the Act of Being." The Review of Metaphysics no. 53:383-401.

17. Braine, David. 2006. "Aquinas, God and Being." In Analytical Thomism: Traditions in Dialogue, edited by Paterson, Craig and Pugh, Matthew S., 1-24. Aldershot: Ashgate.

18. Brentano, Franz. 1975. On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Edited and translated by Rolf George.

Contents: Editor's Preface XI; Preface XV; Introduction 1; I. The Fourfold Distinction of Being 3; II. Accidental Being 6; III. Being in the Sense of Being True 15; IV. Potential and Actual Being 27; V. Being According to the Figures of the Categories 49; Notes 149-197.

19. Brock, Stephen L. 2006. "On Whether Aquinas's "Ipsum Esse" Is "Platonism"." The Review of Metaphysics no. 60:269-303.

20. ———. 2007. "Thomas Aquinas and “What Actually exists”." In Wisdom's Apprentice. Thomistic Essays in Honor o/ L. Dewan O. P., edited by Kwasniewski, Peter A., 13-39. Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press.

21. ———. 2007. "Harmonizing Plato and Aristotle on Esse. Thomas Aquinas and the De hebdomadibus." Nova et Vetera (English edition) no. 4:465-494.

22. Brown, Lesley. 1986. "Being in the Sophist: a Ssyntactical Enquiry." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 4:49-70.

"Plato's Sophist presents a tantalizing challenge to the modern student of philosophy. In its central section we find a Plato whose interests and methods seem at once close to and yet remote from our own. John Ackrill's seminal papers on the Sophist, (1) published in the fifties, emphasized the closeness, and in optimistic vein credited Plato with several successes in conceptual analysis. These articles combine boldness of 'argument with exceptional clarity and economy of expression, and though subsequent writers have cast doubt on some of Ackrill's claims for the Sophist the articles remain essential reading for all students of the dialogue. I am happy to contribute an essay on the Sophist to this volume dedicated to John Ackrill.

Among the most disputed questions in the interpretation of the Sophist is that of whether Plato therein marks off different uses of the verb einai , 'to be'. This paper addresses one issue under that heading, that of the distinction between the 'complete' and 'incomplete' uses of `to be', which has usually been associated with the distinction between the 'is' that means 'exists' and the 'is' of predication, that is, the copula."

(1) Symploke Eidon (1955) and Plato and the Copula: Sophist 251-59 (1957), both reprinted in Plato I, ed G. Vlastos (New York, 1971), 201-9 and 210-22.

23. ———. 1994. "The Verb 'To Be' in Greek Philosophy: Some Remarks." In Companions to Ancient Thought: Language, edited by Everson, Stephen, 212-236. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"The existence of at least these three distinct uses of 'is' was taken for granted by commentators and assumed to apply, by and large, to ancient Greek, though with some salient differences. These include the fact that Greek can and regularly does omit esti in the present tense, though not in other tenses, and that the complete 'is' is still very much a going concern, though more or less defunct in modern English. The fact that the esti of the copula can be omitted means that a predicative use of esti can convey a nuance over and above that of the mere copula (for instance connoting what really is F rather than merely appearing F, or what is enduringly F).

And the fact that current English has more or less abandoned the use of the complete 'is' to mean 'exist' (as in Hamlet's 'To be or not to be), while in Greek it is very much a going concern, may lead us to question whether the complete esti really shares the features of the 'is' which means (or used to mean) 'exist'." (p. 215)

(...)

"I cannot offer here a full account of what I take to be the results of the Sophist, far less a defence of such an account, but confine myself to a few points. To the question whether the dialogue distinguishes an 'is' of identity from an 'is' of predication, I have indicated my answer: that it does not, but it does draw an important distinction between identity-sentences and predications (see section I and n. 2 above). Here I focus on the question whether and if so how it distinguishes complete from incomplete uses. I shall suggest that Plato developed a better theory about the negative 'is not' than his argumentation in the Republic suggests, while continuing to treat the relation between the complete use (X is) and the incomplete (X is F) in the way I have described in section IV, that is, by analogy with the relation between 'X teaches' and 'X teaches singing'." (p. 229)

(...)

"Conclusion

In our attempts to understand and evaluate the claims and arguments of ancient philosophers we have to use conceptual tools, including ones not available to the philosophers themselves. Indisputably the analytical investigations in this century of the metaphysics of, say, Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle have yielded invaluable insights. But where these have involved enquiries concerning the verb 'to be' they have tended to use what may be an inappropriate framework - that of certain modern distinctions in the verb 'to be'. In particular, commentators have been misled by the English word 'exist', which now has the role of the more-or less defunct complete 'is' (as in 'To be or not to be'); they have assumed that Greek esti, when complete, like 'exist', does not allow a completion, and has a role sharply distinct from the esti in a predication. I have argued that a different picture emerges from Plato and Aristotle, both from their usage of esti and from their explicit discussions. Even where they do draw attention to the two syntactic uses (complete and incomplete), as Plato perhaps does at Sophist 2 5 5c12-d 7, and Aristotle in the passages cited in section V, they should not be described as elucidating a difference between the 'is' of existence and that of predication, or indeed as noting a difference of any great philosophical importance. When we try to understand the arguments which seem to depend crucially on the verb 'to be' we should beware of

seeking to impose or to discern our currently favoured distinctions, for in ancient Greek the conceptual web was woven differently, and in the case ofthe verb 'to be' it was, comparatively speaking, a seamless one." (p. 236)

24. Brown, Stephen. 1965. "Avicenna and the Unity of the Concept of Being. The Interpretations of Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus, Gerard of Bologna and Peter Aureoli." Franciscan Studies no. 25:117-150.

25. Buchanan, Emerson. 1962. Aristotle's Theory of Being. Cambridge (MA): University, Mississippi.

26. Calvo, Tomás. 2014. "The Verb 'Be' (εἰμί) and Aristotelian Ontology." Teorema: Revista Internacional de Filosofía no. 33:45-55.

27. Caster, Kevin Joseph. 1996. "The Real Distinction Between Being and Essence according to William of Auvergne." Traditio no. 51:201-223.

28. ———. 1996. "The Distinction between Being and Essence according to Boethius, Avicenna, and William of Auvergne." The Modern Schoolman no. 73:309-332.

"A close analysis of William of Auvergne’s metaphysics reveals a distinction between being and essence that more closely approximates the celebrated real distinction of St. Thomas than has generally been recognized. Like St. Thomas, William maintained both a real distinction and a real composition between being and essence in the metaphysical structure of the concrete thing. Since William’s position thus represented a marked development in the history of philosophy with respect to this topic, it is obviously valuable to look at William’s sources, namely, Boethius and Avicenna. Of course, I am in no sense suggesting that the study of Boethius and Avicenna is valuable only for the insights it might lend to one’s perspective of William’s position. On the contrary, such study is eminently valuable in itself.

1. Boethius’s Contribution to the Doctrine of the Real Distinction

In his Opuscula Sacra, Boethius distinguishes between being (esse) and that which is (id quod est). Because William, who borrowed Boethius’s terminology for his own position, was especially influenced by the De hebdomadibus, one needs to look at this work in order to reach a more complete understanding of William. While the scholarly opinion on Boethius’s distinction is quite divergent, Pierre Hadot’s work — in my opinion — represents the best of the scholarly interpretations regarding this topic. Hadot not only seems best to capture Boethius’s doctrine, but his perspective of Boethius also highlights what William seemed to find in him.

In “La distinction de l’être et de l’étant dans le De Hebdomadibus de Boèce,” Hadot summarizes the differences between being (esse) and that which is (id quod est) as they appear in the axioms found in the De hebdomadibus. The characteristics of being (esse) and that which is (id quod est) may be translated as follows. Being: 1) “is not yet,” 2) “in no way participates in anything,” and 3) “has nothing besides itself added on.” That which is: 1) “has received the form of being,” 2) “has received being,” 3) “participates in that which is being,” 4) “is and exists,” 5) “is able to participate in something,” and 6) “is able to have something besides the fact that it is.” (1)

(1) See Pierre Hadot, “La distinction de l'être et de l’étant dans le De hebdomadibus de Boèce,” Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter, Miscellanea Mediavalia, 2 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1963), p. 147. The characteristics of esse: 1) “nondum est,” 2) “nullo modo aliquo participat,” and 3) “nihil aliud praeter se habet admixtum.” The characteristics of id quod est: 1) “accepit formam essendi,” 2) “suscipit esse,” 3) “participat eo quod est esse,” 4) “est atque consistit,” 5) “participare aliquo potest,” and 6) “potest habere aliquid praeterquam quod ipsum est.”

29. ———. 2004. "William of Auvergne and St. Thomas Aquinas on the Real Distinction between Being and Essence." In Being and Thought in Aquinas, edited by Hackett, Jeremiah, Murnion, William E. and Still, Carl N., 75-108. New York: Stte University of New Yok Press.

30. Cheng, Chung-ying. 2009. "Li and Qi in the Yijing: A Reconsideration of Being and Nonbeing in Chinese Philosophy." Journal of Chinese Philosophy no. Supplement to volume 36:73-100.

31. Cunningham, F. A. 1970. "Richard of Middleton O.F.M. on 'Esse and Essence'." Franciscan Studies no. 30:49-76.

32. D'Ancona, Cristina. 2011. "Platonic and Neoplatonic Terminology for Being in Arabic Translation." Studia graeco-arabica no. 1:23-45.

33. De Haan, Daniel D. 2014. "A Mereological Construal of the Primary Notions Being and Thing in Avicenna and Aquinas." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 88:335-360.

Abstract: "This study has two goals: first, to show that Avicenna’s account of being and thing significantly influenced Aquinas’s doctrine of the primary notions; second, to establish the value of adopting a mereological construal of these primary notions in the metaphysics of Avicenna and Aquinas. I begin with an explication of the mereological construal of the primary notions that casts these notions in terms of wholes and parts. Being and thing refer to the same entitative whole and have the same extension, but they are distinct in intension according to the different entitative parts they signify. Existence and essence constitute the two most fundamental entitative parts of every entitative whole. Being is taken to mean that which has existence, and thing signifies that which has essence. I then show how this mereological construal of the primary notions clarifies a number of texts in Avicenna and Aquinas. Finally, I address a few arguments against employing this mereological interpretation of the primary notions."

34. ———. 2020. Necessary Existence and the Doctrine of Being in Avicenna’s Metaphysics of the Healing. Leiden: Brill.

35. de Rijk, Lambertus Marie. 1952. The Place of the Categories of Being in Aristotle's Philosophy. Assen: Van Gorcum.

Contents: Bibliography I-III; Introduction 1-7; Chapter I. Aristotle's doctrine of truth 8-35; Chapter II. The distinction of essential and accidental being pp. 31-43; Chapter III. Logical and ontological accident 44-52; Chapter IV. The nature of the categories in the Metaphysics 53-66; Chapter V. The doctrine of the categories in the first treatise of the Organon 67-75; Chapter VI. The use of the categories in the work of Aristotle 76-88; Appendix. The names of the categories 89-92; Index locorum 93-96.

From the Introduction: "It seems to be the fatal mistake of philology that it always failed to get rid of Kantian influences as to the question of the relation of logic and ontology. Many modern mathematical logicians have shown that the logical and the ontological aspect not only are inseparable but also that in many cases it either lacks good sense or is even impossible to distinguish them. Accordingly, the distinction of logical and ontological truth (especially of propositional truth and term-truth), that of logical and ontological accident and that of logical and ontological categories, has not the same meaning for modem logic as it seems to have for 'traditional' logic (for instance the logic of most Schoolmen).

I hope to show in this study that the distinction of a logical and an ontological aspect (especially that of logical and ontological categories) can be applied to the Aristotelian doctrine only with the greatest reserve. A sharp distinction carried through rigorously turns out to be unsuitable when being applied to Aristotelian logic. For both aspects are, for Aristotle, not only mutually connected but even interwoven, and this in such a way that the ontological aspect seems to prevail, the logical being only an aspect emerging more or less in Aristotle's generally ontological way of thinking." (pp. 6-7)

36. ———. 1988. "On Boethius' Notion of Being. A Chapter of Boethian Semantics." In Meaning and Inference in Medieval Philosophy. Studies in Memory of Jan Pinborg, edited by Kretzmann, Norman, 1-29. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Reprinted as chapter I in: L. M. de Rijk, Through Language to Reality. Studies in Medieval Semantics and Metaphysics, edited by E. P. Bos, Northampton: Variourum Reprints, 1989.

"From Parmenides onwards, ancient and medieval thought had a special liking for metaphysical speculation. No doubt, speculative thought was most influentially outlined by Plato and Aristotle. However, what the Christian thinkers achieved in metaphysics was definitely more than just applying and adapting what was handed down to them. No student of medieval speculative thought can help being struck by the peculiar fact that whenever fundamental progress was made, it was theological problems which initiated the development. This applies to St Augustine and Boethius, and to the great medieval masters as well (such as Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus). Their speculation was, time and again, focused on how the notion of being and the whole range of our linguistic tools can be applied to God's Nature (Being).

It is no wonder, then, that an inquiry into Boethius's notion of being should be concerned, first and foremost, with his theological treatises, especially De hebdomadibus.

(...)

My final section aims at showing how Boethius's notion of being is clearly articulated in accordance with his semantic distinctions. This is most clearly seen in the main argument of De hebdomadibus where they may be actually seen at work.

As is well known, the proper aim of De hebdomadibus is to point out the formal difference between esse and esse bonum, or in Boethius's words: 'the manner in which substances are good in virtue of their being, while not yet being substantially good' (38.2-4). Its method consists in a careful application of certain formal distinctions, viz.:

(a) The distinction between an object 'when taken as a subsistent whole and id quod est = the constitutive element which causes the object's actually' being; it is made in Axiom II and used in Axiom IV.

(b) The distinction (closely related to the preceding one) obtaining between the constitutive element effecting the object's actual being (forma essendi, or ipsum esse) and the object's actuality as such (id quod est or ipsum est); it is made in Axioms VII and VIII.

(c) The distinction between esse as 'pure being' (= nihil aliud praeter se habens admixtum), which belongs to any form, whether substantial or incidental, and id quod est admitting of some admixture (lit. 'something besides what it is itself'); it is made in Axiom IV and in fact implies the distinction between esse simpliciter and esse aliquid.

(d) The distinction between 'just being some thing', tantum esse aliquid, and 'being something qua mode of being'. It is made in Axiom V and used in Axiom VI and is in fact concerned with a further distinction made within the notion of id quod est. It points out the differences between the effect caused by some form as constitutive of being some thing and that caused by the main constituent (forma essendi) which causes an object's being simpliciter.

(e) The distinction between two different modes of participation, one effecting an object's being subsistent, the other its being some thing, where the 'some thing' (aliquid) refers to some (non-subsistent) quality such as 'being white', 'being wise', 'being good', etc.

The application of these distinctions enables Boethius to present a solution to the main problem: although the objects (ea quae sunt, plural of id quod est) are (are good) through their own constitutive element, being (being good), nevertheless they are not identical with their constitutive element nor (a fortiori) with the IPSUM ESSE (BONUM ESSE) of which their constituent is only a participation." (pp. 1 and 22-23).

37. De Vio, Thomas, Cardinal Cajetan. 1953. The Analogy of Names and the Concept of Being. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.

38. Dillon, John. 2009. "The Question of Being." In Greek Thought. A Guide to Classical Knowledge, edited by Brunschwig, Jacques and Lloyd, Geoffrey E.R., 51-71. Harvard: Harvard University Press.

39. Dumont, Stephen. 1987. "The Univocity of the Concept of Being in the Fourteenth Century: John Duns Scouts and William of Alnwick." Mediaeval Studies no. 49:1-75.

40. ———. 1988. "The Univocity of the Concept of Being in the Fourteenth Century: II. The De ente of Peter Thomae." Mediaeval Studies no. 50:186-256.

41. Elders, Leo. 1993. The Metaphysics of Being of St. Thomas Aquinas in a Historical Perspective. Leiden: Brill.

42. Fitzpatrick, Noel A. 1971. "Walter Chatton on the Univocity of Being: A Reaction to Peter Aureoli and William Ockham." Franciscan Studies no. 31:88-177.

43. Flower, Robert. 1980. "G. E. L. Owen, Plato and the Verb to be." Apeiron no. 14:87-95.

44. Floyd, Juliet. 2006. "On the Use and Abuse of Logic in Philosophy: Kant, Frege and Hintikka on the Verb 'To Be'." In The Philosophy of Jaakko Hintikka, edited by Auxier, Randall E. and Hahn, Lewis E., 137-188. Chicago: Open Court.

"Jaakko Hintikka is a radical and wildly ambitious philosopher. Over the course of more than forty years he has attempted to refashion the whole of logic and philosophy in his own image, urging the overthrow of most everything analytic philosophy inherited from Frege and Russell. He argues that the correct philosophical Logic (with a capital "L" to designate "the real Logic") is his "independence-friendly" logic, wedded to his construals of modal and epistemic logic in the context of game-theoretic semantics, and he calls for a reappraisal of every philosophical problem in light of this conception. Hintikka thereby rejects what became for philosophers (after Hilbert, Gōdel, and Quine) the standard answer to the question, What is Logic?, viz., first-order logic, unmoved by its commonly supposed advantages: topic-neutrality, wide curricular, mathematical, and philosophical acceptance, general (if not universal) applicability, recursively axiomatizable completeness with respect to deductive validity, and classical syntax and semantics for negation. He is not swayed either by the expressive power of second-order logic. He wants a system that is, expressively speaking, somewhere in between. To understand him as a philosopher is to be able to fathom why.

It is not the aim of this essay to come fully to grips with Hintikka's persistent campaign to overthrow the present order of things. Instead, I shall try to characterize his self-conception in broad brushstrokes. Section 1 of the essay aims to situate Hintikka's thought within the context of recent analytic philosophy. Section 2 canvasses his criticisms of Frege's and Russell's fundamental logical notions. Section 3 assesses his treatment of the classical Ontological Argument for God's existence in light of these criticisms. First, I contrast his treatment of the argument with that of Michael Dummett. Next, I consider what Hintikka has left out of philosophical account in his particular reconstruction of the argument, suggesting that it is precisely this which is most telling with respect to his own philosophy. In section 4 I delve into a more detailed analysis of Hintikka's treatment of Kant's philosophy of logic, with the aim of showing how his own philosophical preconceptions shape his historical readings." (pp. 137-138)

45. Frank, Richard M. 1956. "The Origin of the Arabic Philosophical Term Anniyya." Les Cahiers de Byrsa:181-201.

Reprinted in R. M. Frank, Philosophy, Theology and Mysticism in Medieval Islam, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005, Essay IV.

46. ———. 1978. Beings and Their Attributes: The Teaching of the Basrian School of the Mutazila in the Classical Period Studies in Islamic Philosophy and Science. Albany: State University of New York Press.

47. Gál, Gedeon. 1992. "Geraldus Odonis: On the Univocity of the Concept of Being." Franciscan Studies no. 52:23-51.

48. Geach, Thomas Peter. 1955. "Form and Existence." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 55:251-272.

Reprinted in P. T. Geach, God and the Soul, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1969, pp. 42-64.

49. Gilson, Étienne. 1952. Being and Some Philosophers. Toronto: Pontifical Insitute of Mediaeval Studies.

Second edition corrected and enlarged (First edition 1949).

Contents: Preface VII-XI; I. On Being and the One 1; II. Being and Substance 41; III. Essence and Existence 74; V. Being and Existence 154; VI. Knowledge and Existence 190; Appendix - On Some Difficulties of Interpretation 216; Index 233-235.

50. Gould, Josiah B. 1974. "Being, the World, and Appearance in Early Stoicism and Some other Greek Philosophies." The Review of Metaphysics no. 28:261-288.

51. Haaparanta, Leila. 1985. Frege's Doctrine of Being. Helsinki: Acta Philosophica Fennica.

52. Hankey, Wayne. 1980. "Aquinas' First Principle: Being or Unity?" Dionysius no. 4:133-172.

53. Heiman, Ambrose. 1953. "Essence and Esse According to Jean Quidort." Mediaeval Studies no. 15:137-146.

54. ———. 1959. "Two Questions Concerning the Esse of Creatures in the Doctrine of Jean Quidort." In An Etienne Gilson Tribute, edited by O'Neil, Charles J., 51-67. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

55. Henninger, Mark. 2006. "Henry of Harclay on the Univocal Concept of Being." Mediaeval Studies:205-237.

56. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1981. "The Unambiguity of Aristotelian Being." The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter no. 238:1-26.

57. ———. 1986. "The Varieties of Being in Aristotle." In The Logic of Being, edited by Knuuttila, Simo and Hintikka, Jaakko, 81-114. Dordrecht: Reidel.

58. Hughes, Christopher. 2015. Aquinas on Being, Goodness, and God. New York: Routledge.

59. Husain, Martha. 1976. "The Question 'What is Being' and its Aristotelian Answer." The New Scholasticism no. 50:293-309.

"This paper takes its point of departure from a recent article by Joseph Owens: "The content of existence," (*) which argues that being is unknowable in terms of concepts since it either has all cognitive (when contrasted with not-being) or none at all (when contrasted with beings). These dilemmas can be resolved by means of Aristotle's categories as the intrinsic formal structure of being, and as constituting the cognitive content of being "qua" being. In terms of this cognitive content, being is conceptualized, becomes knowable, and can be meaningfully contrasted with both not-being and beings. Beyond the resolution of Owens' dilemmas, the paper goes on to examine the need for meaningful contrasts in all knowledge as well as the adequacy and relevance of Aristotle's categories in relation to modern science."

Joseph Owens, The Content of Existence, in: Milton K. Munitz (ed.), Logic and Ontology, New York: New York University Press 1973, pp. 21-36.

60. Jacobi, Klaus. 1985. "Peter Abelard's Investigations into the Meaning and Functions of the Speech Sign Est." In The Logic of Being, edited by Knuuttila, Simo and Hintikka, Jaakko, 1-15. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"Although Peter Abelard was the most distinguished teacher of logic of his time, a logic understood to be the science of argumentative discourse, he was not destined to found a new philosophical tradition. The historical situation offers at Least a partial explanation -- the pace of philosophical and theological research was so brisk in the twelfth century that many of the established schools enjoyed life spans of at most two or three generations of teachers. The restlessness of the times is embodied to a special degree in Abelard.(1) His writings include commentaries, in many cases several to a work, on the logical works of Aristotle and Porphyry then available, handed down in the form of Boethius' translations, and on Boethius' own logical works. Abelard has to take a number of positions into consideration here: several commentaries on Aristotle by ancient scholars, by Boethius, and by Abelard's own predecessors and teachers, and furthermore the grammatical theories of Priscian and those deriving from Abelard's contemporaries. He discovers with distinctive acumen that the tradition he is examining is disunited and full of tensions on basic questions. It is in the analysis and discussion of these tensions that he finds the field of his own philosophical research. He expects to reach solutions by intensifying the controversies, not by seeking harmony. Thus he traces argument and counter-argument in great thoroughness of detail and from a dizzying succession of points of view, abandoning theses and offering countertheses. What his students could learn from him was not so much a particular theory as his method of formulating and discussing problems.

The situation is much the same for us. If we turn to Abelard in our inquiry into the logic and semantics of the speech sign 'est', we must discover anew the questions which concerned him. In the first Part of this Paper, I will sketch some of the discussions conducted by Abelard in order to make clear in what contexts he found himself confronting questions on the variations of meaning, function, or use of the expression 'est'. In the second part, I will group various theses which Abelard deals with appropriately. It is my intention to plot out the full range of the theories discussed and to mark points of conflict. In the third and final part, I will make some cautious comments on the deeper current of unity to be observed in Abelard's reflections, a current perhaps more easily discernible to the modern eye then it was to Abelard himself." (pp. 145-146)

(1) Cf. Jolivet (1969), Chapter IV; de Rijk (1980). Also compare Häring (1975), who explains the meager transmission of Abelard's works as at least partially attributable to Abelard's style of thinking and writing. His philosophical "works" were not written as books intended to be recopied and handed down but as records of his own thinking to be used in teaching. A thesis which he adheres to with conviction at one point in his writings may reappear later or even in a reworking of the first source as being subject lo doubt or in need of revision.

61. Jordan, Mark D. 1980. "The Grammar of Esse. Re-reading Thomas on the Transcendentals." The Thomist no. 44:1-26.

62. Kahn, Charles H. 1966. "The Greek Verb 'To Be' and the Concept of Being." Foundations of Language no. 2:245-265.

Reprinted in C. H. Kahn, Essays on Being, New York: Oxford University Press 2009, pp. 16-40.

63. ———. 1973. The Verb 'Be' in Ancient Greek. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Volume 6 of: John W. M. Verhhar (ed.), The Verb 'Be' and Its Synonims. Philosophical and Grammatical Studies, Dordrecht: Reidel.

Reprinted by Hackett Publishing, 2003 with new introduction and discussion of relation between predicative and existential uses of the verb einai.

"This book began unintentionally in 1964, when I tried to put together a brief description of the pre-philosophical uses of the Greek verb be in order to lay the groundwork for an interpretation of the more technical use of the verb by the philosophers beginning with Parmenides. But the task was harder and longer than I thought, and it gradually became clear that no adequate description of the Greek data could be given without confronting a number of major issues in linguistic theory and in the philosophy of language.

As often happens in so-called empirical research, the terms in which the problem is posed and the recognition of what might count as a solution turn out to depend upon certain theoretical assumptions about the nature of the subject matter and the appropriate form for description, analysis, and explanation. In this case there was the preliminary question of an appropriate method for describing and classifying the different uses of the verb, and the closely connected question of the relationship between a syntactic or formal analysis of these uses and a semantic account in terms of difference of meaning. Similar questions would arise in the study of any verb. But the verb be poses specific philosophic problems of its own: how are we to define or clarify the concepts of subject, predicate, copula, and verb of existence? And there is the problem of the verb be itself: in what sense is this system of distinct uses a unity? Is the possession of a single verb be with such a diversity of uses only a historical accident of Indo-European? And does it follow that the concept of Being is only a philosophic illusion?" (Preface (1973), XLV)

"Thus the argument of my book reaches two conclusions, one linguistic and one philosophical. The philosophical conclusion, my defense of Greek ontology, rests on my account of the system of einai but does not follow from it.

Greek ontology might be defended on different grounds, and a reader might accept my account of the system of einai but doubt its value as a defense of ontology. Furthermore, I have not tried to demonstrate the fruitfulness of my linguistic analysis for the interpretation of Greek philosophy. That could be done only by a detailed analysis of Platonic and Aristotelian texts.(1) The current study remains, after all, essentially a grammatical prolegomenon to the history of Greek ontology." (Introduction (200), p. VIII)

(1) For the application of my account of einai to Parmenides, see Kahn (2002) ["Parmenides and Plato," in V. Caston and D. W. Graham (eds.), Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in honour of Alexander Mourelatos. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, pp. 81-93] with references there to earlier publications.

[In the Appendix to the Introduction (2003) Kahn replies to four important critical reviews of the first edition of his book:]

Ernst Tugendhat, "Die Seinsfrage und ihre sprachliche Grundlage," Philosophische Rundschau 24 (1977), pp. 161-176: "Tugendhat's review contains a number of penetrating criticisms, some of which I am inclined to regard as justified." (p. XXXIII)

Seth Benardete, "The Grammar of Being," Review of Metaphysics 30 (1977), pp. 486-496. "Seth Benardete has contributed a number of valuable corrections to my description of the Greek usage of einai." (p. XXXIV)

Joachim Klowski, Review in Gnomon 47 (1975), pp. 737-746. "Klowski criticizes my exposition from the point of view of traditional philology and doubts the utility of introducing transformational grammar." (p. XXXV)

Cornelis Jord Ruijgh, "A review of Ch. H. Kahn, The verb 'be' in Ancient Greek," in Lingua 48 (1979), pp. 43-83. [in French] "The most thorough and detailed discussion of my book is by C. J. Ruijgh, a linguist who is also a specialist in Greek. (Unfortunately, this 1979 publication came to my attention only quite recently, as the result of a citation in De Rijk [Aristotle: Semantics and Ontology. Leiden: Brill 2002, two volumes]. I recommend this review for a full, fair, and accurate report of the contents and claims of the book. I discuss here some points in which Ruijgh disagrees with me." (p. XXXVII)

64. ———. 1973. "On the Theory of the Verb 'to be'." In Logic and Ontology, edited by Munitz, Miton, 1-20. New York: New York University Press.

65. ———. 1978. "Linguistic Relativism and the Greek Project of Ontology." In The Question of Being, edited by Sprung, Mervyn, 31-44. University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Paper read at a symposium at Brock University, St. Catherines, Ontario.

Published also in: Neue Hefte für Philosophie 15-16, 1979 pp. 20-33.

66. ———. 1981. "Some philosophical uses of 'to be' in Plato." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 26:105-134.

Reprinted in C. H. Kahn, Essays on Being, New York: Oxford University Press 2009, pp. 75-108.

67. ———. 1986. "Retrospect on the Verb 'to be' and the Concept of Being." In The Logic of Being, edited by Knuttilla, Simo and Hintikka, Jaakko, 1-28. Reidel: Dordrecht.

68. ———. 1988. "Being in Parmenides and Plato." La Parola del Passato no. 43:237-261.

Reprinted in C. H. Kahn, Essays on Being, New York: Oxford University Press 2009, pp. 167-191.

69. ———. 2004. "A Return to the Theory of the Verb be and the Concept of Being." Ancient Philosophy no. 24:381-405.

Reprinted in C. H. Kahn, Essays on Being, New York: Oxford University Press 2009, pp. 109-142.

"The recent reprinting of my book The Verb 'Be' in Ancient Greek by Hackett Publishing, thirty years after its appearance in 1973, gave me the opportunity to rethink and reformulate the theoretical framework for my description of the Greek verb. Since the audience for the reprinted book will inevitably be restricted, I present here a more accessible, slightly revised version of the new (2003) Introduction. In the original 1973 book, the theoretical discussion was far too long and not always consistent. What follows is a more concise and, I hope, more coherent version of my theoretical account of einai."

70. ———. 2009. Essays on Being. New York: Oxford University Press.

Contents: Introduction 1; 1. The Greek verb 'to be' and the concept of Being (1966) 16; 2. On the terminology for copula and existence (1972) 41; 3. Why existence does not emerge as a distinct concept in Greek philosophy (1976) 62; 4. Some philosophical uses of 'to be' in Plato (1981) 75; 5. A return to the verb 'to be' and the concept of Being (2004) 109; 6. The thesis of Parmenides (1969) 143; 7. Being in Parmenides and Plato (1988) 167; 8. Parmenides and Plato once more (2002) 192; Postscript on Parmenides (2008): Parmenides and physics. The direction of the chariot ride in the proem. The epistemic preference for Fire 207; Bibliography 219; Index of names 227.

"The papers reprinted here, published over a stretch of forty years, reflect my continuing concern with two distinct but intimately related problems, one linguistic and one historical and philosophical. The linguistic problem concerns the theory of the Greek verb to be: how to replace the conventional but misleading distinction between copula and existential verb with a more adequate theoretical account. The philosophical problem is in principle quite distinct: to understand how the concept of Being became the central topic in Greek philosophy from Parmenides to Aristotle. But these two problems converge on what I have called the veridical use of einai. In my earlier papers I took that connection between the verb and the concept of truth to be the key to the central role of Being in Greek philosophy. I think that clue pointed in the right direction, but I would now interpret the veridical in terms of a more general function of the verb that I call 'semantic', which comprises the notions of existence and instantiation as well as truth."

71. Kainz, Howard P. 1970. "The Suarezian Position on Being and the Real Distinction: An Analytic and Comparative Study." The Thomist no. 34:289-305.

72. Kearney, Richard. 1992. "Between Kant and Heidegger. The Modern Question of Being." In At the Heart of the Real. Philosophical Essays in Honour of the Most Reverend Desmond Connell, Archbishop of Dublin, edited by O'Rourke, Fran, 271-283. Dublin: Irish Academic Press.

73. Kemple, Bian A. 2017. Ens Primum Cognitum in Thomas Aquinas and the Tradition: The Philosophy of Being as First Known. Leiden: Brill Rodopi.

74. Kenny, Anthony. 2002. Aquinas on Being. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

75. Ketchum, Richard J. 1998. "Being and Existence in Greek Ontology." Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie no. 80:321-332.

76. Klima, Gyula. 1996. "The Semantic Principles Underlying Saint Thomas Aquinas’s Metaphysics of Being." Medieval Philosophy and Theology no. 5:87-141.

77. ———. 2002. "Aquinas’ Theory of the Copula and the Analogy of Being." History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis no. 5:159-176.

78. ———. 2011. "Being." In Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy Between 500 and 1500, edited by Lagerlund, Henrik, 150-159. Dordrecht: Springer.

79. ———. 2012. "Being." In The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Philosophy, edited by Marenbon, John, 403-420. New York: Oxford University Press.

80. Klubertanz, George P. 1946. "Esse and Existere in St. Bonaventure." Mediaeval Studies no. 8:169-199.

81. Knasas, John F. 2003. Being and Some 20th Century Thomists. New York: Fordham University Press.

82. Knuuttila, Simo, and Hintikka, Jaakko, eds. 1986. The Logic of Being. Historical Studies. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Contents: Acknowledgements VII; Introduction IX; Charles H. Kahn: Retrospect on the Verb 'To Be' and the Concept of Being 1; Benson Mates: Identity and Predication in Plato 29; Russell M. Dancy: Aristotle and Existence 49; Jaakko Hintikka: The Varieties of Being in Aristotle 81; Sten Ebbesen: The Chimera's Diary 115; Klaus Jacobi: Peter Abelard's Investigations into the Meaning and Functions of the Speech sign 'Est' 145; Hermann Weidemann: The Logic of Being in Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus 201; Simo Knuuttila: Being qua Being in Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus 201; Lilli Alanen: On Descartes' Argument for Dualism and the Distinction Between Different Kinds of Beings 223; Jaakko Hintikka: Kant on Existence, Predication, and the Ontological Argument 249; Leila Haaparanta: On Frege's Concept of Being 269; Index of names: 291; Index of subjects: 297-300.

83. Kosman, Aryeh. 2013. The Activity of Being: An Essay on Aristotle's Ontology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

84. Kuznetsov, Boris G. 1987. Reason and Being. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Edited by Carolyn R. Fawcett and Robert S. Cohen.

85. Langston, Douglas C. 1979. " Scotus and Ockham on the Univocal Concept of Being." Franciscan Studies no. 29:105-129.

86. Lewis, Frank A. 2004. "Aristotle on the Homonymy of Being." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 68:1-36.

87. Li Vecchi, Joseph, Scalambrino, Frank, and Kovacs, David K. 2020. The Philosophy of Being in the Analytic, Continental, and Thomistic Traditions: Divergence and Dialogue. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

"The philosophy of being is as old as philosophy itself; in fact, depending upon your understanding of philosophy, it may even be older. Thus, as long as there will be philosophy, there will always be the philosophy of being. However, books on the philosophy of being have tended to be written from the point of view of, or privileging, just one tradition from the history of Western philosophy.

So, on the one hand, the three of us thought it would be a valuable contribution to the literature regarding the philosophy of being, if we were to write a book that would specifically speak from the different points of view of three major philosophical traditions.(1) On the other hand, we thought an initial introductory section regarding the philosophy of being in general would help orient readers to the context of our book.(2)"

(1) It is our belief that readers will become familiar with different philosophical traditions by exploring how each tradition approaches the philosophy of being. On the one hand, we recognize that these traditions may be incommensurable. On the other hand, it is our hope that this project will contribute to a renewed sense of philosophical “pluralism” and “ecumenism.”

(2) Whereas this section was constructed through a collaborative effort on our parts, the remaining portions of the book were constructed by each of us independently. That is to say, each of us bears the responsibility for representing our respective traditions: Joseph P. Li Vecchi for the Thomistic, Frank Scalambrino for the Continental, and David Kovacs for the Analytic.

88. Llamzon, Benjamin. 1964. "The specification of 'Esse': a Study in Bañez." The Modern Schoolman no. 41:123-144.

89. ———. 1965. "Supposital and Accidental Esse: A Study in Bañez." The New Scholasticism no. 39:170-188.

90. Llano, Alejandro. 2001. "The Different Meanings of ‘Being’ According to Aristotle and Aquinas." Acta Philosophica no. 10:29-44.

91. Lovejoy, Arthur O. 1936. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Reprinted with a new introduction by Peter J. Stanlis New Brunswick, N.J. : Transaction Publishers 2009.

92. MacIntyre, Alasdair. 2006. "Being." In Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Second Edition, edited by Borchert, Donald M., 527-532. New York: Thomson Gale.

93. Maguire, Thomas. 1875. "The Permanent and Transitory Modes of Being, in Early Greek Philosophy." Hermathena no. 2:231-236.

94. Marrone, Steven P. 1983. "The Notion of Univocity in Duns Scotus's Early Works." Franciscan Studies no. 43:347-395.

95. ———. 1988. "Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus on the Knowledge of Being." Speculum no. 63:22-57.

96. Maurer, Armand. 1946. "Esse and Essentia in the Metaphysics of Siger of Brabant." Mediaeval Studies no. 8:68-85.

97. ———. 1950. "Ens Diminutum: a Note on its Origin and Meaning." Mediaeval Studies no. 12:216-222.

98. ———. 1954. "Henry of Harclay's Question on the Univocity of Being." Mediaeval Studies no. 16:18.

99. ———. 1956. "The 'De Quidditatibus Entium' of Dietrich of Freiberg and its Criticism of Thomistic Metaphysics." Mediaeval Studies no. 18:173-203.

100. ———. 1966. "Cajetan's Notion of Being in His Commentary on the Sentences." Mediaeval Studies no. 28:268-278.

101. Menn, Stephen P. 2003. "Metaphysics: God and being." In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy, edited by McGrade, A. S., 147-170. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

102. Mensch, James R. 1981. The Question of Being in Husserl's Logical Investigations. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

103. Montagnes, Bernard. 2004. The Doctrine of the Analogy of Being according to Thomas Aquinas. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

104. Morgenstern, Amy. 2001. "Leaving the Verb 'to be' Behind: an Alternative Reading of Plato's Sophist." Dionysius no. 19:27-50.

"In this paper, I critically assess readings of Plato's Sophist which, influenced by the Anglo-American philosophical tradition, have in the latter half of the twentieth century set the terms for discussions of this text's central issues. While aware that these readings are often at odds with each other and, therefore, do not form one coherent reading, I argue that the basic theoretical move unifying these readings -- equating the Greek terms esti, to on, and ta onta with the verb 'to be,' understood existentially, predicatively, or as an identity sign -- cannot serve as the basis of an illuminating approach to the Eleatic stranger's investigation."

105. Moro, Andrea. 2018. A Brief History of the Verb To Be. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Translated from Italian by Bonnie McClellan-Broussard.

Original edition: Breve storia del verb essere, Milano: Adelphi: 2010.

106. Morrison, Donald. 1987. "The Evidence for Degrees of Being in Aristotle." Classical Quarterly no. 37:382-402.

107. Nash, Peter W. 1950. "Giles of Rome on Boethius' "Diversum est esse et id quod est"." Mediaeval Studies no. 12:57-91.

108. ———. 1952. "The Meaning of Est in the Sentences (1152-1160) of Robert of Melun." Mediaeval Studies no. 14:129-142.

109. ———. 1957. "The Accidentality of Esse According to Giles of Rome." Gregorianum no. 38:103-115.

110. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. 1977. "Post-Avicennan Islamic Philosophy and the study of Being." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 17:265-271.

"In this article, after a brief discussion of the position of Ibn Sina concerning the distinction between existence and essence, a survey is made of the views of later Islamic thinkers of various schools including "Kalam", "Ishraqi" theosophy and theoretical sufism of the school of Ibn Arabi concerning ontology. The study culminates with Mulla Sadra who brought the discussion of being among Muslim thinkers to full fruition. After this chronological survey, the distinction between the study of being in later Schools of Islamic thought and those of the West is made clear and it is shown how despite a similar background, Islamic and Western thought part ways on this basic issue. Later Islamic students of ontology emphasized that the subject of philosophy is the study of the act of existence, the "actus essendi", while Western thought became ever more concerned with the existent or "ens". In conclusion the relation between the theoretical study of being and practical and operative spiritual methods for the realization of being in the Islamic world is indicated." (p. 265)

111. Nogales, Gómez Salvador. 1972. "The Meaning of Being in Aristotle." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 12:317-339.

"In order to deal with the complex concept of being, Aristotle distinguished between synonyms and homonyms, and these two categories were further subdivided. Things with nothing in common possess being and in every being there is something identical. We recognize matter and being only by analogy. Accident is a dimension of being but is not an entity in itself."

112. O'Farrell, Frank. 1982. "Aristotle's Categories of Being." Gregorianum no. 63:87-131.

113. O'Meara, Dominic. 1976. "Being in Numenius and Plotinus: Some Points of Comparison." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 21:120-129.

Reprinted in: D. O' Meara, The Structure of Being and the Search for the Good. Essays on Ancient and Early Medieval Platonism, Aldershot: Asgate Variorum, 1998, Essay V.

114. Owens, Joseph. 1978. The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics: A Study in the Greek Background of Mediaeval Thought. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

Third revised edition (First edition 1951).

115. Paprzycka, Katarzyna. 1993. "Carnap and Leibniz on the Problem of Being." In Possible Ontologies, edited by Augustynek, Zdzislaw and Jadacki, Jacek Juliusz, 163-177. Rodopi: Amsterdam.

"The title of the present paper appears provocative as it brings together one of the most prominent fighters of metaphysics, R. Carnap, a famous metaphysician and a very difficult metaphysical problem. In fact, Leibniz, whose stance on that very issue we have chosen to relate to that of Carnap's, has not written about the problem of being explicitly either. We will thus ask the reader for some patience as we will try to demonstrate that they both do so implicitly.

Our task is perhaps even more complex with respect to Carnap for aside of being an extraordinarily consistent and systematic thinker, he has also been very self-conscious methodologically. It is remarkable that the system of Aufbau, to which we will restrict our attention, was supposed to be a mere illustration of some methodological principles developed in the so-called construction theory. Accordingly, almost none of the moves in his system lacks a justification. As a result, there are not too many degrees of interpreter's freedom." (p. 163)

116. Pelletier, Francis. 1990. Parmenides, Plato and the Semantics of Not-Being. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

117. Perl, Eric D. 2014. Thinking Being: Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition. Vol. Brill: Leiden.

118. Perreiah, Alan. 1968. "De Conceptu Entis: A Reconsideration." The Modern Schoolman no. 46:50-56.

119. Pini, Giorgio. 2001. "Being and Creation in Giles of Rome." In Nach der Verurteilung von 1277 / After the Condemnation of 1277, edited by Aertsen, Jan A., Emery, Kent and Speer, Andreas. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität von Paris im letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts. Studien und Texte / Philosophy and Theology at the University of Paris in the Last Quarter of the Thirteenth Century. Studies and Texts.

120. ———. 2005. "Univocity in Scotus’s Quaestiones super Metaphysicam: The Solution to a Riddle." Medioevo. Rivista di storia della filosofia medioevale no. 30:69-110.

121. Priest, Stephen. 1999. "Husserl's Concept of Being: From Phenomenology to Metaphysics." Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement no. 44:209-222.

122. Principe, Walter H. 1967. Alexander of Hales' Theology of the Hypostatic Union. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

Chapter I. The Philosophical Background (pp. 21-72), in particular § 2. Ens, Esse, and Existere (pp. 23-42).

123. Prior, William. 1980. "Plato's Analysis of Being and Not-Being in the Sophist." Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 18:199-211.

"In this paper I argue that Plato does not, as most scholars believe, distinguish different senses or uses of the verb 'to be' in the "Sophist". He succeeds in differentiating existential statements from statements of identity and predications, but with the aid of a verb 'to be' which he takes to be univocal and to be equivalent to 'to participate in'. I offer an analysis of "Sophist" 251a-257c, and focus in particular on 255e-256e. This passage displays numerous parallels with the middle dialogues, and it is misleading to treat it as indicative of a change in Plato's metaphysics."

124. Przezdziecki, Joseph J. 1959. "Thomas of Sutton's Critique on the Doctrine of Univocity." In An Etienne Gilson Tribute, edited by O'Neil, Charles J., 189-208. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

125. Reding, Jean-Paul. 2004. "'To Be' in Greece and China." In Comparative Essays in Early Greek and Chinese Rational Thinking, 167-194. Aldershot: Ashgate.

126. Salis, Rita. 2012. "The Notion of Being as Act in Neoplatonism and its Transmission in the Translatio Studiorum." In Translatio Studiorum: Ancient, Medieval and Modern Bearers of Intellectual History, edited by Sgarbi, Marco, 51-63. Leiden: Brill.

127. Schiappa, Edward. 1997. "Interpreting Gorgias's 'Being' in "On Not-Being or On Nature"." Philosophy & Rhetoric no. 30:13-30.

128. Schmitt, Gerhard. 1977. The Concept of Being in Hegel and Heidegger. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann.

129. Schnädelbach, Herbert. 1984. "Being." In Philosophy in Germany 1831-1933, 192-218. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"If, in what follows under the general title of 'Being', we are to give an outline of the rebirth of metaphysics as ontology, we cannot avoid giving an account in detail of the various ontological projects of that time. What is to be clarified can be described as a rehabilitation of the 'problem of being' as a genuinely philosophical problem. This 'problem of being' must obviously be posed in such a way that it cannot be solved by any of the procedures of the empirical sciences; otherwise, any philosophical theory of being would be superfluous. On the other hand, the 'problem of being' should also not be reducible to the problem of knowledge, as the whole of Criticism had taught, since then the attempt to break out of the epistemological ghetto would fail. A third general condition, accepted by all the new ontologists, is that modern ontology should not proceed in a dogmatic fashion in Kant's sense; this also rules out simple reference back to pre-Kantian traditions. The rehabilitation of philosophy as theory of knowledge also remains decisive for the new ontology, to the extent that it regards an epistemological self-justification as absolutely indispensable. The priority of the question of being over that of knowledge, which is the general characteristic of the new ontology, should itself he seen as the result of epistemological reflection: since the time of Lotze, the argument that the subject is him: self an existent and the knowledge-relation a relation of, being had played a central role in that connexion. In Hegel's words, the new ontology saw itself as an immanent critique of epistemology, not as its simple opposite. The success of this critique was then felt as the great liberation 'to things themselves'." (pp. 194-195)

130. Seigfried, Hans. 1972. "Kant's Thesis about Being Anticipated by Suarez?" In Proceedings of the Third International Kant Congress, edited by Beck, Leslie, 510-520. Dordrecht: Reidel.

131. Shien, Gi-Ming. 1951. "Being and Nothingness in Greek and Ancient Chinese Philosophy." Philosophy East and West no. 1:16-24.

132. Sprung, Mervyn, ed. 1978. The Question of Being. East-West Perspectives. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Each chapter in this book (except the first) originated at a symposium arranged by the philosophy department of Brock University, St. Catherines, Ontario.

Contents: Mervyn Sprung: The Question of Being as comparative philosophy 1; Some Western Perspectives: Joseph Owens: Being in early Western tradition 17; Charles H. Kahn: Linguistic relativism and the Greek project of ontology 31; Hans Georg Gadamer: Plato and Heidegger 45; Zygmunt Adamczewski: Questions in Heidegger's thought about Being 55; Robert C. Schaff: Heidegger's path of thinking and the Way of Meditation in the early Upanisads 67; Some eastern perspectives: Wilhelm Halbfass: On Being and What There Is: Indian perspectives on the Question of Being 95; J. G. Arapura: Some special characteristics of Sat (Being) in Advaita Vedanta 111; Mervyn Sprung: Being and the Middle Way 127; Jitendra Nath Mohanty: Some aspects of Indian thinking on Being 141; Index 159-161.

133. Studtmann, Paul. 2007. "Aristotle, Science and the Plenitude of Being." Apeiron no. 40:245-266.

134. Theron, Stephen. 1979. "ESSE." The New Scholasticism no. 53:206-220.

135. Thom, Paul. 2002. "The pervasiveness of Being." In Presocratic Philosophy. Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos, edited by Caston, Victor and Graham, Daniel W., 293-302. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"The pervasiveness of Being is the doctrine that everything is. This doctrine would he false if something was not. That being is pervasive is not a trivial claim. An ontology might he motivated by the desire to quantify over non-beings in such a way that we can say that something is a flying man without implying that some being is a flying man. If such a distinction is allowed, then it might be thought that something is not, even though no being is not. Pervasiveness then would be true for beings but not for 'somethings.'

This chapter explores the different positions that philosophers from Parmenides to Aristotle take on the question of the pervasiveness of Being, and traces some of the relations linking those positions to one another." (p. 293)

136. Tomarchio, John. 2001. "Aquinas's Division of Being According to Modes of Existing." The Review of Metaphysics no. 54:585-613.

137. Twtten, David B. 2007. "Really Distinguishing Essence from Esse." In Wisdom's Apprentice. Thomistic Essays in Honor o/ L. Dewan O. P., edited by Kwasniewski, Peter A., 85-106. Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press.

138. Ventimiglia, Giovanni. 2018. "Aguinas on Being: One, Two or Three Senses of Being?" Quaestio. Journal of the History of Metaphysics no. 18:509-538.

Abstract: "In this article I point out that rather than two, as is commonly thought, or indeed one, which is an old idea recently revived by some scholars, Aquinas in fact presents three main senses of being: (A1) being as actus essendi or esse or ‘present actuality’; (A2) being as (real) form or essence; (B) being as the reply to the an sit? (is there...?) question or anitas or ‘there is’ sense. Regarding the relations among these three senses of being I show that: (i) the same logical treatment holds for the form (B) and (A2), since both can and need to be re-written in the form: something is so-and-so (whereas the same process cannot be applied to the A1 sense of being); (ii) the relation between the A1 and A2 senses of being is not a mere relation between distinct elements, but rather a relation among different stages of a single process, namely that between first and second actuality; (iii) the relation between the A (1 and 2) and B senses of being seems to be one of grounding, since the ‘there is’ sense seems to Aquinas to be grounded on the present actuality sense of being as an effect to its cause."

139. Wilhelmsen, Frederick D. 2016. Being and Knowing: Reflections of a Thomist. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

140. Wippel, John F. 2000. The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being. Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press.

141. ———. 2012. "Being." In The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas, edited by Davies, Brian and Stump, Eleonore, 77-84. New York: Oxford University Press.

"According to Aquinas the word “being” ( ens ) signifies “that which is” or “that which exists.” This complexity within the notion of being implies that one does not grasp it by the process of abstraction alone—the intellect’s first operation whereby it understands what something is without affirming or denying anything of it. While he acknowledges that this intellectual operation suffices for one to grasp the quidditative aspect of being (“that which”), Aquinas appeals to the intellect’s second operation

(whereby one affirms or denies by composing or dividing), often referred to as judgment, to account for one’s grasp of the existential aspect of being and thus to complete one’s understanding of being as that which is. As he explains, while the intellect’s first operation is directed to the nature (essence) of a thing, its second operation is directed to a thing’s existence ( esse )." (p. 77, notes omitted)

142. Yu, Jiyuan. 1999. "The Language of Being: Between Aristotle and Chinese Philosophy." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 39:439-454.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

L'être : bibliographie des études en Français

Bibliographie

1. "Les diviseurs de l’être." 2009. Cahiers de philosophie de l’université de Caen no. 46

Sous la direction de Vincent Carraud et Stéphane Chauvier.

Table des matières : Vincent Carraud et Stéphane Chauvier: Avant-propos 7; Vincent Carraud : Introduction – Le secret de l’ordre : l’être dépassionné 9; Theo Kobusch : La théorie antique de l’hypostasei on et de l’epinoia on et sa postérité 29; Frédéric Nef : Les catégories aristotéliciennes et la division de l’être : types de divisions et types d’ontologies 45; Jean-Baptiste Rauzy : L’abstrait et le concret 79; Stéphane Chauvier : Modes d’être 111-134.

2. Alverny, Marie-Therèse d'. 1959. "Anniyya - Anitas." In Mélanges offerts à Étienne Gilson, de l'Académie française, 59-91. Paris: Vrin.

3. Aubenque, Pierre. 1962. Le problème de l'être chez Aristote. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

4. Berti, Enrico. 1990. "Être et non-être chez Aristote : contraires ou contradictoires?" Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie no. 122:365-373.

5. Boulnois, Olivier. 1999. ttre et représentation. Une généalogie de la métaphysique moderne à l' époque de Duns Scot. Paris: Vrin.

6. Courtine, Jean-François. 2003. Les catégories de l'être. Études de philosophie ancienne et médiévale. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

7. D'Ancona Costa, Cristina. 1992. "La doctrine néoplatonicienne de l'être entre l'antiquité tardive et le moyen âge. Le Liber de causis par rapporta ses sources." Recherches de théologie Ancienne et Médiévale no. 59:41-85.

8. de Libera, Alain. 1980. Le probleme de l'être chez Maitre Eckhart : Logique et metaphysique de Panalogie. Genève: Épalinges, Impr. La Concorde.

9. Guiraud, Pierre. 1962. La phrase nominale en grec d'Homère à Euripide. Paris: Klincksieck.

10. Hadot, Pierre. 1963. "La distinction de l'être et de l'étant dans le De hebdomadibus de Boèce." In Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter. ihr Ursprung und ihre Bedeutung, edited by Wilpert, Paul, 147-153. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

11. ———. 1973. "L'être et l'étant dans le néoplatonisme." Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie:101-115.

12. Hugonnard-Roche, Henri. 2006. "Le vocabulaire philosophique de l'être en syriaque d'aprés des texts de Sergius de Res'aina et Jacques d'Édesse." In Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy. From the Many to the One: essays in celebration of Richard M. Frank, edited by Montgomery, James E., 101-125. Leuven: Peeters

"Dans une très fine étude portant sur l’origine du terme arabe annlya, parue dans les Cahiers de Byrsa, Richard Frank a consacré plusieurs pages à l’étude du vocabulaire syriaque de l’être, en particulier aux traductions syriaques des expressions grecques τό ôv et τό είναι, comme sources possibles du mot arabe étudié.(1) Les quelques remarques qui suivent, consacrées à l’étude de textes syriaques touchant au vocabulaire de l'être et à des notions voisines, se veulent ainsi un hommage aux recherches remarquables d'acuité faites par Richard Frank, et elles se situent en quelque manière dans leur prolongement, même si elles ne visent pas à l'explication du mot arabe susdit.(2)

Notre propos se limndera ici au domaine syriaque, et nos remarques porteront sur les textes de deux auteurs des Vie et Vile siècles respectivement: Scrgius de Res’ainâ (mort en 536) et Jacques d’Édesse (mort en 708)." (p. 101)

(1) R. Frank. The Origin of the Arabic Philosophical Term Anniyya. dans: Cahiers de Byrsa 6 (1956) p. 81-201.

(2) Sur les différents emplois philosophiques du mot annlya chez les auteurs de langue arabe, voir la brève note de A. Hasnawi, Anniyya ou Inniyya (essence, existence), dans: l'Encyclopédie Philosophique Universelle. Les notions philosophiques. II. Pans: Presses Universitaires de France, 1990. p. 101-102. Sur les mots ou les expressions grecques, dont annlya et les expressions formées à l'aide de ce terme sont les traductions, voir le relevé très détaillé et précis donné dans A Greek ami Arabic Lexicon (GALex), éd. G. Endress and D. Gutas, I.4. Leiden: Brill. 1997. p. 428-436.

13. Jolivet, Jean. 2000. "Le vocabulaire de l’être et de la création dans la philosophia prima de l'Avicenna latinus." In L'élaboration du vocabulaire philosophique au Moyen Âge, edited by Hamesse, Jacqueline and Steelo, Carlos, 35-49. Turnhout: Brepols.

14. Kagame, Alexis. 1956. La philosophie bantu-rwandaise de l'Ëtre. Bruxelles: Éditions Duculout

Reprint New York: Johnson Reprint Corp. 1966.

15. Montagnes, Bernard. 1963. La doctrine de l'analogie de l'etre d'apres saint Thomas d'Aquin. Paris: Béatrice-Nauwvelaerts.

16. Muralt, André de. 1990. "L'être du non-être en perspective aristotélicienne." Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie no. 122:375-388.

17. Pécharman, Martine. 1992. "Le vocabulaire de l'être dans la philosophie première: ens, esse, essentia." In Hobbes et son vocabulaire, edited by Zarka, Yves Charles, 31-59. Paris: Vrin.

18. Rijk, Lambertus Maria de. 1981. "Boèce logicien et philosophe: ses positions sémantiques et sa métaphysique de l'ëtre." In Atti del Congresso Internazionale di studi Boeziani (Pavia, 5-8 Ottobre 1980), edited by Obertello, Luca, 141-156. Roma: Herder.

19. Ruijgh, Cornelis Jord. 1979. "A Review of Ch. H. Kahn, The Verb 'Be' in Ancient Greek." Lingua no. 48:43-83

"Sommaire: §1. Introduction: le probleme du rapport entre l'emploi copulatif et l'emploi dit existentiel de einai.

A. Le contenu du livre de M. Kahn: §2. L'ontologie des philosophes et les problèms des deux emplois de einai; le choix de la théorie transformationnelle de Harris. - §3. Les différentes acceptions des termes 'sujet', 'prédicat' et 'copule'. - §4. L'application de la théorie transformationnelle au grec ancien. - §5. La description des emplois copulatifs de einai (copule nominale, copule locative, etc.). - §6. La théorie générale de la copule: valeur statique, marque de la prétention de vérité. - §7. Les emplois existentiels (six types), l'emploi possessif et 1'emploi potentiel de einai. - §8. L'emploi veridical de einai. - §9. L'unité des emplois de einai: dès l'indo-éuropeen, l'emploi copulatif serait central. - §10. L'accentuation de esti et sa place dans l'ordre des mots; la phrase nominale; to on et ousia.

B. Observations critiques: §11. Objections gènérales; la coexistence d'une analyse copulative et d'une analyse non-copulative sans différence sémantique dans certains types de phrases. - §12. Le caractère vague des termes d'ordre sémantique 'valeur fondamentale' et `valeur centrale'. - §13. La valeur fondamentale de einai, qui se manifeste surtout dans la construction absolue: 'être present', 'être là' sans spécification ultérieure (valeur présentielle; les nuances 'subsistantielle' et 'existentielle')., §14. Le rapport entre einai et ses composés (pareinai, eneinai, etc). - §15. L'emploi vital de einai. - §16. L'emploi strictement existentiel du type esti Zeux. - §17. L'emploi strictement existentiel du type estin ostix ...; le passage aux emplois métaphoriques et abstraits de einai. - §18. L'emploi de einai avec un nom d'action comme sujet. - §19. L'emploi-veridical de einai. - §20. L'emploi de einai avec un complement de lieu: le passage à la construction copulative. - §21. Le caractère non spécifié de la valeur fondamentale de einai explique son emploi copulatif; la phrase nominative simple. - §22. La phrase nominative cumulative: l'apposition. - §23. La phrase verbale monolectique (à sujet inclus). - §24. La phrase verbale à sujet extèrne. - §25. La phrase élémentaire du type kuon esti: construction absolue et construction copulative. - §26. La phrase du type outo z Swkratm z esti. - §27. L'ambiguité syntaxique d'autres types de phrases, notamment de ceux qui comportent un quantificateur. - §28. Le caractère non impersonnel de la construction du type nus esti. §29. L'ambiguité syntaxique de la construction impersonnelle du type oion te esti makestai. - §30. La construction impersonnelle du type esti makestai. - §31. La construction impersonnelle du type esti makestai (emploi potentiel; la fonction adverbiale de l'infinitif); les types anagke esti makestai et anagkaion esti makestai. - §32. Conclusion."

20. ———. 1984. "Sur la valeur fondamentale de einai: Une réplique." Mnemosyne no. 37:264-270

Reply to the article of R. van Bennekom in the same number.

21. Simons, Peter M:. 2001. "L'être: une petite histoire autrichienne." In La philosophie autrichienne de Bolzano à Musil, edited by Cometti, Jean-Pierre and Mulligan, Kevin, 29-42. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Key Terms in Ontology: Existence. Definitions by Major Philosophers

Introduction

"I think an almost unbelievable amount of false philosophy has arisen through not realizing what 'existence' means." (p. 234)

From: Bertrand Russell, Logic and Knowledge. Essays 1901-1950, New York: Macmillan 1956.

"Philosophical discussion of the notion of existence, or being, has centered on two main problems which have not always been very clearly distinguished. First, there is the problem of what we are to say about the existence of fictitious objects, such as centaurs, dragons, and Pegasus; second, there is the problem of what we are t o say about the existence of abstract objects, such as qualities, relations, and numbers. Both problems have tempted philosophers to say that there are inferior sorts of existence a s well as the ordinary straightforward sort, and they therefore often suggest that we use the word "being" to cover both kinds but restrict "existence" to "being" of the common, non-fictitious, non-abstract sort. (Sometimes the term "reality" is proposed for "existence" or for "being.") T he problems of fiction and abstraction are different, how ever, for there are both real and fictitious abstractions. For example, the integer between two and four is real, but the integer between two and three is fictitious. On the other hand, there are both concrete and abstract fictions; for example, the winged horse of Bellerophon and the integer between two and three. Accordingly, philosophers have often dealt with the two problems in quite different ways and perhaps ought to do so.

While these are the two main problems, there are others, f or example, that of what we are to say of the being of objects which have not yet begun, or have now ceased, to exist. The history of this subject, moreover, has been tangled with theological issues, to which it will be necessary to refer at certain points." (p. 493)

From: Paul Edwards (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York: Macmillan 1967, entry Existence, by Arthur Norman Prior; Second edition: Donald M. Borchert (ed.), New York: Thomson Gale 2006, vol. 3, pp. 493-500.

"The Indo-European languages in which all the philosophers from Parmenides to Sartre have written have a verb represented in English by 'be', which some of the time at least does the same work as is done by 'exist'. Everything that can be called philosophy of existence that was written by the Greek philosophers of antiquity was expressed with the help of 'einai', the Greek equivalent of 'be'; and it is impossible to reach any clear understanding of their doctrines without examining how they used this word, and how its synonyms in other languages are used." (Preface, p. VIII-IX) "German and French idioms, which most frequently use 'Es gibt' and 'Il y a' in place of 'There is', seem to show a stronger awareness than English of the difference between existential propositions and propositions ascribing properties to objects. Nevertheless even these languages have forms 'Es ist' and 'Il est', which make use of equivalents of the verb 'be', as English uses 'be' in 'There is' and 'There are', and one would have to look further a field to find languages where there was no possibility of construing an existential judgement as predicating being of an object or objects in the same way as dwelling in Transylvania or coming down the road can be predicated of an object or objects. Latin, as we have seen, has the simple unadorned use of 'est' and 'sunt' as a possible substitution for the verbs 'existit' and 'existunt'. Classical Greek, which lacks any word obviously equivalent to 'exist', is forced to use parts of 'einai', its synonym for 'be', much more widely than the languages we have mentioned, for the expression of existential judgements. Thereby hangs a philosophical story of epic dimensions, a Great Chain of Philosophies of Being." (p. 3)

From: Christopher John Fards Williams, What is Existence?, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1981.

"In the extended discussion of the concept (or concepts) of Being in Greek philosophy from Parmenides to Aristotle, the theme of existence does not figure as a distinct topic for philosophical reflection. My aim here is to defend and illustrate this claim, and at the same time to suggest some of the reasons why it is that the concept of existence does not get singled out as a topic in its own right. Finally, I shall raise in a tentative way the question whether or not the neglect of this topic was necessarily a philosophical disadvantage.

Let me make clear that my thesis is limited to the classical period of Greek philosophy, down to Aristotle. The situation is more complicated in Hellenistic and Neoplatonic thought, (...) I suspect that a careful study of these Greek terms would reveal that even in their usage we find no real equivalent of our concept of existence. In any case, this later terminology (...) plays no part in the formulation of Plato's and Aristotle's ontology, and I shall ignore it here. My general view of the historical development is that existence in the modern sense becomes a central concept in philosophy only in the period when Greek ontology is radically revised in the light of a metaphysics of creation: that is to say, under the influence of Biblical religion. As far as I can see, this development did not take place with Augustine or with the Greek Church Fathers, who remained under the sway of classical ontology. The new metaphysics seems to have taken shape in Islamic philosophy, in the form of a radical distinction between necessary and contingent existence: between the existence of God, on the one hand, and that of the created world, on the other." (p. 7)

(...)

To return now to the question with which we began: Why does existence not emerge as a distinct concept in Greek philosophy? In principle the answer is clear. My explanation is that in Greek ontology in its early stages, in Plato and Parmenides, the veridical concept was primary, and the question of Being was the question of "reality" as determined by the concept of truth. Since this conception of reality is articulated in Plato by copula sentences of the form "X is Y," it turns out that even the concept of existence gets expressed in this predicative form: as we have seen, Platonic Greek for "X exists" is "X is something" . In the scheme of categories which Aristotle takes as the starting point for his own investigation of being, this same predicative pattern serves as the primary device for analyzing what there is, and for showing how the various kinds of being are related to one another. So it is naturally the theory of predication, and not the concept of existence, which becomes the central and explicit theme of Aristotle's metaphysics, as it was the implicit theme of Plato's discussion of Being in the Sophist. (p. 15).

From: Charles H. Kahn, Why Existence does not Emerge as a Distinct Concept in Greek Philosophy, in: Parviz Morewedge (ed.), Philosophies of Existence. Ancient and Medieval, New York: Fordham University Press 1982, pp. 7-17. (Reprinted in C. H. Kahn. Essays on Being, New York: Oxford University Press 2009, pp. 62-74.)

Origins of the term "existence"

"The terminology for existence is much more complicated, and I can only give a rough sketch of the problem. We have first to consider how ὑπάρχειν (hyparkein) comes to be used as a synonym for εἶναι (einai) in its "existential" use, and then to follow the history of existere as the Latin rendering of ὑπάρχειν in this sense. Either topic could supply a separate monograph.

ὑπάρχειν originally means "to make a beginning", "to take the initiative", "to take the first step (in doing so-and-so)", e.g. to begin a guest-friendship (in the earliest occurrence of the verb, Odyssey 24.286) or to initiate hostilities (...)

Thus before ὑπάρχειν becomes specialized as a verb of "existence" we find it used in a predicative construction as an expressive equivalent for εἶναι as copula verb.

It is, however, not this copula use but the more frequent construction with the dative that accounts for the first technical use of the verb in philosophy: the use in which it expresses in logical terms the attributive relation which is normally expressed in grammatical form by the copula. Instead of "A is B" Aristotle prefers to say τὁ β τὸ ἀ ὑπάρχειν B belongs to A" (Prior Analytics 25a,5 and throughout). Hence τα ὑπάρχοντα attributes (of a subject) " e.g. at De Interpretatione 16b 10. (And see Bonitz, Index Aristotelicum 789a29-b2; compare the more non-technical use ibid. a12-28.) Since "what belongs to a thing" includes not only its accidents but also essential or substantial attributes in the first category, ὑπάρχειν is said in as many ways as εἶναι, i.e. in as many ways as there are categories or combinations of categories (Pr. An. 48b2-4, 49a6-9). (...)

Apart from this technical use in logic and grammar, the most common meaning of ὑπάρχειν in later Greek seems to be that which we render as 'to exist' or "'to be real'. (This occasionally leads to rather ludicrous confusion, when a late commentator can no longer distinguish between Aristotle's technical sense and his own ordinary use of ὑπάρχειν. (...).

It should be pointed out that although this use of ὑπάρχειν for real existence (in contrast to a mere word or an imaginary object) seems to be the dominant use in late Greek philosophy, the corresponding verb may still be construed both with paralocative and nominal predicates, as we can see from Sextus' discussion of the existence of the gods, e.g. IX-I43 (...).

And the same predicative construction is normal for the corresponding verb exsistere in classical Latin (as will be seen in a moment). In neither case, then, would our familiar contrast between an existential and a copulative verb naturally arise.(...)

I have neither space nor skill to follow the history of exsistere, exsistentia in Latin. I note, however, that like other derivatives of stare, exsistere serves in Varro, Lucretius, and later authors as a stylistic variant for esse, often with the nuance (suggested by ex-) of 'emerge' come into being' 'be produced'. As in the case of ὑπάρχειν this quasi-existential sense of exsistere is fully compatible with the copulative construction: (pecora) quae post tempus nascuntur, fere vitiosa atque inutilia exsistunt. (Varro Rerum rust. II.1.7)

The noun exsistentia seems not be attested before Marius Victorinus and Candidus in the 4th century A.D. It is a learned invention, designed to render ὑπάρχειν; in metaphysical texts where the latter term is distinguished from οὐσια (substantia) as the more general concept, sheer being without categorial determination, while οὐσια presents some determinate form of being, like 'substance' in the first Aristotelian category: Id est exsistentia vel subsistentia vel, si ... dicas ... vel exsistentialitatem vel substantialitatem vel essentialitatem (Adversus Arium III.7.9, cited in Pierre Hadot, Porphyre et Victorinus (Paris, 1968), II p. 29 text 40).

But this terminology was not taken up by Boethius, who apparently preferred esse to exsistere as a rendering of the technical use of ὑπάρχειν for pure, indeterminate being. (1)

As we have seen, Priscian in the 6th century A.D. renders ὑπάρχειν as substantivum. Thus neglected by Boethius and Priscian, the technical use of exsistentia as contrasted with substantia in late Neo-Platonism had no direct impact on early medieval terminology.

Abelard's usage is mixed. He often employs exsistere, exsistens for 'to exist', 'existing (thing)', but rarely uses the abstract noun and then in a rather surprising way: exsistentiae rerum seems to mean '(actual) states of affairs' in contrast to res, the existing thing, whose existence may be expressed by esse. (Dialectica, 154, 11 and 156, 29. Compare Kneale and Kneale, The Development of Logic, p. 206).

Aquinas' usage is even more Boethian: his normal expression for what we call 'existence' is esse or actus essendi. Only with the esse existentiae of Duns Scotus at the end of the thirteenth century do we find existentia firmly established as a technical term contrasted with essentia. Thus the modern terminology of 'existence' seems to derive from Scotus.

What connections (if any) can be traced between Scotus' use of existentia and the technical terminology of Victorinus nearly a millennium earlier, I do not know. In his translations of Proclus, William of Moerbeke renewed the ancient practice of rendering ὑπάρχειν by existentia, (P. O. Kristeller, Journal of Philosophy, 1962, p. 77) and these translations must have had some influence on the shaping of the medieval terminology. But ὑπάρχειν for Proclus is not quite the same either as exsistentia for Victorinus or existentia for Scotus. What role was played here by the concepts and terminology of Islamic philosophy I can only guess. The history of 'existence' seems to consist largely of still unanswered questions.(2)" (pp. 151-155)

Notes

(1) Compare they key passage of Boethius' De Hebdomadibus with the corresponding citation from Damascius in P. Hadot "La distinction de l'être et de l'étant dans le 'De Hebdomadibus' de Boèce", Miscellanea Medievalia, 2, (1963), pp. 147 and 151, n. 25. Boethius shows no trace of the exsistentia-substantia distinction we find in Victorinus and Candidus. It has been pointed out (by Graham, below) that Boethius normally renders the substantival τὸ ὂν by the artificial form ens, but sometimes resorts to the more natural Latin form exsistens for the verbal-adjectival use of the Greek participle as predicate or attribute.

(2) For some remarks on the contrast between Arabic and Greek terminology for "being", see A. C. Graham "'Being' in Linguistics and Philosophy", Foundations of Language, 1 (1965), 223 ff. For doctrinal contacts between Avicenna and Duns Scotus on the question of existence, see E. Gilson, L'être et l'essence, pp. 128-131.

From: Charles H. Kahn, On the Terminology for Copula and Existence, in: S. M. Stern, Albert Hourani and Vivian Brown (eds.), Islamic Philosophy and the Classical Tradition. Essays Presented by His Friends and Pupils to Richard Walzer on His Seventieth Birthday, London: Bruno Cassirer 1972, pp. 141-158. (Reprinted in C. H. Kahn. Essays on Being, New York: Oxford University Press 2009, pp. 41-61.)

Logic and Existence

"The contemporary attempts to determine in a purely logical way the nature of existence, by constructing a logic of existence(1) or a free logic which makes "no assumptions about the existence of the purported designata of its terms, general or singular,"(2) seems to be still premature as long as the problem of existence in its philosophical implications is not adequately resolved. Historically, there are three main problems in logic involving a conception of existence, which clearly show that the logical problem of existence has a philosophical background influencing the "logic of existence" in its technical sense.

The first problem arose in the period of the algebra of logic, when G. Boole (implicitly) and E. Schroeder (explicitly) introduced the concept of the empty class. This innovation resulted in a criticism of the traditional square of opposites and Aristotelian syllogistics, and the conception of the existential import of categorical statements. A further consequence, already recognized in the period of G. Frege and B. Russell, was the interpretation of particular statements as existential statements and of universal statements as hypothetical ones. It was maintained that "all general propositions deny the existence of something or other,"(3) and for these reasons no valid inference of a statement with existential import from a statement without existential import was admitted.

The second problem comprises the "fanciful Russellian analyses of proper names in existential contexts,"(4) with its special theory of descriptions, directed against Meinong's conception that a grammatically correct denoting phrase stands for an object, even if it does not subsist, and a similar view of H. MacColl who assumed two sorts of individuals -- real and unreal.(5) Russell's theory of descriptions is evidently a philosophical reflection of his views concerning the nature of existence as the fundamental problem cf ontology, a technical term introduced for the first time by Chr. Wolff in his Philosophia prima sive Ontologia . .. (1730). For philosophical reasons, Russell attempts to refute the ontological argument of Anselm of Canterbury. In the course of his argument. he adopts both conclusions of Kant's refutation in his Critique of Pure Reason (B 620ff), namely that (1) "all existential propositions are synthetic" and that (2) "Being is obviously not a real predicate; that is, it is not a concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing." His conviction that "existence is quite definitely not a predicate" is another reason for his introduction of the concept of the existential qualifier.

The third problem, introduced recently by W. V. Quine in his famous dictum, "To be is, purely and simply, to be the value of a variable,"(6) is connected with the contemporary discussion on universals and the attempts to reformulate the language of logic and mathematics in a nominalistic sense.(7)" (pp. 157-158)

Notes

(1) See esp. H. S. Leonard, "The Logic of Existence," Philosophical Studies, VII, 49-64 [1956].

(2) K. Lambert, "Free Logic and the Concept of Existence," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, VIII, 138 [1967]. Comp. J. Hintikka, "Existential Presuppositions and Existential Commitments," Journal of Philosophy, LVI, 135 [1959].

(3) B. Russell, "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism," Monist, XXIX, 191 [1918].

(4) S. Candlish, "Existence and the Use of Proper Names," Analysis, XXVIII, 157 [1968].

(5) Comp. B. Russell, "On Denoting," Mind, N. S., XIV, 479-493 [1905]

(6) W. V. Quine, "On What There Is," Review of Metaphysics, II, 32 [1948].

(7) See, e.g., N. Goodman and W. V. Quine, "Steps Toward a Constructive Nominalism," Journal of Symbolic Logic, XII, 105-22 [1947]; I. M. Bochenski, A. Church, and N. Goodman, The Problem of Universals, (Notre Dame, 1956).

From: Karel Berka, "Existence in Modern Logic", in Cael G. Vaught (ed.), Essays in Metaphysics, University Park: Pennsylvania University Press 1970, pp. 157-174.

Definition of "existence": Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (980-1037)

[First distinction between essence and existence]

"The primary analysis of the nature of being, its application to numerous things, and an introduction to the exposition of substance.

Being is recognized by reason itself without the aid of definition or description. Since it has no definition it has neither genus nor differenzia because nothing is more general than it.(1) Being does not have a description since nothing is better known than it. It is possible that one can recognize its name in one language by means of another language. Thus, by some means, it is possible to acquaint someone with what is meant by a term like being. For example, if being appears in Arabic, it can be explained in Persian, and one can indicate that it is that from which other things are derived.

In its first division, being is prima facie of two kinds: the one is called substance and the other accident. Accident is that whose being subsists in something else, so hat that being which is complete without it is either active by itself or due to something else. An example of this condition is the whiteness of a cloth. We note that the cloth exists either by itself due to itself, or by means of those things which bring about its being. Whiteness subsists in a dependent manner in it. Whiteness and whatever is analogous to it are called accidents. In this context, the receptable of whiteness is called a subject, although in another context something else is meant by 'subject'. Thus, a substance is that which is not an accident, whose being, moreover, is not in a subject, but is a reality such that the being of that reality that essence are not receptive to another thing having the aforesaid characteristics. One may regard the substance as a receptable which lacks this character. But to be active, this substance needs to be accepted by this receptacle whose reality we t establish later when we clarify its nature. One may regard the substance neither as a receptable nor as being in a receptacle, as we shall also establish subsequently when we explain its being. This, then, is called a 'substance'." (pp. 15-16).

(1) "The term used by ibn Sina to designate 'being' is hasti, a Persian term for which no equivalent appears in his Arabic texts. To be sure, in Shifa' he points out the term wujud (existence) has several meanings: (1) haqiqa (the essence, reality of something, the fact that it exists), and (2) the particular existence of something, and by making these distinctions, he confirms his awareness of the various senses of 'existence', but even in view of these different senses of 'existence', there is still no term in his Arabic works which could render hasti adequately. Although one could attempt to find a Greek equivalent for this term translating it perhaps as tò òn hê òn by which 'being-qua-being' is commonly rendered, one should nevertheless be cautious not to equate this term with ousía for the reason that ousía is sometimes defined as 'substance'. Ibn Sina, however, holds 'being' in the sense of basti to be the most determinable concept. Hence, if we choose to accept the translation of ousía for being, then ibn Sina's views will definitely be at odds with those of many Neo-Platonists, such as Proclus, who states that the One and the Gods are to be regarded as 'supra being' (hyperoûsios) (Elements, p. 105), or Plotinus, who proclaims that the One generates gennetés (being) (Enneads V [1]). In view of the preceding discussion in this chapter, it is evident that ibn Sina's doctrine disagrees with that of these Greek philosophers, for he asserts that nothing is above being, and whatever exists is a determination of being. However, Aristotle's notion of being-qua-being as tò òn hé òn (Metaphysica, book IV, ch. 1) corresponds to ibn Sina's notion of hasti. Aristotle's position becomes clear in subsequent sections of the Metaphysica when he indicates that mathematics 'cuts off ' a part of being, whereas metaphysics investigates being as being, ignoring those elements of being which are related to it in an accidental manner (i.e. are a determination of being). For a detailed account of this topic, see J. Owens, The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics, Toronto, 1953, esp. ch. 7 and 8. In order to achieve greater clarity on this issue and circumvent various ambiguous usages of the term ousía, Owens suggests the use of the term ' entity' as a better translation of it." (pp. 112-113)

From: Parviz Morewdge, The Metaphysica of Avicenna (ibn Sina). A critical translation-commentary and analysis of the fundamental arguments in Avicenna's Metaphysica in the Danish Nama-i-ala i (The Book of Scientific Knowledge), London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1973.

Francisco Suárez (1548-1617)

[Essence and existence according to Suárez]

"To avoid an equivocation in terms and to make it unnecessary later to make distinctions about an essential being, an existential being or a subsistential being or a being of truth in a proposition, I suppose by being we understand the actual existence of things. For essential being, if it is truly distinguished from existence, adds nothing real to the essence itself, but only differs from it in the way it is conceived or signified. Hence, just as the essence of a creature as such, in virtue of its concept, does not say that it would be something actually real with being outside its causes, so the essential being as by standing precisely in this, does not express an actual being by which an essence outside it causes would be constituted in act. For if to be actual in this latter way is not of the essence of the creature, neither will it be able to pertain to its essential being. Hence, being of a creature as such will prescind of itself from actual being outside its causes by which a created thing comes to be beyond nothing, by which name we designate actual existential being. But subsistential being is also more contracted than existential being, for the latter is common to substance and accidents. The former is proper to substance. Besides, subsistential being (as I suppose from what is to be proved below) is something distinct from the existential being of a substantial created nature and separable from it, because it does not constitute a nature in the order of actual entity, which pertains to existence. Now the being of truth in a pro position of itself is not a real and intrinsic being, but it is an objective being in the intellect as it is composing; hence it belongs also to privations. For we say, accordingly: Blindness is or A man is blind, as Aristotle discusses at greater length in book 5 of Metaphysics, chapter seven. Hence, the discussion is about created existence concerning which, furthermore, we suppose that it is something real and intrinsic to an existing thing; this seems self-evident. For through existence a thing is understood to be something in the nature of things. Therefore, it is necessary that existence be both something real and intrinsic, that is, within the existing thing itself. For a thing cannot be existing by some extrinsic denomination or some being (ens) of reason. Other wise, how would existence constitute a real being (ens) in act and beyond nothing?" (p. 45).

"I say thirdly: that being by which the essence of a creature is formally constituted in essential actuality is the true existential being. (...) Now this statement is proved in a variety of ways. First, because this being, understood precisely, is sufficient for the truth of this statement with a second adjacent: essence is. Hence, that being is true existence. The consequence is clear, for according to the common meaning and human conception, the is of a second adjacent, is not divorced from time. But it signifies being in act in the realm of things, which all of us understand by the name existence or by existential being. You will say that the "is" is always said truly of an actual essence, yet not formally because of the actuality of an essence, nor on account of that being by which it is formally constituted in such actuality, but because it never has this being without existence, although distinct from such an essential being or actuality. But against this retort the antecedent of the argument given is proved. For, by this actual essential being, taken formally and precisely, such an essence is a being (ens) in act and distinguished from a being (ens) in potency. Hence, by virtue of that being, such an essence is, for the inference is correct: it is a being (ens) in act; therefore it is. For to be a being (ens) in act does not reduce the character of being (ens) which includes the verb "is". So, even if we grant that this actual essential being depends on a further limit or act, as on a necessary condition or something of this sort, still that very being will formally constitute a being (ens) in act and will distinguish the latter from a being (ens) in potency. Thus, by virtue of that being a thing is truly and absolutely said to be, just as an accident by virtue of its being is said to be a being (ens) in act and to be absolutely, even though that being requires an inherence in a subject so that, without it, it could not exist naturally." (p. 74).

From: Francisco Suárez, De essentia entis finiti ut tale est et de illius esse eorumque distinctione. (Disputatio XXXI) - (Translated as: On the Essence of Finite Being as Such, on the Existence of that Essence and Their Distinction, by Norman J. Wells, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press 1983).

Rné Descartes (1596-1650)

"To know what existence is, all we have to do is to understand the meaning of the word, for it tells us at once what the thing is which the word stands, for, in so far as we can know it. There is no need here for a definition, which would confuse rather than clarify the issue" (AT X, 525; CSM II, 418).

From: René Descartes, Recherche de la Verité, in: Charles Adam, Paul Tannery (eds.), Oeuvres de Descartes, Paris: Vrin, 1964-1976 (12 volumes; referred as 'AT'); translated as: The Search of Truth, in: J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch (eds.) The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985 (referred as 'CSM').

[According to Descartes, existence is a property]

"Here I do not see what sort of thing you want existence to be, nor why it cannot be said to be a property just like omnipotence - provided, of course, that we take the word 'property' to stand for any attribute, or for whatever can be predicated of a thing; and this is exactly how it should be taken in this context." (AT VII, 382; CSM II 262)"

From: René Descartes, Replies to the Objections [by Gassendi] to the Fifth Meditation.

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

"I call a thing impossible whose nature implies that it would be contradictory for it to exist; necessary whose nature implies that it would be contradictory for it not to exist; and possible whose existence be contradictory for it to exist; necessary whose nature implies that it would be contradictory for it not to exist; and possible whose existence, (*) by its very nature, does not imply a contradiction -- either for it to exist or for it not to exist -- but whose necessity or impossibility of existence depends on causes unknown to us, so long as we feign its existence. So if its necessity or impossibility, which depends on external causes, were known to us, we would have been able to feign nothing concerning it.

[54] From this it follows that, if there is a God, or something omniscient, he can feign nothing at all. For as far as We are concerned, after I know that I exist, (s) I cannot feign either that I exist or that I do not exist; nor can I feign an elephant which passes through the eye of a needle; nor, after I know the nature of God, can I feign either that he exists or that he does not exist. (t) The same must be understood of the Chimera, whose nature implies that it would be contradictory for it to exist. From this what I have said is evident: that the fiction of which we are speaking here does not occur concerning eternal truths. (u) I shall also show immediately that no fiction is concerned with eternal truths.

[55] But before proceeding further, I must note here in passing that the same difference that exists between the essence of one thing and the essence of another also exists between the actuality or existence of the one thing and the actuality or existence of the other. So if we wished to conceive the existence of Adam, for example, through existence in general, it would be the same as if, to conceive his essence, we attended to the nature of being, so that in the end we defined him by saying that Adam is a being. Therefore, the more generally existence is conceived, the more confusedly also it is conceived, and the more easily it can be ascribed fictitiously to anything. Conversely, the more particularly it is conceived, then the more clearly it is understood, and the more difficult it is for us, [even] when we do not attend to the order of Nature, to ascribe it fictitiously to anything other than the thing itself This is worth noting." (pp. 24-25) [56] Now we must consider those things that are commonly said to be feigned, although we understood clearly that the thing is not really as we feign it. E.g., although I know that the earth is round, nothing prevents me from saying to someone that the earth is a hemisphere and like half an orange on a plate, or that the sun moves around the earth, and the like. 1f we attend to these things, we shall see nothing that is not compatible with what we have already said, provided we note first that we have sometimes been able to err, and now are conscious of our errors; and then, we can feign, or at least allow, that other men are in the same error, or can fall into it, as we did previously.

We can feign this, I say, so long as we see no impossibility and no necessity. Therefore, when I say to someone that the earth is not round, etc., I am doing nothing but recalling the error which I, perhaps, made, or into which I could have fallen, and afterwards feigning, or allowing, that he to whom I say this is still in the same error, or can fall into it. As I have said, I feign this so long as I see no impossibility and no necessity.

Notes

(s) Because the thing makes itself evident, provided it is understood, we require only an example, without other proof. The same is true of its contradictory -- it need only be examined for its falsity to be clear. This will be plain immediately, when we speak of fictions concerning essence.

(t) Note. Although many say that they doubt whether God exists, nevertheless they have nothing but the name, or they feign something which they call God; this does not agree with the nature of God, as I shall show later in the proper place.

(u) By an eternal truth I mean one, which, if it is affirmative, will never be able to be negative. Thus it is a first and eternal truth that God is; but that Adam thinks is not an eternal truth. That there is no Chimera is an eternal truth; but not that Adam does not think." (II, 20)"

(*) Joachim (Spinoza's Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940) suggests reading essentia, though the Opera Posthuma's 'existentia' is supported by the Nagelate Schriften. If it were not for the immediately following phrase (ipsa sua natura), I would think this almost certainly correct. 1 have translated the Latin as it stands, but (with Eisenberg) I feel certain that what Spinoza means is that the essence of the thing by itself does not entail either that the thing cannot, or that it must, exist. [Note by Edward Curley]

From: Treatise on the Emendation of the intellect, in: The Collected Works of Spinoza, edited and translated by Edwin Curley, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1985.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)

[According to Leibniz, existence is not a property]

"Existence. It can be doubted very much whether existence is a perfection or degree of reality; for it can be doubted whether existence is one of those things that can be conceived -- that is, one of the parts of essence; or whether it is only a certain imaginary concept, such as that of heat and cold, which is a denomination only of our perception, not of the nature of things. Yet if we consider more accurately, [we shall see] that we conceive something more when we think that a thing A exists, than when we think that it is possible. Therefore it seems to be true that existence is a certain degree of reality; or certainly that it is some relation to degrees of reality. Existence is not a degree of reality, however; for of every degree of reality it is possible to understand the existence as well as the possibility. Existence will therefore be the superiority of the degrees of reality of one thing over the degrees of reality of an opposed thing. That is, that which is more perfect than all things mutually incompatibles exists, and conversely what exists is more perfect than the non-existent, but it is not true that existence itself is a perfection, since it is only a certain comparative relation [comparatio] of perfections among themselves." (p. 165)

From: Robert Merrihew Adams, Leibniz. Determinist, Theist, Idealist, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1994 (undated memorandum by Leibniz).

Christian Wolff (1679-1754)

"Christian Wolff was a rationalistic school philosopher in the German Enlightenment. During the period between the death of Leibniz (1714) and the publication of Kant's critical writings (1780s), Wolff was perhaps the most influential philosopher in Germany.

(...) Wolff thought of philosophy as that discipline which provides reasons to explain why things exist or occur and why they are even possible. Thus, he included within philosophy a much broader range of subjects than might now be recognized as 'philosophical'. Indeed for Wolff all human knowledge consists of only three disciplines: history, mathematics and philosophy.

(...) For Wolff, the immediate objective of philosophical method is to achieve certitude by establishing an order of truths within each discipline and a system within human knowledge as a whole. The ultimate goal is to establish a reliable foundation for the conduct of human affairs and the enlargement of knowledge." (pp. 776-777)

From: Charles A. Corr, "Wolff, Christian", in: Edward Craig (ed.), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York: Routledge 1998.

"Wolff's Ontology begins ( 27) with the assertion of the two laws of contradiction and sufficient reason, both fundamental to the assertion that something is, or that it is not. The former requires that what is must be free from inner conflict, the latter that, if it does not, like a necessary being, have a reason for being in its own nature, it must depend on such a reason in something other than itself. The law of causation, as we ordinarily understand it, is for Wolff only a special form of the law of sufficient reason, pertinent to temporal, changeable things and their states ( 71). From these principles Wolff proceeds to the consideration of the metaphysical modalities, of which the most fundamental is the possible, the negation of the self-contradictory, or logically impossible. Everything actual, he holds, is by the law of contradiction possible, but he here embraces some invalid theorems, for instance, that a possible consequence can only have possible premisses. Obviously, modal logic is still insecure, though Wolff's treatment of apagogic proof in 98 is of some interest. From Wolffian principles it follows that the notion of an entity not wholly determinate is "imaginary', and that the indeterminate is only what is for us determinable, and that it will have to be determined by a sufficient reason ( 111, 117). There is no room in Wolffianism, any more than in Leibnizianism, for radical alternativity: Kant, however, will diverge from this position under the influence of Crusius.

All this leads, however, to Wolff's treatment of what he calls an entity: an entity is defined as any thing which can exist, to which existence is not repugnant. Thus warmth in this stone is a something, an entity, since a stone certainly can be warm or a warm stone can exist. There does not need to be any actual stone-warmth for us to have an entity before us. An entity is, however, rightly called fictitious or imaginary, if it lacks existence, which does not, however, make it less of an entity. These near-Meinongian positions are of great contemporary interest, and form the spring-board for much of Kant's later criticisms of the ontological proof, which is Wolffian enough to treat 100 possible dollars as if they certainly were something. Wolff goes on to draw the distinctions of essential features and attributes, on the one hand, which always must belong to an entity, and its modes, on the other hand, which are merely the characters that it can have and also can not have. Obviously, however, something must be added to possibility to raise it to full existence, and this Wolff is simply content to call the possibility-complement ( 174)." (pp. 39-40).

From: John N. Findlay, Kant and the Transcendental Object. A Hermeneutic Study, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.

"Being is what can exist and, consequently, that with which existence is not incompatible" (§ 134)

"Hinc existentiam definio per complementum possibilitatis" (Existence is defined as the complement of possibility)." (§ 174)

From: Christian Wolff, Philosophia prima sive Ontologia (1730), (First Philosophy, or Ontology).

Christian Augustus Crusius (1715-1775)

"Crusius was a pivotal figure in the middle period of the German Enlightenment, linking Pufendorf and Thomasius with Kant. Though sometimes wrongly characterized (for example by Hegel) as a Wolffian, he was instead an important critic of that position. His system reflected a new alliance between Pietism and Lutheran orthodoxy, offering a comprehensive antirationalist, realist, and voluntarist alternative to the neoscholastic tradition as renovated by Leibniz. Crusius was important in Kant's development and helps us understand the latter's philosophical Protestantism." (p. 736)

From: Michael J. Seidler, "Crusius, Christian August", in: Edward Craig (ed.), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York: Routledge 1998.

"Crusius' influence on Kant. Recent historical scholarship has stressed Crusius' importance in Kant's development, and the view that Kant's philosophy was rooted in Wolff's system has been more and more questioned. Recent research has shown that Kant, educated in the Pietistic, eclectic, and anti-Wolffian milieu of Königsberg University, was mainly trying in his precritical development (1745-1768) -- despite the nonorthodox Wolffian influence of his teacher, Martin Knutzen -- to counteract Wolffian philosophy in an increasingly original way. He therefore appealed both to recent anti-Wolffian trends -- to Maupertuis and his Berlin circle and through Maupertuis to Newton -- and to Crusius, the new leader of Pietist philosophy and only nine years his senior, whose reputation grew tremendously from 1744 on. Crusius' influence on Kant consists in six main points, some of which were also held by other Pietist philosophers or by Maupertuis. Crusius stressed the limits of human understanding, a theme that recurs in Kant's writings under different forms from 1755 on. He rejected the Ontological Argument, as did Kant after 1755, and he later rejected all theoretical proofs of God's existence. He assumed a multiplicity of independent first principles; Kant did so after 1755. He denied the importance of formal logic, and simplified it. He rejected the possibility of defining existence, and accepted a multiplicity of simple notions. He rejected the mathematical method as applied to philosophy. Kant adopted these last three positions in 1762.

Kant's Crusianism reached its climax in his Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der naturlichen Theologie und der Moral ("Investigations Concerning the Distinctness of the Fundamental Principles of Natural Theology and Morals," Berlin, 1764), written in 1762. By 1763 Kant's enthusiasm for Crusius' philosophy was waning, but he did not reject the six tenets above and was still influenced by Crusius on individual points as late as the 1770s. Bohatec has claimed that Crusius' doctrines in revealed theology exerted some influence on Kant's late works in religion." (p. 270).

From: Paul Edwards (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York: Macmillan 1967, entry "Crusius, Christian August", by Giorgio Tonelli.

[First definition of existence as a predicate]

Existence is "that predicate of a thing by virtue of which the thing is to be encountered somewhere and at some time outside thought." (section 46)

From: Christian August Crusius, Entwurf der notwendingen Venunftwharheiten, (1745), (Sketch of Necessary Truths of Reason).

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

(under construction)

BEertand Russell (1872-1970)

"Being is that which belongs to every conceivable term, to every possible object, of thought-in short to everything that can possibly occur in any proposition, true or false, and to all such propositions themselves. Being belongs to whatever can be counted. If A be any term that can be counted as one, it is plain that A is something, and therefore that A is. 'A is not' must always be either false or meaningless. For if A were nothing, it could not be said not to be ; 'A is not' implies that there is a term A whose being is denied, and hence that A is. Thus unless 'A is not' be an empty sound, it must be false. Whatever A may be, it certainly is. Numbers, the Homeric gods, relations, chimeras and four-dimensional spaces all have being, for if they were not entities of a kind, we could make no propositions about them. Thus being is a general attribute of everything, and to mention anything is to show that it is.

Existence, on the contrary, is the prerogative of some only amongst beings. To exist is to have a specific relation to existence-a relation, by the way, which existence itself does not have. This shows, incidentally, the weakness of the existential theory of judgment-the theory, that is, that every proposition is concerned with something that exist, For if this theory were true, it would still be true that existence itself is an entity, and it must be admitted that existence does not exist, Thus the consideration of existence itself leads to non-existential pro, positions, and so contradicts the theory. The theory seems, in fact, to have arisen from neglect of the distinction between existence and being Yet this distinction is essential, if we are ever to deny the existence of anything. For what does not exist must be something, or it would be meaningless to deny its existence ; and hence we need the concept of being, as that which belongs even to the non-existent." (pp. 449-450)

From: Bertrand Russell, The Principles of Mathematics, New York: W. W. Norton Company 1903, second edition 1937.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected bibliography on the Concept of Existence in Philosophy

Studies in English

1. Ajdukiewicz, Kazimierz. 1949-1950. "On the Notion of Existence." Studia Philosophica no. 4:7-22.

Originally published in Polish.

English translation in K. Ajdukiewicz, The Scientific World-Perspective and Other Essays 1931-1963, Edited and with an Introduction by Jerzy Giedymin, Dordrecht: Reidel 1978, pp. 209-221.

2. Bacigalupo, Giuliano. 2016. "Whose Existence? A Deflationist Compromise to the Fregean/Neo-Meinongian Divide." Argumenta no. 2:5-24.

Abstract: "The dispute between the Fregean and the Neo-Meinongian approach to existence has become entrenched: it seems that nothing but intuitions may be relied upon to decide the issue. And since contemporary analytic philosophers clearly are inclined

towards the intuitions that support Frege’s approach, it looks as if Fregeanism has won the day. In this paper, however, I try to develop a compromise solution. This compromise consists in abandoning the assumption shared by both Fregeanism and Neo-Meinongianism, namely that the notion of existence adds something to the content of a statement. To the contrary, we should think of existence as a redundant notion. In other words, I will argue that we should be deflationist about existence. Moreover, the kind of deflationism I propose relies on what I call the existence equivalence schema, a schema which follows the blueprint of the well-known truth equivalence schema. From such a perspective, we can say that Fregean philosophers rightly deny the status of a discriminating property to existence; and, conversely, Neo-Meinongians, too, rightly reject the view that existence is captured by quantification or expresses a universal property of objects. Finally, the argument that we should take a deflationist approach to

existence builds upon an analysis of natural language (general) existential statements and their intuitive entailment-relations."

3. Baier, Kurt. 1961. "Existence." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 61:19-40.

4. Berto, Francesco. 2008. "Modal Meinongianism for Fictional Objects." Metaphysica no. 9:205-218.

5. ———. 2011. "Modal Meinongianism and Fiction: The Best of Three Worlds." Philosophical Studies no. 152:313-35.

6. ———. 2012. "The Selection Problem." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 262:519-537.

7. ———. 2012. Existence as a Real Property: The Ontology of Meinongianism. Dordrecht: Springer.

8. Berto, Francesco, and Priest, Graham. 2014. "Modal Meinongianism and Characterization." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 90 (1):183-200.

9. Bottani, Andrea, and Davies, Richard, eds. 2006. Modes of Existence: Papers in Ontology and Philosophical Logic. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

10. Campbell, Richard. 1974. "Real Predicates and `Exists'." Mind:95-99.

11. Castañeda, Hector Neri. 1980. "Some Reflections on Existence." Philosophic Exchange no. 3:21-40.

12. Comorovski, Ileana, and Heusinger, Klaus von, eds. 2008. Existence: Semantics and Syntax. Dordrecht: Springer.

13. Englebretsen, George. 1980. "A Note on Predication." Dialogue no. 19:627-628.

Reply to: Nicholas Griffin, "Do We Need Predication?", Dialogue, 16, 1977, pp. 653-663.

14. Fitch, Frederic. 1960. "Some Logical Aspects of Reference and Existence." Journal of Philosophy no. 57:640-647.

15. Forbes, Graeme. 1994. "A New Riddle of Existence." Philosophical Perspectives no. 8:415-430.

16. Forgie, William. 1977. "Existence and Properties." The New Scholasticism no. 51:102-116.

17. Geach, Peter Thomas. 1968. "What Actually Exists." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume no. 42:7-16.

18. Geach, Peter Thomas, Ayer, Alfred Julius, and Quine, Willard van Orman. 1951. "Symposium: On What There Is." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. Supplement 25:125-160.

19. Gibson, Quentin. 1998. The Existence Principle. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

20. Goldschmidt, Tyron, ed. 2013. The Puzzle of Existence: Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? New York: Routledge.

21. Grandy, Richard E. 1985/86. "On the Logics of Singular Terms " Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:285-296.

22. Griffin, Nicholas. 1977. "Do We Need Predication?" Dialogue.Canadian Philosophical Review no. 16:653-663.

"The paper is concerned with the standard distinction between the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication. It deals, in particular with attempts by Fred Sommers ("Journal of Philosophy", 1969) and Michael Lockwood ("Philosophical Review", 1975) to show that the distinction is ill-founded since identity statements are predications of singular terms. This proposal is criticized mainly on the grounds that the notion of a singular term depends upon identity and thus can't be used in a program to eliminate identity. An alternative means of removing the distinction between the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication, by eliminating predication in favour of relative identities using Geach's suggestion that "x" is "F" is equivalent to "x" is the same "F" as something, is briefly sketched."

23. Haaparanta, Leila. 2001. "Existence and Propositional Attitudes: a Fregean Analysis." Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy no. 4:75-86.

24. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1966. "Studies in the Logic of Existence and Necessity: I. Existence." The Monist no. 50:55-76.

25. Hochberg, Herbert. 1985/86. "Existence, Non-Existence, and Predication." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:235-267.

26. Jones, Robert Murray. 1964. "Formal Results in the Logic of Existence." Philosophical Studies no. 15:7-10.

27. Keating, B.F. 1979. "Lockwood and Mill on Connotation and Predication." Analysis no. 39:183-188.

28. Kripke, Saul. 2013. Reference and Existence: The John Locke Lectures [1973]. New York: Oxford University Press.

29. Lejewski, Czeslaw. 1954. "Logic and Existence." British Journal for the Philosophy of Science no. 5:104-119.

"I have given my essay this title because it roughly indicates the boundaries of the topic to be discussed and at the same time hints at the method that will be adopted in my analysis. The problem of existence will interest me only to the extent to which it enters the province of logical enquiry and I shall try to disentangle it a little by departing from the generally accepted interpretation of the quantifiers and by bringing in other concepts related to that of existence." (p. 104)

(...)

"I wish to conclude with a brief summary of the results. The aim of the paper was to analyse rather than criticize. I started by examining two inferences which appeared to disprove the validity of the rules of universal instantiation and existential generalization in application to reasoning with empty noun-expressions. Then I distinguished two different interpretations of the quantifiers and argued that under what I called the unrestricted interpretation the two inferences were correct. Further arguments in favour of the unrestricted interpretation of the quantifiers were brought in, and in particular it was found that by adopting the unrestricted interpretation it was possible to separate the notion of existence from the idea of quantification. With the aid of the functor of inclusion two functors were defined of which one expressed the notion of existence as underlying the theory of restricted quantification while the other approximated the term exist(s) as used in ordinary language.

It may be useful to supplement this summary by indicating some aspects of the problem of existence which have not been included in the discussion. I analyzed the theory of quantification so far as it was applied in connection with variables for which noun-expressions could be substituted and my enquiry into the meaning of exist (s) ' was limited to cases where this functor was used with noun-expressions designating concrete objects or with noun-expressions that were empty. It remains to explore, among other things, in what sense the quantifiers can be used to bind predicate variables and what we mean when we say that colours exist or that numbers exist. These are far more difficult problems, which may call for a separate paper or rather for a number of separate papers." (p. 119)

30. Lesle, John, and Kuhn, Robert Lawrence, eds. 2013. The Mystery of Existence: Why Is There Anything At All? Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.

31. Lockwood, Michael. 1975. "On Predicating Proper Names." The Philosophical Review no. 84:471-498.

"Mill's System of Logic is not often turned to by contemporary philosophers as a source of insights regarding the philosophy of language. To be sure, the terms "connotation" and "denotation," which Mill coined, have passed into quite general circulation; and Mill's doctrine of proper names has recently regained a certain popularity-largely as a result of the writings of Kripke. But the notions of connotation and denotation seem generally to be understood in the context of a Fregean or Carnapian scheme of thought which is, to a large extent, alien to Mill's own way of conceiving language; and Mill's views on proper names are usually discussed entirely without reference to what, for Mill, constitutes their theoretical rationale.

To some, it may come as a surprise to learn that Mill actually had anything amounting to a theory of language. In fact, however, there is to be gleaned from Mill's Logic a theory of quite considerable sophistication -- which I shall attempt, in part, to reconstruct and defend. What will emerge from our discussion is a conception of proper names which combines elements that might seem, at first blush, incompatible with one another. I shall argue that the Kripke-Donnelian conception of proper names as "rigid designators" or purely referential devices is anticipated by Mill to an even greater degree than is generally recognized; but that, curiously, this conception does not prevent Mill from allowing that proper names can function as genuine predicates. We shall find that, even for Mill, there is, after all, a sense in which proper names might be said to connote."

32. ———. 1979. "A Question of Connotation: an Answer to Keating." Analysis no. 39:189-194.

33. Mares, Edwin D. 1997. "Who's Afraid of Impossible Worlds?" Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 38 (4):516-526.

34. Masiello, Ralph J. 1971. "A Note on Essence and Existence." The New Scholasticism no. 45:491-494.

35. McDaniel, Kris. 2013. "Existence and Number." Analytic Philosophy:209-228.

36. McGinn, Colin. 2000. Logical Properties. Identity, Existence, Predication, Necessity, Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

37. Miller, Barry. 1975. "In Defence of the Predicate 'Exists'." Mind no. 84:338-354.

38. ———. 1979. "'Exists' and Other Predicates." The New Scholasticism no. 53:475-479.

39. ———. 1981. "Strawson on Existence as a Predicate." Philosophical Papers no. 10:93-99.

40. ———. 1982. "Existence and Natures." The New Scholasticism no. 56:371-375.

41. ———. 1986. "'Exists' and Existence." The Review of Metaphysics no. 40:237-270.

42. ———. 2002. The Fullness of Being: A New Paradigm for Existence. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

43. Moltmann, Friederike. 2013. "The Semantics of Existence." Linguistics and Philosophy no. 36 (1):31-63.

44. ———. 2019. "Existence Predicates." In Quo Vadis, Metaphysics? Essays in Honor of Peter van Inwagen, edited by Szatkowski, Miroslaw, 153-182. Berlin: de Gruyter.

45. Morscher, Edgar. 1985/86. "Was Existence Ever a Predicate?" Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:269-284.

46. Mulligan, Kevin. 2019. "Modes of Being and the Mind." In Quo Vadis,Metaphysics? Essays in Honor of Peter van Inwagen, edited by Szatkowski, Miroslaw, 183-202. Berlin: de Gruyter.

47. Munitz, Milton K. 1974. Existence and Logic. New York: New York University Press.

48. Nakhnikian, George, and Salmon, Wesley C. 1957. "'Exists' as a Predicate." Philosophical Review no. 66:535-542.

49. Orenstein, Alex. 1973. "On Explicating Existence in Terms of Quantification." In Logic and Existence, edited by Munitz, Milton Karl, 59-84. New York: New York University Press.

50. ———. 1978. Existence and the Particular Quantifier. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

51. ———. 1995. "Existence Sentences." In The Heritage of Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, edited by Sinisi, Vito and Wolenski, Jan, 227-236. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"Ajdukiewicz noted that singular existentials were regarded as meaningful in the Lesniewskian -- existentials as copula claims -- tradition but as meaningless within the Frege-Russell -- existentials as quantifier claims -- tradition. By utilizing identity ("=") in the Frege-Russell tradition and noting that it shares features with the Lesniewskian copula (both are sentence forming functors that take nouns as arguments), one can criticize the arguments for meaninglessness that were originally given. Nowadays it is quite common to use identity to express singular existentials. The paper's conclusion is that neither identity nor the copula provide the right basis for understanding existentials, but some feature they share in common."

52. Pappas, George. 2002. "Abstraction and Existence." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 19:43-63.

"The concept of existence has been of great importance in many different philosophical systems. One well-known discussion of existence comes in Kant’s attack on the ontological argument. Kant argued that existence is not a defining predicate or, as is more commonly said, a property. However, as he also noted, the ontological argument seems to depend for its cogency on the assumption that existence is a property of things. Kant does seem right about this, at least for some versions of the ontological argument. For instance, Anselm held that a really existing supreme being is greater than a supreme being that exists solely in the understanding. Existence thus seems to be a great-making property for Anselm, and thus it surely qualifies as a property. Kant is usually credited with being the first to notice that existence is not a property, and for seeing the connection that this point has to the ontological argument.

Kant’s insights here, as elsewhere, seem to me to be of fundamental importance. However, I think as well that Berkeley had something like the same insight concerning existence as we find in Kant, though of course Berkeley made no further allusion to the ontological argument. That is, Berkeley sees well before Kant that existence is not a property, or what Berkeley would have called a quality. Indeed, in a sense to be explained below, it is this insight that lies behind Berkeley’s attempt to show that for all non-perceivers, to be is to be perceived.

Berkeley says in the Commentaries that his great discovery, something he thinks is really new, is how to understand the notion of existence. He means, no doubt, how we are to understand existence itself. This new way of thinking of existence, in turn, leads him to his famous principle of esse is percipi (EIP). A natural reading, then, would be that what Berkeley holds regarding existence and what he takes as genuinely new is just the EIP principle itself. The great discovery about existence would be that it is intimately linked to perception.

This way of thinking of the matter, I argue, is not correct. One aim of this paper is to show that the EIP principle is not Berkeley’s great discovery about existence. That principle, rather, is something that flows out of his discovery about existence. In fact, I think Berkeley has two fundamental discoveries about existence, each of which in its own way is more basic than the EIP principle. The first discovery is that Locke’s way of thinking of existence is deeply flawed, something that commits Locke to holding that there is an abstract idea of existence. Further, this Lockean conception of existence is closely related to a certain way of understanding the EIP principle. A second equally important discovery about existence, is that we do not have any idea of existence, and this is because there is nothing to have an idea of. Berkeley sees clearly, well ahead of both Hume and Kant, that existence is not a property or quality of things; this is his own most profound discovery about existence. This fact leads to a way of understanding the EIP principle, though one that is quite different from that associated with the Lockean conception of existence.

A second aim of the paper will turn out to be directly linked to these two ways of thinking of existence. This aim is that of explaining a certain vacillation in Berkeley’s texts when he is commenting on the status of the EIP principle. In some passages he says that the EIP principle is a necessary truth, one whose denial is a “manifest repugnancy” or a contradiction. Elsewhere, Berkeley says that the denial of the EIP principle is meaningless, a contention that would result in the EIP principle being at best a contingent truth. In yet other passages Berkeley states his point disjunctively: either the denial of the EIP principle is a contradiction, or it is meaningless. My claim is that this vacillation is not indicative of a certain hesitancy on Berkeley’s part, or anything that shows that he was unsure of what to say about the EIP principle. On the contrary, Berkeley knows exactly what is at issue. The denial of the EIP principle is contradictory, I argue, when we think of existence along Lockean lines. Thus, a mistaken conception of existence yields that the EIP principle is a necessary truth. On the other hand, the denial of the EIP principle is meaningless, when existence is understood along Berkeleyan lines. That is, on the correct account of what existence is, the EIP principle is a contingent truth. Berkeley’s two great discoveries about existence produce two distinct versions of the EIP principle.

I do not deny the fundamental role of the EIP principle in Berkeley’s positive metaphysics. Indeed, I follow Tipton in regarding the principle as the dominant, basic principle in the metaphysical scheme worked out in the Principles and the Three Dialogues.* My claim is, rather, that the EIP principle is not Berkeley’s basic discovery about existence, and in that sense it is not his fundamental insight. It is, instead, this fundamental insight from which the EIP principle derives." (pp. 43-45)

53. Pears, David F. 1967. "Is Existence a Predicate?" In Philosophical Logic, edited by Strawson, Peter Frederick, 97-102. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

54. Pruss, Alexander R., and Rasmussen, Joushua L. 2018. Necessary Existence. Vol. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

55. Quine, Willard van Orman. 1939. "Designation and Existence." Journal of Philosophy no. 36:701-709.

Reprinted partially in W. V. Quine, From A Logical Point of View.

56. ———. 1948. "On What There Is." The Review of Metaphysics:21-38.

Reprinted in W. V. O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View: Logico-Philosophical Essays, New York: Harper & Row 1961, pp. 1-19.

57. Rescher, Nicholas. 1978. "The Equivocality of Existence." American Philosophical Quarterly no. 12:57-66.

"1. Is Existence a Univocal or an Equivocal Conception?

There is no denying that many different sorts of things exist.

And there is also no denying that they exist in many different sorts of ways. But is the existence at issue in these different contexts always the same? Is the same idea operative when we say different sorts of things 'exist' do they 'exist' in the same sense of this philosophically crucial terms?

The issue comes down to this: Can one give a strictly uniform account in explicating wherein the existence of different sorts of things lies? Or does the meaning-analysis of the notion of existence lead to different destinations in different settings? Is existence a univocal conception or is it equivocal, so that the different uses of 'exists' are unified only by a 'family resemblance'? These questions define the problem-area of the present discussion." p. 57

(...)

"8. Consequences. Our analysis thus indicates the lack of any workable uniform conception to provide a covering umbrella for all these modes of existence. The philosophical study of existence -- ontology --emerges from these considerations as a complex and internally diversified issue. No simple synoptic formula-such as Quine's well-known thesis 'to be is to be the value of a variable' -- is adequate to this ramified and variegated issue.

Despite this diversity, the logical analysis of the modes and modalities of existence is nevertheless a useful undertaking. For unless one becomes clear as to the composition of the concepts at issue, it is not possible to explore profitably their philosophical ramifications and interrelationships. Insofar as philosophy is a matter of the cost-benefit analysis of the pros and cons of various theoretical positions-as indeed it is, in large measure-the exploration of logico-conceptual distinctions of the sort we have dealt with here can play a useful role in the philosophical enterprise.

Nominalism is a particularly straightforward case in point. For the nominalist (or at any rate the most prominent sort of nominalist), universals are no more than collection-principles for the assembling of suitably resembling actualia. Now the present deliberations have made it clear both what the commitments of this position are and what difficulties they encounter. For if universals are no more than points of resemblance among actually existing things, then it follows at once that the only properties that exist (really and genuinely exist -- in the solely here -- appropriate sense of the term) are those properties which are actually exemplified by reals. The consequences of the position abolish the line of distinction between property existence and property exemplification. An analysis of the consequences of the position make it easy to see what difficulties it encounters. Think again of such examples as Hume's missing shade of blue, the toothy smile of the Cheshire cat, or the unrealized values of parametrized properties (like height, weight, or temperature). All these now disappear as real (i.e., existing) properties. An analytical scrutiny of existence concepts shows that such a nominalism proposes on philosophico-ideological grounds (e.g.,'"economy' or 'simplicity,' etc.) to legislate a narrower range of alternatives than 'the logic of the case' strictly requires. The present considerations suggest that this doctrine enjoins upon us an ontological posture that is in fact smaller than life." p. 65-66).

58. ———. 2013. On Explaining Existence. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

59. Rundle, Bede. 2004. Why is There Something Rather than Nothing? New York Oxford University Press.

60. Salmon, Nathan. 1987. "Existence." In Philosophical Perspectives, 1: Metaphysics, edited by Tomberlin, James, 49-108. Atascadero: Ridgeview.

Reprinted in N. Salmon, Metaphysics, Mathematics, and Meaning: Philosophical Papers I, Oxford: Clarendon Press 2005, pp.

61. ———. 1987. "Existence." Philosophical Perspectives no. 1:49-108.

62. Shaw, Jaysankar Lal. 2003. Some Logical Problems Concerning Existence. Calcutta: Punthi Pustak.

63. Stegmüller, Wolfgang. 1977. "Language and Logic." In Collected Papers on Epistemology, Philosophy of Science and History of Philosophy. Vol. II, 203-240. Dordrecht: Reidel.

English translation of: Sprache und Logik, Studium Generale, 9, 1956, pp. 57-77.

"The subjects discussed in the following sections are to a certain extent scattered in text-books of modern logic. Some of the equivocations dealt with were already known to Aristotle and the Scholastics. Most of the inspiration for my observations comes from the logical and philosophical works of Prof. Willard van Orman Quine." (note 1 p. 239).

See in particular the § 2. The Functions of 'Is' pp. 204-215.

64. Stoothoff, Robert H. 1968. "What Actually Exists." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume no. 42:17-30.

65. Strawson, Peter Frederick. 1967. "Is Existence Never a Predicate?" Crítica: Revista Hispanoamericana de Filosofía no. 1:5-19.

66. Thomasson, Amie L. 2015. Ontology Made Easy. New York: Oxford University Press.

67. Vallicella, William. 1983. "A Critique of the Quantificational Account of Existence." The Thomist no. 47:242-267.

68. van Fraassen, Bas C. 1978. "Essence and Existence." American Philosophical Quarterly no. 12.

"1. Nominalism and Necessity. The differences between medieval nominalists and realists, which foreshadowed current philosophical disagreements, concerned existence. But the issues were not simple: realists postulated essences or real natures in order to explain the regularities in the actual world. Thus the nominalists, abhorring the existence of such abstract entities, found themselves also in a dispute over necessities: whether some things must, and others could happen, and whether these modal facts do, or are needed to, explain what actually happens.

The firm standpoint taken by the nominalists, as I understand them, was the one that became characteristic of the British empiricists later: the only necessities are those which derive from the connections among terms. As Nicholas of Autrecourt formulated it: there can be no inference from the existence or non-existence of one thing to that of another. In that case, realists held, there is no explanation to be had of the regularities in nature-they are one and all coincidences. This realist criticism was later sharply formulated by Peirce, especially in his remarks on Mill. (1)

The appearances are certainly all against the nominalists. For we do say that some things must, and others could happen, and in this way explain what does happen. Scientists, far from having a Quinean canonical idiom, speak just that way. The nominalists' first and basic move in this game is to say that all natural necessities are elliptic for conditional verbal necessities. This sheet on which I write must burn if heated, because it is paper-yes. But the only necessity that is really there is that all paper must burn when heated. This is so, but means only that we would not call something 'paper' if it behaved differently. (This is a naive formulation, but I shall not here present the process of sophisticating it.) There are technical difficulties for logicians in making sense of this move; but when sufficiently refined, the position that all non-verbal necessities are ellipses for conditional necessities ex vi terminorum can be held. (2)

There is however, a special problem, as Quine pointed out very early on, about necessities de re. In the above example, the nominalist really denied that this sheet must burn if heated. He replaced the necessity of the consequent by the necessity of the consequence, to use their inimitably concise jargon. What is true only, he asserted, is that this sheet is paper, a contingent fact, and that any paper must burn if heated, a necessary universal conditional which is not peculiarly about this sheet at all. So he denies the necessity de re asserted.

But we are very accustomed to assert necessities and possibilities de re, and are a bit suspicious of any philosophical position that accuses everyone of habitual and systematic logical error. Could we ever follow the nominalist on this issue and really feel comfortable-at home in the world of Antoine Roquentin, protagonist of La Nausée, who perceives every natural fact and connection as radically contingent?

In the remainder of this essay I shall examine what I believe to be the main philosophical and logical puzzles in the history of this problem." pp. 1-2.

(1) C. S. Peirce, "Uniformity" in his Essays in the Philosophy of Science, ed. by V. Thomas (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957); see especially p. 157; compare also "The Reality of Thirdness" in the same collection, especially pp. 166-167.

(2) See my "The Only Necessity is Verbal Necessity," The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 74 (1977), pp. 71-85.

69. van Inwagen, Peter. 2008. "McGinn on Existence." Philosophical Quarterly no. 58:36 - 58.

70. Vander Laan, David. 1997. "The Ontology of Impossible Worlds." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 38:597-620.

71. Williams, Christopher John Fard. 1981. What is Existence? Oxford: Clarendon Press.

72. Williams, Donald C. 1962. "Dispensing with Existence." The Journal of Philosophy no. 59:748-762.

73. Wippel, John F., ed. 2011. The Ultimate Why Question. Why Is There Anything at All Rather than Nothing Whatsoever? Washington, D.C:: The Catholic University of America Press.

74. Witherall, Arthur. 2016. The Problem of Existence. New York: Routledge.

"In this book I shall investigate the question: 'Why is there something instead of nothing?' It is an extraordinary question, rarely asked and rarely answered. It does not easily arise in conversation, for it cannot be openly and cheerfully debated. Instead it appears as a kind of phantom, shrouded in mist and darkness. The question itself, even in the context of a philosophy classroom, has a strange and disquieting atmosphere. It seems to come from the void, and it depends upon the dreadful contrast between being and nothingness, raising the possibility of knowing both. In asking us to reflect upon this contrast, this question lies at the extreme end of philosophical inquiry, and it deserves to be recognized as such. Transcending all of the normal conceptual structures and standards, asking for an explanation beyond any explanatory framework, it seems both inescapable and incalculable.

Yet I will provide an answer to it of a certain kind, through a gradual process involving an investigation of many possible responses. The final result of this process will be represented not as a simple proposition with a distinct information content, but as a general schema which may be instantiated by a variety of explanatory propositions. As such, my answer will not entirely form a closure of the inquiry that is opened up, but I believe that it forms a coherent and complete response, in at least the sense that the investigation has a distinct conclusion." Chapter 1)

75. Yagisawa, Takashi. 2005. "A New Argument Against the Existence Requirement." Analysis no. 65 (1):39–42.

76. Young, Michael J. 1979. "Existence, Predication, and the Real." The New Scholasticism no. 53:295-323.

"Kant argues that existential judgments cannot be understood as attributing existence, as a predicate, to those things whose existence is asserted. (1) This seems correct, but it gives rise to a serious problem. For as I point out in section I, it seems to imply that existential judgments do not involve any predication whatsoever, and thus that they are not really judgments. One might hope to avoid this paradoxical conclusion by arguing that existential judgments are predicative in form but that they do not attribute existence, as a predicate, to anything; as I point out in Section II, various philosophers have maintained just this. I argue in section III that this view, though not without value, is finally untenable. In section IV, I then point out what I take to be the source of the difficulties that have been discussed and suggest how they are to be resolved. In section V, I point out the implications of this suggestion for the judgment that God exists, and indicate a possible line for further thought on this topic."

(1) Cf. the Critique of Pure Reason, A592-602=B020-630.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected bibliography on the History of Existence in Philosophy

Bibliography

Studies in English

1. Adamson, Peter. 2002. "Before Essence and Existence: al-Kindi's Conception of Being." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 40:297-312.

2. Angelelli, Ignacio. 2004. "Predication Theory: Classical vs Modern." In Relations and Predicates, edited by Hochberg, Herbert and Mulligan, Kevin, 55-80. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

"This essay aims, first, at describing the conflict between the theory of predication (classical, Aristotelian) prevailing in philosophy until the end of the 19th century, and the theory arisen with the new logic (modern, Fregean). Three features characterize the pre- Fregean period: 1) conflation of predication and subordination (extensionally: membership and class-inclusion), 2) conflation of identity and predication, 3) the view of quantificational phrases (e.g. "some men") as denoting phrases. A possible fourth feature is suggested by the consideration of the so-called Locke's "general triangle". Most of the paper is devoted to the first feature, also called the "principal" one, stated by Aristotle. Frege seems to be the first, in 1884, to reject the first feature; he also rejected, not less vehemently, the second and the third features. Fregean predication theory became standard, and just taken for granted in the subsequent developments of logic as well as in the mainstream of philosophy. The second aim of this paper is to evaluate - relative to the notion of predication submitted in section I - the conflict between the two traditions, and to determine if both are somehow right, or one is right and the other wrong. The main result is that the Fregean revolution in predication theory is, at least with regard to the first and second features of the classical view, a clarification that would probably be welcomed by the classical authors themselves (pace Hintikka's "Logic of Being")."

3. Bäck, Allan. 1987. "Avicenna on Existence." Journal of History of Philosophy no. 25:351-367.

"In Islamic philosophy, in particular, with Ibn Sina (Avicenna), there appears, in quite explicit form, a view of predication at odds with many current interpretations of Aristotle and views of predication. That view is that the simple affirmative categorical proposition 'S is p' is to be read as 'S is (existent) as a p', and that for its truth it is required both that S be existent and that S be p. This paper sketches out the development of that view. It then shows how this view resolves such vexing problems in interpreting Aristotle's logic and ontology as the existential import assumption and his view of First philosophy."

4. Bennekom, R.van. 1984. "Existential and Other Sentences in Ancient Greek." Mnemosyne no. 37:257-263.

5. Bonevac, Daniel. 1982. "Kant on Existence and Modality." Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie no. 64:289-300.

6. Burnyeat, Myles. 2003. "Apology 30b 2-4: Socrates, Money, and the Grammar of "gígnesthai"." Journal of Hellenic Studies no. 123:1-25.

Abstract: "The framework of this paper is a defense of Burnet's construal of Apology 30b 2-4. Socrates does not claim, as he is standardly translated, that virtue makes you rich, but that virtue makes money and everything el se good for you. This view of the relation between virtue and wealth is paralleled in dialogues of every period, and a sophisticated development of it appears in Aristotle. My philological defense of the philosophically preferable translation extends recent scholarly work on eínai in Plato and Aristotle to gígnesthai, which is the main verb in the disputed sentence. When attached to a subject, both verbs make a complete statement on their own, but a statement that is further completable by adding a complement. The important point is that the addition of a complement does not change the meaning of the verb from existence to the copula. Proving this is a lengthy task which takes me into some of the deeper reaches of Platonic and Aristotelian ontology, and into discussion of whether Greek ever acquired a verb that corresponds to modem verbs of existence. I conclude that even when later authors such as Philo Judaeus, Sextus Empiricus and Plotinus debate what we naturally translate as issues of existence, none of the verbs they use (eínai, úpárkhein, úphestekénai) can be said to have existential meaning."

7. Burrell, David. 1986. Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn-Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Chapter 2: A Central Distinction: Essence/Existence.

8. Chiaradonna, Riccardo. 2019. ""Existence" in Greek Neoplatonism: Remarks on a Historiographical Issue." In La philosophie arabe à l’étude / Studying Arabic Philosophy. Sens, limites et défis d’une discipline moderne / Meaning, Limits and Challenges of a Modern Discipline, edited by Brenet, Jean-Baptiste and Lizzini, Olga L. , 299-313. Paris: Vrin.

9. Cresswell, M. J. 1971. "Essence and Existence in Plato and Aristotle." Theoria no. 37:91-113.

10. Cross, Richard. 2013. "Duns Scouts on Essence and Existence." Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy no. 1:172-204.

11. Dancy, Russell M. 1983. "Aristotle and Existence." Synthese no. 54:409-442.

Reprinted in: S. Knuuttila, J. Hintikka (eds.), The Logic of Being, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986, pp. 49-80.

12. Daniel, Stephen. 2000. "Berkeley, Suarez and the 'esse-existere' Distinction." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 74 (4):621-636.

13. Dejnozka, Jan. 1996. The Ontology of the Analytic Tradition and Its Origins. Realism and Identity in Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine. Lanham: Littlefiels Adams Books.

Paperback edition reprinted with corrections, 2002; reprinted with further corrections, 2003.

See Chapter 6.3: The Meanings of "Is": Aristotle. Frege, Russell pp. 227-231.

14. Dewan, Lawrence. 1982. "St. Thomas, Joseph Owens, and Existence." The New Scholasticism no. 56:399-441.

15. Fakhry, Majid. 1963. "Notes on Existence and Essence in Averroes and Avicenna." In Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter: ihr Ursprung und ihre Bedeutung. Vorträge des 2. Internationalen Kongresses für mittelalterliche Philosophie, Köln, 31. August-6. September 1961, edited by Wilpert, Paul, 414-417. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Miscellanea Medievalia - Vol. 2.

16. Forgie, William. 1975. "Kant and the Question: "Is Existence a Predicate?"." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 5:563-582.

"Kant gave a two-fold answer to the question, ‘Is existence a predicate?'. His view that existence is not a first-level predicate, i.e., a predicate of objects like horses, stones, and you and me, is widely known. What is not so well-known, however, is his claim that existence is a second-level predicate, a predicate of concepts or of a collection of predicates. In this paper I hope to show why his arguments for both claims are unsuccessful." (p. 563)

17. ———. 2000. "Kant and Frege: Existence as a Second Level Property." Kant Studien no. 91:165-177.

Abstract: "Both Kant and Frege maintained that existence is a second-level predicate or property. And, broadly speaking, each tried to establish this conclusion in the same way. However, their arguments differ at crucial places. I believe that a close look at these differences will uncover major obstacles to the success of the project itself."

18. ———. 2007. "Gassendi and Kant on Existence." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 45:511-523.

Abstract: "In rejecting Descartes's ontological proof for the existence of God, Gassendi maintained that existence is not a property and Kant said that it is not a "real predicate". It is commonly supposed that both are making the same claim. Some have even thought that they advance essentially the same argument for that same claim. I believe none of this is correct. Gassendi and Kant offer different arguments. And they are arguing for different conclusions. These differences stem from a more fundamental one: they mean different things by existence."

19. Frege, Gottlob. 1979. "Dialogue with Pünjer on Existence." In Posthumous Writings, edited by Hermes, Hans, Kambartel, Friedrich and Kaulbach, Friedrich, 53-67. Oxford: Blackwell.

Written before 1884.

20. Geach, Peter Thomas. 1955. "Form and Existence." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 55:251-272.

Reprinted in P. T. Geach, God and the Soul, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1969, pp. 42-64.

"In this paper I shall discuss what Aquinas meant by his term esse, or actus essendi, “ act of existing ”. Another synonym that he uses — quo aliquid est, “ that by which a thing is (or: exists) ”—suggests a convenient division of the subject: we can first discuss Aquinas’s philosophical use of quo, “ that by which ”, and then consider which sense of est, which sort of existential statements, may be relevant to Aquinas’s doctrine of esse. But we shall see that, having got thus far, we cannot arrive at the meaning of the whole phrase quo aliquid est, or the reasons for the way Aquinas uses it, simply by combining our separate considerations about quo and est." (p. 251)

21. Haaparanta, Leila. 1986. "Frege Synthesized: Essays on the Philosophical and Foundational Work of Gottlob Frege." In Frege Synthesized, edited by Haaparanta, Leila and Hintikka, Jaakko, 155-174. Dordrecht: Reidel.

From the General Introduction by Leila Haaparanta and Jaakko Hintikka: "In her article 'Frege on Existence' Leila Haaparanta emphasizes that Frege's greatest insight was the idea of first-order language, which, to a large extent, motivated the rest of his innovations. Haaparanta focuses her attention on Frege's concept of existence, which receives special attention in Frege's thought in connection with the thesis concerning the ambiguity of such words for being as the English 'is'. The ambiguity thesis was an important part of the Fregean paradigm of first-order logic. Haaparanta argues that Frege does not only assume the word 'is' to be ambiguous but that he considers 'exists', or the 'is' of existence, to be an equivocal word. She suggests that the equivocity view has a metaphysical and epistemological background in Frege's thought. Her paper thus pushes a great deal further the suggestions of Jaakko Hintikka mentioned earlier in this Introduction." (p. 6)

22. Harari, Orna. 2003. "The Concept of Existence and the Role of Constructions in Euclid's Elements." Archive for History of Exact Sciences no. 57:1-23.

"This paper examines the widely accepted contention that geometrical constructions serve in Greek mathematics as proofs of the existence of the constructed figures. In particular, I consider the following two questions: first, whether the evidence taken from Aristotle's philosophy does support the modern existential interpretation of geometrical constructions; and second, whether Euclid's Elements presupposes Aristotle's concept of being. With regard to the first question, I argue that Aristotle's ontology cannot serve as evidence to support the existential interpretation, since Aristotle's ontological discussions address the question of the relation between the whole and its parts, while the modern discussions of mathematical existence consider the question of the validity of a concept. In considering the second question, I analyze two syllogistic reformulations of Euclidean proofs. This analysis leads to two conclusions: first, it discloses the discrepancy between Aristotle's view of mathematical objects and Euclid's practice, whereby it will cast doubt on the historical and theoretical adequacy of the existential interpretation. Second, it sets the conceptual background for an alternative interpretation of geometrical constructions. I argue, on the basis of this analysis that geometrical constructions do not serve in the Elements as a means of ascertaining the existence of geometrical objects, but rather as a means of exhibiting spatial relations between geometrical figures." (p. 1)

23. Henry, Desmond Paul. 1964. "Being, Essence, and Existence." Logique et Analyse no. 25-26:104-110.

24. Herrera, Alejandro Ibanez. 1988. Leibniz on Existence, Indiana University.

Available at ProQuest Dissertation Express order number: 8617781.

25. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1981. "Kant on Existence, Predication, and the Ontological Argument." Dialectica no. 35:128-146.

Reprinted in: Simo Knuuttila and J. Hintikka (eds.), The Logic of Being, Dordrecht: Reidel 1986 pp. 249-268.

"The ontological argument fails because of an operator order switch between (1) "necessarily there is an (existentially) perfect being" and (2) "there is a being which necessarily is (existentially) perfect". Here (1) is trivially true logically but (2) is problematic. Since Kant's criticisms were directed at the notion of existence, not at the step from (1) to (2), they are misplaced. They are also wrong, because existence can be a predicate. Moreover, Kant did not anticipate Frege's claim that "is" ("ist") is ambiguous between existence, predication, identity, and class-inclusion. To restore the ontological argument, an extra premise is needed to the effect (roughly) that it is known who the existentially perfect being is. The question is raised whether Kant could have meant the failure of this extra premise by his thesis that existence is not a "real" predicate."

26. ———. 1999. "On Aristotle's Notion of Existence." The Review of Metaphysics no. 52:779-805.

Reprinted in: J. Hintikka, Analyses of Aristotle, Drodrecht: Springer, 2004, pp. 1-22.

27. ———. 2005. "On the Different Identities of Identity: A Historical and Critical Essay." In Philosophical Problems Today. Vol. 2: Language, Meaning, Interpretation, edited by Fløistad, Guttorm, 117-140. Dordrecht: Springer.

28. Hintikka, Jaakko, and Halonen, Ilpo. 2000. "Aristotelian Explanations." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science no. 31:125-136.

Reprinted in: J. Hinitkka, Analyses of Aristotle, Dordrecht: Springer 2004 pp. 127-138.

"Aristotle did not consider the Frege-Russell distinction between the "is"ses of identity, existence and predication as an ambiguity. On each occasion, any of these component senses of "einai" might or might not be present. The existential sense (existential force) was in a Barbara-type syllogism conveyed from the major term to the minor term by the middle term. For this reason the middle term was the proximate cause of the minor one: it is what lent the minor one its existence. Likewise Aristotle had to assume existential force only for the widest (generic) term of each science."

29. Hourani, George. 1972. "Ibn Sina on Necessary and Possible Existence." Philosophical Forum no. 4:74-86.

30. Kahn, Charles H. 1972. "On the Terminology for Copula and Existence." In Islamic Philosophy and the Classical Tradition. Essays Presented by His Friends and Pupils to Richard Walzer on His Seventieth Birthday, edited by Stern, S.M., Hourani, Albert and Brown, Vivian, 141-158. London: Bruno Cassirer.

Reprinted in C. H. Kahn, Essays on Being, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 41-61.

31. ———. 1976. "Why Existence Does Not Emerge as a Distinct Concept in Greek Philosophy." Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie no. 58:324-334.

Reprinted in: P. Morewedge (ed.), Philosophies of Existence. Ancient and Medieval, New York: Fordham University Press, 1982, pp. 7-17 and in C. H. Kahn, Essays on Being, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009 pp. 62-74.

32. Kannisto, Toni. 2016. "Positio contra complementum possibilitatis – Kant and Baumgarten on Existence." Kant-Studien no. 107:291-313.

Abstract: "In the course of his philosophy, in various contexts, Kant comes to reject three theses about existence: (i) that the thoroughgoing determination of a thing implies its existence, (ii) that existence is a real predicate or determination of a thing, and (iii) that existence is the complement of inner possibility or essence.

Kant’s target here is Baumgarten, who advocates these theses as the criterion, classification, and definition of existence. In this article I seek to clarify Kant’s elusive theory of existence through its opposition to Baumgarten. I will show that Kant’s refutation of (i)–(iii) does not stand alone but is grounded on his own definition of existence as (absolute) positing. Thus contrary to common practice, Kant’s negative claims about what existence is not cannot be understood in isolation but must be taken as jointly dependent on Kant’s positive claim about what existence is. I will show that theses (i)–(iii) fail because they presuppose that existence contributes to the intension or content of a concept, whereas according to Kant existence in fact posits a (non-empty) extension of the concept."

33. Kennedy, Leonard. 1968. "Peter of Ledesma and the Distinction Between Essence and Existence." The Modern Schoolman no. 46:25-38.

34. Klima, Gyula. 2013. "Aquinas vs. Buridan on Essence and Existence." In Later Medieval Metaphysics. Ontology, Language, and Logic, edited by Bolyard, Charles and Keele, Rondo, 30-46. New York: Fordham University Press.

35. Klubertanz, George. 1946. "Esse and existere in St. Bonaventure." Mediaeval Studies no. 8:169-188.

36. Lenzen, Wolfgang. 1991. "Leibniz on Ens and Existence." In Existence and Explanation. Essays Presented in Honor of Karel Lambert, edited by Spohn, Wolfgang, Fraassen, Bas C.van and Skyrms, Brian, 59-75. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

37. Lewis, Frank A. 1975. "Did Plato Discover the Estin of Identity?" California Studies in Classical Antiquity no. 8:113-143.

Summary. "(I) The notion of an is of identity in English. Some passages from Plato suggesting the existence of the comparable notion of a special estin of identity in Greek. (II) What in particular would lead Plato to recognize such a special sense of estin? Forms, participation, and predication. In the account of ordinary singular predications, a predicate 'Y' is true of a subject X just in case X participates in the form the Y associated with. (III) Self-participation. If nothing can participate in itself, then for any forms X and Y, X participates in Y and so is Y only if X is not Y. Even if self-participation is allowed, still in the majority of cases a subject is not what it participates in. The difficulty for all theories of predication which wish to explain how a thing can be something which it also is not. (IV) The is of identity re-examined. Some fallacies which might support the notion, and some arguments against it. (V) Sophist 255e11-256d10. Plato does not explicitly recognize an estin of identity. Four competing, "equally best" accounts of the grammatical theory he may implicitly be invoking: (i) the estin of identity; (ii) relational terms; (iii) the definite article; (iv) the not of nonidentity. (VI) Conclusion. The notion of a special estin of identity has little basis in Plato's text."

38. Lizzini, Olga L. 2003. "Wugud-Mawgud/Existence-Existent in Avicenna. A key ontological notion of Arabic philosophy " Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 3:111-138.

39. Malcolm, John. 2006. "Some Cautionary Remarks on the 'Is'/'Teaches' Analogy." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 31:281-296.

"Lesley Brown suggests that Parmenides and Plato were not guilty of an oft-alleged existence/predication confusion since the relevant Greek verb, when used as a copula, had a built-in existential connotation, just as the same use of "teaches" can be understood both completely and incompletely. I challenge this approach on the grounds that it implies that the ancient Greeks were in the impossible position of not being able unproblematically to attribute properties to subjects recognized not to exist. I attempt to show that the evidence Brown presents for her thesis from Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle is inconclusive."

40. Mates, Benson. 1979. "Identity and Predication in Plato." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy:211-229.

Reprinted in: S. Knuuttila and J. Hintikka, The Logic of Being, Dordrecht: Reidel 1986 pp. 29-47.

"In coming to terms with the well-known difficulties concerning such Platonic assertions as "beauty is beautiful," "justice is just," "beauty is more beautiful than anything else," etc., modern commentators have frequently invoked the received notion that the verb "to be" has two or more senses, including in particular the so-called identity and predicative senses. The present paper argues in detail that this verb can be consistently understood as having a single sense throughout Plato's texts, and that such an interpretation does less violence to his doctrines than do the more usual accounts."

41. Matthen, Mohan. 1983. "Greek Ontology and the 'Is' of Truth." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 28:113-135.

"This is an essay about the ontological presuppositions of a certain use of 'is' in Greek philosophy -- I shall describe it in the first part and present a hypothesis about its semantics in the second.

I believe that my study has more than esoteric interest. First, it provides an alternative semantic account of what Charles Kahn has called the 'is' of truth, thereby shedding light on a number of issues in Greek ontology, including an Eleatic paradox of change and Aristotle's response to it. Second, it finds in the semantics of Greek a basis for admitting what have been called 'non-substantial individuals' or 'immanent characters' into accounts of Greek ontology. Third, it yields an interpretation of Aristotle's talk of 'unities' which is crucial to his treatment of substance in the central books of the Metaphysics."

42. Maurer, Armand. 1946. "Esse and essentia in the Metaphysics of Siger of Brabant." Mediaeval Studies no. 8:68-86.

43. Mendelsohn, Richard L. 1987. "Frege's Two Senses of 'Is'." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 28:139-160.

"It is widely believed that there are two senses of 'is', the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication, and that this distinction was clearly drawn by Frege in On Concept and Object, although it was anticipated by others, perhaps, e.g., by Plato in the Sophist. As opposed to this received view, I will argue that Frege had not successfully distinguished two senses of 'is', indeed that his argument leads to precisely the opposite conclusion; on the other hand, the distinction Plato had supposedly drawn in the Sophist, which seems to rest on a semantics Frege was explicitly rejecting, is, given that semantic framework, viable.

Frege had introduced this distinction in order to buttress his view that proper names could not serve as genuine predicates: a proper name occupying ostensible predicate position could not be functioning as a predicate because the 'is' in such a statement would have to be the 'is' of identity, not the 'is' of predication.

I will argue that Frege had been mistaken on this point as well. More generally, I will argue that Frege's theoretical analysis of language is not, as he had thought, incompatible with proper names being allowed to play a genuinely predicative role.

My remarks are prompted by Michael Lockwood's stimulating article, On Predicating Proper Names (1975), which contains an extensive and detailed criticism of Frege's position."

44. Morewedge, Parviz, ed. 1982. Philosophies of Existence: Ancient and Medieval. New York: Fordham University Press.

Contents: Parviz Morewedge: Introduction 1; [First Part] Ancient. 1. Charles H. Kahn: Why Existence Does Not Emerge as a Distinct Concept in Greek Philosophy 7; 2. Paul Seligman: Being and Forms in Plato 18; 3. Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R.: The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics -- Revisited 33; 4. John P. Anton: Aspects of Ancient Ontologies 60; [Second Part] Medieval. 5. Christopher J. Brunner: The Ontological Relation Between Evil and Existents in Manichaean Texts and in Augustine's Interpretation of Manichaeism 78; 6. Bimal Krishna Matilal: Ontological Problems in Nyãya, Buddhism, and Jainism: A Comparative Analysis 96; 7. Allan B. Wolter: A Scotistic Approach to the Ultimate Why-Question 109; 8. John F. Wippel: The Relationship Between Essence and Existence in Late-Thirteenth-Century Thought: Giles of Rome, Henry of Ghent, Godfrey of Fontaines, and James of Viterbo 131; 9. Edward P. Mahoney: Metaphysical Foundations of the Hierarchy of Being According to Some Late-Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers 165; 10. Richard M. Frank: Attribute, Attribution, and Being: Three Islamic Views 258; 11. Majid Fakhry: Al-Suhrawardi's Critique of the Muslim Peripatetics (al-Mashsha' un) 279; 12. Parviz Morewedge: Greek Sources of Some Near Eastern Philosophies of Being and Existence 285; 13. Seyyed Hossein Nasr: Post-Avicennan Islamic Philosophy and the Study of Being 337-344.

45. Morscher, Edgar. 1986. "Was existence ever a predicate?" Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:269-284.

"The question "Was 'existence' ever a predicate?" in a way already suggests its own answer, that this is really the wrong question to ask, because 'existence' has always been a predicate. Even those, such as Kant, who supposedly opposed this view, in fact held it. They merely denied that 'existence' is a "normal" first-order predicate. Not only Kant, but also Bolzano, Frege and Russell claimed that it is a second-order predicate. There is substantive disagreement between Kant and Bolzano on the one hand and Frege and Russell on the other over two issues: the former claim that this second-order predicate applies to no concept analytically and that it can be properly ascribed to a singular concept, whereas the latter deny both of these claims."

46. Nash, Peter. 1950. "Giles of Rome on Boethius' 'Diversum est esse et id quod est'." Mediaeval Studies no. 12:57-91.

47. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. 1989. "Existence (wujud) and Quiddity (mahiyyah) in Islamic Philosophy." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 29:409-428.

48. Nijenhuis, John. 1994. "'Ens' described as 'Being or Existent'." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 68:1-14.

"A recent article in this quarterly about 'Aquinas on 'Exists',' opens with the statement, 'At the outset of On Being and Essence Aquinas distinguishes two senses of 'ens' (being or existent).' (1) Here, this reader stops 'At the outset' and reflects: is it justifiable-speaking linguistically and metaphysically -- to offer two seemingly alternative if not even synonymous renderings of the one Latin word 'ens,' viz., 'being' or (and/or) 'existent'?

The present writer belongs to the small chorus of language-sensitive medievalists who feel pressed to sing extra chorum because they have conclusive evidence that the translation of the Latin esse (as also of the Greek einai) by the usual existence-terminology leads to a flawed interpretation of the 'onto-logical' thought world where use is made of the 'being'-term ens (and its Greek equivalent).

(...)

The basic issue is simple enough, but precisely because it is so simple and obvious it runs the risk of being overlooked. All I can do here is present a series of brief pointers toward the fateful bifurcation of the Latin esse (and the Greek einai) into 'be(ing)' and 'exist(ence).' In doing this, I hope that an objective listing of the pertinent facts which, in their roots, are of an unambiguous linguistic nature, will constitute an instance of that philosophical rhetoric which in the same issue of American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly was called a 'technique of persuasion.' (2) " (pp. 89-90)

(1) Russell Panier and Thomas D. Sullivan, "Aquinas on 'Exists'," in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 67, (1993), 247.

(2) id. p. 257.

49. ———. 1995. "Existence vs. Being: an all-important matter of terminology." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 69:89-95.

"In classical Latin, the verb esse, incompletely rendered by today's 'to be,' was the word expressing what today is divided over the verbs 'be' and 'exist.' As I quoted Vlastos in reference to the similar situation in Greek ('Ens' described as 'Being or existent' 13), 'This kind of knowledge ... even a Greek child would have had. I invited our contemporary philosophers 'to crawl under the linguistic thought-skin of adult Greek and Latin philosophers,' not perhaps in order to agree but at least to understand what they were saying (and then, if they see fit, to disagree). When, by some mysterious process, the verb existere began to be used as the participle of esse, the inevitable apparently happened: the fuller meaning of esse, was gradually-and uncritically-transferred to existere. The etymology of ex(s)istere yields a simple sense, namely, 'come out of,' 'appear' and 'be there,' indicating yes-or-no situations; consequently, the richer meaning of Aquinas's esse (the verb) was fated to become flattened to indicate (rather than 'signify') the plain fact of 'exist(ence)' (often referred to by the new late-Latin noun existentia, see n. 4). The mountainous landscape where Aquinas saw a rich variety of interconnected 'beings' was leveled to the flatland of isolated, barren existents; the various depths of the existing beings came to be viewed as a conglomerate of unrelated, juxtaposed existents."

50. O'Brien, Andrew Joseph. 1964. "Duns Scotus' Teaching on the Distinction between Essence and Existence." The New Scholasticism no. 38:61-77.

51. O'Shaughnessy, Thomas. 1959. "St. Thomas's Changing Estimate of Avicenna's Teaching on Existence as an Accident." The Modern Schoolman no. 36:245-260.

52. Owens, Joseph. 1968. An Interpretation of Existence: Bruce.

Reprint: Houston, Center for Thomistic Studies, 1985.

53. ———. 1972. "'Ignorare' and Existence." The New Scholasticism no. 46:210-219.

54. ———. 1979. "Existence as Predicated." The New Scholasticism no. 53:480-485.

Reply to B. Miller, 'Exists' and Other Predicates, (1979).

55. ———. 1982. "Nature and Conceptualization." The New Scholasticism no. 56:376-380.

56. ———. 1982. "Material Substance -- Temporal or Eviternal?" The New Scholasticism no. 56:442-461.

Reply to L. Dewan, St. Thomas, Joseph Owens, and Existence (1982).

57. Pannier, Russell, and Sullivan, Thomas D. 1993. "Aquinas on "Exists"." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 67:157-166.

58. ———. 1995. "Being, Existence and the Future of Thomistic Studies: a Reply to Professor Nijenhuis." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 69:83-88.

"Our aim is to explain as briefly as we can (1) why there is good reason to use 'existence-terminology,' and (2) why some considerations against it, including what we take to be Professor Nijenhuis's main reasons, should not deter us. In the course of discussing these points we also will indicate why any of this matters for the future of Thomistic studies.

The first reason to permit oneself to use 'existent' or 'existing thing' for 'ens' is that fine dictionaries such as The New Shorter Oxford and The American Heritage (to take a couple at hand) give 'existence' as the first entry under 'being.' That, no doubt, is why translators commonly use 'existence-terminology.' Professor Nijenhuis acknowledges that dictionaries inter-define being and existence and that translators follow suit, but he thinks that both err. Maybe so, but it seems quite clear who bears the onus probandi.

The second reason, often neglected by proponents of 'being-terminology,' is that if we refuse to allow that when Aquinas talks in terms of 'ens' and 'esse' he is talking in one way or another about existing things and about existence, we have no way of comparing Aquinas on existence with anyone who talks about existence. To insist that Aquinas is not talking about the same topic as Frege, Russell, Quine and others because 'ens,' 'esse' and the like are to be translated only in terms of 'being' is to beg some pretty big questions and to seal off Aquinas's thought from the contemporary world of ideas. No doubt some feel that it is more important to understand Aquinas in light of predecessors such as Clarenbald of Arras than Frege, but it seems to us that unless at some point we are willing to consider how Aquinas's thought holds up when examined with the best contemporary work in mind, we will certainly not have served Aquinas or philosophy well." (pp. 83-84)

59. Patt, Walter. 1988. "Aquinas's Real Distinction and Some Interpretations." The New Scholasticism no. 62:1-29.

60. Peña, Lorenzo. 1997. "Essence and Existence in Leibniz's Ontology." Synthesis Philosophica no. 12:415-431.

61. Pietersma, Henri. 1986. "Husserl's Concept of Existence." Synthese no. 66:311-328.

62. Prior, Arthur Norman. 1965. "Existence in Lesniewski and in Russell." In Formal Systems and Recursive Functions. Proceedings of the Eighth Logic Colloquium. Oxford, July 1963, edited by Crossley, John N. and Dummett, Michael, 149-155. Amsterdam: North Holland.

63. Stack, George. 1976. "Berkeley's Concept of Existence." The Modern Schoolman no. 53:281-289.

64. Sweeney, Leo. 1963. "Existence/Essence in Thomas Aquinas’ Early Writings." Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association no. 37:97-131.

65. Toner, Patrick. 2011. "Reading « is » Existentially in Republic 476-80." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 19:171-183.

66. Traylor, A.D. 2001. "Reassessing Heidegger on Existentia." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 75:523-545.

Abstract: "This paper presents an immanent critique of Heidegger's consignment of "existensia" to the "metaphysical" category of "Vorhandenheit". Past scholarship has been by and large uncritical of this tenet of Heidegger, thereby thwarting a potentially fruitful dialogue between continental thinkers and those sympathetic to medieval ontology. The paper (1) argues that the account in "Basic Problems of Phenomenology" is marred by essentialism and thus overlooks a depth-dimension in "existentia"; (2) examines key passages in the 1941 Nietzsche lectures where Heidegger appears to flirt with the possibility of a more primordial sense of "existensia"; and (3) reads the 1936 text "The Origin of the Work of Art" as providing further evidence for reading Heidegger's ontology as a phenomenological recovery of the existential contingency of beings."

67. Upton, Thomas V. 1988. "Aristotle on Existence: Escaping the Snares of Ontology?" The New Scholasticism no. 62:373-399.

68. Vallicella, William. 2001. "Brentano on Existence." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 18:311-327.

69. Vick, George Robert. 1968. Kant's Doctrine of Existence as a Predicate, University of Southern California.

Available at ProQuest Dissertation Express order number: 6905074.

70. ———. 1970. "Existence Was a Predicate for Kant." Kant Studien no. 61:357-371.

71. Wells, Norman J. 1960. "Capreolus on Essence and Existence." The Modern Schoolman no. 38:1-24.

72. ———. 1966. "Existence: History and Problematic." The Monist no. 60:34-43.

"An initial consideration is given of the tensions involved in the perspective of the historian of philosophy. Thereafter, Greek, medieval and early modern positions on being or existence are discussed. Beginning with Parmenides and terminating with Plotinus, the dominant refrain of Greek philosophy is that being is form. With Avicenna, an aspect of being beyond form is isolated -- the existential dimension. However, metaphysics still focuses on the formal; existence remains untapped. In a singular departure from tradition, existence for Thomas Aquinas is no longer a "topping off" of an autonomous essence. It is the primordial, most basic dimension of anything that is "really other than and different from essence". However, this has always been interpreted with Avicennian or Aristotelian spectacles on. This has led to the position of Suarez affirming the identity of essence and existence. The stage is set for appreciating the concept of existence as completely empty and vacuous."

73. Wiggins, David. 1994. "The Kant-Frege-Russell View of Existence: Towards a Rehabilitation of the Second-Level View." In Modality, Morality, and Belief: Essays in Honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus, edited by Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, 93-116. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

74. Wilhelmsen, Frederick. 1976. "Existence and Esse." The New Scholasticism no. 50:20-45.

75. Wippel, John F. 1982. "Essence and existence." In The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism 1100-1600, edited by Kretzmann, Norman, Kenny, Antony and Pinborg, Jan, 385-410. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pree.

76. ———. 2010. "Essence and Existence." In The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy: Vol. 2, edited by Pasnau, Robert, 622-634. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pree.

Études en Français

1. "L'esistenza. L'existence. Die Existenz. Existence." 2003. Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 3.

Contents: Costantino Esposito & Vincent Carraud Premessa IX-XIII; Vincent Carraud: L'invention de l'existence. Note sur la christologie de Marius Victorinus 3; Jean-François Courtine: Essenza, sostanza, sussistenza, esistenza 27; Jerôme Laurent: Sur des modalités d'existence du non-être. Du vide démocritéen à la matière plotinienne 61; Isabelle Olivo-Poindron: Ousia os energheia, ou de l'existence chez Aristote 71; Olga Lizzini: Wugud-Mawgud/Existence-Existent in Avicenna. A key ontological notion of Arabic philosophy 111; Costantino Esposito: Existence, relation, efficience. Le noeud suarézien entre métaphysique et théologie 139; Jean-Christophe Bardout: Causalité ou subiectivité: le développement du sentiment d'existence, de Descartes à l' "Encyclopedie" 163; Jocelyn Benoist: Jugement et existence chez Kant. Comment des jugements d'existence sont-ils possibles? 207; Giusi Strummiello: "Das, was das Seyende Ist". L'esistenza e l'essente nel tardo Schelling 229; Philippe Grosos: L'existence impossible 265; Pierre Carrique: L'exigence d'exister. L'éveil éthique selon Kierkegaard et Heidegger 281; Emmanuel Housset: Existenz und existentia im Denken Heideggers 299; Mienneté et existence selon Heidegger. Le § 64 d' "Être et Temps" 327; Claude Romano: Existent et néant. Autour de la controverse Carnap-Heidegger 351; Óscar Barroso Fernández: La existencia en la filosofía española del siglo XX: Unamuno y Zubiri 371; Pascal Ludwig: Référence et existence: une défense de Frege 391; Stéphane Chauvier: Existence et ilyance 413; Jean-Yves Lacoste: Plus qu'existence et être-en-danger 433; Jean-Luc Marion: Le phénomène et l'événement 449; Varia. Note Cronache Recensioni 463-555; Indice dei nomi 557-566.

2. Bardout, Jean Christophe. 2003. "Causalité ou subjectivité : le développement du sentiment d’existence, de Descartes à l’« Encyclopédie »." Quaestio. Journal of the History of Metaphysics no. 3:163-205.

3. ———. 2013. Penser l’existence. I. L’existence exposée. Époque médiévale. Paris: Vrin.

4. Carnoy, A.. 1957. "L'idée d'existence en Indo-Éuropéen." Tijdschrift voor Philosophie no. 19:294-300.

5. Carraud, Vincent. 2003. "L’invention de l’existence. Note sur la christologie de Marius Victorinus." Quaestio. Journal of the History of Metaphysics no. 3:3-25.

6. Gilson, Étienne. 1946. "La notion d'existence chez Guillaume d'Auvergne." Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge no. 21:55-91.

7. Libera, Alain de. 1980. "Logique et existence selon Saint Albert le Grand." Archives de Philosophie no. 43:529-558.

8. Paulus, Jean. 1940-1942. "Les Disputes d'Henri de Gand et Gilles de Rome sur la distinction de l'essence et de l'existence." Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age no. 13:323-358.

9. Schmutz, Jacob. 2007. "L'invention jésuite du "sentiment d'existence", ou comment la philosophie sort des collèges." XVII Siècle no. 237:615-631.

Studien in Deutsch

1. Dörrie, Heinrich. 1955. "Hypostasis. Wort- und Bedeutungsgeschichte." Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaft zu Göttingen, phil--hist.Klasse no. 3:35-92.

Nachdruck: H. Dörrie, Platonica minora, München: Wilhelm Fing Verlag 1976, pp. 13-69.

2. Graeser, Andreas. 1971. "Á propos hyparkein bei den Stoikern." Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte no. 15:299-305.

3. Hadot, Pierre. 1969. "Zur Vorgeschichte des Begriffs 'Existenz'. Hyparchein bei den Stoikern." Archiv für Bregiffsgeschichte no. 13:115-127.

"Das Wort exsistentia erscheint erstmalig im Lateinischen-in den theologischen Werken des Marius Victorinus, in denen es fast immer zur Übersetzung von hyparxis; dient, im Gegensatz zu dem Wort substantia das ousia übersetzt, und zu subsistentia, das hypostasis wiedergibt. (1) Exsistentia ist abgeleitet von exsistere, das in der philosophischen Sprache oft für esse eintrat, zumal in der Form des Partizips.(2) Exsistere seinerseits wurde auch zur Übersetzung von hyparkein verwendet, wie aus der Timaios-Übersetzung des Calcidius ersichtlich.(3)

Für das Verständnis der Vorgeschichte des Begriffes Existenz ist es daher unerläßlich, sorgfältig die Bedeutung zu präzisieren, die das Wort hyparkein innerhalb des technischen Wortschatzes der griechischen Philosophie aufweist, und die vorliegende Studie möchte einen Beitrag zu einer derartigen Untersuchung liefern. Zunächst soll zu zeigen versucht werden, daß das Wort hyparkein innerhalb der Stoa eine Seinsweise bezeichnet, die dem Geschehen, dem Akzidenz, dem Prädikat zukommt und der Seinsweise des Subjektes gegenübergestellt wird. Danach soll diese Bedeutung des hyparkein einerseits mit dem aristotelischen, andererseits mit dem neuplatonischen, Gebrauch dieses Wortes verglichen werden." (p. 115)

(1) Marius Victorinus Adversus Arium, III, 7, 9, Henry-Hadot (Sources Chrétiennes, Paris, 1960); deutsche Übersetzung, Bibliothek der alten Welt, Artemis Verlag, S. 244-245, Hadot-Brenke); Adversus Arium, II, 4, 48-57 (S. 221, Hadot-Brenke); Candidi Arriani (= Marii Victorini) ad Marium Victorinum rhetorem, I, 2, 18 (S. 74, Hadot-Brenke).

(2) CICERO, De officiis, I, 30, 107: "Ut in corporibus magnae diaim;litudines suns, sic in animis exsistunt maiores etiam uarietates " Marius Victorinus, Adversus Arium, I, 33, 7: "In potentia exsistens ad id quod est esse."

(3) Calcidius, Timaeus, 50, 23, Wasznik: "In reputatione quidem et consideratlone, uere existentis uereque peruigilis naturae." Cf. Plato, Tim. 52 B.

Studi in Italiano

1. Mignucci, Mario. 1975. "In margine al concetto aristotelico di esistenza." In Scritti in onore di Carlo Diano, 227-261. Bologna: Pàtron.

2. Romano, Francesco, and Taormina, Daniela Patrizia, eds. 2002. Hyparxis e Hypostasis nel Neoplatonismo. Firenze: Olschki.

Atti del I Colloquio Internazionale del Centro di Ricerca sul neoplatonismo (Catania, 1-3 Ottobre 1992).

3. Serra, Giuseppe. 1983. "Due studi arabo-latini: I. Note in margine a 'Anniyya-Anitas'." Medioevo no. 19:27-51.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Key Terms in Ontology: Nonexistence. History of the Problem of Nonexistent Objects

Introduction

"The totality of what exists, including what has existed and will exist, is infinitely small in comparison with the totality of the objects of knowledge. This fact easily goes unnoticed, probably because the lively interest in reality which is part of our nature tends to favor that exaggeration which finds the non-real a mere nothing (...) or, more precisely, which finds the non-real to be something for which science has no application or at least no application of any worth." (p. 79)

From: Alexius Meinong, "On the Theory of Objects", in: Roderick M. Chisholm (ed.), Realism and the Background of Phenomenology, Translated by I. Levi, D. B. Terrell, R. M. Chisholm, Glencoe, Ill: Free Press 1960, pp. 76-117.

"Whether or not there are non-existent objects seems to be one of the more mysterious and speculative issues in ontology. To affirm that there are non-existent objects is to affirm that reality consists of two kinds of things, the existing and the non-existing. The existing contains all of what is in our space-time world, plus all abstract objects, if there are any. Most people, it seems fair to say, would think that this is all there is. For the only real question in ontology can be what kinds of existing things there are. However followers of Meinong maintain that this isn't all there is. There is also another kind of things, those that do not exist. And to say this, the Meinongians continue, is to accept that reality is divided into two basic kind of things, the existing and the non-existing. Whether or not reality contains two basic categories of things, existing and non-existing, or only one, existing, is what the debate about non-existent objects is all about. And as such it seems to be the most speculative of the debates in ontology." (p. 249)

Thomas Hofweber, "Quantification and Non-Existent Objects", in: Anthony Everett and Thomas Hofweber (eds.), Empty Names, Fiction and the Puzzles of Non-Existence, Stanford: CSLI Publications 2000, pp. 249-278.

"In this book I consider the ancient problem of nonbeing, the problem whether there are non-existent objects. Holding that there are seems to imply the contradiction that there exist things that do not exist. On the other hand, in common parlance we very often speak of things that do not exist. Sherlock Holmes does not exist, he is a fictional character. Pegasus is mythical and hence non-existent. Phlogiston has turned out not to exist. Extinct species no longer exist, future items do not exist yet, there are all sorts of possible things that do not exist. Atheists certainly believe that God does not exist. So we employ the notion of nonexistence widely and quite comfortably. Furthermore, non-existent things seem to have properties: Sherlock Holmes is a detective who plays the violin, he is not a banker; Pegasus is a winged horse, not a flying fish. The appearance is that ordinary discourse is committed to items that are some- how there and have properties, and yet are said not to exist. Does common language then assume contradictory entities? Surely there cannot be such things. But if not, what are we talking about in these cases? This is a tangle indeed; my purpose in this book is to sort through the strands wound together here and to use the resulting clarifications to deal with various philosophical issues." (p. 1)

Charles Crittenden, Unreality: the Metaphysics of Fictional Objects, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1991.

"I think that it would be useful to have a detailed study of the history of non-existent objects, but I am sure that this would be the culmination of a life's work if done well. (...) One must be aware of the dangers which await one who enters the treacherous waters between the Scylla of ignorance of the history of philosophy and the Charybdis of simplicistic formulations of that history." (p. 68)

Kenneth J. Perszyk, Non-existent Objects: Meinong and Contemporary Philosophy, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1993.

"Non-existence theories first arose in the early Stoa. A doctrine of non-things, detailed in Chrysippus' discussion of the four Stoic categories, might well be traced back to Zeno. Among these non-existent 'things' were immaterial grammatical causes (lekta) which acted semantically as the verification principles of existential propositions (axiomata). In his critique of Aristotle in the in the [Logica] Ingredientibus, Abaelard arrived at a similar theory in his discussion of propositional dicta.

Infrequent classical references to the Stoic theory, coupled with misinterpretations, point to the pervasive influence of the Aristotelian association of the categories with things." (p. 80)

Daniel F. Blackwell, Non-Ontological Constructs: The Effects of Abaelard's Logical and Ethical Theories on His Theology: A Study in Meaning and Verification, Bern: Peter Lang 1988.

Divisions of being in Stoic philosophy

"The Stoics want to place above this [the existent] yet another, more primary genus... Some Stoics consider 'something' the first genus, and I shall add the reason why they do. In nature, they say, some things exist, some do not exist. But nature includes even those which do not exist -- things which enter the mind, such as Centaurs, giants, and whatever else falsely formed by thought takes on some image despite lacking substance."

Sextus Empiricus, Against the professors 10.218 (SVF 2.331, part)

"They [the Stoics] say that of something some are bodies, others incorporeals, and they list four species of incorporeals -- sayable (lekton), void, place and time."

Simplicius On Aristotle's Categories 66,32-67,2 (SVF 2.369, part)

"The Stoics see fit to reduce the number of the primary genera, and others they take over with minor changes. For the make their division a fourfold one, into substrates, the qualified, the disposed, and the relatively disposed."

"In Stoic usage, just as in Epicurean, the ordinary Greek verb 'to be' (einai) can with relative safety be rendered 'exist', despite its vexed earlier history in Greek philosophy. This translation is further justified by some of the Stoic conceptual distinction discussed below.

(...)

The Stoics avoid the common Platonist assumption (...) that to be something is already to exist. To be something is rather, it seems, to be a proper subject of thought and discourse. Most such things do also exist, in that they are bodies. But an incorporeal like a time, or a fictional object like a Centaur, does not. Since, however, expressions like 'Centaur' and 'today' are taken to name something, even though that something has no actual or independent existence (independent, that is, of the world's motion in the case of time, or of someone's mental image, in the case of the Centaur), Although they deny themselves the term 'exist' for such cases, the Stoics have recourse to the broader term under which it falls, 'subsist' (huphistasthai) This latter term, in its Stoic usage, seems to capture the mode of being that Meinong called bestehen and Russell rendered by 'subsist' (in his 1904 articles on Meinong in Mind 13 [reprinted in: Douglas Lackey (ed.) - Essays in Analysis - pp. 21-93]. For Meinong, similarity or Pegasus, for instance, subsist but does not exist. With existing things, however, they share the fact that they have a character (Sosein), just as in Stoicism both a real horse and a Centaur are 'something'. We could render the Stoic distinction between 'exist' and 'subsist' by saying 'There's such a thing as a rainbow, and such a character as Mickey Mouse, but the don't actually exist'."

'Something' is the highest genus, including as it does incorporeals and fictional entities as well as bodies (see stemma above)."

Seneca, Letters, 58.13-15 (SVF 2.332, part)." (pp. 163-164)"

References

SVF = Hans von Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, Lipsia 1903-1905)

From: A. A. Long & D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990.

Divisions of being in Scolastic philosophy

From: Bernard Wuellner, Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophy, Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company 1956 p. 14.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography on the Problem of Nonexistent Objects

Bibliography

1. "Non-Existence and Predication." 1985/86. Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26.

Edited by Rudolf Haller.

Table of Contents: Hector-Neri Castaneda: Objects, Existence, and Reference. A Prolegomenon to Guise Theory 3; William J. Rapaport: Non-Existent Objects and Epistemological Ontology 61; Roderick M. Chisholm: On the Positive and Negative States of Things 97; Ruth Barcan Marcus: Possibilia and Possible Worlds 107; Richard Sylvan: Toward an Improved Cosmo-Logical Synthesis 135; John Woods: God, Genidentity and Existential Parity 181; Gary Rosenkrantz: On Objects Totally Out Of This World 197; Czeslaw Lejewski: Logic and Non-Existence 209; Herbert Hochberg: Existence, Non-Existence, and Predication 235; Edgar Morscher: Was Existence Ever a Predicate? 269; Richard E. Grandy: On the Logics of Singular Terms 285; Gerald Vision: Reference and the Ghost of Parmenides 297; Joseph Margolis: Reference as Relational: Pro and Contra 327; Kent Bach: Failed Reference and Feigned Reference: Much Ado About Nothing 359; Nicholas Griffin: Russell’s Critique of Meinong’s Theory of Objects 375: Panayot Butchvarov: Our Robust Sense of Reality 403; Dale Jacquette: Meinong’s Doctrine of the Modal Moment 423; Karel Lambert: Non-Existent Objects: Why Theories About Them Are important 439; Edward N. Zalta: Lambert, Mally and the Principle of Independence 447; Ermanno Bencivenga: Meinong: A Critique From the Left 461; Ernest Sosa: Imagery and Imagination — Sensory Images and Fictional Character 485; Johannes Brandl: Gegenstandslose Gedanken 501; Barry Smith: The Substitution Theory of Art 533; C.J.F. Williams: Kant and Aristotle on the Existence of Space 559; Keith Lehrer: Reid on Conception and Nonbeing 573; Marian David: Non-Existence and Reid’s Conception of Conceiving 585; Roderick M. Chisholm: George Katkov as Philosopher 601-602.

2. "Existence, Fiction, Assumption. Meinongian Themes and the History of Austrian Philosophy." 2016. Meinong Studies no. 6:99-140.

Mauro Antonelli, Marian David (eds.).

Contents / Inhalt:Stefania Centrone: Relational Theories of Intentionality and the Problem of Non-Existents 1; Peter Andres Varga: The Non-Existing Object Revisited: Meinong as the Link between Husserl and Russell? 27; Dale Jacquette: Anti-Meinongian Actualist Meaning of Fiction in Kripke’s 1973 John Locke Lectures 69; Michele Paolini Paoletti: Paradise on the Cheap. Ascriptivism about Ficta 99; Xavier de Donato-Rodriguez; Meinong’s Theory of Assumptions and its Relevance for Scientific Contexts 141; Jutta Valent: Christian von Ehrenfels. Eine intellektuelle Biographie: Neue Forschungsergebnisse aus dem Nachlass 175; Markus Roschitz: Zu Ernst Mallys Lebensgang, Umfeld und akademischer Laufbahn 207-257

3. Abe, Masao. 1975. "Non-Being and Mu: the Metaphysical Nature of Negativity in the East and the West." Religious Studies no. 11:181-192.

4. Azzouni, Jody. 2010. Talking about Nothing. Numbers, Hallucinations, and Fictions. New York: Oxford University Press.

5. ———. 2013. "Hobnobbing with the Nonexistent." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 56 (4):340-358.

6. Baldwin, Thomas. 1996. "There Might Be Nothing." Analysis no. 56:231-238.

"In recent papers Peter van Inwagen (1996) and Jonathan Lowe (1996) have discussed the `fundamental' (1) question of metaphysics `Why is there anything at all?'. In different ways they argue that the nihilist hypothesis that there might be just nothing can be set aside, either because it is impossible for there to be nothing (Lowe 1996: 118) or because this hypothesis is `as improbable as anything can be' (van Inwagen 1996: 99). By contrast I shall here defend the nihilist hypothesis. r

The point at issue does not simply concern the metaphysics of existence. It also connects with debates concerning modal concepts. David Lewis explicitly declares `there isn't any world where there's nothing at all. That makes it necessary that there is something' (1986: 73). The reason for this, as Lewis explains, is that because he conceives a world as a maximal mereological sum of spatiotemporally interrelated things, there cannot be an empty world, since mereology does not permit `empty sums'. A little surprisingly, David Armstrong, whose combinatorial theory of possibility is in many respects opposed to that of Lewis, also embraces this conclusion, because `the empty world is not a construction from our given elements (actual individuals, properties and relations)' (1989: 93). Armstrong takes this view despite the fact that his theory permits the construction of representations of `contracted worlds' which lack actual individuals, properties and relations because he conceives of worlds as maximal states of affairs and holds that where there is nothing at all, there is no state of affairs. Thus for both Armstrong and Lewis the nihilist hypothesis is to be rejected because the conception of a possibility (or world) has sufficient substance, as a mereological sum or a state of affairs, to demand the existence of something as a part or constituent."

(1) This is how Heidegger describes the question in Heidegger Introduction to Metaphysics, 1959. It is characteristically unclear what, if any, answer to it Heidegger offers.

7. Barker, Stephen. 2015. "Expressivism About Reference and Quantification Over the Non-existent Without Meinongian Metaphysics." Erkenntnis no. 80 (S2):215-234.

8. Barz, Wolfgang. 2014. "Doubts about One’s Own Existence." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 57 (5-6):645-668.

9. ———. 2016. "Two‐Dimensional Modal Meinongianism." Ratio no. 29:249-267.

10. Bernstein, Sara, and Goldschmidt, Tyron, eds. 2021. Non-Being: New Essays on the Metaphysics of Non-Existence. New York: Oxford University Press.

Contents: List of Contributors IX; Sara Bernstein and Tyron Goldschmidt: Introduction XI; 1. Sara Bernstein: Ontological Pluralism about Non-Being 1; 2. Graham Priest: Nothingness and the Ground of Reality: Heidegger and Nishida 17; 3. Roy Sorensen: Thales’ Riddle of the Night 34; 4. Fatema Amijee: Something from Nothing: Why Some Negative Existentials are Fundamental 50; 5. Filippo Casati and Naoya Fujikawa: Against Gabriel: On the Non-Existence of the World 69; 6. Koji Tanaka: How Can Buddhists Prove That Non-Existent Things Do Not Exist? 82; 7. Bryan Frances: How Ordinary Objects Fit into Reality 97; 8. Eddy Keming Chen: The Cosmic Void 115; 9. Roberto Casati and Achille C. Varzi: Ballot Ontology 139; 10. Aaron Segal: Something Out of Nothing: What Zeno Could Have Taught Parmenides 165; 11. Tyron Goldschmidt and Samuel Lebens: Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit: An Argument for Anti-Nihilism 187; 12. Craig Warmke: Ostrich Actualism 205; 13. John A. Keller and Lorraine Juliano Keller: Saying Nothing and Thinking Nothing 226; 14. Arif Ahmed: Why It Matters What Might Have Been 251; 15. Jacob Ross: Explanatory Relevance and the Doing/Allowing Distinction 268; 16. Carolina Sartorio: Responsibility and the Metaphysics of Omissions 294; 17. Daniel Rubio: Death’s Shadow Lightened 310; Index 329-331.

11. Bradford, Dennis. 1980. The Concept of Existence: A Study of Nonexistent Particulars. Lanham: University Press of America.

12. Cartwright, Richard. 1960. "Negative Existentials." Journal of Philosophy no. 57:629-639.

Reprinted in R. Cartwright, Philosophical Essays, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987, pp. 21-31.

13. Centrone, Stefania. 2016. "Relational Theories of Intentionality and the Problem of Non-Existents." Meinong Studies no. 6:1-26.

14. Chakrabarti, Arindam. 1997. Denying Existence. The Logic, Epistemology, and Pragmatics of Negative Existentials and Fictional Discourse. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

15. Chisholm, Roderick M. 1973. "Homeless Objects." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 27:207-223.

Reprinted in R. M. CHisholm, Brentano and Meinong studies, Amsterdam: Rodopi 1982, pp. 37-52.

16. ———. 1986. "On the positive and negative states of things." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:97-106.

"Following Bolzano, I suggest that there are two types of entity: those that are states of other things and those that are not. The second type includes, not only substances, in the traditional sense, but also such abstract objects as numbers, attributes and propositions. It is argued that the theory of states, when combined with an intentional account of negative attributes, will yield a theory of negative entities and of events."

17. ———. 1990. "Monads, nonexistent individuals and possible worlds: reply to Rosenkrantz." Philosophical Studies no. 58:173-175.

18. Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz. 2013. "Varieties of Intentional Objects." Semiotica no. 2013 (194):189–206.

19. Clapp, Lenny. 2009. "The Problem of Negative Existentials Does Not Exist: A Case for Dynamic Semantics." Journal of Pragmatics no. 41 (7):1422-1434.

20. Clark, Romane. 1978. "Not Every Object of Thought has Being: A Paradox in Naive Predication Theory." Nous no. 12:181-188.

21. ———. 1978. "Not Every Object of Thought has Being: A Paradox in Naive Predication Theory." Noûs no. 12:181-188.

22. Contessa, Gabriele. 2009. "Who is Afraid of Imaginary Objects?" In Russell Vs. Meinong: The Legacy of "On Denoting", edited by Griffin, Nicholas and Jacquette, Dale. Routledge.

23. ———. 2010. "Scientific Models and Fictional Objects." Synthese no. 172 (2):215-229.

24. Crane, Tim. 2012. "What is the Problem of Non-Existence?" Philosophia no. 40 (3):417-434.

25. ———. 2013. The Objects of Thought. New York: Oxford University Press.

26. Crittenden, Charles. 1970. "Ontology and the Theory of Descriptions." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 31 (1):85-96.

27. ———. 1993. "Thinking about Non-Being." Inquiry no. 16:290-312.

"There are genuine references to non-existent objects, as can be seen through elucidating reference in common language and applying the criteria enumerated to expressions used in writing and speaking about fiction. The concept of a fictitious entity is simply accepted in the adoption of the language-game' of fiction and has no undesirable ontological consequences. To think otherwise is to fail to attend to the conceptual status of such talk. Accounts of fictional discourse by Russell, Ryle, and Chisholm are found objectionable. The concept of existence is touched on, and consequences concerning reference to abstract and other objects and also concerning method in ontology mentioned."

28. Darby, George, Pickup, Martin, and Robson, Jon. 2017. "Deep Indeterminacy in Physics and Fiction." In Thinking About Science, Reflecting on Art: Bringing Aesthetics and Philosophy of Science Together, edited by Bueno, Otávio, French, Steven, Darby, George and Rickles, Dean. Routledge.

29. De Donato-Rodriguez, Xavier. 2016. "Meinong’s Theory of Assumptions and its Relevance for Scientific Contexts." Meinong Studies no. 6:141-173.

30. Deely, John. 1975. "Reference to the Non-Existent." The Thomist no. 39:253-308.

31. Donnellan, Keith. 1974. "Speaking of Nothing." The Philosophical Review no. 83:3-31.

Reprinted in K. Donnellan, Essays on Reference, Language, and Mind, Edited by Joseph Almog and Paolo Leonardi, New York: Oxford University Press 2012, pp. 81-114.

32. Donnellann, Keith. 1974. "Speaking of Nothing." The Philosophical Review no. 83:3-31.

Reprinted in K. Donnellan, Essays on Reference, Language, and Mind, Edited by Joseph Almog and Paolo Leonardi, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 81-114.

33. Everett, Anthony, and Hofweber, Thomas, eds. 2000. Empty Names, Fiction and the Puzzles of Non-Existence. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

The volume contains 13 new papers concerning the semantic and metaphysical issues arising from empty names, non-existence, and the nature of fiction. The contributors include some of the most important researchers working in these fields. Some of the papers develop and defend new positions on these matters, while other papers offer some important new perspectives and criticisms of the existing approaches. The book contains a comprehensive introductory essay by the editors which provides a survey of the philosophical issues concerning empty names, the various responses to these issues, and the literature to date. The book is composed by three parts: I. Empty names; II. Pretense; III. Ontology.

34. Everett, Anthony J. 2013. The Nonexistent. New York: Oxford University Press.

35. Everett, Theodore J. 2005. "Are There Non-Existent Entities?" In The Philosophy of Panayot Butchvarov: A Collegial Evaluation, edited by Blackman, Larry Lee, 3-19. Edwin Mellen Press.

36. Fine, Kit. 1982. "The Problem of Non-Existents. I: Internalism." Topoi no. 1:97-140.

Contents: A. Iintroduction. 1. Outline 97; 2. Methodology 99; B. Preliminaries, 1. Contexts and Objects 101; 2. Identity and Being 102; 3. The Identity of Non-existents 104; c. An Internalist Theory. 1. The Rudiments 106; 2. The Extended Theory 108; D. Refinements. 1. Implicit /Explicit Copula 110; 2. Diagonal Difficulties 115; 3. Dual Diagonal Difficulties 120; 4. Correlates 123; 5. Modal Matters 129; E. Criticisms. 1. Against Platonism 130; 2. Against Internalism 132; 3. Other Theories 136; Notes 137; References 139.

"The main philosophical question about non-existents is whether there really are any. My own view is that there are none. But even if this is granted, we may still ask what they are like, just as the materialist may consider the nature of sensations or the nominalist the nature of numbers.

On this further topic, there seem to be three main divisions of thought, which may be respectively labelled as:

(i ) platonism /empiricism;

(ii) literalism /contextualism;

(iii ) internalism / externalism.

Let me attempt a rough characterization of these divisions. More refined formulations will come later. On a platonic conception, the non-existent objects of fiction, perception, belief and the like do not depend for their being upon human activity or upon any empirical conditions at all; they exist, or have being, necessarily.

Under an empirical conception, on the other hand, these objects are firmly rooted in empirical reality; they exist, or have being, contingently. On an extreme conception of this sort, these objects are literally created and are brought into being by the appropriate activity either of or within the agent.

(...)

All in all, the three divisions provide for 8 ( = 2^3) combinations of positions. Each, I think, is coherent, but some are more natural than others. For example it is natural, though not necessary, for the ‘platonist’ to accept internalism and for the ‘empiricist’ to accept externalism; for the means by which the objects are individuated will naturally be taken to provide conditions for their existence or being.

My own view on these questions is given by empiricism, contextualism and extemalism, not that this is a common combination in the literature. This view will be defended in the second part of this paper. In the present part, I am concerned to discuss a view that combines internalism with contextualism and platonism; and in the third part, I shall discuss the literalist position, mainly in association with platonism and internalism. I have not attempted systematically to consider all of the possible combinations of position. I have only looked at the more prominent or plausible of the views, though what I say on them should throw light on what is to be said of the others.

The plan of the present part is as follows. In section A2, I discuss general methodological issues facing any philosophical study of nonexistents and, in particular, defend the claim that one can say what they are like without presupposing that there really are any. In section B, I try first to delineate more precisely the subjectmatter of our theories and then to describe the problems of providing identity and existence conditions with which any such theory should deal. In section C, I give an initial formulation of an internalist theory, which is successively refined in section D. Finally, in section E, I give two major criticisms of the theory as thus developed. A more detailed account of each section is given in the list of contents.

It is of the greatest importance to note that the present part does not contain my own views on the subject. It is only in the last section of this part that the internalist position is criticized, and it is only in the second part of this paper that my own, more positive, views are developed." (pp. 97-99)

37. ———. 1984. "Critical Review of Parsons' 'Nonexistent Objects'." Philosophical Studies no. 45:95-142.

Review of: Terence Parsons, Nonexistent Objects, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980.

"There has recently been a rebellion within the ranks of analytic philosophy. It has come to be appreciated that, in the debate between Russell and Meinong, Russell was perhaps mistaken in his criticisms and Meinong was perhaps correct in his views. As a consequence, an attempt was made to rehabilitate the Meinongian position, to defend it against the most obvious attacks and to develop it in the most plausible ways. T. Parsons was among the first of the contemporary philosophers to make this attempt, (1) and so it is especially appropriate that his views should now be set out in a book.

I should say, at the outset, that I thoroughly approve of the Meinongian project. As Parsons makes clear (pp. 32— 38), we refer to non-existents in much the same way as we refer to other objects. It is therefore incumbent upon the philosopher to work out the principles by which our discourse concerning such objects is governed. Not that this is necessarily to endorse a realist position towards the objects of the resulting theory. Nominalists and Platonists alike may attempt to set out the principles that govern arithmetical discourse; and it is in the same spirit that the realist or anti-realist may attempt to set out the principles of our fictional discourse.

Despite my approval of the project, I must admit to some misgivings as to how Parsons has carried it out. These misgivings are of two kinds. There are first some internal criticisms, requiring only change within Parsons’ basic approach. There are then some external criticisms, requiring change to the basic approach.

These criticisms, though, should not be thought to detract from the merits of Parsons’ book. It is, in many ways, an admirable contribution to the field.

It gives weight both to the interest and the legitimacy of the Meinongian enterprise; it pinpoints the difficulties which any satisfactory theory must deal with; and in its solution to those difficulties, it sets up a theory with a degree of rigour and systematicity that should serve as a model for years to come. As a well worked-out and accessible contribution to object theory, there is no better book." (pp. 95-96)

(1) Others include Castafieda [1], Rapaport [7], Routley [8] and Zalta [9].

References

[1] Castaneda, H. N.: 1974, Thinking and the structure of the world’, Philosophia 4, pp.3-40.

[7] Rapaport, W.: 1978, ‘Meinongian theories and a Russellian paradox’, Nous 12, pp.153-180.

[8] Routley, R.: 1980, Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond (Australian National University, Canberra).

[9] Zalta, E. N.: 1980, ‘An introduction to a theory of abstract objects’, Ph.D. Thesis (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

38. Fitch, Gregory. 1993. "Non Denoting." Philosophical Perspectives no. 7:461-484.

39. Friedell, David. 2013. "Salmon on Hob and Nob." Philosophical Studies no. 165 (1):213-220.

40. Giraud, Thibaut. 2016. "On Modal Meinongianism." Synthese no. 193:3329-3346.

41. Goodman, Jeffrey. 2010. "Fictionalia as Modal Artifacts." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 80 (1):21-46.

42. ———. 2014. "Creatures of Fiction, Objects of Myth." Analysis no. 74:35-40.

Abstract: "Many who think that some abstracta are artefacts are fictional creationists, asserting that fictional characters are brought about by our activities. Kripke (1973), Salmon (1998, 2002), and Braun (2005) further embrace mythical creationism, claiming that certain entities that figure in false theories, such as phlogiston or Vulcan, are likewise abstracta produced by our intentional activities. I here argue that one may not reasonably take the metaphysical route travelled by the mythical creationist. Even if one holds that fictional characters are artefact one ought not further hold that mythical objects are, too."

43. ———. 2017. "On Inadvertently Created Abstracta, Fictional Storytelling, and Scientific Hypothesizing." Res Philosophica no. 94 (1):177-188.

Abstract: In my “Creatures of Fiction, Objects of Myth” (2014), I present and defend an argument for thinking that mythical creationism—the view that mythical objects like phlogiston and Vulcan are abstract artifacts—is false. One intriguing sort of objection to my argument has been recently put forth by Zvolenszky (2016); she claims that a crucial premise is seen to be unjustified once one considers the phenomena of inadvertently created abstracta—specifically, inadvertently created fictional characters. I argue here that even if we admit inadvertently created abstracta into our ontology, my argument survives. I ultimately defend a view on which fictional characters (if real) may be countenanced as created abstracta whether purposefully created or not, yet mythical objects are best taken to be discoverable, Platonic abstracta (if real). We can see that such a hybrid ontology is justified once we take proper note of the nature of the sorts of authorial activities involved in fictional storytelling and scientific hypothesizing."

44. Griffin, Nicholas. 2003. "Foreword to the Importance of Nonexistent Objects and of Intensionality in Mathematics." Philosophia Mathematica no. 11:16-19.

45. Grossmann, Reinhardt. 1984. "Nonexistent Objects versus Definite Descriptions." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 62:363-377.

"Some years ago, I published an article about Meinong's theory of objects. (1) I listed there four main theses of Meinong's view:

(1) The golden mountain (and other nonexistents) has no being at all.

(2) Nevertheless, it is a constituent of the fact that the golden mountain does not exist.

(3) Furthermore, it has such ordinary properties as being made from gold.

(4) Existence is not a constituent of any object.

And I argued in that paper that only thesis (1) is true. In particular, I insisted that (3), which I consider to be the most characteristic feature of Meinong's view, is false.

Since then, there have been quite a few discussions of Meinong's view. I would like, in response to some of these works, to reiterate my earlier criticism of Meinong. My purpose is threefold. Firstly, I would like to state once more my own view, which is a version of Russell's theory of definite descriptions, as clearly as possible. Secondly, I shall defend my past contention that the golden mountain is not golden against some recent objections. And thirdly and most importantly, I want to describe the dialectic of the philosophical problem as I perceive it. It seems to me to be an exasperating shortcoming of the discussion that most participants do not clearly state the basic options and their reasons for preferring some to others."

(1) Meinong's Doctrine of the Aussersein of the Pure Object', Noüs, 8 (1974, pp. 67-81. See also my Meinong (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1974).

46. Haller, Rudolf. 1983. "Friedlands sterne oder Facta und Ficta." Erkenntnis no. 19 (1-3):153 - 165.

47. Heawood, John. 1993. "Impossible Objects." Cogito no. 7 (3):179-187.

48. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1984. "Are There Nonexistent Objects? Why Not? But Where are They?" Synthese no. 60:451-458.

Reprinted in J. Hintikka, The Logic of Epistemology and the Epistemology of Logic. Selected Essays, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989, pp. 37-44.

49. Hofweber, Thomas. 2000. "Quantification and Non-Existent Objects." In Empty Names, Fiction, and the Puzzles of Non-Existence, edited by Hofweber, T. and Everett, A.: CSLI Publications.

50. Hunter, Daniel. 1981. "Reference and Meinongian Objects." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 14:23-36.

Abstract: "Terence Parsons has recently given a consistent formalization of Meinong's Theory of Objects. The interest in this theory lies in its postulation of nonexistent objects. An important implication of the theory is that we commonly refer to nonexistent objects. In particular, the theory is committed to taking fictional entities as objects of reference. Yet it is difficult to see how reference to fictional entities can be established if Parsons' theory is correct. This difficulty diminishes the attractiveness of the theory and also raises questions as to the ability of the theory to give a satisfactory account of intentional attitudes towards fictional entities."

51. Inwagen, Peter van. 1996. "Why is There Anything at All?" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 70:95-110.

52. Jacquette, Dale. 1996. Meinongian logic: the semantics of existence and nonexistence. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

53. Jacqutte, Dale. 2016. "Anti-Meinongian Actualist Meaning of Fiction in Kripke’s 1973 John Locke Lectures." Meinong Studies no. 6:59-98.

54. Jadacki, Jacek Juliusz. 2003. "On What Seems Not To Be." In From the Viewpoint of the Lvov-Warsaw School, 19-27. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

55. Kasabova, Anita. 2011. "On Imaginary Entities or Chimeras and their Relation to Reality." Lexia. Rivista di semiotica no. 07/08:183-212.

56. Kelly, Charles J. 1987. "On Things That Do Not Now Exist and Never Have Existed." Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association (61):181-190.

57. Knight, Gordon. 2001. "Idealism, Intentionality, and Nonexistent Objects." Journal of Philosophical Research no. 26:43-52.

58. Kroon, Frederick. 1996. "Characterizing Non-Existents." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 51:163-193.

59. Lambert, Karel. 1985/86. "Nonexistent Objects: Why Theories About Them Are Important." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:439-446.

"What follows is not an historical exercise. The basic concern is neither with Meinong’s nor his disciples’ and advocates’ reasons for thinking the theory of nonexistent objects (= nonsubsistent objects in Meinong’s sense of the word ‘nonsubsistent’) important. Instead I shall try to set aside preexisting reasons — there are lots of these — on behalf of the importance of the theory of nonexistent objects, and adduce a couple of unbiased reasons — what Hugues Leblanc sceptically calls “excuses” — aimed at vindicating the development of theories of such objects. It will not follow from this discussion that one must believe in nonexistent objects anymore than one must believe in ideal objects important as the latter are (in the minds of many) to the interpretation of the theory of classical mechanics.

The reasons on behalf of the importance of the theory of nonexistent objects to be advanced are not mutually exclusive, the first having to do with utility or applications of the theory of nonexistent objects, and the second with the smoothness of essentially classical logical theory with identity." (p. 439)

60. ———. 1985/86. "Non-Existent Objects." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25:439-446.

61. Landini, Gregory. 1990. "How to Russell Another Meinongian: a Russellian Theory of Fictional Objects versus Zalta's Theory of Abstract Objects." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 37:93-122.

62. Lejewski, Czeslaw. 1985/86. "Logic and Non-Existence." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:209-234.

63. Lewis, David. 1990. "Noneism or Allism?" Mind no. 99:23-31.

Reprinted in D. Lewis, Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology, Vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999, pp. 152-163.

64. Lightfield, Ceth. 2014. "Ficta as Contingently Nonconcrete." Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu no. 21 (4):431-457.

65. Lihoreau, Franck, ed. 2011. Truth in Fiction: Ontos Verlag.

66. Livingston, Paisley Nathan, and Sauchelli, Andrea. 2011. "Philosophical Perspectives on Fictional Characters." New Literary History no. 42 (2):337-360.

67. Lowe, John E. 1996. "Why is There Anything at All?" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 70:111-120.

68. Makin, Gideon. 2009. "On Denoting: Appearance and Reality." In Russell Vs. Meinong: The Legacy of 'On Denotng', edited by Griffin, Nicholas and Jacquette, Dale. New York: Routledge.

69. Marcus, Ruth Barcan. 1975. "Dispensing with Possibilia." Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association no. 49 (n/a):39 - 51.

70. ———. 1997. "Are Possible, Non Actual Objects Real?" Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 51 (200):251-257.

71. McCarthy, Andrew, and Phillips, Ian. 2006. "No New Argument Against the Existence Requirement." Analysis no. 66 (1):39–44.

72. McMichael, Alan, and Zalta, Edward N. 1980. "An Alternative Theory of Nonexistent Objects." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 9:297-313.

73. Minerd, Matthew K. 2017. "Beyond Non-Being: Thomistic Metaphysics on Second Intentions, Ens morale, and Ens artificiale." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 91:353-379.

Abstract: "In Thomistic metaphysics, the domain of ens rationis pertains to a hazy region of “non-real” being, laying outside of the proper scientific subject of metaphysics. In addition to negations and privations, a very important domain of entia rationis pertains to that of relationes rationis, especially such relationes as play a role in human reasoning. Logic, studying these “non-real” relations, thus focuses on a unique, if hazy, realm of “non-being.” While this particular type of ens rationis receives the lion’s share of attention among Thomists, there is evidence that similar reflection should be given to two additional domains of experience, namely that of “moral being” and “artificial being” (i.e., the being of artifacts). This paper lays out the general metaphysical concerns pertaining to each of these domains, providing an outline of topics pertinent to a Thomistic discussion of the intentional existence involved in logic, moral realities, and artifacts."

74. Moltmann, Friederike. 2013. Abstract Objects and the Semantics of Natural Language: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 5: Intensional Transitive Verbs and their 'Objects'.

75. Mondadori, Fabrizio. 1985. "Review of Nonexistent Objects by Terence Parsons." The Philosophical Review no. 94:427.

76. Muñoz, Daniel. 2020. "Grounding Nonexistence." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy:1-21.

77. Nöth, Winfried. 2006. "Representations of Imaginary, Nonexistent, or Nonfigurative Objects." Cognitio no. 7 (2):277-291.

78. Paoletti, Michele Paolini. 2016. "Paradise on the Cheap. Ascriptivism about Ficta." Meinong Studies no. 6:99-140.

79. Paolini Paoletti, Michele. 2016. "Who’s Afraid of Non-Existent Manifestations?" In Metaphysics and Scientific Realism: Essays in Honour of David Malet Armstrong, edited by Calemi, Francesco F., 193-206. De Gruyter.

80. Parsons, Terence. 1979. "Referring to Nonexistent Objects." Theory and Decision no. 11:95--110.

81. ———. 1979. "The Methodology of Nonexistence." Journal of Philosophy no. 76:649-662.

82. ———. 1980. Nonexistent Objects. New Haven: Yale University Press.

83. ———. 1982. "Are There Nonexistent Objects?" American Philosophical Quarterly no. 19 (4):365 - 371.

84. ———. 2001. "Referring to Nonexistent Objects." Theory and Decision no. 11:95-110.

85. Priest, Graham. 2011. "Creating Non-Existents." In Truth in Fiction, edited by Lihoreau, Franck, 107-118. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

Abstract: "Towards Non-Being gives a noneist account of the reference of words which do not refer to existent objects—in the context, in particular, of intentional states. The account is a realist one, in the sense that the domain of objects is the same at each world, and so does not depend on the behaviour of objects which exist there. In this paper, I discuss an anti-realist version of the theory. What non-existent objects are available at a world supervenes on the behaviour of the existent—and, particularly, sentient—beings at that world. An appropriate formal semantics is given; and its philosophical ramifications—notably, with respect to the naming of non-existent objects— are explored."

86. ———. 2016. Towards Non-Being: The Logic and Metaphysics of Intentionality. New York: Oxford University Press.

Second edition. (First edition 2005)

87. ———. 2019. "Objects That Are Not Objects." In Quo Vadis,Metaphysics? Essays in Honor of Peter van Inwagen, edited by Szatkowski, Miroslaw, 217-229. Berlin: de Gruyter.

88. Prior, Arthur Norman. 1971. Objects of Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Edited by Peter Thomas Geach and Anthony J. P. Kenny.

89. Przelecki, Marian. 1981. "On What there Is Not." Dialectics and Humanism no. 8:123-129.

"It is my contention (which I shall try to defend in what follows) that the text of the dialogue contains thoughts and ideas that closely correspond to those characteristic of modern logical semantics. The difficulties which Plato is coping with and the solutions proposed by him find their explicit counterparts in the discussions of contemporary logicians and semanticists.

This statement, however, needs some qualification. The text of the dialogue is comprehensive and indefinite enough to allow for different readings and interpretations. It is only some interpretation of some of its fragments that may be said to yield that version of its problems which is suggested below. I would, however, contend that the interpretation advanced is a warranted one and the fragments so interpreted essential for the author's standpoint. One more point should be explicitly stated beforehand. Referring to what I call modern logical semantics, I mean by this a definite semantic theory: model theoretic semantics in its standard version, which might be regarded as a "classical" form of contemporary logical semantics. Some deviations from this use will be indicated in what follows.

The most important philosophical content of the dialogue is contained in its second part (esp. in the paragraphs 237-264). The main problem concerns the semantic characteristic of falsehood and, involved in it, notion of not-being." (p. 123)

90. Rapaport, William J. 1985/86. "Non-Existent Objects and Epistemological Ontology." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:61-95.

"This essay examines the role of non-existent objects in "epistemological ontology" - the study of the entities that make thinking possible. An earlier revision of Meinong's Theory of Objects is reviewed, Meinong's notions of Quasisein and Aussersein are discussed, and a theory of Meinongian objects as "combinatorially possible" entities is presented."

91. Rast, Erich. 2010. "Classical Possibilism and Fictional Objects." In Fiction in Philosophy, edited by Lihoreau, Franck.

Abstract: "An account of non-existing objects called 'classical possibilism', according to which objects that don't actually exist do exist in various other ways, is implemented in a two-dimensional modal logic with non-traditional predication theory. This account is very similar to Priest's, but preserves bivalence and does not endorse dialethism. The power of classical possibilism is illustrated by giving some examples that makes use of a description theory of reference. However, the same effect could also be achieved in a more Millian fashion. It is argued that classical possibilism is ontologically more neutral than is commonly thought, because it allows for the formulation of various forms of reductionism within the object language."

92. Rescher, Nicholas. 1982. "The Concept of Nonexistent Possibles." In Essays in Philosophical Analysis, 73-110. Boston: University Press of America.

93. ———. 2003. Imagining Irreality: A Study of Unreal Possibilities. La Salle: Open Court.

94. ———. 2003. "Nonexistents Then and Now." The Review of Metaphysics no. 57:359-381.

95. Restall, Greg. 1997. "Ways Things Can't Be." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 38 (4):583-596.

96. Rosenkrantz, Gary. 1990. "Reference, Intentionality and Nonexistent Entities." Philosophical Studies no. 58:183-195.

97. Routley, Richard. 1979. "The Theory of Objects as Commonsense." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 9:1-22.

98. Salmon, Nathan. 1998. "Nonexistence." Noûs no. 32:277-319.

Reprinted in N. Salmon, Metaphysics, Mathematics, and Meaning: Philosophical Papers I, Oxford: Clarendon Press 2005, pp. 50-90.

99. ———. 2002. "Mythical Objects." In Meaning and Truth: Investigations in Philosophical Semantics, edited by Campbell, Joseph Keim, O'Rourke, Michael and Shier, David, 105-123. New York: Seven Bridges Press.

100. Sauchelli, Andrea. 2012. "Fictional Objects, Non-Existence, and the Principle of Characterization." Philosophical Studies no. 159:139-146.

101. Skow, Bradford. 2010. "The Dynamics of Non-Being." Philosophers' Imprint no. 10:1-14.

102. Smith, Barry. 1995. "More Things in Heaven and Earth." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:187-201.

103. Smith, David Woodruff. 1975. "Meinongian Objects." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 1:43-71.

104. Stone, Jim. 2010. "Harry Potter and the Spectre of Imprecision." Analysis no. 70:638-644.

105. Swanson, Carolyn. 2012. "A Meinongian Minefield? The Dangerous Implications of Nonexistent Objects." Human Affairs no. 22:161-177.

Abstract: "Alexius Meinong advocated a bold new theory of nonexistent objects, where we could gain knowledge and assert true claims of things that did not exist. While the theory has merit in interpreting sentences and solving puzzles, it unfortunately paves the way for contradictions. As Bertrand Russell argued, impossible objects, such as the round square, would have conflicting properties. Meinong and his proponents had a solution to that charge, posing genuine and non-genuine versions of the Law of Non-Contradiction. No doubt, they had a clever response, but it may not adequately address Russell’s concern. Moreover, as I argue, genuine contradictions are inherent to the set of all nonexistent objects. And such contradictions lead to even further absurdities, for example, that nonexistent objects have and lack every property. Unfortunately, such implications of the theory make it too treacherous to adopt."

106. Sylvan, Richard. 2003. "The Importance of Nonexistent Objects and of Intensionality in Nathematics." Philosophia Mathematica no. 11 (1):20-52.

107. Varga, Peter Andras. 2016. "The Non-Existing Object Revisited: Meinong as the Link between Husserl and Russell?" Meinong Studies no. 6:27-57.

108. Voltolini, Alberto. 1994. "Ficta versus Possibilia." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 48 (1):75-104.

109. ———. 2013. "Probably the Charterhouse of Parma Does Not Exist, Possibly Not Even That Parma." Humana Mente no. 6:235-261.

110. von Solodkoff, Tatjana. 2014. "Fictional Realism and Negative Existentials." In Empty Representations: Reference and Non-Existence, edited by García-Carpintero, Manuel and Martí, Genoveva, 333-352. Oxford University Press.

111. von Solodkoff, Tatjana, and Woodward, Richard. 2013. "Noneism, Ontology, and Fundamentality." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 87:558-583.

112. Walters, Lee. 2015. "The Problem of Nonexistence: Truthmaking or Semantics? Critical Notice of The Objects of Thought, by Tim Crane." Disputatio no. 7:231-245.

113. Wetzel, Thomas Louis. 1978. Non-Existent Objects: A Study in Ontology, University of California, Los Angeles.

Available at ProQuest Dissertation Express. Order number: 7813959.

114. Wolenski, Jan. 1995. "Ways of Dealing with Non-Existence." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:113-127.

"Non-existence provides big problems for ontology and modest for logic. Logical problems of non-existence consist in licensing inferences in which sentences with empty terms arc involved. The standard predicate logic solves this question by presupposing that every individual constant has an object to which it refers. This means that empty domains are excluded from semantics for the first-order logic. However, there is a temptation to consider logic without existential presuppositions.

The ontological problem of non-existence leads to the question of the meaning of ‘nothing’. We encounter “various conceptions of nothing” in the history of philosophy from Parmenides to our times. However, nothing (or nothingness) is always a negation of being.

Since we have distributive and collective (mereological) concepts of being, we also should distinguish nothing in the distributive and mereological meaning. This difference is important because only the former leads to the paradox of nothing of all nothings, analogical to the paradox of all sets. A closer analysis of the nothing in the distributive sense shows that any meaningful talk about non-existence requires a relativisation to a fixed domain of discourse. This seems to entail that the empty set is the formal model of nothing what means that the concept of absolute nothing in the distributive sense is simply inconsistent. To some extent, being and nothing are mutually dual. This motivates that the concept of nothing is governed by so-called dual logic connected with processes of rejection. More specifically, statements on “nothing” are not asserted but rejected."

115. Woodbridge, James A., and Armour-Garb, Bradley. 2009. "Linguistic Puzzles and Semantic Pretence." In New Waves in Philosophy of Language, edited by Sawyer, Sarah, 250-284. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.

116. Yagisawa, Takashi. 2019. "Imagining Fictional Characters." In Quo Vadis,Metaphysics? Essays in Honor of Peter van Inwagen, edited by Szatkowski, Miroslaw, 203-216. Berlin: de Gruyter.

117. Yakira, Elhanan. 1994. "Ideas of Nonexistent Modes." In Spinoza by 2000. The Jerusalem Conference. Vol. 2: Spinoza on Knowledge and the Human Mind, edited by Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Leiden: Brill.

118. Zalta, Edward N., and McMichael, Alan. 1980. "An Alternative Theory of Nonexistent Objects." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 9:297-314.

"The authors develop precise statements of the conditions under which there are nonexistent objects and of the conditions under which any two such objects are identical. Essentially, for any describable condition on properties, there is a nonexistent object which includes (but doesn't necessarily exemplify) just the properties satisfying the condition. The logic of inclusion is developed in detail. It is shown how these nonexistent objects can serve as the denotations of the names of fictional characters."

119. Zvolenszky, Zsofia. 2016. "Fictional Characters, Mythical Objects, and the Phenomenon of Inadvertent Creation." Res Philosophica no. 93:311-333.

Abstract: "My goal is to reflect on the phenomenon of inadvertent creation and argue that—various objections to the contrary—it doesn’t undermine the view that fictional characters are abstract artifacts. My starting point is a recent challenge by Jeffrey Goodman that is originally posed for those who hold that fictional characters and mythical objects alike are abstract artifacts. The challenge: if we think that astronomers like Le Verrier, in mistakenly hypothesizing the planet Vulcan, inadvertently created an abstract artifact, then the “inadvertent creation” element turns out to be inescapable yet theoretically unattractive. Based on considerations about actually existing concrete objects featured in fictional works (as Napoleon is in Tolstoy’s War and Peace), I argue that independently of one’s stand on mythical objects, admitting fictional characters as abstract artifacts is enough to give rise to the challenge at hand; yet this very point serves to undermine the challenge, indicating that inadvertent creation is not nearly as worrisome as Goodman suggests. Indeed, the inadvertent creation phenomenon’s generality extends far beyond objects of fiction and myth, and I will use this observation to counter a further objection. Taking fictional characters (and mythical objects) to be abstract artifacts therefore remains a viable option."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography on the History of Nonexistent Objects: Studies in English

Bibliography

Studies in English

1. Adams, Marilyn McCord. 1977. "Ockham's Nominalism and Unreal Entities." Philosophical Review no. 76:144-176.

2. ———. 1987. William Ockham. South Bend, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press.

See Volume 2, Chapters 23-27 (pp. 1011-1150) for the medieval discussions of God’s ideas of things merely possible and not actually created.

3. Amerini, Fabrizio, and Rode, Christian. 2009. "Franciscus de Prato's Tractatus de ente rationis. A Critical Edition with a Historico-Philosophical Introduction." Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Age no. 76:261-312.

"This paper provides a critical edition of Francis of Prato’s Treatise on Being of Reason (Tractatus de ente rationis). It is prefaced by a historico-philosophical introduction. Francis’s Treatise is one of the first Italian reactions to the diffusion of William of Ockham’s philosophy of language and logic. Francis argues here against Ockham’s reduction of being of reason to acts of cognition, accounted for as items existing ‘subjectively’ (subiective) in the mind. By contrast, following Thomas Aquinas and Hervaeus Natalis, he proposes a relational and ‘objective’ account of being of reason."

4. Andersen, Claus A. 2014. "Ens Rationis Ratiocinatae and Ens Rationis Ratiocinantis: Reflections on a New Book on Beings of Reason in Baroque-Age Scholasticism." Quaestio. Journal of the History of Metaphysics no. 14:315-327.

5. Andras Varga, Peter. 2016. "The Non-Existing Object Revisited Meinong as the Link between Husserl and Russell." In Existence, Fiction, Assumption: Meinongian Themes and the History of Austrian Philosophy, edited by David, Mariam and Antonelli, Mauro, 27-58. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

6. Ashworth, Earline Jennifer. 1977. "Chimeras and Imaginary Objects: A Study in the Post-Medieval Theory of Signification." Vivarium no. 15:57-79.

Reprinted as essay III in: Studies in Post-Medieval Semantics.

"I. Prefatory Note.

In the following paper I shall be discussing a particular problem of meaning and reference as it was formulated by a group of logicians who studied and/or taught at the University of Paris in the early sixteenth century.(1) In alphabetical order they are: Johannes Celaya (d. 1558) who was in Paris from 1500 or 1505 until 1524; Ferdinandus de Enzinas (d. 1528) who was in Paris from about 15x8 until 1522; John Major (1469-1550) who was in Paris from 1492 or 1493 until 1517 and again from 1525 to 1531; William Manderston who taught at Sainte-Barbe from about 1514 and returned to Scotland in or shortly before 1530; Juan Martinez Siliceo (1486-1556) who left Paris in about 1516; Hieronymus Pardo (d. 1502 or 1505); Antonius Silvester who taught at Montaigu; and Domingo de Soto (1494-1560) who left Paris in 1519. I shall also discuss the work of the Spaniard Augustinus Sbarroya and the Germans Jodocus Trutvetter (d. 1519) and Johannes Eckius (1486-1543). Both Sbarroya and Eckius were well acquainted with the works of the Paris-trained logicians. Further material is drawn from the fifteenth-century Johannes Dorp and the anonymous author of Commentum emendatum et correctum in primum et quartum tractatus Petri Hyspani. The work of the medieval authors Robert Holkot, John Buridan and Marsilius of Inghen will appear as it was described by early sixteenth-century authors.

II. Introduction.

One of the main features of late medieval semantics was the attempt to formulate a unified theory of the reference of general terms. It is true that this attempt was not explicitly discussed, but many of the problems which arose in the context of such topics as signification, supposition, ampliation, appellation, and the logical relations between sentences clearly owed their existence to the assumption that general terms always referred to spatio-temporal individuals; and in the solutions offered to these problems, much ingenuity was employed to ensure that this assumption was modified as little as possible, if at all. I have already shown in two earlier papers how some logicians dealt with reference in the modal context “For riding is required a horse” and in the intentional context “I promise you a horse.” (2) At the end of this paper, I shall discuss another intentional sentence, "A man is imaginarily an ass”, which was thought to present a difficulty. However, it would be a mistake to think that context was the only complicating factor, for there were general terms which placed an obstacle in the path of those seeking a unified theory, not only by virtue of the contexts in which they appeared, but by virtue of their meaning. The favourite example of such terms was “chimera”, but “irrational man”, “braying man”, and “golden mountain” also served as illustrations. The problem was not merely that they failed to refer, but rather that they were thought to be incapable of referring because the objects which they apparently denoted were impossible just as, for the modern reader, a round square is impossible. The main purpose of the present paper is to explore the way in which the problem was presented, and some of the solutions which were offered." (pp. 57-58)

(...)

"VI. Conclusion.

This survey of the way some early sixteenth century logicians treated the problem of chimeras reveals very clearly the alternatives faced by any philosopher who wants to give a unified theory of the reference of general terms. If one adopts a purely extensionalist interpretation of propositions, and allows only ordinary spatio-temporal entities into one’s universe of discourse, then one is faced with the choice between rejecting as false many sentences, such as “I imagine a chimera”, which one would wish to accept as true, and accepting as true many sentences, such as “ “Chimera” signifies an ass”, which one would wish to reject as false. If one extends one’s universe of discourse to include imaginary objects which are not just ordinary objects regarded in a certain way, one faces grave ontological problems. On the other hand, to appeal to appellation theory is to acknowledge that no purely extensionalist interpretation of all propositions can be given and that no unified theory of reference is possible; and to adopt Holkot’s solution is to admit that sentences which seem to be structurally similar are not in fact similar and that some sentences which appear to be about objects in the world are in fact about the contents of our own minds. On the whole my sympathies lie with those who abandoned the belief that both general terms and subject-object sentences can be given a uniform treatment, but I have great respect for the subtlety and sophistication with which arguments for a uniform treatment were presented. Post-medieval logicians were by no means mindless followers of their medieval predecessors." (p. 79)

(2) E. J. Ashworth, 'For Riding is Required a Horse’: A Problem of Meaning and Reference in Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Century Logic, in : Vivarium 12 (1974), 94-123; E. J. Ashworth, Ί Promise You a Horse’: A Second Problem of Meaning and Reference in Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Century Logic, in: Vivarium 14 (1976), 62-79, 139-155." (pp. 57-58)

7. Bakaoukas, Michael. 2003. Nothing Exists. A History of the Philosophy of Non-Being. Bloomington: Xlibris Corporation.

8. ———. 2014. "Nonexistence: A Comparative-Historical Analysis of the Problem of Nonbeing." E-Logos. Electronic Journal fro Philosophy:3-25.

9. Benevich, Fedor. 2018. "The Reality of the Non-Existent Object of Thought: The Possible, the Impossible, and Mental Existence in Islamic Philosophy (eleventh–thirteenth centuries)." Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy no. 6:31-61.

Abstract: "One of the most widespread claims combining epistemology and metaphysics in post-Avicennian Islamic philosophy was that every object of thought is real. In Muʿtazilite reading, it was endorsed due to a theory of knowledge which states that knowledge is a connection or relation between the knower and the object known. Avicennists accepted it due to the rule that in a proposition “s is p” if p is something positive s has to be positive and real too. Hence, insofar as one can conceptually distinguish between two non-existent items, they have to be real. In this article, the author presents significant consequences of this theory: the acceptance and denial of non-existent yet real extramental objects; the concept of mental existence as an alternative solution; the conceivability of paraconsistent ideas and their reality or reducibility to some real objects."

10. Blackwell, Daniel F. 1988. Non-Ontological Constructs. The Effects of Abaelard's Logical and Ethical Theories of His Theology: A Study in Meaning and Verification. Bern: Peter Lang.

11. Boehner, Philotheus. 1943. "The Notitia Intuitiva of Non-Existents according to William Ockham." Traditio no. 1:223-275.

Reprinted in: P. Boehner, Collected Articles on Ockham, pp. 268-300.

12. ———. 1948. "Notitia intuitiva of Non-existents According to Peter Aureoli, O.F.M. (1322)." Franciscan Studies no. 6:388-416.

13. Bostock, David. 1984. "Plato on 'Is Not' (Sophist, 254-9)." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 2:89-119.

"According to the received doctrine, which I do not question, the uses of the Greek verb 'to be' may first be distinguished into those that are complete and those that are incomplete. In its incomplete uses the verb requires a complement of some kind (which may be left unexpressed), while in its complete uses there is no complement, and it may be translated as 'to exist' or 'to be real' or 'to be true' or something of the kind. What role the complete uses of the verb have to play in the Sophist as a whole is a vexed question, and one that I shall not discuss. For I think it will be generally agreed, at least since Owen's important article of 1971, (1) that in our central section of the Sophist it is the incomplete uses that are the centre of Plato's attention. Anyway, I shall confine my own attention to these uses, and accordingly my project is to elucidate and evaluate Plato's account of 'is not' where the 'is' is incomplete. I might also add here that, for the purposes of the Sophist as a whole, I am in agreement with Owen's view that what Plato himself took to be crucial was the account of 'not', and what he has to say about 'is' is, in his own eyes, merely ancillary to this. But I do not argue that point, partly because Owen has already done so, and partly because it is not needed for my main contentions. As we shall see, one cannot in fact understand what Plato does say about 'not' without first considering his views on the incomplete 'is'.

Reverting to the received doctrine once more, the incomplete uses of 'is' may be divided into two. In one sense the verb functions as an identity sign, and means the same as 'is the same as', while in the other it functions merely as a sign of predication, coupling subject to predicate, and cannot be thus paraphrased. The vast majority of commentators on the Sophist seem agreed that Plato means to distinguish, and succeeds in distinguishing, these two different senses of the verb.(2) This I shall deny. In fact I shall argue not only that Plato failed to see the distinction, but also that his failure, together with another ambiguity that he fails to see, wholly vitiates his account of the word 'not'. The central section of the Sophist is therefore one grand logical mistake." (pp. 89-90)

(1) Plato on Not-Being in Plato I, ed. G. Vlastos (New York, 1971), 223-267.

(2) One may note P. Shorey, What Plato Said (Chicago, 1933), 298; J. L. Ackrill, ‘Plato and the Copula’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, LXXVII (1957), 1-6 esp. 2; J. M. E. Moravcsik, 'Being and Meaning in the Sophist’, Acta Philosophica Fennica, XIV (1962), 23-64 esp. 51; W. G. Runciman, Plato’s Later Epistemology (Cambridge, 1962), 89; I. M. Crombie, An Examination of Plato’s Doctrines, vol. II (London, 1963), 449; R. S. Bluck, Plato's Sophist (Manchester, 1975), 151; J. Malcolm, ‘Plato’s Analysis of to on and to me on in the Sophist', Phronesis, XII (1967), 130-46 esp. 145; Owen, above n. 1, 256; G. Vlastos, ‘An Ambiguity in the Sophist' in his Platonic Studies (Princeton, 1973), 287; and I would add J. McDowell, ‘Falsehood and not-being in Plato’s Sophist’ in Language and Logos, ed M. Schofield and M. Nussbaum (Cambridge, 1982), 115-34 (discussed below). But the older commentators do not always agree, e.g. F. M. Comford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge (London, 1935), 296, and A. E. Taylor, Plato, the Sophist and the Statesman (London, 1961), 82. More recently J. C. B. Gosling, Plato (London, 1973), 216-20, has put the case for scepticism, and F. A. Lewis, ‘Did Plato discover the estin of identity?’, California Studies in Classical Antiquity, VIII (1975), 113-43, has argued it at length.

14. Brunschwig, Jacques. 1994. "On a Stoic Way of Not Being." In Papers in Hellenistic Philosophy, 158-169. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Translated from French by Janet Lloyd.

15. Burnyeat, Myles. 2002. "Plato on How to Speak of What Is Not: Euthydemus 283a-288a." In Le Style de la pensée. Recueil de textes en hommage à Jacques Brunschwig, edited by Canto-Sperber, Monique and Pellegrin, Pierre, 40-66. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

16. Cantens, Bernardo J. 2003. "Suárez on Beings of Reason: What Kinds of Beings (entia) are Beings of Reason, and What Kind of Being (esse) Do They Have?" American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 77:171-187.

"Beings of reason or non-existent objects have always been a source of mind-boggling paradoxes that have vexed philosophers and thinkers in the past and present. Consider Bertrand Russell's paradox: 'if A and B are not different, then the difference between A and B does not subsist. But how can a non-entity be the subject of a proposition?' Or Meinong's paradox: 'There are objects of which it is true that there are no such objects.' At the root of these troubling conundrums are two basic questions: What are beings of reason? What kind of existence do they have? Francisco Suárez was well aware that a solution to the metaphysical questions concerning the essential character of beings of reason and their ontological status would serve as the key to solving the puzzles and paradoxes just described. A solution to these metaphysical questions would also bring about an understanding of how we talk about beings of reason and other problems that they give rise to in the philosophy of language. In this paper, I present Suárez's view on the nature and ontological status of beings of reason and clarify some of the following questions: What kind of beings (entia) are beings of reason? What kind of being (esse) do beings of reason have? This latter concern is related to the following metaphysical issues: What are real beings? What is the nature and ontological status of possible beings? What is the distinction between real beings, actual beings, and possible beings?"

17. Carson, Scott. 2000. "Aristotle on Existential Import and Non Referring Subjects." Synthese no. 124:343-360.

Abstract: "Much contemporary philosophy of language has shown considerable interest in the relation between our linguistic practice and our metaphysical commitments, and this interest has begun to influence work in the history of philosophy as well.(1) In his Categories and De interpretatione, Aristotle presents an analysis of language that can be read as intended to illustrate an isomorphism between the ontology of the real world and how we talk about that world. Our understanding of language is at least in part dependent upon our understanding of the relationships that exist among the enduring πράγματα that we come across in our daily experience. Part of the foundations underlying Aristotle’s doctrine of categories seems to have been a concern, going back to the Academy, about the problem of

false propositions: language is supposed to be a tool for communicating the way things are, and writers in antiquity were often puzzled by the problem of how we are to understand propositions that claim that reality is other than it is.(2) Aristotle’s analysis of propositions raises a particular problem in this regard: if the subject of a proposition does not refer to anything, how can the proposition be useful for talking about a state of the world?

The problem falls into two separate but related parts: propositions whose subjects are singular terms and hence make claims about some particular thing, and propositions whose subjects are general terms and hence make claims about classes. In this paper I will explain Aristotle’s treatment of each kind, focusing in particular on what has widely been perceived as a problem in his treatment of singular terms. My discussion of his treatment of general terms will be more brief, but will show that his treatment of them is consistent with his treatment of singular terms."

(1) An interesting treatment of this topic that illustrates how such concerns intersect with issues in the history of philosophy can be found in Diamond (1996), Introduction II (pp. 13–38). Whittaker (1996) also touches on these themes.

(2) On the treatment by ancient philosophers of the problem of falsehood see Denyer (1991).

References

Denyer, N.: 1991, Language, Thought and Falsehood in Ancient Greek Philosophy, Routledge, London.

Diamond, C.: 1996, The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Whittaker, C.: 1996, Aristotle’s De Interpretatione: Contradiction and Dialectic, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

18. Caston, Victor. 1999. "Something and Nothing: The Stoics on Concepts and Universals." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 17:145-213.

19. Cesalli, Laurent, Libera, Alain de, and Goubier, Frédéric. 2013. "Does Loving Every Mean Loving Every Every, Even Non-existent Ones? Distribution and Universals in the Opus puerorum " In Logic and Language in the Middle Ages: A Volume in Honour of Sten Ebbesen, edited by Leth Fink, Jacob, Hansen, Heine and Mora-Márquez, Ana María, 305-336. Leiden: Brill.

20. Ciola, Graziana. 2020. " Hic sunt chimaerae? On Absolutely Impossible Significates and Referents in Mid-14th-Century Nominalist Logic." Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales no. 87:441-467.

21. Cocchiarella, Nino. 1982. "Meinong Reconstructed versus Early Russell Reconstructed." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 11:183-214.

Reprinted as Chapter 3 in Logical Studies in Early Analytic Philosophy, pp. 119-151.

"Contemporary philosophy is in a rut, according to Terence Parsons in his recent book Nonexistent Objects, ([NO]), and it is one that stems from the (post-1905) work of Bertrand Russell. The main characteristic of this “Russellian rut” ([NO], 1) is strict adherence to the thesis that being, or being something, amounts to being something that exists—or equivalently that ‘there is’ is to be equated with ‘there exists’ ([NO], 6). This view is now so well entrenched, according to Parsons, that it is a main stay of what he also calls the orthodox tradition.

Now the orthodox view is in a rut, according to Parsons, “because it’s a view in which most of us are so entrenched that it’s hard to see over the edges” ([NO], 1). Naturally, if we want “to look over the edge and see how things might be different” ([NO], 8), as any objective seeker of truth would, then “we need to encounter an actual theory about nonexistent objects” (ibid.). It is the construction and presentation of such a theory that is Parsons’s concern in Nonexistent Objects.

(...)

"Now we do not object to Parsons’s choice of Meinong’s theory here, nor for that matter to his elegant reconstruction and presentation of that theory. We do think, however, that a more balanced recognition of Russell’s overall view is called for and that perhaps the best way to make the Meinongian notion of a concrete object understandable to the orthodox tradition is to compare it with the general Russellian notion of a concrete individual, i.e., the Russellian notion of an individual that can exist but which might in fact not exist. Indeed, on the basis of the analysis and comparison we shall give here, it is our position that the Meinongian notion of a concrete object, at least as reconstructed by Parsons, is parasitic upon, though in a beneficent way, the Russellian notion of a concrete individual, existent or otherwise." (pp. 119-121)

References

[NO] Parsons, Terence, Nonexistent Objects, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980.)

22. Coombs, Jeffrey S. 1993. "The Possibility of Created Entities in Seventeenth-Century Scotism." The Philosophical Quarterly no. 43:447-459.

23. ———. 1994. "John Poinsot On How to Be, Know, and Love a Nonexistent Possible." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 68:321-335.

24. D'Onofrio, Sandro Roberto. 2017. "Notes Concerning the Ontological Status of the Objective Concept of the ens rationis in Antonio Rubio’s Teaching " In Scholastica Colonialis: Reception and Development of Baroque Scholasticism in Latin America, 16th-18th Centuries, edited by Hofmeister Pich, Roberto and Culleton, Alfredo Santiago, 207-229. Turnhout: Brepols.

25. Dancy, Russell M. 1991. Two Studies in the Early Academy. New York: State University of New York Press.

Contents: Preface IX, Introduction XI-XII; Study I. Predication and immanence: Anaxagoras, Plato, Eudoxus, and Aristotle 3; Study II. Ancient non-beings: Speusippus and others 63; Notes 121; Bibliography 179; Index locorum 205; General index 215.

26. David, Marian. 1986. "Nonexistence and Reid’s Conception of Conceiving." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:585-599.

Abstract: "Brentano's famous thesis of the Intentionality of the Mental was already formulated by Thomas Reid who used it in his campaign against the Locke-Berkeley-Hume Theory of Ideas. Apphed to the case of conceiving the thesis says that to conceive is to conceive something. This principle stands in apparent conflict with the common-sensical view, defended by Reid, that we can conceive what does not exist. Both principles, it is argued, are plausible and should be retained. The problem is how to resolve the apparent contradiction. Reid's way out of the dilemma is clarified by contrasting it with less satisfactory solutions."

27. Davis, Leo Donald. 1975. "The Intuitive Knowledge of Non-Existents and the Problem of Late Medieval Skepticism." The New Scholasticism no. 49:410-430.

28. Doyle, John Patrick. 1987. "Suárez on Beings of Reason and Truth (First part)." Vivarium no. 25:47-75.

Reprinted as Chapter 7 in CSS and as Chapter 2 in BBK.

"The sixth essay after the introduction ("Suárez on Beings of Reason and Truth"), against a background view of truth as a function of being, considers Suárez's response to the question of truth where there is no real being independent of the mind. If truth consists in a conformity between the mind and reality, how can there be any truth where there is no independent reality? Most of all, how can there be any truth where something would be impossible of realization? In last analysis, Suárez's reply turns upon the significative cast of the words involved in the expression of beings of reason, especially so called impossible objects. Because, unlike mere nonsense words such as "Blytiri" or "scyndapsus," words like "goat-stag" or "chimera" have signification, there is in their regard, and in regard to the beings of reason they express, the possibility of some statements being true even as others are false." (CSS p. XIII).

29. ———. 1988. "Suárez on Beings of Reason and Truth (Second part)." Vivarium no. 26:51-72.

Reprinted as Chapter 7 in CSS and as Chapter 2 in BBK.

"From Parmenides on, it has been a commonplace in the Western philosophical tradition that truth is a function of being. One need only remember the general Platonic doctrine of Forms, which are at once 'really real' and the locus of intelligibility of truth. Francis Suarez has passed on the common teaching of the Schoolmen that truth is threefold. (1) There is a truth in words, in writing, and in what he calls 'non-ultimate concepts' which is termed truth 'in signifying'. (2) There is a truth in the intellect knowing things, which is called truth 'in knowing'. And (3) there is a truth in things, which is a truth 'in being'."

"This is the completion of a two-part article which considers Suarez's reply to the question of truth where there is no real being independent of the mind. That reply turns upon the significative cast of the words expressing beings of reason, especially "impossible" beings. Because such words, unlike nonsense syllables, have signification, there is in their regard, and in regard to the beings of reason they express, the possibility of some statements being true even as others are false."

30. ———. 1994. "Poinsot on the Knowability of Beings of Reason." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 68:337-362.

"John Poinsot (a.k.a. Joannes a sancto Thoma (1589-1644) was heir to a common division of beings into these that are in themselves real and those which are entirely dependent upon human reason. Those division went back to Aristotle's split between being as found in the categories and being as true. In the Middle Ages and thorough the period of the Spanish Revival, it was found, mutatis mutandis, in Averroes (d. 1198), St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Henry of Ghent (1217?-1293), John Duns Scotus (1266-1308), Francisco Suárez (1548-1617), and just about everyone else in the Scholastic tradition.

One of the very few exceptions that I know to this general rule was Francis of Mayronnes, O.F.M. (d. ca. 1325), who denied the existence of beings of reason. Not only an heir, Poinsot himself embraced and transmitted the common view. For him, beings were either real or rational. Real beings (res extra animam) were those which exist, or can exist, independently of the human mind and which belong in the Aristotelian categories. Rational beings, or beings of reason, in the sense which contrasts with this, were those which do not belong to the categories, and which cannot exist outside human understanding. That there are such beings of reason was not for Poinsot a matter of doubt."

31. ———. 1995. "Another God, Chimerae, Goat-Stags, and Man-Lions: a Seventeenth Century Debate About Impossible Objects." Review of Metaphysics no. 48:771-808.

Reprinted as Chapter 4 in BBK and as Post-Scriptum in: Victor M. Salas (ed.), Hircocervi & Other Metaphysical Wonders. Essays in Honor of John P. Doyle, Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 2013, pp. 329-367.

"This article concerns a 17th Century debate over whether there are self-contradictory impossible objects of understanding or whether there is no intellectual object which is not some actual or possible being. The debate, which has its roots in the Greek and Scholastic traditions, is presented especially between two Jesuits: Thomas Compton Carleton and John Morawski, respectively, a proponent and an opponent of impossible objects. The article itself does not take sides in the debate, but, inasmuch as he wrote later, Morawski is presented as espousing his own view and answering arguments in support of Carleton's position."

32. ———. 2006. "Mastri and Some Jesuits on Possible and Impossible Objects of God's Knowledge and Power." In Rem in seipsa cernere: saggi sul pensiero filosofico di Bartolomeo Mastri (1602-1673), edited by Forlivesi, Marco, 439-468. Padova: Il Poligrafo.

"Why are some things possible while others are not? Is possibility and/or impossibility ultimately from God Himself? If so, how can this be understood? Is it, as St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) thought, stemming from God's intellect in such way that creatures are possible inasmuch as the divine essence is thought by God to be imitable in various ways? Accordingly, God's intellect rather than possible creatures would be the cause of their multiplicity. But further obstacles are posed by the Divine simplicity. St Thomas himself has addressed the question of how can the absolutely simple Divine intellect understand at once many things? Or how can what is simple be imitable in various ways? How can what is perfectly one be the last ground of plurality? This last difficulty was highlighted in the time between Plato and St. Thomas by those to whom it seemed, at best, that from what is simply one, necessarily only one thing could proceed.

Contrasted with this, perhaps the final ground for things being many as well as possible or impossible might be that God has freely willed them so. This seems to have been the view of Henry of Ghent (1217-1293) when he said that the passive potency of creatures and the active power of God are correlative. It was also the thought of William of Ockham (ca. 1290-1349), whose disciple, Gabriel Biel (1410?-95), has gone even more decidedly along this path. Are possibilities themselves, then, creatures of God, depending on His will to make them as they are? If yes, is it in God’s power to make other things possible and then to create them - things which are now impossible? Could God make square circles or a second God? Without restraint from what is beforehand possible, could God abrogate the present moral order and substitute another in its place?

(Or can there be a third, on its face more Platonic, position which would find the source of multiplicity, possibility, and impossibility in other beings which are equally independent with God? Other Gods or “Semi-gods”? Like Plato’s Demiurge, could the Christian God be bound by a set of antecedent possibilities which are not other Gods and which are not His creatures but which are simply “there”, governing His action? We might recoil from such a position, but that won’t solve problems.

2. Some sources

The 17th century Conventual Franciscan, Bartolomeo Mastri, (1602-1673), came to such problems chiefly as a continuator and an interpreter of Duns Scotus (1266-1308), for him “the Doctor”. (17) But between Mastri and the Subtle Doctor centuries had intervened, during which there were other interpreters and different lines of thought about possibles and impossibles. The present paper is confined to Mastri’s views both personal and as an interpreter; and it will try to relate these views to those of some 17th-century Jesuit thinkers whose works were known to him.

Primary sources for Mastri’s doctrine will be in his (so posthumously called) Cursus integer of philosophy, the first three volumes of which he co-authored with his friend and fellow Franciscan, Bonaventura Belluto (1601-1678), (18) whereas the last two, which contain his metaphysical disputations, he afterwards produced alone. (19) My emphasis will be on his metaphysical Disputation 8 (On the Essence and Existence of Finite Being) and, from their joint logic, Disputation 3, question 6 (On Beings of Reason). I will also draw on Mastri’s later Disputationes theologicæ which contain his mature doctrine. (20) The remote source for Mastri’s views will be the writings of his master, Duns Scotus, especially the Ordinatio, most particularly, Book I, distinctions 35, 36, and 43. (21) Someone always present will be the Irish Franciscan, John Punch (Poncius, 1603-1672/3), who was over decades Mastri’s principal opponent. (22)". (pp. 440-443, many notes omitted).

(17) On Mastri, see M. Forlivesi, “Scotistarum princeps”. Bartolomeo Mastri (1602-1673) e il suo tempo, Padova: Centro studi antoniani, 2002. In English, cf. B. Crowley, “The Life and Works of Bartholomew Mastrius, O.F.M. Conv. 1602-1673”, in Franciscan Studies, 8 (1948), pp. 97-152.

(18) I have used the following edition: Mastrius - Bellutus, Philosophise ad mentem Scoti cursus integer, Venetiis: Apud Nicolaum Pezzana, 1727.

(19) Here I have used Mastrius, Disputationes in XII Aristotelis Stagiritæ libros Metaphysicorum, 2 vols., Venetiis: Typis Marci Ginammi, 1646-1647.

(20) For this I have used: Mastrius, Disputationes theologicæ, I In primum librum Sententiarum, Venetiis: Apud Ioannem Iacobum Hertz, 1675 (archetypal edition Venetiis: Apud Ioannem Iacobum Hertz, 1655). In addition, I have had access to: Mastrius, Disputationes theologicæ, I In primum lihrum Sententiarum, Venetiis: Ex Typographia Balleoniana, 1719. From what I have seen, I would judge the 1675 edition to be better.

(21) In Joannes Duns Scouts, Opera omnia, ed. Commissio scotistica, Civitas Vaticana: Typis polyglottis vaticanis, 1950-.

(22) I. Poncius, Philosophiae ad mentem Scoti cursus integer, Lugduni: Sumptibus Laurentii Arnaud et Petri Borde, 1672. On Punch, cf. M.J. Grajewski, “John Punch, Franciscan Scotist of the Seventeenth Century”, in Franciscan Studies, 6 (1946), pp. 54-92. For Punch versus Mastri here, see J. Coombs, “The Possibility of Created Entities in Seventeenth-Century Scotism”, in The Philosophical Quarterly, 43 (1993), pp. 447-459; St. Sousedík, “Der Streit um den wahren Sinn der scotischen Possibilienlehre”, in John Duns Scotus. Metaphysics and Ethics, eds. L. Honnefelder, R. Wood and M. Dreyer, Leiden - New York - Köln: E. J. Brill, 1996, pp. 191-204; and T. Hoffmann, “Creatura intellecta”. Die Ideen und Possibilien bei Duns Scotus mit Ausblick auf Franz von Mayronis, Poncius und Mastrius, Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2002, especially ch. 7, pp. 263-304.

33. ———. 2012. On the Borders of Being and Knowing. Late Scholastic Theory of Supertranscendental Being. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Edited by Victor M. Salas.

Table of Contents: Editor's Foreword VII-IX; Introduction XIII-XVI; 1. Sprouts from Greek Gardens: Antisthenes, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics (first publication) 1; 2. Suarez on Beings of Reason and Truth 19; 3. Extrinsic Cognoscibility 67; 4. Impossible Objects 95; 5. The Teleology of Impossible Objects 127; 6. Beings of Reason and Imagination 151; 7. Four Degrees of Abstraction 167; 8. From Transcendental to Transcendental 185; 9. Supertranscendental Nothing 215; 10. Wrestling with Wraith 243; 11. The Borders of Knowability 273; 12. Conclusion 293; Bibliography 301; Indices 319-326.

"Sylvester Mauro, S.J. (1619-1687) noted that human intellects can grasp what is, what is not, what can be, and what cannot be. The first principle, 'it is not possible that the same thing simultaneously be and not be,' involves them all.

The present volume begins with Greeks distinguishing 'being' from 'something' and proceeds to the late Scholastic doctrine of 'supertranscendental being,' which embraces both. On the way is Aristotle's distinction between 'being as being' and 'being as true' and his extension of the latter to include impossible objects. The Stoics will see 'something' as the widest object of human cognition and will affirm that, as signifiable, impossible objects are something, more than mere nonsense. In the sixteenth century, Francisco Suárez will identify mind-dependent beings most of all with impossible objects and will also regard them as signifiable. By this point, two conceptions will stand in opposition. One, adumbrated by Averroes, will explicitly accept the reality and knowability of impossible objects. The other, going back to Alexander of Aphrodisias, will see impossibles as accidental and false conjunctions of possible objects. Seventeenth-century Scholastics will divide on this line, but in one way or another will anticipate the Kantian notion of 'der Gegenstand überhaupt.' Going farther, Scholastics will see the two-sided upper border of being and knowing at God and the negative theology, and will fix the equally double lower border at 'supertranscendental being' and 'supertranscendental nonbeing,' which non-being, remaining intelligible, will negate the actual, the possible, and even the impossible."

34. Ebbesen, Sten. 1986. "The Chimera's Diary." In The Logic of Being, edited by Knuuttila, Simo and Hintikka, Jaakko, 115-143. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Reprinted in: S. Ebbesen, Greek-Latin Philosophical Interaction. Collected Essays, Volume 1, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008, pp. 35-57.

"My feelings towards philosophers are mixed. For centuries they have used me as an experimental animal, keeping me on a minimum of being. In a way I may owe them my “life”, but their experiments have weakened me so much that the end may be drawing near. If my weakness proves fatal, please inform the Centaur, Goat-Stag and Pegasus, who are my next of kin. If the philosophers kill me, I expect them to keep at least one of my relatives alive in order to continue the experiments. If we are all doomed, I would like to secure us a place in man’s memory. This is why I have put together these extracts from my diary, recording the sufferings to which I and my tribe have been subjected." (*)"

(*) "This paper reproduces the manuscript left by the chimera, but I have added references to books and manuscripts, plus a few notes which appear in square brackets. The reader will notice that the chimera has wisely disregarded accidental changes of philosophers’ choices of example when they need a composite animal. The chimera takes remarks about, e.g., the goat-stag as remarks aimed at itself. As a matter of fact, Aristotle and the Greek Aristotelian commentators prefer the goat-stag (τραγελαφος) and the centaur (ίπποχέvταυρος). In the Hellenistic period, the centaur, the scylla and the chimera are the standard examples. In Latin medieval texts the chimera (inherited from Manlius Boethius) is vastly more popular than any of the other composite animals."

35. Ebbesen, Sten, and Pinborg, Jan. 1982. "Thott 581 40, or de ente rationis." In English Logic in Italy: 14th and 15th Centuries, edited by Maierù, Alfonso, 111-146. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

36. Eck, Job van. 2002. "Not-Being and Difference: on Plato's Sophist 256 d 5-258 e 3." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 23:63-84.

"Plato's analysis of falsity at Sophist 263 is given in terms of not being and difference. 'Theaetetus flies' is false because what is different is stated as the same, and what is not as what is, (263 D 1-2), things that are different from what is the case concerning him (viz. flying) are described as the same (as what is the case about him). That there are indeed many 'not-beings' in the sense of things different from the things that are, the Eleatic Stranger (ES) and Theaetetus remarked some lines above, 'for we said there are many things that are with regard to each thing and many things that are not (263 B 11-12), referring to 256 E 6-7, 'so, with regard to each of the forms, being is many and not-being is indefinite in quantity'. In this way they had been disobedient to Parmenides, who had stated, 'Never shall it force itself on us that things that are-not are.' But they had gone even further in their disobedience: 'but we have not merely shown that the things that are-not are, but also brought to light the form not-being happens to have' (258 D 5-7).

The context of both points has caused commentators a lot of problems. The main question is, how is it that something (i.e. a form) is called an ouk on in 256 D 8-257 A 6? Is it because it is different from the form of being; or is it because it is different from any thing (i.e. any form) it is not identical with? And on which of the two lines is the form of not-being defined as it is introduced in the section that follows, in 258 A 11-B 8 and 258 D 7-E 3? Only a few commentators have tackled the problems systematically, and as far as I know no interpretation has been reached that is both coherent and sound. Nevertheless, such an interpretation is possible, as I shall argue in the following. I shall discuss the passages at issue, criticize commentaries that have been given, and present the interpretation intended." (pp. 63-64, Greek omitted)

37. Findlay, John Niemeyer. 1933. Meinong's Theory of Objects. London: Oxford University Press.

Contents of the Second Edition: Preface to the Second Edition V-XV; I. The Doctrine of Content and Object 1; II. The Pure Object and Its Indifference to Being 42; III. The Theory of Objectives 59; IV: The Modal Moment 102; V. Objects of Higher Order 113; VI. The Theory of Incomplete Objects 152; VII. The Modal Properties of Objectives 185; VIII.The Apprehension of Objects 218; IX. Valuation and Values 264; X. Dignitatives and Desideratives 303; XI. Appraisal of Meinong 322; Index 349-353.

Second edition in 1963 (Gregg Revivals Reprint); the chapters IX and X were added in this edition.

Reprinted with the title: Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values and a new Introduction. Findlay and Meinong by Dale Jacquette (pp. XXV-LIV), Aldershot: Ashgate, 1995.

38. Folescu, Marina. 2016. "Thinking About Different Nonexistents of the Same Kind: Reid's Account of the Imagination and its Nonexistent Objects." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 93:627-649.

Abstract: "How is it that, as fiction readers, we are nonplussed by J. K. Rowling's prescription to imagine Ronan, Bane, and Magorian, three different centaurs of the Forbidden Forrest at Hogwarts? It is usually held in the philosophical literature on fictional discourse that singular imaginings of fictional objects are impossible, given the blatant nonexistence of such objects. In this paper, I have a dual purpose: (i) on the one hand, to show that, without being committed to Meinongeanism, we can explain the phenomenon of singular imaginings of different nonexistents of the same (fictional) kind; (ii) while, at the same time, to attribute this position to Thomas Reid, thus correcting some misunderstandings of his view on imagination."

39. Frank, Richard M. 2000. "The Non-Existent and the Possible in Classical Ash'arite Teaching." MIDEO. Miscellanies of the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies in Cairo no. 24:1-37.

40. Gale, Richard M. 1974. "Bergson Analysis of the Concept of Nothing." The Modern Schoolman no. 51:269-300.

41. Goubier, Frédéric, and Perini-Santos, Ernesto. 2015. "When the World is Not Enough: Medieval Ways to Deal with the Lack of Referents." Logica Universalis:213-235.

Abstract: "According to several late medieval logicians, the use the universal quantifier ‘omnis’ creates the requirement that the sentence refers to at least three items—the principle of sufficientia appellatorum. The commitment is such that, when the quota is not fulfilled, one has to import the missing items from the realm of the nonexistent. While the central argument for this principle, whose origin is Aristotle’s De Caelo, stems from the contrast between unrestricted universal quantifiers and binary quantifiers, the discussion is often mixed with another issue, concerning the requirement of a plurality of referents for universals. In this paper, we try to distinguish those different issues and map the reactions of xiiith authors to the principle of sufficientia appellatorum."

42. Griffin, Nicholas. 1986. "Russell's Critique of Meinong's Theory of Objects." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:375-401.

43. Grossmann, Reinhardt. 1969. "Non-Existent Objects: Recent Work on Brentano and Meinong." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 6:17-32.

44. ———. 1974. "Meinong's doctrine of the "Aussersein" of the pure object." Nous no. 8:67-82.

45. Habib, Nicholas. 1985. "A Medieval Perspective on the Meaningfulness of Fictitious Terms: A Study of John Buridan." Franciscan Studies no. 45:73-82.

46. Haller, Rudolf. 1986. "Nonexistence and Predication." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26.

47. Heider, Daniel. 2016. "The Notitia Intuitiva and Notitia Abstractiva of the External Senses in Second Scholasticism: Suárez, Poinsot and Francisco de Oviedo." Vivarium no. 54:173-203.

Abstract: "This paper analyzes the theories of three representatives of Second Scholasticism, namely Francisco Suárez, SJ, John Poinsot, OP, and Francisco de Oviedo, SJ, on the issue of the intuitive and abstractive cognition of the external senses. Based on a comparison of their theories, linked to the historical starting point of the debate in the first decades of the fourteenth century (Peter Auriol, John Duns Scotus, Francis

of Meyronnes, William of Ockham and Walter Chatton), the paper argues that the doctrinal and argumentative matrix of these authors’ texts is significantly ‘present’ in the Second Scholastics as well. 1) As far as naturally produced sensation is concerned, all these authors, including Poinsot, follow the Scotistic justification of the natural infallibility of the external senses; 2) regarding the possibility of supernaturally

caused objectless perception, Poinsot’s position can be labelled, surprisingly, Scotistic; 3) Suárez’s theory, although partly similar to the doctrine of the late Ockham, is an idiosyncratic stance; 4) Oviedo’s conception, even more distant from that of Ockham, can be characterized as ‘Auriolian’ and ‘Chattonian’. "

48. Hübner, Karolina. 2016. "Spinoza on Essences, Universals, and Beings of Reason." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly no. 97:58-88.

Abstract: "The article proposes a new solution to the long‐standing problem of the universality of essences in Spinoza's ontology. It argues that, according to Spinoza, particular things in nature possess unique essences, but that these essences coexist with more general, mind‐dependent species‐essences, constructed by finite minds on the basis of similarities (‘agreements’) that obtain among the properties of formally‐real particulars. This account provides the best fit both with the textual evidence and with Spinoza's other metaphysical and epistemological commitments. The article offers new readings of how Spinoza understands not just the nature of essence, but also the nature of being, reason, striving, definitions, and different kinds of knowledge."

49. Jacquette, Dale. 1982. "Meinong's Theory of Defective Objects." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 15:1-19.

"In his difficult work On Emotional Presentation, Meinong introduces the concept of defective objects. These are meant to provide part of the solution to Mally's paradox about self-referential thought. But the discussion of defective objects is ambiguous in ways which give rise to a dilemma.

It is not clear whether defective objects are supposed to be a special kind of intentional object on Meinong's theory, or whether they are not really supposed to be intentional objects at all. If defective objects are a special kind of intentional object, then it is possible to put forward a strengthened version of Mally's paradox which cannot be solved by the theory of defective objects. The strengthened paradox represents a counter-example to the intentionality thesis, according to which every psychological experience is directed toward an object of intention. But if defective 'objects' are not really intentional objects at all, then psychological experiences which have defective objects will themselves constitute counter-examples to the intentionality thesis. In either case, the thesis cannot be consistently maintained." (p. 1)

50. ———. 1989. "Mally's Heresy and the Logic of Meinong Object Theory." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 10:1-14.

51. ———. 1989. "On the Objects' Independence from Thought by Ernst Mally: Translation and Commentary " Man and World no. 22:215-231.

52. ———. 1995. "Meinong's Concept of Implexive Being and Nonbeing." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:233-271.

"Meinong introduces the concept of implexive being and nonbeing to explain the metaphysics of universals and as a contribution to the theory of reference and perception. Meinong accounts for Aristotle's doctrine of the inherence of secondary substances in primary substances in object theory terms as the implection of incomplete universals in complete existent or subsistent objects. The derivative notion of implexive so-being is developed by Meinong to advance an intuitive modal semantics that admits degrees of possibility. A set theoretical interpretation of Meinong's mereological concept of the implection of incomplete beingless objects in existent or subsistent complete objects is proposed. The implications of Meinong's concept of implection are exploited to answer extensionalist objections about "Meinong's jungle," defending the ontic economy of an extraontological neo-Meinongian semantic domain that supports individual reference and true predication of constitutive properties to beingless objects."

53. ———. 1996. Meinongian Logic. The Semantics of Existence and Nonexistence. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Contents: Preface IX; Introduction 1;

Part One: Meinong's theory of Objects.

I. Elements of Object theory 7; II. Formal semantic paradox in Meinong's Object theory 12; III. Meinong's theory of Defective Objects 37; IV. The Object theory intentionality of ontological committment 56; V. Logic, mind and Meinong 70; VI. Meinong's doctrine of the modal moment 80;

Parto Two: Object theory O.

I. Syntax, formation and inference principles 95; II. Semantics 101; III. Developments of the logic 114;

Part Three: Philosophical problems and applications.

I. Twardowski on Content and Object 193; II: Private language and private mental objects 200; III. God an impossible Meinongian Object 230; IV. Meinongian models of scientific law 238; V. Aesthetics and Meinongian Logic of Fiction 256; VI. The Paradox of Analysis 265;

Bibliography 269; Index 285.

"Alexius Meinong and his circle of students and collaborators at the Philosophisches Institut der Universität Graz formulated the basic principles for a general theory of objects.(1) They developed branches and applications of the theory, outlined programs for further research, and answered objections from within and outside their group, revising concepts and sharpening distinctions as they proceeded. The object theory that emerged as the result of their efforts combines important advances over traditional systems of logic, psychology, and semantics.The fate of object theory in the analytic philosophical community has been unfortunate in many ways. With few exceptions, the theory has not been sympathetically interpreted. It has often met with unfounded resistance and misunderstanding under the banner of what Meinong called "The prejudice in favor of the actual". (2) The idea of nonexistent objects has wrongly been thought to be incoherent or confused, and there are still those who mistakenly believe that the theory inflates ontology with metaphysically objectionable quasi-existent entities.' These criticisms are dealt with elsewhere by object theory adherents, and are not considered here. In what follows, the intelligibility of an object theory such as Meinong envisioned is assumed, and ultimately vindicated by the construction of a logically consistent version. The inadequacies of extensionalist theories of ontological commitment and definite description, hallmarks of the Russell-Quine axis in recent analytic philosophy, justify an alternative intentional Meinongian object theory logic. Analytic philosophy survives the rejection of extensionalist treatments of definite description and ontological commitment, since analytic methods are not inherently limited to any particular set of extensional or intentional assumptions.

A comprehensive historical treatment of Meinong's philosophy is not attempted in these chapters, though some historical issues are addressed. Some of Meinong's most important philosophical writings have now been translated or are expected to appear in the near future, and there are several recent commentaries on Meinong's work, including Richard Routley's Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond, Terence Parsons' Nonexistent Objects, and Karel Lambert's Meinong and the Principle of Independence. These studies have contributed to renewed interest in and unprejudiced reappraisal of object theory. Analyses of the subtle turnings in Meinong's thought over several decades may be found in J. N. Findlay's Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values, Reinhardt Grossmann's Meinong, Robin Rollinger's Meinong and Husserl on Abstraction and Universals, and Janet Farrell Smith's essay "The Russell-Meinong Debate". These works trace the complex development of Meinong's early nominalism or moderate Aristotelian realism in the Hume-Studien to his mature realistic interpretation of relations and factual objectives or states of affairs as subsistent entities, the theory of objects of higher order, and the doctrine of the Aussersein of the pure object. I have relied on these among other sources, I cannot hope to improve on them in some respects, and my topic in any case is somewhat different. I am concerned exclusively with the logic, semantics, and metaphysics or ontology and extraontology of Meinong's theory. Accordingly, I shall not discuss Meinong's epistemology, theory of perception, or value theory, which I nevertheless regard as essential to an understanding of his philosophy as a whole. The logic, semantics, and metaphysics of object theory are in a sense the most fundamental aspects of Meinong's thought, and therefore require the most careful preliminary investigation.

The formal system I develop is a variation of Meinong's vintage Gegenstandstheorie, refined and made precise by the techniques of mathematical logic. The proposal offers an integrated three-valued formalization of Meinongian object theory with existence-conditional abstraction, and modal and non-Russellian definite description subtheories. The logic is motivated by considerations about the need for an object theory semantics in the correct analysis of ontological commitment and definite description. Applications of the logic are provided in phenomenological psychology, Meinongian mathematics and metamathematics, criticism of ontological proofs for the existence of God in rationalist theodicy, the interpretation of fiction and scientific law, and formal resolutions of Wittgenstein's private language argument and the paradox of analysis. In some areas it has been necessary to depart from Meinong's official formulation of the theory. But I have tried to make these differences explicit, justifying them by argument and evaluating alternative interpretations. This I believe is in keeping with the spirit of the first exponents of object theory, who did not advance their views as a fixed body of doctrine, but maintained an openminded scientific attitude, and continually sought to achieve a more accurate approximation of the truth.

(1) I refer to Meinong's Gegenstandstheorie as a theory of objects, but alternative English equivalents have been proposed which should also be considered. Reinhardt Grossmann argues that the theory must be called a theory of entities because it includes not merely objects (Objekte), but objectives or states of affairs (Objektive). Grossmann, Meinong [1974], pp. 111-12: "If we keep in mind that Meinong will eventually divide all entities (other than so-called dignitatives and desideratives) into objects on the one hand and objectives on the other, we cannot speak of a theory of objects as the all-embracing enterprise, but must speak -- as I have done and shall continue to do -- of a theory of entities." This argument is inconclusive, since objectives are also objects of a kind, which Meinong describes as objects of higher order (hOherer Ordnung), superiora founded on inferiora or lower order objects. An objective in any case can be as much an object of thought as any other nonobjective object, as when someone thinks about the fact that Graz is in Austria, and thereby makes that state of affairs an object of thought. In this sense, the theory of objects, of lower and higher order, is already all-embracing in the way Grossmann thinks Meinong's Gegenstandstheorie is meant to be. Nicholas Griffin identifies a further difficulty in Grossmann's terminological recommendation. In "The Independence of Sosein from Sein" [1979], p. 23, n. 2, Griffin writes: "Grossmann standardly uses the term 'entity' for Meinong's 'Gegenstand', which is usually translated as 'object'. Since the Oxford English Dictionary defines 'entity' as 'thing that has real existence', this switch is unsatisfactory. Accordingly I have switched back either to 'object' or to the even more neutral term `item'." Griffin's choice of translation agrees with Richard Routley's in Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond [1981], where Routley refers to a theory of items distinct in some respects from but directly inspired by Meinong's theory of objects. Routley's 'theory of item'' is perhaps better used to designate his own special version of object theory, which he also denotes `noneism'. Neither Grossmann's nor Routley's terminology carries the intentional force of 'Gegenstand', which as Meinong explains is etymologically releated to 'gegenstehen', to stand against or confront, as objects of thought are supposed to confront and presetn themselves to the mind.

(2) Alexius Meinong, "The Theory of Objects" ("Uber Gegenstandstheorie") [1904], pp. 78-81.

(3) In his early work, Meinong expressed the belief that nonexistent objects have what he then called Quasisein. "The Theory of Objects", pp. 84-5. Meinong here refers to the first edition of his Über Annahmen [1902], p. 95. See J. N. Findlay, Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values [1963], pp. 47- 8. Routley, Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond [1981], pp. 442, 854. Routley reports that Meinong renounced the theory of Quasisein in favor of the Aussersein thesis by 1899 (presumably with the publication in that year of his essay "Uber Gegenstände höherer Ordnung und deren Verhältnis zur inneren Wahrnehmung"). As a statement of the frequent misinterpretations of Meinong's object theory that persist today, see P.M. S. Hacker, Insight and Illusion: Themes in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, revised edition [1986], p. 8: "The Theory of Descriptions ... enabled Russell to thin out the luxuriant Meinongian jungle of entities (such as the square circle) which, it had appeared, must in some sense subsist in order to be talked about ..."

54. John, of St.Thomas (John Poinsot). 1949. "Entia Rationis and Second Intentions." The New Scholasticism no. 23:395-413.

Translated from Latin by John J. Glanville. Donald G. Hollenhorst and Yves R. Simon.

55. Kelley, Francis. 1978. "Some Observations on the 'Fictum' Theory in Ockham and Its Relation to Hervaeus Natalis." Franciscan Studies no. 38:260-282.

56. Klima, Gyula. 1993. "The Changing Role of Entia rationis in Mediaeval Semantics and Ontology: A Comparative Study with a Reconstruction." Synthese no. 96:25-58.

"In this paper I want to argue for two theses concerning entia rationis. My first thesis is that entia rationis, in what I would call the via antiqua (1) sense, are objects of thought and signification, required by a certain kind of semantics, but undesirable as objects simpliciter in ontology. My second thesis is that this systematic role of entia rationis in the via antiqua tradition of mediaeval thought was simply eliminated by the advent of Ockhamist semantics, which opened the way towards a radical reinterpretation of the concept of entia rationis and towards a new research programme for ontology.

In the next section of this paper, therefore, I start my discussion with a case study of the systematic role played by entia rationis in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, a typical representative of the via antiqua tradition, occasionally drawing parallels with and taking illustrations from the works of other mediaeval thinkers, too. (2) In the third section I give a systematic account of all kinds of entia rationis against the background of a comprehensive semantic theory constructed in the spirit of the via antiqua tradition. In the fourth section I describe the ways William Ockham's approach changed this semantic background, and examine how these changes influenced the concept of entia rationis. In the concluding section of the paper I present a simple formal reconstruction of what I take to be Ockham's basic innovations in semantics, and discuss briefly the new ontological programme it initiated."

(1) One of course has to be very cautious when applying such an expression so much involved in scholarly debate. In the rest of this paper I want to use it in a very restricted, technical sense, referring to a particular way of constructing semantic theory, sharply distinguishable from Ockham's and his followers' way (both to be described later). What

I think may justify such a usage is the clear connection of these ways of doing semantics with the manners in which broader philosophical, theological, and methodological issues were treated in the two great trends getting separated later in mediaeval thought. Indeed, this paper may perhaps serve as a modest contribution to the characterisation of the two viae from the point of view of the connections between semantics and ontology. As to the debates concerning the proper characterisation of via antiqua vs. via moderna, see, e.g., Moore (1989).

(2) To be sure, by presenting Aquinas's views as representative of what I call 'via antiqua semantics' I do not want to deny the immense variety of semantic views in mediaeval philosophy even before Ockham. I take Aquinas's views as typical, however, as contrasted with Ockham's, precisely in those of their features that rendered the via antiqua framework unacceptable for Ockham.

57. Lambertini, Roberto. 1989. "Resurgant entia rationis. Matthaeus de Augubio on the object of logic." Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen-Âge Grec et Latin no. 59:3-60.

58. Leclerq, Bruno, Richard, Sébastien, and Seron, Denis, eds. 2015. Objects and Pseudo-Objects. Ontological Deserts and Jungles from Brentano to Carnap. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

59. Lehrer, Keith. 1986. "Reid on Conception and Nonbeing." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:573-583.

60. Marchesi, Andrea. 2018. "Husserl’s Early Theory of Intentionality as a Relational Theory." Grazer Philosophische Studien:343-367.

61. Marrama, Oberto. 2016. "Spinoza on Fictitious Ideas and Possible Entities." The European Legacy no. 21:359-372.

Abstract: "The aim of this article is twofold: to provide a valid account of Spinoza’s theory of fictitious ideas, and to demonstrate its coherency with the overall modal metaphysics underpinning his philosophical system. According to Leibniz, in fact, the existence of romances and novels would be sufficient to demonstrate, against Spinoza’s necessitarianism, that possible entities exist and are intelligible, and that many other worlds different from ours could have existed in its place. I argue that Spinoza does not actually need to resort to the notion of possible entities in order to explain the incontrovertible existence of fictions and fictitious ideas. In order to demonstrate this, I will first show how, according to Spinoza, true ideas of nonexistent things need not be regarded as fictitious ideas. Then I will show by which means Spinoza can justify the real existence of fictions and fictitious ideas in the human mind through our present knowledge of actually existing things, to conclude that fictitious ideas neither add anything to what we already know of things, nor do they increase the extent of the existing conceivable reality by demanding the existence of possible non-actualised entities."

62. McDowell, John. 1982. "Falsehood and Not-Being in Plato's Sophist." In Language and Logos. Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy Presented to G. E. L. Owen, edited by Schofield, Malcolm and Nussbaum, Martha, 115-134. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"For me, G. E. L. Owen's 'Plato on Not-Being' (1971) radically improved the prospects for a confident overall view of its topic. Hitherto, passage after passage had generated reasonable disagreement over Plato's intentions, and the disputes were not subject to control by a satisfying picture of his large-scale strategy; so that the general impression, as one read the Sophist, was one of diffuseness and unclarity of purpose. By focusing discussion on the distinction between otherness and contrariety (257B1-C4), Owen showed how, at a stroke, a mass of confusing exegetical alternatives could be swept away, and the dialogue's treatment of not-being revealed as a sustained and tightly organised assault on a single error. In what follows, I take Owen's focusing of the issue for granted, and I accept many of his detailed conclusions. Where I diverge from Owen - in particular over the nature of the difficulty about falsehood that Plato tackles in the Sophist (§§5 and 6 below) -it is mainly to press further in the direction he indicated, in the interest of a conviction that the focus can and should be made even sharper." (p. 115)

63. McGrade, Arthur S. 1985. "Plenty of Nothing: Ockham's Commitment to Real Possibles." Franciscan Studies no. 45:145-156.

64. Melamed, Yitzhak Y. 2000. "On the Exact Science of Nonbeings: Spinoza's View of Mathematics." Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly no. 49:3-22.

65. Mié, Fabian. 2011. "Plato's Sophist on Negation and Not-Being." In Parmenides, 'Venerable and Awesome' (Plato, Theaetetus 183e), edited by Cordero, Néstor-Luis, 363-372. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Summary: "This brief paper develops an interpretation of Plato’s theory of negation understood as an answer to Parmenides’ paradoxes concerning not-being. First, I consider some aspects that result from an analysis of Sophist 257b–259d, formulating some general theses which I then go on to unfold in more detail in the following section. Finally, I show what exactly Plato’s so-called overcoming of the Eleatic problem related to negation and falsehood is; and I outline some of the main semantic and metaphysical consequences that are entailed by this overcoming."

66. Millán-Puelles, Antonio. 1996. The Theory of the Pure Object. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter.

Original Spanish edition: Teoría el objeto puro, Madrid: Ediciones RIALP, 1990. Translated and edited by Jorge García-Gómez.

67. Mourelatos, Alexander P. D. 1979. "'Nothing' as 'not-Being': some literary contexts that bear to Plato." In Arktouros. Hellenic Studies Presented to Bernard M. W. Knox on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, edited by W., Bowersock Glen, Walter, Burkert and C.J., Putnam Michael, 319-329. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Reprinted in: John P. Anton, Anthony Preus (eds.), Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy. Vol. II: Plato, Albany: State University of New York Press 1983, pp. 59-69.

"It has often been noticed that Plato, and before him Parmenides, assimilates "what is not" (μηδέν or ουδέν). (1) Given that the central use of "nothing" has important ties with the existential quantifier (''Nothing is here" = "It is not the case that there is anything here"), it has widely been assumed that contexts that document this assimilation also count as evidence that both within them and in cognate ontological contexts the relevant sense of "being" or "to be" is that of existence. That this assumption is not to be granted easily, has been compellingly argued by G. E. L. Owen. (2) His main concern was to show that the assumption is particularly mischievous in the interpretation of the Sophist, where he found it totally unwarranted. My own concern is to attack the assumption on a broader plane. "Nothing" in English has uses that do not depend on a tie with the existential quantifier. So too in Greek: meden or ouden can be glossed as "what does not exist," but it can also be glossed as "not a something," or in Owen's formulation, "'what is not anything, what not in anyway is': a subject with all the being knocked out of it and so unindentifiable, no subject." (3) In effect, the assimilation of "what is not" to "nothing" may—in certain contexts—work in the opposite direction: not from "nothing" to "non-being" in the sense of non-existence; rather from "non-being" as negative specification or negative determination to "nothing" as the extreme of negativity or indeterminacy. To convey the sense involved in this reverse assimilation I borrow Owen's suggestive translation "not-being" for μέ ον, a rendering which makes use of an incomplete participle, rather than the complete gerund, of the verb "to be." (p. 59 of the reprint).

(1) See Parmenides B 6.2, cf. B 7.1, B 8.7-13, B 9.4; Plato Rep. 478 B 12-C 1, Tht. 189 A 10, Soph. 237 C7-E 2. Cf. G. E. L. Owen, "Plato on Not-Being," in Plato, I, Metaphysics and Epistemology, ed. G. Vlastos (Garden City, N.Y., 1971), pp. 225-227.

(2) Owen, "Plato on NotBeing," pp. 241-248 and passim. For use of this assumption in interpreting Parmenides, see D. J. Furley, "Notes on Parmenides," in Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos, Phronesis, suppl. vol. 1 (Assen and New York, 1973) 12.

68. Nichols, Ryan. 2002. "Reid on Fictional Objects and the Way of Ideas." The Philosophical Quarterly no. 52:582-601.

69. Novotný, Daniel D. 2006. "Prolegomena to a Study of Beings of Reason in Post-Suarezian Scholasticism, 1600-1650." Studia Neoaristotelica no. 3:117-141.

"In 1597 Francisco Suárez published a comprehensive treatise on beings of reason (entia rationis) as part of his Disputationes metaphysicae. Subsequent scholastic philosophers vigorously debated various aspects of Suárez's theory. The aim of this paper is to identify some of the most controversial points of these debates, as they developed in the first half of the seventeenth century. In particular, I focus on the intension and the extension of 'ens rationis', its division (into negations, privations and relations of reason) and its causes. Additionally, I will discuss how Suárez's views sparked a number of debates within the classical view, debates which ultimately led to the emergence of various alternative theories, especially among the Jesuits. These non-classical views radically revise the previous classical conception of beings of reason."

70. ———. 2009. "Forty-Two Years after Suárez: Mastri and Belluto's Development of the Classical Theory of Entia Rationis." Quaestio. Journal of the History of Metaphysics no. 8:473-498.

71. ———. 2012. "Scholastic Debates About Beings of Reason and Contemporary Analytical Metaphysics." In Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic edited by Novak, Lukas, Novotný, Daniel D., Sousedik, Prokop and Svoboda, David, 25-40. Heusenstamm: Ontos Verlag.

72. ———. 2013. Ens Rationis from Suárez to Caramuel. A Study in Scholasticism of the Baroque Era. New York: Fordham University Press.

"Beings of reason are impossible intentional objects, such as blindness and square-circle. The first part of this book is structured around a close reading of Suarez's main text on the subject, namely Disputation 54. The second part centers on texts on this topic by other outstanding philosophers of the time, such as the Spanish Jesuit Pedro Hurtado de Mendoza (1578-1641), the Italian Franciscan Bartolomeo Mastri (1602-73), and the Spanish-Bohemian-Luxembourgian polymath Juan Caramuel de Lobkowitz (1606-82)."

73. ———. 2015. "Suárez on Beings of Reason." In A Companion to Francisco Suárez, edited by Salas, Victor M. and Fastiggi, Robert L., 248-273. Leiden: Brill.

74. O'Brien, Denis. 1993. "Non-Being in Parmenides, Plato and Plotinus: a Prospectus for the Study of Ancient Greek Philosophy." In Modern Thinkers and Ancient Thinkers, edited by Sharples, Robert W., 1-26. London: University College London Press.

English version of "Le non-être dans la philosophie grecque: Parménide, Platon, Plotin", in Pierre Aubenque (ed.), Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, Napoli: Bibliopolis 1991, pp. 317-364.

"Here I must omit detailed argument (which I have published elsewhere) (11) and limit myself to a simple outline of the structure of the whole.

Esti does not mean "being is" (Cornford's emendation) at the beginning of the poem. But the esti of the first path does acquire a subject in the course of the argument. For the goddess does later claim as a development of the first way the proposition eon emmenai (fr. 6.1): "it is necessary to say this, and to think this, namely that being is", or ". . . that there is being".(12)

That is not the case however for the path which is opposed to the path of persuasion, a path "from which we can learn nothing" (fr. 2.5-8). This path is expressed by the negation of esti (fr. 2.5): " 'is not' and it is necessary not to be". This path has no subject and never acquires one, for the substantivized participle, "what is not" (to me eon, fr. 2.7-8), proves to be as unknowable as the simple indicative statement: "is not".

Hence a crucial difference between the first and second way.

"Being" or "what is" (eon) can be added as a development of the first way (esti) whereas "is not" (auk esti) and "what is not" (to me eon) are never joined to form a proposition; both expressions are equally impossible and equally unknowable statements of the second way.

It is true that, in the course of the poem, the goddess does produce a composite statement where the negative participle is added to the positive verb (einai me eonta, fr. 7.1): "things that are not, are". That composite statement does not represent either of the two paths introduced at the beginning of the argument. It is, instead, an impossible combination of the two ways, a combination which is not only false, but contradictory (cf. fr. 6).

The false and contradictory combination of "is" and "is not" (fr. 7.1: "things that are not, are") represents the "opinions of mortals in which there is no true conviction" (fr. 1.30; cf. fr. 8.38-41).

Thus the whole poem turns upon the opposition between "is" and "is not" (fr. 2), on the development of "is" into "being is" (fr. 6.1-2) and the recognition which this will bring of a being that is "unborn" and "imperishable" (fr. 8.1-21), and finally on the impossible conjunction of "is" and "is not" which underlies the whole of our belief in a world where things are not unborn and are not imperishable, the world where "things that are not, are" (fr. 7.1).

An impossibly rapid survey of an unconventional interpretation of Parmenides, but one which will allow me to turn to the criticism made of Parmenides by Plato in the Sophist."

(11) Mainly in my contributions to the two volumes of the work quoted in n. 2 above. [Études sur Parménide, Paris: Vrin 1987]

(12) Fr. 6.1: khre to legein to noein t' eon emmenai. This text is not the same as that printed in Diels-Kranz (d. n. 1 above). For the repetition of the article (to), see Etudes sur Parménide, vol. I, p. 24.

75. ———. 2000. "Parmenides and Plato on What is Not." In The Winged Chariot: Collected Essays on Plato and Platonism in Honour of L.M. de Rijk, edited by Kardaun, Maria and Spruyt, Joke, 19-104. Leiden: Brill.

"Plato, in writing the Sophist, "did not consider it beneath his dignity to return to the great Parmenides" . Any reader of Plato's dialogue must therefore do likewise. But whose Parmenides should we return to? If modern interpretations of the Sophist are legion, so too are the reconstructions that are currently on offer, from modern scholars, of the fragments of Parmenides.

Which one should we take on board?

Two names in particular stand out. Miss G. E. M. Anscombe was a close associate of Wittgenstein, and is generally acknowledged as one of the leading philosophers of her day. Professor W. K. C. Guthrie was a pupil of F. M. Cornford, and is the only historian of ancient philosophy who has had both the knowledge and the ambition to undertake a history of Greek philosophy that would rival the great work of Eduard Zeller.(2) Both scholars therefore have impeccable credentials. Both have written on Parmenides.(3)

One or other or both, one might surely think, will have been able to recover from the extant fragments ideas that will make sense of the criticisms of Parmenides that loom so large in Plato's Sophist." (p. 19)

(2) See Guthrie (1962-1981). Sadly, Guthrie did not live to complete his majestic enterprise; the last volume takes us only as far as Aristotle. Cf. Zeller (1844) and (1919-1920). Gomperz (1896-1909) is too chatty to be a serious rival.

(3) Guthrie (1965) 1-80. Anscombe (1969), reprinted in Anscombe (1981) 3-8. Cf O'Brien (1987) 206 n. 25. Miss Anscombe goes so far as to entitle the first volume of her Collected papers (1981) From Parmenides to Wittgenstein. Obviously therefore she does not consider her contribution on Parmenides to be a mere πáρπεργον."

Works cited

Anscombe, G. EM. (1969) 'Parmenides, Mystery and Contradiction', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society n.s. 69 (1968-9): 125-132.

-- (1981) The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe, vol. I, From Parmenides to Wittgenstein (Minneapolis) 3-8.

Gomperz, T. (1896-1909) Griechische Denker, Eine Geschichte der Antiken Philosophie, 3 vols (Leipzig).

Guthrie, W. K. C. (1962-1981) A History of Greek Philosophy, 6 vols (Cambridge).

--- (1965) A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. ii, The Presocratic Tradition from Parmenides to Democritus (Cambridge).

O'Brien, D. (1987) Études sur Parménide, sous la direction de Pierre Aubenque, tome I, Le Poeme de Parménide, Texte, Traduction, Essai Critique "en collaboration avec Jean Frère pour la traduction française" (Paris).

Zeller, E. (1844) Die Philosophie der Griechen, Eine Untersuchung iiber Charackter, Gang und Hauptmomente ihrer Entwicklung. (Leipzig).

-- ( 1919-1920) Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, ed. W. Nestle, 3 Teile, 6 Abteilungen (Leipzig).

76. Panaccio, Claude, and Piché, David. 2010. "Ockham's Reliabilism and the Intutition of Non-Existents." In Rethinking the History of Skepticism. The Missing Medieval Background, edited by Lagerlund, Henrik, 97-118. Leiden: Brill.

77. Paolini Paoletti, M. 2013. "Commentary of Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond: an Investigation of Noneism and the Theory of Items by R. Routley." Humana Mente no. 6:275-292.

78. Parsons, Terence. 1975. "A Meinongian Analysis of Fictional Objects." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 1:73-76.

"Meinong is best known as the loser of the Russell-Meinong debate of 1905. Russell had the last word then, and (unfortunately) most of us know only his version of Meinong's views.' But there is more to be said on Meinong's side. In an earlier paper I tried to develop a version of Meinong's ontology which is clear, consistent, and immune to Russell's attacks. Most importantly, that theory preserves - rather than analyses away - Meinong's radical and exciting ontological views: that there are non-existent objects; that there are impossible objects; etc.

So what? We want more of a theory than clarity and consistency; we also want reason to believe that it's true. How might we offer evidence in favor of such a theory? I think that the only evidence that we ever have in favor of a general metaphysical theory is that it has many interesting applications. The Meinongian theory agrees with more orthodox theories in its treatment of existing objects, so any evidence in its favor will consist of applications to issues concerning non-existent objects. The present paper contains one of these; it's an application of the Meinongian theory to an analysis of fictional objects.

By "fictional" I do not mean "non-existent", but rather "occurring in fiction". Many fictional objects are indeed non-existent, and it is their non-existence that in some sense causes all the problems, but fictional works also abound in reference to real objects, and this fact must be taken into account.

I will begin by giving an exposition of the Meinongian ontology." (p. 73)

79. Pasniczek, Jacek. 1995. "Are Contradictions Still Lurking in Meinongian Theories of Objects?" Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:293-303.

"Contemporary formalizations of Meinong's theory of objects prove that Russell's accusation of inconsistency of the theory is not valid.

However, in the same formalizations there has appeared a new source of potential inconsistency. Theories of objects inspired by Meinong's ontology usually include, in addition to basic principles of the ontology, abstraction-axioms for defining objects and properties (relations). Although these axioms seem to be perfectly acceptable, they lead to paradoxes when adopted without any restrictions. These paradoxes may be understood as paradoxes of size (not of self-referentiality): too many objects or too many properties are defined by the axioms. We can avoid them at the cost of counterintuitive stipulations, some of them similar to those applied in set theory or in higher-order logics (like a stratification of formulas). We need, however, to look for phenomenologically well-grounded protections against paradoxes. This search can deepen our understanding of the nature of Meinongian objects."

80. Perszyk, Kenneth J. 1993. Nonexistent Objects: Meinong and Contemporary Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

81. Piché, David. 2010. "Gerard of Bologna and Hervaeus Natalis on the Intuition of Non-Existents." Quaestio. Journal of the History of Metaphysics no. 10:207-218.

82. Pippin, Rober. 2004. "Critical Inquiry and Critical Theory: A Short History of Nonbeing." Critical Inquiry no. 30:424-428.

83. Read, Stephen. 1977. "The Objective Being of Ockham's Ficta." Philosophical Quarterly no. 27:14-31.

84. Rescher, Nicholas. 2003. "Nonexistents Then and Now." Review of Metaphysics no. 57:359-381.

Reprinted as Chapter 8 in N. Rescher, Scholastic Meditations, Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005, pp. 126-148.

85. Roncaglia, Gino. 1995. "Smiglecius on "Entia rationis"." Vivarium no. 33:27-49.

86. Rosenthal, Michael. 2019. "Spinoza on Beings of Reason [Entia Rationis] and the Analogical Imagination." In

GET

Spinoza in Twenty-First-Century American and French Philosophy: Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Moral and Political Philosophy, edited by Ramond, Charles and Stetter, Jack, 231-250. London: Bloomsbury Press.

"Although in his early works Spinoza is critical of “beings of reason” (entia rationis), nonetheless he thinks that they are useful in certain contexts. This paper discusses the metaphysical and epistemological status of “beings of reason”—such as universals, measurements, and value terms—and tries to explain how, even if they are problematic, they can be useful. I shall argue that Spinoza borrows from Suarez and other neo-scholastics the idea that beings of reason are analogical. The regulatory function of beings of reason depends upon the possibility—a possibility that is most often not realized—of the similarity of the imaginative entity to an actual being. I discuss the role of beings of reason in Spinoza’s conception of the part-whole relation and the construction of an imaginative sign. I shall claim that the case of beings of reason sheds light on the nature of the imagination itself in the Ethics. "

87. Schmidt, Robert. 1963. "The Translation of Terms like Ens Rationis." The Modern Schoolman no. 41:73-75.

88. Schnieder, Benjamin. 2007. "Mere Possibilities: A Bolzanian Approach to Non-Actual Objects." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 45:525-550.

89. Sendłak, Maciej. 2013. "Modal Meinongianism, Russell’s Paradox, and the Language/Metalanguage Distinction." Polish Journal of Philosophy:63-78.

90. Suárez, Francisco. 1995. On Beings of Reason (De Entibus Rationis). Metaphysical Disputation LIV by Francisco Suárez. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Translated from the Latin with an introduction and notes by John P. Doyle.

"Suárez's Disputationes metaphysicae is to this day the most comprehensive and systematic treatise on metaphysics written from an Aristotelian perspective. It addresses every metaphysical issue raised by medieval and Renaissance scholastics and discusses the views of all important figures who preceded Suárez. As such it is a treasure-trove not only for the metaphysician but also for the historian and has exercised enormous influence on early modern philosophy, particularly in Continental Europe. (...) The Disputation deals with mental entities and, therefore, contains relevant discussions to the philosophy of mind and the ontological status of intensional objects."

Jorge J. E. Gracia - State University of New York at Buffalo.

"In a finely wrought and philosophically intelligible translation of this 54th Disputation of Suárez, John P. Doyle has documented with care the ancient Greek and Medieval sources of Suárez's discussion, its influence upon many hitherto unknown late Scholastic writers and the relevance of Suárez's intentionality theory to such prominent figures in early, middle and late Modern thought as Descartes, Berkeley, Leibniz, Kant, Brentano, Husserl, Meinong, B. Russell, Heidegger and others."

Norman J. Wells, Boston College.

91. Tachau, Katherine. 2001. "Peter Aureol on Intentions and the Intuitive ognition of Non-Existents." Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen-Âge Grec et Latin no. 44:122-150.

92. Twardowski, Kazimierz. 1977. On the Content and Object of Presentations. A Psychological Investigation. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Translation and introduction by Reinhardt Grossmann of Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen.

93. Tweedale, Martin. 1967. "Abailard and Non-Things." Journal of the History of Philosohy no. 5:329-342.

94. Van Cleve, James. 2015. Problems from Reid. New Yorl: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 10: Conception and Its Objects, pp. 264-300.

95. Vossenkühl, Wilhelm. 1985. "Ockham and the Cognition of Non-Existents." Franciscan Studies no. 45:33-46.

96. Wells, Norman J. 1983. "Francisco Araujo, OP, on the Eternal Truths." In Graceful Reason. Essays in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy Presented to Joseph Owens, CSSR on the Occasion of His Seventy-Fifth Birthday and the Fiftieth Anniversary of His Ordination, edited by Gerson, Lloyd, 401-417. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

97. Wettstein, Howard. 1984. "Did the Greeks Really Worship Zeus? ." Synthese no. 60:439-450.

98. Wiitala, Michael. 2015. "Non-Being and the Structure of Privative Forms in Plato’s Sophist." Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 19:277-286.

Abstract: "In Plato’s Statesman, the Eleatic Stranger explains that the division of all human beings into Greek and barbarian is mistaken in that it fails to divide reality into genuine classes or forms (eide). The division fails because “barbarian” names a privative form, that is, a form properly indicated via negation: non-Greek. This paper examines how the Stranger characterizes privative forms in the Sophist. I argue that although the Stranger is careful to define privative forms as fully determinate, he nevertheless characterizes them as having a structure unlike that of their non-privative counterparts. A privative form, in contrast to a non-privative form, is indifferent to the specificity of its members."

99. Wippel, John F. 1981. "The Reality of Nonexisting Possibles According to Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and Godfrey of Fontaines " Review of Metaphysics no. 34:729-758.

100. Yao, Zhihua. 2008. "Some Mahāsāṃghika Arguments for the Cognition of Nonexistent Objects." Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research no. 25:79-96.

101. ———. 2020. Nonexistent Objects in Buddhist Philosophy: On Knowing What There is Not. New York: Bloomsbury.

102. Zachhuber, Johannes. 2006. "Stoic Substance, Non-Existent Matter? Some Passages in Basil of Caesarea Reconsidered." Studia Patristica no. 41:425-432.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography on the History of Nonexistent Objects: Studies in French, Italian, Spanish, German

Études en Français

1. "Le problème du non-être dans la philosophie antique." 1990. Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie no. 122.

Actes du Colloque international de philosophie antique tenu à Genève les 2 et 3 novembre 1989. À la mémoire d'Henri Joly.

Sommaire: Jacques Bouveresse: Hommage à Henri Joly 297; Jean Rudhardt: Dans quelle mesure et par quelles images les mythes grecs ont-ils symbolisé le néant? 303; Françoise Létoublon: La notion de non-être dans l’histoire de la langue grecque archaïque 313;

Lambros Couloubaritsis: La logique du mythe et la question du non-être 323; André-Jean Voelke: Vide et non-être chez Leucippe et Démocrite 334; Curzio Chiesa: Idées de négations 353; Enrico Berti: Etre et non-être chez Aristote: contraires ou contradictoires? 365; André: de Muralt: L’être du non-être en perspective aristotélicienne 375; Jacques Brunschwig: Sur une façon stoïcienne de ne pas être 389; Dominic O’Meara: La question de l'être et du non-être des objets mathématiques chez Plotin et Jamblique 405; Fernand Brunner: L’aspect rationnel et l’aspect religieux de la philosophie de Plotin 417; Bibliographie d’Henri Joly 431-432.

2. Benoist, Jocelyn. 2001. Représentations sans objet. Aux origines de la phénoménologie et de la philosophie analytique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

3. Berti, Enrico. 1983. "Quelques remarques sur la conception aristotélicienne de non-être." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 2:115-142.

4. ———. 1990. "Être et non-être chez Aristote: contraires ou contradictoires?" Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie no. 122:365-374.

5. Biard, Joël. 1985. "La signification d'objets imaginaires dans quelques textes anglais du 14e siècle (Guillaume de Heytesbury, Henry Hopton)." In The Rise of British Logic. Acts of the Sixth European Symposium of Medieval Logic and Semantics. Balliol College, Oxford, 19-24 June 1983, edited by Lewry, Patrick Osmund, 265-283. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.

6. Brunschwig, Jacques. 1990. "Sur une façon stoicienne de ne pas être." Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie no. 122:389-403.

Repris da J. Brunschwig, Études sur les philosophies hellénistiques. Épicurisme, stoïcisme, scepticisme, Paris: Presses universitaires de France 1995, pp. 251-268.

English translation: "On a Stoic way of not being".

7. Couloubaritsis, Lambros. 1990. "La logique du mythe et la question du non-être." Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie no. 122:323-340.

8. de Muralt, André. 1990. "L'être du non-être en perspecti8ve aristotélicienne." Revude de Théologie et de Philosophie no. 122:375-388.

9. Demonet, Marie-Lucie. 2002. "Les êtres de raison, ou les modes d'être de la littérature." In Res et Verba in der Renaissance. Proceedings of a Colloquium held at Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel in 1998, edited by Kessler, Eckhard and Maclean, Ian, 177-195. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

10. Laurent, Jérôme. 2003. "Sur des modalités d’existence du non-être. Du vide démocritéen à la matière plotinienne." Quaestio. Journal of the History of Metaphysics no. 3:61-70.

11. Létoublon, Françoise. 1990. "La notion de non-être dans l'histoire de la langue grecque archaïque." Revue de théologie et de philosophie no. 40:313-322.

12. Libera, Alain de. 1997. "Subsistance et existence: Porphyre et Meinong." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale:167-192.

13. ———. 2002. La référence vide. Théories de la proposition. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

14. Marrone, FRancesco. 2017. "Ens reale / Ens rationis. Le mental et le réel dans le formalisme scotiste du XVIe siècle." Quaestio. Journal of the History of Metaphysics no. 17:155-176.

15. Murault, André de. 1990. "L'être du non-être en perspective aristotelicienne." Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie no. 122:375-388.

16. O'Meara, Dominic. 1990. "La question de l'être et du non-être des objets mathématiques chez Plotin et Jamblique." Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie no. 122:405-416.

Repris dansn: D. O' Meara, The structure of Being and the search for the Good. Essays on ancient and early medieval Platonism, Aldershot: Asgate Variorum, 1998 Essay XV.

Résumé: "Cet article traite du statut ontologique des objets mathématiques dans l'interprétation qu'en ont donné les néoplatoniciens Plotin et Jamblique.

Tous deux réalistes, ils témoignent de l'influence d'Aristote et du stoïcisme.

Plotin manifeste ainsi une tendance nominaliste dans le cadre de son réalisme, tendance critiquée par Jamblique qui, tout en décelant la présence des nombres à chaque niveau de la réalité, semble concevoir les

objets mathématiques comme la projection par l'esprit humain de principes supérieurs."

17. Philippe, Marie-Dominique. 1975. "Originalité de "l'ens rationis" dans la philosophie de saint Thomas." Angelicum no. 52:91-124.

"Si Aristote a eu le mérite de distinguer avec beaucoup de netteté l'art de la logique de la philosophie elle-même, considérant cet art comme un organon, un instrument de la pensée, saint Thomas, commentateur d'Aristote, continue son effort; et dans une perspective critique il précise que si la philosophie regarde l'ens naturae, l'ens extra animam, la logique, elle, considère l'ens rationis, ce qui ne peut naître que dans notre connaissance intellectuelle (1).

Examinons ici les principaux textes où saint Thomas expose sa pensée sur ce point, pour essayer d'en saisir toute la signification et, à partir de là, mieux comprendre le réalisme de sa métaphysique. Car si l'ens naturae ne se définit pas par l'ens rationis - c'est plutôt l'inverse qui a lieu, puisque l'ens per se est l'ens extra animam, il peut cependant être mieux manifesté, pour nous, grâce à l'ens rationis. Il y a là quelque chose d'analogue à ce qui a lieu entre f'ens naturae et l'ens artificiale (qui peut, lui aussi, être appelé ens rationis en un sens élargi): l'ens artificiale se définit en fonction de l'ens naturae, et non l'inverse; mais la comparaison des deux nous aide à mieux saisir ce qu'est l'ens naturae au sens fondamental et premier." (p. 91)

(1) Cf. Comm. Mét., IV, 4, n. 574.

(2) Comm. Mét., VII, 1, n. 1245.

18. Putallaz, François-Xavier. 1983. "Autour de la connaissance intuitive des non-existants chez Ockham." Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie no. 30:447-467.

Studi in Italiano

1. Boccaccini, Federico. 2010. "Quasi umbrae entium. Suarez e Brentano sull'ens rationis." In Francisco Suarez and His Legacy. The Impact of Suarezian Metaphysics and Epistemology on Modern Philosophy, edited by Sgarbi, Marco, 271-294. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

2. Cova, Luciano. 1976. "Francesco di Meyronnes e Walter Catton nella controversia scolastica sulla 'notitia intuitiva de re non existente'." Medioevo no. 2:227-252.

Abstract: "The paper examines the position of two Franciscan fourteenth-century theologians about the question regarding the possibility (“naturaliter” or “de potentia Dei”) of a non-existing object’s intuitive knowledge. Even if in very different ways and with distinct purposes, both Francis of Meyronnes in Paris and Walter Chatton in Oxford in the same years seem to defend the gnoseology of Duns Scotus, in polemic (but also partially in agreement) with Peter Aureoli and William of Ockham."

3. Di Liso, Saverio. 1984. "Domingo de Soto sulla questione 'Utrum subiectum logicae sit ens rationis'." Rivista di Storia della Filosofia no. 53:567-598.

4. Lenzi, Massimiliano, and Maierù, Alfonso, eds. 2009. Discussioni sul nulla tra Medioevo ed età moderna. Firenze: Olschki.

5. Lombardo, Mario Gaetano. 1995. La forma che dà l'essere alle cose. Enti di ragione e bene trascendentale in Suárez, Leibniz, Kant. Milano: Istituto Propaganda Libraria.

6. Poggi, Stefano. 2009. "Da Wolff a Herbart: l’ontologia di un soggetto inesistente." Quaestio. Journal of the History of Metaphysics no. 9:325-333.

7. Raspa, Venanzio. 1996. "Su ciò che non esiste. Da Bolzano a Meinong: un excursus nella filosofia austriaca." Studi Urbinati no. 67:115-201.

8. Roncaglia, Gino. 1992. "Buone e cattive fantasie: la riflessione sugli enti inesistenti nella logica di Bartholomäus Keckermann." Metaxy no. 13:80-104.

9. ———. 1994. "Utrum impossibile sit significabile: Buridano, Marsilio di Ighen e la chimera." In Filosofia e teologia nel Trecento. Studi in ricordo di Eugenio Randi, edited by Bianchi, Luca, 259-282. Louvain-la-Neuve: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales.

10. Sillitti, Giovanna. 1980. Tragelaphos. Storia di una metafora e di un problema. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

Estudos en Español

1. Azanza, Ana. 1995. "La polemica de Pedro de Atarrabia (m. 1347) con Pedro Aureolo (m. 1322) sobre la intuicion del no-existente." Revista Espanola de Filosofia Medieval no. 2:71-78.

2. Barroso Fernández, Óscar. 2011. "Los entes de razón en Suárez. Una concepción barroca de la realidad." Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía no. 28:135-161.

Abstract: "In this paper I shall show the relevant role which the beings of reason play in Suarez's philosophy, namely, the role of being the guarantee of the scientific validity. For this thesis it is basic to discover the difference between the chimera and other beings of reason: the negation, the relation of reason and the privation. In this way, Suarez sets the basis of the properly baroque way of understanding the world as an extra-mental reality which is only cognoscible through the artful device of the being of reason. Suarez conceives the science from the Aristotelean perspective, that is why he does not appreciate the mathematical beings of reason. Nevertheless, we do believe that the notion of being of reason is helpful in the comprehension of the singularity of the baroque metaphysics in comparison to the posterior ontologism. We enter, therefore, in discussion with the marked tendency to interpret the metaphysics of Suarez in an ontological way."

3. Beuchot, Mauricio. 1987. Metafísica. La ontologia aristotélico-tomista de Francisco de Araújo. Ciudad de Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico UNAM.

4. Fernández-Rodríguez, José Luis. 1972. El ente de razón en Francisco Araújo. Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra.

5. ———. 1994. "El "ens rationis", un caso de objeto puro." Anuario Filosófico no. 27:297-318.

6. ———. 1997. "Etiología del ente de razón." Philosophica no. 19-20:109-120.

7. ———. 1997. "Tipología del ente de razón." Anuario Filosófico no. 30:361-379.

8. González, Angel Luis. 1994. "Lo meramente posible." Anuario Filosófico no. 27:345-364.

9. Rovira, Rogelio. 2000. "La quididades paradójicas. Sobre la contribución de Antonio Millán-Puelles a la doctrina clasica del ente de razón." Pensamiento no. 56:265-284.

10. Yela Utrilla, Juan Francisco. 1948. "El Ente de Razón en Suàrez." Pensamiento no. 4:271-303.

Studien in Deutsch

1. Andersen, Claus A. 2016. Metaphysik im Barockscotismus. Untersuchungen zum Metaphysikwerk des Bartholomaeus Mastrius. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Mit Dokumentation der Metaphysik in der scotistischen Tradition ca. 1620-1750

2. Barz, Wolfgang. 2008. "Aussersein des reinen Gegenstandes – ein Berührungspunkt zwischen Meinong und Quine." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 62:358-384.

3. Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz. 2005. "Drei Versionen der Meinongschen Logik." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 59:49-70.

4. Kobusch, Theo. 1996. "Ens inquantum ens und ens rationis. Ein aristotelisches Problem in der Philosophie des Duns Scotus und Wilhelm Ockham." In Aristotle in Britain during the Middle Ages, edited by Marenbon, John, 157-175. Turnhout: Brepols.

Proceedings of the International conference at Cambridge 8-11 April 1994 organized by the Société Internationale pour l'Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale.

5. Kraus, Oskar. 1929. "Gegen entia rationis, sogennante irreale oder ideale Gegenstände." Philosophische Hefte no. 2:257-273.

6. Rode, Christian. 2001. "Sein oder Nichtsein. Hervaeus Natalis und Wilhelm von Ockham über das ens rations." In Umbrüche: Historische Wendepunkte der Philosophie von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit, edited by Kahnert, Klaus and Mojsisch, Burkhard, 77-98. Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner.

7. ———. 2004. Franciscus de Prato. Facetten seiner Philosophie im Blick auf Hervaeus Natalis und Wilhelm von Ockham. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.

8. Zimmermann, Albert. 1967. "Eine anonyme Quaestio: „Utrum haec sit vera: Homo est animal homine non exsistente"." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 49:183-200.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Key Terms in Ontology: Substance. History and Definitions by Major Philosophers

The traditional concept of 'Substance'

"The term 'substance' is one of the most confusing terms in philosophy. For Aristotle, at least some of the time, the paradigm cases of substances were, as he put it, 'this man, this horse', i.e. particular things of that kind. For complicated historical reasons, however, substance has sometimes come to be equated with what Aristotle called 'matter'; thus iron and sulphur, and other stuffs, have come to be called 'substances'. For further complicated historical reasons substance came to be regarded by e.g. Locke as the underlying something or other which is supposed to give support to the properties that inhere in it. Indeed the Latin etymology of the term 'substance' will suggest to anyone having a sensitivity to it that notion of something standing beneath the properties. Locke thus called it a 'something I know not what' -- a suggestion that is not conveyed by either of the other two usages. The situation is complicated still further by the fact that the Latin etymology is relevant only to those modern discussions which rely on the term 'substance'. The Greek word which Aristotle used -- 'ousia' -- and which is traditionally translated 'substance' has none of the suggestions that the Latin etymology of 'substance' provides, but has additional suggestions of its own, particularly a connexion with being. (The feminine present participle of the verb 'to be' in Greek is ousia; ousia has the form of an abstract noun and is for that reason naturally to be translated 'being' or 'beingness', but Aristotle often uses the word with an article to indicate a particular kind of being, a particular kind of thing.)" (p. 60)

From: David Hamlyn, Metaphysics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1984.

"For Aristotle, 'substances' are the things which exist in their own right, both the logically ultimate subjects of predication and the ultimate objects of scientific inquiry. They are the unified material objects, as well as the natural stuffs, identifiable in sense-experience, each taken to be a member of a natural species with its 'form' and functional essence. Entities in other categories -- qualities, actions, relations and so forth -- are treated as dependent on, if not just abstracted aspects of, these independent realities. With the rise of mechanistic physics in the seventeenth century, the Aristotelian multiplicity of substances was reduced to universal matter mechanically differentiated. This move sharpened the issue of the relation of mind to the physical world. The consequent variety of ways in which the notion of substance was manipulated by materialists, dualists, immaterialists and anti-dogmatists encouraged later scepticism about the distinction between independent realities and human abstractions, and so idealism. Twentieth-century conceptualism, like some earlier versions of idealism, rejects the distinction altogether, commonly ascribing the logical priority of material things in natural language to the utility of a folk physics, as if they were the theoretical entities of everyday life. As such, their identity and existence are determined only through applications of a theory outdated by modern science. Yet this 'top-down', holistic philosophy of language is belied by the detailed insights of traditional logic, which point clearly to a 'bottom-up' account of classification and identity, that is an account which recognizes the possibility of perceptually picking out material objects prior to knowledge of their kind of nature, and of subsequently classifying them. The idea that material things are theoretical entities, and that their individuation is accordingly kind-dependent, is a hangover from an atomistic approach to perception which calls on theory to tie sensory information together. A more accurate understanding of sensation as the already integrated presentation of bodies in spatial relations to one another and to the perceiver is consonant with the possibility denied by the idealist - namely, that, with respect of its primitive referents, language and thought are shaped around reality itself, the independent objects given in active sense-experience. That the coherence or discrete unity of material objects has a physical explanation does not mean that physics explains it away." (p. 205)

From: Michael R. Ayers, "Substance" in: Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York: Routledge 1998.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on the History of "Substance" in Philosophy

Bibliography

1. Alverny, Marie-Thèrese d'. 1988. "Substance in Arabic Philosophy: Al-Farabi's Discussion." Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association no. 61:88-97.

2. Anscombe, Elizabeth G.M., and Geach, Peter Thomas. 1973. Three Philosophers. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Contents: Analytical Table of Contents VI-XX; G. E. M. Anscombe: Aristotle: The Search for Substance 1; P. T. Geach: Aquinas 65; P. T. Geach: Frege 127-162.

3. Arpe, Curt. 1938. Das Ti En Einai Bei Aristoteles. Hamburg: Walter de Gruyter.

Reprint: New York, Arno Press, 1976 with Ernst Hambruch, Logische Regeln der Platonischen Schule in der Aristotelischen Topik (1904).

4. ———. 1941. " Substantia." Philologus.Zeitschrift für das Klassische Altertum no. 94:65-78.

5. Aubenque, Pierre. 1962. Le Problème De L'être Chez Aristote. Essai Sur La Problématique Aristotélicienne. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

6. ———. 2000. "Sur L'ambivalence Du Concept Aristotélicien De Substance." In Ontologie Et Dialogue. Mélanges En Hommage À Pierre Aubenque Avec Sa Collaboration À L'occasion De Son 70e Anniversaire, edited by Cordero, Nestor-Luis, 93-106. Paris: Vrin.

Repris dans: P. Aubenque, Problèmes aristotéliciens. I. Philosophie théorique, Paris: Vrin, 2009, pp. 197-210.

7. ———. 2002. "La Transformation Cartésienne Du Concept Aristotélicien De Substance." In Le Style De La Pensée. Recueil De Textes En Hommage À Jacques Brunschwig, edited by Canto-Sperber, Monique and Pellegrin, Pierre, 490-501. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Repris dans: P. Aubenque, Problèmes aristotéliciens. I. Philosophie théorique, Paris: Vrin, 2009, pp. 341-350.

8. Bärthlein, Karl. 1968. "Zur Entstehung Der Aristotelischen Substanz-Akzidens-Lehre." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 50:196-253.

9. Bennett, Jonathan. 1987. "Substratum." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 4:197-215.

Reprinted in: Vere Chappell (ed.), Locke, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 129-148.

10. Berti, Enrico. 1975. "Logical and Ontological Priority among the Genera of Substance in Aristotle." In Kephalaion: Studies in Greek Philosophy and Its Continuation Offered to Professor C. J. De Vogel, edited by Mansfeld, Jaap and Rijk, Lambertus Marie de, 55-69. Assen: Van Gorcum.

"Among the many still unsolved problems of Aristotelian exegesis is that concerning the relationship between the three types of substance which are distinguished in book XII of the Metaphysics, that is to say, terrestrial (mobile and corruptible), celestial (mobile and incorruptible), and supracelestial (incorruptible and immobile) (1). In fact some scholars supposed they could regard this relationship as an instance of pros hen homonymy (2), involving a priority of the immobile substance which is not only ontological but also logical (3); some identified it with the relationship of succession (to ephexes), understood as a particular sort of pros hen homonymy and therefore as implying logical priority as well (4); finally, some identified it with the relationship of succession itself, without specifying whether this should be regarded as implying not only ontological, but also logical priority (5). In spite of this variety of solutions, it seems to me that the problem has not been discussed with sufficient thoroughness and, especially, that the following issues have not been definitively clarified : a) whether in fact the three above-mentioned types of substance are irreducible to a common genus, and therefore give rise to a true and proper homonymy or equivocity of the notion of substance; b) whether this homonymy, if it subsists, allows some sort of logical unification, i.e. a priority of a genus in relation to the others which is not only ontological but also logical; also, what would be the precise nature of this logical priority.

An answer to these questions seems important for the general interpretation of Aristotle's philosophy. As a matter of fact, since substance, for Aristotle, is what gives unity to all being, a decision concerning the type of unity which it possesses determines the conception which we must have of the very unity of being; and since, furthermore and that of the other types of substance, that is to say, the problem of the unity, and therefore of the possibility, of the science of being qua being, i.e. of philosophy itself.

The present investigation does not claim, of course, to provide a definitive reply to the questions enumerated above, but merely offers itself as a contribution to their discussion, by analyzing some passages in Aristotle which have not been sufficiently taken into account in this connexion." pp. 55-56

(1) Cf. Aristot., Metaph. XII 1, 1069a33-34; 6, 1071b3-4. For convenience I mention the former under the denomination of terrestrial substances, though they occupy the whole sphere under the sky of the moon, and the latter under the denomination of supracelestial substances, though, to be exact, they, being immaterial, could not be localized spatially.

(2) J. Owens, The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics, Toronto, 1963 (2nd ed.), 279-300, 455-473; G. Patzig, Ontologie und Theologie in der "Metaphysik" des Aristoteles, Kant-Studien 52, 1960-61, 199-201.

(3) By "ontological priority" ( physei or ousiai) I mean the possibility that some things have of existing independently of others, while the latter cannot exist without them (cf. Metaph. VII, 1019a1-4); by "logical priority" ( logoi) I mean the fact that the notion of some things is necessarily contained in the notion, or definition, of others, while the notion of these others is not contained in the definition of the former ( Metaph. V 11, 1018b30-36). On this distinction cf. G. E. L. Owen, Logic and Metaphysics in some earlier works of Aristotle, in: Aristotle and Plato in the mid-fourth century, Goteborg 1960, 170-72.

(4) H. J. Kramer, Zur geschichtlichen Stellung der "Metaphysik" des Aristoteles, Kant-Studien 58, 1967, 349; H. Happ, Hyle, Berlin 1971, 337-342.

(5) G. Colle, Aristote, Métaphysique, Livre IV, Louvain-Paris 1931, 63; J. Tricot, Aristote, La Métaphysique, Paris 19622, I, 190, n.4; G. Reale, Aristotele, La Metafisica, Napoli 1968, I, 329.

11. Boehm, Rudolf. 1976. La Métaphysique D'aristote. Le Fondamental Et L'essential : "De L'etre Et De L'etant", (Livre Vii). Paris: Gallimard.

Traduit de l'allemand Das Grundlegende Und Das Wesentliche. Zu Aristoteles' Abhandlung ÜBer Das Sein Und Das Seiende' (Metaphysik Z), Den Haag: Aspen Publishers Inc, 1965, presenté par Emmanuel Martineau; avec une note de Jean Franois Courtine.

12. Bolton, Robert. 1995. "Science and the Science of Substance in Aristotle's Metaphysics Z." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly no. 76:419-469.

Reprinted in: Frank A. Lewis and Robert Bolton (eds.), Form, Matter and Mixture in Aristotle, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996, pp. 231-280.

13. ———. 2002. "Substance and the Definition of Definition in Aristotle." In Le Style De La Pensée. Recueil De Textes En Hommage À Jacques Brunschwig, edited by Canto-Sperber, Monique and Pellegrin, Pierre, 155-181. Paris: Belles Lettres.

14. Bos, Egbert Peter. 2000. "Some Notes on the Meaning of the Term 'S ubstantia' in the Tradition of Aristotle's Categories." In L'élaboration Du Vocabulaire Philosophique Au Moyen Âge, edited by Hamesse, Jacqueline and Steel, Carlos, 511-537. Turnhout: Brepols.

15. Braun, René. 1977. Deus Christianorum. Recherches Sur Le Vocabulaire Doctrinal De Tertullien. Paris: Éditions Augustiniennes.

Deuxième édition revue et augmentée (Premère edition 1962).

16. Burnyeat, Myles, ed. 1979. Notes on Book Zeta of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Oxford: Sub-Faculty of Philosophy.

Being the record by Myles Burnyeat and others of a seminar held in London 1975-1979.

Reprinted 1986.

17. ———. 2001. A Map of Metaphysics Zeta. Pittsburgh: Mathesis Publications.

18. Collinge, N.E. 1971. "The Senate and the Essence: Gerousia and Ousia." Glotta no. 49:218-229.

19. Courtine, Jean-Franois. 1980. "Note Complémentaire Pour L'histoire Du Vocabulaire De L'être. Les Traductions Latines D' Ousía Et La Compréhension Romano-Stoïcienne De L'être." In Concepts Et Catégories De La Pensée Antique, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 33-87. Paris: Vrin.

Repris dans: J-F. Courtine, Les catégories de l'être. Études de philosophie ancienne et médiévale, Paris: Press Universitaires de France, 2003, pp. 11-77.

20. Dancy, Russell. 1975. "On Some of Aristotle's First Thoughts About Substances." Philosophical Review no. 84:338-373.

21. Dörrie, Heinrich. 1955. " Hypostasis. Wirt- Und Bedeutungsgeschicte." Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaft zu Göttingen, phil--hist.Klasse no. 3:35-92.

Reprinted in: H. Dörrie, Platonica minora, München, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1976, pp. 13-69.

22. Driscoll, John A. 1979. "The Platonic Ancestry of Primary Substance." Phronesis no. 24:253-269.

23. ———. 1981. " Eide in Aristotle's Earlier and Later Theories of Substance." In Studies in Aristotle, edited by O'Meara, Dominic J., 129-159. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

Reprinted in: Terence Irwin (ed.), Aristotle. Substance, Form, and Matter, New York: Garland, 1995.

24. Dumoulin, Bertrand. 1983. "L' Ousia Dans Les Catégories Et Dans La Métaphysique." In Zweifelhaftes Im Corpus Aristotelicum. Studien Zu Einigen Dubia. Akten Des 9. Symposium Aristotelicum, Berlin, 7-16 September 1981, edited by Moraux, Paul and Wiesner, Jürgen, 37-71. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

25. Erdin, Franz. 1939. Das Wort Hypostasis. Seine Bedeutungsgeschichtliche Entwicklung in Der Altchristlichen Literatur Bis Zum Abschluss Der Trinitarischen Auseinandersetzungen. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder.

Freiburger Theologische Studien vol. 52.

26. Ermano, Andrea. 2000. Substanz Als Existenz. Eine Philosophische Auslegung Der Prote Ousia. Mit Text, Ubersetzung Und Diskussion Von Aristoteles, Categoriae 1-5. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

27. Ferrarin, Alfredo. 2001. Hegel and Aristotle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

28. Fonfara, Dirk. 2003. Die Ousia-Lehren Des Aristoteles. Untersuchungen Zur Kategorienschrift Und Zur Metaphysik. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

29. Frede, Michael. 1987. "Substance in Aristotle's Metaphysics." In Essays in Ancient Philosophy, 72-98. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

30. Furth, Montgomery. 1988. Substance, Form, and Psyche. An Aristotelian Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

31. Galluzzo, Gabriele, and Mariani, Mauro, eds. 2006. Aristotle's Metaphysics Book Z: The Contemporary Debate. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale.

32. Ghellinck, Joseph de. 1941. "L'entrée D' Essentia, Substantia, Et Autre Mots Apparentés Dans Le Latin Médiéval " Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi no. 16:77-112.

33. ———. 1942. " Essentia Et Substantia. Note Complémentaire." Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi no. 17:129-133.

34. Gill, Mary Louise. 1989. Aristotle on Substance. The Paradox of Unity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

35. Gilson, Étienne. 1952. Being and Some Philosophers. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.

36. Gutschmidt, Holger, Lang-Balestra, Antonella, and Segalerba, Gianluigi, eds. 2008. Substantia - Sic Et Non. Eine Geschichte Des Substanzbegriffs Von Der Antike Bis Zur Gegenwart in Einzelbeiträgen. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

37. Halleux, André de. 1984. "'Hypostase' Et 'Personne' Dans La Formation Du Dogme Trinitaire." Revue d'Histoire Ecclésiastique no. 79:311-369.

Deuxième partie: pp. 623-670.

Repris dans: A. de Halleux, Patrologie et oecuménisme. Recueil d'études, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990, pp. 113-214.

38. Hartman, Edwin. 1976. "Aristotle on the Identity of Substance and Essence." Philosophical Review no. 85:545-561.

39. Irwin, Terence, ed. 1995. Aristotle. Substance, Form and Matter. New York: Garland.

40. Jolivet, Régis. 1929. La Notion De Substance. Essai Historique Et Critique Sur Le Développement Des Doctrines D'aristote À Nos Jours. Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne.

41. Lewis, Frank A. 1991. Substance and Predication in Aristotle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

42. ———. 1996. "Aristotle on the Unity of Substance." In Form, Matter, and Mixture in Aristotle, edited by Lewis, Frank A. and Bolton, Robert, 39-81. Maiden: Blackwell.

43. Loux, Michael J. 2005. Primary Ousia. An Essay on Aristotle's Metaphysics Z and H. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

44. MacKinnon, D.M. 1965. "Aristotle's Conception of Substance." In New Essays on Plato and Aristotle, edited by Bambrough, Renford, 97-119. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

45. Mansion, Suzanne. 1946. "La Première Doctrine De La Substance: La Substance Selon Aristote." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 44:349-369.

46. Marten, Rainer. 1962. Ousia Im Denken Platons. Meisenheim am Glan: Verlag Anton Hain.

47. Marx, Werner. 1988. "Ousiologie Et Théologie." In Aristote Aujourd'hui, edited by Sinaceur, Mohammed Allal, 44-59. Paris: Éditions érès.

48. Moingt, Joseph. 1964. Théologie Trinitaire De Tertullien. Paris: Aubier.

Vol II: Voir la Deuxième Partie: Substantialité et Individualité. Étude du Vocabulaire Philosophique.

49. Moreau, Joseph. 1955. "L'être Et L'essence Dans La Philosophie D'aristote." In Autour D'aristote. Recueil D'études De Philosophie Ancienne Et Médiévale Offert À Monseigneur A. Mansion, 181-204. Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain.

50. Motte, André, and Somville, Pierre, eds. 2008. Ousia Dans La Philosophie Grecque Des Origines À Aristote. Lovain-la-Neuve: Peeters.

Travaux du Centre d'études aristotéliciennes de l'Université de Liège.

51. Ong-Van-Cung, Kim-Sang. 1997. "Substance Et Distinctions Chez Descartes, Suárez Et Leurs Prédecesseurs Médiévaux." In Descartes Et Le Moyen-Age, edited by Biard, Joël and Rashed, Roshdi, 215-229. Paris: Vrin.

52. Pasnau, Robert. 2011. Metaphysical Themes, 1274-1689. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

53. Perez Paoli, Ubaldo Ramon. 1990. Der Plotinische Begriff Von Hypostasis Und Die Augustinische Bestimmung Gottes Als Subiectum. Würzburg: Augustinus-Verlag.

54. Reeve, C.D.C. 2000. Substantial Knowledge. Aristotle's Metaphysics. Indianapoli: Hackett.

55. Richard, Marcel. 1945. "L'introduction Du Mot 'Hypostase' Dans La Théologie De L'incarnation (Première Partie)." Mélanges de science religieuse no. 2:5-32.

56. ———. 1945. "L'introduction Du Mot 'Hypostase' Dans La Théologie De L'incarnation (Deuxième Partie)." Mélanges de science religieuse no. 2:243-270.

57. Robertson, David G. 1998. "Stoic and Aristotelian Notions of Substance in Basil of Caesarea." Vigiliae Christianae no. 52:393-417.

"Basil is somewhere in between Stoic and Aristotelian doctrines of substance, while his mind is also guided on these matters by his theological predecessors and contemporaries. It is possible to see evidence in Basil of deeply ingrained habits of thought which he carries into his writings from his early training in Stoic dialectic. One outstanding example of this may be seen in his insistence that the ousia of God must have its being securely rooted in a hypostasis, while the Stoics would say that nothing can exist without the possession of ousia (their first category) as a qualified thing ( poion). What one does not find in Basil is a doctrine of divine substance and persons which can support a consistent conceptuality derived from Stoic logic."

58. Romano, Francesco, and Taormina, Daniela Patrizia, eds. 2002. Hyparxis E Hypostasis Nel Neoplatonismo. Atti Del I Colloquio Internazionale Del Centro Di Ricerca Sul Neoplatonismo (Catania, 1-3 Ottobre 1992). Firenze: Olschki.

59. Rosenberg, Jay F. 2000. "Identity and Substance in Hume and Kant." Topoi. An International Review of Philosophy no. 19:137-145.

60. Rosier, Irène. 1987. "Les Acceptions Du Terme ' Substantia' Chez Pierre Hélie." In Gilbert De Poitiers Et Ses Contemporains, edited by Jolivet, Jean and Libera, Alain de, 299-324. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

61. Ruler, Han van. 1999. "'Something, I Know Not What'. The Concept of Substance in Early Modern Thought." In Between Demonstration and Imagination. Essays in the History of Science and Philosophy Presented to John D. North, edited by Nauta, Lodi and Vanderjagt, Arjo, 365-391. Leiden: Brill.

62. Salbego, Luigi. 1976. ""Essentia" Nel De Trinitate Di S. Agostino E Nel Monologion Di S. Anselmo." In Saint Anselme Ses Précurseurs Et Ses Contemporains, edited by Kohlenberger, Helmut, 205-220. Frankfurt: Minerva.

63. Smalbrugger, Matthias. 1989. "Sur L'emploi Et L'origine Du Terme "Essentia" Chez Augustin." Augustiniana no. 39:436-445.

"Dans le présent article, nous nous proposons d'examiner un aspect de la théologie d'Augustin, à savoir son emploi du terme essentia. P. Hadot se demande si Augustin «a ignoré la théologie trinitaire de Victorinus ou a renoncé à l'utiliser», sans choisir l'un des termes de l'alternative (1); peut-être une lecture attentive de quelques passages montrera-t-elle qu'Augustin a volontairement renoncé à suivre son prédécesseur." p. 436

(1) P. Hadot, Porphyre et Victorinus, Paris 1968, p. 477.

64. Spellman, Lynne. 2005. Substance and Separation in Aristotle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

65. Stead, George Christopher. 1975. "The Concept of Divine Substance." Vigiliae Christianae no. 29:1-14.

66. ———. 1977. Divine Substance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

67. ———. 1985. Substance and Illusion in the Christian Fathers. London: Variorum Reprints.

68. Stegmaier, Werner. 1974. Der Substanzbegriff Der Metaphysik. Aristoteles, Descartes, Leibniz. Hirschlanden: Gedruckt bei Fa. Schober.

69. Tonelli, Giorgio. 1961. "Critiques of the Notion of Substance Prior to Kant." Tijdschrift voor Filosofie no. 23:285-301.

"The Ages of Reason and Enlightenment aimed not only to advance knowledge but also tried to distinguish carefully between things which can and cannot be known. Characteristic of those ages is the manner in which metaphysical speculation was reduced by the sciences or brushed aside by the leading philosophical schools.

The general problem of the limits of human understanding became one of the leading philosophical themes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Doubts about the possible scope of human reasoning concerned not only God, the spirits, and the nature of the human soul, (1) but also went to the very core of that reality which man was then trying to subdue intellectually; several conceptual elements were discovered whose nature many thinkers found mysterious and inaccessible to the mind. In fact, beside a clear awareness of the limits of human understanding in general, the notions of mathematical infinity, (2) force, (3) and substance were considered by many philosophers to be above man’s reason. The purpose of the present paper is to study the criticisms which were directed against the last of these notions, criticisms which played a rather important role in the famous "Copernican revolution" of 1769 at the start of Kant's critical period. (4) We shall consider not only criticisms of the notion of substance itself, but also those of the closely related notions of essence and materia prima; these often include the notion of substance, or serve as a foundation for." (pp. 285-286)

(1) For opinions about the human soul in that period see: G. Tonelli, Elementi melodologici e metafisici in Kant precritico (1745-1768), Cap. VII, § 30 and foll. About God's unintelligibility, Ibid., Cap. VII, § 17 (In the II Vol., to be published in short. Vol. I, Torino 1959).

(2) See G. Tonelli, Le problème des bornes de l'entendement humain au XVllle siècle et la genèse du criticisme kantien particulièrement par rapport à la question de l’infini, "Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale", 1959.

(3) See Tonelli, Elementi, Cap. VII, § 21 and foll.

(4) A not very thorough history of the notion of substance is in K. Heidmann, Der Substanz-Begriff von Abälard bis Spinoza, Berlin 1889, (Dissertation).

70. Wedin, Michael. 2000. Aristotle's Theory of Substance. The Categories and Metaphysics Zeta. New York: Oxford University Press.

71. Witt, Charlotte. 1989. Substance and Essence in Aristotle. An Interpretation of Metaphysics Vii-Ix. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

72. ———. 1989. "Aristotelian Essentialism Revisited." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 27:285-298.

73. Witt, Rex E. 1933. "Hypostasis." In Amicitiae Corolla. A Volume of Essays Presented to James Rendel Harris, on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, edited by Wood, H.G., 319-343. London: University of London Press.

74. Woolhouse, Roger S. 1993. Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz. The Concept of Substance in Seventeenth-Century Metaphysics. New York: Routledge.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on the Contemporary Theories of Substance

Bibliography

1. Anscombe, G. E. M. 1964. "Symposium: Substance."Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes no. 38:69-78.

2. Armstrong, David Malet. 1997.A World of State of Affairs . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Preface XI; -XIII; 1. Introduction 1; 2. Some preliminary doctrines 11; 3. Properties I 19; 4. Properties II 47; 5. Powers and dispositions 69; 6. Relations 85; 7. Particulars 95; 8. States of affairs 113; 9. Independence 139; 10. Modality 148; 11. Number 175; 12. Classes 185; 13. Totality states of affairs 196; 14. Singular causation 202; 15. Laws I 220; 16. Laws Ii 242; 17. The unity of the world 263; References 270; Index 277.

"During the past twenty years or so, I have been working on ontological questions. What are universals, laws of nature, dispositions and powers, possibilities and necessities, classes, numbers? The present essay tries to bring all these topics together in a unified metaphysical scheme, an ontology. As a result, there is a certain amount of recapitulation of earlier writing. But putting the pieces together turned out to be quite difficult. A good deal of further work was necessary. Many mistakes, as I now think of them, had to be corrected. So what follows is not a mere sum of past thinking." (From the Preface)

"The hypothesis of this work is that the world, all that there is, is a world of states of affairs. Others, Wittgenstein in particular, have said that the world is a world of facts and not a world of things. These theses are substantially the same, though differently expressed.

The general structure of states of affairs will be argued to be this. A state of affairs exists if and only if a particular (at a later point to be dubbed athin particular) has a property or, instead, a relation holds between two or more particulars. Each state of affairs, and each constituent of each state of affairs, meaning by their constituents the particulars, properties, relations and, in the case of higher-order states of affairs, lower-order states of affairs, is a contingent existent. The properties and the relations are universals, not particulars. The relations are all external relations.

It is useful to admitmolecular states of affairs. These, however, are mere conjunctions (never negations or disjunctions) of the original states of affairs. Molecular states of affairs constitute no ontological addition to their conjuncts. But in one special case, to be mentioned in a moment, they become very important.

For first-order states of affairs, that is, states of affairs that do not have states of affairs as constituents, the Tractarian thesis of Independence is somewhat speculatively, but nevertheless hopefully, advanced. No such state of affairs entails or excludes the existence of any other wholly distinct state of affairs. Given Independence, a rather simple and straightforward Combinatorial theory of what possibilities there are, can be put forward. If Independence fails, things get more complicated.

The present theory is not biased towards Atomism nor is it biased against Atomism. Anepistemic possibility that requires to be noted is the possibility that every (first-order) state of affairs is molecular, that is, analysable into a conjunction of states of affairs. (A simple if to a degree controversial example:a ' being F may be equivalent toa 's being G & a' being H, with F=G & H. The pattern may be repeated for G and H, and so for ever.) Every first-order state of affairs may be a nest of first-order states of affairs: states of affairs all the way down. To allow for this epistemic possibility, a Combinatorial theory of what possibilities there are requires further elaboration." pp. 1-2.

3. Ayers, Michael. 1991. "Substance: Prolegomenon to a Realist Theory of Identity."Journal of Philosophy no. 88:69-90.

"The aim of the present paper is to show how traditional realist doctrines, suitably interpreted, have an explanatory force that pragmatism or any other form of conceptualism cannot hope to match. The explanations it supplies are of structural features of our thinking to which considerations drawn from the philosophy of physics are simply irrelevant.

Although preconceptualist realists disagreed over what things are paradigm substances, as well as over the details of what it is to be a substance, it is not difficult to extract from the tradition at least a rough list of the category’s leading characteristics. Such a list of properties should even help us to map and understand the disagreements and divergences. Yet orthodoxy and broad principles are more relevant to the immediate purpose than heresy and idiosyncratic variations. The present argument will therefore assume that such things as horses and plane trees are paradigm substances, whereas homoeomerous substances such as gold and water call for special, but integrally related treatment (treatment sketched out below under the heading “materiality”). Attributes, such as a thing’s redness or squareness, and events, actions, or processes, such as walks, walking, thunderstorms, and the like, exemplify nonsubstances or (for the sake of a single name) “modes.”

Most of the claims embodied in the following list have on occasion been impatiently brushed aside, or simply ignored, by modern philosophers arguing on behalf either of empiricism or of conceptualism. Some of them, however, have been reinterpreted and absorbed into this or that version of conceptualism. One aim of the present argument is to reveal the coherence of the list, which will emerge in so far as each item can be explained, and needs to be explained, by reference to the others. Some effort will be made, of course, to present the principles as tenable, although more than one principle will be modified after consideration of the motives for which it has been held.

1. Substances are the ultimate subjects of predication, and therefore the only beings with independent existence.

2. Substances are real unities (both natural and logical).

3. Substances are material. Individual substances are distinguished from one another at any one time by their matter.

4. Substances exist all at once, and exist through time, or endure. (Events, in contrast, take time or unfold.)

5. Substances are active, the ultimate sources of change. Their underlying natures or essences are the ultimate principles of explanation.

6. Only substances fall into true natural kinds, and every truly individual substance is a member of a natural kind.

Let us consider these candidate properties of the category seriatim." (pp. 69-70).

4. Bastit, Michel. 2012.La Substance. Essai Métaphysique . Les Plans sur Bex (Suisse): Les Presses Universitaires de l'IPC.

Sommaire: Introduction 11; I. Comment pratiquer la métaphysique? 19; II. Substance et intuitions premières 57; III. La substance et ses accidents 67; IV. Propriétés ou tropes? 109; V. Pur individu, pur substrat, ou individuation? 151; VI. Indépendance et identité de la substance 187; VII. La substance forme en acte et cause de l'existence 229; Conclusion. Consistance ontologique et fécondité métaphysique 287; Bibliographie 293; Index nominum et rerum 303-308.

"La question de la substance s’impose au philosophe, en dépit des dénégations de certains ou en raison de ces dénégations.

Les expériences les plus naïves semblent bien nous présenter le monde sous forme d’êtres relativement autonomes dont dépendent d’autres réalités moins autonomes. Peut-être ces expériences premières sont-elles illusoires et doivent-elles être remises en cause par une connaissance mieux informée, notamment par les acquis des sciences naturelles. En tout état de cause, il est nécessaire et important de prendre position sur cette question. Bien des raisons militent en faveur de l’inscription de la substance à l’ordre du jour de la philosophie. Si toute la réalité doit se diviser en réalités autonomes et réalités non autonomes, la description et la compréhension de l’ensemble de la réalité est engagée dans cette problématique. La substance s’impose plus encore à la réflexion si l’on considère que la philosophie doit énumérer les êtres. Pour compter, il faut en effet catégoriser et donc distinguer à quel type d’êtres on a à faire. Mais la catégorisation implique à son tour de préciser les relations de dépendance entre les catégories et donc aussi entre les êtres. Le mot de réalité désigne ici l’être, l’ensemble des étants, de sorte qu’en mettant en relation ceux-ci entre eux il soit possible de parvenir à savoir quels sont ceux qui dépendent les uns des autres et quelles sont les causes de cette dépendance. Le terme de la recherche sera ainsi une connaissance des relations qui constituent la réalité et de ce fait mènera à la connaissance de cette réalité considérée elle-même comme un effet de ces relations de dépendance." (p. 11)

(...)

"Le premier chapitre de cet ouvrage est consacré à déterminer et justifier la méthode adoptée pour l’étude de la substance. Nous commenons par argumenter en faveur du réalisme, après quoi nous justifions naturellement l’utilisation d’une méthode descriptive et analytique, par décomposition et résolution, à condition de pousser cette analyse descriptive jusqu’à une analyse causale faisant ressortir les dépendances ontologiques inscrites dans la réalité. Sans recourir en permanence aux instruments formalisés, l’analyse est formelle au sens où elle ne vise pas à l’analyse d’une substance particulière mais à celle de la substance comme telle.

Le second chapitre essaie de saisir les intuitions les plus élémentaires qui conduisent vers la substance à partir d’une analyse du langage le plus ordinaire et de l’expérience sensible élémentaire. Il semble important, dans le cadre de l’option réaliste défendue et adoptée, de pouvoir demeurer en lien avec ces données primitives, même aux cours des analyses les plus abstraites.

Le troisième chapitre établit la réalité des accidents en montrant qu’il existe une partie de la réalité, accessible aux sens, qui est plus contingente et fluctuante que d’autres. Il précise que cette partie de la réalité n’existe que dans et grâce à l’existence d’une seconde partie de la réalité moins contingente et plus permanente, les substances. La question de l’existence de réalités intermédiaires entre ces deux-ci est traitée en distinguant des substances et des accidents concrets les propriétés et les accidents abstraits. Au terme, la division entre les substances et les accidents est largement justifiée et la confusion entre les deux types d’être apparaît contestable et dommageable à une description fidèle du monde.

Le chapitre quatre entame l’analyse de la substance elle-même et examine si elle peut se comprendre comme un ensemble de propriétés ou de tropes. La réponse est négative en raison de l’universalité des propriétés, de leur caractère abstrait et enfin du risque de défaut d’unité, que leur compréhension comme ce dont est faite la substance - fait courir à la substance. La discussion des tropes, tout en saluant leur caractère actuel, montre que leur notion est contradictoire et que leur mode d’unité ne permet pas non plus de rendre compte de la substance. On conclut à la nécessité d’une forme individuelle actuelle où se réalisent l’unité et l’actualisation des propriétés.

Le chapitre cinq discute l’identification de la substance soit avec un pur individu soit avec un pur substrat. Ces identifications s’avèrent impossibles en raison de l’indétermination des purs individus ou du substrat. Tout en acceptant le rôle fondamental du substrat pour certaines substances, il est démontré que seule la forme peut rendre compte de la détermination et de l’appartenance du substrat aux substances.

Le chapitre six exhibe les caractères fondamentaux de la substance et montre qu’ils résistent aux mises en cause dont ils sont l’objet sur la base soit des théories de la quadridimensionalité, soit de la non-localité, les unes et les autres inspirées par une interprétation discutable et nullement nécessaire des données scientifiques contemporaines. La discussion de l’individualité, de la distinction des endurants et des perdurants permet de conclure à la nécessité, pour préserver l’identité et l’indépendance de la substance, d’une partie substantielle première informante et déterminante. A partir de ces acquis est présentée une table des catégories qui place la substance actuelle au premier rang et dont dépendent les autres catégories d’êtres.

Le chapitre sept rejette la conception modale de la substance. Puis il examine un certain nombre de conceptions de la substance comme essence, comme famille de parties, comme individu existant et en retient certains éléments: partie première, dépendance et indépendance ontologiques, causalité. Enfin il montre comment la substance conue comme forme, partie première de la substance, actuelle, est seule capable de rendre compte complètement de la substance et de la manière dont elle existe." (pp. 14-16).

5. Boutot, Alain. 1998. "Les Théories De La Morphogenèse Et Le Dilemme De La Substance."Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 2.

"Les théories de la morphogenèse, à travers une approche tout-à-fait originale, c’est-à-dire structurale des morphologies, mettent un terme à cet idéalisme des relations. Dans ces théories, les formes empiriques ne sont pas de simples accidents de la matière, des épiphénomènes sans consistance, des configurations aléatoires dues au jeu des forces internes ou externes en présence, mais le reflet de structures mathématiques bien déterminées. Grâce à cette analyse, elles parviennent à concilier — dans une certaine limite bien évidemment — les deux points de vue que nous venons d’opposer: la thèse substantialiste et l’antithèse relationniste. Elles réussissent à conjuguer d’une manière qui pourra paraître paradoxale à première vue le primat des relations sur la substance, et le primat des substances sur les relations. Elles relativisent tout autant qu’elles substantialisent les relations. (35)" (p. 199)

(35) Afin de prévenir tout malentendu, il convient de lever dès à présent une ambiguïté concernant le sens que nous donnons ici au mot « substance ». Dans le chapitre 5 desCatégories , Aristote distingue deux acceptions de la substance: la substance peut désigner d'une part l’individu, le composé de matière et de forme (la substance première), et d’autre part l’essence (la substance seconde). Lorsque nous parlons d’une « relativisation » des substances, nous prenons le mot « substance » dans le premier de ces deux sens (individu), mais lorsque nous parlons d’une substantialisation des relations, nous le prenons dans le second (essence). La raison d’être de cette ambiguïté apparaîtra par la suite.

"On dit quelquefois que la philosophie moderne a substitué la question du sens à la vieille question de l’essence. Pour les modernes, à la différence des anciens, les choses n’ont pas d’essence, pas de nature, mais un sens, et ce sens leur vient du sujet ou de l’esprit. « C’est (...) nous-mêmes, dit Kant, qui introduisons l’ordre et la régularité dans les phénomènes que nous appelons nature, et nous ne pourrions les y trouver s’ils n’y avaient pas été mis originairement par la nature de notre esprit »(41). Cet antagonisme du sens et de l’essence est au fond une nouvelle formulation du dilemme de la substance dont nous sommes parti. Les théories de la morphogenèse réussissent à réduire cet antagonisme en concevant l’essence comme sens, c’est-à-dire comme structure et réciproquement. Elles amorcent ce faisant la constitution de ce que Thom appelle une sémiophysique. une physique du sens. La nature a un sens qu’il s’agit de découvrir. Ce sens est contenu dans des structures typiques, qui ne sont pas des constructions axiomatiques plus ou moins arbitraires, des systèmes formels, mais possèdent une objectivité fondamentale. Elles constituent la raison d’être de la chose, et abritent son essence. Cette sémiophysique nous reconduit d’une certaine manière dans les parages de la pensée aristotélicienne de l’être naturel comme composé d’une matière et d’une forme. Elle ne la reproduit certes pas purement et simplement, mais la renouvelle en profondeur en substituant à la vieille notion de forme le concept moderne de structure, réalisant ainsi l’alliance apparemment improbable de la substance et de la relation." (p. 204)

(41)Critique de ia raison pure . Paris, PUF. 1975. p. 140.

6. Brennan, Sheilah O'Flynn. 1977. "Substance within Substance."Process Studies no. 7:14-26.

"It is undoubtedly true that Whitehead’s conception of the presence of one actual entity in another plays a key role in his metaphysics. On it, indeed, he bases such central themes of his philosophy as his concepts of organism, internal relations, universal relativity, process, and time. Nevertheless, not all Whiteheadian scholars have been convinced that he has successfully accounted for the immanence of substance within substance.(1) The following study will undertake an investigation of Whitehead’s metaphysics in order to determine whether it provides adequate support for his claim. At the same time, since Whitehead supposes his position to traverse directly an Aristotelian thesis, the article will also attempt to establish in what manner and to what extent Whitehead is in fact in opposition to the Greek philosopher." (p. 14)

(1) 1 Cf. Dorothy Emmet,Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism (New York: 1966), pp. xxii-xxvi. After reading her hook, Whitehead expressed appreciation, but took her to task for stressing the transmission of form to the neglect of his theory of immanence. You seem to me at various points," he writes, "to forget my doctrine of ‘immanence’ which governs the whole treatment of objectification. Thus at times you write as the connection between past and present is merely that of a transfer of character." In the preface of the second edition, Emmet confesses that she is at a loss to explain what Whitehead meant. "I do not know," she says, "that anyone has really elucidated it. Professor Christian had a try at it in hisAn Interpretation of Whitehead’s Metaphysics but came down on the view that what are repeated from one actual occasion to another are characteristics. ‘[his is undoubtedly the view which is easiest to make plausible, and I was inclined to it myself; but we have Whitehead’s emphatic statement that it is not what he meant." Victor Lowe also testifies to the fact that "many philosophers laid downProcess and Reality unconvinced that the author had said clearly how one actual entity can be present in another" (Understanding Whitehead [Baltimore, 1966], p. 360). Quoting Whitehead, he indicates what he thinks might be the reason for this lack of understanding: "The truism that we can only conceive in terms of universals has been stretched to mean that we can only feel in terms of universals." However, even if one admits on the basis of experience alone that one feels individuals, and that by this very fact one is inclined to the view that somehow individuals are immanent, the question still remains: Does Whitehead’s metaphysics provide an adequate philosophical account of this fact of experience?

7. Broackes, Justin. 2006. "Substance."Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 106:131-166.

"The Aristotelian notion of a First Substance (like Fido the dog), an enduring thing with perhaps changing properties, became ridiculed and rejected in the period from Locke to Hume. I clarify the idea and explain how, when separated from some unnecessary accretions, it emerges as a notion to which we are all committed, perhaps, indeed, innocently. One standard objection (that the substance ends up, absurdly, having ‘no properties’) involves the misconception that the Aristotelian subject of Fido's properties needs to be some extra item, other than, literally, Fido. The main rival view treats things as ‘bundles’ of properties or ‘tropes’; I explore some difficulties in conceiving the components of the bundles. The root of the trouble, I think, lies in the Humean view that if two things are non-identical, they must also be capable of existing separately: this immediately, and disastrously, makes it impossible to recognize ontological dependence between non-identical objects. I end by replying to two special worries: that if substances existed at all, they would be imperceptible and unknowable."

8. Bunge, Mario. 1977.Treatise on Basic Philosophy. Iii: Ontology: The Furniture of the World . Dordrecht: Reidel.

"This book and its companion, namely Volume 4 of ourTreatise, concern the basic traits and patterns of the real world. Their joint title could well beThe Structure of Reality. They constitute then a work in ontology, metaphysics, philosophical cosmology, or general theory of systems. Our work is in line with an old and noble if maligned tradition: that of the pre-Socratic philosophers, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hobbes, Helvetius, d'Holbach, Lotze, Engels, Peirce, Russell, and Whitehead. But at the same time it departs from tradition in the matter of method. In fact our aim is to take the rich legacy of ontological problems and hints bequeathed us by traditional metaphysics, add to it the ontological presuppositions of contemporary scientific research, top it with new hypotheses compatible with the science of the day, and elaborate the whole with the help of some mathematical tools.

The end result of our research is, like that of many a metaphysical venture in the past, a conceptual system. It is hoped that this system will not be ridiculously at variance with reason and experience. It is intended moreover to be both exact and scientific: exact in the sense that the theories composing it have a definite mathematical structure, and scientific in that these theories be consistent with and moreover rather close to science - or rather the bulk of science. Furthermore, to the extent that we succeed in our attempt, science and ontology will emerge not as disjoint but as overlapping. The sciences are regional ontologies and ontology is general science. After all, every substantive scientific problem is a subproblem of the problem of ontology, to wit,What is the world like?

After a long period underground, talk about metaphysics has again become respectable. However, we shall not be talking at length about ontology except in the Introduction. We shall instead do ontology. In the process we shall attempt to exhibit the mathematical structure of our concepts and we shall make the most of science. Being systematic our ontology may disappoint the historian. Being largely mathematical in form it will be pushed aside by the lover of grand verbal (but sometimes deep and fascinating) systems - not to speak of the lover of petty verbal matters. And being science-oriented it will fail to appeal to the friend of the esoteric. Indeed we shall be concerned with concrete objects such as atoms, fields, organisms, and societies. We shall abstain from talking about items that are neither concrete things nor properties, states or changes thereof. Any fictions entering our system will be devices useful in accounting for the structure of reality. (Constructs were dealt with in Volumes 1 and 2 of this work.)" pp. XIII-XIV.

Contents: Preface toOntology I XIII; Acknowledgements XV; Special symbols XVI; Introduction 1; 1. Substance 26; 2. Assembly 39; 3. Thing 108; 4. Possibility 164; 5. Change 215; 6. Spacetime 276; 7. Concluding remarks 330; Bibliography 334; Index of names 344; Index of subjects 348-352.

9. Campbell, Keith. 1990.Abstract Particulars . Oxford: Blackwell.

Contents: Preeface XI-XII; 1. A One-category Ontology 1; 2. The Problem of Universals 27; 3. Some General Objections to Trope Theory 53; 4. The Pattern of the Properties 81; 5. Relations, Causation, Space-Time and Compresence 97; 6. Fields: Draling with the Boundary Problem 135; 7. The Human and Social Worlds 157; Notes 175; References 181; Index 185-187.

"Many philosophers have held, explicitly or implicitly, that any comprehensive survey of the world’s constituents would include the casts of qualities and relations that occur at particular places and times as the qualities and relations of particular objects. It is not so common to affirm that such cases are themselves particulars in their own right, rather than deriving their particularity from their association with a substance, but this was G. F. Stout’s distinctive claim (Stout, 1905).

D. C. Williams took another step: these cases, or tropes as he called them, not only form a distinct and independent category of existent, they are the very alphabet of being, the simple, basic, primal items from which all else is built or otherwise derives (Williams, 1966). In presenting his view, Williams acknowledged that it ‘calls for completion in a dozen directions at once’. This work is my attempt to press ahead towards that completion. The great, liberating insight which Stout and Williams offer us is this: properties can be particulars, so the denial of univcrsals need not be the denial of properties. In other words. Particularism (which is economical, plausible and appealing) does not have to take the form of Nominalism (which is economical, but neither plausible nor appealing).

While the principal inspiration for this book is Williams' work, I have also gained a great deal from discussions with David Armstrong, who remains a Realist about Univcrsals, but whose successive publications in this area provide sympathetic treatments of the trope or abstract particularist view (Armstrong, 1978, 1989).

Another colleague, John Bacon, has pursued the trope idea in a more formal way (Bacon, 1988, 1989), while David Lewis treats it as a serious option for dealing with certain intractable problems facing Realism over universal (Lewis, 1983, 1986). Wilfrid Sellars recognized tropes by another name, although not, I think, as the sole fundamental category.

Frank Ramsey counselled that when a philosophical dispute presents itself as an irresolvable oscillation between two alternatives, the likelihood is that both alternatives are false and share a common false presupposition. It is my contention that Realism and Nominalism in the problem of universals exhibit precisely this pattern, their common, false presupposition being that any quality or relation must be a universal.

This book explores the implications of this position. It also argues for theses about relations (Foundationism) and basic physical properties (field theory), which are particularly congenial to a trope philosophy, but are in large measure independent of it. They have merits irrespective of the truth about properties in general." (from thePreface ).

References:

George F. Stout, "Things and Sensations",Proceedings of the British Academy , 2, 1-13.

Donald C. Williams,Principles of Empirical Realism , Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 1966.

David. M. Armstrong,Universals and Scientific Realism , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978 (2 volumes).

David M. Armstrong,Universals , Boulder: Westview Press, 1989.

John Bacon, "Four modal modellings",Journal of Philosophical Logic , 17, pp. 207-220.

John Bacon, "A single primitive trope-relation", Journal of Philosophical Logic , 18, pp. 141-154.

David Lewis, "New work for the theory of universals",Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 61, pp. 343-377.

David Lewis, "Against structural universals",Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 64, pp. 25-46.

10. Chisholm, Roderick M. 1996.A Realistic Theory of Categories. An Essay in Ontology . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments IX;

Part One: The Realistic Background.

1. Introduction 3; 2. The Nature of Attributes 11; 3. The Existence of Attributes 19; 4. Propositions as Reducible to Attributes 23; 5. The Intentional Structure of Attributes 29; 6. The Primacy of the Intentional 35;

Part Two: The Basic Categories

7. The Ontology of the Theory of Classes 45; 8. The Nature of Relations 51; 9. Times and the Temporal 55; 10. States and Events 71; 11. Spatial Entities and Material Substance 85; 12. Persons and Their Bodies: Some Unanswered Questions 99;

Part Three: Homeless Objects

13. Appearances 109; 14. Intentionalia 115; 15. Fictitious Objects 121;

Part Four: Application to Philosophical Theology

16. Necessary Substance 127;

Notes 133; Index 145.

11. Clark, Ralph W. 1976. "The Bundle Theory of Substance."New Scholasticism no. 50:490-503.

12. Code, Alan. 1978. "No Universal Is a Substance."Paideia :65-74.

13. Copi, Irving M. 1954. "Essence and Accident."Journal of Philosophy no. 51:706-719.

Reprinted in Ruth Groff (ed.),Revitalizing Causality. Realism about causality in philosophy and social science , New York: Routledge, 2008, pp. 45-55.

14. Correia, Fabrice. 2005.Existential Dependence and Cognate Notions . München: Philosophia Verlag.

Contents: Introduction 11; 1. Preamble 17; Introductory Break 39; 2. Simple Dependence I: Presentation, and Rejection of Some Accounts 43; 3. Metaphysical Grounding 57; 4. Simple Dependence II: The Foundational Approach 69; 5. Some Other Notions of Existential Dependence 93; 6. Supervenience 135; Appendix: A. The Logic 155; B. Disjunctive Sums 161; C. Parameter Covariance 163; Bibliography 165; List of Figures 169; List of Symbols and Notations 171; List of Named Propositions, Conditions and Rules 173; Index 175.

"Some methodological points have to be made clear from the start. It is not my intention in this work to claim, for instance, that such and such entities are actually existentially dependent, in whichever sense, upon such and such entities, e.g. that mental phenomena depend on brain phenomena, accidents on substances, or again wholes on parts. I am not here interested in how the world is—not even in how the world must be or might be, if ‘must’ and ‘might’ are understood as expressing metaphysical necessity and possibility, respectively. My investigation is a conceptual one: I am interested in the notions of existential dependence, not in their extensions, be it in the actual world or in other metaphysically possible worlds. That is to say, this work is not one of metaphysics, if we agree to take metaphysics to be specifically concerned with what there is and how the things there are relate to one another—in this world alone, or in arbitrary metaphysically possible worlds.

It may rather be called a work of meta-metaphysics, or of ontology if one wishes; for it is primarily concerned with the concepts which may be used by the metaphysician in his attempt to propose a picture of the universe. (1)

Such ontological investigations are of central importance, of course. For insofar as he wants to provide us with a satisfactory picture of the world, the metaphysician must as clearly as possible explain the basic concepts he uses.

He may then play the role of the ontologist; or alternatively, he may invoke some already available ontological study." (p. 13)

(1) There is no well established terminology which we can rely on here. The terms ‘metaphysics’ and ‘ontology’ have been both used in various ways, sometimes even as synonymous.

"Defining the category of substance is normally not taken to be giving a mere stipulative definition of the predicate ‘is a substance’. One usually starts with a certain view as to what belongs to the category (paradigmatic substances) and as to what is outside of the category (paradigmatic nonsubstances), and one then tries to find necessary and sufficient conditions for belonging to the category which respect the initial view. This is how I shall understand the activity of defining substances." (p. 127)

15. Daly, Chris. 1994. "Tropes."Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 94:253-261.

16. Denby, David A. 2007. "A Note on Analysing Substancehood."Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 85:473-484.

"I propose an analysis of the notion of a substance. I define two 'quasi-logical' independence relations, and state the analysis in terms of the distribution of these relations among substances and properties generally. This analysis treats the categories of substance and property as mutually dependent. To show that it (probably) states a sufficient condition for substance, I argue that it is in a certain kind of equilibrium. This illustrates a promising general approach to analysing fundamental metaphysical notions."

17. Denkel, Arda. 1992. "Substance without Substratum."Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 52:705-711.

18. ———. 1996.Object and Property . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Acknowledgements XI; 1. Introduction 1; 2. Ultimacy and objecthood 16; 3. Individuation and objecthood 44; 4. Identity and individuality 71; 5. Change, matter and identity 93; 6. Properties, particularity and objecthood 153; 7. Essence and individuality 195; 8. Causation and particular properties 228; Works cited 248; Index 258.

"The present study concerns the nature of object, change and property. I propose to introduce my discussion of these issues by an informal sketch of the development of some of the earliest attempts made in the same direction. I am interested in looking into the way in which the relevant fundamental problems of ontology and the principal rational attempts to solve them first emerged. My descriptions are not intended to be historically complete (or perhaps even fully accurate), and I will allow myself some freedom of interpretation." (p. 1)

"Below I formulate a more explicitly ontological version, often used in current philosophical debates. The argument begins by observing

that the sensible world of particular entities is full of repetitions and recurrences. It looks as though the same colour, the same

pattern, is here, there, and scattered all over the universe. This shirt, that pencil, the sea and the sky are all blue. Many particulars

share the same thing; they all have blue as a common aspect.

There seem to be identities, therefore, amongst non-identical particulars. This fact is neither something we create, nor a mere

appearance. It reflects the truth, and hence the existence of universals must be acknowledged.

If plausible, this argument establishes that there exist universal entities shared by a multiplicity of particulars. As such, however, it does not demonstrate that universals reside in a world different from that of the concrete particulars of perception. Thus there is an open choice between placing them in an independent transcendent reality, or within manifest things. Plato took the former alternative, and Aristotle opted for the latter, each choice being made at a certain cost.

I have tried to trace some of the main lines of the ancient background of the philosophical debate concerning change, object and property. Some later historical material and contemporary contributions will be supplied as the main discussion develops. Thus parts of chapters 2, 5 and 6 will be concerned with properties and universals; parts of chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 will treat objecthood.

Change will be among the principal topics of chapters 4 and 7." (p. 9)

19. ———. 2000. "The Refutation of Substrata."Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 61:431-440.

20. Dewan, Lawrence. 2006. "The Importance of Substance." InForm and Being. Studies in Thomistic Metaphysics , 96-130. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

Originally (1997) published on the website of the Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame.

21. Fernández Beites, Pilar. 2008. "Teoría De La Sustantividad: Una Necesaria Ampliación De La Teoría De La Sustancia."Pensamiento no. 64:197-223.

"This article aims to expound the ontological theory of Xavier Zubiri in order to come up with a «theory of substantivity» capable of incorporating the classical theory of substance. An even more fundamental difference than classical theory’s distinction between substance and accidents is the distinction between whole and parts: the independent or autonomous parts that structure the real are not principally «substances» but «substantivities» or wholes. But defending a theory of substantivity does not presuppose rejecting the theory of substance. In the theory of substantivity, substance continues to play an important ontological role for two reasons. First, because we cannot descriptively do away with the substance-accident relation: a substantivity has to be considered a substance (not in the strict sense) insofar as it supports accidents and the same is true with the «independent parts», since their independence is precisely the expression of their substantiality. Second, we cannot give up the theory of substance because we have to admit at least the existence of a substance in the strict sense, of a simple substance (simplicity in the strict sense), which is the «I» as pure subject (the «soul» of classical theory). And it is at this point that the article definitely distances itself from the later Zubiri."

22. Fine, Kit. 1994. "Essence and Modality."Philosophical Perspectives no. 8:1-16.

"The concept of essence has played an important role in the history and development of philosophy; and in no branch of the discipline is its importance more manifest than in metaphysics.

Its significance for metaphysics is perhaps attributable to two main sources. In the first place, the concept may be used to characterize what the subject, or at least part of it, is about.

For one of the central concerns of metaphysics is with the identity of things, with what they are.

But the metaphysician is not interested in every property of the objects under consideration. In asking 'What is a person?', for example, he does not want to be told that every person has a deep desire to be loved, even if this is in fact the case.

What then distinguishes the properties of interest to him? What is it about a property which makes it bear, in the metaphysically significant sense of the phrase, on what an object is?

It is in answer to this question that appeal is naturally made to the concept of essence. For what appears to distinguish the intended properties is that they are essential to their bearers." p. 1.

It is my aim in this paper to show that the contemporary assimilation of essence to modality is fundamentally misguided and that, as a consequence, the corresponding conception of metaphysics should be given up. It is not my view that the modal account fails to capture anything which might reasonably be called a concept of essence. My point, rather, is that the notion of essence which is of central importance to the metaphysics of identity is not to be understood in modal terms or even to be regarded as extensionally equivalent to a modal notion. The one notion is, if I am right, a highly refined version of the other; it is like a sieve which performs a similar function but with a much finer mesh.

I shall also argue that the traditional assimilation of essence to definition is better suited to the task of explaining what essence is. It may not provide us with an analysis of the concept, but it does provide us with a good model of how the concept works. Thus my overall position is the reverse of the usual one. It sees real definition rather than de re modality as central to our understanding of the concept." p. 3

23. ———. 1994. "Compounds and Aggregates."Noûs no. 28:137-158.

"Some objects appear to be composed of parts: a quantity of sand of its grains, a throbbing pain of its throbs, a set of its members, and a proposition of its constituents.

There seem to be two fundamentally different ways in which an object can be composed of parts. One is nonstructural in character; the parts just merge. The other is structural; the parts hang together within a structure. Thus of the examples above, the first two, the sand and the pain, are composed from their parts in a nonstructural fashion, while the last two, the set and the proposition, are composed in a structural manner.

The notion of a nonstructural method of composition may be taken to be one which conforms to certain structure-obliterating identity conditions. These are as follows: order and repetition among the composing objects is irrelevant to the result; the composition of a single object is the object itself; and the composition of compositions of objects is the composition of those very objects'. Thus the first of these conditions excludes concatenation as a nonstructural method of composition; while each of the remaining conditions excludes the set-builder (the operation which composes a set from its members).

Let us agree to call any nonstructural method of composition a method of fusion. There is a particular such method, I call it aggregation, which has been very prominent in the literature on part-whole. It may be characterized as a method of composition which conforms to the identity conditions above and which also conforms to the following existence conditions: the aggregate of objects which exist in time exists at exactly those times at which one of the objects exists; and an aggregate of objects which are located in space occupies, at any given time at which it exists, exactly those places which are occupied by one of the objects.

It has often been supposed that aggregation is a legitimate method of composition, that objects may be composed from others in conformity with the conditions set forth above. What has made aggregation so attractive, apart from any intuitive appeal it may have, are two main factors (which will be discussed in more detail later in the paper). The first, and most important, is the identification of a thing with the content of its spatio-temporal extension. The second is the identification of a thing with the fusion of its time-slices. Both of these forms of identification require that the objects fuse in the manner of aggregation.

It has also often been supposed that aggregation is the only legitimate method of fusion. Part of the appeal of this further position may arise from a general hostility to different methods of composition, whether they be methods of fusion or not. Under the form of nominalism championed by Goodman, for example, there can be no difference in objects without a difference in their parts; and this implies that the same parts cannot, through different methods of composition, yield different wholes.

However, I suspect that many of those who would be open to structural methods of composition would still not be open to distinct nonstructural methods of composition. For it is hard to see, especially given the identification of a thing with its spatio-temporal content, what other methods of fusion there might be; and it is hard to see how there could be alternative conceptions of a fusion, of a whole at the same level as its elements and formed without regard to their order or repetition.

Let us call the extreme position, that there is only one method of composition, mereological monism; let us call the less extreme position, that there is only one method of fusion, fusion monism; and let us call that particular version of fusion monism according to which aggregation is the sole method of fusion aggregation monism.

The main purpose of this paper is to show that the last of these three positions is mistaken. I want to show that there is a method of fusion which is not aggregative, i.e. which does not conform to the characteristic existence conditions for aggregates. However, my attack on this position may be relevant to the two other positions as well. For granted that aggregation is itself a legitimate method of fusion, it follows that fusion monism should be dropped in favour of a pluralist position. And to the extent that the adoption of monism depended upon a general hostility to structural considerations, the way is then open to the admission of structural methods of composition.

It is also my intention to attack two related forms of monistic doctrine. For just as we can single out the aggregative method of nonstructural composition, so we can single out the aggregative way of being a nonstructural part and the aggregative kind of nonstructural whole. One might then maintain that not only does aggregation constitute the only nonstructural method of composition, but that it also constitutes the only nonstructural way of being a part and the only nonstructural way of being a whole. We therefore have three forms of monism, one with respect to composition, another with respect to part, and a third with respect to whole. As will later become clear, the two further forms of monism aresuccessively weaker than the original; and so their denials might be taken, in mimicry of Quine, to comprise three grades of mereological involvement.

From the discussion of monism will emerge objections to two other prominent doctrines: extensionalism and mereological atomism. According to the first of these, things are the same when their extensions (spatial, spatio-temporal, or modal-spatio-temporal) are the same; and according to the second, parts are prior to their wholes.

For the purposes of attacking the aggregation monist, I have assumed that aggregation is a legitimate method of fusion. Towards the end of the paper, I suggest that there is no such method and propose a form of fusion monism in which some other method of fusion takes the place of aggregation. However, my tentative endorsement of fusion monism is not meant in any way to lend support to a general monist position."

24. ———. 1994. "Senses of Essence." InModality, Morality and Belief. Essays in Honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus , edited by Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, 53-73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"One may distinguish between tbe essential and accidental properties of an object. A property of an object is essential if it must have the property to be what it is; otherwise the property is accidental.

But what exactly is meant by this account? It has been common to give a further explanation in modal terms. A property is taken to be essential when it is necessary that the object have the property or, alternatively, when it is necessary that it have tbe property if it exist. For reasons that I have already given in my paper “Essence and Modality,’’ I doubt whether this or any other modal explanation of the notion can succeed. Indeed, I doubt whether there exists any explanation of the notion in fundamentally different terms. But this is not to deny the possibility of further clarification; and it is the aim of the present paper to provide it.

What I shall do is to distinguish some of the closely related ways in which the notion may be understood. This will be important for getting clearer both on which claims can be made with its help and on which concepts can be defined with its help. In particular, we shall see that several different senses of ontological dependence correspond to the different senses of essence. The task is also important for the purpose of developing a logic of essentialist reasoning; for most of the different senses of essence that we distinguish will make a difference to the resulting logic. My main concern in this paper has been with making the distinctions, and not with drawing out their implications; but I hope it is clear from the examples what some of these implications are." (p. 53)

25. ———. 1994. "Ontological Dependence."Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 95:269-290.

"The usual account of ontological dependence in terms of necessity is criticized; and an alternative account of terms of essence is proposed. Different notions of dependence are seen to correspond to different notions of essence."

26. ———. 1995. "The Logic of Essence."Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 24:241-273.

27. ———. 1999. "Things and Their Parts."Midwest Studies in Philosophy no. 23:61-74.

"I wish to sketch a theory of the general nature of material things. It is a theory on which I have been working for some time; and what I present here is the merest sketch. Details are slid over, significant questions not raised, and controversial assumptions left undefended. But I hope, all the same, that enough is said to indicate the relevance of the theory to questions concerning the nature of material things and the plausibility of its answers.

One way into the theory is through consideration of part-whole. Things have parts; and so we are led to consider how they are capable of having the parts that they do. What in their nature accounts for their division into parts? It has often been supposed that we may give an adequate answer to this question by conceiving of a material thing as the material content of a space-time region or as a successive stream of matter. But I believe that there are enormous difficulties with these positions and that, once they are taken into account, we are led to adopt a very different conception of a material thing and of its relationship to its parts.

Central to the paper is a distinction between two different ways in which one thing can be part of another. It can, in the first place, be apart in a way that is relative to a time. It is in this way, for example, that a newly installed carburetor is now apart of my car, whereas earlier it was not, or that certain molecules are now parts of my body though later, through the exercise of natural bodily functions, they no longer will be.

In the second place, one object can be a part of another in a way that is not relative to a time. For something that is a part in this way, it is not appropriate to ask when, or for how long, it is a part; it just is a part. It is in such a way that the pants and the jacket, for example, are parts of a suit or various atoms are parts of a water molecule, or two particular pints of milk are parts of a quart of milk, or various time-slices, if there are such things, are parts of a persisting individual." p. 61

28. ———. 2000. "Semantics for the Logic of Essence."Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 29:543-584.

"This paper provides a possible worlds semantics for the system of the author's previous paperThe Logic of Essence . The basic idea behind the semantics is that a statement should be taken to be true in virtue of the nature of certain objects just in case it is true in any possible world compatible with the nature of those objects. It is shown that a slight variant of the original system is sound and complete under the proposed semantics."

29. ———. 2003. "The Non-Identity of a Material Thing and Its Matter."Mind no. 112:195-234.

"Many philosophers have thought that a material thing is, or may be, one and the same as its matter - that a statue, for example, may be the same as the clay from which it is made or a river the same as the water which flows through it. There appears to be a powerful argument against such views, for the thing in each of these cases would appear to have properties not possessed by its matter.

Thus the clay of a statue may exist even though the statue itself has ceased to exist and the river may be composed of different water at different times even though this cannot be true of the water that composes it at any given time. However, these philosophers have responded to this argument by claiming that the apparent difference in properties represents, not a difference in the objects themselves, but a difference in the descriptions under which they may be conceived. We may conceive of a given thing as a statue or some clay or as a river or a body of water, for example, and, depending upon how the object is conceived, we will say one thing about it rather than another.

It is the aim of this paper to show that this counter-response cannot be sustained and that the original argument against identity should therefore be allowed to stand. This is no easy task since there would appear to be nothing in the immediate linguistic data to settle the question one way or the other.

However, by working through the consequences of the counter-response for the rest of our language, I think it may be shown to be extremely implausible. The paper is in two main parts. The first (§§1-4) is largely concerned with setting up the problem. We characterize the different forms the identity theory can take (§1), explain how the argument in favor of non-identity might in principle break down (§2), present the most plausible versions of such arguments (§3), and then consider the most plausible counter-response to them (§4). The second part (§§5-8) embarks on a detailed investigation of the difficulties with the counter-response. It is shown to be unable to account for a wide variety of different linguistic data, that is loosely classified according as to how reference to a material thing might be achieved. Four main kinds of case will be considered: those in which a sort is explicitly invoked (§5); those in which it is implicitly invoked (§6); those in which the very notion of reference is itself used in securing reference(§7); and those in which there is reference to a plurality of things (§8)." (p. 195)

30. Gorman, Michael. 2006. "Independence and Substance."International Philosophical Quarterly no. 46 (2):147-159.

31. ———. 2006. "Substance and Identity-Dependence."Philosophical Papers no. 35:103-118.

32. ———. 2012. "On Substantial Independence: A Reply to Patrick Toner."Philosophical Studies no. 159:293-297.

33. ———. 2014. "Two Types of Features: An Aristotelian Approach."Ratio no. 27:140-154.

34. Gould, Paul. 2013. "How Does an Aristotelian Substance Have Its Platonic Properties? Issues and Options."Axiomathes no. 23:343-364.

35. Groff, Ruth, ed. 2007.Revitalizing Causality: Realism About Causality in Philosophy and Social Science . New York: Routledge.

36. Gyekye, Kwame. 1973. "An Examination of the Bundle-Theory of Substance."Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 34:51-61.

37. Hacker, P. M. S. 1979. "Substance: The Constitution of Reality."Midwest Studies in Philosophy no. 4:239-261.

38. ———. 2004. "Substance: Things and Stuffs."Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume no. 78:239-261.

39. Healey, Richard. 1995. "Substance, Modality and Spacetime."Erkenntnis no. 42:287-316.

40. Hennig, Boris. 2008. "Substance, Reality, and Distinctness."Prolegomena no. 7:5-20.

"Descartes claims that God is a substance, and that mind and body are two different and separable substances. This paper provides some background that renders these claims intelligible. For Descartes, that something is real means it can exist in separation, and something is a substance if it does not depend on other substances for its existence. Further, separable objects are correlates of distinct ideas, for an idea is distinct (in an objective sense) if its object may be easily and clearly separated from everything that is not its object. It follows that if our idea of God is our most distinct idea, as Descartes claims, then God must be a substance in the Cartesian sense of the term. Also, if we can have an idea of a thinking subject which does not in any sense refer to bodily things, and if bodily things are substances, then mind and body must be two different substances."

41. Hiller, Avram. 2013. "Object-Dependence."Essays in Philosophy no. 14:33-55.

42. Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin, and Steinberg, Alex, eds. 2013.Varieties of Dependence. Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence . München: Philosophia Verlag.

Contents: Miguel Hoeltje: Introduction 9;

Part 1: Surveys

Kathrin Koslicki : Ontological Dependence: An Opinionated Survey 31; Phil Corkum: Substance and Independence in Aristotle 65; Kelly Trogdon: An Introduction to Grounding 97; Alex Steinberg: Supervenience: A Survey 123; Jussi Haukioja: Different Notions of Response-Dependence 167;

Part II: Research Papers

E.J. Lowe: Some Varieties of Metaphysical Dependence 193; C.S.I. Jenkins: Explanation and Fundamentality 211; Louis de Rosset : No Free Lunch 243; Fabrice Correia: Metaphysical Grounds and Essence 271; Stefano caputo: The Dependence of Truth on Being:

Is There a Problem for Minimalism? 297; Stephan Leuenberger: Supervenience Among Classes of Relations 325; Ralf M. Bader: Multiple-Domain Supervenience for Non-Classical Mereologies 347; Eline Busck Gundersen: Response-Dependence and Conditional Fallacy Problems 369; Don López de Sa: Rigid vs Flexible Response-Dependent Properties 393; Name Index 419; Subject Index 423; List of Contributors 429.

43. Hoffman, Joshua, and Rosenkrantz, Gary. 1994.Substance among Other Categories . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

44. ———. 1997.Substance: Its Nature and Existence . New York: Routledge.

45. Hoffman, Joshua, and Rosenkrantz, Gary S. 2007. "How to Analyse Substance: A Reply to Schnieder."Ratio no. 20:130-141.

46. Hübner, Johannes. 2007.Komplexe Substanzen . Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

47. Jaeger, Andrew J. 2014. "Back to the Primitive: From Substantial Capacities to Prime Matter."American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 88 (3ì):381-395.

48. Kanzian, Christian. 2009.Ding – Substanz – Person. Eine Alltagsontologie . Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

Inhalt: Teil 0 Einleitung: Voraussetzungen, thematischer Überblick, Grenzen 7;

Teil I Grundzüge einer Alltagsontologie von Dingen 19; 1. Was ist eine Alltagsontologie? 19; 2. Was sind Partikularien? 31; 3. Dinge sind Partikularien 34; 4. Dinge und andere Partikularien 37; 5. Metaontologischer Einschub 73; 6. Probleme einer Ontologie mit Dingen 102;

Teil II Substanzen 125; 2. Substanzkriterien 191; 3. Dinge machen die Kategorie aus, nicht Substanzen 211; 4. Haben wir es hier mit einer Alltagsontologie zu tun? 223;

Teil III Personen 229; 1. Selbstbewusstsein als Bedingung für Personalität 230; 2. Grundzüge einer Ontologie der Personen 260; 3. Personen als selbstbewusste Lebewesen: Problemexposition 296;

Literatur 332; Register 339.

"Im ersten Hauptteil habe ich versucht, Grundzüge einer Alltagsontologie von Dingen zu entwerfen und gegen einige grundlegende Einwände zu verteidigen. In diesem zweiten Teil möchte ich einen Schritt weiter-, wenn man so will, in die Kategorie der Dinge „hineingehen“, und untersuchen, ob es nicht innerhalb dieser Kategorie weitere ontologisch signifikante Differenzen gibt, die es rechtfertigen, innerhalb der Dinge eine Gruppe mit genau umschreibbaren Besonderheiten anzugeben.

Dabei wird der Begriff „Substanz“ eine wichtige Rolle spielen. Um es vorwegzunehmen, werde ich Substanzen als „Subspezies“ oder „Genus“ innerhalb der umfassenden Kategorie der Dinge einführen. Das mag vom Gebrauch von „Substanz“ bei manchen AutorInnen abweichen. Und zwar insofern, als bei manchen „Ding“ und „Substanz“ als Synonyme aufgefasst werden. Auch von der klassischen Ontologie unterscheide ich mich, insofern nämlich, als ich „Substanz“ eben nicht als Bezeichnung einer Kategorie im ontologisch technischen Sinne verstehe. Ich werde nun im zweiten Hauptteil versuchen, diese Abweichungen möglichst umfassend einzuführen und auch ontologisch zu begründen. Der Weg dazu weist einige Parallelen auf zu jenem im ersten Teil. Dort habe ich Dinge als eine Kategorie im Bereich der Partikularien bestimmt, und zwar so, dass ich zunächst nicht-dingliche Partikularien ins Auge gefasst habe, das sind Ereignisse und Zustände. Dinge aber wurden durch den Verweis auf die Unterschiede zu Ereignissen und Zuständen charakterisiert. Hier werde ich mit Artefakten beginnen, um die nicht-artifiziellen Dinge über Differenzen zu den ersteren ontologisch zu bestimmen. Ich verrate dem/der LeserIn wohl kein großes Geheimnis, dass allein damit, nämlich mit nicht-artifiziellen Dingen

oder Vorkommnissen natürlicher Arten, Substanzen gemeint sein können.

Dass Substanzen Lebewesen sind, steht ebenfalls schon hier zu vermuten, muss jedoch begründet werden; v.a. meine These, dass „Substanz“ und „Lebewesen“, bzw. „Lebewesen“ und „Vorkommnis natürlicher Arten“ extensionsgleich zu verstehen sind. Es gibt m.a.W. keine nicht-lebendigen Substanzen, natürlich auch keine Lebewesen, die keine Substanzen sind.

Über all dies soll in diesem zweiten Hauptteil gehandelt werden." (p. 125)

49. Kearns, John T. 1970. "Substance and Time."Journal of Philosophy no. 67:277-289.

50. Kneale, W. 1939. "The Notion of a Substance."Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 40:103-134.

51. Körner, Stephan. 1964. "Symposium: Substance."Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes no. 38:79-90.

52. Langan, Thomas. 1987. "Substance, System, and Structure."New Scholasticism no. 61:285-306.

53. Latham, Noa. 2001. "Substance Physicalism." InPhysicalism and Its Discontents , edited by Gillett, Carl and Loewer, Barry M., 152-170. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"How should we define physicalism or minimal physicalism? In my view, this question calls for stipulation because these are theoretical terms without a uniform use. Different views of psychophysical relations are physicalistic in different ways and to different degrees, and there is an obvious interest in clarifying and distinguishing these views and determining which are true. My aim in this chapter will be to do some of the clarifying and distinguishing. Stipulation of a unique thesis as physicalism or minimal physicalism must come with a rationale, and as I have none to offer I shall not pursue this." (p. 152)

(...)

"Ontological physicalism for concrete particulars is the view that both substance physicalism and concrete event physicalism hold. I have argued that this is equivalent simply to the view that the world is governed by laws with purely physical antecedents. And from this definition its close ties to the principle of physical closure can be seen.

The basic idea behind physical closure is that the best explanations of physical phenomena are physical. Ontological physicalism can now be seen to entail physical closure, because a world governed by laws with purely physical antecedents will be one in which every physical phenomenon is fully explained by physical laws and prior physical conditions. But the converse is false. Physical closure does not entail ontological physicalism, because it holds in the noninteractive substance dualistic world we considered in which minds can perceive and think but cannot influence the physical world. However, physical closure does entail that the effecting of physical states is governed by purely physical laws, and this can indeed be taken as an equivalent formulation of the principle.

In conclusion, I have argued that ontological physicalism for concrete particulars is best regarded not as some primitive thesis but as the thesis that the world is governed by laws of succession with purely physical antecedents. In coming to understand in what ways the world is physicalistic, we are interested in whether all first-order properties instantiated in the spatiotemporal world are physical (on the various plausible interpretations of this),23 whether there is libertarian choice, and whether there is downward causation. I have argued that these questions absorb the question whether there are nonphysical particulars." (p. 168)

54. Loux, Michael J. 1976. "The Concept of a Kind."Philosophical Studies no. 29:53-61.

55. Lowe, E. J. 1988. "I. Substance, Identity and Time."Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes no. 62:61-78.

56. ———. 1994. "Primitive Substances."Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 54:531-551.

57. ———. 1998.The Possibility of Metaphysics. Substance, Identity, and Time . New York: Oxford University Press.

Contents: 1. The possibility of metaphysics 1; 2. Objects and identity 28; 3. Identity and unity 58; 4. Time and persistence 84; 5. Persistence and substance 106; 6. Substance and dependence 136; 7. Primitive substances 154; 8. Categories and kinds 174; 9. Matter and form 190; 10. Abstract entities 210; 11. Facts and world 228; 12. The puzzle of existence 248; Bibliography 261; Index 269.

From the Preface: "My overall objective in this book is to help to restore metaphysics to a central position in philosophy as the most fundamental form of rational inquiry, with its own distinctive methods and criteria of validation. In my view, all other forms of inquiry rest upon metaphysical presuppositions thus making metaphysics unavoidable-so that we should at least endeavour to do metaphysics with our eyes open, rather than allowing it to exercise its influence upon us at the level of uncritical assumption. I believe that this is beginning to be acknowledged more widely by philosophers as various research programmes for instance, in the philosophy of mind and in the philosophy of quantum physics-are being seen to flounder through inadequacies in their metaphysical underpinnings. For that reason, I hope that a book like this will prove to be a timely one.

Because Chapters 1 and 2 partly serve to introduce themes explored in greater detail later in the book, I have not written an Introduction as such. Doing so would have involved unnecessary repetition. However, it may help the reader if I supply here a brief synopsis of the book's contents. In Chapter 1, I attempt to characterize the distinctive nature of metaphysics as an autonomous intellectual discipline and defend a positive answer to Kant's famous question, `How is metaphysics possible?', distinguishing my own answer from that of various other schools of thought, including some latter-day heirs of Kantianism. A key ingredient in my defence of metaphysics is the articulation of a distinctive and, in my view, indispensable notion ofmetaphysical possibility-conceived of as a kind of possibility which is not to be identified with physical, logical, or epistemic possibility.

Chapter 2 is devoted to an examination of two of the most fundamental and all-pervasive notions in metaphysics-the notion of anobject and the notion ofidentity and explores their interrelationships. In the course of this exercise a central ontological distinction-that betweenconcrete andabstract objects is brought to the fore, my contention being that this is at bottom a distinction between those objects that do, and those that do not,exist in time ." (from the Preface).

58. ———. 1999. "Concreta: Substance." InMetaphysics. Contemporary Readings , edited by Hales, Steven D., 371-376. Belmont: Wadsworth.

59. ———. 2003. "Substantial Change and Spatiotemporal Coincidence."Ratio no. 16:140-160.

60. ———. 2006.The Four-Category Ontology: A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science . New York: Oxford Unviersity Press.

61. ———. 2008. "A Defence of Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism." InPsycho-Physical Dualism Today: An Interdisciplinary Approach , edited by Antonietti, Alessandro, Corradini, Antonella and Lowe, E. Jonathan, 167-183. Lanham: Lexington Books.

62. ———. 2010. "Substance Dualism: A Non-Cartesian Approach." InThe Waning of Materialism: New Essays , edited by Koons, Robert C. and Bealer, George, 439-461. New York: Oxford University Press.

63. ———. 2012. "A Neo-Aristotelian Substance Ontology: Neither Relational nor Constituent." InContemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics , edited by Tahko, Tuomas E., 229-248. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

64. Lowe, E. J., and Noonan, Harold W. 1988. "Substance, Identity and Time."Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes no. 62:61-100.

65. Macdonald, Cynthia. 2005.Varieties of Things: Foundations of Contemporary Metaphysics . Malden: Blackwell.

Chapter 3:Material Substances , pp. 79-133.

66. Martin, C.B. 1980. "Substance Substantiated."Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 58:3-10.

67. Maurin, Anna-Sofia. 2002.If Tropes . Dordrecht: Springer.

68. McDaniel, Kris. 2010. "A Return to the Analogy of Being."Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 81:688-717.

69. ———. 2013. "Degrees of Being."Philosophers' Imprint no. 13:1-18.

70. McGrail, Robert. 2008. "Working with Substance."Techne no. 12:65-84.

71. Millikan, Ruth Garrett. 2000.On Clear and Confused Ideas. An Essay About Substance Concepts . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

72. Moltmann, Friederike. 2004. "Properties and Kinds of Tropes: New Linguistic Facts and Old Philosophical Insights."Mind no. 113:1-41.

"Terms like ‘wisdom’ are commonly held to refer to abstract objects that are properties. On the basis of a greater range of linguistic data and with the support of some ancient and medieval philosophical views, I argue that such terms do not stand for objects, but rather for kinds of tropes, entities that do not have the status of objects, but only play a role as semantic values of terms and as arguments of predicates. Such ‘non-objects’ crucially differ from objects in that they are not potential bearers of properties. "

73. Myers, C. Mason. 1977. "The Concept of Substance."Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 15:505-519.

74. Needham, Paul. 2006. "Substance and Modality."Philosophy of Science no. 73:829-840.

75. ———. 2010. "Substance and Time."British Journal for the Philosophy of Science no. 61:485-512.

76. Noonan, Harold W. 1988. "Ii. Substance, Identity and Time."Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes no. 62:79-100.

77. Oaklander, L. Nathan. 1978. "The Bundle Theory of Substance."New Scholasticism no. 52:91-96.

78. Owens, Joseph. 1982. "Material Substance."New Scholasticism no. 56:442-461.

79. Pasnau, Robert. 2004. "Form, Substance, and Mechanism."Philosophical Review no. 113:21-88.

80. Pelletier, Arnaud. 2006. "Substance, Individu, Monade."Revue Philosophique De Louvain no. 104:361-369.

81. Pickavance, Timothy. 2014. "Bare Particulars and Exemplifcation."American Philosophical Quarterly no. 51:95-108.

82. Quinton, Anthony. 1973.The Nature of Things . London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

83. Rankin, Kenneth. 1982. "The Complete Reality of Substance."Mind no. 91:377-397.

84. Rea, Michael C. 2011. "Hylomorphism Reconditioned."Philosophical Perspectives no. 25.

85. Robb, David. 2009. "Substance." InThe Routledge Companion to Metaphysics , edited by Le Poidevin, Robin, 256-264. New York: Routledge.

86. Rosenkrantz, Gary, and Hoffman, Joshua. 1991. "The Independence Criterion of Substance."Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 51:835-853.

Reprinted in Steven D. Hales,Metaphysics. Contemprary Readings , Belmont: Wadsworth, 1999, pp. 385-396.

87. Russell, Bertrand. 1927. "Substance."Philosophy no. 2:20-27.

"The question of substance in the philosophy of physics has three branches: logical, physical, and epistemological. The first is a problem in pure philosophy: is the notion of “ substance ” in any sense a “ category,” i.e. forced upon us by the general nature either of facts or of knowledge? The second is a question of the interpretation of mathematical physics: is it (a) necessary, or (b) convenient to interpret our formulae in terms of permanent entities with changing states and relations? The third concerns the relation of perception to the physical world."

88. Schaffer, Jonathan. 2009. "On What Grounds What." InMetametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology , edited by Manley, David, Chalmers, David J. and Wasserman, Ryan, 347-383. New York: Oxford University Press.

89. ———. 2009. "Spacetime the One Substance."Philosophical Studies no. 145:131-148.

90. Schneider, Luc. 2009. "On Ties and Copulae within the Ontological Square." InGustav Bergmann. Phenomenological Realism and Dialectical Ontology , edited by Langlet, Bruno and Monnoyer, Jean-Maurice, 193-208. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

91. Schnieder, Benjamin. 2004.Substanzen Und (Ihre) Eigenschaften: Ine Studie Zur Analytischen Ontologie . Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

92. ———. 2005. "How Not to DefineSubstance . A Comment Upon Hoffman and Rosenkrantz."Ratio no. 18:107-117.

"The article is a critical examination of Joshua Hoffman's and Gary Rosenkrantz’ approach to the traditional category of individual substance. On several places they offered an analysis of the concept of a substance in terms of some highly sophisticated notion of generic independence. Though ingenious, and even though it might be extensionally adequate, their account cannot provide an informative analysis of the concept in question, because it exhibits a peculiar kind of circularity. It is shown that one cannot establish, on the basis of their analysis, that a given entity is a substance, if one does not already know that it is one in advance. The circularity of their account is examined in detail, and it is explained how it could have arisen."

93. ———. 2006. "A Certain Kind of Trinity: Dependence, Substance, Explanation."Philosophical Studies no. 129:393-419.

94. Seibt, Johanna. 1995. "Individuen Als Prozesse: Zur Ontologischen Revision Des Substanz-Paradigmas."Logos. Zeitschrift für systematische Philosophie no. 2:352-384.

95. Sellars, Roy Wood. 1929. "Critical Realism and Substance."Mind no. 38:473-488.

Reprinted in Ruth Groff (ed.),Revitalizing Causality. Realism about causality in philosophy and social science , New York: Routledge, 2008, pp. 13-25.

96. ———. 1943. "Causality and Substance."Philosophical Review no. 52:1-27.

Reprinted in Ruth Groff (ed.),Revitalizing Causality. Realism about causality in philosophy and social science , New York: Routledge, 2008, pp. 26-44.

97. ———. 1943. "Verification of Categories: Existence and Substance."Journal of Philosophy no. 40:197-205.

98. Simons, Peter. 1994. "Particulars in Particular Clothing: Three Trope Theories of Substance."Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 54:553-575.

Reprinted in Steven D. Hales,Metaphysics. Contemprary Readings , Belmont: Wadsworth, 1999, pp. 397-413.

99. Simons, Peter M. 1998. "Farewell to Substance: A Differentiated Leave-Taking."Ratio no. 11:235-252.

100. Smith, Barry. 1982.Parts and Moments: Studies in Logic and Formal Ontology . München: Philosophia Verlag.

101. ———. 1997. "On Substances, Accidents and Universals: In Defence of a Constituent Ontology."Philosophical Papers no. 26:105-127.

102. Stebbing, L. Susan. 1929. "Concerning Substance."Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 30:285-308.

103. Szatkowski, Miroslaw, and Rosiak, Marek, eds. 2014.Substantiality and Causality . Vol. Walter de Gruyter: Berlin.

104. Toner, Patrick. 2008. "Emergent Substance."Philosophical Studies no. 141:281-297.

105. ———. 2010. "On Substance."American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 84:25-48.

106. ———. 2011. "Independence Accounts of Substance and Substantial Parts."Philosophical Studies no. 155:37-43.

107. ———. 2013. "On Aristotelianism and Structures as Parts."Ratio no. 26:148-161.

108. Trettin, Käthe, ed. 2005.Substanz. Neue Überlegungen Zu Einer Klassischen Kategorie Des Seienden . Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.

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111. Van Cleve, James. 1985. "Three Versions of the Bundle Theory."Philosophical Studies no. 47:95-107.

Reprinted in Steven D. Hales,Metaphysics. Contemprary Readings , Belmont: Wadsworth, 1999, pp. 376-384.

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114. Wiggins, David. 1980.Sameness and Substance . Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Revised edition of:Sameness and Substance , Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1980.

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Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Key Terms in Ontology: Mathesis Universalis. The Search for a Universal Science

Introduction

"Preliminary remark: It is never quite clear what (the modern concept of mathesis universalis as such exactly signifies, let alone how it may be defined. The expression itself (1) is a composite of the Greek μάθησεως latinized by transcription to mathesis, and the Latin universalis. The latinized mathesis, generally meaning, according to the dictionaries, learning / knowledge / science (= disciplina or scientia), (2) more specifically designates mathematic (= scientia mathematica), though it can even mean astrology. Hence the first and general sense of mathesis universalis signifies no more than universal science (disciplina universalis or scientia universalis). However – and this will be very important – since this "science" has a rather mathematical ring to it, we should on second thoughts take it to be an equivalent of s cientia mathematica universalis (3) (or generalis or communis: due to the underlying Greek terminology, there is no difference between universal, general, or common in antiquity – things will have changed by Leibniz' time at the latest, of course).

This more specific meaning, i.e., universal (or general or common) mathematical science or universal mathematic, is essential, and more or less the bottom line for most occurrences of the expression, though it still remains very vague. However, the emphasis of this paper lies, with regard to the concept of mathesis universalis not so much on the historical details as on the more general systematical outlines. Therefore it should suffice to begin our work with an understanding of mathesis universalis that implies not much more than universal (or general or common) mathematical science, which of course still allows for a range of diverse meanings. What matters is to remain true to the sense of mathesis universalis while not confusing the two very different notions somehow inherent in the Latin, i.e., that of universal mathematic on the one hand and that of universal science on the other. A clear line should be drawn between these two concepts, of which the former is mathematical (even though sometimes in a wider sense), the latter not. I trust that it will become clear in this paper that both for historical and systematical reasons it is not only justified, but even necessary, to draw this general distinction between universal mathematic and universal science in this way." (pp. 129-130)

Notes

(1) The major work of reference with regard to the Renaissance and Early Modern history of mathesis universalis (mainly in the context of Paduans, Jesuits, and Humanists/Ramists) remains G. Crapulli, Mathesis universalis. Genesi di un'idea nel XVI secolo, Roma 1969 (as his focus is on the sixteenth century, Crapulli treats neither Descartes nor Leibniz, but only their predecessors). For the history of the term as such cf. R. Kauppi, "Mathesis universalis", in: J. Ritter/K. Gründer (ed.), Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 5: L-Mn, Basel/Stuttgart 1980, col. 937-938 and also J. Mittelstrass, "Die Idee einer Mathesis universalis bei Descartes", Perspektiven der Philosophie: Neues Jahrbuch 4 (1978), 177-178.

(2) Descartes himself was clear about the fact that not much can be gained from the word itself: hic enim vocis originem spectare non sufficit; nam cum Matheseos nomen idem tantum sonet pod disciplina (Regula IV, Oeuvres X, 377,16-18).

(3) D. Rabouin, "La 'mathematique universelle' entre mathematique et philosophie, dAristote a Proclus", Archives de Philosophie 68 (2005), 249-268, discusses the concept's ambiguous character between philosophy and mathematics. Cf. also his paper "Les interpretations renaissantes de la 'mathematique generale' de Proclus", to be published in the proceedings (ed. A. Lernould and B. Vitrac) of the International Conference on Le Commentaire de Proclus au premier livre des Elements d'Euclide, forthcoming from Septentrion (Presses Unversitaires de Lille) [Alain Lernould (ed.), Études sur le Commentaire de Proclus au premier livre des Éléments d'Euclide, Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2010].

From: Gerald Bechtle, "How to Apply the Modern Concepts of Mathesis Universalis and Scientia Universalis to Ancient Philosophy. Aristotle, Platonisms, Gilbert of Poitiers, and Descartes". In Kevin Corrigan and John D. Turner (eds.), Platonisms: Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern, Leiden: Brill 2007, pp. 129-154.

"The design of mathesis universalis, for short MU, was stated in the 17th century as part of the rationalistic philosophy of this time including a program of mathematization of sciences (see Weingartner, 1983). However, the significance of MU is not restricted to that period. It belongs to main ideas of Western civilization, its beginnings can be traced to Pythagoreans and Plato.

Immediate sources of the 17th century MU are found in the 15th century revival of Platonism whose leading figure was Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the author of "Theologia Platonica". He was accompanied by Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), also by Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543). All of them may have taken as their motto the biblic verse, willingly quoted by St. Augustine, Omnia in numero et pondere et mensura disposuisti, Sap. 11, 21. The core of their doctrine was expressed in Ficino's statement that the perfect divine order of the universe gets mirrored in human mind due to mind's mathematical insights; thus mathematics proves capable of the role of an universal key to the knowledge; hence the denomination mathesis universalis.

This line of thought was continued in the 16th century by Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and Johannes Kepler (1571-1630); it penetrated not only mechanics and astronomy but also medical sciences as represented by Teophrastus Paracelsus of Salzburg (1493-1541). No wonder that in the 17th century the community of scholars was ready to treat the idea of MU as something obvious, fairly a commonplace, before Descartes made use of this term in his "Regulae ad directionem ingenii". "Regulae" did not appear in print until 1701, hence the term itself could not have been taken from this source. In fact, it was used earlier by Erhard Weigel, a professor of mathematics in Jena (Leibniz's teacher) who wrote a series of books developing the program of universal mathematics: "Analysis Aristotelis ex Euclide restituta", 1658 (an interpretation of Aristotle's methodological theory in the light of Euclid's practice); "Idea Matheseos Universae", 1669; "Philosophia Mathematica: universae artis inveniendi prima stamina complectens", 1693 (see Arndt, "Einführung des Herausgegebers", in: Christian Wolff, Vernünftige Gedanken, Halle (1713) edited by H. W. Arndt, Hildesheim: Georg Olms 1965).

The last of the listed titles involves one of the key concepts of the MU program: ars inveniendi, i.e. the art of discovering truths in a mathematical way. There were two approaches to this art, differing from each other by opposite evaluations of formal logic. According to Descartes, formal logic of Aristotle and schoolmen was useless for the discovery of truth; according to Leibniz, ars inveniendi was to possess the essential feature both of formal logic and of mathematical calculus, viz. the finding of truths in formae (in virtue of form)." (pp. 525-526)

From: Witold Marciszewski, "The principle of Comprehension as a Present-Day Contribution to mathesis universalis", Philosophia Naturalis 21, 1984, pp. 523-537.

Mathesis universalis in Husserl

"Husserl finds in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s notion of mathesis universalis the first systematic attempt to unify the formal apophansis of Aristotle with the formal mathematical analysis deriving from Franciscus Vieta. According to Husserl, Leibniz saw the possibility of combining the formalized scholastic logic with other formal disciplines devoted to the forms that governed, for example, quantity or spatial relations or magnitude. Leibniz distinguished between a narrower and a broader sense of mathesis universalis. In the narrower sense, it is the algebra of our ordinary understanding, the formal science of quantities.

But since the formalization at work in algebra already makes conceivable a purely formal mathematical analysis that abstracts from the materially determinate mathematical disciplines such as geometry, mechanics, and acoustics, we arrive at a broader concept emptied of all material content, even that of quantity. When applied to judgments, this formal discipline yields a syllogistic algebra or mathematical logic. But, according to Leibniz, this formal analysis of judgment ought to be combinable with all other formal analyses. Hence, the broader mathesis universalis would identify the forms of combination applicable in any science, whether quantitative or qualitative. Only thereby would it achieve the formality allowing it to serve as the theory-form for any science, whatever the material region to which that science is directed.

According to Husserl, however, Leibniz does not give an adequate account of how this unity is achieved. Husserl’s development of Leibniz’s notion of mathesis universalis recognizes the identity of apophantic logic and mathematical logic insofar as both apply to the forms of judgments and of arguments at different levels of abstraction. Moreover, when the principles of a mathematical logic are applied to any object whatever, it becomes clear, given the identity of the judgment as posited and the judgments as supposed, that mathematical logic can also be understood as formal ontology. Formal ontology as the formal theory of objects is characterized in the first instance by its contrast with formal apophantic logic. Formal ontology investigates a set of forms – correlative to those we find in apophantic logic – forms that Husserl calls “object-categories” (Gegenstandskategorien). These categories include object, state of affairs, unity, plurality, number, relation, set, ordered set, combination, connection, and the like. Formal ontology, however, is united with formal logic, for logic concerns the state of affairs just as supposed in the judgment. This means that meaning-categories (Bedeutungskategorien) and object-categories are the same forms, but they are considered differently and named differently in the natural and critical attitudes." (pp. 129-130)

From: John J. Drummond, Historical Dictionary of Husserl's Philosophy Lanham: Scarecrow Press 2007.

"Apophantics as a doctrine of sense and a logic of truth. From the above said it emerges that formal logic, as classically conceived, reflects the attitude of that person who performs the critique but whose judging is not a direct one but a judgement about judgements. Formal logic is constituted like an apophantic logic, whose object is the predicative judgement. This should not constitute a limitation for logic - as in fact has been the case so far - says Husserl - for apophansis contains all the categorical intentional entities. In other words, classical formal logic kept on the apophantic level, abandoning the very aim of knowledge comprised in the "intentionality" of the judgement. However, says Husserl, judgements conceived of as "intentional entities" pertain to the region of sense. The phenomenological analysis of the sense-directed attitude leads Husserl to the following conclusions: there is a region of sense wherein a judgement is meaningful irrespective of whether or not it is exact. This shows that sense transcends the act of referring to the given subjects, sense is "transcendental" and senses are ideal poles of unity (Formale und Transzendentale Logik, p. 119). Hence it follows that pure logic has the following divisions: the doctrine of sense and the doctrine of truth, for we have seen that the sense of a judgement and its truth are two different things.

Having thus examined the whole content of classical analytics, a content which though implied is yet not explicit, in his opinion, Husserl concludes that analytics, thus conceived, represents that Mathesis Universalis i.e. that universal science dreamt of by Leibniz which has four levels:

(a) as Mathesis Universalis, the systematic form of theories; (b) as pure Mathesis, of non-contradiction; (c) as Mathesis o f the possible truth; (d) as Mathesis of pure senses." (p. 367)

From: Anton Dumitriu, History of Logic, Volume III, Tubridge Wells: Abacus Press 1977.

"Husserl's analyses of the mathesis universalis, in keeping with their detailed presentation in FTL [Formal and Transcendental Logic 1929], continue to offer a durable foundation for more extensive phenomenological investigations of the formal sciences. Here Husserl makes a particularly important distinction, one of exemplary significance for the whole of phenomenological description. In the first place, the mathesis universalis understood as objectively existing science -- in Husserl's terminology as objective logic (26) -- is to be phenomenologically-descriptively analyzed. In the second place, these investigations directed toward objective logic are to be supplemented through a subjective logic i. e., (27) through analyses of the cognitive structures of mathematical or logical knowing. The problems Husserl takes on in FTL according to these terms are particularly, (i) the relation between formal logic and mathematics (their co-extension and distinguishability), and (ii) the inner structure of the mathesis universalis. Both problems will be briefly addressed in what follows.

The conception of the mathesis universalis that Husserl clearly grasps for the first time in the Prolegomena is barely altered in the FTL of 1928, which describes mathesis universalis as a science in which formal logic and mathematics blend together in the sense of co-extension. (28) In their respective traditional formal logic and mathematics possessed a clear thematic orientation, on the basis of which they were "undoubtedly separate sciences" [FTL, 80]. Since the "breakthough of algebra" however, abstract mathematics is no longer the science of number and quantity, and abstract logic is no longer the science of the structures of content-related language that orients itself toward the grammar of natural language (a characterization that applies equally to the Brentanian understanding of logic as a general theory of correct [natural-language] reasoning). It would already have been problematic enough if the traditional logic now in the form of Boolean algebra had, as "apophantic mathematics" [FTL,77], become a field of abstract mathematics. But it proved additionally to be the case that ever further sectors of mathematics could themselves be seen as a (Boolean) algebra, which dissolved even the traditional division of disciplines within mathematics. What was left over was thus a comprehensive formal science on the basis of a comprehensive (algebraicized) methodology.

However, it is due not only to a methodological alignment that, after the "breakthrough of algebra," formal logic and mathematics blended together. The formula "a ? b = b ? a" can, for example, be easily reformulated in a first-order language, whereby the transition to formal logic is achieved. Yet the form-variables a,b,... are maintained in this transition, and consequently the logician has the same region of abstract objects in front of him, objects whose constitutive laws were initially considered by the mathematician. Thus the question arises whether and (when yes) in what sense formal logic is distinguishable from mathematics at all,(29) from the mathematics Husserl refers to as formal ontology -- is e., the science "of the possible categorial forms in which substrate objectivitis can truly exist." [FTL,145].

It is one of the most notable results of FTL that Husserl developed precisely the sense in which the two sciences are finally distinct from one another. In keeping with the two-fold character of phenomenological analysis, this distinction is based upon the results of subjectively as well as objectively directed phenomenological descriptions. The first direction leads to the concept of "critical attitude" [FTL, 45, 46], which permits a distinction between the attitude (Einstellung) of the logician from that of the mathematician. The critical attitude of the logician is tantamount with an act of reflection, which is the necessary condition for encountering a judgment as judgment. The mathematician, on the other hand, remains for the most part in an objectively-directed attitude even after he has carried out the abstraction from the material determinations of the object. In his characteristic reflective attitude, the logician directs his attention to the speaking about (abstract) objects, which makes it possible to isolate the structures of this speech. Thus even when logic, in a fashion analogous to formal ontology, speaks about an object-sphere, it refers to the objects and relations in this sphere through the judgment [FTL, 54].

Objectively this distinction in attitude reveals itself to the extent that the judgment is the fundamental concept of formal logic. In the reformulation of the group-axioms in a first-order language, the axioms stand before us as judgments that are grammatically well formulated in the sense of inductive definitions. Au introductory text-book on group-theory, for example, will normally introduce neither the syntax of formalized mathematical language nor a formal concept of proof. In other words, in contrast to formal logic, whose fundamental conceptual inventory includes "judgment" or "judgment-set", these concepts are never even issues in mathematics [cf. FTL, 24]. Mathematics (in its traditional and abstract form) remains in an unreflective attitude which does not in principle thematize the speaking about objects [cf. FTL, 546]. It is occasionally necessary of course, to adopt the critical attitude for the purpose of the fundamental mathematical activity of proof. For the mathematician, this "methodological exception" from the unreflective attitude is motivated by a methodical modalization of the judgment carried out in the direct attitude. We shall return to this in the last two sections.

Since the delimiting of formal logic and mathematics will play a decisive role in the understanding of mathematical incompleteness, this must be treated in somewhat more detail. In the LI [Logical Investigations] of 1900/01, Husserl draws a concise distinction between state of affairs (Sachverhalt) and judgment.(31) States of affairs are experienced as being in the world; they are the objective truth-maker of the judgment, hence an analogon to the objects of perception, to which the psychic acts of perceiving are directed. With this distinction;, Husserl clears up a problem that many thinkers toward the end of the 19th century struggled to resolve.(32) Husserl belongs for this reason alone among Bolzano and Frege as one of the pioneers of modern logic.(33) It is therefore very much in the spirit of Husserl when Tarski remarks in his 1935 essay that he intends to do justic, to the intentions expressed in the following dictum: "To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true."(34) Logic in the period after Husserl lost sight, however, of what Brentano and Husserl called "descriptive psychology"(35)" (pp. 105-108)

Notes

(26) Husserl's concept of logic (in the objective sense) is at least two-fold. On the one hand Husserl speaks of a "fully developed formal logic" [EJ= Experience and Judgment 2], which, as mathesis universalis, would encompass abstract formal logic as well as abstract mathematics. On the other hand he speaks of formal logic as a special science, in which case it is up to the reader to distinguish on every occasion whether Husserl is referring to traditional (Aristotelian) formal logic or to modem mathematicized logic as discipline within the mathesis universalis.

(27) Husserl deals with the distinction between the objective and subjective aspects of logic in, for example, the Introduction to FTL.

(28) In and of itself, the idea of coextension is already present in the Prolegomena. In the Ideen it is made explicit, in FTL analyzed in detail.

(29) On formal ontology FTL, 24; III/1, 10. The problem here exposed was aptly described by Kleene 24 years later in the following way: "In a mathematical theory, we study a system of mathematical objects. How can a mathematical theory itself be an object for mathematical study?" (Stephen Cole Kleene, Introduction to metamathematics, Amsterdam, North-Holland, 1952, 59).

(30) Husserl distinguishes between judgments and the spoken or written expression of judgments (on this see FTL, 5). His concept of judgment not so far away from what is commonly referred to as "proposition" in the terminology of analytic philosophy. At the same time, it is important that the judgment (i. e., the proposition) be opposed not to the expression, but rather that the judgment (as proposition) be opposed to the object of the judgment (where of course the judgment itself can also be made into the object of a higher-level judgment through a particular act of reflection.) Since the judgment can only be given together with an expression (in phenomenological parlance: the judgment is founded on the expression), the presumption of ' Platonic' metaphysics is here unjustified. Dealing with the constitution of judgments would call for detailed phenomenological-psychological investigations into the phenomenology of spoken and written language, analyses that cannot be carried through within the confines of this essay.

(31) The talk of states of affairs can be found in Husserl's work wherever the question is one of truth and its subjective correlate evidence, thus, for example, in the fourth LI, 39. The term "Sachlage", however, should -- even when this expression is employed in the LI (e.g. iv .LI, 28) -- be regarded with a view to its decisive formulation in 59 of EJ. It is not to be confused with state of affairs.

(32) This is the result of the thoroughgoing historical investigation in Barry Smith "Logic and the Sachverhalt", The Monist 72 (1989), 52-69. On this see also the remarks on the roll of Stumpf, Brentano, Meinong, Twardowski, or Reinach in the development of the concept of Sachverhalt.

(33) Best known is of course the influence of Husserl's concept of "pure logical grammar" in Leśniewski and his followers (on this Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, "Husserl' conception of a Purely Logical Grammar." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 17 (1955-57) 362-9).

(34) Adam Tarski (Der Wahrheistbregriff in den formalisierten Sprachen." Studia Philosophica 1 (1935), 261-465. English translation: H. Feigl, and W. Sellars, Readings in Philosophical Analysis. New York (NY): Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949.

From: Olav K. Wiegand, "Phenomenological-Semantic Investigations into Incompleteness", In Olva K. Wiegand et al. (eds.), Phenomenology on Kant, German Idealism, Hermeneutics and Logic. Philosophical Essays in Honor of Thomas M. Seebohm, Dordrecht: Kluwer 2000, pp. 101-132.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on the History of Mathesis Universalis

General studies

Études en Français

1. De Buzon, Frédéric. 1998. "Mathesis universalis." In La science classique: XVIe-XVIIIe siècle. Dictionnaire critique, edited by Blay, Michel and Halleux, Robert, 610-621. Paris: Flammarion.

2. Desanti, Jean-Toussaint. 1972. "Réflexion sur le concept de Mathesis." Bulletin de la Société Française de Philosophie no. 77:1-22.

Repris dans: J. T. Desanti, La philosophie silencieuse ou Critique des philosophies de la science, Paris: Le Seuil, 1975, pp. 196-219.

Nouvelle édition avec une Introduction de Jacques Sédat dans Figures de la psychanalyse, 2005/2 (12), pp. 103-137.

3. Dumoncel, Jean-Claude. 2002. La tradition de la mathesis universalis. Platon, Leibniz, Russell. Paris: Unebévue.

4. Rabouin, David. 2009. Mathesis universalis. L'idée de "mathématique universelle" d'Aristote à Descartes. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Table des matières: Introduction 9; La constitution de la "mathématique universelle" comme problème philosophique 33; I. Aristote 37; II. "Mathématique universelle" et théories mathématiques: Aristote, Euclide, Epinomis 85; III. Le moment néo-platonicien 129; Vers la science de l'ordre et de la misure 193; Introduction 193; IV. La renaissance de la mathématique universelle 195; V. La mathesis universalis cartésienne 251; Conclusion 347; Annexe I. La quaestio de scientia mathematica communi 363; Annexe II. Essai bibliographique sur la mathesis universalis chez Descartes et Leibniz 367; Bibliographie 375; Index nominum 397-402.

English Studies

1. Knobloch, Eberhard. 2004. "Mathesis - The Idea of a Universal Science." In Form, Zahl, Ordnung. Studien zur Wissenschafts- und Technikgeschichte. Festschrift für Ivo Schneider zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Seising, Rudolf, Folkerts, Menso and Hashagen, Ulf, 77-90. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.

" “I know much, it is true, yet I’d like to know everything”: Obviously Wagner, the self-confident servant of Goethe’s Faust (verse 601) wanted to compare with God whereas in universal topic of humanism and baroque times - the historical Faust died in the 1530ies - should only enable men to participate in God's universal knowledge. The epoch overflowed with universalisms, like universal arithmetic, art, characteristic, harmony, instruments, language, magic, mathematics, method, science, symbolism. By all means, universality or at least generality corresponding to unity ranked above diversity corresponding to plurality. “Pluralitas num quam est ponenda sine necessitate”, Ockham had already said, “plurality must never be assumed without necessity”.

Evidently this attitude corresponded to the political situation of the 17th century. It was the time of absolutism, of absolute monarchs. Yet, we must be careful not to rush to conclusions. 19th and 20th centuries physicists of democratic societies liked and like reductionist unifications: the Grand Unified Theory (GUT) and even the hypothetical Theory Of Everything (TOE) are taking shape.

Harmony instead of controversy, certainty instead of uncertainty, evidence instead of obscurity: Since Platonic times mathesis was the discipline which seemed to be especially appropriate to guarantee these ideals. The better if it even seems to grant immortality: For ‘‘Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. ‘Immortality’ may be an inappropriate word, but probably a mathematician has the best chances of whatever it may mean”, as the English mathematician Godefrey Harold Hardy asserted (1993, 81). (*)

No wonder that mathesis played a crucial role in the history of the idea of a universal science. I would like to discuss five essential aspects of this history:

1. Capstone; 2.Tree of science; 3. Human reason; 4. Ocean of sciences; 5. Theory with practice; Epilogue." (p. 77)

(*) [G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician Apology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993 (first edition 1940).]

2. Marciszewski, Witold. 1984. "The Principle of Comprehension as a Present-Day Contribution to Mathesis Universalis." Philosophia Naturalis no. 21:523-537.

3. Mittelstrass, Jürgen. 1979. "The philosopher's conception of "Mathesis Universalis" from Descartes to Leibniz." Annals of Science no. 36:593-610.

"In Descartes, the concept of a 'universal science' differs from that of a 'mathesis universalis', in that the latter is simply a general theory of quantities and proportions. Mathesis universalis is closely linked with mathematical analysis; the theorem to be proved is taken as given, and the analyst seeks to discover that from which the theorem follows. Though the analytic method is followed in the Meditations, Descartes is not concerned with a mathematisation of method; mathematics merely provides him with examples. Leibniz, on the other hand, stressed the importance of a calculus as a way of representing and adding to what is known, and tried to construct a 'universal calculus' as part of his proposed universal symbolism, his 'characteristica universalis'. The characteristica universalis was never completed-it proved impossible, for example, to list its basic terms, the 'alphabet of human thoughts'-but parts of it did come to fruition, in the shape of Leibniz's infinitesimal calculus and his various logical calculi. By his construction of these calculi, Leibniz proved that it is possible to operate with concepts in a purely formal way."

4. Poser, Hans. 1998. "Mathesis universalis and Scientia Singularis. Connections and Disconnections between Scientific Disciplines." Philosophia Naturalis no. 35:3-21.

"Introduction.

Since Einstein sought a unification of relativity theory and quantum theory, two generations of physicists have tried to establish such a theory in order to unify the most efficient macroscopic theory with the extremely powerful microscopic one, but up to now they have not managed it. In many disciplines we are confronted with competing models that are successful within different and even overlapping areas, but which are at the same time incompatible with each other, seen from a more universal standpoint. To develop a unifying theory, is thus one of the greatest challenges.

Why do we take this as a challenge at all? In a historical perspective, this is far from evident: for nearly two thousand years, nobody felt disturbed by the fact that, to locate the position of a planet by means of the Ptolemaic system, one had to make three different mathematical calculations with no theory in common. The method developed by Copernicus, was by no means more precise in its results, nor was it simpler in its calculations, it had only one advantage, not belonging to physics, but to metaphysics, as it proposed one uniform procedure! Differing from the methodology of the School, which, for each quaestio postulated its correspondent appropriate method, and which, therefore, could not lead to universal theory, we are now confronted with the idea of unity, corresponding to an absolutely different image of science, the idea there should be a unity of science or even a unified science! At the beginning, reasons for this had been vague, they hinted at the unity of Gods creation; and its echo might be seen in a secularized version in C. Fr. v. Weizsäcker's Unity of Nature (*). The first theoretical approach is developed in the rationalistic tradition, more precisely, in Descartes and his embracing Mathesis universalis. The same aim is to be found in Leibniz and his proposal of a Scientia generalis, as well as in the intention of Rudolf Carnap and the Vienna circle in postulating a Unified science. In all these cases we are confronted with the question how this all-embracing universal science is related to the singular and diverging sciences, and what the borders of the principles of subordination are."

(...)

"Our search for a link among changing and mutual exclusive sciences shall take the way from Descartes to Leibniz and Neurath on the one hand and Collingwood and Kuhn on the other. It leads to a discussion of Toulmin s thesis of an evolutionary character of all scientific development, a thesis which is taken as support for the post-modern worldview. Against all these attempts, the guiding thesis of this paper is to show that we have to accept truth as a regulative idea behind each scientific undertaking." (pp. 3-5)

(*) [New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1980]

Ancient and Medieval period

Études en Français

1. Breton, Stanislas. 1969. Philosophie et mathématique chez Proclus.

Suivi de Principes philosophiques des mathématiques d'apres le Commentaire de Proclus aux deux premiers livres des Eléments d'Euclide, par Nicolai Hartmann ; traduit de l'allemand par Geneviève de Pesloüan.

2. Rabouin, David. 2005. "La 'mathématique universelle' entre mathématique et philosophie, d'Aristote à Proclus." Archives de Philosophie no. 68:249-268.

English Studies

1. Rabouin, David. 2005. "La 'mathématique universelle' entre mathématique et philosophie, d'Aristote à Proclus." Archives de Philosophie no. 68:249-268.

2. Bechtle, Gerald. 2007. "How to Apply the Modern Concepts of Mathesis Universalis and Scientia Universalis to Ancient Philosophy. Aristotle, Platonisms, Gilbert of Poitiers, and Descartes." In Platonisms: Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern, edited by Corrigan, Kevin and Turner, John D., 129-154. Leiden: Brill.

Abstract: "This chapter concentrates on applying modern concepts like mathesis universalis and scientia universalis to the Ancient Philosophy of Aristotle, Platonisms, Gilbert of Poitiers and Descartes and to reconsider the available evidence so as to view seemingly well-known doctrines in a new light. To do this one needs to find an appropriate instrument for this, as Napolitano (*) undoubtedly has; the new conceptual tool should not only be some kind of gadget, but should also be made to do real work. In the present case, a distinction between, rather than a conscious conflation of, mathesis universalis (common or universal mathematic) and scientia universalis (universal science), might help us to consider some well-known (though obviously often uncertain) doctrinal facts about well-known philosophers from a new perspective. It has surprising shifts of emphasis and the introduction of new distinctions may eventually cause us to ask new systematic questions."

"However, the emphasis of this paper lies, with regard to the concept of mathesis universalis not so much on the historical details as on the more general systematical outlines. Therefore it should suffice to begin our work with an understanding of mathesis universalis that implies not much more than universal (or general or common) mathematical science, which of course still allows for a range of diverse meanings. What matters is to remain true to the sense of mathesis universalis while not confusing the two very different notions somehow inherent in the Latin, i.e., that of universal mathematic on the one hand and that of universal science on the other. Λ clear line should be drawn between these two concepts, of which the former is mathematical (even though sometimes in a wider sense), the latter not. I trust that it will become clear in this paper that both for historical and systematical reasons it is not only justified, but even necessary, to draw this general distinction between universal mathematic and universal science in this way." (p. 130)

(*) Linda M. Napolitano Valditara, Le idee, i numeri, l'ordine. La dottrina della mathesis universalis dall'Accademia antica al neoplatonismo, Napoli: Bibliopolis 1988.

3. Cantù, Paola. 2010. "Aristotle's prohibition rule on kind-crossing and the definition of mathematics as a science of quantities." Synthese no. 174:225-235.

"The article evaluates the Domain Postulate of the Classical Model of Science and the related Aristotelian prohibition rule on kind-crossing as interpretative tools in the history of the development of mathematics into a general science of quantities. Special reference is made to Proclus' commentary to Euclid's first book of Elements, to the sixteenth century translations of Euclid's work into Latin and to the works of Stevin, Wallis, Viète and Descartes. The prohibition rule on kind-crossing formulated by Aristotle in Posterior analytics is used to distinguish between conceptions that share the same name but are substantively different: for example the search for a broader genus including all mathematical objects; the search for a common character of different species of mathematical objects; and the effort to treat magnitudes as numbers."

4. Klein, Jacob. 1968. Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Translated from the original German: Die griechische Logistik und die Entstehung der Algebra, published in Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik, Astronomie und Physik, Abt. B, Studien, v. 3, 1934.

Reprinted: New York, Dover Publications, 1992.

See in particular: Chapter 11.3: The reinterpretation of the katholou pragmateia as Mathesis Universalis in the sense of ars analytice, pp. 178-185, and Chapter 12: The cconcept of number: A. In Stevin (186), B. In Descartes (197), C. In Wallis, pp. 211-224.

Studi Italiani

1. Napolitano Valditara, Linda M. 1988. Le idee, i numeri, l'ordine. La dottrina della mathesis universalis dall'Accademia antica al neoplatonismo. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

Indice: Capitolo Primo: Per una definizione di mathesis universalis: notazioni storiche ed indicazioni semantiche.

La definizione cartesiana di mathesis universalis, 11; Il concetto di mathesis universalis nei secoli XVI e XVII, 26;

Capitolo Secondo: Le principali fonti (storiche e teoriche) della mathesis universalis: Platone, Aristotele, Euclide, Proclo.

L’uso delle fonti 45; Le fonti storiche: dai “ problemi” ai “teoremi”; dal numero figurato alla quantitas 50; Le fonti teoretiche: Euclide 74; Le fonti teoretiche: Proclo, 96;

Capitolo Terzo: Il progetto della mathesis universalis nell’Accademia antica.

Riflessioni introduttive, 149; Speusippo, 156; Senocrate 185; Eudosso di Cnido e la teoria delle proporzioni. Teorie e problemi dell’Epinomide 209; Conclusioni sull’Accademia antica 229;

Capitolo Quarto: La flessione della mathesis universalis fra il III ed il I scolo a. C.

L’Accademia scettica e l' “irrazionalità” dell’epoca ellenistica 283; La prima Accademia scettica: Arcesilao di Pitane 286; La nuova Accademia scettica: Carneade di Cirene 293; Filone di Larissa, Antioco di Ascalona e la ripresa del realismo 306; La scuola scientifica di Alessandria fra teoria e tecnica. Rigore ed invenzione in Archimede 310;

Capitolo Quinto: Alcune connessioni tra mathesis universalis, filosofia medioplatonica e neo-pitagorismo 343.

Il medioplatonismo 343; La sistemazione delle scienze nel Didaskalikòs: il ruolo dell’analisi ed il significato della dialettica 348; La caduta della matematizzazione nella Ideenlehre medioplatonica. Plutarco, la φίλη άριθμητική ed il pitagorismo 378; Il neopitagorismo, l'aritmologia ed il matematismo di Nicomaco di Gerasa 413; L’esemplarità matematica nella nuova teologia neopitagorica e medioplatonica 434; La matematica dell’età imperiale: storia e storiografia 469;

Capitolo Sesto: Appunti per una connessione fra mathesis universalis e neoplatonismo.

Mathesis universalis e neoplatonismo 537; Giamblico di Calcide: Περί της κοινής μαθηματικής έπιστήμης, 539;

Conclusioni.

Concezione arcaico-tradizionale del numero e mathesis universalis 573; Le definizioni del numero e la dottrina dei principi dualistica e monistica 575; Forme della mathesis universalis nella tradizione platonica e pitagorica 577; Le relazioni d’ordine 580; Ordo geometrìcus e gnoseologia 583; I correttivi al matematismo 586.

Bibliografia 593; Indice dei luoghi 617-652.

Estudios en Español

1. Ortiz de Landázuri, Carlos. 2000. "Mathesis universalis en Proclo de las aporias cosmologicas al universo euclideo." Anuario Filosofico no. 33:229-257.

English Abstract: "The author shows how Proclo is a precursor of 'Mathesis universalis' concept, without admitting the aporetic method of mathematics which is in Plato, Aristotle and Euclides thought. Today, his paradigm is rejected but it is a decisive factor to understand the sources of Western thought. This study deals with the works of Brisson, Cleary, Trudeau, Beierwaltes and Schmitz."

Renaissance period

Études en Français

1. Angelini, Annarita. 2006. "« Un autre ordre du monde » : Science et mathématiques d’après les commentateurs de Proclus au Cinquecento." Revue d'histoire des sciences no. 59:265-283.

2. Bonnet, Stéphane. 2005. "La philosophie mathématique de Giordano Bruno." Archives de Philosophie no. 68:315-330.

3. Helbing, Mario Otto. 2000. "La fortune des Commentaires de Proclus sur le premier livre des Éléments d'Euclide à l'époque de Galilée." In La philosophie des mathématiques de l'Antiquité tardive. Actes du colloque international Fribourg, Suisse (24-26 septembre 1998), edited by Bechtle, Gerald and O'Meara, Dominic J., 173-193. Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse.

4. Mehl, Édouard. 2010. "La science capitale: Johann Valentin Andreae et les mathématiques." In Religion und Naturwissenschaften im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, edited by Greyerz, Kaspar von, Kaufmann, Thomas, Siebenhüner, Kim and Zaugg, Roberto, 124-142. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus.

5. Rabouin, David. 2010. "Le rôle de Proclus dans les débats sur la ‘mathématique universelle’ à la Renaissance." In Études sur le Commentaire de Proclus au premier livre des Eléments d’Euclide, edited by Lernould, Alain, 217-234. Villeneuve d'Ascq: Press Universitaires du Septentrion.

Énglish Studies

1. Bockstaele, Paul. 2009. "Between Viète and Descartes: Adriaan van Roomen and the Mathesis Universalis." Archiv for History of Exact Sciences no. 63:433-470.

"Adriaan van Roomen published an outline of what he called a Mathesis Universalis in 1597. This earned him a well-deserved place in the history of early modern ideas about a universal mathematics which was intended to encompass both geometry and arithmetic and to provide general rules valid for operations involving numbers, geometrical magnitudes, and all other quantities amenable to measurement and calculation. 'Mathesis Universalis' (MU) became the most common (though not the only) term for mathematical theories developed with that aim. At some time around 1600 van Roomen composed a new version of his MU, considerably different from the earlier one. This second version was never effectively published and it has not been discussed in detail in the secondary literature before. The text has, however, survived and the two versions are presented and compared in the present article. Sections 1-6 are about the first version of van Roomen's MU the occasion of its publication (a controversy about Archimedes' treatise on the circle, Sect. 2), its conceptual context (Sect. 3), its structure (with an overview of its definitions, axioms, and theorems) and its dependence on Clavius' use of numbers in dealing with both rational and irrational ratios (Sect. 4), the geometrical interpretation of arithmetical operations multiplication and division (Sect. 5), and an analysis of its content in modern terms. In his second version of a MU van Roomen took algebra into account, inspired by Viète's early treatises; he planned to publish it as part of a new edition of Al-Khwarizmi's treatise on algebra (Sect. 7). Section 8 describes the conceptual background and the difficulties involved in the merging of algebra and geometry; Sect. 9 summarizes and analyzes the definitions, axioms and theorems of the second version, noting the differences with the first version and tracing the influence of Viète. Section 10 deals with the influence of van Roomen on later discussions of MU, and briefly sketches Descartes' ideas about MU as expressed in the latter's Regulae."

2. Cifoletti, Giovanna. 2006. "From Valla to Viète: The Rhetorical Reform of Logic and Its Use in Early Modern Algebra." Early Science and Medicine no. 11:390-423.

"Lorenzo Valla's rhetorical reform of logic resulted in important changes in sixteenth-century mathematical sciences, and not only in mathematical education and in the use of mathematics in other sciences, but also in mathematical theory itself. Logic came to be identified with dialectic, syllogisms with enthymemes and necessary truth with the limit case of probable truth. Two main ancient authorities mediated between logical and mathematical concerns: Cicero and Proclus. Cicero's 'common notions' were identified with Euclid's axioms, so that mathematics could be viewed as core knowledge shared by all human kind. Proclus' interpretation of Euclid's axioms gave rise to the idea of a universal human natural light of reasoning and of a mathesis universalis as a basic mathematics common to both arithmetic and geometry and as an art of thinking interpretable as algebra. "

Studi Italiani

1. Crapulli, Giovanni. 1969. Mathesis universalis. Genesi di una idea nel XVI secolo. Roma: Edizioni dell'Ateneo.

Indice: Premessa 7; I. Il V libro degli Elementi di Euclide, il Commento al I libro degli Elementi di Proclo e la problematica di una scienza matematica comune 9; II. La ‘scientia communis' matematica nel Commentarium de certitudine mathematicarum di A. Piccolomini (1547). L'insegnamento delle matematiche allo Studio padovano sulla metà del sec. XVI: F. Delfino, P. Catena, F. Barozzi 33; III. Il Commento di Proclo nelle interpretazioni di P. Ramo e C. Dasipodio: ‘dialectica’ e ‘communis scientia universalis' 63; IV. La ‘scientia mathematica communis' in analogia alla ‘prima philosophia’ secondo B. Pereira 93; V. Il progetto della ‘prima mathesis' nell’Apologia pro Archimede di A. van Roomen 101; VI. La ‘mathematica generalis’ nella Methodus admirandorum mathematicorum di J. H. Alsted (1613) 125; VII. Conclusioni sulla mathesis universalis nel sec. XVI;

Appendici.

I. Scritti matematici (1564, 1570, 1593) di C. Dasipodio 157; II. Dalla ‘Cosmographia’ (1585) di F. Barozzi 205; IIΙ. La ‘Apologia pro Archimede’ (VI-VIII capp.; 1597) di A. van Roomen 209; IV. La ‘Methodus admirandorum mathematicorum’ (1613) di J. H. Alsted 243;

Indici.

Indice terminologico 277; Indice dei nomi propri 279-285.

Estudios en Español

1. Vieira Oliveira, Zaqueu. 2011. "Vida e Obra de Adriaan van Roomen (1561-1615)." Anais do IX Seminário Nacional de História da Matemática:1-12.

English Abstract: "Adriaan van Roomen (Louvain, 1561 – Mainz, 1615) was mathematician and physician. He studied mathematics and philosophy in Cologne, then studied medicine in this city and then in Louvain and Italy. In 1585, on a trip to Rome, received the degree of medicinae licenciatus.

From 1586 to 1592 was professor of mathematics and medicine at the University of Louvain and in 1593 became the first professor of medicine at the newly founded University of Wurceburgo. In 1594 received the degree of doctor of medicine in Bologna. Between 1596 and 1603 was the Chapter mathematician's Cathedral of Wurceburgo [Würzburg]. Many of his works are medical theses defended his students who taught classes at universities. Already some of his work in astronomy, botany, meteorology and fireworks are just compilations of works by ancient authors or their períod. Already in mathematics, some of his works also contain references to ancient authors, but his ideas about mathesis universalis and trigonometry, show the originality of van Roomen and present it as a big calculator. The most important mathematical works of van Roomen are: Ideae Mathematicae pars prima (1593), Problema Apolloniacum (1596) and In Archimedis circuli dimensionem (1597) and astronomy Ouranographia sive caeli descriptio (1591) and Speculum Astronomicum (1606). Van Roomen also communicated with various scholars of his time through correspondence. The Jesuit Priest Christoph Clavius was the most correspondent goals, however we find letters to the astronomers Johannes Kepler and Christoph Grienberge."

René Descartes

René Descartes: les Regulae ad directionem ingenii et la recherche de la mathesis universalis

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Études en Français

1. Berlioz, Dominique. 1993. "Langue adamique et caractéristique universelle chez Leibniz." In Leibniz and Adam, edited by Dascal, Marcelo and Yakira, Elhanan, 153-168. Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects.

2. Couturat, Louis. 1901. La logique de Leibniz: d'aprés des documents inédits. Paris: Felix Alcan.

Reprint: Hildesheim, Olms, 1961 e 1985.

3. Gérard, Vincent. 2006. "Leibniz et la mathématique formelle." Philosophie no. 92:29-55.

4. Knecht, Herbert. 1981. La logique chez Leibniz. Essai sur le rationalisme baroque. Lausanne: L'Age d'Homme.

Voir le Chapitre III: La mathématique universelle pp. 91-123.

5. Rauzy, Jean-Baptiste. 1995. "Quid sit natura prius ? La conception leibnizienne de l'ordre." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 98:31-48.

6. Schmitz, François. 2000. "La pyramide de Leibniz. Note sur le logiquement possible et la logique modale." Cahiers de Philosophie du Langage no. 4:63-99.

English Studies

1. Weingartner, Paul. 1983. "The ideal of the mathematization of all sciences and of "more geometrico" in Descartes and Leibniz." In Nature Mathematized. Historical and Philosophical Case Studies in Classical Modern Natural Philosophy, edited by Shea, William R., 151-195. Dordrecht: Reidel.

2. Westerhoff, Jan C. 1999. "'Poeta Calculans': Harsdorffer, Leibniz, and the "mathesis universalis"." Journal of the History of Ideas no. 60:449-467.

"This paper seeks to indicate some connections between a major philosophical project of the seventeenth century, the conception of a "mathesis universalis", and the practice of baroque poetry. I shall argue that these connections consist in a peculiar view of language and systems of notation which was particularly common in European baroque culture and which provided the necessary conceptual background for both poetry and the mathesis universalis."

3. Dascal, Marcelo. 1987. Leibniz. Language, Signs and Thought. Amsterdam: Benjamins Publishers.

4. Mittelstrass, Jürgen. 1985. "Leibniz and Kant on mathematical and philosophical knowledge." In The Natural Philosophy of Leibniz, edited by Okruhlik, Kathleen and Brown, James Robert, 227-261. Dordrecht: Reidel.

See in particular § 2 Mathesis universalis pp. 232-239.

5. Pombo, Olga. 1987. Leibniz and the Problem of a Universal Language. Münster: Nodus Publikationen.

6. ———. 2002. "Leibniz and the encyclopaedic project." In Ciência, tecnologia y bien comun: la actualidad de Leibniz, 267-278. Valencia: Editorial de la Universidas Politecnica de Valencia.

"My talk will have three moments. In a first moment, I will try to identify the main determinations of encyclopaedic project in its whole. Since Varro (116-24 b.c.), Rerum Divinorum et Humanorum Antiquitates, St. Isidorus (560-636) Etimologies, Alsted Encyclopaedia Omnia Scientiarum (1630), or Diderot and D'Alembert Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers (1751-1765), to the Internet - which constitutes (I will argue) the most recent and eloquent development of the history of encyclopaedism - the aim will be to look for what is common to all this kind of excessive works. In a second moment, I will attempt to understand how Leibniz's idea of encyclopaedia inserts itself in that project of all times, what specific place Leibniz occupies within those many attempts. In the third moment, I will try to estimate the presence of Leibniz's idea of encyclopaedia in subsequent developments of encyclopaedism, namely in the XX / XXI century. This will be my humble contribution to this Congress whose major purpose is to think out the actuality of Leibniz."

7. Rabouin, David. 2012. "Interpretations of Leibniz’s Mathesis universalis at the beginning of the XXth Century." In New Essays on Leibniz Reception. In Science and Philosophy of Science 1800-2000, edited by Krömer, Ralf; and Chin-Drian, Yannick, 187-201. Dordrecht: Springer.

"In his doctoral dissertation, completed in 1922 under the direction of Edmund Husserl and published in 1925 in the Jahrbuch für Philosophie und Phänomenologische Forschungen, Dietrich Mahnke proposed a very valuable overview of the so-called “Leibniz Renaissance”. As indicated by the choice of his title: Leibnizens Synthese von Universalmathematik und Individualmetaphysik, this renaissance was seen by Mahnke as marked by a tension between two Leibnizian programs: that of a “universal mathematics” and that of a “metaphysics of individuation”. His agenda was to propose a way of reconciling these two programs through a point of view inspired by the development of Husserlian phenomenology. In this paper, I will concentrate on the first program, “universal mathematics” or mathesis universalis, and see how the interpretation of this Leibnizian theme was indeed a key point in the demarcation between different ways of articulating logic, mathematics and philosophy at the beginning of the XXth century. I will pay particular attention to the way in which commentators carefully selected their texts in the Leibnizian corpus. It will be an occasion to exhibit certain postulates lurking behind classical interpretations of Leibniz in the studies by Russell, Couturat, Cassirer, or Brunschvicg. I will then contrast these readings with another interpretation of Leibniz’s mathesis universalis, permitted by a better access to the texts and a somewhat calmer discussion around the relationship between logic, mathematics and philosophy. " (p. 187)

8. ———. 2019. "Mathematics and Imagination in Early Modern Times: Descartes and Leibniz’ mathesis universalis in the light of Proclus’ Commentary of Euclid’s Elements." In Knowledge and the Power of Imagination, 17th-18th Centuries, edited by Vermeir, Koen. Dordrecht: Springer.

Not yet published.

Deutschen Studien

1. Danek, Jaromit, and Möckel, Christian. 2000. "Idee der Mathesis universalis - die logische Vernunft: Leibniz und Husserl." In Phänomenologie und Leibniz, edited by Cristin, Renato and Kiyoshi, Sakei, 88-121. Freiburg: Alber.

2. Heinekamp, Albert. 1975. "Natürliche Sprache und Allgemeine Charakteristik bei Leibniz." In Akten des II Internationalen Leibniz-Kongresses. Hannover, 17-22. Juli 1972. Vol IV: Erkenntnislehre, Logik und Sprachphilosophie, 257-286. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner.

3. Mahnke, Dietrich. 1925. "Leibnizens Synthese von Universalmathematik und Individualmetaphysik." Jahrbuch für Philosophie und Phänomenologische Forschungen:305-612.

Reprint: Stuttgart: Frommann 1964.

4. Poser, Hans. 1979. "Signum, notio und idea. Elemente der Leibnizschen Zeichentheorie." Zeitschrift für Semiotik no. 1:309-324.

English Abstract: "Leibniz' approach towards a "characteristica universalis", a "universal art of signs" (Zeichenkunst), as an essential instrument of human knowledge is rooted both in the Cartesian ideal method of a universal mathesis and in the ars magna as a universal language comprising all the simple concepts and their combinations. The signum (sign vehicle) expresses a notio (concept) based on an idea fundamental to the res (object). The assumption here is that an isomorphic relationship between the logical and ontological areas is the precondition enabling denotation. However, the deficiency of human thought prevents characterization in its entirety; a multitude of sign systems - "Bereichscharakteristiken", area-specific characteristics - take the place of this ideal. Under these conditions it is also possible to transpose ordinary language into a lingua rationis. Beyond that, the importance of ordinary language consists in its correlating sign and meaning."

5. Risse, Wilhelm. 1969. "Die Characteristica Universalis bei Leibniz." Studi Internazionali di Filosofia no. 1:107-116.

6. Schneider, Martin. 1988. "Funktion und Grundlegung der Mathesis Universalis im Leibnizschen Wissenschaftsystem." Studia Leibnitiana.Sonderheft no. 15:162-182.

7. Trendelenburg, Friedrich Adolf. 1856. Über Leibnizens Entwurf einer allgemeinen Charakteristik. Berlin: Königlich Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Estudios en Español

1. Cardoso, Adelino. 1996. "Mathesis Leibniziana." Philosophica: Revista do Departamento de Filosofia da Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa:51-77.

"Dans cet article, l'auteur essaie de montrer qu'on trouve chez Leibniz une "mathesis", c'est-a-dire une conception du savoir et de l'organisation des savoirs, originale, laquelle est entierèment discernable d'autres "mathesis" qui ont été proposées par ses contemporains du XVIIe siecle. Du point de vue thématique, l'auteur croit que cette " mathesis" reçoit son intelligibilité de la relation que Leibniz établit entre la métaphysique et les mathématiques. Sous ce rapport, on constate des vraies transformations dans la pensée de Leibniz, dès le moment où il fait son adhesion au mécanisme (1668) jusqu'à la formulation de sa dernière pensée. Dans cette évolution, la correspondance avec de Volder joue un role décisif."

After Leibniz

Études en Français

1. Charrak, André. 2009. Empirisme et théorie de la connaissance. Réflexion et fondement des sciences au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Vrin.

2. Tosel, André. 2005. "La “Science nouvelle” de Vico face à la “mathesis universalis” " Noesis no. 8:1-12.

English Studies

1. Jesseph, Douglas M. 2010. "The “merely mechanical” vs. the “scab of symbols”: seventeenth century disputes over the criteria of mathematical rigor." In Philosophical Aspects of Symbolic Reasoning in Early Modern Mathematics edited by Heeffer, Albrecht and Van Dyck, Maarten, 273-288. London: College Publications.

"This paper deals with seventeenth-century understandings of rigorous demonstration. Although there was a widely-shared concept of rigor that has its origins in classical Greek sources, philosophers in the early modern period were divided over how to characterize the ultimate foundation for mathematics. One group (whom I term the “geometric foundationalists”) held that seeming physical concepts such as space, body and motion, were properly foundational. The other group (whom I call “algebraic foundationalists”)

claimed that the true foundations of mathematics must be abstract notions of quantity which were the subject of algebra, or even a more general mathesis universalis that encompassed all reasoning about number and measure.

The geometric foundationalists faced the objection that they had introduced “merely mechanical” or insufficiently abstract principles into the foundations of mathematics. In contrast, the algebraic foundationalists needed to rebut the accusation that they based mathematics on a “scab of symbols”, or empty notation divorced from anything real or substantial. I argue that this episode offers some useful insights into general questions about foundations, and can help us understand what is at stake in disputes over foundational issues, as well as how such disputes rise to prominence and then fade away."

2. Maat, Jaap. 2004. Philosophical Languages in the Seventeenth Century: Dalgarno, Wilkins, Leibniz. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Deutsche Studien

1. Arndt, Hans Werner. 1971. Methodo scientifica pertractatum. Mos geometricus und Kalkülbegriff in der philosophischen Theorienbildung des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Vorwort: V; Einleitung 1; I. Zur Herausbildung der "Matematischen Methode" im Zusammenhang der Entwicklung des Begriff der Methode 15; II. Descartes' Begriff der Methode im Verhältnis zu seiner Konzeption einer "Mathesis Universalis" 29; III. Zur Auffassung der "Mos Geometricus" un der "Mathesis Universalis" in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrunderts 69; IV. Das Verhältnis von matematischer Methode und "Mathesis Universalis" in der Philosophie von Leibniz 99; V. "Methodo Scientifica" und "Mathesis Universalis" in der Metodenlehre Christian Wolffs 125; VI. Johann Heinrich Lamberts Konzeption einer Wissenschaflichen Grundlehre 149; Literaturverzeichnis 161; Sachregister 166; Namenregister 169-170.

2. ———. 1979. "Die Semiotik Christian Wolffs als Propädeutik der ars characteristica combinatoria und der ars inveniendi." Zeitschrift für Semiotik no. 1.

English Abstract: "The central thesis in Wolff's approach towards semiotics is that a semiotically classified representation of philosophical sciences is a prerequisite to the development of an ars inveniendi. Assuming that an isomorphic relationship between concepts, signs, and things as well as between their differences and relations exists, Wolff develops a system of concepts resulting in a real Organon for philosophy. Wolff's method follows the ideal of explicating concepts originating in ordinary language, which, because of this origin, become lexicographically applicable, even independently of the theoretical context. While here (and this is true to Daries) all content of consciousness is assumed to be accessible to an analysis notionum and to be solely conveyed by signs, later on, language and signs are regarded as media capable of evoking their own effects."

3. Peckhaus, Volker. 1997. Logik, Mathesis universalis und allgemeine Wissenschaft. Leibniz und die Wiederentdeckung der formalen Logik im 19. Jahrundert. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

Inhalt: Vorwort VII-VIII; 1. Einleitung 1; 2. Die Idee der mathesis universalis bei Leibniz 25; 3. Die frühe Rezeption Leibnizscher mathesis universalis und Logik 64; 4. Die "logische Frage" und die Entdeckung der Leibnizschen Logik 130; 5. Leibniz und die englische Algebra der Logik 185; 6. Ernst Schröder: "Absolute Algebra" und Leibnizprogramm 233; 7. Schluss 297; Verzeichnisse 309-412.

Studi Italiani

1. Ciafardone, Raffaele. 1971. "Il problema della "mathesis universalis" in Lambert." Il Pensiero no. 16:171-208.

Edmund Husserl

Études en Français

1. Gagné, Gilles. 1971. L'idée de la "Mathesis universalis". Essai sur la doctrine de la science d'Edmund Husserl.

Thèse inédite presentée à l'Université d'Ottawa.

2. Gérard, Vincent. 2001. Mathématique universelle et métaphysique de l’individuation. L’élaboration de l’idée de mathesis universalis dans la phénoménologie de Husserl.

Thèse inédite.

Résumé: "La mathesis universalis est-elle l'ontologie formelle ? Telle est la question à laquelle nous nous proposons de répondre dans ce travail. Dans la première partie, on trouve la genèse de l’idée de mathesis universalis comme ontologie formelle. Dans la deuxième, les délimitations ontologiques de la mathesis universalis par rapport a la géométrie et l'axiologie formelle. dans la troisième, l'élucidation phénoménologique de la mathesis universalis comme théorie des sens apophantiques purs. Dans la quatrième, son articulation sur une métaphysique formelle ou théorie de l'individuation: la mathesis universalis est alors réarticulée sur l'ontologie formelle, mais en un autre sens de l'ontologie formelle. Les résultats auxquels nous sommes parvenu sont les suivants : 1) Husserl emprunte son concept de mathesis universalis, non pas à la Règle IV-b de Descartes, soit pour en accomplir le sens, soit pour la détourner de son sens, mais a la tradition arithmétisante de Van Schooten, Wallis, Newton et du Leibniz de 1695; 2) l'élaboration husserlienne de l'idée de mathesis universalis est une tentative pour identifier un ensemble de noyaux régulateurs (principe de permanence de Hankel, etc.) qui norment les possibilité d'admission d'objets dans le champ analytique formel; 3) la géométrie comme science de l'espace est exclue de ce champ; 4) il existe en revanche une analogie radicale entre l'axiologie formelle et la mathesis universalis; 5) Husserl n'est pas seulement redevable a Leibniz de l'idée de mathesis universalis, mais également de sa conversion philosophique; 6) la mathesis philosophique pensée a la lumière de la théorie de la connaissance telle qu'elle est élaborée par Leibniz vers 1684 n'est, ni ne veut être, une théorie de l' être, mais une théorie pure de la signification; 7) cette théorie de la signification s'articule sur une métaphysique formelle dont Husserl emprunte le concept a Lotze. Elle a pour tâche de décrire les formes idéales auxquelles doivent correspondre les relations entre les éléments d'un monde, quel qu'il soit."

3. ———. 2002. "La mathesis universalis est-elle l'ontologie formelle?" Annales de Phénomenologie no. 1:61-98.

4. ———. 2012. "Mathesis universalis et géométrie: Husserl et Grassmann." In Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences. Essays in Commemoration of Edmund Husserl, edited by Ierna, Carlo, Jacobs, Hanne and Mattens, Filip, 255-300. New York: Springer.

5. Ierna, Carlo. 2012. "La notion husserlienne de multiplicité : au-delà de Cantor et Riemann." Methodos [en ligne] no. 12.

"En raison du rôle changeant qu’il joue dans les différents ouvrages de Husserl, le concept de Mannigfaltigkeit a fait l’objet de nombreuses interprétations. La présence de ce terme a notamment induit en erreur plusieurs commentateurs, qui ont cru en déterminer l’origine dans les années de Halle, à l’époque où Husserl, ami et collègue de Cantor, rédigeait la Philosophie de l’arithmétique. Mais force est de constater qu’à cette époque Husserl s’était déjà ouvertement éloigné de la définition cantorienne de Mannigfaltigkeit en s’approchant plutôt de Riemann, comme le montrent les nombreuses études et leçons qui lui sont consacrées. La Mannigfaltigkeitslehre de Husserl semble donc plus proche de la topologie que de la théorie des ensembles de Cantor. Ainsi, dans les Prolégomènes, Husserl introduit l’idée d’une Mannigfaltigkeitslehre pure en tant qu’entreprise méta-théorique dont le but est d’étudier les relations entre théories, à savoir la manière par laquelle une théorie est dérivée ou fondée à partir d’une autre. Dès lors, lorsque Husserl affirme que le meilleur exemple d’une telle théorie pure des multiplicités se trouve dans les mathématiques, cela risque donc de prêter à confusion. En effet, la théorie pure des théories ne saurait être simplement identifiée aux mathématiques qui relèvent de la topologie, mais considérée en tant que mathesis universalis. Bien qu’une telle position ne fût sans doute pas entièrement claire en 1900-01, Husserl ne tardera pas à relier explicitement théorie des multiplicités et mathesis universalis.En ce sens, la mathesis universalis, théorie des théories en général, est une discipline formelle, apriori et analytique qui a pour but l’analyse des catégories sémantiques suprêmes et des catégories d’objets qui leur sont corrélées. Dans cet article j’essayerai de comprendre le développement de la notion de Mannigfaltigkeit au sein de la pensée de Husserl (de ses débuts mathématiques jusqu’au rôle central qu’elle jouera plus tard) à partir de l’arrière-fond et du contexte mathématique du développement de la philosophie de Husserl lui-même."

6. Rabouin, David. 2006. "Husserl et le projet leibnizien d'une mathesis universalis." Philosophie no. 92:13-28.

7. Safou, Jean-Bernard. 2002. Husserl et la métaphysique de Descartes: essai d'une interprétation phénoménologique du projet de la Mathesis universalis. Thèse inédite disponible sur l' Atelier National de reproduction des Thèses - ANRT (Ref. 31760).

8. Winance, Eleuthère. 1966. "Logique, mathématique et ontologie comme 'mathesis universalis' chez Edmund Husserl." Revue Thomiste no. 66:410-434.

English Studies

1. Centrone, Stefania, and Da Silva Jairo, José 2917. "Husserl and Leibniz: Notes on the Mathesis Universalis." In Essays on Husserl’s Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics, edited by Centrone, Stefania, 1-23. Dodrecht: Springer.

2. Hopkins, Burt C. 2011. The Origin of the Logic of Symbolic Mathematics: Edmund Husserl and Jacob Klein. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

3. Lerner, Rosemary R.P. 2012. "Mathesis Universalis and the Life-World: Finitude and Responsibility." The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy no. 12:136-154.

4. Milkov, Nikolay. 2006. "The formal theory of everything: exploration of Husserl's theory of manifolds." In Logos of Phenomenology and Phenomenology of the Logos. Book One, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 119-135. Dordrecht: Springer.

5. Olvera Mijares, Raul. 1994. "Some historical remarks on Husserl's theory of multiplicity." Axiomathes no. 5:385-394.

6. Tito, Johannes Maria. 1990. Logic in the Husserlian Context. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

7. Wiegand, Olav K. 2000. "Phenomenological-semantic investigations into incompleteness." In Phenomenology on Kant, German Idealism, hermenutics and logic. Philosophical Essays in honor of Thomas M. Seebohm, edited by Wiegand, Olav K., Dostal, Robert J., Embree, Lester, Kockelmans, Joseph and Mohanty, Jitendra Nath, 101-132. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

See in particular § 2. Husserl's phenomenological analysis of the mathesis universalis, pp. 105-111.

"Husserl's analyses of the mathesis universalis, in keeping with their detailed presentation in FTL [Formal and Transcendental Logic 1929], continue to offer a durable foundation for more extensive phenomenological investigations of the formal sciences. Here Husserl makes a particularly important distinction, one of exemplary significance for the whole of phenomenological description. In the first place, the mathesis universalis understood as objectively existing science -- in Husserl's terminology as objective logic (26) -- is to be phenomenologically-descriptively analyzed. In the second place, these investigations directed toward objective logic are to be supplemented through a subjective logic i. e., (27) through analyses of the cognitive structures of mathematical or logical knowing. The problems Husserl takes on in FTL according to these terms are particularly, (i) the relation between formal logic and mathematics (their co-extension and distinguishability), and (ii) the inner structure of the mathesis universalis. Both problems will be briefly addressed in what follows." p. 105

Deutschen Studien

1. Ha, Byung-Hak. 1997. Das Verhältnis der Mathesis universalis zur Logik als Wissenschaftstheorie bei E. Husserl. Bern: Peter Lang.

2. Kuster, Frederike. 2008. Wege der Verantwortung. Husserls Phänomenologie als Gang durch die Faktizität. Dodrecht: Kluwer.

Erste Kapitel: Eine mathesis der Geist und der Humanität.

3. Wiegand, Olav K. 1998. Interpretationen der Modallogik. Ein Beitrag zur phaenomenologischen Wissenschaftstheorie. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"The author's aim is to point out interpretations of modal logic which are compatible with the phenomenological approach to mathematics. The book consists of three parts with ten chapters. In the first part (pp. 19-77) the author presents E. Husserl's conception of a ''mathesis universalis''. For Husserl, the mathesis universalis contains both, formal mathematics and formal (symbolic) logic. It has a hierarchical structure consisting of a pure logical grammar, a logic of consequences and a logic of truths. The author pays special attention to the differences between formal logic and formal mathematics which can be observed despite their extensional identity.\par In the second part (pp. 81--143) the author presents what he calls ''phenomenological semantics'', i.e. the phenomenological theory of modalization being a general analysis of intentions. The author distinguishes three levels of modalization, the level of protological passive synthesis, the level of protological active synthesis, and the level of (logical) predication.\par The third part (pp. 147--194) combines the results of the preceding parts in a phenomenological criticism of modern modal logic, especially its interpretation as possible worlds semantics. The problems of applying this semantics to natural language are seen as anchor points of phenomenological criticism. The provability interpretation of modal logic is proposed as a genetic interpretation, notwithstanding the problems which Hilbert's program and Husserl's closely related idea of definite manifolds had with Gödel's and Church's results. (Volker Peckhaus)".

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Études en Français

1. Dumoncel, Jean-Claude. 1991. Le jeu de Wittgenstein. Éssai sur la mathesis universalis. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliographie sur René Descartes et la recherche de la mathesis universalis

Études en Français

1. Allard, Jean-Louis. 1963. Le Mathématisme de Descartes. Ottawa: Éditions de l'Université d'Ottawa.

2. Araújo Silva, Mateus. 2008. "L'imagination dans la Géometrie de Descartes: Retour sur une question ouverte." In Mathématiciens français du XVIIe siècle. Descartes, Fermat, Pascal, edited by Serfati, Michel and Descotes, Dominique, 69-128. Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise-Pascal.

3. Beyssade, Jean-Marie. 1991. "Le sens commun dans la Règle XII : le corporel et l'incorporel." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 96:497-514.

4. ———. 1997. "‘L'étendue n'est pas le corps’ (Regulae XIV, AT X, 444, 1. 18). Genres d'être et façons de parler dans les Regulae." Laval Théologique et Philosophique no. 53:755-766.

5. Boutrox, Pierre. 1900. L'imagination et les mathématique selon Descartes. Paris: Alcan.

"Original, stirring interpretation of Descartes's concept of mathesis universalis as a science of pure, naked quantities without any concrete reality, hence independent of imagination in Descartes's sense. Descartes recognized this conception to be practically unattainable; his algebraic geometry was merely the most useful and convenient compromise he could find. The thesis rests on distinctions between "imagination" acting in time and "understanding" outside time; memory and perception; deductive reasoning and immediate cognition. Important appendix on Descartes's and Vieta's analysis "au point du vue du role de l'imagination" (37-41); also on Descartes's Regulae (42-45), to the understanding of which this study makes a profound contribution." (Sebba, p. 102).

6. Cassan, Elodie. 2007. "Intuition et science chez Descartes. Le cas des Règles pour la direction de l'esprit." Transparaître no. 1:37-54.

7. Cobb-Stevens, Richard. 1997. "La géométrie des Regulae: mathesis et ontologie." In Lire Descartes aujourd'hui, edited by Depré, Olivier; Lories, Danielle, 85-107. Louvain-Paris: Éditions Peters.

8. Costabel, Pierre. 1976. "Les Regulae et l'actualité scientifique de leur temps." Les Études Philosophiques:415-423.

Repris dans: P. Costabel, Démarches originales de Descartes savant, Paris: Vrin, 1982, pp. 39-47.

9. De Buzon, Frédéric. 1996. "La mathesis des Principia: remarques sur II, 64." In Descartes: Principia Philosophiae (1644-1994), edited by Armogathe, Jean-Robert; Belgioioso Giulia, 303-320. Napoli: Vivarium.

10. ———. 2005. "Mathématiques et dialectique: Descartes ramiste?" Les Études Philosophiques:455-467.

11. ———. 2013. La Science cartésienne et son objet. Mathesis et phénomène. Paris: Honoré Champion.

"Les trois disciplines théorétiques, métaphysique, mathématique et physique constituent le lieu essentiel d'intervention de la philosophie de Descartes dans les discussions de l'âge classique, et encore dans les nôtres, mais trop souvent de manière séparée. Il s'agit dans cet essai de comprendre comment l'une des tâches que Descartes assigne à la philosophie première, au-delà de la validation extérieure des sciences contre le scepticisme, est d'en redéfinir les objets et d'en retracer les frontières, de manière à assurer l'intelligibilité intégrale du réel qui se présente à l'esprit comme phénomène, et ce jusqu'aux passions de l'âme. Cette discussion concerne au premier chef les concepts cartésiens de mathématique et la manière dont Descartes, en particulier dans les Méditations, recompose la mathématique pure à partir de la figure et du mouvement pour identifier l'essence des corps, et donc la possibilité d'une physique, à son objet. Sont concernées les positions fondamentales de Descartes en philosophie naturelle: rapport entre physique et mathématique, lois de la nature, atomisme, théorie des substances individuelles, et, en contrepoint, les instruments de connaissance, particulièrement la sensation et l'imagination."

12. De Oliveira, Erico Andrade Marques. 2010. "La genèse de la méthode cartésienne: la mathesis universalis et la rédaction de la quatrième des Règles pour la direction de l'esprit." Dialogue.Canadian Philosophy Review no. 49:173-198.

"À bien des égards, la Règle IV paraît être formée de deux textes distincts, ce que devrait justifier la différence entre la mathesis universalis et la méthode cartésienne. Cette interprétation conventionnelle est remise en cause en montrant que la révision qui s’opère au sein de la mathématique fait de celle-ci une méthode qui contraint les sciences à instituer l’ordre et la mesure dans leurs recherches. Ainsi, la discussion sur la mathesis universalis ne vise pas une science mathématique d’un niveau supérieur, mais a eu pour but la mise en œuvre d’une universalisation des méthodes menant à la découverte de la vérité."

13. Dumitrescu, Marius. 1999. "Le défi cartésien par l'idée de mathesis universalis." Revue Roumaine de Philosophie no. 42-43:25-32.

14. Fichant, Michel. 1993. "L'Ingenium selon Descartes et le chiffre universel des Règles pour la Direction de l'Esprit." In Scepticisme et Exégèse. Hommage à Camille Pernot 197-216. Lyon: École Normale Supérieure de Fontenay/Saint Cloud.

Repris dans: M. Fichant, Science et métaphysique dans Descartes et Leibniz, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998, pp. 1-28.

15. Gäbe, Luder. 1983. "La Regle XIV. Lien entre geometrie et algebre." Archives de Philosophie no. 56:654-660.

16. Gajano, Alberto. 1995. "Enseigner et apprendre chez Descartes: la connaissance des principes dans les Regulae ad directionem ingenii et la Recherche de la vérité." Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 120:165-190.

17. Gontier, Thierry. 2006. "Mathématiques et science universelle chez Bacon et chez Descartes." Revue d’Histoire des Sciences no. 59:285-312.

18. Israel, Giorgio. 1999. "Des Regulæ à la Géométrie." Revue d’Histoire des Sciences no. 51:183-236.

"Décrire la Géométrie comme un « essai » illustrant la méthode cartésienne, ou comme une application des règles formulées dans le Discours de la Méthode, conduit, à notre avis, à sousestimer le lien entre ce brillant « essai » et l'œuvre philosophique de Descartes. Certes, une telle description de la Géométrie fait état d'une dépendance entre l'unique application mathématique de la méthode cartésienne et les principes métaphysiques sur lesquels elle se fonde. Mais il faut bien noter que le lien entre la Géométrie et la méthode cartésienne que l'on suggère par là paraît faible. La conséquence est que les études consacrées à ce texte se divisent en analyse « philosophique » et en analyse « mathématique ». En fait, lorsqu'on prend en compte l'ensemble de l'œuvre cartésienne dans son rapport avec la Géométrie, la situation paraît toute différente. Les Regulae ad directionem ingenii, en particulier, permettent d'établir un lien plus étroit entre la méthode cartésienne et la Géométrie.

L'objet de cet article est de mettre en évidence tous ces rapports; nous examinons les questions historiographiques soulevées ci-dessus et, en particulier, les conséquences de la séparation entre une approche philosophique et une approche purement mathématique. Nous prétendons que cette séparation est sans fondement dans le cas de l'œuvre cartésienne et qu'elle est susceptible de conduire à des conclusions discutables."

19. Jamart, Géraldine. 1996. "Logique, mathématique et ontologie: La Ramée, précurseur de Descartes." Les Études Philosophiques:17-28.

" Cet article confirme l’idée heideggerienne, repensée par J.-L. Marion, selon laquelle les Regulae ont une portée ontologique. Pour ce faire, Il effectue une comparaison de la dialectique de La Ramée et de la Mathesis Universalis de Descartes. Il se développe en trois thèses : 1) La Mathesis Universalis et la dialectique déterminent l’essence du penser à partir du mathématique (compris radicalement); 2) Elles consistent en un savoir «ontologique», c’est-à-dire un savoir à partir duquel nous pouvons expérimenter les choses comme choses en général; 3) Leur portée « ontologique» naît de leur proximité avec la mathématique." (p. 17)

20. ———. 2001. "Le rôle de l’imagination dans les Regulae, ou la concurrence de deux conceptions de la rationalité. Méthode et mathesis universalis." In L'esprit cartésien. Quatrième centenaire de la naissance de Descartes, edited by Bourgeois, Bernard and Havet, Jacques, 212-215. Paris: Vrin.

21. Lauth, Reinhard. 1968. "La constitution du texte des Regulae de Descartes." Archives de Philosophie:648-656.

Sur le livre de Jean-Paul Weber (1964).

22. Loi, Maurice. 2000. "La mathesis universalis aujourd'hui." In L'esprit cartésien. Quatrième centenaire de la naissance de Descartes, edited by Bourgeois, Bernard and Havet, Jacques, 231-233. Paris: Vrin.

23. Lojacono, Ettore. 1996. "Épistemologie, méthode et procédés méthodiques dans la pensée de Descartes." Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres:39-105.

"Soulignant le lieu-commun de la problématique de la méthode chez les penseurs de la Renaissance, l'Auteur étudie les prémisses culturelles, puis le lieu théorique de la méthode cartésienne, qui s'inscrit dans le domaine épistémique de l'arithmétique et de la géométrie, d'une part, et dans l'espace opérationnel de l'esprit, d'autre part. Examinant les catégories de l'intuitus et de la déduction, l'Auteur retrace les étapes de la définition de la méthode comme guide dans l'élaboration de la voie analytique, depuis les Regulae jusqu'au Discours."

24. Marion, Jean-Luc. 1974. "Ordre et relation. Sur la situation aristotélicienne de la théorie cartésienne de l'ordre selon les Règles V et VI." Archives de Philosophie no. 37:243-274.

25. ———. 1975. Sur l'ontologie grise de Descartes. Science cartesienne et savoir aristotelicien dans les Regulae. Paris: Vrin.

Deuxième édition revue 1981; troisième édition 1992.

26. Martineau, Emmanuel. 1976. "L'ontologie de l'ordre." Études Philosophiques no. 31:415-423.

27. Milhaud, Gaston. 1918. "L'œuvre de Descartes pendant l'hiver 1619-20. I. La méthode et la mathesis. II. Les premieres travaux d'analyse et de geometrie." Scientia (Bologna) no. 23:1-8; 77-90.

Repris dans G. Milhaud, Descartes savant, Chapitre III. CHAPITRE III. L'œuvre de Descartes pendant l’hiver 1619-1620, pp. 64-88, Paris: Alcan 1921.

28. Olivo, Gilles. 1996. "L'évidence en règle: Descartes, Husserl et la question de la mathesis universalis." Études Philosophiques:189-221.

"La signification de la mathesis universalis des Regulae se confond avec la question historiquement disputée de la priorité de la méthode sur la métaphysique. Cette difficulté, exemplairement consignée dans l’interprétation husserlienne de Descartes, est levée lorsqu’on constate que Descartes n’a cessé - du Discours jusqu’aux Meditationes - d’affirmer là primauté constitutive de la méthode sur les sciences, métaphysique comprise, conformément au projet de la mathesis universalis. Ainsi se trouve institué un écart définitif entre le commencement méthodique (de l’évidence) et le fondemerit métaphysique dont le sens strictement non-méthodologique de la Regula generalis est l’indice." (p. 189)

29. ———. 1997. "La sagesse des principes: la mathesis universalis dans les Principiae philosophiae de Descartes." In Lire Descartes aujourd'hui, edited by Depré, Olivier and Lories, Danielle, 69-84. Louvain-Paris: Éditions Peters.

30. ———. 2005. Descartes et l'essence de la vérité. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Table des matières: Introduction: La clarté transcendantale de la vérité; Vérité de la méthode ou vérité de la philosophie première?; La question du fondement; Section I : La certitude de la sagesse universelle; Chapitre 1: La sagesse universelle des Regulae ou la primauté de l'entendement; Chapitre 2: Les Regulae, La recherche de la vérité et la mathesis universalis; Chapitre 3: Les Regulae et La recherche de la vérité présupposent-elles une philosophie première?; Section II: La certitude en vèrité; Chapitre 4: La règle générale et l'hypothèse du Dieu trompeur; Chapitre 5: La règle générale entre évidence et certitude; Chapitre 6: Des natures simples à l'idée vraie; Chapitre 7: La IVe Méditation et la création des vérités éternelles; Conclusion; Index.

31. Pironet, Fabienne. 1998. "Le sujet de la science dans les Regulae de Descartes." Medioevo. Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 24:267-281.

32. Rabouin, David. 2009. Mathesis universalis. L'idée de "mathématique universelle" d'Aristote à Descartes. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Table des matières: Introduction 9; La constitution de la "mathématique universelle" comme problème philosophique 33; I. Aristote 37; II. "Mathématique universelle" et théories mathématiques: Aristote, Euclide, Epinomis 85; III. Le moment néo-platonicien 129; Vers la science de l'ordre et de la misure 193; Introduction 193; IV. La renaissance de la mathématique universelle 195; V. La mathesis universalis cartésienne 251; Conclusion 347; Annexe I. La quaestio de scientia mathematica communi 363; Annexe II. Essai bibliographique sur la mathesis universalis chez Descartes et Leibniz 367; Bibliographie 375; Index nominum 397-402.

33. ———. 2015. "Mathesis, Méthode, Géometrie. Les Regulae et leur place dans la philosophie de Descartes." In Lectures de Descartes, edited by Buzon, Frédéric de, Cassan, Élodie and Kambouchner, Denis, 67-95. Paris: Ellipses.

34. Robinet, André. 1996. Aux sources de l'esprit cartésien. L'axe La Ramée-Descartes: de la Dialectique des 1555 aux Regulae. Paris: Vrin.

35. ———. 1996. "Le référent "dialectique" dans les Regulae." Études Philosophiques:3-15.

"L’œuvre de Descartes, et notamment les Regulae, a été interprétée dans son rapport avec la philosophie ancienne ou médiévale. Un vaste domaine de recherche est aujourd’hui ouvert qui lie les Regulae à leur environnement immédiat. Plus de 20.000 ouvrages portant le titre dialectica voient le jour de 1520 à 1630 qui traitent de l’invention, de l’intuition, de la déduction, de la méthode, de l’ordre, de la série et de l’application de ces concepts dialectiques aux autres savoirs, notamment mathématiques. Ces logiques d’inspiration variée se heurtent entre courants dont la typologie est repérable. Les Regulae se réfèrent à l’un d’entre eux par leur plan d’ensemble, par leurs disposition de détail, par leurs concepts et par leur philosophie. Cette appartenance ramiste est commandée par la Dialectique de La Ramée de 1555. Cet article analyse le concept de dialectique dressé contre l'Organon, son fondement dans l’intuition des natures simples, son développement en mathesis universalis au travers des cent années de travaux qui précèdent l’élaboration cartésienne des Regulae. Or ces dispositions ne cesseront pas d’avoir cours dans l’œuvre cartésienne." (p. 3)

36. ———. 1997. "L'axe La Ramée-Descartes: position dans la règle IV de la "mathesis universalis"." In Descartes et la Renaissance, edited by Faye, Emmanuel, 67-76. Paris: Honoré Champion.

Repris dans: André Robinet, Aux sources de l'esprit cartésien: L'axe La Ramée-Descartes: de la Dialectique des 1555 aux Regulae, Paris: Vrin, 1996.

"Le quatrième des concepts de la dialectique presentée dans les "Regulae" de Descartes répond a une lourde histoire au cours de laquelle il est consideré comme étant la suite naturelle du recours à la méthode. Depuis Dasypodius jusqu'a Romanus, ces concepts, issus des travaux de La Ramée sur la dialectique et sur Euclide, ont eté longuement travaillés et discutés, notamment par les auteurs du courant ramiste. Le choix particulier fait par Descartes répond a une disposition ordinaire dans la logique du XVIeme siècle et se propage par lui a travers le XVIIeme siècle."

37. Robinet, Nelly. 1999. "Les règles III et IV des Regulae face à la Dialectique de La Ramée." In Descartes et la Renaissance, edited by Faye, Emmanuel, 57-66. Paris: Honoré Champion.

38. Sagemüller, Franz. 2000. "La Mathesis universalis et son jeu de langage." In L'esprit cartésien. Quatrième centenaire de la naissance de Descartes, edited by Bourgeois, Bernard and Havet, Jacques, 264-270. Paris: Vrin.

Actes du 26. Congrés de l'Association des Sociétés de Philosophie de Langue Française (A.S.P.L.F.) / organisé par la Société Française de Philosophie, 30 août-3 septembre 1996.

39. Serfati, Michel. 1994. "Regulae et mathématiques." Theoria. Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia no. 9:61-108.

"L’histoire du texte des Régles pour la Direction de l’Esprit (Regulae) de Descartes est un peu singulière: non publié du vivant de Descartes, il n’a paru qu’en 1701, dans les Opera Posthuma d’Amsterdam. De façon plus significative, et contrairement aux autres traités cartésiens perdus, ce texte secret n’est jamais explicitement evoqué par Descartes, fût-ce au détour d’une correspondance. Par leur étroite dépendance vis à vis des mathématiques, les Regulae sont cependant un texte majeur, constitutives de la pensée de leur auteur dans ses années de jeunesse (1619-1628), et par là de toute la philosophie moderne. Descartes avait jugé le texte suffisamment important pour I’emmener à Stockholm, où il a été découvert apres sa mort, dans ses papiers. Entre les mathématiques et les Regulae, ce texte “éclatant et obscur” (J.P. Weber), il est ces trois types principaux de rapports croisés que nous tâcherons d’analyser: historiquement d’abord, quelles furent la formation et I’expérience mathématique du jeune Descartes, qui constituerent, à notre sens, I’armature conceptuelle du texte. Quelles sont ensuite les voies par lesquelles, dans les Regulae, Descartes a pu transmuer cette expérience mathématique premiere à la fois en une pratique, une méthode, une théorie de la connaissance, enfin en une épistémologie assez radicalement neuve. Enfin, et prenant Descartes au sérieux nous examinerons à I’occasion cette question: quel est le sort réservé, de nos jours, à cette épistémologie cartésienne, en particulier confrontée aux mathématiques contemporaines?"

40. Weber, Jean-Paul. 1963. "Commentaire des Règles VII et VIII des « Regulae » de Descartes: Histoire du texte." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 68:180-212.

41. ———. 1964. "Sur la composition de la Regula IV de Descartes." Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger:1-29.

42. ———. 1964. La constitution du texte des Regulae. Paris: Société d'Édition d'Einsegnement Supérieur.

Chapitre I. La Règle IV pp. 3-17.

43. ———. 1972. "La méthode de Descarts d'aprés les Regulae." Archives de Philosophie no. 30:51-60.

English Studies

1. Beck, Leslie John. 1952. The Method of Descartes. A Study of the Regulae. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

See in particular Chapter XII. The Science of Order pp. 190-202.

2. Brissey, Patrick. 2014. "Rule VIII of Descartes Regulae ad directionem ingenii." Journal of Early Modern Studies no. 3:9-31.

3. Clarke, Desmond M. 1977. "Descartes's Use of "Demonstration" and "Deduction"." The Modern Schoolman no. 54:333-344.

Reprinted in: G.J.D. Moyal (ed.), Descartes. Critical Assessments, New York: Routledge, 1991, vol. 1, pp. 237-247.

4. Dijksterhuis, Fokko Jan. 2014. "Reworking Descartes’ mathesis universalis." Metascience no. 23:613-618.

Review of: John Schuster: Descartes-agonistes: Physico-mathematics, method and corpuscular-mechanism 1618-33.

5. Doyle, Bret J. Lalumia. 2009. "How (not) to study Descartes' Regulae." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 17:3-30.

6. Gaukroger, Stephen. 1980. "Descartes' Project for a Mathematical Physics." In Descartes. Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics, edited by Gaukroger, Stephen, 97-140. Brighton: Harvester Press.

7. Harries, Karsten. 1990. "Problems of the Infinite: Cusanus and Descartes." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 64:89-110.

8. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1978. "A Discourse on Descartes's Method." In Descartes: Critical and Interpretive Essays, edited by Hooker, Michael, 74-88. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

9. Joachim, Harold H. 1957. Descartes’s Rules for the Direction of the Mind. London: Allen & Unwin.

10. Klein, Julie R. 2002. "Memory and the extension of thinking in Descartes’s Regulae." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 42:23-40.

11. Kraus, Pamela Ann. 1983. "From Universal Mathematics to Universal Method: Descartes's "Turn" in Rule IV of the Regulae." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 21:159-174.

12. ———. 1986. ""Whole Method". The Thematic Unity of Descartes' Regulae." The Modern Schoolman:83-109.

13. Lachterman, David R. 1986. "Objectum Purae Matheseos: mathematical construction and the passage from essence to existence." In Essays on Descartes' Meditations, edited by Oksenberg Rorty, Amélie, 435-458. Berkeley.

14. McRae, Robert. 1961. The Problem of the Unity of the Sciences: Bacon to Kant. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Chapter: Descartes: the Project of a Universal Science, pp. 46-68.

15. Miner, Robert C. 2005. "The Baconian Matrix of Descartes' Regulae." In Descartes and Cartesianism, edited by Smith, Nathan D. and Taylor, Jason P., 1-20. Cambridge: Scholars Press.

16. Palmer, Eric. 1997. "Descartes's Rules and the Workings of the Mind." In Logic and the Workings of the Mind. The Logic of Ideas and Faculty Psychology in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Easton, Patricia A., 269-282. Atascadero: Ridgeview.

17. Rabouin, David. 2019. "Mathematics and Imagination in Early Modern Times: Descartes and Leibniz’ mathesis universalis in the light of Proclus’ Commentary of Euclid’s Elements." In Knowledge and the Power of Imagination, 17th-18th Centuries, edited by Vermeir, Koen. Dordrecht: Springer.

Not yet published.

18. Recker, Doren A. 1993. "Mathematical Demonstration and Deduction in Descartes's Early Methodological and Scientific Writings." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 31:223-244.

19. Sasaki, Chikara. 1997. "Descartes as a reformer of mathematical disciplines." In Descartes et le Moyen Âge, edited by Biard, Joël and Rashed, Roshdi, 37-45. Paris: Vrin.

20. ———. 2003. Descartes's Mathematical Thought. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

See the Second Part: The Concept of 'Mathesis universalis' in Historical Perspective, pp. 287-438.

21. Schmitter, Amy M. 2000. "Mind and Sign: Method and the Interpretation of Mathematics in Descartes's Early Work." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 30:371-411.

22. Schuster, John. 1980. "Descartes' Mathesis Universalis, 1619-28." In Descartes. Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics, edited by Gaukroger, Stephen, 41-96. Sussex: Harvester Press.

23. ———. 2013. Descartes-Agonistes. Physico-mathematics, Method & Corpuscular-Mechanism 1618-33. New York: Springer.

Chapter 5. Analytical Mathematics, Universal Mathematics and Method: Descartes’ Identity and Agenda Entering the 1620s, pp. 225-264; Chapter 7. Universal Mathematics Interruptus: The Program of the Later Regulaeand Its Collapse 1626–1628, pp. 307-348.

24. Sebba, Gregor. 1979. "Retroversion and the history of ideas: J. -L. Marion's Translation of the Regulae of Descartes." Studia Cartesiana no. 1:145-165.

25. Sepper, Dennis L. 1989. "Descartes and the Eclipse of Imagination, 1618-1630." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 27:379-403.

26. ———. 1996. Descartes's Imagination: Proportion, Images, and the Activity of Thinking. Berkeley: Univrsity of California Press.

See in particular Part II: Imagination and the Regulae ad directionem ingenii, pp. 83-208.

27. Sergei, Talander. 2010. "The doctrine of intellectual intuitions in Descartes’s Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii." Methodus no. 5:68-83.

28. Smith, Nathan D. 2009. "Mathesis, Mathematics and Method in Descartes's Regulae: A reprise." In Branching Off. The Early Moderns in Quest for the Unity of Knowledge, 15-46. Bucarest: Zeta Books.

29. ———. 2010. The Origins of Descartes' Concept of Mind in the Regulae ad directionem ingenii.

Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, available at ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.

Summary: "This dissertation attempts to locate the origins of Descartes' concept of mind in his early, unfinished treatise on scientific method, the Regulae ad directionem ingenii . It claims that one can see, in this early work, Descartes' commitment to substance dualism for methodological reasons. In order to begin an analysis of the Regulae , one must first attempt to resolve textual disputes concerning its integrity and one must understand the text as a historical work, dialectically situated in the tradition of late sixteenth and early seventeenth century thought. The dissertation provides this historical backdrop and textual sensitivity throughout, but it focuses on three main themes. First, the concept of mathesis universalis is taken to be the organizing principle of the work. This methodological principle defines a workable technique for solving mathematical problems, a means for applying mathematics to natural philosophical explanations, and a claim concerning the nature of mathematical truth. In each case, the mathesis universalis is designed to fit the innate capacities of the mind and the objects studied by mathesis are set apart from the mind as purely mechanical and geometrically representable objects. Second, Descartes' account of perceptual cognition, the principles of which are found in the Regulae , is examined. In this account, Descartes describes perception as a mechanical process up to the moment of conscious awareness. This point of awareness and the corresponding actions of the mind are, he claims, independent from mechanical principles; they are incorporeal and cannot be explained reductively. Finally, when Descartes outlines the explanatory bases of his natural science, he identifies certain "simple natures." These are the undetermined categories according to which actual things can be known. Descartes makes an explicit distinction between material simples and intellectual simples. It is argued that this distinction suggests a difference in kind between the sciences of the material world and the science or pure knowledge of the intellectual world. Though the Regulae is focused on physical or material explanations, there is a clear commitment to distinguishing this type of explanation from the explanation of mental content and mental acts. Hence, the Regulae demonstrates Descartes' early, methodological commitment to substance dualism."

30. Statile, Glenn. 2007. René Descartes’ Regulae. The Power and Poverty of Method. Astoria: Seaburn Publishing Group.

31. Thomas, Bruce M. 1996. "Cartesian Epistemics and Descartes' Regulae." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 13:433-449.

32. van de Pitte, Frederick. 1979. "Descartes' Mathesis Universalis." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 61:154-174.

Reprinted in: Georges J. D. Moyal (ed.), René Descartes: Critical Assessments, Vol. I, New York: Routledge, 1991, pp. 61-79.

33. ———. 1991. "The Dating of Rule IV-B in Descartes' Regulae ad directionem ingenii." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 29:375-395.

"A careful analysis of Rule IV requires the acceptance of a later dating for this fragment -- probably as late as 1639-1640, when the Meditations were uppermost in Descartes's thought. It also permits a clarification of his terminology: Mathesis is a science of necessary relations. 'Mathesis universalis', rather than a mere extension of 'mathesis', is a distinct discipline which transforms systems of necessary relations into genuine 'scientia' by providing the underlying conditions for the very possibility of knowledge. Thus, Descartes provides not a simple mathematical method, but a very profound methodology."

34. Weingartner, Paul. 1983. "The ideal of the mathematization of all sciences and of "more geometrico" in Descartes and Leibniz." In Nature Mathematized. Historical and Philosophical Case Studies in Classical Modern Natural Philosophy, edited by Shea, William R., 151-195. Dordrecht: Reidel.

35. Weitz, Morris. 1983. "Descartes's Theory of Concepts." Midwest Studies in Philosophy no. 8:89-103.

Reprinted in: Georges Moyal (ed.), Rene Descartes: Critical Assessments, Vol. I, New York: Routledge, 1991, pp. 94-109.

Studi Italiani

1. Cifoletti, Giovanna. 1989. Quaestio sive aequatio: la nozione di problema nelle Regulae di Cartesio. Firenze: European University Institute.

Ristampato in: Alfonso Ingegno (a cura di), Da Democrito a Collingwood. Studi di storia della filosofia, Firenze: Olschki, 1991, pp. 43-79.

2. Cosenza, Paolo. 1983. "La "Consequentia" nelle Regulae di Descartes." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 75:200-222.

Edizione riveduta in P. Cosenza, Logica formale e antiformalismo. (Da Aristotele a Descartes), Napoli: Liguori, 1987, pp. 71-92.

I luoghi delle Regulae in cui è usato il termine consequentia, 71; Il significato del concetto di consequentia presso alcuni logici del XIV secolo, 72; II concetto di consequentia in due autori del XVI secolo indicati nella Ratio Studiorum della Compagnie di Gesù per l’insegnamento della logica, 76; II significato del termine consequentia nelle Regulae, 79; Sulle ragioni del differente significato che il termine consequentia ha nelle Regulae rispetto a cio che esso indicava nella dottrina delle consequentiae, 86-92.

3. ———. 1984. Sillogismo e concatenazione nelle Regulae di Descartes. Napoli: Temi Moderni Edizioni.

4. Di Loreto, Mario. 1991. "Scientia Universalis: Problemi e prospettive di ricerca nella storiografia cartesiana dalla Dédicace du placard alle Cogitationes privatae." Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres:51-73.

5. Gaiano, Alberto. 1993. ""Doctrina et disciplina": unità delle scienze e autonomia della ragione nelle Regualae di Descartes." Giornale Critico della Filosofia Italiana no. 72:57-85.

6. Lojacono, Ettore. 1997. "Su un hapax delle Regulae: ‘Analysis’ alcune osservazioni sul suo significato e sulle sue interpretazioni." In Il vocabolario della République des lettres. Terminologia filosofica e storia della filosofia. Problemi di metodo, edited by Fattori, Marta, 171-190. Firenze: Olschki.

7. Perini, Roberto. 1973. ""Mathesis universalis" e metafisica nel metodo cartesiano." Giornale di Metafisica no. 28:159-207.

8. ———. 1983. Il problema della fondazione nelle Regulae di Descartes. Rimini: Maggioli.

9. Sergio, Emilio. 2006. Verità matematiche e forme della natura da Galileo a Newton. Roma: Aracne.

Capitolo 4: René Descartes (1596-1650), pp. 167-206.

Deutschen Studien

1. Gerten, Michael. 2001. Wahrheit und Methode bei Descartes. Eine systematische Einführung in die cartesische Philosophie. Hamburg: Meiner.

2. Krämer, Sybille. 1991. Berechenbare Vernunft. Kalkül und Rationalismus im 17. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Kapitel 2.1 Mathematik und Method beim junge Descartes (1619-1628), pp. 159-219.

3. Mittelstrass, Jürgen. 1978. "Die Idee der Mathesis universalis bei Descartes." Perspektiven der Philosophie no. 4:177-192.

4. Pasini, Enrico. 1992. "Mathesis und Phantasie. Die Rolle der Einbildungskraft im Umfeld der Descartesschen Regulae." Studia Leibnitiana no. 24:160-176.

English Abstract: "A particular aspect of the confrontation between modern philosophy and the Aristotelian tradition relates to the so-called psychology of faculties. On this basis, it is much harder for modern thought, in comparison to the field of natural sciences, to separate itself from the concepts, theories, and terminologies which characterize the still deriding traditional approach. Focusing on the Regulae ad directionem ingenii -- in which the young Descartes, first writing about method, attempted to lay the foundation of a "mathesis generalis" -- these problems are discussed as far as the role of imagination is concerned. There are two main questions: the presence of mental images in thought processes, and the cognitive functions of the imagination. In the Regulae he proposes some examples of intuitive, not-imaginative knowledge, a thorough analysis of which shows important difficulties in young Descartes' approach. Different solutions were to be proposed by Descartes himself and by most cartesians, on one hand, and by Tschirnhaus on the other hand. Finally Leibniz's peculiar solution is considered. "

Estudios en Español

1. Arenas, Luis. 1996. "Matematicas, metodo y "mathesis universalis" en las "Regulae" de Descartes." Revista de Filosofia (Spain) no. 8:37-61.

2. Caballero Bono, José Luis. 1997. "Evocación de la Regla IV de Descartes." Anábasis. Revista de Filosofia no. 6:109-128.

3. Muñoz-Alonso, and Lopez, Gemma. 1985. El legado de Descartes. Methodo y "mathesis universalis". Madrid: Grupodis.

4. Paty, Michel. 1997. "Mathesis universalis e inteligibilidad en Descartes." In Memorias del Seminario en Conmemoración de los 400 Anos del Nacimiento de René Descartes, edited by Albis, Victor, 135-170. Santafé de Bogotà.

5. Villalobos, José. 1996. "Mathesis Universalis cartesiana." Cudaernos sobre Vico no. 5/6:239-250.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on Metaphysical fundamentality (A - Gia)

Bibliography

1. Aguirre, Anthony, Foster, Brendan, and Merali, Zeeya, eds. 2019. What is Fundamental? Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Contents: Anthony Aguirre, Brendan Foster and Zeeya Merali: Introduction 1; Emily Adlam: Fundamental? 5; Matthew Leifer: Against Fundamentalism 13; Alyssa Ney: The Politics of Fundamentality 27; Dean Rickles: Of Lego and Layers (and Fundamentalism) 37;

Marc Séguin: Fundamentality Here, Fundamentality There, Fundamentality Everywhere 49; Markus P. Müller: Mind Before Matter: Reversing the Arrow of Fundamentality 63;Tejinder P. Singh: Things, Laws, and the Human Mind 75; Sabine Hossenfelder: The Case for Strong Emergence 85; Sean M. Carroll and Ashmeet Singh: Mad-Dog Everettianism: Quantum Mechanics at Its Most Minimal 95; Ian T. Durham: Bell’s Theory of Beables and the Concept of ‘Universe’ 105; Gregory N. Derry: Fundamentality, Explanation, and the Unity of Science 115; Karen Crowther: When Do We Stop Digging? Conditions on a Fundamental Theory of Physics 123; Ken Wharton: Fundamental is Non-random 135; Mozibur Rahman Ullah: Socrates, Atoms and Being: A Platonic Dialogue 147; Aditya Dwarkesh: ‘Fundamentality’ as a Linguistic Paradigm and Linguistics as a Fundamental Paradigm 169; Appendix: List of Winners 179; Titles in This Series 181-

2. Amijee, Fatema. 2021. "Something from Nothing: Why Some Negative Existentials are Fundamental." In Non-Being: New Essays on the Metaphysics of Nonexistence, edited by Bernstein, Sara and Goldschmidt, Tyron, 50-68. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"I proceed as follows. In section 1, I discuss motivations and arguments for the view—a view that I ultimately reject—according to which there can be no negative existentials at the fundamental level. In section 2, I show that there is good reason to include a totality fact in the explanans for any contingent negative existential.

But totality facts are themselves contingent negative existentials, which makes it difficult to see how we might be able to avoid positing at least some negative existentials at the fundamental level. As part of my argument for the claim that some negative existentials are fundamental, in section 3 I argue against candidate alternative accounts for eliminating the tension between the claim that no negative existential is fundamental and the claim that every negative existential is partially explained by a negative existential. Finally, in section 4, I show that the arguments for not positing negative facts—and specifically totality facts—at the fundamental level are inadequate. This completes my case for the view that totality facts are fundamental." (pp. 52-53)

3. Babic, Joshua, and Cocco, Lorenzo. 2020. "A note on Dasgupta’s Generalism." Philosophical Studies no. 177:2153–2162.

Abstract: "Dasgupta (Philos Stud Int J Philos Anal Tradit 145(1):35–67, 2009) has argued that material individuals, such as particles and laptops, are metaphysically objectionable and must be eliminated from our fundamental theories of the world.

He proposes to eliminate them by redescribing all the fundamental facts of the world in a variant of predicate functor logic. We study the status, on this theory, of a putative fact particularly recalcitrant to a formulation within predicate functor logic: his own claim that there are no fundamental or primitive material individuals. We consider three regimentations of the denial of primitive individuals and show that—under some plausible hypotheses about fundamental truths and the fundamentality operator—they cannot be consistently translated in predicate functor logic by Dasgupta’s usual strategy. We conclude by discussing two approaches to salvage Generalism, in the absence of such a translation."

References

Dasgupta, S. (2009). Individuals: An essay in revisionary metaphysics. Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, 145(1), 35–67.

4. Bacon, Andrew. 2019. "Substitution Structures." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 48:1017-1075.

"An increasing amount of twenty-first century metaphysics is couched in explicitly hyperintensional terms: concepts such as grounding, fundamentality and metaphysical priority can draw distinctions between necessarily equivalent propositions and properties.(1) While hyperintensionality in the philosophy of language is often taken to be merely a feature of our representations of the world, a prerequisite of hyperintensional metaphysics is that reality itself be hyperintensional. At the metaphysical level, propositions, properties, operators, and other elements of the type hierarchy, must be at least more fine-grained than functions from possible worlds to extensions. In this paper I develop, in the setting of type theory, a general framework for reasoning about the granularity of propositions and properties."

(1) 1See Nolan [27] for a helpful overview of this trend.

References

[27] Nolan, D. (2014). Hyperintensional metaphysics. Philosophical Studies, 171(1), 149–160.

5. ———. 2020. "Logical Combinatorialism." Philosophical Review no. 129:537-589.

Abstract: "In explaining the notion of a fundamental property or relation, metaphysicians will often draw an analogy with languages. The fundamental properties and relations stand to reality as the primitive predicates and relations stand to a language: the smallest set of vocabulary God would need in order to write the `book of the world'. In this paper I attempt to make good on this metaphor. In order to do this I introduce a modality that, put informally, stands to propositions as logical truth stands to sentences. The resulting theory, formulated in higher-order logic, also vindicates the Humean idea that fundamental properties and relations are freely recombinable and a variant of the structural idea that propositions can be decomposed into their fundamental constituents via logical operations. Indeed, it is seen that, although these ideas are seemingly distinct, they are not independent, and fall out of a natural and general theory about the granularity of reality."

6. Bader, Ralf M. 2020. "Fundamentality and Non-Symmetric Relations." In The Foundation of Reality: Fundamentality, Space, and Time, edited by Glick, David, Darby, George and Marmodoro, Anna, 15-45. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"The first part of this chapter argues that there are no non-symmetric relations at the fundamental level (Sections 1.2 and 1.2). The second part identifies different ways in which asymmetry and order can be introduced into a world that only contains symmetric but no non-symmetric fundamental relations (Section 1.4).

The third part develops an account of derivative relations and puts forward identity criteria that establish that derivative non-symmetric relations do not have distinct converses. Instead of a plurality of relations, there are only different ways of picking out the same relation (Section 1.5). The final part provides an account of how generative operations can induce order and argues for a reconceptualisation of grounding as an operation rather than as a relation (Section 1-6)." (p. 16)

7. Barker, Jonathan. 2022. "Against Purity." Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy:1-43.

Not yet published, preprint available at PhilArchive.

Abstract: "A fundamental fact is “pure” just in case it contains no grounded entity—ex. entities like Tokyo, President Biden, the River Nile, {Socrates}, and so on—among its constituents. Purity is the thesis that every fundamental fact is pure. Purity is popular among defenders of ground. Indeed, an entire corner of the grounding literature is devoted to one of Purity's implication that every grounding fact has a ground. Nevertheless, I argue that Purity is false. I argue that if every grounding fact has a ground, then at least one fundamental fact has a grounded constituent. Thus, if Purity is true, then it is false. Purity's falsity therefore follows via reductio. Moreover, in seeing why Purity is false, we will also be uncovering a powerful reason to think that at least _some_ grounding facts are fundamental rather than grounded. I close by arguing that the facts about what grounds composition's occurrence are particularly good candidates for fundamental grounding facts."

8. Barnes, Elizabeth. 2012. "Emergence and Fundamentality." Mind no. 121:873-901.

Abstract: "In this paper, I argue for a new way of characterizing ontological emergence.

I appeal to recent discussions in meta-ontology regarding fundamentality and dependence, and show how emergence can be simply and straightforwardly characterized using these notions. I then argue that many of the standard problems for emergence do not apply to this account: given a clearly specified meta-ontological background, emergence becomes much easier to explicate. If my arguments are successful, they show both a helpful way of thinking about emergence and the potential utility of discussions in meta-ontology when applied to first-order metaphysics."

9. ———. 2014. "Fundamental Indeterminacy." Analytic Philosophy no. 55:339–362.

"In what follows, I will argue that a defender of indeterminacy needs to show that indeterminacy can be fundamental, but that her standard arguments, even if they work, only establish derivative indeterminacy (§1). I then move on to the case for fundamental indeterminacy, first giving a brief explanation of different ways we might characterize the idea that there is fundamental indeterminacy (§2) and then examining arguments for indeterminacy which (unlike standard arguments) if successful can establish fundamental indeterminacy (§3). I argue that the best strategy for motivating fundamental indeterminacy is to focus on its ability to increase theoretical expressiveness." (pp. 339-340)

10. Barnesm, Eric. 1994. "Explaining Brute Facts." PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association no. 1:61-68.

Abstract: "I aim to show that one way of testing the mettle of a theory of scientific explanation is to inquire what that theory entails about the status of brute facts. Here I consider the nature of brute facts, and survey several contemporary accounts of explanation vis a vis this subject (the Friedman-Kitcher theory of explanatory unification, Humphreys' causal theory of explanation, and Lipton's notion of 'explanatory loveliness'). One problem with these accounts is that they seem to entail that brute facts represent a gap in scientific understanding. I argue that brute facts are non-mysterious and indeed are even explainable by the lights of Salmon's ontic conception of explanation (which I endorse here). The plausibility of various models of explanation, I suggest, depends to some extent on the tendency of their proponents to focus on certain examples of explananda - I ponder brute facts qua explananda here as a way of helping us to recognize this dependency."

References

Friedman, M. (1974), “Explanation and Scientific Understanding”, Journal of Philosophy 71: 5–19.

Humphreys, P. (1989), The Chances of Explanation: Causal Explanations in the Social, Medical, and Physical Sciences. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Kitcher, P. (1981), “Explanatory Unification”, Philosophy of Science 48: 507–531.

Kitcher, P. (1989), “Explanatory Unification and the Causal Structure of the World”, in Kitcher, P. and Salmon, W.C., (eds.) Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 13, Scientific Explanation, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 410–505.

Lipton, P. (1991) Inference to the Best Explanation. London and New York: Routledge.

11. Baron, Sam, and Le Bihan, Baptiste. 2022. "Composing Spacetime." Journal of Philosophy no. 119:33-54.

Abstract: "According to a number of approaches in theoretical physics, spacetime does not exist fundamentally. Rather, spacetime exists by depending on another, more fundamental, non-spatiotemporal structure. A prevalent opinion in the literature is that this dependence should not be analyzed in terms of composition. We should not say, that is, that spacetime depends on an ontology of non-spatiotemporal entities in virtue of having them as parts. But is that really right? On the contrary, we argue that a mereological approach to dependent spacetime is not only viable, but promises to enhance our understanding of the physical situation."

12. Baron, Sam, and Tallant, Jonathan. 2016. "Monism: The Islands of Plurality." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 93:583-606.

Abstract: "Priority monism (hereafter, ‘monism’) is the view that there exists one fundamental entity —the world—and that all other objects that exist (a set of objects typically taken to include tables, chairs, and the whole menagerie of everyday items) are merely derivative.

Jonathan Schaffer has defended monism in its current guise, across a range of papers.

Each paper looks to add something to the monistic picture of the world. In this paper we argue that monism—as Schaffer describes it—is false. To do so we develop an ‘island universe’ argument against Schaffer’s monistic theory."

13. Baysan, Umut. 2015. "Realization Relations in Metaphysics." Minds and Machines no. 25:247-260.

Abstract: " ‘‘Realization’’ is a technical term that is used by metaphysicians, philosophers of mind, and philosophers of science to denote some dependence relation that is thought to obtain between higher-level properties and lower-level properties. It is said that mental properties are realized by physical properties; functional and computational properties are realized by first-order properties that occupy certain causal/functional roles; dispositional properties are realized by categorical properties; so on and so forth.

Given this wide usage of the term ‘‘realization’’, it would be right to think that there might be different dependence relations that this term denotes in different cases. Any relation that is aptly picked out by this term can be taken to be a realization relation. The aim of this state-of-the-field article is to introduce the central questions about the concept of realization, and provide formulations of a number of realization relations. In doing so, I identify some theoretical roles realization relations should play, and discuss some theories of realization in relation to these theoretical roles."

14. Bennett, Karen. 2011. "Construction Area (N0 Hard Hat Required)." Philosophical Studies no. 154:79-104.

Abstract: ""A variety of relations widely invoked by philosophers—composition, constitution, realization, micro-basing, emergence, and many others—are species of what I call ‘building relations’. I argue that they are conceptually intertwined, articulate what it takes for a relation to count as a building relation, and argue that—contra appearances—it is an open possibility that these relations are all determinates of a common determinable, or even that there is really only one building relation."

15. ———. 2017. Making Things Up. New York: Oxford University Press.

Contents: 1. Introduction 1; 2. Building I: Breaking Ground 6; 3. Building II: Characterizing the Class 30; 4. Causing 67; 5. Absolute Fundamentality 102; 6. Relative Fundamentality 137; 7. Building Building? 187; 8. In Defense of the Nonfundamental 214; Appendix: Objections to the Second Grade of Causal Involvement 239; References 247; Name Index 257; Subject Index 259-260.

"In Chapters 5 and 6, I investigate the nature of fundamentality. In Chapter 5, I distinguish three different notions of absolute fundamentality in the contemporary literature, and argue that the primary notion is that of being unbuilt. In Chapter 6, I argue that relative fundamentality—relations like being more fundamental than and being just as fundamental as—must also be understood in terms of building. I further claim that this fact goes a long way towards demystifying fundamentality talk. Indeed, that is one of the central claims of the book: there is nothing more to relative fundamentality than the obtaining of certain patterns of building. Along the way, I investigate various related questions, such as whether anything is absolutely fundamental at all, and whether everything is comparable with respect to relative fundamentality." (p. 3)

16. ———. 2019. "Précis of Making Things Up." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 98:478-481.

"The goal of Making Things Up is to get clearer about what building relations are, how they are related to each other, and how they are related to fundamentality and causation. More generally, the goal is to articulate a detailed picture of a structured world.

Soon, I will sketch the book chapter by chapter. But I want to start by flagging three core commitments that color the project in a variety of ways, and by frontloading what I suppose are the two biggest claims in the book. The first core commitment is agnosticism about whether there is a single most fundamental building relation. Throughout the book, I instead talk in terms of a plurality of building relations, and intend talk of ‘building’ in the singular as shorthand for quantificational or generic claims. The second core commitment is agnosticism about metaphysical foundationalism: agnosticism, that is, about the claim that the world has a bottom level, that all chains of building terminate in something fundamental. The third core commitment is what I hereby call ‘content neutrality’, though I do not use that label in the book. I do not intend to assert substantive claims about what in fact builds what, or what is in fact fundamental, if anything is. My goal is instead to sketch a kind of framework view that can be shared by people who disagree with me, and with each other, about particular building claims." (p. 478)

17. Benocci, Matteo. 2017. "Priority Monism and Essentiality of Fundamentality: A Reply to Steinberg." Philosophical Studies no. 174:1983-1990.

Abstract: "Steinberg has recently proposed an argument against Schaffer’s priority monism. The argument assumes the principle of Necessity of Monism, which states that if priority monism is true, then it is necessarily true. In this paper, I argue that Steinberg’s objection can be eluded by giving up Necessity of Monism for an alternative principle, that I call Essentiality of Fundamentality, and that such a principle is to be preferred to Necessity of Monism on other grounds as well."

References

Steinberg, A. (2015). Priority monism and part/whole dependence. Philosophical Studies, 172, 2025–2031.

18. Berker, Selim. 2019. "The Explanatory Ambitions of Moral Principles." Noûs no. 53:504-536.

Abstract: "Moral properties are explained by other properties. And moral principles tell us about moral properties. How are these two ideas related? In particular, is the truth of a given moral principle part of what explains why a given action has a given moral property? I argue “No.” If moral principles are merely concerned with the extension of moral properties across all possible worlds, then they cannot be partial explainers of facts about the instantiation of those properties, since in general necessitation does not suffice for explanation. And if moral principles are themselves about what explains the moral properties under their purview, then by their own lights they are not needed in order to explain those moral properties’ instantiation—unless, that is, the principles exhibit an objectionable form of metaphysical circularity. So moral principles cannot explain why individual actions have moral properties. Nor, I also argue, can they explain why certain other factors explain why those actions have the moral properties that they do, or in some other way govern or mediate such first-order explanations of particular moral facts. When it comes to the explanation of an individual action’s specific moral features, moral principles are explanatorily idle."

19. Bernstein, Sara. 2014. "Two Problems for Proportionality about Omissions." Dialectica no. 68:429-441.

"Theories of causation grounded in counterfactual dependence face the problem of profligate omissions: numerous irrelevant omissions count as causes of an outcome. A recent purported solution to this problem is proportionality, which selects one omission among many candidates as the cause of an outcome. This paper argues that proportionality cannot solve the problem of profligate omissions for two reasons. First: the determinate/determinable relationship that holds between properties like aqua and blue does not hold between negative properties like not aqua and not blue. Negative properties are those at stake in omissive causation. Second: proportionality misconstrues the nature of the problem to be solved."

20. ———. 2021. "Could a Middle Level Be the Most Fundamental?" Philosophical Studies no. 178:1065-1078.

Abstract: "Debates over what is fundamental assume that what is most fundamental must be either a ‘‘top’’ level (roughly, the biggest or highest-level thing), or a ‘‘bottom’’ level (roughly, the smallest or lowest-level things). Here I sketch an alternative to top-ism and bottom-ism, the view that a middle level could be the most fundamental, and argue for its plausibility. I then suggest that this view satisfies the desiderata of asymmetry, irreflexivity, transitivity, and well-foundedness of fundamentality, that the view has explanatory power on par with that of top-ism and bottom-ism, and that it has a unique connection to the Principle of Sufficient Reason."

21. Bertrand, Michael. 2017. "Fundamental Ontological Structure: An Argument Against Pluralism." Philosophical Studies no. 174:1277-1297.

Abstract: "In recent years, a hierarchical view of reality has become extremely influential. In order to understand the world as a whole, on this view, we need to understand the nature of the fundamental constituents of the world. We also need to understand the relations that build the world up from these fundamental constituents.

Building pluralism is the view that there are at least two equally fundamental relations that together build the world. It has been widely, though tacitly, assumed in a variety of important metaphysical debates. However, my primary aim in this paper is to argue that this has been a mistake. I will show that serious problems concerning the relationship between building and fundamentality afflict pluralism and are likely fatal to it. I claim that, for better or worse, our best hope is building singularism, the view that there is a single most fundamental building relation. I conclude by examining the advantage that singularist accounts enjoy over their pluralist rivals."

22. Bliss, Ricki. 2019. "What Work the Fundamental?" Erkenntnis no. 84:359-379.

Abstract: "Although it is very often taken for granted that there is something fundamental, the literature appears to have developed with little to no careful consideration of what exactly it is that the fundamentalia are supposed to do. If we are to have a good reason to believe that there is something fundamental, we need not only to know what exactly it is that the fundamentalia are invoked for, but why it is that nothing else is available for the task to hand. A good argument in defense of fundamentality, then, will contain an assumption that stipulates an explanatory target; along with a second, crucial, assumption that tells us that no dependent entity is available to do the work that needs to be done. In this paper, I explore both of these assumptions."

23. ———. 2020. "Fundamentality." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 336-347. New York: Routledge.

"The notion of fundamentality has, in more recent times, come not only to be associated with the thought that there is something ultimate, basic or at the bottom, but also with the thought that some things are nearer or further from or equidistant with that bottom. Thus, we have at our disposal, in fact, not only a notion of absolute fundamentality but also one of relative fundamentality.

This chapter is focused largely upon absolute fundamentality. Although the notion of relative fundamentality is an important one, it is commonly thought to be captured by the asymmetry, transitivity and irreflexivity of the grounding relation to which it is intimately related.Although, as we will see, this supposition is questionable, our discussion of relative fundamentality will be relegated to a cursory and brief portion of the chapter—§1. More extensive discussions of relative fundamentality can be found in Saenz [Chapter 25],Tahko [Chapter 27] and Thompson [Chapter 17] in this volume. In §2, I move onto a discussion of absolute fundamentality proper. In §2.1, I consider the common ways in which the notion has been captured, and in §2.2, the ways in which it has been characterised. In §3, I present what the most common arguments in defence of the view are.And in §4, I offer a brief discussion of whether we need grounding in order to cash out accounts of fundamentality." (p. 337)

24. Bliss, Ricki, and Priest, Graham, eds. 2018. Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Contents: List of Contributors VII; 0. Ricki Bliss and Graham Priest: The Geography of Fundamentality: An Overview;

Part I. The Hierarchy Thesis

1. Gabriel Oak Rabin: Grounding Orthodoxy and the Layered Conception 37; 2. Elizabeth Barnes: Symmetric Dependence 50; 3. Ricki Bliss: Grounding and Reflexivity 70; 4. Daniel Nolan: Cosmic Loops 91; 5. Naomi Thompson: Metaphysical Interdependence, Epistemic Coherentism, and Holistic Explanation 107; 6. Graham Priest: Buddhist Dependence 126; 7. Jon Erling Litland: Bicollective Ground: Towards a (Hyper)Graphic Account 140;

Part II. The Fundamentality Thesis

8. Einar Duenger Bohn: Indefinitely Descending Ground 167; 9. Kelly Trogdon: Inheritance Arguments for Fundamentality 182; 10. Mark Jago: From Nature to Grounding 199; 11. John Wigglesworth: Grounding in Mathematical Structuralism 217; 12. Tuomas E. Tahko: Fundamentality and Ontological Minimality 237; 13. Matteo Morganti: The Structure of Physical Reality: Beyond Foundationalism 254;

Part Ill. Tue Contingency and Consistency Theses

14. Nathan Wildman: On Shaky Ground? Exploring the Contingent Fundamentality Thesis 275; 15. Filippo Casati: Heidegger's Grund: (Para-)Foundationalism 291;

Index of Names 313; General Index 316-324.

25. ———. 2018. "The Geography of Fundamentality." In Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, edited by Bliss, Ricki and Priest, Graham, 1-33. New York: Oxford University Press.

"The kind of view, or cluster of views, that appear to dominate the contemporary

analytic debate can be thought of broadly as, or as species of, metaphysical foundationalism.

As will become clearer in due course, there are, in fact, a variety of ways in which one can be a metaphysical foundationalist; with different species of foundationalism involving different core commitments. Although this list is by no means exhaustive, we assume the following to be amongst the core commitments of metaphysical foundationalism as commonly endorsed in the contemporary literature.

1. The hierarchy thesis: Reality is hierarchically structured by metaphysical dependence relations that are anti-symmetric, transitive, and anti-reflexive.

2. The fundamentality thesis:There is some thing(s) which is fundamental.

3. The contingency thesis: Whatever is fundamental is merely contingently existent.

4. The consistency thesis: The dependence structure has consistent structural properties.

Strictly speaking, in order to be considered a species of foundationalism, a view needs only commit to the the fundamentality thesis: 2., then, is both necessary and sufficient for a view to count as a kind of foundationalism. For proponents of what we can think of as the standard view, however, all four theses are necessary, with no one of them being sufficient.(3)

(3) The idea that the world is ontologically ‘flat’, with everything being fundamental—a rejection of 1—has been described by Bennett 2011 as ‘crazy pants’, for example. Just as many philosophers baulk at the suggestion that the fundamentalia are necessary beings.

References

Bennett, K. (2011), ‘By our Bootstraps’, Philosophical Papers, vol. 25, pp. 27–41.

26. Borghini, Andrea, and Lando, Giorgio. 2016. "Mereological Monism and Humean Supervenience." Synthese no. 197:4745-4765.

Abstract: "According to Lewis, mereology is the general and exhaustive theory of ontological composition (mereological monism), and every contingent feature of the world supervenes upon some fundamental properties instantiated by minimal entities (Humean supervenience). A profound analogy can be drawn between these two basic contentions of his metaphysics, namely that both can be intended as a denial of emergentism. In this essay, we study the relationships between Humean supervenience and two philosophical spin-offs of mereological monism: the possibility of gunk and the thesis of composition as identity. In a gunky scenario, there are no atoms and, thus, some criteria alternative to mereological atomicity must be introduced in order to identify the bearers of fundamental properties; this introduction creates a precedent, which renders the restriction of the additional criteria to gunky scenarios arbitrary. On the other hand, composition as identity either extends the principle of indiscernibility of identicals to composition or is forced to replace indiscernibility with a surrogate; both alternatives lead to the postulation of a symmetric kind of supervenience which, in contrast to Humean supervenience, does not countenance a privileged level. Both gunk and composition as identity, thus, display a tension with Humean supervenience."

27. Brenner, Andrew. 2022. "Metaphysical Foundationalism and Theoretical Unification." Erkenntnis:1-21.

First online 21 July 2021.

Abstract: "Some facts ground other facts. Some fact is fundamental iff there are no other facts which partially or fully ground that fact. According to metaphysical foundationalism, every non-fundamental fact is fully grounded by some fundamental fact(s).

In this paper I examine and defend some neglected considerations which might be made in favor of metaphysical foundationalism. Building off of work by Ross Cameron, I suggest that foundationalist theories are more unified than, and so in one important respect simpler than, non-foundationalist theories, insofar as foundationalist theories allow us to derive all non-fundamental facts from some fundamental fact(s). Non-foundationalist theories can enjoy a similar sort of theoretical unification only by taking on objectionable metaphysical laws."

28. Brown, Christopher. 2017. "Minds Within Minds: An Infinite Descent of Mentality in a Physical World." Erkenntnis no. 82:1339-1350.

Abstract: "Physicalism is frequently understood as the thesis that everything depends upon a fundamental physical level. This standard formulation of physicalism has a rarely noted and arguably unacceptable consequence—it makes physicalism come out false in worlds which have no fundamental level, for instance worlds containing things which can infinitely decompose into smaller and smaller parts. If physicalism is false, it should not be for this reason. Thus far, there is only one proposed solution to this problem, and it comes from the so-called via negativa account of physicalism. Via negativa physicalism identifies the physical with the non-mental, such that if everything in the world ultimately depends only on nonmental things, then physicalism is true. To deal with the possibility of worlds without a fundamental level, this account says that physicalism is false in worlds with either a fundamental mental level or an infinite descent of mental levels. Here I argue that there could be a world with an infinite descent of all-mental levels, yet in which physicalism might plausibly be true—thus contradicting the sufficient-for false condition meant to save physicalism from the threat of infinitely decomposable worlds. This leaves the need for a new dependence-based account of physicalism."

29. ———. 2021. "Fundamental Mentality in a Physical World." Synthese no. 199:2841-2860.

Correction in Synthese, 199, 2021, p. 2861.

Abstract: "Regardless of whatever else physicalism requires, nearly all philosophers agree that physicalism cannot be true in a world which contains fundamental mentality. I challenge this widely held attitude, and describe aworld which is plausibly all-physical, yet which may contain fundamental mentality. This is a world in which priority monism is true—which is the view that the whole of the cosmos is fundamental, with dependence relations directed from the whole to the parts—and which contains only a single mental system, like a brain or computer. Because some properties of the whole are fundamental under priority monism, it follows that that the mental properties of a cosmos-encompassing brain or computer system may be fundamental in a priority monist world. Yet such a world need not contain anything physically unacceptable: the mental properties of the cosmos-encompassing brain or computer can be characterized in a physicalism-friendly functionalist or identity-theoretic way. Thus, as I see it, physicalism need not be false in such a world. This constitutes a challenge to those who hold the view that physicalism is inconsistent with the existence of fundamental mentality."

30. Brown, Joshua D. K. 2016. "Natural Objects." Journal of the American Philosophical Association no. 2:254-271.

Abstract: "This paper introduces a framework for thinking about ontological questions—in particular, the Special Composition Question—and shows how the framework might help support something like an account of restricted composition. The framework takes the form of an account of natural objects, in analogy with David Lewis’s account of natural properties. Objects, like properties, come in various metaphysical grades, from the fundamental, fully objective, perfectly natural objects to the nomologically otiose, maximally gerrymandered, perfectly non-natural objects. The perfectly natural objects, I argue, are the mereological simples, and (roughly) a collection composes an object of degree-n naturalness if and only if its members are arranged F-wise, for some property F that appears in the degree-n natural laws. Arbitrary composites turn out to be perfectly non-natural objects and are metaphysical bystanders.

Ordinary composite objects fall in between. Some—e.g., atoms—are very (though not perfectly) natural; others—e.g., tables—are highly non-natural."

31. Brown, Robin, and Ladyman, James. 2009. "Physicalism, Supervenience and the Fundamental Level." Philosophical Quarterly no. 59:20-38.

Abstract: "We provide a formulation of physicalism, and show that this is to be favoured over alternative formulations. Much of the literature on physicalism assumes without argument that there is a fundamental level to reality, and we show that a consideration of the levels problem and its implications for physicalism tells in favour of the form of physicalism proposed here. Its key elements are, first, that the empirical and substantive part of physicalism amounts to a prediction that physics will not posit new entities solely for the purpose of accounting for mental phenomena, nor new entities with essentially mental characteristics such as propositional attitudes or intentions; secondly, that physicalism can safely make do with no more than a weak global formulation of supervenience."

32. Brzozowski, Jacek. 2008. "On Locating Composite Objects." Oxford Studies in Metaphysics no. 4:193-222.

"Composite objects (at least some of them, in our world) are located in space-time. The question I will pose is the following: does the location of a composite object derive from the location of its proper parts, or not? I will argue that either way, there are unappealing consequences. We face a dilemma. Either:

1. If the location of composite objects is derived from their proper parts, we must deny the possibility of spatio-temporal gunk objects: composite objects each of whose parts is itself composite, or,

2. If the location of composite objects is not derived from their proper parts, we must posit brute metaphysical necessities connecting the location of composite objects with the locations of their proper parts." (p. 193, a note omitted)

33. ———. 2016. "Monism and Gunk." In Reality Making, edited by Jago, Mark, 57-74. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"One of the main arguments put forward in favour of monism is that it can accommodate the possibility of gunk worlds—worlds where each part divides into further parts without end—while the view of their pluralist opponents cannot.

It’s argued that as gunk worlds are possible, and that as a pluralist metaphysics does not allow for the possibility of such worlds while a monist metaphysics does, monism has an important advantage over pluralism.(4)

While I do think that the possibility of gunkworlds (if they are indeed possible) is a problem for the pluralist, I aim to show that the possibility of gunk worlds is similarly problematic for the monist.

(...)

I conclude that the argument from the possibility of gunk does not offer the monist the clear cut advantage over the pluralist that one may have originally thought it had." (pp. 57-58)

(4) The argument from the possibility of gunk is put forward by Schaffer (2007, 2010).

References

Schaffer, J. (2007). ‘From Nihilism to Monism’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 85(2), 175-91.

Schaffer, J. (2010). ‘Monism: The Priority of the Whole’. Philosophical Review, 119(1), 31-76.

34. Builes, David. 2019. "Pluralism and the Problem of Purity." Analysis no. 79:394-402.

"Does everything exist in the same way as everything else? Monists about being (or ‘Monists’ for short) say ‘yes’, and Pluralists about being (or ‘Pluralists’ for short) say ‘no’.

(...)

Trenton Merricks (forthcoming) presents a dilemma against Pluralism. He argues that both horns of the dilemma are unacceptable, and so Pluralism must be false. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, I will argue that one particular horn of Merricks’s dilemma is unproblematic for the contemporary version of Pluralism defended by Turner (2010) and McDaniel (2009, 2010, 2017), and so Merricks’s argument against Pluralism, as stated, is unsound. However, my second task is to provide a new dilemma against Pluralism, which, when combined with Merricks’s arguments, constitutes a powerful new challenge to every form of Pluralism." (p. 394)

References

McDaniel, K. 2009. Ways of being. In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, eds. D.J. Chalmers, D. Manley and R. Wasserman, 290–319. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McDaniel, K. 2010. A return to the analogy of being. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81: 688–717.

McDaniel, K. 2017. The Fragmentation of Being. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Merricks, T. forthcoming. The only way to be. Noûs, [53, 2019, 593-612]

Turner, J. 2010. Ontological pluralism. Journal of Philosophy 107: 5–34.

35. Callender, Craig. 2001. Why Be a Fundamentalist: Reply to Schaffer.

Unpublished, available at PhilSci Archive.

Abstract: "This is my commentary on Jonathan Schaffer's paper "Evidence for Fundamentality?"; both the paper and comments were presented at the Pacific APA, San Francisco, March 2001. Schaffer argues against the view that there is an ultimate fundamental level to the world. Seeing that quarks and leptons may have an infinite hierarchy of constituents, he claims, empowers and dignifies the whole of nature (15). Like Kant he holds that there are as good reasons for believing matter infinitely divisible as composed of fundamental simples. I'm afraid that Schaffer's provocative arguments have not convinced me. In the paper, I criticize the idea that fundamentalism 'weakens' and 'denigrates' the whole of nature and try to show that an infinite hierarchy can not do the work Schaffer needs it to. I then argue that we should not in fact be agnostic between the two rival hypotheses."

36. Calosi, Claudio. 2020. "Priority Monism, Dependence and Fundamentality." Philosophical Studies no. 177:1-20.

Abstract: "Priority monism (PM) is roughly the view that the universe is the only fundamental object, that is, a concrete object that does not depend on any other concrete object. Schaffer, the main advocate of PM, claims that PM is compatible with dependence having two different directions: from parts to wholes for subcosmic wholes, and from whole to parts for the cosmic whole. Recently it has been argued that this position is untenable. Given plausible assumptions about dependence, PM entails that dependence has only one direction, it always goes from wholes to parts. One such plausible assumption is a principle of Isolation. I argue that, given all extant accounts of dependence on the market, PM entails No Isolation.

The argument depends upon a particular feature of the dependence relation, namely, necessitation and its direction. In the light of this, I contend that the argument is important, insofar as it suggests that we should distinguish dependence from other cognate notions, e.g. grounding. Once this distinction is made, I suggest we should also distinguish between two different notions of fundamentality that might turn out to be not-coextensive."

37. Cameron, Ross P. 2008. "Turtles All the Way Down: Regress, Priority and Fundamentality in Metaphysics." The Philosophical Quarterly no. 58:1-14.

Abstract: "I address an intuition commonly endorsed by metaphysicians, that there must be a fundamental layer of reality, i.e., that chains of ontological dependence must terminate: there cannot be turtles all the way down. I discuss applications of this intuition with reference to Bradley’s regress, composition, realism about the mental and the cosmological argument. I discuss some arguments for the intuition, but argue that they are unconvincing. I conclude by making some suggestions for how the intuition should be argued for, and discussing the ramifications of giving the justification I think best."

38. ———. 2010. "From Humean Truthmaker Theory to Priority Monism." Noûs no. 44:178-198.

"The Humean is a resister of mysterious brute necessity; when there is necessity, she claims, we must be able to give an explanation of the necessity.

(...)

Connections have been drawn between truthmaker theory and priority monism. Jonathan Schaffer—who has been largely responsible for the recent resurgence of interest in priority monism—has argued that one of the benefits of priority monism is that it allows for a neat and parsimonious theory of truthmakers which solves the problem of negative facts.(3) That gives us one way of arguing from truthmaker theory to priority monism: priority monism affords an advantageous theory of truthmaking, so the truthmaker theorist has good reason to be a priority monist. In this paper I intend to offer a different argument from truthmaker theory to priority monism: the truthmaker theorist has to be a priority monist, provided she doesn’t want to be committed to objectionable necessary connections between distinct contingent existents." (p. 178)

(3) Jonathan Schaffer, ‘The Least Discerning and Most Promiscuous Truthmaker’, forthcoming in The Philosophical Quarterly [60, 2010, 307-324]

39. ———. 2012. "Composition as Identity Doesn’t Settle the Special Composition Question." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 84:531-554.

Abstract: "Orthodoxy says that the thesis that composition is identity (CAI) entails universalism: the claim that any collection of entities has a sum. If this is true it counts in favour of CAI, since a thesis about the nature of composition that settles the otherwise intractable special composition question (SCQ) is desirable. But I argue that it is false: CAI is compatible with the many forms of restricted composition, and SCQ is no easier to answer given CAI than otherwise. Furthermore, in seeing why this is the case we reveal an objection to CAI: that it allows for the facts concerning what there is to be settled whilst leaving open the question about what is identical to what."

40. ———. 2019. "Comments on Karen Bennett's Making Things Up." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 98:482-488.

"Karen Bennett’s original and intriguing book Making Things Up is about building relations: relations by which you get some things from others. Relations such as composition, where you get a whole from some parts; set formation, where you get a set from some members; grounding, where you get a derivative fact from a more fundamental one; realization, where you get a higher-level state from a lower-level one; etc.

Philosophers like the smallest toolbox possible, so it’s tempting to try to reduce some building relations to others. David Lewis, e.g., attempts to reduce class-formation to composition: the class of Xs is simply the mereological sum of all of X’s subclasses.(2) We might hope, indeed, that there is ultimately only one building relation, to which all others can be reduced. Bennett thinks not. She is a building pluralist.(3) I’m going to tackle her case for this, and argue that monism remains a contender." (p. 482)

(2) Lewis (1991).

(3) More carefully, she prefers building pluralism because she takes her arguments to show not that monism is false but rather that we shouldn’t gamble on it being true (p24). I will argue that the arguments don’t even make the case for preferring pluralism.

References

Lewis, David, (1991), Parts of Classes, Oxford: Blackwell

41. Chen, Gang. 2009. "Hierarchy, form, and Reality." Frontiers of Philosophy in China no. 4:437-453.

Abstract: "Scientific progress in the 20th century has shown that the structure the world is hierarchical. A philosophical analysis of the hierarchy will obvious significance for metaphysics and philosophy in general. Jonathan Schaffer's paper, "Is There a Fundamental Level?", provides a systematic of the works in the field, the difficulties for various versions of fundamentalism, and the prospect for the third option, i.e., to treat each level as ontologically equal. The purpose of this paper is to provide an argument for the third option. The author will apply Aristotle's theory of matter and form to the discussion of the hierarchy and develop a theory of form realism, which will grant every level with "full citizenship in the republic of being." It constitutes an argument against ontological and epistemological reductionism. A non-reductive theory of causation is also developed against the fundamental theory of causation."

42. Correia, Fabrice. 2021. "The Logic of Relative Fundamentality." Synthese no. 198:1279-1301.

Abstract: "I introduce a proof system for the logic of relative fundamentality, as well as a natural semantics with respect to which the system is both sound and complete.

I then “modalise” the logic, and finally I discuss the properties of grounding given a suggested account of this notion in terms of necessity and relative fundamentality."

43. ———. 2021. "A Kind Route from Grounding to Fundamentality." Synthese no. 199:8299-8315.

Abstract: "I offer an account of fundamentality for facts in terms of metaphysical grounding.

The account does justice to the idea that whether a fact is absolutely fundamental, and whether a fact is more fundamental than, or as fundamental as, another fact, are a matter of where in a grounding-induced hierarchy of kinds of facts these facts appear."

44. ———. 2021. "Fundamentality from Grounding Trees." Synthese no. 199:5965-5994.

Abstract: "I provide and defend two natural accounts of (both relative and absolute) fundamentality for facts that do justice to the idea that the “degree of fundamentality” enjoyed by a fact is a matter of how far, from a ground-theoretic perspective, the fact is from the ungrounded facts."

45. Cowling, Sam. 2014. "Instantiation as Location." Philosophical Studies no. 167:667-682.

Abstract: "Abstract Many familiar forms of property realism identify properties with sui generis ontological categories like universals or tropes and posit a fundamental instantiation relation that unifies objects with their properties. In this paper, I develop and defend locationism, which identifies properties with locations and holds that the occupation relation that unifies objects with their locations also unifies objects with their properties. Along with the theoretical parsimony that locationism enjoys, I argue that locationism resolves a puzzle for actualists regarding the ontological status of uninstantiated properties. I also note some promising applications of the locationist framework to the metaphysics of quantities and possible worlds."

46. Crowther, Karen. 2019. "When Do We Stop Digging? Conditions on a Fundamental Theory of Physics." In What is Fundamental?, edited by Aguirre, Anthony, Foster, Brendan and Merali, Zeeya, 123-133. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "In seeking an answer to the question of what it means for a theory to be fundamental, it is enlightening to ask why the current best theories of physics are not generally believed to be fundamental. This reveals a set of conditions that a theory of physics must satisfy in order to be considered fundamental. Physics aspires to describe ever deeper levels of reality, which may be without end. Ultimately, at any stage we may not be able to tell whether we’ve reached rock bottom, or even if there is a base level—nevertheless, I draft a checklist to help us identifywhen to stop digging, in the case where we may have reached a candidate for a final theory. Given that the list is—according to (current) mainstream belief in high-energy physics—complete, and each criterion well-motivated, I argue that a physical theory that satisfies all the criteria can be assumed to be fundamental in the absence of evidence to the contrary."

47. Cuffaro, Michael E., and Hartmann, Stephan. 2021. "The Open System View."1-61.

Preprint available at https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.11095

Abstract: "There is a deeply entrenched view in philosophy and physics, the closed systems view, according to which isolated systems are conceived of as fundamental. On this view, when a system is under the influence of its environment this is described in terms of a coupling between it and a separate system which taken together are isolated. We argue against this view, and in favor of the alternative open systems view, for which systems interacting with their environment are conceived of as fundamental, and the environment’s influence is represented via the dynamical equations that govern the system’s evolution. Taking quantum theories of closed and open systems as our case study, and considering three alternative notions of fundamentality: (i) ontic fundamentality, (ii) epistemic fundamentality, and (iii) explanatory fundamentality, we argue that the open systems view is fundamental, and that this has important implications for the philosophy of physics, the philosophy of science, and for metaphysics."

48. Dasgupta, Shamik. 2009. "Individuals: An Eessay in Revisionary Metaphysics." Philosophical Studies no. 145:35-67.

Abstract: "We naturally think of the material world as being populated by a large number of individuals. These are things, such as my laptop and the particles that compose it, that we describe as being propertied and related in various ways when we describe the material world around us. In this paper I argue that, fundamentally speaking at least, there are no such things as material individuals. I then propose and defend an individual-less view of the material world I call ‘‘generalism’’."

49. ———. 2013. "Absolutism vs Comparativism about Quantity." Oxford Studies in Metaphysics no. 8:105-148.

"In this paper I discuss a question that arises for all quantities but which is best illustrated by the case of mass. The property of having mass is a determinable that appears to have two kinds of determinates. On the one hand, we naturally think that something with mass has a determinate intrinsic property, a property it has independently of its relationships with other material bodies.

But we also think that things with mass stand in various determinate mass relationships with one another, such as x being more massive than y or x being twice as massive as y. My question is: of the intrinsic masses and the mass relationships, which are fundamental?" (p. 105)

(...)

"Conclusion: The question of absolutism vs comparativism has received relatively little discussion, and I consider this a significant lacuna in our understanding of what the natural world fundamentally consists in. In this paper, I have tried to clarify what the issue amounts to and describe where I see the major battle lines as lying. I believe that comparativism is probably the correct view for mass, but if I have not convinced you of that I hope to have shown that the issue is important and that there is interesting further work to do in the area." (pp. 145-146)

50. De Rizzo, Julio. 2019. "How (not) to Argue Against Brute Fundamentalism." Dialectica no. 73:395-410.

Abstract: "This paper is a response to McKenzie (2017). I argue that the case she presents is not a genuine counterexample to the thesis she labels Brute Fundamentalism. My response consists of two main points. First, that the support she presents for considering her case a metaphysical explanation is misguided. Second, that there are principled reasons for doubting that partial explanations in Hempel’s sense, of which her case is an instance, are genuinely explanatory in the first place.

Thus McKenzie’s attack on Brute Fundamentalism fails."

References

McKenzie, K. 2017, “Against Brute Fundamentalism”, Dialectica, 71, 2, pp. 231–261.

51. Dorr, Cian. 2013. "Reading ‘Writing the Book of the World’." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 87:717-724.

"Analytic philosophy is suspicious of jargon words unless introduced by explicit definitions or for purposes of disambiguation. But this healthy suspicion must not be allowed to degenerate into a knee-jerk refusal to admit any conceptual innovations. The heart of Writing the Book of the World [by Ted Sider] is an extended plea for the intelligibility, and importance, of a certain technical use of ‘structural’ (a close cousin of Lewis’s technical use of ‘natural’). In this central aim, the book is in my view almost entirely successful. Setting aside certain exotic constructions involving ‘S’ (the formal counterpart of ‘structural’) which even Sider recognises as straining intelligibility ‘to the breaking point’ (p. 257), I am convinced that ‘structural’ is not only intelligible, but a fruitful addition to the philosopher’s idiolect, which allows us to raise questions that are interesting both intrinsically and for their bearing on other topics." (p. 717)

52. ———. 2016. "To Be F Is To Be G." Philosophical Perspectives no. 30:39-134.

"I am interested in a certain way of understanding claims of the form ‘To be F is to be G’, which I take to have played a central role in philosophy from its inception. Here are some examples where the target reading is natural:

(1) a. To be a vixen is to be a female fox.

b. To be square is to be rectangular and equilateral.

c. To be just is to be such that each part of one’s soul does its own proper work.

d. To be a human being is to be a rational animal.

e. To be a hydrogen atom is to be an atom whose nucleus contains exactly one proton.

As (1c) and (1d) illustrate, questions whose answers can be given in the form ‘To be F is to be G’ have been of central interest to philosophers since the beginning. (1e) illustrates that we cannot always tell whether to be F is to be G using “armchair” methods: sometimes, we need to do experiments. But notalways, as witness (1b)."

53. Dorr, Cian, and Hawthorne, John. 2013. "Naturalness." Oxford Studies in Metaphysics no. 8:3-77.

"In the wake of David Lewis’s seminal paper ‘New Work for a Theory of Universals’ (Lewis 1983b), a certain use of the word ‘natural’ has become widespread in metaphysics and beyond. In this usage, properties can be classifi ed as more or less natural, with perfectly natural properties as a limiting case. For example, Lewis would claim that being negatively charged is much more natural than being either negatively charged or part of a spoon, and may even be perfectly natural." (p. 3, a note omitted)

(...)

"Our aim in this paper is not to take sides in the debate between naturalness enthusiasts and naturalness sceptics, but to bring some structure to the terrain, replacing displays of contrasting nebulous attitudes with a range of relatively precise and independently debatable questions."

References

Lewis, David (1983b) ‘New Work for a Theory of Universals’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61: 343–77. Reprinted in Lewis 1999: 8–55.

—— (1999) Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

54. Duncan, Michael, Miller, Kristie, and Norton, James. 2021. "Ditching Dependence and Determination: Or, How to Wear the Crazy Trousers." Synthese no. 198:395-418.

Abstract: "This paper defends Flatland—the view that there exist neither determination nor dependence relations, and that everything is therefore fundamental—from the objection from explanatory inefficacy. According to that objection, Flatland is unattractive because it is unable to explain either the appearance as of there being determination relations, or the appearance as of there being dependence relations. We show how the Flatlander can meet the first challenge by offering four strategies—reducing, eliminating, untangling and omnizing—which, jointly, explain the appearance as of determination relations where no such relations obtain. Since, plausibly, dependence relations just are asymmetric determination relations, we argue that once we come mistakenly to believe that there exist determination relations, the existence of other asymmetries (conceptual and temporal) explains why it appears that there are dependence relations.""

55. ———. 2022. "Ontology without Hierarchy." In The Question of Ontology: The Contemporary Debate, edited by Cumpa, Javier. New York: Oxford University Press.

Not yet publkished; preprint available at PhilPapers.org

Abstract: "It has recently become popular to suggest that questions of ontology ought be settled by determining, first, which fundamental things exist, and second, which derivative things depend on, or are grounded by, those fundamental things. This methodology typically leads to a hierarchical view of ontology according to which there are chains of entities, each dependent on the next, all the way down to a fundamental base. In this paper we defend an alternative ontological picture according to which there is no ontological hierarchy. Such a picture appears counterintuitive (at least to many), in part because in the absence of a hierarchical structure to our world, there would be no structure apt to back metaphysical explanations. There are two reasons to suppose this is so. First, there would be no structure apt to back metaphysical explanations because there would be a fatal mismatch between the formal features of metaphysical explanation, on the one hand, and the structure of the world, on the other hand. Second, in the absence of an ontological hierarchy there would be no structure apt to back metaphysical explanations because the only connections that would obtain between relevant facts are mere correlational connections. But mere correlations are not the right kinds of relations to back metaphysical explanations: explanation requires something more. This paper aims to show that neither of these is a good reason to prefer a hierarchical view of ontology."

56. Eddon, Maya. 2013. "Fundamental Properties of Fundamental Properties." Oxford Studies in Metaphysics no. 8:78-104.

"Two grams mass and 3 coulombs charge are examples of quantitative properties. Such properties have certain structural features that other sorts of properties lack. How should we account for the distinctive structure of quantity? The answer to this question will depend, in large part, on one’s other metaphysical commitments. In this paper I focus on the metaphysical framework offered by David Lewis."

(...)

"This paper proceeds as follows. In sections 2 and 3, I lay out some background assumptions, and sketch some of the structural features of quantity. In section 4, I assess several accounts of quantity, and argue that the one best suited to a Lewisian framework posits perfectly natural second-order relations. In section 5, I address worries that an account of the structural features of quantity, in terms of the perfectly natural, is not required. If such an account is not provided, I argue, then many accounts that make use of perfectly natural properties and relations are untenable. In section 6, I use the results of the previous sections to argue that the perfectly natural properties and relations do not comprise a minimal supervenience base." (pp. 78-79)

57. ———. 2017. "Parthood and Naturalness." Philosophical Studies no. 174:3163-3180.

Abstract: "Is part of a perfectly natural, or fundamental, relation? Philosophers have been hesitant to take a stand on this issue. One reason for this hesitancy is the worry that, if parthood is perfectly natural, then the perfectly natural properties and relations are not suitably ‘‘independent’’ of one another. (Roughly, the perfectly natural properties are not suitably independent if there are necessary connections among them.) In this paper, I argue that parthood is a perfectly natural relation. In so doing, I argue that this ‘‘independence’’ worry is unfounded. I conclude by noting some consequences of the naturalness of parthood."

58. Fahrbach, Ludwig. 2005. "Understanding Brute Facts." Synthese no. 145:449-466.

Abstract: "Brute facts are facts that have no explanation. If we come to know that a fact is brute, we obviously don’t get an explanation of that fact. Nevertheless, we do make some sort of epistemic gain. In this essay, I give an account of that epistemic gain, and suggest that the idea of brute facts allows us to distinguish between the notion of explanation and the notion of understanding.

I also discuss Eric Barnes’ (1994) attack on Friedman’s (1974) version of the unification theory of explanation. The unification theory asserts that scientific understanding results from minimizing the number of brute facts that we have to accept in our view of the world. Barnes claims that the unification theory cannot do justice to the notion of being a brute fact, because it implies that brute facts are gaps in our understanding of the world. I defend Friedman’s theory against Barnes’ critique."

References

Barnes, E.: 1994, ‘Explaining Brute Facts’, Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 199, Vol. 1, pp. 61–68.

Friedman, M.: 1974, ‘Explanation and Scientific Understanding’, Journal of Philosophy 71, 5–19.

59. Fine, Kit. 2013. "Fundamental Truth and Fundamental Terms." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 87:725-732.

Comments on Siders’ ‘Writing the Book of the World’ [ New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.]

"Ted Sider’s ‘Writing the Book of the World’ is a bold and ambitious work, offering original and provocative answers to a wide range of questions within metaphysics and meta-metaphysics. The book is focused on the topic of fundamentality—of what is fundamental and of what it is to be fundamental and, although Sider is largely concerned to develop his own positive views on the topic, he does devote a couple of sections (§§8.1-2) to my views, as laid out in the paper, ‘The Question of Realism’. (1) I hope I may therefore be forgiven for devoting my attention to some of the more critical points that he makes in these sections." (p. 725)

(1) Imprint, vol. 1, no. 1, 2001, reprinted in ‘Individuals, Essence and Identity: Themes of Analytic Philosophy’ (ed. A. Bottani, M Carrara, P. Giaretta), Dordrecht: Kluwer 2002, 3-41.

60. Fiocco, M. Oreste. 2019. "What Is a Thing?" Metaphilosophy no. 50:649-669.

Abstract: “Thing” in the titular question of this paper should be construed as having the utmost generality. In the relevant sense, a thing just is an entity, an existent, a being. The present task is to say what a thing of any category is. This task is the primary one of any comprehensive and systematic metaphysics. Indeed, an answer provides the means for resolving perennial disputes concerning the integrity of the structure in reality—whether some of the relations among things are necessary merely given those relata themselves—and the intricacy of this structure—whether some things are more or less fundamental than others. After considering some reasons for thinking the generality of the titular question makes it unanswerable, the paper propounds the methodology, original inquiry, required to answer it. The key to this methodology is adopting a singular perspective; confronting the world as merely the impetus to inquiry, one can attain an account of what a thing must be.

Radical ontology is a systematic metaphysics—broadly Aristotelian, essentialist, and nonhierarchical—that develops the consequences of this account. With it, it is possible to move past stalemate in metaphysics by revealing the grounds of a principled choice between seemingly incommensurable worldviews."

61. ———. 2019. "Each Thing Is Fundamental: Against Hylomorphism and Hierarchical Structure." American Philosophical Quarterly no. 56:289-301.

Abstract: "Each thing is fundamental. Not only is no thing any more or less real than any other, but no thing is prior to another in any robust ontological sense. Thus, no thing can explain the very existence of another, nor account for how another is what it is. This surprising conclusion is reached by undermining two important positions in contemporary metaphysics: hylomorphism and hierarchical views employing so-called building relations, such as grounding. The paper has three main parts.

First, it is observed that hylomorphism is alleged by its proponents to solve various philosophical problems. However, it is demonstrated, in light of a compelling account of explanation, that these problems are actually demands to explain what cannot be but inexplicable. Second, it is shown how the argument against hylomorphism illuminates an account of the essence of a thing, thereby providing insight into what it is to exist. This indicates what a thing, in the most general sense, must be and a correlative account of the structure in reality. Third, it is argued that this account of structure is incompatible not only with hylomorphism, but also with any hierarchical view of reality. Although hylomorphism and the latter views are quite different, representing distinct philosophical traditions, it is maintained that they share untenable accounts of structure and fundamentality and so should be rejected on the same grounds."

62. Fisher, A. R. J. 2016. "Truthmaking and Fundamentality." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly no. 97:448-473.

Abstract: "I apply the notion of truthmaking to the topic of fundamentality by articulating a truthmaker theory of fundamentality according to which some truths are truth-grounded in certain entities while the ones that don’t stand in a metaphysical-semantic relation to the truths that do. I motivate this view by critically discussing two problems with Ross Cameron’s truthmaker theory of fundamentality. I then defend this view against Theodore Sider’s objection that the truthmaking approach to fundamentality violates the purity constraint.

Truthmaker theorists can have a trouble-free theory of fundamentality."

63. French, Steven. 2022. "Fundamentality." In The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Physics, edited by Knox, Eleanor and Wilson, Alastair, 679-688. New York: Routledge.

"The idea that there is some fundamental “level” or “ground” where our description of the world bottoms out has acquired the status of ‘the received view’ in metaphysics (a classic statement of this view can be found in Oppenheim and Putnam (1958); for a more recent critical defense, see Cameron, 2008). Typically this view is cashed out in terms of some set of ‘basic building blocks’ populating this level, which sits at the bottom of a hierarchy ordered according to some set of compositional principles. These fundamental building blocks are thus taken to have some form of “ultimate” ontological priority with regard to everything else in the hierarchy. In this chapter I shall consider two kinds of threats to this view: the first comes from arguments against the idea of such a level in general, whereas the second concerns the nature of these occupants. As we ’ll see, both these threats become entwined in the context of modern physics but I ’ll conclude with a suggestion as to how this“received view” may be maintained in this context.

(...)

In what follows the broad framework that I shall adopt with regard to this relationship will be that set out in (French and McKenzie, 2012, 2015): on the one hand, if metaphysics is to be understood as saying some thing about reality, then the implications of modern science and, in particular, physics need to be properly appreciated and this in turn will impact on certain “paradigmatic” metaphysical accounts, such as the received view, above; on the other, one does not have to accept that non-naturalistic metaphysics should be dismissed or even “discontinued” as some have pressed (Ladyman et al., op. cit.), since it can still serve as a kind of “toolbox” from which various devices and maneuvers can be extracted and put to use.In what follows I hope to illustrate both as aspects of this framework." (p. 679)

References

Cameron, R.P. (2008).Turtles all the way down: Regress, priority and fundamentality. The Philosophical Quarterly, 58: 1–14

Oppenheim, P. and Putnam, H. (1958). Unity of science as a working hypothesis. In H. Feigl et al. (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 2, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press; also in The Philosophy of Science, R. Boyd, P. Gasper, and J.D. Trout (eds.). London: MIT Press, pp. 405–427, 1991.

French ,S. and McKenzie, K. (2012).‘ Thinking outside the (tool)box: Towards a more productive engagement between metaphysics and philosophy of physics ’with K .McKenzie. The European Journal of Analytic Philosophy, 8: 42–59.

French, S. and McKenzie, K. (2015). ‘Rethinking outside the toolbox: Reflecting again on the relationship between philosophy of science and metaphysics’, with K. McKenzie. In T. Bigaj and C. Wuthrich (eds.), Metaphysics in Contemporary Physics, Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, Rodopi, pp. 145–174.

Ladyman, J., Ross, D., et al. (2007). Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

64. Frugé, Christopher. 2021. "Joints and Basic Ways." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.

First online 4 March 2021.

Abstract: "Metaphysicians often distinguish between joints and basic ways. Joints are the unified and joint-carving properties that trace the structure of the world. They are theorized under the ideology of structural, perfectly natural, or sparse properties. Basic ways are the ultimate and independent properties that give rise to all others. They are theorized under the ideology of grounding, where the ungrounded properties are the basic ways. While these notions are often seen as rivals, I argue that we need both, because the joints and the basic ways crosscut. For the sake being exhaustive and ecumenical, I distinguish between natural and normative sorts of joints and basic ways. I argue that, for either sort, if there is such a sort of joint and basic way, then there are joints that are not basic ways and there are basic ways that are not joints."

65. Funkhauser, Eric. 2022. "The Natural, the Fundamental, and the Perfectly Similar: Unraveling a Metaphysical Braid." Metaphilosophy no. 53:85-99.

Abstract: "Some of our most prominent metaphysicians have argued for a notion of naturalness that combines the roles of joint-carving, fundamentality, and perfect similarity. This paper argues that it is a mistake to think that there are select properties fulfilling all these roles. Toward this end, epistemologically tractable diagnostic markers for naturalness are presented. From these it follows that there can be perfect naturalness and similarity at nonfundamental levels; and the fundamental need not be perfectly natural or yield perfect similarities. Metaphysicians of naturalness are encouraged to attend to insights from metaphysical property theory and the interdisciplinary study of patterns and complexity, both of which support these conclusions. Distinct metaphysical projects are distinguished."

66. Gang, Chen. 2009. "Hierarchy, Form, and Reality." Frontiers of Philosophy in China no. 4:437-453.

Abstract: "Scientific progress in the 20th century has shown that the structure the world is hierarchical. A philosophical analysis of the hierarchy will obvious significance for metaphysics and philosophy in general. Jonathan Schaffer's paper, "Is There a Fundamental Level?", provides a systematic of the works in the field, the difficulties for various versions of fundamentalism, and the prospect for the third option, i.e., to treat each level as ontologically equal. The purpose of this paper is to provide an argument for the third option. The author will apply Aristotle's theory of matter and form to the discussion of the hierarchy and develop a theory of form realism, which will grant every level with "full citizenship in the republic of being." It constitutes an argument against ontological and epistemological reductionism. A non-reductive theory of causation is also developed against the fundamental theory of causation"

67. Giannotti, Joaquim. 2021. "Fundamental Yet Grounded." Theoria no. 87:578-599.

Abstract: "Grounding is claimed to offer a promising characterization of the fundamental as that which is ungrounded. Detractors of this view argue that there can be fundamental and yet mutually grounded entities. Such a possibility undermines the definition of the fundamental as the ungrounded. I aim to show, however, that the possibility of fundamental mutually grounded entities does not force us to renounce the prospects of characterizing fundamentality in terms of grounding.

To accomplish this aim, I defend a grounding-based view that accommodates fundamental mutually grounded entities straightforwardly. My definition of fundamentality is similar to, but importantly different from, one that Karen Bennett discusses. I conclude by resisting two objections raised by Jessica Wilson against the Bennettian framework that also target the proposed view."

68. ———. 2021. "The Fundamentality of Fundamental Powers." Acta Analytica no. 36:589-613.

Abstract: "Dispositional essentialism is the view that all or many fundamental properties are essentially dispositional, or powers. The literature on the dispositional essence of powers is abundant. In contrast, the question of how to understand the fundamentality of fundamental powers has received scarce interest. Therefore, the fundamentality of powers stands in need of clarification. There are four main conceptions of the fundamental, namely as that which is (i) metaphysically independent; or (ii) belonging to a minimally complete basis; or (iii) perfectly natural; or (iv) metaphysically primitive. Here, I present and discuss each of these approaches from the viewpoint of dispositional essentialism. I show that (i) is incompatible with the metaphysics of powers and (ii)–(iv) have more drawbacks than merits. Therefore, my conclusion is that the dispositional essentialist should seek an alternative. Although I offer no positive account, I pave the way to more fruitful views by identifying the shortcoming of these unpromising options."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on Metaphysical fundamentality (Gib - P)

Bibliography

1. Giberman, Daniel. 2015. "A Topological Theory of Fundamental Concrete Particulars." Philosophical Studies no. 172:2679-2704.

Abstract: "Fundamental concrete particulars are needed to explain facts about nonfundamental concrete particulars. However, the former can only play this explanatory role if they are properly discernible from the latter. Extant theories of how to discern fundamental concreta primarily concern mereological structure. Those according to which fundamental concreta can bear, but not be, proper parts are motivated by the possibilities that all concreta bear proper parts (mereological ‘‘gunk’’) and that some properties of wholes are not fixed by the properties of their proper parts (‘‘emergence’’).

In response, theorists who hold that the fundamental concrete particulars can be proper parts may appeal to the possibility that every concrete particular is a proper part—that there is no mereologically maximal whole world (mereological ‘‘junk’’), as well as to the intuition that fundamental concreta are qualitatively homogeneous ‘‘blocks’’ from which non-fundamental concreta are built. After motivating the plausibility of gunk and junk, the present essay proposes a constraint on fundamental concrete particulars based on topology instead of mereology: the fundamental concrete particulars must be appropriately connected. This constraint has the unique advantage of consistency witheach of gunk, emergence, junk, and the building block intuition."

2. Glazier, Martin. 2016. "Laws and the Completeness of the Fundamental." In Reality Making, edited by Jago, Mark, 11-37. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"Any explanation of one fact in terms of another will appeal to some sort of connection between the two. In a causal explanation, the connection might be a causal mechanism or law. But not all explanations are causal, and neither are all explanatory connections.

(...)

I call these general noncausal explanatory connections laws of metaphysics.(1) In this chapter I argue that some of these laws are to be found in the world at its most fundamental level, forming a bridge between fundamental reality and everything else. It is only by admitting fundamental laws, I suggest, that we can do justice to the explanatory relationship between what is fundamental and what is not. And once these laws are admitted, we are able to provide a nice resolution of the puzzle of why there are any nonfundamental facts in the first place." (p. 11)

(1) The notion of a law of metaphysics has also been discussed by Sider (2011, § 12.4) and Wilsch (2015).

References

Sider, T. (2011). Writing the Book of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wilsch, T. (2015). ‘The nomological account of ground’. Philosophical Studies, 172, 2015, pp. 3293-3312.

3. Glick, David, Darby, George, and Marmodoro, Anna, eds. 2020. The Foundation of Reality: Fundamentality, Space, and Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Contents: List of Figures VII, List of Contributors IX; David Glick: Introduction 1;

Section 1. The Metaphysics of Fundamentality

1. Ralf M. Bader: Fundamentality and Non-Symmetric Relations 15; Alastair Wilson: Classifying Dependencies 46; 3. Matteo Morganti: Ontic Structuralism and Fundamentality 69; 4. J. E. Wolff: Fundamental and Derived Quantities 87; 5. Nora Berenstain: Privileged-Perspective Realism in the Quantum Multiverse 102;

Section 2. Quantum Mechanics and Fundamentality

6. Michael Esfeld: Super-Humeanism: The Canberra Plan for Physics 115; 7. Jenann Ismael: What Entanglement Might Be Telling Us: Space, Quantum Mechanics, and Bohm’s Fish Tank 139; 8.

Alyssa Ney: Wave Function Realism in a Relativistic Setting 154; 9. David Glick and George Darby: In Defense of the Metaphysics of Entanglement 169;

Section 3. Spacetime Theories and Fundamentality

10. Richard Healey: On the Independent Emergence of Space-time 183; 11. Elena Castellani and Sebastian De Haro: Duality, Fundamentality, and Emergence 195; 12. Tomasz Bigaj: Radical Structural Essentialism for the Spacetime Substantivalist 217; 13. Christian Wüthrich: When the Actual World Is Not Even Possible 233;

Bibliography 255; Index 269-273.

4. Goff, Philip. 2016. "Fundamentality and the Mind-Body Problem." Erkenntnis no. 81:881-898.

Abstract: "In the recent metaphysics literature, a number of philosophers have independently endeavoured to marry sparse ontology to abundant truth. The aim is to keep ontological commitments minimal, whilst allowing true sentences to quantify over a vastly greater range of entities than those which they are ontologically committed to. For example, an ontological commitment only to concrete, microscopic simples might be conjoined with a commitment to truths such as ‘There are twenty people working in this building’ and ‘There are prime numbers greater than 5.’ I argue that a significant challenge to this project comes from the philosophy of mind. As Theodore Sider has pointed out, anti-physicalism is consistent with a sparse ontology. However, I will try to show that the premises of the standard anti-physicalist arguments can be used to form an argument to the conclusion that sentences which quantify over subjects of experience ontologically commit us to subjects of experience. Truths about consciousness cannot be bought more cheaply than their superficial grammar suggests."

5. ———. 2017. Consciousness and Fundamental Reality. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 2.2 The Nature of Fundamentality, pp. 41-63.

"Now we have a grip on what physicality is, we turn to the question of what it would be for fundamental reality to be entirely physical. This calls for an account of fundamentality, of what it is for certain facts to entirely constitute fundamental reality. There has recently been a return to a very traditional understanding of fundamentality in terms of a distinctively metaphysical notion of in rem explanation, or “grounding” as it has become known. In what follows I will explain how I understand grounding, outline a conception of physicalism defined in terms of grounding, and then defend it against alternative accounts of fundamentality." (pp. 41-42)

6. Goldwater, Jonah. 2018. "Physicalism and the Sortalist Conception of Ojects." Synthese no. 195:5497-5519.

Abstract: "Many hold an Aristotelian metaphysic of objects: fundamentally, objects fall under sortals and have persistence conditions befitting their sort. Though sometimes offered as a theory of material objects, I argue this view is in fact incompatible with physicalism. Call a ‘sortal’ a kind of object, a ‘sortal identity’ a particular’s nature specified in sortal terms, and ‘sortal properties’ properties that are determined by an object’s sortal identity, such as its persistence conditions. From here the argument runs as follows. Something is physical only if it is physically fundamental or is determined by what is physically fundamental (P1), but sortal identities and properties are neither physically fundamental (P2) nor determined by the physically fundamental (P3). I defend each premise in turn. P1 falls out of the standard conception of physicalism. Rejecting P2 is tantamount to positing Aristotelian substantial forms and formal causes—which are themselves incompatible with physicalism. I defend P3 by showing that extant solutions to “the grounding problem”—the problem of showing how (nonfundamental) sortal properties are determined by (nonsortal) physical properties—are either physicalistically unacceptable, or else physicalistically acceptable but opposed to the sortalist metaphysic."

7. Gorman, Michael M. 2014. "Essentiality as Foundationality." In Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, edited by Novotny, Daniel D. and Novák, Lukáš 119-137. New York: Routledge.

"In this essay, I propose a way of thinking about essence and accident that stands in the Aristotelian-scholastic tradition. At the core of my proposal will be the claim that a thing’s accidental features are those of its features that are supported by other features it has, while its essential features are those that are foundational, that is, not supported by any other features it has.

First, I discuss an important basic question for the philosophy of essence, a question that needs to be answered before rival theories of essence can be adjudicated.

Second, I look at the received view in a bit more detail. Third, I look at some recently proposed alternatives. Fourth, I present my own view of essence.

Fifth, I raise and respond to an objection." (p. 119, anote omitted)

8. Hakkarainen, Jani. 2022. "The Fundamentality and Non-Fundamentality of Ontological Categories." In E. J. Lowe and Ontology, edited by Szatkowski, Miroslaw, 123-142. New York: Routledge.

"As Bliss and Priest (2018) and Tahko (2018) document, there is a rapidly growing literature on metaphysical fundamentality and nonfundamentality or derivativeness. This literature focuses almost exclusively on the fundamentality and non-fundamentality or derivativeness of entities: which entities are fundamental, which, in turn, are non-fundamental or derivative from the fundamental entities and what does derivation mean? The concern here is then no less than the ground of existence - if there is any. Therefore, this debate is a natural offspring of the literature on grounding and I propose that we call the fundamentality of entities "ontological fundamentality" (accordingly for their non-fundamentality or derivativeness).

The fundamentality and non-fundamentality of ontological categories ("categories", for short) is practically ignored by the theorists of ontological fundamentality, which is a deficit." (p. 123)

(...)

"My problem in the present chapter is to consider what this fundamentality is. Elaborating on what Lowe says, my proposed solution is that categorial fundamentality is having membership fully determined by a fundamental formal ontological relation or relations jointly in an order, whereas categorial non-fundamentality is having membership at least partly determined by a non-fundamental formal ontological relation in an order. Fundamentality of formal ontological relations is their simplicity and their non-fundamentality is their derivativeness in the senses specified below. In what follows, I will also tell what determination in the membership determination of categories means." (p. 124)

References

Bliss, R. and Priest, G. (eds.) (2018), Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Tahko, T. E. (2018), 'Fundamentality', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Available online: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ fall2018/entries/ fundamentality/, retrieved 30/8/2019.

9. Heil, John. 2003. "Levels of Reality." Ratio no. 16:205-221.

Abstract: "Philosophers and non-philosophers have been attracted to the idea that the world incorporates levels of being: higher-level items – ordinary objects, artifacts, human beings – depend on, but are not in any sense reducible to, items at lower levels. I argue that the motivation for levels stems from an implicit acceptance of a Picture Theory of language according to which we can ‘read off’ features of the world from ways we describe the world. Abandonment of the Picture Theory opens the way to a ‘no levels’ conception of reality, a conception that honors anti-reductionist sentiments and preserves the status of the special sciences without the ontological baggage."

10. ———. 2021. "Truthmaking and Fundamentality." Synthese no. 198:849-860.

Abstract: "Consider the idea that some entities are more fundamental than others, some entities ‘ground’ other, less fundamental, entities. What is it for something to be more fundamental than another, or for something to ‘ground’ something else? This paper urges the rejection of conceptions of grounding and fundamentality according to which reality has a hierarchical structure in which higher-level entities are taken to be distinct from but metaphysically dependent on more fundamental lower-level entities. Truthmaking is offered as an apt replacement for at least some of the many applications of grounding."

11. Heller, Mark. 2008. "The Donkey Problem." Philosophical Studies no. 140:83-101.

Abstract: "The Donkey Problem (as I am calling it) concerns the relationship between more and less fundamental ontologies. I will claim that the moral to draw from the Donkey Problem is that the less fundamental objects are merely conventional.

This conventionalism has consequences for the 3D/4D debate. Fourdimensionalism is motivated by a desire to avoid coinciding objects, but once we accept that the non-fundamental ontology is conventional there is no longer any reason to reject coincidence. I therefore encourage 4Dists to become even more radical—embrace the Donkey Problem’s conventionalism and deflate the debate between 3Dists and 4Dists."

12. Hildebrand, Tyler. 2016. "Natural Properties, Necessary Connections, and the Problem of Induction." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 96:668-689.

Abstract: "The necessitarian solution to the problem of induction involves two claims: first, that necessary connections are justified by an inference to the best explanation; second, that the best theory of necessary connections entails the timeless uniformity of nature. In this paper, I defend the second claim. My arguments are based on considerations from the metaphysics of laws, properties, and fundamentality."

13. Hofweber, Thomas. 2009. "Ambitious, Yet Modest, Metaphysics." In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, edited by Chalmers, David, Manley, David and Wasserman, Ryan, 260-289. New York: Oxford University Press.

"I have enough doubts about the glorious history of philosophy to not take Aristotle’s word for ‘priority’ to be a clear enough notion on which metaphysics can be based. In a sense, of course, priority is a clear notion. There are many things that are prior or more fundamental than other ones, but they are so in many senses of these words. What is disputed and controversial is whether there is a special metaphysical sense of priority or fundamentality.

This I deny.(7)" (p. 271)

(7) In conversation, as well as in [Schaffer, [On What Grounds What] this volume, p. 375], the Euthyphro contrast is often mentioned as a clear case of metaphysical priority: is something good because the Gods love it, or do the Gods love it because it is good. But this is not at all clear. There are two counterfactual dependencies here which are not metaphysical priority: if the Gods loved something else then that would be good, vs. if something else were good then the Gods would love that. And there are causal readings of the contrast (which are not a case of metaphysical priority), and so on. Metaphysical priority is supposed to be another sense of priority, distinct from counterfactual and causal ones. When undergraduates get the contrast it is not at all clear that this gives them the notion of metaphysical priority, as Schaffer holds.

14. ———. 2016. Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics. New York: Oxford Universty Press.

Chapter 13: Esoteric and Egalitarian Metaphysics, § 13.4.2 Fyndamentality and Explanation, pp. 328-330.

"Do we have a substantial, egalitarian, notion of priority available? As it turns out, there is good reason to think that we do. In the following we will have a critical look at some of the best arguments that we have such a notion available.We will start with one widely used notion in the present neo-Aristotelian context: fundamentality. After that we will consider various considerations which suggest that we have an egalitarian notion of ground that goes beyond the uncontroversial cases."

15. Hüttemann, Andreas. 2021. A Minimal Metaphysics for Scientific Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 6: Reduction and Physical Foundationalism, pp. 159-185.

"Conclusion: Foundationalism is not implied by what classical mechanics and quantum mechanics have to say about the part-whole relation.(8) Not even those cases in classical and quantum mechanics that are most favourable to the foundationalist – namely, cases of part-whole explanation of the dynamics of compound systems – commit us to the claim that the behaviour of the compound is ontologically posterior to the behaviour of the parts (and some further facts about how the parts interact and how they are related). The reductive practices we have discussed in Chapter 5 [Reductive practices] do not commit us to Foundationalism." (p. 185)

(8) McKenzie comes to a similar conclusion: ‘it seems that the layered structure that (those who identify as) metaphysicians are primarily concerned with is a structure that is oriented in some sense “orthogonally” from that relating the ontologies of the different sciences’ (McKenzie 2019, 56). See also McKenzie (2011).

References

McKenzie, K. (2011). Arguing against Fundamentality. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 42, 244–55.

McKenzie, K. (2019). Fundamentality. In S. Gibb, R. Hendry and T. Lancaster, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Emergence. London: Routledge, pp. 54–64.

16. Inman, Ross D. 2018. Substance and the Fundamentality of the Familiar: A Neo-Aristotelian Mereology. New York: Routledge.

Chapter 2: Grounding and Essence, pp. 53-74.

"In the previous chapter, I outlined and argued for a version of serious essentialism that glossed the notion of essence in non-modal terms and is captured by real definition.

(...)

I now want to turn to the topic of metaphysical grounding or dependence, yet another pillar upon which I will rely in developing the notion of fundamental mereology in the sequel.

The present chapter will proceed as follows. In §2.1 I introduce the notion of metaphysical grounding as a robust form of (non-causal) metaphysical dependence as well as several general background assumptions about grounding that I draw from in the sequel. I explicate a host of axioms and operative assumptions about the formal and structural features of a species of grounding, viz. ontological dependence, that is ubiquitous in the context of mereological metaphysics. I make no claim to originality nor to have argued for my preferred understanding of metaphysical grounding.

(...)

In § 2.2 I take a closer look at the diverse family of ontological dependence relations. I employ the serious-essentialist framework developed in the previous chapter to specify a species of grounding that employs a non-modal view of essence and that is well suited to generate relations of metaphysical priority and posteriority."

17. Jenkins, C. S. 2013. "Explanation and Fundamentality." In Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence, edited by Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin and Steinberg, Alex, 211-241. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"Setting aside some no-doubt-important differences, for current purposes I shall take it that metaphysical fundamentality is generally supposed to amount to something reasonably similar regardless of the ontological category of that to which it is being attributed. My purpose in this paper is to explore the question: what are metaphysicians doing when they describe something as 'metaphysically fundamental'?

There is influential recent work in metaphysics arguing about whether there exists anything fundamental (see e.g. Markosian 2005, Cameron 2008). The fundamentality or otherwise of particular things is also a rich source of metaphysical debate (see e.g. Schaffer 2010). And this work taps into a venerable tradition plausibly dating back at least to Aristotle." (p. 212)

References

Cameron, R. 2008: 'Turtles All The Way Down: Regress, Priority andFundamentality'. Philosophica! Quarterly 58, pp. 1-14.

Markosian, N. 2005: 'Against Ontological Fundamentalism'. Facta P!u!osophica 7, pp. 69-83.

Schaffer, J. 2010. 'Monism: The Priority of the Whole'. The Philosophical Review 19, pp. 31-7 6.

18. Jenkins Ichikawa, Jonathan, and Jenkins, C. S. I. 2017. "On Putting Knowledge 'First'." In Knowledge First: Approaches in Epistemology and Mind, edited by Carter, Joseph Adam, Gordon, Emma C. and Jarvis, Benjamin, 113-131. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"Introduction: There is a New Idea in epistemology. It goes by the name of ‘knowledge first,’ and it is particularly associated with Timothy Williamson’s book Knowledge and Its Limits (Williamson [Oxford University Press] 2000). In slogan form, to put knowledge first is to treat knowledge as basic or fundamental, and to explain other states—belief, justification, maybe even content itself—in terms of knowledge, instead of vice versa. The idea has proven enormously interesting, and equally controversial. But foundational questions about its actual content remain relatively unexplored. We think that a wide variety of views travel under the banner of ‘knowledge first’ (and that the slogan doesn’t help much with differentiating them). Furthermore, it is far from straightforward to draw connections between certain of these views; they are more independent than they are often assumed to be.(1)

Our project here is exploratory and clarificatory. We mean to tease apart various ‘knowledge first’ claims, and explore what connections they do or do not have with one another. Section 3 provides a taxonomy, and Section 4 explores connections.

The result, we hope, will be a clearer understanding of just what the Knowledge-First theses are. Section 5 concludes with some brief suggestions as to how we think the various theses might be evaluated.

Section 2 begins with a brief summary of the historical context in which the knowledge-first programme arose. It provides insights into what exactly the programme is by disentangling elements of the tradition to which it is a reaction" (p. 113)

(1) The authors contributed to this chapter equally; they are listed alphabetically.

19. Jones, Nicholas K. 2022. "Against Representational Levels." Philosophical Studies no. 36:1-20.

To be published in volume 36 of Philosophical Studies, preprint available PhilArchive.

Abstract: "Some views articulate reality’s hierarchical structure using relations from the fundamental to representations of reality. Other views instead use relations from the fundamental to constituents of non-representational reality. This paper argues against the first kind of view."

20. Khalidi, Muhammad Ali. 2011. "The Pitfalls of Microphysical Realism." Philosophy of Science no. 78:1156-1164.

Abstract: "Microphysical realism is the position that the only real entities and properties are found at the most fundamental level of nature. In this article, I challenge microphysical realism concerning properties and natural kinds. One argument for microphysical realism about entities, the “nothing-but argument,” does not apply to properties and kinds. Another argument, the “causal exclusion argument,” cannot be sustained in light of modern physics. Moreover, this argument leads to an objection against microphysical realism, based on the “illusoriness of macroproperties.” Another objection is based on the possibility that there is no fundamental level but a “bottomless pit.”

21. Kirilyuk, Andrei P. 2018. Objective Fundamental Reality Structure by the Unreduced Complexity Development. 1-7.

Paper submitted to the 2017-2018 FQXi Essay Contest, 19 January 2018.

Abstract: "We explain why exactly the simplified abstract scheme of reality within the standard science paradigm cannot provide the consistent picture of “truly fundamental” reality and how the unreduced, causally complete description of the latter is regained within the extended, prova-bly complete solution to arbitrary interaction problem and the ensuing concept of universal dynamic complexity. We emphasize the practical importance of this extension for both particular problem solution and further, now basically unlimited fundamental science development (otherwise dangerously stagnating within its traditional paradigm)."

22. Kleinknecht, Reinhard. 1998. "Comments on U. Meixner's Lecture "Actual Existence, Identity and Ontological Priority"." Erkenntnis no. 48:227-231.

"The questions treated by Uwe Meixner (hereafter referred to as M) in his lecture are of fundamental importance as far as ontology is concerned.

He assumes the old distinction between epistemological and ontological priority. This distinction is intuitively justified. However, when it comes to the question as to what exactly is meant by that, philosophers are divided on their views. M deals exclusively with ontological priority. But since what is being dealt with here is priority in ordine essendi, one ought really to refer to "ontic" priority instead of "ontological". Having said that I will however adopt the terms used by M." (p. 227)

References

Uwe Meixner. Actual Existence, Identity and Ontological Priority. Erkenntnis (48), 1998, 209-226.

23. Kleinschmidt, Shieva. 2015. "Fundamentality and Time‐Travel." Thought: A Journal of Philosophy no. 4:46-51.

Abstract: "The relation of being more fundamental than, as well as the Finean notion of partial grounding, are widely taken to be irreflexive, transitive, and asymmetric. However, certain time-travel cases that have been used to raise worries about the irreflexivity, transitivity, and asymmetry of proper part of can also be used to argue that more fundamental than and partially grounds do not have these formal properties. I present this worry and discuss several responses to it, with the aim of showing that the problem is harder to address when applied to fundamentality and partial grounding than it was when merely applied to proper parthood."

24. Koons, Robert C., and Pickavance, Timothy H. 2017. The Atlas of Reality: A Comprehensive Guide to Metaphysics. Malden: Wiley Blackwell.

Chapter 3: Grounding, Ontological Dependence, and Fundamentality, pp. 47-73.

"So, we must distinguish between two kinds of fundamental entities, namely, those whose existence is ungrounded, and those which are not ontologically dependent on any other entity. These are, respectively, G-fundamental and O-fundamental entities.

Def D3.5 G-Fundamentality. An entity x is G-fundamental if the existence of x is ungrounded.

Def D3.6 O-Fundamentality. An entity x is O-fundamental if and only if neither the quiddity (generic essence) nor the haecceity (individual essence) of x contains any entity other than x itself.

Something that isn’t G-fundamental will be G-derivative, and, similarly, something that isn’t O-fundamental will be O-derivative." (p. 59)

25. Korman, Daniel Z. 2015. "Fundamental Quantification and the Language of the Ontology Room." Noûs no. 49:298-321.

Abstract: "Nihilism is the thesis that no composite objects exist. Some ontologists have advocated abandoning nihilism in favor of deep nihilism, the thesis that composites do not existO, where to existO is to be in the domain of the most fundamental quantifier. By shifting from an existential to an existentialO thesis, the deep nihilist seems to secure all the benefits of a composite-free ontology without running afoul of ordinary belief in the existence of composites. I argue that, while there are well known reasons for accepting nihilism, there appears to be no reason at all to accept deep nihilism. In particular, deep nihilism draws no support either from the usual arguments for nihilism or from considerations of parsimony."

26. Korman, Daniel Z., and Carmichael, Chad. 2018. "Composition." In Oxford Handbooks Online, 1-40. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Abstract: "This article is intended as an introduction to the central questions about composition and a highly selective overview of various answers to those questions. §1 reviews some formal features of parthood that are important for understanding the nature of composition. §2 examines the special composition question: which pluralities of objects together compose something? §§3–4 examines the argument from vagueness for unrestricted composition. §5 addresses questions concerning the uniqueness of composition, coincident objects, hylomorphism, and the so-called grounding problem. §6 concernes the question of which composites existfundamentally."

27. Koslicki, Kathrin. 2015. "Questions of Ontology." In Ontology After Carnap, edited by Blatti, Stephan and Lapointe, Sandra, 220-241. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"In what follows, I will argue that some of the most interesting and important debates which properly belong to the study of being, whether we call it “metaphysics” or “ontology”, do not concern existential questions at all; rather, such disputes may in some cases focus on non-existential disagreements over questions of fundamentality.

Fundamentality can be construed in either a relative or an absolute way.

Relative fundamentality is a comparative notion and one that comes in degrees: it allows us to assess an entity’s status as fundamental (non-derivative) or non-fundamental (derivative) relative to that of another. When we encounter a pair of entities, such that one is allegedly more or less fundamental or derivative than the other, we should not immediately assume that we are also dealing with a phenomenon that can be correctly described as absolutely fundamental. For example, one might take moral facts to be less fundamental than mental facts, without taking either realm to be fundamental absolutely. Thus, we should take care, in what follows, to separate questions of relative fundamentality from those which concern absolute fundamentality." (p. 223)

28. Kovacs, David Mark. 2020. "What is Priority Monism?" Philosophical Studies no. 178:2873-2893.

Abstract: "In a series papers, Jonathan Schaffer defended priority monism, the thesis that the cosmos is the only fundamental material object, on which all other objects depend. A primitive notion of dependence plays a crucial role in Schaffer’s arguments for priority monism. The goal of this paper is to scrutinize this notion and also to shed new light on what is at stake in the debate. I present three familiar arguments for priority monism and point out that each relies on a connecting principle that ties dependence to other metaphysical relations. I then argue for two desiderata: the relation between dependence and other metaphysical relations needs to be strong enough to establish that other metaphysical relations are relevant to the direction of dependence but not so strong as to leave no room for revisionary versions of priority monism. I propose a particular way of meeting these desiderata, according to which the target notion of dependence is graded rather than all-or-nothing. One upshot is that we should be less preoccupied with priority monism itself and should instead focus on specific aspects of a broader monistic worldview."

29. Kreines, James. 2018. "Fundamentality without Metaphysical Monism: Response to Critics of Reason in the World." Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain no. 39:138-156.

Abstract: "This article is a reply to comments by Franz Knappik and Robert Stern on my book, Reason in the World: Hegel’s Metaphysics and its Philosophical Appeal. Issues addressed nclude the systematicity of Hegel’s philosophy, the prioritizing of metaphysical over epistemological questions in his arguments, Hegel’s response to Kant’s Antinomy of Pure Reason, and my conclusion that there are senses in which Hegel’s own position is both ambitiously metaphysical and also monist, but that the monism present there is epistemological, and the ambitious metaphysics is non-monist."

References

Knappik, F. (2016), ‘And Yet He is a Monist: Comments on James Kreines’, Reason in the World, Hegel Bulletin. [pp. 121-137]

Kreines, J. (2015), Reason in the World: Hegel’s Metaphysics and its Philosophical Appeal. Oxford: OUP.

Stern, R. (2016), ‘Kreines on the Problem of Metaphysics in Kant and Hegel’, Hegel Bulletin. [pp. 106-120]

30. Kriegel, Uriah. 2015. "Existence, Fundamentality, and the Scope of Ontology." Argumenta no. 1:97-108.

Abstract: "A traditional conception of ontology takes existence to be its proprietary subject matter—ontology is the study of what exists (§ 1). Recently, Jonathan Schaffer has argued that ontology is better thought of rather as the study of what is basic or fundamental in reality (§ 2). My goal here is twofold. First, I want to argue that while Schaffer’s characterization is quite plausible for some ontological questions, for others it is not (§ 3). More importantly, I want to offer a unified characterization of ontology that covers both existence and fundamentality questions (§§ 4-5)."

References

Schaffer, J. 2009, “On What Grounds What”, in Chalmers D.J., D. Manley, and R. Wasserman (eds.), Metametaphysics, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

31. Kutach, Douglas. 2016. "Ontology: an Empirical Fundamentalist Approach." In Metaphysics in Contemporary Physics, edited by Wüthrich, Christian and Bigaj, Tomasz, 55-80. Leiden: Brill Rodopi.

Abstract: "I apply the philosophical program Empirical Fundamentalism to the topic of ontology. My advice is to represent reality using two related components: a model of fundamental reality and a model of what we can observe in principle called an ‘empirical surrogate’.

The empirical surrogate need not be fundamental but can abstract away from fundamental reality while reducing to fundamental reality. Our ideal guess at ontology is a model of fundamental reality that (1) is a reduction base for the appropriate empirical surrogate, (2) posits no conspiratorial structure, and (3) has no redundant structure. I contrast my approach to alternatives that appeal to beables or primitive ontology."

32. Le Bihan, Baptiste. 2018. "Space Emergence in Contemporary Physics: Why We Do Not Need Fundamentality, Layers of Reality and Emergence." Disputatio no. 10:71-95.

Abstract: " ‘Space does not exist fundamentally: it emerges from a more fundamental non-spatial structure.’

This intriguing claim appears in various research programs in contemporary physics. Philosophers of physics tend to believe that this claim entails either that spacetime does not exist, or that it is derivatively real. In this article, I introduce and defend a third metaphysical interpretation of the claim: reductionism about space. I argue that, as a result, there is no need to subscribe to fundamentality, layers of reality and emergence in order to analyse the constitution of space by non-spatial entities. It follows that space constitution, if borne out, does not provide empirical evidence in favour of a stratified, Aristotelian in spirit, metaphysics. The view will be described in relation to two particular research programs in contemporary physics: wave function realism and loop quantum gravity.

33. Leuenberger, Stephan. 2020. "The Fundamental: Ungrounded or All-Grounding?" Philosophical Studies no. 177:2647-2669.

Abstract: "Fundamentality plays a pivotal role in discussions of ontology, supervenience, and possibility, and other key topics in metaphysics. However, there are two different ways of characterising the fundamental: as that which is not grounded, and as that which is the ground of everything else. I show that whether these two characterisations pick out the same property turns on a principle—which I call ‘‘Dichotomy’’—that is of independent interest in the theory of ground: that everything is either fully grounded or not even partially grounded. I then argue that Dichotomy fails: some facts have partial grounds that cannot be complemented to a full ground. Rejecting Dichotomy opens the door to recognising a bifurcation in our notion of fundamentality. I sketch some of the far-reaching metaphysical consequences this might have, with reference to big-picture views such as Humeanism.

Since Dichotomy is entailed by the standard account of partial ground, according to which partial grounds are subpluralities of full grounds, a non-standard account is needed. In a technical ‘‘Appendix’’, I show that truthmaker semantics furnishes such an account, and identify a semantic condition that corresponds to Dichotomy."

34. Lipman, Martin A. 2018. "Against Fundamentality-Based Metaphysics." Noûs no. 52:587-610.

Abstract: "Metaphysical views typically draw some distinction between reality and appearance, endorsing realism about some subject matters and antirealism about others.

There are different conceptions of how best to construe antirealist theories. A simple view has it that we are antirealists about a subject matter when we believe that this subject matter fails to obtain. This paper discusses an alternative view, which I will call the fundamentality-based conception of antirealism. We are antirealists in this sense when we think that the relevant matter fails to be constitutive of fundamental reality. The following discussion will not rely on any particular understanding of fundamental reality, covering conceptions based on grounding, naturalness and truthmaking, to name three salient ones. This paper argues that there are serious issues with fundamentality-based metaphysics. It will be argued that: (1) the fundamentality-based approach shapes and restricts our realist and antirealist views in unsatisfying ways, (2) that it is unable to handle the conflicting facts that lie across the envisaged ‘layers’ of the metaphysically structured world, and (3) that the methodological reasons for adopting the fundamentality-based approach fail. The paper will conclude with a diagnosis of the discussed issues, identifying a common source."

35. List, Christian. 2019. "Levels: Descriptive, Explanatory, and Ontological." Noûs no. 53:852-883.

Abstract: "Scientists and philosophers frequently speak about levels of description, levels of explanation, and ontological levels. In this paper, I propose a unified framework for modelling levels. I give a general definition of a system of levels and show that it can accommodate descriptive, explanatory, and ontological notions of levels. I further illustrate the usefulness of this framework by applying it to some salient philosophical questions: (1) Is there a linear hierarchy of levels, with a fundamental level at the bottom? And what does the answer to this question imply for physicalism, the thesis that everything supervenes on the physical? (2) Are there emergent properties? (3) Are higher-level descriptions reducible to lower-level ones? (4) Can the relationship between normative and non-normative domains be viewed as one involving levels? Although I use the terminology of “levels”, the proposed framework can also represent “scales”, “domains”, or “subject matters”, where these are not linearly but only partially ordered by relations of supervenience or inclusion."

36. Loew, Christian. 2018. "Fundamentality and Time’s Arrow." Philosophy of Science no. 85:483-500.

Abstract: "The distribution of matter in our universe is strikingly time asymmetric. Most famously, the Second Law of Thermodynamics says that entropy tends to increase toward the future but not toward the past. But what explains this time-asymmetric distribution of matter? In this paper, I explore the idea that time itself has a direction by drawing from recent work on grounding and metaphysical fundamentality. I will argue that positing such a direction of time, in addition to time-asymmetric boundary conditions (such as the so-called “past hypothesis”), enables a better explanation of the thermodynamic asymmetry than is available otherwise."

37. Loss, Roberto. 2021. "There Are No Fundamental Facts." Analysis no. 81:32-39.

"Introduction: Many facts appear to depend on, and thus to be grounded in, other facts: the fact that it is true that the Earth’s climate is warming is grounded in the fact that the Earth’s climate is indeed warming; the fact that { Socrates } exists is grounded in the fact that Socrates exists; the fact that the flag of the European Union is blue is grounded in the fact that it is reflex-blue etc.

Are there fundamental facts – namely, facts that are not grounded in other facts? In this paper I will present an argument showing that certain assumptions concerning the notion of metaphysical grounding entail that no fact is fundamental. In §2 I will briefly present the argument. In §3 I will attempt to defend its main assumptions and compare it with a similar argument recently proposed by Mark Jago. In §4 I will consider two possible objections. I will then conclude that the argument presented in this paper seems to provide at least some minimal support to the idea that (possibly excluding a restricted set of ‘special’ facts) there are indeed no fundamental facts." (p. 32 a note omitted)

References

Jago, M. 2020. A short argument for truthmaker maximalism. Analysis 80: 40–44.

38. Markosian, Ned. 2005. "Against Ontological Fundamentalism." Facta Philosophica no. 7:69-83.

"In Section 2 I will formulate and explain the relevant thesis – Ontological Fundamentalism – together with several related theses that are involved in the popular line of reasoning for it. In Section 3 I will spell out the popular line of reasoning for Ontological Fundamentalism, and show that no one should be convinced by it. Finally, in Section 4, I will consider the independent question of whether Ontological Fundamentalism is true, and I will argue that it is not." (pp. 69-70)

39. Mathers, David. 2019. "Against Sider on Fundamentality." Erkenntnis no. 84:823-838.

Abstract: "Sider’s Writing the Book of the World gives an account of fundamentality in terms of his central ideological notion ‘structure’. Here I first argue against Sider’s claim that to be fundamental to a degree is to be structural to a degree. I argue there’s a pair of properties, P1 and P2, such that P1 is the more fundamental, but Sider is committed to counting P2 as the more structural. I then argue that if relative structure and relative fundamentality can come apart in this way, then Sider is likely also wrong to identify being absolutely structural with being absolutely fundamental."

References

Sider, T. (2011). Writing the Book of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

40. McDaniel, Kris. 2009. "Ways of Being." In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, edited by Chalmers, David, Manley, David and Wasserman, Ryan, 290-319. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In what follows, I develop a meta-ontological theory based on the work of Martin Heidegger circa Being and Time.

(...)

Most contemporary analytic metaphysicians believe that the idea that different kinds of beings can enjoy different ways of being is metaphysically bankrupt, and probably even meaningless.(5) They are mistaken. In section 3, I discuss the doctrine that there are ways of being, and show how we can understand this doctrine in terms of the meta-ontological framework defended by Theodore Sider. I then contrast Sider’s views on existence with the Heideggerian position developed here. In section 4, I compare and contrast this Heideggerian meta-ontological position with quantifier variance, a view inspired by Carnap (1956) and recently defended by Eli Hirsch (2002a).

In section 5, I abstract away from the particulars of Heidegger’s theory and provide a general account for understanding what is for things to exist in different ways.

I conclude with a brief discussion of how accepting that there are different ways of being might impact ontological disputes, such as the dispute between nominalists and realists over mathematical entities and the dispute between actualists and possibilists over mere possibilia.(6)"

(5) See Quine (1960: 242). Van Inwagen (2001) is a prominent neo-Quinean.

(6) In what follows, I do not distinguish between ‘‘existence’’ and ‘‘being’’ and ‘‘what there is.’’

On the view to be articulated, everything that there is exists or has being, but existing things can exist in different ways or enjoy different modes of being. Any distinction lost by this terminologicalconvenience can be recaptured in the framework defended in section 5.

References

Carnap, Rudolph. 1956. ‘‘Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology’’, in Meaning and Necessity: A Study in Semantics and Modal Logic. University of Chicago Press, 205–28.

Hirsch, Eli. 2002a. ‘‘Quantifier Variance and Realism’’, Philosophical Issues 12:51–73.

Quine, W. V. O. 1960. Word and Object, John Wiley and Sons, and MIT Press.

van Inwagen, Peter. 2001. ‘‘Meta-Ontology’’, in Ontology, Identity, and Modality: Essays in Metaphysics, Cambridge University Press, 13–31.

41. ———. 2013. "Degrees of Being." Philosophers' Imprint no. 13:1-18.

"The view I mean to defend is the view rejected in the following passage:

A thing cannot be more or less real than another which is also real. It has been said that reality does admit of degrees. But this can … be traced to one of two confusions…. Sometimes reality has been confused with power … [but] a thing which asserts more power is not more real than one that asserts less. Sometimes … the possibility of degrees of reality is based on the possibility of degrees of truth. … If, for example, it should be truer to say that the universe was an organism than that it was an aggregate, then it is supposed that we may say that an organic universe is more real than an aggregate-universe.

But this is a mistake. [McTaggart 1927: 4–5]

I grant that it would be a mistake to confuse power with reality and a mistake to accept degrees of truth. So let’s not make these mistakes.

On the view that I am considering, being is not to be conflated with some other feature that comes in degrees. Being itself comes in degrees: to be simpliciter is to be to some degree or other, just as to have mass simpliciter is to have some determinate amount of mass. And just as not everything has the same amount of mass, not everything that is exists to the same degree." (p. 3)

References

McTaggart, J.M.E. 1927. The Nature of Existence, volume I, Cambridge University Press.

42. ———. 2017. "Normative Accounts of Fundamentality." Philosophical Issues no. 27:167-183.

"In McDaniel (forthcoming: chapter 6), I noted that in contemporary discussions of fundamentality, normative and evaluative proclamations abound.

I also discussed antecedents to these proclamations in the history of western philosophy. Given the prevalence of normative or evaluative locutions in discussions of fundamentality, it is worth considering normative or evaluative accounts. Even if these accounts ultimately fail, exploring them will help us get clearer on whether there is any sort of normativity governing fundamentality.

Moreover, as suggested earlier, a successful normative account of joint carving would radically reorient meta-ethics and metaphysics, and this fact itself provides a reason to give them serious thought." (p. 169)

References

McDaniel, Kris. Forthcoming [2017]. The Fragmentation of Being, Oxford University Press.

43. McKenzie, Kerry. 2011. "Arguing Against Fundamentality." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A no. 42:244-255.

Abstract: "This paper aims to open up discussion on the relationship between fundamentality and naturalism, and in particular on the question of whether fundamentality may be denied on naturalistic grounds. A historico-inductive argument for an anti-fundamentalist conclusion, prominent within the contemporary metaphysical literature, is examined; finding it wanting, an alternative ‘internal’ strategy is proposed. By means of an example from the history of modern physics–namely S-matrix theory–it is demonstrated that (1) this strategy can generate similar (though not identical) anti-fundamentalist conclusions on more defensible naturalistic grounds, and(2) that fundamentality questions can be empirical questions. Some implications and limitations of the proposed approach are discussed."

44. ———. 2017. "Against Brute Fundamentalism." Dialectica no. 71:231-261.

Abstract: "In metaphysics, the fundamental is standardly equated with that which has no explanation – with that which is, in other words, ‘brute’. But this doctrine of brutalism is in tension with physicists’ ambitions to not only describe but also explain why the fundamental is the way that it is. The tension would ease were science taken to be incapable of furnishing the sort of explanations that brutalists are concerned with, given that these are understood to be of a distinctively ‘metaphysical sort’. But to assume this is to assume a sharp demarcation between physics and metaphysics that surely cannot be taken for granted. This paper sets out to examine the standing of brutalism from the perspective of contemporary fundamental physics, together with theories of explanation drawn both from the philosophy of science and metaphysics. Focusing on what fundamental kinds the world instantiates and how physicists go about determining them, I argue that a partial explanation, in Hempel’s sense, may be given of this fundamental feature. Moreover, since this partial explanation issues, at least in part, from stipulations as to the essential nature of the kinds involved, I claim that it has as much right to be regarded as a metaphysical explanation as do grounding explanations. As such, my conclusion will be that the doctrine of brutalism can no longer be regardedas tenable: at least modulo certain plausible essentialist assumptions, it is no longer the case that no explanation can be given of the fundamental."

45. ———. 2017. "Relativities of Fundamentality." Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics no. 59:89-99.

Abstract: "S-dualities have been held to have radical implications for our metaphysics of fundamentality. In particular, it has been claimed that they make the fundamentality status of a physical object theory-relative in an important new way. But What physicists have had to say on the issue has not been clear or consistent, and in particular seems to be ambiguous between whether S-dualities demand an anti-realist interpretation of fundamentality talk or merely a revised realism. This paper is an attempt to bring some clarity to the matter. After showing that even antecedently familiar fundamentality claims are true only relative to a raft of metaphysical, physical, and mathematical assumptions, I argue that the relativity of fundamentality inherent in S-duality nevertheless represents something new, and that part of the reason for this is that it has both realist and anti-realist implications for fundamentality talk. I close by discussing the broader significance that S-dualities have for structuralist metaphysics and for fundamentality metaphysics more generally."

46. ———. 2019. "Fundamentality." In The Routledge Handbook of Emergence, edited by Gibb, Sophie, Hendry, Robin and Lancaster, Tom, 54-64. New York: Routledge.

"The concept of metaphysical emergence is intimately tied up with our concept of fundamentality.

(...)

Fortunately, however, by now there exists an extensive literature on how to conceptualize fundamentality.

For if anything characterizes the last decade in metaphysics, it is surely the explosion of interest metaphysicians have shown in precisely this question. Although the reasons for this foregrounding of fundamentality issues are not easy to determine, in the last few years a number of philosophers in the a priori tradition have gone as far as to claim that metaphysics just is the study of the fundamental and its relation to the non-fundamental – some even more restrictively that it is that of the fundamental alone.(1)

(...)

This brief chapter will have something to say about all of these questions, and the labour will be divided as follows. In Section 2, we will introduce some of the idioms pertaining to ontological priority that are intended to help us get a grip on the notion of fundamentality. In Section 3, we will discuss whether priority ought to be conceptualized in terms of some kind of determination relation or rather in a form ontological dependence – a matter over which there seems to be a surprising amount of confusion in the literature. In Section 4, we will consider some issues pertaining to the level of ‘grain’ at which relations of priority ought to be conceptualized. In Section 5, we will consider the issue of whether we should believe that anything fundamental exists at all." (pp. 54-55)

(1) See e.g. Schaffer (2009), Dorr (2008), and Paul (2012) for statements of the former view; Sider (2011, p. 1) for a statement of the latter.

References

Dorr, Cian (2008). ‘There Are No Abstract Objects’, in Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics, eds. Theodore Sider, John Hawthorne and Dean W. Zimmerman. Oxford: Blackwell.

Paul, L.A. (2012). ‘Building the World from Its Fundamental Constituents’, Philosophical Studies 158 (2):221–256.

Schaffer, Jonathan (2009). ‘On What Grounds What’, in Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, eds. David Manley, David J. Chalmers and Ryan Wasserman, pp. 347–383. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Sider, Theodore (2011). Writing the Book of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

47. ———. 2022. Fundamentality and Grounding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Abstract: "A suite of questions concerning fundamentality lies at the heart of contemporary metaphysics. The relation of grounding, thought to connect the more to the less fundamental, sits at the heart of those

debates in turn. Since most contemporary metaphysicians embrace the doctrine of physical ism and thus hold that reality is fundamentally physical, a natural question is how physics can inform the current debates over fundamentality and grounding. This Element introduces the reader to the concept of grounding and some of the key issues that animate contemporary debates around it, such as the question of whether grounding is 'unified' or 'plural' and whether there exists a fundamental level of reality. It moves on to show how resources from physics can help point the way towards their answers - thus furthering the case for a naturalistic approach to even the most fundamental of questions in metaphysics."

48. Mehta, Neil. 2017. "Can Grounding Characterize Fundamentality?" Analysis no. 77:74-79.

Abstract: "It can seem incoherent to fully characterize fundamentality in terms of grounding, given that the fundamental is precisely that which cannot be fully characterized in terms of anything else. I argue that there is no such incoherence."

49. Miller, Elizabeth. 2014. "Schaffer on the Action of the Whole." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 114:365-370.

Abstract: "I argue that Schaffer’s recent defence of Spinozan Monism—the thesis that the cosmos is the only substance, or the only fundamental and integrated thing—fails to establish that the universe is uniquely fundamental. In addition, Schaffer’s own defence of his thesis offers the pluralist about fundamentality a model for responding to Schaffer’s criticism of pluralism."

50. ———. 2020. "Two Notions of Holism." Synthese no. 197:4187-4206.

Abstract: "A simple argument proposes a direct link between realism about quantum mechanics and one kind of metaphysical holism: if elementary quantum theory is at least approximately true, then there are entangled systems with intrinsic whole states for which the intrinsic properties and spatiotemporal arrangements of salient subsystem parts do not suffice. Initially, the proposal is compelling: we can find variations on such reasoning throughout influential discussions of entanglement. Upon further consideration, though, this simple argument proves a bit too simple. To get such metaphysically robust consequences out, we need to put more than minimal realism in.

This paper offers a diagnosis: our simple argument seems so compelling thanks to an equivocation. The predictions of textbook quantum theory already resonate with familiar holistic slogans; for realists, then, any underlying reality, conforming to such predictions, also counts as holistic in some sense or other, if only by association.

Such associated holism, though, does not establish the sort of specific, robust supervenience failure claimed by our simple argument. While it may be natural to slide to this stronger conclusion, facilitating the slide is not minimal realism per se but an additional explanatory assumption about how and why reality behaves in accordance with our theory: roughly, quantum theory accurately captures patterns in the features and behaviors of physical reality because some underlying metaphysical structure constrains reality to exhibit these patterns. Along with the diagnosis comes a recommendation: we can and should understand one traditional disagreement about the metaphysics of entanglement as another manifestation of a familiar and more general conflict between reductive and non-reductive conceptions of metaphysical theorizing.

Such reframing makes clearer what resources reductionists have for resisting the simple argument’s challenge from quantum holism. It also has an important moral for their opponents. Traditional focus on whole-part supervenience failure distracts from a root disagreement about metaphysical structure and its role in our theorizing.

Non-reductionists fond of our simple argument would be better off tackling this root directly."

51. Morganti, Matteo. 2020. "Fundamentality in Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Physics. Part II: Physics." Philosophy Compass no. 15:1-10.

First online 29 August 2020.

Abstract: "This is the second part of an overview article on fundamentality in metaphysics and the philosophy of physics.

Here, the notion of fundamentality is looked at from the viewpoint of the philosophical analysis of physics and physical theories. The questions are considered (1) whether physics can be regarded as fundamental with respect to other sciences, and in what sense; (2) what the label ‘fundamental physics’ should exactly be taken to mean; (3) on what grounds a particular physical theory should be considered fundamental; (4) what should be regarded as fundamental according to particular theories of physics; and (5) what indications come from contemporary physics concerning the fundamental structure of reality."

52. ———. 2020. "Fundamentality in Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Physics. Part I: Metaphysics." Philosophy Compass no. 15:1-14.

First online 15 July 2020.

Abstract: "This is the first part of a two-tier overview article on fundamentality in metaphysics and the philosophy of physics.

It provides an introduction to the notion of fundamentality in metaphysics, as well as to several related concepts. The key issues in the contemporary debate on the topic are summarized, making systematic reference to the most relevant literature.

In particular, various ways in which the fundamental entities and the fundamental structure of reality may be conceived are illustrated and discussed. A final brief section looks at the methodological issue of naturalism, paving the way for the survey of fundamentality in the philosophy of physics which is carried out in the second part."

53. ———. 2020. "Ontic Structuralism and Fundamentality." In The Foundation of Reality: Fundamentality, Space, and Time, edited by Glick, David, Darby, George and Marmodoro, Anna, 69-86. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"Ontic structural realism (OSR) is the view that (1) in spite of the discontinuities that characterise the historical development of science we can be realist about something, i.e., the concrete counterpart of certain theoretical structures that remain preserved across theory-change; and (2) such structure is all there is in the actual world, at least at the fundamental level." (p. 69)

"The structure of the chapter is as follows: in Section 3.2 I will concisely introduce the key notions employed in extant discussions of metaphysical fundamentality that will play a role here, and in Section 3.3 I will do the same with OSR, identifying with more precision the two fundamentality-related questions that arise in connection to it. In Section 3.4 I will present and discuss the various ontologies that can be and, partly, have been associated with OSR—with special attention to the quantum domain and the nature of space-time—bearing in mind the two different questions of fundamentality. In Section 3.5 I will critically assess these ontologies based on the indications coming from both a priori metaphysical reflection and current science. In particular, I will point out potential difficulties for structuralism as a metaphysical thesis. In Section 3.6 I will conclude by briefly presenting an alternative view, which arguably preserves the essential insights of structuralism while at the same time offering a different take on fundamentality." (p 70, a note omitted)

References

Ladyman, J. (1998). ‘What is Structural Realism?’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science Part A 29, 409-424.

54. Ney, Alyssa. 2020. "Are the Questions of Metaphysics More Fundamental Than Those of Science?" Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 100:695-715.

Abstract: "When pursued naturalistically, metaphysics may seem forced to navigate a narrow path. So that it may be a worthwhile enterprise, it must have claim to discovery of a distinctive set of objective truths. Yet it must also avoid potential competition or conflict with the results of scientific theories. In response to this problem, some naturalistic metaphysicians have argued that properly understood, metaphysics is aimed at a set of truths distinct from those of science. Metaphysicians investigate a realm of truths more fundamental than those of even fundamental science. This paper examines what is required both in science and metaphysics for a theory to count as a fundamental theory. Several criteria are presented which suggest that metaphysics does not investigate a realm more fundamental than that of science."

55. O'Leary-Hawthorne, John, and Cortens, Andrew. 1995. "Towards Ontological Nihilism." Philosophical Studies no. 79:143-165.

"In this paper, we wish to motivate a radical cluster of metaphysical pictures that have tempted philosophers from a variety of traditions. These pictures share one important theme - they refuse to accord countable entities any place in the fundamental scheme of things. Put another way, they all suggest that the concept of an object has no place in a perspicuous characterization of reality. Such pictures suffer from a number of fairly obvious prima facie difficulties. They seem to fly in the face of common sense. They seem to suggest that just about everything we say is false. They seem to gesture at a noumenal reality that human language is unable to describe. And so on. Our aim is to meet such difficulties head on and, by doing so, vindicate this sort of radical picture as one that deserves to be taken seriously.

This paper is organised into four sections. In section one, we examine various forms of this radical metaphysic and discuss their historical precedents, both in this century and in previous ones. In section two, we consider how the most radical of these metaphysical pictures - what we call 'ontological nihilism' - might be fleshed out into a rich, articulate, theory. In section three, we consider what the proponent of such a picture should say concerning the truth or falsity of ordinary discourse. In section four, we consider what the motivations for this apparently perverse metaphysic might be." (p. 143)

56. Oberle, Thomas. 2022. "Metaphysical Foundationalism: Consensus and Controversy." American Philosophical Quarterly no. 59:97-110.

Abstract: "There has been an explosion of interest in the metaphysics of fundamentality in recent decades. The consensus view, called metaphysical foundationalism, maintains that there is something absolutely fundamental in reality upon which everything else depends. However, a number of thinkers have challenged the arguments in favor of foundationalism and have proposed competing non-foundationalist ontologies. This paper provides a systematic and critical introduction to metaphysical foundationalism

in the current literature and argues that its relation to ontological dependence and substance should be qualified in important ways."

57. Paolini Paoletti, Michele. 2021. "A Brighter Shade of Categoricalism." Axiomathes:1-30.

First online 10 July 2021.

Abstract: "Categoricalism is a doctrine about properties according to which the dispositional aspects of properties are not essential to them. In opposition to categoricalism, dispositionalism holds that the dispositional aspects of properties are essential to them. In this article, I shall construct a new version of categoricalism that should be favoured over the other existing versions: Semi-Necessitarian Categoricalism. In Section 2 I shall elaborate on the distinction between categoricalism and dispositionalism and single out different ‘shades’ of both doctrines. I shall also illustrate the main advantages and problems that characterize categoricalism. In Section 3 I shall introduce Necessitarian Categoricalism – as it has been recently developed by Alexander Kelly and Deborah Smith, among others. Even if Necessitarian Categoricalism solves the aforementioned problems of categoricalism, it also loses its main advantages. In Section 4 I shall refine this version of Necessitarian Categoricalism, thus developing Semi-Necessitarian Categoricalism. In Section 5 I shall face some objections. Finally, in Section 6, I shall briefly draw some conclusions and compare my account with other accounts."

References

Kelly, A. J. (2009). Properties and Powers. PhD Dissertation (University of Warwick)

______ (2013). “Ramseyan Humility, scepticism and grasp”. Philosophical Studies, 164: 705-726

Smith, D. (2016). “Quid Quidditism Est?”. Erkenntnis, 81: 237-257

58. Paseau, Alexander. 2010. "Defining Ultimate Ontological Basis and the Fundamental Layer." The Philosophical Quarterly no. 60:169-179.

Abstract: "I explain why Ross Cameron’s definition of ultimate ontological basis is incorrect, and propose a different definition in terms of ontological dependence, as well as a definition of reality’s fundamental layer. These new definitions cover the conceptual possibility that self-dependent entities exist. They also apply to different conceptions of the relation of ontological dependence."

59. Paul, L. A. 2012. "Building the World from Its Fundamental Constituents." Philosophical Studies no. 158:221-256.

"In this paper, I argue that a popular way of modeling the fundamental constituents, structure and composition of the world, the spatiotemporalist approach to the world, has taken a wrong turn. Spatiotemporalist approaches to fundamental structure take the fundamental nature of the world to be spatiotemporal: they take the category of spatiotemporal to be fundamental. These approaches tend to start with questions about whether and how spatiotemporal parts and spatiotemporal composition interact, and try to build the entire physical world using spatiotemporal mereology. Supersubstantivalism, the view that everything physical reduces to spatiotemporal regions, is spatiotemporalism taken to an extreme." (p. 222)

60. ———. 2013. "Categorical Priority and Categorical Collapse." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. Supplementary Volume 87:89-113.

Abstract: "I explore some of the ways that assumptions about the nature of substance shape metaphysical debates about the structure of Reality. Assumptions about the priority of substance play a role in an argument for monism, are embedded in certain pluralist metaphysical treatments of laws of nature, and are central to discussions of substantivalism and relationalism. I will then argue that we should reject such assumptions and collapse the categorical distinction between substance and property."

"A central project of contemporary metaphysics is to understand the nature of the world as a whole. The traditional way to approach this project is to develop an account of the metaphysically basic kinds, that is, of the fundamental ontological categories of the world. But in addition to giving an account of what the fundamental ontological categories are, we need to give an account of how they and their members ground the overall structure of the world." (p. 89)

61. Pearson, Olley. 2018. "Emergence, Dependence, and Fundamentality." Erkenntnis no. 83:391-402.

Abstract: "In a recent paper Barnes proposes to characterize ontological emergence by identifying the emergent entities with those entities which are both fundamental and dependent. Barnes offers characterizations of the notions of fundamentality and dependence, but is cautious about committing to the specifics of these notions. This paper argues that Barnes’s characterization of emergence is problematic in several ways. Firstly, emergence is a relation, and merely delimiting relata of this relation tells us little about it. Secondly, the group of entities delimited as dependent and fundamental do not appear to be the group of emergent entities. Rather, some entities appear to be dependent and fundamental and not emergent, whilst other entities appear to be emergent and not dependent and fundamental. The moral drawn is that in order to provide a characterization of emergence one must go beyond what Barnes says explicitly. It is also shown that a potentially fruitful way of doing this would be to further specify the notion of dependence at issue revealing it to be asymmetric and perhaps merely nomological."

References

Barnes, E. (2012). Emergence and fundamentality. Mind, 121(484), 873–901.

62. Pickel, Bryan. 2017. "Naming, Saying, and Structure." Noûs no. 51:594-616.

Abstract: "It is commonplace for philosophers to distinguish mere truths from truths that perspicuously represent the world’s structure. According to a popular view, the perspicuous truths are supposed to be metaphysically revelatory and to play an important role in the accounts of law-hood, confirmation, and linguistic interpretation.

Yet, there is no consensus about how to characterize this distinction. I examine strategies developed by Lewis and by Sider in his Writing the Book of the World which purport to explain this distinction in terms of vocabulary: the truths that represent the world perspicuously have better, joint-carving vocabulary.

I argue that the distinction between a perspicuous and mere truth concerns both the vocabulary of the sentence and its grammar. I then show that the collective motivations for distinguishing perspicuous from mere truths do not allow Lewis and Sider to properly impose constraints on grammar."

63. Plate, Jan. 2016. "Logically Simple Properties and Relations." Philosophers' Imprint no. 16:1-40.

"Introduction: Metaphysicians generally agree that not all predicates are created equal. In the Parmenides, young Socrates affirms that there are Forms of the beautiful, the just, and the good, but denies that there is a Form of hair or of mud. In classical Indian metaphysics, Udayana’s followers distinguished ‘real’ universals (jāti) from those that are merely ‘constructed’ (upādhi).(1) And in recent Western philosophy, Goodman (1955) has distinguished projectible from non-projectible predicates, Armstrong (1978) predicates that correspond to universals from those that don’t, Shoemaker (1980) genuine from ‘mere Cambridge’ properties, and David Lewis (1983; 1986) perfectly natural attributes from those that are less than perfectly natural.(2) It is easy to notice that in each of these distinctions, one of the two respective classes of predicates (or universals, etc.) is in some way privileged. The distinction that this paper is concerned with also fits into this roster. I shall try to give an account of it, and offer the beginnings of an argument for the view that it would make for a viable substitute for Lewis’s distinction between the perfectly and the less-than-perfectly natural attributes."

(1) 1. Bartley (2001, 543).

(2) For the sake of brevity, the term ‘attribute’ is here (following Carnap [1942]) used interchangeably with ‘property or relation’, practically regardless of context. So I shall speak of ‘Lewis’s concept of a perfectly natural attribute’, irrespective of the fact that (i) Lewis himself tends not to use the word ‘attribute’, and (ii) the conception of attributes operative in this paper is markedly different from Lewis’s.

References

Armstrong, D. M. (1978). A Theory of Universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bartley, C. (2001). Udayana. In O. Leaman (ed.), Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy (pp. 542–44). London: Routledge.

Carnap, R. (1942). Introduction to Semantics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Goodman, N. (1955). Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lewis, D. K. (1983). New Work for a Theory of Universals. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 61, 343–77.

Lewis, D. K. (1986). On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell.

Shoemaker, S. (1980). Causality and Properties. In P. van Inwagen (ed.), Time and Cause (pp. 109–35). Dordrecht: Reidel.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on Metaphysical fundamentality (R - Z)

Bibliography

1. Raven, Michael J. 2009. Ontology, From a Fundamentalist Point of View.

PhD thesis, New York University, 2009, available at Academia.edu.

Abstract: "Ontology’s attempt to uncover what is real can seem alternately profound, obscure, and empty. My aim is to clarify this project. I present and argue against the orthodox view that what is real is what there is. My proposed alternative is that what is real is what is fundamental. I develop this old idea in new ways, showing how it can resist standard difficulties, reshape some live ontological debates, and guide us towards a clearer understanding of whether ontology is as profound as it seems or as obscure or empty as skeptics allege."

2. ———. 2015. "Fundamentality without Foundations." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 93:607-626.

Abstract: "A commonly held view is that a central aim of metaphysics is to give a fundamental account of reality which refers only to the fundamental entities. But a puzzle arises. It is at least a working hypothesis for those pursuing the aim that, first, there must be fundamental entities. But, second, it also seems possible that the world has no foundation, with each entity depending on others. These two claims are inconsistent with the widely held third claim that the fundamental just is the foundational. It is tempting to resolve the puzzle by rejecting the first or second claim, perhaps because it is obscure how the third claim might plausibly be challenged. But I develop a new analysis of fundamentality which challenges the third claim by allowing for an entity to be fundamental without being foundational. The analysis, roughly, is that an entity is fundamental (or ineliminable, as I call it) just in case not all facts about it are grounded in facts about other entities. The possibility of fundamentality without foundations not only provides for a novel resolution to the puzzle, but has applications to some live debates: for example, it undermines Jonathan Schaffer’s modal argument for priority monism."

3. Rayo, Agustin. 2015. "Essence Without Fundamentality." Theoria: An International Journal for Theory, History and Fundations of Science no. 30:349-363.

"In Modality and Explanatory Reasoning, Boris Kment argues that a single notion of essence can be used to play two different theoretical roles. He thinks there is an important connection between essence and metaphysical necessity, on the one hand, and between essence and metaphysical explanation, on the other.

It seems to me that there is a price to be paid for using a single notion of essence to play both of these roles. For the project of giving metaphysical explanations requires a notion of essence that distinguishes between truths that are more or less "fundamental", in a metaphysical sense. So the result of using that same notion of essence in an account of metaphysical necessity is that one ends up with a conception of metaphysical necessity that is tied up with distinctions of metaphysical fundamentality.

The main objective of this paper is to develop a notion of essence which steers clear of the notion of metaphysical fundamentality, and to suggest that it is well-suited to elucidate the notion of metaphysical necessity. I will also argue that the relevant notion of essence can be used to resolve a tension implicit in a famous argument of Kit Fine's for the conclusion that the notion of essence cannot be adequately captured by the notion of metaphysical necessity."

References

Kment, B. 2014. Modality and Explanatory Reasoning, OUP, Oxford.

4. Schaffer, Jonathan. 2003. "Is There a Fundamental Level?" Noûs no. 37:498-517.

"Talk about ‘‘the fundamental level of reality’’ pervades contemporary metaphysics. The fundamentalist starts with (a) a hierarchical picture of nature as stratified into levels, adds (b) an assumption that there is a bottom level which is fundamental, and winds up, often enough, with (c) an ontological attitude according to which the entities of the fundamental level are primarily real, while any remaining contingent entities are at best derivative, if real at all.

(...)

I find the hierarchical picture of nature in (a) plausible as reflected in the structure and discoveries of the sciences, and consider the ontological primacy of the fundamental entities in (c) a natural (though not inevitable) conclusion.

In any case I will not discuss these issues here. Rather I will discuss the assumption (b) that there exists a fundamental level; first because it is almost entirely neglected; second because, as I will argue, there is no evidence in its favor; and third because the hierarchical picture minus (b) yields a far more palatable metaphysic in which, contra (c), all entities are equally real.

So why believe that there is a fundamental level? Why not an infinite descending hierarchy of levels?

In discussing the evidence for fundamentality I will, on route, clarify the various senses of ‘‘levels’’, assess the epistemic standing of various fundamentalist doctrines such as physicalism, and present a rival metaphysic of infinite descent which is at home in the macroworld." (pp. 498ò-499)

5. ———. 2004. "Two Conceptions of Sparse Properties." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly no. 85:92-102.

Abstract: "Are the sparse properties drawn from all the levels of nature, or only the fundamental level? I discuss the notion of sparse property found in Armstrong and Lewis, show that there are tensions in the roles they have assigned the sparse properties, and argue that the sparse properties should be drawn from all the levels of nature. The issue has direct bearing on reductionism. If the sparse properties are drawn from all the levels of nature, then macro-scientific properties are just as primary as microscientific properties, and do not need to be reduced to them."

6. ———. 2008. "Truth and Fundamentality: On Merricks's Truth and Ontology." Philosophical Books no. 49:302-316.

Abstract: "Truth and Ontology is a lively book, brimming with arguments, and drawing the reader towards the radical conclusion that what is true does not depend on what there is. If there is a central line of argument, it is that the best account of truthmaking requires truths to be about their truthmakers, but negative existentials, modals, and claims about the past and future are not about what is, but rather about what is not, what might be, and what was and will be.

In §1 I will discuss this central line of argument, and invite Merricks to clarify his notion of aboutness. In §2 I will try to (re-)motivate truthmaking, and sketch a positive account that takes dependence seriously. Whether this account succeeds or fails, Merricks deserves credit for pushing us all to reconsider truthmaking and its motivations."

References

Trenton Merricks, Truth and Ontology. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007.

7. ———. 2008. "Truthmaker Commitments." Philosophical Studies no. 141:7-19.

8. ———. 2010. "The Least Discerning and Most Promiscuous Truthmaker." Philosophical Quarterly no. 60:307-324.

Abstract: "I argue that the one and only truthmaker is the world. This view can be seen as arising from (i) the view that truthmaking is a relation of grounding holding between true propositions and fundamental entities, together with (ii) the view that the world is the one and only fundamental entity. I argue that this view provides an elegant and economical account of the truthmakers, while solving the problem of negative existentials, in a way that proves ontologically revealing."

9. ———. 2013. "The Action of the Whole." Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume no. 87:67-87.

"I discuss an argument for the monistic idea that the cosmos is the one and only fundamental thing, drawing on the idea that the cosmos is the one and only thing that evolves by the fundamental laws."

(...)

"What are the fundamental blocks from which reality is built? The pluralist views the cosmos as pieced together from many tiny parts, while the monist holds that the entire scene is painted onto one vast unbroken whole. I provide an argument for monism—the argument from nomic integrity—which draws on the idea that the fundamental laws of nature govern the temporal evolution of the cosmos as a whole, applying at most approximately and derivatively to any merely partial subsystem:

(1) Leibnizian Substance: Something is a substance if and only if it evolves by the fundamental laws.

(2) Russellian Laws: The cosmos is the one and only thing that evolves by the fundamental laws.

(3) Spinozan Monism: The cosmos is the one and only substance (from 1 and 2).

To fix another image: the cosmos ticks like a single clockwork. To cast a slogan: reality acts as one." (p. 67)

10. ———. 2013. "Metaphysical Semantics Meets Multiple Realizability." Analysis no. 73:736-751.

"Sider’s Writing the Book of the World is an outstanding work. In an earlier review (Schaffer forthcoming) I called it ‘masterful’ and ‘required reading’, while worrying about Sider’s notion(s) of structure. Here I offer the further praise of further discussion, centred on a separate worry concerning whether Sider’s metaphysical semantics can handle multiple realizability." (p. 736)

(...)

"Overview: In Section 1 I describe metaphysical semantics, and identify three conditions of adequacy. In Section 2 I propose three ways for metaphysical semantics to treat multiple realizability, and in Sections 3–5 I argue that none of these three ways can satisfy more than one adequacy condition. I conclude in Section 6 that the underlying problem lies with Sider’s eliminativist attitude to the non-fundamental." (p. 737)

References

Schaffer, J. forthcoming [(2014) 123 (1): 125–129]. Review of Theodore Sider’s Writing the Book of the World. Philosophical Review.

11. Schipper, Arthur. 2019. "Fundamental Truthmakers and Non-fundamental Truths." Synthese no. 198:3073-3098.

Abstract: "Recently, philosophers have tried to develop a version of truthmaker theory which ties the truthmaking relation (t-rel) closely to the notion of fundamentality. In fact, some of these truthmaker-fundamentalists (tf-ists), as I call them, assume that the notion of fundamentality is intelligible in part by citing, as central examples of fundamentals, truthmakers, which they understand necessarily as constituents of fundamental reality.

The aim of this paper is first to bring some order and clarity to this discussion, sketching how far tf is compatible with orthodox truthmaking, and then critically to evaluate the limits of tf. It will be argued that truthmaker theory cannot directly help with articulating the nature of fundamental reality and that t-rel does not necessarily relate truths with anything more fundamental, unless what is fundamental is what the

truthbearers in question are about. I shall argue that tf faces a rather thorny dilemma and some general problems. I shall present two exhaustive types of fundamentalism on which a version of tf can be based: deflationary and inflationary. It will be argued that each version of tf runs into significant troubles accounting for all truth, specifically ordinary truths and metaphysical truths about the relations between ordinary facts and fundamental facts. I shall not attempt to solve these problems, but rather, at the end, diagnose the issues with tf as lying in the difficulties with reconciling the manifest image with the scientific and metaphysical images of reality."

12. Schnieder, Benjamin. 2020. "Atomism and Fundamentality." Erkenntnis no. 85:551-574.

Abstract: "The paper focusses on two claims about metaphysical structure: Atomism and Fundamentalism.

The first of these claims says that there are mereological atoms, i.e. minimal elements in the mereological structure of reality. The second says that there are fundamental truths, i.e. minimal elements in the grounding structure of reality.

A philosopher who defended both of these claims was Bernard Bolzano; the present paper is an exploration of his views on the matter."

13. Schrenk, Markus. 2009. "Can Physics ever be Complete if there is no Fundamental Level in Nature?" Dialectica no. 63:205-208.

Abstract: "In their recent book Every Thing Must Go, Ladyman and Ross (2007) claim:

1. Physics is analytically complete since it is the only science that cannot be left incomplete (cf. p. 283).

2. There might not be an ontologically fundamental level (cf. p. 178).

3. We should not admit anything into our ontology unless it has explanatory and predictive utility (cf. p. 179).

In this discussion note I aim to show that the ontological commitment in (3) implies that the completeness of no science can be achieved where no fundamental level exists. Therefore, if claim (1) requires a science to actually be complete in order to be considered as physics, (1), and if Ladyman and Ross’s “tentative metaphysical hypothesis [. . .] that there is no fundamental level” (p. 178) is true, (2), then there simply is no physics. Ladyman and Ross can, however, avoid this unwanted result if they merely require physics to ever strive for completeness rather than to already be complete."

References

Ladyman, J. and Ross, D. 2007, Every Thing Must Go. Metaphysics Naturalized, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

14. Shumener, Erica. 2017. "The Metaphysics of Identity: Is Identity Fundamental?" Philosophy Compass no. 12:1-13.

"In this paper, I will first say more about what the question ‘Are identity and distinctness facts fundamental?’ means. Next, I will explore attempts to treat identity and distinctness facts as non‐fundamental. Finally, I will examine two approaches that treat (at least some) identity and distinctness facts as fundamental.

Metaphysicians have different conceptions of fundamentality. As a result, discussion of the fundamentality status of identity and distinctness facts shifts depending on the characterization of fundamentality in play. In the first part of this paper (section 3), we will consider the question of whether identity and distinctness facts are fundamental in light of grounding‐based characterizations of fundamentality. In section 4, we will also consider how a different account of fundamentality, one that appeals to the notion of ‘joint‐carvingness’, bears on this question" (p.1, notes omitted)

15. ———. 2019. "Building and Surveying: Relative Fundamentality in Karen Bennett’s Making Things Up." Analysis no. 79:303-314.

"One of the most important contributions of Making Things Up is Bennett’s discussion of relative fundamentality, of one entity’s being more fundamental than, less fundamental than, or equifundamental to another.(2) Bennett understands relative fundamentality in terms of building relations. Before delving into Bennett’s account of relative fundamentality, we can first divide positions on relative fundamentality into two camps:

Builders: Facts about relative fundamentality are fixed solely by facts involving building relations and their patterns of instantiation.

Surveyors: Facts about relative fundamentality are not fixed solely by facts about building relations and their patterns of instantiation.

Bennett is a builder. Surveyors come in different varieties. Some surveyors understand relative fundamentality without an appeal to building relations.

While David Lewis did not provide a full account of relative fundamentality, we should probably think of him as this kind of surveyor." (pp. 303-304, a ote omitted)

(2) I use ‘entity’ loosely to range over members of different ontological categories (objects, facts, properties, events and so on).

16. Sider, Theodore. 2008. "Monism and Statespace Structure." Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement no. 62:129-150.

"An intriguing newcomer to the contemporary scene is the ancient doctrine of monism, the claim that “reality is one”. I will argue that, contrary to initial appearances, monism can be made materially adequate. But the monist’s reconstruction of common sense and science will reveal some troublesome commitments." (p. 130, anote omitted)

17. ———. 2011. Writing the Book of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"The central theme of this book is: realism about structure. The world has a distinguished structure, a privileged description. For a representation to be fully successful, truth is not enough; the representation must also use the right concepts, so that its conceptual structure matches reality’s structure. There is an objectively correct way to “write the book of the world”.

Realism about predicate structure is fairly widely accepted. Many—especially those influenced by David Lewis—think that some predicates (like ‘green’) do a better job than others (like ‘grue’) at marking objective similarities, carving nature at the joints. But this realism should be extended, beyond predicates, to expressions of other grammatical categories, including logical expressions. Let “there schmexists an F” mean that the property of being an F is expressed by some predicate in some sentence of this book. ‘Schmexists’ does not carve at the joints; it is to the quantifier ‘there exists’ as ‘grue’ is to ‘green’. Likewise, the question of joint-carving can be raised for predicate modifiers, sentential connectives, and expressions of other grammatical categories. (Structure is a generalization and extension of Lewisian naturalness.)

I connect structure to fundamentality. The joint-carving notions are the fundamental notions; a fact is fundamental when it is stated in joint-carving terms. A central task of metaphysics has always been to discern the ultimate or fundamental reality underlying the appearances. I think of this task as the investigation of reality’s structure." (Preface, p. VII)

18. ———. 2013. "Précis of Writing the Book of the World." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 87:706-708.

"My central thesis is that there is a ready-made world. Some concepts are objectively privileged: the “fundamental”, or “joint-carving”, or “structural” ones. A complete description of reality using these concepts—the “book of the world”—gives reality’s fundamental structure. A description using cooked-up concepts can be true, and even equivalent (in a sense) to the book of the world, but is nevertheless representationally deficient since its structure does not match the world’s structure.

Many traditional questions of metaphysics are about the nature of “ultimate reality”. Is reality ultimately just physical, or is there also a mental aspect? In my terms, this is the question of whether the book of the world mentions mentality—of whether mental concepts are structural." (p. 706)

19. ———. 2013. "Replies to Dorr, Fine, and Hirsch." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 87:733-754.

"Reply to Kit Fine

Kit Fine’s rich paper raises important issues about the metaphysics of fundamentality. Fine and I agree that fundamentality-theoretic concepts are not to be defined modally, that they are not to be understood in terms of ordinary meaning, and that some such concepts are to be adopted as conceptually primitive. But we differ over which such concepts to adopt.

Fine’s (2001; 2012) primitive concepts are those of ground and reality.

One proposition grounds another if and only if the first accounts for the second in a certain metaphysically distinctive way; one proposition holds in reality if and only if it is part of “reality’s intrinsic structure” (2001, section 8).

My primitive concept, on the other hand, is that of joint-carving.

Ground and reality apply at the level of entire propositions (or sentences, or facts), whereas joint-carving applies at the level of parts of propositions (or sentences, or facts). Mass, existential quantification, negation, and the like, rather than entire propositions, are candidates for joint-carving.

Thus my account is more atomistic than Fine’s: the locus of fundamentality for me is sub-propositional whereas for Fine it is propositional." (pp. 738-739)

References

Fine, Kit (2001). “The Question of Realism.” Philosopher’s Imprint 1: 1–30.

______ (2012). “Guide to Ground.” In Fabrice Correia and Benjamin Schnieder (eds.), Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality, 37–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

______ (2013). "Fundamental Truth and Fundamental Terms." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 87: 725-732.

20. ———. 2013. "Symposium on Writing the Book of the World." Analysis no. 73:751-770.

"Reply to Trenton Merricks

Trenton Merricks’s illuminating paper begins by criticizing the first sentence of my book: ‘Metaphysics, at bottom, is about the fundamental structure of reality’. Metaphysics isn’t about any single thing ‘at bottom’, Merricks says, and anyway, plenty of it isn’t about structure. He’s largely right; I got a little carried away with my rhetoric. But I do think that fundamentality is more central to metaphysics than Merricks allows.

Questions about which concepts are fundamental are indeed just one part of metaphysics. But there are also questions that use fundamental concepts, which I also meant to count as being ‘about the fundamental structure of reality’. If quantifiers carve at the joints, for instance, then ontological questions are about the fundamental structure of reality (see, e.g. p. viii)." (p. 754, notes omitted)

(...)

"Reply to Jonathan Schaffer

In addition to characterizing fundamentality itself, a theory of fundamentality must also account for the connection between fundamental and nonfundamental.

The fundamental ‘underlies’ everything else, but in what sense exactly? According to Jonathan Schaffer’s kind yet deeply challenging critique, my account of the connection – metaphysical semantics – cannot handle multiply realizable non-fundamental facts. This is an important criticism, and I’ll discuss it in a moment, but first I want to resist Schaffer’s description of my account as being ‘radically eliminativist’ and implying that the non-fundamental is ‘mere talk’." (p. 760)

References

Trenton Merricks. "Three Comments on Writing the Book of the World." Analysis, 73 (2013): 722-736.

Jonathan Schaffer. "Metaphysical Semantics Meets Multiple Realizability." Analysis, 73 (2013): 736-751.

21. ———. 2013. "Against Parhood." Oxford Studies in Metaphysics no. 8:237-293.

"In this paper, I will defend what Peter van Inwagen calls nihilism: composite entities (entities with proper parts) do not exist.(1) This formulation will need to be refined, and, at the very end of the paper, softened a little. But let us stick to the simple, strong version for now." (p. 237)

(...)

"Since I accept the existence of the particles, my denial of an object composed of them isn’t absurd. Denying that T exists in addition to a, b, and c is no more absurd than denying that holes exist in addition to perforated things, or denying that smirks exist in addition to smirking faces. Similarly, denying the existence of persons, animals, plants, and the rest is not absurd if one accepts subatomic particles that are “arranged personwise” (to use van Inwagen’s phrase), animal-wise, plant-wise, and so on." (p. 238)

(1) van Inwagen (1990). “Proper parts” of x are parts of x other than x itself (it is customary to count entities as being parts of themselves). By “composition” I have in mind only mereological composition, i.e. composition by parts, though I do discuss sets in the final section. Other nihilists include Dorr (2002) and Cameron (2010 b); see also Dorr (2005). See Dorr and Rosen (2002) for a defense—partly overlapping mine—of nihilism against objections. For stylistic reasons I often speak of existence, but as a good Quinean I intend this to be recast in terms of quantification.

References

Cameron, Ross P. (2010 b). “Quantifi cation, Naturalness and Ontology”. In Allan Hazlett (ed.), New Waves in Metaphysics , 8–26. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Dorr, Cian (2002). “The Simplicity of Everything”. Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University.

—— (2005). “What We Disagree About When We Disagree About Ontology”. In Mark Kalderon (ed.), Fictionalism in Metaphysics, 234–86. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dorr, Cian (2009) and Gideon Rosen (2002). “Composition as a Fiction”. In Richard Gale (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics, 151–74. Oxford: Blackwell.

van Inwagen, Peter (1990). Material Beings. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

22. ———. 2017. "Substantivity in Feminist Metaphysics." Philosophical Studies no. 174:2467-2478.

Abstract: "Elizabeth Barnes and Mari Mikkola raise the important question of whether certain recent approaches to metaphysics exclude feminist metaphysics. My own approach (from my book Writing the Book of the World) does not, or so I argue.

I do define ‘‘substantive’’ questions in terms of fundamentality; and the concepts of feminist metaphysics (and social metaphysics generally) are nonfundamental. But my definition does not count a question as being nonsubstantive simply because it involves nonfundamental concepts. Questions about the causal structure of the world, including the causal structure of the social world, are generally substantive because their answers are not sensitive to any alternate, equally good conceptual choices we could have made. I also argue that such questions are substantive regardless of the ontology of social kinds."

References

Elizabeth Barnes (2017). ‘‘Realism and Social Structure." Philosophical Studies, 174, 2417–2433.

Mari Mikkola (2017). ‘‘On the Apparent Antagonism between Feminist and Mainstream Metaphysics." Philosophical Studies, 174, 2435-2448.

23. Sijuwade, Joshua R. 2021. "Fundamentality and the Existence of God." Manuscrito: Revista Internacional de Filosofía Campinas no. 44:93-168.

Abstract: "In this article, I seek to assess the extent to which Theism, the claim that there is a God, can provide a true fundamental explanation for the existence of certain entities within the layered structure of reality. More precisely, I assume the cogency of Swinburne’s explanatory framework and seek to resituate it within a new philosophical context—that of the field of contemporary metaphysics—which will enable me to develop a true fundamental explanation for the existence of the non-fundamental entities that fill up the various levels of the layered structure of reality. And thus, given the truth of this type of explanation, we will have one more good reason to believe in the existence of God."

References

Swinburne, R. 2004. The Existence of God. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Swinburne, R. 2010. Is There a God?. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

24. Simmons, Byron. 2021. "Fundamental Non-qualitative Properties." Synthese no. 198:6183-6206.

Abstract: "The distinction between qualitative and non-qualitative properties should be familiar from discussions of the principle of the identity of indiscernibles: two otherwise exactly similar individuals, Castor and Pollux, might share all their qualitative properties yet differ with respect to their non-qualitative properties—for while Castor has the property being identical to Castor, Pollux does not. But while this distinction is familiar, there has not been much critical attention devoted to spelling out its precise nature. I argue that the class of non-qualitative properties is broader than it is often taken to be. When properly construed, it will not only include properties such as being identical to Castor, which somehow make reference to particular individuals, it will also include more general properties such as identity, composition, set membership, as well as various peculiarly ontological properties. Given that some of these more general properties help to explain objective similarity, we have reason to believe that there are fundamental non-qualitative properties."

25. Skiles, Alexander. 2009. "Trogdon on Monism and Intrinsicality." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 87:149-154.

Abstract: "Kelly Trogdon [2009] argues that priority monism—here, the view that only the world as a whole has fundamental properties—conflicts with the best extant accounts of intrinsicality. He then proposes an alternative account that is designed to be not only compatible with this view, but also independently plausible. But his account conflicts with priority monism as well, and incorrectly classifies various non-intrinsic properties."

References

Trogdon, Kelly 2009. Monism and Intrinsicality, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy, 87:1, 127-148.

26. ———. 2014. "Primitivism About Intrinsicality." In Companion to Intrinsic Properties, edited by Francescotti, Robert M., 221-252. Berlin: de Gruyter.

"The goal of this chapter is to explore the prospects of the view I shall call primitivism about intrinsicality, and offer a limited defense. A key component of this limited defense consists simply in clarifying what it could be, exactly, for intrinsicality to be “primitive”. As we shall see, at least some prima facie decisive objections to primitivism seem less convincing once this has been done.

Doing so is the task of section 1. In section 2, I then consider several arguments for primitivism about intrinsicality. And finally, in section 3, I consider several arguments against it." (p. 222)

27. Sorensen, Roy. 2011. "Bottomless Determination: How Yablo Can Get Proportionality from Gunk." Analysis no. 71:637-630.

Abstract: "Consider the beginningless sequence: …  being less than 0.01 grams, being less than 0.1 grams, being less than 1 gram, being less than 10 grams … There is no super-determinate in this chain. Just as the possibility of bottomless constitution shows that there may be no fundamental layer of reality with respect to objects, the possibility of bottomless determination shows that there may be no fundamental level of reality with respect to properties. This possibility supports Stephen Yablo's proportionality principle that the cause of an event is the most specific property that makes a difference."

28. Steinberg, Alex. 2015. "Priority Monism and Part/Whole Dependence." Philosophical Studies no. 172:2025-2031.

29. Tahko, Tuomas. 2015. An Introduction to Metametaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 6: Fundamentality and levels of reality, pp. 120-150.

"This chapter concerns the view that reality comes with a hierarchical structure of ‘levels’. This view has a long history and it remains very popular.

(...)

To express this in terms of ontological dependence we might say that a whole depends for its existence on its parts (although not everyone would agree that this is the correct direction of the dependence relation, as we will see). Fundamentality comes in when we consider whether there is an end to this chain of dependence: do we ever reach the smallest parts? That is, is there a fundamental, ‘bottom level’, or does the hierarchical structure of reality continue ad infinitum? The received view has long been that there indeed is a fundamental level that everything else ‘stands on’. The fundamental level is usually thought to be at the smaller end of the spectrum: atomism suggests that there are certain (subatomic) indivisible simples, particles that are fundamental or ontologically independent. But we must immediately note that the fundamental level must not necessarily be at the bottom, the smaller end – the fundamental end could also be at the top; that is, the universe as a whole could be considered fundamental, to be prior to its parts." (p. 120)

30. Tahko, Tuomas E. 2014. "Boring Infinite Descent." Metaphilosophy no. 45:257-269.

Abstract: "In formal ontology, infinite regresses are generally considered a bad sign. One debate where such regresses come into play is the debate about fundamentality. Arguments in favour of some type of fundamentalism are many, but they generally share the idea that infinite chains of ontological dependence must be ruled out. Some motivations for this view are assessed in this article, with the conclusion that such infinite chains may not always be vicious. Indeed, there may even be room for a type of fundamentalism combined with infinite descent as long as this descent is “boring,” that is, the same structure repeats ad infinitum. A start is made in the article towards a systematic account of this type of infinite descent. The philosophical prospects and scientific tenability of the account are briefly evaluated using an example from physics."

31. ———. 2018. "Fundamentality and Ontological Minimality." In Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, edited by Bliss, Ricki and Priest, Graham, 237-253. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In particular, we should clarify the role of mereology in discussions of fundamentality, which we’ll do in Section 2. In Section 3, a common objection to the possibility of metaphysical infinitism is outlined,with some critical remarks. In Section 4, a more general sense of fundamentality will be explicated with the help of the idea of ontological minimality— this more general approach to fundamentality considers it as an ontological minimality thesis. Section 5 examines the tension between the mereological, object-oriented ontology and structuralism. It is suggested that fundamentality understood as an ontological minimality thesis can accommodate both. Finally, in Section 6, we will briefly consider whether fundamentality understood as an ontological minimality thesis rules out metaphysical infinitism."

32. ———. 2021. "Bohmian Holism." In Unfolding the Big Picture. Essays in Honour of Paavo Pylkkänen, edited by Limnell, Petteri and Vadén, Tero. Helsinki: Philosophical Studies from the University of Helsinki

"I will take my cue from a recent paper, co-authored by Pylkkanen, Hiley, and Pattiniemi (2015). This paper focuses on Bohm's views about individuality and the possible reconcilia- tion of individuality with the holistic aspects of quantum theory. These aspects have led some, like Ladyman and Ross (2007), to argue that there are no individuals, just relations-this is the upshot of their ontic structural realism (OSR). Taking this thought further, some authors (Ismael and Schaffer, forthcoming) have taken the holistic approach to its extreme and argued that the cosmos as a whole is the most fundamental thing (since it forms one vast entangled system); this is a form of priority monism. Pylkkanen, Hiley, and Pattiniemi examine where Bohm's view might fall among these options. The result is interesting: there is clearly an element of holism involved-let us call it Bohmian holism-but it does not appear to be of the eliminative type that some versions of OSR might promote, nor the priority monist's version of quantum holism."

References

Ismael, J. and Schaffer, J. (2020). 'Quantum Holism: Nonseparability as Common Ground', Synthese 197: 4131-60.

Ladyman, J., Ross, D., Spurrett, D., and Collier, J. (2007). Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pylkkanen, P., Hiley, B.J., and Pattiniemi, I. (2015). 'Bohm's Approach and Individual ty', n A. Guay and T. Pradeu (eds.) Individuals Across the Sciences. Oxford: Oxford Univers ty Press, pp. 226-49.

33. Tahko, Tuomas E., and O'Conaill, Donnchadh. 2012. "On the Common Sense Argument for Monism." In Spinoza on Monism, edited by Goff, Philip, 149-166. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.

"Priority monism is the claim that there is one fundamental entity, upon which all other entities are ontologically dependent (by ‘entity’, we mean any portion of the universe which can be distinguished from other portions by its identity conditions). The priority monism we shall address in this chapter regards the entire spatiotemporal cosmos as the fundamental entity.

Shoes, ships, sealing- wax and any other spatiotemporal entities are all parts of, and exist in virtue of, this entity.(1)" (p. 149)

(...)

"We have demonstrated that Schaffer’s common sense argument in favour of priority monism cannot work, for both semantic and ontological reasons.

In the process of criticising this argument we have made some suggestions as to what a NCS [Near-Complete Scheme] could look like. We remain neutral as to the details of this scheme, but we believe that there are good reasons to think that one must exist.(21)" (p. 162)

(1) In this chapter, we shall be considering only spatiotemporal entities. We shall thus ignore the relation between the cosmos and abstract entities such as numbers or sets.

References

Jonathan Schaffer (2012). "Monism: The Priority of the Whole'', In Philip Goff (ed.), Spinoza on Monism, New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 9-50.

34. Tallant, Jonathan. 2013. "Problems of Parthood for Proponents of Priority." Analysis no. 73:429-438.

"Introdcution: According to some views of reality, some objects are fundamental and other objects depend for their existence upon these fundamental objects. In this article, I argue that we have reason to reject these views." (p. 429)

(...)

"It is a common enough view in metaphysics that at least some objects are fundamental. Typically, the entities that are fundamental are taken to be metaphysically basic and to not depend upon anything else for their existence. Further, on such views, non-fundamental objects exist. However, non-fundamental objects are derivative and depend for their existence upon the fundamental objects. Views with this structure take one of two forms: Priority Pluralism and Priority Monism. For the purposes of this article, I’ll describe the union of these views as ‘Priority Views’ – or ‘PVs’. In this article I argue against PVs." (p. 430)

35. Taylor, Elanor. 2018. "How to Make the Case for Brute Facts." In Brute Facts, edited by Vintiadis, Elly and Mekios, Constantinos, 28-44. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"The view that there are ontologically brute facts is the view that certain facts are not like this, because those facts are not and never will be explained. Although ontologically brute facts appear to be suspiciously mysterious, some philosophers have argued that we should embrace them (Barnes 1994).

The possibility of ontologically brute facts generates a methodological question: what is an adequate basis for belief in ontological bruteness? When is it reasonable to think that some fact is not and never will be explained? In this chapter I explore this question.

I begin by introducing ontological bruteness, and distinguishing it from other types of bruteness and related notions of emergence and fundamentality. I then consider three hypothetical failed attempts to make the case for ontological bruteness. The first is an attempt to infer bruteness from fundamentality, the second an attempt to infer bruteness from the absence of a particular kind of scientific explanation, and the third an attempt to infer bruteness from the absence of a particular kind of philosophical explanation. I draw cautionary lessons from these failures, arguing that in each case the inference to bruteness is made too quickly. Finally, I offer a positive proposal according to which if a naturalistic, general metaphysical theory with strong abductive support posits ontologically brute facts, then this is an adequate (but defeasible) case for ontological bruteness." (p. 28)

References

Barnes, Eric. 1994. “Explaining Brute Facts.” PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Vol. 1. Contributed Papers, pp. 61–8.

36. Thalos, Mariam. 2011. "Two Conceptions of Fundamentality." Philosophy of the Social Sciences no. 41:151-177.

Abstract: "This article aims to show that fundamentality is construed differently in the two most prominent strategies of analysis we find in physical science and engineering today: (1) atomistic, reductive analysis and (2) Systems analysis.

Correspondingly, atomism is the conception according to which the simplest (smallest) indivisible entity of a certain kind is most fundamental; while systemism, as will be articulated here, is the conception according to which the bonds that structure wholes are most fundamental, and scale and/or constituting entities are of no significance whatsoever for fundamentality. Accordingly, atomists maintain that the basic entities—the atoms—are fundamental, and together with the “external” interactions among them, are sufficient for illuminating all the features and behaviors of the wholes they constitute; whereas systemists proclaim that it is instead structural qualities of systems, that flow from internal relations among their constituents and translate directly into behaviors, that are fundamental, and by themselves largely (if not entirely) sufficient for illuminating the features and behaviors of the wholes thereby structured.

Systemism, as will be argued, is consistent with the nonexistence of a fundamental “level” of nondecomposable entities, just as it is consistent with the existence of such a level. Still, systemism is a conception of the fundamental in quite different, but still ontological terms. Systemism can serve the special sciences—the social sciences especially—better than the conception of fundamentality in terms of atoms. Systemism is, in fact, a conception of fundamentality that has rather different uses—and importantly, different resonances. This conception of fundamentality makes contact with questions pertaining to natural kinds and their situation in the metaphysics of the special sciences—their situation within an order of autonomous sciences.

The controversy over fundamentality is evident in the social sciences too, albeit somewhat imperfectly, in the terms of debate between methodological individualists and functionalists/holists. This article will thus clarify the difference between systemism and holism."

37. ———. 2013. Without Hierarchy: The Scale Freedom of the Universe. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 3: Multiple Conceptions of Fundametality, pp. 105-126.

Abstract: "A venerable tradition in the metaphysics of science commends ontological reduction: the practice of analysis of theoretical entities into further and further proper parts, with the understanding that the original entity is nothing but the sum of these. This tradition implicitly subscribes to the principle that all the real action of the universe (also referred to as its "causation") happens at the smallest scales-at the scale of microphysics. A vast majority of metaphysicians and philosophers of science, covering a wide swath of the spectrum from reductionists to emergentists, defend this principle. It provides one pillar of the most prominent theory of science, to the effect that the sciences are organized in a hierarchy, according to the scales of measurement occupied by the phenomena they study. On this view, the fundamentality of a science is reckoned inversely to its position on that scale. This venerable tradition has been justly and vigorously countered-in physics, most notably: it is countered in quantum theory, in theories of radiation and superconduction, and most spectacularly in renormalization theories of the structure of matter. But these counters-and the profound revisions they prompt-lie just below the philosophical radar. This book illuminates these counters to the tradition principle, in order to assemble them in support of a vaster (and at its core Aristotelian) philosophical vision of sciences that are not organized within a hierarchy. In so doing, the book articulates the principle that the universe is active at absolutely all scales of measurement. This vision, as the book shows, is warranted by philosophical treatment of cardinal issues in the philosophy of science: fundamentality, causation, scientific innovation, dependence and independence, and the proprieties of explanation."

38. Thompson, Naomi. 2018. "Metaphysical Interdependence, Epistemic Coherentism, and Holistic Explanation." In Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, edited by Bliss, Ricki and Priest, Graham, 107-125. New York: Oxford University Press.

"This paper develops an argument for metaphysical interdependence; an alternative to orthodox foundationalist accounts of metaphysical structure as characterized by grounding relations. Friends of metaphysical interdependence take facts to be related in networks of grounding such that there might be no foundational facts, and that a given fact can appear in its own grounding ancestry. Grounding is an explanatory relation, and the need to recognize holistic explanations (and in particular, holistic metaphysical explanations) generates a requirement for an account of grounding with a holistic structure. Metaphysical interdependence is such an account.

After briefly introducing the notion of ground in §2, §3 outlines both the core of the foundationalist approach, and that of metaphysical interdependence. §4 develops an analogy between metaphysical interdependence and coherentism in epistemology.

§5 argues that grounding is to be thought of as an explanatory relation. In §6, the view that grounding is an explanatory relation is considered against the backdrop of different approaches to explanatory structure. In §7 I respond to some perceived objections to holistic explanation. §8 concludes this chapter." (p. 107)

39. Torza, Alessandro. 2017. "Ideology in a Desert Landscape." Philosophical Issues no. 27:383-406.

Abstract: "On one influential view, metaphysical fundamentality can be understood in terms of joint-carving. Ted Sider has recently argued that (i) some first order quantifier is joint-carving, and (ii) modal notions are not joint-carving.

After vindicating the theoretical indispensability of quantification against recent criticism, I will defend a logical result due to Arnold Koslow which implies that (i) and (ii) are incompatible. I will therefore consider an alternative understanding of Sider’s metaphysics to the effect that (i) some first order quantifier is joint-carving, and (iii) intensional notions are not joint-carving. Another result due to Koslow entails that (i) and (iii) are also incompatible. I will argue that this second result is inconclusive. Nevertheless, (iii) is incompatible with another tenet of Sider’s metaphysics, namely that (iv) ‘being joint-carving’ is itself joint-carving. In order to resolve the inconsistency, I will tentatively argue that condition (iv) should be renounced."

References

Koslow, A. 2014. "The modality and non-extensionality of the quantifiers". Synthese, [2019, (196) 2545-2554]

Sider, T. 2012. Writing the Book of the World. Oxford University Press.

40. ———. 2020. "Structural Indeterminacy." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 101:365-382.

Abstract: "The threat of ontological deflationism (the view that disagreement about what there is can be non-substantive) is averted by appealing to realism about fundamental structure—or so tells us Ted Sider. In this paper, the notion of structural indeterminacy is introduced as a particular case of metaphysical indeterminacy; then it is argued that structural indeterminacy is not only compatible with a metaphysics of fundamental structure, but it can even safeguard it from a crucial objection; finally, it is shown that, if there are instances of structural indeterminacy, a hitherto unacknowledged variety of ontological deflationism will arise. Unless structure is shown to be determinate, ontological deflationism remains a live option. Furthermore, I will consider whether structural indeterminacy could be challenged by adopting a naturalistic epistemology of structure; the question is answered in the negative on the basis of a formal result concerning theory choice. Finally, I submit a new way of articulating the epistemology of structure, which hinges on the very possibility of structural indeterminacy."

41. Trogdon, Kelly. 2009. "Monism and Intrinsicality." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 87:127-148.

Abstract: "Central to the programme of sparse ontology is a hierarchical view of reality; the basic entities form the sparse structure of being, while the derivative entities form the abundant superstructure. Priority pluralism and priority monism are both theses of sparse ontology. Roughly speaking, the priority pluralist claims that wholes and their properties ontologically depend on parts and their properties, while the priority monist claims that it goes the other way around. In this paper I focus on Ted Sider’s recent argument that priority monism is probably false because it is incompatible with our best account of intrinsicality. In response I propose an account of intrinsicality that is compatible with both priority monism and priority pluralism. I argue that the account, in addition to having the virtue of being neutral between priority monism and priority pluralism, is independently plausible."

42. ———. 2009. "Physicalism and Sparse Ontology." Philosophical Studies no. 143:147-165.

Abstract: "A major stumbling block for non-reductive physicalism is Kim’s disjunctive property objection. In this paper I bring certain issues in sparse ontology to bear on the objection, in particular the theses of priority monism and priority pluralism. Priority pluralism (or something close to it, anyway) is a common ontological background assumption, so in the first part of the paper I consider whether the disjunctive property objection applies with equal force to non-reductive physicalism on the assumption that priority monism is instead true. I ultimately conclude that non-reductive physicalism still faces a comparable problem. In the second part, I argue, surprisingly enough, that what I call ‘fine-grained reductionism’, a particular version of which Kim proposes as an alternative to non-reductive physicalism, may work better in the monist framework than the pluralist one. I conclude that issues in sparse ontology, therefore, are more relevant to the debate about physicalism than one may have thought."

43. ———. 2010. "Intrinsicality for Monists (and Pluralists)." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 88:555-558.

Abstract: "Two competing views in sparse ontology are monism and pluralism. In Trogdon [2009] I propose an account of intrinsicality that I argue is both compatible with monism and pluralism and independently plausible. Skiles [2009] argues that my account fails on both fronts. In this note I respond to his two objections."

References

Skiles, A. 2009. Trogdon on Monism and Intrinsicality, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87/1: 149–54.

Trogdon, K. 2009. Monism and Intrinsicality, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87/1: 127–48.

44. ———. 2018. "Inheritance Arguments for Fundamentality." In Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, edited by Bliss, Ricki Leigh and Priest, Graham, 182-198. Oxford University Press.

"In this chapter I take up the question of how we might appeal to the notion of inheritance in arguing for metaphysical foundationalism. I first clarify Schaffer’s inheritance argument sketched above, suggesting that it relies on a heavy-duty metaphysical principle I call the inheritance principle. I show that Schaffer’s argument is unsuccessful even granting the principle. Then I explore what consequences the inheritance principle might have for metaphysical foundationalism granting for the sake of argument that the principle is true. I show how in this case we can deploy the notion of causal capacity inheritance in arguing for two special cases of metaphysical foundationalism, what I call causal foundationalism and concrete foundationalism. I conclude that if considerations involving inheritance are to provide a route to metaphysical foundationalism, the route will be indirect—in this case we would need to argue for the thesis in a piecemeal fashion (say, by arguing for concrete foundationalism plus a corresponding thesis about abstract entities). There may indeed be plausible inheritance arguments for fundamentality—it’s just that we need to be careful to focus on the appropriate theses as well as the appropriate inherited properties." (p. 183)

References

Schaffer, J. 2009. “On What Grounds What.” In D. Chalmers, D. Manley, and R. Wasserman (eds), Metametaphysics. Oxford University Press.

45. Wang, Jennifer. 2016. "Fundamentality and Modal Freedom." Philosophical Perspectives no. 30:397-418.

"The notion of fundamentality has been much discussed recently. The picture is that there is a fundamental level of the world, and that non-fundamental, or derivative, features of the world depend upon the fundamental. My focus in this paper is on a specific question about the nature of fundamentality. Many agree that if an entity is fundamental, then it is in some sense ontologically independent.(1) This accompanied by intuitions that it is ‘self-sufficient’, or ‘need not look outside itself’. It is commonly believed that as such, fundamental entities are modally free, in a sense to be clarified.(2) Intuitively, a mark of modal freedom is some form of free recombination: For each of the various ways modally free entities can individually be, they can be those ways with each other."

(1) I will be using the term ‘entity’ liberally to apply to the purported members of different ontological categories, which may include objects, properties, relations, facts, or states of affairs.

(2) This notion is borrowed and adapted from Schaffer (2010a).

References

Schaffer, Jonathan. 2010a. “The Internal Relatedness of All Things.” Mind 119/474: 341–36.

46. Werner, Jonas. 2021. "A Grounding-Based Measure of Relative Fundamentality." Synthese no. 198:9721-9737.

Abstract: "Reality is hierarchically structured, or so proponents of the metaphysical posit of grounding argue. The less fundamental facts obtain in virtue of, or are grounded in, the more fundamental facts. But what exactly is it for one fact to be more fundamental than another? The aim of this paper is to provide a measure of relative fundamentality.

I develop and defend an account of themetaphysical hierarchy that assigns to each fact a set of ordinals representing the levels on which it occurs. The account allows one to compare any two facts with respect to their fundamentality and it uses immediate grounding as its sole primitive. In the first section, I will set the stage and point to some shortcomings of a rival account proposed by Karen Bennett. The second section will present my own proposal and the third section will discuss how it can be extended to non-foundationalist settings. The fourth section discusses potential objections."

References

Bennett, K. (2017). Making things up. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

47. Wildman, Nathan. 2018. "On Shaky Ground? Exploring the Contingent Fundamentality Thesis." In Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, edited by Bliss, Ricki and Priest, Graham, 275-290. Oxford University Press.

"In particular, after fixing some preliminaries in Section 1, I’ll discuss in Section 2 three reasons for taking the contingent fundamentality thesis seriously. I then evaluate some objections in Section 3 intended to show that taking fundamentality to be contingent is wrong-headed; I argue that these objections can be dealt with, leaving the contingent fundamentality thesis at least prima facie plausible. In Section 4, I then look at how the thesis relates to views about the possibility of contingently existing fundamentalia, pulling some of the various packages apart, and making the case for adopting what I call the Shifty Shaky view. I then conclude in Section 5 by indicating further areas about the thesis ripe for fruitful future exploration." (p. 275)

48. Williams, J. Robert G. 2010. "Fundamental and Derivative Truths." Mind no. 119:104-141.

Abstract: "This article investigates the claim that some truths are fundamentally or really true—and that other truths are not. Such a distinction can help us reconcile radically minimal metaphysical views with the verities of common sense. I develop an understanding of the distinction whereby Fundamentality is not itself a metaphysical distinction, but rather a device that must be presupposed to express metaphysical distinctions. Drawing on recent work by Rayo on anti-Quinean theories of ontological commitments, I formulate a rigourous theory of the notion. In the final sections, I show how this package dovetails with ‘interpretationist’ theories of meaning to give sober content to thought that some things—perhaps sets, or gerrymandered mereological sums—can be ‘postulated into existence’."

References

Rayo, Agustıίn 2007: ‘Ontological Commitment’. Philosophy Compass, 2, pp. 428–44.

——2008: ‘On Specifying Truth-Conditions’. Philosophical Review, 117, pp. 385–443.

——unpublished: An Account of Possibility.

49. Wilson, Jessica M. 2002. "Causal Powers, Forces, and Superdupervenience." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 63:53-77.

Summary: "Horgan (1993) proposed that “superdupervenience” – supervenience preserving physicalistic acceptability – is a matter of robust explanation. I argued against him (1999) that (as nearly all physicalist and emergentist accounts reflect) superdupervenience is a matter of Condition on Causal Powers (CCP): every causal power bestowed by the supervenient property is identical with a causal power bestowed by its base property. Here I show that CCP is, as it stands, unsatisfactory, for on the usual understandings of causal power bestowal, it is trivially satisfied or falsified. I offer a revision of CCP which incorporates the evident fact that causal powers are grounded in fundamental forces."

References

Terence Horgan, “From Supervenience to Superdupervenience: Meeting the Demands of a Material World,” Mind, Vol. 102 (1993).

Jessica Wilson, “How Superduper does a Physicalist Supervenience Need to Be?,” Philosophical Quarterly (1999).

50. ———. 2012. "Fundamental Determinables." Philosophers' Imprint no. 12:1-17.

"Introduction: Contemporary philosophers commonly suppose that any fundamental entities there may be are maximally determinate. More generally, they commonly suppose that, whether or not there are fundamental entities, any determinable entities there may be are grounded in, hence less fundamental than, more determinate entities. So, for example, Armstrong takes the physical objects constituting the presumed fundamental base to be “determinate in all respects” (1961, 59), and Lewis takes the properties characterizing things “completely and without redundancy” to be “highly specific” (1986, 60). Here I’ll look at the usually cited reasons for these suppositions as directed against the case of determinable properties, in particular, and argue that none is compelling (Sections 1 to 3). The discussion in Section 3 will moreover identify positive reason for taking some determinable properties to be part of a fundamental (or relatively fundamental) base. I’ll close (Section 4) by noting certain questions arising from the possibility of fundamental determinables, as directions for future research."

References

Armstrong, D. M. (1961). Perception and the Physical World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lewis, David (1986). On the Plurality of Worlds. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

51. ———. 2019. "Comments on Making Things Up." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 98:497-506.

Making Things Up is a first-rate work of philosophy, that should be read by anyone interested in fundamentality and metaphysical dependence. Here I’ll focus on the following components of Bennett’s ‘building’-based framework for understanding these notions:

I. There are diverse building relations, including but not limited to mereological composition, constitution, set formation, and realization, via which some goings-on are built out of others.

II. Though diverse, the building relations are unified in being members of a class of relations that are directed (irreflexive and antisymmetric), necessitating, and generative, in that building goings-on produce or generate built goings-on (32).

III. Though unified, there is no generic building relation (what I call ‘big-‘G’ Grounding’, for terminological clarity) of the sort advocated in Fine 2001, Schaffer 2009, and Rosen 2010, serving as a more natural or more fundamental core of the specific building relations.

IV. Building relations “connect entities that are in some sense more fundamental to entities that are in some sense less fundamental” in a way providing a reductive basis for relative fundamentality: “one of the central claims of the book [is] that there is nothing more to relative fundamentality than the obtaining of certain building relations”.

V. The not-holding of building relations provides a reductive basis for absolute fundamentality, via a conception according to which “to be fundamental is to be unbuilt” (103), either relative to a building relation, or simpliciter.

VI. Causation is a building relation." (p. 497, notes omitted)

References

Fine, Kit 2001. “The Question of Realism". Philosophers’ Imprint, 1:1–30.

Rosen, Gideon 2010. “Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction". In B. Hale and A. Hoffmann, editors, Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology, 109–36. OUP.

Schaffer, Jonathan 2009. “On What Grounds What". In D. Manley, D. Chalmers, and R. Wasserman, editors, Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, 347–383. OUP.

52. Wolff, Johanna. 2012. "Do Objects Depend on Structures?" British Journal for the Philosophy of Science no. 63:607-625.

Abstract: "Ontic structural realists hold that structure is all there is, or at least all there is fundamentally.

This thesis has proved to be puzzling: What exactly does it say about the relationship between objects and structures? In this article, I look at different ways of articulating ontic structural realism in terms of the relation between structures and objects. I show that objects cannot be reduced to structure, and argue that ontological dependence cannot be used to establish strong forms of structural realism. At the end, I show how a weaker, but controversial, form of structural realism can be articulated on the basis of ontological dependence."

53. Wolff, J. E. 2020. "Fundamental and Derived Quantities." In The Foundation of Reality: Fundamentality, Space, and Time, edited by Glick, David, Darby, George and Marmodoro, Anna, 87-101. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"It is fairly standard in contemporary metaphysics to distinguish between fundamental and non-fundamental properties. As I will be using these terms here, this distinction is meant to capture David Lewis’ idea that some properties are perfectly natural, and that these elite properties are what make for objective similarity among objects, as well as doing all kinds of other metaphysical heavy lifting. In order to perform all these metaphysical duties, fundamental properties are usually said to be intrinsic and undefined; they are the properties in terms of which less natural properties are defined, but not vice versa (Lewis 1983). In keeping with the aim of naturalistic metaphysics, the expectation is that science will reveal to us which properties are fundamental." (p. 87)

(...)

"I conclude that the distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental properties, at least as far as physical quantities are concerned, is less naturalistic than previously thought." (p. 88)

References

Lewis, D. (1983). ‘New Work for a Theory of Universals’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61, (4) 343-77.

54. Yates, David. 2018. "Inverse Functionalism and the Individuation of Powers." Synthese no. 195:4525-4550.

Abstract: "Abstract In the pure powers ontology (PPO), basic physical properties have wholly dispositional essences. PPO has clear advantages over categoricalist ontologies, which suffer from familiar epistemological and metaphysical problems. However, opponents argue that because it contains no qualitative properties, PPO lacks the resources to individuate powers, and generates a regress. The challenge for those who take such arguments seriously is to introduce qualitative properties without reintroducing the problems that PPO was meant to solve. In this paper, I distinguish the core claim of PPO: (i) basic physical properties have dispositional essences, from a hitherto unnoticed assumption: (ii) the dispositional essences of basic physical properties exclusively involve type-causal relations to other basic physical properties. I reject (ii), making room for structuralist ontology in which all basic physical properties are pure powers, individuated by their places in a causal structure that includes not only other powers, but also physically realized qualitative properties such as shapes, patterns and structures. Such qualities individuate pure powers in the way that non-mental input and output properties individuate realized mental properties in functionalist theories of mind, except that here it is the basic physical powers that are individuated by relations to realized non-powers. I distinguish one Platonic and two Aristotelian version of this theory, and argue that the Aristotelian versions require that grounding is not always a relative fundamentality relation, because the powers ground the qualities that individuate them. I argue that symmetric grounding is the best way to make sense of the relational individuation common to all structuralist ontologies, and is therefore no additional commitment of the one proposed here."

55. Zylstra, Justin. 2014. "Dependence and Fundamentality." Studia Philosophica Estonica no. 7:5-28.

Abstract: "I argue that dependence is neither necessary nor sufficient for relative fundamentality.

I then introduce the notion of ‘likeness in nature’ and provide an account of relative fundamentality in terms of it and the notion of dependence. Finally, I discuss some puzzles that arise in Aristotle’s Categories, to which the theory developed is applied."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on metaphysical grounding. First part: A-Col

Bibliography

1. "Grounding Relation(s)." 2013. Essays in Philosophy no. 14.

Edited by Paul Hovda & Troy Cross.

Contents: Paul Hovda, Troy Cross: Grounding Relation(s): Introduction 1; Louis deRosset: What is Weak Ground? 7; Jon Erling Litland: On Some Counterexamples to the Transitivity of Grounding 19; Avram Hiller: Grounding Relation(s) 33-55.

2. "Aristotelian Metaphysics: Essence and Ground." 2014. Studia Philosophica Estonica no. 7.2.

Edited by Riin Sirkel and Tuomas E. Tahko.

3. "Special Issue on Ground, Essence, and Modality." 2021. Synthese no. 198.

Supplement issue 6; Edited by Donnchadh Ó Conaill & Tuomas E. Tahko.

Contents: Donnchadh Ó Conaill & Tuomas Tahko: New frontiers in ground, essence, and modality: introduction 1219; Henrik Rydéhn: Grounding and ontological dependence 1231; Michael Wallner: The ground of ground, essence, and explanation: 1257; Fabrice Correia: The logic of relative fundamentality 1279; Michele Lubrano: The emergence of ground: some limitative results 1303; Samuele Chilovi: Grounding entails supervenience 1317; Benjamin Schnieder: On ground and consequence 1335; Barbara Vetter: A plenitude of powers 1365; Antonella Mallozzi: Two notions of metaphysical modality 1387; Martin Glazier: The difference between epistemic and metaphysical necessity 1409; Penelope Mackie: Persistence and modality 1425; Mark Jago: Essential bundle theory and modality 1439; Nathan Wildman: Against the reduction of modality to essence 1455-471.

4. Aizawa, Ken. 2016. "Compositional Explanation: Dimensioned Realization, New Mechanism, and Ground." In Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground, edited by Aizawa, Ken and Gillett, Carl, 75-90. London: Palgrave-Macmillan.

"The primary concern of this chapter is to bring Dimensioned realization to the attention of both New Mechanists and “Grounders.” For both New Mechanists and Grounders, recognizing compositional explanations involving Dimensioned realization is an important step in the development of more descriptively adequate accounts of non-causal, compositional explanations. More specifically, Dimensioned realization shows how New Mechanists might embrace compositional explanatory relations among properties. Moreover, Dimensioned realization suggests that, at least at times, one needs to move beyond bare grounding claims—claims such as “X Grounds Y”—in order to develop a (good) explanation. 3 In principle, the recognition of Dimensioned realization and its implications might be viewed as friendly additions to work on New Mechanism and Ground." (p. 79)

5. Aizawa, Kenneth, and Gillett, Carl, eds. 2016. Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Contents: Steven French: Series Editor’s Preface V-VI; 1. Kenneth Aizawa, Carl Gillett: Introduction: Vertical Relations in Science, Philosophy, and the World: Understanding the New Debates over Verticality 1;

Part I Scientific Composition and the New Mechanism 39

2. L. R. Franklin-Hall: New Mechanistic Explanation and the Need for Explanatory Constraints 41; 3. Kenneth Aizawa: Compositional Explanation: Dimensioned Realization, New Mechanism, and Ground 75; 4. Jens Harbecke: Is Mechanistic Constitution a Version of Material Constitution? 91; 5. Derk Pereboom: 5 Anti-Reductionism, Anti-Rationalism, and the Material Constitution of the Mental 123;

Part II Grounding, Science, and Verticality in Nature 141

6. Jonathan Schaffer: Ground Rules: Lessons from Wilson 143; 7. Jessica Wilson: The Unity and Priority Arguments for Grounding 171; 8. Carl Gillett: The Metaphysics of Nature, Science, and the Rules of Engagement 205; 9. Andrew Melnyk: Grounding and the Formulation of Physicalism 249; 10. Alyssa Ney: Grounding in the Philosophy of Mind: A Defense 271;

Index 301-310.

"Aizawa and Gillett’s exciting new collection focused on those metaphysical tools designed to capture ‘vertical’ relations between entities and systems of different kinds. One such device is ‘grounding’ which has become a ubiquitous umbrella term, covering relations between a variety of entities from the scientific to the social." (From the Series Editor's Preface, p. V)

6. Aizawa, Ken, and Gillett, Carl. 2016. "Introduction: Vertical Relations in Science, Philosophy, and the World: Understanding the New Debates over Verticality." In Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground, edited by Carl Gillett, Ken Aizawa, 1-38. London: Palgrave-Macmillan.

"Given our limited space, we cannot provide a detailed characterization of even one of the philosophical research traditions about verticality. Each of these traditions has a rich history, is sophisticated in its treatment of verticality, has numerous proponents off ering distinct variants, and includes a range of competing versions of the relevant type of V-framework. Our focus is therefore simply to provide a minimal characterization of each research tradition for our purposes here, which are twofold. We simply seek, first, to give the reader an initial sense of the research tradition and, second, we seek to highlight one or two distinctive features of verticality as it is characterized under the particular kind of account offered by the research tradition." (p. 9)

7. Allen, Sophie R. 2020. "Intrinsicality, Independence and Grounding." Metaphysica no. 21:71-97.

Abstract: "This paper investigates the plausibility of Witmer, Butchard and Trogdon’s proposal to distinguish intrinsic properties from extrinsic ones in terms of independence from accompaniment and grounding. I argue that the proposed criterion is not adequate to determine intrinsicality, since according to it some intuitively extrinsic properties turn out to be intrinsic. I suggest and evaluate two responses: first, one could characterize a conception of independence which is specific to the individual instantiating the property; and second, one could justify two assumptions about properties which entail that counterexample properties of the kinds I present do not exist, most importantly that there are no fundamental properties which are instantiated in an intrinsic fashion by some individuals and an extrinsic fashion by others. Although the latter seems prima facie plausible, I present some potential counterexamples to it from current physical theory. I conclude that the grounding- and independence-based criterion of intrinsicality can be defended from my objections, although the cost of doing so might make it more attractive to characterize intrinsicality in terms of independence, or in terms of grounding, alone."

References

Witmer, D. Gene, William Butchard, and Kelly Trogdon. 2005. “Intrinsicality without Naturalness.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70: 326–50.

8. Alvarado, José Tomas, and Tugby, Matthew. 2021. "A Problem for Natural-Kind Essentialism and Formal Causes." In Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation, edited by Jansen, Ludger and Sandstad, Petter, 201-221. New York: Routledge.

"In the first section we will present some of the main characteristics of the relations of grounding and dependence, and what constraints must be respected when they interact. In the second section, we will introduce the main problem as it occurs in natural-kind essentialism. The third and fourth sections will discuss some alternatives that may be attempted by defenders of natural-kind ontologies to assuage the problem presented, in particular, a theory of 'substantial forms' and a structuralist stance towards the connection between kinds and essential properties. What appears through this examination is a significant concern for all those enthusiastic about the prospects of 'formal causes' in metaphysics. The function attributed to these causes should be treated carefully to avoid incoherent structures of ontological explanation." (pp. 201-202)

9. Amijee, Fatema. 2021. "Explaining Contingent Facts." Philosophical Studies no. 178:1163-1181.

Abstract: "I argue against a principle that is widely taken to govern metaphysical explanation. This is the principle that no necessary facts can, on their own, explain a contingent fact. I then show how this result makes available a response to a longstanding objection to the Principle of Sufficient Reason—the objection that the Principle of Sufficient Reason entails that the world could not have been otherwise (i.e. that all facts are necessary)."

10. Assadian, Bahram, and Nassim, Jonathan. 2019. "Indeterminacy and Failure of Grounding." Theoria no. 85:276-288.

Abstract: "Cases of grounding failure present a puzzle for fundamental metaphysics. Typically, solutions are thought to lie either in adding ontology such as haecceities or in re-describing the cases by means of the ideology of metaphysical indeterminacy. The controversial status of haecceities has led some to favour metaphysical indeterminacy as the way to solve the puzzle. We consider two further treatments of grounding failure each of which, we argue, is a more plausible alternative. As such, the initial dichotomy is a false one, and these alternative options deserve consideration before resorting to the heavyweight machinery of metaphysical indeterminacy."

11. Atiq, Emad H. 2018. "On Ground as a Guide to Realism." Ratio no. 31:165-178.

Abstract: "According to Fine (among others), a nonbasic factual proposition must be grounded in facts involving those of its constituents that are both real and fundamental. But the principle is vulnerable to several dialectically significant counterexamples. It entails, for example, that a logical Platonist cannot accept that true disjunctions are grounded in the truth of their disjuncts; that a Platonist about mathematical objects cannot accept that sets are grounded in their members; and that a colour primitivist cannot accept that an object’s being scarlet grounds its not being chartreuse. The Finean might try to defend these implications, but it generates further problems. Instead, the principle should be rejected. An important upshot is that the principle cannot be relied on to distinguish robust realism from anti-realism about a propositional domain, for the principle obscures ways of taking features to be both real and fundamental."

12. Audi, Paul. 2012. "Grounding: Toward a Theory of the In-Virtue-of Relation." The Journal of Philosophy no. 109:685-711.

"The phrase 'in virtue of' is ubiquitous in philosophy. Nearly as pervasive are the protestations that it is poorly understood and in need of clarification. Far less common are sustained attempts to elucidate this phrase and its philosophical significance.

I propose that it expresses a primitive, noncausal relation of determination, which I call grounding. Although my understanding of grounding fits well with many of the most interesting and important uses of the phrase 'in virtue of' (and related locutions), my account is not purely descriptive; my claim is that we should regiment our use of the phrase to achieve the best theoretical result." (pp. 685-686, notes omitted)

13. ———. 2012. "A Clarification and Defense of the Notion of Grounding." In Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality edited by Correia, Fabrice and Schnieder, Benjamin, 101-121. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"This paper defends a particular version of the idea that there is a non-causal relation of determination, grounding, often expressed by the phrase “in virtue of .” This relation corresponds to certain non-causal explanations, including those philosophers give, e.g., in saying that a statue has its aesthetic properties in virtue of its physical properties, or that a thing has its dispositional features in virtue of its categorical features, or that a person has a reason to believe that p in virtue of her perceptual experiences. Indeed, it is the fact that there are such explanations, together with the fact that their correctness cannot be underwritten by any causal relation, that makes it incumbent on us to recognize grounding." (p. 101)

14. ———. 2016. "Property Identity." Philosophy Compass no. 11:829-840.

Abstract: "The question of how properties are individuated is extremely important. Consider the following proposals. To be in pain is to be in a certain neurological state. To be red is to appear red to normal observers in standard conditions. To be obligatory is to maximize the good. Each makes a claim of property identity. Each is a substantive metaphysical thesis of wide interest. None can be studied with due scrutiny in the absence of a general account of property identity. Here, I will survey existing accounts and suggest a new account in terms of grounding that has some advantages over the other candidates."

15. ———. 2020. "Why Truthmaking Is Not a Case of Grounding." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 101:567-590.

Abstract: "Truthmaker theorists often express their core commitment by saying that truth is grounded in being, and grounding theorists often take truthmaking to be a paradigm case of grounding. But I will argue that truthmaking is not a case of grounding. What is crucial for understanding truthmaking is not grounding but rather meaning (in a broad sense including reference). Truth is still constrained by how things are, so even if (socalled) truthmakers don’t play a role in grounding truths, the methodological program of truthmaker theory survives. Here I lay out my understanding of truth and truthmaking, and distinguish two conceptions of grounding. I argue that truthmaking is not plausibly seen as a case of grounding on either conception. I argue further that treating truthmaking as grounding threatens to violate a plausible irreflexivity principle, and makes trouble for the view that grounding is transitive. I then suggest that there is no genuine relation of truthmaking (which there would have to be if it were a true case of grounding). Finally, I show how the core insights of truthmaker theory are preserved by the understanding of truthmaking that I favor."

16. Austin, Christopher J. 2021. "Form, Cause, and Explanation in Biology: A Neo-Aristotelian Perspective." In Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation, edited by Jansen, Ludger and Sandstad, Petter, 238-268. New York: Routledge.

"Conclusion: In this chapter I have illustrated the ways in which the mechanization of the natural world in the aftermath of the Scientific Revolution was crystallised in the biological sciences with the formation of the Modern Synthesis-a conceptual framework for evolutionary theory in which the teleological prowess of formal causation is rendered both explanatorily impotent and ontologically otiose. I have argued, however, that the radical reframing of that theory implicit in the explanatory structure of evolutionary developmental biology suggests that the Aristotelian posit of a non-mechanistic ground of the modality of morphology need not be treated with suspicion. Form may yet prove a metaphysically and empirically powerful apparatus with which to comprehend the nature of organisms in the context of our post-Darwinian picture of the living world." (p. 258)

17. Azzano, Lorenzo, and Carrara, Massimiliano. 2021. "The Grounding of Identities." Philosophia no. 49:1943-1962.

Abstract: "A popular stance amongst philosophers is one according to which, in Lewis’ words, “identity is utterly simple and unproblematic”.[*] Building from Lewis’ famous passage on the matter, we reconstruct, and then criticize, an argument to the conclusion that identities cannot be grounded. With the help of relatively uncontroversial assumption concerning identity facts, we show that not all identities are equi-fundamental, and, on the contrary, some appear to be provided potential grounding bases using two-level identity criteria. Further potential grounding bases for identities are presented. Identity might be utterly simple and unproblematic, but this is not sufficient to conclude that identities are ungrounded, or fundamental."

[*] David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1986, pp. 192-193.

18. Bader, Ralf. 2013. "Towards a Hyperintensional Theory of Intrinsicality." The Journal of Philosophy no. 110:525-563.

Abstract: "The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties is an elusive distinction that has resisted precise formulation.

Some of the most promising accounts of this distinction take the form of combinatorial or duplication analyses. The former try to capture the patterns of independence amongst intrinsic and extrinsic properties in terms of logical, modal, mereological and spatiotemporal notions. The latter attempt to identify intrinsic properties as properties that never differ amongst duplicates. This paper argues in favour of a hyperintensional analysis of intrinsicality that appeals to ‘in virtue of’ claims. It will be shown that accounts of intrinsicality that appeal to combinatorial and duplication principles do not yield satisfactory results, even when they are supplemented with a notion of ‘naturalness’. We need to appeal to ‘in virtue of’ claims rather than to ‘naturalness’ in order (i) to allow for cases whereby a property is possessed both intrinsically and extrinsically, (ii) to adequately classify modal properties when these are given a counterparttheoretic analysis, and (iii) to retain the idea that the set of intrinsic properties and the set of pure extrinsic properties are closed under Boolean operations. Moreover, the paper will argue in favour of treating the intrinsically/extrinsically distinction as more basic than the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction and explaining the latter in terms of the former."

19. ———. 2013. "Multiple-Domain Supervenience for Non-Classical Mereologies." In Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence, edited by Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin and Steinberg, Alex, 347-367. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"Conclusion: Thus, we have seen that we can use co-ordinated multiple-domain supervenience relations to model determination and dependence relations between complex entities and their constituents. In particular, we developed two ways of making such supervenience claims, namely (i) by appealing to R-related pairs, and (ii) by making use of associated isomorphisms. Moreover, it was shown that suitable supervenience relations can be devised not only for classical mereological systems but also for non-classical ones, by modifying the domains and imposing various conditions on mappings that allow us to capture the additional structure of non-classical parthood relations. Additionally, we provided principles for cases in which wholes are taken to be prior to their parts that are applicable in settings in which one is dealing with dense parthood orderings and atomless gunk." (p. 366-367)

20. ———. 2017. "The Grounding Argument against Non-Reductive Moral Realism." Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Vol. 12:106-134.

Abstract: "Strong supervenience of normative properties on non-normative properties implies that for every normative property there is a necessarily co-extensive non-normative property, given that the set of non-normative properties is closed under infinitary disjunction and conjunction (cf. Kim 1993: chapter 3, Jackson 1998, Streumer 2008). This puts pressure on non-reductionist versions of moral realism, insofar as normative properties would seem to end up being identical to non-normative properties, thereby ruling out the existence of irreducibly normative properties." (Notes omitted)

References

Jackson, F. (1998) From Metaphysics to Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Kim, J. (1993) Supervenience and Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Streumer, B. (2008) ‘Are there irreducibly normative properties?’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86(4): 537–61.

21. Bailey, Andrew M. 2011. "The Incompatibility of Composition as Identity, Priority Pluralism, and Irreflexive Grounding." Analytic Philosophy no. 52:171-174.

"Some have it that wholes are, somehow, identical to their parts. This doctrine is as alluring as it is puzzling. But in this paper, I show that the doctrine is incompatible with two widely accepted theses. Something has to go." (p. 171)

(...)

"... composition as identity promises answers to the General and Special Composition Questions.(13) These are intriguing promissory notes; but if composition as identity is false, we cannot cash them. Those interested in these mereological questions had best look elsewhere for help." (p. 174)

(13) 13. But see Cameron (forthcoming) and McDaniel (forthcoming) for cautionary notes about the

latter claim.

References

R. Cameron, “Composition As Identity Doesn’t Settle the Special Composition Question,” Philosophy

and Phenomenological Research (forthcoming). [73, 97-100, 2010]

K. McDaniel, “Composition As Identity Does Not Imply Universalism,” Erkenntnis (forthcoming). [84, 531-554. 2012]

22. Barker, Jonathan. 2021. "Grounding and the Myth of Ontological Innocence." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 99:303-318.

Abstract: "According to the Ontological Innocence Thesis (OIT), grounded entities are ontologically innocent relative to their full grounds. I argue that OIT entails a contradiction, and therefore must be discarded. My argument turns on the notion of ‘groundmates’, two or more numerically distinct entities that share at least one of their full grounds. I argue that, if OIT is true, then it is both the case that there are groundmates and that there are no groundmates. Therefore, I conclude, OIT is false. Moreover, in seeing why OIT is false, we will be left with three heterodox options about grounding and reality’s structure. So this paper’s second conclusion is that, even after we have discarded OIT, we are in for an additional surprise."

23. Barker, Stephen. 2012. "Expressivism about Making and Truth-Making." In Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality edited by Correia, Fabrice and Schnieder, Benjamin, 272-293. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"The facts of truth are not primitive facts. Unless we accept the identity theory of truth – and equate truth and fact – the fact that a proposition is true must obtain in virtue of something: how things are with its subject matter.(1) We might express this thought as the idea that truth supervenes on, is asymmetrically determined by, being (see Bigelow 1988). But that would be misleading, since it suggests that truth is not part of being. The facts of truth, that certain propositions are true or false, are part of how things are, and so, are aspects of being. We should say rather that the facts of truth, the alethic facts, are made the case by non-alethic facts. (Still, as we shall see, that claim will need qualification.) Viewed in this way, the problem of truth-making reduces to the problem of making. What’s making ?" (p. 272)

(1) Rodríguez-Pereyra 2005 presents this kind of argument for truth-making.

References

Beebee, H. and Dodd, J. (eds.) 2005. Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate. Oxford: Clarendon Press

Bigelow, J. 1988. The Reality of Numbers. Oxford University Press

Rodríguez-Pereyra, G. 2005. ‘Why Truthmakers’, in Beebee and Dodd 2005, 17–31

24. Baron, Sam. 2015. "The Priority of the Now." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly no. 96:325-348.

Abstract: "This article motivates and develops a new theory of time: priority presentism. Priority presentism is the view according to which (i) only present entities exist fundamentally and (ii) past and future entities exist, but they are grounded in the present. The articulation of priority presentism is an exercise in applied grounding: it draws on concepts from the recent literature on ontological dependence and applies those concepts in a new way, to the philosophy of time. The result, as I will argue, is an attractive position that can do much of the same work in satisfying our intuitions about time as presentism, but without the ontological cost."

25. Baron, Sam, Miller, Kristie, and Norton, James. 2014. "Groundless Truth." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 57:175-195.

Abstract: "We defend two claims: (1) if one is attracted to a strong non-maximalist view about truthmaking, then it is natural to construe this as the view that there exist fundamental truths; (2) despite considerable aversion to fundamental truths, there is as yet no viable independent argument against them. That is, there is no argument against the existence of fundamental truths that is independent of any more specific arguments against the ontology accepted by the strong non-maximalist. Thus there is no argument that the strong non-maximalist herself will find dialectically motivating."

26. Baron, Sam, Miller, Kristie, and Tallant, Jonathan. 2020. "Grounding at a Distance." Philosophical Studies no. 177:3373-3390.

Abstract: "What distinguishes causation from grounding? One suggestion is that causation, but not grounding, occurs over time. Recently, however, counterexamples to this simple temporal criterion have been offered. In this paper, we situate the temporal criterion within a broader framework that focuses on two aspects: locational overlapping in space and time and the presence of intermediaries in space and time. We consider, and reject, the idea that the difference between grounding and causation is that grounding can occur without intermediaries. We go on to use the fact that grounding and causation both involve intermediaries to develop a better temporal criterion for distinguishing causation from grounding. The criterion is this: when a cause and effect are spatially disjoint, there is always a chain of causal intermediaries between the cause and the effect that are extended in time. By contrast, when the grounds and the grounded are spatially disjoint, there is always a chain of grounding intermediaries, but the chain need not be extended in time, it can be purely spatial. The difference between grounding and causation, then, is that causation requires time for chaining in a way that grounding does not."

27. Baron, Samuel, Miller, Kristie, and Tallant, Jonathan. 2022. "The Harmony of Grounding." Philosophical Studies.

Not yet published, available philarchive.org.

Abstract: "Mereological harmony is the idea that the mereological structure of objects mirrors the mereological structure of locations. Grounding harmony is the idea that there is a similar mirroring between the grounding structure of objects and locations. Our goal in this paper is exploratory: we introduce and then explore two notions of grounding harmony: locative and structural. We outline potential locative and structural harmony principles for grounding, and show which of these principles may entail, or be entailed by, principles of mereological harmony. We then present a case study in grounding harmony, by applying it to Schaffer’s (2010a) specific version of priority monism. We show that, given a strong form of grounding harmony, Schaffer-style monism is inconsistent, but that this inconsistency can be resolved by offering bespoke notions of grounding harmony. We use Schaffer’s priority monism to demonstrate a broader tension within certain packages of metaphysical views, including versions of priority pluralism. We close by briefly considering the case against structural grounding harmony."

28. Baron-Schmitt, Nathaniel. 2021. "Contingent Grounding." Synthese no. 199:4561-4580.

Abstract: "A popular principle about grounding, “Internality”, says that if A grounds B, then necessarily, if A and B obtain, then A grounds B. I argue that Internality is false. Its falsity reveals a distinctive, new kind of explanation, which I call “ennobling”. Its falsity also entails that every previously proposed theory of what grounds grounding facts is false. I construct a new theory."

29. Batchelor, Roderick. 2010. "Grounds and Consequences." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 80:65-77.

Summary: "We first introduce the intuitive idea of a relation of grounding between facts (§ 1).

Then we propose a definition of this idea, based on a certain theory of the structure of facts (§ 2, with formalization in an appendix). Finally we consider the idea of proofs of a special kind, namely proofs which follow the grounds of what is proved (§ 3)."

30. Bennett, Karen. 2004. "Spatio-Temporal Coincidence and the Grounding Problem." Philosophical Studies no. 118:339-371.

Abstract: "A lot of people believe that distinct objects can occupy precisely the same place for the entire time during which they exist. Such people have to provide an answer to the ‘grounding problem’ – they have to explain how such things, alike in so many ways, nonetheless manage to fall under different sortals, or have different modal properties. I argue in detail that they cannot say that there is anything in virtue of which spatio-temporally coincident things have those properties. However, I also argue that this may not be as bad as it looks, and that there is a way to make sense of the claim that such properties are primitive."

31. ———. 2011. "By Our Bootstraps." Philosophical Perspectives no. 25:27-41.

"Conclusion: I admit that the superinternality solution is occasionally hard to articulate, but that does not make it wrong. The regresses are suprisingly hard to articulate, too, but that does not make them nonsense.

The grounding dilemma is hard. On pain of flatworldism, we must solve it.

To solve it, we must either claim that both the grounding facts and the grounding relation are fundamental, or else claim that they are grounded, or else wave a magic wand and find some way between the horns. I have not argued that the first and third options are hopeless. I have simply argued that the second is definitely not. Grounding is not fundamental." (p. 41)

32. ———. 2021. "Why I Am Not a Dualist." Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind no. 1:208-231.

"I am not a dualist. I do not think there are any nonphysical properties, substances, or facts. I think that the entire nature of the world is grounded in—determined or settled by—its fundamental physical nature.

But why do I think this? In the bright light of day, I take physicalism to be almost obvious. But in the dark of night, I have to admit to myself that it is not entirely clear why exactly I dislike dualism. Are there good arguments against it? That is, set aside whether there are good objections to the arguments for dualism, or against physicalism. Are there good arguments against the view itself?

In what follows, I will take up that question. After more carefully spelling out what I take dualism and physicalism to be, I will suggest that the most frequently heard arguments against dualism are more problematic than we physicalists like to admit. I will then offer a new argument against dualism.

In broad strokes, it is this: dualists do not dodge all demands for explanation by denying that consciousness can be explained in physical terms. I will articulate what exactly it is that they must explain, and offer two independent arguments for thinking that they cannot do so. The basic upshot is that moving to dualism because of a perceived explanatory failure of physicalism simply does not help." (p. 208)

33. Benovsky, Jiri. 2012. "Aesthetic Supervenience vs. Aesthetic Grounding." Estetika no. 49:166-178.

Abstract: "The claim that having aesthetic properties supervenes on having non-aesthetic properties has been widely discussed and, in various ways, defended. In this article, I aim to demonstrate that even if it is sometimes true that a supervenience relation holds between aesthetic properties and ‘subvenient’ non-aesthetic ones, it is not the interesting relation in the neighbourhood. As we shall see, a richer, asymmetric, and irreflexive relation is required, and I shall defend the claim that the increasingly popular relation of grounding does amuch better job than supervenience."

34. Benovsky, Jiry. 2016. Meta-metaphysics: On Metaphysical Equivalence, Primitiveness, and Theory Choice. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Chapter 4: The Importance of Being Primitive, pp. 61-71.

Abstract: "This chapter concerns primitiveness. Indeed, my way of arguing for or against equivalence claims in the previous chapters largely depends on the nature of primitives and on the role they play in each of the theories involved, and it is now time to be explicit about this. In general, in most metaphysical debates a lot depends on primitives—indeed, metaphysical theories rely heavily on the use of the primitives that they typically appeal to. So, I will emphasize here the utmost importance of primitives in the construction of metaphysical theories and in the subsequent evaluation of them. I will claim that almost all of the explanatory power of metaphysical theories comes from their primitives, and I will scrutinize the notion of “power” and “explanatory”. All together, these points will naturally lead me to defend a global view on the nature of the metaphysical enterprise: what is at stake in metaphysics is to find out not just what there is or what there is not, but what is more fundamental than what—to find out what are the best primitives. Relationships between my view and the current debate concerning the notion of grounding will be discussed."

35. Berker, Selim. 2018. "The Unity of Grounding." Mind no. 127:729-777.

Abstract: "I argue—contra moderate grounding pluralists such as Kit Fine and more extreme grounding pluralists such as Jessica Wilson—that there is fundamentally only one grounding/in-virtue-of relation. I also argue that this single relation is indispensable for normative theorizing—that we can’t make sense of, for example, the debate over consequentialism without it. It follows from what I argue that there is no metaethically-pure normative ethics (in contrast to Ronald Dworkin’s claim that there is no normatively-pure metaethics)."

36. Bernstein, Sara. 2016. "Grounding Is Not Causation." Philosophical Perspectives no. 30:21-38.

"Grounding is not causation, and is not like causation, contra its contemporary characterizers. Apparent similarities between causation and grounding are mostly superficial, and utilizing causation as a way to illuminate ground glosses over their important dissimilarities while failing to untangle distinct, subtle problems that both grounding and causation face. Or so I will argue." (p. 21)

(...)

"In the following discussion, I set these claims in my sights. I target two distinct but similar theses: what Schaffer (2016) calls “grounding-causation unity”, the thesis that grounding and causation are only nominally distinct relations, and what I will call “grounding-causation comparison”, the methodological process of illuminating ground by appealing to similar features of causation. I call proponents of either of these two theses Grinders, or those who meld together the notions of causation and grounding literally or metaphorically." (p. 22)

(...)

"Conclusion

Grounding skepticism has largely focused on challenging the univocality, usefulness, and explanatory power of grounding. Here I have issued a new challenge to grounding: that it cannot be illuminated by appeal to the familiar notion of causation. Perhaps groundhogs will find a new notion to which to appeal in order to illuminate ground, or perhaps grounding skeptics will be satisfied with another methodological route to securing a transparent notion of ground. But attempting to use causation as a guide to ground emphasizes similarities that turn out to be superficial, while ignoring the intricacies that genuinely characterize each notion. Groundhogs [*] should not be Grinders: they need another path forward." (p. 35)

[*] I owe thanks to Kit Fine’s “Essential Glossary of Ground” for this term.

References

Schaffer, J. (2016). “Grounding in the Image of Causation”, Philosophical Studies 173(1): 49–100.

37. ———. 2018. "Causal Idealism." In Idealism: New Essays in Metaphysics, edited by Goldschmidt, Tyron and Pearce, Kenneth L., 217-230. New York: Oxford University Press.

"A quick disclaimer: as a causal realist, I am invested in discovering an objective, mind-independent causal relation. Thus I will not make it my goal in this discussion to defend causal idealism against general objections or broader criticism. Rather, my goal will be to give causal idealism a fair shake by articulating it clearly and fairly, and to explain why the view should be considered a viable alternative to the mixed views I have mentioned.

Roadmap: In section 1, I articulate the thesis of causal idealism, and apply it to some contemporary problems for causal theories. In section 2, I give an overview of a family of views that incorporates human thought and agency into the causal relation. In section 3, I weigh causal idealism against the discussed mixed views, and argue that causal idealism is a viable alternative." (p. 218)

38. Berto, Francesco, and Plebani, Matteo. 2015. Ontology and Metaontology: A Contemporary Guide. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Chapter 8: The Grounding Approach, pp. 113-119.

Abstract: "In this chapter we introduce the approach of grounding theorists: a recent, non-standard metaontological view according to which the Quinean understanding of ontological questions as quantificational questions limits the explanatory power of ontological theories. In Section 1, we motivate intuitively the grounding theorist’s key idea that ontology should not look just at what there is, but rather at what is fundamental: at what underpins and explains the existence of what, and at the things, if there are any, that underpin and explain the existence of anything else. Section 2 introduces the notion of ground, used in this approach to account for the idea of ontological fundamentality, and investigates its plausible formal properties. Section 3 examines what happens to the methodology of ontology if we accept the grounding view, and Section 4 looks at some open issues."

39. Bertrand, Michael. 2020. "We Need Non-factive Metaphysical Explanation." Erkenntnis:1-21.

First online 7 February 2020.

Abstract: "Suppose that A explains B. Do A and B need to be true? Provided that we have metaphysical explanation in mind, orthodoxy answers “yes:” metaphysical explanation is factive. This article introduces and defends a non-factive notion of metaphysical explanation. I argue that we need a non-factive notion of explanation in order to make sense of explanationist arguments where we motivate a view by claiming that it offers better explanations than its competitors. After presenting and rejecting some initially plausible rivals, I account for non-factive metaphysical explanation by drawing on existing applications of structural equation models to metaphysical grounding."

40. Bianchi, Silvia, and Giannotti, Joaquim. 2021. "Grounding Ontic Structuralism." Synthese no. 199:5205-5223.

Abstract: "A respectable assessment of priority-based ontic structuralism demands an elucidation of its metaphysical backbone. Here we focus on two theses that stand in need of clarification: (1) the Fundamentality Thesis states that structures are fundamental, and (2) the Priority Thesis states that these structures are prior to putative fundamental objects, if these exist. Candidate notions to illuminate (1) and (2) such as supervenience and ontological dependence failed at this task. Our purpose is to show that grounding is the best competitor to articulate (1) and (2), and regiment such theses in a desirable unified way. Our strategy is two-fold. First, we make the case that grounding does better than ontological dependence and supervenience. Second, we show that the distinction between partial and full grounds permits us to respond to an objection raised by Kerry McKenzie against the proposal of interpreting priority-based Ontic Structuralism in the idiom of metaphysical determination. Our conclusion is that priority ontic structuralists have compelling reasons for adopting a grounding-based approach."

41. Bliss, Ricki. 2013. "Viciousness and the Structure of Reality." Philosophical Studies no. 166:399-418.

Abstract: "Given the centrality of arguments from vicious infinite regress to our philosophical reasoning, it is little wonder that they should also appear on the catalogue of arguments offered in defense of theses that pertain to the fundamental structure of reality. In particular, the metaphysical foundationalist will argue that, on pain of vicious infinite regress, there must be something fundamental. But why think that infinite regresses of grounds are vicious? I explore existing proposed accounts of viciousness cast in terms of contradictions, dependence, failed reductive theories and parsimony. I argue that no one of these accounts adequately captures the conditions under which an infinite regress—any infinite regress—is vicious as opposed to benign. In their place, I suggest an account of viciousness in terms of explanatory failure. If this account is correct, infinite grounding regresses are not necessarily vicious; and we must be much more careful employing such arguments to the conclusion that there has to be something fundamental."

42. ———. 2014. "Viciousness and Circles of Ground." Metaphilosophy no. 45:245-256.

Abstract: "Metaphysicians of a certain stripe are almost unanimously of the view that grounding is necessarily irreflexive, asymmetric, transitive, and well-founded.

They deny the possibility of circles of ground and, therewith, the possibility of species of metaphysical coherentism. But what’s so bad about circles of ground?

One problem for coherentism might be that it ushers in anti-foundationalism: grounding loops give rise to infinite regresses. And this is bad because infinite grounding regresses are vicious. This article argues that circles of ground do not necessarily give rise to infinite regresses, and where they do, those regresses are not necessarily vicious."

43. ———. 2018. "Grounding and Reflexivity." In Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, edited by Bliss, Ricki and Priest, Graham, 70-90. New York: Oxford University Press.

"This paper aims to focus the reasons for which we might find reflexive instances of dependence unacceptable: a task that necessitates an investigation into what it even means for a fact to ground itself. In §1, I introduce the notion of ground along with the kinds of circles of ground I will be considering. In §2, I present several different reasons to motivate the need to think about circles of ground more seriously. In §3, I discuss possible metaphysically substantive reasons to deny that anything can be self-dependent. Both historically and contemporarily, philosophers have expressed worries over the ontological priority ordering, bootstrapping, and the connection between self-dependence and the necessary and the divine. In §4, I turn to a consideration of explanatory reasons to avoid circles of ground. I discuss connections between circularity, non-well-foundedness, and viciousness, along with the thought that circles of ground are unacceptable for the more (deceptively) humdrum reason that they give rise to trivial and uninformative explanations. I conclude that the most salient reasons we have for supposing grounding is irreflexive are explanatory rather than metaphysical, and that reasons to reject or accept instances of reflexivity need to be assessed with a greater eye to other of our commitments." (p. 71)

44. Block, Ned. 2014. "The Canberra Plan Neglects Ground." In Qualia and Mental Causation in a Physical World: Themes from the Philosophy of Jaegwon Kim, edited by Horgan, Terence, Sabates, Marcelo and Sosa, David, 105-133. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"According to the Canberra Plan, the first step in a reductive physicalist enterprise is to functionally define the property to be reduced, and the second step is to find the physical property that fills that functional role.

Reductive physicalism is true for the mind if both steps can always be carried out for mental properties.

(...)

This chapter will argue that the point of view of the Canberra Plan neglects ground. I will consider a few attempts to graft an account of the physical/functional ground of mind onto the Canberra Plan, arguing that such attempts lead nowhere." (p. 105)

45. Bohn, Einar Duenger. 2018. "Indefinitely Descending Ground." In Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, edited by Bliss, Ricki and Priest, Graham, 167-181. New York: Oxford University Press.

"We often say that some facts obtain in virtue of others, for example that semantic facts obtain in virtue of facts about language-use, or that normative facts obtain in virtue of descriptive facts, or that mental facts obtain in virtue of physical facts. The question I'm interested in is: must such in-virtue-of chains eventually end in some facts that don't obtain in virtue of any other facts? Or can they go on indefinitely without end?(1)

In other words (to be clarified below), must the in-virtue-of relation be well-founded?

In what follows, I argue that it must not, and point to some reasons for it even actually not being so. More specifically, in Section l, I introduce what is perhaps the closest we get to a standard notion of the in-virtue-of relation, namely a relation of grounding; in Section 2, I argue that there is no good reason to think that this relation of grounding must be well-founded; and in Section 3, I argue more directly that it's not necessarily well-founded, and further that there are reasons to think it's actually non-well-founded." (p. 167)

(1) Note that there can be infinite chains that are limited, but I wish to talk about infinite chains that are unlimited; I here and throughout use the term 'indefinite' for that purpose. This should not be confused with the way 'indefinite' is sometimes used in the philosophy of mathematics, where there is a constructional or potential aspect to it, nor should it be confused with the way 'indefinite' is sometimes used in debates over vagueness, where there is an aspect of, well, vagueness to it.

46. Braver, Lee. 2012. Groundless Grounds: A Study of Wittgenstein and Heidegger. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

"As we have seen, Wittgenstein and Heidegger challenge a number of the assumptions and aspirations that have guided philosophy since its inception.

One of these, foundationalism, is the attempt to trace all knowledge back to a source or set of claims that, as necessarily true, secure the truth of all that is derived from them. Just as a valid argument produces only true conclusions from true premises, so a properly built system insulates the circulation of truth throughout its entirety. As Descartes argues, if we don’t know that we know what we think we know, then we may not know it after all.

The problem, which has been with us nearly as long as philosophy itself, is that a base–superstructure organization requires an ultimate level which itself has no justifying foundation underneath it. Absent the troubled notion of self-justifying beliefs, we have either a bottom level hovering over the abyss or, as they say, it’s turtles all the way down. Wittgenstein and Heidegger accept the first horn of this perennial dilemma. Stopping at an unjustified level only seems worrisome to a mindset conditioned by foundationalism to expect a transcendent ground which, more than being right, cannot be wrong, an idea which is incompatible with finite creatures like us. Freed from this incoherent demand, we can accept the grounding afforded by human nature and cultural norms as both all that is possible and all that is needed. Once we are weaned off millennia-old cravings for the transcendent, we can learn to live with the human." (pp. 173-174)

47. Brenner, Andrew. 2020. "Explaining Why There is Something Rather than Nothing." Erkenntnis:1-17.

First online 7 June 2020.

Abstract: "It is sometimes supposed that, in principle, we cannot offer an explanation for why there is something rather than nothing. I argue that this supposition is a mistake, and stems from a needlessly myopic conception of the form explanations can legitimately take. After making this more general point, I proceed to offer a speculative suggestion regarding one sort of explanation which can in principle serve as an answer to the question “why is there something rather than nothing?” The suggestion is that there may be something rather than nothing in virtue of the truth of certain sorts of subjunctive conditionals."

48. ———. 2021. "How Does God Know That 2 + 2 = 4?" Religious Studies no. 57:301-316.

Abstract: "Sometimes theists wonder how God’s beliefs track particular portions of reality, e.g. contingent states of affairs, or facts regarding future free actions. In this article I sketch a general model for how God’s beliefs track reality. God’s beliefs track reality in much the same way that propositions track reality, namely via grounding. Just as the truth values of true propositions are generally or always grounded in their truthmakers, so too God’s true beliefs are grounded in the subject matters of those beliefs (i.e. God believes that p in virtue of the fact that p).

This is not idle speculation, since my proposal allows the theist to account for God’s true beliefs regarding causally inert portions of reality."

49. Brewer, Bill. 2019. "Basic Objects as Grounds: A Metaphysical Manifesto." In The Nature of Ordinary Objects, edited by Cumpa, Javier and Brewer, Bill, 48-62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Introduction: According to our commonsense world-view, macroscopic material objects endure, are never precisely collocated with each other, and may survive the loss of at least some of their parts. But these commitments are notoriously difficult to reconcile. My project in what follows is to elaborate an account that succeeds in reconciling them in the most basic cases, of what I call Natural Continuants, and to explore its potential as an adequate overall theory by explaining how such basic objects may serve as the grounds for various other material things." (p. 48)

50. Bryant, Amanda. 2018. "Naturalizing Grounding: How Theories of Ground Can Engage Science." Philosophy Compass no. 13:1-12.

Abstract: "This paper surveys some of the grounding literature searching for points of contact between theories of ground and science. I find that there are some places where a would‐be naturalistic grounding theorist can draw inspiration. I synthesize a list of recommendations for how science may be put to use in theories of ground. I conclude that the prospects for naturalizing the metaphysics of ground are bright."

51. ———. 2020. "Physicalism." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 484-500. New York: Routledge.

"Before determining whether grounding may be fruitfully applied to physicalism, we will need some sense of what physicalism is supposed to be. To that end, Section 1 will lay out some key metaphysical physicalist theses. Section 2 will discuss supervenience and some central challenges to supervenience physicalism (see also Kovacs, Chapter 24, this volume). Section 3 will introduce the notion of grounding and use it to formulate physicalism. Finally, Section 4 will consider the relative merits and demerits of grounding physicalism.We will see that while grounding physicalism arguably improves on supervenience physicalism in some respects, serious work remains if grounding is to enable a clearly viable formulation of physicalism." (p. 484)

52. ———. 2022. "Grounding Interventionism: Conceptual and Epistemological Challenges." Metaphilosophy.

First on line 18 February 2022.

Abstract: "Philosophers have recently highlighted substantial affinities between causation and grounding, which have inclined some to import the conceptual and formal resources of causal interventionism into the metaphysics of grounding. The prospect of grounding interventionism raises two important questions: What exactly are grounding interventions, and why should we think they enable knowledge of grounding? This paper approaches these questions by examining how causal interventionists have addressed (or might address) analogous questions and then comparing the available options for grounding interventionism. The paper argues that grounding interventions must be understood in worldly terms, as adding something to or deleting something from the roster of entities, or making some fact obtain or fail to obtain. It considers three bases for counterfactual assessment: imagination, structural equation models, and background theory. The paper concludes that grounding interventionism requires firmer epistemological foundations, without which the interventionist’s epistemology of grounding is incomplete and ineffectually rationalist."

53. Busck Gundersen, Eline. 2013. "Response-Dependence and Conditional Fallacy Problems." In Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence, edited by Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin and Steinberg, Alex, 369-392. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"Response-dependence theses seem vulnerable to conditional fallacy problems like those that afflict the simple conditional analysis of dispositions.

This paper is an attempt to clear response-dependence theses of these charges. I discuss what the counterexamples show, and how they might be resisted. I consider three suggested solutions from the literature on response-dependence: Johnston's construal of response-dependence theses in explicitly dispositional terms, Blackburn's 'elasticity' approach, and \Vright's provisional equations. I develop a fourth strategy based on relativisation of the 'favourable conditions' that play a central role in response-dependence theses. I also table, but do not discuss in detail, a fifth suggestion inspired by Lewis's revised conditional analysis of dispositions. I conclude that the resources can be found to defend response-dependence theses against conditional fallacy problems." (p. 369)

54. Cameron, Margaret. 2014. "Is Ground Said-in-Many-Ways?" Studia Philosophica Estonica no. 7.2:29-55.

Abstract: "Proponents of ground, which is used to indicate relations of ontological fundamentality, insist that ground is a unified phenomenon, but this thesis has recently been criticized. I will first review the proponents’ claims for ground’s unicity, as well as the criticisms that ground is too heterogeneous to do the philosophical work it is supposed to do. By drawing on Aristotle’s notion of homonymy, I explore whether ground’s metaphysical heterogeneity can be theoretically accommodated while at the same time preserving its proponents’ desideratum that it be a unified phenomenon."

55. Cameron, Ross P. 2016. "Do We Need Grounding?" Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 59:382-397.

Abstract: "Many have been tempted to invoke a primitive notion of grounding to describe the way in which some features of reality give rise to others. Jessica Wilson argues that such a notion is unnecessary to describe the structure of the world: that we can make do with specific dependence relations such as the part–whole relation or the determinate–determinable relation, together with a notion of absolute fundamentality. In this paper I argue that such resources are inadequate to describe the particular ways in which some parts of reality give rise to others, and thus that we do in fact need grounding."

References

Wilson, Jessica. 2014. “No Work for a Theory of Grounding.” Inquiry 57 (5–6): 535–579.

56. Caputo, Stefano. 2013. "The Dependence of Truth on Being: Is There a Problem for Minimalism?" In Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence, edited by Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin and Steinberg, Alex, 297-323. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"Conclusions: I hope to have vindicated the following claims: first, TDB [asymmetrical dependence of truth on being] truth; second, TDB isue in virtue of facts concerning the nature of our linguistic competence with the truth-predicate; third, a minimalist can perfectly explain, in his framework, these facts and thereb,· why TDB true" (p. 321)

57. Carmichael, Chad. 2016. "Deep Platonism." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 92:307–328.

"According to the bundle theory, particulars are bundles of universals. For example, this blue cup is a bundle of universals including blueness, cuphood, etc. The elements of a bundle are said to be compresent, which distinguishes genuine bundles from arbitrary groupings of unrelated universals. Every particular, on this view, is a bundle of compresent universals. Given the plausible claim that all the facts about bundles are grounded in facts about their members, the bundle theory entails the thesis that all the facts about particulars are grounded in facts purely about universals. This thesis is what I call deep platonism."

(...)

"For a variety of reasons, I reject the bundle theory. But I accept deep platonism. I begin by showing how to meet the main objection to deep platonism (which is also the main objection to the bundle theory): that it is inconsistent with the possibility of distinct qualitative indiscernibles (section 1). The key to my reply is a non-standard theory of haecceities as non-well-founded properties of a certain sort. Then I will respond to several objections (section 2). Finally, I will argue that we should accept deep platonism on the basis of considerations of parsimony about the fundamental (section 3)." (pp. 307-308, notes omitted)

58. Carnino, Pablo. 2014. "On the Reduction of Grounding to Essence." Studia Philosophica Estonica no. 7:56-71.

Abstract: "In a recent article, Fabrice Correia explores the project of reducing the notion of grounding to that of essence. He then goes on to provide several candidate definitions and test each of them against a number of objections. His final take on the situation is, roughly, that two of the definitions can handle all of the considered objections.

The aim of this paper is to re-evaluate Correia’s conclusions in the light of two sources of insights: Firstly, I will argue that one of the objections treated by Correia has been somewhat underestimated, and that it still constitutes a threat against definitions of grounding in terms of essence. Secondly, there are at least two further objections that should be considered by the advocate of such definitions. As I will show, one of them can be neutralized; but the other one is more serious and suggests a clear dialectical edge to an operationalist definition."

References

Correia, F. Metaphysical grounds and essence, in M. Hoeltje, B. Schnieder and A. Steinberg (eds), Varieties of Dependence. Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence, Basic Philosophical Concepts Series, Philosophia, München, pp. 271-296.

59. ———. 2017. "Grounding Is Not Superinternal." Thought: A Journal of Philosophy no. 6:24-32.

Abstract: "Whenever a fact P grounds another fact Q, one may ask why that is so. Karen Bennett (2011) and Louis deRosset (2013) independently argue that grounding facts—such as the fact that P grounds Q—are always grounded in their grounds-part (what stands in P’s position). Bennett calls this the view that grounding is superinternal. My aim in this paper is to argue that grounding is not superinternal. I will do so by showing that superinternality, together with some widely accepted formal features of grounding—namely, transitivity and necessitation—yield implausible claims about how necessities are explained. Then, I will discuss how my argument compares with Dasgupta’s (2014) argument against superinternality."

References

Bennett, K. “By Our Bootstraps.” Philosophical Perspectives 25.1 (2011): 27–41.

Dasgupta, S. “The Possibility of Physicalism.” Journal of Philosophy 111.9/10 (2014): 557–592.

deRosset, L. “Grounding Explanations.” Philosophers’ Imprint 13.7 (2013): 1–26.

60. Carrara, Massimiliano, and Martino, Enrico. 2015. "Grounding Megethology on Plural Reference." Studia Logica no. 103:697-711.

Abstract: "In Mathematics is megethology (Lewis, Philos Math 1:3–23, 1993) Lewis reconstructs set theory combining mereology with plural quantification. He introduces megethology, a powerful framework in which one can formulate strong assumptions about the size of the universe of individuals. Within this framework, Lewis develops a structuralist class theory, in which the role of classes is played by individuals. Thus, if mereology and plural quantification are ontologically innocent, as Lewis maintains, he achieves an ontological reduction of classes to individuals. Lewis’work is very attractive. However, the alleged innocence of mereology and plural quantification is highly controversial and has been criticized by several authors. In the present paper we propose a new approach to megethology based on the theory of plural reference developed in To be is to be the object of a possible act of choice (Carrara, Stud Log 96: 289–313, 2010). Our approach shows how megethology can be grounded on plural reference without the help of mereology."

References

Carrara, M., and E. Martino, To be is to be the object of a possible act of choice, Studia Logica 96:289–313, 2010.

Lewis, D., Mathematics is megethology, Philosophia Mathematica 1:3–23, 1993. [Reprinted as Chapter 17 in D. Lewis, Papers in Philosophical Logic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998, pp. 203-229.]

61. Chilovi, Samuele. 2020. "Grounding-based Formulations of Legal Positivism." Philosophical Studies no. 177:3283-3302.

Abstract: "The goal of this paper is to provide an accurate grounding-based formulation of positivism in the philosophy of law. I start off by discussing some simple formulations, based on the ideas that social facts are always either full or partial grounds of legal facts. I then raise a number of objections against these definitions: the full grounding proposal rules out possibilities that are compatible with positivism; the partial grounding proposal fails, on its own, to vindicate the distinctive role that is played by social facts within positivist accounts of law. Then, I present a more adequate and insightful formulation capable of solving their problems, which crucially relies on a robust notion of a social enabler. Finally, I model inclusive and exclusive positivism on the resulting template, and set out the advantages of the ground-enablers proposal."

62. ———. 2021. "Grounding Entails Supervenience." Synthese no. 198:1317-1334.

Abstract: "Do grounding claims entail corresponding supervenience claims? The question matters, as a positive answer would help grounding theorists address worries that their hyperintensional primitive is obscure, and also increase the argumentative strategies that are available within ground-theoretic frameworks for metaphysical inquiry. Stephan Leuenberger („From Grounding to Supervenience?", 2014a) argues for a negative response, by specifying some candidate principles of entailment and then claiming that each of them is subject to counterexamples. In this paper, I critically assess those principles and the objections he raises against them, and advocate a novel entailment principle that overcomes all the problems suffered by those other principles. The principle I defend places a supervenience-based constraint on grounding claims, and secures a substantive connection between grounding and modality, weaker than necessitation."

References

Leuenberger, S. (2014a) „From Grounding to Supervenience?", Erkenntnis 79: 227-240.

63. Chilovi, Samuele, and Pavlakos, George. 2019. "Law-Determination as Grounding: A Common Grounding Framework for Jurisprudence." Legal Ethics no. 25:53-76.

Abstract: "Law being a derivative feature of reality, it exists in virtue of more fundamental things, upon which it depends. This raises the question of what is the relation of dependence that holds between law and its more basic determinants. The primary aim of this paper is to argue that grounding is that relation. We first make a positive case for this claim, and then we defend it from the potential objection that the relevant relation is rather rational determination.(1) Against this challenge, we argue that the apparent objection is really no objection, for on its best understanding, rational determination turns out to actually be grounding. Finally, we clarify the framework for theories on law-determination that results from embracing our view; by way of illustration, we offer a ground-theoretic interpretation of Hartian positivism, and show how it can defuse an influential challenge to simple positivist accounts of law."

(1) Greenberg, M. (2004) ‘How Facts Make Law’, Legal Theory 10:157-198.

64. ———. 2021. "The Explanatory Demands of Grounding in Law." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.

First online 8 November 2021.

Abstract: "A new strategy in philosophy of law appeals to explanatory gap arguments to attack legal positivism. We argue that the strategy faces a dilemma, which derives from two available readings of the constraint it places on legal grounding. To this end, we elaborate the most promising ways of spelling out the epistemic constraints governing law-determination and show that each of the arguments based on them has problems. Throughout the paper, we evaluate a number of explanatory requirements, ultimately with a view to shedding light on the explanatory nature of both grounding in general and legal grounding in particular."

65. Christensen, Ryan. 2014. "Essence, Essence and Essence." Studia Philosophica Estonica no. 7:72-87.

Abstract: "I argue that three different notions of essence—temporal, definitional, and modal— are all distinct notions, and are all philosophically useful. After defining the different notions, I discuss the philosophical problems each addresses."

66. Claas, Jan. 2021. "The Grounds and the Components of Concepts." Erkenntnis:1-21.

"In this paper I investigate the idea that in conceptual analysis we are in a substantialway concerned with revealing metaphysical grounds. I argue that a recent proposal fails, according to which we aim to reveal what complex concepts are grounded in.

The notion of composition, rather than that of grounding, is the best way to understand the intuitive hierarchy of concepts. In an analysis we reveal the components or parts of complex concepts and their structure. Finally, I propose an alternative role for grounding in our accounts of analysis: in analyses we reveal truths about the composition of concepts that serve as grounds for truths about their functions, which are what we want to understand."

67. Clark, Michael J. 2018. "What Grounds What Grounds What." The Philosophical Quarterly no. 68:38-59.

Abstract: "If there are facts about what grounds what, are there any grounding relations between them? This paper suggests so, arguing that transitivity and amalgamation principles in the logic of grounding yield facts of grounding that are grounded by others. I develop and defend this view and note that combining it with extant accounts of iterated grounding commits us to seemingly problematic instances of ground-theoretic overdetermination. Taking the superinternality thesis as a case study, I discuss how defenders of this thesis should respond. It emerges that our discussion puts pressure on superinternalists to make an interesting qualification to their view: to only regard as a fundamental metaphysical law a version of the superinternality thesis that is restricted to minimal and immediate grounding."

68. Clark, Michael J., and Liggins, David. 2012. "Recent Work on Grounding." Analysis no. 72:812-823.

"‘In virtue of’ is a mainstay of philosophical discourse. So are similar expressions, such as ‘depends on’, ‘is prior to’, and ‘is determined by’. It is reasonable to suppose that these expressions are all used to express claims of non-causal dependence, or – as is becoming the standard term – ‘grounding’.

Whilst causation has been studied extensively, it is only in recent years that grounding has become established as a major concern of metaphysics. In this article, we will take stock by bringing together some of the main themes to have emerged in the recent debate. We begin by introducing the notion of grounding (Section 1). Then we discuss scepticism about grounding (Section 2) before setting out some of the main questions about grounding under current investigation (Section 3). The final section introduces further avenues for future research." (p. 812)

69. Clark, Michael J., and Wildman, Nathan. 2018. "Grounding, Mental Causation, and Overdetermination." Synthese no. 195:3723-3733.

Abstract: "Recently, Kroedel and Schulz have argued that the exclusion problem—which states that certain forms of non-reductive physicalism about the mental are committed to systematic and objectionable causal overdetermination—can be solved by appealing to grounding. Specifically, they defend a principle that links the causal relations of grounded mental events to those of grounding physical events, arguing that this renders mental–physical causal overdetermination unproblematic. Here, we contest Kroedel and Schulz’s result. We argue that their causal-grounding principle is undermotivated, if not outright false. In particular, we contend that the principle has plausible counterexamples, resulting from the fact that some mental states are not fully grounded by goings on ‘in our heads’ but also require external factors to be included in their full grounds. We draw the sceptical conclusion that it remains unclear whether non-reductive physicalists can plausibly respond to the exclusion argument by appealing to considerations of grounding."

References

Kroedel, T., & Schulz, M. (2016). Grounding mental causation. Synthese, 193, 1909–1923.

70. Colomina-Almiñana, Juan J. 2018. Formal Approach to the Metaphysics of Perspectives: Points of View as Access. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Contents: 1. A World of Points of View 1; 2. Contextualizing Points of View 27; 3. Adopting a Point of View 61; 4. Points of View as Grounding 81; 5. Comparing and Evaluating Points of View 105; 6. A Pluralist Notion of Truth for Metaphysical Points of View 117; Conclusion 143; References 147-156.

"To summarize then, this book deals with the place that perspectives must occupy in the world. Besides that I will attend to some of these cases later, this book is not particularly interested in establishing whether some of these perspectives are better understood as mere ways of speech. Think, for instance, of uncontroversial cases regarding whether you are late for an appointment or not, or what actually is nearby, or some political and partisan opinions about events, or which scientific paradigm better accounts for gravity, or whether Secretariat (a horse) is an “athlete.” These are, with no doubt, very interesting disputes. However, the core of this book must analyze in depth substantial ontological arguments regarding the existence of what I call metaphysical points of view." (p. VIII)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on metaphysical grounding. Second part: Cor-Fin

Bibliography

1. Correia, Fabrice. 2000. "Propositional Logic of Essence." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 29:295-311.

"Introdcution: The present paper can be considered as a companion to Kit Fine’s papers ‘The Logic of Essence’ and ‘Semantics for the Logic of Essence’.(1) In the first paper Fine presents a logical system for quantified essentialist statements, E5.(2) In the second he presents a semantics for a variant of the system, and proves this system adequate (i.e. sound and complete) with espect to that semantics. I propose here a Kripke-style semantics for E5π, a propositional counterpart of E5, and prove the adequacy of the latter with respect to the former.

There are many, more or less natural, more or less interesting, ways to extend E5 (or one of its cousins) to a system of quantified logic of essence. E5π, together with its semantics, is intended to constitute the core of subsequent, more expressive, logics of essence. So, the study of E5π per se, regardless of possible quantificational extensions, is of great interest.

Another interesting point about the present study lies in the fact that the completeness proof given here is much simpler than the one Fine gives for his quantificational system.

The reader is strongly urged to take a look at Fine’s papers on the logic of essence, if only because no detailed comparison between Fine’s material and mine will be offred." (p. 295)

2. ———. 2005. Existential Dependence and Cognate Notions. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

Contents: Introduction 11; 1. Preamble 17; 2. Simple Dependence I: Presentation, and Rejection of Some Accounts 43; 3. Metaphysical Grounding 57; 4. Simple Dependence II: The Foundational Approach 69; 5. Some Other Notions of Existential Dependence 93;

6. Supervenience 135; Appendix 155; Bibliography 165; List of Figures 169; List of Symbols and Notations 171; List of Named Propositions, Conditions and Rules 173; Index 175.

"The use of notions of existential dependence pervades the whole history of philosophy, and as the above remarks suggest there are good reasons to consider them as notions of central philosophical importance. Yet they have never been a topic of philosophical research of their own—at least in the contemporary period—a few exceptions aside. The first notable exception is Husserl with his third Logical Investigation on modal mereology. Yet even if in this work Husserl not only uses, but also spends time to define some notions of existential dependence, the result is quite imprecise, and how exactly Husserl’s views should be understood is still a matter of controversy.

The remaining exceptions are three. There is first and foremost the work of the Manchester triad which, at least at the beginning, to a certain extent tries to dig up the Husserlian investigations. Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Barry Smith are responsible for “introducing” existential dependence to the analytic world, and two approaches to dependence pervade an important amount of their work, namely the modal-existential approach and the essentialist-existential approach. The second exception is E. J. Lowe and his purely essentialist approach, and finally the third is Kit Fine, to whom I shall also attribute the essentialist-existential approach." (p. 12)

(...)

"My plan is the following. In the Preamble, I introduce notions and principles that will be useful in the rest of this work. After a short break, chapter 2 introduces the simplest notion of existential dependence, presents some existing accounts of this notion and some objections to these accounts. In chapter 3 the crucial notion of grounding is introduced. In chapter 4, I then propose my own account of simple existential dependence, and show how it escapes the difficulties faced by its rivals. Chapter 5 deals with other forms of existential dependence—like generic dependence, disjunctive dependence and temporalized forms of existential dependence—and finally chapter 6 is about supervenience." (p. 15)

3. ———. 2006. "Generic Essence, Objectual Essence, and Modality." Noûs no. 40:753-767.

Abstract: "When thinking about the notion of essence or of an essential feature, philosophers typically focus on what I will call the notion of objectual essence. The main aim of this paper is to argue that beside this familiar notion stands another one, the notion of generic essence, which contrary to appearance cannot be understood in terms of the familiar notion, and which also fails to be correctly characterized by certain other accounts which naturally come to mind as well. Some of my objections to these accounts are similar to some of Kit Fine’s compelling objections to the standard modal account of (objectual) essence (Fine 1994). In the light of these objections, Fine advances the view that it is metaphysical necessity which has to be understood in terms of essence, rather than the other way around, and takes essence to be unanalyzable.

When formulating his view, Fine had only objectual essence in mind (or had both concepts in mind, but assumed that the generic is a special case of the objectual), and for that reason, I will argue, his account fails. I will suggest that Fineans should modify their view, and take it that metaphysical necessity is to be understood in terms of the two notions of essence—a view I myself find appealing. Finally, I will end by suggesting a further move which reduces the objectual to the generic, making metaphysical necessity reducible to generic essence alone—a move with which I myself have some sympathy."

References

Fine, K. (1994) “Essence and Modality,” Philosophical Perspectives, 8: 1–16.

4. ———. 2010. "Grounding and Truth-Functions." Logique et Analyse no. 53:251-279.

"The plan of the paper is the following. I first discuss the question of the logical form of statements of grounding (§1). There I distinguish between the predicational view on the logical form of these statements, and the operational view, which I endorse. I then introduce the notions of factual identity and factual equivalence, and argue that the formulation of a logic of grounding must go in tandem with the formulation of a logic of factual identity in case one opts for predicationalism, and of a logic of factual equivalence if one opts for operationalism (§2). In §3, I define the language relative to which I subsequently formulate the logic of grounding and factual equivalence.

In §4 I lay down structural principles for grounding and factual equivalence.

In §5, I then propose principles for the logic of factual equivalence and truth-functions, and in §6, I do the same for the logic of grounding and truth-functions. Finally, I present a semantical characterization of the resulting logical system and prove the system to be sound and complete with respect to the semantics (§7)" (pp. 252-263)

5. ———. 2011. "From Grounding to Truth-Making: Some Thoughts." In Mind, Values, and Metaphysics. Philosophical Essays in Honor of Kevin Mulligan. Vol. 1, edited by Reboul, Anne, 85-98. Dordrecht: Springer.

Abstract: "The number of writings on truth-making which have been published since Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Barry Smith’s seminal, rich and deep article ‘Truth-Makers’ in 1984 is considerable. Some deal with the theory of the notion, some with its applications and some with both. This chapter adds up to the pile of writings which focus on the theory. I focus on one account of truth-making I find plausible, the view that for a truth-bearer to be made true by an entity is for it to be the case that the truth-bearer is true because the entity exists, where ‘because’ is understood as expressing a form of objective, metaphysical explanation which is now often subsumed under the label ‘grounding’. Taking this account for granted, we may distinguish, amongst the general principles governing truth-making, those which derive from more basic principles governing the notions in terms of which it is defined, from those which do not. Which principles compose the first class, which are the more basic principles from which they derive and how do the former derive from the latter? I try to make some steps towards an answer to this difficult question."

References

Mulligan K., Simons P., Smith B. (1984), Truth-makers. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 44(3): 287–321.

6. ———. 2013. "Logical Grounds." Review of Symbolic Logic no. 7:31-59.

"As I see it, the main interest of this study is threefold. First, the study provides a precise account of a pretheoretic notion of logical explanation which, I take it, is of great intrinsic interest. Second, it shows that the concept of logical grounding can be used to provide a new angle of approach in logic, which is illuminating and possesses a certain power of unification. And third, it shows that the concept of logical grounding is not irremediably obscure or fruitless, thereby providing (i) a direct response to some forms of scepticism about this concept and (ii) an element of response to certain forms of scepticism about more general concepts of grounding (in particular, that of metaphysical grounding)." (p. 33, notes omitted)

7. ———. 2013. "Metaphysical Grounds and Essence." In Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence, edited by Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin and Steinberg, Alex, 271-296. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"Is it possible to provide an account of metaphysical grounding in terms of essence? E. J. Lowe (2009) addresses a similar question about truth-making and essence, and makes a suggestion which points towards a positive answer. Kit Fine (2012) addresses the original question and answers negatively. I argue that the prospects for an account of metaphysical grounding in terms of essence are not as bad as one might have thought." (p. 271)

References

Correia, E and B. Schnieder (eds.) 2012: Metaphysical Grounding: Understandiing the Structure ol Reali!y·. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fine, K. 2012: 'Guide to Ground'. In Correia and Schnieder 2012, pp. 37-80.

Lowe, E. J. 2009: 'An Essentialist Approach to Truth-Making'. In Lowe and Rami 2009, pp. 201-16.

Lowe, E. J. and A. Rami (eds.) 2009: Truth and Truth-Making, Stocksfield: Acumen.

8. ———. 2017. "Real Definitions." Philosophical Issues no. 27:52-73.

Abstract: "I offer and defend an account of real definitions. I put forward two versions of the account, one formulated in terms of the notion of generalised identity and of a suitable notion of grounding (RD1), and the other one formulated in terms of the former notion and of a suitable notion of comparative joint carvingness (RD2). Given a plausible assumption, (RD1) and (RD2) turn out to be equivalent. I give a sketch of a unified account of the three notions involved in (RD1) and (RD2) from which the assumption can be derived."

9. ———. 2017. "An Impure Logic of Representational Grounding." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 46:507-538.

Abstract: "I give a semantic characterization of a system for the logic of grounding similar to the system introduced by Kit Fine in his “Guide to Ground”, as well as a semantic characterization of a variant of that system which excludes the possibility of what Fine calls ‘zero-grounding’."

10. ———. 2020. "Granularity." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 228-243. New York: Routledge.

"Grounding is a hyperintensional notion: necessarily equivalent sentences need not be equivalent from a ground-theoretic perspective. How fine-grained, exactly, is grounding? There is a striking lack of consensus on this question. In this chapter, I try to systematize and review the main options that have been put forward in the literature. For reasons that have to do with both naturalness and convenience, I for the most part take the question to be about what is sometimes called, following Kit Fine’s (2012a) terminology, strict full grounding, and I take for granted a conception of grounding as a relation that is many-to-one and non-factive. I discuss the consequences of making alternative assumptions only in the very last section." (p. 228, notes omitted)

References

Fine, K, (2012a). Guide to Ground. In F. Correia & B. Schnieder (eds.), Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 37–80.

11. ———. 2021. "A New Argument for the Groundedness of Grounding Facts." Erkenntnis:1-16.

First online 8 June 2021.

Abstract: "Many philosophers have recently been impressed by an argument to the effect that all grounding facts about “derivative entities”—e.g. the facts expressed by the (let us suppose) true sentences ‘the fact that Beijing is a concrete entity is grounded in the fact that its parts are concrete’ and ‘the fact that there are cities is grounded in the fact that p’, where ‘p’ is a suitable sentence couched in the language of particle physics—must themselves be grounded. This argument relies on a principle, Purity, which states that facts about derivative entities are non-fundamental. Purity is questionable.

In this paper, I introduce a new argument—the argument from Settledness—for a similar conclusion but which does not rely on Purity. The conclusion of the new argument is that every “thick” grounding fact is grounded, where a grounding fact [F is grounded in G, H, …] is said to be thick when at least one of F, G, H, … is a fact—a condition that is automatically satisfied if grounding is factive. After introducing the argument, I compare it with the argument from Purity, and I assess its cogency relative to the relevant accounts of the connections between grounding and fundamentality that are available in the literature."

12. ———. 2021. "Ontological dependence, Grounding and Modality." In The Routledge Handbook of Modality, edited by Bueno, Otávio and Shalkowski, Scott A. , 100-113. New York: Routledge.

"Ontological dependence and grounding are two important items in the metaphysician’s toolbox: both notions can be used to formulate important philosophical claims and to define other notions that play a central role in philosophical theorising. Philosophical inquiry about ontological dependence and (especially) grounding has been very lively over the past few years, making it difficult to write a short review article on any of them, let alone a short review article on both.

I try to reach a good compromise between a discussion of each notion taken separately and a discussion of how they relate to one another." (p. 100)

13. Correia, Fabrice, and Schnieder, Benjamin, eds. 2012. Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: List of contributors VII; Fabrice Correia, Benjamin Schnieder: Grounding: an opinionated introduction 1; 1. Kit Fine: Guide to ground 37; 2. Chris Daly: Scepticism about grounding 81; 3. Paul Audi: A clarification and defense of the notion of grounding 101; 4. Jonathan Schaffer: Grounding, transitivity, and contrastivity 122; 5. Michael Della Rocca: Violations of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (in Leibniz and Spinoza) 139; 6. J. Robert G. Williams: Requirements on reality 165; 7. Kathrin Koslicki: Varieties of ontological dependence 186; 8. E. J. Lowe: Asymmetrical dependence in individuation 214; 9. Jody Azzouni: Simple metaphysics and “ontological dependence” 234; 10. David Liggins: Truth-makers and dependence 254; 11. Stephen Barker: Expressivism about making and truth-making 272; Bibliography 294; Name index 306; Subject index 309-311.

14. ———. 2012. "Grounding: An Opinionated Introduction." In Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality, edited by Correia, Fabrice and Schnieder, Benjamin, 1-36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Some of the most important questions in philosophy, we believe, concern matters of priority.

(...)

What concerns us here is not so much whether these specific claims are true, but rather something they have in common topic-wise: it seems to us that they all target a particular sort of non-causal priority which we would like to call grounding and which we regard as a phenomenon of the highest philosophical importance.

This volume collects papers in which this phenomenon is addressed from various (both sympathetic and critical) sides. Summaries of those papers are provided in Section 6 of this introduction. But first, we want to walk you through an opinionated survey of pertinent issues, preparing the field and putting the papers into perspective.

While the recent debate about grounding is not older than a decade, the topic has been dealt with before. So, we start by briefly walking through some important stages of the history of grounding. We then devote two sections on systematic issues, one on the theory of grounding proper, and one on its connections with other notions.(1)" (pp. 1-2)

(1) For further reading we recommend a survey article by Trogdon (forthcoming). While his paper naturally has some overlap with ours, he often has a different focus so that the two papers complement each other.

References

Trogdon, K. forthcoming. ‘Grounding – An Overview’, in Hoeltje, Schnieder, and Steinberg, Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence, Munich: Philosophia Verlag 2013, pp. 97-122.

15. Correia, Fabrice, and Skiles, Alexander. 2019. "Grounding, Essence, and Identity." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 98:642-670.

Abstract: "Recent metaphysics has turned its focus to two notions that are—as well as having a common Aristotelian pedigree—widely thought to be intimately related: grounding and essence. Yet how, exactly, the two are related remains opaque. We develop a unified and uniform account of grounding and essence, one which understands them both in terms of a generalized notion of identity examined in recent work by Fabrice Correia, Cian Dorr, Agustın Rayo, and others. We argue that the account comports with antecedently plausible principles governing grounding, essence, and identity taken individually, and illuminates how the three interact. We also argue that the account compares favorably to an alternative unification of grounding and essence recently proposed by Kit Fine."

16. Cusbert, John, and Millier, Kristie. 2018. "The Unique Groundability of Temporal Facts." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 94:410-432.

Abstract: "The A-theory and the B-theory advance competing claims about how time is grounded. The A-theory says that A-facts are more fundamental in grounding time than are B-facts, and the B-theory says the reverse.

We argue that whichever theory is true of the actual world is also true of all possible worlds containing time. We do this by arguing that time is uniquely groundable: however time is actually grounded, it is necessarily grounded in that way. It follows that if either the A-theory or the B-theory is actually false, then it is necessarily false."

17. Daly, Chris. 2012. "Scepticism about Grounding." In Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality edited by Correia, Fabrice and Schnieder, Benjamin, 81-100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"A minimal claim that any theory of grounding will make is that talk of grounding is intelligible. Yet it is controversial whether such talk is intelligible.

Two (mutually exclusive) strategies to support that minimal claim are available.

One is to define ‘grounding’ using terms that are already well understood.

The other is to take ‘grounding’ as a primitive term but to use various ways to convey its meaning. This chapter will offer sceptical responses to both strategies whilst paying special attention to the second. The chief contention of the chapter is that, if treated as a primitive, ‘grounding’ is unintelligible.

Grounding theorists are alive to this sceptical response and have tried to counter it. The chapter will seek to show that their attempts to date fail."

18. Dasgupta, Shamik. 2014. "On the Plurality of Grounds." Philosophers' Imprint no. 13:1-28.

Recent metaphysics has contained a good deal of discussion about the notion of ground.

(...)

"In this spirit, one aim of this paper is to argue that ground is irreducibly plural. It is well known that something’s ground can be a plurality — the occurrence of a conference is an example of something that is presumably grounded in a multitude of facts concerning the actions of its many participants. Those facts together are what explains why there is a conference occurring, even though none of them is a sufficient explanation individually. But the literature uniformly assumes that what is grounded must be a single fact. Here I disagree and argue that what is grounded can be a plurality too: there can be cases in which they, the members of a plurality, are explained in more fundamental terms, even though none of them admits of explanationon its own." (pp. 1-2)

19. ———. 2014. "The Possibility of Physicalism." The Journal of Philosophy no. 111:557-592.

"It has been suggested that many philosophical theses—physicalism, nominalism, normative naturalism, and so on—should be understood in terms of ground.(1) Against this, Ted Sider has argued that round is ill-suited for this purpose.(2) Here I develop Sider’s objection and offer a response. In doing so I develop a view about the content of these philosophical theses, and hence about how to understand disagreements over them." (p. 557)

(1) For some recent examples, see Kit Fine, “The Question of Realism,” Philosophers’ Imprint, 1 (2001): 1–30; Gideon Rosen, “Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction,” in B. Hale and A. Hoffmann, eds., Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 109–36; and Jonathan Schaffer, “On What Grounds What,” in D. Chalmers, D. Manley, and R. Wasserman, eds., Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009), pp. 347–83. The suggestion is not new; indeed these authors take themselves to be reinvigorating a traditional conception of these issues that stems back at least to the ancient Greeks.

2 See Theodore Sider, Writing the Book of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

20. ———. 2016. "Metaphysical Rationalism." Noûs no. 50:379-418.

Abstract: "The Principle of Sufficient Reason states that everything has an explanation. But different notions of explanation yield different versions of this principle. Here a version is formulated in terms of the notion of a “grounding” explanation.

Its consequences are then explored, with particular emphasis on the fact that it implies necessitarianism, the view that every truth is necessarily true. Finally, the principle is defended from a number of objections, including objections to necessitarianism. The result is a defense of a “rationalist” metaphysics, one that constitutes an alternative to the contemporary dogmas that some aspects of the world are “metaphysically brute” and that the world could in so many ways have been different."

21. ———. 2017. "Constitutive Explanation." Philosophical Issues no. 27:74-97.

"I will argue that ground can be significantly deflated: one can hold that it corresponds to no part of reality, that it is not primitive in any metaphysically significant sense, even that it is a person- or culture-relative notion with noncognitive elements, and yet still find it philosophically important. I will not argue that the best conception of ground is maximally deflationary in all these respects. But it is worth asking what the limit case looks like, if only to clarify whether certain objections to ground target the core notion or just inflated varieties.(1)" (pp. 74-75)

(1) To be clear, the conception of ground I initially latched onto was not deflationary in all these respects. It is only recently that I’ve come to see that it can be deflated more than I had previously thought.

22. De Florio, Ciro. 2018. "On Grounding Arithmetic." In From Arithmetic to Metaphysics: A Path Through Philosophical Logic, edited by Giordani, Alessandro and Florio, Ciro de, 103-118. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Abstract: "Philosophy of mathematics of last fifty years has been dominated by the metaontological stance according to which one fundamental problem of the ontology of mathematical theories is the existence of mathematical objects and the related epistemic access to them. But during the last ten years another fecund and promising metaphysical framework has been developed: the key idea (which goes back to Aristotle) is that the main problem of metaphysics is about the relation of grounding among various levels of reality. Although this approach should be relevant for almost all the metaphysical questions, however,

there are few attempts to extend these intuitions to the debate in philosophy of mathematics. The aim of this, preliminary, work is analysing some possible outcomes of the grounding approach in metaphysics of mathematics."

23. De Rizzo, Julio. 2019. Reasons Why Not: On the Positive Grounds of Negative Truths. Berlin: J. B. Metzler.

"A suggestive way of turning this slogan [Reality is ultimately positive] into a precise thesis makes use of the fashionable ideology of grounding: roughly put, the idea of a non-causal connection between truths expressible by claims to the effect that some truths obtain because other truths obtain. (More on this in due course.) When this is the case, the latter truths are typically said to be more fundamental than the former.

In this manner, grounding is taken to shed light on theses which have a bearing on how truths of a certain class are structured relatively to another class or other classes of truths. Thus the thesis of physicalism, for example, might be understood as the thesis that physical truths ground truths about consciousness, i.e. that the latter truths obtain because physical truths obtain. By way of analogy, one can expect that the bias against negativity announced in the slogan be captured by the claim that negative truths obtain because positive truths do, i.e. that positive truths ground negative ones. Henceforth, I will label this the positivist thesis, and the position thereby characterized positivism.

The main aim of the present study is to examine the positivist thesis and the position it characterizes in detail. The task is twofold. Firstly, to clarify what the thesis amounts to; and secondly, to explore its credentials relative to some specific domains of negative truths." (pp. 2-3)

24. ———. 2020. "The Ground of All Negative Existential Truths." Critica no. 52:129-148.

Summary: "A natural proposal for the grounds of negative existential truths, such as that Vulcan does not exist, states that these truths are grounded in the totality truth affirming the existence of every existent thing together with the truth that they are all. In this paper I will put forward three objections to straightforward formulations of this idea, and argue that a change in the usual grammar of grounding claims, allowing for pluralities of sentences to express not only grounds, but also groundees, is effective in making the account immune to the objections raised."

25. ———. 2021. "Grounding Grounds Necessity." Analysis no. 80:639-647.

Abstract: "Drawing from extensions of existing ideas in the logic of ground, a novel account of the grounds of necessity is presented, the core of which states that necessary truths are necessary because they stand in specific grounding connections."

26. ———. 2021. "A Ground-theoretical Modal Definition of Essence." Analysis.

First Online 20 September 2021.

Abstract: "I provide a case-by-case definition of essential truths based on the notions of metaphysical necessity and ontological dependence. Relying on suggestions in the literature, I adopt a definition of the latter notion in terms of the notion of ground. The resulting account is adequate in the sense that it is not subject to Kit Fine’s famous counterexamples to the purely modal account of essence. In addition, it provides us with a novel conception of truths pertaining to the essence of objects, which might help to dispel doubts on the legitimacy of the notion of essence itself."

27. Declos, Alexandre. 2021. "More Grounds for Grounding Nominalism." Philosophia no. 49:49-70.

Abstract: "In this paper, I examine Peter Schulte’s “Grounding Nominalism” (Schulte, 2018), understood as the claim that first-order properties and relations are grounded in the concrete particulars which instantiate them. While Schulte offered reasons to think that this view is consistent, along with answers to a number of objections, a more straightforward argument for GN is still needed. I take on this task here, by discussing and defending what I call the “argument from abstraction”. The latter, I suggest, offers more grounds to Grounding Nominalism."

References

Schulte, P. (2018). Grounding nominalism. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 100(2), 482–505

28. Della Rocca, Michael. 2012. "Violations of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (in Leibniz and Spinoza)." In Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality edited by Correia, Fabrice and Schnieder, Benjamin, 139-164. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

My central concern here – violations of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (hereafter: ‘PSR’) – does indeed stem from my engagement with two figures from the history of philosophy: Leibniz and Spinoza. Both of these philosophers are big fans of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the principle according to which each thing that exists has an explanation.(1) Indeed, a strong case can be made that each of these thinkers structures his entire system around the PSR more or less successfully.(2) However, despite these similarities, the character of each philosopher’s commitment to the PSR differs, and the differences have illuminating implications for our understanding of the power of these rationalist systems and for the metaphysical issues these philosophers take up that concern us today. One way to distill these differences is by exploring the perhaps surprising ways violations of the PSR arise for Leibniz and Spinoza. It will turn out that Leibniz is, or would be, unable to handle such violations, while Spinoza can handle them more or less in stride in his more resilient and, in some ways, more exotic, rationalist system." (pp. 139-140)

(1) Spinoza: see Ethics 1p11d2. Leibniz: see Monadology §32.

(2) Spinoza more, Leibniz less!.

29. ———. 2014. "Razing Structures to the Ground." Analytic Philosophy no. 55:276-294.

"However, despite this bulwark of support for grounding, I want here at least to begin a new challenge to this now popular notion. I think that there are reasons to doubt that there are any instances of grounding, and I think that these reasons are broadly in keeping with the spirit of Quine’s best argument against modality: what I call the argument from arbitrariness. Once we see the force of this argument against grounding, we will be in a position, I believe, to advance a powerful argument for something like existence monism, a monism more extreme than the priority monism that Schaffer defends." (p. 278)

30. deRosset, Louis. 2010. "Getting Priority Straight." Philosophical Studies no. 149:73-97.

"Here is the plan. I will start by trying to get a little clearer on what the priority theorist claims (Sect. 1). Then I will articulate a constraint on the kind of explanation central to the priority theorist’s view (Sect. 2). I will show how that constraint makes trouble for the priority theorist (Sect. 3). I will review two avenues of response available to priority theorists, and provide reasons for thinking that neither are satisfactory (Sect. 4). Next I will articulate a more cautious variant of priority theory that avoids the trouble, and show that it nevertheless faces similar problems (Sect. 5). I will conclude with a brief discussion of the prospects for retaining the spirit of priority theory while abandoning its letter (Sect. 6)."

31. ———. 2011. "What is the Grounding Problem?" Philosophical Studies no. 156:173-197.

Abstract: "A philosophical standard in the debates concerning material constitution is the case of a statue and a lump of clay, Lumpl and Goliath respectively.

According to the story, Lumpl and Goliath are coincident throughout their respective careers. Monists hold that they are identical; pluralists that they are distinct. This paper is concerned with a particular objection to pluralism, the Grounding Problem. The objection is roughly that the pluralist faces a legitimate explanatory demand to explain various differences she alleges between Lumpl and Goliath, but that the pluralist’s theory lacks the resources to give any such explanation.

In this paper, I explore the question of whether there really is any problem of this sort. I argue (i) that explanatory demands that are clearly legitimate are easy for the pluralist to meet; (ii) that even in cases of explanatory demands whose legitimacy is questionable the pluralist has some overlooked resources; and (iii) there is some reason for optimism about the pluralist’s prospects for meeting every legitimate explanatory demand. In short, no clearly adequate statement of a Grounding Problem is extant, and there is some reason to believe that the pluralist can overcome any Grounding Problem that we haven’t thought of yet."

32. ———. 2013. "Grounding Explanations." Philosophers' Imprint no. 13:1-26.

"Unfortunately the use of grounding to articulate the layered conception faces a problem, recently pressed by Ted Sider [Sider, 2011, §7.2, 8.2.1]. I will call this problem the collapse. The problem, very roughly, is that if we take grounding explanations to state fundamental facts, then the facts about what explains, e.g., my preference for oatmeal will be fundamental. So, my preference for oatmeal will be mentioned in any complete description of the fundamental layer. The same goes for any other entity. All of the layers collapse into one; every entity turns out to occupy the fundamental layer. The collapse turns on the question of how to ground the facts stated by the explanations themselves.

I will suggest a way of grounding explanations that avoids the problem. Briefly, the suggestion is that the fact stated by a grounding explanation is grounded in its explanans.

Here’s the plan. §1 lays out a simple-minded way of using grounding explanations to articulate the intuitive conception of layered structure.

I also differentiate this approach to articulating the idea of layered structure from a more traditional one centering on reduction. §2 shows how the commitments articulated in §1 lead to the collapse, when paired with the claim that grounding explanations are fundamental.

In §3, I defend a claim that plays a central role in both my articulation of the idea of layered structure and the collapse. §4 proposes an alternative way of avoiding the collapse by denying that grounding explanations are fundamental. §5 outlines and criticizes a different proposal for avoiding the collapse implicit in some of the extant literature, and §6 discusses objections." (pp. 2-3, anote omitted)

References

Theodore Sider. Writing the Book of the World. Oxford University Press, 2011.

33. ———. 2013. "What is Weak Ground?" Essays in Philosophy no. 14:7-18.

Abstract: "Kit Fine, in "The Pure Logic of Ground", has made a seminal attempt at formalizing the notion of ground. Fine ties the formal treatment of grounding to the notion of a weak ground. Formalization of this sort is supposed to bring clarity and precision to our theorizing. Unfortunately, as I will argue, it's not clear what weak ground is.

I review five alternative explanations of the idea, and argue that none of them are ultimately satisfactory. I close by outlining a more complicated explanation of the notion that turns out to be more satisfactory."

34. ———. 2013. "No Free Lunch." In Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence, edited by Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin and Steinberg, Alex, 243-270. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"Some philosophers (see Armstrong 1997; Cameron 2008; Melia 2005 and Schaffer 2007, 2009, 2010a) have recently suggested that explanations of a certain sort can mitigate our ontological commitments.

The explanations in question, grounding explanations, are those that tell us what it is in virtue of which an entity exists and has the features it does.

(...)

These philosophers argue that derivative entities are 'no addition to being', in the sense that an ontology is no less sparse for containing them than it is for containing the entities which ground them; derivative entities are an 'ontological free lunch'." (p. 243)

(...)

"Here I argue that they are wrong: barring reduction, everv entity is fundamental, in the sense that either its existence or its possession of at least one other feature is explanatorily basic. Thus, the claim

EXPLANATION

Many entities are derivative: their existence and other features can be explained solely by reference to the existence and properties of other things should be rejected. An upshot is that, whatever form Ockham's Razor, should take, grounding explanations on their own do not provide 'an ontological free lunch'." (p. 245, a note omitted)

References

Armstrong, D. M. 1997: A World of States of Affairs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Beebee, H. and J. Dodd (eds.) 2005: Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cameron, R. P. 2008: 'Truthmakers and Ontological Commitment'. Philosophical Studies 140, pp. 1-18.

Chalmers, D., D. Manley and R. Wasserman (eds.) 2009: Metametaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Melia, J. 2005: 'Truthmaking without Truthmakers'. In Beebee and Dodd 2005, pp. 67-83.

Schaffer, J. 2007: 'From Nihilism to Monism'. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85, pp. 175-91.

- 2009: 'On What Grounds What'. In Chalmers, Manley and Wasserman 2009, pp. 357-83.

- 2010a: 'Monism: The Priority of the Whole'. The Philosophical Review 119, pp. 31-76.

35. ———. 2014. "On Weak Ground." The Review of Symbolic Logic no. 7:713-744.

Abstract: "Though the study of grounding is still in the early stages, Kit Fine, in "The Pure Logic of Ground", has made a seminal attempt at formalization. Formalization of this sort is supposed to bring clarity and precision to our theorizing, as it has to the study of other metaphysically important phenomena, like modality and vagueness. Unfortunately, as I will argue, Fine ties the formal treatment of grounding to the obscure notion of a weak ground. The obscurity of weak ground, together with its centrality in Fine’s system, threatens to undermine the extent to which this formalization offers clarity and precision. In this paper, I show how to overcome this problem. I describe a system, the logic of strict ground (LSG) and demonstrate its adequacy; I specify a translation scheme for interpreting Fine’s weak grounding claims; I show that the interpretation verifies all of the principles of Fine’s system; and I show that derivability in Fine’s system can be exactly characterized in terms of derivability in LSG. I conclude that Fine’s system is reducible to LSG."

36. ———. 2015. "Better Semantics for the Pure Logic of Ground." Analytic Philosophy no. 56:229-252.

"Kit Fine has offered an exact treatment of these formal features of grounding (Fine, 2012a). He specifies a language in which grounding claims may be expressed, proposes a system of axioms which capture the relevant formal features, offers a semantics which interprets grounding claims expressible in the language, and shows that his axioms are sound and complete for his semantics.

As we shall see, however, there are reasons for dissatisfaction with Fine’s semantics.

(...)

In this paper I show that there is another approach available. I offer a formally specified, model-theoretic semantics for Fine’s language, for which a certain natural axiomatization of the pure logic of ground is sound and complete. The semantics is motivated by ideas already present in the grounding literature, so it offers a plausible candidate for an exact specification of an intended interpretation of grounding claims. I also show how the semantics I offer avoids problems faced by Fine’s semantics." (p. 229)

37. ———. 2017. "Grounding the Unreal." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 95:535-563.

Abstract: "(...) It is tempting to explain this layered structure of dependence and determination among our theories by appeal to a corresponding layered structure of dependence and determination among the entities putatively treated by those theories. In this paper, I argue that we can resist this temptation: we can explain the sense in which, e.g., the biological truths are dependent on and determined by chemical truths without appealing to properly biological or chemical entities. This opens the door to a view on which, though there are more truths than just the purely physical truths, there are no entities, states, or properties other than the purely physical entities, states, and properties. I argue that some familiar strategies to explicate the idea of a layered structure of theories by appeal to reduction, ground, and truthmaking encounter difficulties. I then show how these difficulties point the way to a more satisfactory treatment which appeals to something very close to the notion of ground. Finally, I show how this treatment provides a theoretical setting in which we might fruitfully frame debates about which entities there really are."

38. ———. 2020. "Anti-Skeptical Rejoinders." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 180-193. New York: Routledge.

"The recent groundswell of interest in the theory of grounding has been met in some quarters with a skeptical reaction.There are two kinds of skepticism that should be distinguished. Relatively local skeptical doubts concern the appropriateness of applying grounding to this or that particular theoretical purpose.

(...)

The kind of skepticism that is our focus here is more ambitious. Global skepticism about ground is the view that the attempt to develop a theory of ground is generally and in principle defective, and attempts to apply such a theory will be fruitless.There are several global skeptics in the literature (Daly 2012), (Hofweber 2009: 269–72), (Koslicki 2015), (Thompson 2016a), (Turner 2016), (Wilson 2014).Are their doubts warranted? In this chapter, I review both the reasons that seem to favor global skepticism and the responses to those reasons by defenders of ground. I suspect that the number of published global skeptics is a tiny fraction of the total population of global skeptics. So rather than merely offering a piecemeal enumeration of skeptical arguments and responses in the literature, I will attempt to fit them into a more general scheme."

References

Daly, Chris. Skepticism About Grounding. In Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality, pages 81–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Hofweber,Thomas. Ambitious, Yet Modest, Metaphysics. In David Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, editors, Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, pages 260–79. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Koslicki, Kathrin. The Coarse-Grainedness of Grounding. Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, 9: 306–44, 2015.

Thompson, Naomi. Grounding and Metaphysical Explanation. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 116(3): 395–402, October 2016a.

Turner, Jason. Curbing Enthusiasm About Grounding. In Philosophical Perspectives: Metaphysics, volume 30, pages 366–96. Malden, MA:Wiley, 2016.

Wilson, Jessica M. No Work for a Theory of Grounding. Inquiry, 57(5): 535–79, 2014.

39. Dixon, T. Scott. 2016. "Grounding and Supplementation." Erkenntnis no. 81:375-389.

Abstract: "Partial grounding is often thought to be formally analogous to proper parthood in certain ways. Both relations are typically understood to be asymmetric (and hence irreflexive) and transitive, and as such, are thought to be strict partial orders. But how far does this analogy extend? Proper parthood is often said to obey the weak supplementation principle. There is reason to wonder whether partial grounding, or, more precisely, proper partial grounding, obeys a ground-theoretic ersion of this principle. In what follows, I argue that it does not. The cases that cause problems for the supplementation principle for grounding also serve as counterexamples to another principle, minimality, defended by Paul Audi."

40. ———. 2016. "What Is the Well-Foundedness of Grounding?" Mind no. 125:439-468.

Abstract: "A number of philosophers think that grounding is, in some sense, well-founded.

This thesis, however, is not always articulated precisely, nor is there a consensus in the literature as to how it should be characterized. In what follows, I consider several principles that one might have in mind when asserting that grounding is well-founded, and I argue that one of these principles, which I call ‘full foundations’, best captures the relevant claim. My argument is by the process of elimination. For each of the inadequate principles, I illustrate its inadequacy by showing either that it excludes cases that should not be ruled out by a well-foundedness axiom for grounding, or that it admits cases that should be ruled out."

41. ———. 2018. "Upward Grounding." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 97:48-78.

Abstract: "Realists about universals face a question about grounding. Are things how they are because they instantiate the universals they do? Or do they instantiate those universals because they are how they are? Take Ebenezer Scrooge. You can say that (i) Scrooge is greedy because he instantiates greediness, or you can say that (ii) Scrooge instantiates greediness because he is greedy. I argue that there is reason to prefer the latter to the former. I develop two arguments for the view. I also respond to some concerns one might have about the view defended. I close by showing that analogous views regarding the truth of propositions (that if the proposition that p is true, then it is true because p) and the existence of facts (that if the fact that p exists, then it exists because p) are supported by analogs of one of these arguments."

42. ———. 2020. "Infinite Descent." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 244-258. New York: Routledge.

"Introduction: Once one accepts that certain things metaphysically depend upon or are metaphysically explained by other things, it is natural to begin to wonder whether these chains of dependence or explanation must come to an end.This chapter surveys the work that has been done on this issue—the issue of grounding and infinite descent. I frame the discussion around two questions:

Question 1. What is infinite descent of ground?

Question 2. Is infinite descent of ground possible?

In addressing the second question, I will consider a number of arguments that have been made for and against the possibility of infinite descent of ground.When relevant, I connect the discussion to two important views about the way reality can be structured by grounding: metaphysical foundationalism and metaphysical infinitism. A third such view, metaphysical coherentism, countenances cyclic grounding chains. Due to limitations on space, I will not discuss this view in what follows, though I will have cause to discuss cyclic chains. For further discussion of coherentism, see “Strict Partial Order” (Chapter 17 in this volume)." (p. 244)

43. Donaldson, Thomas. 2016. "The (Metaphysical) Foundations of Arithmetic?" Noûs no. 51:775-801.

"This paper is a thorough discussion of a proposal due independently to Robert Schwartzkopff and Gideon Rosen about what grounds facts involving cardinal numbers. Roughly, the principle is as follows:

For any properties F and G, if the number of things that have the property F is identical to the number of things that have the property G, then this fact is grounded by the fact that the things that have the property F and the things that have the property G can be paired one-to-one.(8)

For obvious reasons, I call this the ‘Schwartzkopff-Rosen Principle’. The principle is a perfect case study: it is precise enough that it can be investigated in detail, but it is no mere toy case.

(...)

"I proceed as follows. I begin in section two by presenting a ‘framework’ for the subsequent discussion—that is, I set out my preferred notation and my initial assumptions. In section three I begin my discussion of the Schwartzkopff-Rosen Principle. In sections four, five, six and seven I refine the principle. In section eight I show that the principle implies that the relation of ‘partial ground’ is not acyclic.

Section nine is my conclusion. In an appendix, I discuss ground and second-order quantification." (pp. 775-776)

(8) Rosen (2010: 123); Schwartzkopff (2011: 362).

References

Rosen, Gideon (2010) ‘Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction,’ in Bob Hale and Aviv Hoffmann (eds.), Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology, pp. 109–136. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Schwartzkopff, Robert (2011) ‘Numbers as Ontologically Dependent Objects: Hume’s Principle Revisited,’ in Grazer Philosophische Studien 82(1):353–373.

44. ———. 2020. "Analiticity." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 288-299. New York: Routledge.

"In this chapter, I will begin to explore the question of what happens if we take seriously both the notion of analyticity and the notion of ground. I will do this by revisiting the old idea that analytic truths are “true in virtue of meaning”. One warning is necessary before we start. I will indulge in the convenient but questionable practice of assuming that ground is a relation among facts. Nothing of consequence hangs on this, however, so readers who are wary of this way of thinking about grounding can make suitable adjustments as they read. See the Introduction to this volume for discussion." (p. 289)

45. Dorsey, Jonathan Eric. 2016. "On the Grounding-Reduction Link." American Philosophical Quarterly no. 53:411-422.

Abstract: "The claim that reduction entails grounding (but not vice versa)---called "the grounding-reduction link"-is potentially very important but not clearly correct. After working through a fruitful debate between Gideon Rosen (who maintains the link) and Paul Audi (who maintains its impossibility), I distinguish between what I call "strict" and "broad" reduction. Strict reduction is incompatible with grounding, but broad reduction is not. Thus the link is possible, at least for broad reduction. However, neither strict nor broad reduction entails grounding. Ultimately, there may be a link between grounding and some highly qualified form of reduction. However, the philosophical traction that one might hope to gain for grounding via such a link is considerably diminished if not outright lost."

References

Paul Audi, "Grounding: Toward a Theory of the In-Virtue-of Relation," Journal of Philosophy, vol. 109, no. 12 (2012), pp. 685-711.

Gideon Rosen, "Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction," in Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology, ed. Bob Hale and Aviv Hoffman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 109-135.

46. Dumsday, Travis. 2014. "E. J. Lowe on the Unity Problem." Studia Philosophica Estonica no. 7:195-218.

Abstract: "Some properties are connected in a perspicuous and unproblematic way. For instance, the possession of shape clearly entails the possession of size (and vice versa).

In other cases the connection is not so perspicuous. For instance, assuming that the precise rest mass and negative charge of an electron are both among its fundamental intrinsic properties, what links them, given that those properties are inherently separable? (Their separability is apparent from the fact that other kinds of particle have the same mass as an electron but a different charge, or the same charge but a different mass.) Given the inherent separability of those properties, what explains their conjunction in this case? Oderberg (2007, 2011) calls this the “unity problem”, and attempts to solve it have issued from assorted schools of thought within both substance ontology and the metaphysics of natural kinds. One of the more significant of these solutions is proffered by E.J. Lowe as part of his four-category ontology.

Here I explicate his solution, raise a possible objection, and suggest a reply."

References

Oderberg, D. (2007). Real Essentialism, Routledge, London.

Oderberg, D. (2011). Essence and properties, Erkenntnis 75: 85-111.

47. Duncan, Michael, Miller, Kristie, and Norton, James. 2017. "Is Grounding a Hyperintensional Phenomenon?" Analytic Philosophy no. 58:297-329.

"Two topics that have received a lot of attention in recent years are hyperintensionality and grounding. In this paper, we explore the relation between them. It is often said that grounding is hyperintensional; but there are a number of ways to understand this claim.

We argue that whether it is true depends both on what view of grounding one endorses and also on what one means by ‘hyperintensional’." (p. 297)

48. Elqayam, Shira. 2012. "Grounded rationality: Descriptivism in epistemic context." Synthese no. 189:39-49.

Abstract: "ormativism, the approach that judges human rationality by comparison against normative standards, has recently come under intensive criticism as unsuitable for psychological enquiry, and it has been suggested that it should be replaced with a descriptivist paradigm. My goal in this paper is to outline and defend a meta-theoretical framework of such a paradigm, grounded rationality, based on the related principles of descriptivism and (moderate) epistemic relativism. Bounded rationality takes into account universal biological and cognitive limitations on human rationality. Grounded rationality accepts universal constraints but adds cognitive variability: Within-individual variability (dual processing), and individual as well as cultural differences. I discuss the implications of grounded rationality to dual processing, proposing that investing limited cognitive resources in analytic processing might be less instrumentally rational for individuals with low cognitive ability."

49. Emery, Nina. 2018. "Laws and Their Instances." Philosophical Studies no. 176:1535-1561.

Abstract: "Abstract I present an argument for the view that laws ground their instances. I thenoutline two important consequences that follow if we accept the conclusion of this argument. First, the claim that laws ground their instances threatens to undermine a prominent recent attempt to make sense of the explanatory power of Humean laws by distinguishing between metaphysical and scientific explanation. And second, the claim that laws ground their instances gives rise to a novel argument against the view that grounding relations are metaphysically necessary."

50. ———. 2020. "Laws of Nature." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 437-448. New York: Routledge.

"Here is a plan for what follows. In Section 1, I will set out some groundwork with respect to the notion of laws of nature. I will then turn to two central questions in the metaphysics of laws: what (if anything) grounds the laws (Section 2) and what (if anything) the laws ground (Section 3).To keep things (relatively) simple, I will focus on these questions as they apply to deterministic laws that show up in fundamental physics. In Section 4, I say a bit about how the discussion might extend to laws that are not deterministic." (p. 437)

51. Epstein, Brian. 2015. The Ant Trap. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 6: Grounding and Anchoring, pp. 74-87.

"Grounding is most straightforwardly understood as a relation between facts. And in investigating social metaphysics, we look for the reasons for a wide variety of social facts to be the case. This is what a constitutive rule should be telling us. Sometimes we set up grounding conditions for a particular fact.

For instance, we set up grounding conditions for the existence of one particular boundary around a village. More typically, we set up general conditions for grounding some kind of social fact." (p. 76)

52. Fine, Kit. 1994. "Essence and Modality." Philosophical Perspectives no. 8:1-16.

Reprinted in The Philosopher’s Annual for 1994, volume 16, (edited by Patrick Grim, Gary Mar, Peter Williams), Stanford: CSLI 1996 and in J. Kim, D. Korman, E. Sosa (eds.), Metaphysics: An Anthology, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell 2011 (second edition).

"The concept of essence has played an important role in the history and development of philosophy; and in no branch of the discipline is its importance more manifest than in metaphysics.

Its significance for metaphysics is perhaps attributable to two main sources. In the first place, the concept may be used to characterize what the subject, or at least part of it, is about.

For one of the central concerns of metaphysics is with the identity of things, with what they are.

But the metaphysician is not interested in every property of the objects under consideration. In asking 'What is a person?', for example, he does not want to be told that every person has a deep desire to be loved, even if this is in fact the case.

What then distinguishes the properties of interest to him? What is it about a property which makes it bear, in the metaphysically significant sense of the phrase, on what an object is?

It is in answer to this question that appeal is naturally made to the concept of essence. For what appears to distinguish the intended properties is that they are essential to their bearers." (p. 1)

(...)

"It is my aim in this paper to show that the contemporary assimilation of essence to modality is fundamentally misguided and that, as a consequence, the corresponding conception of metaphysics should be given up. It is not my view that the modal account fails to capture anything which might reasonably be called a concept of essence. My point, rather, is that the notion of essence which is of central importance to the metaphysics of identity is not to be understood in modal terms or even to be regarded as extensionally equivalent to a modal notion. The one notion is, if I am right, a highly refined version of the other; it is like a sieve which performs a similar function but with a much finer mesh.

I shall also argue that the traditional assimilation of essence to definition is better suited to the task of explaining what essence is. It may not provide us with an analysis of the concept, but it does provide us with a good model of how the concept works. Thus my overall position is the reverse of the usual one. It sees real definition rather than de re modality as central to our understanding of the concept." (p. 3)

53. ———. 1995. "Senses of Essence." In Modality, Morality and Belief. Essays in Honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus, edited by Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, 53-73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"One may distinguish between tbe essential and accidental properties of an object. A property of an object is essential if it must have the property to be what it is; otherwise the property is accidental.

But what exactly is meant by this account? It has been common to give a further explanation in modal terms. A property is taken to be essential when it is necessary that the object have the property or, alternatively, when it is necessary that it have tbe property if it exist. For reasons that I have already given in my paper “Essence and Modality,’’ I doubt whether this or any other modal explanation of the notion can succeed. Indeed, I doubt whether there exists any explanation of the notion in fundamentally different terms. But this is not to deny the possibility of further clarification; and it is the aim of the present paper to provide it.

What I shall do is to distinguish some of the closely related ways in which the notion may be understood. This will be important for getting clearer both on which claims can be made with its help and on which concepts can be defined with its help. In particular, we shall see that several different senses of ontological dependence correspond to the different senses of essence. The task is also important for the purpose of developing a logic of essentialist reasoning; for most of the different senses of essence that we distinguish will make a difference to the resulting logic. My main concern in this paper has been with making the distinctions, and not with drawing out their implications; but I hope it is clear from the examples what some of these implications are." (p. 53)

54. ———. 2001. "The Question of Realism." Philosopher's Imprint no. 1:1-30.

Reprinted in Andrea Bottani, Massimiliano Carrara, Pierdaniele Giaretta (eds.), Individuals, Essence and Identity. Themes of Analytic Metaphysics, Dordrecht: Kluwer 2002, pp. 3-48.

"My aim in this paper is to help lay the conceptual and methodological foundations for the study of realism. I come to two main conclusions: first, that there is a primitive metaphysical concept of reality, one that cannot be understood in fundamentally different terms; and second, that questions of what is real are to be settled upon the basis of considerations of ground. The two conclusions are somewhat in tension with one another, for the lack of a definition of the concept of reality would appear to stand in the way of developing a sound methodology for determining its application; and one of my main concerns has been to show how the tension between the two might be resolved.

The paper is in two main parts. In the first, I point to the difficulties in making out a metaphysical conception of reality.

I begin by distinguishing this conception from the ordinary conception of reality (§ 1) and then show how the two leading contenders for the metaphysical conception -- the factual and the irreducible-both appear to resist formulation in other terms. This leads to the quietist challenge, that questions of realism are either meaningless or pointless (§ 4); and the second part of the paper (§§ 5-10) is largely devoted to showing how this challenge might be met. I begin by introducing the notion of ground (§ 5) and then show how it can be used as a basis for resolving questions both of factuality (§§ 6-7) and of irreducibility (§§ 8-9). I conclude with some remarks on the essential unity of these two questions and of the means by which they are to be answered (§ 10)." (pp. 3-4)

55. ———. 2009. "The Question of Ontology." In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, edited by Chalmers, David J., Manley, David and Wassermann, Ryan, 157-177. New York: Oxford University Press.

"There are a number of difficulties with the standard quantificational view. They are for the most part familiar but it will be worth spelling them out, if only to make clear how far removed our understanding of the ontological question is from our understanding of their quantificational counterparts. Philosophers may have learned to live with the disconnect between the two, but their tolerance of the situation should not lull us into thinking that it is tolerable." (p. 138)

"This account of our method for settling ontological dispute requires that we have a grasp not only of an absolute conception of reality, of there being nothing more than ..., but also of a relative conception, of there being nothing more to ... than ..., since it is through our assessment of the relative claims that we attempt to adjudicate the plausibility of the absolute claims. Many philosophers seem to have supposed that our having a good working grasp of such notions depends upon our being able to define them in other terms, so that questions of metaphysics or ontology thereby become questions of semantics or epistemology or total science. I consider this to be a serious methodological error: upon careful reflection we can see that our intuitive grasp of these notions is a sufficient guide in itself to their proper employment; and the attempt to define these notions in other terms has served merely to distort our understanding of the metaphysical questions and of the methods by which they are to be resolved." (p. 176)

56. ———. 2010. "Some Puzzles of Ground." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 51:97-118.

"In recent years there has been a growing interest in the concept of ground—of one thing holding in virtue of another, and, in developing an account of ground, a number of philosophers have laid down principles which they regard as unquestionably true of the concept. (1) The purpose of this note is to show that these principles are in conflict with seemingly impeccable principles of logic. Thus a choice must be made; either one or more of the metaphysical principles or one or more of the logical principles should be given up.

Some philosophers—and especially those already unsympathetic to ground—may think that the conflict reveals some underlying defect in the concept. For if acceptance of the concept of ground has such untoward consequences, then this can only be because the concept was no good in the first place. My own view—which I suggest toward the end of the paper—is quite different. It is not that considerations of ground should be ignored or even that the principles of ground should be given up in the light of their conflict with the principles of logic. Rather we need to achieve some kind of reflective equilibrium between the two sets of principles, one that does justice both to our logical intuitions and to our need for some account of their ground. Thus the conflict, far from serving to undermine the concept of ground, serves to show how important it is to arriving at a satisfactory view of what in logic, as in other areas of thought, can properly be taken to hold.

The puzzle to which the conflict of principles gives rise bears some resemblance to the paradoxes of self-reference. It is not itself a paradox of self-reference: the puzzle, on the one side, makes no direct use of self-reference; the paradox, on the other side, makes no direct appeal to the notion of ground. But considerations of ground are often used to motivate certain solutions to the paradoxes, and the puzzle makes clear the reasoning behind these considerations and brings out the critical role played by the notion of ground. (2)" (pp. 97-98)

(1) They include Audi [1], Batchelor [2], Correia [3], Correia [4], Rosen [10], Schneider [11], and Schneider [12].

(2) I especially have in mind the kind of solution to the semantic paradoxes to be found in Kripke [8].

References

[1] Audi, P., “Grounding,” forthcoming, 2010. [Paul R. Audi, 'Grounding: Toward a Theory of the In-Virtue-Of Relation', The Journal of Philosophy 109, 2012, pp. 685-711.]

[2] Batchelor, R., “Grounds and consequences,” Grazer Philosophische Studien, vol. 80 (2010), pp. 65–77.

[3] Correia, F., Existential Dependence and Cognate Notions, Philosophia Verlag GmbH, München, 2005.

[4] Correia, F., “Grounding and truth-functions,” forthcoming in Logique et Analyse [211 (2010), 251–279]

[8] Kripke, S., “Outline of a theory of truth,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 72 (1975), pp. 690–71.

[10] Rosen, G., “Metaphysical dependence: Grounding and reduction,” pp. 109–36 in Modality: Metaphysics, Logic and Epistemology, edited by B. Hale and A. Hoffman, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010.

[11] Schneider, B., “Truth-functionality,” Review of Symbolic Logic, vol. 1 (2008), pp. 64–72.

[12] Schneider, B., “A logic of ‘because’,” in progress, 2010.

57. ———. 2012. "Guide to Ground." In Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality edited by Correia, Fabrice and Schnieder, Benjamin, 37-80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"A number of philosophers have recently become receptive to the idea that, in addition to scientific or causal explanation, there may be a distinctive kind of metaphysical explanation, in which explanans and explanandum are connected, not through some sort of causal mechanism, but through some constitutive form of determination. I myself have long been sympathetic to this idea of constitutive determination or “ontological ground”; and it is the aim of the present chapter to help put the idea on a firmer footing – to explain how it is to be understood, how it relates to other ideas, and how it might be of use in philosophy. (1)" (p. 37)

(1) A number of other philosophers (they include Audi [forthcoming], Batchelor [2010], Schaffer [2009b], Correia [2005, 2010], Raven [2009], Rosen [2010], Schnieder [2011]) have done related work in defense of the notion; and I have not attempted to make a detailed comparison between their ideas and my own.

I am grateful to the participants at the Boulder conference on dependence and to Neil Tennant for many helpful comments on an earlier draft of the chapter. I should add that, for reasons of space, some of the material in the chapter originally submitted to the volume had been abridged.

References

Audi, P. forthcoming. Grounding: Toward a Theory of the In-Virtue-Of Relation’, Journal of Philosophy [109, 2012, pp. 685-711.]

Batchelor, R. 2010. ‘Grounds and Consequences’, Grazer Philosophische Studien 80: 65–77

Correia, F. 2005. Existential Dependence and Cognate Notions. Munich: Philosophia Verlag

___ 2010. ‘Grounding and Truth-Functions’, Logique et Analyse 53: 251–79

Raven M. 2009. Ontology, From a Fundamentalist Point of View. Ph.D., New York University

Rosen, G. 2010. ‘Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction’, in Hale and Hoffman 2010, (eds.), 2010. Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press 109–36

Schaffer, J. 2009b. ‘On What Grounds What’, in Chalmers, Manley, and Wasserman 2009 (eds.), 2009. Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Oxford University Press 347–83

Schnieder, B. 2011. ‘A Logic for “Because”’, The Review of Symbolic Logic 4: 445–65

58. ———. 2012. "The Pure Logic of Ground." The Review of Symbolic Logic no. 5:1-25.

"Ground is the relation of one truth holding in virtue of others. This relation is like that of consequence in that a necessary connection must hold between the relata if the relation is to obtain but it differs from consequence in so far as it required that there should also be an explanatory connection between the relata. The grounds must account for what is grounded. Thus even though P is a consequence of P & P, P & P is not a ground for P, since it does not account for the truth of P.

It is the aim of this paper to develop a semantics and proof theory for the pure logic of ground. The pure logic of ground stands to ground as Gentzen’s structural rules stand to consequence. One prescinds from the internal structure of the propositions under consideration and simply asks what follows from what in virtue of the formal features of the underlying relation. Thus the claim that ground is transitive, that if P is a ground for Q and Q a ground for R then P should be a ground for R, is plausibly regarded as part of the pure logic of ground; but the claim that P is a ground for P & P will be part of the applied as opposed to the pure logic of ground, since it turns on the logical properties of &." (p. 1)

59. ———. 2012. "The Essential Glossary of Ground."1.

Available at https://www.academia.edu/27080402

"ground - a philosophical foodstuff, considered by some to be the elixir of life and by others to be

a deadly poison." (p. 1)

60. ———. 2015. "Unified Foundations for Essence and Ground." Journal of the American Philosophical Association no. 1:296-315.

"There are, I believe, two different kinds of explanation or determination to be found in metaphysics - one of identity, or of what something is, and the other of truth, or of why something is so. One may explain what singleton Socrates is, for example, by saying that it is the set whose sole member is Socrates and one may explain why, or that in virtue of which, singleton Socrates exists by appeal to the existence of Socrates. One might talk, in connection with the first, of essence, of what singleton Socrates essentially is and, in connection with the second, of ground, of what grounds the existence of singleton Socrates. (1)

Of course, explanations of identity and of truth also occur outside of metaphysics, but what is characteristic of their occurrence within metaphysics is the especially tight connection between explanandum and explanans. Being a set whose sole member is Socrates is somehow constitutive of what Socrates is; and Socrates’ existing is somehow constitutive of the existence of singleton Socrates. It is perhaps hard to say in general what constitutes a constitutive explanation but it is at least required, in any case of a constitutive explanation, that there should be metaphysically necessary connection between explanandum and explanans. Given that singleton Socrates is essentially a set whose sole member is Socrates, then it is metaphysically necessary that the set is one whose sole member is Socrates; and given that Socrates existence grounds the existence of singleton Socrates, it will be metaphysically necessary if Socrates exists that his singleton exists." (p. 296)

(...)

"My present view is that the relationship between the two kinds of explanation is much closer than I had originally taken it to be. The decisive step towards achieving the desired rapprochement is to see both kinds of explanation as having a generic, as well as a specific, bearing on the objects with which they deal; they must be allowed to have application to an arbitrary individual of a given kind and not just to specific individuals of that kind. Once this step is taken, the initial disparities between essence and ground disappear and we are able to provide a unified and uniform account of the two notions. I had previously referred to essence and ground as the pillars upon which the edifice of metaphysics rests (Fine [2012], p. 80], but we can now see more clearly how the two notions complement one another in providing support for the very same structure." (p. 297)

(1) I should like to thank the members of audiences at Birmingham, Oxford and Oslo for many helpful comments. The present paper is a companion to my paper ‘Identity Criteria and Ground’ and the reader may find it helpful, if not essential, to have the other paper at hand. I should note that Correia [2014] attempts to provide unified foundations, of a very different sort, in terms of an underlying notion of factual identity.

There has been a growing literature on essence and ground in the recent philosophical literature. My own work on essence dates back to Fine [1994]; and a useful reference on ground is the anthology of Correia & Schnieder [2012].

References

Correia F. & Schnieder B. (eds.), [2012] ‘Metaphysical Grounding’, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Correia F. [2014] ‘Identity, Essence and Ground’, slides for a talk.

Fine K., [1994] ‘Essence and Modality’, in Philosophical Perspectives 8 (ed. J. Tomberlin) as the Nous Casteneda Memorial Lecture, pp. 1-16, (1994); reprinted in ‘The Philosopher’s Annual' for 1994, volume 16, (ed. P. Grim), Stanford: CSLI; and reprinted in ‘Metaphysics: An Anthology’ (2nd edition), eds. J. Kim, D. Korman, E. Sosa, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell (2011).

Fine K., [2012] ‘Guide to Ground’ in ‘Metaphysical Grounding’ (eds. B. Schnieder & F. Correia), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 8-25 pp.; reprinted online in ‘Philosophers Annual’ for 2012 (eds. P. Grim, C. Armstrong, P. Shirreff, N-H Stear).

Fine K., [2014] ‘Identity Criteria and Ground’, to appear in Philosophical Studies. [vol. 173, 2016, pp. 1-19]

61. ———. 2016. "Identity Criteria and Ground." Philosophical Studies no. 173:1-19.

"Philosophers often look for criteria of identity or think they are not to be found. They may ask for a criterion of identity for sets, for example, or for propositions, or for persons across time, or for individuals across possible worlds. And in response to such requests, they have said such things as: a criterion of identity for sets is their having the same members; or a criterion of identity for persons across time is their psychological continuity. (1)

But what are these philosophers asking for when they ask for such criteria? I shall argue that the usual way of construing these questions is seriously misguided. I shall also propose an alternative - and, I hope, preferable - way of construing these questions and shall briefly indicate its significance for our more general understanding of metaphysical explanation. In what follows, I shall often use the criteria of identity for sets and for persons as examples. But it is important to bear in mind that they are just that, examples, and that the points I make concerning them are meant to apply, across the board, to all identity criteria." (p. 1)

(1) 1I should like to thank Ted Sider, Fatema Amijee and Martin Glazier for their very helpful written comments and members of the audiences at Austin, Birmingham, CUNY, Oberlin, Oxford and Oslo for many helpful oral comments.

62. ———. 2017. "A Theory of Truthmaker Content II: Subject-matter, Common Content, Remainder and Ground." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 46:675-702.

"We continue with the development of the theory of truthmaker content begun in part I, dealing with such ‘non-standard’ topics as subject matter, common content, logical remainder and ground. This is by no means an exhaustive list of topics that might have been considered but it does provide an indication of the nature and scope of the theory. As before, the paper is divided into an informal exposition and a technical addendum. Both can be read independently of the other but it would be helpful, in either case, to have the first part of the paper at hand." (p. 675)

63. ———. 2020. "Semantics." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 501-509. New York: Routledge.

"It has often been supposed that there need only be a modal connection between a truth-maker and the sentence it makes true or that the truth-maker need only be partially relevant to the sentence it makes true, so that the fact that it is raining and windy, for example, would then be a truth-maker for the sentence ‘it is raining or snowing’. It is therefore important to note that the notion of ground gives rise to a quite distinctive notion of truth-making, which requires not merely a modal connection but also a very strong relevant connection.

Truth-making has been used for two quite distinct ends, one metaphysical and the other semantical. By attempting to discern the truth-makers of sentences, it has been thought that we might achieve a better understanding of the world via an understanding of what makes the sentences true and also that we might achieve a better understanding of language via an understanding of how the sentences are made true." (p. 502, note omitted)

64. Fine, Kit, and de Rosseet, Louis. 2021. "A Semantics for the Impure Logic of Ground."

Avalaible at https://www.uvm.edu/~lderosse/impure.pdf

"This paper establishes a sound and complete semantics for the impure logic of ground. Fine [2012a] sets out a system for the pure logic of ground, one in which the formulas between which ground-theoretic claims hold have no internal logical complexity; and it provides a sound and complete semantics for the system.

Fine [2012b, §§6-8] sets out a system for an impure logic of ground, one that extends the rules of the original pure system with rules for the truth-functional connectives, the first-order quantiers, and λ-abstraction. However, it does not provide a semantics for this system. The present paper partly fills this lacuna by providing a sound and complete semantics for a system GG containing the truth-functional operators that is closely related to the truth-functional part of the system of [Fine, 2012b].(1)" (p. 1)

(1) The main differences between the two systems are that we now only allow finitely many formulas to occur to the left of the ground-theoretic operator and that we have added the Irreversibility Rule, which should have been part of the original system.

References

K. Fine. Guide to Ground. In Benjamin Schnieder and Fabrice Correia, editors, Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality, pages 37-80. Cambridge University Press, 2012b. reprinted online in `Philosophers Annual' for 2012 (eds. P. Grim, C. Armstrong, P. Shirre, N-H Stear).

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on metaphysical grounding. Third part: Fis-Lan

Bibliography

1. Fisher, David, Hong, Hao, and Perrine, Timothy. 2021. "A Challenge to the New Metaphysics: deRosset, Priority, and Explanation." Synthese no. 198:6403-6433.

Abstract: "Priority Theory is an increasingly popular view in metaphysics. By seeing metaphysical questions as primarily concerned with what explains what, instead of merely what exists, it promises not only an interesting approach to traditional metaphysical issues but also the resolution of some outstanding disputes. In a recent paper, Louis deRosset argues that Priority Theory isn’t up to the task: Priority Theory is committed to there being explanations that violate a formal constraint on any adequate explanation.

This paper critically examines deRosset’s challenge to Priority Theory. We argue that deRosset’s challenge ultimately fails: his proposed constraint on explanation is neither well-motivated nor a general constraint. Nonetheless, lurking behind his criticism is a deep problem for prominent ways of developing Priority Theory, a problem which we develop."

2. Folde, Christian. 2015. "Grounding Interpretation." British Journal of Aesthetics no. 55:361-374.

Abstract: "In this paper I examine the relationship between interpreting a fiction and specifying its content.

The former plays a major role in literary studies; the latter is of central concern in the philosophical debate on truth in fiction. After elucidating these activities, I argue that they do not coincide but have interesting interdependencies. In particular, I argue that correct interpretations are metaphysically grounded in fictional content. I discuss this claim in detail and show why it is not in tension with the evidential claim that correct interpretations give us epistemic access to fictional content, which I also endorse."

3. Forrai, Gábor. 2011. "Grounding Concepts: The Problem of Composition." Philosophia no. 39:721-731.

Abstract: "In a recent book C.S. Jenkins proposes a theory of arithmetical knowledge which reconciles realism about arithmetic with the a priori character of our knowledge of it. Her basic idea is that arithmetical concepts are grounded in experience and it is through experience that they are connected to reality. I argue that the account fails because Jenkins’s central concept, the concept for grounding, is inadequate. Grounding as she defines it does not suffice for realism, and by revising the definition we would abandon the idea that grounding is experiential. Her account falls prey to a problem of which Locke, whom she regards as a source of inspiration was aware and which he avoided by choosing anti-realism about mathematics."

References

Jenkins, C. S. (2008). Grounding concepts: An empirical basis for arithmetical knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

4. Francez, Nissim. 2021. "Logical Grounding: The Case of “if‐then‐else”." Theoria no. 87:1175-1192.

Abstract: "The paper proposes grounding the ternary connective “if … then … else” (classically interpreted), thus far not considered in the logical grounding literature. In doing so, a new kind of plural grounding, called collective immediate grounding, is proposed as more adequate than the traditional complete immediate grounding in avoiding redundancy. The approach is proof-theoretic."

5. Fritz, Peter. 2021. "Ground and Grain." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

First online 11 August 2021.

"Current views of metaphysical ground suggest that a true conjunction is immediately grounded in its conjuncts, and only its conjuncts. Similar principles are suggested for disjunction and universal quantification. Here, it is shown that these principles are jointly inconsistent: They require that there is a distinct truth for any plurality of truths. By a variant of Cantor’s Theorem, such a fine-grained individuation of truths is inconsistent. This shows that the notion of grounding is either not in good standing, or that natural assumptions about it need to be revised."

6. Genco, Francesco A., Poggiolesi, Francesca, and Rossi, Lorenzo. 2021. "Grounding, Quantifiers, and Paradoxes." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 50:1417-1448.

Abstract: "The notion of grounding is usually conceived as an objective and explanatory relation. It connects two relata if one—the ground—determines or explains the other—the consequence. In the contemporary literature on grounding, much effort has been devoted to logically characterize the formal aspects of grounding, but a major hard problem remains: defining suitable grounding principles for universal and existential formulae. Indeed, several grounding principles for quantified formulae have been proposed, but all of them are exposed to paradoxes in some very natural contexts of application. We introduce in this paper a first-order formal system that captures the notion of grounding and avoids the paradoxes in a novel and nontrivial way. The system we present formally develops Bolzano’s ideas on grounding by employing Hilbert’s ε-terms and an adapted version of Fine’s theory of arbitrary objects."

7. Giannini, Giacomo, and Stephen, Mumford. 2021. "Formal Causes for Powers Theorists." In Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation, edited by Jansen, Ludger and Sandstad, Petter, 87-105. New York: Routledge.

"We have examined three degrees of involvement between powers and formal explanations involving essences. We have done this without taking a stance on the precise nature of the essence-operator, and therefore on what it is to be constitutively essential. This leaves an unsatisfactory gap in our treatment of the topic: those formal explanations appealing only to constitutive essences seem to have a much weaker link with powers. This leaves open the possibility of a fourth degree of essential involvement: that the essence-operator could be analysed or reduced to the basic ideology of powers metaphysics (be it Vetter's POT operator, or some primitive 'directedness' relation). In other words, that constitutive essence itself could be reduced to some feature of powers. This would establish the strongest possible link between formal explanations and powers. We are skeptical that this can be done. We will not, however, attempt to discuss it: taking on the debate about the best understanding of constitutive essence goes beyond the scope of the paper, and beyond our powers at the moment. So, in this paper, we settle for a modest conclusion: we are content to show that an important subset of formal explanations, those involving propria, can be grounded in a metaphysics of powers, without showing that all of them do, nor that powers are uniquely qualified to do so." (Conclusion, p. 102)

References

Vetter, B. (2015) Potentiality: From Dispositions to Modality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

8. Giannotti, Joaquim, and Bianchi, Silvia. 2021. "Grounding Ontic Structuralism." Synthese no. 199:5205-5223.

Abstract: "A respectable assessment of priority-based ontic structuralism demands an elucidation of its metaphysical backbone. Here we focus on two theses that stand in need of clarification: (1) the Fundamentality Thesis states that structures are fundamental, and (2) the Priority Thesis states that these structures are prior to putative fundamental objects, if these exist. Candidate notions to illuminate (1) and (2) such as supervenience and ontological dependence failed at this task. Our purpose is to show that grounding is the best competitor to articulate (1) and (2), and regiment such theses in a desirable unified way. Our strategy is two-fold. First, we make the case that grounding does better than ontological dependence and supervenience. Second, we show that the distinction between partial and full grounds permits us to respond to an objection raised by Kerry McKenzie against the proposal of interpreting priority-based Ontic Structuralism in the idiom of metaphysical determination. Our conclusion is that priority ontic structuralists have compelling reasons for adopting a grounding-based approach."

9. Gillett, Carl. 2016. "The Metaphysics of Nature, Science, and the Rules of Engagement." In Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground, edited by Aizawa, Ken and Gillett, Carl, 205-247. London: Palgrave-Macmillan.

"I look at prominent approaches to vertical relations from three different areas of philosophy that are increasingly used to provide accounts

of scientific composition. In section 1.1, I provide a brief overview of work in analytic metaphysics on “Grounding”; in section 1.2, I outline what I term “neo-Causal” treatments from philosophy of science of “constitutive” relations and explanations; and, in section 1.3, I survey standard “functionalist” frameworks from the philosophy of mind. Although differing in various ways, I suggest all these views, when considered as treatments of scientific composition, are Unengaged to varying degrees because each of these positions does not construct its account of scientific composition through the detailed examination of compositional explanations.

How then are these various views constructed? I show that work in all of these areas actually pursues the Appropriational strategy: each account appropriates machinery developed for other phenomena." (p. 211)

10. Glazier, Martin. 2017. "Essentialist Explanation." Philosophical Studies no. 174:2871-2889.

Abstract: "Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in metaphysical explanation, and philosophers have fixed on the notion of ground as the conceptual tool with which such explanation should be investigated. I will argue that this focus on ground is myopic and that some metaphysical explanations that involve the essences of things cannot be understood in terms of ground. Such ‘essentialist’ explanation is of interest, not only for its ubiquity in philosophy, but for its being in a sense an ultimate form of explanation. I give an account of the sense in which such explanation is ultimate and support it by defending what I call the inessentiality of essence. I close by suggesting that this principle is the key to understanding why essentialist explanations can seem so satisfying."

11. ———. 2020. "Explanation." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 121-132. New York: Routledge.

"Metaphysical ground, like other topics in philosophy, is the subject of intense disagreement. What is it? What principles govern it? How can we know anything about it? Controversy surrounds these and other questions about ground. But if there is one uncontroversial claim in this area, it is that ground is deeply linked with a certain form of explanation, what we will call grounding explanation.This link and this form of explanation are the subject of this chapter."

(...)

"This chapter surveys the philosophical literature on grounding explanation and its connection to metaphysical ground. I begin by discussing explanation in general (§1) before turning to grounding explanation in particular (§2). I then take up the question of whether and how this form of explanation relates to reality (§3). I turn finally to ground (§4)." (p. 121)

12. ———. 2021. "The Difference Between Epistemic and Metaphysical Necessity." Synthese no. 198:1409-1424.

Abstract: "Philosophers have observed that metaphysical necessity appears to be a true or real or genuine form of necessity while epistemic necessity does not. Similarly, natural necessity appears genuine while deontic necessity does not. But what is it for a form of necessity to be genuine? I defend an account of genuine necessity in explanatory terms. The genuine forms of necessity, I argue, are those that provide what I call necessitarian explanation. I discuss the relationship of necessitarian explanation to ground."

13. Goff, Philip. 2019. "Grounding, Analysis, and Russellian Monism." In The Knowledge Argument, edited by Coleman, Sam, 198-222. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Mary in her black and white room knows all that physical science can teach us about the physical facts involved in colour experience. But it does not follow that she knows everything there is to know about these facts. The Russellian monist exploits this gap to defend a form of physicalism – in a very broad sense of that word. Unfortunately, recent developments in the grounding literature cast doubt on that strategy, or so I will argue." (p. 198)

14. Grajner, Martin. 2021. "Grounding, Metaphysical Laws, and Structure." Analytic Philosophy no. 62:376-395.

Abstract: According to the deductive-nomological account of ground, a certain fact A grounds another fact B in case the laws of metaphysics determine the existence of B on the basis of the existence of A. Accounts of grounding of this particular variety have already been developed in the literature.

My aim in this paper is to sketch a new version of this account.

My preferred account offers two main improvements over extant accounts. First, the present account is able to deal with necessitarian as well as non-necessitarian cases of grounding by acknowledging the existence of two types of metaphysical laws. I will argue that we should assume that metaphysical laws come in the necessitarian as well as in the non-necessitarian variety—closely paralleling the distinction between strict and non-strict laws made in the philosophy of science. The second main improvement of the present account is that it can provide an explanation of why metaphysical laws have a direction built into them. I will argue that we should characterize metaphysical laws with the help of Theodore Sider's notion of structure, which is a descendent of David Lewis's notion of naturalness. According to the account of metaphysical laws developed in this paper, metaphysical laws express in their antecedents either perfectly structural truths or more structural truths than in their consequents.

Since on Sider's account structural features of reality are fundamental features of reality, the account explains the direction built into metaphysical laws."

15. Greco, Daniel. 2018. "Explanation, Idealism, and Design." In Idealism: New Essays in Metaphysics, edited by Goldschmidt, Tyron and Pearce, Kenneth L., 231-245. New York: Oxford University Press.

"My aim in this essay is twofold. First, following up a common suggestion in the recent literature,(1) I’ll show how we can formulate versions of physicalism, dualism, and idealism as theses about grounding, or metaphysical explanation, rather than as more straightforwardly ontological theses concerning what exists. Second, I’ll argue that this reformulation provides a helpful lens through which to look at arguments in the philosophy of religion. In particular, traditional versions of theism are naturally understood as versions of idealism, once idealism is understood as a thesis about grounding." (p. 231)

(1) See, e.g., Fine (2001), Schaffer (2009), Bennett (2011a), Dasgupta (2014).

References

Bennett, Karen. 2011a. “By Our Bootstraps.” Philosophical Perspectives 25: 27–41.

Dasgupta, Shamik. 2014. “The Possibility of Physicalism.” Journal of Philosophy 111: 557–92.

Fine, Kit. 2001. “The Question of Realism.” Philosophers’ Imprint 1: 1–30.

Schaffer, Jonathan. 2009. “On What Grounds What.” In David J. Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, eds. Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 347–83.

16. Griffith, Aaron M. 2014. "Truthmaking and Grounding." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 57:196-215.

Abstract: "This paper is concerned with the relation between two important metaphysical notions, ‘truthmaking’ and ‘grounding.’ I begin by considering various ways in which truthmaking could be explicated in terms of grounding, noting both strengths and weaknesses of these analyses. I go on to articulate a problem for any attempt to analyze truthmaking in terms of a generic and primitive notion of grounding based on differences we find among examples of grounding. Finally, I outline a more complex view of how truthmaking and grounding could relate. On the view explored, truthmaking is a species of grounding differentiated from other species of grounding by the unique form of dependence it involves."

17. ———. 2018. "Social Construction and Grounding." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 97:393-409.

Abstract: "The aim of this paper is to bring recent work on metaphysical grounding to bear on the phenomenon of social construction. It is argued that grounding can be used to analyze social construction and that the grounding framework is helpful for articulating various claims and commitments of social constructionists, especially about social identities, e.g., gender and race. The paper also responds to a number of objections that have been (or could be) leveled against the application of grounding to social construction from Elizabeth Barnes (2014), Mari Mikkola (2015), and Jessica Wilson (2014)."

References

Barnes, E. “Going Beyond the Fundamental: Feminism in Contemporary Metaphysics.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 114:3, pt. 3 (2014): 335–51.

Mikkola, M. “Doing Ontology and Doing Justice: What Feminist Philosophy Can Teach Us about Meta-Metaphysics.” Inquiry 58:7–8 (2015): 780–805.

Wilson, J. “No Work for a Theory of Grounding.” Inquiry (2014): 1–45.

18. Guigon, Ghislain. 2018. "Truths qua Grounds." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 97:99-125.

Abstract: "A number of philosophers have recently found it congenial to talk in terms of grounding. Grounding discourse features grounding sentences that are answers to questions about what grounds what. The goal of this article is to explore and defend a counterpart-theoretic interpretation of grounding discourse. We are familiar with David Lewis’s applications of the method of counterpart theory to de re modal discourse.

Counterpart-theoretic interpretations of de re modal idioms and grounding sentences share similar motivations, mechanisms, and applications. I shall explain my motivations and describe two applications of a counterpart theory for grounding discourse. But, in this article, my main focus is on counterpart-theoretic mechanisms."

19. Hakkarainen, Jani, and Keinänen, Markku. 2021. "Away with Dispositional Essences in Trope Theory." In Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation, edited by Jansen, Ludger and Sandstad, Petter, 106-123. New York: Routledge.

"In Section 1, we will outline the central features of our theory relevant to the present discussion. We will argue in Section 2 that dispositional essentialism is incompatible with the Strong Nuclear Theory or Keith Campbell's and Douglas Ehring's trope theories because tropes would be identity-dependent on other tropes in dispositional essentialism. In addition to being incompatible with these one-category trope ontologies, dispositional essentialism faces serious problems in characterizing essences of fundamental properties. As we will argue in Section 3, the exact advantages of dispositional essentialism remain unclear in comparison with the views taking laws of nature as primitive. Finally, in Section 4, we outline an alternative account, based on Smith's (2016) non-recombinatorial quidditism, according to which tropes as particular characters or natures necessitate their own fundamental nomological roles. The resulting conception of powerful tropes is compatible with the Strong Nuclear Theory and does not introduce any such problematic additional constructions as primitive dispositional essences or laws of nature considered as fundamental constituents of reality. In our view, he closest substitutes for formal causes are powerful tropes necessary

to a given substance." (p. 107)

References

Campbell, K. (1981) 'The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars'. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 6 (1), 477-88.

Campbell, K. (1990) Abstract Particulars. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Ehring, D. (2011) Tropes: Properties, Objects, and Mental Causation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Smith, D. (2016) 'Quid Quidditism Est?' Erkenntnis 81(2), 237-57.

20. Hansen, Casper Storm. 2014. "Grounded Ungroundedness." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 57:216-243.

"Kripke’s well-known theory of truth(1) has some (also well-known) problems with regard to semantic openness and inadequate modelling of some intuitively unproblematic uses of the truth predicate. I will present a modification of the theory that solves some of these problems. But first (Section II) it is argued that the basic version of Kripke’s theory is on the right track if we are looking for an explication of the correspondence theory of truth, because the correspondence relation is a grounding relation. The modification is done in an attempt to stay true to these basic ideas behind Kripke’s construction and just take them a step further by extending the range of facts that truth values can be grounded in to include facts about sentences being ungrounded.

Thereby some of the problems of expressive weakness in Krikpe’s own theory are solved." (p. 216)

(1) Kripke, Saul. ‘Outline of a Theory of Truth’. The Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975): 690–716.

21. ———. 2016. "Unified Grounding." Erkenntnis no. 81:993-2010.

Abstract: "This paper offers a unification and systematization of the grounding approaches to truth, denotation, classes and abstraction. Its main innovation is a method for ‘‘kleenifying’’ bivalent semantics so as to ensure that the trivalent semantics used for various linguistic elements are perfectly analogous to the semantics used by Kripke, rather than relying on intuition to achieve similarity. The focus is on generalizing strong Kleene semantics, but one section is devoted to supervaluation, and the unification method also extends to weak Kleene semantics."

22. Harbecke, Jens. 2016. "Is Mechanistic Constitution a Version of Material Constitution?" In Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground, edited by Carl Gillett, Ken Aizawa, 91-121. London: Palgrave-Macmillan.

"The investigation proceeds as follows. In a first step, I reconstruct the context in which the question about mechanistic constitution arises (section “The Question of Mechanistic Constitution”). I then review the philosophical enquiry associated with mechanistic constitution (section “The Mechanistic Approach”), which includes a discussion of the regularity theory (section “What Is Mechanistic Constitution?”) and of identity statements about phenomena and mechanisms (section “Identity”).

Subsequently, I review the problem of material constitution and the grounding problem (section “The Question of Material Constitution”).

I then show that material constitution is to be distinguished from mechanistic constitution (section “Is Mechanistic Constitution Material Constitution?”) while there are various logical and conceptual connections between the two notions (section “Connections”). In a final step, I suggest that the ontology presupposed by the regularity approach to mechanistic constitution offers an informative eliminativist solution to the problem of mechanistic constitution and grounding (section “Mechanisms and the Grounding Problem”). The last section summarizes the argument and raises some open questions that the present chapter was unable to answer (section “Conclusion”)." (p. 93)

23. Haukioja, Jussi. 2013. "Different Notions of Response-Dependence." In Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence, edited by Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin and Steinberg, Alex, 167-190. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"An intuitively compelling distinction seems to exist between those areas of discourse in which the facts are in some sense 'up to us' and those in which they are not.

(...)

Response dependence theories were initially proposed as an attempt to sharpen this distinction. However, the original idea has since been extended in various different ways, with different philosophical aims in mind. As a result, discussions of response-dependence can sometimes be confusing--my hope in the present chapter is to clarify the situation and reduce the risk of misunderstandings, by presenting an overview of the main theories and their differences." (p. 167)

24. Henderson, David, and Horgan, Terry. 2013. "On the Armchair Justification of Conceptually Grounded Necessary Truths." In The a Priori in Philosophy, edited by Casullo, Albert and Thurow, Joshua C., 111-133. New York: Oxford University Press.

"The plan of the chapter is as follows. In Section 1, we discuss armchair methodology in linguistics, as a useful model for armchair philosophical reasoning. In Section 2, we elaborate on our conception of low-grade a priori reasoning in philosophy, in a way that emphasizes some key respects in which such reasoning incorporates empirical considerations. In Section 3, we illustrate low-grade a priori reasoning in action. We discuss a series of scenarios concerning a much-discussed concept (namely, the concept water), and we use these scenarios to argue for two hypotheses, each of which is apt to seem somewhat surprising in the current philosophical climate: first, metaphysically necessary truths that are semantically non-analytic and epistemologically a posteriori— e.g., “Water is composed of H2O”—are underwritten by yet-more-fundamental necessary truths that are analytic; and second, it is a conceptually grounded necessary truth that some statements expressing epistemic possibilities do not express metaphysical possibilities. In Section 4, we situate our conception of armchair reasoning in philosophy in relation to two other conceptions—on the one hand, that of Timothy Williamson, whose construal of such reasoning is less traditional than ours, and on the other hand, that of those philosophers who continue to deploy a more traditional understanding of the a priori. We argue that our own conception is preferable to each of these alternatives." (p. 112)

25. Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin, and Steinberg, Alex, eds. 2013. Varieties of Dependence: Ontological dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

Contents: Miguel Hoe!tje: Introduction 9:

Part I: Surveys

Kathrin Koslicki: Ontological Dependence: An Opinionated Survey 31; Phil Corkum: Substance and Independence in Aristotle 65; Kelly Trogdon: An Introduction to Grounding 97; Alex Steinberg: Supervenience: A Survey 123; Jussi Haukioja: Different Notions of Response-Dependence 167;

Part II: Research Papers

E.]. Lowe: Some Varieties of Metaphysical Dependence 193; CS.I. .Jenkins: Explanation and Fundamentality 211; Louis deRosset: No Free Lunch 243; Fabrice Correia: Metaphysical Grounds and Essence 271; Stefano Caputo: The Dependence of Truth on Being: Is There a Problem for Minimalism? 297; Stephan Leuenberger: Supervenience Among Classes of Relations 325; Ralf M. Bader: Multiple-Domain Supervenience for Non-Classical Mereologies 347; Eline Busck Gundersen: Response-Dependence and Conditional Fallacy Problems 369; Dan Lopez de Sa: Rigid vs. Flexible Response-Dependent Properties 393;

Name Index 419: Subject Index 423; List of Contributors 429-431.

26. Horgan, Terence. 1993. "From Supervenience to Superdupervenience: Meeting the Demands of a Material World." Mind no. 102:555-586.

"There now seems to be emerging (e.g., Kim 1990; 1993b, ch. 9) an attitude of sober reassessment, accompanied by a suspicion that supervenience theses per se do less work philosophically than some had hoped they would.

I think this change of mood was in many ways inevitable, given certain ironic facts about the history of the notion of supervenience in philosophical thought during the 20th century. There is much to be learned from this history about both the uses and the limitations of supervenience theses, especially with respect to materialism. So the first half of this paper,§§ 1-4, will be a historical overview, aimed at highlighting some key ironies and drawing some important lessons for materialist metaphysics. The principal moral will be that supervenience relations, in order to figure in a broadly materialistic worldview, must be explainable rather than sui generis."

References

Kim, Jaegwon 1990: "Supervenience as a Philosophical Concept". Metaphilosophy 2, 1, 1 & 2, pp. 1-27.

-- 1993b: Supervenience and Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

27. Horvath, Joachim. 2018. "Philosophical Analysis: The Concept Grounding View." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 97:724-750.

Abstract: "Philosophical analysis was the central preoccupation of 20th-century analytic philosophy. In the contemporary methodological debate, however, it faces a number of pressing external and internal challenges. While external challenges, like those from experimental philosophy or semantic externalism, have been extensively discussed, internal challenges to philosophical analysis have received much less attention. One especially vexing internal challenge is that the success conditions of philosophical analysis are deeply unclear.

According to the standard textbook view, a philosophical analysis aims at a strict biconditional that captures the necessary and sufficient conditions for membership in the relevant category. The textbook view arguably identifies a necessary condition on successful philosophical analyses, but understood as a sufficient condition it is untenable, as I will argue in this paper. To this end, I first uncover eight conditions of adequacy on successful philosophical analyses, some of which have rarely been spelled out in detail. As we shall see, even sophisticated alternatives to the textbook view fail to accommodate some of these conditions.

I then propose the concept grounding view as a more promising account of philosophical analysis.

According to this view, successful philosophical analyses require necessary biconditionals that are constrained by grounding relations among the concepts involved. Apart from providing a satisfactory account of philosophical analysis in its own right, the concept grounding view is also able to meet the challenge that the success conditions of philosophical analysis are problematically unclear."

28. Hovda, Paul, and Cross, Troy. 2013. "Grounding Relation(s): Introduction." Essays in Philosophy no. 14:1-6.

"Metaphysics has witnessed a dramatic shift of late. While questions about existence, possibility, and necessity still matter to the discipline, the focus now rests on questions about essence, grounding, naturalness, fundamentality, and structure. Metaphysicians have gone from asking merely what there is, could be, or must be, to asking about features of things, and connections among things, that may not be describable merely in terms of existence, possibility, and necessity; for example: what grounds what?

From the perspective of a logical empiricist, the transition from ontology and modal metaphysics to essentialist metaphysics is a passing from dark to still darker days. But Aristotle might see things differently. In fact, one might be tempted to dub this transition “The Aristotelian Turn”. This issue features papers illuminating one of the central notions enabling this recent turn, the notion of grounding." (p. 1)

29. Howard-Snyder, Daniel, Rasmussen, Joshua, and Cullison, Andrew. 2013. "On Whitcomb's Grounding Argument for Atheism." Faith and Philosophy no. 30:198-204.

Abstract: "Dennis Whitcomb argues that there is no God on the grounds that (i) God is supposed to be omniscient, yet (ii) nothing could be omniscient due to the nature of grounding. We give a formally identical argument that concludes that one of the present co-authors does not exist. Since he does exist, Whitcomb’s argument is unsound. But why is it unsound? That is a difficult question.

We venture two answers. First, one of the grounding principles that the argument relies on is false. Second, the argument equivocates between two kinds of grounding: instance-grounding and quasi-mereological grounding.

Happily, the equivocation can be avoided; unhappily, avoidance comes at the price of a false premise."

References

Dennis Whitcomb, “Grounding and Omniscience,” Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 4 (2012). pp. 173-201.

30. Jago, Mark, ed. 2016. Reality Making. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Contents: List of Figures VII; List of Contributors VIII; Mark Jago: Reality-Making: Introduction 1; Martin Glazier: Laws and the Completeness of the Fundamental 11; Naomi Thompson: Metaphysical Interdependence 38; Jacek Brzozowski: Monism and Gunk 57; Matthew Tugby: What are Dispositional Properties? 75; Mark Jago: Essence and the Grounding Problem 99; Nicholas K. Jones: Object as a Determinable 121; Sonia Roca-Royes: Rethinking Origin Essentialism (for Artefacts) 152; Nathan Wildman: How (not) to be a Modalist About Essence 177; Index 197-200.

31. ———. 2016. "Reality-Making: Introduction." In Reality Making, edited by Jago, Mark, 1-10. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"This volume contains chapters based on the Reality Making conference in metaphysics, held in Nottingham in July, 2012. Most of them are revised and expanded versions of talks given at the conference. They are closely focused on the conference’s main metaphysical themes: grounding, fundamentality, and essence.The first two, by Martin Glazier and NaomiThompson, primarily concern grounding. They address questions of how entities non-causally depend on other entities for their existence and qualitative character; and they consider the nature and importance of that dependence relation.The next two chapters, by Jacek Brzozowski and Matthew Tugby, consider what kinds of entity, if any, are fundamental to reality. They investigate the relationship between the fundamental and all the other parts of reality, and the connection between fundamental reality and other ways the world could have been. The remaining four chapters, by Mark Jago, Nicholas Jones, Sonia Roca-Royes, and Nathan Wildman, focus on the topic of reality-making:

essence and its connection to grounding and fundamentality. These chapters focus on the essences of objects (as opposed to properties and other kinds of entity).

They ask: what are material objects?Are they fundamental parts of reality? If not, how are they grounded? What grounds their essences and their modal properties?"

32. ———. 2016. "Essence and the Grounding Problem." In Reality Making, edited by Jago, Mark, 99-120. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"As I indicated above, I find pluralism to be well-motivated, independently of the modal argument; and I’ve argued for pluralism (by arguing against monism) elsewhere (Barker and Jago 2014). My aim in this paper is not to argue for pluralism, but to defend it against its most serious problem."

(...)

"If modal differences (including differences in persistence conditions) between coincident objects cannot be grounded, then pluralism about coincident objects looks to be in bad shape.

How should the pluralist respond? Her options seem to be limited from the start.

Some have suggested that modal differences between coincident objects depend on the way we conceptualize the objects in question (§5.3). Others have claimed that the pluralist must take such modal differences to be primitive facts about our world (§5.4). Both approaches are unappealing; and the pluralist can do much better.

My aim in this chapter is to set out (what I take to be) the best response to the grounding problem." (p. 100)

References

Barker, S. and Jago, M. (2014). ‘Monism and material constitution’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 95(2): 189-204-

33. ———. 2018. "From Nature to Grounding." In Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, edited by Bliss, Ricki Leigh and Priest, Graham, 199-216. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"The underlying complaint is that there's no way to understand the general features of grounding.

(...)

We can develop both a general theory of grounding and a theory of how particular things are grounded. The key link between the simple logical cases and the difficult ones-involving material objects, mental states, truth, and so on-concerns the natures of those entities. I'll argue for a certain view of what makes those entities what they are, and then show how this provides us with information on how they are (or could be) grounded. If we can get a grasp on the natures of things (in the sense to be articulated below), then the simple logical cases give us what we need to understand the grounding conditions for those entities." (pp. 199-200)

34. Jansen, Ludger, and Sanstad, Petter, eds. 2021. Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation. New York: Routledge.

Contents: List of Figures IX, List of Tables XI, Acknowledgements XIII; List of Abbreviations XV;

Ludger Jansen, Petter Sandstad: 1. Introducing Formal Causation 1;

Part I: Scholastic Approaches to Formal Causation 17;

2. Gyula Klima: Form, Intention, Information: From Scholastic Logic to Artificial Intelligence 19; 3. David S. Oderberg: Formal Causation: Accidental and Substantial 40;

Part II: Contemporary Approaches to Formal Causation 63;

4. Petter Sanstad, Ludger Jansen: A Non-hylomorphic Account of Formal Causation 65; 5. Giacomo Giannini, Stephen Mumford: Formal Causes for Powers Theorists 87; 6. Jani Hakkarainen, Markku Keinänen: Away with Dispositional Essences in Trope Theory 106; 7. Michele Paolini Paoletti: Functional Powers 124;

Part III: Formal Causation and Dependence;

8. Benjamin Schnieder, Jonas Werner: An Aristotelian Approach to Existential Dependence 151; 9. Wolgang Sattler: Finean Feature Dependence and the Aristotelian Alternative 175; 10. José Tomas Alvarado, Matthew Tugby: A Problem for Natural-Kind Essentialism and Formal Causes 201;

Part IV: Formal Causation in Biology and Cognitive Sciences 223;

11. James G. Lennox: Form as Cause and the Formal Cause: Aristotles Answer 225; 12. Christopher J. Austinì: Form, Cause, and Explanation in Biology: A Neo-Aristotelian Perspective 238; 13. Sandeep Prasada: Formal Explanation and Mechanisms of Conceptual Representation 269;

List of Contributors 287; Index of Passages from Aristotle 291; General Index 293.

35. ———. 2021. "Introducing Formal Causation." In Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation, edited by Jansen, Ludger and Sanstad, Petter, 1-16. New York: Routledge.

"The essays in this volume, together with this introduction, trace the historical development of formal causation and demonstrate its relevance for contemporary issues, such as causation, explanation, laws of nature, powers, functions, trope theory, essence, dependence, and metaphysical grounding. There are also papers connecting formal causation to contemporary work in biology and cognitive science.

In this introduction, we will first sketch the history of formal causation, from its beginning with Plato and Aristotle, its reception by (and criticism from) the ancient commentators, and all the way to our current time (Section 1). Second, we take a more systematic point of view, and attempt to answer the question of why we need a theory of formal causation today (Section 2). To do so, we point at possible applications for such a theory by pinpointing the relevance of formal causation to the current literature (Section 2.1). We next look at the different approaches to formal causation that is to be found today and investigate whether they are concerned with the same issue (Section 2.2). Lastly, we point out some open questions, some of which are addressed by the contributions of this volume (Section 2.3). Finally, we shall give a summary of each contribution of this volume (Section 3)." (p. 1)

36. Jansson, Lina. 2017. "Explanatory Asymmetries, Ground, and Ontological dependence." Erkenntnis no. 82:17-44.

Abstract: "The notions of ground and ontological dependence have made a prominent resurgence in much of contemporary metaphysics. However, objections have been raised. On the one hand, objections have been raised to the need for distinctively metaphysical notions of ground and ontological dependence. On the other, objections have been raised to the usefulness of adding ground and ontological dependence to the existing store of other metaphysical notions. Even the logical properties of ground and ontological dependence are under debate. In this article, I focus on how to account for the judgements of non-symmetry in several of the cases that motivate the introduction of notions like ground and ontological dependence. By focusing on the notion of explanation relative to a theory, I conclude that we do not need to postulate a distinctively asymmetric metaphysical notion in order to account for these judgements."

37. ———. 2018. "When are Structural Equation Models Apt? Causation versus Grounding." In Explanation Beyond Causation: Philosophical Perspectives on Non-Causal Explanations, edited by Reutlinger, Alexander and Saatsi, Juha, 250-266. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In section 2 I will briefly review how structural equation modelling works in the causal case before showing how the formal framework can be extended to the grounding case.

In section 3 I will argue that it is only the formal framework that carries over to the grounding case. In particular, the seeming unification of the structural equations approach to explanation disappears once we take into account what it takes for a structural equations model to have appropriately captured the situation that we are modelling. As Schaffer (2016) and Blanchard and Schaffer (2017) emphasize, structural equation modelling is a type of modelling. Once we are given a model of some scenario or system, the obvious question to ask is whether the model is any good. That is, is the model an apt or fitting one (for the purpose at hand)? For a model to be a good one for the purposes at hand it has to contain appropriate (whatever that turns out to mean) variables and appropriately (whatever that turns out to mean) represent the relations of causal or grounding relevance." (p. 251)

References

Blanchard, T. and Schaffer, J. (2017), ‘Cause without Default’, in H. Beebee, C. Hitchcock, and H. Price (eds.), Making a Difference: Essays on the Philosophy of Causation (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 175–214.

Schaffer, J. (2016), ‘Grounding in the Image of Causation’, Philosophical Studies 173: 49–100.

38. Javier-Castellanos, Amir A. 2014. "Some Challenges to a Contrastive Treatment of Grounding." Thought: A Journal of Philosophy no. 3:184-192.

Abstract: "Jonathan Schaffer has provided three putative counterexamples to the transitivity of grounding, and has argued that a contrastive treatment of grounding is able to provide a resolution to them, which in turn provides some motivation for accepting such a treatment. In this article, I argue that one of these cases can easily be turned into a putative counterexample to a principle which Schaffer calls differential transitivity. Since Schaffer’s proposed resolution rests on this principle, this presents a dilemma for the contrastivist: either he dismisses the third case, which weakens the motivation for accepting his treatment of grounding, or else he accepts it, in which case he is faced with a counterexample to a principle that his proposed resolution to the original cases depends on. In the remainder of the article, I argue that the prima facie most promising strategy the contrastivist could take, which is to place some restriction on which contrastive facts are admissible so as to rule out the purported counterexample to differential transitivity, faces some important difficulties. Although these difficulties are not insurmountable, they do pose a substantial challenge for the contrastivist."

References

Schaffer, Jonathan. “Grounding, Transitivity, and Contrastivity,” in Correia, Fabrice and Schneider, Benjamin, Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 122-138.

39. Jenkins, C. S. 2008. Grounding Concepts: An Empirical Basis for Arithmetical Knowledge. New York: Oxford University Press.

"I assume that arithmetical truths are conceptual truths; that is, that we can tell that they are true just by examining our concepts (i.e. certain of our mental representations). But, I say, the epistemological story cannot end there. In order for an examination of our concepts to supply us with knowledge of an independent reality, it must be that those concepts are appropriately sensitive to the nature of that reality, or what I call grounded. A concept’s being grounded in my sense requires that it (or, perhaps, the constituent concepts from which it is built) should accurately represent some feature of the independent world.(8) That is, groundedness requires that the concept be what I call fitting. But more is also required: just as knowledge requires more than truth, groundedness requires more than fittingness. In fact, I suggest that there is a very tight analogy between the two cases." (Introduction, p. 8)

(8) In fact, there is a little more subtlety involved in the precise formulation of this notion. But this sketch will do to convey the general idea.

40. ———. 2011. "Is Metaphysical Dependence Irreflexive?" The Monist no. 94:267-276.

"It is very commonly asserted that metaphysical dependence or grounding is an irreflexive relation: that is to say, it never holds between an item and itself." (p. 267)

(...)

"Maybe the irreflexivity assumption doesn't require argument?

Perhaps it is reasonable just to assume it in the absence of arguments to the contrary. There are (at least) three possible ways to back up this suggestion.

One could take the irreflexivity claim to be:

1. stipulative,

2. intuitive, or

3. too basic to require justification (at least in the relevant contexts).

If it is taken to be stipulative (i.e. if one takes it to be true by definition that dependence is irreflexive), one runs the risk of discussing something that isn't what everyone else meant by 'dependence', or of discussing something that is less interesting than schmependence (a nearby non-irreflexive relation). One can mean whatever one likes by 'dependence', of course, but these risks are to be treated with respect by any serious philosopher.

If one merely takes irreflexivity to be intuitive, however, one is open to the possibility that its intuitiveness might be explained away as being due to quasi-irreflexivity.

What about taking irreflexivity to be too basic to require justification in the relevant contexts?8 After all, one must start somewhere if one is to make any progress; one can't argue for all one's assumptions. But one can assert that dependence appears to be irreflexive, or exhibits some features suggestive of irreflexivity, almost as quickly as one can assert that it is irreflexive.

Now that the irreflexivity assumption has been questioned and one obvious motivation for it undermined, it is not good philosophical practice to sweep the challenge back under the carpet." (p. 275, notes omitted)

41. Jones, Nicholas K. 2016. "Object as a Determinable." In Reality Making, edited by Jago, Mark, 121-151. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Contents: List of Figures VII; List of Contributors VIII; Mark Jago: Reality-Making: Introduction 1; Martin Glazier: Laws and the Completeness of the Fundamental 11; Naomi Thompson: Metaphysical Interdependence 38; Jacek Brzozowski: Monism and Gunk 57; Matthew Tugby: What are Dispositional Properties? 75; Mark Jago: Essence and the Grounding Problem 99; Nicholas K. Jones: Object as a Determinable 121; Sonia Roca-Royes: Rethinking Origin Essentialism (for Artefacts) 152; Nathan Wildman: How (not) to be a Modalist About Essence 177; Index 197-200.

42. Katzav, Joel. 2002. "Identity, Nature, and Ground." Philosophical Topics no. 30:167-187.

Abstract: "What does the qualitative identity of objects consist in? A standard response is that it consists in the possession of properties and relations. If all of an object's properties and relations are specified, all there is to be specified about its qualitative as opposed to its numerical identity will have been specified.

Another response adds that kinds, conceived of as an irreducible category of entity, also play a part in fixing the qualitative identities of objects.

In what follows, two arguments are offered according to which these views are insufficient. Both lead to the conclusion that the qualitative identities of objects consist in part in their natures being grounded in what differs from entities, that is to say in something like conditions for the possibility of entities.

The idea of such grounding will be clarified, and some of the criteria of adequacy for theses about it will be spelled out. Further, the implications of the claim that the natures of objects are grounded for the problems of the one and the many will be discussed."

43. Khudairi, Hasen. 2018. "Grounding, Conceivability, and the Mind-Body Problem." Synthese no. 195:919-926.

Abstract: "This paper challenges the soundness of the two-dimensional conceivability argument against the derivation of phenomenal truths from physical truths (cf. Chalmers in The conscious mind, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996; The character of consciousness, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010) in light of a hyperintensional regimentation of the ontology of consciousness. The regimentation demonstrates how ontological dependencies between truths about consciousness and about physics cannot be witnessed by epistemic constraints, when the latter are recorded by the conceivability—i.e., the epistemic possibility—thereof. Generalizations and other aspects of the philosophical significance of the hyperintensional regimentation are further examined."

44. Kirchin, Simon. 2013. "Evaluation, Normativity and Grounding." Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume no. 87:179-198.

Abstract: "I consider the ‘normative relevance’ argument and the idea of grounding. I diagnose why there appears to be a tension between the conclusion that we are tempted to reach and the intuition that the normative is grounded in or by the non-normative. Much of what I say turns on the idea of the normative itself. In short, I think that concentrating on this idea can help us see how the tension arises. My aim is to encourage people to reconceptualize the debate so as to begin to offer additional insight. To that end, I spend some time contrasting normativity with evaluation, and then think how the debate may alter if we run it with the latter. I doubt that doing so will solve any problem, and I suspect that what I say will be controversial anyway.

But there is some value to changing matters nonetheless. The idea that runs through this paper is that the whole issue is so complex and deep that we should not narrowly construe it with reference only to normativity."

45. Kment, Boris. 2014. Modality and Explanatory Reasoning. New York: Oxford University Press.

"The goal of this book is to shed light on metaphysical necessity and the broader class of modal properties to which it belongs."

(...)

I will argue that to understand modality we need to reconceptualize its relationship to causation and other forms of explanation such as grounding, a relation that connects metaphysically fundamental facts to non-fundamental ones. While many philosophers have tried to give modal analyses of causation and explanation, often in counterfactual terms, I will argue that we obtain a more plausible, explanatorily powerful and unified theory if we regard explanation as more fundamental than modality." (p. 1)

46. ———. 2021. "Russell–Myhill and Grounding." Analysis.

First online 1 October 2021.

Abstract: "The Russell-Myhill paradox (RMP) puts pressure on the Russellian structured view of propositions (structurism) by showing that it conflicts with certain prima facie attractive ontological and logical principles. I describe several versions of RMP and argue that structurists can appeal to natural assumptions about metaphysical grounding to provide independent reasons for rejecting the ontological principles used in these paradoxes. It remains a task for future work to extend this grounding-based approach to all variants of RMP."

47. Koons, Robert C., and Pickavance, Timothy H. 2017. The Atlas of Reality: A Comprehensive Guide to Metaphysics. Malden: Wiley Blackwell.

Chapter 3: Grounding, Ontological Dependence, and Fundamentality, pp. 47-73.

"In recent years, many metaphysicians, following the lead of Kit Fine, have used the term ‘grounding’ to represent a relation of metaphysical dependency: if x is grounded in y, then x (in a certain sense) depends upon y, for its existence, or truth, or nature. We could identify fundamental entities or truths with those that are not grounded in other entities or truths, either by being absolutely ungrounded or by being in some special way grounded without being grounded in or by anything." (pp. 47-48)

48. Korbmacher, Johannes. 2015. "Yet Another Puzzle of Ground." Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy no. 29:1-10.

Abstract: "We show that any predicational theory of partial ground that extends a standard theory of syntax and that proves some commonly accepted principles for partial ground is inconsistent.

We suggest a way to obtain a consistent predicational theory of ground."

49. ———. 2018. "Axiomatic Theories of Partial Ground I: The Base Theory." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 47:161-191.

Abstract: "This is part one of a two-part paper, in which we develop an axiomatic theory of the relation of partial ground. The main novelty of the paper is the of use of a binary ground predicate rather than an operator to formalize ground. This allows us to connect theories of partial ground with axiomatic theories of truth. In this part of the paper, we develop an axiomatization of the relation of partial ground over the truths of arithmetic and show that the theory is a proof-theoretically conservative extension of the theory PT of positive truth. We construct models for the theory and draw some conclusions for the semantics of conceptualist ground."

50. ———. 2018. "Axiomatic Theories of Partial Ground II: Partial Ground and Hierarchies of Typed Truth." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 47:193-226.

Abstract: "This is part two of a two-part paper in which we develop an axiomatic theory of the relation of partial ground. The main novelty of the paper is the of use of a binary ground predicate rather than an operator to formalize ground. In this part of the paper, we extend the base theory of the first part of the paper with hierarchically typed truth-predicates and principles about the interaction of partial ground and truth.

We show that our theory is a proof-theoretically conservative extension of the ramified theory of positive truth up to ε_0 and thus is consistent. We argue that this theory provides a natural solution to Fine’s “puzzle of ground” about the interaction of truth and ground. Finally, we show that if we apply the truth-predicate to sentences involving our ground-predicate, we run into paradoxes similar to the semantic paradoxes: we get ground-theoretical paradoxes of self-reference."

51. Koslicki, Kathrin. 2015. "The Coarse-Grainedness of Grounding." Oxford Studies in Metaphysics no. 9:306-344.

"At least with respect to its formal properties, then, grounding does appear to hold more promise than supervenience for the purposes of developing an approach to relative fundamentality, if only because grounding is commonly stipulated to be asymmetric and not definable in modal terms. However, aswe will discover below, grounding nevertheless suffers from some of same deficiencies as supervenience: most prominently, grounding also fails to be sufficiently finegrained to do its intended explanatory work. In addition, there is doubt as to whether the phenomena collected together under the rubric of grounding are really unified by the presence of a single relation.

And, finally, grounding turns out not to be particularly helpful in capturing and illuminating what is philosophically important about the traditional substance/non-substance distinction. In the end, we will find that, although grounding performs better than supervenience in some ways, it does not solve all of the problems to which a supervenience-based approach to relative fundamentality falls prey." (p. 309)

52. ———. 2016. "Where Grounding and Causation Part Ways: Comments on Schaffer." Philosophical Studies no. 173:101-112.

Abstract: "Does the notion of ground, as it has recently been employed by metaphysicians, point to a single unified phenomenon (the ‘‘Unity Hypothesis’’)? Jonathan Schaffer holds that the phenomenon of grounding exhibits the unity characteristic of a single genus. In defense of this hypothesis, Schaffer proposes to take seriously the analogy between causation and grounding. More specifically,Schaffer argues that both grounding and causation are best approached through a single formalism, viz., that utilized by structural equation models of causation. In this paper, I present several concerns which suggest that the structural equation model does not transfer as smoothly from the case of causation to the case ofgrounding as Schaffer would have us believe. If it can in fact be shown that significant differences surface in how the formalism in question applies to the two types of phenomena in question, Schaffer’s attempt at establishing an analogy between grounding and causation has thereby been weakened and, as a result, the

application of the Unity Hypothesis to the case of grounding once again stands in need of justification."

53. ———. 2020. "Skeptical Doubts." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 164-179. New York: Routledge.

"What exactly are we supposed to learn from the grounding enthusiast’s alleged insight that factual and/or nonfactual connections such as those cited in (1) and (2) are all grounding connections? In what follows, I shall refer to this as “the Central Question”. Grounding skeptics (also known as “ground busters”, see Fine 2020), depending on the version of grounding skepticism they endorse, respond to the Central Question as follows: either (i) we learn nothing at all from the grounding enthusiast’s alleged insight; or (ii) what we learn from the grounding enthusiast’s alleged insight can be better stated in terms that do not appeal to the grounding idiom. In either case, so the grounding skeptic reasons, the grounding idiom lacks theoretical utility, and we therefore might as well continue to go about the business of trying to clarify the nature of the factual and/or nonfactual connections at issue without appeal to the grounding idiom." (p. 165, a note omitted)

References

Fine, Kit (2020) “The Essential Glossary of Ground,” this volume.

54. Kovacs, David Mark. 2017. "Grounding and the Argument from Explanatoriness." Philosophical Studies no. 174:2927-2952.

Abstract: "In recent years, metaphysics has undergone what some describe as a revolution: it has become standard to understand a vast array of questions as questions about grounding, a metaphysical notion of determination. Why should we believe in grounding, though? Supporters of the revolution often gesture at what I call the Argument from Explanatoriness: the notion of grounding is somehow indispensable to a metaphysical type of explanation. I challenge this argument and along the way develop a ‘‘reactionary’’ view, according to which there is no interesting sense in which the notion of grounding is explanatorily indispensable. I begin with a distinction between two conceptions of grounding, a distinction which extant critiques of the revolution have usually failed to take into consideration: grounding qua that which underlies metaphysical explanation and grounding qua metaphysical explanation itself. Accordingly, I distinguish between two versions of the Argument from Explanatoriness: the Unexplained Explanations Version for the first conception of grounding, and the Expressive Power Version for the second. The paper’s conclusion is that no version of the Argument from Explanatoriness is successful."

55. ———. 2018. "What Is Wrong with Self-Grounding?" Erkenntnis no. 83:1157-1180.

Abstract: "Many philosophers embrace grounding, supposedly a central notion of metaphysics. Grounding is widely assumed to be irreflexive, but recently a number of authors have questioned this assumption: according to them, it is at least possible that some facts ground themselves. The primary purpose of this paper is to problematize the notion of self-grounding through the theoretical roles usually assigned to grounding. The literature typically characterizes grounding as at least playing two central theoretical roles: a structuring role and an explanatory role. Once we carefully spell out what playing these roles includes, however, we find that any notion of grounding that isn’t irreflexive fails to play these roles when they are interpreted narrowly, and is redundant for playing them when they are interpreted more broadly.

The upshot is that no useful notion of grounding can allow a fact to ground itself."

56. ———. 2020. "Four Questions of Iterated Grounding." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 101:341-364.

Abstract: "The Question of Iterated Grounding (QIG) asks what grounds the grounding facts. Although the question received a lot of attention in the past few years, it is usually discussed independently of another important issue: the connection between metaphysical explanation and the relation or relations that supposedly “back” it. I will show that once we get clear on the distinction between metaphysical explanation and the relation(s) backing it, we can distinguish no fewer than four questions lumped under QIG. I will also argue that given some plausible assumptions about what it would take for a relation to back metaphysical explanation, many salient views about grounding allow us to give “easy” answers to these questions—easy in the sense that we can straightforwardly derive them from the respective conception of grounding without getting into the sorts of complexities that typically inform answers to QIG. The paper’s main upshot is that we cannot expect to make much progress on QIG without first addressing the difficult issue of how exactly grounding is related to metaphysical explanation."

57. ———. 2020. "Modality." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 348-360. New York: Routledge.

"How is grounding related to modality? This question is ambiguous, since several phenomena fit under the broad label ‘modality’. First, we could ask whether grounds necessitate what they ground (‘Grounding Necessitarianism’). Second, we could ask whether grounding is an internal relation, i.e., whether in every possible world in which some fact and its grounds obtain they automatically stand in the grounding relation.Third, we could ask how grounding is related to modal notions, in particular supervenience, which used to be assigned similar theoretical roles.

Alex Skiles’s contribution to this volume [Chapter 10] discusses the first and the second of these questions, and in the context of a broader discussion of meta-grounding, Jon Erling Litland [Chapter 9] also touches on the second; the present chapter will entirely focus on the relation between grounding and supervenience." (p. 348)

58. ———. 2021. "An Explanatory Idealist Theory of Grounding." Noûs.

First online 12 April 2021.

Abstract: "How is grounding related to metaphysical explanation? The standard view is that the former somehow “backs”, “undergirds” or “underlies” the latter. This view fits into a general picture of explanation, according to which explanations in general hold in virtue of a certain elite group of “explanatory relations” or “determinative relations” that back them. This paper turns the standard view on its head: grounding doesn't “back” metaphysical explanation but is in an important sense downstream from it. I call this view “grounding idealism”, since it structurally resembles an analogous view about causation that is known as “causal idealism” and has been endorsed by philosophers like Michael Scriven and Philip Kitcher. I formulate a specific version of grounding idealism, Metaphysical Explanation-First Idealism (MEFI), according to which the semantic value of ‘grounding’ is an abundant, gerrymandered relation settled by the metaphysical explanation facts. Then I offer some theoretical considerations that support MEFI over rival accounts of the relation between grounding and metaphysical explanation. Finally, I address the question of what role is left for grounding to play, if not that of “backing” metaphysical explanations."

59. Krämer, Stephan. 2013. "A simpler puzzle of ground." Thought: A Journal of Philosophy no. 2:85-89.

Abstract: "Metaphysical grounding is standardly taken to be irreflexive: nothing grounds itself. Kit Fine has presented some puzzles that appear to contradict this principle. I construct a particularly simple variant of those puzzles that is independent of several of the assumptions required by Fine, instead employing quantification into sentence position. Various possible responses to Fine’s puzzles thus turn out to apply only in a restricted range of cases."

60. ———. 2019. "Ground-theoretic Equivalence." Synthese no. 198:1643-1683.

Abstract: "Say that two sentences are ground-theoretically equivalent iff they are interchangeable salva veritate in grounding contexts. Notoriously, ground-theoretic equivalence is a hyperintensional matter: even logically equivalent sentences may fail to be interchangeable in grounding contexts. Still, there seem to be some substantive, general principles of ground-theoretic equivalence. For example, it seems plausible hat any sentences of the form A ∧ B and B ∧ A are ground-theoretically equivalent. What, then, are in general the conditions for two sentences to stand in the relation of ground-theoretic equivalence, and what are the logical features of that relation? This paper develops and defends an answer to these questions based on the mode-ified truthmaker theory of content presented in my recent paper ‘Towards a theory of ground-theoretic content’ (Krämer in Synthese 195(2):785–814, 2018)."

61. ———. 2020. "Puzzles." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 271-282. New York: Routledge.

"This chapter reviews the variety of logical puzzles of ground that have been identified in the literature, describes the solutions that have been proposed, and indicates what the main challenges are that these solutions face. I begin by introducing relevant notation as well as the key concepts and principles that will subsequently be used in formulating the puzzles before turning to the puzzles themselves. In principle, there is a huge number of different derivations of contradictions from the relevant principles about ground. Many of them are essentially alike, so that any reasonable solution to one will immediately provide a solution to the other. Some of them exhibit more substantial differences, however, and I shall try to describe all the substantially different types of puzzles. I then briefly discuss what desiderata we might impose on adequate solutions to the puzzles before I finally turn to the solutions themselves. Many of these, once developed in detail, involve a fair bit of formal machinery. I shall mainly attempt to convey the basic philosophical ideas underlying and motivating the technical work; readers keen on the details will have to consult the primary texts." (p. 271)

62. Krämer, Stephan, and Roski, Stefan. 2015. "A Note on the Logic of Worldly Ground." Thought: A Journal of Philosophy no. 4:59-68.

Abstract: "In his 2010 paper ‘Grounding and Truth-Functions’, Fabrice Correia has developed the first and so far only proposal for a logic of ground based on a worldly conception of facts. In this paper, we show that the logic allows the derivation of implausible grounding claims.We then generalize these results and draw some conclusions concerning the structural features of ground and its associated notion of relevance, which has so far not received the attention it deserves."

References

Correia, Fabrice. “Grounding and Truth-Functions.” Logique et Analyse 53.211 (2010): 251–79.

63. Kroedel, Thomas, and Schulz, Moritz. 2016. "Grounding Mental Causation." Synthese no. 193:1909-1923.

Abstract: "This paper argues that the exclusion problem for mental causation can be solved by a variant of non-reductive physicalism that takes the mental not merely to supervene on, but to be grounded in, the physical.Agrounding relation between events can be used to establish a principle that links the causal relations of grounded events to those of grounding events. Given this principle, mental events and their physical grounds either do not count as overdetermining physical effects, or they do so in a way that is not objectionable."

64. Lange, Marc. 2013. "Grounding, Scientific Explanation, and Humean Laws." Philosophical Studies no. 164:255-261.

Abstract: "It has often been argued that Humean accounts of natural law cannot account for the role played by laws in scientific explanations. Loewer (Philosophical Studies 2012) has offered a new reply to this argument on behalf of Humean accounts—a reply that distinguishes between grounding (which Loewer portrays as underwriting a kind of metaphysical explanation) and scientific explanation. I will argue that Loewer’s reply fails because it cannot accommodate the relation between metaphysical and scientific explanation. This relation also resolves a puzzle about scientific explanation that Hempel and Oppenheim (Philosophy of Science 15:135–75, 1948) encountered."

References

Hempel, C. G., & Oppenheim, P. (1948). Studies in the logic of explanation. Philosophy of Science, 15, 135–175.

Loewer, B. (2012). Two accounts of laws and time. Philosophical Studies, 160(1): 115-137.

65. ———. 2019. "Ground and Explanation in Mathematics." Philosopher's Imprint no. 19:1-18.

"Increased attention has recently been paid to the fact that in mathematical practice, certain mathematical proofs but not others are recognized as explaining why the theorems they prove obtain (Mancosu 2008; Lange 2010, 2015a, 2016; Pincock 2015). Such “mathematical explanation” is presumably not a variety of causal explanation. In addition, the role of metaphysical grounding as underwriting a variety of explanations has also recently received increased attention (Correia and Schnieder 2012; Fine 2001, 2012; Rosen 2010; Schaffer 2016). Accordingly, it is natural to wonder whether mathematical explanation is a variety of grounding explanation. This paper will offer several arguments that it is not." (p. 1)

References

Correia, Fabrice and Benjamin Schnieder 2012. Grounding: An opinionated introduction. In Correia and Schnieder (eds.), Metaphysical Grounding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1−36.

Fine, Kit 2001. The question of realism. Philosophers’ Imprint 1 (2): 1−30.

Fine, Kit 2012. Guide to ground. In Correia and Schnieder (eds.), Metaphysical Grounding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 37–80.

Lange, Marc 2010. What are mathematical coincidences (and why does it matter)? Mind 119 (474): 307-340.

Lange, Marc 2015a. Explanation, existence, and natural properties in mathematics: a case study – Desargues’ theorem. Dialectica 69 (4): 435−472.

Lange, Marc 2016. Because Without Cause. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mancosu, Paolo 2008. Mathematical explanation: why it matters. In Mancosu (ed.), The Philosophy of Mathematical Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 134−150.

Pincock, Christopher 2015. The unsolvability of the quintic: A case study in abstract mathematical explanation. Philosophers’ Imprint 15 (3): 1−19.

Rosen, Gideon 2010. Metaphysical dependence: Grounding and reduction. In Bob Hale and Aviv Hoffman (eds.), Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 109−136.

Schaffer, Jonathan 2016. Grounding in the image of causation. Philosophical Studies 173 (1): 49–100.

66. Langton, Rae. 2018. "‘Real Grounds’ in Matter and Things in Themselves." Kantian Review no. 23:435-448.

Abstract: "Matter’s real essence is a ground for certain features of phenomena. Things in themselves are likewise a ground for certain features of phenomena. How do these claims relate? The former is a causal essentialism about physics, Stang argues; and the features so grounded are phenomenally nomically necessary. The latter involves a distinctive ontology of things in themselves, I argue; but the features so grounded are not noumenally nomically necessary. Stang’s version of Kant’s modal metaphysics is admirable, but does not go far enough. Kant’s causal essentialism involves the essences of fundamental properties, as well as of matter. And things in themselves are grounds, because they are substances, the ‘substrate’ of phenomena."

References

Stang, Nicholas F. (2016) Kant’s Modal Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on metaphysical grounding. Fourth part: Lar-Pic

Bibliography

1. Larsson, Staffan. 2018. "Grounding as a Side‐Effect of Grounding." Topics in Cognitive Science no. 10:389-408.

Abstract: "In relation to semantics, “grounding” has (at least) two relevant meanings. “Symbol grounding” is the process of connecting symbols (e.g., words) to perception and the world. “Communicative grounding” is the process of interactively adding to common ground in dialog. Strategies for grounding in human communication include, crucially, strategies for resolving troubles caused by various kinds of miscommunication. As it happens, these two processes of grounding are closely related. As a side-effect of grounding an utterance, dialog participants (DPs) may adjust the meanings they assign to linguistic expressions, in a process of semantic coordination.

Meanings of at least some expressions (e.g., concrete nouns) include perceptual aspects which enable DPs to classify entities as falling under the expression or not based on their perception of those entities. We show how perceptual grounding of symbols can be achieved in a process of interactively adding to common ground. This requires that perceptual aspects of meaning can be updated as a result of participating in linguistic interaction, thereby enabling fine-grained semantic coordination of perceptually grounded linguistic meanings.

A formal semantics for low-level perceptual aspects of meaning is presented, tying these together with the logical-inferential aspects of meaning traditionally studied in formal semantics. The key idea is to model perceptual meanings as classifiers of perceptual input. This requires a framework where intensions are (a) represented independently of extensions, and (b) structured objects which can be modified as a result of learning. We use Type Theory with Records (TTR), a formal semantics framework which starts from the idea that information and meaning are founded on our ability to perceive and classify the world, that is, to perceive objects and situations as being of types. As an example of our approach, we show how a simple classifier of spatial information based on the Perceptron can be cast in TTR."

2. Leary, Stephanie. 2017. "Non-naturalism and Normative Necessities." Oxford Studies in Metaethics no. 12:76-105.

"My aim in this chapter, however, is to show that non-naturalists can offer a metaphysical explanation for why the normative supervenes on the natural by adopting the sort of essentialist metaphysics developed by Fine, Rosen, and Dasgupta.(5) Specifically, I argue (in §4.4) that the non-naturalist may claim that there are some hybrid normative properties whose essences involve both naturalistic sufficient conditions for their instantiation and sufficient conditions for the instantiation of other sui generis normative properties, and that this explains why the normative is determined by, and supervenes on, the natural. Moreover, I argue (in §4.5) that this nonnaturalist explanation for supervenience does not covertly assume any brute metaphysically necessary connections between natural and normative properties, and thus avoids what McPherson calls “bruteness revenge.”6" (p. 77)

(5) 5 Fine (1994a, 2012), Rosen (2010), and Dasgupta (2014).

(6) McPherson (2012).

References

Dasgupta, S. 2014. “The Possibility of Physicalism,” Journal of Philosophy, 111(9/10): 557–92.

Fine, K. 1994a. “Essence and Modality,” Philosophical Perspectives, 8: 1–16.

Fine, K. 2012. “Guide to Ground,” in F. Correia and B. Schnieder (eds.), Metaphysical Grounding, 37–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McPherson, T. 2012. “Ethical Non-naturalism and the Metaphysics of Supervenience,” in R. Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, 7, 205–34. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rosen, G. 2010. “Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction,” in B. Hale and A. Hoffmann (eds.), Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology, 109–36. New York: Oxford University Press.

3. ———. 2020. "Normativity." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 472-483. New York: Routledge.

"One of the ways in which grounding earns its keep as a respectable bit of ideology is by being useful for understanding long-standing philosophical debates, including debates in normative ethics and metaethics. (...)

But this common story about grounding’s applications in normative inquiry is rife with controversy. First, even if normative ethicists are in the business of making because-claims, it’s controversial whether these because-claims are about metaphysical grounding or a related but distinctly normative relation—normative grounding.

Second, this grounding characterization of the naturalism versus non-naturalism debate begins to look problematic once we ask whether on this characterization, for example, the fact that an act’s maximizing happiness fully grounds that it’s right is itself a normative fact that must be fully grounded in natural, non-normative facts in order for naturalism to be true.Very general metaphysical considerations suggest that such grounding-facts cannot be so grounded.

(...)

This chapter surveys these two main issues in §2 and §3, respectively, while highlighting what’s at stake in these disputes for both normative and metaphysical theorizing." (p. 472)

4. Lenart, Karol. 2021. "Grounding, Essence, and Contingentism." Philosophia no. 49:2157-2172.

Abstract: "According to grounding necessitarianism if some facts ground another fact, then the obtaining of the former necessitates the latter. Proponents of grounding contingentism argue against this claim, stating that it is possible for the former facts to obtain without necessitating the latter. In this article I discuss a recent argument from restricted accidental generalisations provided by contingentists that advances such possibility. I argue that grounding necessitarianism can be defended against it. To achieve this aim, I postulate a relationship between grounding and essence by introducing a notion of individual essences understood as a set of essential properties that individuate its bearer. According to a proposed view grounding holds in virtue of identities of its relata, which are in turn determined by their respective individual essences. From there I claim that if grounding holds in virtue of the individual essences of its relata, then it is possible to resist the objection from restricted accidental generalisations and maintain a view that grounds necessitates what is grounded."

5. Lennox, James G. 2021. "Form as Cause and the Formal Cause: Aristotle's Answer." In Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation, edited by Jansen, Ludger and Sandstad, Petter, 225-237. New York: Routledge.

"Introduction: The primary focus of this paper is a distinction of vital importance in understanding causality in the context of Aristotle's investigation of organisms. Aristotle insists that the form of a living being, that is, its soul (psyche), is a cause in three of the four ways of being a cause (DA [De anima] 11.4, 41568-21, discussed below). This claim has two important implications:

• Being a formal cause is only one way in which form is a cause

• It turns out that there is an intimate relationship in Aristotle's natural philosophy between the formal cause, the moving cause, and the cause for the sake of which (aka the final cause), and this has a direct implication for Aristotle's understanding of the way in which an animal's soul, that is, its form, serves as the cause of its being the kind of living thing it is.

As we will soon see, when it comes to living beings, the relationship between form as formal cause and form as final cause is an especially intimate one." (p. 225)

6. Leuenberger, Stephan. 2013. "Supervenience Among Classes of Relations." In Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence, edited by Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin and Steinberg, Alex, 325-346. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"Whatever the exact relationship between supervenience and reducibility, the question whether some relations are reducible to properties naturally leads to the question whether the former supervene on the latter. What would it take for relations to supervene on properties?

The extant literature does not contain a sustained and systematic examination of this question, at least as far as I am aware. This is surprising, given that a great deal of work has been done on distinguishing various concepts of supervenience, supplying exact characterizations for them, and finding applications. It is even more surprising in light of the fact that the concept of supervenience is eminently suitable to be applied to relations, as I shall argue." (pp. 327-328)

7. ———. 2014. "Grounding and Necessity." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 57:151-174.

Abstract: "The elucidations and regimentations of grounding offered in the literature standardly take it to be a necessary connection. In particular, authors often assert, or at least assume, that if some facts ground another fact, then the obtaining of the former necessitates the latter; and moreover, that grounding is an internal relation, in the sense of being necessitated by the existence of the relata. In this article, I challenge the necessitarian orthodoxy about grounding by offering two prima facie counterexamples.

First, some physical facts may ground a certain phenomenal fact without necessitating it; and they may co-exist with the latter without grounding it. Second, some instantiations of categorical properties may ground the instantiation of a dispositional one without necessitating it; and they may co-exist without grounding it. After arguing that these may be genuine counterexamples, I ask whether there are modal constraints on grounding that are not threatened by them. I propose two: that grounding supervenes on what facts there are, and that every grounded fact supervenes on what grounds there are. Finally, I attempt to provide a rigorous formulation of the latter supervenience claim and discuss some technical questions that arise if we allow descending grounding chains of transfinite length."

8. ———. 2014. "From Grounding to Supervenience?" Erkenntnis no. 79:227-240.

Abstract: "The concept of supervenience and a regimented concept of grounding are often taken to provide rival explications of pre-theoretical concepts of dependence and determination. Friends of grounding typically point out that supervenience claims do not entail corresponding grounding claims. Every fact supervenes on itself, but is not grounded in itself, and the fact that a thing exists supervenes on the fact that its singleton exists, but is not grounded in it. Common lore has it, though, that grounding claims do entail corresponding supervenience claims. In this article, I show that this assumption is problematic. On one way of understanding it, the corresponding supervenience claim is just an entailment claim under a different name. On another way of understanding it, the corresponding claim is a distinctive supervenience claim, but its specification gives rise to what I call the ‘‘reference type problem’’: to associate the classes of facts that are the relata of grounding with the types of facts that are the relata of supervenience. However it is understood, supervenience rules out prima facie possibilities: alien realizers, blockers, heterogeneous realizers, floaters, and heterogeneous blockers. Instead of being rival explications of one and the same pre-theoretical concept, grounding and supervenience may be complementary concepts capturing different aspects of determination and dependence."

9. ———. 2020. "Emergence." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 312-323. New York: Routledge.

"Grounding is taken to be topic neutral, and contributors tend to be interested in general and noncontingent claims about it.

(...)

The literature on emergence is strikingly different on all those counts. It is dispersed over a number of subdisciplines of philosophy, with different intellectual traditions, notably philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and to a lesser extent metaphysics. Indeed, collections on emergence (e.g., Bedau and Humphreys (2008); Clayton and Davies (2006)) tend to cast the net even wider and include contributions from various natural and social sciences, as well as speculative proposals from the margins of mainstream science.Accordingly, the literature is highly heterogeneous.This means that whatever generalizations I am about to offer on the literature should be taken with a grain of salt." (p. 312)

References

Bedau, M.A. and Humphreys, P. (2008). Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Clayton, P. and Davies, P. (2006). The Re-Emergence of Emergence:The Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

10. Liggins, David. 2012. "Truth-makers and Dependence." In Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality edited by Correia, Fabrice and Schnieder, Benjamin, 254-271. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"This chapter discusses the significance of non-causal dependence for truth-maker theory. After introducing truth-maker theory (Section 10.1), I discuss a challenge to it levelled by Benjamin Schnieder. I argue that Schnieder’s challenge can be met once we acknowledge the existence of non-causal dependence and of explanations which rely on it (Sections 10.2 to 10.5). I then mount my own argument against truth-maker theory, based on the notion of non-causal dependence (Sections 10.6 and 10.7)." (p. 254)

References

Schnieder, B. 2006. ‘Truth-Making Without Truth-Makers’, Synthese 152: 21–46

11. ———. 2016. "Grounding and the Indispensability Argument." Synthese no. 193:531-548.

Abstract: "There has been much discussion of the indispensability argument for the existence of mathematical objects. In this paper I reconsider the debate by using the notion of grounding, or non-causal dependence. First of all, I investigate what proponents of the indispensability argument should say about the grounding of relations between physical objects and mathematical ones. This reveals some resources which nominalists are entitled to use. Making use of these resources, I present a neglected but promising response to the indispensability argument—a liberalized version of Field’s response—and I discuss its significance. I argue that if it succeeds, it provides a new refutation of the indispensability argument; and that, even if it fails, its failure may bolster some of the fictionalist responses to the indispensability argument already under discussion. In addition, I use grounding to reply to a recent challenge to these responses."

12. Litland, Jon Erling. 2011. Natural Deduction for Logics of Ground.

Available on academia.edu.

Abstract: "I develop two logics (pplg and pnlg) of grounding which can deal with iterated grounding claims. The logics are developed in natural deduction form and the grounding operators are equipped with both introduction and elimination rules. I prove normalization results for pplg and pnlg and determine their relationship to Fine’s Pure Logic of Ground."

13. ———. 2013. "On Some Counterexamples to the Transitivity of Grounding." Essays in Philosophy no. 14:19-32.

Abstract: "I discuss three recent counterexamples to the transitivity of grounding due to Jonathan Schaffer. I argue that the counterexamples don’t work and draw some conclusions about the relationship between grounding and explanation."

References

Schaffer, Jonathan (2012). “Grounding, Transitivity, and Contrastivity”. In: Metaphysical Grounding. Ed. by Fabrice Correia and Benjamin Schnieder. Cambridge University Press. Chap. 4, pp. 122–138

14. ———. 2015. "Grounding, Explanation, and the Limit of Internality." The Philosophical Review no. 124:481-532.

"For the reader’s benefit, here’s an overview of the essay. In section 2, I introduce terminology and notation. In section 3, I explain what I mean by the thesis that grounding is internal. In section 4, I lay down the assumptions about ground that generate the problem for internality; in section 5, I present the counterexample; and in section 6, I defend it against a variety of objections. This concludes the negative part of the essay.

Moving on to the positive part of the essay, I link grounding with the notion of a “completely satisfactory explanation” (section 7).

(...)

On either alternative, we obtain a satisfactory logic of ground in settings where we have self-reference, and we can establish the conjecture of the previous section. After concluding (section 9), two technical appendixes establish some claims baldly asserted in the main text: appendix A shows how supervaluationism can be satisfactorily combined with a theory of ground, and appendix B works through the technical details of the account of ground in terms of completely satisfactory explanation." (pp. 482-483)

15. ———. 2016. "An Infinitely Descending Chain of Ground Without a Lower Bound." Philosophical Studies no. 173:1361-1369.

Abstract: "Using only uncontentious principles from the logic of ground I construct an infinitely descending chain of ground without a lower bound. I then compare the construction to the constructions due to Dixon (forthcoming [2016]) and Rabin and Rabern (J Philos Log, 2015)."

References

Dixon, T. S. (2016). What is the well-foundedness of grounding? Mind. 125, 439-468.

Rabin, G. O., & Rabern, B. (2015). Well-founding grounding grounding. Journal of Philosophical Logic

16. ———. 2016. "Pure Logic of Many-Many Ground." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 45:531-577.

Abstract: "A logic of grounding where what is grounded can be a collection of truths is a “many-many” logic of ground. The idea that grounding might be irreducibly many-many has recently been suggested by Dasgupta (2014). In this paper I present a range of novel philosophical and logical reasons for being interested in many-many logics of ground. I then show how Fine’s State-Space semantics for the Pure Logic of Ground (PLG) can be extended to the many-many case, giving rise to the Pure Logic of Many-Many Ground (PLMMG). In the second, more technical, part of the paper, I do two things. First, I present an alternative formalization of PLG; this allows us to simplify Fine’s completeness proof for PLG. Second, I formalize PLMMG using an infinitary sequent calculus and prove that this formalization is sound and complete."

17. ———. 2017. "Grounding Ground." In Oxford Studies in Metaphysics: Vol. 10, edited by Bennett, Karen and Zimmermann, Dean W, 279-315. New York: Oxford University Press.

"If Γ’s being the case grounds ϕ’s being the case, what grounds that Γ’s being the case grounds ϕ’s being the case?1 This is the Problem of Iterated Ground.(1)

Dasgupta (2014b), Bennett (2011), and deRosset (2013) have grappled with this problem from the point of view of metaphysics. But iterated ground is a problem not just for metaphysicians: the existing logics of ground(2) have had nothing to say about such iterated grounding claims. In this paper I propose a novel account of iterated ground and develop a logic of iterated ground. The account—what I will call the Zero-Grounding Account (ZGA for short)—is based on three mutually supporting ideas: (i) taking non-factive ground as a primitive notion of ground; (ii) tying nonfactive ground to explanatory arguments; and (iii) holding that true non-factive grounding claims are zero-grounded (in Fine’s sense)." (p. 279)

(1) Here Γ are some (true) propositions and ϕ is a (true) proposition. For the official formulation of claims of ground, see § 2 below. In the interest of readability I will not distinguish carefully between use and mention throughout.

(2) Fine 2012b; Correia 2010, 2014; Schnieder 2011; Poggiolesi 2015.

References

Bennett, K. (2011). “By Our Bootstraps.” Philosophical Perspectives 25.1, pp. 27–41.

Correia, Fabrice (2010). “Grounding and Truth-functions.” Logique et Analyse 53.211, pp. 251–79.

Correia, Fabrice (2014). “Logical Grounds.” Review of Symbolic Logic 7.1, pp. 31–59.

Fine, Kit (2012b). “The Pure Logic of Ground.” Review of Symbolic Logic 5.1, pp. 1–25.

Dasgupta, Shamik (2014b). “The Possibility of Physicalism.” Journal of Philosophy 111.9/10, pp. 557–92.

deRosset, Louis (2013). “Grounding Explanations.” Philosophers’ Imprint 13.7, pp. 1–26.

Poggiolesi, Francesca (2015). “On Defining the Notion of Complete and Immediate Formal Grounding.” Synthese, pp. 1–21.

Schnieder, Benjamin (2011). “A Logic for ‘Because’.” Review of Symbolic Logic 4.3, pp. 445–65.

18. ———. 2018. "Could the Grounds’s Grounding the Grounded Ground the Grounded?" Analysis no. 78:56-65.

Abstract: "The answer to the opening question is ‘yes’: it follows from standard principles in the logic of ground that that there are facts φ and ψ such that φ’s partially grounding ψ partially grounds ψ. This might seem like a mere curiosity, but it has important consequences for the following hotly debated issue. Suppose that the fact φ grounds the fact ψ; then this – that φ grounds ψ – is a further fact, and we may ask what grounds it. (This is the Problem of Grounding Ground.) Most philosophers who have addressed it have held that φ is at least a partial ground for φ’s grounding ψ. Unfortunately, this, together with standard principles in the logic of ground, entails that the answer to the opening question is ‘no’. Standard and plausible principles about ground are thus inconsistent; moreover, this inconsistency turns on different principles than the inconsistencies unearthed by Fine (2010) and Krämer (2013). In particular, the principle of Amalgamation – that if each of φ and φ is a ground for θ then φ together with φ is a ground for θ – plays a role in generating the inconsistency.

In this article, I establish the above claims and, tentatively, argue that we resolve the inconsistency by giving up Amalgamation, thus clearing the way for φ’s grounding ψ’s grounding ψ."

References

Fine, K. 2010. Some puzzles of ground. Notre Dame Jorunal of Formal Logic 51: 97–118.

Krämer, S. 2013. A simpler puzzle of ground. Thought 2: 85–9.

19. ———. 2018. "In Defense of the (Moderate) Disunity of Grounding." Thought: A Journal of Philosophy no. 7:97-108.

Abstract: "Fine (2012) is a pluralist about grounding. He holds that there are three fundamentally distinct notions of grounding: metaphysical, normative, and natural. Berker (2017) argues for monism on the grounds that the pluralist cannot account for certain principles describing how the distinct notions of grounding interact. This paper defends pluralism. By building on work by Fine (2010) and Litland (2015) I show how the pluralist can systematically account for Berker’s interaction principles.

A monist about grounding holds that there is a single fundamental grounding relation; a pluralist holds that there are several fundamentally distinct grounding relations. In this paper I do two things. First, I defend the moderate pluralism of Fine (2012) from two challenges recently presented by Berker (2017). Second, I show that the pluralist’s most basic grounding relations are not asymmetric." (A note omitted)

References

Berker, Selim. “The Unity of Grounding.” Mind (2017). [2018, 127, 729-777]

Fine, Kit. “Some Puzzles of Ground.” Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 51.1 (2010): 97–118.

Fine, Kit. “Guide to Ground,” in Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Fabrice Correia and Benjamin Schnieder. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, 37–80 Ch. 1.

Litland, Jon Erling. “Grounding, Explanation, and the Limit of Internality.” Philosophical Review 124.4 (2015): 481–532.

20. ———. 2018. "Pure Logic of Iterated Full Ground." The Review of Symbolic Logic no. 11:411-435.

Abstract: "This article develops the Pure Logic of Iterated Full Ground (PLIFG), a logic of ground that can deal with claims of the form “φ grounds that (ψ grounds θ)”—what we call iterated grounding claims. The core idea is that some truths ground a truth φ when there is an explanatory argument (of a certain sort) from premisses to conclusion φ. By developing a deductive system that distinguishes between explanatory and nonexplanatory arguments we can give introduction rules for operators for factive and nonfactive full ground, as well as for a propositional “identity” connective.

Elimination rules are then found by using a proof-theoretic inversion principle."

21. ———. 2018. "Bicollective Ground: Towards a (Hyper)graphic Account." In Reality and Its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, edited by Bliss, Ricki and Priest, Graham, 140-163. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"Overview: We begin in §2 by introducing the central notion of immediate strict full ground.

In §3 we develop some ways of making sense of the characteristic non-distributivity of bicollective ground and argue that mathematical structuralists should avail themselves of bicollective ground. In §4 we rehearse the truthmaker semantics for bicollective ground and point out some problems that arise in the bicollective case.

In §5 we recall the graph-theoretic account for the left-collective case and argue against Fine's principle of Amalgamation. The main contribution of the paper comes in §6 where we develop the graph-theoretic account ofbicollective ground. We discuss how to define acyclic graphs, mediate ground, the notions of partial ground, and what it is for two collections of truths to be ground-theoretically equivalent. We conclude with some questions for future research (§7)." (p. 141)

22. ———. 2020. "Meta-Ground." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 133-147. New York: Routledge.

"Suppose the facts Γ ground the fact ϕ.Then it is a fact that Γ grounds ϕ. And we may ask what grounds it. What is the answer? And what turns on this? This is the question of meta-ground, grounding ground, or iterated ground.

The goal of this chapter is to introduce the reader to the state of the debate about meta-ground and to indicate some areas for future research.Even though the problem of meta-ground is a fairly small piece of the larger literature on ground, it is impossible to cover everything. Since I want to indicate what I take to be the most interesting areas for future research, regrettably some subtleties in the existing views had to be suppressed." (p. 133, a note omitted)

23. Lopez de Sa, Dan. 2013. "Rigid vs. Flexible Response-Dependent Properties." In Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence, edited by Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin and Steinberg, Alex, 393-417. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"According to a more or less traditional view of secondary qualities, they are-or would be-real though not fully objective features of external objects. Roughly speaking, they are real not only by being the significations of natural simple predicates which can be used to make predications that are, for the most part, truth-evaluable and sometimes true, but also by being exemplified independently of those representations.

Roughly speaking, they are less than fully objective in that it is essential for something having them that it bears a certain relation to subjective responses of ours, at least as we actually are.

Response-dependence was intended to generalize the notion of a secondary quality in that respect, by applying also to values in a way such that-at least a qualified form of-realism was vindicated. My view is that response-dependence, by itself, fails with respect to this project." (p. 393)

24. Loss, Roberto. 2015. "Grounds, Roots and Abysses." Thought: A Journal of Philosophy no. 4:41-52.

Abstract: "The aim of this study is to address the “Grounding Grounding Problem,” that is, the question as to what, if anything, grounds facts about grounding. I aim to show that, if a seemingly plausible principle of modal recombination between fundamental facts and the principle customarily called “Entailment” are assumed, it is possible to prove not only that grounding facts featuring fundamental, contingent grounds are derivative but also that either they are (at least) partially grounded in the grounds they feature or they are “abysses” (i.e., derivative facts without fundamental grounds and lying at the top of an infinitely descending chain of ground)."

25. ———. 2016. "Parts Ground the Whole and Are Identical to It." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 94:489-498.

Abstract: "What is the relation between parts taken together and the whole that they compose?

The recent literature appears to be dominated by two different answers to this question, which are normally thought of as being incompatible. According to the first, parts taken together are identical to the whole that they compose. According to the second, the whole is grounded in its parts. The aim of this paper is to make some theoretical room for the view according to which parts ground the whole they compose while being, at the same time, identical to it."

26. ———. 2017. "Grounding, Contingency and Transitivity." Ratio no. 30:1-14.

Abstract: "Grounding contingentism is the doctrine according to which grounds are not guaranteed to necessitate what they ground.

In this paper I will argue that the most plausible version of contingentism (which I will label ‘serious contingentism’) is incompatible with the idea that the grounding relation is transitive, unless either ‘priority monism’ or ‘contrastivism’ are assumed."

27. ———. 2019. "No Ground for Doomsday." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 62:1136-1156.

Abstract: "The ability of providing an adequate supervenience base for tensed truths may seem to be one of the main theoretical advantages of both the growing-block and the moving-spotlight theory of time over presentism. However, in this paper I will argue that some propositions appear to be as problematic for growing-block theorists as past-directed propositions are for presentists, namely propositions stating that nothing will be the case in the future.

Furthermore, I will show that the moving-spotlight theory can adequately address all the main supervenience challenges that can be levelled against A-theories of time. I will, thus, conclude that, at least as far as the supervenience principle is concerned, the moving-spotlight theory should be preferred over both presentism and the growing-block theory."

28. Lovett, Adam. 2019. "A Simple Proof of Grounding Internality." Thought: A Journal of Philosophy no. 8:154-166.

Abstract: "Some people think that grounding is a type of identity. And some people think that grounding connections hold necessarily. I show that, under plausible assumptions, if grounding is a type of identity, then grounding connections hold necessarily."

29. ———. 2020. "The Puzzles of Ground." Philosophical Studies no. 177:2541-2564.

Abstract: "I outline and provide a solution to some paradoxes of ground."

30. Lowe, E. J. 1998. The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

"The arguments of Chapter 5 more or less take the concept of substance for granted and so part of the aim of Chapter 6 is to provide a rigorous definition of substance, in terms of the crucial notion of existential dependency. At the same time, I begin to build up a picture of the relationships between the category of substance and other categories of entities at the same ontological level—entities such as events, properties, places, and times. This picture is further developed in Chapter 7, where I go on to argue for quite general reasons that certain fundamental kinds of substance—what I call primitive substances—must exist in order to provide the ultimate existential grounding of all concrete existence. Such substances are distinctive in that their identity through time is itself primitive or ungrounded.

However, identifying these substances is a more difficult matter than arguing in a general way for the necessity of their existence." (Preface, p. VI)

31. ———. 2012. "Asymmetrical Dependence in Individuation." In Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality edited by Correia, Fabrice and Schnieder, Benjamin, 214-233. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Identity-dependence would appear to be an asymmetrical, or at least an antisymmetrical relation, with the implication that no two distinct entities can be each other’s individuators – even if we can allow, as I believe we should, that some entities are self-individuating.

(...)

However, some so-called ‘structuralist’ ontologies seem to threaten the contention that two or more entities of a certain kind cannot all fix each other’s identities.

(...)

If these suggestions are correct, then it would seem that, in principle, all facts about the identities of entities of any kind may ‘supervene’ upon relational facts about certain structures to which those entities belong. Hence, no identity fact would be metaphysically basic or foundational. In the present chapter, this line of thought will be challenged and thereby a case be made out for the claim that some entities in any coherent system of ontology must be self-individuating, with these entities ultimately explaining the identities of all other entities in the system." (p. 215)

32. ———. 2013. "Some Varieties of Metaphysical Dependence." In Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence, edited by Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin and Steinberg, Alex, 193-210. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"In this paper, I shall first of all (in section 1) define various kinds of ontological dependence, motivating these definitions by appeal to examples. My contention is that whenever we need, in metaphysics, to appeal to some notion of existential or identity-dependence, one or other of these definitions will serve our needs adequately, which one depending on the case in hand. Then (in section 2) I shall respond to some objections to one of these proposed definitions in particular, namely, my definition of (what I call) essential identity dependence.

Finally (in section 3), I shall show how a similar approach can be applied in the theory of truthmaking, by offering an account of the truthmaking relation which defines it in terms of a type of essential dependence. I shall also say why I think that this approach is preferable to one which treats the truthmaking relation as primitive. More generally, my view is that accounts of dependence or 'grounding' which treat these notions as primitive are less satisfactory than my own position, which is that in all cases a suitable definition is forthcoming if we look hard enough." (p. 193)

33. Lubrano, Michele. 2018. "The Emergence of Ground: Some Limitative Results." Synthese no. 198:1303-1315.

Abstract: "In this paper I’m going to deal with the divide between foundationalism and infinitism about grounding. I will examine a thesis about the emergence of ground that has recently been proposed by Matteo Morganti. I will show that a generalized version of this thesis suffers from some serious limits and it cannot be accepted without a significant departure from the standard notion of grounding."

References

Morganti, M. (2009). Ontological priority, fundamentality and monism. Dialectica, 63(3), 271–288.

Morganti, M. (2015). Dependence, justification and explanation: Must reality be well-founded? Erkenntnis, 80, 555–572.

34. Marshall, Daniel Graham. 2015. "Intrinsicality and Grounding." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 90:1-19.

Abstract: "A number of philosophers have recently claimed that intrinsicality can be analysed in terms of the metaphysical notion of grounding. Since grounding is a hyperintensional notion, accounts of intrinsicality in terms of grounding, unlike most other accounts, promise to be able to discriminate between necessarily coextensive properties that differ in whether they are intrinsic. They therefore promise to be compatible with popular metaphysical theories that posit necessary entities and necessary connections between wholly distinct entities, on which it is plausible that there are such properties. This paper argues that this promise is illusory. It is not possible to give an analysis of intrinsicality in terms of grounding that is consistent with these theories. Given an adequate analysis should be compatible with these theories, it follows

that it is not possible to analyse intrinsicality in terms of grounding."

35. Martínez, Sergio F., and Huang, Xiang. 2011. "Epistemic Groundings of Abstraction and Their Cognitive Dimension." Philosophy of Science no. 78:490-511.

Abstract: "In the philosophy of science, abstraction has usually been analyzed in terms of the interface between our experience and the design of our concepts. The often implicit assumption here is that such interface has a definite identifiable and universalizable structure, determining the epistemic correctness of any abstraction. Our claim is that, on the contrary, the epistemic grounding of abstraction should not be reduced to the structural norms of such interface but is also related to the constraints on the cognitive processes of specific abstractions. This suggests that we should understand abstraction as embodied in different kinds of abstraction practices."

36. Maurin, Anna-Sofia. 2019. "Grounding and Metaphysical Explanation: It’s Complicated." Philosophical Studies no. 176:1573-1594.

Abstract: "Grounding theorists insist that grounding and explanation are intimately related. This claim could be understood as saying either that grounding ‘inherits’ its properties from (metaphysical) explanation (and that, therefore, contemplating the nature of explanation informs us about the nature of grounding) or it could be interpreted as saying that grounding plays an important—possibly an indispensable— role in metaphysical explanation (and that, therefore, that there are these explanations justifies positing grounding). Or both. I argue that saying that grounding ‘inherits’ its properties from explanation can only be justified if grounding is explanatory by nature (if so-called ‘unionism’ is true), but that this view is untenable. We ought therefore to be ‘separatists’ and view grounding and explanation as distinct. As it turns out, though, once grounding has been in this sense distinguished from the explanation it backs, the view that the role grounding plays in explanation justifies its introduction ends up in serious trouble. I conclude that the role grounding plays in explanation (if any) does not justify attributing to grounding whatever nature we think it has, and it most likely does not give us any special reason to think grounding exists."

37. Mayer, Marta Cialdea, and Cerrito, Serenella. 2001. "Ground and Free-Variable Tableaux for Variants of Quantified Modal Logics." Studia Logica no. 69:97-131.

Abstract: "In this paper we study proof procedures for some variants of first-order modal logics, where domains may be either cumulative or freely varying and terms may be either rigid or non-rigid, local or non-local. We define both ground and free variable tableau methods, parametric with respect to the variants of the considered logics. The treatment of each variant is equally simple and is based on the annotation of functional symbols by natural numbers, conveying some semantical information on the worlds where they are meant to be interpreted.

This paper is an extended version of a previous work where full proofs were not included. Proofs are in some points rather tricky and may help in understanding the reasons for some details in basic definitions."

38. Mazurkiewicz, Szymon. 2019. "Legal Positivism Social Source Thesis and Metaphysical Grounding: Employing Metaphysical Grounding Based on Metaphysical Laws." Archiwum Filozofii Prawa i Filozofii Spolecznej:5-21.

"In this paper, I would like to examine the grounding account of the determination of the relation between social facts and legal facts, as well as try to resolve some problems that this account involves. The first one is its unintelligibility: if one claims that legal facts are metaphysically grounded in social facts without explaining why this relation holds, such a claim does not seem to be explanatory sufficient. The second one

is insufficient explanation of how normative legal facts can be grounded in descriptive social facts." (p. 6)

39. McDaniel, Brannon. 2017. "Grounding and the Objection from Accidental Generalizations." Thought: A Journal of Philosophy no. 6:178-184.

Abstract: "Monistic grounding says that there is one fundamental ground, while pluralistic grounding says that there are many such grounds. Grounding necessitarianism says that grounding entails, but is not reducible to, necessitation, while grounding contingentism says that there are at least some cases where grounding does not entail necessitation. Pluralistic grounding necessitarianism is a very popular position, but accidental generalizations, such as ‘all solid gold spheres are less than one mile in diameter’, pose well-known problems for this view: the many fundamental grounds of such generalizations do not necessitate them. Though there is a straightforward response to this objection, I argue that it fails.Thus the objection from accidental generalizations stands, and proponents of pluralistic grounding necessitarianism face the following dilemma: either give up pluralistic grounding, or give up necessitarianism."

40. ———. 2022. "Grounding as Minimal Necessitation." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 65:154-175.

Abstract: Let NNG be the claim that necessitation is necessary for grounding, and let NSG be the claim that necessitation is sufficient for grounding. The consensus view is that grounding cannot be reduced to necessitation, and this is due to the (approximately) universally-accepted claim that NSG is false. Among deniers of NSG: grounding contingentists think NNG is also false, but they are in the minority compared to grounding necessitarians who uphold NNG. For one who would defend the claim that grounding is reducible to necessitation, the task is formidable: she must defend NSG and NNG. I consider two prominent objections against NSG, and two more against NNG before developing a reductive account of grounding as minimal necessitation that avoids not only all four of the previously mentioned objections, but also an additional objection that targets minimal necessitation accounts in particular. If my arguments are compelling, then, insofar as we thereby have a strong prima facie case for thinking that grounding can be reduced to (minimal) necessitation, we have a strong prima facie case for thinking the consensus view is mistaken."

41. McDaniel, Kris. 2017. The Fragmentation of Being. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments IX; Introduction 1; 1. Ways of Being 12; 2. A Return to the Analogy of Being 48; 3. Ways of Being and Time 78; 4. Categories of Being 109; 5. Being and Almost Nothingness 140; 6. Persons and Value 170; 7. Degrees of Being 195; 8. Being and Ground 223; 9. Being and Essence 256; Concluding Unsystematic Postscript 290; Bibliography 293; Index 317-320.

"One of the oldest questions in metaphysics concerns not the various natures of beings but rather the nature of being itself: is being unitary or does being fragment? The primary aims of this book are to explicate the idea that being fragments, to show how the fragmentation of being impacts various other extant philosophical disputes, and to defend the tenability and fruitfulness of the idea that being fragments.

These aims are interdependent. An inexplicable idea is neither tenable nor fruitful.

And an idea is fruitful only if it sheds light on extant disputes or provides new paths for interesting research. If the claim that being fragments has no philosophical payoff elsewhere, one must forgive those who neglect or dismiss the question of the fragmentation of being. My hope is that I will convince you of the importance of the claim that being fragments by extensively exploring the connections between the various ways being might fragment and philosophical issues pertaining to metaphysical fundamentality, substances and accidents, time, modality, ontological categories, absences and presences, persons, value, ground, and essence. This book is devoted to these explorations." (p. 1)

42. ———. 2019. "The Principle of Sufficient Reason and Necessitarianism." Analysis no. 79:230-236.

"1. Introduction: Peter van Inwagen (1983: 202–4) presented a powerful argument against the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which I henceforth abbreviate as ‘PSR’. (See also Bennett 1984: 115 for a similar argument. I will elide the differences between them in what follows.) For decades, the consensus was that this argument successfully refuted PSR. However, now a growing consensus holds that van Inwagen’s argument is fatally flawed, at least when ‘sufficient reason’ is understood in terms of ground, for on this understanding, an ineliminable premiss of van Inwagen’s argument is demonstrably false and cannot be repaired. I will argue that this growing consensus is mistaken and that a powerful argument relevantly similar to van Inwagen’s should still concern us, even when we understand ‘sufficient reason’ in terms of ground.

Here is the plan for the paper. In §2, I briefly state a version of van Inwagen’s argument. In §3, I briefly discuss the recent criticism of it van Inwagen’s argument and then formulate an updated version of it that is more plausible than its predecessor but which avoids the recent criticism."

References

Bennett, J. 1984. A Study of Spinoza’s ‘‘Ethics’’, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Press.

van Inwagen, P. 1983. An Essay on Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press

43. McKenzie, Kerry. 2022. Fundamentality and Grounding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Abstract: "A suite of questions concerning fundamentality lies at the heart of contemporary metaphysics. The relation of grounding, thought to connect the more to the less fundamental, sits at the heart of those

debates in turn. Since most contemporary metaphysicians embrace the doctrine of physical ism and thus hold that reality is fundamentally physical, a natural question is how physics can inform the current debates over fundamentality and grounding. This Element introduces the reader to the concept of grounding and some of the key issues that animate contemporary debates around it, such as the question of whether grounding is 'unified' or 'plural' and whether there exists a fundamental level of reality. It moves on to show how resources from physics can help point the way towards their answers - thus furthering the case for a naturalistic approach to even the most fundamental of questions in metaphysics."

44. McSweeney, Michaela M. 2020. "Debunking Logical Ground: Distinguishing Metaphysics from Semantics." Journal of the American Philosophical Association no. 6:156-170.

Abstract: "Many philosophers take purportedly logical cases of ground (such as a true disjunction being grounded in its true disjunct(s)) to be obvious cases, and indeed such cases have been used to motivate the existence of and importance of ground. I argue against this. I do so by motivating two kinds of semantic determination relations. Intuitions of logical ground track these semantic relations. Moreover, our knowledge of semantics for (e.g.) first order logic can explain why we have such intuitions. And, I argue, neither semantic relation can be a species of ground even on a quite broad conception of what ground is.

Hence, without a positive argument for taking so-called ‘logical ground’ to be something distinct from a semantic determination relation, we should cease treating logical cases as cases of ground."

45. ———. 2020. "Logic." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 449-459. New York: Routledge.

"Some of the paradigmatic examples of grounding (that are often used to motivate, or help us latch onto, the notion of grounding itself) are relations between logically complex facts and the logically simpler facts that entail them. For example:

[The grass is green] grounds [Either the grass is green or the moon is made of cheese].

[The grass is green], [The sky is blue] ground [The grass is green and the sky is blue].

[The chair is orange] grounds [Something is orange].

Either implicitly or explicitly, these are usually (but not always) taken as instances of variations of the following principles:

Conjunctive grounding (‘CG’): If each of p, q is true, then [p], [q] together ground [p & q].

Disjunctive grounding (‘DG’): If p is true, then [p] grounds [p v q].

Existential grounding (‘EG’): If Fa is true, then [Fa] grounds [∃x Fx].

This entry surveys some things that have been said in favor of these principles (and about logical grounding in general) and raises (but does not resolve) some questions about why we should accept these principles, and, if we should, what it means to accept these principles." (p. 449)

46. Melamedoff, Damian. 2018. "Against Existential Grounding." Thought. A Journal of Philosophy no. 7:3-11.

Abstract: "Existential grounding is the thesis that all existential generalizations are grounded in their particular instances.This paper argues that existential grounding is false.This is because it is inconsistent with two plausible claims about existence: (1) the claim that singular existence facts are generalizations and (2) the claim that no object can be involved in a fact that grounds that same object’s existence. Not only are these claims intuitively plausible, but there are also strong arguments in favour of each of them."

47. Melnyk, Andrew. 2016. "Grounding and the Formulation of Physicalism." In Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground, edited by Aizawa, Ken and Gillett, Carl, 249-270. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

"Because I aspire to be a naturalistic metaphysician, I ask in this chapter whether an appeal to the relation of grounding posited recently by certain philosophers might be useful in one kind of approach to the problem of the many sciences—a physicalist approach." (p. 250)

48. Merlo, Giovanni. 2022. "Disjunction and the Logic of Grounding." Erkenntnis no. 87:567-587.

Abstract: "Many philosophers have been attracted to the idea of using the logical form of a true sentence as a guide to the metaphysical grounds of the fact stated by that sentence.

This paper looks at a particular instance of that idea: the widely accepted principle that disjunctions are grounded in their true disjuncts. I will argue that an unrestricted version of this principle has several problematic consequences and that it’s not obvious how the principle might be restricted in order to avoid them. My suggestion is that, instead of trying to restrict the principle, we should distinguish between metaphysical and conceptual grounds and take the principle to apply exclusively to the latter. This suggestion, if correct, carries over to other prominent attempts at using logical form as a guide to ground."

49. Mikkola, Mari. 2015. "Doing Ontology and Doing Justice: What Feminist Philosophy Can Teach Us About Meta-Metaphysics." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 58:780-805.

Abstract: "Feminist philosophy has recently become recognised as a self-standing philosophical sub-discipline. Still, metaphysics has remained largely dismissive of feminist insights. Here I make the case for the value of feminist insights in metaphysics: taking them seriously makes a difference to our ontological theory choice and feminist philosophy can provide helpful methodological tools to regiment ontological theories.

My examination goes as follows. Contemporary ontology is not done via conceptual analysis, but via quasi-scientific means. This takes different ontological positions to be competing hypotheses about reality’s fundamental structure that are then assessed with a loose battery of criteria for theory choice. Such criteria make up the constitutive values of ontology (e.g. providing a unified, coherent, non-circular, simple, parsimonious total theory). These values are distinguished from contextual values of a practice: the political and moral values embedded in the social context of inquiry. Although we may be frank about some meta-metaphysical value commitments, bringing in feminist contextual values is viewed as an unacceptable move when thinking about ontological theory choice. This paper then asks: is this move unacceptable? I think not and I aim to motivate this methodological insight here by examining recent work on grounding."

50. ———. 2019. "Grounding and Anchoring: On the Structure of Epstein’s Social Ontology." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 62:198-216.

Abstract: "Brian Epstein’s The Ant Trap is a praiseworthy addition to literature on social ontology and the philosophy of social sciences. Its central aim is to challenge received views about the social world – views with which social scientists and philosophers have aimed to answer questions about the nature of social science and about those things that social sciences aim to model and explain, like social facts, objects and phenomena. The received views that Epstein critiques deal with these issues in an overly people-centered manner. After all, even though social facts and phenomena clearly involve individual people arranged in certain ways, we must still spell out how people are involved in social facts and phenomena. There are many metaphysical questions about social properties, relations, dependence, constitution, causation, and facts that cannot be answered (for instance) just be looking at individual people alone. In order to answer questions about (e.g.) how one social entity depends for its existence on another, we need different metaphysical tools. Epstein thus holds that social ontological explanations would greatly benefit from making use of the theoretical toolkit that contemporary analytical metaphysics has to offer. He focuses specifically on two metaphysical instruments: grounding and anchoring. This paper examines Epstein’s understanding and use of these tools. I contend that Epstein is exactly right to say that contemporary metaphysics contains many theoretical instruments that can be fruitfully applied to social ontological analyses. However, I am unconvinced that Epstein’s tools achieve what they set out to do. In particular, I will address two issues: (1) How is grounding for Epstein meant to work? (2) Is anchoring distinct from grounding, and a relation that we need in social ontology?"

51. Miller, Elizabeth. 2015. "Humean Scientific Explanation." Philosophical Studies:1311–1332.

Abstract: "In a recent paper, Barry Loewer attempts to defend Humeanism about laws of nature from a charge that Humean laws are not adequately explanatory.

Central to his defense is a distinction between metaphysical and scientific explanations: even if Humeans cannot offer further metaphysical explanations of particular features of their ‘‘mosaic,’’ that does not preclude them from offering scientific explanations of these features. According to Marc Lange, however, Loewer’s distinction is of no avail. Defending a transitivity principle linking scientific explanantia to their metaphysical grounds, Lange argues that a charge of explanatory inadequacy resurfaces once this intuitive principle is in place. This paper surveys, on behalf of the Humean, three strategies for responding to Lange’s criticism. The ready availability of these strategies suggests that Lange’s argument may not bolster anti-Humean convictions, since the argument rests on premises that those not antecedently sharing these convictions may well reject. The three strategies also correspond to three interesting ways of thinking about relations of grounding linking Humean laws and their instances, all of which are consistent with theses of Humean supervenience, and some of which have been heretofore overlooked."

References

Lange, M. (2013). Grounding, scientific explanation, and Humean laws. Philosophical Studies, 164, 255–261.

Loewer, B. (2012). Two accounts of laws and time. Philosophical Studies, 160, 115–137.

52. Miller, Kristie, and Norton, James. 2017. "Grounding: It’s (Probably) All in the Head." Philosophical Studies no. 174:3059-3081.

Abstract: "In this paper we provide a psychological explanation for ‘grounding observations’—observations that are thought to provide evidence that there exists a relation of ground. Our explanation does not appeal to the presence of any such relation. Instead, it appeals to certain evolved cognitive mechanisms, along with the traditional modal relations of supervenience, necessitation and entailment. We then consider what, if any, metaphysical conclusions we can draw from the obtaining of such an explanation, and, in particular, if it tells us anything about whether we ought to posit a relation of ground."

53. Moran, Alex. 2018. "Kind‐Dependent Grounding." Analytic Philosophy no. 59:359-390.

"I begin by saying something more about the notion of grounding itself (Section 2). Then, I set out the aforementioned passage from Rosen (2015), discussion of which will help us work towards the key notion of kind-dependent grounding that this paper appeals to (Section 3). Along the way, we will encounter the idea that each object instantiates a fundamental kind, which can determine the properties it may have, plus the idea that grounding claims can hold conditionally. The following two sections then put the notion of kinddependent grounding to work in connection with two important metaphysical problems (Sections 4–5). The final section concludes (Section 6)." (p. 361)

54. Morganti, Matteo. 2014. "Metaphysical Infinitism and the Regress of Being." Metaphilosophy no. 45:232-244.

Abstract: "This article offers a limited defense of metaphysical “infinitism,” the view that there are, or might be, infinite chains of ontological dependence. According to a widespread presupposition, there must be an ultimate ground of being—most likely, a plurality of fundamental atoms. Contrary to this view, this article shows that metaphysical infinitism is internally coherent. In particular, a parallel with the debate concerning infinitism about epistemic justification is suggested, and an “emergence model” of being is put forward. According to the emergence model, the being of any given entity gradually arises out of an infinite series of progressively less dependent entities—it is not wholly transmitted, as it were, from a basic, ungrounded level to all the dependent ones in a step-by-step fashion. Some objections are considered and rebutted."

55. ———. 2018. "The Structure of Physical Reality. Beyond Foundationalism." In Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, edited by Bliss, Ricki and Priest, Graham, 254-272. New York: Oxford University Press.

"The plan of the paper is as follows. Section 2 briefly discusses the traditional view, based on grounding relations as determining strict partial orders and well-founded structures—so-called ‘metaphysical foundationalism’.The discussion then focuses on the prospects of non-standard models of the metaphysical structure of (parts of) physical reality. Section 3 looks at ‘infinitist’ models, where the well-foundedness assumption is dropped. Section 4 discusses ‘coherentist’ models, in which grounding relations fail to be irreflexive and symmetric and grounding structures give rise to ‘loops’ and/or ‘webs’. Section 5 concludes the paper by considering the plausibility of what one may call ‘hybrid’ models and, more generally, of pluralism with respect to the metaphysical structure of reality." (p. 257)

56. Morton, Justin. 2019. "Grounding Thick Normative Facts." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly no. 100:408-431.

Abstract: "Many philosophers have been concerned with the nature of thick normative concepts. In this paper, I try to motivate a different project: understanding the nature of thick normative properties and facts. I propose a ground-theoretic approach to this project. I then argue that some of the simplest andmost initially plausible ways of understanding thick facts fail and that we are forced to accept some initially implausible views. I try to show how these views are not so implausible after all."

57. Muñoz, Daniel. 2020. "Grounding Nonexistence." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 63:209-229.

Abstract: "Contingent negative existentials give rise to a notorious paradox. I formulate a version in terms of metaphysical grounding: nonexistence can’t be fundamental, but nothing can ground it. I then argue for a new kind of solution, expanding on work by Kit Fine. The key idea is that negative existentials are contingently zero-grounded – that is to say, they are grounded, but not by anything, and only in the right conditions. If this is correct, it follows that grounding cannot be an internal relation, and that no complete account of reality can be purely fundamental."

58. Ney, Alyssa. 2016. "Grounding in the Philosophy of Mind: A Defense." In Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground, edited by Gillett, Carl and Aizawa, Ken, 271-300. London: Palgrave-Macmillan.

"One of the major trends in metaphysics in recent years has been in the development and application of novel conceptual frameworks for representing facts about realism, fundamentality, and metaphysical priority." (p. 271)

(...)

"I will argue that Fine’s framework has distinctive advantages but to see this it needs to be carefully teased apart from the others.

As I hope to show, Fine’s framework may be useful as a foundation for developing an approach to the mind–body problem that can resolve and clarify debates. I hope to show that by utilizing Fine’s distinctions, we are able to offer novel, conciliatory positions allowing us to move past some debates that have been carrying on in the philosophy of mind for decades." (p. 274)

59. ———. 2020. "Mind." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 460-471. New York: Routledge.

"The concept of grounding is typically introduced in order to formulate and address questions about metaphysical relationships.

(...)

This chapter will (i) describe how some metaphysicians have proposed the introduction of grounding concepts in order to formulate and provide answers to the mind–body problem and (ii) survey concerns about the appropriateness, adequacy, and indispensability of grounding concepts for addressing questions about the status of mental phenomena in a physical world. Finally, this chapter will (iii) consider replies to these concerns.A central lesson will be that any adequate assessment of the usefulness of grounding frameworks for formulating issues and positions in the philosophy of mind must be sensitive to distinctions between the different grounding concepts that have been introduced." (p. 460)

60. Nolan, Daniel. 2018. "Cosmic Loops." In Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, edited by Bliss, Ricki and Priest, Graham, 91-106. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Conclusion: Cosmic loops are of intrinsic interest: thinking about them can satisfy the same urges to grapple with the unfamiliar which are satisfied by various sorts of speculative fiction, from science fiction to the stories of Borges. Metaphysical fiction is a genre in its infancy, but a promising one for all that.

I have argued that thinking about cosmic loops serves several more academic purposes, however. They demonstrate, that we can make sense of loops of ground in a different way from the usual examples of loops achieved through only a few steps, and the conceivability and perhaps possibility of them are supported in ways different from other arguments I know of to support failures of asymmetry and transitivity. ." (p.104)

61. Norton, James. 2017. On the Dispensability of Grounding: Ground-breaking Work on Metaphysical Explanation, The University ofd Sidney.

Unpublished PhD thesis available at https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/16600

Abstract: "Primitive, unanalysable grounding relations are considered by many to be indispensable constituents of the metaphysician’s toolkit. Yet, as a primitive ontological posit, grounding must earn its keep by explaining features of the world not explained by other tools already at our disposal. Those who defend grounding contend that grounding is required to play two interconnected roles: accounting for widespread intuitions regarding what is ontologically prior to what, and forming the backbone of a theory of metaphysical explanation, in much the same way that causal relations have been thought to underpin theories of scientific explanation. This thesis undermines the need to posit grounding relations to perform either of these jobs. With regard to the first, it is argued that a pair of human psychological mechanisms—for which there is substantial empirical support—can provide a more theoretically virtuous explanation of why we have the intuitions that we do. With regard to the second, I begin by considering what we want from a theory of explanation, and go on to develop three attractive (yet grounding-free) theories of metaphysical explanation. I offer: i) a psychologistic theory that calls upon the aforementioned psychological mechanisms, as well as the modal relations of necessitation and supervenience, ii) a metaphysical variant of the deductive-nomological theory of scientific explanation, and iii) a metaphysical variant of the unificationist theory of scientific explanation. Furthermore, these theories draw upon mechanisms and relations (both logical and ontological) to which we are already committed. Thus, to posit grounding relations in order to explain our priority intuitions, or in order to develop a theory of metaphysical explanation, is ontologically profligate. I conclude that we should not posit relations of ground."

62. Nutting, Eileen S., Caplan, Ben, and Tillman, Chris. 2018. "Constitutive Essence and Partial Grounding." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 61:137-161.

Abstract: "Kit Fine and Gideon Rosen propose to define constitutive essence in terms of ground-theoretic notions and some form of consequential essence. But we think that the Fine–Rosen proposal is a mistake. On the Fine–Rosen proposal, constitutive essence ends up including properties that, on the central notion of essence (what Fine calls ‘the notion of essence which is of central importance to the metaphysics of identity’), are necessary but not essential. This is because consequential essence is (roughly) closed under logical consequence, and the ability of logical consequence to add properties to an object’s consequential essence outstrips the ability of ground-theoretic notions, as used in the Fine–Rosen proposal, to take those properties out. The necessary-but-not-essential properties that, on the Fine–Rosen proposal, end up in constitutive essence include the sorts of necessary-but-not-essential properties that, others have noted, end up in consequential essence."

63. O'Conaill, Donnchadh. 2018. "Grounding, Physicalism and Necessity." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 61:713-730.

Abstract: "Recent work on metaphysical grounding has suggested that physicalism can be characterised in terms of the mental facts being grounded in physical facts. It is often assumed that the full grounds of a fact metaphysically necessitate that fact. Therefore, it seems that if the physical grounds the mental, then the physical facts metaphysically necessitate the mental facts. Stefan Leuenberger argues that such a version of physicalism would be vulnerable to counterexamples. I shall outline a characterisation of grounding which appeals to a relation between grounding and the essences of properties instantiated in the grounded facts or in their grounds. If a grounded fact is such that its constituent property is essentially related to the properties instantiated in its grounds, or vice versa, then the grounded fact will be metaphysically necessitated by its full grounds. This characterisation of grounding not only avoids Leuenberger’s counterexamples, but has broader implications for characterising physicalism in terms of grounding."

64. O'Conaill, Donnchadh, and Tahko, Tuomas E. 2021. "New Frontiers in Ground, Essence, and Modality: Introduction." Synthese no. 198:1219-1230.

"Ground, essence, and modality seem to have something to do with each other. Can we provide unified foundations for ground and essence, or should we treat each as primitives? Can modality be grounded in essence, or should essence be expressed in terms of modality? Does grounding entail necessitation? Are the notions of ground and essence univocal? This volume focuses on the links—or lack thereof—between these three notions, as well as the foundations of ground, essence, and modality more generally, bringing together work on the metaphysics, epistemology, and logic of these three notions by some of the leading figures in the field as well as emerging young scholars.

(...)

After providing a brief historical summary of the (re)emergence of modality, essence and ground as central notions in metaphysics (Sect. 1), we shall outline some of the main themes in recent work on these notions and on the links between them (Sect. 2). In Sect. 3 we briefly introduce the papers in this volume." (p. 1219)

65. Oderberg, David S. 2021. "Formal Causation: Accidental and Substantial." In Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation, edited by Jansen, Ludger and Sandstad, Petter, 40-61. New York: Routledge.

"Of Aristotle's famous four causes, the 'formal cause' has been arguably the most neglected, if not eliminated outright from philosophy. This paper is an attempt to contribute to the rehabilitation of formal causality.

First, I outline the Aristotelian-Scholastic understanding of form as the principle of actuality, explaining the overlap between forms and universals.

I then begin, unconventionally, with an explanation of formal causation by accidents. There is a kind of causation by accidental forms that cannot be equated with efficient causation: I distinguish between the efficient causal trigger of actualisation and the continued actualisation of an object's potentiality, which latter is accounted for by formal causality. The discussion then moves to substantial forms and formal causation by them-where accounts of formal causality traditionally begin.

I argue that the causality whereby there exists a hylemorphic compound of matter and form cannot be efficient but must be formal. This requires an analysis of some aspects of matter as pure potentiality Aristotelian prime matter. I conclude by discussing the role of form as the unifier of matter into a single substance. This activity of unification is a central element in substantial formal causality. By contrast, Travis Dumsday's attempt to solve the unity problem without appealing to form is found wanting. I conclude that formal causation, far from being the relic of an outdated metaphysic, is both coherent and necessary to a proper understanding of fundamental being."

References

Dumsday, T. (2010) 'Natural Kinds and the Problem of Complex Essences'. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88(4), 619-34.

66. Orilia, Francesco. 2009. "Bradley's Regress and Ungrounded Dependence Chains: A Reply to Cameron." Dialectica no. 63:333-341.

Abstract: "A version of Bradley’s regress can be endorsed in an effort to address the problem of the unity of states of affairs or facts, thereby arriving at a doctrine that I have called fact infinitism. A consequence of it is the denial of the thesis, WF, that all chains of ontological dependence are well-founded or grounded. Cameron has recently rejected fact infinitism by arguing that WF, albeit not necessarily true, is however contingently true. Here fact infinitism is supported by showing that Cameron’s argument for the contingent truth of WF is unsuccessful."

WF = Ontological Well-Foundedness

References

Cameron, R. 2008, ‘Turtles all the Way Down: Regress, Priority and Fundamentality’, Philosophical Quarterly 58, pp. 1–14.

67. Paolini Paoletti, Michele. 2021. "Functional Powers." In Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation, edited by Jansen, Ludger and Sandstad, Petter, 124-148. New York: Routledge.

"Functions constitute a debated issue at the intersection between ontology and philosophy of science. Indeed, functions have given rise to several philosophical theories about their features, their presence or absence within specific kinds of entities, and their origins. Nevertheless, before delving into these aspects of functions, it is necessary to clarify what functions are from an ontological viewpoint. Namely, it is necessary to single out the nature of functions.

In this contribution, I shall suggest that functions should be taken as powers. More precisely, I shall argue that there is a certain category of powers-that of functional powers-and that functional powers can be legitimately taken to play the role of functions." (p. 124)

68. Passinsky, Asya. 2020. "Social Entities." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 510-520. New York: Routledge.

"In recent years,there has been an increased interest in applying the tools and methods of analytic metaphysics to the study of social phenomena.This chapter examines how one such tool—the notion of metaphysical ground—may be used to elucidate some central notions, debates, and positions in the philosophy of race and gender, social ontology, and the philosophy of social science. Three main applications are examined: how the notion of social construction may be analyzed in ground-theoretic terms (§1); how debates over the nature of social facts may be recast as grounding debates (§2); and how the doctrine of ontological individualism may be formulated using the notion of ground (§3).The chapter concludes by considering a skeptical challenge concerning the usefulness of the grounding framework for social metaphysics (§4)." (p. 510)

69. Perebom, Derk. 2016. "Anti-Reductionism, Anti-Rationalism, and the Material Constitution of the Mental." In Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground, edited by Carl Gillett, Ken Aizawa, 123-140. London: Palgrave-Macmillan.

"Physicalism about the mental requires that all mental entities be appropriately founded in microphysical entities. Supposing the truth of physicalism, it remains an open question whether the relation between the microphysical and the mental is reductive or nonreductive. By contrast with the mid-twentieth century, currently, most nonreductivists maintain that the main reason for accepting the nonreductive option is not methodological but metaphysical. On the position I endorse, mental natural kinds are not identical to natural kinds in microphysics because mental causal powers are not identical to microphysical causal powers." (p. 124)

70. Petersen, Thorben. 2016. "The Grounding Problem for Eternalism." Philosophical Studies no. 173:1819-1852.

Abstract: "In this paper, I develop an argument against eternalism, which is similar to the widely discussed grounding problem for presentism. It has recently been argued by many that presentism should be rejected on grounds that its sparse ontology is not suited to underwrite the healthy dose of realism we all share about the past. My aim basically is to add a new twist to the debate, by showing that actually eternalists are no better off than their rivals. In particular, I argue that the eternalist’s ontology does not have the appropriate shape to ground true propositions about the past."

71. Piccolomini D’Aragona, Antonio. 2021. "Proofs, Grounds and Empty Functions: Epistemic Compulsion in Prawitz’s Semantics." Journal of Philosophical Logic.

First Online 8 November 2021.

Abstract: "Prawitz has recently developed a theory of epistemic grounding that differs in many respects from his earlier semantics of arguments and proofs. An innovative approach to (valid) inferences yields a new conception of the intertwinement of the notions of valid inference and proof. We aim at singling out three reasons that may have led Prawitz to the ground-theoretic turn, i.e.: a better order in the explanation of the relation between valid inferences and proofs; a notion of valid inference based on which valid inferences and proofs are recognisable as such; a reconstruction of the deductive activity that makes inferences capable of yielding justification per se. These topics are discussed by Prawitz with reference to a very general and ancient question: why and how correct deduction has the epistemic power to compel us to accept its conclusions, provided its premises are justified? We conclude by remarking that, in spite of some improvements, the ground-theoretic approach shares with the previous one a problem of vacuous validity which, as Prawitz himself points out, blocks in both cases a satisfactory explanation of epistemic compulsion."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on metaphysical grounding. Fifth part: Ple-Ski

Bibliography

1. Plebani, Matteo. 2018. "The Indispensability Argument and the Nature of Mathematical Objects." Theoria: An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science no. 33:249-263.

Abstract: "Two conceptions of the nature of mathematical objects are contrasted: the conception of mathematical objects as preconceived objects (Yablo 2010), and heavy duty platonism (Knowles 2015). It is argued that some theses defended by friends of the indispensability argument are in harmony with heavy duty platonism and in tension with the conception of mathematical objects as preconceived objects."

References

Knowles, Robert. 2015. Heavy duty platonism. Erkenntnis 80/6: 1255-1270.

Yablo, Stephen. 2010. Things: Papers on objects, events, and properties. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2. Rabin, Gabriel Oak. 2018. "Grounding Orthodoxy and the Layered Conception." In Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, edited by Bliss, Ricki Leigh and Priest, Graham, 37-49. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Here's a roadmap for the remainder of the paper. In the next section (2: "Ground as the Generator as Layers"), we put some flesh on the bones of the idea of the layered conception and how ground interacts with it. Each of Sections 3-6 explores how ground fares in its ability to vindicate the layered conception under the relaxation of some element of the orthodoxy. We consider abandoning foundationalism, antisymmetry,

irreflexivity, and transitivity (in that order). The conclusory Section 7 steps back to consider the resulting overall picture." (p.39)

3. ———. 2019. "Grounding the Gaps or Bumping the Rug? On Explanatory Gaps and Metaphysical Methodology." Journal of Consciousness Studies no. 26:191-203.

Abstract: In a series of recent papers, Jonathan Schaffer (2017a,b) presents a novel framework for understanding grounding. Metaphysical laws play a central role. In addition, Schaffer argues that, contrary to what many have thought, there is no special ‘explanatory gap’ between consciousness and the physical world. Instead, explanatory gaps are everywhere. I draw out and criticize the methodology for metaphysics implicit in Schaffer’s presentation. In addition, I argue that even if we accept Schaffer’s picture, there remains a residual explanatory gap between consciousness and the physical. The residual gap does most of the same philosophical work as the original (e.g. in conceivability arguments). Schaffer has introduced a troublesome metaphysical methodology that fails to follow through on its biggest promise: to deflate the explanatory gap."

References

Schaffer, J. (2017a) Functionalism as a grounding principle, presented at Grounding and Consciousness, NYU Florence, August 2017.

Schaffer, J. (2017b) The ground between the gaps, Philosopher’s Imprint, 17 (11).

4. Poggiolesi, Francesca. 2016. "On Defining the Notion of Complete and Immediate Formal Grounding." Synthese no. 193:3147-3167.

Abstract: "The aim of this paper is to provide a definition of the the notion of complete and immediate formal grounding through the concepts of derivability and complexity.

It will be shown that this definition yields a subtle and precise analysis of the concept of grounding in several paradigmatic cases."

5. ———. 2016. "A Critical Overview of the Most Recent Logics of Grounding." In Objectivity, Realism, and Proof: FilMat Studies in the Philosophy of Mathematics edited by Boccuni, Francesca and Sereni, Andrea, 291-309. Dordrecht: Springer.

Abstract: "In this paper our aim is twofold: on the one hand, to present in a clear and faithful way two recent contributions to the logic of grounding, namely Correia (2014), and Fine (2012a); on the other hand, to argue that some of the formal principles describing the notion of grounding proposed by these logics need to be changed and improved."

References

Correia, F. (2014). Logical grounds. Review of Symbolic Logic, 7(1), 31–59.

Fine, K. (2012a). Guide to ground. In F. Correia & B. Schnieder (Eds.), Metaphysical grounding (pp. 37–80). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fine, K. (2012b). The pure logic of ground. Review of Symbolic Logic, 25(1), 1–25.

6. ———. 2018. "On Constructing a Logic for the Notion of Complete and Immediate Formal Grounding." Synthese no. 195:1231-1254.

Abstract: "In Poggiolesi (2016b) we have introduced a rigorous definition of the notion of complete and immediate formal grounding; in the present paper our aim is to construct a logic for the notion of complete and immediate formal grounding based on that definition. Our logic will have the form of a calculus of natural deduction, will be proved to be sound and complete and will allow us to have fine-grained grounding principles."

References

Poggiolesi, F. (2016b). On defining the notion of complete and immediate formal grounding. Synthese, 193:

3147–3167.

7. ———. 2020. "Grounding Rules and (Hyper-)Isomorphic Formulas." Australasian Journal of Logic no. 17:70-80.

Abstract: "An oft-defended claim of a close relationship between Gentzen inference rules and the meaning of the connectives they introduce and eliminate has given rise to a whole domain called proof-theoretic semantics, see Schroeder-Heister (1991); Prawitz (2006). A branch of proof-theoretic semantics, mainly developed by Došen (2019); Došen and Petríc (2011), isolates in a precise mathematical manner formulas (of a logic L) that have the same meaning. These isomorphic formulas are defined to be those that behave identically in inferences. The aim of this paper is to investigate another type of recently discussed rules in the literature, namely grounding rules, and their link to the meaning of the connectives they provide the grounds for. In particular, by using grounding rules, we will refine the notion of isomorphic formulas through the notion of hyper-isomorphic formulas. We will argue that it is actually the notion of hyper-isomorphic formulas that identify those formulas that have the same meaning."

References

Došen, K. (2019). Identity of proofs based on normalization and generality. Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, 9:477–503.

Došen, K. and Petríc (2011). Isomorphica formulas in classical propositional logic. Mathematical Logic Quarterly, 58:1–17.

Prawitz, D. (2006). Meaning approached via proofs. Synthese, 148:507–524.

Schroeder-Heister, P. (1991). Uniform proof-theoretic semantics for logical constants (abstract). Journal of Symbolic Logic, 56:11–42.

8. ———. 2020. "Grounding Rules for (Relevant) Implication." Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics no. 31:26-55.

Abstract: "In Poggiolesi (2020a) a definition of the notion of complete and immediate formal grounding in the background of a relevant framework has been introduced; this definition generates some intuitively acceptable grounding principles for relevant implication. In the present paper our aim is to construct a logic for the notion of complete and immediate formal grounding in a relevant framework based on that definition. Our logic will have the form of a calculus of natural deduction and will formalize the relation of grounding both as a meta-linguistic relation and as a connective. The calculus will contain grounding rules for relevant implication and will be proved to be sound and complete with respect to the original definition. Finally we will prove the deduction theorem at the grounding level, i.e. we will show that grounding formalized as a metalinguistic relation is equivalent to grounding formalized as a connective."

References

Poggiolesi, F. (2020a). Grounding principles for (relevant) implication. Synthese, pages 1-28.

9. ———. 2020. "Logics." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 213-227. New York: Routledge.

"The concept of grounding has been long neglected or forgotten in the history of logic (exceptions can be found in this book, as in Chapter 5 by Roski).This fact is all the more astonishing once we realize that grounding seems to cover the same special logical role as the kindred notions of truth and provability: like its cousin concepts, grounding can be fruitfully formalized into two different ways, namely as (i) a predicate or sentential operator or as (ii) a metalinguistic relation.This double formalization,which testifies to the importance of grounding as a logical notion, will structure this chapter.The next section will be dedicated to studies of grounding under the perspective of (i), which is the most developed in the contemporary literature; while Section 3 will focus on approaches adopting perspective (ii)." (p. 214)

10. ———. 2021. "Grounding Principles for (Relevant) Implication." Synthese no. 198:7351–7376.

Abstract: "Most of the logics of grounding that have so far been proposed contain grounding axioms, or grounding rules, for the connectives of conjunction, disjunction and negation, but little attention has been dedicated to the implication connective. The present paper aims at repairing this situation by proposing adequate grounding principles for relevant implication. Because of the interaction between negation and implication, new grounding principles concerning negation will also arise."

11. Prasada, Sandeep. 2021. "Formal Explanation and Mechanisms of Conceptual Representation." In Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation, edited by Jansen, Ludger and Sandstad, Petter, 269-286. New York: Routledge.

"The plan for the paper is as follows. Section 2 provides a sketch of the empirical research that suggests that children and adults routinely make use of formal explanations. Section 3 defends the interpretation of those data as revealing the use of Aristotle's formal aitia in generating those explanations. I leave the Greek term aitia untranslated as common translations tend to be problematic. Section 4 describes the formal characteristics of the mechanisms that have been proposed to underlie the representation and acquisition of the type of generic knowledge for which formal explanation is intrinsic. Section 5 discusses some of the key characteristics of the mechanisms and the manner in which the mechanisms represent the type of generic knowledge for which formal explanations are crucial. Finally, Section 6 suggests some ways in which the work described may provide a new way to look at some Aristotelian claims regarding the acquisition of first principles and the role of formal explanation in that process." (p. 269)

12. Rabin, Gabriel Oak, and Rabern, Brian. 2016. "Well Founding Grounding Grounding." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 45:349-379.

Abstract: "Those who wish to claim that all facts about grounding are themselves grounded (“the meta-grounding thesis”) must defend against the charge that such a claim leads to infinite regress and violates the well-foundedness of ground. In this paper, we defend. First, we explore three distinct but related notions of “well-founded”, which are often conflated, and three corresponding notions of infinite regress. We explore the entailment relations between these notions. We conclude that the meta-grounding thesis need not lead to tension with any of the three notions of “well-founded”. Finally, we explore the details of and motivations for further conditions on ground that one might add to generate a conflict between the meta-grounding thesis and a well-founded constraint. We explore these topics by developing and utilizing a formal framework based on the notion of a grounding structure."

13. Rauti, Antonio. 2012. "Multiple Groundings and Deference." The Philosophical Quarterly no. 62:317-336.

Abstract: "The idea that reference is multiply grounded allows causal-historical theories of reference to account for reference change. It also threatens the stability of reference in light of widespread error and confusion. I describe the problem, so far unrecognised, and provide a solution based on the phenomenon of semantic deference, which I differentiate from reference-borrowing. I conclude that deference has an authentic foundational semantic role to play."

14. Raven, Michael J. 2012. "In Defence of Ground." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 90:684-701.

Abstract: "I defend (metaphysical) ground against recent, unanswered objections aiming to dismiss it from serious philosophical inquiry. Interest in ground stems from its role in the venerable metaphysical project of identifying which facts hold in virtue of others. Recent work on ground focuses on regimenting it.

But many reject ground itself, seeing regimentation as yet another misguided attempt to regiment a bad idea (like phlogiston or astrology). I defend ground directly against objections that it is confused, incoherent, or fruitless. This vindicates the very attempt to regiment ground. It also refocuses our attention on the genuine open questions about ground and away from the distracting, unpersuasive reasons for dismissing them."

15. ———. 2013. "Is Ground a Strict Partial Order?" American Philosophical Quarterly no. 50:193-201.

"A Schism has formed among Devotees.

Orthodoxy says ground induces a strict partial order structure on reality, from the more derivative to the more fundamental. Heresy denies that ground is a strict partial order: ground is either not irreflexive (Jenkins 2011) or not transitive (Schaffer 2012).

What's at stake? The structure of reality, answer Devotees. Even Infidels have a stake: they might take Devotees' infighting as evidence against ground's coherence (cf. Wilson). My aim is to defend Orthodoxy against Heresy. I first characterize Orthodoxy (§ 2) and then the Heresy against it (§ 3). Next, I argue against the Heresy that ground is not irreflexive (§ 4) and then argue against the Heresy that ground is not transitive (§ 5). My defense of Orthodoxy vindicates ground's Orthodox deployment "in the wild" and weakens Infidels's attempts to leverage the Schism into an argument for ground's incoherence (§ 6)." (p. 193)

References

Jenkins, Carrie S. 2011. "Is Metaphysical Grounding Irreflexive?," Monist, vol. 94, no. 2, pp. 267-276.

Schaffer, Jonathan. 2012. "Grounding, Transitivity, and Contrastivity," in Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality, ed. Fabrice Correia and Benjamin Schnieder (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 122-138.

Wilson, Jessica. Unpublished manuscript. "No Work for a Theory of Grounding." [Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 57, 2014, pp. 535-579]

16. ———. 2015. "Ground." Philosophy Compass no. 10:322-333.

Abstract: "This essay focuses on a recently prominent notion of (metaphysical) ground which is distinctive for how it links metaphysics to explanation. Ground is supposed to serve both as the common factor in diverse in virtue of questions as well as the structuring relation in the project of explaining how some phenomena are “built” from more fundamental phenomena. My aim is to provide an opinionated synopsis of this notion of ground without engaging with others. Ground, so understood, generally resists illumination by appeal to more familiar models of explanation. Nevertheless, its distinctive explanatory and metaphysical aspects guide us on characterizing its explanatory logic and its metaphysical features. Some issues concerning the meta-question of what (if anything) grounds ground are explored, as well as some recent skeptical challenges to ground."

17. ———. 2017. "New Work for a Theory of Ground." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 60:625-655.

Abstract: "There has been much recent interest in a distinctively metaphysical kind of determinative explanation: ground. This paper concerns various skeptical challenges to ground’s relevance to metaphysics, such as that it is an empty posit, that the work it is supposed to do is appropriated by other notions, and that it is inapt for specific issues it should serve. I argue against these challenges. My strategy is both critical and constructive. Critical because I argue that versions of these challenges raised by Elizabeth Barnes, Kathrin Koslicki, Mari Mikkola, and Jessica Wilson are not persuasive. Constructive because we may nevertheless learn from them new work for ground."

18. ———, ed. 2021. The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding. New York: Routledge.

Contents: Notes on Contributors XIII, Acknowledgments XVII; 1. Michael J. Raven Introduction 1;

Part I: History 15;

Michael J. Raven: Introduction 17; 1. Phil Corkum: Ancient 20; 2. Marko Malink: Aristotelian Demonstration 33; 3. Margaret Cameron: Medieval and Early Modern 49; 4. Fatema Amijee: Principle of Sufficient Reason 63; 5. Stefan Roski: Bolzano 76; 6. Kevin Mulligan: Austro-German Phenomenologists 90;

PART II: Explanation and Determination 103;

Michael J. Raven: Introduction 105; 7. Benjamin Schnieder: Dependence 107; 8. Martin Glazier: Explanation 121; 9. Jon Erling Litland: Meta-Ground 133; 10. Alexander Skiles: Necessity 148;

11. Kathrin Koslicki: Skeptical Doubts 164; 12. Louis deRosset: Anti-Skeptical Rejoinders 180; 13. Kevin Richardson: Varieties 194;

PART III: Logic and Structure 209;

Michael J. Raven: Introduction 211; 14. Francesca Poggiolesi: Logics 213; 15. Fabrice Correia: Granularity 228; 16. T. Scott Dixon: Infinite Descent 244; 17. Naomi Thompson: Strict Partial Order 259; 18. Stephan Krämer: Puzzles 271;

Part IV: Connections

Michael J. Raven: Introduction 285; 19. Tom Donaldson: Analyticity 288; 20. Jennifer Wang: Cause 300; 21. Stephan Leuenberger: Emergence 312; 22. Justin Zylstra: Essence 324; 23. Ricki Bliss: Fundamentality 336; 24. David Mark Kovacs: Modality 348; 25. Noël B. Saenz: Ontology 361; 26. Olla Solomyak: Realism 375; 27. Tuomas E. Tahko:L Structure 387; 28. Kelly Trogdon: Truthmaking 396;

Part V: Applications 409;

Michael J. Raven: Introduction 411; 29. Erica Shumener: Identity 413; 30. Tobias Wilsch: Laws of Metaphysics 425; 31. Nina Emery: Laws of Nature 437; 32. Michaela M. McSweeney Logic 449; 33. Alyssa Ney: mIND 460; 34. Stephanie Leary: Normativity 472; 35. Amanda Bryant: Physicalism 484; 36. Kit Fine: Semantics 501; 37. Asya Passinsky: Social Entities 510;

The Essential Glossary of Ground 521; Index 523-530.

19. Rettler, Bradley. 2017. "Grounds and ‘Grounds’." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 47:631-655.

Abstract: "In this paper, I offer a new theory of grounding. The theory has is that grounding is a job description that is realized by different properties in different contexts.

Those properties play the grounding role contingently, and grounding is the property that plays the grounding role essentially. On this theory, grounding is monistic, but ‘grounding’ refers to different relations in different contexts. First, I argue against Kit Fine’s monist univocalism. Next, I argue against Jessica Wilson’s pluralist multivocalism. Finally, I introduce monist multivocalism, explicate three versions of it, and show its advantages."

20. Richardson, Kevin. 2020. "Grounding Pluralism: Why and How." Erkenntnis no. 85:1399-1415.

Abstract: "Grounding pluralism is the view that there are multiple kinds of grounding. In this essay, I motivate and defend an explanation-theoretic view of grounding pluralism.

Specifically, I argue that there are two kinds of grounding: why-grounding—which tells us why things are the case—and how-grounding—which tells us how things are the case."

21. ———. 2020. "Varieties." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 194-208. New York: Routledge.

"In this chapter,I describe the state of the art for pluralist theories of grounding.Every pluralist must answer four questions:

• Why should one be a pluralist rather than a monist? (§2)

• What are the varieties of grounding? (§3)

• What is the sense (if any) in which grounding is unified? (§4)

• What is the meaning of “grounds”? (§5)

In what follows, I give various representative pluralist answers to these questions."

22. ———. 2021. "Grounding Is Necessary and Contingent." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 64:453-480.

Abstract: "Grounding is necessary just in case: if P grounds Q, then necessarily: if P, then Q. Many accept this principle. Others propose counterexamples. Instead of straightforwardly arguing for, or against, necessity, I explain the sense in which grounding is necessary and contingent. I argue that there are two kinds of grounding: what-grounding (which tells us what it is for things to be the case) and why-grounding (which tells us why things are the case), where the former kind is necessary while the latter is contingent."

23. Roca-Royes, Sonia. 2016. "Rethinking Origin Essentialism (for Artefacts)." In Reality Making, edited by Jago, Mark, 152-176. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Contents: List of Figures VII; List of Contributors VIII; Mark Jago: Reality-Making: Introduction 1; Martin Glazier: Laws and the Completeness of the Fundamental 11; Naomi Thompson: Metaphysical Interdependence 38; Jacek Brzozowski: Monism and Gunk 57; Matthew Tugby: What are Dispositional Properties? 75; Mark Jago: Essence and the Grounding Problem 99; Nicholas K. Jones: Object as a Determinable 121; Sonia Roca-Royes: Rethinking Origin Essentialism (for Artefacts) 152; Nathan Wildman: How (not) to be a Modalist About Essence 177; Index 197-200.

24. Rodriguez-Pereyra, Gonzalo. 2005. "Why Truthmakers." In Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate, edited by Beebee, Helen and Dodd, Julian, 17-31. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

"Thus the insight behind the idea of truthmakers is that truth is grounded.

In other words, truth is not primitive. If a certain proposition is true, then it owes its truth to something else: its truth is not a primitive, brute, ultimate fact. The truth of a proposition thus depends on what reality, and in particular its subject matter, is like. What reality is like is anterior to the truth of the proposition, it gives rise to the truth of the proposition and thereby accounts for it." (p. 21, a note omitted)

25. ———. 2015. "Grounding Is Not a Strict Order." Journal of the American Philosophical Association no. 1:517-534.

Abstract: "The paper argues that grounding is neither irreflexive nor asymmetric nor transitive. In arguing for that conclusion the paper also argues thattruthmaking is neither irreflexive nor asymmetric nor transitive."

26. Roland, Jeffrey W. 2010. "Concept Grounding and Knowledge of Set Theory." Philosophia no. 38:179-193.

Abstract: "Abstract C. S. Jenkins has recently proposed an account of arithmetical knowledge designed to be realist, empiricist, and apriorist: realist in that what’s the case in arithmetic doesn’t rely on us being any particular way; empiricist in that arithmetic knowledge crucially depends on the senses; and apriorist in that it accommodates the time-honored judgment that there is something special about arithmetical knowledge, something we have historically labeled with ‘a priori’. I’m here concerned with the prospects for extending Jenkins’s account beyond arithmetic—in particular, to set theory. After setting out the central elements of Jenkins’s account and entertaining challenges to extending it to set theory, I conclude that a satisfactory such extension is unlikely."

References

Jenkins, C. S. (2008). Grounding concepts: An empirical basis for arithmetic knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

27. Rooney, James Dominic. 2019. "Grounding Relations Are Not Unified: Aquinas and Heil versus Schaffer." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 59:57-64.

Abstract: "Jonathan Schaffer, among others, has argued that metaphysics should deal primarily with relations of “grounding.” I will follow John Heil in arguing that this view of metaphysics is problematic, for it draws on ambiguous notions of grounding and fundamentality that are unilluminating as metaphysical explanations. I take Heil’s objections to presuppose that “grounding” relations do not form a natural class, where a natural class is one where some member of that class has (analytic or contingent a posteriori) priority among others and explains order among other members in the class. To strengthen Heil’s criticism that “grounding” is a non-natural class of relations, I will draw on an unlikely ally. Thomas Aquinas’s “analogy of being” doctrine, if accurate, offers reasons that no categorical relations (like grounding relations) form a natural class."

28. Rosa, Luis. 2019. "Knowledge Grounded on Pure Reasoning." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly no. 100:156-173.

Abstract: "In this paper, I deal with epistemological issues that stem from the hypothesis that reasoning is not only a means of transmitting knowledge from premise-beliefs to conclusion-beliefs but also a primary source of knowledge in its own right. The idea is that one can gain new knowledge on the basis of suppositional reasoning. After making some preliminary distinctions, I argue that there are no good reasons to think that purported examples of knowledge grounded on pure reasoning are just examples of premise-based inferences in disguise. Next, I establish what kinds of true propositions can to a first approximation be known on the basis of pure reasoning. Finally, I argue that beliefs that are competently formed on the basis of suppositional reasoning satisfy both externalist and internalist criteria of justification."

29. Rosen, Gideon. 2010. "Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction." In Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology, edited by Hale, Bob and Hoffmann, Aviv, 109-135. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Introduction: This essay is a plea for ideological toleration. Philosophers are right to be fussy about the words they use, especially in metaphysics where bad vocabulary has been a source of grief down through the ages. But they can sometimes be too fussy, dismissing as ‘unintelligible’ or ‘obscure’ certain forms of language that are perfectly meaningful by ordinary standards and which may be of some real use.

So it is, I suggest, with certain idioms of metaphysical determination and dependence. We say that one class of facts depends upon or is grounded in another.

We say that a thing possesses one property in virtue of possessing another, or that one proposition makes another true. These idioms are common, as we shall see, but they are not part of anyone’s official vocabulary. The general tendency is to admit them for heuristic purposes, where the aim is to point the reader’s nose in the direction of some philosophical thesis, but then to suppress them in favor of other, allegedly more hygienic formulations when the time comes to say exactly what we mean. The thought is apparently widespread that while these ubiquitous idioms are sometimes convenient, they are ultimately too unclear or too confused, or perhaps simply too exotic to figure in our first-class philosophical vocabulary.

Against this tendency, I suggest that with a minimum of regimentation these metaphysical notions can be rendered clear enough, and that much is to be gained by incorporating them into our analytic tool kit. I make this proposal in an experimental spirit. Let us see how things look if we relax our antiseptic scruples for a moment and admit the idioms of metaphysical dependence into our official lexicon alongside the modal notions (metaphysical necessity and possibility, the various forms of supervenience) with which they are often said to contrast unfavorably. If this only muddies the waters, nothing is lost; we can always retrench. If something is gained, however, as I believe it is, we may find ourselves in a position to make some progress. (pp. 109-110)

30. ———. 2015. "Real Definition." Analytic Philosophy no. 56:189-209.

"The case can be made that contemporary analytic philosophy is up to its ears in idioms of definition, analysis, reduction and constitution that are best understood in a similarly metaphysical key—as demands for real definition rather than linguistic or conceptual analysis.

(...)

The main argument for this view is that when we try to answer these questions, we are happy to entertain analyses cast in terms that fully competent masters of the analysandum need not grasp.

(...)

In my travels I have encountered some resistance to this idea, even among philosophers who are otherwise sanguine about the recrudescence of premodern metaphysics in postmodern philosophy.

(...)

The best way to overcome this skepticism would be to explain, in clear and independently intelligible terms, what it is to define a thing, or in other words, to provide a (real) definition of (real) definition. The

aim of the present note is to do just that." (p. 189)

31. ———. 2017. "Ground by Law." Philosophical Issues no. 27:279-301.

"It is a commonplace, or anyway it used to be, that one way to explain a fact is to subsume it, together with its conditions, under a general law.

(...)

Metaphysical grounding is an explanatory relation. When a set of facts grounds a fact A, the grounded fact obtains because its grounds obtain.

And so we might want to know whether laws play a similar role in the grounding explanation of particular facts, and if so, what that implies about the nature of those laws. This paper explores these questions." (p. 279, a note omitted)

32. ———. 2017. "What Is a Moral Law?" Oxford Studies in Metaethics no. 12:135-159.

"The main metaphysical challenge for realists abut the normative is to characterize this explanatory connection between the particular normative facts and the non-normative facts that ‘underlie’ them. The most straightforward answer is ethical naturalism, which I take to be the view that every particular normative fact [Fa] is metaphysically grounded without remainder in facts whose constituents are 100 percent non-normative." (p. 135 notes omitted)

(...)

Naturalist and non-naturalist agree that particular moral facts [Fa] always stand in some explanatory relation to the non-normative facts in the vicinity. The non-naturalist’s distinctive claim is that this relation is not the much-studied relation of metaphysical grounding; nor is it causation or any other familiar explanatory relation. The challenge for the non-naturalist is to give a positive account of this connection." (pp. 136-137)

33. ———. 2017. "Metaphysical Relations in Metaethics." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, edited by McPherson, Tristam and Plunkett, David, 151-169. New York: Routledge.

"This chapter aims to clarify a question that can be vaguely put as follows: How are the normative facts related to the natural facts?

(...)

Our discussion assumes that there are normative facts—facts about the normative properties of things and the normative relations in which they stand. It also assumes that some facts are clearly “natural,” e.g., the fact that the fish will die if they are not fed.

The challenge is to say how facts of the first sort are related to facts of the second sort.

But it must be conceded at the outset that this question is not exactly clear. When we ask how the normative is “related” to the natural, what sort of information are we seeking?

The best way to clarify a question that is unclear in this way is to say what would count as an answer to it, so the plan for what follows is to do just that. Recent work in general metaphysics provides a vocabulary in which hypotheses about the relation between the normative and the natural can be stated with some precision. This chapter explains that vocabulary by putting it to work for the purpose of providing a taxonomy of answers to our target question." (p. 151)

34. Roski, Stefan. 2018. "Grounding and the Explanatory Role of Generalizations." Philosophical Studies no. 175:1985-2003.

Abstract: "According to Hempel’s (Aspects of scientific explanation and other essays. The Free Press, New York, 1965) influential theory of explanation, explaining why some a is G consists in showing that the truth that a is G follows from a law-like generalization to the effect that all Fs are G together with the initial condition that a is F. While Hempel’s overall account is now widely considered to be deeply flawed, the idea that some generalizations play the explanatory role that the account predicts is still often endorsed by contemporary philosophers of science.

This idea, however, conflicts with widely shared views in metaphysics according to which the generalization that all Fs are G is partially explained by the fact that a is G. I discuss two solutions to this conflict that have been proposed recently, argue that they are unsatisfactory, and offer an alternative."

35. Russell, Jeffrey Sanford. 2016. "Qualitative Grounds." Philosophical Perspectives no. 30:309-348.

"Ground and Necessity: Shamik Dasgupta argues that we shouldn’t think there are any fundamental facts about particular individuals: these would be undetectable danglers, redundant to our scientific explanations (2009; 2014; forthcoming; see also 2011; 2013).

Rather, we should hold that all facts about particular individuals are grounded in what the world is like qualitatively.(1) All non-qualitative facts hold in virtue of qualitative facts. He calls this “qualitativism”. (Other names for the view are “generalism”, “structuralism”, or “metaphysical anti-haecceitism”.) I’ll call it the Qualitative Grounds thesis. I find this thesis intriguing, but I don’t entirely understand it. In this paper I strive to get a clearer view of what it really involves." (p. 309)

References

Dasgupta, Shamik. (2009). “Individuals: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics.” Philosophical Studies 145(1): 35–67.

———. (2011). “The Bare Necessities.” Philosophical Perspectives 25(1): 115–60.

———. (2013). “Absolutism Vs Comparativism About Quantity.” Oxford Studies in Metaphysics

———. (2014). “On the Plurality of Grounds.” Philosopher's Imprint 14(20): 1–28.

———. (forthcoming [2017]). “Quality and Structure.” In Elizabeth Barnes (ed.), Current Controversies in Metaphysics, Routledge, [with the title Can We Do Without Fundamental Individuals? Yes pp. 7-23]

36. Rydéhn, Henrik. 2018. "Grounding and Ontological dependence." Synthese no. 198:1231-1256.

Abstract: "Recent metaphysics has seen a surge of interest in grounding—a relation of non-causal determination underlying a distinctive kind of explanation common in philosophy. In this article, I investigate the connection between grounding and another phenomenon of great interest to metaphysics: ontological dependence. There are interesting parallels between the two phenomena: for example, both are commonly invoked through the use of “dependence” terminology, and there is a great deal of overlap in the motivations typically appealed to when introducing them. I approach the question of the relationship between grounding and ontological dependence through an investigation of their modal connections (or lack thereof). I argue, firstly, that on the common assumption that grounding is factive, it can be shown that no known variety of rigid ontological dependence is either necessary or sufficient for grounding. I also offer some suggestions in support of the claim that this generalizes to every possible form of rigid ontological dependence. I then broaden the discussion by considering a non-factive conception of grounding, as well as by looking at forms of generic (rather than rigid) ontological dependence. I argue that there is at least one form of rigid ontological dependence that is sufficient for non-factive grounding, and that a form of generic dependence may be necessary (but not sufficient) both for factive and non-factive grounding. However, justifying even these fairly weak modal connections between grounding and ontological dependence turns out to require some quite specific and substantive assumptions about the two phenomena that have only rarely been discussed."

37. Saenz, Noël B. 2015. "A Grounding Solution to the Grounding Problem." Philosophical Studies no. 172:2193-2214.

Abstract: "The statue and the lump of clay that constitutes it fail to share all of their kind and modal properties. Therefore, by Leibniz’s Law, the statue is not the lump.

Question: What grounds the kind and modal differences between the statue and the lump? In virtue of what is it that the lump of clay, but not the statue, can survive being smashed? This is the grounding problem. Now a number of solutions to the grounding problem require that we substantially revise our view of reality. In this paper, I provide a solution to this problem that does not require such a revision. I then show how my solution to the grounding problem can solve a related problem and answer a related question. The upshot is that the solution I offer is not only nonrevisionary, but also fruitful."

38. ———. 2020. "Ontology." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 361-374. New York: Routledge.

"In this chapter, I will explore a number of ways the literature has said that grounding and ontology relate. To summarize: §2 concerns itself with grounding’s ability to save the ontology: to provide a safe and sane way of quantifying over certain kinds of things in our theories. §3 with its ability to price the ontology: to show how we should measure ontological simplicity. And §4 with its ability to restrict derivative ontology: to restrict what can be grounded from what.(7)" (pp. 361-362)

(7) Notice that we can also ask what ontology has to “say” about grounding.This can be divided into two. We can ask about the ontology of grounding: does grounding exist? But we can also ask about what an ontology has to say about grounding: given a preferred ontology, how should we think about grounding? Since we need to assume that grounding exists in order to discuss its import on ontology, and since this chapter is devoted to applying grounding to ontology and not ontologies to grounding, I will not address these questions here.

39. Sandstad, Petter, and Jansen, Ludger. 2021. "A Non-hylomorphic Account of Formal Causation." In Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation, edited by Jansen, Ludger and Sandstad, Petter, 65-86. New York: Routledge.

"In this paper, we develop our own account of formal causation, which is basically inspired by Aristotle's views and might, in a way, be seen as a development of Lowe's. In Section 2, we present the basic framework of our own account of formal causation. In Section 3, we make clear that our view of formal causation is not committed to, though consistent with, (i) any specific view on universals, (ii) hylomorphism, (iii) individual forms, and (iv) biological kinds, social entities, artefacts, etc. as real kinds. Our view thus has fewer ontological commitments than many rival accounts of formal causation, and may therefore be of more general interest. In Section 4, we contrast our variant of formal causation with a more traditional hylomorphic account. In Section 5, we argue that formal causation is indispensable in explanation, and, more controversially, that it is a type of causation. To back up this position, we explore in Section 6 the dependence relations involved in cases of formal causation, such that formal causes are difference-makers. The seventh section concerns epistemological issues." (p. 66)

References

Lowe, E. J. (2006) The Four-Category Ontology: A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science. Oxford: Oxford University Pres

40. Sattler, Wolfgang. 2021. "Finean Feature Dependence and the Aristotelian Alternative." In Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation, edited by Jansen, Ludger and Sandstad, Petter, 175-200. New York: Routledge.

"In his seminal paper 'Essence and Modality' Kit Fine argues that traditionally there have been two distinct approaches to essentialism."

(...)

In this paper I discuss the application first of Fine's and then of Aristotle's account of 'ontological dependence' to cases where an attribute that is accidental to its subject(s), depends ontologically on its subject(s). I start with a short exposition of Fine's account of ontological dependence and then apply it to cases concerning accidental attributes, first conceived as 'Aristotelian universals' (in the modern sense of that term), and then conceived as tropes of a sort (Section 2). I then do the same with respect to Aristotle's account (Section 3). I argue, for one, that there are clear differences between the results of applying Fine's account and of applying Aristotle's account. Moreover, some of the results following from Fine's account are prima facie implausible.

(...)

In the last section (4) I argue that the difference in results between applying Fine's account and applying Aristotle's account reflects a difference in method and in commitment between these accounts. I then suggest, and argue in outline for an explanation of these differences, namely, that Fine's essentialism and Aristotle's essentialism aim to explain somewhat different things. And this entails that the notions of what something is and of essence are conceived differently within these two theories." (pp. 175-176, a note omitted)

41. Savu, Bianca-Alexandra. 2017. "Grounds and Structural Realism: A Possible Metaphysical Framework." Symposion. Theoretical and Applied Inquiries in Philosophy and Social Sciences:97-106.

Abstract: "This article discusses the proposal of accommodating grounding theories and structural realism, with the aim to provide a metaphysical framework for structural realism (ST). Ontic structural realism (OSR), one of the most accepted metaphysical versions for structural realism, is taken into account here, with the intention of analyzing the framework in which GT and OSR are compatible, and to what extent."

42. Schaffer, Jonathan. 2009. "On What Grounds What." In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, edited by Chalmers, David, Manley, David and Wasserman, Ryan, 347-383. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

"On the now dominant Quinean view, metaphysics is about what there is. Metaphysics so conceived is concerned with such questions as whether properties exist, whether meanings exist, and whether numbers exist. I will argue for the revival of a more traditional Aristotelian view, on which metaphysics is about what grounds what. Metaphysics so revived does not bother asking whether properties, meanings, and numbers exist. Of course they do! The question is whether or not they are fundamental.

In §1 I will distinguish three conceptions of metaphysical structure. In §2 I will defend the Aristotelian view, coupled with a permissive line on existence. In §3 I will further develop a neo-Aristotelian framework, built around primitive grounding relations." (p. 347)

43. ———. 2010. "Monism: The Priority of the Whole." Philosophical Review no. 119:31-76.

"The monist holds that the whole is prior to its parts, and thusviews the cosmos as fundamental, with metaphysical explanation dangling downward from the One. The pluralist holds that the parts are prior to their whole, and thus tends to consider particles fundamental, with metaphysical explanation snaking upward from the many. Just as the materialist and idealist debate which properties are fundamental, so the monist and pluralist debate which objects are fundamental.

I will defend the monistic view. In particular I will argue that there are physical and modal considerations that favor the priority of the whole.

Physically, there is good evidence that the cosmos forms an entangled system and good reason to treat entangled systems as irreducible wholes. Modally, mereology allows for the possibility of atomless gunk, with no ultimate parts for the pluralist to invoke as the ground of being." (pp. 31-32)

44. ———. 2010. "The Least Discerning and Most Promiscuous Truthmaker." Philosophical Quarterly no. 60:307-324.

Abstract: "I argue that the one and only truthmaker is the world. This view can be seen as arising from (i) the view that truthmaking is a relation of grounding holding between true propositions and fundamental entities, together with (ii) the view that the world is the one and only fundamental entity. I argue that this view provides an elegant and economical account of the truthmakers, while solving the problem of negative existentials, in a way that proves ontologically revealing."

45. ———. 2012. "Grounding, Transitivity, and Contrastivity." In Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality, edited by Correia, Fabrice and Schnieder, Benjamin, 122-138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Grounding is generally assumed to be transitive. The assumption of transitivity is natural. For instance, if the physical system grounds the chemical arrangement, and the chemical arrangement grounds the biological organism, then it is natural to thereby infer that the physical system must ground the biological organism. Moreover the assumption of transitivity is useful. By treating grounding as transitive (and irreflexive), one generates a strict partial ordering that induces metaphysical structure.

Yet I will offer counterexamples to the transitivity of grounding. Such counterexamples should not be so surprising given that grounding is akin to causation, and that there are known counterexamples to the transitivity of causation. I will conclude by explaining how a contrastive approach can resolve the counterexamples while retaining metaphysical structure." (p. 121)

46. ———. 2015. "What Not to Multiply Without Necessity." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 93:644-664.

"Introduction: The Razor commands: Do not multiply entities without necessity! Few principles are as pervasive in contemporary metaphysics. Yet I argue that the Razor is too blunt a measure of ontological economy, failing to distinguish fundamental from derivative entities. Instead I recommend the more precise Laser, which is focused specifically on fundamental entities, and commands: Do not multiply fundamental entities without necessity!

I argue that the Laser represents an improvement over the Razor, I connect the Laser to an underlying ‘bang for the buck’ methodology, and I trace the implications of this bang-for-the-buck methodology for certain metaphysical debates. What emerges is general pressure towards a permissive and abundant view of what there is, coupled with a restrictive and sparse view of what is fundamental. Classical mereology and pure set theory come out as paradigms of methodological virtue, for making so much from so little.

In arguing that the Laser represents an improvement over the Razor, I take for granted that ontological economy is an aspect of rational theory choice.

(...)

My thesis is that, given that ontological economy is an aspect of rational theory choice, this notion of economy is better scanned through the Laser.

47. ———. 2016. "Grounding in the Image of Causation." Philosophical Studies no. 173:49-100.

Abstract: "Grounding is often glossed as metaphysical causation, yet no current theory of grounding looks remotely like a plausible treatment of causation. I propose to take the analogy between grounding and causation seriously, by providing an account of grounding in the image of causation, on the template of structural equation models for causation."

48. ———. 2016. "Ground Rules: Lessons from Wilson." In Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground, edited by Aizawa, Ken and Gillett, Carl, 143-170. London: Palgrave-Macmillan.

"Overview: In section “A Brief Introduction to Grounding”, I offer a brief introduction to the notion of grounding. In sections “Are Grounding Claims Informative? and Are Grounding Claims Helpful?”, I take up Wilson’s two main objections to grounding-based approaches—that bare grounding claims are uninformative, and that such claims are unhelpful—and extract two main lessons. In section “Wilson’s Pluralistic Framework”, I critique Wilson’s rival pluralistic approach for, among other things, not taking up Wilson’s own lessons. I conclude in section “Structural Equation Models to the Rescue” by explaining how an approach based on structural equation models for grounding has a special claim to adequacy." (p. 144)

References

Wilson, J. M. (2014). No work for a theory of grounding. Inquiry, 57, 535–79.

49. ———. 2017. "The Ground Between the Gaps." Philosophers' Imprint no. 17:1-26.

"Overview: In §1 I review and clarify the idea there is a special explanatory gap arising between the physical and the phenomenal. In §2 I examine the usual “transparent” connections such as between the H, H, and O atoms and the H_2O molecule they compose, and argue that such transitions require substantive metaphysical principles (in this case mereological principles about both the existence and the nature of wholes). In §3 I offer a more theoretical route to the more general conclusion that substantive metaphysical principles are needed in all concrete cases, by presenting a formalism for grounding relations generally (based on structural equation models) which requires the specification of dependence functions. Finally, in §4 I articulate a form of physicalism — “ground physicalism” — on which the physical is the ultimate ground for the chemical, the biological, and the psychological, and show how it resolves explanatory gap worries." (p. 2)

50. ———. 2017. "Social Construction as Grounding; or: Fundamentality for Feminists, a Reply to Barnes and Mikkola." Philosophical Studies no. 174:2449-2465.

Abstract: "Feminist metaphysics is guided by the insight that gender is socially constructed, yet the metaphysics behind social construction remains obscure. Barnes and Mikkola charge that current metaphysical frameworks—including my grounding framework—are hostile to feminist metaphysics. I argue that not only is a grounding framework hospitable to feminist metaphysics, but also that a grounding framework can help shed light on the metaphysics behind social construction. By treating social construction claims as grounding claims, the feminist metaphysician and the social ontologist both gain a way to integrate social construction claims into a general metaphysics, while accounting for the inferential connections between social construction and attendant notions such as dependence and explanation. So I conclude that a grounding framework can be helpful for feminist metaphysics and social ontology."

51. ———. 2021. "Ground Functionalism." Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind no. 1:171-207.

"I have the bold ambition of reviving the hopeful materialist story, by adding a new chapter—ground functionalism—which integrates functionalist insights about the mind with ground-theoretic insights about explanation.

The ground functionalist posits a mind making principle linking material states to mental states via functional role, such that a properly choreographed system dances out a mind. I argue that ground functionalism preserves the insights of functionalism, while enabling a viable explanation for consciousness." (pp. 171-172)

52. Schnieder, Benjamin. 2006. "Truth-Making without Truth-Makers." Synthese no. 152:21-46.

Abstract: "The article is primarily concerned with the notion of a truthmaker.

An explication for this notion is offered, which relates it to other notions of making something such-and-such. In particular, it is shown that the notion of a truth-maker is a close relative of a concept employed by van Inwagen in the formulation of his Consequence Argument. This circumstance helps understanding the general mechanisms of the concepts involved. Thus, a schematic explication of a whole battery of related notions is offered. It is based on an explanatory notion, introduced by the sentential connector “because”, whose function is examined in some detail. Finally, on the basis of the explication proposed, an argument is developed to the effect that the objects usually regarded as truthmakers are not apt to play this role."

53. ———. 2010. "A Puzzle about ‘Because'." Logique et Analyse no. 53:317-343.

Abstract: "The essay is a partial investigation into the semantics of the explanatory connective ‘because’. After three independently plausible assumptions about ‘because’ are presented in some detail, it is shown how their interaction generates a puzzle about ‘because’, once they are combined with a common view on conceptual analysis. Four possible solutions to the puzzle are considered."

54. ———. 2011. "A Logic for ‘Because'." The Review of Symbolic Logic no. 4:445-465.

Abstract: "In spite of its significance for everyday and philosophical discourse, the explanatory connective ‘because’ has not received much treatment in the philosophy of logic. The present paper develops a logic for ‘because’ based on systematic connections between ‘because’ and the truth-functional connectives."

55. ———. 2016. "In Defence of a Logic for ‘Because’." Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics:160-171.

Abstract: "The present author developed a calculus for the logic of ‘because’.

In a recent paper in this journal, it has been claimed that the central inference rules for the logic are invalid and that the intuition upon which the rules are based is not accounted for. This note criticises these arguments and presents an independent argument in favour of the rules used in the logic."

References

Tsohatzidis, S. (2015). A problem for a logic of ‘because’. Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics, 25, 46–49.

56. ———. 2018. "On Ground and Consequence." Synthese no. 198:1335-1363.

Abstract: "What does it mean that some proposition follows from others? The standard way of spelling out the notion proceeds in modal terms: x follows from y iff necessarily, if y is true, so is x. But although this yields a useful and manageable account of consequence, it fails to capture certain aspects of our pre-theoretical understanding of consequence. In this paper, an alternative notion of logical consequence, based on the idea of grounding, is developed."

57. ———. 2019. "On the Relevance of Grounds." In Quo Vadis, Metaphysics?: Essays in Honor of Peter van Inwagen, edited by Szatkowski, Mirosław, 59-82. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Abstract: "Three traditional philosophical issues that van Inwagen discusses in his metaphysical works are the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the question of why there is something rather than nothing, and the question of whether free will is compatible with determinism. The three topics are connected by a conceptual tie: the notion of a ground. In this essay, it is argued that van Inwagen’s take on the three topics, ingenious as it otherwise is, suffers from an inadequate conception of the underlying notion of a ground."

58. ———. 2020. "Grounding and Dependence." Synthese no. 197:95-124.

Abstract: "The paper deals with the notions of grounding and of existential dependence.

It is shown that cases of existential dependence seem to be systematically correlated to cases of grounding and hence the question is raised what sort of tie might hold the two notions together so as to account for the observed correlation. The paper focusses on three possible ties between grounding and existential dependence: identity (as suggested in Jonathan Schaffer’s works), definition (as suggested by Fabrice Correia and Benjamin Schnieder), and grounding (as suggested by Kathrin Koslicki and Francesco Orilia). A case for the definitional tie is made."

59. Schnieder, Benjamin, and Steinberg, Alex. 2016. "Without Reason?" Pacific Philosophical Quarterly no. 97:523-541.

Abstract: "The argument for modal collapse is partly responsible for the widespread rejection of the so-called Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) in recent times. This paper discusses the PSR against the background of the recent debate about grounding and develops principled reasons for rejecting the argument from modal collapse."

60. Schnieder, Benjamin, and Werner, Jonas. 2021. "An Aristotelian Approach to Existential Dependence." In Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation, edited by Jansen, Ludger and Sandstad, Petter, 151-174. New York: Routledge.

"According to W. V. Quine, the goal of ontology is simply to determine what there is. But neo-Aristotelians think that this leaves out a crucial aspect of the ontological enterprise. For, not all entities are born equal.

Some entities exist only derivatively: they depend for their existence on other, more fundamental, entities which make the former exist. To study such existential dependencies is a central task of ontology." (p. 151)

61. Schulte, Peter. 2019. "Grounding Nominalism." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly no. 100:482-505.

Abstract: "The notion of grounding has gained increasing acceptance among metaphysicians in recent years. In this paper, I argue that this notion can be used to formulate a very attractive version of (property) nominalism, a view that I call ‘grounding nominalism’. Simplifying somewhat, this is the view that all properties are grounded in things. I argue that this view is coherent and has a decisive advantage over competing versions of nominalism: it allows us to accept properties as real, while fully accommodating nominalist intuitions. Finally, I defend grounding nominalism against several seemingly troublesome objections."

62. Sher, Gila. 2019. "Where Are You Going, Metaphysics, and How Are You Getting There? – Grounding Theory as a Case Study." In Quo Vadis, Metaphysics?: Essays in Honor of Peter van Inwagen, edited by Szatkowski, Mirosław, 37-57. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Abstract: "The viability of metaphysics as a field of knowledge has been challenged time and again. But in spite of the continuing tendency to dismiss metaphysics, there has been considerable progress in this field in the 20th- and 21st-centuries. One of the newest – though, in a sense, also oldest – frontiers of metaphysics is the grounding project. In this paper I raise a methodological challenge to the new grounding project and propose a constructive solution. Both the challenge and its solution apply to metaphysics in general, but grounding theory puts the challenge in an especially sharp focus. The solution consists of a new methodology, holistic grounding or holistic metaphysics. This methodology is modeled after a recent epistemic methodology, foundational holism, that enables us to pursue the foundational project of epistemology without being hampered by the problems associated with foundationalism."

63. Shumener, Eric. 2020. "Identity." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 413-424. New York: Routledge.

"This chapter concerns the nature of identity criteria and the relationship between ground and facts of identity or distinctness.After some preliminaries in Section I, we turn to formulations of identity criteria in terms of ground in Section II. Section III explores reasons for and against taking identity and distinctness facts to be fundamental. Section IV tackles specific proposals for grounding identity and distinctness facts." (p. 413)

64. Sider, Theodore. 2020. "Ground Grounded." Philosophical Studies no. 177:747-767.

Abstract: "Most facts of grounding involve nonfundamental concepts, and thus must themselves be grounded. But how? The leading approaches—due to Bennett, deRosset, and Dagupta—are subject to objections. The way forward is to deny a presupposition common to the leading approaches, that there must be some simple formula governing how grounding facts are grounded. Everyone agrees that facts about cities might be grounded in some complex way about which we know little; we should say the same about the facts of grounding themselves. The kinds of facts that might enter into the grounds of the facts of grounding are explored at length."

65. ———. 2020. The Tools of Metaphysics and the Metaphysics of Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 1: Postmodal Metaphysics and Structuralism 1; Chapter 2: Nomic Essentialism 23-44.

"Recently there has been a shift to new tools (or perhaps a return to old ones), which I will call “postmodal”. David Lewis (who had also been a leader in the modal revolution) enriched his conceptual toolkit with the concept of natural properties and relations—those elite properties and relations that determine objective similarities, occur in the fundamental laws, and whose distribution ?xes everything else. I myself have argued for the centrality of a concept that is closely related to Lewis’s notion of naturalness: the concept of structure, or as I’ll put it here, the concept of a fundamental concept. Fundamental concepts are not limited to those expressed by predicates; we may ask, for instance, whether quanti?ers or modal operators express fundamental concepts—whether they help to capture the world’s fundamental structure. Kit Fine (re-)introduced the concept of essence, and argued that it should not be understood modally. He pointed out that although it does seem to be an essential feature of the singleton set [Socrates] that it contain Socrates, it does not seem to be an essential feature of Socrates that he be contained in [Socrates]; being a member of this set is not “part of what Socrates is”. Thus we cannot define a thing’s essential features, as it had been common to do in the halcyon days of the modal era, as those features that the thing possesses necessarily, for it is plausible that Socrates possesses the feature of being a member of [Socrates] necessarily.(2) Fine also (re-)introduced a notion of ground. One fact grounds another, he said, if the second holds in virtue of the first—if the first explains, in a distinctively metaphysical way, the second. Interest in ground and related concepts over the past ten years or so has been intense." (p. 2)

(2) See also Dunn (1990, section 4).

References

Dunn, J. Michael (1990). Relevant predication 3: Essential properties. In Truth or Consequences (edited by J. Dunn and A. Gupta), pp. 77–95. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.

66. Sijuwade, Joshua. 2021. "Grounding and the Existence of God." Metaphysica.

First online December 16, 2021.

Abstract: "In this article, I seek to assess the extent to which Theism, the claim that there is a God, can provide a true fundamental explanation for the instantiation of the grounding relation that connects the various entities within the layered structure of reality. More precisely, I seek to utilise the explanatory framework of Richard Swinburne within a specific metaphysical context, a ground-theoretic context, which will enable me to develop a true fundamental explanation for the existence of grounding. And thus, given the truth of this type of explanation, we will have a further reason to believe in the existence of God."

67. Sirkel, Riin, and Tahko, Tuomas E. 2014. "Editorial: Aristotelian Metaphysics: Essence and Ground." Studia Philosophica Estonica no. 7:1-4.

Articles: Justin Zylstra: Dependence and Fundamentality 5-28; Margaret Anne Cameron: Is Ground Said-in-Many-Ways? 29-55; Pablo Carnino: On the Reduction of Grounding to Essence 56-71; Ryan Christensen: Essence, Essence, and Essence 72-87; Lucas Angioni: Aristotle on Necessary Principles and on Explaining X through X’s essence 88-112; Kathrin Koslicki: The Causal Priority of Form in Aristotle 113-141; Michail Peramatzis: Sameness, Definition, and Essence 142-167; Christine J. Thomas: Plato on Metaphysical Explanation: Does 'Participating' Mean Nothing? 168-194; Travis Dumsday: E.J. Lowe on the Unity Problem 195-218.

"This special issue of Studia Philosophica Estonica centers around Aristotelian metaphysics, construed broadly to cover both scholarly research on Aristotle’s metaphysics as well as work by contemporary metaphysicians on Aristotelian themes.

(...)

"The contribution this special issue makes to the ongoing discussion is twofold. First, the special issue promotes a deeper interaction between scholars of Aristotle and contemporary metaphysicians. We hope that the papers encourage people working in the history of philosophy to relate to contemporary discussions and people working in contemporary metaphysics to engage with Aristotle and Ancient scholarship. Second, the special issue is unified in its focus on two themes in Aristotelian metaphysics, essence and grounding. The papers address questions concerning fundamentality and dependence, ontological independence or priority, the causal priority of forms, the unity of grounding, the reduction of grounding to essence, the unity of essence, the roles of essence, and explanation and definition. We hope that this issue opens up fresh and exciting avenues for future research both in Ancient scholarship as well as in contemporary metaphysics. A brief summary of the volume’s papers follows."(p. 1)

68. Siscoe, Robert Weston. 2021. "Grounding and a Priori Epistemology: Challenges for Conceptualism." Synthese no. 199:11445-11463.

Abstract: "Traditional rationalist approaches to a priori epistemology have long been looked upon with suspicion for positing a faculty of rational intuition capable of knowing truths about the world apart from experience. Conceptualists have tried to fill this void with something more empirically tractable, arguing that we know a priori truths due to our understanding of concepts. All of this theorizing, however, has carried on while neglecting an entire cross section of such truths, the grounding claims that we know a priori. Taking a priori grounding into account poses a significant challenge to conceptualist accounts of a priori knowledge, as it is unclear how merely understanding conceptual connections can account for knowledge of grounding. The fact that we do know some grounding truths a priori, then, is a significant mark in traditional rationalism’s favor, and the next frontier for those who aim to eliminate the mystery surrounding a priori knowledge."

69. ———. 2021. "Grounding, Understanding, and Explanation." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.

Abstract: "Starting with the slogan that understanding is a ‘knowledge of causes’, Stephen Grimm and John Greco have argued that understanding comes from a knowledge of dependence relations. Grounding is the trendiest dependence relation on the market, and if Grimm and Greco are correct, then instances of grounding should also give rise to understanding. In this paper, I will show that this prediction is correct – grounding does indeed generate understanding in just the way that Grimm and Greco anticipate. However, grounding examples of understanding also show that Grimm and Greco are not telling the full story when it comes to understanding. Understanding can only be generated by a particular subset of dependence relations – those dependence relations that are also explanatory. Grimm and Greco should thus appeal to a privileged class of dependence relations, relations like grounding that can also give rise to explanation."

70. Skiba, Lukas. 2022. "In Defence of Hybrid Contingentism." Philosophers' Imprint no. 22:1-30.

"After situating, in §2, the haecceities objection more carefully in the overall context of Williamson’s case for uniform necessitism and clarifying it in some important respects, I turn to the notion of non-causal explanation it involves and whose role in the objection has, surprisingly, not yet received much attention. I fill this lacuna in §3, where I argue that the objection can be fruitfully understood as challenging the contingentists to provide metaphysical grounds for the haecceity facts in question. In §4, I propose a way in which contingentists can meet this challenge, drawing n recent work concerning the interaction of round and essence. In §5, I develop and defend the resulting hybrid contingentist position by showing that, first impression to the contrary, it coheres well with an essence-based account of ontological dependence.9" (p. 3, notes omitted)

References

Williamson, T. (2013). Modal Logic as Metaphysics. Oxford University Press.

71. Skiles, Alexander. 2014. "Primitivism about Intrinsicality." In Companion to Intrinsic Properties, edited by Francescotti, Robert M., 221-252. Berlin: de Gruyter.

"Objections to the thesis that intrinsicality fails to succumb to reductive analysis have not been fully articulated or defended anywhere in the literature. Indeed, the thesis is rarely mentioned even as an option (let alone a live one). Nor has it been discussed what a viable account of intrinsicality along these lines could,or should, look like.

The goal of this chapter is to explore the prospects of the view I shall call primitivism about intrinsicality, and offer a limited defense. A key component of this limited defense consists simply in clarifying what it could be, exactly, for intrinsicality to be “primitive”. As we shall see, at least some prima facie decisive objections to primitivism seem less convincing once this has been done.

Doing so is the task of section 1. In section 2, I then consider several arguments for primitivism about intrinsicality. And finally, in section 3, I consider several arguments against it." (p. 222, a note omitted)

72. ———. 2015. "Against Grounding Necessitarianism." Erkenntnis no. 80:717-751.

Abstract: "Can there be grounding without necessitation? Can a fact obtain wholly in virtue of metaphysically more fundamental facts, even though there are possible worlds at which the latter facts obtain but not the former? It is an orthodoxy in recent literature about the nature of grounding, and in first-order philosophical disputes about what grounds what, that the answer is no. I will argue that the correct answer is yes. I present two novel arguments against grounding necessitarianism, and show that grounding contingentism is fully compatible with the various explanatory roles that grounding is widely thought to play."

73. ———. 2020. "Necessity." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 148-163. New York: Routledge.

"In §1, I discuss the main arguments in the literature for necessitarianism and consider responses to them. In §2, contingentism is subjected to the same treatment. In §3, I survey the internalism versus externalism dispute. (Since the necessitarianism vs. contingentism dispute has been explored in more depth than the internalism vs. externalism dispute, and because many of the maneuvers available within the first dispute have analogues in the second, I will focus more attention on the former.)" (pp. 148-149)

74. Skiles, Alexander, and Trogdon, Kelly. 2013. "Grounding." In The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics, edited by Bliss, Ricki and Miller, J. T. M., 199-210. New York: Routledge.

"Metametaphysics concerns foundational metaphysics. Questions of foundational metaphysics include: What is the subject matter of metaphysics? What are its aims? What is the methodology of metaphysics? Are metaphysical questions coherent? If so, are they substantive or trivial in nature? Some have claimed that the notion of grounding is useful in addressing such questions. In this chapter, we introduce some core debates about whether – and, if so, how – grounding should play a role in metametaphysics." (p. 199)

(...)

"In what follows, we focus on three of the most interesting and widely discussed roles that have been assigned to grounding in metametaphysics. Specifically, we consider how grounding might be relevant to whether metaphysical questions are substantive (§1), how to choose between metaphysical theories (§2), and how to understand so-called ‘location problems’ (§3)." (.p 200, anote omitted)

75. ———. 2019. "Maurin on Grounding and Explanation." In Maurinian Truths – Essays in Honour of Anna-Sofia Maurin on her 50th Birthday, edited by Wahlberg, Tobias Hansson and Stenwall, Robin, 159-172. Lund: Lund University.

"In the classical and contemporary literature on grounding, explanatory language is routinely used to communicate what it is and to motivate substantive principles about how it behaves."

(...)

"Two views have emerged about how to answer this question.

Some stipulate that by ‘grounding’ they mean a distinctive form of determination, what we will call determinationG, where to determine is, roughly speaking, to produce or bring about (Audi 2012; Schaffer 2016; and Trogdon 2013)."

(...)

"Others stipulate that by ‘grounding’ they mean a distinctive form of explanation, what we will call explanationG (Dasgupta 2017; Litland 2015; and Rosen 2010).

(...)

As is customary, let us call the latter view Unionism (grounding is explanationG) and the former view Separatism (grounding is determinationG).

Compatible with Separatism is the idea that there are conditions under which grounding backs or underwrites explanations, and Unionism is compatible with the view that there are conditions under which grounding itself is backed or underwritten by other relations.

In “Grounding and Explanation: It’s Complicated” (2019), Anna-Sofia Maurin aims to show that, despite appearances, Unionism and Separatism in fact undermine the use that explanatory language has been put to in elucidating grounding, rather than undergird it. In what follows we will critically assess her interesting argument." (pp. 159-160)

References

Audi, P. (2012) Grounding: Toward a Theory of the In-Virtue-Of Relation, Journal of Philosophy 109, 685–711.

Dasgupta, S. (2017) Constitutive Explanation, Philosophical Issues 27, 74–97.

Litland, J. (2015) Grounding, Explanation, and the Limit of Internality, Philosophical Review 124, 481–532.

Maurin, A.-S. (2019) Grounding and Explanation: It’s Complicated, Philosophical Studies 176, 1573–1594.

Rosen, G. (2010) Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction. In R. Hale and A. Hoffman (eds.) Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Schaffer, J. (2016) Grounding in the Image of Causation, Philosophical Studies 173, 49–100.

Trogdon, K. (2013) An Introduction to Grounding. In B. Schnieder, M. Hoeltje, & A. Steinberg (eds.), Varieties of Dependence. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

76. ———. 2021. "Should Explanation Be a Guide to Ground?" Philosophical Studies no. 178:4083-4098.

Abstract: "Grounding and explanation are said to be intimately connected. Some even maintain that grounding just is a form of explanation. But grounding and explanation also seem importantly different—on the face of it, the former is ‘worldy’ or ‘objective’ while the latter isn’t. In this paper, we develop and respond to an argument to the effect that there is no way to fruitfully address this tension that retains orthodox views about grounding and explanation but doesn’t undermine a central piece of methodology, namely that explanation is a guide to ground."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on metaphysical grounding. Sixth part: Sko-Z

Bibliography

1. Skow, Bradford. 2016. Reasons Why. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Why-questions are important in metaphysics. The obvious example is their importance to the theory of grounding. Many metaphysicians are very busy producing theories of grounding—but what is grounding? A common strategy for helping initiates get a handle on the subject matter of these theories is to say that when one fact grounds another, the first may be used to answer the question why the second obtains. Another example of a part of metaphysics where why-questions are important is the theory of modality. If some fact F obtains in two possible worlds W andV, then those worlds are in one respect similar. Boris Kment argues, in “Counterfactuals and Explanation,” that this respect of similarity matters for how close V and W are, in the sense of closeness relevant to evaluating counterfactuals, if and only if the question why F obtains has the same answer in both worlds." (p. 2)

References

Kment, Boris. “Counterfactuals and Explanation.” Mind vol. 115, 2006, 261-309.

2. Smithson, Robert. 2020. "Metaphysical and Conceptual Grounding." Erkenntnis no. 85:1501-1525.

Abstract: "In this paper, I clarify the relation between two types of grounding: metaphysical and conceptual. Metaphysical grounding relates entities at more and less fundamental ontological levels. Conceptual grounding relates semantically primitive sentences and semantically derivative sentences. It is important to distinguish these relations given that both types of grounding can underwrite non-causal “in-virtue-of” claims. In this paper, I argue that conceptual and metaphysical grounding are exclusive: if a given in-virtue-of claim involves conceptual grounding, then it does not involve metaphysical grounding. I then present two heuristics for deciding which type of grounding is relevant to a given case. These heuristics suggest that certain proposed cases of metaphysical grounding may not actually involve metaphysical grounding at all."

3. Solomyak, Olla. 2020. "Realism." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 375-386. New York: Routledge.

"Questions of ground and questions of realism appear to be tightly connected in a number of ways, but there has not been consensus on precisely how these connections should be understood nor a full explication of the various approaches one might take on this issue. My aim in this chapter will be to spell out several ways in which we might see these questions as connected and thereby clarify the role for questions of ground in metaphysical inquiry more generally." (p. 375)

4. Steinberg, Alex. 2013. "Supervenience: A Survey." In Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence, edited by Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin and Steinberg, Alex, 123-166. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"Many philosophers think that an important sort of dependence that relates conjunctive facts to atomic facts and the primary colours to the specific shades can be captured by supervenience claims."

(...)

"Supervenience, then, promises to be one of the dependence relations that structure the world we live in. This paper aims to give an overview of the subject. Section 1 introduces the main kinds of supervenience.

Section 2 discusses their relations. And section 3 makes the case that purely modal definitions of supervenience can fruitfully be improved upon.

In the rest of the paper I will follow the bulk of the philosophical literature in focusing exclusively on properties as the relata of supervenience." (pp. 123-124)

5. Stenwall, Robin. 2017. "Causal Grounds for Negative Truths." Philosophical Studies no. 174:2973-2989.

Abstract: "Among truthmaker theorists it is generally thought that we are not able to use the entailment principle (i.e. the principle according to which truthmaking distributes across entailment) to ground negative truths. But these theorists usually only discuss truthmakers for truth-functional complexes, thereby overlooking the fact that there are non-truth-functional complexes whose truth values are not solely determined by the truth or falsity of their atomic propositions. And once we expand the class of truths that require their own bespoke truthmakers to also include these, there is no reason to exempt negative truths from grounding. For given that truthmaking is closed under entailment and every negative truths is entailed by some non-truth-functional complex or other, any resources rich enough to ground the truth of the latter will do the same job for the former."

6. ———. 2021. "A Grounding Physicalist Solution to the Causal Exclusion Problem." Synthese no. 198:11775-11795.

Abstract: "Remember how Kim (Philos Perspect 3:77–108, 1989, in: Heil and Mele (eds) Mental causation, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993b) used to argue against non-reductive physicalism to the effect that it cannot accommodate the causal efficacy of the mental?

The argument was that if physicalists accept the causal closure of the physical, they are faced with an exclusion problem. In the original version of the argument, the dependence holding between the mental and the physical was cashed out in terms of supervenience. Due to the work or Fine (Philos Perspect 8:1–16, 1994) and others, we have since come to realize that modal notions are not well-suited to perform the work of properly characterizing dependence. As a consequence of this, an increasingly larger community of contemporary metaphysicians prefer to spell out mental-physical dependence in terms of a non-causal and non-reductive notion called grounding, which is intended to target a particular sort of metaphysical relation that takes us from ontologically less fundamental features of the world to that which is more fundamental. In this paper I join forces with those who think that this shift in focus is on the right track.

More specifically, I will argue that the grounding physicalist can solve the exclusion problem in a way that is preferable to the supervenience-based nonreductive physicalist solution, as well as in a way that is compatible with the externalist picture of the mental."

References

Fine, K. (1994). Essence and modality. Philosophical Perspectives, 8, 1–16.

Kim, J. (1989). Mechanism, purpose, and explanatory exclusion. Philosophical Perspectives, 3, 77–108. (Reprinted in Kim 1993a, pp. 237–64).

Kim, J. (1993a). Supervenience and mind: Selected philosophical essays. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

7. Tahko, Tuomas. 2015. An Introduction to Metametaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 5: Grounding and ontological dependence, pp. 93-119.

"The notion of ‘ground’ stormed into contemporary analytic metaphysics at the beginning of the twenty-first century,(1) but the roots of the notion go all the way back to Aristotle. At its simplest, grounding may be understood as ‘metaphysical explanation’. To be more precise, when some x is grounded in some y, it is usually thought that y explains x. Moreover, the status of y is generally thought to be somehow prior to that of x – grounding is typically understood to express priority between things. For instance, we might say that the members of a set are prior to the set itself; the existence of the set is grounded in its members. Or to take a more concrete example, the existence of any given composite object is grounded in the existence of its parts." (p. 93)

(1) The definitive work is Kit Fine, ‘The Question of Realism,’ Philosophers Imprint 1 (2001), pp. 1–30, but for more recent discussion, see especially F. Correia and B. Schnieder (eds.), Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality (Cambridge University Press, 2012); see also R. L. Bliss and K. Trogdon, ‘Metaphysical Grounding,’ in E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 edn); see https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/grounding/.

8. Tahko, Tuomas E. 2013. "Truth‐Grounding and Transitivity." Thought: A Journal of Philosophy no. 2:332-340.

Abstract: "It is argued that if we take grounding to be univocal, then there is a serious tension between truth-grounding and one commonly assumed structural principle for grounding, namely transitivity.

The primary claim of the article is that truth-grounding cannot be transitive. Accordingly, it is either the case that grounding is not transitive or that truth-grounding is not grounding, or both."

9. ———. 2020. "Structure." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 387-395. New York: Routledge.

WIn this chapter, I will discuss both of these senses of structure as well as their potential connections. I will first briefly outline a potential connection between ground, structure, and fundamentality. Next we take up the idea that reality has a hierarchical structure and we will then examine whether there could be a systematic connection between ground and structure via the Lewisian notion of naturalness.This leads us to a question about the relationship between reality and representation, before concluding with a more detailed discussion about a famous principle regarding fundamentality, namely, the principle of purity." (p. 387)

10. Tajer, Diego. 2016. "Grounding and Logical Basing Permissions." Diametros no. 50:81-96.

Abstract: "The relation between logic and rationality has recently re-emerged as an important topic of discussion. Following the ideas of Broome [1999] and Macfarlane [2004], the debate focused on providing rational requirements, which work as bridges between logic and epistemic norms. However, as Broome [2014] and Way [2011] observed, the usual requirements cannot capture some important aspects of rationality, such as how one can rationally believe something on the basis of believing something else. Broome [2014] proposed a few additional principles ("basing permissions") for this purpose. In this paper I develop a more systematic family of basing permissions using the recent notion of grounding (Fine [2012], Correia [2014]). In particular, I claim that if Γ (logically) grounds Α, and you believe Γ then rationality permits you to believe Α on the basis of believing Γ."

References

Broome [2014] - J. Broome, Rationality through reasoning, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014.

Correia [2014] - F. Correia, " Logical Grounds," Review of Symbolic Logic (7/1) 2014, p. 31-59.

Fine [2012] - K. Fine, A guide to ground, [in:] Grounding and Explanation, F. Correia, B. Schniereder (eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2012, p. 37- 80.

Macfarlane [2004] - J. Macfarlane, "What (if any) is the normative role of logic?", unpublished talk at APA 2004, available on the website of the author.

Way [2011] - J. Way, "The symmetry of rational requirements," Philosophical Studies (155/2) 2011, p. 227- 239.

11. Tallant, Jonathan. 2018. Truth and World: An Explanationist Theory. New York: Routledge.

"My starting point for many of the arguments will be Armstrong’s canonical Truth and Truthmaking. So, to the theory. I borrow (with slight emendation) from Cameron (2008a).(1)

Maximalism: for any true proposition, there exists some thing or things that necessitate(s) the truth of that proposition. (cf. Cameron, 2008a: 292)

Maximalism is an extreme version of truthmaker theory.

The truthmaker theorist merely holds that:

Truthmaker theory: for some true propositions, there exists some thing or things that necessitate(s) the truth of that proposition.

As we move through this chapter, we will have to refine these principles. For one thing, note that this treats necessitation as the truthmaker relation (as do, e.g., both Armstrong (2004) and Cameron (2008a)). I will suggest that mere necessitation is not fit to play the role of the truthmaker relation. Following a number of others (e.g., Schaffer, 2008a, 2008b, 2009: 365), I suggest that the truthmaker relation should be treated as a grounding relation – the ‘in virtue of’ relation. I take this relation to be a primitive and unanalysable relation, though there are things that can be said to cast light on its nature."

(1) The emendation: Cameron states that truthmakers must be pluralities: things. There is no obvious reason that a truthmaker might not, instead, be a thing.

References

Armstrong, D. 2004. Truth and Truthmakers. Cambridge: CUP.

Cameron, R. 2008a. ‘Comments on Merricks’s Truth and Ontology’, Philosophical Books, 49, 292–301.

Schaffer, J. 2008a. ‘Truthmaker Commitments’, Philosophical Studies, 141, 7–19.

Schaffer, J. 2008b. ‘Truth and Fundamentality: On Merricks’s Truth and Ontology’, Philosophical Books, 49, 302–16.

Schaffer, J. 2009. ‘On What Grounds What’, in D. Chalmers, D. Manley and R. Wasserman (eds.), Metametaphysics. Oxford: OUP, 347–83.

12. Thompson, Naomi. 2014. Structuring Reality.

PhD thesis at the University of Birmingham; available at Academia.edu.

Abstract: "This thesis explores attempts to characterise the structure of reality. Three notions stand out: Lewisian naturalness, Sider‘s 'structure', and grounding, where the latter has become the most popular way to characterise the structure of reality in the contemporary literature. I argue that none of these notions, as they are currently understood, are suited for limning the metaphysical structure of reality. In the first part of the thesis I argue that, by the lights of the relevant theories, both naturalness and structure fall short of the theoretical role carved out for those posits. In the second part of the thesis I present two challenges to the ‗orthodox‘ conception of grounding. The first contests the standard assumption that grounding is asymmetric, both by citing what I take to be best described as symmetric instances of grounding, and by developing and arguing for a new theory of metaphysical structure – ‗metaphysical interdependence‘ – which takes grounding to be nonsymmetric. The second challenge concerns the relationship between grounding and (metaphysical) explanation, and leads to a dilemma for the grounding theorist. My proposed resolution to the dilemma is to adopt an antirealist approach to grounding, which I further motivate and develop in the final chapter."

13. ———. 2016. "Grounding and Metaphysical Explanation." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 116:395-402.

Abstract: "Attempts to elucidate grounding are often made by connecting grounding to metaphysical explanation, but the notion of metaphysical explanation is itself opaque, and has received little attention in the literature. We can appeal to theories of explanation in the philosophy of science to give us a characterisation of metaphysical explanation, but this reveals a tension between three theses: that grounding relations are objective and mind-independent; that there are pragmatic elements to metaphysical explanation; and that grounding and metaphysical explanation share a close connection. Holding fixed the mind-independence of grounding, I show that neither horn of the resultant dilemma can be blunted. Consequently, we should reject the assumption that grounding relations are mind-independent."

14. ———. 2016. "Metaphysical Interdependence." In Reality Making, edited by Jago, Mark, 38-56. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"I assume the existence of a distinctive relation of non-causal dependence: the grounding relation. Intuitive examples of grounding can help to elucidate the notion. Consider, for example, the relationship that obtains between Socrates’s singleton—the set that only has Socrates as a member—and Socrates himself (see Fine 1995, 271), where Socrates’s singleton exists because Socrates exists. Grounding can be understood as a relation of metaphysical explanation, as emphasized by the ‘because’ in the previous sentence. Claims about the dependence of truths on their truthmakers are also plausibly construed as grounding claims (e.g. Rodriguez-Pereyra 2006, 960; Correia 2011)—we get a particular truth in virtue of the existence of the relevant truthmaker. The truth is thus grounded in the truthmaker. Borrowing another kind of example of grounding from Schaffer 2009, 375), the Euthyphro dilemma concerns whether an act is morally right because it is approved by the gods, or is approved by the gods because it is morally right. If we take the first horn of the dilemma, then the rightness of the act is grounded in the approval of the gods. If the latter, the approval of the gods is grounded in the rightness of the act." (p. 38)

References

Correia, F. (2011). ‘From Grounding to Truth-Making: Some Thoughts’. In Reboul, A., Philosophical papers dedicated to Kevin Mulligan, Cham: Springer [2014, vol. 1, pp. 85-98].

Fine, K. (1995). ‘OntologicalDependence’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, Vol. 95, 269-90.

Rodriguez-Pereyra, G. (2006). ‘Truthmaking, entailment, and the conjunction thesis’. Mind 115 (460): 957-82.

Schaffer, J. (2009). ‘On What Grounds What’. In Chalmers, D., Manley, D, and Wasserman, R. (eds.) Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, pp. 347-83. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

15. ———. 2018. "Irrealism about Grounding." Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement no. 172:2405-2425.

Abstract: "Grounding talk has become increasingly familiar in contemporary philosophical discussion. Most discussants of grounding think that grounding talk is useful, intelligible, and accurately describes metaphysical reality. Call them realists about grounding. Some dissenters reject grounding talk on the grounds that it is unintelligible, or unmotivated. They would prefer to eliminate grounding talk from philosophy, so we can call them eliminitivists about grounding. This paper outlines a new position in the debate about grounding, defending the view that grounding talk is (or at least can be) intelligible and useful. Grounding talk does not, however, provide a literal and veridical description of mind-independent metaphysical reality. This (non-eliminative) irrealism about grounding treads a path between realism and eliminativism."

16. ———. 2019. "Questions and Answers: Metaphysical Explanation and the Structure of Reality." Journal of the American Philosophical Association:98-116.

Abstract: "This paper develops an account of metaphysical explanation according to which metaphysical explanations are answers to what-makes-it-the-case-that questions. On this view, metaphysical explanations are not to be considered entirely objective, but are subject to epistemic constraints imposed by the context in which a relevant question is asked. The resultant account of metaphysical explanation is developed independently of any particular views about grounding.

Toward the end of the paper an application of the view is proposed that takes metaphysical explanations conceived in this way to characterize reality’s structure. According to this proposal, reality’s structure is partly constituted by a projection of our explanatory practices onto reality."

17. ———. 2020. "Strict Partial Order." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 259-270. New York: Routledge.

"This chapter explores aspects of the logic of ground.A strict partial order is transitive, irreflexive, and asymmetric.Whilst it is generally assumed that grounding exhibits these properties, this has consequences for other aspects of the study of ground, and so each assumption has been challenged in the grounding literature.The present chapter critically discusses those challenges and explores reasons for thinking that grounding forms a strict partial order in the first place." (p. 259)

18. Tiehen, Justin. 2015. "Grounding Causal Closure." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly no. 96:501-522.

Abstract: "What does itmean to say thatmind-body dualismis causally problematic in a way that othermind-body theories, such as the psychophysical type identity theory, are not? After considering and rejecting various proposals, I advance my own, which focuses on what grounds the causal closure of the physical realm.

A metametaphysical implication of my proposal is that philosophers working without the notion of grounding in their toolkit aremetaphysically impoverished.

They cannot do justice to the thought, encountered in every introductory class in the philosophy of mind, that dualism has a special problem accounting for mental causation."

19. ———. 2015. "Explaining Causal Closure." Philosophical Studies no. 172:2405-2425.

Abstract: "The physical realm is causally closed, according to physicalists like me.

But why is it causally closed, what metaphysically explains causal closure? I argue that reductive physicalists are committed to one explanation of causal closure to the exclusion of any independent explanation, and that as a result, they must give up on using a causal argument to attack mind–body dualism. Reductive physicalists should view dualism in much the way that we view the hypothesis that unicorns exist, or that the Kansas City Royals won the 2003 World Series: false, but not objectionable in any distinctively causal way. My argument turns on connections between explanation, counterfactuals, and inductive confirmation."

20. Torza, Alessandro. 2020. "Ground and Modality." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 63:563-585.

Abstract: "The grounding relation is routinely characterized by means of logical postulates.

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I show that a subset of those postulates is incompatible with a minimal characterization of metaphysical modality. Then I consider a number of ways for reconciling ground with modality. The simplest and most elegant solution consists in adopting serious actualism, which is best captured within a first-order modal language with predicate abstraction governed by negative free logic. I also explore a number of alternative strategies by revising the ground-theoretic postulates, while keeping the modal ones fixed. As I argue, each of those strategies is either unviable, highly contentious, or insufficiently motivated."

21. Trogdon, Kelly. 2013. "Grounding: Necessary or Contingent?" Pacific Philosophical Quarterly no. 94:465-485.

Abstract: "Recent interest in the nature of grounding is due in part to the idea that purely modal notions are too coarse-grained to capture what we have in mind when we say that one thing is grounded in another. Grounding not being purely modal in character, however, is compatible with it having modal consequences.

Is grounding a necessary relation? In this article I argue that the answer is ‘yes’ in the sense that propositions corresponding to full grounds modally entail propositions corresponding to what they ground. The argument proceeds upon two substantive principles: the first is that there is a broadly epistemic constraint on grounding, while the second links this constraint with Fine’s Aristotelian notion of essence. Many think grounding is necessary in something like the sense specified above, but just why it’s necessary is an issue that hasn’t been carefully addressed. If my argument is successful, we now know why grounding is necessary."

22. ———. 2013. "An Introduction to Grounding." In Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence, edited by Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin and Steinberg, Alex, 97-122. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"There is a burgeoning literature on grounding. The primary goal of this chapter is to set out and clarify some of the central issues and disputes concerning this notion. In the course of the chapter I'll weigh in on certain positions, treat others as working assumptions, and remain neutral on others. In some cases philosophers either explicitly endorse or reject the positions I discuss, while in other cases the positions have yet to be discussed in any detail.

The plan for the chapter is as follows. I begin by distinguishing two general approaches to grounding-on one our talk of grounding in philosophy is univocal, and on the other it isn't-and consider different ways in which each view might be further developed (§2). Then I consider the logical form of grounding statements as well as the tructural principles that govern grounding (§3-4). Next, I take up the matter of how the notions of grounding, modality, and reduction interact (§5-6). I close with a brief discussion of the grounds for what grounds what (§7)." (pp. 97-98)

23. ———. 2015. "Placement, Grounding, and Mental Content." In The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophical Methods, edited by Daly, Chris, 481-496. London: Palgrave-Macmillan.

"Introduction: One central issue concerning philosophical methodology is this: what concepts should go into our philosophical toolbox? That is to say, what notions are appropriate to rely on in doing philosophy? This issue is relevant not only to how we should go about addressing philosophical problems but also how we’re to formulate those problems in the first place. There is a burgeoning literature on the notion of grounding. I’m a proponent of grounding – I think the notion of grounding is coherent and theoretically useful. Supposing that the notion of grounding belongs in our philosophical toolbox, what consequences might this have for familiar philosophical problems? In this chapter I focus on what Jackson (1998) calls placement problems – problems concerning how the manifest facts (e.g. facts concerning ordinary macroscopic objects, the mental, and the moral) “fit into” the world given that the world is ultimately physical in nature.

If we formulate placement problems in terms of grounding, we should expect new possibilities to open up with respect to how to solve them. My goal in this chapter is to show that this is precisely what happens with respect to the content placement problem, the problem of how to fit facts concerning mental content into the actual world given that it’s ultimately physical in nature." (p. 481, anote omitted)

References

Jackson, F. 1998. From Metaphysics to Ethics. Oxford UP.

24. ———. 2018. "Grounding-Mechanical Explanation." Philosophical Studies no. 175:1289-1309.

Abstract: "I argue that there is an important similarity between causation and grounding. In particular I argue that, just as there is a type of scientific explanation that appeals to causal mechanisms—causal-mechanical explanation—there is a type of metaphysical explanation that appeals to grounding mechanisms—grounding-mechanical explanation. The upshot is that the role that grounding mechanisms play in certain metaphysical explanations mirrors the role that causal mechanisms play in certain scientific explanations. In this light, it becomes clear that grounding-mechanical explanations make crucial contributions to the evaluation of a variety of important philosophical theses, including priority monism and physicalism."

25. ———. 2020. "Truthmaking." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 396-407. New York: Routledge.

"Before getting into the details, I should note some of the assumptions I’m going to make about grounding and truthmaking. While each of these assumptions has been challenged in the literature, they strike me as reasonable starting points. As for regimentation, I assume that grounding and truthmaking claims are to be formulated with the predicates “grounds” and “makes true” rather than sentential connectives such as “because”.As for the ontological status of grounding and truthmaking, I assume that they’re relations ‘out there’ in the domain of our ontology rather being primitive pieces of ideology. As for their relata, I assume that something is a ground, a grounded entity, or a truthmaker only if it’s a fact, and something is made true only if it’s a proposition. I assume that facts and propositions are structured entities, where the former are worldly in that they lack concepts or modes of presentation as constituents, and the latter are representational in that they do have such constituents. Collections of one or more facts ground other facts, and collections of one or more facts make true propositions." (p. 396, anote omitted)

26. Trogdon, Kelly, and Witmer, D. Gene. 2021. "Full and Partial Grounding." Journal of the American Philosophical Association no. 7:252-271.

Abstract: "While controversy about the nature of grounding abounds, our focus is on a question for which a particular answer has attracted something like a consensus. The question concerns the relation between partial grounding and full grounding. The apparent consensus is that the former is to be defined in terms of the latter. We argue that the standard way of doing this faces a significant problem and that we ought to pursue the reverse project of defining full grounding in terms of partial grounding. The guiding idea behind the definition we propose is that full grounding is what happens when partial grounding works in a way that ensures that the grounded is nothing over and above the grounds. We ultimately understand this idea in terms of iterated nothing-over-and-above claims."

27. Trueman, Robert. 2021. "Truthmaking, Grounding and Fitch’s Paradox." Analysis no. 81:270-274.

Abstract: "Jago and Loss have recently used variations on Fitch's paradox to argue that every truth has a truthmaker, and that every fact is grounded. In this paper, I show that Fitch's paradox can also be adapted to prove the exact opposite conclusions: no truth has a truthmaker, and no fact is grounded. All of these arguments are as dialectically effective as each other, and so they are all in bad company."

References

Jago M. 2020. A short argument for truthmaker maximalism. Analysis 80: 40-44.

Loss R. forthcoming [2021]. There are no fundamental facts. Analysis 81: 32-39.

28. Tsohatzidis, Savas L. 2015. "A Problem for a Logic of ‘Because’." Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics no. 25:46-49.

Abstract: "A problem is raised for the introduction rules proposed in Benjamin Schnieder’s (2011) ‘A logic for "because"', arising in connection with (a) inferences that the"rules should not, but do, validate and (b) inferences that the rules should, but do not, validate."

References

Schnieder, B. (2011). A logic for ‘because’. The Review of Symbolic Logic, 4, 445–465.

29. Tugby, Matthew. 2016. "What are Dispositional Properties?" In Reality Making, edited by Jago, Mark, 75-98. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Contents: List of Figures VII; List of Contributors VIII; Mark Jago: Reality-Making: Introduction 1; Martin Glazier: Laws and the Completeness of the Fundamental 11; Naomi Thompson: Metaphysical Interdependence 38; Jacek Brzozowski: Monism and Gunk 57; Matthew Tugby: What are Dispositional Properties? 75; Mark Jago: Essence and the Grounding Problem 99; Nicholas K. Jones: Object as a Determinable 121; Sonia Roca-Royes: Rethinking Origin Essentialism (for Artefacts) 152; Nathan Wildman: How (not) to be a Modalist About Essence 177; Index 197-200.

30. ———. 2021. "Grounding Theories of Powers." Synthese no. 198:11187-11216.

Abstract: "Necessitarianism, as we shall use the term, is the view that natural properties and causal powers are necessarily connected in some way. In recent decades the most popular forms of necessitarianism have been the anti-Humean powers-based theories of properties, such as dispositional essentialism and the identity theory. These versions of necessitarianism have come under fire in recent years and I believe it is time for necessitarians to develop a new approach. In this paper I identify unexplored ways of positing metaphysically necessary connections in nature, using the concepts of grounding and essential dependence. For example, I show that one could be a necessitarian by insisting that the properties of things necessarily ground their powers, and that one can maintain this while rejecting dispositional essentialism. Using different combinations of claims about grounding and essential dependence (or lack thereof), I map out a spectrum of new positions and compare them to previous theories of natural modality. Some of these positions are compatible with Humean metaphysics (given certain readings of Hume’s Dictum) while others are not. The overall aim of the paper is to provide a new metaphysical framework for understanding theories of powers and thereby launch a new necessitarian research programme."

31. Turner, Jason. 2016. "Curbing Enthusiasm About Grounding." Philosophical Perspectives no. 30:366-396.

"Metaphysics in the high old style is back in fashion, and this season’s favorite accessory is a relation philosophers are pleased to call metaphysical grounding.

By ‘grounding’, the fashionistas do not intend merely the venerable project of trying to figure out how the ordinary appearances are settled by ultimate reality.

They mean, instead, a very particular sort of metaphysical relation (or something like a relation) used to tie together the fundamental with the non-fundamental— a kind of priority relation that structures the world.

Some stodgier critics have objected that metaphysics’ newfound enthusiasm for grounding is misguided, because the notion is in fact unintelligible: Talk of the alleged relation makes no sense, and metaphysicians have simply fooled themselves into thinking otherwise. I do not share this diagnosis—as far as I can see, talk of the relation makes perfect sense. But I too want to curb the discipline’s grounding-based enthusiasm. The enthusiasm has led many to make wild claims about grounding’s virtues, such as that we can use it to shield entities from Ockham’s razor. And it has led many to embark on grand grounding-theoretic projects, such as the search for its ‘logic’. I think many of these claims unfounded and projects unpromising: Grounding’s marketing campaign has made promises which, I will argue, it cannot deliver." (p. 366)

32. Ujvári, Márta. 2020. "Metaphysical Explanation Separated from Grounding." Metaphysica no. 21:55-69.

Abstract: Grounding is typically associated to metaphysical explanation on the basis of the explanatory role’s being characteristic of grounding as well. Some even say that all what metaphysical explanation does is tracking the grounding relation. However, recently Maurin has argued that grounding does not “inherit” its properties from metaphysical explanation and, consequently, we should be “separatists”. In this paper separatism will be defended from the perspective of metaphysical explanation thus giving a turn to the separatist strategy. In particular, the structural difference between grounding and metaphysical explanation will be pointed out as affecting also the explanatory function. It will be shown how dispositions and essentialist claims play different roles in the two theories.

Lastly, it will be claimed that the two theories diverge on accounting for law-like and accidental generalizations. Provided these arguments are sound, there will be good reason to tell metaphysical explanation apart from grounding.

References

Maurin, A. S. 2019. “Grounding and Metaphysical Explanation: it’s Complicated.” Philosophical Studies 176 (6): 1573–94

33. Valore, Paolo. 2021. "A Proposed Taxonomy of Realism in Conceptual Frameworks." European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy no. 13:1-10.

"One of the complications of a clear evaluation of different positions in metaphysics and ontology is discrepancy in terminology and variance, if not incongruity, of basic concepts associated to relevant notions. This is a common problem in philosophy, but it seems that it has been exacerbated in recent debates about different clusters of positions called “realism.”

(...)

Evidently, a significant reconstruction of the various systems (not even of the most important authors) and the many possible foundations and justifications of “realism” is out of the scope of this paper (a well-done comprehensive synopsis of versions of “realism” can be easily found in several other papers and encyclopedia entries, for instance Miller 2019). Instead of trying to infer a definition of “realism,” as if by induction, from the countless pictures given by philosophers identifying (or identified by others) as “realists” in the history of philosophy or in a catalogue of current debates, here I offer a taxonomy provided by a conceptual analysis of the notion of “realism” in what I think are its sub-concepts, recognizing three different conceptual frameworks." (p. 2)

References

Miller Alexander, (2019), “Realism,” in E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition).

34. Väyrynen, Pekka. 2013. "Grounding and Normative Explanation." Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume no. 87:156-178.

Abstract: "This paper concerns non-causal normative explanations such as ‘This act is wrong because/in virtue of ’ (where the blank is often filled out in non-normative terms, such as ‘it causes pain’). The familiar intuition that normative facts aren’t brute or ungrounded but anchored in non-normative facts seems to be in tension with the equally familiar idea that no normative fact can be fully explained in purely non-normative terms. I ask whether the tension could be resolved by treating the explanatory relation in normative explanations as the sort of ‘grounding’ relation that receives extensive discussion in recent metaphysics. I argue that this would help only under controversial assumptions about the nature of normative facts, and perhaps not even then. I won’t try to resolve the tension, but draw a distinction between two different sorts of normative explanations (one concerning ‘bearers’, the other concerning ‘sources’ of normativity) which helps to identify constraints on a resolution. One distinctive constraint on normative explanations in particular might be that they should be able to play a role in normative justification."

35. von Solodkoff, Tatjana. 2012. "Straightening Priority Out." Philosophical Studies no. 161:391-401.

Abstract: "In recent work, Louis deRosset (Philosophical Studies 149:73-97, 2010) has argued that priority theorists, who hold that truths about macroscopic objects can be metaphysically explained without reference to such things, cannot meet an independently motivated constraint upon good explanation. By clarifying the nature of the priority theorist's project, I argue that deRosseťs argument fails to establish its conclusion."

References

deRosset, L. (2010). Getting priority straight. Philosophical Studies, 149, 73-97.

36. Wallner, Michael. 2021. "The Ground of Ground, Essence, and Explanation." Synthese no. 198:1257-1277.

Abstract: "This paper is about the so-called meta-grounding question, i.e. the question of what grounds grounding facts of the sort ‘φ is grounded in Γ ’. An answer to this question is pressing since some plausible assumptions about grounding and fundamentality entail that grounding facts must be grounded. There are three different accounts on the market which each answer the meta-grounding question differently: Bennett’s and deRosset’s “Straight Forward Account” (SFA), Litland’s “Zero-Grounding Account” (ZGA), and “Grounding Essentialism” (GE). I argue that if grounding is to be regarded as metaphysical explanation (i.e. if unionism is true), (GE) is to be preferred over (ZGA) and (SFA) as only (GE) is compatible with a crucial consequence of the thought that grounding is metaphysical explanation. In this manner the paper contributes not only to discussions about the ground of ground but also to the ongoing debate concerning the relationship between ground, essence, and explanation."

"Versions of (GE) are discussed in Rosen (2010), Fine (2012) and Dasgupta (2014)." (p. 1258)

References

Bennett, K. (2011). By our bootstraps. Philosophical Perspectives, 25, 27–41.

Dasgupta, S. (2014). The possibility of physicalism. Journal of Philosophy, 111(9/10), 557–592.

deRosset, L. (2013). Grounding explanations. Philosopher’s Imprint, 13(7), 1–26.

Fine, K. (2012). Guide to ground. In F. Correia & B. Schnieder (Eds.), Metaphysical grounding: Understanding the structure of reality (pp. 37–80). Cambridge: CUP.

Litland, J. E. (2017). Grounding ground. In K. Bennett & D. Zimmerman (Eds.), Oxford studies in metaphysics (Vol. 10, pp. 279–315). Oxford: OUP.

Rosen, G. (2010). Metaphysical dependence: Grounding and reduction. In B. Hale & A. Hoffmann (Eds.), Modality: Metaphysics, logic, and epistemology (pp. 109–136). Oxford: OUP.

37. Wang, Jennifer. 2020. "Cause." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 300-311. New York: Routledge.

"The notion of ground is often introduced as the metaphysical analogue of the notion of cause. For the most part, no more is said about the connection between the two notions, for instance, the extent of the analogy or whether theorizing about one notion might shed light on the other. But in recent literature, some philosophers have developed a sustained analogy between grounding and causation, with the end goal of showing that they present a unified phenomenon.Although there are other questions about the connection between grounding and causation, this chapter centers on the unification claim." (300, a note omitted)

38. Werner, Jonas. 2020. "Plural Grounding and the Principle of Sufficient Reason." Analysis no. 80:90-95.

"McDaniel (2019) presents a novel argument that aims to establish that the principle of sufficient reason fails if there is a contingent truth. It is a variant of an argument to the same conclusion that has been presented by van Inwagen 1983: 202–4. Van Inwagen’s argument has been shown to fail if the principle of sufficient reason is formulated as the thesis that every truth has a full ground (see e.g. Schnieder and Steinberg 2015). The crucial aspect of McDaniel’s new argument is that it employs a notion of plural grounding, with plural grounding allowing that ‘many facts can collectively ground many facts collectively’ (McDaniel 2019: 232). McDaniel defines that ‘a plurality of truths are contingently true if and only if at least one of them is contingently true’ (2019: 233) and he formulates the principle of sufficient reason as the thesis that ‘any plurality of contingent truths has a full ground’(2019: 232). I will henceforth use ‘(PPSR)’ (for ‘plural principle of sufficient reason’) to refer to this thesis." (p. 90)

(...)

"General irreflexivity is an assumption that is needed for McDaniel’s argument against (PPSR) to work. If I have been successful in showing that (PPSR) only captures the spirit of the principle of sufficient reason if it is formulated in terms of a notion of plural grounding for which general irreflexivity fails, then I have rebutted McDaniel’s attack on the principle of sufficient reason." (p. 94)

References

McDaniel, K. 2019. The principle of sufficient reason and necessitarianism. Analysis 79: 230–36.

Schnieder, B. and A. Steinberg. 2015. Without reason? Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 96: 523–41.

van Inwagen, P. 1983. An Essay on Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

39. ———. 2021. "Arbitrary Grounding." Philosophical Studies.

First Online 10 July 2021.

Abstract: "The aim of this paper is to introduce, elucidate and defend the usefulness of a variant of grounding, or metaphysical explanation, that has the feature that the grounds explain of some states of affairs that one of them obtains without explaining which one obtains. I will dub this variant arbitrary grounding. After informally elucidating the basic idea in the first section, I will provide three metaphysical hypotheses that are best formulated in terms of arbitrary grounding in the second section. The third section will be concerned with the relation between arbitrary grounding and non-arbitrary grounding. The fourth section will compare arbitrary grounding to two extant proposals in the literature."

40. ———. 2022. The Modalities of Essence and Ground. Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann.

Contents: Acknowledgements IX; 1. Introduction 1; 2. Immediate Minimal Grounds 19; 3. Constructing the Semantics 39: 4. Essence 75; 5. Necessity and Possibility 111; 6. Grounding 133; 7. Comparison and Conclusion 163; Final Remarks 175; Bibliography 177-183.

"Introduction: In this first chapter I present the core idea of this book and lay out its structure. Furthermore, I introduce its main topics. I will start by painting a big picture of the view I want to develop in this work and I situate it in the present philosophical landscape. Afterwards, I will briefly discuss the central concepts of essence, grounding and metaphysical modality and I will specify the ways in which I will use them in the subsequent chapters. Finally, an overview of the following chapters will be provided.

1.1 The Basic Idea

In this book I develop and defend a unified semantic treatment of essence, grounding and metaphysical modality. Statements like “Socrates is essentially wise”, “Possibly the number of ducks in Hamburg is odd” and “Bob the ball is red grounds Bob the ball is coloured” can be modelled in the resulting semantics. It will take the form of a world semantics similar to the standard possible world semantics for metaphysical modality. One of its central features will be that not only possible worlds, but also impossible worlds - ways the world might not have been - are its semantic values. The smantics will be argued to shed light on the deep philosophical connections between three of the most important posits of contemporary metaphysics. It will be shown to bear relevance to some important and controversial issues regarding the relations between essence, ground and modality.

The core idea standing in the background of my semantics is to model essences with accessibility-relations, relations that specify which worlds can see other worlds, metaphorically speaking. Essences modelled with accessibility-relations will be the sole primitive of the view to be developed. Accounts of grounding and metaphysical modality will be given in terms of essence." (p. 1)

41. Whitcomb, Dennis. 2012. "Grounding and Omniscience." Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion no. Vol. 4:173-201.

Abstract: "This chapter argues that omniscience is impossible and therefore that there is no God. The argument turns on the notion of grounding. The chapter begins by illustrating and clarifying that notion. It then lays out five claims, one of which is the claim that there is an omniscient being, and the other four of which are claims about grounding. It shows that these five claims are jointly inconsistent. It then argues for the truth of each of them, except the claim that there is an omniscient being. From these arguments it follows that there are no omniscient beings and thus that there is no God."

42. Wigglesworth, John. 2018. "Grounding in Mathematical Structuralism." In Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, edited by Bliss, Ricki Leigh and Priest, Graham, 217-236. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"Conclusion:L We have argued for two grounding claims involving mathematical entities that are relevant to the mathematical structuralist: that the identity of a mathematical object is grounded in the identity of the structure it belongs to, and in the identities of other mathematical objects in that structure. This argument has proceeded by describing mathematical structures in terms of unlabelled graphs.With this account of structure to hand, we present standard identity conditions for objects in a structure and for structures themselves, which allow us to articulate the notion of the identity of a mathematical entity in the context of structuralism. We then interpret grounding claims involving these entities as claims about what happens in the space of possible mathematical structures. This is an interpretation which makes no reference to any particular systems or realizations that exemplify the structures in question. And so, unlike Linnebo’s account, it is an account of grounding that is available to both the ante rem and in re non-eliminativist structuralists. On this interpretation, we argue that the grounding claims are true.Their truth follows from, or is at least evidenced by, the truth of the relevant corresponding necessity claims, claims ranging over the space of possible mathematical structures." (p. 232)

43. Wildman, Nathan. 2016. "How (not) to be a Modalist About Essence." In Reality Making, edited by Jago, Mark, 177-196. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Contents: List of Figures VII; List of Contributors VIII; Mark Jago: Reality-Making: Introduction 1; Martin Glazier: Laws and the Completeness of the Fundamental 11; Naomi Thompson: Metaphysical Interdependence 38; Jacek Brzozowski: Monism and Gunk 57; Matthew Tugby: What are Dispositional Properties? 75; Mark Jago: Essence and the Grounding Problem 99; Nicholas K. Jones: Object as a Determinable 121; Sonia Roca-Royes: Rethinking Origin Essentialism (for Artefacts) 152; Nathan Wildman: How (not) to be a Modalist About Essence 177; Index 197-200.

44. Wilhelm, Isaac. 2020. "An Argument for Entity Grounding." Analysis no. 80:500-507.

"According to those I will call ‘fact-only grounders’ (Rosen 2010 and Fine 2012), grounding only obtains between facts. Physical objects, abstract objects, events and other non-fact entities do not ground anything. According to those I will call ‘entity grounders’ (Schaffer 2009 and deRosset 2013), nonfact entities can serve as grounds. Facts can ground, but so can physical objects, abstract objects and perhaps other kinds of entities.

In this paper, I give an argument in favour of entity grounding over fact only grounding. Put roughly, the argument is this: entity grounders can give a more unified, less disjunctive account of the grounds of identity facts than fact-only grounders. After presenting the argument, I consider some responses that fact-only grounders might give." (p. 500, a note omitted)

Referencs

deRosset, L. 2013. Grounding explanations. Philosophers’ Imprint 13: 1–26.

Fine, K. 2012. Guide to ground. In Metaphysical Grounding, eds. F. Correia and B. Schnieder, 37–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rosen, G. 2010. Metaphysical dependence: grounding and reduction. In Modality, eds. B. Hale and A. Hoffmann, 109–35. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Schaffer, J. 2009. On what grounds what. In Metametaphysics, eds. D. Chalmers, D. Manley and R. Wasserman, 347–83. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

45. ———. 2021. "Grounding and Propositional Identity." Analysis no. 81:80-81.

Abstract: "I show that standard grounding conditions contradict standard conditions for the identities of propositions."

46. Williams, J. Robert G. 2012. "Requirements on Reality." In Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality edited by Correia, Fabrice and Schnieder, Benjamin, 165-185. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"My focus in this chapter is how revisionary we need to be about wider theory, in order to incorporate the minimal metaphysics.

In Section 6.1 I outline a ‘Moorean’ epistemological challenge: that overly revisionary or error-theoretical theories of the world will not be reasonable to believe for those that start off with a fair share of common sense and a healthy respect for the testimony of best science. I outline two strategies for responding to this challenge by reconciling educated common sense and minimal metaphysics – ‘structured metaphysics’, in the mode of Fine and Schaffer, and the linguistic strategies favoured by Quine and contemporary fictionalists. Section 6.2 focuses on some familiar ‘representational’ strategies; and Section 6.3 develops my own favoured version of this strategy" (p. 165)

47. Wilsch, Tobias. 2015. "The Nomological Account of Ground." Philosophical Studies no. 172:3293-3312.

Abstract: "The article introduces and defends the Nomological Account of ground, a reductive account of the notion of metaphysical explanation in terms of the laws of metaphysics. The paper presents three desiderata that a theory of ground should meet: it should explain the modal force of ground, the generality of ground, and the interplay between ground and certain mereological notions. The bulk of the paper develops the Nomological Account and argues that it meets the three desiderata.

The Nomological Account relies on two central notions: the notion of a ‘law of metaphysics’ and the notion of ‘determination via the laws’. The paper offers the constructional conception of the laws of metaphysics, on which the metaphysical laws are general principles that characterize construction–operations such as composition, constitution, or set-formation. The role of determination in the account is explained and some reductive approaches to the notion are sketched. The case for the Nomological Account presented in this article is also a case for the laws of metaphysics. Since the Nomological Account offers a promising approach to metaphysical explanation we should take the laws of metaphysics seriously."

48. ———. 2016. "The Deductive-Nomological Account of Metaphysical Explanation." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 94:1-23.

Abstract: "The paper explores a deductive-nomological account of metaphysical explanation: some truths metaphysically explain, or ground, another truth just in case the laws of metaphysics determine the latter truth on the basis of the former. I develop and motivate a specific conception of metaphysical laws, on which they are general rules that regulate the existence and features of derivative entities. I propose an analysis of the notion of ‘determination via the laws’, based on a restricted form of logical entailment. I argue that the DN-account of ground can be defended against the well-known objections to the DN-approach to scientific explanation. The goal of the paper is to show that the DN-account of metaphysical explanation is a well-motivated and defensible theory."

49. ———. 2020. "Laws of Metaphysics." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 425-436. New York: Routledge.

"If causal explanations are supported by general laws, non-causal explanation might be supported by general laws as well. Consider metaphysical explanations like ‘Peter the elephant is colored because he is grey’and ‘{Socrates} exists because Socrates exists’.These explanations might arise from general laws which entail that any grey object is also colored and that any object is the member of its singleton set (see Glazier’s entry “Ground and Explanation”, Chapter 8 in this volume).The role of such laws of metaphysics is to guide the bottom-up development of facts, much like the role of laws of nature is to govern facts along the temporal axis." (p. 425)

50. Wilson, Alastair. 2018. "Grounding Entails Counterpossible Non‐Triviality." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 92:716-728.

Abstract. "This paper outlines a non-reductive counterfactual account of grounding along interventionist lines, and uses the account to argue that taking grounding seriously requires ascribing non-trivial truth-conditions to a range of counterpossible counterfactuals. This result allows for a diagnosis of a route to scepticism about grounding, as deriving at least in part from scepticism about non-trivial counterpossible truth and falsity."

51. ———. 2018. "Metaphysical Causation." Noûs no. 52:723-751.

Abstract: "There is a systematic and suggestive analogy between grounding and causation. In my view, this analogy is no coincidence. Grounding and causation are alike because grounding is a type of causation: metaphysical causation. In this paper I defend the identification of grounding with metaphysical causation, drawing on the causation literature to explore systematic connections between grounding and metaphysical dependence counterfactuals, and I outline a non-reductive counterfactual theory of grounding along interventionist lines."

52. ———. 2020. "Classifying Dependencies." In The Foundation of Reality: Fundamentality, Space, and Time, edited by Glick, David, Darby, George and Marmodoro, Anna, 46-68. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"These days, metaphysical questions are frequently cast in terms of the ideology of grounding. This notion is usually introduced in explicit contrast to causation: ground is supposed to be a non-causal dependency relation that supports metaphysical explanations, just as causal relations support causal explanations. But the distinction between causation and grounding has never been very clear-cut, and recent work (Schaffer 2016; A. Wilson 2018a) has highlighted how deep the structural similarities between the notions run. Schaffer concludes that causation and grounding are merely closely analogous, whereas I have defended the more radical view that grounding is a specific type of causation; however, I set that heterodox view aside for the purposes of this chapter and proceed on the assumption that there is a coherent distinction to be drawn between the two notions." (p. 46)

(...)

"First, Section 2.2 provides some relevant background on causation and grounding.

Then in Sections 2.3-28 I examine six obvious criteria by which to distinguish these two notions. I argue that each of the criteria is problematic in some way or other, which motivates the search for a better criterion. In Section 2.9 I offer my own account of the distinction between grounding and causation in terms of how the dependency is mediated. This mediation criterion can explain the appeal of the next best candidate criteria—the temporal criterion and the modal criterion—without suffering from their problems. Section 2.10 provides further support for the mediation criterion by arguing that it makes the classification of dependencies in physics appropriately sensitive to the interpretation of the physical theories involved.

Section 2.11 is a conclusion." (p. 47)

53. Wilson, Jessica M. 2014. "No Work for a Theory of Grounding." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 57:535-579.

Abstract: "It has recently been suggested that a distinctive metaphysical relation — ‘Grounding’—is ultimately at issue in contexts in which some goings-on are said to hold ‘in virtue of’’, be (constitutively) ‘metaphysically dependent on’, or be ‘nothing over and above’ some others. Grounding is supposed to do good work (better than merely modal notions, in particular) in illuminating metaphysical dependence. I argue that Grounding is also unsuited to do this work. To start, Grounding alone cannot do this work, for bare claims of Grounding leave open such basic questions as whether Grounded goings-on exist, whether they are reducible to or rather distinct from Grounding goings-on, whether they are efficacious, and so on; but in the absence of answers to such basic questions, we are not in position to assess the associated claim or theses concerning metaphysical dependence. There is no avoiding appeal to the specific metaphysical relations typically at issue in investigations into dependence—for example, type or token identity, functional realization, classical mereological parthood, the set membership relation, the proper subset relation, the determinable/determinate relation, and so on—which are capable of answering these questions. But, I argue, once the specific relations are on the scene, there is no need for Grounding."

54. ———. 2016. "The Unity and Priority Arguments for Grounding." In Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground, edited by Aizawa, Ken and Gillett, Carl, 171-204. London: Palgrave MacMillan.

"...in two recent papers, however, Jonathan Schaffer ( 2016 and this volume ) aims to develop a better version of the Unity argument, and off ers certain objections to my reasons for rejecting the Priority argument. In this paper, I consider and respond to these new motivations for Grounding. I start with some clarificatory remarks concerning the dialectical import of Grounding, its assumed relata, and how I take the ideology/ontology distinction to be relevant to the discussion; I then present and respond to Schaffer’s new versions of the Unity and Priority arguments." (p. 172)

References

Schaff er, J. (this volume). Ground Rules: Lessons from Wilson.

Schaff er, J. (2016). Grounding in the image of causation. Philosophical Studies, 173 , 49–100.

55. ———. 2016. "Grounding-Based Formulations of Physicalism." Topoi no. 35:1-18.

Abstract: "I problematize Grounding-based formulations of physicalism. More specifically, I argue, first, that motivations for adopting a Grounding-based formulation of physicalism are unsound; second, that a Grounding-based formulation lacks illuminating content, and that attempts to imbue Grounding with content by taking it to be a (nonmonotonic, hyperintensional) strict partial order are unuseful (since ‘over and above’ relations such as strong emergence may also be non-monotonic hyperintensional strict partial orders) and problematic (in ruling out reductive versions of physicalism, and relatedly, in undermining the ostensive definition of primitive Grounding as operative in any context where idioms of dependence are at issue); third, that conceptions of Grounding as constitutively connected to metaphysical explanation conflate metaphysics and epistemology, are ultimately either circular or self-undermining, and controversially assume that physical dependence is incompatible with explanatory gaps; fourth, that in order to appropriately distinguish physicalism from strong emergentism (physicalism’s primary rival), a Grounding-based formulation must introduce one and likely two primitives in addition to Grounding; and fifth, that understanding physical dependence in terms of Grounding gives rise to ‘spandrel’ questions, including, e.g., ‘‘What Grounds Grounding?’’, which arise only due to the overly abstract nature of Grounding."

56. ———. 2016. "Metaphysical Emergence; Weak and Strong." In Metaphysics in Contemporary Physics, edited by Bigaj, Tomasz and Wüthrich, Christian 345-398. Leiden: Brill Rodopi.

Abstract: "Motivated by the seeming structure of the sciences, metaphysical emergence combines broadly synchronic dependence coupled with some degree of ontological and causal autonomy. Reflecting the diverse, frequently incompatible interpretations of the notions of dependence and autonomy, however, accounts of emergence diverge into a bewildering varieties.

Here I argue that much of this apparent diversity is superficial. I first argue, by attention to the problem of higher-level causation, that two and only two strategies for addressing this problem accommodate the genuine emergence of special science entities. These strategies in turn suggest two distinct schema for metaphysical emergence – ‘Weak’ and ‘Strong’ emergence, respectively. Each schema imposes a condition on the powers of (features of) entities taken to be emergent: Strong emergence (associated with British emergentism) requires that higher-level features have more token powers than their dependence base features, whereas (following Wilson 1999) Weak emergence (associated with non-reductive physicalism) requires that higher-level features have a proper subset of the token powers of their dependence base features. Importantly, the notion of ‘power’ at issue here is metaphysically neutral, primarily reflecting commitment just to the plausible thesis that what causes an entity may (perhaps only contingently) bring about are associated with how the entity is – that is, with its features."

References

Wilson, J. (1999). How Superduper does a Physicalist Supervenience Need to Be? The Philosophical Quarterly 49, 33–52.

57. Wirling, Ylwa Sjölin. 2020. "Is Backing Grounding?" Ratio no. 33:129-137.

Abstract: "Separatists are grounding theorists who hold that grounding relations and metaphysical explanations are distinct, yet intimately connected in the sense that grounding relations back metaphysical explanations, just as causal relations back causal explanations. But Separatists have not elaborated on the nature of the ‘backing’ relation. In this paper, I argue that backing is a form of (partial) grounding. In particular, backing has many of the properties commonly attributed to grounding, and taking backing to be partial grounding allows Separatists to make the most of their position vis-à-vis their Unionist opponents."

58. Witmer, D. Gene, Butchard, William, and Trogdon, Kelly. 2005. "Intrinsicality without Naturalness." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 70:326-350.

Abstract: "Rae Langton and David Lewis have proposed an account of “intrinsic property” that makes use of two notions: being independent of accompaniment and being natural. We find the appeal to the first of these promising; the second notion, however, we find mystifying.

In this paper we argue that the appeal to naturalness is not acceptable and offer an alternative definition of intrinsicality. The alternative definition makes crucial use of a notion commonly used by philosophers, namely, the notion of one property being had in virtue of another property. We defend our account against three arguments for thinking that this “in virtue of‘ notion is unacceptable in this context. We also take a look at a variety of cases in which the definition might be applied and defend it against potential counterexamples. The upshot, we think, is a modest but adequate account of what we understand by “intrinsic property.”"

References

Langton, R. and Lewis, D. 1998. “Defining ‘Intrinsic’,’’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58, 333-45. Reprinted (1999) in Lewis’ Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

59. Woods, Jack. 2017. "Emptying a Paradox of Ground." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 47:631-648.

Abstract: "Sometimes a fact can play a role in a grounding explanation, but the particular content of that fact make no difference to the explanation—any fact would do in its place. I call these facts vacuous grounds. I show that applying the distinction between-vacuous grounds allows us to give a principled solution to Kit Fine and Stephen Kramer’s paradox of (reflexive) ground. This paradox shows that on minimal assumptions about grounding and minimal assumptions about logic, we can show that grounding is reflexive, contra the intuitive character of grounds. I argue that we should never have accepted that grounding is irreflexive in the first place; the intuitions that support the irreflexive intuition plausibly only require that grounding be non-vacuously irreflexive. Fine and Kramer’s paradox relies, essentially, on a case of vacuous grounding and is thus no problem for this account."

References

Fine, K. (2010). Some puzzles of ground. Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 51(1), 97–118.

Krämer, S. (2013). A simpler puzzle of ground. Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, 2(2), 85–89.

60. Woodward, James. 2017. "Interventionism and the Missing Metaphysics." In Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science: New Essays, edited by Slater, Matthew H. and Yudell, Zanja, 193-227. New York: Oxford University Press.

"A number of philosophers with a metaphysical orientation have criticized Making Things Happen for its failure to provide an account of the metaphysical foundations or grounds or truth-makers for causal and explanatory claims. I originally attempted to write an ordinary paper responding to these criticisms but found this to be a very difficult undertaking: I realized that I disagreed with my critics about so much that putting everything into an ordinary “linear” argument was impossible.

(...)

What follows is, I readily admit, a caricature that makes no attempt to be fair or balanced. Many of the philosophers I know who are analytical metaphysicians do not share the affect and attitudes of my Professor Metafisico, and many are far more knowledgeable about science.

I hope that readers will take the dialogue in the spirit in which it is intended— as an attempt to be provocative and to raise in a sharp, unnuanced way some questions that deserve more attention than they have hitherto received. These include issues about just what metaphysical grounding consists in or amounts to, why (or when or for what purposes) it is required, and how providing metaphysical foundations relates to providing scientific explanations of a more ordinary empirical sort and to methodological concerns that at least in the past were regarded as an important component of philosophy of science. In particular, I want to raise the question of whether it is somehow obligatory that all philosophers of science do the sort of metaphysics associated with providing grounds or truth-makers or (as I maintain and hope) there are kinds of inquiry in philosophy of science having to do with methodology and the interpretation of the content of the particular scientific theories that can be pursued independently of the kinds of concerns that animate analytical metaphysicians." (pp. 193-194)

References

James Woodward (2003). Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation, New York: Oxford University Press.

61. Wygoda Cohen, Shlomit. 2020. "Not All Partial Grounds Partly Ground: Some Useful Distinctions in the Theory of Grounding." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 100:75-92.

Abstract: "The aim of this paper is to argue for some useful distinctions in the theory of grounding. I do so by first introducing the notion of grounding, discussing some of its features, and arguing that grounds must play some role in bringing about what they ground (sec. 1). I then argue that there are various distinct roles a fact may play in bringing about another, and more particularly that we should distinguish between three such roles; enablers, partial grounds, and facts that partly ground (sec. 2). Finally, I present two theoretical advantages to incorporating these distinctions into our theory of grounding. Namely, that it reframes, and arguably dissolves, the contingentist-necessitarian debate (sec. 3), and that it helps to elegantly deal with the purported counterexamples to the transitivity of grounding and thus maintain the plausible elements of the assumption that grounding is a transitive relation (sec. 4)."

62. Yablo, Stephen. 1982. "Grounding, Dependence, and Paradox." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 11:117-137.

"The idea that grounding is an important component of our intuitive notion of well-definedness has long formed part of the conceptual background axiomatic set theory.' Yet only in recent years have we come to appreciate how heavily grounding figures in our intuitions of semantical well- definedness. The culmination of this developing appreciation, for the present at least, is Kripke's celebrated Theory of Truth; and while it would be a mistake to say that Kripke's ideas came as a complete surprise to concerned semanticists, it would be."

(...)

"The first purpose of this paper is to hasten the process by attempting to place some aspects of Kripke's work into formal and philosophical perspective. The second purpose has to do with my feeling that Kripke has only done half, albeit the first and therefore by far the most important half, of the The intuition of grounding is, I want to maintain, a two-sided intuition. the one side is what I'll call the inheritance aspect. (pp. 117-118)

(...)

"This paper is divided into two parts, one theoretical and one (compara- tively) applied. Sections 2-7 deal with the development of dependence in an abstract setting. Our main result is that any collection with an inheritance- style characterization admits a canonically related dependence-style charac- terization. In Sections 8-10 we show in a series of applications how the dependence way of doing things can improve our understanding of truth, semantic level, and paradoxicality." (p- 119)

63. Yip, Jack. 2015. "Truthmaking as an Account of How Grounding Facts Hold." Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy no. 29:11-32.

Abstract: "Grounding, as a way to articulate ontological dependence, faces the problem of what grounds grounding facts themselves (such as the fact that the singleton of Socrates is grounded in Socrates).

This problem stems from the need to account for the holding of grounding facts, which generates the hierarchical structure of ontological dependence. Within the grounding framework, grounding facts are either ungrounded or grounded. I will first argue that neither option can provide us with a satisfactory account. The main reason is that non-fundamental entities have to be counted as fundamental or involved in the essences of fundamental entities in order for either of the two options to work - the non-fundamental is being smuggled into the fundamental.

My suggestion is to appeal to the notion of truthmaking and tackle the problem about the holding of grounding facts outside the grounding framework|instead of asking what grounds grounding facts, I ask what makes grounding claims true.

Truthmaking is a prima facie relation holding between the representational and the non-representational such that the latter makes the former true. With the principle `if (p) is true, then it is a fact that p,' we can account for the holding of grounding facts in a derivative sense. As a proposition contains the information about its truthmaker, the nature of grounding claims will tell us how grounding facts hold. I accept a realm of concepts which make up propositions (which might be needed already if there are propositions and propositions are compositional). These concepts will act as part of the truthmaker for grounding claims (in addition to the non-conceptual fundamental entities) - the concept of the ground must figure in the concept of the grounded.

For a concept to figure in another, it is to be involved in the constitutive essence of the latter (analogous to Kit Fine's idea that the ground of a grounded entity figures in the essence of the grounded entity). This account will not smuggle anything non-fundamental into the fundamental realm. The implication is that ontological dependence stems from our different kinds of conceptualisations (perhaps of the same stuff, as in the concepts of water and H_2O), which justifies metaphysicians' armchair method."

64. Zanetti, Luca. 2021. "Grounding and Auto-abstraction." Synthese no. 198:10187-10205.

Abstract: "Abstraction principles and grounding can be combined in a natural way (Rosen in Hale B, Hoffmann A (eds) Modality: metaphysics, logic, and epistemology, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 109–136, 2010; Schwartzkopff in Grazer philosophische studien 82(1):353–373, 2011). However, some ground-theoretic abstraction principles entail that there are circles of partial ground (Donaldson in Noûs 51(4):775–801, 2017).

I call this problem auto-abstraction. In this paper I sketch a solution. Sections 1 and 2 are introductory. In Sect. 3 I start comparing different solutions to the problem. In Sect. 4 I contend that the thesis that the right-hand side of an abstraction principle is (metaphysically) prior to its left-hand side motivates an independence constraint, and that this constraint leads to predicative restrictions on the acceptable instances of ground-theoretic abstraction principles. In Sect. 5 I argue that auto-abstraction is acceptable unless the left-hand side is essentially grounded by the right-hand side. In Sect. 6 I highlight several parallelisms between auto-abstraction and the puzzles of ground. I finally compare my solution with the strategies listed in Sect. 3."

65. Zimmermann, Alexander, Kleinknecht, Reinhard, and Dorn, Georg J. W. 2020. "Grounding from a Syntactic Point of View: A Sentential-Logical Approach." Erkenntnis.

First online 3 March 2020.

Abstract: "We define the term ┌a set T of sentential-logical formulae grounds a sentential-logical formula A from a syntactic point of view┐ in such a way that A is a syntactic sentential-logical consequence of T, and specific additional syntactic requirements regarding T and A are fulfilled. These additional requirements are developed strictly within the syntactics of sentential-logical languages, the three most important being new, namely: to be atomically minimal, to be minimal in degree, and not to be conjunction-like. Our approach is independent of any specific sentential-logical calculus."

66. Zylstra, Justin. 2018. "The Essence of Grounding." Synthese no. 196:5137-5152.

Abstract: "I develop a reduction of grounding to essence. My approach is to think about the relation between grounding and essence on the model of a certain concept of existential dependence. I extend this concept of existential dependence in a couple of ways and argue that these extensions provide a reduction of grounding to essence if we use sorted variables that range over facts and take it that for a fact to obtain is for it to exist. I then use the account to resolve various issues surrounding the concept of grounding and its connection with essence; apply the account to paradigm cases and to the impure logic of grounding; and respond to objections."

67. ———. 2018. "Essence with Ground." Analytic Philosophy no. 59:193-207.

"Many metaphysicians would like to have both essence and ground in their toolkit.(1) Applications of one concept often invoke the other.

(...)

In this paper, I argue that the compatibility of essence and ground is not simply given. I do this by first giving a pentad of claims that plausibly govern the concepts of essence and ground, and how they interact. I argue that each claim in the pentad has independent albeit defeasible support but that they are jointly inconsistent. I then offer a way out of inconsistency by expanding our ideology: I introduce a non-factive operator that expresses the sort of thing an item is, in a distinctive sense of the term. The upshot is that we can make sense of the idea that something pertains to the essence of an item but involves contingency." (p. 193)

68. ———. 2019. "Making Semantics for Essence." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 62:859-876.

Abstract: "In this paper, I develop a truthmaker semantics for essence and use the semantics to investigate the explanatory role of essence."

69. ———. 2020. "Essence." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 324-335. New York: Routledge.

"Philosophers have recently explored various interesting relations between metaphysical grounding and essence, not all of which are compatible.

(...)

The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of this literature. To achieve this aim in a systematic way, I divide the chapter into four sections. In the first section, I review the literature on essence. In the second section, I outline various reductive proposals: reductions of essence to ground, reductions of ground to essence, and reductions of both to a third party. In the third section, I outline various proposed entailments: entailments from essence to ground and entailments from ground to essence. In the fourth section, I outline how essence and ground have been jointly applied toward various theoretical ends." (p. 325)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on the history of metaphysical grounding (A - M)

Bibliography

1. Amijee, Fatema. 2020. "Principle of Sufficient Reason." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 63-75. New York: Routledge.

"According to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (henceforth ‘PSR’), everything has an explanation or sufficient reason.The PSR was a central tenet of rationalist metaphysics but has since gone out of vogue.

(...)

But lately, interest in the PSR has been enjoying a resurgence.This has been due, at least in part, to the recent interest in grounding, and relatedly, metaphysical explanation. If the notions of ground and metaphysical explanation are in good standing, then we can formulate a version of the PSR on which ‘explanation’ picks out either ground or metaphysical explanation. Since this chapter figures in a volume on grounding, I will focus on the version of the PSR that says that every fact has a ground. My primary goal is to address three questions. First, how continuous is the contemporary notion of grounding with the notion of sufficient reason endorsed by Spinoza, Leibniz, and other rationalists? In particular, does a PSR formulated in terms of ground retain the intuitive pull and power of the PSR endorsed by the rationalists? Second, to what extent can the PSR avoid the formidable traditional objections levelled against it if it is formulated in terms of ground? And finally, how might historical discussion of the PSR shed light on the contemporary notion of grounding?" (p. 63)

2. ———. 2022. "Principle of Sufficient Reason." In Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences, edited by Jalobeanu, Dana and Wolfe, Charles T., 1670-1680. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

"Our need to understand the world, and our place in it, drives both philosophy and science. But to what extent is our world intelligible? According to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (“PSR”), everything is—at least in principle—intelligible.

Everything has an explanation, even if that explanation may not be accessible to us. While the Principle of Sufficient Reason was not known by that label until the seventeenth century, the principle’s provenance goes at least as far back as Parmenides, and discussions that exploit the principle are to be found in medieval philosophers like Aquinas, Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonides.

But the principle takes center stage in the early modern era. It is in this period that we find direct engagement with the PSR. A first task of this entry will thus be to bring to the fore the nature of the early modern commitment to this principle, and the arguments for and against it. A second task will be to highlight how historical discussions of the PSR have shaped—and continue to shape— contemporary philosophy.

This entry will proceed as follows. In the next section, “Proponents,” I discuss the views, as well as some arguments, developed by three early modern PSR proponents: Spinoza, Leibniz, and du Châtelet. The following section, “Contemporary Proponents,” examines a few contemporary arguments for the PSR. Lastly, the section on “The PSR in Contemporary Debates” discusses some ways in which the PSR has influenced contemporary philosophy." (pp. 1670-1671)

3. Angioni, Lucas. 2014. "Aristotle on Necessary Principles and on Explaining X Trough the Essence of X." Studia Philosophica Estonica no. 7:88-112.

Abstract: "I discuss what Aristotle means when he say that scientific demonstration must proceed from necessary principles. I argue that, for Aristotle, scientific demonstration should not be reduced to sound deduction with necessary premises. Scientific demonstration ultimately depends on the fully appropriate explanatory factor for a given explanandum. This explanatory factor is what makes the explanandum what it is. Consequently, this factor is also unique. When Aristotle says that demonstration must proceed from necessary principles, he means that each demonstration requires the principle that is the necessary one for the fully appropriate explanation of its explanandum. This picture also provides a key to understand Aristotle’s thesis that scientific explanation depends on essences: it is the essence of the attribute to be explained (rather then the essence of the subject-term within the explanandum) that should be stated as the fully appropriate explanatory factor."

4. Archambault, Jacob. 2024. "Grounding Medieval Consequence." In Grounding in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Normore, Calvin G. and Schmid, Stephan, 129-146. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Developed out of earlier work on Aristotelian topics, syllogistic, and fallacies, by the early fourteenth century the medieval theory of consequence came to provide the first unified framework for the treatment of inference as such. With such a development came the task of unifying the various justifications for inferences treated in earlier frameworks. Prior to the appearance of theories of consequences, the task of providing a real foundation, or grounding, for good inferences is shared between theories of demonstration, such as those provided in commentaries on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, and theories of topical inference, passed on to the medievals via Boethius. But by the time of the earliest consequentiae, most consequences were grounded in the theory of supposition, which began its own development in the twelfth century. Secondary literature on supposition has generally held that in the most common form of supposition, personal supposition, a term is taken to stand for individuals falling under it. In this paper, I show that for the earliest consequentiae this is false: prior to William of Ockham’s work, personal supposition could also involve descent to concepts or types falling under a term, previously thought to be the exclusive provision of simple supposition. As such, a greater variety of ways of grounding consequence exists in the period than has hitherto been recognized."

5. Betti, Arianna. 2010. "Explanation in Metaphysics and Bolzano's Theory of Ground and Consequence." Logique et Analyse no. 56:281-316.

Abstract: "In (2006a, 2006b), Benjamin Schnieder criticizes truthmaking as a relation between entities in the world and the truths those entities `make true'. In (2006b), his criticism exploits a notion of conceptual explanation that is very similar to Bolzano's grounding. In the first part of this paper, I offer an analysis of Bolzano's grounding. I discuss some open problems and argue that Bolzano's grounding is not a systematization of the ordinary notion of `because' as others have maintained, but of the technical notion of explanatory proof in the context of an axiomatic conception of (proper) science. On the basis of this analysis, in the second part, I offer a critical discussion of Schnieder 2006b's arguments against truthmaking. I conclude that the latter are not very effective from a methodological point of view and that Bolzano's original position fares better in this respect; still, truthmaker theorists will be able to defend truthmaking only at a high price."

References

Schnieder, B. (2006a). Troubles with Truth-making: Necessitation and Projection. Erkenntnis 64: 61-74.

Schnieder, B. (2006b). Truth-Making without Truth-Makers. Synthese 152: 21-6.

6. Bliss, Ricki. 2024. "Some Work for a Theory of Grounding?" In Grounding in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Normore, Calvin G. and Schmid, Stephan, 307-330. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "In her “No Work for a Theory of Grounding,” Jessica Wilson argues that we have no need for a theory of what she calls Big-G Grounding. The reason for this, thinks Wilson, is that the work that Big-G Grounding is invoked for can be better done by what she calls small-g grounding relations: membership, parenthood, realization, and so on. Contra Wilson, I argue that small-g grounding relations may not allow us to do all the grounding work that needs to be done. In particular, I argue that small-g grounding relations may not be adequate to the task of engaging with the work of historical Western and non-Western figures; nor do they allow us to explore the full array of possibilities regarding the overarching structure of reality. To this end, I offer two case studies: one that explores dependence relations in the work of Leibniz, and the other the cosmology of the Chinese Buddhist thinker Fazang. Although I do not defend the claim that there is in fact some work for a theory of Grounding, my argument is highly suggestive of it."

7. ———. 2024. Grounding, Fundamentality and Ultimate Explanations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 2: Ultimate ExRlanations: An Idea and Its History_

"Anyone familiar with the contemporary grounding literature will be aware that there is something of a tension or, perhaps better to say, divergence of opinion over the history of the notion. On one view, the notion of grounding is thought to be as old as

philosophy itself, with many of its most important thinkers engaging with questions pertaining to it. On this approach, although more contemporary discussions certainly take on their own flavour, the resurgence in interest in the notion is very much entangled with a return to the glorious days of good old-fashioned metaphysics. On another view, the notion of grounding is very much the plaything of contemporary analytic metaphysicians. According to this understanding of grounding, its origin myth traces itself back to Manhattan in the early naughties, where Kit Fine, Gideon Rosen and Jonathan Schaffer laid the foundations for a new and important program of research. Mutatis mutandis for the notion of fundamentality assuming it to be married to and/or defined in terms of grounding.

How is it that such seemingly juxtaposed views of the history of grounding have come to characterise the discourse?

Which one is correct? These are difficult (and partly, if not largely, sociological) questions and I won't really attempt to answer them here. What I will do, however, is try to say something more about how we might characterize these different conceptions of grounding and its relationship to history, as well as to defend the position that will illuminate the rest of this Element: the notions of grounding and fundamentality can reasonably be understood as old, if not in letter, then at least inspirit."

8. Cameron, Margaret. 2014. "Is Ground Said-in-Many-Ways?" Studia Philosophica Estonica no. 7:29-53.

Abstract: "Proponents of ground, which is used to indicate relations of ontological fundamentality, insist that ground is a unified phenomenon, but this thesis has recently been criticized. I will first review the proponents’ claims for ground’s unicity, as well as the criticisms that ground is too heterogeneous to do the philosophical work it is supposed to do. By drawing on Aristotle’s notion of homonymy, I explore whether ground’s metaphysical heterogeneity can be theoretically accommodated while at the same time preserving its proponents’ desideratum that it be a unified phenomenon."

9. ———. 2020. "Medieval and Early Modern." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 49-62. New York: Routledge.

"To be sure, medieval, Renaissance, and early modern philosophers did not have at their disposal the theoretical terminology afforded by the recent grounding literature, including the very term “ground” as it is currently used. It is, however, well known that ground has its roots in, broadly speaking, the Aristotelian metaphysical tradition. Given the fact that Aristotle’s philosophy, and specifically his metaphysics, provided the foundation for the subject during most of this time, it should come as no surprise that we find philosophers engaging in many of the same debates and discussions regarding questions of fundamentality, ontological priority, metaphysical explanation, and dependence relations." (p. 49)

10. Caputo, John D. 1970. "Being, ground and play in Heidegger." Man and World no. 3:26-48.

"By the summer of 1935 what was intimated in the earlier discussion of finitude and the Nothing is made explicit. At this time the treatment of ground takes the form of what Heidegger calls the "ground-question" (Grund-frage) of metaphysics: why is there any being at all and not rather nothing? This well-known question of Leibniz, mentioned in passing in The Essence of Ground and What is Metaphysics?, is transitional to the later Heidegger. It inquires into the being and asks about its ground. Why are there any beings at all? Obviously no being can serve as the answer to the question. The ground which the question seeks is Being itself. Being sustains the being and prevents its falling back into the abyss of Nothingnes.

The ground that is sought after is sought for as the ground for the decision for being rather than for nothingness.

Being is the inner power of the being by which it is. Being is the perduring power which remains whatever fluctuations may occur within beings.

Being is the emergent power, stepping forth into the light of itself. Being as ground therefore is physis: the emergent-enduring-power (aufgehend-verweilend--Walten)." (p. 30, notes omitted)

11. Casati, Filippo. 2018. "Heidegger’s Grund: (Para-)Foundationalism." In Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, edited by Bliss, Ricki Leigh and Priest, Graham, 291-312. New York: Oxford University Press.

"This paper presents two new grounding theories (called para-foundationalism 1.0 and para-foundationalism 2.0) that, in virtue of their being inconsistent (but not trivial) theories, do not fit in the taxonomy presented by Bliss and Priest.[*] In order to do so, we will develop some metaphysical ideas proposed by Martin Heidegger.

Consistently with a vast part of the current literature, he thought that all things have whatever form of being they have because they depend on other things. In particular, he believed that every thing is because every thing depends on being. Heidegger's being is the ground [Grund] of literally everything because being is what makes any entity an entity. Chairs, stars, dreams, and the world are in virtue of being.

In Section 2, we introduce Heidegger's concept of ground by distinguishing between an ontic ground and an ontological ground. In Section 3, we focus our attention on the ontological ground. We present Heidegger's idea according to which being is the ground of every entity and being is itself ungrounded. We also discuss its relation with the Principle of Sufficient Reasons (PSR), and we describe its structural properties. Finally, we show that these structural properties are the same ones that characterize a particularly strong form of foundationalism. In Section 4 and Section 5, we show how Heidegger's characterization of being leads to a contradiction, according to which being both is and is not an entity. After that, assuming that such a contradiction is a dialetheia (namely a true contradiction), we show how Heidegger's foundationalism should be revised in order to do justice to the antinomic nature of being itself. Thus, we introduce two forms of para-foundationalism, which is an inconsistent version of foundationalism. In Section 6, using para-foundationalism, we try to give an interpretation of one of the most obscure concepts of the so-called late Heidegger, namely the last God. Finally, in the Appendix, we propose two formal models that show how, working in a paraconsistent setting, para-foundationalism does not lead to logical triviality." (p. 292, notes omitted)

[*] Ricki Bliss and Graham Priest, The Geography of Fundamentality: An Overview, (Introduction to the volume, pp. 1-33).

12. ———. 2019. "Heidegger and the contradiction of Being: a dialetheic interpretation of the late Heidegger." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 27:1002-1024.

Abstract: "It is well known that, from the beginning to the end of his philosophical trajectory, Martin Heidegger tries to develop a fundamental ontology which aims at answering the so-called question of Being: what does Being mean?

Unfortunately, in trying to answer this question, Heidegger faces a predicament: given his own premises, speaking about Being leads to a contradiction. Moreover, according to the majority, if not all, of the interpreters who admit the existence of such a predicament, Heidegger tries to avoid the contradiction in question. But is this the only way Heidegger tries to solve the predicament? In this paper, I argue that, in some of his late works and, in particular, in the Contributions to Philosophy, Heidegger also takes into serious consideration the possibility of accepting the contradiction he faces in speaking about Being as true. If this is correct, Heidegger endorses what nowadays analytic philosophers call dialetheism, namely the metaphysical position according to which some (but not all) contradictions are true."

13. Centrone, Stefania. 2016. "Early Bolzano on Ground-Consequence Proofs." The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic no. 2:215-237.

Abstract: "In his early Contributions to a Better-Grounded Presentation of Mathematics (1810) Bernard Bolzano tries to characterize rigorous proofs (strenge Beweise). Rigorous is, prima facie, any proof that indicates the grounds for its conclusion. Bolzano lists a number of methodological constraints all rigorous proofs should comply with, and tests them systematically against a specific collection of elementary inference schemata that, according to him, are evidently of ground-consequence-kind. This paper intends to give a detailed and critical account of the fragmentary logic of the Contributions, and to point out as well some difficulties Bolzano's attempt runs into, notably as to his methodological ban on 'kind crossing'."

14. Chignell, Andrew. 2012. "Kant, Real Possibility, and the Threat of Spinoza." Mind no. 121:635-675.

Abstract: "In the first part of the paper I reconstruct Kant’s proof of the existence of a ‘most real being’ while also highlighting the theory of modality that motivates Kant’s departure from Leibniz’s version of the proof. I go on to argue that it is precisely this departure that makes the being that falls out of the pre-critical proof look more like Spinoza’s extended natura naturans than an independent, personal creator-God. In the critical period, Kant seems to think that transcendental idealism allows him to avoid this conclusion, but in the last section of the paper I argue that there is still one important version of the Spinozistic threat that remains."

"The final part of our story, however—the part which Kant did not seem to notice—is that the threat of Spinozism returns when we consider how the real harmony of non-fundamental or derivative predicates (with one another, and with the fundamental predicates) is grounded. It is unclear in light of his own argument how Kant could avoid appealing to God as the ground of this harmony, and it would seem that God could only do that by actually exemplifying all possible predicates—fundamental and derivative—as modes of an infinite array of explanatorily distinct divine furcations or attributes. With respect to this second Spinozistic threat, transcendental idealism is impotent." (p. 37)

15. Corkum, Phil. 2013. "Substance and Independence in Aristotle." In Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence, edited by Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin and Steinberg, Alex, 65-95. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"Individual substances are the ground of Aristotle's ontology. Taking a liberal approach to existence, Aristotle accepts among existents entities in such categories other than substance as quality, quantity and relation; and, within each category, individuals and universals. As I will argue, individual substances are ontologically independent from all these other entities, while all other entities are ontologically dependent on individual substances. The association of substance with independence has a long history and several contemporary metaphysicians have pursued the connection. (1) In this chapter, I will discuss the intersection of these notions of substance and ontological dependence in Aristotle." (p. 65)

(1) S ee, for example, Hoffman and Rosenkrantz 1991, Lowe 2005, Gorman 2006 and Schnieder 2006. For discussion, see Koslicki forthcoming.

References

Feser, E. (ed.) forthcoming [2013] : Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hoffman, J. and G. Rosenkrantz 1991: 'The Independence Criterion of Substance'. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51, pp. 835-53.

Lowe E. J. 2005: 'Ontological Dependence'. In Zalta, E. N. (ed.): The Stanford Enryclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2005 ed. URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2005/entries/dependence-ontological/ "Ontological dependence".

Gorman, M. 2006: 'Independence and Substance'. International Philosophical Quarterly 46, pp. 147-59.

Koslicki, K. forthcoming [2013]: 'Substance, Independence and Unity'. In Feser forthcoming. [pp. 169-195]

Schnieder, B. 2006: 'A Certain Kind of Trinity: Dependence, Substance, Explanation'. Philosophical Studies 129, pp. 393-419.

16. ———. 2016. "Ontological Dependence and Grounding in Aristotle." In Oxford Handbooks Online in Philosophy, 1-14.

Abstract: "The relation of ontological dependence or grounding, expressed by the terminology of separation and priority in substance, plays a central role in Aristotle’s Categories, Metaphysics, De Anima and elsewhere.

The article discusses three current interpretations of this terminology. These are drawn along the lines of, respectively, modal-existential ontological dependence, essential ontological dependence, and grounding or metaphysical explanation. I provide an opinionated introduction to the topic, raising the main interpretative questions, laying out a few of the exegetical and philosophical options that influence one’s reading, and locating questions of Aristotle scholarship within the discussion of ontological dependence and grounding in contemporary metaphysics."

17. ———. 2020. "Ancient." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 20-32. New York: Routledge.

"Is there grounding in ancient philosophy? To ask a related but different question: Is grounding a useful tool for the scholar of ancient philosophy? These questions are difficult, and my goal in this chapter is not so much to give definitive answers as to clarify the questions. I hope to direct the student of contemporary metaphysics towards passages where it may be fruitful to look for historical precedent. But I also hope to offer the student of ancient philosophy some guidance on when drawing on the contemporary discussion of grounding may be beneficial." (p. 20)

18. Correia, Fabrice. 2004. "Husserl on Foundation." Dialectica no. 58:349-367.

Abstract: "In the third of his Logical Investigations, Husserl draws an important distinction between two kinds of parts: the dependent parts like the redness of a visual datum or the squareness of a given picture, and the independent parts like the head of a horse or a brick in a wall. On his view, the distinction is to be understood in terms of a more fundamental notion, the notion of foundation. This paper is an attempt at clarifying that notion. Such attempts have already been undertaken (separately) by Peter Simons and Kit Fine, and the paper also contains elements of comparison of our three sets of views."

References

Fine, K. 1995, “Part–Whole”, in B. Smith (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Husserl, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Husserl, E. 2001, Logical Investigations, Vol. 2, London & New York: Routledge.

Simons, P. 1982, “The Formalization of Husserl’s Theory of Wholes and Parts”, in B. Smith(ed), Parts and Moments. Studies in Logic and Formal Ontology, Munich: Philosophia.

19. Dahlstrom, Daniel O. 2011. "Being and Being Grounded." In The Ultimate Why Question: Why Is There Anything at All Rather than Nothing Whatsoever?, edited by Wippel, John F., 125-145. Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press.

"The world today stands under the spell of Leibniz’s thought. Or, perhaps more carefully, we might say that the world today stands under the spell of what Leibniz thought only too well. With uncanny perceptiveness, he managed to articulate a basic principle of thinking and being in the early modern world that is arguably as vital today as it was at the outset of the eighteenth century.

(...)

I am referring, of course, to what has been called, since Leibniz’s time, the principle of sufficient reason.

Many of the foregoing sentiments were voiced by Heidegger in lectures and an address held some fifty years ago and published in 1957 as Der Satz vom Grund, the German abbreviation for Leibniz’s principle of

reason.(1)" (p. 125)

(...)

"However, as I hope to show by means of the following considerations, the issue is far more complicated than Heidegger lets on. In particular, his way of painting Leibniz’s principle with the same colors that he applies to the so-called “atomic age” is, I argue, misleading to a fault. But the main thrust of my following remarks is to establish what is wrong with Heidegger’s interpretation of Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason as a means of clarifying what I take to be right about it.

My comments are divided into three parts. In the first part I discuss Leibniz’s complex account of the principle of sufficient reason with an eye to its bearing on his conception of the contingency of finite existence.

In the second part I turn to Heidegger’s account of Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason and his “argument” for a different, nonconventional reading of the principle.2 In the third part I address the trenchancy of the argument." (p. 127)

(1) Heidegger, Der Satz vom Grund (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957), 51 (hereafter “SvG 51“). All translations into English are my own.

20. de Boer, Karin, and Howard, Stephen. 2019. "A Ground Completely Overgrown: Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 27:358-377.

Abstract: "While we endorse Heidegger’s effort to reclaim Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as a work concerned with the possibility of metaphysics, we hold, first, that his reading is less original than is often assumed and, second, that it unduly marginalizes the critical impetus of Kant’s philosophy. This article seeks to shed new light on Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics and related texts by relating Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant to, on the one hand, the epistemological approach represented by Cohen’s Kant’s Theory of Experience and, on the other, the metaphysical readings put forward by Heimsoeth, Wundt and others in the 1920s. On this basis, we argue that Heidegger’s interpretation of Kant remains indebted to the methodological distinction between ground and grounded that informed Cohen’s reading and was transferred to the problem of metaphysics by Wundt. Even if Heidegger resists a ‘foundationalist’ mode of this distinction, we argue that his focus on the notions of ground and grounding does not allow him to account for Kant’s critique of the metaphysical tradition."

21. de Jong, Willem R. , and Betti, Arianna. 2010. "The Classical Model of Science: a millennia-old model of scientific rationality." Synthese:185-203.

Abstract: "Throughout more than two millennia philosophers adhered massively to ideal standards of scientific rationality going back ultimately to Aristotle’s Analytica posteriora. These standards got progressively shaped by and adapted to new scientific needs and tendencies. Nevertheless, a core of conditions capturing the fundamentals of what a proper science should look like remained remarkably constant all along. Call this cluster of conditions the Classical Model of Science. In this paper we will do two things. First of all, we will propose a general and systematized account of the Classical Model of Science. Secondly, we will offer an analysis of the philosophical significance of this model at different historical junctures by giving an overview of the connections it has had with a number of important topics. The latter include the analytic-synthetic distinction, the axiomatic method, the hierarchical order of sciences and the status of logic as a science. Our claim is that particularly fruitful insights are gained by seeing themes such as these against the background of the Classical Model of Science. In an appendix we deal with the historiographical background of this model by considering the systematizations of Aristotle’s theory of science offered by Heinrich Scholz, and in his footsteps by Evert W. Beth."

22. della Rocca, Michael. 2010. "PSR." Philosopher's Imprint no. 10:1-13.

"One can see my argument as highlighting an important dialectical advantage that our imagined rationalist (i. e., me) has over our imagined non-rationalist (i. e., you). I have been arguing that the non-rationalist who accepts some explicability arguments has no non-question-begging way to avoid the rationalist position, i. e., no non-question-begging way to avoid the PSR. By contrast, the rationalist who accepts the necessitarian implication of the PSR is not under any pressure, as far as I can see, to accept the non-rationalist position, i. e., to deny the PSR. In this way, the rationalist position is internally coherent in a way that the position of the non-rationalist who accepts some explicability arguments is not. And, of course, an internally incoherent position is worse off than an internally coherent one. So, again, we have powerful and un-rebutted reason to accept the PSR, a principle that most of us have been taught to scorn." (p. 13)

23. ———. 2012. "Violations of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (in Leibniz and Spinoza)." In Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality, edited by Correia, Fabrice and Schnieder, Benjamin, 139-164. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"My central concern here – violations of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (hereafter: ‘PSR’) – does indeed stem from my engagement with two figures from the history of philosophy: Leibniz and Spinoza. Both of these philosophers are big fans of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the principle according to which each thing that exists has an explanation.(1) Indeed, a strong case can be made that each of these thinkers structures his entire system around the PSR more or less successfully.(2)" (p. 139)

(...)

"But can we enter the promised land and should we? Certainly if we – like Spinoza – accept the PSR, then, given the Leibnizian arguments concerning relations, we should enter the promised land of monism.

But can we get to the promised land without invoking something as strong as the PSR? Yes, I believe that all we need to invoke is the plausible claim that relations must be grounded. Given this relatively uncontroversial claim, it follows – as we have seen – that relations are not fully real and that the only thing that fully exists is the one world.

Of course, this relatively uncontroversial claim and the PSR itself are in need of further scrutiny before we can confidently accept the results advanced in this chapter.(17)" (p. 164)

(17) In Della Rocca forthcoming, I explore in a rationalist spirit some problems for the rationalist position developed here.

References

M. Della Rocca forthcoming [2012]: Rationalism, idealism, monism, and beyond, in: Eckart Förster, Yitzhak Y. Melamed (eds.), Spinoza and German Idealism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 7-26.

24. Della Rocca, Michael, and Amijee, Fatema, eds. 2024. The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A History. New York: Oxford University Press.

Not yet published.

25. Di Bella, Stefano. 2005. "Leibniz's Theory of Conditions: A Framework for Ontological Dependence." The Leibniz Review no. 15:67-93.

Abstract: "The aim of this paper is to trace in Leibniz' s drafts the sketched outline of a conceptual framework he organized around the key concept of 'requisite'. We are faced with the project of a semi-formal theory of conditions, whose logical skeleton can have a lot of different interpretations. In particular, it is well suited to capture some crucial relations of ontological dependence. Firstly the area of 'mediate requisites' is explored - where causal and temporal relations are dealt with on the basis of a general theory of 'consequence'.

Then the study of 'immediate requisites' is taken into account - a true sample of mereological inquiry, where Leibniz strives for a unitary treatment of part-whole relation, conceptual inclusion and inherence. Far from simply conflating these relations one with another and with causality, therefore, Leibniz tried to spell them out, while at the same time understanding them within a single conceptual framework."

"A little known episode in the later history of philosophy and logic could help us to grasp the significance of these Leibnizian ideas. I am thinking of Bolzano's theory of the 'consequence' (Abfolge) relation, as it is introduced in the second part of his Wissenschaftslehre. This notion is not a purely logical one, insofar as it is distinguished from that of 'deducibility' (Ableitbarkeit, the true ancestor of our Tarskian consequence), and properly holds only for true propositions. It aims at capturing the old Aristotelian distinction between explanations 'tau oti' (that) and 'tau dioti' (why), hence it is an objective asymmetrical relation of 'grounding' between 'propositions in themselves' ('an sich'), in Bolzano's jargon. It is accurately distinguished from epistemical inference, but also from the notion of 'cause' (Ursache), that is a further specification of that relation in the sense of a 'real ground': "An object A is the cause of another B, whenever the proposition 'A does exist' contains the reason for the proposition 'B does exist' ." (21)" (p. 73)

(21) Bernard Bolzano, Wissenschaftslehre, III § 379, p. 497.

26. di Poppa, Francesca. 2013. "Spinoza on Causation and Power." The Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 51:297-319.

Abstract: "The purpose of this paper is to argue that, for Spinoza, causation is a more fundamental relation than conceptual connection, and that, in fact, it explains conceptual connection. I will firstly offer a criticism of Michael Della Rocca’s 2008 claims that, for Spinoza, causal relations are identical to relations of conceptual dependence and that existence is identical to conceivability. Secondly, I will argue that, for Spinoza, causation is more fundamental than conceptual dependence, offering textual evidence from both Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and Ethics.

In particular, I will offer an interpretation of the attributes as first and foremost causal activities, or powers: this interpretation has the advantage to clarify the role of [definiton] 1D6 as a “genetic definition".”

References

Michael della Rocca 2008. Spinoza. Nw York: Routledge.

27. Embry, Brian. 2019. "Francisco Suárez on Beings of Reason and Non-Strict Ontological Pluralism." Philosopher's Imprint no. 19:1-15.

"Suárez explains the difference between existence and objective being in terms of intrinsicality and extrinsicality: existence is an intrinsic sort of being, and objective being is an extrinsic sort of being." (p. 6)

(...)

"But how exactly are we to understand the notion of extrinsic being?" (p. 7)

(...)

"David Lewis once informally characterized the distinction as follows:

“In general, something has an intrinsic property solely in virtue of how that thing itself is; it has a purely extrinsic property solely in virtue of how accompanying things, and its external relations to those accompanying things, are” (Lewis 2001: 384). Here Lewis characterizes the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction in terms of the in virtue of relation.

He ultimately finds this characterization unsatisfactory because we do not have a “clear enough understanding of ‘solely in virtue of’” Lewis 2001: 384).

However, the in virtue of relation has been the subject of much progress in recent metaphysics. Even critics of the in virtue of relation agree that we have a clear enough understanding of it (Wilson 2014, Koslicki 2015). Advocates note that we often say that certain facts obtain in virtue of others." (p. 7)

(...)

"This is not the place to argue for a particular analysis of intrinsicality, but I want to show how the notion of grounding can provide a better sense of what it could mean to say that something has extrinsic being." (p. 8)

References

Lewis, David. 2001. “Redefining ‘Intrinsic’.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (2): 381–398.

Koslicki, Kathrin. 2015. “The Coarse-Grainedness of Grounding.” In Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, Vol. 9, edited by Karen Bennett and Dean W. Zimmerman, 306–341. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wilson, Jessica. 2014. “No Work for a Theory of Grounding.” Inquiry 57 (5–6): 535–579.

28. Evans, Matthew. 2012. "Lessons from Euthyphro 10a–11b." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 42:1-38.

"My aim in this paper is to show that (and how) the famous argument of Euthyphro 10a - 11b, which I will call the Euthyphro Argument, can be seen to play an important role in Plato’s broader anti-constructivist project. As I interpret it, this argument is best understood as an attack on the very idea that beliefs could ground facts in the way the constructivist thinks they could."

(...)

"Here is how I will proceed. First I will provide a detailed reconstruction of the argument. Then I will try to show, on the basis of this reconstruction, that the argument can withstand many (if not all) of the most powerful lines of criticism that have been (and might be) advanced against it. Finally I will offer an assessment of the argument’s dialectical impact on constructivism in particular and naturalism in general. At each step along the way I hope to make it increasingly clear that this argument is more resilient than its critics have acknowledged, and that the naturalists among us must either learn its lessons or face defeat." (pp. 2-3)

29. Fine, Kit. 2022. "Some Remarks on Bolzano on Ground." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 276-300. New York: Oxford University Press.

"When I developed my own ideas on ground in the 1990s I was oblivious to Bolzano's work on the topic in his Theory of Science (henceforth WL). It was almost a couple of decades later that I became aware of his work and I was then astonished both by its level of sophistication and by the extent to which he had anticipated many of our contemporary concerns. Although the topic has had a long history, going all the way back to the ancients, there is little doubt in my mind that Bolzano deserves a special place as the first person to embark upon a systematic study of the topic; and I believe his contributions in this area to be as

great an intellectual achievement, in their own way, as his contributions to logic or real analysis." (p. 276, a note omitted)

(...)

"I wish in this paper to take Bolzano at his word and to follow through on a couple of issues raised by some of his suggestions. It would have been desirable if I had been able to show how, by following through on this suggestion, these various issues might have been resolved. Unfortunately, I was not able to do this and I can only hope to have made clear the interest of the issues and the direction in which further investigation of them might proceed." (p. 276)

30. Franks, Curtis. 2014. "Logical Completeness, Form, and Content: An Archaeology." In Interpreting Gödel: Critical Essays, edited by Kennedy, Juliette, 78-106. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Indeed, throughout his logical investigations,Bolzano’s considerably more sustained focus was devoted, not to the Ableitbarkeit relation, but to the theory of this objectively significant consequence relation, a theory he called “Grundlehre.”

Bolzano’s 1810 Beyträge is the definitive exposition of this theory of ground and consequence." (p. 83)

(...)

"Bolzano’s two theories of logical consequence are themselves not precise enough for their correspondence with one another to be subject to proof. All the same, the question is at the center of Bolzano’s thought.

The procedural Ableitbarkeit relation provides a calculus of inference.

The ontological Abfolge relation is a feature of the world absolutely independent of our ability to reason about it. By establishing that these notions correspond, we would ensure that the logical structure of the world is accessible, that some line of thought could trace the dependencies of truths, that the reasons behind the complex facts of reality are discoverable and comprehensible." (p. 92)

31. Frost, Gloria. 2023. "Medieval." In The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy, edited by Koslicki, Kathrin and Raven, Michael J., 30-40. New York: Routledge.

"The first section examines medieval views on basic issues about essences. The section begins by discussing medieval conceptions of the distinction between essential and accidental features. Next the section discusses medieval positions on whether there are only species essences or also individual essences. Lastly, the section examines medieval views on the knowability of essences. The second section of the of the essay focuses on two medieval debates about essences. The first debate had to do with which features of material beings were essential to them. The Latin scholastic authors on whom this essay focuses adopted Aristotle’s theory of hylomorphism. This theory maintains that material substances are composed of matter and form. Scholastic authors debated about whether the essences of material substances were constituted merely by their forms or if their essences also contained their matter. The second debate focused on the question of whether there is a real distinction between the essence of a created substance and its existence. The debate was about whether in addition to their essence a creature was composed by a distinct actualizing principle through which the essence was the essence of a real being, rather than a merely possible one. Though this question is foreign to contemporary philosophy, it was one of the most pressing concerns regarding essences for medieval scholastic thinkers." (p. 30)

32. Guigon, Ghislain. 2012. "Spinoza on Composition and Priority." In Spinoza on Monism, edited by Goff, Philip, 183-205. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.

"In section 9.1 I argue that Spinoza agrees that there are many concrete things though there is only one fundamental concrete thing. In section 9.2 I argue that Spinoza’s view is that the fundamental concrete thing, the extended substance, is mereologically simple. However, this interpretation of Spinoza faces two challenges that I shall explore: a puzzle about the occurrence of composition in extended reality, and a puzzle about substantial simplicity. Sections 9.3 and 9.4 provide conceptual tools that will allow me to address these two challenges in sections 9.5 and 9.6: section 9.3 introduces Spinoza’s threefold distinction between kinds of composition and section 9.4 is a study of Spinoza’s doctrine about beings of reason." (p. 184)

33. Hocutt, Max. 1974. "Aristotle's Four Becauses." Philosophy no. 49:385-399.

"I. Introduction

What has traditionally been labelled 'Aristotle's theory of causes' would be more intelligible if construed as 'Aristotle's theory of explanations', where the term 'explanation' has substantially the sense of Hempel and Oppenheim, who construe explanations as deductions.(1) For Aristotle, specifying 'causes' is constructing demonstrations.

This interpretation has two virtues: unlike the theory of the 'four causes', it makes sense; and it shows what the logical theory of aitia in the Posterior Analytics has to do with the metaphysical treatment in the Physics and Metaphysics. On the assumption that Aristotle's metaphysics might be contaminated by his logic, Aristotle's metaphysics and logic have traditionally been kept scrupulously separate, as if they were by different men.

The result of this separation is to make Aristotle's metaphysics seem illogical. I want here to go a little way towards showing that this is not necessarily so." (p. 385, a note omitted)

34. Howat, Andrew. 2023. "Pragmatism." In The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy, edited by Koslicki, Kathrin and Raven, Michael J., 53-66. New York: Routledge.

"After some terminological preliminaries (§1), this chapter defends the following claims.

First, there are at least two different interpretations available of C.S. Peirce’s views on essence and essentialism (§2). One of them suggests that Peirce may have endorsed his own novel, pragmatist understandings of essence/essentialism. William James’s few remarks on the topic are somewhat ambivalent (§3), evincing a superficial anti-essentialism that seemingly anticipates Quine’s views, while remaining consistent with an anti-realist form of essentialism. Although John Dewey’s pragmatism (§4) is the most vividly anti-essentialist in spirit, once again there are prominent scholars who seemingly reject that interpretation, partly because Dewey’s attitude to metaphysics in general is difficult to establish. Some of his anti-essentialist remarks seem grounded in his own pragmatist, empirically naturalist metaphysics, while others suggest an outright metaphysical quietism that seemingly rules out “essence” and “essentialism” as meaningful terms." (pp. 53-54)

35. Kappes, Yannic. 2024. "Bolzano’s Tortoise and a loophole for Achilles." Synthese no. 203:1-29.

Abstract: "This paper discusses a novel response to two closely related regress arguments from Bolzano’s Theory of Science and Carroll’s What the Tortoise Said to Achilles. Bolzano’s argument aims to refute the thesis that full grounds must include propositions involving notions such as entailment, grounding or lawhood which link the respective grounds to their groundee. This thesis is motivated, Bolzano’s argument is reconstructed, and a response based on self-referential linking propositions is developed and defended against objections concerning self-reference and Curry’s paradox. Finally, the idea is applied to a reading of Carroll’s dialogue and a corresponding solution to the so-called infinite regress problem of inference is proposed."

36. Kasabova, Anna. 2012. "Bolzano’s Semantic Relation of Grounding: A Case Study." In Inference, Consequence, and Meaning: Perspectives on Inferentialism, edited by Gurova, Lilia, 85-103. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

"Bernard Bolzano, the 19th Century mathematician and philosopher who taught at the University of Prague, worked out a semantic notion of grounding (Abfolge) for providing proofs with an objective ground (Begründung) or explanatory force. He claims that a true statement or truth is grounded or scientifically proved if and only if it is shown to be objectively dependent on other truths.(1) Bolzano holds a foundationalist view on which there are basic true propositions or axioms and basic beliefs that support derivative propositions and derivative beliefs based on the more basic propositions and beliefs. He claims that a semantic dependence relation holds between basic propositions or basic beliefs and derivative propositions or derivative beliefs, a relation he calls Abfolge, translated as the grounding relation, where grounding a statement means giving a reason for that statement." (p. 85)

(1) Beyträge II, (1810), § 12. cf. also 1817, §1 where he says that scientific proofs should be groundings (Begründungen) and introduces the terms Grundwahrheiten and Folgewahrheiten."

References

Bolzano, Bernard. (1810) Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik. Prague: Caspar Widtmann. [English translation by Steve Russ in: Bolzano, Bernard. 2004. „Contributions to a better grounded presentation of mathematics.“ In From Kant to Hilbert. A sourcebook on the foundations of mathematics, vol. I, edited by William Ewald, 174-224. Oxford: Clarendon Press.]

__ (1817), Rein analytischer Beweis des Lehrsatzes, dass zwischen je zwey Werthen, die ein entgegengesetzes Resultat gewähren, wenigstens eine reele Wurzel der Gleichung liege, Wilhelm Engelmann (English translation: Purely analytic proof of the theorem that between any two values which give results of opposite sign, there lies at least one real root of the equation; in From Kant to Hilbert, cit., pp. 225-248.

37. Kment, Boris. 2014. Modality and Explanatory Reasoning. New York: Oxford University Press.

"The goal of this book is to shed light on metaphysical necessity and the broader class of modal properties to which it belongs."

(...)

I will argue that to understand modality we need to reconceptualize its relationship to causation and other forms of explanation such as grounding, a relation that connects metaphysically fundamental facts to non-fundamental ones. While many philosophers have tried to give modal analyses of causation and explanation, often in counterfactual terms, I will argue that we obtain a more plausible, explanatorily powerful and unified theory if we regard explanation as more fundamental than modality." (p. 1)

38. Knappik, Franz. 2016. "And Yet He is a Monist: Comments on James Kreines, Reason in the World." Hegel Bulletin:1-17.

Abstract: "I critically discuss Kreines’s arguments against readings on which Hegel holds some version of metaphysical monism. In section 1, I address Kreines’s claim that Hegel’s revised version of Kant’s argument in the Transcendental Dialectic implies a rejection of metaphysical monism. I argue both that the argument that Kreines ascribes to Hegel does not itself rule out monism, and that there are serious exegetical problems with the way Kreines understands Hegel’s diagnosis of the antinomies and his critique of the metaphysics of the understanding. In section 2, I discuss additional reasons that Kreines gives for seeing Hegel as rejecting metaphysical monism. In particular, I argue that Hegel is much more optimistic about the intelligibility of nature than Kreines thinks: to a substantial degree, the basic structure of nature, including the laws of mechanics, is open to explanations that are ultimately based on a monistic principle."

39. Koslicki, Kathrin. 2014. "The Causal Priority of Form in Aristotle." Studia Philosophica Estonica no. 7:113-141.

Abstract: "In various texts (e.g., Met. Z.17), Aristotle assigns priority to form, in its role as a principle and cause, over matter and the matter-form compound. Given the central role played by this claim in Aristotle’s search for primary substance in the Metaphysics, it is important to understand what motivates him in locating the primary causal responsibility for a thing’s being what it is with the form, rather than the matter. According to Met. Θ.8, actuality [energeia/entelecheia] in general is prior to potentiality [dunamis] in three ways, viz., in definition, time and substance. I propose an explicitly causal reading of this general priority claim, as it pertains to the matter-form relationship. The priority of form over matter in definition, time and substance, in my view, is best explained by appeal to the role of form as the formal, efficient and final cause of the matter-form compound, respectively, while the posteriority of matter to form according to all three notions of priority is most plausibly accounted for by the fact that the causal contribution of matter is limited to its role as material cause. When approached from this angle, the work of Met. Θ.8, can be seen to lend direct support to the more specific and explicitly causal priority claim we encounter in Met. Z.17, viz., that formis prior tomatter in its role as the principle and primary cause of a matter-form compound’s being what it is."

40. ———. 2024. "Modality and Essence in Contemporary Metaphysics." In Modality: A History, edited by Melamed, Yitzhak Y. and Newlands, Samuel, 263-293. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Introduction. Essentialists hold that at least a certain range of entities can be meaningfully said to have natures, essences, or essential features independently of how these entities are described, conceptualized, or otherwise placed with respect to our specifically human interests, purposes, or activities. For quite some time, it was common among contemporary metaphysicians to regard essence as a modal notion: an essential truth, on this conception, is a modal truth of a certain kind (viz., one that is both necessary and de re, i.e., about a certain entity); and an essential property is a feature an entity has necessarily, if it is to exist. The essential truths, according to this approach, are thus a subset of the necessary truths; and the essential properties of entities are included among their necessary properties." (p. 263)

41. Koslicki, Kathrin, and Raven, Michael J. 2023. "History." In The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy, edited by Koslicki, Kathrin and Raven, Michael J., 15-17. New York: Routledge.

"Philosophers have discussed essence since antiquity. The notion of essence played a central role in ancient Greek philosophy and occupied center stage during the Middle Ages. A more critical stance towards this notion developed during the early modern era and continues, in some quarters, into the present time. The turn of the millennium saw the notion of essence falling upon especially hard times.

(...)

All this suggests that it is high time to reevaluate essence. To arrive at an adequate assessment of where we are, however, it is necessary first to appreciate the history of philosophical discussions of essence that have preceded our current vantage point. Part I of this Handbook thus begins by offering a historical survey of the role of essence in ancient Greek, medieval, and modern philosophy as well as in the contemporary traditions of pragmatism, phenomenology, and early analytic philosophy." (p. 15)

42. Kreines, James. 2015. Reason in the World: Hegel’s Metaphysics and Its Philosophical Appeal. New York: Oxford University Pree.

"What we are discovering, as we step through these debates, is the fundamentality of the question of what is a reason for what. We need the basic and general notion of one thing being a reason for another in order to engage any of these debates. And so we should accept that notion as basic and proceed to consider what specific forms of reason there really are, which directions they run in different cases, and how they relate to one another. This point can be expressed in contemporary terminology as well, but it requires stretching a bit beyond the usage generally intended. Schaffer, for example, speaks of “ontological dependence” and “grounding.” Part of his point is to distinguish a special sort of worldly dependence in metaphysics, parallel to but distinct fromcases like the causality of interest in the natural sciences. My point here is that we need a more general notion of worldly dependence, or (better) reason in the world, in order to open up in a parallel manner all the questions and possible positions concerning laws, causality, and so on.(13)" (p. 68)

(13) See especially Schaffer (2009). The notion of “worldly dependence” here, then, is closer not to Schaffer’s “grounding” but to Kim’s (1994) notion of a “metaphysical dependence” that is the “correlate” of explanation, where this can but need not be specifically causal.

References

Kim, J. 1994. “Explanatory Knowledge and Metaphysical Dependence.” Philosophical Issues 5: 51–69.

Schaffer, J. 2009. “On What Grounds What.” In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, edited by D. Manley, D. Chalmers, and R. Wasserman, 347–83. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

43. ———. 2016. "Things in Themselves and Metaphysical Grounding: On Allais’ Manifest Reality." European Journal of Philosophy no. 24:253-266.

"I conclude, then, as follows: There is no comparatively comprehensive interpretation of transcendental idealism that is, in my view,more successful than Allais’ ambitious Manifest Reality. With respect to Kant on things in themselves, however, I think Allais’ account retains one disadvantage common to its competitors. Escape, as I see it, requires different understanding of the extremes that a “moderate” interpretation should avoid: On the one extreme, there are indeed deflationary readings, precluding a metaphysical assertion of the existence of things in themselves as grounds of appearances.

But the other extreme is not precisely noumenalism, as Allais claims. It is rather any metaphysics asserting the existence of unconditioned grounds, or metaphysical fundamentality in this sense. The argument of the Dialectic rules these all to be unacceptably dogmatic, and for what seem to me powerfully philosophical reasons. I would think that the big interpretive challenge is to navigate between these extremes concerning things in themselves—hopefully in a manner that can retain access to the many unmatched advantages of Allais’ interpretation of Kant on appearances." (p. 264)

References

Allais, L. (2010), ‘Transcendental Idealism and Metaphysics,’ Kantian Yearbook 2:1–32.

—— (2015), Manifest Reality: Kant’s Idealism & his Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

44. ———. 2016. "Fundamentality without Metaphysical Monism: Response to Critics of Reason in the World." Hegel Bulletin:1-19.

Abstract: "This article is a reply to comments by Franz Knappik and Robert Stern on my book, Reason in the World: Hegel’s Metaphysics and its Philosophical Appeal. Issues addressed include the systematicity of Hegel’s philosophy, the prioritizing of metaphysical over epistemological questions in his arguments, Hegel’s response to Kant’s Antinomy of Pure Reason, and my conclusion that there are senses in which Hegel’s own position is both ambitiously metaphysical and also monist, but that the monism present there is epistemological, and the ambitious metaphysics is non-monist."

45. Kriener, Jönne. 2017. "Bolzano." In The History of Philosophical and Formal Logic: From Aristotle to Tarski, edited by Malpass, Alex and Antonutti Marfori, Marianna, 121-142. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

See Bolzano’s theory of grounding (pp. 133-137).

5.1 Grounding

Bolzano’s logic as developed so far applies equally to true as to false propositions.

However, Bolzano has more to offer: a special system for truths. True propositions are ordered by what Bolzano calls the relation of Abfolge. Let me translate it as ‘grounding’. Bolzano motivates his theory of grounding from examples of the following kind ( WL §198).

(3) It is warmer in Palermo than in New York.

(4) The thermometer stands higher in Palermo than in New York.

Both propositions are true. However, it is the truth of (3) that explains (4) and not vice versa. The truth of (3) grounds the truth of (4).

This relation of grounding stands out from Bolzano’s system in that it is not defined in terms of variation. In particular, the fact that (3) grounds (4) and not vice versa cannot be captured by deducibility: (3) can be derived from (4).

Therefore, a stronger concept is needed: (3) grounds (4).

For a long time, interpreters have found this part of Bolzano’s work ‘obscure’ ( Berg 1962 : 151). Nothing in a modern logic textbook corresponds to Bolzanian grounding. Nonetheless, the concept has a long and venerable tradition. Bolzano connects with Aristotle’s distinction between why -proofs and mere that -proofs (Aristotle 2006 : 1051b; Betti 2010)." (p. 133)

References

Aristotle ( 2006), Metaphysics Book Θ , ed. Stephen Makin , Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Berg, Jan (1962), Bolzano’s Logic. Stockholm , Almqvist & Wiksell.

Betti , Arianna ( 2010), ‘ Explanation in Metaphysics and Bolzano’s Theory of Ground and Consequence’, 211 : 281–316 .

Bolzano , Bernard (1837), Wissenschaftslehre, Sulzbach: Seidel.

46. Lange, Marc. 2022. "Bolzano, the Parallelogram of Forces, and Scientific Explanation." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 394-417. New York: Oxford University Press.

"The parallelogram law for the composition of forces was introduced in 1586 by Simon Stevin. It seems to have been widely recognized by Newton's day since both Pierre Varignon and Bernard Lamy stated it in the same year (1687) as Newton did in the Principia.(2) But long after the parallelogram law's truth had become uncontroversial, considerable dispute remained over why it holds. Rival approaches to its explanation were developed and criticized by many notable scientists over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Bernard Bolzano's contribution to this debate was his Attempt at an Objective Grounding of the Theory of the Composition of Forces (as Russ (2004, 684) translates the title of Bolzano (1842)). (Bolzano did not publish this paper until 1842, but some commentators have suggested that the paper was composed much earlier; for instance, Russ says that it was written 'probably in the 1810's'.(3)" (p. 394, a note pmitted)

(2) For historical background, see Dugas 1988 [A History of Mechanics. New York: Dover] and Duhem 1991 The Origins of Statics. Dordrecht: Kluwer].

(3) Russ 2004 [The Mathematical Works of Bernard Balzano. Oxford: Oxford University Press], 622.

47. Lapointe, Sandra. 2006. "Bolzano on Grounding or Why Is Logic Synthetic." In The Logica Yearbook 2005, 113-126. Prague: Filosofia.

48. MacBride, Fraser, and Janssen-Lauret, Frederique. 2022. "Why Lewis Would Have Rejected Grounding." In Perspectives on the Philosophy of David K. Lewis, edited by Beebe, Helen and Fsher, A. R. J., 66-91. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In this chapter we argue that were Lewis to be writing today, he would—drawing upon the corpus of his established views—provide us with principled reasons for saying both (1) that we don’t need the notions of ‘metaphysical dependence’, ‘grounding’ or ‘ontological priority’ and (2) that they’re not intelligible notions anyway. They’re not needed because, he would have held, either there is work to be done but all the heavy lifting can be achieved by other means or there really isn’t any work that needs doing at all. They’re not intelligible, he would have continued, because they presuppose metaphysical modalities which Lewis had always held suspect. So much the worse, we conclude, for contemporary developments, whatever may be de rigueur. The tradition to which Lewis belonged cannot be consigned to the dustbin of history.

Here we use ‘grounding’ as a generic label for a range of theories which deem metaphysics stymied without metaphysical dependency, grounding or ontological priority. Although ‘metaphysical dependence’, ‘grounding’ and ‘ontological priority’ can be used differently, their proponents often share motivations and themes. We focus upon the alleged shortcomings of supervenience, the oft-cited need to invoke grounding to explain how a singleton relates to its sole member and the appeal to facts, essentialism or metaphysical necessity to explain grounding itself—all motivations and themes incompatible with Lewis’s philosophy." (pp. 66-67)

49. Malink, Marko. 2020. "Aristotelian Demonstration." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 33-48. New York: Routledge.

"In what follows, I give an overview of Aristotle’s argument and its historical significance (Section 2).The relevant relation of priority in nature is determined by the order of terms in acyclic chains of immediate universal affirmations (Sections 3 and 4). Given the deductive framework of Aristotle’s syllogistic theory, it can be shown that all direct demonstrations but not all indirect demonstrations proceed from premises that are prior in nature to the conclusion (Section 5). I conclude by indicating how this fact correlates with similar results in modern versions of the impure logic of ground (Section 6)." (p. 34)

50. ———. 2022. "Aristotle and Bolzano on Grounding." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 221-243. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In 1837 Bernard Bolzano published his most important work in the area of logic, the Theory of Science: Attempt at a Detailed and in the Main Novel Exposition of Logic with Constant Attention to Earlier Authors. As indicated by the subtitle, a significant portion of the Theory of Science is devoted to a discussion of the work done by earlier theorists on the various topics covered in the treatise. Bolzano thus develops his logical theory by examining and criticizing his predecessors' views. Among the authors that figure most prominently in the Theory of Science is Aristotle. In particular, Aristotle takes centre stage in Bolzano's discussion

of grounding (Abfolge) in §§ 198-222." (p. 221, a note omitted)

51. ———. 2023. "Ancient." In The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy, edited by Koslicki, Kathrin and Raven, Michael J., 19-29. New York: Routledge.

"The status of questions of the form “What is X?” was an important topic of discussion among Socratic thinkers. For example, Antisthenes, a pupil of Socrates and opponent of Plato, examined the nature of definitions: Antisthenes was the first to define “definition” (logos), by saying: “A definition is an account revealing what a thing was or is.” (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 6.3) However, unlike Socrates and Plato, Antisthenes ended up denying the possibility of defining things by specifying their essence. According to Aristotle, Antisthenes held the view that “one cannot define the essence of a thing since the definition would be a long account; but one can specify and teach of what sort a thing is” (Metaphysics H 3 1043b23–7).5 As we will see, Aristotle himself does not share Antisthenes’ skepticism, but contends that we are in fact able to define things by specifying their essence." (pp. 20-21)

52. ———. 2024. "Aristotle on Modality." In Modality: A History, edited by Melamed, Yitzhak Y. and Newlands, Samuel, 1-30. New York: Oxford University Press.

"While necessity figures centrally in the cosmologies presented by Plato and the Pre- Socratics, we do not have any evidence that these thinkers provided an account of the nature of necessity in general. The

first philosopher known to have provided such an account is Aristotle.

In his logical and metaphysical works, Aristotle develops a systematic theory of necessity and related modalities such as possibility and impossibility." (p. 2)

53. Martin, Christopher J. 2004. "Formal Consequence in Scotus and Ockham: towards an account's of Scotus logic." In Duns Scot à Paris, 1302–2002: Actes du colloque de Paris, 2–4 septembre 2002, edited by Boulnois, Olivier, Karger, Elizabeth, Solère, Jean-Luc and Sondag, Gérard, 117-150. Turnhout: Brepols.

"The status of a striking and important counter-possible conditional claim is much disputed in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Thomas Aquinas argues that the proposition “if the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, then it is not distinct from the Son” is true and he is followed in this by Godfrey of Fontaines and Thomas of Sutton. Henry of Ghent, to the contrary, insists that it is false and this is also the view of John Dims Scotus who claims to prove the falsity of the conditional by showing that the consequent does not follow formally from the antecedent. William of Ockham for his part argues for just the opposite, maintaining that the consequent of the conditional does indeed follow formally its antecedent, but he insists that despite this the conditional is not evidently true.

We know a good deal about Ockham’s theory of conditional propositions(1) but not very much about Scotus’ views on the subject. In this paper I will try to make some progress towards understanding Scotus’ logic by considering his account of the conditional in solving this particular theological problem and propose that his theory of formal consequence can be connected with that of the formal distinction.

I will then argue that in the light of this connection Ockham’s different theory of consequences can be understood as part of his general rejection Scotus’ metaphysics." (p. 117)

(1) Gullelmus de Ockham, Summa Logicae (OPh III-3).

54. ———. 2024. "Abelard on Grounding in Ontology and Logic." In Grounding in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Normore, Calvin G. and Schmid, Stephan, 103-128. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Contemporary discussions of grounding have found an historical ances

tor for their claims in Aristotle’s appeal to the four causes. In this paper I propose what I think is a much closer and certainly more developed anticipation of theories of grounding as dependence in the work of Peter Abelard. Abelard explicitly appeals to grounding in his account of the ontological structure of substance in terms of what we now call tropes. This theory itself then grounds his appeal to the theory of the dialectical topics in formulating the truth conditions of conditional propositions and the validity conditions of arguments corresponding to different grounding relationships."

55. Massimi, Michela. 2017. "Grounds, Modality, and Nomic Necessity in the Critical Kant." In Kant and the Laws of Nature, edited by Massimi, Michela and Breitenbach, Angela, 150-170. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"In this section, I turn to Kant’s lectures on metaphysics to clarify why, in my view, Kant’s considered answer to the problem of inference should be searched for in his multifaceted notion of ground and consequence. I clarify three different kinds of nomic necessity that Kant saw at play in different kinds of laws, each respectively relying on a different notion of ground, qua conceptual ground (“ratio cognoscendi”), qua ground of being (“ratio essendi”), or qua ground of becoming (“ratio fiendi”). Only the latter notion captures cause–effect relations at play in empirical causal laws, I argue." (p. 169)

(...)

"The main goal of this chapter was to advance an interpretation that could vindicate Kant’s bold claim that the understanding prescribes laws to nature. To this end, I have elucidated the metaphysical aspect of the dispositional essentialist reading that I am defending on Kant’s behalf with an eye to clarifying different kinds of necessity that Kant seems to be referring to in various passages of the lectures on metaphysics. We identified three main notions of necessity (conceptual, metaphysical, and natural necessity, respectively). They are, respectively, at work in conceptual truths, theoretical identity statements, and empirical causal laws, via three different kinds of grounds (ratio cognoscendi, essendi, and fiendi). This taxonomy is far from exhaustive and is meant only to map out (tentatively) the territory of lawlike claims and their necessity in Kant." (p. 168)

56. McDaniel, Kris. 2024. "Modality in 20th- Century Philosophy." In Modality: A History, edited by Melamed, Yitzhak Y. and Newlands, Samuel, 221-251. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Introduction. It is hard to overstate how important the topic of modality was for philosophy in the 20th century. Fittingly, a comprehensive discussion of this topic and its role in the development of 20th-century philosophy in a piece this size is impossible, and as such, choices must be made about what to cover. Here is what I plan to do here. First, much of early 20th-century modal theorizing is a response, either direct or indirect, to Kant, and so I begin by outlining some key Kantian claims about modality. Second, I describe two philosophical traditions stemming from this reaction, the phenomenological tradition, with a focus on Husserl and Heidegger, and the analytic tradition, with a focus on Russell and Quine. Next, I turn to the relatively recent history of modality in the analytic tradition, and focus on work by Barcan Marcus on the formula discovered by and named after her, Kripke on the necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori, and Lewis on modal realism." (pp. 221-222)

57. Melamed, Yitzhak Y. 2012. "Why Spinoza is not an Eleatic Monist (Or Why Diversity Exists)." In Spinoza on Monism, edited by Goff, Philip, 206-222. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

"In the first part of the chapter I will present and explain the problem of justifying the existence of infinite plurality modes in Spinoza’s system. In the second part of the chapter I consider the radical solution to the problem according to which modes do not really exist, and show that this solution must be rejected upon consideration. In the third and final part of the chapter I will suggest my own solution according to which the essence of God is active and it is this feature of God’s essence which requires the flow of modes from God’s essence. I also suggest that Spinoza considered radical infinity and radical unity to be roughly the same, and that the absolute infinity of what follow from God’s essence is grounded in the absolute infinity of God’s essence itself." (pp. 206-207)

58. Michels, Robert. 2023. "Contemporary (analytical) tradition." In The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy, edited by Koslicki, Kathrin and Raven, Michael J., 84-99. New York: Routledge.

"Due to the strong influence of logical empiricism, the notion of essence seemed like a relic of the past to many analytic philosophers working in the first half of the 20th century. Yet, at the beginning of the 21st century, analytic philosophers considered the notion worthy of serious discussion and even relied on it in philosophical explanations and theories. This chapter gives a roughly chronological overview of the history of essence in 20th century philosophy in the analytic tradition, focusing on a number of important developments leading from the logical positivists’ opposition to essence to its current renaissance in analytic metaphysics and beyond." (p. 84)

59. Morscher, Edgar. 2016. Bernard Bolzanos Lehre von Grund und Folge. Eine axiomatische Rekonstruktion. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

60. ———. 2022. "The Grounds of Moral 'Truths'." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 343-363. New York: Oxford University Press.

"From whatever area of knowledge you are approaching Bolzano's work-be it theology, philosophy, mathematics, or natural sciences-it is almost impossible not to come across a reference to Aristotle's distinction between the knowledge of 'that' (ὅτι), and the knowledge of 'why' (διότι). Bolzano's favourite examples for illustrating this distinction are taken from the natural sciences: From the information that the thermometer (or barometer) reading in location l_1 at time t is higher than in location l_2 we can infer that the temperature (or atmospheric pressure, respectively) in l_1 at tis higher than in l_2 , The higher thermometer (or barometer) reading, however, is not the ground why the temperature (or the atmospheric pressure, respectively) is higher at t in l1 than in l_2, but it is exactly the other way around: the truth that the temperature (or atmospheric pressure) is higher is the ground for the truth that the thermometer ( or barometer) reading is higher, which is its consequence.(1)

(...)

The present chapter of this book is concerned with Bolzano's application of this distinction within the field of ethics. In the introductory first section I will lay out the conceptual framework to be used in the third (main) section of this chapter. In the intermediate second section I will present a brief introduction to Bolzano's ethics." (p. 343)

(1) Similar examples can be found, e.g. in RW [Lehrbuch der Religionswissenschaft] I, §3: 6; WL Wissenschaftslehre] II, §162: 192f., 194; §168: 210; §177: 222;§198: 340; WL IV, §401: 34; §690: 580f.

61. Mulligan, Kevin. 2004. "Essence and Modality: The Quintessence of Husserl’s Theory." In Semantik und Ontologie: Beiträge zur philosophischen Forschung, edited by Siebel, Mark and Textor, Mark, 387-418. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

"Even the most cursory reader of Husserl’s writings must be struck by the frequent references to essences (“Wesen”, “Essenzen”), Ideas (“Idee”), kinds, natures, types and species and to necessities, possibilities, impossibilities, necessary possibilities, essential necessities and essential laws.

What does Husserl have in mind in talking of essences and modalities?

What did he take the relation between essentiality and modality to be? In the absence of answers to these questions it is not clear that a reader of Husserl can be said to understand him.

Thus in the first part of Husserl’s first major work, the “Prolegomena” to the Logical Investigations (P, LI), he mentions the essence of logic, of knowledge, the rational essence of deductive science (Preface), the essence of truth, falsity, generality, particularity, ground and consequence, affirmation and denial (§ 18), of colours and tones (§ 40), of numbers (§ 46), the essence of theoretical connections (§ 66), of process, cause, effect, time and thinking (§ 71 A). And he continues in this style throughout his later writings (cf. Smith 1989).

Husserl often mentions essences in the course of making claims to the effect that some universal proposition holds in virtue of the essence of this or that. He says that such propositions are grounded in the essence of this or that. We therefore need to understand what expressions of the form “the essence of x” mean, what Husserl took their extension to be, what he understands by “ground” and how modality, essence, grounding and universality or generality stand to one another. Answers to all these questions are required, it may seem, before we can even begin to understand Husserl’s account of the epistemology of essences and essential connections." (pp. 387-388)

Refereces

Smith, B. 1989: “Logic and Formal Ontology”, in: J. N. Mohanty & W. McKenna (eds.), Husserl’s Phenomenology: A Textbook, University Press of America: Lanham, 29-67.

62. ———. 2020. "Austro-German Phenomenologists." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 90-101. New York: Routledge.

"Brentano’s heirs, in particular Husserl and Meinong, as well as their students and many philosophers influenced by them, rely heavily on grounding (begründen), founding (fundieren), and related ties such as dependence (Abhängigkeit) and existential relativity.

(...)

In this section, we look at how Brentano’s heirs understood grounding and foundation, in particular their relation to essentialism and modality, and say something about the variety of the claims they put forward that employ grounding and foundation. In the following sections, we look in more detail at a handful of philosophical claims formulated in terms of foundation (§2) and grounding (§§3–5)." (p. 90)

63. ———. 2022. "Logic, Logical Norms, and (Normative) Grounding." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 244-275. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In what follows I expound and evaluate Husserl's views about 'because' and grounding (section 8.2) and then consider some specific questions where his views are opposed to those of Bolzano. I begin with Husserl's ground-theoretical argument against Bolzano's account of the general structure of a proposition (section 8.3), which bears on the controversy between operationalist and predicationalist views in the contemporary debate about grounding. I then briefly outline Husserl's very non-Bolzanian views about essence and foundation (section 8.4), and finally examine (section 8.5) Husserl's account of the nature of logic, which he himself contrasts with Bolzano's account, and his views about grounding relations between normative facts (such as logical norms) and non-normative facts (such as logical principles)." (pp. 244-245)

64. ———. 2023. "Contemporary (phenomenological) tradition." In The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy, edited by Koslicki, Kathrin and Raven, Michael J., 67-83. New York: Routledge.

"The phenomenologists’ confidence in their ability to intuit essences and connections between them (essential connections) seems to have done much to discredit phenomenology and to have led to a lack of interest in their views about essence and its roles, in particular its relation to modality and grounding, not least amongst later so called phenomenologists. Meinong, unlike Husserl and his followers, did not go in for intuiting essences and was never philosophically intoxicated. But he, too, thought that essences and natures play a central role in philosophy. What, then, did the phenomenologists take essences and their connections to be? What rôles, philosophical and non-philosophical, did they assign to essence? What sort of contact, epistemic and non-epistemic, with essence did they take themselves to enjoy?" (p. 67 a note omitted)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on the history of fundamentality and grounding (N - Z)

Bibliography

1. Newlands, Samuel. 2018. Reconceiving Spinoza. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 3: Conceptual Dependence Monism, pp. 57-89.

"2.5 Eliminativism and the Nature of Grounding.

We have seen Spinoza account for claims and facts about some putative forms of metaphysical dependence, such as causation and inherence, in terms of conceptual dependence, without ever moving in the reverse direction. I suggested that this unidirectional explanatory priority follows from Spinoza’s more general privileging of conceptual dependence over all other putative forms of dependence. Causation, inherence, following-from, and existential dependence obtain in virtue of conceptual connections between relata. But what is this further in-virtue-of, if not itself a kind of dependence?

In contemporary parlance, how are causal facts dependent on or grounded in conceptual facts, according to Spinoza? By Spinoza’s own explanatory demands, we need an explanation of that form of dependence too." (p. 79)

(...)

"In the end, I am inclined to think Spinoza embraces the starker eliminative option. There are no distinctions between causation, inherence, following-from, and the rest of his non-conceptual laundry list. All forms and instances of metaphysical dependence just are conceptual in the stronger sense that there are neither extensional nor intensional differences among the conceptual relations that are the truth-makers for ascriptions of causation, inherence, and the rest. Or, if the appeal to truth-making seems worrisome here (what is making, if not yet more dependence?), we could say that for Spinoza, all and only features of conceptual dependence relations are the features of every form and instance of metaphysical dependence. That is, in addition to affirming conceptual sensitivity of causation and the rest, Spinoza affirms conceptual identification as well. This would also explain why Spinoza treats conceptual dependence as explanatorily prior to (what others take to be) other forms of dependence." (p. 81, a note omitted)

2. ———. 2024. "Leibniz on Modality." In Modality: A History, edited by Melamed, Yitzhak Y. and Newlands, Samuel, 118-143. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Leibniz contributed to three distinct projects involving modality, all of which were lively points of debate in the 17th century. The first concerns the distribution of necessity and contingency. What exists, happens, or is true necessarily? What exists, happens, or is true contingently? The second project concerns the analysis of modality.

What is the nature and true account of necessity and contingency? We might expect an analysis of modality to provide answers to the distribution question, but for Leibniz, the order of discovery usually went in the other direction. He antecedently wanted to avoid certain distribution answers, and he developed various analyses of modality in order to secure the desired distribution. I will present several of his most prominent efforts, some of which seem more promising than others.

Leibniz was also interested in the grounds of modality. Like many early moderns, Leibniz thought that God was the ultimate ground of both modal truths and modal truthmakers. But there was fierce disagreement about exactly how God serves as the ultimate ground of modality.

Leibniz defends an intellectualist account of the divine grounds of possibility and he offers pointed criticisms of the main alternatives.

After exploring Leibniz’s grounding account in Section 3, I will conclude by sketching how Leibniz’s different modal projects could work in tandem." (p. 119)

3. Normore, Calvin G. 2024. "Up in the Air: Buridan’s Principled Rejection of Grounding." In Grounding in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Normore, Calvin G. and Schmid, Stephan, 239-250. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "The fourteenth-century theorist Jean Buridan claimed that in a thoroughly bivalent framework central semantic concepts such as truth and signification are both free of paradox and ungrounded. This paper outlines and defends Buridan’s approach and suggests that it may give reason to think that ungroundedness is not problematic in semantics or in metaphysics."

4. Normore, Calvin G., and Schmid. Stephan, eds. 2024. Grounding in Medieval Philosophy. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Contents: 1. Magali Roques: Introduction: Grounding Then and Now 1; 2. Riin Sirkel: Ontological Priority and Grounding in Aristotle’s Categories 33; 3. Petter Sandstad: Grounding and Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics 65; 4 Paul Thom: Ground in Avicenna’s Logic 83; 5. Christopher J. Martin: Abelard on Grounding in Ontology and Logic 103; 6. Jacob Archambault: Grounding Medieval Consequence 129; 7. Simona Vucu: Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and John Duns Scotus on the Causation of Proper and Inseparable Accidents 147; 8. J. T. Paasch: Ockham on Priority and Posteriority 177; 9. Magali Roques: William of Ockham on Essential Dependence and Causation 203; 10. Thomas M. Ward: The Incoherence of Ockham’s Ethics 225; 11. Calvin G. Normore: Up in the Air: Buridan’s Principled Rejection of Grounding 239; 12. Mikko Yrjönsuuri: Valid on Formal Grounds 251; 13. Stephan Schmid: Two Kinds of Grounding? Suárez on Natural Resultance and Foundation 281; 14. Ricki Bliss: Some Work for a Theory of Grounding? 307; Index 331-333.

5. Oberst, Michael. 2021. "Kant on Real Grounds and Grounds of Being." In The Court of Reason: Proceedings of the 13th International Kant Congress. Vol. 1, edited by Himmelmann, Beatrix and Serck-Hanssen, Camilla, 591-597. Berlin: de Gruyter.

"In recent years, some scholars have argued that Kant embraces a theory of “real grounds” that is akin to contemporary accounts of grounding. In their view, Kantian real grounds are ‘explanatory’ grounds, and (real) grounding is an ontological dependence relation.¹ Whilst they acknowledge causality as the paradigmatic case of grounding, these readers think that causality is by no means the only one (Stratmann 2018, 6–7). Other examples allegedly include mathematical grounding, grounds of possibility, substance-accident and whole-part relations, and noumenal affection.

I shall argue that this reading is mistaken. A compelling textual case can be made that, according to Kant, all real grounds are causes(2). Thus, if one wanted to argue against this view, one would need to establish that he considers certain kinds of non-causal grounds as real grounds. The arguably most promising candidate for that are “grounds of being” (rationes essendi). Although Kant put some efforts into finding a place for grounds of being within his classification of grounds, he apparently did not reach a solution that he himself considered satisfactory.

Notwithstanding this, I argue that an account would have been available to him that captures the modal intuition behind grounds of being without being real grounds in Kant’s sense. I conclude that grounds of being cannot serve as an example for non-causal real grounds" (p. 591)

(1) For example, Stang argues that the grounding relation is a “non-logical non-causal asymmetric real grounding relation between mutually necessarily entailing propositions” (Stang 2016, 236). See also Chignell 2012, 650, Massimi 2017, 156–158, Stratmann 2018, 3–7, Stang 2019.

(2) My view is actually more complex. For some grounds of possibility are not actual causes, but nonetheless potential causes which are actualized under appropriate causal circumstances. As I see it, Kant follows the broadly Aristotelian tradition of understanding possibility in terms of potentiality, yet ultimately goes beyond it. I cannot argue for this view in the present paper.

References

Chignell, Andrew (2012): “Kant, Real Possibility, and the Threat of Spinoza”. In: Mind 121/483, 635–675.

Massimi, Michela (2017): “Grounds, Modality, and Nomic Necessity in the Critical Kant”. In M. Massimi/A. Breitenbach (Eds.): Kant and the Laws of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 150–170.

Stang, Nicholas F. (2016): Kant’s Modal Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stang, Nicholas F. (2019): “A Guide to Ground in Kant’s Lectures on Metaphysics”. In: C. Fougate (Ed.): Kant’s Lectures on Metaphysics: a Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 74–101.

Stratmann, Joe (2018): “Kant, Grounding, and Things in Themselves”. In: Philosophers’ Imprint 18/7,

6. Paasch, J. T. 2024. "Ockham on Priority and Posteriority." In Grounding in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Normore, Calvin G. and Schmid, Stephan, 177-201. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Does William Ockham believe in a metaphysical form of grounding? In particular, does Aristotelian natural priority (as Ockham understands it) qualify as a kind of metaphysical grounding? I offer a close analysis of Ockham’s texts, and I suggest that the answer is probably no. In the course of my analysis, I show that Ockham sparks a debate about priority that was taken up by other fourteenth century thinkers, and I show that Ockham’s view is striking because he so sharply separates natural priority and causal priority. Unlike certain other scholastics who understand natural priority as a kind of dependence, Ockham insists that natural priority is entirely non-causal, and qua natural priority, it involves no dependence between the entities involved. This leads Ockham to deny that natural priority applies to certain cases which otherwise might count as standard candidates."

7. Poggiolesi, Francesca. 2022. "Bolzano, (the Appropriate) Relevant Logic, and Grounding Rules for Implication." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 319-342. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In the first part of this paper the main aim is to take a closer look at exact deducibility and its relations to contemporary logic. More precisely, we will show that there exists a particular connection between Bolzano's notion of exact deducibility and the relevant logic CR introduced by Tennant (1984). These reflections will not only clarify the notion of exact deducibility per se, but also, in virtue of the connection between exact deducibility and grounding, shed further light on the general Bolzanian conception of grounding In the second part of the paper we will focus on the recent studies on the logic of grounding and in particular on the grounding rules for implication, a topic that, as far as we know, has received relatively little treatment. We will try to argue that the logic CR can again play a role: it is indeed a useful and interesting framework for formulating the grounding rules for implication. The paper is organized as follows. In section 11.2 we will recall Bolzano's notions of deducibility and exact deducibility, emphasizing their logical properties.

In section 11.3 we will introduce the logic CR, while in section 11.4 we will explain why this is the adequate contemporary counterpart of Bolzano's notion of exact deducibility. We will use section 11.5 to discuss the issue of the grounding rules for implication. We will show that even in this context the logic CR has a role to play." (pp. 319-320)

References

Tennant, N. 1984. 'Perfect Validity, Entailment and Paraconsistency'. Studia Logica 43 (1-2): 179-98.

8. Priest, Graham. 2018. "Buddhist dependence." In Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, edited by Bliss, Ricki and Priest, Graham, 126-139. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Many issues in Western philosophy were discussed with great sophistication in the Eastern philosophical traditions. A prime example of this is metaphysical dependence.(1)

This is absolutely central to Buddhist metaphysics. Indeed, there is a wide variety of views about, in particular, the structure of metaphysical dependence.

In this essay, I will explain some of these views, and some of their ramifications.

The aim is neither to give a scholarly account of any of these views, nor to argue for or against any one of them. Rather, the point of the essay is to open the eyes of philosophers who know little of the Eastern philosophical traditions to important possibilities of which they are likely to be unaware.

In Section 3 of this essay, I will explain three Buddhist positions concerning metaphysical dependence: those of Abhidharma, Madhyamaka, and Huayan. In Section 4, I will turn to some ways in which these positions engage with some Western debates. But first, for those readers whose knowledge of the history and development of Buddhist philosophy may be incomplete, I will explain enough of this in Section 2 to situate what is to follow." (p. 126, two note omitted)

(1) In contemporary Western philosophy, the topic is discussed under a variety of names, such as ontological dependence and grounding. Moreover, there seems to be little unanimity as to whether there is just one relationship here, or, if not, how the different varieties of the species are related.(...).

9. Puryear, Stephen. 2020. "The Logic of Leibniz’s Borrowed Reality Argument." The Philosophical Quarterly no. 70:350-370.

Abstract: "Leibniz argues that there must be a fundamental level of simple substances because composites borrow their reality from their constituents and not all reality can be borrowed. I contend that the underlying logic of this ‘borrowed reality argument’ has been misunderstood, particularly the rationale for the key premise that not all reality can be borrowed. Contrary to what has been suggested, the rationale turns neither on the alleged viciousness of an unending regress of reality borrowers nor on the Principle of Sufficient Reason, but on the idea that composites are phenomena and thus can be real only insofar as they have a foundation in substances, from which they directly ‘borrow’ their reality. The claim that composites are phenomena rests in turn on Leibniz’s conceptualism about relations. So understood, what initially looked like a disappointingly simple argument for simples turns out to be a rather rich and sophisticated one."

10. Raven, Michael J. 2019. "(Re)Discovering Ground." In The Cambridge History of Philosophy, 1945–2015, edited by Becker, Kelly and Thomson, Iain D., 147-159. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Recently, there has been a rapid growth of literature on questions of determination. It has become increasingly clear that subtly different notions of determination are involved. Nevertheless, much of this literature operates under the working hypothesis that there is a distinctive kind of determination that is at issue in these questions and is itself a topic worthy of study on its own.

“Ground” has emerged as the popular, quasi-technical term for this kind of determination. A question of ground asks in virtue of what some phenomenon obtains and is answered either by stating its grounds or that it has none.

Much has recently been written about ground.1 Here the focus is on its history in the Western analytic philosophical tradition since 1945.(2)" (p. 147)

(2) Although ground does not only appear in the Western analytic philosophical tradition, space requires omitting its appearances elsewhere.

11. Roques, Magali. 2024. "Introduction: Grounding Then and Now." In Grounding in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Normore, Calvin G. and Schmid, Stephan, 1-32. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

"Sincde the contributions in this volume cticically examines medieval views on non-causal explanation by referring to the current debate on non-causal explanation, I will open the volume with an introduction to this debate, which will motivate the examination of medieval texts. I will begin with an overview of the philosophical background to the neo-Aristotelian turn in metaphysics, in which non-causal explanation occupies a central place. This will lead me to introduce the core features of the notion of non-causal explanation as it is understood in the current debate. I will then present the current state of the debate on the history of non-causal explanation, and will explain why an investigation into medieval views on non-causal explanation is much needed. Before giving a summary of the contributions, I will present the core result to which they converge—namely, that in medieval thought grounding claims are not seen as instances of a univocal concept of non-causal explanation. For medieval thinkers, the kind of claim which we would describe as a grounding claim is either a complex sentence that includes a hyperintensional sentential operator, or an atomic sentence that includes a predicate referring to a relation of priority that relates things that may be of different categories.(2) They are not troubled by working with two different types of grounding claims at the same time, since I will suggest that medieval authors need both kinds of grounding claims in order to articulate their logic and metaphysics." (pp. 2-3)

(2) See Stephan Schmid’s chapter in this volume, p. 292, for another scholastic view on this interpretation of the grounding operator. According to Suárez, on Schmid’s interpretation, the thought ‘Snow is white’ is true in virtue of its object being the fact that snow is white and of its being the case that snow is white.

12. ———. 2024. "William of Ockham on Essential Dependence and Causation." In Grounding in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Normore, Calvin G. and Schmid, Stephan, 203-223. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "It has become a commonly held view that Ockham does not defend a reductionist account of efficient causality, and that for him causal powers cannot be eliminated from causal statements. This paper argues that this reading can be refined, and that according to Ockham the analysis of causality can go one step further. In reaction to Scotus’s concept of essentially ordered causes, Ockham claims that a relation of “essential dependence” holds between a total cause and its effect. I argue for a reading of this relation in counterfactual terms. If this reading is correct, Ockham’s account is close in spirit to the “neo-Humean” account of causality defended by David Lewis, according to which efficient causality is counterfactual dependence plus restrictive clauses concerning cases of counterfactual dependence that are not causal and cases of redundant causation. From this view point, Ockham’s view is close in spirit to the positivist conception of metaphysics that was prevalent before the “neo-Aristotelian” turn in metaphysics."

13. Roski, Stefan. 2017. Bolzano's Conception of Grounding. Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann.

Contents: Preface IX; I. Introduction 1; 2. Objective truth, variation & truth-preservation 19; 3. Explanatory priority: Bolzano’s pure logic of grounding 55; 4. Simplicity and economy: Bolzano’s impure logic of grounding 109; 5. Bolzano’s logic of grounding and the logic of metaphysical grounding 215; 6. Conclusion 233; l ist of abbreviations 251; List of symbols, definitions, and principles 253; Bibliography 257; Index 267-269.

"Overview of the book

As each of the following chapters will be accompanied by a detailed overview of its content and line of argumentation, I will confine myself here to a brief overview of the main line of argumentation of the book.

At the core of Bolzano’s theory of grounding lies a set of general principles that express properties the relation exhibits according to him. An analysis of these principles, their interrelation, and their role in Bolzano’s methodology will form the main bulk of the book. It is heuristically useful to divide these principles into two classes. The first class contains principles that hold for every case of grounding, irrespective of any specific properties of the relata. These principles capture, as it were, minimal conditions an explanatory relation has to satisfy according to Bolzano. The second class consists of more specific principles that mostly apply only to truths from deductive or a priori sciences. Adapting a distinction by Kit Fine, I will call the former Bolzano’s pure logic of grounding and the latter his impure logic of grounding.(52) Before we can dive into the details of Bolzano’s theory, we will have to gain some familiarity with the nuts and bolts of his logical framework. This will be done in Chapter Two. Chapter Three then discusses Bolzano’s pure logic of grounding, while Chapter Four is concerned with the impure logic of grounding. Chapter Five wraps up and draws some connections to the recent debate on grounding. In what follows I will sketch the content of each of these chapters in a little more detail." (p. 16)

(52) Cf. (Fine [The Pure Logic of Ground. Review of Symbolic Logic 5(1) 1-25] 2012b). The justification for employing this distinction will be given further below.

14. ———. 2019. "Bolzano and Kim on Grounding and Unification." Synthese no. 196:2971-2999.

Abstract: "It is sometimes mentioned that Bernard Bolzano’swork on grounding anticipates many insights of the current debate on metaphysical grounding. The present paper discusses a certain part of Bolzano’s theory of grounding that has thus far not been discussed in the literature. This part does not so much anticipate what are nowadays common assumptions about grounding, but rather goes beyond them. Central to the discussion will be a thesis of Bolzano’s by which he tries to establish a connection between grounding and (deductive) unification. The paper spells out this thesis in detail and discusses the assumptions on which it rests. Next to this mainly historical aim, the paper also presents reasons why philosophers who are not interested in the historical Bolzano should find the thesis interesting by relating it to a certain view on unification and explanation that has been put forward by Kim. A final part of the paper provides a critical evaluation of the thesis against the background of current accounts of grounding."

15. ———. 2020. "Bolzano." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 76-89. New York: Routledge.

"This chapter provides an overview of Bernard Bolzano’s views about grounding. On Bolzano’s account, grounding is an objective priority relation among true propositions that has certain explanatory features.The chapter briefly highlights historical influences on Bolzano’s account of grounding and subsequently provides an overview of the most important aspects of it. As we shall see, Bolzano’s account resembles current accounts of metaphysical grounding in many respects and can thus easily be related to many positions in the current debate.This is going to be a main focus of this chapter.Apart from that, we shall investigate some Bolzanian ideas about grounding that differ from the current orthodoxy but may constitute interesting additions, challenges or inspirations for those working in the current debate." (p. 76)

16. Roski, Stefan, and Rumberg, Antje. 2016. "Simplicity and Economy in Bolzano’s Theory of Grounding." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 54:469-496.

Abstract: This paper is devoted to Bolzano’s theory of grounding (Abfolge) in his Wissenschaftslehre. Bolzanian grounding is an explanatory consequence relation that is frequently considered an ancestor of the notion of metaphysical grounding. The paper focuses on two principles that concern grounding in the realm of conceptual sciences and relate to traditionally widespread ideas on explanations: the principles, namely, that grounding orders conceptual truths from simple to more complex ones (Simplicity), and that it comes along with a certain theoretical economy among them (Economy). Being spelled out on the basis of Bolzano’s notion of deducibility (Ableitbarkeit), these principles are revealing for the question to what extent grounding can be considered a formal relation."

17. Roski, Stefan, and Rusnock, Paul. 2014. "Bolzano on Necessary Existence." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 96:320-359.

Abstract: "This paper is devoted to an examination of Bolzano’s notion of necessary existence, which has so far received relatively little attention in the literature.

We situate Bolzano’s ideas in their historical context and show how he proposed to correct various flaws of his predecessors’ definitions. Further, we relate Bolzano’s conception to his metaphysical and theological assumptions, arguing that some consequences of his definition which have been deemed counterintuitive by some of his interpreters turn out to be more reasonable given the broadly Leibnizian background of his metaphysics. Finally, we consider some difficulties that arise from Bolzano’s evolving views on freedom, which, at least in his early thought, was intimately linked with contingency. In an appendix, we discuss a recent debate on Bolzano’s notion of necessary truth between Textor and Rusnock that has some bearing on our overall line of interpretation of Bolzano’s notion of necessary existence."

References

Rusnock, P. 2012. “On Bolzano’s Conception of Necessary Truth”. British Journal of the History of Philosophy 20, 817-837.

Textor, M. 2013. “Bolzano on the Source of Necessity: A Reply to Rusnock”. British Journal of the History of Philosophy 21, 381-392.

18. Roski, Stefan, and Schnieder, Benjamin. 2016. "Gründe aller Arten? Der Anspruch auf Vereinheitlichung in Bolzanos Abfolgetheorie." In Geschichte - Gesellschaft - Geltung: XXIII. Deutscher Kongress Für Philosophie 28. September - 2. Oktober 2014 an der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster. Kolloquienbeiträge, edited by Quante, Michael, 891-912. Hamburg: Meiner.

19. ———. 2019. "Fundamental Truths and the Principle of Sufficient Reason in Bolzano's Theory of Grounding." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 57:675-706.

Abstract: "Bernard Bolzano developed his theory of grounding in opposition to the rationalists’ Principle of Sufficient Reason (the PSR). He argued that the PSR fails because there are fundamental, that is, ungrounded truths. The current paper examines Bolzano’s views on fundamentality, relating them to ongoing debates about grounding and fundamentality."

20. ———. 2022. "A Survey of Bolzano's Theory of Grounding." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 4-34. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Reality is not an unordered blob of phenomena. Instead, the diverse elements of reality are structured by a web of priorities so that not all of them are on a par: some elements hold in virtue of prior elements. The prior elements may be called grounds of the posterior elements that hold because of them; the relation connecting them may be called grounding.

This view, popular in contemporary metaphysics, is as ancient as philosophy itself. It is rooted in ideas that go back at least to Plato and Aristotle and that have remained influential throughout the entirety of Western philosophy until the twenty-first century.Bernard Bolzano's theory of grounding is a peak in the history of these ideas, as it exceeds most earlier theories in scope, depth, and rigour.

Moreover, it anticipates a range of ideas that take a prominent place in the contemporary metaphysical debate.

In this survey paper, we pursue three aims:

- First, we briefly sketch the origins of Bolzano's views on grounding and the role that grounding plays in his philosophy.

- Second, we give an overview of Bolzano's mature conception of grounding, focussing on its most detailed exposition, which can be found in his Theory of Science.

- Third, we introduce elements and terminology from Bolzano's conceptual framework that are required to understand his theory of grounding." (p. 4)

21. ———, eds. 2022. Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies. New York: Oxford University Press.

Table of Contents: Acknowledgements IX; List of Tables and Figures XI; List of Contributors XIII; Part I: Stefan Roski, Benjamin Schnieder: Introduction 3; 1. Preamble; 2. A Survey of Bolzano's Theory of Grounding 4; 3. On the Contents of This Volume 35; Part II: Bolzano's Writings on Grounding (in English Translations); 4. Early Period: Scientific Method and the Foundations of Mathematics 45; 5. Middle Period: Theology and Metaphysics 85; 6. Mature Period: A Theory of Grounding 107; Part III: Research Papers on Bolzano's Theory; 7. Mark Malink: Aristotle and Bolzano on Grounding 221; 8. Kevin Mulligan: Logic, Logical Norms, and (Normative) Grounding 244, 9. Kit Fine:Some Remarks on Bolzano on Ground 276; 10. Mark Textor: Grounding, Simplicity, and Repetition 301; 11. Francesca Poggiolesi: Bolzano, ( the Appropriate) Relevant Logic, and Grounding Rules for Implication 319; 12. Edgar Morscher: The Grounds of Moral 'Truths' 343; 13. Paul Rusnock: Grounding in Practice: Bolzano's Purely Analytic Proof in Light of the Contributions 364; 14. Marc Lange: Bolzano, the Parallelogram of Forces, and Scientific Explanation 394; 15. Benjamin Schnieder: A Fundamental Being: Bolzano's Cosmological Argument and Its Leibnizian Roots 418; Glossary of German Terms 445; Name Index 447; Subject Index 450-458.

"Premble: One of the liveliest debates in contemporary philosophy concerns the notions of grounding and metaphysical explanation. Many consider these notions to be of prime importance for metaphysics and the philosophy of explanation, or even for philosophy in general, and lament that they had been neglected for far too long.

Although the current debate about grounding is of recent origin, its central ideas have a long and rich history in Western philosophy, going back at least to the works of Plato and Aristotle.(1) Bernard Bolzano's theory of grounding, developed in the first half of the nineteenth century, is a peak in the history of these ideas. On Bolzano's account, grounding lies at the heart of a broad conception of explanation encompassing both causal and non-causal cases. Not only does his theory exceed most earlier theories in scope, depth, and rigour, it also anticipates a range of ideas that take a prominent place in the contemporary debate. But despite the richness and modernity of his theory, it is known only by a comparatively small circle of philosophers predominantly consisting of Bolzano scholars.

This book is meant to make Bolzano's ideas on grounding accessible to a broader audience. The book gathers translations of Bolzano's most important writings on these issues, including material that has hitherto not been available in English. Additionally, it contains a survey article on Bolzano's conception (see Chapter 2) and nine research papers critically assessing elements of the theory and/or exploring its broad range of applications in Bolzano's philosophy and beyond (for a more detailed overview of the book's contents, see Chapter 3)." (p. 3)

1 See Raven, M. (ed.) 2020. [The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding. Oxford and New York: Routledge], chs 1-6.

22. ———. 2022. "On the Contents of This Volume." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 35-42. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Bolzano's published works do not contain any self-standing treatise on grounding.

What comes closest to this would be a part in his Theory of Science ( WL II, §§198-222) that is exclusively dedicated to the topic of grounding. But for a full apprehension of Bolzano's views on grounding one has to take into account several other passages-scattered across the Theory of Science, but also across many of his other writings-in which he illuminates his ideas on grounding and/or applies them to a broad range of philosophical issues. Moreover, a complete picture of Bolzano's views should also take into account how some of his ideas significantly changed over the years. So in this book, we not only present the central

part on grounding from the Theory of Science, but also gather a selection of further passages on grounding, taking into accounts texts from Bolzano's entire philosophical career." (p. 35)

23. ———. 2022. "[Bolzano's Writings on Grounding] Early Period: Scientific Method and the Foundations of Mathematics." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 45-84. New York: Oxford University Press.

"This chapter contains translations of excerpts from three early texts by Bolzano (written around 1810):

- the booklet Contributions to a Better-Grounded Presentation of Mathematics (published 1810);

- the unpublished manuscript Aetiology;

- the unpublished manuscript General Mathematics." (p. 45)

24. ———. 2022. "[Bolzano's Writings on Grounding] Middle Period: Theology and Metaphysics." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 85-106. New York: Oxford University Press.

"This chapter contains translations of excerpts from three texts by Bolzano: the Athanasia, the Treatise of the Science of Religion, and his Philosophical Notebooks." (p. 85)

25. ———. 2022. "[Bolzano's Writings on Grounding] Mature Period: A Theory of Grounding." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 107-218. New York: Oxford University Press.

"This chapter contains translations of texts in which Bolzano develops and applies his mature theory of grounding. The heart of the chapter are excerpts from Bolzano's main work Theory of Science, where he gives the most comprehensive account of his conception of grounding and discusses the role of grounding in several philosophical areas ranging from the methodology of science, to the philosophy of causation, to metaphysics. In addition to that, the chapter includes a brief excerpt from a survey of Bolzano's Theory of Science and his Theory of the Science of Religion, in which Bolzano gives a succinct summary of central ideas of his mature theory. Finally, the chapter includes the complete translation of Bolzano's essay What Is Philosophy? which defends a ground-theoretical conception of philosophy." (p. 107)

26. Rumberg, Antje. 2013. "Bolzano’s Concept of Grounding (Abfolge) Against the Background of Normal Proofs." Review of Symbolic Logic no. 6:424-459.

Abstract: "In this paper, I provide a thorough discussion and reconstruction of Bernard Bolzano’s theory of grounding and a detailed investigation into the parallels between his concept of grounding and current notions of normal proofs. Grounding (Abfolge) is an objective ground-consequence relation among true propositions that is explanatory in nature. The grounding relation plays a crucial role in Bolzano’s proof-theory, and it is essential for his views on the ideal buildup of scientific theories. Occasionally, similarities have been pointed out between Bolzano’s ideas on grounding and cut-free proofs in Gentzen’s sequent calculus. My thesis is, however, that they bear an even stronger resemblance to the normal natural deduction proofs employed in proof-theoretic semantics in the tradition of Dummett and Prawitz."

27. Rusnock, Paul. 2022. "Grounding in Practice. Bolzano's Purely Analytic Proof in Light of the Contributions." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 364-393. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Introduction

Bolzano's best-known mathematical work, the Rein analytischer Beweis of 1817, promises to deliver a 'purely analytic' proof of a theorem from the theory of equations.(1) He also claims that this proof is not a mere certification (Gewissmachung), but rather a ground-revealing proof (Begrundung) of this truth.

In this paper I will undertake to explain and assess these claims against the background of his early account of mathematical method and the relation of grounding, with occasional reference to the later development of his thought. I begin with an overview of the Contributions to a Better-Grounded Presentation of Mathematics,(2) which presents Bolzano's early views on these and related matters." (p. 364)

(1) Bolzano 1817a =RB. English translation in Russ 2004 [The Mathematical Works of Bernard Bolzano, edited and translated by Steve B. Russ. Oxford: Oxford University Press]

(2) Bolzano 1810 = BD; English translation in Russ 2004

28. Sandstad, Petter. 2024. "Grounding and Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics." In Grounding in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Normore, Calvin G. and Schmid, Stephan, 65-81. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Abstract Fabrice Correia and Benjamin Schnieder suggest that Aristotle’s account of formal causation in the Posterior Analytics is a type of grounding. While there are many similarities, I will argue that what Aristotle had in mind differs from contemporary standard accounts of grounding. First, I give a brief account of formal causation as presented in the Posterior Analytics. Second, I show that formal causation differs from grounding in at least two crucial respects. (1) Formal causation involves a priority relation between different ontological categories, namely, states of affairs and substantial forms. In allowing for transcategorial grounding, Aristotle’s theory is similar to that of Jonathan Schaffer and Bernard Bolzano. (2) Formal causation is not transitive, both because there are no chains of formal causes, and because Aristotle is interested only in the full and ultimate, yet at the same time immediate, ground. There are two further differences: Aristotle does not think that a conjunction is always grounded in its conjuncts, nor that a universal quantification is always grounded in its instances. His theory is in some sense narrower than grounding, in that it allows only for full immediate grounds. In another sense it is closer to truthmaking, both in that truthmaking is transcategorial and that it does not allow for chains. However, Aristotle’s formal cause should rather be seen as a “beingmaker,” since truthmaking has to do with linguistic entities and truthbearers. Aristotle’s formal cause thus fits well into the framework of grounding, as an immediate full ground, but fits poorly with the standard claims about grounding."

29. Schaffer, Jonathan. 2009. "On What Grounds What." In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, edited by Chalmers, David, Manley, David and Wasserman, Ryan, 347-383. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

"On the now dominant Quinean view, metaphysics is about what there is. Metaphysics so conceived is concerned with such questions as whether properties exist, whether meanings exist, and whether numbers exist. I will argue for the revival of a more traditional Aristotelian view, on which metaphysics is about what grounds what. Metaphysics so revived does not bother asking whether properties, meanings, and numbers exist. Of course they do! The question is whether or not they are fundamental.

In §1 I will distinguish three conceptions of metaphysical structure. In §2 I will defend the Aristotelian view, coupled with a permissive line on existence. In §3 I will further develop a neo-Aristotelian framework, built around primitive grounding relations." (p. 347)

30. Schechtman, Anat. 2023. "Modern." In The Routledge Handbook of Essence in Philosophy, edited by Koslicki, Kathrin and Raven, Michael J., 41-52. New York: Routledge.

"The early modern period in the history of philosophy—roughly, from the middle of the seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth century—was a time of dramatic shifts in philosophical positions and traditions. At the beginning of this period, the Aristotelian paradigm that shaped most medieval philosophy was still dominant. But early modern thinkers increasingly subjected it to scrutiny, criticism, and creative reinterpretation.

Naturally, discussions of essence by central figures in the period exemplify this dynamic.

My aim here is to survey some of the most important developments, highlighting the ways in which early modern thinkers gradually leave the medieval Aristotelian tradition behind.

A central theme is how differing conceptions of the scope of essence lead to differing conceptions of its theoretical roles." (p. 41)

31. ———. 2024. "Modality and Essence in Early Modern Philosophy: Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke." In Modality: A History, edited by Melamed, Yitzhak Y. and Newlands, Samuel, 61-84. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Philosophers in the 17th century engaged in a range of debates about modality, including its nature (what it is for something to be necessary, possible, or impossible), scope (what is necessary, possible, or impossible), and knowability (how, if at all, we can know modal facts). They also debated the explanation or ground of modality: that in virtue of which something is necessary, possible, or impossible. My interest in this essay is to explore this latter debate, and to tentatively defend two theses about it.

The first thesis is that for central philosophers in the period, a range of important modal facts are grounded in essences. That is, what explains why something is necessary, possible, or impossible is that some entities have the essences they do— where an entity’s essence, as will be discussed further below, is what it is to be that entity. The second thesis is that as the 17th century progresses, we witness growing reluctance to admit that some facts are necessary, due to growing reluctance to admit that certain properties belong to essences, or even that essences exist." (pp.61-62, a note omitted)

32. Schmid, Stephan. 2024. "Two Kinds of Grounding? Suárez on Natural Resultance and Foundation." In Grounding in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Normore, Calvin G. and Schmid, Stephan, 281-306. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "In contemporary metaphysics the notion of grounding plays a crucial role, and though its precise meaning is debated, there seems to be a widespread consensus that grounding is the same in all its typical instances. In this chapter I show that the late scholastic philosopher Francisco Suárez (1549–1617) can be seen as challenging this consensus since he gives an altogether different account of the way vital capacities are “grounded” in their underlying soul and the way the truth of a thought is “grounded” in its object: while a vital capacity is something over and above the soul, from which it “naturally results,” the truth of a thought is no additional entity apart from the thought and its object, in which it is “founded.” So, in addition to contributing two intriguing accounts of vital capacities and truth, Suárez’s theories of natural resultance and foundation make an interesting case for the possibility that grounding might not be a single and unified form of metaphysical dependence as contemporary metaphysicians seem to presuppose."

33. Schnieder, Benjamin. 2014. "Bolzano on Causation and Grounding." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 52:309-337.

"This paper is an exploration of Bolzano’s views on causation, which have not been thoroughly examined yet. The paper reconstructs Bolzano’s position, with a focus on his analysis of the concept of causation, on its ontological presuppositions, and on how he relates causation to his theory of grounding.(1) A comparison with standard positions from the contemporary debate on causation will prove his views to be quite original. Moreover, they are a valuable addition to the more recent debate on metaphysical grounding,(2) in which grounding is sometimes informally described as something like metaphysical causation with the exact connection of the two notions seldom being elaborated. Bolzano’s theory explicitly addresses the issue and takes an innovative stance. However, it will also be revealed that his account is beset with problems. But even if his position should ultimately not be tenable, discussing it can deepen our understanding of problems raised in the current debates about causation and grounding and shed new light on them." (p. 309)

(1) The paper concentrates on general conceptual and metaphysical issues of causation. It will not discuss Bolzano’s views on the epistemology of causation, nor his views on detailed matters of fact perhaps better to be treated in physics and its philosophy (such as the question of how causal powers are actually distributed in the world, what kind of basic causal powers there are, etc.).

(2) See e.g. Rosen, “Metaphysical Dependence”; Schaffer, “What Grounds”; and Fine, “Guide to Ground.”

References

Fine, Kit. “Guide to Ground.” In Metaphysical Grounding, edited by F. Correia and B. Schnieder, 37–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Rosen, Gideon. “Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction.” In Modality, edited by Bob Hale and Avrid Hoffmann, 109–35. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Schaffer, Jonathan. “On What Grounds What.” In Metametaphysics, edited by David Chalmers et al., 347–383. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

34. ———. 2022. "A Fundamental Being. Bolzano's Cosmological Argument and Its Leibnizian Roots." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 418-443. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Bernard Bolzano believed he can offer an a priori proof of the existence of a fundamental entity, relying on his conception of grounding. It seems fair to say that the argument is a philosophical gem, whether or not one endorses it in its entirety (no vulgar suspense: I will argue we should not follow in Bolzano's footsteps here). Since the conception of grounding Bolzano works with is, moreover, remarkably modern in spirit, his argument can be treated and discussed like a contribution to the contemporary debate about grounding and fundamentality. This paper will reconstruct Bolzano's reasoning, explain its historical context, and put his argument under scrutiny." (p. 418)

35. Schnieder, Benjamin, and Werner, Jonas. 2021. "An Aristotelian Approach to Existential Dependence." In Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation, edited by Jansen, Ludger and Sandstad, Petter, 151-174. New York: Routlege.

"5 Conclusion

We think that there are different, legitimate definitions of concepts that can go by the name of existential dependence, suited for different theoretical purposes. But we also argued that a definition in terms of grounding or metaphysical explanation, the basic idea of which can be traced back to Aristotle's Categories (Section 1), is particularly interesting for ontological inquiries: it yields a notion of dependence which is the converse of productive priority, so that if an entity depends on another, the latter helps bring about the existence of the dependent entity (Section 2).

We discussed the role that conceptual explanations play for such a notion of dependence, and in metaphysics more generally (Section 3). And we defended the definition of dependence in terms of grounding from some recent criticisms (Section 4). We hope to have thereby shown that the definition yields a theoretically fruitful concept that deserves to be in the standard toolkit of ontology." (p. 172)

36. Shatalov, Keren Wilson. 2024. "Aristotle on Non-Substantial Particulars, Fundamentality, and Change." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie:1-31.

Abstract: "There is a debate about whether particular properties are for Aristotle non-recurrent and trope-like individuals or recurrent universals. I argue that Physics I.7 provides evidence that he took non-substantial particulars to be neither; they are instead non-recurrent modes. Physics I.7 also helps show why this matters.

Particular properties must be individual modes in order for Aristotle to preserve three key philosophical commitments: that objects of ordinary experience are primary substances, that primary substances undergo genuine change, and that primary substances are ontologically fundamental."

37. Silverman, Allan. 2013. "Grounding, Analogy, and Aristotle’s Critique of Plato’s Idea of the Good." In Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics, edited by Feser, Edward, 102-120. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

"In what follows, I want to examine some ways in which Schaffer, Fine and Aristotle think about grounding and dependence. In Section 1, I will focus on some problems arising from the manner in which the contemporary metaphysicians characterize their notion of ground. In Section 2, I will explore Aristotle’s ideas of focal meaning and especially analogy, as developed in remarks on energeia in Metaphysics Theta and his criticism of Plato’s Idea of the Good in Nicomachean Ethics I.6, in the hope that they may help us understand how to think about the relation between ground and the various grounding relations." (pp. 102-103)

38. Sirkel, Riin. 2018. "Essence and Cause: Making Something Be What It Is." Discipline Filosofiche no. 28:89-112.

Abstract: "Aristotle frequently describes essence as a “cause” or “explanation” (αἴτιον or αἰτία), thus ascribing to essence some sort of causal or explanatory role. This explanatory role is often explicated by scholars in terms of essence “making the thing be what it is” or “making it the very thing that it is”. I argue that this is problematic, at least on the assumption that “making” expresses an explanatory relation, since it violates certain formal features of explanation (especially the requirement that the explanans be distinct from the explanandum). I then consider whether Aristotle is vulnerable to this problem by examining the explanatory role of essence in Posterior Analytics and Metaphysics Z 17."

39. ———. 2024. "Ontological Priority and Grounding in Aristotle’s Categories." In Grounding in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Normore, Calvin G. and Schmid, Stephan, 33-63. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "In the Categories, Aristotle intends to ascribe to particular substances ontological priority over all other things, but it is far from obvious what notion of priority would make this plausible. This question is the focus of my paper. I will examine what has been the standard account of his notion of ontological priority—the “modal-existential” account—and the problems it entails, as well as some scholarly alternatives to it. I will defend my own alternative account—the “explan atory-existential” account—which addresses the problems that arise for other proposed accounts, and will make plausible Aristotle’s claim that particular substances have priority over all other things. I will argue that he puts forth this notion of priority in Categories 12, and that it bears a similarity to the notion of grounding as discussed in contemporary metaphysics."

40. Stang, Nicholas F. 2019. "A Guide to Ground in Kant’s Lectures on Metaphysics." In Kant’s “Lectures on Metaphysics”: A Critical Guide, edited by Fugate, Courtney D., 74-101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) says that everything has a reason that fully explains it. Leibniz expresses the PSR in Latin and French, respectively, as the principle that everything has a ratio or raison. When German philosophers of the eighteenth century, heavily influenced by the Leibnizian writings available to them, formulated similar ideas in their native tongue, they translated ratio as Grund and expressed the PSR accordingly as: Everything has a ground that fully explains it. This Principle of Sufficient Ground (Satz des zureichenden Grundes) or PSG is, so to speak, the Leibnizian PSR translated into German."

(...)

"It comes as no surprise then that Kant, steeped as he was in German rationalism and its debates, would extensively discuss the PSG and the notion of ground (Grund) in the metaphysics lectures he gave virtually every semester at the University of Konigsberg from 1755 until his retirement from teaching in 1796.(1)"

(...)

"While scholars have extensively discussed Kant's treatment of the PSG in the Antinomies chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason,(2) and, more recently, his relation to German rationalist debates about it,(3) relatively little has been said about the exact notion of ground that figures in the PSG. My aim in this chapter is to explain Kant's discussion of ground in the lectures and to relate it, where appropriate, to his published discussions of ground." (pp. 74-75)

(1) For an overview of Kant's lecture activity see Karl Ameriks's and Steve Naragon's Introduction to (Kant 1997) and the website maintained by Naragon: https://users.manchester.edu/FacStaff/SSNaragon/Kant/.

(3) E.g., Hogan (2010), Fugate (2014a).

References

Kant, Immanuel. 1997. Lectures on Metaphysics. Edited by Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon. Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fugate, Courtney D. 2014a. "Alexander Baumgarten on the principle of sufficient reason." Philosophica - Revista Do Departamento de Filosofia da Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa, 44: 127-47.

Hogan, Desmond. 2010. "Kant's Copernican Turn and the Rationalist Tradition." In: Guyer, Paul (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

41. ———. 2024. "Modality in Kant and Hegel." In Modality: A History, edited by Melamed, Yitzhak Y. and Newlands, Samuel, 171-206. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Kant and Hegel differ from all these traditional and contemporary views, and from one another, concerning the unity of modality.

According to Kant, modal concepts (categories, as we will see) do not describe properties of objects, but instead express the relation of concepts of objects to our capacities for cognition. The role of the modal categories is to express the relation of a concept of an object to the matter and form of our cognitive capacities: possibility applies to concepts that agree with the form of the relevant cognitive capacity; actuality applies to concepts that agree with the matter of the capacity; and necessity applies to concepts that follow from the matter of the capacity given its form. Since our capacity for cognition has two “stems,” sensibility and understanding, this generates a distinction between two kinds of modality: logical modality, which expresses the relation of a concept to the form and matter of the understanding alone, and real modality, which expresses the relation of a concept to the form and matter of understanding and sensibility. What unifies the modal concepts— what makes each of the modal categories modal— is that they all express a manner of relating to our cognitive capacities." (pp. 172-173)

42. Steigerwald, Joan. 2015. "Ground and Grounding: The Nature of Things in Schelling’s Philosophy." Symposium no. 19:176-197.

Abstract: This paper examines the notions of ground and grounding across several of Schelling’s works, from the philosophy of nature, through transcendental idealism and identity philosophy, to the Freedom essay and The Ages of the World. It contends that Schelling repeatedly returns to the same problematic, that each attempt to establish a foundation for philosophy is inscribed with the particular and the concrete, so that the work of grounding is also an ungrounding.

It reads the different expressions of Schelling’s philosophy against and through one another, arguing that each offers both a foundation and critique of its others."

43. Stern, Robert. 2016. "Kreines on the Problem of Metaphysics in Kant and Hegel." Hegel Bulletin:1-15.

Abstract: "This article offers a discussion of James Kreines’s book Reason in the World: Hegel’s Metaphysics and Its Philosophical Appeal. While broadly sympathetic to Kreines’s ‘concept thesis’ as a conceptual realist account of Hegel, the article contrasts two Kantian arguments for transcendental idealism to which Hegel’s position may be seen as a response—the argument from synthetic a priori knowledge and the argument from the dialectic of reason—and explores the implications of Kreines’s commitment to the latter over the former."

44. Stratmann, Joe. 2018. "Kant, Grounding, and Things in Themselves." Philosophers' Imprint no. 18:1-21.

"Despite their differences, proponents of metaphysical one- and two-object interpretations alike claim that appearances are grounded in things in themselves. Call this claim the transcendental grounding thesis." (pp. 1-2)

(...)

"A significant difficulty in making sense of the transcendental grounding thesis is that it is prima facie unclear how to characterize Kant’s account of grounding — an account which has yet to be systematically explored in the secondary literature. My strategy in this paper is to begin by elucidating some core features of this account. This will enable us to understand some of the conditions under which different specific kinds of grounding relations obtain. This will, in turn, help to adjudicate the issue of which specific kind of grounding relation obtains between things in themselves and appearances, as well as the dispute concerning the distinctness of things in themselves and appearances." (p. 2, a note omitted)

45. Tahko, Tuomas E. 2013. "Metaphysics as the First Philosophy." In Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics, edited by Feser, Edward, 49-67. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.

"Introduction: Aristotle talks about “the first philosophy” throughout Metaphysics – and it is metaphysics that Aristotle considers to be the first philosophy – but he never makes it entirely clear what first philosophy consists of. What he does make clear is that the first philosophy is not to be understood as a collection of topics that should be studied in advance of any other topics.

In fact, Aristotle seems to have thought that the topics of Metaphysics are to be studied after those in Physics (Cohen 2009). In what sense could metaphysics be the first philosophy? Let me take the liberty of applying the technical jargon of contemporary metaphysics to answer: The first philosophy is an account of what is, or what it means to be, fundamental.

Things that are the most fundamental are not grounded in anything more fundamental, they are ontologically independent. This does not necessarily mean that first philosophy attempts to list the most fundamental things, although this could be a part of the discipline. Rather, the study of fundamentality focuses on giving an account of what it is for something to be fundamental. So, first philosophy studies a certain type of being – the fundamental type, and it may also involve an account of which (kind of)

things are, or could be, fundamental." (p. 49)

46. Tatzel, Armin. 2002. "Bolzano's Theory of Ground and Consequence." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 43:1-25.

"The aim of the paper is to present and evaluate Bolzano's theory of grounding, that is, his theory of the concept expressed and the relation brought into play by 'because'. In the first part of the paper (Sections 1-4) the concept of grounding is distinguished from and related to three other concepts: the concept of an epistemic reason}, the concept of causality, and the concept of deducibility (i.e., logical consequence). In its second part (Sections 5-7) Bolzano's positive account of grounding is reconstructed in axiomatic form and critically discussed."

47. ———. 2003. "Bolzano on Grounding." In The Logica Yearbook 2002, edited by Childers, Timothy and Majer, Ondrej, 245-258. Prague: Filosofia.

48. Textor, Mark. 2022. "Grounding, Simplicity, and Repetition." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 301-318. New York: Oxford University Press.

"The relata of the grounding relation are true propositions (Sätze an sich). Let's start therefore by getting clear about those properties of propositions that are of importance for the theory of grounding.

The notion of a proposition cannot be defined, but Bolzano gives his readers pointers towards the intended concept. For example, take a non-indexical sentence like '2 + 2 = 4'. Its meaning is a proposition: something which is either true or false and never neither.(2) Not all sentences will express a proposition or express a proposition fully, but some do and this will, one hopes, suffice for Bolzano's purposes." (p. 301, a note omitted)

(2) ML, 47 [MM-EX, 40-1].

References

Bolzano, B. 1975. 'Von der mathematischen Lehrart'. In BGA [Bolzano Gesamtausgabe] IIA.7, pp. 46-98. [ML].

Translation in On the Mathematical Method and Correspondence with Exner by Rolf George and Paul Rusnock, Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2004, pp. 39-83. [MM-EX]

49. Thom, Paul. 2024. "Ground in Avicenna’s Logic." In Grounding in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Normore, Calvin G. and Schmid, Stephan, 83-102. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Kit Fine articulates a notion of ground as a type of explanation by metaphysical constitution—a notion that happens to fit Avicenna’s conception of essence fairly closely. Fine sets out from ideas that are basic to the Aristotelian tradition of which Avicenna was a part. However, despite the common Aristotelian heritage, there are also points in the further development of the notion of ground where Fine and Avicenna make different, and opposed, theoretical choices. Underlying these choices are the two thinkers’ different conceptions of logic."

50. Thomas, Christine J. 2014. "Plato on Metaphysical Explanation: Does ‘Participating’ Mean Nothing?" Studia Philosophica Estonica no. 7:168-194.

Contents: Riin Sirkel, Tuomas E. Tahko, Editorial 1; Justin Zylstra: Dependence and Fundamentality 5; Margaret Cameron: Is Ground Said-in-Many-Ways? 29; Pablo Carnino: On the Reduction of Grounding to Essence 56; Ryan Christensen: Essence, Essence, and Essence 72; Lucas Angioni: Aristotle on Necessary Principles and on Explaining X Trough the Essence of X 88; Kathrin Koslicki: The Causal Priority of Form in Aristotle 113; Michail Peramatzis: Sameness, Definition, and Essence 142; Christine J. Thomas: Plato on Metaphysical Explanation: Does 'Participating' Mean Nothing? 168; Travis Dumsday: E.J. Lowe on the Unity Problem 195-218.

51. van den Berg, Hein. 2014. Kant on Proper Science: Biology in the Critical Philosophy and the Opus postumum. Dordrecht: Springer.

Chapter 2: Kant’s Conception of Proper Science, pp. 15-52.

52. Viltanioti, Irini–Fotini. 2012. "Powers as the Fundamental Entities in Philolaus' Ontology." Journal of Ancient Philosophy no. 6:1-31.

Abstract: "The main claim of this paper is that powers are the fundamental entities in Philolaus’ ontology.

Limiters (περαίνοντα) and unlimiteds (άπειρα) are to be respectively understood as the power to limit and the power to be limited. As powers to do something, limiters and unlimiteds are different from their individual bearers, namely the “things that are” (ἐόντα). Number or harmony, that is the power to fit together, makes, along with the basic powers to limit and to be limited, things what they are. Philolaus’ φύσις should be understood as the outcome of the working of the three other powers, namely περαίνοντα, άπειρα and άρμονία coming together and coming to be realized (άρμόχθη). In other words, φύσις is the state that results from the realization of the three fundamental powers. Philolaus’ ἐόντα are to be considered as coming out of the four primary powers and of what Philolaus refers to as έστώ. Thus, Philolaus appears to be one of the first power structuralists."

53. Vucu, Simona. 2024. "Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and John Duns Scotus on the Causation of Proper and Inseparable Accidents." In Grounding in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Normore, Calvin G. and Schmid, Stephan, 147-176. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Medieval philosophers such as Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus defended the possibility of what I call self-agency, the view that substances bring about in themselves their own necessary and inseparable features. In this paper, I propose that self-agency should be understood as an attempt to clarify the relationship between what is necessary but still accidental, and what is essential. I explore this view in the context of two objections against the possibility of self-agency: a general one, according to which the relationship between what is essential and what is necessary (but accidental) should not be envisaged in causal terms; and a more specific one, namely, that there is no need to consider this relationship to be a case of efficient causation. Against the first objection, I show that in the thirteenth century medieval philosophers envisaged this relationship in causal terms because of the way they conceived the ontological status of accidents. Against the second objection, I show that while Henry admits the possibility of self-agency as a consequence of his view of the nature of causal powers, Scotus thinks that without self-agency one cannot account for why proper and inseparable accidents are necessarily related to their subject of inherence."

54. Wang, Jennifer. 2016. "Fundamentality and Modal Freedom." Philosophical Perspectives no. 30:397-418.

"The claim that fundamentality entails modal freedom (FEMF) may seem attractive.

After all, if an entity ‘need not look outside itself’, how could it modally depend on anything else? Nonetheless, the road from fundamentality to modal freedom is not straightforward." (p. 397)

(...)

"My aim is not to assess these competing views, about which much has been written. Rather, I will examine the positive reasons that a defender of FEMF may give in favor of her thesis. I begin the next section by saying more about the notion of fundamentality and the relevant types of fundamental entities. In section 3, I give a more careful characterization of modal freedom. I then examine reasons to believe FEMF by way of ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ routes in sections 4 and 5. Direct routes appeal to the supposed nature of fundamentality, whereas indirect routes make use of principles that appear to be motivated for independent reasons, such as Hume’s dictum that there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. I argue that none of these routes provide motivation for FEMF beyond the intuitions that fundamental entities are ‘self-sufficient’ or ‘need not look outside themselves’. In fact, as I will suggest in section 6, there are positive reasons to hold that the fundamental entities are not modally free." (pp. 397-398)

55. Ward, Thomas M. 2024. "The Incoherence of Ockham’s Ethics." In Grounding in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Normore, Calvin G. and Schmid, Stephan, 225-237. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Ockham thinks that God can command creatures to hate him. He also thinks that it is right to obey any divine command. This paper investigates what it is, for Ockham, to obey divine commands, and what makes it right to do so. The most plausible explanations of what makes it right to obey divine commands are God’s goodness and God’s power. The textual evidence in Ockham points towards both, but I judge the preponderance of the evidence to lean in favour of grounding our obligations to obey God on God’s goodness. But whichever of the two we pick, we end up with an incoherent view. Given some things Ockham says, it should not be possible for Ockham’s God to make it right to hate God, yet Ockham also says that this is possible. I see no way to rescue Ockham’s ethics from incoherence."

56. Watkins, Eric. 2021. "What real progress has metaphysics made since the time of Kant? Kant and the metaphysics of grounding." Synthese no. 198:3213–3229.

Abstract: "This paper argues that, despite appearances to the contrary, Kant and contemporary analytic metaphysicians are interested in the same kind of metaphysical dependence relation that finds application in a range of contexts and that is today commonly referred to as grounding. It also argues that comparing and contrasting Kant’s and contemporary metaphysicians’ accounts of this relation proves useful for both Kant scholarship and for contemporary metaphysics. The analyses provided by contemporary metaphysicians can be used to shed light on Kant’s understanding of what a real conditioning relation is, while Kant’s perspective on the practice and goals of metaphysics sheds light on several claims and issues at home in the contemporary debate."

57. Williams, Heath, and Byrne, Thomas. 2022. "Husserl’s Theory of Scientific Explanation: A Bolzanian Inspired Unificationist Account " Husserl Studies no. 38:171-196.

Abstract: "Husserl’s early picture of explanation in the sciences has never been completely provided. This lack represents an oversight, which we here redress. In contrast to currently accepted interpretations, we demonstrate that Husserl does not adhere to

the much maligned deductive-nomological (DN) model of scientific explanation.

Instead, via a close reading of early Husserlian texts, we reveal that he presents a unificationist account of scientific explanation. By doing so, we disclose that Husserl’s philosophy of scientific explanation is no mere anachronism. It is, instead, tenable and relevant. We discuss how Husserl and other contemporary thinkers draw theoretical inspiration from the same source—namely, Bernard Bolzano. Husserl’s theory of scientific explanation shares a common language and discusses the same themes as, for example, Phillip Kitcher and Kit Fine. To advance our novel reading, we discuss Husserl’s investigations of grounding, inter-lawful explanation, intramathematical explanation, and scientific unification."

58. Yrjönsuuri, Mikko. 2024. "Valid on Formal Grounds." In Grounding in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Normore, Calvin G. and Schmid, Stephan, 251-280. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Could formal logic be a naturalist field of study? This paper analyses how medieval logicians committed to Aristotelian naturalism thought about the metaphysical grounding of logic. As they assumed, it is at least sometimes a fact that a conclusion follows from some premises; here it is questioned how they thought this fact, or logical validity, to be grounded. The early medieval Arabic tradition (e.g. Ibn Sinā) thought in a way comparable to Immanuel Kant’s position that logic is a formal study of intellectual structures, but given their metaphysical realism concerning universals, such intellectual structures may be taken to be natural parts of Aristotelian metaphysics. On the other hand, the early medieval Latin tradition (e.g. Abelard) thought in a way comparable to Bernard Bolzano that the subject matter logic studies is not the intellectual realm, but essentially linguistic facts, taking language to be a natural phenomenon. Robert Kilwardby endeavoured to combine these traditions, but turns out to have taken a stance much closer to Kant, and to have given little importance to linguistic facts in his account of how syllogistic validity and thereby validity in general is grounded. At the same time, Kilwardby’s work enhanced the conception of the formality of logic, although he thought that only the syllogistic form is a properly logical form. Analysis of John Buridan’s logic shows that he had a generalized conception of logical form that was tightly knit with linguistic form as it is found in mental language, which he took to be a metaphysically natural domain. Unlike Kant and Bolzano, both Kilwardby and Buridan can be viewed as naturalists as concerns the study of formal logic, inasmuch as they thought that logical validity is grounded in facts that their Aristotelian metaphysics would consider natural."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on ontological dependence: A- K

Bibliography

1. Armstrong, Joshua, and Stanley, Jason. 2011. "Singular Thoughts and Singular Propositions." Philosophical Studies no. 154:205-222.

Abstract: "A singular thought about an object o is one that is directly about o in a characteristic way—grasp of that thought requires having some special epistemic relation to the object o, and the thought is ontologically dependent on o. One account of the nature of singular thought exploits a Russellian Structured Account of Propositions, according to which contents are represented by means of structured n-tuples of objects, properties, and functions. A proposition is singular, according to this framework, if and only if it contains an object as a constituent. One advantage of the framework of Russellian Structured propositions is that it promises to provide a metaphysical basis for the notion of a singular thought about an object, grounding it in terms of constituency. In this paper, we argue that the attempt to ground the peculiar features of singular thoughts in terms of metaphysical constituency fails, and draw some consequences of our discussion for other debates."

2. Asay, Jamin. 2020. "Truth(making) by Convention." American Philosophical Quarterly no. 57:117-128.

Abstract: "A common account of the distinction between analytic and synthetic truths is that while the former are true solely in virtue of meaning, the latter are true also in virtue of the way of the world. Quine famously disputed this characterization, and his skepticism over the analytic/synthetic distinction has cast a long shadow. Against this skepticism, I argue that the common account comes close to the truth, and that truthmaker theory in particular offers the resources for providing a compelling account of the distinction that preserves the basic ideas behind it, and avoids the standard criticisms facing the distinction. In particular, I argue that analytic truths are truths that ontologically depend in no way whatsoever upon what exists."

3. Azzouni, Jody. 2012. "Simple Metaphysics and “Ontological Dependence”." In Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality edited by Correia, Fabrice and Schnieder, Benjamin, 234-253. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"I 've argued in other work (Azzouni 2010a, 2010b) that ordinary usage admits only two ontological statuses: existence and non-existence.

Further, only things that exist have properties. Truths about those things, therefore, correspondingly correctly describe those properties, and attribute those properties to those things. Anything that doesn’t exist has no properties, for anything that doesn’t exist isn’t in any way at all. Therefore: no thing that doesn’t exist can be talked about (because there is nothing to talk about). That these sound like evident truisms, and indeed, that they sounded like evident truisms to Plato and Parmenides, isn’t an indication that these are constraints on the meaning of words like “exist” and “nothing,” or phrases like “there is,” and “no thing.” Nothing that strong follows. It is an indication, however, of an aspect of our ordinary understanding of metaphysics, of our ordinary and fundamental understanding of what there is and what there isn’t." (p. 235)

References

Azzouni, J. 2010a. ‘Ontology and the Word “Exist”: Uneasy Relations’, Philosophia Mathematica 18, 1: 74–101

___ 2010b. Talking About Nothing: Numbers, Hallucinations and Fictions. Oxford University Press

4. Banega, Horacio. 2012. "Formal Ontology as an Operative Tool in the Theories of the Objects of the Life-World: Stumpf, Husserl and Ingarden." Symposium no. 16:64-88.

Abstract: "It is accepted that certain mereological concepts and phenomenological conceptualisations presented in Carl Stumpf’s Über den psychologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung and Tonpsychologie played an important role in the development of the Husserlian formal ontology. In the third Logical Investigation, which displays the formal relations between part and whole and among parts that make out a whole, one of the main concepts of contemporary formal ontology and metaphysics is settled: ontological dependence or foundation (Fundierung). My main objective is to display Stumpf’s concepts of partial content, independent content, spatial wholes, sound wholes, and the different kinds of connection among parts, in particular, fusion (Verschmelzung). Second, I will show how Husserl improved this background, in particular with regards to the exact nature of the theory of manifolds (Mannigfaltigkeitslehre), in discussion with Georg Cantor, the father of set theory. Third, I will focus on Ingarden’s use of formal ontology and on the different modes of being that can be justified by appealing to the concept of ontological dependence in its Ingardenian variations. If my interpretation is adequate, it should be inferred that formal ontology is the operative theory of phenomenological philosophy, and this must be acknowledged in its full significance with respect to the supposed independence of the phenomenological method since 1913. A further consequence, not developed in this essay, is that formal ontology can be mathematised."

5. Barnes, Elizabeth. 2018. "Symmetric Dependence." In Reality and Its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, edited by Bliss, Ricki and Priest, Graham, 50-69. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"Metaphysical orthodoxy maintains that the relation of ontological dependence is irreflexive, asymmetric, and transitive. The goal of this paper is to challenge that orthodoxy by arguing that ontological dependence should be understood as non-symmetric, rather than asymmetric. If we give up the asymmetry of dependence, interesting things follow for what we can say about metaphysical explanation—particularly for the prospects of explanatory holism." (p. 50)

6. Baron, Sam. 2022. "Counterfactuals of Ontological Dependence." Journal of the American Philosophical Association.

Not yet published; available al PhilArchive.org.

Abstract: "A great deal has been written about `would' counterfactuals of causal dependence. Comparatively little has been said regarding `would' counterfactuals of ontological dependence. The standard Lewis-Stalnaker semantics is inadequate for handling such counterfactuals. That's because some of these counterfactuals are counterpossibles, and the standard Lewis-Stalnaker semantics trivializes for counterpossibles. Fortunately, there is a straightforward extension of the Lewis-Stalnaker semantics available that handles counterpossibles: simply take Lewis's closeness relation that orders possible worlds and unleash it across impossible worlds. To apply the extended semantics, an account of the closeness relation for counterpossibles is needed. In this paper I offer a strategy for evaluating `would' counterfactuals of ontological dependence that understands closeness between worlds in terms of the metaphysical concept of grounding."

7. Berto, Francesco. 2012. "The Selection Problem." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 262:519-537.

Abstract: "In Fiction and Fictionalism, Mark Sainsbury has recently dubbed “Selection Problem” a serious trouble for Meinongian object theories. Typically, Meinongianism has been phrased as a kind of realism on nonexistent objects: these are mind-independent things, not mental simulacra, having the properties they have independently from the activity of any cognitive agent. But how can one single out an object we have no causal acquaintance with, and which is devoid of spatio-temporal location, picking it out from a pre-determined, mind-independent set?"

"In this paper, I set out a line of response by distinguishing different ways in which a thing may not exist. I show that the selection problem (a) does not arise for past, currently nonexistent objects; (b) may not arise also for future existents (provided one massages naïve intuitions a bit); and (c) even for mere possibilia; but (d) is a real snag for purely fi ctional objects, such as Holmes or Gandalf.

As for (d), I propose a solution that forces Meinongianism to introduce a kind of ontological dependence of purely fi ctional nonexistents upon existents." (.p 519)

References

Sainsbury, M., 2010, Fiction and Fictionalism, Routledge, Oxford

8. Brody, B. A. 1971. "On the Ontological Priority of Physical Objects." Noûs no. 5:139-155.

"Strawson, in Chapter 1 of Individuals,(1) had argued that physical objects are ontologically prior to all other particulars. I believe that there is some truth to the position that he advances, but that there are also many false aspects to it. I also believe that there are immense weaknesses in Strawson's argument for his position but that it is possible to construct an alternative argument for the true aspects of it. This paper will argue for these beliefs.

What is meant by "ontological priority"? We shall say that an entity a is in a given person's ontology if and only if there is some object b identical with a such that that person believes that b exists and there is no object c identical with a such that that person believes that c does not exist.(2)" (p. 139)

(1) P. F. Strawson, Individuals (Anchor Books: 1963) all page references will be to this edition.

(2) We could not simply say that a is in one's ontology if one believes that a exists. For then, if you believed that the morning star, but not the evening star, existed, that star would both be and not be in your ontology. The complication introduced in the text avoids this opacity problem by saying that the star is not in your ontology. It could be changed (by deleting the last clause) to give a broader notion of one's ontological commitments or (by modifying the first clause) to give an even narrower notion of one's ontological commitments.

It is not necessary, for our purposes, to decide which is the best way for handling this problem.

9. Bueno, Otávio, and Shalkowski, Scott, eds. 2018. The Routledge Handbook of Modality. New York: Routledge.

Contents: Notes on Contributors XI;

Otávio Bueno and Scott A. Shalkowski: Introduction: Modal matters: philosophical significance 1

PART 1

Worlds and modality

1 Michael De: Possible worlds 11; 2 Karen Bennett: Actualism 21; 3 Dorothy Edgington: Counterfactual conditionals 30; 4 Daniel Nolan: Impossibility and impossible worlds 40; 5 Brian Leftow: The origins of logical space 49;

PART 2

Essentialism, ontological dependence, and modality

6 Penelope Mackie: Essentialism and modality 61; 7 Boris Kment: De re modality 70; 8 Benj Hellie, Adam Russell Murray, and Jessica M. Wilson: Relativized metaphysical modality: index and context 82; 9 Fabrice Correia: Ontological dependence, Grounding and Modality 100; 10 Scott A. Shalkowski: Modalism 114;

PART 3

Modal anti-realism

11 John Divers: Modal anti-realism 125; 12 Ross P. Cameron: Modal conventionalism 136; 13 Amie L. Thomasson: Norms and modality 146;

PART 4

Epistemology of modality

14 Sonia Roca-Royes: The integration challenge 157; 15 M. Oreste Fiocco: The epistemic idleness of conceivability 167; 16 Christopher Peacocke: Epistemology, the constitutive, and the principle-based account of modality 180; 17 Timothy Williamson: The counterfactual-based approach to modal epistemology 188; 18 Albert Casullo: Modality and a priori knowledge 198; 19 Anand Jayprakash Vaidya: Intuition and modality: a disjunctive-social account of intuition-based justification for the epistemology of modality 208;

PART 5

Modality and the metaphysics of science

20 Steven French: Modality and scientific structuralism 221; 21 Marc Lange: Laws of nature, natural necessity, and counterfactual conditionals 230; 22 Alexander Bird: Natural kinds and modality 239; 23 Samuel C. Fletcher: Modality in physics 251; 24 Ned Hall: Physical and metaphysical modality 265;

PART 6

Modality in logic and mathematics

25 Øystein Linnebo and Stewart Shapiro: Modality in mathematics 281; 26 Christopher Menzel: Modal set theory 292; 27 Bob Hale: The logic of metaphysical modality 308; 28 Otávio Bueno: Modality and the plurality of logics 319;

PART 7

Modality in the history of philosophy

29 Robin Smith: Ancient Greek modal logic 331; 30 Stephen Read: Modality in medieval philosophy 344; 31 Alan Nelson: Modality in Descartes’s philosophy 355; 32 Peter Millican: Hume on modality 364; 33 Nicholas Stang: Kant on real possibility 378; 34 Roberta Ballarin: Quine on modality 390; 35 John P. Burgess: Kripke on modality 400;

Index 409-415.

10. Calosi, Claudio. 2020. "Priority Monism, Dependence and Fundamentality." Philosophical Studies no. 177:1-20.

Abstract: "Priority monism (PM) is roughly the view that the universe is the only fundamental object, that is, a concrete object that does not depend on any other concrete object. Schaffer, the main advocate of PM, claims that PM is compatible with dependence having two different directions: from parts to wholes for subcosmic wholes, and from whole to parts for the cosmic whole. Recently it has been argued that this position is untenable. Given plausible assumptions about dependence, PM entails that dependence has only one direction, it always goes from wholes to parts. One such plausible assumption is a principle of Isolation. I argue that, given all extant accounts of dependence on the market, PM entails No Isolation.

The argument depends upon a particular feature of the dependence relation, namely, necessitation and its direction. In the light of this, I contend that the argument is important, insofar as it suggests that we should distinguish dependence from other cognate notions, e.g. grounding. Once this distinction is made, I suggest we should also distinguish between two different notions of fundamentality that might turn out to be not-coextensive."

11. Casey, Jack. 2022. "The Unity of Dependence." Journal of the American Philosophical Association:1-18.

First online: 27 January 2022

Abstract: "Most philosophers treat ontological dependence and metaphysical dependence as distinct relations. A number of key differences between the two relations are usually cited in support of this claim: ontological dependence’s unique connection to existence, differing respective connections to metaphysical necessitation, and a divergence in their formal features. Alongside reshaping some of the examples used to maintain the distinction between the two, I argue that the additional resources offered by the increased attention the notion of grounding has received in recent years potentially offer us a way to unite the two relations, promising the attendant benefits parsimony offers, as a result."

12. Chakravartty, Anjan. 2012. "Ontological Priority: The Conceptual Basis of Non-eliminative, Ontic Structural Realism." In Structural Realism: Structure, Object, and Causality, edited by Landry, Elaine M. and Rickles, Dean P., 187-206. Dordrecht: Springer.

"In this paper I consider a recent formulation of scientific realism, the core of which amounts to a provocative metaphysical doctrine. The family of views to which this innovation belongs is called “structural realism” (SR); the relevant genus within this family is now commonly referred to as “ontic structural realism” (OSR); and the novel species under consideration here is something that I will call “non-eliminative OSR”, to contrast it with its older and more widely problematized sibling species, eliminative OSR. I will argue that the core metaphysical doctrine underlying non-eliminative OSR, advocating an “ontological priority” of the relations of objects and properties over the objects and properties themselves, is no less problematic. The result is a dilemma for those who would subscribe to OSR in either its eliminative or noneliminative forms, in hopes of finding a promising way forward for realism in the context of scientific knowledge." (p. 187)

13. ———. 2017. "Particles, Causation, and the Metaphysics of Structure." Synthese no. 194:2273-2289.

Abstract: "I consider the idea of a structure of fundamental physical particles (as described, for example, in quantum theory) being causal. Causation is traditionally thought of as involving relations between entities—objects or events—that cause and are affected. On structuralist interpretations, however, it is unclear whether or how precisely fundamental particles can be causally efficacious. On some interpretations,

only relations (as opposed to entities) exist; on others, particles are ontologically dependent on their relations in ways that problematize the traditional picture. I argue that thinking about causal efficacy in this context generates an inevitable pattern of reasoning. To assess the cogency of a given structuralist proposal one must take a stand with respect to a significant metaphysical challenge. Two options then emerge: skepticism about the form of structuralism at issue; or a dissolution of the challenge by means of a contentious ontological primitive. I contend that the choice between these options cannot be forced on scientific or philosophical grounds alone."

14. Chisholm, Roderick M. 1983. "Boundaries as Dependent Particulars." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 20:87-95.

"Introduction: Stephan Körner has noted that one way of drawing up a theory of categories will divide all particulars "into (a) a dass of independent particulars, i.e. particulars which are ontologically fundamental, and (b) a dass of dependent particulars, i.e. particulars which are not ontologically fundamental."(1) The dependent particulars might be said to be "parasitical upon" the fundamental particulars.

I shall here discuss the nature of spatial boundaries, viewing them as dependent particulars."

(1) Stephan Körner, Categorial Frameworks, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970, p. 4.

15. ———. 1994. "Ontologically Dependent Entities." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 54:499-507.

"A discussion of the distinction between ontologically dependent and ontologically non-dependent entities presupposes a general theory of categories. I assume that there are four basic types of entity: states; contingent individuals; abstracta; and necessary substance. The general theory would involve five dichotomies-five ways of dividing things into exclusive and exhaustive subsets.

The dichotomies are these: (1) Things which are contingent and things which are noncontingent or necessary; (2) contingent things which are states and contingent things which are non-states or contingent individuals; (3) contingent individuals which are boundaries and contingent individuals which are non-boundaries or contingent substances; (4) necessary things which are states and necessary things which are not states but are, nevertheless, entia per se; and (5) those entia per se which are abstracta and that ens per se which is necessary substance." (p. 499)

16. Correia, Fabrice. 2005. Existential Dependence and Cognate Notions. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

Contents: Introduction 7; 1. Preamble 13; Introductory Break 35; 2. Simple Dependence: Presentation, and Rejection of Some Accounts 39; 3. Metaphysical Grounding 53; 4. Simple Dependence: The Foundational Approach 65; 5. Some Other Notions of Existential Dependence 89; 6. A Cognate Notion: Supervenience 131; Appendix 151; Bibliography 161; List of Figures 165; List of Symbols and Notations 167; List of Named Propositions, Conditions and Rules 169; Index 171.

"It is quite common nowadays to encounter in philosophical writings claims to the effect that certain entities depend for their existence upon certain other entities, that the former cannot exist without the latter. Thus, for instance, it is sometimes claimed that events depend for their existence upon their participants, sets upon their members, particularized properties and relations (tropes) upon their bearers, mental states and events upon physical states and events, boundaries upon the corresponding extended objects, holes upon their hosts.

The notion of existential dependence not only serves to formulate particular philosophical claims. It may also be used to help characterize general philosophical positions, and to define central philosophical concepts. For instance, idealism may be defined as the view according to which the external world depends for its existence upon epistemic subjects; mereological essentialism as the claim that genuine wholes depend for their existence upon their parts; the thesis of the essentiality of biological origins as the view according to which every organism is existentially dependent upon its biological origins. And according to a certain philosophical tradition, substances are defined as existentially independent entities of a certain sort." (p. 7)

(...)

"My plan is the following. In the Preamble, I introduce notions and principles that will be useful in the rest of this work. After a short break, chapter 2 introduces the simplest notion of existential dependence, presents some existing accounts of this notion and some objections to these accounts. In chapter 3 the crucial notion of grounding is introduced. In chapter 4,1 then propose my own account of simple existential dependence, and show how it escapes the difficulties faced by its rivals. Chapter 5 deals with other forms of existential dependence—like generic dependence, disjunctive dependence and temporalized forms of existential dependence—and finally chapter 6 is about supervenience."

17. ———. 2008. "Ontological Dependence." Philosophy Compass no. 3:1013-1032.

Abstract: "‘Ontological dependence’ is a term of philosophical jargon which stands for a rich family of properties and relations, often taken to be among the most fundamental ontological properties and relations. Notions of ontological dependence are usually thought of as ‘carving reality at its ontological joints’, and as marking certain forms of ontological ‘non-self-sufficiency’. The use of notions of dependence goes back as far as Aristotle's characterization of substances, and these notions are still widely used to characterize other concepts and to formulate metaphysical claims. This paper first gives an overview of the varieties of these notions, and then discusses some of their main applications."

18. ———. 2021. "Ontological Dependence, Grounding and Modality." In The Routledge Handbook of Modality, edited by Bueno, Otávio and Shalkowski, Scott A., 100-113. New York: Routledge.

"Ontological dependence and grounding are two important items in the metaphysician’s toolbox: both notions can be used to formulate important philosophical claims and to define other notions that play a central role in philosophical theorising. Philosophical inquiry about ontological dependence and (especially) grounding has been very lively over the past few years, making it difficult to write a short review article on any of them, let alone a short review article on both.

I try to reach a good compromise between a discussion of each notion taken separately and a discussion of how they relate to one another. I begin by introducing the notions and discussing a number of their connections with modality (Sections 9.1 and 9.2), starting with grounding for systematic reasons (some important concepts of ontological dependence are defined in terms of grounding). I then further the discussion of how the notions are connected to each other, by arguing against the view that (partial) grounding is equivalent to (the converse of) ontological dependence between facts (Section 9.3). Finally, I discuss their respective roles in the theory of fundamentality (Section 9.4)." (p. 100 a note omitted)

19. Costa, Damiano. 2019. "An Argument Against Aristotelian Universals." Synthese no. 198:4331-4338.

Abstract: "I provide an argument against the Aristotelian view of universals, according to which universals depend for their existence on their exemplifiers. The argument consists in a set of five jointly inconsistent assumptions. As such, the argument can be used to argue in favour of other conclusions, such as that exemplification is no relation or that plausible principles concerning ontological dependence or grounding do not hold."

20. Dumsday, Travis. 2016. "Non-Mereological Pluralistic Supersubstantivalism: An Alternative Perspective on the Matter–Spacetime Relationship." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 46:183-203.

Abstract: "In both the historical and contemporary literature on the metaphysics of space (and, more recently, spacetime), a core dispute is that between relationism and substantivalism. One version of the latter is supersubstantivalism, according to which space (or, again, spacetime) is the only kind of substance, such that what we think of as individual material objects (electrons, quarks, etc.) are actually just parts of spacetime which instantiate certain properties. If those parts are ontologically dependent on spacetime as a whole, then we arrive at an ontology with only a single genuinely independent substance, namely the entire spacetime manifold.

This is monist supersubstantivalism. A view on which the parts of spacetime are ontologically prior to the whole has been called pluralistic supersubstantivalism.

As currently formulated, supersubstantivalism (in either its monist or pluralistic forms) carries significant advantages and encounters major difficulties. I argue that some of the latter motivate an alternative formulation, non-mereological pluralistic supersubstantivalism, according to which spacetime is a real substance, but what we think of as material objects are also real substances, irreducible to and numerically distinct from that larger spacetime manifold and any of its parts.

Yet, the underlying nature of those material objects is ultimately the same type as that of spacetime: at bottom, a particle is just a smaller quantity of spacetime embedded in or contained by or co-located with the larger whole that we would normally think of as ‘spacetime,’ capable both of genuine movement within/across the larger spacetime manifold and (at least in principle) independent existence from it."

21. Duncan, Michael, Miller, Kristie, and Norton, James. 2021. "Ditching determination and dependence: or, how to wear the crazy trousers." Synthese no. 198:395-418.

Abstract: "This paper defends Flatland—the view that there exist neither determination nor dependence relations, and that everything is therefore fundamental—from the objection from explanatory inefficacy. According to that objection, Flatland is unattractive because it is unable to explain either the appearance as of there being determination relations, or the appearance as of there being dependence relations. We show how the Flatlander can meet the first challenge by offering four strategies—reducing, eliminating, untangling and omnizing—which, jointly, explain the appearance as of determination relations where no such relations obtain. Since, plausibly, dependence relations just are asymmetric determination relations, we argue that once we come mistakenly to believe that there exist determination relations, the existence of other asymmetries (conceptual and temporal) explains why it appears that there are dependence relations."

22. Elpidorou, Andreas. 2018. "Introduction: The Character of Physicalism." Topoi no. 37:435-455.

Abstract: "Not many issues in philosophy can be said to match, let alone rival, physicalism’s importance, persistent influence, and divisiveness. To a first approximation, physicalism holds that everything that exists in our world is physical.

An acceptance of physicalism commits thus one to a monistic worldview. Despite how variegated existing entities or properties might appear to be, everything that exists in our world is, according to physicalism, the same: namely, physical.

Indeed, it is widely thought that physicalism demands not only that the non-physical (the chemical, the biological, the economic, the social, the mental, etc.) metaphysically depends on the physical but also that the non-physical is nothing over and above the physical. But what type of metaphysical dependence vindicates physicalism?

The aim of this editorial introduction is twofold. First, Sects. 1–8 offer a critical introduction to the metaphysical character of physicalism. In those sections, I present and evaluate different ways in which proponents of physicalism have made explicit the metaphysical dependence that is said to hold between the non-physical and the physical. Some of these accounts are found to be problematic; others are shown to be somewhat more promising. In the end, some important lessons are drawn and different options for physicalists are presented. Second, in Sect. 9, the six papers that comprise the special issue are introduced and summarized.

Each contribution to the special is, in different ways, concerned with explicating the character of physicalism. New ways of formulating physicalism are assessed; old ways are defended; and the distinctions between physicalism naturalism, and dualism are reconsidered. The special issue is neither the first nor the last word on the topic of the character physicalism. Nonetheless, it offers both an updated appraisal of our current understanding of physicalism and concrete proposals for how to move forward."

23. Erices, Gonzalo Nuñez. 2019. "Boundaries and Things. A Metaphysical Study of the Brentano-Chisholm Theory." Kriterion: Journal of Philosophy no. 33:15-48.

Abstract: "The fact that boundaries are ontologically dependent entities is agreed by Franz Brentano and Roderick Chisholm. This article studies both authors as a single metaphysical account about boundaries. The Brentano-Chisholm theory understands that boundaries and the objects to which they belong hold a mutual relationship of ontological dependence: the existence of a boundary depends upon a continuum of higher spatial dimensionality, but also is a conditio sine qua non for the existence of a continuum. Although the view that ordinary material objects and their boundaries (or surfaces) ontologically depend on each other is correct, it does not grasp their asymmetric relationship: while the existence of a surface rigidly depends upon the existence of the very object it belongs to, the existence of a physical object generically depends upon having some surface. In modal terms, both are two kinds of de re ontological dependence that this article tries to distinguish."

24. Esfeld, Michael, and Lam, Vincent. 2011. "Ontic Structural Realism as a Metaphysics of Objects." In Scientific Structuralism, edited by Bokulich, Peter and Bokulich, Alisa, 143-159. Dordrecht: Springer.

"In a first approach, ontic structural realism (OSR) is a realism towards physical structures in the sense of networks of concrete physical relations, without these relations being dependent on fundamental physical objects that possess an intrinsic identity as their relata. In that vein, OSR has been developed in recent years as a metaphysics of contemporary fundamental physics, mainly non-relativistic quantum mechanics (QM), relativistic quantum field theory (QFT) and the general theory of relativity (GTR)." (p. 143)

(...)

"The issue of the relationship between objects and relations within OSR has mainly been addressed in the literature in terms of ontological primacy (Stachel 2006; Ladyman and Ross 2007, Section 3.4; French 2010)." (p. 145)

(...)

"In sum, current fundamental physics does not make an intrinsic identity of the fundamental physical objects, whatever they may be, available. The relations or structures acknowledged in current fundamental physics cannot provide for an identity that distinguishes each object from the other ones either, since they yield no more than what is known as weak discernibility. However, weak discernibility does not contribute to vindicating the idea of relations enjoying ontological primacy over relata in that objects somehow emerge out of relations (4), and the other two versions of OSR – symmetric ontological dependence between objects and relations (3), eliminativism with respect to objects (5) – are not convincing either." (p. 150)

References

French, Steven (2010): “The interdependence of structure, objects and dependence”. Forthcoming in Synthese. [vol, 175, pp. 89-109]

Ladyman, James & Ross, Don with Spurrett, David & Collier, John (2007): Every thing must go. Metaphysics naturalised. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stachel, John (2006): “Structure, individuality, and quantum gravity”. In: D. Rickles, S. French & J. Saatsi (eds.): The structural foundations of quantum gravity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 53–82.

25. Ferguson, Thomas Macaulay. 2016. "Remarks on Ontological Dependence in Set Theory." Australasian Journal of Logic no. 13:41-57.

Abstract: "In a recent paper, John Wigglesworth explicates the notion of a set's being grounded in or ontologically depending on its members by the modal statement that in any world (possible or impossible), that a set exists in that world entails that its members exist as well. After suggesting that variable-domain S5 captures an appropriate account of metaphysical necessity, Wigglesworth purports to prove that in any set theory satisfying the axiom Extensionality this condition holds, that is, that sets ontologically depend on their members with respect to extraordinarily weak notions of set. This paper diagnoses a number of problems concerning Wigglesworth's formal argument. For one, we will show that Wigglesworth's argument is invalid as it requires an appeal to hidden, extralogical theses concerning rigid designation and the persistence of sets across possible worlds. Having demonstrated the indispensability of these principles to Wigglesworth's argument, we will then show that even granted the enthymematic premises, the argument only proves the ontological dependence of singletons on their members and does not extend to sets in general. Finally, we will consider strengthenings of Wigglesworth's reasoning and suggest that even the weakest generalization will bear undesirable consequences."

References

Wigglesworth, J. Set-theoretic dependence. Australasian Journal of Logic 12, 3 (2015), 150-176.

26. Ferrier, Edward. 2019. "Against the Iterative Conception of Set." Philosophical Studies no. 176:2681-2703.

Abstract: "According to the iterative conception, each set is formed out of sets that are, in some sense, prior to it. Because priority plays an essential role in explanations of why contradiction-inducing sets, such as the universal set, do not exist, the success of these explanations depends on our ability to make sense of the relevant priority relation. I argue that attempts to do this have fallen short: understanding priority in a straightforwardly constructivist sense threatens the coherence of the empty set and raises serious epistemological concerns; but the leading realist interpretations–ontological and modal interpretations of riority—are deeply problematic as well. I conclude that the purported explanatory virtues of the iterative conception are, at present, unfounded."

27. Fine, Kit. 1995. "Ontological Dependence." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 95:269-290.

"T'here appears to be a distinctively ontological sense in which one thing may be said to depend upon another. What the one thing is will depend upon the other thing, upon what it is. It is in this sense that one is tempted to say that a set depends upon its members or that a particularized feature, such as a smile, upon the particular in which it is found. For what the set is will depend upon its members; and what the feature is will depend upon the particular that instantiates it. (1)

Granted that there is an intelligible notion of ontological dependence, it would appear to be of great importance to the study of metaphysics. Metaphysics has two main areas of concern: one is with the nature of things, with what they are; and the other is with the existence of things, with whether they are. Considerations of dependence are relevant to both. For central to the question of the nature of any item is the determination of what it depends upon; and if something is taken to exist, then so must any thing upon which it depends. Indeed, it has often been maintained that it is only those things which do not depend upon anything else that can properly be said to exist at all." (p. 269)

(...)

"But how is the notion of dependence itself to be understood? The idea of what something is, its identity or being, is notoriously obscure; and the idea of the being of one thing depending upon that of another is doubly obscure. A natural suggestion at this point is to take the being of something simply to be its existence. Thus in saying that a set depends upon its members, or a feature upon its instantiator, we are taking the existence of the one to depend upon that of the other. Call this the existential construal of dependence. Another natural suggestion is to take the dependence between the beings of the two items, as opposed to the items themselves, to be modal in character. The being of the one will depend upon that of the other in the sense that it is necessary that if the one item has its ‘being’ then so does the other. Call this the modal construal of dependence." (p. 270)

(1) This paper derives from an earlier paper ‘Dependent Objects’ , that was written in 1982 but remained unpublished. Some of the issues raised are discussed at greater length in Fine [1995b]; and no attempt is here made to settle the methodological, as opposed to the conceptual, issues. I should like to thank Ruth Chang and the members of the Wednesday Group at Oxford for helpful comments.

References

Fine K. [1995b] ‘Senses of Essence’, to appear in Festschrift for Ruth Barcan Marcus. [Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.), Modality, Morality and Belief. Essays in Honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 53-73.]

28. ———. 2020. "Comments on Jessica Wilson’s “Essence and Dependence”." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine, edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 471-475. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Jessica Wilson’s paper is a wonderfully sympathetic account of my general approach to metaphysics; and there is a special satisfaction to be had in being, not merely understood, but understood so well.

(...)

But her paper is not all praise. For she wishes to criticize my account of ontological dependence in terms of essence - perhaps as part of a larger critique of the use of a general notion of dependence in etaphysics (§ 4). In a number of papers, I have suggested that an object x will depend upon an object y if and only y figures in the essence of x, i.e., if and only if, in giving an account of what x is, reference must be made

y. But she thinks that this equivalencemay fail in the right to left direction, that an object y may figure in the essence of x without x depending upon y (she may be perfectly happy with the left to right direction, though this is not something that she discusses)." (p. 471)

29. Fontaine, Matthieu, and Rahman, Shahid. 2010. "Fiction, Creation and Fictionality: An Overview." Methodos no. 10:1-75.

Abstract: "The philosophical reflection on non-existence is an issue that has been tackled at the very start of philosophy and constitutes since the publication in 1905 of Russell’s “On Denoting” one of the most thorny and heated debates in analytic philosophy. However the fierce debates on the semantics of proper names and definite descriptions which took off after the publication of Strawson’s ‘On Referring’ in 1950 did not trigger a systematic study of the semantics of fiction. In fact, the systematic development of a link that articulates the approaches to fiction of logic; philosophy and literature had to wait until the work of John Woods, who published in 1974 the book Logic of Fiction: A Philosophical Sounding of Deviant Logic. One of the most exciting challenges of Woods’ book relates to the interaction between the internalist or inside-the-story (mainly pragmatist) and externalist or outside-the-story (mainly semantic) points of view. For that purpose Woods formulated as first a fictionality operator to be read as “according to the story …” in relation to the logical scope of which issues on internalism and externalism could be studied. The discussions on fiction that followed Woods’ book not only seem not to fade away but even give rise to new and vigorous research impulses. Relevant fact for our paper is that in the phenomenological tradition too, the study of fiction has a central role to play. Indeed, one of the most controversial issues in intentionality is the problem of the existence-independence; i.e. the purported fact that intentional acts need not be directed at any existent object. Influenced by the work of the prominent student of Husserl, Roman Ingarden (1893-1970), Amie Thomasson develops the phenomenological concept of ontological dependence in order to explain how we can perform inter- and transfictional-reference - for example in the context of literary interpretation. The main claim of this paper is that a bi-dimensional multimodal reconstruction of Thomasson’s-Ingarden’s theory on fictional characters which takes seriously the fact that fictions are creations opens the door to the articulation between the internalist and the externalist approaches. We will motivate some changes on the artifactual approach – including an appropriate semantics for the fictionality operator that, we hope, will awaken the interest of theoreticians of literature. The paper could be also seen as an overview of how different concepts of intentionality might yield different formal semantics for fictionality. We will provide a dialogical framework that is a modal extension of a certain proof system developed by Matthieu Fontaine and Juan Redmond. The dialogical framework develops the inferential counterpart to the the bidimensional semantics introduced by Rahman and Tulenheimo in a recent paper."

References

Rahman, S. and Tulenheimo, T., 2009a: “From games to dialogues and back: towards a general frame for validity”, in O. Majer, A. Pietarinen, and T. Tulenheimo (eds.), Games: Unifying Logic, Language, and Philosophy, Logic, Epistemology and the Unity of Science 15, Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 153–208.

30. ———. 2014. "Towards a Semantics for the Artifactual Theory of Fiction and Beyond." Synthese no. 191:499-516.

Abstract: "In her book Fiction and Metaphysics (1999) Amie Thomasson, influenced by the work of Roman Ingarden, develops a phenomenological approach to fictional entities in order to explain how non-fictional entities can be referred to intrafictionally and transfictionally, for example in the context of literary interpretation. As our starting point we take Thomasson’s realist theory of literary fictional objects, according to which such objects actually exist, albeit as abstract and artifactual entities. Thomasson’s approach relies heavily on the notion of ontological dependence, but its precise semantics has not yet been developed. Moreover, the modal approach to the notion of ontological dependence underlying the Artifactual Theory has recently been contested by several scholars. The main aims of this paper are (i) to develop a semantic approach to the notion of ontological dependence in the context of the Artifactual Theory of fiction, and in so doing bridge a number of philosophical and logical gaps; (ii) to generalize Thomasson’s categorial theory of ontological dependence by reconstructing ontological categories of entities purely in terms of different structures of ontological dependence, rather than in terms of the basic kinds of entities the categorical entities depend on."

31. French, Steven. 2010. "The interdependence of structure, objects and dependence." Synthese no. 175:89-109.

Abstract: "According to ‘Ontic Structural Realism’ (OSR), physical objects—qua metaphysical entities—should be reconceptualised, or, more strongly, eliminated in favour of the relevant structures. In this paper I shall attempt to articulate the relationship

between these putative objects and structures in terms of certain accounts of metaphysical dependence currently available. This will allow me to articulate the differences between the different forms of OSR and to argue in favour of the ‘eliminativist’

version. A useful context is provided by Floridi’s account of the relationship between ‘ontic’ and ‘epistemic’ structural realisms and I shall conclude with some brief remarks on possible extensions of OSR into other scientific domains."

References

Floridi, L. (2008). A defence of informational structural realism. Synthese, 161, 219–253.

32. Galton, Antony. 2014. "On Generically Dependent Entities." Applied Ontology no. 9:129-153.

Abstract: "An entity x is said to be generically dependent on a type F if x cannot exist without at least one entity of type F existing. In this paper several varieties of generic dependence are distinguished, differing in the nature of the relationship between an entity and the instances of a type on which it generically depends, and in the light of this criteria of identity for generically dependent entities are investigated. These considerations are then illustrated in detail in a series of three case studies, covering shapes, linguistic entities such as letters, words and sentences, and collectives. Each case study examines how far the entities involved have robust identity criteria, and to the extent that they do not it is questioned whether they can be regarded as bona fide examples of generic dependent entities.

Finally, in the light of this, a number of possible accounts that may be given of the ontological status of such entities are considered."

33. Glick, David, Darby, George, and Marmodoro, Anna, eds. 2020. The Foundation of Reality: Fundamentality, Space, and Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Contents: List of Figures VII; List of Contributors IX; David Glick: Introduction 1;

Section 1. The Metaphysics of Fundamentality

1. Ralf M. Bader: Fundamentality and Non-Symmetric Relations 15; 2. Alastair Wilson: Classifying Dependencies 46; 3. Matteo Morganti: Ontic Structuralism and Fundamentality 69; 4. J. E. Wolff: Fundamental and Derived Quantities 87; 5. Nora Berenstain: Privileged-Perspective Realism in the Quantum Multiverse102;

Section 2. Quantum Mechanics and Fundamentality

6. Michael Esfeld: Super-Humeanism: The Canberra Plan for Physics 125; 7. Jenann Ismael: What Entanglement Might Be Telling Us: Space, Quantum Mechanics, and Bohm’s Fish Tank 139; 8. Alyssa Ney: Wave Function Realism in a Relativistic Setting 154; 9. David Glick and George Darby: In Defense of the Metaphysics of Entanglement 169;

Section 3. Spacetime Theories and Fundamentality

10. Richard Healey: On the Independent Emergence of Space-time 183; 11. Elena Castellani and Sebastian De Haro: Duality, Fundamentality, and Emergence 195;

12. Tomasz Bigaj: Radical Structural Essentialism for the Spacetime Substantivalist 217; 13. Christian Wüthrich: When the Actual World Is Not Even Possible 233;

Bibliography 255; Index 269-273.

34. Gorman, Michael. 1993. Ontological Priority.

Unpublished Ph.D thesis, State University of New York at Buffalo, available at ProQuest Dissertation Express, Pub ID 9404812.

Abstract: "

Authors

Michael Gorman

Catholic University of America

Abstract

This dissertation is an investigation of ontological priority. The Introduction argues that although philosophers have often been concerned with the things that are ontologically prior, they have seldom addressed the question of what ontological priority is. ;Part One gives a detailed analysis of what ontological priority is. Chapter 1 notes that there are two competing theories available: according to the first, ontological priority is a dependence relation; according to the second, it is a degrees-of-being relation. Since the two views are in themselves irreconcilable and since there are no good grounds for choosing between them, it is better to find a "higher" theory that encompasses both of them. Chapter 2 lays the groundwork for the development of this "higher" theory by examining the Scotistic notion of "essential order", a notion that includes the two relations that have been called 'ontological priority' as noted in Chapter 1. Chapter 3 adapts Scotus's understanding of essential order to formulate a definition of ontological priority. The definition does not define just one relation; rather, it gives membership criteria for an entire class of "ontological priority relations". ;Part Two examines some of the members of the class of ontological priority relations. Chapter 4 examines dependence and concludes three things: first, that the received understanding of dependence is incorrect; second, that dependence properly understood is an ontological priority relation; third, that the relation that is usually thought to be dependence is also an ontological priority relation. Chapter 5 examines degrees-of-being. Since the question of what degrees-of-being is is too complicated to deal with in the context of the dissertation, the chapter examines several theories and shows that degrees-of-being is an ontological priority relation according to any of the theories. ;The Conclusion shows some relations among the three ontological priority relations discussed in Part Two. It also shows briefly how the concept of ontological priority relations can be used to talk about the orderings of the universe. Finally, it points the way to further investigation."

35. ———. 2006. "Independence and Substance." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 46:147-159.

Abstract: "The paper takes up a traditional view that has also been a part of some recent analytic metaphysics, namely, the view that substance is to be understood in terms of independence. Taking as my point of departure some recent remarks by Kit Fine, I propose reviving the Aristotelian-scholastic idea that the sense in which substances are independent is that they are non-inherent, and I do so by developing a broad notion of inherence that is more usable in the context of contemporary analytic metaphysics than the traditional notion is. I end by showing how non-inherence, while necessary for being a substance, cannot be taken as sufficient without some qualifying remarks."

36. ———. 2006. "Substance and Identity-Dependence." Philosophical Papers no. 35:103-118.

Abstract: "The notion of substance has become rather important in recent metaphysical discussions, but there is no consensus on how it is to be understood. In this paper discuss the idea that substance can be defined in terms of identity-dependence. Giving special attention to the work of E.J. Lowe, who is the main advocate of this position, I clarify how the identity-dependence approach ought to be understood and defend it against an objection having to do with dependence on God. then bring forward difficulties having to do with mereological essentialism and necessity of origins. These difficulties are much more powerful, but it is possible to revise the identity-dependence approach in a way that avoids them."

37. ———. 2012. "On substantial independence: a reply to Patrick Toner." Philosophical Studies no. 159:293-297.

Abstract: "Patrick Toner has recently criticized accounts of substance provided by Kit Fine, E. J. Lowe, and the author, accounts which say (to a first approximation) that substances cannot depend on things other than their own parts. On Toner’s analysis, the inclusion of this ‘‘parts exception’’ results in a disjunctive definition of substance rather than a unified account. In this paper (speaking only for myself, but in a way that would, I believe, support the other authors that Toner discusses), I first make clear what Toner’s criticism is, and then I respond to it. Including the ‘‘parts exception’’ is not the adding of a second condition but instead the creation of a new single condition. Since it is not the adding of a condition, the result is not disjunctive. Therefore, the objection fails."

38. Grimes, Thomas R. 1988. "The Existential Basis of Propositions, States of Affairs, and Properties." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 31:151-163.

"Existentialism, in its more general form, is the view that such things as propositions, states of affairs, and properties are ontologically dependent upon the objects they are directly about. On this view, if Socrates had never existed there would not have been the proposition Socrates is wise, the state of affairs Socrates' being wise, nor the property being such that Socrates is wise.

Existentialism strikes me as a plausible doctrine. Alvin Plantinga, however, is of a differing opinion and has sought to fill the existential vacuum by arguing that it is possible that a singular proposition exists even if the contingent individual it involves does not.(2) In defense of existentialism, I will attempt to show that Plantinga's efforts are not succesful, and then give an argument in favor of the existentialist position." (pp. 151-162, a note omitted)

(2) See "De Essentia", Grazer Philosophische Studien, 7 (1979), and also

"On Existentialism", Philosophical Studies, 44 (1983).

39. Hiller, Avram. 2013. "Object-Dependence." Essays in Philosophy no. 14:33-55.

Abstract: "There has been much work on ontological dependence in recent literature. However, relatively little of it has been dedicated to the ways in which individual physical objects may depend on other distinct, non-overlapping objects. This paper gives several examples of such object-dependence and distinguishes between different types of it. The paper also introduces and refines the notion of an n-tet. N-tets (typically) occur when there are object-dependence relations between n objects. I claim that the identity (or, rather, what I call the n-dentity) conditions for n-tets are not grounded in the individual identity conditions of each of the n objects, but instead are metaphysically basic. The paper then briefly discusses some ramifications of accepting objectdependence (and n-tets) on the philosophy of biology, ethics, and logic."

40. Hinckfuss, Ian. 1976. "Necessary Existential Dependence." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 54:123-132.

"The notion that one sort of thing depends in some logical way for its existence on the existence of another sort of thing is a common feature of ontological discussions in every field of philosophy. The notion is of importance, for it is often thought that the tracing of these necessary ontological dependencies gives us greater understanding as to the nature of the entities involved. Thus such questions may arise as: In what way, if at all, do such abstract entities such as sentences, propositions and languages depend for their existence on the existence of concrete entities--such as thinking and communicating people---and the linguistic tokens which they manufacture?

In what way, if at all, do the existence of space and time depend on the existence of material objects?

(...)

In this paper, I shall try to render plausible the contention that there is no coherent notion of existential dependence, where this dependence is construed as any sort of logical relationship." (p. 123)

41. Hoeltje, Miguel. 2013. "Introduction." In Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence, edited by Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin and Steinberg, Alex, 9-28. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"This collection focusses on four notions that have been used to formulate metaphysical claims about the structure of the world: ontological dependence, grounding, supervenience, and response-dependence. The collection aims at both providing a useful guide to the novice reader as well as making a contribution to the current debates involving these notions.

To this end, contributions of two different sorts are included.

For each of the four notions, the collection contains a survry paper introducing the pertinent concepts and distinctions, and summarizing the state of the art of the debate. A fifth survey paper, on Aristotle's notion of ontological dependence and its relevance to the notion of a substance, provides some of the historical background. These survey papers thus provide the theoretical basis for the research papers that make original contributions to the current debates." (p. 9)

42. Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin, and Steinberg, Alex, eds. 2013. Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

Contents: Miguel Hoe!tje: Introduction 9;

Part I: Surveys

Kathrin Koslicki: Ontological Dependence: An Opinionated Survey 31; Phil Corkum: Substance and Independence in Aristotle 65; Kelly Trogdon: An Introduction to Grounding 97; Alex Steinberg: Supervenience: A Survey 123; Jussi Haukioja: Different Notions of Response-Dependence 167;

Part II: Research Papers

E. ]. Lowe: Some Varieties of Metaphysical Dependence 193; C. S. I. .Jenkins: Explanation and Fundamentality 211; Louis deRosset: No Free Lunch 243; Fabrice Correia: Metaphysical Grounds and Essence 271; Stefano Caputo: The Dependence of Truth on Being: Is There a Problem for Minimalism? 297; Stephan Leuenberger: Supervenience Among Classes of Relations 325; Ralf M. Bader: Multiple-Domain Supervenience for Non-Classical Mereologies 347; Eline Busck Gundersen: Response-Dependence and Conditional Fallacy Problems 369; Dan Lopez de Sa: Rigid vs. Flexible Response-Dependent Properties 393;

Name Index 419; Subject Index 423; List of Contributors 429-431.

43. Irmak, Nurbay. 2013. "The Privilege of the Physical and the Status of Ontological Debates." Philosophical Studies no. 166:1-8.

Abstract: "Theodore Sider in his latest book [Writing the book of the world. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2011] provides a defense of the substantivity of the first-order ontological debates against recent deflationary attacks. He articulates and defends several realist theses: (a) nature has an objective structure, (b) there is an objectively privileged language to describe the structure, and (c) ontological debates are substantive. Sider’s defense of metaontological realism, (c), crucially depends on his realism about fundamental languages, (b). I argue that (b) is wrong.

As a result, Sider’s metaontological realism fails to establish the substantivity of certain ontological disputes. Nonetheless, I will argue denying metaontological realism does not require giving up on the realism about structure, (a), that most of us would like to preserve: namely the idea that there are objective similarities and differences in the world that we try to wrap our minds around."

44. Jacinto, Bruno. 2019. "Serious Actualism and Higher-Order Predication." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 48:471-499.

Abstract: "Serious actualism is the prima facie plausible thesis that things couldn’t have been related while being nothing. The thesis plays an important role in a number of arguments in metaphysics, e.g., in Plantinga’s argument (Plantinga Philosophical Studies, 44, 1–20 1983) for the claim that propositions do not ontologically depend on the things that they are about and in Williamson’s argument (Williamson 2002) for the claim that he, Williamson, is necessarily something. Salmon (Philosophical Perspectives, 1, 49–108 1987) has put forward that which is, arguably, the most pressing challenge to serious actualists. Salmon’s objection is based on a scenario intended to elicit the judgment that merely possible entities may nonetheless be actually referred to, and so may actually have properties. It is shown that predicativism, the thesis that names are true of their bearers, provides the resources for replying to Salmon’s objection.

In addition, an argument for serious actualism based on Stephanou (Philosophical Review, 116(2), 219–250 2007) is offered. Finally, it is shown that once serious actualism is conjoined with some minimal assumptions, it implies property necessitism, the thesis that necessarily all properties are necessarily something, as well as a strong comprehension principle for higher-order modal logic according to which

for every condition there necessarily is the property of being a thing satisfying that condition."

References

Plantinga, A. (1983). On existentialism. Philosophical Studies, 44, 1–20.

Salmon, N. (1987). Existence. Philosophical Perspectives, 1, 49–108.

Stephanou, Y. (2007). Serious actualism. Philosophical Review, 116(2), 219–250.

Williamson, T. (2013). Modal logic as metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

45. Jansson, Lina. 2017. "Explanatory Asymmetries, Ground, and Ontological Dependence." Erkenntnis no. 82:17-44.

Abstract: "The notions of ground and ontological dependence have made a prominent resurgence in much of contemporary metaphysics. However, objections have been raised. On the one hand, objections have been raised to the need for distinctively metaphysical notions of ground and ontological dependence. On the other, objections have been raised to the usefulness of adding ground and ontological dependence to the existing store of other metaphysical notions. Even the logical properties of ground and ontological dependence are under debate. In this article, I focus on how to account for the judgements of non-symmetry in several of the cases that motivate the introduction of notions like ground and ontological dependence. By focusing on the notion of explanation relative to a theory, I conclude that we do not need to postulate a distinctively asymmetric metaphysical notion in order to account for these judgements."

46. Jenkins, C. S. 2011. "Is Metaphysical Dependence Irreflexive?" The Monist no. 94:267-276.

"It is very commonly asserted that metaphysical dependence or grounding is an irreflexive relation: that is to say, it never holds between an item and itself." (p. 267)

(...)

"Maybe the irreflexivity assumption doesn't require argument?

Perhaps it is reasonable just to assume it in the absence of arguments to the contrary. There are (at least) three possible ways to back up this suggestion.

One could take the irreflexivity claim to be:

1. stipulative,

2. intuitive, or

3. too basic to require justification (at least in the relevant contexts).

If it is taken to be stipulative (i.e. if one takes it to be true by definition that dependence is irreflexive), one runs the risk of discussing something that isn't what everyone else meant by 'dependence', or of discussing something that is less interesting than schmependence (a nearby non-irreflexive relation). One can mean whatever one likes by 'dependence', of course, but these risks are to be treated with respect by any serious philosopher.

If one merely takes irreflexivity to be intuitive, however, one is open to the possibility that its intuitiveness might be explained away as being due to quasi-irreflexivity.

What about taking irreflexivity to be too basic to require justification in the relevant contexts?8 After all, one must start somewhere if one is to make any progress; one can't argue for all one's assumptions. But one can assert that dependence appears to be irreflexive, or exhibits some features suggestive of irreflexivity, almost as quickly as one can assert that it is irreflexive.

Now that the irreflexivity assumption has been questioned and one obvious motivation for it undermined, it is not good philosophical practice to sweep the challenge back under the carpet." (p. 275, notes omitted)

47. Johansson, Ingvar. 2004. Ontological Investigations: An Inquiry into the Categories of Nature, Man and Society. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

Second edition. First edition London: Routledge 1989.

"Foreword to the second edition: After fifteen years, a second edition of Ontological Investigations will now appear. It contains three appendices: First, a summary of the conclusions of the book in aphoristic form; second, a piece on universals which provides a

more elaborate defence of my realist point of departure; and, third, an appendix on ontology in information science, a topic which is also addressed in this Foreword." (p. VII)

Chapter 9: "As I indicated at the beginning of chapter 8, I do not regard internal relations as a fundamental category but a specific kind of the truly fundamental category 'existential dependence'. The theory of this category is, I think, first worked out by Brentano and the young Edmund Husserl. But it has not so far, unlike external and internal relations, become common property within philosophy.

This is the reason why I wanted to discuss internal relations before existential dependence. I think the move to the latter concept is so important that I shall make some further introductory remarks before presenting the category of existential dependence." (p. 124)

48. Kanzian, Christian. 2015. "Existential Dependence and other Formal Relations." In God, Truth, and other Enigmas, edited by Szatkowski, Miroslaw, 183-196. Berlin: de Gruyter.

"As the title ofmy paper indicates, I will not restrictmyself to general considerations concerning formal relations. Inmy second section I aim to introduce dependence, ontological dependence, as another such formal relation. In this section I will spell out what ontological dependence has in common with the other formal relations, and how we can define it amongst the other genera of formal relations.

Having, I hope, sufficiently motivated the argument I am making, I next turn to existential dependence in the third section, treating it as an own kind or species of ontological dependence. Continuing the method I employed in section two, I will point out aspects which existential dependence has in common with other species of dependence, and, then, those of its characteristics that are not shared by the other formal relations within the genus of ontological dependence. In the final two sections ofmy paper I will present a brief overview of certain possible applications of this theory of formal relations, focusing on existential dependence.

With such a theory in hand, we can make a certain specific categorial frame more plausible (section 4). I also believe that formal relations like existential dependence, perhaps, can help us understand central topics in philosophical theology, e.g. of God’s identity, and of creation. Concerning the latter I make some fragmentary suggestions (in section 5)." (pp. 183-184)

49. Kim, Jaegwon. 1994. "Explanatory Knowledge and Metaphysical Dependence." Philosophical Issues no. 5:51-69.

"There is a famous remark Aristotle made about knowledge: "Men do not think they know a thing unless they have grasped the 'why' of it" (Physics II, ch. 3; see also Metaphysics V, ch. 2). This remark is often quoted by writers on scientific explanation to underline the importance of explanation to scientific knowledge, and why, as philosophers, we should concern ourselves with understanding what explanation is -that is, to show that "analyzing" scientific explanation, or building a "model" of explanation, is a reputable philosophical enterprise." (p. 51)

(...)

"My main proposal, then, is this: explanations track dependence relations. The relation that "grounds" the relation between an explanans, G, and its explanatory conclusion, E, is that of dependence; namely, G is an explanans of E just in case e, the event being explained, depends on g, the event invoked as explaining it.

On this proposal, therefore, the simplifying effect of an explanation is seen both in our belief system and in the world: by showing an event to be dependent on another, the explanation reduces the number of independent events in the world, and also the number of independent assumptions we need to accept about the world." (p. 68)

50. Kolb, David. 1975. "Ontological priorities: A critique of the announced goals of "descriptive metaphysics"." Metaphilosophy no. 6:238-258.

"Is there a the metaphysics of ordinary language? In recent decades philosophers have attempted to obtain “ontological” results by analyzing the language we ordinarily speak, its semantics, and the conditions that make it possible. Peter Strawson’s “descriptive metaphysics” is perhaps the most famous of these attempts; I will try to show in this essay that it does not fulfil its stated purpose.

After a brief review of some of the main theses of Individuals, I discuss an ambiguity in Strawson’s notion of “ontological priority”. This ambiguity seriously weakens Strawson’s arguments and raises the question whether “descriptive metaphysics” is metaphysics at all. I then try to outline his project as a whole and show why it might lead to this ambiguity. This involves examining what Strawson means by “other conceptual schemes”.

I close with a brief look at similar issues in Strawson’s later book, The Bounds of Sense.

This essay restricts itself to one author, but it is part of a wider attempt to show that analysis of (ordinary) language yields no necessary metaphysical results except at Kant’s price: the elimination of metaphysics by some sort of transcendental philosophy." (p. 238)

51. Koons, Robert C., and Pickavance, Timothy H. 2017. The Atlas of Reality: A Comprehensive Guide to Metaphysics. Malden: Wiley Blackwell.

Chapter 3: Grounding, Ontological Dependence, and Fundamentality, pp. 47-73.

"Fine (2012a) distinguishes between grounding and ontological dependence. Grounding is an explanatory relation between facts. Ontological dependence is a relation between entities or things: x is dependent on y iff y is contained in the essence of x."

(...)

"So, we might distinguish between the quiddity of x (x’s species, a nature or what-it-is-to-be x that is shared by things with the same form), and the haecceity of x (the thisness of x, what it is to be x in particular). Quiddities are shareable; haecceities are not. If so, we should distinguish between two different kinds of ontological dependence: quidditistic ontological dependence (‘q-dependence’) and haecceitistic ontological dependence (‘hdependence’).

Socrates is q-dependent on his animality and his rationality, and on his soul and body, but not on his parents, while he might be h-dependent on his parents and on the circumstances of his conception, if we assume that these particular parents and the particular event of his conception are in some sense essential to Socrates’ particular individuality or identity. In fact, many metaphysicians (following Kripke 1980) subscribe to what is called origins essentialism, meaning that a thing’s particular origin is essential to its individual identity (i.e., part of its haecceity).

So, if we believe in origins essentialism, particular events (like conceptions) might be included in the haecceities of particular things, but not in their quiddities (although the property of having some conception-event or other might be included in the quiddity)." (P. 58)

References

Fine, K. (2012a), Guide to Ground, in F. Correia and Benjamin Schnieder eds., Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

52. Koslicki, Kathrin. 2012. "Essence, Necessity, and Explanation." In Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics, edited by Tahko, Tuomas E., 187-206. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

£In Section 12.2 of this chapter, I discuss Fine’s way of drawing the distinction between what is part of the essence of an object and what merely follows from the essence of an object. Fine’s approach to essence and modality has the advantage over the traditional approach to de re modality that it is set up to reflect the sensitivity of essentialist truths towards their grounds, viz., the identity of those objects in virtue of which these claims are true. But Fine’s approach, as far as I can see, does not settle all the questions we would like to have answered concerning the derivation of propositions stating necessary (but non-essential) features of objects (e.g., the triangle’s being three-sided) from propositions stating their essential features (e.g., the triangle’s being three-angled), since the relevant notion of consequence that is needed for this purpose cannot be merely that of logical entailment." (p. 189)

53. ———. 2012. "Varieties of Ontological Dependence." In Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality edited by Correia, Fabrice and Schnieder, Benjamin, 186-213. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Surprisingly, despite the central role dependence has played in philosophy since its very inception, this relation has only recently begun to receive the kind of attention it deserves from contemporary metaphysicians. In this chapter, I would like to contribute to the recent surge of interest in this subject by helping to develop a better grasp of the notion of ontological dependence. In doing so, I am not interested primarily in defending particular positions in first-order metaphysics, e.g., trope theory or Aristotelianism about universals. Rather, the focus of this current project is to become clearer about the kinds of dependence relations to which philosophers who assert or deny these positions in first-order metaphysics appeal. I take this project to be a crucial component of defending a realist position in metaphysics, according to which substantive disagreements in ontology are possible." (p 187, a note omitted)

54. ———. 2013. "Ontological Dependence: An Opinionated Survey." In Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence edited by Schnieder, Benjamin, Hoeltje, Miguel and Steinberg, Alex, 31-64. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"The purpose of this essay is to provide an opinionated survey of some recent developments in the literature on ontological dependence.(1) Ontological dependence is typically taken to be a relation whose relata are entities."

(...)

"Conclusion: In this essay, I have considered various prominent construals of ontological dependence in the literature: modal vs. non-modal; existential vs. non-existential; as well as rigid vs. generic construals. And while there is of course nothing wrong in principle with defining whatever technical concept one wishes, the question arises, in the face of this plethora of relations that go under the name of 'ontological dependence', what explanatory tasks these notions are designed to accomplish and how well they in fact meet the desiderata that are set for them. I have identified three potential measures of success by means of which particular accounts of ontological dependence may be evaluated: (i) how well they do in classifying certain paradigmatic cases of ontological dependence in a particular desired way; (ii) whether they allow for the formulation of a plausible independence criterion of substancehood; and (iii) whether they make room for the possibility of substantive non-existential disagreements in ontology over questions of fundamentality. Relative to these three goals, we have seen that modal and existential construals of ontological dependence are open to persuasive counterexamples, while essentialist accounts seem to perform more promisingly. Still, various questions remain to be addressed by essentialist accounts as well: in particular, (i) how to handle the essentialit:y of origins (if it is in fact part of the essence of certain sorts of entities to have originated from whatever they in fact originated from); (ii) whether and how hylomorphic compounds can be assigned substance status; and (iii) how a distinction may be drawn between what is taken as primitive by a particular theory or conceptual system (e.g., the number 0 or the empty set) and what is genuinely ontologically fundamental. Thus, as is to be expected, more work sti!l lies ahead for those who are sympathetic to essentialist accounts ot ontological dependence." (pp. 60-61, a note omitted)

(1) For other useful surveys, see also Correia 2008 and Lowe 2005.

Correia F. 2008: 'Ontological Dependence'. Philosophy Compass 3, pp. 1-20.

Lowe E. J. 2005: 'Ontological Dependence'. In Zalta, E. N. (ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

55. ———. 2013. "Substance, Independence and Unity." In Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics, edited by Feser, Edward, 169-195. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

"Conclusion: In this chapter, I considered particular attempts by E. J. Lowe and Michael Gorman at providing an independence criterion of substancehood and argued that the stipulative exclusion of non-particulars and proper parts (or constituents) from such accounts raises difficult issues for their proponents. The results of the present discussion seem to indicate that, at least for the case of composite entities, a unity criterion of substancehood might have at least as much, and perhaps more, to offer than an independence criterion and therefore ought to be explored further by neo-Aristotelians in search of a defensible notion of substancehood.

I indicated briefly how such a unity criterion might be used by neo-Aristotelians to support the inclusion of hylomorphic compounds in the category of substance, given the traditional role of form as the principle of unity within the compound." (p. 188)

References

56. ———. 2018. Form, Matter, Substance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"The Aristotelian doctrine of hylomorphism holds that those entities which are subsumed under it are compounds of matter (hulē) and form (morphē or eidos)." (p. 1)

(...)

"With Chapter 5 (“Ontological Dependence”), I begin Part II (“Substance”) whose main focus is on the question of whether concrete particular objects deserve to be assigned the ontologically privileged status of substancehood within a hylomorphic ontology and, if so, according to what notion of “ontological privilege.” As noted earlier, this assignment becomes potentially problematic once concrete particular objects

are analyzed as metaphysically complex due to their hylomorphic structure. It is common to conceive of the substances as ontologically independent, according to some preferred sense of “independence.” But what is this preferred sense of “ontological independence” and do matter–form compounds qualify as substances when we apply this notion of ontological independence to them? This chapter discusses various relations which have been defined in the literature under the heading of “ontological dependence.”

I examine first existential construals of ontological dependence and turn next to construals of ontological dependence which are formulated in terms of a non-modal conception of essence. I argue in this chapter and Chapter 6 that even the most promising ones among these candidate relations are nevertheless open to objections when evaluated against various plausible measures of success. Chapter 5 incorporates material from Koslicki (2012a, 2013a)." (pp. 4-5)

References

Koslicki, Kathrin (2012a). “Varieties of Ontological Dependence,” in Fabrice Correia and Benjamin Schnieder (eds), Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, pp. 186–213.

Koslicki, Kathrin (2013a). “Ontological Dependence: An Opinionated Survey,” in Miguel Hoeltje, Benjamin Schnieder, and Alex Steinberg (eds), Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence. Philosophia Verlag: München, pp. 31–64.

57. Kovacs, David Mark. 2018. "The Deflationary Theory of Ontological Dependence." Philosophical Quarterly no. 68:481-502.

Abstract: "When an entity ontologically depends on another entity, the former ‘presupposes’ or ‘requires’ the latter in some metaphysical sense. This paper defends a novel view, Dependence Deflationism, according to which ontological dependence is what I call an aggregative cluster concept: a concept which can be understood, but not fully analysed, as a ‘weighted total’ of constructive (roughly: mereological in the broadest possible sense) and modal relations. The view has several benefits: it accounts for clear cases of ontological dependence as well as the source of disagreement in controversial ones; it gives a nice story about the evidential relevance of modal, mereological and set-theoretic facts to ontological dependence; and it makes sense of debates over the relation’s formal properties. One important upshot of the deflationary account is that questions of ontological dependence are generally less deep and less interesting than usually thought."

58. ———. 2020. "Constitution and Dependence." Journal of Philosophy no. 117:150-177.

Abstract: "Constitution is the relation that holds between an object and what it is made of: statues are constituted by the lumps of matter they coincide with; flags, one may think, are constituted by colored pieces of cloth; and perhaps human persons are constituted by biological organisms. Constitution is often thought to be a "dependence relation." In this paper, I argue that given some plausible theses about ontological dependence, most definitions of constitution don’t allow us to retain this popular doctrine. The best option for those who want to maintain that constitution is a dependence relation is to endorse a kind of mereological hylomorphism: constituted objects have their constituters as proper parts, along with a form, which is another proper part. The upshot is that constitution theorists who think of constitution as a dependence relation but are reluctant to endorse mereological hylomorphism ought to give up one of their commitments."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on ontological dependence: L - Z

Bibliography

1. Lowe, E. J. 1994. "Ontological Dependency." Philosophical Papers no. 23:31-48.

"A crucial notion in metaphysics is that of one object depending for its existence upon another object - not in a merely causal sense, but in a deeper, quasi-logical sense. (I say ‘quasi-logical’ because, strictly speaking, logical relations can only obtain between propositions, not worldly objects.) Thus a substance is often conceived to be an object which does not depend for its existence upon anything else.(1) Again, properties are often said to depend for their existence upon the objects which possess them.(2)" (p. 31)

(1) Thus Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, I, 5 1: ‘by substance we can understand nothing other than a thing which exists in such a way as to depend on no other thing for its existence’. See John Cottingham et al. (eds), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), Vol. I, p. 210.

(2) Thus Descartes, Second Set of Replies, Definition V: ‘we know by the natural light that a real attribute cannot belong to nothing’. See Cottingham et al. (eds), op. cit., Vol II, p. 114.

2. ———. 1998. The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Contents: 1 The Possibility of Metaphysics 1; 2 Objects and Identity 28; 3 Identity and Unity 58; 4 Time and Persistence 84; 5 Persistence and Substance 106; 6 Substance and Dependence 136; 7 Primitive Substances 154; 8 Categories and Kinds 174; 9 Matter and Form 190; 10 Abstract Entities 210; 11 Facts and the World 228; 12 The Puzzle of Existence 248;

Bibliography 261; Index 269-275.

"The arguments of Chapter 5 more or less take the concept of substance for granted and so part of the aim of Chapter 6 is to provide a rigorous definition of substance, in terms of the crucial notion of existential dependency. At the same time, I begin to build up a picture of the relationships between the category of substance and other categories of entities at the same ontological level—entities such as events, properties, places, and times. This picture is further developed in Chapter 7, where I go on to argue for quite general reasons that certain fundamental kinds of substance—what I call primitive substances—must exist in order to provide the ultimate existential grounding of all concrete existence. Such substances are distinctive in that their identity through time is itself primitive or ungrounded.

However, identifying these substances is a more difficult matter than arguing in a general way for the necessity of their existence." (Preface, p. VI)

3. ———. 2004. "The Particular–Universal Distinction: A Reply to MacBride." Dialectica no. 58:335-340.

Abstract: "In this brief reply to Fraser MacBride’s critical examination of the four-category ontology and the place within it of the particular – universal distinction, it is argued that the prospects for identifying the four basic ontological categories in terms of the characteristic patterns of ontological dependency between entities belonging to the different categories are rather more promising than MacBride suggests."

References

MacBride, F. 2004, “Particulars, Modes and Universals: An examination of E. J. Lowe’s Four-Fold Ontology”, 58, pp. 317-333.

4. ———. 2004. "Some Formal Ontological Relations." Dialectica no. 58:297-316.

Abstract: "Some formal ontological relations are identified, in the context of an account of ontological categorization.

It is argued that neither formal ontological relations nor ontological categories should themselves be regarded as elements of being, but that this does not undermine the claim of formal ontology to be a purely objective science. It is also argued that some formal ontological relations, like some ontological categories, are more basic than others. A four-category ontology is proposed, in which two basic categories of universals and two basic categories of particulars are distinguished in terms of certain formal ontological relations characteristically obtaining between entities belonging to the different categories."

5. ———. 2012. "Asymmetrical Dependence in Inviduation." In Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality edited by Correia, Fabrice and Schnieder, Benjamin, 214-233. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Identity-dependence would appear to be an asymmetrical, or at least an anti-symmetrical relation, with the implication that no two distinct entities can be each other’s individuators – even if we can allow, as I believe we should, that some entities are self-individuating. This point is related to the fact that circular explanations are inadmissible. For identity-dependence is clearly a species of explanatory relation, in the metaphysical – rather than the merely epistemic – sense of ‘explanation’. The identity of a death is explained, at least partly, by the identity of its subject. As it may otherwise be put, a death has its identity at least partly ‘in virtue of ’ the identity of its subject – and not the other way around." (p. 215)

6. ———. 2013. "Some Varieties of Metaphysical Dependence." In Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Grounding, Supervenience, Response-Dependence, edited by Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin and Steinberg, Alex, 193-210. Munchen: Philosophia.

"In this paper, I shall first of all (in section 1) define various kinds of ontological dependence, motivating these definitions by appeal to examples. My contention is that whenever we need, in metaphysics, to appeal to some notion of existential or identity-dependence, one or other of these definitions will serve our needs adequately, which one depending on the case in hand. Then (in section 2) I shall respond to some objections to one of these proposed definitions in particular, namely, my definition of (what I call) essential identitydependence.

Finally (in section 3), I shall show how a similar approach can be applied in the theory of truthmaking, by offering an account of the truthmaking relation which defines it in terms of a type of essential dependence. I shall also say why I think that this approach is preferable to one which treats the truthmaking relation as primitive. More generally, my view is that accounts of dependence or 'grounding' which treat these notions as primitive are less satisfactory than my own position, which is that in all cases a suitable definition is forthcoming if we look hard enough." (p. 193)

7. ———. 2013. "Complex Reality: Unity, Simplicity, and Complexity in a Substance Ontology." In Johanssonian Investigations: Essays in Honour of Ingvar Johansson on His Seventieth Birthday, edited by Svennerlind, Ch, Almäng, J. and Ingthorsson, R., 338-357. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

"1. Ontology and Levels

As I have just remarked, it is common in current metaphysics to speak of ‘ontological levels’. But levels of what? As I understand it, we should take these to be levels of being, rather than mere levels of description of being. But what exactly is to be understood in this context by a ‘level of being’? What I propose is that we should take a ‘level of being’ to be a level of beings, where ‘beings’ in the relevant sense are taken to be objects (though one might also want to include properties of objects).

Moreover, I have in mind now only concrete objects, not abstract ones — a distinction that I shall discuss shortly. As well as clarifying what is to be understood by ‘being’ in this context, however, we need also to clarify what is to be understood by ‘level’. This I propose to do in terms of part–whole relations.

(...)

"But accepting that — by definition, according to my proposal — a whole is always at a ‘higher’ level than its proper parts, is there anything more that we can say, quite generally, about how objects at different levels are related? I think so, because we can always ask, concerning objects at different levels, what relationships of ontological dependence — or, if this term is preferred, grounding — they stand in to one another. Of particular interest here are dependence relations which are asymmetric (or perhaps anti-symmetric) and which consequently determine an order of ontological priority between the objects so related, with the object depended upon (the ‘dependee’) having ontological priority over the dependent object (the ‘depender’)." (p. 341)

8. Lycan, William G. 1970. "Identifiability-Dependence and Ontological Priority." The Personalist no. 51:502-513.

9. MacBride, Fraser. 2004. "Particulars, Modes and Universals: An examination of E. J. Lowe’s Four-Fold Ontology." Dialectica no. 58:317-333.

Abstract: "Is there a particular-universal distinction? Ramsey famously advocated scepticism about this distinction. In “Some Formal Ontological Relations” E.J. Lowe argues against Ramsey that a particular-universal distinction can be made out after all if only we allow ourselves the resources to distinguish between the elements of a four-fold ontology. But in defence of Ramsey I argue that the case remains to be made in favour of either (1) the four-fold ontology Lowe recommends or (2) the articulation of a particular-universal distinction within it. I also argue that the case remains to be made against (3) a spatio-temporal conception of the particular-universal distinction."

10. McKenzie, Kerry. 2014. "Priority and Particle Physics: Ontic Structural Realism as a Fundamentality Thesis." British Journal for the Philosophy of Science no. 65:353-380.

Abstract: "In this article, I address concerns that the ontological priority claims definitive of ontic structural realism are as they stand unclear, and I do so by placing these claims on a more rigorous formal footing than they typically have been hitherto. I first of all argue that Kit Fine’s analysis of ontological dependence furnishes us with an ontological priority relation that is particularly apt for structuralism. With that in place, and with reference to two case studies prominent within the structuralist literature, I consider whether any of structuralism’s distinctive priority claims may be regarded as warranted. The discussion as a whole has largely negative implications for the radical structuralism of French and Ladyman (including their ‘eliminativist’ interpretation of it), largely positive implications for the moderate structuralism primarily advocated by Esfeld and Lam, and some broad lessons for contemporary fundamentalist metaphysics as a whole."

References

French, S. and Ladyman, J. [2003a]: ‘Remodelling Structural Realism: Quantum Physics and the Metaphysics of Structure’, Synthese, 136, pp. 31–56.

Esfeld, M. and Lam, V. [2008]: ‘Moderate Structural Realism about Space-Time’, Synthese, 160, pp. 27–46.

Esfeld, M. and Lam, V. [2010]: ‘Ontic Structural Realism as a Metaphysics of Objects’, in A. Bokulich and P. Bokulich (eds), Scientific Structuralism, Dordrecht: Springer,pp. 143–59.

11. ———. 2019. "Dependence." In The Routledge Handbook of Emergence, edited by Gibb, Sophie, Hendry, Robin and Lancaster, Tom, 36-53. New York: Routledge.

"Dependence is the most general notion under which a host of familiar metaphysical relations between entities – causation, supervenience, grounding, realisation, etc. – fall. In the first section of this chapter, I will offer some preliminary clarifications to outline the territory in a little more detail. Some years back, this would have primarily involved differentiating kinds of dependence in terms of the strength of the modal operators used and the other details of an analysis deploying them. Now, there has been a proliferation of non-purely modal accounts of dependence. The second section identifies the various reasons that have been offered for this proliferation. The third section discusses a notion of ontological dependence and grounding, each of which draws on an appeal to the essence of the depending, or depended upon, entities. In spite of their popularity,

we will see that such notions are of little assistance in capturing a central case of interest to us: the proper understanding of emergence. In the light of this, the fourth section defends a purely modal treatment of some of the problem cases outlined in the first section and also discusses a non-modal notion of construction. I close with a hypothesis that the combination of three features, a non-dependence account of fundamentality, various notions of construction and purely modal properties, remove the motivation for appeal to an independent account of grounding in this, and perhaps any, area." (p. 36)

12. ———. 2020. "Structuralism in the Idiom of Determination." British Journal for the Philosophy of Science no. 71:497-522.

Abstract: "Ontic structural realism (OSR) is a thesis of fundamentality metaphysics: the thesis that structure, not objects, has fundamental status. Claimed as the metaphysic most befitting of modern physics, OSR first emerged as an entreaty to eliminate objects from the metaphysics of fundamental physics. Such elimination was urged by Steven French and James Ladyman on the grounds that only it could resolve the ‘underdetermination of metaphysics by physics’ they claimed reduced any putative objectual commitment to a merely ‘ersatz’ form of realism. Few, however, have joined French and Ladyman either in acknowledging that such underdetermination exists or in attributing to it such drastic consequences. However, an alternative view that physics does sanction objects, albeit merely as ontologically secondary entities, represents a different and seemingly less extreme route to the same conclusion regarding the fundamentality of structure. But since what it means to be ‘ontologically prior’ is itself a vexed philosophical question, a stance must be taken as to how we are to understand priority before its prospects may be evaluated. In an earlier paper, I outlined how Fine’s notion of ontological dependence might be utilized to defend the priority-based approach to structuralism. Since then, however, I have become convinced that that ontological dependence is not a relation of priority after all. As a result, the arguments outlined in that paper stand in need of reassessment.

In this work, I consider the prospects for priority-based structuralism when expressed in the idiom of determination. My conclusion will be that it has yet to be vindicated by our best physical theories, owing to the failure of symmetry structures to determine the world’s inventory of fundamental kinds. Nevertheless, the same symmetry considerations point toward there being renewed prospects for eliminativism—an eliminativism, moreover, of more naturalistic appeal than that hitherto associated with OSR."

References

French, S. and Ladyman, J. [2003]: ‘Remodelling Structural Realism: Quantum Physics and the Metaphysics of Structure,’ Synthese, 136, pp. 31–56.

French, S. and Ladyman J. [2011]: ‘In Defence of Ontic Structural Realism’, in A. Bokulich and P. Bokulich (eds), Scientific Structuralism, Springer, pp. 25–42.

13. Meixner, Uwe. 1998. "Actual Existence, Identity and Ontological Priority." Erkenntnis no. 48:209-226.

Abstract: "The paper first distinguishes ontological priority from epistemological priority and unilateral ontic dependence. Then explications of ontological priority are offered in terms of the reducibility of the actual existence or identity of entities in one ontological category to the actual existence or identity of entities in another. These explications lead to incompatible orders of ontological priority for individuals, properties of individuals and states of affairs. Common to those orders is, however, that the primacy of the category of individuals is abandoned. This primacy is challenged in the paper also by epistemological arguments, and an onto-anthropological explanation is offered for the very common but false idea that individuals are ontological prior to all other kinds of entities. Finally ontological priority is discussed with respect to a fully specified system of ontological categories."

14. Moltmann, Friederike. 2019. "Ontological Dependence, Spatial Location, and Part Structure." In Ontology Makes Sense: Essays in Honor of Nicola Guarino, edited by Borgo, Stefano, Ferrario, Roberta, Masolo, Claudio and Vieu, Laure, 211-221. Amsterdam: IOS Publications.

Abstract: "This paper presents new observations about ontologically dependent objects which cannot have a host-independent spatial location or a physical part structure, namely disturbances (holes, folds, scratches), tropes, and attitudinal objects (claims, thoughts, promises, requests). It proposes an account of such attributively limited objects in terms of Fregean abstraction, which has so far been applied only to abstract objects."

15. Moran, Alex. 2018. "The Paradox of Decrease and Dependent Parts." Ratio no. 31:273-284.

Abstract "This paper is concerned with the paradox of decrease. Its aim is to defend the answer to this puzzle that was propounded by its originator, namely, the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus.[*] The main trouble

with this answer to the paradox is that it has the seemingly problematic implication that a material thing could perish due merely to extrinsic change. (For, intuitively, it is not possible for a mere extrinsic change to cause a material thing to cease to be.) It follows that in order to defend Chrysippus’ answer to the paradox, one has to explain how it could be that Theon is destroyed by the amputation without changing intrinsically. In this paper, I shall answer this challenge by appealing to the broadly Aristotelian idea that at least some of the proper parts of a material substance are ontologically dependent on that substance. I will also appeal to this idea in order to offer a new solution to the structurally similar paradox of increase. In this way, we will end up with a unified solution to two structurally similar paradoxes."

"This paper is concerned with an ancient puzzle: the paradox of decrease. Consider Dion, a human being, and Theon, one of Dion’s large proper parts, identical to all of Dion besides his left foot. Suppose that Dion’s left foot is amputated, and that Dion survives. (Suppose also that Dion undergoes no further mereological change.) Intuitively, Theon survives in this scenario as well as Dion; after all, Theon only undergoes extrinsic change. However, if this is right, it follows that post-amputation, Dion and Theon end up composed of the very same matter, whilst occupying exactly the same region of space. Intuitively, however, it is not possible for two material objects to occupy precisely the same spatial region, or be composed of the very same matter, at once.(1)" (pp. 273-2174)

[*] The paradox is reported by Philo of Alexandria, On the Indestructibility of the World 48 (von Armin, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta 2.397); English translation in A.A. Long & D. N. Sedley, The Helllenistic Philosophers, Cambridge: Cambridge University press 1987, Vol. 1, pp. 171-172]

16. Morganti, Matteo. 2009. "Ontological Priority, Fundamentality and Monism." Dialectica no. 63:271-298.

Abstract: "In recent work, the interrelated questions of whether there is a fundamental level to reality, whether ontological dependence must have an ultimate ground, and whether the monist thesis should be endorsed that the whole universe is ontologically prior to its parts have been explored with renewed interest. Jonathan Schaffer has provided arguments in favour of ‘priority monism’ in a series of articles (2003, 2004, 2007a, 2007b, forthcoming). In this paper, these arguments are analysed, and it is claimed that they are not compelling: in particular, the possibility that there is no ultimate level of basic entities that compose everything else is on a par with the possibility of infinite ‘upward’ complexity. The idea that we must, at any rate, postulate an ontologically fundamental level for methodological reasons (Cameron 2008) is also discussed and found unconvincing: all things considered, there may be good reasons for endorsing ‘metaphysical infinitism’. In any event, a higher degree of caution in formulating metaphysical claims than found in the extant literature appears advisable."

References

Cameron, R. 2008, ‘Turtles All theWay Down: Regress, Priority and Fundamentality’, Philosophical Quarterly 58, pp. 1–14.

Schaffer, J. 2003, ‘Is There a Fundamental Level?’, Noûs 37, pp. 498–517.

Schaffer, J. 2004, ‘Two Conceptions of Sparse Properties’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 85, pp.

92–102.

Schaffer, J. 2007a, ‘From Nihilism to Monism’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85, pp. 175–191.

Schaffer, J. 2007b, ‘Monism’, in: E. Zalta, ed., Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/monism

Schaffer, J. forthcoming, ‘Monism: The Priority of the Whole’, Philosophical Review. [119 (1):31-76 (2010)]

17. ———. 2014. "Metaphysical Infinitism and the Regress of Being." Metaphilosophy no. 45:232-244.

Abstract: "This article offers a limited defense of metaphysical “infinitism,” the view that there are, or might be, infinite chains of ontological dependence. According to a widespread presupposition, there must be an ultimate ground of being—most likely, a plurality of fundamental atoms. Contrary to this view, this article shows that metaphysical infinitism is internally coherent. In particular, a parallel with the debate concerning infinitism about epistemic justification is suggested, and an “emergence model” of being is put forward. According to the emergence model, the being of any given entity gradually arises out of an infinite series of progressively less dependent entities—it is not wholly transmitted, as it were, from a basic, ungrounded level to all the dependent ones in a step-by-step fashion. Some objections are considered and rebutted."

18. ———. 2015. "Dependence, Justification and Explanation: Must Reality be Well-Founded?" Erkenntnis no. 80:555-572.

Abstract: "Abstract This paper is about metaphysical ‘infinitism’, the view that there are, or could be, infinite chains of ontological dependence. Its main aim is to show that, contrary to widespread opinion, metaphysical infinitism is a coherent position. On the basis of this, it is then additionally argued that metaphysical infinitism need not fare worse than the more canonical ‘foundationalist’ alternatives when it comes to formulating metaphysical explanations. In the course of the discussion, a rather unexplored parallel with the debate concerning infinitism about justification is suggested."

19. ———. 2018. "From Ontic Structural Realism to Metaphysical Coherentism." European Journal for Philosophy of Science no. 9:1-20.

Abstract: "The present paper argues that the typical structuralist claims according to which invariances, symmetries and the like are fundamental – especially in physics – should not be understood in terms of physical relations being fundamental. Rather, they should be understood in terms of ‘metaphysical coherentism’ - the idea that object-like parts of reality exhibit symmetric relations of ontological dependence. The view is developed in some detail, in particular by showing that i) symmetric ontological dependence does not necessarily lead to uninformative metaphysical explanations, and ii) metaphysical coherentism strikes the best balance between the requirements of naturalism and those of theoretical consistency – especially in view of the difficulties that structuralists seem to have in accounting for all state-independent properties of particles in relational terms.

On this basis, the coherentist picture is applied to the interpretation of the quantum domain, and contrasted with extant varieties of structuralism, of both the eliminative and the non-eliminative sort, and holism."

20. Morris, Kevin. 2018. "Truthmaking and the Mysteries of Emergence." In Brute Facts, edited by Vintiadis, Elly and Mekios, Constantinos, 113-119. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"My focus in what follows will be on the claim that truthmaking can play a substantive role in defining an unproblematic notion of emergence. While “emergence” and related locutions have been used to express a variety of nonequivalent ideas, in perhaps the most philosophically interesting sense, to say that some property M is emergent is to say that while instances of M synchronically depend on instances of other properties, instances of M are truly novel additions to the world; and instances of M are genuine additions to the world, at least in part, in virtue of making a unique and distinctive causal contribution." (p. 113, a note omitted)

(...)

"I will begin by sketching the two central notions of the truthmaking-based precisification of emergence: the notion of being needed as a truthmaker and the notion of ontological dependence." (p. 115)

21. Mount, Beau Madison. 2019. "Antireductionism and Ordinals." Philosophia Mathematica no. 27:105-124.

Abstract: "I develop a novel argument against the claim that ordinals are sets. In contrast to Benacerraf’s antireductionist argument, I make no use of covert epistemic assumptions. Instead, my argument uses considerations of ontological dependence.

I draw on the datum that sets depend immediately and asymmetrically on their elements and argue that this datum is incompatible with reductionism, given plausible assumptions about the dependence profile of ordinals. In addition, I show that a structurally similar argument can be made against the claim that cardinals are sets."

22. Nelson, Michael. 2013. "Modal Metaphysics. Contingently Existing Propositions." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 43:776-803.

Abstract: "I argue that propositions are contingent existents. Some propositions that in fact exist might not have existed and there might have been propositions that are distinct from every actually existing proposition. This is because some propositions are singular propositions, which are propositions containing ordinary objects as constituents, and so are ontologically dependent on the existence of those objects; had those objects not existed, then the singular propositions would not have existed. I provide both a philosophical and technical understanding of the contingent status of propositions."

23. Nolan, Daniel. 2011. "Categories and Ontological Dependence." The Monist no. 94:277-301.

"In this paper I want to do two connected things. The first is to explore, in general terms, some of the issues that come up when we start considering ontological categories and questions about relations of dependence between them (either between the members of one and the members of another, or between the categories themselves). The second is to discuss one particular way we could try to illuminate the apparent dependence relationships between categories (or apparent categories): by exploring and tentatively defending a particular account of how ordinary things are related to events, and how we might relate the putative category of 'physical object' (or 'thing', as I will call them) to the putative category of 'event'." (p. 277)

24. Noordhof, Paul. 2019. "Dependence." In The Routledge Handbook of Emergence, edited by Gibb, Sophie, Hendry, Robin and Lancaster, Tom, 36-53. New York: Routledge.

"Dependence is the most general notion under which a host of familiar metaphysical relations between entities – causation, supervenience, grounding, realisation, etc. – fall. In the first section of this chapter, I will offer some preliminary clarifications to outline the territory in a little more detail. Some years back, this would have primarily involved differentiating kinds of dependence in terms of the strength of the modal operators used and the other details of an analysis deploying them. Now, there has been a proliferation of non-purely modal accounts of dependence. The second section identifies the various reasons that have been offered for this proliferation. The third section discusses a notion of ontological dependence and grounding, each of which draws on an appeal to the essence of the depending, or depended upon, entities. In spite of their popularity, we will see that such notions are of little assistance in capturing a central case of interest to us: the proper understanding of emergence. In the light of this, the fourth section defends a purely modal treatment of some of the problem cases outlined in the first section and also discusses a non-modal notion of construction. I close with a hypothesis that the combination of three features, a non-dependence account of fundamentality, various notions of construction and purely modal properties, remove the motivation for appeal to an independent account of grounding in this, and perhaps any, area."

25. Orilia, Francesco. 2016. "Armstrong’s Supervenience and Ontological Dependence." In Metaphysics and Scientific Realism: Essays in Honour of David Malet Armstrong, edited by Calemi, Francesco Federico, 233-251. Berlin: De Gruyter.

"Let us then turn to the dependence proposal, the idea that FL is (or should be) a way of saying that the supervenient is ontologically dependent on the subvenient.

This option is certainly intriguing and worth exploring, for it seems in line with Armstrong’s insistence on (contingent) particulars, universals and states of affairs as somehow fundamental: everything else seems to depend on this basic level." (p. 238)

(...)

"In sum, if we are to understand FL in terms of ontological dependence, as we are trying to do, it seems we should enroll Armstrong in the party of those who do not take ontological dependence as necessarily well-founded. Schaffer 2010 argues from the empirical possibility of gunks, objects made up of smaller and smaller parts ad infinitum, to priority monism, the thesis that the cosmos is a whole on which everything else, qua part, is dependent. But this argument presupposes that the well-foundedness of dependence is taken for granted. However,if we rather take for granted the plausible idea that a complex such as P&Q is dependent on its parts and not vice versa (after all, according to Armstrong, as we have seen, P&Q might fail to exist even if P and Q exist), the possibility of gunky universals should rather lead us to question the well-foundedness of dependence.

Similarly, well-foundedness should be questioned, given the possibility of gunks, or the possibility of appealing to fact infinitism to account for the relatedness of universals and particulars that brings about states of affairs." (p. 249)

Sigla = FL = “doctrine of the ontological free lunch” [ "One may call this view, that the supervenient is not something additional to what it supervenes upon, the doctrine of the ontological free lunch. Like other free lunches, this one gives and takes away at the same time. You get the supervenient for free, but you do not really get an extra entity." D. M. Armstrong, A World of States of Affairs, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997, pp. 12-13.]

26. Page, Sam. 2006. "Mind-independence disambiguated: Separating the meat from the straw in the realism/anti-realism debate." Ratio no. 19:321-335.

Abstract: "The notion of mind-independence plays a central role in the contemporary realism/anti-realism debate, but the notion is severely ambiguous and consequently the source of considerable misunderstanding.

In this paper, four kinds of mind-independence are distinguished: ontological, causal, structural, and individuative independence. Appreciating these distinctions entails that one can reject the individuative independence of the natural world, and still maintain that the natural world is causally and structurally independent of us. This paper argues that so-called anti-realists, especially Rorty, Putnam, and Goodman, are not opposed to the causal and structural independence of the natural world, as is frequently

alleged, but rather its individuative independence. An acceptance of these points will hopefully put an end to the prevalence of strawmen in the debate, and focus attention on meatier issues."

27. Paolini Paoletti, Michele. 2016. "Non-Symmetrical Relations, O-Roles, and Modes." Acta Analytica no. 31:373-395.

Abstract: "I examine and discuss in this paper Orilia’s theory of external, non-symmetrical relations, that is based on ontological roles (O-Roles). I explore several attempts to interpret O-Roles from an ontological viewpoint and I reject them because of two problems concerning the status of asymmetrical relations (to be distinguished from non-symmetrical relations simpliciter) and of exemplification as an external, non-symmetrical relation. Finally, following Heil’s and Lowe’s characterization of modes as particular properties that ontologically depend on their “bearers”, I introduce relational modes in order to define a new solution to the problems of the ontological status of both external, non-symmetrical relations and O-Roles. I also deal with five objections raised by Fraser MacBride against relational modes and O-Roles and I elaborate an analysis of the relations of being to the left of and being to the right of."

References

MacBride, F. (2007). Neutral relations revisited. Dialectica, 61(1), 25–56.

MacBride, F. (2014). How involved do you want to be in a non-symmetric relationship? Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 92(1), 1–16.

28. ———. 2018. "Substance Causation." Philosophia:1-22.

"Let me now turn to fundamentality – or ontological independence/basicness. An intuitive characterization of fundamentality is the following: an entity is fundamental if and only if (iff) it is needed to ground(1) something in the universe and it is not grounded by anything else. Metaphorically speaking, fundamental entities are all and only those entities that some "lazy" omniscient and omnipotent being would need to invoke in order to ground what happens in the universe." (p. 2

(1) I assume here that something is fundamental iff it is ontological independent (or ontologically basic) – even if there are some modal characterizations of ontological independence according to which the ontological independence of something does not guarantee its fundamentality. Moreover, as it will become apparent in a few lines, I am not committed here to the idea that fundamentality/ontological independence must be characterized in terms of some primitive relation of grounding. Therefore, my use of the verb "to ground" does not aim at recalling the latter view."

29. ———. 2019. "Respects of Dependence." Studia Neoaristotelica no. 16:49-82.

Abstract: "I consider in this paper respects of dependence, namely, the fact that some entities depend on other entities in some respect or another. In the first section, I provide a characterization of contemporary debates on dependence based on respects of dependence. I also single out seven desiderata a good theory of dependence should satisfy and three ways of interpreting respects of dependence. In the second section, I criticize two of such ways and, in the third section, I defend the remaining option, namely, that respects of dependence correspond to different dependence-relations between entities (e.g., existence-dependence, identity-dependence, and so on). In the fourth section, I develop my theory of Respect-of-Dependence (RD) Relations in order to distinguish between partial and full dependence and between specific and generic dependence, and to qualify RD-relations in temporal and modal terms. Finally, in the last section, I anticipate and reply to three objections against dependence pluralism."

30. ———. 2021. "Respects of Dependence and Symmetry." Studia Neoaristotelica no. 18:31-68.

Abstract: "In this article I discuss several apparent counterexamples to the asymmetry of ontological dependence. These counterexamples were introduced in discussions about grounding, but they can affect every theory of ontological dependence. I show that, if one adopts metaontological pluralism (i.e., the view according to which there are many dependence relations), one has some advantages when it comes to defending the asymmetry of dependence. In Section 1, I introduce metaontological pluralism and my own version of it, which is based on Respect-of-Dependence Relations (RD-Relations). I then single out five strategies to deal with apparent cases of symmetric dependence and show that only two of them are available to metaontological pluralists. In Sections 2, 3, and 4 I deal with cases of symmetric dependence by adopting these strategies. Finally, in Section 5, I anticipate and reply to three objections against my account."

31. Pearson, Olley. 2018. "Emergence, Dependence, and Fundamentality." Erkenntnis no. 83:391-402.

Abstract: "In a recent paper Barnes proposes to characterize ontological emergence by identifying the emergent entities with those entities which are both fundamental and dependent. Barnes offers characterizations of the notions of fundamentality and dependence, but is cautious about committing to the specifics of these notions. This paper argues that Barnes’s characterization of emergence is problematic in several ways. Firstly, emergence is a relation, and merely delimiting relata of this relation tells us little about it. Secondly, the group of entities delimited as dependent and fundamental do not appear to be the group of emergent entities. Rather, some entities appear to be dependent and fundamental and not emergent, whilst other entities appear to be emergent and not dependent and fundamental. The moral drawn is that in order to provide a characterization of emergence one must go beyond what Barnes says explicitly. It is also shown that a potentially fruitful way of doing this would be to further specify the notion of dependence at issue revealing it to be asymmetric and perhaps merely nomological."

References

Barnes, E. (2012). Emergence and fundamentality. Mind, 121(484), 873–901.

32. Plantinga, Alvin. 1979. "De Essentia." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 7:101-121.

Abstract: "In this paper I propose an amendment to Chisholm's definition of individual essence.[*] I then argue that a thing has more than one individual essence and that there is no reason to believe no one grasps anyone else's essence. The remainder of the paper is devoted to a refutation of existentialism, the view that the essence of an object X (along with propositions and states of affairs directly about x) is ontologically dependent upon x in the sense that it could not have existed if x had not existed."

[*] Roderick Chisholm, Person and Object (London: Allen and Unwin 1976), p. 29: "D.I.5 G is an individual essence (or haecceity) =Df G is a property which is such that, for every x, x has G if and only if x is necessarily such that it has G, and it is impossible that there is a y other than x such that y has G." (Note added)

33. Poli, Roberto. 2010. "Spheres of Being and the Network of Ontological Dependencies." Polish Journal of Philosophy no. 4:171-182.

Abstract: "Ontological categories form a network of ties of dependence. In this regard, the richest source of distinctions consists in the medieval discussion on the divisions of being.

After a preliminary examination of some of those divisions, the paper pays attention to Roman Ingarden's criteria for classifying the various types of ontological dependence. The following are the main conclusions that can be drawn from this exercise. Ingarden suggests that (1) the most general principles framing the categories of particulars are based on couples of mutually opposed principles; (2) the most general among these couples of principles appear to be based on three different types of modalities; (3) subsequent couples of opposed principles do not see to require the introduction of further types of modalities, and (4) the overall typology shows that there are three spheres of being, respectively composed of ideal entities, real entities and intentional entities as contents of psychological acts."

34. Prescott-Couch, Alexander. 2017. "Explanation and Manipulation." Noûs no. 51:484-520.

Abstract: "I argue that manipulationist theories of causation fail as accounts of causal structure, and thereby as theories of “actual causation” and causal explanation. I focus on two kinds of problem cases, which I call “Perceived Abnormality Cases” and “Ontological Dependence Cases.” The cases illustrate that basic facts about social systems—that individuals are sensitive to perceived abnormal conditions and that certain actions metaphysically depend on institutional rules—pose a challenge for manipulationist theories and for counterfactual theories more generally. I then show how law-based accounts of causal structure can answer such challenges. The moral of the story is that the basic manipulationist idea that our interest in causal structure is driven by our interest in manipulating our environment faces decisive problems in a central domain of application, the social sciences."

35. Rosen, Gideon. 2010. "Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction." In Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology, edited by Hale, Bob and Hoffmann, Aviv, 109-135. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Introduction: This essay is a plea for ideological toleration. Philosophers are right to be fussy about the words they use, especially in metaphysics where bad vocabulary has been a source of grief down through the ages. But they can sometimes be too fussy, dismissing as ‘unintelligible’ or ‘obscure’ certain forms of language that are perfectly meaningful by ordinary standards and which may be of some real use.

So it is, I suggest, with certain idioms of metaphysical determination and dependence. We say that one class of facts depends upon or is grounded in another.

We say that a thing possesses one property in virtue of possessing another, or that one proposition makes another true. These idioms are common, as we shall see, but they are not part of anyone’s official vocabulary. The general tendency is to admit them for heuristic purposes, where the aim is to point the reader’s nose in the direction of some philosophical thesis, but then to suppress them in favor of other, allegedly more hygienic formulations when the time comes to say exactly what we mean. The thought is apparently widespread that while these ubiquitous idioms are sometimes convenient, they are ultimately too unclear or too confused, or perhaps simply too exotic to figure in our first-class philosophical vocabulary.

Against this tendency, I suggest that with a minimum of regimentation these metaphysical notions can be rendered clear enough, and that much is to be gained by incorporating them into our analytic tool kit. I make this proposal in an experimental spirit. Let us see how things look if we relax our antiseptic scruples for a moment and admit the idioms of metaphysical dependence into our official lexicon alongside the modal notions (metaphysical necessity and possibility, the various forms of supervenience) with which they are often said to contrast unfavorably. If this only muddies the waters, nothing is lost; we can always retrench. If something is gained, however, as I believe it is, we may find ourselves in a position to make some progress. (pp. 109-110)

36. Rosenkrantz, Gary S. 2018. "Of Facts and Things." International Journal of Philosophical Studies no. 26:679-700.

Abstract: "This paper examines the ontological status of individual substances; intuitive examples of such entities include particles and living organisms. My aim is to assess the ontological status of individual substances in the light of arguments for an ontology of [concrete] facts, often called states of affairs. Advocates of a fact ontology have argued that these factive entities are the ontologically fundamental beings. I will address the salient question of whether individual substances are reducible to, or eliminable in favor of, facts. I will further address the question of whether individual substances, even if not reducible to facts, are nonetheless ontologically dependent upon facts in a way that undercuts the claim that some individual substances are ontologically fundamental. Finally, I will argue that a persuasive case for the claim that facts are what is ontologically fundamental has yet to be made."

37. Rosenkrantz, Gary S., and Hoffmann, Joshua. 1991. "The Independence Criterion of Substance." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 51:835-853.

"According to a traditional view, an individual substance is that which could exist all by itself or which in some sense is "independent." In this paper, we construct a new version of an analysis of the notion of substance in terms of independence, and argue for its adequacy.

It should be noted that our project is to analyze the concept of individual substance as ordinarily understood, paradigm instances of which seem to be particular material objects and persons."

(...)

"For the purposes of our analysis we shall assume (plausibly, we think) that a thing in this ordinary sense, i.e., an individual substance, is not reducible to or identifiable with an entity of another kind or ontological category, e.g., a set or collection of either properties, ideas, sense-data, or events. (This does not rule out the possibility that a substance can be eliminated in favor of an entity of another kind or ontological category."

Since there is considerable disagreement among philosophers about what kinds of entities could exist, and since such disagreement is difficult to resolve, there is an advantage, epistemically speaking, in providing an analysis of substance which is ontologically neutral." (pp. 835-836, notes omitted)

38. Rydéhn, Henrik. 2018. "Grounding and Ontological dependence." Synthese no. 198:1231-1256.

Abstract: "Recent metaphysics has seen a surge of interest in grounding—a relation of non-causal determination underlying a distinctive kind of explanation common in philosophy. In this article, I investigate the connection between grounding and another phenomenon of great interest to metaphysics: ontological dependence. There are interesting parallels between the two phenomena: for example, both are commonly invoked through the use of “dependence” terminology, and there is a great deal of overlap in the motivations typically appealed to when introducing them. I approach the question of the relationship between grounding and ontological dependence through an investigation of their modal connections (or lack thereof). I argue, firstly, that on the common assumption that grounding is factive, it can be shown that no known variety of rigid ontological dependence is either necessary or sufficient for grounding. I also offer some suggestions in support of the claim that this generalizes to every possible form of rigid ontological dependence. I then broaden the discussion by considering a non-factive conception of grounding, as well as by looking at forms of generic (rather than rigid) ontological dependence. I argue that there is at least one form of rigid ontological dependence that is sufficient for non-factive grounding, and that a form of generic dependence may be necessary (but not sufficient) both for factive and non-factive grounding. However, justifying even these fairly weak modal connections between grounding and ontological dependence turns out to require some quite specific and substantive assumptions about the two phenomena that have only rarely been discussed."

39. Sacchi, Elisabetta, and Voltolini, Alberto. 2012. "To Think is to Have Something in One’s Thought." Quaestio no. 12:395-422.

"In this paper we will focus on the most basic form of intentionality, namely reference intentionality or aboutness: the property an intentional event or state (for short: a thought) has of being about, or of, a certain object, the entity thereby labelled the intentional object. Hereafter, by “intentionality” we will mean reference intentionality.

Along with a well-honoured tradition, we will accept that intentionality is at least a property a thought holds necessarily, i.e., in all possible worlds that contain it; more specifically, a necessary relation, namely the relation of existential dependence of the thought on its intentional object. Yet we will first of all try to show that intentionality is more than that. For we will claim that intentionality is an essential property of the thought, namely a property whose predication to the thought is true in virtue of the identity, or nature, of such a thought. More particularly, for us intentionality will again be a relation, yet a relation of ontological dependence of the thought on its intentional object; specifically, the relation for the thought of being constituted by its object." (p. 395, notes omitted)

40. Schnieder, Benjamin. 2006. "A Certain Kind of Trinity: Dependence, Substance, Explanation." Philosophical Studies no. 129:393-419.

Abstract: "The main contribution of this paper is a novel account of ontological dependence. While dependence is often explained in terms of modality and existence, there are relations of dependence that slip through the mesh of such an account. Starting from an idea proposed by Jonathan Lowe, the article develops an account of ontological dependence based on a notion of explanation; on its basis, certain relations of dependence can be established that cannot be accounted by the modal-existential account.

Dependence is only one of two main topics of this paper, for it is approached via a discussion of the category of substance. On a traditional view, substances can be characterised as independent entities. Before the background of a modal-existential account of dependence, this idea appears problematic.

The proposed notion of explanatory dependence is shown to vindicate the traditional approach to substance."

41. ———. 2020. "Dependence." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 107-120. New York: Routledge.

"Not all entities are born equal. Some entities exist only derivatively: they depend for their existence on other, more fundamental entities that make the former exist.To study such existential dependencies is an important task of ontology.

Similarly, not all truths and facts are born equal. Some truths are derivative: they are true because of other, more fundamental truths that make the former true; these latter truths can be called the grounds of the former, and the relation holding between grounds and what they ground can be called grounding. Equally, some facts are derivative: they obtain because of other, more fundamental facts, i.e., their grounds.

As illustrated by these paragraphs, characterizations of existential dependence and of grounding can be phrased in similar terms. Dependent entities are often called derivative and are said to owe their existence to other entities that make them exist, just as grounded facts are often said to be derivative and to owe their obtaining to other facts that make them obtain.That observation motivates the question how exactly the notion of grounding relates to notions of existential dependence (and also other sorts of dependency; more on that in what follows).This is the main concern of this handbook entry.

As to the structure of what follows: In §2, notions of dependence are characterized in a general way. In §3, notions of existential and ontological dependence are introduced. In §4, proposals about how existential dependence relates to grounding are discussed." (p. 107)

42. Schwartzkopff, Robert. 2011. "Numbers as Ontologically Dependent Objects: Hume’s Principle Revisited." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 82:353-373.

Summary: "Adherents of Ockham’s fundamental razor contend that considerations of ontological parsimony pertain primarily to fundamental objects. Derivative objects,on the other hand, are thought to be quite unobjectionable. One way to understand the fundamental vs. derivative distinction is in terms of the Aristotelian distinction between ontologically independent and dependent objects. In this paper I will defend the thesis that every natural number greater than 0 is an ontologically dependent object thereby exempting the natural numbers from Ockham’s fundamental razor."

43. Sethi, Umrao. 2021. "The Varieties of Instantiation." Journal of the American Philosophical Association no. 7:417-437.

Abstract: "Working with the assumption that properties depend for their instantiation on substances, I argue against a unitary analysis of instantiation. On the standard view, a property is instantiated just in case there is a substance that serves as the bearer of the property. But this view cannot make sense of how properties that are mind-dependent depend for their instantiation on minds. I consider two classes of properties that philosophers often take to be mind-dependent: sensible qualities like color, and bodily sensations like itches. Given that the mind is never itself literally red or itchy, we cannot explain the instantiation of these qualities as a matter of their having a mental bearer. Appealing to insights from Berkeley, I defend a view on which a property can be instantiated not in virtue of having a bearer—mental or material—but rather in virtue of being the object of a conscious act of perception.

In the second half of the paper, I suggest that the best account of sensible qualities and bodily sensations ultimately makes use of both varieties of instantiation."

44. Simons, Peter M. 1987. Parts: A Study in Ontology. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Chapter 8: Ontological Dependence, pp. 290-323.

45. Smith, Deborah C. 2012. "Rainbows, Time Zones, and Other Mind-Dependent Objects: Making Sense of the Relevant Notions of “Mind-Dependence” in the Debate between Metaphysical Realists and Antirealists." Open Journal of Philosophy no. 2:38-44.

Abstract: "In a recent article, Sam Page distinguishes four kinds of mind-(in)dependence: ontological, causal, struc-tural, and individuative. He argues that, despite the fact that the metaphysical realism/antirealism debate has been frequently characterized as a debate between those who accept and those who deny that the world is causally and/or structurally dependent on minds, many antirealists are primarily interested in de-fending the claim that the world is individuatively mind-dependent. In this article, I critically examine these differing senses of “mind-dependence” highlighting ways in which they remain ambiguous and identifying various entailment relations between them. I argue that there is reason to believe that onto-logical dependence, structural dependence, and the only sort of individuative dependence that is relevant to the metaphysical debate are coextensive notions. As such, any argument that succeeds in establishing that it is incoherent to suppose that everything is ontologically and/or structurally dependent thereby es-tablishes the incoherence of metaphysical antirealism."

46. Steinberg, Alex. 2015. "Priority monism and part/whole dependence." Philosophical Studies no. 172:2025-2031.

Abstract: "Priority monism is the view that the cosmos is the only independent concrete object. The paper argues that, pace its proponents, Priority monism is in conflict with the dependence of any whole on any of its parts: if the cosmos does not depend on its parts, neither does any smaller composite."

47. Tallant, Jonathan. 2015. "Ontological Dependence in a Spacetime-World." Philosophical Studies no. 172:3101-3118.

Abstract: "Priority Monism (hereafter, ‘Monism’), as defined by Jonathan Schaffer (Philos Rev 119:131–176, 2010), has a number of components. It is the view that: the cosmos exists; the cosmos is a maximal actual concrete object, of which all actual concrete objects are parts; the cosmos is basic—there is no object upon which the cosmos depends, ontologically; ontological dependence is a primitive and unanalysable

relation. In a recent attack, Lowe (Spinoza on monism. Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp 92-122, 2012) has offered a series of arguments to show that Monism fails. He offers up four tranches of argument, with different focuses.

These focal points are: (1) being a concrete object; (2) aggregation and dependence; (3) analyses of ontological dependence; (4) Schaffer’s no-overlap principle. These are all technical notions, but each figures at the heart of a cluster of arguments that Lowe puts forward. To respond, I work through each tranche of argument in turn.

Before that, in the first section, I offer a cursory statement of Monism, as Schaffer presents it in his 2010 paper, Monism: The Priority of the Whole. I then respond to each of Lowe’s criticisms in turn, deploying material from Schaffer’s 2009 paper Spacetime: the One Substance, as well as various pieces of conceptual machinery from Lowe’s own works (The possibility of metaphysics. Clarendon, Oxford, 1998, 2010) to deflect Lowe’s (Spinoza on monism. Palgave Macmillan, London, pp 92–122, 2012) attacks. In the process of defending Monism from Lowe (Spinoza on monism. Palgave Macmillan, London, pp 92–122, 2012), I end up offering some subtle refinements to Schaffer’s (Philos Rev 119:131–176, 2010) view and explain how the resulting ‘hybrid’ view fares in the wider dialectic."

References

Lowe, E. J., "Against Monism", in Philip Goff (ed.), Spinoza on Monism, New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2012, 92-122.

48. Thomasson, Amie L. 1999. Fiction and Metaphysics. Cambrisge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 2. The nature and varieties of existential dependence, pp. 24-34.

"I have argued that fictional characters are dependent objects, requiring for their very existence such entities as literary works and the creative acts of an author. But they depend on these in different ways — requiring the creative acts of an author only to come into existence, and works of literature to remain in existence — so that it is misleading to simply speak of these indifferently as dependencies. To unravel the details of the status of fictional objects we must step back to examine the concept of existential dependence in general and to delineate carefully the various forms that this relation can take." (p. 24)

(...)

"Fictional characters provide an especially good motivation for drawing out a theory of dependence, because they exhibit many different sorts of dependence on many different sorts of entities, and because indeed the dependencies supporting them are layered, as they are dependent on literary works, which are themselves dependent on other entities. We can now utilize this system of dependence to return to make the earlier understanding of fictional objects more precise and detailed. The details of the theory of dependence also prove pivotal to understanding the place of fictional characters in a general system of categories in Part II. But it must not be forgotten that the phenomenon of dependence is completely general — many other types of entities seem to share each of these types of dependence; in fictional characters they are simply combined in an especially interesting way."

49. Todd, Patrick. 2013. "Soft Facts and Ontological Dependence." Philosophical Studies no. 164:829-844.

Abstract: "In the literature on free will, fatalism, and determinism, a distinction is commonly made between temporally intrinsic (‘hard’) and temporally relational (‘soft’) facts at times; determinism, for instance, is the thesis that the temporally intrinsic state of the world at some given past time, together with the laws, entails a unique future (relative to that time). Further, it is commonly supposed by incompatibilists that only the ‘hard facts’ about the past are fixed and beyond our control, whereas the ‘soft facts’ about the past needn’t be. A substantial literature arose in connection with this distinction, though no consensus emerged as to the proper way to analyze it. It is time, I believe, to revisit these issues. The central claim of this paper is that the attempts to analyze the hard/soft fact distinction got off on fundamentally the wrong track. The crucial feature of soft facts is that they (in some sense) depend on the future. Following recent work on the notion of dependence, however, I argue that the literature on the soft/hard distinction has failed to capture the sense of dependence at stake. This is because such attempts have tried to capture softness in terms of purely modal notions like entailment and necessitation. As I hope to show, however, such notions cannot capture the sort of asymmetrical dependence relevant to soft facthood. Arguing for this claim is the first goal of this paper. My second goal is to gesture towards what an adequate account of soft facthood will really look like."

50. Tognazzini, Neal A. 2015. "Grounding the Luck Objection." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 93:127-138.

Abstract: "Many object to libertarianism by arguing that it manages to solve one problem of luck (the threat of determinism) only by falling prey to another (the threat from indeterminism). According to this objection, there is something freedom undermining about the very circumstances that the libertarian thinks are required for freedom. However, it has proved difficult to articulate precisely what it is about these circumstances that is supposed to undermine freedom—the absence of certain sorts of explanations has perhaps been the most common complaint. In this paper, however, I argue that recent work on the metaphysics of ontological dependence provides the resources for formulating the luck objection in its strongest form."

51. Toner, Patrick. 2011. "Independence accounts of substance and substantial

parts." Philosophical Studies no. 155:37-43.

Abstract: "Traditionally, independence accounts of substance have held pride of place. Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes and Spinoza—among many others—accepted independence accounts in one form or another. The general thrust of such views is that substances are those things that are apt to exist in themselves. In this paper, I argue that several contemporary independence theories of substance—including those of Kit Fine, E.J. Lowe and Michael Gorman—include an ad hoc element that renders them

unacceptable. I’ll also consider the theories of Hoffman and Rosenkrantz."

52. Tugby, Matthew. 2016. "Universals, Laws, and Governance." Philosophical Studies no. 173:1147-1163.

Abstract: "Proponents of the dispositional theory of properties typically claim that their view is not one that offers a realist, governing conception of laws. My first aim is to show that, contrary to this claim, if one commits to dispositionalism then one does not automatically give up on a robust, realist theory of laws. This is because dispositionalism can readily be developed within a Platonic framework of universals.

Second, I argue that there are good reasons for realist dispositionalists to favour a Platonic view. This is because the alternative Aristotelian version of dispositionalism, on which universals are immanent entities, is unstable for various reasons.

My final aim is to address a common criticism facing Platonic theories of laws, which is the problem of how external entities can play an explanatory role where the world’s law-like patterns of behaviour are concerned. I argue that the Platonists’ response to the one over many problem can help to shed light on this matter, and a possible solution is sketched, one which makes use of the notions of essence, constitution and ontological dependence."

53. Wigglesworth, John. 2015. "Set-Theoretic Dependence." Australasian Journal of Logic no. 12:259-176.

Abstract: "In this paper, we explore the idea that sets depend on, or are grounded in, their members. It is said that a set depends on each of its members, and not vice versa. Members do not depend on the sets that they belong to. We show that the intuitive modal truth conditions for dependence, given in terms of possible worlds, do not accurately capture asymmetric dependence relations between sets and their members. We extend the modal truth conditions to include impossible worlds and give a more satisfactory account of the dependence of a set on its members. Focusing on the case of singletons, we articulate a logical framework in which to evaluate set-theoretic dependence claims, using a normal first-order modal logic. We show that on this framework the dependence of a singleton on its single members follows from logic alone. However, the converse does not hold."

54. Wilson M, Jessica. 2020. "Essence and Dependence." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine, edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 283-300. New York: Oxford University Press.

"What I aim to do in this paper is threefold. First, I’ll substantiate my previous claims concerning Fine’s approach to metaphysical theorizing, by attention to his accounts of essence and dependence. Second, I’ll raise some specific concerns about the general principles Fine takes to schematically characterize these notions. In particular, I’ll argue that Fine’s essence-based account of ontological dependence is subject to certain counterexamples. The problem, roughly speaking, is that Fine supposes that an entity’s essence makes reference just to what it ontologically depends on, but various cases suggest that an entity’s essence can also make reference to what ontologically depends on it. As such, Fine’s account of ontological dependence is subject to the same objection he raises against modal accounts of essence and dependence—that is, of being insufficiently general or ecumenical. Third, I’ll close by observing that in cases where the target phenomenon admits of highly diverse applications, as is the case with ontological dependence (or the related notion of ground), there is no guarantee that the search for general principles that are both appropriately contentful and appropriately ecumenical will be successful. Even so, the search for such principles is clearly worthwhile; hence whatever the outcome in a given case, in raising to salience the schema-based approach, Fine has here made a lasting contribution." (p. 284)

55. Zhong, Lei. 2021. "Physicalism Without Supervenience." Philosophical Studies no. 178:1529-1544.

Abstract: "It is widely accepted that supervenience is a minimal commitment of physicalism. In this article, however, I aim to argue that physicalism should be exempted from the supervenience requirement. My arguments rely on a parallel between ontological dependence and causal dependence. Since causal dependence does not require causal determination, ontological dependence should not require ontological determination either. Moreover, my approach has a significant theoretical advantage: if physicalism is not committed to supervenience, then the metaphysical possibility of zombies—which is still wide open after all these years—would pose no challenge to physicalism."

56. Zylstra, Justin. 2014. "Dependence and Fundamentality." Studia Philosophica Estonica no. 7:5-28.

Abstract: "I argue that dependence is neither necessary nor sufficient for relative fundamentality.

I then introduce the notion of ‘likeness in nature’ and provide an account of relative fundamentality in terms of it and the notion of dependence. Finally, I discuss some puzzles that arise in Aristotle’s Categories, to which the theory developed is applied."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on the history of ontological dependence

Bibliography

1. Berti, Enrico. 2001. "Multiplicity and Unity of Being in Aristotle." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 101:185–207.

Abstract: "I. In analytic philosophy, so-called 'univocalism' is the prevailing interpretation of the meaning of terms such as 'being' or 'existence', i.e. the thesis that these terms have only one meaning (see Russell, White, Quine, van Inwagen). But some analytical philosophers, inspired by Aristotle, maintain that 'being' has many senses (Austin, Ryle). II. Aristotle develops an argument in favour of this last thesis, observing that 'being' and 'one' cannot be a single genus, because they are predicated of their differences (Metaph. B 3). III. But 'being' for Aristotle has also a unity, i.e. 'focal meaning', which coincides with substance (Metaph. Γ 2), and substance has not only an ontological priority, but also a logical priority, in respect to the other beings, as was shown by G. E. L. Owen. IV. This 'focal meaning' cannot be identified with primary substance, i.e. with the unmovable mover, as some interpreters pretend, because this latter has only an ontological, not a logical, priority in respect to the world. V. The impossibility of this interpretation results from Aristotle's rejection of an essence and a substance of being (Metaph. B 4), i.e. the rejection of what the Christian philosophers called esse ipsum subsistens."

2. Blank, Andreas. 2009. "Existential Dependence and the Question of Emanative Causation in Protestant Metaphysics, 1570–1620." Intellectual History Review no. 19:1-13.

"That the world is dependent on God for its existence is a view that many Scholastic and early modern thinkers took to be a philosophical implication of the biblical creation story. However, they strongly disagreed about how to analyse the relation of existential dependence. Christia Mercer has argued that there is an interesting and little noticed group of humanist Platonists in German philosophy in the one or two generations before Leibniz. In particular, she holds that Platonism was adopted to understand the relation between God and the created world. In support of her view, she has brought to light numerous passages from little-known works by early modern German philosophers prominent in their day,

such as Johannes Micraelius (1597–1658), Johann Adam Scherzer (1628–1683), Erhard Weigel (1625–1699), and Jacob Thomasius (1622–1684). No doubt, the presence of Platonic strands in German philosophy in the generation before Leibniz is a remarkable but little-appreciated fact.

However, I will argue that, if one recalls the revival of metaphysics at Protestant universities in the period between 1570 and 1620, a more complex picture emerges. While Mercer’s account focuses on instances where early modern German thinkers seem to accept wholeheartedly Platonic views about the relation between God and the world, there are also critical responses to thinking about this relation in terms of emanative causation. In this article, I will consider some writings by two philosophers who took a critical stance on this issue: Nicolaus Taurellus and Rudolph Goclenius. Taurellus (1547–1606) studied philosophy at the Lutheran University of Tübingen under Jakob Schegk and medicine at Basel.

He held a chair in ethics in Basel, and then from 1580 a chair in medicine and natural philosophy at the University of Altdorf. Goclenius (1547–1628) held a chair in moral philosophy at the University of Marburg, where his long-standing Reformed leanings allowed him to remain in post after the purge of Lutherans from the University in 1605." (p. 1, notes omitted)

3. ———. 2015. Ontological Dependence and the Metaphysics of Individual Substances, 1540–1716. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

Contents: Acknowledgements 11; Note on Citations and Translations 13; Abbreviations 15; Introduction 17; Chapter 1: Ontological Dependence and the Ordained Power of God in Julius Caesar Scaliger’s Theory of Plant Generation 29; Chapter 2: Nicolaus Taurellus on Forms, Elements, and Ontological Dependence 57; Chapter 3: Nicolaus Taurellus and Rudolph Goclenius on Ontological Dependence and the Question of Emanative Causation 87; Chapter 4: Ontological Dependence and Incomplete Entities in Gallego de la Sema’s Theory of Animal Generation 114; Chapter 5: Fortunio Liceti on Ontological Dependence and Immaterial Extension 139; Chapter 6: Henry More on Ontological Dependence and Immaterial Extension 163; Chapter 7: Leibniz and the Sixteenth-Century Controversy over Ontological Dependence and Substance Pluralism 183; Chapter 8: Leibniz on Ontological Dependence and Incomplete Entities 209; References 237; Index 257-267.

"The question of what depends on what, and how, is one of the perennial questions of metaphysics, and the early modern period is no exception to this. Much of the central themes in early modern metaphysics are more or less directly connected with issues about ontological dependence. This holds for Descartes’s discussion of the mind/body interaction as well as for Spinoza’s discussion of the relations between substance, attributes and modes, for Malebranche’s theory of occasional causes as well as for Leibniz’s theory of pre-established harmony.(1) Obviously, a comprehensive treatment of ontological dependence in early modem metaphysics would have to be extensive, and presumably it would end up being highly redundant since it would have to cover much ground that is already extremely well researched. The present volume does not seek to even come close to such a comprehensive exposition. Rather, it unites a group of essays that deal with some less familiar aspects of the role of the notion of ontological dependence in early modern metaphysics." (p. 17)

(1) For an overview of the role of ontological dependence in early modern theories of susbstance, see Burkhardt, "Substance, Attributes and Modes."

(...)

"The approaches traced in the present volume thus can be characterized as problem-oriented in two senses: First, they can all be lead as different attempts at integrating dependence relations—the dependence of created beings on God, the dependencies between created beings, the dependencies between the constituents of created beings—with diverging accounts of the nature of individual substances. And second, they all use such a general framework to offer solutions to more specialized ontological problems. I will take these more specialized problems as starting points of the single chapters and will trace the notions of ontological dependence and individual substance within the framework of the solutions to these problems." (p. 19)

References

Burkhardt, Hans. “Substance, Attributes and Modes—Substantial Structures in Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz.” In Substance and Attribute. Western and Islamic Traditions in Dialogue. Edited by C. Kanzian and Μ. Legenhausen. Frankfurt: Ontos, 2007, pp. 8-22.

4. Bliss, Ricki, and Priest, Graham. 2018. "Metaphysical Dependence, East and West." In Buddhist Philosophy: A Comparative Approach, edited by Emmanuel, Steven M., 63-85. Malden: Wiley Blackwell.

"In Section 4.3, we will look at some of the ways in which metaphysical dependence occurs in Eastern traditions, and in Section 4.4 we will look at its occurrence in Western traditions. In Section 4.5 we will spell out some of the ways each tradition can benefit by being informed of the other.

Before we do this, however, there is a necessary preliminary. The views on metaphysical dependence are many, and there is a great variety of answers to central questions such as “What sorts of things is it which are dependent or independent?”, “What is the nature of metaphysical dependence?”, and “What is the reality like that metaphysical dependence structures?” To get some order into the chaos we need a framework in which to fit views. We do this by providing a taxonomy, the subject of Section 4.2." (p. 63)

(...)

"Conclusion: In this chapter we have looked at the relation (or relations) of metaphysical dependence as they feature in philosophy – both historical and contemporary.

In an essay of this nature we have been able to do little more than sketch briefly some of the terrain; neither have we attempted to resolve any substantial philosophical issues. Our main aim has been to show that the notion of metaphysical dependence is an important feature of both Western and Eastern traditions, and to alert philosophers who are aware of only one side of this divide to the existence of the other. If it serves to bring the two traditions into dialogue, and so advance this central area of metaphysics, we will feel it has achieved its goal." (p. 81)

5. Cohoe, Caleb. 2013. "There Must Be A First: Why Thomas Aquinas Rejects Infinite, Essentially Ordered, Causal Series." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 21 (838-856).

Abstract: "Several of Thomas Aquinas’s proofs for the existence of God rely on the claim that causal series cannot proceed in infinitum. I argue that Aquinas has good reason to hold this claim given his conception of causation.

Because he holds that effects are ontologically dependent on their causes, he holds that the relevant causal series are wholly derivative: the later members of such series serve as causes only insofar as they have been caused by and are effects of the earlier members. Because the intermediate causes in such series possess causal powers only by deriving them from all the preceding causes, they need a first and nonderivative cause to serve as the source of their causal powers."

6. Constantin, Ion. 2012. "Husserl on the World as an Ontologically Dependent Correlate of the Transcendental Subject." Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations no. 11:103-108.

Abstract: "The purpose of this article is to gain a deeper understanding of Husserl’s distinction between conceptual and empirical inquiry, his method of reduction, his commitment to idealism, his aim of criticizing epistemological naturalism, and his definition of the transcendent world. The paper generates insights about Husserl’s prioritization of immanence, his account of the primal impression, his prioritization of consciousness, and his transcendental idealism. The results of the current study converge with prior research on Husserl’s philosophical idealism, his realism, his development of transcendental phenomenology, and his project of philosophical reform."

7. Corkum, Phil. 2008. "Aristotle on Ontological Dependence." Phronesis no. 53:65-92.

Abstract: "Aristotle holds that individual substances are ontologically independent from non-substances and universal substances but that non-substances and universal substances are ontologically dependent on substances. There is then an asymmetry between individual substances and other kinds of beings with respect to ontological dependence. Under what could plausibly be called the standard interpretation, the ontological independence ascribed to individual substances and denied of non-substances and universal substances is a capacity for independent existence. There is, however, a tension between this interpretation and the asymmetry between individual substances and the other kinds of entities with respect to ontological independence. I will propose an alternative interpretation: to weaken the relevant notion of ontological independence from a capacity for independent existence to the independent possession of a certain ontological status."

8. ———. 2013. "Substance and Independence in Aristotle." In Varieties of Dependence: Ontological Dependence, Supervenience, and Response-Dependence, edited by Hoeltje, Miguel, Schnieder, Benjamin and Steinberg, Alex, 65-95. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"Individual substances are the ground of Aristotle's ontology. Taking a liberal approach to existence, Aristotle accepts among existents entities in such categories other than substance as quality, quantity and relation; and, within each category, individuals and universals. As I will argue, individual substances are ontologically independent from ll these other entities, while all other entities are ontologically dependent on individual substances. The association of substance with independence has a long history and several contemporary metaphysicians have pursued the connection.(1) In this chapter, I will discuss the intersection of these notions of substance and ontological dependence in Aristotle."

(1) See, for example, Hoffman and Rosenkrantz 1991, Lowe 2005, Gorman 2006 and Schnieder 2006. For discussion, see Koslicki forthcoming.

References

Gorman, M. 2006: 'Independence and Substance'. International Philosophical Quarterly 46, pp. 147-59.

Hoffman, J. and G. Rosenkrantz 1991: 'The Independence Criterion of Substance'. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51, pp. 835-53.

Koslicki, K. forthcoming: 'Substance, Independence and Unity'. In Feser forthcoming. [2013. "Substance, Independence and Unity." In Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics, edited by Feser, Edward, 169-195. London: Palgrave Macmillan.]

Lowe, E. J. 2005: 'Ontological Dependence'. In Zalta, E. N. (ed.): The Stanford Enryclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2005 ed. URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2005/entries/dependence-ontological/.

Schnieder, B. 2006: 'A Certain Kind of Trinity: Dependence, Substance, Explanation'. Philosophical Studies 129, pp. 393-419.

9. ———. 2016. "Ontological Dependence and Grounding in Aristotle." Oxford Handbooks Online in Philosophy:1-14.

Abstract: "The relation of ontological dependence or grounding, expressed by the terminology of separation and priority in substance, plays a central role in Aristotle’s Categories, Metaphysics, De Anima and elsewhere.

The article discusses three current interpretations of this terminology. These are drawn along the lines of, respectively, modal-existential ontological dependence, essential ontological dependence, and grounding or metaphysical explanation. I provide an opinionated introduction to the topic, raising the main interpretative questions, laying out a few of the exegetical and philosophical options that influence one’s reading, and locating questions of Aristotle scholarship within the discussion of ontological dependence and grounding in contemporary metaphysics."

10. De Rizzo, Julio. 2021. "Ingarden on the Varieties of Dependence." European Journal of Philosophy.

First online 3 October 2021.

Abstract: "In the third chapter of his major work, the Controversy over the Existence of the World, Roman Ingarden discusses four varieties of dependence entities might exhibit. The aim of this essay is to explore these varieties and to put the claims Ingarden makes concerning them on a rigorous footing."

11. Di Bella, Stefano. 2005. "Leibniz’s Theory of Conditions: A Framework for Ontological Dependence." The Leibniz Review no. 15:67-93.

Abstract: "The aim of this paper is to trace in Leibniz' s drafts the sketched outline of a conceptual framework he organized around the key concept of 'requisite'. We are faced with the project of a semi-formal theory of conditions, whose logical skeleton can have a lot of different interpretations. In particular, it is well suited to capture some crucial relations of ontological dependence. Firstly the area of 'mediate requisites' is explored - where causal and temporal relations are dealt with on the basis of a general theory of 'consequence'. Then the study of 'immediate requisites' is taken into account - a true sample of mereological inquiry, where Leibniz strives for a unitary treatment of part-whole relation, conceptual inclusion and inherence. Far from simply conflating these relations one with another and with causality, therefore, Leibniz tried to spell them out, while at the same time understanding them within a single conceptual framework."

12. Edelhoff, Ana Laura. 2020. Aristotle on Ontological Priority in the Categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Abstract: "The main objective of this Element is to reconstruct Aristotle's view on the nature of ontological priority in the Categories. Over the last three decades, investigations into ontological dependence and priority have become a major concern in contemporary metaphysics. Many see Aristotle as the originator of these discussions and, as a consequence, there is considerable interest in his own account of ontological dependence. In light of the renewed interest in Aristotelian metaphysics, it will be worthwhile - both historically and systematically - to return to Aristotle himself and to see how he conceived of ontological priority (what he calls "priority in substance" (proteron kata ousian) or "priority in nature" (proteron tei phusei)), which is to be understood as a form of asymmetric ontological dependence."

13. Gorman, Michael M. 1994. "Ontological priority and John Duns Scotus." Philosophical Quarterly no. 44:460-471.

"The term 'ontological priority' is used fairly often in philosophical discourse.

The ways in which it is used are so varied, however, that it is tempting to suppose that they may have nothing in common. The purpose of this essay is to develop an inclusive definition of ontological priority, one that includes the various uses as special cases, by utilizing John Duns Scotus's concept of 'essential order'.

The interest of such a definition lies not only in the fact that it makes sense of the various meanings usually given to the term 'ontological priority', but also in the fact that it marks out a special class of relations. First, I will discuss the senses usually given to 'ontological priority' in the literature; second, I will consider the problems with defining it; third, I will examine Scotus's notion of essential order; finally, I will use that Scotistic notion to develop an inclusive definition of 'ontological priority'." (p. 460)

14. Imaguire, Guido. 2021. "On the Coherence of Aristotelian Universals." Synthese no. 199:7255-7263.

Abstract: "The current interest in the notions of ontological dependence and metaphysical grounding is usually associated with a renewal of interest in Aristotelian metaphysics. Curiously, some authors have recently argued that the Aristotelian view of universals, according to which universals depend for their existence on their exemplifiers, is incoherent from a grounding perspective. In this paper I argue that such criticism is misleading. I shall examine their arguments and clarify the supposed incoherence."

15. Kriegel, Uriah. 2016. "Brentano's Latter-day Monism." Brentano Studien no. 14:69-77.

"According to “existence monism”, there is only one concrete particular, the cosmos as a whole (Horgan and Potrč 2000, 2008). According to “priority monism,” there are many concrete particulars, but all are ontologically dependent upon the cosmos as a whole, which accordingly is the only fundamental concrete particular (Schaffer 2010a, 2010b). In essence, the difference between them is that existence monism does not recognize any parts of the cosmos, whereas priority monism does – it just insists that the parts are ontologically dependent upon the whole in this case.

Brentano never maintained either of these views. But in the last two years of his life, he seems to have held the following approximation: there is only one physical substance, namely, the material universe as a whole. This is twice removed from existence or priority monism: first, it allows for a plurality of mental substances (souls); secondly, it allows for a plurality of physical accidents, which in Brentano’s reistic ontology are also concrete particulars (see Kriegel 2015). Still, the view that the only physical substance is the universe as a whole is quite radical and finds little precedent in the history of philosophy." (p. 69)

References

Horgan, T. and M. Potrč 2000. ‘Blobjectivism and Indirect Correspondence.’ Facta Philosophica 2: 249–270.

Horgan, T. and M. Potrč 2008. Austere Realism: Contextual Semantics Meets Minimal Ontology. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Kriegel, U. 2015. ‘Thought and Thing: Brentano’s Reism as Truthmaker Nominalism.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 91: 153–180.

Schaffer, J. 2010a. ‘Monism: The Priority of the Whole.’ Philosophical Review 119: 31–76.

Schaffer, J. 2010b. ‘The Internal Relatedness of All Things.’ Mind 119: 341–376.

16. Massin, Olivier. 2018. "Brentanian Continua." Brentano Studien no. 16:229-276.

"Brentano’s theory of continuity is based on his account of boundaries.

The core idea of the theory is that boundaries and coincidences thereof belong to the essence of continua. Brentano is confident that he developed a full-fledged, boundary-based, theory of continuity; and scholars often concur: whether or not they accept Brentano’s take on continua they consider it a clear contender. My impression, on the contrary, is that, although it is infused with invaluable insights, several aspects of Brentano’s account of continuity remain inchoate. To be clear, the theory of boundaries on which it relies, as well as the account of ontological dependence that Brentano develops alongside his theory of boundaries, constitute splendid achievements. However, the passage from the theory of boundaries to the account of continuity is rather sketchy. This paper pinpoints some chief problems raised by this transition, and proposes some solutions to them which, if not always faithful to the letter of Brentano’s account of continua, are I believe faithful to its spirit.

§1 presents Brentano’s critique of the mathematical account of the continuous. §2 introduces Brentano’s positive account of continua. §3 raises three worries about Brentano’s account of continuity. §4 proposes a Neo-Brentanian approach to continua that handles these worries." (pp. 229-230, a note omitted)

17. Neels, Richard. 2018. "Phusis, Opposites and Ontological Dependence in Heraclitus." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 35:199-217.

"In the first section of this paper, I argue for a specific way of understanding Heraclitus’s use of phusis. For Heraclitus, the character, or phusis, of an object is defined by a structure of opposing yet essential properties inherent in that object. In the second section, I use this specific definition of phusis to explain the set of Heraclitean fragments that I believe exhibit this understanding of phusis. In the third section, I discuss the river fragment and argue that it and some similar fragments also exhibit Heraclitus’s notion of phusis. In the final section, I argue that the relationship between objects and opposites is one of dependence.

I end by attributing to Heraclitus the dependence on opposites thesis, which states that objects are ontologically dependent for their existence and their identity (that is, their “nature” or phusis) on opposing yet essential properties that are necessarily inherent in them." (pp. 199-200)

18. Orilia, Francesco. 2009. "Bradley's Regress and Ungrounded dependence Chains: A Reply to Cameron." Dialectica no. 63:333-341.

Abstract: "A version of Bradley’s regress can be endorsed in an effort to address the problem of the unity of states of affairs or facts, thereby arriving at a doctrine that I have called fact infinitism. A consequence of it is the denial of the thesis, WF, that all chains of ontological dependence are well-founded or grounded. Cameron has recently rejected fact infinitism by arguing that WF, albeit not necessarily true, is however contingently true. Here fact infinitism is supported by showing that Cameron’s argument for the contingent truth of WF is unsuccessful."

References

Cameron, R. 2008, ‘Turtles all the Way Down: Regress, Priority and Fundamentality’, Philosophical Quarterly 58, pp. 1–14.

19. Pfeiffer, Christian. 2018. "Aristotle and the Thesis of Mereological Potentialism." Philosophical Inquiry no. 42:28-66.

Abstract: "According to Aristotle, the way in which the parts of a whole are is different from the way in which the whole exists. Parts of an object are only potentially, whereas the whole exists actually. Although commentators agree that Aristotle held this doctrine, little effort has been made to spell out precisely what it could mean to say that the parts are only potentially.

In this paper, I shall attempt to elucidate that claim and explain the philosophical motivation behind it. I will argue that the motivation of mereological potentialism is to account for the unity of material substance. For a part to be potentially is, I will argue, a form of ontological dependence of the part on the whole. Potential parts have their being as a possible division of the whole. I will further explain this by specifying how the parts are grounded in the capacities of the whole and how the parts are individuated by the whole."

20. Ruloff, Colin P. 2014. "Divine Thoughts and Fregean Propositional Realism." International Journal for Philosophy of Religion no. 76:41-51.

Abstract: "Abstract Anderson and Welty have recently advanced an argument for the claim that the laws of logic are ontologically dependent upon a necessarily existent mind, i.e. God. In this paper I argue that a key premise of Anderson and Welty’s argument—viz., a premise which asserts that x is intrinsically intentional only if x is mind-dependent— is false, for on a broadly Fregean account of propositions, propositions are intrinsically intentional but not mind-dependent."

References

Anderson, J., & Welty, G. (2011). The lord of noncontradiction. Philosophia Christi, 13(2), 321–338.

21. Sentesy, Mark. 2018. "The Now and the Relation between Motion and Time in Aristotle: A Systematic Reconstruction." Apeiron no. 51:279-323.

Abstract: "This paper reconstructs Aristotle’s account of the now to clarify the relationship between motion and the number of time. If time is the number of motion, then the priority of motion can be grasped by examining his theory of number. The paper gives a systematic overview of the now in relation to motion, to the constitution of units, and to number in general. This shows that, for Aristotle, the now is not itself an extended unit, and defends his view against claims that time is implicitly prior to motion. The temporal number is co-constituted by the soul and motion, and the now is key to understanding how this occurs. This paper shows that, just as numbers are generated by the soul, time emerges through the soul’s articulation of motion using a now. The now is a limit that marks out and sets up the abstraction of a temporal unit from its underlying motion. This reconstruction provides a strong basis for the claim that time is ontologically dependent on motion, and secondarily on the soul."

22. Snyder, James G. 2011. "Marsilio Ficino and Frane Petrić on the “Ontological Priority” of Matter and Space." Synthesis Philosophica no. 26:229-239.

Abstract: "This paper is a comparison of some of the central ontological claims on the nature of prime matter of the Renaissance Platonist Marsilio Ficino, and the nature of space of Frane Petrić, the sixteenth century Platonist from the town of Cres. In it I argue that there are two respects in which the natural philosophies of both Platonists resemble one another, especially when it comes to the ontological status of the most basic substrate of the material world. First, both Ficino and Petrić argue for the basic existence of matter and space. Second, both philosophers attribute an “ontological priority” to matter and space over what are seen as the fleeting qualities of the material world."

23. Turnbull, Robert G. 1959. "Aseity and Dependence in Leibniz’s Metaphysics." Theoria no. 25:95-114.

"It is part of my intention in this paper to show that the fundamental features of Leibniz’s metaphysics can be properly thought of as emerging from an attempt to make appropriate emendations in the Platonic pattern.

There is a patent similarity between Platonic souls and Leibnizien “metaphysical points”; both are such that their esse is agere. This comment, at the moment, is not really very illuminating.

It wants exploitation. To exploit it will require our taking a rather circuitous route. We start naturally, I believe, with some critical feflections upon the Platonic doctrine of dependence per praesentiam." (p. 97)

24. Unlu, Hikmet. 2020. "Aristotle on Ontological Priority." Acta Philosophica no. 1:137-158.

Abstract: "There are several passages in the Metaphysics where Aristotle explains ontological priority in terms of ontological dependence, but there are others where he seems to adopt a teleological conception of ontological priority. It is sometimes maintained that the latter priority too must be construed in terms of the former, or that the priorities in question are not both endorsed (or simultaneously endorsed) by Aristotle. The goal of this paper is to show otherwise; I argue that what is at issue are two distinct priorities that Aristotle simultaneously endorses."

25. Vilhauer, Benjamin. 2008. "Incompatibilism and Ontological Priority in Kant's Theory of Free Will." In Incompatibilism and Ontological Priority in Kant's Theory of Free Will, edited by Muchnik, Pablo.

"Kant is an incompatibilist about free will and determinism. Like all incompatibilists, Kant thinks that there is a fundamental conflict between determinism and free will. But like no other incompatibilist, Kant holds both that determinism is true, and that we have free will. Kant thinks that the truth of determinism is demonstrated by the conclusion of the Second Analogy, that is, by the conclusion that the necessitation of all alterations according to causal laws is a condition for the possibility of the experience of objective succession. But he also thinks we have an immediate awareness that we are morally responsible, in a sense that implies that we have free will. This awareness is based on what he describes in the second Critique as a "fact of pure reason."" (p. 22)

"The purpose of this paper is to argue that Kant's incompatibilism can only be accommodated if one accepts the "ontological" interpretation of this distinction, i.e. the view that agents qua noumena are ontologically prior to agents qua phenomena.

(...)

This paper has two main parts. In the first part, the ontological interpretation will be described, and an explanation will be given of how it makes room for Kant's incompatibilism. Recent (independent) work by the present author, Eric Watkins, and Robert Hanna will be drawn on to demonstrate that the ontological interpretation can mount a better defense against some traditional objections than has often been thought. In the second part, the two-aspect interpretation of Kant's theory of free will shall be described, and it will be argued that it cannot make room for Kant's incompatibilism." (pp. 23-24)

References

Hanna, R. and Moore, A. "Reason, Freedom and Kant: An Exchange," Kantian Review 12, no. 1 (2007): pp. 113-133.

Vilhauer, B. "The Scope of Responsibility in Kant's Theory of Free Will," forthcoming in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy. [2010, 18:1, 45-71]

--. "Can We Interpret Kant as a Compatibilist about Detenninism and Moral Responsibility?" British Journal for the History of Philosophy 12, no. 4 (2004): pp. 719-730.

Watkins, E. Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Linguistic Relativism (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) vs. Universal Grammar

Introduction

"Early in the twentieth century, American anthropologist Franz Boas (1858-1942) inaugurated an important expansion of scientific investigation of the languages of native North America. As part of a broad critique of nineteenth-century evolutionary arguments he stressed the equal value of each language type and their independence from race and cultural level. He argued that each language necessarily represents an implicit classification of experience, that these classifications vary across languages, but that such variation probably has little effect on thought or culture.

His student Edward Sapir (1884-1939) accepted the main thrust of Boas' position but came to feel that the closely knit system of categories in a language could represent incommensurable analyses of experience with effects on speakers' conceptual view points and aesthetic interpretations. Gestalt and psychoanalytic psychology and Sapir's own literary efforts also played a role in his thinking on this issue. Sapir's concern was not with linguistic form as such (for example, whether a language uses inflections or not), nor with linguistic content or meaning as such (for example, whether a language could refer to a particular referent), but rather with the formal organization of meaning characteristic of a language, the regular ways meanings are constructed (for example, grammatical categories and patterns of semantic composition). Despite the suggestiveness of his formulation, Sapir provided few specific illustrations of the sorts of influences he had in mind.

Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941), a gifted amateur linguist independently interested in these issues as they related to the nature of science, came into contact with Sapir in 1930 and began developing these views to a more systematic way. He analysed particular linguistic constructions, proposed mechanisms of influence, and provided empirical demonstrations of such influences on belief and behavior. However, his views on this issue are known to us largely through letters, unpublished manuscripts and popular pieces, which has led to considerable debate about his actual position. In this context, the one article on this issue prepared for a professional audience must be given special weight (see Whorf 1956). (1)Whorf argued that each language refers to an infinite variety of experiences with a finite array of formal categories (both lexical and grammatical) by trouping experiences together as analogically 'the same' for the purposes of speech. These categories also interrelate in a coherent way, reinforcing and complementing one another, so as to constitute an overall interpretation of experience. Languages vary considerably not only in the basic distinctions they recognize, but also in the assemblage of thesecategories into a coherent system of reference. Thus the system of categories which each language provides to its speakers is not a common, universal system, but one peculiar to the individual language, and one which makes possible a particular 'fashion of speaking'.

But speakers tend to assume that the categories and distinctions of their language are natural, given by external reality. Further, speakers make the tacit error of assuming that elements of experience which are classed together on one or another criterion for the purposes of speech are similar in other respects as well. The crux of Whorf's argument is that these linguistic categories are used as guides in habitual thought. When speakers attempt to interpret an experience in terms of a category available in their language they automatically involve the other meanings implicit in that particular category (analogy) and in the overall configuration of categories in which it is embedded. And speakers regard these other meanings as being intrinsic to the original experience rather than a product of linguistic analogy. Thus, language does not so much blind speakers to some obvious reality, but rather it suggests associations which are not necessarily entailed by experience. Ultimately, these shaping forces affect not only everyday habitual thought but also more sophisticated philosophical and scientific activity. In the absence of another language (natural or artificial) with which to talk about experience, speakers will be unlikely to recognize the conventional nature of their linguistically based understandings." (p. 471)

Notes

(1) "The relation of habitual thought and behavior to language" (1939) reprinted in B. L. Whorf Language, thought, and reality. Selected writings. Cambridge: Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1956 pp. 134-159).

From: John A. Lucy, "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis", in: Edward Craig (ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, London, New York: Routledge 1998.

"The original idea, variously attributable to Humboldt, Boas, Sapir, Whorf, was that the semantic structures of different languages might be fundamentally incommensurable, with consequences for the way in which speakers of specific languages might think and act. On this view, language, thought, and culture are deeply interlocked, so that each language might be claimed to have associated with it a distinctive world view.

These ideas captured the imagination of a generation of anthropologists, psychologists, and linguists, as well as members of the general public. They had deep implications for the way anthropologists should conduct their business, suggesting that translational difficulties might lie at the heart of their discipline. However, the ideas seemed entirely and abruptly discredited by the rise of the cognitive sciences in the 1960s, which favoured a strong emphasis on the commonality of human cognition and its basis in human genetic endowment. This emphasis was strengthened by developments within linguistic anthropology, with the discovery of significant semantic universals in color terms, the structure of ethno-botanical nomenclature, and (arguably) kinship terms.

However, there has been a recent change of intellectual climate in psychology, linguistics, and other disciplines surrounding anthropology, as well as within linguistic anthropology, towards an intermediate position, in which more attention is paid to linguistic and cultural difference, such diversity being viewed within the context of what we have learned about universals (features shared by all languages and cultures). New work in developmental psychology, while acknowledging underlying universal bases, emphasizes the importance of the socio-cultural context of human development. Within sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology there has also been increasing attention to meaning and discourse, and concomitantly a growing appreciation of how interpretive differences can be rooted as much in the systematic uses of language as in its structure." (pp. 2-3)

(...)

"The boldness of Whorf's formulation prompted a succession of empirical studies in America in the 1950s and early 1960s aimed at elucidating and testing what now became known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Anthropological and linguistic studies by Trager, Hoijer, Lee, Casagrande, and others have been well reviewed elsewhere (see Lucy Language diversity and thought. A reformulation of the linguistic relativity hypothesis chapter 3; and this volume). These studies hardly touched on cognition, but in the same period a few psychologists (notably Lenneberg, Brown, Stefflre) did try to investigate the relation between lexical coding and memory, especially in the domain of color, and found some significant correlations (again see Lucy chapter 5). This line of work culminated, however, in the celebrated demonstration by Berlin & Kay (1969) of the language-independent saliency of "basic colors," which was taken as a decisive anti-relativist finding, and effectively terminated this tradition of investigations into the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. There followed a period in which Whorf's own views in particular became the butt of extensive criticism.

It is clear from this background that the "Sapir-Whorf" hypothesis in its classical form arose from deep historical roots but in a particular intellectual climate. Even though (it has been closely argued by Lucy op. cit.) the original hypothesis has never been thoroughly tested, the intellectual milieu had by the 1960s entirely changed. Instead of empiricism, we now have rationalistic assumptions. Instead of the basic tenets of structuralism, in which each linguistic or social system must be understood first in internal terms before comparison is possible, modern comparative work (especially in linguistics) tends to presume that one can isolate particular aspects or traits of a system (e.g. aspect or subjecthood) for comparison. The justification, such as it is, is that we now have the outlines of a universal structure for language and perhaps cognition, which provides the terms for comparison. It is true that the assumption of unconscious processes continues, but now the emphasis is on the unconscious nature of nearly all systematic information processing, so that the distinctive character of Whorf's habitual thought has been submerged.

In this changed intellectual climate, and in the light of the much greater knowledge that we now have about both language and mental processing, it would be pointless to attempt to revive ideas about linguistic relativity in their original form. Nevertheless, there have been a whole range of recent intellectual shifts that make the ground more fertile for some of the original seeds to grow into new saplings. It is the purpose of this volume to explore the implications of some of these shifts in a number of different disciplines for our overall view of the relations between language, thinking, and society." (pp. 6-7)"

From: John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson, Rethinking Linguistic Relativity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996.

Historical roots of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

"In traditional scholarship concerning the intellectual roots of the so-called Sapir -Whorf Hypothesis' -- a term perhaps first used by Harry Hoijer (1904-1976) in 1954 in a paper at a conference devoted to the subject, but probably made more widely known through John B. Carroll's (b. 1916) posthumous edition of Benjamin Lee Whorf s papers in 1956 (cf page 27) -- these are traced largely, but not exclusively, to German language theory of the 17th (e.g., Leibniz) through the early 19th century, which, in Humboldt's version, connects the 'inner form' of a language with the particularity of a world view of the nation that speaks it. This traditional view (surveyed in Koerner 1992) has recently been challenged by Joseph (1996) and, where Whorf's work in general is concerned, by Lee (1996) in her monograph treatment of Whorfs 'theory complex' (especially Chapter 3). In this short paper the argument is made that these seemingly opposite positions concerning intellectual indebtnedness are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but that an allowance should he made for the presence, latent or keenly felt, of two distinct but at least loosely connected layers of influence discernible in the work of North American linguists and anthropologists studying indigenous languages from Whitney to Whorf and his followers. So while the first, perhaps more general and less explicit kind of influence (at least where Whorf is concerned) derives from a fairly long-standing tradition in German philosophy of language, appropriate room should definitely be given to the more immediate sources of the idea that one's native language determines individual and cultural patterns of thought which Joseph (1996) has documented so carefully, this idea held by Herder and, notably, by Humboldt (which he dubs the 'magic key' view), whereby language is seen as embodying the national mind and unfolding in line with the Romantic concept of history, in contrast to the other version (dubbed by him 'metaphysical garbage'), which envisions language developing within an evolutionary view of history and which is seen as introducing obstacles to logical thought. This latter view, Joseph holds, appears to have been commonplace in Cambridge analytical philosophy, represented most prominently by Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) and Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), and in Viennese logical positivism, reflected in the Work of Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970). Joseph identifies Charles Kay Ogden (1889- 1957) as the key link between Cambridge and Vienna, whose influential book of 1923 The Meaning of Meaning, co-authored with Ivor Armstrong Richards (1893-1979), subtitled "The influence of language on thought and of the science of symbolism", contains, Joseph demonstrates, many of the positions held by both Whorf and Sapir.

According to Joseph (1996), Sapir's positive review of the same year of Ogden and Richards' influential book marks a turning point from his view of language as a cultural product (as in his 1921 book Language, which incidentally was one of the works criticized in Ogden and Richards) to a sort of template around which the rest of culture is structured, as argued in his "The Status of Linguistics as a Science" (1929), This paper, Joseph suggests, like others of Sapir's writings from 1923 on, takes up the rhetoric of 'metaphysical garbage' almost exclusively. Whorf in turn, drawn by Sapir to structuralism from originally mystical interests in language - beginning with his discovery in 1924 of the quasi-Cabbalistic writings of Antoine Fahre d'Olivet (1768-1825), likewise takes up this 'garbage' line, interweaving it with 'magic key' only in the two years between Sapir's death and his own. Joseph in his important, indeed ground-breaking study on the subject -- also investigates other influences on Whorf, for instance the writings of the analytic philosopher Count Alfred Korzybski (1879-1950), founder of the General Semantics movement in the United States. As a result, my own paper, like my previous research on the subject, can be regarded as dealing more with part of the general intellectual climate that informed American scholarship during much of the 19th and the early 20th century, than with most of the direct, textually traceable sources, of the so-called Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis that Joseph had identified." (pp. 1-2)

From: E. F. K. Koerner, Towards a 'Full Pedigree' of the 'Sapir-Whorf Hipothesys'. From Locke to Lucy. In: Martin Pütz and Marjolijn H. Verspoor (eds.), Explorations in Linguistic Relativity, Philadelphia: John Benjamins 2000, pp. 1-24.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on Linguistic Relativity (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis)

Bibliography

1. Aarsleff, Hans. 1988. "Introduction." In On Language: The Diversity of Human Language-Structure and Its Influence on the Mental Development of Mankind , VII-LXV. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2. Alford, Danny H.K. 1978. "The Demise of the Whorf Hypothesis (A Major Revision in the History of Linguistics)." Berkeley Linguistics Society. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting no. 4:485-499.

3. Basson, A.H., and O'Connor, J. 1947. "Language and Philosophy: Some Suggestions for an Empirical Approach." Philosophy no. 22:49-65.

4. Berlin, Brent, and Kay, Paul. 1969. Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Reprinted: Stanford, Center for the Study of Language and Information, 1999.

5. Berriman, W.A. 1978. "Alternative conceptual schemes." Metaphilosophy no. 9:226-232.

"Against recent arguments, which define alternative conceptual schemes in terms of failure of translatability and insist that since such schemes cannot be translated, they cannot be made intelligible, I argue that even if Whorf is mistaken about the Hopi, he does describe, using the same grammatical criteria as Strawson, a scheme radically different to that described in "Individual's" (our scheme). It seems appropriate to mark the difference by "alternative conceptual scheme." Further, I claim that not translation but rather a process of substitution of, or addition to, a first language is the key to understanding a radically different second language."

6. Bertalanffy, Ludwig von. 1955. "An essay on the relativity of categories." Philosophy of Science no. 22:243-263.

7. Björk, Ingrid. 2008. Relativizing Linguistic Relativity: investigating Underlying Assumptions about Language in the Neo-Whorfian Literature . Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet.

"This work concerns the linguistic relativity hypothesis, also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which, in its most general form claims that 'lan-guage' influences 'thought'. Past studies into linguistic relativity have treated various aspects of both thought and language, but a growing body of literature has recently emerged, in this thesis referred to as neo-Whorfian, that empirically investigates thought and language from a cross-linguistic perspective and claims that the grammar or lexicon of a particular language influences the speakers' non-linguistic thought.

The present thesis examines the assumptions about language that underlie this claim and criticizes the neo-Whorfian arguments from the point of view that they are based on misleading notions of language. The critique focuses on the operationalization of thought, language, and culture as separate vari-ables in the neo-Whorfian empirical investigations. The neo-Whorfian stud-ies explore language primarily as 'particular languages' and investigate its role as a variable standing in a causal relation to the 'thought' variable. Tho-ught is separately examined in non-linguistic tests and found to 'correlate' with language.

As a contrast to the neo-Whorfian view of language, a few examples of other approaches to language, referred to in the thesis as sociocultural appro-aches, are reviewed. This perspective on language places emphasis on prac-tice and communication rather than on particular languages, which are vie-wed as secondary representations. It is argued that from a sociocultural per-spective, language as an integrated practice cannot be separated from tho-ught and culture. The empirical findings in the neo-Whorfian studies need not be rejected, but they should be interpreted differently. The findings of linguistic and cognitive diversity reflect different communicational practices in which language cannot be separated from non-language."

8. Black, Max. 1959. "Linguistic relativity: the views of Benjamin Lee Whorf." The Philosophical Review no. 68:228-238.

Reprinted in: Max Black, Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1962.

9. ———. 1969. "Some troubles with Whorfianism." In Language and Philosophy: A Symposium , edited by Hook, Sidney, 30-35. New York: New York University Press.

10. Bloom, Alfred H. 1981. The Linguistic Shaping of Thought: A Study in the Impact of Language on Thinking in China and the West . Hillsdale: Laurence Erlbauim Associates.

11. Boas, Franz. 1966. Introduction to Handbook of American Indian Languages; Indian Linguistic Families of America North of Mexico . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

The volume, edited by Preston Holder, contains a Preface (V-IX), the Introduction by Franz Boas (1911) pp. 1-79, and the essay by J. W. Powell Indian linguistic families of America North of Mexico (1891) pp. 83-221; reprinted 1991.

12. Boroditsky, Lera. 2003. "Linguistic Relativity." In Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science , edited by Nadel, Lynn, 917-922. London: Macmillan.

13. Brown, Roger Langham. 1967. Wilhelm von Humboldt's Conception of Linguistic Relativity . The Hague: Mouton.

14. Carroll, John B., ed. 1956. Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf . Cambridge: Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Edited and with an introduction by John B. Carroll. Foreword by Stuart Chase.

15. Casas, María Xosé Fernández. 2003. "El relativismo lingüístico en la obra de Edward Sapir. Una revisión de tópicos unfundados." Teorema no. 22:115-129.

16. Chomsky, Noam. 1966. Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought . New York: Harper & Row.

17. Cloeren, Hermann J. 1975. "The neglected analytical heritage." Journal of the History of Ideas no. 36:513-529.

"Presented are virtually unknown contributions to analytical philosophy by 18th and 19th century German philosophers with striking anticipations of Wittgenstein and 20th century analytical thought as well as of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity.

Language is seen in its transcendental function; ordinary language as an indispensable metalanguage. An interdependence theory of language and thought leads to regard philosophy as critique of language and cognition. Its task: the elimination of metaphysics and pseudoproblems, The clarification of concepts and the meaning of propositions. The method claims therapeutic consequences."

18. ———. 1988. Language and Thought: German Approaches to Analytic Philosophy in the 18th and 19th Centuries . Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

19. Cook, John. 1978. "Whorf's linguistic relativism (First part)." Philosophical Investigations no. 1:1-30.

"This is the first part of a two-part essay on Benjamin Lee Whorf's linguistic relativism: the thesis that the grammatical structure of one's language "shapes" the "form" of one's thoughts. This thesis has often been treated by anthropologists, linguists, and psychologists as an empirical claim, subject to scientific investigation, and a principal aim of this essay is to assess that general view of Whorf's thesis. In this first part of the essay, a number of criticisms of Whorf's relativism are considered and are shown to rest on various misconceptions of Whorf's thesis."

20. ———. 1979. "Whorf's linguistic relativism (Second part)." Philosophical Investigations no. 2:1-37.

21. Cooper, Robert L., and Spolsky, Bernard, eds. 1991. The Influence of Language on Culture and Thought: Essays in Honor of Joshua A. Fishman's Sixty-Fifth Birthday . Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

22. Crawford, T.D. 1982. "Plato's reasoning and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis." Metaphilosophy no. 13:217-227.

"The works of Plato are examined in the context of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and a number of instances are cited in which the influence of the structure of the Greek language appears to have led him into a faulty line of reasoning."

23. Danesi, Marcel. 2021. Linguistic Relativity Today: Language, Mind, Society, and the Foundations of Linguistic Anthropology . New York: Routledge.

24. Davidson, Donald. 1974. "On the very idea of a conceptual scheme." Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association no. 47:5-20.

Reprinted in: D. Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation , Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984, pp. 183-199.

25. Deutscher, Guy. 2010. Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages . New Yorl: Picador.

26. Duval, Roch. 2001. "L'hypothèse de Whorf s'applique-t-elle à la philosophie? Brève réflexion sur les heurs et malheurs du rapport de la langue à la culture avec la philosophie comme toile de fond." Horizons Philosophiques no. 12:28-52.

"Intended as a commemoration of the 60th anniversary of Whorf's death, this paper reviews the revival of the thesis of linguistic relativity (the so-called "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis") in linguistics. If the demise of Whorf's hypothesis, in the early Sixties, was tantamount to an irrevocably condemnation by the philosophical community, then how should philosophers react to the rejuvenation of Whorf's hypothesis?

In my opinion philosophers should take seriously the recent attempts to reformulate that hypothesis in order to avoid oversimplifications. I challenge William Harvey, (Philosophy Today , summer 1996, pp. 273-286) by arguing that he is guilty of such an oversimplification."

27. Ellos, William J. 1982. "Benjamin Lee Whorf and ultimate reality and meaning." Ultimate Reality and Meaning no. 5:140-150.

"Surface and depth structure forms the central focal point of Whorf's creative work. In his developed system surface language-forms are called phenotypes and depth-elements are termed cryptotypes. Meaning is the interplay between the two. Penotypes are overt categories and cryptotypes are covert categories. Selective categories may be overt or covert but basically they work along lexemic lines. Modulus categories may be overt or covert but basically they work along grammatical lines. Semantic categories tend to be surface groupings of linguistic elements and hence carry no meaning."

28. Everett, Caleb. 2013. Linguistic Relativity: Evidence Across Languages and Cognitive Domains . Berlin: de Gruyter - Mouton.

29. Feuer, Lewis S. 1953. "Sociological aspects of the relations between language and philosophy." Philosophy of Science no. 20:85-100.

30. Fielding, David. 1986. "L'hypothèse Sapir." Petite Revue de Philosophie no. 7:17-46.

"There can be no coherent "Sapir-Whorf" hypothesis. Sapir's mentalism, in contrast to Whorf's associationism, is best understood in the rationalist tradition. His phonology is almost Platonist: "psychological reality" -- i.e., patterns of phonemes -- control both production and perception of speech. His anthropology is also reminiscent of Plato in its insistence on a dialectical relationship with native informants. However his epistemological insight that "syntax modulates understanding" resembles a central theme of Wittgenstein's later philosophy."

31. Fishman, Joshua A. 1960. "A systematization of the Whorfian hypothesis." Behavioral Science no. 5:323-329.

32. ———. 1980. "The Whorfian Hypothesis: Varieties of Valuation, Confirmation and Disconfirmation: I." International Journal of the Sociology of Language no. 26:25-40.

33. ———. 1982. "Whorfianism of the third kind: Ethnolinguistic diversity as a worldwide societal asset (The Whorfian Hypothesis: Varieties of validation, confirmation, and disconfirmation ll)." Language in Society no. 11:1-14.

34. Foley, William A. 1997. Anthropological Linguistics: An Introduction . Malden: Blackwell Publishers.

35. Gentner, Dedre, and Goldin-Meadow, Susan, eds. 2003. Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and Cognition . Cambridge: The MIT Press.

36. Goddard, Cliff. 2008. "Whorf meets Wierzbicka: variation and universals in language and thinking." Language Sciences no. 25:393-432.

"Probably no contemporary linguist has published as profusely on the connections between semantics, culture, and cognition as Anna Wierzbicka. This paper explores the similarities and differences between her "natural semantic metalanguage" (NSM) approach and the linguistic theory of Benjamin Lee Whorf. It shows that while some work by Wierzbicka and colleagues can be seen as "neo-Whorfian", other aspects of the NSM program are "counter-Whorfian". Issues considered include the meaning of linguistic relativity, the nature of conceptual universals and the consequences for semantic methodology, the importance of polysemy, and the scale and locus of semantic variation between languages, particularly in relation to the domain of time. Examples are drawn primarily from English, Russian, and Hopi."

37. Gumperz, John J., and Levinson, Stephen C., eds. 1996. Rethinking Linguistic Relativity . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: List of contributors VII; Acknowledgements VIII; 1. Introduction: linguistic relativity re-examined by John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson 1;

Part I. Linguistic determinism: the interface between language and thought

Introduction to Part I by John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson 21; 2. The scope of linguistic relativity: an analysis and review of empirical research 37; 3. From "thought and language" to "thinking for speaking" by Dan I. Slobin 70; 4. Intra-speaker relativity by Paul Kay 97; 5. Imaging in iron, or thought is not inner speech by Charles M. Keller and James Dixon Keller 115;

Part II. Universals and variation in language and culture

Introduction to Part II by Stephen C. Levinson 133; 6. The origins of children's spatial semantic categories: cognitive versus linguistic determinants by Melissa Bowerman 145; 7. Relativity in spatial conception and description by Stephen C. Levinson 177; 8. Cognitive limits to conceptual relativity: the limiting-case of religious ontologies by Pascal Boyer 203;

Part III. Interpretation in cultural context

Introduction to Part III by John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson 225; 9. Language form and communicative practices by William F. Hanks 232; Projections, transpositions, and relativity by John B. Haviland 271; 11. Communities, commonalities, and communication by Herbert H. Clarck 324;

Part IV. The social matrix: culture, praxis, and discourse

Introduction to Part IV by John Gumperz 359; 12. The linguistic and cultural relativity of inference by John J. Gumperz 374; 13. Linguistic resources for socializing humanity by Elinor Ochs 407; 14. When animals become "rounded" and "feminine": conceptual categories and linguistic classification in a multilingual setting by Elsa Gomez-Imbert 438; Index 470-488.

38. Harvey, William. 1996. "Linguistic relativity in French, English, and German philosophy." Philosophy Today no. 40:273-288.

"The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (that grammar influences world view) is employed to explain the differences between German, French and English philosophical traditions. German philosophy's idealist, unitary and systematic tendencies are attributed to German's end-verbs, case system, root morphemes and initial qualifiers. French philosophy's dualism and rationalist analysis are ascribed to that language's more abstract signifiers and its description by progressive discrete divisions. And English philosophy's skeptical materialist empiricism is attributed to English's mixing of French and German syntax and lexicons, and to the higher incidence of passive constructions in English."

39. Haugen, Einar. 1977. "Linguistic relativity: myths and methods." In Language and Thought: Anthropological Issues , edited by McCormack, William and Wurm, Stephen, 11-28. The Hague: Mouton.

40. Hennigfeld, Jochem. 1976. "Sprache als Weltansicht: Humboldt - Nietzsche - Whorf." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 30:435-451.

41. Hoijer, Harry. 1953. "The relation of language to culture." In Anthropology Today: An Encyclopedic Inventory , edited by Kroeber, Alfred Louis, 554-573. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

International Symposium on anthropology prepared under the chairmanship of A. L. Kroeber-

42. ———. 1954. "The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis." In Language in Culture: Proceedings of a Conference on the Interrelations of Language and Other Aspects of Culture , edited by Hoijer, Harry, 92-105. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

43. Humboldt, Wilhelm von. 1988. On Language: The Diversity of Human Language-Structure and Its Influence on the Mental Development of Mankind . New York: Cambridge University Press.

Edited by Michael Losonsky, translated by Peter Heath and with an introduction by Hans Aarsleff.

Second edition without Aarsleff's introduction: 1999.

44. Hunt, Earl, and Agnoli, Franca. 1991. "The Whorfian hypothesis: a cognitive psychology perspective." Psychological Review no. 98:377-389.

"The linguistic relativity (Whorfian) hypothesis states that language influences thought. In its strongest form, the hypothesis states that language controls both thought and perception. Several experiments have shown that this is false. The weaker form of the hypothesis, which states that language influences thought, has been held to be so vague that it is unprovable. The argument presented herein is that the weaker Whorfian hypothesis can be quantified and thus evaluated. Models of cognition developed after Whorf's day indicate ways in which thought can be influenced by cultural variations in the lexical, syntactical, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of language. Although much research remains to be done, there appears to be a great deal of truth to the linguistic relativity hypothesis. In many ways the language people speak is a guide to the language in which they think."

45. Imai, Mutsumi. 2000. "Universal ontological knowledge and a bias toward language-specific categories in the construal of individuation." In Evidence for Linguistic Relativity , edited by Niemeier, Susanne and Dirven, René, 139-160. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

46. Imai, Mutsumi, and Gentner, Dedre. 1993. "Linguistic relativity vs. universal ontology: Cross-linguistic studies of the object/substance distinction." In What We Think, What We Mean and How We Say It: Papers from the Parasession on the Correspondence of Conceptual, Semantic & Grammatical Representation , edited by Beals, J., Cooke, G., Kathman, D., McCullough, K.-E., Kita, S. and Testen, D., 171-186. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.

Proceedings of the 29th Chicago Linguistic Society.

47. ———. 1997. "A cross-linguistic study of early word meaning: Universal Ontology and linguistic influence." Cognition no. 62:169-200.

"This research concerns how children learn the distinction between substance names and object names. Quine (1969) proposed that children learn the distinction through learning the syntactic distinctions inherent in count/mass grammar. However, Soja et al. (1991) found that English-speaking 2-year-olds, who did not seem to have acquired count/mass grammar, distinguished objects from substances in a word extension task, suggesting a pre-linguistic ontological distinction. To test whether the distinction between object names and substance names is conceptually or linguistically driven, we repeated Soja et al.'s study with English- and Japanese-speaking 2-, 2.5-, and 4-year-olds and adults. Japanese does not make a count-mass grammatical distinction: all inanimate nouns are treated alike. Thus if young Japanese children made the object-substance distinction in word meaning, this would support the early ontology position over the linguistic influence position. We used three types of standards: substances (e.g., sand in an S-shape), simple objects (e.g., a kidney-shaped piece of paraffin) and complex objects (e.g., a wood whisk). The subjects learned novel nouns in neutral syntax denoting each standard entity. They were then asked which of the two alternatives -- one matching in shape but not material and the other matching in material but not shape--would also be named by the same label. The results suggest the universal use of ontological knowledge in early word learning. Children in both languages showed differentiation between (complex) objects and substances as early as 2 years of age. However, there were also early cross-linguistic differences. American and Japanese children generalized the simple object instances and the substance instances differently. We speculate that children universally make a distinction between individuals and non-individuals in word learning but that the nature of the categories and the boundary between them is influenced by language."

48. Imai, Mutsumi, and Mazuka, Reiko. 2003. "Reevaluating Linguistic Relativity: LanguageSpecific Categories and the Role of Universal Ontological Knowledge in the Construal of Individuation." In Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and Thought , edited by Gentner, Dedre and Goldin-Meadow, Susan, 429-464. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press.

49. ———. 2007. "Language-Relative Construal of Individuation Constrained by Universal Ontology: Revisiting Language Universals nd Linguistic Relativity." Cognitive Science no. 31:385-413.

Abstract. "Objects and substances bear fundamentally different ontologies. In this article, we examine the relations between language, the ontological distinction with respect to individuation, and the world.

Specifically, in cross-linguistic developmental studies that follow Imai and Gentner (1997), we examine the question ofwhether language influences our thought in different forms, like (1) whether the language-specific construal of entities found in a word extension context (Imai & Gentner, 1997) is also found in a non-linguistic classification context; (2) whether the presence of labels per se, independent of the count-mass syntax, fosters ontology-based classification; (3) in what way, if at all, the count-mass

syntax that accompanies a label changes English speakers’ default construal of a given entity?

On the basis of the results, we argue that the ontological distinction concerning individuation is universally shared and functions as a constraint on early learning of words. At the same time, language influences one’s construal of entities cross-lingistically and developmentally, and causes a temporary change of construal within a single language. We provide a detailed discussion of how each of these three ways language may affect the construal of entities, and discuss how our universally possessed knowledge interacts with language both within a single language and in cross-linguistic context."

References

Imai, M., & Gentner, D. (1997). A cross-linguistic study of early word meaning: Universal ontology and linguistic influence. Cognition , 62, 169–200.

50. Jedynak, Anna. 2008. "On linguistic relativism." In The Lvov-Warsaw School: The New Generation , edited by Jadacki, Jacek and Pasniczek, Jacek, 325-344. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

51. Joseph, John E. 1996. "The immediate sources of the 'Sapir-Whorf hypothesis'." Historiographia Linguistica no. 23:365-404.

Updated and reprinted in: From Whitney to Chomsky: Essays in the History of American Linguistics, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2002, pp. 71-105.

52. ———. 2002. "The popular (mis)interpretations of Whorf and Chomsky: what they have in common, and why they had to happen." In From Whitney to Chomsky: Essays in the History of American Linguistics , edited by Joseph, John E., 197-221. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

53. Kay, Paul, and Kempton, Willett. 1984. "What is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?" American Anthropologist no. 86:65-79.

54. Koerner, Ernst Frideryk Konrad. 1992. "The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: a preliminary history and a bibliographical essay." Journal of Linguistic Anthropology no. 2:173-198.

An extended and updated version is included as Chapter 10 in E. F. K. Koerner - Professing linguistic historiography - Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 1995 pp. 203-240.

55. ———. 2000. "Towards a 'full pedigree' of the 'Sapir-Whorf hipothesys'. From Locke to Lucy." In Explorations in Linguistic Relativity , edited by Pütz, Martin and Verspoor, Marjolijn H., 1-24. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

56. ———. 2002. "On the sources of the 'Sapir-Whorf hypothesis'." In Toward a History of American Linguistics , 39-62. London: Routledge.

Revised version of: The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: a preliminary history and a bibliographical essay , Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2, 1992, pp. 173-198.

57. ———. 2008. "Immediate and not so immediate sources of the 'Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis': methodological considerations." In Linguistic Historiography: Projects & Prospects , 61-84. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

58. Kowal, Kristopher H. 1998. Rhetorical Implications of Linguistic Rrelativity. Theory and Application to Chinese and Taiwanese Interlanguages . New York: Peter Lang.

59. Kurzon, Dennis. 1998. A Tale of Two Remedies: Equity, Verb Aspect and the Whorfian Hypothesis . Liverpool: Deborah Charles Publication.

60. Landesman, Charles. 1961. "Does language embody a philosophical point of view?" The Review of Metaphysics no. 14:617-636.

"Examining the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the author addresses the questions whether language affects perception and whether grammatical categories affect conceptual categories. he argues that advocates of linguistic relativity have attributed to language an unjustified degree of causal efficacy and that linguistic idealism is contradicted by the results of experimental psychology. Then, considering the claimed correlation between grammatical and conceptual categories, he argues that grammar has no metaphysics and does not influence thought. The author concludes that language in use embodies a point of view only in the weak sense that relations and distinctions implicit in necessary concepts constitute a philosophical theory about reality."

61. Langacker, Ronald W. 1976. "Semantic representations and the linguistic relativity hypothesis." Foundations of Language no. 14:307-357.

In evaluating the linguistic relativity hypothesis, it is necessary to avoid using terms in such a way as to empty the hypothesis of empirical content; it is also necessary to separate related but distinct issues. There is no reason to accept any strong version of the hypothesis when this is understood to pertain to differences in cognition due to non-universal aspects of language structure.

Generative grammarians have been led by their orientation and findings to reject the hypothesis, But their ideas on the relation between language and thought have often been confused and burdened by gratuitous assumptions. It is argued that 'semantic representations', the semantic objects determined by linguistic principles, cannot be equated with the primary structures manipulated in cognition, termed 'conceptual structures'. It is further argued, With lexical and grammatical examples from various languages, that semantic representations are not universal, even granted essential uniformity of cognition for all speakers and the viability of an informal notion of semantic equivalence between sentences."

62. Leavitt, John. 2011. Linguistic Relativities: Language Diversity and Modern Thought . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

63. ———. 2014. "Linguistic Relativity: Precursors and Transformations." In Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture , edited by Sharifian, Farzad, 18-30. New York: Routledge.

64. Lee, Penny. 1994. "New work on the linguistic relativity question." Historiographia Linguistica no. 21:173-191.

65. ———. 1996. The Whorf Theory Complex: A Critical Reconstruction . Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

66. Lohmann, Johannes. 1976. "Saint Thomas et les Arabes (structures linguistiques et formes de pensée)." Revue Philosophique de Louvain :30-44.

67. Lounsbury, Floyd G. 1969. "Language and culture." In Language and Philosophy: A Symposium , edited by Hook, Sidney, 3-29. New York: New York University Press.

68. Lucy, John A. 1992. Grammatical Categories and Cognition: A Case Study of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

69. ———. 1992. Language Diversity and Thought: A Reformulation of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

70. ———. 1997. "Linguistic relativity." Annual Review of Anthropology no. 26:291-312.

71. ———. 2003. "Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis." In The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences , edited by Wilson, Robert A. and Keil, Frank C., 475-476. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press.

72. Lyon, Gordon. 1999. "Language and perceptual experience." Philosophy no. 74:515-534.

"This paper examines a series of experiments on recognition-memory for colors, often thought to support the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. the article argues that the hypothesis of perceptual familiarity provides a plausible, non-Whorfian explanation of the results. language is not influencing nonlinguistic perception here, since recognition-memory for perceptual simples is itself mediated by language."

73. Macnamara, John. 1991. "Linguistic relativity revisited." In The Influence of Language on Culture and Thought: Essays in Honor of Joshua A. Fishman's Sixty-Fifth Birthday , 45-60. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

74. Manchester, Martin L. 1985. The Philosophical Foundations of Humboldt's Linguistic Doctrines . Amsterdam: John Benjamins

75. Mandelbaum, David Goodman, ed. 1949. Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, and Personality . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Reprinted with a new foreword by David G. Mandelbaum and an epilogue by Dell H. Hymes in 1985.

76. Mandelbaum, Maurice. 1979. "Subjective, objective, and conceptual relativisms." The Monist no. 62:403-428.

"This paper is concerned with relativism regarding factual knowledge. (Relativism regarding value-judgments is not discussed.) That position is identified with the view that assertions cannot be judged true or false in themselves, but must be judged with reference to one or more aspects of the total situation in which they are made. Three forms of relativism are discussed: subjective relativism (e.g., C. A. Beard); objective relativism (e.g., J. H. Randall, jr.); conceptual relativism (e.g., B. L. Whorf; T. S. Kuhn). in each case an acceptance of arguments in favor of the position is held to involve prior commitment to a non-relativistic interpretation of some judgments concerning matters of fact; thus, the position is self-limiting."

77. Mannheim, Bruce, and Hill, Jane H. 1992. "Language and world view." Annual Review of Anthropology no. 21:381-406.

78. Marking, Kasoer C. 1962. "Some qualifying remarks on linguistic relativity." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 22 (566):573.

79. Mathiot, Madeleine, ed. 1979. Ethnolinguistics: Boas, Sapir and Whorf Revisited . The Hague: Mouton.

80. Miller, Robert Lee. 1968. The Linguistic Relativity Principle and Humboldtian Ethnolinguistics: A History and Appraisal . The Hague: Mouton.

81. Moschonas, Spiros A. 2004. "Relativism in language ideology: on Greece's latest language issues." Journal of Modern Greek Studies no. 22:173-206.

"Language relativism can be associated with two major conceptions: that "each language has or is a particular spirit" and that "each language has or is a-real or imagined-territory." Spirituality and territoriality combined give rise to the ideology of a language as a realm. This ideology of Modern Greek as a regime language has become dominant after the official establishment of a standard norm (demotic) and the resolution of the perennial "Greek Language Question." As it is evidenced by a host of "language issues" raised in the Greek newspapers since 1976, relativism has determined what counted as a "language issue" that was worth publishing, which language issues were eligible for public debates, and the extent to which language issues were allowed to penetrate "public opinion"."

82. Müller-Vollmer, Kurt. 1990. "From sign to signification: the Herder-Humboldt controversy." In Johann Gottfried Herder: Language, History, and the Enlightenment , edited by Koepke, Wilhelm, 9-24. Columbia: Camden House.

83. Nauta, Lodi. 2006. "Linguistic relativity and the humanist imitation of classical Latin." In Language and Cultural Change: Aspects of the Study and Use of Language in the Later Middle Ages and the Renaissance , edited by Nauta, Lodi, 173-186. Leuven: Peeters.

84. Niemeier, Susanne, and Dirven, René, eds. 2000. Evidence for Linguistic Relativity . Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Papers presented at the 11th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, held August 1993 at the University of California.

85. O'Neall, Sean. 2008. Cultural Contact and Linguistic Relativity among the Indians of Northwestern California . Norman: University Of Oklahoma Press.

86. Ogden, Charles Kay, and Richards, Ivor. 1923. The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Sscience of Symbolism . New York: Harcourt, Brace.

87. Pederson, Eric. 2007. "Cognitive linguistics and linguistic relativity." In The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics , edited by Geeraerts, Dirk and Cuyckens, Hubert, 1012-1044. New York: Oxford University Press.

88. Penn, Julia M. 1972. Linguistic Relativity versus Innate Ideas. The Origins of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis in German Thought . The Hague: Mouton.

89. Pinxten, Rik, ed. 1976. Universalism Versus Relativism in Language and Thought: Proceedings of a Colloquium on the Sapir-Whorf Hypotheses . The Hague: Mouton.

Proceedings of a Colloquium on the Sapir-Whorf hypotheses [sic].

90. Pourcel, Stéphanie. 2002. "Investigating linguistic relativity: a research methodology " Durham Working Papers in Linguistics no. 8:125-138.

Abstract: "This paper aims at providing a basic rationale for methodological concerns in empirical investigations of the relation between language and thought. It will be assumed that the existence of such a relationship may be valid, and further that language may assume some causal effect within it. This paper thus revives the notion of linguistic relativity as exposed by Benjamin Lee Whorf (1956). Slobin’s 'Thinking for Speaking' research (1996 & 2000) on this topic will be reviewed critically, with the aim of altering the methodology followed so as to avoid circularity of argument. Throughout this paper, I will argue that any empirical research testing the potential influence of language on thinking must (a) provide non- linguistic stimuli, and (b) obtain non- linguistic data, so that test-subjects’ cognitive behaviour is not biased at any point by linguistic input during task performance. This paper will present the design of one such experiment. It will then discuss some preliminary results, and suggest potential conclusions."

References

Slobin, D. (1996). From ‘thought and language’ to ‘thinking for speaking’. In J. Gumperz & S. Levinson (eds.), Rethinking linguistic relativity . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 70-96.

Slobin, D. (2000). Verbalised events. In S. Niemeier & R. Dirven (eds.), Evidence for linguistic relativity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 107-138.

Whorf, B. (1956). Language, thought, and reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

91. Pütz, Martin, and Verspoor, Marjolijn H., eds. 2000. Explorations in Linguistic Relativity . Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Contents: Martin Pütz and Marjolijn H. Verspoor: Preface; Introduction IX; E.F.K. Koerner: Towards a 'full pedigree' of the 'Sapir-Whorf hypothesis': From Locke to Lucy 1; Jürgen Trabant: How relativistic are Humboldt's "Weltansichten"? 25; Penny Lee: When is 'linguistic relativity' Worf's linguistic relativity? 45; Juliane House: Linguistic relativity and translation 69; Peter Mühlhäusler: Humboldt, Whorf and the roots of ecolinguistics 89; Wallace Chafe: Loci of diversity and convergence in thought and language 101; Nick J. Enfield: On linguocentrism; Paul R. Hays: From the Jurassic dark: Linguistic relativity as evolutionary necessity 159; Sydney M. Lamb: Neuro-cognitive structure in the interplay of language and thought 173; David B. Kronenfeld: Language and thought: Collective tools for individual use 197; Gary B. Palmer and Claudia Woodman: Ontological classifiers as polycentric categories, as seen in Shona class 3 nouns 225; Robert E. MacLaury: Linguistic relativity and the plasticity of categorization: Universalism in a new key 249; Bruce Hawkins: Linguistic relativity as a function of ideological deixis 295; Linda L. Thornburg and Klaus-Uwe Panther: Why we subject incorporate (in English): a post-Whorfian view 319; Minglang Zhou: Metalinguistic awareness in linguistic relativity: Cultural and subcultural practices across Chinese dialect communities 345; Subject index 365.

92. Quine, Willard van Orman. 1960. Word and Object . Cambridge: The MIT Press.

93. ———. 1969. "Natural kinds." In Ontological Relativity and Other Essays , 114-138. New York: Columbia University Press.

94. Reding, Jean-Paul. 1986. "Greek and Chinese categories: a reexamination of the problem of linguistic relativism." Philosophy East and West no. 36:349-374.

Reprinted as Chapter 4 in J.-P. Reding, Comparative Essays in Early Greek and Chinese Rational Thinking, Aldedrshot: Ashgate 2004.

95. ———. 1997. "L'utilisation philosophique de la metaphore en Grèce et en Chine: vers une metaphorologie comparée." Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie no. 129:1-30.

"Everything leads us to believe that an 'exotic' language produces exotic metaphors, which in turn condition those modes of thought different from our own. Comparative analysis of a metaphorical field common to Greece and China (light and the mirror) shows that the philosophical differences do not proceed from the various material of the metaphors used, but rather from the different attitudes to language. The hypothesis of linguistic relativism far from being either weakened or confirmed by this comparative analysis, appears itself to depend on the manner in which Greek and Occidental thought conceived the relation of thought to language."

96. ———. 2004. Comparative Essays in Early Greek and Chinese Rational Thinking . Aldershot: Ashgate.

97. Reines, Maria Francisca, and Prinz, Jesse. 2009. "Reviving Whorf: The Return of Linguistic Relativity." Philosophy Compass no. 4:1022-1032.

Abstract: "The idea that natural languages shape the way we think in different ways was popularized by Benjamin Whorf, but then fell out of favor for lack of empirical support. But now, a new wave of research has been shifting the tide back toward linguistic relativity. The recent research can be interpreted in different ways, some trivial, some implausibly radical, and some both plausible and interesting. We introduce two theses that would have important implications if true: Habitual Whorfianism and Ontological Whorfianism. We argue that these offer the most promising interpretations of the emerging evidence."

98. Robins, Robert H. 1976. "The current relevance of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis." In Universalism versus Relativism in Language and Thought: Proceedings of a Colloquium on the Sapir-Whorf Hypotheses , edited by Pinxten, Rik, 99-107. Mouton: The Hague.

99. Rossi-Landi, Ferruccio. 1973. Ideologies of Linguistic Relativity . The Hague: Mouton.

100. Ruddick, Sara. 1969. "Extreme relativism." In Language and Philosophy: A Symposium , edited by Hook, Sidney, 41-47. New York: New York University Press.

101. Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech . New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.

102. ———. 1929. "The status of linguistics as a science." Language no. 5:207-214.

"The long tried methods of Indo-European linguistics have proved themselves by the success with which they have been applied to other fields, for instance Central Algonkian and Athabaskan. An increasing interest in linguistics may be noted among workers in anthropology, culture history, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. For all of them linguistics is of basic importance: its data and methods show better than those of any other discipline dealing with socialized behavior the possibility of a truly scientific study of society. Linguists should, on the other hand, become aware of what their science may mean for the interpretation of human conduct in general."

103. Sauer, Werner. 1985. "A note on "Plato's reasoning and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis"." Metaphilosophy no. 16:235-238.

104. Sharifian, Farzad, ed. 2015. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture . New York: Routledge.

105. Soja, Nancy, Carey, Susan, and Spelke, Elizabeth S. 2008. "Ontological categories guide young children's inductions of word meaning: object terms and substance terms." Cognition no. 38:179-211.

"Three experiments assessed the possibility, suggested by Quine (1960, 1969) among others, that the ontology underlying natural language is induced in the course of language learning, rather than constraining learning from the beginning. Specifically, we assessed whether the ontological distinction between objects and non-solid substances conditions projection of word meanings prior to the child's mastery of count/mass syntax. Experiments 1 and 2 contrasted unfamiliar objects with unfamiliar substances in a word-learning task. Two-year-old subjects' projection of the novel word to new objects respected the shape and number of the original referent. In contrast, their projection of new words for non-solid substances ignored shape and number. There were no effects of the child's knowledge of count/mass syntax, nor of the syntactic context in which the new word was presented. Experiment 3 revealed that children's natural biases in the absence of naming do not lead to the same pattern of results. We argue that these data militate against Quine's conjecture."

106. Stroinska, Magda, ed. 2001. Relative Points of View: Linguistic Representation of Culture . New York: Berghahn Books.

107. Swanson, J.W. 1961. "Linguistic relativity and translation." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 22:185-192.

"The thesis of "linguistic relativity" argued for by Whorf is by no means novel. The main elements of Whorf's views can be found as far back as the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt, and more lately in those of Ernst Cassirer. But among those who have espoused the thesis of linguistic relativity Whorl, at least, has attempted to give some empirical content to the theory through his investigations of certain American Indian languages. And it is to the stimulation of Whorl's writings that the renewed interest in the doctrine of linguistic relativity in the last few years can be traced. In this paper I shall not attempt an exegesis of Wharf's somewhat obscure writings, but rather propose three different interpretations of the notion of linguistic relativity without attempting to relate them to Whorl's writings except in a casual way. My chief concern will be to furnish an analysis or explication of the thesis of linguistic relativity, not a study of Whorl's writings."

108. ———. 1961. "Landesman on linguistic relativity." The Review of Metaphysics no. 15:336-339.

109. Thomson, David S. 1994. "The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: worlds shaped by words ." In Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology , edited by McCurdy, David W. and Spradley, James, 79-90. New York: Harper Collins.

110. Underhill, James W. 2009. Humboldt, Worldview and Language . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

111. Walton, Kendall Lewis. 1973. "Linguistic Relativity." In Conceptual Change , edited by Pearce, Glenn and Maynard, Patrick, 1-30. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"This paper is an attempt to make sense of the idea that different languages embody or reflect different "conceptual schemes," different ways of experiencing or perceiving the world. The following (apparent) dilemma is discussed: if a language is translatable into English it cannot embody a scheme different from ours, but if it is not translatable we cannot know that it embodies a different scheme, even if it does; hence it is impossible to find examples which confirm the thesis that different languages embody different conceptual schemes.

An account of one kind of difference of conceptual scheme is developed which avoids this dilemma."

112. Wardy, Robert. 2000. Aristotle in China: Language, Categories and Translation . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Semiotics and Ontology: The Rediscovery of John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas)

Introduction

"The seventeenth-century Portuguese Dominican, John of St Thomas or John Poinsot, was a major figure in late scholastic philosophy and theology. Educated at Coimbra and Louvain, he taught both disciplines in Spain: at Madrid, Plasencia and Alcalà. Aspiring to be a faithful disciple of Thomas Aquinas, he published a three-volume Cursus philosophicus thomisticus (Thomistic Philosophical Course) and before he died began the publication of a Cursus theologicus (Theological Course). His philosophical writing was explicitly on logic and natural philosophy. However, in both his philosophical and theological works, he treated many metaphysical, epistemological and ethical issues. His logic is divided into two parts, formal and material. Of particular interest is his semiotic doctrine which appears in the second part. In natural philosophy, he explained Aristotle with a Thomistic slant. While following Aquinas in theology, John at times developed his master's doctrine along new lines."

From: John P. Doyle, "John of St. Thomas (1589-1644)", - in: Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. V p. 117-120, New York: Routledge 1998.

"Thus the story even of the sign begins with the discovery of nature as a reality prior to and in various ways escaping human purposes. The story of the sign, in short, is of a piece with the story of philosophy itself, and begins, all unknowingly, where philosophy itself begins, though not as philosophy. To proceed to tell the story of the sign in other ways is of course not impossible; but each such alternative approach leaves out too many of the pieces needed even for the effort of re-telling the story more succinctly when we turn around to explain what we have discovered - at least if we want to tell the tale in the most convincing and complete manner possible.

Our purpose in these pages, then, is to make the discovery which, we will argue, introduces postmodernity (the end of the story for now) clear and credible, and for this nothing less than a general history of philosophy will do. Even if we do not have to explore every theme of that history, we must yet explain all those themes that pertain to the presupposition of the sign's being and activity, in order to arrive at that being and activity with sufficient intellectual tools to make full sense of it as a theme in its own right. And those themes turn out to be nothing less or other than the very themes of ontology and epistemology forged presemiotically, as we might say, in that laboratory for discovering the consequences of ideas that we call the history of philosophy'. If the discovery of the sign began, as a matter of fact, unconsciously with the discovery of nature, then the beginning of semiotics was first the beginning of philosophy, for only as philosophy are the foundations of semiotics possible - even if semiotics is what philosophy must eventually become, as we shall see. Nothing begins where it ends; the best stories are told not from the middle; and, while the end of a tale may do much to illumine its beginnings, the end is hardly a substitute for the beginning."

From: John Deely, Four Ages of Understanding. The First Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-First Century, Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2001, pp. 19-20.

"On the showing of his volumes' titles, Poinsot treats of Logic and Natural Philosophy. As a matter of public avowal he treats neither of Metaphysics nor of Ethics, whence to one inspecting the work superficially will it readily appear that Poinsot has said nothing or next to nothing on these matters. But to anyone who not only looks at the index of questions and articles, but who also reads the text attentively in its entirety, will find that practically everything expounded by modern authors under the title of Ontology can be found in Poinsot under his treatment of Material Logic and under his treatment of causes and the ground of motion in the Natural Philosophy. Likewise for the fundamentals of Criteriology, which can be found treated in the Second Part of the Logic in the questions on foreknowledge and premises, demonstration and scientific knowledge. The fact that our author does not provide a specific dissertation on Metaphysics and especially on Ethics within the compass of his Cursus Philosophicus, while unfortunate from our point of view, should not lead anyone to think that Poinsot has written little or nothing on these for matters in other places. Matters pertaining to natural theology and to ethics were left for thematic treatment in the Cursus Theologicus, according to the custom of that age, and, specifically, the matters of natural theology to the Commentary on the First Part [Poinsot, Tomus Primus Cursus Theologici1637, Tomus Secundus 1643], those of Ethics to the Commentary on the Second Part [Poinsot Tomus Quartus and Quintus 1645, Tomus Sextus 1649] of the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas, where all these matters are found treated at great length." (p. XII)

From: Beato Reiser, Editoris Praefatio to: Ioannes a Sancto Thoma (Poinsot) Ars logica (1631-1632) nova editio a Raiser, Turin: Marietti 1930.

The name: João Poinsot - Joannes de S. Thoma - Juan de Sto Tomás - Jean de St.Thomas - Giovanni di S. Tommaso - John of St. Thomas

"It is not often that a special discussion has to be devoted to the name of the author of a given work, though indeed such a problem is far from unheard-of. There are a number of considerations that make such a discussion useful in the present case. Accordingly, I will proceed to identify the author of our text in two steps: First, by explaining why I have settled on 'John Poinsot' as the most appropriate for our purpose of the several variant names he might be and has been called by; Second, by recounting the events of his life in the context of European history of the time.

(...)

The principal posthumous editors of Poinsot's works - Reiser in the case of the Cursus Philosophicus, the Solesmes editors in the case of the Cursus Theologicus - use for their author's name the Latin form "Joannes a Sancto Thoma" ("John of Saint Thomas"). It was this name in this form that Poinsot himself attached to the first three volumes he himself edited of his Cursus Theologicus.

Nonetheless, the following three posthumous volumes of the Cursus Theologicus revert to the variant, "Joannes de Sancto Thoma," which is also the form used on the early editions of the volumes of the Cursus Philosophicus one time, in the 1635 Douai edition of the Artis Logicae Prima Pars, with the spelling "Johannes..."In personal correspondence, our author often wrote and signed in the vernacular of Spain, "Juan de S. Thoma" (or "Thomas," "Toma," "Tomâs").

The Solesmes editors seem to think that use of the Latin "de" form arose in this case from assimilation to the Spanish version of the Latin "a Sancto Thoma," to wit, "de Santo Thoma" (and "de Sancto Thoma" is not incorrect Latin in any case), but that it was "a Sancto Thoma" that was the form Poinsot actually received in religious life.

The surname "Poinsot" certainly belonged to our author by birth, but its etymological connotations create yet other problems in the present case, since to modern ears it is unmistakably French in flavor, though our author's father came from Austria while his mother (Maria Garcez) was Portuguese, and he himself was educated in Portugal and Belgium, after which he entered for the rest of his life the heartland of Spain, where he studied, taught, and labored, ending his days in the Council of the King. Living at the time just prior to the emergence of the nation states as we think of them today, Poinsot belongs to no "nationality" in the usual sense.

Portuguese by maternal blood, Viennese and French (Burgundian) by paternal blood, Portuguese, Belgian, and Spanish by education, it is very difficult to say how such a man identified himself in the civil order. How would he think of himself? Certainly, no modern category would be the likely answer to that question.

(...)

On all versions, John is the English form of our author's first name. That his family surname was Poinsot is equally certain. Hence, for our English edition of his semiotic,. the first such in any language, we thus nominally identify our author." (pp. 421-424, notes omitted)

John Deely, "Editorial Afterword" to the Tractatus de Signis. The Semiotic of John Poinsot, Berkeley: University of California Press 1985.

Tractatus de Signis

"The semiotic of John Poinsot here presented autonomously for the first time was disengaged from a larger work entitled the Ars Logica, itself but the first two parts of a five-part Cursus Philosophicus. Since this work has a considerable historical interest in its own right, and in order to minimize the violence of editing the tractatus de signis into a whole independent of that original context, we have settled on the following manner of presentation.

Putting ourselves in the position of a reader coming to the Ars Logica for the first time and interested only in Poinsot's discussion of signs, we asked ourselves: What sections of the work would this hypothetical reader have to look at in order to appreciate that discussion both in its own terms and in terms of the whole of which it originally formed a part? To what extent are these separable philosophically? The pages that follow make up our solution to this problem. We have left Poinsot's text stand virtually entirely according to the order he proposed for it within the Ars Logica as a whole. To make this order clear, we have included title pages, and all general statements Poinsot set down concerning the whole (and therefore the Treatise as part), inserting where appropriate and to bridge necessary jumps a series of brief comments designated "semiotic markers," designed to show the reader how the rationale of all editing is derived from the original author's own intentions; and second, we have included all and only those sections of the whole which have a direct bearing on understanding the doctrine proposed in the Treatise on Signs proper, as the semiotic markers make clear.

In other words, we have tried to provide the reader with a guided tour of the Ars Logica that leads directly to an understanding of the doctrine of signs contained in that work, but does so by enabling him or her to appreciate the historical origin of the account in the context of its author's own understanding of previous logical and philosophical traditions. We have chosen this format as the one best suited, so far as we could judge, to exhibit the unique mediating status Poinsot's Treatise occupies "archeologically," as it were, in the Western tradition between the ontological concerns of ancient, medieval, and renaissance philosophy, and the epistemological concerns of modern and contemporary thought.

At the end of the work, the reader will find a lengthy "Editorial Afterword" explaining the entire work and giving its background and prospectus, much the sort of materials commonly given in an Introduction to a translated work. The device of the semiotic markers made it possible in this case to bypass the need for lengthy introductory materials enabling the reader to grasp the editorial structure of the whole, yet without of course obviating the need for detailed discussions somewhere of the principles of the English text, and of the historical situation of the author and his work. Thus we have been able to enter simply and directly into the doctrinal content of the main text, without cluttering its entrance with more than a very few lines of contemporary origin.

The reader will also find at the end of the work a complete series of indices to this entire edition, both to its main text (which indices are explained at length in the "Afterword" just mentioned) and to its accompanying editorial materials, followed by a comprehensive list of Bibliographical references. Bibliographical references not complete in the markers or in the notes on the text will be found there. All indexical references to the Treatise itself with its attendant parts (i.e., to the bi-lingual portions of this edition) are by page and line numbers, thus providing the reader with the exact place of each reference in this English edition of Poinsot's text and, at the same time, the almost exact place in the parallel column of the Latin original. Similarly, all cross references to other parts of Poinsot's Cursus Philosophicus, as in the running heads of the present edition, are according to the pages, columns (a, b), and lines of the Reiser edition, as set out in the "Abbreviations" immediately preceding this preface." (pp. 1-2)

John Deely, "To the Reader of this Edition", Tractatus de Signis. The Semiotic of John Poinsot, Berkeley: University of California Press 1985.

Outlines of Formal Logic

"The Ars Logica is a long work of 839 double-columned pages, some 280,000 words. Its two main divisions are: Formal Logic and Material Logic. As John of St. Thomas puts it: "In the first part we deal with everything that belongs to the form of the art of Logic and to prior resolution. These are the things Aristotle dealt with in De Interpretatione and Analytica Priora, and are customarily taught beginning students in Outlines. But in the second part we shall deal with everything that belongs to logical matter, or to posterior resolution, especially as it is in demonstration, towards which Logic is principally ordered."The First Part contains a short text of formal Logic suited for beginners, followed by an explanation for advanced students (in 8 "Quaestiones Disputandae ad Illustrandum Difficultates Aliquas Huius Textus," subdivided into 29 articles) of the more difficult points of the short text. Only the short text for beginners is translated in the present volume.

The Second Part is "longer and more diffuse because the matter of any art normally has more things demanding consideration than the form does." The proper matter of the art of Logic will be propositions in which a demonstration can take place. If strict demonstration requires reduction to principles known per se, then the propositions strictly demonstrable must be those that are necessary and per se connected. Now, we know that contingent predicates give contingent propositions. For necessary propositions we need essential or proper predicates. Here then we have a means for discovering necessary matter: unfold the ordered lines of the predicaments, in which all things are reduced to their top genera, and where for each predicament is given the higher and lower predicates between which an essential connection is discovered. However, since predicaments cannot be known without the predicables, which are the modes of predicating essentially or accidentally, these too must be matter for the art of Logic. Thus the matter of Logic contains these three: 1) predicables, the modes of predication; 2) the ten predicaments, the classes and top genera to which all natural things and their essential predicates are reduced; 3) the forming of per se propositions and strict demonstrations. These, then, are the three divisions of Material Logic. For the first, John of St. Thomas bases his teaching on the text of Porphyry. For the last two, on the texts of Aristotle. And as a sort of introduction to the whole of Material Logic he considers (in 5 questions and 24 articles) the nature of the science of Logic itself. The most fundamental parts of his Material Logic have been translated by Yves R. Simon, John J. Glanville, and G. Donald Hollenhorst.

According to John of St. Thomas, and to Aristotle and St. Thomas before him, Logic deals with the operations of reason. Its "function is to direct the reason lest it err in the manner of inferring and knowing." The natural divisions of Logic then follow the different kinds of mental operations. Thus Formal Logic is divided into three books: 1) what pertains to the simple apprehension (first operation of the mind); 2) what pertains to judgment (second operation) ; 3) what pertains to reasoning and inference (third operation). Material Logic too, though indirectly of course, is divided according to the mental operations. Its direct object is the matter, taken generally, that the mind deals with, i.e. necessary predicates and their connecting lines. Still, the manner of predicating, the reduction of all essential predicates to the ten predicaments, and the forming of per se propositions and strict demonstrations are mental operations even when they depend on the matter known." (p. 5-6, Notes omitted)

Francis C. Wade, "Introduction" to John of St. Thomas, Outlines of Formal Logic, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press 1955.

The Material Logic of John of St. Thomas: Basic Treatises

"We do not need to elaborate on the reasons why the integral translation of a work which fills 839 two-column pages in the latest edition was held impossible. Since a choice had to be made, we turned to the field of material logic, where the shortage of great books is particularly felt. (...) But no more than about three fifths of John of St. Thomas' writings in material logic could be included within reasonable space limits. Our choice was governed by both doctrinal and pedagogical concerns. We made it a rule never to abridge an exposition having the character of a whole. Our shortest units are long articles. In several cases, our unit is a whole "question." On the subject of demonstration, it is the whole set of "questions" corresponding to the Posterior Analytics.

Whoever is aware of the situation of logical studies in our time knows that the most vexing of our problems is the problem of logic itself. Accordingly, much space is given to the issues concerning the object and nature of logic (I). The problem of the universal (II) is obviously of central significance for all logic and for the philosophy of knowledge. The "antepredicamental" discussions (III), consisting principally of an inquiry into analogy, constitute a masterly contribution to the theory of meaning. The doctrine of analogy presented here is the subject of further developments in the articles on the division of being into categories (IV). The long study of the first four categories (IV) is a store of elaborate information on concepts basic in all parts of philosophy and in the interpretation of the sciences. From a certain standpoint, the pages on quantity and on relation can be considered supplementary to the introductory pages on the object of logic. Taken together, these three sections present much material and many precise instruments for the improvement of our ideas on the relations between the logical and the mathematical sciences. Section V is concerned with four timely issues: signification, the relation of knowledge to actual existence, reflection, and formalization. Lastly (VI) we present without any omission John of St. Thomas' treatment of demonstration and science.

(...) Much of the doctrine contained in John of St. Thomas' formal logic is available in the Formal Logic of Jacques Maritain. The Short Treatises which, from a pedagogical standpoint, constitute the core of John of St. Thomas' teaching in formal logic, have been translated by Francis C. Wade under the title of Outlines of Logic (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1955)." (pp. XX-XXI)

Yves R. Simon, "Foreword" to The Material Logic of John of St. Thomas: Basic Treatises, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1955.

Introduction to the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas

"One might expect a Thomist of the strict observance to engage in the kind of close commentary on the text that characterized Thomas's own commentaries on Aristotle, or Cajetan's on the Summa, but in both his philosophical and his theological work, John writes in relative independence of the text that prompts the discussion. He will summarize rapidly the relevant work of Aristotle, and then go on to a discussion guided as much by later controversy as by the text itself. So, too, there is in the theological writings a kind of tour de monde survey of what others have said on the question before launching into his own solution. But the vast theological effort was prefaced by three sizeable Essays: an analysis of the Sentences of Peter Lombard, a discussion of the authority the thought of St. Thomas enjoys in the Church, and the analysis of the Summa theologiae translated here. The full title is: Isagoge ad D. Thomae theologiae. Explicatio connexionis et ordinis totius Summae Theologiae D. Thomae, per omnes ejus materias.

John's introduction is just that - it is not a commentary or analysis of the text of the Summa theologiae, but a bearing of its infrastructure, displaying the ordering principles that brought together the vast treasury of Christian theology in as economical and perspicuous a manner as possible. In many ways, John's task was simple: all he had to do was pick up on the quite overt remarks of St. Thomas as to why a topic or treatise comes before or after others, what the inner ordering of a treatise was, what the ordering of the articles within a question was, and, not to put too fine a point on it, why the objections in a given article come in the order they do. The Summa theologiae was written for theological, though not philosophical, beginners, and it aims to give a swift, accurate, and adequate sense of the theological terrain. From that point of view, John can be said to have provided an outline of an outline. This is not to disparage what he has done. There are enormous advantages to being acquainted with the skeleton of the Summa before examining the flesh that covers it. There is no need to overstate John's achievement to see it as something for which the neophyte can be grateful and which, even for one who thinks himself an adept, not only reinforces the old sense of the storied order of the Summa but, in its hurried and pedestrian prose, contains more than one precious nugget absent from more ambitious commentaries." (pp. IX-X)

Ralph McInerny, "Preface" to Introduction to the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas: The Isagoge of John of St. Thomas, South Bend: St. Augustine Press 2004.

Poinsot's contribution to logic and semiotic

"Poinsot, so far as present knowledge goes, holds the privileged position in semiotic historiography of being the earliest systematizer of the 'doctrine of 'signs. Not until the work of Peirce in our own day do we again encounter a 'semiotic of comparable energy and scope. In 1632, Poinsot published, as part of his series of courses in philosophy at the University of Alcalâ, Spain, a highly original, systematically conceived Treatise on Signs (Tractatus de Signis) (1930), which fits exactly 'Locke's definition of semiotic proposed some 58 years later, at the close of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (details in Deely, Introducing Semiotic. Its History and Doctrine, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1982), and taken up again by Peirce.

From this point of view, Poinsot's work provides us with the first of several "missing links" in the history of logic and 'philosophy after 'Ockham (e. 1350), enabling us to trace backwards through the Iberian schools of Coimbra (notably in the work of Petrus Fonseca [1564] and the team of workers he organized, the so-called "Conimbricenses"), Salamanca (Suárez, Soto, and others), and Alcalâ, a heretofore largely untold story of developments that are exceptional in import for semiotics (Deely 1982).

Doctrinally, Poinsot's work achieves a new, entirely experiential point of departure for the enterprise of philosophy, and reconciles in so doing the seemingly opposed orders of nature and 'culture. Poinsot begins his Treatise on Signs by drawing attention to a central feature of 'semiosis that must, in his opinion, be a first concern of semioticians to safeguard and give adequate account of, namely, the fact that, in our experience, signs bring together natural and social phenomena. The sign, he points out (Book 1, Question I: 646b26-45), is something neither preclusively natural nor preclusively social, but both inclusively, for while all signs as such acquire their signification and actually exist only within some living being's experience, nonetheless, within that very experience, the connection between signs and what they signify sometimes seemsto have roots outside our experience of their connection (the case of "natural" signs), and other times seems to have no reality other than the one derived from the experience itself of social interaction (the case of customary and stipulated signs). Thus the first task of the semiotician, in Poinsot's judgment, is to secure a standpoint superior to the division of being into what exists independently of our 'cognition (ens reale 'mind-independent being') and what exists dependently upon cognition (ens rationis mind-dependent being'). For Poinsot, semiotic must take its stand, in the felicitous description by Sebeok, squarely "at the intersection of nature and culture." This simple description of semiotic's initial task already amounts to a revolution within the perspective of natural philosophy or "physics" traditional in Poinsot's day. For the sole concern of that tradition was to uncover and explicate the structure of ens reale, which they thought to have achieved, after "Aristotle, with the division of mind independent being into substances, or natural units of independent existence, with their accidents, or various properties and characteristics. Thus, the division of being into the Aristotelian categories of substance and the various types of accident was generally thought to be the permanent achievement of ontology in the Latin age.

Poinsot's approach to semiotic entirely undercuts this categorial scheme, going beneath it and beginning with an analysis of experience prior to the possibility of the working out of any such scheme. He establishes a fundamental ontology in just that sense which Heidegger calls for in our own time, namely, an "ontology" that accounts for the categorial interconnections and lays bare the ground of the prior possibility of truth as a "correspondence" between thought and being. Poinsot finds this fundamental ontology in our experience of the ways in which things appear to be relative. Poinsot observed (following in this Aquinas [Quaestione disputate de anima c. 1266: q. 28] and Cajetan [Commentaria in Summa theologicam, 1507] before him) that, as a mode of reality, relation is unique in that its essence (esse ad aliud 'being between') is separate from its cause or ground of existence (esse in alio 'the character or feature upon which a relation is founded'), which is not the case for any other mode of reality. Poinsot sees in this the ultimate reason for the possibility of semiosis: relation in what is proper to it, namely, suprasubjectivity or intersubjectivity (esse ad), is indifferent to realization now in nature, now in thought, now in both. Relation in this sense, precisely as indifferent to the opposition of what depends upon and what is independent of cognition, Poinsot calls relatio secundum esse 'relation according to the way it has being' or 'ontological relation' (see Deely 1982).

By contrast, things that are related exist subjectively as something in their own right, not just between other things sustaining them in a derivative way. And yet, if we seek to explain why they are as they are or how they might be altered from their present state, we find it necessary to refer to what the individuals in question themselves are not. Thus, even the individual entities and "natural units" of experience existing in their own right - even substances in Aristotle's scheme, the most absolute of the subjective entities - are seen to be relative when it comes to the question of how they come to be or of how they are to be accounted for. Relativity in this sense, precisely as infecting the whole scheme of categories of cognition-independent existents, Poinsot termed relatio secundum dici 'relation according to the way being must be expressed in discourse', or (synonymously) relatio transcendentalis 'transcendental relation'.

With this division of being, then, into transcendental and ontological relation, Poinsot has two simple "categories" that are exhaustive and exclusive, but whose terms are entirely matters of direct experience (unlike Aristotle's division of being into substance and accident, which was also exhaustive and exclusive, but directly experienced only on the side of certain accidents: comprehensive discussion in Powell [Freely Chosen Reality] 1982), and whose relevance to the doctrine of signs is immediate. For all authors agree, and indeed experience makes quite unmistakable, that every sign as such is a relative being (something making known another than itself), and since, by the prior terms of the analysis of relative being, we know that there are only two irreducible types of relativity, it remains only to apply that analysis to our experience of semiosis in order to determine in what precisely a sign consists (the formalis ratio signi, as Poinsot puts it), that is to say, what is it that constitues a sign in its proper being? The answer to this question is ontological relation, an answer which enables Poinsot to resolve a number of aporia that have plagued accounts of signifying from ancient times down to the present, and which turn out to be decisive for °epistemology and philosophical thought generally."

From: John Deely, "Poinsot, John", in: General Editor, Thomas A. Sebeok; Editorial Board, Paul Bouissac [et al.] Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics, Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter 1986.

"John of St Thomas' logic is divided into two parts. In the first part, his concern is with the formal theory of correct thinking. This part, which includes such medieval items as supposition, exponibles and consequences, corresponds especially to the Summulae Logicales of Peter of Spain and the Prior Analytics of Aristotle. In the larger second part, which corresponds to the Isagoge of Porphyry, plus the Categories and the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle, he deals with material logic, which is a general theory of scientific demonstrations and the necessary connections they involve depending upon their content. Organized according to the three operations of the intellect (simple apprehension, judgment and reasoning) the first part treats of terms, propositions, consequences and syllogisms, along the way attending to definitions, divisions and their various facets. In the second part, John reflects upon the nature of logic itself, which he thinks is at once an art and a science. As science, he says, 'logic is essentially and absolutely in virtue of its own principles speculative, but it takes on the manner of a practical science in so far as it offers rules and direction for speculation itself' (Ars Logica, II q.1 a.4). The object of logic is beings of reason, such as species, genus, subject, predicate, antecedent, consequent and so on, formed by the mind's reflections upon its own operations. Such beings of reason, which have some foundation in reality outside the mind, fall under a wider notion that includes beings of reason like chimeras. These last lack such a foundation because they are impossible (that is, self-contradictory) objects. Contrasted with both sorts of beings of reason are real beings which are divided into the various Aristotelian categories.

The categories are the central concern of the second part of John's logic. He rejects Duns Scotus' teaching that ens (being) is said univocally of the categories.. Rather, as Cajetan thought, 'being' as said of the categories is 'formally analogous with an analogy of proper proportionality' (Ars Logica, II q.14 a.3). Passing through each category in succession he concurs with Cajetan's interpretation of Aquinas (Summa theologiae Ia. 28.1) to the effect that relation is unique because it can be found in the order either of real being or being of reason. Only relation, since it is not just 'in' something but also 'towards' something, can transcend categorial status and be conceived apart from real existence either in itself (that is, the mode of existence proper to a substance) or in something else (the mode proper to an accident). This thought was to be central to John's doctrine of signs.

The doctrine of signs itself, which in part at least reflects the influence of John's Jesuit teachers at Coimbra, forms a treatise which runs over questions 21-3 in the second part of his logic. Essentially relational, signs are divided first into formal and instrumental, and second into natural, conventional and customary. All signs make something else known: formal signs (for example, a concept or an impressed species) do so without themselves first being known; instrumental signs (such as smoke or a spoken word) are themselves first known and then lead to the knowledge of something else. Natural signs (smoke) differ from conventional signs (words) inasmuch as the former simply arise from causal connections in the natural order while the latter result from human choice. Customary signs also result from choice but can be natural when a custom leads us naturally to its cause. Signs involve two non-reciprocal relations: between the sign and the significate (as in the relation of measured to measure) and between the sign and the cognitive power of a knower (as in the relation of measure to measured). Considered just as such, these relations are not in the line of physical causality but rather in that of intentionality in which the sign substitutes for the significate. Within this line of intentionality the ability of relation to transcend real being and being of reason becomes the basis of a unified semiotic doctrine respecting all signs of whatever sort they are."

From: John P. Doyle, "John of st. Thomas (1589-1644)", in: Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York: Routledge 1998.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected bibliography of John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas)

Works of John Poinsot translated in English

1. Poinsot, John. 1985. Tractatus de Signis. The Semiotic of John Poinsot. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Interpretive arrangement in bilingual format (Latin and English) by John N. Deely in consultation with Ralph Austin Powell from the 1930 Reiser edition (emended second impression, 1932) of the Artis Logicae Prima et Secunda Pars of the Cursus Philosophicus Tomisticus, comprising the first two parts of the five part Cursus Philosophicus of 1631-1635.

This work is also available as a text database as an Intelex Electronic Edition.

Corrected second edition, with a new preface by John Deely, South Bend, St. Augustine Press, 2013.

Review by J. E. Ashworth, "The historical origins of John Poinsot's Treatise on Signs", Semiotica, 69, 1988, 129-147.

2. John, of St.Thomas. 1955. Outlines of Formal Logic. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Translated from the Latin with an introduction by Francis C. Wade.

3. ———. 1955. The Material Logic of John of St. Thomas: Basic Treatises. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Translated by Yves R. Simon, John J. Glanville and G. Donald Hollenhorst. With a preface by Jacques Maritain.

4. ———. 2004. Introduction to the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas: the Isagoge of John of St. Thomas. South Bend: St. Augustine Press.

Translation and introduction by Ralph McInerny.

5. ———. 2022. John of St. Thomas [Poinsot] on Sacred Science: Cursus Theologicus I, Question 1, Disputation 2. South Bend: St. Augustine Press.

Edited by Victor M. Salas and translated by John P. Doyle (Not yet published).

6. ———. 1949. "Entia Rationis and Second Intentions." New Scholasticism no. 23:395-413.

Translated by John J. Â Glanville, G. Donald Hollenhorst, Yves R. Simon.

Logic: Second Part, Question II - Article 1: Nature and division of the Ens rationis; Article 2: Nature and division of the second intention or logical Relatio rationis.

Editor's Note: "These pages are from a translation of the Basic Treatises of the Logic of John of St. Thomas, to be published by the University of Chicago Press, [The material logic of John of St. Thomas: basic treatises (1955), pp. 60-76] whose courtesy for the present excerpt is gratefully acknowledged."

7. ———. 1951. The Gifts of the Holy Ghost. London: Sheed & Ward.

A translation of part of vol. 5 of Cursus theologicus by Dominic Hughes, with a foreword by Walter Farrell.

Main studies about the philosophy of John Poinsot

(The contributions by John Deely are listed in his bibliography).

1. "John Poinsot." 1994. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 68 (3).

Special issue on John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas) - Table of contents: John Deely: A morning and evening star: editor's introduction pp. 259-278; Mauricio Beuchot: Intentionality in John Poinsot pp. 279-296; John C. Cahalan: If Wittgenstein had read Poinsot: recasting the problem of signs and mental states pp. 297-320; Jeffrey S. Coombs: John Poinsot on how to be, know, and love a non-existent possible pp. 321-336; John P. Doyle: Poinsot on knowability of beings of reason pp. 337-362; Vincent Guagliardo: Being-as-first-known in Poinsot: a priori or aporia? pp. 363-394; Michael Raposa: Poinsot on the semiotic of awareness pp. 395-408; Douglas B. Rasmussen: The significance for cognitive realism of the thought of John Poinsot pp. 409-424; Norman J. Wells: John Poinsot on created eternal truths vs. Vasquez, Suárez and Descartes pp- 425-446.

2. Ashworth, Earline Jennifer. 1988. "The Historical Origins of John Poinsot's Treatise on Signs." Semiotica no. 69:129-147.

"In 1631-1632 John Poinsot (otherwise known as John of St. Thomas) published his Ars Logica at Alcalá. From this massive work John Deely has extracted all those parts relating to the theory of signs, and has given them the general heading of Tractatus de Signis (Treatise on Signs), though it should be noted that the Treatise on Signs proper consists of just three Questions related to Aristotle's Perihermenias. The project is a valuable one, for Poinsot was an interesting writer in his own right who frequently had original observations to make. Deely's contribution, so far as the edition and translation are concerned, is superb; and the book itself is a splendid example of the printer's art. However, I have some very grave reservations about Deely's interpretation of Poinsot's work, and it is these reservations that I intend to discuss here. Others (notably Sebeok 1986) have already sung the praises of Deely and Poinsot; and as one of the few philosophers who has actually read some of the sixteenth-century authors to whom Poinsot was indebted, I feel it incumbent on me to point out that there is another side to the coin. However, I do not intend my remarks to detract in any way from the achievement represented by Deely's version of the Treatise on Signs.

I shall first discuss Deely's attitude toward the historical interpretation of Poinsot and how it differs from my own. In so doing, I shall show that there was a tradition of placing the discussion of signs in a Perihermenias commentary. Second, I shall discuss the topic of relations, since Deely claims that the 'revolutionary' nature of Poinsot's doctrine of signs stems from his classification of relations. I shall remark that a very similar classification of relations is found in at least one of Poinsot's sources, namely Domingo de Soto (1494-1560). Third, I shall discuss the details of the theory of signs as described by some early sixteenth-century writers, and I shall show that the general lines of Poinsot's classification are due to Domingo de Soto. Finally, I shall make some remarks about other aspects of the translation and editorial material which seem to need further comment.

* John N. Deely (trans. and ed.), with Ralph Austin Powell, Tractatus de Signis. The Semiotic of John Poinsot. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.

3. Bellerate, Bruno. 1958. "Conceito de existência em João de s. Tomás." Filosofia no. 5:154-169.

Reprinted in: Jesué Pinharanda de Gomes (ed.) - Antologia de estudos sobre João de Santo Tomás - Lisboa, Edição do Instituto Amaro da Costa, 1985.

4. ———. 1960. L'analogia tomista nei grandi commentatori di S. Tommaso. Roma: Editrice Salesiana.

5. Beuchot, Mauricio. 1980. "La doctrina tomista clásica sobre el signo: Domingo de Soto, Francisco de Araújo y Juan de santo Tomás." Critica:39-60.

6. ———. 1989. "El problema de los universales en Juan de santo Tomás." Revista de filosofía (Maracaibo) no. 12:33-42.

7. ———. 1994. "Intentionality in John Poinsot." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 68:279-296.

8. ———. 1999. Semiótica, filosofía del lenguaje y argumentación en Juan de santo Tomás. Pamplona: Universidad de Navarra.

9. Beuchot, Mauricio, and Deely, John. 1995. "Common sources for the semiotic of Charles Peirce and John Poinsot." Review of Metaphysics no. 48:549-566.

10. Bondi, Eugene. 1966. "Predication: a study based on the "Ars Logica" of John of st. Thomas." Thomist no. 30:260-294.

11. Cahalan, John C. 1994. "If Wittgenstein had read Poinsot: recasting the problem of signs and mental states." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 68:297-319.

12. Coombs, Jeffrey S. 1994. "John Poinsot on how to be, know, and love a non-existent possible." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 68:321-335.

13. Dalcourt, Gerard J. 1994. "Poinsot and the mental imagery debate." Modern Schoolman no. 72:1-12.

14. Doyle, John J. 1953. "John of st. Thomas on Mathematical Logic." New Scholasticism no. 27:3-38.

15. Doyle, John Patrick. 1994. "Poinsot on the Knowability of Beings of Reason." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 68:337-362.

16. Fernández RodrÍguez, José Luis. 1997. "Tipologia del ente de razón." Anuario Filosófico no. 30:361-379.

17. Forlivesi, Marco. 1993. Conoscenza e affettività. L'incontro con l'essere secondo Giovanni di san Tommaso. Bologna: Edizioni Studio Domenicano.

18. Furton, Edward J. 1995. A medieval semiotic. Reference and representation in John of st. Thomas' theory of signs. New York: Peter Lang.

19. ———. 1997. "The constitution of the object in Immanuel Kant and John Poinsot." Review of Metaphysics no. 51:55-75.

"Kant was unaware, as are most academic philosophers today, that late Latin scholastics, especially on the Iberian peninsula, had also struggled for an account of the intellect's ability to order our experience of the real and so constitute a properly scientific object. The results of this effort were, of course, quite unlike those of the Kantian solution and compatible with a completely different view of the natural order. Even more important for the history of Western philosophy, the results were immediately and thoroughly eclipsed by the rise of Cartesianism. The great scholastic effort to understand how scientific objects are constituted passed from the modern period into intellectual oblivion.

Yet there are ample reasons to think that an exploration of these forgotten, pre-Kantian views might shed some light on contemporary efforts to fashion a postclassical epistemology and philosophy of science. Despite the more primitive cosmology, basic concepts of epistemological theory developed by the Latins are far more easily disengaged from medieval physics than are Kantian concepts from Newtonian mechanics. Kant is committed in principle to the view that space, for example, is mathematizable a priori in a completely deterministic manner. This is a much more wide-ranging and deeply-rooted metaphysical commitment than is the claim, for example, that there are only six observable planets.

What follows is an examination of a generally forgotten theory of objective constitution--one that avoids unnecessary entanglements with the determinism of Newtonian mechanics if only by predating the Cartesian and Kantian turns. It is a theory that in principle allows nature to live by other rules than those of mechanical necessity and one that, I believe, rightly recognizes that nature's laws can suffer exception without thereby destroying the possibility of scientific knowledge. Moreover, it is a 'bridge' theory that unites classical and contemporary philosophic tendencies, for despite its strong medieval roots, it is a theory largely committed to the fundamental insight of modernity that the knower, in some measure, must condition the object known." p. 55

20. Glanville, John J. 1958. "Zabarella and Poinsot on the Object and Nature of Logic." In Readings in Logic, edited by Houde, Roland, 204-226. Dubuque: Brown.

21. Gomes, Pinharanda. 1983. João de Sancto Tomás na filosofia do século XVII. Lisboa: Ministério da Educaçao.

22. Gracia, Jorge J.E., and Kronen, John D. 1994. "John of saint Thomas." In Individuation in Scholasticism. The Later Middle Ages and the Counter-Reformation, 1150-1650, edited by Gracia, Jorge J.E., 511-533. New Yourk: State University of New York Press.

23. Guagliardo, Vincent. 1994. "Being-as-First-Known in Poinsot: a-priori or aporia?" American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 68:363-394.

24. Herculano de Carvalho, José. 1960. "Segno e significazione in João de são Tomás." In Aufsätze zur Portugiesischen Kulturgeschichte - Vol. 2, edited by Flasche, Hans, Briesemeister, Dietrich and Körner, Karl-Hermann, 161-176. Münster: Aschendorff.

Reprinted in: José Herculano de Carvalho - Estudos linguísticos, vol. II, pp. 131-168, Atlântida Editora, Coimbra 1973

25. Kennedy, Leonard A. 1972. "La doctrina de la existencia en la Universidad de Salamanca durante el siglo XVI." Archivo Teológico Granadino no. 35:5-71.

26. Kronen, John D. 1994. "The Substantial Unity of Material Substances According to John Poinsot." Thomist no. 58:599-615.

27. Marmo, Costantino. 1987. "The semiotics of John Poinsot." Versus no. 46:109-129.

28. Maroosis, James. 2003. "Poinsot, Peirce, and Pegis: knowing as a way of being." In A Thomistic Tapestry. Essays in Memory of Étienne Gilson, edited by Redpath, Peter A., 157-176. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

29. Moreno, Alberto. 1959. "Implicación material en Juan de santo Tomás." Sapientia no. 14:188-191.

30. ———. 1963. "Lógica proposicional en Juan de santo Tomás." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 4:113-134.

31. Murphy, James Bernard. 1983. "Nature, custom and stipulation in the semiotic of John Poinsot." Semiotica no. 83:33-68.

32. ———. 1994. "Language, Communication, and Representation in the Semiotic of John Poinsot." Thomist no. 58:569-598.

33. Nuchelmans, Gabriel. 1980. Late-Scholastic and Humanist theories of the proposition. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

34. ———. 1983. Judgment and proposition. From Descartes to Kant. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

35. ———. 1994. "Can a mental proposition change its truth value? Some 17th-century views." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 15:69-84.

Reprinted in: Gabriel Nuchelmans - Studies on the History of Logic and Semantics, 12th-17th Centuries, edited by Egbert Peter Bos, Variorum, Aldershot, 1996, (Text XIV).

36. Powell, Ralph Austin. 1987. "Poinsot as foil for doctrinal considerations on inexistent personality in existent substance according to C. S. Peirce." In Semiotics 1983, edited by Evans, Jonathan and Deely, John, 93-104. Lanham: University Press of America.

37. Raposa, Michael. 1994. "Poinsot on the semiotics of awareness." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 68:395-408.

38. Rasmussen, Douglas B. 1994. "The significance for cognitive realism of the thought of John Poinsot." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 68:409-424.

39. Santaella-Braga, Lucia. 1991. "John Poinsot's doctrine of signs: the recovery of a missing link." Journal of Speculative Philosophy no. 51:151-159.

40. Solana, Marcial. 1928. Los grandes escolásticos españoles de los siglos XVI y XVII: suas doctrinas filosóficas y su significación en la Histoire de la Filosofia. Madrid: Jaime Ratés.

41. Tello, Belisario D. 1954. "El ente de razón según Juan de santo Tomás." Philosophia no. 11:43-50.

42. Thomas, Ivo. 1950. "Material implication in John of st. Thomas." Domincan Studies no. 3:180-185.

43. Tyn, Thomas. 1989. "L'essere nel pensiero di Giovanni di san Tommaso." Angelicum no. 66:21-55.

44. Wells, Norman J. 1994. "John Poinsot on created eternal truths vs. Vasquez, Suárez and Descartes." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 68:425-446.

45. Winance, Eleuthère. 1985. "Echo de la querelle du psychologisme et de l'antipsychologisme dans l'"Ars logica" de Jean Poinsot." Semiotica no. 56:225-259.

46. Wojtkiewicz, C. 1961. "L'objet de la logique chez Jean de saint-Thomas." Roczniki Filozoficzne no. 9:1-21.

47. Wolicka, Elzbieta. 1979. "The notion of truth in the epistemology of John of saint Thomas." New Scholasticism no. 53:96-106.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated Bibliography of John Deely. First part: 1965-1998

Introduction

John Deely (1942-2017) was the Rudman Chair in Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston.

"If there is one notion that is central to the emerging postmodern consciousness, that notion is the notion of sign. And for understanding this notion, nothing is more essential than a new history of philosophy. For the notion of sign that has become the basis for a postmodern development of thought was unknown in the modern period, and before that traces back only as far as the turn of the 5th century AD. Yet the context within which the general notion of sign was first introduced presupposes both the ancient Greek notion of "natural sign" (semeion) and the framework of Greek discussions of nature and mind which provoked the development of philosophy in the first place as an attempt to understand the being proper to the objects of experience. Not only does it emerge that the sign is what every object presupposes, but, in modern philosophy, the conundrum about the reality of the "external world", the insolubility of the problem of how in theory to get beyond the privacy of the individual mind, springs directly from the reduction of signification to representation. So here is one of the ways in which the four ages of this book can be outlined: preliminaries to the notion of sign; the development of the notion itself; forgetfulness of the notion; recovery and advance of the notion. Tracing the development of the notion of sign from its beginning and against the backdrop of Greek philosophy yields an unexpected benefit by comparison with more familiar historical approaches. Every modern history of philosophy has been essentially preoccupied with the separating off from philosophy of science in the modern sense, especially in and after the seventeenth century. From this point of view, many of the continuing philosophical developments of the later Latin centuries tend to drop out of sight. It has become the custom to present modem philosophy, conventionally beginning with Descartes (17th century), simply as part and parcel of the scientific break with the authors of Latin tradition, and to treat the bringing of nominalism into the foreground of Latin thought by William of Ockham (14th century) as if that were the finale of Latin development.

This hiatus of two and a half centuries in the history of philosophy, however, effectively disappears when we make our way from ancient to modern times by tracing mainly the development of the philosophical notion of signum. From the High Middle Ages down to the time of Descartes we find a lively and continuous discussion of sign which, through a series of important if unfamiliar controversies on both sides of the thirteenth century, leads to a basic split in the closing Latin centuries. On one side stand those who think that the general notion of sign is an empty name, a flatus vocis, a nominalism, no more than a "relation of reason", an ens rationis. On the other side are those who are able to ground the general notion in an understanding of relation as a unique, suprasubjective mode of being, a veritable dual citizen of the order of ens reale and ens rationis alike, according to shifting circumstances.

Modern philosophy, from this point of view, appears essentially as an exploration of the nominalist alternative; and postmodern thought begins with the acknowledgment of the bankruptcy of the modern effort, combined with the determination pioneered by C. S. Peirce to explore the alternative, "the road not taken", the "second destiny" that had been identified in the closing Latin centuries but forgotten thereafter. Peirce's postmodern resumption of premodern epistemological themes produces a number of immediately dramatic and surprising results (beginning with the cure for the pathology dividing our intellectual culture between the personae of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde).

So derives the title for this work, Four Ages of Understanding: ancient Greek thought, the Latin Age, modern thought, postmodern thought. The book is a survey of philosophy in what is relevant to the "understanding of understanding" from ancient times to the present. It is intended both as a reference work in the history of philosophy and a guide to future research - a "handbook for inquirers" in history, philosophy, and the humanities generally, including historians and philosophers of science. The book also aims to aid in the classroom those professors willing to wean a new generation from the "standard modern outlines" of philosophy's history which serve mainly to support the post-Cartesian supposition that history is of next to no import for the doing itself of philosophy."

From: John Deely - Four ages of understanding. The first postmodern survey of philosophy from ancient times to the turn of the Twenty-first century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2001. (pp. XXX-XXXI)

Bibliography

1. Deely, John. 1965. "Evolution: concept and content. Part I." Listening no. 0:27-50.

2. ———. 1966. "Evolution: concept and content. Part II." Listening no. 1:35-66.

3. ———. 1966. "The emergence of Man: an inquiry into the operation of natural selection in the making of Man." The New Scholasticism no. 40:141-176.

Reprinted in: John Deely and Raymond J. Nogar (eds.) - The problem of evolution. A study of the philosophical repercussions of evolutionary science - New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1973 pp. 120-145

4. ———. 1967. "Finitude, negativity, and transcendence: the problematic of metaphysical knowledge." Philosophy Today no. 11:184-206.

5. ———. 1967. "The situation of Heidegger in the tradition of Christian philosophy." The Thomist no. 31:159-244.

"This is an essay on the meaning of Being ('das Sein') in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. its principal conclusion is that with the notion of 'Sein,' Heidegger has picked up again a theme first introduced into Western thought by Averroes and Aquinas, forgotten after the death of Poinsot in 1644, namely, the reality of 'ens intentionale' as an order of existence irreducibly other than the order of material nature. The point is demonstrated by showing the correspondence of Seidegger's 'Sein/Seiende' distinction with the 'intentionale/entitativum' distinction of Arabic and Latin Aristotelianism."

6. ———. 1967. "The problematic of metaphysical knowledge." Philosophy Today no. 11:184-206.

"If metaphysical knowledge is truly a distinct and formally unified cognitive discipline which touches the way things are in some commonly fundamental way, then the nature and extent of such knowing should admit of an at least minimal characterization. With the question of whether there is after all a genuinely metaphysical mode of understanding experience into which our minds can thematically enter explicitly in mind, this essay probes into the problem of establishing a critical point of departure for metaphysical ontology properly and recognizably so called."

7. ———. 1968. "The immateriality of the Intentional as such." The New Scholasticism no. 42:293-306.

"This article takes occasion from the discussion of intentionality set forth in chapter 12 of Mortimer J. Adler's recent book, 'The difference of man and the difference it makes,' to clarify a number of points in the classical theory of intentionality which are largely unknown or misrepresented in such current discussions as the one Adler both reports on and extends. It achieves this clarification by a close scrutiny of Adler's text, directing attention at critical points to the signal analyses of Jacques Maritain and Yves Simon which go farther into this problem of intentionality than any other contemporary writings."

8. ———. 1969. "The philosophical dimensions of the origin of species. Part I." The Thomist no. 33:75-149.

"This article is a comprehensive assessment of the major writings on natural species from Aristotle to the present, aiming to understand in what sense the ancient views were transformed after Darwin. It draws a clear distinction between the approach of classical philosophy and that of modern science to the problem of species, coupled with a comparative assessment of the methods of classical vs. modern philosophy in dealing with the question of specific differences in nature. The problems of causality, chance, and progress (evolutionary direction) are discussed in the framework of the species concepts. A detailed analytical outline is given after the conclusion."

9. ———. 1969. "The philosophical dimensions of the origin of species. Part II." The Thomist no. 33:251-342.

10. ———. 1969. "Evolution and ethics." Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association no. 43:171-184.

Reprinted in: John Deely and Raymond J. Nogar (eds.) - The problem of evolution. A study of the philosophical repercussions of evolutionary science - New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1973 pp. 187-209.

"This article seeks to determine the nature of the connection between evolutionary and ethical theory. To achieve this it proceeds from a statement of the possible connections to consider the idea of nature seemingly entailed by the data of evolutionary science, delineating here the general notion of good co-entailed, the distinction between physical and moral goodness, the 'naturalistic fallacy', being and ought, the mutual implication of 'natural' and 'positive' law. It concludes with a resolution of the possible connections initially limned."

11. ———. 1971. "Animal intelligence and concept-formation." The Thomist no. 35:43-93.

"Beginning from certain remarks on abstraction by Peter Geach, this article outlines a classical view of the highest levels of cognitive organization attainable in principle by animal consciousness, and indicates the indispensable role played by such attainments in the formation of properly intellectual cognition. By a careful culling, the relevant texts from Aquinas' corpus are gathered in a consistent framework and related to the contemporary conclusions of H. H. Price and M. J. Adler adversative to Geach."

12. ———. 1971. The Tradition via Heidegger. An Essay on the Meaning of Being in the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Contents: Acknowledgements VII; Preface IX; A note of reference stile XI; List of symbols used XIII; Analytic Table of Contents XVII-XXVIII; Introduction 1; I. The situation of Heidegger in the tradition of Christian philosophy 9; II. The problem of language and the need for a re-trieve 17 III. The forgottenness of Being 29; IV. Form Man and the Cogito Sum to Dasein 43; V. Dasein and the regress to conscious awareness 62; VI. Intentionalität and Intentionale: two distinct notions 78; VII. Dasein and the intentional life of Man 88; VIII. The presuppostioned priority of the Being-Question 111; IX. Phenomenology: the medium of the Being-Question 134; X. From the early to the later Hiedegger 156; XI. Conclusion: the denouement of our re-trieve 171; Postscript: a note on the genesis and implications of this book 178; Appendix I: The thought of Being and theology 184; Appendix II: metaphysics and the thought of M. Heidegger 189; Selected bibliography 194; Index of proper names 199-200.

"In making it clear that the essential thought of Heidegger is concerned principally with what scholasticism has referred to in passing (so to speak) as the order of esse intentionale strictly understood, however, I intend to make it equally clear that with Martin Heidegger philosophy itself has achieved a measure of progress. For if the area of esse intentionale has been clearly delimited by the great scholastics, it has been almost entirely neglected or misunderstood by the majority of philosophers; and even in those rare writings, such as the works of John of St. Thomas, where its fundamental structure is rightly characterized, its proper actuality is never rendered fully thematic. Even as the ancients knew full well that the earth was a globe, yet knew nothing of the actual topography of the other side, so is the notion of esse intentionale the "antipodes" or unexplored region in their metaphysical topography concerned, as it was, principally with tracing the nature of change and the substance/accident dimension of act-potency compositions, i.e., with esse entitativum, rather than with the dimension of intersubjectivity and the then little realized problem of intersubjectivity par excellence, the nature of the domination of man's existence by a total view of reality (culture, Weltanschauung, etc.) not known to reduce to fact, or of Historicity." (...)

Yet however complex and subtle accuracy compels its detailed analyses to be, this book has a simple ground plan. It develops through eight stages, covered by ten chapters:

1. Stage one does no more than place our considerations in the context of contemporary currents of thought, pointing out the difficulty and utility of arriving at a consistent understanding of the direction of Heidegger's thought (Chapters I and II).

2. Stage two consists in a direct consideration of Heidegger's original philosophical experience as providing an approach to the meaning of "Being" in terms of the presence of beings in awareness and social life rather than simply in themselves (Chapter III).

3. Stage three delineates the difficulty of formalizing this experience of intersubjectivity in a definite question serving to guide further inquiry, of translating the mystery of Being into a structured problematic accessible to properly philosophical research (Chapter IV).

4. In stage four are brought out the double set of considerations necessary to analytically adequate the structured unity of Dasein as disclosed by virtue of the fact that Dasein's uttermost (äusserst) possibility is at the same time its ownmost (eigenst) and non-relational (unbezügliche) (Chapters V and VI). 5. The fifth stage makes clear that the contribution of Heideggerean thought to the progress of philosophy stems principally from rendering the intersubjective dimension of human reality thematic, from thematizing that dimension of Dasein according to which it enjoys its "objectively scientific priority," as Heidegger puts it, for phenomenological research (Chapter VII).

6. Stage six makes clear the functional interdependence which obtains between the ontic-ontological structure of Dasein's temporal unity and the priority in philosophy of the phenomenological over the metaphysical sense of the Being question (Chapter VIII).

7. Stage seven examines the identity of Heidegger's conception of the phenomenological attitude and research-mode with his thought of Being (Denken des Seins) (Chapter IX).

8. The final stage traces the passage from the early to the later Heidegger as necessitated from within by the suppression of the act-potency structures which gave determinateness and direction to the analyses of Sein and Zeit, showing that in these terms the celebrated turning in Heidegger's way of thought provides the justification and completes the demonstration of each sequential stage in our Retrieve." (pp. 3-4).

13. ———. 1971. "The myth as integral objectivity." Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association no. 45:67-76.

"This article attempts a definition and division of myth in order to clarify the relations between mythical thought and critical reflection. By means of this clarification, a further attempt is made to vindicate the uniqueness in principle of objective existence over against that of physical and mental events alike, in terms of the indifference of thought to being and non-being in its relation to objects, an indifference unmistakably exhibited by the functioning of myth in human culture."

14. ———. 1972. "The ontological status of intentionality." The New Scholasticism no. 46:220-233.

"In a recent article, Richard Aquila argues that Brentano's intentionality thesis as developed by Chisholm is either devoid of ontological significance, or carries a commitment to non-existent objects. The argument is that a relation, if it is genuine, implies the reality of its term. I show this argument to be mistaken, by pointing out the classical distinction between the formality of a relation, which derives from its being referential, and the reality or existence of a relation, which derives from its foundation in some subject. In terms of this distinction, it is perfectly possible, under certain privileged conditions (discussed in this article), for a true relation to exist without there having to be any real term for that relation. Hence it is false to assert that the thesis concerning the intentionality of the mental depends for its ontological significance on a commitment to a realm of mind-independent non-existent objects."

15. ———. 1972. "How Language Refers." Studi Internazionali di Filosofia no. 4:41-50.

"Assuming language sometimes succeeds in referring to objects, this article considers the question: how is such success possible? What enables language to refer? After showing that behavioral psychology and the theory of meaning as use provide no answer, an answer is drawn (by way of an infinite regress argument) from the dependence of language on an essentially relative entity T, which as such is indifferent to the physical reality of its term. Some implications are developed as critique of views of Frege, Meinong, Russell, Quine, and Wittgenstein; and it is suggested in conclusion that the capacity of language to refer to what does not physically exist is the key to the nature of thought."

16. ———. 1973. "The impact of evolution of scientific method." In The Problem of Evolution, edited by Deely, John and Nogar, Raymond J., 3-82. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Previously published in a two-part Italian translation by P. Bonzani as "Evoluzione biologica e teoria della scienza" in: Renovatio, vol. 5 Part I pp. 404-418 and part II pp. 534-546.

17. ———. 1973. The Problem of Evolution: A Study of the Philosophical Repercussions of Evolutionary Science. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

In collaboration with Raymond J. Nogar

18. ———. 1974. "The Two Approaches to Language: Philosophical and Historical Reflections on the Point of Departure of Jean Poinsot's Semiotic." The Thomist no. 38:856-907.

19. ———. 1975. "Reference to the Non-Existent." The Thomist no. 39:253-308.

20. ———. 1975. "Semiotica: dottrina dei segni." Renovatio no. 10:472-490.

21. ———. 1975. "Modern logic, animal psychology and human discourse." Revue de l'Université d'Ottawa no. 45:80-100.

22. ———. 1976. "The doctrine of signs: taking form at last." Semiotica no. 18:171-193.

Review of: Umberto Eco, - A Theory of Semiotics, translated by David Osmond-Smith, Bloomington:, Indiana University Press, 1976.

23. ———. 1977. "'Semiotic' as the doctrine of signs." Ars Semiotica no. 1:41-68.

24. ———. 1977. "Metaphysics, modern thought, and 'Thomism'." Notes et Documents no. 8:12-18.

25. ———. 1977. "The use of words to mention." The New Scholasticism no. 51:546-553.

"This article takes up the problem of linguistic reference as it has been stated in current Anglo-American philosophy, but introduces into the discussion basic considerations derived from a 1632 'Tractatus de signis' by John Poinsot. The argument shows why the concept of use' is incapable of providing foundations for a philosophy of language, and how the necessary alternative concept leads to radical revision of basic positions widely held in recent analytic and linguistic philosophy concerning mental events and states."

26. ———. 1977. "All'origine della semiotica." Renovatio no. 12:330-357.

27. ———. 1978. "What's in a name?" Semiotica no. 22:151-181.

Review of: Thomas Sebeok - Contributions to the doctrine of signs, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976.

28. ———. 1978. "Toward the origin of Semiotic." In Sight, Sound, and Sense, edited by Sebeok, Thomas A., 1-30. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

29. ———. 1978. "Semiotic and the controversy over mental events." Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association no. 52:16-27.

"This essay surveys epistemological theory as it has developed from the beginnings of modern philosophy to the present time, in order to show how the development of a doctrine of signs (semiotic) provides, both historically and theoretically, as alternative understanding of knowledge that is far more consonant with common experience than any of the traditional mainstream modern or contemporary views, and thus portends a revolution for philosophy."

30. ———. 1980. "Antecedents to Peirce's notion of iconic signs." In Semiotic 1980: Proceedings of 5th Annual Meeting. Semiotics Society of America, edited by Herzfeld, Michael and Lenhart, Margot, 109-120. New York: Plenum.

31. ———. 1980. "The nonverbal inlay in linguistic communication." In The Signifying Animal, edited by Rauch, Irmengard and Carr, Gerlad F., 201-217. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

32. ———. 1981. "Cognition from a semiotic point of view." In Semiotics 1981, edited by Deely, John and Lenhart, Margot, 21-28. New York: Plenum.

33. ———. 1982. Introducing Semiotic: Its History and Doctrine. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments VI; List of diagrams VIII; Foreword by Thomas A. Sebeok IX; Author's Preface XIII-XVI;

Objectives 1; Part I: Historical Content 5; Section 1. Point of departure and method 7; 2. Exploratory: the Ancient World (Greek and Latin) 13; 3. Exploratory: the indigenous Latin development 23; 4. Exploratory: cognition theory among the Latins 43; 5. Exploratory: the drift toward semiotic consciousness 47; 6. Explanatory: modern times to the present 67; 7. Summation 83;

Part II: Doctrinal perspectives 85; Section 1. Language 87; 3. Knowledge 93: 3. Experience 107;

Appeindeces 125; Appendix I: On the notion "Doctrine of Signs" 127; Appendix II: On the distinction between words and ideas 131;

Notes 143; References and indices 205; Index of conceptts and terms 235; Index of persons, places, and works 240

"The first part of this book is an initial attempt to establish an outline of the history of logic expressly from the standpoint of a doctrine of signs as defined by John Locke under the heading of semiotic. No effort has been made in this part to explore the standpoint so defined (that is left for the second part). What has been attempted rather is to indicate in a summary fashion and from the point of view of a philosopher a general sketch of the place and circumstances in Western culture where semiotic consciousness was first thematically achieved, to the extent at least that we are able to determine this in the light of the history of logic and philosophy as the "experts" present it to us, supplemented of course by an actual reading, first-hand, of the texts on which the outline relies - not all of which, by any means, have been weighed evenly if at all in the researches so far of the expert historians.

This fact already indicates the extent to which semiotic historiography will be achieved only by upsetting and revising, often in radical ways, the conventional outlines and histories of thought which have become standard fare in the universities of today. The writing of this history eventually must inevitably take the form also of a structuring anew of the entire history of ideas and of philosophy, in order to bring to the fore and make explicit the semiotic components latent by the nature of the case (all thought being through signs) in each of the previous thinkers who have wrestled since ancient times with foundational questions of knowledge, experience, and interpretation generally.

(...)

The second part of this book can no longer claim to be historical (though it tries not to be ignorant of history). Insofar as it differs from Part I, it does so under the inspiration of a remark made by Paul Bouissac at the sixth annual meeting of the Semiotic Society of America on the 2nd of October, 1981, in his presentation, "Figurative vs. Objective Semiosis." All previous semiotic "theories," he observed, be they Greimasian, Saussurean, Peircean, Poinsotian, have come to the study of signs late in the day, on the basis of a thoroughly worked out system of concepts, a "pre-existing philosophical paradigm." To this prejacent paradigm, then, their subsequent notions of signification were referred and required to conform. The coming of age of semiotic as a perspective in its own right requires exactly the reverse. It can have no paradigm of philosophy given in advance. Beginning with the sign, that is, from the function of signs in our experience taken in their own right (semiosis), it is the task of semiotic to create a new paradigm - its own - and to review, criticize, and correct so far as possible all previous accounts of experience in the terms of that paradigm.

These remarks, filled at the time with the passion and life of the speaker, were spontaneous there and poorly paraphrased here. Yet they struck me then and seem to me now with undiminished force exactly justes, exactly to capture in a flash of insight the task against whose demands the movement that has grown up around us must finally be measured. To answer Herbert's question (1981), what contributes toward meeting these demands in the work going on today is the revolutionary part of semiotics, what does not so contribute belongs to merely passing fad and fashion.

Like Part I, therefore, Part II of this book is heuristic rather than didactic. It seeks not to outline but to adumbrate the reorientation of thought made possible by the semiotic point of view not (indeed) in all areas, but at least in the area of the foundations of knowledge and experience, and at the interface of modern with (in lieu of the better term yet to be coined) post-modern times. Semiotics is capable of mediating a change of age as profound and total as was the separating off of modern times from the Latin era. Then, the cutting edge of transition was modern science, experimental and mathematical, coming of age. Today it is the interpretive activity of the mind becoming conscious of its full range, ground, and instruments, that is, semiotics." (pp. 1-4)

34. ———. 1983. "Neglected figures in the history of semiotic inquiry: John Poinsot." In History of Semiotics, edited by Eschbach, Achim and Trabant, Jürgen, 115-126. Amsterdam: John Benjamins

35. ———. 1985. "Editorial afterword and critical apparatus to: Tractatus de Signis. The Semiotic of John Poinsot." In Tractatus de Signis. The Semiotic of John Poinsot, 391-514. Berkeley: California University Press.

Available also combined with an Aquinas database as an Intelex Electronic Edition.

Corrected second edition, with a new preface by John Deely, South Bend, St. Augustine Press, 2013.

36. ———. 1985. "Semiotic and the liberal arts." The New Scholasticism no. 59:296-322.

Note from the author: "The 'second epsilon' mentioned in this work is a blunder, for the 'first epsilon' is not an epsilon but an eta, thus; Semeiotiké".

37. ———, ed. 1985. Semiotics, 1984. Lanham: University Press of America.

Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Semiotic Society of America, 11-14 October 1984, Bloomington, Indiana.

38. ———. 1985. Logic as a Liberal Art: Rethinking Logic in the Perspective of Semiotic. Kingston: Queen's University.

Monographs, working papers and prepublications of the Toronto Semiotic Circle.

Second edition: Student edition. Dubuque: Letterheads to Books, 1992.

39. ———. 1986. "Semiotic as framework and direction." In Frontiers in Semiotics, edited by Deely, John, Williams, Brooke and Kruse, Felicia, 264-271. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

40. ———. 1986. "Semiotic in the thought of Jacques Maritain." Recherche Sémiotique / Semiotic Inquiry no. 6:1-30.

41. ———. 1986. "John Locke's place in the history of semiotic inquiry." In Semiotics 1986, edited by Deely, John and Evans, Jonathan, 406-418. Lanham: University press of America.

42. ———. 1986. "A context for narrative universals: semiology as a Pars Semiotica." American Journal of Semiotics no. 4:53-68.

43. ———. 1986. "Idolum. Archeology and ontology in the iconic sign." In Iconicity: Essays on the Nature of Culture. Festschrift for Thomas A. Sebeok on his 65th Birthday, edited by Bouissac, Paul, Herzfeld, Michael and Posner, Roland, 29-49. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag.

44. ———. 1986. "The coalescence of semiotic consciousness." In Frontiers in Semiotics, edited by Deely, John, Williams, Brooke and Kruse, Felicia, 5-34. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.

45. ———, ed. 1986. Semiotics, 1985. Lanham: University Press of America.

Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Semiotic Society of America, 24-27 October 1985, the Berks Campus of the Pennsylvania State University, Reading, Pennsylvania.

46. ———. 1986. "Semiotic Society of America Style Sheet." American Journal of Semiotics no. 3-4:193-215.

47. ———. 1987. "On the notion of phytosemiotics." In Semiotics 1982, edited by Deely, John and Evans, Jonathan, 541-554. Lanham: University Press of America.

Reprinted with minor revision in: John Deely, Borroke Williams, Felicia Kruse (eds.) - Frontiers in Semiotics - Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1986

48. ———. 1987. "On the problem of interpreting the term 'First' in the expression 'First Philosophy'." In Semiotics 1987, edited by Deely, John, 3-14. Lanham: University Press of America.

49. ———. 1988. "The semiotic of John Poinsot: Yesterday and tomorrow." Semiotica no. 69:31-127.

50. ———, ed. 1988. Semiotics, 1987. Lanham: University Press of America.

51. ———. 1988. "Semiotics and First Philosophy." Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association no. 62:136-146.

52. ———. 1989. "The Grand Vision." In Peirce's Doctrine of Signs, edited by Colapietro, Vincent and Olshewsky, Thomas, 45-67. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.

Reprinted as chapter 7 in: John Deely, New beginnings: early modern philosophy and postmodern thought, Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1994.

53. ———. 1990. Basics of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Reprinted: South Bend, St. Augustine's Press. 2004. Greatly expanded fourth edition, Tartu University Press, 2005, with an introduction by K. Kull, S Salupere, P. Torop: Semiotics has no beginning pp. IX-XXV and an Author's Preface to the Fourth Edition XXVI-XXVIII.

(In the fourth edition the chapters from eight to eleven are new, and the first, but especially the third and fourth chapters contain important additions).

Contents of the Fourth edition: K. Kull, S Salupere, P. Torop: Semiotics has no beginning pp. IX; Author's Preface to the Fourth Edition XXVI; Author's Preface to the first edition XXIX; Thematic epigraphs 1; 1. Literary semiotics and the doctrine of signs 1; 2. Semiotics: method or point of view? 12; 3. Semiosis: The subject matter of semiotic inquiry 26; 4. Signs: The medium of semiosis 51; 5. Zoosemiotics and anthroposemiotics 74; 6. Physiosemiosis and phytosemiosis 111; 7. Retrospect: history and theory in semiotics 1368. Prospect: a new beginning for the sciences 171; 9. The quasi-error of the external world 183; 10. How semiotics unifies human knowledge 202; 11. The definition of Human Being 215; References 233; Translators' afterword 260; Dictionary of terms 262; Name Index 266-268.

"The aim of the book, then, is to fill the need for an answer to the question of just what is the essential nature and what are the fundamental varieties of possible semiosis. The substance of the answer to this twofold question is contained in chapters 3 through 6. Corresponding to this answer is the answer in chapter 2 to the prior question of what semiotics itself-the knowledge corresponding to the subject matter-basically is. And bracketing this whole discussion by way of opening and closing is a kind of sociological look at semiotics today in chapter 1, balanced by a historical look at semiotics in retrospect and prospect in chapter 7.

This is a book I have long wanted to write and one that has, for even longer, needed to be written; but, at least for this author, only recently have the essential insight and opportunity come together for expressing in a coherent overall framework the basic concepts of semiotics." (pp. XXIX-XXX)

54. ———. 1992. "Philosophy and Experience." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 66 (3):299-319.

55. ———. 1992. "The Supplement of the Copula: Linguistic Light on an Old Logical Problem." The Review of Metaphysics no. 46:251-277.

56. ———. 1992. "Semiotics and biosemiotics: are sign-science and life-science coextensive?" In Biosemiotics: The Semiotic Web 1991, edited by Sebeok, Thomas A. and Umiker-Sebeok, Jean, 45-75. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.

Reprinted in a revised version as chapter 6 of: New beginnings: early modern philosophy and postmodern thought with the title "How do signs work?" pp. 151-182

57. ———. 1992. "From glassy essence to bottomless lake." In Semiotics 1992, edited by Deely, John, 151-158. Lanham: University Press of America.

58. ———. 1993. "Locke's Proposal for Semiotics and the Scholastic Doctrine of Species." The Modern Schoolman no. 70:165-188.

59. ———. 1993. "Logic within semiotics." In Simbolicity, edited by Bernard, Jeff, Deely, John, Prewitt, Terry, Voight, Vilmos and Withalm, Gloria, 77-86. Lanham: University Press of America.

Simbolicity is bound together with Semiotics 1990 edited by Karen Haworth, John Deely, and Terry Prewitt as a single volume.

60. ———. 1993. The Human Use of Signs or: Elements of Anthroposemiosis. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Contents: List of figures IX; Preface XI-XIII; Preliminaries 1; Part. I. Signification 11; Part II. Textuality 53; Part III. Critick 83; Part IV. Otherness 121; Paragraphal glosses 135; Appendix: The ethics of terminology 173; References 175; Index of persons mentioned 199; Index of conceptions 202; About the author 241.

"This book is the best argument I can make to date that the perspective required to develop a doctrine of signs in the fullness of its proper possibilities implies also an understanding of human experience that will be for the first time integral and adequate to the task of providing the measure of human knowledge in the whole of its extent, as distinguished from imposing upon experience and systems of belief some ideological measure designed to dismiss large parts thereof a-priori. To minimize the difficulty of the argument, the book has been set up in such a way as to emphasize the autonomy of the paragraphs.

The present work is published in the hope especially of drawing other workers into the labor of understanding the human use of signs, recognizing all the while that the work perforce advances along an asymptotic curve ill-suited to dogmatic beliefs of any stripe. A community of inquirers cannot escape from the need to provide its own authority, and at the same time to ground that authority critically on the nodes and intersections of objective being with physical being." (pp. XII-XIII)

"I will proceed in four parts.

In Part I, I will examine the generic element in the semiotic definition of anthropos as animal linguisticum, that is to say, what is common to zoösemiosis and anthroposemiosis through the action of signs in the building up of "experience" as something in its own right superordinate to the brute secondness of environmental interactions. This I do under the heading of Signification. And here, following up on Sebeok's suggestions, we will see how the basic notion of modeling system extends much wider than the linguistic base assigned to it by the Tartu school.

In Part II, under the heading of Textuality, I will examine, so to say, the linguisticization of the world of experiencethat is, the species-specific element of experience that makes the human modeling system, or experience anthroposemiotically considered, different from the modeling system of animals employing communication systems lacking the code constitutive of the signum expertum ad placitum (the sign experienced linguistically, let us say). This sign will appear as ultimately rooted as such in the relation of signification grasped and deployed in its distinction from the perceptible sign-vehicle and the content signified. We will thereby see how textuality, virtual in the Umwelt, becomes actual through the indefinite decompositions and recompositions of experience linguistically construed by means of the establishment of a praeterbiological code which no longer, as in Sebeok's notion (cf. Baer Thomas A. Sebeok doctrine of signs in: Classics of semiotics, 1981: 183), adequates the Uexküllian notion (1940) of "meaning-plan", because textuality breaks the proportion between biological heritage and object as such experienced. In a word, we confront in the codes whereby experience is textualized the differentiating factor in the semiotic definition of anthropos as animal linguisticum.

This examination of code will bring us to the third element in this modeling of anthroposemiosis -- Part III of the essay, examination of the curiously detached domain called "Critick" in the wide and generic sense explained above (§ 17) as taken from Locke's Essay, wherein that equally curiously detached exercise called "criticism" takes place according to various forms. Therein, at one and the same time, what is most distinctive and what is most feeble in anthroposemiosis coincide to create that illusion whereby the literary aspect of semiosis is raised to the Pinnacle of intellectual achievement and treated perversely as a self-contained and autonomous exercise of semiotic competence. Here we will make explicit a point that will have been established virtually in the two previous stages of the diso‡cussion: the critical function and faculty is a subspecies of semiotic competence rather than identical with semiotic competence. Subordinate to and subtended by much broader processes of semiosis, criticism in any specific sense owes its validity to its connection with, rather than to its misleading appearance of autonomy within, those processes. It is a question of appreciating the expanse of the framework and depth of the foundation that belongs to semiotics today by birthright as an offspring of the doctrine of signs gestated by the Iberians after 1529 (Soto's Summulae), crystallized thematically in Poinsot's Treatise of 1632, named by Locke in 1690, and implemented by Peirce in its wholesale possibilities with the essay on categories of 1867 and in the many essays thereafter until his death in 1914.

Once the expanse of the framework has been grasped, it will be possible, in a few concluding remarks (Part IV on "Otherness"), to show how "constituting the other" is not unique to anthropology but is rather the basic activity of human intelligence essentially dependent on linguistic means. What is unique and uniquely interesting about anthropology is simply that "the other" is, normally, a conspecific whom we encounter only after socialization to maturity has occurred on the basis of cultural rules and expectations alien to our own socialization."

61. ———. 1993. "How does semiotic effect renvoi?" American Journal of Semiotics no. 11:11-61.

Reprinted as chapter 8 of: New beginnings: early modern philosophy and postmodern thought, pp. 201-244.

62. ———, ed. 1993. Semiotics, 1992. Lanham: University Press of America.

63. ———. 1994. "What Happened to Philosophy Between Aquinas and Descartes?" The Thomist no. 58:543-568.

64. ———. 1994. New Beginnings: Early Modern Philosophy and Postmodern Thought. Toronto: Toronto University Press.

Contents: List of illustrations X; Preface: The way to Postmodenity by Lucia Santaella-Braga XI; Technical prenote and acknowledgements XV-XVI; Introduction: On reading this book 3; Part I: The historical contacts. 1. Stating the question 13; 2. The historical prejudices 27; 3. Outlining Latinity with rinsed eyes 39; 4. The problem of novelty in the writings of Late Latin Scholasticism 53; 5. Locke's proposal for semiotic: what was new and what was not 109; Epilogue to Part I: Further signs 145; Part II: Expanding the speculative links; 6. How do signs work? 151; 7. The Grand Vision 183; 8. Renvoi 201; Transition to the future: the way of signs 245; Appendix 1: Contrasting ontological and Transcendental relatives 249; Appendix 2: Longer Latin citations 255; References 261; Index 295-310.

"This book concerns the theme of new beginnings within philosophy, the changes of age which define philosophical epochs. The theme is taken up not in its full scope as a speculative issue, but concretely in terms of the two most recent such turning points: the origins of modern philosophy out of Latin times and the origins of postmodern philosophy out of modern times. Each of these eras arises out of and defines itself against the backdrop of the paradigm of philosophy accepted in the background period. But what is unusual in the case I am considering is that the modern paradigm was so formed as to conceal from the outset fundamental themes of premodern Latin thought which are, in effect, resumed and foregrounded (with new accents and emphases, to be sure) by the postmodern development. Between the late Latin matrix of early modern philosophy and postmodernism there is a measure of speculative continuity which the classical modern development conceals. That underarching continuity or subtension is what I want to bring to the surface.

Even so restricted and concretized, the transitions at issue are large. To make their handling manageable, in Part I of the book I have focused on them as they are embodied in key figures: especially René Descartes, 1596-1650, and John Locke, 1632-1704 (and, to a lesser extent, George Berkeley, 1685-1753, and David Hume, 1711-1776), for the understanding of the origins of distinctively modern philosophy; Charles Peirce, 1839-1914, and Martin Heidegger, 1889-1976, for the understanding of the central thrust of postmodernism in philosophy; and John Poinsot, 1589-1644, for demonstrating speculative links which bind the matrix of the two at either end-the dawn and the dusk-of essentially modern philosophy.

Thus there are five key figures in the book, but Poinsot is the central one. He is central, however, not as an isolated thinker but as a representative-a unique and uniquely qualified representative, as the reader will learn-of the Latin Age both in its last phase as providing the matrix of early modern philosophy and in its full extent so far as it was a development of the logical, physical, and metaphysical writings of Aristotle assimilated to the milieu of medieval and renaissance Latin culture. In the same way, Descartes and Locke, Peirce and Heidegger, appear in these pages not as individual thinkers but as paired thinkers representative, respectively, of modernism and postmodernism in philosophy. All five figures, then, are personifications of the theme, and are preented as instantiating it.

(...)

This book sets out to redress the imbalances and correct some distortions, in order to motivate philosophers and historians of philosophy to see and review their materials in a new light-and above all to start reading some new texts which will not only make it possible to tell, but will shortly compel us to tell, a quite different "story of modern philosophy" than the stale one-sided tale we have been repeating to generations upon generations of students since the 1800s." (pp. 3-4)

65. ———. 1994. "Why investigate the common sources of Charles Peirce and John Poinsot?" In Semiotics 1994, edited by Spinks, Cary William and Deely, John, 34-50. New York: Peter Lang.

66. ———. 1994. "A Morning and Evening Star: Editor's Introduction." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 68:259-278.

"This special issue of the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly devoted to John Poinsot is complemented by a mélange of four additional essays in Poinsot's honor, three of which appear in The Thomist, and one in The Modern Schoolman. (1) Given the neglect Poinsot's work has suffered throughout the modern period, it is at least surprising to find the 350th anniversary of his death commemorated by such a range of learned essays celebrating his current relevance, and appearing in three of the oldest learned journals in the American Catholic university world (dating back, respectively, to 1927, 1939, and 1920).

Such homage is certainly befitting for the work of a man whose epistemological writings were considered by Jacques Maritain to be the only synthesis capable of bringing the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas effectively to bear on the critical situation as it developed in modernity. (2) My abduction is that the homage may be regarded more as auspicious of what the future holds for Poinsot's work in emerging from the shadows of modernity than as redressing a past neglect. These essays in honor of Poinsot in the several journals commemorate the past, by they celebrate the future, marking, in fact, a prospect of postmodernity." pp. 259-260.

(1) John Deely, "What Happened to Philosophy between Aquinas and Descartes?"; James Bernard Murphy, "Language, Communication, and Representation in the Semiotic of John Poinsot"; John D. Kronen, "The Substantial Unity of Material Substances according to John Poinsot" The Thomist, 58, no. 4 (October 1994); Gerard J. Dalcourt, "Poinsot and the Mental Imagery Debate," The Modern Schoolman, 72, n. 1 (November 1994).

2 Jacques Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, trans. supervised by Gerald B. Phelan (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1959), 387. See further John Deely, "Semiotic in the Thought of Jacques Maritain," Recherche Sémiotique / Semiotic Inquiry 6, no. 2 (1986): 1-30.

67. ———. 1994. "Locke's philosophy vs. Locke's proposal for semiotic." American Journal of Semiotics no. 11:33-37.

68. ———. 1995. "A prospect of postmodernity." Listening no. 30:7-14.

69. ———. 1995. "Quondam magician, possible Martian, semiotician: Thomas Albert Sebeok." Cruzeiro Semiótico:17-26.

Volume titled: Ensaios em Homagem a Thomas A. Sebeok, edited by Norma Tasca.

70. Deely, John, and Beuchot, Mauricio. 1995. "Common Sources for the Semiotic of Charles Peirce and John Poinsot." The Review of Metaphysics no. 48:539-566.

"The prevalence today of 'semiotics' as the preferred linguistic form for designating the study of signs in its various aspects already conceals a history, a story of the ways in which, layer by layer, the temporal achievement we call human understanding builds, through public discourse, ever new levels of common acceptance each of which presents itself as, if not self-evident, at least the common wisdom. Overcoming such present-mindedness is not the least of the tasks faced by the awakening of semiotic consciousness. (...)

There are a host of reasons, from superficial to profound, that play a role in the current dominance of 'semiotics' as the preferred linguistic form for designating the study of signs. The reversal of dominance in the discursive rivalry between 'semiology' and 'semiotics' as cultural forms of understanding, we want to suggest, is owing to the gradual, not to say grudging, recognition of the comparative depth, scope, and importance of the studies authored, on the one hand, by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) and those who took their principal inspiration in the study of signs from his work; and, on the other hand, by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) and those who took principal inspiration in the study of signs from his work. Saussure, of course, coined the term 'semiologie,' while Peirce, though he did not coin the word 'semiotic,' nonetheless took it over from the desuetude into which it had fallen as a neologism at the end of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding of 1690 and put it into current circulation.(*) (p. 539)

(*) See John Deely, "John Locke's Place in the History of Semiotic Inquiry," in Semiotics 1986, ed. John Deely and Jonathan Evans (Lanham: University Press of America, 1988), 406-18. For Locke's actual text itself of 1690, see "Coining the Name," in Frontiers in Semiotics, 2-4, with detailed analysis of the coinage in Luigi Romeo, "The Derivation of 'Semiotics' through the History of the Discipline," Semiosis 6, no. 2 (1977): 31-8; John Deely, "Semiotic and the Liberal Arts," The New Scholasticism, 59, no. 3 (summer 1985): 296-322; and John Deely, "Locke's Proposal for Semiotics and the Scholastic Doctrine of Species," The Modern Schoolman 70, no. 3 (March 1993): 165-88.

71. Deely, John. 1996. "Ferdinand de Saussure and semiotics." In Semiotics 1995, edited by Spinks, Cary William and Deely, John, 71-83. New York: Peter Lang.

72. ———, ed. 1996. Semiotics, 1994. Bern: Peter Lang.

Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Semiotic Society of America 20-23 October 1994, Radisson Airport Hotel, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

73. ———. 1997. "Quid sit Postmodernismus?" In Postmodernism and Christian Philosophy, edited by Ciapalo, Roman, 68-96. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

74. ———. 1997. "The seven deadly sins and the Catholic Church." Semiotica no. 117:67-102.

75. ———. 1997. "The four ages of understanding between ancient physics and postmodern semiotics." In Semiotics 1996, edited by Spinks, Cary William and Deely, John, 229-239. New York: Peter Lang.

76. ———. 1997. "Looking back on a theory of semiotics: one small step for philosophy, one giant leap for the doctrine of signs." In Reading Eco: An Anthology, edited by Capozzi, Rocco, 82-110. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

77. ———. 1997. "A new beginning in philosophy: Poinsot's contribution to the Seventeenth-Century search." In Hispanic Philosophy in the Age of Discovery, edited by White, Kevin, 275-314. Washington: The Catholic University of America Press.

78. ———. 1998. "A precis of the intersemiosis of perception and understanding." In New Approaches to Semiotics and the Human Sciences: Essays in Honor of Roberta Kevelson, edited by Pencak, William and Lindgren, Ralph, 279-306. Bern: Peter Lang.

79. ———. 1998. "The ethics of terminology." American Catholic Association (Proceedings) no. 72:197-243.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated Bibliography of John Deely. Second part: 1999-2010

Bibliography

1. Deely, John. 1999. "How is the universe perfused with signs?" In Semiotics 1997, edited by Spinks, Cary William and Deely, John, 389-394. New York: Peter Lang.

2. ———. 1999. "Physiosemiosis and semiotics." In Semiotics 1998, edited by Spinks, Cary William and Deely, John, 191-197. New York: Peter Lang.

3. ———. 1999. "Postmodernism and the perfusion of signs." In Semiotics - Evolution Energy. Toward a Reconceptualization of the Sign, edited by Taborsky, Edvina, 7-13. Aachen: Shaker Verlag.

4. ———. 2000. Natura Naturans and Natura Naturata. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Preface to the book: Ecstatic naturalism: signs of the world by Robert Corrington.

5. ———. 2000. "A new beginning for the sciences." In Semiotics as a Bridge between the Humanities and the Sciences, edited by Perron, Paul, Sbrocchi, Leonard, Colilli, Paul and Danesi, Marcel, 103-116. Ottawa: Legas.

Presented at the November 2-7, 1995, Symposium 'Semiotics as a bridge between the Humanities and the Sciences' organized at Victoria Collegeof the University of Toronto by Prof. Marcel Danesi.

6. ———. 2000. "The Latin foundations for semiotic consciousness; Augustine (Fifth century AD) to Poinsot (Seventeenth century)." Recherches Sémiotiques / Semiotic Inquiry no. 20:11-32.

7. ———. 2001. Four Ages of Understanding: The First Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Contents at a Glance: Contents in detail XI; List of tables and illustrations XXIV; Preface: The boundary of time XXIX-XXXIII; 1. Society and civilization: the prelude to philosophy 3;

Part I. ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY: The discovery of "reality"

2. Philosophy as physics 17; 3. The Golden Age: philosophy expands its horizon 42; 4. The final Greek centuries and the overlap of Neoplatonism with Christianity 93;

Part II. THE LATIN AGE: philosophy of Being

5. The geography of the Latin Age 161; 6. The so-called Dark Ages 212; 7. Creating a wave: the Second Stage 251; 8. The fate of Sign in the Later Latin Age 364; 9. Three Outcomes, two destinies 411; 10. The road not taken 447;

Part III. THE MODERN PERIOD: The way of ideas

11. Beyond the Latin Umwelt: science comes of age 487; 12. The Founding Fathers: René Descartes and John Locke 511; 13. Synthesis and successors: The strange case of dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde 540; 14. Locke again: the scheme of human knowledge 590;

Part IV: POSTMODERN TIMES: The way of Signs

15. Charles sanders Peirce and the recovery of Signum 611; 16. Semiology: modernity's attempt to treat the Sign 669; 17. At the Turn of the Twenty-first century 689; 18. Beyond Realism and Idealism: resumé and envoi 735;

Historically layered references 743; Gloss on the references 835; Index 837; Timetable of figures 1015-1019.

"If there is one notion that is central to the emerging postmodern consciousness, that notion is the notion of sign. And for understanding this notion, nothing is more essential than a new history of philosophy. For the notion of sign that has become the basis for a postmodern development of thought was unknown in the modern period, and before that traces back only as far as the turn of the 5th century AD. Yet the context within which the general notion of sign was first introduced presupposes both the ancient Greek notion of "natural sign" (semeion) and the framework of Greek discussions of nature and mind which provoked the development of philosophy in the first place as an attempt to understand the being proper to the objects of experience. Not only does it emerge that the sign is what every object presupposes, but, in modern philosophy, the conundrum about the reality of the "external world", the insolubility of the problem of how in theory to get beyond the privacy of the individual mind, springs directly from the reduction of signification to representation. So here is one of the ways in which the four ages of this book can be outlined: preliminaries to the notion of sign; the development of the notion itself; forgetfulness of the notion; recovery and advance of the notion.

Tracing the development of the notion of sign from its beginning and against the backdrop of Greek philosophy yields an unexpected benefit by comparison with more familiar historical approaches. Every modern history of philosophy has been essentially preoccupied with the separating off from philosophy of science in the modern sense, especially in and after the seventeenth century. From this point of view, many of the continuing philosophical developments of the later Latin centuries tend to drop out of sight. It has become the custom to present modern philosophy, conventionally beginning with Descartes (17th century), simply as part and parcel of the scientific break with the authors of Latin tradition, and to treat the bringing of nominalism into the foreground of Latin thought by William of Ockham (14th century) as if that were the finale of Latin development.

This hiatus of two and a half centuries in the history of philosophy, however, effectively disappears when we make our way from ancient to modern times by tracing mainly the development of the philosophical notion of signum. From the High Middle Ages down to the time of Descartes we find a lively and continuous discussion of sign which, through a series of important if unfamiliar controversies on both sides of the thirteenth century, leads to a basic split in the closing Latin centuries. On one side stand those who think that the general notion of sign is an empty name, a flatus vocis, a nominalism, no more than a "relation of reason", an ens rationis. On the other side are those who are able to ground the general notion in an understanding of relation as a unique, suprasubjective mode of being, a veritable dual citizen of the order of ens reale and ens rationis alike, according to shifting circumstances.

Modern philosophy, from this point of view, appears essentially as an exploration of the nominalist alternative; and postmodern thought begins with the acknowledgment of the bankruptcy of the modern effort, combined with the determination pioneered by C. S. Peirce to explore the alternative, "the road not taken", the "second destiny" that had been identified in the closing Latin centuries but forgotten thereafter. Peirce's postmodern resumption of premodern epistemological themes produces a number of immediately dramatic and surprising results (beginning with the cure for the pathology dividing our intellectual culture between the personae of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde).

So derives the title for this work, Four Ages of Understanding: ancient Greek thought, the Latin Age, modern thought, postmodern thought. The book is a survey of philosophy in what is relevant to the "understanding of understanding" from ancient times to the present. It is intended both as a reference work in the history of philosophy and a guide to future research - a "handbook for inquirers" in history, philosophy, and the humanities generally, including historians and philosophers of science. The book also aims to aid in the classroom those professors willing to wean a new generation from the "standard modern outlines" of philosophy's history which serve mainly to support the post-Cartesian supposition that history is of next to no import for the doing itself of philosophy." (pp. XXX-XXXI)

8. ———. 2001. "Physiosemiosis in the semiotic spiral: a play of musement." Sign System Studies no. 29:27-48.

9. ———. 2001. "A sign is what?" Sign System Studies no. 29:705-744.

Presidential Address to the Semiotic Society of America delivered at October 19, 2001, luncheon of 26th Annual Meeting held at Victoria University, Toronto

10. ———. 2001. "Umwelt." Semiotica no. 134:125-135.

11. ———. 2002. What Distinguishes Human Understanding? South Bend: St. Augustine's Press.

Contents: Foreword IX-XIV; Preamble 3; 1. Requirements of the discussion 5; 2. Foundations in Nature for the semiotic point of view 16; 3. The semiosis of sensation 33; 4. From sensation to Umwelt as species-specific objective world 38; 5. How the distinctiveness of semiosis in general possible? 47; 6. A semiosis beyon perception 68; 7. The dependency of understanding on perceptual semiosis 110; 8. Language and understanding as a single semiosis exapted 120; 9. The semiotic animal 124; Appendix Definition of Umwelt 126; Historically layered references 144; Index 168-178.

"This is an essay in what used to be, and still largely is, called the "philosophy of mind", a designation heavy with the dualistic assumptions of classical modernity. When those assumptions wrapped up in that traditional classification are jettisoned in favor of an epistemological paradigm compossible with semiosis, it becomes clear that what we are dealing with is straightforwardly a semiotics of the cognitive activities of living organisms. The following pages are better viewed under this clarification.

Dr. Anthony Russell claimed that the clarification makes of the essay "the first treatment of the distinction between sense and intellect worth reading since the days of Locke and Hume". Be that as it may, if the reader adjudges the work worth having read, the game shall have been worth the candle.

Semiotics is nothing more or other than the knowledge we develop by studying the action of signs, and it receives its various divisions from the various ways and regions in which that action is verified. This study presupposes nothing more than a notion of sign as one thing standing for another in a relation of renvoi, that is to say, an irreducibly triadic relation, actual or virtual, but in the case of cognitive life, it seems, always actual. Such a general notion of sign is verified, at the extremes, in phenomena we call "natural" and in phenomena we call "cultural", as well as in the intermediary phenomena of social interaction such as sociology, for example, studies it. But - and this is one of the more surprising upshots of contemporary semiotic research - the actual proposal of such a general notion of sign appears to be no older than Augustine, and a creation of the specifically Latin Age of philosophical history.

Proposed at the end of the fourth century, the semiotic point of view did not receive a warrant until the early seventeenth century, when it was for the first time demonstrated how the early Latin proposal for a general notion of sign, applicable in a single sense to the extremes of nature and culture, could be vindicated through the fact that relation according to the way it has being is indifferent to whether its subjective foundation or ground be taken from physical interaction and being or from cognitive activity alone. This establishment of a unified object or subject matter for semiotic investigation was in principle revolutionary for our understanding of human experience and the knowledge which derives there-from. It unified in a single instrument or medium the otherwise diverse products of speculative knowledge about the natures of things and practical knowledge about human affairs and the application thereto of speculative knowledge.

The first author who succeeded in giving voice to the underlying unity of the being in relation upon which all action of signs as such depends was John Poinsot (1589-1644), an Iberian philosopher of mixed Burgundian and Portuguese descent. In the text of his Tractatus de Signis, published in 1632, the new beginning implicit in the adoption of the semiotic point of view is in two ways at least symbolized. First, the text expressly notes that the sign requires a standpoint superior to the division of being into what is and what is not independent of cognition, which translates, in modern parlance, into a standpoint superior to the confrontation of realism with idealism. Second, the compass of the Tractatus de Signis text unites what were, in the then-traditional liberal arts curriculum of the European universities, the opening discussions of logic with the concluding discussions of the theory of knowledge." (pp. IX-X)

12. ———. 2002. "The Absence of Analogy." The Review of Metaphysics no. 55:521-550.

"The doctrine of analogy as the Latins came distinctively to develop it pretty much began its philosophical life in the Stagirite's reply to the Parmenidean One doctrine. There is no one way to say being, replied Aristotle, but, on the contrary, many ways; irreducibly many. At least, as we will see, this was the point from which it developed among the Latins after Thomas Aquinas, who took up Aristotle's point more fully and in some strikingly different ways than is suggested by the Greek of Aristotle. We will see that precisely for want of an understanding of the foundational implications of Aquinas's doctrine of analogy and his corollary doctrine of the transcendental "properties" of being, most of his late modern followers, in their battle against Descartes and the idealism in general that became the hallmark of modernity, fell into that trap (native to the way of things) of proceeding "as if a philosophy of being could not also be a philosophy of mind," (*) and quite missed the problem of being-as-first-known, as shall appear." (p. 522)

(*) Jacques Maritain, Distinguish to Unite, or The Degrees of Knowledge, trans, from the 4th French edition under the supervision of Gerald B. Phelan (New York: Scribner's, 1959), 66: "comme si une philosophie de l'etre ne pouvait etre aussi une philosophie de l'esprit."

13. ———. 2002. "From semeion to 'signum' to 'sign': translating sign form Greek to Latin to English." In Essays in Translation, Pragmatics, and Semiotics, 129-172. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press.

14. ———. 2003. The Impact on Philosophy of Semiotics: The Quasi-Error of the External World with a Dialogue between a 'Semiotist' and a 'Realist'. South Bend: St. Augustine's Press.

Contents: Part I. The impact on philosophy of semiotics.

1. The state of the question 3; 2. Demarcating modernity within philosophy 10; 3. Why th doctrine os signs is not modern 28; 4. Hw semiotics restores tradition to philosophy 51; 5. Classical antiquity and semiotics 90; 6.Prospective 96;

Part II. The quasi-error of the external world

1. Betwixt and between 117; 2. The egg of postmodernity 119; 3. The egg hatches 125; 4. Skirmishes on the boundary 131; 5. Reality too is a word 140; 6. Amodeling system biologically underdetermined 145; 7. Blickwendung: a glance in the rear-view mirror 147; 8. Updating the file 150;

Part III. Dialogue between a 'semiotist' and a 'realist'

"A sign is What?" A conversation between a 'semiotist' and a ?realist' 157; Diagram: the semiotic spiral 164; References historically layered 209; Index 250-267.

"With Peirce, in recovering from the Latins the general notion of sign, (1) and in advancing that notion both by naming distinctively its third term and by shifting the focus from the being to the action of signs (so that it is well understood that, in that spiral of semiosis (2) we call experience, representamen, significate, and interpretant are constantly changing places as abductions give way to deductions and deductions to retroductions provenating yet further abductions, and so on, in a semiosis that would be infinite did not death intervene to curtail the process in the individual case), what we were handed was precisely a new set of categories. (3) This "new list", like the categories of Aristotle, purported to contain modes of being as able to exist independently of mind and able to be known precisely in that dimension of their being; but unlike Aristotle's were not restricted to that order of prospective existence, "ens reale". Like Kant's categories, the new list purported to reveal the input of mind into objectivity; but unlike Kant's was not restricted to the mind-dependent dimension of what is consequently known, "ens rations". In short, by revealing how mind-independent and mind-dependent being interweave in the constitution of experience as a semiotic web of relations whose nodes, reticles, or interstices precisely present to us an objective world both natural and cultural in its provenance and knowability, the new list of categories carries us forward beyond modernity and not simply back to some older viewpoint ("realism") adequately presaged in both ancient Greek and medieval Latin thought.

In short, semiotics proves for philosophy neither a question of premodern (though it draws on ancient discussion of relation as much as on medieval discussion of sign) nor modem, but precisely postmodern in its positive essence. For semiotics enables us to see clearly what, for philosophy, modernity consisted in, and why modern philosophy proves wanting when it comes to the analysis of science, language, and knowledge - to matters epistemological generally. For all thought is in signs, and signs are sustained by their distinctive action, which is exhibited in but cannot be confined or reduced to language, as semiology and late modem analytic thought (after the "linguistic turn") beguiled their followers into believing." (pp. 28-29)

(1) Beuchot and Deely Common sources for the semiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce and John Poinsot, 1995; Deely Why investigate the common sources of Charles Peirce and John Poinsot? 1994.

(2) See the Diagram in Part III, p. 164 below.

(3) Peirce 1867: Collected Papers 1. 545-559.

15. ———. 2003. "The quasi-error of the external world. an essay for Thomas A. Sebeok, in memoriam." Cybernetics & Human Knowing no. 10:25-46.

Abstract: "There is a story according to which Professor Sebeok was on a panel of distinguished speakers who received from the audience a challenge to show cause why the basic ideas of semiotics, such as that of Umwelt, were not simply one more version of solipsistic idealism. Each of the speakers in turn addressed the matter, each beginning with a protestation (outdoing in earnestness the previous speaker) to the effect that, Of course, I am not a solipsist. Finally, Tom's turn arrived. He shrugged, and said simply: I'm a solipsist. It was one of those seminal moments, of which Tom created so many, like the time in Toronto where he mentioned in passing in his main remarks that Everyone thinks of language in terms of communication. But language has nothing to do with communication. In the question period, the very first questioner challenged him on the point. You said that language has nothing to do with communication, the audience member reminded him. Why did you say that? Because it doesn't, Tom answered pointedly, and proceeded to call on the next questioner."

16. ———. 2003. "The semiotic animal (long version)." In Logica, dialogica, ideologica. I segni tra funzionalità ed eccedenza, edited by Petrilli, Susan and Calefato, Patrizia, 201-219. Milano: Mimesis.

17. ———. 2003. "The word 'semiotics': formation and origins." Semiotica no. 146:1-49.

Revised and expanded in: Why semiotics?

18. ———. 2003. "On the word semiotics, formation and origins." Semiotica no. 146:1-50.

19. ———. 2003. "The semiotic foundations of the human sciences from Augustine to Peirce." Recherche Sémiotique / Semiotic Inquiry no. 23:3-29.

20. ———. 2004. Why Semiotics? Ottawa: Legas Publishing.

Contents: Chapter 1. Why semiotics? 3; Chapter 2. Tentatives of terminology 11; Chapter 3. My guess at the riddle 53; Appendix A. The first programmatic statement toward a doctrine of signs (Locke 1689) 59; Appendix B. The second programmatic statement toward a doctrine of signs (Saussure 1916) 62; Appendix C. The Latin prelude to a doctrine of signs (Poinsot 1632) 66; Historically layered references 71; Index rerum 89-96.

"The word 'semiotics' as a matter of interest today can hardly be discussed apart from a consideration as well of its late modern competitor in intellectual culture, 'semiology'. Seldom has the struggle to define the soul of a newly emerging cultural epoch, in the present case 'postmodernism' as bearing on a molting of philosophical tradition itself, been so succinctly encapsulated as in the late 19th and 20th century history and contest between these two terms. To this spectacle we arrive late enough in the game to realize that semiotics is the term that has carried the day, in the sense of portending the main future line of development of the doctrine of signs within intellectual culture.

The formation and origins of semiotics as a dictionary item, that is to say, as a publicly recognized lexical item of natural language, is what will concern us here. We will see that from its earliest appearances in the English tongue the word semiotics has been bound up with a twofold notion or question: What is to be understood by the doctrine of signs? and What name is most proper to understanding the development of such a doctrine?

The word has ancient roots in Greek medicine, we will see; but its late modern/postmodern establishment in English is what will concern us here. I have chosen the device of numbered paragraphs to facilitate the reader's grasp of the investigative steps, empirical in the broad sense, that I have taken by examining sequences of dictionaries to track the emergence and variations on 'semiotics' as an English lexical item in its own right. Whatever its overtones and provenances from the past and from other languages, within neither Greek nor Latin does the term seem ever to have existed as such, certainly not with its definitive (at least for the time of the twenty-first century's first decade!) postmodern significance of the doctrine that signs consist in every case in a triadic relation of referral.

The being of sign as consisting universally in a relation essentially triadic is a postmodern view of premodern provenance, as is coming to be widely known in semiotics, if sometimes to the consternation of Peircean purists who prefer to overlook or deny Peirce's debt to the Latins in this particular; but the appropriation of 'renvoi' as the term properly to name this fundamental recognition is of recent vintage, coming only after Jakobson (1896-1982), indeed, and with certain essential revisions taken into account, (*) to arrive at the henceforward classical formula for sign (the action of which is the subject matter of semiotic investigation): aliquid alicuique stat pro alio, 'one thing standing for another to some third party'. This formulation is the latest molting, we will see subsequently, of a distinguished lineage."

(*) See Jakobson "Coup d'ceil sur le devéloppement de la sémiotique", in Panorama sémiotique / A Semiotic Landscape, Proceedings of the First Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, Milan, June 1974, ed. Seymour Chatman, Umberto Eco, and Jean-Marie Klinkenberg (The Hague: Mouton, 1979), 3-18. Also published separately under the same title by the Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies as a small monograph (= Studies in Semiotics 3; Bloomington: Indiana University Publications, 1975); and in an English trans. by Patricia Baudoin titled "A Glance at the Development of Semiotics", in The Framework of Language (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Studies in the Humanities, Horace R. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, 1980),1-3 viewed under the two correctives, Deely New beginnings. Early modern philosophy and postmodern thought followed by Deely A sign is what? 721-22. Cf. Deely The impact on philosophy of semiotics passim.

21. ———. 2004. "The role of Thomas Aquinas in the development of semiotic consciousness." Semiotica no. 152:75-139.

Abstract: "'Semiotic consciousness' is the awareness we have of the role and action of signs in the world. This essay examines the role of Thomas Aquinas (1224/5-1274) in the growth of semiotic consciousness among the Latins, as Charles Sanders Peirce will take up the matter in influencing the twentieth-century establishment of semiotics as a global intellectual movement. Although Aquinas never focused on the subject of signs for its own sake, he frequently treats of it in relation to other direct investigations in a great variety of contexts. The result of his treatments is to have left a series of texts which, though not without their inner tensions, contain a series of consequences and connections which can be developed into a unified theory of the being constitutive of signs as a general mode. Precisely this theory was spelled out systematically for the first time in the 1632 Treatise on Signs of John Poinsot, expressly grounded in a pulling together of Aquinas's various texts together with a careful analysis of the role of signs in human experience. The resulting doctrinal perspective proves to have been implicit in Aquinas and to lie at the foundation of Peirce's notion of signs as triadic relations, a notion he took over from the later Latins and developed anew, particularly in shifting the focus from the being to the action proper to signs, or 'semiosis'. It is this appropriation and shift that marks the boundary between modernity and postmodernism in philosophy, with respect to which the writings of Aquinas are like a taproot."

22. ———. 2004. "The semiosis of angels." The Thomist no. 68:205-258.

23. ———. 2004. "Semiotics and Jakob von Uexküll's concept of Umwelt." Sign System Studies.

Presented 10 January 2004 at the 9-10 January 2004 International Symposium 'Zeichen und der Bauplan des Lebens - Uexküll Bededutin heute'.

24. ———. 2004. "'Semeion' to 'sign' by way of 'signum': on the interplay of translation and interpretation in the establishment of semiotics." Semiotica no. 148:187-227.

25. ———. 2004. "The Thomistic import of the Neo-Kantian concept of Umwelt in Jakob von Uexküll." Angelicum no. 81:711-732.

26. ———. 2004. "Thomas Albert Sebeok, "biologist manqué"." In International Association for Semiotic Studies 2004 World Congress.

27. ———. 2004. "Tom Sebeok and the external world." Semiotica no. 150:1-21.

28. ———. 2004. "'Semeion' to sign by way of signum: on the interplay of translation and interpretation in the establishment of semiotics." Semiotica no. 148:187-227.

29. ———. 2004. "Dramatic reading in three voices: a sign is What?" American Journal of Semiotics no. 20:1-66.

30. ———. 2005. "From semiotic animal to semioethic animal and back." In Macht der Zeichen, Zeichen de Macht / Signs of Power, Power of Signs, edited by Withalm, Gloria and Wallmannsberger, Josef, 120-136. Wien: Lit. Verlag.

31. ———. 2005. "The semiotic animal (definitional version)." In Semiotics 2003, edited by Williamson, Rodney, Sbrocchi, Leonard and Deely, John. Ottawa: Legas.

32. ———. 2005. "The semiotic animal: a postmodern definition of Human Being superseding the modern definition "res congitans"." In Proceedings of the International Congress on Christian Humanism in the Third Millenium: The perspective of Thomas Aquinas, edited by Pontificia, Academia Sancti Thomae Aquinatis and Società, Internazionale Tommaso d'Aquino, 261-274. Vatican City: Pontificia Academia Sancti Thomae Aquinatis.

"A postmodern humanism consistent with the thought of Thomas Aquinas requires a new definition of human being, one which extends the classical understanding of «rational animal» on the basis of a study of what is distinctively human within the action of signs. Ancient and medieval philosophy was generally "realistic", but failed to distinguish thematically between objects existing as such only in knowledge and things existing whether or not known. The understanding of the human being that accompanied this orientation was expressed in the formula "rational animal"

(animal rationale). Modern philosophy came to an understanding of the difference between objects existing in knowledge and things existing independently of knowledge, but at the price of failing to show how things can themselves become objects. The understanding of human being that accompanied the modern divorce of objects from things was enshrined in the formula "thinking thing" (res cogitans). Philosophy became "postmodern" when, through work recovering and advancing the original semiotic consciousness of the Latin Age systematized in the 17th century work of John of St. Thomas, it became possible to understand how, through the action of signs, objects and things are interwoven in the fabric of human experience that transcends the modern opposition of realism to idealism. The understanding of human being that develops from and together with this postmodern perspective is precisely captured in the formula "semiotic animal" (animal semeioticum). "

33. ———. 2005. Augustine and Poinsot: The Protosemiotic Development. Sofia: Tip-Top Press.

34. ———. 2005. "Defining the semiotic animal: a postmodern definition of human being superseding the modern definition "Res Cogitans"." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 79:461-481.

"As modernity began with a redefinition of the human being, so does postmodernity. But whereas the modern definition of the human being as res cogitans cut human animals off from both their very animality and the world of nature out of which they evolved and upon which they depend throughout life, the postmodern definition as semeiotic animal both overcomes the separation from nature and restores the animality essential to human being in this life. Semiotics, the doctrine of signs suggested by Augustine and theoretically justified by Poinsot, developed in our own day after Peirce, introduces postmodernity by overcoming the Kantian epistemological limits on the side of ens reale and showing the social constructions superordinate to ens reale as essential to animal life."

35. ———. 2005. "Why the semiotic animal needs to develop a semioethics." In The Semiotic Animal, edited by Deely, John, Petrilli, Susan and Ponzio, Augusto, 207-221. Ottawa: Legas Publishing.

"This paper will discuss why the definition of human being as semiotic animal necessarily implies a semioethic, in light of how, as a definition, it both differs from the classical (ancient and medieval) definition of the human being as "rational animal" and replaces the modern definition of human being as "res cogitans". At issue here is the classical distinction between speculative and practical thought, and how the definition of ethics as belonging determinately to the practical sphere is affected by the establishment of semiotics as transcending that classical distinction. I will consider how the perspective of semiotics impacts upon the traditional ideas of ethics, and how these traditional ideas, in turn, are absorbed into or transformed by the notion of a "semioethics"."

36. ———. 2005. Thomas Albert Sebeok and Semiotics. Sofia: Tip-Top Press.

37. ———. 2006. "The literal, the metaphorical, and the price of semiotics: an essay on philosophy of language and the doctrine of signs." Semiotica no. 161:9-74.

38. ———. 2006. "On 'Semiotics' as naming the Doctrine of Signs." Semiotica no. 158:1-33.

39. ———. 2006. "Semiotics, history of." In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Second Edition, edited by Brown, Keith, 216-229. London: Elsevier.

40. ———. 2006. "Let us not lose sight of the forest for the trees.." Cybernetics & Human Knowing no. 13:161-193.

41. ———. 2006. "'To find our way in these dark woods' versus coming up short." Recherche Sémiotique / Semiotic Inquiry no. 26:165-234.

42. ———. 2007. Intentionality and Semiotics: A Story of Mutual Fecundation. Scranton: University of Scranton Press.

43. ———. 2007. "The primary modeling system in animals." In La filosofia del linguaggio come arte dell'ascolto: sulla ricerca scientifica di Augusto Ponzio / Philosophy of language as the art of listening: on Augusto Ponzio' scientific research, edited by Petrilli, Susan, 161-179. Bari: Edizione dal Sud.

44. ———. 2008. Descartes & Poinsot: The Crossroad of Signs and Ideas. Scranton: University of Scranton Press.

Volume 2 in the "Postmodernity in Philosophy" Poinsot Trilogy: Contrasting the Way of Signs to the Way of Ideas, Semiotics to Epistemology.

45. ———. 2008. "From semiosis to semioethics: the full vista of the action of signs." Sign System Studies no. 36:437-421.

46. ———. 2008. "How to go nowhere with language." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 82:337-359.

47. ———. 2008. "On the value of Poinsot's work to philosophy today." In Cursus Philosophicus, V-XIV. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Introductory remarks to the critical edition reprint of Poinsot's Cursus Philosophicus ed. B. Reiser "II reimpresso emendata" 1948 (original edition Spain, 1631-1635). Vol. I

48. ———. 2008. "Evolution, semiosis and ethics: rethinking the context of natural law." In Contemporary Perspectives on Natural Law, edited by González, Ana Marta, 241-257. Aldershot: Ashgate.

49. ———. 2009. Augustine & Poinsot: The Protosemiotic Development. Scranton: University of Scranton Press.

Volume 1 in the "Postmodernity in Philosophy", Poinsot Trilogy: Determining the Standpoint for a Doctrine of Signs.

The volume 3, "Peirce & Poinsot: the action of signs from Nature to Ethics" was not published.

50. ———. 2009. Purely Objective Reality. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

"In his Letter on Humanism of 1947, Heidegger declared that the subject/object opposition and the terminology that accrues to it had still not been properly addressed in the history of philosophy, and he awaited a proper disquisition that resolved the problem. To date, that has not been provided. This volume explains and solves the prevailing problems in the subjectivity/objectivity couplet, in the process making an indispensable contribution both to semiotics and to philosophy. This book shows that what is thought to be 'objective' in the commonplace use of the term is demonstrably different from what objectivity entails when it is revealed by semiotic analysis. It demonstrates in its exegesis of the 'objective' that human existence is frequently governed by examples of a 'purely objective reality' -- a fiction which nevertheless perfuses, is perfused by, and guides experience. The ontology of the sign can be mind-dependent or mind-independent, just as the status of relation can be as legitimate on its own terms whether it is found in ens rationis or in ens reale. The difference in the awareness of human animals consists in this very contextualization that Deely's writings in general have made so evident: the ability to identify signs as sign relations, and the ability to enact relations on a mind-dependent basis. Purely Objective Reality offers the first sustained and theoretically consistent interrogation of the means by which human understanding of 'reality' will be instrumental in the survival -- or destruction -- of planet Earth."

51. ———. 2010. Semiotic Animal: A Postmodern Definition of "Human Being" Transcending Patriarchy and Feminism. South Bend: St. Augustine Press.

52. ———. 2010. Medieval Philosophy Redefined. Scranton: University of Scranton Press.

The Development of Cenoscopic Science, AD 354 to 1644 (from the Birth of Augustine to the Death of Poinsot)

Books edited

1. Deely, John, and Lenhart, Margot, eds. 1983. Semiotics, 1981. New York: Plenum Press.

2. Poinsot, John. 1985. Tractatus de Signis. The Semiotic of John Poinsot. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Interpretive arrangement in bilingual format (Latin and English) by John N. Deely in consultation with Ralph Austin Powell from the 1930 Reiser edition (emended second impression, 1932) of the Artis Logicae Prima et Secunda Pars of the Cursus Philosophicus Tomisticus, comprising the first two parts of the five part Cursus Philosophicus of 1631-1635.

This work is also available as a text database as an Intelex Electronic Edition.

Corrected second edition, with a new preface by John Deely, South Bend, St. Augustine Press, 2013.

Review by J. E. Ashworth, "The historical origins of John Poinsot's Treatise on Signs", Semiotica, 69, 1988, 129-147.

3. Deely, John, Williams, Brooke, and Kruse, Felicia, eds. 1986. Frontiers in Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Contents: Editor's Preface: "Pars pro toto" VII; Description of contributions and list of permissions XVIII-XXII;

I. The name and its context.

John Locke: Coining the name 3; John Deely: The coalescence of semiotic consciousness 5; Thomas A. Sebeok: The Doctrine of Signs 35;

II. Semiotic systems: Anthropocentric, Zoosemiotics, Phytosemiotics

Donald Preziosi: The multimodality of communicative events 44; Jacques Maritain: Language and the theory of Sign 41; Umberto Eco, Roberto Lambertini, Costantino Marmo, Andrea Tabarroni: "Latratus Canis" or: The Dog's barking 63; Thomas A. Sebeok: The notion of Zoosemiotics; Thomas A. Sebeok: "Talking" with animals: zoosemiotics explained 76; Martin Krampen: Phytosemiotics 83; John Deely: On the notion of phytosemiotics 96;

III. Developing themes

T. L. Short: Life among the Legisigns 105; Floyd Merrell: Structuralism and beyond: a critique of presuppositions 120;

IV. Reshaping traditional spheres: some regional applications

Eugen Baer: The medical symptom 140; Umberto Eco: On symbols 153; Irene Portis Winner: Semiotics of culture 181; Michel Herzfeld: Disemia 183; Roberta Kevelson: Prolegomena to a comparative legal semiotic 191; Richard Lanigan: Semiotics, communicology, and Plato's Sophist 199; Brooke Williams: History in relation to semiotic 217; Luigi Romeo: Heraclitus and the foundations of semiotics 224;

V: The name and its direction

Joseph Ransdell: Semiotic objectivity 236; Thomas A. Sebeok: "Semiotics" and its congeners 255; John Deely; Semiotic as framework and direction 264;

Notes 272; References 289; Explanation of reference style (Historical layering) 290; Index 323-329.

"The collection is complementary to the sister collection of Robert Innis, Semiotics: An Introductory Anthology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), which is a superb assemblage of neoclassic authors, contemporary more or less, but most now dead, and mirroring the embryonic stage through which semiotics first established itself on the contemporary scene. The two collections represent, respectively, points of departure, on the one hand, and trajectories of travel since.

There remains to explain the articulation of the parts of the present collection in their specific character.

Part I explains the origin of the term "semiotic" as it comes to us from Locke, and conveys specifically a perspective, as Winance put it (1983: 515), "able to assimilate the whole of epistemology and natural philosophy as well", where "nature" is understood, as Aquinas explained in such a context (c.1269: 1.1.2), "ita quod sub naturali philosophia comprehendamus et metaphysicam" -- "in such a way as to include whatever there is of being".

Part II does not treat of all the main semiotic systems known to exist, but only of those three concerning which programmatic research statements are as such extant. This part treats therefore of the three main semiotic systems so far explored as such by teams of researchers cognizant of their orientation and concerned to establish it as such. Further frontiers remain, and some of them (by no means all, or even always accurately) have already been indicated in the position paper of Anderson et al. (1984), "A Semiotic Perspective on the Sciences: Steps Toward a New Paradigm".

Part III concerns themes common to the breaking down and breaking through of the confines imposed by the various linguistic paradigms, as semiotics has moved into its broader perspective of development.

Part IV illustrates the penetration of semiotics into some areas already well established in traditional terms. This section is the most incomplete, inasmuch as the influence of semiotics extends to many "traditional spheres" besides those specified here; but we have chosen the readings for this section with an eye to their exploratory merit. The point of the section is to illustrate lines of possible over already achieved development.

Part V, finally, returns to the name, for the purpose of exploring now not its origins, but its future. It might equally well have been titled "Prospective Semiotics".

In short, the volume begins with the text of Locke's original proposal, followed by a philosophical-historical exegesis of that proposal, and develops through a series of essays establishing the connection of the original semiotic perspective to traditional lines of specialized thought (including philosophy itself) and exhibiting the possibilities of that original perspective in more or less detailed applications to major problem areas. The readings globally taken provide, as we have said, a corrective and an enhancement of popular conceptions of semiotic today.

We aim at nothing less than a full-scale "paradigm shift", in the popular consciousness, from the exclusively literary, structuralist, and Saussurean pars to the inclusive biological, philosophical, and Peircean totum." pp. XVI-XVII.

4. Deely, John, and Evans, Jonathan, eds. 1987. Semiotics, 1982. Lanham: University Press of America.

5. ———, eds. 1987. Semiotics, 1983. Lanham: University Press of America.

6. Deely, John, and Baer, Eugene, eds. 1988. Medical Semiotics. Lanham: University Press of America.

7. Deely, John, and Evans, Jonathan, eds. 1988. Semiotics, 1986. Lanham: University Press of America.

Proceedings of the eleventh annual meeting of the Semiotic Society of America, 16-19 October 1986, San Francisco, California.

8. Deely, John, Prewitt, Terry, and Haworth, Karen, eds. 1990. Semiotics, 1988. Lanham: University Press of America.

9. ———, eds. 1990. Semiotics, 1989. Lanham: University Press of America.

10. Deely, John, Bernard, Jeff, Voight, Vilmos, and Withalm, Gloria, eds. 1993. Semiotics with Simbolicity, 1990. Lanham: University Press of America.

11. Deely, John, and Prewitt, Terry, eds. 1993. Semiotics, 1991. Lanham: University Press of America.

Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Semiotic Society of America.

12. Deely, John, and Corrington, Robert, eds. 1996. Semiotics, 1993. Bern: Peter Lang.

Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the Semiotic Society of America 21-24 October 1993, Radisson Airport Hotel, St. Louis, Missouri.

13. Deely, John, and Spinks, Cary William, eds. 1996. Semiotics, 1995. Bern: Peter Lang.

Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Semiotic Society of America 19-22 October 1995, Menger Hotel, San Antonio, Texas.

14. ———, eds. 1997. Semiotics, 1996. Bern: Peter Lang.

15. ———, eds. 1998. Semiotics Yearbook 1997. Bern: Peter Lang.

16. ———, eds. 1999. Semiotics, 1998. Bern: Peter Lang.

17. Deely, John, Spinks, Cary William, and Simpkins, Scott, eds. 2000. Semiotics, 1999. Bern: Peter Lang.

18. Deely, John, and Simpkins, Scott, eds. 2001. Semiotics 2000: Sebeok Century. Ottawa: Letters Press.

Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Semiotic Society of America, held Sept. 28-30, 2000 at Purdue University, Purdue, Indiana.

19. ———, eds. 2002. Semiotics 2001. Ottawa: Legas.

20. Deely, John, and Prewitt, Terry, eds. 2003. Semiotics 2002. Ottawa: Legas.

21. Deely, John, Sbrocchi, Leonard, and Williamson, Rodney, eds. 2005. Semiotics 2003. Ottawa: Legas.

22. Cobley, Paul, ed. 2010. Realism for the 21st Century: A John Deely Reader. Scranton: Scranton University Press.

23. Deely, John, and Petrilli, Susan, eds. 2010. Sign Crossroads in Global Perspective: Semiotics and Responsibilities. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The Frege-Russell 'Is' Ambiguity Thesis

The meaning of the word "is"

This page use the font Lucida Sans Unicode for logical symbols.

"One of the most interesting open problems in the history of formal sciences concerns the rise of modern logic epitomized by the2 Frege-Russell theory of quantifiers. One of the cornerstones of this theory is the distinction between the allegedly different meanings of verbs for being. According to received wisdom, such verbs are multiply ambiguous between the is of predication, the is of existence, the is of identity, and the is of subsumption. This view, also known as the Frege-Russell ambiguity thesis, is built into the notations that have been used in logic since the turn of the 20th century, in that the allegedly different meanings are expressed differently in the usual logical notations. (1) The is of identity is expressed by the identity sign a = b, the is of predication by a singular term's filling the argument slot of a predicative expression P(a), the is of existence by the existential quantifier (∃x)P(x), and the is of subsumption by a general conditional of the form (Vx) (x ∊ S ⊃ x ∊ P). Both Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell attached great importance to the ambiguity of the verb is. During the 20th century it became commonplace to subscribe to this thesis even though it is not necessary or even fully obvious (cf. [Hintikka 1979]; [Mates 1979]). But then again, it turns out that after the Middle Ages no philosopher assumed such multiple ambiguity before the 19th century. What happened? How did the Frege-Russell thesis come about? In what follows, I approach these questions from a historical point of view. I first say a few introductory words about the treatment of existence in Aristotle and Kant, and thereafter focus on the 19th century English developments in the field of the algebra of logic and on the ideas of George Boole and Augustus De Morgan in particular.

Aristotle considered the Frege-Russell distinction but rejected it. His treatment of existence in the context of a syllogistically constructed science was in rough agreement with the ancient Greek language, in which there were no separate verbs for existence. Existence was expressed by the absolute construction with ἐστιν which looks like a special case of predication, e.g., "Zeus is" as a limiting case of such statements as "Zeus is a god" or "Zeus is powerful". In effect, Aristotle treated the different Frege-Russell senses of different components in the force of ἐστιν. Each of these components could be absent or present on any one occasion of the use of ἐστιν. In syllogistic reasoning, existence was sometimes present as part of the force of the predicate term, sometimes absent. The existential force trickled down from the most general terms of the sense in question along a sequence of syllogistic conclusions. Hence, in any one particular science existential force had to be assured, according to Aristotle, only for the widest generic term defining the field of that science:

Thus we assume the meaning alike of unity, straight, and triangular; but while as regards unity and magnitude we assume also the fact of their existence, in the case of the remainder proof is required. [An. post., A 10, 76a, 34-36]

Existence could not serve alone as a predicate term because it would have been too broad a term, not restricted to any one category and thus not an essence of anything [An. post., B 7, 92b, 13-15]. In this sense, according to Aristotle, existence was not a predicate. However, it could be a part of the force of a predicate term.

It is often said that Kant's discussion of existence includes a criticism of the idea that existence is a predicate. In fact, it includes a stronger criticism, namely the rejection of the idea that existence could be even a part of the force of a predicate term. According to Kant, existence adds nothing to a concept of a thing:

'Being' is obviously not a real predicate; that is, it is not a concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing. [...] The small word 'is' adds no new predicate. [Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 625]

This does not mean that Kant embraced the Frege-Russell thesis. It means that at the turn of the 19th century the notion of existence became homeless, as far as the logical representation of different propositions was concerned. It must be admitted, though, that Kant's criticism served to disassociate the predicative and the existential uses of is from one another. According to Leila Haaparanta, Kant seems to have inspired the Frege-Russell distinction [Haaparanta 1986].

After Kant the next major development in logical theory was the algebra of logic that originated in England around the mid-19th century.(2) The following two ideas came to the forefront:

1) the operators corresponding to the syllogistical standard forms of universal and particular judgments were treated as duals;

2) universal judgments were taken to be relative to some universe of discourse and were inevitably taken as the non-existence of exceptions in that domain.

Because of the duality, existential quantifier expressions came to express existence. The homeless notion of existence thus found a new home, no longer in the predicative is but in the existential quantifier.

Before moving on to take a closer look upon the ideas of Augustus De Morgan and George Boole, it is important to acknowledge that neither of them introduced existential or universal quantifiers, and therefore they must not be regarded as early pioneers of the predicate calculus. However, at least De Morgan seems to have been aware of at least some of the difficulties that arose in the absence of quantifiers [Goerge C. Smith (ed.), The Boole-De Morgan Correspondence: 1842-1864, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1982, p. 24]." (pp. 255-257)

Notes

(1) Stanislaw Leśniewski's notation provides an important exception here.

(2) Strictly speaking it was upon Leibniz's initiative that the idea of an algebraic structure of logic began to grow -- even though it was Boole who really started its systematic development.

From: Risto Vilkko, "Existence, Identity, and the Algebra of Logic", in Benedikt Löwe, Volker Peckhaus, and Thomas Räsch (eds.), Foundations of the Formal Sciences. The History of the Concept of the Formal Sciences, London: College Publications 2006, pp. 255-265.

"Being" From a linguistic point of view

"Nowadays, logicians tend to draw a sharp distinction between the 'existential' function of 'the verb to be' and, its various 'predicative' or 'copulative', functions. The philosophical importance of this distinction lies in the fact that most modern philosophers would say that existence cannot be predicated of objects in the same sense as their various attributes, or properties, but is presupposed in the identification of objects or in any reference to them. (...)

It is worth noting, however, that in English 'the verb to be' is not used as freely in existential sentences as it was in Greek: it is such sentences as God is (where 'the verb to be' is perfectly normal in Greek) that have mainly interested philosophers. What would generally be described as the 'existential' use of 'the verb to be' in English is not common except with a locative or temporal complement. Examples of this usage are (i) There are lions in Africa, and (ii) The accident was yesterday. We shall discuss such 'existential' sentences presently.

Among the 'predicative' uses of 'the verb to be' logicians customarily distinguish: (a) the identification of one entity with another (a = b: e.g. That man is John); (b) class-membership (b ∈ C: e.g. John is a Catholic, 'John is a member of the class of persons characterized as Catholic'); and (c) class-inclusion (C ⊂ D: Catholics are Christians, 'The members of the class of persons characterized as Catholic are included among the members of the class of persons characterized as Christians').

Though logically important, the distinction between class-membership and class-inclusion does not appear to be of any syntactic significance in most languages. The distinction between 'characterizing' and 'sortal' sentences (...) is, however, of considerable importance: cf. Apples are sweet and Apples are fruit, The former tend to have an 'adjectival' predicate (in languages where one can draw a distinction between 'adjectives' and 'verbs'), and the latter a nominal predicate. The syntactic analysis of sentences with nominal predicates (e.g. Apples are fruit, John is a soldier, Mary is still a very young girl) is a very complex matter: we shall not go into the question here. We will disregard the differences between various subtypes of nominal predicates and treat them all like 'adjectival' predicates. For terminological convenience, we will refer to both classes of sentences (whether they are 'characterizing' or 'sortal', and regardless of any other differences) as attributive." (pp. 388-389)

From: John Lyons, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1968.

The history of the concept of "being" and the "Is" ambiguity thesis

"This history involves more changes and contrasts than one might perhaps expect. For one thing, we twentieth-century philosophers are wont to approach the notion of being by means of the Frege-Russell ambiguity thesis. As we all know this thesis concerns the notion of being, as codified in verbs for being in languages like the English is, German ist or the ancient Greek estin. What it asserts is that these verbs are multiply ambiguous. We have to distinguish (according to this thesis) from each other the ises of existence, identity, predication and subsumption. Indeed we are in fact supposed to have learned to distinguish them from each other in practice, for we have all been taught to use first-order logic as our canonical notation in logic and logical analysis. It is in order for me to emphasize the word ambiguity here. Every half-way sensitive analyst (or perhaps I should say, every sensible analyst) will grant that verbs for being like the English is are used in different ways on different occasions. What the Frege-Russell thesis does, is to blame these differences in use on the ambiguity of a single word, instead of explaining the difference in use away in some other way, for instance by reference to the context of use.

The Frege-Russell ambiguity thesis has played a major role in twentieth-century philosophy. With his usual modesty, Russell (1914, p. 50) called it "the first serious advance in real logic since the time of the Greeks". One of the many surprises in my brief history of the concept of being is how recent a belief in the Frege-Russell thesis is in the history of philosophy. As far as I know, it is not found in a clear form before the nineteenth century. Its genesis needs and deserves a closer scrutiny, but apparently different versions of the ambiguity thesis were adopted independently of each other by different thinkers. Some historians assign the credit (or the blame) for introducing the distinction between the existential is and the predicative is to Kant. (But see below.) In contrast, the thesis is conspicuous by its absence from such philosophers as Aristotle.

(...)

As was indicated, it has been claimed that the Frege-Russell distinction can be traced back to Kant and his thesis that "existence is not a predicate". Meinong's case shows that this cannot be the full story. For one important thing, even though he adopted a part of the Frege-Russell distinction, at the same time existence was in a sense a predicate according to Meinong. After all, only existential judgements were for him contingent." (pp. 29-31)

From: Jaakko Hintikka, "Meinong in a Long Perspective," Grazer Philosophische Studien 50, 1995, pp. 29-45.

Charles H. Kahn on "Being" in Ancient Greek

"I am not myself a linguistic relativist. I want, in effect, to defend the concept of being against its modern detractors. What I hope to do in this paper is to show that when the Greek concept of being (as introduced by Parmenides and developed by Plato) is properly understood it represents a valid and indeed inevitable topic for philosophic inquiry. It turns out, in fact, to be fundamentally the same topic that is pursued in the modern ontological tradition of Frege, the early Wittgenstein, and Quine. And it also turns out to be very different from the questions of personal existence and the human condition which dominate that other school of modern ontology associated with the name of Heidegger. (2)

In order to meet the challenge of linguistic relativism, we must first give an adequate account of the linguistic functions of the verb 'be,' (eimi in ancient Greek), and then show that these functions provide the basis for a coherent concept and a clear philosophical question. Let me briefly indicate in advance what I take the solution to be. The concept of being in Greek philosophy refers to the nature of reality or the structure of the world, in the very general sense of 'the world,' which includes whatever we can know or investigate and whatever we can describe in true or false statements. The question of being is then: How must the world be structured in order for inquiry, knowledge, science, and true discourse or, for that matter, false discourse to be possible?

On this view of the concept of being, the key notion is that of truth -- the goal of science and the aim of declarative speech. If the claims of linguistic relativism have seemed plausible in regard to the concept of being, that is due in part to the fact that they rely upon an inadequate account of the functions of the verb 'be,' an account in which the connections with truth and falsehood --what I call the 'veridical' uses of the verb are generally overlooked. Once we put the notion of truth at the heart of the Greek concept of being, the internal coherence and general significance of this concept will become clear. I have argued elsewhere that this concept of being does not rest on an illegitimate confusion, since it brings together three distinct notions -- existence, predication, and truth -- which belong together in any ontology or in any metaphysical scheme. (3) At the same time it is important to recognize that these three notions are distinct, and that the distinction between them was not always clearly seen in Greek philosophy, precisely because the same verb eimi, and its participle on, was used to express all three. Here, as elsewhere, it is important to give the devil his due; if we do not, as the saying goes, he will take more than his share. In defending the concept of being against the charge of linguistic confusion, it is important to recognize the genuine possibilities for confusion that were latent in the multiple usage of the verb. If we bear in mind the distinctions between existence, predication, and truth, and recognize that these distinctions were often overlooked because of a single linguistic expression for all three, we will be in a better position to interpret a number of perplexing passages in Plato, Aristotle, and Parmenides, for we will be in a position to articulate some problems more clearly than the Greek philosophers were able to do. My guess is that the same may be true for Indian philosophy, for the basic functions of the verb as in Sanskrit seem to be very nearly the same as those of eimi in Greek. If my linguistic analysis of the verb 'be' is adequate for Greek, it (or a similar analysis) ought to be adequate for Sanskrit. And if the linguistic analysis of 'be' can shed useful light on the Greek concept of being, the same relation ought to hold between an analysis of the Sanskrit verb and the Indian concept of being.

Since I am not an Indologist, I offer this parallel only for what it may be worth, as a heuristic hypothesis and as a challenge to Sanskrit scholars and specialists in Indian philosophy. I shall limit myself to the Greek material, and proceed in two steps. First I shall report some of the results of the linguistic analysis of the Greek verb which I have published elsewhere. Then I shall apply this analysis to the interpretation of two key passages for the development of the terminology and concepts of Greek ontology. The first passage is from the poem of Parmenides, where the concept of being makes its first appearance in the philosophical tradition of the West. The second passage is Plato's initial exposition of the doctrine of Forms in the Phaedo, where we have the first full-scale statement of Plato's own ontology.

I begin, then, by summarizing some results of the linguistic analysis. One central feature of my account is the claim that the verb 'be' in Greek -- and, I dare say, in Indo-European generally -- is primarily and fundamentally a copula and not a verb of existence, as comparative linguists have usually held. There is no evidence for the traditional assumption that the verbal root es originally meant only existence (or the like) and gradually declined into the use as "mere copula." By claiming that the copula uses the primary, I meat, not only that they are factually (or statistically) predominant front the earliest texts, but also that they provide the only possible point of departure for a theoretic account of the whole system of uses for the verb. I do not claim that the copula uses are older than the others, but only that if we regard them as older we can understand how the other uses could have developed from them. Talk of "development" here is a mere theoretical convenience, like a myth of creation or an original social compact, a conceptual device that serves to clarify the relations of logical priority and dependence between different factors in a complex system.

From the point of view of the language, then, the primary or central use of the verb is as a copula. (4) By a copula use I mean an occurrence of the verb with a predicate adjective ("I am tall"), a predicate noun ("I am a man"), or a prepositional phrase ("I am in the conference room"). The copula use includes the so-called 'is' of identity: "I am C.K." ; "I am the first speaker this afternoon." The verb 'be' as copula in Indo-European is characterized by two features which are important for the philosophical development. The first I call the locative, the second the durative aspect. By the locative feature I mean the fact that the verb serves for predication in general, not only with nominal predicates (predicate nouns and adjectives or participles) but specifically for statements of place, like "We are in this room." This locative use seems so essential to the meaning of the verb that we find Aristotle saying that most people believe that whatever is, is somewhere; what is nowhere is nothing: for Greek common sense, a thing cannot really be unless it is somewhere. Beginning with Plato, some philosophers will deny the necessity of this connection between being and being in some place. But it has a strong intuitive hold on the Greek feeling about "what is."

The second feature of the Indo-European copula, the durative aspect, is even more decisive for the Greek view of being. This is the aspect which contrasts 'be' with 'become,' eimi with gignomai as copula verb (and as with bhu in Sanskrit). What is at issue here is not simply the aspectual opposition familiar in comparative linguistics, where the present-imperfect stem is contrasted with aorist and perfect, but a more general linguistic contrast between being in a state or being in a place, on the one hand, and change of state or change of place on the other hand. This general aspectual contrast is best described as an opposition between stative and mutative, or static and kinetic. We can illustrate the opposition in English by contrasting "I am tired" with "I become tired," "I am tall" with "I grow tall," "I am in Canada" with "I go to Canada" or "I arrive in Canada." This aspectual contrast seems to be much more general than Indo-European, for it is founded in the nature of things, and there is likely to be some expression for it in every language. But it is characteristic of Indo-European that the root es is typically, and in Greek almost exclusively, used to express the stative aspect, whereas a variety of other copulas are used for predication with a mutative nuance (there is no single root for 'be'. There is no single Indo-European word for 'become,' as there is a single root for 'be'). There is, in short, an essential connection in Indo-European between the idea of being and the idea of stability or remaining in the same state.

So far we have considered only the copula or predicative uses of 'be.' There are of course other, non-copulative uses, of which I will mention only two. One is the existential use, or rather the family of uses with an existential sense. As an example we may take the familiar Homeric verse, "There is a city Ephyre in the corner of horse-nourishing Argos." The connection of this existential use with the copula construction ("Ephyre is a city," "Ephyre is in Argos") is fairly obvious. Other existential uses are farther removed from the copula construction, but I shall not go into these complications here.

Finally we have what I call the veridical use, where 'be' expresses neither predication nor existence but the truth of a statement or a belief. The standard veridical construction is of the form "Things are as you say,"esti tauta houto hosper su legeis, or for short, esti tauta or esti houto. Curiously enough, the ancient veridical use has recently had a vigorous revival in colloquial English: "Tell it like it is." The distinctive features of the veridical construction are ( 1) that the verb is not construed with a predicate but with an implied or explicit comparison to a clause of saying or thinking ("it is ... like you say"), and (2) that the underlying subject of the verb is a sentence or a sentential content roughly speaking, a proposition: the 'it' refers to a sentence, expressed or understood. The importance of this veridical use in ancient Indo-European is reflected by the widespread use of the root es, and above all its participial derivatives (from sant), in the sense of 'truth': in Greek ontos, toi onto, 'truly' ; legein ta onta 'state the facts' ; in archaic English we find 'sooth' for 'truth' ; and in Sanskrit there are the familiar derivatives of sat (e.g., satya) in the same sense.

So much for the linguistic preliminaries. We have first the copula uses with their locative connotation or locative application and their durative-stative aspect. We have next the existential uses; and, finally, the veridical construction with the related uses of the participial forms to mean 'truth.' Now my claim about the philosophic development of the Greek concept of being is roughly this: the last-named use must be placed first. The point of departure for the philosophers is the veridical use and the notion of truth. Philosophers are primarily concerned with knowledge or the search for knowledge, and hence with truth in speech and in thought. But as the veridical construction shows, the concept of truth involves some kind of correlation or 'fit' between what is said or thought, on one side, and what is, or what is the case, or the way things are, on the other side. Let us call this the correlation between assertion and reality, where 'assertion' is used neutrally both for saying that it is so and for thinking that it is so ; and 'reality' is used simply as a convenient abbreviation for the fact that it is so or what happens to be the case. In saying that the concept of truth implies a correlation or a 'fit' in this sense between assertion and reality, I think we beg no metaphysical questions. We simply articulate the connection of ideas expressed in the Greek locutions esti tauta and esti houto. And precisely the same connection is expressed in the modern locution "Tell it like it is."

So we see how the philosophers' interest in knowledge and truth, taken together with the use of 'be' and its participle to mean 'truth' or 'what is so,' immediately leads to the concept of being as reality. I repeat, I am using 'reality' here not in any large metaphysical sense but simply as a convenient term in the hermeneutical metalanguage: as a mere name or counter for the facts that make true statements true and false statements false, or for whatever it is "in the world" (for whatever "is the case") that makes some assertions and some judgments correct and others mistaken. If I assert either in thought or in speech that the sun is shining, and if what I assert is true, then the corresponding 'reality' is simply the fact that the sun is shining.

So far I have said nothing about 'be' as verb of existence or as copula. I have shown only that starting from the veridical locutions and the notion of being as truth we immediately get to the related notion of being as reality, in a suitably loose and generalized sense of 'reality.' I think that these two notions, together with the locative idea that whatever is, is somewhere, and with the durative-stative aspect of the verb, are all we require for interpreting Parmenides' notion of being. Of course, we can easily see how the existential and copula uses of 'be' will also turn up, if we think of the reality in question as expressed by a subject-predicate sentence-for instance, by the sentence "The sun is shining." For if this sentence is true, then its subject (the sun) must exist. And the sentence uses the copula verb 'is' to predicate something of this subject, namely that it is shining, or that its light reaches us. So when we are talking about truth and reality, the existential and copulative uses of 'be' are never far away. But I insist that if we begin to interpret the concept of being by looking for existential or copula uses of the verb, we will not only make unnecessary trouble for ourselves; we may miss the real point. We will not only play into the hands of the linguistic relativists; we will fail to grasp the essential features of the Greek concept of being." (pp. 32-36)

Notes

(2) I shall not dwell here upon the contrast between the Greek and the Heideggerian conceptions of Being. See my remarks on "static being and personal Dasein" in The Verb 'Be' in Ancient Greek (Dordrecht : Reidel, 1973), pp. 415-19.

(3) In addition to Chapter 8 of The Verb 'Be' in Ancient Greek, see "On the Theory of the Verb 'to be,'" in Logic and Ontology, ed. Milton K. Munitz (New York : New York University Press, 1973), pp. 1-20. In these studies I was primarily concerned with the unity of the linguistic system of the verb as ordinarily used. By contrast, the present paper deals explicitly with the special quasi-technical use of the verb and its nominal derivatives ( by and obcria ) to formulate the philosophic concept of Being. I thus return to the topic originally sketched in "The Greek Verb 'to be' and the Concept of Being," Foundations of Language 2 (1966): 245-65.

(4) This linguistic claim that the copula uses are fundamental for the system of the verb as a whole is logically independent of my claim that, as a fact in the history of philosophy, the idea of truth (and falsehood) associated with the veridical uses is the primary notion for the development of the metaphysical concept of Being in Plato and Parmenides. Either claim might be in error without the other thesis being affected either way. But of course there is some connection between the function of copula and the veridical idea. See my remarks on the notion of truth-claim implicit in the copula use, The Verb 'Be' in Ancient Greek, pp. 186-91, 407f.

From: Charles H. Kahn, "Linguistic Relativism and the Greek Project of Ontology", in Mervyn Sprung (ed.), The Question of Being, University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press 1978, pp. 31-44.

ἔστι in Ancient Greek

"Whether ἐστι is orthotone ((ἒστι) or enclitic depends solely on its position: ἒστι when initial (or quasi-initial: see below), otherwise ἐστι. This is both stated by ancient grammarians and confirmed by linguistic theory ; (1) the modern differentiation between ἐστι copula, ἐστι to affirm existence or possibility, is mistaken. (2)

The accentual treatment of verbs in Greek will originally have been the same as in Sanskrit: all finite verbs in independent clauses unaccented when not initial, accented only when initial. Most unaccented verbs acquired an accent under the rule of limitation, and became thereby orthotone; (3) the few forms short enough to remain unaccented acquired an accent by analogy with related forms which were not. Only two tenses are capable of remaining unaccented in all their forms, the pres. indic. of εἰμι and of φημι; and these are precisely the two tenses which could be enclitic in historical Greek. (4) Their enclisis is a survival from the old universal enclisis of verbs; it should operate, therefore, in the same way in which that enclisis operated, in accordance with position. (5)

According to Herodian (i. 553) ἐστι is orthotone not only when initial but also after οὐ, καί, εί, άλλά, ώς, τοῦτο. If this is true, it means that the original initial accentuation was extended, surprisingly, to a number of quasi-initial positions.(6) But it may, in part at least, be false: the Homeric scholia (BT On Iliad I. 63 ; cf. A on 6. 152) say expressly that ἐστι is orthotone only when initial and after οὐ." (pp. 425-426)

Notes

(1) See Wackernagel, 'Der griechische Verbalakzent' Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung, 23, [1877], 457 ff., (= Kleine Schriften, 1955, 1058 ff.); I give only the barest essentials.

(2) I say 'modern' (it was propounded by Gottfried Hermann, De emendanda ratione graecae grammaticae pars I. [Lipsia, 1801], 84 ff.), but it seems to have its root in antiquity: I notice at the last moment (what the handbooks ignore) that Eustathius (On Iliad., p. 880. 22, discrepantly with his remarks On Odyssey. p. 1600. 53) and Photios (s.v. έστιν) record a view that the accent varies with the meaning (paroxytone ἐπειδὰν αποφαινώμθἀ περί του ώc ύπάρχει [άποφαινώμεθα αυτοι περί τοῦὑπάρχeιν τι Phot.], οἷον ἐστι πόλις Ἐφύρη, oxytone όταν πρόσ ἐρώησιν άποκρινώμeθaα); cf. also schol. T On Iliad. 23. 157 and 549. There seem to have been divergent practices; but we shall do well to prefer that which linguistic theory shows to have been original.

(3) Hence their recessive accent (which was then universalized in all positions: e.g. initial γνοιἑσ [Sanskrit jñeyás] supplanted by γνἱοεσ from enclitic γνοιεσ.

(4) Enclisis of φημι is perhaps the surest token that enclisis of είμι is not conditioned by its 'weakness of meaning' as copula.

(5) The original orthotone accents should have been (on the analogy of Sanskrit) είμι (έσσι) ἔστἓἐστὸν ἐσμἐν ἐστέ ἐίσιand similarly φημι etc.; but all save ἐστι are traditionally oxytone (είμι, φημί, etc.). Influence of the enclitic forms in all but the commonest case? But there is some evidence for initial φῆμι: Tyrannion cited by Eustathius On Odyssey, p. 1653, 58.

(6) 'Surprisingly', for this 'quasi-initial' position is precisely the position (second in their clause) to which enclitics tend.

From: W. S. Barrett (ed.), Euripides - Hippolytos, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1964.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on the Frege-Russell 'Is' ambiguity thesis

Bibliography

1. Angelelli, Ignacio. 2015. "The Meaning(s) of “Is”: Normative vs. Naturalistic Views of Language." In The Road to Universal Logic: Festschrift for the 50th Birthday of Jean-Yves Beziau. Volume II, edited by Koslow, Arnold and Buchsbaum, Arthur, 171-179. Cham (Switzerland): Birkhäuser.

Abstract: "One of the founders of modern logic, G. Frege, has insisted on the variety of meanings of the little word “is.” He explicitly distinguished four such meanings (sheer predication or subsumption, identity, assertion, and existence); a fifth meaning (subordination) follows from Frege’s new theory of predication. It is part of the Fregean doctrine that special symbols corresponding to different meanings of “is” are to be used. Such distinctions have been strongly challenged by J. Hintikka, in a twofold way: theoretically and historiographically. Neither challenge is regarded as successful. Behind the conflict on “is” two opposite conceptions of language may be perceived: language as culture versus language as nature (“natural language”)."

2. Boger, George. 2018. "Existential Import and an Unnecessary Restriction on Predicate Logics." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 39:109-134.

Abstract: "Contemporary logicians continue to address problems associated with the existential import of categorical propositions. One notable problem concerns invalid instances of subalternation in the case of a universal proposition with an empty subject term. To remedy problems, logicians restrict first-order predicate logics to exclude such terms. Examining the historical origins of contemporary discussions reveals that logicians continue to make various category mistakes. We now believe that no proposition per se has existential import as commonly understood and thus it is unnecessary to restrict first-order predicate logics to non-empty classes. After introducing the problem, we trace some nineteenth century treatments of the issue to locate a source of misconstruing propositional import in misconceptions of ‘implies’ and ‘affirms’ and name the process/product fallacy, along with the translation of categorical sentences using quantifiers and accommodating an empty class. Next we treat some metalogical matters to orient our discussion by which we provide a more precise nomenclature about ‘sentence’ and ‘proposition’ to correct previous misconceptions; here we uncover a common category mistake in respect of a proposition’s efficacy. The semantic distinction between agent and force is helpful in this connection. We conclude by showing that logicians have reinserted existence as a predicate, a position previously excised by Kant, and that the Frege-Russell ambiguity thesis applies only to relationships within a categorical sentence between grammatical predicate and subject."

3. Corazza, Eros. 2018. "Names, Identity, and Predication." Philosophical Studies no. 175:2631–2647.

Abstract: "It is commonly accepted, after Frege, that identity statements like ‘‘Tully is Cicero’’ differ from statements like ‘‘Tully is Tully’’. For the former, unlike the latter, are informative. One way to deal with the information problem is to postulate that the terms ‘Tully’ and ‘Cicero’ come equipped with different informative (or cognitive) values. Another approach is to claim that statements like these are of the subject/predicate form. As such, they should be analyzed along the way we treat ‘‘Tully walks’’. Since proper names can appear in predicative position we could go as far as to dismiss the sign of identity altogether, some told us. I will try to discuss the advantages and/or disadvantages of this approach and investigate whether Frege’s view that the ‘is’ of identity must be distinguished from the ‘is’ of predication (copula) can be reconciled with the fact that names can appear in predicative position."

4. Dancy, R. M. 2006. "Hintikka, Aristotle, and Existence." In The Philosophy of Jaakko Hintikka, edited by Auxier, Randall E. and Hahn, Lewis Edwin, 311-328. La Salle: Open Court.

5. Dejnožka, Jan. 1996. The Ontology of the Analytic Tradition and its Origins. Realism and Identity in Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine. Lanham: Littlefield Adams Books.

Paperback edition reprinted with corrections, 2002; reprinted with further corrections, 2003.

6. Floyd, Juliet. 2006. "On the Use and Abuse of Logic in Philosophy: Kant, Frege and Hintikka on the Verb "To Be"." In The Philosophy of Jaakko Hintikka, edited by Auxier, Randall E. and Hahn, Lewis Edwin, 137-187. La Salle: Open Court.

7. Haaparanta, Leila. 1985. Frege's Doctrine of Being. Helsinki: Acta Philosophica Fennica.

Contents: Preface 3; A note on the textual references and the bibliography 5; I. Introduction 9; II. The interpretational framework 27; III. The origin of the thesis concerning the ambiguity of the word 'Is' 47; IV. Identity and predication 59; V. Existence 128; VI. Concluding remarks 159; Bibliography 162; Index of names 179.

"The purpose of this work is to clarify the philosophical basis of Frege's doctrine concerning the word 'is'. Frege's doctrine of being is partly considered in its historical setting, formed mainly by Leibniz and Kant. Since the ambiguity thesis is one of the cornerstones of Frege's new logic, this work will, to some extent, help to indicate how Frege arrived at his great logical innovation. I shall proceed by first presenting a short survey of the different approaches to Frege's philosophy and thereafter outlining Frege's historical setting (Chapter II.1.). Then I shall present the main features of Frege's view of logic (Chapter II.2.). After that, I shall say a few words of the history of the word 'being' in philosophical and philological literature and study Frege's texts concerning the ambiguity doctrine (Chapter III). In Chapter IV there is a discussion on Frege's distinction between identity and predication with reference to Leibniz's and Kant's thought and some remarks are also made on class-inclusion. In Chapter V there are comments on Frege's doctrine of existence with reference to Kant's ideas. Finally, I shall make some concluding remarks on Frege in a wider historical context (Chapter VI). Chapter II will give the interpretational framework for considering Frege's doctrine of being. Chapters IV and V are meant to show how this general hypothesis works in the textual material and thereby to yield a detailed interpretation of Frege's view." (pp. 16-17)

8. ———. 1986. "Frege on Existence." In Frege Synthesized: Essays on the Philosophical and Foundational Work of Gottlob Frege, edited by Haaparanta, Leila and Hintikka, Jaakko, 155-174. Dordrecht: Reidel.

From the General Introduction by Leila Haaparanta and Jaakko Hintikka: "In her article 'Frege on Existence' Leila Haaparanta emphasizes that Frege's greatest insight was the idea of first-order language, which, to a large extent, motivated the rest of his innovations. Haaparanta focuses her attention on Frege's concept of existence, which receives special attention in Frege's thought in connection with the thesis concerning the ambiguity of such words for being as the English 'is'. The ambiguity thesis was an important part of the Fregean paradigm of first-order logic. Haaparanta argues that Frege does not only assume the word 'is' to be ambiguous but that he considers 'exists', or the 'is' of existence, to be an equivocal word. She suggests that the equivocity view has a metaphysical and epistemological background in Frege's thought. Her paper thus pushes a great deal further the suggestions of Jaakko Hintikka mentioned earlier in this Introduction." (p. 6)

9. ———. 1986. "On Frege's Concept of Being." In The Logic of Being. Historical Studies, edited by Hintikka, Jaakko and Knuuttila, Simo, 269-289. Dodrecht: Reidel.

10. ———. 2012. "On "Being" and Being: Frege between Carnap and Heidegger." In Categories of Being: Essays on Metaphysics and Logic, edited by Haaparanta, Leila and Koskinen, Heikki J., 319-337. New York: Oxford University Press.

11. ———. 2020. "Frege on “Es gibt,” Being in a Realm and (Meta)Ontology." In Metametaphysics and the Sciences: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives, edited by Kjosavik, Frode and Serck-Hanssen, Camilla, 81-98. New York: Routledge.

12. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1979. "Frege's Hidden Semantics." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 33:716-722.

13. ———. 1979. ""Is", Semantical Games, and Semantical Relativity." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 8:433-468.

Reprinted in J. Hintikka, J. Kulas, The Game of Language: Studies in Game-Theoretical Semantics and Its Applications, Dordrecht: Reidel 1983, pp. 161-200 and in J. Hintikka, Selected Papers Vol. 4: Paradigms of Language Theory and Other Essays, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1998, pp. 71-106.

14. ———. 1981. "The Unambiguity of Aristotelian Being." The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter no. 238:1-26.

15. ———. 1981. "Kant on Existence, Predication, and the Ontological Argument." Dialectica no. 35:127-146.

Reprinted in S. Knuuttila, J. Hintikka (eds.), The Logic of Being: Historical Studies, Dordrecht: Reidel 1986, pp. 249-268.

16. ———. 1983. "Semantical Games, the Alleged Ambiguity of ‘is’, and Aristotelian Categories." Synthese no. 54:443-467.

Revised reprint in J. Hintikka, J. Kulas, The Game of Language: Studies in Game-Theoretical Semantics and Its Applications, Dordrecht: Reidel 1983, pp. 201-229 and in J. Hintikka, Selected Papers Vol. 6: Analyses of Aristotle, Dordrecht: Kluwer 2004, pp. 23-43.

17. ———. 1986. "The Varieties of Being in Aristotle." In The Logic of Being: Historical Studies, edited by Knuuttila, Simo and Hintikka, Jaakko, 81-114. Dordrecht: Reidel.

18. ———. 1995. "Meinong in a Long Perspective." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:29-45.

"Meinong’s thought is considered in relation to several major conceptual problems, including the Frege-Russell thesis that words like is are multiply ambiguos and Aristotle’s treatment of existence. This treatment leads to a problem of how to interpret quantifiers. The three main possible interpretations are: (i) quantifiers as ranging over actual individuals (or individuals existing in some one world); (ii) quantifiers as ranging over a set of possible individuals; (iii) quantifiers merely as a way of specifying the interdependencies of the concepts (forms) specified by syllogistic terms. The subsequent history of philosophers' and logicians,' treatments of existence is characterized by a tension between (i)-(iii). Meinong’s position is in the main (iii) whereas Russell in his On Denoting defended (i). The contrast between (i) and (iii) has a counterpart in nineteenth-century discussions about foundations of mathematics."

19. ———. 1999. "On Aristotle's Notion of Existence." The Review of Metaphysics no. 52:779-805.

Reprinted in: J. Hintikka, Analyses of Aristotle, Dordrecht: Kluwer 2004, pp. 1-22.

20. ———. 2004. "On the Different Identities of Identity: A Historical and Critical Essay." In Philosophical Problems Today: Volume 2: Language, Meaning, Interpretation, edited by Fløistad, Guttorm, 117-139. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

21. ———. 2006. "Ta Meta Ta Metaphysika: The Argumentative Structure of Aristotle’s Metaphysics." In Mind and Modality: Studies in the History of Philosophy in Honour of Simo Knuuttila, edited by Hirvonen, Vesa, Holopainn, Toivo J. and Tuominen, Mira, 41-53. Leiden: Brill.

22. ———. 2006. "Reply to R. M. Dancy." In The Philosophy of Jaakko Hintikka, edited by Auxier, Randall E. and Hahn, Lewis Edwin, 329-333. La Salle: Open Court.

23. ———. 2007. "It All Depends on What 'Is' Is: A Brief History (and Theory) of Being." In On Language: Analytic, Continental and Historical Contributions, edited by Burmeister, Jon and Sentesy, Mark, 51-62. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

24. Hintikka, Jaakko, and Vilkko, Risto. 2006. "Existence and Predication from Aristotle to Frege." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 73:359-377.

"One of the characteristic features of contemporary logic is that it incorporates the Frege-Russell thesis according to which verbs for being are multiply ambiguous. This thesis was not accepted before the nineteenth century. In Aristotle existence could not serve alone as a predicate term. However, it could be a part of the force of the predicate term, depending on the context. For Kant existence could not even be a part of the force of the predicate term. Hence, after Kant, existence was left homeless. It found a home in the algebra of logic in which the operators corresponding to universal and particular judgments were treated as duals, and universal judgments were taken to be relative to some universe of discourse. Because of the duality, existential quantifier expressions came to express existence. The orphaned notion of existence thus found a new home in the existential quantifier."

25. Kolak, Daniel, and Symons, John. 2004. "The Results are in: The Scope and Import of Hintikka's Philosophy." In Quantifiers, Questions and Quantum Physics: Essays on the Philosophy of Jaakko Hintikka, edited by Kolak, Daniel and Symons, John, 209-271. Dordrecht: Springer.

26. Mill, James. 1829. Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind. London: Baldwin and Cradock.

Two volumes.

Reprinted Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1982 and Bristol, Thoemmes, 2001.

See Vol. I, Chapter IV. Naming § 4 Predication.

27. Mion, Giovanni. 2019. "Hintikka on the “Kant–Frege View”: A Critical Assessment." Logica Universalis no. 13:171-178.

Abstract: "In “Kant on Existence, Predication, and the Ontological Argument” (1981), Hintikka argues that the so-called “Kant–Frege view” (i.e., the claim that Kant is a forerunner of Frege’s treatment of existence)

is wrong, for its supporters erroneously assume that for Kant ‘is’ is ambiguous.

In this paper, I will first critically evaluate Hintikka’s arguments against the Kant–Frege view. Then, I will attempt to prove that Kant’s claim that existence is not a real predicate and Frege’s claim that existence is a quantifier are in fact logically interdependent. Finally, I will use the Kant–Frege view in order to reconcile the various claims that Kant makes about existence."

28. Santayana, George. 1915. "Some Meanings of the Word Is [First version]." Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Method no. 12:66-68.

29. ———. 1924. "Some Meanings of the Word Is [Second version]." Journal of Philosophy no. 21:365-377.

Expanded version of the article published in 1915 (reprinted in Justus Buchler and Benjamin Schwartz, eds., Obiter Scripta. Lectures, Essays and Reviews by George Santayana, New York: Scribner's Sons, 1936, pp. 189-212); reprinted also in: Martin A. Coleman (ed.), The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009, pp. 138-148.

"This selection first appeared in The Journal of Philosophy (21 [1924]: 365-77), A shorter version with the same title was published in 1915 (The journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, 12 (1915 1:66-68). As early as 1914 Santayana had intended the article as the first chapter of his Realms of Being. The 1924 article was republished in Obiter Scripta, and in a letter to the editors of that volume Santayana wrote: "I am also glad that you have rescued the 'Meanings of the Word "Is" '.On re-reading that article, I feel that it contains my whole philosophy in a very clear and succint form; I was dissuaded by a friend from putting it into The Realm of Essence, and also by my own feeling that it covered too much ground to go into that volume. Here [in Obiter Scripta] it is in its place." (The Letters of George Santayana, Book Five, 1933-1936: The Works of George Santayana, Volume V, Book Five, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003, p. 158). The seven meanings of the word "is" that Santayana distinguished demonstrate different realms of being that make up his ontological system." (M. Coleman, p. 138 of the 2009 reprint)

30. Vilkko, Risto. 2006. "Existence, Identity, and the Algebra of Logic." In Foundations of the Formal Sciences. The History of the Concept of the Formal Sciences, edited by Löwe, Benedikt, Peckhaus, Volker and Räsch, Thomas, 255-265. London: College Publications.

"One of the most interesting open problems in the history of philosophy concerns the genesis of contemporary logic epitomized by the Frege-Russell theory of quantifiers. One of the cornerstones of this theory is the distinction between the allegedly different meanings of ordinary-language verbs for being. According to the received view, such verbs are multiply ambiguous between the is of predication, the is of existence, the is of identity, and the is of subsumption. This assumption (a.k.a. Frege-Russell ambiguity thesis) is built into the notations that have been used in logic since Frege and Russell, in that the allegedly different meanings are expressed in the usual logical notations differently. It turns out that no philosopher before the 19th century assumed the Frege-Russell thesis.

It can be shown that Aristotle considered the Frege-Russell distinction but rejected it. He treated existence as a part of the force of a predicate term. Some people have ascribed it to Kant. However, it is false to say that Kant created, or maintained, the Frege-Russell thesis. His discussion of existence is often said to include a criticism of the idea that existence is a predicate. Strictly speaking it includes a stronger criticism, viz. the rejection of the idea that existence could be as much as a part of the force of a predicate term. Hence, after Kant the notion of existence became an orphan, as far as the logical representation of different propositions in syllogistic logic was concerned.

The next main development in logical theory was the algebra of logic that originated in England around the mid-19th century. The following two ideas came to the forefront: (1) the operators corresponding to our universal quantifier and existential quantifier were treated as duals; (2) universal quantifier expressions were taken to be relative to some universe of discourse, and was inevitably taken as the non-existence of exceptions in that domain. Because of the duality, existential quantifier expressions came to express existence. The orphaned notion of existence thus found a home, no longer in the predicative is but in the existential quantifier. This helps to explain the independent discovery of quantifiers by Frege and by Peirce.

This paper concentrates on what happened to the notion of existence after Kant and before Frege. Particular attention is paid to the English developments around mid-19th century and to the work of George Boole and Augustus De Morgan in particular."

31. Wiggins, David. 1995. "The Kant–Frege–Russell View of Existence: Toward the Rehabilitation of the Second‐Level View." In Modality, Morality and Belief. Essays in Honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus, edited by Sinnott‐Armstrong, Walter, Raffman, Diana and Asher, Nicholas, 93-115. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"At the acme of the influence in philosophical logic of Russell and Frege, few can have predicted that, after their deaths, the idea that they both sought to discredit of existence as a first-level concept (or property of individuals) would so soon be restored.

(...)

This was that the existence of an item (or items) x of level n is always a property of x's concept, which is a level (n + 1) concept, not a level (n + 2) property of x itself. But the situation nobody predicted would appear to be the actual one. As something believed and positively advocated in its Fregean purity, the Frege-Russcll view has virtually disappeared from sight.

Such an outcome might prompt an adherent of the Frege-Russell view to try to refute the new first level doctrine. But, in the absence of any attempt to refurbish the Frege- Russell account or resolve its difficulties, that would be absurdly premature. It would be still more premature to try to explore the relation of the restated Frege-Russell account to the substitutional interpretations of quantifiers whose possibility our admired honorand has so long and persistently defended against cavil and misrepresentation. The most I shall attempt here is to make the Frege-Russell view visible again. (pp. 93-94)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Language as Calculus vs. Language as Universal Medium

Introduction

"An initial reference-point in this area is provided by Leibniz's distinction between two components of his ambitious project in mathematical logic or, rather, project to create a mathematical logic. On the one hand, Leibniz proposed to develop a characteristica universalis or lingua characteristica which was to be a universal language of human thought whose symbolic structure would reflect directly the structure of the world of our concepts. On the other hand, Leibniz's ambition included the creation of a calculus ratiocinator which was conceived of by him as a method of symbolic calculation which would mirror the processes of human reasoning.

When Leibniz's project began to be realized in the nineteenth century, its two components were taken up by different research traditions. The 'algebraic' school represented by Boole, Peirce, and Schröder sought to develop in the spirit of Leibniz's calculus ratiocinator mathematical techniques by means of which different kinds of human reasoning could be mastered. In contrast, Frege himself noted, his Begriffsschrift was to be primarily a characteristica universalis in Leibniz's sense, a Formelsprache des reinen Denkens (cf. here Sluga, "Frege against the Booleans", Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 28, 1987, pp. 80-98). Admittedly, Frege made claims for it also as a calculus ratiocinator, but those claims were not met with enthusiasm. Husserl contradicted them, apparently thinking (as Tarski did later) that a lingua universalis cannot be purely formal. In any case, as Jourdain snidely noted, Frege's formalism was singularly clumsy as a means of actual reasoning: "... using Frege's symbolism as a calculus would be rather like using a three-legged stand-camera for what is called 'snap-shot' photography" (Jourdain, "Preface" to Louis Couturat, The algebra of Logic, 1914 pp. III-X). Subsequent attempts to find specific help for the purpose of concrete work in logic or in the foundations of mathematics have tended to confirm rather than to disconfirm Jourdain's judgment. The theoretical interest of Frege's ambitious project is due to its being an attempted characteristica universalis or at least lingua characteristica mathematicae, not to its being a viable calculus ratiocinator." (pp. IX-X)

From: Jaakko Hintikka, Lingua Universalis vs. Calculus Ratiocinator. An Ultimate Presupposition of Twentieth-Century Philosophy, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1997.

"Answering Schröder's criticisms of Begrifsschrift, Frege states that, unlike Boole's, his logic is not a calculus ratiocinator, or not merely a calculus ratiocinator, but a lingua characterica.(1) If we come to understand what Frege means by this opposition, we shall gain a useful insight into the history of logic. The opposition between calculus ratiocinator and lingua characterica has several connected but distinct aspects. These various aspects, most of the time not stated by Frege, have to be brought out by a study of his work. From Frege's writings a certain picture of logic emerges, a conception that is perhaps not discussed explicitly but nevertheless constantly guides Frege. In referring to this conception I shall speak of the universality of logic.

This universality of Frege's lingua characterica is, first, the universality that quantification theory has in its vocabulary and that the propositional calculus lacks. Frege frequently calls Boole's logic an 'abstract logic' (2), and what he means by that is that in this logic the proposition remains unanalyzed. The proposition is reduced to a mere truth value. With the introduction of predicate letters, variables, and quantifiers, the proposition becomes articulated and can express a meaning. The new notation allows the symbolic rewriting of whole tracts of scientific knowledge, perhaps of all of it, a task that is altogether beyond the reach of the propositional calculus. We now have a lingua, not simply a calculus. Boole's logic, which cannot claim to be such a lingua, remains the study, in ordinary language, of algebraic relations between propositions. This study is carried out in ordinary language and is comparable to many branches of mathematics, say group theory. In Frege's system the propositional calculus subsists embedded in quantification theory; the opposition between lingua and calculus is, in this respect, not exclusive, and that is why Frege writes that his own logic is not merely a calculus ratiocinator.(3) However, the opposition between calculus ratiocinator and lingua characterica goes much beyond the distinction between the propositional calculus and quantification theory. The universality of logic expresses itself in an important feature of Frege's system. In that system the quantifiers binding individual variables range over all objects. As is well known, according to Frege, the ontological furniture of the universe divides into objects and functions. Boole has his universe class, and De Morgan his universe of discourse, denoted by '1'. But these have hardly any ontological import. They can be changed at will. The universe of discourse comprehends only what we agree to consider at a certain time, in a certain context. For Frege it cannot be a question of changing universes. One could not even say that he restricts himself to one universe. His universe is the universe. Not necessarily the physical universe, of course, because for Frege some objects are not physical. Frege's universe consists of all that there is, and it is fixed." ( (pp. 324-325)

Notes

(1) Schröder's criticisms are contained in his review of Begriffsschrift, published in Zeitschrift für Mathematik und Physik 25 (1880), Historisch-literarische Abtheilung, 81-94. Frege's reply was an address to a learned society, delivered on 27 January 1882 and published in its proceedings, 'Über den Zweck der Begriffsschrift', Sitzungs-berichte der Jenaischen Gesellschaft für Medicin und Naturwissenschaft fur das Jahr 1882 (Jena 1883), pp. 1-10, reprinted in Gottlob Frege, Begriffsschrift und andere Aufsatze, Hildesheim 1964, pp. 97-106. [English translation by Terrell Ward Bynum in: Gottlob Frege, Conceptual Notation, and Related Articles, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1972, reprinted 2000, pp. 90-100] On the origin of the expression 'lingua characterica' see Günther Patzig's footnote 8, on p. 10 of Gottlob Frege, Logische Untersuchungen, Göttingen 1966.

(2) See, for instance, Frege's comments on Boole in 'Über den Zweck der Begriffsschrift' (mentioned in footnote 1), pp. 1-2.

(3) In 'Über die Begriffsschrift des Herr Peano and meine eigene', Berichte über die Verhandlungen der Königlichen Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Mathematisch-physische Classe 48 (1897), 361-378, [English translation in: Gottlob Frege, Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic and Philosophy, edited by Brian McGuinness, Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1984, pp. 234-248]. Frege writes on p. 371: "Boole's logic is a calculus ratiocinator, but no lingua characterica; Peano's mathematical logic is in the main a lingua characterica and, subsidiarily, also a calculus ratiocinator, while my Begriffsschrift intends to be both with equal stress." Here the terms are used with approximately the meanings given in the present paragraph: Boole has a propositional calculus but no quantification theory; Peano has a notation for quantification theory but only a very deficient technique of derivation; Frege has a notation for quantification theory and a technique of derivation.

From: Jean van Heijenoort, "Logic as Calculus and Logic as Language", Synthese 17, 1967, pp. 324-330.

"Sir Isaiah Berlin has shown how to understand Tolstoi on the basis of the insight that Tolstoi was a fox who believed that he was a hedgehog (1). It is time we realize similarly what Frege was: a semanticist who did not believe in semantics. This insight we owe largely to van Heijenoort, who describes it by speaking of two conceptions of language and logic (2). He called them conceptions of logic as language and logic as calculus. More generally, and perhaps a shade more aptly, we might label them conceptions of language as the inescapable medium of communication (in brief, "language as medium") and language as calculus.

The most general form of the former I can think of is that we cannot according to this view get "outside" our language, as it were look on it from outside. The reason is that the results of all such "viewing" must be expressible in our language. Now this language presupposes in all its uses certain semantical relations (relations of representation) between language and reality. (Otherwise we could not use language in our transactions with reality.) But since these semantical relations are presupposed in each and every use of language, they cannot be expressed in language. Any attempt to do so involves a circularity and hence results in nonsense or tautology.

I am not putting forward these views as being unchallengeable. Indeed, they are challenged by the view of language and its logic as calculus. According to this view we can do all or most of the things the contrary opinion deemed impossible. Among other things, we can think of the representative relationships between language and the world as being varied radically and in a large scale. The point of using the term "calculus" is hence not to compare language to an uninterpreted calculus, a mere game with characters, but to emphasize that language, including our very own home language, is in principle freely reinterpretable like a calculus, at least for the purposes of a semanticist.

As van Heijenoort already pointed out, the development of all systematic logical semantics (model theory) thus presupposes some variant of the view of language as calculus. For one of the leading ideas of all model theory is to vary the interpretation of some part of the language in question in a way the view of language as medium does not countenance. As we saw, the stronger forms of this view even forbid saying anything significant and nonvacuous about the basic semantical relationships (relationships of naming, reference, or otherwise named representation)." (pp. 716-717)

Notes

(I) Isaiah Berlin. The Hedgehog and the Fox. London, 1957.

(2) Jean Van Heijenoort, "Logic as Language and Logic as Calculus". Synthese. vol. 17 (1967). pp. 324-330.

From: Jaakko Hintikka, "Frege's Hidden Semantics", Revue Internationale de Philosophie 33, 1979, pp. 716-722.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected bibliography on Language as Calculus vs. Language as Universal Medium

Bibliography

1. Blanché, Robert. 1970. La logique et son histoire d'Aristote à Russell. Paris: Armand Colin.

See Chapter VIII. Leibniz 1. Situation de Leibniz 189; 2. Logique classique 193; 3. Lingua characteristica universalis 201; 4. Calculus ratiocinator 208-219.

2. Cocchiarella, Nino. 1988. "Predication versus membership in the distinction between logic as language and logic as calculus." Synthese no. 77:37-72.

3. Cohen, Jonathan. 1954. "On the Project of a Universal Character." Mind no. 63:49-63.

Reprinted in: Knowledge and Language. Selected Essays of L. Jonathan Cohen, Edited and with an introduction by James Logue, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002 pp. 1-14.

"During the last thirty years or so the practice has grown up among logicians of attributing the project of a universal character to Leibniz alone among seventeenth century thinkers. This attribution is to be found, for instance, in L. S. Stebbing’s Modern Introduction to Logic, (1) in Cohen and Nagel’s Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method, (2) in M. Black’s Nature of Mathematics, (3) in J. H. Woodger’s Axiomatic Method in Biology, (4) and in O. Neurath’s introductory article in the International Encyclopaedia of Unified Science. (5) And it dates, I suspect, from the publication of C. I. Lewis’s Survey of Symbolic Logic in 1918. Lewis mentioned that Leibniz acknowledged a debt in this connexion to Raymond Lully, Athanasius Kircher, George Dalgarno and John Wilkins. But he considered their writings contained “little which is directly to the point”. (6) In this Lewis was obviously right with regard to Leibniz’s conception of a calculus of reasoning, but wrong, as I shall try to show, with regard to the project of a universal character, which seems in fact to have been an intellectual commonplace in seventeenth century Western Europe. This somewhat neglected by-way of philosophical history is worth a brief review, I think, not only in order to fix more precisely the respect in which Leibniz was the only seventeenth century precursor of modern symbolic logicians, but also because it draws attention to an early widespread philosophical muddle about the cónstruction of artificial languages."

4. Couturat, Louis, and Leau, Leopold. 1903. Histoire de la langue universelle. Paris: Hachette.

5. Dresner, Eli. 1999. "Hintikka's 'Language as calculus vs. language vs. universal medium' Distinction." Pragmatics and Cognition no. 7:405-421.

6. Eco, Umberto. 1995. The Search for the Perfect Language. Oxford: Blackwell.

Translated by James Fentress from the Italian: La ricerca della lingua perfetta nella cultura europea, Bari: Laterza, 1993.

7. Hartimo, Mirja. 2006. "Logic as a Universal Medium or Logic as a Calculus? Husserl and the Presuppositions of "the Ultimate Presupposition of Twentieth Century Philosophy"." Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 44:569-580.

"This paper discusses Jean van Heijenoort's (1967) and Jaakko and Merrill B. Hintikka's (1986, 1997) distinction between logic as a universal language and logic as a calculus, and its applicability to Edmund Husserl's phenomenology. Although it is argued that Husserl's phenomenology shares characteristics with both sides, his view of logic is closer to the model-theoretical, logic-as-calculus view. However, Husserl's philosophy as transcendental philosophy is closer to the universalist view. This paper suggests that Husserl's position shows that holding a model-theoretical view of logic does not necessarily imply a calculus view about the relations between language and the world. The situation calls for reflection about the distinction: It will be suggested that the applicability of the van Heijenoort and the Hintikkas distinction either has to be restricted to a particular philosopher's views about logic, in which case no implications about his or her more general philosophical views should be inferred from it; or the distinction turns into a question of whether our human predicament is inescapable or whether it is possible, presumably by means of model theory, to obtain neutral answers to philosophical questions. Thus the distinction ultimately turns into a question about the correct method for doing philosophy."

8. Heijenoort, Jean van. 1967. "Logic as Calculus and Logic as Language." Synthese no. 17:324-330.

Reprinted in:

- R.S. Cohen & M.W. Wartofsky (editors), Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 3: In Memory of Norwood Russell Hanson, Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium on Philosophy of Science, 1964/1965, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1967, pp. 440-446;

- Jean van Heijenoort, Selected Essays - Napoli: Bibliopolis, 1985, pp. 11-16;

- Jaakko Hintikka, Lingua Universalis vs. Calculus Ratiocinator. An Ultimate Presupposition of Twentieth-Century Philosophy, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997, pp. 233-239.

9. ———. 1977. "Set-theoretic semantics." In Logic Colloquium '76, edited by Gandy, Robin O. and Hyland, John M.E., 183-190. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

10. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1997. Lingua Universalis vs. Calculus Ratiocinator. An Ultimate Presupposition of Twentieth-Century Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Contents: Origin of the essays VII; Introduction IX-XXII; 1. Contemporary philosophy and the problem of truth 1; 2. Is truth ineffable? 20; 3. Defining truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth 46; 4. On the development of the model-theoretic viewpoint in logical theory 104; 5. The place of C. S. Peirce in the history of logical theory 140; 6. (with Merrill B. Hintikka): Wittgenstein and language as the universal medium 162; 7. Carnap's work in the foundations of logic and mathematics in a historical perspective 191; 8. Quine as a member of the tradition of the universality of language 214; Appendixes. 1. Jean van Heijenoort: Logic as calculus and logic as language 233; 2. Martin Kusch: Husserl and Heidegger on meaning 240-268.

"Of these essays, 1 and 5 are being published elsewhere at the same time but have not been published before. Essays 2, 4 and 6-8 are published without any changes. For technical reasons, it has not been feasible to make them completely uniform typographically or to bring their references completely up to date. Essay 3, which is the mainstay of the argumentation of this volume, has been revised for republication. In particular, its sections 9 and 12 have been thoroughly rewritten."

11. Peckhaus, Volker. 2004. "Calculus ratiocinator versus characteristica universalis? The two traditions in logic, revisited." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 25:3-14.

12. Rossi, Paolo. 2000. Logic and the Art of Memory. The Quest for a Universal Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Translated from the Italian: Clavis universalis: arti mnemoniche e logica combinatoria da Lullo a Leibniz, Milano: Ricciardi, 1960 (second revised edition, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1983) with an introduction by Stephen Clucas.

13. Scholz, Heinrich. 1961. Concise History of Logic. New York: Philosophical Library.

Translated from: Abriss der Geschichte der logik (1931) by Kurt F. Leidecker.

14. Smith, Barry. 1990. "Characteristica Universalis." In Language, truth and ontology, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, 50-81. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"Our task will be to construct portions of a directly depicting language which will enable us to represent the most general structures of reality. We shall draw not on standard logical treatments of the contents of epistemic states as these are customarily conceived in terms of propositions. Rather, we shall turn to a no less venerable but nowadays somewhat neglected tradition of formal ontology: not sentences or propositions, but maps, diagrams or pictures, shall serve as the constituents of our mirror of reality."

15. Swanson, J.W. 1965. "On the calculus ratiocinator." Inquiry no. 8:315-331.

16. Vilkko, Risto. 2002. A Hundred Years of Logical Investigations: Reform Efforts of Logic in Germany 1781-1879. Paderborn: Mentis Verlag.

17. Burkhardt, Hans. 1980. Logik und Semiotik in der Philosophie von Leibniz. München: Philosophia Verlag.

See in particular: 3.04 Die Charakteristik pp. 186-205.

18. ———. 1987. "The Leibnizian Characteristica Universalis as Link Between Grammar and Logic." In Speculative Grammar, Universal Grammar, and Philosophical Analysis of Language, edited by Buzzetti, Dino and Ferriani, Maurizio, 43-63. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

19. Couturat, Louis. 1901. La logique de Leibniz: d'aprés des documents inédits. Paris: Felix Alcan.

Reprinted: Hildesheim, Olms, 1961 e 1985.

20. Heinekamp, Albert. 1972. "Ars characteristica und natürliche Sprache bei Leibniz." Tijdschrift voor Filosofie no. 34:446-488.

"One can distinguish two different approaches toward language in Leibniz's work. On one hand, he considers natural language insufficient and would like to replace it by a 'rational' language (lingua philosophica), while on the other hand, he is an empirical researcher of language who collects phenomena from the most diverse languages in order to compare them with other languages. The literature about Leibniz highlights only these two aspects of his work, and usually considers them to be incompatible. The relationship between Leibniz's remarks about 'characteristica universalis' and his theories about natural language is explored. Even though Leibniz did not produce an explicit theory about this relationship, a difference between these two is clearly implied in his remarks. Natural language and characteristica are to Leibniz, basically different in their existence, their function, and their performance. Nevertheless, they both form integral components of Leibniz's monad theory."

21. Hernández Márquez, Victor Manuel. 1999. "Leibniz y la lingua characterica." Diánoia.Anuario de Filosofía no. 45:35-63.

22. Lenzen, Wolfgang. 2004. Calculus universalis. Studien zur Logik von G. W. Leibniz. Paderborn: Mentis Verlag.

23. O'Briant, Walter. 1994. "Leibniz's Europeanism and the characteristica universalis." In Leibniz und Europa. VI. Internationaler Leibniz-Kongress. Vorträge. 1. Teil, 541-543. Hannover: Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Gesellschaft.

24. Patzig, Günther. 1969. "Leibniz, Frege und die sogennante 'lingua characteristica universalis'." Studia Leibnitiana.Supplementa:103-112.

Akten des Internationale Leibniz-Kongresses Hannover 14-19 November 1966 - Vol. 3: Erkenntnislehre, Logik, Sprachphilosophie, Editionsberichte.

25. Peckhaus, Volker. 1997. Logik, Mathesis universalis und allgemeine Wissenschaft: Leibniz und die Wiederentdeckung der formalen Logik im 19. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

Contents: Vorwort VII-VIII; 1. Einleitung 1; 2. Die Idee der mathesis universalis bei Leibniz 25; 3. Die frühe Rezeption Leibnizscher mathesis universalis und Logik 64; 4. Die "logische Frage" und die Entdeckung der Leibnizschen Logik 130; 5. Leibniz und die englische Algebra der Logik 185; 6. Ernst Schröder: "Absolute Algebra" und Leibnizprogramm 233; 7. Schluss 297; Verzeichnisse 309-412.

26. Rossi, Paolo. 1989. "The Twisted Roots of Leibniz' Characteristic." In The Leibniz Renaissance, 271-289. Firenze: Olschki.

27. Schneider, Martin. 1994. "Leibniz' Konzeption der "characteristica universalis" zwischen 1677 und 1690." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 48:213-236.

28. Goldfarb, Warren. 2001. "Frege's Conception of Logic." In Future Pasts. The Analytic Tradition in Twentieth Century Philosophy, edited by Floyd, Juliet and Shieh, Sanford, 25-41. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"The first task is that of delineating the differences between Frege's conception of logic and the contemporary one. I shall start with the latter. Explicit elaborations of it are surprisingly uncommon. (In most writing on issues in philosophical logic,

it is implicitly assumed; yet many textbooks gloss over it, for one pedagogical reason or another.) There are various versions; I will lay out the one formulated by Quine in his textbooks (1) as it seems to me the clearest.

On this conception, the subject matter of logic consists of logical properties of sentences and logical relations among sentences. Sentences have such properties and bear such relations to each other by dint of their having the logical forms they do. Hence, logical properties and relations are defined by way of the logical forms; logic deals with what is common to and can be abstracted from different sentences. Logical forms are not mysterious quasi-entities, à la Russell. Rather, they are simply schemata: representations of the composition of the sentences, constructed from the logical signs (quantifiers and truth-functional connectives, in the standard case) using schematic letters of various sorts (predicate, sentence, and function letters). Schemata do not state anything and so are neither true nor false, but they can be interpreted: a universe of discourse is assigned to the quantifiers, predicate letters are replaced by predicates or assigned extensions (of the appropriate r-ities) over the universe, sentence letters can be replaced by sentences or assigned truth-values. Under interpretation, a schema will receive a truth-value. (pp. 25-26)

(...)

Such a schematic conception is foreign to Frege (as well as to Russell). This comes out early in his work, in the contrast he makes between his Begriffsschrift and the formulas of Boole: "My intention was not to represent an abstract logic in formulas, but to express a content through written signs in a more precise and clear way than it is possible to do through words." (2) And it comes out later in his career in his reaction to Hilbert's Foundations of Geometry: "The word 'interpretation' is objectionable, for when properly expressed, a thought leaves no room for different interpretations. We have seen that ambiguity [Vieldeutigkeit] simply has to be rejected." (3) There are no parts of his logical formulas that await interpretation. There is no question of providing a universe of discourse. Quantifiers in Frege's system have fixed meaning: they range over all items of the appropriate logical type (objects, one place functions of objects, two place functions of objects, etc.). (p. 27)

(...)

On Frege's universalist conception, then, the concern of logic is the articulation and proof of logical laws, which are universal truths. Since they are universal, they are applicable to any subject matter, as application is carried out by instantiation. For Frege, the laws of logic are general, not in being about nothing in particular (about forms), but in using topic-universal vocabulary to state truths about everything. (p. 28)

(...)

My central aims in this paper have been to delineate Frege's universalist conception of logic and contrast it with a more familiar one, to show that this conception connects with many other points in Frege's philosophy, and to suggest that the conception is a well-motivated one, given the nature of Frege's project. Of course, today most of us would find the schematic conception (or some variant of it) far more natural, if not unavoidable. But I hope to have caused us to reflect on how much else has to shift in order to make it." (p. 41)

(1) Elementary Logic (Boston: Ginn, 1941) and Methods of Logic (New York: Holt, 1950).

(2) "Über den Zweck der Begriffsschrift," Jenaische Zeitschrift far Naturwissenschaft 16, Supplement (1882): 1-10, p. 1

(3) "Über die Grundlagen der Geometrie," Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematiker Vereinigung 15 (1906): 293-309, 377-403, 423-430, p. 384.

29. Haaparanta, Leila. 1985. Frege's Doctrine of Being. Helsinki: Acta Philosophica Fennica.

30. ———. 1988. "Analysis as the method of logical discovery: some remarks on Frege and Husserl." Synthese no. 77:73-98.

31. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1979. "Frege's Hidden Semantics." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 33:716-722.

"From my observations, several corollaries follow for the recent discussions concerning Frege in the literature.

For instance, the truly interesting historical problem is not to find anticipations of Frege on sense and reference in earlier philosophers or, more generally, to study Frege's theory in its relation to his predecessors. The fascinating novelty which I for one would very much like to understand better is how Frege came upon his ideas about extensional logic, ideas which were radically different from the great majority of traditional philosophers. Furthermore, the deep objects of comparison and contrast in twentieth-century philosophy are not later theories of senses (or their partial dispensability as in Kripke) or other theories of intensional contexts but those recent findings which challenge Frege's treatment of first-order logic.

Among these targets of challenge, the most important ones are probably the paucity of Frege's ontology (set of categories represented by his primitive symbols), the so-called Frege principle (1), and the Frege-Russell claim that ordinary-language words like the English "is" and the German "ist" are ambiguous between the "is" of existence, identity, predication, and subsumption (2). In some ways, the true import of Frege's tacit first-order semantics is best seen from the criticisms to which these three cornerstones of Frege's semantics have been subjected." p. 722

(1) See here my paper "Theories of Truth and Learnable Languages" (forthcoming).[Stig Kanger and Sven Öhman (eds.) - Philosophy and grammar: papers on the occasion of the Quincentennial of Uppsala University - Dordrecht, D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1981 pp. 37-58]

(2) See my paper, "'Is', Semantical Games, and Semantical Relativity." Journal of Philosophical Logic. vol. 8 ( 1979), 433-468.

32. ———. 1981. "Semantics: A Revolt Against Frege." In Contemporary Philosophy. Vol. I. Philosophy of Language, edited by Floistad, Guttorm, 57-82. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

33. ———. 1984. "A Hundred Years Later: The Rise and Fall of Frege's Influence in Language Theory." Synthese no. 59:27-49.

34. Kluge, Eike Henner W. 1977. "Frege, Leibniz "et alii"." Studia Leibnitiana no. 9:266-274.

"Patzig has argued that Frege's use of the phrase 'lingua characterica' constitutes an insufferable pleonasm that no-one with first-hand knowledge of Leibniz's writings would have committed. On this he bases an argument to show that Frege's knowledge of Leibniz was weak and garnered from secondary sources. I show that this claim ignores certain crucial Leibniz quotes by Frege which he could have found only in the Gerhardt edition of Leibniz's mathematical works and his correspondence, and lay the foundation for an analysis of the historical influence of Leibniz on the development of Frege's thought."

35. ———. 1980. "Frege, Leibniz and the notion of an ideal language." Studia Leibnitiana no. 12:140-154.

"This paper examines the question, whether and to what degree Leibniz's project of an ideal language -- of a "lingua characterica" which at the same time can also function as a "calculus ratiocinator" -- had an influence on Frege's project of a "Begriffsschrift". It concludes that not only are there sufficient conceptual similarities to warrant an hypothesis of historical connection, but that there are also historical indications in Frege's own writings to that effect."

36. Sluga, Hans. 1987. "Frege against the Booleans." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 28:80-98.

37. Banchetti-Robino, Marina. 1997. "Husserl's Theory of Language as Calculus Ratiocinator." Synthese no. 112:303-321.

"This paper defends an interpretation of Husserl's theory of language, specifically as it appears in the Logical Investigations, as an example of a larger body of theories dubbed `language as calculus'. Although this particular interpretation has been previously defended by other authors, such as Hintikka and Kusch, this paper proposes to contribute to the discussion by arguing that what makes this interpretation plausible are Husserl's distinction between the notions of meaning-intention and meaning-fulfillment, his view that meaning is instantiated through meaning-intending acts of transcendental consciousness, and his view that the content of meaning-intending acts is ideal meaning simpliciter. As well, the paper argues that the phenomenological method of reduction itself presupposes the notion that reality as such can be reached by subtracting the influence of the language of the natural attitude and its ontological commitments and it, thus, presupposes the conception of language as a reinterpretable calculus." (p. 303)

38. Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua. 1956. "Husserl's conception of a purely logical grammar." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 17:362-369.

Reprinted in: Aspects of language. Essays and lectures on philosophy of language, linguistic philosophy and methodology of linguistics - Jerusalem - The Magnes Press - The Hebrew University, 1970 pp. 89-97.

Reprinted also in: Jitendra Nath Mohanty - Readings on Husserl's Logical Investigations - The Hague - Martinus Nijhoff 1977 pp. 128-137.

39. Ferriani, Maurizio. 1983. "Boole, Frege e la distinzione leibniziana 'Lingua-Calculus'." In Atti del convegno internazionale di storia della logica, edited by Abrusci, Michele, Casari, Ettore and Mugnai, Massimo, 301-306. Bologna: CLUEB.

Versione ampliata in: Maurizio Ferriani - Logica e filosofia della logica. Studi su Boole e Peirce - Bologna, CLUEB, 1999 pp. 3-26.

40. Goldfarb, Warren. 1979. "Logic in the Twenties: the nature of the quantifier." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 44:351-368.

41. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1981. "Wittgenstein's Semantical Kantianism." In Ethics: Proceedings of the Fifth International Wittgenstein Symposium, 25-31 August 1980, Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria, edited by Morscher, Edgar and Stranzinger, Rudolf, 375-390. Wien: Hölder-Pichler Tempsky.

42. ———. 1988. "On the Development of the Model-Theoretic Viewpoint in Logical Theory." Synthese no. 77:1-36.

43. ———. 1997. "The Place of C. S. Peirce in the History of Logical Theory." In The Rule of Reason. The Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Brunning, Jacqueline and Forster, Paul, 13-33. Toronto: Toronto University Press.

44. Hintikka, Jaakko, and Hinitkka, Merrill. 1986. "Wittgenstein and Language as the Universal Medium." In Investigating Wittgenstein, 1-29. Oxford: Blackwell.

Reprinted in: Lingua Universalis vs. Calculus Ratiocinator. An Ultimate Presupposition of Twentieth-Century Philosophy pp. 162-190.

45. Kusch, Martin. 1988. "Husserl and Heidegger on meaning." Synthese no. 77:99-127.

Reprinted in: Jaakko Hintikka, Lingua Universalis vs. Calculus Ratiocinator. An ultimate presupposition of Twentieth-century philosophy, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997, pp. 240-268.

46. ———. 1989. Language as Calculus vs. Language as Universal Medium. A Study in Husserl, Heidegger, and Gadamer. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Contents: Preface IX-XI; Part I. Introduction: Language as calculus vs. language as the universal medium 1; Part II. Husserl's phenomenology and language as calculus 11; Part III. Heidegger's ontology and language as the universal medium 135; Part IV. Between Scylla and Charybdis -- Gadamer's hermeneutics 229; Notes to Part I 259; Notes to Part II 260; Notes Part III 290; Notes to Part IV 310; Bibliography 315; Index of names 343; Index of subjects 353.

47. Proops, Ian. 2007. "Russell and the Universalist conception of logic." Noûs no. 41:1-32.

48. Schõfer, Erasmus. 1972. "Heidegger's Language: Metalogical Forms of Thought and Grammatical Specialities." In On Heidegger and Language, edited by J., Kockelmans Joseph, 281-301. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Translated from German by Joseph J. Kockelmans.

49. Wolenski, Jan. 1998. "Husserl and the development of semantics." Philosophia Scientiae no. 3:151-158.

"This paper investigates the role of Edmund Husserl in the development of formal or model-theoretic semantics through glasses of the distinction of language as calculus vs. language as universal medium, introduced by Jaakko Hintikka and Martin Kusch. In particular, the paper raises the question of possible Husserl's influence on the conception of language accepted in Polish philosophy, in particular by Lesniewski and Tarski."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The Problem of Universals: the Contemporary Debate

Formal Ontology and the Theory of Universals

"The central feature of a formal ontology is how it represents the nexus of predication, which depends on what theory of universals it assumes.

The three main theories of universals are nominalism, conceptualism, and (logical or natural) realism.

The analysis of the fundamental forms of predication of a formal ontology may be directed upon the structure of reality or upon the structure of thought.

Natural realism, and in particular Aristotle's ontology, is directed upon the structure of the natural world, and the preeminent mode of being is that of concrete individual things, or primary substances. There are two major forms of natural realism, moderate realism and modal moderate realism.

Aristotle's moderate natural realism has two types of predication: predication of species and genera (natural kinds), and predication of properties and relations.

Kant's and Husserl's categorial analyses, unlike Aristotle's, are directed upon the structure of thought and experience rather than upon the structure of reality. The categories function on this account to articulate the logical forms of judgments and not as the general causes or grounds of concrete being.

Husserl's formal ontology is based on a transcendental logic in which the laws and rules of logic are justified in terms of subjective analyses of presumed a priori structures that provide the evidence for the objective versions of those of those laws and rules.

There are two problems regarding the completeness of a formal ontology: first, the problem of the completeness of the categories of an ontology, and second, the problem of the completeness of the deductive laws that are based on those categories.

Set theory provides only an external semantics for a formal ontology; unless that ontology is set theory itself, which has no nexus of predication, and hence strictly speaking is not a formal ontology. An incompleteness theorem for a formal ontology based a set-theoretic semantics need not show that the ontology is incomplete with respect to an internal semantics. In particular, sometimes general models are a better representation of a formal ontology's internal semantics than are. so-called "standard" models.

Conceptual realism is a, formal ontology framed within the context of a naturalistic epistemology and a naturalistic approach to the relations between language, thought, and reality as based on our scientific knowledge of the world.

Conceptual realism is based on a conceptualist account of the speech and mental acts that underlie reference and predication. It is directed in that regard primarily upon the structure of thought. But, because its methodology is based on a linguistic and logical analysis of our speech and mental acts, it is not committed to a phenomenological reduction of those acts. Nor does it preclude such a reduction.

Conceptual realism contains both a natural realism and an intensional realism, each of which can be developed as separate subsystems that are compatible within the larger framework, one containing a modern form of Aristotelian essentialism, and the other containing a modern counterpart of Platonism based on the intensional contents of our speech and mental acts." (pp. 23-24)

From: Nino Cocchiarella, Formal Ontology and Conceptual Realism, New York: Springer 2007.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on The Contemporary Problem of Universals

Bibliography

1. Aaron, Richard I. 1952. The Theory of Universals. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

2. Armstrong, David Malet. 1978. Universals and Scientific Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Two volumes

3. ———. 1986. "In Defence of Structural Universals." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 64 (1):85-88.

"1 . The central issue. At the heart of David Lewis' case against structural universals lies his contention that two different things cannot be composed of exactly the same parts.

Here is what I take to be a counter-example to his principle. Let a and b be two particulars, and R be a non-symmetrical relation. Let it be the case that a has R to b, and that b has R to a. We have two distinct states of affairs ('two different things'), yet, in a clear sense of the word 'composed', they are composed of exactly the same parts: a, b and R.

The two states of affairs may be called structures. In his important recent book The Categorical Structure of the World (1983, Section 101), Reinhardt Groomsman offers the following identity-conditions for structures. S1 and S2 are the very same structure if and only if (a) they contain- the very same nonrelational parts; (b) they contain the very same relations; (c) the same parts stand in the same relations to each other. In my counter-example, the two structures contain the very same non-relational parts, the very same relations, but it is not the case that the same parts stand in the same' relation to each other.

My counter-example to Lewis' principle was chosen because, although it involves structures, it does not involve structural universals. This shows, I think, that the difficulty raised by Lewis is best thought of as an argument against postulating any universals, structural or otherwise; or, at least, as an argument against postulating relations which are universals.

Lewis, of course, would not allow the counter-example. By far the simplest way for him to deal with it is by adopting a philosophy of what, following D. C. Williams (1953) , and, more recently, K. K. Campbell (1981) , he calls 'tropes'. Tropes are properties and relations, but they are properties.' and relations conceived not as universals but as particulars.;-On this; view 'of relations, my alleged counter-example becomes two states of affairs, a c1 b, and b c2 a, where c1 and c2 are not identical, although they may, resemble exactly. (The universal R perhaps reduces to an equivalence-class of exactly resembling tropes.) Given this account, I have certainly not produced a counter-example to Lewis' view that two different things cannot: be composed of exactly the same things.

But is not the dispute now a stand-off? Lewis can use his principle against a philosophy of universals. I can use universals to produce a counter-example to his principle. Indeed, is not Lewis close to begging the question against me?

It may be replied that Lewis' view is the more economical. He puts forward an attractive-sounding principle. I have to deny that the principle holds in

all cases, and my reason is that it is defeated by those suspicious characters: universals.

To this I reply that economy in a metaphysics can only be judged, as Mark Johnston has put it to me, `in the end-game'. For myself, I believe that universals are great explainers. The loss on the roundabouts as a result of having to deny Lewis' principle may well be made up with interest on the swings. In any case, as the great Dr. Tarrasch said, `before the end-game, the Gods have placed the middle-game'.

What it would be nice to have, but what I cannot supply, is formal description of an operation which will take one from any unordered set of universals to possible structural universals which involve nothing but members of the set.' (I say `possible' in order to respect the Principle of Instantiation which I believe should apply to all universals.) Such an operation will permit the one universal in the original set to appear in more than one `place' in the structural universal. (E.g. an F having R to an F which has R to a third F.) A parallel is the way that, in a set of sets, the very same individual may be found as a member of different sub-sets." pp. 85-86.

4. ———. 1989. Universals. An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder: Westview Press.

Contents: Preface XI-XII; 1. The problem 1; 2. Primitive natural classes 21; 3. Resemblance nominalism 39; 4. Particulars as bundles of universals 59; 5. Universals as attributes 75; 6. Tropes 113; 7. Summing up 135; references 131; Index 145.

"This book is intended to be intelligible to the advanced undergraduate student and should also be suitable for graduate seminars. However, I hope that it will also be of interest to professional philosophers, particularly those who are sympathetic to the project of an empirical metaphysics. Since the publication of my book Universals and Scientific Realism in 1978, although my views have remained the same in broad outline, I have become aware of various mistakes and omissions in what I said then. The present work, therefore, besides introducing the topic, tries to push the subject further ahead.

I now think that a particular type of moderate Nominalism, moderate because it admits properties and relations, but a Nominalism because it takes the properties and relations to be particulars rather than universals, can be developed as an important and quite plausible rival to a moderate Realism about universals. In the earlier book I gave such a Nominalism only brief consideration. By contrast, in this work a battle between Nominalists and Realists over the status of properties and relations becomes one main theme.

In general, I have largely confined myself to moderate Nominalisms and moderate Realisms. That host of contemporary philosophers who unreflectively substitute classes of particulars for properties and relations I take to be immoderate Nominalists. However, many of the arguments that I bring against the more moderate Natural Class theory are also arguments against this orthodoxy." (From the Preface)

"It is time to bring the matter to a conclusion. Metaphysicians should not expect any certainties in their inquiries. One day, perhaps, the subject will be transformed, but for the present the philosopher can do no more than survey the field as conscientiously as he or she can, taking note of the opinions and arguments of predecessors and contemporaries, and then make a fallible judgment arrived at and backed up as rationally as he or she knows how.

Of all the results that have been argued for here, the most secure, I believe, is the real existence of properties and relations. Whether they be universals or particulars is a more delicate matter, and just what properties and relations are required may be obscure, and in any case not for the philosopher to determine. But I hope that the arguments of Chapters 2 and 3, criticizing the versions of the Natural Class and Resemblance theories that try to do without properties and relations, will be thought weighty. Blobs are out; we require layer cakes. Reality must have more fundamental structure than the stricter Nominalisms allow. The introduction of properties and relations then involves, I argued, the admission of states of affairs (facts) into our ontology." p. 135

(...)

"Therefore, the fate of the Universals theory may turn on the questions of the inexact resemblance of universals and of the nature of laws. But if both questions go as I surmise that they will go, the Universals theory seems ahead of even the best Trope theory.

Drawing a figure from the game of chess, Mark Johnston has suggested to me that the dispute between a suitably sophisticated theory of universals and a suitably sophisticated theory of tropes can only be decided in the end game. Maybe. We are probably only at the beginning of the middle game as yet.

We have seen in Chapter 6 the remarkable way that the Universals and Trope theories, when thought through, turn out to run parallel in many respects. We may in the end have to reconsider an idea of H. H. Price's ( Thinking and experience, Hutchinson, 1953, Ch. 1, pp. 30-32) that Universals and Resemblance theories are no more than "alternative languages," although, unlike Price, we will surely need to move to a trope version of a Resemblance theory.

At any rate, the Problem of Universals is alive and well and may commend itself to those happy few who feel the intellectual fascination in what D. C. Williams called "grubbing around in the roots of being." p. 139

5. ———. 1991. "Classes Are State of Affairs." Mind no. 100:189-200.

6. Azzouni, Jody. 2004. Deflating Existential Consequence. A Case for Nominalism. New York: Oxford University Press.

7. Bacon, John. 1986. "Armstrong's Theory of Properties." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 64 (1):47-53.

"At the heart of D. M. Armstrong's theory of universals in [N], [U] and [L] is a set of basic theses about monadic universals, or properties, as he calls them. The theses lay down the a priori conditions under which a one, place predicate simple or compound) may stand for a property. Thus there are predicates standing for no property. We may nevertheless say for convenience that they stand for `features', without here attempting a closer semantic analysis of this way of speaking. The rough idea is that a `feature' is a class-concept. As (placeholders for) one-place predicates, I use F, G.

That F is a property or a universal will be expressed by the (closed) sentence UF. The theory of U, of universalhood, is the metaphysical core of Armstrong's theory of universals. My purpose here is to clarify the core so far as formal means -permit."

[N] Nominalism and realism vo. 1 of Universals and scientific realism, Cambridge 1978.

[U] A theory of universals, vol. 2 of same.

[L] What is a law of nature?, Cambridge 1983.

8. ———. 1995. Universals and Property Instances. The Alphabet of Being. London: Blackwell.

9. Bealer, George. 1993. "Universals." The Journal of Philosophy no. 90 (1):5-32.

10. Bigelow, John. 1986. "Towards Structural Universals." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 64 (1):94-96.

11. Bochenski, Joseph M., Church, Alonzo, and Goodman, Nelson. 1956. The Problem of Universals. A Symposium. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press.

Contents; Alonzo Church: Propositions and Sentences 3; Nelson Goodman: A World of Individuals 15; Joseph Bochenski: The Problem of Universals 35-54.

"The papers contained in this publication were read at the Aquinas Symposium sponsored by the Department of Philosophy of the University of Notre Dame on March 9-10, 1956. Leo R. Ward, C.S.C., of the University of Notre Dame, coordinator of the Aquinas Symposium, had invited scholars representing several divergent views on the nature of Universals to present, within the limits of a relatively short paper and a subsequent discussion period, some aspects of the problem of Universals. Response to his invitation was very gratifying.

Out of the meeting came three papers that literally make up a symposium: Professor Alonzo Church of Princeton University, Professor Nelson Goodman of the University of Pennsylvania, and Professor I. M. Bochcnski, 0.P., of the University of Fribourg and Visiting-Professor at the University of Notre Dame read papers that converge on the Problem of the Universals from three different philosophic positions. Professor Richard McKeon of the University of Chicago was the discussion leader at all of the sessions. These papers, with a minimum of editing by the respective participants, are now made available in this edition."

12. Boolos, George. 1985. "Nominalist Platonism." The Philosophical Review no. 94:327-344.

13. Butchvarov, Panayot. 1966. Resemblance and Identity. An Examination of the Problem of Universals. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

14. Campbell, Keith. 1990. Abstract Particulars. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

15. Chihara, Charles. 1968. "Our Ontological Commitment to Universals." Noûs no. 2:25-46.

16. Cleve, James van. 1994. "Predication without Universals? A Fling with Ostrich Nominalism." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 54:577-590.

"In this paper I wish to consider the merits of Realist theories of predication vis-à-vis three varieties of Nominalism, which Armstrong has dubbed Predicate Nominalism, Resemblance Nominalism, and Ostrich Nominalism) In Part I, I shall argue that Ostrich Nominalism is the most satisfactory position of these four, and that the Realist view favored by Armstrong and many others is prone to the same fundamental difficulty as the other two varieties of Nominalism. In Part II, I shall consider difficulties for the argument of Part I."

17. Cocchiarella, Nino. 1986. Logical Investigations of Predication Theory and the Problem of Universals. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

"Predication theory has been a subject of philosophical concern since at least the writings of Plato and Aristotle. It is in its way the locus of a number of philosophical issues both in metaphysics and epistemology, not the least of which is the problem of universals.

The latter problem, sometimes all too simply put as the question of whether there are universals or not, is especially germane to the notion of predication since a theory of universals is at least in part a semantic theory of predication; and it is just to such a theory that we must turn in any philosophical investigation of the notion of predication.

In doing so, however, we need not assume the truth or superiority of any one theory of universals over another. Indeed, an appropriate preliminary to any such assumption might well consist of a comparative analysis of some of the different formal theories of predication that can be semantically associated with these different theories of universals: for just as the latter provide a semantics for the former, it is only through the logical syntax of a formal theory of predication that the logical structure of a theory of universals can be rendered perspicuous. That, in any case, is the principal methodological assumption for the approach to the problem of universals we shall undertake in the present monograph where we will be more concerned with the construction and comparison of the abstract logical systems that may be associated with different theories of universals than with the metaphysical or epistemological issues for which they were originally designed. It is our hope and expectation, however, that these comparative formal analyses will be instrumental toward any philosophical decision as to whether to adopt a given theory of universals or not.

The original use of the term "universal" goes back to Aristotle according to whom a universal is that which can be predicated of things (De Interpretatione, 17 a 39). We shall retain the core of this notion throughout this essay and assume that whatever else it may be a universal has a predicable nature and that it is this predicable nature which is what constitutes its universality.

Nothing follows from that assumption, however, regarding whether a universal is (1) merely a predicate expression (nominalism) of some language or other; (2) a concept (conceptualism) in the. sense of a sociobiologically based cognitive ability or capacity to identify, collect or classify, and characterize or relate things in various ways; or (3) a real property or relation existing independently of both language and the natural capacity humans have for thought and representation (realism). We propose to take each of these interpretations or theories of universals seriously in what follows at least to the extent that we are able to associate each with a formal theory of predication. Our particular concern in this regard, moreover, will be with the explanation each provides of the predicable nature of universals, i.e., of that in which the universality of universals consists.

Our discussion and comparison of nominalism, conceptualism and realism, accordingly, will not deal with the variety of arguments that have been given for or against each of them, but with how each as a theory of universals may be semantically associated with a formal theory of predication. Our assumption here, as indicated above, is that insofar as such an associated formal theory of predication provides a logically perspicuous medium for the articulation of the predicable nature of universals as understood by the theory of universals in question, then to that extent the formal theory may itself be identified with the explanation which that theory of universals provides of the predicable nature of universals. It is in the sense of this assumption, moreover, that we understand a philosophical theory of predication to be a formal theory of predication together with its semantically associated theory of universals." pp. 11-12.

18. Eberle, Rolf. 1970. Nominalistic Systems. Dordrecht: Reidel.

19. Forrest, Peter. 1986. "Ways Worlds Could Be." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 64 (1):15-24.

20. ———. 1986. "Neither Magic nor Mereology: A Reply to Lewis." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 64 (1):89-91.

"In 'Against Structural Universals', David Lewis provides an important critique of the theory of structural universals developed by D.. M. Armstrong, and which I use in 'Ways Worlds Could Be'. Lewis' chief criticism is based on the thesis that the only unanalysable, sui generis, :mode of composition is that of mereology. (1) I call that the Either Mereology or Magic Thesis. Lewis claims that the 'generation of sets out of their elements is not some unmereological form of composition'. He, rightly in my opinion, treats a set as the mereological sum of unit sets. And -- here' I disagree -- -he insists that the generation of unit sets is 'not composition at all.'

In reply to Lewis I shall attack the Either Mereology `or Magic Thesis by arguing:

(1) That it does not follow from a conceptual analysis. (2)

(2) Although it has considerable prima facie appeal it is not robust enough to be used to argue against structural universals

and (3) Lewis himself is committed to counter-examples lo, it.

I conclude that Either Mereology or Magic Thesis is merely' an interesting conjecture, which would hold for some ontologies, but which Lewis should not advance and which has no power to refute my own theory of possibility."

(1) Against Structural Universals', this issue of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy pp. 25-46 .

(2) Nor is it obvious that Lewis intended it to be.

21. Gosselin, Mia. 1990. Nominalism and Contemporary Nominalism. Ontological and Epistemological Implications of the Work of W. V. O. Quine and of N. Goodman. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

22. Hale, Bob. 1987. "Abstract Objects." In. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

23. Hochberg, Herbert. 1988. "A Refutation of Moderate Nominalism." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 66 (2):188-207.

"Russell offered what has become a classic argument for the existence of universal properties in his 1911 paper 'On the Relations of Universals and Particulars. (1) My concern in this paper is not with the cogency of the argument he offered there, but with a moderation of the nominalist's position that concedes a point to Russell. (1) Some nominalist's have recently acknowledged Russell's claim that a universal 'connection' or `relation' of similarity is involved in taking qualities to be particular-instances, or 'quality-moments' in Husserl's terminology, and have argued as follows. The realist recognises particulars and universals. In addition, the realist acknowledges a universal connection or tie or nexus or predication relation - exemplification, say. Thus, the realist recognises three distinct kinds of things: particulars, universal qualities (including relations) and a connection between particulars and universals. The 'moderate' nominalist recognises particular quality-instances and a universal connection - exact similarity. Consequently, Russell's argument, at best, does not force a universal relational quality upon the nominalist, but merely forces the nominalist to recognise a universal connection that is a correlate of the realist's exemplification connection, and not of the realist's universal qualities and relations.(2) In a way, the modification of the nominalist's position is a tribute to Bradley's 'paradox', which can be taken to force one to recognise, as Russell sometimes did, that there is a basic predication relation that cannot be included as a relation among relations without initiating a vicious regress. (3)

The moderate nominalist can then reject Russell's claim that a universal relational quality must be recognised. Since the similarity relation is the analogue of the realist's exemplification connection, it is not a 'standard' universal. And, as any view must recognise such a connection, giving Bradley his due, the nominalistic advocate of quality-instances merely recognises, in his way, what the realist must also recognise: a 'connection' exemplification `tie' (or several `ties'): the nominalist recognises particular quality-instances and a universal `similarity tie'. Thus, while Russell's argument is neither blocked nor denied, it is seemingly deprived of its sting.

I shall argue that the moderate nominalist's argument fails for a number of reasons. (It is worth noting that Wilfrid Sellars has long advocated a variant of this kind of nominalism, though he sought to avoid explicitly accepting either a universal tie or quality-instances.) (4) One reason the argument fails is that it tries to avoid one kind of entity by giving another type of entity a two-fold function. The realist's exemplification connection performs only one function. It serves to connect particulars to universals so that we have states of affairs (5) to provide truth conditions for atomic sentences. In short, it combines elements into complexes. The nominalist's connection is not merely a connection in that sense. It not only connects exactly similar qualityinstances into what we may call 'similarity-facts', but, by so doing, it provides the qualitative content for an object. This is readily seen when we note that the realist's connection may or may not obtain, in the sense that a state of affairs may or may not obtain, given the elements - the particular and the quality - that enter into it. The nominalist's similarity fact must obtain, given the elements that enter into it, and is thus necessary, just as the similarity relation may be said to be 'internal', as opposed to an 'external' tie of exemplification. Thus, the relation of exact similarity is quite different from a connecting tie like exemplification." pp. 188-189

(1) Russell's classic argument will not do as it was presented. It will do in an amended form. On this point see my 'Russell's Proof of Realism Reproved', Philosophical Studies 37, 1980.

(2) I am indebted to D. M. Armstrong for calling my attention to this variant of nominalism and to discussion of it with him.

(3) Russell's concern with the Bradley paradox was partially responsible for his holding, in the manuscript of 1913 entitled Theory of Knowledge, that facts involved logical forms which were not constituents. See Chapter VII of the manuscript, published as vol. 7, The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, ed. E. Eames et. al. (London: 1984).

(4) On Sellars' nominalism see my 'Logical Form, Existence, and Relational Predication', in Foundations of Analytic Philosophy, ed. H. Wettstein, et. al. (Minneapolis: 1981), reprinted in my book Logic, Ontology and Language (Munich: 1984).

(5) Questions arise regarding 'possible' facts or states of affairs that do not 'obtain'. Such issues, though relevant to the dispute between realists and nominalists, will be avoided in this paper.

24. Jacquette, Dale. 2006. "Bochenski on Property Identity and the Refutation of Universals." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 35:293-316.

"An argument against multiply instantiable universals is considered in neglected essays by Stanislaw Lesniewski and I. M. Bochenski. Bochenski further applies Lesniewski's refutation of universals by maintaining that identity principles for individuals must be different than property identity principles. Lesniewski's argument is formalized for purposes of exact criticism, and shown to involve both a hidden vicious circularity in the form of impredicative definitions and explicit self-defeating consequences. Syntactical restrictions on Leibnizian indiscernibility of identicals are recommended to forestall Lesniewski's paradox."

25. Johansson, Ingvar. 2000. "Determinables as Universals." The Monist no. 83 (1):101-121.

26. Katz, Jerrold, and Postal, Paul. 1991. "Realism Vs. Conceptualism in Linguistics." Linguistics and Philosophy no. 14:515-554.

27. Küng, Guido. 1967. Ontology and the Logistic Analysis of Language. An Enquiry into the Contemporary Views on Universals. Doridrecht: Reidel.

Revised edition (Original edition: Ontologie und logistische Analyse der Sprache Eine Untersuchung zur zeitgenössischen Universaliendiskussion - Wien, Springer-Verlag, 1963).

Contents: 0. Introduction 1; Part One: The logistic analysis of language and the relation of representation. 1. A philosophical revolution 23; 2. From the theory of knowledge to the logical analysis of language 30; 3. From the psychological concept to the graphical sign 38; 4. The relation of representation 51; Part Two: The relation of representation of predicate signs and contemporary views on universals. 5. Bertrand Russell 66; 6. Ludwig Wittgenstein 80; 7. Rudolf Carnap 86; 8. Stanislaw Lesniewski 102; 8. W. V. Quine and N. Goodman 127; 10. The interpretations of predicate signs 161; 11. Conclusion 180; Bibliography 188; Index of names 201; Index of subjects.

"It is the aim of the present study to introduce the reader to the ways of thinking of those contemporary philosophers who apply the tools of symbolic logic to classical philosophical problems. Unlike the "continental" reader for whom this work was originally written, the English-speaking reader will be more familiar with most of the philosophers discussed in this book, and he will in general not be tempted to dismiss them indiscriminately as 'positivists and 'nominalists'. But the English version of this study may help to redress the balance in another respect. In view of the present emphasis on ordinary language and the widespread tendency to leave the mathematical logicians alone with their technicalities, it seems not without merit to revive the interest in formal ontology and the construction of formal systems.

A closer look at the historical account which will be given here, may convince the reader that there are several points in the historical development whose consequences have not yet been fully assessed: I mention, e.g., the shift from the traditional three-level semantics of sense and denotation to the contemporary two-level semantics of representation; the relation of extensional structure and intensional content in the extensional systems of Wittgenstein and Carnap; the confusing changes in labelling the different kinds of analytic and apriori true sentences; etc. Among the philosophically interesting tools of symbolic logic Lesniewski's calculus of names deserves special attention. Despite the pioneering efforts of Professor C. Lejewski, philosophers still have not caught on to it so far." (from the Preface).

28. Landesman, Charles, ed. 1971. The Problem of Universals. New York: Basic books.

Contents: On the relations of universals and particulars, by B. Russell; Universals and resemblances, by H. H. Price; On concept and object, by G. Frege; Frege's hidden nominalism, by G. Bergmann; Universals, by F. P. Ramsey; Universals and metaphysical realism, by A. Donagan; Universals and family resemblances, by R. Bambrough; Particular and general, by P. F. Strawson; The nature of universals and propositions, by G. F. Stout; Are characteristics of particular things universal or particular? by G. E. Moore and G. F. Stout; The relation of resemblance, by P. Butchvarov; Qualities, by N. Wolterstroff; On what there is, by W. V. Quine; Empiricism, semantics, and ontology, by R. Carnap; The languages of realism and nominalism, by R. B. Brandt; Grammar and existence: a preface to ontology, by W. Sellars; A world of individuals, by N. Goodman; Bibliographical notes pp. 307-308.

29. Landini, Gregory, and Foster, Thomas. 1991. "The Persistence of Counterexample: Re-Examining the Debate over Leibniz Law." Noûs no. 25:43-61.

30. Largeault, Jean. 1971. Enquête Sur Le Nominalisme. Louvain: Éditions Nauwelaerts.

31. Lewis, David. 1986. "Against Structural Universals." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 64 (1):25-46.

32. ———. 1986. "Comment on Armstrong and Forrest." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 64 (1):92-93.

33. Linsky, Bernard, and Zalta, Edward. 1995. "Naturalized Platonism Versus Platonized Naturalism." The Journal of Philosophy no. 92 (10):525-555.

34. Loux, Michael J., ed. 1970. Universals and Particulars. Readings in Ontology. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press.

Second revised edition 1976.

"Few philosophical issues have proved as persistent as the problem of universals. In virtually every period in the history of philosophy the existence of universals has been a central focus of philosophical concern; and like any recurrent issue, the problem has received different interpretations in different historical contexts. It is, nonetheless, possible to abstract a common theme from the variety of interpretations; for whatever else has been at issue, the concept of a multiply exemplifiable object has always been pivotal in the debate over universals. One party to the dispute (the Platonist or metaphysical realist) contends that our ordinary notions of property, action, relation, and kind all presuppose an ontology of multiply exemplifiable objects. Different objects, realists have claimed, can possess one and the same property; different persons can perform one and the same action; different things can belong to one and the same kind; and different n-tuples (i.e., pairs, triples, etc.) of objects can enter into one and the same relation. According to the realist, their jointly possessing, performing, belonging to, and entering into are all cases of multiple exemplification; and what they jointly possess, perform, belong to, or enter into is a universal.

Nominalists, on the other hand, have denied the possibility of multiple exemplification and with it the reality of universals. Some have agreed that objects can and do possess properties, enter into relations, and perform actions, but have contended that it is impossible for different objects to possess numerically one property, for different persons to perform numerically one action, and for different n-tuples of objects to enter into numerically one relation; whereas, other nominalists have refused to attribute any ontological status whatever to properties, actions, kinds, and relations." pp. 3-4

Contents: UNIVERSALS. The existence of universals by Michael J. Loux 3; The world of universals by Bertrand Russell 25; On what there is by W. V. O. Quine 33; Universals by D. F. Pears 44; Particular and general by P. F. Strawson 59; Qualities by Nicholas Wolterstorff 87; Universals and family resemblances by Renford Bambrough 106; Universals and metaphysical realism by Alan Donagan 125; Abstract entitites by Wilfrid Sellars 156; On the nature of universals by Nicholas Wolterstorff 206; PARTICULARS. Particulars and their individuation by Michael J. Loux 235; The identity of indiscernibles by Max Balck 250; The identity of indiscernibles by A. J. Ayer 263; The identity of indiscernibles by D. J. O'Connor 271; Bare particulars by Edwin B. Allaire 281; Particulars re-clothed by V. C. Chappell 291; Another look at bare particulars by Edwin B. Allaire 296; Do relations individuate? by J. W. Melland 304; Particulars and their qualities by D. C. Long 310; Essence and accident by Irving Copi 331; Essence and accident by Hugh S. Chandler 347; World and essence by Alvin Plantinga 353; Bibliography 387-396.

35. MacBride, Fraser. 2004. "Whence the Particular-Unversal Distinction?" Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 67:181-194.

36. Marsonet, Michele. 2002. The Problem of Realism. Aldershot: Ashgate.

37. Maurin, Anna-Sofia. 2002. If Tropes. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

38. Mellor, D.H. 1992. "There Are No Conjunctive Universals." Analysis no. 52:97-103.

"In short, just calling particulars and universals 'parts' of facts will not distinguish them even from functions like conjunctions, negation and disjunction, let alone from each other. Nor will it tell us whether there are conjunctive universals. For the answer to that question will now depend on whether the specifically universal type of parts of facts includes non-ultimate parts. If it does, there will be conjunctive universals; if not, not. So to say that there are such universals, just because parts are generally taken to include non-ultimate parts, would simply beg the question. Moreover this answer to it will now give advocates of conjunctive universals far more than they want. (...)

I conclude that none of Oliver's models of how particulars and universals constitute facts will tell us whether, and if so why, there are conjunctive universals." p. 99

39. Mellor, D.H., and Oliver, Alex, eds. 1997. Properties. New York: Oxford University Press.

Contents: Introduction by D. H. Mellor and Alex Oliver 1; I. Function and concept by Gottlob Frege 34; II. The world of Universals by Bertrand Russell 45; III. On our knowledge of Universals by Bertrand Russell 51; IV. Universals by F. P. Ramsey 57; V. On what there is by W. V. Quine 74; VI. Statement about Universals by Frank Jackson 89; VII. 'Ostrich Nominalism' or 'Mirage Realism'? by Michael Devitt 93; VIII. Against 'Ostrich' Nominalism: a reply to Michael Devitt by D. M. Armstrong 101; IX: On the elements of Being: I by Donald C. Williams 112; X. The metaphysics of abstract particulars 125; XI. Tropes by Chris Daly 140; XII. Properties by D. M. Armstrong 160; XIII. Modal realism at work: properties 173; XIV. New work for a theory of Universals by David Lewis 188; XV. Causality and properties by Sydney Shoemaker 228; XVI. Properties and predicates by D. H. Mellor 255; Notes on Contributors 268; Select bibliography 270; Index of Names 275-276.

"Particular objects have properties, respects in which they may be alike or differ. People running are alike in motion, if not in shape or size, and differ in that respect from people standing still; spheres are alike in shape,

not in size or motion, and differ in that respect from cubes; and so on. Similarly with relations. Take Don and his son Bill, and Kim and her daughter Ann. Don's parent -- child relation to Bill holds also between Kim and Ann. In this respect these so-called ordered pairs-written (Don,Bill) (Kim,Ann) -- are like all other parent-child pairs, and differ from any other pair, like (Don, Ann) or the child-parent pair (Bill,Don), whose first member is not a parent of the second.

Similarly with relations of three or more particulars. These are respects which ordered triples, quadruples etc. (n-tuples in general) may be alike or differ. Suppose Don is older than Kim, who is older than Bill, who is older than Ann. Then (Don,Kim,Bill) and (Ann,Bill,Don) are alike in that the middle member of each triple is between the other two in age -- if not perhaps in height or weight -- and differ in this respect from triples, like (Don,Bill,Kim), whose members are not ordered by age. Describing relations in this way, as properties of n-tuples of particulars, if of course

course artificial, but the artifice has a point. The point is to remind us that properties and relations raise similar questions, about what it is for particulars and groups of particulars to differ or to be alike, questions that are best tackled together. And the answers to these questions matter both themselves and in their implications, e.g. for change: since to change in some respect is just to differ in that respect at different times. Thus a

particular that differs in colour but not in shape at different times thereby changes its colour but not its shape, just as Bill's outgrowing his father is (Don,Bill) changing by ceasing to be an instance of the taller than relation. In what follows, we shall usually work with properties for ease of presentation. When what we say about properties does not apply to relations we shall say so and when there is something distinctive to be said about relations we shall say it.

The most important questions about the kinds of sameness, difference and change that properties embody concern their reality and objectivity. Do particulars change or stay the same, resemble or differ from each other, independently of how we think of or describe them? That is, do properties exist in their own right-and if so which?

But if these are the important questions about properties, they can hardly be our first ones. For just as we cannot know that unicorns do not exist (but that if they did they would do so independently of our thinking so) without knowing what unicorns are, so we cannot know whether and which properties exist without knowing what properties are. So our first question is this: what sort of entities are properties like running and relations like being taller than?

This question involves at least two comparisons. First, how do properties relate to the predicates that apply to the particulars (and n-tuples of particulars) which have those properties: how are running and being taller than related to what `runs' and `is taller than' mean? And second, how do properties differ from and relate to the particulars that have them?

These questions would be hard enough to answer if everyone agreed on the meanings of predicates, on what fixes their meanings and on the nature of the particulars they apply to. But these too are contentious matters, a fact which complicates our questions by making answers to them parts of semantic and metaphysical package deals, which need to be assessed en bloc. This fact, and the long history of the subject, also makes different writers use different terms for what we are calling `properties', `predicates' and 'particulars'-and also use these terms to mean different things. So to help readers understand the readings that follow and relate them to each other, we shall note in passing some of these other uses." (from the Introduction).

40. Moreland, James Porter. 1985. Universals, Qualities, and Quality-Instances: A Defense of Realism. Lanham: University Press of America.

41. ———. 1991. "How to Be a Nominalist in Realist Clothing." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 39:75-101.

42. ———. 2001. Universals. Montréal: McGill-Queen's University Press.

Contents: Preface and acknowledgements VII; 1. The problem(s) of universals 1; 2. Extreme nominalism and properties 23; 3. Moderate nominalism ands properties 50; 4. Minimalist realism: Wolterstorff's kinds and Armstrong's properties 74; 5. Traditional realism: properties are abstract objects 97; 6. Traditional realism: issues and objections 114; 7. The individuation of particulars 140; Notes 158; Bibliography 170; Index 181.

"This book is a study in analytic ontology with a focus on issues and options at the core of the problem of universals. The problem of universals is actually a cluster of related issues central to debates among extreme nominalists, moderate nominalists and advocates of various forms of realism about the ontological status of properties. The book is intended to be an introduction to the topic and I have aimed the level of exposition at upper level undergraduates, graduate students and professional philosophers, and I believe the book should be of value to all three groups. Given the intended audience, the book is an introduction, not in the sense of being aimed at beginning students in philosophy, but in the sense of seeking to focus on the most important issues central to the subject matter. Because of this focus and space limitations, I have of necessity refrained from addressing certain topics in the study of universals that have been prominent in the past ten years, specifically: the relationship between higher and lower order universals; the relationship between universals and causation, laws of nature and scientific explanation; the use of moderate (especially trope) nominalism to do work in various areas of philosophy. As interesting as these topics may be, those who study them bring to their reflections positions on the more fundamental topics about universals. And, often, philosophers who discuss these current issues seem unfamiliar with or inadequately appraised of important distinctions and arguments at the core of those more fundamental topics. For these reasons, I have chosen to focus in this book on those subjects that have been of perennial importance to the study of universals. There is a gap in the recent literature in these areas on which I focus, and I have tried to make a contribution to filling that gap." (from the Preface).

43. Newman, Andrew. 1992. The Physical Basis of Predication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

44. Oliver, Alex. 1992. "Could There Be Conjunctive Universals?" Analysis no. 52:88-103.

"Recently D. H. Mellor (1) has revived an argument of Ramsey's against the existence of complex universals. Although he believes in simple universals, Mellor argues that negative, disjunctive and conjunctive universals do not exist. I will show that his argument rests on a contentious identity criterion for facts. Despite the recent renewal of interest in a metaphysics of facts, conspicuously little has been said about the relationship between a fact and its constituents. I sketch three models of this relationship, only one of which sanctions the identity criterion. It turns out that this model does not fit Mellor's interpretation of Ramsey's theory of facts. I conclude by showing that Ramsey's argument does nothing to rule out one kind of conjunctive universal." p. 88

(1) D. H. Mellor, Properties and predicates, in his Matters of metaphysics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991 pp. 170-182.

45. Quinton, Anthony. 1973. The Nature of Things. London: Routldge & Kegan Paul.

46. Rodriguez-Pereyra, Gonzalo. 2000. "What Is the Problem of Universals?" Mind no. 109:255-273.

"In this article I address the Problem of Universals by answering questions about what facts a solution to the Problem of Universals should explain and how the explanation should go. I argue that a solution to the Problem of Universals explains the facts the Problem of Universals is about by giving the truthmakers (as opposed to the conceptual content and the ontological commitments) of the sentences stating those facts. I argue that the sentences stating the relevant facts are those like "a has the property F", that is, sentences stating that a particular has a certain properly. Finally I show how answering these questions in this way transforms the Problem of Universals, traditionally conceived as the One over Many, that is, the problem of explaining how different particulars can have the same properties, into the Many over One, that is, the problem of explaining how the same particular can have different properties. The Problem of Universals is the problem of the Many over One."

47. ———. 2002. Resemblance Nominalism. A Solution to the Problem of Universals. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

48. ———. 2002. "The Problem of Universals and the Limits of Conceptual Analysis." Philosophical Papers no. 31:39-47.

49. Stegmüller, Wolfgang. 1977. "The Problem of Universals Then and Now." In Collected Papers on Epistemology, Philosophy of Science and History of Philosophy. Vol. I, 1-65. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Original German: Das Universalienproblem eisnt und jetzt in: Archiv für Philosophie, 6 (1956) pp. 192-225 and 7 (1957) pp. 45-81.

50. ———. 1978. Das Universalien-Problem. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

51. Strawson, Peter Frederick, and Chakrabarti, Arindam, eds. 2006. Universals, Concepts and Qualities. New Essays on the Meaning of Predicates. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Contents: Introduction byArindam Chakrabarti; Strawson on universals byPranab Kumar Sen; Reply to Pranab Sen by P.F. Strawson; Universals and other generalities by Jonardon Ganeri; Predicates and properties: an examination of P.K. Sens' theory of universals by Fraser McBride; Buddhist nominalism and desert ornithology by Mark Siderits; Universals transformed: the first thousand years after Plato by Richard Sorabji; Conceptualism by Chris Swoyer; The concept horse by Harold W. Noonan; Universals and particulars: Ramsey's scepticism by Bob Hale; How not to trivialize the identity of indiscernibles by Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra; Universals and the defence of ante rem realism by George Bealer; Particulars have their properties of necessity by David Armstrong; Properties in abundance by Wolfgang Künne; A category of particulars by P.F. Strawson; On perceiving properties byArindam Chakrabarti; Index.

52. Teichmann, Roger. 1992. Abstract Entities. New York: St. Martin's Press.

53. Urbani Ulivi, Lucia, ed. 1981. Gli Universali E La Formazione Dei Concetti. Milano: Edizioni di Comunità.

54. Williams, Donald. 1986. "Universals and Existents." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 64 (1):14.

"The somewhat dusty problem on which I engage us here is about as inclusive and 'ontological' as any, and I would introduce it by developing some implication of the remark that our philosophical object, the world, and each part of it, is (naturally enough) a totality of what is. The italicized phrase at once brings to the pedagogic mind certain further catchwords which point up the contrast between what a thing is and that it is. The 'what' here however has itself stood for two meanings. By 'what it is' we may mean it, the thing, the particular case it is, the individual subject, denoted by an` ordinary proper name, so that what exists when Socrates exists is Socrates; but we may mean again its nature, the kind it is, the character generally said to be connoted by a common noun or conveyed by descriptive adjectives and denoted by an abstract noun, so that to answer what exists when Socrates exists is to say that it is a man, is wise, is snubnosed, and so forth, or even that the 'what' of it is Humanity, Wisdom, Snubnosedness, etc. The dichotomy here is sometimes signalized by distinguishing within the import of the present 'what', considered in contrast with the 'that', a narrower sense of 'what' which we pedagogues sometimes express by '(the) such', viz., the kind or character, in contrast with '(the) this', viz., the case or instance. The, problem of universals, which is the clearer and easier of the problems associated with the opposition of 'essence and existence', is that of the real distinction and connection of the two referents of our more inclusive 'what', the such and this, and especially the assessment of the view that these involve an entity of one category, an abstract universal, which inheres in or qualifies an entity of another category, a concrete particular."

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article by the late Professor Donald C. Williams (1899-1983) dates from about 1959.

55. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 1970. On Universals. An Essay in Ontology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

56. Zalabardo, José. 1996. "Predicates, Properties and the Goal of a Theory of Reference." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 51:121-161.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Index of the section "Ontologists of the 19th and 20th centuries"

Ontologists in chronological order

Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848) Contributions to Logic and Ontology Critical judgments, excerpts from his works, bibliography of critical studies

Franz Brentano (1838-1917) Ontology and His Immanent Realism. Annotated bibliography of his works, of the English translations and of the most relevant critical studies

Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) BIbliography oF His Theory of Categories

Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) Ontology: Being, Existence, and Truth Excerpts from texts, studies and bibliography on his conceptions of being, existence and truth

Alexius Meinong (1853-1920) Theory of Objects Bibliography of his works (original edition and English translations) and of the most relevant critical studies

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) Formal Ontology and Transcendental Logic Editions of the works in German and English, bibliography on formal ontology

Selected bibliography on Husserl's Logic and Ontology:

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)

Kazimierz Twardowski (1866-1938) The Content and Object of Presentations Bibliography of his works and of the most relevant critical studies

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) His Ontological Development Bibliography of studies on his ontological development

Nicolai Hartmann (1882-1950) Levels of Reality and Ontology) Bibliography of his works and of the most relevant critical studies

Adolf Reinach (1883-1917) States of Affairs (Sachverhalt) and Negative Judgments Bibliography of the works and translations; selection of the most relevant critical studies

Stanislaw Lesniewski (1886-1939) Logical Systems: Protothetic, Ontology, Mereology Bibliography of his works and of the most relevant critical studies

Tadeusz Kotarbinski (1886-1981) From Reism to Pansomatism Bibliography of his works and of the most relevant critical studies

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) The Ontology of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Bibliography and critical judgments about the ontology of the Tractatus

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works) List of the works in the German edition

Truth (Alethéia) as Unconcealment His conception of Truth as Unconcealment in the Greek thought

The History of Metaphysics as Ontotheology The history of Metaphysics view under the paradigm of Ontotheology

Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970)

Roman Ingarden (1893-1970) The Realism / Idealism Debate Bibliography of the works in German and of the translations; selection of the most relevant critical studies

Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000)

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972)

Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989)

Gustav Bergmann (1906-1987) Ontological Realism Selected bibliography with abstracts

Nelson Goodman (1906-1998)

Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000)

Arthur Norman Prior (1914-1969)

Annotated bibliography of the works by Justus Buchler (1914-1991)

Roman Suszko (1919-1979) The non-Fregean Logics Selected bibliography with abstracts (only the publications in English)

Mario Bunge (1919-2020). Selected bibliography

Fred Sommers (1923-2004) on the Logic of Natural Language

Hector-Neri Castañeda (1924-1991)

Selected bibliography of (David Malet) Armstrong (1926-2014)

Bogusław Wolniewicz on the Formal Ontology of Situations (1927) Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Warsaw University

Reinhardt Grossmann (1931-2010) The Ontology of Categories

The Ontological Realism of Panayot Butchvarov (1933) Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Iowa

The Conceptual Realism of Nino Cocchiarella (1933) Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Indiana University

Richard Sylvan [born Richard Routley] (1935-1996) Nonexistent Objects Selected bibliography with abstracts

Selected bibliography of George Englebretsen Professor Emeritus at Bishop's University, Canada

Jon Barwise (1942-2000)

Jerzy Perzanowski (1943-2009) Modal Logics, Ontology and Ontologics Complete bibliography of the works in English with abstracts

Kit Fine (1946) and the Ontology of Modal Actualism, Silver Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics, New York University

Liliana Albertazzi (1947): Ontology and Psychology (1947) Principal Investigator at the University of Trento Centre for the Mind and Brain (CIMeC)

Brian Cantwell Smith On the Origins of Objects Professor of information, computer science, and philosophy at University of Toronto

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Table of Ontologists

Ontologists

Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848) Contributions to Logic and Ontology Critical judgments, excerpts from his works, bibliography of critical studies

Franz Brentano (1838-1917) Ontology and His Immanent Realism. Annotated bibliography of his works, of the English translations and of the most relevant critical studies

Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) Ontology and Semiotics. The Theory of Categories Bibliography of his writings and about his conception of semiotics and the theory of categories

Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) Ontology: Being, Existence, and Truth Excerpts from texts, studies and bibliography on his conceptions of being, existence and truth

Alexius Meinong (1853-1920) Theory of Objects Bibliography of his works (original edition and English translations) and of the most relevant critical studies

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) Formal Ontology and Transcendental Logic Editions of the works in German and English, bibliography on formal ontology

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)

Kazimierz Twardowski (1866-1938) The Content and Object of Presentations Bibliography of his works and of the most relevant critical studies

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) His Ontological Development Bibliography of studies on his ontological development

Nicolai Hartmann (1882-1950) Levels of Reality and Ontology) Bibliography of his works and of the most relevant critical studies

Adolf Reinach (1883-1917) States of Affairs (Sachverhalt) and Negative Judgments Bibliography of the works and translations; selection of the most relevant critical studies

Stanislaw Lesniewski (1886-1939) Logical Systems: Protothetic, Ontology, Mereology Bibliography of his works and of the most relevant critical studies

Tadeusz Kotarbinski (1886-1981) From Reism to Pansomatism Bibliography of his works and of the most relevant critical studies

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) The Ontology of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Bibliography and critical judgments about the ontology of the Tractatus

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works) List of the works in the German edition

Truth (Alethéia) as Unconcealment His conception of Truth as Unconcealment in the Greek thought

The History of Metaphysics as Ontotheology The history of Metaphysics view under the paradigm of Ontotheology

Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970)

Roman Ingarden (1893-1970) The Realism / Idealism Debate Bibliography of the works in German and of the translations; selection of the most relevant critical studies

Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000)

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972)

Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989)

Gustav Bergmann (1906-1987) Ontological Realism Selected bibliography with abstracts

Nelson Goodman (1906-1998)

Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000)

Arthur Norman Prior (1914-1969)

Justus Buchler (1914-1991) The Metaphysics of Natural Complexes Selected bibliography

Roman Suszko (1919-1979) The non-Fregean Logics Selected bibliography with abstracts (only the publications in English)

Mario Bunge (1919-2020) Selected bibliography on the Scientific Philosophy of Mario Bunge Bibliography of his works and of the most relevant critical studies

Fred Sommers (1923-2004) on the Logic of Natural Language

Hector-Neri Castañeda (1924-1991)

The Moderate Realism of D. M. (David Malet) Armstrong (1926-2014)

Bogusław Wolniewicz (1927-2017) on the Formal Ontology of Situations

Reinhardt Grossmann (1931-2010) The Ontology of Categories

The Ontological Realism of Panayot Butchvarov (1933) Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Iowa

The Conceptual Realism of Nino Cocchiarella (1933) Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Indiana University

Richard Sylvan [born Richard Routley] (1935-1996) Nonexistent Objects Selected bibliography with abstracts

George Englebretsen's Contribution to the Rediscovery of Traditional Formal Logic Professor Emeritus at Bishop's University, Canada

Jon Barwise (1942-2000)

Jerzy Perzanowski (1943-2009) Modal Logics, Ontology and Ontologics Complete bibliography of the works in English with abstracts

Kit Fine (1946) and the Ontology of Modal Actualism. Annotated bibliography. Silver Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics, New York University

Liliana Albertazzi (1947): Ontology and Psychology Principal Investigator at the University of Trento Centre for the Mind and Brain (CIMeC)

Brian Cantwell Smith On the Origins of Objects Reid Hoffman Professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Human at University of Toronto

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The Philosophy of Bernard Bolzano: Logic and Ontology

Some appreciations of Bolzano's philosophy

"Bernhard Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre, published in 1837, a work which in its treatment of the logical 'theory of elements' far surpasses anything that world-literature has to offer in the way of a systematic sketch of logic. Bolzano did not, of course, expressly discuss or support any independent demarcation of pure logic in our sense, but he provided one de facto in the first two volumes of his work, in his discussions of what underlay a Wissenschaftslehre or theory of science in the sense of his conception; he did so with such purity and scientific strictness, and with such a rich store of original, scientifically confirmed and fruitful thoughts, that we must count him as one of the greatest logicians of all time.

He must be placed historically in fairly close proximity to Leibniz, with whom he shares important thoughts and fundamental conceptions, and to whom he is also philosophically akin in other respects." (Chapter Ten, Appendix: References to F. A. Lange and B. Bolzano, § 61, p. 142)

From: Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. I, Prolegomena to a Pure Logic [1900], London and New York: Routledge 1970.

"While the idealists were removing every trace of objectivity from Kant's semantics, there was in a corner of the Austro-Hungarian empire, ignored by the leaders of German philosophy, a Czech priest by the name of Bernard Bolzano, who was engaged in the most far-reaching and successful effort to date to take semantics out of the swamp into which it had been sinking since the days of Descartes. Bolzano was the first to recognize that transcendental philosophy and its idealistic sequel were a reductio ad absurdum of the semantics of modem philosophy. He was also the first to see that the proper prolegomena to any future metaphysics was a study not of transcendental considerations but of what we say and its laws and that consequently the prima philosophia was not metaphysics or ontology but semantics. The development of these ideas in his monumental Wissenschaftslehre and in a variety of other writings established Bolzano as the founder of the semantic tradition. Bolzano's philosophy was the kind that takes from and then gives life to science. His approach to semantics was developed in dialectical interplay with the decision to solve certain problems concerning the nature of mathematical knowledge. Kant had not even seen these problems; Bolzano solved them. And his solutions were made possible by, and were the source of, a new approach to the content and character of a priori knowledge." (p. 23)

From: J. Alberto Coffa, The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap. To the Vienna Station, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991.

"Bernard Bolzano was a lone forerunner both of analytical philosophy and phenomenology.

Born in Prague in the year when Kant's first Critique appeared, he became one of the most acute critics both of Kant and of German Idealism. He died in Prague in the same year in which Frege was born; Frege is philosophically closer to him than any other thinker of the nineteenth or twentieth century.

Bolzano was the only outstanding proponent of utilitarianism among German-speaking philosophers, and was a creative mathematician whose name is duly remembered in the annals of this discipline. His Wissenschaftslehre (Theory of Science) of 1837 makes him the greatest logician in the period between Leibniz and Frege.

The book was sadly neglected by Bolzano's contemporaries, but rediscovered by Brentano pupils: its ontology of propositions and ideas provided Husserl with much of his ammunition in his fight against psychologism and in support of phenomenology, and through Twardowski it also had an impact on the development of logical semantics in the Lwow-Warsaw School." (p. 823)

From: Wolfgang Künne, "Bolzano, Bernard" in: Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. II p. 823-827, New York: Routledge 1998.

An overview of Bolzano's philosophy

"It is as logician, methodologist, and epistemologist that Bolzano, after a long period of neglect, regained philosophical attention in the twentieth century. Mainly in order to combat radical skepticism, he found it necessary to base his teachings in these fields on certain ontological conceptions. He was convinced that there exist truths-inthemselves (Wahrheiten an sich) prior to and independent of language and man. These truths he carefully distinguished from truths expressed in words and conceived truths. The set of truths-in-themselves is a subset of the set of propositions (in-themselves) (Sätze an sich), again to be distinguished from propositions expressed in words and conceived propositions. Propositions consist of terms (ideas-in-themselves, Vorstellungen an sich).

These are likewise to be distinguished, on the one hand, from the words or word sequences by which they are denoted and, on the other, from subjective ideas that occur in our mind. Although linguistic entities and conceived entities exist concretely, terms, propositions, and truths do not. Terms were equally carefully distinguished from their objects, whether or not these objects themselves existed concretely. Though Bolzano was a Platonist (in the modern sense), his ontology was rather remote from that of Plato or, for that matter, from that of Immanuel Kant, in spite of the common an sich terminology.

Beyond these negative determinations, Bolzano had little positive to say on the ontological status of terms and propositions except that they are the matter (Stoff) or sense (Sinn) of their correlates in language and thought.

Terms can be either simple or complex and either empty (gegenstandslos) or nonempty (gegenständlich); if nonempty, they are either singular or general. Examples of empty terms are –1, 0, Nothing, Round Square, Green Virtue, and Golden Mountain; absolutely simple terms are Not, Some, Have, Be, and Ought, but Bolzano was uncertain about others. Simple, singular terms he called intuitions (Anschauungen).

Propositions are composed of terms and are perhaps best regarded as ordered sequences of terms, while the content (Inhalt) of a proposition is the (unordered) set of the simple terms out of which the terms constituting the proposition are composed. The content of a complex term is similarly defined. The terms 3^5 and 5^3 are different, though they have the same content. The terms 2^4 and 4^2 are different, though they have not only the same content but even the same object. With this conception of content, the traditional doctrine of the reciprocity between the extension of a term (the set of objects falling under it) and the content of a term can easily be seen to be invalid.

Among Bolzano’s many idiosyncratic convictions, perhaps the most interesting, but also the most strange to the modern mind, was his belief that each branch of science has a unique, strictly scientific presentation, which for him meant not only a unique finite axiom system (a belief he shared with many) but also an essentially unique entailment (Abfolge) of each theorem of this science by the axioms, a belief which might well be unique to Bolzano.

This relationship of entailment, as presented by Bolzano, is very peculiar and obscure. Bolzano was never quite sure that he understood it himself, though he was convinced that there objectively must exist some such relationship, that each science must have its basic truths (Grundwahrheiten) to which all other truths of that science stand in the peculiar relation of consequence (Folge) to ground (Grund). Bolzano was constantly struggling to differentiate this relation of entailment from the relation of derivability (Ableitbarkeit), which was the basic relation of his logic. Though he did not succeed in putting his theory of entailment into consistent and fruitful shape,- and could not possibly have done so, in view of the chimerical character of his goal,- his acumen, mastery of the contemporary logical and methodological literature, intellectual honesty, and lifelong self-criticism more than made up for his numerous shortcomings. Bolzano remains a towering figure in the epistemology, logic, and methodology of the first half of the nineteenth century." (p. 647)

From: Yeoshua Bar-Hillel, Bolzano, Bernard, in: Paul Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York: Macmillan 1967, vol. 2, pp. 337-338; Second edition: Donald M. Borchert (ed.), New York: Thomson Gale 2006, vol. 1, pp. 646-648.

"Bolzano's philosophy is notable for its clarity and for his reliance on logical argument. This, his monadological metaphysics and his many-sidedness helped to earn him his sobriquet of 'the Bohemian Leibniz'. Bolzano's stalking horse was Kant, whom he respected as an important philosopher but with whom he disagreed on many fundamental matters. A follower, Franz Prihonsky, collected his critical discussions of Kant into a volume entitled Neue Anti-Kant. So Neurath's epithet about Austrian philosophy being spared Kant is wrong: Bolzano took Kant very seriously, but disagreed with him.

The most characteristic doctrine of Bolzano's philosophy is his semantic Platonism, which anticipates that of Frege. Bolzano distinguished mental judgements and linguistic sentences (Sätze) from what he called Sätze an sich, which I shall call 'propositions'. Likewise he distinguished mental ideas (Vorstellungen) and linguistic names from Vorstellungen an sich, which I shall call 'concepts'. The an sich entities, propositions and concepts, are abstract and timeless: they are the meanings of linguistic expressions and the contents of significative mental acts. Bolzano had an argument against scepticism which he thought proved the existence of true propositions. Suppose there were no truths. Then the proposition that there are no truths would be a truth, so by reductio there is at least one truth. Since any proposition p is distinct from (though equivalent to) the proposition that it is true that p, it follows for Bolzano that there are infinitely many truths, and these are all abstract propositions (in themselves). Some years later Dedekind produced a similar (and similarly flawed) argument to try and show the existence of an infinite set. It is important that for Bolzano false propositions have the same ontological status as true ones, and objectless concepts have the same status as concepts under which objects fall.

This Third Realm of the in-itself is brilliantly wielded by Bolzano to define and explain truth and falsity, logical truth and logical falsity, logical consequence, compatibility, derivability, analyticity, logical analyticity, probability, degrees of derivability and probabilistic inference. His definition of logical consequence differs little from that of Tarski, which it anticipated by about a century, and his theory of logical truth anticipates that of Quine. In logic it seems to have been Bolzano's fate to have invented wheels that others more famously reinvented after him. Had his views been widely known and available in readable texts in or shortly after his lifetime, I estimate that the advance of logic would have been accelerated by at least thirty, perhaps even fifty years. Where he falls short of Frege is that he does not have the concept of a formal system, where axioms are laid down and theorems follow by precisely defined syntactic rules of inference. Bolzano on the other hand prefers to work throughout with semantic concepts. The most important of these is the idea of variation. If we take a proposition and consider some logical part of it, whether a concept or another proposition, then we can consider what happens when we allow this part to vary and consider the range of its possible variants. For example if we take the proposition John loves Mary then we could replace John by Fred, Harry, Elisabeth etc., usually providing only that the name replacing John always denotes, and consider various properties of the class of variants so obtained. It is amazing how many different logico-semantic concepts Bolzano can define using this one idea. In one respect though he remains old-fashioned and Leibnizian, namely in his affection for the subject,- predicate form of propositions. The basic form of proposition for Bolzano is A has b, where A is the subject-concept and b is an abstract name for a predicate-concept, e.g., instead of This is red he would say This has redness. He even thought that every proposition could be tortured into this form. Our recent relational example would be John has love for Mary. Two philosophically interesting concepts are truth and existence. For It is true that it rains in Spain Bolzano has The proposition that it rains in Spain has truth and for Tigers exist he has The concept of tiger has objectuality, meaning that at least one thing falls under it. The latter analysis will evoke memories of Kant and Frege: like them Bolzano considers existence a second-level concept. Even non-existence has subject,- predicate form: There are no unicorns becomes The concept of unicorn has objectlessness.

Metaphysically Bolzano was an atomist and monadist, his monads, unlike those of Leibniz, having a physical location. Taking the idea of atoms as physical points seriously led him into an odd theory of contact. At a point on its surface a physical body may have an atom (and so be closed there) or lack an atom (or be open there). Consider now two non-overlapping bodies in contact at a certain point. If they were both open there they would fail to be in contact there, since there would be a spatial point between them that neither occupies. If they were both closed there they could not be in contact without sharing a point, in which case they would overlap. Hence contact can only take place where one body is open and the other is closed. Bolzano's chief metaphysical work was Athanasia, or Reasons for the Immortality of the Soul. Here he took the standard view that the soul is a monad and hence indestructible. The book contains an ontology of substance and accidents, which he calls adherences." (pp. 112-114)

From: Peter Simons, "Bolzano, Brentano and Meinong: Three Austrian Realists", in: Anthony O'Hear (ed.), German Philosophy Since Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999, pp. 109-136.

"[Bolzano] composed his two main works from 1823 though 1841: the Wissenschaftslehre (4 vols., 1837) and the posthumous Grössenlehre.

(...)

Bolzano recognized a profound distinction between the actual thoughts and judgments (Urteile) of human beings, their linguistic expressions, and the abstract propositions (Sätze an sich) and their parts which exist independently of those thoughts, judgments, and expressions. A propostion in Bolzano's sense is a preexistent sequence of ideas-as-such (Vorstellungen an sich).

Only propositions containing finite ideas-as-such are accessible to the mind. Real thins existing concretely in space and time have subsistence (Dasein) whereas abstract objects such as propositions have only logical existence. Adherences, i.e., forces, applied to certain concrete substances give rise to subjective ideas, thoughts, or judgments. A subjective idea is a part of a judgment that is not itself a judgment. The set of judgments is ordered by a causal relation.

Bolzano's abstract world is constituted of sets, ideas-as-such, certain properties (Beschaffenheiten), and objects constructed from these. Thus, sentence shapes are a kind of ideas-as-such, and certain complexes of ideas-as-such constitute propositions. Ideas-as-such can be generated from expressions of a language by postulates for the relation of being an object of something. Analogously, properties can be generated by postulates for the relation of something being applied to an object.

(...)

In the Grössenlehre Bolzano intended to give a detailed, well-founded exposition of contemporary mathematics and also to inaugurate new domains of research. Natural numbers are defined, half a century before Frege, as properties of "bijective" sets (the members of which can be put in one-to-one correspondence), and real numbers are conceived as properties of sets of certain infinite sequences of rational numbers. The analysis of infinite sets brought him to reject the Eudidean doctrine that the whole is always greater than any of its parts and, hence, to the insight that a set is infinite if and only if it is bijective to a proper subset of itself. This anticipates Peirce and Dedekind. Bolzano's extension of the linear continuum of finite numbers by infinitesimals implies a relatively constructive approach to nonstandard analysis. In the development of standard analysis the most remarkable result of the Grössenlehre is the anticipation of Weirstrass's discovery that there exist nowhere differentiable continuous functions.

The Wissenschaftslehre was intended to lay the logical and epistemological foundations of Bolzano's mathematics. A theory of science in Bolzano's sense is a collection of rules for delimiting the set of scientific textbooks. Whether a class of true propositions is a worthwhile object of representation in a scientific textbook is an ethical question decidable on utilitarian principles.

Bolzano proceeded from an expanded and standardized ordinary language through which he could describe propositions and their parts. He defined the semantic notion of truth and introduced the function corresponding to a "replacement" operation on propositions. One of his major achievements was his definition of logical derivability (logische Ableitbarkeit) between sets of propositions: B is logically derivable from A if and only if all elements of the sum of A and B are simultaneously true for some replacement of their non-logical ideas-as-such and if all elements of B are true for any such replacement that makes all elements of A true. In addition to this notion, which is similar to Tarski's concept of consequence of 1936, Bolzano introduced a notion corresponding to Gentzen's concept of consequence. A proposition is universally valid (allgemeingültig) if it is derivable from the null class. In his proof theory Bolzano formulated counterparts to Gentzen's cut rule.

Bolzano introduced a notion of inductive probability as a generalization of derivability in a limited domain This notion has the formal properties of conditional probability. These features and Bolzano's characterization of probability density by the technique of variation are reminiscent of Wittgenstein's inductive logic and Carnap's theory of regular confirmation functions.

The replacement of conceptual complexes in propositions would, if applied to a formalized language, correspond dosely to a substitution-semantic conception of quantification. His own philosophical language was based on a kind of free logic. In essence, Bolzano characterized a substitution-semantic notion of consequence with a finite number of antecedents. His quantification over individual and general concepts amounts to the introduction of a non-elementary logic of lowest order containing a quantification theory of predicate variables but no set-theoretical principles such as choice axioms. His conception of universal validity and of the semantic superstructure of logic leads to a semantically adequate extension of the predicate-logical version of Lewis's system S5 of modal logic without paradoxes. It is also possible to simulate Bolzano's theory of probability in a substitution-semantically constructed theory of probability functions. Hence, by means of an ontologically parsimonious superstructure without possible-worlds metaphysics, Bolzano was able to delimit essentially the realms of classical logical truth and additive probability space." (pp. 93-94)

From: Jan Berg, "Bolzano, Bernard", in: Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Second Edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999.

The importance of Bolzano's logic

"Why look back now? Let me start by stating my non-historian's view of the modem history of logic. Like many scientific disciplines, flourishes while being ill-defined. Despite textbook orthodoxy, the issue what logic should be about is a legitimate topic of discussion, and one to which answers have varied historically. One key topic is reasoning: its valid laws for competent users, and perhaps also its sins: mistakes and fallacies. But the modern core also includes independent concerns such as formal languages, their semantic meaning and expressive power. Moreover, the modem research literature, much of it still in a pre-textbook stage, reveals a wide range of topics beyond reasoning and meaning, dealing with general structures in information, and many-agent activities other than reasoning, such as belief revision or communication. Thus, the agenda of logic keeps evolving, as it should. In this light, going back to the pioneers is not just a matter of piety, but also of self-interest.

One striking feature of older literature is its combination of issues in logic with general methodology of science. One sees this with Bolzano, Mill, or Peirce, but also with major modem authors, such as Tarski, Carnap, or Hintikka. The border line between logic and philosophy of science seems arbitrary. Why have 'confirmation', 'verisimilitude', or 'theory structure' become preserves for philosophers of science, and not for logicians? This separation seems an accidental feature of a historical move, viz. Frege's 'contraction of concerns', which tied up logic closely with the foundations of mathematics, and narrowed the agenda of the field to a point where fundamentalists would say that logic is the mathematics of formal systems. Admittedly, narrowing an agenda and focusing a field may be hugely beneficial. Frege's move prepared the ground for the golden age of logic in the interbellum, which produced the core logic curriculum we teach today. At the same time, broader interests from traditional logic migrated, and took refuge in other disciplines. But as its scientific environment evolved in the 20th century, logic became subject to other influences than mathematics and philosophy, such as linguistics, computer science, AI, and to a lesser degree, cognitive psychology and other experimental disciplines.

Compared with Frege, Bolzano's intellectual range is broad, encompassing general philosophy, mathematics, and logic. This intellectual span fits the above picture. Even so, I am not going to make Bolzano a spokesman for any particular modern agenda. The current professional discussion speaks for itself. But I do want to review some of his themes as to contemporary relevance. Incidentally, the main sources for the analysis in my 1985 paper, besides reading Bolzano himself, have been Kneale & Kneale 1962, and Berg 1962. After the Vienna meeting this autumn of 2002, I learnt about Rusnock 2000, whose logic chapters turned out sophisticated and congenial.

A short summary of Bolzanian themes:

- We quickly enumerate those points in Bolzano's logical system that are the most unusual and intriguing to logicians. These will return at lower speed in later sections.

- The systematic idea of decomposing propositions into general constituents is linguistically attractive, and reminiscent of abstract analyses of constituent structure in categorial grammars (Buszkowski 1997, Moortgat 1997, van Benthem 1991).

- In doing so, looking at different ways of setting the boundary between fixed and variable vocabulary in judging the validity of an inference is another innovation, which ties up with the recurrent issue of the boundaries of 'logicality'.

- Moving to logical core business, acknowledging different styles of reasoning: 'deducibility', 'strict deducibility', or statistical inference, each with their own merits, is a noteworthy enterprise quite superior to unreflected assumptions of uniformity.

- As to detailed proposals, consider Bolzano's central notion of deducibility. It says that an inference from premises φ to a conclusion Ψ is valid, given a variable vocabulary A (written henceforth as φ ⇒ A Ψ) if (a) every substitution instance of the A's which makes all premises true also makes the conclusion true, and (b) the premises must be consistent. Clause (a) is like modem validity, modulo the different semantic machinery, but with a proviso (b) turning this into a non-monotonic logic, the hot topic of the 1980s. Moreover, the role of the vocabulary argument A making inference into a ternary relation really, will also turn out significant later.

- But also other notions of inference are reminiscent of modem proposals trying to get more diversity into how people deal with large sets of data, such as 'strict deducibility': using just the minimal set of premises to get a given conclusion.

- Bolzano's statistical varieties of inference involve counting numbers of substitutions that make a given statement true. Such connections between qualitative logic and quantitative probability were still alive in Carnap's inductive logic, a fringe topic at the time, but they are coming back in force in modem logic, too.

- Very striking to logicians at the interface with AI is Bolzano's formulation of systematic properties of his notions of inference, such as versions of transitivity or the deduction theorem, some depending on the fixed/variable constituent distinction. No truth tables, model-theoretic semantics, and their ilk, but instead, some of the more sophisticated structural theory of inference that carne in fashion in the 1980s.

All these themes do, or should, occur in modern logic! Let's take them up now one by one." (pp. 12-14)

References

Benthem, J. van (1985): “The Variety of Consequence, According to Bolzano”, Studia Logica 44:4, 389—403.

Benthem, J. van (1991): Language in Action: Categories, Lambdas and Dynamic Logic, North-Holland, Amsterdam.

Berg, J. (1962): Bolzano’s Logic, Almqvist and Wiksell, Stockholm.

Buszkowski, W. (1997): “Mathematical Linguistics and Proof Theory”. In J. van Benthem and A. ter Meulen, eds., Handbook of Logic and Language, 638-738, Elsevier Science Publishers, Amsterdam.

Kneale, W. and M. (1962) The Development of Logic, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Moortgat, M. (1997): “Categorial Type Logics”. In J. van Benthem and A. ter Meulen, eds., Handbook of Logic and Language, Elsevier Science Publishers, Amsterdam, 93—177.

Rusnock, P. (2000): Bolzano’s Philosophy and the Emergence of Modern Mathematics, Rodopi, Amsterdam.

From: Johann van Benthem, "Is There Still Logic in Bolzano's Key?", in: Edgar Morscher (ed.), Bernard Bolzanos Leistungen in Logik, Mathematik und Physik, Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 1999.

"In an introductory chapter, Bolzano defines a science as an "aggregate of truths whose known portion is important enough to be set forth in a special book" and logic as the science which deals with the division of the domain of all truths into suitable parts, and supplies the rules for the composition of the respective treatises. These rules and the division of the domain of all truths are discussed in the final, fourth volume of the German edition. But before the domain of truths can be divided into sections, and treatises written, a sufficient number of truths must first be discovered. Accordingly, the theory of science proper is preceded by a book entitled Erfindungskunst (Heuretic), which is concerned with the discovery of truths. This section, in turn, presupposes a discussion of the conditions of human knowledge in general. But epistemology can be transacted only if it is preceded by a theory concerning the entities which are known, namely propositions in themselves and their terms (Theory of Elements). Finally, the first section of the work is the Theory of Fundamentals, in which Bolzano undertakes to prove that there are truths in themselves and that some of them can be known." (pp. XXVIII-XXIX)

From: George Rolf, Editor's Introduction, to: Bernard Bolzano, Theory of Science, Berkeley: University of California Press 1972.

The main thesis contained in the Theory of Science consists in a clear distiction between psychology and logic. This work, as well as Bolzano's other works on logic, was given little consideration by his contemporaries. Husserl was the first to point out the exceptional importance of Bolzano's conception, considering him as "one of the greatest logicians of all times".

In Bolzano's view, logic is "a theory of science" -- Wissenschaftslehre. which explains the title of the above cited treatise on logic.

The work is divided into five parts:

1) Fundamentallehre -- fundamental theory. In this part Bolzano points out that truths must be considered in themselves -- Wahrheiten an sich, separating the logical content from the corresponding logical process.

2) Elementarlehre -- elementary theory. In this part he treats of the theory of representations of sentences and deductions. Here also Bolzano admits, as he did for truth, that there are "representations in themselves -- Vorstellungen an sich and "sentences in themselves" -- Sätzen an Sich.

3) Erkenntnislehre -- the theory of knowledge. That is the theory of the conditions that truth must conform to in relation to human intelligence.

4) Erfindungskunst -- the art of discovering truth.

5) Eigentliche Wissenschaftslehre -- the theory of science proper. This part is concerned with "truth" in the field of special sciences.

The three fundamental concepts on which Bolzano's theory is based are: "sentence in itself", "representation in itself", and "truth in itself".

By "sentence in itself" he understands that which can be thought in a sentence, irrespective of the fact whether this sentence has been thought or not, expressed or not. In this way, he marks a fundamental distinction between thinking a sentence and the sentence itself. The "sentence in itself" is neither representation, nor judgement; Bolzano does not specify what such a sentence is, but he says what it is not. A "sentence in itself" has no existence whatsoever, since only thought sentences or asserted sentences exist in the mind of the one who thinks; the sentence is the content of thought, which content has no real existence. So, for instance, the sentence "life is not the greatest good of all" is a "sentence in itself", when we consider only its significant content -- its sense --, irrespective of the fact whether it is true or false.

As to the "representation in itself", this does not exist in us, it exists independently of the subject's consciousness; therefore, although several subjects may have the same representation, it is not multiplied but unique, and this is, in fact, Bolzano's argument in favour of the objectivity of representation. Let us take the above quoted sentence, "life is not the greatest good of all"; "life" and "the greatest good of all" are representations in themselves and are elements of the given sentence. The sum of representations in a sentence forms its content. This "objective representation" does not need, like the "proposition in itself" or the objective proposition, a subject who should think of, or express it but, like the latter, "it is not anything existing and yet it is a certain something" -- Zwar nicht als etwas Seiendes, aber doch als ein gewisses Etwas (Wissenschaftslehre, vol. 1, p. 217). More precisely "representation in itself" consists of something but not of something existing. Therefore "representations in themselves" are neither true nor false.

The third of Bolzano's concepts is "truth in itself", which expresses something as it is, irrespective of whether it was or not thought or expressed by some one. The object of truth needs nothing of what exists. So, for instance, the truth that "truth is nothing existing", does not require any real object (op. cit., vol. I, p. 112).

After this analysis of significations Bolzano proceeds to the examination of other logical concepts, of logical value, logic relation and deduction, and he comes to the conclusion that logic is a science of meaning. This is pure logic -- Die reine Logik -- independent of psychology, with an a priori value, but not in the Kantian sense.

Husserl will be influenced by these basic ideas of Bolzano's philosophy and in this way will attempt to definitely eliminate psychologism in logic." (vol. III, pp. 354-355)

From: Anton Dumitriu, History of Logic, Tubridge Wells: Abacus Press 1977 (4 volumes).

Bolzano's contribution to logic

"The Wissenschaftslehre [WL] (1837) by Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848) is one of the masterpieces in the history of logic. In this encyclopedic work Bolzano intended to construct a new and philosophically satisfactory foundation of mathematics. The search for such a foundation brought forth valuable by-products in logical semantics and axiomatics. For example, Bolzano introduced the notion of abstract, non-linguistic proposition and described its relations to other relevant notions such as sentence, truth, existence and analyticity. Furthermore, he studied relations among propositions and defined highly interesting notions of validity, consistency, derivability and probability, based on the idea of "replacing" certain components in propositions. In set theory, he stated the equivalence of reflexivity and infiniteness of sets and considered isomorphism as a sufficient condition for the identity of powers of infinite sets. He conceived of a natural number as a property characterizing sets of objects, even though he did not base his development of arithmetic on this notion, and analyzed sentences about specific numbers in a way reminiscent of Frege and Russell. In a posthumous manuscript from the 1830's (recently published) he developed a theory of real numbers, which differs from those of Dedekind, Weierstrass, Méray and Cantor. Bolzano's real numbers may be identified with certain sequences of rational numbers.

Logic in Bolzano's sense is a theory of science, a kind of metatheory, the objects of which are the several sciences and their linguistic representations. This theory is set forth in Bolzano's monumental four-volumes work Wissenschaftslehre (hereafter referred to as WL). Bolzano's very broad conception of logic with its strong emphasis on methodological aspects no doubt accounts for the type of logical results which he arrived at. The details of his theory of science proper are given in the fourth volume of the WL and belong to the least interesting aspects of his logic. On the other hand, Bolzano's search for a solid foundation for his theory of science left very worthwhile by-products in logical semantics and axiomatics. His theory of propositions in the starting-point of these results.

Bolzano became more and more aware of the profound distinction between the actual thoughts of human beings and their linguistic expressions on the one hand, and the abstract propositions and their components which exist independently of these thoughts and expressions on the other hand. Furthermore, he imagined a certain fixed deductive order among all true propositions. This idea was intimately associated with his vision of a realm of abstract components of propositions constituting their logically simple parts.

For the following presentation of Bolzano's theory of propositions I have to define some terms. A concrete sentence occurrence is a sequence of particles existing in space and time, arranged according to the syntactic rules of a grammar, and contrasting with its surroundings. A simple sentence shape, on the other hand, is a class of similar concrete occurrences of simple sentences. A compound sentence shape is built up recursively from simple sentence shapes by means of syntactic operations. Not every compound sentence shape has a corresponding concrete sentence occurrence. Two compound sentence shapes may be considered identical if they are built up from identical simple sentence shapes in the same way. Two simple sentence shapes are identical if they contain the same sentence occurrences.

Now consider the compound sentence containing the following concrete sentence occurrence: 'a simple sentence shape is a class of similar sentence occurrences or it is not the case that a simple sentence shape is a class of similar sentence occurrences'. In another sense one could say that this sentence shape, which is an abstract logical object outside of space and time, contains two sentence occurrences, i.e., two abstract "occurrences" of the simple sentence shape containing the following concrete inscription: 'a simple sentence shape is a class of similar sentence occurrences'. In the following, I will use the expression 'sentence occurrence' exclusively in the first, concrete sense.

Bolzano's notion of abstract non-linguistic proposition (Sätz an sich) is a keystone in his philosophy and can be traced in his writings back to the beginnings of the second decade of the 19th century. I shall try to characterize Bolzano's conception of propositions by means of certain explicit assumptions. These assumptions also give information about the relation between propositions and other logically interesting objects.

In his logic Bolzano utilizes a concept which is an exact counterpart of the modern logical notion of existential quantification. Therefore, he could have stated that (1) There exist entities, called 'propositions', which fulfill the following necessary conditions (2) through (15). (Cf. WL 30 ff.)

Thus, propositions possess the kind of logical existence developed in modern quantification theory. However, (2) A proposition does not exist concretely in space and time (WL 19).

According to Bolzano, both linguistic and mental entities such as thoughts and judgments are concrete (WL, 34, 291). Hence, propositions could not be identified as concrete linguistic or mental occurrences. Furthermore,(3) Propositions exist independently of all kinds of mental entities ((WL 19).

Therefore the identification between propositions and mental dispositions sometimes made in medieval nominalism cannot be applied to propositions in Bolzano's sense.

A proposition in Bolzano's sense is a structure of ideas-as-such. Hence, an idea-as-such (Vorstellung an sich) is a part of a proposition which is not itself a proposition (WL 48). But to he able to generate propositions we have to characterize ideas-as-such independently of propositions. This is in fact implicit in Bolzano. He worked extensively with the relation of being an object of an idea as-such, which corresponds in modern logic to the relation of being an element of the extension of a concept. In terms of this relation, taken as a primitive by Bolzano, certain postulates may be extracted from his writings which concern the existence and general properties of ideas-as-such.

Independently of human minds and of linguistic expressions there exists a collection of absolutely simple ideas-as-such. As examples Bolzano mentions the logical constants expressed by the words 'not', 'and', 'some', 'to have', 'to be', 'ought' (WL, 78); but he admits being unable to offer a more comprehensive list. He seems to mean that each complex idea A can be analyzed into a sequence S(A) of simple ideas which would probably include certain logical constants.

I shall call this sequence S(A) the 'primitive form' of A. The manner in which a complex idea is built up from simple ones may be expressed by a chain of definitions. So it appears that some complex ideas behave somewhat like the open formulas of a logical calculus. Bolzano assumes that two ideas are strictly identical if and only if they have the same primitive form ((WL 92, 119, 557)." (pp. 147-150)

From: Jan Berg, Bolzano's Contribution to Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics, in: R. O. Gandy, J. M. Hyland (eds.), Logic Colloquium '76, Amsterdam: North Holland 1977, pp. 147-171.

Bolzano's contribution to semiotics

"The Prague philosopher, Bernard Bolzano, in his major work the Theory of Science (1837), mainly in the last two of the four volumes, reserves much space for semiotics. The author frequently cites Locke's Essay and the Neues Organon, and discovers in Lambert's writings "an semiotics many very estimable remarks", though these are of little use "for the development of the most general rules of scientific discourse", one of the aims Bolzano sets himself (par. 698).

The same chapter of The Theory of Science bears two titles, one of which, -- Semiotik -- appears in the table of contents (vol. IV, p. XVI), the other of which -- Zeichenlehre -- heads the beginning of the text (p. 500); paragraph 637, which follows, identifies both designations -- the theory of signs or semiotics (Zeichenlehre Oder Semiotik). If, in this chapter and in several other parts of the work, the author's attention is held above all by the testing of the relative perfection of signs (Vollkomenheit oder Zweckmässigkeit) and particularly of signs serving logical thought, then it is in the beginning of the third volume that Bolzan? tries to introduce the reader to the fundamental notions of the theory of signs throughout par. 285 (pp. 67-84) which overflows with ideas and is titled "the designation of our representations" (Bezeichnung unserer Vorstellungen).

This paragraph begins with a bilateral definition of the sign, "An object through whose conception we wish to know in a renewed fashion another conception connected therewith in a thinking being, is known to us as a sign". A whole chain of geminate concepts follows, some of which are very new, while others, referring back to their anterior sources, are newly specified and enlarged. Thus Bolzano's semiotic thoughts bring to the surface the difference between the meaning (Bedeutung) of a sign as such and the significance (Sinn) that this sign acquires in the context of the present circumstance, then the difference between the sign (1) produced by the addresser (Urheher) and (2) perceived by the addressee who, himself, oscillates between understanding and misunderstanding (Verstehen und Missverstehen). The author makes a distinction between the thought and expressed interpretation of the sign (gedachte und sprachliche Auslegung), between universal and particular signs, between natural and accidental signs (natürlich und züfallig), arbitrary and spontaneous (willkürlich und unwillkürlich), auditory and visual (hörbar und sichtbar), simple (einzeln) and composite (zusamengestzt, which means "a whole whose parts are themselves signs"), between unisemic and polysemic, proper and figurative, metonymical and metaphorical, mediate and immediate signs; to this classification he adds lucid footnotes on the important distinction to be made between signs (Zeichen) and indices (Kennzeichen) which are devoid of an addresser, and finally on another pressing theme, the question of the relationship between interpersonal (an Andere) and internal (Sprechen mit selbst) communication." (pp. 202-203 of the reprint)

From: Roman Jakobson, A Glance at the Development of Semiotics, in The Framework of Language. Translated from the French by Patricia Baudoin, Ann Arbor: Michigan Studies in the Humanities, Horace R. Rackham School of Graduate Studies 1980 and reprinted in: R. Jakobson, Selected Writings. Contributions to Comparative Mythology. Studies in Linguistics and Philology, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 1985, pp. 199-218.

Bolzano's ontology

"The first basic notion of Bolzano's ontological system is the part relation. Its domain, i.e., the set of all objects bearing it to something, embraces concrete substances, abstract objects, and collections. The converse domain of the part relation, i.e., the set of all objects to which it is borne, contains collections only.

Some collections are concrete entities existing in space and time, the rest are abstract sums or other sets. Concrete sums are composed of substances and adherences, i.e., forces. Forces applied to certain substances give rise to subjective ideas or judgements. Further results of such applications are the concrete sentence occurrences. A subjective idea is a part of a judgement which is not itself a judgement. The set of judgements is ordered by a special causal relation.

Bolzano's abstract world is constituted of sets, abstract sums, certain attributes (i.e., properties or relations), ideas-as-such, and objects constructed on the basis of these entities. Thus, sentence shapes are a kind of properties, and certain complexes of ideas-assuch constitute propositions. The notion of an idea-as-such can be constructed from expressions of a language by means of axioms for the relation of being an object of something. Analogously, properties can be generated by axioms for the relation of something being applied to an object. The converse of this relation, i.e., the relation of an entity having a property, and the relation of being an object of an idea-as-such are fundamental ontological constants of Bolzano's.

Natural numbers are defined as properties of bijective sets, and real numbers are essentially conceived of as properties of sets of certain infinite sequences of rational numbers. The analysis of infinite sets leads to a generalization of the part relation by scrapping the doctrine that the whole is always greater than any of its parts. The extension of the linear continuum of finite numbers by infinitesimals within the coarsest free algebraic filter settles definite limits to Bolzano's approach to analysis.

A part relation in a narrower sense, viz., the relation of being a subsequence of a sequence of abstract objects, holds among ideasas-such and propositions. Furthermore, the relation of derivability holds among propositions, and true propositions are ordered by the relation of entailment.

Among the relations holding between the constituents of the concrete world and the abstract world there are the relations of a substance having a property or being an object of an idea-as-such. Moreover, the relations of an idea-as-such or proposition being the subject matter of a subjective idea or a judgement, respectively, establish ontologically important connections between the abstract world and the concrete world.

The main features of Bolzano's ontology may be schematized as follows:

(...)

The question whether a rational reconstruction of Bolzano's ontology is possible will be sustained like a pedal point throughout the present study. In many respects, indeed, his ontological system is a model of thrift, comprehensiveness, and deductive cogency. He shows us how to grasp a self-contained, abstract "third" world (in Popper's sense) embracing the realms of classical logical truth and additive probability spaces without indulging in possible worlds, states of affairs, facts, and all that. Admittedly, from a modern point of view certain aspects of his ontology may look like Dr. Johnson's dog walking on its hind legs: it is not always done quite well, but you are surprised to find it done at all. To rational bipeds of our time it should be more instructive, though, to watch this performance rather than amazing at metaphysical cephalopods wallowing in clouds of ontological splendors, or gazing at recondite cogitators crawling on all fours through a self-induced verbal fog." (pp. 31-32)

(...)

"Ontology without possible worlds.

A minimal requirement for pursuing philosophy of science and mathematics is the access to sentence (or formula) shapes, an adequate truth definition, substitution, and some set-theoretic principles. The first three notions allow a semantic demarcation of the

realms of classical logical truth and additive probability spates. Apart from syntactic identity, the strongest semantic principle of individuation for sentence shapes is logical equivalence. If one should insist on abstract objects with stronger semantic identity conditions, as Bolzano did for reasons of philosophical foundations, then non-linguistic propositions may be tendered.

Bolzano proceeded from an expanded and standardized ordinary language by means of which he could describe the universe of propositions and their parts. We have seen that this exposition can be organized into explicit postulate systems. The existence of propositions and their parts being thus guaranteed, Bolzano defined the semantic notion of truth and introduced the function corresponding to a "replacement" operation on propositions. He could also easily have rendered an exact definition of the notion of a sentence shape. The replacement of conceptual complexes in propositions enabled him to develop the essential parts of classical logic and probability theory without resorting to ontologically lavish constructions.

Bolzano's notion of proposition offers an interesting alternative to the corresponding concepts developed in modern possible-world semantics. (For a lucid survey, see Edgar Morscher, Propositions and all that: Ontological and epistemological reflections, in: L. M. de Rijk (ed.), Logos and Pragma. Essays on the Philosophy of Language in Honour of Professor Gabriel Nuchelmans, Nijmegen, 1987, pp. 241-257) According to a representative theory of this kind, a proposition is a function sending possible worlds onto truth-values. A possible world is a maximally consistent set of states of affairs. A state of affairs is somehow conceived of as being built up from members of the domain of individuals and their attributes. Moreover, a fact is a real state of affairs. Thus, a concrete object and its attributes can be parts of a state of affairs. For example, the concrete individual Kurt Waldheim and the property of being the 42nd president of the United States of America would, according to this view, be parts of the state of affairs that Kurt Waldheim is the 42nd president of the U.S.

The main flaws of this approach to the ontology of propositions are, first, that propositions expressed by logically equivalent sentences conflate and, second, that a concrete object can never be part 01 a state of Alai's which is nut a fact. lot example, the real Kurt Waldheim can never be part of the state of affairs of someone being the 42nd president of the U.S.

The latter obstacle can be removed by representing concrete things by bundles of world-lines, i.e., by sets of sets of world-points. The real Kurt Waldheim, e.g., is thereby represented by a bundle of world-lines which will never enter into a state of affairs containing the property of being the 42nd president of the U.S. The fictitious Kurt Waldheim figuring in such a state of affairs branches off from the bundle representing the real Kurt Waldheim at a certain space-time point in the world of 1993. In view of the highly abstract character of this approach, an alternative remedy might be to leave states of affairs unanalyzed and take them as primitive entities. From the ontological point of view, however, we could then as well get on directly with propositions.

An attempt to evade the former difficulty of propositions conflating under logical equivalence of the corresponding sentences by proffering new categories of intensional objects will be a great expense to unyielding ontologians. One device may be to take the functions sending the possible worlds onto truth-values in intension. Hence, a practicable theory of propositions based on a possible-world semantics would have to postulate the existence of sets of sets of world-points, and moreover of properties, relations, and function concepts. An attempted entity-saving measure of introducing the attributes by functions in extension from possible worlds onto sets of individuals or sets of n-tuples of individuals would be redundant, however, since attributes are parts of the constituents of possible worlds.

An ontology based on Bolzano's system of propositions would only have to postulate the existence of one category of intensional objects, namely ideas-as-such, and could otherwise employ purely extensional set-theoretic and algebraic methods. A possible objection to Bolzano's ontology might be raised on account of the fact that it cannot yield the semantics of epistemic and other non-classical logics. In these regions outside the analysis of the foundations of science and mathematics, it may be argued, real philosophy begins with the search for new semantic superstructures while the metaphysical dusk of possible worlds approaches."

From: Jan Berg, Ontology without Ultrafilters and Possible Worlds. An Examination of Bolzano's Ontology, Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag 1992.

Bolzano on the limits of knowledge

Bolzano, whose concept ‘truths in themselves’ was employed by Husserl (...), set himself the task of clarifying the concept of unknowability and of finding out whether it has any instances. The § 314 of his Wissenschaftslehre bears the title: “Whether our ability to know has definite limits” (“Ob es bestimmte Grenzen für unser Erkenntnisvermögen gebe?”). The target of Bolzano’s criticism is Kant, as the next paragraph (315) makes clear: “The doctrine of the critical philosophy on this” (“Die Lehre der kritischen Philosophie hierüber”).

One would expect that Hartmann carefully studied Bolzano’s reasoning before presenting his own theory. At least, he should have commented on Bolzano’s arguments, and tried to refute them. One’s expectations grow higher due to his citation of Husserl, who obviously received the concept of truths in themselves from Bolzano (Husserl praised Bolzano in the first volume of his Logische Untersuchungen). However, nothing seems to indicate that Hartmann was familiar with Bolzano’s reasoning against unknowability in § 314.(11) The Wissenschaftslehre which Hartmann had thoroughly studied is that of Fichte (cf. Die Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus, pp. 45—80). This is not only a scholarly point, because Bolzano’s analysis of the knowability problem is one of the most remarkable ever presented of it and his arguments present a severe challenge to anybody who thinks that human knowledge has absolute limits. Bolzano’s contribution was unknown to Hartmann — but surely not unknowable.

According to Bolzano, there is an infinite number of true propositions. But, because we have a finite capacity of comprehending these propositions, it may be asked whether our ability to know has definite limits and whether we are able to determine these. Before answering this question, says Bolzano, we first have to clarify what we understand by such limits to our ability to know and by their determination.(12) One may determine the limits of a certain power either completely or incompletely. Complete determination concerns everything that the power can and cannot bring about, whereas incomplete or partial determinations concern only something the power can or cannot accomplish. A complete determination of our ability to know should characterize in a perfect way the totality of the truths which we know and of the truths we are not able to know; otherwise a determination of this ability is incomplete. It is the complete determination that is needed: certain sentences, which truthfully state what we are able to know and what not. ‘Knowledge’ here means true justified belief. One may speak of the (public) knowledge of the whole of humanity or of all finite minds in the cosmos, or of the (personal) knowledge of some individual. The question of the determination of the limits of knowledge concerns criteria which allow us to decide whether answering a given question does not exceed our ability to know. If such criteria could be given, we would be able to abstain from a spurious search. The criteria should concern knowability in principle and not only what is presently or up to now unknowable. The fact that we have not been able to know a certain truth up to the present time does not imply that this will also be impossible for us in the future. The criteria should characterize a class of truths which we not only do not know at present, but will never know, at least as long as we are human beings.(13)

After these considerations, it should be clear enough what is being searched for. There are three possible ways of proceeding:

1) enumerating all unknowable truths

2) indicating unknowables by giving a property which characterizes them

3) looking for such propositions the truth or falsity of which is not only unknown but will never be found out.(14)

This means that we may use either an extensional or an intensional procedure. It is clear that procedure 1) is self-refuting, Bolzano claims: if we know that the propositions p_1..., pn are true and unknowable to us, then they must be knowable to us.(15) It is more difficult to see that procedure 2) is also a dead end. In indicating unknowables, we have to use such characterizations as

All A’s are unknowable to us.

No truths of the form ‘A is X’ are knowable to us.(16)

But these kinds of statements are illegitimate and self-contradictory, according to Bolzano. If we can characterize a thing by a property (say ‘A’), then we know something of it, at least what it has in common with other things. However, the sentence “We cannot know anything of A” is a sentence about A, so that it is a contradiction to say that one does not know of A at all, i.e., that one cannot express any true proposition about it.

It may be said that, by claiming something to be unknowable, one does not mean that none of its properties are known, or that no proposition can be expressed about it. It may be claimed that a thing is unknowable to us if we cannot specify any of its real properties. Bolzano refutes this claim as follows: the property ‘A’ by which we comprehend a thing, is a real property of that thing, because the features of that thing are such as belong only to things which are subsumable under ‘A.’ For instance, colour belongs to the properties of a star. Somebody could claim that it is not a real property, because only physical properties (mass, density, heath) are real. If nothing else than the colour were known of a star, it would then be unknown, and might remain unknowable as to its real properties. Bolzano’s argument means that the claim “All stars whose properties other than colour cannot be known are unknowable to us” is self-refuting. If we identify a distant star by virtue of its colour (e.g., Vega as being blue), then that colour is a genuine feature of the star, because it belongs only to those things which have the same colour. Accordingly, the property “stars whose properties other than colour cannot be known” (A) fails to characterize something genuinely unknowable.

A further claim would be to say that an unknowable thing is unknowable due to such real properties which are not subsumable under ‘A.’ This claim may be expressed as follows:

All such properties (‘X’) as do not belong to the property ‘A,’ by which we characterize the ‘ A’-things, are unknowable to us.

No truths of the form ‘All A’s are X’ are knowable to us, to the extent that ‘X’ is not included in the content of ‘A.’(17)

Thus, the adjectives of our language might in principle fail to attain the richness of the properties characteristic of things in the world, and we would be unable to acquire knowledge of all objective properties. Admittedly, says Bolzano, there may be properties of things which are not included in our designations. But then the truth of a proposition concerning these properties should be proved on the basis of the special character of these designations. Can such a special character of designations be known? If it can be known, then it is a contradiction to maintain that it is unknowable.(18) On the other hand, if one does not come to know those properties which are not included in the content of ‘A,’ then one has no reason to assume their existence.(19) For instance, there is no reason to assume that there may be colours outside the reach of our colour-words.

Bolzano applies the above considerations to a criticism of Kant’s hypothesis that there are things in themselves which are in principle unknowable. According to him, that hypothesis is self-contradictory: the proposition that insensible things cannot be the contents of our synthetic judgments is itself a synthetic judgment about them.(20) Bolzano also criticizes Kant’s distinction between sensible and insensible objects, because he thinks that it is in some respects misleading.(21) Furthermore, he criticizes Kant’s antimonies. According to Bolzano, the proofs which Kant presented for the theses and antitheses contain many errors.(22)

The third possibility of showing that knowledge has absolute limits is not self-refuting, as the other two are in Bolzano’s analysis. This possibility is based, like the first one, on extensional considerations. The main idea is to suggest candidates — propositions the truth or falsity of which can never be discovered. Bolzano’s objection to this procedure is that it is difficult to prove statements concerning unknowability. The fact that we have up to now been unable to decide whether the property ‘B’ belongs or does not belong to the things of class ‘A’ does not entitle us to conclude that we will never have any reason for such a decision. In order to make the difficulty clearer, Bolzano studies two different possibilities: the connexion between the concepts ‘A’ and ‘B’ may be

(i) purely conceptual, or

(ii) empirical.

In the first case, the history of mathematics can teach us about many questions which could not be decided for centuries but in the end were decided by suitable means. Nobody can be sure that a conceptual connexion not yet known cannot be discovered by the painstaking analysis of the concepts involved and their comparison not only with each other but also with related concepts.(23) In so far as empirical questions are concerned, nobody can anticipate the rich possibilities of future experience. Bolzano’s example is an especially happy one: it is not known what the moon’s inhabitants look like (the Wissenschaftslehre appeared in 1837). A modem example would be the question whether there are intelligent beings in other planetary systems. According to Bolzano, all possible “proofs” of unknowability are in fact based on a questionable argument from the limitations of the present state of knowledge to an unsurpassable limitation.(24)

Bolzano then considers a possible objection: because his analysis results in the impossibility of giving a limitation of our ability to know, this result itself seems to be a kind of limitation of this ability. His answer to the objection is the following: he does not maintain that it will never be possible to set a limit to knowability — only that he does not himself know of such a limit. Furthermore, the result that it is impossible to differentiate knowability from unknowability can be considered as an indication of a truth concealed for ever only under the presupposition that there really is an absolute limit of knowledge. Bolzano does not subscribe to this presupposition; he thinks rather that we cannot draw the limit between knowability and unknowability simply because there is no such limit. Human knowledge can be enriched ad infinitum.(25)" (pp. 103-106)

Notes

(11) Hartmann knew Bolzano’s theories of sentences in themselves and truths in themselves, and eagerly accepted them; cf. Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, p. 25 and “Die Erkenntnis im Lichte der Ontologie,” Kleine Schriften I, p. 134. Cf. also J. N. Mohanty Nicolai Hartmann and Alfred North Whitehead. A Study in recent Platonism (1957), p. 42: “Bolzano’s doctrine of ‘Satz an sich’ is accepted with admiration ...” (Mohanty points to Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis p. 25).

(12) B. Bolzano, Wissenchaftslehre III, § 314, p. 232.

(13) Ibid., pp. 233 ff.

(14) Ibid., pp. 234 ff. The expressions “enumerate” and “indicate” have been used by J. Berg Bolzano's Logic (1962), p. 70.

(15) B. Bolzano, Wissenchaftslehre III, § 314, p. 234: “Wenn wir die Grenzen, die unser eigenes oder die das Erkenntnisvermogen der ganzen Menschheit hat, zu bestimmen suchen: so leuchtet ein, dies konne nicht dadurch geschehen, daB wir die Wahrheiten, die fur uns Einzelne oder fur alle Menschen unerreichbar sind, namentlich angeben; denn um dieB zu vermogen, miiBten sie uns nicht unbekannt, sondem bekannt seyn.”

(16) Cf. the reconstruction of Bolzano’s argument by A. Wedberg Filosofins historia III. Fran Bolzano till Wittgenstein (1966), p. 96. [English translation: A History of Philosophy: From Bolzano to Wittgenstein, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984]

Cf. also a similar reconstruction by J. Berg (1962), p. 70.

(17) Cf. A. Wedberg (1966), p. 96; J. Berg (1962), p. 70.

(18) B. Bolzano, Wissenchaftslehre III, § 314, p. 236.

(19) Ibid.: “Ich nun fur meinen Theil gestehe, von einer solchen Eigenthiimlichkeit gewisser Vorstellungen keine KenntniB zu haben.”

(20 B. Bolzano, Wissenchaftslehre III, § 315, p. 247 f.

(21) Ibid., pp. 246 ff.

(22) Ibid., pp. 250 ff.

(23) B. Bolzano, Wissenchaftslehre III, § 314, p. 237. Cf. D. Hilbert (1965), p. 298: “[I]n der Mathematik gibt es kein Ignorabimus!”

(24) B. Bolzano, Wissenchaftslehre III, § 314, pp. 236 ff.

(25) Ibid., p. 238.

From: Arto Sitonen, Problems of Aporetics, Helsinki: Suomlainen Tiedeakademia 1989.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on Bernard Bolzano's Contributions to Logic and Ontology. First Part: A - B

Biographies

1. Morscher, Edgar. 2008. Bernard Bolzano's Life and Work. Sank Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Table of contents: Preface 9; Introduction 13; 1. Bolzano's life and scientific career 17; 2. Bolzano's removal from Office and the "Bolzano Trial" 23; 3. A short survey of Bolzano's work 29; 4. Logic 33; 5. Epistemology and philosophy of science 75; 6. Ethics 89; 7. Aesthetics 107; 8. Political and social philosophy 113; 9. Philosophy of religion and theology 125; 10. Metaphysics 135; 11. Philosophy of nature and of physics 139; 12. Philosophy of mathematics 141; 13. Metaphilosophy and history of philosophy 149; 14. The so-called Bolzano Circle and Bolzano's influence on the development of the sciences and on intellectual history 151; Appendix: A formal reconstruction of Bolzano's method of idea-variation and of his definitions of logical truth and of logical consequence 159; Bibliography 169; Index of names 207.

"Despite the enormous increase of interest in Bolzano's philosophy during the last decades, an up-to-date monograph on Bolzano's philosophy is still a desideratum. The last book that might be called a monograph on Bolzano's philosophy dates from almost 100 years ago; it is Shmuel Hugo Bergmann's Das philosophische Werk Bernard Bolzanos (Halle/S. 1909), written in the spirit of the Brentano school, in particular of Bergmann's teacher Anton Marty.

When I was invited by the Editors of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to contribute the entry on Bernard Bolzano, I took it as a challenge for starting my long-standing plan to write a monograph on Bolzano's philosophy. The present book is, to be clear, merely the first step toward this end. In this respect I can benefit from the generous copyright regulations of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy which allow the entries to appear also in print. The author welcomes any kind of comments and criticism to the present printed version of the Internet article in order to take them into consideration in his projected monograph on Bolzano's philosophy.

(...)

I dedicate this book to the greatest and most meritorious Bolzano scholar ever, Jan Berg, without whom Bernard Bolzano would not be seen as the outstanding philosopher as we now know him to be." (From the Preface)

2. Rusnock, Paul, and Šebestik, Jan. 2019. Bernard Bolzano: His Life and Work. New York: Oxford University Press.

Contents: A Note on Citations XIII; Acknowledgements XV; Preface XVII; Chronology XX; Extracts XXXI-XXXII; Introduction 1; 1. Bolzano’s Life 5; 2. Ethics 83; 3. Political Philosophy 105; 4. Philosophy of Religion 139; 5. Catholicism and the Catholic Church 167; 6. Logic 187; 7. Theory of Knowledge 337; 8. Ontology and Metaphysics 405; 9. 9 Mathematics 502; 10. Aesthetics, the Science of Beauty 544; Afterword 595; Bibliography 599; Index of Persons 647; Index of Subjects 653-667.

"In the English-speaking world, Bolzano is best known for his work in logic and mathematics. There are certainly things of great importance and beauty in these parts of his work. We have already written, each of us, on these matters, and will have more to say about them in this book. But a faithful portrait of Bolzano cannot limit itself to this, for until he was 40 years old, he was only able to pursue these subjects in his spare time. With his considerable gifts in these non-controversial areas, he certainly might have led a distinguished life of speculation as a mathematician or philosopher. Instead he chose quite deliberately to plunge into the turbulent political life of his homeland, applying his formidable intelligence, energy, and determination to the reform of his society and its institutions. It is here that we shall begin." (p. 3)

Bibliographies

1. Lapointe, Sandra 2019. Bernard Bolzano. Oxford Bibliographies Online: 1-13.

"Introduction

Bernard Bolzano’s (b. 1781-d. 1848) originality and numerous anticipatory insights have deserved him a unique position in the history of philosophy. While scholarship trudged for more than a hundred years after his death, in the second half of the 20th century, Bolzano emerged at once as the most significant logician between Leibniz and Frege, one of Kant’s most scrupulous and formidable critics, and what may have been one of the greatest single influences on Brentano’s students, in particular Twardowski and Husserl, beside Brentano himself. For a variety of reasons—e.g. methodological and thematic proximity—analytic philosophers have found in Bolzano a congenial interlocutor. As a result, most commentaries and discussions tend to focus on aspects of Bolzano’s views on logic and its philosophy, in particular his treatment of questions relating to analyticity, deducibility, and grounding in his opus magnum, the Theory of Science (1837). But the wealth of ideas we find throughout his work is far from exhausted. Because Bolzano research is young, there still subsist substantial gaps in the literature. More importantly, perhaps, there is ample space for reassessments of standard interpretations. The present bibliography is designed so as to both provide interested researchers and prospective scholars with a sense of those issues that constitute the poles of current discussions and leave room for ulterior updates."

Studies on Bolzano's Logic and Ontology

Abbreviations: WL = Bolzano's Wissenschafslehre (1837)

1. Bernard Bolzano, 1781-1848 Bicentenary. Impact of Bolzano's Epoch on the Development of Science. 1982. Acta Historiae Rerum Naturalium Necnon Technicarum. Prague: Institute of Czechoslovak and General History CSAS

Proceedings of the Bernard Bolzano's Bicentenary Conference, Prague, September 7-12, 1981.

Contents: (only the contributions on Bolzano are cited): Zdenèk Ceska: B. Bolzano and the Charles University 3-8; Lubos Novy: Bolzano's contribution to science and society 9-23; Günter Kröber: Bernard Bolzano und das Problem des Wissenschfatlich-technischen und sozialen Fortschrittes 103-128; Jan Janko: Veränderungen der Naturgeschichte und ihre Differenziation in der I. Hälfte des 19. Jahrunderts 129-154; Joseph W. Dauben: Progress of mathematics in the early 19th century: Context, contents and consequences 223-260; Jan Berg: 415-425; Karel Berka: B. Bolzano's philosophy of science 427-442; Jonathan Cohen: Bolzano's theory of induction 443-457; Helmut Metlzer: Bernard Bolzano Beitrag zum Gestaltwandel der Logik 479-489.

2. "Bolzano Studien." 1987. Philosophia Naturalis no. 24:351-499

Content (Essays in English):

II. Basic Questions of Logic and Semantics.

Jan Berg: Bolzano and Situation Semantics: Variations on a Theme of Variation 373-377; Peter Simons: Bolzano, Tarski, and the Limits of Logic 378-405;

III. On the Problem of Paradoxis.

Jan Berg: Is Russell's Antinomy Derivable in Bolzano's Logic? 406-413;

IV: Probability, Induction and Syllogistic.

Jan Berg: Bolzano on Induction 442-446;

V. Contributions on Bolzano's Metaphysics.

Rolf George: Bolzano on Time 452-468.

3. Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre 1837-1987. International Workshop (Firenze, 16-19 September 1987). 1992. Firenze: Olschki

Content: Premessa V; Rolf George: Concepts of Consequence 3; Detlef D. Spalt: Bolzano's Zahlbegriffe. Bislang Übersehene Marksteine Feudal-absolutistischer Mathematik 27; Ettore Casari: An Interpretation of Some Ontological and Semantical Notions in Bolzano's Logic 55; Jan Berg: The Connection Between Bolzano's Logic of Variation and His Theory of Probability 107; Benson Mates: Bolzano and Ancient Pyrrhonism 121; Karel Berka: Bolzanos Lehre vom naturlichen Schliessen 141; Jan Sebestik: The construction of Bolzano's Logical System 163; Carlo Cellucci: Bolzano and Multiple-Conclusion Logic 179; Rudolf Haller: Bolzano and Austrian Philosophy 191; Massimo Mugnai: Leibniz and Bolzano on the "Realm of Truths" 207; Bob van Rootselaar: Axiomatics in Bolzano's Logico-Mathematical Research 221-230.

4. "Bolzano and Analytic Philosophy." 1997. Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 53:1-266

Edited by Wolfgang Künne, Mark Siebel, Mark Textor.

Proceedings of the International Symposium held in Hamburg 3rd-t5th January 1997.

Contents: Preface; VI; Dagfin Føllesdal: Bolzano's Legacy 1; Jan Berg: Bolzano, the Prescient Encyclopedist 13; Jan Šebestik: Bolzano, Exner and the Origins of Analytical Philosophy 33; Paul Rusnock: Bolzano and the Traditions of Analysis 61; Peter Simons: Bolzano on Collections 87; Ali Behboud: Remarks on Bolzano's Collections 109: Mark Siebel: Variation, Derivability and Necessity 117; Edgar Morscher: Bolzano's Method of Variation: Three Puzzles 139; Rolf George: Bolzano's Programme and Abstract Objects 167; Mark Textor: Bolzano's Sententialism 181; Wolfgang Künne: Propositions in Bolzano and Frege 203: Michael Dummett: Comments on Wolfgang Künne's Paper 241; Carsten Uwe Gieske: Bolzano's Notion of Testifying 249-266.

"From January 3rd to January 5th 1997 the international symposium Bolzano and Analytical Philosophy took place in Hamburg.

(---)

Michael Dummett once called Bernard Bolzano the "great-grandfather of analytical philosophy".[*] The aim of the symposium was to explore whether Bolzano's analytical great-grandchildren can still learn from their Bohemian ancestor. We hope the symposium will stimulate further systematic and exegetical research in thisarea." (from the Preface)

[*] Michael Dummett, Origins of Analytic Philosophy, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press 1993, p. 171.

5. "Bernard Bolzano." 1999. Revue d'Histoire des Sciences no. 52:339-506

The following contributions are in English:

Charles Chihara: Frege's and Bolzano's rationalist conceptions of arithmetic 343; Joëlle Proust: Bolzano's theory of representation 363; Johannes Hafner: Bolzanos' criticism of indirect proofs 385; Paul Rusnock: Philosophy of mathematics: Bolzano's responses to Kant and Lagrange 399.

6. "Bolzano and Kant." 2012. Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 85

Guest Editor: Sandra Lapointe.

Table of Contents: Sandra Lapointe: Introduction 1; Sandra Lapointe: Is Logic Formal? Bolzano, Kant and the Kantian Logicians 11; Nicholas F. Stang: A Kantian Reply to Bolzano's Critique of Kant's Analytic-Synthetic Distinction 33; Clinton Tolley: Bolzano and Kant on the Place of Subjectivity in a Wissenschaftslehre 63; Timothy Rosenkoetter: Kant and Bolzano on the Singularity of Intuitions 89; Waldemar Rohloff: From Ordinary Language to Definition in Kant and Bolzano 131-149.

7. Adair-Toteff, Christopher. 2002. "Bolzano's Gesamtausgabe." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 10:127-133

"Shortly after Bolzano’s death there was an attempt to collect his works as a Gesamtausgabe, but there was little interest. Another attempt was made to honour the sixtieth anniversary of his death in 1908 but that also failed.

The Wissenschaftslehre was republished in four volumes in the early 1930s, but it was not until the late 1960s that a number of international Bolzano scholars succeeded in planning the Bernard Bolzano Gesamtausgabe. The first of a projected 100+ volumes appeared in 1969 – an introductory book that was a biography. The Gesamtausgabe is composed of four series:

I Writings (Schriften);

II Posthumous writings (Nachlaß);

III Correspondence (Briefwechsel);

IV Documents (Dokumente)." (p. 128)

(...)

"Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre was published in four volumes in Germany in 1837. It consists of five Books: Theory of Fundamentals, Theory of Elements, Theory of Knowledge, Heuretic, and Theory of Science Proper.

In the first book Bolzano defines Wissenschaftslehre as the attempt to provide an account of science in general. Its function is not to discuss any individual sciences but rather to determine the rules by which all truths can be determined to belong to the individual sciences. He acknowledges that he is using science and doctrine in slightly unusual terms but insists that his account is superior to either Fichte’s or Hegel’s. Bolzano maintains that Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre offers a mistaken attempt to provide a doctrine of knowledge in general. Bolzano does admit that he does not really understand Fichte’s philosophy. Bolzano also admits to a similar lack of comprehension of Schelling and Hegel.

Bolzano uses a number of technical terms. One is a ‘proposition in itself’ (Satz an sich) which he takes to be an assertion that something is or is not the case. A proposition in itself need not be uttered or even thought. In a similar vein Bolzano speaks of ‘truth in itself’ (Wahrheit an sich) or ‘objective truth’ that does not have real existence in contrast to recognized truths that do exist. And, there are ‘representations in themselves’ (Vorstellungen an sich). Examples of ideas in themselves would be ‘Caius’ and ‘wisdom’ in the proposition ‘Caius has wisdom’. Representations in themselves have neither truth nor existence. Much in the first three books appears to be an attack on Kantian philosophy – he has no use for Kant’s psychology and his Ding an sich. But, these books are not simply negative. He claims to have shown that there are truths and that we can recognize them and he sets out the conditions under which we can recognize them." (p. 129)

8. Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua. 1950. "Bolzano’s Definition of Analytic Propositions." Methodos:32-55

Published also in Theoria 16, 1950, pp. 91-117.

Reprinted in: Y. Bar-Hillel, Aspects of language. Essays and lectures on philosophy of language, linguistic philosophy and methodology of linguistics, Jerusalem: The Magnes Press - The Hebrew University, 1970, pp. 3-28.

"In view of recent discussions on the nature of analytic truth, it should be rather interesting to inquire into the treatment which this subject received by the most outstanding logician of the first half of the 19th century, the Austrian philosopher, theologician, and: physicist Bernard Bolzano.

Our investigation will turn upon section 148 of Bolzano's four volumed masterwork Wissenschaftslehre (1837). Only occasionally shall we need to refer to other parts of this work. This section, headed "Analytic or Synthetic Propositions", comprises pages 83-89 of the second volume and is divided into three subsections of less than two pages altogether, followed by four annotations, filling the next five pages. I dwell so long upon these bibliographical particulars only to bring into full light the wealth of systematic and historic material contained in these few pages.

1. Pre-History.

Bolzano's aim, in § 148, was to define a concept which could serve as an adequate explication for what is now commonly termed 'logical truth'. Though this aim is nowhere explicitly stated, there can be no doubt about it, just as Kant before him and many logicians after him doubtless aimed at the same target when they proposed their respective definitions.

Bolzano devotes the greater part of his fourth annotation the discussion of many such attempts made by his predecessors and contemporaries. He mentions Aristotle, Locke, Crusius (the German logician of the first half of the 18th century who was probably the first to use the terms 'analytic' and 'synthetic' in their Kantian senses), Kant and many other minor philosophers. He easily succeeds in proving the inadequateness of Kant's two definitions for analytic', the one given in his Logik and equating, in effect, Analytic (1) with Identical, the other much better known in the introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, where he proposes to call propositions 'analytic', whose predicate-concept is contained (perhaps in a hidden manner) in the subject-notion. Bolzano points out (p. 87) the vagueness of the term 'contained' and argues that, according to a quite natural interpretation of this term, the proposition « The father of Alexander, King of Macedonia, was King of Macedonia » ought to be analytic, a consequence which Kant certainly did not intend to be drawn.

But to even more refined versions of Kant's definition, given by some of his followers, replacing the vague 'contained' by more concise terms, such as those making use of 'essential characteristics', Bolzano objects that only one type of proposition conforms to them, namely 'A (which is B) is B'. But should not, continues Bolzano, also propositions of the type 'Every object is either B or non-B' be counted among the analytic propositions?

Having thus convinced himself of the inadequateness of all prior approaches, he started to attack the subject along a new and highly original line." (pp. 3-4 of the reprint).

9. ———. 1952. "Bolzano’s Propositional Logic." Archiv für Mathematische Logik und Grundlagenforschung no. 1:65-98

Reprinted in: Y. Bar-Hillel, Aspects of language. Essays and lectures on philosophy of language, linguistic philosophy and methodology of linguistics, Jerusalem: The Magnes Press - The Hebrew University, 1970, pp. 33-68.

"1848 is a remarkable year not only in general history; in the history of human culture and thought it will be remembered also as the birth year of G. Frege, "the greatest logician of the 19th century",(2) and should be remembered as the year in which the death of the greatest logician between Leibniz and Frege, the Czech Bernard Bolzano, occurred. So far, little has been done to evaluate his important contributions to logical theory,(3) and I hope that the present article will help to undo this undeserved wrong.

The purpose of this article is very restricted: only a small part of Bolzano's investigations will be dealt with, i.e. his propositional logic, and even this in a limited degree. This theory is in my opinion not only a master-work of outstanding historical interest, I also believe that it contains many features neglected even by modern symbolic logic and nevertheless worthy of close study. I am convinced that such a study will considerably enrich our logical technique and terminology.

Since our principal aim is to emphasize the impact which Bolzano's ideas should have on contemporary logic, I shall allow myself to depart, sometimes considerably, from his original account and even to disregard parts of his theory unacceptable to us which do not play any decisive role in its construction, all this, of course, after due warning shall have been given.

I shall summarize the contents of §§147, 154-160 of Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre (1837), with which alone this study is concerned, in 28 definitions and 95 theorems. Most of these theorems will not be proved, for the sake of brevity, but the reader will, in general, be able to supplement the proofs by himself. Many definitions and a few theorems will be illustrated by simple examples. Major departures from Bolzano's original account will be specially mentioned and justified.

In the second part of the study I shall outline the place of Bolzano's contribution within the framework of modern semantics, by its detailed comparison with the corresponding parts of R. Carnap's two volumes of Studies in Semantics. This comparison will give us a certain perspective on the bearing of Bolzano's highly original innovations for modern research, and on the other hand enable us to see clearly the precise nature of some of his shortcomings." (pp. 33-34)

(1) This article has been written as an outcome of conversations with Professor Hugo Bergman of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and a joint reading of the relevant passages of Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre. It is to Professor Bergman that I owe the general ideas on which this paper is based.

(2) According to A. Tarski, Introduction to Logic, 1941, p. 19.

(3) The following is a list of the most important articles dealing mainly with Bolzano's contributions to logic which have appeared in the last two decades:

W. Dubislav Bolzano as Vorlaufer der mathematischen Logik", Philosophisches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft, vol. 44 (1931), pp. 448-456.

H. Scholz, "Die Wissenschaftslehre Bolzanos", Semesterberichte, 9. Semester, 1936/37, pp. 1-53.

H. Scholz, "Die Wissenschaftslehre Bolzanos", Abhandlungen der Fries'schen Schule, n. s. vol. 6 (1937), pp. 399-472.

H. R. Smart, "Bolzano's Logic", The Philosophical Review, vol. 53 (1944), pp. 513-533.

I have not been able to get hold of Scholz's second article, but since it is, according to the Journal of Symbolic Logic, only a somewhat broader version of his first article, the loss is probably not too great. My quotations from Scholz will therefore refer always to his first article.

10. ———. 2006. "Bolzano, Bernard." In Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Second edition. Vol. 1, edited by Borchert, Donald M., 646-648. New York: Thomson Gale

First edition 1967.

"Bernard Bolzano, a philosopher, theologian, logician, and mathematician, was born in Prague, where his father, an Italian art dealer, had settled; his mother was a German merchant’s daughter. Bolzano studied mathematics, philosophy, and theology in Prague and defended his doctor’s thesis in mathematics in 1804; he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest the following year. Shortly thereafter he was appointed to a temporary professorship in the science of religion at Karlova University in Prague and two years later was given a newly established chair in this field. Some time later he was accused of religious and political heresy and was removed from his teaching position in December 1819. Bolzano spent much of his time thereafter with the family of his friend and benefactor, A. Hoffmann, at their estate in southern Bohemia. He had difficulty getting his later publications through the Metternich censorship. Some of his books were put on the Index, and many appeared only posthumously. Some manuscripts are yet to be published; the most important of these are in the National Museum and the University Library in Prague, others are in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna. In December 1848, Bolzano died of a respiratory disease from which he had suffered for most of his life." (p. 646)

11. Behboud, Ali. 1997. "Remarks on Bolzano's Collections." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 53:109-115

"With his "zoology of general kinds of collective entities"[*], Peter Simons has sketched - in a very helpful way - some main alternatives for possible interpretations of Bolzano's collections. As he pointed out, we may not have more thanjust a best fit - and, in fact, he proposes that Bolzano' s account is "a distinct and distinctive theory of collections". I do agree with Simons that there are many difficulties we have to face when we try to fit Bolzano' s account into one of our theories. Also, ignoring the considerable historical interest for the moment, the price the technical inconveniences as weIl as the conceptual complexities which such a fit might require in the end could be too high to be of any practical interest. Nevertheless, I would like to try my luck for a best fit. (1)" (p. 105)

(1) Simons is clearly right that Bolzano does not develop a systematic theory of collections. However, collections play a fundamental role for Bolzano (even beyond his mathematical theories), since anything whatsoever is either a collection or an "atom" (einfach). So it is no surprise thatthe notion of a collection is almost ubiquitous in Bolzano's works.

[*] P. Simons, Bolzano on Collections, (1997), p. 87.

12. Bellomo, Anna, and Massas, Guillaume. 2021. "Bolzanos' Mathematical Infinite." The Review of Symbolic Logic:1-55

Abstract: "Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848) is commonly thought to have attempted to develop a theory of size for infinite collections that follows the so-called part–whole principle, according to which the whole is always greater than any of its proper parts. In this paper, we develop a novel interpretation of Bolzano’s mature theory of the infinite and show that, contrary to mainstream interpretations, it is best understood as a theory of infinite sums. Our formal results show that Bolzano’s infinite sums can be equipped with the rich and original structure of a non-commutative ordered ring, and that Bolzano’s views on the mathematical infinite are, after all, consistent."

13. Benoist, Jocelyn. 2002. "Husserl and Bolzano." In Phenomenology World-Wide: Foundations, Expanding Dynamisms, Life-Engagements. A Guide for Research and Study, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 98-100. Dordecht: Kluwer

"Bolzano's influence on Husserl has recently come to be appreciated at its true worth. It is actually an extremely important one.

Husserl recalls that he attended a lecture given by Brentano on The Paradoxes of the Infinite. But he mayalso have heard of Bolzano from his mathematics professor Karl Weierstrass. Papers written by the Brentanist Benno Kerry (Ueber Anschauung und ihre psychische Verarbeitung 1885-1891) also had a certain bearing on Husserl's knowledge of Bolzano. The insightful discussion of the Bolzanian thesis of "representations without object" to be found in Twardowski's book On Content and Object of Presentations succeeded in interesting Brentano's pupil in that author definitively.

The psychological point of view adopted by Husserl in the Philosophy of Arithmetic does seem to be very far removed from that of Bolzano. However, on the other hand, Husserl's break with psychologism, which took place during the years 1894-1896, appears to have had a direct bearing on Husserl's better acquaintance with Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre during that period. We now know that in 1896 Husserl gave a course which was not, as is commonly believed, a draft of the Prolegomena, but was rather a survey of Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre. [*]

What really matters is that the break with Brentanian psychologism was indeed a Bolzanian move. Such a move allows us to speak of a "Bolzanian tum" in Husserl's thought, taking place around 1896. From that point of view, Husserl's thought, "phenomenology", may and must be understood as a (quite strange) kind of compromise between Brentanian descriptive psychology and Bolzanian propositionalism." (p. 98)

[*] E, Husserl, Logik. Vorlesung 1896, edited by Elisabeth Schuhmann, Dordrecht: Springer 2001.

14. Benthem, Johan van. 1984. Lessons from Bolzano. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Leland Stanford Junior University

"Bernard Bolzano's contributions to logic, largely unnoticed in the 19th century, have been receiving ever more attention from modern logicians (cf. Scholz, 1937; Berg, 1962; Corcoran, 1975). As a result, it has already become something of a commonplace to credit Bolzano with the discovery of the notion of logical consequence in the semantic sense. Now, this particular attribution, whether justified or not, would at best establish a historical link between modern logical concerns and Bolzano's work. The purpose of the present note, however, is to bring out three important aspects of that work that are still of contemporary systematic interest. No detailed textual study of Bolzano is needed to substantiate our suggestions. We shall refer to well-documented 'public' aspects of the 'Wissenschaftslehre' (Bolzano, 1837), pointing out their more general logical significance." (p. 1).

References

Jan Berg, Bolzanos's Logic, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell 1962.

John Corcoran, "Meanings of Implication." Diálogos, 9, pp. 59-76, 1975.

Heinrich Scholz, "Die Wissenschaftslehre Bolzano's: Eine Jahrhundert-Betrachtung." Abhandlungen der Fries'schen Schule, 6, pp- 399-472, 1937.

15. ———. 1985. "The Variety of Consequence, According to Bolzano." Studia Logica no. 44:389-403

Abstract: "Contemporary historians of logic tend to credit Bernard Bolzano with the invention of the semantic notion of consequence, a full century before Tarski. Nevertheless, Bolzano's work played no significant role in the genesis of modern logical semantics. The purpose of this paper is to point out three highly original, and still quite revelant themes in Bolzano's work, being a systematic study of possible types of inference, of consistency, as well as their meta-theory. There are certain analogies with Tarski's concerns here, although the main thrust seems to be different, both philosophically and technically. thus, if only obliquely, we also provide some additional historical perspective on Tarski's achievement."

16. ———. 2003. "Is There Still Logic in Bolzano’s Key?" In Bernard Bolzanos Leistungen in Logik, Mathematik und Physik, edited by Morscher, Edgar, 11-34. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag

"Bolzano is widely seen as the philosopher of abstract propositions, far removed from psychological blemishes. Nevertheless, many themes in this paper suggest links with the actual reasoning performed by non-Platonic humans like us. We saw this with attention to diverse styles of task-dependent reasoning, with degrees of logicality for the expressions of natural language that we actually use, with inferences transferring information across discourse situations, with global architecture of reasoning styles, or with mixtures of such neatly compartmentalized logical activities as semantic evaluation and proof. When we take all this seriously, it becomes hard not to go one step further, and do something which Frege has forbidden - but probably also Bolzano: take the psychological facts seriously. All the above topics border on cognitive science and the experimental study of human reasoning, and the eventual agenda of modem logic will also have to come to better terms with that than the by now pretty stale slogan of 'anti-psychologism'.

Conclusions.

We have surveyed some aspects of Bolzano's logic from a modern standpoint, stressing in particular his different styles of consequence, the essential ternary nature of consequence when language is taken into account, and the mixed notion of consequence in a model. In all three cases we included some new technical observations to show that the issues are still alive. But the more general thrust is this.

Bolzano's work remains interesting for logic today, both in its general sweep, and in some of its details. Partly, it is attractive precisely because it is so non-mainstream, and hence valuable for modern agenda discussions. Its themes crossing logic and philosophy of science reflect current rapprochements, while its thrust also seems to fit with some themes from AI. Classical mathematical logic has had an Austrian icon in Kurt Gödel: modem logic might consider at least having a Czech-Austrian patron saint." (pp. 30-31).

17. ———. 2013. "Bernard Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre." Topoi no. 32:301-303

"In this review, I will focus on Mr. Bolzano’s thoughts about logic, even though he offers much more than that to readers interested in theory of science and general philosophy. Modern logic has become more and more technical, cutting itself loose from its broader origins as the study of reasoning, and philosophers of logic slavishly play up to this trend by devising ever more arcane criteria of ‘logicality’ that apply only to a small elite of ‘logical constants’, making it harder and harder for new themes to enter the field. Refreshingly, Mr. Bolzano does none of this. He resolutely ignores received wisdom in logic textbooks, and deftly avoids entanglement in the scholasticism of our modern age. Instead, he just goes back to what logic is about, and rethinks it afresh." (p. 301)

18. Berg, Jan. 1962. Bolzano's Logic. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell

Contents: Preface 5; Introduction 7; Abbreviations 12; I. Bolzano's life and work 13; II. A logical frame 33; III. Bolzano's fundamental notions 41; IV. Bolzano's logic of variation 92; V. Other logical theories 146; VI. Bolzano's logic of entailment 151; VII. Bolzano's philosophy of mathematics 165; Bibliography 179; Index of proper names 213-214.

"Bernard Bolzano made essential contributions to, inter alia, theology, logic, and mathematics. For political reasons, however, he was prevented from influencing to a full extent the age in which he lived. As a mathematician his name has survived, although many of his most remarkable results were not published until a century after their conception. As a logician he has begun to appear again in scattered articles and comments. In this study I have tried to give an exposition and evaluation of the main ideas of his logic from a modern viewpoint.

Important parts of Bolzano's theories of logic and semantics were new with him, and when these ideas reappear later they were independent of him. This position, in part outside of the historical development, makes it highly pertinent to compare Bolzano's theories directly with modern logic. When tracing the lineage of some of Bolzano's ideas I have even projected the earlier theories onto a modern scheme of reference.

In the first chapter I shall briefly mention the genesis of Bolzano's main works. But I am not primarily interested in the genetic aspect of Bolzano's theories. Therefore, as often as possible I shall consider Bolzano's various formulations of his ideas as if they were parts of a simultaneous whole.

My analysis of Bolzano's achievements in logic, semantics, and mathematical philosophy is based on his mature production after 1820, when he started writing his magnum opus, the Wissenschaftslehre. The works chiefly consulted are:

(1) Wissenschaftslehre, I-IV (Bolzano (15) mostly abbreviated "WL"). [Names followed by parenthesized numerals refer to the bibliography; see the last paragraph of this introduction.]

(2) Der Briefwechsel B. Bolzano's mit F. Exner (Bolzano (54), "BE").

(3) Erste Begriffe der allgemeinen Grössenlehre (Bolzano (78), "AG").

(4) Reine Zahlenlehre. Erster Abschnitt. Von dem Begriffe, den allgemeinsten Beschaffenheiten und der Bezeichnungsart der Zahlen (Bolzano (79), "RZ").

(5) Unendliche Grössenbegriffe (Bolzano (81), "UG").

(6) Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre und Religionswissenschaft in einer beurtheilenden Uebersicht (Bolzano (z5), "WU").

(7) Einleitung zur Grössenlehre (Bolzano (83), "EG").

(8) Paradoxien des Unendlichen (Bolzano (45), "PU").

For (3)-(5) and (7) I have utilized Bolzano's unpublished manuscripts. In general I have presupposed that some editions of (1), (2), and (8) are accessible to the reader.

Chapter I presents in a concentrated form some biographical and bibliographical facts about Bolzano. The manuscripts used are described and dated. Some topics lying outside of logic proper and dealt with in published or unpublished works of Bolzano are also touched upon. The most representative portraits of Bolzano - one of which has not been published before - are reproduced.

Chapter II describes the logical machinery to be used in the formalization and the comparative analysis of Bolzano's logic. This chapter may be read cursorily and used as future occasion may require. The system expounds the so-called elementary logic, i.e., classical predicate logic of first order with identity. In view of its simplicity and non-controversial character, elementary logic seems at present to be an expedient object for comparison in research in the history of logic. To be sure, we know nothing for certain about the future of logic; maybe the logics of tomorrow will differ greatly from those of today. However, it is likely that our elementary logic will be translatable into or representable within these conceivable new systems. But there is always the possibility that new systems of logic will promote a deeper understanding of certain features of the objects analysed.

Chapters III-VII expound those aspects of Bolzano's theories of logic, semantics, and mathematical philosophy which seem to me fundamental. Certain sections of these chapters are subdivided into two parts; part A describes Bolzano's ideas and part B offers commentaries on A. In order to shorten the exposition, definitions and arguments are sometimes formalized even in A, and sometimes auxiliary notions not found in Bolzano are introduced with explicit caution. In doing so I have always attempted to stay within or very close to Bolzano's sphere of ideas. This does not mean, of course, that I have always followed the order in which Bolzano presents his definitions and theories in the Wissenschaftslehre or elsewhere. Nor have I stinted myself at times in giving very free paraphrases of Bolzano's mode of expression. In proving theorems I try to reproduce Bolzano's line of thought without copying his manner of speaking. In part B, Bolzano's logic is compared with modern theories. I attempt to show how certain gaps could be filled in and how Bolzano's theories could be elaborated and made more precise. Moreover, under B some forerunners of Bolzano and selected parts of the modern literature concerning him are discussed.

In the annotated bibliography, part A embraces the literature on Bolzano and his own works. References to part A are given by names followed by numerals within parenthesis. References to part B of the bibliography are effected by placing a "B" after the parenthesized numerals. In references to manuscripts, folio numbers are qualified by "r" and "v", meaning, as usual, recto and verso respectively." (Introduction).

19. ———. 1966. "Bolzano's Notion of Proposition." In Ost und West in der Geschichte des Denkens und der kulturellen Beziehungen. Festschrift für Eduard Winter zum 70. Geburtstag. Mit einem Geleitwort von A.P. Juskevic, edited by Steinitz, Wolfgang, 519-526. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

20. ———. 1967. "What Is a Proposition?" Logique et Analyse no. 39/40:293-306

"Certain theories of modern logic have the purpose of defining interesting classes of linguistic expressions, such as the set of sentences of a language, or relations between expressions, such as derivability among formulas. Other theories aim at describing semantic relations between linguistic expressions and nonlinguistic objects, such as the relation of being the meaning of an expression. Yet a third kind of theories may give a direct analysis of non-linguistic objects which could stand in semantic relations to linguistic expressions.

This paper first propounds and discusses certain constructions of the second kind and then attempts an explication of the third kind of the notion of non-linguistic proposition. However, only a limited class of propositions (called "elementary propositions") will be explained, viz., propositions corresponding to the sentences of a language of elementary logic. Admittedly, this explication will have merely a remote connection with the problems of ordinary language. On the other hand, a tradition of logical semantics has accumulated since the 19th century dealing with technical and more or less formalized languages, and it may be worth while to attempt a solution of some problems encountered in such studies.

In writing this paper I have profited from comments and criticism of Professor A. Wedberg, University of Stockholm." (p. 293)

21. ———. 1972. "Bolzano's Theory of an Ideal Language." In Contemporary Philosophy in Scandinavia, edited by Paul, Anthony, Olson, Raymond and Wright, Georg Henrik von, 405-415. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press

"In his logical inquiries Bolzano employed a partly formalized language embracing an ordinary language extended by constants, variables, and certain technical expressions. In the second volume of the Wissenschaftslehre he investigated the relations of this semiformalized philosophical language to colloquial language (WL, sections 127-46, 169 84). He believed that all sentences of colloquial language were 'reducible' to sentences of certain canonical forms expressed in the philosophical language. These canonical sentences were said to mirror their corresponding propositions in the sharpest way.

Had Bolzano's theory of reduction been completely developed it might have resulted in the construction of an ideal language for philosophical analysis. In this ideal language, however, sentences of canonical form would not play quite the same role as the atomic sentence forms on the basis of which more complex forms are built up in modern quantification theory. It seems, on the contrary, that Bolzano intended even the most complicated sentences to have canonical forms or to be reducible to sentences having such form.

This paper attempts a reconstruction of an extensional Bolzanian ideal language on the level of elementary logic. After some preliminary explanations of fundamental notions in Bolzano's logic, the main points of his theory of reduction of sentences are described. Two principles that determine the construction of an elementary Bolzanian ideal language emerge from the exposition. We then move toward building such a language and begin by modifying the standard representation of elementary logic, replacing the universal and existential quantifiers by Hilbert's e-operator. By further modifications of both the syntax and the underlying semantics, a logical language satisfying the two principles is obtained." (pp. 405-406)

22. ———. 1977. "Bolzano's Contribution to Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics." In Logic Colloquium '76, edited by Gandy, Robin O. and Hyland, John Martin, 147-171. Amsterdam: North-Holland

"The Wissenschaftslehre was intended merely as a prelude to Bolzano's work on mathematics. His main ambition was to recreate the whole body of contemporary mathematics in accordance with the vision of an abstract hierarchy of true propositions. For Bolzano this task implied the creation of entirely new foundations for certain branches of mathematics, as may be seen from his highly interesting efforts directed toward basing geometry on topological concepts.

In carrying out this program, most of the means of expression of modern quantification theory were in essence available to Bolzano.

He came very close to modern notions of satisfaction, logical truth, consistency and logical consequence. On the other hand, the formal deductive machinery of quantification theory is practically non-existent in Bolzano's works. This syntactic machinery appears only in Frege, who created the first strictly logistical system at the end of the 19th century. Bolzano's lack of interest in developing particular logical calculi most probably stems from his aspects of logic and mathematics and of science in general.

The notion of calculus in the modern logistical sense was first clearly considered by Leibniz. His basic dream was of an effectively decidable, interpreted calculus embracing all "eternal" truth. Bolzano was justifiably critical of this overambitious program and presented instead his own theory of the Abfolge structure of nonlinguistic propositions, thereby taking his stand away from that line of development in logic which leads to modern syntactic concept formation. A reason for Bolzano's general lack of interest in questions of logical syntax was no doubt his profoundly intensional, non-linguistic approach to logic.

Bolzano's central thesis, that there are abstract objects which differ from both mental occurrences and all kinds of linguistic expressions, has been advocated by later philosophers of the German-speaking countries, inter alia by Lotze, Brentano in his earlier period, Meinong and Frege. Lotze and Frege never refer to Bolzano's work, though, and the others protested their independence of Bolzano. Husserl admits that he received vital influences from Bolzano, but his notions of "ideal" objects derive from Lotze's and not from Bolzano's logic.

Among the great Western philosophers Bolzano is perhaps the least influential. In epistemology, logic and mathematics his most fervent disciples were not able to propagate his ideas with sufficient vigor.

His keen criticism of German idealistic philosophy and his important discoveries in logic: semantics and mathematical philosophy silently died away.

A contributing cause of Bolzano's lack of influence on the development of the philosophical disciplines was, of course, the fact that most of his works were, for political reasons, published anonymously in editions not easily accessible. Furthermore, an immense number of unpublished manuscripts in a partly almost indecipherable handwriting is to be found in archives in Prague and Vienna. Several unfruitful attempts have been made in the last 150 years to bring out more or less complete editions of Bolzano's works. It is to be hoped that the latest venture launched in Stuttgart, West Germany, will prove more successful." (pp. 170-171)

23. ———. 1982. "A Requirement for the Logical Basis of Scientific Theories Implied by Bolzano's Logic of Variation." Acta Historiae Rerum Naturalium Necnon Technicarum no. 12:415-425

Bernardo Bolzano (1781-1848) - Bicentenary. Impact of Bolzano's epoch on development of Science - Conference papers, Prague 7-13 September 1981.

24. ———. 1986. "A Logic of Terms with an Existence Operator." In Logic and Abstraction. Essays Dedicated to Per Lindström on his Fifthieth Birthday, edited by Furberg, Mats, Wetterström, Thomas and Aberg, Claes, 71-94. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis

"1. Introduction

In this paper a language L* of elementary logic satisfying the following two conditions will be constructed:

(C 1) each expression in L* consists of an n-ary function symbol f applied to n arguments (n > 0);

(C 2) if in L* f is a predicative function symbol, ti a term, and J an interpretation for a particular i (1 < i < n) under which ti is empty, then f(t_1 · · ·tn is false under J.

Here f is a predicative function symbol of L* if f under a suitable mapping, corresponds to a predicate of one of the standard versions of elementary logic.

The language L* differs from standard representations of elementary logic in that it replaces the universal and existential quantifiers with Hilbert’s ε-operator and modifies both the syntax and the underlying semantics accordingly. An elementary logic with a non-trivial existence predicate is in itself interesting, and when combined with a logic of terms can be utilized for research in the history of logic. (Cf. Berg [1972]."

References

J. Berg, Bolzano's theory of an ideal language. R. E. Olson & A. M. Paul (Eds.): Contemporary philosophy in Scandinavia pp. 405-415 (Baltimore).

25. ———. 1987. "Bolzano and Situation Semantics: Variations on a Theme of Variation." Philosophia Naturalis no. 24:373-377

"The distinction between logical and non-logical notions plays a significant role in Bolzano's theory and he is fully aware of its importance even though he has to admit that various scholars may differ in their opinion on what a logical idea is (WL § 148.3). Tarski has tried to clarify the distinction between logical and non-logical notions (Adam Tarski, What are logical notions? History and Philosophy of Logic, 7, 1986, pp. 143-154). A notion of Euclidean geometry, e.g., is invariant under all similarity transformations, and a topological notion is invariant under all continuous transformations. Analogously, a logical notion may be conceived of as a concept which is invariant under all bijective mappings of the domain of individuals onto itself. (In this sense even the classical reduction problem of critical realism can be solved: A physical notion is a concept invariant under a Galilei or a Lorentz transformation.)

It is possible to vary not only the non-logical ideas-as-such contained in propositions but even some or all logical ideas. Actually, such a variation is implied by the algebraic approach to logic. The propositions of Bolzano correspond to the values of the propositional variables of modern logic. (p. 374)

(...)

Bolzano seems to have intended, however, variation exclusively over non-logical ideas-as-such. That he did not allow a variation of the copula is abundantly clear from his way of introducing the notion of variation in his Einleitung zur Grossenlehre (Bolzano (2A7), p. 62). Here he presupposes that only the subject and predicate ideas of a proposition or parts thereof be varied. Furthermore, his proofs of certain variation-logical theorems show that he would not allow a variation of the logical constants of negation, truth, and the copula in the form of an inclusion between ideas-as-such (WL §§ 154.19, 155.21)." (p. 375)

26. ———. 1987. "Is Russell's Antinomy Derivable in Bolzano's Logic?" Philosophia Naturalis:406-413

"In his encyclopedic work Wissenschaftslehre Bernard Bolzano expounded a theory of logical truth which constitutes an outstanding achievement in the history of Western thought. This informal theory is essentially based on a substitutional truth-value semantics without certain existence presuppositions and contains a general proof theory. In his substitutional semantics Bolzano introduced notions such as universal validity, consistency, consequence, analyticity, and probability by means of the technique of variation of concepts. In his proof theory he treated the notion of entailment, which is a generalization of a special case of the relation of logical consequence, and studied proof trees generated by the relation of entailment which exhibit the objective connection between all true propositions. In view of this wealth of important notions it seems worthwhile to investigate the possibility of a consistent reconstruction of Bolzano's logic. In particular, it must be examined how his theory fares with a fundamental set-theoretic antinomy such as that of Russell." (p. 406)

(...)

"There is, therefore, no such thing as an idea of all ideas which are not objects of themselves, and Bolzano could scarcely be blamed for having no idea of something which does not exist in any sense at all. Under a reasonable interpretation of Bolzano's theory of ideas-as-such there is no trouble-maker around who could generate an antinomy analogous to that of Russell." (p. 411)

27. ———. 1987. "Bolzano on Induction." Philosophia Naturalis no. 24:442-446

"Bolzano combined the fundamental notions of his theory of probability and his proof theory to achieve a logical analysis of the principles of induction. The relation between the conclusion and the premisses of an inference of incomplete induction or analogy is an interior probability relation in Bolzano's sense. The principles of induction endow the relation between the premisses and the conclusion with the character of a relation between ground and consequence. From Bolzano's subsumption of the rule of incomplete induction under the syllogistic rule of Barbara, it follows that this relation is a special case of Bolzanian derivability." (p. 442)

28. ———. 1992. Ontology Without Ultrafilters and Possible Worlds: An Examination of Bolzano's Ontology. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag

Contents: Vorwort der Herausgeber [Edgar Morscher] 7; Einleitung von Edgar Morscher 13;

Jan Berg: Ontology Without Ultrafilters and Possible Worlds 29

Introduction 31; § 1. Collections, sets, and sums 34; § 2. Numbers, infinite sets, and infinitesimals 39; § 3. Ontology without ultrafilters 48; § 4. Ideas, properties, and intuitions 52; § 5. Propositions, sentences, and judgements 64; § 6. Validity, derivability, and entailment 79; § 7. Substances, adherences, and causes 88; § 8. Ontology without possible worlds 91;

List of special symbols 95; References 97-100.

"The first basic notion of Bolzano’s ontological system is the part relation. Its domain, i.e., the set of all objects bearing it to something, embraces concrete substances, abstract objects, and collections. The converse domain of the part relation, i.e., the set of all objects to which it is borne, contains collections only.

Some collections are concrete entities existing in space and time, the rest are abstract sums or other sets. Concrete sums are composed of substances and adherences, i.e., forces. Forces applied to certain substances give rise to subjective ideas or judgements. Further results of such applications are the concrete sentence occurrences. A subjective idea is a part of a judgement which is not itself a judgement. The set of judgements is ordered by a special causal relation.

Bolzano’s abstract world is constituted of sets, abstract sums, certain attributes (i.e., properties or relations), ideas-as-such, and objects constructed on the basis of these entities. Thus, sentence shapes are a kind of properties, and certain complexes of ideas-as-such constitute propositions. The notion of an idea-as-such can be constructed from expressions of a language by means of axioms for the relation of being an object of something. Analogously, properties can be generated by axioms for the relation of something being applied to an object. The converse of this relation, i.e., the relation of an entity having a property, and the relation of being an object of an idea-as-such are fundamental ontological constants of Bolzano’s." (p. 31)

(...)

"The question whether a rational reconstruction of Bolzano’s ontology is possible will be sustained like a pedal point throughout the present study. In many respects, indeed, his ontological system is a model of thrift, comprehensiveness, and deductive cogency. He shows us how to grasp a self-contained, abstract “third” world (in Popper’s sense) embracing the realms of classical logical truth and additive probability spaces without indulging in possible worlds, states of affairs, facts, and all that. Admittedly, from a modem point of view certain aspects of his ontology may look like Dr. Johnson’s dog walking on its hind legs: it is not always done quite well, but you are surprised to find it done at all. To rational bipeds of our time it should be more instructive, though, to watch this performance rather than amazing at metaphysical cephalopods wallowing in clouds of ontological splendors, or gazing at recondite cogitators crawling on all fours through a self-induced verbal fog." (p. 33)

29. ———. 1992. "The Connection Between Bolzano's Logic of Variation and His Theory of Pprobability." In Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre 1837-1987. International Workshop, 107-120. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki

"In his monumental four-volume work Wissenschaftslehre (1837) - in the sequel denoted by ‘WL’ - Bolzano introduced several new concepts for the analysis of the structure of scientific theories. In particular, he tried to lay down a logically satisfactory foundation of mathematics and the theory of probability. During the search for such a foundation he became aware of the distinction between the actual thoughts of human beings and their linguistic expressions on the one hand, and abstract propositions (Sätze an sich) and their components which exist independent of these thoughts and expressions on the other hand.

Bolzano described the relations of propositions to other relevant notions such as those of sentence, truth, existence, and analyticity. Furthermore, he studied relations among propositions and defined highly interesting notions of validity, consistency, derivability, and probability, based on the method of «replacing» certain components in proposition. A proposition in Bolzano’s sense is a structure of ideas-as-such (Vorstellungen an sich). According to Bolzano, each complex idea-as-such can be analyzed into a sequence of simple ideas which include certain logical constants such as those expressed by the words ‘not’, ‘and’, ‘some’, ‘all’, ‘to have’, or ‘ought’ (WL §§ 61, 78.1, 116.3). The manner in which a complex idea-as-such is built up from simple ones may be expressed in a language by a chain of definitions." (p. 1907)

30. ———. 1994. "The Ontological Foundations of Bolzano's Philosophy of Mathematics." In Logic and Philosophy of Science in Uppsala, edited by Prawitz, Dag and Westerstähl, Dag, 265-271. Dordrecht: Kluwer

"The basic notion of Bolzano's ontological system is the part relation.

Its domain embraces concrete substances, abstract objects, and collections; the converse domain contains collections only.

Some collections are concrete entities existing in space and time, the rest are abstract sets.

Bolzano's notion of a set implies that a set cannot be a member of itself. Hence, there is no danger of an antinomy similar to that of Russell arising in Bolzano's ontological system of sets.

Bolzano's abstract world is constituted of sets, certain attributes (i.e., properties and relations), ideas-as-such, and objects constructed on the basis of these entities. Thus, certain complexes of ideas-as-such constitute propositions. The notion of an idea-as-such can be constructed from expressions of a language by means of axioms for the relation of being an object of something. Analogously, properties can be generated by axioms for the relation of something being applied to an object. The converse of this relation and the relation of being an object of an idea-as-such are fundamental ontological constants of Bolzano's." (p. 265)

31. ———. 1997. "Bolzano, the Prescient Encyclopedist." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 53:13-32

Abstract: "In his Wissenschaftslehre Bernard Bolzano tried to lay down a logically satisfactory foundation of mathematics and theory of probability. Thereby he became aware of the distinction between the actual thoughts and judgments of human beings, their linguistic expressions and the abstract propositions (Sätze an sich) and their components ( Vorstellungen an sich). This ontological distinction is fundamental in Bolzano's thinking paired with a universal world view in the sense that philosophy, mathematics, physics and metaphysics should be build upon the same logical foundations. Bolzano's enterprise is sketched in the light of examples from his logical semantics, proof theory, number theory, theory of truth and his variation logic."

32. ———. 2000. "From Bolzano's Point of View." The Monist.An International Quarterly Journal of General Philosophical Inquiry no. 83 (1):47-67

"I am going to present logic, logical semantics, ontology, proof theory, the foundations of mathematics, and certain aspects of the philosophy of nature from Bolzano's point of view.

In his monumental four-volume work Wissenschaftslehre (1837) Bolzano introduced several new concepts for the logical analysis of the structure of scientific theories. In particular, he tried to lay down a logically satisfactory foundation of mathematics and the theory of probability.

During the search for such a foundation he became aware of the distinction between the actual thoughts and judgements of human beings, their linguistic expressions, and the abstract propositions (Sätze an sich) and their components which exist beyond space and time. This ontological distinction is fundamental in Bolzano's philosophy. In his terminology, real things have actuality whereas abstract objects have logical existence bare of actuality.

Bolzano worked extensively with the relation of being an object of an idea-as-such (a Vorstellung an sich). The object of an idea-as-such can be either an abstract object or a concrete object existing in space and time.

The relation of being an object of an idea-as-such corresponds in modem semantics to the relation of being an element of the extension of a concept." ( 47)

(...)

"Bolzano is indubitably one of the greatest philosophers of the German language. His world view was a universal one in the sense that philosophy, mathematics, physics, and metaphysics should build upon the same logical foundations. In fact, he already recognized many of the essential things to come in logic and the foundations of mathematics." (p. 67)

33. ———. 2003. "Bolzano's Heuristics." In Bernard Bolzanos Leistungen in Logik, Mathematik und Physik, edited by Morscher, Edgar, 35-56. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag

"In the fourth part of the Wissenschaftslehre [WL], contained in the third volume of the original 1837 edition, Bolzano treats heuristics or the "art of discovery", i.e., the "rules to be observed in the search for new truths" (§ 9. Note 3; cf. also § 15.2). The first main section of Bolzano's heuristics embraces the general rules of this discipline (§§ 325 -348).

Logic in Bolzano's sense is a theory of science the objects of which are the different sciences and their linguistic representations (§ 15). According to Bolzano a science is a set of true propositions (Sätze an sich) worthy of representation in a textbook. Logic or the theory of science is a set of rules which are necessary and sufficient for a representation to satisfy certain criteria concerning scientific textbooks (§ 1). In view of this very broad conception of logic it is fairly obvious that heuristics is an integrant part thereof." (p. 35)

This paper was already presented in 1991 at the International Bolzano Symposium in Salzburg, but has never been published since.

34. ———. 2003. "The Importance of Being Bolzano." In Bernard Bolzanos Leistungen in Logik, Mathematik und Physik, edited by Morscher, Edgar, 153-166. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag

"1. Logical consequence

Ever since Aristotle philosophers have occupied themselves with the question whether a given statement follows from another statement. The first published precision of this notion in modern times was undertaken by the Polish logician Alfred Tarski in 1936. Accordingly, a closed formula F is a logical consequence of a set of formulas F if and only if F is true under every interpretation of the nonlogical constants under which all elements of F are true. Logical constants are inter alia connectives of sentential logic (expressed by words like "not", "and", "or", "if - then") and quantifiers of predicate logic (such as "for all" and "there is"); hence, the interpretation of these constants is determined.

But who conceived this notion of logical consequence (mutatis mutandis) already a hundred years earlier?'

Right: The Bohemian philosopher, ontologist, logician, mathematician and theologian Bernard Bolzano!

Upon substitution of abstract nonlinguistic propositions for closed formulas and variants of propositions for interpretations, we get precisely a special case of Tarski's notion of logical consequence. (A variant of a proposition P is a proposition identical with P up to at least one nonlogical component.) Incidentally, at the university of Warsaw Tarski was a student of Lukasiewicz's who lectured inter alia on Bolzano's logic.

Just like Bolzano Tarski admitted being unable to exactly distinguish between logical and nonlogical constants. Not until thirty years later did he formulate a necessary condition for the property of being a logical constant. Furthermore, if all constants of the formal language in question were regarded as logical, the notion of material implication, would emerge. Even this weakest of all notions of consequence was introduced by Bolzano and is playing an important role in some of his deduction rules.

Tarski presupposed a fixed domain as a realm of reference for the interpretations. Even Bolzano did not conceive of a combined quantification over domains and components of propositions. (By introducing a predicate for domains and letting the quantifiers refer to this predicate, however, one can represent all theorems of the model theory developed later on.)

Nowadays we know, of course, that Tarski's notion of logical consequence is unsuitable if the set-theoretic language is enlarged by a generalized existence quantifier expressing that there is an absolutely infinite class C (in the sense that C does not include exactly K elements for any cardinal number K). This esoteric fact of modern set theory cannot, however, diminish our appreciation of Bolzano's achievement.

2. Analytic propositions

A fundamental distinction in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is that between analytic and synthetic judgements. In modern logical semantics analyticity is often considered a relation between a sentence S, a set of definitions, and a language L. For instance, one can say that S in L is analytic with respect to D if S is a logical consequence of D in L which embraces S and the elements of D.

But who formulated an analogous explication of analyticity within the system of abstract propositions already in the 1830s?

Right: Bernard Bolzano!" (pp. 153-154)

(...)

"6. Situation semantics

In modern so-called situation semantics, established at the beginning of the 1980s by the American logician and linguist Jon Barwise, a notion of consequence is introduced which is stronger than that of Tarski. In situation semantics certain set-theoretic structures are considered models and a situation is a partial submodel thereof. The primitive notion is the confirmation of a sentence in a model by a situation. For example, a sentence of the form of "A or not A" is a logical consequence of any sentence in the sense of Tarski but not a strong consequence of it.

But who discovered this notion of strong consequence even a hundred years earlier?

Right: Bernard Bolzano!

In his logic Bolzano considered not only the variants with respect to the sequence of all nonlogical components of propositions but also the variants with respect to all subsequences. By that counterparts of main laws of situation semantics turn into theorems of Bolzano's logic." (p. 156)

(...)

17. Estimation

Thus some outstanding achievements of Bolzano's on the fields of logic, semantics, and mathematics have been delineated. The fact that the connection of most of these achievements with modern research remained unknown until the 1960s is due to the circumstance that the study of Bolzano's work took a new turn then and that eventually editions of the often hardly legible manuscripts of the literary remains could be published in the Collected Works of Bernard Bolzano.

Moreover, particularly in Bolzano's logical semantics there are many original ideas which have no precise affinity with modern theories. In addition to that he accomplished extensive investigations into concepts of epistemology, philosophy of nature, physics, metaphysics, ethics, and theology." (p. 165)

35. Berka, Karel. 1982. "Bolzano’s Philosophy of Science." In Bernard Bolzano, 1781-1848 Bicentenary. Impact of Bolzano's Epoch on the Development of Science, 427-442. Prague: Institute of Czechoslovak and General History CSAS.

36. ———. 1983. "The Ideal of Mathematization in B. Bolzano." In Nature Mathematized. Historical and Philosophical Case Studies in Classical Modern Natural Philosophy. Vol. 1, edited by Shea, William R., 291-298. Reidel: Kluwer

"In my contribution I would like to draw attention to the views on the ideal of mathematization held by B. BoJzano, a later follower of Leibnizian rationalism.

This analysis will show the evolution of conceptions elaborated in the epoch of mathesis universalis on this topic in a period basically influenced by the philosophy of Kant and other representatives of German classical philosophy." (p. 291)

(...)

"The discussions concerning the acceptability of the fifth postulate of Euclid's Elements and the various attempts to prove it, seem to him to be clear evidence that the problem in question does not lie in the demonstration of the certainty of this postulate, but in finding the objective ground of its validity. In his work Die drey Probleme der Rectification, der Complanation und der Cubirung (1811), he claims that we cannot accept as a basic truth any proposition which admits a further ground of its truth. BoJzano does not doubt that this postulate is true, requiring only to have its validity grounded in an objective way, independently of our subjective feeling of certainty." (p. 291)

(...)

"Bolzano's conception, which extends and modifies the Leibnizian project of mathematization is explicitly proclaimed in part II, "On the mathematical method", of his Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik (1810) and further elaborated in other mathematical works, especially in his Einleitung zur Grossenlehre, and in the Wissenschaftslehre, where the logical aspects of mathematics and its methodology are taken into consideration." (p. 292)

37. ———. 1988. "Natural Deduction in Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre." In Intensional Logic, History of Philosophy and Methodology. To Imre Ruzsa on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, edited by Bodnàr, István M., Maté, András and László, Pólos, 203-212. Budapest: Department of Symbolic Logic, Eotvos University.

38. ———. 1998. "Bernard Bolzano. A Historian of Logic." History of Science and Technology no. 31:121-130

Abstract: "Bolzano´s Theory of Science (Wissenschaftslehre) contains a great amount of very valuable information concerning the development of logic from its beginnings in Aristotle till the post-Kantian period. In a critical exposition Bolzano presents views of his predecessors and compares them with his own standpoint. The paper presents a selective survey of various conceptions developed by Aristotle, G. W. Leibniz and his followers G. Ploucquet, J. H. Lambert and S. Maimon together with their Bolzanian interpretation. The historical analyses in his principal logical work are, thus, at the same time a witness of his own opinions toward different topics in logic."

39. Betti, Arianna. 1998. "De Veritate: Another Chapter. The Bolzano-Lesniewski Connection." In The Lvov-Warsaw School and Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna and Wolenski, Jan, 115-137. Dordrecht: Kluwer

"In 'De Veritate: Austro-Polish contributions to the theory of truth from Brentano to Tarski' Jan Wolenski and Peter M. Simons related an intriguing story of the "Austro-Polish obsession with truth". Wolenski and Simons mention the Bohemian philosopher Bernard Bolzano several times, with particular reference to absoluteness and sempiternity of truth in Twardowski and Lesniewski.

(...)

In the following I wish to point out three issues. First, in the so-called prelogistic writings the early Lesniewski defines truth of sentences in such a way that truth conditions are the same - mutatis mutandis - as Bolzano's.

Secondly, from this point of view the links between the early and the late Lesniewski, in this case between some parts of his early writings and some aspects of Ontology, are closer than they are commonly believed to be. Thirdly, in this perspective it can be shown that some of Bolzano's views come near to Lesniewski's Ontology. In discussing Bolzano's views I shall mostly follow Casari's reading of Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre." (p. 115)

40. ———. 2006. "Sempiternal Truth. The Bolzano-Twardowski-Lesniewski Axis." In The Lvov-Warsaw School: The New Generation, edited by Jadacki, Jacek Jusliuz and Pasniczek, Jacek, 371-399. Amsterdam: Rodopi

"Twardowski [*] had revived Bernard Bolzano’s ideas on the subject [eternity and sempiternity of truth], and, mainly thanks to him, these became known in the Lvov-Warsaw School (see, for instance, Jadacki 1993, p. 191). There is no doubt that Lesniewski knew Twardowski’s ideas and it seems evident that the latter influenced him: Lesniewski’s results are mostly compatible with the “absolutistic” content of Twardowski’s 1900 article. And, similarly, no doubts can be raised about the Bolzanian origin of the aspects of eternity and sempiternity of truth defended by Twardowski in Relative Truths (see, for instance, Wolenski and Simons 1988, p. 430, n. 24; and Simons 1992, Ch. 2, p. 15, n. 11; see also Smith 1988, p. 325): though his name is not quoted, traces of Bolzano’s legacy can be found even in the examples given by Twardowski, some of which are the same as used by Bolzano in his Wissenschaftslehre. Yet, since Bolzano, Twardowski and Lesniewski supported different theories of meaning with different ontological presuppositions, “sempiternity of truth” actually stands for three different conceptions. This paper is a survey of these three conceptions. I suggested elsewhere a comparison between Bolzano and the early Lesniewski as to their theories of meaning and truth, claiming the possibility of a (direct or indirect) influence of Bolzano upon Lesniewski. The analysis presented here is also meant as a contribution to the picture sketched there." (p. 372, notes omitted)

[*] “On the So-Called Relative Truths” (1900) in J. Brandl and J. Wole?ski (eds.), Kazimierz. Twardowski - Actions, Products and other Topics in Philosophy, Amsterdam: Eodopi 1999, pp. 147-168. J. Brandl and J. Wole?ski (eds.),

References

Jadacki, J.J. (1993). Kazimierz Twardowski’s Descriptive Semiotics. In: Coniglione et al., eds. (1993), pp. 191-206.

Coniglione, F., R. Poli and J. Wolenski, eds. (1993). Polish Scientific Philosophy: The Lvov-Warsaw School. Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, vol. 28. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Simons, P.M. (1992). Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Smith, B. (1988). Kasimir Twardowski: An Essay on the Borderlines of Ontology, Psychology and Logic. In: Szaniawski, ed. (1988), pp. 313-375.

Szaniawski, K., ed. (1988). The Vienna Circle and the Lvov-Warsaw School. The Hague: Nijhoff.

Wolenski, J. and P.M. Simons (1988). De veritate: Austro-Polish Contributions to the Theory of Truth from Brentano to Tarski. In: Szaniawski, ed. (1988), pp. 391-443.

41. ———. 2006. "The Strange Case of Savonarola and the Painted Fish. On the Bolzanization of Polish Thought." In Actions, Products, and Things. Brentano and Polish Philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz, 55-81. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag

"I have previously discussed in several papers specific Bolzanian elements present in the Polish tradition. This paper will not, for the most part, add anything in particular to that. The new - and rather blunt hypothesis to be put forward here is that, despite appearances, Twardowski also contributed de facto to slowing down the reception of Bolzano's most modem logical discoveries. For in Poland Bolzano was to remain one logician among many for rather long. It was chiefly thanks to two factors that Bolzano's star could, slowly, begin to rise in Poland, or, at least, that the fundamental achievements of his logic could be known. One factor is antipsychologistic (more precisely Platonistic) influence coming from Husserl and from Twardowski's student Lukasiewicz. The other factor is the change in the conception of logic which took Polish logic from, say, Sigwart, to Tarski through Lesniewski and Lukasiewicz," (p. 55)

42. ———. 2010. "Explanation in Metaphysics and Bolzano's Theory of Ground and Consequence." Logique et Analyse no. 56:281-316

"In "Troubles with Truth-making: Necessitation and Projection." Erkenntnis 64: 61-74 (2006a, and in "Truth-Making without Truth-Makers." Synthese 152: 21-46 (2006b), Benjamin Schnieder criticizes truthmaking as a relation between entities in the world and the truths those entities 'make true'. In (2006b), his criticism exploits a notion of conceptual explanation that is very similar to Bolzano's grounding. In the first part of this paper, I offer an analysis of Bolzano's grounding. I discuss some open problems and argue that Bolzano's grounding is not a systematization of the ordinary notion of 'because' as others have maintained, but of the technical notion of explanatory proof in the context of an axiomatic conception of (proper) science. On the basis of this analysis, in the second part, I offer a critical discussion of Schnieder 2006b's arguments against truthmaking. I conclude that the latter are not very effective from a methodological point of view and that Bolzano's original position fares better in this respect; still, truthmaker theorists will be able to defend truthmaking only at a high price."

43. ———. 2012. "Bolzano’s Universe: Metaphysics, Logic, and Truth." In Categories of Being. Essays on Metaphysics and Logic, edited by Haaparanta, Leila and Koskinen, Heikki J., 167-208. New York: Oxford University Press

"Thanks to a handful of publications from the last decade, however, Bolzanian metaphysics has begun to receive more attention than ever before.(1)

It is not difficult to show why Bolzanian metaphysics matters. Bolzano’s logic builds on firm ontological and mereological foundations. Logic as a science has a realm of its own, that of the an sich, in the strong sense that logic is the science of a special kind of object, namely, propositions-in-themselves and ideas, and their qualities. Furthermore, the edifice of logic rests on a mereological conjecture regarding the basic form of propositions and is constructed by exploiting mereological relations between propositions and ideas, plus a device of semantic ascent, involving very special ideas with very special qualities, called symbolic ideas.

Th e first and main aim of this essay is to present an overview of Bolzano’s universe from the point of view of his metaphysics and its relationship to logic, relying fundamentally on his major work, the Wissenschaftslehre. This I shall do in sections II–VI. Although these sections are chiefly intended as an exposition of the state of the art on the matter, I shall make no secret of preferring a reading of Bolzano as a “Platonistic nominalist,” as Textor puts it—as a Platonist about propositions and a nominalist about properties. (2) My second aim, in sections VII–IX, shall be to answer the open question of whether in Bolzano there is any “ontology of truth,” as one may call it, though with some hesitation." (pp. 167-168)

(1) Among others, Künne 1998; Schnieder 2002; Textor 2004.

(2) Textor 2004 , 10. That Bolzano is a Platonist about propositions is the predominant view, which I follow here. Among those who disagree, cf. Cantù 2006 , 10.

References

Cantù, Paola. 2006. Bolzano et les propositions en soi: une théorie objective des vérités. In Propositions et états de choses , ed. J. Benoist. Paris: Vrin.

Künne, Wolfgang. 1998. Substanzen und Adhärenzen—Zur Ontologie in Bolzanos Athanasia. Philosophiegeschichte und logische Analyse 1: 233–50.

Schnieder, Benjamin. 2002. Substanz und Adhärenz: Bolzanos Ontologie des Wirklichen. Sankt Augustin: Academia.

Textor, Mark. 2004. Bolzanos Ontologie. In Die Bedeutung Bernard Bolzanos für die Gegenwart, ed. K. Strasser. Prague: Filosofia.

44. Beyer, Christian. 2004. "Bolzano and Husserl on Singular Existential Statements." In Phenomenology & Analysis: Essays on Central European Philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Huemer, Wolfgang, 69-88. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag

"Which form does the propositional content take that is judged when a given speaker sincerely utters a sentence in order to assert a singular existential statement? Two thought-provoking answers to this question have been proposed by Bernard Bolzano and, when commenting upon Bolzano's proposal, by Edmund Husserl. In Section 1 of this paper the author clarifies what he means by "singular existential statements". In Section 2 Bolzano's proposed analysis is sketched. In Section 3 the author exposes the earlier Husserl's conception of "logical reflection" and draws upon it to explain why Husserl, around 1900, subscribed to Bolzano's proposal. Following this, he reconstructs and considers in detail the later Husserl's discussion of that proposal and Husserl's own mature theory of singular existential statements as manifested in a 1917/18 lecture series, both of which shed light upon a conception that is of central importance for Husserlian phenomenology: the conception of "noematic sense" (Section 4)." (p. 71)

45. Bodnar, Joanne. 1976. Bolzano and Husserl: Logic and Phenomenology

Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, State University of New York at Buffalo, available at ProQuest Dissertation Express.

Contents: Introduction 1; I. Bolzano's Anti-Psychologism 5; II. Bolzano's Theory of Meaning 41; III. Bolzano's Basic Logical Relations 51; IV. Truth to Bolzano 63; V. Husserl's Anti-Psychologism 76; VI. Husserl's Theory of Meaning 99; VII. Basic Logical Relations in Husserl 113; VIII. Truth to Husserl 128; IX. Recapitulation 144; X. Conclusion 151; Bibliography 164-168.

"Bernard Bolzano and Edmund Husserl both present some form of ontological framework for logic rather than a linguistic framework. Their works predate the pragmatic and semantic theories of Tarski and Carnap. Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre appeared in 1837. (2)And Husserl’s major logical thinking was formulated before 1935. (3) But neither of them seem receptive to a semantic foundation for logic, because of their rationalist-platonist leanings. Both strongly oppose the view that logic is taken from psychological experience by generalization. They have a viewpoint which is perhaps closer to the classical outlook than to either of the others, since they consider the foundation of logic to be the acceptance of meanings as entities — entities which are in some important ways related to actual and possible being and its structure.

Bolzano and Husserl each make crucial modifications on traditional platonism as a philosophy of logic. A basic thesis which they both do accept is that the logical entities such as the proposition with its elements and its relations are ideal unities, which are independent of their being thought. But the logical entities are not platonic forms in which spatio-temporal existences "participate" — nor are they determined by spatio-temporal existence in any way. They are independent of the subject or knower as well as of the facts of material existence.(4)

Thus the logical entities are what they are whether they ever come to expression or not. They have a character similar to that of numbers or other "abstract" mathematical objects, but it cannot be said that they arise in experience as abstractions from the empirical world. Although there is disagreement about the question of abstraction in Bolzano — with some Bolzano commentators such as Rolf George seeing little difference between Bolzano and Carnap — this tendency to read Bolzano's work as if he were a pragmatist obscures the originality of Bolzano.(5)

His differences from semantic and empiricist thinking are well worth investigating. Husserl's approach too deserves consideration for its uniqueness. Crediting Bolzano with giving a starting point in philosophy of logic, Husserl "discovered" Bolzano and brought his work out of obscurity. He makes use of the work of Bolzano however, only to transform it thoroughly. If certain common themes are selected for exposition, the positions of Bolzano and Husserl are both seen to be modifications of the classical platonism. This provides a basis for a comparison of Bolzano and Husserl." (pp. 3-5).

(2) Bolzano's work under consideration is Theory of Science, ed. and trans. by R. George (Berkeley, 1972), hereafter cited simply as Bolzano. English paginations are used, but section numbers apply to all German editions as well. The Theory of Science is a condensation of Wissenschaftslehre, vols. 1-4 (Sulzbach, 1837). R. George follows in large measure the F. Kambartel edition of Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre vols. 1-2, entitled Grundlegung der Loqik (Hamburg, 1963) in which Bolzano’s original has been condensed, with the omitted passages summarized by the editor.

(3) Works by Husserl principally under consideration are Logische Untersuchungen (1900 and 1913), trans. by J. N. Findlay (New York, 1976); and Formale und Transzendentale Loqik (1929), trans. by D. Cairns (Hague, 1969).

(4) See: U. Neemann, Bernard Bolzanos Lehre von Anschauung und Begriff in ihrer Bedeutung fŭr erkenntnistheoretische und pädaqogische Probleme (Paderborn, 1972) pp. 81 and 144. for discussions of how Bolzano's logical entities differ from Plato's forms and from Kant's subjective categories.

(5) See: R. George, "Editor's Introduction" in Bolzano's Theory of Science, (Berkeley, 1972) p. xxx. Also note J. Berg, Bolzano's Logic (Stockholm, 1962) pp. 49-50, where he expresses the view that Bolzano takes logical entities as abstractions.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on Bernard Bolzano's Contributions to Logic and Ontology. Second Part: C - Geo

Studies on Bolzano's Logic and Ontology

1. Cantù, Paola. 2011. "Bolzano Versus Kant: Mathematics as a Scientia Universalis." In Mind, Values, and Metaphysics: Philosophical Essays in Honor of Kevin Mulligan. Vol. 1, edited by Reboul, Anne. Dordrecht: Springer.

Abstract: "The chapter will discuss some changes in Bolzano’s definition of mathematics attested in several quotations from the Beyträge, Wissenschaftslehre and Größenlehre: Is mathematics a theory of forms or a theory of quantities? Several issues that are maintained throughout Bolzano’s works will be distinguished from others that were accepted in the Beyträge and abandoned in the Größenlehre.

Changes will be interpreted not only as a consequence of the new logical theory of truth introduced in the Wissenschaftslehre but also as a consequence of the overcome of Kant’s terminology, and of the radicalization of Bolzano’s anti-Kantianism.

It will be argued that Bolzano’s evolution can be understood as a coherent move, if one compares the criticism on the notion of quantity expressed in the Beyträge with a different and larger notion of quantity that Bolzano developed already in 1816. This discussion is based on the discovery that two unknown texts mentioned by Bolzano can be identified with works by von Spaun and Vieth. Bolzano’s evolution will be interpreted as a radicalization of the criticism of the Kantian definition of mathematics and as an effect of Bolzano’s unaltered interest in the Leibnizian notion of mathesis universalis. As a conclusion, it will be argued that Bolzano never abandoned his original idea of considering mathematics as a scientia universalis, i.e. as the science of quantities in general, and it will be suggested that the question of ideal elements in mathematics, which has been interpreted as a main reason for the development of a new logical theory, can also be considered as a main reason for developing a different definition of quantity."

References

Vieth G.U.A. (1805) Anfangsgründe der Mathematik. Lehrbuch der angewandten Elementarmathematik. Barth, Leipzig-

von Spaun F.A.R. (1805) Versuch das Studium der Mathematik durch Erläuterung eniger Grundbegriffe und durch zweckmässigere Methoden zu erleichtern. Göbhardt, Bamberg-

2. Casari, Ettore. 1989. "Remarks on Bolzano's Modalities." In Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Storia della Logica: le teorie della modalità, edited by Corsi, Giovanna, Mangione, Corrado and Mugnai, Massimo, 319-322. Bologna: CLUEB.

"1. The Roots of Bolzano’s Interest in Modalities.

From an autobiographical note quoted by Winter ([1], p.32), we learn that as Bolzano was 17 years old and began to read the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, he was soon strongly attracted by the distinctions of Judgments into a priori and a posteriori and into analytic and syntetlc as well as by the distinction of representations into Intuitions and concepts, whereas he was very hurted by the immediate use, without any previous explanation, of the concepts of experience and of necessity. A significant part of Bolzano’s work may be seen as an attempt to clarify the preceding notions and to substantiate their distinctions. In particular, his theory of (absolute) modalities is his answer to the question about necessity, an answer which he derives from his answer to the question about experience. Necessity is indeed first reduced to necessary truth; this latter is identified with true proposition in Itself which doesn't depend upon experience; depending upon experience is identified with containing intuitions; intuitions are a logically well defined kind of representations In themselves (Ideas).

Bolzano’s theory of modalities has been scarcely considered up to now; the most careful analysis has been done by E. Morscher ([2], pp.87-92). In the following we will embed Bolzano’s theory of the absolute modalities, as presented mainly in the Wissenschaftslehre §182, into the general framework of his logic we have reconstructed elsewhere ([3], [4]) and which will be only sketched here. We will not consider his theory of relative modalities." (p. 319)

(...)

"Last Remarks. As alluded to in §1, Bolzano’s primary interest was in the notion of necessary truth. The whole of his modal theory, although interesting in many respects, is far from being satisfactorily refined. So, for instance, we remark that according to Bolzano, every standard proposition whose subject is unobjectual [gegenstandIos], that is, referring to no object, is false, it follows that all such propositions are possible (although their being true may be Impossible). That truth is a quality and that there is an Idea which refers to it, are, of course, rather disquieting assumptions. From their discussion in [4], it follows that a very important question is whether the idea [p], which refers to p, has also p as its part. In the present context, the question presents itself, in particular, with respect to the problem about the conceptuality of a proposition having the idea [p] as its subject, under the hypothesis of the conceptuality of the proposition p and vice versa; a problem which immediately arises, when considering, for instance, iterated modalities." (p. 323)

Bibliographical Note

[1] E. Winter, Die geistige Entwicklung Bolzanos, in E. Winter, P. Funk, J. Berg, Bernard Bolzano, Ein Denker und Erzieher Im Österreichischen Vormärz, Sitz.-Ber. d. Öst. Ak.d. Wiss., Phil.-Hist.Kl., Bd. 252, Abhdl. 5, Hf. 8, Wien 1967, pp. 29-74.

[2] E. Morscher, Philosophische Logik bei Bernard Bolzano, in Bolzano-Symposion: "Bolzano als Logiker", Sitz.-Ber. d. Öst. Ak.d. Wiss., Phil.-Hist. Kl., Bd.293, Abhdl. 5, Hf. 12, Wien 1974, pp. 77-105.

[3] E. Casari, Bemerkungen über die Bolzanosche Wissenschaftslehre, in Logik und Grundlagenforschung, H.Scholz-Kolloquium, Aschendorff, Münster i. W., 1985, pp. 53-66.

[4] E. Casari, An Interpretation of some ontological and semantical notions In Bolzano's logic, to appear in the proc. of the meet. (1987) of the Florence Center for Hist, and Phil. of Sc.: Wissenschaftslehre 1B37-1987.

3. ———. 1992. "An Interpretation of Some Ontological and Semantical Notions in Bolzano's Logic." In Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre 1837-1987. International Workshop, 55-105. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki.

"In the following, the attempt is done to clarify some significant features of Bolzano's logical system with particular attention to its development in the Wissenschaftslehre (WL). This system is viewed as a theory trying to identify certain quite general properties, relations and operations of things [Dinge], in the most general and unbiased sense of this word. For sake of simplicity and determinateness of the formulations, the current logical symbolism is used. The point of view of the theory is elementary, that is to say, we always work with particular notions about the things without allowing us any consideration of arbitrary notions about the things. 'x', 'y', 'z', ... are used as variables for things." (p. 55)

4. ———. 2006. "Some Remarks on Bolzano's Notion of a Quality." In Logic and Philosophy in Italy. Some Trends and Perspectives. Essays in honor of Corrado Mangione, edited by Ballo, Edoardo and Franchella, Miriam, 185-201. Milano: Polimetrica.

5. ———. 2016. Bolzano's Logical System. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"As already mentioned, many specialist studies have analysed many of the questions that arise from the first three parts of Bolzano’s work, as well as providing comprehensive expositions of them, often very successfully. Yet, it seems to us that there remains room for a more systematic reconsideration of Bolzano’s logical thought.

This book is concerned precisely with this aim. In undertaking this task, the book is intended as an exploration, not so much of the more specifically discursive aspects of Bolzano’s logical thought—already amply studied—as much as one aimed at identifying the singularly coherent and systematic nature of the logic presented in the Wissenschaftslehre.

In order to render as visible as possible the systematic nature of that logic, I have decided to present it within a formal system. Despite being surprising even to me, it has become clear that in pursuing this aim, it is sufficient to adopt the approach of the predicate calculus with identity and choice operator, that is, enlisting the wellknown Hilbert’s epsilon calculus. As this book reveals, the formalization of Bolzano’s logic in this calculus emerges quite effortlessly." (Preface, p. VIII)

6. ———. 2017. "Husserl and Bolzano." In Essays on Husserl’s Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics, edited by Centrone, Stefania, 75-91. Springer.

Abstract: "The paper examines the all too often neglected role of the Czech philosopher and mathematician Bernard Bolzano for Husserl’s work, from ca. 1893–1894 onwards. Husserl himself finds it important to stress in an appendix to chapter 10 of the Prolegomena to Pure Logic that his investigations are not “in any sense mere commentaries upon, or critically improved expositions of, Bolzano’s thought patterns”, but that they “have been crucially stimulated by Bolzano... ”.

The paper examines early Bolzano’s ideas on the ground-consequence relation, Bolzano’s logical universe as presented in his masterpiece, the monumental Wissenschaftslehre, the role of Hermann Lotze in making Husserl receptive for Bolzano and, finally, a lecture course on logic held by Husserl at the University of Halle in 1896 [*], working out just what Husserl is taking, and not taking, from Bolzano."

[*] E. Husserl, [LV’96] Logik: Vorlesung 1896, ed. by E. Schuhmann. Husserliana Materialienbände I (Kluwer, Dordrecht, 2001)

7. Cellucci, Carlo. 1992. "Bolzano and Multiple-Conclusion Logic." In Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre 1837-1987. International Workshop, 179-189. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki.

"The aim of this paper is to assess Bolzano's logical work in the light of contemporary logical developments. This has been done before by others, most recently by van Benthem, (1) but everybody has his own approach and my approach -- whatever its value -- will be somewhat different from the current one. Make no mistake, I am not going to discuss once again to what extent Bolzano anticipated modern logic. On the contrary I will try to show how far he was from moden logic. In order to do so I will compare Bolzano with the tradition of multiple-conclusion logic." (p. 179)

(1) J. van Benthem, The Variety of Consequence, According to Bolzano, Studia Logica 44, 1985, pp. 389-403.

8. Centrone, Stefania. 2010. "Functions in Frege, Bolzano and Husserl." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 31:315-336.

Abstract: "This explorative article is organized around a set of questions concerning the concept of a function. First, a summary of certain general facts about functions that are a common coin in contemporary logic is given. Then Frege's attempt at clarifying the nature of functions in his famous paper Function and Concept and in his Grundgesetze is discussed along with some questions which Freges' approach gave rise to in the literature. Finally, some characteristic uses of functional notions to be found in the work of Bernard Bolzano and in Edmund Husserl's early work are presented and elucidated."

"4. Bernard Bolzano

In this section, I want to show that the set–theoretical notion of a function is implicitly at work in Bolzano’s logic of variation. Bolzano’s own use of the term ‘function’ is not pertinent here, for he employs this term only in the context of ‘x is a function of y1, y2,..., yn’ where the correlated entities are what he calls Größen (magnitudes).(24) Thus, Bolzano’s usage of the term (unlike Frege’s) is restricted to the field of mathematics. The entities his logic of variation is concerned with are not magnitudes, but propositions and their non-propositional parts." (p. 325)

(24) Bolzano 1830–1835, [J. Berg, ed., Einleitung zur Grössenlehre. Erste Begriffe der allgemeinen Grössenlehre, BGA Series 2A, vol. 7, 1975], p. 229.

9. ———. 2016. "Early Bolzano on Ground-Consequence Proofs." The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic no. 2:215-237.

Abstract: "In his early Contributions to a Better-Grounded Presentation of Mathematics (1810) Bernard Bolzano tries to characterize rigorous proofs (strenge Beweise). Rigorous is, prima facie, any proof that indicates the grounds for its conclusion. Bolzano lists a number of methodological constraints all rigorous proofs should comply with, and tests them systematically against a specific collection of elementary inference schemata that, according to him, are evidently of ground-consequence-kind. This paper intends to give a detailed and critical account of the fragmentary logic of the Contributions, and to point out as well some difficulties Bolzano's attempt runs into, notably as to his methodological ban on 'kind crossing'."

10. Chattopadhyaya, Debi Prasad. 1979. "Bolzano and Frege: A Note on Ontology." In Logic, Ontology and Action, edited by Banerjee, K.K., 214-242. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press.

11. Chihara, Charles. 1999. "Frege's and Bolzano's Rationalist Conceptions of Arithmetic." Revue d'Histoire des Sciences no. 52:343-361.

Abstract: "In this article, I compare Gottlob Frege's and Bernard Bolzano's rationalist conceptions of arithmetic. Each philosopher worked out a complicated system of propositions, all of which were set forth as true. The axioms, or basic truths, make up the foundations of the subject of arithmetic. Each member of the system which is not an axiom is related (objectively) to the axioms at the base. Even though this relation to the base may not yet be scientifically proven, the propositions of the system include all of the truths of the science of arithmetic. I conclude the article by analyzing the respective views of Frege and Bolzano in the light of Gödel's first incompleteness theorem."

12. Chisholm, Roderick M. 1986. "On the Positive and Negative State of Things." In Non-Existence and Predication, edited by Haller, Rudolf, 97-106. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Abstract: "Following Balzano, I suggest that there are two types of entity: those that are states of other things and those that are not. The second type includes, not only substances, in the traditional sense, but also such abstract objects as numbers, attributes and propositions. It is argued that the theory of states, when combined with an intentional account of negative attributes, will yield a theory of negative entities and of events."

13. ———. 1986. "The Self in Austrian Philosophy." In Von Bolzano zu Wittgenstein. Zur Tradition der österreichischen Philosophie = From Bolzano to Wittgenstein. The Tradition of Austrian Philosophy, edited by Nyíri, János Kristóf 71-74. Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.

Reprinted in: R. M. Chisholm, On Metaphysics, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989, pp. 156-161.

"Bolzano's definition of substance provides us with a kind of key to the conceptions of the self in Austrian philosophy. His definition is as clear as anyone could possibly wish. He says that there are two kinds of things: (I) those things that are states or conditions of other things ("Beschaffenheiten von anderen Dingen"); and (II) those things that are not states or conditions of other things: "the latter are what I call substances."(1) Examples of things that are states or conditions of other things are "the color, smell and weight of a body," the beliefs that a particular person has, the sensations that he has, and the actions that he performs. Examples of substances-of things that are not states or conditions of other things -are physical bodies and selves.

Bolzano says, in Leibnizian fashion, that, if there are things that are states or conditions of other things, then there are things that are not states or conditions of other things.(2) If we use the term "substance" in the way he suggests, then we need not ask whether a given philosopher believes in substances; we need ask only what the things are that function for him as substances." (p. 156 of the reprint)

(1) Bolzano, Athanasia oder Gründe für die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (Sulzbach: J. G. v. Seidleschen Buchhandlung, 1838), [second enlarged edition; first edition 1827] p. 283.

(2) Bolzano (1827), p. 22. He holds that Beschaffenheiten may themselves have Beschaffenheiten and that such things as numbers also have Beschaffenheiten (p. 22), and he seems to hold that God has a Beschaffenheit (p. 22).

14. ———. 1989. "Bolzano on the Simplicity of the Soul." In Traditionen und Perspektiven der analytischen Philosophie, edited by Gombocz, Wolfgang, Rute, Heiner and Sauer, Werner. Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.

15. ———. 1991. "Bernard Bolzano's Philosophy of Mind." Philosophical Topics no. 19:207-216.

"The views of Bernard Bolzano ( 1781-1842) concerning the nature of psychological properties and the nature of what it is that has those properties are of first importance to philosophy. I shall discuss some of them here in the hope that what I say may lead to a more systematic study and evaluation.

Bolzano's best known works are the Theory of Science [Wissenschafteslehre], first published in 1837, and The Paradoxes of the Infinite [Paradoxien des Unendlichen], first published in 1851. The present topic is discussed in detail in Athanasia: Or Grounds for the Immortality of the Soul, published in 1838.(2) This work has not been translated into English." (p. 205, note 1 omitted)

(...)

"Bolzano, then, is concerned with presenting considerations which, he thinks, indicate that only simple substances can think. In order to avoid a fundamental misunderstanding, we must be clear about one fundamental point. In setting out on his investigations, Bolzano assumes that it is not known that thinking things are identical with physical bodies. Hence he does not presuppose the thesis according to which we are identical with our bodies or with some proper part of our bodies. Others, of course, may presuppose the contrary of this thesis. But any criticism of Bolzano that is based upon the contrary thesis and that does not include a positive defence of this contrary thesis would be question begging." (p. 207)

(2) Athanasia; oder Griinde fur die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (Sulzbach: J. G. v. Seidleschen Buchhandlung, 1838). [Second enlarged editon; first edition 1827.]

16. Claas, Jan. 2021. "Leibniz and Bolzano on Conceptual Containment." European Journal of Philosophy:1-19.

Abstract: "Philosophers often rely on the notion of conceptual containment and apply mereological terminology when they talk about the parts or constituents of a complex concept. In this paper, I explore two historical approaches to this general notion. In particular, I reconstruct objections Bernard Bolzano puts forward against a criterion that played a prominent role in the history of philosophy and that was endorsed, among others, by Leibniz. According to this criterion, a concept that represents objects contains all and only the concepts that represent properties the objects must have in order to be represented by the former concept.

Bolzano offers several counterexamples and arguments against the criterion. I argue that while some of them presuppose a strongly mereological understanding of containment, which Leibniz is not committed to, one of them also succeeds without relying on demanding mereological principles."

17. Coffa, J. Alberto. 1982. "Kant, Bolzano and the Emergence of Logicism." Journal of Philosophy no. 74:679-689.

"Bolzano was the first to recognize the fallacy behind the principle of synthetic judgments. The crucial step in Kant's inference for the need to appeal to intuition in synthetic judgments was the premise that from concepts alone only analytic knowledge can be derived. Astonishingly, there isn't a single argument in the Critique for this claim; all Kant says about it is that "it is evident" (A47, B64).(6) What is evident, instead, is that Kant had confused true in virtue of concepts with true in virtue of definitions, or, in his own language, he had erroneously identified judgments whose predicate is not contained in their subject-concept with judgments that extend our knowledge (Erweiterungsurteile). Against this, Bolzano was the first to make a point that even Frege would miss: that Kant's analytic judgments, far from exhausting the grounding power of the conceptual resources of our language, mobilize only a very modest fraction of them, the logical concepts. Bolzano's characterization of analyticity is well known, and it has often been noted that it anticipates not Frege's proof-theoretic treatment but the more modern semantic approach by means of interpretations. What is less well known is the reasoning that led Bolzano to this proposal. After reviewing a number of attempts to explain the point of Kant's notion of analyticity, Bolzano comments that ''none of these explanations singles out what makes these [analytic] propositions important. I believe that this consists in the fact that their truth or falsity does not depend upon their constituent representations but remains unaltered, whatever changes one may make in some of these representations . . . This is the ground of my preceding definition."(7) Thus, the reason why Bolzano came to his celebrated insight on the semantic characterization of logical truth is that he saw that Kant's analytic judgments, far from being those grounded on the information implicit in the constituent concepts, were grounded on only a few of those concepts, thus concluding that a proper definition of analyticity should emphasize the extent to which all other concepts are to be ignored." (p. 684)

(6) For a very modest effort toward an argument, see Ak 20, 340.

(7) Wissenschaftslehre (Hamburg: Meiner, 1929), vol. II, sec. 148, p. 88.

18. ———. 1991. The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Second Chapter: Bolzano and the Birth of Semantics pp. 22-40.

"While the idealists were removing every trace of objectivity from Kant's semantics, there was in a corner of the Austro-Hungarian empire, ignored by the leaders of German philosophy, a Czech priest by the name of Bernard Bolzano, who was engaged in the most far-reaching and successful effort to date to take semantics out of the swamp into which it had been sinking since the days of Descartes. Bolzano was the first to recognize that transcendental philosophy and its idealistic sequel were a reductio ad absurdum of the semantics of modern philosophy. He was also the first to see that the proper prolegomena to any future metaphysics was a study not of transcendental considerations but of what we say and its laws and that consequently the prima philosophia was not metaphysics or ontology but semantics. The development of these ideas in his monumental Wissenschaftslehre and in a variety of other writings established Bolzano as the founder of the semantic tradition.

Bolzano's philosophy was the kind that takes from and then gives life to science. His approach to semantics was developed in dialectical interplay with his decision to solve certain problems concerning the nature of mathematical knowledge. Kant had not even seen these problems; Bolzano solved them. And his solutions were made possible by, and were the source of, a new approach to the content and character of a priori knowledge. We shall illustrate the point by focusing on one of Bolzano's favorite mathematical topics, the calculus." (p. 23)

19. Cohen, Jonathan L. 1982. "Bolzano's Theory of Induction." In Impact of Bolzano's Epoch on Development of Science - Conference Papers Prague 1981, 443-457. Prague: Ustav ceskoslovenských a svetových dejin CSAV.

Also published in: Merrilee H. Salmon (ed.), The Philosophy of Logical Mechanism, Dordrecht: Springer 2011, pp. 29-40.

Abstract: "Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre was published in 1837, although most of it seems to have been written during the decade 1820–1830. John Stuart Mill’s System of Logic was published in 1843, but had been in gestation or preparation since 1825. Neither author seems to have exercised any influence on the other, and in their views about the fundamental nature of logical and mathematical reasoning they notoriously represented very different trends. Bolzano sought to direct philosophers’ attention away from mental processes towards relationships between ideas in themselves and between propositions in themselves, while Mill’s logic insisted on a study of the mental process which takes place whenever we reason, of the conditions on which this process depends, and of the steps of which it consists. But in their views about the methodology of natural science the divergences are much more finegrained. Both assign a central role to the search for causes and both discuss the same basic procedures for the discovery of these. It is just that Bolzano shows a greater sensitivity than Mill does to the inherent difficulties of the enterprise."

20. Corcoran, John. 1975. "Meanings of Implication." Diálogos no. 9:59-76.

Reprinted in: R. I. G. Hughes (ed.), A Philosophical Companion to First-order Logic, Indianapolis: Hackett 1993, pp. 85-100.

"In philosophical and mathematical discourse as well as in ordinary scholarly contexts the term 'implies' is used in several clear senses, many of which have already been noticed and explicated. The first five sections of this article codify and interrelate the most widely recognized meanings. Section 6 discusses a further significant and common use. Section 7 discusses and interrelates Tarski's notion of logical consequence, the "model-theoretic" notion of logical consequence, and Bolzano's two grounding relations. The eighth section employs the use-mention distinction to separate the three common grammatical categories of 'implies'. Section 8 also shows that criteria based on use-mention are not reliable indications of intended usage of 'implies'. The ninth and last section relates the above to the counterfactual and gives reasons for not expecting to find 'implies' used to express counterfactuals. A summary is provided."

"Summary and Conclusion: In the first five sections we have distinguished twelve uses of the term 'implies'. At the outset we distinguished: implies1 (truth-functional), implies2 (logical consequence) and implies3 (logical deducibility). Next we distinguished three elliptical or enthymematic varieties of implication: C-implies1, C-implies2 and C-implies3. In none of these six senses did "A implies B" presuppose the truth of A. Then we discussed the cases wherein "A implies B" is used to mean "The-fact-that-A implies B," which does presuppose the truth of A. We paraphrased the latter as "A is true and A implies 13" where 'implies' indicates any of the previous six senses of the term. Thus, at that point, twelve senses of implies were distinguished, six which do not presuppose the truth of the implying sentence and six which do. Of the six which do, three are enthymematic.

In addition, the three original senses were carefully distinguished and interrelated, and possible causes of confusion were identified.

Then, building on some off-hand observations of Russell, we related the truth-functional use of 'implies' to two further notions which have been used as explications of traditional logical consequence. We also brought in Bolzano's relative implication and his two grounding relations.

We argued briefly that counterfactuals are not normally expressed using 'implies' and that the distinction between use and mention cannot be used as a test for distinguishing different meanings of 'implies'.

Use of 'implies' as a transitive verb taking a human subject has been ignored."

21. de Jong, Willem R. 2001. "Bernard Bolzano, Analyticity and the Aristotelian Model of Science." Kant-Studien no. 91:328-349.

"In this article I intend to make clear that Bolzano's perception and use of the distinction in question [analytic-synthetic] should also be understood in the framework of this model of science. The effect of doing so is to render more comprehensible Bolzano's highly personal and, in its application, upon first acquaintance rather strange characterization of the analytic-synthetic distinction. This characterization can then also be placed more easily in its historical context. [Joëlle] Proust aside, most interpreters have looked somewhat askance at Bolzano's notion of analyticity. And most of them seem not to be able to go on and do much with this apparently anomalous element in Bolzano's thinking. (4)

In § 2 Bolzano is presented as an adherent of the Aristotelian model of science. Section 3 discusses briefly Kant's view of the analytic-synthetic distinction; Bolzano studied it thoroughly. In § 4 his criticism of Kant's notion of analyticity is considered, while in § 5 and § 6 Bolzano's own characterization of this distinction is discussed. Section 7 connects Bolzano's notion of analyticity with his view of derivability or (logical) inference. In the following two sections this theme is further elaborated and developed in the light of the Aristotelian model of science and the notion of scientific demonstration implicit in it. Finally, § 10 presents some conclusions." (pp. 328-329)

(4) Cf. Y. Bar-Hillel, "Bolzano's Definition of Analytic Propositions." Theoria 16 (1950), pp. 91-117; p. 100. W. and M. Kneale, The Development of Logic, Oxford 1962, p. 367. J. Berg, "Introduction." In: B. Bolzano, Theory of Science (ed. by J. Berg; transl. by B. Terrell), Dordrecht 1973, pp. 12-44; p. 18. Coffa, The Semantic Tradition, Cambridge, 1991, p. 34.

22. ———. 2010. "The Analytic-Synthetic Distinction and the Classical Model of Science: Kant, Bolzano and Frege " Synthese no. 174:237-261.

Abstract: "This paper concentrates on some aspects of the history of the analytic-synthetic distinction from Kant to Bolzano and Frege. This history evinces considerable continuity but also some important discontinuities. The analytic-synthetic distinction has to be seen in the first place in relation to a science, i.e. an ordered system of cognition. Looking especially to the place and role of logic it will be argued that Kant, Bolzano and Frege each developed the analytic-synthetic distinction within the same conception of scientific rationality, that is, within the Classical Model of Science: scientific knowledge as cognitio ex principiis. But as we will see, the way the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments or propositions functions within this model turns out to differ considerably between them."

23. Detlefsen, Michael. 2010. "Rigor, Re-proof and Bolzano’s Critical Program." In Construction. Festschrift for Gerhard Heinzmann, edited by Bour, Pierre Edouard, Rebuschi, Manuel and Rollet, Laurent, 171-184. London: King’s College Publications.

"Introduction

The so-called critical movement in nineteenth and twentieth century foundational thinking(1) was described by the American mathematician George Miller (1863–1951) as one in which “[o]ur geometric intuitions are forced into the background” [27, p. 530] as, more and more, “logical deductions from definitions” (loc. cit.) take their place.

The main sources of this movement, as both Miller and others described them, were the widely advertised problems concerning geometrical intuition as a guide to our thinking about continuity and differentiability. As mathematicians became increasingly sensitive to the press of these problems, they also “naturally became . . .more exacting in regard to rigor” (loc. cit.), and this renewed emphasis on rigor became the central element of nineteenth and early twentieth century attempts to “arithmetize” mathematics.

How the notion of rigor mentioned was conceived and what its principal benefits were taken to be are prime concerns for me here. A better understanding of these matters should contribute to a better understanding of rigor and its motives and benefits overall. Therewith, I believe, should also come a fuller appreciation of the attention given to rigor by nineteenth century foundational thinkers. These at any rate are my chief goals here." (p. 171)

(1) “Critical” was the term that was used by Felix Klein (cf. [20]) and various other writers (cf. e.g. [22]), F. Engel ([8]), J. Merz (cf. [25] and [26]), C. Keyser (cf. [17], [18] and [19]) and G. Kneebone (cf. [24]) to describe the proposals in the nineteenth century that called for the reformation of proof practices in mathematics, particularly analysis.

24. Drozdek, Adam. 1997. "Logic and Ontology in the Thought of Bolzano." Logic and Logical Philosophy no. 5:3-18.

"Logic and theology were two domains of great importance to Bolzano. His attempt to reconcile the demands of these two domains led Bolzano to very strong logical realism, or, objectivism, whereby theology could be put on a firm ground. The paper analyzes the problem of objective concepts, propositions, and truths, with an attempt to give an interpretation of these entities, to account for their puzzling ontological status in Bolzano's system.

Bolzano is one of the forerunners of modern logic; however, his logical, and also mathematical, discussions were conducted in the context of very serious concern about the ontological status of the logical constructs. In the context of logic, he discusses the problem of propositions (Sätze) and their special category, namely truths; and ideas (Vorstellungen), and their special categories, namely intuitions (Anschauungen); and concepts. What is interesting in Bolzano’s analyses is the considerable effort he devotes to distinguishing subjective propositions and ideas from objective propositions and ideas, the latter also called propositions and ideas in themselves. What is particularly puzzling in Bolzano’s philosophy is the ontological status of the latter. According to Bolzano, objective propositions and ideas do not exist, they are not real, and yet they make logic possible." (pp. 3-4)

25. Dubucs, Jacques, and Lapointe, Sandra. 2006. "On Bolzano's Alleged Explicativism." Synthese.An International Journal for Epistemology, Methodology and Philosophy of Science no. 150:229-246.

Abstract: "Bolzano was the first to establish an explicit distinction between the deductive methods that allow us to recognise the certainty of a given truth and those that provide its objective ground. His conception of the relation between what we, in this paper, call "subjective consequence", i.e., the relation from epistemic reason to consequence and "objective consequence", i.e., grounding (Abfolge) however allows for an interpretation according to which Bolzano advocates an "explicativist" conception of proof: proofs par excellence are those that reflect the objective order of grounding. In this paper, we expose the problems involved by such a conception and argue in favour of a more rigorous demarcation between the ontological and the epistemological concern in the elaboration of a theory of demonstration."

26. Duhn, Anita von. 2001. "Theoretical Laws and Normative Rules: Kant and Bolzano's Views on Logic." In Kant und die Berliner Aufklarung. Akten des 9. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses. Band V: Sektionen XV-XVIII, edited by Gerhardt, Volker, Horstmann, Rolf-Peter and Schumacher, Ralph, 3-12. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Does logic instruct us how to think correctly? If so, what place does methodology have in logic? Is logic an instrument which provides rules for correct thinking or a system of proof for scientific theories, or is the doctrine of method merely an appendix to a doctrine of elements? The question whether logic is an organon is related to the question whether logical laws are theoretical truths or normative laws. Kant and Bolzano agree that logical laws basically provide us with truths, but that they can be apprehended as telling us how to think. (1) So a theoretical judgment that something is the case precedes the normative judgment that we may or should do something about it. Does it follow that Kant and Bolzano also agree on the question of whether logic is an organon which instructs us how to think? I will show that despite their divergent positions on logic, both authors claim that we apply normative rules because they are true." (p. 3)

(1) Kant and Bolzano agree with Husserl and Frege, who thought that a normative act, such as demanding or permitting, presupposes a theoretical act, such as judging or believing and that every law that states what is can be apprehended that one ought to think in accordance with it. Cf. Frege (1893) Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, intro. XV; Husserl (1900) Prolegomena, §§ 3, 13-14. I discuss this issue in "Is logic a theoretical or practical discipline? Kant and/or Bolzano", to appear in the Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie. [vol. 84, no. 3 (2002) pp. 319-333]

27. ———. 2003. "Bolzano's Account of Justification." In The Vienna Circle and Logical Empiricism: Re-evalutation and Future Perspectives, edited by Stadler, Friedrich, 21-33. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"Bolzano investigated the following problem. How can we determine whether or not a certain truth is basic without recourse to subjective criteria based on intuition or immediate perceptual knowledge? For him, the criterion of self-evidence is not a means for justifying propositions because it does not provide us with a scientific proof presenting the objective reasons for a proposition, reasons that hold independently of our knowledge.(1) Bolzano intended to provide a workable alternative to the criterion of intuitive self-evidence, and claims that we have to search for proof even of self-evident propositions – at least until it becomes clear that and why no proof could be required.(2)

I reconstruct Bolzano’s account of justification, which is designed to replace the criterion of self-evidence and provide a scientific basis for the demonstrative sciences. I then argue that although Bolzano succeeded in devising a procedure for grounding truths, his theory fails on the account that it implicitly reintroduces an epistemological problem." (p. 21)

(1) 1804, § 3 (Betrachtungen über einige Gegenstände der Elementargeometrie (1804) in Bolzano ’s early mathematical works, Czechoslovak Studies in the History of Science, Prague, 1981. Partial English translation by S. Russ in W. Ewald, From Kant to Hilbert, vol. 1, OUP, 1996); Beyträge II (1810), §§2, 11, 12, 21 (Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik (1810) in Bolzano’s early mathematical works, op.cit. (Beyträge). English translation by S. Russ in W. Ewald, op.cit.); 1817 (Purely analytic proof ...), § 1; English translation by S. Russ in W.Ewald, op.cit; WL IV, §525; (Wissenschaftslehre (1837), 4 vols, Aalen, Scientia Verlag,

1981 (WL)) and the Anti-Euklid, a manuscript in Bolzano’s Nachlass edited by Karel Vecerka, Sbornik, Prague, 1967, pp. 204-215, who dates the text around 1840. Jan Sebestik, however, situates the text closer to 1816.

(2) 1804, §3.

28. Dummett, Michael. 1997. "Comments on Wolfgang Künne's Paper." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 53:241-248.

Comments on: W. Künne, Propositions in Bolzano and Frege (1997).

"Entertaining and judging (§§ 1,3)

I feel some doubt about Wolfgang Künne's definition (E1)

x is a subjective idea

iff

x is not a judgement &

possibly for some y (y is a judgement and x is part of y).

A judgement must be some particular person' s judgement, and occur at a particular time. Künne might now be judging that Bolzano misunderstood Kant; but suppose he is not. Are we to say that Künne now has a subjective idea of misunderstanding on the strength of the fact that he might be making that judgement?

The awkwardness arises from the difficulty of fitting (merely) entertaining or grasping a proposition into Künne's Figure 1. A proposition is indeed always something that it is possible to judge; but "X entertains the proposition P" cannot be defined as "Possibly X judges that P". Entertaining a proposition has to be acknowledged as a type of mental act in its own right, and as one more generic than judging: one that, like judging, has a proposition as its object (content, matter). Failure to acknowledge this leads to the complications of Figure 5." (p. 241)

29. Etchemendy, John. 1990. The Concept of Logical Consequence. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Chapter 3: Tarski on Logical Truth, pp. 27-50.

"Though my concern in this book is not historical, a few preliminary words should be said about the complicated heritage of the model-theoretic definitions of the logical properties. As I mentioned, these definitions are generally credited to Tarski's 1936 article, and for the purposes of this book, there is no need to question this attribution.

What is clearly right about it is that Tarski's article contains the only serious attempt to state, in its most general form, the analysis underlying the standard definitions, and to put forward a detailed philosophical justification for that analysis. It is, so to speak, the philosophical locus of the model-theoretic definitions.

From a historical point of view, though, attributing the definitions to Tarski alone oversimplifies the situation a great deal.(4) For one thing, most of the main features of the analysis were anticipated, in various different ways, by earlier authors, including Bolzano (1837), Padoa (1901), Bernays (1922), Hilbert and Ackermann (1928), and Gödel (1929). Of all of these, Bolzano's discussion is by far the most extensive; in Chapter 3, I will briefly describe his account and motivate certain features of Tarski's analysis by comparing it with Bolzano's." (p. 7)

(4) For a more detailed discussion of the historical relationship between Tarski's analysis and the model-theoretic definitions, see Etchemendy (1988).

"I approach Tarski's account of logical truth and logical consequence indirectly, by considering first a simpler account developed by Bolzano nearly a century earlier.(1) The two accounts are remarkably similar; indeed, Tarski initially entertains what is, for all intents, precisely the same definition as Bolzano's, but modifies it for reasons I will eventually explain. But in spite of the striking similarity in the two accounts, Tarski was unaware of Bolzano's work until several years after the initial publication of his article. The key difference between the two accounts is simply that Bolzano employs substitution where Tarski uses the more technical, and for the purposes more adequate, notion of satisfaction." (p. 27).

References

Bernays, Paul. 1922. "Review of Behmann, 1922."Jahrbuch über die Fortschritte der Mathematik 48: 1119-1120.

Bolzano, Bernard. 1837. Wissenschaftslehre. Sulzbach.

Etchemendy, John. 1983. "The Doctrine of Logic as Form." Linguistics and Philosophy 6: 319-334.

--- 1988. "Tarski on Truth and Logical Consequence."Journal of Symbolic Logic 53: 51-79.

Gödel, Kurt. 1929. Uber die Vollstandigkeit des Logikkalkuls. Diss., University of Vienna. Reprinted, with translation, in Godel, Collected Works. Volume I. Ed. Solomon Feferman, et al. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Hilbert, David, and Wilhelm Ackermann. 1928. Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik. Berlin: Springer. Second edition ( 1938) translated as Principles of Mathematical Logic. New York: Chelsea, 1950.

Padoa, Alessandro. 1901. "Essai d'une theorie algebrique des nombres entiers, precedééd'une introduction logique a une theorie deductive quelconque." Bibliotheque du Congres International de Philosophie, Paris, 1900. Paris:

Armand Colin. Translated as "Logical Introduction to Any Deductive Theory." In Jean van Heijenoort, ed., From Frege to Godel. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

30. Fine, Kit. 2022. "Some Remarks on Bolzano on Ground." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin. New York: Oxford University Press

"Bolzano takes the notion of grounding to be factive, so that grounds and consequences are always true propositions. But he also acknowledges that we sometimes invoke a non-factive notion of grounding.

Kit Fine discusses how Bolzano proposes to understand such a notion and critically assesses Bolzano's proposal from the perspective of the recent debate about grounding and its logic." (p. 37)

31. Føllesdal, Dagfin. 1981. "Comments on Quine." In Philosophy and Grasmmar: Papers on the Occasion of the Quincentennial of Uppsala University, edited by Kanger, Stig and Öhman, Sven, 29-35. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Comments on W.V.O. Quine, Grammar, Truth, and Logic, same volume, pp. 17-28.

"I shall now comment on some points in the paper which, it seems to me,would be well worth discussing by our group. I will concentrate on the following three points:

1. Logical particles.

2. Syntactic ambiguities.

3. Demonstratives." (p. 29)

(...)

"One hundred and fifty years ago, Bolzan02 was the first to have the idea of demarcating logic the way Quine does with the help of a set of logical particles which are held constant, while the other non-logical expressions are freely substituted for one another. However, Bolzano's idea received little attention until it was rediscovered afresh in the mid-thirties by Quine and Ajdukiewicz(3) independently of one another. All the basic ingredients are there in Bolzano: the steps that Bolzano goes through are the same as Quine's and in the same order:

1. Specify a vocabulary of logical particles.

2. Define what it means for two expressions to have the same logical form:

Two expressions have the same logical form if they can be obtained from one another by the substitution of non-logical expressions for non-logical expressions.

3. Define logical truth:

A sentence is logically true if and only if all sentences with the same logical form are true." (pp. 29-30, a note omitted)

(3) Quine, W. V., 'Truth by Convention', in O. H. Lee (ed.), Philosophical Essays for A. N. Whitehead (Longrnans, New York, 1936). Reprinted in W. V. Quine, The Ways of Paradox (Random House, New York, 1966), and in various other places, including Herbert Feigl and Wilfrid Sellars (eds.), Reading in Philosophical Analysis Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1949). Ajdukiewicz, Kazimierz, 'Sprache und Sinn', Erkenntnis 4 (1934), 100-138.

32. ———. 1997. "Bolzano's Legacy." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 53:1-11.

Original German published as: Bolzanos bleibende Leistungen in: Arkadiusz Chrudzimski and Wolfgang Huemer (eds.), Phenomenology and Analysis. Essays on Central European Philosophy, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2004, pp. 57-68.

Abstract: "Bemard Bolzano (1781-1848) was an original and independent thinker, who left a lasting legacy in several areas of philosophy. Four such areas are singled for special attention: political philosophy, ethics and theology, logics and semanties, and mathematics. In all these areas he was far ahead of his time. He had pioneering ideas in political philosophy and in ethics and philosophy of religion, and he argued for them in a brilliantly clear way. In logic and semantics he anticipated Frege, Camap and Quine on important points, and he had intriguing, yet to be explored, ideas on intuition and other fundamental philosophical notions. In the foundations of mathematical analysis and the theory of infinite sets he anticipated Weierstrass and Cantor."

33. ———. 2001. "Bolzano, Frege and Husserl on Reference and Object." In Future Pasts: The Analytic Tradition in Twentieth Century Philosophy, edited by Floyd, Juliet and Shieh, Sanford, 67-80. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"Bolzano was a main influence on the development of Husserl's phenomenology.

Husserl gives generous credit to Bolzano in several of his works and refers to him frequently. Husserl first came across Bolzano when, barely twenty, he read Paradoxien des Unendlichen(2) during his studies with Weierstrass in Berlin. And he renewed this acquaintance with Paradoxien des Unendlichen in 1884-1885 when he followed Brentano's lectures in Vienna on "Die elementare Logik und die in ihr notigen Reformen."

But it was only later, in the mid-1890s, that Husserl started serious study of Bolzano's Theory of Science,(3) which he earlier had regarded as "strange" ("fremdartig"). Husserl had then decided to give up work on the second volume of the psychologistic Philosophy of Arithmetic (1891) and had started working on what was to become his first phenomenological work, the Logical Investigations (1900-1901). Husserl states that he came to appreciate Bolzano, and in particular his theory of propositions (Satze an sich) and representations (Vorstellungen an sich), through studying Lotze's interpretation of Plato's theory of ideas. Husserl interpreted Bolzano in a platonistic manner, which Husserl claimed—I think unjustly—was foreign to Bolzano ([Husserliana] XXII, Aufsätze und Rezensionen (1890-1910)] p. 130)." (pp. 67-68)

(2) Bernard Bolzano, Paradoxien des Unendlichen, ed. F. Prihonsky (Berlin: Mayer and Miiller, 1889; originally published 1851).

(3) Bernard Bolzano, Theory of Science, abridged, ed. and trans. Rolf George (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972, originally published 1837).

34. Fossati, Lorenzo. 2019. "Neither Aristotle nor Kant. Bernard Bolzano on Categories." In Categories: Histories and Perspectives 2, edited by D'Anna, Giuseppe and Fossati, Lorenzo, 77-94. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

"The second Book of the Wissenschaftslehre, the Elementarlehre (Theoryof Elements) is divided into four Parts; the first one is dedicated to the ideas in themselves (it is in the first volume of Wissenschaftslehre, the second volume take into account propositions in themselves, true propositions and inferences). This first Part, which includes §§ 46-120, is divided into four Chapters and introduces the notion of objective representation (often indicated as "idea"), its internal attributes and the distinction between the representations on the basis of their interrelation and of their relation to other objects (WL I: 214--571).

Each paragraph is followed by some notes where Bolzano appeals to ancients and modems to point out his own theses. At the end of the Chapter on ideas in themselves he adds a further Appendix (§§ 115-120) entitled "Previous Treatments of the Subject Matter of this Part," which helps better point out the big picture.

In particular, two paragraphs are devoted to categories-§ 118 to the categories of the "ancients" and § 119 of the "modems." He thus underlines his willingness to investigate any aspect and to involve all different kinds of interlocutors, but first and foremost his constant necessity to confront Aristotle and Kant." (pp. 77-78, notes omitted)

35. Fraisopi, Fausto. 2014. "The Quasi-Ontology of "An-Sich". Bernard Bolzano’s Theory of Science between Leibnitian Ars Combinatoria and the Husserlian Idea of mathesis universalis." Avello Publishing Journal no. 4:1-25.

Abstract: "Starting from the critical position that Husserl assumes against Bolzano and hisidea of mathesis universalis, this paper focuses and emphasizes Bolzano’s project for a mathesis and the differences between this project and Leibniz’s. Putting into an historical perspective these three forms of mathesis, by Leibniz, Bolzano, and Husserl, we / I open in so doing a theoretical perspective concerning the nonontological dimension of idealities they form and articulate mathesis as such. The an-ontological Combinatorics of propositions and of ideas in themselves, suggests, Bolzano maintains, the possibility of a treatment of Combinatorics independently from these ontological and metaphysical presuppositions that formed and structured the Leibnitian ars combinatoria. In this sense, the philosophical position of a “semantic Platonism,” assumed by Bolzano, opens the perspective of a non-metaphysical but modular mathesis that we can articulate and widen beyond an ontological commitment."

36. Franks, Curtis. 2014. "Logical Completeness, Form, and Content: An Archaeology." In Interpreting Gödel: Critical Essays, edited by Kennedy, Juliette, 78-106. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

§ 2: Bolzano's question, pp. 81-92.

"Bernard Bolzano engaged in the profound study of two distinct notions of logical consequence over several decades in the early nineteenth century.

The work most remembered and highly regarded by modern logicians, because of its striking resemblance to twentieth century set-theoretical definitions of consequence, concerns the Ableitbarkeit (“derivability”) relation.

In his 1837 masterpiece, Wissenschaftslehre, Bolzano in fact defines a network of concepts – validity, compatibility, equivalence, and derivability – in terms of one another in a way very similar to contemporary presentations. Here is his definition of the last of these: [Wissenschatslehre, § 155, text omitted]." (p. 81)

"Bolzano’s two theories of logical consequence are themselves not precise enough for their correspondence with one another to be subject to proof. All the same, the question is at the center of Bolzano’s thought.

The procedural Ableitbarkeit relation provides a calculus of inference.

The ontological Abfolge relation is a feature of the world absolutely independent of our ability to reason about it. By establishing that these notions correspond, we would ensure that the logical structure of the world is accessible, that some line of thought could trace the dependencies of truths, that the reasons behind the complex facts of reality are discoverable and comprehensible." (p. 92)

37. George, Rolf. 1961. The Problems of the Infinite and the Continuum in Some Major Philosophical Systems of the Enlightenment, Michigan State University.

Unpublished Ph.D thesis, available at Michigan State University, Digital repository.

Contents: Introduction 1; Chapter I: Leibniz 19; Chapter II: Berkeley 63; Chapter III: Bayle 111; Chapter IV: Kant 133; Chapter V: Bolzano 192; Conclusion 215; Bibliography I-V.

"The philosophers discussed in this dissertation are Leibniz, Berkeley, Bayle, Kant, and Bolzano. Its aim is to show that certain difficulties connected with infinite and continuous sets were recognized by these philosophers, and that their systems were, at least in part, designed in such a way that these difficulties did not arise in them.

(...)

Bolzano was the first to realize that the so-called Paradox of Galileo is no paradox at all, but simply describes a common property of all infinite sets.

As concerns the constitution of continua the problem was that neither the assumption that a continuum ultimately consists of unextended parts, nor that it consists of extended parts seemed defensible. Against the former case it was argued that unextended parts, no matter how many, cannot make a finite extension, against the’latter that extended parts are not ultimate, but are further divisible. Bayle held that none of the logical alternatives are defensible, so that no one need bother to change whatever opinion he happens to have on the subject.

(...)

Bolzano declared that in a continuum every point has a neighbor within any distance, no matter how small. This definition, although ultimately unsatisfactory, proved to be of great help in discovering various important properties of continuous sets." (Fom the Abstract)

38. ———. 1972. "Enthymematic Consequence." American Philosophical Quarterly no. 9:113-116.

"Enthymemes were traditionally defined as incomplete or incompletely stated syllogisms.

Arguments of this sort, though formally invalid, must be allowed to have some merit, and although the restriction to syllogisms is undesirable, the definition at least has the advantage of precision.

(...)

I shall argue in this paper that, while it is true that enthymematic arguments can be augmented so that valid arguments result, it is not wise to define enthymemes in these terms. I shall instead give a definition of enthymematic consequence which is similar to Tarski's definition of logical consequence; one can even arrange matters so that the latter becomes a limiting case of the former.

The definition can then be used to generate additional premisses which will convert enthymematic arguments into logically valid ones. It will thus automatically provide the desired restriction upon missing premisses.

I shall then show that the definition gives the same results as the traditional account within the domain of syllogisms, and that outside this domain it singles out a class of invalid but plausible arguments which seem to answer to many logicians' intuition of what an enthymeme is, if we can take the examples in their textbooks as a clue." (p. 113)

(...)

"It remains to give a logician his due who more than a hundred years ago propounded a theory of logical consequence which in one definition accounted for both logical and enthymematic validity: Bernard Balzano. He defined consequence thus: "I say that propositions M, N, O ... follow from Propositions A, B, C, D, ... with respect to the variable parts i, j, ... if every class of representations whose substitution for i, j, ... makes all of A, B, C, D, ... true also makes all of M, N, O, ... true."(6) It has been pointed out that Balzano anticipated Tarski by almost exactly a hundred years in his definition of logical consequence.(7) Indeed,

if the variable parts i, j, ... are taken to consist of all and only the extralogical terms of A, B, C, D, ... , M, N, O, ... the definition is close to that of Tarski (though Bolzano demands that the premisses be consistent). Cases where i, j, ... include more or fewer than the extralogical terms were generally regarded as somewhat quaint. In particular, it has not been seen that cases of Bolzano-entailment where the class of "variable" terms is smaller than the class of extralogical terms are just those argument forms which we are wont to call enthymemes." (p. 116)

(6) Bernard Bolzano, Wissenschaftslehre, Vol. 2 (Sulzbach, 1837), p. I 14.

(7) E.g., by Heinrich Scholz.

39. ———. 1983. "Bolzano’s Consequence, Relevance and Enthymeme." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 12:299-318.

"Historians of logic tend to view their task as the application of modern insights and symbolic techniques to old texts. Perhaps they do this on the assumption that what is good in these works must be an adumbration of what was recently done and is now well known. This holds, at any rate, for most discussions of Bolzano's theory of logical consequence.

In the present paper I shall reverse this procedure and comment on some problems and beliefs of contemporary logic from what I take to be Bolzano's point of view. This will have the advantage of bringing out more forcefully than a straight exegesis what his view was and will also, I hope, put in doubt certain contemporary dogmas.

I begin by applying his definition of consequence to propositional logic. Bolzano did not entertain this branch of logic, and to this extent my account is ahistorical. That it is, nonetheless, a straight extension of his theory is shown by the fact that all 23 theorems about consequence which he proves in his Theory of Science hold in this application I then consider how C. I. Lewis's so-called "independent proof" for A & -A |= B fares in this system (it fails). After some comments on the proof, I show that in Bolzano-consequence premisses and conclusion share a subsentence (a necessary condition of relevance). There follows a discussion of enthymemes and a general procedure for generating the so-called "nutting premiss". At the end I sketch a taxonomy of consequence relations and briefly remark on earlier interpretations of Bolzano's work. In using the first person plural (from now on) I mean to speak for those who think Bolzano's approach sound, a group that includes at least Bolzano and myself." (p. 299, notes omittred)

40. ———. 1983. "A Postscript on Fallacies." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 12:319-325.

"Bolzano is justly esteemed for his opposition to psychologism in logic. It is most fitting, therefore, that his definition of consequence has enabled us to strike a blow at the residual psychologism that is found in the customary treatment on enthymemes.(1) We shall now do the same for the so-called formal fallacies." (p. 319)

(1) See section (9) of the preceding essay. [Bolzano’s Consequence, Relevance and Enthymeme]

41. ———. 1986. "Bolzano's Concept of Consequence." Journal of Philosophy no. 83:558-564.

Reprinted in: Dale Jacquette (ed.), Philosophy of Logic: An Anthology, Malden: Blackwell, 2002, pp. 205-209.

"Plainly, to identify a speech as an argument and to understand its premises and conclusion is not the same as knowing what argument is intended. What is missing? Bernard Bolzano defines the concept of consequence thus:

Propositions M, N, O, . . . follow from propositions A, B, C, D, . with respect to variable parts i, j, . . . if every class of ideas whose substitution for i, j, . . . makes each of A, B, C, D,. . . true also makes all of M, N, O, . . . true.(1)

The i, j . . . are constants tagged for substitution; I shall call them variands." (p. 558)

(...)

"The conception of consequence here adumbrated has two features that should recommend it to logicians who are concerned not with the development of formal systems, but with the analysis of infor- mally stated arguments and the identification of fallacies. The first of these is that arguments of invalid form are invalid. In the classical view, this is not the case, as Gerald Massey has pointed out with clarity and vigor.(3)

(...)

In Bolzano's view, the evaluation of any argument must begin with the identification of variands. If their variation generates an invalid form, the argument is invalid; if not, not. It is of course possible to make mistakes in this, just as sentences can be misunderstood. It is a cultural, and perhaps even a human, failing that we do not usually indicate the variands explicitly. But these are problems of communication. Plainly, it is often possible, and sometimes important, to identify formal fallacies. It therefore seems that in this respect Bolzano's account of consequence is superior to the classical. A second positive feature of Bolzano's conception is that it gives a promising account of enthymemes. Although he concentrates on arguments in which all indexical elements are variands (this being the proper province of logic, cf. WL § 223), his definition does not exclude cases in which only some of them are. We readily identify 'Socrates' as the variand in 'Socrates was a man, therefore Socrates was mortal'. That is, we understand this argument as implicitly claiming that every substitution on 'Socrates' that makes the premise true also makes the conclusion true. If we had to construct a device for computing the "missing premise" (which we intuitively take to be 'All men are mortal'), we would have it state that fact. It would, that is, form the universal closure on the variand, over the conditional consisting of premise and conclusion, and voila, the missing premise results. This procedure works for all syllogistic enthymemes, and is only slightly more complex when no singular terms are involved. No principle of charity or other proviso is needed. I venture the guess that some such computation is going on even in our own minds when, with a speed that must compel wonder, we determine what all the world takes to be the missing premise in such a case."

(1) Wissenschaftslehre (Sulzbach, 1837), § 155, no. 2, vol. ii, pp. 199 ff. Translated as Theory of Science, R. George, ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972), p. 209. Henceforth WL.

(3) "The Fallacy behind Fallacies," in P. A. French, T. E. Vehling, Jr., and H. K. Wettstein, eds., The Foundations of Analytic Philosophy (Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1981), pp. 499 ff.

42. ———. 1987. "Bolzano on Time." Philosophia Naturalis no. 24:452-468.

"In the first volume of the Wissenschaftslehre Bolzano claims that "by the word 'time' we mean nothing but that particular determination in a real thing which is the condition for correctly attributing to it a given property."(1) He says that from this all properties of time can be deduced. This is supported by just one example, namely, that several contrary properties can be attributed to the same substance only on condition that times differ. This follows directly, since sentences with contrary predicates can be true only if their subjects differ. Hence one and the same substance can have contrary attributes only on the assumption that its time determinations are not the same.

In Chapter 412 he maintains that a theory can have the status of a science even if its extent is very small. Consequently, he says, "the theory of time (the properties of time, not of the art of measuring it) deserves to be treated as a special science (i.e. the pure theory of time) although this science can consist of only a very few propositions."(2) Kant, he objects, should not have denied it the name of science for no other reason than its small extent.

In the following chapter Bolzano adds that a theory need not be denied the status of a science even if everyone already knows its propositions. Again the theory of time serves as an example. He maintains that all theorems of the pure theory of time are obvious to everyone (sind jedem von selbst schon bekannt) (3) , but that it should be considered to be a science nonetheless.

These are sweeping claims. Given the voluminous publications, the many controversies and the continuing interest in the subject of time they seem strange, even absurd. I begin by discussing these assertions, then add some reflexions on Bolzano on time perception, and end with a brief account of his criticism of Kant's views." (p. 452)

(1) Wissenschaftslehre I, 365. Citations follow the first edition.

(2) IV, 52.

(3) IV, 53.

43. ———. 1992. "Concepts of Consequence." In Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre 1837-1987. International Workshop, 3-26. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki.

"It has been held since antiquity that in all deductive argumentation there is a formal element or aspect. I wish to distinguish, and contrast, two ways of characterizing this. One of them I call «logic of schemata», or the «Received View», and the other, which was first articulated by Bolzano, «logic of variation». I shall investigate how these concepts of consequence succeed in addressing five concerns, not all of them logical issues, as we now understand logic, but connected with argumentative practice and certain epistemic matters.

(1) For the sake of completeness I mention first that a definition of consequence should fix a relation that satisfies certain formal requirements, i.e. a cut rule, thinning, and the like. There is a conventionally accepted set of these, described, e.g. by Gentzen. If a consequence relation shows deviations from this, it must be a reasoned difference that should be argued for. Also, a consequence relation (specifically logical, rather than enthymematic consequence) should be defined in such a way that first order predicate logic is strongly complete, that is, that if A is a consequence of a set of sentences X, then A should be deducible from X in a finite sequence of steps.

(2) A defensible definition of consequence should have the form, broadly, «If an argument satisfies this definition, it is valid, otherwise not». Contemporary definitions fail, as a rule, to satisfy the «otherwise not» clause. It is, however, argumentative practice to convict arguments of being formally fallacious. This can only be based on the assumption that if we have fully understood an argument, we can judge it to be valid or invalid - setting aside such esoterica as undecidable cases. I think it desirable that a definition of consequence allow an account of invalidity as well as validity.

(3) I shall consider a definition of logical consequence to be superior if is it broad enough to explain why we concede merit to some formally invalid arguments enthymemes), but withhold approbation from others (gross non-sequiturs), that is, if it treats logical consequence as a special, though perhaps the most important and interesting, case.

(4) Arguments as presented in both informal and formal contexts can be ambiguous, even if they are constructed of unambiguous sentences, and even if they are couched in a language that stipulates a rigid distinction between logical and extralogical constants. I call an argument naked if all that is presented are premisses, conclusion, and an inference indicator, like «therefore». I shall maintain that when we understand an argument, we understand more than the sentences of which it is composed, and more than the unspecified claim that the conclusion somehow follows from the premisses. That is, we grasp more than the naked argument. If we fail in this, we may misconstrue arguments, which amounts to saying that naked arguments can be ambiguous. I suggest that an acceptable theory of consequence should allow us to bring into focus the problem of argument ambiguity.

(5) It is desirable that a concept of consequence, if it does not itself define a «relevant» relation, can at least be augmented so that it does. (A consequence relation is here called relevant if it stipulates or implies that premisses and conclusion share some element)." (pp. 3-4)

44. ———. 1997. "Psychologism in Logic: Bacon to Bolzano." Philosophy and Rethoric no. 30 (3):213-242.

Reprinted in: Dale Jacquette (ed.), Philosophy, Psychology, and Psychologism. Critical and Historical Readings on the Psychological Turn in Philosophy, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003, pp. 21-49.

"The first logician to conceive of logic as a matter wholly apart from psychology was Bolzano. He did, however not neglect the old concerns. Of the four volumes of his Wissenschaftslehre only the first two (and not all of them) deal with the objective world of propositions in themselves. The third is epistemology, dealing with the manifestation of propositions in the mind: a judgment, in contrast to a proposition, which is abstract and mind independent, now is a mental episode whose “matter” is a proposition in itself. In this part of the work he discusses all those issues that tended to be mixed into the discussion of logic itself: clarity and obscurity of representations, knowledge and error, as well as the “art of discovery” which now has its proper place as a part of epistemology. The last volume, finally, is given over to the presentation of a science in the form of a treatise of the subject.

This is the old “methodology”, the theory of combining discovered truths into the system of a science." (p. 39 of the reprint)

(...)

"I hope to have clarified in this paper at least some of the strands of psychologism that ran through the history of logic between Bacon and Bolzano. Much had to be left out. My thesis — if I may be said to have argued one — has been that there were different kinds of intrusion of psychology into logic, some due to a conception of logic that included much of what is now assigned to other fields, others due to cultural and ideological persuasions, and still others to the obsession that logic is the science of thinking." (p. 44 of the reprint)

45. ———. 1997. "Bolzano's Programme and Abstract Objects." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 53:167-180.

Abstract: "Most of the Bolzano literature is exegetical, neglecting, unfortunately, the great potential of his logic as the beginning of a Programme. Specifically, his unorthodox construal of the consequence relation as triadic, and his account of logical form are promising beginnings which even as they stand shed light on question of relevance, the ancient problems of enthymemes and others. Instead of developing these suggestions, Bolzano scholars have been occupied with elucidating the ontology of sentences in themselves, and related topics. I argue, and believe to be in agreement with Bolzano, that the nature of sentences is fully explained by the relations that hold between them, just as money has no nature or essence beyond the transactions it makes possible. It follows that the development of his logic would contribute at least as much to the understanding of sentences than any exegesis."

46. ———. 2003. "Bolzano and the Problem of Psychologism." In Husserl's Logical Investigations Reconsidered, edited by Fisette, Denis, 95-108. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"As we saw, the view that subjective ideas are parts of judgments was not new, but Bolzano's theory of objective contents allowed him to avoid a certain confusion. It was generally acknowledged that ideas pass through the mind when one thinks, i.e. judges. At the same time they were thought to be sensations, or the copies of sensations, that is, visual or auditory sense data.

They were often described in terms not consistent with their roles as terms of judgments, i.e. as extended, round, moving, receding, as semblances of their objects, etc. (cf. Exner, supra) [*]. But mental occurrences of this sort cannot be terms of judgments. Hume, for example, claimed reasoning to be the operation of our thoughts and ideas, but it is not very plausible to think of it as an operation on something that can be blue, round, divided, or point-like.

Bolzano was not a victim of that confusion. For him a subjective idea is part of a mental proposition or at least could be such a part, and must have the character that goes with this role. He concentrates on the logical functions of ideas, thus avoiding certain classical mistakes. In particular the view that knowledge consists in the similarity or resemblance between our ideas and their objects is exposed as fallacious. Terms of propositions refer to their objects, they need not resemble them. The truth of a proposition, and hence our knowledge of an object, does not depend upon the similarity between idea and object. Rather, "a proposition is true if we connect with the idea of an object the idea of an attribute which this object actually has" (WL §42). This rejection of the resemblance theory is not based on the classical argument that we can never know whether our ideas resemble their objects since we can never compare the two, the object being altogether inaccessible. Rather, the critical point is that it is of no consequence whether an idea resembles its object." (pp. 105-106)

(...)

"Bolzano had a very generous conception of the scope of logic, which for him included a logic of discovery, epistemology and a lot of communication theory. He insisted that logic in this broad sense needed to make use of psychological theory. However, the Theory of Elements in the first two volumes of WL on which "logic as a science must be built" (Husserl) is a historical first in avoiding all connection with psychological doctrine." (p. 108)

[*] Bernard Bolzano, Letter to Franz Exner, 18th December 1834, in: On the Mathematcal Method and Correspondence with Exner, Amsterrdfam: Rodopi 2004, pp.157-174.

47. ———. 2004. "Intuitions—the Theories of Kant and Bolzano." In Semantik und Ontologie. Beiträge zur philosophischen Forschung, edited by Siebel, Mark and Textor, Mark, 319-354. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

"Bolzano credits Kant with impressing on the philosophical public the distinction between intuition (Anschauung) and concept (Begriff). But making the distinction is one thing, explaining it is another. Bolzano is not happy with Kant’s account (WL I, § 77),(1) but his critique does not connect well with Kant’s theory. The gulf between them, in both substance and terminology, is too deep. Despite the divergence between the two philosophers on almost any topic, Bolzano paid more attention by far to Kant and Kantian logicians than any other tradition or school, for good reasons."

(...)

"Mathematical propositions are purely conceptual, and so intuitions will play no role in their proof or analysis. They can be established a priori because they are purely conceptual. Bolzano’s theory of intuition supports this profoundly important tenet of his thought. His redefinition of “Anschauung” was thus not merely an exercise in persuasive definition, and the appropriation of a popular and important expression for different purposes.

According to Bolzano (and in truth, I might add) there are no such things as Kantian intuitions. Bolzano’s construal of the word, whatever its shortcomings, certainly removes the temptation to seek geometrical and arithmetic truth in intuitions, yet preserves the root connotation that Anschauungen are those thought episodes that represent our direct empirical awareness." (p. 35)

(1) Bolzano 1837. The Wissenschaftslehre is cited as WL plus number of volume.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on Bernard Bolzano's Contributions to Logic and Ontology. Third Part: Gie - L

Studies on Bolzano's Logic and Ontology

1. Gieske, Carsten Uwe. 1997. "Bolzano's Notion of Testifying." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 53:249-266

Abstract: "The notion of testifying (or testimony) is the central notion of Bolzano's theory of communication. In his Wissenschaftslehre (Theory of Science) Bolzano gives an analysis of this notion. It shows surprising parallels to Paul Grice's attempt to define "A meantNN something by x". I will begin with an explanation of some parts of the analysis and continue with an investigation of the relationship between Bolzano's analysis and that of Grice. In conclusion I would like to present some evidence supporting the hypothesis that several of the virtues of Grice's theory had already been developed by Bolzano, whose approach even has the advantage of a better definition than Grice's, as Bolzano's analysis provides a better basis for defining a notion of successful communication of information."

2. Grossmann, Reinhardt. 1961. "Frege's Ontology." Philosophical Review no. 70:23-40

Reprinted in: E. D. Klemke, Essays on Frege, Urbana: University of Illinois Press 1968, pp. 79-98.

On Bolzano see pp. 23-27.

"I begin by describing some features of Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre, for much of what I shall have to say about Frege can best be understood against the background of Bolzano's view.(4) According to Bolzano, all things are of one of three kinds:

First, there are different kinds of mental states (subjective Vorstellungen), namely, (a) individual ideas (subjective Einzelvorstellungen), (b) general ideas (subjective Allgemeinvorstellungen), and (c) thoughts (gedachte Saetze). Things of these three kinds are supposed to exist in individual minds; in this respect they are "subjective" rather than "objective."(5) Second, there are so-called objects_1 (Gegenstaende), namely, (a) individual things and (b) properties (Beschaffenheiten and Relationen). These things are not in any individual mind, but exist independently of minds and are therefore "objective" rather than "subjective."(6)

Third, there are senses (objective Vorstellungen), namely, (a) individual concepts (objective Einzelvorstellungen), (b) general concepts (objective Allgemeinvorstellungen), and (c) propositions (Saetze an sich). These things differ from mental states in that they are as "objective" as objects_1. But they also differ from the latter. One important difference is that they are more closely connected with mental states than are objects_1. (7)" (pp. 23-24)

(4) Bolzano, Wissenschaftslehre (new ed., 4 vols.; Leipzig, 1929). Compare also Y. Bar-Hillel, "Bolzano's Definition of Analytic Propositions," Methodos, II (1950), 32-55; and H. R. Smart, "Bolzano's Logic," Philosophical Review, LIII (I944), 513-533.

(5) Wissenschaftslehre, I, 77, 99, 219.

(6) Ibid., pp. 219-222, 331, 378-387.

(7) Ibid., pp. 2I6-2I8.

3. Hafner, Johannes. 2000. "Bolzano's Criticism of Indirect Proofs." Revue d'Histoire des Sciences no. 52:385-399

Abstract: "The bearing of Ableitbarkeit and the compatibility requirement on the possibility of indirect proofs in Bolzano's logic has frequently been misconstrued. Without additional assumptions concerning the logical structure of indirect proofs and the relationship between proofs and Ableitbarkeit the compatibility requirement does not in general preclude indirect proofs. Bolzano's own objections to them are raised in the context of Abfolge, not Ableitbarkeit. Closer inspection shows that there are in fact two distinct criticisms in play. Identifying and analyzing them clarifies what exactly Bolzano views as the problem of indirect proofs."

4. Hale, Bob, and Wright, Crispin. 2015. "Bolzano’s Definition of Analytic Propositions." Grazer Philosophische Studien:325-364

Abstract: "We begin by drawing attention to some drawbacks of what we shall call the Frege-Quine definition of analytic truth. With this we contrast the definition of analytic propositions given by Bolzano in his Wissenschaftslehre.

If Bolzano’s definition is viewed, as Bolzano himself almost certainly did not view it, as attempting to capture the notion of analyticity as truth-in-virtue-of-meaning which occupied centre stage during the first half of the last century and which, Quine’s influential assault on it notwithstanding, continues to attract philosophical attention, it runs into some very serious problems. We argue that Bolzano’s central idea can, nevertheless, be used as the basis of a new definition which avoids these problems and possesses definite advantages over the Frege-Quine approach. Our itle notwithstanding, we make no claim to contribute to the exegesis of Bolzano’s thought and works, which we must leave to those more expert in these matters than we are. Naturally, we have done our best not to misrepresent Bolzano’s views, and believe we have avoided doing so. But it bears emphasis that it is no part of our intention to suggest that the modifications to his definition which we propose would have had any appeal for him, or that he had, or would have had, any sympathy with the project which motivates them."

5. Haller, Rudolf. 1992. "Bolzano and Austrian Philosophy." In Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre 1837-1987. International Workshop, 191-206. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki

"It would be fruitful to compare in detail some of the formulations in Twardowski, Husserl, Meinong, Mier, and Kerry, with the original work of Bolzano, a task which cannot be done here. That we cannot rely in all cases on a clear-cut causal relation from reading Bolzano to the adoption of his arguments may not wonder us. To speak about an entire tradition is always a tricky thing, since traditions are not easily to be identified. But if we may use the expression `tradition' then part of a philosophical tradition is that its main tenets recur in different writings and the same or at least similar methods are applied. The fact, however, that even the philosophers of the Vienna Circle claimed to be part of this tradition has been overlooked for a long time. After all, logical empiricism was only one of the labels they accepted. Neurath's preferred name «rational empiricism» is somewhat nearer to what was the significant principle of Austrian philosophy. It was the attempt to base the system of science on an ontology of objects. For both fields the tradition starting with Bolzano provided a good basis to build up a philosophical program.

To investigate how many of the philosophers of this tradition came to similar conceptions under an influence of Bolzanoan ideas without a wider knowledge of his work and to explain, how at the same time we find a strong impact of this conception in different philosophers will remain a task for further research." (pp. 205-206).

6. Jaray, Kimberly. 2006. "Reinach and Bolzano: Towards A Theory of Pure Logic." Symposium.Journal of the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy no. 10:473-502

"The work of Adolf Reinach (1883-1917) on states of affairs, judgment, and speech acts bears striking similarities to Bernard Bolzano's work in the area of general logic. It is my belief that these similarities suggest that Reinach used Bolzano's logical work to assist with his own. Three considerations support this view. First, Bolzano's work in Die Wissenschaftslehre (Theory of Science) was considered by Husserl to be the necessary foundation for any work in logic. Second, Bolzano's logic was a suitable alternative to Immanuel Kant's in that he formulated his essential relations as inexistent yet real, not Platonic or belonging to a transcendental realm. Third, Reinach did not openly criticize Bolzano in the manner he did the Austrians of the Brentano school, suggesting that Bolzano's logic was more complementary with his own. Due to his untimely death in 1917, Reinach's work on states of affairs and logic remains incomplete, some of it even lost or destroyed. I shall here offer a few brief remarks about Husserl as he was Reinach's mentor and friend, but an in depth discussion of the differences between Reinach and Husserl will not be offered in this paper. Secondary literature tells us that Reinach admired Husserl's Logical Investigations, in which phenomenology was said to concern itself with "primarily the discovery of the terra firma of pure logic, of the Sachen (things) in the sense of objective entities in general and of general essences in particular," and further "this phenomenology must bring to pure expression, must describe in terms of their essential concepts and their governing formulae of essence, the essences which directly make themselves known in intuition, and the connections which have their roots purely in such essences." These acts of discovering and describing essences or things themselves became the foundation of Reinach's realist ontology: things themselves surround us in the world and our access to them does not require a transcendental turn. It was precisely this realist foundation that allowed Reinach to develop and extend his phenomenological work to logic, legal philosophy, and speech acts as well. This conception of the nature and goal of phenomenology allowed Reinach and other phenomenologists a manner in which to analyze experience with its essential connections without either falling prey to psychologism or resorting to Platonism: phenomenology for them was truly a realist alternative." (p. 473)

7. Kasabova, Anita. 2002. "Is Logic a Theoretical or Practical Discipline? Kant and / or Bolzano." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 84:319-333

"Does logic describe something or not? If not, is it a normative or practical discipline? Is there a radical division between the practical or normative level and the theoretical or descriptive level? A discipline is theoretical, we may say, if its main propositions contain descriptive expressions, such as "is" or "have", but no normative expressions, such as "ought", "ought not" or "may". A discipline is normative if its main propositions are of the form "it ought to be". Theoretical propositions express what is, whereas practical propositions express what should be. So a theoretical discipline is descriptive and a normative discipline is prescriptive, but what does a theoretical discipline describe?

According to one view, logic is only theoretical and only describes how things are. Logic as a purely theoretical discipline can then be said to be about mental or linguistic activities, or about non-temporal entities and their non-natural connections, such as entailment or derivability. The practical alternative of this purely theoretical view is that logic is only a practical discipline. Its propositions tell us how we may, should or should not judge and reason. Logic as a normative discipline states norms for human activities. According to another view, logic is primarily a theoretical discipline and its counterpart says that logic is primarily a practical discipline. Yet another view of logic says that it can be conceived as both theoretical and practical." (p. 319).

"Which view of logic does Bolzano take? Whereas Husserl insists on delineating a separate pure logic, Bolzano’s Theory of Science combines theoretical and practical logic. Unlike Husserl and contrary to Kant, Bolzano claims that logic as a theory of science, must have both a theoretical and a practical character. Bolzano’s wide understanding of logic as a Wissenschaftslehre or doctrine of how to present sciences (WL I, § 1) extends to epistemology and methodology, including didactic and methodological rules for classifying and teaching the sciences. These latter are collections of truths (WL I, § 1) and it is the practical task of a theory of science or logic to direct our acquaintance with these collections of true propositions. Bolzano even claims that logic in this wide sense is essentially a normative discipline, which depends on psychology (WL I, § 11) (21) and that logic proper (22) is a methodology containing laws that regulate our acquisition of knowledge (WL I, § 15.2) (23)." (p. 326).

(21) Cf. also Heinrich Fels, “Die Philosophie Bolzanos”, Philosophisches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft, vol. 40, pp. 319-448, 1927, pp.319-448).

(22) Bolzano calls the 4th part of the Theory of Science “Eigentliche Wissenschaftslehre”.

(23) Cf. Heinrich Scholz, Die Wissenschaftslehre Bolzanos, Verlag Oeffentliches Leben, Berlin.1937, p.421.

8. ———. 2004. "Colour Sensations and Colour Qualities: Bolzano Between Modern and Contemporary Views." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 12:247-276

"What are colour sensations? Sensations are the basic constituents of our perceptual states. They are primitive mental events and are usually distinguished from the conceptual component of more complex mental states, such as beliefs or judgements. For instance, we may see a certain colour or hear a sound without understanding what it is, but we do not remember a colour or sound, nor believe that there is a colour such as tawny, or want to hear a certain sound, without having some idea of what it is." (p. 247)

(...)

"How does Bolzano distinguish between colour sensations and colour qualities? He explains the fact that we have colour sensations by assuming that these latter are caused by real properties of objects and, in the Wissenschaftslehre and the Athanasia, he claims that colours are dispositional properties or secondary qualities. His causal thesis on colour perception is that colours are properties or attributes of things and we assume that these properties are the cause of our colour sensations and the reason for our judgements that we are seeing coloured things.(12)

His claim that colours are dispositional qualities underlies his examination of physical experiments on colours, which I reconstruct in the next but one section. I then bring the implications of his view into the contemporary discussion of whether colours are dispositional or physical qualities of objects." (p 249)

(12) Aetiologie, in Mathematische und Philosophische Schriften 1810–1816, BBGA, 2, Nachlass A, vol. 5. §§ 14–15.

9. ———. 2006. "Bolzano's Semiotic Method of Explication." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 23:21-39

"This paper is programmatic: it presents a so-far undiscussed part of Bolzano’s Theory of Science, namely the Semiotics.(1) Bolzano’s account of explication is reconstructed to show his contribution to the contemporary discussion." (p. 21)

(...)

"In the second section of the semiotics dealing with the use of signs in treatises and manuals, Bolzano introduces the notion of Verständigung.

In German, a Verständigung means to inform someone of something, to communicate with someone and to make oneself (or something) understood.(7) Bolzano's English and French translators use the word explication for translating Verständigung, for this notion concerns the interpretative relation between linguistic and mental events: the relation between signs and intentions and the way in which we understand words. A Verständigung is more than the mere grasping or understanding of a word, however, for this word designates the linguistic act of making something explicit in such a way that it is understood by others and thus this concept plays an important role in communication." (p. 21-22)

(1) Bolzano, Bernard (1837), Wissenschaftslehre (Theory of Science), Sulzbach, Seidel, [WL] IV, §§ 637-677; (1833-1841) Von der mathematischen Lehrart (On the mathematical method), in Bernard Bolzano Gesamtausgabe, Stuttgart: Fromann-Holzboog, 1969-, Nachlass II, A, 7, [ML] § 9.

(7) The noun Verständigung is the nominalization of the verb verständigen, which means "to inform" ("den Leser zu verstandigen") or "to communicate."

The second use occurs especially with constructions using the genitive, e.g., "den Gastfreund der Ursache ihres Kummers zu verständigen" or "der jungen Fiirstin meine Liebe zu verständigen." Sich verstandigen means "to make oneself understood" and, more specifically, "to correct mistakes or misunderstandings" (Missverständnisse). See H. Paul, Deutsches Worterbuch (Halle: Niemeyer, 1896, 1935), pp. 608-609, as well as contemporary dictionaries of the German language, such as the Wahrig (1966), Bertelsmann, (2002).

10. Kasabova, Anna. 2012. "Bolzano’s Semantic Relation of Grounding: A Case Study." In Inference, Consequence, and Meaning: Perspectives on Inferentialism, edited by Gurova, Lilia, 85-103. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Abstract: "I reconstruct Bolzano’s account of the grounding relation (Abfolge) which, I argue, is a precursor of inferentialism as a basis for semantics and I apply the grounding relation to a particular case: episodic memory. I argue that the basis of episodic memory is not the empirical relation of causality but the semantic relation of grounding which explains why we remember some things rather than others."

11. Kasabova, Anita. 2013. "Dubislav and Bolzano." In The Berlin Group and the Philosophy of Logical Empiricism, edited by Milkov, Nikolay and Peckhaus, Volker, 205-228. Dordrecht: Springer

"Brief Introduction

Walter Dubislav (1895–1937) was an active member of the Berlin Group of logical empiricismin the early 1930s. A philosopher, mathematician and logician, he shared the thematic focus of the Berlin Group on the natural sciences, mathematics and logic. He shared the methodological demand of the Berlin Group that philosophical method of inquiry should follow the rigor and precision of formal sciences in exposition and logical reasoning (Rescher 2006, 283). A rigorous methodology for philosophy was also required by Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848), the Prague mathematician, logician and philosopher. Was it Bolzano’s efforts to separate logic from psychology in the Theory of Science (Bolzano 1837) or his reconstruction of mathematics in the Contributions to a Better Founded Exposition of Mathematics (1810) which attracted Walter Dubislav’s attention?

Dubislav was not interested in Bolzano’s early attempts to develop a mathematical method for expounding objective dependence relations which hold between judgments as grounds and consequences (Bolzano 1810, II, § 2). His research is focused on the later Bolzano (1837). In a series of papers published between 1929 and 1931, he deals with Bolzano’s Kant-criticism and Bolzano’s contribution to modern logic. More specifically, he examines what he calls Bolzano’s propositional functions (Aussage- oder Satzfunktion), his notion of analyticity and analytic statements, as well as his notions of probability (Wahrscheinlichkeit) and derivability (Ableitbarkeit)." (p. 205)

12. ———. 2013. "Bolzano on Kant’s Definition of Analyticity – Does it Fall Short of Logical Precision?" Philosophical Alternatives no. 6:13-34

Abstract: "My commentary is Kant-friendly and I begin by re-situating the Siebel-Bolzano-Kant discussion on analytic judgments in regard to their history, namely, to Aristotle's predication. I focus on Siebel-Bolzano's objections that Kant's analytic judgments (i) have a definiens permitting too broad an interpretation, and (ii) that the definiens is too narrow. I re-examine Kant's use of 'covertly' and 'identity of concepts' and argue pace Mark Siebel that Kant's analytic judgments make explicit the shared content of subject and predicate. I then re-examine Kant and Bolzano's notion of (essential) distinctive feature (Merkmal) discussed by Siebel in the context of the ‘contained in’/’contained under’ issue, and show that Kant’s analytic judgments are nominal definitions."

13. Kluge, Eike Henner. 1980. "Bolzano and Frege: Some Conceptual Parallels." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 10:21-41

"Recent Frege scholarship has evidenced a growing interest in the historical basis of Frege's thought. By and large, that interest has focussed on the figure of Leibniz, and although there is still some disagreement over the precise nature and extent of the latter's influence, the fact that it exists is apparently beyond dispute. However, there is another historical figure, of some importance in his own right, whose influence on Frege - or, to be more precise, the possibility of whose influence on Frege - has largely been ignored. I am referring to Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848). The purpose of this paper is to expose some interesting not to say profound similarities between certain fundamental doctrines of the two thinkers, and to suggest on that basis the likelihood of an influence of the former on the latter should be seriously considered." (p. 21)

14. Kneale, Wiiliam, and neale, Martha. 1962. The Development of Logic. Oxford Clrendon Press

Chapter V. Logic after the Renaissance. § 5. Bolzano and Mill, pp. 358-371.

"According to Bolzano a science in the objective sense of that word is a sum of objective truths. If it is set forth in a treatise, the truths of which it consists must, of course, be known to some man, but truths are not in general to be identified with truths known to men. On the contrary it is reasonable to suppose that the great majority of them are known only to God. For an objective truth is a true proposition-in-itself (Satz-an-sich), that is to say, a true propositional content, something thinkable or expressible but not necessarily thought or expressed.(6) Often the word 'judgement' is used in this sense, but it is not suitable as a technical term because it is sometimes used also for the act as opposed to the content of judging; and apart from that it would be misleading if applied to a content which was not believed but merely considered as an hypothesis. 'Judgement' is in fact just one of many words that we can use to refer to propositional contents in special contexts. Others are 'premiss' and 'conclusion', which logicians introduced as descriptions for sentences occurring in certain positions in arguments but used later as though they were designations for propositional contents." (p. 360)

(6) Wissenschaftslehre § 12.

15. Konzelmann, Ziv Anita. 2009. "Naturalized Rationality. A Glance at Bolzano's Philosophy of Mind." Baltic International Yearbook ofCognition, Logic and Communication no. 4:1-21

Abstract: "Bernard Bolzano's philosophy of mind is closely related to his metaphysical conceptions of substance, adherence and force. Questions as to how the mind is working are treated in terms of efficient (causal) faculties producing simple and complex representations, conclusive and non-conclusive judgments, and meta-representational attitudes such as believing and knowing. My paper outlines the proximity of Bolzano's account of "mental forces" to contemporary accounts of faculty psychology such as Modularity Theory and Simple Heuristics. While the modularist notions of domain specificity and encapsulated mental faculties align with Bolzano's allotment of domain specific tasks to correspondingly specified psychological forces (e.g. judging to "judgmental force", inferring to "inferential force" etc.), the emphasis of Simple Heuristics on accurate "fast and frugal" processes aligns with Bolzano's views regarding cognitive resources and the importance of epistemic economy. The paper attempts to show how Bolzano's metaphysics of mind supposes a conception of bound rationality that determines his epistemology. Combining the rationalist concern for epistemic agent responsibility in the pursuit of knowledge with a strong confidence in the reliability of causal processes to generate the right beliefs, his epistemology shows close affinities with contemporary Virtue Epistemology. According to Virtue Epistemology, knowledge requires that true beliefs be generated by reliable processes typical of a virtuous character. The thesis that Bolzano anticipates virtue epistemological considerations is corroborated by his discussion of heuristic principles that set the norms for the acquisition of knowledge. The paper explores possible relations between such principles and the presumed low-level heuristics of cognitive processes."

16. ———. 2011. "Bolzanian Knowing: Infallibility, Virtue and Foundational Truth." Synthese no. 183:27-45

Abstract: "The paper discusses Bernard Bolzano’s epistemological approach to believing and knowing with regard to the epistemic requirements of an axiomatic model of science. It relates Bolzano’s notions of believing, knowing and evaluation to notions of infallibility, immediacy and foundational truth. If axiomatic systems require their foundational truths to be infallibly known, this knowledge involves both evaluation of the infallibility of the asserted truth and evaluation of its being foundational.

The twofold attempt to examine one’s assertions and to do so by searching for the objective grounds of the truths asserted lies at the heart of Bolzano’s notion of knowledge. However, the explanatory task of searching for grounds requires methods that cannot warrant infallibility. Hence, its constitutive role in a conception of knowledge seems to imply the fallibility of such knowledge. I argue that the explanatory task contained in Bolzanian knowing involves a high degree of epistemic virtues, and that it is only through some salient virtue that the credit of infallibility can distinguish Bolzanian knowing from a high degree of Bolzanian believing."

17. Koren, Ladislav. 2014. "Quantificational Accounts of Logical Consequence I: From Aristotle to Bolzano." Organon F no. 21:22-44

Abstract: "So-called quantificational accounts explicate logical consequence or validity as truth-preservation in all cases, cases being construed as admissible substitutional variants or as admissible interpretations with respect to non-logical terms. In the present study, which is the first from three successive studies devoted to quantification accounts, I focus on the beginning of systematic theorizing of consequence in Aristotle‘s work, which contains the rudiments of both modal and formal accounts of consequence.

I argue, inter alia, that there is no evidence for the claim that Aristotle propounded a quantificational account, and that for a full-fledged quantificational approach in a modern style we need to turn to Bolzano’s substitutional approach, whose motivation, structure and problems are explained in the second part of this study."

"Bolzano might have been the first to elaborate rigorously on this very idea in his account of logical validity and deducibility. The following passage deserves a full quote:

Among the definitions of [the concept of deducibility] … one of the best is that of Aristotle: ‘a syllogism is a discourse in which, certain things being stated, something other than what is stated follows of necessity from their being so.’ Since there can be no doubt that Aristotle assumed that the relation of deducibility can hold between false propositions, the ‘follows of necessity’ can hardly be interpreted in any other way than this: that the conclusion becomes true whenever the premises are true. Now it is obvious that we cannot say of one and the same class of propositions that one of them becomes true whenever the others are true, unless we envisage some of their parts as variable.

For propositions none of whose parts change are not sometimes true and sometimes false; they are always one or the other. Hence when it was said of certain propositions that one of them becomes true as soon as the others do, the actual reference was not to these propositions themselves, but to a relation which holds between the infinitely many propositions which can be generated from them, if certain of their ideas are replaced by arbitrarily chosen other ideas. (Bolzano 1972, § 155, 219-220)" (p. 33)

References

Bolzano B. (1837/1972): Theory of Science. Translated and edited by R. George. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Translation of selected parts of Wissenschaftslehre. Versuch einer ausführlichen und grösstentheils neuen Darstellung der Logik mit steter Rücksicht auf deren bisherige Bearbeiter. 4 Vols. Sulzbach: J. E. v. Seidel.

18. Krämer, Stephan. 2011. "Bolzano on the Intransparency of Content." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 82:189-208

Summary: "Content, according to Bolzano, is intransparent: our knowledge of certain essential features of the contents of our contentful mental acts (such as their identity and composition) is often severely limited. In this paper, I identify various intransparency theses Bolzano is committed to, and present and evaluate the defence he offers for his view. I argue that while his intransparency theses may be correct, his defence is unsuccessful. Moreover, I argue that improving on his defence would require substantial modifications to his general epistemology of content."

19. Krause, Andrej. 2006. "Are Bolzano's Substances Simple?" American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 80:543-562

Abstract: "This article analyzes one aspect of Bolzano's metaphysics. It discusses the question of whether, according to Bolzano, substances are simple or not. In the opinion of some commentators, he accepts composed substances, that is, substances having substances as proper parts. However, it is easily possible to misinterpret his position. This paper first tries to reconstruct Bolzano's definitions of the concept of substance and suggests that he should be able to agree with the following final definition: x is a substance if and only ifx is real and not a property. After this, it is shown that, according to Bolzano, every substance is simple in a fourfold sense: No substance has (1) adherences as parts, (2) substances as proper parts, (3) spatially extended parts, and (4) temporal parts."

20. Kriener, Jönne. 2017. "Bolzano." In The History of Philosophical and Formal Logic: From Aristotle to Tarski, edited by Malpass, Alex and Antonutti Marfori, Marianna, 121-142. New York: Bloomsbury Academic

"This chapter presents core elements of the logic developed by the Austrian mathematician and philosopher Bernard Bolzano during the fi rst decades of the nineteenth century. * For Bolzano, logic deals with scientific reasoning quite generally. A science for him is an ordered body of true propositions. Accordingly, I will begin by explaining Bolzano’s notion of proposition.

When we engage in science, our reasoning crucially involves the derivation of some propositions from others. Bolzano’s most advanced innovation in logic is his theory of deducibility ( Ableitbarkeit ). Famously, it anticipates some aspects of the modern concept of logical consequence.

Finally we deal with a more demanding, and less well understood, way in which Bolzano took scientific truths to be ordered: his notion of grounding ( Abfolge ). Grounding is central to Bolzano’s thinking about science, and thus an important part of Bolzano’s logic." (p. 121)

21. Künne, Wolfgang. 1997. "Propositions in Bolzano and Frege." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 53:203-240

Reprinted in W. Künne, Versuche über Bolzano / Essays on Bolzano, pp. 157-195 and in Michael Beaney and Erich H. Reck (eds.), Gottlob Frege. Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers. Vol. I: Frege's Philosophy in Context, New York: Routledge, 2005, pp. 124-153.

Abstract: "In the Preface to his book Frege and Other Philosophers [New York: Oxford University Press, 1996] Michael Dummett says: “The only nineteenth-century philosopher of whom it would be reasonable to guess, just from the content of his writings and those of Frege, that he had influenced Frege, is Bernhard Bolzano, who died in the year Frege was born; but there is no evidence whatever that Frege ever read Bolzano”.(1) Apart from one grave mistake this seems to me to be exactly right. Did you notice the “grave” mistake? Bolzano’s first name is spelled with an “h” and thereby deprived of its Italian flavour.(2)

To be sure, there were two mathematically minded philosophers and one philosophically minded mathematician who emphatically appealed to Bolzano in the course of their discussions with Frege. So he was made aware of the fact that Bolzano’s work was potentially relevant for his own concerns. But Husserl, Kerry and Korselt were critical of Frege, and Frege in turn was very critical of them. Perhaps that’s why he never bothered to read an author they praised, — who knows... (3)

There are many respects in which a comparison between Bolzano and Frege could be philosophically fruitful. But what is most striking for everyone who reads both Frege’s Logische Untersuchungen and Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre is the close similarity between what Frege calls Gedanken and what Bolzano calls Sätze an sich. In the literature this resemblance is frequently mentioned, but I have never seen a detailed investigation into this topic.(4) In this paper I shall recall some of the well-known respects, and point out some less well-known respects, in which F(rege)-Propositions and B(olzano)-Propositions (as I shall call them) resemble each other. But I am at least as keen to underline some philosophically important differences beneath those similarities."

(1) Dummett, vii. The same claim is to be found in Dummett Ursprünge der analytischen Philosophie, Frankfurt /M., 1988, 34; Origins of Analytical Philosophy, Cambridge/MA, 1993, 24, and Frege. Philosophy of Mathematics, London, 1991, 47. I cannot take seriously E.-H. Kluge’s contention that there was “a de facto, perhaps even unconscious influence that manifested itself in a similarity of conceptual approach and a parallelism of positions defended” (Kluge "Bolzano and Frege: Some Conceptual Parallels, in: Grazer Philosophische Studien 10 (1980), pp. 21-42, 21 ff.). Several extremely careless translations from the Wissenschaftslehre in Kluge’s article seem to be symptomatic of a rather superficial acquaintance with Bolzano’s work. I also disagree with much of his interpretation of Frege.

(2) Bemard(o)’s father was born at the Lago di Como. By the way, the misspelling is endemic. In Vienna it marred even the attempt to name a street after Bolzano.

(3) Cp. Künne "Die Ernte wird erscheinen...' Die Geschichte der Bolzano-Rezeption (1849-1939)", pp. 9-82, esp. 31-50; revised version in this volume: 326-359.

(4) Of course, in Dummett Ursprünge.../Origins... ch. 4, it is also duly registered, but the focus is rather on Frege.

22. ———. 1998. "Bolzano, Bernard." In Routledge Encylopedia of Philosophy, edited by Craig, Edward, 824-828. New York: Routledge

Abstract: "Bernard Bolzano was a lone forerunner both of analytical philosophy and phenomenology. Born in Prague in the year when Kant’s first Critique appeared, he became one of the most acute critics both of Kant and of German Idealism. He died in Prague in the same year in which Frege was born; Frege is philosophically closer to him than any other thinker of the nineteenth or twentieth century. Bolzano was the only outstanding proponent of utilitarianism among German-speaking philosophers, and was a creative mathematician whose name is duly remembered in the annals of this discipline. His Wissenschaftslehre (Theory of Science) of 1837 makes him the greatest logician in the period between Leibniz and Frege. The book was sadly neglected by Bolzano’s contemporaries, but rediscovered by Brentano’s pupils: Its ontology of propositions and ideas provided Husserl with much of his ammunition in his fight against psychologism and in support of phenomenology, and through Twardowski it also had an impact on the development of logical semantics in the Lwów-Warsaw School."

23. ———. 2001. "Constituents of Concepts: Bolzano vs. Frege." In Building on Frege. New Essays on Sense, Content, and Concept, edited by Newen, Albert, Nortmann, Ulrich and Stuhlmann-Laeisz, Rainer, 267-285. Stanford: CLSI Publications

Reprinted in: W. Künne, Versuche über Bolzano / Essays on Bolzano, Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag 2008, pp. 211-232.

"In section 1 of this paper I shall point out that in one respect the grandfather of analytical philosophy was more conservative than its great-grandfather: Frege at least partially endorsed the Canon of Reciprocity which was a prominent ingredient of the post-Cartesian logical tradition, Bolzano rejected it completely. In section 2 I shall try to defend one part of this bipartite principle. In section 3 I shall try to show that this line of defence is open to Frege. This claim is based on a reconsideration of Frege’s notion of the marks (Merkmale) of a concept, — a notion which is generally treated rather cavalierly in the literature on Frege. In section 4 I shall present a problem that Bolzano and Frege share because they both think of complex senses in part-whole terms. Finally, in part 5, I shall briefly celebrate what I deem to be Bolzano’s victorious attack on the other part of the Canon of Reciprocity (CR)." (p. 211)

(...)

Here is Kant’s formulation of CR: (4)

(CR) Content and extension of a concept stand in an inverse relation. The more objects fall under a concept, the fewer conceptual components are contained within the concept, and vice versa.

Bolzano attacks CR in § 120 of his monumental Wissenschaftslehre (1837; henceforth ‘WL' for short). (5)

(4) ‘Inhalt und Umfang eines Begriffs stehen gegen cinander in umgekehrtem Verhältnisse. Je mehr namlich ein Begriffunter sich enthalt, desto weniger enthalt er in sich und umgekehrt’ (Kant (10), 148). Bolzano’s contention in WL I 294, 570, repeated by many authors, that (CR) is to be found already in the Logic of Port Royal (Arnauld/Nicole) is not tenable (Schmauks 14f.). An early (if not the earliest) formulation of (CR) is given in Wolff (l), 138.

(5) Bolzano quotes (CR) in WL I 292.

[Another definition of CR: "Every concept, as partial concept, is contained in the representation of things; as ground of cognition, i.e., as mark, these things are contained under it. In the former respect every concept has a content, in the other an extension.

The content and extension of a concept stand in inverse relation to one another. The more a concept contains under itself, namely, the less it contains in itself, and conversely.

Note. The universality or universal validity of a concept does not rest on the fact that the concept is a partial concept, but rather on the fact that it is a ground of cognition." (I. Kant, The Jäsche Logic, § 7, Content and extension of concepts, in: Lecture on Logic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 96]

24. ———. 2003. "Bernard Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre and Polish Analytical Philosophy Between 1894 and 1935." In Philosophy and Logic in Search of the Polish Tradition: Essays in Honour of Jan Wolenski on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday, edited by Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna, 179-192. Dordrecht: Kluwer

"In this paper I want to examine some of the many Polish contributions to a critical discussion of Bolzano 's masterpiece.

Twardowski praised Bolzano for clearly distinguishing, under the headings [1] subjektive Vorstellung, [2] Vorstellung an sich or objektive Vorstellung, and [3] Gegenstand, what ought to be distinguished, namely [1] the mental act of representing an object, [2] the content of this act, and [3] its object. Twardowski's book [Twardowski 1892] voiced a fundamental disagreement with Bolzano, which, some would say, was to become rather fruitful, and it is marred by a fundamental misunderstanding.

The disagreement concerns the question whether all representings are objectual (gegenständlich) or whether some representings lack an object. For Bolzano this was a matter of course: The act of representing I give voice to when uttering the definite description 'the present King of Poland' has no object.

Twardowski disagreed: my representation does have an object, but it is a non-existent one,(4) This move paved the way for Meinong (as weIl as for Routley and Parsons)(5). Meinong's Theory of Objects is based upon the 'principle of the independence of being from being-so (Prinzip der Unabhängigkeit des Soseins vom Sein)' : an object can be thus-and-so even if it has no being (i.e, even if it neither 'exists' nor 'subsists'). Bolzano was strongly opposed to this: 'as the old canon has it (wie schon der alte Kanon besagt) - nonentis nullae sunt offectiones.(6) In 1894 another pupil of Brentano's, Edmund Husserl, who had already come across Bolzano as a mathematician, forcefully defended the claim that some representings have no object whatsoever against Twardowski's criticism.(7) (In some respects this controversy foreshadows that between Meinong and post-'On Denoting-Russell.)" (p. 179-180)

(4) Twardowski (1982), p. 24.

(5) Meinong 'Über Gegenstandstheorie'. On Meinong's reading of Bolzano cp. Künne (1997), §11.

(6) Bolzano, Athanasia; pp. 292 f. As to the Canon cp. Descartes, Principia I § 52.

(7) Husserl (1894), p. 303.

References

Bolzano, Bemard: 1837, Dr. B. Bolzanos Wissenschaftslehre, Seidel, Sulzbach; reprint, edited by Wolfgang Schultz, Leipzig, 1929/1931.

Bolzano, Bernard: 1838, Dr. Bolzano's Athanasia [ . . .]. Zweite verbesserte Ausgabe, Seidel, Sulzbach.

Husserl, Edmund: 1894, 'Immanenter und wirklicher Gegenstand', Husserliana XXII, Nijhoff, TheHague,1979, pp. 303-338.

Künne, Wolfgang: 1997, ' ''Die Ernte wird erscheinen", Die Geschichte der Bolzano-Rezeption', in: H. Ganthaler and O. Neumaier (eds.), Bolzano und die österreichische Geistesgeschichte, Academia, Sankt Augustin, pp. 9-82.

Meinong, Alexius: 1904, 'Über Gegenstandstheorie' , reprinted in Gesamtausgabe, Vol. VII, Graz 1968, pp. 483-535.

Twardowski, Kazimierz: 1982, Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen, 1894, Philosophia, München.

25. ———. 2003. "Are Questions Propositions?" Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 57:157-168

Reprinted in: W. Künne, Versuche über Bolzano / Essays on Bolzano, Sankt Augustin, Academia Verlag, 2008, pp. 197-210.

"In the Prolegomena to his Logische Untersuchungen (LU) Edmund Husserl praised the first two volumes of Bernard Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre (WL) as ‘far surpassing everything else world literature has to offer as systematic exposition of logic’. Eleven years later the key is a bit lower: These volumes, he now says, occupy ‘the highest rank in the logical world literature of the 19th century’.(2)

To the best of my knowledge, the most extensive and most thorough discussion of a single contention in Bolzano’s philosophy of logic that can be found in any of Husserl’s books and articles published during his lifetime is contained in the last chapter of his LU.(3) The topic of this discussion is a courageous if not outrageous Bolzanian contention which, at least on the face of it, flatly contradicts what most philosophers since Aristotle took for granted. Questions, Bolzano claims, are a special kind of propositions and hence truth-evaluable. Let me call this Bolzano's Tenet.

In my little exercise I shall reconstruct and evaluate both Bolzano’s Tenet and Husserl’s criticism thereof. I shall argue that the latter is largely correct, but that in the end Husserl and Bolzano are both wrong. Somebody else got it right: a philosopher and mathematician for whom one would also claim a very high rank indeed in the logical world literature of the 19th, and of any, century. But this is to anticipate.

What exactly is it that Bolzano maintains when he says that questions are a kind of propositions? By ‘proposition (Satz an sich)’ he means something that is neither mental nor linguistic. Propositions are thinkables and sayables which can be singled out by that-clauses. Such thinkables and sayables are truth-evaluable, hence, assuming bivalence as Bolzano does, they are either true or false. If Bolzano’s Tenet is to make any sense at all, by ‘questions’ he cannot mean anything mental or linguistic. Now the term ‘question’ is multiply ambiguous, and for our inquiry it is most important not to get entangled in this ambiguity. We must distinguish

Questions 1: mental acts of asking oneself a question,

Questions 2: illocutionary acts of asking a question,

Questions 3: interrogative sentences, and

Questions 4: askables.

Wonderings, i. e. sense-1-questions, are voiced by sense-2-questions. Husserl occasionally labels the former 'innerliche Fragen' and the latter ‘Anfragen’. The second term (which in ordinary German has a far narrower application) is meant to register the fact that sense-2-questions are essentially addressed to someone. Sense-3-questions are linguistic vehicles of sense-2-questions; unsurprisingly Husserl calls them ‘Fragesatze’. Sense-4-questions, finally, are possible contents of sense-1- and of sense-2-questions, and sometimes they coincide with the conventional linguistic meaning of sense-3-questions. (They do so only if the latter are free of context-sensitive elements.) In Husserl’s language, an askable is a ‘Frageinhalt’, and he identifies it with the ‘Bedeutung' (meaning) des Fragesatzes'. (4) Askables are those thinkables and sayables which can be singled out by indirect sense-3-questions (for example, by the clauses in ‘He asked whether the conference had started’ or ‘She asks when the conference will end’). So let us reformulate Bolzano’s Tenet: Askables are a proper sub-set of propositions." (pp. 197-198).

(...)

"At the point we have now reached we can recognize that the following stance has a chance of being coherent: conceding that English yes/no interrogatives are not true or false (sc. in English) any more than any other interrogatives are, while maintaining that yes/no interrogatives, in contradistinction to search interrogatives, express propositions which are true or false (simpliciter). This is coherent if we take yes/no interrogatives to be an exception to the right-to-left half of a bridge-principle that is unexceptionable as regards declarative sentences: Sentence S is true in language L at context c if and only if what is expressed by S in L at c is true. This move would mitigate the tension between Aristotle’s and Bolzano’s views about questions, which Husserl emphasized at the outset of his discussion of Bolzano’s Tenet." (pp. 209-210).

(2) Husserl (3), I 225; letter to Friedjung, in Husserl (14), VII 97.

(3) In 1920 Husserl emphasized that he had refrained from modifying the text of the 1st edition only because in the meantime his views had changed too drastically (preface to the 2nd edition of Husserl(3), II/2 vii). I shall concentrate exclusively on his 1901 position, more precisely: on those aspects of that position which are relevant for an evaluation of Bolzano’s thesis about questions. (Page references are always to the 2nd edition.)

(4) Husserl (3), II/2 211-212.

26. ———. 2006. "Analyticity and Logical Truth: from Bolzano to Quine." In The Austrian Contribution to Analytic Philosophy, edited by Textor, Mark, 184-249. New York: Routledge

Reprinted in: W. Künne, Versuche über Bolzano / Essays on Bolzano, Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag 2008, pp. 233-303.

"Truth-value bearers and the concept of truth

For Bolzano analyticity, like truth and falsity, is a property of propositions (Sätze an sich). He takes the concept of a proposition to resist analysis or conceptual decomposition (Erklärung), but there are other ways of ‘achieving an understanding (Verständigung)’ of a concept.(3)

Consider a report of the following type: ‘Johanna said that copper conducts electricity, Jeanne said the same thing, though in different words, and Joan believes what they said.’ Here a that-clause is used to single out something that is [1] said by different speakers, [2] distinct from the linguistic vehicles used for saying it, and [3] believed by somebody. ‘Now, this is the sort of thing I mean by proposition,’ Bolzano would say, ‘propositions are sayables and thinkables, possible contents of sayings and thinkings, that can be singled out by that-clauses.’(4)"

(3) 3 Cf. Bolzano, Wissenschaftslehre (henceforth: WL, quoted by volume and page number) IV 243–5, 488–90, 542–5, 547. The manuscript of WL was published only seven years after Bolzano had begun to search for a publisher (outside the borders of the Austrian Empire). The book was as unsuccessful as can be. It was only several decades after Bolzano’s death that some philosophers in Vienna, Halle and Lemberg recognized some of the gold mines it contains. See Künne (2) and (5).

(4) Bolzano’s views on propositions are examined, and compared with Frege’s, in Künne (3).

References

Künne, W.:

(2) ‘ “Die Ernte wird erscheinen”, Die Geschichte der Bolzano-Rezeption’ [I], in H. Ganthaler and O. Neumaier (eds) Bolzano und die österreichische Geistesgeschichte, St Augustin: Academia Verlag, 1997: 9–82.

(3) ‘Propositions in Bolzano and Frege’, in (4): 203–40.

(4) with M. Siebel and M. Textor (eds) Bolzano and Analytic Philosophy, Grazer Philosophische Studien 53, 1997.

(5) ‘Die Geschichte der philosophischen Bolzano-Rezeption’ [II], in H. Rumpler (ed.) Bernard Bolzano und die Politik, Wien: Böhlau, 2000: 311–52.

27. ———. 2007. "Some Varieties of Deception." In Explaining the Mental. Naturalist and Non-Naturalist Approaches to Mental Acts and Processes, edited by Penco, Carlo, Beaney, Michael and Vignolo, Massimiliano, 106-122. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

"Members of the family of concepts to which the title of this paper alludes play important roles in various areas of theoretical and practical philosophy. I want to throw some light on these concepts and their interrelations, and in doing so I also want to make Bernard Bolzano's analytical work in this area better available. The great-grandfather of analytical philosophy, a contemporary of Hegel's, was a great mathematician, and he held the chair of Philosophy of Religion at Prague University until the Emperor sacked him. It was part of his job to deliver a sermon, a so-called Erbauungsrede or exhortation. on each and every Sunday and on church holidays. These sermons contain most of the material I shall exploit in this paper.(1) None of my definitions literally coincides with Bolzano's, but most of them are substantially due to him.

Bolzano never put his accounts of various kinds of deceiving and of various kinds of trying to deceive together. but if one attempts to arrange them systematically it runs out that for the most part they harmonize very well with each other. Whenever they don't I shall take the liberty of making adjustments that are meant lo enhance their plausibility." (p. 106)

(1) The pertinent sermons will be quoted as 'I', 'II', 'III ' and 'IV', followed by page number. I. deception & cheating, 13. 04.1817, in Bolzano. ER4, pp 306-313: II. self-deception, 15. 07.1810. in Bolzano. ER4, pp. 36-45: lll. Hypocrisy 16.02.1812. in Bolzano. ER2,. pp. 289-300. IV Lying 18. 03.1810, in Bolzano, ER2, pp. 73-81. Abbreviated references to Bolzano's works are spell out in the bibliography to this paper Quotations from Bolzano are always in italics.

28. ———. 2008. Versuche über Bolzano / Essays on Bolzano. Sank Augustin: Academia Verlag

Essays in English: Propositions in Bolzano and Frege 157; Are Questions Propositions? 197; Constituents of Concepts 211; Analyticity and Logical Truth: From Bolzano to Quine 233-304

29. ———. 2009. "Bolzano and (Early) Husserl on Intentionality." In Acts of Knowledge: History, Philosophy and Logic, Essays Dedicated to Göran Sundholm, edited by Primiero, Giuseppe and Rahman, Shahid, 95-140. London: College Publications.

30. ———. 2011. "On Liars, ‘Liars’ and Harmless Self-Reference." In Mind, Values, and Metaphysics. Philosophical Essays in Honor of Kevin Mulligan. Volume 2, edited by Reboul, Anne, 355-429. Dordrecht: Springer

Abstract: "The topics of this chapter are (1) the history of a mislabelled antinomy and of a pseudo-paradox and (2) some logico-semantical peculiarities of self-referential sentences that do not give rise to a paradox. My points of departure will be Bernard Bolzano’s discussions of a plain fallacy he called The Liar and of an antinomy that we unfortunately got used to calling The Liar. He found a pointer to the fallacy in Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations. In a logic manual of the early renaissance, he came across a source of the antinomy in the form of a sentence that declares itself to be false. In Sect. 24.1, I shall praise Bolzano’s reaction to the fallacy and discuss his analysis of the concept of lying. I will present some ancient expositions of the antinomy and go on to criticize, along Moorean lines, Russell’s rather sloppy account. Finally, I will defend the author of the ‘Letter to Titus’ against the charge of being paradox-blind when he invoked a Cretan denigrator of all Cretans. (Some twentieth century logicians and analytic philosophers are the villains of this part of my chapter: I shall criticize their carelessness with respect to a well-entrenched concept, and I shall complain that they keep on alluding to ancient texts without bothering to read them closely.) In Sect. 24.2, I shall reconstruct Girolamo Savonarola’s excellent exposition of the antinomy [*], examine Bolzano’s criticism of the Florentine diagnosis and reject his own attempt to defuse the paradox. (I shall not try to improve on his attempt.) In this context, Bolzano makes a point concerning self-referential sentences that is not affected by the failure of his alleged dissolution of the antinomy. He rightly takes it to be a matter of course that there are ever so many harmlessly self-referential sentences. But he shows that some care is needed when one wants to formulate their negation. In Sect. 24.3, I will expound this point.

It turns out that similar problems arise when one uses harmlessly self-referential sentences in deductive arguments. Such sentences also enforce a revision of certain intuitively plausible constraints on translation."

[*] Girolamo Savonarola’s Compendium logicae (Bolzano, WL I 78–80; Savonarola, CL 151, lines 6–24).

References

Savonarola G. (1492) Compendium logicae. In: Savonarola G. (1982) Opere, vol 22, Scritti filosofici, 1 (Garfagnini G. Garin E. (eds)). Roma 3–208.

31. ———. 2015. "On Having a Property: Corrigenda in Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 91:365-408.

32. ———. 2018. "Truth, Ascriptions of Truth, and Grounds of Truth Ascriptions: Reflections on Bolzano and Frege." In Eva Picardi on Language, Analysis and History, edited by Coliva, Annalisa, Leonardi, Paolo and Moruzzi, Sebastiano, 31-66. Cham (Switzerland): Palgrave Macmillan

"In Sect. 1 of this chapter, I shall discuss Bolzano’s attempt to give a definition of the concept of truth, in Sect. 2 I shall ask whether Frege succeeds in showing that all such endeavours are doomed to failure. In this chapter I shall remain neutral as to the question of definability, but the key premise of his alleged proof of indefinability. The equivalence schema ‘The thought that things are thus and so is true if, and only if, things are that way’ captures an important feature of the concept of truth.

Frege went beyond this true-iff principle when he claimed that the two halves of such biconditionals do not only stand and fall together,—they even express one and the same thought. It is doubtful whether Frege has any good argument for this Identity Thesis. In Sect. 3 of this chapter I will give reasons for this doubt. In Sect. 4 I shall show that, and why, Bolzano rejects the Identity Thesis. Bolzano emphasizes an important feature of our concept of truth that is not captured by the equivalence schema. One can hint at this additional feature by saying, ‘If the thought that things are thus and so is true, then it is true because of things’ being that way, and not vice versa’. In Sect. 5 I shall locate this true because-of principle in the theory of grounding (Abfolge) that Bolzano outlined in the second volume of his monumental Wissenschaftslehre (henceforth: WL). In Sect. 6 I shall explore whether the Identity Thesis can be refuted by appealing to (the Bolzanian reformulation of) the true-because-of principle. On the following pages, I shall not try to argue for the true-because-of principle. Like Aristotle and Bolzano I shall accept it as a basic intuition concerning truth.(1) The brief Appendix points to a use of the notion of grounding that has been neglected in recent literature although Bolzano deemed it to be of great importance." (pp. 31-32)

(1) Any attempt at a proof of this principle from a definition of truth presupposes, of course, that pace Frege such a definition is to be had.

33. Lange, Marc. 2022. "Bolzano, the Parallelogram of Forces, and Scientific Explanation." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 394-417. New York: Oxford University Press

"Marc Lange turns to Bolzano's philosophy of physics and discusses his explanatory proof of the parallelogram law for the composition of forces. Lange argues that this proof is neither clearly causal nor clearly non-causal. In order to illuminate its explanatory potential, Lange compares it with Bolzano's explanation of the intermediate value theorem: Bolzano takes the latter to have a unified explanation covering all functions, and in a similar spirit he regards an explanation of the parallelogram law as unifying it with analogous laws regarding various other quantities that are potential causes." (p. 38)

34. Lapointe, Sandra. 2002. "Bolzano's Hidden Theory of Universal Quantification." In The Logica Yearbook 2001, edited by Childer, Timothy and Ondrej, Majer, 37-48. Prague: Filosofia. Publishing House of Prague Institut of Philosophy.

35. ———. 2004. "Why Frege Never Read Bolzano." In The Logica Yearbook 2003, edited by Behounek, Libor, 183-194. Prague: Filosofia. Publishing House of Prague Institute of Philosophy.

36. ———. 2006. "Bolzano on Grounding or Why Is Logic Synthetic." In The Logica Yearbook 2005, 113-126. Prague: Filosofia.

37. ———. 2007. "Bolzano Semantics and His Critique of the Decompositional Conception of Analysis." In The Analytic Turn, edited by Beaney, Michael, 219-234. London: Routledge

"When asked to explain what conceptual analysis is, philosophers often resort to the idea of decomposition: to analyse an expression or a concept is to break it down into its (simpler) components. Although the notion of decomposition is a convenient figure of speech, without qualifications it can hardly be said to provide an informative description of what is involved in conceptual analysis. It could be argued, however, that this was not always the case. In Kant's theory, for instance, the conception of analysis is literally decompositional: notions such as Zergliederung, Auflösung', `Inhalt' and enthalten sein' are meant to provide a relatively straightforward description of the mereological conception of the formal features of and relations between concepts he had inherited from his predecessors, contrary to what influential interpretations such as Quine (1953: 21) suggest.(2) In what follows, I'll use the expression `decompositional conception of analysis' to refer to the conception of analysis that underlies Kantian semantics and, most notoriously, the Kantian definition of analyticity. My concern, though, is not primarily with Kant nor with analyticity but with Bernard Bolzano's conception of analysis. A superficial reading of Bolzano's Theory of Science - Wissenschaftslehre (Bolzano 1837; hereafter WL) - could lead one to think that Bolzano also subscribed to the decompositional conception of analysis. Yet, while Bolzano sanctions Kant's account in his earlier work (cf. Bolzano 1810: §5; 1812: §30) he came explicitly to reject it. Contrary to what is often assumed, Bolzano's understanding of what it means for a concept to be 'included' in another concept or for a given concept to have a particular content is radically different from Kant's and from that of Bolzano's other immediate predecessors. In fact, Bolzano anticipated some of the most important developments of twentieth-century semantics.(3)

I begin the paper with a brief sketch of the decompositional conception of analysis in section 1, and then in section 2 I present Bolzano's criticism of this conception. In section 3, I explain the main lines of Bolzano's reductive programme of analysis. Section 3, I hope, will go some way towards establishing the continued interest of Bolzano's semantic analyses. One of the main consequences of Bolzano's rejection of the decompositional conception of analysis is the need to find a new way to define semantic notions such as analyticity or validity. For that purpose, Bolzano developed a new and ingenious substitutional method. I sketch this method in section 4. I conclude by pointing out some important aspects of Bolzano's historical impact." (pp. 219-220)

(2) I deal in more length with this question in Lapointe Qu'est-ce que l'analyse?, Paris, Vrin, 2008.

(3) Superficial knowledge of medieval semantics suffices to convince that similarities are not scarce but this, unfortunately, remains to be studied.

38. ———. 2010. "Bolzano a priori Knowledge, and the Classical Model of Science." Synthese no. 174:263-281

Abstract: "This paper is aimed at understanding one central aspect of Bolzano’s views on deductive knowledge: what it means for a proposition and for a term to be known a priori. I argue that, for Bolzano, a priori knowledge is knowledge by virtue of meaning and that Bolzano has substantial views about meaning and what it is to know the latter. In particular, Bolzano believes that meaning is determined by implicit definition, i.e. the fundamental propositions in a deductive system. I go into some detail in presenting and discussing Bolzano’s views on grounding, a priori knowledge and implicit definition. I explain why other aspects of Bolzano’s theory and, in particular, his peculiar understanding of analyticity and the related notion of Ableitbarkeit might, as it has invariably in the past, mislead one to believe that Bolzano lacks a significant account of a priori knowledge. Throughout the paper, I point out to the ways in which, in this respect, Bolzano’s antagonistic relationship to Kant directly shaped his own views."

39. ———. 2011. Bolzano's Theoretical Philosophy. An Introduction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan

Contents: Michael Beaney: Foreword VIII; Acknowledgements XI; Introduction 1; 1. Kant and German Philosophy 11; 2. Decomposition 18; 3. Meaning and Analysis 29; 4. A Substitutional Theory 43; 5. Analyticity 59; 6. Ableitbarkeit and Abfolge 72; 7. Justification and Proof 91; 8. A priori Knowledge 102; 9. Things, Collections and Numbers 116; 10. Frege, Meaning and Communication 128; 11. Husserl, Logical Psychologism and the Theory of Knowledge 139; Notes 158; Bibliography 170; Index 180-183.

"Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848) occupies a unique place in the history of modern philosophy. Born in the year in which Kant's Critique of Pure Reason was published and dying in the year in which Frege was born, his philosophy - like his life - can be seen as offering a bridge between Kant's seminal work and the birth of analytic philosophy. In Bolzano's writings, one finds many of the characteristic themes of analytic philosophy anticipated. Like Frege and Russell after him, Bolzano was dissatisfied with Kant's account of mathematics and realised that a better conception of logic was required to do justice to mathematics. Bolzano's conception of logic was not Frege's or Russell's, but he did criticise traditional subject-predicate analysis, suggested that there was a fundamental form underlying all types of proposition and was insistent on the need to keep psychology out of logic. Like Frege, Bolzano construed existential statements as being concerned with the non-emptiness of appropriate 'ideas' ('Vorstellungen an sich' in Bolzano's terms) or 'concepts' (Begrime' in Frege's terms), and his conception of 'propositions' (Satze an sich') is similar in many respects to Frege's conception of 'thoughts' ('Gedanken'). Like Frege, too, Bolzano emphasised that there is a class of entities, including both 'ideas'/'concepts' and 'propositions'/'thoughts', which are objective but not actual ('wirklich'), in the sense of not existing in the spatio-temporal realm.

Despite these similarities, however, Bolzano had no direct influence on any of the acknowledged founders of analytic philosophy. He had an influence on other German-speaking philosophers such as Franz Brentano, Benno Kerry, Edmund Husserl, Alwin Korselt and Kazimierz Twardowski, who themselves had an influence on the early analytic philosophers, both through correspondence and in their own publications (even if, often, mainly as a target of criticism). Through Twardowski, the founder of the Lvov-Warsaw school, he also had an influence on a whole generation of Polish logicians and philosophers, including Jan Lukasiewicz, Stanislaw Lesniewski and Alfred Tarski, who played an important role in the development of analytic philosophy. So a full account of the history of analytic philosophy must certainly pay attention to Bolzano's work. His significance, however, lies not just in these patterns of influence. The similarities and differences between his views and those of Frege, in particular, reveal much about the nature of analytic philosophy: the conceptions of analysis and logical form involved, for example, and key debates such as those about analyticity and other modal notions. These influences and connections are explored and elucidated by Sandra Lapointe in this book.

At the heart of Bolzano's logic - logic being understood in the traditional broad sense as including both methodology and theory of science (hence the title of Bolzano's major work, the Wissenschaftslehre) - lies his critique of Kant. As Lapointe explains in the first three chapters, Bolzano criticises Kant's theory of intuition and his decompositional conception of analysis. In doing so, Bolzano develops his own positive doctrines, concerning analyticity and logical consequence, in particular, based on a method of substitution, as Lapointe elaborates in Chapters 4-6. In the remaining chapters, further clarifying his semantic theory, she discusses his epistemological and ontological views and his connection with Frege and Husserl." (from the Foreword by Micharl Beaney).

40. ———. 2012. "Is Logic Formal? Bolzano, Kant and the Kantian Logicians." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 85:11-32

Abstract: "In the wake of Kant, logicians seemed to have adhered to the idea that what is distinctive of logic is its “formality”. In the paper, I discuss the distinction Kant draws between formality and generality of logic and argue that he ultimately con ates the two notions. I argue further that Kant's views on the formality of logic rest on a series of non trivial assumptions concerning the nature of cognition. I document the way in which these assumptions were received in his successors. In the second part of the paper I focus on Bolzano's criticism of the Kantian position and his redefinition of the notion of form. I argue that while what contemporary, post-Tarskian philosophers generally understand as the formality of logic ought to be traced back to Bolzano there are also important differences between the two positions."

41. ———. 2012. "Bolzano and Kant: Introduction." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 85:1-10.

42. ———. 2014. "Bolzano, Quine and Logical Truth." In A Companion to W.V.O. Quine, edited by Harman, Gilbert and Lepore, Ernie, 296-312. Malden: Wiley Blackwell

"In this paper, I compare Quine's discussion of logical truth to Bolzano's theory of "logical analyticity". It is by now a received view that Bolzano largely anticipated Quine's views on logical truth, a conclusion Quine himself was retroactively prompted to draw:

"[M]y much cited definition of logical truth was meant only as an improved exposition of a long-current idea. So I was not taken aback at Bar-Hillel's finding the idea in Bolzano [...]" (Quine 1960, 65; see also 1966b, 110)."

According to the standard interpretation, the similarity between Bolzano and Quine comes from the fact that they are both "demarcating logic [...] with the help of a set of logical particles which are held constant, while the other non-logical expressions are freely substituted for each other".(3) This interpretation assumes that Bolzano and Quine share at least some substantial views about what makes a term a "logical" term. I think that this interpretation is largely mistaken. My paper has four parts. In the first part, I give some background to Bolzano's theory, focusing on his views on syntax and form. In the second part, I show why it is mistaken to assume that Bolzano and Quine mean the same when they speak of logical concepts/words. In the third part of the paper I discuss Bolzano's views on logical truth and sentences that can be turned into logical truth by putting synonyms for synonyms. I conclude by asking whether Bolzano's position allows him to fulfil the epistemic requirement (and answer, with a twist, in the affirmative)." (p.297).

(3) “Comments on Quine” (Føllesdal 1980, p. 29, my emphasis).

References

Føllesdal, Dagfinn (1980). Comments on Quine. In S. Kanger and S. Öhman (eds.). Philosophy and Grammar (29–35). Dordrecht: Reidel.

Quine, W.v.O. (1960). Word and Object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Quine, W.v.O. (1966b). Carnap and Logical Truth. In The Ways of Paradox (107–132). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

43. ———. 2014. "Bolzano and the Analytical Tradition." Philosophy Compass no. 9:96-111

Abstract: "In the course of the last few decades, Bolzano has emerged as an important player in accounts of the history of philosophy. This should be no surprise. Few authors stand at a more central junction in the development of modern thought. Bolzano's contributions to logic and the theory of knowledge alone straddle three of the most important philosophical traditions of the 19th and 20th centuries: the Kantian school, the early phenomenological movement and what has come to be known as analytical philosophy. This paper identifies three Bolzanian theoretical innovations that warrant his inclusion in the analytical tradition: the commitment to ‘logical realism’, the adoption of a substitutional procedure for the purpose of defining logical properties and a new theory of a priori cognition that presents itself as an alternative to Kant's. All three innovations concur to deliver what counts as the most important development of logic and its philosophy between Aristotle and Frege. In the final part of the paper, I defend Bolzano against a common objection and explain that these theoretical innovations are also supported by views on syntax, which though marginal are both workable and philosophically interesting."

44. ———. 2014. "Bolzano’s Logical Realism." In The Metaphysics of Logic, edited by Rush, Penelope, 189-208. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

"Bolzano’s Theory of Science (1837) presents the first explicit and methodical espousal of internal logical realism. It also contains a formidable number of theoretical innovations. They include (i) the first account of the distinction between “sense” (Sinn, Bedeutung) and “reference” (or “objectuality”: Gegenständlichkeit), (ii) definitions of analyticity and consequence, i.e. “deducibility” (Ableitbarkeit) based on a new substitutional procedure that anticipates Quine’s and Tarski’s, respectively, and (iii) an account of mathematical knowledge that excludes, contra Kant, recourse to extraconceptual inferential steps and that is rooted in one of the earliest systematic reflections on the nature of deductive knowledge. (i)–(iii) all assume the existence of mind - and language-independent entities Bolzano calls “propositions and ideas in themselves” (Sätze an sich). Take (i) for instance. Appeal to propositions in themselves in this context serves Bolzano’s antipsychologism in logic: according to Bolzano, the sense (Sinn) of a sentence – the proposition it expresses – is to be distinguished from the mental act in which it is grasped. Just like what is the case in Frege, a sentence has the semantic properties it has (e.g. truth) on Bolzano’s account derivatively, by virtue of its relation to mind-independent entities: the primary bearers of semantic properties are the propositions that constitute their Sinne." (p. 195)

45. ———. 2017. "Bernard Bolzano." In Sourcebook in the History of Philosophy of Language: Primary source texts from the Pre-Socratics to Mill, edited by Cameron, Margare, Hill, Benjamin and Stainton, Robert J., 1029-1032. Dordrecht: Springer

"The views on language of Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848) overlap with two traditions. On the one hand, Bolzano tries to make sense of the idea that the signs we use designate ideas. On the other hand, Bolzano’s theory is underpinned by a series of semantic and epistemological analyses that yield the first philosophical treatment of linguistic signs as endowed with both meaning and reference, understood in the contemporary sense. The resulting theory is an interesting combination of elements of post-Lockean epistemologies with a clear anticipation of post-Fregean semantics." (p. 1029)

46. ———. 2018. "Bolzano's Philosophy of Mind and Action." In Philosophy of Mind in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Lapointe, Sandra, 42-59. New York: Routledge

"In spite of the overwhelmingly sympathetic consensus on the significance of Bolzano’s contribution to theoretical philosophy, little attention has to this date been paid to his views on mind."

(...)

"The present chapter is an attempt to go some way toward such an understanding.

The first part of the chapter offers a brief comparison of Bolzanian and Brentanian views on representation and judgement. A brief survey of Brentano’s main positions is informative as a theoretical point of comparison for Bolzano’s own views. At the very least, it is helpful to have the Brentanian theory in mind when gauging the impact - however humble - Bolzano effectively had on the theories of mind of some of Brentano’s students.(4) The comparison however does not fully do justice to Bolzano’s views. This is mainly because Bolzano’s approach to the philosophy of mind and action has more to share with contemporary theorists than with any of his predecessors or successors in the 19th century. This claim is likely to arouse perplexity. Bolzano puts forward his views on mind in Athanasia (1827), a treatise in which a hefty metaphysics of substance is put to work for the purpose of proving the immortality of the soul, a context which prima facie is unlikely to afford much relevance. Those who have discussed Bolzano’s views on mind, with few exceptions, have however consistently missed what is most remarkably interesting about them. First, the framework within which Bolzano develops his metaphysics of mind and agency is not dualistic and presents some anticipation of what will later be known as “neutral monism”.(5) Second, the conceptual resources that are deployed to make sense of the way in which “body” and “soul” interact in living beings presuppose an understanding of organisms that goes against - or far beyond - much of what Bolzano’s contemporaries and successors in the the 19th century wrote on the topic, especially the Idealists. More importantly, Bolzano puts forward an account of rational agency based on a theory of mind that anticipates crucial aspects of contemporary discussions on the role of intentions as “reasons” or “causes” for action. In the second and more substantive part of the paper, I focus on Bolzano’s views on the ontology of mind and rational agency." (pp. 42-43)

(4) For a more detailed presentation of Brentano's views on mind, see Rollinger infra; see also Kriegel (forthcoming). [2017]

(5) For a discussion of Mach's view on neutral monism, for instance, see Banks, infra.

References

Erik C. Banks, Ernst Mach' Contributions to the Philosophy of Mind, same volume, pp. 77-95.

Robin D. Rollinger, Brentano's Early Philosophy of Mind, same volume, pp. 168-185.

Uriah Kriegel, "Brentano Concept of Mind" in Innovations in the History of Analytical Philosophy, Sandra Lapointe and Chris Pincock (eds.), Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

47. ———. 2019. "Bolzano on Logic in Mathematics and Beyond." In Logic from Kant to Russell: Laying the Foundations for Analytic Philosophy, edited by Lapointe, Sandra, 101-122. New York: Routledge

"According to standard narratives, the origins of formal logic as we know it are to be found within the push toward logicism, axiomatisation and the foundations of set theory for which Frege’s foundational project in mathematics often serves as muster. Frege, however, was by no means the first logician of the 19th century to seek to provide a new logical foundation to mathematical knowledge. At least one other author was driven by concerns, insights, ambitions and philosophical acumen that were as remarkable as Frege’s. This author’s efforts too resulted in a fullscale logical system whose conceptual resources, while they do not have the elegance and simplicity of Frege’s “concept-script”, are nonetheless as rich as those of first-order predicate calculus and powerful enough to generate Russell’s paradox.(2) This author is Bernard Bolzano." (p. 101)

(2) Cf. Simons (1997) and Lapointe (2011, Chapter 3).

References

Lapointe, Sandra (2011) Bolzano’s Theoretical Philosophy, Houndmills, Palgrave.

Simons, Peter (1997) “Bolzano on Collections,” Grazer Philosophische Studien 53, 87–108.

48. ———. 2022. "Bolzano’s Theory of Satz an sich." In The Routledge Handbook of Propositions, edited by Tillman, Chris and Murray, Adam Russell. New York: Routledge

49. Lapointe, Sandra, and Armstrong, Chloe. 2014. "Bolzano, Kant, and Leibniz." In New Anti-Kant, edited by Lapointe, Sandra and Tolley, Clinton, 272-290. London: Palgrave Macmillan

"Both historically and philosophically Bolzano’s contribution to philosophy is to be understood within the context of the reception of Kant’s critical philosophy, or so we will argue. This claim is also likely to be controversial. Bolzano’s contribution to philosophy, and in particular his contribution to the epistemology of logic and mathematics, is more often than not positioned in stark opposition to Kant’s, in the intellectual lineage of Leibniz. What we are proposing is deliberately meant to upset this picture. Bolzano’s relationship to critical philosophy is far more complex than what is generally assumed. For one thing, Bolzano’s relationship to Kantian philosophy is not exhausted by his relationship to Kant. Bolzano paid close attention to the logical theories of those who followed in Kant’s stride, the “new logicians” (Bolzano’s term), and he discussed their views in at least as much depth as he did Kant’s. What’s more, Bolzano sought to determine what is distinctive of the “new logic” and thus offered a philosophical reflexion that is still, even today, enlightening when it comes to understanding this aspect of the reception of Kant’s first Critique." (pp. 273-274)

(...)

"Of course, there are connections between Bolzano and Leibniz. But Bolzano discusses Leibniz’s work in fact comparatively rarely. We find over the some 2400 pages of the Theory of Science (1837) a mere 30 references to Leibniz, mostly to the Nouveaux essais (1704) – compare this with the some 150 references to Kant, and some 200 to Kiesewetter.[*] It is not only that the number of references is small, but also that many references are in footnotes, even in the sections entirely devoted to discussion of the views of other philosophers." (p. 275)

[*] Kiesewetter, Johann Gottfired Karl Christian. (1806). Grundriss einer allgemeinen Logik nach Kantischen Grundsätzen. Berlin: Lagarde.

50. Lapointe, Sandra, and Tolley, Clinton, eds. 2014. New Anti-Kant. London: Palgrave Macmillan

Contents: Michael Beaney: Series Editor's Foreword VI; Acknowledgements IX; Notes on Contributors X; PART I: 1. Sandra Lapointe and Clinton Tolley: Introduction 3; 2. Translators' Note 15; 3. František Přihonský: New Anti-Kant, or examination of the Critique of Pure Reason According to the Concepts Laid Down in Bolzano’s Theory of Science (translated by Sandra Lapointe and Clinton Tolley) 18;

PART II: 4. Clinton Tolley: Bolzano and Kant on Space and Outer Intuition 157; 5. Nicholas F. Stang: Kant, Bolzano, and the Formality of Logic 192; 6. Timothy Rosenkoetter: Kant, Bolzano, and Moore on the Value of Good Willing 235; 7. Sandra Lapointe and Chloe Armstrong: Bolzano, Kant and Leibniz 272; Index 291-295.

"A unique philosophical dialogue

The present volume contains an altogether remarkable document in the history of nineteenth-century philosophy: a critical commentary on he most influential systematic work (the Critique of Pure Reason) of one major philosopher (Kant), written from the point of view of another major systematic philosopher (Bolzano), just decades after the former's publication. Bolzano, at the height of his powers, and with his mature philosophical views having fully taken shape with the publication of his Theory of Science (1837), undertakes the project of engaging, key point by key point, with Kant's masterwork. In collaboration with Bolzano, Frantisek Prihonsky (who would ultimately publish the final record of this work in 1850, shortly after Bolzano's death) both compiles a comprehensive and thorough summary of the main definitions, theses, and arguments in Kant's book, and then proceeds to bring to light the most important unclarities, confusions, and fallacies that he finds each step along the way. The result, New Anti-Kant, is not only an extremely useful and even-handed overview of the entire first Critique itself - including parts often neglected by even Kant's most sympathetic readers - but also a catalogue of philosophically insightful and textually well-grounded challenges to signature Kantian doctrines. This work helps us to see anew the overarching contours of Kant’s philosophy, and brings a fresh focus onto deep points of tension within Kant's system - all the while serving to introduce us, through instructive contrast, to the powerful alternative perspective that Bolzano develops in his own systematic philosophy." (pp. 3-4).

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on Bernard Bolzano's Contributions to Logic and Ontology. Fourth Part: M - R

Studies on Bolzano's Logic and Ontology

1. Malink, Marko. 2022. "Aristotle and Bolzano on Grounding." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 221-243. New York: Oxford University Press

"Marko Malink examines Aristotle's conception of scientific proofs as the historical roots of Bolzano's conception of grounding and compares the two philosophers' views on infinite grounding chains, on the role that generality plays in ground-revealing proofs, and on scientific knowledge." (p. 37)

2. Mancosu, Paolo. 1999. "Bolzano and Cournot on Mathematical Explanation." Revue d'histoire des sciences no. 52:429-456

Abstract: "Recent discussions on the topic of « mathematical explanation » have focused on the distinction between explanatory and non-explanatory proofs. The former proofs are supposed to differ from the latter in that they not only establish that a result is true but also show why it is true. This opposition is at the core of the philosophies of mathematics of Bolzano and Cournot. The paper analyzes Bolzano's theory of Grund and Folge, and Cournot' s opposition between the logical and the rational order, emphasizing their relevance to the issue of mathematical explanation. The final part of the paper investigates the shortcomings of Bolzano's and Coumot's theories as explications of mathematical explanation."

3. Mates, Benson. 1992. "Bolzano and Ancient Pyrrhonism." In Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre 1837-1987. International Workshop, 121-139. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki

"Bolzano's attempt to refute so-called "radical" or "complete" skepticism is carefully described in Professor Berg's introduction to his edition of the Wissenschaftslehre (WL). Two forms of such skepticism are there distinguished. The thesis of the ontological form is

(1) No propositions (Sätz an sich) is true and that of the epistemological form is

(2) No judgment (Urteil) is true.

Bolzano's principle arguments against these are roughly as follows. Against (1) he argues that, for any proposition S, either S is true or the proposition that S is false is true. Therefore, at least one proposition is true. The argument against (2) is less clear. Bolzano (WL 40) takes the problem to be that of convincing a radical skeptic that, after all, he must recognize the truth of at least one proposition. After considering various possibilities, he concludes that the skeptic will have to accept as true at least the proposition that he has ideas (Vorstellungen), for obviously he confirms this proposition the moment he doubts or denies it. The point, I suppose, is that, just as one cannot doubt that there are men on the moon if one has no idea of what it is to be a man or to be on the moon, so the skeptic, if he has no ideas, is in no position to doubt anything, not even that he has ideas. Bolzano thinks that while the skeptic might refuse publicly to admit the proposition in question, "nevertheless he will surely feel in his innards that it is true... and if he feels this, we have won".

Whatever one may think of these arguments, in this paper I am not concerned to evaluate them but only to consider whether they refute Pyrrhonism, as Bolzano seems to suppose." (pp. 121-122)

(...)

The root of Bolzano's failure to appreciate the force of Pyrrhonism is, in my opinion, that he does not realize that its self-referential aspect is essential. This aspect is not something that Sextus is reluctant to admit but is rather a feature that he emphasizes over and over again and that he obviously regards as crucial to the consistency of the skeptic's position. Bolzano's failure to understand this is especially evident at WL 40, where he quotes and discusses one of the many passages in which Sextus points out the self-reference of the skeptic's slogans (phonai), i.e., pronouncements like "contrary claims are equal", "no more this than that", "I decide nothing", etc. Bolzano says:

In setting forth the various formulae with which the skeptic is accustomed to express his state of doubt, Sextus Empiricus tries to employ maximal caution so as to protect it from the charge of self-contradiction, but nevertheless he finds himself compelled at the end to admit

"As concerns all the skeptic slogans the following must be understood in advance, namely that we do not maintain their truth in any absolute way, since we say that they themselves are included among the things to which they apply -- just as cathartic drugs do not merely eliminate humor from the body but also expel themselves along with the humors" (Outlines of Pyrrhonism I 206).

"This amounts to the reluctant admission", says Bolzano, that the skeptic ceases to be a skeptic as soon as he declares himself to be a skeptic. Only if he keeps silent and makes no judgment, not only in words but also internally, is he a complete doubter; and as long as this condition exists we others can say of him truly that he doesn't know a single truth. But as soon as he himself says it, the condition ceases and his judgment is therefore false.

But there is no "reluctant admission" here, and the Pyrrhonist doesn't have to be silent if he is to remain a Pyrrhonist. He will say "It seems to me now that contrary claims are equal" and "It seems to me now that there is no more reason for this than that", and so on. What he refrains from are flat out categorical statements, whether concerning his own skepticism or anything else.

It will be evident that this form of skepticism is not easily refuted. Since the Pyrrhonist agrees only to propositions expressing what seems to him at the moment to be the case, it is even unclear what a refutation would be like. But that is a topic for another day". (pp. 138-139).

4. Morscher, Edgar. 1986. "Was Existence Ever a Predicate?" Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:269-284

Abstract: "The question "Was 'existence' ever a predicate?" in a way already suggests its own answer, that this is really the wrong question to ask, because 'existence' has always been a predicate. Even those, such as Kant, who supposedly opposed this view, in fact held it. They merely denied that 'existence' is a "normal" first-order predicate. Not only Kant, but also Bolzano, Frege and Russell claimed that it is a second-order predicate. There is substantive disagreement between Kant and Bolzano on the one hand and Frege and Russell on the other over two issues: the former claim that this second-order predicate applies to no concept analytically and that it can be properly ascribed to a singular concept, whereas the latter deny both of these claims."

5. ———. 1986. "Propositions and States of Affairs in Austrian Philosophy before Wittgenstein." In From Bolzano to Wittgenstein. The Tradition of Austrian Philosophy, edited by Nyiri, Janoc Cristof, 75-85. Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.

6. ———. 1987. "Propositions and All That: Ontological and Epistemological Reflections." In Logos and Pragma. Essays on the Philosophy of Language in Honour of Professor Gabriël Nuchelmans, edited by Rijk, Lambertus Marie de and Braakhuis, Henk A.G., 241-257. Nijmegen: Ingenium Publishers

"Bernard Bolzano was one of the first philosophers in modern times to develop explicitly a complete theory for entities like propositions, statements and states of affairs. I will first describe and clarify the main features of his theory, and then sketch the subsequent development to our day." (p. 243)

(...)

"Let me now complete my historical sketch. Up to now I have only discussed Bolzano's doctrine of propositions. I concentrated on Bolzano's doctrine because I think that he gave the clearest account, the clearest description of propositions available in his time, and that none of the philosophers who followed, including Frege, has made an essential improvement in this respect. Although Bolzano's doctrine, his description of the propositions and the ontological status he ascribes to them, is far from being satisfactory, because it is insufficiently clear, no other philosopher up to our time has done any better. I have therefore explained Bolzano's doctrine in more detail in order to have one representative traditional doctrine to which I can refer in what follows.

What seems very interesting to me and what I have always been very impressed by is the fact that philosophers with completely different backgrounds and from different schools developed, at the same time as Bolzano and afterwards, quite similar views, sometimes using almost the same words as Bolzano, without being familiar with his work. Although this is far from being a proof for the truth of his doctrine, it is nevertheless a fact a philosopher cannot pass by because it indicates that this is not the doctrine of an eccentric outsider. On the contrary, it has attracted many philosophers, including such prominent ones as Frege, Wittgenstein and Russell, Husser! and Meinong, Windelband and Rickert. (I have described the views of some of these philosophers and compared them in another paper: Morscher (1972 [Von Balzano zu Meinong: zur Geschichte des logischen realismus])." (p. 248)

7. ———. 1997. "Bolzano’s Method of Variation: Three Puzzles." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 53:139-165

Abstract: "Bernard Bolzano's most fruitful invention was his method of variation. He used it in defining such fundamental logical concepts as logical consequence, analyticity and probability. The following three puzzles concerning this method of variation seem particularly worth considering. (i) How can we define the range of variation of an idea or the categorial conformity of two ideas without already using the concept of variation? This question was raised by Mark Siebel in his M.A. thesis. (ii) Why must we define analyticity by means of (simultaneous or successive) variation of several ideas rather than by means of replacing a single idea? This problem is suggested by an example due to W.V.O. Quine, John R. MyhiII and Benson Mates. (iii) Must every 'there is ...' sentence be synthetic for Bolzano, as his pupil Franz Prihonsky claims in his booklet Neuer Anti-Kant, or can a `there is...' sentence be logically analytic?"

8. ———. 2006. "The Great Divide within Austrian Philosophy. The Synthetic a Priori." In The Austrian Contribution to Analytic Philosophy, edited by Textor, Mark, 250-263. New York: Routledge

"In this chapter I will try to show that the divergent Austrian ways of being anti-Kantian do not vanish even when we focus on this single topic. To illustrate this view, I will take as my examples Bernard Bolzano and Rudolf Carnap, who both belong – for different reasons – to the so-called Austrian tradition in philosophy.

Both are fully conversant with Kant’s work, and both have a critical attitude toward it and are in this sense anti-Kantian. This is also true when it comes to the question of the synthetic a priori: both refute strongly Kant’s treatment of the synthetic a priori. However, whereas Carnap denies synthetic sentences a priori altogether, Bolzano does not deny their existence but only the way in which Kant justifies their truth.

What is even more important is that Bolzano not only – contrary to Carnap – accepts Kant’s synthetic a priori, but even extends it to the realm of logic. In clear opposition to Kant and Carnap, who take all logical truths to be analytic, there are synthetic truths for Bolzano even in the area of logic. I will try to argue for this claim in the following sections." (p. 250)

9. ———. 2008. Bernard Bolzano's Life and Work. Sank Augustin: Academia Verlag

Table of Contents: Preface 9; Introduction 13; 1. Bolzano’s Life and Scientific Career 17; 2. Bolzano’s Removal from Office and the “Bolzano Trial” 23; 3. A Short Survey of Bolzano’s Work 29; 4. Logic 33; 5. Epistemology and Philosophy of Science 75; 6. Ethics 89; 7. Aesthetics 107; 8. Political and Social Philosophy 113; 9. Philosophy of Religion and Theology 125; 10. Metaphysics 135; 11. Philosophy of Nature and of Physics 139; 12. Philosophy of Mathematics 141; 13. Metaphilosophy and History of Philosophy 149; 14. The So-called Bolzano Circle and Bolzano’s Influence on the Development of the Sciences and on Intellectual History 151; Appendix: A Formal Reconstruction of Bolzano’s Method of Idea-Variation and of his Definitions of Logical Truth and of Logical Consequence 159; Bibliography 169; Index of Names 207-211.

"Despite the enormous increase of interest in Bolzano’s philosophy during the last decades, an up-to-date monograph on Bolzano’s philosophy is still a desideratum. The last book that might be called a monograph on Bolzano’s philosophy dates from almost 100 years ago; it is Shmuel Hugo Bergmann’s Das philosophische Werk Bernard Bolzanos (Halle/S. 1909), written in the spirit of the Brentano school, in particular of Bergmann’s teacher Anton Marty.

When I was invited by the Editors of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to contribute the entry on Bernard Bolzano, I took it as a challenge for starting my long-standing plan to write a monograph on Bolzano’s philosophy. The present book is, to be clear, merely the first step toward this end." (from the Preface)

(...)

"Bolzano’s uncommonly versatile work culminated in three extensive main writings in three different areas of knowledge: 1) in theology his four volume Textbook of the Science of Religion (Bolzano 1834b), 2) in philosophy the four volume Theory of Science (Bolzano 1837a), which provides a new foundation for logic and is at the same time an extensive manual of logic, and 3) in mathematics the Theory of Quantities, conceived of as a monumental work, but not completed.

Bolzano’s teaching was concerned exclusively with fundamental topics of theology, in addition he worked mainly in logic. Nevertheless, his scientific development began in mathematics. It was mathematics that was the starting point for his scientific work and to which he ultimately returned in order to create a new foundation on which mathematics as a whole could be built; he succeeded in doing this, however, only in bits and pieces." (p. 29)

10. ———. 2022. "The Grounds of Moral 'Truths'." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 343-363. New York: Oxford University Press

"Central to Bolzano's ethics is his Supreme Moral Law, i.e. an ethical truth that grounds all other ethical truths. While Bolzano considers this law to be fundamental in the realm of ethics, he also claims that it is not

an ungrounded, basic truth. Edgaqr Morscher discusses this view in the context of a succinct reconstruction of Bolzano's views on grounding, his ethics, and his deontic logic." (p. 38)

11. Morscher, Edgar, and Simons, Peter. 2014. "From Bolzano via Quine to Fine." In Joint Ventures in Philosophy, edited by Morscher, Edgar and Simons, Peter, 137-156. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

12. Mugnai, Massimo. 1992. "Leibniz and Bolzano on the "Realm of Truths"." In Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre 1837-1987. International Workshop, 207-220. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki

"In his article Propositions and Sentences (1956) Alonzo Church pointed out -- on the basis of a suggestion made by Joseph Maria Bochenski -- that strong analogies exist between Bolzano's theory of Satz an sich and Gregory of Rimini's doctrine of complexe significabile.' In the same essay, Church also pointed out that Bolzano appealed to Leibniz as to a logician who plainly recognized propositions in the abstract sense. After Church's essay, it became very usual to mention Gregory of Rimini in reference to Bolzano's ontological conceptions. Nevertheless, we do not have any evidence of a direct influence of Gregory of Rimini's ideas on Bolzano's philosophy of logic. Bolzano seems to have only a limited acquaintance with the logic of the late medieval period: the credit accorded to Savonarola's Compendium logicae - a standard work which is absolutely lacking in originality - corroborates, I think, this view.2 Yet Bolzano may have benefited by late scholastic inheritance through the intermediation of later works, like those of Campanella, Clauberg, Fonseca, Keckermann, Leibniz and Wolf.' In fact, as already mentioned, Leibniz is the first author whom Bolzano explicitly refers to, in paragraph 21 of the Wissenschaftslehre, as a forerunner of the Satz an sich theory:

"Thus Leibniz uses as equivalent the expressions proposition and cogitatio possibilis (Dial. de Connexion inter Verba a Res [C. I. Gerhardt, ed. Philos. Schriften, vol. VII, p. 190]. This obviously presupposes that by propositions he meant propositions in themselves." (*)

The Leibniz's work on which Bolzano explicitly bases this conviction is the Dialogus de connexione inter res et verba, first published by Raspe in 1765 -- a work whose content paradoxically seems to partly disprove Bolzano's interpretation.' Thus Church considers it «

"an exaggeration or a misunderstanding" on Bolzano's part to have attributed to Leibniz's Dialogus "the use of the word propositio for proposition in the abstract sense" or Satz an sich.(6) The same remarks are repeated by Prof. Berg in his monograph on Bolzano's logic: after having identified Bolzano's Satz an sich with Frege's Gedanke, Prof. Berg writes:

According to Leibniz a proposition (propositio) is a possible thought (cogitatio possibilis), which is capable of being true or false... But no thought or reasoning is possible without words or some other kind of signs. And under transformation of a proposition into a different language a certain relationship (proportio) among the signs and between the signs and the objective reality is transformed into a similar relationship. The last two conditions fit Aristotle's and Peter of Spain's but not Frege's notion of proposition. Therefore... it must have been a misunderstanding on Bolzano's part to have attributed to Leibniz the use of the world "propositio" for Satz an sich.(7)

In what follows, I intend to take up the problem of the correcteness of the interpretation given by Bolzano and then to develop a comparison between the positions of Leibniz and those of Bolzano relative to the notions of idea, proposition and truth.

In the notes I have employed the following abbreviations: WL = B. Bolzano, Wissenschaftslehre, in B. Bolzano, Gesamtausgabe, Reihe I, Schriften, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Friedrich Frommann Verlag 1985 ff; GP = G. W Leibniz, Die philosophische Schriften, Hrsg. von C. I. Gerhardt, Berlin, Akademie, 1857-90, vol. I-VII; VE = G. W. Leibniz, Vorausedition zur Reihe VI - Philosophische Schriften - Munster, Akademie, 1982 ff.

(1) A. Church, Propositions and Sentences, in I. M. Bochenski, A. Church, N. Goodman, The Problem of the Universals, Notre Dame, Notre Dame Press, 1956, p. 3.

(2) WL 1, 11/1, pp. 105 ff.

(3) WL 1, 11/1, pp. 234 ff.

(4) WL 1, 11/1, p. 111.

(5) Cfr. Oeuvres philosophiques latines et francoises de feu Mr. de Leibnitz ... publiees par Mr. Rud. Eric Raspe, Leipzig, 1765, pp. 505-512.

(6) A. Church, op. cit., p. 10.

(7) J. Berg, Bolzano's Logic, Stockholm, Almquist and Wiksell, 1962, pp. 51-52.

(*) [cited in German in the original; I cite from the translation of Wissenschaftslehre by Rolf George, p. 24]

13. Mulligan, Kevin. 2022. "Logic, Logical Norms, and (Normative) Grounding." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 244-275. New York: Oxford University Press

"While Bolzano's writings were largely ignored by the philosophical community of his time, they later aroused the attention of Franz Brentano and his students, in particular that of Edmund Husserl. Kevin Mulligan examines a range of Husserl's views on grounding and their relation to Bolzano's views. A particular emphasis is laid on Husserl's conception of logic: is logic a normative or a theoretical discipline? Relatedly:

what is the connection between logical norms and logical truths? Husserl argues that logic is a theoretical discipline and that logical truths ground logical norms. In order to understand and evaluate this view, it is compared with Bolzano's account of the grounds of moral truths." (p. 37)

14. Neeman, Ursula. 1970. "Analytic and Synthetic Propositions in Kant and Bolzano." Ratio no. 12:1-25

"Whereas Kant regards the structure of being and knowing as identical, Bolzano interprets the Kantian true synthetic propositions as true propositions, in which the predicate is a characteristic of the subject and not a component of the notion of the subject (characteristic =df. a property of the object, which falls under the concept; component =df. ingredient of the concept). These propositions are analytic in a wider sense, because they render possible an analysis of an object, whereas the logico-analytic propositions render possible only an analysis of their concept. Therefore Bolzano also distinguishes between deductibility (ordo cognoscendi) and ground-consequence relation (ordo essendi) and grounds the latter on the principle of simplicity. A discovery of an objective connection in mathematics is only possible by a strict determination of the basic concepts and by axiomatization, because in opposition to Kant, Bolzano thinks mathematical laws to be discoveries and not creations of the human mind."

15. Otte, Michael. 2008. "Proof and Explanation from a Semiotical Point of View." Relime:23-43

Abstract: "A distinction between proofs that prove and proofs that explain has over and again played an important role within recent discussions in epistemology and mathematics education.

The distinction goes back to scholars who, like Bolzano or Dedekind, have tried to reestablish pure mathematics as a purely conceptual and analytical science. These endeavors did in particular argue in favor of a complete elimination of intuitive or perceptual aspects from mathematical activity, arguing that one has to rigorously distinguish between a concept and its representations. Using a semiotical approach which negates such a separation between idea and symbol, we shall argue that mathematics has no explanations in a foundational sense. To explain amounts to exhibiting the meaning of something.

Mathematics has, however, as we shall try to show, no definite meanings, neither in the structural intra-theoretical sense nor with respect to intuitive objectivity. Signs and meanings are processes, as we shall argue along with Peirce."

"Before we can address the issue of proof and explanation we have to get rid of traditional Bewusstseinsphilosophie (philosophy of consciousness), that is, popularly speaking, the belief that “meanings are in the head” and knowledge is some sort of mental experience. After Kant epistemology began to ramify and various new philosophies of mathematicsarose in which meaning, rather than mind played the central role. But the view that there exists an epistemologically autarkic or self-sufficient epistemic subject, which serves itself from external sensations and internal experiences or representations (Vorstellungen) to thereby constitute true knowledge, is a myth and should also be abandoned.

In Part I of this paper we try to provide some pertinent arguments to this end, based on Peirce’s semiotics.

“Consciousness is used to denote the I think, the unity of thought; but the unity of thought is nothing but the unity of symbolization” (Peirce CP 7.585). Part II treats the questions of proof and explanation with respect to the ideas of Bolzano on the one hand and Peirce on the other. Part III presents some examples and tries to make a connection with current debates about the issue in mathematical education and cognitive psychology." (p. 25)

16. ———. 2009. "The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction in Kant and Bolzano." In Relatively and Philosophically Earnest. Festschrift in Honor of Paul Ernest's 65 Birthday, edited by Sriraman, Bharath and Goodchild, Simon, 39-56. Missoula: Information Age Publishing.

17. Parsons, Charles. 2012. "Two Studies in the Reception of Kant's Philosophy of Arithmetic." In From Kant to Husserl: Selected Essays, 80-99. Harvard: Harvard University Press

"The present essay takes its point of departure from a thought I have had at various times in thinking about interpretations of Kant’s philosophy of mathematics in the literature, in particular that offered by Jaakko Hintikka. That was that if the interpretation is correct, shouldn’t one expect that to show in the way that Kant’s views were understood by others in the early period after the publication of the first Critique? That reflection suggests a research program that might be of some interest, to investigate how Kant’s philosophy of mathematics was read in, say, the first generation from 1781. I have not undertaken such a project. However, I will make some comments about two examples of this kind. In doing so I haven’t always kept my eye 0n Kant, because the figures involved are of interest in their own right. The first is Johann Schultz (1739-1805), the disciple of Kant who was professor of mathematics in Köinigsberg.Thc second is Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848), who in an early essay of 1810 (*)

offered a highly critical discussion of Kant’s theory of construction of concepts in intuition. In one way, I think the result of this little experiment is negative, in that it does little toward settling disputed questions about the interpretation of Kant. On the other hand, I think it brings out some problems of Kant's views that could be seen either at the time he wrote or not long after." (p. 80)

(*) [Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik = Contributions to a Better Grounded Presentation of Mathematics]

18. Poggiolesi, Francesca. 2022. "Bolzano, (the Appropriate) Relevant Logic, and Grounding Rules for Implication." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 319-342. New York: Oxford University Press

"While Bolzano sharply distinguishes grounding from logical deducibility {in modern terminology: entailment), he also regards the two notions as importantly connected. He sees a particularly close connection

between grounding and exact deducibility (a special case of deducibility). Francesca Poggiolesi examines this latter notion and compares it to notions of relevant entailment. She argues that Neil Tennant's system CR is the best model for Bolzano's ideas, and can in turn also serve as a framework for developing grounding rules for conditionals." (p. 37)

19. Proust, Joëlle. 1981. "Bolzano's Analytic Revisited." The Monist. An International Quarterly Journal of General Philosophical Inquiry:214-230

"What I propose is to reconsider the interpretation of Bolzano's concept of analytic propositions which was offered thirty years ago by Bar-Hillel.(1) The claim of Bar-Hillel was that, in a late addition to his book, The Theory of Science,(2) Bolzano actually had been radically improving his concept of analyticity, thus creating some inconsistencies with the previous, uncorrected version. This allows us to equate the new Bolzanian definition of analytic with what was to be defined, a century later, as logical truth by W. V. Quine. Bar Hillel's interpretation has been uncritically accepted by commentators, although the historical issue has been rightly challenged by J. Berg. What I want to show is that, in spite of a surface analogy between Bolzano's phrasing of the definition of 'logical analytic' and Quine's definition, certain considerations should lead us to call that parallel into question. Attractive as it may be for a Quinian, such a view of Bolzano's analytic can be shown as incompatible with the leading ideas of his philosophy of logic. Furthermore, there is enough evidence in other sections of the Theory of Science to show that Bolzano's criterion of analyticity is grounded on purely semantical properties and is part of a general account of logical properties in terms of the mapping of propositions to corresponding models." (p. 214)

(1) "Bolzano's Definition of Analytic Propositions," Theoria 16 (1950): 91-117 and Methodos 2, (1950): 32-55; reprinted in Aspects of Language Magnes Press 1970, pp. 3-32.

(2) Bernard Bolzano, Wissenschaftslehre (Sulzbach 1837, Leipzig 1914); partly translated by Rolf George: Theory of Science, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972). We shall quote this translation whenever available.

20. ———. 1989. Questions of Form: Logic and the Analytic Proposition from Kant to Carnap. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

Translated by Anastasios Albert Brenner from the original French: Questions de forme. Logique et proposition analytique de Kant à Carnap - Paris, Fayard, 1986.

Section Two: Bolzano's Renovation of Analiticity, pp. 49-108.

"The specifically Bolzanian concept of analyticity is brought in at an advanced life, as the maturely formulated answer to a problem that never ceased to appear under different aspects. Only in the Wissenschaftslehre of 1837 does what we might call a “revolution” in analyticity occur. Earlier texts strive to adapt the Kantian definition so that it satisfies the new requirements of the anticritical mathematicians. But this definition, often revised, gives rise to growing difficulties. There were so many reasons for abandoning it, but also so many constraints working to shape the new definition. “Revolution,” we said; but until the Wissenschaftslehre, analyticity was a marginal theme. Its main function was, as in Kant, to reveal the problematic existence of the synthetic a priori. From a theme of preliminary exposition, analyticity becomes in the work of 1837 an “integrated” concept: henceforth it is part of a philosophy and becomes inseparable from a method of identifying logical objects, variation. But this was a “Ptolemaic,” not a “Copernican,” revolution: instead of statically emphasizing the synthetic a priori, it becomes a notable property of certain propositions whose definition now requires a preliminary examination of other properties such as truth and validity. This definition, however, does not have a purely descriptive interest; the theses of Volume 3 must be taken seriously in order to portray with perfect clarity the deep interest that Bolzano had in his new definition of analyticity." (p. 49)

21. ———. 1999. "Bolzano’s Theory of Representation." Revue d'Histoire des Sciences no. 52:363-383

Abstract: "Bolzano's theory of representation is one of the most radically intensionalist approaches to representation. It is based on the following three claims: A). A representation is essentially independent of thought and of linguistic expression; B). A representation is structured; C). Such a structure is independent of the objects represented. These claims are both tools and constraints relative to Bolzano's substantive goals. Bolzano ultimately aimed to carry out a deep transformation of mathematical and scientific practice, thanks to a more accurate conception of logic and of the role of logic in scientific exposition. I examine some of the consequences of Bolzano's claims in regard to his conception of mathematical treatises."

22. Roberts, Mark. 1994. "The Bearer of Truth and Falsity." Southwest Philosophy Review no. 10:59-67

Abstract: "Until Bolzano nearly all philosophers believed that truth and falsity are predicated of judgments of beliefs. Bolzano and other philosophers after him argue that propositions are the bearers of truth and falsity and that propositions have a timeless ideal existence: a position which seems to discredit completely their view that propositions are the bearers of truth and falsity. Yet, several arguments can be offered which show that propositions are the bearers of truth and falsity without introducing as a premise the timeless existence of propositions."

23. Rohloff, Waldemar. 2012. "From Ordinary Language to Definition in Kant and Bolzano." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 85:131-149

Abstract: "In this paper I discuss Kant's and Bolzano's differing perspectives on ordinary natural language. I argue that Kant does not see ordinary language as providing semantically organized content and that, as a result, Kant does not believe that ordinary language is sufficiently well-developed to support philosophical analysis and definition. By contrast, for Bolzano, the content given in ordinary language are richly structured entities he calls 'propositions in themselves'. This contrast in views is used to explain Bolzano's criticism of Kant's belief that definition is impossible for philosophical concepts. It is also used to explain Bolzano's criticism of Kant's methods of exposition of philosophical concepts."

24. Rojszczak, Artur. 2005. From the Act of Judging to the Sentence. The Problem of Truth Bearers from Bolzano to Tarski. Dordrecht: Springer

Edited by Jan Wolenski.

Chapter 7.1: Bernard Bolzano (I): Sentences in Themselves, pp. 111-115.

"I shall not go into the details of the multiplicity of Bolzano’s ideas and their particular influence on the history of semantics. I shall, as I have tried to do with respect to every issue in this study, concentrate on his ideas within the theory of science as it is related to the problem of the truth bearer. In the context of the theory of truth, it is worth noting that Bolzano’s position during his times, i.e. in the first half of the nineteenth century, was quite unusual. Bolzano’s influence on this century was provided by his notion of the objectivity of truth in a way that also remained standard for the next century. Furthermore, the theory which should guarantee the objectivity of truth was, for Bolzano, his theory of sentences in themselves. Only the semantics of the twentieth century sees Bolzano’s theory of sentences in themselves as an anticipation of the contemporary notion of proposition. I shall, however, refer to his Fundamentallehre [Theory of Fundamentals], i.e. to the first sections of his Theory of Science, which deals with the existence of objective truth and with the possibility of its cognition. I shall omit some elements of this theory that are irrelevant to my purposes; for example, Bolzano’s proof of the existence of truth, his proof of the existence of infinitely many truths or the argument for the cognition of truths. In this part of Bolzano’s argumentation, he focuses on the problem of skepticism, making an attempt to prove the fundamentalist position in epistemology.(1) I shall take the liberty of presenting Bolzano’s ideas as far as truth bearers are concerned as contrasted with the views of Brentano and Twardowski on the objectivity of truth which I shall present in the next sections." (p. 111)

(1) Bolzano 1837, par. 40–43.

25. Rojszczak, Artur, and Smith, Barry. 2003. "Truthmakers, Truthbearers and the Objectivity of Truth." In Philosophy and Logic in Search of the Polish Tradition: Essays in Honour of Jan Wolenski on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday, edited by Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna, 229-268. Dordrecht: Kluwer

"The aim of this paper is to show that the account of objective truth taken for granted by logicians at least since the publication in 1933 of Tarski 's 'The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages' arose out of a tradition of philosophical thinking initiated by Bolzano and Brentano. The paper shows more specifically that certain investigations of states of affairs and other objectual correlates of judging acts, investigations carried out by Austrian and Polish philosophers around the turn of the century, formed part of the background of views that led to standard current accounts of the objectivity of truth. It thus lends support to speculations on the role of Brentano and his heirs in contemporary logical pbilosophy advanced by Jan Woleński in his masterpiece on the Logic and Philosophy in the Lvov-Warsaw School of 1989." (p. 229)

26. Rollinger, Robin D. 2004. "Austrian Theories of Judgment: Bolzano, Brentano, Meinong, and Husserl." In Phenomenology & Analysis. Essays on Central European Philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Huemer, Wolfgang, 257-284. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag

Reprinted in: R. D. Rollinger, Austrian Phenomenology. Brentano, Husserl, Meinong, and Others on Mind and Object, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag 2009, pp. 233-262.

"Introduction

In nineteenth century German philosophy it was among the prevailing views that mental phenomena were to be divided into three classes: thinking, feeling, and willing. In Austria, however, two of the towering philosophers, Bernard Bolzano and Franz Brentano, held that presentations (Vorstellungen) and judgments (Urteile) make up two distinct classes of mental phenomena. Moreover, both of these philosophers saw it as an important task to work out a theory of judgment in particular. It is accordingly no surprise that Brentano’s two most outstanding pupils, Alexius Meinong and Edmund Husserl, developed theories of judgment, though their results were markedly different from those of their predecessors and from each other’s. In the following the line of Austrian philosophy from Bolzano to Husserl will be traced by presenting an overview of the four theories indicated in the title. The topic under consideration in these theories, though apparently little more than a chapter in descriptive psychology, is of great significance because it gives us an intersection for issues in epistemology, ontology, and philosophy of logic." (p. 257)

27. Rootselaar, Bob van. 1970. "Bernard Bolzano." In Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. 2, edited by Gillispie, Charles Coulston, 273-279. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons

"Bolzano planned to elaborate the methodology begun in his Beyträge and to develop it into a complete lheory of science, of which a treatise on logic was to form the cornerstone. From 1820 on, he worked steadily on it, and his four-volume treatise Wissenschaftslehre appeared in 1837. The plan of the Wissenschaftslehre appears clearly from the following subdivision (see Kambartel, Bernard Bolzano's Grundlegung der Logik, pp. 14-17):

(I) Fundamental theory: proof of the existence of abstract truths and of the human ability to judge.

(2) Elementary theory: theory of abstract ideas, propositions, true propositions, and deductions.

(3) Theory of knowledge: condition of the human faculty of judgment.

(4) Heuristics: rules to be observed in human thought in the search for truths,

(5) Proper theory of science: rules to be observed in the division of the set of truths into separate sciences and in their exposition in truly scientific treatises.

The work did not induce a complete revision of science, as Bolzano hoped, but, on the contrary, remained unnoticed and did not exercise perceptible influence on the development of logic. Some of the

innovations in logic contained in the first two volumes did attract attention, as well as excessive praisenotably from Edmund Husserl and Heinrich Scholz (see Berg. op. cit.; Kambanel, op. cit.; and the literature

cited in them).

The rise of logical semantics, initiated by Alfred Tarski in the l 930's, has led to a revival of the study of Bolzano's logic in the light or modem logic (see Berg, op. cit.) and of his theory of an ideal language.

The heart of Bolzano's logic is formed by his concepts of (abstract) proposition (Satz an sich), abstract idea (Vorstellung an sich), truth, and the notions of derivability (Ab!eirbarkeit) and entailment (Abfolge)." (pp. 277-278)

28. ———. 1992. "Axiomatics in Bolzano's Logico-Mathematical Research." In Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre 1837-1987. International Workshop, 221-230. Florence: Leo S. Olschki

"A discussion of Bolzano’s axiomatical considerations requires some care, because his idea of axiomatization differs considerably from axiomatics as it is currently understood.

His Wissenschaftslehre is testimony of his concern for the foundation of science in general and in particular of the theoretical sciences. Among the theoretical sciences mathematics is of special interest.

According to Bolzano, the mathematics of his time was based on shaky foundations, and one of his activities was directed toward correction of this situation.

On the other hand he certainly had the intention to recapture essentially the entire body of existing mathematics and present it in full accordance with his newly laid foundations. This is the reason why on several occasions he revised existing proofs of known mathematical theorems." (p. 221)

29. Rosenkoetter, Timothy. 2012. "Kant and Bolzano on the Singularity of Intuitions." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 85:89-129

Abstract: "Kant and Bolzano agree that intuitions are non-accidentally singular, but each offers more than one explanation of why this is the case. One model, exemplified by Bolzano's explication of intuitions as “this”-representations, posits a type of representation which is such that it can only have one object. A very different explanation, prominent in Kant's Transcendental Aesthetic, has recourse to the fact that certain classes of objects (spaces and times) can have only one instance, and argues on this basis that some representations with those contents are singular. This paper surveys various versions of these two explanations and uses each philosopher's answers to shed light on the other's."

30. Roski, Stefan. 2013. "A priori Knowledge in Bolzano: Conceptual Truths and Judgements." In Judgement and the Epistemic Foundation of Logic, edited by Schaar, Maria van der, 101-132. Dordrecht: Springer

"According to Kant, a true judgement can be called a priori in case it can take place absolutely (schlechterdings) independent of experience. Propositions that are knowable in this way are called a priori propositions by him (Kant, [Critique of Pure Reason], 1787 B, 3–4)." (p. 101)

(...)

"[Bolzano] tried to give a satisfactory theoretical account of the notion of synthetic a priori proposition. Roughly speaking, he located Kant’s mistake in the attempt to introduce a distinction among propositions by means of a distinction among judgements. Bolzano reversed this order and aimed instead to explicate the valid core of what Kant tried to capture in epistemic terms entirely in objective, logical ones." (p. 101)

(...)

"Bolzano’s explication has two aspects, a logical and an epistemological one.

The logical aspect consists in drawing a precise and workable distinction in terms of non-epistemic notions. The epistemological aspect concerns the way in which Bolzano’s suggestion might work: What is his account of how one can come to know synthetic truths a priori?

While there have been investigations of Bolzano’s objective explication of the notion of a priori proposition (see Textor 1996, chapter 4), the epistemological details have never been examined in great detail.(2) The task of this chapter is thus to tell the epistemological story behind Bolzano’s objective explication.

I should note right from the beginning that the aim of the chapter is descriptive and historical. Primarily, I want to make sense of what Bolzano plausibly had in mind, rather than assess its intrinsic plausibility." (p. 102)

(2) An exception is Lapointe ( 2010 ).

References

Lapointe, S. 2010. Bolzano, a priori knowledge and the classical model of science. Synthese 174:263–281.

Textor, M. 1996. Bolzanos propositionalismus. Berlin/New York: Walter De Gruyter.

31. ———. 2017. Bolzano's Conception of Grounding. Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann

Contents: Preface IX; I. Introduction 1; 2. Objective truth, variation & truth-preservation 19; 3. Explanatory priority: Bolzano’s pure logic of grounding 55; 4. Simplicity and economy: Bolzano’s impure logic of grounding 109; 5. Bolzano’s logic of grounding and the logic of metaphysical grounding 215; 6. Conclusion 233; l ist of abbreviations 251; List of symbols, definitions, and principles 253; Bibliography 257; Index 267-269.

"Overview of the book

As each of the following chapters will be accompanied by a detailed overview of its content and line of argumentation, I will confine myself here to a brief overview of the main line of argumentation of the book.

At the core of Bolzano’s theory of grounding lies a set of general principles that express properties the relation exhibits according to him. An analysis of these principles, their interrelation, and their role in Bolzano’s methodology will form the main bulk of the book. It is heuristically useful to divide these principles into two classes. The first class contains principles that hold for every case of grounding, irrespective of any specific properties of the relata. These principles capture, as it were, minimal conditions an explanatory relation has to satisfy according to Bolzano. The second class consists of more specific principles that mostly apply only to truths from deductive or a priori sciences. Adapting a distinction by Kit Fine, I will call the former Bolzano’s pure logic of grounding and the latter his impure logic of grounding.(52) Before we can dive into the details of Bolzano’s theory, we will have to gain some familiarity with the nuts and bolts of his logical framework. This will be done in Chapter Two. Chapter Three then discusses Bolzano’s pure logic of grounding, while Chapter Four is concerned with the impure logic of grounding. Chapter Five wraps up and draws some connections to the recent debate on grounding. In what follows I will sketch the content of each of these chapters in a little more detail." (p. 16)

(52) Cf. (Fine [The Pure Logic of Ground. Review of Symbolic Logic 5(1) 1-25] 2012b). The justification for employing this distinction will be given further below.

32. ———. 2019. "Bolzano and Kim on Grounding and Unification." Synthese no. 196:2971-2999

Abstract: "It is sometimes mentioned that Bernard Bolzano’s work on grounding anticipates many insights of the current debate on metaphysical grounding. The present paper discusses a certain part of Bolzano’s theory of grounding that has thus far not been discussed in the literature. This part does not so much anticipate what are nowadays common assumptions about grounding, but rather goes beyond them. Central to the discussion will be a thesis of Bolzano’s by which he tries to establish a connectionbetween grounding and (deductive) unification. The paper spells out this thesis in detail and discusses the assumptions on which it rests. Next to this mainly historical aim, the paper also presents reasons why philosophers who are not interested in the historical Bolzano should find the thesis interesting by relating it to a certain view on unification and explanation that has been put forward by Kim. A final part of the paper provides a critical evaluation of the thesis against the background of current accounts of grounding."

Reference

Kim Jaegwon (1994) Explanatory Knowledge and Metaphysical Dependence. Philosophical Issues 5:51–69-

33. ———. 2020. "Bolzano." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, edited by Raven, Michael J., 76-89. New York: Routledge

"This chapter provides an overview of Bernard Bolzano’s views about grounding. On Bolzano’s account, grounding is an objective priority relation among true propositions that has certain explanatory features.The chapter briefly highlights historical influences on Bolzano’s account of grounding and subsequently provides an overview of the most important aspects of it. As we shall see, Bolzano’s account resembles current accounts of metaphysical grounding in many respects and can thus easily be related to many positions in the current debate.This is going to be a main focus of this chapter. Apart from that, we shall investigate some Bolzanian ideas about grounding that differ from the current orthodoxy but may constitute interesting additions, challenges or inspirations for those working in the current debate." (p. 76)

34. Roski, Stefan, and Rumberg, Antje. 2016. "Simplicity and Economy in Bolzano’s Theory of Grounding." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 54:469-496

Abstract: This paper is devoted to Bolzano’s theory of grounding (Abfolge) in his Wissenschaftslehre. Bolzanian grounding is an explanatory consequence relation that is frequently considered an ancestor of the notion of metaphysical grounding. The paper focuses on two principles that concern grounding in the realm of conceptual sciences and relate to traditionally widespread ideas on explanations: the principles, namely, that grounding orders conceptual truths from simple to more complex ones (Simplicity), and that it comes along with a certain theoretical economy among them (Economy). Being spelled out on the basis of Bolzano’s notion of deducibility (Ableitbarkeit), these principles are revealing for the question to what extent grounding can be considered a formal relation."

35. Roski, Stefan, and Rusnock, Paul. 2014. "Bolzano on Necessary Existence." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 96:320-359

Abstract: "This paper is devoted to an examination of Bolzano’s notion of necessary existence, which has so far received relatively little attention in the literature.

We situate Bolzano’s ideas in their historical context and show how he proposed to correct various flaws of his predecessors’ definitions. Further, we relate Bolzano’s conception to his metaphysical and theological assumptions, arguing that some consequences of his definition which have been deemed counterintuitive by some of his interpreters turn out to be more reasonable given the broadly Leibnizian background of his metaphysics. Finally, we consider some difficulties that arise from Bolzano’s evolving views on freedom, which, at least in his early thought, was intimately linked with contingency. In an appendix, we discuss a recent debate on Bolzano’s notion of necessary truth between Textor and Rusnock that has some bearing on our overall line of interpretation of Bolzano’s notion of necessary existence."

References

Rusnock, P. 2012. “On Bolzano’s Conception of Necessary Truth”. British Journal of the History of Philosophy 20, 817-837.

Textor, M. 2013. “Bolzano on the Source of Necessity: A Reply to Rusnock”. British Journal of the History of Philosophy 21, 381-392.

36. Roski, Stefan, and Schnieder, Benjamin. 2019. "Fundamental Truths and the Principle of Sufficient Reason in Bolzano's Theory of Grounding." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 57:675-706

Abstract: "Bernard Bolzano developed his theory of grounding in opposition to the rationalists’ Principle of Sufficient Reason (the PSR). He argued that the PSR fails because there are fundamental, that is, ungrounded truths. The current paper examines Bolzano’s views on fundamentality, relating them to ongoing debates about grounding and fundamentality."

37. ———. 2022. "Introdfuction: A Survey of Bolzano's Theory of Grounding." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 4-34. New York: Oxford University Press

"In this survey paper, we pursue three aims:

- First, we briefly sketch the origins of Bolzano's views on grounding and the role that grounding plays in his philosophy.

- Second, we give an overview of Bolzano's mature conception of grounding, focussing on its most detailed exposition, which can be found in his Theory of Science.

- Third, we introduce elements and terminology from Bolzano's conceptual framework that are required to understand his theory of grounding." (p. 4)

38. ———, eds. 2022. Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies. New York: Oxford University Press

Table of Contents: Acknowledgements IX; List of Tables and Figures XI; List of Contributors XIII; Part I: Stefan Roski, Benjamin Schnieder: Introduction 3; 1. Preamble; 2. A Survey of Bolzano's Theory of Grounding 4; 3. On the Contents of This Volume 35; Part II: Bolzano's Writings on Grounding (in English Translations); 4. Early Period: Scientific Method and the Foundations of Mathematics 45; 5. Middle Period: Theology and Metaphysics 85; 6. Mature Period: A Theory of Grounding 107; Part III: Research Papers on Bolzano's Theory; 7. Mark Malink: Aristotle and Bolzano on Grounding 221; 8. Kevin Mulligan: Logic, Logical Norms, and (Normative) Grounding 244, 9. Kit Fine:Some Remarks on Bolzano on Ground 276; 10. Mark Textor: Grounding, Simplicity, and Repetition 301; 11. Francesca Poggiolesi: Bolzano, ( the Appropriate) Relevant Logic, and Grounding Rules for Implication 319; 12. Edgar Morscher: The Grounds of Moral 'Truths' 343; 13. Paul Rusnock: Grounding in Practice: Bolzano's Purely Analytic Proof in Light of the Contributions 364; 14. Marc Lange: Bolzano, the Parallelogram of Forces, and Scientific Explanation 394; 15. Benjamin Schnieder: A Fundamental Being: Bolzano's Cosmological Argument and Its Leibnizian Roots 418; Glossary of German Terms 445; Name Index 447; Subject Index 450-458.

39. Rumberg, Antje. 2013. "Bolzano’s Concept of Grounding (Abfolge) Against the Background of Normal Proofs." Review of Symbolic Logic no. 6:424-459

Abstract: "In this paper, I provide a thorough discussion and reconstruction of Bernard Bolzano’s theory of grounding and a detailed investigation into the parallels between his concept of grounding and current notions of normal proofs. Grounding (Abfolge) is an objective ground-consequence relation among true propositions that is explanatory in nature. The grounding relation plays a crucial role in Bolzano’s proof-theory, and it is essential for his views on the ideal buildup of scientific theories. Occasionally, similarities have been pointed out between Bolzano’s ideas on grounding and cut-free proofs in Gentzen’s sequent calculus. My thesis is, however, that they bear an even stronger resemblance to the normal natural deduction proofs employed in proof-theoretic semantics in the tradition of Dummett and Prawitz."

40. Rusnock, Paul. 1997. "Bolzano and the Traditions of Analysis." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 53:61-85

Abstract: "Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy, wrote that modern analytical philosophy had its origins in the construction of modern functional analysis by Weierstrass and others. As it turns out, Bolzano, in the first four decades of the nineteenth century, had already made important contributions 'to the creation of "Weierstrassian" analysis, some of which were well known to Weierstrass and his circle. In addition, his mathematical research was guided by a methodology which articulated many of the central principles of modern philosophical analysis. That Russell was able to discover philosophical content within mathematical analysis was thus not surprising, for it had been carefully put there in the first place. Bolzano can and should, accordingly, be viewed as a founder of modern analytical philosophy, and not necessarily as an uninfluential one. This paper considers his work in mathematical and philosophical analysis against some of the relevant historical background."

41. ———. 1997. "Remaking Mathematics: Bolzano reads Lagrange." Acta Analytica no. 18:51-72

"With Cauchy, Bolzano was among the most thorough and acute of Lagrange’s readers, and it is clear that Bolzano had a good deal of respect for him as a mathematician, going through his treatises pencil in hand as soon as they were published, and occupying himself with many of the same questions. Like Lagrange, Bolzano was dissatisfied with the state of the foundations of analysis; like him he sought to provide an autonomous foundation for this branch of mathematics, one free from appeals to infinitesimals, geometry, and motion. Bolzano also appears to have respected Lagrange’s opinion on the contents of analysis.

(...)

This broad agreement on content, however, was accompanied by sharp disagreements concerning method. Indeed, Bolzano chose his early subjects in part precisely in order to accentuate these differences. For Lagrange’s entire approach to analysis was out of harmony with Bolzano’s philosophy of science. And as Lagrange’s work was in many ways the highest expression of analysis around the beginning of the nineteenth century, Bolzano’s criticisms applied quite generally to the state of mathematics at the time. The difficulties which he found were not of the kind that one could hope to resolve by small changes of detail. They were, rather, systemic. What was required, according to Bolzano, was no less than a “complete transformation” of mathematics, at least of those parts which are not to be rejected as completely incorrect.(3) Not one to make such a statement idly, Bolzano had already been working on the task for over a decade, and would spend a good part of the rest of his life attempting to finish the work, rebuilding mathematics from the ground up in line with his methodology. This led to a detailed confrontation with eighteenth-century and notably Lagrangian mathematics; and it is here, in Bolzano’s criticisms, and the alternatives he proposes, that we find the unmistakable imprint of his philosophy." (pp. 2-3)

(3) Rein analytischer Beweis des Lehrsatzes, daß zwischen je zwey Werthe, die eine entgegengesetzes Resultat gewähren, mindestens eine reele Würzel der Gleichung liege (Prague, 1817), Preface; English translation by S. B. Russ, Historia Mathematica 7 (1980) 156-185.

42. ———. 1999. "Philosophy of Mathematics: Bolzano's Responses to Kant and Lagrange." Revue d'Histoire des Sciences no. 52 (3-4):399-428

Summary: "Bolzano's philosophy of mathematics is presented through a consideration of his critical responses to Kant and Lagrange."

"In a late essay, Bolzano describes the philosophy of mathematics as an activity aimed at discovering the objective grounds of propositions which we already know with the greatest certainty and evidence (1). For him, philosophy of mathematics was simply what we would now call foundational research in the broadest sense - that is, it was not just a matter of « ultimate » foundations (for instance set theory, logic, or the like), but also of the foundations of particular mathematical theories (for instance geometry, the calculus, combinatorics...). Bolzano was certainly committed to dealing with questions of ultimate foundations, with developing a unified system of mathematics from first principles - his detailed investigations of set theory and logic bear ample witness to this. He also understood, however, that foundational inquiries could be, at least provisionally, local. One could, as he explained in the Contributions to a better-founded presentation of mathematics of 1810, assume certain propositions as locally primitive, deferring until a later date their proof from more basic principles (2). No sharp line can be drawn to separate such local questions from those of ultimate foundations. Searching for underlying principles, in whatever domain and at whatever level, was an activity he quite plausibly and in line with tradition regarded as philosophical." (pp. 399-400)

(1) Bernard Bolzano, Was ist Philosophie? (Wien, 1849), 23.

(2) Bernard Bolzano, Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik (Prag, 1810), part II, § 11 (hereafter: Beyträge).

43. ———. 2000. Bolzano's Philosophy and the Emergence of Modern Mathematics. Amsterdam: Rodopi

"In his own time, Bolzano was known primarily for his highly public life as a social and religious reformer, one of the leading figures of the Bohemian Enlightenment. In mathematics and logic - the concerns of this book - Bolzano was no less a reformer, developing strikingly modem views on logic, and attempting to recast mathematics in line with the methods set out in this new logic. He pursued this project doggedly,

attempting to carry it through to the last details. The results, although incomplete, are impressive, and worthy of our attention.

I have tried in this book to give an adequate sketch of Bolzano as a philosopher of mathematics and as a philosophical mathematician.

Within his mathematical work, I have chosen to focus on his research in the foundations of real analysis, as it is here where he had the greatest success, and where the positive imprint of his philosophical views is most apparent. Of his vast writings on logic, I have confined my attention mainly to those parts which bear most directly on mathematical method. Much of Bolzano's mathematics and logic will no doubt appear quite familiar, and it is easy to forget just how new and strange this territory was when Bolzano - often on his own - first moved into it. For this reason, I have attempted also to convey something of the historical context of his work." (pp. 4-5)

44. ———. 2011. "Kant and Bolzano on Logical Form." Kant-Studien no. 102

Abstract: "In the works of Kant and his followers, the notion of form plays an important role in explaining the apriority, necessity and certainty of logic. Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848), an important early critic of Kant, found the Kantians' definitions of form imprecise and their explanations of the special status of logic deeply unsatisfying. Proposing his own conception of form, Bolzano developed radically different views on logic, truth in virtue of form, and other matters. This essay presents Bolzano's views in the light of his criticisms of the Kantian logicians."

45. ———. 2012. "Remarks on Bolzano’s Conception of Necessary Truth." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 20:817-837

Abstract: "This essay presents a new interpretation of Bolzano's account of necessary truth as set out in §182 of the Theory of Science. According to this interpretation, Bolzano's conception is closely related to that of Leibniz, with some important differences. In the first place, Bolzano's conception of necessary truth embraces not only what Leibniz called metaphysical or brute necessities but also moral necessities (truths grounded in God's choice of the best among all metaphysical possibilities). Second, in marked contrast to Leibniz, Bolzano maintains that there is still plenty of room for contingency even on this broader conception of necessity."

46. ———. 2013. "On Bolzano’s Concept of a Sum." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 34:155-169

Abstract: "Alongside his groundbreaking work in logic, Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848) made important contributions to ontology, notably with his theory of collections. Recent work has done much to elucidate Bolzano's conceptions, but his notion of a sum has proved stubbornly resistant to complete understanding. This paper offers a new interpretation of Bolzano's concept of a sum. I argue that, although Bolzano's presentation is defective, his conception is unexceptionable, and has important applications, notably in his work on the foundations of arithmetic."

47. ———. 2013. "Kant and Bolzano on Analyticity." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 95:298-335

Abstract: "The history of speculation on a notion or notions called analyticity, now usually characterized as truth in virtue of meanings and independently of fact, is often viewed from the perspective of the Quine-Carnap dispute. Previous characterizations, due to Kant, Frege and others, are then seen as being of a piece with Carnap’s various definitions of analyticity, and thus open to Quine’s objections. Seen from this point of view, Bolzano’s claims about analyticity appear downright bizarre: for on his conception, analyticity is not only non-linguistic, but also independent of both apriority and necessity. In this paper, it is argued that the problem lies not with Bolzano, but rather with the received historical account, especially its interpretation of Kant."

48. ———. 2022. "Grounding in Practice: Bolzano's Purely Analytic Proof in Light of the Contributions." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 364-393. New York: Oxford University Press

"Bolzano's best-known mathematical work, the Rein analytischer Beweis of 1817, promises to deliver a ground-revealing proof of an important theorem from the theory of equations, which Bolzano shows to follow from (a generalization of) the intermediate value theorem. In his paper Paul Rusnock explains and assesses this promise against the background of Bolzano's early account of mathematical method, in which the idea of grounding plays a central role."

49. Rusnock, Paul, and Burke, Mark. 2010. "Etchemendy and Bolzano on Logical Consequence." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 31:3-29

Abstract: "In a series of publications beginning in the 1980s, John Etchemendy has argued that the standard semantical account of logical consequence, due in its essentials to Alfred Tarski, is fundamentally mistaken. He argues that, while Tarski's definition requires us to classify the terms of a language as logical or non-logical, no such division is guaranteed to deliver the correct extension of our pre-theoretical or intuitive consequence relation. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, Tarski's account is claimed to be incapable of explaining an essential modal/epistemological feature of consequence, namely, its necessity and apriority.

Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848) is widely recognized as having anticipated Tarski's definition in his Wissenschaftslehre (or Theory of Science) of 1837. Because of the similarities between his account and Tarski's, Etchemendy's arguments have also been extended to cover Bolzano. The purpose of this article is to consider Bolzano's theory in the light of these criticisms. We argue that, due to important differences between Bolzano's and Tarski's theories, Etchemendy's objections do not apply immediately to Bolzano's account of consequence. Moreover, Bolzano's writings contain the elements of a detailed philosophical response to Etchemendy."

50. Rusnock, Paul, and George, Rolf. 2004. "Bolzano as Logician." In The Rise of Modern Logic: from Leibniz to Frege, edited by Gabbay, Dov and Woods, Jean, 177-205. Amsterdam: North-Holland

Handbook of the History of Logic. Vol. 3.

"Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848) stands out with Frege as one of the great logicians of the nineteenth century. His approach to logic, set out in the Theory of Science [WL] of 1837, marks a fundamental reorientation of the subject on many fronts, one which is as radical as any in the history of the field. In sharp contrast to many of his contemporaries, Bolzano insisted upon a rigorous separation of logic from psychology. It should be possible, he thought, to characterize propositions, ideas, inferences, and the axiomatic organization of sciences without reference to a thinking subject. Consistently pursuing this approach to logic and methodology, Bolzano developed important accounts of formal semantics and formal axiomatics.

A talented mathematician, Bolzano developed his logic in conjunction with his mathematical research. Among the first to work on the foundations of mathematics in the modern sense of the term, he made a number of key discoveries in analysis, topology, and set theory, and had a significant influence on the development of mathematics in the nineteenth century. In logic, Bolzano is best remembered for his variation logic (section 4.2 below), a surprisingly subtle and rigorous development of formal semantics. In this article, we discuss Bolzano's logic along with some of his work in the foundations of mathematics which has some bearing on logic." (p. 177)

51. Rusnock, Paul, and Šebestik, Jan. 2013. "The Beyträge at 200: Bolzano's Quiet Revolution in the Philosophy of Mathematics." Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy no. 1:1-14

Abstract: "This paper surveys Bolzano's Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik (Contributions to a better-grounded presentation of mathematics) on the 200th anniversary of its publication. The first and only published issue presents a definition of mathematics, a classification of its subdisciplines, and an essay on mathematical method, or logic. Though underdeveloped in some areas (including, somewhat surprisingly, in logic), it is nonetheless a radically innovative work, where Bolzano presents a remarkably modern account of axiomatics and the epistemology of the formal sciences. We also discuss the second, unfinished and unpublished issue, where Bolzano develops his views on universal mathematics. Here we find the beginnings of his theory of collections, for him the most fundamental of the mathematical disciplines. Though not exactly the same as the later Cantorian set theory, Bolzano's theory of collections was used in very similar ways in mathematics, notably in analysis. In retrospect, Bolzano's debut in philosophy was a remarkably successful one, though its fruits would only become generally known much later."

52. ———. 2019. Bernard Bolzano: His Life and Work. New York: Oxford University Press

"Yet interest in Bolzano’s theoretical work has rarely extended farther than mere curiosity. Where Frege, for instance, has been the subject of many studies, few English-speaking philosophers have felt moved to look into the details of Bolzano’s work. This is more than a pity, since Bolzano did not simply anticipate what others later developed, but has original things to say that are of enduring interest. One of the most remarkable philosophers of the nineteenth century, his works are still very much worth studying today, so solid is their foundation, so meticulous their detail. Quine might have done well, for instance, to have considered what Bolzano had to say about the analytic/synthetic distinction, or about the a priori, Putnam and Kripke to what Bolzano had to contribute to their discussions of indexicals and natural kind terms. Frege himself, as Alwin Korselt [*] pointed out in a none-too-friendly exchange over the foundations of geometry, might have learned a few things about logical consequence from him.

(...)

In the English-speaking world, Bolzano is best known for his work in logic and mathematics. There are certainly things of great importance and beauty in these parts of his work. We have already written, each of us, on these matters, and will have more to say about them in this book. But a faithful portrait of Bolzano cannot limit itself to this, for until he was 40 years old, he was only able to pursue these subjects in his spare time. With his considerable gifts in these non-controversial areas, he certainly might have led a distinguished life of speculation as a mathematician or philosopher. Instead he chose quite deliberately to plunge into the turbulent political life of his homeland, applying his formidable intelligence, energy, and determination to the reform of his society and its institutions. It is here that we shall begin." (pp. 2-3)

[*] Korselt, Alwin. "Über die Grundlagen der Geometrie." Jahresberiehte der Deutschen Mathematikervereinigung, 12 (1903): 402-407.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on Bernard Bolzano's Contributions to Logic and Ontology. Fifth Part: S - Z

Studies on Bolzano's Logic and Ontology

1. Schnieder, Benjamin. 2007. "Mere Possibilities: a Bolzanian Approach to Non-Actual Objects." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 45:525-550

"The paper is a detailed reconstruction of Bernard Bolzano's account of merely possible objects, which is a part of his ontology that has been widely ignored in the literature so far. According to Bolzano, there are some objects which are merely possible. While they are neither denizens of space and time nor members of the causal order, they could have been so. Thus, on Bolzano's view there are, for example, merely possible persons, i.e., objects which are neither actual nor persons but which could have been both. In course of the development of Bolzano's views, they are contrasted with the better known theory of his compatriot Alexius Meinong, and it is shown that they have a modern counterpart in the accounts of merely possible objects that were developed by Bernard Linsky and Ed Zalta, and by Timothy Williamson."

"Here is a brief outline of my paper. The first section is dedicated to the clarification of some basic Bolzanian notions, an understanding of which is needed for what follows. In the second section, I set out to establish that Bolzano in fact had the ontological view I attribute to him. That is, he accepted that there are merely possible objects. The third and final section is concerned with the exposition and reconstruction of Bolzano’s account of mere possibilities." (p. 526)

2. ———. 2014. "Bolzano on Causation and Grounding." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 52:309-337

"This paper is an exploration of Bolzano’s views on causation, which have not been thoroughly examined yet. The paper reconstructs Bolzano’s position, with a focus on his analysis of the concept of causation, on its ontological presuppositions, and on how he relates causation to his theory of grounding.(1) A comparison with standard positions from the contemporary debate on causation will prove his views to be quite original. Moreover, they are a valuable addition to the more recent debate on metaphysical grounding,(2) in which grounding is sometimes informally described as something like metaphysical causation with the exact connection of the two notions seldom being elaborated. Bolzano’s theory explicitly addresses the issue and takes an innovative stance. However, it will also be revealed that his account is beset with problems. But even if his position should ultimately not be tenable, discussing it can deepen our understanding of problems raised in the current debates about causation and grounding and shed new light on them." (p. 309)

(1) The paper concentrates on general conceptual and metaphysical issues of causation. It will not discuss Bolzano’s views on the epistemology of causation, nor his views on detailed matters of fact perhaps better to be treated in physics and its philosophy (such as the question of how causal powers are actually distributed in the world, what kind of basic causal powers there are, etc.).

(2) See e.g. Rosen, “Metaphysical Dependence”; Schaffer, “What Grounds”; and Fine, “Guide to Ground.”

References

Fine, Kit. “Guide to Ground.” In Metaphysical Grounding, edited by F. Correia and B. Schnieder, 37–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Rosen, Gideon. “Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction.” In Modality, edited by Bob Hale and Avrid Hoffmann, 109–35. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Schaffer, Jonathan. “On What Grounds What.” In Metametaphysics, edited by David Chalmers et al., 347–383. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

3. ———. 2022. "A Fundamental Being: Bolzano's Cosmological Argument and Its Leibnizian Roots." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 418-443. New York: Oxford University Press

"In his ontology, Bolzano uses the notion of grounding to make claims about the dependent and independent existence of entities. In particular, he argues that there must be a fundamental object (in Bolzano's

terminology: an unconditioned object), whose existence is not grounded in the existence of any other object. In his paper, Benjamin Schnieder reconstructs Bolzano's argument, explains its historical context, and puts the argument under scrutiny." (p. 38)

4. Scholz, Heinrich. 1961. Concise History of Logic. New York: Philosophical Library

On Bolzano see pp. 44-48.

"Modern logic interprets syllogisms as deduction of judgments from other judgments. Obviously, this interpretation is meaningless so long as we do not know what is meant by deducing one judgment from another. Bolzano did find the relevant interpretation which, it must be owned, also does not satisfy us all around but is, nevertheless, epoch-making solely because in pursuing his objective Bolzano turned away from statements and returned to the "forms."(154)

These "forms" now appear for the first time explicitly in formal logic so that with their aid Bolzano was able to obtain the most interesting interpretations not only for the derivation but also for the rest of the logically basic relations of compatibility, incompatibility, etc.(155) His charming Philosophische Grammatik(156) we have already mentioned. A luminous chapter all by itself contains magnificent discussions of earlier treatments of every topic of logic with special reference to Aristotle and Kant.(157) In these discussions there is invaluable material for any critical history of logic." (pp. 46-47)

(154) See above, p. 3-4.

(155) Cf. especially WL, II, paragraph 154 ff., 198ff.; I, paragraph 95 ff.

(156) See above, p. 40.

(157) Cf. the little book of Bolzano's keenly critical pupil which I brought out in 1931 in a new edition together with W. Dubislav and which appeared in the Felix Meiner Verlag in Leipzig. It is F. Prikonsky: Neuer Anti-Kant oder Prülfung der Kritik der reinen Vernunft nach den in Bolzanos Wissenschaftslehre niedergelegten Begriffen. Here we also get acquainted with Augustine's anticipation of Bolzano's principles and ideas, a fact hardly commented on to this day.

5. Schubring, Gert. 1993. "Bernard Bolzano -- Not as Unknown to His Contemporaries as Is Commonly Believed?" Historia Mathematica:45-53

Abstract: "An unknown review of Bolzano's three important papers from the years 1816 to 1817 written in 1821 by J. J. I. Hoffmann, a mathematician from Southern Germany, is edited and commented."

"According to common historiography, Bolzano's pioneer publications, in particular his contributions to a new rigor in analysis in 1816 to 1817, remained almost unknown to the mathematical community. Only one piece of evidence contradicting the general impression that nobody read Bolzano in his own day is frequently quoted: N. H. Abel's remark in one of his Paris notebooks. Having read some of Bolzano's publications during the time he spent in Berlin 1825/1826, he noted enthusiastically "Bolzano is a clever man" (1). Abel's appreciation is taken, however, as an isolated instance, and Hermann Hankel is credited with having been the first to bring Bolzano to the general attention of the mathematical community in 1871 (see [Grattan--Guinness 1970, 51-52]).

(...)

With regard to this desideratum concerning the history of reception of Bolzano's work in his own time, an essay review of Bolzano's three key papers of 1816/1817 in one of the leading German review journals, the Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur--Zeitung (JALZ), is a most welcome find. I came across it when analyzing the JALZ for its numerous mathematical reviews. As a first contribution to the study of Bolzano's contemporary reception, the essay review is examined in order to explore the reviewer's reading and understanding of Bolzano's work. Moreover, the mathematical education and practice of the reviewer is analyzed, and the role of the transmitting journal is briefly discussed. The essay review itself is also presented, or more precisely, those parts of it that are in the reviewer's own words." (pp. 45-46)

References

Grattan-Guinness, I. 1970. The development of the foundations of mathematical analysis from Euler to Riemann. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

6. Šebestik, Jan. 1990. "The Archaeology of the Tractatus: Bolzano and Wittgenstein." In Wittgenstein, eine Neubewertung / Wittgenstein, Towards a Re-Evaluation. Akten des 14. Intemationalen Wittgenstein-Symposiums, edited by Haller, Rudolf and Brandl, Johannes L., 112-118. Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky

"In the case of Bolzano, a comparison with Wittgenstein covers not only some specific points, but also the style of their philosophies and the roJe of logic in the construction of the system. I see three main points of comparison:

1. For Bolzano, formal logic is the central discipline of philosophy: a logical system once set up becomes an instrument for all philosophical analysis.

2. Bolzano refutes Kant's transeendental argument the function of which is assumed by a logico-semantical theory which is developed in two different ways:

a) a theory of meaning or sense based on abstract intensional entities, propositions (Sätze an sich) and ideas-in-themselves (Vorstellungen an sich). The grammatical forms of ordinary language have to be elucidated and amended in order to comply with canonic forms obtained by the logical analysis of language.

b) a theory of reference or denotation, more precisely the logic of classes and the logic of extensional relations between propositions (extensional because defined solely in terms of the truth values of the propositions considered). Particularly important in this respect is the elucidation of fundamentallogical notions: validity, contravalidity, logical consequence (deducibility) and its link with probability.

3. Bolzano' s theory of representation (Vorstellung) is not properly speaking a picture theory. According to Bolzano, pictures (Bilder) are not ideas; they can at most accompany some ideas. No properly functional relationship, no Abbildung, is established between propositions and the world. On the one hand, Sätze an sich are not Sachverhalte, because no Sachverhalte correspond to false propositions. On the other hand, the structure of the propositions, which is derived from the structure of the statements of ordinary language, does not correspond exactly to the structure of objects. The system of all true propositions yields a complete description an sich of the world and of the properties of things within it, but Bolzano refutes the idea of morphism between the propositions and the world. It is nevertheless on the grounds of Bolzanian theories that the first (Polish- )Austrian picture theory was born. In Twardowski 's Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen ( 1894 ), where the author attemps a synthesis between Bolzano 's logic and Brentano 's descriptive psychology, a functional relationship (Abbildung) is established between objects and ideas." (p. 113)

7. ———. 1992. "The Construction of Bolzano's Logical System." In Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre 1837-1987. International Workshop, 163-177. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki

"Several reconstructions of Bolzano's logical system have been proposed until now, some of them at the present workshop. They exploit systematically different aspects of Bolzano's logic and interpret it in terms of different XXth century systems. Such an approach has its own rights, as the full force of Bolzano's logic can be measured only by the standards of our contemporary logic. This is precisely the mark of great authors: each important discovery in their field brings to the light some hitherto unnoticed aspects of their work. That such reinterpretations are possible in the case of Bolzano, that his system can be represented in a quite different conceptual frame and translated into modern symbolic notation simply shows how rich and far reaching are his theories. Another argument favours this approach: a XXth century logician can read Bolzano and other logicians of the past only against the background of modern theories. It is in this way that the body of scientific knowledge is continuously being transmitted: by adapting and translating incessantly old theories into the present language. Moreover, the very meaning of past theories can often be understood only in the light of our systems. Already Husserl noticed that he would not have been able to grasp the significance of Bolzano's logic if he had not previously studied the most advanced contemporary logical theories - which in his case mainly meant the logic of Schroder!

Nevertheless, this modernizing approach does not yield full justice to Bolzano. Even if some of his doctrines are definitively obsolete, they have their function in the construction of his system. Like his mathematics, his philosophy and his theology, Bolzano's logic was conceived in a specific historical context and its complete understanding requires a close attention to the logical and philosophical theories of his time. This is why a complementary approach seems necessary, namely a historical analysis which would trace the links between his system and the logical doctrines of his contemporaries as well as with great logical theories of the past.

My intention is to explain the formation and the structure of his logical system whose core is propositional logic. Bolzano's system of extensional relations between propositions represents one of the decisive innovations in the history of logic. It has no historical antecedents. It is nevertheless connected with logical theories of the late XVIIIth and early XIXth century and my paper tries to elucidate the genesis of Bolzano's system against this historical background. This approach will not only show the originality of Bolzano's achievement in full light, but also give a perhaps unexpected insight into the structure of his logical system.

In my reconstruction, I intend to remain within Bolzano's logic, using only conceptual tools which he himself has designed. Therefore, I shall neither attempt to translate his definitions into some XXth century notation, nor confront his logic with our systems. One of the advantages of this approach is to give a presentation of Bolzano's logic which is as simple as possible and has no recourse either to symbolic language (except for elementary set-theoretical notational devices) or to sophisticated semantic framework. Those who have tried to explain Bolzano's logical theories to non-specialists or even to students of modern logic may test the advantage of such an approach." (pp.163-164).

8. ———. 1997. "Bolzano, Exner and the Origins of Analytical Philosophy." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 53:33-59

Abstract: "Analytical philosophy begins with the first mathematical and philosophical works of Bolzano published between 1804 and 1817. There, Bolzano set out a project for the global reform of mathematics by means of the axiomatic method. Having completed the Wissenschaftslehre, Bolzano wrote a summary of his logic for the Grossenlehre, which he sent to Exner in 1833. The correspondence between Bolzano and Exner covered some of the main subjects treated by analytical philosophy: the status of abstract objects (propositions and objective ideas), intuitions, objectless ideas, the concept of object and many others. While Bolzano argued in favor of abstract entities independent of mind and of language, Exner considered them as abstractions obtained from the subjective judgments and representations. During the XIXth century, Bolzano's philosophy spread over Bohemia and Austria through manuscripts and through the first edition of Zimmermann's textbook of philosophy. The most important Brenta-n ians, Kerry, Twardowski, Meinong and Husserl, discussed his doctrines which may also have influenced Wittgenstein and the Polish school."

9. ———. 2003. "Husserl Reader of Bolzano." In Husserl's Logical Investigations Reconsidered, edited by Fisette, Denis. Dordrecht: Kluwer

"The incredible soundness of Husserl's judgment in the matter of logic is unique among his contemporaries - only Frege's insight is on par with it, if not superior. This is due to the lesson of Bolzano whose logic is the truth itself. Husserl adapted his logical system so that it became the logical basis of phenomenology. He adopted Bolzano's main ideas: the extension of logic to the theory of science, the theory of ideal meanings, the distinction between mental act, linguistic expression, meaning and denoted object, the concept of analyticity. Independently of Bolzano and consonant with later mathematical theories, Husserl developed his formal analytics along two lines, apophantic and formal ontology.

Bolzano, however, had articulated the domain of conceptual truths in the same manner: he constructed his logical system as a theory of meaning and his mathematics as a theory of object in general or Etwas überhaupt. Both set theory and mereology have their origin here. By his theory of science, Bolzano gave a new impetus to philosophy and logic. For the first time in modern thought, such questions as the nature of logical objects, the problems of meaning and reference, the relation between logic and language became central issues of philosophy." (p. 80)

10. ———. 2014. "Bolzano’s Lehrjahre." In Mind, Values, and Metaphysics: Philosophical Essays in Honor of Kevin Mulligan. Vol. 1, edited by Reboul, Anne, 289-293. Dordrecht: Springer

Abstract: "The paper will discuss some changes in Bolzano's definition of mathematics attested in several quotations from the Beyträge, Wissenschaftslehre and Grössenlehre: is mathematics a theory of forms or a theory of quantities? Several issues that are maintained throughout Bolzano's works will be distinguished from others that were accepted in the Beyträge and abandoned in the Grössenlehre. Changes will be interpreted as a consequence of the new logical theory of truth introduced in the Wissenschaftslehre, but also as a consequence of the overcome of Kant's terminology, and of the radicalization of Bolzano's anti-Kantianism. It will be argued that Bolzano's evolution can be understood as a coherent move, if one compares the criticism expressed in the Beyträge on the notion of quantity with a different and larger notion of quantity that Bolzano developed already in 1816. This discussion is based on the discovery that two unknown texts mentioned by Bolzano can be identified with works by von Spaun and Vieth respectively. Bolzano's evolution will be interpreted as a radicalization of the criticism of the Kantian definition of mathematics and as an effect of Bolzano's unaltered interest in the Leibnizian notion of mathesis universalis. As a conclusion, it will be argued that Bolzano never abandoned his original idea of considering mathematics as a scientia universalis, i.e. as the science of quantities in general, and it will be suggested that the question of ideal elements in mathematics, which has been interpreted as a main reason for the development of a new logical theory, can also be considered as a main reason for developing a different definition of quantity. "

11. Shapiro, Stewart. 2011. "Varieties of Pluralism and Relativism for Logic." In A Companion to Relativism, edited by Hales, Steven D., 526-552. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell

Abstract: "My purpose is to articulate a number of different senses in which one can be a pluralist and/or a relativist concerning logical consequence. I propose, first, that logical consequence is either polysemous or it denotes a cluster concept. In other words, there are a number of different notions that go by that name, often run together, or else there are several aspects of the notions, with varying weights. The different notions, or aspects, of consequence, turn on matters of modality, semantics, effectiveness, justification, rationality, and form. Second, most of the articulations of the pre - theoretic notions(s) of logical consequence make essential use of a boundary between logical and non - logical terminology. This suggests a sort of relativism/pluralism explicitly noted by Bernard Bolzano and Alfred Tarski: logical consequence is relative to the logical/non - logical boundary. An argument may be valid on one collection of logical terms, invalid on another. Third, it is possible that at least some aspects of the notion of logical consequence are vague: there may be borderline cases of valid arguments. If so, we have to turn to what the correct account of vagueness is. On some theories of vagueness, consequence ends up as relative to something, such as a sharpening or a conversational context, and on others, we end up with a kind of pluralism. Finally, there are a number of interesting and important mathematical theories that employ a non - classical logic, and are rendered inconsistent if classical logic is imposed. This suggests a fourth kind of relativism/pluralism: relativity to structure." (p. 526)

12. Siebel, Mark. 1997. "Variation, Derivability, and Necessity." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 53:117-137

Abstract: "In Bolzano's view, a proposition is necessarily true iff it is derivable from true propositions that include no intuition (Anschauung). This analysis is historically important because it displays close similarities to Quine's and Kripke's ideas. Its systematic significance, however, is reduced by the fact that derivability is defined with recourse to the method of variation, which we are allowed to apply even to propositions containing none of the respective variables. This liberality leads to the result that, according to Bolzano's analysis, every truth is necessarily true. Even by introducing his condition of relevance (shared variables), Bolzano cannot avoid that some propositions come out as necessarily true which are merely contingently true."

13. ———. 2002. "Bolzano's Concept of Consequence." The Monist. An International Quarterly Journal of General Philosophical Inquiry no. 85:581-601

"In the second volume of his Wissenschaftslehre (2) from 1837, the Bohemian philosopher, theologian, and mathematician Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848) introduced his concept of consequence, named derivability (Ableitbarkeit), together with a variety of theorems and further considerations. Derivability is an implication relation between sentences in themselves (Sätze an sich), which are not meant to be linguistic symbols but the contents of declarative sentences as well as of certain mental episodes. When Schmidt utters the sentence 'Schnee ist weiss', and Jones judges that snow is white, the sentence in itself expressed by Schmidt is the same as the one to which Jones agrees in thought. This sentence in itself is an abstract entity: in some sense, it exists; but it is unreal insofar as it lacks a position in space and time, does not stand in causal relationships, and is independent of the existence of thinking beings and languages. (3)" (p. 581)

(*) On the whole, this contribution is a summary of my book Der Begriff der Ableitbarkeit bei Bolzano (Siebel 1996).

(2) I refer to it by 'WL' plus number of volume, section, and page. It is partly translated by Rolf George: Theory of Science, Oxford 1972; but here translations are mine.

(3) Cf. WL I, § 19, pp. 77f.; § 22, p. 90; § 25, p. 112; § 28, p. 121; WL II, § 122, 4.

14. ———. 2011. "“It Falls Somewhat Short of Logical Precision.” Bolzano on Kant's Definition of Analyticity." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 82:91-127

"Kant's famous definition of analyticity states that a judgement is analytic if its subject contains its predicate. Bolzano objects that (i) Kant's definiens permits an interpretation too wide, (ii) the definiens is too narrow, (iii) the definiendum is too limited, and (iv) the definition does not capture the proper essence of analyticity. Objections (i), (iii) and (iv) can be countered. Objection (ii) remains because, among other things, the Kantian definition has an eye only for an analysis of the subject within a judgement."

15. ———. 2019. "Bolzano’s Theory of Judgment." In The Act and Object of Judgment: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives, edited by Ball, Brian and Schuringa, Christoph, 110-128. New York: Routledge

"Section 2 presents one of the many places where Bolzano anticipates Frege’s anti-psychologistic notion of a third realm, which complements the inner realm of mental appearances and the outer realm of perceivable objects. In particular, Bolzano strictly distinguishes between judgments as mental acts and the contents of such acts. In section 3, it is shown how he tries to draw the line between judgments and acts of merely entertaining a thought. Section 4 focuses on the formation of judgments. Of prime importance is the distinction between mediated and unmediated judgments because it is intimately connected with epistemic issues. Section 5 deals with intrinsic qualities of judgments, such as vividness, degree of confi dence, clarity vs obscurity, and distinctness vs confusedness.(1)

The notion of judgment occupies centre stage in Bolzano’s analyses of epistemic concepts. It is not only crucial to his explication of belief ( Meinung ) as a disposition to judge but also to his explications of cognition ( Erkenntnis ) as true judgment and conviction ( Überzeugung ) and knowledge ( Wissen ) as attitudes towards judgments. In the interest of brevity, I will not go into this conceptual enterprise. Instead, it will be pointed out that Bolzano’s theory of judgment includes ingredients one would hardly expect when being told that he anticipated Frege’s antipsychologistic views." (pp. 110-111)

(1) Some of the following considerations may also be found in Siebel (1999) and Siebel (2004).

References

Siebel, M. (1999), “Bolzanos Erkenntnistheorie”, in E. Morscher (ed.), Bernard Bolzanos geistiges Erbe für das 21. Jahrhundert. Sankt Augustin: Academia.

Siebel, M. (2004), “Bolzanos Urteilslehre”, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 86: 56–87.

16. Simons, Peter. 1987. "Bolzano, Tarski, and the Limits of Logic." Philosophia Naturalis:378-405

Reprinted in: Peter Simons, Philosophy and logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski. Selected Essays, Dordrecht, Kluwer 1992, pp. 13-40.

Abstract: "Both Bolzano and Tarski were unsure what counts as logic. This means that Bolzano's concept of logical analyticity, like Tarski's of logical consequence, is not completely determinate.

In a posthumously published paper, Tarski offers a proposal for demarcating the logical objects in a type-hierarchy, based on the idea of invariance under arbitrary permutations of the domain of individuals. In this paper I comment on and extend Tarski's proposal and show how to combine it with Bolzano's procedure of variation among concepts, to obtain a definition of logical constants in a logically significant fragment of a purported Bolzanian realm of meanings in themselves. I conclude with doubts about the propriety and utility of such a realm."

17. ———. 1997. "Bolzano on Collections." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 53:87-108

Abstract: "Bolzano's theory of Collections (Inbegriffe) has usually been taken as a rudimentary set theory. More recently, Frank Krickel has claimed it is a mereology.[*] I find both interpretations wanting. Bolzano's theory is, as I show, extremely broad in scope; it is in fact a general theory of collective entities, including the concrete wholes of mereology, classes-as-many, and many empirical collections. By extending Bolzano's ideas to embrace the three factors of kind, components and mode of combination, one may develop a coherent general account of collections. But it is most difficult to take Bolzano's view to fit modern set theory. So while Krickel's positive thesis is rejected, his negative thesis is confirmed."

F. Krickel, Teil und Inbegriff. Bernard Bolzanos Mereologie, 1995.

18. ———. 1999. "Bolzano, Brentano and Meinong: Three Austrian Realists." In German Philosophy Since Kant, edited by O'Hear, Anthony, 109-136. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

"Bolzano's work will in due course be wholly accessible in print and should present relatively few problems of interpretation. I foresee a steadily growing reputation, but whether he comes to his just recognition will depend on attracting sufficiently many interested and talented commentators. The most promising centre of Bolzano studies is currently Hamburg, where a number of young enthusiasts have gathered around Wolfgang Künne.

Of the three philosophers I have mentioned, Bolzano is without doubt the most considerable. Meinong's theories are in the end unacceptably extreme and Brentano's work is often unclear in its implications, though both say things which are of much value to present-day discussions. On the other hand, whether one agrees with his semantic Platonism or not, Bolzano's views are up to the highest standards of contemporary discussion and in their clarity above much of it. His correspondence with Ferdinand Exner has been called the first text of modern analytical philosophy. Most work has to date concentrated on his logic and semantics, but his ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of religion and philosophy of mathematics all deserve greater exposure. The Complete Edition will serve as a definitive textual basis, but it is very expensive, and we badly need cheap study texts in English and German to complement it, and a good introduction to Bolzano in English. We also need to revise our histories of nineteenth-century philosophy to take adequate account of its greatest representative." (p. 126)

19. ———. 2006. "Austrian Philosophers on Truth." In The Austrian Contribution to Analytic Philosophy, edited by Textor, Mark, 159-183. New York: Routledge

"In this chapter, I shall consider what the principal Austrian philosophers from Bolzano to Popper have had to say on the subject of truth. Since I shall cover a fair number of philosophers and theories, my considerations will be mainly confined to two linked questions:

What – according to the philosopher in question – is the nature of truth?

What ontology is required to explicate truth according to their account?

Further questions concerned with our access to and knowledge of the truth will only be considered as necessary, since they lead into a tangle of issues for which I shall not have the space here. Neither shall I justify my selection of this or that philosopher as ‘Austrian’, but simply press on." (p. 159)

20. ———. 2011. "Bolzano’s Logic."1-19

Available on the website academia.edu

Original translated by Giorgio Volpe and published in Italian as “Bolzano e la logica” in S. Besoli, L. Guidetti and V. Raspa, eds., Bernard Bolzano e la tradizione filosofica. Macerata: Quodlibet. = Discipline filosofiche XXI, 2, 2011, 321–342.

Abstract: "Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre (1837) is one of the two most important works in logic between Leibniz and Frege. In it, Bolzano revolutionised logic by placing it for the first time on a firm semantic footing, employing the concepts of objective, abstract propositions and ideas. The chief instrument in his account of logic is the variation of ideas, which enabled him to define a wide range of logical concepts, and further allowed him to merge deductive logic with a logical conception of probability. This article summarizes the main points of Bolzano’s logic and indicates ways in which they relate to post-Fregean logic."

21. ———. 2015. "Bolzano's Monadology." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 23:1074-1084

Abstract: "Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848), known in his lifetime as ‘the Bohemian Leibniz’, is best known as a logician and mathematician, but he also developed a monadology in which the monads, which he called

‘atoms’, have spatial location and physical properties. This essay summarizes and assesses his monadology."

22. Smart, Harold R. 1944. "Bolzano's Logic." The Philosophical Review no. 53:513-533

"Contemporary advocates of Husserl's phenomenological approach to the problems of philosophy tend, consciously or unconsciously, to convey the impression that there is only slight connection between Bernard Bolzano's logical theories and those of their Master. Unfortunately their attitude on this matter encourages the common belief that Bolzano may be safely ignored by students of logic-that his work in this field is of little consequence at the present time. Yet in Husserl's own estimation Bolzano was one of the greatest logicians of all times, and historians of philosophy have called him a "Leibniz auf b6hmischen Boden".

He was at all events one of the staunchest opponents of the metaphysical logicians following Kant, as well as of Kant himself.

His Wissenschaftslehre (1837), a compendious work in four volumes totalling nearly 2500 pages, draws much of its inspiration from Augustinian and Leibnizian sources, and in turn has served as a basis for certain theories of Brentano, Husserl, Meinong, and others. Like Leibniz he zealously occupied himself with both mathematics and philosophy from early youth, and again like Leibniz he is rightly famous for his distinguished work in both fields. Indeed his Paradoxien der Unendlichen (posth. 1850) is said to have started the great Cantor on his researches in the realm of the mathematical infinite. And he is another of the few thinkers whose chief philosophical writings are in the field of logic. For the rest, his writings are shot through with references to his predecessors, both ancient and modern, and with critical remarks on their doctrines." (p. 513)

23. Stang, Nicholas F. 2013. "A Kantian Reply to Bolzano's Critique of Kant's Analytic-Synthetic Distinction." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 85:33-61

Summary: "One of Bolzano’s objections to Kant’s way of drawing the analytic-synthetic distinction is that it only applies to judgments within a narrow range of syntactic forms, namely, universal affirmative judgments. According to Bolzano, Kant cannot account for judgments of other syntactic forms that, intuitively, are analytic. A recent paper by Ian Proops also attributes to Kant the view that analytic judgments beyond a limited range of syntactic forms are impossible.

I argue that, correctly understood, Kant’s conception of analyticity allows for analytic judgments of a wider range of syntactic forms."

24. ———. 2014. "Kant, Bolzano, and the Formality of Logic." In New Anti-Kant, edited by Lapointe, Sandra and Tolley, Clinton, 192-234. London: Palgrave Macmillan

"In §12 of his 1837 magnum opus, the Wissenschaftslehre, Bolzano remarks that “In the new logic textbooks one reads almost constantly that ‘in logic one must consider not the material of thought but the mere form of thought, for which reason logic deserves the title of a purely formal science’” ( WL §12, 46).(1) The sentence Bolzano quotes is his own summary of others’ philosophical views; he goes on to cite Jakob, Hoffbauer, Metz, and Krug as examples of thinkers who held that logic abstracts from thematter of thought and considers only its form. Although Bolzano does not mention Kant by name here, Kant does of course hold that “pure general logic”, what Bolzano would consider logic in the traditional sense (the theory of propositions, representations, inferences, etc.), is formal.

(...)

In recent work, both John MacFarlane and Sandra Lapointe have argued that this ‘formality thesis’ is original to Kant; according to them, no one in the pre-Kantian, Leibnizian logical tradition held that logic

is about the form of thinking.(3) As MacFarlane points out, the claim that logic is formal is now so widespread that it is often simply asserted without argument. So in criticizing the formality thesis in these post-Kantian figures (whom Lapointe aptly dubs ‘Kantian logicians’) Bolzano is really targeting one of Kant’s most influential ideas in the philosophy of logic." (pp. 192-193)

(1) References to the Wissenschaftslehre ( WL ) are to Bolzano (1837); it is cited by section number and page.

(3) MacFarlane (2002) and Lapointe (2012).

References

Lapointe, S. (2012). ‘Is Logic Formal? Bolzano, Kant and the Kantian Logicians’, Grazer Philosophische Studien, 85, 11–32.

MacFarlane, J. (2002). ‘Frege, Kant, and the Logic in Logicism’, The Philosophical Review, 111, 25–65.

25. Stelzner, Werner. 2002. "Compatibility and Relevance: Bolzano and Orlov." Logic and Logical Philosophy no. 10:137-171

"Ivan Orlov (1886 - not later 1936) is the author of "The Logic of Compatibility of Propositions", Matematicheskii Sbornik 35, 1928, pp. 263-86 (in Russian), "the first precisely elaborated modern system of relevance logic" (p. 137)

"In Bernard Bolzano Orlov had a great predecessor in the attempt of deriving the concept of logical consequence, and indeed of relevant consequence, from the concept of compatibility of sentences. It is appropriate, therefore, to turn to Bolzano in order to check out parallels and divergences in the treatment and role of the compatibility of sentences in Bolzano's and Orlov's logical projects." (p. 142)

26. Sundholm, Göran. 1994. "Ontologic versus Epistemologic: some Strands in the Development of Logic 1837-1957." In Logic and Philosophy of Science in Uppsala, edited by Prawitz, dag and Westerstähl, Dag, 373-384. Dodrecht: Kluwer

"Inferences, that is, acts of passage in which a certain judgement, the conclusion of the inference, is drawn on the basis of certain already made judgements, the premisses of the inference, have yielded their central place at the hard core of logic to relations of logical consequence between propositions that serve as contents of the judgements involved, or even more commonly, between well-formed formulae, that is, between meta-mathematical objects of an uninterpreted formal language. In the present paper I intend to review some of the steps in the process whereby this came about, as well as mention a couple of philosophical corollaries.

Quine, in 1952, held that 'logic is an old subject and since 1879 it has been a great one'.(1) No one reasonably informed concerning the development of logic could possibly object to the first part of this statement, but I want to take mild exception to the second: logic was great also prior to to the appearance of Frege's Begriffsschrift.(2) From the perspective I am concerned to develop here, 1837 is as important a year as 1879. In that year Bernhard Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre made its appearance in four mighty tomes.(3)" (pp. 373-374)

(1) Methods of Logic, Holt and Co., N.Y. 1950, p. vii.

(2) Louis Nebert, Halle, Jena 1879.

(3) J. von Seidel, Sulzbach.

27. ———. 1998. "MacColl on Judgement and Inference." Nordic Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 3:119-132

"The theme of our conference is that of Hugh MacColl and the logical tradition. From any point of view, surely, judgement and inference are (possibly the) central components of the logical tradition. However, they do not occur as such in MacColl’s Symbolical reasoning(s).

(...).

Accordingly, I begin with a rational reconstruction of what I see as the pivotal moment in the 19th century logical tradition, namely Bolzano’s introduction of a novel form of judgement, which will be used to take the measure of the early MacColl with respect to judgement and inference." (p. 119)

(...)

!Why does this Bohemian priest [Bolzano] deserve pride of place over and above such luminaries as Boole, Peirce and Frege? For more than two thousand years, logic has been concerned with how to effect valid acts of inference from judgements known to other judgements that become known through the inference in question. Basically, these judgements take the subject/copula/predicate form [S is P]. Bolzano now has the courage to break with this traditional pattern and uses instead the unary form

(1) A is true;

where A is a Satz an sich, or a Gedanke, in the later alternative terminology of Frege. The latter term was translated into English as proposition by Moore and Russell, with an unusually confusing ambiguity as a result: prior to 1900 a “proposition” stood for a judgement (made), whereas later it came to stand for the propositional content of such a judgement." (p. 120)

28. ———. 1999. "When, and Why, did Frege read Bolzano?" In Logica Yearbook 1999, 164-174

"Michael Dummett wrote:

The only nineteenth-century philosopher of whom it would be reasonable to guess, just from the content of his writings and those of Frege, that he had influenced Frege, is Bernhard Bolzano, who died in the year Frege was born; but there is no evidence whatever that Frege ever read Bolzano(1)

Subsequently he was taken to task by Wolfgang Künne for having made the 'grave mistake' of misspelling 'Bernard', the first name of Bolzano.

However, in my opinion, this is not the only mistake in the quote from Dummett. In the present note I wish to dispute that 'there is no evidence whatever that Frege ever read Bolzano'. On the contrary, by combining two well-known sets of facts, I shall argue, one obtains strong evidence that Frege did read Bolzano late 1905 or early 1906." (p. 164, a note omitted)

(...)

"On the strength of internal evidence I have argued that Frege did read Bolzano.

Was it in fact possible for him to do so? It certainly was, as Dr. Uwe Dathe, of the Philosophical Institute at Jena University, has been kind enough to check.(26) The University Library at Jena owns a set of Bolzano's collected works from 1882. The acquisition is not dated, but from the library stamp and binding it is clear that the set must have been obtained shortly after its appearance.

Unfortunately, the library ledgers for the years 1821-1899, which have miraculously been retained, are in too bad a state to allow for any conclusion whether Frege actually borrowed the work during that period.(27)

Finally, if, as I aver, Frege did read Bolzano, why does he not simply say so? The answer here surely lies in his character: throughout his career Frege never acknowledges, but always disagrees.(28) His sprit seems to have been essentially adversarial. He is the typical Gegner who only attacks, but who cannot be bothered to agree." (p. 172)

(1) Frege and Other Philosophers, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991, p. VII.

(2) 'Propositions in Bolzano and in Frege', in: Grazer Philosophische Studien (Bolzano and Analytic Philosophy; edited by Wolfgang KUnne, Mark Siebel and Mark Textor) 53 (1997), pp. 202-240, at p. 203.

(26) Private letter, November 26,1998.

(27) Of course, if I am right, a later loan, in 1905 or 1906, outside the period of the ledgers, would be more likely.

29. ———. 2002. "A Century of Inference: 1837-1936." In In the Scope of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. Vol. II, edited by Gardenfors, Peter, Wolenski, Jan and Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna, 565-580. Dordrecht: Kluwer

"The first serious breach in the traditional logical fortress was broached by one thoroughly steeped in the Scholastic patrimony, namely Bernard Bolzano, in another Wissenschaftslehre from 1837. This, however, is no puny pamphlet,but a monumental four-volume tome.(5) Like all good ideas the basic idea behind Bolzano's magisterial change is essentially simple: Bolzano revolutionizes logical theory by "objectivizing" the middle column of the traditional diagram. This objectivization consists in severing the left - and right-hand links to mind and language, thereby obtaining objective "Platonist" logical notions, for which Bolzano ironically adopts the Kantian 'an sich' idiom.

Thus, the (mental) terms become objective "ideas-in-themselves" (Vorstellungen an sich). (6) The judgements made, that is, the mental propositions, become propositions-in-themselves (Satze an sich), that is, propositions in the modem, post-Russellian sense.(7) Finally, the mental inferences are replaced by Ableitbarkeiten, that is, relations of (logical) consequence between propositions-inthemselves.

The resulting change with respect to the form of judgement is particularly interesting. In place of the traditional bipartite Subject/copula/Predicate form Bolzano uses the unary form

C is true,

where C is a Satz an sich, that is, a proposition that serves as content of the judgement in question (WL §34). The form of the proposition C, on the other hand, stays close to the traditional [S is P]. Bolzano uses [A has b], where A and b are Vorstellungen an sich, that is, (what corresponds to) objectivizations of the mental products of simple apprehensions, as canonical form for the objective propositions. Thus, he converts the traditional form of judgement into a form of content:

The proposition that the rose has redness is true

instead of

The rose is red." (pp. 567-568. a note omitted)

(7) Russell ([Principles of Mathematics] 1903, Appendix A) might be responsible for sanctioning the unfortunate use of the term Russell (1903, Appendix A) might be responsible for sanctioning the unfortunate use of the term proposition for the Fregean Gedanken.

30. ———. 2009. "A Century of Judgement and Inference: 1837-1936. Some Strands in the Development of Logic." In The Development of Modern Logic, edited by Haaparanta, Leila, 263-318. New York: Oxford University Press

§ 3. Revolution: Bolzano’s Annus Mirabilis, pp. 269-273.

"My office in the present chapter is to tell how, within a century, the notions of judgment and inference were driven out of logical theory and replaced by propositions and (logical) consequence. Systematic considerations guide the treatment. My history is unashamedly Whiggish: A current position will be shown as the outcome, or even culmination, of a historical development. No apology is offered, nor, in my opinion, is one needed." (p. 263)

(...)

"Bolzano’s revolution with respect to the traditional picture is threefold.

First, the middle (“product”) column of the traditional schema is objectified.

The mental links are severed, and thus, in particular, the traditional notions mental term (concept, idea) and mental proposition (judgment) are turned into their ideal, or Platonist, counterparts idea-in-itself (Vorstellung an sich) and proposition-in-itself (Satz an sich).(23) Second, the pivotal middle square of the diagram is altered: The judgment made no longer takes the traditional (S is P) form. Logic is no longer term logic. Instead Bolzano uses the propositional, unary form of judgment that was canvassed above, with his Sätze an sich taking the role of judgable contents:

The Satz an sich S is true.(24)

Third, Bolzano bases his logical theory, not on inference (from judgments known to judgment made), but on (logical) consequence between propositions.(25)

Judgment is dethroned and its content now holds pride of place in logical theory." (pp. 269-270)

(23) The English rendering of Bolzano’s Satz an sich is a matter of some delicacy.

The modern, Moore-Russell notion of proposition, being an English counterpart of the Fregean Thought (German Gedanke), really is an an sich notion, and, for our purposes, essentially the same as Bolzano’s Satz an sich. Thus, proposition-in-itself is pleonastic: The in-itself component is already included in the proposition.

Furthermore, the mental propositions and their linguistic signs, that is, written or spoken propositions, as explained, carry assertoric force, whereas Bolzano’s Sätze an sich manifestly do not, serving, as they do, in the role of judgmental content. (...)

(24) WL, §34.

(25) Occasionally I shall permit myself to drop the “in-itself” idiom in the interest of perspicuity and readability and speak just of “propositions.”

31. Świętorzecka, Kordula. 2017. "Bolzano’s Argument for the Existence of Substances: a Formalization with Two Types of Predication." Acta Analytica no. 32:411-426

Abstract: "The topic of our analysis is the argument for the existence of substances given by Bernard Bolzano in Athanasia (1827), where he essentially employs two ontological categories: substance and adherence. Bolzano considers the real and conditioned Inbegriff of all adherences, which are wirklich and nicht selbst bestehen.

He claims that the formed collection is dependent on something external and nonadherential, which therefore is a substance. Bolzano’s argumentation turns out to be structurally similar to his argument for the existence of God from Lehrbuch der Religionswissenschaft (1834), but in each of these reasonings, we find different plausible interpretations of the key concept “Inbegriff”. The latter argumentation refers to the mereological totality of existentially conditioned objects. We propose the explication of the Bolzanian Inbegriff of all adherences using two types of predication: we consider its extension as composed of certain intensional counterparts of adherences.

In our approach, we use a fragment of the theory of abstract objects formulated by E. Zalta (1983), describing two different relations between individuals and properties: extensional exemplification and intensional encoding. We put our reconstruction in a wider context of Bolzano’s ontology, formulating the needed axioms with two primitive predicates of second order ... is an adherence, ... is conditioned by something real as well as the conditionally introduced first order predicate constant In for Inbegriff of all adherential ideas. Finally, we sketch a model for our theory."

References

Zalta, E. (1983). Abstract object: an introduction to axiomatic metaphysics, D. Dordrecht: Reidel.

32. ———. 2019. "Two Formal Interpretations of Bolzano’s Theory of Substances and Adherences." Axiomathes no. 29:265-284

Abstract: "Our research concerns a formal representation of Bolzano’s original concepts of Substanz and Adhärenz. The formalized intensional theory enables to articulate a question about the consistency of a part of Bolzano’s metaphysics and to suggest an answer to it in terms of contemporary model theory. The formalism is built as an extension of Zalta’s theory of abstract objects, describing two types of predication, viz. attribution and representation. Bolzano was aware about this distinction.

We focus on the consistency of this formalism and the description of its semantics.

Firstly, we explore the possibility to reconstruct a Russellian antinomy based on the concept of the Bolzano’s Inbegriff of all adherences. (Bolzano’s theory of ideas is often suspected of antinomial consequences.) Our aim is to show limitations of his theory that prevent a contradiction when the Inbegriff consists of non-selfreferential adherences. Next, we discuss two competing semantics for the proposed theory: Scott’s and Aczel’s semantics. The first one yields a problematic result, that there are no models for the considered theory, containing a non-empty collection of all adherences. This is due to the fact that Scott’s structures verify the formula on reloading abstracts in extensional contexts. We show that Aczel’s semantics does not contain this difficulty. There are described Aczel’s models with a non-empty set of all adherences. The self-referentiality of such a collection becomes irrelevant here.

Finally, we show that there are Aczel’s structures verifying the formula on reloading abstracts and we exclude them from the class of models intended for our theory."

References

Zalta, E. (1983). Abstract object: an introduction to axiomatic metaphysics, D. Dordrecht: Reidel

33. Tarski, Adam. 2002. "On the Concept of Following Logically." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 23:155-196

Translated from the Polish and German by Magda Stroinka and David Hitchcock.

"We provide for the first time an exact translation into English of the Polish version of Alfred Tarski’s classic 1936 paper, whose title we translate as ‘On the concept of following logically’.

We also provide in footnotes an exact translation of all respects in which the German version, used as the basis of the previously published and rather inexact English translation, differs from the Polish. Although the two versions are basically identical, to an extent that is even uncanny, we note more than 400 differences. Several dozen of these are substantive differences due to revisions by Tarski to the Polish version which he did not incorporate in the German version.

With respect to these revisions the Polish version should be regarded as more authoritative than the German. Hence scholars limited to an English translation should use ours." (p. 1)

"After the original of this paper had appeared in print, H. Scholz in his article ‘Die Wissenschaftslehre Bolzanos, Eine Jahrhundert-Betrachtung’, Abhandlungen der Fries’schen Schule, new series, vol. 6, pp. 399-472 (see in particular p. 472, footnote 58) pointed out a far-reaching analogy between this definition of consequence and the one suggested by B. Bolzano about a hundred years earlier." [Note added by Tarski in English in Tarski (1956, 1983).] (p. 67).

34. Tatzel, Armin. 2002. "Bolzano's Theory of Ground and Consequence." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 43:1-25

Abstract: "The aim of the paper is to present and evaluate Bolzano's theory of grounding, that is, his theory of the concept expressed and the relation brought into play by 'because'. In the first part of the paper (Sections 1-4) the concept of grounding is distinguished from and related to three other concepts: the concept of an epistemic reason}, the concept of causality, and the concept of deducibility (i.e., logical consequence). In its second part (Sections 5-7) Bolzano's positive account of grounding is reconstructed in axiomatic form and critically discussed."

35. Textor, Mark. 1997. "Bolzano's Sententialism." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 53:181-202

Abstract: "Bolzano holds that every sentence can be paraphrased into a sentence of the form "A has b". Bolzano's arguments for this claim are reconstructed and discussed. Since they crucially rely on Bolzano's notion of paraphrase, this notion is investigated in detail. Bolzano has usually been taken to require that in a correct paraphrase the sentence to be paraphrased and the paraphrasing sentence express the same proposition. In view of Bolzano's texts and systematical considerations this interpretation is rejected: Bolzano only holds that the sentence to be paraphrased and the paraphrasing sentence must be equipollent ("gleichgeltend"). It is shown that even this modest view of paraphrase does not help Bolzano in sustaining his claim that all sentences have the form "A has b"."

36. ———. 2001. "Logically Analytic Propositions A Posteriori?" History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 18:91-113

"In this paper I will be concerned with Bolzano's explication of logical analyticity or I-analyticity for short. Nowadays Balzano is often seen as a forerunner of the so-called substitutionalist account (Etchemendy) of I-analyticity for sentences, the property that distinguishes logical truths (falsehoods) from "ordinary" truths (falsehoods). I will argue that Bolzano's explication does not correspond closely to the modern account. My reason for this heterodox view is not that Balzano tries to define what makes a proposition, roughly, the meaning of a sentence, I-analytic. The problem I am interested in will also arise for an account of I-analyticity for sentences that follows Bolzano's lead. My reason is an epistemological one: Bolzano's account does not allow him to say that I-analytic propositions can be known a priori. But according to most philosophers' understanding of I-analyticity this epistemological feature is central to the notion of logical truth. Hence, Bolzano's account does not capture an important feature of the concept of a logical truth or the broader concept of an I-analytic proposition." (p. 91)

37. ———. 2003. ""Caius-at-Noon" or Bolzano on Tense and Persistence." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 20:81-102

Translated in French as: "Bolzano sur le temps et la persistence", Philosophiques, 30, 2003, pp. 105-125.

"Bolzano's fame among contemporary analytic philosophers is mainly due to his achievements in the philosophy of logic.

(...)

What is less well known is that Bolzano also uses histheory of propositions to define a variety of epistemological and metaphysical notions. Among the metaphysical notions so defined is the notion of time. Crucial for his definition of time is Bolzano 's thesis that

a tensed natural language sentence attributing a substantial property to an actual thing expresses only a complete proposition if it contains an expression like "in (at) t" as part of its subject-term.

Bolzano consequently rejects the Aristotelian idea that tense attaches to predicables.(1) Bolzano's proposal is of interest for contemporary philosophers, because it bears a striking resemblance to contemporary theories in which expressions like "Caius at noon" refer to temporal parts. This paper is primarily concerned with a reconstruction and evaluation of the part of Bolzano's doctrine of propositions that is the basis of his definition of time. The definition itself will be a topic for another occasion. First things first. The following sketch of Bolzano's definitional strategy and its rationale shall introduce the reader to Bolzano's general project, which connects tense and time." (pp. 81-82)

(1) Aristotle puts his view forward in De Interpretalione 16b6 and 16b8.

For recent defenses see P. T. Geach, Reference and Generality (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1962), §27, and D. Wiggins "Substance," in Philosophy, ed. A. C. Grayling (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 232.

38. ———. 2013. "Bolzano on the Source of Necessity: A Reply to Rusnock." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 21:381-392

Abstract: "According to Bolzano, an object has necessary being if, and only if, there is a conceptual truth that ascribes being to it. I (Textor, 1996, chapter 5) proposed that the notion of conceptual truth bears the explanatory weight in Bolzano's theory of necessity because, ultimately, the truth of such a proposition depends only on the nature of the concepts it contains. Rusnock (2012) argues against this interpretation and proposes, in turn, that for Bolzano necessity and contingency are tied to free choice. In this article I will provide conceptual and historical background for Bolzano's view of necessity and use it to motivate my interpretation as well as to rebut Rusnock's criticism."

References

Rusnock, P. ‘Remarks on Bolzano’s Conception of Necessary Truth’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 20, 817-837, (2012).

Textor, M. Bolzanos Propositionalismus (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 1996.

39. ———. 2013. "Bolzano’s Anti-Kantianism: From a Priori Cognitions to Conceptual Truths." In The Oxford Handbook of The History of Analytic Philosophy, edited by Beaney, Michael, 227-250. New York: Oxford University Press

Abstract: "Bernard Bolzano was born in 1781, the year of the publication of the first edition of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason; he died in 1848, the year of Gottlob Frege’s birth. These dates are symbolic. Bolzano’s work is a link between Kant’s philosophy and early analytic philosophy of which Frege is a key exponent. In this chapter I will discuss how Bolzano’s criticism of Kant shapes Bolzano’s theory of propositions. In connection with this I will outline how Bolzano discovered the method of variation and give an overview of his results in employing this method."

40. ———. 2013. "Bolzano on Conceptual and Intuitive Truth: the Point and Purpose of the Distinction." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 43:13-36

Abstract: "Bolzano incorporated Kant's distinction between intuitions and concepts into the doctrine of propositions by distinguishing between conceptual (Begriffssätze an sich) and intuitive propositions (Anschauungssätze an sich). An intuitive proposition contains at least one objective intuition, that is, a simple idea that represents exactly one object; a conceptual proposition contains no objective intuition. After Bolzano, philosophers dispensed with the distinction between conceptual and intuitive propositions. So why did Bolzano attach philosophical importance to it? I will argue that, ultimately, the value of the distinction lies in the fact that conceptual and intuitive truths have different objective grounds: if a conceptual truth is grounded at all, its ground is a conceptual truth. The difference in grounds between conceptual and intuitive truths motivates Bolzano's criticism of Kant's view that intuition plays the fundamental role in mathematics, a conceptual science by Bolzano's lights."

41. ———. 2022. "Grounding, Simplicity, and Repetition." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies, edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 301-318. New York: Oxford University Press

"For Bolzano, grounding often goes along with a reduction of propositional complexity, where he takes the complexity of a proposition to depend not only on how many ideas occur in it, but also by how often each of them occurs (so that the proposition that Ann is wise is less complex than the proposition that Ann isn't unwise). But this raises the Repetition Problem, which Mark Textor explores in his paper: how can a whole contain one and the same entity more than once?" (p. 37)

42. Thompson, Paul B. 1981. "Bolzano’s Deducibility and Tarski’s Logical Consequence." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 2:11-20

Abstract: "In this paper I argue that Bolzano's concept of deducibility and Tarski's concept of logical consequence differ with respect to their philosophical intent. I distinguish between epistemic and ontic approaches to logic, and argue that Bolzano's deducibility presupposes an epistemic approach, while Tarski's logical consequence presupposes an ontic approach."

43. Tolley, Clinton. 2012. "Bolzano and Kant on the Place of Subjectivity in a Wissenschaftslehre." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 85:63-88

Summary: "Throughout his career, Bolzano presents his account of knowledge and science as an alternative to 'the Critical philosophy' of Kant and his followers. The aim of this essay is to evaluate the success of Bolzano's own account—and especially, its heavy emphasis on the objectivity of cognitive content—in enabling him to escape what he takes to be the chief shortcomings of the 'subjective idealist philosophy'. I argue that, because Bolzano's own position can be seen to be beset by problems that are both recognizably similar to, and possibly even worse than, those that he takes to afflict Kant's account of the elements of our knowledge, Bolzano's attempt to fully overcome the alleged vices of Kant's idealism by 'extruding' semantic content from the mind must be judged to be less than satisfactory."

44. ———. 2013. "Bolzano and Kant on the Nature of Logic." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 33:307-327

Abstract: "Here I revisit Bolzano's criticisms of Kant on the nature of logic. I argue that while Bolzano is correct in taking Kant to conceive of the traditional logic as a science of the activity of thinking rather than the content of thought, he is wrong to charge Kant with a failure to identify and examine this content itself within logic as such. This neglects Kant's own insistence that traditional logic does not exhaust logic as such, since it must be supplemented by a transcendental logic that will in fact study nothing other than thought's content. Once this feature of Kant's views is brought to light, a much deeper accord emerges between the two thinkers than has hitherto been appreciated, on both the nature of the content that is at issue in logic and the sense of logic's generality and formality."

45. ———. 2014. "Bolzano and Kant on Space and Outer Intuition." In New Anti-Kant, edited by Lapointe, Sandra and Tolley, Clinton, 157-191. London: Palgrave Macmillan

"Challenges to Kant’s account of geometry appear already in some of Bolzano’s earliest publications (cf. Bolzano 1810), and are developed more sustainedly in his later discussions of Kant in the 1837 Wissenschaftslehre (‘ WL ’) and those recorded by Příhonský in the 1850 New Anti-Kant (‘ NAK ’). Bolzano argues, against Kant, that it is possible to define the representation of space through mere concepts alone, without this definition including any representations whatsoever drawn from intuition (cf. WL §79.6, I.366; §79 Anm, I. 369–370; NAK 74). In this respect, Bolzano thereby puts forward a form of geometrical ‘logicism’ avant la lettre.(4) In fact, Bolzano’s criticisms go considerably further, insofar as he argues that the very idea of a pure intuition is essentially incoherent (as we will see below, cf. §§4–5).

Yet while existing treatments of Bolzano’s criticism of Kant on space have focused primarily on Bolzano’s contrasting account of knowledge in geometry and mathematics more broadly, much less attention has been paid to the consequences that Bolzano’s rejection of pure intuition has for Bolzano’s own account of our intuitions of external objects – representations that Bolzano himself also calls ‘outer intuitions’.(5) This will be my focus in what follows." (p. 158)

(4) Cf. Coffa 1991, 27f.; Sebestik 2003, 54f.; cf. Palagyi 1902, iii.

(5) An early start on this topic can be found in Palagyi 1902, chapter VI (esp.

§18). Some more recent helpful treatments of related topics can be found in George 2003 and Rosenkoetter 2012. For a discussion of Bolzano’s rejection of Kant’s doctrine of the pure intuition of time that is in key ways complementary to what follows, see George 1987.

References

Bolzano, Bernard. (1810). Beiträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik. Prague: C. Widtmann.

Coffa, Alberto. (1991). The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

George, Rolf. (1987). ‘Bolzano on Time’, Philosophia naturalis, 24, 452–468.

George, Rolf. (2003). ‘Intuitions’, Philosophiques, 30.1 (Printemps

Palagyi, Melchior. (1902). Kant und Bolzano: eine kritische Parallele . Halle: Max Niemeyer.

Rosenkoetter, Timothy. (2012). ‘Kant and Bolzano on the singularity of intuitions’, Grazer Philosophische Studien, 85, 89–129.

Sebestik, Jan. (2003). ‘La dispute de Bolzano avec Kant’, Philosophiques, 30.1 (Printemps), 47–66.

46. Trlifajová, Katerina. 2018. "Bolzano’s Infinite Quantities." Foundations of Science no. 23:681-704

Abstract: "In his Foundations of a General Theory of Manifolds, Georg Cantor praised Bernard Bolzano as a clear defender of actual infinity who had the courage to work with infinite numbers. At the same time, he sharply criticized the way Bolzano dealt with them.

Cantor’s concept was based on the existence of a one-to-one correspondence, while Bolzano insisted on Euclid’s Axiom of the whole being greater than a part. Cantor’s set theory has eventually prevailed, and became a formal basis of contemporary mathematics, while Bolzano’s approach is generally considered a step in the wrong direction. In the present paper, we demonstrate that a fragment of Bolzano’s theory of infinite quantities retaining the part-whole principle can be extended to a consistent mathematical structure.

It can be interpreted in several possible ways. We obtain either a linearly ordered ring of finite and infinitely great quantities, or a partially ordered ring containing infinitely small, finite and infinitely great quantities. These structures can be used as a basis of the infinitesimal calculus similarly as in non-standard analysis, whether in its full version employing ultrafilters due to Abraham Robinson, or in the recent ‘‘cheap version’’ avoiding ultrafilters due to Terence Tao."

47. van der Schaar, Maria. 2007. "Bolzano on Judgement and Error." In The Logica Yearbook 2006, edited by Tomala, O and Honzi, R., 211-221. Prague: Filosofia

"Keeler (1934) ends his history of the problem of error with Kant, and Balduin Schwarz, in his article on ‘Irrtum’ in the Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, only mentions ‘the important analysis’ of error given by Bolzano. In the less known third part of the Wissenschaftslehre (1837), the ‘Erkenntnislehre’, there are several chapters on judgement, knowledge and truth, with a special section on error. Besides the logical / conceptual question how error is possible, Bolzano also asks the epistemological / psychological question what the causes of error are, how error arises in us.

With respect to the concept of error, one has to distinguish between act and product. ‘Error’ and the German term ‘Irrtum’ stand for the product, resulting from an act of erring (‘das Irren’). The distinction is a special case of the distinction between the act of judgement and the judgement product. Both act and product need to be distinguished from the proposition, which Bolzano also calls an error, if it is false but held true.

Because Bolzano explains error primarily as incorrect judgement (WL, I, § 36), the question what judgement is comes first (section 2). To understand the concept of error, one also needs to understand what knowledge is (section 3).

In my analysis of Bolzano’s notions of judgement and knowledge I have profited from Mark Siebel’s two recent articles on these topics (Siebel, 1999 and 2004). In section 4 Bolzano’s concept of error will be dealt with." (p. 212)

References

Keeler, L. W. (1934). The Problem of Error from Plato to Kant, Rome.

Siebel, M. (1999). Bolzanos Erkenntnistheorie. In E. Morscher (Ed.). Bernard Bolzanos geistiges Erbe für das 21. Jahrhundert (59–96). Sankt Augustin: Academia.

Siebel, M. (2004). Bolzanos Urteilslehre. In Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 86, 56–87.

48. Waldegg, Guillermina. 2001. "Ontological Convictions and Epistemological Obstacles in Bolzano's Elementary Geometry." Science and Education no. 10:409-418

Abstract: "Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848) was a contemporary of the founders of non-Euclidean geometry and of the renovation of projective geometry. However, he did not participate in the movement transforming concepts and methods which crystallized in a new order of geometry at the beginning of the nineteenth century. On the contrary, throughout his life Bolzano tried to demonstrate Euclid's postulate of parallel lines.

Two ontological convictions played the role of epistemological obstacle for Bolzano and prevented him even from imagining the possibility that non-Euclidean geometries might exist. In the first place, Bolzano thought that Euclidean geometry had an intrinsic structure and thus geometrical space must be intrinsically Euclidean. Secondly, the description of this structure contained the existence of an “objective” connection between geometrical truths; a basic truth was, by its nature, “simple and general”.

This article forms part of the body of work aimed at identifying obstacles in the history of mathematics in order to confront them with obstacles to learning and to establish their epistemological character."

49. ———. 2005. "Bolzano’s Approach to the Paradoxes of Infinity: Implications for Teaching." Science & Education no. 14:559-577

Abstract.: "In this paper we analyze excerpts of Paradoxes of the Infinite, the posthumous work of Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848), in order to show that Georg Cantor’s (1845–1918) approach to the problem of defining actual mathematical infinity is not the most natural. In fact, Bolzano’s approach to the paradoxes of infinity is more intuitive, while remaining internally coherent. Bolzano’s approach, however, had limitations. We discuss implications for teaching, which include a better understanding of the responses of students to situations involving actual mathematical infinity, for it is possible to draw a kind of parallel between these responses and Bolzano’s reasoning."

50. Wedberg, Anders. 1984. "Perfection and Innovation: Bernard Bolzano." In A History of Philosophy. Vol. 3: From Bolzano to Wittgenstein, 51-85. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

51. Winner, Thomas G. 1994. "Peirce and Bolzano." In Living Doubt. Essays Concerning the Epistemology of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Debrock, Guy and Hulswit, Menno, 157-169. Dordrecht: Reidel

"Like Peirce, whom he preceded by roughly half a century, Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848), the brilliant mathematician, logician and semiotician who taught and wrote in Prague, was little recognized in his lifetime. Like Peirce, he endured persecution for his uncompromising attitudes, in his case both in science and political-religious life: also Bolzano’s teaching career, like Peirce’s, was cut short, in Bolzano’s case because of official displeasure of the Vatican and the Vienna court over his resolute and unwavering liberalism in religious, social and political matters and towards the relation of Czechs and Germans in the Bohemian crownlands of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Bolzano’s principal scientific contribution was, like Peirce’s, in the area of mathematics and logic; and Bolzano’s logic, like Peirce’s, contained major contributions to semiotics, which Bolzano called the theory of signs (Zeichenlehre) and Semiotik, though Bolzano’s Zeichenlehre was certainly not as comprehensive and systematic as Peirce’s semeiotic. Unlike Peirce, Bolzano is known primarily to logicians and to specialists in Catholic theology, while his semiotics has received relatively little attention." (p. 157)

52. Wrinch, Dorothy Maud. 1917. "Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848)." The Monist.An International Quarterly Journal of General Philosophical Inquiry no. 27:83-107

"In Bolzano we find the virtues of human sympathy and insight coupled with the austerer virtues of the metaphysician and logician. He was a man of action as well as a man of ideas. He was well known for his kindly disposition and his broadmindedness. He possessed not only the sympathy with the poor necessary for a social reformer, but the ability to develop his ideas of social reconstruction on practical lines. Not only did he elaborate a theory of an ideal state, but he also introduced numerous reforms in the actual state of which he was a member. He studied theology very earnestly as a young man and later wrote a great deal on the subject. Even though his liberal views brought him into collision with those on whom his livelihood depended, yet he courageously continued his teaching and writing, always making it his aim to seek for truth. He was a metaphysician of some importance and his treatises on metaphysics are valuable, not only for the original thought which they contain, but also for his important criticisms of Kant. In esthetics his work is by no means without interest, and to the psychology and ethics of his day he made very valuable contributions. But preeminently he was a mathematician and logician." (p. 83)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bernard Bolzano: bibliography of the English translations

Bibliography

1. Bolzano, Bernard. 1996. "Contributions to a Better-Grounded Presentation of Mathematics (1810)." In From Kant to Hilbert: a Source Book in the Foundations of Mathematics. Vol. I, edited by Ewald, William, 174-224. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Translation by Steve Russ, (abbreviated: BD) revised reprint in The Mathematical Works of Bernard Bolzano, pp. 87-137.

"The work BD must be one of the first books devoted to what we would now call foundations of mathematics, or philosophy of mathematics. (Indeed, this latter phrase was the title given to it by Fels for the second edition.) After a short Preface the first main part is devoted to the nature of mathematics and its proper classification. The second part deals with definitions, axioms, proofs, and theorems. It is here that the ground-consequence relation is introduced:

in the realm of truth . . . a certain objective connection prevails . . . . some of these judgements are the grounds of others and the latter are the consequences of the former. (BD II § 2)

He goes on to explain that the proper purpose to pursue in a scientific exposition is to arrange the judgements so as to reflect this objective connection. (p. 21-22)

(...)

An important contribution Bolzano makes here is a solution to the problem of how to define, or come to agreement, on the basic or simple concepts of a system. He says we should do so in the same way as we first learn terms in our mother tongue by considering several propositions containing the term (see BD II § 8). This is akin to what we would call implicit definition and, of course, is closely related to axiomatic systems. However, this is hindsight; there is no suggestion that Bolzano did, or could, consider axiom systems with the degree of formality familiar since the work of Hilbert.

Any such book as BD could hardly ignore Kant and his thinking aboutmathematics and accordingly there is an Appendix devoted to a criticism of Kant's theory of the construction of mathematical concepts through pure intuition. The central point of Bolzano's criticism was that the very notion of pure intuition was incoherent containing, he believed, internal contradictions. An excellent account of this, and indeed the whole methodology outlined in BD, is contained in Rusnock Bolzano's Philosophy and the Emergence of Modern Mathematics (2000), Ch. 2. For a more extended and philosophical discussion of Bolzano's views of proof and their relationship to Kant see Lapointe (forthcoming) [Bolzano's Semantics and his Criticism of the Decompositional Conception of Analysis" in The Analytic Turn, Michael Beaney (Ed.), London, Routledge, 2007, pp.219-234].

Steve Russ, from the reprint in The Mathematical Works of Bernard Bolzano, pp. 22-23.

2. ———. 1972. Theory of Science, Attempt at a Detailed and in the Main Novel Exposition of Logic with Constant Attention to Earlier Authors. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Translation of selected section of Wissenschaftslehre edited by Rolf George.

The Index lists the complete contents of the first three books of the Wissenschaftslehre.

Cited as: George 1972.

Contents: Acknowledgments VII; Editor's Introduction XXIII; Bibliography XLVIII; Introduction 1; Book One: Theory of Fundamentals 19; Book Two: Theory of Elements 59; Book Three: Theory of Knowledge 303; Book Four: Heuretic 373; Book Five: Theory of Science Proper 385; Index of Special Symbols, phrases and Sentence Forms 393; Index of Subjects 393; Index of Persons 396; (*) Names Omitted (list of persons to whom reference had to be omitted in the present edition) 398; Translation of Key Terms 399.

"During the earliest stages of my work on this translation, I enjoyed the co-operation and advice of my teacher, the late Henry S. Leonard. A preliminary draft of the first volume was finished in 1958, but at that time I was still thinking of a complete translation of all four volumes. I was eventually persuaded that early complaints about the unnecessary bulk of the work had their point. Kambartel's very successful attempt at shortening the first two volumes (Bernard Bolzano's Grundlegung der Logik, Hamburg, 1963) finally convinced me that an abbreviated version was not only feasible, but desirable." (p. VII).

(*) Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre is an admirable source book for, and commentary upon, the history of logical theory. The following is the list of persons to whom references had to be omitted in the present edition." (p. 398)

3. ———. 1973. Theory of Science. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Edited, with an introduction, by Jan Berg. Translated from the German by Burnham Terrell.

Part A: Selections from the Wissenschaftslehre pp. 35-367; Part B: Excerpts from Bolzano's Correspondence pp. 371-383; Bibliography pp. 385-389.

Cited as: Berg 1973.

Table of Contents: Preface XV; Editor's Intreoduction 1; Part A. A selection from the Wissenschaftslehre (Sulzbach 1837, Leipzig 1914-31) Volume One 35; Volume Two: 167; Volume Three 305; Volume Four 357; Part B. Excerpts from Bolzano's Correspondence 371; Bibliography 385; Name Index 391; Subject Index 393-398.

"The present selection from the Wissenschaftslehre of Bernard Bolzano aims at giving a compact view of his main ideas in logic, semantics, epistemology and the methodology of science. These ideas are analyzed from a modern point of view in the Introduction. Furthermore, excerpts from Bolzano's correspondence are included which yield important remarks on his own work.

The translation of the sections from the Wissenschaftslehre are based on a German text, which I have located in the Manuscript Department of the University Library in Prague (signature: 75 B 459). It was one of Bolzano's own copies of his printed work and contains a vast number of corrections made by Bolzano himself, thus representing the final stage of his thought, which has gone unnoticed in previous editions." (from the Preface).

4. ———. 2014. Theory of Science. New York: Oxford University Press.

First complete translation by Rolf George and Paul Rusnock.

Volume One: Theory of Fundamentals and Theory of Elements (part I): Introduction; Book One: Theory Of Fundamentals; Part I: Of The Existence of Truths in Themselves; Part II: Of the Recognizability of Truth; Book Two: Theory of Elements: Part I: Of Ideas in Themselves.

Volume Two: Theory of Elements (part II): Book Two: Theory of Elements (continued); Part II: Of Propositions in Themselves; Part III: Of True Propositions; Part IV: Of Inferences.

Volume Three: Theory of Knowledge and the Art of Discovery; Book Three: Theory of Knowledge; Part I: Of Ideas; Part II: Of Judgements; Part III: Of the Relation Between our Judgements and Truth; Part IV: Of Certainty, Probability, and Confidence in Judgements; Book Four: The Art of Discovery; Part I: General Rules; Part II: Particular Rules.

Volume Four: Theory Of Science Proper; Book Five: Theory Of Science Proper; Part I: General Rules; Part II: On the Determination of the Extensions of the Sciences; Part III: On the Choice of a Class of Readers for a Treatise; Part IV: On the Propositions Which Should Appear in a Treatise; Part V: On the Divisions of a Treatise; Part VI: On the Order to Which the Propositions Belonging to a Treatise Should Appear; Part VII: Theory of Signs or, On the Signs Used in Or Recommended by a Treatise; Part VIII: How the Author of a Treatise Should Behave; Part IX: On Scientific Books That Are Not Genuine Treatises.

5. ———. 2007. Selected Writings on Ethics and Politics. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Translated by Paul Rusnock and Rolf Georg.

Contents: Introduction 1; I. Selected Exhortations 43; II. On Rights, Civil Disobedience, and Resistance to Authority 141; III. Ethics and Philosophy of Religion 169; IV. Political Philosophy 241; V. Index 359-368.

"In his own day, few appreciated Bolzano's contributions to theoretical philosophy and mathematics: only a small number were even aware that he had done this work. He was renowned. rather, for his work as "catechist". professor of religious science (Religionswissenschaft) at the Charles University in Prague from 1805 to 1819. In this highly visible position, Bolzano had become one of the most prominent advocates of social justice and reform in his homeland, a national philosopher who was the "social and political conscience of Bohemia" (4)

(4) W. Künne, "Bernard Bolzano über Nationalismus und Rassismus in Böhmen," p. 97-139 in E. Morscher and O. Neumaier ed. Bolzanos Kampf gegen Nationalismus und Rassismus. Beitrage zur Bolzano-Forschung 4, Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag. 1996, p. 97.

6. ———. 2015. "On the Concept of the Beautiful: A Philosophical Essay (§§1–25)." Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics no. 52:229-266.

Partial translation by Adam Bresnahan of Über den Begriff des Schönen. Eine philosophische Abhandlung [On the concept of the beautiful. A philosophical treatise] (Prague, 1843).

"Preface

The fact that I have decided to fill so many pages with the analysis of a single concept may for some seem to demand explanation. I can only reply that this concept seems to me to be of particular importance; and further, that the analysis of concepts is a matter that always demands expansive inquiries if one is to go beyond merely saying that the concept is reducible to its parts and actually convince the reader, thus also taking care to demonstrate that the attempts at explicating the concept that have been made thus far are lacking in one way or another. After I have completed this essay on the fundamental concept of aesthetics, I will not deem it necessary to proceed with such thoroughness in the essays that follow." (p. 229)

7. ———. 2004. The Mathematical Works of Bernard Bolzano. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Contents: Preface XII, Introduction 1; Part I: Geometry and Foundations 11. 1.1: Elementary Geometry (1804) 25; 1.2: Contribution to a Better-Grounded Presentation of Mathematics (1810 83); Part II: Early Analysis 139. 2.1: The Binomial Theorem (1816) 155; 2.2: A Purely Analytic Proof (1817) 255; 2.3: Three Problems of Rectification, Complanation and Cubature (1817) 279; Part III: Later Analysis and the Infinite 345. 3.1: Infinite Quantity Concepts (1830s) 355; 3.2: Theory of Functions (1830s) 429; 3.3: Improvements and Additionsd to the Theory of Functions (F+) 573; 3.4: Paradoxes of the Infinite (posthumous 1851) 591; Selected Works of Bernard Bolzano 679; Bibliography 685; Name Index 691; Subject Index 693.

"The main goal of this volume is to present a representative selection of the mathematical work and thought of Bolzano to those who read English much better than they could read the original German sources. It is my hope that the publication of these translations may encourage potential research students, and supervisors, to see that there are numerous significant and interesting research problems, issues, and themes in the work of Bolzano and his contemporaries that would reward further study. Such research would be no small undertaking.

Bolzano's thoughtwas all of a piece and to understand his mathematical achievements properly it is necessary to study his work on logic and philosophy, as well as, to some extent, on theology and ethics. Of course, it would also be necessary to acquire the linguistic, historical, and technical skills fit for the purpose. But the period of Bolzano's work is one of the most exciting periods in the history of Europe, from intellectual, political, and cultural points of view. And with over half of the projected 120 volumes of Bolzano's complete works (BGA) available, the resources for such research have never been better. Thework on mathematics and logic has been particularly well-served through the volumes already published." (p. XII).

8. Ewald, William. 1996. From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of Mathematics. Vol. I. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Contents: 6. Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848): A. Preface to Considerations on some objects of elementary geometry 172 (Bolzano 1804); B. Contributions to a better-grounded presentation of mathematics 174 (Bolzano 1810); C. Purely analytic proof of the theorem that between any two values which give results of opposite sign there lies at least one real root of the equation 225 (Bolzano 1817a); D. From Paradoxes of the infinite 249-292 (Bolzano 1851).

9. Bolzano, Bernard. 1950. Paradoxes of the Infinite. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

The Paradoxien originally appeared in 1851, were reprinted in facsimile in 1889 and edited afresh in 1921 by A. Höfler, with annotations by H. Hahn.

Translated from the German of the posthumous edition by Franz Prihonský and furnished with a historical introduction by Donald A. Steele.

New translation in The Mathematical Works of Bernard Bolzano, pp. 591-678.

Contents: Short title key to Bolzano references IX; Donald A. Steele: Historical Introduction 1; Translation 59; Selected bibliography 176; Index of Persons and Place 185; Index of Topics 188-189.

"The Paradoxien are the work of Bolzano's old age. Indeed, the modern mathematical reader who takes the text as it stands will be occasionally disappointed, and may misjudge Bolzano if he has not also read his earlier work. The qualification of taking the text 'as it stands' is not otiose. Our received version, here translated from the 1851 Leipzig edition, is a posthumous one by a friend with whom Bolzano discussed the topics in question for the last few years of his life. The competence of Prihosnky, as an editor of mathematical matter and the trustworthiness of the received version of the Paradoxien have recently been placed in doubt by Martin Jasek, the discoverer of the counter-example.

The antecedents of the Paradoxien go back at least as far as 9 June 1842, when Bolzano read 'that part of his paper on the march of ideas to be followed in a truly scientific exposition of mathematics which deals with the finite and infinite.' The next traces are three instalments of papers read as follows: on 9 January 1845 about 'a solution of sundry paradoxes occurring in the mathematical sciences' ; on to December 1846 about 'calculations with infinite numerical expressions'; and on 24 February 1848 about 'the paradoxes occasioned in mathematics by the idea of the infinite.' The gradual crystallisation of the eventual title is manifest. Between the first and second paper, on 3 February 1845, Bolzano wrote to Prihonsky that he was busy with sundry paradoxes in mathematics; between the second and third, he wrote twice to Fesl: on 26 February 1848 that he now realised more than ever the importance of the topics of the Paradoxien for mathematics and its philosophy, and on 24 June 1848 that the matter for the Paradoxien is constantly expanding under his pen. Finally, on 30 November 1848, only eighteen days before his death, Bolzano read a final instalment under the final title of Paradoxien des Unendlichen.

Unlike the manuscript of the Funktionenlehre, that of the Paradoxien was never made ready for the press by the author himself. That task fell to his devoted but none too mathematical friend Prihonsky. In fact, Bolzano himself had entertained doubts about the posthumous treatment of his mathematical papers, for he wrote to Fesl as early as 12 June 1842 that he was convinced 'that his mathematical ideas, in their present form, could not be really well edited by any of his friends.' This premonition on Bolzano's part comes to corroborate the suspicions of Jasek.

Those suspicions were aroused by a palpable contradiction between the Funktionenlehre and the Paradoxien.

The received text of §37, pages 65-66, as distinguished from the footnote, makes no actual assertion as to the universal existence of derivates of continuous functions; Bolzano simply intends to choose such as are differentiable for a certain purpose: 'Ich begehre nichts anderes, als dass.' But a footnote says it can be shown that 'all well defined functions' are bound to be differentiable 'save possibly for a set of arguments which may indeed be infinite, but whose members must be individually isolated.' No proof is attempted. Jasek ('Aus dem handschriften Nachlass Bernhard Bolzanos', Vestnik Kralovske Ceske Spolecnosti Nau, Trida matematicko-prirodovedeckd (1923), pp. 29-32) claims to possess evidence that the footnote is interpolated. He suspects Slivka von Slivitz, another pupil and friend of Bolzano, of being Prihonsky necessary but not sufficient mathematical counsellor, and of having timorously desired to shield Bolzano from the appearance of mathematical heresy which his counterexample may well have borne to contemporaries.

A fresh critical study of the manuscript is indicated, and external obstacles stand in the way for the present. The difficulty does not, however, reside solely in the passage noticed by Jasek. It recurs in §45, page 88. Strictly speaking, again, there is even here no actual assertion that all continuous functions are differentiable, and the question is further complicated by the admitted fact that the posthumous editor found the manuscript in places rather illegible, in spite of his acquaintance with Bolzano's peculiar abbreviation practices. The presumption of guilt on the part of von Slivitz is slightly enhanced, in Jasek's eyes, by a study of his marginal annotations to a copy of the Funktionenlehre. With baffling contrariety, it is also slightly alleviated by the fact that the Zusammensetzung der Krafte, published in 1842 by Bolzano himself -- and embodying with acknowledgement some suggestions by von Slivitz -- proceeds (§52, page 29) to differentiate a function of which only the continuity is known, together with its satisfaction of conditions which are not quoted as if they established the otherwise uncertain differentiability. The hypothesis that Bolzano's mathematical discrimination had become dulled between 1830 and 1848 on this point at least is simple and not to be rejected a priori; but neither is it to be accepted easily until renewed and exact archivial research compels us to do so." (pp. 53-55).

10. ———. 2004. On the Mathematical Method and Correspondence with Exner. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Translated by Paul Rusnock and Rolf George.

Contents: Acknowledgements 4; Introduction 5; A note on the translation 37; I. On the Mathematical Method 39; II. Selections from the Bolzano-Exner Correspondence 83; III. Bolzano and Exner on Ideas and their objects: an exchange from 1843 175; IV. Indices 185; Index of Names 186; Index of Subjects 188-191.

There are thee version of the essay on mathematical method; the translation if from the latest version (pp. 23-78 of the original edition).

"It is clear that Bolzano was not satisfied with the logic set out in the Contributions [1810]. Already in 1812 he had resolved to write another treatise on logic,(4) a project he worked on for close to a decade following his dismissal. The result was one of the great works of nineteenth-century philosophy, the Theory of Science.(5) The Theory of Science was ready for the press by 1830, at which time Bolzano started writing the Theory of Magnitudes [Grossenlehre], a treatise intended to supply a unified foundation for all of contemporary mathematics.(6) Although he wrote several hundred pages, many of them all but ready for the press, but died before finishing his work. Some elements of his mathematical system were published after his death in the Paradoxes of the Infinite,(7) edited by his friend and student F. Prihonsky, but the bulk remained all but unknown until well into the twentieth century. The essay "On the Mathematical Method", translated here, formed part of the introductory matter of the Theory of Magnitudes, and was intended to present the essentials of Bolzano's logic to a mathematical audience.

Due in large part to his troubles with the Austrian authorities, the Theory of Science remained unpublished for almost a decade (it was finally published outside Austria, in Bavaria, in 1837). This did not mean, however, that Bolzano's logic remained unknown. Long accustomed to an invasive and often arbitrary censorship, Bohemian intellectuals had developed unofficial channels for communicating their ideas, a precursor of the Samizdat system which was later to flourish in that land. Bolzano's mature logic received its first airing in this way, when, in 1833, he had a copy made of the essay on mathematical method and sent it to Franz Exner, the newly appointed professor of philosophy in Prague.(8)

Exner (1802-1853) was born and educated in Vienna, where he studied philosophy with Rembold, who like Bolzano (and for similar political reasons) had been removed from his university chair in 1825. In 1830, Exner was put in the uncomfortable position of taking his teacher's place, being called upon to fill the vacant chair on a temporary basis. In 1832 he moved to Prague, where he was named to the chair of philosophy. Outside of his official duties, in good Austrian fashion, he organized a "circle" of intellectuals which met regularly at his house. Although a born and bred Viennese, he was sensitive to the special circumstances of Bohemia, particularly to the disadvantaged situation of the Czech majority. Politically, though not always philosophically, he was very much on Bolzano's side: with the Bohemian enlightenment and opposed to the conservative reaction in both church and state. Exner was a follower of Herbart, who had a substantial following in Austria at the time, and whose doctrines were to become in effect the official philosophy of the Empire, in part due to Exner's influence when he worked for the Ministry of Education from 1845 until his death.(9)

Exner responded to Bolzano in June of 1833, beginning a correspondence that would continue for the rest of Bolzano's life. The most intense philosophical exchanges occurred during 1833 and 1834, when the letters translated here were written. The two continued their discussion in person in 1834, when Bolzano returned to Prague from June to November. There would also be a later exchange of views in a pair of papers read at the Royal Bohemian Academy of Sciences in the early 1840s. We have translated Bolzano's contribution, which contains the relevant passages from Exner's, in this volume." (pp. 6-8)

(4) Philosophische Tagebucher 1811-1817, in J. Berg, F. Kambartel, J. Louzil, B. van Rootselaar, and E. Winter ed., Bernard Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe (hereafter BBGA) (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1969-) Series 2B Vol. 16/1, p. 34-36.

(5) Wissenschaftslehre (Sulzbach, 1837). New edition by Jan Berg in the BBGA. Hereafter WL.

(6) BBGA IIA, Vols. 7-10; Volumes 7, 8 and 10/1 have already been published.

(7) Paradoxien des Unendlichen (Leipzig, 1851), English translation by D. Steele (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950).

(8) Three versions of the essay on mathematical method survive. Our translation is based upon the latest version. Most likely, however, the version that Exner received differed somewhat from this one. A Czech translation of an earlier work on logic, "O logice" (= "Etwas über Logik" BBGA 2A5, p. 139-168), was actually published somewhat earlier (1831).

(9) Cf. Biographisches Lexicon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich, part 4 (Vienna, I 858); Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, vol. 6 (Leipzig, 1877).

11. Russ, S. B. 1980. "A translation of Bolzano’s paper on the intermediate value theorem." Historia Mathematica no. 7:156-185.

Summary: "This is the first English translation of Bolzano's paper, Rein analytischer Beweis des Lehrsatzes, dass zwischen je zwey Werthen, die ein entgegengesetzes Resultat gewahren, wenigstens eine reelle Wurzel der Gleichung liege (Prague 1817). It has already appeared in French, Russian, and Czechoslovakian translations.

The paper represents an important stage in the rigorous foundation of analysis and is one of the earliest occasions when the continuity of a function and the convergence of an infinite series are both defined and used correctly."

Note: The content of the two anthologies from the Wissenschaftslehre is different, so the books are complementary.

Excerpts from the Theory of Science

The main work of Bolzano, Wissenschaftslehre, (1837) was published n four volumes: Wissenschaftslehre: Versuch einer ausführlichen und grösstetheils neuen Darstellung der Logik, mit steter Rücksicht auf deren bisherige Bearbeiter. Herausgegeben von mehren seiner Freunde. Mit einer Vorrede von Dr. J. Cr. Heinroth. - Sulzbach.

Critical edition edited by Jan Berg: Gesamtausgabe - Voll.11-14 (1985-2000).

Vol. I XVI+571 [3], vol. II VIII+568+[2], vol. III VIII+575 and vol. IV XX+683 pages; the work is composed of five book in 718 paragraphs.

Summary (from the translations of Rolf George [George 1972] and Jan Berg [Berg 1973]; the citations by Bolzano are from the Introduction, 15):

Introduction (1-16). Logic as a theory of science

Book One: Theory of Fundamentals Truths (17-45) "including the proof that there are truths in themselves and that we humans also have the capacity to know them"

Purpose, Contents and Divisions of this Book (17)

Refutation of some Objections (18)

Part One: Of the Existence of Truths in Themselves (19-33)

Part Two: Of the Recognizability of Truth (34-45)

Book Two: Theory of Elements "or the theory of ideas, propositions, true propositions and inferences in and of themselves"

Purpose, Contents, and Sections of this Book (46)

Part One: Of Ideas in Themselves (47-114)

Appendix: Earlier Treatment of the Subject Matter of this Part (115-120)

Part Two: Of Propositions in Themselves (121-184)

Appendix: Earlier Treatment of the Subject Matter of this Part (185-194)

Part Third: Of True Propositions (195-222)

Part Fourth: Of Arguments (223-253)

Appendix: Earlier Treatment of the Subject Matter of this Part (254-268)

Book Three: Theory of Knowledge "or concerning the conditions underlying the possibility of knowing the truth, particularly among us humans"

Purpose, Content, and Divisions of this Book (269)

Part One: Of Ideas (270-289)

Part Two: Of Judgments (290-306)

Part Third: Of the Relation between Judgments and Truth (307-316)

Part Fourth: Of Certainty, Probability and Confidence in Judgments (317-321)

Book Four: The Art of Invention (322-391) "or rules to be observed in the enterprise of thought when it is aimed at discovering the truth"

Book Five: Theory of Science proper (392-718) "or rules that must be observed in dividing up the domain of truth generally into particular sciences and in presenting those sciences in specialized scholarly treatises."

1. What the Author Understands by Theory of Science

Suppose that all truths which are now, or eve were, known to any man were somehow collected together, e.g. compiled in a single book; I would call such an aggregate the sum of all human knowledge. Compared to the immense domain of truths in themselves, most of which are altogether unknown, this sum is very small; but it is large, ever too large a sum for the mental capacity of any man.(...)4. It should be possible through some reflection t find the rules which we must follow in dividing the total domain of truth into individual sciences and which must govern the writing of the respective treatises. There can also be no doubt that the sum of these rules itself deserves to be called a science, since it is clearly worth while to collect the most important part of the in a special book, and to order the and provide proofs for them so that everyone can understand and accept them with conviction. I allow myself to call it the theory of science [Wissenschaftslehre], since it is the science which teaches us to represent other sciences (actually only their treatises) (...) [Berg 1973]

§ 15. General Outline of this Treatise

It is desirable that the theory of science proper should be preceded by a discussion of rules to be followed in the discovery of truths: heuretic. Heuretic seems to require an antecedent discussion of the general conditions of human knowledge: epistemology. Epistemology can be fruitfully developed only if it is preceded by the theory of ideas, propositions and deductions: the theory of elements. The latter will be preceded by a theory of fundamentals in which it is proved that there are truths and propositions in themselves. [George 1972].

§ 19. What the author Means by a Proposition in Itself

In order to indicate as clearly as possible to my readers what I mean by a proposition in itself (Satz an sich), I shall begin by explaining first what I call as assertion or a proposition expressed in words. I use this term to designate a verbal statement (most often consisting f several, but at times of just a single word) if it is an instrument of asserting or maintaining something, if it is therefore always either true or false, on of the two, in the ordinary sense of these words, if it (as can also say) must be either correct or incorrect (...) But I also call the following sequence of words a proposition: 'Squares are round'. For through this form of words something is also stated or asserted, although something false and incorrect. On the other hand, I do not call the following expressions propositions: 'The omnipresent God', 'A round square'. For though these expressions something is indeed represented but nothing is stated or asserted. Consequently one can, strictly speaking, neither say that there is anything thru, nor that is anything false in them. [Berg 1973].

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bernard Bolzano: Bibliographie des Études en Français

Traductions

1. Rychlík, Karel. 1961. "La théorie des nombres réels dans un ouvrage posthume manuscrit de Bernard Bolzano." Revue d’histoire des sciences et de leurs applications no. 14:313-327.

"La théorie des nombres réels (T.N.R.) de Bernard Bolzano fait partie de sa Grössenlehre (Théorie des quantités), laissée en manuscrit et restée inachevée. C'est principalement au cours des années 1830 à 1835, après avoir terminé son oeuvre importante sur la logique, Wissenschaftslehre (Théorie de la science), que Bolzano travaillait à cette vaste oeuvre.

(...)

Dans sa T.N.R., Bolzano tâche tout d'abord d'effectuer l'arithmétisation de la T.N.R., qui fut développée beaucoup plus tard de trois manières différentes par K. Weierstrass (1860), C. Méray (1869), et G. Cantor (1872), et finalement par R. Dedekind (1872). Bolzano peut être considéré à bon droit comme précurseur de ces mathématiciens: l'idée du fondement purement arithmétique des nombres réels se dessine chez lui tout à fait nettement, bien que ses considérations concernant ce sujet ne soient pas tout à fait irréprochables.

Bolzano donne ensuite le « développement de Cantor » des nombres réels; il le prend pour point de départ pour déduire les propositions ultérieures concernant les nombres réels; la trichotomie des relations « plus grand » et « plus petit », le théorème d'Archimède (Eudoxe), le théorème de Cauchy-Bolzano, le théorème de Bolzano-Weierstrass et finalement un théorème qui rappelle le théorème de Dedekind. Ces considérations pourraient, sans grands changements, être amenées à la précision requise de nos jours. Ce manuscrit de Bolzano publié, même en son état actuel, aurait pu accélérer considérablement le progrès des mathématiques.

La Ire Partie du présent article contient un Abrégé du manuscrit de la T.N.R.

Dans la IIe Partie intitulée « Conclusion », je tâche de corriger et de compléter l'oeuvre de Bolzano.

La IIIe Partie comprend la Bibliographie." (pp. 313-314).

2. Sebestik, Jan. 1964. "Bernard Bolzano et son mémoire sur le théorème fondamental de l’Analyse." Revue d’Histoire des Sciences no. 17.

Traduction de Rein analystischer Beweis der Lehrsatzes (1817) avec le titre: Démonstration purement analytique (pp. 136-164).

Repris dans B. Bolzano, Premiers écrits. Philosophie, logique, mathématique, pp. 209-243.

3. Bolzano, Bernard. 1975. Qu'est-ce que la philosophie? Québec: Presses de l'Université de Laval.

Rédigé en 1839; traduction et commentaire par Denis Macabrey.

4. ———. 1987. "De la mathématique universelle ou arithmétique." Archives de Philosophie no. 50:403-411.

Traduction et commentaire de Jan Sebestik.

Repris dans B. Bolzano, Premiers écrits. Philosophie, logique, mathématique, pp. 259-261.

5. ———. 1990. "Sur la doctrine kantienne de la construction des concepts par les intuitions." Philosophie no. 27:3-12.

Traduction de l'Appendice à Contributions zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik (1810) par Jacques Laz; repris dans: J. Laz, Bolzano critique de Kant, Paris, Vrin, 1993, p. 161-82.

Version revue et corrigée dans B. Bolzano, Premiers écrits. Philosophie, logique, mathématique, pp. 131-138.

6. ———. 1992. "Introduction à la théorie des grandeurs et Wissenschaftslehre." In Logique et fondements des mathématiques. Anthologie (1850-1914), edited by Rivenc, François and de Roulhan, Philippe, 15-28. Paris: Payot.

Traduction et commentaire de Jan Sebestik.

7. ———. 1993. Le paradoxes de l'infini. Paris: Seul.

Traduction de Hourya Sinaceur.

8. Prihonski, Franz. 2006. Bolzano contre Kant. Le Nouvel Anti-Kant. Paris: Vrin.

Introduit, traduit et annoté par Sandra Lapointe.

9. Bolzano, Bernard. 2008. De la méthode mathématique et Correspondance Bolzano - Exner. Paris: Vrin.

Œuvres choisies I.

Traduction coordonnée par Carole Maigné et Jan Sebestik.

10. ———. 2010. Premiers écrits. Philosophie, logique, mathématique. Paris: Vrin.

Œuvres choisies II.

Édition coordonnée par Carole Maigné et Jean Sebestik.

11. ———. 2012. "Du concept du beau, § 37-40." In Formalisme esthétique Prague et Vienne au XIXe siècle, edited by Maigné, Carole, 57-73. Paris: Vrin.

Traduction par Carole Maigné et Gaëtan Pégny de Über den Begriff des Schöen, BGA I 18, pp. 87-238, (§ 37-40).

12. ———. 2015. "Textes choisis sur les domaines des sciences, l’intuition et la théorie du langage." Philosophie no. 2:12-21.

Traduit et présenté par Alain Gallerand.

Bibliographies

1. Lapointe, Sandra. 2003. "Bibliographie." Philosophiques:235-243.

"Cette bibliographie a pour but de faire le point sur les études bolzaniennes de langue française et d’orienter le lecteur à travers la littérature sur le sujet.

Nous y faisons l’inventaire des articles et monographies francophones portant sur Bolzano — dont le nombre, comme on aura tôt fait de le constater, reste regrettablement marginal. Le lecteur y trouvera également la liste des traductions françaises publiées ou projetées des oeuvres de Bolzano. Nous incluons les monographies et les traductions anglophones les plus importantes et nous fournissons le descriptif du projet d’édition des OEuvres complètes (Bernard Bolzano-Gesamtausgable) de même que la liste des ouvrages parus en allemand et en anglais dans la série Contributions aux recherches bolzaniennes (Beiträge zur Bolzano-Forschung). Pour un complément à cette bibliographie, on consultera Sebestik (1992). Le nombre de publications en allemand et en anglais est plus considérable. On consultera à ce sujet les volumes 2 et 10 des Beiträge zur Bolzano Forschung." (p. 235)

References

Sebestik, Jan, Logique et mathématique chez Bernard Bolzano, Paris, Vrin, 1992.

Études (A - L)

1. "Bernard Bolzano." 1999. Revue d'Histoire des Sciences no. 52:339-506.

Numéro spécial consacré à la mathématique et à la logique chez Bolzano, rassemblant les contributions suivantes en français :

Hourya Sinaceur: Mathématique et logique chez Bolzano. Introduction 339-341; Hourya Sinaceur: Réalisme mathématique, réalisme logique chez Bolzano 457-477; Jan Sebestik: Forme, variation et déductïbilité dans la logique de Bolzano 479-506.

2. "Bernard Bolzano." 2000. Les Études Philosophiques no. 4:433-534.

Sous la direction de Jocelyn Benoist.

Table des matières: Jocelyn Benoist: Présentation 433; Mark Textor: Bolzano et Husserl sur l'analyticité 435; Sandra Lapointe: Analyticité, universalité et quantification chez Bernard Bolzano 455; Claudio Majolino: Variation(s) I. Bolzano et l'équivocité de la variation 471; Ali Benmakhlouf: La proto-sémantique de Bolzano 489; Jocelyn Benoist: Pourquoi il n'y a pas d'ontologie formelle chez Bolzano 505; Jacques Bouveresse: Sur les représentations sans objet 519-534.

3. "Bernard Bolzano : Philosophie de la logique et théorie de la connaissance." 2003. Philosophiques no. 30.

Sous la direction de Sandra Lapointe.

Index: Sandra Lapointe: Introduction: Bernard Bolzano: contexte et actualité 3; Rolf George; Intuitions 19; Jan Sebestik: La dispute de Bolzano avec Kant: fragment d'un dialogue sur la connaissance mathématique 47; Paul Rusnock: Qu'est-ce que la représentation? Bolzano et la philosophie autrichienne 67; Benjamin Schnieder: Bolzano sur la structure des propositions et le rôle sémantique des propriétés 83; Mark Textor: Bolzano sur le temps et la persistance 105; Peter Simons: Bolzano sur les nombres 127; Jocelyn Benoist: Propriété et détermination: Sémantique et ontologie chez Bernard Bolzano 137; Edgar Morscher: La définition bolzanienne de l'analyticité logique: 149; Mark Siebel: La notion bolzanienne de déductibilité 171; Armin Tatzel: La théorie bolzanienne du fondement et de la conséquence 191; Jacques Dubucs et Sandra Lapointe: Preuves par excellence 219; Sandra Lapointe: Bibliographie 235-243.

4. Benmakhlouf, Ali. 2000. "La proto-sémantique de Bolzano." Les Études Philosophiques 489-504.

"Le projet de B. Bolzano, « le Leibniz de la Bohême », est de considérer comme une des tâches de sa vie le fait d’« endiguer l’épouvantable désordre que Kant, sans le présumer lui-même, a occasionné par ses philosophèmes en Allemagne »(2). Husserl lui rend hommage dans les Prolégomènes à la logique pure : « C’est sur l’ouvrage de Bolzano [la Wissenschaftslehre], que la logique doit s’édifier comme science »(3), car ce nouveau Leibniz a su mettre la philosophie sur le chemin d’un « savoir théorique analytique universel » sans l’obstruer de « vision du monde ou de sagesse universelle », équivoque préjudiciable au progrès philosophique. Deux perspectives vont retenir ici notre attention :

1 / Dans les Contributions à une exposition des mathématiques sur de meilleurs fondements, texte de 1810, Bolzano invalide l’existence de l’intuition pure en nous montrant que c’est là une notion contradictoire. Kant était parti des mathématiques pour élaborer cette notion, c’est des mathématiques que vient aussi la critique. Les propositions arithmétiques n’empruntent rien à l’intuition et sur cette base minent le fondement épistémologique kantien.

2 / Autre chantier ouvert : la distinction entre ordre en soi de la vérité et ordre pour nous ; seul le premier ordre est objet de la science. Il faut rompre avec l’idée d’une connexion étroite entre l’indémontrabilité et l’immédiateté. L’immédiat pour nous, donné par l’intuition ou l’évidence ne relève pas de l’indémontrable, qui est toujours en soi et indépendant de nous. Les critères de l’indémontrable sont la simplicité et la justification, ceux de l’immédiateté sont l’intuition et l’évidence, nous avons là deux régimes totalement différents de la connaissance. Par là même la coïncidence kantienne entre l’acte de conscience et le formel auto fondateur de l’accord de la connaissance avec elle-même est non seulement inutile mais nuisible, comme l’a montré J. Cavaillès (4)." (p. 491)

(2) Testament de Bolzano, cité, in Laz, Bolzano critique de Kant, Vrin 1991, p. XIII.

(3) Husserl, Prolégomènes à la logique pure, tr. fr., PUF, p. 248-259.

(4) Kant avait souligné le fait que la logique générale faisait abstraction de tout contenu de la connaissance, c’est-à-dire de toute relation de celle-ci à un objet, nous sommes en droit de nous demander si cette abstraction est possible, si, comme le note J. Cavaillès, l’ « abstraction qui donne le logique étant radicale », nous ne tombons pas finalement dans le « vide »; «ni du côté matière, puisqu’elle porte sur l’indéfini “tout objet”, ni du côté forme, elle ne s’accroche à une qualification positive ». La question de Cavaillès à Kant est alors la suivante: «Que tirer de l’exigence d’accord de la pensée avec elle-même sinon l’éternelle répétition » ? (...) « Pour que l’accord revêtit un sens plein, il faudrait qu’il y eut au moins une différenciation à l’intérieur de la pensée, que l’occasion du désaccord possédât déjà un contenu, mais la logique serait alors logique transcendantale ou dialectique » (in Sur la logique et la théorie de la science, p. 6, Hermann, 1994).

5. Benoist, Jocelyn. 1997. "De Kant à Bolzano : Husserl et l'analyticité." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale:217-238.

Repris dans : J. Benoist : Phénoménologie, sémantique, ontologie. Husserl et la tradition logique autrichienne, Paris: P.U.F., 1997 avec le titre : L'héritage de Bolzano : l'analytique formel, pp. 59-81.

"Donner une définition correcte de l'analyticité exige d'abord l'abandon de l'approche« subjective»(1) de ce phénomène induite par les formulations kantiennes. Tant qu'on en reste à la question de savoir si le prédicat était ou non« pensé dans le sujet», il est malaisé de séparer le fait et le droit et de donner une détermination précise au problème.

Qu'est-ce en effet qu'être pensé ou non dans un concept? A l'analyse il devient évident que le problème ne peut pas se réduire à celui de savoir si la représentation avancée comme prédicat était ou non contenue dans ma représentation du sujet. L'analyticité, si elle a un sens, est un fait objectif, qui concerne la structure même de ce à quoi je suis confronté dans mon jugement, la vérité de ce jugement, et non le« contenu» de mes représentations. Distinguer l'analytique et le synthétique, c'est départager des conformations de jugement, en tant que celles-ci définissent des formes différentes pour les objets eux-mêmes (des types d'« objectivité» différents). D'une certaine façon, par là même, l'analyticité (ou son contraire) n'est plus à chercher nulle part ailleurs que dans la proposition elle-même, fût-elle idéalisée - comme c'est le cas chez Bolzano - et non dans les« représentations» (au sens de représentations du sujet) qui y sont associées.

La percée décisive est accomplie par Bolzano lorsqu'il développe au § 148 de la Wissenschaftslehre une théorie originale de l'analyticité, fondée sur le concept leibnizien de substituabilité." (pp. 64-65, une note omise)

(1) Comme c'est le reproche général adressé à Kant par Bolzano. Cf. la présentation de Jacques Laz, Bolzano critique de Kant, Paris, Vrin, 1993.

6. ———. 1999. L'a priori conceptuel. Bolzano, Husserl, Schlick. Paris: Vrin.

"Pour Bolzano, toute proposition est essentiellement composition (Zusammensetzung) de représentations(2), qui sont pour elles de véritables parties(3). À partir de là, on peut envisager la variation (Veränderung) de certaines de ces parties. Est analytique une proposition qui conserve la même valeur de vérité quelque représentation que l’on substitue à un ou plusieurs éléments représentationnels distingués en elle (i, j, ...)(4). Cette définition, qui se rattache aux recherches leibniziennes sur la substituabilité plus qu’à Kant, est extraordinairement souple : il suffit qu’un seul élément représentationnel (sémantique) de la proposition soit librement modulable salva veritate pour la proposition pour qu’elle soit tenue pour analytique. De ce point de vue la définition bolzanienne, tout à la fois objective (sémantique) et pragmatique (elle est adossée à la simple possibilité d’une transformation opérée sur la proposition) déborde largement le cas de la seule analyticité logique - celui qui intéressera Husserl aussi bien. Il est vrai que Bolzano admet aussi une analyticité au sens strict, qu’il nomme « analyticité logique »(5) : celle-ci se caractérise par le fait que dans la proposition qui est analytique en ce sens-là, tout peut faire l’objet de substitution, sauf des concepts «qui appartiennent à la logique ». On aboutit alors à une entente de l’analyticité en son sens radical qui est celle où la valeur de vérité de la proposition n’est plus tributaire que de son armature logique, de ce que Husserl appellera les «concepts formels»(6) qui y interviennent. Cette analyticité bolzanienne fixe, à quelques réserves près sur lesquelles nous reviendrons, le cadre de l'analyticité husserlienne." (pp. 98-99)

(2) Wissenschaftslehre, § 123, Bd. Il, p.4 sq. Nous entendons évidemment ici par « représentation » (Vorstellung), la « représentation en soi » en son sens d’unité sémantique de base (cf. Wissenschaftslehre, § 48, Bd. I, p. 215 sq.).

(3) Sur le sens de cette méréologie, qui constitue une extension de celle constitutive de la représentation elle-même, voir le § 56, Bd. l, p. 243 sq. On notera l’absence de distinction méréologique entre la logique qui gouverne la composition, à base de représentation» simples, des «représentations composées » et celle qui gouverne la composition, à partir d’elles, de «propositions » (qui sont essentiellement constituées de représentations), Elle aura une certaine importance pour notre propos ultérieur.

(4) Wissenschaftslehre, § 148, Bd. II, p. 83. Sur ce qui suit, voir notre exposé dans Phénoménologie, sémantique, ontologie, chap. II, p. 65 sq.

(5) Wissenschaftslehre, § 148, Bd. II, p. 84.

(6) Recherches logiques III, § 11, tr. fr. p. 35.

7. ———. 1999. "Bolzano, Husserl et l'idée de grammaire." Les Études Philosophiques:521-534.

Repris dans : J. Benoist, Entre acte et sens. Recherches sur la théorie phénoménologique de la signification, Paris: Vrin, 2002, avec le titre : Grammaire ou méréologie des représentations, pp. 33-48.

"Au paragraphe 56 de la Wissenschaftslehre, Bolzano avance un principe de compositionnalité (Zusammengesetztheit) des représentations en soi, principe à l’appui duquel il invoque l’expérience phénoménologique de la «représentation pensée », que d’autres textes spécifient comme le corrélat subjectif de la représentation en soi (1): « notre conscience nous enseigne en effet que nous distinguons presque dans chacune des représentations pensées certaines parties, dans la liaison desquelles elle consiste » (2).

L’articulation du langage en mots porte également témoignage d’une telle composition : la simple pluralité des mots employés pour restituer la signification de telle ou telle expression peut renvoyer à la complexité de la représentation, même s’il n’est pas dit, contrairement à ce que pourraient suggérer certaines analyses de Bolzano, qu’elle la réfléchisse exactement (3).

Bolzano a un mot pour désigner la teneur méréologique de la représentation, c’est-à-dire la « somme » de ses parties : le contenu (Inhalt) de la représentation, le mot que Kant utilisait pour désigner son intension (par opposition à son extension). « Somme » (Summe) doit ici être entendu en un sens bien particulier: la somme n’est rien d’autre qu’un ensemble dans lequel une sous-partie d’une partie est encore une partie de l’ensemble (4), et nullement une opération. Cette définition ne comprend aucune contrainte d’ordre: on a en quelque sorte ici affaire aux constituants de la représentation « en vrac ». C’est ce qui constitue son « contenu », autant dire son matériau méréologique. On est donc très loin de la teneur intensionnelle de l' Inhalt au sens kantien du terme.

Bolzano le souligne lui-même :

Comme, par ce contenu, on n’entend que la somme des constituants dont est constituée la représentation, mais non la façon que ces parties ont d’être liées ensemble, une représentation n’est donc pas encore entièrement déterminée par l’indication de son contenu, mais, à partir d’un contenu univoquement donné, on peut parfois obtenir deux (ou plus) représentations différentes (5)." (pp. 35-36)

(1) Cf. Wissenschaftslehre, Sulzbach, 1837, § 48, l’opposition entre la « représentation eue » ou « pensée » et la « représentation en soi ». Le même paragraphe, Bd. I, p. 217, précise qu’à toute représentation subjective correspond une représentation en soi, qui constitue sa matière (Stoff) et pour ainsi dire sa teneur sémantique. Le § 52, p. 228 sq., nous met toutefois en garde contre l’idée d’une corrélation nécessaire de l’une à l’autre, car elle reviendrait à prendre la représentation en soi au piège d’un rapport qui lui demeure extrinsèque.

(2) Wissenschaftslehre, § 56, Bd. I, p. 243. En fait, les deux « remarques » jointes à ce paragraphe, p. 244-246, apportent immédiatement des restrictions à cette transposition du plan subjectif de la représentation au plan objectif: il peut y avoir dans la représentation en soi des parties qui ne sont pas représentées distinctement dans la représentation subjective, voire qui n’y sont pas représentées du tout, de même qu’une partie peut très bien être représentée dans la représentation subjective sans que rien lui corresponde dans la représentation en soi. Il n’y a pas d’isomorphie de l’une à l’autre, mais juste extension d’un seul et même principe de compositionnalité.

(3) La bonne articulation de la représentation serait à trouver au niveau du sens de l’expression, dont la forme linguistique apparente ne reproduit pas forcément la structure. Nous renverrons ici aux réflexions de notre amie Sandra Lapointe sur la notion de paraphrase à introduire chez Bolzano.

(4) Cf. Wissenschaftslehre, § 84, Bd. I, p. 400.

(5) Wissenschaftslehre, § 56, Bd. I, p. 244.

8. ———. 2000. "Pourquoi il n'y a pas d'ontologie formelle chez Bolzano." Les Études Philosophiques 505-518.

Repris dans : J. Benoist, Entre acte et sens. Recherches sur la théorie phénoménologique de la signification, Paris: Vrin, 2002, pp. 49-65.

"Pourtant, y a-t-il une véritable « ontologie formelle » chez Bolzano? Cette notion même peut-elle avoir un sens dans le contexte de pensée qui est le sien?

On peut rappeler ici la mise en garde de Husserl dans Logique formelle et logique transcendantale. Bolzano n’aurait « pas vu la distinction entre la forme vide du quelque chose en général prise comme genre suprême qui se différencie en tant que forme formelle vide et la région universelle de l’existant (Daseiendes) possible (du réel [des Realen] au sens le plus large), région qui se différencie en régions particulières »(2).

Dans son livre sur l’ontologie formelle, Frédéric Nef écrit qu’un tel reproche est « plus intéressant pour la conception qu’il trahit de l’ontologie formelle que pour ce qu’il dit de Bolzano »(3). Et il est vrai qu’une telle critique réfléchit certainement la conception que Husserl se fait de l’ontologie formelle. Pour autant est-elle injustifiée, et ne nous dit-elle rien sur Bolzano? Nous n’en sommes pas sûr. Tout à la fois nous ne sommes pas certains, quant à nous, que Husserl ait raison dans le débat qui l’oppose ici à Bolzano: c’est-à-dire sur le point de savoir s'il faut une ontologie formelle, ou en tout cas si celle-ci peut avoir une portée autre que locale (et rendre compte, par exemple, d’autre chose que des seuls mathematica). Mais nous pensons qu’en revanche Husserl a raison sur un point historique : le diagnostic de l’absence d’ontologie formelle chez Bolzano précisément, et cela en tout sens - et non seulement au sens de Husserl. Sur ce point, Husserl, fin historien de la philosophie à ses heures, nous apprend plus sur Bolzano que les reconstructions modernes. Tout le problème est alors de ré-apprécier la position de Bolzano, dans son originalité bien détectée par Husserl, avec d’autres yeux que ceux de Husserl." (pp. 505-506).

(2) Logique formelle et logique transcendantale, tr. fr. Suzanne Bachelard, Paris, PUF, 1957, § 26d p. 117.

(3) L’objet quelconque. Recherches sur l'ontologie de l'objet, Paris, Vrin, 1998, p. 124.

9. ———. 2000. "Husserl entre Brentano et Bolzano : jugement et proposition." Manuscrito no. 23:11-39.

Résumé : "Il est bien connu que, dans la Ve Recherche Logique, Husserl critique la théorie brentanienne du jugement. Son problème est de définir le “porteur” de vérité auquel le jugement donne une valeur de vérité. Un tel projet le conduit très près du propositionalisme bolzanien. Alors la théorie phénoménologique du jugement apparaît comme une sorte de compromis entre la psychologie brentanienne de l’acte

et un point de vue purement sémantique hérité de Bolzano. La question demeure de savoir si une telle conciliation est possible sans un tournant transcendantal."

10. ———. 2001. Représentations sans objet. Aux origines de la phénoménologie et de la philosophie analytique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Chapitre 1: Bolzano et le paradoxe des objets inexistants, pp. 17-41.

"Il faut rappeler ici brièvement les présupposés qui sont ceux de la Wissenschaftslehre en ce qui concerne la notion de « représentation ». Lorsque, dans la Doctrine des éléments de la Wissenschaftslehre, Bolzano parle de « représentations en soi », il s’agit de ce qu’on pourrait appeler la teneur sémantique de la représentation, et dont le modèle est clairement celui, linguistique, d’unités de sens correspondant aux différents mots, même s’il demeure extrinsèque à ce sens d’être effectivement proféré ou non, et d’apparaître dans un éventuel discours — il lui est en tout cas, si c’est possible, encore plus extrinsèque d’être effectivement représenté ou non (en un sens psychologique) par un sujet. Il s’agit en premier lieu d’une dépsychologisation de la représentation — dont la détermination traditionnelle, mentale, est ravalée au rang de seule représentation « subjective », la « représentation en soi » se voyant aussi, par contraste, qualifiée de « représentation objective». Toute représentation subjective contient comme son sens (sa « matière » : Stoff) une représentation en soi ou objective, qui, en raison même de son statut sémantique, a une dimension d’idéalité, et est indépendante des fluctuations de la subjectivité représentante. Inversement, il n’est pas dit qu’à toute représentation objective doive correspondre une représentation subjective dans laquelle elle viendrait s’incorporer et qui, en quelque sorte, la supporterait. Bolzano dit même très expressément le contraire, et il faut faire droit (ratification ultime de la thèse d’idéalité de la représentation objective) à la possibilité de représentations en soi qui n’auraient pas de manifestation subjective, c’est-à-dire ne seraient représentées ni énoncées par qui que ce soit (1).

Or, parmi les représentations entendues en ce sens-là, sémantique et objectif, il en est qui sont sans objet. C’est l’objet du célèbre § 67 de la Wissenschaftslehre." (pp. 17-18)

(1) Cf. la très importante mise au point n° 2 du § 52 de la Wissenschaftslehre, Bd. I, p. 228 (contre Briefwechsel mit Exner, lettre à Exner du 23 août 1833, p. 86-87: « A chaque représentation objective correspond une représentation subjective qui lui appartient, qui est sa conception (Auffassung). »). Là sans doute on trouverait la limite du rapprochement de la doctrine bolzanienne de la représentation subjective et de la représentation objective et de la doctrine husserlienne de la corrélation noético-noématique — ou plus exactement phansio-ontique, sur le terrain de la doctrine de la signification (cf. Husserl, Sur la théorie de la signification, § 8 b, p. 62). On notera par ailleurs que l’entendement divin sert toutefois alors à Bolzano, de façon traditionnelle, à supporter dans sa pensée les « représentations en soi »: cf. la réserve de la fin du § 48 de la Wissenschaftslehre, Bd. I, p. 218 : «Il peut y avoir des représentations objectives qui ne sont reçues dans la conscience d’aucun être pensant — à l'exception de Dieu » (nous soulignons). Mais Bolzano précisera aussi qu’une telle incarnation est inessentielle à ladite représentation.

11. ———. 2002. Entre acte et sens : recherches sur la théorie phénoménologique de la signification. Paris: Vrin.

Première partie : L'univers du sens: Bolzano; Chapitre I: Grammaire, ou méréologie des représentations 33; Chapitre II: Pourquoi il n'y a pas d'ontologie formelle chez Bolzano 49; Chapitre III: Sens et non-sens 67-86 [inédit].

"De fait, il y a bien une théorie des impossibilia dans la Wissenschaftslehre de Bolzano. Et cette théorie témoigne d’intéressantes similarités, aussi bien que des différences, avec la théorie supposée de Wittgenstein.

Du point de vue de Bolzano, ce problème relève de ce cercle de problèmes connu sous le nom de: représentations sans objet (gegenstandlose Vorstellungen).

Qu’est-ce qu’une représentation sans objet? Et, en premier lieu, qu’est-ce qu’une représentation?

Sous les termes «représentations en soi » et «propositions en soi », Bolzano vise ce qu’on pourrait appeler des entités sémantiques, qui relèvent d’une théorie de la signification.

La seconde classe de ces entités, les propositions en soi, est construite sur la première. Les propositions en soi sont des combinaisons de représentations en soi.

Pourtant, jusqu’à un certain point, dans l’œuvre de Bolzano, les représentations en soi sont déterminées exclusivement en référence aux propositions en soi, qui semblent avoir une sorte de priorité logique. La seule caractérisation que Bolzano semble être capable de donner des dites représentations en soi est que ce sont des parties de propositions en soi (les parties de ces entités porteuses de valeur de vérité que sont les propositions qui ne sont pas encore elles-mêmes porteuses de valeur de vérité).

Les propositions en soi étant définies comme des combinaisons de représentations en soi qui, en tant que combinaisons, ont une valeur de vérité, il semble qu’il y ait là comme un cercle vicieux.

Remarquons cependant que Bolzano, au paragraphe 52-1 de la Wissenschaftslehre, insiste sur le fait que la caractérisation (il s’agit tout au plus d’une explication élucidatrice, ce que Bolzano appellerait une Verstândigung, qui aide à cerner le sens d’un terme, et aucunement d’une définition) de la représentation en soi comme partie de la proposition en soi, partie qui n’a pas encore elle-même de valeur de vérité, est seulement extrinsèque, et nullement essentielle. En réalité, le réalisme sémantique strict qui est le sien conduit Bolzano à considérer que les représentations en soi précèdent leur possible combinaison, et sont, dans leur sens (dans le fait d’avoir un sens pour elles, et dans le contenu de celui-ci), indépendantes de celle-ci. Tout comme les combinaisons dont il est question (id est les propositions en soi, dans le cas où ces combinaisons ont une valeur de vérité) consistent également en elles-mêmes, dans une sorte d’objectivité, indépendamment de tout acte subjectif de combiner." (pp. 68-69)

12. ———. 2002. "La réécriture par Bolzano de l'Esthétique transcendantale." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale:287-303.

Résumé : "L' Elementarlehre de la Wissenschaftslehre de Bolzano peut être lue comme une sorte de réécriture de l' Elementarlehre de la Critique de la raison pure. Bien sûr, on pourrait avoir l'impression que toute Esthétique Transcendantale fait ici défaut. Des déterminations qui sont supposées intuitives chez Kant sont réinterprétées par Bolzano comme purement conceptuelles. Pourtant, en fait, développant sa propre Esthétique Transcendantale du point de vue d'une sémantique objective, Bolzano invente une nouvelle sorte d'a priori pour la sensibilité - précisément un a priori purement conceptuel."

13. ———. 2002. "Bolzano et l'idée de Wissenschaftslehre." In Les philosophes et la science, edited by Wagner, Pierre, 659-678. Paris: Gallimard.

14. ———. 2003. "Propriété et détermination: sémantique et ontologie chez Bernard Bolzano." Philosophiques no. 30:137-148.

Résumé : "L’auteur essaie de circonscrire la sphère du «métaphysique » dans la pensée de Bolzano. Il montre comment la métaphysique de la réalité (Wirklichkeit), avec ses deux ingrédients: les substances et les propriétés (Beschaffenheiten), doit être distinguée de la doctrine du règne « sémantique » (celui des représentations et des propositions en soi). Ces dernières entités n’appartiennent pas à la sphère de l’ontologie, et il est impossible de trouver quelque chose comme une « ontologie formelle » chez Bolzano qui serait en charge de s’occuper d’elles, c’est-à-dire une doctrine qui les traiterait comme des « êtres ». L’auteur s’intéresse, de ce point de vue, à la distinction importante faite par Bolzano, entre les propriétés (Beschaffenheiten), qui doivent être prises en un sens ontologique, et les déterminations (Bestimmungen) qui, bien que rapportées à des objets et éventuellement des êtres, n’ont pas de sens indépendamment d’un discours tenu sur ces objets, et ne sont pas des entités ontologiques à proprement parler. Ainsi, l’auteur essaie de mettre en lumière la complexité des relations entre le plan sémantique et le plan ontologique chez Bolzano: les deux plans doivent être soigneusement distingués, et pourtant demeurent aussi corrélés en un sens complexe."

15. Bouveresse, Jacques. 2000. "Sur les représentations sans objet." Les Études Philosophiques no. 4:519-534.

"Un point crucial de la théorie bolzanienne de la représentation est qu'une représentation doit avoir dans tous les cas un contenu ou plus exactement, pour respecter la terminologie de Bolzano, une matière, mais pas necessairement un objet. Quand on dit d'une représentation subjective qu'elle a un contenu, on veut dire qu'une représentation objective lui est coordonnée. Une représentation contradictoire ne peut pas avoir d'objet; mais il n'en resulte pas que nous ne puissions pas la penser; et, lorsque nous la pensons, nous appréhendons nécessairement une représentation objective. Nous avons des représentations de cette sorte toutes les fois que nous entendons des représentations verbales comme un carré rond, un pentaèdre regulier, etc. «Car sans cela, remarque Bolzano, on devrait dire que ce que nous pensons avec des représentations de cette sorte est ou bien rien du tout ou bien pas plus que ce que nous pensons avec le mot entièrement denue de sens "abracadabra". Mais le fait que nous formulions des propositions comme: "II ne peut pas y avoir un pentaèdre regulier, un carré negatif' comme des verités et qu'acquerir une compréhension de ces verités exige que nous considerions en chacune d'elle son propre objet, celui de la première etant entièrement différent de celui de la deuxième, nous démontre déjaàqu'il n'en est pas ainsi.» (Wissenschaftslehre, § 70)." (p. 519)

16. Brisart, Robert. 2002. "Husserl et Bolzano : le lien sémantique." Recherches Husserliennes no. 18:3-29.

17. Candiotto, Maurizio. 2012. "Représentations sans relation : Bolzano et Frege." Esercizi filosofici no. 7:20-32.

English abstract: "In comparing Frege’s sense (Sinn) with Bolzano’s representations in themselves (Vorstellungen an sich) pivotal is the role of variation, a procedure which both philosophers use to define their respective notions of the objective content (or, rather, the direct object) of thought. The uses they make of such procedure, however, are utterly different : for Bolzano resistance to variation is essential to all representations in themselves, simply as such, while for Frege it is the hallmark of (both the reference and) the sense of unsaturated expressions only, the saturated ones being rather extraneous than resistant to variation. However, the two notions they respectively define by means of variation are not barely incommensurable: there is a matter between them. Moreover, in each of the two philosophers variation – and therefore thought – implies drawing a profile of the entire world. Be it by predicating or even simply by representing, thinking implies outlining nothing less than the entire world. Both in Frege and Bolzano variation can be traced forward to what will be, in the XX century, one of the roots of transcendental philosophy."

18. Cantù, Paola. 2006. "Bolzano et les propositions en soi : une théorie objective des vérités." In Propositions et états de choses. Entre être et sens, edited by Benoist, Jocelyn, 51-66. Paris: Vrin.

"Bernard Bolzano présente sa théorie logique des propositions en soi dans les deux premières parties de sa Wissenschaftslehre, publiée en 1837, mais quelques aspects sont déjà traités dans un échange épistolaire avec Exner daté de 1834 et dans les Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik de 1810: ce dernier texte montre que l’intérêt de Bolzano à la connaissance scientifique et à l’étude de la logique est étroitement lié à la recherche mathématique (1).

Avant d’exposer les différences entre propositions en soi et états des choses et avant d’expliquer les raisons et les conséquences de cette opposition, j’esquisserai quatre traits fondamentaux de la logique bolzanienne: la définition et la fonction des propositions en soi et des représentations en soi, le propositionalisme, qui dans la théorie de la signification attribue le rôle le plus important aux propositions, la nature des relations entre représentations subjectives, objectives et objets, la conception sémantique de la vérité (2).

Parallèlement je mentionnerai quatre conceptions que Bolzano critique vigoureusement: le psychologisme, l’interprétation intentionnelle des représentations en soi, le concept traditionnel de adequatio entendu comme ressemblance entre concepts et objets, l’idée que tous les concepts doués de sens ont un objet, soit réel soit irréel.

L’analyse des fondements de la théorie logique de Bolzano nous permet de remarquer:

– que la théorie de la vérité n’est pas une théorie de la correspondance en tant que adequatio entre idées et objets;

– que les propositions en soi sont ce qui porte la valeur de vérité (truthbearers) et donc ne jouent pas le rôle d’état de choses, de quelque façon qu’on l’entende;

– que la logique bolzanienne peut être définie un platonisme logique, seulement dans la mesure où elle refuse une conception épistémique de la vérité, et qu’il est de toute façon préférable qu’elle soit considérée un objectivisme sémantique, car elle ne distingue pas deux niveaux différents de l’être." (pp. 51-52)

(1) Cf. B. Bolzano, [BY] : Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik, Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1974 ; [WL] : Wissenschaftslehre, Sulzbach, 1837, in Gesamtausgabe, I. Schriften, spécialement t. 11-12, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Frommann-Holzboog, 1985-88 ; [BfW] : Der Briefwechsel B. Bolzano’s mit F. Exner, in Bernard Bolzanos Schriften (Spisy=Schriften), éd. E. Winter, t. 4, Prag, Königliche Böhmische Gesellschaft, 1935.

(2) Sur la logique de Bolzano voir J. Sebestik, Logique et Mathématique chez Bernard Bolzano, Paris, Vrin, 1992 et J. Berg, Bolzano’s Logic, Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiskell, 1962.

19. Cavaillès, Jean. 1946. "La théorie de la science selon Bolzano." Deucalion no. 1:195-202.

Repris dans : J. Cavaillès, Sur la logique et la théorie de la science, Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1947; nouvelle édition avec une postface de Jan Sebestik, Paris: Vrin, 1997 et dans J. Cavaillès, Œuvres complètes de philosophie des sciences, Paris: Hermann, 1994, pp. 653-658.

"Bolzano considère - et manque résoudre - les mêmes problèmes de la légitimité mathématique : après les difficultés de principes auxquelless'embarrasse le dix-huitième siècle pour le calcul infinitésimal, c'est lui qui, le premier, définit correctement la limite, introduit la notion d'ensemble. D'où philosophiquement un double enrichissement de la veine leibnizienne. D'abord, l'être même de la science est soumis à critique : il s'agit à la fois de déterminer ce qui constitue une science comme telle et le moteur de son développemenL Mises à part les imperfections dues à l'époque, l'idée est décisive pour notre problème. Pour la première fois peut-être, la science n'est plus considérée comme simple intermédiaire entre l'esprit humain et l'être en soi, dépendant autant de l'un que de l'autre et n'ayant pas de réalité propre, mais comme un objet sui generis, original dans son essence, autonome dans son mouvement." (p. 654)

20. Danek, Jaromir. 1971. "La méthodologie de Bolzano. Un thème dans la genèse de la pensée phénoménologique et de l'humanisme de notre temps." Dialogue no. 10:504-516.

"Dans son ensemble, la WL [Wissenschaftslehre] s'articule de la maniere suivante.

D'abord, la Doctrine fondamentale établit qu'il y a une infinité de vérités en soi, a la suite de quoi s'édifie la construction logique de la Doctrine élementaire. Les parties suivantes, consacrés a la Théorie de la connaissance, analysent les facultés qui permettent d'atteindre des vérités dans l'acte de transcendance, acte par lequel on parvient a une compréhension de certaines des vérités en soi, et dont les règles peuvent être clairement definies. C'est ce qui fait l'objet de la quatrième partie : L'Art d'inventer. Ce plan, dicté par des preoccupations logiques, suit l'ordre inverse de la gènese réelle de la connaissance, laquelle commence d'abord par l'art d'inventer, dont les règles présupposent d'ailleurs une structure a priori du monde. Mais le système logique doit être compris comme une reproduction des actes de la connaissance, ordonnés de telle sorte qu'ils menent a une synthèse méthodologique que Bolzano développe dans la Doctrine de la science proprement dite. Cette cinquième partie doit, elle-même, être une science, puisque l'examen de la structure objective de la science est aussi une objectivation rigoureuse, une synthèse de ce qui constitue le développement des diverses parties intégrantes de la connaissance." (pp. 504-505)

21. ———. 1975. Les projets de Leibniz et de Bolzano. Deux sources de la logique contemporaine. Québec: Presse de l'Université de Laval.

"L’idéal leibnizien d’unification des sciences commence à se concrétiser dans la Doctrine de la Science de Bolzano, théorie conçue comme une logique générale. Cette première tentative, fidèle au contenu éthique et humaniste du projet leibnizien, annonce le système qui l’exprimera d’une façon beaucoup plus large : celui d’une logique transcendantale des vérités, logique dont Husserl élargira la portée.

La critique du panlogisme dialectique de Hegel (ou, plutôt, de ses interprétations unilatérales) souligne l’importance méthodologique de l’anhistorisme apriorique des points de départ de la philosophie bolzanienne.

Décrit dans la « partie fondamentale » de la Doctrine de la Science, le monde idéal de l’en soi devient une base objective pour des analyses effectuées avec une précision mathématique. Même s’il est loin d’être achevé, le système de Bolzano apparaît ainsi comme une introduction à la méthode phénoménologique devant permettre de s’élever à une vision la plus objective possible du monde.

Un penseur comme Husserl s’efforcera de dépasser les limites du système bolzanien, pour mettre davantage à jour les fondements de laconnaissance scientifique, d’une science en soi. Or, une telle recherche soulève le problème leibnizien des vérités éternelles. Existe-t-il, comme le soutenait l’auteur de la Monadologie, deux mondes radicalement distincts : le domaine des vérités éternelles et celui d’infinie variété des réalités contingentes ? Par ailleurs, la réconciliation de ces deux mondes pourrait-elle permettre de dégager des valeurs applicables à la vie quotidienne ?

La logique n’est qu’une forme de l’effort tendant à découvrir les vérités par une méthode universelle. Les systèmes de Leibniz et de Bolzano ont été établis, thématisés et appliqués comme une logique authentique des vérités. L’explicitation contemporaine de cette thématisation se trouve dans la Logique formelle et logique transcendantale de Husserl. Cet ouvrage marque une nouvelle étape dans le développement de la logique des vérités comme fondement unifié des sciences. Cette étude n aurait-elle donc pas de fin ? Chaque époque se doit de la reprendre. À des besoins pratiques nouveaux correspondent toujours de nouvelles études théoriques.

Le problème de la logique est donc situé dans un cadre très général.

Le coeur de la logique leibnizienne et bolzanienne nous livre non seulement un contenu qui vise les futurs projets d’une logique transcendantale en tant que mathesis universalis de toutes les sciences, mais aussi un contenu pragmatique et éthique qui permettent notamment de nourrir une réflexion particulièrement riche sur un thème se posant avec plus de force que jamais à notre époque troublée : celui de la liberté humaine. (pp. 1-2)

22. Dubucs, Jacques, and Lapointe, Sandra. 2003. "Preuves par excellence." Philosophiques no. 30:219-234.

Résumé : "Bolzano fut le premier philosophe à établir une distinction explicite entre les procédés déductifs qui nous permettent de parvenir à la certitude d’une vérité et ceux qui fournissent son fondement objectif. La conception que Bolzano se fait du rapport entre ce que nous appelons ici, d’une part, « conséquence subjective », à savoir la relation de raison à conséquence épistémique et, d’autre part, la « conséquence objective », c’est-à-dire la fondation (Abfolge), suggère toutefois que Bolzano défendait une conception « explicativiste » de la preuve : les preuves par excellence sont celles qui reflètent l’ordre de la fondation objective.

Dans cet article nous faisons état des problèmes liés à une telle conception et argumentons en faveur d’une démarcation plus stricte entre la préoccupation ontologique et la préoccupation épistémologique dans l’élaboration d’une théorie de la preuve."

23. Duhn, Anita von. 2003. "Les remarques de Bolzano sur les couleurs." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale:463-488.

Résumé : "Les remarques de Bolzano sur les couleurs n’ont pas fait l’objet de recherches jusqu’à présent. Le but de cet article est de montrer que ses investigations sur les couleurs constituent une contribution intéressante à la théorie de la connaissance du XIXe siècle. Selon Bolzano, les couleurs sont des qualités secondes ainsi que des propriétés physiques et, par conséquent, elles sont des quantités mesurables. Il soutient que la perception des couleurs est réglée par des lois empiriques et il argumente que les couleurs que nous voyons sont déterminables par des concepts de grandeur."

24. Fréchette, Guillaume. 2011. "De la proposition à l’état de choses : Husserl lecteur de Bolzano." In Catégories ontologiques et catégories logiques, edited by Seron, Denis, 45-68. Liège: Presses de l’Université de Liège.

25. ———. 2014. "L’intentionnalité dans la Théorie de la science de Bolzano. Éléments d’une reconstruction." Methodos no. 14:1-20.

Résumé : "Dans la réception de Bolzano, et probablement depuis les Prolégomènes de Husserl, on insiste généralement sur le fait que la Théorie de la science (1837) de Bolzano vise à développer une théorie des représentations et des propositions qui fait de celles-ci des entités logiques de plein droit, indépendantes des actes de pensée, et seules porteuses des propriétés dont traite la logique (vérité, fausseté, objectualité, etc.) L’importance accordée à cette position, souvent appelée réalisme logique (Morscher), tend toutefois à masquer d’autres aspects de l’ouvrage de Bolzano qui, sans contredire ce réalisme logique, montrent toutefois que la perspective développée par le philosophe de Prague visait aussi à rendre compte de la relation intentionnelle entre l’agent et ces entités logiques.

Dans le présent article, je me penche sur les moyens mis en branle par Bolzano pour élucider cette relation. Dans un premier temps, j’examine le cas des représentations sans objet en soulignant le caractère intentionnel de certaines de leurs caractérisations. Dans un deuxième temps, je me penche sur le traitement réservé au jugement en relation à la proposition en soi. Dans la dernière partie de l’article, j’expose les grandes lignes de sa conception des intentions de signification sous-jacente à sa sémiotique. Pris comme un tout, ces trois cas montrent que le thème de l’intentionnalité n’est pas un épiphénomène dans la Théorie de la science, comme on pourrait le croire en partant de l’interprétation de Bolzano par Husserl, mais bien une partie constituante de l’entreprise du philosophe de Prague."

26. Gallerand, Alain. 2012. "Les apories du concept de redondance logique chez Bolzano." Bulletin d’analyse phénoménologique no. 8:1-27.

Résumé : "Le concept de redondance logique chez Bolzano soulève plusieurs difficultés. Il ne s’accorde ni avec la notion de représentation simple qu’il est censé expliquer, puisque Bolzano définit les individus comme des unités composées de plusieurs caractères et décrit les représentations singulières (noms propres et indexicaux) comme l’abréviation de descriptions définies, ni avec la distinction entre jugements synthétiques et analytiques, car il suppose que l’analyse d’un sujet individuel permet d’en dévoiler un à un les prédicats, comme si l’expérience ne jouait aucun rôle dans la connaissance des individus. Pourquoi Bolzano reste-t-il donc attaché à un concept aussi problématique ? Est-ce le seul moyen d’expliquer comment nous nous représentons des individus ? Nous montrerons que les apories de la notion de redondance logique témoignent de l’influence de la théorie leibnizienne du jugement, et qu’une version phénoménologiquement améliorée de la sémantique objective est néanmoins capable de les surmonter et de rétablir la simplicité de la représentation et la synthèse du jugement dans leurs droits."

27. ———. 2013. "Bolzano et le problème du rapport intension/extension : La redondance logique vs. le principe de proportionnalité inverse." Bulletin d’analyse phénoménologique no. 9:1-25.

Résumé : "Cet article, qui fait suite à une publication précédente (« Les apories du concept de redondance logique chez Bolzano »), poursuit un double objectif : (I) démontrer que les apories que nous avions relevées peuvent être surmontées par l’analyse des rapports extensionnels entre représentations ; (II) évaluer la contribution de Bolzano à la question classique des rapports intension/extension telle qu’elle a été posée par Port-Royal. La logique des classes, dont Bolzano pose les fondements (Théorie de la science, 2e partie, 3e section), permet en effet de dégager les lois de la redondance logique — auxquelles Bolzano ne cesse de faire implicitement référence sans en donner la formule — et de délimiter le champ d’application du principe classique de proportionnalité inverse entre intension et extension auquel déroge précisément la redondance. La critique bolzanienne de la logique de Port-Royal prend alors tout son sens."

28. George, Rolf. 2003. "Intuitions." Philosophiques no. 30:19-46.

Résumé : "Kant imposa au public philosophique la distinction entre sensations, intuitions et concepts. Bolzano reprit la terminologie, mais pas la substance de cette dernière. Cet article examine la critique astucieuse et détaillée qu’adresse Bolzano à Kant et présente les grandes lignes de sa théorie. Tandis que ses célèbres propositions « en soi » lui permirent de traiter avec précision des notions de conséquence, d’équivalence, d’analyticité, etc., en évitant le psychologisme logique si commun à l’époque, les intuitions font figure d’exception. Elles sont introduites en rapport direct avec l’activité mentale : les intuitions sont des pensées — les épisodes qui représentent notre conscience empirique directe — et constituent en fait la porte étroite de la philosophie de l’esprit bolzanienne."

29. Granger, Gaston-Gilles. 1969. "Le concept de continu chez Aristote et Bolzano: étude stylistique." Les Études Philosophiques:513-523.

"Ėtude stylistique

La définition topologique d'un << continu >>, telle qu'elle s'est constituée dans le premier tiers du siècle [4], fournit, confrontée à la notion intuitive confuse qu'elle met en forme, un exemple excellent de structuration mathématique. Nous nous proposons seulement ici un commentaire succinct de deux tentatives antérieures de formation du concept, toutes deux insatisfaisantes, quoique profondes, et propres à montrer l'importance, jusque dans une création aussi abstraite, de l'orientation stylistique.

Au § 38 des Paradoxes de l'infini [2], Bolzano se propose<< d'amener à une conscience claire le concept que nous désignons par l'expression << une extension continue, ou un continu>> (p. 73). Il pose alors comme conditions décisives d'une conceptualisation du continu : 1° Qu'il s'agisse d'un ensemble << d'objets simples>> (points ou << substances >>) ; 2° Qu'aucun de ces éléments ne soit << isolé >>, en un sens précis sur lequel nous aurons à revenir. En réfutant les objections que le sens commun peut invoquer, il rencontre l'idée aristotélicienne de contiguïté : << Tout point d'un continu doit avoir un autre point qu'il touche immédiatement. >> Idée dont il montre naturellement l'inconsistance dès qu'on l'applique à des éléments sans parties. Mais c'est ce qu'Aristote avait déjà vu ([1], VI, 231 a 26), dont l'analyse n'était nullement aussi naïve. Nous comparerons donc le texte de Bolzano et celui de Physique, V, 3,226 b 21 - 227 a 30 - où Aristote analyse le continu, en essayant ainsi de mettre en lumière la mise en place d'une structure dans son double rapport à l'intuition perceptive et au contexte opératoire, insistant sur la différence du choix des traits considérés comme pertinents pour la définition du concept." (p. 513)

Bibliographie

[1] Aristote, Physique, Oxford, éd. Ross, 1936.

[2] Bolzano (B.), Paradoxien des Unendlichen, Leipzig, 1851 ; réédition F. Meiner, Hamburg, 1921.

[3] Bolzano (B.), Wissenschaftslehre, Sulzbach, 1837; réédition Leipzig, 1914-1931.

[4] BOURBAKI (N.), Topologie générale, chap. X : «Dictionnaire», Paris, A.S.I., 1949.

30. Gyemant, Maria. 2013. "Bolzano et le psychologisme. Sur la possibilité des représentations sans objet." Philosophie:45-66.

"Mon but, dans ce texte, sera de montrer que le débat autour des représentations sans objet est en réalité fondé sur une mécompréhension. Les adeptes d’une psychologie brentanienne (en l’occurrence Franz Exner et Kasimir Twardowski, dont je traiterai ici) utilisent le concept de représentation en un sens qui n’est pas celui de Bolzano. Pour le dire rapidement, ils entendent par représentation essentiellement l’acte psychologique de représenter, alors que ce que Bolzano nomme « représentation en soi » est de l’ordre de la signification. Les présupposés psychologistes des auteurs mentionnés sont en réalité précisément ceux auxquels Bolzano avait essayé d’échapper par sa théorie des représentations en soi. Ce qui mobilise la démarche tout entière de la Wissenschaftslehre, c’est l’idée que les propositions vraies existent en soi, que la vérité ne dépend pas du fait d’être pensée par quelqu’un, c’est-à-dire de ses occurrences psychologiques concrètes.

Ainsi, nous voyons que le problème des représentations sans objet ne peut se poser de façon positive, non critique, que si nous nous plaçons à l’intérieur de la théorie bolzanienne en assumant les thèses qu’elle présuppose." (p. 46)

31. Haller, Rudolf. 1987. "Remarques sur la tradition sémantique." Archives de Philosophie no. 50:359-369.

Résumé : "L'auteur exprime son accord avec la thèse ď Alberto Coffa selon laquelle une tradition sémantique, inspirée par l'oeuvre de Bolzano, précède l'apparition de la conception sémantique dans le Cercle de Vienne, et en particulier celle de Carnap. La question principale qui se pose concerne d'une part l'antagonisme entre cette tradition et Kant et d'autre part l'opposition entre les empiristes logiques et Kant. Il semble que Carnap n'a pu se débarrasser de certains présupposés kantiens et néo-kantiens, même une fois sa base ontologique rendue physicaliste. Cette dernière position étant étrangère à Wittgenstein, on ne peut pas suivre Coffa lorsqu'il soutient que la sémantique de Carnap au milieu des années trente est voisine de la « vision du langage » de Wittgenstein."

32. Künne, Wolfgang. 2009. "Bolzano et (le jeune) Husserl sur l'intentionnalité." Philosophiques no. 36:307-354.

Résumé : "Dans les « Prolégomènes à la logique pure » de ses Recherches logiques (LU), Husserl rend hommage aux deux premiers volumes de la Wissenschaftslehre (WL) de 1837 de Bernard Bolzano comme un « ouvrage qui […] surpasse de loin tout ce que la littérature mondiale a à offrir en termes de contributions systématiques à la logique ». Cet article porte sur le jeune Husserl comme lecteur du chef-d’oeuvre de Bolzano, visant ainsi à contribuer à une compréhension adéquate de certains aspects des théories de Bolzano et de Husserl et de ce sur quoi portent ces théories. Je me concentrerai sur la question de savoir comment Bolzano en 1837 et Husserl autour de 1900 ont conçu les contenus des actes et états mentaux.

Dans les sections 1 et 2, je fais état de la redécouverte de la WL de Bolzano au sein de l’École de Brentano, et en ce qui concerne le problème des représentations sans objets, j’endosse la défense de Bolzano par Husserl contre Twardowski. Dans les sections 3 et 4, je présente un aperçu de la théorie des propositions (Sätze an sich) et des notions (Vorstellungen an sich), et montre comment Husserl assimile le cadre conceptuel bolzanien dans ses RL. Tandis que Bolzano considère les propositions et les notions comme étant des objets abstraits sui generis, le jeune Husserl développe une conception des notions et des propositions en termes d’espèces. J’explique cette conception dans la section 5 et je la défends contre le dernier Husserl. La discussion la plus extensive et la plus détaillée d’une seule et unique thèse de la philosophie de la logique de Bolzano qu’on puisse trouver dans les livres et les articles publiés par Husserl de son vivant se trouve dans le dernier chapitre de ses RL. Le sujet de discussion, et la dernière section de cet article, est une affirmation courageuse, pour ne pas dire outrageuse de Bolzano qui, du moins pris au pied de la lettre, contredit tout simplement ce que la plupart des philosophes ont tenu pour acquis depuis Aristote. Les questions, soutient Bolzano, sont une espèce particulière de propositions, et donc leur vérité est susceptible d’être évaluée."

33. Lapointe, Sandra. 2000. "Analyticité, universalité et quantification chez Bernard Bolzano." Les Études Philosophiques 455-470.

"Introduction

Bolzano entretient avec la tradition analytique une relation des plus intéressantes.

Contrairement au cas de Husserl, il n'y a pas de filiation proprement dite. Outre certains passages que l'on peut trouver chez Wittgenstein et Tarski, les points d'incidence de la pensée bolzanienne sur la tradition

anglo-américaine sont rares et sans conséquences considérables (1). Toutefois, la philosophie analytique partage avec Bolzano tant l'idée fondamentale que la logique habite au coeur de l'investigation philosophique, qu'un intérêt marqué pour les problèmes liés à la théorie de la signification et de la vérité.

Il est donc étonnant de constater le peu d'attention qu'a reçu Bolzano jusqu'à aujourd'hui. Cette lacune dans le savoir contemporain s'explique non seulement par le destin tragique de l'oeuvre bolzanienne mais aussi par l'anhistoricisme, ou plus précisément par l' « anti-historicisme » inhérent à la philosophie analytique. Cet anti-historicisme est pourtant problématique et, depuis quelques années, des philosophes cherchent à trouver un compromis entre un philosopher purement « analytique » et un philosopher où l'histoire est la mesure de toute chose, même de la vérité(2). Mon étude qui se situe dans cette perspective se veut une contribution tant à la diffusion de l'oeuvre de Bolzano qu'à l'histoire de la philosophie analytique." (p. 455)

(1) 1. Cf. Sebestik, 1990 ; Künne, 1997, p. 7 4 s.

(2) Cf. Beaney, 1996, p. 2-5.

Bibliographie

Beaney Michael (1996), Frege : Making Sense, London, Duckworth.

Künne Wolfgang (1997), «Die Geschichte der Bolzano-Rezeption (1849-1939) », dans Bolzano und die Ôsterreichische Geistesgeschichte. Beiträge zur Bolzano-Forschung, vol. 6, Akademia Verlag, Sankt Augustin.

Sebestik Jan (1990), « The archeology of the Tractatus : Bolzano and Wittgenstein», dans Wittgenstein - Towards a Re-Evaluation. Proceedings ef the 14th International Wittgenstein-Symposium August 1989 Kirchberg (Austria), Wien, Hôlder-Pichler-Tempsky.

34. ———. 2002. "Bolzano et l’anti-kantisme autrichien." In Années 1781-1801. Kant: Critique de la Raison Pure. Vingt ans de réception, edited by Piché, Claude, 263-272. Paris: Vrin.

"Selon certains historiens de la philosophie, il y aurait une tradition philosophique distincte de la tradition philosophique allemande qui naîtrait en Autriche au xixe siècle (1). Quoiqu’il n’y ait pas consensus sur l’ensemble des paramètres qui définissent cette tradition, on s’entend pour dire que tous ses protagonistes nourrissent un anti-kantisme atypique par rapport aux différents courants philosophiques dans le reste du St-Empire-Romain-Germanique. Le but de cette étude est de contribuer à la documentation de la thèse de l’antikantisme autrichien.

Le point de départ se situe dans le paradoxe suivant : Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848) est, de tous les philosophes autrichiens, celui qui a critiqué Kant avec le plus d’acharnement et de rigueur. Néanmoins, en 1806, il fut accusé de défendre des thèses kantiennes, une accusation assez compromettante pour qu’elle risque de lui faire perdre la chaire de sciences religieuses qu’il avait obtenue à l’Université de Prague un an plus tôt. Indépendamment de la question de savoir si cette accusation était justifiée, et selon l’avis de Bolzano lui-même elle ne l’était pas, on voudra faire lumière sur les traits du contexte culturel et politique de l’époque qui peuvent expliquer la signification et la portée de telles accusations." (p. 264)

(1) Par exemple, Rudolf Haller, « Zur Historiographie der osterreichischen Philosophie », dans Von Bolzano zu Wittgenstein : zur Tradition der ôsterreichischen Philosophie, Vienne, Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1986, p. 41-53.

35. ———. 2003. "Introduction : Bernard Bolzano : Contexte et actualité." Philosophiques no. 30:3-17.

"Le présent numéro est consacré principalement aux aspects de l’œuvre de Bolzano qui concernent sa philosophie de la logique et sa théorie de la connaissance. Ce thème a semblé, d’entrée de jeu, être celui le plus susceptible de susciter l’intérêt du lecteur et ce pour plusieurs raisons. Premièrement, Bolzano s’est fait, dans ces domaines, le brillant précurseur de plusieurs découvertes importantes et l’étude de ses théories fournit un prétexte opportun pour faire le point sur les conceptions contemporaines, par exemple, de l’analyticité, de la conséquence, de la preuve, du nombre, etc. Deuxièmement, les liens qui se dessinent entre Bolzano et des auteurs aussi importants que Kant, Husserl et Twardowski, mais aussi Frege, Carnap et Tarski, marquent la nécessité de réévaluer certaines idées reçues en ce qui concerne l’histoire de la philosophie analytique. À cet égard, on se doit de mentionner que l’intérêt suscité depuis quelques années par la connexion historique étroite — connexion dont une certaine phénoménologie a longtemps fait fi — entre Bolzano et le fondateur de la phénoménologie a motivé un renouvellement des études husserliennes et a permis de mieux comprendre les origines communes de la philosophie analytique et de la phénoménologie. Enfin, les thèmes autour desquels gravitent les articles réunis ici témoignent d’un aspect essentiel de la contribution de Bolzano à la philosophie. Notre intention est de fournir au lecteur francophone un moyen de se familiariser avec un aspect incontournable d’une œuvre d’une richesse immense tout en montrant sa saisissante actualité.

Dans le reste de cette introduction, je présente les éléments qui permettront au lecteur de s’initier aux grandes lignes de la philosophie bolzanienne et, en le référent aux articles pertinents, de s’orienter dans ce qui suit." (p. 3)

36. ———. 2003. "Principe de priorité et principe du contexte chez Bolzano et Husserl." In Aux origines de la phénoménologie. Husserl et le contexte des Recherches logiques, edited by Fisette, Denis, 93-110. Paris: Vrin.

"La proposition bolzanienne est une entité dont la fonction première est d'être « porteur de vérité». Elle se distingue, du point de vue ontologique, de l'énoncé et du jugement (conçu comme épisode mental) en ceci que tout en étant quelque chose, elle n'est pas réelle. En d'autres termes, les propositions en soi (Sätze an sich) ou, pour adopter la terminologie suggérée par Bolzano, les propositions (Sätze) ne sont situables ni dans le temps, ni dans l'espace et, par conséquent, ne font pas partie des chaînes de transactions causales. Elles doivent bien plutôt être conçues comme appartenant à un « troisième monde» (1)" p. 93)

(1) Bolzano ne défend toutefois pas un platonisme naïf, mais bien plutôt ce qu'on pourrait appeler un platonisme instrumental. Il écrit par exemple: «L"utilité de la distinction [entre jugements et propositions] se manifeste de la manière la plus surprenante en ceci qu'elle permet à l'auteur de déterminer objectivement un nombre de concept qui n'avaient jusqu'à maintenant pas été expliqués ou qui l'avaient été incorrectement. Par exemple, les concepts d'expérience, d'apriori, de possible, de nécessaire, de contingen, de probable, etc ... à travers lesquels les disputes philosophiques les plus importantes pourront être menées à terme» (Bolzano 1839, p. 128).

Bibliographie

Bolzano, Bernard 1839. Dr. Bolzano und seine Gegner; Sulzbach: Seidel. (cité d'après: Bernard Bolzano Gesamtausgabe ; Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt : Frommann-Holzboog, série 1, vol.16.1, 1989.)

37. ———. 2008. Qu'est-ce que l'analyse? Paris: Vrin.

Sur Bolzano voir la traduction française partielle de Théorie de la Science § 147-148 (pp. 91-96) avec commentaire (pp. 97-126).

38. Laz, Jacques. 1990. "Un platonicien débridé? Bolzano, critique de l'intuitionnisme kantien." Philosophie no. 27:13-29.

39. ———. 1993. Bolzano critique de Kant. Paris: Vrin.

Suivi de Bernard Bolzano, Sur la doctrine kantienne de la construction des concepts par les intuitions, (pp. 169-182). [Appendice aux Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik]

"La présente étude poursuit deux objectifs : introduire à l’œuvre philosophique, trop méconnue, de Bolzano et montrer comment cette œuvre s’est constituée en s’opposant à la philosophie de Kant.

Nous avons délibérément limité cette entreprise à l’examen de la prise de position précoce du jeune Bolzano contre Kant, formulée dès 1810 dans l'Appendice des Contributions, qui inaugure sa critique de l’intuitionnisme. Après l’analyse des critiques formulées dans ce texte - critiques que Bolzano maintiendra toute sa vie -, nous nous contenterons d’indiquer brièvement les grands principes qui fondent cet antikantisme, maintenu dans l’œuvre magistrale de la maturité : la Théorie de la Science(4).

(...)

"L’Appendice des Contributions, comme son titre l’indique, n’examine en principe que la théorie kantienne de la « construction des concepts », c’est-à-dire la théorie kantienne des mathématiques. Mais si l’on sait que c’est pour Kant la réflexion sur les mathématiques et sur la géométrie tout particulièrement, qui rendit nécessaire d’affirmer l’existence d’une intuition pure en nous, base de tout l’édifice critique, l’invalidation par Bolzano de cette notion, qu’il juge logiquement contradictoire, entraîne une mise en cause de l’ensemble du kantisme.

Ce texte résume une critique, déjà longuement mûrie, de la philosophie de Kant. Y sont fermement dénoncés les dogmes de l’intuitionnisme kantien : la philosophie des mathématiques requiert des principes que la philosophie de la subjectivité, inaugurée par le criticisme, ne saurait se concilier. Ce refus de l’idéalisme est d’abord la critique des principes d’une « esthétique» qui prétendrait fonder la science. A l’intuitionnisme aussi bien mathématique que philosophique, Bolzano oppose une philosophie des vérités en soi et de leur connexion, dont il fait le socle de toutes les régions du savoir. Les principes de cette théorie de l’objectivité scientifique - on l’a appelé le platonisme moderne - seront à la base des philosophies du XXe siècle dans leur dialogue avec la science : des penseurs aussi différents que Husserl, les membres du cercle de Vienne, Popper, Wittgenstein ou Gödel, en recevront l’héritage. Ils sont, dès 1837, définitivement exposés dans la Wissenschaftslehre de Bolzano." (pp. 10-11)

(4) Bolzano, Wissenschaftslehre, Sulzbach, 1837.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bernard Bolzano: Bibliographie des en Français (M - Z)

Études (M - Z)

1. Majolino, Claudio. 2000. "Variation(s) I. Bolzano et l'équivocité de la variation." Les Études Philosophiques 471-488.

"D'une certaine façon, la notion de variation représente la clé de voûte de la construction conceptuelle bolzanienne. Mais que faut-il entendre par là ?

Tout d'abord, l'expression « Veranderung » ne va pas de soi : d'une part, elle signifie changement, transformation; d'autre part, elle désigne aussi cette opération formelle qui est à l'arrière-plan de la variable, c'est-à-dire de cette place vide que, depuis l'analytique d'Aristote et surtout l'algèbre de Diophante, en logique et en mathématiques on peut remplir par des étants quelconques. Ainsi au sens large du terme à la notion de variation appartiennent à la fois un sens de modification et un sens de multiplicité.

Mais chez Bolzano, le double sens de la variation relève aussi d'un dédoublement ontologique, de la différence entre le domaine de l'effectivité et celui de l'objectivité. En effet, la thèse du platonisme bolzanien impliquerait un dédoublement de la variation parallèle à celui des « Ur-regionen » de l' « es gibt »: non seulement les étants du monde sont selon un mode d'être tout à fait différent de celui des objets idéaux, mais à chaque domaine correspond une variation propre et à part entière. Cela veut dire aussi qu'à chaque domaine appartient un sens de variation prescrit par la constitution ontologique des objets de ce domaine même, selon la thèse de la priorité de l'être (l'être de l'effectivité vs. l'être de l'en soi) sur le devenir (le sens de modification vs. le sens de multiplicité)." (p. 471)

"Cet article est une partie d'un travail plus vaste consacré aux énoncés de la variation dans la philosophie du XIX' siècle. Il sera suivi par deux autres textes (Variation(s) II et Ill) consacrés à la variation chez Lotze et chez Husserl." (p. 471)

2. Mansour, Goufrane. 2008. "Bolzano: objectivité sémantique et subjectivité de la perception." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 60:551-569.

Résumé : "De la pensée de Bolzano, l’objectivisme sémantique est certainement l’aspect le plus largement commenté. Mais son œuvre maîtresse, la Wissenschaftslehre, comprend aussi bien la version la plus aboutie de cet objectivisme qu’une partie proprement épistémologique, la « Théorie de la Connaissance ». Si l’épistémologie bolzanienne repose sur la désubjectivation des éléments de la connaissance, la théorie de la perception présente dans cette Wissenschaftslehre prête au sujet connaissant un rôle actif dans l’élaboration du réel perceptif."

3. Miskiewicz, Wioletta. 2004. ""L'affaire Zimmermann". À propos des influences bolzaniennes dans l'École de Lvov et de Varsovie." In Aristote au XIXème siècle, edited by Thouard, Denis, 377-394. Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.

"Nous allons exposer ici le récit de la constitution d’un manuel de philosophie qui a joué un rôle particulièrement intéressant dans l’histoire de la philosophie et de la logique moderne, car c’est probablement par son biais qu’un nouveau style logique, emprunté à Bolzano, à savoir la logique des propositions en place de la logique des termes, fut introduit de façon quasi clandestine dans les gymnases de la monarchie des Habsbourgs. Le livre en question, Philosophische Propaedeutik für Obergymnasien(8) de Robert Zimmermann, fut aussi le manuel qu’étudia au Theresianum, prestigieux gymnase viennois, Kazimierz Twardowski, futur professeur à Lvov et père d’une école philosophique qui a donné plusieurs générations de remarquables logiciens et mathématiciens polonais - dont Lukasiewicz (9)." (p. 379)

(8) Zimmermann, Robert, Philosophische Propaedeutik für Obergymnasien. Erste Abteilung : Empirische Psychologie, Vienne, 1852. Zimmermann, Robert, Philosophische Propaedeutik für Obergymnasien. Zweite Abteilung : Formale Logik, Vienne, 1853 ; désormais cité : Propaedeutik.

(9) En procédant ainsi nous nous situons d’une certaine façon dans l’esprit de Bolzano pour qui la question des traités et des manuels scolaires est de toute première importance pour la détermination d’une discipline scientifique. Tout en renouant avec l’idée de l'Organon (il s’agit d’indiquer les règles qui permettent le partage du domaine des vérités dans les sciences particulières), Bolzano fait montre d’un grand pragmatisme dans la détermination des disciplines scientifiques : est science une discipline qui mérite d’être exposée dans un traité. Ce qui lui vaudra une critique virulente de la part de Husserl (en 1913) et l’accusation d’« empirisme radical » illustrée par une citation de la Wissenschaftslehre : « Nous ne sommes aussi certains de la justesse des règles : Barbara, Celarent, etc., que parce que mille sortes d’essais les confirment dans les raisonnements que nous avons établis d’après elles » ; « Préface aux Recherches Logiques », dans Husserl, E., Articles sur la logique (1890 - 1913), trad. J. English, Paris, PUF, 1975, p. 392.

4. Morscher, Edgar. 2003. "La définition bolzanienne de l'analyticité logique." Philosophiques no. 30:149-169.

Traduction de: Logische Allgemeingültigkeit, dans: Beiträge zur Bolzano-Forschung 11, 1999, pp. 179-206.

Résumé . "D’après Bolzano, une proposition est logiquement analytique si et seulement si elle est soit logiquement valide, soit logiquement non valide. Bolzano dit aussi parfois qu’une proposition est logiquement valide si et seulement si elle est et reste vraie sous toute variation simultanée et uniforme de ses parties non logiques. C’est essentiellement la même définition que donne Quine dans son article «Carnap and Logical Truth » où il attribue à ce dernier (et dans une note également à Bolzano) l’idée qu’un énoncé logiquement vrai est un énoncé au sein duquel seuls les termes logiques sont essentiels. Mais qu’en est-il des propositions et des énoncés vrais qui sont composés exclusivement de parties logiques ? Selon la définition précédente, elles s’avèreraient toutes logiquement valides ou logiquement vraies. Une proposition telle que « Il y a quelque chose» n’est toutefois manifestement pas logiquement valide selon Bolzano. La définition courante de la validité logique doit être modifiée de manière à répondre aux intuitions bolzaniennes. Dans cet article, je propose une telle modification."

5. Mulligan, Kevin. 1997. "Sur l'histoire de l'approche analytique de l'histoire de la philosophie : de Bolzano et Brentano à Bennett et Barnes." In Philosophie analytique et histoire de la philosophie, edited by Vienne, Jean-Michel, 61-103. Paris: Vrin.

"La nature, le but et la méthode de l’histoire de la philosophie sont exposés par Brentano dans ses Histoires de la philosophie antique et moderne. Bolzano s’occupe de manière beaucoup moins détaillée de ces questions dans “De la conception de Hegel et de ses partisans de l’histoire en général et de l’histoire de la philosophie en particulier”. Sa conception de l’histoire de la philosophie est néanmoins très claire dans ses propres contributions à l’histoire de la philosophie, ainsi que dans celles de ses élèves. On comprendra mieux l’importance pour notre sujet des avis programmatiques de Bolzano et de Brentano quand on aura examiné ce contre quoi ils réagissent au dix-neuvième siècle (§ 2.2) ainsi qu’une thèse substantielle sur l’histoire de la philosophie due à Brentano (§ 3) et finalement le rapport entre ces programmes et l’énorme quantité d’histoire de la philosophie qui en constitue la réalisation plus ou moins fidèle et consciente (§ 4)." (p. 5)

6. Novy, Luboš. 2008. "Les relations entre la logique et la mathématique dans l'oeuvre de Bernard Bolzano." Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences no. 58:327-341.

"Le but de cet article consiste à indiquer avec concision comment s’est formée la relation de la logique et de la mathématique dans la pensée de Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848) et quel caractère avaient ces disciplines dans toute sa vie.

La relation de la logique et de la mathématique a joué en général un rôle important dans l’évolution moderne de ces sciences. Beaucoup de résultats de Bolzano sont appréciés du point de vue du développement subséquent, mais leur conception malgré son originalité évidente restait étroitement liée avec des idées plus anciennes, surtout avec celles du 18e siècle. Pour cette raison nous ne voulons pas chercher les signes des tendances dans la relation de ces branches chez Bolzano, mais nous allons nous contenter de leur position dans la vie de l’auteur." (p. 325)

7. Pégny, Gaëtan. 2013. "Bolzano et Hegel." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 78:215-243.

Résumé : "L’allergie de Bolzano à l’œuvre de Hegel est un fait souligné dans presque toutes les présentations de sa pensée. Pourtant, conformément à son éthique intellectuelle, il a tenté de se familiariser avec cette philosophie qu’il rejetait plus que toute autre. Il a même, tardivement, reconnu qu’il pouvait s’y trouver des propositions justes. Afin d’affiner la compréhension de la relation de Bolzano à Hegel, on se propose ici de reconstruire la polémique des Trois essais sur Hegel en montrant qu’elle recoupe bien des formes d’anti-hégélianisme devenues canoniques (la critique de la philosophie de l’histoire notamment), mais dans un contexte qui lui est propre et la spécifie. Dans un second temps, on reviendra sur les divergences philosophiques à l’origine de la nécessité pour Bolzano de critiquer un auteur et ses disciples, dans lesquels il voit une forme de régression intellectuelle et sociale, divergences qui imposent et orientent une lecture. Ces divergences sur la compréhension du rôle du langage et de la philosophie, du rapport des représentations au réel, ou sur la définition de l’infini, sont sous-jacentes à la polémique des Trois essais, mais on doit en chercher la formulation dans le reste du corpus bolzanien."

8. Proust, Joëlle. 1986. Questions de forme : logique et proposition analytique de Kant à Carnap. Paris: Fayard.

Chapitre 3 : La théorie de la proposition analytique de Bolzano.

9. ———. 1992. "L'intensionnalisme sans le réel: de Bolzano à Katz." Histoire Épistémologie Langage no. 14:245-257.

Résumé : "On s'intéresse ici à la perspective sémantique consistant à maintenir strictement disjoints la définition réelle (ayant trait à l'objet et à ses propriétés) et la définition nominale (concernant la représentation ou le sens et ses constituants). Ainsi Bolzano montre-t-il que des paradoxes surgissent quand on donne une interprétation « réelle » de la composition « nominale ».

Cependant Putnam dans une série d'articles célèbres donne des arguments tendant à démontrer qu'il n'existe pas de classes de vérités qui soient d'ordre purement sémantique ou nominal: les usages linguistiques dépendent toujours d'un état du monde. Les arguments de Putnam peuvent toutefois être efficacement combattus en abandonnant certaines exigences propres à la sémantique frégéenne. On montre les affinités entre la stratégie suggérée par Katz dans une série de travaux récents et celle de Bolzano."

References

Katz, J. J. (1977) « A proper theory of names », Philosophical Studies, 31, 1-80.

Katz, J. J. (1990a) « The domino theory », Philosophical Studies, 58, 3-39.

Katz, J. J. (1990b) « Has the description theory of names been refuted ? », Meaning and Method: Essays in Honor of Hilary Putnam, édité par George Boolos, Cambridge : Cambridge university Press.

Katz, J. J. (1992) « The new intensionalism », Unpublished manuscript, 1992.

Putnam, H. (1962) « It ain't necessarily so », The Journal of Philosophy, 49, 2, 658-671.

Putnam, H. (1970) « Is semantics possible ? », Metaphilosophy , I, 187-201 ; reproduit dans Mind, Language and Reality. Philosophical Papers, t. II, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

Putnam, H. (1975). « The meaning of meaning » in K. Gunderson éd., Language, Mind and Knowledge, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, VII ; reproduit dans Mind, Language and Reality. Philosophical papers, t. II, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

10. Rusnock, Paul. 2001. "Refaire les mathématiques : Bolzano lecteur de Lagrange." In La Philosophie autrichienne de Bolzano à Musil, edited by Cometti, Jean-Pierre and Mulligan, Kevin, 121-138. Paris: Vrin.

"Les rapports ayant existé entre Bolzano et des philosophes tels que Kant furent assez importants. Plus intéressants encore furent, à mon avis, ses rapports avec les mathématiciens - ce que je tenterai d’illustrer par un examen de sa lecture de Lagrange, un des plus éminents analystes des années formatrices de Bolzano. Avec Cauchy, Bolzano était un des lecteurs les plus pénétrants et les plus minutieux des œuvres de Lagrange. Il est évident qu’il avait beaucoup de respect pour ce dernier, parcourant ses traités crayon en main, et s'occupupant souvent des mêmes problèmes que lui. Tout comme Lagrange, Bolzano n’était pas satisfait de l’état des fondements de l’analyse ; comme lui il s'efforçait de construire une fondation autonome, sans infinitésimaux et sans appel à la géométrie ou au mouvement. Il est également patent qu’il estimait les opinions de Lagrange concernant le contenu de l’analyse. Ses premiers ouvrages d’analyse sur la série du binôme et le théorème des valeurs intermédiaires abordent des problèmes qui étaient importants pour Lagrange également. Et la Théorie des fonctions (Functionenlehre) de Bolzano(1), rédigée dans les années 1830, dont le titre même rappelle les trités de Lagrange, incorpore beaucoup de caractéristiques de l’analyse lagrangienne, notamment la primauté du concept de fonction et ।'importance du théorème de Taylor." (pp. 122-123)

(1) Bolzano, Functionenlehre, Königliche böhmische Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, 1930.

11. ———. 2003. "Qu'est-ce que la représentation? Bolzano et la philosophie autrichienne." Philosophiques no. 30:67-81.

Résumé . "Largement inconnu en Allemagne au xixe siècle, Bolzano connut un meilleur sort en Autriche, surtout auprès des étudiants de Brentano, qui étudièrent avidement sa Théorie de la science. Cependant, un examen attentif de la réception des idées de Bolzano chez les brentaniens nous montrent qu’il fut souvent mal compris. Cet article discute d’un cas particulier de ce phénomène,

la réaction de K. Twardowski à la théorie de la représentation de Bolzano."

12. ———. 2003. "La théorie des intuitions chez Bolzano." In Aux origines de la phénoménologie. Husserl et le contexte des Recherches logiques, edited by Fisette, Denis and Lapointe, Sandra, 111-123. Paris: Vrin.

"On sait que Bolzano était l'ennemi acharné de l'intuition en mathématique.

Il est donc surprenant de constater que les «intuitions» jouent néanmoins un rôle fondamental dans sa logique, et que, de surcroît, Bolzano concède qu'en attirant l'attention sur la distinction entre intuition

et concept, Kant a fait une contribution de taille à la philosophie.

Ceux qui ignorent ce que Bolzano a écrit à ce sujet seront peut-être encore plus étonnés de découvrir ce que sont les intuitions bolzaniennes(2)."

(2) Bolzano présente sa théorie des intuitions dans la Théorie de la science ( 1837, §§ 72-79), mais les paragraphes §§ 59.3, 133, 182.4, 278, et 303-305 sont tout aussi importants. Il en discute également aux paragraphes §§ 6-7 de Von der mathematischen Lehrart et dans un essai qui date des années 1833-1834 et qui constitue l'introduction à la grande oeuvre mathématique de Bolzano, la Théorie de la quantité (Grossenlehre). Cette dernière resta inédite jusqu'en 1975. En 1833, peu avant la publication de la Théorie de la science, Bolzano fit parvenir un exemplaire de son ouvrage (1975) à F. Exner, professeur de philosophie à Prague. Les deux philosophes pragois discutèrent longuement Je problème de l'intuition, en particulier dans leur correspondance (Cf. Bolzano 1935), dont une nouvelle édition paraîtra sous peu dans la BBGA et dont on prépare présentement les éditions françaises (éd. Sebestik et alii) et anglaises (P. Rusnock/R George). Enfin, le Nouvel anti-Kant (Bautzen: Hiecke, 1850) de F. Pnnonsky, un ami et disciple de Bolzano, contient une discussion détaillée des intuitions de même qu'une critique des doctrines kantiennes. On trouve une version préliminaire de cette critique dans l'annexe aux Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik (Bolzano 1810; voir Laz 1993, p. 169-182 pour la traduction française) de même que dans le Lehrbuch der Religionswissenschaft (Bolzano, 1834, §§ 61-62).

Bibliographie

Bolzano, Bernard 1975. Von der Mathematischen Lehrart; dans Bolzano Gesamtausgabe, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, série IIA vol. 7 (partie Ill).

--- 1935. Briefwechsel mit F. Exner; E. Winter (éd.), Prague: koniglich bohmisch Akademie der Wissenschaften.

--- 1837. Wissenschaftslehre; 4 volumes, Sulzbach: Seidel.

--- 1834. Lehrbuch der Religionswissenschaft; Sulzbach: Seidel.

--- 1810. Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik; Prague.

Laz, Jacques 1993. Bolzano critique de Kant; Paris: Vrin.

13. Schmutz, Jacob. 2009. "Quand le langage a-t-il cessé d'être mental? Remarques sur les sources scolastiques de Bolzano." In Le langage mental du Moyen Âge à l'âge classique, edited by Biard, Joël, 307-337. Paris: Vrin.

"Jacob Schmutz s'interroge lui aussi sur la fin du langage mental, mais en parcourant une séquence historique différente. Son point de départ est fourni par Bernard Bolzano, connu pour avoir au XIX" siècle soutenu la thèse de « propositions en soi », dotées d'une subsistance qui n'est ni le mode d'être des qualités de l'intellect ni celui des choses. Si Brentano a pu être rapproché de certains auteurs médiévaux tels que Grégoire de Rimini ou Gautier Burley, toute transmission proprement historique restait problématique. Jacob Schmutz nous révèle ici une voie inédite de transmission. Les « lumières catholiques » d'Europe centrale, dont les positions sont diffusées par certains manuels du XVIIIe siècle connus de Bolzano, sont elles-mêmes fortement dépendantes de la scolastique espagnole des XVIe et XVIIe siècles. On peut ainsi suivre l'émergence de l'idée de proposition objective, sur le modèle de la dualité entre concept formel et concept objectif, et conjointement avec la notion de vérité objective.

Le vrai n'est plus vrai par dénomination extrinsèque à partir d'un intellect, fût-ce l'intellect divin. Les débats sur le statut de cette proposition objective conduisent certains auteurs comme Sébastien Izquierdo, au XVIIe siècle, à en faire le premier porteur de la vérité objective. Le dispositif conceptuel qui, du XIV" au XVIe siècle, mettait le langage mental au premier plan s'est bien dissout, ainsi qu'on l'a vu, mais un certain nombre de problèmes posés et de concepts qui ont surgi à cette occasion continuent à travailler l'histoire des théories de la proposition et de la vérité." (Joël Biard, Introduction, p. XIV)

14. Schnieder, Benjamin. 2003. "Bolzano sur la structure des propositions et le rôle sémantique des propriétés." Philosophiques no. 30:83-103.

Résumé : "Bernard Bolzano développe une théorie exhaustive et très élaborée des propositions comme entités structurées et composées de concepts. L’une de ses thèses principales consiste à dire que toutes les propositions ont en commun la même structure : «A – a – (la propriété) b ». Cet article examine le rôle que jouent les propriétés eu égard à cette thèse. Lorsque les propriétés figurent dans les théories sémantiques standards, elles sont généralement conçues comme des entités partageables, en d’autres mots, comme des universaux. Je montre que (contrairement à ce qui fait consensus dans la littérature) Bolzano croyait que ce sont bien plutôt des propriétés particularisées qui tombent sous la représentation-prédicat d’une proposition. De là émerge une sémantique plutôt inhabituelle : une proposition de la forme [A – a – (la propriété) b] est vraie ssi une des propriétés particularisées qui se tiennent sous la représentation-prédicat [b] inhère au sujet de la proposition, c’est-à-dire l’entité dénotée par la représentation-sujet [A]."

15. Scholz, Heinrich. 1968. Esquisse d’une histoire de la logique. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne.

16. Šebestik, Jan. 1964. "Bernard Bolzano et son Mémoire sur le théorème fondamental de l'Analyse." Revue d'histoire des sciences et de leurs applications no. 17:129-135.

"L'auteur du mémoire dont nous présentons ici une traduction française n'est pas inconnu aux lecteurs de la Revue ď Histoire des Sciences. En 1961, M. Rychlik y exposa les tentatives de Bolzano pour construire une théorie des nombres réels selon les manuscrits de la Grôssenlehre (« Théorie de la Grandeur ») (1). Le nom lui-même de Bolzano est indissociabiement lié à un théorème fondamental de l'analyse — l'un de ceux qu'il démontre dans ce mémoire — mais nous voulons profiter de l'occasion pour esquisser un portrait, ou tout au moins une silhouette, d'un grand mathématicien qui fut en même temps un grand logicien et un grand philosophe."

(1) La théorie des nombres réels dans un ouvrage posthume manuscrit de Bernard Bolzano, Rev. Hist. Sci., t. XIV, n°8 3-t (juil.-déc. 1961), pp. 313-27.

17. ———. 1984. "Bolzano et Brentano. Deux sources autrichiennes du Cercle de Vienne." Fundamenta Scientiae no. 5:219-235.

18. ———. 1987. "Premiers paradoxes bolzaniens de l'infini avec un texte inédit de B. Bolzano." Archives de Philosophie no. 50:403-411.

Résumé : "L'article présente une note inédite de Bolzano, qui recense les principales difficultés de l'infini. Cette note, qui date de 1813-1814, est extraite de son journal, Miscellanea mathematica. La question de savoir si de l'existence d'une bijection entre deux ensembles, on peut conclure à leur équipotence, aboutit à une impasse : quelle que soit la réponse donnée, ses conséquences sont absurdes."

19. Sebestik, Jan. 1989. "Bolzano (Bernard)." In Encyclopaedia Universalis. Vol. 4, 328-330.

"Théologien, philosophe, surtout logicien et mathématicien, Bolzano a laissé une œuvre très étendue et très importante que ses contemporains ont presque entièrement ignorée. D'une part, la nature de ses préoccupations, toutes centrées sur les questions des fondements, a éloigné de lui les mathématiciens tournés davantage vers les théories avancées et vers les applications. D'autre part, son style archaïque et lourd, plein de détours difficiles à suivre, a découragé les logiciens, dont la plupart étaient incapables de comprendre l'intérêt même de ses recherches qui dépassaient de très loin la syllogistique et tout ce qu'on faisait entrer à l'époque dans la logique.

Dans l'histoire de la logique, Bolzano mérite une place à côté des plus grands, Aristote, Leibniz et Frege. Avec ces deux derniers, il partage le destin ingrat de ceux qui ont voulu reconstruire la logique pour l'assurer dans ses fondements et pour qu'elle puisse servir de base aux mathématiques. En effet, l'histoire de la logique nous montre que les découvertes les plus novatrices n'exercent aucune influence et ne sont vraiment comprises que beaucoup plus tard, lorsque la communauté scientifique dispose d'outils simplifiés et accessibles permettant enfin de comprendre l'œuvre des pionniers. Il en fut ainsi pour l'œuvre de Leibniz et pour celle de Frege ; il en va de même de nos jours pour l'œuvre de Bolzano.

Bolzano a créé un vaste système logique conçu dans une perspective sémantique, qu'il a intégré dans un projet global de théorie de la science. Les innovations les plus importantes concernent la logique des relations propositionnelles, articulée autour du concept de forme propositionnelle et de l'opération de substitution. Il expose sa logique dans une langue naturelle mais technique, avec des particularités parfois très déconcertantes." (p. 328)

20. Šebestik, Jan. 1992. Logique et mathématique chez Bernard Bolzano. Paris: Vrin.

"Exposer la logique de Bolzano pose des problèmes plus délicats. Son système est peut-être le plus vaste et le plus complet qui ait jamais été construit; même la logique contemporaine, comparée à la théorie bolzanienne de la science, apparaît comme une élaboration, certes, incomparablement plus fine et plus puissante, mais limitée à une seule province du vaste empire bolzanien.

Je me suis limité à la logique au sens strict qui est exposée dans les deux premiers tomes de la WL et je me suis efforcé d’en analyser les concepts principaux plutôt que de reproduire et encore moins de traduire les théorèmes dans une langue symbolique. En cela, j’ai voulu non seulement m’inspirer de la méthode de Bolzano, qui est une analyse conceptuelle d’une rigueur exemplaire encore aujourd’hui, mais aussi répondre à ses vœux de voir appliquée cette méthode à ses propres concepts. La logique de Bolzano est séparée de la nôtre par la grande coupure que représente la formalisation de la logique, laquelle a radicalement transformé ce champ de recherches et permis de donner aux concepts logiques une précision impossible à atteindre par le moyen de la langue naturelle. De ce fait, les concepts logiques de Bolzano sont marqués par l’imprécision et les ambiguïtés de la langue naturelle : pour la même raison, son système logique reste trop complexe et peu maniable. Néanmoins, l’analyse des mécanismes logiques l’a conduit à définir un certain nombre de concepts fondamentaux, ceux de forme propositionnelle ou de déduction par exemple, que les logiciens du XXe siècle ont mis en évidence par d’autres voies, et même à en formuler d’autres que la logique issue de Frege et de Russell ne s’est pas encore appropriée." (p. 18)

21. ———. 1994. "Twardowski entre Bolzano et Husserl : la théorie de la représentation." Cahiers de la Philosophie Ancienne et du Langage de l'Université de Paris XII no. 1:61-85.

"Résumons :

A la triade bolzanienne : représentation subjective, représentation en soi, objet de la représentation, Twardowski répond par la triple distinction entre l’acte, le contenu et l’objet de la représentation, et l’étend aux jugements. Dans les deux cas, on doit distinguer l’acte (acte de représenter ; acte de juger), l’objet, indépendant de la pensée, appelé par Brentano également objet primaire (ce qui est représenté par une représentation ou nommé par un nom; ce qui est jugé), et le contenu, à savoir l’objet immanent, objet secondaire ou le “signe” de l’objet, dépendant de la pensée (image psychique de l’objet représenté, ce qui est représenté dans la représentation ; ce qui est reconnu ou rejeté par un jugement, à savoir l’existence d’un objet)." (p. 64)

22. ———. 1996. "Études bolzaniennes." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale:437-448.

"Cet aperçu de la littérature bolzanienne récente peut donner l'idée de la vitalité de cette recherche qui a pris, ces dernières années, un nouvel élan. La plupart des ouvrages dont j'ai parlé sont d'une qualité exceptionnelle (je recommande tout particulièrement les ouvrages de Berg, de Laz et l'atelier de Florence[*]) et devraient inciter les philosophes français à étudier celui qui, comme le dit Jacques Bouveresse, doit enfin « être reconnu comme un des plus grands philosophes de langue allemande »(5). Le climat philosophique actuel semble enfin lui être favorable."

(5) Préface à l'ouvrage de J. Laz, Bolzano critique de Kant, p. VI.

[*] Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre 1837-1987, International Workshop (Firenze, 16-19/9/1987), coll. Biblioteca di Storia della scienza, Firenze, L. Olschki, voi. 31, 1992, VI-231 p.

23. ———. 1999. "Forme, variation et déductibilité dans la logique de Bolzano." Revue d'Histoire des Sciences no. 52:479-506.

Résumé - "Les innovations principales de Bolzano en logique résultent de l'introduction et de l'usage systématique de la méthode de la variation qui correspond à la méthode substitutionnelle de la logique contemporaine. Cette méthode fournit les concepts logiques fondamentaux de validité, d'analyticité et de déductibilité. Je propose également une liste des concepts logiques de Bolzano. La comparaison de la déductibilité avec la notion de conséquence logique de Tarski met en évidence les caractères spécifiques de la logique de Bolzano dont le plus important consiste dans la nature de ses objets : bien que Bolzano

travaille aussi avec les formes propositionnelles, l'objet de sa logique est constitué des propositions en soi et des représentations en soi."

24. ———. 2003. "La dispute de Bolzano avec Kant. Fragment d'un dialogue sur la connaissance mathématique." Philosophiques no. 30:47-66.

Résumé : "Ce dialogue confronte deux conceptions qui dominent jusqu’à nos jours la philosophie des mathématiques : d’un côté la conception kantienne qui souligne l’irréductible apport de l’intuition dans la formulation des axiomes, ainsi que l’effectivité des procédés de construction ; de l’autre côté la conception bolzanienne qui s’efforce d’éliminer toute intervention de l’intuition au profit des démonstrations et des procédés purement conceptuels."

25. ———. 2012. "La logique comme théorie de la science selon Bernard Bolzano." Les Cahiers philosophiques de Strasbourg no. 32:227-251.

"En écoutant les diférentes contributions à ce colloque, je me suis retrouvé sur un terrain familier. Presque tous les noms des auteurs des xviie et xviiie siècles m’étaient bien connus : ceux de La Ramée, de Zabarella, Goclenius, Clauberg, Geulincx, Jungius, Baumgarten, et bien d’autres, sans parler des grands. De même leurs questions : qu’est-ce que la logique ? quel est son objet ? est-elle une doctrine ou un organon, une méthode ? est-elle une méthode de disposition des résultats connus, de démonstration, d’invention ou de purification ? Comme l’a dit Sophie Roux, le brouillage logique-méthode a encore été accentué au cours du xviie siècle. quel est l’usage de la logique, à supposer qu’elle soit utile ? est-elle superlue, vide et stérile comme le disent les premiers critiques de l’aristotélisme et ensuite descartes et Locke ?

Un grand auteur a remis l’ordre dans ce foisonnement d’idées disparates, en intégrant tous ces éléments dans son système de logique : le théologien, mathématicien et philosophe Bernard Bolzano. Il a commenté et critiqué tous ces auteurs, traité toutes ces questions." (p. 227)

26. Seron, Denis. 2006. "La controverse sur la négation de Bolzano à Windelband." Philosophie:58-78.

"Il y a certainement lieu d’évoquer, du point de vue de l’histoire de la philosophie de langue allemande du dix-neuvième et de la première moitié du vingtième siècle, un problème de la négation. Ce problème de la négation se ramène à un petit nombre de questions fondamentales. En particulier : l’affirmation et la négation se situent-elles strictement sur le même plan et sont-elles « coordonnées » ? La négation est-elle une propriété du contenu de l’acte judicatif, ou une propriété de l’acte judicatif lui-même ? Si la négation est simplement la qualité de rejet, qu’est-ce qui est rejeté dans le jugement négatif ? Le jugement négatif est-il pour autant un « jugement de valeur » ? Existe-t-il des représentations négatives ? Le jugement négatif est-il synonyme de séparation, ou réclame-t-il encore, comme le jugement affirmatif, une liaison entre des contenus représentatifs ? « S n’est pas p » est-il une forme primitive du jugement au même titre que « S est p », comme le pensait Kant par exemple ? Ou bien est-il, comme le pense Husserl, le résultat d’une modification de la forme primitive de tout jugement « S est p » ? Quel est le lieu de la négation ? Est-ce la copule, le prédicat, ou ni l’un ni l’autre ?

Je me propose ici d’indiquer schématiquement en quels termes ces questions ont été posées et de retracer quelques étapes de ce questionnement depuis Lotze et Bolzano, en m’arrêtant avant Frege et Husserl et en n’évoquant qu’occasionnellement les conceptions de Brentano et des brentaniens." (p. 58)

27. Siebel, Mark. 2003. "La notion bolzanienne de déductibilité." Philosophiques no. 30:171-189.

Résumé : "L’article (i) présente le concept de déductibilité que Bolzano introduit dans sa Wissenscahftslehre, (ii) indique quelques traits caractéristiques en vertu desquels ce concept diffère de plusieurs conceptions contemporaines de la conséquence et (iii) examine l’affirmation selon laquelle il présente une forte similarité avec la conception de Tarski et la logique de la pertinence."

28. Simons, Peter. 2003. "Bolzano sur les nombres." Philosophiques no. 30:127-135.

Résumé : "Dans cet article, l’auteur présente la théorie bolzanienne du nombre.

Il établit, sur la base d’une comparaison avec Frege, que la conception bolzanienne rencontre toutes les exigences d’une telle théorie tout en présentant plusieurs traits originaux, comme par exemple le fait qu’elle s’articule sur la base d’une théorie des « collections » (Inbegriffe), qui lui confèrent un intérêt philosophique certain. Tout en indiquant au passage un problème inhérent à la notion bolzanienne de Reihe, l’auteur présente la conception bolzanienne des nombres naturels, reconstruit sa théorie des nombres abstraits et montre comment Bolzano est en mesure d’établir le lien entre ces derniers et leur application aux ensembles concrets d’objets."

29. Sinaceur, Hourya. 1975. "Bolzano est-il le précurseur de Frege?" Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 57:286-303.

"L'histoire des sciences entretient avec la philosophie des rapports privilrgiés. En clarifier les problèmes peut constituer, de manière tout ä fait spécifique, un travail de critique philosophique, puisqu'il contribue à élucider les situations intellectuelles oü viennent à se former certains des concepts fondamentaux de notre savoir, et par suite, des formes et des figures de la rationalité. Mais cela s'accompagne inévitablement d'une révision de l'historiographie usuelle, révision souvent malaisée en ce qu'elle doit assumer le risque d'avoir ä nier des évidences historiques, ce qui est bien plus difficile que d'illustrer, inversement, par l'histoire, des thèses affirmatives, positives et peremptoires. En l'espece, s'agissant de verifier si Bolzano a été le précurseur de Frege, il suffit, semble-t-il, de noter les allusions de Bolzano aux concepts elaborés par Frege pour y lire une étape de cette élaboration. Mais si découvre que cette étape figure davantage les obstacles rencontrés par Frege que la voie qui le mena aux fondements de l'arithmétique, comment etablir que Bolzano n'est pas le précurseur de Frege ? C'est ä cette question que nous nous attachons pour ce qui est de la définition du nombre entier." (p. 286)

30. ———. 1996. "Bolzano et les mathématiques." In Les philosophes et les mathématiques, edited by Barbin, Évelyne and Caveing, Maurice, 150-173. Paris: Ellipses.

I. La recherche des premières raisons au royaume de la vérité: Les sciences a priori et les autres; Concept et intuition, analytique et synthétique; La théorie des sciences purement a priori ou théorie du sens objectif. – II. La reconstruction axiomatique et l’arithmétisation des mathématiques: La connexion objective des vérités; Concepts primitifs; L’arithmétisation. – III. Les ensembles infinis: Le concept d’infini actuel; Les grandeurs et les nombres; Les divers infinis. – IV. Les nombres de l’arithmétique pure. – Conclusion.

31. ———. 1999. "Réalisme mathématique, réalisme logique chez Bolzano." Revue d'Histoire des Sciences no. 52:457-477.

Résumé : "La plupart des spécialistes de Bolzano présentent sa doctrine des propositions et représentations en soi, doctrine du sens objectif, comme une pièce maîtresse de son réalisme philosophique. Le but de cet article est de montrer les difficultés d'une interprétation trop monolithique de ce réalisme. La théorie logique de Bolzano est en fait plus nuancée qu'on ne le reconnaît généralement. Certes, les propositions en soi constituent un univers de significations objectives, douées d'une réalité propre, distincte à la fois de la réalité psychique et de la réalité physique. Mais les propositions en soi ne sont pas, à strictement parler, des objets logiques ; elles sont matière, et non objet, de pensée. Quant au réalisme mathématique de notre auteur, il ne laisse pas d'être affecté par un certain empirisme manifeste surtout dans le statut accordé aux nombres entiers."

32. Tatzel, Armin. 2003. "La théorie bolzanienne du fondement et de la conséquence." Philosophiques no. 30:191-217.

Résumé : "Le but de cet article est de présenter et d’évaluer la théorie de la fondation de Bernard Bolzano, c’est-à-dire sa théorie du concept exprimé et de la relation mise en jeu par « parce que ». Dans la première partie (§§1-4), le concept de fondation est distingué et mis en relation avec trois autres concepts: le concept de raison épistémique, le concept de causalité et le concept de déductibilité (c’est-à-dire de conséquence logique). Dans la seconde partie (§§5-7), je reconstruis la théorie bolzanienne de la fondation sous forme axiomatique et j’en offre une discussion critique."

33. Textor, Mark. 2000. "Bolzano et Husserl sur l'analyticité." Les Études Philosophiques 435-454.

"Bolzano est connu parmi les philosophes de la logique surtout pour deux définitions de concepts logiques importants.

(A) On parle souvent aujourd'hui de la définition de Bolzano-Tarski de la conséquence logique, suivant laquelle un énoncé X s'ensuit logiquement des énoncés de la classe K si tout modèle de la classe K est aussi un modèle de X.

(...)

Siebel montre dans son livre Der Begriff der Ableitbarkeit bei Bolzano que cette image courante doit être révisée.

(B) Tout comme on parle de la définition de Bolzano-Tarski de la conséquence logique, on pourrait parler de la définition de Bolzano-Quine de l'analyticité logique ou de la vérité logique. Quine définit une vérité

logique comme une proposition vraie qui ne contient essentiellement que des mots logiques, et il remarque dans une note de bas de page : « En substance Bar Hillel a retrouvé cette formulation chez Bolzano, il y a plus de 125 ans» (Quirie, 1954, p. 110).

Dans mon exposé, je me concentrerai sur le second point : la définition que Bolzano donne de l'analyticité logique, ou, pour privilégier le sousgroupe des propositions logiquement analytiques qui tient aujourd'hui le devant de la scène, la définition donnée par Bolzano de la vérité logique. Or l'expression« vérité logique» est un terme technique de la philosophie. Que faut-il entendre par là ?" (pp. 435-436)

Bibliographie

Willard Orman Van Quine (1954), « Carnap and Logical Truth », repris dans W. V. O. Quine, The Ways of Paradox, Cambridge, Mass., 1960.

34. ———. 2003. "Bolzano sur le temps et la persistance." Philosophiques no. 30:105-125.

Résumé : "Comment une proposition qui affirme que a est fatigué le matin et n’est pas fatigué le midi peut-elle être vraie ? Bolzano soutient que toute proposition portant sur une chose contingente contient, dans la composante-sujet, la représentation d’un temps. Dans cet article, je reconstruis et évalue les arguments de Bolzano en les comparant à ceux de son adversaire principal, le tenant de la position selon laquelle toute proposition portant sur une chose contingente contient une copule renfermant la représentation du temps auquel l’objet représenté par la composante-sujet a la propriété représentée par la composante-prédicat (la conception de la modification de la copule). La conception bolzanienne de la modification du sujet ne peut résoudre le problème logique de la persistance qu’en assumant que des représentations-sujets qui contiennent différentes représentations de temps représentent différents individus dotés de déterminations temporelles. Mais ceci engendre une nouvelle question : comment un objet peut-il avoir différentes déterminations temporelles sans pour autant changer ?"

Note: Cet article paraîtra en version originale dans History of Philosophy Quarterly.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bernard Bolzano: Bibliografia delle traduzioni e degli studi italiani

Traduzioni

1. Bolzano, Bernard. 1965. Paradossi dell'infinito. Milano: Feltrinelli.

Traduzione di Carla Sborgi, con prefazione, appendice e note di Franco Voltaggio.

2. ———. 1965. Paradossi dell'infinito. Milano: Silva.

Introduzione e traduzione di Alberto Conte; nuova edizione Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 2003.

3. ———. 1985. Del metodo matematico. Torino: Boringhieri.

Traduzione della seconda delle tre parti in cui si suddivide l'Introduzione alla Grössenlehre (scritta prima del febbraio 1842); edizione originale nella Gesamtausgabe: Reihe II: Nachlass. A. Nachgelassene Schriften, Band 7, Grössenlehre. Einleitung zur Grössenlehre und erste Begriffe der allgemeinen Grössenlehre. Herausgegeben von Jan Berg, (Friedrich Frommann Verlag (Günther Holzboog), Stuttgart, 1975).

Traduzione di Lorenzo Giotti, introduzione di Carlo Cellucci; nuova edizione 2004.

4. ———. 2006. "Che cos'è la filosofia?" In Il concetto della filosofia in Bernard Bolzano, edited by Fossati, Lorenzo. Milano: Isu Cattolica.

Traduzione italiana di Was ist Philosophie? (1838), a cura di M.J. Fesl, Wien: W. Braumüller, 1849; nuova edizione in: B. Bolzano, Vermischte philosophische und physikalische Schriften 1832-1848, a cura di J. Louzil, , Reihe 2A (Nachgelassene Schriften), Band 12/3, Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe, Stuttgart -Bad Canstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1978, pp. 13-33.

5. ———. 2011. "Proposizione ed espressione." Discipline Filosofiche no. 21:13-26.

Traduzione italiana di Luca Guidetti.

6. ———. 2014. Dottrina fondamentale. §§ 1-45 dalla Dottrina della scienza Milano: Bompiani.

Testo tedesco a fronte.

Introduzione e traduzione di Gianni Rigamonti.

Note e apparati di Lorenzo Fossati.

Bibliografia degli studi in Italiano

1. "Bernard Bolzano e la tradizione filosofica." 2011. Discipline Filosofiche no. 21:5-347.

Indice: Stefano Besoli, Luca Guidetti, Venanzio Raspa: Presentazione 5; Luca Guidetti: Lo spazio logico dell'espressione. Intorno a B. Bolzano, Proposizione ed espressione 7; Bernard Bolzano: Proposizione ed espressione 13; Jan Patočka: Il posto di Bolzano nella storia della filosofia 27; Andrej Krause: Bolzano e Aristotele 43; Luca Guidetti: Bolzano e gli stoici 61; Massimo Mugnai: Bolzano e Leibniz 93; Stefano Besoli: Bolzano e Kant 109; Gaëtan Pégny: Bolzano e Hegel 153; Wolfgang Künne: Bolzano e Frege 179; Mauro Mariani: Bolzano e Cantor 203; Sandra Lapointe: Bolzano e Husserl 227; Venanzio Raspa: Bolzano e la filosofia austriaca 245; Jan Sebestik: Bolzano e la matematica 287; Peter Simons: Bolzano e la logica 321; Abstracts 343-347.

2. Benoist, Jocelyn. 2009. "Perché non c'é un'ontologia formale in Bolzano." Giornaledifilosofia.net:2-14.

"Spesso oggi il pensiero di Bolzano si vede chiamato in causa a fondamento del progetto, propriamente moderno, di un’ontologia formale(1), al quale lo sviluppo della matematica formale (liberata dal giogo del riferimento alle figure o alle grandezze) e della logica matematizzata ha fornito un nuovo inizio. Il fatto che l’autore non abbia contribuito di poco a questo duplice sviluppo nutre certamente un tale tentativo di avvicinamento. Alcuni dei suoi enunciati sulla matematica e la concezione che Bolzano ha potuto farsene col tempo, nella continuità con Leibniz, a un certo punto del suo pensiero, possono anche confortarlo.

C’è tuttavia una vera “ontologia formale” in Bolzano? Questa stessa nozione può avere un senso nel contesto del suo pensiero?" (p. 2)

(1) Cfr. ad esempio F. Nef, L’objet quelconque. Recherches sur l’ontologie de l’objet, Paris, Vrin, 1998.

3. Besoli, Stefano. 2011. "Bolzano e Kant." Discipline Filosofiche no. 21:109-152.

"L’autonoma prospettiva dall’anti-kantismo bolzaniano, che si manifesta a partire dai Beyträge del 1810 (6) - in un continuo ampliamento di orizzonti tematici che sollecitano un incremento di analisi concettuale in ordine a problemi che, non avendo mai cessato di apparire in maniera diversa, richledevano soluzioni all’altezza di una loro rinnovata configurazione, culmina in quella sintesi di scuola, largamente autorizzata da Bolzano, che è il Neuer Anti-Kant (1850) (7), nel quale si condensano, in un quadro unitario, le novità espresse da un fronte di opposizione al soggettivismo trascendentale, che aspirava a una qualche visibilità in un’epoca in cui si avvertiva che un certo numero di filosofi erano ancora legati a Kant o erano comunque in procinto di volgersi di nuovo a lui, delusi dall’esito inconcludente della più recente speculazione(8). Pur non essendo quindi del tutto inaspettata la fonte da cui proviene questa forma di radicale Kant-Kritik, essa non attua una semplice regressione realistica, consona a riproporre i contorni di quel realismo trascendentale tanto deprecato da Kant, ma individua nella dottrina dell'inseità degli oggetti logici lo strumento più idoneo per rincarare in senso assolutistico una nozione di a priori che in Kant appariva in fondo ancora largamente «acritica»(9)

(6) Cfr. B. Bolzano, Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik. Erste Lieferung, Widmann, Prag, 1810, neu hrsg. mit Einleitung und Anmerkungen von H. Fels, Schöningh, Paderborn, 1926, Nachdruck hrsg. von H. Wussing, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1975.

(7) Sulla rilevanza attribuita all’aggettivazione che compare nel titolo di quest’opera, il cui significato è da un lato indicare la «natura dei fondamenti» con i quali si è inteso contestare Kant per sole esigenze di verità, ma dall’altro distinguere il contenuto di tale critica da quella formulata da B. Stattler in una sua requisitoria peraltro non memorabile {Anti-Kant, 2 Bde., Lentner, München, 1788), o forse ad es. anche da quella di A. Bolliger (Anti-Kant oder Elemente der Logik, der Physik und der Ethik, Schneider, Basel, 1882), cfr. F. Prihonsky, op. cit., P 19.

(8) Cfr. B. Bolzano, Was ist Philosophie?, Braumüller, Wien, 1849, ora in Id., Bernard Bolzano Gesamtausgabe, hrsg. von E. Winter, J. Berg, F. Kambartel, J. Louzil, B. van Rootselaar, Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1969 sgg. (d’ora in poi GA), GA 2 A, 12/3 (Vermischte philosophische und physikalische Schriften 1832-1848, hrsg. von J. Berg und J. Loužil), p. 13.)"

(9) Cfr. J. Patocka, Il posto di Bolzano nella storia della filosofia, supra, p. 40 sg., dove l’autore critica però Bolzano per non essere riuscito a cogliere il «carattere più positivo della dottrina kantiana, richiamandosi a «mitiche verità in sé», invece di avvalersi di una «dotttrina critica della conoscenza» di natura processuale.

4. Bucci, Paolo. 1989. "Bernard Bolzano e la logica kantiana." Rivista di Filosofia no. 80:241-260.

"La discussione di Bolzano si volge innanzitutto a considerare i termini particolari in cui, all'interno della manualistica kantiana, era stato affermato il carattere formale della logica. Agli studiosi d'impostazione kantiana, autori dei «nuovi manuali», Bolzano rimprovera in particolare di aver voluto individuare - come condizione della formalità della logica e della sua possibilità di porsi in una dimensione rigorosamente a priori - il fatto che essa debba fare astrazione «da ogni diversità degli oggetti», per limitarsi a una considerazione del modo in cui l'intelletto «pensa e deve pensare gli oggetti» (15)

• Mostrando di tenere presente la concezione kantiana della «logica generale pura», Bolzano rileva che le trattazioni di Krug, Hoffbauer, Kiesewetter avevano in definitiva condotto a un vero e proprio

«fraintendimento» del carattere formale della logica, secondo il quale essa non dovrebbe contenere al suo interno «alcuna materia, ossia nessuna proposizione determinata » e di conseguenza, «poiché verità possono essere soltantoproposizioni determinate, neppure verità»." (p. 247)

(15) Wissenschaftslehre, vol. I, p. 46. Definizioni di questo tipo sono in effetti rintracciabili ad esempio in J. G. K. Kiesewetter, Grundriss einer allgemeinen Logik, Leipzig, Röchly, 1824 , § 2, e in J. Chr. Hoffbauer, Anfangsgründe der Logik, Halle, s.i.e., 1794 § 11, e si richiamano direttamente ad analoghe affermazioni kantiane. Cfr. infatti Kritzk der reinen Vernunft, Riga, Hartknoch, 1781, pp. 52-54, e 2a ed. 1787, pp. 76-78, trad. it. a cura di G. Gentile e G. Lombardo-Radice con il titolo Critica della ragion pura, Bari, Laterza, 6a ed. 1977, pp. 94-95; Logik, in Gesammelte Schriften (a cura della Königlich Akademie der Wissenschaften), Berlin-Leipzig, Reimer-De Gruyter & Co., 1902-23 , voi. IX, pp. 12-13, trad. it. a cura di L. Amoroso con il titolo Logica, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1984, pp. 6-7 .

5. ———. 1994. "Logica e organizzazione del sapere nella dottrina della scienza di Bernard Bolzano." Rivista di Filosofia no. 85:241-259.

"Confrontata con il progetto fichtiano della Wissenschaftslehre, l'impostazione bolzaniana presenta differenze spesso rilevanti. Fondamentale tra queste differenze è il fatto che la Wissenschaftslehre bolzaniana, nel momento in cui affronta il problema dell'organizzazion del sapere, non mtende porsi al di fuori dell'ambito della logica: la «dottrina della scienza in senso stretto» coincide infatti con una particolare accezione del termine «logica», secondo cui essa si configura appunto ome la disciplina che ha il compito di determinare Ie regole e i criteri del processo di organizzazione deIle conoscenze." (pp. 243-244)

6. ———. 1995. "La teoria bolzaniana delle spazio e del tempo." Rivista di Filosofia no. 86:217-237.

"A una indagine che si proponga di ricostruirne l'interna articolazione la teoria bolzaniana dello spazio e del tempo si presenta come un insieme di analisi che, per quanto scarsamente sistematizzate, si possono ordinare secondo tre distinti «livelli», in dipendenza dei differenti contesti teorici ai quali appartengono i problemi sollevati da Bolzano nel corso della sua discussione(1). I tre livelli della teoria possono essere denominati rispettivamente ontologico, lektologico-semantico e gnoseologico.

Appartiene all'ambito di una «ontologia» dello spazio e del tempo la questione se ad essi debba essere attribuito lo statuto di oggetto (Gegenstand) oppure quello di qualità (Beschaffenheit), e se abbiano o no la proprietà di esistere (Wirklichkeit haben) (2)." (p. 217)

(1) La presente ricostruzione terrà conto essenzialmente della Wissenschaftslehre, che non è tuttavia l'unico fra i testi di Bolzano a documentare il suo interesse per la tematica dello spazio e del tempo. Di essa si trova traccia, ad esempio, nella terza sezione della incompiuta Grossenlehre, il progetto di fondazione e di ordinamento delle conoscenze matematiche che Bolzano intraprese a partire dal 1830. Sull'articolazione dell'opera cfr. J. Berg, Bolzano's Logic, Stockholm, Almquist and Wiksell, 1962, pp. 17-25.

Della seconda parte dell'Introduzione alla Grossenlehre esiste una traduzione italiana a cura di L. Giotti con il titolo Del metodo matematico, Torino, Boringhieri, 1985.

(2) Su queste «nozioni ontologiche» si veda E. Casari, An lnterpretation of Some Ontologica! and Semantica! Notions in Bolzano's Logic, nel volume Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre 1837-1987 (Atti del workshop internazionale), Firenze, Olschki, 1992, pp. 55-56. L'«ontologia» bolzaniana ammette sia «cose» (oggetti o qualità) esistenti, sia «cose» non-esistenti come le entità lektologiche (idee e proposizioni in sé). Si veda in proposito B. Bolzano, Wissenschaftslehre, Aalen, Scientia Verlag, 1981, vol. I, pp. 218-20.

7. ———. 2000. Husserl e Bolzano. Alle origini della fenomenologia. Milano: Edizioni Unicopli.

8. Bussotti, Paolo. 1998. "Il problema dei fondamenti della matematica negli scritti giovanili di Bernard Bolzano." Epistemologia no. 21:225-243.

9. Cantù, Paola. 2003. "Bernard Bolzano e le rappresentazioni anoggettuali." In Forma dat esse rei, edited by Valore, Paolo, 125-166. Milano: LED Edizioni Universitarie.

Abstract: "L’analisi della questione del riferimento e del significato dei termini linguistici è strettamente correlata al rapporto tra le parole con cui descriviamo il mondo e i concetti con cui lo categorizziamo. In che modo le espressioni linguistiche permettono di parlare del mondo? C’è una corrispondenza biunivoca tra parole e cose? E se non c’è, cosa significano i termini vuoti? Denotano concetti? E in che modo potremmo avere un concetto senza un oggetto che corrisponda ad esso? E a che scopo dovremmo servirci di concetti vuoti per descrivere il mondo?

Nel 1834 Bernard Bolzano elabora una teoria delle rappresentazioni anoggettuali in risposta a simili domande e riconosce in molte pratiche linguistiche l’uso di espressioni prive di riferimento oggettuale ma tuttavia significanti; perfino la congiunzione di termini contraddittori ha per Bolzano un significato, benché non solo non denoti ma neppure possa denotare un oggetto. Per comprendere quale sia il significato di tali espressioni riassumeremo brevemente nell’Introduzione la teoria logica di Bolzano, quindi offriremo una catalogazione degli esempi di rappresentazioni senza oggetto, suddividendole in negative, contraddittorie, semplicemente vuote e non referenziali; infine vedremo in che senso le rappresentazioni senza oggetto possono essere considerate immaginarie. Mostreremo la funzione logica delle rappresentazioni anoggettuali e scopriremo anche una ragione matematica per l’analisi delle rappresentazioni contraddittorie.

Nell’ultimo paragrafo analizzeremo le implicazioni ontologiche della teoria delle rappresentazioni distinguendo due livelli (esserci e esistere) e argomentando che la concezione di Bolzano è un oggettivismo semantico piuttosto che un platonismo logico. Attraverso il confronto con Frege, Russell, Meinong e Quine tratteggeremo infine la questione della portata esistenziale delle proposizioni mostrando il rapporto tra due aspetti del problema ontologico: semantico e metafisico."

10. Capone-Braga, Gaetano. 1916. "L' "Athanasia" di Bernardo Bolzano." La Cultura Filosofica no. 10:116-145.

11. Casari, Ettore. 1985. "L'universo logico bolzaniano." Rivista di Filosofia no. 76:339-366.

12. ———. 1985. "Logica e unità del sapere." In L'unità della cultura. In memoria di Lucio Lombardo Radice, edited by Barra, Mario. Bari: Edizioni Dedalo.

13. ———. 1990. "Una fonte dimenticata? La teoria bolzaniana del significato." Rivista di Filosofia no. 80:319-349.

14. ———. 1997. "Sull'origine dell' "oggettivo" in Bolzano." In Logica e teologia. Studi in onore di Vittorio Sainati, edited by Fabris, Adriano, Fioravanti, Gianfranco and Moriconi, Enrico, 93-115. Pisa: ETS.

15. Cataldi Madonna, Luigi. 1989. "Wolff, Bolzano e la probabilità." Il Cannocchiale.Rivista di Studi Filosofici:107-130.

Reprinted in: S. Carboncini, L. Cataldi Madonna (eds.), Nuovi studi sul pensiero di Christian Wolff, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1989.

16. Colantuono, Donatella. 2012. "Conoscenza della realtà e realtà come conoscenza. Il punto di vista di Bernard Bolzano." Quaestio. Annuario di Storia della Metafisica no. 12:153-170.

"Quando si sente parlare di Bernard Bolzano (Praga 1781-1848) si è spesso indotti ad associarne il nome al cosiddetto platonismo logico(1). Il perché è facilmente rintracciabile in quella che è probabilmente la dottrina più nota tra le molte esposte nella sua Wissenschaftslehre (1837), ovvero la teoria delle proposizioni in sé (Sätze an sich) e delle idee in sé (Vorstellungen an sich). L’espressione“essere in sé” è infatti utilizzata proprio per connotare le nozioni logiche basilari come entità non-mentali e non-linguistiche, totalmente indipendenti dall’essere pensate o pronunciate da qualcuno. In tal senso – si potrebbe dire – Bolzano è un realista, poiché pare non contemplare la possibilità di una determinazione della realtà in senso noetico.

(,,,)

Ciò che però qui vorrei mostrare è proprio come la legittimità di tali interpretazioni possa essere messa in questione attraverso il chiarimento della nozione bolzaniana di esistenza (Existenz) o avere realtà (Wirklichkeit haben). Seguendo questa direttrice, il percorso che intendo delineare si articolerà su un duplice binario. Il primo consiste nel mostrare che la realtà propriamente intesa non è un predicato attribuibile agli enti logici, se non nella misura in cui questi diventano l’oggetto di un atto intenzionale del pensiero. Il secondo è l’indagine del ruolo che Bolzano attribuisce alla mente nella logica applicata, che sarà svolta verificando se l’accadere delle verità nella realtà si imponga semplicemente alla mente come un dato oggettivo o se non sia anche condizionata dalle modalità di accesso alle proposizioni da parte degli esseri pensanti." (pp. 153-154)

(1) Cf. ad esempio in E. Morscher, Das logische An-sich bei Bernard Bolzano, Anton Pustet, Salzburg-München 1973.

17. Costantini, Filippo. 2016. Pensare l'infnito. Filosofia e Matematica dell’Infinito in Bernard Bolzano e Georg Cantor. Milano - Udine: Mimesis Edizioni.

"Ecco il tema del libro: il transfinito. Ovvero la teoria degli insiemi. Mostreremo la genesi di questa teoria, il suo farsi largo nelle analisi di uno degli autori più interessanti dell’Ottocento, nonostante sia stato pressoché dimenticato: Bernard Bolzano. La prima parte del libro è dedicata a lui: tenteremo di capire che cosa Bolzano intende con il termine Menge (insieme) e il ruolo che tale concetto assume nella sua filosofia. Questo ci permetterà di riflettere sul rapporto tra logica, matematica e filosofia (ontologia e metafisica) e su questioni di alto interesse speculativo: dalla riflessione sull’assoluto alla trattazione matematica dei paradossi di Zenone. La seconda parte è dedicata a Cantor, padre indiscusso dell’insiemistica. Mostreremo come l’idea di trattare con quantità infinite sia sorta da problemi squisitamente tecnici e che però, fin dai primi vagiti della teoria, Cantor abbia sempre considerato di fondamentale importanza l’aspetto filosofico del suo lavoro matematico." (p. 20)

18. Di Bella, Stefano. 2006. "L' "Anti-Kant" di Franz Príhonsky e la critica bolzaniana alla teoria kantiana del giudizio." Rivista di Filosofia no. 97:233-250.

19. Fossati, Lorenzo. 2005. "Bolzano su sapere e credere." In La misura dell'uomo. Filosofia, teologia, scienza nel dibattito antropologico in Germania (1760-1915), edited by Mori, Massimo and Poggi, Stefano, 289-316. Bologna: Il Mulino.

"Bolzano è come un lago, sulla superficie del quale, dopo avervi gettato un sasso, si disegnano i cerchi concentrici delle onde: il discorso si amplia necessariamente e naturalmente, e il singolo argomento acquista la sua portata solo se gli si permette di increspare l’intera superficie, se cioè si è disposti a seguire la trama dei rimandi interni ed esterni dell’opera. In un certo senso, addirittura, è possibile partire da un qualsiasi punto per avere una via d’accesso all’intero sistema del pensiero bolzaniano.

Il sasso che vorremmo gettare è quello dell’analisi dei concetti di sapere e di credere, ma, per riuscire nel lancio, dovremo necessariamente anteporre ad essa l’esame delle linee fondamentali della teoria della conoscenza bolzaniana." (p. 289)

20. ———. 2006. Il concetto della filosofia in Bernard Bolzano. Milano: I.S.U. Università Cattolica.

Contiene in appendice la traduzione di B. Bolzano, Was ist Philosophie? (1838), Che cos'è la filosofia?, pp. 175-201.

"Per Bolzano il problema della scarsa diffusione del suo pensiero nel mondo dei dotti era di primaria importanza: da un lato egli era ben consapevole della novità e della profondità dei suoi lavori, dall’altro non poteva non constatare come essi rimanessero ai margini del dibattito filosofico e scientifico del suo tempo. La causa gli pareva che dovesse essere ricercata in aspetti esteriori e contingenti, come la «pesantezza» del suo modo di scrivere e del suo stile, o la sorte toccata ad alcuni dei suoi allievi, che talvolta venivano marginalizzati, talaltra abbandonavano le concezioni del maestro elaborandone di proprie o avvicinandosi ad altre impostazioni.

Ma per cogliere la portata di tali considerazioni è bene interrogarsi se l’isolamento sia stata una caratteristica costante del Bolzano-Kreis e se e quanto sia stata radicale. Dovremo allora innanzitutto ripercorrere la vita del Nostro, cercando di mettere in luce il clima culturale in cui si formò e in cui successivamente operò.

In appendice viene presentata la traduzione di Was ist Philosophie?, il saggio che costituirà il filo rosso della nostra ricerca." (p. 7)

21. ———. 2006. "La “Weltweisheit” da Wolff a Bolzano." In Tradurre e comprendere. Pluralità dei linguaggi e delle culture, edited by Pititto, Rocco and Venezia, Simona, 201-217. Roma: Aracne.

"Nel saggio Was ist Philosophie? del 1849, mirando a una definizione della filosofia e dovendosi districare tra le molte alternative disponibili, Bolzano individua il punto ideale di partenza dell’indagine nella considerazione del significato comunemente attribuito al termine, affermando che

trotz den so mannigfach lautenden Erklärungen, welche die Philosophen bisher den Begriffe ihrer Wissenschaft gegeben, bloß durch den steten Gebrauch des Wortes allmählich eine Bedeutung desselben gebildet, die, wenn auch nicht scharf begrenzt, doch immer bestimmt genug ist, um es von jedem anderen zu unterscheiden(1).

Infatti,

muß […] jeder Weltweise, der uns ein philosophisches System darbietet, einen bestimmten Begriff der Philosophie demselben zu Grunde gelegt haben(2).

La parola che qui egli utilizza, “Weltweise”, e che ricorre spesso in Bolzano, è quella su cui vorremmo soffermarci in questo contributo.

Nel tedesco corrente la parola “Weltweisheit” viene usata come sinonimo di “Philosophie” e “Weltweise” di “Philosoph”; Bolzano, però, ritiene di poter giocare sui due termini e attribuisce una grande importanza al modo in cui essi vengono applicati, e quindi ci sembra valer la pena cercare di approfondire il significato della parola più “insolita”, nell’assunzione che dietro ogni sinonimia ci sia qualcosa da scoprire.

Essendo la parola la via d’accesso al concetto per lo stesso Bolzano, una simile questione non dovrebbe essere né troppo peregrina né esclusivamente terminologica." (p. 201)

(1) Bolzano (1849), p. 15: «nonostante le spiegazioni apparentemente così disparate che i filosofi hanno dato finora del concetto della loro scienza, si è formato in modo graduale, semplicemente attraverso l’uso costante della parola, un suo significato che, anche se non nettamente delimitato, è pur sempre abbastanza determinato da distinguerlo da ogni altro».

(2) Ibid.: «ogni sapiente che ci presenta un sistema filosofico deve aver posto a suo fondamento un determinato concetto di filosofia». Rendiamo qui “Weltweise” con “sapiente” e “philosophisch” con “filosofico” per rendere il gioco tra i due termini: la ragione di tale scelta emergerà dalle pagine che seguono."

22. ———. 2010. "Il fondazionismo è superato? La versione di Bolzano." In Mondo Uomo Dio. Le ragioni della metafisica nel dibattito filosofico contemporaneo, edited by Ghisalberti, Alessandro, 177-196. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

"L’idea che la conoscenza umana debba essere fondata o giustificata pare oggi il mero retaggio di un’impostazione superata del problema. Tuttavia si tratta di un progetto che è stato perseguito lungamente, e che in quanto tale ha subito torsioni e ripensamenti non secondari nel corso della storia della filosofia, al punto che forse non sarebbe eccessivo considerare il termine fondazione come equivoco. Prima ancora di stabilire se sia possibile o necessario un fondamento della conoscenza, bisogna allora cercare di chiarire che cosa propriamente ci proponiamo di fare ed eventualmente specificare se riteniamo tale tentativo votato in quanto tale al fallimento, o se invece lo siano solo alcune delle sue varianti.

In effetti, almeno secondo un certo modo di intendere la storia della filosofia, si sarebbe tentati di rispondere alla domanda se il fondazionismo sia superato con un secco no, a) perché in generale il concetto di superamento, per cui vi sarebbero problemi e soprattutto soluzioni superati da altri, non avrebbe senso, essendo invece sempre concreti e singoli tanto i primi quanto le seconde(1); b) perché per motivi analoghi sarebbe ugualmente discutibile parlare di fondazionismo al singolare, invece che dei diversi fondamenti escogitati dai singoli filosofi.

Nonostante questo caveat, si cercherà di discutere il fondazionismo dando prima un quadro generale della crisi in cui sembra essere incorso, in tal modo specificando i suoi stessi tratti, per poi presentare il fondazionismo di Bernard Bolzano, interessante per alcuni aspetti che si spera di riuscire a far emergere." (p. 177)

(1) Cfr. l’oramai classico saggio di M. Dal Pra, Del «superamento» in storiografia filosofica, «Rivista critica di storia della filosofia», 11 (1956), pp. 218-226.

23. ———. 2010. La tela del sapere. Studi su Bernard Bolzano. Milano: Educatt.

"Nelle pagine che seguono vorremmo provare allora a gettare tre sassi, saggiando tre diversi punti dei suoi scritti e tentando tre differenti approcci. Nel primo caso verrà considerata la Fundamentallehre, la prima parte della Wissenschaftslehre (§§ 17-45), che affronta il tema capitale della fondazione della conoscenza, cercando di stabilire un ponte tra l’impostazione bolzaniana e l’approccio più recente al problema, e di valutarne in tale contesto la praticabilità teorica.

Successivamente, si focalizzerà l’attenzione sulla Erkenntnislehre (§§ 269-321) e in particolare si tenterà un’analisi approfondita del § 321, in relazione ai concetti di conoscenza, sapere e credere, esplicitando i punti di polemica nei confronti della trattazione kantiana dello stesso tema, secondo un intento più strettamente storico e ricostruttivo.

Infine, si cercherà di fare emergere la concezione generale della filosofia di Bolzano, a partire da un singolo termine, quello di Weltweisheit, rintracciando i luoghi dello «scontro» che in tedesco si ebbe tra esso e quello che poi avrebbe prevalso, Philosophie.

Si tratta insomma di tentativi di amplificare e assecondare gli stimoli che provengono dalla pagina bolzaniana, e di seguire le tracce che collegano il pensiero di Bolzano al pensiero del suo tempo ed eventualmente del nostro. Evidentemente, non può trattarsi che di piste che conducono lontano, e di cui solo una parte può essere qui percorsa, ma sarebbe già sufficiente per chi scrive riuscire a far emergere la proficuità e l’interesse di tale complessa «tela»." (pp. 6-7)

24. Ganthaler, Heinrich, Berg, Jan, and Morscher, Edgar. 1993. "Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848)." In La filosofia cristiana nei secoli XIX e XX. Vol. 1, edited by Coreth, Emerich, Neidl, Walter M. and Pfligersdorffer, Georg, 272-298. Roma: Città Nuova.

Edizione originale: Christliche Philosophie im katholischen Denken des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Band 1. Neue Ansätze im 19. Jahrhundert, Graz-Wien-Köln: Styria Premium, 1987, pp. 242-265, traduzione italiana a cura di Gaspare Mura e Giorgio Penzo.

25. Guidetti, Luca. 2011. "Lo spazio logico dell'espressione. Intorno a B. Bolzano, Proposizione ed espressione." Discipline Filosofiche no. 21:7-12.

"1. La struttura della Dottrina della scienza

Nella sua Introduzione alla Dottrina della scienza, Bolzano sostiene che il fine dell’opera è quello di offrire «l’insieme delle regole secondo cui procedere per suddividere l’intero ambito della verità nelle singole scienze e per la loro esposizione in specifici manuali». Infatti, «dal momento che è possibile esporre adeguatamente una scienza solo quando i suoi confini sono stati adeguatamente determinati [...] la dottrina della scienza è quella scienza che ci mostra come possiamo esporre le scienze in manuali adatti a tale scopo»(1). Com’è stato osservato(2), quest’intento ricognitivo sembra nascondere una ben più ampia e profonda ambizione, ossia quella di battere in breccia tutte le precedenti riflessioni sulla “scienza”, in quanto viziate da confusione tra il piano del pensiero (che comprende il concettuale, il conoscitivo, il mentale, il percettivo, in breve tutto ciò che “accade” in un soggetto di conoscenza e in relazione ad esso, quindi anche l’esistenza e ogni esperienza) e quello logico-oggettivo, comprendente tutto ciò che, nella scienza, non appartiene per definizione all’accadimento reale del pensiero, quindi tutto il suo contenuto denotativo." (p. 7)

(1) WL, I, p. 7

(2) Cfr., ad esempio, R. George, Editor's Introduction, in B. Bolzano, Theory of Science, edited and translated by R. George, University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1972, pp. XXVII-XXIX.

26. ———. 2011. "Bolzano e gli stoici." Discipline Filosofiche no. 21:61-92.

"Com’è noto, uno dei maggiori contributi forniti dagli stoici allo sviluppo della logica è la cosiddetta “semantica delle proposizioni”. Nella nostra discussione, volta a un confronto tra Bolzano e gli stoici riguardo alla semantica proposizionale, prescinderemo dalle questioni di fatto o sistematiche -ad esempio che le fonti stoiche siano scarse, spesso incoerenti e per lo più indirette; che la logica stoica abbia subito un processo di riabilitazione relativamente recente, oppure che Bolzano citi raramente gli stoici e che, dove lo fa, non dia molto peso alle loro nozioni logiche fondamentali, come ai concetti di lekton o di semainon (3), per concentrarci invece sulle questioni tematiche o di principio, il cui scopo è quello di evidenziare i paradigmi e-splicativi, non sempre direttamente verificabili, che sottendono le rispettive posizioni. A tal proposito, adotteremo un procedimento d’indagine circolare-regressivo che va da Bolzano agli stoici e da questi di nuovo a Bolzano, in modo da cogliere adeguatamente il sistema a partire dal tema, così come si addice ad ogni formazione analitica che voglia dirsi paradigmatica." (pp. 61-62, due note omesse)

' Cfr. B. Bolzano, Wissenschaftslehre. Versuch einer ausführlichen und großenteils neuen / Erstellung der Logik mit steter Rücksicht auf deren bisherige Bearbeiter, in der J.E. von Seidelschen Buchhandlung, Sulzbach, 1837 (d’ora in poi: WL), Bd. I, § 23, dove gli stoici vengono menzionati riguardo al problema del valore di verità della proposizione, ma senza accennare all'importanza che in essi assume la semantica proposizionale. Nel medesimo passo, Bolzano fa riferimento a Sesto Empirico, Contro i logici, II, 12 (ed. it. a cura di A. Russo, Laterza, Roma/Bari, 1975, p. 140), in cui il filosofo scettico parla del lekton stoico; anche in questo caso, tuttavia, egli non dà rilievo a tale concetto, sebbene ciò possa giustificarsi per il fatto che sta introducendo la forma generale della proposizione (cfr. a tal riguardo, W.C. Kneale, Μ. Kneale, The Development of Logic, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1962, ed. it. a cura di A.G. Conte, Storia della logica, Einaudi, Torino, 1972, p. 411).

27. Krause, Andrej. 2011. "Bolzano e Aristotele." Discipline Filosofiche no. 21:43-60.

"Nel presente saggio tratteremo aspetti del rapporto tra Bolzano e Aristotele, limitandoci però ad alcune riflessioni di principio dei due autori sulla metafisica. Benché Bolzano non abbia mai composto alcuno scritto sulla metafisica, aveva in progetto di farlo e lo aveva in parte anche già cominciato(1). Inoltre, in molti passi delle sue opere si trovano dettagliate discussioni di problemi metafisici. Invero, diversamente da Bolzano, Aristotele ha scritto una Metafisica, solo che egli non ha né impiegato a tal proposito il termine “metafisica”, né il titolo di quest’opera proviene da lui. Quest’ultimo si deve infatti all’ordinamento dei libri nell’edizione aristotelica di Andronico di Rodi, il quale collocò la Metafisica dopo la Fisica(2). Aristotele stesso non chiama metafisica la disciplina praticata in questo scritto, bensì sapienza, filosofia prima o anche teologia. Essa si occupa di temi che anche oggi vengono assegnati alla metafisica, ad esempio del concetto di sostanza, di anima e di Dio. In ciò che segue, metteremo in relazione alcune riflessioni di Bolzano e Aristotele su questi concetti metafisici; a tal proposito verrà anzitutto indicato in breve il posto della metafisica nei rispettivi sistemi delle scienze." (p. 43)

(1) Cfr. le lettere a Prihonsky del 29.3., 4.5., 26.5. e 20.12.1847, in B. Bolzano, Briefe an F. Prihonsky (d’ora in poi: BAP), in Id., Gesamtausgabe, hrsg. von E. Winter, J. Berg, F. Kambartel, J. Louzil, B. van Rootselaar, Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1969 sgg. (d’ora in poi: GA), III, 3/3, pp. 673, 675, 681 sgg., 700.

(2) Cfr. Μ. Bordt, Aristoteles’ „Metaphysik XII“, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 2006, p. 11.

28. Künne, Wolfgang. 2011. "Bolzano e Frege." Discipline Filosofiche no. 21:179-202.

"Nella Prefazione al suo libro Frege and Other Philosophers Michael Dummett scrive:

[1] L’unico filosofo del diciannovesimo secolo del quale sarebbe ragionevole supporre, solo dal contenuto dei suoi scritti e di quelli di Frege, che abbia influenzato Frege, è Bernard Bolzano, il quale morì l’anno in cui nacque Frege; ma [2] non c’è nessuna evidenza che Frege abbia letto Bolzano(1).

Che nessun filosofo del diciannovesimo secolo sia così vicino a Frege come Bolzano, ho cercato di provarlo quindici anni fa in relazione al concetto bolzaniano di proposizione (Satz an sich)(2) e a quello fregeano di pensiero (Gedanke)(3). Nella prima parte di questo saggio, ribadirò nuovamente l’affermazione [1] di Dummett in relazione alle concezioni di dimostrazione e di assioma. Nella seconda parte esaminerò, in relazione all’unica escursione di Frege nella metalogica e alla valutazione sua e di Bolzano della dimostrazione indiretta, se Dummett abbia ragione riguardo all’affermazione [2]." (p. 179)

(1) Μ. Dummett, Frege and Other Philosophers, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991, p. vii. L’inserzione dei numeri fra parentesi quadre è mia (W. K).

2 D’ora in poi, il termine “proposizione” sta per Satz an sich.

3 Cfr. W. Künne, Propositions in Bolzano and Frege (1997), rist. in Μ. Beaney, E. Reck, ed. by, Frege's Philosophy in Context, Routledge, London/New York, 2005, pp. 124-153 (con “Commenti” di Dummett), e in Id., Versuche über Bolzano/Essays on Bolzano, Academia, Sankt Augustin, 2008, pp. 157-194.

29. Lapointe, Sandra. 2011. "Bolzano e Husserl." Discipline Filosofiche no. 21:227-242.

"Secondo una tradizione ampiamente consolidata, Frege è stato colui che ha spinto il «primo» Husserl a rigettare il suo presunto psicologismo(1). Mentre sono però accertate interazioni dal punto di vista intellettuale tra Husserl e l'rege, al tempo in cui Husserl cominciava a venire alle prese con tale questione nei primi anni Novanta dell’Ottocento2, non è possibile affermare con certezza se sia stato Frege a suscitare le critiche di Husserl nei confronti dello psicologismo presenti nelle Ricerche Logiche, laddove ci sono invece molte prove a sostegno del fatto che la vera spinta dietro la critica di Husserl sia provenuta dalla Wissenschaftslehre di Bolzano.

(...)

Mentre la connessione tra Husserl e Bolzano non è più ignorata del tutto dal punto di vista storico, essa tuttavia resta ancora non adeguatamente documentata. In particolare, la maggior parte degli studi si focalizza oggi sul ruolo che Bolzano potrebbe aver giocato nell’adozione in logica, da parte di Husserl, di una posizione simile al realismo semantico. Ma l'influenza di Bolzano dev’essere cercata nelle Ricerche Logiche di Husserl - e specialmente nel primo libro, in maniera molto più sostanziale - e questo è ciò che argomenterò nel prosieguo di questo saggio."

(1) Cfr. D. Bell, Reference, Experience, and Intentionality, in L. Haaparanta, ed., Mind, Meaning and Mathematics, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1994, pp. 185-209; D. Follesdal, Bolzano, Frege, and Husserl on Reference and Object, in J. Floyd, S. Shieh, eds., Future Pasts, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001, pp. 67-79.

(2) Si veda per esempio la corrispondenza tra Frege e Husserl in R. Bernet, D. Welton, G. Zavota, eds., Edmund Husserl: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers, Routlege, London, 2005, pp. 20-31.

30. Mangiagalli, Maurizio. 2006. "Bernard Bolzano e l'idea di una logica pura." Sapienza no. 59:459-466.

31. Mariani, Mauro. 2011. "Bolzano e Cantor." Discipline Filosofiche no. 21:203-226.

Riassunto: "Per molti secoli l'opinione predominante di filosofi e matematici è stata che l'infinito è solo potenziale (nel senso che "potenza" ha in Aristotele) e che l'infinito attuale è, al contrario, intrinsecamente inconsistente. Tra i primi, Bolzano ha "dimostrato" che l'infinito attuale esiste e che nessuna contraddizione sorge se c'è una corrispondenza biunivoca tra un insieme infinito e molti dei suoi sottoinsiemi propri. A dire il vero, i Paradossi dell'infinito di Bolzano hanno avuto una potente influenza sulle opinioni di Cantor sull'infinito attuale, ma le loro teorie sono per molti aspetti in contrasto. Infatti, secondo Bolzano, se esiste una corrispondenza biunivoca tra gli insiemi A e B ciò non implica che A sia grande quanto B, quindi non possiamo definire i numeri cardinali attraverso la nozione di corrispondenza biunivoca. Inoltre sostiene che un tutto è maggiore delle sue parti. Bolzano sostiene che gli insiemi infiniti possono essere di dimensioni diverse e che esistono infiniti numeri: ma, secondo il suo punto di vista, li caratterizza in modo per nulla compatibile con quello di Cantor. In conclusione, le intuizioni di Bolzano sull'infinito non prefigurano le teorie di Cantor, ma costituiscono un approccio alternativo all'infinito a cui prestano attenzione alcuni matematici moderni."

32. Melandri, Enzo. 1960. "I paradossi dell'infinito nell'orizzonte fenomenologico." In Omaggio a Husserl, edited by Paci, Enzo, 83-120. Milano: Il Saggiatore.

33. Mugnai, Massimo. 2011. "Bolzano e Leibniz." Discipline Filosofiche no. 21:93-108.

"Per Bernard Bolzano, la filosofia di Leibniz costituisce un punto di rifeimento costante: se ciò risulta palese da un’opera come Athanasia, non lo è meno se leggiamo le pagine della Wissenschaftslehre dedicate all’ontologia logica, alla semantica e al calcolo logico in senso proprio (2). Rinviando a un'altra occasione un raffronto più ampio e sistematico tra le posizioni dei due filosofi (soprattutto per quel che riguarda la teoria logica), mi occuperò in questa sede della teoria delle idee e delle proposizioni in sé, che lo stesso Bolzano, com’è noto, considera affine a quanto sostenuto da Leibniz in opere e che, al tempo, gli erano accessibili. Prenderò dapprima in considerazione le posizioni di Leibniz e poi quelle di Bolzano, cercando quindi di sviluppare un confronto, che metta in luce identità di vedute, analogie e differenze tra i due filosofi." (p. 93)

(2) Un raffronto tra la logica di Leibniz e quella di Bolzano è tentato in J. Danek, Les projets de Leibniz et de Bolzano, deux sources de la logique contemporaine, Les Presses de l’Université Lavai, Quebec, 1975, prima però della pubblicazione di ulteriori testi leibniziani in edizione critica. Per un’analisi puntuale dei rapporti tra Bolzano e Leibniz riguardo alla teoria della conoscenza, si veda: S. Centrone, Bolzano und Leibniz über Klarheit und Deutlichkeit, in «Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie», 92, 2011, pp. 256-289.

34. Palágyi, Melchior. 1993. Kant e Bolzano. Un confronto critico. Ferrara: Spazio Libri.

Traduzione di Kant und Bolzano. Eine kritische Parallele, Halle: Niemeyer, 1902 a cura e con un'introduzione di Luca Guidetti, prefazione di Enzo Melandri.

35. Patočka, Jan. 2011. "Il posto di Bolzano nella storia della filosofia." Discipline Filosofiche no. 21:27-42.

"Ho cercato di trattare il problema della filosofia di Bolzano nei suoi rapporti sia storici sia sistematici, al fine di mostrare che la dottrina delle verità in sé, benché logicamente nasca dalla modalità in cui Bolzano, di fronte alla filosofia della sua epoca, ha compreso il problema della scienza, non è né il senso complessivo, né in ultima analisi il centro della sua filosofia della scienza. Il problema che Bolzano voleva risolvere è la struttura della scienza come realtà sui generis. Questo problema, con la sua soluzione, non sta e non cade così come cade ad esempio la teoria kantiana della ragione con la sua concezione della sintesi a priori. Il problema di Bolzano è da sempre legittimato: la filosofia come dimensione della logica è un’idea che non è superata, la teoria della costruzione della scienza sarà un giorno formulata; l’epistemologia moderna e la logica accumulano materiale per la costruzione, di cui Bolzano ha intravisto per primo i tratti; egli lavora così sulle sue parti, sulle sue tracce, e ciò è come un miracolo, quando vediamo come Frege, Whitehead e Russell, Brentano e Husserl, i logici e i semantici polacchi e molti altri scoprono nuovamente, dopo molti anni, particolari aspetti del suo problema, dei suoi singoli concetti e delle sue soluzioni; e tuttavia ciò non è in realtà un miracolo, ma la logica della cosa, la logica del suo grande problema, il quale d’altra parte è rimasto da lui non risolto ma che rimarrà per sempre legato a lui, al suo nome e al suo lavoro." (p. 40)

36. Pégny, Gaëtan 2011. "Bolzano e Hegel." Discipline Filosofiche no. 21:153-178.

"Non si discuterà qui della pertinenza di fare di Bolzano un “precursore”, né della questione di sapere se il suo desiderio di correzione logica della folta macchia hegeliana basti a fare di Bolzano un “analitico” e un “moderno”; ancor meno si discuterà della questione di accertare se tutta la letteratura analitica si riduca a un rifiuto in blocco, indignato o ironico, dello hegelismo e dei suoi prodotti derivati. Ci si contenterà di mostrare quel che ha permesso di fondare un simile giudizio, prima di sfumarlo, mostrando che c’è effettivamente stata sia una lettura sia un’argomentazione. C’è sempre qualche paradosso nel tentare di circoscrivere il rapporto di un filosofo nei confronti del suo più acerrimo nemico. Si cercherà qui di mostrare che c’è davvero stata la formulazione di una critica, e non un semplice atteggiamento di rifiuto che semplificherebbe la scrittura di manuali di storia della filosofia divisa in categorie prive di sfumature. Non si tratta tuttavia di negare l’intensità dell’opposizione, ma di comprenderne le ragioni strutturali, e in cosa essa implichi e allo stesso tempo impedisca la lettura. Si comincerà dunque con l’esporre l’essenziale dell’argomentazione dei saggi polemici su Hegel, contestualizzando un’argomentazione che, se destoricizzata, è troppo spesso ripiegata sia verso la passione irrazionale sia verso un antihegelismo con il quale si sarà, a seconda dei casi, sempre in accordo, o che si troverà sempre non pertinente. Si esamineranno poi, in maniera più sistematica, le posizioni filosofiche che hanno condizionato la lettura bolzaniana." (p. 154)

37. Preti, Giulio. 1935. "I fondamenti della logica formale pura nella "Wissenschaftslehre" di B. Bolzano e nelle "Logische Unturschungen" di E. Husserl." Sophia no. II-IV:187-194.

Seconda parte: 361-376.

Ristampato in: Giulio Preti, Saggi filosofici, Vol. I, Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1976, pp. 11-31.

"Il Bolzano concepisce la logica come « dottrina della scienza » ; il territorio della verità si divide in territori unitarii, le singole scienze. La scienza è definita(11) il complesso di verità di una data specie, da esporsi in un libro di testo.

La dottrina della scienza sarà quindi(12) il complesso di quelle regole secondo le quali dobbiamo procedere nella partizione del territorio della verità in singole scienze e nell'esporle in testi acconci, se vogliamo procedere in modo conforme allo scopo.

Per quanto strana possa sembrare la definizione, orientata in senso assolutamente pratico, essa include già la posizione oggettivistica del Bolzano. Infatti il manuale d'una scienza implica già tutto un complesso di verità d'una data specie ordinate e collegate(13) secondo rapporti che non saranno arbitrarii, ma necessariamente regolati da principii, che fanno si che la scienza sia scienza e non un complesso caotico di proposizioni. La dottrina della scienza non è quindi semplicemente l'arte di fissare per iscritto i teoremi d'unascienza, ma comprende: (a) la teoria della divisione della verità in singoli territori; (b) l'arte di trovare le verità d'un dato territorio; ( c) l'arte di disporre queste verità secondo i loro rapporti. È ovvio che le parti piu importanti dal punto di vista della logica saranno la prima, cui però Bolzano non dà adeguato sviluppo, e la terza, che si presenta come una teoria dei rapporti logici fra proposizioni; è appunto questa, che Bolzano chiama « dottrina elementare », la vera e propria teoria della scienza in senso husserliano, cioè la ricerca di ciò che fa scienza la scienza(14)" (p 17 della ristampa)

11 Wissenschaftslehre, I, p. 4.

12 Wissenschaftslehre, I, p. 7.

13 ivi, p. 5.

14 Logische Untersuchungen^2, I, p. 11.

38. Raspa, Venanzio. 1996. "Su ciò che non esiste. Da Bolzano a Meinong: un excursus nella filosofia austriaca." Studi Urbinati.B: Scienze Umane e Sociali no. 67:115-201

1. Ci sono oggetti che non esistono. - 2. Rappresentazioni in sé e rappresentazioni senza oggetto .in B. Bolzano. - 3. La mediazione storica di R. Zimmermann. - 4. Il capovolgimento delle rappresentazioni senza oggetto in K. Twardowski. - 5. · Oggetti non esistenti nella Gegentstandstheorie di A. Meinong. - 6. Aspetti della controversia fra Russell e Meinong.

"L'apparato concettuale di base che, per successivi sviluppi, ci porterà ad una messa a fuoco del nostro discorso, e maturerà nella Gegenstandstheorie di Meinong, ci viene offerto da Bernard Bolzano, il primo autore di questa storia. Bolzano assume all'interno del suo universo, in cui si danno anche oggetti non esistenti, una classe di oggetti logici, le cosiddette rappresentazioni senza oggetto [gegenstandslose Vorstellungen], vale a dire - nel suo linguaggio - rappresentazioni in sé [Vorstellungen an sich] cui non corrisponde nessun oggetto, in quanto gli attribuiscono proprietà fra loro contraddittorie, oppure che non si ritrovano nell'esperienza. Nell'ambiente filosofico austriaco a cavallo fra la seconda metà del XIX e l'inizio del XX sec., le rappresentazioni senza oggetto non vengono accolte nei termini in cui erano state elaborate da Bolzano, ma vengono, in un certo senso, capovolte; al loro posto compaiono gli oggetti non esistenti contraddittori oppure non fattuali. Dalle rappresentazioni senza oggetto di Bolzano si giunge, attraverso una duplice mediazione, quella di Robert Zimmermann e quella ben più determinante di Kazimierz Twardowski, il vero artefice del capovolgimento, agli oggetti non esistenti di Alexius Meinong. Quel che vorrei cercare di ricostruire è la maniera in cui avviene il capovolgimento e gli sviluppi teorici cui esso dà luogo. Procediamo dunque col chiederci: cosa intende specificamente Bolzano per 'rappresentazione in sé' e, quindi, per 'rappresentazione senza oggetto'? Le rappresentazioni in sé possono anche essere denominate concetti (4); se questo può dare un idea del tipo di nozione con cui abbiamo a che fare, restano tuttavia ancora da spiegare le due caratteristiche essenziali corrispondenti alle espressioni di 'in sé [an sich]' e 'senza oggetto [gegenstands los]'.." (pp. 118-119)

(4) Sulla scelta del termine 'rappresentazione' preferito a quello di 'concetto', cfr._ B. Bolzano, Wzssenschaftslehre. Versuch einer ausführlichen und grossentheils neuen Darstellurzg der Logik mit steter Rücksicht auf deren bisherige Bearbeiter, 4 Bde., Sulzbach, J. E. v. Seidelschen Buchhandlung 1837, Bd. I, § 50, p. 222-223 (d'ora in avanti WL). Per le citazioni si è tenuta presente l'edizione critica della Bernard Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe, Reihe I: Schriften, Bde. 11-14: Wissenschaftslehre, hrsg. von J. Berg, Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt, Frommann/Holzboog 1985 sgg.

39. Raspa, Venanzio. 2011. "Bolzano e la filosofia austriaca." Discipline Filosofiche no. 21:245-285.

"Nel trattare di Bolzano e la filosofia austriaca non si può non parlare di un terzo termine che li lega indissolubilmente: la censura. L’azione censoria dell’autorità politica interviene in maniera preponderante non solo nel determinare le sorti e i modi della difficoltosa e relativamente tarda diffusione del pensiero bolzaniano all’interno della Monarchia asburgica, ma anche nella definizione di filosofia austriaca quale categoria storiografica. È un fatto che, dal 20 gennaio 1820, Bolzano fu sospeso dall’insegnamento e gli fu proibito sia di predicare, sia di pubblicare entro i confini austriaci, così che la maggior parte dei suoi libri uscirono all’estero e spesso anonimi. Successivamente, alla condanna viennese si aggiunse quella romana, con la messa all’indice di due suoi libri, le Erhauungsreden für Akademiker (nel 1828) e il Lehrbuch der Religionswissenschaft (nel 1839). Ed è altresì un fatto che, se si vuole caratterizzare la filosofia austriaca, non si può non farlo attraverso la sua opposizione a Kant e agli idealisti tedeschi, le cui opere furono ugualmente censurate nell’Austria di allora." (p. 245, nota omessa)

40. ———. 2018. "Le vicende del contenuto attraverso Bolzano, Twardowski e Meinong." Paradigmi no. 36:31-48.

Abstract: "Distinguishing between mental act and content of representations and propositions in themselves, Bolzano offers a logico-semantical notion of content. Twardowski opposes to it a psychological conception of the content of representations and identifies the content of the judgment, in the case of existential judgments, with the existence of the object, in the case of judgments about a relation, with the subsistence of the relation. In opposition to Twardowski, Meinong does not confound logical and psychological content and shows, by means of the notion of presentation, that a content is present in all experiences, including emotions."

41. Scholz, Heinrich. 1983. Storia della logica. Roma-Bari: Laterza.

Edizione originale 1931. Traduzione di Enzo Melandri.

Introduzione e aggiornamento blbliografico di Carlo Ce!lucci.

"Ma a questo punto tutto quanto precede viene talmente messo in ombra dall'opera di Bolzano, che il confronto stesso lo fa scomparire; poiché il grande Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848) nei primi tre volumi della sua Dottrina della scienza (in quattro volumi) del 1837 (ristampa Felix Meiner, Leipzig 1929-1931) ci ha dato un'introduzione alla logica da cui c'è tanto da imparare che non si può fare a meno di esclamare: prendi e leggi! Parliamo di un'introduzione alla logica, a malgrado della vastissima mole, per accennare al fatto che il centro di gravità dell'opera non va ricercato nella teoria della deduzione in quanto tale - al livello cui Bolzano elevò le esigenze che la logica deve soddisfare, una nuova teoria poteva fornirla solo la logistica - ma bensì nelle tante considerazioni particolari così acute e istruttive che conducono dentro i problemi di questa logica in modo più profondo e brillante di tutto ciò cbe non si trova, nel senso del calcolo logico, sulla linea del grande Leibniz. E in un modo tale da rendere queste illuminanti considerazioni in grandissima parte (parte che andrebbe precisata almeno una volta con esattezza!) indipendenti dalla teoria augustiniana delle verità e idee in sé, su cui Bolzano le imbastì." (p. 58)

42. Šebestik, Jan. 2011. "Bolzano e la matematica." Discipline Filosofiche no. 21:287-320.

"Bolzano pratica la matematica con spirito filosofico, concettuale, e benché si trovino nei suoi lavori, e in particolare nella Functionenlehre, centinaia di teoremi originali ed essenziali, gli capita spesso di concentrarsi nell’elaborazione di nuove definizioni che vertono su concetti in apparenza ben noti, come quelli di numero naturale, di numero reale, di limite, di dimensione, di retta o di curva o, come dice il titolo di un testo manoscritto, Geometrische Begriffe, die Jeder kennt und nicht kennt. Reciprocamente, in logica, la matematica gli serve non solo come serbatoio inesauribile di esempi, ma soprattutto come strumento che permette di provare una tesi essenziale della sua logica, la sussistenza dell’insieme infinito delle verità in sé. La maggior parte delle sue molteplici dimostrazioni si basa in effetti sulle proprietà della serie dei numeri naturali, come afferma Bolzano nel paragrafo 13 dei Paradoxien des Unendlichen.

In primo luogo, quattro cose lo interessano in materia di filosofia della matematica: lo statuto degli oggetti matematici in sé, l’ordine dei teoremi, o, come dice lui stesso, la connessione oggettiva delle verità, la scelta o, più esattamente, la ricerca degli assiomi - poiché il matematico non deve sceglierli, ma trovarli - e il concetto di prova." (pp. 287-288)

43. Simons, Peter. 2011. "Bolzano e la logica." Discipline Filosofiche no. 21:321-342.

Traduzione di Giorgio Volpe.

La versione originale in inglese Bolzano’s Logic è disponibile sul sito academia.edu.

"Introduzione

Nel periodo della storia della logica compreso fra la morte di Leibniz (1716) e la pubblicazione della Begriffsschrift di Frege (1879) spiccano due date. Una è il 1847, anno in cui la Mathematical Analysis of Logic di George Boole introdusse nello studio del ragionamento i metodi algebrici. L altra, assai meno sbandierata sul momento e per lungo tempo dopo l’evento, fu la pubblicazione nel 1837 della Wissenschaftslehre (Dottrina della scienza, d’ora in poi WL) di Bolzano. I due tentativi, separati da un solo decennio e indipendenti uno dall altro, sono complementari. Mentre Boole si applicò a introdurre il rigore e il metodo matematico nel ragionamento logico, Bolzano si sforzò di iniettare il rigore logico nel metodo della matematica, oltre che di altre discipline. La logica algebrica di Boole introdusse un approccio simbolico e algoritmico che condusse infine ai metodi logici dell’informatica, mentre la trattazione bolzaniana dei concetti logici anticipò di un secolo le definizioni semantiche moderne di alcuni concetti logici chiave. Entrambi gli aspetti, quello algoritmico e quello semantico, informano la logica moderna. Ma Bolzano è il padre della semantica logica. Questo articolo espone gli elementi chiave della sua rivoluzione logica." (p. 121, note omesse)

44. van Wierst, Pauline. 2016. "Profili: Bernard Bolzano." AphEx. Portale Italiano di Filosofia Analitica no. 14.

Abstract: "Bernard Bolzano (1781?1848) `e probabilmente il pensatore pi`u sottovalutato dell’Ottocento.

Ha anticipato di cent’anni la definizione semantica di verit`a e di conseguenza logica di Tarski, ha dato alla logica e alla matematica una nuova e rigorosa fondazione, e ha fornito la prima analisi dettagliata di spiegazione scientifica. In matematica ha ottenuto risultati che vengono insegnati ancora oggi in ogni classe di matematica delle scuole superiori, come il teorema di Bolzano-Weierstrass e la prima prova rigorosa del teorema dei valori intermedi.

A causa dell‘isolamento dalla communità accademica, del divieto di pubblicare e delle premature anticipazioni, le sue opere (in particolare quelle filosofiche) non ottennero ai suoi tempi l’attenzione che avrebbero invece meritato. In questo profilo ci proponiamo principalmente di presentare i suoi contributi in merito alla metodologia scientifica. Considereremo sia le sue riflessioni in proposito, sia le idee innovative che in tali riflessioni trovarono la loro origine. In particolare, vedremo in che modo tali riflessioni lo hanno portato a sviluppare diverse nozioni di conseguenza logica, una nozione altamente originale della distinzione analitico/sintetico, una caratterizazione della spiegazione scientifica, nonché una teoria dei numeri fondata su una teoria degli insiemi e delle parti. A tal fine, verrà presentata una selezione delle sue idee metafisiche, logiche e matematiche che, lungi dal potersi considerare esaustiva, risulta tuttavia indispensabile all’esposizione e comprensione di questi contenuti in chiave sistematica."

45. Voltaggio, Franco. 1974. Bernard Bolzano e la dottrina della scienza. Milano: Edizioni di Comunità.

Premessa 7; Introduzione 9; Parte prima: Logica come Dottrina della Scienza; 1. L'idea generale della logica 27; 2. La concezione generale della verità (Presupposti) 55; 3. La concezione generale della verità (Le verità in sé) 79; Parte seconda: L'Infinito come criterio di verità. 1. Dell'esistenza di un numero infinito di verità in sé 89; 2. Infinito e totalità 119; Parte terza: La critica della filosofia trascendentale. 1. Critica della prospettiva trascendentale kantiana 159; 2. Critica della dialettica hegeliana 209; 3. L'ontologia bolzaniana come fondamento della moderna teoria dell'intenzionalità 239; Postilla 263; Bibliografia 265-275.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bernard Bolzano: Bibliographie philosophische Schriften

Bolzano's Writings

"A comprehensive Bolzano bibliography up to 1999, compiled by Jan Berg, Edgar Morscher, and Anneliese Müller, has recently appeared as Vol. E2/3 of the Bernard Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe (BBGA). Vol. E 2/1, which was prepared by Berg, Morscher, and Marie Pavlíková, contains a bibliography spanning 1824–1970; two supplements to this volume (prepared by Berg and Morscher) extend this to the beginning of 1987. Three further installments by Berg and Morscher entitled Bolzano-Forschung (Salzburg, 1989; St Augustin, 1992, 2000) cover the years 1987–98. (...) Bolzano’s manuscripts are divided between the National Library in Vienna, the NationalMuseum, and theMuseum of National Literature in Prague. For catalogues of these collections, see Vols. E 2/1 and E 2/2 of the BBGA. A considerable part of Bolzano’s personal library was incorporated into the collection of the National and University Library in Prague. For details, see P. M. Schenkel. Bernard Bolzanos Bibliothek, 2 Vols (St Augustin, 2002). Our bibliography begins with a chronologically ordered list of Bolzano’s published works, followed by the plan for the Gesamtausgabe (with facing page English translation), translations of Bolzano’s works, and selected secondary literature. We aim to be nearly comprehensive with respect to Bolzano’s own writings, in the original and in translation, but not, for reasons of space, with respect to the secondary literature."

Paul Rusnock, Jan Šebestík, "Bernard Bolzano: His Life and Work", New York: Oxford University Press, p. 599.

Biografien in deutscher Sprache

Abkürzungen:

BBGA = Bernard Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe

WL = Wissenschaftslehre

1. Fels, Heinrich. 1929. Bernard Bolzano. Sein Leben und sein Werk. Leipzig: Felix Meiner.

2. Winter, Eduard. 1949. Leben und geistige Entwicklung des Sozialethikers und Mathematikers Bernard Bolzano. Halle: Niemeyer.

3. ———. 1969. Bernard Bolzano. Ein Lebensbild. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog.

BGA I.1.

4. Christian, Curt, ed. 1981. Bernard Bolzano, Leben und Wirkung. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Inhalt: Jaromir Louzil: Bernard Bolzanos Sitten- und Gesellschaftslehre 5; Marie Pavlikova: Bernard Bolzanos Lehrjahre 29; Pavel Krivsky: Das Entstehen, die Herausgabe und das Projekt der 2. Ausgabe von Bolzanos Lehrbuch der Religionswissenschaft 62; Eduard Winter: Das doppelte Gesicht der Religionswissenschaft Bernard Bolzanos 85; Edgar Morscher: Bolzanos Wissenschaftslehre 99; Curt Christian: Bemerkungen zu drei Einwänden gegen Bolzano 127-147.

5. Zeithammer, Gregor. 1997. Bolzano-Biographie. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog.

Gesamtausgabe Reihe IV: Dokumente. Band 2. Edited by Gerhard Zwerschke.

English summary: "The Bolzano biography written by Gregor Zeithammer (1800-1881) has up to now only been cited in excerpts. The text-critical, annotated edition of the manuscript from Zeithammers literary estate, which is preserved at the literary archives in Prague, makes this important source for research on Bolzano completely accessible."

German summary: "German description: Die Bolzano-Biographie von Gregor Zeithammer (1800-1881) wurde bisher nur in Auszugen zitiert. Die textkritische, kommentierte Edition des Manuskripts aus dem Zeithammer-Nachlass des Literaturarchivs in Prag macht diese wichtige Quelle der Bolzano-Forschung nun vollstandig zuganglich."

6. Morscher, Edgar, and Müller, Anneliese, eds. 2016. Beiträge zu Bolzanos Biographie von Josef Hoffmann und Anton Wißhaupt sowie vier weiteren Zeitzeugen. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog.

Gesamtausgabe Reihe IV: Dokumente. Band 3.

Bibliographien in deutscher Sprache

Abkürzungen:

BBGA = Bernard Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe

WL = Wissenschaftslehre

1. Berg, Jan, Morscher, Edgar, and Pavlíková, Marie, eds. 1972. Bolzano-Bibliographie und Editionsprinzipien der Gesamtausgabe. Bibliographie - Erste Abteilung. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog.

BGA 2.1.

Inhaltverzeichnis: Editionsprinzipien der Bernard Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe 7; Katalog des Bolzano-Nachlasses in der österreichischen Nationalbibliothek von Jan Berg 17; Katalog des Nachlasses 19; Personenverzeichnis 78; Bolzano - Bibliographie von Jan Berg, Edgar Morscher und Marie Pavlíková 81; Bolzanos veröffentlichte Schriften 85; Literatur über Bolzano 98; Chronologisches Register 157; Übersicht nach Sachgebieten 162; Anhang: Gliederung der Bernard Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe 171-180.

"Allegemeine Prinzipien

Die Bernard Bolzano - Gesamtausgabe wird in folgende vier Reihen gegliedert:

I. Schriften

Darunter werden alle zu Lebzeiten Bolzanos veröffentlichten Schriften verstanden.

II. Nachlaß

Die Nachlaßreihe soll alle erst nach dem Tode Bolzanos veröffentlichten Schriften enthalten. Auch vollendete Manuskripte oder Abschriften solcher Manuskripte Bolzanos werden wiedergegeben. Über die Aufnahme fragmentarisch erhaltener oder unvollendeter Werke, sowie von Bolzano regelmäßig gemachter Aufzeichnungen, vereinzelter Notizen und Glossen zu fremden Werken wird von Fall zu Fall entschieden. Glossen zu eigenen Werken werden bei der Wiedergabe berücksichtigt.

Nicht wiedergegeben werden aus Gründen des ungeheuren Umfangs Vorstufen aufgenommener Letztfassungen sowie im allgemeinen Abschriften, Exzerpte und Übersetzungen Bolzanos von Werken anderer Autoren.

III. Briefwechsel

Es werden alle Briefe Bolzanos mit den entsprechenden Schreiben der Briefpartner aufgenommen. Die Briefe werden zunächst nach Partnern und innerhalb der so entstandenen Gruppen dann chronologisch geordnet. Über die verlorengegangenen Briefe von und an Bolzano wird nach Möglichkeit berichtet.

IV. Dokumente

Als Ergänzung zur Gesamtausgabe bietet diese Reihe ausgewählte Dokumente und Bilder zur Lebensgeschichte Bolzanos." (S. 9)

2. Berg, Jan, and Morscher, Edgar, eds. 1982. Supplement I: Ergänzungen und Korrekturen zur Bolzano-Bibliographie (Stand: Ende 1981). Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog.

BGA 2.1. Supplement I.

"Die Ergänzungen und Korrekturen beziehen sich auf die erste Abteilung des zweiten Einleitungsbandes der Bernard Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe, der vor genau zehn Jahren erschien.

Die mit einem Sternchen (*) versehenen Nummern sind bereits in der ursprünglichen Bibliographie enthalten. Es wird hier nur eine Korrektur vorgenommen oder eine Ergänzung hinzugefügt.

Bei Ergänzung einer Nummer, die aus chronologischen Gründen zwischen zwei Nummern der ursprünglichen Bibliographie einzufügen ist, wird eine Dezimalnumerierung verwendet.

Es kommt hier gegenüber der ursprünglichen Bibliographie ein Abschnitt neu hinzu, in dem die anonymen Schriften verzeichnet sind. In diesem Abschnitt wird auch auf diejenigen anonym erschienenen Schriften verwiesen, deren Verfasser identifiziert werden konnte." (S. 7)

3. ———, eds. 1988. Supplement II: Ergänzungen zur Bolzano-Bibliographie (Stand: Anfang 1987). Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog.

BGA 2.1. Supplement II.

"Bolzanos veröffentlichte Schriften sowie die bisher erschienenen Bände der Gesamtausgabe werden vollständig registriert, während bei der Literatur über Bolzano und bei den anonymen Schriften nur Ergänzungen angeführt werden. Diese Ergänzungen beziehen sich auf die erste Abteilung des zweiten Einleitungsbandes der Bernard-Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe (Bolzano (E2/1)), der vor sechzehn Jahren erschien, und auf das erste Supplement zur Bolzano-Bibliographie (Bolzano (E2/1, Suppl.I)), das vor sechs Jahren erschien.

Die mit einem Sternchen (*) versehenen Nummern sind bereits in der ursprünglichen Bibliographie bzw. im ersten Supplement enthalten. Es wird hier nur eine Korrektur vorgenommen oder eine Ergänzung hinzugefügt.

Bei Ergänzung einer Nummer, die aus chronologischen Gründen zwischen zwei Nummern der ursprünglichen Bibliographie bzw. des ersten Supplements einzufügen ist, wird eine Dezimalnumerierung verwendet." (S. 7)

4. Krivsky, Pavel, and Pavlíková, Marie, eds. 2006. Katalog des Bolzano-Nachlasses im Literaturarchiv des Museums der Nationalen Literatur in Prag – a. Einleitung – b. Katalog des Nachlasses – c. Personenregister. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog.

BGA 2.2.

5. Berg, Jan, Morscher, Edgar, and Müller, Anneliese, eds. 2015. Bolzano-Gesamtbibliographie 1804–1999. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog.

BGA 2.1.3.

English summary: "This bibliography documents all of the works written by Bolzano and published up to December 31, 1999 (some of them anonymously), in chronological order, including all reprints, new editions and translations. In addition all those books and essays published up to this time whose titles establish a connection to Bolzano as well as further books, essays, reviews and articles in lexicons which are relevant for Bolzano research are registered here. Since many of Bolzano’s works as well as those of his students and friends and his adversaries were published anonymously, these have been noted and put in chronological order in a section of their own (in many cases it was possible to identify the authors)."

6. Gombocz, Wolfgang L., Haller, Rudolf, and Henrichs, Norbert, eds. 1986. International Bibliography of Austrian Philosophy / Internationale Bibliographie zur Österreichen Philosophie (IBÖP) 1974/1975. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Teil 1: Seiten 1* - 73*.

1. W.L. Gombocz, R. Haller, N. Henrichs: Vorwort 7*; Literaturhinweise zur IBÖP 12*; 2. Bildnis: Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848) 14*; 3. Aufsatz: (Jan Berg, Edgard Morscher: Bernard Bolzano -- Der österreichische Philosoph 15*; 4. Hinweise für den Gebrauch der Bibliographie und Register 66*; 5. How to Use Bibliography and Index 70*;

Teil 2: Seiten 1-98.

6. Bibliographie 1-51; Dokumente 1-999; Sachregister 53-83; Namenregister 85-98.

Bibliographe zu Bolzano: pp. 54* - 63*.

7. Berg, Jan, and Morscher, Edgar, eds. 1989. Bolzano-Forschung 1987-1988. Salzburg: Forschungsinstitut Philosophie/Technik/Wirtschaft der Universität Salzburg.

8. ———, eds. 1992. Bolzano-Forschung 1989-1991. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhalt: Vorwort 7; Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe: Gliederung 11; Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe: Bisher erschienene Bände 25; Bolzano-Bibliographie: Ergänzungen 37; Akademische Schriften, Publikationen und Projekte 109; Eine neue Auswahlausgabe der Wissenschaftslehre 111; Bolzano-Stiftung in Prag: Gründung 117; Bolzano-Gasse in Wien 118; Internationales Bolzano-Symposium in Salzburg 119; Internationale Bolzano-Gesellschaft: Gründung 121; Internationale Bolzano-Gesellschaft: Statuten 123.

9. ———, eds. 1999. Bolzano-Forschung 1992-1998. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhalt: Vorwort 7; Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe: Gliederung 11; Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe: Bisherige Bände 25; Bolzano-Bibliographie: Ergänzungen 43; Dissertationen und Diplomarbeiten über Bolzano 157; Wissenschaftliche Tagungen über Bolzano 159; Die Internationale Bernard-Bölzano-Gesellschaft (Salzburg) 161; Die Stiftung Bemard Bolzano (Prag) 163; Forschungsprojekte zu Leben und Werk Bolzanos 167; Anita von Duhn: Bolzanos Kritik an Kants theoretischer Philosophie 169; Sandra Lapointe: Husserl - von Bolzano zu Kant 181; Jane Regenfelder: Die Bolzano-Frage im Spiegel der Wiener Polizeiakten 189; Peter Michael Schenkel: Bolzanos Bibliothek als Schlüssel zur Interpretation seines Systems 197; Edgar Morscher, Kurt Strasser: Die wissenschaftliche Erfassung von Bolzanos Erbauungsreden 205; Miszellen. Jan Berg: Nichts 209; Edgar Morscher: Robert Zimmermann - Begründer der Gegenstandstheorie? 213; Edgar Morscher: Chisholms Bolzano 221; Edgar Morscher: Bolzano und die Freimaurerei 231; Personenregister 249.

Studien auf Ihre Logik und Ontologie

1. Bolzano als Logiker. Bolzano-Symposion am 17 und 18 Dezember 1973. 1974. Wien: Verlag der Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Anlässlich des 125. Todestages Bernard Bolzanos (+ 18 Dezember 1848).

Inhalt: Eduard Winter: Religionsphilosophie und Logik bei B. Bolzano 5; Jan Berg: Was ist ein Satz nach Bolzano? 21; Marie Pavlikova: Bolzanos wissenschaftlicher Nachlass in Prag, seine Neuordnung und Bolzanos Manuskripte zur Logik 31; Christian Curt: Ableitbarkeit und Abfolge bei Bolzano 47; Jaromír Louzil: Bolzanos Begriff der Anschauung 63; Edgar Morscher: "Philosophische Logik" bei Bernard Bolzano 77-105.

2. "Bolzano Studien." 1987. Philosophia Naturalis no. 24:351-499.

Inhalt (Essays in Deutsch): Edgar Morscher: Vorwort des Herausgegebers 351-352;

I. Zur Biographie Bolzanos.

Jan Berg, Heinrich Ganthaler, Edgar Morscher: Bolzanos Biographie in tabellarischer Übersicht 353-372;

III. Zur Problematik der Paradoxien.

Edgar Morscher: "Hintertürln" für Paradoxien in Bolzanos Logik 414-422;

IV: Wahrscheinlichkeit, Induktion und Syllogistik.

G. Dorn: Zu Bolzanos Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre 423-441; Morscher Edgar: Bolzanos Syllogistik 447-451;

V. Beiträge zur Metaphyk Bolzanos.

Heinrich von Ganthaler, Peter Simons: Bernard Bolzanos Kosmologischer Gottesbeweis 469-475; A. Süssbauer: Propositionen und Sachverhalte in der österreichen Philosophie von Bolzano bis Popper 476-498.

3. Behnoud, Ali. 2000. Bolzanos Beiträge zur Mathematik und ihrer Philosophie. Bern: Gerd Grassoff.

4. Berg, Jan. 1967. "Bolzano als Logiker." Sitzungsberichte der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse:95-120.

Band 252, Teil IV.

Bernard Bolzano. Ein Denker und Erzieher im österreichischen Vormärz. [Von] Eduard Winter in Verbindung mit Paul Funk und Jan Berg.

5. ———. 1974. "Was ist ein Satz nach Bolzano?" In Bolzano als Logiker. Bolzano-Symposion, 21-30. Wien: Verlag der Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften.

6. ———. 1976. "Bolzanos Metaphysik." In West-Begegnung in Österreich: Festschrift für E. Winter, edited by Oberkofler, G. and Zablinger, E., 27-33. Wien: Hermann Böhlau.

7. ———. 1983. "Bernard Bolzano: Die Überwindung des Skeptizismus." In Grundprobleme der grossen Philosophen. Philosophie der Neuzeit III, edited by Speck, Josef, 46-97. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

8. ———. 1990. "Zur logischen und mathematischen Ontologie. Geneseologie und Resultatismus in der Analyse der Grundlagen der Bolzanoschen Zahlenlehre." In Rechnung mit dem Unendlichen, edited by Spalt, Detlef D., 123-155. Basel.

Abstrakt: "Im Einklang mit den allgemeinen Richtlinien dieser Tagung werde ich anhand des konkreten Beispiels der Zahlenlehre von Bernard Bolzano Stellung nehmen zur Frage, ob die Nichtstandard-Analysis für die moderne Wissenschaftsgeschichtsschreibung von Bedeutung ist. Dabei müssen zunächst die ontologischen Grundlagen der Bolzanoschen Zahlenlehre dargestellt werden."

9. ———. 1992. "Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848)." In Sprachphilosophie / Philosophy of Language / La philosophie du langage, edited by Steger, Hugo and Wiegand, Herbert Stern, 381-393. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft. Band 7.1

Inhalt: 1. Wahrheit; 1.1 Sätze an sich; 1.2 Vorstellungen an sich; 1.3 Sprachliche Sätze; 1.4 Begriffssätze; 2. Logische Wahrheit; 2.1 Variationslogik; 2.2 Analytische Sätze; 2.3 Logische Konsequenz; 2.4 Bewertungssemantik; 3. Literatur in Auswahl.

10. ———. 1999. "Kant über analytische und synthetische Urteile mit Berûcksichtigung der Lehren Bolzanos." In Bernard Bolzanos geistiges Erbe für da 21. Jahrhundert, edited by Morscher, Edgar, 97-128. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

11. ———. 1999. "Naturphilosophie, Physik und Mathematik bei Bolzano." In Bernard Bolzanos geistiges Erbe für da 21. Jahrhundert, edited by Morscher, Edgar, 257-265. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

12. Berg, Jan, and Morscher, Edgar. 1987. "Bolzanos Biographie in tabellarischer Übersicht." Philosophia Naturalis no. 24:353-372.

13. Bergmann, Hugo. 1909. Das philosophisches Werk Bernard Bolzano mit Benutzung ungedruckter Quellen kritisch untersucht. Halle: Max Niemeyer.

Nebst einen Anhange: Bolzanos Beiträge zur philosophischen Grundlegung der Mathematik.

Nachdruck: Hildesheim, Georg Olms 1970.

"Der in Prag geborene Autor [Hugo Bergmann] dieses immer noch sehr lesenswerten Buches war zwölf Jahre lang Klassenkamerad Franz Kafkas; zusammen mit Kafka hörte er Martys Vorlesungen über “Deskriptive und genetische Psychologie”, bestand im Unterschied zu seinem Freund die anschließende Prüfung (155) und promovierte bei Marty über “Die Atomtheorie im 19. Jahrhundert” (“ein Beitrag zur Problemgeschichte der Philosophie”). Im zionistischen Studentenverein Bar-Kochba war er eines der literarisch produktivsten Mitglieder.(156)

Bergmann stellt in der ersten Hälfte seiner Bolzano-Monographie auf 100 Seiten Bolzanos “Logik” dar, dann jeweils sehr komprimiert seine Psychologie, seine Ästhetik, seine praktische Philosophie, seine Metaphysik und schließlich in einem 50-seitigen Anhang seine Philosophie der Mathematik. Anders als Marty verkennt Bergmann nicht, daß von Bolzanos Sätzen an sich manche wahr und manche falsch sind, aber er stimmt der Sache nach mit seinem Lehrer überein, wenn er dann die Annahme falscher Sätze an sich als haltlos darzutun sucht.(157) Bergmann vermißt bei Bolzano eine angemessene Deskription der Beziehung zwischen urteilendem Subjekt und Sätzen an sich, und er kritisiert, wie andere Brentanisten vor ihm, daß Bolzano auch synkategorematischen Satzteilen eine (Vorstellung an sich als) Bedeutung zuspricht.(158)

1911 verhandelte Hugo Bergmann in Halle mit dem Geschäftsführer der Kant-Gesellschaft wegen der Herausgabe der Werke Bolzanos. Was dieses Ziel seiner Deutschland-Reise anging, war Bergmann optimistisch: “Die Ausgabe hängt jetzt wohl nur noch davon ab, ob sie nicht schon von anderer Seite gemacht wird. Ich hätte zunächst die 4 Bde Wissenschaftslehre herauszugeben, jedes Jahr einen Band. Wegen Habilitation ist hier nichts zu machen, wegen der zu auffallenden Konfession”.(159) Bergmann lehnte es ab, sich um des Erwerbs der venia legendi willen taufen zu lassen (wie Brentano ihm riet) oder aus der Zionistischen Organisation auszutreten (wie Stumpf verlangte).(160) Und auch seine editorischen Pläne scheiterten - Alois Höfler gewann das Rennen." (S. 58-60)

(155) Vgl. Bergmanns “Erinnerungen an Franz Kafka”, in: Universitas 27 (1972), S.739-750.

(156) In einem von diesem Verein herausgegebenen Sammelband erschien 1913 in Leipzig Hugo Bergmanns religionsphilosophischer Aufsatz “Die Heiligung des Namens” [wiederabgedruckt in: Kurt Wilhelm (Hrsg.), Jüdischer Glaube, Bremen o.J., S. 396-409], über den Max Brod schreibt: “kaum jemals hat in der Folgezeit ein Schriftwerk einen so erleuchtenden Eindruck auf mich gemacht” (Brod, S.228).

(157) H.Bergmann 1909, V (zu §8), S.12f„ 15,27; vgl. Selbstanzeige, S.561.

(158) Vgl. A.Marty, Untersuchungen, S.337f.; K.Twardowski, Vorstellungen, S. 23. Husserl nimmt hier eine vermittelnde Position ein: TV. Logische Untersuchung, §§4-5.

(159) Schmuel Hugo Bergman, Tagebücher und Briefe 1901-1975, 2 Bde., hrsg.v.Miriam Sambursky, Jüdischer Verlag/Athenäum, Frankfurt 1985, Bd.l, S.40.

(160) Vgl. Bergmanns Briefwechsel mit Brentano und Stumpf: op.cit., S. 42-44, 49-53, 542; und “Briefe Franz Brentanos an Hugo Beigmann”, S. 130-136. Bolzano hätte Bergmann gerade in diesem Punkte seinen Respekt erwiesen: “[D]aß die Nation der Juden [...] bei allem dem im Ganzen noch immer viel zu gewissenhaft ist, als daß sie [...], nur um ihre Lage zu verbessern, das Christenthum annehmen wollte, gereicht noch zu ihrem Lobe” (Bolzano, Lehrbuch der Religionswissenschaft, Bd. II, S. 18 f.).

Wolfgang Künne, "Die Ernte wird erscheinen.." Die Geschichte de Bolzano-Rezeption (1849-1939), im: Heinrich Ganthaler und Otto Neumaier (Hrsg.), Bolzano und die österreichische Geistesgeschichte, Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 1997, S. 9-82.

14. ———. 1966. "Bolzano und Brentano." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 48:306-311.

"Als vor einigen Jahren in Ostberlin ein Symposion über Bernhard Bolzano abgehalten wurde, wendete sich Prof. Eduard Winter an mich und forderte mich auf, „als ältesten lebenden Bolzano-Forscher", wie er sich ausdrückte, meine Erinnerungen über die Beziehungen zwischen Brentano und Bolzano niederzuschreiben, insbesondere die Frage zu beantworten: Wie stand Brentano zu Bolzano?

Dieser Aufforderung entstammt die nachfolgende Veröffentlichung.

Ich bin in der angenehmen Lage, hier Brentano selbst zu Wort kommen zu lassen. Im Nachstehenden drucke ich drei Brentano-Texte ab, welche die Antwort auf die an mich gestellte Frage geben." (S. 306)

15. Berka, Karel. 1980. "Christian Wolff und Bernard Bolzano." In Christian Wolff als Philosoph der Aufklärung in Deutschland, edited by Gerlach, Hans-Martin, Schenk, Günter and Thaler, Burchard, 57-62. Halle-Wittenberg: Wissenschaftspublizistik der Martin-Luther-Universität.

Hallesches Wolff-Kolloquium 1979 anlässlich der 300. Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages.

16. ———. 1992. "Bolzanos Lehre vom natürlichen Schliessen." In Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre 1837-1987. International Workshop, 141-161. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki.

"In meinem Aufsatz beabsichtige ich zu zeigen, dass Bolzanos’ Lehre vom Schluss einen relevanten Beitrag zum natürlichen Schliessen beinhaltet, aus den man eher auf eine positive Einschätzung dieses Bestandteiles seiner Logik schliessen kann. Meine Interpretation will dabei die Schwächen seiner Auffassung, wie sie besonders vom heutigen Standpunkt ersichtlich sind, in keinen Falle verschweigen. Da Bolzano in seiner spezifischen Erweiterung der Syllogistik sowie in seinem Ansatz zum definiten Klassenkalkül die Methode des natürlichen Schliessens nur ganz intuitiv angewendet hat, werde ich in meiner Rekonstruktion keine systematische und streng formale Darstellung anstreben. Ich werde mich deswegen nur auf solche - natürlich nicht alle - Stellen beschränken, in denen diese Methode in einer hinreichenden Weise im Texte dargelegt ist. Ein solcher Zutritt entspricht der historischen Entwicklung der Logik, in der das natürliche Schliessen - obzwar es bereits schon von Aristoteles benutzt wurde - in einer systematischen Art und Weise erst in den dreissiger Jahren unseres Jahrhundert unabhängig von G. Gentzen und St. Jaskowski herausgearbeitet wurde." (S. 142)

17. Beyer, Christian. 1996. Von Bolzano zu Husserl. Eine Untersuchung über den Ursprung der phänomenologischen Bedeutungslehre. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Inhalt: lnhaltsverzeichnis 1; Einleitung 3; Erstes Kapitel. Die Phänomenoiogie der logischen Erlebnisse 7; Zweites Kapitel. Boizano pur: Die wesentlichen Unterscheidungen 53; Drittes Kapitel. Bolzano, Lotze, Husser!: Die Spezies-Konzeption der Bedeutung 131; Literatur 187; Index 193-203.

"Ich werde im zweiten Kapitel zunachst einige zentrale Bestandstücke der in den ersten beiden Banden der 'Wissenschaftslehre' dargestellten Urteils- und v.a. Vorstellungslehre, die fur Husserl wichtig geworden sind, in möglichst unmodijizierter Form prasentieren. Dieses Kapitel wirft ein ganz neues Licht auf Bolzanos Beitrag zur Philosophie der Sprache und des Geistes. Im dritten Kapitel werde ich dann Husserls Lotze- inspirierte 'Interpretation' dieser Lehre vorstellen, was u.a. ein naheres Eingehen auf Lotzes Erkenntnis- und Ideenlehre (wie sie sich insbesondere im genannten Kapitel Uber die "Ideenwelt" manifestiert) erfordert. Lotzes ldeenlehre erweist sich dabei als auBerordentlich wichtige lnspirationsquelle der Phänomenologie Uberhaupt. Am Ende dieses Kapitels werden wir, so hoffe ich, Husserls Platonische Spezies-Konzeption der Bedeutung vor dem analytisch- phanomenologischen Blick haben. AbschlieBend gebe ich einen Ausblick auf die weitere Entwicklung von Husserls Bedeutungslehre zwischen 1900-1913. Mein besonderes Augenmerk gilt dabei dem Phanomen der Indexikalitat und Husserls auch im Zusammenhang mit der gegenwiirtigen 'lntemalismus / Externalismus'- Debatte hochinteressanten Konzeption des 'noematischen X'." (S. 6)

18. ———. 2001. "Logik, Semantik und Ontologie: neuere Literatur zu Bolzano." Philosophische Rundschau no. 48:231-262.

"Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848) kann mit einigem Recht als der erste moderne sprachanalytisch Philosoph bezeichnet werden. Sein Hauptwerk, die 1837 erschienene monumentale Wissenschaftslehre, zeichnet sich methodisch durch eine nie zuvor dagewesene Kombination aus Problembewußtsein logischen und begriffsanalytischen Feingefühl argumentativer Klarheit und Stringenz aus. Thematisch behandelt Bolzano darin Hauptgebiete der heutigen analytischen Philosophie: Logik, Semantik, Ontologie, Philosophie des Geistes, Erkenntnis-und Wissenschaftstheorie.

Auf vielen dieser Gebiete vollbringt er (wie auch in der Mathematik, Philosophie der Mathematik, Ethik und Religionslehre) bedeutsame wissenschaftlich Pei oniertaten. Bolzano ist ein durch und durch systematisch orientierte Denker, der aber gleichwohl wichtige traditionelle Positionen und (zumeist weniger wichtige) Meinungen seiner zeitgenössischen Kollegen ausfuhrlich berücksichtigt (wenngleich er sie nicht immer pünktlich wiedergibt)." (S. 231)

19. Brandl, Johannes L. 2003. "Die Objektivität der Anschauung: ein Problem in Bolzanos Vorstellungstheorie." In Philosophie im Geiste Bolzanos, edited by Hieke, Alexander and Neumaier, Otto, 87-108. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

20. Buhl, Günter. 1961. Ableitbarkeit und Abfolge in der Wissenschaftstheorie Bolzanos. Köln: Universitäts Verlag.

Kantstudien, Ergänzungsheft 83.

21. ———. 1968. "Der Wissenschaftsbegriff bei Bolzano." In Beiträge zur Entwicklung der Wissenschaftstheorie im 19. Jahrhundert, 63-70. Meisenheim: Anton Hain.

22. Casari, Ettore. 1986. "Bemerkungen über die Bolzanosche Wissenschafstlehre." In Logik und Grundlagenforschung. Festkolloquium zum 100. Geburstag von Heinrich Scholz, 53-66. Münster: Aschendorff.

23. Centrone, Stefania. 2010. "Bolzano und Leibniz über Klarheit und Deutlichkeit." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 92.

English abstract: "At a time when they had largely fallen into disrepute Bolzano reactivated the distinctions between ‚clear‘ and ‚obscure‘, ‚distinct‘ and ‚confused‘ ideas. In the central sections of this paper I offer a critical reconstruction of the explanations of these pairs of opposita which are to be found in vol. III of Bolzano’s monumental Wissenschaftslehre (1837). I then provide a detailed account of its Leibnizian counterparts that were well known to the ‚Bohemian Leibniz‘, and finally I evaluate Bolzano’s criticism thereof."

24. ———. 2010. "Der Reziprozitätskanon in den Beyträgen und in der Wissenschaftslehre." Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung no. 64:310-330.

25. ———. 2011. "Begründungen bei Bolzano und beim frühen Husserl." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 65:1-23.

"Vor genau zweihundert Jahren erschien ein Büchlein mit dem Titel Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik, verfasst von Bernard Bolzano, Weltpriester, Doctor der Philosophie und königlich-kaiserlicher Professor der Religionswissenschaft an der Carl-Ferdinandeischen Universität zu Prag. Edmund Husserl kannte das Büchlein: in seiner Formale und Transzendentalen Logik erzählt er von der „verdienstlichen Neuausgabe der früher so gut wie unzugänglichen Jugendschrift Bolzanos, (Philosophie der Mathematik oder Beiträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik (sic!)) die wir H. Fals (sic!) verdanken“.(1) (Leider ist es dem Herausgeber der Husserliana-Edition dieses Buchs weder gelungen, den Titel von Bolzanos Opusculum noch den Namen des Herausgebers der Auflage von 1926, der Heinrich Fels hieß, korrekt anzugeben).(2)"

(1) Formale und transzendentale Logik [Aufl. 1929] § 26 d).

(2) Vgl. Künne 2010, [Die Philosophische Logik Gottlob Freges, Frankfurt/M.] 327.

26. ———. 2012. "Strenge Beweise und das Verbot der metábasis eis állo génos. Eine Untersuchung zu Bernard Bolzanos Beyträgen zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 33:1-31.

English abstract: "In his booklet ‘Contributions to a better founded presentation of mathematics’ of 1810 Bernard Bolzano made his first serious attempt to explain the notion of a rigorous proof. Although the system of logic he employed at that stage is in various respects far below the level of the achievements in his later Wissenschaftslehre, there is a striking continuity between his earlier and later work as regards the methodological constraints on rigorous proofs. This paper tries to give a perspicuous and critical account of the fragmentary logic of Beyträge, and it shows that there is a tension between that logic and Bolzano’s methodological ban on ‘kind crossing’."

27. ———. 2012. "Das Problem der Apagogischen Beweise in Bolzanos Beyträgen und seiner Wissenschaftslehre." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 33:127-157.

English abstract: "This paper analyzes and evaluates Bolzano’s remarks on the apagogic method of proof with reference to his juvenile booklet ‘Contributions to a better founded presentation of mathematics’ of 1810 and to his ‘Theory of science’ (1837). I shall try to defend the following contentions: (1) Bolzanos’ vain attempt to transform all indirect proofs into direct proofs becomes comprehensible as soon as one recognizes the following facts: (1.1) his attitude towards indirect proofs with an affirmative conclusion differs from his stance to indirect proofs with a negative conclusion; (1.2) by Bolzano’s lights arguments via consequentia mirabilis only seem to be indirect. (2) Bolzano does not deny that indirect proofs can be perfect certifications (Gewissmachungen) of their conclusion; what he denies is rather that they can provide grounds for their conclusions. (2.1) They cannot do the latter, since they start from false premises and (2.2) since they make an unnecessary detour. (3) The far-reaching agreement between his early and late assessment of apagogical proofs (in the Beyträge of 1810 and the Wissenschaftslehre of 1837) is partly due to the fact that he develops his own position always against the background of Wolff’s and Lambert’s views."

28. ———. 2012. "Consequentia Mirabilis, Antiskeptizismus und Antinomien. Über Bolzanos Beweis, daß es wenigsten eine Wahrheit an sich; daß es der Wahrheiten mehre, ja unendlich viele gebe." Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung no. 66:539-565.

"In seinem Aufsatz The Structure of Logic and Its Relation to Other Systems (1920) kritisiert der amerikanische Pragmatist und Logiker Clarence Irving Lewis die „traditionelle rationalistische Auffassung“, weil sie logische Gesetze für den Beweis grundlegender metaphysischer Wahrheiten verwendet. Er schreibt:

[T]he attempt to establish incontrovertible truth by deductive procedures is nugatory.

The traditional rationalistic conception that metaphysical first principles can be shown to be logically necessary, or that what is logically prior is more certain or self-evident, is a conception to which the actual structure of logical systems lends no support.(1)

Strenggenommen schreibt Lewis hier der traditionellen rationalistischen Auffassung zwei Thesen zu. Kann man nicht die logische Notwendigkeit metaphysischer Prinzipien akzeptieren und zugleich (mit Bolzano)(2)

bestreiten, dass sie in jedem Fall unmittelbar einleuchtend sind?" (S. 539)

(1) Lewis 1920, [The Structure of Logic and its Relation to Other Systems, in: The Journal of Philosophy 18 – 19, 505 – 516], 506.

(2) BM [Beyträge zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik. Erste Lieferung] 59 – 60; WL [Wissenschaftslehre] IV, 191 – 192.

29. Centrone, Stefania, and Künne, Wolfgang. 2011. "Bolzanos Zeichentheorie. Eine Untersuchung zu § 285 der Wissenschaftslehre." Grazer philosophische Studien no. 83:171-198.

30. Dähnhardt, Simon. 1992. Wahrheit und Satz an sich. Zum Verhältnis des Logischen zum Psychischen und Sprachlichen in Bernard Bolzanos Wissenschaftslehre. Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus-Verlagsgesellschaft.

31. Danek, Jaromir. 1970. Weiterentwicklung der Leibnizschen Logik bei Bolzano. Meisenheim a Glan: A. Hain.

32. Dapunt, Inge. 1967. "Macht Bolzanos Logik Existenzvoraussetzungen?" Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie no. 15:1513-1515.

33. ———. 1968. "Zwei Typen von Systemen der traditionellen Logik." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 50:275-281.

Dieser Essay von Inge Dapunt-Morscher ist nachgedruckt in: Edgar Morscher, Studien zur Logik Bernard Bolzanos, Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2007, pp. 113-120.

34. ———. 1969. "Zur Klarstellung einiger Lehren Bernard Bolzanos." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 7:63-73.

"Seiner Abhandlung uber "Frege's Ontology"(1) schickt Reinhardt Grossmann eine Erörterung voraus von "some features of Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre, for much of what I [i.e., Grossmann] shall have to say about Frege can best be understood against the background of Bolzano's view";(2) und so erfolgen die einleitenden Bemerkungen über Bolzano gerade in der Absicht, "to review some of his [i.e., Frege's] ideas in the light of Bolzano's distinctions."(3) Diese Absicht mag Grossmann dazu veranlasst haben, seine Darstellung der Lehren Bolzanos--im Hinblick auf ihre späitere Brauchbarkeit bei den Ausfiihrungen tiber Frege---ein wenig zu modifizieren; da jodoch Grossmann sich dabei nicht nur auf Bolzano beruft, sondern das Dargelegte ausdrücklich für Bolzanos Ansichten ausgibt mad dies auch dutch zahlreiche Hinweise auf die Wissenschaftslehre Bolzanos zu belegen versucht, scheint er im guten Glauben gewesen zu sein, Bolzanos Gedanken unverändert und getreu wiederzugeben. Ich möchte nun hier nichts anderes zeigen, als dass die Lehren, welche in diesem Aufsatz von Grossmann Bolzano zugeschrieben werden, in vielen Punkten von dem abweichen, was Bolzano tatsächlich behauptet hat, ja teilweise sogar im Widerspruch dazu stehen." (S. 73)

35. ———. 1970. "Zur Frage der Existenzvoraussetzungen in der Logik." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 11:89-96.

Nachdruck: E. Morscher (2007), S. 125-134.

"Auf Grund dieser Aristotelischen Existenzvoraussetzung (wenn auch nicht deswegen allein) ist in der Aristotelischen Logik der Schluss von "Alle F sind G" auf "Einige F sind G" gültig(2) und—was gleichbedeutend damit ist—die Aussageform "Wenn: Alle F sind G, dann: Einige F sind G" allgemeingültig. Man kδnnte nun aber auch ein logisches System ausarbeiten, in dem zwar jene Schlussregel gilt, welche den Ubergang von "Alle F sind G" auf "Einige F sind G" gestattet, in dem also "Wenn: Alle F sind G, dann: Einige F sind G" allgemeingültig ist, nicht aber "Einige F sind F". Ein System dieser Art haben wir in der Logik Bernard Bolzanos vor uns. Nach Bolzano gibt es namlich auch gegenstandlose Vorstellungen ansich(3), die wir hier als Korrelat der leeren Klasse auffassen können, mit der sie—bei alien sonstigen Unterschieden—zumindest in dem für uns hier relevanten Punkt ubereinstimmen. Wird nun in "Einige F sind F" fur "F" der sprachliche Ausdruck einer solchen gegenstandlosen Vorstellung an sich eingesetzt (und dies ist in der Logik Bolzanos durchaus erlaubt), so entsteht daraus eine falsche Aussage. In der Logik Bolzanos ist also "Einige F sind F" nicht allgemeingütig, weil hier im Gegensatz zur Aristotelischen Logik fur die Prädikatvariablen "F", "G" , . . . auch leere Prädikate einsetzbar sind. Trotzdem ist aber in Bolzanos Logik ebenso wie in der Aristotelischen der Schluss von "Alle F sind G" auf "Einige F sind G" gültig, die Aussageform "Wenn: Alle F sind G, dann: Einige F sind G" somit allgemeingültig, und zwar deshalb, weil Bolzano von jedem Satz an sich, wenn er wahr sein soil, verlangt, dass seine Subjektvorstellung nicht gegenstandlos bzw. leer sein darf, sondern gegenständlich (d. i. nicht - gegenstandlos bzw. nicht-leer) sein muss(4); demnach kann eine Aussage der Form "Alle F sind G" nur dann wahr sein, wenn an Stelle von "F" der sprachliche Ausdruck einer gegenständlichen Vorstellung an sich und somit ein nicht-leeres Prädikat steht, wenn es daher mindestens ein F gibt, welches dann selbstverständlich auch ein G sein muss, weil ja—laut Voraussetzung—jedes F ein G ist. Immer dann, wenn eine Aussage von der Form "Alle F sind G" wahr ist, muss daher auch die entsprechende Aussage "Einige F sind G" wahr sein." (. 90-91)

(2) In der traditionellen Logik ist bekanntlich der Schluss von einer universellen Aussage auf die entsprechende partikuläre Aussage gestattet; dadurch wird ]a in der Aristotelischen Syllogistik die Güiltigkeit der modi obliqui gewäirleistet. Ich habe hier einen Sonderfall davon herausgegriffen, nämlich den Schluss von einem A-Satz (d. i. eine universell affirmative Aussage) auf den dazugehörigen I-Satz (d. i. eine partikulä affirmative Aussage).

(3) Bernard Bolzano, Wissenschaflslehre, Sulzbach (1837), Bd. I, S. 304 ff.

(4) Bernard Bolzano, Wissenschaflslehre, Sulzbach (1837), Bd. II, S. 328 ff.

36. Dörn, Georg. 1987. "Zu Bolzanos Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie." Philosophia Naturalis no. 24:423-441.

37. Dubislav, Walter. 1929. "Über Bolzano als Kritiker Kants." Philosophisches Jahrbuch:357-368.

38. ———. 1931. "Bolzano als Vorläufer der mathematischen Logik." Philosophisches Jahrbuch no. 44:448-456.

39. Duhn, Anita von. 1999. "Bolzanos Kritik an Kants theoretischer Philosophie." In Bolzano-Forschung 1992-1998, edited by Berg, Jan and Morscher, Edgar, 169-180. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

40. Fels, Heinrich. 1926. "Bernard Bolzano." Philosophisches Jahrbuch no. 39:384-418.

41. ———. 1927. "Die Philosophie Bolzanos (I)." Philosophisches Jahrbuch no. 40:319-336.

42. ———. 1927. "Die Philosophie Bolzanos (II)." Philosophisches Jahrbuch no. 40:423-448.

43. ———. 1928. "Das apriorische und das empirische Element in der Philosophie Bernard Bolzanos." Jahrbuch der philosophischen Fakultät der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Bonn no. 3:39-42.

44. Føllesdal, Dagfin. 2004. "Bolzanos bleibende Leistungen." In Phenomenology & Analysis: Essays on Central European Philosophy., edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Huemer, Wolfgang, 57-68. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

"Bolzanos ganze Diskussion von Sätzen und Vorstellungen an sich ist eine Manifestation seines Problembewusstseins: er sah die Probleme des Psychologismus fünfzig Jahre vor Frege und Husserl, er zeigt durch einfache und überzeugende Beispiele die Unhaltbarkeit vieler populärer Ansichten über Vorstellungen und Begriffe, wie etwa die Reziprozität von Umfang und Inhalt, die unkritisch angenommene Korrelation zwischen Teilen einer Vorstellung und Teilen ihres Gegenstandes oder zwischen Teilen einer Vorstellung und Eigenschaften ihres Gegenstandes. Bolzano ist sich auch des Problems der Identitätskriterien für Begriffe sehr bewusst und schlägt vor, dass Begriffe identisch sind, wenn sie in derselben Weise aus denselben Teilen aufgebaut sind, und dass einfache, nicht-leere Begriffe gleich sind, dann und nur dann wenn sie den gleichen Umfang haben.

Diese Definitionen sind sicherlich nicht ganz ohne Probleme, Bolzanos Versuch ist aber besser als (soweit sie mir bekannt sind) die von anderen Philosophen, die über Begriffe sprechen, und das sind die meisten

Philosophen des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts." (S. 62)

45. Ganthaler, Heinrich von, and Neumaier, Otto, eds. 1997. Bolzano und die österreichische Geistesgeschichte. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhalt: Vorwort 7; Wolfgang Künne: "Die Ernte wird erscheinen …" Die Geschichte der Bolzano-Rezeption (1849-1939) 9; Peter Stachel: Die Bedeutung von Bolzanos "Wissenschaftslehre" für die österreichische Philosophiegeschichte. Ein Baustein zu einer Geschichte der pluralistischen Tradition österreichischer Philosophie 83; Edgar Morscher: Robert Zimmermann -- der Vermittler von Bolzanos Gedankengut? Zerstörung einer Legende 145; Kurt Blaukopf: Im Geiste Bolzanos und Herbarts. Ansätze empiristischer Musikforschung in Wien und Prag 237; Kurt F. Strasser: Bewegung und Verwandlung. Arnold Schönberg 265-277.

46. George, Rolf. 1999. "Anschauungen bei Kant und Bolzano." In Bernard Bolzanos geistiges Erbe für da 21. Jahrhundert, edited by Morscher, Edgar, 129-144. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

47. Gieske, Carsten Uwe. 2001. "Bolzano über den Sinn von "Wahrheit". Eine exegetische Untersuchung zu den Paragraphen 24, 25 und 28 der "Wissenschaftslehre"." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 55:556-570.

"Einer der wichtigsten Begriffe der Bernard Bolzanos ist der Begriff der Wahrheit an sich. Er ist auch einer der dem Publikum gëlaufigeren Begriffe Bolzanos - so dass eine exegetische Untersuchung, die die Wahrheitsdefinition der Wissenschaftslehre zum Thema hat, über flüssig erscheinen könnte. Doch wie lautet die Wahrheitsdefinition der Wissenschaftslehre? Allein im ersten Teil der Wissenschaftslehre, in der Fundamentallehre, finden sich mindestens sechs verschiedene Formulierungen. Die Definition des Paragraphen 28 zum Beispiel, die Bolzano als die ,,richtige Erklärung" kennzeichnet (I I24)(1), wird seltener zitiert, während eine andere - sie steht im prominenten, aber hermeneutisch heiklen Paragraphen 25 - zu Recht oder zu Unrecht bevorzugt wird.(2) Sie ist wiederum die einzige, bei der Bolzano auf den Ausdruck ,,aussagen" verzichtet; in den anderen Wahrheitsdefinitionen kommt dieser Ausdruck - grammatisch uneinheitlich verwendet - vor. Schon diese Beobachtungen machen deutlich, dass es durchaus von Interesse sein kann, diese Formulierungen einmal im Hinblick auf Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten zu untersuchen. Dabei wird die Frage, wie ,,aussagen" jeweils zu verstehen ist, eine Hauptfrage dieses Aufsatzes sein, an dessen Ende die Wahrheitsdefinition der Wissenschaftslehre präsentiert werden soll." (S. 556)

(1) I 124 =: Bolzano, Band I, S. 124.

(2) Wenn nur dem Gegenstande, von dem der Satz handelt, das wirklich zukommt, was er ihm beilegt..." dann "... soll mir der Satz doch immer den Namen einer Wahrheit an sich erhalten..." (I 112; hier "Def. (iv)", vgl. Morscher S. 66f., Künne S. 226f.; eng verwandt mit (iv) ist Bergs Extrakt aus 1108 ff., s. Berg S. 61 f.).

Literatur

Bolzano, Bernard: Wissenschaftslehre, hrsg. von Wolfgang Schultz, Band I und II, Leipzig 1929, Band III und IV, Leipzig 1931; ND Aalen 1981.

Berg, Jan: Bernard Bolzano. Die Überwindung des Skeptizismus, in: J. Speck (Hg.): Grundprobleme der großen Philosophen. Philosophie der Neuzeit Jfl Göttingen/Zürich 1983.

Künne, Wolfgang: Bolzanos blühender Baum. Plädoyer for eine nicht-epistemische Wahrheitsauffassung, in: Forum für Philosophie, Bad Homburg (Hg.): Realismus und Antirealismus, Frankfi.m/Main 1992.

Morscher, Edgar: Das logische An-sich bei Bernard Bolzano, Salzburg/München 1973.

48. Gil, Thomas. 1997. "Die Bedeutung der Skeptizismuskritik für die Grundlegung der Semiotik. Bernhard Bolzanos Wider!egung des radikalen Zweifels in der .,Fundamentallehre" (Wissenschafts/ehre, §§ 17 -45) als Voraussetzung seiner Semiotik." Semiosis. Internationale Zeitschrift für Semiotik und Ästhetik no. 83/44:3-13.

"ln den Paragraphen der "Fundamentallehre" der Wissenschaftslehre kritisiert Bernard Bolzano die Position des radikalen Skeptizismus, nachdem er sie genau definiert hat. Nach dem radikalen Skeptizismus, so wie Bolzano ihn bestimmt, kann es keine Wahrheit geben. Bolzanos Widerlegung des so definierten radikalen Skeptizismus, welche von Heinrich Scholz als "eine völlig originale Gedankenleistung" gewürdigt wird, besteht in der Hauptsache aus zwei Argumentationen, die zwei Sätze beweisen: aJ daß es wenigstens eine Wahrheit gibt; b) daß es unendlich viele Wahrheiten gibt.

Die Bolzanosche Widerlegung des Skeptizismus steht im Zentrum der folgenden Ausführungen, allerdings sofern eine solche Widerlegung für Bolzanos Grundlegung der Logik und der Zeichenlehre von Relevanz ist. Daß diese Relevanz basaler oder fundamentaler Art ist, .geht aus der Funktion und Stellung der Paragraphen der "Fundamentallehre" im Gesamtsystem der Bolzanoschen Wissenschaftslehre hervor. Die Skeptizismuskritik ist in der Tat ein Unumgängliches für das konstruktive System von Erkenntnis-, Wissens- und Wissenschaftsmöglichkeiten, das die Wissenschaftslehre darstellt, im allgemeinen und für die Semiotik Bolzanos (sowohl für die Grundlegung der Zeichenlehre in den Paragraphen 285 und 334 bis 345 als auch für die angewandte .,Semiotik" in den Paragraphen 637 bis 699 des vierten Bandes der Wissenschaftslehre) im besonderen." (S. 3)

49. Heesch, Elli. 1935. "Grundzüge der Bolzanoschen Wissenschaftslehre." Philosophisches Jahrbuch no. 48:313-341.

"Mit den jetzt angedeuteten Voraussetzungen an Charakter und Methode und mit seinem scharfen Verstand schreibt Bolzano sein größtes philosophisches Werk: Wissenscliaftslehre, das uns in 4 Bänden ein umfassendes Lehrbuch der Logik liefert. Der Hauptteil, die eigentliche Wissenschaftslehre, macht den vierten Band aus. Die drei ersten Bände stellen einen ausführlichen Unterbau zum vierten dar uud sind auch heute noch eine ergiebige Fundstelle für die Lehre von den Vorstellungen, Sätzen und Urteilen, für Wahrscheinlichkeitsbetrachtungen u.s.w. Ich werde aus ihnen nur das herausheben, was im Sinne Bolzanos für den vierten Band unbedingt Voraussetzung ist.

. Die drei ersten Bände umfassen vier Hauptteile : die Fundamental-, die Elementar-, die Erkenntnislehre und die Erfindungskunst. Der Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre im engeren Sinne läßt die Notwendigkeit dieser Teile erkennen. Die Wissenschaftslehre im engeren Sinne wird von Bolzano gleichgesetzt einer Methodenlehre, d. h. sie enthält die Regeln, die bei der Zerlegung des gesamten Gebietes der Wahrheit in einzelne Wissenschaften und bei der Darstellung der letzteren in besonderen Lehrbüchern befolgt werden müssen.

Um eine so definierte Wissenschaftslehre sinnvoll aufzubauen, muß das Material sichergestellt sein: das Vorhandensein einer Gesamtheit von wahren Sätzen, die für den menschlichen Verstand erkennbar sind, und die Möglichkeit, die Beziehungen einzelner Wahrheiten zu anderen festzulegen, zunächst formal und wenn möglich auch material.

Damit ist die Aufgabe der ersten drei Bände umrissen, und zwar in rückwärtiger Reihenfolge, d. h. die Notwendigkeit des vorhergehenden Teiles ist gegeben durch einen Ausspruch des nachfolgenden Teiles." (S. 316)

50. Hieke, Alexander, and Neumaier, Otto, eds. 2003. Philosophie im Geiste Bolzanos, anlässlich des 222.Geburtstages von Bernard Bolzano Edgar Morscher gewidmet. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhalt der Erste Abschnitts: I. Bernard Bolzano.

Wolfgang Künne: Bolzanos frühe Jahre 5; Kurt F. Strasser: Pascal, Bolzano und die Einheit von Glauben und Wissen 49; Edmund Runggaldier: Die "Einfachheit" der Substanz bei Bolzano 69; Johannes L. Brandl: Die Objektivität der Anschauung: ein Problem in Bolzanos Vorstellungstheorie 87; Anne Siegetsleitener: Das Büchlein vom angeblich besten Staate oder Gedanken einer Prauenfreundin über ein Leben in Bolzanien 109; Clemens Sedmak: Die Bedeutung "wichtiger Sätze" für die Philosophie 127-142.

51. Kambartel, Friedrich. 1978. "Der philosophische Standpunkt der Bolzanoschen Wissenschaftslehre." In Bernard Bolzano's Grundlegung der Logik: Ausgewählte Paragraphen aus der Wissensmaftslehre, Band I und II, VII-LIV. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.

52. Konzelmann, Ziv Anita. 2010. Kräfte, Wahrscheinlichkeit und "Zuversicht," Bernard Bolzanos Erkenntnislehre. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

53. Kraus, Lukas Benedikt. 2014. Der Begriff des Kontinuums bei Bernard Bolzano. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

54. Krause, Andrej. 2004. Bolzanos Metaphysik. München: Alber.

Inhalt: Vorwort 11; Einleitung 13; I. Bolzanos Begriff der Metaphysik 23; II. Bolzanos Ontologie 42; III. Bolzanos Metaphysik der bedingten Substanzen 141; IV. Bolzanos Metaphysik der unbedingten Substanz 303; Symbol- und Abkürzungsverzeichnis 362; Literaturverzeichnis 363; Personregister 381; Sachregister 385-387.

"II. Bolzanos Ontologie

Die Metaphysik Bolzanos ist eine Wissenschaft, die es mit wirklichen Gegenständen zu tun haben soll und nur mit solchen Gegenständen. Im folgenden wird der Teil der Metaphysik Bolzanos dargestellt und erörtert, der sich den wirklichen Gegenständen möglichst allgemein zuwendet. Ich nenne diesen Teil die allgemeine Metaphysik oder auch die Ontologie Bolzanos, verwende also den Terminus »Ontologie« in einer engeren Bedeutung als etwa Berg in seiner Abhandlung Ontology Without Ultrafilters ... Wenn er dort von »Bolzano's Ontology« spricht, so meint er die Gegenstände Bolzanos im allgemeinen, nicht nur die wirklichen Gegenstände.(1)

Im Verlauf der Untersuchung wird sich zeigen, daß Bolzano zufolge jeder wirkliche Gegenstand entweder eine Substanz oder eine Adhärenz oder - nach manchen Texten Bolzanos - ein Inbegriff von Substanzen ist und daß jede Substanz, jede Adhärenz und jeder Inbegriff von Substanzen ein wirklicher Gegenstand ist. Daher kann man auch sagen, daß sich die Ontologie Bolzanos vor jeder weiteren Differenzierung mit Substanzen, insofern sie Substanzen sind, mit Adhärenzen, insofern sie Adhärenzen sind, und mit Inbegriffen von Substanzen, insofern sie Inbegriffe von Substanzen sind, befaßt. Die Besonderheit der einzelnen Substanz, der einzelnen Adhärenz oder des einzelnen Inbegriffs von Substanzen soll hierbei noch keine Rolle spielen. Es interessiert an dieser Stelle also noch nicht, ob die betrachteten Substanzen bedingt oder unbedingt, veränderlich oder unveränderlich, geistig oder materiell, vollkommener oder weniger vollkommen sind usw. oder ob die betrachteten Adhärenzen dieser oder jener Art sind. Alles das wird erst später, für eine speziellere Metaphysik, wichtig werden.

Die Darlegung und Diskussion der Positionen Bolzanos hinsichtlich der Ontologie erfolgt in sieben Kapiteln. In den ersten beiden Kapiteln untersuche ich die Definitionsvorschläge Bolzanos für die Begriffe »Substanz« und »Adhärenz« und seine Argumente für die Gegenständlichkeit der entsprechenden Vorstellungen an sich. In den darauffolgenden beiden Kapiteln bespreche ich einige wichtige Beschaffenheiten, die jeder Substanz zukommen sollen, nämlich deren Einfachheit und deren Anfangslosigkeit und Unvergänglichkeit. Danach erörtere ich die von Bolzano vorgenommene Unterscheidung zwischen äußeren und inneren Beschaffenheiten und seinen Begriff der Veränderung. Schließlich diskutiere ich den ontologischen Status, den Bolzano den Inbegriffen von Substanzen zuweist. Hierbei wird sich heraussteilen, daß sich bei einer entsprechenden Modifikation Bolzanos Konzept vom Verhältnis »Substanz - Inbegriff von Substanzen« in eine ganz bestimmte moderne Substanzontologie gleichsam einbetten läßt." (S. 42-43)

(1) Vgl. ebd., 32. Dennoch ist diese Arbeit natürlich eine sehr bedeutungsvolle Untersuchung zu Bolzanos Ontologie, denn sie fragt auch nach den wirklichen Gegenständen. Für die Ontologie Bolzanos sehr wichtig sind außerdem Künne, Substanzen und Adhärenzen ..., u. Schnieder, Substanz und Adhärenz ... Man vgl. ferner Berg, Bolzanos Metaphysik, ders., Einleitung ... [GA 2A, 12/3,107-112], Chisholm, The Self ..., ders., Bolzano on the Simplicity ..., ders., Bernard Bolzano's Philosophy of Mind, Herrmann, Der religionsphilosophische Standpunkt ..., 137-141, Huonder, Das Unsterblichkeitsproblem ..., 86-88, Krickel, Teil und Inbegriff..., 22-27, Künne, Bolzanos Philosophie der Religion ..., 319f., Louzil, Bernard Bolzanos Materiebegriff, Pnhonsky, Atomlehre ..., Ryschawy, Die Unsterblichkeitslehre ..., Schrödter, Philosophie und Religion ..., 50-55, Textor, Bolzanos Propositionalismus, 56-73.

55. Künne, Wolfgang. 1992. "Bolzanos blühender Baum: Plädoyer für eine nicht-epistemische Wahrheitsauffassung." In Realismus und Antirealismus, 224-244. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

56. ———. 1998. "Substanzen und Adhärenzen—Zur Ontologie in Bolzanos Athanasia." Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy no. 1:233-250.

57. ———. 1998. "Bolzanos oberstes Sittengesetz." In Bernard Bolzanos geistiges Erbe für das 21. Jahrhundert : Beiträge zum Bolzano-Symposium der Österreichischen Forschungsgemeinschaft im Dezember 1998 in Wien, edited by Morscher, Edgar, 371-391. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

58. ———. 1999. "Über Lug und Trug." In Bernard Bolzanos geistiges Erbe für da 21. Jahrhundert, edited by Morscher, Edgar, 29-58. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Nachdruck: W. Künne, Versuche über Bolzano / Essays on Bolzano, Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2008, S. 121-156.

59. ———. 2008. Versuche über Bolzano / Essays on Bolzano. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhalt: Geleitwort von Edgar Morscher 7; Vorwort 11; Bolzanos frühe Jahre 13; Die theologischen Gutachten in den Verfahren gegen den Professor and Priester Bolzano 67; Bolzanos oberstes Sittengesetz 103; Über Lug and Tug 121; Propositions in Bolzano and Frege 157; Are Questions Propositions? 197; Constituents of Concepts 211; Analyticity and Logical Truth: From Bolzano to Quine 233; "Die Ernte wird erscheinen..." Die Geschichte der Bolzano-Rezeption (1848-1939) 305: Literaturverzeichnis 405; Quellennachweis 449: Personenregister 451-464.

60. ———. 2013. "Intentionalität: Bolzano und Husserl." In Versuche über Husserl, edited by Centrone, Stefania, 97-144. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.

"»Der Problemtitel, der die ganze Phänomenologie umspannt, heißt Intentionalität.« Da es der Vater der Phänomenologie ist, der dies behauptet,¹ können wir uns wohl darauf verlassen. In diesem Aufsatz versuche ich, Edmund Husserls (ursprüngliche) Theorie der Intentionalität vor dem Hintergrund einer ihrer wichtigsten Inspirationsquellen, Bernard Bolzanos Theorie der »Sätze und Vorstellungen an sich«, zu rekonstruieren und in einem Punkt zu korrigieren. Im ersten Teil des Aufsatzes erörtere ich das Problem (zumindest prima facie) gegenstandsloser intentionaler Akte und Zustände, das im Zentrum von Husserls Metakritik an Twardowskis Bolzano-Kritik stand. Thema des zweiten Teils dieses Aufsatzes ist Husserls ursprüngliche Auffassung des ontologischen Status der Gehalte intentionaler Akte und Zustände, mit der er (für eine Weile) auf Distanz zu Bolzano ging." (S. 97)

61. Lapointe, Sandra. 2010. "Sprache − Symbol − Beweismethode in der Mathematik und Bolzanos Kant-Kritik." In Methodenreflexionen in der Philosophie, edited by Kremberg, Bettina, 35-48. Leipzig: University of Leipzig Press.

62. Menne, Albert. 1981. "Extension und comprehension bei Peirce und Bolzano." In Proceedings of the C. S. Peirce bicentennial International Congress, edited by Ketner, Kenneth L., 359-361. Lubbock: Texas Tech Press.

"Noch erstaunlicher aber ist es, dass Peirce die einschlagigen Theorien von Bernard Bolzano nicht kennt, die für ihn sicherlich sehr wichtig gewesen waren. Bolzano ist es, der wie Peirce unter dem Umfang des Begriffes bereits die individuellen Objekte versteht, auf die der Begriff zutrifft, und nicht die Unter-Arten, die er umfasst. Ausserdem unterscheidet Bolzano sehr scharf zwischen "Merkrnal" und "Bestandteil":

Merkmale sind Eigenschaften der Dinge, Bestandteile aber sind die Terme, aus denen der Begriff zusammengesetzt ist. Bolzano weist darauf hin, dass zwei bedeutungsverschiedene Begriffe die gleichen Bestandteile haben konnen; so hatten z.B. die heiden Begriffe "gelehrter Sohn eines ungelehrten Vaters" und "ungelehrter Sohn eines gelehrten Vaters" die gleichen Bestandteile.

Der Inhalt eines Begriffes sollte also nicht nur aus der Summe seiner Bestandteile, sondern auch aus deren strukturellem Gefüge bestehen.

Desgleichen ist Bolzano der erste, der eine sehr gründliche, durch Beispiele belegte Kritik an dem Reziprozitatsgesetz bietet. Zur Zeit der Abfassung seiner Untersuchung "Upon Logical Comprehension and Extension", also im Jahre 1867, scheint Peirce überhaupt nichts von Bolzano gewusst zu haben. Aber auch in dem "Supplement" von 1893 erwahnt er ihn nicht.

Wohl finden sich in zwei anderen Werken von Peirce Hinweise auf Bolzano, seine Wissenschaftslehre und seine Paradoxien des Unendlichen, die zeigen, daB er Bolzano sehr geschatzt hat, aber auch zugleich verraten, daB er nur aus sekundaren Quellen Kenntnisse iiber seine Bedeutung fiir die Grundlegung der Mengenlehre und des Begriffes der Machtigkeit hatte, dass er aber im übrigen nur durch abstruse Gerüiche etwas von Bolzano wusste." (S. 360)

63. Morscher, Edgar. 1967. "Inwiefern enthält Bolzanos Logik Existenzvoraussetzungen?" Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie no. 15:1513-1515.

Nachdruck: E. Morscher (2007), S. 107-111.

"Das logische System, das Bemard Bolzano in seiner Wissenschaftslehre ausführlich dargestellt hat, ist teilweise noch stark der traditionellen Iogik verhaftet, weist aher anderseits auch schon verblüffende Übereinstimmungen mit der modernen Logik auf. In diesem Zusammenhang wird gelegentlich die Frage aufgeworfen (2), ob und inwiefern Bolzanos Iogik Existenzvoraussetzungen enthalte.

Die Redeweise, daß ein logisches System eine Existenzvoraussetzung enthält, ist mehrdeutig. Dementsprechend kann man denn auch die Frage, ob Bolzanos Logik eine Existenzvoraussetzung enthalte oder nicht, verschieden verstehen; fünf verschiedene Fragen, die man alle unter den gemeinsamen Titel “Existenzvoraussetzung in Bolzanos Logik” subsumieren könnte, will ich hier kurz besprechen.

(2) Diese Frage wird zwar in der Bolzano-Literatur öfter kurz gestreift, aber — soweit ich sehe — nirgends näher diskutiert." (S. 107)

64. ———. 1969. "Was heißt es, daß ein logisches System “Existential Import” besitzt oder eine Existenzvoraussetzung macht?" Philosophia Naturalis no. 11:204-206.

Nachdruck: E. Morscher (2007), S. 121-123.

65. ———. 1972. "Von Bolzano zu Meinong. Zur Geschichte des logischen Realismus." In Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein. Beiträge zur Meinong-Forschung, edited by Haller, Rudolf, 69-102. Graz: Akademische Druck - und Verlagsanstalt.

66. ———. 1973. Das logische An-Sich bei Bernard Bolzano. Salzburg, München: Anton Pustet.

Inhaltsübersicht: (A) EINLEITUNG 9; (1) Die Stellung Bolzanos in der Philosophie seiner Zeit 9; (2) Grundzüge der Methode Bolzanos 12; (3) Bolzanos Verhältnis zu Kant und Leibniz 32; (4) Die Bedeutung der Logik im Gesamtschaffen Bolzanos 36; (5) Problemstellung 38; (B)Dartellender Teil 41; (1) Satz an sich 52; (2) Vorstellung an sich 82; (3) Wissenschaft an sich 105; (4) Anhang 118; (C) Systematische Zusammenfassung 123; (1) Die logischen Gegenstände sind nichts Wirkliches 124; (2) Es gibt logische Gegenstände 139; (D) Kritischer Teil 141; (1) Die Interpretation von (C 2) 142; (2) Der Beweis von (C 2) 223; (E) Schluss 273; (F) Nachwort 283; (G) Literaturverzeichnis 285; (H) Register.

67. ———. 1974. "Ist Existenz ein Prädikat? Historische Bemerkungen zu einer philosophischen Frage." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 28:120-132.

Nachdruck: E. Morscher (2007), S. 135-147.

"Für eine ganze Reihe von philosophischen Aufsätzen dient die Frage, ob Existenz ein Prädikat ist, oder auch eine bejahende oder verneinende Antwort auf diese Frage als Überschrift. Es wird dabei nicht nur diskutiert, welche der beiden Auffassungen (die Bejahung oder die Verneinung der Frage) richtig ist, sondern es wird auch das Problem aufgeworfen, ob die Frage überhaupt sinnvoll gestellt ist oder doch sinnvoll gestellt werden könnte, wie sie sinnvollerweise formuliert werden müßte und was sie, falls sie sinnvoll gestellt wird, zu bedeuten hat (1).

Die Stellungnahmen großer Philosophen (angefangen von Kant) zu dieser Frage sind zwar — zumindest „oberflächlich“ — weitgehend bekannt, aber mir scheint doch, daß ein wesentlicher Aspekt an diesen Stellungnahmen vielfach übersehen wurde und unbeachtet geblieben ist; diesen Aspekt möchte ich hier herausarbeiten, weil dadurch die Problemstellung selbst klarer wird und exakter gefaßt werden kann und weil dann auch wesentlich differenziertere Antworten auf diese Frage gegeben werden können. Ich möchte mit einer Analyse jener Antworten beginnen, die Kant und Bolzano auf die im Titel gestellte Frage gegeben haben. Zunächst aber seien noch zur Vereinfachung zwei Abkürzungen eingeführt: Jene Auffassung, welche die im Titel gestellte Frage bejaht, wollen wir mit einem ,J‘ bezeichnen, während wir den gegenteiligen Standpunkt, der die Titelfrage verneint, mit einem ,N‘ abkürzen werden. Ein Ziel meiner Ausführungen besteht darin zu zeigen, daß diese Zweiteilung der Standpunkte (in J und N) viel zu undifferenziert ist und nicht einmal dazu ausreicht, den Standpunkt Kants in dieser Frage treffend zu charakterisieren." (S. 135)

(1) Vgl. z.B. den Aufsatz von George Edward Moore,“Is Exlstence a Predicate“, in: The Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. 15 (1936), pp. 175—188, abgedruckt u. a. in Moore, Philosophical Papers (London & New York 1959, Nachdruck: London & New York 1963), pp. 115—126.

68. ———. 1974. ""Philosophische Logik" bei Bernard Bolzano." In Bolzano als Logiker. Bolzano-Symposion am 17 und 18 Dezember 1973, 77-105. Wien: Verlag der Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Nachdruck: E. Morscher (2007), S. 169-197.

69. ———. 1981. "Bolzanos Wissenschaftslehre." In Bernard Bolzano. Leben und Wirkung, edited by Christian, Curt, 99-126. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Nachdruck: E. Morscher (2007), S. 19-46.

"Bolzanos vielseitiges Schaffen auf den verschiedensten Wissensgebieten krönen drei Hauptwerke: Sein unvollendet gebliebenes mathematisches Hauptwerk Größenlehre, sein religionswissenschaftlich-theologisches Hauptwerk Lehrbuch der Religionswissenschaft und sein philosophisches Hauptwerk Wissenschaftslehre. Trotz der intensiven Bemühungen Bolzanos und seiner Schüler blieb die Wissenschaftslehre aus verschiedenen Gründen lange fast völlig unbekannt, und kaum ein bedeutender Philosoph nahm Notiz von ihr; und auch heute noch, wo die große Bedeutsamkeit dieses Werkes längst erkannt wurde und unter Fachleuten außer Zweifel steht, gibt es nur wenige, die sich mit dem Werk als Ganzem näher befaßt haben. Man begnügt sich meist damit, einzelne Rosinen aus dem Kuchen der Wissenschaftslehre heräuszupicken. Schuld daran ist sicherlich neben dem enormen Umfang des Werkes auch die Tatsache, daß die von Bolzano entwickelte Zusammenstellung der Probleme auf den ersten Blick eher eigenartig und vielleicht in manchen Punkten sogar fast skurril anmutet und auf weitgehendes Unverständnis stößt. Bolzano behandelt nämlich in seiner Wissenschaftslehre nicht nur so tiefgehende philosophische Themen wie etwa die Frage, ob es überhaupt Wahrheit gibt und ob wir sie erkennen können, ob es mehrere oder gar unendlich viele Wahrheiten gibt, was eine Vorstellung und ein Satz an sich ist, wie zwischen analytischen und synthetischen Sätzen unterschieden werden kann, was es heißt, daß ein Satz an sich aus anderen Sätzen ableitbar ist, wie das Verhältnis von Grund und Folge bestimmt werden kann, usw. Er beschäftigt sich vielmehr daneben auch mit so banalen und seichten praktischen Fragen wie etwa den folgenden: Ob der Verfasser eines Lehrbuchs seinen Namen und auch wohl einige seiner Lebensumstände angeben soll (WL IV, § 478); ob es zweckmäßig ist, in einem Lehrbuch, da ja Bücher bekanntlich auch eine Waare sind, den Druckort, den Namen des Verlegers, den Preis u. m. A. zu bemerken (§ 480); Ob in einem Lehrbuche auch Gleichnisse Vorkommen dürfen (§ 497); Wie Beispiele die Aufmerksamkeit befördern können (§ 647); Ob auch der Liebe zum Gewöhnlichen oder zum Neuen zuweilen ein Einfluß auf die Anordnung unserer Sätze gestattet werden dürfe (§ 619); Wiefern uoir in einem, Lehrbuche Kunstwörter meiden sollen (§ 661); Was zu geschehen habe, bevor man noch die Abfassung des Buches anfängt (§ 702); Welche besondere Sorgfalt selbst die sprachliche Darstellung in einem Lehrbuche verdiene (§ 708), usw. Da überrascht es dann wohl gar nicht mehr, daß Bolzano in seiner Wissenschaftslehre auch noch etwa die Frage mit einschließt, Wie Sittlichkeit auch bei Abfassung eines Lehrbuches zu Statten komme (§ 700). Neben den zuerst genannten Themen wirken solche Fragestellungen fast lächerlich oder peinlich, und Bolzanos mitunter pedantische Abschweifungen in diese Gebiete muten manchmal fast ein wenig schrullenhaft an. Dadurch aber werden gerade die wichtigen philosophischen Leistungen Bolzanos, die sich in der Wissenschaftslehre niedergeschlagen haben,- verdeckt.

Aus diesem Grund möchte ich zunächst (I) Bolzanos Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre und vorher noch die damit zusammenhängenden Begriffe einer Wissenschaft und eines Lehrbuchs erläutern, um Verständnis für Bolzanos doch eher ungewöhnliche Konzeption der Wissenschaftslehre zu wecken; dann werde ich den Inhalt der fünf Hauptteile der Wissenschaftslehre jeweils kurz umreißen (II) und einige wichtige Lehren herausgreifen und rekonstruieren (III)."(S. 19-20)

70. ———. 1987. "Bolzanos Syllogistik." Philosophia Naturalis no. 24 (4):447-451.

Nachdruck: E. Morscher (2007), S. 101-105.

"Einordnung der Syllogistik in Bolzanos Logik.

Bolzano hat nicht ein eigenes System für die Syllogistik entwickelt, sondern er hat sie in eine allgemeinere Theorie eingebaut, ähnlich wie auch etwa in der modernen Logik die Syllogistik als Teil des Prädikatenkalküls aufgefaßt werden kann. Zu Bolzanos Syllogistik (BS) vgl. besonders WL II 413-415, 441-443 und 534-565." (S. 102)

71. ———. 1987. ""Hintertürln" für Paradoxien in Bolzanos Logik." Philosophia Naturalis no. 24:414-422.

Nachdruck: E. Morscher (2007), S. 159-167.

"Paradoxien können in einem logischen System an verschiedenen Stellen auftreten: Wenn man sie an einem Punkt ausgemerzt hat, bietet dies noch lange keine Gewähr dafür, daß sie sich nicht anderswo einschleichen. Dies umso mehr, wenn die Grenzen eines Systems nicht streng bewacht, ja nicht einmal klar markiert und genau angebbar sind, wie dies bei Bolzanos „System“ (und übrigens auch bei den meisten anderen “Systemen” der traditionellen Logik) der Fall ist.

Ich möchte hier zeigen, daß (zumindest) an drei Stellen in Bolzanos Logik die Gefahr von Paradoxien auftritt. Damit soll gar kein Vorwurf gegen Bolzano erhoben werden (dazu übrigens noch Näheres im dritten Abschnitt), sondern ich möchte nur aus heutiger Sicht (mit unserem heutigen Wissen um Paradoxien) mögliche Gefahrenquellen in Bolzanos Logik aufspüren, denn: nur wer die Gefahr kennt, kommt in ihr nicht um ... Ich werde mich darauf beschränken, drei Paradoxien bzw. Paradoxie-Gefahren herauszuarbeiten, die sich bei Verwendung des elementaren Instrumentariums von Bolzanos Logik ergeben. Danach werde ich zu diesen angeblichen oder echten Gefahren Stellung nehmen.“ (S. 159)

72. ———. 1989. "Zu Bolzanos Lösung der Lügner-Paradoxie." In Traditionen und Perspektiven der analytischen Philosophie. Festschrift für Rudolf Haller, edited by Gombocz, Wolfgang L., Rutte, Heiner and Sauer, Werner, 89-96. Wien: Holder-Pichler-Tempsky.

Nachdruck: E. Morscher (2007), S. 149-157.

"In einer kurzen Studie (1) rekonstruiert Bochenski eine Lösung der Lügner-Paradoxie von Paulus Venetus. Ich werde hier zunächst Bochenskis Rekonstruktion wiedergeben und dann mit Hilfe des von ihm entwickelten Instrumentariums Bolzanos Lösungsvorschlag für die Lügner-Paradoxie analysieren." (S. 149)

(1) J.M. Bochenski, “Formalisierung einer scholastischen Lösung der Paradoxie des ‘Lügners’”, in J.M. Bochenski, Logisch-philosophische Studien mit Aufsätzen von P. Banks, A. Menne und I. Thomas (Freiburg/Br.-München 1959), pp. 71—73. Vgl. auch J.M. Bochenski, Formale Logik (Freiburg/Br.-München (2) 1962), pp. 291-292 (die 14 von Paulus Venetus verworfenen Lösungen werden auf pp. 280-288 wiedergegeben).

73. ———. 1999. "Logische Allgemeingültigkeit." In Bernard Bolzanos geistiges Erbe für da 21. Jahrhundert, edited by Morscher, Edgar, 179-206. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Beiträge zur Bolzano-Forschung, 11.

Nachdruck: E. Morscher (2007), S. 47-74 mit dem Titel: Bolzanos Definition der logische Analytizität, französische Übersetzung in Philosophiques 30, 2003, S. 149-169.

74. ———. 2003. "Sind alle wahren logischen Sätze logisch wahr?" In Bernard Bolzanos Leistungen in Logik, Mathematik und Physik, edited by Morscher, Edgar, 57-82. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Nachdruck: E. Morscher (2007), S. 75-99.

75. ———. 2004. "Die Geburt der Gegenstandstheorie aus einem Missverständnis?" In Phenomenology & Analysis: Essays on Central European Philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Huemer, Wolfgang, 89-104. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

"Bolzano unterscheidet immer wieder mit aller Schärfe und Deutlichkeit zwischen einer Vorstellung und ihrem Gegenstand: Nicht nur die subjektive Vorstellung, d.i. der psychische Vorstellungsakt, sondern auch deren objektiver Gehalt oder “Stoff”, d.i. die Vorstellung an sich, unterscheidet sich wesentlich von ihrem jeweiligen Gegenstand. Das geht schon daraus hervor, dass ein und dieselbe Vorstellung mehrere Gegenstände haben kann (wie z.B. die Vorstellung [weißes Pferd]2) oder auch gar keinen (wie z.B. die Vorstellung [geflügeltes Pferd]) (WL I 218–20). Allerdings geht Bolzano nicht so weit zu behaupten, dass jeder Gegenstand einer Vorstellung von dieser selbst verschieden sein muss, denn es gibt nach ihm auch sogenannte symbolische Vorstellungen oder Vorstellungsvorstellungen (WL I 426–9, §90), von denen einige (wie z.B. die Vorstellungen [Vorstellung], [Nicht-Wirkliches] und [Etwas]) Gegenstände von sich selbst sind." (S. 93)

(2) Für Vorstellungen und Sätze an sich verwende ich die Quinesche Notation mit eckigen Klammern, von der ich schon bisher eingeschränkten Gebrauch gemacht habe: [Pferd] ist demnach die Vorstellung an sich von einem Pferd bzw. die durch das Wort ‘Pferd’ ausgedrückte Vorstellung an sich.

76. ———. 2016. Bernard Bolzanos Lehre von Grund und Folge. Eine axiomatische Rekonstruktion. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

77. Morscher, Edgar, and Simons, Peter. 2014. "Objektivität und Evidenz." In Joint Ventures in Philosophy, 11-42. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

1.1. Objektivität der Wahrheitswerte und ihrer Träger bei Bernard Bolzano, S. 12-20.

78. Mourany, Antoun-Hamid. 1978. Logik und Wahrheit an Sich bei Bolzano. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Inhalt: Der Logizismus als hermeneutisches Prinzip im Denken Bolzanos; Genese und Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre; Die Wahrheit an sich; Die Elementarlehre als reine Logik; Kant, Bolzano und Husserl; Der metaphysische Logizismus.

79. Neeman, Ursula. 1972. "Kausalität und Determinismus bei Bernard Bolzano." Philosophia Naturalis no. 13:353-370.

80. ———. 1972. Bernard Bolzanos Lehre von Anschauung und Begriff in ihrer Bedeutung für erkenntnistheoretische und pädagogische Probleme. München: F. Schöningh.

81. ———. 1974. "Bolzanos Kantkritik." In Akten des Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, Mainz 6.-10. April1974, edited by Fuhnke, Gerhard, 842-847. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

82. ———. 1977. "Husserl und Bolzano." Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie no. 2:52-66.

83. ———. 1978. "Der Begriff der Möglichkeit bei Bernard Bolzano." Philosophia Naturalis no. 17:70-89.

84. ———. 2001. "Zeichen in Sprache und Denken nach Ockham, Lambert und Bolzano." Zeitschrift für Semiotik (23).

"Zeichen sind nach B. Bolzano wirkliche Gegenstände oder Prozesse, die nicht als etwas Für-sich-selbst-Stehendes, sondern als Hinweise auf ein Anderes verstanden werden. Das durch sprachliche Zeichen Bezeichnete ist das, was den Benutzern einer Sprache als einheitliche semantische Basis dient, was als Bereich von Vorstellungen und Sätzen an sich vorgegeben ist, also das, was unter der Intension von Zeichen verstanden wird. Extensionaler Bezug, also Referenz auf außermentale Objekte, ist nur indirekt auf dem Umweg über die Intensionen möglich. Im weiteren Verlauf der Darstellung wird Bolzanos Gebrauch der Ausdrücke „Sinn" und „Bedeutung" erklärt. Ferner werden die mit seiner Betonung des intensionalen Aspekts verbundenen erkenntnistheoretischen Probleme angesprochen und im Vergleich mit den Zeichentheorien von W. von Ockham, von J. H. Lambert und von G. W. Leibniz verdeutlicht. Dabei geht es um die Frage, ob die durch sprachliche Zeichen bezeichneten Inhalte Abbilder der außermentalen Objektwelt sind oder ihre Funktion sich darin erschöpft, auf die Welt des Außermentalen nur zu verweisen, ohne dieser selbst ähnlich zu sein."

85. Palágyi, Melchior. 1902. Kant und Bolzano. Eine kritische Parallele. Halle: Verlag von Max Niemeyer.

Inhalts -Verzeichnis: Einleitung; I. Abschnitt. Der Gegensatz der beiden Denker 1; II. Abschnitt. Bolzano's Lehre von den Sälzen an sich. 22; III. Abschnitt. Der Apriorlsmus bei Kant, Leibniz und Bolzano 44; IV. Abschnitt. Die Vorstellungstheorie Bolzano's 68; V. Abschnitt. Der Einfluss Kant's auf Bolzano 87; VI. Abschnitt. Bolzano's Abwendung von Kant 97-124.

86. Runggaldier, Edmund. 2003. "Die "Einfachheit" der Substanz bei Bolzano." In Philosophie im Geiste Bolzanos, edited by Hieke, Alexander and Neumaier, Otto, 69-86. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

87. Rychlik, Karel. 1958. "Betrachtungen aus der Logik in Bolzanos Handschriftlichem Nachlasse." Czechoslovak Mathematical Journal no. 8:197-202.

Abstrakt: "Der Verfasser bringt in diesem Aufsatze den Inhalt von Bolzanos Arbeit „Von der mathematischen Lehrart" und den § 8 dieser Arbeit, einen Auszug, der für die mathematische Logik von besonderer

Bedeutung ist."

88. Schmit, Roger. 1994. "Über Bolzanos Begriff der Auslegung." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 47:1-29.

"Die Frage der Beziehungen zwischen Logik und Umgangssprache beschaftigt Bolzano in der 1837 erschienenen Wissenschaftslehre.

Von besonderer Wichtigkeit filr diese Problematik erweist sich der Begriff der Auslegung sprachlicher Ausdrücke.(8) Unter einer Auslegung versteht Bolzano ganz allgemein einen "Satz endlich, in welchem ausgesagt wird, dass der Sinn gewisser Zeichen dieser oder jener sey", wobei die Auslegung entweder bloss gedacht oder aber durch Zeichen ausgedrilckt werden kann. In dem letzteren FaIle handelt es sich dann urn eine sprachliche Auslegung.(9) So gesehen stellt die Auslegung des Sinnes sprachlicher Zeichen eine ebenso natürliche wie notwendige Leistung dar, ohne die zwischenmenschliche Kommunikation berhaupt nicht denkbar ware." (S. 4)

(8) Die Umgangssprache bezeichnet Bolzano auch noch als die "Sprache des gemeinen Lebens", dies im Gegensatz zur Sprache der Wissenschaft (Vgl. z.B.: § 169). Bemerkenswerterweise begegnen wir dem Begriff der Sprache des Lebens ebenfalls bei Frege. Vgl. [18]: Vorwort, XI, wo es heisst: "Das VerhaItnis meiner Begriffsschrift zu der Sprache des Lebens ... ". Fur Bolzano gilt aber, dass nicht nur die Gebrauchssprache, sondem auch die Sprache der Wissenschaft klarungsbedurftige Ausdriicke enthalt. Ob diese terminologische Ubereinstimmung eine rein zufallige Parallele darstellt oder als Hinweis für eine Beeinflussung

Freges durch Bolzano zu werten ist, bleibt ungeklart, weil Frege sich nirgends explizit auf Bolzano bezieht. Eine Liste weiterer begrifflicher ParalIeIen zwischen Frege und Bolzano findet sich in [22]: pp. 21-41. Vgl. auch [23]: pp. 263-280.

(9) Wissenschaftslehre, hrsg. von Wolfgang Schultz, Leipzig^2 1929-1931 (fotomechanischer Nachdruck: Aalen 1970). § 285.

Literaturvezeichnis

22. Eike Henner W. Kluge, "Bolzano and Frege: Some conceptual parallels", in: Grazer philosophische Studien 10 (1980), pp. 21-41.

23. -, The Metaphysics of Gottlob Frege. An Essay in Ontological Reconstruction, The Hague-Boston-London 1980

89. Schnieder, Benjamin. 2008. "Bolzanos zwei Substanzbegriffe. Anmerkungen zu Krauses Bolzano-Interpretation." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 62:97-108.

90. ———. 2009. "Bolzanos Erklärung des Zeitbegriffs." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 91:42-69.

Abstract: Bernard Bolzano repeatedly tried to provide an analysis of the concept of time. This paper develops a detailed reconstruction of Bolzano’s analysis. Thereby it clarifies the logical formof the analysis and thus discovers its principal problem: While the analysis may well incorporate an important insight on our conception of time, it cannot succeed as an analysis."

91. Scholz, Heinrich. 1937. "Die Wissenschaftslehre Bolzano's: Eine Jahrhundert-Betrachtung." Abhandlungen der Fries'schen Schule no. 6:399-472.

Nachdruck in: H. Scholz, Mathesis universalis. Abhandlungen zur Philosophie als strenger Wissenschaft, (eds. H. Hermes, F. Kambartel & J. Ritter), Basel: Benno Schwabe, 1961, pp. 219-267.

92. ———. 1969. Abriß der Geschichte der Logik. Freiburg im Breisgau: K. Alber.

93. Schuffenhauer, Werner, Winter, Eduard, and Pautsch, Hildegard, eds. 1981. Bernard Bolzano 1781-1848. Studien und Quellen. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

Inhalt: Studien. Herausgegeben von Werner Schuffenhauser. Zum Geleit 3-8; Karel Berka: Bernard Bolzano (5. Oktober 1781 - 18. Dezember 1848) 9-29; Von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft. Zu einigen Problemen der philosophischen Entwicklung in böhmischen Ländern in der 1. Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (mit besonderer Rücksicht auf A. Smetana und B. Bolzano) 30-37; Jaromir Louzil: Bernard Bolzanos Materiebegriff 38-48; Boris Ivanovic Fedorov: Logisch-methodologische und philosophische Ideen Bernard Bolzanos 49-55; Helmut Metzler: Bolzanos Lehre vom Gegensatz in ihrem produktiven Kritikverhältnis zur Hegelschen Widerspruchsdialektik 56-80; Henryk Moese: Systemaufbau in Bolzanos Wissenschaftslehre und ihre Kantischen Quellen. Entwicklungsfragen der Logik in nachkantischer Zeit 81-92; Gerhard Terton: Bemerkungen zu Bolzanos Vorstellungsbegriff unter besonderer Beachtung sprachanalytischer Aspekte 93-98; Lothar Kreiser, Anita Steube: Bernard Bolzanos sprachlogische Untersuchungen 99-118; Günter Schenk: Über Bolzanos Theorie der Beziehungen zwischen "Vorstellungen an sich" 119-145; Anatoli Alexandrovic Starcenko, Olga Stefanovna Tjagnibedina: Besonderheiten der wahrscheinlichkeitslogischen Forschungen B. Bolzanos 146-160; Hans-Jürgen Trrder: Bolzanos Ansichten und Arbeiten zur Physik 161-167; Edward Winter: Der Wissenschaftspädagoge Bernard Bolzano in Briefen an den Salonphilosophen Eduard von Badenfeld (Silesius) 1845-1847 168-184.

Quellen. Herausgegeben von Eduard Winter und Hildegard Pautsch. Bolzano's Begriffe 1821 187-277; Eduard Winter: Bolzano in Techobuz-"Friedenstal". Ein vormärzliches Idyll unter Polizieiaufsicht 279-302; Anna Hoffmann, Josef Hoffmann: Briefe an M. Fesl, 1834-1841 304-315; Michael Josef Fesl: Arbeitsprogramm, angenommen von dem Bolzaninstenkozil in Techobuz von Schriftführer M. J. Fesl 316-321; Bolzano: Stoffe 321-322; Anton Wisshaupt: Briefe a M. J. Fesl, 1842-1843 323-329; Bolzano: Briefe an Gregor Zeithammer, 1841-1842 330-335; Anton Wisshaupt: Abgeänderter Nachdruck 338-357.

94. Šebestik, Jan. 1999. "Bolzanos Paradoxien des Unendlichen." In Bernard Bolzanos geistiges Erbe für da 21. Jahrhundert, edited by Morscher, Edgar, 231-256. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

95. Sedmak, Clemens. 2003. "Die Bedeutung "wichtiger Sätze" für die Philosophie." In Philosophie im Geiste Bolzanos, edited by Hieke, Alexander and Neumaier, Otto, 127-142. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

96. Siebel, Mark. 1996. Der Begriff der Ableitbarkeit bei Bolzano. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

97. ———. 1997. "Bolzanos Ableitbarkeit und Tarskis Logische Folgerung." In Analyomen 2. Proceedings of the Second Conference "Perspectives in analytical philosophy". Vol. I: Logic, Epistemology, Philosophy of Science, 148-156. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Bernard Bolzanos Definition der Ableitbarkeit (aus seiner Wissenschaftslehre von 1837) ist häufig mit Alfred Tarskis Definition der logischen Folgerung verglichen worden. Die Resultate eines solchen Vergleichs sind sehr einhellig ausgefallen: Die meisten der Autoren sehen eine frappierende Ubereinstimmung.

Wilfrid Hodges z. Β. verwendet im Handbook of Philosophical Logic den Terminus „Bolzano-Tarski definition" - so als ob ihre Definitionen identisch wären. Heinrich Scholz schreibt, daß Tarski Bolzanos Begriff der Implikation „wiederentdeckt" habe. Tarski selbst stimmt ihm hier zu. In einer Fußnote zu der englischen Übersetzung seines Folgerungs-Textes heißt es, daß Scholz „far-reaching analogies" zwischen seinem und Bolzanos Ansatz gefunden habe. - In den Worten von Peter Simons und Johan van Benthem: Es ist mittlerweile zu einem philosophischen Allgemeinplatz geworden, daß Bolzano Tarskis Definition antizipiert hat.(1)

Ich möchte im weiteren Verlauf detailliert auflisten, welche Eigenschaften sich die definierten Implikations-Relationen teilen und welche nicht. In den bisherigen Texten findet man zwar verstreute Bemerkungen zu diesem Thema, aber keinen ausfuhrlichen Vergleich, der eine größere Menge von Eigenschaften miteinbezieht, die für Implikations-Relationen relevant sind. Bolzanos Definition soll dabei in einer Weise modifiziert werden, die in Ubereinstimmung mit seinen Ideen zur Logik ist. Auf diesem Weg werde ich zu einer Definition kommen, die Tarskis in der Tat sehr nahe kommt. Am Ende werden wir allerdings sehen, daß Unterschiede bleiben, die für Logiker sehr wichtig sind: nämlich Unterschiede in der Extension." (p. 148)

(1) Hodges 1983, 56; Scholz 1952, 121; Tarski 1956, 417; Simons 1987, 378; van Benthem 1985, 389. Vgl. auch Corcoran 1975, 71; Kneale/Kneale 1962, 640f.; Schröter 1955, 39.

Literatur

Bar-Hillel, Yehoshuah: Bolzanos Definition of Analytic Propositions. Theoria 16 (1951), 91-117.

Corcoran, John: Meanings of Implication. Dialogos 9 (1975), 59-76.

Hodges, Wilfrid: Elementary Predicate Logic. In: Handbook of Philosophical Logic, Bd. I, hrsg. D. Gabbay/F. Guenthner, Dordrecht 1983, 1-131.

Kneale William, Kneale Martha: The Development of Logic, Oxford 1962.

Scholz Heinrich: Rezension von Bar-Hillel 1951. The Journal of Symbolic Logic 17 (1952), 119-122.

Schröter, Karl: Theorie des logischen Schließens I . Zeitschriftfiir mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik 1 (1955), 37-86.

Simons, Peter: Bolzano, Tarski, and the Limits of Logic. Philosophia naturalis 24 (1987), 378-405.

Tarski, Alfred: Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics: Papers from 1923 to 1938, hrsg. J. Η. Woodger, Oxford 1956.

Van Benthem, Johan: The Variety of Consequence, According to Bolzano. Studia Logica 44 (1985), 389-403.

98. ———. 1999. "Bolzanos Erkenntnistheorie." In Bernard Bolzanos geistiges Erbe für da 21. Jahrhundert, edited by Morscher, Edgar, 59-95. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

"Es geht mir in diesem Beitrag darum, den analytisch-deskriptiven Teil von Bolzanos Erkenntnistheorie darzustellen, indem ich zeige, auf welche Weise er solche Begriffe wie Erkenntnis, Wissen, Meinung und Urteil in der Wissenschaftslehre erläutert. Mehr praktisch orientierte Fragen, wie die nach den Möglichkeiten oder dem Umfang unserer Erkenntnis, werden nur eine Nebenrolle spielen. Da der Begriff einer Meinung und der eines Urteils auch psychologische Grundbegriffe sind, handelt es sich zugleich um eine Einführung in einen Teilbereich von Bolzanos Philosophie des Geistes. Dabei wird immer wieder auf Parallelen zu heutigen Ansichten und auf Schwierigkeiten hingewiesen, die sich aus Bolzanos Explikationen ergeben. Trotz aller Detailprobleme stehen sie jedoch gegenüber den Erklärungen seiner Vorgänger und Zeitgenossen, mit denen er sich beschäftigt hat, sehr viel besser da." (p. 59)

99. ———. 1999. "Bolzano über Ableitbakeit." In Bernard Bolzanos geistiges Erbe für da 21. Jahrhundert, edited by Morscher, Edgar, 147-178. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

100. ———. 2004. "Bolzanos Urteilslehre." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 86:56-87.

"Die 1837 erschienene Wissenschaftslehre des böhmischen Philosophen, Theologen und Mathematikers Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848) ist in erster Linie durch ihre Untersuchungen zu (in einem weiten Sinn) logischen Begriffen ins philosophische Bewusstsein gerückt. Bolzano erläutert dort, wann Aussagen auseinander folgen, unter welchen Bedingungen sie analytisch oder synthetisch sind, was sie zu notwendigen oder kontingenten Wahrheiten macht, was Anschauungen und was Begriffe sind … Weniger bekannt ist, dass dieses Werk eine eigenständige Urteilslehre enthält, die sich insbesondere im zweiten Hauptstück des Bandes III (§§ 290–306) verbirgt. Wie diese aussieht, wird im Folgenden kritisch rekonstruiert." (S. 56)

101. Siitonen, Arto. 2007. "Zu Bolzanos Kritik der Kantischen Antinomien." Kriterion no. 21:84-97.

Abstract: "Bernard Bolzano criticised Kant's philosophy so vehemently that his pupil Franz Prihonsky called him "Anti-Kant". One of his criticisms concerns Kant's cosmological antinomies. The context of this critique is the problem of limits of knowledge. Kant wanted to prove that there are such boundaries, and to show where these are located. In this paper we will (i) schematize Kant's antinomies (to see what Bolzano really criticised on them) and (ii) summarize Bolzano's criticism, which is distributed over his and his student's work. At the beginning we will work out the (more fundamental) theoretical differences between Kant's and Bolzano's philosophy to see what roles these play in the construction of the antinomies."

102. Simons, Peter. 1999. "Bolzano über Wahrheit." In Bernard Bolzanos geistiges Erbe für da 21. Jahrhundert, edited by Morscher, Edgar, 13-28. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

"1. Bolzanos Theorie, kurz gefaßt

Bolzanos Theorie der Wahrheit ist schlicht und einfach. Zuerst unterscheidet er in § 24 der Wissenschaftslehre (WL) verschiedene Bedeutungen der Wörter ‘wahr’ und ‘Wahrheit’:

(1) Wahrheit als Beschaffenheit von Sätzen an sich, vermöge deren sie etwas so, wie es ist, aussagen.

(2) Wahrheit, verstanden als ein Satz, dem Wahrheit im Sinne von (1) zukommt.

(3) Wahrheit als Urteil, das eine Wahrheit im Sinne von (2) zum Inhalt hat (Bolzano sagt: richtiges Urteil), oder auch als die Beschaffenheit eines solchen Urteils.

(4) Wahrheit als der Inbegriff sämtlicher wahren Sätze an sich.

(5) Wahr im Sinne von echt oder wirklich.

Bolzano zieht die Bedeutungen (1) und (2) vor. Bezüglich (2) sagt er: “ich verstehe also, um es nochmals zu sagen, unter einer Wahrheit an sich jeden beliebigen Satz, der etwas so, wie es ist, aussagt, wobei ich unbestimmt lasse, ob dieser Satz von irgend jemand wirklich gedacht und ausgesprochen worden sei oder nicht”. (S. 13).

103. ———. 1999. "Bolzano über Zahlen." In Bernard Bolzanos geistiges Erbe für da 21. Jahrhundert, edited by Morscher, Edgar, 217-229. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

104. Spalt, Detlef D. 1992. "Bolzano's Zahlbegriffe. Bislang Ubersehene Marksteine Feudal-absolutischer Mathematik." In Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre 1837-1987. International Workshop, 27-54. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki.

"Nach Bolzanos Amtsenthebung und dem über ihn verhängten Publikationsverbot erschien ab 1820 seine Arithmetik nur noch in zwei Werken:

(1) in seinem philosophischen Hauptwerk Wissenschaftslehre ( = WL), verfaßt 1812-30, gedruckt im Ausland 1837, danach 1882, 1914/15 - 1929/31, 1970, 1981;

(2) in seiner nachgelassenen Spätschrift Paradoxien des Unendlichen (= PdU) aus den Jahren 1847/48, gedruckt nach seinem Tod 1851, 1899, (1911), 1920, (1950), 1955, (1963), 1964, (1965), (1966), 1975 (in Klammern Daten von Übersetzungen).

Ich beschränke mich im folgenden ausschließlich auf diese beiden Werke - denn sie sind seit langem zugänglich, ohne jedoch (so meine Sicht) bislang angemessen rezipiert worden zu sein." (S. 27)

105. Stachel, Peter. 2004. "Der logische Realismus Bernard Bolzanos." In Geschichte der Österreichischen Humanwissenschaften. Vol 6.1: Philosophie und Religion: Erleben, Wissen, Erkennen, edited by Acham, Karl, 53-63. Wien: Passagen Verlag.

106. Strasser, Kurt, ed. 2003. Die Bedeutung Bernard Bolzanos für die Gegenwart. Akten des Internationalen Symposiums 30. Oktober-1. November 2001 in Prag. Praha: Filosofia.

Inhalt: Kurt F. Strasser: Vorbemerkungen des Herausgebers 9; Manfred Poiger: Vorwort des Leiters des Österreichischen Kulturforums in Prag (1996-2002) 11; Vilém Herold: Vorwort des Direktors des Instituts für Philosophie der Akademie der Wissenschaften der Tschechischen Republik 13;

Das wissenschaftliche Vermächtnis Bolzanos.

Jan Berg: Bolzanos wissenschaftliche Bedeutung 19; Edgar Morscher: Bolzanos Ethik 37; Markus Textor: Bolzanos Ontologie - Eine Übersicht 79;

Bolzanos Lehr- und Forschuncstätickeit.

Winfried Löffler: Bolzanos Religionsphilosophie und Theologie 109; Kurt F. Strasser: Bernard Bolzanos pädagogische Sendung 143;

Bolzano in der Tschechischen Philosophiegeschichte.

Vlastimil Hála: Zu Patočkas Interpretation von B.Bolzano 175; Miroslav Pauza: B.Bolzano als Forschungsobjekt tschechischer Theoretiker 195;

Personenregister 211.

107. Süssbauer, Alfons. 1987. "Propositionen und Sachverhalte in der Österreichischen Philosophie von Bolzano bis Popper." Philosophia Naturalis no. 24:476-498.

108. Textor, Mark. 1996. Bolzanos Propositionalismus. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Nach dieser Übersicht über die Zielsetzung meiner Arbeit mag man sich fragen, warum ich zwei auf den ersten Blick sehr verschiedene Fragen in einer Arbeit behandle. Meine Antwort lautet: Die beiden Ziele meiner Arbeit sind durch den Begriff der Anschauung an sich bzw. des Anschauungssatzesan sich miteinander verknüpft. Sowohl in Bolzanos Theorie des Inhalts indexikalischer Denkepisoden als auch in seinen Analysen der eben aufgezählten Begriffe spielt dieser Begriff die zentrale Rolle. Meine Arbeit hat also eine Grundfrage, die man wie folgt formulieren könnte: „Welchen philosophischen Nutzen hat Bolzanos Unterscheidung zwischen Anschauungs- und Begriffssätzen an sich?" (S. 2-3)

109. ———. 2004. "Bolzanos Ontologie—eine Übersicht." In Die Bedeutung Bernard Bolzanos für die Gegenwart, edited by Strasser, Kurt, 79-106. Prague: Filosofia.

110. Winter, Eduard. 1933. Bernard Bolzano und sein Kreis. Dargestellt mit erstmaliger Heranziehung der Nachlässe Bolzanos und seiner Freunde. Leipzig: J. Hegner.

111. ———. 1956. "Zur Geschichte und zum Stand der Bolzano-Forschung." Zeitschrift für Slawistik no. 6:440-448.

112. ———. 1964. Die historische Bedeutung der Frühbegriffe B. Bolzanos. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

Mit einem Anhang Bolzano's Begriffe 1821, mit Anmerkungen zu den logischen und mathematischen Begriffen von Jan Berg.

113. ———. 1975. "Robert Zimmermanns Philosophische Propädeutik und die Vorlagen aus der Wissenschaftslehre Bernard Bolzanos." Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Klasse.

Eine Dokumentation zur Geschichte des Denkens und der Erziehung in der Donaumonarchie.

'Philosophische Propaedeutik ... von Dr. Robert Zimmermann ... Zweite Abtheilung: Formale Logik. Wien, 1853': pp. 37-107.

'Dr. B. Bolzanos Wissenschaftslehre ... Mit einer Vorrede des Dr. J. Ch. A. Heinroth. Erster Band. Sulzbach, ... 1837': pp. 109-380.

114. ———. 1993. Ausgewahlte Schriften aus dem Nachlass. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Herausgegeben von Edgar Morscher.

115. Wolenski, Jan. 1999. "Bolzano über verneinende Existezaussagen." In Bernard Bolzanos geistiges Erbe für da 21. Jahrhundert, edited by Morscher, Edgar, 207-216. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Vollständige Liste der Bände der Reihe Beiträge zur Bolzano Forschung

Bibliographie

1. Berg, Jan. 1992. Ontology Without Ultrafilters and Possible Worlds. An Examination of Bolzano’s Ontology. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Contents: Introduction; 1. Collections, sets, and sums; 2. Numbers, infinite sets, and infinitesimals; 3. Ontology without ultrafilters; 4. Ideas, properties, and intuitions; 5. Propositions, sentences, and judgements; 6. Validity, derivability, and entailment; 7. Substances, adherences, and causes; 8. Ontology without possible worlds; List of special symbols; References.

2. Berg, Jan, and Morscher, Edgar. 1992. Bolzano-Forschung 1989–1991. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhaltverzeichnis: Vorwort; Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe: Gliederung; Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe: Bisher erschienene Bände; Bolzano-Bibliographie: Ergänzungen; Akademische Schriften, Publikationen und Projekte; W. Künne: Eine neue Auswahlausgabe der Wissenschaftslehre: Bolzano-Stiftung in Prag: Gründung; Bolzano-Gasse in Wien; Internationales Bolzano-Symposium in Salzburg; Internationale Bolzano-Gesellschaft: Gründung; Internationale Bolzano-Gesellschaft: Statuten.

3. Winter, Eduard. 1994. Ausgewählte Schriften aus dem Nachlaß. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Eingeleitet und herausgegeben von Edgar Morscher.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Edgar Morscher: Eduard Winters Nachlaß im Salzburger Bolzano-Winter-Archiv; Eduard Winter: Das Bolzano-Winter-Archiv in Maurach; Eduard Winter: Bernard Bolzano, der Stern meines Lebens; Eduard Winter: Bolzano und Brentano, die bedeutendsten Philosophen Österreichs im 19. Jahrhundert; Johann Heinrich Loewe: Gutachten über R. Zimmermanns Philosophische Propädeutik.

4. Morscher, Edgar, and Neumaier, Otto, eds. 1996. Bolzanos Kampf gegen Nationalismus und Rassismus. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhaltverzeichnis: Vorwort; Bernard Bolzano: Erbauungsreden gegen Nationalismus und Rassismus; 1. Über das Verhältniß der beiden Volksstämme in Böhmen; 2. Von dem Betragen gegen die jüdische Nation; 3. Über die Vaterlandsliebe; Eduard Winter: Bernard Bolzano und die nationale Frage; Wolfgang Künne: Bernard Bolzano über Nationalismus und Rassismus in Böhmen.

5. Krickel, Frank. 1995. Teil und Inbegriff. Bernard Bolzanos Mereologie. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhaltverzeichnis: A) Einleitung

I. Bolzanos Lehre von Teil und Inbegriff; II. Leben und Werk Bernard Bolzanos; III. Vorbemerkungen zu Klassen und Kollektionen; IV. Zur Formalisierung;

B) Vorbemerkungen zu Bolzanos Ontologie und Logik

I. Grundzüge der Bolzanoschen Ontologie; II. Die Sätze und Vorstellungen an sich; III. Zusammenfassung, Wertung und Ausblick;

C) Bolzanos Lehre von den Inbegriffen

I. Inbegriffstheoretische Grundbegriffe; II. Exkurs: Zusammendenkbarkeit in der Allgemeinen Mathesis von 1810; III. Der sprachphilosophisch-logische Zugang zu den Inbegriffen; IV. Die Teil-Relation; V. Formale Rekonstruktion der Bolzanoschen Lehre von den Inbegriffen; VI. Mengen und Summen; VII. Inbegriffstheoretische Spezialfragen; VIII. Zusammenfassung;

D) Anwendungen der Theorie der Inbegriffe

I. Bolzanos Auffassung der Zahlen; II. Die An-sich-Gegenstände als Inbegriffe;

E) Vergleich und Interpretation

I. Einordnung in die Entwicklung der modernen Mengenlehre; II. Einordnung des Bolzanoschen Ansatzes; III. Schlußbetrachtung;

Anhang; Literaturverzeichnis; Abkürzungen; Werke Bolzanos; Lexika; Literatur.

6. Ganthaler, Heinrich, and Neumaier, Otto, eds. 1997. Bolzano und die österreichische Geistesgeschichte. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhaltverzeichnis: Vorwort 7; Wolfgang Künne: "Die Ernte wird erscheinen ... " Die Geschichte der Bolzano-Rezeption (1849-1939) 9; Peter Stachel: Die Bedeutung von Bolzanos "Wissenschaftslehre" ftir die österreichische Philosophiegeschichte. Ein Baustein zu einer Geschichte der pluralistischen Tradition österreichischer Philosophie 83; Edgar Morscher: Robert Zimmermann - der Vermittler von Bolzanos Gedankengut? Zerstörung einer Legende 145; Kurt Blaukopf: Im Geiste Bolzanos und Herbarts. Ansätzeempiristischer Musikforschung in Wien und Prag 237; Kurt F. Strasser: Bewegung und Verwandlung. Arnold Schönberg 265-276.

7. Siebel, Mark. 1996. Der Begriff der Ableitbarkeit bei Bolzano. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Einleitung; 1. Grundbegriffe der Bolzanoschen Wissenschaftslehre und der modernen Logik; 2. Die Variations-Methode; 3. Allgemeine Feststellungen; 4. Variations-Methode und Aussagefunktionen; 5. Tarski und Bolzano; 6. Bolzanos Relevanz-Bedingung; Schlußbemerkungen; Literatur; Namensregister; Sachregister.

8. Blaukopf, Kurt. 1996. Die Ästhetik Bernard Bolzanos. Begriffskritik, Objektivismus, “echte” Spekulation und Ansätze zum Empirismus. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Vorbemerkung; 1. Bolzanos Verhältnis zu den Künsten; 2. Herbartianer und Bolzanisten; 3. Schwierigkeiten der Bolzano-Rezeption; 4. Echte und unechte Spekulation; 5. Das Schönheitsurteil; 6. Verhältnis zu Herbarts Ästhetik; 7. Begriffliche und empirische Wahrheiten; 8. Kriterien der Einteilung; 9. Pfade zu empirischer Kunstforschung; 10. Künste fürs Ohr; 11. Verbindung von Ton- und Gedankenkunst;

12. Künste fürs Auge; 13. Augen- und Gedankenkunst; 14. Ohren- und Augenkunst vereinigt; 15. Alle drei Hauptgattungen vereinigt; 16. Blick in die Zukunft; Bibliographie; Namensindex.

9. Príhonský, Franz. 2003. Neuer Anti-Kant und Atomenlehre des seligen Bolzano. Mit den Editionsmaterialien der von Heinrich Scholz und Walter Dubislav geplanten Ausgabe des Neuen Anti-Kant und einem ausführlichen Vorwort von Edgar Morscher. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Herausgegeben von Edgar Morscher und Christian Thiel.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Vorwort; Portrait von Franz Příhonský; Editionstechnische Hinweise; Edgar Morscher: Im Spannungsfeld zwischen Kant und Leibniz - eine geistige Standortbestimmung; Franz Příhonský: Neuer Anti-Kant; Heinrich Scholz, Walther Dubislav: Editionsmaterialien zum Neuen Anti-Kant; Franz Příhonský: Atomenlehre des seligen Bolzano; Literaturverzeichnis; Personenregister.

10. Berg, Jan, and Morscher, Edgar. 2000. Bolzano-Forschung 1992–1996. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Vorwort; Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe: Gliederung; Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe: Bisherige Bände; Bolzano-Bibliographie;

Ergänzungen

Dissertationen und Diplomarbeiten über Bolzano; Wissenschaftliche Tagungen über Bolzano; Die Internationale Bernard-Bolzano-Gesellschaft (Salzburg); Die Stiftung Bernard Bolzano (Prag); Forschungsprojekte zu Leben und Werk Bolzanos; Anita von Duhn: Bolzanos Kritik an Kants theoretischer Philosophie; Sandra Lapointe: Husserl von Bolzano zu Kant; Jane Regenfelder: Die Bolzano-Frage im Spiegel der Wiener Polizeiakten; Peter Michael Schenkel: Bolzanos Bibliothek als Schlüssel zur Interpretation seines Systems; Edgar Morscher, Kurt Strasser: Die wissenschaftliche Erfassung von Bolzanos Erbauungsreden;

Miszellen

Jan Berg: Nichts; Edgar Morscher: Robert Zimmermann: Begründer der Gegenstandstheorie?; Edgar Morscher: Chisholms Bolzano; Edgar Morscher: Bolzano und die Freimaurerei.

11. Morscher, Edgar, ed. 2000. Bolzanos geistiges Erbe für das 21. Jahrhundert: Beiträge zum Bolzano-Symposium der Österreichischen Forschungsgemeinschaft im Dezember 1998 in Wien. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Vorwort;

I. Erkenntnistheorie

Peter Simons: Bolzano über Wahrheit; Wolfgang Künne: Über Lug und Trug; Mark Siebel: Bolzanos Erkenntnistheorie; Jan Berg: Kant über analytische und synthetische Urteile mit Berücksichtigung der Lehren Bolzanos; Rolf George: Anschauungen bei Kant und Bolzano;

II. Logik, Mathematik und Physik

Mark Siebel: Bolzano über Ableitbarkeit; Edgar Morscher: Logische Allgemeingültigkeit; Jan Wolenski: Bolzano über verneinende Existenzaussagen; Peter Simons: Bolzano über Zahlen; Jan Sebestik: Bolzanos Paradoxien des Unendlichen; Jan Berg: Naturphilosophie, Physik und Mathematik bei Bolzano;

III. Metaphysik und Religionsphilosophie

Mark Textor: Bolzano über die Unvergänglichkeit der Seele; Winfried Löffler: Bolzanos kosmologischer Gottesbeweis im historischen und systematischen Vergleich; Winfried Löffler: Bolzanos Lehrbuch der Religionswissenschaft und die Schultheologien seiner Zeit; Kurt F. Strasser: Bernard Bolzanos Erbauungsreden - Quellenlage und Einbettung;

IV. Ethik und Ästhetik

Wolfgang Künne: Bolzanos oberstes Sittengesetz; Heinrich Ganthaler: Bolzano über das Recht auf Eigentum; Otto Neumaier: Die Kunst des bloßen Gedankens;

Appendix

Jaromír Louzil, Kurt F.Strasser: Schematische Übersicht über Bolzanos Erbauungsreden;

Personenregister.

12. Löffler, Winfried, ed. 2002. Bernard Bolzanos Religionsphilosophie und Theologie. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhaltverzeichnis: Eberhard Herrmann: Die Kognitivität des Glaubens in Bolzanos Religionsphilosophie bezogen auf die Realismusdebatte in der neueren analytischen Religionsphilosophie; Edgar Morscher: Bolzanos Logik der Religion; Carsten Gieske: Grundlagen und religionsphilosophische Aspekte der Hermeneutik Bernard Bolzanos; Peter Walter: Bolzanos Konzeption vom Aufbau der Theologie im historischen Vergleich; Wolfgang Künne: Die theologischen Gutachten in den Verfahren gegen den Professor und den Priester Bolzano; Henning Graf Reventlow: Ein orthodoxer Liberaler: Bolzano und die Bibel: Peter M. Schenkel: Theologische und religionsphilosophische Literatur in Bolzanos Privatbibliothek; Winfried Löffler: Neues zu Bolzanos Gottesbeweisen; Andrej Krause: Was bleibt von der menschlichen Seele nach dem Tod? Bolzanos Antwort in der Athanasia; Gottfried Hornig: Zur Dogmatik und Perfektibilitätstheorie Bolzanos; Roman A. Siebenrock: Bolzano und die Unfehlbarkeit der Kirche. Zur Struktur einer theologischen Position vor 1870; Kurt Strasser: Wohlthätige Gährung im Schooße der Kirche. Zur Dynamik der Ansichten des Katecheten Bernard Bolzano.

13. Schnieder, Benjamin. 2002. Substanz und Adhärenz. Bolzanos Ontologie des Wirklichen. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Einleitung;

I. Der Begriff der Adhärenz; 1. Eine Verständigung über den Begriff der Beschaffenheit; 2. Der Beschaffenheitsbegriff: Definitionsversuche; 3. Die Existenz von Adhärenzen - Beschaffenheiten im kausalen Gefüge;

4. Identitätsbedingungen für Adhärenzen; 5. Ein größeres interpretatorisches Rätsel: Ist „Beschaffenheit“ im Munde Bolzanos mehrdeutig?;

II. Der Begriff der Substanz

1. Eine Verständigung über den Substanzbegriff; 2. Der Substanzbegriff - Definitionsversuche: Substanzen und Unabhängigkeit; 3. Der Substanzbegriff - Definitionsversuche: Substanzen und Beschaffenheiten; 4. Die Existenz von Substanzen;

Übersicht der wichtigsten Definitionen und Sätze; Literaturverzeichnis; Personenregister; Sachregister.

14. Berg, Jan, and Morscher, Edgar. 2002. Bernard Bolzanos Bibliothek, Teil I. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Vorwort; Hinweise für die Benützung des Katalogs; Peter Michael Schenkel: Bolzanos Bibliothek - ihre Entstehung, ihre Geschichte und ihr Status quo; Jan Berg, Edgar Morscher: Die wissenschaftliche Bedeutung von Bolzanos Bibliothek; Bolzanos Bibliothek: Handschriftliches Verzeichnis (1849); Schrank A: Philosophische Werke (einschließlich Ästhetik); Schrank B: Theologische Werke; Schrank C: Theologie; Schrank D: A) Geschichte; B) Geographie; C) Mathematik; D) Architektonik; E) Astronomie; Schrank E: A) Physik; B) Naturgeschichte; C) Pädagogik; D) Belletristik und Sprachstudien: a) Deutsche Schriften; b) Böhmische Sprache; c) Französische Sprache; d) Italienische Sprache; e) Lateinische Klassiker; f) Griechische Autoren; E) Zeitschriften; F) Bücherverzeichnisse; Ergänzungen von Peter Michael Schenkel (2002) zum Verzeichnis von 1849; Anhang A: Verzeichnis der nach Bolzanos Tod fälschlich eingestellten Bücher; Anhang B: Verzeichnis der nicht mehr in Bolzanos Bibliothek vorhandenen Werke; Anhang C: Bolzanos Verzeichnis von Büchern mit Randglossen; Peter Michael Schenkel: Register; Personenregister; Sachregister.

15. ———. 2002. Bernard Bolzanos Bibliothek, Teil II. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Vorwort; Hinweise für die Benützung des Katalogs Bolzanos Bibliothek: Alphabetisches Verzeichnis aller Bücher; Adressen.

16. Morscher, Edgar, ed. 2004. Bernard Bolzanos Leistungen in Logik, Mathematik und Physik. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Beiträge zum Bolzano-Symposium der Österreichischen Forschungsgemeinschaft im Oktober 2002 in Wien.

Inhaltverzeichnis: Vorwort;

I. Logik

Johan van Benthem: Is there still Logic in Bolzano's Key?; Jan Berg: Bolzano's Heuristics; Edgar Morscher: Sind alle wahren logischen Sätze logisch wahr?;

II. Mathematik

Bob van Rootselaar: Bolzanos Mathematik; Paul Rusnock: Bolzano's Contributions to Real Analysis; Peter Simons: Bolzano on Quantities;

III. Physik

Jan Berg: Bolzanos Naturphilosophie und ihre Beziehung zur Physik;

IV. Bolzanos wissenschaftliche Bedeutung

Jan Berg: The Importance of Being Bolzano;

Anhang: Der Bernard-Bolzano-Forschungsschwerpunkt der Österreichischen Forschungsgemeinschaft;

Personenregister.

17. Landerer, Christoph. 2004. Eduard Hanslick und Bernard Bolzano. Ästhetisches Denken in Österreich in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Vorwort; 1. Einführung in die Problemstellung; 2. Zur Forschungsgeschichte der Problemstellung: Hanslick, Bolzano und Prag; 3. Biographische Berührungspunkte: Hanslicks bolzanistisches Umfeld; 4. „Vom Musikalisch-Schönen“: Eduard Hanslicks Ästhetik im Überblick; 5. Begriff und Klassifikation des Schönen: Bernard Bolzanos Ästhetik im Überblick; 6. Hanslick und Bolzano: Der gemeinsame theoretische Boden; 7. VMS und die logisierende Tradition in der österreichischen Philosophie: Einige abschließende Bemerkungen; Literaturverzeichnis; Personenregister.

18. Strasser, Kurt F. 2004. Bernard Bolzanos Erbauungsreden, Prag 1805–1820. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Einleitung; Erstdrucke von Erbauungsreden; Muster der Darstellung; Gesamtverzeichnis (Kurzfassungen); Studienjahr 1804/05; Studienjahr 1805/06; Studienjahr 1806/07; Studienjahr 1807/08; Studienjahr 1808/09; Studienjahr 1809/10; Studienjahr 1810/11; Studienjahr 1811/12; Studienjahr 1812/13; Studienjahr 1815/16; Studienjahr 1816/17; Studienjahr 1817/18; Studienjahr 1818/19; Studienjahr 1819/20;

Sachregister.

19. Loewe, Sophie, ed. 2006. Lebensbeschreibung von Johann Heinrich Loewe. Dargestellt anhand von Briefen seiner Tochter. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhaltverzeichnis: Vorwort; Edgar Morscher & Otto Neumaier: Johann Heinrich Loewe - ein Philosophieprofessor in Salzburg und Prag; Sophie Loewe: Lebensbeschreibung von Johann Heinrich Loewe; Appendix A: Zusätze zu den Fußnoten; Appendix B: Manuskriptseiten in Faksimile; Personenregister.

20. Morscher, Edgar. 2007. Studien zur Logik Bernard Bolzanos. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhaltsverzeichnis: Vorwort; Einleitung; I. Bolzanos Wissenschaftslehre; II. Bolzanos Definition der logischen Analytizität; III. Sind alle wahren logischen Sätze logisch wahr?; IV. Bolzanos Syllogistik; V. Inwiefern enthält Bolzanos Logik Existenzvoraussetzungen?; VI. Zwei Typen von Systemen der traditionellen Logik; VII. Was heißt es, daß ein logisches System „Existential Import“ besitzt oder eine Existenzvoraussetzung macht?;

VIII. Zur Frage der Existenzvoraussetzungen in der Logik; IX. Ist Existenz ein Prädikat?; X. Zu Bolzanos Lösung der Lügner-Paradoxie; XI. „Hintertürln“ für Paradoxien in Bolzanos Logik; XII. „Philosophische Logik“ bei Bernard Bolzano; Quellennachweis; Literaturverzeichnis; Personenregister.

21. Künne, Wolfgang. 2008. Versuche über Bolzano – Essays on Bolzano. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhalt: Geleitwort von Edgar Morscher; Vorwort; Bolzanos frühe Jahre; Die theologischen Gutachten in den Verfahren gegen den Professor und Priester Bolzano; Bolzanos oberstes Sittengesetz; Über Lug und Trug; Propositions in Bolzano and Frege; Are Questions Propositions?; Constituents of Concepts; Analyticity and Logical Truth: From Bolzano to Quine; "Die Ernte wird erscheinen..." Die Geschichte der Bolzano-Rezeption (1848-1939); Literaturverzeichnis; Quellennachweis; Personenregister.

22. Morscher, Edgar. 2008. Bernard Bolzano’s Life and Work. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Table of Contents: Preface 9; Introduction 13; 1. Bolzano’s Life and Scientific Career 17; 2. Bolzano’s Removal from Office and the “Bolzano Trial” 23; 3. A Short Survey of Bolzano’s Work 29; 4. Logic 33; 5. Epistemology and Philosophy of Science 75; 6. Ethics 89; 7. Aesthetics 107; 8. Political and Social Philosophy 113; 9. Philosophy of Religion and Theology 125; 10. Metaphysics 135; 11. Philosophy of Nature and of Physics 139; 12. Philosophy of Mathematics 141; 13. Metaphilosophy and History of Philosophy 149; 14. The So-called Bolzano Circle and Bolzano’s Influence on the Development of the Sciences and on Intellectual History 151; Appendix: A Formal Reconstruction of Bolzano’s Method of Idea-Variation and of his Definitions of Logical Truth and of Logical Consequence 159; Bibliography 169; Index of Names 207-211.

23. Konzelmann Ziv, Anita. 2010. Kräfte, Wahrscheinlichkeit und “Zuversicht”. Bernard Bolzanos Erkenntnislehre. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

24. Fréchette, Guillaume. 2010. Gegenstandslose Vorstellungen. Bolzano und seine Kritiker. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

25. Kraus, Lukas Benedikt. 2014. Der Begriff des Kontinuums bei Bernard Bolzano. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

26. Centrone, Stefania. 2015. Studien zu Bolzano. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Inhalt: Geleitwort von Edgar Morscher; Vorwort; Strenge Beweise und das Verbot der metábasis eis állo génos. Eine Untersuchung zu Bernard Bolzanos Beyträgen zu einer begründeteren Darstellung der Mathematik; Das Problem der apagogischen Beweise in Bolzanos Beyträgen und seiner Wissenschaftslehre; Begründungen bei Bolzano und beim frühen Husserl; Verträglichkeit, Ableitbarkeit und Enthymem. Eine Untersuchung zu Bernard Bolzanos Begriff der Folgebeziehung; Der Reziprozitätskanon in den Beyträgen und in der Wissenschaftslehre; Consequentia Mirabilis, Antiskeptizismus und Antinomien. Über Bolzanos Beweis, daß es wenigstens eine Wahrheit an sich, daß es der Wahrheiten mehre, ja unendlich viele gebe; Bolzano und Leibniz über Klarheit und Deutlichkeit; Literaturverzeichnis; Quellennachweis; Personenregister.

27. Morscher, Edgar. 2016. Bernard Bolzanos Lehre von Grund und Folge. Eine axiomatische Rekonstruktion. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

28. Künne, Wolfgang, and Piša, Peter. 2018. "Weil ich den kirchlichen sowohl als weltlichen Behörden mißfiel": Bernard Bolzano auf dem Index. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

29. Künne, Wolfgang. 2019. Bernard Bolzanos Erbauungsreden (und ihre Edition). Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

30. Neumaier, Otto, and Schenkel, Peter Michael, eds. 2020. Briefe an Bernard Bolzano 1831-1836. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Franz Brentano's Ontology and His Immanent Realism

Brentano, philosopher and psychologist

"Brentano was a philosopher and psychologist who taught at the Universities of Würzburg and Vienna. He made significant contributions to almost every branch of philosophy, notably psychology and philosophy of mind, ontology, ethics and the philosophy of language. He also published several books on the history of philosophy, especially Aristotle, and contented that philosophy proceeds in cycles of advance and decline. He is best known for reintroducing the scholastic concept of intentionality into philosophy and proclaiming it as the characteristic mark of the mental. His teachings, especially those on what he called descriptive psychology, influenced the phenomenological movement in the twentieth century, but because of his concern for precise statement and his sensitivity to the dangers of the undisciplined use of philosophical language, his work also bears affinities to analytic philosophy." (p. 12)

From: Roderick M. Chisholm and Peter Simons, "Brentano, Franz Clemens" in: Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, London: Routledge 1998, vol. 2, pp. 12-17.

"Brentano never presented his philosophy in completed form. Most of his doctrines are known to us from writings published after his death, and these do not contain any rounded out statement of his views. Brentano was not among those who in a moment of intuition sketch the architectonics of a system, leaving the relevant details to be fitted into it later. His research, always problem-oriented, began with individual questions, then went on to seek an absolutely certain, or if this could not be obtained, at least a probable, solution for the difficulties encountered along the way. Nor did he hesitate to revise his previous conceptions on the basis of advances in knowledge. The 'will to truth' checked the growth of a 'will to construct', and prevented the congealing of earlier ideas.

Brentano's significance for contemporary philosophy is still singularly underestimated. There is a striking disparity between the very great effect he has had on present-day philosophy and the relatively meager attention paid his teachings in current philosophical instruction and research. For Brentano is a center from which threads extend in the most varied directions. In the first place, the entire philosophy of phenomenology would be inconceivable without him. He was the teacher of Husserl (on whom he had an influence that should not be underestimated) and was thus the spiritual grandfather, so to speak, of Max Scheler and Martin Heidegger. Secondly, his work in ontology and metaphysics, notably his analysis of categories and his penetrating studies of Aristotle, decisively influenced the contemporary philosophies of Being (even if very indirectly in part). Finally, his method - especially in the study of the logic of language, which he considers the starting-point in philosophy bears a remarkable resemblance in many respects to the procedure of present day empiricism, and particularly to that of analytic philosophy in Britain and the U.S.A. It is difficult to say how much the investigations conducted in these countries owe to his stimulating ideas." (p. 24)

From: Wolfgang Stegmüller, Main Currents in Contemporary German, British, and American Philosophy, Dordrecht: Reidel 1969.

"Franz Brentano did not like to publish books; as he once said, he hated the "secondary work" that was connected with proof-reading, referencing of quotations, etc. He thus left the publication of his literary remains to his disciples. Indeed, after his death (1917) Alfred Kastil and Oskar Kraus undertook the publication of his literary remains and, in the time permitted to them, carried it out with great loyalty and dedication. In the years 1922 through 1934, there appeared in Felix Meiner's Philosophische Bibliothek ten volumes of Brentano's works; the editor's rich annotations are invaluable for understanding Brentano's lectures and the development of his thoughts. After Kastil's death the work of publication was taken over by Franziska Meyer-Hillebrand, his disciple." (p. 94)

From: Hugo Bergmann, "Brentano on the History of Greek Philosophy", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 27, 1967, pp. 94-99.

The theory of intentionality

"Brentano's first concern in psychology was to find a characteristic which separates psychological from non-psychological or 'physical' phenomena. It was in connection with this attempt that he first developed his celebrated doctrine of intentionality as the decisive constituent of psychological phenomena. The sentence in which he introduces the term 'intentionality' is of such crucial importance that I shall render it here in literal translation: Every psychical phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or sometimes the mental) inexistence of an object, and what we should like to call, although not quite unambiguously, the reference (Beziehung) to a content, the directedness (Richtung) toward an object (which in this context is not to be understood as something real) or the immanent-object quality (immanente Gegenständlichkeit). Each contains something as its object, though not each in the same manner. In the representation (Vorstellung) something is represented, in the judgment something is acknowledged or rejected, in desiring it is desired, etc. This intentional inexistence is peculiar alone to psychical phenomena. No physical phenomenon shows anything like it. And thus we can define psychical phenomena by saying that they are such phenomena as contain objects in themselves by way of intention (intentional). (1)Actually, this first characterization of the psychological phenomenon makes use of two phrases: 'intentional inexistence' and 'reference to a content.' It is the first of these phrases which has attracted most attention, and it has even given rise to the view, supported by both anti-scholastics and neo-scholastic critics, that this whole doctrine was nothing but a loan from medieval philosophy. While a quick reading of the passage may seem to confirm this view, it is nevertheless misleading. 'Intentional inexistence,' which literally implies the existence of an 'intentio' inside the intending being, as if imbedded in it, is indeed a Thomistic conception. But it is precisely this conception which Brentano himself did not share, or which in any case he abandoned, to the extent of finally even dropping the very term 'intentionality.' Thus, the second characterization of the psychic phenomenon, 'reference to an object,' is the more important and the only permanent one for Brentano; it is also the one listed exclusively in the Table of Contents, beginning with the first edition. What is more: as far as I can make out, this characterization is completely original with Brentano, except for whatever credit he himself generously extends to Aristotle for its 'first germs' in a rather minor passage of the Metaphysics (1021 a 29). It was certainly none of Brentano's doing that this new wholly unscholastic conception came to sail under the old flag of 'intentionality.' Reference to an object is thus the decisive and indispensable feature of anything that we consider psychical: No hearing without something heard, no believing without something believed, no hoping without something hoped, no striving without something striven for, no joy without something we feel joyous about, etc. Physical phenomena are characterized, by contrast, as lacking such references. It also becomes clear at this point that Brentano's psychological phenomena are always acts, taking this term in a very broad sense which comprises experiences of undergoing as well as of doing, states of consciousness as well as merely transitory processes. Here, then, Brentano for the first time uncovered a structure which was to become one of the basic patterns for all phenomenological analysis." (pp. 36-37)

Notes

(1) Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt I, Buch II, Kapitel I 5 (pp. 125 f.; English translation p. 88).

From: Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement. A Historical Introduction, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1963 (Third Edition).

"Of great importance is Brentano's classification of psychic phenomena. There are three classes: presentations, judgments, and emotive acts. Of the first Brentano claims that all psychic phenomena are either presentations or involve presentations (a statement accepted by Husserl in an interpretation of presentations as "objectivating acts"). Judgments are conceived by Brentano as acts of affirmation or negation; thus he rejects a propositional theory of judgment. The third class (Akte der Gemütsbewegung) contains acts of volition as well as emotions, feelings, etc. These acts are conceived in analogy to judgments; they are either positive or negative (love vs. hate) and they are correct or incorrect (love is correct if its object is intrinsically worthy of being loved). This led Brentano to a conception of ETHICS as a discipline parallel to LOGIC. His basic ideas in ethics were first published as a paper he delivered in Vienna in 1889 (Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis; an English translation, Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong, already appeared in 1902). His ethics had a strong influence on Max Scheler and on G. E. Moore (1873-1958). In his later writings Brentano became more and more interested in developing his own ontology and theory of categories. He developed a position called "reism" according to which the basic category is that of res, which comprehends both concrete things and immaterial souls. This strict objectivistic attitude was initially not influential within the phenomenological movement, but it did become important for logic and ontology in Poland. In recent years these ideas have had great influence on philosophers such as Roderick Chisholm and Barry Smith.

Of great influence on Husserl was Brentano's theory of wholes and parts, which he introduced in his "ontology," the second part of his Würzburg lectures (in the 1870s Brentano inserted a descriptive part that he called "phenomenology" between the abovementioned "transcendental philosophy" and the "ontology"). Ontology has as its basic distinction that between collectiva and divisiva, which dichotomy is in turn classified as physical, logical, and metaphysical. The influence on Husserl's formal and material ontology as developed in the third of his Logische Untersuchungen (1900-1901) is obvious, and it is likely that Husserl knew about these lectures via Stumpf, to whom he refers in this context and who had an extensive copy of these lectures.

The concept of Intentionality is only a problematic link between Brentano and phenomenology. This is already indicated by the fact that Brentano later gave up the term "intentional" because he thought that his views in this connection had been misunderstood. As a matter of fact Brentano does not talk about intention or intentionality, but rather uses expressions like "intentional inexistence" or "intentionally contain" that he introduced in order to distinguish psychic phenomena from physical phenomena. An isolated quality such as red is a physical phenomenon; red as belonging to consciousness is on the other hand a psychic phenomenon.

Intentional inexistence can be regarded as a mereological concept on two different levels. On the descriptive level, a psychic phenomenon is part of a complex consciousness to which belong, for instance, inner perception, acts of judgment, and emotive acts; on the metaphysical level, which also embraces entities that are not immediately given but inferred, it is conceived as part of a soul. In contexts like "intentional inexistence," the term "intentional" does not determine the related expression "inexistence" (or "containment") but modifies it, i.e., it changes its original meaning. If these words were used in this original meaning, the following conclusions would be valid: if something exists in something else, then both things exist; if something is contained in something other than it, there is a spatial relation between them. In the modified context of "intentional inexistence" and "intentional containment," however, both conclusions are invalid. The intentional relation is thus, as Brentano explains in later writings, only "something relation-like" (etwas Relativliches). It is not, as in Husserl's intentional acts, a matter of directedness toward an object transcendent to consciousness but, in contrast, something immanent to consciousness." (pp. 74-75)

From: Dieter Münch, "Franz Brentano" in: Lester Embree et alii (eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1997, pp. 71-75.

The School of Brentano

"The standards of rigour and descriptive adequacy of Scholasticism were re-established above all by Franz Brentano and his school. Brentano, a pupil of Adolf Trendelenburg, one of the few Aristotelians in the 19th century in Germany, created a philosophical system which was a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Cartesianism, and the empiricism of The British School. This system was modified in different and often highly original ways by his pupils, the most important of whom were Kazimierz Twardowski, Edmund Husserl, Carl Stumpf, Christian von Ehrenfels, Anton Marty, and Alexius Meinong.

In contradistinction to Hegel and his fellow idealists, the Brentano School was very successful in associating its philosophical work in fruitful ways with modern developments in the sciences, above all in psychology and linguistics. Brentano’s pupils were responsible for founding not only new philosophical movements such as phenomenology, but also new programmes of scientific research such as the Gestalt theories of the Graz and Berlin Schools. Brentano’s pupils contributed in important ways to modern logic, above all through Twardowski and his students in Poland. And they contributed also to ontology, for example through Meinong and the members of The Graz School, who established the so-called theory of objects. Husserl, following in some respects in Meinong’s footsteps, founded in turn the discipline of formal ontology and was the first to analyse in formal manner the ontological concepts of dependence, part and whole. Husserl’s work in this field was then continued in philosophy above all by Adolf Reinach and Roman Ingarden, and in its application to linguistic parts and wholes by Stanislaw Leśniewski and others in Poland. Husserl’s philosophical ideas on formal and material ontology gave rise further to a new understanding of synthetic or material a priori truths. From the perspective of Husserl, Reinach, and Ingarden such truths are not, as for Kant, the products of a forming or shaping activity on the side of the subject. Rather, as for Aristotle, they represent intelligible strictures on the side of the objects of experience, structures which are not invented but discovered, and which serve, again, as a pre-empirical basis for science and philosophy." (pp. XXI-XXII)

From: "Introduction" to: Barry Smith Barry and Hans Burkhardt (eds.), Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, Munich: Philosophia Verlag 1991.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Franz Brentano: Editions and translations

Introduction

"An edition of Brentano's literary production in its entirety is not yet available. At present the available works by Brentano divide between the following two types:

1. Works published during his lifetime.

2. Works in his Nachlass.

The works which Brentano published during his lifetime, in the form of both books and Essays, represent only a small part of his total output. The books published from the Nachlass divide between:

1. Books edited by orthodox pupils, for instance 0. Kraus, A. Kastil and F. Mayer-Hillebrand, which afford numerous personal insights.

2. Books published since the 1970s.

(See F. Mayer-Hillebrand, "Franz Brentanos wissenschaftlicher Nachlass", Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 6, 1951-52, 599-603, and by the same author, "Rückblick auf die bisherigen Bestrebungen zur Erhaltung und Verbreitung von Fr. Brentanos philosophischen Lehre und kurze Darstellung dieser Lehren", Zeitschrift fur philosophische Forschung 17, 1963, 146-169; also "Remarks Concerning the Interpretation of the Philosophy of Franz Brentano. A Reply to Dr. Srzednicki", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 23, 1962-3, 438-44; see also J.C.M. Brentano, "The Manuscripts of Franz Brentano", Revue internationale de philosophie 78, 1966, 477-482).

The books belonging to the first category were compiled according to debatable philological criteria, with additions and collages of writings produced in different periods. The considerable arbitrariness of these constructs and the interpretative interpolations made by the editors have not generally benefited the understanding and diffusion of Brentano's thought. In particular, collections of the posthumously-published Essays and dictations have often adopted the method of interpreting earlier texts as anticipations of later ones.

Moreover, one should read a huge body of correspondence (1400 letters with Marty alone) which has been published only in part, while some of the corpus, including letters from Brentano's period in Italy (1895-1916), is entirely unpublished. Brentano's philosophical correspondence is of great interest, not least because a letter sent to one scholar was then passed on to others, who read it, commented on it, and then sent it back, in a sort of epistolary colloquium. Only a tiny part of Brentano's correspondence has been published from the Nachlass.

Apropos the Nachlass, its first classification was produced by T. Masaryk, who founded a Brentano Archive in Prague for the purpose of organizing and publishing items. In 1939, at the beginning of the Second World War, the Archive was transferred first to Manchester, then to Oxford (the Bodleian Library), and finally to the United States.

Brentano's unpublished writings and dictations have undergone successive cataloguing by F. Mayer-Hillebrand, W. Baumgartner and T. Binder. They can currently be consulted at diverse universities. In the USA at the University of California (Berkeley), Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island), Cornell University (Ithaca, New York), Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.), University of Minnesota (Minneapolis); Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.), and at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. In Australia they can be consulted at Melbourne University (Victoria); in Europe at the Bodleian Library of Oxford, the Staatsbibliotek of Munich, the University of Innsbruck, the University of Vienna, and the Goethemuseum of Frankfurt; in France at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; in Latin America at the University of Mexico City (Mexico D.F.) and the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The Brentano Archive originally deposited at Brown University included Brentano's personal library. It can now be consulted at the Forschungsstelle and Dokumentationszentrum far österreichische Philosophie of Graz."

From: Liliana Albertazzi, Immanent Realism. An Introduction to Brentano, Dordrecht, Springer, 2006, pp. 341-342.

Main publications in German

N.B.: Abstract for some works not translated in English are from Antos B. Rancurello, "A Study of Franz Brentano. His Psychological Standpoint and His Significance in the History of Psychology", New York and London: Academic Press 1968, "Annotated Bibliography", pp. 134-169, abbreviated R. followed by page numbers.

1. Brentano, Franz. 1862. Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder.

New edition in Sämtliche veröffentlichte Schriften, Vol. IV, edited by Thomas Binder and Arkadiusz Chrudzimski, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014.

2. ———. 1866. Ad disputationem qua theses gratiosi philosophorum ordinis consensu et auctoritate pro impetranda venia docendi in alma universitatejulio-maximiliana defendet. Auschaffenburg: J. W. Schniper.

Three pages. Reprinted in: Über die Zukunft der Philosophie (1929).

"In sequence, deals with methodological questions (1-4), ontological and metaphysical problems (5-11), issues in philosophical psychology (12-15), logical and linguistic inquiries (16-21), ethical investigations (22-23), and aesthetics (24-25). The most important of these theses, the one that became Brentano’s theoretical slogan, is the fourth one: Vera philosophiae methodus nulla alia nisi scientiae naturalis est. (The titles of these theses, followed by a c.ommentary and critical note for each one of them, was published by Kraus, Brentano, Über die Zukunft der Philosophie, 1929.). (R. p. 1379

3. ———. 1867. Die Psychologie des Aristoteles insbesondere seine Lehre vom nous poietikós. Nebst einer Beilage über das Wirken des Aristotelischen Gottes. Mainz: F. Kirchheim.

Reprint: Wissenschaftliche Buchgsellschaft, Darmstadt 1967.

4. ———. 1867. "Geschichte der kirchlichen Wissenschaften." In Kirchengeschichte. Band III, Teil 11, edited by Mohler, Johann Adam, 103-104. Regensburg: G. J. Manz.

Edited by Pius Bonifacius Gams.

5. ———. 1869. "Auguste Comte und die positive Philosophie." Chilianeum no. 2:15-37.

6. ———. 1873. "Der Atheismus und die Wissenschaft." Historisch-Politische Blätter für das Katholische Deutschland no. 72:916-929.

7. ———. 1874. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt [Erster Band]. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.

"This was the title of the first edition: subsequently the final dative "e" was dropped to give the more commonly cited Standpunkt. The 350-page first edition was designated as Volume 1; this too was dropped." (English translation: Introduction to the Second Edition, p. XIII).

Second edition with introduction and notes by Oskar Kraus Leipzig, 1924; reprinted Meiner, Hamburg, 1973.

New edition of Psychologie I & II (1874/1911) as volume I of the Sämtliche veröffentlichte Schriften with the title: Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt. Von der Klassifikation psychischer Phänomene Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag, 2008.

8. ———. 1874. Über die Gründe der Entmutigung auf philosophischem Gebiete. Wien: Braumüller.

"Originally Brentano’s inaugural professorial address delivered at the University of Vienna on April 22, 1874 (only slightly over a month after the publication of his Psychology). Contains an analysis of the main objections of positivism against philosophy, followed by “a proof of its strength and rightful claim” for a place and future among the various sciences. Surprising!y enough, however, Brentano here rests his case on behalf of philosophy upon Comte’s positivistic conception of a hierarchy of sciences. Disregarding this inconsistency, later on recognized by Brentano himself, his views on the· dependence of “Sociology and all the other branches of philosophy” upon psychology remain in the mainstream of his thinking." (R. p. 138)

9. ———. 1875. "Herr Horwicz als Rezensent. Ein Beitrag zur Orientierung über unsere wissenschaftlichen Kulturzustände." Philosophische Monatshefte no. 4:180-187.

10. ———. 1876. Was für ein Philosoph manchmal Epoche macht. Wien, Pest, Leipzig: Hartleben.

"Originally an address to a student’s club at the University of Vienna. Contains an exposition and critique of Plotinus’ philosophy, with the specific purpose of showing its striking similarities to certain modern philosophical conceptions (especially Schelling’s conception), all being presented as concrete illustrations of the phase of decline in philosophy which Brentano called mysticism." (R., p. 138)

11. ———. 1879. Neue Rätsel von Änigmatias. Wien: C. Gerold's Sohn.

Second expanded edition with the title: Änigmatias. Neue Rätsel - Beck, München 1909.

12. ———. 1882. "Über den Creatianismus des Aristoteles." In Sitzungsberichte der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse. Band 100, 95-126. Wien: C. Gerhold's Sohn.

"An exposition and defense of his interpretation of Aristotle, according to which this philosopher would have asserted beyond doubt the divine origin of man’s soul, and hence its spirituality and immortality." (R., p. 138)

13. ———. 1883. Offener Brief an Herrn Prof. Dr. Eduard Zeller aus Anlass seiner Schrift über die Lehre des Aristoteles von der Ewigkeit des Geistes. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.

14. ———. 1889. Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.

Second expanded edition by Oskar Kraus Meiner, Leipzig, 1921 reprinted 1969.

15. ———. 1892. Das Genie. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.

"Originally an address delivered to the Vienna Society of Engineers and Architects. Its central and recurring theme is that “genial activity differs from the non-genial always in degree, but never in kind.” Proceeding methodologically “from simple to more complex cases,” and casting the whole discussion into a fairly adequate historical perspective, Brentano develops this theme as it applies to “geniuses” in the field of “games,” the scientific field, and the field of fine arts. Discounting as “at the very least premature” any attempt to explain “genial phenomena” on the basis of “a special physiological constitution of the brain,” he advances instead a psychological explanation, viewing them as the “fruit of habit, of practice . . . according to common psychological laws” (such as the laws of “interest,” “participation”—including both feeling and will—and “imprinting”). With a genial touch of his own, Brentano concludes: “What was divine in [geniuses] lives also in us, even though it does not burn with such a bright flame, and this is exactly what makes us like them.” In essence, this small treatise may be viewed as a chapter in his “genetic” psychology. (Reprinted in Grundzüge der Ästhetik [1959].)" (R., p. 139)

16. ———. 1892. Das Schlechte als Gegenstand dichterischer Darstellung. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.

17. ———. 1892. "Über ein optisches Paradoxon." Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane no. 3:349-358.

18. ———. 1892. "Über ein optisches Paradoxon (Zweiter Artikel)." Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane no. 5:61-82.

19. ———. 1893. Über die Zukunft der Philosophie. Wien: Alfred Hölder.

Edited and introduced by Oskar Kraus. New edition edited by Paul Weintgartner Meiner, Hamburg, 1968.

"Originally a lecture delivered to the Philosophical Association of Vienna on March 22, 1892 in refutation of the position taken by Exner, Rector of the University of that city, in his inaugural address the previous year that (1) “philosophy has forfeited its sovereignty without any hope of ever regaining it,” and (2) the method of the natural sciences is inapplicable to the Geisteswissenschaften. Brentano supplemented the lecture with an introduction and an appendix. " (R., p. 141)

20. ———. 1893. "Das Genie." Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane no. 5:94-96.

21. ———. 1894. "Zur Lehre von den optischen Täuschungen." Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane no. 6:1-7.

22. ———. 1895. Die vier Phasen der Philosophie und ihr augenblicklicher Stand. Stuttgart: Cotta.

Reprinted with a new introduction by Oskar Kraus and the addition of essays on Plotinus, Thomas Aquinas, Kant, Schopenhauer and Auguste Comte Meiner, Leipzig, 1926.

New edition edited by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand, Meiner, Hamburg, 1968.

23. ———. 1895. Meine letzten Wünsche für Österreich. Stuttgart: Cotta.

"Reprint of articles published in Wien Neue Freie Presse (December 2, 5, 8, 1894), with a preface and two “supplements” (containing the critique of the stand he had taken in those articles by “einer regierungfreundlicher Presse,” and his replies to it). Contains Brentano’s critical assessment of (1) Austrian laws on marriage (with special reference to his own case), and (2) the intellectual atmosphere and certain specific policies of the University of Vienna (in general, and in particular as they related to his efforts to insure freedom of thinking and teaching, rejuvenate philosophy, and furnish the young psychology the proper media for growth and development—an Institute, and a Laboratory), “Accusations,” Brentano tells us, were directed against him on both counts, especially the first; and he did not hesitate to “defend” himself. Ultimately, the claim of this booklet for scientific status seems to rest mainly, if not exclusively, upon Brentano’s views on the value and need for experimentation in psychology, and his distinction between “descriptive” and “genetic psychology.”

Brentano wrote his Last Wishes upon resigning his post at the University ol Vienna. The reasons leading him to take this step, together with the deep pathos and nostalgia connected with it, are well reflected in the following statements: “It had been twenty years since I came to Austria, to Vienna and its University. I have come with inherited warm sympathy for this land and its people; I have found the most friendly reception; and as one of the noblest daughters of Vienna extended her hand to me as wife, I felt even mon closely united in brotherhood with my new people. Now fate has it that this is the very reason why, failing in health, overwhelmed (with sorrow) and fettered in my best views for the common good, today I am thinking ol leaving Austria".” (R. pp. 1412-142)

24. ———. 1896. Zur eherentlichen Frage in Österreich. Berlin: Guttentag.

25. ———. 1897. "Zur Lehre von der Empfindung." In Dritter internationaler Kongreß für Psychologie in München vom 4. bis 7. August 1896, 110-133. München: Lehmann.

26. ———. 1899. "Dichtung und Weisheit." In Goethe-Festschrift zum 150, edited by Ströbel, August, 15-19. Parag: Lese- und Redehalle.

27. ———. 1906. " Von der psychologischen Analyse der Tonqualitäten in ihre eigentlich ersten Elemente." In Atti del V Congresso Internazionale di Psicologia, 157-165. Roma: Forzani.

28. ———. 1907. Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.

Second expanded edition edited by Roderick Chisholm and R. Fabian, Meiner, Hamburg, 1979.

New edition as volume II of the Sämtliche veröffentlichte Schriften with the title Schriften zur Sinnespsychologie edited with a Preface and an Index by Thomas Binder und Arkadiusz Chrudzimski, Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag, 2009.

29. ———. 1909. Änigmatias: Neue Rätsel. München:: Beck.

30. ———. 1911. Aristoteles und seine Weltanschauung. Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer.

New edition in Sämtliche veröffentlichte Schriften, Vol. VII, edited by Thomas Binder und Arkadiusz Chrudzimski, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2018.

31. ———. 1911. Aristoteles Lehre vom Ursprung des menschlischen Geistes. Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer.

New edition in Sämtliche veröffentlichte Schriften, Vol. Vi, edited by Maurto Antonelli and Thomas Binder, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2023.

32. ———. 1911. Von der Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.

Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte vol. II. Second edition with new unpublished essays edited by Oskar Kraus (1925).

33. ———. 1911. "Aristoteles." In Grosse Denker. Band I, edited by Aster, Ernst von, 153-207. Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer.

34. ———. 1920. "Zur Lehre vom Raum und Zeit." Kant Studien no. 25:1-23.

Edited by Oskar Kraus.

35. ———. 1922. Die Lehre Jesu und ihre bleibende Bedeutung, mit einem Anhange: Kurze Darstellung der christlichen Glaubenslehre. Leipzig: Felix Meiner.

Edited by Alfred Kastil.

36. ———. 1924. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt [Zweiter Band]. Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene. Leipzig: Meiner.

Edited by Oskar Kraus with introduction, new essays from the Nachlaß, notes and index. Reprint 1973.

37. ———. 1924. "Vom ens rationis. (Von den Gedankendingen.)

(6. Januar 1917.)." In Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte, 238-277. Leipzig: Meiner.

38. ———. 1924. "Über das Sein im uneigentlichen Sinne, abstrakte Namen und Verstandesdinge. (Diktat vom 30. Januar 1917.)." In Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte, 226-237. Leipzig: Meiner.

39. ———. 1924. "Von den Gegenständen des Denkens. (Diktat vom 22. Februar 1915.)." In Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte, 213-225. Leipzig: Meiner.

40. ———. 1924. "Universetf Denkendes und individuell Seiendes. (Diktat vom 21. 11. 1917.)." In Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte, 199-203. Leipzig: Meiner.

41. ———. 1924. "Anschauung und abstrakte Vorstellung. (Anschaulich einheitliche und attributiv einheitliche Vorstellung.}

(Letztes Diktat Franz Brentanos am 9. März 1917, acht Tage vor seinem Tode.)." In Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte, 204-212. Leipzig: Meiner.

42. ———. 1925. Versuch über die Erkenntnis. Leipzig: Meiner.

Edited by Alfred Kastil; Second revised edition edited and introduced by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand, Meiner, Hamburg, 1970.

"Contains several studies (mostly in the nature of “dictations”) written over approximately the last twenty years of Brentano’s life. The title may have been chosen by the editor with the conscious intention of putting this volume in direct line of descent from Locke’s and Leibniz’s epoch-making Essays, and from Laplace’s less well known, but equally important, Philosophical essay on probabilities. Consists of a theory of epistemology, and more specifically a theory of induction, with definite “psychological overtones.” Its longest single essay (dated 1903) is entitled: “Down with Prejudices: a word of exhortation to the present world to free itself, in the spirit of Bacon and Descartes, of all blind a-priori.” Supplemented with additional studies, this essay forms the core of a four-part treatise, touching upon: (1) scientific philosophy and the philosphy of prejudice, (2) the logical character of mathematics, (3) the problem of induction, and (4) the universal principle of causality and the impossibility of absolute chance occurrence for anything which is or was or will be. A twenty-page long essay on probability (dated 1916) completes the text of this volume." (R., pp. 144-145)

43. ———. 1926. "Zur Klassifikation der Künste." Hochschulwissen no. 3:57-62.

44. ———. 1926. "Über Prophetie." Jahrbuch der Charakterologie no. 2:259-264.

45. ———. 1928. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt. Band III. Vom sinnlichen und noetischen Bewusstsein; Äussere und innere Wahrnehmung, Begriffe. Leipzig: Felix Meiner.

Edited by Oskar Kraus. .

New edition revised by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand, 1968.

46. ———. 1928. Vom sinnlichen und noetischen Bewusstseins. Leipzig: Meiner.

Edited by Oskar Kraus< reprinted by Mayer/Hillebrand, Hamburg, Meiner, 1968, 1974.

47. ———. 1929. Vom Dasein Gottes. Leipzig: Felix Meiner.

Edited by Alfred Kastil; reprinted Meiner, Hamburg, 1980.

48. ———. 1929. "Über die Zukunft der Philosophie, nebst den Vorträgen. Über die Gründe der Entmutigung auf philosophischen Gebiet. Über Schellings System, sowie 25 Habilitationsthesen." In. Hamburg: Meiner.

Second edition with an Introduction by Paul Weingartner, 1968.

49. ———. 1930. Wahrheit und Evidenz. Erkenntnistheoretische Abhandlungen und Briefe. Leizig: Felix Meiner.

Edited by Oskar Kraus; reprinted Meiner, Hamburg, 1974.

50. ———. 1933. Kategorienlehre. Leipzig: Felix Meiner.

Edited with introductgyion and notes by Alfred Kastil; reprint Hamburg: Meiner 1985.

51. ———. 1946. "Briefe Franz Brentanos an Hugo Bergmann." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 7:83-158.

Edited by Hugo Bergmann.

52. ———. 1954. Religion und Philosophie: ihr Verhältnis zueinander und ihre gemeinsamen Aufgaben. Bern: A. Francke.

Edited, with an Introduction and Commentary by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand.

"Aims to present Brentano’s overall views on “the relationship between philosophy and religion, and their common tasks.” As can easily be inferred from the commentary, an almost herculean effort (first by Kastil and then by the present editor) went into “assembling” this volume from very disparate sources (notes, outlines, lecture excerpts, letters, summaries from previous printed works). In spite of this, as the editor indicates, Brentano’s views remain fragmentary in a number of instances.

Contains four major sections (each subdivided into several parts), dealing respectively with the following topics: (1) philosophical essay on religion (concept and tasks of religion and philosophy, religion and typical forms of religion, the philosopher’s attitude toward “popular” forms of religion), (2) existence and nature of God, and his relation to the world, (3) problems in theodicy (origin of evil and its compatibility with the “ordinances” of an all-powerful and all-good God, optimism versus pessimism), and (4) spirituality and immortality of man’s soul.

The last part was edited by Kastil over a ten year period (1933-1943), and was originally intended by him to form the core of a fourth volume on Brentano’s Psychology (in addition to the three volumes edited by Kraus). The present editor justifies its inclusion in this volume because, according to Brentano, the most important task of both philosophy and religion is directed to prove the spirituality and immortality of man’s soul. As it presently stands, this part contains an exposition and critique of the most important “mind-body” theories, followed by a detailed statement of proof s designed to show that “the psychic subject,” i.e., “the subject of our psychic activities,” is a “spiritual, nondimensional, nonspatial substance,” and as such immortal. Among other things, within this context, Brentano debates the issue of whether any one part of the brain or the brain as a whole could be the substrate of psychic activities. In view of his repeated insistence in previous studies upon the spirituality of Aristotle’s “active intellect,” it is of interest to notice in passing that in the present volume he argues against the “semimaterialism” of this author." (R., pp. 149-150)

53. ———. 1956. Die Lehre vom Richtigen Urteil. Nach den Vorlesungen über Logik, mit Benützung anderer Manuskripte aus dem Gebiete der Erkenntnistheorie, aus dem Nachlass. Bern: A. Francke.

Edited by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand.

54. ———. 1959. Grundlegung und Aufbau der Ethik. Bern: A. Francke.

From the unpublished lessons on "Praktische Philosophie". Edited by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand.

"Presents Brentano’s ideas on Ethics as found in annotations and outlines used by him in his lectures on “Practical Philosophy” at the University of Vienna (1876-1894). In its present form, the text is supplemented with statements taken from Kraus’ works and other works of Brentano. This painstaking editorial work was originally undertaken by Kastil, and subsequently, after his death in 1950, was brought to completion by the present editor, one of his pupils.

Contains a brief introduction (covering some general topics to be expected at the beginning of a course in Ethics), and six parts, touching upon the following broad issues: principles of ethical knowledge, the highest practical good, freedom of the will, morality in general, ethical principles, actualization of ethical principles. The theme underlying all these issues, and throwing light upon Brentano’s own answers to them, is his basic conception that ethics is neither “heteronomous” (dependent upon extrinsic norms), nor “autonomous” (in the sense of Protagoras’ famous dictum “man is the measure of all things”), but “orthonomous”: the true “measure of all things” is not “man as such,” but “man, the knower, insofar as he judges with evidence” (einsichtig)". (R., p. 149)

55. ———. 1959. Grundzüge der Ästhetik. Aus dem Nachlass. Bern: A. Francke.

Edited, with an Introduction and Commentary by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand.

"Based upon Brentano’s lectures (1885-1886) on “Selected problems from psychology and esthetics,” other unpublished material, and some studies previously published by Brentano himself [1892a, 1892b] or by his editors. In essence, presents all that Brentano ever said on the matter (although less complete than his pronouncements on ethics and logic). Contains three parts, dealing respectively with (1) “Selected problems in psychology and esthetics” (concept of psychology and esthetics, including a rather comprehensive “longitudinal” historical perspective, which in turn includes a detailed exposition and sharp critique of the various theories discussed; relationship between psychology and esthetics, with an analysis of “descriptive” and “genetic” psychology; investigations on representation— a forty-five page long “treatise”, Das Genie), (2) “On the beautiful” (the concept of the beautiful; value relationships of our representations; Das Schlechte als Gegenstand dichterischer Darstellung), and (3) “Classification and Assessment of art” (some general considerations and principles, followed by some essays “On music”)." (R. , p. 151)

56. ———. 1963. Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophie. Bern-München: A. Francke.

From the lessons on history of philosophy of the Nachlass. Edited, with an introduction and Commentary by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand.

"Based upon Brentano’s lectures on the history of philosophy (Würzburg-Vienna). Even in their available broad outline forms, these lectures show how well Brentano set the stage for his “saga”, and how well he knew the part which each actor was playing or which he asked him to play. Of course, the hero in this narrative is Aristotle, taking up, as he does, one-third of Part I, “the ascending phase” (beginning with the Ionian philosophers) and sitting majestically at its apex. As might be expected, Part II, “the phase of decline,” is much shorter: only eighty-seven pages, in comparison with three-hundred-and-nine pages, making up Part I." (R., p. 151)

57. ———. 1964. "Zwei Briefe an E. Mach." In Ernst Mach: Wegbereiter der modernen Physik, edited by Heller, K. D., 157-159. Dordrecht: Springer.

58. ———. 1965. "Sechs Briefe an A. Meinong." In Philosophenbriefe: Aus der Wissenschaftlichen Korrespondenz von A. Meinong, edited by Kindinger, Rudolf, 18-23. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt.

59. ———. 1965. "Sprechen und Denken." In Franz Brentano’s Analysis of Truth, edited by Srzednicki, Jan, 116-121. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

The German text and the translation of Sprechen und Denken (EL. 66).

60. ———. 1965. "Wahrheit ist eine Art von Ubereinstimmung." In Franz Brentano’s Analysis of Truth, edited by Srzednicki, Jan, 122-127. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

The German text and the translation of Wahrheit ist eine Art von Ubereinstimmung (EL. 67)

61. ———. 1965. "Uber den Sinn und die Wissenschaftliche Bedeutung des Satzes " In Franz Brentano’s Analysis of Truth, edited by Srzednicki, Jan, 128-131. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

The German text and the translation of Uber den Sinn und die Wissenschaftliche Bedeutung des Satzes "Veritas est adequatio rei et intellectus" (EL. 28).

62. ———. 1965. "Kurzer Abriss einer allgemeinen Erkenntnistheorie." In Franz Brentano’s Analysis of Truth, edited by Srzednicki, Jan, 132-136. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

The German text and the translation of Kurzer Abriss einer allgemeinen Erkenntnistheorie, (Chapter IV) (EL. 96).

63. ———. 1966. Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen. Bern-München: A. Francke.

Letters and essay from the Nachlass, Edited, with an Introduction, and introduced by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand.

"Comprises a number of posthumous essays from Brentano’s extensive exchange of letters (some of them previously published in Wahrheit und Evidenz) with Marty and Kraus, bearing upon his doctrine that only the real exists and can be represented. In her introduction, the editor traces the development of Brentano’s thinking on this doctrine, and highlights both the major objections that were advanced against it and Brentano’s answers to them." (R., p. 151)

64. ———. 1968. "Die 25 Habilitationsthesen (lateinisch und deutsch)." In Über die Zukunft der Philosophie, 133-142. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.

65. ———. 1975. "Was an Reid zu Loben. Ueber die Philosophie von Thomas Reid." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 1:1-18.

66. ———. 1976. Philosophische Untersuchungen zu Raum, Zeit, und Kontinuum. Hamburg: Meiner.

Edited and introduced by Stephen Körner and Roderick Chisholm.

67. ———. 1977. "Aristoteles Lehre vom Guten." Perspektiven der Philosophie no. 3:135-147.

68. ———. 1980. Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Philosophie im christlichen Abendland. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.

From the Nachlass. Edited by Klaus Hedwig.

69. ———. 1982. Deskriptive Psychologie. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.

Edited by Roderick Chisholm and Wilhelm Baumgartner.

70. ———. 1986. Über Aristoteles. Nachgelassene Aufsätze. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.

Edited by Rolf George.

71. ———. 1987. Geschichte der Philosophie der Neuzeit. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.

From the Nachlass. Edited and introduced by Klaus Hedwig.

72. ———. 1987. "Von der natur der Vorstellung." Conceptus:25-31.

With a Vorwort (Preface) by Johannes Brandl pp. 19-23.

73. ———. 1988. Über Ernst Machs 'Erkenntnis und Irrtum': mit zwei Anhängen, Kleine Schriften über Enrst Mach, Der Brentano-Mach-Briefwechsel. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Edited and introduced by Roderick Chisholm and Johann Marek.

74. ———. 1989. Briefe an Carl Stumpf, 1867-1917. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

Edited and introduced by Gerhard Oberko.

75. ———. 1992. "Ein Brief Franz Brentanos an Carl Stumpf vom 10.02.1876." Acta Analytica no. 8:33-42.

76. ———. 1993. "Zur Kategorienlehre. Ein unveröffentlichter Text." Brentano Studien no. 4:251-272.

Edited by Mauro Antonelli.

77. ———. 1993. "Von der Substanz." Axiomathes no. 4:25-40.

Unpublished text (Palermo, March 1900) with an Introduction by Wilhelm Baumgartner and a letter by Anton Marty.

78. ———. 1994. "Grundlegung der Tonpsychologie." Brentano Studien no. 5:219-236.

Franz Brentano über Geza Révész - With comments by Wilhelm Baumgartner.

79. ———. 1994. "Diktate über die Zeit (1907 und 1915)." Axiomathes no. 5 (2-3):325-344.

Unpublished text; with an introduction by Liliana Albertazzi.

80. ———. 2009. Schriften zur Sinnespsychologie. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

Sämtliche veröffentlichte Schriften - Vol II.

Edited, with a Preface and an Index, by Thomas Binder and Arkadiusz Chrudzimski.

81. ———. 2010. Schriften zur Ethik und Ästhetik. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

Sämtliche veröffentlichte Schriften III.

Herausgegeben, mit einem Vorwort und einem Index versehen von Thomas Binder und Arkadiusz Chrudzimski.

82. ———. 2013. "Abstraktion und Relation." In Themes from Brentano, edited by Fisette, Denis and Fréchette, Guillaume, 465-482. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Abstraktion und Relation 465-482.

83. ———. 2013. "Ausgewahlte Briefe an Marty." In Themes from Brentano, edited by Fisette, Denis and Fréchette, Guillaume, 483-499. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

84. ———. 2013. "Moderne Irrthümer über die Erkenntnis der Gesetze des Schließens." In Themes from Brentano, edited by Fisette, Denis and Fréchette, Guillaume, 513-524. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

85. Brentano, Franz, and Fechner, Gustav Theodor. 2015. Briefwechsel über Psychophysik, 1874–1878. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Edited by Arkadiusz Chrudzimski and Wolfgang Huemer.

86. Brentano, Franz. 2016. "Die Gesetze der Wechselwirkung der Naturkräfte und ihre Bedeutung für die Metaphysik." Brentano Studien no. 14:27-56.

Edited by Guillaume Fréchette.

87. ———. 2019. Vermischte Schriften. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Sämtliche veröffentlichte Schriften, Vol. IX, edited by Thomas Binder und Arkadiusz Chrudzimski, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2019.

Brentano's writings published during his lifetime will be reprinted by Ontos Verlag (now De Gruyter) in ten volumes:

Franz Brentano: Sämtliche veröffentlichte Schriften in zehn Bänden (Herausgegeben von Arkadiusz Chrudzimski und Thomas Binder).

I. Abteilung: Schriften zur Psychologie.

1. Band: Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (1874/1911): Mit einem Vorwort von Thomas Binder und Arkadiusz Chrudzimski zur Ausgabe der veröffentlichten Schriften, eingeleitet von Mauro Antonelli und Werner Sauer. Herausgegeben von Werner Sauer, 2014.

2. Band: Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie

II. Abteilung: Schriften zur Ethik und Ästhetik.

3. Band: Schriften zur Ethik und Ästhetik

III. Abteilung: Schriften zu Aristoteles.

4. Band: Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles (1862) [2014]

5. Band: Die Psychologie des Aristoteles (1867)

6. Band: Aristoteles Lehre vom Ursprung des menschlichen Geistes (1911): Mit einem Vorwort von Mauro Antonelli und Thomas Binder zur Ausgabe der veröffentlichten Schriften und einem einleitenden Essay von Ion Tănăsescu. Herausgegeben von Mauro Antonelli und Thomas Binder, 2023.

7. Band: Aristoteles und seine Weltanschauung (1911): Mit einem Vorwort von Thomas Binder und Arkadiusz Chrudzimski zur Ausgabe der veröffentlichten Schriften, eingeleitet von Guillaume Fréchette. Herausgegeben von Thomas Binder und Arkadiusz Chrudzimski, 2018.

8. Band: Kleinere Schriften zu Aristoteles

IV. Abteilung: Vermischtes

9. Band: Vermischte Schriften: Mit einer Einleitung von Denis Fisette. Herausgegeben von Thomas Binder und Arkadiusz Chrudzimski, 2019.

V. Abteilung: Nicht-Philosophisches.

10. Band: Nicht-Philosophisches: Theologisches - Juristisches - Schachschriften - Rätsel - Dichtung

English translations

1. Brentano, Franz. 1975. On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Edited and translated by Rolf George.

Contents: Editor's Preface XI; Preface XV; Introduction 1; I. The Fourfold Distinction of Being 3; II. Accidental Being 6; III. Being in the Sense of Being True 15; IV. Potential and Actual Being 27; V. Being According to the Figures of the Categories 49; Notes 149-197.

"Thus the discussion of the several senses of being form the threshold of Aristotle's Metaphysics. This makes clear why these considerations must have had great importance for him, and this importance becomes even more obvious if one considers that in this context there is considerable danger of confounding several concepts which have the same name. For, as he remarks in the second book of the Posterior Analytics 10, it becomes more and more difficult to recognize equivocation the higher the degree of abstraction and generality of concepts. Thus the possibility of deception must be greatest with being itself since, as we have already seen, it is the most general predicate.

But we have not yet established the fact that, according to Aristotle, being is asserted with several significations, not only with one (Categories 1. 1a1. 6). To begin with we shall establish this through several passages of the Metaphysics and show, at the same time, how the various distinctions of the several senses of being can be initially subordinated to four senses of this name; subsequently we shall proceed to a special discussion of each of them." (Introduction, p. 2)

(10) Anal. post. 11.13. 97b29: "Equivocation is less readily detected in genera than in infimae species."

2. ———. 1977. The Psychology of Aristotle, in Particular His Doctrine of the Active Intellect. With an Appendix Concerning the Activity of Aristotle's God. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Edited and translated by Rolf George.

Contents: Editor's Preface IX; Preface XIII; Introduction 1; Book I. Survey of Earlier Explanatory efforts 4; Book II. Development of the Aristotelian Doctrine of the Active Intellect 25; Review; Guidelines for the Investigation 25; Part I. Of the Soul and the Powers of the Soul in General 28; Part II. Of the Parts of the Soul in Particular, and First of the Vegetative Soul 50; Part III. Of the Sensitive Soul 54; Part IV. Of the Intellectual soul 74; Appendix. Of the Activity, Especially the Creative Activity, of Aristotle's God 162; Notes 181; Index 265-266.

"In all, Franz Brentano wrote four books on Aristotle. The first of these is his well-known Of the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle. The present book, first published in 1867, is the second. The third, Aristoteles Lehre vom Ursprung des menschlichen Geistes is an animadversion upon a theory of Zeller and a development and defense of a point first made in this volume. The last, Aristoteles undseine Weltanschauung, written toward the end of Brentano’s life, is a general account—a composite photograph, as it were—of Aristotle’s metaphysical teaching.

A few comments about the present volume (and a hint concerning the third) are in order. Eduard Zeller had attributed to Aristotle the view that the human intellect is not created with the individual person, but derives from some preexisting pool of intelligences. Brentano developed his opposition to Zeller in minute detail in Ursprung. But at the root of his misgivings lies a general aversion to mysticism and the imputation of mystical teachings to Aristotle. A case of the latter was Averroes’ theory that the Active Intellect is a cosmic or divine power, rather than a force that belongs to each individual mind, a force that must be presumed to exist if we want to explain thinking at all. Few contemporary commentators follow Brentano in this. Most of them would, except perhaps for the metaphor, agree with Randall and regard the Active Intellect as a “Platonic wild oat coming home to roost.”

Brentano found neither theoretical merit nor personal solace in the thought that one might lose his individuality by being taken up into a larger whole. Similarly, he found repugnant any view that took sensing, thinking, willing, and the like to be in some deep sense events other than occurrences in an individual mind, perhaps a partaking in some divine happening. Brentano found in Aristotle a similar respect for human individuality. Thus this book is not merely an exegesis of an Aristotelian text, but a defense of it against certain mystical misinterpretations, as well as a document of Brentano’s own antimystical fervor." (From the Editor's Preface, p. IX)

3. ———. 1995. "Nous poiētikos: Survey of Earlier Interpretations." In Essays on Aristotle's De Anima, edited by Oksenberg Rorty, Amélie and Nussbaum, Martha C., 313-329. New York: Oxford University Press.

Translated from The Psychology of Aristotle, Book I.

Abstract: "This essay explores Aristotle’s conception of the active intellect or nous poiētikos. The earliest, medieval, and most recent interpretations of this concept are discussed. It is argued that even Aristotle’s immediate disciples disagreed in their conception of the active intellect, nor was there any more unanimity in the Middle Ages. According to Trendelenburg, the difficulty of the Aristotelian doctrine lies in the fact that the nous is sometimes said to be so intimately connected with the other faculties of the soul that it appears to be incapable of existing without them. When it is viewed the highest nous, as nous poiētikos, it is separated from the rest of human nature and contrasted with it as something higher and its ruler."

4. ———. 1973. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. New York: Humanities Press.

Edited withe a Preface L. McAlister; translated by Antos C. Rancurello, D.B. Terrell and Linda L. McAlister.

Second edition with a new introduction by Peter Simons, London, New York, Routledge 1995.

Book One: Psychology as a science (translation of Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt - vol I).

Book Two: Mental phenomena in general (translation of Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt - vol II).

"Franz Brentano’s Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt was originally published in 1874 by Duncker & Humblot in Leipzig. It was divided into two books, and three additional books were supposed to follow, but never appeared. Another book entitled Vom sinnlichen und noetischen Bewusstsein is sometimes referred to as “Psychologie III”; it is not included here, although an English edition is planned.[*] 1911 Book Two of the Psychologie was reissued under the title Von der Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene again by Duncker & Humblot. To this edition Brentano added some notes and appended several essays expanding upon and in some cases revising and correcting points made in the original text. In 1924 a second edition of Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, edited by Oskar Kraus, was published in Felix Meiner’s Philosophische Biblothek series in Leipzig. In addition to the supplementary essays which had been added in 1911, Kraus appended several more essays from Brentano’s Nachlass, and provided an Introduction and explanatory notes.

The present edition is a translation of Kraus’s 1924 edition although it differs in the following respects. It does not include the essay, “Miklosich on Subjectless Propositions.” Kraus had included this essay in the 1924 edition of the Psychologie and omitted it from his 1934 edition of Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis, the work to which Brentano had originally appended it. Since it has recently been restored to its place in that work in Roderick M. Chisholm’s English edition, The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong (London and New York, 1969), I omit it here. The notes from Kraus’s edition, many of which are devoted to giving Kraus’s own interpretation of Brentano’s views, are included here. They can be distinguished from Brentano’s notes by their numerical designations. I have, however, abbreviated some and omitted others. References have been brought up to date and English editions have been cited whenever possible. The few additional notes added by the translators and the editor are identified as such; most of these were contributed by D.B. Terrell." (Preface to the English Edition, p. XXI)

[*] Sensory and Noetic Consciousness (1981).

5. ———. 1981. Sensory and Noetic Consciousness. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint vol. III. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Edited by Oskar Kraus. English edition edited with a Preface by Linda L. McAlister; translated by Margarete Schättle and Linda L. McAlister.

"When, in 1911, Brentano allowed the second book of the Psychology to be re-issued under the title The Classification of Mental Phenomena, the text was reprinted in its original form because to do otherwise would have required extensive revisions, but many footnotes and a lengthy appendix were added by Brentano so that his mature thinking on the topics touched upon in the Psychology would be revealed.

In 1929; eleven years after Brentano’s death, his friend and editor, Oskar Kraus, compiled a collection of essays from Nachlass on topics relating to psychology. Kraus chose to call this volume Psychologie II as though it were the long-awaited third book of Brentano’s Psychology. In a way, this is how Kraus viewed it. The positions reflected in this volume, however, are those of Brentano’s later philosophical period, so the Psychologie III really does not constitute a direct continuation of the first two books of Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint at all. At best, it is a continuation of the Appendix to The Classification of Mental Phenomena. Kraus subtitled his collection Vom sinnlichen und noetischen Bewusstsein (On Sensory and Noetic Consciousness). In order to avoid the confusing implication of calling this work Psychologie III, | have chosen to entitle the English edition Sensory and Noetic Consciousness and subtitle it Psychology III for purposes of identification.

The present volume is a translation of Oskar Kraus’s 1929 collection.

It differs only in that I have edited certain portions of Kraus’s introductory remarks, especially those of a somewhat polemical nature in which he responds at length to the criticisms of some of his contemporaries, and which would be of interest largely to specialists in the history of early-twentieth-century German philosophy, but not to the general philosophical and psychological readership today. I have also abbreviated some of Kraus’s copious footnotes. In each case in which there is an omission, it is indicated in the text by an ellipsis." (From the Preface to the English Edition, p. VII)

6. ———. 1902. The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong. Westminster: A. Constable & Co.

Translated by Cecil Hague (now obsolete: see the new translation by Roderick M. Chisholm and Elizabeth H. Schneewind).

7. ———. 1969. The Origin of our Knowledge of Right and Wrong. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Edited by Oskar Kraus; English edition edited by Roderick M. Chisholm.

Translated by Roderick M. Chisholm and Elizabeth H. Schneewind.

Reprint: New York, Routledge, 2009.

"The first edition of Franz Brentano’s Vom Ursprung sittlicber Erkenntnis was published in 1889 by Duncker & Humblot in Leipzig. This was translated by Cecil Hague and published in 1902 by Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd., in London. A second edition, edited by Oskar Kraus, was published by Felix Meiner in Leipzig in 1921. This edition contained as Appendices nine supplementary essays from Brentano’s Nachlass, as well as an Introduction and explanatory notes by Kraus. A third revised edition, edited by Kraus, was published by Felix Meiner in 1934.

The present translation is a translation of Kraus’s third edition. It differs from Kraus’s edition in the following respects. It includes everything that Brentano had included in his first edition (Kraus had omitted the essay, “Miklosich on Subjectless Propositions,” since this was included in the second edition of Brentano’s Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, published by Felix Meiner in 1925). Some of Kraus’s notes and parts of the Introduction have been abbreviated, some of the notes have been omitted, and references have been brought up to date. I have added a few brief notes; these have my initials.

Two works that had not appeared when Kraus wrote his Introduction may be brought to the reader’s attention. One is Brentano’s Grundlegung und Aufbau der Ethik (Bern: A. Francke, 1952), edited by Professor Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand of Innsbruck. This book was prepared from Brentano’s notes for his lectures on Practical Philosophy, given at the University of Vienna from 1876 to 1894. It is now being translated into English by Elizabeth Schneewind. The other is Kraus’s own Die Werttheorien: Geschichte und Kritik (Brünn: Richard M.Rohrer, 1937). This is a most useful and informative discussion of the history of the theory of value up to the 1930’s, seen from the point of view of the book that is here translated.

The present translation, which is completely new, was prepared by Elizabeth Schneewind and myself. To avoid confusion, we have retained the title that Cecil Hague used for his translation of the first edition. We wish to thank Miss Linda L. McAlister for a number of helpful suggestions and criticisms." (Preface to the English Edition (by R. M. Chisholm))

8. ———. 1998. "The Four Phases of Philosophy and its Current State." In The Four Phases of Philosophy, edited by Mezei, Balasz M. and Smith, Barry. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"In what follows we shall introduce the English translation of what is perhaps Brentano's most important text on the history of philosophy. In our introduction, we shall analyze Brentano's conception of what he called "the four phases of philosophy"; we shall show the origin of his theory and the problems it was designed to address; and we shall demonstrate that Brentano's theory can be applied to at least one line in the history of philosophy after Brentano's time.

That Brentano developed his own theory of the history of philosophy is not widely known. This theory is summarized in a short essay entitled "The Four Phases of Philosophy", published in 1895 and translated here as an Appendix. Brentano believed that the history of philosophy displays a regularly recurring pattern and can thus be divided into successive periods, each of which can be considered as an organic whole of a precisely determined form.

Such periods are for instance the period of classical Greek philosophy ending with Aristotle, the medieval period up to but not including Descartes, and the period of modem philosophy beginning with Descartes and ending with Hegel and other classical 'German idealist' thinkers. In each such period, Brentano argues, four phases can be distinguished: the first phase is that of intensive philosophical development, of scientific results and scientific interest; the second phase is dominated by practical interest; the third phase is that of increasing scepticism which gives way, in the end, to a last phase, in which philosophy becomes a mere branch of literature which has no scientific relevance at all.

Brentano's theory of the history of philosophy is based on the idea that philosophy is a science, and that the method of philosophy is identical with the method of the other sciences. Philosophy is a science for two reasons. First, it has a determinate subject-matter, which is in Brentano's eyes the structure and function of human cognition; and second, it has a determinate method, which is in no way different from the method of the other sciences, both as concerns its logical coherence and rigour, and also as concerns the requisite clarity of its formulations." (pp. 1-2)

9. ———. 1978. Aristotle and His World View. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Edited and translated by Rolf George and Roderick M. Chisholm.

"In Brentano's scientific Nachlass there are more than 150 unpublished manuscripts and dictations pertaining to '' Aristotelica.'' He published five books in addition to articles and reviews, on Aristotle's philosophy.

The last of these is the present book, Aristoteles und seine Weltanschauung (1911), published six years before his death.

Brentano here sets forth what he takes to be the essential features of Aristotle's philosophy and to present them as a unified whole. He begins with Aristotle's ontology and his theory of the manifold sense of the term being; then he discusses theory of knowledge and in particular Aristotle's conception of what Leibniz was to call "the first truths of fact" and "the first truths of reason"; then he discusses the concepts of substance, matter, and form; and finally he turns to Aristotle's theology and his theory of man. The latter parts of the work are admittedly speculative."

(...)

"Aristotle states explicitly that God is " the first principle or primary thing."(4) In knowing himself, therefore, God knows the ultimate ground of the world. This means, according to Brentano's interpretation, that God has a priori knowledge of the world as a whole and of the necessity of every detail. Brentano defends the view that, according to Aristotle, the world is the best of all possible worlds and was created by God. "Parts of it," Brentano writes, "may seem to be defective when they are considered apart from the whole, but once they are viewed in connection they can be seen to be entirely as they ought to be.'' Brentano gives a plausible interpretation of those passages in Aristotle that may seem to suggest the contrary. This reconstruction of Aristotle's theology is not accepted by most contemporary commentators, but it seems to have been shared by Theophrastus, who was Aristotle's successor as head of the Peripatetic school." (R. M. Chisholm, Preface to the English eition, pp. VII-VII, a note omitted)

(4) This essay was originally intended for the work Grosse Denker, ed. by Dr. von Aster. Hence the attempt to condense everything. In the end the essay was still too long to be included as a whole. Very important sections which have there been omitted have again been added in this separate edition. (Ernst von Aster, ed., Grosse Denker, 2 vols. [Leipzig, 1912], 1, 153-208.)

10. ———. 1987. On the Existence of God. Lectures given at the Universities of Würzburg and Vienna (1868-1891). Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.

Edited and translated by Susan F. Krantz.

"Of the works by Franz Brentano (1838-1917) which have appeared in English thus far, perhaps none is better suited to convey a clear idea of the spirit of the man that this volume of his lectures on proving the existence of God. In order to understand his metaphysics, it would he better to read The Theory of Categories; in order to master the finer points of his psychology, it would be better to read Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint; in order to appreciate his ethical theory, it would be better to read The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong or, for a more thorough treatment, The Foundation and Construction of Ethics. But in order to see what it was that gave Brentano the enthusiasm and dedication to do all that work and much more besides, it is necessary to find out what Brentano believed the philosophical enterprise itself to be; and this comes forth most vividly when he bends his philosophical efforts to the subject he considered most important of all, namely, natural theology. For, like Socrates, Brentano brought a kind of religious fervor to his philosophy precisely because he saw it as dealing much better than religion does with the matters that are closest to our hearts.

The lectures on natural theology which appear here as compiled and edited by Alfred Kastil were delivered over a period that includes most of Brentano's teaching career, beginning when he was still a Roman Catholic priest lecturing at Wiirzburg and extending through much of his twenty years at Vienna.(1) That his interest in the subject was an abiding one is evidenced by the short essay included at the end of the book, which he dictated in 1915, just two years before his death. Naturally, the developments in his thinking on other subjects affected his thinking on the subjects of the existence of God and our knowledge of God. Thus in certain places Kastil has altered the text of the earlier lectures to conform to Brentano's later theories. Such passages are identified in the editorial notes which appear at the end ofthe text." (Introduction to the English Translation, by Susan F. Krantz, p. 1)

(1) For details about Brentano's life, see Kraus and Stumpf in The Philosophy of Brentano, Ed. Linda McAlister, (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press,1976).

11. ———. 1966. The True and the Evident. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Edited by Oskar Kraus.

English edition edited by Roderick M. Chisholm; translated by Roderick M. Chisholm, Ilse Politzer, and Kurt R. Fischer; Reprint: New York, Routledge, 2009.

"Franz Brentano’s Wahrheit und Evidenz, edited by Oskar Kraus of the University of Prague, was first published in 1930 by Felix Meiner at Leipzig. Professor Kraus compiled and edited the material and contributed an Introduction as well as extensive explanatory notes. The Introduction and notes are included in the present edition with certain minor alterations. No further introduction is needed, but certain features of the translation require brief comment.

Brentano divides mental phenomena, or states of consciousness, into three fundamental classes: Vorstelkn, Urteilen, and Gemütstätigkeiten, identifying these classes with what Descartes had called “ideas” (ideae), “judgements”, and “volitions or affections”. The most natural translation of “Vorstellung”, therefore, is “idea”, but “presentation” and “thought” are sometimes also used. The verb “vorstellen” is more difficult; it is here translated variously as “to think of”, “to contemplate”, and “to have before the mind”.

According to Brentano’s later view, set forth in Parts Three and Four, our states of consciousness take only realia as their objects. Realia is to be understood in contrast with irrealia—the pseudo-objects (according to Brentano) which may seem to be designated by such expressions as “the existence of God”, “the non-being of the round square”, “Socrates being mortal”, “that Socrates is mortal”, “redness”, “the absence of food”, and “nothing”.

A man who is thinking about a unicorn, however, is thinking about ein Reales, despite the fact that unicorns do not exist or have any other kind of being or reality. Hence “realities” and “real entities” are to be avoided as translations of realia and of the various German words (e.g. Realitäten) which Brentano uses as synonyms. “Things” would seem to be the best translation; “concrete things” has been avoided because it is not adequate for the expression of certain parts of Brentano’s theory of categories.

Judgements, then, have only things or realia as their objects, and not so-called “propositions” or “states of affairs”. The theist, for example, accepts or affirms God, and not the existence of God or the proposition that God exists. Brentano, therefore, does not use that-clauses or other propositional objects with his two verbs “anerkennen” and “leugnen”; these verbs are here translated by means of the disjunctive expressions, “accept or affirm” and “reject or deny”.

Judgements and feelings, according to Brentano, are either correct (richtig) or incorrect. And of those judgements and feelings that are correct, some are also als richtig charakterisiert. Since a literal translation of the latter expression would be entirely misleading, “seen to be correct” has been used instead. By reference to those judgements which the subject “sees to be correct”, Brentano constructs his theory of the true and the evident." (From the Preface to the English Edition by R. M. Chisholm), p. XI)

12. ———. 1981. The Theory of Categories. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Translated by Roderick M. Chisholm and Norbert Guterman.

"This book contains the definitive statement of Franz Brentano's views on metaphysics.

It is made up of essays which were dictated by Brentano during the last ten years of his life, between 1907 and 1917. These dictations were assembled and edited by Alfred Kastil and first published by the Felix Meiner Verlag in 1933 under the title Kategorienlehre. Kastil added copious notes to Brentano's text.

These notes have been included, with some slight omissions, in the present edition; the bibliographical references have been brought up to date.

Brentano's approach to philosophy is unfamiliar to many contemporay readers. I shall discuss below certain fundamental points which such readers are likely to find the most difficult. I believe that once these points are properly understood, then what Brentano has to say will be seen to be of first importance to philosophy." (From the Introduction to the Theory of Categories by Roderick M. Chisholm. p. 1)

13. ———. 1973. The Foundation and Construction of Ethics. New York: Humanities Press.

Compiled from His Lectures on Practical Philosophy by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand.

English Edition edited and translated by Elizabeth Hughes Schneewind.

Reprint: New York, Routledge, 2009.

"Franz Brentano’s Grundlegung und Aufbau der Ethik was published in 1952 by A. Franke in Bern. The book is based upon the notes which Brentano used for his lectures on practical philosophy at the University of Vienna from 1876 to 1894. The preparation of the book, which was begun by Professor Alfred Kastil, was completed after Kastil’s death by Professor Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand. This, the first English translation of the work, is one of a series of translations supported by the Franz Brentano Foundation under the general editorship of Professor Roderick M. Chisholm of Brown University. As of this writing, three other works have appeared in the series, all published by Routledge & Kegan Paul. They are The True and the Evident (trans. Chisholm, Politzer and Fischer; 1966), The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong (trans. Chisholm and Schneewind; 1969), and Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (trans. Rancurello, Terrell, and McAlister; 1972).

The present book is strictly a translation of the 1952 German edition. Professor Mayer-Hillebrand’s Foreword to that edition is included at the end. The numbered footnotes that appear throughout the text are hers; those with asterisks are mine." (From the Preface to the English Edition, p. X)

14. ———. 1988. Philosophical Investigations on Space, Time, and the Continuum. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Translated by Barry Smith.

Reprint: New York, Routledge, 2009.

"Analysis of the concepts of space and time and of the more general concept of a continuum is an essential part of natural philosophy and descriptive psychology. It was only natural, therefore, that Brentano occupied himself with these questions for the greater part of his life, from the time of his early efforts to set forth the Aristotelian philosophy to the final years of his life when, completely blind, he set forth his final views on what he called ‘descriptive psychology.’

The essays in the present volume are a selection from Brentano’s works on space, time and the continuum. None of them have previously been published in English translation.

Brentano had entrusted Alfred Kastil and Oskar Kraus with preparing his unpublished works for publication. Kastil had intended to publish selections from the works on space, time and the continuum in a single volume with an analytic table of contents, introduction and notes, but he died before he was able to complete the work.

In selecting the manuscripts for the present volume, we have emphasised those works that are primarily concerned with philosophical problems and that represent Brentano’s final views. We have tried to avoid unnecessary repetitions.

The basic features of Brentano’s theory may be found in the first selection (‘On what is continuous’); further details are added in the second selection (‘On the measure of what is continuous’). To understand this theory in its broad outlines, one should compare it both with the doctrine of Aristotle and with the classic mathematical theories of Cantor and Dedekind. The comparison with Aristotle is essential since, as almost always, Brentano begins with the views of Aristotle and then modifies them in far-reaching respects.

Comparison with the mathematical theories is essential in order to exhibit the details of Brentano’s view and to remove certain misunderstandings." (From the Editor's Introduction to the English Edition by Stephan Körner and Roderick M.Chisholm, p. IX, a note omitted).

15. ———. 1995. Descriptive Psychology. London: Routledge.

Edited and translated by Benito Müller.

"In the foreword to Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), Brentano said that the ethical views he set forth there belong to the ‘domain of thoughts of a “descriptive psychology” which I now dare to hope to be able to disclose to the public in its full extent in the not too distant future’.(27) Unfortunately, he did not publish a work entitled ‘Descriptive Psychology’, but many of his writings and dictations on the subject have been published in the various post-humous works in the Philosophische Bibliothek. And he gave several courses of lectures on the subject at the University of Vienna. Three different lecture manuscripts have been preserved.

The first of these was given in 1887–8 and was entitled Deskriptive Psychologie. The second, entitled Deskriptive Psychologie oder beschreibende Phänomenologie was given in 1888–9. (Although the term ‘Phänomenologie’ occurred in the title, it does not seem to have been used in the lectures themselves.) The third, entitled simply Psychognosie, was given in 1890–1. The main text of the present book is taken from the lecture of 1890–1.

The following material is added in the appendices: (1) the description of ‘inner perception’ from the lectures of 1887–8; (2) the general account of ‘descriptive psychology’ from the lectures of 1888–9; (3) ‘Of the Content of Experiences’ from the lectures of 1887–8; (4) ‘Psychognostic Sketch I’, from 1901; (5) ‘Psychognostic Sketch II’, also from 1901; and (6) an undated manuscript from the same general period entitled ‘Perceiving and Apperceiving’." (From the Introduction by Roderick M. Chisholm, Wilhelm Baumgartner and Benito Müller, pp. XV-XVI, two notes omitted)

(27) F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis, 3rd ed., Oskar Kraus (ed.), Hamburg: Meiner, 1969, p. 3.

16. ———. 1960. "The Distinction between Mental and Physical Phenomena." In Realism and the Background of Phenomenology, edited by Chisholm, Roderick M., 39-61. Atascadero: Ridgeview.

Selection from Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt vol. I Book II chapter 1.

17. ———. 1960. "Presentation and Judgment Form. Two Distinct Fundamental Classes." In Realism and the Background of Phenomenology, edited by Chisholm, Roderick M., 62-70. Atascadero: Ridgeview.

Selection from Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt vol. I Book II chapter 7.

18. ———. 1960. "Genuine and Fictitious Objects." In Realism and the Background of Phenomenology, edited by Chisholm, Roderick M., 71-75. Atascadero: Ridgeview.

Selection from Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt vol. II Supplementary Essay IX.

19. ———. 2021. The Teaching of Jesus and Its Enduring Significance. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Translated by Richard Schaefer.

Contents: Part I. Richard Schaefer: Introduction: Brentano’s The Teaching of Jesus 100 Years Later: An Historical Introduction 1; Part II. Franz Brentano: The Teaching of Jesus and Its Enduring Significance 21; Appendix: Christian Doctrine: A Short Outline of Its Essential Content 111; Index 119-122.

"Whoever reads Brentano’s The Teaching of Jesus today will find in it the record of a life devoted to the pursuit of wisdom as a sacred enterprise. This was at the core of Brentano’s life from the very beginning to the very end, and it drove both his entry into the priesthood and his departure from it. Simply put, Brentano believed that the noblest thing one could do is to try to understand God and his creation. To be sure, much of what Brentano says in these texts might seem terse and underdeveloped, more like the résumé of conclusions drawn than a concerted effort at laying out all of the relevant facts and considerations requisite to making a full and complete argument. This stems, in part, from the fact that the book was prepared in the very last days of Brentano’s life, and culled from texts he had drafted in multiple and different circumstances.(29) It was not the product of a singular sustained effort whose goal was to explicate all of the failings of Christianity in a systematic way, but a guide for those who were already on their way to seriously doubting the truth of Christian teachings. It was not aimed at attacking people of faith, but of reassuring those who had already begun to lose it, reassuring them of the validity of their doubts and recasting their very experience of doubt as pleasing to God.(30) Though Brentano did not put the matter in exactly those terms, he was hopeful that “if providence” had set him on “a rough and thorny path,” he might be reconciled to it if he was able to help “others to avoid similar obstacles and suffering.” (Introduction, pp. 15-16)

(29) It is important to remember too that Brentano was almost entirely blind in the last years of his life, and relied on his second wife to transcribe much of what he wanted to write.

(30) Brentano’s genuine desire to be helpful and supportive to those struggling with their religious doubts is evident in his correspondence with Anton Marty and Hermann Schell, to name just a few.

20. Tănăsescu, Ion, Bejinariu, Alexandru, Krantz Gabriel, Susan, and Stoenescu, Costantin, eds. 2022. Brentano and the Positive Philosophy of Comte and Mill. Berlin: de Gruyter.

With Translations of Original Writings on Philosophy as Science by Franz Brentano.

Contents: Appendix: The Idea of Philosophy as Science in Brentano Habilitation Theses 1866 433; Auguste Comte and Positive Philosophy 1869 437; Introduction to the Concept of the History of Philosophy 457; On the Law of Historical Development 475; Philosophy of the History of Philosophy 485; On the Reasons for a Loss of Confidence in the Area of Philosophy 489; On Schelling’s Philosophy 501; On the Future of Philosophy 523; My Parting Wishes for Austria 1894 571-590. Index 591; Authors 591; Subject 598-616.

21. Brentano, Franz. 2020. "Ontologische Fragen/Ontological Questions: A Treatise from Franz Brentano’s Manuscripts." In Franz Brentano’s Philosophy After One Hundred Years: From History of Philosophy to Reism, edited by Fisette, Denis, Fréchette, Guillaume and Janoušek, Hynek, 261-340. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Edited and Translated by Robin D. Rollinger.

"The treatise that is published here is based on a manuscript that Brentano dictated in 1908 and is kept under the section M 35 in the Houghton Library at Harvard University in Harvard."

(...)

"This particular treatise has been selected because it is the lengthiest and most substantial elaboration of Brentano’s ontology (and also to some extent his epistemology) at the end of a long period of gestation during the early twentieth century (from about 1902–1908).(9) The ontology in question has been labeled “reism” (a term that Brentano himself does not use) because it does not allow for any other entities besides things, i.e. real entities which are either souls or bodies. Brentano had been corresponding extensively for a number of years with his student, Anton Marty, then a professor of the German Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague and teacher of Kastil, as well as with others who came to represent Brentano’s philosophy, most notably with Oskar Kraus." (p. 265)

(9) For documentation of this period see the letters and texts that are published in Brentano (1966a: 101–191, 323–267).

References

Brentano, Franz. 1966a. In Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen, ed. F. Mayer-Hillebrand. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.

22. Fisette, Denis, and Fréchette, Guillaume, eds. 2013. Themes from Brentano. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Contents: Expositions and Discussions. Selected Materials and Translations.

Denis Fisette: Introduction 359; Thomas Binder: There and Back Again. An Updated History of Franz Brentano’s Unpublished Papers 369; Franz Brentano: Abstraction and Relation, followed by Selected Letters to Marty 419; Guillaume Fréchette: Editorial Remarks: 421; Franz Brentano: Modern Errors concerning the Knowledge of the Laws of Inference 501; Franz Brentano: Moderne Irrthümer über die Erkenntnis der Gesetze des Schließens 513.

Index of Names 525-530.

23. Brentano, Franz. 1982. "The Brentano-Vailati correspondence." Topoi no. 1:3-29.

Edited by Roderick Chisholm and Michael Corrado.

"The Brentano letters -- with the exception of portions of that dated 24 March 1900 -- have not previously been published (4). The Vailati letters are translated from the Italian text of the Epistolario, edited by Giorgio Lanaro (Turin, 1971). Certain passages in Brentano's letters have been put between square brackets. These passages appeared as footnotes in Brentano's letters. All footnotes in the present edition are by the editors. In addition to the letters we have translated here, there are several brief letters from each writer to which no known reply has been preserved.

We add, as an Appendix, the original versions of Brentano's letters. The original versions of Vailati's letters may be found in the Scritti di Giovanni Vailati." (p. 3)

French translations

1. Brentano, Franz. 1992. Aristote. Les diverses acceptions de l’être. Paris: Vrin.

Traduction de Pascal David.

2. ———. 2004. "Sur Aristote." In Aristote au XIX siècle, edited by Thouard, Denis, 295-312. Villeneuve d'Asq Cédex: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.

3. ———. 2008. Psychologie du point de vue empirique. Paris: Vrin.

Traduction par Maurice de Gandillac; nouvelle édition revue et présentée par Jean-François Courtine (première édiiton: Paris, Aubier, 1944).

4. ———. 2009. "Deux études de psychologie descriptive." Annales de Phénomenologie no. 8:181-204.

Traduction et Introduction de Antonio Mazzù pp. 181-182; Psychognosie et psychologie génétique, pp. 183-190; "Éléments de la conscience" pp. 191-204.

Extrait de Deskriptive Psychologie. Aus dem Nachlass herausegegeben und eingeleitet von Roderick M. Chisholm und Wilhelm Baumgartner, Felix Meiner, Hamburg, 1982, pp. 1-27.

5. ———. 2017. Psychologie descriptive. Paris: Gallimard.

6. ———. 2003. L'origine de la connaissance morale suivi de La doctrine du jugement correct. Paris: Gallimard.

Traduit de l'allemand par Marc de Launay et Jean-Claude Gens.

Préfacé par Jean-Claude Gens.

7. ———. 2018. Essais et conférences I. Sur l’histoire de la philosophie. Paris: Vrin.

Choix des textes, traduction et révision sous la direction de Denis Fisette et Guillaume Fréchette.

8. ———. 2021. Essais et conférences II. La philosophie et ses ramifications. Paris: Vrin.

Choix des textes, traduction et révision sous la direction de Denis Fisette et Guillaume Fréchette.

Italian translations

1. Brentano, Franz. 1995. Sui molteplici significati dell'essere secondo Aristotele. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

Prefazione, introduzione, traduzione dei testi greci, progettazione e impostazione editoriale di Giovanni Reale; traduzione del testo tedesco e indici di Stefano Tognoli.

2. ———. 2007. La psicologia di Aristotele con particolare riguardo alla sua dottrina del nous poietikos. Con un'appendice sull'operare del Dio aristotelico. Macerata: Quodlibet.

A cura e con un saggio introduttivo di Stefano Besoli.

Nuova edizione interamente riveduta e corretta (Prima edizione: Bologna, Pitagora, 1989).

3. ———. 1913. La classificazione delle attività psichiche. Lanciano: Carabba.

Con appendice dell'Autore e con prefazione e note del traduttore Mario Puglisi.

4. ———. 1989. Psicologia dal punto di vista empirico. Trento: Reverdito.

Traduzione del primo volume a cura di Lilana Albertazzi (ristampata nella traduzione completa in tre volumi pubblicata da Laterza nel 1997).

5. ———. 1997. La psicologia dal punto di vista empirico. Bari: Laterza.

A cura di Liliana Albertazzi.

Vol. I; Vol. II: La classificazione dei fenomeni psichici; Vol. III: Coscienza sensibile e coscienza noetica.

6. ———. 1966. Sull'origine della conoscenza morale. Brescia: La Scuola.

Traduzione, introduzione e note di Adriano Bausola.

7. ———. 1986. "Ciò che dobbiamo elogiare nella filosofia di Thomas Reid." Annali di discipline filosofiche dell'Università di Bologna:5-23.

8. ———. 2014. La prova dell'esistenza di Dio. Roma: Castelvecchi.

Titoli originali: Aus einem Briefe Franz Brentanos an einen Agnostiker iiber Sicherheit und Bedeutung der theistischen Weltanschauung (1909);Gedankengang beim Beweise fiir das Dasein Gottes (1915).

Testi tratti da Vom Dasein Gottes, a cura di A. Kastil, Felix Meiner Verlag, Leipzig, 1929.

Traduzione dal tedesco di Nicola Zippe!.

9. ———. 2014. Aristotele e la sua visione del mondo. Firenze: Le Lettere.

10. ———. 2022. Elementi di estetica. Brescia: Morcelliana.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on Franz Brentano: Studies in English, First Part: A - Bar

Bibliographical resources

1. Paolo Gregoretti. 1983. Franz Brentano. Bibliografia completa (1862-1982), Trieste,:Università degli Studi.

Contents: I. Works by Franz Brentano 7; II. translations 21; III. Studies on Brentano 25; Index of Authors 81-87.

2. Wilhelm Baumgartner and F. P. Burkard. 1990. Franz Brentano Bibliographie in: International Bibliography of Austrian Philosophy 1982/83 - Internationale Bibliographie zur osterreichischen Philosophie - Compiled with assistance of Thomas Binder, Jutta Valent, Helmut Werba, Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Contents: Teil I / Part I. 1. W. L. Gombocz: Vorwort 7; Literaturhinweis zur IBÖP / Bibliographical Notes 13; 2. Bildnis / Portrait: Franz Brentano 16; 3. W. Baumgartner, F.-P. Burkard: Franz Brentano. Eine Skizze seines Lebens und seiner Werke 17; 4. W. Baumgartner, F.-P. Burkard: Franz-Brentano-Bibliographie 54; 5. Hinweise für den Gebrauch der Bibliographie und register 161; 6. How to use Bibliography and Index 166-170.

3. Liliana Albertazzi. 2006. Immanent Realism. An Introduction to Brentano, Dordrecht: Springer.

Bibliographic notes pp. 341-354.

Bibliography

1. "Die Philosophie Franz Brentano." 1978. Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 5.

Special Issue. Contributions to the Brentano-Konferenz Graz, 4-8 September 1977 (Edited by Roderick Chisholm and Rudolf Haller).

Studies in English: Edgar Morscher: Brentano and his place in Austrian philosophy 1; George Katkov: The world in which Brentano believed he lived 11; Burnham Terrell: Quantification and Brentano's logic 45; Dagfinn Føllesdal: Brentano and Husserl on intentional objects and perception 83; Herbert Spiegelberg: On the significance of the correspondence between Franz Brentano and Edmund Husserl 95; Peter Geach: Intentionality of thought versus intentionality of desire 131; Elizabeth Anscombe: Will and emotion 139; Paul Weingartner: Brentano's criticism of the correspondence theory of truth and the principle "Ens et verum convertuntur" 183; Roderick M. Chisholm: Brentano's conception of substance and accident 197; Rolf George: Brentano's relation to Aristotle 249-266.

2. "The Descriptive Psychology of the Brentano School." 1987. Topoi no. 6:1-64.

Guest editors: Roderick Chisholm and Rudolf Haller.

Contents: R. M. Chisholm and R. Haller: Introduction 1; Klaus Hedwig: Brentano's Hermeneutics 3; Stephan Körner: On Brentano's Objections to Kant's Theory of Knowledge 11; Heiner Rutte: On the Problem of Inner Perception 19; Peter M. Simons: Brentano's Reform of Logic 25; Barry Smith: The Substance of Brentano's Ontology 39; Enzo Melandri: The 'Analogia Entis' According to Franz Brentano: A Speculative-Grammatical Analysis of Aristotle's 'Metaphysics' 51; Roderick M. Chisholm: Brentano's Theory of Pleasure and Pain 59-64.

3. "The School of Brentano and Husserlian Phenomenology." 2003. Studia Phaenomenologica no. 3.

Contents: Ion Tănăsescu, Victor Popescu: Introduction 9; Wilhelm Baumgartner: Franz Brentano, "Grossvater" der Phänomenologie 15; Jocelyn Benoist: Quelques remarques sur la doctrine brentanienne de l'évidence 61; Ion Tanasescu: Ist die Empfindung intentional? Der Brentanosche Hintergrund einer Kritik Husserls 75; Klaus Hedwig: "Inseln des Unglücks". Die Stellung des Schlechten im Summationsprinzip der Güter. Aristoteles-Brentano-Katkov 99; Victor Popescu: Espace et mouvement chez Stumpf et Husserl. Une approche méréologique 115; Claudio Majolino: Le différend logique: jugement et énoncé. Eléments pour une reconstruction du débat entre Husserl et Marty 135; Dale Jacquette: Meinong on the Phenomenology of Assumption 155; Carlo Ierna: Husserl on the Infinite 179; Robin Rollinger: Husserl's Elementary Logic. The 1896 Lectures In Their Nineteenth Century Context 195; Bernhardt Waldenfels: Zwischen Sagen und Zeigen. Überlegungen zu Husserls Theorie der okkasionellen Ausdrücke 215; Bruce Bégout: Percevoir et juger. Le rôle de la croyance originelle (Urdoxa) dans la phénoménologie du jugement de Husserl 229-270.

4. "Brentano's Concept of Intentionality. New Assessments." 2015. Brentano Studien no. 13.

Edited by Guillaume Fréchette.

Contents: Guillaume Fréchette: Introduction. Brentano’s Conception of Intentionality: New Facts and Unsettled Issues 9; Mauro Antonelli: Franz Brentano’s Intentionality Thesis. A New Objection to the “Nonsense that was Dreamt up and Attributed to him” 23; Carlo Ierna: Improper Intentions of ambiguous objects: Sketching a New Approach to Brentano’s Intentionality 55; Arkadiusz Chrudzimski: Intentional Objects and Mental Contents 81; Klaus Hedwig: „eine wesentliche Umbildung“. Über die Transformation der Intentionalität bei Brentano 121; Cyril McDonnell: Understanding and Assessing “Brentano’s Thesis” in Light of His Modification of the Scholastic Concept of Intentionality 153; Hamid Taieb: Relations and Intentionality in Brentano’s Last Texts 183; Ion Tănăsescu: The two Theories of Intentionality in Brentano and the Program of Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint 211; Klaus Hedwig: Buchrezension: María del Carmen Paredes Martín, Teorías de la intencionalidad 233; Wilhelm Baumgartner: Buchrezension: Ion Tanasescu (Hg.), Franz Brentano’s Metaphysics and Psychology. Upon the sesquicentennial of Franz Brentano’s Dissertation 243-257.

5. "Brentano." 2017. The Monist no. 100.

Contents: Johannes L. Brandl: Was Brentano an Early Deflationist About Truth? 1; Anna Giustina: Conscious Unity from the Top Down: A Brentanian Approach 15; Olivier Massin and Marion Hämmerli: Is Purple a Red and Blue Chessboard? Brentano on Colour Mixtures 37; Michelle Montague: A Contemporary View of Brentano’s Theory of Emotion 64; Kevin Mulligan: Brentano’s Knowledge, Austrian Verificationisms, and Epistemic Accounts of Truth and Value 88; Jonas Olson: Two Kinds of Ethical Intuitionism: Brentano’s and Reid’s 106; Hamid Taieb: Intentionality and Reference: A Brentanian Distinction 120; Mark Textor: From Mental Holism to the Soul and Back 133-154.

6. "Special Symposum: New Work on Brentano." 2023. European Journal of Philosophy no. 31:337-523.

Contents: Guillaume Fréchette and Hamid Taieb: Descriptive psychology: Franz Brentano's project today 337; Charles Siewert: Why we need descriptive psychology 341; Johannes L. Brandl: Why we need descriptive psychology 358; Denis Seron: Experiencing the a priori 371; Anna Giustina: Introspective acquaintance: An integration account 380; Arnaud Dewalque: Introspective acquaintance: An integration account 398; Guillaume Fréchette: Why does it matter to individuate the senses: A Brentanian approach 413; Hamid Taieb: Brentano on the individuation of mental acts 431; Michelle Montague: Brentano's theory of intentionality 445-454.

Book Symposium: Brentano's Philosophical System: Mind, Being, Value by Uriah Kriegel.

Uriah Kriegel: Précis of Brentano's Philosophical System 445; Angela Mendelovici: Brentano on phenomenal and transitive consciousness, unconscious consciousness,and phenomenal intentionality 458; Jonas Olson: Kriegel on Brentano on value and fi ttingness 479; Uriah Kriegel: Brentano on consciousness, intentionality, value, will, and emotion: Reply tosymposiasts 486-493.

7. Albertazzi, Liliana. 1989. "Brentano and Mauthner's Critique of Language." Brentano Studien no. 2:145-157.

Abstract: "Though different in methodological approach to language, Brentano and Mauthner share a similar background: Positivism, Aristotelian studies, empiricist psychology, anti-Kantian stance. The critique of language marks the point of significant convergence: Brentano's emphasis of reism and nominalism goes together with (1) his descriptive-semasiologic critique of language as a logical doctrine of categories, and (2) his critique of language as a genetic semasiology, both bound by the view of the intentional nature of language. It is pointed out at lights that and how the component of genetic semasiology in Brentano allows comparison with the communicative, pragmatic and performative perspective of Mauthner's Sprachkritik due to a shared emphasis on the rhetorical force of language."

8. ———. 1993. "Brentano, Twardowski, and Polish Scientific Philosophy." In Polish Scientific Philosophy: The Lvov-Warsaw School, edited by Coniglione, Franco, Poli, Roberto and Wolenski, Jan, 11-40. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"It is not an easy task to give a clear and brief summary of the thought of Franz Bentano, because of the shifting nature of its development and the complexity of its subject-matter. However, mention should be made of certain themes which constantly recur in his work: first, his Aristotelean inheritance(27) in particular his examination of the doctrine of the categories; second. his Cartesian choice of the evidence of inner perception of psychic phenomena, and his complementary notion of the mediated - and therefore not immediately evident - perception of outer perception, i.e. of physical phenomena. Third, his view of psychology as a discipline of high ontological value(28): a psychology of the act rather than of contents, and at the same a descriptive psychology or psychognosis(29). Brentano defined his descriptive psychology as an exact science and a pure psychology(30) seeking to analyse the elements of psychic life and the laws that govern it(31). This definition is particularly important because it gave rise to a whole series of taxonomies of psychic behaviour as variously developed in Husserlian phenomenology, Meinong's theory of objects, Marty's linguistic theories, Ehrenfcls' and Stumpf s school researches in Gestaltpsychologie." (pp. 13-14, notes abbreviated)

(27) Brentano's thought is part of the Aristotelean Renaissance which was the work of the commentaries on Aristotle by Bonitz, Tricot and Schwegler, the Geschichle der Kategorienlehre by Trendelenburg, Prantl's history of logic and Steinthal's studies in linguistics, but it was also a result of the influence of Hegel. Brentano saw Aristotle as mediating between predominantly metaphysical interests and problems of theoretical psychology (...)

(28) Note that although Brentano's original interest lay in metaphysics rather than in psychology, his descriptive psychology had considerable ontological valency. At Wiirzburg Brentano mainly taught metaphysics, history of philosophy and deductive and inductive logic; he only began lecturing in psychology in the summer of 1871. Cf. C. Stumpf, "Erinnerungen an Franz Brentano", in 0. Kraus. Franz Brentano. Zur Kenntnis seines Lebens und seine Lehre, mil Beiträgen v·on Carl Stumpf und Edmund Husserl, (Munich: Beck, 1919). (...)

(29) The term 'descriptive' in the psychology and philosophy of this period embraces a variety of conceptions. One of the first to introduce the term 'descriptive' (beschreibend) in the sciences (in mathematics} was Kirchhoff. where be used it in contrast with 'explicative' (erklärend}. In Brentano. 'descriptive' (deskriptiv) has the specific meaning of 'morphological' merely classificatory. (...)

(30) F. Brentano, Deskriptive Psychologie. (ed.} W. Baumgartner and R.M. Chisholm, (Hamburg: Meiner, 1928).

(31) The fact that Brentano's descriptive psychology is a reine Psychologie demonstrates that it is essentially a theoretical science, entirely distinct from physiology.

9. ———. 1993. "Brentano, Meinong and Husserl on Internal Time." Brentano Studien no. 3:89-110.

Abstract: "Brentano's Descriptive Psychology marks a breakthrough into clarification of internal time, made possible by using his doctrine of intentionality (and modality) of consciousness. Husserl's version of descriptive psychology, a pure phenomenological psychology, according to its author tries to overcome Brentano's (naturalistic) description of internal experience by explicitly considering the intentional content of mental events, and the different categories of objects as objects of a possible consciousness. Husserl's investigations on internal time are an example of a quite specific sort of genetic inquiry, complementary to the descriptive one. Meinong, when discussing the relation of representation and perception of time, differentiates between the time as given in a representation (act time), in different sorts of (Meinongian) objects (object time), and in contents (content time). These questions of a Brentanist temporality problem are reconsidered and brought to a Husserlian conclusion."

10. ———. 1998/9. "The phenomenon of time in Brentanist tradition." Brentano Studien no. 7:163-192.

11. ———. 2003. "Franz Brentano's psychology today. A programme of empirical and experimental metaphysics." Brentano Studien no. 10:107-118.

Abstract: "In this article I try to emphasise the following three main points:

1. Brentano's metaphysics is not speculative; it is instead a programme for scientific research. 2. Some components of his metaphysics, especially those relating to the problem of perceptive continua -- and many aspects of it developed experimentally by his pupils -- are today discussed not only by philosophy but also by the cognitive sciences, more or less accurately, more or less consciously. 3. Some areas of the cognitive sciences express the need for a scientifically -- even neurophysiologically -- founded theory of intentionality."

12. ———. 2004. "The Psychophysics of the soul. Aristote and Brentano." In Aristote au XIX siècle, edited by Thouard, Denis, 249-275. Villeneuve d'Asq Cédex: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.

"Brentano’s studies on Aristotle are of a complexity such that they can be analysed along various dimensions:

1. Environmental (specifically, the relationship between Brentano and the exponents of the Aristotelian revival, in particular Zeller, Prantl, Trendelenburg and Bonitz).

2. Psychological (the connections between psychology and physiology, the problem of the intensity of the sensations and their measurement, the debate on intensive and extensive magnitudes, etc.).

3. Metaphysical (in particular, the theme of being with regard to the categories and the relationship between being-in-potency and being-in-act, between accident and substance, and the problem of the continua).

4. Logico-ontological (the theme of being with regard to true or false being, accidental being, etc.).

These various dimensions are interconnected, so that analysis of Brentano’s writings furnishes a sort of ‘diorama’ on the Aristotelian themes .addressed by the nineteenth century’s Aristotelian Renaissance.

This essay examines a number of aspects relative to psychology and, to some extent, metaphysics which distinguish not only the thought of Brentano but also that of his school - as regards both descriptive psychology and experimental psychology.

Specifically, Brentano’s book The Psychology of Aristotle marks his shift of interest from metaphysical questions to problems of a gnoseological and psychological nature, although these latter are still presented in the form of commentary on, and interpretation of, Aristotle’s theories. The book acts as a prelude to Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint(9) Brentano best-known work, and it also marks the point at which Brentano’s interest turned to psychophysical questions.

In this paper, after a brief overview of Aristotle’s theory of the soul (in particular of the sensitive soul) — which constitutes Brentano’s conceptual framework — I shall outline Brentano’s psychological theories. I shall then examine his specific conceptions, focusing on the difference between psychic phenomena and physical phenomena, and on the part/whole relation which characterizes the former. The Brentano texts to which I shall refer are The Psychology of Aristotle, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, and Descriptive Psychology." (pp. 249-250, notes omitted)

13. ———. 2006. Immanent Realism: An Introduction to Brentano. Dordrecht: Springer.

Contents: Acknowledgements IX; Terminological Note XI; Introduction 1; Chapter 1. A Life. A Novel 5; Chapter 2. Brentano and Aristotle 43; Chapter 3. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint 83; Chapter 4. Metaphysics and the Science of the Soul 123; Chapter 5. A woodworm in the Intentional Relation 155; Chapter 6. Ficciones 189; Chapter 7. Continua 233; Chapter 8. Reverse Aristotelianism: Metaphysics of Accidents 269; Chapter 9. Other Writings: Ethics, Aesthetics and History of Philosophy 295; Chapter 10. A History of Brentano Criticism 313; Chapter 11. A Wager on the Future 335; Bibliographic Notes 341; References 355; Index of Names 373-378.

"This ‘Introduction to Brentano’ is primarily aimed at conceptual interpretation even though it has been written with scrupulous regard to the texts and sets out its topics according to their chronological development."

(...)

"This book is not an introduction to all the themes treated by Brentano, since this would be beyond its scope. Moreover, even less does it claim to be definitive.

The idea of writing this introduction to the thought of Brentano sprang from a theoretical exigency, namely to argue for a more defendable form of realism, and from the conviction that, at the moment, a categorial apparatus able to handle the problems raised by contemporary science is lacking, in particular in cognitive science. The various forms of direct and indirect realisms are, in my opinion, inadequate to deal with the problems addressed by contemporary cognitive science. I believe, instead, that Brentano’s immanentist realism, with its sophisticated architecture, is a framework that can be applied and developed in various areas of scientific inquiry: for example, psychophysics and theory of perception, semantics, aesthetics, and more generally, the theory of consciousness (see L. Albertazzi ed., Unfolding Perceptual Continua, Amsterdam, Benjamins Publishing Company 2002). Brentano’s realism can oppose both the theory of Cartesian Theatre and the neuroreductionist proposal as well, and it is also a framework able to establish the scientific legitimacy of metaphysics (see L. Albertazzi ed., The Dawn of Cognitive Science. Early European Contributors, Dordrecht, Kluwer 2000). The book therefore pays close attention to Brentano’s writings on psychology and metaphysics.

No reader of Brentano can fail to be astonished by the multiplicity of the disciplinary references to be found in his thought and writings. Consequently, although this introduction privileges themes of psychology and metaphysics, it also takes account of Brentano’s other writings, especially those on language." (pp. 1-2)

14. ———. 2006. "Retrieving intentionality. A Legacy from the Brentano School." In The Lvov-Warsaw School: The New Generation, edited by Jadacki, Jacek Juliusz and Pasniczek, Jacek, 291-314. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"The expression ‘actus mentis’ then has a metaphysical connotation and as such constituted the basis of Franz Brentano’s theory of intentional reference, which became the standard source for subsequent and even contemporary citations on intentionality (Brentano 1874).

Brentano, moreover, despite the widely held belief to the contrary, did not develop a thoroughgoing theory of intentionality, but rather one in only embryonic form, and especially in his unpublished writings. A thoroughgoing theory of intentionality, in fact, must fulfil a number of conditions, namely:

(1) The moment-now of the intentional presentation must extend through a continuing set of durations which comprise fringes of the past and of the future contents.

(2) Distinctions must be made among the various ways in which the psychic act is directed towards an object.

(3) The relation between psychic act, object and content must be reconstructed, with a precise distinction being drawn between their distinctive parts.

A modern version of a theory of intentionality of this type, which focuses on the relationship between act, object and content, has been developed in Poland by Twardowski, a pupil of Brentano. Twardowski’s theory was then resumed by Husserl with some modifications which accentuated the feature of temporal dynamicity.(2) Bearing these developments of Brentano’s theory in mind, the argument that I wish to develop below is the following:

(1) Reference to a theory of intentionality is much more complex than the currently canonical versions employed by analytic philosophy.

(2) It can serve the purposes of cognitive science and in particular the development of an empirical-experimental theory of cognitive space (see Albertazzi 2002)." (pp. 291-292)

(Note 2) The first outline of a theory of intentionality, in fact, is to be found in an essay written by Husserl in 1894, Intentionale Gegenstände, in reply to a question raised by Twardowski in §§ 13 and 14 of his (1894). On this, see Schuhmann (1993), Albertazzi (1993).

References

Albertazzi, L. (1993). Brentano, Twardowski and Polish Scientific Philosophy. In: Coniglione et al., eds. (1993), pp. 11-40.

Albertazzi, L. (2002). Towards a Neo-Aristotelian Theory of Continua: Elements of an Empirical Geometry. In: L. Albertazzi (ed.), Unfolding Perceptual Continua, pp. 29-79. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Brentano, F. (1874). Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte. Leipzig: Duncker & Humbolt. English translation: Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973).

Coniglione, F., R. Poli and J. Wole?ski, eds. (1993). The Scientific Philosophy of the Lvov-Warsaw School. Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, vol. 28. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Husserl, E. (1990/1). Intentionale Gegenstände. [1894] Edited by K. Schuhmann. Brentano Studien 3, 137-176. [English translation: Intentional objects, in Edmind Husserl, Early wWritings in the Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1994, pp. 344-378]

Schuhmann, K. (1993). Husserl and Twardowski. In: Coniglione et al., eds. (1993), pp. 41-58. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Twardowski, K. (1894). Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen. Edited by R. Haller. München-Wien: Philosophia Verlag, 1982. English translation: On the Content and Object of Presentations (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977).

15. ———. 2018. "Brentano's Aristotelian Concept of Consciousness." In The Bloomsbury Companion to the Philosophy of Consciousness, edited by Jacquette, Dale, 27-56. New York: Bloomsbury.

"Developing a science of consciousness per se as proposed by Brentano (Brentano 1995b, 4–5) is a great endeavour and challenge for current research. In fact, starting from the analysis and description of conscious experience, one should re-define the qualities classically considered to be primary, such as the attributes of physics, like shapes, size, motion and the like, in the qualitative terms of ‘voluminousness’, ‘remoteness’, ‘solidness’, ‘squareness’ and so on, all of which are relational, distributed qualities of what is perceived. One has to bracket off the correlated psychophysical and/or neurophysiological inquiries and develop an autonomous science of qualities. For the time being, we still do not know how life emerged from an inanimate being, and we also do not know how consciousness arises from unconscious entities. We nevertheless have evidence of both. Moreover, we know at least some of the relations of dependence among the different levels of reality (Hartmann 1935; Poli 2001, 2012). It seems to be more productive and scientifically honest to recognize the existence of different realms, categorically different phenomena, governed by specific laws, and enjoying equal ontological dignity, instead of reducing all types of reality to the one we presently know better, or are supposed to know better, that is physical being. Future discoveries may allow us to know more about the complete nature of reality. Within this framework, consciousness is part and parcel of nature, and it is given to us phenomenologically or, as Brentano would have said, in phenomenal presence." (pp. 47-48)

References

Brentano, F. (1995b). Descriptive Psychology, edited by B. Müller, London: Routledge (1st German ed. 1982, edited by R. M. Chisholm and W. Baumgartner, Hamburg: Meiner).

Hartmann, N. (1935). Ontologie (4 Vols), I: Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, Berlin-Leipzig: de Gruyter. [English translation: Ontology: Laying the Foundations, Berlin: de Gruyter 2019]

Poli, R. (2001). ‘The Basic Problem of the Theory of Levels of Reality’, Axiomathes, 12 (3–4), 261–83.

Poli, R. (2012). ‘Nicolai Hartmann’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nicolai-hartmann/

16. Albertazzi, Liliana, Libardi, Massimo, and Poli, Roberto, eds. 1996. The School of Franz Brentano. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analytical table of Contents IX; Foreword by The Editors XV; Introduction. Liliana Albertazzi, Massimo Libardi, Roberto Poli: Brentano and his School: reassembling the puzzle 1; 1. Massimo Libardi: Franz Brentano (1838-1917) 25; Part I: The pupils 81; 2. Liliana Albertazzi: Anton Marty (1847-1914) 83; 3. Karl Schuhmann: Carl Stumpf (1848-1936) 109; 4. Dale Jacquette: Alexius Meinong (1853-1920) 131; 5. Reinhard Fabian: Christian von Ehrenfels (1859-1932) 161; 6. Liliana Albertazzi: Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) 175; 7. Roberto Poli: Kazimierz Twardowski (1866-1938) 207; Part II: Topics and influences 233; 8. Wilhelm Baumgartner: Act, content and object 235; 9. Johannes Brandl: Intentionality 261; 10. Paolo Bozzi: Higher-order objects 285; 11. Peter Simons: Logic in the Brentano School 305; 12. Barry Smith: Logic and the Sachverhalt 323; 13. Roberto Poli: Truth theories 343; 14. Jan Wolenski: Reism in the Brentanist tradition 357: 15. Luigi Dappiano: Theories of values 377; 16. Liliana Albertazzi: From Kant to Brentano 423; Index of Topics 465; Index of names 467-477.

"The central idea developed by the contributions to this book is that the split between analytic philosophy and phenomenology - perhaps the most important schism in twentieth-century philosophy - resulted from a radicalization of reciprocal partialities. Both schools of thought share, in fact, the same cultural background and their same initial stimulus in the thought of Franz Brentano. And one outcome of the subsequent rift between them was the oblivion into which the figure and thought of Brentano have fallen.

The first step to take in remedying this split is to return to Brentano and to reconstruct the 'map' of Brentanism.

The second task (which has been addressed by this book) is to revive interest in the theoretical complexity of Brentano's thought and of his pupils and to revitalize those aspects that have been neglected by subsequent debate within the various movements of Brentanian inspiration.

We have accordingly decided to organize the book into two introductory essays followed by two sections (Parts 1 and 2) which systematically examine Brentano's thought and that of his followers. The two introductory essays reconstruct the reasons for the 'invisibility', so to speak, of Brentano and set out the essential features of his philosophical doctrine. Part 1 of the book then examines six of Brentano's most outstanding pupils (Marty, Stumpf, Meinong, Ehrenfels, Husserl and Twardowski). Part 2 contains nine essays concentrating on the principal topics addressed by the Brentanians.

In order to facilitate cross-referencing between the various essays contained in the book, each chapter concludes with a table giving the other points in the book where the same topics are dealt with." (Foreword by the Editors).

17. Alves, Pedor M. S. 2019/20. "The Not Always Conscious Mind. A Reappraisal of Brentano's Theses." Brentano Studien no. 16:195-226.

Abstract: "In this article I discuss the three Brentanian theses of intentionality, self- consciousness, and the unity of consciousness. Regarding the first two, I argue that there is a shift in the meaning of consciousness when one passes from the first to the second, and I conclude that the best reading of self-consciousness is an intransitive one, opposing the strong transitive sense of the first thesis. Based on that, I examine whether there are non- conscious psychical acts or states . Disagreeing with Brentano, I present an empirical argument for the establishment of non-conscious psychical acts or states . Based on that, I construe the Brentanian thesis of the secondary object, presented by an intentio obliqua, as a process of time-constitution of the actuality of psychical, conscious life . Finally, I address the issue of unity of simultaneity of consciousness, presenting it in light of this new framework. Throughout the paper, especially in the first and last sections, I contrast the Aristotelian psyche-soma distinction with the modern mind- body dualism, trying to account for Brentano’s rather complex stance vis- à-vis one and the other."

18. Antonelli, Mauro. 2003. "Franz Brentano, the "Grandfather of Phenomenology" and the Spirit of the Times." In Phenomenology World-Wide: Foundations - Expanding Dynamics - Life-Engagements. A Guide for Research and Study, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 11-29. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"Brentano, teacher of Husserl

In the literature on Husserl there is a marked tendency to interpret the thought of the founder of phenomenology in the light of his later works, particularly focusing on The Crisis of European Sciences, which deals with the fundamental concept of Lebenswelt, as well on the themes of passive synthesis and intersubjectivity, which were central concerns of this phase. Another dominant approach tends to view phenomenology purely in terms of transcendental phenomenology, a concept systematically developed in Ideas I of 1913, the text that most clearly reveals the closeness of Husserl to neo-Kantian movements.

While undoubtedly legitimate, such approaches presuppose the presence of some immanent directive idea driving the development of Husserl's entire work and, in so doing, tend to impose corresponding directive criteria for its comprehension and interpretation. They therefore underplay the slow and complex evolution of the founder of phenomenology, the conceptual work to which he submitted his early ideas, and his continual effort to give them more precise definition and radically greater depth.

This is even more true in considering the initial phase of Husserl 's work, which preceded and paved the way for Logical Investigations, a phase when the influence of his teacher Franz Brentano was strong and decisive. The fact that it was later dismissed by Husserl himself as being "psychologistic", does not justify its removal or neglect.

On the contrary, it must be evaluated historically in terms of the preparatory stage for the development of a line of thinking that would lead, through the above-mentioned work of conceptual clarification and investigation, to an increasingly precise definition of the sphere of action of phenomenology.

In the light of such remarks, we intend to review some of the crucial points along the philosophical itinerary traveled by Brentano, the man whom Husserl considered "my one and only teacher in philosophy" and from whose lessons the then youthful mathematician "first acquired ... the conviction that philosophy, too, is a field of serious endeavor, and that it too can-and in fact must-be dealt in rigorous scientific manner". (Husserl, 1919, 154; translation, 48)

The outstanding feature of Brentano's philosophical propositions, which surfaces in the work of all his pupils, is the attribution of an essentially philosophical value to psychological investigation, which is in tum the basis for the revival and renewal of philosophy as a scientific discipline, whose crisis he imputes to the abandonment of the empirical method of research and the surrender to the speculative temptations typifying idealistic philosophy.

It is in the singular blend of Aristotelian, Cartesian and Empiricist elements permeating this project that we uncover a series of decisive ideas which, critically perceived, were to influence profoundly the work of HusserI." (p. 11)

References

Husserl, E. 1919. "Erinnerungen an Franz Brentano", in Kraus: 1919, 153-167. Eng. trans. in McAlister: 1976, 47-55.

Kraus, 0. (ed.) 1919. Franz Brentano. Zur Kenntnis seines Lebens und seiner Lehre. Miinchen: Beck.

McAlister, L. L. (ed.) 1976. The Philosophy of Brentano. London: Duckworth.

19. ———. 2015. "Franz Brentano’s Intentionality Thesis. A New Objection to the “Nonsense that was Dreamt up and Attributed to him”." Brentano Studien no. 13:23-53.

Abstract: "Brentano’s thesis of intentionality has been traditionally interpreted as a theory of the “intentional relation”, i.e., of the (ordinary binary) relation between the mental act and its intentional or “immanent” object. This ob ject is immanent in the sense that it is in fact contained in the mind, and with an ontological status that is distinct from that of the transcendent, existent or non-existent object. On the basis of Brentano’s Aristotelian- Scholastic sources, especially Aristotle’s perception theory and his theory of relativa, the author rejects the view of the immanent object as a con- sciousness-immanent, ontologically diminished entity and highlights the continuity which exists between Brentano’s earlier and later (the so-called reistic) view of intentionality."

20. ———. 2017. "In Search of Lost Substance. Brentano on Aristotle's Doctrine of Categories." Brentano Studien no. 15:173-228.

Abstract: "Brentano’s doctoral dissertation 'On the Manifold Senses of Being in Aristotle' (1862) takes up Aristotle’s ontology and theory of categories in order to show that a realistic ontology requires the interweaving of factual being and its adequate logical expression. The scheme of categories manifests itself on a grammatical-linguistic level – as Trendelenburg pointed out – , but it is grounded in the variety and multiplicity characterising the level of real things – as Aquinas held. The logic-linguistic side of the categories is thus dependent on the ontological and founded by it. Brentano’s first book thus has two main interpretative sources, one which is fundamental but hidden, the other more explicit but superficial: the first is Thomas Aquinas – for Brentano as a young catholic seminarian, of course, 'sine Thomas mutus esset Aristoteles' – , the second Adolf Friedrich Trendelenburg, his Berlin teacher and leader of the Aristotelian revival in Protestant Germany. The Thomist influence lead Brentano to propose a univocal reading of the Aristotelian ontology, allowing that deduction of the categories from the general concept of being, that Aquinas had already worked out during the Middle Ages. Considering the Aristotelian ontological framework compatible with a deductive trend, which was aimed at bringing the equivocal nature of being back to an analogical structure, Brentano forced, at least partially, an interpretation that would be particularly appreciated by Heidegger, to the point that according to him it is due to Brentano that “the systematic impact of Aristotelian philosophy begins”. This Thomist influence is also analysed through a comparison between the printed version of the dissertation and its preliminary version, dating back to 1861, which is preserved as a manuscript in Brentano’s Nachlass (Werkmanuskripte, Frühe Schriften, Ms. 16)"

21. ———. 2022. "Consciousness and Intentionality in Franz Brentano." Acta Analytica no. 37:301-322.

Abstract: "The paper argues against the growing tendency to interpret Brentano’s conception of inner consciousness in self-representational terms. This trend has received support from the tendency to see Brentano as a forerunner of contemporary same-order theories of consciousness and from the view that Brentano models intransitive consciousness on transitive consciousness, such that a mental state is conscious insofar as it is aware of itself as an object. However, this reading fails to take into account the Brentanian concept of object, which is ultimately derived from ancient and medieval philosophy, as well as the secondary, elusive character that Brentano attributes to inner perception. According to Brentano, we have an aspectual but transparent consciousness of transcendent objects, whereas our awareness of our own mental acts is always complete but incidental, and ultimately opaque. Reversing the relationship between intentionality and consciousness faces difficulties at the textual interpretative level, but also raises theoretical problems, for it risks treating Brentano’s theory of mind as a form of subjectivism and idealism."

22. Antonelli, Mauro, and Binder, Thomas, eds. 2021. The Philosophy of Brentano: Contributions from the Second International Conference Graz 1977 & 2017, in Memory of Rudolf Haller. Leiden: Brill Rodopi.

Contents: Mauro Antonelli and Thomas Binder: Editors’ Introduction 1; Mauro Antonelli: In Memory of Rudolf Haller (1929–2014) 7;

Part 1: Brentano’s Philosophical Program

Wolfgang Huemer: Was Brentano a Systematic Philosopher? 11; Denis Fisette: Remarks on the Architecture of Brentano’s Philosophical Program 28; Susan Krantz Gabriel: Brentano on Kant’s Transcendental Idealism 50;

Part 2: Ontology

Werner Sauer: Beobachtungen zur Deduktion der Kategorien in Brentanos Dissertation 73; Laurent Cesalli: Medieval and Austro-German Realisms: Universals and States of Affairs 117;

Part 3: Psychology

Denis Seron: Psychology First! 141; Johannes L. Brandl and Mark Textor: ‘Disentangling Judgement from Its Linguistic Clothing’: Brentano’s View of Judgement and Its Linguistic Guises 156; Ion Tănăsescu: Franz Brentano and Anton Marty: Two Versions of Descriptive Psychology? 179; Hamid Taieb: Brentano on the Characteristics of Sensation 192; Bernhard M. Geißler: Der Einfluss Franz Brentanos auf Sigmund Freud: Der Versuch eines umfassenden ideengeschichtlichen Arguments 209;

Part 4: Philosophy of Mind

Mauro Antonelli: Selbst-Repräsentation und Phänomenale Intentionalität bei Brentano: Eine kritische Stellungnahme 231; Christiane Schreiber: Was versteht Brentano in der Intentionalitätspassage unter einem Objekt eines psychischen Phänomens? 250; Johann C. Marek: Brentano und Meinong: Versuch einer dokumentarischen Gegenüberstellung 263;

Part 5: Logic, Ethics, Religion, and Politics

Carlo Ierna: Brentano as a Logicist 301; Robin D. Rollinger: Brentano and von Ehrenfels on Emotion, Desire, and Absolute Value: An Extreme Contrast in Austrian Phenomenology 312; Klaus Hedwig: Die Transformation des Glaubens beim frühen Brentano 328; Adrian Maître: Zum psychologischen Gottesbeweis bei Franz Brentano 351; Thomas Binder: Eine politische Wissenschaft gibt es noch nicht: Einige Bemerkungen zu Franz Brentanos Verhältnis zur Politik 368;

Index of Names 389-395.

23. Antonelli, Mauro, and Boccaccini, Federico, eds. 2019. Franz Brentano: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers. Vol. 1: Sources and Legacy. New York: Routledge.

Contents: Acknowledgements; General introduction; Introduction to volume 1

Part 1. Brentano’s Life and Work

1. Mario Puglisi, ‘Franz Brentano: A Biographical Sketch’, The American Journal of Psychology, 35, 3, 1924, 414–419.

2. John Passmore, extract from ‘The Movement towards Objectivity’, in Hundred Years of Philosophy (London: Duckworth, 1957), pp. 175–181.

3. Herbert Spiegelberg, ‘Franz Brentano (1838–1917): Forerunner of the Phenomenological Movement’, in The Phenomenological Movement. A Historical Introduction, (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1960.

Second revised edition 1978. Third expanded edition with the collaboration of Karl Schuhmann, 1982), pp. 27–50.

Part 2. Brentano and Aristotle

4. Rolf George and Glen Koehn, ‘Brentano’s Relation to Aristotle’, in D. Jacquette (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Brentano (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 20–44.

First published in Grazer Philosophische Studien, 5, (1978) 197–210.

5. John L. Ackrill, ‘Review of F. Brentano, The Psychology of Aristotle (in Particular His Doctrine of the Active Interest)’, Classical Review, 29, 1, 1979, 165.

6. Barry Smith, ‘The Soul and Its Parts: A Study in Aristotle and Brentano’, Brentano Studien. Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung, 1, 1988, 75–88.

7. Jonathan Barnes, ‘Review of F. Brentano, Über Aristoteles’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 49, 1, 1988, 162–167.

8. Susan F. Krantz, ‘Brentano’s Argument Against Aristotle for the Immateriality of the Soul’, Brentano Studien. Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung, 1, 1988, 63–74.

9. Mauro Antonelli, ‘In Search of Lost Substance: Brentano on Aristotle’s Doctrine of Categories’, revised and enlarged translation of ‘Auf der Suche nach der Substanz. Brentanos Stellung in der Rezeption der Aristotelischen Ontologie im 19. Jahrhundert’, Brentano Studien. Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung, 1990/91, 19–46.

10. Richard Sorabji, ‘From Aristotle to Brentano: The Development of the Concept of Intentionality’, in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary Volume: Aristotle and the Later Tradition, edited by H.

Blumenthal & H. Robinson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 227– 259.

11. Enrico Berti, ‘Brentano and Aristotle’s Metaphysics’, in R. W. Sharples (ed.), Whose Aristotle? Whose Aristotelianism? (Aldershot: Ashgate, 20011), pp. 135–149.

12. Werner Sauer, ‘Being as the True: From Aristotle to Brentano’, in D. Fisette and G. Fréchette (eds.), Themes from Brentano, (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2013), pp. 193–226. Revised version by the author for the volume.

Part 3. Brentano on Medieval and Modern Philosophy

13. Herbert Spiegelberg, ‘"Intention" and "Intentionality" in the Scholastics, Brentano and Husserl’, in L. L. McAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Brentano, (London: Duckworth, 1976), pp. 108–127. Originally published in Studia Philosophica, 29, 1970, 189-216.

14. Etienne Gilson, ‘Franz Brentano’s Interpretation of Medieval Philosophy’, in L. L. McAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Brentano, (London: Duckworth, 1976), pp. 56–67. Originally published in Mediaeval Studies, 1, 1, 1939, 1–10.

15. Ausonio Marras, ‘Scholastic Roots of Brentano’s Conception of Intentionality’, in L. L. McAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Brentano, (London: Duckworth, 1976), pp.128–139. Originally published in.Rassegna di Scienze Filosofiche, 1, 1974, 213–226.

16. Richard Aquila, ‘Brentano, Descartes, and Hume on Awareness’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 35, 2, 1974, 223–239.

17. Dieter Münch, ‘Brentano and Comte’, Grazer Philosophische Studien, 35, 1989, 33–54.

Part 4. Legacy

18. Carl Stumpf, ‘Reminiscences of Franz Brentano’, in L. L. McAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Brentano, (London: Duckworth, 1976), pp.10–46. Originally published in O. Kraus (ed.), Franz Brentano. Zur Kenntnis seines Lebens und seiner Lehre, (Munich: Beck, 1919), pp. 85–149.

19. Edmund Husserl, ‘Reminiscences of Franz Brentano’, in L. L. McAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Brentano (London: Duckworth, 1976), pp. 47–55. Originally published in O. Kraus (ed.), Franz Brentano. Zur Kenntnis seines Lebens und seiner Lehre, (Munich: Beck, 1919), pp.151–167.

20. Alexius Meinong, [‘Reminiscences of Franz Brentano’], extracts from ‘Meinong’s Life and Work’, in R. Grossmann Meinong (London: Routledge, 1974 [1921]), pp. 230–232.

21. Martin Heidegger, ‘Letter to Richardson’, in W. J. Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1963), pp. X–XI.

22. John C. M. Brentano, ‘The Manuscripts of Franz Brentano’, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 20, 78, 1966, 477–482.

23. Michael Dummett, ‘The Legacy of Brentano’, in Origins of Analytical Philosophy, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 28–42.

24. Roderick M. Chisholm and Michael Corrado, ‘The Brentano-Vailati Correspondence’, Topoi, 1, 1982, 3–7.

25. Barry Smith, ‘Austrian Philosophy and the Brentano School’, in Austrian Philosophy: The Legacy of Franz Brentano, (Chicago/La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1994), pp. 7–30.

26. Dariusz Łukasiewicz, ‘Polish Metaphysics and the Brentanian Tradition’, in Sandra Lapointe, Jan Wolenski, Mathieu Marion and Wioletta Miskiewicz (eds), The Golden Age of Polish Philosophy: Kazimierz Twardowski's Philosophical Legacy (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2009), pp. 19-31.

24. ———, eds. 2019. Franz Brentano: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers. Vol. 2: Intentionality and Philosophy of Mind. New York: Routledge.

Contents: M. Antonelli, F. Boccaccini: Introduction to volume 2;

Part 5. Psychology

27. Robert Flint, ‘Review of F. Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt’, Mind, 1, 1, 1876, 116–122.

28, Théodule Ribot, ‘Brentano’, in German Psychology of Today: The Empirical School, translated from the second French edition by J. M. Baldwin, (New York: Schribner, 1886), pp. 295–300.

29. William James, ‘On Brentano’, extract in The Principles of Psychology (Cambridge, Massachusetts/London, England: Harvard University Press, 1981 [1980]), vol. 1, pp. 185-191.

30. George F. Stout, ‘On Brentano', extracts from Analytic Psychology, vol. 1 (London/New York: Mcmillan & Co., 1896), pp. 40–42; pp. 106–111; pp. 116–120.

31. H. T. Watt, ‘Review of F. Brentano, Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie’, Mind, 17, 65, 1908, pp. 128–129.

32. Paul Natorp, ‘Brentano’, trans. R. D. Rollinger, in Allgemeine Psychologie nach kritischer Methode (Tübingen: Mohr, 1912), pp. 241–245.

33. Martin Heidegger, ‘Review of F. Brentano, Von der Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene (1914)’, trans. R. D. Rollinger, Literarische Rundschau für das katholische Deutschland, 40, 5, 1914, 233–234.

34. Edward B. Titchener, ‘Brentano and Wundt: Empirical and Experimental Psychology’, American Journal of Psychology, 32, 1, 1921, 108–120.

35. Edward B. Titchener, ‘Review of F. Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt’, American Journal of Psychology, 36, 2, 1925, 303–304.

36. Edwin G. Boring, ‘Franz Brentano’, in A History of Experimental Psychology (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1929/1950), pp. 356–361.

37. Raymond E. Fancher, ‘Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint and Freud’s Early Metapsychology’, Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences, 13, 3, 1977, 207–227.

38.Ernst Sosa, ‘Review of Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint III’, Canadian Philosophical Reviews/Revue Canadienne de Comptes Rendus en Philosophie, 4, 1, 1984, pp. 6–8.

Part 6. Intentionality

39. Alexius Meinong, ‘Object and Content’, in Marie-Luise Schubert Kalsi, Alexius Meinong on Objects of Higher Order and Husserl’s Phenomenology (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1978), pp.141–143.

40. Edmund Husserl, ‘Appendix: External and Internal Perception: Physical and Physical Phenomena’, from Logical Investigations, translated by J.N. Findlay from the second German edition of Logische Untersuchungen; with a new preface by Michael Dummett; and edited with a new introduction by Dermot Moran, (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 335-348.

41. Ludwig Wittgenstein, ‘Brentano’, in Gordon Backer (ed.), The Voices of Wittgenstein: The Vienna Circle (London: Routledge, 2003 [1930]), pp. 443–451.

42. Roderick M. Chisholm, ‘Intentional Inexistence’, in L. L. McAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Brentano, (London: Duckworth, 1976), pp. 140–150. Originally published in Perceiving: A Philosophical Study (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1957) pp. 168–185.

43. Linda L. McAlister, ‘Chisholm and Brentano on Intentionality’, in L. L. McAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Brentano, (London: Duckworth, 1976), pp.151–159. Originally published in Review of Metaphysics, 28, 2, 1975, 328–338.

44. Dagfinn Føllesdal, ‘Brentano and Husserl on Intentional Objects and Perception’, Grazer Philosophische Studien, 5, 1978, 83–94.

45. Roderick M. Chisholm, ‘The Formal Structure of the Intentional: A Metaphysical Study’, Brentano Studien. Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung, 3, 1990/91, 11–17.

46. Dermot Moran, ‘Brentano’s Thesis’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, 70, 1996, 1–27.

47. Tim Crane, ‘Brentano’s Concept of Intentional Inexistence’, in M. Textor (ed.), The Austrian Contribution to Analytic Philosophy (London/New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 20–35.

48. Guillaume Fréchette, ‘Brentano’s Thesis (Revisited)’, in D. Fisette and G. Fréchette (eds.), Themes from Brentano (Studien zur österreichischen Philosophie, vol. 44, (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2013), pp. 91–119.

49. Mauro Antonelli, ‘Franz Brentano’s Intentionality Thesis. A New Objection to the "Nonsense that was Dreamt up and Attributed to Him"’, Brentano Studien. Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung, 13, 2015, 23–53.

Part 7. Philosophy of Mind

50. Max Scheler, ‘Illusion and Internal Perception’, extract from The Idols of Self-Knowledge in D. R. Lachterman (ed and trans.), Selected Philosophical Essays (Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press, 1973), pp. 17-29. Translated from the German "Die Idole der Selbsterkenntnis", in Vom Umsturz der Werte, 4 ed. rev., Gesammelte Werke III (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1955), pp. 215-292.

51. Bertrand Russell, [‘Brentano’s Analysis of Mind’], extract in The Analysis of Mind, (London/New York: Allen & Unwin-Mcmillan, 1921), pp. 14–16; 142–143, 246-247.

52. Charles W. Morris, ‘Mind as Intentional Act. Brentano and the Historical Background’, in Six Theories of Mind (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1932), pp.149–152.

53. Reinhardt Grossmann, ‘Acts and Relations in Brentano’, Analysis, 21, 1, 1960/61, 1–5.

54. Reinhard Kamitz, ‘Acts and Relations in Brentano: A Reply to Prof. Grossmann’, Analysis, 22, 4, 1961/62, 73–78.

55. Jaegwon Kim, ‘Materialism and the Criteria of the Mental’, Synthese, 22, 3, 1971, 323–345.

56. Elisabeth Anscombe, ‘Will and Emotion’, Grazer Philosophische Studien, 5, 1978, 139–148.

57. Roderick M. Chisholm, ‘Brentano’s Analysis of the Consciousness of Time’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 6, 1, 1981, 3–16.

58. Kevin Mulligan and Barry Smith, ‘Franz Brentano on the Ontology of Mind’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 45, 4, 1985, 627–644.

59. David Bell, ‘Self-evidence, Self-knowledge, and Self-perception’, in Husserl, (London, Routledge, 1990), pp. 23–28.

60. Roderick M. Chisholm, ‘Brentano on "Unconscious Consciousness"’, in R. Poli (ed.), Consciousness, Knowledge and Truth: Essays in Honour of Jan Srzednicki, (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993), pp. 153–159.

61. Amie L. Thomasson, ‘After Brentano: A One-Level Theory of Consciousness’, European Journal of Philosophy, 8, 2, 2000, 190–209.

62. Uriah Kriegel, ‘Consciousness as Intransitive Self-Consciousness: Two Views and an Argument’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 33, 1, 2003, 103–132, plus epilogue.

63. Dan Zahavi, ‘Back to Brentano?’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 11, 10–11, 2004, 66–87.

64. Federico Boccaccini, ‘Brentano’s Use of Mental Act’ (original contribution for the volume).

25. ———, eds. 2019. Franz Brentano: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers. Vol. 3: Metaphysics, Logic, Epistemology. New York: Routledge.

Contents: M. Antonelli, F. Boccaccini: Introduction to volume 3;

Part 8. Theory of Categories

65. Oskar Kraus, ‘On Categories, Relations and Fictions’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 42, 1941/42, 101–116.

66. Roderick M. Chisholm, ‘Brentano’s Conception of Substance and Accident’, Grazer Philosophische Studien, 5, 1978, 197–210.

67. Andrew Burgess, ‘Review of F. Brentano, The Theory of Categories’, The Thomist, 48, 3, 1984, 493–497.

68. Barry Smith, ‘The Substance of Brentano’s Ontology’, Topoi, 6, 1, 1987, 39–49.

69. Peter M. Simons, ‘Brentano’s Theory of Categories: A Critical Appraisal’, Brentano Studien. Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung, 1, 1988, 47–61.

Part 9. Reism

70. Tadeusz Kotarbinski, ‘Franz Brentano as Reist’, trans. Linda L. McAlister and Margarete Schattle in L. L. McAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Brentano, (London: Duckworth, 1976), pp. 194–203.

Originally published as ‘Franz Brentano comme réiste’, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 20, 78, 1966, 459–476.

71. D. B. Terrell, ‘Brentano’s Argument for Reismus’, in L. L. McAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Brentano (London: Duckworth, 1976), pp. 204–212. Originally published in Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 20, 78, 1966, 446–458.

72. Jan Wolenski, ‘Reism in the Brentanist Tradition’, in L. Albertazzi, M. Libardi and R. Poli (eds.), The School of Franz Brentano (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996), pp. 357–375.

73. Arkadiusz Chrudzimski and Barry Smith, ‘Brentano’s Ontology: FromConceptualism to Reism’, in D. Jacquette (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Brentano (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 197–219.

Part 10. Logic and Language

74. Jan P. N. Land, ‘Brentano’s Logical Innovations’, Mind, 1, 2, 1876, 289–292.

75. Wilhelm Windelband, ‘Contributions to the Theory of Negative Judgement’, trans. R. D. Rollinger, Strassburger Abhandlungen zur Philosophie. E. Zeller zu seinem 70. Geburtstag. (Freiburg i.Br./Tübingen, 1884), pp. 165-195.

76. Martin Heidegger, ‘Judgement Characterised as a Basic Class of Psychical Phenomena (Franz Brentano, Anton Marty)’, trans. R. D. Rollinger, in Die Lehre vom Urteil im Psychologismus: Ein kritischpositiver

Beitrag zur Logik (Leipzig: Barth, 1914), pp. 57–66.

77. Hugo Bergmann, ‘Brentano’s Theory of Induction’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 5, 2, 1944/45, 281–292.

78. Jan T. J. Srzednicki, ‘Some Elements of Brentano’s Analysis of Language and their Ramifications’, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 20, 78, 1966, 434–445.

79. Peter Geach, ‘The Hume-Brentano-Gilson Thesis’, extract in Logic Matters (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972), pp. 263–267.

80. Roderick M. Chisholm, ‘Brentano’s Theory of Judgement’, in Brentano and Meinong Studies, (Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi, 1982), pp. 17–36.

81. Peter M. Simons, ‘Brentano’s Reform of Logic’, Topoi, 6, 1, 1987, 25–38.

82. David Bell, ‘A Brentanian Philosophy of Arithmetic’, Brentano Studien. Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung, 2, 1989, 139–144.

83. Marietje van der Schaar, ‘Brentano on Logic, Truth and Evidence’, Brentano Studien. Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung, 10, 2003, 113–142.

Part 11. Epistemology

8. Moritz Schlick, ‘On Evidence’, extracts in General Theory of Knowledge, trans. by A. E. Blumberg; with an introduction by A. E. Blumberg and H. Feigl, (New York: Springer, 1974 [1918]), pp. 39–44, 82–90, 147–161.

845. Wolfgang Stegmüller, ‘Critical Empiricism: Franz Brentano’, trans. R. D. Rollinger in Hauptströmungen der Gegenwartsphilosophie 1 ed. (Wien/Stuttgart: Humboldt-Verlag, 1952), pp. 45–88.

86. Stephan Körner, ‘On Brentano’s Objections to Kant’s Theory of Knowledge’, Topoi, 6, 1, 1987, 11–17.

87. Jan Wolenski, ‘Brentano’s Criticism of the Correspondence Conception of Truth and Tarski’s Semantic Theory’, Topoi, 8, 1, 1989, 105–110.

26. ———, eds. 2019. Franz Brentano: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers. Vol. 4: Ethics, Aesthetics, Religion. New York: Routledge.

Contents: M. Antonelli, F. Boccaccini: Introduction to volume 4;

Part 12. Ethics and Value Theory

88. George E. Moore, ‘Review of F. Brentano, The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong’, International Journal of Ethics, 14, 1, 1903, 115–123.

89. George E. Moore, ‘Preface’, in Principia Ethica (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1960 [1903]), pp. vii-xii.

90. Max Scheler, ‘The Non-Formal A Priori in Ethics’, in Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. A New Attempt toward the Foundation of an Ethical Personalism, translated from the German 5 ed. rev., Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1966) by M. S. Frings and R. L. Funk, (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973 [1916]), pp. 81–91.

91. Howard O. Eaton, ‘Brentano’s Empirical Psychology’, in The Austrian Philosophy of Values (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press,1930), pp. 15–39.

92. William D. Ross, ‘Brentano and the Foundations of Ethics’, extract in Foundations of Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), pp. 279–283.

93. Everett W. Hall, ‘Is Value the Being an Object or a Right Love?’, extract in What is Value? An Essay in Philosophical Analysis (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952), pp. 94–112.

94. John N. Findlay, ‘Review of F. Brentano, Grunlegung und Aufbau der Ethik’, The Philosophical Review, 63, 3, 1954, 432–435.

95. Gabriel Franks, ‘Was G. E. Moore Mistaken About Brentano?’, in L. L. McAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Brentano (London: Duckworth, 1976), pp.182–193. Originally published in The New Scholasticism,

43, 2, 1969, 252–268.

96. John N. Findlay, ‘Brentano and the Axiological Ethics’, extract in Axiological Ethics, (London: Macmillan, 1970), pp. 16–24.

97. Linda L. McAlister, ‘The Development of Brentano’s Later Ethical Theory’, in The Development of Franz Brentano’s Ethics (Elementa, vol. 27), (Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi, 1982), pp. 141–167.

98. Roderick M. Chisholm, ‘Correct Emotion’, in Brentano and Intrinsic Value (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 47–58.

99. Roderick M. Chisholm, ‘The Hierarchy of Values’, in Brentano and Intrinsic Value (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 59–67.

100. Sven Danielsson and Jonas Olson, ‘Brentano and the Buck-Passers’, Mind, 116, 463, 2007, 511–522.

Part 13. Aesthetics, History, Religion

101. Mario Puglisi, ‘Wisdom and Religion According to Franz Brentano’, The Personalist, 16, 1935, 68–72.

102. George Katkov, ‘The Pleasant and the Beautiful’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 40, 1939/40, 177–206.

103. Roderick M. Chisholm, ‘Review of F. Brentano, Religion und Philosophie’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 16, 3, 1955/56, 439– 440.

104. Rush Rhees, ‘Review of F. Brentano, Religion und Philosophie’, Mind, 66, 262, 1957, 274–276.

105. Hugo Bergman, ‘Brentano on the History of Greek Philosophy’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 26, 1, 1965, 94–99.

106. Andrew J. Burgess, ‘Brentano as Philosopher of Religion’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 5, 2, 1974, 79–90.

107. Andrew J. Burgess, ‘Brentano’s Evolving God’, The New Scholasticism, 55, 1, 1981, 438–449.

108. Roderick M. Chisholm, ‘Brentano’s Theory of Pleasure and Pain’, Topoi, 6, 1, 1987, 59–64.

109. Lynn Pasquerella, ‘Brentano and Aesthetic Intentions’, Brentano Studien. Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung, 4, 1992/93, 235–249.

110. Rudolf Haller, ‘Remarks on Brentano’s Aesthetics’, trans R. D. Rollinger, in Brentano Studien. Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung, 5, 1994, 177–186.

111. Eberhard Tiefensee, ‘Philosopy and Religion in the Work of Franz Brentano’, trans. R. D. Rollinger, in E. Coreth, W. Ernst and E. Tiefensee (eds.), Von Gott reden in säkularer Gesellschaft, (Leipzig: Benno Verlag, 1996), pp. 175–195.

112. Peter Simons, ‘The Four Phases of Philosophy: Brentano’s Theory and Austrian’s History’, The Monist, 83, 1, 2000, 68–88.

113. Werner Sauer, ‘Erneuerung der Philosophia Perennis: Über die ersten vier Habilitationsthesen Brentanos’, Grazer Philosophische Studien, 58–59, 2000, 119–149.

114. Susan F. Krantz Gabriel, ‘Brentano on Religion and Natural Theology’, in D. Jacquette (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Brentano (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 237–254.

115. Richard Schaefer, ‘Infallibility and Intentionality: Franz Brentano’s Diagnosis of German Catholicism’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 68, 3, 2007, 477–499.

Index.

27. Aquila, Richard. 1974. "Brentano, Descartes, and Hume on Awareness." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 35:223-239.

"In an important sense, however, Brentano's real significance - or at least his real historical significance - does not turn upon either of these issues. For suppose that we grant that sensory experiences are mental but nonintentional phenomena, and that linguistic events are intentional but nonmental phenomena. Even if both of these things are so, we would still need to draw a clear distinction between any mental event which is intentional and the object of that event. And we must insist with Brentano that, with the exception of some special cases, the object of any mental event could not itself be something mental. The major force, I believe, of Brentano's concern with intentionality does not lie merely in his concern for some general distinction between mental and nonmental phenomena, although such a distinction was naturally of importance to him. Of at least as great an importance is the distinction which Brentano requires that we draw, once we have acknowledged the intentionality of conscious ness, between mental phenomena and, whether they be a "reality" or not, the objects of such phenomena. The object of ordinary sensory awareness, for example, is never in any literal sense something which has a merely mental status, not even in cases where that object is the sheerest of illusions or hallucinations. The object is, even in such cases as these, a purely physical phenomenon. The historical force of these points will become clear, I think, once we have set them incontrast with a certain "classical" approach that has been taken to the problem of awareness. This approach is provided by what we may call the "content theory" of awareness. This is a theory which, as I shall point out later, was in fact broadly influential among Brentano's contemporaries in psychology." (pp. 224-225)

28. ———. 1982. "Intentional objects and Kantian appearances." Philosophical Topics no. 12:9-37.

"Fairly obviously, Kant's epistemology raises questions concerning the intentionality, or the "object-directed" character, of perception.

It is, as one might therefore expect, fruitful to consider Kant's views in comparison with some of those of Franz Brentano. This, it turns out, is no mere exegetical device, for it is not unreasonable to suggest that precisely the originality of Kant's approach to perceptual awareness lies in his anticipation of a point of view characteristic of the later thinker.

Brentano's thesis, for the purpose of this discussion, does not involve his claim that all psychological states are intrinsically object-directed. Kant in fact appears to reject that claim, for he appears to share with Husserl the view that mere "sensations" constitute an exception to it. The relevant Brentanian thesis may be stated by restricting our attention to those sensory states which, in the opinion of all parties, are object-directed, namely, ordinary perceptions, or Kantian (empirical) intuitions (as opposed to the mere "sensations" ingredient in those intuitions). The thesis concerns a particular sense in which each such state is, in its intrinsic character, an object-directed state. Each, namely, is object-directed in a way that is logically independent of the ascription of ontological status to any object of that state." (p. 9, notes omitted)

29. Arnaud, Richard B. 1975. "Brentanist Relations." In Analysis and Metaphysics: Essays in Honor of R. M. Chisholm, edited by Lehrer, Keith, 189-208. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

"A single passage from Franz Brentano's Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint has, in the century since its publication, spawned more than its share of mythological beasts, mathematical monsters and philosophical treatises. It runs:

... Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the scholastics of of the Middle Ages called the intentional (and also mental) inexistence (Inexistenz) of an object (Gegenstand), and what we could call, although in not entirely unambiguous terms, the reference to a content, a direction upon an object (by which we are not to understand a reality in this case), or an immanent objectivity. Each one includes something as object within itself, although not always in the same way. In presentation something is presented, in judgment something is affirmed or denied, in love [something is] loved, in hate [something] hated, in desire [something] desired, etc.

This intentional inexistence is exclusively characteristic of mental phenomena. No physical phenomenon manifests anything similar. Consequently, we can define mental phenomena by saying that they are such phenomena as include an object intentionally within themselves.(1)

This passage sets forth, or at least strongly intimates, three doctrines that were to preoccupy Brentano and his followers in later years, namely: (I) the doctrine that intentionality, reference to an object, is a distinctive mark of the mental; (II) the doctrine that intentional reference radically differs from other, merely physical, relations primarily in virtue of the fact that mental phenomena may be directed not only upon objects that exist but even upon objects that do not exist; and (III) an obscure and problematic doctrine to the effect that any object of intentional reference thereby has a special ontological status called 'intentional inexistence". What has come to be called the intentionality thesis of Brentano is the conjunction of (I) and (II).(...)

In what follows, we shall concentrate on some of the philosophical difficulties that seem to be connected with (II), and very little will be made of (I). Nothing will be said here concerning the unsatisfactory doctrine (III), since the problematic nature of the notion of intentional inexistence has been forcefully demonstrated by Chisholm.(3)" (p. 189), note 2 omitted)

(1) Brentano [2], pp. 88-89.

(3) cr. Chisholm [3], pp. 6-20; and [4), pp. 201-203. Compare McAlister [1].

References

Brentano, Franz [2] Psychology from an Empirical Standpunkt, transI. by Antos C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, and Linda L. McAlister, Humanities Press, New York, 1973.

Chisholm, Roderick M. [3] 'Brentano on Descriptive Psychology and the Intentional', in Phenomenology and Existentialism, ed. by Edward N. Lee and Maurice Mandelbaum, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1967.

Chisholm, Roderick M. [4] 'Intentionality', in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Philosophy, editor-in-chief, Paul Edwards, Macmillan Co. and The Free Press, New York, 1967.

McAlister, Linda L. 'Franz Brentano and Intentional Inexistence', Journal of the History of Philosophy 8 (1970), 423-430.

30. Bacigalupo, Giuliano. 2018. "Towards a New Brentanian Theory of Judgment." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 95:245-264.

Abstract: "In the last few decades, the interest in Brentano’s philosophical psychology, especially in his theory of judgment, has been steadily growing. What, however, has remained relatively unexplored are the modifications that have been introduced over the years into this theory by Brentano himself and by his student Anton Marty. These amendments constitute the focus of the present paper. As will be argued, only by making such changes can the weaknesses of the first formulation of the theory be overcome.

Moreover, as the final section of the paper attempts to show, these modifications may even trigger further steps towards what we might label a new Brentanian theory of judgment."

31. Bartok, Philip J. 2005. "Brentano's Intentionality Thesis: beyond the analytic and phenomenological readings." Journal of History of Philosophy no. 43:437-460.

"The task of this paper is to navigate a route between the excesses of these two influential readings of Brentano’s thesis [the analytical and the phenomenological]. By attending closely to both the motivating concerns and the distinctive methodological features of Brentano’s psychology,

as it is presented in PES [Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint] and in the posthumously published lectures on Descriptive Psychology (DP), this reading aims to avoid both the methodological insensitivity of the analytic reading and the Whiggishness of the phenomenological reading while preserving what is of value in each. The picture of Brentano that emerges from such an investigation is that of an innovating founder of a new empirical psychology, a psychology that was to serve as the foundation not only for metaphysics, but also for fields like logic, ethics, and aesthetics. While this psychology bears significant methodological and doctrinal similarities to both contemporary analytic philosophy of mind and phenomenology, the attempt to identify its methods and concerns with those of either of these two successors occludes what is truly distinctive about it. An appreciation of the distinctive character of Brentano’s psychology permits a fairer reading of his intentionality thesis and thus allows for a more accurate assessment of the complex relationship of Brentano’s empirical psychology to the philosophical and psychological works of his twentieth-century successors on both sides of the Atlantic.(...)

I shall proceed as follows: In section 1 I survey the “analytic reading” of Brentano’s thesis, drawing attention to its misunderstandings of the central Brentanian terms ‘phenomena’ and ‘intentional inexistence’ as well as its general insensitivity to Brentano’s psychological method. Section 2 introduces the “phenomenological reading” as an improvement upon the analytic reading, in that it attends to methodological issues, permitting distinctions to be drawn between descriptive psychological, genetic psychological, metascientific, and metaphysical elements in his work. Section 3 criticizes the tendency of phenomenologists to impute their own theoretical motives to Brentano and his psychological project.

Finally, section 4 introduces the elements of a third reading of Brentano’s thesis and of the psychological project of PES and DP as a whole, one that takes seriously his claim to be an empirical psychologist intent upon erecting a new psychology upon solid theoretical foundations." (p. 439, a note omitted)

32. ———. 2005. "Reading Brentano on the Intentionality of the Mental." In Intentionality: Past and Future, edited by Forrai, Gabor and Kampis, George, 15-24. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"Franz Brentano’s attempts to develop a new empirical psychology, as presented in works like Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint of 1874 (Brentano, 1955/1995a; hereafter in text as “PES”) and the later lectures posthumously published in Descriptive Psychology (Brentano, 1982; 1995b; hereafter in text as “DP”), stand at the historical point of departure of the two dominant traditions in twentieth-century philosophy, the analytic and phenomenological traditions. Prominent thinkers in both of these camps have identified Brentano’s psychological explorations as an inspiration for central aspects of their philosophical views. But thinkers in these two traditions have read Brentano’s psychology and his most important discovery, his intentionality thesis, in quite different ways. As a result, they have arrived at different interpretations of the same theoretical elements. This state of affairs raises puzzling questions: How can the work of a single philosopher have given rise to such variant readings? Do relevant texts equally support both these readings? To what extent did the philosophical projects of Brentano’s readers color their understanding of his thought? Have his readers in either of these traditions recovered anything like Brentano’s understanding of his psychological project and his intentionality thesis?

I will argue that while both of these broad strategies for reading Brentano involve significant misrepresentations of his intentionality thesis, phenomenologists have generally read Brentano in a far more methodologically sensitive fashion than have his analytic interpreters. Because of this, the phenomenological reading corrects some of the more serious interpretive errors made by many of his analytic readers. My strategy will be to examine each of these readings in turn, beginning with the analytic reading. A brief concluding section summarizes the results of these examinations." (p. 15)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on Franz Brentano: Studies in English, Second Part: Bau - Chr

Bibliography

1. Baumgartner, Wilhelm. 1989. "Objects analysed. Brentano's way toward the identity of objects." Topoi Supplement no. 4:20-30.

2. ———. 1996. "Act, Content, and Object." In The School of Franz Brentano, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Libardi, Massimo and Poli, Roberto, 235-259. Kluwer: Dordrecht.

"In what follows, I will deal with some aspects of Brentano's theory and terminology concerning the nature of the psychical, i.e. his descriptive psychological analysis which is, in fact, an early phenomenological theory about mental states, their structure, their mutual relation, and their intentional correlates (objects and contents). This theory goes along with his ontological theory of mind, which is an application of Aristotelian substance-accident or part-whole ontology, to the realm of mind, or more concretely, to a thinking person.

Taking the teachings of the natural sciences (the world existing outside of us and its physical laws) for granted, Brentano develops a special, individual ontology of mind (facts and motivational interrelations of the psychical). In describing the two aspects of the minds intentional relations to things other than itself and the self-relating character of psychical phenomena, Brentano describes both the inner world of mind and the outer world of inner world (general ontology). The analysis of phenomena (phenomenology) serves as link between special and general ontology." (p. 235, a note omitted)

3. ———. 2013. "Franz Brentano's Mereology." In Themes from Brentano, edited by Fisette, Denis and Fréchette, Guillaume, 227-245. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"Introduction

In his search for a scientifically based worldview, and in contrast to “blind a priori” assumptions (Brentano 1925), Brentano aimed at an analysis of parts, down to their last fundamental elements, their properties and interconnections in order to demonstrate “what binds the world from within”. He did so from an ontological (and from a broader metaphysical) standpoint on the one hand, and from a psychological perspective on the other.

In what follows, I will examine Brentano’s methodological attempts to provide a foundational account of an ontology of things (§ 2) and an ontology of mind (§ 3) on the basis of his mereology, that is, his theory of part-whole-relations. In § 1, I refer to his lectures on the history of philosophy and to his essay on “The Four Phases of Philosophy”.

I consider these investigations on scientific history in general, its periods, main themes, and endeavors, as relevant examples which illustrate my thesis that the relations of parts and wholes in Brentano’s thought can also be observed beyond his ontology and his psychology." (p. 227)

References

Brentano, Franz. 1925.Versuch über die Erkenntnis, Leipzig: Meiner.

Brentano, Franz. 1998. The Four Phases of Philosophy. Amsterdam: Rodopi

4. Baumgartner, Wilhelm, and Pasquerella, Lynn. 2004. "Brentano’s value theory: beauty, goodness, and the concept of correct emotion." In The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, edited by Jacquette, Dale, 220-236. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Brentano’s theory of value, derived from his philosophical psychology, attempts to locate an objective basis for the intrinsic value of both aesthetic and ethical contemplation through the intentional objects of emotions and desires. As theories of intrinsic value, Brentano’s aesthetics and ethics are concerned with what is good and bad, beautiful and ugly, pleasurable and displeasurable, in and of themselves, and not merely as a means to an end. As objective theories, Brentano presupposes that our aesthetic and ethical evaluations, like our judgments or beliefs, are either correct or incorrect. In what follows, we will set forth some of the basic principles involved in Brentano’s aesthetics and ethics and elucidate how Brentano attempted to provide a foundation for these disciplines using his descriptive psychology." (p. 220)

5. Baumgartner, Wilhelm, and Simons, Peter. 1994. "Brentano’s Mereology." Axiomathes no. 5:55-76.

"1. Introduction

Many philosophers have codidered the fundamental properties of the relational concept part/whole to be self-evident.

Serious investigation of the formal properties of the concept part/whole began only in our century with the work of Whitehead and - especially - Lesniewski.

Brentano employed the concept of part variously as a tool of his philosophy but he also considered the concept for itself. The topic part/whole runs right through his thinking and for good methodological and systematic reasons: he constructs and consolidates his conception of science(1) and his individual theorems in analytic descriptive manner "from below". Problems that appeared important to him, often the same problem, such as the interpretation of being, were turned around and looked at from different sides; he was always looking to explicate a complex problem step by step via partial solutions, always seeking to systematize the (apparently) disparate, while allowing individual issues their rightful place.(2)

(1) Probably under the intluence of Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre, cf. its Introduction, § 7,

p. 32 f., § 58, p. 253.

(2) See the investigations into the "principle of mereological essentialism" in (Chisholm 1982), 8, also his (1973) and (1975).

References

[Chisholm 1973] Roderick M. Chishohn, "Parts as essenlial to their wholes", Review of Metaphysics 25, 1973, 581-603.

[Chisholm 1975] Roderick M. Chisholm, "Mereological essentialism: some further considerations", Review of Metaphysics 28, 1975, 477-484.

[Chisholm 1982] Roderick M. Chishohm, Brentano and Meinong Studies, Amsterdam, Rodopi.

6. Bell, David. 1989. "A Brentanian Philosophy of Arithmetic." Brentano Studien no. 2 (139-144).

Abstract: "The aim of this paper is to identify the main respects in which Husserl's early philosophy, and in particular his early writings on the foundation of arithmetic, were influenced by Brentano's thought. It is claimed that the doctrinal, conceptual, and methodological perspective within which Husserl's Philosophy of Arithmetic is conceived and executed (but which remains veery largely suppressed in Husserl's texts) is that which he inherited, more or less without modification, from Brentano in the period to which Psychology from an empirical Standpoint, The Origin of our Knowledge of Right and Wrong, and the lectures on Descriptive Psyvhology belong. That influence was extensive and profound enough to warrant calling Husserl's philosophy of arithmetic 'Brentanian'."

7. Bell, John L. 2000. "Continuity and the logic of perception." Transcendent Philosophy no. 1:1-7.

"In his On What is Continuous of 1914 ([2]), Franz Brentano makes the following observation:

If we imagine a chess-board with alternate blue and red squares, then this is something in which the individual red and blue areas allow themselves to be distinguished from each other in juxtaposition, and something similar holds also if we imagine each of the squares divided into four smaller squares also alternating between these two colours. If, however, we were to continue with such divisions until we had exceeded the boundary of noticeability for the individual small squares which result, then it would no longer be possible to apprehend the individual red and blue areas in their respective positions. But would we then see nothing at all? Not in the least; rather we would see the whole chessboard as violet, i.e. apprehend it as something that participates simultaneously in red and blue. [p. 6]

In this paper I will describe a simple and natural framework—a logic of perception—in which this “simultaneous participation” or superposition of perceived attributes is accorded a major role. (This framework was originally introduced in [1] for a different purpose.) The central concept of the framework is that of an attribute being manifested over a region or part of a proximity space—an abstract structure embodying key features of perceptual fields. An important property of the manifestation relation is nonpersistence, namely, the fact that a space may manifest an attribute not manifested by some part. This will be shown to be closely related to the idea of superposing attributes.

I will also show how this framework is tied up with the continuity of perceptual fields." (p. 1)

References

[1] Bell, J.L., A New Approach to Quantum Logic. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 37, 1986.

[2] Brentano, Franz, Philosophical Investigations on Space, Time and the Continuum. Barry Smith, translator. London: Croom Helm, 1988.

8. Benoist, Jocelyn. 2003. "The Question of Grammar in Logical Investigations, With Special Reference to Brentano, Marty, Bolzano and Later Developments in Logic." In Phenomenology World-Wide: Foundations - Expanding Dynamics - Life-Engagements. A Guide for Research and Study, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 94-97. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"The question of grammar is among the most important in Husserl's Logical Investigations. Grammar measures the ability of thought to produce sense, thus opening the question of the possibility of objects-even where they cannot exist in any real sense. Grammar is the basic structure of the meaning modality of intentionality which, in Logical Investigations, is the fundamental modality.

Brentano's criticism of language may have prepared Husserl to a reflect upon grammar. However, this last theme remained foreign to Brentano, who never engaged in any real inquiry into meaning, which is the basis of grammar. Brentano cared much more for the problem of the reference or lack of reference of signs within the framework of a "fiction-theory". The decisive stimulus for Husserl' s theory in fact came from the Brentanist Anton Marty (Mulligan, 1990; Benoist, 1997a, Ch. 3), who developed a philosophy of language where grammar played a significant role. Marty introduced the basic grammatical categories that characterize Husserl 's system." (p. 94)

References

Benoist, Jocelyn (1997a). Phénoménologie, sémantique, ontologie: Husser! et la tradition logique autrichienne. Paris: P.U.F.

Mulligan, Kevin ed. (1990), Mind, Meaning and Metaphysics. The Philosophy and Theory of Language of Anton Marty. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

9. Bergmann, Gustav. 1967. Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Reprinted Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2004, with an introdction by Erwin Tegtmeier.

Contents. Preface VII;

Book One. Facts, Things, Ideas

Part I: General Ontology 3; Part II: Representationalism 125:

Book Two: Brentano and Meinong

Part III: Brentano 221; Part IV: Meinong 335;

Bibliographical Note 445; Index 447.

"On the one hand, Brentano’s ontology is not easy to understand; nor therefore is it easy to describe accurately. That makes it difficult to achieve that alternation of exposition and criticism, both fluent and lucid, or at least not too crabbed and not obscure, which one ought to aim at when undertaking a task of this sort. On the other hand, Parts I and II have put us into possession of a considerable apparatus, developed at least in part with a view toward this task. In this situation an introductory section, consisting wholly of reflections designed to provide some preliminary orientation about matters both strange and difficult, should do some good. I shall present these reflections as a numbered string of comments or remarks.

The last is about Brentano’s metaphilosophy. The one preceding it indicates how the issues I take up are distributed over the several sections. If at that point you will have a first glimpse of the reasons that led me to select just these issues and to discuss them in just this order, the Introduction will have served its purpose. But I do not feel like starting without first making explicit what I just implied. Both exposition and criticism are selective. For I am not, as a historian of the sort I am not, concerned with Brentano's views on all issues nor with how they developed in the course of his career, but, rather, as a philosopher of the sort I am, with what is interesting about them." (p. 222)

10. Bergmann, Hugo. 1945. "Brentano's theory of induction." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 5:281-292.

Reprinted in: Linda McAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Brentano, pp. 213-223.

"It is a remarkable fact that Hume’s problem of the validity of the incomplete induction did not disquiet most of the logicians of the nineteenth century.

They studied the logical mechanism of induction, but the problem as discovered by Hume, that is, as an epistemological issue, was scarcely realised as existent. To quote one example, F.F. Apelt’s Theone der Induktion (1854), a book of great merit in many respects, virtually disregards the incomplete induction as such, and treats complete and incomplete induction as being on an equal footing.

The exception, of course, is John Stuart Mill, whatever may be our opinion of the answers he offers to the question. On the European continent, Franz Brentano found himself grappling with the problem from the

beginning of his philosophical thought. His Versuch über die Erkenntnis, edited from his literary remains by Alfred Kastil in 1925, is in essence a theory of induction." (p. 281)

11. ———. 1965. "Brentano on the History of Greek Philosophy *." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 26:94-99.

* Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophie, in conformity with the lectures contained in his literary remains published by Franziska Mayer-Hildebrand. Bern: A. Francke, 1963. Pp. Lxiii, 396.

"Franz Brentano, did not like to publish books; as he once said, he hated the "secondary work" that was connected with proof-reading, referencing of quotations, etc. He thus left the publication of his literary remains to his disciples. Indeed, after his death (1917) Alfred Kastil and Oskar Kraus undertook the publication of his literary remains and, in the time permitted to them, carried it out with great loyalty and dedication.

In the years 1922 through 1934, there appeared in Felix Meiner's Philosophische Bibliothek ten volumes of Brentano's works; the editor's rich annotations are invaluable for understanding Brentano's lectures and the development of his thoughts. After Kastil's death the work of publication was taken over by Franziska Meyer-Hillebrand, his disciple. She published the Grundlegung and Aufbau der Ethik, Die Lehre vom richtigen Urteil, the Grundzuege der Aesthetik, and Religion und Philosophie; to these are now being added the lectures on the Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophie." (p. 94)

(...)

"The edit:or calls our attention (p. 371) to "profound changes" in Brentano's comprehension of certain doctrines of Aristotle. Three times as much space in this book is devoted to Aristotle as to Plato. The exposition is divided not into three parts, as is that on Plato, but into seven parts: logic; metaphysics (subdivided into Being in general .and the origin and principle of Being); theology ("God is not only efficient cause, but creator of the world, but He is not identical with Plato's idea of the good; discussion of the proofs for the existence of God"); cosmology ("The eternity of the world is unacceptable; from this assumption there could be no progress, no proper evolution, no history"); psychology (in this chapter discussion of the doctrine that the·soul does not think without images; weighty objections against this doctrine and its refutation by Aristotle - the psychological efforts of the Wuerzburg school in the early years of our century, which were influenced directly or indirectly by Brentano, are unfortunately not mentioned); and ethics and politics,

in chapters six and seven respectively." (p. 98)

12. Berti, Enrico. 2001. "Brentano and Aristotle's Metaphysics." In Whose Aristotle? Whose Aristotelianism?, edited by Sharples, Robert W., 135-149. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"Franz Brentano's interpretation of Aristotle's philosophy has attracted the attention of scholars right up to the present day. It has been considered important above all for two reasons: a) because it constituted the origin of the famous theory of intentionality, which was found in his book on Aristotle's Psychology (1867); and b) because of the influence that the theory of the several senses of being, developed in his Dissertation of 1862, exercised on the birth of Heidegger's thought. However, Brentano's attempt to attribute to Aristotle the concept of creation and the theory of the immortality of the human soul has been almost completely rejected.

The first point was illustrated particularly by R. George and R. Sorabji, (1) but Brentano's interpretation of Aristotelian psychology was also at the centre of the debate on the "Mind-Body Problem", which involved several important philosophers, such as H. Putnam, the same R. Sorabji, M. Burnyeat, M. C. Nussbaum and others. (2) A part of his book on Aristotle's Psychology was included in the recent collection of Essays on Aristotle's "De anima".(3) The second point, to which Heidegger himself drew attention in his famous letter to Father Richardson, (4) was studied first by F. Volpi and afterwards by many others, including myself. (5)

The interpretation of Aristotle's theology expounded by Brentano in an additional essay to Aristotle's Psychology, was criticised by Eduard Zeller in the third edition of his monumental history of Greek philosophy (1878). This criticism induced Brentano to write an essay on Aristotle's Creationism (1882), followed by a reply from Zeller, a new intervention on the part of Brentano and a further reply by Zeller (1883), which seemed to close the discussion.(6) But Brentano reprinted his essay of 1882, with some additions, in the volume Aristoteles Lehre vom Ursprung der menschlichen Geistes (1911) (7) and in the same year he also published a monograph, Aristoteles and seine Weltanschauung, where he repeated the main lines of his interpretation. (8) The controversy was definitively resolved, in my opinion, only with W. D. Ross's introduction to his edition of Aristotle's Metaphysics, where the famous English Aristotelian refuted any possibility of conceiving Aristotle's God as a creator, explicitly attacking the interpretation proposed by Brentano.(9)

On this occasion I do not wish to return to the theory of intentionality, even if I will make some reference to it. I would like, on the contrary, to see what consequences the interpretation of Aristotle's ontology, developed by Brentano in his dissertation of 1862, and his interpretation of Aristotle's theology, developed in his later writings, had for the modern and contemporary image of Aristotle; that is, how Brentano's Aristotle influenced contemporary philosophers' judgements of Aristotle's metaphysics." (pp. 135-137)

(1) Cf. R. George, 'Brentano's Relation to Aristotle', in R.M. Chisholm and R. Haller (eds.), Die Philosophie Franz Brentanos, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1978, 249-266; R. Sorabji, 'From Aristotle to Brentano; the Development of the Concept of Intentionality', in H. Blumenthal and H. Robinson (eds.), Aristotle and the Later Tradition, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy Supplementary Volume, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.

(2) I tried to sum up this debate in E. Berti, 'Aristotele e il "Mind-Body Problem', Iride. Filosofia e discussione pubblica 11, 1998, 43-62.

(3) Die Psychologie des Aristoteles, insbesondere seine Lehre vom Nous Poietikos, Mainz: Kirchheim, 1867, was republished by R. George, Hamburg: Meiner, 1967, and was translated into English by R. George, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.

The first chapter, 'Nous poietikos: Survey of earlier interpretations', was included in M. C. Nuussbaum and A. O. Rorty (eds.), Essays on Aristotle's De anima, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992, 313-341.

(4) This letter (1962), published by Heidegger as Preface to W.J. Richardson, Heidegger, The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1963, has been developed in his lecture 'Mein Weg in die Phanomenologie' (1963), in id., Zur Sache des Denkens, Tubingen, Mohr, 1969, 81-90.

(5) Cf. F. Volpi, Heidegger e Brentano, Padua: Cedam, 1976 (Pubblicazioni della Scuola di perfezionamento in Filosofia dell'Università di Padova), and Heidegger e Aristotele, Padova: Daphne, 1984; J. Taminiaux, Le regard et l'excédent, The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1977, 156-182; E. Berti, Aristotele nel Novecento, Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1992, 44-111; Th. Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

(6) F. Brentano, 'Ueber den Creatianismus des Aristoteles', S.-B. d. K. Akad. d. Wiss., philos.hist. Kl., 100, Wien 1882, 95-126; E. Zeller, 'Aristoteles Lehre von der Ewigkeit des menschlichen Geistes', S.-B. d. Preuss. Akad. d. Wiss., Berlin 1882 (repr. in Zeller's Kleine Schriften, Berlin 1910); F. Brentano, Offener Brief an Herrn professor Dr. Eduard Zeller, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1883; E. Zeller, Deutsche Literaturanzeigung, 1883.

(7) Leipzig: Veit & Comp., 1911 (second edition, with an Introduction by R. George who illustrates the controversy, Hamburg: Meiner, 1980). I examined this topic in E. Berti, 'Zeller e Aristotele', Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, cl. di lett. e filos., s. III, vol. XIX.3, Pisa 1989, 1233 -1254.

(8) Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer. In preparing this monograph Brentano wrote a series of notes on Aristotle, which remained unpublished until after his death: cf. F. Brentano, Uber Aristoteles. Nachgelassene Aufsatze, hrsg. v. R. George, Hamburg: Meiner, 1986.

(9) Aristotle's Metaphysics, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924, I, cxxxiii-cxxxix, cxlix, cliii-cliv. I occupied myself with this discussion in E. Berti, 'Da chi è amato it motore immobile? Su Aristotele, Metaph. XII 6-7', Methexis 10, 1997, 59-82.

13. Betti, Arianna. 2013. "We owe it to Sigwart! A new look at the content/object distinction in early phenomenological theories of judgment from Brentano to Twardowski." In Judgement and Truth in Early Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology, edited by Textor, Mark, 74-96. Palgrave.

"In a series of articles, Dale Jacquette has offered the following picture of Twardowski’s contribution to Brentano’s theory of intentionality.

Brentano made no distinction between the content and the object of mental acts: he ‘seems to place the real world beyond the reach of thought’ (Jacquette 1990: 181, Jacquette 2004: 107; see also Jacquette 2006: 12). By distinguishing sharply between content and object instead, Twardowski went beyond Brentano (although, contrary to what others claim, he was not the first Brentanian to do so).

This picture needs fine- tuning." (p. 74)

(...)

"On the basis of the logic manuscript EL 80 he edited, Robin Rollinger has recently argued that Brentano himself has the distinction in place (Rollinger 2009), and, given Rollinger’s dating of EL80, this implies not only that Brentano acknowledged the distinction before Twardowski, but also before Höfler and Meinong’s Logik.(1)" (p.75)

(...)

"Why did Brentano himself introduce the content/object distinction at a certain point, and at which ‘certain point’? Here’s the story as I’ll tell it in this paper. It is, on the face of Rollinger’s dating of EL80, a (possibly) controversial story. Brentano was forced to consider (or consider more seriously) the content/object distinction at a certain point, I’d say not before 1888–89, by attacks against his theory of judgement made by critics such as Sigwart and Windelband." (p. 76)

(1) For an earlier discussion of the issue, see Chrudzimski 2001: 33 and ff.

References

Chrudzimski, A. (2001) Intentionalitatstheorie Beim Frühen Brentano/Intentionality Theory, the Early Brentano. (Dordrecht: Kluwer).

Jacquette, D. (1990) ‘The Origins of Gegenstandstheorie: Immanent and Transcendent Intentional Objects in Brentano, Twardowski and Meinong’, Brentano-Studien 3, 177–202.

—— (2004) ‘Brentano’s concept of intentionality’, In D. Jacquette (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, 98–130. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

—— (2006) ‘Twardowski, Brentano’s Dilemma, and the Content-Object Distinction’, in A. Chrudzimski & D. Łukasiewicz (eds.), Actions, Products and Things. Brentano and Polish Philosophy, 9–33. (Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag).

Rollinger, R.D. (2009) ‘Brentano’s Psychology and Logic And The Basis Of Twardowski’s Theory Of Presentations’, The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 4, 1–23.

14. Blackmore, John. 1998. "Franz Brentano and the University of Vienna Philosophical Society 1888-1938." In The Brentano Puzzle, edited by Poli, Roberto, 73-92. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"Introduction

The recent publication of the lectures given by the University of Vienna Philosophical Society from 1888 to 1922 has apparently stimulated increased interest among many scholars. The primary reason, of course, is that the Vienna background of many of the best-known philosophers of the 20th century has raised the distinct possibility that the Philosophical Society was a significant or even principal incubator for this remarkable development. Mach, Wittgenstein, Boltzmann, Neurath, Popper, von Hayek, and Feyerabend were all Viennese. The first four thinkers were clearly influenced by lectures and discussions given in the Society, the father of Sir Karl Popper was a member,3 Friedrich von Hayek alleges that most philosophical discussion revolved around Mach's ideas at that time, and concerning Feyerabend's attraction to philosophy, one might suspect a source in Boltzmann's Populäre Schriften. Some of the groups which appear to have been 'spun off from the Society include Schlick's Circle, Reininger's Circle, and Heinrich Gomperz's Circle.

But in this paper, I would like to explore the relations of Franz Brentano and his students with the Society, which as we shall see were important until the First World War and for a few years afterwards. Brentano gave the first lecture, his students held top positions in the society often until their deaths, his followers actually gave more talks or led more discussions than the numerous adherents of Mach and Boltzmann, and Franz Brentano's most famous students, Meinong and Husserl, were corresponding members of this Vienna Society for some length of time." (p. 73, notes omitted)

15. Bonino, Guido. 2018. "Brentano in America. Three episodes." Paradigmi no. 1:49-64.

Abstract: "The article aims to investigate how Gustav Bergmann, Reinhardt Grossmann and Roderick Chisholm used Brentano's notion of intentionality in their own philosophical pursuits, and on how they saw themselves and their works with respect to what they regarded as Brentano's place in the history of philosophy. It is shown how the differences among their interpretations depend mainly on their different philosophical agendas."

16. Brandl, Johannes. 2018. "Brentano’s Renewal of Philosophy: A Double-Edged Sword." Brentano Studien no. 16:25-52.

Abstract: "This paper discusses Brentano’s plan to renew philosophy as consisting of two goals. One goal is to restore the scientific reputation of philosophy by employing the natural methods of descriptive psychology. In contrast to sceptical and critical approaches in 19th-century philosophy, Brentano seeks to renew philosophy by reviving a purely theoretical interest that he associates with the work of Aristotle. The other goal derives from Brentano’s theistic worldview. Like scholastic thinkers, Brentano believes that philosophy can provide a rational foundation for theism. His plan is therefore not just to align philosophy with the empirical sciences, but also to arbitrate between scientific knowledge and belief in God. But can one really expect from philosophy to serve as a bridge between science and religion? Since there is good reason to doubt that philosophy can play that role, Brentano’s plan for a renewal of philosophy remains a double-edged sword that cuts one way or the other, aligning philosophy with either science or religion, but not both."

17. Brandl, Johannes L. 1996. "Intentionality." In The School of Franz Brentano, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Libardi, Massimo and Poli, Roberto, 261-284. Kluwer: Dordrecht.

"There is one assumption which all participants in this debate, whether modern or traditional, agree on: they all accept propositional entities. Meinong accepts objectives, Husserl accepts states of affairs, and Fodor and Searle accept propositions.(12) They accept these entities as the objects of our propositional attitudes. Not so Brentano after 1874. His account of belief and desire makes do with the same entities as are already involved in his analysis of non-propositional acts. But it is not clear what those entities are to which Brentano is committed from the beginning.

(...)

In what follows I want to explore this idiosyncracy of Brentano's theory, not as a historical curiosity, but as a source of inspiration for dealing with contemporary issues. I start out from a standard version of the representational theory of mind (section 2). I then consider two possible ways of attributing such a theory to Brentano (sections 3-5). The first approach emphasizes the fundamental role of presentations. The second approach leads to the result that only acts which are neither propositional nor non-propositional can play this fundamental role. In the final section I briefly consider the merits of this latter interpretation." (pp. 263-264)

(12) 12 The difference between these types of entities is explored, both from a modem and a traditional perspective, in Künne 1987.

References

Künne 1987. W. KUnne, "The intentionality of thinking: The difference between state of affairs and propositional matter", in Mulligan 1987, 175-186.

Mulligan 1987. K. Mulligan (ed.), Speech act and sachverhalt, Dordrecht, Nijhoff.

18. ———. 2013. "What is Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness? Brentano’s Theory of Inner Consciousness Revisited." In Themes from Brentano, edited by Fisette, Denis and Fréchette, Guillaume, 41-65. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"The plan of the paper is as follows. I begin with Brentano’s definition of mental phenomena (section 2) and his idea that mental phenomena have a distinctive internal structure (section 3). I then consider what inner consciousness contributes to this structure by clarifying two distinctions with which Brentano operates here: the distinction between primary and secondary objects (section 4), and his distinction between inner perception and inner observation (section 5).

The main step in my interpretation will then consist in pointing out that inner perception and inner observation need not be conceived as two distinct cognitive faculties. Rather we can think of them as one faculty that gives rise to gradually different forms of self-knowledge (section 6). In the remaining part of the paper I will then exploit this interpretation for rebutting two objections that have been raised against Brentano’s theory. David Rosenthal has argued that Brentano’s model rests on a Cartesian premise and should therefore be replaced by a proper higher-order theory of consciousness (section 7).

Others, including Henrich, Frank and many phenomenologists have questioned Brentano’s treatment of the regress-problem and on that basis suggested that Brentano’s model of consciousness should be replaced by a strictly one-level theory (section 8). I will argue that both objections miss their target because Brentano’s fits neither the mould of a higher-order nor of a one-level theory." (pp. 42-43)

19. ———. 2017. "Was Brentano an Early Deflationist about Truth?" The Monist no. 100:1-14.

Abstract: "It is often assumed that deflationist accounts of truth are a product of philosophy of logic and language in the twentieth century. In this paper I show why this assumption is historically short-sighted. An early version of deflationism about truth can already be found in Brentano’s 1889 lecture “On the Concept of Truth.” That Brentano is a precursor of deflationism has gone largely unnoticed because of a different reception of his lecture: according to most scholars, Brentano proposes in it a revision of the correspondence theory of truth that he later rejected in favour of an epistemic theory. Contrary to this received interpretation, I argue that Brentano actually tried to show how one can minimize an account of truth without thereby sacrificing a robust realist intuition about the objectivity of truth. Brentano held on to this deflationist view in his later years, when he assigned self-evident judgments a primary role in our understanding of truth."

20. ———. 2017. "Brentano on Truth." In The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School, edited by Kriegel, Uriah, 163-168. New York: Routledge.

"How to understand Brentano’s account of truth is a question of some controversy.

A number of different views have been put forward as positions that Brentano held at some stage in his career. The received view has it that the early Brentano subscribed to a form of correspondence theory which he later rejected in favor of a definition of truth in terms of correct judging, where the correctness of a judgement is defined in terms of the notion of self-evidence (...)."

(...)

"Section 1 first summarizes the received view and then indicates two problems raised by this interpretation. Section 2 explains in which sense Brentano may have been a deflationist and how this interpretation avoids the problems of the received view." (p. 163)

21. ———. 2023. "The purposes of descriptive psychology." European Journal of Philosophy:358-370.

Abstract: "In this paper, I discuss the different views of the founders of descriptive psychology in the 19th century about the meaning and purpose of this discipline and sketch a new plan for connecting descriptive psychology with the language-critical tradition of analytic philosophy. I will show that the goals Hermann Lotze, Franz Brentano, and Wilhelm Dilthey set for descriptive psychology were too lofty for different reasons. The common problem they faced was how to reconcile the ideal of autonomous philosophical knowledge with the empirical relevance that descriptive psychology should have. Faced with this dilemma, I outline a new plan to conceive of descriptive psychology as a critical project aimed at overcoming the obstacles that language places in the way of our knowledge of mental phenomena."

22. Brandl, Johannes L., and Textor, Mark. 2021. "‘Disentangling Judgement from Its Linguistic Clothing’: Brentano’s View of Judgement and Its Linguistic Guises." In The Philosophy of Brentano: Contributions from the Second International Conference Graz 1977 & 2017, in Memory of Rudolf Haller, edited by Antonelli, Mauro and Binder, Thomas, 156-178. Leiden: Brill Rodopi.

"What seems clear is that the potential of Brentano’s criticism of ordinary language has not yet been fully explored. We found that at least three points deserve further attention: Brentano’s view that noun phrases, for example, demonstratives, can express a simple judgment; his idea that assertoric sentences can express non-propositional acknowledgements; and last but not last, Brentano’s concept of double judgement. Taking together, these three insights may provide us with a better ground for introducing propositional objects into a theory of judgement. Disentangling our judgements from language also means not to follow the usual procedure of simply taking the meaning of assertoric sentences to constitute the objects that we judge to be true or false." (p. 177)

23. Brentano, J. C. M. 1966. "The Manuscripts of Franz Brentano." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 20:477-482.

"The philosopher Franz Brentano, my father, left at his death an unusual number of unpublished papers. This is due to two main reasons. One is that true to the principle he had announced in one of his theses when applying for the venia legendi at Würzburg university: Vera philoso phiae methodus nulla alia nisi scientiae naturalis est, which meant that philosophy should proceed by small well con solidated steps and that each step before being accepted should stand the test of not being in conflict with any other part of true philosophy, he wished to withhold his findings from publication until they were checked and rechecked. Apart from his lectures the medium for communicating the results of his investigations was the correspondence with other philosophers, particularly with former pupils. The other reason is that in the later part of his life he was affected by an eye ailment and gradually almost lost his eyesight. From about 1904 onwards writing and particularly reading became very difficult." (p. 477)

24. Brito, Evandro Oliveira de. 2018. "Franz Brentano's theory of judgment (1889): a critique of Aristotle's correspondence theory of truth." Trans/Form/Ação no. 41:39-56.

Abstract: "The purpose of this paper is to discuss the concept of truth formulated by Franz Brentano in 1889. As a textual basis, I take Brentano’s communication, presented to the philosophical community of Vienna in March 1889, entitled “On the concept of truth” (Über den Begriff der Wahrheit), and I provide a systematic exposition of Brentano’s analysis of the problems surrounding the interpretation of the Aristotelian concept of truth as correspondence. My analysis explains how Brentano reinterpreted the Aristotelian concept of truth as correspondence within the conceptual framework of his descriptive psychology."

25. Brown, Deborah. 2000. "Immanence and Individuation: Brentano and the Scholastics on Knowledge of Singulars." The Monist no. 83:22-46.

"The primary aim of this paper is to explain the connection between the theory of immanence in its medieval and Brentanian forms and the problem of individuation. The predominant Scholastic solution to the problem will be compared with Brentano's own "Leibnizian" account of singular knowledge. I shall begin in the next section with a discussion of how the problem arose in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition of the

middle ages for it is in this metaphysico-epistemological tradition that Brentano's work is best located. In Section III, I outline Brentano's theory of immanence in more detail and discuss his proposed analysis of singular knowledge. I shall argue that there can be found in Brentano's later modifications of the theory of immanent objects nominalist tendencies which should have made the task of explaining singular knowledge easier.

Brentano's general rejection of nominalism and the residual Aristotelian Thomistic ideas in his theory of intentionality, however, prevented a full swing to nominalism. In the fourth Section I consider one medieval nominalist solution to the problem of singular knowledge, William of Ockham's, in the light of Brentano's objections to nominalism. It is my contention that not only does Brentano's reading of medieval nominalism contain a fundamental misunderstanding, but that his own philosophy of mind requires the possibility of direct, non-abstractive epistemic access to individuals.

Thus in the final Section I discuss how an adequate theory of the unity of consciousness requires an adequate account of our knowledge of singulars." (pp. 23-24)

26. Cesalli, Laurent, and Taieb, Hamid. 2018. "Brentano and Medieval Ontology." Brentano Studien no. 16:335-362:.

Abstract: "Since the first discussion of Brentano’s relation to (and account of) medieval philosophy by Spiegelberg in 1936, a fair amount of studies have been dedicated to the topic. And if those studies focused on some systematic issue at all, the beloved topic of intentionality clearly occupied a hegemonic position in the scholarly landscape. This paper considers the question from the point of view of ontology, and in a twofold perspective: What did Brentano know about medieval ontology and what kind of access did he have to that material (section 1)? What kind of use did Brentano make of medieval material in his own philosophy, and with what kind of results (section 2)?"

References

Spiegelberg H. (1936), “Der Begriff der Intentionalität in der Scholastik, bei Brentano und Husserl”, Philosophische Hefte 5, p. 75-91 (reprint in Studia Philosophica 29 (1970), p. 189-216). [Revised by the author and translated in: Linda McAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Brentano, pp. 108-127]

27. Chisholm, Roderick M. 1952. "Intentionality and the Theory of Signs." Philosophical Studies no. 3:56-63.

"Franz Brentano wrote, in a well-known passage, that intentionality is peculiar to psychical phenomena. No physical phenomenon, he said, shows anything like it; hence intentionality affords us a criterion of the mental or psychical(1). Let us refer to this view as "Brentano's thesis." Among the phenomena which he would have called "intentional" is the interpretation of signs. One may ask, is it possible to provide an adequate theory of signs which will show Brentano's thesis to be mistaken? In the present paper I shall make certain general points which, I believe, must be considered in any attempt to answer this question, I shall first attempt to state Brentano's thesis somewhat more exactly; then I shall turn to the analysis of the concept sign."

(1) Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom emplrischen Standpunkte (Leipzig, 1924), vol. 1, pp. 124-25.

28. ———. 1955/56. "Sentences About Believing." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 56:125-148.

"1. " I can look for him when he is not there, but not hang him when he is not there ".(1) The first of these activities, Brentano would have said, is intentional; it may take as its object something which does not exist. But the second activity is "merely physical"; it cannot be performed unless its object is there to work with. " Intentionality ", he thought, provides us with a mark of what is psychological.

I shall try to reformulate Brentano's suggestion by describing one of the ways in which we need to use language when we talk about certain psychological states and events.

I shall refer to this use as the " intentional use " of language.

It is a kind of use we can avoid when we talk about nonpsychological states and events.

In the interests of a philosophy contrary to that of Brentano, many philosophers and psychologists have tried to show, in effect, how we can avoid intentional language when we wish to talk about psychology. I shall discuss some of these attempts in so far as they relate to the sorts of things we wish to be able to say about believing. I believe that these attempts have been so far unsuccessful. And I think that this fact may provide some reason for saying, with Brentano, that " intentionality " is a mark of what is psychological." (p. 125)

(1) Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, page 133e.

29. ———. 1957. "Intentional Inexistence." In Perceiving: A Philosophical Study, 168-185. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Chapter XI; reprinted in: Linda McAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Brentano, pp. 140-150.

"I have suggested that the locution ‘There is something that S perceives to be f' may be defined as meaning: ‘There is something such that it is f, it appears to S in some way, S takes it to be f, and S had adequate evidence for so doing.’ And I have suggested that ‘S takes something to be f may be defined by reference to what S assumes, or accepts. I have now said all that I can about the philosophic questions which the concepts of adequate evidence and of appearing involve. Let us finally turn, then, to the concept of assuming, or accepting. The principal philosophic questions which this concept involves may be formulated by reference to a thesis proposed by Franz Brentano.

Psychological phenomena, according to Brentano, are characterised ‘by what the scholastics of the middle ages referred to as the intentional (also the mental) inexistence of the object, and what we, although with not quite unambiguous expressions, would call relation to a content, direction upon an object, (which is not here to be understand as a reality), or immanent objectivity.’(2) This ‘intentional inexistence’, Brentano added, is peculiar to what is psychical; things which are merely physical show nothing like it.

Assuming, or accepting, is one of the phenomena Brentano would have called intentional. I will first try to formulate Brentano’s thesis somewhat more exactly; then I will ask whether it is true of assuming." (p. 168)

(2) Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte, (Leipzig, 1924), vol. 1, pp, 124-5. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (New York and London, 1973), p. 88.

30. ———, ed. 1960. Realism and the Background of Phenomenology. Atascadero: Ridgeview.

Contents: Preface V; Editor's Introduction 3; Selections. 1. Franz Brentano: The distinction between mental and physical phenomena 39; 2. Franz Brentano: Presentation and judgment form. Two distinct fundamental classes 62, 3. Franz Brentano: Genuine and fictitious objects 76; 4. Alexius Meinong: The theory of objects 76; 5. Edmund Husserl: Phenomenology 118; 6. Edmund Husserl: Phenomenology and anthropology 129; 7. H. A. Prichard: Appearances and reality 143; 8. E. B. Holt, W. T. Marvin, W. P. Montague, R. B. Perry, W. B. Pitkin, and E. G. Spaulding: Introduction to 'The New Realism' 151; 9. Samuel Alexander: The basis of realism 186; 10. Bertrand Russell: The ultimate constituents of matter 223; 11. Arthur C. Lovejoy: A temporalistic realism 238; 12. G. E. Moore: A defense of common sense 255; Selected bibliography 283; Index 305-308.

"The translations of Brentano and Meinong and the second translation of Husserl ("Phenomenology and Anthropology") have not previously been published. The selections from Brentano were translated by D. B. Terrell, of the University of Minnesota, and are taken, with his kind permission, from his translation of Brentano's Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt. Meinong's "The Theory of Objects" was translated by Isaac Levi, of Western Reserve University, D. B. Terrell, and Roderick M. Chisholm. Husserl's "Phenomenology" was translated by C. V. Salmon, of Belfast University; his "Phenomenology and Anthropology" by Richard Schmitt; of Brown University." (from the Preface)

31. ———. 1966. "Brentano's Theory of Correct and Incorrect Emotion." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 20:395-415.

Reprinted in: R. M: Chisholm, Brentano and Meinong Studies, pp. 68-79 and in Linda McAlister, The Philosophy of Brentano, pp. 160-175.

"Brentano's theory of correct and incorrect emotion is based upon the analogy he believes to hold between what he calls the sphere of the intellect and the sphere of the emotions. What he has to say about this presumed analogy seems to me to be very important indeed.

Even where his views are controversial, they are extraordinarily suggestive, not only for ethics, but also for the theory of preference and for philosophical psychology.

(...)

Brentano divides judgments into two exclusive classes - those that are affirmative and those that are negative. Affirmative judgments are those that affirm, acknowledge, or accept something. Negative judgments are those that deny or reject something. All judgments are also either correct or incorrect; or, as we usually say, they are either true or false. And finally, there is a very close connection between the correctness and incorrectness of judgments, on the one hand, and existence and non-existence, on the other. For to say of an object that it exists, Brentano suggests, is to say that it is correct to accept that object, and to say of an object that it does not exist is to say that it is correct to reject that object. The latter point may also be put by saying that an object exists if and only if it is worthy of being accepted or affirmed, and that an object does not exist if and only if it is worthy of being rejected or denied.(1)

And now Brentano thinks, we may say much the same thing, mutatis mutandis, about emotions - about "love and hate".

Emotions are either positive or negative; they are either proemotions or anti-emotions, love or hate. Love and hate may be correct and they may also be incorrect. There is a very close connection between the correctness and incorrectness of emotions, on the one hand, and goodness and badness on the other. For to say of an object that it is good, Brentano suggests, is to say that it is correct to love that object, and to say of an object that it is bad is to say that it is correct to hate that object. The latter point may also be put by saying that an object is good if and only if it is worthy of being loved, and an object is bad if and only if it is worthy of being hated.

But to put the analogy this way is to oversimplify Brentano's doctrine. And, so he concedes, there are fundamental points of disanalogy that hold between the intellectual and the emotive spheres." (pp. 396-397)

(1) For the details of this view, see Brentano's Wahrheit und Evidenz (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1958; first published in Leipzig in 1930), ed., Oskar Kraus. The English edition is The True and the Evident (London:

Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1966), ed., Roderick M. Chisholm.

32. ———. 1967. "Brentano on descriptive psychology and the intentional." In Phenomenology and Existentialism, edited by Lee, Edward and Mandelbaum, Maurice, 1-23. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press.

"Brentano's doctrme ot the intentional, as well as much of the rest of what we would now call his philosophy, was a part of what he called "descriptive psychology." Brentano's "descriptive psychology" and Husserl's "phenomenology" are closely related. Husserl had studied with Brentano in Vienna from 1884 to 1886.(3) Brentano had used "beschreibende Phänomenologie" as an alternative name for descriptive psychology but evidently did not use "Phänomenologie" in this way after 1889.

The relation that descriptive psychology bears to genetic or explanatory psychology, Brentano said, is analogous to the relation that anatomy bears to physiology and to the relation that "geognosy" bears to geology (hence "psychognosy" was still another term that Brentano used for descriptive psychology).(4) Genetic or explanatory psychology is concerned with the causal status of psychological phenomena and hence with the relations that such phenomena bear to physical and chemical processes. It is not an exact science but, like meteorology, must qualify its generalizations with such terms as "on the average" and "for the most part." But descriptive psychology, Brentano thought, was an exact science." (p. 2)

(3) See Husserl's " Erinnerungen an Franz Brentano," in Oskar Kraus, Franz Brentano: Zur Kenntnis seines Lebens und seine Lehre (Munich: 1919).

(4) See Franz Brentano, Grundzüge der Asthetik, ed. F. Mayer-Hillebrand, pp. 36fF., and Meine letzten Wünsche für Oesterreich (Stuttgart: 1895).

33. ———. 1972. "Sentences about Believing." In Intentionality, Mind, and Language, edited by Marras, Ausonio. Urbana: University of Iilinois Press.

From Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. II, eds. H. Feigl, M. Scriven, and G. Maxwell, pp. 510-520. Copyright, 1958, by the University of Minnesota. Reprinted by permission of the author, the University of Minnesota Press, and the editors of Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, where an earlier version of this paper was first published [56 (1955-56), 125-148].

" “I can look for him when he is not there, but not hang him when he is not there."(1) The first of these activities, Brentano would have said, is intentional; it may take as its object something which does not exist. But the second activity is “merely physical"; it cannot be performed unless its object is there to work with. “Intentionally,” he thought, provides us with a mark of what is psychological.

I shall try to reformulate Brentano’s suggestion by describing one of the ways in which we need to use language when we talk about certain psychological states and events. I shall refer to this use as the “intentional use" of language. It is a kind of use we can avoid when we talk about nonpsychological states and events." (p. 31)

(1) L. Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations (London and New York: Macmillan, 1953) p. 133e.

34. ———. 1976. "Brentano's nonpropositional theory of judgment." Midwest Studies in Philosophy no. 1:91-95.

"Burnham Terrell [*] has performed a valuable service in presenting Brentano’s theory of judgment and his “logical innovations” in the light of contemporary logical developments. In what follows, I will attempt to supplement what Terrell has done by showing how the reistic side of Brentano’s theory might be developed. As Terrell notes, Brentano in the final reistic phase of his thought rejects such entia irrealia as propositions, judgmental contents, and states of affairs.

But it is normally supposed that a nonpropositional theory of judgment cannot possibly be made adequate to so-called compound judgments. I shall attempt to show that this supposition is false." (p. 91)

[*] Franz Brentano's Logical Innovations (1976).

35. ———. 1976. "Brentano's Descriptive Psychology." In The Philosophy of Brentano, edited by McAlister, Linda Lopez, 91-100. London: Duckworth.

Revised by the author, who notes, ‘I have profited by certain criticisms made by D.B. Terrell’. The first version of this paper appeared in the Proceedings of the XIVth International Congress of Philosophy, 2-9 September 1968 (Vienna, 1968), volume 2, pp. 164-74.

"It is most fitting that one session of an international congress of philosophers meeting in Vienna should be devoted to the topic, ‘Brentano, philosophical psychology, and the phenomenological movement’. Franz

Brentano’s lectures on descriptive psychology were given at the University of Vienna three-quarters of a century ago. Husserl said that without Brentano’s researches ‘phenomenology could not have come into being at all’.(2) Brentano’s descriptive psychology is doubtless very close to what Husserl originally took phenomenology to be. But in the philosophical problems that are central to it, and in the precise analytic manner with which Brentano dealt with them, his descriptive psychology is also very close to the ‘philosophy of mind’ or ‘philosophical psychology’, that is now of concern to philosophers in the analytic tradition.

Yet it would not be flitting, here in Vienna, to look upon Brentano merely as a precursor of subsequent philosophical movements. I shall try to say briefly what he took descriptive psychology to be and I shall comment upon what I take to be its philosophical significance." (p. 91)

(2) See Edmund Husserl,‘Author’s Preface to the English Edition’, Ideas—General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (London, 1931), p. 23; Phanomenologische Psychologie (The Hague, 1962), pp. 31-4, 267-9, 353-4.

36. ———. 1978. "Brentano's Conception of Substance and Accident." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 5:197-210.

Abstract: "Brentano uses terms in place of predicates (e.g. "a thinker" in place of "thinks") and characterizes the "is" of predication in terms of the part-whole relation. Taking as his ontological data certain intentional phenomena that are apprehended with certainty, he conceives the substance-accident relation as a define-able type of part-whole relation which we can apprehend in "inner perception". He is then able to distinguish the following types of individual or ens reale: substances; primary individuals which are not substances; accidents; aggregates; and boundaries."

37. ———. 1981. "Brentano's analysis of the consciousness of time." In Midwest Studies in Philosophy. Volume VI. The Foundations of Analytic Philosophy, edited by French, Peter A., Uehling Jr., Theodore E. and Wettstein, Howard K., 3-16. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

"Franz Brentano's conception of philosophical analysis is illustrated by his aanalysis of our consciousness of time. The analysandum is not a linguistic expression or a concept; it is an experience of a certain sort. Hence the analysis might be called "phenomenological," but Brentano prefers to say it is a matter of "descriptive psychology."

An analysis of our consciousness of time is not, or course, an analysis of time. Hence Brentano's analysis is consistent with a number of different conceptions of time. But it does presuppose that tense is to be taken seriously. In other words, Brentano does not accept the philosophical view, advocated by many contemporary philosophers of science, according to which distinctions of tense are merely "subjective" or otherwise "illusory." Nor does he believe that all truths can he expressed in untensed sentences.

I shall begin by formulating what Brentano takes to be a fundamental problem of descriptive psychology -- that of accurately describing our awareness of temporal succession. Then I shall set forth the development of his views with respect to this problem." (p. 3)

38. ———. 1982. Brentano and Meinong Studies. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Contents: Foreword 1; 1. Brentano's Theory of Substance and Accident 3; 2. Brentano's Theory of Judgment 17; 3. Homeless Objects 37; 4. Beyond Being and Nonbeing 53; 5. Correct and Incorrect Emotion 68; 6. Objectives and Intrinsic Value 80; 7. The Quality of Pleasure and Displeasure 92; 8. Supererogation and Offence 98; 9. Beginnings and Endings 114-124.

"I present these papers on Brentano and Meinong in the hope that they will lead the reader back to the originai sources. Some of the papers are expositions and commentaries. Others are developments of certain suggestions first made by Brentano or by Meinong.

The first two papers are concerned with the basic presuppositions of Brentano's theoretical philosophy. "Brentano's Theory of Substance and Accident" was presented to the Congress on the Philosophy of Franz Brentano held in Graz in September 1977; it first appeared in the Grazer Philosophische Studien, Vol. V (1978). The second paper - "Brentano's Theory of Judgment" - has not been published before; but a preliminary version of part of it, entitled "Brentano's Nonpropositional Theory of Judgment," appeared in the Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. I (1976). It should be noted that Brentano's Kategorienlehre, to which many references are made in these two papers, has now been translated into English as The Theory of Categories, The Hague; Martinus Nijhoff 1981.

(...)

The four papers that follow are concerned with the theory of value, as it had been conceived by Brentano and developed by Meinong. "Correct and Incorrect Emotion" and "The Quality of Pleasure and Displeasure" are both adapted from "Brentano's Theory of Correct and Incorrect Emotion," which first appeared in the Brentano issue of the Revue Internationale de Philosophie, Vol. 20 (1966).

(...)

The final paper - "Beginnings and Endings" - is a revision of a paper entitled "Brentano als analytischer Metaphysiker," which first appeared in the special volume of Conceptus entitled Österreichische Philosophie und ihr Einfluss auf die analytische Philosophie der Gegenwart, Jg. XI (1977), Nr. 28-30, pp. 77-82. A later version appeared in Time and Cause, edited by Peter Van Inwagen (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1980), pp. 17-25. It has been revised once again for the present volume.

I hope that these essays will be thought of as carrying out the tradition of the Brentano school." (From the Foreword).

39. ———. 1982. "Brentano's Theory of Judgment." In Brentano and Meinong Studies, 17-36. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"Introduction. In the final reistic phase of his thought Brentano rejects such entia irrealia as propositions, Judgmental contents, and states of affairs, and he develops what may be called a "nonpropositional theory of judgment". It is normally supposed that a nonpropositional theory of judgment cannot possibly be made adequate to so-called compound judgments. I shall attempt to show that this supposition is false.

The two essential features of Brentano's theory of judgment are these: (1) that there are two irreducibly different types of judgment, one affirmative and the other negative; and (2) that the only terms needed in the formulation of such judgments are terms that a reist could countenance as being genuine." (p. 17)

40. ———. 1983. "Boundaries as Dependent Particulars." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 20:87-95.

"Introduction

Stephan Körner has noted that one way of drawing up a theory of categories will divide all particulars "into (a) a dass of independent particulars, i.e. particulars which are ontologically fundamental, and (b) a class of dependent particulars, i.e. particulars which are not ontologically fundamental."(1) The dependent particulars might be said to be "parasitical upon" the fundamental particulars.

I shall here discuss the nature of spatial boundaries, viewing them as dependent particulars." (p. 87)

(1) Stephan Körner, Categorial Frameworks, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970, p. 4.

41. ———. 1986. Brentano and Intrinsic Value. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Editors' introduction IX; Acknowledgments XIII; 1. Introduction 1; 2. Thought and its objects 9; 3. The phenomena of love and hate 17; 4. Correct judgment 33; 5. Correct emotion 47; 6. The hierarchy of values 59; 7. Organic unities 69; 8. Evil 91: Index 103.

"The psychological approach to the theory of value.

I have tried to do two things in this book. The first is to set forth Franz Brentano's theory of value within the context of the remarkable philosophical system that he worked out.

And the second is to develop in further detail some of his more suggestive insights about the nature of intrinsic value.

My concern, for the most part, has been with exposition and clarification and not with criticism.

Much of Brentano's philosophy is based upon psychological considerations. The most important of these, as far as the theory of value is concerned, is his conception of the analogies that hold between intellectual and emotive phenomena." (p. 1)

42. ———. 1987. "Brentano and One-Sided Detachability." Conceptus: Zeitschrift Fur Philosophie no. 21:153-159.

43. ———. 1987. "Brentano's theory of pleasure and pain." Topoi no. 6:59-64.

"In one of their uses, the words "pleasure" and "pain" designate sense qualities of a certain sort. When they are used in this way, then "pleasure" may be said to designate one type of sense content and "pain" may be said to designate another. But in another of their uses, "pleasure" and "pain" designate certain types of mental act and not sensory contents. I can say "I am pleased that you are well" or "I am displeased about the bad news". In this case my statement may express an intentional attitude comparable to belief and desire.

What is the relation, then, between sensory pleasure and pain, on the one hand, and nononsensory, or intentional, pleasure and pain on the other? Are they simply two different types of phenomena that happen to have the same name? Or is there a sense in which both can be said to be subspecies of more generic types of pleasure and pain? These are among the basic philosophical questions of the theory of pleasure and pain. They present a problem, therefore, for descriptive psychology.(1)

The descriptive problem was clearly set forth by Stumpf in a lecture that was given in 1906 and published in the following year. Brentano's discussion of pleasure and pain in the Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie (1907) is essentially a commentary on Stumpf's lecture.(2)" (p. 59)

(1) Compare the general discussion by William Alston, in 'Pleasure', in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (The Macmillan Company, New York, 1967), Vol. VI, pp. 341-347.

(2) Carl Stumpf, 'Über Gefühlsempfindungen', Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, Band 44 (1907), pp. 1-49.

In a later article, Stumpf replies in detail to Brentano's criticisms; see 'Apologie der Gefühlsempfindungen', Zeitschrift für Psychologie, Band 75 (1916), pp. 104-140.

44. ———. 1989. "The objects of sensation: a Brentano study." Topoi no. 8:3-8.

"Introduction

The objects of sensation -- that is to say, such things as sense-qualities, sense-data, or phenomena -- continue to be what Meinong had called "homeless objects (heimatlose Gegenstände)'. (1) Investigators cannot agree as to what kind of things they are and they cannot even agree as to whether there are such things. I will try to show in this paper that Brentano's final view about them tells us just what they are and what kind of a home they have.

To explicate Brentano's view, I will begin, as he did in the Psychology, by considering the nature of the psychological.

For I think we can do what he wanted to do -- namely, to find a mark that is peculiar to what is psychological.

I assume, as he did, that we can agree pre-analytically about what things are psychological. All of our psychological properties are properties that include the property of thinking. Examples of such properties are judging, wishing, hoping and desiring. And the property of sensing -- the property of having a sensation -- is also a psychological property.

Let us first consider the kinds of thing that can have psychological properties." (p. 3)

(1) In "Uber die Stellung der Gegenstandstheorie im System der Wissenschaften" (1907); see Meinong Gesamtausgabe Band V, eds. Rudolf Hailer, Rudolf Kindinger and Roderick M. Chisholm, Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstait, 1975, pp. 214--220.

45. ———. 1991. "The formal structure of the Intentional: A metaphysical Study." Brentano Studien no. 3:11-18.

Abstract: "What is the metaphysical significance of what Brentano has shown us about intentionality? It is the fact that intentional phenomena have logical or structural features that are not shared by what is not psychological.

It was typical of British empiricism, particularly that of Hume, to suppose that consciousness is essentially sensible. The objects of consciousness were thought to be primarily such objects as sensations and their imagined or dreamed counterparts. In the Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Brentano makes clear that intentional phenomena need not be sensible. He is aware that, even if intentional phenomena are always accompanied by sensible or sensational phenomena, they are not themselves sensational or sensible phenomena. And the presence of certain intentional attitudes is at least as certain and indubitable for us as is the presence of our sensations. If I make a certain judgment or ask myself a certain question, then I can know directly and immediately that I make that judgment or ask that question. (This is not to say, of course, that every intentional attitude may be the object of such certainty. Perhaps there is a sense in which you may be said to like or to dislike a certain thing without realizing that you like or dislike that thing.)

If I can know directly and immediately that I am making a certain judgment, then, I can know what it is to make such a judgment. And if I know what it is to make a judgment, then, in making the judgment I can know directly and immediately that there is a certain individual thing - namely, the one who makes the judgment. Arid I, of course, am the one who makes my judgments and does my thinking. The same is true, obviously, of my other intentional activities - such activities as wondering, fearing, hoping, desiring, considering, liking and disliking."

46. ———. 1993. "Spatial continuity and the theory of part and whole. A Brentano study." Brentano Studien no. 4:11-24.

"The concepts of a spatially continuous substance, of spatial dimension and of spatial boundary are here "analyzed out" of the concepts of individual thing, of constituent and of coincidence. The analysis is based upon the theory of spatial coincidence that was developed by Brentano. Its presuppositions are essentially these: (1) if there are spatial objects of any kind, then there are continuous spatial substances. (2) such substances are possibly such that they are not constituents of any individual thing; and (3) they contain constituents (namely, boundaries) which are necessarily such that they are constituents of spatial substances."

47. ———. 1993. "Brentano on "Unconscious Consciousness"." In Consciousness, Knowledge, and Truth: Essays in Honour of Jan Srzednicki, edited by Poli, Roberto, 153-160. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"Introduction

In his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Franz Brentano sets forth a theory of consciousness which implies (i) that every mental state includes an awareness of the subject of that state. (ii) that every mental state is itself an object of consciousness and (iii) that there are no unconscious mental states. Brentano's views on these matters, it seems to me, are of first importance. Many of Brentano's critics have felt that they involve insuperable difficulties. In the present essay, I will attempt to put these views as clearly as possible and to suggest how Brentano might deal with some of the criticisms that have been made.

I will discuss three questions: (l) Does Brentano's concept of a "secondary" object lead to a regress? (2) Is every mental act an object of an evident judgement? And (3) are there unconscious mental states?" (p. 153)

48. Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz. 2003. "Brentano's Late Ontology." Brentano Studien no. 10:221-236.

Abstract: "In the present paper I want to give an interpretation of Brentano's late, nominalistic ontology. There are two aspects of this theory: the conception of individual properties containing their substances, presented mainly in the fragments collected in Brentano's Theory of Categories and the conceptualistic reduction virtually involved in Brentano's definition of truth."

49. ———. 2013. "Brentano and Aristotle on the Ontology of Intentionality." In Themes from Brentano, edited by Fisette, Denis and Fréchette, Guillaume, 121-137. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"It is often claimed that Brentano’s rediscovery of intentionality has been strongly influenced by Aristotle. Brentano himself stressed repeatedly his affinity to Aristotle(1) and this self-interpretation was by no means restricted to the theory of intentionality. In fact, Brentano seemed to believe that almost all of what he had discovered during his most influential years (1874–1895) has its more or less remote roots in the philosophy of Aristotle.(2) Yet if we carefully compare the picture of intentionality that is to be found in Aristotle’s De Anima with Brentano’s theory of immanent objects, we find more differences than similarities. The truth is that Brentano developed a quite different ontology of intentionality, and his references to Aristotle should be seen as a conventional homage to his master rather than as something of substance that could help us to understand better Brentano’s own theory. What Brentano in fact took from Aristotle was rather his way of doing philosophy and certain isolated ideas, but certainly not theories in their entirety.(3)" (p. 121)

(1) Cf. e.g. Brentano (1874/1924, 124f.); Brentano (1982, 26).

(2) Cf. e.g. his frequently cited letter, in Brentano (1977, 291).

(3) This is true even of Brentano’s early metaphysics, as developed in his Lectures on Metaphysics from 1867 (manuscript M 96). Cf. Chrudzimski (2004, ch. 3) and Chrudzimski and Smith (2004, 197-204).

References

Brentano, F. 1874/1924. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt vol. I. ed. by O. Kraus, Leipzig: Meiner [1st ed. 1874].

—— 1891/1982. Deskriptive Psychologie, ed. by Roderick M. Chisholm and Wilhelm Baumgartner, Hamburg: Meiner.

—— 1977. Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen. Hamburg: Meiner.

Chrudzimski, A. 2004. Die Ontologie Franz Brentanos. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Chrudzimski, A. and B. Smith. 2004. ‘Brentano’s Ontology: From Conceptualism to Reism’ in: D. Jacquette, (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 197–219.

50. ———. 2015. "Intentional Objects and Mental Contents." Brentano Studien no. 13:81-119.

Abstract: "In this paper I present a sketch of a theory of intentionality introducing special entities called intentional objects. Elaborated theories of this kind can be found in the works of Franz Brentano and Roman Ingarden. Nowadays those philosophers who are sympathetic to intentional objects are accused of planting an ontological jungle. All the problems of the theory of intentionality, it is claimed, can be resolved within the framework of a theory assuming a much more parsimonious ontology, like the theory of mental content proposed by the early Husserl or the so-called “adverbial” theory of intentionality. However, I show that the competitors of the the- ory of intentional objects face serious difficulties, the most important being that within their framework the relation between the representing entity (mental content or “adverbially specified” mental property of the subject) and the external target object has to be construed as primitive, while in the theory of intentional objects it can be easily defined. The consequence is that the partisans of mental contents and adverbialists are forced to re- quire a distinguished kind of epistemic access not only to the representing entity but also to this “representing relation”. This consequence, which is very seldom made explicit, seems indeed to be fatal. Intentional objects appear in this light not as products of an ontological extravagance but in- stead as entities that are indispensable, if we are to be able to explain the phenomenon of intentionality at all. Moreover, it turns out that we gain nothing if we introduce mental contents in addition to intentional objects. The approach to intentionality that I finally advocate postulates an external relation between a conscious subject and an intentional object, and is thus at bottom Brentanian."

51. Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz, and Lukasiewicz, Dariusz, eds. 2006. Actions, Products, and Things: Brentano and Polish Philosophy. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

Contents: Introduction 7; Dale Jacquette: Twardowski, Brentano's dilemma, and the content-object distinction 9; Maria van der Schaar: On the ambiguities of the term Judgement: an evaluation of Twardowski's distinction between action and product 35; Arianna Betti: The strange case of Savonarola and the painted fish: on the Bolzanization of Polish thought 55, Peter Simons: Things and truths: Brentano and Lesniewski, ontology and logic 83; Arkadiusz Chrudzimski: The young Lesniewski on existential propositions 107; Barry Smith: On the phases of Reism 107; Dariusz Lukasiewicz: Brentanian philosophy and Czezowski's conception of existence 183; Jan Wolenski: Brentanism and the rise of formal semantics 217; Notes on contributors 233; Index of names 235.

52. Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz, and Smith, Barry. 2004. "Brentano’s ontology: from conceptualism to reism." In The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, edited by Jacquette, Dale, 197-220. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"It is often claimed that the beginnings of Brentano’s ontology were Aristotelian in nature; but this claim is only partially true. Certainly the young Brentano adopted many elements of Aristotle’s metaphysics, and he was deeply influenced by the Aristotelian way of doing philosophy. But he always interpreted Aristotle’s ideas in his own fashion. He accepted them selectively, and he used them in the service of ends that would not have been welcomed by Aristotle himself. The present paper is an exposition of the development of Brentano’s ontology, beginning with the Lectures on Metaphysics first delivered by Brentano in Würzburg in 1867 and concluding with his late work from 1904-17." (p. 197)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on Franz Brentano: Studies in English, Third Part: Cos - Gau

Bibliography

1. Cosci, Matteo. 2023. "Brentano and Hillebrand on Syllogism: Development and Reception of the ‘Idiogenetic’ Theory." In Aristotle’s Syllogism and the Creation of Modern Logic: Between Tradition and Innovation, 1820s–1930s, edited by Verburgt, Lukas M. and Cosci, Matteo, 129-163. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

"The seventh chapter presents Franz Brentano and Franz Hillebrand’s ‘idiogenetic theory’, a post-scholastic type of syllogistic theory involving acts of judging which were regarded as belonging as such to a special genus (idios genos) of psychical phenomena. The logical traits of the theory were first put forward by Brentano in his Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (1874, first ed.) and then formally presented in Hillebrand’s Die neuen Theorien der kategorischen Schlüsse (1891). The most novel aspect of the theory was that all judgements were restated in existential form as single-membered assertions, or rejections, whose subject and predicate could be simpliciter converted. The proposal provoked numerous reactions. Particularly the last part of Hillebrand’s system, namely the extension about ‘double judgments’ (existential and predicative judgments bound together), was criticized by Husserl and Meinong, among others. But it also received active support from Brentano’s student Anton Marty. In his chapter, Matteo Cosci recalls the Leibnizian antecedent that showed the character of supposition of the existential import holding in the traditional square of oppositions. That assumption was a matter of concern for Brentano, who may have been aware of its formulation (possibly via Leibniz’s Difficultates Quaedam Logicae) in the process of developing his own reform of syllogistic on new, intentionalistic grounds. Aside from its intrinsic merits and originality, Brentano and Hillebrand’s ‘idiogenetic theory’ had a considerable impact in the fields of descriptive psychology, analytic philosophy and early phenomenology towards the end of the century – not to mention its relevance for the great current in logic inaugurated by Kazimierz Twardowski, prominent student of Brentano and the standard-bearer of his reform in Poland at the beginning of the twentieth century." (Introduction, p. 7)

2. Crane, Tim. 2006. "Brentano's Concept of Intentional Inexistence." In The Austrian Contribution to Analytic Philosophy, edited by Textor, Mark, 20-35. New York: Routledge.

Reprinted in: T. Crane, Aspects of Psychologism, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2013, pp. 25-39.

"First I will attempt to expound Brentano’s concept of intentional inexistence in its original 1874 context. This will enable us to eliminate some of the relatively superficial misunderstandings alluded to above.

Then I will outline Brentano’s change of mind when he later came to write the appendices to his 1874 Psychology. Although any reasonably careful reading of the text will show that Brentano did in fact change his mind, it is not always clearly recognised in the discussions of Brentano’s thesis what it is that he changed it from. Third I will show how the tension between his earlier view and the later view of the appendices is in fact the tension which is responsible for the problem of intentionality as we have it today." (p. 20)

3. Curvello, Flávio Vieira. 2016. "Franz Brentano’s Mereology and the Principles of Descriptive Psychology." Dialogue and Universalism no. 26:109-123.

Abstract: I analyse Brentano s argumentative strategy from his lectures in the Deskriptive Psychologie and how he introduces and reframes his fundamental psychological theses. His approach provides us with

the reasons why psychology can be distinguished into different domains of investigation and how the tasks of one of these domains the descriptive-psychological one imply a specific understanding about the structure of consciousness. Thereby a mereology of consciousness is developed, which offers the theoretical background to the aforementioned reframing of the Brentanian theses."

4. ———. 2021. "Brentano on scientific philosophy and positivism." Kriterion: Journal of Philosophy no. 62:657-679.

Abstract: "In this paper, I analyze Brentano’s fourth habilitation thesis, according to which the philosophical method should be none other than the natural scientific one.

The meaning of this thesis can be initially assessed through an examination of Brentano’s views on the relationship between natural and human sciences. His arguments for methodological unity in this debate show that he actually argues for an overarching idea of scientific knowledge, which is not restricted to the fields already recognized as scientific, but which can also be applied to philosophical domain. A fuller comprehension of that idea is provided by Brentano’s writings on Comte’s positivism."

5. Dainton, Barry. 2017. "Brentano on Phenomenal Unity and Holism." Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger no. 142:513-528.

"To provide anything approaching a complete picture of what Brentano is offering us here would mean engaging with some of the most distinctive (and inevitably) controversial aspects of his philosophy:the nature of “real unities” and “inner perception”, for example.

I shall be touching on some aspects of these issues, albeit briefly, later on. For now I want to focus on just one important and distinctive element of his position. Returning to our total experience E, according to Brentano its constituents parts, e1, e2, e3 and e4 are phenomenally unified if and only if they are experienced by us as occurring together (or “inwardly perceived as existing together” as he puts it). Whereas Descartes appealed to co-instantiation within a substance to explain the unity of consciousness, Brentano appeals to a phenomenal relationship: contents or objects are unified in consciousness if they are experienced as existing together. Let us say (for obvious reasons) that experiences related in this way are co-conscious."

6. de Boer, Theodorus. 1976. "The Descriptive Method of Franz Brentano: Its Two Functions and Their Significance for Phenomenology." In The Philosophy of Brentano, edited by McAlister, Linda Lopez, 101-107. London: Duckworth.

Translated from the German by Linda L. McAlister and Margarete Schättle.

Reprinted from the Proceedings of the XlVlh International Congress of Philosophy, 2—9 September 1968 (Vienna, 1968), vol. 2, pp. 191-9.

"When Brentano published his lecture The Origin of our Knowledge of Right and Wrong(2) in 1889, he wrote in the foreword that ‘this work will develop some of the views that there set forth in my Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint and will differ in fundamental respects from everything that has previously been said upon the subject. My readers will then be able to see, I hope, that I have not been idle during the long period of my literary retirement.’ There had, in fact, taken place an important change in Brentano’s thought during the period between 1874 and 1889. We would like to take this opportunity to direct attention to this and to ask in how far it signifies a further elaboration, a correction, or perhaps even a renunciation of his earlier views. This change in his views is reflected in the position that is now assigned to descriptive psychology. In 1874 it had only a subordinate function: it served as a preliminary for genetic psychology. All this is in line with the natural scientific character of Brentano’s philosophy. In 1866 he had defended the well-known thesis, ‘The true method of philosophy is none other than that of the natural sciences’." (p. 101)

(...)

"But by 1889 descriptive psychology had become an independent, autonomous science. The reason for this is the new function that it had acquired in the meantime - that of providing the foundations for the universally valid laws of the normative sciences: logic, aesthetics, and ethics. This is not psychologism, as Chisholm rightly points out, for Brentano strongly opposes the very attempt to make empirical generalisations the basis of apodictic laws for these sciences." (p. 102)

(2). Trans. Roderick M. Chisholm (London and New York, 1969).

7. Dewalque, Arnaud. 2013. "Brentano and the parts of the mental: a mereological approach to phenomenal intentionality." Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences no. 12:447-464.

Abstract: "In this paper, I explore one particular dimension of Brentano’s legacy, namely, his theory of mental analysis. This theory has received much less attention in recent literature than the intentionality thesis or the theory of inner perception. However, I argue that it provides us with substantive resources in order to conceptualize the unity of intentionality and phenomenality. My proposal is to think of the connection between intentionality and phenomenality as a certain combination of part/whole relations rather than as a supervenience or identity relation. To begin, I discuss some reasons for being a (neo-)Brentanian about the mind and briefly introduce the main characteristics of Brentano’s internalist description program. Then, I turn to the current “inseparatist” way of dealing with intentionality and phenomenality, focusing on the demand for unity coming from advocates of phenomenal intentionality. I suggest that the unity of the mind may be put in a new light if we put aside metaphysical–epistemological questions, go back to Brentano’s description program, and endorse his thesis that the mental is something unified in which various parts must be distinguished. In the last section, I draw some lessons from this approach, holding that, for any representational content R, R is (in Brentano’s terms) an abstractive or “distinctional” part of the relevant state and that, for any qualitative aspect Q, Q is an abstractive or “distinctional” part of the

relevant representational content R."

8. ———. 2013. "Schema of the Brentano School intellectual progeny." Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences no. 12:445.

Abstract: "This schema gives an overview of the main branches and key members of the school of the German philosopher Franz Brentano (1838–1917)."

9. ———. 2018. "Natural Classes in Brentano’s Psychology." Brentano Studien no. 16:111-142.

Abstract: "This article argues that Brentano’s classification of mental phenomena is best understood against the background of the theories of natural classification held by Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill. Section 1 offers a reconstruction of Brentano’s two-premise argument for his tripartite classification. Section 2 gives a brief overview of the reception and historical background of the classification project. Section 3 addresses the question as to why a classification of mental phenomena is needed at all and traces the answer back to Mill’s view that psychological laws are class-specific.

Sections 4 and 5 connect the second premise of Brentano’s argument to Comte’s principle of comparative likeness and Mill’s insistance that class membership is determined by the possession of common characteristics. And section 6 briefly discusses the evidence Brentano provides for the first premise."

10. ———. 2019. "Brentano's Case for Optimism." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 111:835-847.

Abstract: "Call metaphysical optimism the view that this world is the best of all possible worlds.

This article addresses Franz Brentano’s case for metaphysical optimism. I argue that, although Brentano does not offer any conclusive argument in favour of the latter, he disentangles many related issues which are interesting in their own right. The article has five sections corresponding to five claims, which I argue are central to Brentano’s view, namely: (§1) metaphysical optimism is best spelled out as the view that this world is the only good among all possible worlds; (§2) the notion of “correct”—or “fitting”—love offers a criterion of the good and the test of inverted love offers a means to identify that which is good; (§3) pessimism has to be distinguished from pejorism, viz. the view that the non-existence of this world is preferable to its existence; (§4) there is something good involved in every “bad” thing, to the effect that pejorism is false; (§5) it is wrong to consider the value of something in isolation."

11. ———. 2020. "The Phenomenology of Mentality." In Franz Brentano's Philosophy after Hundred Years: From History of Philosophy to Reism, edited by Fisette, Denis, Frechette, Guillaume and Janoušek, Hynek, 23-40. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "This paper offers a phenomenological interpretation of Brentano’s view of mentality. The key idea is that mental phenomena are not only characterized by intentionality; they also exhibit a distinctive way of appearing or being experienced.

In short, they also have a distinctive phenomenology. I argue this view may be traced back to Brentano’s theory of inner perception (henceforth, IP). Challenging the self-representational reading of IP, I maintain the latter is best understood as a way of appearing, that is, in phenomenological terms. Section 2 addresses Brentano’s claim that IP is one mark of the mental alongside intentionality. Sections 3 and 4 present support for a phenomenological interpretation of IP. And Section 5 briefly discusses two objections."

12. ———. 2021. "Misleading Expressions: The Brentano-Ryle Connection." In Philosophy of Language in the Brentano School: Reassessing the Brentanian Legacy, edited by Dewalque, Arnaud, Gauvry, Charlotte and Sébastien, Richard, 95-118. Cham (Switzerland): Palgrave Macmillan.

"Some linguistic expressions are misleading in the sense that they look as if they are about something while they actually are about something else.

In this chapter I argue that Gilbert Ryle’s account of misleading expressions, which is rightly considered a milestone in the history of analytic philosophy, is continuous with Brentano’s critique of language. Not only did they identify roughly the same classes of misleading expressions, but their analyses are driven by a form of ontological parsimony which sharply contrasts with rival views in the Brentano School, like those of Meinong and Husserl. It is true that Brentano’s account, unlike Ryle’s, is put in terms of underlying mental phenomena. However, this difference, I submit, is mainly terminological and does not reflect any substantial disagreement.

The chapter has four sections. Section 1 (‘Analysis’) suggests that Ryle and Brentano share a similar notion of analysis as paraphrase of misleading expressions. Section 2 (‘Two Senses of “About”’) spells out the notion of misleading expression by means of the surface-grammar/truth-conditions distinction, which I argue is implicit in their accounts.

Section 3 (‘Ficta’) zooms in on a specific class of misleading expressions, namely expressions about ficta. Finally, Sect. 4 (‘A Moral About the Meaning of “Meaning”’) draws the consequences of what precedes for a correct understanding of the notion of meaning." (pp. 95-96)

13. ———. 2021. "The Occamization of 'Meaning': Ryle and Brentano." Logique & Analyse no. 256:511-532.

Abstract: "To Occamize a nominal expression N is to show that, despite grammatical appearances, N does not name, or denote, an entity. This article argues that the Occamization of ‘meaning,’ which was central to Gilbert Ryle’s meta-philosophy, had already been advanced by Franz Brentano. The core thesis of the article is that Brentano’s notion of ‘content,’ albeit different from that of linguistic rules, does a similar job of

eliminating expendable entities. If the meaning of a linguistic expression is not an entity at all, then the question as to what kind of entity it is—what I shall call the Locke-Frege problem—turns out to be a pseudo-problem and is better dispensed with."

14. ———. 2023. "On noticing transparent states: A compatibilist approach to transparency." European Journal of Philosophy:398-412.

Abstract: "According to the transparency thesis, some conscious states are transparent or “diaphanous”. This thesis is often believed to be incompatible with an inner-awareness account of phenomenal consciousness. In this article, I reject this incompatibility. Instead, I defend a compatibilist approach to transparency. To date, most attempts to do so require a rejection of strong transparency in favor of weak transparency. In this view, transparent states can be attended to by attending (in the right way) to the presented world: that is, they are merely translucent. Here, I first argue that this understanding of transparency is too weak to qualify as a compatibilist view. Drawing on insights from Franz Brentano, I then describe a middle road between strong and weak transparency. The crucial idea is that, although transparent states cannot be attended to, they can be noticed (under suitable conditions). This view, I submit, allows supporters of inner awareness to commit themselves to a more interesting understanding of transparency—moderate transparency—that preserves the initial intuition underlying the transparency metaphor."

15. Dewalque, Arnaud, Gauvry, Charlotte, and Richard, Sébastien, eds. 2021. Philosophy of Language in the Brentano School: Reassessing the Brentanian Legacy. Cham (Switzerland): Palgrave-Macmillan.

Contents: 1. Arnaud Dewalque, Charlotte Gauvry, and Sébastien Richard: Introduction: Mind, Meaning and Reality 1

Part I Brentano and Philosophy of Language 33

2. Guillaume Fréchette: The Context Principle in Austro-German Philosophy 35; 3. Charlotte Gauvry: A Context Principle in Brentano? 57; 4. Denis Seron: Brentano and Mauthner on Grammatical Illusions 77; 5. Arnaud Dewalque: Misleading Expressions: The Brentano-Ryle Connection 95; 6. Hélène Leblanc: Sign and Language in Anton Marty: Before and after Brentano 119;

Part II The Brentano School: Act, Meaning and Object 141

7. Sébastien Richard: De Significatione: The Brentano-Ingarden Axis 143; 8. Olivier Malherbe: Meaning(s) in Roman Ingarden’s Philosophy of Language 169; 9. Denis Fisette: Overcoming Psychologism: Twardowski on Actions and Products 189; 10. Bruno Leclercq: Is the Content-Object Distinction Universally Valid? Meaning and Reference in Twardowski and Meinong 207; 11. Jan Woleński: Extensionality/Intensionality in Polish Philosophy of Language: From Twardowski to Ajdukiewicz 227;

Part III Brentano’s Wider Legacy 243

12. Maria van der Schaar: Modifying Terms and Modification in Husserl and the Brentano School 245; 13. Hamid Taieb: The Early Husserl on Typicality 263; 14. Basil Vassilicos: Wundt and Bühler on Gestural Expression: From Psycho-Physical Mirroring to the Diacrisis 279; 15 Kevin Mulligan: On Being Guided, Signals and Rules: From Bühler to Wittgenstein 299;

Index 317-322.

16. Drummond, John. 1998. "From Intentionality to Intensionality and back." Études Phénoménologiques no. 14:89-126.

17. Dubois, James. 1996. "Investigating Brentano's Reism." Brentano Studien no. 6:283-296.

18. Eaton, Howard Ormsby. 1930. The Austrian Philosophy of Values. Norman: University of Oklahoma Pres.

Chapter One: Brentano’s Empirical Psychology, pp. 15-39.

"The concept of values had long been regarded as being rather incidental to metaphysics, or else to economics, ethics, aesthetics or some other of the many social sciences which made use of it. It had been rather taken for granted, and had been, consequently, almost completely neglected as a field of speculative or scientific investigation. The present study is an attempt to analyze in considerable detail the value theories of a small group of men in Austria who did their best to remedy that state of affairs. We designate this group as the Second Austrian School, hinting at their intimate relations with the first Austrian School of economic theory. The founders of this school were Franz Brentano, Alexius von Meinong, and Professor Christian von Ehrenfels, to whom we shall devote the major share of our attention.

This school is of significance because of its attempt to rescue the abstract concept of values as such from its Cinderella-like subordination in the households of the various social sciences and establish it in its rightful place as an independent and coordinate department of philosophic thought. Of course it is not possible to study values quite independently of the particular value sciences; a value which is neither economic, ethic, esthetic, nor any other of the specific types of value seems to be unthinkable. This does not mean that the study of values is open only to economists, or ethicists, or students of aesthetics.

It is becoming a matter of pressing concern to discover if there are any respects in which one can generalize concerning values simply qud values, regardless of metaphysical theory or connection with a social science." (p. 16)

19. Fano, Vincenzo. 1993. "The categories of consciousness: Brentano's epistemology." Brentano Studien no. 4:101-130.

Abstract: "The present investigation reformulates a few Brentanian ideas concerning what is mental. In particular, an attempt to define the categorial structure implicit in the notion of consciousness and in that of inner perception, keeping in mind their connections with external perception and with unconscious, is outlined. Within the mental field is observed a formal violation of some elementary rules of ontology and mereology, and such violation can be interpreted in terms of an infinite multiplicity of the mental field itself."

20. Farrell Krell, David. 1975. "On the Manifold Meaning of Aletheia: Brentano, Aristotle, Heidegger." Research in Phenomenology no. 5:77-94.

"In 1964 Heidegger cited as the persistent task of his thought the meaning of ἀλήθεια -no longer to be translated as "truth" but to be pondered as unconcealment or "the clearing that first grants Being and thinking and their presencing to and for each other."(4) Now one of the four senses ascribed to "being" in Brentano's dissertation on Aristotle is όν ώς ἀληθής "being in the sense of the true." Does Brentano's account of "being in the sense of the true" have significant bearing on Heidegger's response to the matter of his thinking, i.e. Aletheia as the unconcealment of beings in presence? This brief study tries to answer that question by offering (I) a general account of Brentano's thesis, (II) a detailed resume of its third chapter, concerning όν ώς ἀληθής, (III) a condensed treatment of Heidegger's aletheological notion of Being, and (IV) a summary of results and response to the question." (p. 79)

21. Fischer, Kurt Rudolf, and Miller, Leon R. 1976. "Notes on Terrell's "Brentano's logical innovations"." Midwest Studies in Philosophy no. 1:95-97.

"The purpose of Professor Terrell’s paper[*] is to bring to light some of the genuinely distinctive features of Brentano’s logical innovations through the development of a ‘Brentano-style’ notation and formal system. This method enables him to achieve a standard of explictness that is not to be found in the work of Brentano himself. The dangers inherent in such an approach are formidable; as many recent studies in the history of logic have amply demonstrated, the desire for formal clarity may easily result in a number of major distortions.

Some inkling of the difficulty may be gleaned from Brentano’s claim that existents are individuals, but that reflection about individuals is always general. In Professor Terrell’s treatment, ‘thinking’ becomes ‘reference,’ and the terms of a Brentanist formal logic are, accordingly, general terms. These general terms are not functions constructed out of more primitive expressions, predicates and one or more individual expressions; they are primitives.

As a result, the notion of substituting an individual constant for the variable in an expression such as ‘Fx’ is meaningless. Therefore, as Professor Terrell is well aware, any attempt to formalize Brentano’s logical theory in the familiar notation of the first-order predicate calculus is doomed to failure. However, Professor Terrell’s suggestions for surmounting these difficulties do not seem entirely successful." (pp. 95-96)

[*] Franz Brentano's Logical Innovations (1976).

22. Fisette, Denis. 2015. "Franz Brentano and higher-order theories of consciousness." Argumentos no. 7:9-39.

Abstract: "This article addresses the recent reception of Franz Brentano’s writings on consciousness. I am particularly interested in the connection established between Brentano’s theory of consciousness and higher-order theories of consciousness and, more specifically, the theory proposed by David Rosenthal. My working hypothesis is that despite the many similarities that can be established with Rosenthal’s philosophy of mind, Brentano’s theory of consciousness differs in many respects from higher-order theories of consciousness and avoids most of the criticisms generally directed to them. This article is divided into eight parts. The first two sections expound the basic outline of Rosenthal’s theory, and the third summarizes the principal objections that Rosenthal addresses to Brentano, which I, then, examine in sections 4 and 5. In sections 6 and 7, I discuss Brentano’s principle of the unity of consciousness, and in section 8, I consider the scope of the changes that Brentano brings to his theory of consciousness in his later writings,which follow the 1874 publication of Psychology. I then draw the conclusion that Brentano’s theory rests on a view of intransitive and intrinsic self-consciousness."

23. ———. 2018. "Franz Brentano and Auguste Comte’s Positive Philosophy." Brentano Studien no. 16:73-110.

Abstract: "My aim in this study is to show that the philosophical program elaborated by Brentano in his Psychology is largely indebted to the research conducted by Brentano on British empiricism and Comte‘s positive philosophy during the Würzburg period (1866-1873). This research represents the starting point of, and backdrop to, the project for philosophy as science, which is at the heart of his Psychology, and sheds new light on the philosophical stakes of many debates he leads in that work. Furthermore, Brentano’s research informs us about his philosophical preoccupations during the Würzburg period, and simultaneously provide us with a new perspective on the evolution of his thought from his habilitation at Würzburg in 1866 to his arrival in Vienna in 1874. In this study, I propose to examine some of the factors that motivated Brentano¹s interest in Comte¹s philosophy and to evaluate the influence that the latter exerted on Brentano¹s thought during the Würzburg period and beyond."

24. ———. 2019. "Brentano’s Lectures on Positivism and His Relationship to Ernst Mach." In Ernst Mach – Life, Work, Influence, edited by Stadler, Friedrich, 39-50. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Franz Brentano’s criticism of Mach in his lectures on Positivism (1893–1894)

This paper is mainly about Brentano’s commentaries on Ernst Mach in his lectures “Contemporary philosophical questions” which he held one year before he left Austria. I will first identify the main sources of Brentano’s early interests in positivism during his Würzburg period. The second section provides a short overview of Brentano’s 1893–1894 lectures and his criticism of Comte, Kirchhoff, and Mill. The next sections bear on Brentano’s criticism of Mach’s monism and Brentano’s argument, based on his theory of intentionality, against the identification of mental to physical phenomena. The last section is about Brentano’s proposal to replace the identity relation in Mach’s theory of elements by that of intentional correlation. I conclude with a remark on the history of philosophy in Austria."

25. ———. 2020. "Brentano and J. Stuart Mill on Phenomenalism and Mental Monism." In Franz Brentano and Austrian Philosophy, edited by Fisette, Denis, Fréchette, Guillaume and Stadler, Friedrich, 251-267. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "This study is about Brentano’s criticism of a version of phenomenalism that he calls “mental monism” and which he attributes to positivist philosophers such as Ernst Mach and John Stuart Mill. I am interested in Brentano’s criticism of Mill’s version of mental monism based on the idea of “permanent possibilities of sensation.” Brentano claims that this form of monism is characterized by the identification

of the class of physical phenomena with that of mental phenomena, and it commits itself to a form of idealism. Brentano argues instead for a form of indirect or hypothetical realism based on intentional correlations."

26. ———. 2020. "Introduction: Franz Brentano in Vienna." In Franz Brentano and Austrian Philosophy, edited by Fisette, Denis, Frechette, Guillaume and Stadler, Friedrich, 3-21. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

"But all this recent interest in Brentano’s philosophy cannot develop as much as many would like because, contrary to the writings of several of his students, including Husserl’s, only a fraction of Brentano’s writings is currently accessible to Brentano’s actual and potential readers. And many of his writings that are accessible through the editions of O. Kraus, A. Kastil, and F. Mayer-Hillebrand present major problems because of the editorial policies that prevailed in their editions. This editorial work has to be done all over again because Brentano’s writings have been systematically manipulated in order to promote Brentano’s late philosophical views.(17)

Since 2008, the reedition of Brentano’s works published during his lifetime has been undertaken by Ontos Verlag (now de Gruyter),(18) supplemented by original introductions. Needless to say, the publication of numerous manuscripts, dictations, seminars, lecture notes, or Brentano’s abundant correspondence would greatly contribute to enhancing the contemporary interest in Brentano’s work." (P. 6, a note omitted)

(17) Cf, Fisette/Fréchette (Eds.) (2013), Themes from Brentano, Section V, p. 359–418.

(18) Brentano (2008–2018), Sämtliche veröffentlichte Schriften, Berlin: De Gruyter.

27. ———. 2021. "Remarks on the Architecture of Brentano’s Philosophical Program." In The Philosophy of Brentano: Contributions from the Second International Conference Graz 1977 & 2017, in Memory of Rudolf Haller, edited by Antonelli, Mauro and Binder, Thomas, 28-49. Leiden: Brill Rodopi.

"This paper is about Brentano’s philosophical program in Vienna and the overall architecture that holds together the main parts of his philosophy. My point of departure is the recent literature on the unity of Brentano’s philosophy, which has sometimes been understood as a “system” in the spirit of Kant and his successors, for example. I am particularly interested in the research program that he began to develop during his stay in Würzburg and that he exhibited upon his arrival in Vienna, namely in his inaugural address at the University of Vienna (Brentano, 1929a) and in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint.

(...)

The aim of this study is to investigate, from a bird’s eye view, the main articulations of Brentano’s philosophical program." (p. 28, a note omitted)

28. Fisette, Denis, and Fréchette, Guillaume, eds. 2013. Themes from Brentano. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Contents: Guillaume Fréchette: Introduction: Brentano’s Impact 9.

Consciousness. Brentanian and Neo-Brentanian Perspectives.

Denis Fisette: Introduction; Uriah Kriegel: Brentano’s Most Striking Thesis: No Representation Without Self-Representation 23; Johannes L. Brandl: What is Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness? Brentano’s Theory of Inner Consciousness Revisited 41; Mark Textor: Unity Without Self: Brentano on the Unity of Consciousness 67;

Varieties of Intentionality.

Guillaume Fréchette: Introduction 87; Guillaume Fréchette: Brentano’s Thesis (Revisited) 91; Arkadiusz Chrudzimski: Brentano and Aristotle on the Ontology of Intentionality 121; Laurent Cesalli: Anton Marty’s Intentionalist Theory of Meaning 139; Matjaž Potrc: Phenomenology of Intentionality 165.

Ontology and Metaphysics.

Guillaume Fréchette: Introduction 189; Werner Sauer: Being as the True: From Aristotle to Brentano 193; Wilhelm Baumgartner: Franz Brentano’s Mereology 227; Susan Gabriel: Brentano at the Intersection of Psychology, Ontology, and the Good 247.

Critics and Heirs. The School of Brentano.

Denis Fisette: Introduction 273; Denis Fisette: Mixed Feelings. Carl Stumpf’s Criticism of James and Brentano on Emotions 281; Olivier Massin: The Intentionality of Pleasures and Other Feelings. A Brentanian Approach 307; Riccardo Martinelli: Brentano and Stumpf on Tonal Fusion 339.

Expositions and Discussions. Selected Materials and Translations.

Denis Fisette: Introduction 359; Thomas Binder: There and Back Again. An Updated History of Franz Brentano’s Unpublished Papers 369; Franz Brentano: Abstraction and Relation, followed by Selected Letters to Marty 419; Guillaume Fréchette: Editorial Remarks: 421; Franz Brentano: Modern Errors concerning the Knowledge of the Laws of Inference 501; Franz Brentano: Moderne Irrthümer über die Erkenntnis der Gesetze des Schließens 513.

Index of Names 525-530.

29. Fisette, Denis, Fréchette, Guillaume, and Janoušek, Hynek, eds. 2020. Franz Brentano’s Philosophy After One Hundred Years: From History of Philosophy to Reism. Cham (SWitzerland): Springer.

Contents: Denis Fisette, Guillaume Fréchette, and Hynek Janoušek: Preface V;

Part I Descriptive Psychology and Philosophy of Mind

1. Íngrid Vendrell Ferran: Brentano and the Birth of a New Paradigm in the Philosophy of Emotions 3; 2. Arnaud Dewalque: The Phenomenology of Mentality 23; 3. Denis Seron: Consciousness and Representation 41; 4. Maik Niemeck: Current Accounts of Subjective Character and Brentano’s Concept of Secondary Consciousness 55;

Part II Brentano and Husserl

5. Hynek Janoušek: Brentano’s Theory of Time-Consciousness in Husserl’s Philosophy of Arithmetic 75; 6. Hamid Taieb: Husserl on Brentanian Psychology: A Correct Criticism? 87; 7. : Brentano, Husserl and Psychological Immanence 109;

Part III Ontology and Metaphysics. On Reism

8. Bruno Leclercq: Foundational Mereology as a Logical Tool for Descriptive Psychology 125; 9. Sébastien Richard: Are There Ideal Objects?: The Controversy Between Kotarbiński and Ingarden 149; 10. : Brentano on entia rationis and Linguistic Fictions 167;

Part IV History of Philosophy

11. Venanzio Raspa: Brentano on Aristotle’s Categories 185; 12. Emanuele Mariani: The Analogies of the Soul: Brentano, Aristotle and the Project of a Scientific Psychology 205;13. Laurent Cesalli: Brentano as a Historian of (Medieval) Philosophy 221; 14 David Torrijos-Castrillejo: F.J. Clemens and Some Aspects of Neo-Scholasticism in the Education of F. Brentano 231; 15. Josef Hlade: Brentano and Brain Research in His Time: His Criticism of Theodor Meynert’s Brain Theory 243;

Appendix: Ontologische Fragen/Ontological Questions: A Treatise from Franz Brentano’s Manuscripts 261; Franz Brentano - Edited and Translated by Robin Rollinger;

Index 341-345.

30. Fisette, Denis, Fréchette, Guillaume, and Stadler, Friedrich, eds. 2021. Franz Brentano and Austrian Philosophy. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Contents: Part I Brentano and Austrian Philosophy

1. Denis Fisette: Introduction: Franz Brentano in Vienna 3;

Descriptive Psychology and Phenomenology: Brentano and Husserl

2. Dagfinn Føllesdal: Brentano and Husserl on Intentionality 23; 3. David Woodruff Smith: Descriptive Psychology and Phenomenology: From Brentano to Husserl to the Logic of Consciousness 49; 4. Dermot Moran: Brentano’s Concept of Descriptive Psychology 73; 5. Guillaume Fréchette: Brentano on Phenomenology and Philosophy as a Science 101;

Brentano and the Vienna Circle

6. Hans-Joachim Dahms: Brentano’s Appointment to the University of Vienna 117; 7. Thomas Uebel: Intentionality in the Vienna Circle 135; 8. Christian Damböck: (Dis-)Similarities: Remarks on “Austrian” and “German” Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century 169;

Brentano and the History of Philosophy

9. Richard Schaefer: Learning from Lasaulx: The Origins of Brentano’s Four Phases Theory 181; 10. Anna Brożek: Franz Brentano and the Lvov-Warsaw School 197; 11. Mark Textor: How Many Terms Does a Judgement Have?Jerusalem Versus Brentano 235; 12. Denis Fisette: Brentano and J. Stuart Mill on Phenomenalism and Mental Monism 251;

Documentation: Alfred Kastil and the Vienna Circle

13.Alfred Kastil: Ist die Unterscheidung von Ganzheit und Summe eine sachliche? Bemerkungen zum Vortrage Prof. Schlicks „Über den Begriff der Ganzheit” 269; 14. Alfred Kastil: Franz Brentanos Kritik der Antimetaphysiker 289; 15. Moritz Schlick: Gestaltpsychologie 309;

Part II General Part

16. David J. Chalmers: Carnap’s Second Aufbau and David Lewis’s Aufbau 329; 17. Gergely Ambrus: Carnap and Wittgenstein on Psychological Sentences: 1928–1932. Some Further Aspects of the Priority-Dispute

Over Physicalism 353; 18. Markus Arnold: Scientific Communities. A History of Theories and Concepts 387;

Part III Reviews

19. Georg Schiemer: Paolo Mancosu, Abstraction and Infinity. Oxford University Press, 2016 427; 20. Christopher Burke: Jordi Cat, Adam Tamas Tuboly (Ed.) Neurath Reconsidered: New Sources and Perspectives. Cham: Springer Nature, 2019 431;

Index 437-441

31. Føllesdal, Dagfinn. 1978. "Brentano and Husserl on Intentional Objects and Perception." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 5:83-94.

Reprinted in: Hubert Dreyfus (ed.), Husserl, Intentionality and Cognitive Science, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982, pp. 31-41.

"In order to shed some light upon the relationship between Brentano and Husserl, I shall discuss briefly their views on intentional objects and on perception. I have chosen to focus my comments on these two themes partly because they were central to their relationship and partly because they are also interconnected in a certain way that we shall look at. I will begin by saying a little about Brentano's views on intentionality. These views have been mentioned several times in the earlier papers of this meeting, and they will probably be brought up again in many of the later papers. I will then explain how Husserl tried to solve these problems. Afterwards I will go on to discuss some features of Brentano's view on perception, and I will finally show how Husserl here too starts out from Brentano, but modifies Brentano's ideas in such a way as to create a really quite different theory." (p. 83)

32. ———. 2020. "Brentano and Husserl on Intentionality." In Franz Brentano and Austrian Philosophy, edited by Fisette, Denis, Frechette, Guillaume and Stadler, Friedrich, 23-48. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Brentano’s lectures attracted a large number of very gifted students who became fascinated with the idea of intentionality and developed it further in several different directions. Brentano followed up Aristotle’s view on our mind taking on the form of the object and he was particularly influenced by Thomas Aquinas’ approach. His students struggled with how to deal with acts without objects, for example hallucinations, and proposed different solutions. Husserl tried to agree with his teacher as far as he could. He even regarded agreement with one’s teacher as a duty, which could only be forsaken for very good reasons. But he thought he had such reasons. These led him to phenomenology, which is briefly presented in this paper. In a short appendix I use the connection between Aristotle and Husserl to examine the controversy between two prominent Aristotle scholars, Myles Burnyeat (1992) and Richard Sorabji (1974, 1992), and their many followers on both sides concerning the interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of perception. The appendix was presented in lectures at conferences in 1995 and 1996, but never sent off for publication.

It was published in Greek translation in 1997. In the following years, Burnyeat, who died on September 20, 2019, modified his view, probably without knowing about my criticism. As far as I know, Sorabji stands by his view."

References

Burnyeat, Myles. 1992. Is an Aristotelian Philosophy of Mind Still Credible? (A Draft). In Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, ed. M. Nussbaum and A. Rorty, 15–26. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Sorabji, Richard. 1974. Body and soul in Aristotle. In Philosophy 49, pp 63–89. Here quoted from the reprint in Michael Durrant, (Ed.), Aristotle’s De Anima in focus, London: Routledge, 1993.

———. 1991. From Aristotle to Brentano: The Development of the Concept of Intentionality. Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume, pp. 227–259.

33. Fréchette, Guillaume. 2011. "Leibniz and Brentano on Apperception." In Natur und Subjekt. Vorträge 1. Teil, Proceedings of the ninth international Leibniz Congress, Hannover 2011, edited by Breger, H., Herbst, J. and Erdner, S., 351-359. Hannover: Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Gesellschaft.

"Whereas Leibniz is often seen as defending a traditional HOT-theory[*], Brentano is often believed to be offering a viable alternative, within the framework of HOT-theories, to the assumption that first-order and second order acts are distinct existences without compromising the core idea of HOT-theories, namely that the explanation of phenomenal consciousness to be reached rests on the cognitive level and not on

the sensory level of our experience.

One might, however, wonder how one single strategy concerning the explanation of consciousness relies on two philosophers who are in disagreement regarding consciousness.

Brentano and Leibniz have indeed different views concerning the nature of perception as well as different views concerning the nature of consciousness and the possibility of unconscious perceptions. In this paper, I will address some of the difficulties of both these strategies by comparing Leibniz’s and Brentano’s concepts of apperception (Bewußtsein or inneres Bewußtsein in Brentano’s language). The view adopted here is quite wide. Due to shortage of space, I will have to put aside the numerous debates in the contemporary literature on Leibniz concerning the various meanings of apperception in his writings. In my view, both Leibniz’s and Brentano’s accounts of apperception are, as they stand, unsatisfactory regarding their contribution to a HOT-theory. In order to show this in more details, I will first start by contrasting their views of the nature ofperception and apperception. It will soon become clear that their respective views lead to distinct HOT-theories. In the conclusion, I will propose an interpretation of their theories in which they would both be able to contribute to one model of HOT-theories." (pp. 351-352)

[*] Higher-Order-Theories.

34. ———. 2013. "Kant, Brentano and Stumpf on Psychology and Anti-Psychologism." In Kant und die Philosophie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht: Akten des XI. Kant-Kongresses 2010, edited by Bacin, Stefano, Ferrarin, Alfredo, La Rocca, Claudio and Ruffing, Margit, 727-736. Berlin: de Gruyter.

"In all the criticisms made by Franz Brentano against nineteenth-century philosophy, be it in the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint or in his later writings, Kant undoubtedly occupies the place of honor. In Brentano’s view, Kant not only postulated without any justification synthetic a priori judgments, but he also instigated the phase of decadence that characterized German philosophy in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Beyond these polemic affirmations that often attract attention, it is important to put things in perspective and investigate how such criticisms are construed and what their origins are. In the present paper, I focus more specifically on the reception of Kantian psychology by Brentano and his students. Certainly, Brentano’s rejection of Kantian psychology goes along with his total rejection of the synthetic a priori judgments.

What I want to suggest here is that in the specific case of psychology, the hostile reception of Kantian philosophy in the school of Brentano is mainly due to a combination of two factors. The first is Kant’s rejection of psychology in the theory of knowledge. The second, which is correlative to the first factor, is the Brentanian rejection of Kant’s thesis on the impossibility of psychology becoming a science. In what follows, I investigate these two factors in detail, using as a case study the position advocated by Carl Stumpf in “Psychology and Theory of Knowledge”.(2) This work fully deserves to be discussed: Stumpf (1848–1936) was not only one of the most brilliant and influent students of Brentano, but his essay also played an important role in the school of Brentano, offering one of the rare printed confrontations with the Kantian and Neokantian positions on psychology." (pp. 727-728, a note omitted)

(2) Stumpf, Carl: “Psychologie und Erkenntnistheorie”. In: Abhandlungen der Königlich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 19, 1891, 465– 516. All further references to this essay are abbreviated here as PE.

35. ———. 2013. "Brentano’s Thesis (Revisited)." In Themes from Brentano, edited by Fisette, Denis and Fréchette, Guillaume, 91-119. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"In the following paper, I will first discuss a presupposition in Chisholm’s understanding of intentional sentences. This presupposition – namely, that intentional sentences are about intentional objects and that these objects possess a diminished form of existence – supports of course his reading of Brentano’s thesis, but there are good reasons, as I will try to show, to question this presupposition. As I will argue, Brentano was not in the first place arguing against reductionism, although he certainly would have disputed it: rather, he took the reality of the mental as it is given in experience, but wanted to identify a common ground shared by all mental phenomena which would still take into account the intrinsic diversity of mental phenomena. In this respect, intentionality was introduced as a feature that comes in different varieties and that still provides a golden thread to the unity of sensations, presentations, judgments, strivings, willings, desirings, etc., which constitute every man’s mental life." (pp. 92-93)

36. ———. 2014. "Austrian Logical Realism? Brentano on States of Affairs." In Defending Realism: Ontological and Epistemological Investigations, edited by Cumpa, Javier, Jesson, Greg and Bonino, Guido, 379-400. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Abstract: "In the following paper, I will discuss the motives behind Franz Brentano’s judgment contents and the strategies offered by him to support them, suggesting that most of these strategies—based on his treatment of true negative existential judgments—are not clearly compatible with the logical realism he often professed.

More generally, I would like to suggest that although there definitely is a realist concern in Austrian philosophy introducing them to support states of affairs, reducing their introduction to a realist concern is misguided. As shown in the case of Brentano, states of affairs were not always introduced in order to answer the question of what makes our assertions true, but rather to provide a psychological account of judgments that would help distinguish between the two basic classes of acts: presentations and judgments. I argue that Brentano’s way of dealing with states of affairs shares some similarities with nominalists’ motivations and strategies for introducing states of affairs."

37. ———. 2015. "Brentano’s soul and the unity of consciousness." Argumentos no. 7:65-76.

Abstract: "In the following paper, I discuss Fisette’s reconstruction of Brentano’s view, according to which Brentano’s conception of consciousness and of its unity is based on the presupposition that consciousness has a bearer, i.e. the soul.

First, I identify Fisette’s real target (sect.1) and challenge his conception of the mental agent as central to Brentano’s account (sect. 2 and 3). In section 4, I formulate some doubts about the sources used by Fisette, and, in section 5, I propose another reading of the relation between the unity of consciousness and the mental agent in the late Brentano."

References

Fisette, Denis. Franz Brentano and higher-order theories of consciousness, Argumentos, 7, 2015, pp. 9-39.

38. ———. 2015. "Brentano’s Conception of Intentionality: New Facts and Unsettled Issues." Brentano Studien no. 13.

"1. The unsettled issues in Brentano’s Thesis

While Brentano’s thesis on intentionality definitely is his most important contribution to the philosophy of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, it is remarkable that it has been understood in so many different ways. It is well known that Chisholm (1955-56) saw in Brentano’s thesis a thesis about intentional sentences, and Quine a thesis “of a piece with the thesis of indeterminacy of translation” (Quine 1960, 221), two readings which were decisive in the philosophy of mind between the 1960s and the 1980s, where Brentano’s intentionality thesis was often considered to be the target par excellence of naturalism. Things changed between the 1980s and 1990s, when consciousness and intentionality regained some philosophical dignity, thanks most notably to the works of Searle. Building upon this, more recent works proposed another approach of the thesis, moving its focus from an anti-reductionist view of the relation between the mental and the physical to a more general view on the nature of mind. Among many interesting and stimulating reappraisals of Brentano’s thesis in this context, it is worth ìmentioning Tim Crane (1998), who developed Brentano’s thesis of intentionality as the mark of the mental into an intentionalist account of the mind, and Uriah Kriegel (2003a, 2003b, 2013), who suggested that the intentionality thesis comes together with a thesis on the self-representational nature of mental acts, akin to Brentano’s account of consciousness.

From a historical and interpretive perspective however, the question of the true meaning of Brentano’s intentionality thesis seems to remain unsettled, even today. Three main issues, involved directly or indirectly in the interpretation of Brentano’s thesis on intentionality, remain particularly sensitive:" (p. 9)

References

Chisholm, R., 1955-56, “Sentences about believing”, in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 56, p. 125–148.

Qune, W.v.O. Word and Object, Harvard, The MIT Press 1960.

Kriegel, U., 2003a, “Consciousness and Intransitive Self-Consciousness. Two Views and an Argument”, in Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 33, 103–132.

——, 2003b, “Is Intentionality dependent upon Consciousness?”, in Philosophical Studies, 116, 271–307.

——, 2013, “Brentano’s Most Striking Thesis”, in Fisette, D. and G. Frécehtte (eds.), Themes from Brentano, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 23–40.

39. ———. 2017. "Content and Object in Brentano." The IfCoLog Journal of Logics and their Applications no. 4:3609-3628.

"It has usually been maintained that Brentano’s theory of intentionality never actually distinguished between the content of an act and its object, and that the distinction was introduced by Meinong and Höfler (1890), then more systematically by Twardowski (1894), and later by Husserl (1900/1)."

(...)

"Recent research on Brentano’s lecture manuscripts from the 1870s and 1880s, however, has shown that Brentano discussed the distinction between content and object at length in the very lectures that were attended by Meinong, Höfler, and Twardowski.(4)"

(...)

"These limitations on Brentano’s concept of intentionality are particularly difficult to maintain when one considers his lectures on logic from the late 1860s and early 1870s, in which he clearly states and develops the distinction between content and object; moreover, his lecture notes on descriptive psychology from the mid- and late-1880s also basically follow the same concern, as did his logic lecture notes from the Vienna period.(5) One finds in these documents an explicit concern with the distinction itself and its application in a more general theory of intentionality.

I will discuss these lectures and the quotes themselves in section 3. Before that, in section 2, I would like to suggest that Brentano’s own conception of philosophy speaks in favour of a more general reading of the intentionality thesis than the one suggested by Dale Jacquette’s “immanent intentionality” and by the sympathizers of the Chisholmian reconstruction of Brentano." (pp. 3609-3610)

(4) 4This is for instance the case with the numerous lectures delivered by Brentano in Vienna between 1874 and 1891, most notably on logic, descriptive psychology, and ethics.

(5) Some of this material will be published soon in Brentano (forthcoming).

References

[11] Brentano, F. (forthcoming), Deskriptive Psychologie und beschreibende Phänomenologie. Vorlesungen 1887/88 und 1888/89, Dordrecht, Springer.

[18] Husserl, E. (1900/1), Logische Untersuchungen (in 3 volumes), Halle, Max Niemeyer.

[23] Meinong, A., Höfler, A. (1890), Logik, Vienna, Tempsky.

[27] Twardowski, K. (1894/1977), Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen. Eine psychologische Untersuchung, Vienna, Hölder. English translation: On the Content and Object of Presentations. A Psychological Investigation, translated by R. Grossmann, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff.

40. ———. 2018. "Brentano on Perception." Hungarian Philosophical Review no. 62:13-33.

"However, the standard reading of Brentano – according to which he believes that intentionality is a relation to an immanent object, and perception is a special case of intentionality – has a grain of truth, at least insofar as there are many passages from the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint that seem to support this reading. But as mentioned above, there are obvious problems with this reading when it comes to Brentano’s supposition of an external world directly responsible for what we see, hear, etc. Furthermore, Brentano’s criticism of phenomenalism(7) makes it difficult to champion a reading on which he appears to defend a variety of this same phenomenalism.

In short, the common reading of Brentano’s thesis on intentionality attributes to him a suboptimal account of perception which does not fit with his critique of phenomenalism. Furthermore, it suggests that Brentano should be seen as a defender of the argument from illusion. But if causality is a relation that, according to him, operates between the external world and physical phenomena, and if the external world is not a simple theoretical posit but something of which perceiving agents are parts, then there must be a way in which, as perceiving agents, we are after all related with the external world." (p. 16)

(7) See for example Brentano against Mach (Brentano 1988), but also Brentano’s lectures on positivism from 1894–95 (Brentano 1894–95), where he defends the view of a correlation between the seeing and the seen (against the identification proposed by Mach), advocating at the same time for the irreducibility of causality.

References

Brentano, Franz 1894/95. Positivismus. Kolleg 1894/95. Unpublished lecture notes. Manuscript O. Kraus. Prague, Masaryk Archives (Kraus IIIa19).

Brentano, Franz 1988. Über Ernst Machs “Erkenntnis und Irrtum”. Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1988.

41. ———. 2018. "The 'Philosopher of Intentionality' a Century Later." Brentano Studien no. 16:13-21.

"A commemorative issue of the Brentano Studien for the centenary is an unusual and challenging task: How could a commemorative volume on Brentano distinguish itself from any other issue of a journal that is dedicated to the philosophy of Brentano and publishes articles on Brentano as part of its mission?" (p. 13)

(...)

"In soliciting contributions to this volume, we followed three main streams: Brentano’s metaphilosophy, both from a historical and systematic perspective (section 1); his metaphysics and epistemology (section 2); and finally his relation to Aristotle, also from a historical and systematic perspective (section 3)." (p. 15)

42. ———. 2019. "From Brentano to Mach. Carving Austrian Philosophy at its Joints." In Ernst Mach – Life, Work, Influence, edited by Stadler, Friedrich. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "In many respects, Mach’s arrival in Vienna in 1895 marks the beginning of a new era in Austrian philosophy, paving the way for young philosophers and scientists like Hahn and Neurath and preparing the soil for the Vienna Circle.

While this understanding of Mach’s contribution to the development of Viennese philosophy seems correct to an important extent, it leaves aside the role of Brentano and his school in this development. I argue that the Brentanian and Machian moments of Austrian philosophy are jointed. I propose a description of the nature of these joints based on institutional, methodological, and philosophical aspects of these phases, and suggest a diagnosis that supports what I take to be the right carving between these two moments."

43. Frechette, Guillaume. 2019. "Brentano on Perception and Illusion." In The Philosophy of Perception: Proceedings of the 40th International Wittgenstein Symposium, edited by Limbeck-Lilienau, Christoph and Stadler, Friedrich, 119-134. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Abstract: "Brentano’s philosophy of perception has often been understood as a special chapter of his theory of intentionality. If all and only mental phenomena are constitutively intentional, and if perceptual experience is mental by definition, then all perceptual experiences are intentional experiences. I refer to this conception as the “standard view” of Brentano’s account of perception. Different options are available to support the standard view: a sense-data theory of perception; an adverbialist account; representationalism. I argue that none of them are real options for the standard view. I suggest that Brentano’s conception of optical illusions introduces a presupposition that not only challenges the standard view – the distinction between the subjectively and objectively given – but that also makes his account more palatable for a naïve understanding of perception as openness to and awareness of the world."

44. ———. 2019. "The Origins of Phenomenology in Austro-German Philosophy. Brentano, Husserl." In A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Philosophy, edited by Shand, John, 418-453. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.

"Brentano is the backbone of Austro‐German philosophy for many reasons. He came to Austria in 1874, which he considered to be a favorable context to found a philosophical school;(2) he was instrumental in reintroducing Bolzano, the grandfather of Austro‐German philosophy, to Austrian philosophers; he trained or contributed to the training of many generations of Austro‐German philosophers, ranging from Carl Stumpf and Anton Marty to Alexius Meinong, Thomas Masaryk, Christian von Ehrenfels, Alois Höfler, Edmund Husserl, Kazimierz Twardowski, Oskar Kraus and Schmuel Hugo Bergman; and he was an acknowledged influence on many philosophers ranging from Stout, Moore, and Heidegger to the Vienna Circle (the authors of the Manifesto) and many other late twentieth‐ and early twenty‐first‐century philosophers, on both sides of the analytic vs. continental divide. As the “grandfather of phenomenology”(3) resp. the “disgusted grandfather of phenomenology,”(4) but also as the key figure on the “Anglo‐Austrian Analytic Axis” (Simons 1986; Dummett 1988, p. 7), Brentano is at the source of the two main philosophical traditions in twentieth‐century philosophy. In this article, I will focus mainly on his place in nineteenth‐century European philosophy and on the central themes and concepts in his philosophy that were determinant in the development of the philosophy of his most gifted student: Edmund Husserl." (pp. 418-419)

(2) On his philosophical appreciation of Austria, see for instance his inaugural lecture “On the Causes of Discouragement in the Philosophical Domain,” in Brentano (1929, p. 85ff.). See also his recollections in his letter to Bergman from 1909, published in Bergman (1946, p. 125).(...)

(3) See Baumgartner (2003).

(4) Ryle (1976).

References

Baumgartner, W. (2003). Franz Brentano: Grossvater der Phänomenologie. Studia Phaenomenologica 3: 15–60.

Bergman, H. (1946). Briefe Franz Brentanos an Hugo Bergman. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 7: 83–158.

Brentano, F. (1929). Über die Zukunft der Philosophie. Leipzig: Meiner.

Ryle, G. 1976. “Disgusted Grandfather of Phenomenology” Times Higher Education Supplement, September 10: 15.

45. Fréchette, Guillaume. 2020. "Descriptive Psychology: Brentano and Dilthey." Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science no. 10:290-307.

Abstract "Although Wilhelm Dilthey and Franz Brentano apparently were pursuing roughly the same objective—to offer a description of our mental functions and of their relations to objects—and both called their respective research programs ‘descriptive psychology’, they seem to have used the term to refer to two different methods of psychological research.

In this article, I compare analyses of these differences. Against the reading of Orth but also against a possible application of recent relativist accounts of the epistemology of peer disagreement to this case, I argue that their apparent shared objective is not enough to support an understanding of their views as two alternatives within a given historical or scientific context, or as a mutual peer disagreement. I show that the impression of a shared objective can be explained away as stemming from the influence of their teacher Adolf Trendelenburg, and I stress that the case of introspection strongly suggests

that an account in terms of peer disagreement is not plausible. Finally, I conclude that the opposition between two traditions, Austrian philosophy and historicism, might be better suited to account for the dispute and its apparent common historical context."

46. ———. 2020. "Brentano on Phenomenology and Philosophy as a Science." In Franz Brentano and Austrian Philosophy, edited by Fisette, Denis, Frechette, Guillaume and Stadler, Friedrich, 101-115. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "I argue in this paper that Brentano’s grand project of philosophy as a science remained constant throughout his lifetime, from his habilitation thesis of 1866 to his last published writings. I suggest that this project has two main domains of application, namely, metaphysics and psychology. I focus on the application of the programme to psychology. According to my account, the project is based not only on the 1866 thesis that the method of philosophy is nothing other than the method of natural science (Thesis 4), as the standard reading of Brentano’s project suggests, but also on the thesis that philosophy should reject the distinction between speculative science and exact science (Thesis 1). I argue that the interplay between these two theses is present not only in Brentano’s early works, but also in his later lectures on descriptive psychology given in Vienna at the end of the 1880s. Not only does this explain why the grand project of philosophy remained constant, it also offers a more faithful account of the kind of investigation actually conducted by Brentano in the late 1880s – and later under the label of ‘phenomenology’, or descriptive psychology – than the one offered by the standard reading."

47. ———. 2023. "Why does it matter to individuate the senses: A Brentanian approach." European Journal of Philosophy:413-430.

Abstract: "How do we individuate the senses, what exactly do we do when we do so, and why does it matter? In the following article, I propose a general answer to these related questions based on Franz Brentano's views on the senses. After a short survey of various answers offered in the recent literature on the senses, I distinguish between two major ways of answering this question, causally and descriptively, arguing that only answers giving priority to description and to the classification involved in it are on the right track for a general answer to the related questions. In the second part of the article, I argue that Brentano's descriptive psychology is an attractive candidate for such an answer. His descriptive psychology provides a plausible account of the classification involved in description, in particular regarding the classification of sensory qualities. I close the article by briefly explaining how Brentano spells out the priority of descriptive answers over causal ones."

48. Fugali, Edoardo. 2008. "Toward the Rebirth of Aristotelian Psychology: Trendelenburg and Brentano." In Psychology and Philosophy: Inquiries into the Soul from Late Scholasticism to Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Heinämaa, Sara and Reuter, Martina, 179-202. Dordrecht: Springer.

Abstract: "The chapter studies the concepts of the self, the soul and the subject as they were developed around the first half of the nineteenth century in German philosophy presiding over the birth of psychology as a science. The topic is addressed by examining particularly the leading roles that Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg and Franz Brentano played in this development. Both thinkers worked out an original conception of the soul through recourse to Aristotle’s theories of the soul, combining them with insight stemming from the modern tradition of the philosophy of subjectivity, particularly Kantianism. The first part of the chapter explicates Friedrich Trendelenburg’s argument, that psychology constitutes an independent discipline, and show how his arguments contributed to the general discussion about the status of psychology. The second part consists of an explication of Franz Brentano’s reinterpretation of the Aristotelian tradition and provides a critical comparison between his position and that of Trendelenburg. The main argument of the chapter is that Trendelenburg had an important mediating role in the post-Aristotelian tradition, which developed further and culminated in idealistic theories of subjectivity and self-consciousness."

49. ———. 2018. "Sensus Communis and Imagination as Precursors of Inner Perception in Brentano." Brentano Studien no. 16:305-334.

Abstract: "Aim of this contribution is an inquiry about the double bind between both key notions of sensus communis (koiné aísthesis) and imagination in Brentano’s interpretation of Aristotelian psychology and in his later work. I will try to show how the treatment of these concepts prefigures Brentano’s theory of inner perception in its full-grown formulation. Strictly knit together with sensible imagination, as far as it allows for the coordination of the cognitive operations carried out by the proper senses and for establishing a level of metareflective awareness about them, sensus communis is defined as a modality of self-consciousness directly rooted in sense perception. Yet, at the same time, it provides for the genesis of a higher-order form of self-consciousness and of a structure of self-reference of all cognitive acts to their bearer. The theoretical issue at stake here consists in verifying if Brentano does really succeed in providing the adequate conceptual tools for the task of developing an unitary account of self-consciousness. This should be able to overcome the Cartesian-Kantian divide between the blind automatisms of sense perception and the empty certitude of a merely intellective awareness."

50. Gabriel, Susan. 2013. "Brentano at the Intersection of Psychology, Ontology, and the Good." In Themes from Brentano, edited by Fisette, D. and Frechette, G. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"In what follows I shall be painting with a broad brush, not without some trepidation, but with the end in view of showing an aspect of Brentano’s thought that can only be uncovered by connecting three large areas, namely, psychology, ontology, and ethics. Specifically I shall be considering these areas as they relate to Brentano’s natural theology, and in particular his theodicy or defense of God’s justice. Brentano took the optimistic view, that is, he thought it reasonable to believe, even though it could not be fully proved, that the evils in this world are or will be defeated by the good, and he thought it provable with an exceedlingly high degree of probability that there is an infinitely perfect necessary being, i.e., God. But I do not intend to present or examine the proofs for God’s existence here, much less to solve the problem of evil per se; rather, I hope simply to show how certain features of Brentano’s psychology, ontology, and ethics come together to allow Brentano to raise, and perhaps partially answer, the question of evil in a unique and thought-provoking way." (pp. 247-248, notes omitted)

51. Gauvry, Charlotte. 2020. "Brentano on entia rationis and Linguistic Fictions." In Franz Brentano's Philosophy after Hundred Years: From History of Philosophy to Reism, edited by Fisette, Denis, Frechette, Guillaume and Janoušek, Hynek. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "In line with a rich and long tradition revived by Suárez, Brentano maintains that all non-determined entities have to be considered as non-beings. In this respect, he makes use of the concept of entia rationis. Interestingly, he suggests, at least since his 1901 letter to Marty[*], that these entities have to be considered not things or beings at all but “fictions,” more precisely, as linguistic fictions. The purpose

of my text is twofold. First, I intend to clarify the status of linguistic fictions in Brentano. In particular, I will consider the extent to which they are connected or not with medieval theories of entia irrealia and entia rationis (Suárez). Secondly, I will emphasize the linguistic nature of those fictions and sketch some remarks on Brentano’s view on language and concepts."

[*] in F. Brentano, Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen, ed. F. Mayer-Hillebrand. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag 1977.

52. ———. 2021. "A Context Principle in Brentano?" In Philosophy of Language in the Brentano School. Reassessing the Brentanian Legacy, edited by Dewalque, Arnaud, Gauvry, C. and Richard, Sebastian, 57-75. Cham, Switzerland): Palgrave.

"The (historical) purpose of my chapter is to show that we are facing a paradox. Although considering Brentano as a ‘philosopher of language’ in the Frege-Wittgenstein sense is questionable—for reasons that I will dwell on below –, his dense and little-known manuscripts on language are full of ‘pragmatic’ insights, even fuller than Frege’s, Russell’s or the early Wittgenstein’s own works. Brentano actually anticipates some of the main claims of the later philosophers of ordinary language. The (systematic) purpose of this chapter is then to explore Brentano’s analyses on ordinary language in order to ask whether it makes sense to consider him a ‘contextualist’." (p. 58)

(...)

"Throughout this article, I will essentially focus on Brentano’s Logic manuscripts, which include the 1869–1871 Würzburg Lesson “Deduktive und Induktive Logik” (Ms. EL 80)—which was also taught in Vienna in 1875 and 1877 –, and the 1878–1885 Vienna Lesson “Die elementare Logik und die in ihr nötigen Reformen” (Ms. EL 72). Although still unpublished, these manuscripts are precious and provide a reliable source on Brentano’s work, contrary to the often quoted Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand’s compilation (see Brentano 1956), which includes numerous and not clearly identified fragments which are not from Brentano.

Besides, although they cover almost twenty years, these lessons were all taught before Brentano’s so-called ‘reist’ turn and are thus rather homogeneous." (p. 59)

References

Brentano Franz. 1956. In Die Lehre vom richtigen Urteil, ed. Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand. Bern: Francke.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on Franz Brentano: Studies in English, Fourth Part: Gea - Kra

Bibliography

1. Geach, Peter. 1978. "Intentionality of Thought versus Intentionality of Desire." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 5:131-138.

Abstract: "The work of Brentano's English contemporary J.E. McTaggart is in several ways profitable for Brentano scholars to study: I here cosider his views on the nature and classification of mental states. In McTaggart's account the characteristic of being a 'cognition', one that some but not all 'cogitations' have, corresponds to Brentano's notion of Anerkennen; quite unlike Brentano, he holds that contrariety obtains only between the contents of judgments, not between contrary acts of affirming and denying; like Brentano however he recognizes contrariety in the realm of emotion and feeling, e.g. between love and hate, pleasure and pain. He regards feelings and emotions as mere colourings of cogitations, and thinks that their relation to an object (intentionality, as Brentano would say) comes about merely from their cogitative aspect. This view is attractively simple; but by considering McTaggart's own view of emotions' being in respect of characteristics of their objects, we can find serious ground to reject it."

2. Geniusas, Saulius. 2014. "The origins of the phenomenology of pain: Brentano, Stumpf and Husserl." Continental Philosophy Review no. 47:1-17.

Abstract: "The following investigation aims to determine the historical origins of the phenomenology of pain. According to my central thesis, these origins can be traced back to an enthralling discussion between Husserl and two of his most important teachers, Brentano and Stumpf. According to my reconstruction of this discussion, while Brentano defended the view that all feelings, including pain, are intentional experiences, and while Stumpf argued that pain is a non-intentional feeling-sensation, Husserl of the Logical Investigations provides compelling resources to resolve the polemic between his teachers by showing how pain can be conceived as a pre-intentional experience. According to my argument, this largely forgotten discussion is of significance not only because it enriches our understanding of pain, but also because it modifies the phenomenological conception of consciousness.Thus in the concluding section, I show why the Husserlian resolution of the controversy between Brentano and Stumpf is of importance for our understanding of the central phenomenological theme—intentionality."

3. George, Rolf. 1978. "Brentano's Relation to Aristotle." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 5:249-266.

Abstract: "The paper tries to illustrate the influence of Aristotle's thought upon Brentano by arguing that the view that all psychological phenomena have objects was proably derived from the Aristotelian conception that the mind can know itself only en parergo, and that this knowledge presupposes that some other thing be in the mind "objectively". Brentano's contribution to Aristotle scholarship is illustrated by reviewing some of his arguments against Zeller's claim that Aristotle's God, contemplating only himself, is ignorant of the world. The paper concludes with an attempt to explain the relative neglect into which Brentano's exegetical efforts have fallen."

4. George, Rolf, and Kohen, Glen. 2001. "Brentano’s relation to Aristotle." In The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, edited by Jacquette, Dale, 20-44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"To conclude: Brentano’s way of philosophizing and treating the history of the subject really does represent a renewal of style and substance, a more scientific attitude, a profound change from the obscurities of German Idealism.

There are few writers for whom Aristotle was more alive. And even if his interpretations are often speculative and daring, his manner of arguing for them is always challenging, demanding a kind of active involvement that cautious historical accounts seldom manage to produce." (pp. 41-42)

5. Gilson, Étienne. 1939. "Franz Brentano's interpretation of mediaeval philosophy." Mediaeval Studies no. 1:1-10.

Reprinted in: Linda McAlister (ed:), The Philosophy of Brentano, pp. 56-67.

"The section of J.A. Möhler’s History of the Church that deals with the history of the ecclesiastical sciences during the Middle Ages, has been compiled from the posthumous notes of Möhler, by Franz Brentano, then a Catholic priest and a professor at the German University of Wurzburg.(2) As is usually the case in general histories, Brentano’s chapter is a rather short one, but it gives a clear account of what was then known on the subject. Its main interest however does not lie in its remarkable clarity and general accuracy, but rather in the philosophical interpretation of the evolution of medieval thought which it propounds. As will be seen later, there are good reasons to think that the responsible author for that interpretation was not Möhler, but Brentano." (p. 1)

(2) The History of the Church of J.-A. Möhler will be quoted from the French translation: J.-A. Möhler, Histoire de I'Eglise, trans. P. Belet and published by Gams (3 vols, Paris 1868—9). Interesting details on the history of the book will be found inthe Preface of Gams. The chapter on the History of ecclesiastical sciences is in vol. 2, pp. 467-520. In the German edition of Möhler’s Kirchengeschichte, the chapter written by Brentano will be found in vol. 2, pp. 526-84.

6. Gilson, Lucie. 1976. "Franz Brentano on Science and Philosophy." In The Philosophy of Brentano, edited by McAlister, Linda Lopez, 68-79. London: Duckworth.

Translated from the French by Linda L. McAlister and Margarete Schättle. Reprinted from Revue Internationale de Philosophie, vol. 20, no. 78 (1966), pp. 416-33.

"Can philosophy be saved, and, if so, how? A consideration of these questions marks the starting point of Brentano’s work, and the desire to bring about the salvation of philosophy is his principal motivation. It is this desire that inspired the first and fourth of his habilitation theses which he defended in a public disputation at the University of Wurzburg one hundred years ago. In the first thesis he stated: ‘Philosophy must protest against the distinction between speculative and exact sciences; and the justification for this protest is philosophy’s very right to existence.’(2) His urth thesis read: ‘The true method of philosophy is none other than that of the natural sciences.'"

(2) See Über die Zukunft der Philosophie, ed. Oskar Kraus (Leipzig, 1929), p. 136 (Latin text) and p. 137 (German text).

7. Girard, Charles. 2021. "Reflexivity Without Noticing: Durand of Saint-Pourçain, Walter Chatton, Brentano." Topoi no. 41:111-121.

Abstract: "According to Franz Brentano, every mental act includes a representation of itself. Hence, Brentano can be described as maintaining that: (T1) reflexivity, when it occurs, is included as a part in mental acts; and (T2) reflexivity always occurs.

Brentano’s way of understanding the inclusion of reflexivity in mental acts (T1) entails double intentionality in mental acts. The aim of this paper is to show that the conjunction of (T1) and (T2) is not uncommon in the history of philosophy.

To that end, the theories of two medieval thinkers, namely, Walter Chatton and Durand of Saint-Pourçain, are presented.

The repeated conjunction of (T1) and (T2) paves the way for a more general distinction than that between subjectivist and objectivist theories of reflexivity, namely, one between automatic theories of reflexivity (where noticing is not required for reflexivity) and apperceptive theories of reflexivity (where noticing is required for reflexivity)."

8. Giustina, Anna. 2017. "Conscious Unity from the Top Down: A Brentanian Approach." The Monist no. 100:15-36.

Abstract: "Many contemporary views on unity of consciousness adopt a bottom-up approach: a subject has several conscious experiences at a time, which are unified in virtue of a special relationship. In this paper I explore an alternative, top-down approach, according to which (to a first approximation) a subject has one single conscious experience at a time. I present three top-down approaches: Priority unity monism, Existence unity monism, and Brentanian unity monism.

The first two are defined in analogy with the homonymous metaphysical theories of object composition. Brentanian monism retraces Franz Brentano’s view on unity of consciousness, and is defined by appeal to some of his mereological ideas. I argue that the latter is the best top-down approach to unity of consciousness."

9. ———. 2023. "Introspective acquaintance: An integration account." European Journal of Philosophy:380-397.

Abstract: "In this paper, I develop a new version of the acquaintance view of the nature of introspection of phenomenal states. On the acquaintance view, when one introspects a current phenomenal state of one's, one bears to it the relation of introspective acquaintance. Extant versions of the acquaintance view neglect what I call the phenomenal modification problem. The problem, articulated by Franz Brentano in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, is that drawing introspective attention to one's current conscious experience may modify its phenomenology. Failing to take phenomenal modification into account affects the adequacy of extant versions of the acquaintance view. The purpose of this paper is to develop a better version, the integration account, that meets the phenomenal modification challenge while preserving the merits of other versions."

10. Gonzáles Porta, Mario Ariel. 2019/20. "Brentano and his School on the Psychological Method." Brentano Studien no. 16:37-68.

Abstract: "The standard expositions of Brentano’s philosophical antecedents went no further than to recall his Aristotelian background and, against this backdrop, to indicate his assimilation of English empiricism, including John Stuart Mill, and of French positivism, primarily Comte. In recent times, this perspective has begun to be reappraised. In what follows, I propose to contribute to this reappraisal process by concentrating on the relations existing between the Brentanian program and the Germanic tradition of the “psychological method”."

11. Grossmann, Reinhardt. 1960. "Acts and Relations in Brentano." Analysis no. 21:1-5.

"When I think of John as thinking of Paris, there is therefore still only one mental substance which is now modified in two ways, and not, as one may perhaps think, two arrows pointing at John and Paris, respectively: one, if I may so put it, pointing from myself to John thinking of Paris, the other, from John's self to Paris. The only difference between thinking of a relational property and thinking of a non-relational property consists in the fact that in the former case the thinker's self is modified in two ways, while in the latter there is only one. But whether acts are relational or not in the usual sense, does not at all depend on how we think of them. Brentano, it seems, confuses a philosophical question, namely, the nature of relations, with a psychological one, namely, how we think about them; or, if not, then he answers two different questions. He asserts, first, that there are no relations and that acts in particular are properties. He asserts, second, that, psycho- logically speaking, one thinks of act-properties in a certain way, namely, the way in which one thinks of all his so-called relational properties. Hence he has not been able to show that one can deny the existence of relational acts and at the same time solve the problem of how selves are connected with other selves and independent material things." (p. 5)

12. ———. 1962. "Brentano's Ontology: A Reply to Mr. Kamitz." Analysis no. 23:20-24.

"In a recent article, Mr. Kamitz claims that I misrepresented the views of Brentano.(1) He then goes on to correct my alleged errors. Before I examine his corrections, a general remark may be appropriate. It was not my intention to expound Brentano's views in detail. This is of course impossible in five pages. Nor did I use or even mention Brentano's own terminology. Rather, I tried to offer an analysis of some of Brentano's crucial ideas in my own words." (p. 20)

(...)

"(4) Finally, Mr. Kamitz claims that I am unjustified in saying that Brentano confused the two questions "What is a relation?" and " How do we think about relations ? ", because Brentano proved that there are no relations. But I did not just say that Brentano confused the two questions. What I said was that either he confused the questions or, if he didn't, he answered two different questions. Brentano asserted, first, that there are no relations. He asserted, second, that, psychologically speaking, one thinks of all his so called " relational properties " in a certain way. Hence I stated a disjunction. And Mr. Kamitz' statement that Brentano proved that there are no relations shows that this disjunction is true." (pp. 23-24)

13. ———. 1969. "Non-existent objects: recent work on Brentano and Meinong." American Philosophical Quarterly no. 6:17-32.

"There are two problems which must be faced.

First, what are ideas as contrasted with senseimpressions?

Secondly, how are they related to their objects? Brentano's school, I submit, gave the correct answer to the first question, but did not find a satisfactory answer to the second. More accurately, it was a student of Brentano's, K. Twardowski, who had the right idea. Every mental act, he held, has two sides: it is an act of a certain kind, say, a judgment or a representation (Vorstellung), and it also has a so-called content, say, the content expressed by the sentence "This is red."(11)

The sharp distinction between a mental act, its kind, and its content is one of the most outstanding achievements of Brentano's school.(12) Bergmann, in his book [Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong (Madison, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1967)], says everything that needs to be said about this distinction and its importance.(13)

But this leaves us with the second and more formidable problem: How are contents of mental acts related to what they intend? We need not worry about the general problem of the existence of relations; the shackles of Aristotelian ontology do not hamper us. But not all mental acts-and hence not all contents-intend existents. We see things that are not there and we believe things that are not so. How can such mental acts intend anything?

There is nothing there for them to be related to or connected with. On the other hand, the mind is not just blank, if I may put it so, when one has an hallucination or clings to a mistaken belief. Even non-veridical mental acts seem to intend something; and we can tell what they intend. Actually, we know what our mental acts intend before we know whether or not their intentions exist. I am convinced that if there is a key-issue of the realism-idealism controversy, it is the issue raised by these and similar considerations. Bergmann agrees with this assessment. He shows in painstaking detail that and how Brentano's school contributed to the discussion of the problem of non-existent objects.

And we also agree that no one from that school found the right solution." (p. 20)

(11) See K. Twardowski, Zur Lehre vom lnhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen (Wien, 1894) .

(12) It can be found, for example, both in Meinong and in Husserl.

(13) Bergmann's exposition is flawed by a small but persistent mistake in his own ontology. He says that a mental act is a state of affairs. In general, he thinks of ordinary things like chairs and tables as states of affairs. This, I believe, is wrong. A mental act or a chair is not a state of affairs, but rather what Bergmann calls a particular and what I would prefer to call an individual thing. Such individual things must be distinguished from properties, states of affairs, and other categorial kinds. Bergmann's mistake, though, is slight because he acknowledges all the relevant ontological kinds, if I may put it so. He merely "identifies" ordinary things with the wrong kind, namely, states of affairs rather than with the right kind, namely, individual things (particulars).

14. Gyemant, Maria. 2017. "Contrasting Two Ways of Making Psychology: Brentano and Freud." Axiomathes no. 27:491-501.

Abstract: "Brentano’s views on psychology influenced the way philosophy was made at the beginning of the 20th century. But did this influence spread as far as to give place to Freud’s revolutionary discovery of the psychoanalytical unconscious?

There are reasons to believe that Brentano had a profound influence on Freud. An attentive analysis of Freud’s vocabulary as well as his arguments against ‘‘philosophical’’ objections supports this point rather convincingly. However, Freud was not a philosopher and Brentano’s historical influence does not suffice to transform the Freudian unconscious in a philosophical concept. It is the purpose of this paper to sketch a way to make a philosophical use of Freud’s unconscious by reconstructing the dialogue between Brentano and Freud on a conceptual level. Despite the explicit critique of the unconscious that we find in Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, I show that Freud never truly opposed Brentano. He rather took Brentano’s descriptive psychology a step further: he introduced a dynamic component to the analysis of the psyche that is complementary to Brentano’s descriptive psychology and could be considered a type of genetic psychology."

15. Haldane, John. 1989. "Brentano's Problem." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 35:1-32.

Abstract: "Contemporary writers often refer to 'Brentano's Problem' meaning by this the issue of whether all intentional phenomena can be accounted for in terms of a materialist ontology. This, however, was not the problem of intentionality which concerned Brentano himself. Rather, the difficulty which he identified is that of how to explain the very contentfulness of mental states, and in particular their apparently relational character. This essay explores something of Brentano's own views on this issue and considers various other recent approaches. It then examines the scholastic doctrine of 'intentional inexistence' in the version associated with Aquinas, according to which content is explained by reference to the occurrence in esse intentionale of the very same features (forms) as contribute to the constitution of extra-mental reality. Various interpretations and aspects of this view are considered and a version of it is commended as providing a plausible solution to Brentano's problem."

16. Hao, Liu. 2019/20. "Brentano's Two Stages of Intentionality in the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint." Brentano Studien no. 16.

Abstract: "This paper deals with Brentano’s notion of intentionality, aiming to ela- borate on the puzzles surrounding it: the distinction between mental and physical phenomena, how to interpret intentional in-existence, the non- existent object, and the implication of “in” in “in-existence” . Meanwhile, Brentano’s notion of intentionality varies in his two stages of PES . The change Brentano made in the second stage, I think, results from the con- fusion between content and object in the first stage. Based on these, this paper provides a comprehensive and dynamic picture of Brentano’s topic of intentionality."

17. Hart, James G. 2012. "Individuality of the" I": Brentano and Today." Journal of Speculative Philosophy no. 26:232-246.

"Introduction

The Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP), as a fifty-year-old movement of both phenomenologically and existentially disposed philosophers, may regard Franz Brentano (1838–1917) as at least a grandfather. For many SPEP members, including myself until very recently, Brentano has been known in a rather vague and inauthentic empty intention merely as the teacher of Husserl, foremost in regard to some aspects of the doctrine of intentionality. Upon closer inspection this is pitifully shortsighted, and I have come to believe that the phenomenologist’s lineage to the grandfather is not to be forgotten and that retrieving it may bring out not only differences but surprising enrichments that will emerge through wrestling with the differences. As merely one example, I want to discuss Brentanian propositions regarding the individuality of the I." (p. 232, a note omitted)

18. Hedwig, Klaus. 1979. "Intention: Outlines for the History of a Phenomenological Concept." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 39:326-340.

"Brentano made only short reference to the scholastic concept of intentio.(1) In its philosophical implications, however, this reference rendered possible a new interpretation of reality which has subsequently become one of the main themes of phenomenological philosophy. On the other hand, the terminological parallels with the scholastic use of the concept of intention and its partial dependence on an Aristotelian problem generally conceal that Brentano referred to a very limited version of the late medieval discussion on intentionality a limitation which is at least partially responsible for the radical reformulation of this concept in Brentano's later writings." (p. 326)

(1) Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Leipzig 1924, I, p. 124. Cf. K. Hedwig, "Der scholastische Kontext des Intentionalen bei Brentano," Grazer Phil. Studien (1978).

19. ———. 1987. "Brentano's Hermeneutics." Topoi no. 6:3-10.

"It is surpnsmg and often even puzzling to see that Brentano, who in his own scientific work strictly insisted on the return to "experience", to the "empirical standpoint" and the "exact method" of natural science, was for the whole of his life occupied with historical texts - from the young student who wrote numerous notes on Aristotle(1) to the old man, who was no longer able to read but who listened to texts read to him, who was no longer able to write but who dictated his extremely subtle philosophical reflections, which are interwoven with numerous historical quotations.(2) While considering any of these texts, one is surprised by the actual relevance of historical references. It seems as if Brentano did not understand history in a historical sense, nor the past as past, but as "now" relevant. History is obviously preceded by a theory of history or, as Brentano says, by a "philosophy of the history of philosophy".(3) Historical hermeneutics is part of philosophy itself." (p. 3)

(1) The Nachlass contains 159 Mss on Aristotle. Brentano developed his hermeneutical theories mainly in contrast to E. Zeller (cf. Note 52), but also in the context of his own studies on Aristotle; cf. Ms. A20: Aristoteles' Terminologie; Ms. A2: Grundzüge fiir die Interpretation grosser philosophischer Denker, insbesondere des Aristoteles; Ms. A154: Zur Methode Aristotelischer Studien und zur Methodik geschichtlicher Forschung auf philosophischem Gebiet iiberhaupt. -- The quotations follow the Meiner editions of Brentano's works and the Catalogue of Manuscripts established by F. Mayer-Hillebrand and revised by W. Baumgartner.

(2) In his last dictation (9 March 1917) on Anschauung und abstrakte Vorstellung Brentano refers to Aristotle, Leibniz, Berkeley, Newton, Clarke, Kant, Euler, and Schopenhauer.

(3) This is the title of several Seminarübungen held at Vienna (SS 1878; SS 1880; SS 1883). A fragment of this text is included in Ms. H45: Gesch. d. Phil. (25248-25252).

20. Heller Britto, Arthur. 2019/20. "Brentanian Continua and their Boundaries." Brentano Studien no. 16:157-194.

Abstract: "Just as mathematicians were constructing the set-theoretical topological conceptions that permeate contemporary mathematical and scientific thinking, Brentano was also thinking about the subject but from a more traditional Aristotelian perspective that could not be fully harmonized with the mathematical approach. In this paper, we attempt to reconstruct Brentano’s account of continua and their boundaries, which is his response to the set-theoretical topology of his time, as well as comment on other such attempts by previous authors."

21. Henry, Desmond Paul. 1993. "Brentano and Some Medieval Mereologists." Brentano Studien no. 4:25-34.

"Discussion of what Brentano calls the 'strange arithmetic' involved in the connumeration of overlapping objects is also to be found in Abelard, John Wyclif, and in Leibniz. Brentano's divergence from the commonly-held medieval distinction between X-part and part-of-X may be partially explained by his adherence to a theory of body resembling that which occurs in a twelfth-century compendium of Porretan logic."

22. Hickerson, Ryan. 2007. The History of Intentionality: Theories of Consciousness from Brentano to Husserl. London: Continuum International Publishing Group.

Chapter 1: What was Brentano's Problem? Physical phenomena in Psychology from Empirical Standpoint, pp. 21-44.

"In order to understand that claim, what has come to be known as 'Brentano's Thesis' (also sometimes called the 'Intentional Thesis' or the ' Intentionalist Thesis'), we need only three basic concepts: the mental, the physical, and intentionality. Everything mental is intentional, and nothing physical is intentional, says the Brentanian.

(...)

"The task of this chapter will be a direct interpretation of the most neglected of these three basic concepts, proper accounting for which upsets now-standard readings of the other two. I argue below that Brentanian physical phenomena are not merely phenomenal quaJities or mentaJ entities, but are instead robustly physical, i.e. we should take Brentano at his word when he labelled them 'physicaJ'. The upshot is attributing to Brentano a somewhat older understanding of the physicaJ, one that he inherited from the positivism of Auguste Comte, and that will return him to the fold of fin-de-siècle phenomenalisms. But I wiJI aJso argue that this does not vitiate Brentano's basic commitment to a kind of physicalism, because Brentano did not treat these physical facts as mind dependent. In addition to treating physical phenomena as mental contents, Brentano treated them as psychophysical causes. This pairing of theses, part and parcel of Brentano's 'empirical standpoints', results in a rather severe theoreticaJ problem: integrating sensible contents with judgeable contents. But this problem, Brentano's (actual) problem is quite different from what has come to be known as ' Brentano's Problem '.

I will deny a ubiquitous misreading of Brentano as an immanentist, i.e. someone who treated physical phenomena as existing only within the mind. I do so not to rehabilitate Brentano's reputation, so much as try to set the record straight." (p. 22)

23. Hossack, Keith. 2006. "Reid and Brentano on consciousness." In The Austrian Contribution to Analytic Philosophy, edited by Textor, Mark, 36-63. New York: Routledge.

"Among the principal philosophical problems that any satisfactory account of consciousness has to address are the following three. First, the problem of qualitative character: do experiences have intrinsic nonrepresentational properties, namely qualia, which determine what the experience is like for the subject of the experience? Second, the problem of the necessity of co-occurrence: why is it that, necessarily, an experience and the consciousness of it co-occur, i.e. necessarily either both are present together, or both are absent together? Third, the problem of introspection: what account should be given of the introspective knowledge one has of one’s own current experiences?

In this chapter I discuss the contributions of Thomas Reid and Franz Brentano to these three problems. There is a fundamental similarity between their accounts of consciousness, for they both endorsed an ‘Identity Theory’, according to which an experience, and the consciousness of the experience, involve only a single mental event. But although they both subscribed to the Identity Theory, they meant different things by it. For the Scottish philosopher of common sense, consciousness was a species of knowledge; but for the Austrian founder of phenomenology, consciousness was the same thing as appearance.

This is a fundamental difference between their two approaches: taking knowledge as the central concept in the philosophy of mind tends to promote philosophical realism; taking appearance as the central concept risks anti-realism and idealism. I shall be suggesting that Reid’s more realist approach is to be preferred to Brentano’s, since it does a better job of solving the three problems of consciousness." (p. 36)

24. Huemer, Wolfgang. 2018. "“Vera philosophiae methodus nulla alia nisi scientiae naturalis est” Brentano’s conception of philosophy as rigorous science." Brentano Studien no. 16:53-72.

Abstract: "Brentano’s conception of scientific philosophy had a strong influence on his students and on the intellectual atmosphere of Vienna in the late nineteenth century. The aim of this article is to expose Brentano’s conception and to contrast his views with that of two traditions he is said to have considerably influenced: phenomenology and analytic philosophy. I will shed light on the question of how and to what extent Brentano’s conception of philosophy as a rigorous science has had an impact on these two traditions. The discussion will show that both took their liberties in the interpretation of the thesis, a move that allowed them to liberate themselves from Brentano’s inheritance and to fully develop their own philosophical positions."

25. ———. 2019. "Is Brentano's Method a Unifying Element of the Brentano School?" Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica:897-910.

Abstract: "Among historians of philosophy it is often taken for granted that the «Brentano school» was one of the influential philosophical movements at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century – but Brentano’s own contributions are often eclipsed by that of his direct students. This invites to reflect on the nature of and the unity within the school. Since Brentano’s conception of a rigorous, scientific philosophy had a strong impact on his students, it has been argued that this conception constitutes a unifying element in an otherwise heterogeneous group. The scope of this article is to shed light on this thesis and to show its limits. I argue for a differentiated view: the Brentano school is best seen not as a compact movement, but as a heterogeneous group of scholars who approached, in a given historical and geographical period, similar topics in very similar ways."

26. ———. 2021. "Was Brentano a Systematic Philosopher?" In The Philosophy of Brentano: Contributions from the Second International Conference Graz 1977 & 2017, in Memory of Rudolf Haller, edited by Antonelli, Mauro and Binder, Thomas, 11-27. Leiden: Brill Rodopi.

"In the following, I will discuss whether this qualifies Brentano’s philosophical position as a “grand system” from which one could deduce a profound and informative answer to any serious philosophical roblem.(1) I will pay particular attention to two aspects: Brentano’s view that philosophy should be done in a rigorous, scientific manner and the fragmentary character of Brentano’s work. I will argue that both aspects stand in contrast to the very idea of system-philosophy: the maxim that philosophy should adopt the method of the natural sciences was intended by Brentano as a way of distancing himself from system-philosophy; while the fragmentary character of Brentano’s work does not fulfill the aspiration of system-philosophy to provide an answer to everything. Yet, the incompleteness of his work is not an arbitrary or contingent aspect; it is rather a necessary side-effect of his methodological views." (pp. 11-12)

(1) The modification “profound and informative” seems necessary, or else Wittgenstein’s early position would qualify as a philosophical system, as the picture theory of the Tractatus provides a unified account of the true, the good, and the beautiful, which, however, is not (and does even not intend to be) very profound or informative, at least not with regard to the latter two concepts, as it merely consists in the thesis that statements in ethics and aesthetics are meaningless.

27. Huemer, Wolfgang, and Landerer, Christoph. 2010. "Mathematics, experience and laboratories: Herbart’s and Brentano’s role in the rise of scientific psychology." History of the Human Science no. 23:72-94.

Abstract: "In this article we present and compare two early attempts to establish psychology as an independent scientific discipline that had considerable influence in central Europe: the theories of Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841) and Franz Brentano (1838–1917).

While both of them emphasize that psychology ought to be conceived as an empirical science, their conceptions show revealing differences. Herbart starts with metaphysical principles and aims at mathematizing psychology, whereas Brentano rejects all metaphysics and bases his method on a conception of inner perception (as opposed to inner observation) as a secondary consciousness, by means of which one gets to be aware of all of one’s own conscious phenomena. Brentano’s focus on inner perception brings him to deny the claim that there could be unconscious mental phenomena – a view that stands in sharp contrast to Herbart’s emphasis on unconscious, ‘repressed’ presentations as a core element of his mechanics of mind.

Herbart, on the other hand, denies any role for psychological experiments, while Brentano encouraged laboratory work, thus paving the road for the more experimental work of his students like Stumpf and Meinong. By briefly tracing the fate of the schools of Herbart and Brentano, respectively, we aim to illustrate their impact on the development of psychological research, mainly in central Europe."

28. Ierna, Carlo. 2014. "Making the Humanities Scientific: Brentano’s Project of Philosophy as Science." In The Making of the Humanities: Volume III: The Modern Humanities, edited by Bod, Rens, Maat, Jaap and Weststeijn, Thijs, 543-554. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

"On July 14, 1866, Brentano stepped up to the pulpit to defend his thesis that‘the true method of philosophy is none other than that of the natural sciences’.(21)

This thesis became the north star of his school, rallying his first students to his flag,(22) and remained a central and lasting concern for many of them.(23) This thesis is part of a greater whole and actually follows from another thesis, namely that: ‘Philosophy must deny that the sciences can be divided into the speculative and the exact; because if this is not correctly denied, then philosophy itself would have no right to exist’.(24) Here a more general claim is made about the nature of science and philosophy: there is just one kind of science and philosophy is part of it. Philosophy is not done by speculative construction, but by humble, detailed investigation.(25) As Brentano told his students some years later: ‘We are taking the first steps toward the renewal of philosophy as science’, not by conjuring up ‘proud systems’ out of thin air, but by humbly ‘cultivating fallow scientific ground’.(26) Thus Brentano instilled in his students a strong sense of scientific rigor and his students did not consider themselves to practice ‘armchair philosophies’, but to do science." (p. 545)

(22) The expression comes from a letter of Carl Stumpf to Brentano from 1892, quoted in Oskar Kraus, Franz Brentano. Zur Kenntnis seines Lebens und seiner Lehre (Munich: Beck, 1919), 19. Also see Carl Stumpf, ‘Erinnerungen an Franz Brentano’, in Kraus, Franz Brentano, 88.

(23) About this thesis, see Dale Jacquette, ‘Brentano’s Scientific Revolution in Philosophy’, The Southern Journal of Philosophy 40 (2002), and Robin Rollinger, Austrian Phenomenology: Brentano, Husserl, Meinong and Others on Mind and Object, Phenomenology & Mind (Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2008), 3.

(24) Brentano, ‘Die Habilitationsthesen’, in Über die Zukunft der Philosophie, 136-137.

(25) Poli, ‘Introduction’, in The Brentano Puzzle, 7, and Roberto Poli, ‘At the Origin of Analytic Philosophy’, Aletheia (1994).

(26) Franz Brentano, ‘Über Schellings Philosophie’, in Über die Zukunft der Philosophie, 131; Wilhelm Baumgartner, ‘Nineteenth-Century Würzburg: The Development of the Scientific Approach to Philosophy’, in Roberto Poli (ed.), In Itinere: European Cities and the Birth of Modern Scientific Philosophy (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), 86.

29. ———. 2015. "Improper Intentions of Ambiguous Objects: Sketching a New Approach to Brentano’s Intentionality." Brentano Studien:55–80.

"In this article I will begin by discussing recent criticism, by Mauro Antonelli and Werner Sauer of the ontological interpretation of Franz Brentano’s concept of intentionality, as formulated by i.a. Roderick Chisholm. I will then outline some apparent inconsistencies of the positions advocated by Antonelli and Sauer with Brentano’s formulations of his theory in several works and lectures. This new evaluation of (unpublished) sources will then lead to a sketch of a new approach to Brentano’s theory of intentionality. Specifically, it will be argued that the notion of “intentional object” is inherently and unavoidably ambiguous in every act of external perception, due to the fact that we can only have improper intentions directed at the external world." (p. 55)

30. ———. 2021. "Brentano as a Logicist." In The Philosophy of Brentano: Contributions from the Second International Conference Graz 1977 & 2017, in Memory of Rudolf Haller, edited by Antonelli, Mauro and Binder, Thomas, 301-311. Leiden: Brill Rodopi.

"In the present contribution I would like to make three related claims: 1) There was an original and shared philosophy of mathematics in the School of Brentano; 2) In the School of Brentano mathematics was considered as the paradigmatic and foundational science, and more specifically as deductive, analytic, and a priori; 3) Brentano founds the concept of number on elementary logical operations, i.e. Brentano was a logicist. I will concentrate mainly on the third claim, using the other two as background and support." (p. 301)

31. Jacquette, Dale. 1990/1991. "The Origins of Gegenstandstheorie: Immanent and Transcendent Intentional Objects in Brentano, Twardowski, and Meinong." Brentano Studien no. 3:177-202.

"The origins of object theory in the philosophical psychology and semantics of Alexius Meinong and the Graz school can be traced both to the insight and failure of Franz Brentano's immanent objectivity or intentional in-existence thesis. The immanence thesis is documented, together with its critical reception in Alois Höfler's Logik, Twardowski's Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen, and Meinong's mature Gegenstandstheorie, in which immanent thought content and transcendent intentional object are distinguished, and Brentano's thesis of immanent intentionality as the mark of the mental is reinterpreted to imply that only content is the immanently intentional component of presentations. Brentano's thought from the early immanence thesis through the so-called Immanenzkrise and his later reism is explored against the background of his students' reactions to the original 1874 intentionality thesis and its idealist implications, in the emergence of Meinong's object theory and Edmund Husserl's transcendental phenomenology. Finally, Brentano's reism in the later ontology is critically examined, as his solution to ontic problems of immanent intentionality, limiting intentional objects to transcendent concrete particulars."

32. ———. 2001. "Brentano's concept of intentionality." In The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, edited by Jacquette, Dale, 98-130. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Among Brentano’s most important and philosophically influential achievements is his thesis of the intentionality of mind. To say that thought is intentional is to say that it intends or is about something, that it aims at or is directed upon an intended object. Intentionality is thus the aboutness of thought, the relation whereby a psychological state intends or refers to an intended object." (p. 98)

(...)

"The intentionality thesis holds out the prospect of understanding the essential nature of thought. If Brentano is right, then an intentionalist metaphysics of mind distinguishes psychological from nonpsychological or extrapsychological phenomena. This, unsurprisingly, is precisely how Brentano proposes to apply the concept of intentionality, which he significantly describes as “the mark of the mental.(2)" (p. 99)

(2) See Psychologie from empirischen Standpunkt §5; especially, pp. 115–17.

33. ———. 2001. "Introduction: Brentano's philosophy." In The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, edited by Jacquette, Dale, 1-19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Brentano is among the most important yet under-appreciated philosophers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He led an intellectual revolution that sought to reverse what was then the prevalent post-Kantian trend of German-Austrian philosophy in the direction of an Aristotelian scientific methodology. At the same time, he made valuable contributions to philosophical psychology, metaphysics, ontology, value theory, epistemology, the reform of syllogistic logic, philosophical theology and theodicy, and the history of philosophy and philosophical methodology." (p. 1)

34. ———. 2002. "Brentano’s Scientific Revolution in Philosophy." The Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 40:193-221.

"The standard, and by now almost cliché, description of Brentano as an Aristotelian empiricist doing battle with post-Kantian transcendentalism ignores what I find genuinely philosophically revolutionary-and, in the same measure, philosophically risky-about Brentano’s philosophy.

The truly revolutionary aspect of Brentano’s thought is its attempt to make individual internal first-person a posteriori phenomenological experience the empirical basis for inductive reasoning in support of universal a priori propositions in philosophical psychology. In turn, these are supposed to uphold all of metaphysics and ontology, as well as logic, epistemology, value theory, and the social sciences. The idea that a scientific psychology must be both empirical and a priori is a requirement Brentano consistently makes, beginning with the foreward to the 1874 edition of Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, where he writes: “My psychological standpoint is empirical; experience alone is my teacher. Yet I share with other thinkers the conviction that this is entirely compatible with a certain ideal point of view.(6)"

(6) Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint [1924; originally 1874 and 1911, edited by Oskar Kraus; English edition by Linda L. McAlister, translated by Antos C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, and Linda L. McAlister (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973, xxvii. (...)

35. ———, ed. 2004. The Cambridge Companion to Brentano. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: List of contributors XIII; Acknowledgments XVII; List of abbreviations XVIII; Chronology XX-XXII; 1. Dale Jacquette: Introduction: Brentano's philosophy 1; 2. Rolf George and Glen Koehn: Brentano's relation to Aristotle 20; 3. Peter Simons: Judging correctly: Brentano and the reform of elementary logic 45; 4. Kevin Mulligan: Brentano on the mind 66; 5. Dale Jaquette: Brentano's concept of intentionality 98; 6. Joseph Margolis: Reflections on intentionality 131; 7. Linda L. McAlister: Brentano's epistemology 149; 8. Charles Parsons: Brentano on judgment and truth 168; 9. Arkadiusz Chrudzimski and Barry Smith: Brentano's ontology: from conceptualism to reism 197; 10. Wilhelm Baumgartner and Lynn Pasquerella: Brentano's value theory: beauty, goodness, and the concept of correct emotion 220; 11. Susan F. Krantz Gabriel: Brentano on religion and natural theology 237; 12. Robin D. Rollinger: Brentano and Husserl 255; 13. Karl Schuhmann: Brentano's impact on twentieth-century philosophy 277; Bibliography 298; Index 316-322.

36. ———. 2012. "Brentano on Aristotle’s Categories: First Philosophy and the Manifold Senses of Being." In Franz Brentano's Metaphysics and Psychology, edited by Tănăsescu, Ion, 53-94. Bucharest: Zeta Books.

"Brentano’s 1862 dissertation, Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles, is a scholarly historical study and philosophical consideration of Aristotle’s theory of categories.(1)

The categories in Aristotle’s first philosophy, as Brentano interprets them, are the mutually independent predicates of being at the highest levels of generality, in the variety of ways in which we speak about being. If correctly identified, the categories should correspond exactly to the multiple modes of existence or ways of being that are available to primary substances in the actual world as Aristotle conceptualizes them. As such, they are the categories not only of our predicative thoughts, but of the real existence of primary substances.

Aristotle’s categories accordingly constitute the rock bottom of his first philosophy. They are his ontology, built on the Greek word “ontos” for “being”; or, better, melding “ousia” as Aristotle’s Greek term for ‘substance’, they are the fundamental concepts of his ousiology." (pp. 53-54)

(1) Brentano, Franz (1862): Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder’sche Verlagshandlung; (ed. and trans.) George, Rolf (1975): On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle. Berkeley: University of California Press (all parenthetical page references to this translation).

37. ———. 2016. " Brentano’s Signature Contributions to Scientific Philosophy." Brentano Studien no. 14:127-157.

Abstract: "Brentano’s agreement with the discovery of inner sensation or perception and the faculty of active intellect in Aristotle reflects the exact meaning by which both thinkers regard philosophy and philosophical psychology or philosophy of mind as (externally and internally) empirical and by extension (externally and internally) scientific. Brentano’s psychology is scientific in an Aristotelian sense directly inspired by the arguments of De Anima. It recognizes and builds its explanations on inner as well as outer sense and perception in establishing empirical experiential foundations for knowledge. Aristotelian-Brentanian philosophical psychology avails itself of the mind’s active as well as passive cognitive capabilities in taking the first steps toward a scientific proto-phenomenology. It is in his combined expansively outer and inner empirical psychology of passive and active intellect that Brentano’s signature contributions to an Aristotelian sense of scientific philosophy are most instructively ascertained."

38. ———. 2019. "Brentano on Aristotle’s Psychology of the Active Intellect." In Aristotelian Studies in 19th Century Philosophy, edited by Hartung, Gerald, King, Colin Guthrie and Rapp, Christof, 149-177. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Abstract: "One of the battlefields of Aristotelian studies in the 19th century is Aristotle’s theory of the intellect. Franz Brentano’s famous Habilitationsschrift on this topic became very much contested among Aristotle scholars of this time.

In this chapter Dale Jacquette argues that by this treatise Brentano provides a lasting systematic contribution to a precise problem in the theory of mind: the problem of how the mind generates abstractions from subjectively experienced sense impression and perceptions. One of the surprising results of studying Brentano’s work in this connection is the manner in which his interpretation of Aristotle engages mind-theoretical themes and assumptions from British Empiricism, all while defending Aristotelian metaphysics against such a tradition."

39. Janoušek, Hynek. 2017. "Consciousness of Judging: Katkov’s Critique of Marty’s State of Affairs and Brentano’s Description of Judgement." In Mind and Language – on the Philosophy of Anton Marty, edited by Taieb, Hamid and Fréchette, Guillaume, 241-260. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Abstract: "This study presents Katkov’s critique of Marty’s theory of meaning and Brentano’s description of judgemental consciousness. Katkov, a student of Oskar Kraus in Prague, developed an interesting account of a reistic reduction of states of affairs. This reduction is based on Katkov’s transformation of Marty’s theory of the secondary intention of statements (linguistically expressed judgements) and on a further development of Brentano’s theory of judgements. According to Katkov’s theory, all linguistically expressed judgements have to manifest two independent judgements if they are to fulfil the communicative goal of a speaker. The first judgement is a basic acceptance or negation of an object. The second is a higher-order belief in the correctness of the acceptance or negation. Katkov then reduces states of affairs to the consciousness of objective validity, which consists in such a belief in correctness. In this article I first present some features of Katkov’s critique of Marty’s theory of linguistic communication of statements.

I then offer my own short reply to Katkov’s questions.

The study concludes by presenting Katkov’s reduction of states of affairs to a complex of beliefs and by questioning Katkov’s description concerning the difference between sensory perception and rational judgement. This difference motivates Katkov’s separation of a basic acceptance or negation on the one side and a separate belief in the correctness of the acceptance or negation on the other."

References

Katkov, G. (1930), ‘Bewußtsein, Gegenstand, Sachverhalt. Eine Brentanostudie’, Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie 75(3/4), p. 459–544.

Katkov, G. (1978), ‘The World in which Franz Brentano Believed He Lived’, Grazer Philosophische Studien 5, p. 11–27.

40. Kamitz, Reinhard. 1962. "Acts and Relations in Brentano: A Reply to Prof. Grossmann." Analysis no. 22:73 - 78.

"In the very interesting article by Prof. Reinhardt Grossmann about Brentano's theory of relations(1) there are, in my opinion, some serious errors concerning Brentano's theory which, I feel, ought to be rectified.

Such a correction first of all calls for a short summary of Brentano's semiotic ideas." (p. 73)

(...)

"Recapitulating what I said about Mr. Grossmann's argument in regard to Brentano's confusion of two different questions, one can finally put it shortly thus; Mr. Grossmann would be quite right, if words such as ' relation ', etc., were autosemantica, i.e. words with a meaning-function of their own, so that one could legitimately demand a definition of the term ' relation '. This, however, is, according to Brentano, not the case. Therefore Mr. Grossmann's argument fails to convince." (p. 78)

(1) 'Acts and Relations in Brentano', Analysis 21.1, 1960.

41. ———. 1963. "Acts and Relations in Brentano: A Second Reply to Professor Grossmann." Analysis no. 24:36-41.

"In a recent article "Brentano's Ontology: A Reply to Mr. Kamitz" (Analysis 23.1, October 1962) Prof. Grossmann tries to prove that my arguments, expressed in Analysis 22.4, are for the most part not only based on a misrepresentation of his own criticism of Brentano, but also on a erroneous representation of Brentano's teaching itself.(2) I now wish to consider Prof. Grossmann's new arguments.

(...)

"Brentano never denied the existence of relational acts, but only—as a result of critical linguistic researches—the existence of Koexistenzrelationen. Prof. Grossmann has overlooked this distinction (as well as the ambiguity of the word 'object') and has therefore been led to false conclusions regarding Brentano's theory of acts and relations." (p. 40, a note omitted)

(3) For this reason I especially appreciate Prof. Mayer-Hillebrand's willingness to join the discussion in a last word to this article.

Prof. Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand, of the University of Innsbruck, writes:

"I cannot here discuss Prof. Grossmann's misinterpretations, nor is it necessary, because Dr. Kamitz has already done so.

It is because of the great importance of this point that I was ready to add a postscript to this article by Dr. Kamitz, whose opinions on this matter I fully share." (p. 41)

42. Katkov, George. 1978. "The World in Which Brentano Believed He Lived." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 5:11-27.

Abstract: "The first part of this paper gives a summary of some philosophical discoveries of Brentano which affected his outlook on the world in which he lived. The other, lesser part, contains reminiscences of how the philosophical thinking of the man affected his behaviour to the world around him."

43. Kavanaugh, Leslie. 2008. "Brentano on Space." Footprint no. 3:39-50.

"At the end of the nineteenth century, Franz Brentano developed a philosophical method that would be a sort of middle way between the idealism inherited from Kant, the ontological gap inherited from Descartes, and a brute materialism advocated primarily by the emerging hegemony of scientific procedure. The question was (and is): What is my relation to the world? Is the world completely ‘out there’ and then a matter of discovery? If this is the case, then a philosophical account needs to be constructed that explains how we can know the world. Is the world, on the other hand, completely ‘in here’, in my mind – the world being a mere representation of sense data? If this is the case, then a philosophical account would still need to explain how the world is constituted in my mind. Both accounts had failed historically. Furthermore, both accounts could not explain the relationship between my ‘mind’ and other ‘minds’. This impasse, this aporia, was the birthplace of phenomenology. (pp. 40-41)

44. Körner, Stephan. 1987. "On Brentano's Objections to Kant's Theory of Knowledge." Topoi no. 6:11-17.

Abstract: "The main purpose of this essay is to examine Brentano's rejection of Kant's theory of a priori concepts and synthetic a priori judgments. The essay begins by recalling the views of Descartes and Locke about the acquisition of knowledge, since Brentano regards them as on the whole correct or, at least, as pointing in the right direction and since he regards Kant's epistemology as obscurantist and reactionary (Section 1). There follows a brief characterization of Brentano's conception of knowledge as based on self-evident inner perception and analytic propositions, i.e. propositions which are true ex terminis (Section 2). Next some aspects of Kant's epistemology are compared with corresponding features of Brentano's doctrine (Section 3). In the light of this comparison the validity of Brentano's criticisms is examined (Section 4). In conclusion an independent view of the function of concepts and of their relation to perception is briefly outlined and contrasted with the views of Kant and Brentano (Section 5)."

45. Kotarbinski, Tadeusz. 1976. "Franz Brentano as Reist." In The Philosophy of Brentano, edited by McAlister, Linda L., 194-203. London: Duckworth.

Translated from the French by Linda L. McAlister and Margarete Schättle.

Reprinted from the Revue Internationale de Philosophie vol. 20, no. 78 (1966), pp. 459-76.

"The term ‘reism’ was coined when I wrote my book on formal logic and the methodology of science entitled Gnosiology, which first appeared in 1929.(2)" (p. 194)

(...)

"At the time I wrote this I was unaware that the scope and substance of this reism had already been formulated and put forth earlier by Franz Brentano, especially in the appendices to the supplement to his major work Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint. This supplement, entitled The Classification of Mental Phenomena appeared in 1911 together with the above-mentioned appendices. In 1924 (Vol. I) and 1925 (Vol. II), after the death of the author the second edition of the complete work appeared, supplemented by new additions, notably by a number of dictations by the author between 1915 and 1917, after he had lost his sight.

How is it possible that I did not know of Brentano's thought when I wrote my Gnosiology? I was, after all, a student of Professor Kazimierz Twardowski, who was himself a student of Brentano's. There is a very simple explanation of this puzzle. Brentano was not a very faithful follower of his own doctrines; on the contrary, in his later years he completely changed his whole point of view. Therefore his followers went in two different directions: one group continued to work on the typology and the structural analysis of so-called intentional entities which are intangible objects perceived only through the act of thinking; the other group (by adopting the essential sense of the word 'exist') was converted to the belief that things are the only existing objects and, at the same time, are the only things that can be the objects of thought. The second group, Brentano's reist followers, consisted, among others, of Oskar Kraus, editor and annotater of the above-mentioned second edition of the Psychology, and also the editor and annotator of numerous posthumous writings of the master. The first group consisted of Meinong, Husserl and many others, among them Twardowski; his treatise on 'acts and products' shows, above all, that Twardowski firmly maintained a nonreist point of view in the controversy between logic and ontology." (p. 195)

(2) Elements Teorii Poznania, Logiki Formalnej i Metodologii Nauk (Lvov, 1929; 2nd ed. Wroclaw, Warsaw and Cracow, 1961). English translation, Gnosiology. The Scientific Approach to the Theory of Knowledge, trans. Olgierd Wojtasiewicz, translation ed. G. Bidwell and C. Finder (Oxford and New York, 1966).

46. Krantz Gabriel, Susan. 2004. "Brentano on religion and natural theology." In The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, edited by Jacquette, Dale, 237-254. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Although Brentano broke with organized religion in the late 1870s, he remained a traditional theist all his life and was still writing (by dictation) on subjects in natural theology in 1917."

(...)

"The best way to understand Brentano’s natural theology is to see it in the context of Aristotelian empiricism as modified by the somewhat Cartesian outlook of Brentano’s philosophical psychology." (p. 237)

47. ———. 2006/2009. "Brentano on Albert the Great’s Summa de creaturis, Concerning the Substantiality of the Soul." Brentano Studien no. 12:357-367.

Abstract: "Though Brentano’s lectures on medieval philosophy belong to his early period (1864-1873), it is possible to find evidence in them of abiding interests that later developed into his mature thought. The thesis that the soul is a substance, which Brentano noted in the philosophy of Albert the Great, clearly forms the core of Brentano’s later reism. I show how both Brentano’s presentation of the topic, and his interpretation of Albert, as well as his reliance on 19th century historians of philosophy, lead to this conclusion."

48. ———. 2017. "Brentano on Darwin I: Teleology." Brentano Studien no. 16:361-372.

Abstract: "In his On the existence of God: Lectures given at the Universities of Würzburg and Vienna (1868–1891), Brentano’s version of the teleological proof of God’s existence receives more attention than his three other proofs do, and within its presentation an analysis of the Darwinian theory of evolution is the main focus . Brentano objected, not to the fact of the evolution of species, but rather to the Darwinian explanation of evolution in terms of random mutation and natural selection . In analyzing Brentano’s objection to Darwin’s explanation of evolution, this article examines his distinction between apparent teleology and real teleology, his commentary on the theory of random chance, and, apartfrom the question of God’s existence, the difficulty in general of accountingfor biological phenomena without recourse to some concept of purpose ."

49. ———. 2018. "Brentano on Darwin II: Science." Brentano Studien no. 16:143-156.

Abstract: "In his On the existence of God: Lectures given at the Universities of Würzburg and Vienna (1868-1891), Brentano offers several proofs of God’s existence, of which the teleological proof gets more attention than any other, and within this presentation an analysis of the Darwinian theory of evolution is decidedly prominent. Although Brentano was critical of certain aspects of Darwinism, in particular the apparent denial of purposes in nature, it would be a mistake to conclude that he rejected the science behind the theory of evolution. Rather, in this, as in other areas of scientific research, Brentano was an interested and well-informed student, conversant in and respectful of the scientific developments of his era. This article examines Brentano’s views on the science of evolution, including some of the specific scientific discoveries with which he was familiar, and some of the contemporary scientists whose views he discussed, as these are to be found in his lectures on the existence of God."

50. ———. 2021. "Brentano on Kant’s Transcendental Idealism." In The Philosophy of Brentano: Contributions from the Second International Conference Graz 1977 & 2017, in Memory of Rudolf Haller, edited by Antonelli, Mauro and Binder, Thomas, 50-70. Leiden: Brill Rodopi.

"Franz Brentano did not admire Kant’s philosophy. In fact, it would not be overstating the case to say that he held transcendental idealism in contempt. At the same time, it can be persuasively argued that Brentano was indebted to Kant, namely, that some of his views involve or lead to a kind of phenomenological realism. In what follows I shall first examine Brentano’s critique of Kant as it is to be found in his lectures on the existence of God (Brentano, 1987). Then I shall address the question of Brentano’s fairness to Kant. Finally, I shall venture a resulting account of Brentano’s realism." (p. 50, notes omitted)

References

Brentano, F. (1987). On the existence of God: Lectures given at the Universities of Würzburg and Vienna (1868–1891), ed. and trans. by S. F. Krantz. The Hague: Nijhoff.

51. Krantz, Susan. 1988. "Brentano's argument against Aristotle for the immateriality of the soul." Brentano Studien no. 1:63-74.

Abstract: "The Aristotelian conception of the soul as Brentano understood it is examined, with respect to the nature of the soul and mainly to what Aristotle called the sensitive soul, since this is where the issue of the soul's corporeity becomes important. Secondly the difficulties are discussed which Brentano saw in the Aristotelian semimaterialistic conception conceming tbe intellectual, as distinct from the sensitive soul from Brentano's reistic point of view which claimed that the entire human soul is a substance in its own right and that it is an immaterial substance. Finally there follows a presentation of what is taken to be Brentano's conception of the soul as it appears from a reistic interpretation of his analyses of the act of sensation and of the subject of sensation in order to shed some light on the reistic ontology that may be taken to underlie Brentano's sychology."

52. ———. 1993. "Brentano's Revision of the Correspondence Theory." Brentano Studien no. 3:79-88.

Abstract: "Franz Brentano took exception to the classic statement of the correspondence theory of truth, the thesis: veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus. His reasons for objecting to it, and his proposed revision of the thesis, are interesting considered in themselves as well as for the light they shed on Brentano's view of the relation between the thinker and the world. With regard to the former, it is shown how Brentano analyzes the adaequatio thesis word by word in order to demonstrate what he takes to be its fundamental incoherence. With regard to the latter, it becomes apparent, by contrast with the Thomistic understanding of the adaequatio thesis, that Brentano's revision of it in the direction of a phenomenological theory of truth also involves a revised understanding of the nature of the thinker or knower."

53. ———. 1993. "Brentanian unity of consciousness." Brentano Studien no. 4:89-100.

Abstract: "Brentano's thoughts on unity of consciousness are of central importance to an understanding of his psychology and of his ontology. By means of a reistic interpretation of his views on unity of consciousness, and in contrast with the Aristotelian approach to unity of consciousness, one begins to see the paradoxically objective and realistic spirit of Brentano's subjectivism in psychology."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on Franz Brentano: Studies in English, Fifth Part: Kri - Moh

Bibliography

1. Kriegel, Uriah. 2013. "Brentano’s Most Striking Thesis: No Representation Without Self-Representation." In Themes from Brentano, edited by Fisette, Denis and Fréchette, Guillaume, 23-40. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"Section 8 of Chapter 2 of Part II of the Psychology reads: “A Presentation and the Presentation of that Presentation are Given in One Mental Act.” Thus Brentano appears fully committed, in a considered way, to the idea that there could be no representation without self-representation. To my mind, this is Brentano’s most striking thesis: that the very possibility of representing an apple, say, depends on the possibility of self-representing to represent an apple.

In what follows, I want to argue that this claim, which sounds odd to our modern sensibilities, is actually deeply insightful.

(...)

"The plan for the rest of the paper is as follows. In §2, I will argue that there could be no representation-of without representation-to.

There can be token representations-of that are not representations-to, but they must betoken a type of representation some tokens of which are both representations-of and representations-to. In §3, I will offer an analysis of “x represents y to z” according to which it means (more or less) that z has a representation of x representing y. In §4, I will note that this generates a regress of representations which can only end with self-representing representations. If my thought of the Sydney Opera House represents both the Opera House and itself, then it is both a representation-of and a representation-to without requiring the postulation of any further representation. The upshot is that there could be no representation without self-representation: in a world without self-representing representations there would be no representation at all. Brentano’s most striking thesis is true." (pp. 24-25)

2. ———. 2015. "How to Speak of Existence: A Brentanian Approach to (Linguistic and Mental) Ontological Commitment." In Themes from Ontology, Mind, and Logic: Essays in Honor of Peter Simons, edited by Lapointe, Sandra, 81-106. Leiden: Brill.

Summary "To a first approximation, ontology is concerned with what exists, metaontology with what it means to say that something exists. So understood, metaontology has been dominated by three views: (i) existence as a substantive first-order property that some things have and some do not, (ii) existence as a formal first-order property that everything has, and (iii) existence as a second-order property of existents’ distinctive properties. Each of these faces well-documented difficulties.

In this chapter, I want to expound a fourth theoretical option, which unfortunately has remained ‘under the radar.’ Th is is Franz Brentano’s view, according to which to say that X exists is not to attribute a property at all (first- or second-order), but to say that the correct attitude to take toward X is that of accepting or believing in it."

3. ———. 2015. "Thought and Thing: Brentano's Reism as Truthmaker Nominalism." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 90:153-180.

"Introduction

The ontological theory of the later Franz Brentano is often referred to as ‘reism.’

But what exactly is reism, and how is it related to modern-day nominalism?

In this paper, I offer an interpretation of Brentano’s reism as a specific variety of nominalism. This variety, although motivated by distinctly modern concerns about truthmakers, adopts a strategy for providing such truthmakers that is completely foreign to modern nominalism. The strategy rests on proliferation of coincident concrete particulars. For example, ‘Socrates is wise’ and ‘Socrates is Greek’ are made true, respectively, by wise-Socrates and Greek-Socrates, where wise-Socrates and Greek-Socrates are two coinciding but numerically distinct concrete particulars (which also coincide with Socrates)." (p. 153)

4. ———. 2016. "Brentano's Latter-day Monism." Brentano Studien no. 14:69-77.

Abstract: "The recent literature on the metaphysics of material objects has featured extensive discussion of monism, the thesis that the world as a whole – the cosmos – is the only material object, or at least the only fundamental material object. A notable byproduct of the growing interest in monism has been a rather energetic reexamination of historical forms of monism. Philosophers whose monist metaphysics has earned serious reconsideration include Parmenides (Rea 2001), Spinoza (Goff 2012, Guigon 2012), the British idealists (Schaffer 2010b) and some of the latter’s American counterparts (Zimmerman forthcoming). One philosopher whose monistic musings have not yet been excavated as part of this general movement, however, is Franz Brentano. In a single known document – a dictation from 30 January 1915 (when he was 77 and completely blind) – Brentano develops what appears to be a version of monism about the material world. This brief note offers a presentation of Brentano’s specific version of monism, and of his master argument for it."

5. ———. 2016. "Brentano’s Mature Theory of Intentionality." Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy no. 4:1-15.

Abstract: "The notion of intentionality is what Franz Brentano is best known for. But disagreements and misunderstandings still surround his account of its nature. In this paper, I argue that Brentano’s mature account of the nature of intentionality construes

it, not as a two-place relation between a subject and an object, nor as a three-place relation between a subject’s act, its object, and a ‘content,’ but as an altogether non-relational, intrinsic property of subjects. I will argue that the view is more defensible than might initially appear."

6. ———, ed. 2017. The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School. New York: Routledge.

Contents: Uriah Kriegel: Introduction 1;

Part I: Brentano’s Philosophy

1. Thomas Binder: Franz Brentano: Life and Work 15; 2. Uriah Kriegel: Brentano’s Philosophical Program 21;

1.1: Mind

3. Denis Seron: Brentano’s Project of Descriptive Psychology 35; 4. Tim Crane: Brentano on Intentionality 41; 5. Mark Textor: Brentano on Consciousness 49; 6. Barry Dainton: Brentano on the Unity of Consciousness 61; 7. Guillaume Fréchette: Brentano on Time-Consciousness 75; 8. Olivier Massin: Brentano on Sensations and Sensory Qualities 87; 9. Uriah Kriegel: Brentano’s Classification of Mental Phenomena 97; 10. Uriah Kriegel: Brentano on Judgment 103; 11. Michelle Montague: Brentano on Emotion and the Will 110; 12. Gianfranco Soldati: Brentano on Self-Knowledge 124,

1.2: Metaphysics

13. Werner Sauer: Brentano’s Reism 133; 14. Susan Krantz Gabriel: Brentano on the Soul 144; 15. Wojciech Żełaniec: Brentano on Time and Space 150; 16. Hamid Taieb: Brentano on Properties and Relations 156;

17. Johannes L. Brandl: Brentano on Truth 163; 18. Denis Seron:: Brentano on Appearance and Reality 169; 19. Alessandro Salice: Brentano on Negation and Nonexistence 178;

1.3: Value

20. Jonas Olson: Brentano’s Metaethics 187; 21.Lynn Pasquerella: Brentano’s Normative Ethics 196; 22. Wolfgang Huemer: Brentano on Beauty and Aesthetics 202; 23. Ion Tănăsescu: Brentano on Genius and Fantasy 210; 24. Richard Schaefer: Brentano’s Philosophy of Religion 216;

Part II: The Brentano School

25. Arnaud Dewalque: The Rise of the Brentano School 225; 26. Arnaud Dewalque: The Unity of the Brentano School 236;

2.1: Brentano’s Students

27. Laurent Cesalli and Kevin Mulligan: Marty and Brentano 251; 28. Denis Fisette: Stumpf and Brentano 264; 29. Johann Christian Marek: Meinong and Brentano 272; 30. Maria E. Reicher: Ehrenfels and Brentano 283;

31. Dermot Moran: Husserl and Brentano 293; 2.2: Arianna Betti: Twardowski and Brentano 305;

2.2: Students’ Students and Further Influences

33. Hynek Janoušek and Robin Rollinger: The Prague School 313; 34. Guillaume Fréchette: Bergman and Brentano 323; 35. Arianna Betti: Brentano and the Lvov-Warsaw School 334; 36. Wilhelm Baumgartner: The Innsbruck School 341; 37. Maria van der Schaar: Brentano, Stout and Moore 349; 38. Dale Jacquette: Chisholm and Brentano 358;

Notes on Contributors 365; Brentano Bibliography 368; Brentano Bibliography—Archival Material 371; References 372; Index 395-399.

7. ———. 2017. "Brentano's Philosophical Program." In The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School, edited by Kriegel, Uriah, 21-32. New York: Routledge.

"Franz Brentano was not a systematic writer, but he was very much a systematic thinker.

Through his manuscripts, lecture notes, letters, dictations, and occasional published writings, one can discern a systematic, unified approach to the true, the good, and the beautiful. My goal here is to articulate explicitly this approach, and the philosophical program it reflects. The exercise requires going over big stretches of terrain with some efficiency; I will go just as deep into Brentano’s approaches to the true, the good, and the beautiful as is required to make explicit their structural unity.

The basic idea behind Brentano’s program is that there are three distinctive types of mental act that proprietarily target the true, the good, and the beautiful. To understand the true, the good, and the beautiful, we must obtain a clear grasp (i) of the distinctive mental acts targeting them and (ii) of success in such targeting. According to Brentano, the true is that which it is correct, or fitting, or appropriate to believe; the good is that which it is correct/fitting to love or like or approve of; and the beautiful is that with which it is correct/fitting to be delighted.(1) The next three sections develop and (do the minimum to) motivate each of these claims." (p. 21)

(1) The term Brentano prefers in this context is Richtig, most naturally translated as “correct” or “fitting.” But in one place he offers a number of synonyms—konvenient, passend, and entsprechend (Brentano 1969: 74)— which are more or less interchangeably translatable as “appropriate,” “suitable,” “fitting,” and “adequate.”

References

Brentano, Franz (1969). The Origins of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong. Trans. R. M. Chisholm and E. H. Schneewind. London: Routledge.

8. ———. 2017. "Brentano's Classification of Mental Phenomena." In The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School, edited by Kriegel, Uriah, 97-102. New York: Routledge.

"In Chapter 3 of Book I of Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Brentano articulates what he takes to be the four most basic and central tasks of psychology. One of them is to discover the “fundamental classification” of mental phenomena. Brentano attends to this task in Chapters 5–9 of Book II of the Psychology, reprinted (with appendices) in 1911 as a standalone book (Brentano 1911a). The classification is further developed in an essay entitled “A Survey of So-Called Sensory and Noetic Objects of Inner Perception,” published posthumously in Brentano 1928/1981b, as well as in a 1907 dictation entitled “Loving and Hating,” reprinted in Brentano 1969." (p. 97)

References

Brentano, Franz (1911a). Von der Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. All references are to the 1924 edition.

Brentano, Franz (1969). The Origins of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong. Trans. R. M. Chisholm and E. H. Schneewind. London: Routledge.

Brentano, Franz (1981b). Sensory and Noetic Consciousness. Trans. M. Schättle and L. L. McAlister. London: Routledge.

9. ———. 2017. "Brentano on Judgment." In The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School, edited by Kriegel, Uriah, 103-109. New York: Routledge.

" “Judgment” is Brentano’s term for any mental state liable to be true or false. This includes not only the products of conceptual thought, such as belief, but also perceptual experiences, such as seeing that the window was left open. “Every perception counts as a judgment,” writes Brentano (1874: II, 50/1973a: 209). Accordingly, his theory of judgment is not exactly a theory of the same phenomenon we today call “judgment” but of a larger class of phenomena, one (perhaps the main) species of which is what we call “judgment”. Even if we keep thisin mind, though, the profound heterodoxy of Brentano’s theory of judgment is still striking.

(...)

Here I present this unified core of this highly original theory of judgment, which can be captured in terms of three main theses. The first is that, contrary to appearances, all judgments are existential judgments (§1). The second is that the existential force of judgment is indeed a force, or mode, or attitude— it does not come from the judgment’s content (§2). The third is that judgment is not a propositional attitude but an “objectual” attitude (§3)."

References

Brentano, Franz (1874). Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.

10. ———. 2017. "Brentano’s Concept of Mind: Underlying Nature, Reference-Fixing, and the Mark of the Mental." In Innovations in the History of Analytical Philosophy, edited by Lapointe, Sandra and Pincock, Christopher, 197-228. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

"1 Introduction

Perhaps the philosophical thesis most commonly associated with Brentano is that intentionality is the mark of the mental. But in fact Brentano often and centrally uses also what he calls ‘inner perception’ to demarcate the mental. In this chapter, I offer a new interpretation of Brentano’s conception of the interrelations among mentality, intentionality, and inner perception. According to this interpretation, Brentano took the concept of mind to be a natural-kind concept, with intentionality constituting the underlying nature of the mental and inner-perceivability serving as the concept’s reference-fixer." (p. 197)

11. ———. 2017. "Brentano’s Evaluative-Attitudinal Account of Will and Emotion." Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger no. 142:529-558.

"Brentano’s theory of will and emotion is less widely discussed, even within the circles of Brentano scholarship. In this paper, I want to show that this is a missed opportunity, certainly for Brentano scholars but also for contemporary philosophy of mind.

Brentano’s accounts of the will and of emotion are, I will argue, both insightful and creative, on the one hand, and strikingly plausible, upon reflection, on the other.

The contemporary literature on emotion is considerably larger and more contentious than that on the will. Accordingly, I will start with Brentano’s theory of the will, and demonstrate its plausibility against the more peaceful background of current-day discussions of desire (§1). Importantly, however, Brentano offers a somewhat unified account of will and emotion, so I will attempt to leverage the apparent plausibility of his account of will to argue for a similar plausibility in his account of emotion (§2). This will lead to the question of how will and emotion should be distinguished within the unified account – something Brentano has very interesting things to say about (§3)." (p. 529)

12. ———. 2018. Brentano's Philosophical System: Mind, Being, Value. New York: Oxford University Press.

"This is a book about the late-nineteenth-century/early-twentieth-century Austro-German philosopher Franz Brentano. It attempts to present Brentano’s philosophical system, especially as it pertains to the connection between mind and reality, in terms that would be natural to contemporary analytic philosophers; to develop Brentano’s central ideas where they are overly programmatic or do not take into account philosophical developments that have taken place since Brentano’s death a century ago; and to offer a partial defense of Brentano’s system as quite plausible and in any case extraordinarily creative and thought-provoking.

Why write a book about Brentano? For me personally, the primary motivation to study Brentano in detail has been the combination of creativity and plausibility I have found in his work. It seems to me filled with gems that are not so much under-appreciated as virtually unknown by contemporary analytic philosophers. To convince the reader of this is the mandate of the bulk of this book." (p. 1)

13. ———. 2018. "Belief-that and Belief-in: Which Reductive Analysis?" In Non-Propositional Intentionality, edited by Gzrankowski, Alex and Montague, Michelle, 192-213. New York: Oxford University Press.

"On the face of it, some of our psychological attitudes are propositional and some are objectual.

(...)

Very few philosophers have held that in fact no attitudes are propositional—that all are objectual. Perhaps Hume held this view. One philosopher who certainly did is Franz Brentano. Brentano explicitly writes that ‘All mental references refer to things’ (Brentano 1911, 291), where a ‘thing’ is an individual object or concrete particular.

His argument for this cannot be appreciated without a detailed account of his entire philosophy of mind. Short on space, here I will restrict myself to his case for the thesis that judgment is an objectual attitude. This thesis would already be of first importance, since judgment and belief are customarily taken to be the paradigmatic propositional attitudes. This seems antecedently very plausible: you can love Jane, but

you cannot judge Jane (in the relevant sense) or judge that Jane. And yet, I will argue, Brentano’s case for an objectualist account of judgment is surprisingly compelling.

Although the case has some local holes in it, I will argue that they can be filled reasonably satisfactorily.

I start, in section 2, with some background on Brentano’s notion of judgment, as it emerges from his classification of mental states. In section 3, I offer an initial exposition of his objectualist account of judgment for analytic philosophers. In section 4, I reconstruct and tighten Brentano’s case for the objectualist account. In section 5, I consider some key objections." (pp. 192-193)

References

Brentano, F. C. (1874) Psychology from Empirical Standpoint, ed. O. Kraus, tr. A. C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, and L. L. McAlister (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973).

Brentano, F. C. (1911) Appendix to the Classification of Mental Phenomena. In Brentano 1874.

14. ———. 2018. "Brentano’s Dual-Framing Theory of Consciousness." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 97:79-98.

Abstract: "Brentano’s theory of consciousness has garnered a surprising amount of attention in recent philosophy of mind (Thomasson 2000, Caston 2002, Hossack 2002, 2006, Kriegel 2003a, 2003b, 2009, Thomas 2003, Smith 2004, Zahavi 2004, Drummond 2006, Textor 2006, 2013). Here I argue for a novel interpretation of Brentano’s theory that casts it as more original than previously appreciated and yet quite plausible upon inspection. According to Brentano’s theory, as interpreted here, a conscious experience of a tree is a mental state that can be simultaneously thought of, or framed, equally accurately as (i) an awareness of a tree or (ii) an awareness of an awareness of a tree."

References

Caston, V. 2002. ‘Aristotle on Consciousness.’ Mind 111: 751–815.

Drummond, J. J. 2006. ‘The Case(s) of (Self-)Awareness.’ In U. Kriegel and K. Williford (eds.), Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Hossack, K. 2002. ‘Self-Knowledge and Consciousness.’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 102: 163–181.

Hossack, K. 2006. ‘Reid and Brentano on Consciousness.’ In M. Textor (ed.). The Austrian Contribution to Analytic Philosophy. London: Routledge.

Kriegel, U. 2003a. ‘Consciousness as Intransitive Self-Consciousness: Two Views and an Argument.’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 33: 103–132.

Kriegel, U. 2003b. ‘Consciousness, Higher-Order Content, and the Individuation of Vehicles.’ Synthese 134: 477–504.

Kriegel, U. 2009. Subjective Consciousness: A Self-Representational Theory. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Smith, D. W. 2004. ‘Return to Consciousness.’ In his Mind World: Essays in Phenomenology and Ontology (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Textor, M. 2006. ‘Brentano (and some Neo-Brentanians) on Inner Consciousness.’ Dialectica 60: 411–432.

Textor, M. 2013. ‘Brentano on the Dual Relation of the Mental.’ Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 12: 465–483.

Thomas, A. P. 2003. ‘An Adverbial Theory of Consciousness.’ Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2: 161–185.

Thomasson, A. L. 2000. ‘After Brentano: A One-Level Theory of Consciousness.’ European Journal of Philosophy 8: 190–209.

Zahavi, D. 2004. ‘Back to Brentano?’ Journal of Consciousness Studies 11: 66–87.

15. ———. 2022. Franz Brentano: An Invitation to Philosophy.

Available for downlad at PhiArchive: https://philpapers.org/rec/KRIFBC

"The article is written to be understood without any background in philosophy, and in fact may double as an introduction to the various branches philosophy itself. Each section covers Brentano’s core ideas in one branch of philosophy, starting with the briefest exposition of the branch itself. This exposition occurs before the subsections of each sections begin, and may be skipped by more advanced readers. Note also that the sections are fairly modular, so the article need not be read in its entirety to make sense. For instance, sections 2-5 constitute something of a self-standing text, as do sections 5-8." (p. 4)

16. ———. 2022. "The Epistemology of Intentionality: Notional Constituents vs. Direct Grasp." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.

Published online: 07 May 2021.

Abstract: "Franz Brentano is well known for highlighting the importance of intentionality, but he said curiously little about the nature of intentionality. According to Mark Textor, there is a deep reason for this: Brentano took intentionality to be a conceptual primitive the nature of which is revealed only in direct grasp. Although there is certainly textual support for this interpretation, it appears in tension with Brentano's repeated attempts to analyze intentionality in terms of ‘notional constituents’ – aspects of intentionality which cannot come apart in reality but which can be conceptually distinguished. After bringing out this tension, I explore some options for resolving it, ultimately offering my own favored interpretation."

17. ———. 2023. "Précis of Brentano’s Philosophical System." European Journal of Philosophy:455-457.

"The purpose of my book Brentano’s Philosophical System: Mind, Being, Value (henceforth, BPS) is to reconstruct Brentano’s attempt to answer his question, present a partial defense of the answer, offer some potential improvements on it, and also point to persistent difficulties it faces.

Below, I (a) speed-explain Brentano’s self-imposed constraint and its motivation, (b) reconstruct Brentano’s account of the real in light of it, and (c) reconstruct Brentano’s corresponding account of the valuable. These three tasks correspond roughly to BPS’s three parts: ‘Mind,’ ‘Being,’ and ‘Value.’"(p. 455)

18. Kroon, Frederick. 2013. "Intentional Objects, Pretence, and the Quasi-Relational Nature of Mental Phenomena: A New Look at Brentano on Intentionality." International Journal of Philosophical Studies no. 21:377-393.

Abstract: "Brentano famously changed his mind about intentionality between the 1874 and 1911 editions of Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (PES).

The 1911 edition repudiates the 1874 view that to think about something is to stand in a relation to something that is within in the mind, and holds instead that intentionality is only like a relation (it is ‘quasi-relational’).

Despite this, Brentano still insists that mental activity involves ‘the reference to something as an object’, much as he did in the 1874 edition of PES. The question is what Brentano might have meant by this, given that he rejects a relational account of intentionality. The present paper suggests an answer. It draws on recent work on pretence theory to provide a model of Brentano’s notion of the quasi-relational nature of mental phenomena, as well as of the notion of mental reference to an object, and argues that the model helps to explain why Brentano might have been able discern a clear continuity between the views of the 1874 and 1911 editions of PES, despite the differences."

19. Kujundzic, Neb. 2012. "The Power of Abstraction: Brentano, Husserl and the Göttingen Students." Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy/Revue canadienne de philosophie continentale no. 16:191-200.

Abstract: "A quick look into the index of Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint reveals that all references to “abstract terms” occur only in the appendix (taken from Brentano’s “Nachlass” essays).

What should we make of this? Was it the case that the inquiry into abstract, as well as non‐existent, objects came as an afterthought to Brentano? Or was he all too aware of the consequences of such investigations?

Furthermore, was it largely the absence of such inquiry that prompted Husserl and his early students in Göttingen, such as Daubert and Reinach, to develop a deep ontological commitment to entities he refers to as “abstract” or “ideal”?"

20. Küng, Guido. 1986. "Brentano and Ingarden on the Experience and Cognition of Values." Reports on Philosophy (Jagiellonian University) no. 10:57-67.

21. Land, J. P. N. 1876. "Brentano's Logical Innovations." Mind no. 1:289-292.

"It will hardly be necessary to mark the passages of Mill's writings which may have led the Austrian Professor to his starting-point.

Let me observe at once that the main feature of his reconstruction of logical doctrine consists in reducing all categorical propositions to what he calls existential propositions, doing away with the familiar distinction between subject and predicate terms. Where we say Some man is sick, he gives as a substitute, There is a sick man.

Instead of No stone is alive, he puts There is not a live stone. On the other hand, he proposes to improve on the statement Some man is not learned by welding together the negative and the predicate term, and asserting There is an unlearned man. Finally, All men are mortal is to be expressed in his system There is not an immortal man. That is to say, he simply affirms or denies the existence of some object having either two positive qualifications, or one positive together with one negative." (p. 289)

22. Leclercq, Bruno. 2020. "Foundational Mereology as a Logical Tool for Descriptive Psychology." In Franz Brentano's Philosophy after Hundred Years: From History of Philosophy to Reism, edited by Fisette, Denis, Frechette, Guillaume and Janoušek, Hynek, 125-148. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Franz Brentano maintains that consciousness is experienced as a whole and can only be analyzed into “components” through theoretical distinctions. And he claims that some mereology provides the conceptual tools required by such a holistic conception of mind. But of course, this cannot be classical extensional mereology, for which wholes are nothing but the sum of their parts. Brentano’s conception of mind requires some “foundational mereology” like the one Husserl sketched in his third Logical investigation. In the present paper, we use Gilbert Null’s formalization of this foundational mereology in order to investigate the possible relations between what Brentano names the “primary” and “secondary” acts and distinguish thereby several theoretical stands that can be taken on this point, some of them being close to Brentano’s own views and some of them challenging it."

References

Null, G. 2007a. The Ontology of Intentionality I. Husserl Studies 23: 33–69.

———. 2007b. The Ontology of Intentionality II. Husserl Studies 23: 119–159.

23. Leung, Ka-Wing. 2021. "Intra‐mental or intra‐cranial? On Brentano's concept of immanent object." European Journal of Philosophy no. 29:1039-1059.

Abstract: "The aim of this paper is to elucidate Franz Brentano's concept of immanent object through his own words and from his own perspective. The prevalent account of Brentano's revival of intentionality, his initial failure to distinguish between object and content, and his wrong-headed immanentism, is largely derived from his students. Brentano's objection to it, although well known, is seldom heeded. In fact, plenty of guidelines have been provided by Brentano himself in his writings on how his concept of immanent object is to be understood. I begin with his distinction between two senses of “object,” which, I argue, must be clearly set apart from distinction between two modes of object. I then examine three different interpretations of the term “in-existence”: the locative, the inherentist, and the objective interpretation. In the end, after dismissing the first two interpretations, I argue that Brentano is best understood as maintaining an objective and deflationary account of mental in-existence."

24. Libardi, Massimo. 1996. "Franz Brentano (1838-1917)." In The School of Franz Brentano, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Libardi, Massimo and Poli, Roberto, 25-79. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"Still today, reconstruction of Brentano' s thought is haphazard and incomplete.

A first difficulty arises because so little of his work has found its way into print; a lack of source material exacerbated by the fact that much of his vast NachlaJ3 has never been published. (14)

One reason for the comparative neglect of Brentano's thought is that he concentrated on questions which the text-books on nineteenth-century philosophy dismiss as minor, focusing their attention instead on theories and thinkers who drew their inspiration from the dissolution of the idealist systems or from the intricacies of neo-Kantianism. Brentano stands at the confluence of currents of thought - such as the Aristotelian Renaissance or, at least in certain respects, Italian pragmatism - which have been pushed into the background by the current interpretation of the history of philosophy.

When Brentano was engaged in writing the two volumes of Psychologie, his intention was to follow it with four further books giving more detailed treatment to the properties of and the laws pertaining to the three fundamental classes of psychic phenomena, and to the relationships between psychic and physical phenomena. His project never came to fruition, however, and today commentators use Psychologie 1 to denote Oskar Kraus's 1924 edition of Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, which includes volume 1 and chapters 1-4 of volume 2 of the 1874 Psychologie. Psychologie 2 denotes Von der Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene, the second edition by Oskar Kraus, which contains published and unpublished essays from Von der Klassifikation der psychischen Phänomene of 1911 and chapters 5-9 from the second volume of the 1874 Psychologie plus some appendixes. Psychologie 3 is used ot denote Vom sinnlichen und noetischen Bewusstsein (taken from the Nachlass) in its 1968 edition by Mayer-Hillebrand." (p. 29)

25. Łukasiewicz, Dariusz. 2007. "Brentano's theory of judgment and the Lvov-Warsaw School." Ruch Filozoficzny no. 1:33-47.

"I will discuss the reception of Franz Brentano’s philosophy in Poland, in particular, the reception of Brentano’s ideas among representatives of the Lvov - Warsaw School. However, I would like to confine myself to some Brentano’s ideas: his conception of judgment and its philosophical consequences. I will do this, firstly, because it might be perhaps interesting to find in Brentano’s heritage one idea which is on the one hand the most characteristic to Brentano and, on the other hand, exerted wide and essential influence on the Polish philosophy. Secondly, the conception of judgment in itself assumes, or implies, theories of truth, values, knowledge, theories of objects, and it also has importance for philosophical foundations of logic." (p. 33, a note omitted)

26. Macnamara, John. 1993. "Cognitive psychology and the rejection of Brentano." Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour no. 23:117-137.

"In Psychology from an empirical standpoint Franz Brentano presented a concept of cognitive psychology that contrasts sharply with present day concepts of the subject. It is my theme that Brentano came much closer than modern psychologists to a true understanding of cognition. The psychological community turned its back on Brentano partly because it failed to comprehend him and partly because Brentano’s cognitive psychology did not fit in with strong positivist currents that swept psychologists in a different direction. Besides there was a concerted effort by the next generation of psychologists to make psychological research fit the model of biological research. As a result much of what has passed and still passes as cognition misses the heart of the matter. One way forward is to re-examine Brentano’s ideas and contrast them with those which at present hold sway. This will, I believe, not only lead to a juster appreciation of the situation but it will also indicate how cognitive psychology ought to be studied. Here I will concentrate on the first part of this task, on an examination of Brentano’s thought, and only adumbrate the implications for the study of cognition." (p. 117)

27. Marchesi, Andrea. 2019. "Brentanian Inner Consciousness and the Infinite Regress Problem." Dialectica no. 73:129-147.

Abstract: "By “Brentanian inner consciousness” I mean the conception of inner consciousness developed by Franz Brentano. The aim of this paper is threefold: first, to present Brentano’s account of inner consciousness; second, to discuss this account in light of the mereology outlined by Brentano himself; and third, to decide whether this account incurs an infinite regress. In this regard, I distinguish two kinds of infinite regress: external infinite regress and internal infinite regress. I contend that the most plausible reading of Brentano’s account is the so-called fusion thesis, and I argue that internal infinite regress turns out to be inherent to Brentanian inner consciousness."

28. ———. 2022. "A Systematic Reconstruction of Brentano’s Theory of Consciousness." Topoi no. 41:123-132.

Abstract: "In recent years, Brentano’s theory of consciousness has been systematically reassessed. The reconstruction that has received the most attention is the so-called identity reconstruction. It says that secondary consciousness and the mental phenomenon it is about are one and the same. Crucially, it has been claimed that this thesis is the only one which can make Brentano’s theory immune to what he considers the main threat to it, namely, the duplication of the primary object. In this paper, I arguethat the identity reconstruction is untenable, and I defend an alternative, which I name the unity reconstruction. According to the unity reconstruction, secondary consciousness is a real part of the mental phenomenon it is about, and hence is distinct from it. I contend that this thesis does not in itself lead to the duplication of the primary object, and that what should be blamed is rather a controversial thesis about the intentional structure of secondary consciousness—a thesis which Brentano ultimately abandoned."

29. Margolis, Joseph. 2001. "Reflections on intentionality." In The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, edited by Jacquette, Dale, 131-148. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"In fact, Brentano provides a masterly clarification of his account of intentional “activities” in the Appendix to The Classification of Mental Phenomena (in effect, the new title for Book Two of the Psychology), which was prepared for inclusion in the 1911 edition (and is included in the English translation of the Psychology). This was the principal source, for instance, on which Tadeusz Kotarbinski was led to affirm (in his generous way) that “Brentano was the first to develop a reistic philosophy, more than a decade before the system had a name.”(7) Kotarbinski was right in what he says here: the matter is quite important, as we shall see, in simplifying Brentano’s general account in the best sense, as well as in distinguishing Brentano’s best view (by my own persuasion) from the views of a bewilderingly diffuse army of subsequent discussants who have taken the notion into extravagant conceptual thickets." (pp. 132-133).

(7) Tadeusz Kotarbinski, “Franz Brentano as Reist,” in, ed., Linda L. McAlister, The Philosophy of Brentano (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1976), p. 200.

30. Marques de Carvalho, Joelma. 2015. "Franz Brentano’s higher-order theories of consciousness." Argumentos no. 7:77-84.

Abstract: "This article aims at giving a brief comment on Denis Fisette’s interpretation of Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness by Franz Brentano, where consciousness has been seen as a form of intransitive self-consciousness being intrinsic to the agent. In agreement with that interpretation, I want to present a few more basic arguments in order to support that assumption such as, for example, some epistemic thoughts by Brentano given in his books Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte (1874) and Die Deskriptive Psychologie (1982). The present paper has been divided into five sections. The first section deals with the initial understanding of psychology in Brentano. Section two deals with the concepts of consciousness and intentionality. In the third section, the classification of mental phenomena will be presented. Section four refers to the concept of descriptive psychology or phenomenology and finally, I will show the consequences of Brentano’s epistemic and ontological arguments related to his concept of consciousness."

31. Marras, Ausonio. 1974. "The Scholastic roots of Brentano's conception of intentionality." Rassegna di Scienze Filosofiche no. 1:213-226.

Reprinted in: Linda McAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Brentano, pp. 128-139.

"The aim of this paper is to show, contrary to Spiegelberg’s contention, that there is in fact a very intimate connection between the two conceptions of psychological phenomena contained in Brentano’s previously quoted passage[*], although no attempt shall be made here to determine the extent to which Brentano was actually aware of this connection. I shall hold, essentially, that the idea of reference to an object not only is not incompatible with the scholastic idea of intentional inexistence, but is in fact constitutive of that very idea. I shall also attempt to discredit an assumption which I believe underlies Spiegelberg’s comments in the quotation before the last quotation, and that is that the doctrine of intentional inexistence commits scholastic thought to some form of immanentistic epistemology (opposed, at least in spirit, to Brentano’s ‘realistic’ epistemology), in that it fails, allegedly, to give a coherent account of the independent existence of the object known." (pp. 129-130)

[*] Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint, English edition edited by Linda L. McAlister, trans. D.B. Terrell, Antos C. Rancurello, and Linda L. McAlister (London and New York, 1973), p. 88.

32. Martin, Wayne M. 2008. Theories of Judgment: Psychology, Logic, Phenomenology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 3 § 5: Thetic logic, pp. 63-73.

"We shall return below to consider the contribution of the phenomenological tradition to the problems of judgment, but our interest here is rather in Brentano’s work as a logician. Brentano’s logical doctrines have not been widely discussed, and the neglect is in retrospect explicable. His most detailed logical writings were published only posthumously in 1956, and his influence and accomplishment in this area, though significant, were doubly eclipsed: first by his role in the emergence of a distinctively phenomenological school, and then by the broader logical revolution to which Brentano had contributed but which ultimately overswept him.

(Brentano’s main logical doctrines were first set out in 1874, and his calculus was elaborated in detail by 1877; Frege’s Begriffsschrift was published in 1879.) Nonetheless, Brentano’s logical accomplishments merit our attention. Why? Because in Brentano’s logic the dispute over the logical representation of existential judgments turns subversive, directly challenging the longstanding characterization of judgment as synthesis.

Brentano and his collaborators formulated the first modern system of inference that systematically eschewed any appeal to judgment as a synthesis of representational content." (p. 63, a note omitted)

(34) For some exceptions to the general neglect of Brentano’s logic, see Chisholm 1982, and important discussions by Simons 1984 and 1987, and the Italian logician Roberto Poli 1993, 1998. By contrast, important studies of the reform of logic in this period leave Brentano entirely out of account (Dummett 1993, Willard 1984), and Barry Smith’s account of Brentano’s contributions to the tradition he calls ‘‘Austrian Philosophy’’ (1994) skims over Brentano’s logical contributions. Two essays by Burnham Terrell (1976, 1978) deal with Brentano’s treatment of quantification; for replies see Fischer and Miller 1976 and Chisholm 1976. Perhaps the most intriguing appropriation of Brentano’s logical proposals is Kuroda 1972, which uses Brentanian logic in the analysis of Japanese syntax, and is still regularly cited in linguistics research. See, e.g., Sasse 1987, Ladusaw 1994, McNally 1997, 1998.

References

Brentano, Franz. 1870–77: Die Lehre vom Richtigen Urteil, published posthumously in an edition edited by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand (Bern: Francke, 1956)

_________ 1874: Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (Leipzig: Dunker und Humblot); citations refer to the pagination of the English translation by L. McAlister et al. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973)

33. ———. 2010. "Fichte's Logical Legacy: Thetic Judgment from the Wissenschaftslehre to Brentano." In Fichte and the Phenomenological Tradition, edited by Waibel, Violetta L., Breazeale, Daniel and Rockmore, Tom, 379-406. Berlin: de Gruyter.

"It is not usual to think of Fichte as a logician, nor indeed to think of him as leaving a legacy that shaped the subsequent history of symbolic logic. But I argue here that there is such a legacy, and that Fichte formulated an agenda in formal logic that his students (and their students in turn) used to spark a logical revolution. That revolution arguably reached its culmination in the logical writings of Franz Brentano, better known as a founding figure of the phenomenological movement. In logical writings that were published only posthumously, but that were fully elaborated in the decade prior to the publication of Frege's Begriffschrift, Brentano (together with his collaborator Anton Marty) developed a radically innovative logical calculus that was explicitly designed to overthrow the orthodox logical analysis of judgment and inference. At the center of this revolution was the notion of thetic judgment [thetische Urteil], a form of judgment upon which Fichte had insisted in the first published version of the Wissenschaftslehre, and which his students subsequently set out to accommodate within the framework provided by Kant's general logic. But thetic judgment proved resistant to such assimilation, and it was left to Brentano to use the analysis of thetic judgment in his attempt to topple a long-standing logical tradition.

In what follows I reconstruct the main episodes in this century-long drama in the logical theory of judgment. My discussion is divided into four sections. I begin with a review of Fichte's most explicit call for logical revolution, together with his introduction of the notion of thetic judgment, set against the backdrop of an anomaly within Kant's logical commitments. In the second section I trace the logical treatment of this anomaly among Fichte's philosophical progeny, in particular Johann Friedrich Herbart and Moritz Drobisch. The third section explores Brentano's position, and his more radical solution to the anomaly bequeathed by Kant. In the final section I return to Fichte, to consider to what degree these subsequent developments remained faithful to the logical agenda Fichte had projected." (pp. 379-380)

34. Massin, Olivier. 2018. "Brentanian Continua." Brentano Studien no. 16:229-276.

Abstract: "The paper presents, criticizes and proposes some fixes to Brentano’s theory of continuity (that is, absence of gaps). Brentano’s key idea is that continua consists of boundaries (and not of points) and that their continuity is guaranteed by the coincidence of these boundaries. After having presented Brentano’s account, I argue that it is beset by two main problems. First, if continua consist only of coinciding boundaries, continua can never be extended. Second, if continua involve coinciding boundaries, there must be some underlying continua in which such a coincidence takes place. But then the continuity of such underlying continua remains unaccounted for.

To fix these two problems, I argue that we should distinguish the question of the continuity of what is in space and time, from the question of the continuity of space and time themselves. While the continuity of what is in space and time is correctly explained by boundary-coincidence (along Brentano’s lines), I suggest that the continuity of space and time themselves is explained not by boundary-coincidence but by a primitive relation of continuity (at which Brentano appears to hint in more neglected places)."

35. Massin, Olivier, and Hämmerli, Marion. 2017. "Is Purple a Red and Blue Chessboard? Brentano on Colour Mixtures." The Monist no. 100:37-63.

Abstract: "Can we maintain that purple seems composed of red and blue without giving up the impenetrability of the red and blue parts that compose it? Brentano thinks we can. Purple, according to him, is a chessboard of red and blue tiles which, although individually too small to be perceived, are together indistinctly perceived within the purple. After a presentation of Brentano’s solution, we raise two objections to it. First, Brentano’s solution commits him to unperceivable intentional objects (the chessboard’s tiles). Second, his chessboard account fails in the end to explain the phenomenal spatial continuity of compound colours. We finally sketch an alternative account of compound colours, which, while holding fast to their phenomenal compoundedness and to the impenetrability of colours, avoids introducing inaccessible intentional objects and compromising on the continuity of the purple. According to our proposal, instead of being indistinctly perceived spatial parts of the purple, red and blue are distinctly perceived nonspatial parts of it."

36. Mayer-Hillebrand, Franziska. 1963. "Remarks Concerning the Interpretation of the Philosophy of Franz Brentano: A Reply to Dr. Srzednicki." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 23:438-444.

"I feel it necessary to comment upon Dr. J. T. Srzednicki's article in the March, 1962, issue of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, in which he sets forth his interpretation of the correct way of editing Franz Brentano's scientific manuscripts and of making the philosopher's teachings known in wider areas. Srzednicki criticizes in particular the way in which A. Kastil and I have attempted to reproduce Brentano's trains of thought; he refers to Kastil's Die Philosophie Franz Brentanos (Francke-VerlagB, ern 1951) and to my edition of Brentano's Die Lehre vom Richtigen Urteil (Francke-Verlag, Bern 1956)."

(...)

"As editor of the Brentano manuscripts since Kastil's death in 1950, I believe it to be my duty to place the merits of my revered teacher, A. Kastil, into the proper light, as well as to explain the method which I, in referring to Brentano's explicit wish, used in Lehre vom Richtigen Urteil, and to reject Srzednicki's criticisms." (p. 438)

37. McAlister, Linda Lopez. 1970. "Franz Brentano and intentional inexistence." Journal of History of Philosophy no. 8:423-430.

"Franz Brentano, in his important early work Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (1874), maintains that all human experience is divided into two classes: mental phenomena and physical phenomena,(1) It is then incumbent upon him to show how these two classes of phenomena are to be distinguished one from another.

In Book II, Chapter 1, of the Psychologie, he devotes himself to this task, and in the course of the chapter he surveys several different ways of making out the distinction.

After enumerating examples of mental phenomena and of physical phenomena, he searches for defining characteristics of mental phenomena. He finds several characteristics which he thinks all mental phenomena have and all physical phenomena lack or vice versa, but far and away the most important of these, in Brentano's estimation, and the one whdch has aroused the most interest on the part of later philosophers, is what he calls "intentional inexistence,"(2) (or merely "intentional existence"; the prefix "in-" does not indicate negation but rathor location, indicating existence in the mind)." (p. 423)

(1) i Oskar Kraus, e.d., 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1924), I, 109.

(2) Psych. I, 137.

38. ———. 1975. "Chisholm and Brentano on intentionality." The Review of Metaphysics no. 28:328-338.

Reprinted in: Linda McAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Brentano, pp. 151-159.

"I believe, however, that Chisholm’s interpretation of Brentano’s intentionality doctrine is not wholly accurate, and that while the doctrine he sets forth as Brentano’s is an interesting and provocative one, it gives a

misleading impression of what Brentano’s views actually were, by obscuring almost entirely the specific nature of the question Brentano was trying to solve, and by misreading the answer Brentano gave. If only for the sake of historical accuracy a corrective should be given, but of course, taking another look at Brentano’s particular way of construing the mind/body problem and the solution he put forth may also prove to be suggestive in its own right.

In this paper I will first show that there is no textual basis for theinterpretation of Brentano’s intentionality doctrine that Chisholm gives, and I will discuss briefly how, in light of that fact, Chisholm might have thought that there was. Then I will point out instances in which the version of intentionality that Chisholm attributes to Brentano conflicts with other views that Brentano held at the time. Out of these discussions emerges a different interpretation of Brentano’s intentionality thesis, and, I hope, a more accurate one." (p. 152)

39. ———, ed. 1976. The Philosophy of Brentano. London: Duckworth.

Contents: Editor's Introduction VII-IX; Oskar Kraus: Biographical sketch of Franz Brentano 1; Carl Stumpf: Reminiscences of Franz Brentano 10; Edmund Husserl: Reminiscences of Franz Brentano 47; Étienne Gilson: Brentano's interpretation of medieval philosophy 56; Lucie Gilson: Franz Brentano on science and philosophy 68; E. B. Titchener: Brentano and Wundt: empirical and experimental psychology 80; Roderick Chisholm: Brentano's descriptive psychology 91; Thomas De Boer: The descriptive method of Franz Brentano: its two functions and their significance for phenomenology 101; Herbert Spiegelberg: Intention and intentionality in the Scholastics, Brentano and Husserl 108; Ausonio Marras: Scholastic roots of Brentano's conception of intentionality 128; Roderick Chisholm: Intentional inexistence 140; Linda McAlister: Chisholm and Brentano on intentionality 151; Roderick Chisholm: Brentano's theory of correct and incorrect emotion 160; George Edward Moore: Review of Franz Brentano's The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong 176; Gabriel Franks: Was G. E. Moore mistaken about Brentano? 182; Tadeusz Kotarbinski: Franz Brentano as Reist 194; D. B. Terrell: Brentano's argument for Reismus 204; Hugo Bergmann: Brentano's theory of induction 213; Oskar Kraus: Toward a phenomenognosy of time consciousness 224; Bibliography of the published writings of Brentano: 240; Bibliography of works on Brentano: 248; Index of names 255; General Index 259-262.

40. ———. 1979. "A Quasi-Brentanian Theory of Objects." The Journal of Philosophy no. 76:662-663.

"Recently there has been renewed interest in developing theories of nonexistent objects from such people as the Routleys and Terence Parsons. They often say they are reviving or reconstructing Meinong's Theory of Objects. What they then proceed to do is to reconstruct only a small fragment of his theory.

Parsons, for example, calls his a "quasi-Meinongian" theory, but then says, "The theory I want to discuss here is expressly limited to concrete objects, some of which exist and some of which do not" (655)."

(...)

"Parsons offers no justification for this limitation. If he did, he might want to argue that concrete objects are the only possible objects of mental acts. Such arguments were developed by Brentano in reaction against Meinong's theory of objects in the early part of the century. In fact, Parsons' theory seems to me more accurately described as a "quasi-Brentanian theory" than as a "quasi-Meinongian" one. That is because Brentano's later philosophy, which is called Reism, can be viewed, like Parsons', as a theory of objects which is limited to concrete objects, both existent and nonexistent." (p. 662)

References

Terence Parsons, The Methodology of Nonexistence, The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 76, No. 11, (Nov., 1979), pp. 649-662.

41. ———. 1982. The Development of Franz Brentano's Ethics. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"There are two major periods in the philosophical thought of Franz Brentano (1838-1917).

(...)

Similarly, there are two distinct discernible periods in Brentano's thought concerning ethical theory. Unfortunately, Brentano's ethical writings have never been presented in such a way that this development from the earlier to the later period would be apparent. On the contrary, the manner in which Brentano's ethical works have been edited serves to obscure the fact that there was such a development rather than exhibit this fact. Only one work on ethics was published during Brentano's lifetime, his lecture Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis,(2) wherein he expounds what I shall call his earlier ethical theory. His later moral philosophy, which began to evolve around the turn of the century, and which reflects the changes taking place in his philosophical thought generally, was not set out by Brentano in any published or polished form. It can, however, be pieced together from references in letters and in papers from his extensive Nachlass.(3) It is also reflected in a work published posthumously under the title Grundlegung und Aufbau der Ethik. (4) It is the form of editing adopted for this book which does so much to obscure the development of Brentano's ethics. The text is basically that of Brentano's lectures on ethics delivered at the University of Vienna between 1876 and 1894, and so it represents in a more detailed form than does Ursprung Brentano's early ethical philosophy. But Professor Mayer-Hillebrand and Professor Alfred Kastil, who worked on this material before her, have chosen to incorporate into this early text Brentano's later ethical views as well, and they have apparently tried to edit out all those sections of the early text which do not agree with these later views. In short they have tried to turn an early text into a later one by virtually rewntmg it in places. The resulting book is, needless to say, somewhat misleading, for it gives the impression that Brentano had expounded the same ethical theory throughout his life.

In this dissertation I shall try to erase this impression by tracing the development of Brentano's ethics from the earlier to the later period. For the early period my main sources are Ursprung andmicrofilms of the early ethics lectures. I have used Grundlegung when its text has not been altered significantly by the editors to conform to Brentano's later views. This entailed checking the entire text against the microfilms of the original lecture notes.(5)

When the text had been altered in Grundlegung, I relied on the original texts. For Brentano's later ethical theory I relied mostly on the materials from the Nachlass especially upon a recently published selection of later letters and essays entitled Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen, edited by Professor Mayer-Hillebrand.(6)

In addition to tracing the development of Brentano's ethics and trying to analyze the reasons behind this development, I have tried to present background information concerning his methodology, psychology, epistemology, etc. sufficient for an understanding of his philosophy. I give interpretations of those passages which seem to me to call for further elucidation and I include critical commentary on the major ethical positions Brentano espouses and on some other points as well." (pp. 1-3)

(2) (Leipzig, 1889) - hereafter cited as Ursprung. All references are to the 3rd edition, Oskar Kraus, ed. (Leipzig, 1934).

(3) The papers, fragments, dictations, etc. left unpublished by Brentano at his death have been preserved on twenty-seven rolls of microfilm by the philosopher's son Dr. J.C.M. Brentano and the Franz Brentano Foundation. See Dr. Brentano's article "The Manuscripts of Franz Brentano", Revue International de Philosophie,XX, No, 78 (1966), 476-484.

(4) Ed. Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand (Bern, 1952)--hereafter cited as Grundlegung. Translated as The Foundation and Construction of Ethics, Elizabeth Huges Schneewind (London, 1973).

(5) I am indebted to the Franz Brentano Foundation for making these films available to me by presenting them as a gift to the Olin Library, Cornell University.

(6) (Bern, 1966).

42. ———. 2004. "Brentano's epistemology." In The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, edited by Jacquette, Dale, 149-167. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"In this chapter, I will set out what I take to be the basic tenets of Franz Brentano’s epistemology. This seemingly simple task is a crucial one because virtually every other aspect of Brentano’s philosophy uses his epistemology as a starting point and is structured in the same way. As the title of his major published work, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, suggests, Brentano saw himself as an empiricist; his account of knowledge, belief and other epistemological concepts is therefore constructed from the building blocks, so to speak, of the phenomena of experience." (p. 149)

43. McDonnell, Cyril. 2006. "Brentano’s Revaluation of the Scholastic Concept of Intentionality into a Root-Concept of Descriptive Psychology." Yearbook of the Irish Philosophical Society:124-171.

Abstract: "It is generally acknowledged that it is principally due to Brentano and his students, in particular Husserl, that the medieval-scholastic terminology of ‘intentional act’ and ‘intentional object’ re-gained widespread currency in philosophical circles in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. This paper examines Brentano’s original re-introduction and revaluation of the Scholastic concept of intentionality into a root-concept of descriptive psychology. It concentrates on (1) Brentano’s modification of the Scholastic concept of object-relatedness of the will to depict the object-relatedness of all psychical-act experiences in consciousness, (2) Brentano’s modification of the Scholastic concept of the abstracted form of sense residing intentionally in the soul of the knower to depict the directly intended object of

consciousness, and (3) the significance of these modifications for understanding what commentators now call ‘Brentano’s thesis’. It notes that Brentano develops not one but two descriptive-psychological theses of intentionality both of which are entirely unScholastic. It also notes, however, that part of the original meaning of the metaphysical distinction that the Scholastics drew between ‘intentional indwelling’ (inesse intentionale) and ‘real being’ (esse naturale) continues to play a critical role in Brentano’s revision of the concept of intentionality in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874) and in his lecture courses delivered at Vienna University on Descriptive Psychology (1887-91), and that this part of the original meaning of the Scholastic concept of intentionality remains both alive and intact in Brentano’s 1874 study and in Husserl’s (in)famous transcendental reduction of Ideas I (1913). Thus the paper argues that identifying what Brentano accepts, rejects, and adds to the original Scholastic concepts of ‘intentional act’ and ‘the intentional indwelling of an object’ cannot be evaded in the proper elucidation and evaluation of ‘Brentano’s thesis’."

44. ———. 2006. "Brentano’s Modification of the Medieval-Scholastic Concept of ‘Intentional Inexistence’ in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874)." Maynooth Philosophical Papers no. 3:55-74.

Abstract: "Brentano is perhaps most famously renowned for his re-deployment of Scholastic terminology of ‘intentional act’ and ‘intentional object’ in the elaboration of his novel science of ‘descriptive psychology’ in the mid-1870s and 1880s. In this re-deployment, however, Brentano adapted the original Scholastic meanings of both of these terms. Thus Brentano advanced not one but two descriptive-psychological theses of intentionality.(1) These theses, however, are often not properly distinguished, and consequently they are more often confused. Nevertheless, once the two theses are distinguished, Brentano’s basic descriptive-psychological tenet of the intentionality of consciousness is more readily understandable on its own terms. Whether Brentano’s descriptive-psychological tenet is entirely acceptable philosophically, or not, of course, is another matter but this presupposes understanding in a straightforward sense what Brentano’s doctrine is. In this article, I will be concerned mainly with Brentano’s re-introduction of ‘what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object’ in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874),(2) even though it is Brentano’s (second) thesis on ‘intentional act’, one that he developed after his 1874 publication, that is more generally well known and examined. While acknowledging that many versions of ‘Brentano’s thesis’, as it is usually (and loosely) referred to by commentators today, have been re-worked in modern philosophy of mind, this article focuses attention on some of the main points of convergence and deviance between the original Scholastic concept and Brentano’s ‘new’ concept of intentionality in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint."

(1) According to Herbert Spiegelberg: ‘It is true that when he [Brentano] uses the adjective “intentional” [in his 1874 Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, qualifying the kind of existence characteristic of the objects of consciousness, as is evident from the context] he still betrays traces of the scholastic doctrine about the immanence of the object known within the soul. But it was this very doctrine about the immanence of the object of knowledge in the soul which Brentano came to reject during what Brentano scholars call the crisis of immanence (“Immanenzkrise”) of 1905.’ The Phenomenological Movement: a Historical Introduction (3rd revised and enlarged edition, with the collaboration of Karl Schuhman, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), p. 48, note 19. Thus it is possible for Brentano, whilst rejecting the immanent object theory of intentionality, to still defend the ‘intentional acts’ of consciousness after 1905, though ‘as far as I [Spiegelberg] can make out, even the term “intentional” disappears from Brentano’s psychological vocabulary (ibid.).’

(2) Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, trans. by Antos. C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell & Linda L. McAlister (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973; Routledge, 1995), p. 88—henceforth abbreviated as PES in notes; Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (Leipzig, 1874).

45. ———. 2015. "Understanding and Assessing “Brentano’s Thesis” in Light of His Modification of the Scholastic Concept of Intentionality." Brentano Studien no. 13:153-181.

Abstract: "This paper investigates Brentano’s modification of the Scholastic concept of intentionality in his elaboration of his thesis on the intentionality of consciousness. It argues that though ‘Brentano’s thesis’ cannot be fully understood without reference to the original Scholastic concept, Brentano also gives this concept new meaning in his elaboration of not one but two descriptive-psychological theses of intentionality, one concerning the intentional indwelling of an object in consciousness and another concerning the relatedness of psychical-act experiences to their objects, both of which are entirely unscholastic."

46. ———. 2017. "Brentano’s New Understanding of Psychology in Light of His Reading of English Empiricists." Brentano Studien no. 15:263-290.

"In this article, I wish to examine some of the main ideas that Brentano borrowed in part or in full from those ‘most eminent English psychologists of the empiricist school’(8) that are of most relevance to an understanding and evaluation of Brentano’s new view of ‘psychology’ ‘from an empirical standpoint’. Of pivotal importance to the ‘investigations’ which Brentano unfurls in PES [Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint] is a distinction which he draws between the ‘inner perception of physical phenomena’ and ‘outer perception of physical phenomena’, a distinction, as we shall see, he found in the ‘English empiricists’ whom he read. This has an important bearing on understanding Brentano’s famous re-introduction and appeal to ‘what the Scholastics of the Middle-ages called the intentional (or mental) in-existence of an object’ as the mark of ‘our own psychical phenomena’ in Book II ‘Psychical Phenomena In General’ of PES because, as Brentano explicitly remarks, ‘no physical phenomenon [by comparison to our own psychical phenomena] exhibits anything like it’.(9) In this article, therefore, I will first address the main reasons for Brentano’s general change of views about the science of psychology and then assess the significance of the ‘English empiricists’ in understanding and evaluating his use of the concept of intentionality to distinguish ‘psychical phenomena’ from ‘physical phenomena’." (p. 265)

(8) PES, p. 145. See, also, pp. 13–14, p. 80, and p. 94.

(9) PES, pp. 88–89.

47. Melandri, Enzo. 1987. "The 'Analogia Entis' according to Franz Brentano: A Speculative-Grammatical Analysis of Aristotle's 'Metaphysics'." Topoi no. 6:51-58.

"It is to Brentano's credit that he, developing a well-known thesis of Trendelenburg, radicalized the indirect way in which Aristotle addresses the ontological problem, to repropose it in terms which it is not abusive to define of speculative grammar. Trendelenburg(4) would have been the first one to notice, among the moderns, that in Aristotle if one thing is essentially predicated of another so that name and concept of the predicate applies to it, then this occurs in a grammatically different form than if the predicate merely gives its name to the subject without being of the essence of the subject. (5)

And it is Brentano himself who speaks of Trendelenburg's peculiar ability to exploit the "speculative content" of the ancient thinkers by starting with the affinity that such content often has with the grammatical peculiarities of "linguistic forms". (6)" (p. 52)

(4) 4 A. Trendelenburg, Geschichte der Kategorienlehre, I, Berlin 1846, in F. Brentano, Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles, Freiburg im Breisgau 1862, Ch. V, § 15.

(5) F. Brentano, op. cit., p. 185. F. Brentano, On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle, ed. and transl, by R. George, Berkeley, Los Angeles & London, University of California Press, 1975 pp. 123-24.

(6) Op. cit., ib.

48. Mendelovici, Angela. 2021. "Brentano on Phenomenal and Transitive Consciousness, Unconscious Consciousness, and Phenomenal Intentionality." European Journal of Philosophy no. 1:1-10.

Abstract: "In Brentano’s Philosophical System: Mind, Being, Value, Uriah Kriegel argues that Brentano’s work forms a “live philosophical program” (p. 14, italics omitted) that contemporary philosophy has much to learn from and that is promising and largely correct. To this end, Kriegel argues that Brentano’s notion of consciousness is the contemporary notion of phenomenal consciousness, that Brentano’s rejection of unconscious mentality is a grave mistake that can be fairly neatly excised from his overall view, and that Brentano’s notion of intentionality is the contemporary notion of phenomenal intentionality. This paper raises some doubts about these claims, suggesting that Brentano’s notion of consciousness might more closely align with the contemporary notion of transitive consciousness than with that of phenomenal consciousness, that Brentano’s rejection of unconscious mentality cannot be so easily excised from his overall view but that it is not such a grave mistake, and that Brentano’s notion of intentionality may not be that of phenomenal intentionality but rather that of generic abountness. I wrap up by considering the extent to which we might agree with Kriegel that Brentano’s work forms a live philosophical program that contemporary philosophy has much to learn from."

49. Méndez-Martínez, Jorge Luis. 2020. "Sound Ontology and the Brentano-Husserl Analysis of the Consciousness of Time." Horizon. Studies in Phenomenology no. 9:184-215.

Abstract: "Both Franz Brentano and Edmund Husserl addressed sound while trying to explain the inner consciousness of time and gave to it the status of a supporting example. Although their inquiries were not aimed at clarifying in detail the nature of the auditory experience or sounds themselves, they made some interesting observations that can contribute to the current philosophical discussion on sounds.

On the other hand, in analytic philosophy, while inquiring the nature of sounds, their location, auditory experience or the audible qualities and so on, the representatives of that trend of thought have remained silent about the depiction of sound and the auditory phenomena in the phenomenological tradition. The paper’s intention is to relate both endeavours, yet the perspective carried out is that of analytic philosophy and, thus, I pay special attention to conceptual analysis as a methodological framework.

In this sense, I first explain what sound ontology is in the context of analytic philosophy and the views that it encompasses—namely, the Property View (PV), the Wave View (WV) and the Event View (EV)—. Secondly, I address the problems it entails, emphasising that of sound individuation. In a third section, I propose the possibly controversial conjunction of a “Brentano-Husserl Analysis of the Consciousness of Time” (for short “Brentano-Husserl analysis”) and outline the commonalities of both authors, without ignoring its discrepancies. My main focus is Husserl’s 1905 Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des Inneren Zeitbewusstseins. While addressing the Brentano-Husserl analysis, I elaborate on the problem of temporal and spatial extension (Raumlichkeit and Zeitlichkeit, respectively) of both consciousness and sound. Such comparison is a key one, since after these two developments, one can notice some theoretical movements concerning the shift of attention from sounds to the unity of consciousness, and how they mirror each other. After examining the controversial claims concerning the temporal and spatial extension of both consciousness and sound, I argue in the concluding paragraphs that while considering the accounts of sound ontology, the Brentano-Husserl analysis would probably endorse a Property View and that this could have interesting consequences for the issue of Sound Individuation."

50. Mezei, Balasz. 2000. "Brentano and Husserl on the History of Philosophy." Brentano Studien no. 8:81-94.

Abstract: "A particular subject-matter in Franz Brentano's philosophy is his approach to the history of philosophy. I shall consider the evolution of his concept of the history of philosophy, the sources of this concept, and, finally, its relationship to Edmund Husserl's understanding of the history of philosophy. Brentano's scheme of the four phases of the history of philosophy can serve as a principle of evaluation of what comes after Brentano's era in the history of philosophy."

51. Mezei, Balasz, and Smith, Barry. 1998. The Four Phases of Philosophy. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

With an Appendix: The Four Phases of Philosophy and Its Current State by Franz Brentano, pp. 81-111.

"In what follows we shall introduce the English translation of what is perhaps Brentano's most important text on the history of philosophy. In our introduction, we shall analyze Brentano's conception of what he called "the four phases of philosophy"; we shall show the origin of his theory and the problems it was designed to address; and we shall demonstrate that Brentano's theory can be applied to at least one line in the history of philosophy after Brentano's time.

That Brentano developed his own theory of the history of philosophy is not widely known. This theory is summarized in a short essay entitled "The Four Phases of Philosophy", published in 1895 and translated here as an Appendix. Brentano believed that the history of philosophy displays a regularly recurring pattern and can thus be divided into successive periods, each of which can be considered as an organic whole of a precisely determined form.

Such periods are for instance the period of classical Greek philosophy ending with Aristotle, the medieval period up to but not including Descartes, and the period of modem philosophy beginning with Descartes and ending with Hegel and other classical 'German idealist' thinkers. In each such period, Brentano argues, four phases can be distinguished: the first phase is that of intensive philosophical development, of scientific results and scientific interest; the second phase is dominated by practical interest; the third phase is that of increasing scepticism which gives way, in the end, to a last phase, in which philosophy becomes a mere branch of literature which has no scientific relevance at all." (pp.1-2)

52. Milkov, Nikolay. 2023. Hermann Lotze’s Influence on Twentieth Century Philosophy. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Chapter 4: Lotze and Brentano, p. 77-91.

"That the roots of Brentano’s “revolution in philosophy” are deeper than has commonly been recognized is further evidenced by what he took for granted in his writings. This is most notably seen when spelling out the ways his positions on various topics related to the views of leading 19th-century German philosophers whose doctrines were so widely familiar in the literature of the time that he felt it unnecessary to identify them by name. A telling example is Jakob Friedrich Fries, who anticipated Brentano’s—and, actually, also Lotze’s—rejection of the widely held notion that perception consists in a combination of ideas. Fries also anticipated Brentano by identifying “assertions” with perception, a consequential epistemological move that Alfred Kastil first pointed out over a century ago (1912, pp. 52 f.), and one we shall take up in due course (in § 3.1 below). It was evidently Lotze again, who was the medium of Fries’ influence on Brentano on this count.

Such shared thought-determinations and theoretical outlooks attest to the interrelations among the various currents in 19th-century German philosophy. Multiple lines of influence enabled Kastil, who edited three volumes of Brentano’s writings (1921, 1925, and 1933), to trace a variety of similarities between Fries and Brentano, findings which he presented in a book of 352 pages published in the neo-Friesian journal Abhandlungen der Fries’schen Schule, New Series (1912)."

References

Kastil, Alfred (1912): “Jakob Friedrich Fries’ Lehre von der unmittelbaren Erkenntnis”. In: Abhandlungen der Fries’schen Schule Neue Folge 4. No. 1, pp. 5–336.

Brentano, Franz (1921): Die Lehre Jesu und ihre bleibende Bedeutung. Alfred Kastil (Ed.) Leipzig: Felix Meiner.

Brentano, Franz (1925): Versuch über die Erkenntnis. Alfred Kastil (Ed.) Leipzig: Felix Meiner.

Brentano, Franz (1933): Kategorienlehre. Alfred Kastil (Ed.) Leipzig: Felix Meiner.

53. Moder, Gregor. 2019. "Ontology of touch: from Aristotle to Brentano." In The Language of Touch: Philosophical Examinations in Linguistics and Haptic Studies, edited by Komel, Mirt. New York: Bloomsbury.

"Before presenting an attempt at an ontology of touch, I want to point out that ontology has always been closely related to the study of language. This is not simply the claim that any ontological consideration must necessarily be expressed by some language and within some language, and is therefore inevitably limited by that particular language. That would define the relationship between language and being only by way of negation. On the contrary, metaphysics, both ancient and modern, has consistently acknowledged that language determines being in an affirmative, productive, or constructive manner."

(...)

"Within Aristotle’s body of work, the relation between language and ontology is perhaps even more clear in his logical work, Categories, which is preoccupied to an extent with categorizing things that are (ta onta). In concordance with Metaphysics, the central category of being is substance; it is the only independent one, and all other categories—like quality and quantity—are relative to substance." (pp. 55-56, a note omitted)

(...)

"At this point, we shall depart from Aristotle’s ontology. In order to explain movement, he had to give up the mathematical concept of a point, which seems a very high price to pay. Instead, we will look to Aristotle scholars, particularly to Franz Brentano, who revisited the problem and proposed a solution that bridges the gap between a plenist ontology and the mathematical representation of movement in dimensionless points. In effect, what Brentano suggests is nothing short of a miracle: a concept of a point-in-movement, of a continuous point, and therefore of a point capable of touch." (p. 67)

54. Mohanty, Jitendra Nath. 1972. The Concept of Intentionality. St. Louis: Warren H. Green.

Part One, Chapter 1. Brentano's Concept of Intentionality, 3; 2. Chisholm and the Brentano Thesis 25-35.

"Whatever mightT have been the history of the concept of intentionality before Brentano(1), there is no doubt that modern philosophy owes it to him to have both drawn attention to the centrality of this concept for philosophy of mind and given it a formulation which is essentially original. However, since Brentano gave his historic formulation, philosophy has moved ahead; and his concept has been criticised, refined and amended, sometimes beyond recognition, by those who profess allegiance to him. The history of this concept after Brentano is a fascinating story, and forms part of the theme of this book: though the main purpose of this study is not historical survey but systematic understanding. I begin, in this chapter, by taking a close look at the first chapter of the second Book of Brentano's Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (2) ." (p. 3)

(1) For the history of the concept of intentionality, see: Spiegelberg, F. "Der Begriff der Intentionalitat in der Scholastik, bei Brenteno und bei Husserl," Philosophische Hefte, Vol. V, 1936, 75-91; and Moreau, J. "The Problem of Intentionality and classical thought," International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. I, 1961 ,215-234.

(2) Brentano, F. Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Vol. 1, Leipzig, 1924.

55. Montague, Michelle. 2017. "A Contemporary View of Brentano’s Theory of Emotion." The Monist no. 100:64-87.

Abstract: "In this paper I consider Franz Brentano’s theory of emotion. I focus on three of its central claims: (i) emotions are sui generis intentional phenomena; (ii) emotions are essentially evaluative phenomena; (iii) emotions provide the basis of an epistemology of objective value. I argue that all three claims are correct, and I weave together Brentano’s arguments with some of my own to support them. In the course of defending these claims, Brentano argues that ‘feeling and will’ are united into the same fundamental class. I summarize two of his arguments for this claim, what I call ‘the nature of desire’ argument and ‘the transition’ argument. I show how a central plank of these arguments relies crucially on Brentano’s epistemology of value."

56. ———. 2023. "Brentano's theory of intentionality." European Journal of Philosophy:445-454.

Abstract: "Chapters Five through Nine of Book Two of Brentano's 1874 Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint were republished in 1911 with a substantive Appendix of Brentano's remarks. In the Appendix Brentano makes a significant addition to his theory of intentionality. In particular, he introduces new modes within the mode of presentation itself. These new modes are needed to account for our thinking about anything in a relational structure (in recto and in obliquo modes) and for our thoughts about time (the temporal mode). I want to suggest that in the end Brentano simply takes relations to be different kinds of modes."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on Franz Brentano: Studies in English, Sixth Part: Mon - Rut

Bibliography

1. Moore, George Edward. 1903. "The Origin of the Knowledge of Right and Wrong." International Journal of Ethics no. 14:115-123.

Reprinted in: Linda McAlister (ed.), The philosophy of Brentano, pp. 176-181.

"This is a far better discussion of the most fundamental principles of ethics than any others with which I am acquainted. Brentano himself is fully conscious that he has made a very great advance in the theory of ethics. ‘No one’, he says, ‘has determined the principles of ethics as, on the basis of new analysis, I have found it necessary to determine them’ (p. X); and his confidence both in the originality and in the value of his own work is completely justified. In almost all points in which he differs from any of the great historical systems, he is in the right; and he differs with regard to the most fundamental points of moral philosophy. Of all previous moralists, Sidgwick alone is in any respect superior to him; and Sidgwick was never clearly aware of the wide and important bearings of his discovery in this one respect. Brentano is both clearer and more profound; and he avoids Sidgwick's two fundamental errors. It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of his work.

His main proposition is that what we know, when we know that a thing is good in itself, is that the feeling of love towards that thing (or pleasure in that thing) is 'right’ (nchtig). Similarly, that a thing is bad, is merely another way of saying that hatred of that thing would be ‘right’." (p. 176 of the reprint)

2. Moran, Dermot. 1996. "Brentano's Thesis." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes no. 70:1-27.

"t seems appropriate in an Address to the Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society and Mind Association to revisit Franz Brentano's much-quoted and oft-misunderstood account of intentionality, particularly since Brentano himself refers to Aristotle as his source and since intentionality is now a cornerstone of much contemporary philosophy of mind.(1)" (p. 1)

(...)

"Since I believe there is philosophical value in getting things right historically, it is worthwhile returning to Brentano's own conception in its original setting with a view to unpacking its key elements. We shall see that Brentano's version of intentionality is deeply embedded in a complex of broadly Cartesian, internalist and-though one must be very careful-introspectionalist assumptions. He did accept the reality of psychological states and their evident nature, they are as they appear to be, psychology does reveal our mental natural kinds. But, I shall argue, Brentano never held that mental events were ontologically irreducible to the physical; or that materialism was false; or that intentionality related people to propositions. Nor did he claim to have 'discovered' intentionality. For him, intentionality merely served as the most satisfactory criterion (among several other candidates, such as non-spatiality and inwardness) for initially identifying the domain of the mental, indeed a criterion to which, in his view, traditional philosophy (i.e., Aristotle-Aquinas-Descartes) subscribed.

Brentano did claim that all and -less emphatically- only mental states were intentional. He did see intentionality as the best 'mark of the mental', but it is not at all clear, as we shall see, just what is being marked off from what. In particular, his definition of the physical refers only to a certain phenomenal properties of our conscious states, and his understanding of the psychical is precisely that which is grasped reflexively in inner perception." (pp. 2-3)

(1) Brentano refers to Aristotle's De Anima: 'Aristotle himself spoke of this mental in-existence', Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint , ed Oskar Kaus, English ed. Linda L. McAlister, trans. A.C. Rancurello, D.B. Terrell and L.L. McAlister (London: Routledge, 1973; 2nd English Edition with introduction by Peter Simons, 1995), p. 88 note †. [Hereafter PES]. Elsewhere he cites Metaphysics Book 5, ch. 15, 1021a29, which speaks of certain things whose nature includes a reference to something else, see F. Brentano, The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong, trans. R. Chisholm and Elizabeth Schneewind (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 14. [Hereafter RW].(...)

3. ———. 2000. "Heidegger's critique of Husserl's and Brentano's accounts of intentionality." Inquiry no. 43:39-65.

"Inspired by Aristotle, Franz Brentano revived the concept of intentionality to characterize the domain of mental phenomena studied by descriptive psychology. Edmund Husserl, while discarding much of Brentano's conceptual framework and presuppositions, located intentionality at the core of his science of pure consciousness (phenomenology). Martin Heidegger, Husserl's assistant from 1919 to 1923, dropped all reference to intentionality and consciousness in Being and Time (1927), and so appeared to break sharply with his avowed mentors, Brentano and Husserl. Some recent commentators have sided with Heidegger and have endorsed his critique of Husserl and Brentano as still caught up in epistemological, representationalist approaches to intentionality. I argue that Heidegger is developing Husserl, focusing in particular on the ontological dimension of intentionality, not reversing or abandoning his account. Heidegger's criticisms of representationalism merely repeat Husserl's. Furthermore, I argue that Husserl's account of cognitive intentionality, which recognizes the importance of the disinterested theoretical attitude for scientific knowledge, has been underestimated and misunderstood by Heidegger, who treats scientific cognition as a deficient form of practice. In short, Heidegger is more dependent on Husserl than he ever publicly acknowledged."

4. ———. 2000. Introduction to Phenomenology. New York: Roultdge.

Chapter 1: Franz Brentano: descriptive psychology and intentionality, pp. 23-59.

"In his initial phase of expressing this relation, Brentano emphasised it was possible to be intentionally related to all kinds of objects, imagined, possible, impossible, and so on. Roughly from 1874 to 1904, Brentano frequently expresses intentionality in terms of the intentional inexistence of the object. ‘Inexistence’ (Inexistenz) is, in fact, Brentano’s translation of the Latin term in-esse, the verb meaning ‘to be in’, which was used by the Scholastics to characterise the manner in which an accident is said to be in a substance (e.g. knowledge is in a man), and specifically with regard to epistemology, the manner in which a form is in the mind. By ‘inexistence’ Brentano does seem to intend that the object of an act of consciousness is something immanent in consciousness, whether or not there is also a real object or ‘reality’ (Realität) outside of consciousness."

(...)

"Later, in his 1911 Classification of Mental Phenomena, the revised edition of Book Two of Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, reissued at the request of his students, Brentano admitted his use of the phrase ‘intentional inexistence’ (PES 180 n.) had been misunderstood and he would have been better to have avoided it altogether. He says he even considered replacing the term ‘intentional’ with another Scholastic term ‘objective’, but this would have given rise to more misunderstandings by those who did not appreciate the Scholastic meaning of esse objectivum, the manner in which things are ‘objectively’ in the mind.(84)Brentano is referring to the Cartesian distinction between ‘formal’ and ‘objective reality’ in the Third Meditation, where Descartes distinguished the meaning-content (realitas objectiva) which belongs to the idea of God from the ‘formal reality’ (realitas formalis) of the cause of the idea, namely the actual being, God. According to Brentano’s employment of this distinction, when I believe something actively, or when I am actually making an error, the belief or error is formally in me; when I remember believing something or making an error, then that belief or error is objectively in me (The True, 15–16). These distinctions between the ‘presented object’ and the ‘mode of presentation’, the formal and the objective, are efforts by Brentano to accommodate a conceptual distinction which his students were forcing on him, namely the distinction between the content and the object of the act." (pp. 48-49)

5. ———. 2013. "Intentionality: Some Lessons from the History of the Problem from Brentano to the Present." International Journal of Philosophical Studies no. 21:317-358.

Abstract: "Intentionality (‘directedness’, ‘aboutness’) is both a central topic in contemporary philosophy of mind, phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, and one of the themes with which both analytic and Continental philosophers have separately engaged starting from Brentano and Edmund Husserl’s ground-breaking Logical Investigations (1901) through Roderick M. Chisholm, Daniel C. Dennett’s The Intentional Stance, John Searle’s Intentionality, to the recent work of Tim Crane, Robert Brandom, Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi, among many others. In this paper, I shall review recent discussions of intentionality, including some recent explorations of the history of the concept (paying particular attention to Anselm), and suggest some ways the henomenological approach of Husserl and Heidegger can still offer insights for contemporary philosophy of mind and consciousness."

6. ———. 2020. "Brentano’s Concept of Descriptive Psychology." In Franz Brentano and Austrian Philosophy, edited by Fisette, Denis, Frechette, Guillaume and Stadler, Friedrich, 73-100. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "In this paper, I begin by outlining Franz Brentano’s connections with John Henry Newman (on issues of faith) and then explore in detail Brentano’s evolving conception of descriptive psychology from Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874) to his Descriptive Psychology lectures (1887–1891). Brentano was developing a descriptive, “empirical” science of mental phenomena (in opposition to Wundt’s physiological psychology and to Fechner’s psychophysics), and his focus was on a priori necessary laws that are given directly to intuition. Brentano developed his psychology from Aristotle and from the then contemporary psychology (especially British psychologists, such as Alexander Bain, John Stuart Mill, Henry Maudsley, and others). Husserl’s descriptive phenomenology was deeply influenced by Brentano’s descriptive psychology, although, in his mature works, Husserl abandoned all of Brentano’s main distinctions and developed a new intentional analysis that identified consciousness as a self-enclosed domain governed by a priori eidetic laws. In this paper I will explore Brentano’s and Husserl’s conceptions of descriptive psychology but I shall also examine Wilhelm Dilthey’s account of descriptive psychology that was based on ‘motivation’, a concept adopted by Husserl. Husserl’s mature phenomenology advanced far beyond Brentano’s descriptive psychology. But, despite their differences, I shall show that both Brentano and Husserl were committed to a non-reductive sui generis exploration of the ‘life of consciousness’ (Bewusstseinsleben) understood as a dynamic complex of essential features that can be apprehended by reflective analysis."

7. Morrison, James C. 1971. "Husserl and Brentano on Intentionality." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 31:27-46.

"It is the purpose of this essay to attempt to show that Husserl's phenomenological views are very different from and far more developed than Brentano's, and that he even rejects (wholly or in part) many of the latter's most important doctrines.

In order to clarify this problem I propose to discuss Brentano's well known attempt to distinguish mental and physical phenomena in which he introduces the notion of "IntentionaI lnexistence." I will then take up Husserl's views on both the general problem of mental vs. physical phenomena and on the more specific one of Intentionality. No attempt will be made to give a complete account of Husserl's own views on Intentionality, since to do so adequately would imply a discussion of his whole philosophy. Also, I will concentrate almost exclusively on material from the Logische Untersuchungen, since it is here that he makes most explicit and detailed reference to Brentano." (p. 27)

8. Morscher, Edgar. 1978. "Brentano and His Place in Austrian Philosophy." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 5:1-10.

"The first part of this paper summarizes what I take to be the most important doctrines of Brentano's philosophy. The second part investigates the possible meanings of the term 'Austrian philosophy'. The third part attempts to say something about Brentano's place in Austrian philosophy -- whatever that may be --, while the fourth part focuses on a problem in which I am especially interested. The paper closes with a proposal for what the expression 'Austrian philosophy' could mean."

9. Mulligan, Kevin. 2004. "Brentano on the mind." In The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, edited by Jacquette, Dale. Cambridge University Press.

"After a survey of the main claims and distinctions made by Brentano in his account of the mind, I consider in some detail what he says about what he takes to be the groundfloor and the top floor of the mind – time-consciousness and the emotions. I then set out his accounts of the self. In view of the difficulties involved in navigating amongst Brentano’s texts, changing views, and opinionated editors, I indicate the main developments of Brentano’s views about the mind. In spite of the fact that, in 1889, he seems to have thought that descriptive psychology was almost complete (KRW, p. ix, USE, p. 3), these developments ended only with his death." (p. 69)

Abbreviations

KRW = The Origins of the Knowledge of Righr and Wrong

USE = Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis

10. ———. 2017. "Brentano’s Knowledge, Austrian Verificationisms, and Epistemic Accounts of Truth and Value." The Monist no. 100:88-105.

"What can we know? What is it to know? What roles does knowledge play? Brentano gives answers to each of these questions. The objects of knowledge, Brentano thinks, are of two kinds. I have knowledge of my own mental states and acts and I may have knowledge of noncontingent truths. To know is to judge correctly and with evidence.

Three central roles for knowledge, according to Brentano, are that truth, existence, and value must be understood in epistemic terms.

His answers to the first two questions come near the end of a long and venerable tradition. His answer to the third question marks the beginning of a family of theories which were to play an important role in twentieth-century philosophy. For Brentano’s epistemic account of truth was the first of many Austrian verificationisms about truth and meaning.(1) And his epistemic account of value led to the development of a variety of alternatives to naive realism à la Moore and Scheler about value.

Brentano’s answers to all three questions led to substantial modifications of his framework by some of his students. His answers also provoked a violent rejection of the framework itself by some of his heirs and other philosophers which culminated in the defence of the view that to know is not to judge or to believe with evidence because it is not to judge or believe.

In what follows, I have three goals. First, to expound and understand Brentano’s views about knowledge and his epistemic accounts of truth and value. Secondly, since a hundred years have now passed since Brentano’s death, it seems appropriate to try and show just what roles his epistemology has played over the last hundred years; I shall therefore concentrate on six major developments of his epistemology ranging from substantial modifications and developments to outright rejection, as well as a number of minor developments. Finally, I hope that the panorama of developments I present will help to illuminate the details of Brentano’s own ideas. In §§2–4, I concentrate on Brentano’s account of theoretical knowledge and its developments. Not until §5 do I turn to the details of his account of axiological knowledge and its fate." (pp. 88-89)

(1) Kastil (1934) refers to Brentano’s “gnoseological” conception of truth.

References

Kastil, A. 1934. “Ontologischer und gnoseologischer Wahrheitsbegriff,” in O. Engländer et al., eds. Zur Philosophie der Gegenwart, Prague: Calve, 23–34.

11. ———. 2017. "Incorrect emotions in ancient, austrian & contemporary philosophy." Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger no. 142:491-512.

"Brentano often refers to ancient predecessors of his distinction between correct and incorrect non-intellectual states or acts. In 1907, he ascribes to Meinong the view that it is nonsense to say of anything but judgments that they are correct or “characterised as correct” and says that the view rejected by Meinong is that of “the greatest thinkers of the distant past” and Brentano’s own view.

Unsurprisingly, some of Brentano’s pupils, followers and heirs, such as Kastil and Kraus, devoted a lot of attention to the roles of non-intellectual correctness in Aristotle. (...). In contrast, the enormous secondary literature on intellectual correctness and right reason in ancient philosophy and later seems to have paid little attention to non-intellectual correctness. In what follows, I first look briefly at what Plato and Aristotle say about what I have called non-intellectual correctness. I then consider a series of questions about non-intellectual correctness and outline and evaluate some ancient, Austrian and contemporary answers." (pp. 491-492 notes omitted)

12. Mulligan, Kevin, and Smith, Barry. 1985. "Franz Brentano on the Ontology of Mind." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 45:627-644.

"Franz Brentano's 'philosophy of mind' still means, as far as most philosophers are concerned, no more than a peculiarly influential account of intentionality. In fact, in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Brentano has provided an account of mental phenomena which ranks with any to be found in the literature of philosophy. It differs as much from the concept-centered Kantian approaches to 'reason' or 'understanding' as from more recent approaches, centred on the language used to report or to express 'propositional attitudes', in being an ontology of mind, concerned with the description of the entities which are involved in mental experience and of the relations between them.

With the posthumous publication of a series of lectures given in Vienna in 1890-911 we now possess a clear account of the ontology, and of the methods, underlying Brentano's numerous and subtle descriptions of mental phenomena, at least at one highly fruitful stage in his career. What follows is a detailed exposition of this work, together with a brief critical coda." (p. 627)

13. Münch, Dieter. 1989. "Brentano and Comte." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 36:33-54.

"In his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (PES, 1874) Brentano seeks to lay the foundation of psychology as a science. Surprisingly, he rejects the obvious idea that psychology is the science of the 'mind' or 'soul', and he agrees instead with Lange's claim that we need a "psychology without a soul" (PES I, p. 16; Engl., p. 11)." (p. 33)

(...)

"But why, then, does Brentano not follow Aristotle in stating that there is a soul, and that it is this which is the subject of psychology?

To answer this question I want to show that it is not only Aristotle who is centrally relevant for an understanding of Brentano's Psychology. We have to keep in mind that Brentano here is trying to solve a specific problem, namely to lay the foundation of psychology as a science. The study of Aristotle made Brentano accustomed to a philosophy in a scientific spirit and prepared hirn therefore for an understanding of the contemporary empirical philosophy and especially the so-called 'positive philosophy' as developed by Auguste Comte. It is the influence of this positive philosophy, I want to claim, which makes it understandable why we miss the soul in the published volumes of Brentano's Psychology. For Brentano's theory of psychical phenomena is in fact an answer to the question: how can we deal with psychical phenomena in the framework of positive philosophy?

This will mean that the influence of Comte - in contrast to that of Aristotle (and Descartes) -, concerns not so much the content as the methodology of the theses put forward in the Psychology." (p. 36)

14. Nathan, N. M. L. 1971. "Brentano's Necessitarianism." Ratio no. 13:44-55.

"Brentano held that there is a sense of 'necessary', on which whatever exists, exists necessarily, i.e. it is necessary that it should come into existence when it does so, and that it should remain in existence as long as it does so."

(...)

"But in what follows I shall presuppose rather than defend theintelligibility of Brentano's claim.

Brentano supports his claim with a variety of arguments, some deSIgned to show that it is infinitely improbable that whatever exists does not exist necessarily, others to show that thc claim that anything that exists does not exist necessarily is self-contradictory; some starting from the temporal character of existing things others from their spatial character.(6)" (pp. 44-45)

(6) For arguments from the spatial character of existing things see Versuch über die Erkenntnis, ed. A. Kastil (Leipzig, 1925), pt. IV, Anhang D, pp. 154-6; Vom Dasein Gottes ed. A. Kastil (Leipzig, 1929), pp. 451-3.

Brentano's earliest arguments for neccssitarianism from the temporal character of existing things were meant to show only that it was infinitely probable that all changing things existed necessarily. Later he tried to show that it was logically necessary that all existmg things whatsoever existed necessarily. (See Kastil's remarks in Versuch, pp. 196-7.) Part IV of the Versuch (pp. 108-57) contains various versions of both kinds of arguments from temporality.

Particularly clear versions of the temporal argument for Brentano's stronger claim can be found in Vom Dasein Gottes, pp. 414-16; 446-8. For other versions of both kinds of arguments from temporality see Grundlegung und Aufbau der Ethik, ed. F. Mayer-Hillebrand (Bern, 1952), pp. 281-9; Religion und Philosophie, ed. F. Mayer-Hillebrand (Bern, I 956), pp. 12o-6; Die Lehre vom Richtigen Urteil, ed. F. Mayer-Hillebrand (Bern, 1956), pp. 299-309.(...).

15. Niel, Luis. 2019/20. "Brentano and Intentionality: or How to Break Immanence from Within." Brentano Studien no. 16:69-98.

Abstract: "The article focuses on Brentano’s conceptions of intentionality as developed throughout the different periods of his thought: first, in his early works on Aristotle and its operating notion of 'intentional’ as something objective in sensations; second, in his ‘intentionality passage’, which, based on a psychological approach, presents an immanentist account (likely Cartesian) of intentionality as a two-term relation between the mind and the immanent (or intentional) object; third, in his late ‘reistic phase’, where, due to the ontological flaws of the psychological approach, a strong ontological commitment to the ‘real thing’ is presented which leads to a new conception of intentionality as a one-term relation (as something ‘relativlich’) or as the directedness of the mind towards real things. I will first argue that Brentano’s early theory supports a form of intentional immanentism, which his later reistic account vainly attempts to break by introducing the ‘real thing’ into the intentional equation; this leads to many unsolved problems and flaws, expressed by the conceptual tension of an unclear differentiation of the concepts of thing, real, existence, and object. I will also argue that his first psychological-descriptive conception, which methodologically leaves aside existent things by inner perception, presents a more consist account of intentionality which, based on the concept of an in-existing object in the mind, breaks its immanence as it understands this object as something different from the mind itself."

16. Niemeck, Maik. 2020. "Current Accounts of Subjective Character and Brentano’s Concept of Secondary Consciousness." In Franz Brentano's Philosophy after Hundred Years: From History of Philosophy to Reism, edited by Fisette, Denis, Frechette, Guillaume and Janoušek, Hynek, 55-71. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "There is widespread agreement among many contemporary philosophers of mind that, in addition to their qualitative character, phenomenally conscious states contain some kind of subjective character. The subjective character of experience is most commonly characterized as a subject’s awareness that it is currently undergoing a specific experience. This idea is nothing new, of course, and something similar has been proposed quite some time ago by Franz Brentano, among others, under the name of “secondary consciousness”. That fact hasn’t remained unnoticed.

Indeed, a number of competing contemporary accounts of subjective character refer to Brentano as an early proponent of their particular view. This article pursues two objectives. First, it argues that the so-called self-mode account of subjective character is, for systematical reasons, superior to self-representational and pre-reflective accounts. Second, the article briefly suggests a novel interpretation of Brentano’s concept of secondary consciousness that sets it in relation to the previously introduced self-mode account and bears some similarities with Thomasson’s adverbial interpretation of Brentano’s concept of secondary consciousness."

17. Nuñez Erices, Gonzalo. 2019. "Boundaries and Things. A Metaphysical Study of the Brentano-Chisholm Theory." Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy no. 33:15-48.

Abstract: "The fact that boundaries are ontologically dependent entities is agreed by Franz Brentano and Roderick Chisholm. This article studies both authors as a single metaphysical account about boundaries. The Brentano-Chisholm theory understands that boundaries and the objects to which they belong hold a mutual relationship of ontological dependence: the existence of a boundary depends upon a continuum of higher spatial dimensionality, but also is a conditio sine qua non for the existence of a continuum. Although the view that ordinary material objects and their boundaries (or surfaces) ontologically depend on each other is correct, it does not grasp their asymmetric relationship: while the existence of a surface rigidly depends upon the existence of the very object it belongs to, the existence of a physical object generically depends upon having some surface. In modal terms, both are two kinds of de re ontological dependence that this article tries to distinguish."

18. Olivier, Massin. 2017. "Brentano on Sensations and Sensory Qualities." In The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School, edited by Kriegel, Uriah, 87-96. New York: Routledge.

"The term “sensation” (Empfindung) famously displays an act/object ambiguity. It might be used to refer

1. To our sensing of something: a sensory act (e.g. a hearing);

2. To what we sense: a sensory object (e.g. a sound);

3. To some mental episode of ours having no object distinct from itself. Pain is sometimes said to be such a “subjectively subjective” mental episode, some sensing which is its own sensa.(1)" (p. 87)

(...)

"Sensations have two kinds of features. Some, such as their intentional mode or their temporal features, cannot be explained away by looking at their object. Others, such as their intensity or the difference between senses, are features that sensations inherit from their objects.

Accordingly, this chapter has three sections. The first introduces Brentano’s view of sensations by presenting the intentional features of sensations irreducible to features of the sensory objects. The second presents Brentano’s view of sensory objects—which include sensory qualities—and the features of sensations that such objects allow to explain, such as their intensity. The third section presents Brentano’s approach to sensory pleasures and pains, which combines both appeals to specific modes of reference and to specific sensory qualities." (p. 88)

19. Olson, Jonas. 2017. "Two Kinds of Ethical Intuitionism: Brentano’s and Reid’s." The Monist no. 100:106-119.

Abstract: "This paper explores Franz Brentano’s metaethics by comparing it to Thomas Reid’s.

Brentano and Reid share a commitment to moral realism and they are both aptly classified as intuitionists concerning moral knowledge and the nature of moral judgment. However, their respective versions of intuitionism are importantly different, in ways that reflect more general differences between their respective epistemological views. Sections III and IV of the paper focus more exclusively on Brentano’s metaethics and some of its unorthodox features. These features tie in with notorious difficulties for moral realism concerning the nature of moral truth and the relation between moral judgment and motivation to act."

20. Parsons, Charles. 2004. "Brentano on judgement and truth." In The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, edited by Jacquette, Dale, 168-196. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"In its original form, Brentano’s view of judgment implies that in a sense all judgments are existential judgments or negations of existential judgments. This peculiarity of his view of judgment influenced his thought on truth at an early point and led to a particular line of questioning of the traditional idea of truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus, the root of what has come to be called the correspondence theory of truth, already adumbrated in the 1889 lecture that is the opening essay in the compilation Wahrheit und Evidenz. Brentano was not the only or even the most influential philosopher to question the correspondence theory at the time, but his criticisms had distinctive features. In late writings he sketched as a positive view an epistemic conception. The discussion below of Brentano’s views on truth will concentrate on these aspects." (p. 171)

21. Pasquerella, Lynn. 1985. "Brentano and Organic Unities." In From Bolzano to Wittgenstein, edited by Nyiri, J. C., 128-131. Wien: Holder/Pichier/Tempsky.

22. ———. 1987. "Intensional logic and Brentano’s non-propositional theory of judgment." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 29:117-119.

"The reism Brentano adopted in the later stages of his philosophy led him to reject such entia irrealia as properties, judgmental contents (or states of affairs) and to advocate a non-propositional theory of judgment. While non-propositional theorists may, through certain linguistic maneuvers, eliminate reference and to some extent avoid commitment to propositions, many philosophers believe the nonpropositional theorist cannot escape the use of propositions altogether.

George Bealer levels such an attack in his book Quality and Concept.(1)" (p. 117)

(...)

"Bealer contends that "on the non-relational non-propositional theory of judgment there is no credible way even to express the above intuitively valid arguments ... ". (2) Thus, Bealer rejects Brentano's approach because, as he sees it, the theory "falters at the earliest possible stage: it collides with logic itself'.(3)

I will show that Bealer is mistaken when he claims that Brentano's non-propositional theory cannot offer an adequate rendering of the first two arguments. While I grant that Brentano cannot provide an adequate translation of the third argument, I do not grant its intuitive validity." (p. 60)

(1) George Bealer, Quality and Concept, (Oxford: The Clarendon Press), 1982, pp. 223-224

(2) Ibid.

(3) Ibid.

23. ———. 1988. "Brentano and the Direct Attribution Theory." Brentano Studien no. 1:189-197.

Abstract: "According to Brentano, what is characteristic of every mental act is the reference to something as an object. The exact nature of an object of our mental acts has, however, been first the subject of steady discussion in Brentano's writings and consecutively gave rise to controversy for contemporary philosophers of mind; e.g. Chisholm, Castañeda. What follows is an elucidation of the relationship between Brentano's final theory of sensation and its interpretation in Chisholm's Direct Attribution theory as a consideration of a recent challenge by Castañeda: that while the Brentanian-Chisholmian account is exemplary in dealing with tacit self-reference at the level of unreflective consciousness, this theory needs to be developed even further to be adequate to those cases of self-reference involved in reflective consciousness."

24. ———. 1989. "Kotarbinski and Brentano on Truth." Topoi Supplement no. 4:98-106.

25. ———. 1993. "Brentano and aesthetic intentions." Brentano Studien no. 4:235-249.

"Introduction. Brentano's philosophy of art, contained primarily in his book, Grundzuge der Ästhetik, is the result of an original theory of intrinsic value that was derived from Brentano's philosophical psychology. In his aesthetics, Brentano endeavored to find an objective ground for the value of aesthetic contemplation through his theory of the intentional objects of emotions and desires. The lack of attention Brentano's aesthetics has received is surprising, given that two of the many students Brentano influenced, Husserl (through the development of the phenomenological movement) and Ehrenfels (through the development of Gestalt psychology) have had an extraordinary influence on twentieth century perceptions of art. In this paper I will attempt to redress some of this neglect by outlining Brentano's analysis of aesthetic intentions and the relationship his aesthetics bears to his overall philosophical system." (p. 235)

26. ———. 2002. "Phenomenology and Intentional Acts of Sensing in Brentano." Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 40 (Supplement):269-279.

"In his paper “Intentionality of Phenomenology in Brentano,” Matjaž Potrč endeavors to provide a Brentanian analysis of how it is possible for phenomenal objects to become the contents of intentional acts of sensing.’ Potrč contends that while Brentano stands as an “origins philosopher” at the crossroads of analytic and continental philosophy, subsequent philosophers from both traditions have failed to adequately address the nature of phenomenological experiences. He speculates that their explanatory insufficiency results alternatively from attempts to account for intentionality without phenomenology or from efforts to provide an analysis of phenomenology without intentionality.Potrč seeks to redress this oversight by highlighting the intimate relationship Brentano proposes between intentionality and phenomenology. In the process, he exposes a variety of contemporary metaphysical and epistemological controversies related to intentionality, reference, and phenomenology. Responding to these controversies, Potrč reinforces Brentano’s thesis of the irreducibility of intentionality to the referential and the necessary distinction between what he terms “physical and experiential space.”

Potrčs analysis embodies a broad range of intriguing philosophical questions. Too many, in fact, to be addressed in a single response. The focus of my commentary, therefore, will be to be provide an outline of Brentano’s theory of sensation as background to Potrč's important project and to evaluate and develop his thesis of Brentano as an “origins philosopher”." (p. 269)

References

Potrč, Matjaž. Intentionality of Phenomenology in Brentano, The Southern Journal of Philosophy (2002) Vol. XL, pp. 231-267.

27. Pavlik, Jan. 1991. "Brentano's theory of intentionality." Brentano Studien no. 3:63-70.

Abstract: "Brentano's intentional psychology is an attempt at overcoming the Humean tradition characterized by probabilistic empirism, subjectivism and psychologism. Intentional psychology enables restoration of the autonomy of human psyche with reference to natural laws as well as overcoming the reduction of specific subject-object relations to object-object relations realized in associationist psychology. In contrast with speculative approaches of German classical philosophy, Brentano's theory enables empirical, non-metaphysical inquiry of subject-object relations."

28. Pietersma, Henry. 1978. "Brentano's Concept of the Evident." Analecta Husserliana no. 7:235-244.

Abstract: "It is well known how much E. Husserl’s original project of phenomenology has been inspired by Brentano’s epistemology, which may be characterized as a search for firm foundations. At the foundation of all that we know, or think we know, there must be matters which we know with unshakable certainty. Such a certainty is not merely a characteristic attitude adopted by an epistemic subject who may none the less be in the dark as to what his status is and where he stands in the whole of reality, so that his certainty might quite conceivably be shaken. On the contrary this subject, now that he has dug down to the foundations, need not fear that somewhere an evil genius might still be hiding and frustrate even his very best epistemic efforts. For there is now no longer any darkness or mystery shrouding his place in reality and his capacities to know. Husserl has developed this objective ground for certitude to the point that Brantano himself could no longer understand him."

29. Płotka, Witold. 2020. "From psychology to phenomenology (and back again): A controversy over the method in the school of Twardowski." Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences no. 19:141-167.

Abstract: "This paper seeks to define the main trends, arguments and problems regarding the question of method formulated by Twardowski and his students. In this regard, the aim of the paper is twofold. First, I situate Brentano’s project of descriptive psychology within the context of disputes in the school of Twardowski concerning the method of both psychology and phenomenology, arguing that descriptive-psychological analysis was dominant in this respect.

Second, the study explores the notion of eidetic phenomenology, as founded on a methodological procedure, which supposed to guarantee infallibility of its descriptions. To show this, I first reconstruct Brentano’s concept of descriptive psychology, its object, its method and aims. Second, I track the changes and reinterpretations provided by Twardowski in his view of descriptive psychological analysis. Third, I explore Witwicki’s and Bandrowski’s—both early students of Twardowski—discussions of the descriptive approach. I try to show that the former accepted psychologism, while the latter overcame it by means of logical analysis. Fourth, I suggest that the only student of Twardowski who renounced the Brentanian method was Ingarden, who developed eidetic phenomenology. Finally, I present Blaustein’s—one of the last students of Twardowski—reappraisal of descriptive psychology and his critique of Ingarden’s method. This controversy over the method of descriptive psychology reveals how one can situate Twardowski’s legacy within early phenomenology in Poland."

30. Poli, Roberto. 1993. "The Dispute over Reism: Kotarbinski - Ajdukiewicz - Brentano." In Polish Scientific Philosophy: The Lvov-Warsaw School, edited by Coniglione, Franco, Poli, Roberto and Wolenski, Jan, 339-354. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"I wish now to propose a possible embedding of the reist theses by drawing on certain elements in the thought of Franz Brentano.

Brentano's philosophical opus falls, as is well known, into two distinct phases. Here I wish to explore the doctrine that he developed during his last years, a doctrine that can properly be defined as reist(18). To do so, I shall use Chisholm's reconstruction of Brentano's position on the problem of substance and accident.(19)

The two main presuppositions of Brentano's reism are the thesis of the primacy of inner perception and the theory of concrete predication.

For Brentano, the primary use of the copula occurs in phenomena of inner perception. Strictly speaking, we can only paradigmatically comprehend the being of things when they are apprehended by inner perception. By contrast, we can understand things that are not apprehended by inner perception only by analogy - by relating them to our experience as thinking beings. In terms of our discussion here, this dimension of Brentano's theory does not seem to be immediately relevant, however fundamental it may be to his ontology. Entirely relevant, instead, is his theory of concrete predication. with its requirement that all the predicates of the language should be transformed into concrete terms. In this sense, one cannot say, for example 'roses are red' but 'roses are red-things'. All the predicates of the language, and in particular all its abstract terms, must undergo a similar translation process. From such a perspective, the traditional position that a judgement attributes properties to things is replaced by one where a judgement connects things with things(20)." (p. 348)

(18) The principal rererence texts are Kategorienlehre, (Hamburg: Neiner, 1969) and Die Abkhehr vom Nichtrealen (Hamburg: Neiner, 1966).

(19) R. Chisholm, "Brentano's Theory of Substance and Accident", in Brentano and Meinong Studies, (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1982).

(20) As Chisholm points out in the essay cited in note 19, this proposal derives rrom the Aristotelean conception of simple judgements, where affirmative judgements combine things and negative judgements separate them. Cf. De interpretatione, 16a11.

31. ———, ed. 1998. The Brentano Puzzle. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Contents: List of Contributors VII; Roberto Poli: Foreword IX-X; Roberto Poli: The Brentano puzzle: an introduction 1; Dallas Willard: Who needs Brentano? The wasteland of philosophy without its past 15; Claire Ortiz Hill: Introduction to Paul Linke's 'Gottlob Frege as philosopher' 45; Paul F. Linke: Gottlob Frege as philosopher 49; John Blackmore: Franz Brentano and the University of Vienna Philosophical Society 1888-1938 73; Alf Zimmer: On agents and objects: some remarks on Brentanian perception 93; Liliana Albertazzi: Perceptual saliences and nuclei of meaning 113; Jan Srzednicki: Brentano and the thinkable 139; Claire Ortiz Hill: From empirical psychology to phenomenology. Edmund Husserl on the 'Brentano puzzle' 151; Serena Cattaruzza: Brentano and Boltzmann: the Schubladenexperiment 169; Karl Schuhmann: Johannes Daubert's theory of judgement 179; Evelyn Dölling: On Alexius Meinong's theory of signs 199; Robin Rollinger: Linguistic expressions and acts of meaning: comments on Marty's philosophy of language 215-225.

"The papers collected in this volume arise from the conference "The Brentano Puzzle," organized in Bolzano / Bozen, Italy, on the 14th and 15th of November 1996 by the Central European Institute of Culture.

The conference's aim was to analyse the following puzzle. Even if the width and the depth of Brentano's intellectual legacy are now well known, those asked to list the principal philosophers of the nineteenth century very rarely mention his name. We may call this puzzle the problem of Brentano's 'invisibility.'

It is obvious that Brentano's invisibility has serious consequences on assessment of his philosophical theory. The reconstruction of Brentano's thought is still flawed and incomplete. Moreover, Brentano's emphasis on oral teaching, and the meagreness of his published work, compared with the enormous quantity of his manuscripts and correspondence, are also of theoretical importance because they are rooted in Brentano's method of 'doing' philosophy. We know that the distinguishing feature of his philosophy was its empirical bias, its insistence on rigorous and partial answers rather than on the construction of systems. Given these features, it comes as no surprise that the same problem should be examined on several separate occasions and that different solutions should be proposed for it.

This procedure has a certain amount of inner coherence. Although Brentano always began his analysis with specific topics and problems, he proposed solutions which then reverberated through the entire edifice of his philosophy. This is a manner of philosophising which takes the natural sciences as its model. These factors also account for the different solutions that Brentano proposed for the problems he addressed. His thought, in fact, displays a continuity of method and a permanence of problems, but not a univocity of solutions. It is this aspect that allows one to talk of a school of Brentano among his pupils, to detect a 'family resemblance' among philosophers and scholars belonging to different disciplines. That is to say, the school is defined more by problems and the method used in their analysis than by their solutions in the strict sense. Accordingly, his heterodox followers, such as Carl Stumpf, Anton Marty, Alexius Meinong, Christian von Ehrenfels, Edmund Husserl and Kazimierz Twardowski, were more faithful to their master's thought than the orthodox Brentanians like Oskar Kraus, Alfred Kastil and Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand.

One further component of the Brentano puzzle is that a number of Brentano's outstanding pupils achieved their own success and founded their own schools. Suffice it to mention Husserl's phenomenology, Twardowski's Lvov-Warsaw school and Meinong's Graz school. The personal success and academic recognition attained by these exponents of Brentano's school (in the broad sense) have come to obscure their common thematic origins. The subsësequent split between analytic philosophy and phenomenology generated, as a side-effect, the oblivion into which Franz Brentano's thought then fell.

Nevertheless, Brentano and his school display surprising affinities with Frege and the tradition that he inspired. Perhaps the most interesting reconstruction of these connections is that accomplished by a number of works in German by Paul Linke. It was thought that a survey of Linke's thought might prove useful to English readers. For this reason the book also contains the English translation of his 'Gottlob Frege als Philosoph,' published in 1947, with an introduction by Claire Ortiz Hill.

Last but not least, analyses of the relevance of Brentano's and his followers' theses for contemporary philosophical and scientific debate are also considered." (Foreword by Roberto Poli)

32. ———. 2000. "Brentano in Italy." Brentano Studien no. 8:233-257.

33. ———. 2004. "Approaching Brentano's Theory of Categories." In Phenomenology and Analysis: Essays on Central European Philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Huemer, Wolfgang, 285-322. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

"In this paper I shall begin with analysis of the core of Brentano’s ontology, namely his theory of categories." (p. 288)

(...)

"Brentano’s theory of “what exists” can only be properly understood if we recall that, for him, everything that exists is an individual: “And we also say, of things that exist in the strict sense, that they are individuals”(TC, 26 – 1916). We will see in the section devoted to wholes and parts that “individual” does not mean “one”. Brentano rejected the Aristotelian identification between individual and one as the source of numerous errors.

He retained the concept of “individual”, but with the meaning of “determined”. This is a major departure from the mainstream understandding of the concept of an individual. If ‘individual’ means determined, then both collectives and parts can be taken as real individuals. As far as I know, Brentano does not explicitly address the entities referred to by mass terms, but obviously nothing precludes their inclusion in the set of individuals, understood as (fully) determinate reality. On the other hand, what in itself is fully determined can be thought by us without all its determinations." (p. 295)

(...)

"Summing up, one main conclusion is apparent. Brentano used the theory of wholes and parts as the main component of his conceptual framework. This choice runs counter to deeply ingrained beliefs of the mainstream twentieth-century scientific ideology. To provide but one example: a theory of wholes and parts grounds the thesis that wholes govern parts. This entails acknowledging the ontological difference between the relations of part to whole and those going the other way round from the whole to its parts. These relations are not symmetric. Moreover, the latter family of relations may proceed not only from wholes to parts, but from whole to “something else” (e.g. boundaries) as well. All this amounts to paving the way for systems and levels of reality.

It is fair to conclude by saying that Brentano performed an enormous amount of preparatory work, recovering and furthering the best philosophical theories, and lighting many blind allies. It is our task to take a step forward." (p. 320)

References

Franz Brentano. TC. The Theory of Categories, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1981.

34. ———. 2012. "Modes and Boundaries." In Franz Brentano's Metaphysics and Psychology, edited by Tănăsescu, Ion, 397-418. Bucharest: Zeta Books.

"Brentano’s ontology is sophisticated and difficult to assess.

An obvious problem is the unfinished state of the different versions of his theory of categories (to wit, the three drafts of the theory of category). Perhaps less obvious but no less important are the tensions arising from the continuous dialogue that Brentano develops with Aristotle and his conclusive departure from the theories of the Stagirite. Finally, a major difficulty is the originality and mutual interdependences of the many theories that Brentano developed in the last decades of his life, including the theories of parts and wholes, categories, modes, continua and boundaries.

(...)

The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 summarizes the main aspects of the Aristotelian theory of parts and wholes; Section 3 distinguishes things in the proper sense from things in an extended sense; Sections 4 introduces time and space; Section 5 substance and accident. Section 6 discusses boundaries and Section 7 continua. Finally, Section 8 presents Brentano’s theory of parts and wholes and Section 9 his theory of categories." (pp. 397-398)

35. Potrč, Matjaž. 1993. "Grades of intentionality." Brentano Studien no. 3:71-78.

Abstract: "Intentional inexistence is to be understood via directedness to an internal object which may but needs not exist. As far as the relation to the object exists, it is infallible - contrary to the fallible directedness at an external object. Brentanian intentionality is based on the evidence, and does not allow for degrees. Brentano has been carful to delimit his project of 'Psychognosie' from the physical and from the physiological. The thesis of intentional gradation is discussed, which allows for three degrees. The first form of intentionality involves simple tropisms. The second grade of intentionality is the one of generality, as opposed to specificity an particularity. The third intentional grade would enable directness to the singular.

As human organisms only are able to entertain directness to the singular, brentsnian intentionality would fall under the second kind of directedness, the one involving generality. Supposition that this thesis is right might the lead to the question whether Brentano really described intentionality specific for human organisms. "

36. ———. 2002. "Intentionality of Phenomenology in Brentano." The Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 40:231-267.

Abstract: "Phenomenology is intrinsically intentional for Brentano. Qualitative conscious experiences are individuated by their phenomenal space. Phenomenal space does not include just an experiential space. Physical phenomenal space is also needed. This invites the kinds of examples concerning the phenomenal that take account of both spaces. Physical space is analyzed because it assures the intentionality of phenomenology.

The thesis concerning intentionality of phenomenology is compared to the overall project of grounding intentionality or directedness at a content or at an object. Besides being directed at an object, an intentional act is also reflexively directed at itself. This reflexive directedness includes qualitative phenomenal experience. As directedness at an object and reflexive directedness of the act at itself become interwoven, there is the intrinsic phenomenology of intentionality. Both intentionality of phenomenology and phenomenology of intentionality present the wholes with mutually pervading and only logically distinguishable parts.

In the above theses, balance is established between phenomenology and intentionality. It is conjectured that this balance was disrupted in both analytical and continental traditions, to which Brentano was a precursor and an origins figure."

37. Puglisi, Mario. 1924. "Franz Brentano: A Biographical Sketch." The American Journal of Psychology no. 35:414-419.

"In the preface to one of his posthumous works, recently published,-Die Lehre Jesu und ihre bleibende Bedeutung,-Brentano alludes to his religious crisis; it is the first and only time that he refers to it. "Born of a Catholic family," he writes, "I was led to accept the ecclesiastical life; but later I was obliged to separate myself from the church. My sole reason for taking this step was my wish to serve the higher interests of

mankind; and my mature convictions made me realise that such service would be impossible if I followed the path upon which I had originally entered. For me, research has always been a vital necessity; and from the very first I tried, again and again, to resolve, in a satisfactory way, certain apparent contradictions of reason and what is called supernatural revelation. The failure of every effort to resolve these contradictions gave rise, little by little, to grave doubts regarding the truth of religious dogmas. But religious belief had been presented to me as a sacred duty, whose disregard meant eternal punishment; and a doubt regarding the obligation of belief thus appeared to me as a temptation to evil.... All this struggle was repeated over and over; and I should never have come to a decision if it bad not been for a certain extraordinary event,-the assembling of the Vatican Council to discuss the infallibility of the Pope. Here a doctrine was at issue which I could still doubt without thereby falling into sin, and over against which I therefore was still free from any bondage that might disturb my conscience and prevent an impartial examination of the subject. I studied it, and the result of my study was the firmest possible persuasion of the untenability of that dogma." (p. 416)

38. Rancurello, Antos C. 1968. A Study of Franz Brentano: His Psychological Standpoint and His Significance in the History of Psychology. New York: Academic Press.

Foreword by Edwin G. Boring.

"In justification of the claim that Brentano “had the rightness of the obvious on his side,” Boring very appropriately called attention to his doctrine that “mind is intentional.” The present study aims to show that this doctrine acquires an even deeper meaning and significance when it is viewed within the context of Brentano’s broader conception of man himself as an intentional being. Brentano was very well aware that in many respects man is “reactive”— the product of hereditary and environmental influences. At the same time, he insisted that, as a “psychically active subject,” man is “pro-active,” self-actualizing, self-enhancing, and self-transcending. The student of psychology will easily see reflected in these descriptive terms the orientation of many leading authors throughout the history of psychology as a science, and especially the orientation of the “third force” movement in American psychology.

Another goal of the present study is to show that many other views of Brentano bearing upon more specific theoretical, methodological, and applied issues in psychology have gained increasing acceptance in the history of this science since the 1880’s and again parallel closely the overall stand of (he “third force” movement. Although the evidence that will be provided in support of these claims is selective rather than comprehensive, it should be sufficient to bring out both the essential elements and the historical significance of Brentano’s standpoint in psychology.

In terms of general organization, the present study comprises three closely interrelated sections. The first section offers a portrait, as against a mere composite picture, of Brentano’s life, personality, and works, and as such paves the way, in the second section, for a synopsis of his orientation on psychological issues. There logically follows, in the third section, a general appraisal of Brentano’s significance in the history of psychology.

An annotated bibliography of Brentano’s writings and of works bearing upon his thought is included in this study both as a supplement to the text proper and as an independent contribution." (pp. XI-XII)

39. Raspa, Venanzio. 2020. "Brentano on Aristotle’s Categories." In Franz Brentano's Philosophy after Hundred Years: From History of Philosophy to Reism, edited by Fisette, Denis, Frechette, Guillaume and Janoušek, Hynek, 185-203. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Brentano’s dissertation Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles (On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle) (1862) is examined in the light of the nineteenth-century debate on the Aristotelian categories. After providing an exposition of the conceptions of the main representatives of this debate, Adolf Trendelenburg and Hermann Bonitz, this paper assesses Brentano’s point of view on the meaning and origin of the Aristotelian categories. It shows (i) that Brentano assumes non-Aristotelian elements in his reading of the Aristotelian categories, (ii) that this depends on the fact that he shares Bonitz’s thesis, and (iii) that his reading is incomplete in the light of certain Aristotelian statements about non-being."

40. Rauch, Leo. 1968. "Brentano’s Psychology and the Problem of Existential Import." Philosophical Studies (Dublin) no. 17:121-131.

Abstract: "Frasn Brentano has often been considered guilty of the‘psychologism’ which Edmund Husserl, his pupil, attacked. The charge is justified in only a limited sense: Brentano is dealing not with intentional acts but rather with intentional objects. His concern is directed, among other things, to certain logical and ontological problems such as those raised by a Meinong, even if Brentano makes use of psychological insight in order to shed light on them."

41. Richardson, Robert. 1983. "Brentano on intentional inexistence and the distinction between mental and physical phenomena." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 65:250-282.

"Aquila, Chisholm, McAlister, and Srzednicki have made marked strides in furthering our understanding of Brentano. There is no doubt that any interpretation must incorporate their insights. Relying on the work already done in elaborating and defending their respective interpretations of the doctrine of intentional inexistence, or intentionality, we are now in a position to reach a definitive resolution of their differences.

After first providing a fuller statement of the two available alternatives we will proceed to provide a critique of each in turn, isolating their weaknesses as well as their strengths. This will enable us to reach a synthesis capable of explaining intentional inexistence and its place in Brentano's psychology; moreover, we can do it in a way which combines the attractions of both the orthodox and reformed interpretations while shedding the inadequacies of each." (p. 251)

42. Röck, Tina. 2017. "Brentano’s Methodology as a Path through the Divide: On Combining Phenomenological Descriptions and Logical Analysis." Axiomathes no. 27:475-489.

Abstract: "In this paper, I will describe how Brentano was able to integrate descriptive philosophy and logical analysis fruitfully by pointing out Brentano’s concept of philosophy as a rigorous science. First I will clarify how Brentano attempted to turn philosophy into a rigorous descriptive science by applying scientific methods to philosophical questions. After spelling out the implications of such a descriptive understanding of philosophy, I will contrast this descriptive view of philosophy with a semantic-analytic understanding of philosophy as proposed by Frege. After having thus set the stage I will argue that (1) the current separation of philosophy into the seemingly antithetical strands of (continental) phenomenology and analytic philosophy may be seen as a consequence of how the term ‘rigorous science’ in ‘philosophy as a rigorous science’ is interpreted: Does a rigorous science grasp its object with as much exactitude as possible? Or is a science rigorous when its theories are expressed unambiguously, and their implications are drawn with precision? In the course of this investigation I will also point out (2) how Brentano’s integrative use of descriptive philosophy (a precursor to phenomenology) and analysis can provide a suitable starting point for an equally successful integration of these methods in contemporary philosophy."

43. Rojszczack, Artur. 2005. From the Act of Judging to the Sentence: The Problem of Truth Bearers from Bolzano to Tarski. Dordrecht: Springer.

Edited by Jan Wolenski.

Chapter 3. Descriptive psychology: the theory of judgement as the theory of cognition and knowledge: 1. Franz Brentano (I): The Act of Judging as the Truth Bearer 33-41;

Chapter 4. Judgment, psychology, and language: 1. Franz Brentano (II): Linguistic Analysis 57-65;

Chapter 6. Reism: 1. Franz Brentano (III): The Judger as the Truth Bearer 103-106;

Chapter 7. The objectivity of truth: 2. Franz Brentano (IV): Identity and Evidence 116-121.

"Artur left behind an English translation of his PhD dissertation. This work is the culmination of Artur’s thinking on topics already dealt with, both historically and systematically, in his earlier writings, and it reflects his philosophical interests in Austrian philosophy from Bolzano to the present day and in particular in the Polish wing of the Austrian tradition established by Kazimierz Twardowski. The present book is the first monograph in the literature of philosophy entirely devoted to the problem of truth-bearers. It focuses primarily on ontological, rather than on semantic and logical, problems, and perhaps its main virtue lies in its careful and detailed investigation of the issue of whether a physicalist conception of truth-bearers is possible." (From the Preface: In memoriam of Artur Rojszczack, by Barry Smith and Ja Wolesnki, p. XV)

44. Rojszczak, Artur, and Smith, Barry. 2003. "Theories of Judgment." In The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870-1945, edited by Baldwin, Thomas, 157-173. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"It was Franz Brentano who was responsible for the first major break with the combination theory of judgement through the doctrine of intentionality set forth in his Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (Brentano 1874/1924 [1973: 77–100, esp. 88–9]). Knowledge, for Brentano, is a matter of special types of judgement. The psychological description and classification of judgements in all their modes of occurrence is thus in his eyes a necessary precursor to the theory of knowledge as a branch of philosophy. First, however, it is necessary to find a firm foundation for the science of psychology itself, and this requires a coherent demarcation of the proper object of psychological research. For this we need some unique property which would distinguish mental from other types of phenomena. Hence Brentano’s much-mooted principle of the intentionality of the mental, which states that each and every mental process is of or about something.

Brentano distinguishes three basic types of mental or intentional phenomena: presenting, judging, and phenomena of love and hate. Each of these three types of mental phenomenon is determined by its own characteristic intentional relation or intentional directedness. A presentation is any act in which the subject is conscious of some content or object without taking up any position with regard to it. Such an act may be either intuitive or conceptual. That is, we can have an object before our mind either in sensory experience (and in variant forms thereof in imagination), or through concepts – for example when we think of

the concepts of colour or pain in general. Presentations may be either (relatively) simple or (relatively) complex, a distinction inspired by the British empiricists’ doctrine of simple and complex ideas. A simple presentation is for example that of a red sensum; a complex presentation that of an array of differently coloured squares (Brentano 1874/1924 [1973: 79f., 88f.])." (pp. 159-160)

References

Brentano, F. (1874). Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Leipzig: Duncker and Humboldt. Trans. 1973 A. C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, and L. L. McAlister, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, London: Routledge.

45. ———. 2003. "Truthmakers, Truthbearers and the Objectivity of Truth." In Philosophy and Logic in Search of the Polish Tradition: Essays in Honour of Jan Wolenski on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday, edited by Hintikka, Jaako, Czarnecki, Tadeusz, Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna, Placek, Tomasz and Rojszczak, Artur, 229-268. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"The aim of this paper is to show that the account of objective truth taken for granted by logicians at least since the publication in 1933 of Tarski 's 'The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages' arose out of a tradition of philosophical thinking initiated by Bolzano and Brentano. The paper shows more specifically that certain investigations of states of affairs and other objectual correlates of judging acts, investigations carried out by Austrian and Polish philosophers around the turn of the century, formed part of the background of views that led to standard current accounts of the objectivity of truth! It thus lends support to speculations on the role of Brentano and his heirs in contemporary logical pbilosophy advanced by Jan Woleński in his masterpiece on the Logic and Philosophy in the Lvov-Warsaw School of 1989."

46. Rollinger, Robin D. 1993. "Husserl and Brentano on Imagination." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 75:195-210.

Revised version with the title: Brentano and Husserl on Imagination in: R. D. Rollinger, Austrian Phenomenology. Brentano, Husserl, Meinong, and Others on Mind and Object, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2009, pp. 29-50.

"4. Conclusion

The differences between Husserl and Brentano on imagination may briefly be summarized as follows. While Brentano is willing to characterize the contents of perceptual presentations as more intense than those of phantasy presentations, Husserl has misgivings about this characterization. Even if the various distinctions which he makes in his theory of presentations are kept in mind, the ascription of more intense contents (sensations) to perceptual presentations inadequately differentiates such presentations from imagining. For however intense the contents of a presentation may be, this presentation cannot be an instance of perceiving, on Husserl’s view, unless a unique form of apprehension is present. Nor does it appear to him that the concept of intensity applies to all contents without difficulty. Moreover, Brentano’s claim that phantasy presentations are improper ones which merely approximate proper presentations is subject to further doubt from Husserl. As long as “proper presentations” is a term that refers to intuitive presentations, he regards both phantasy presentations and perceptual presentations as proper. Finally, while Brentano characterizes the presentation of temporally extended objects such as melodies and motions in terms of phantasy presentation and attributes a further impropriety (i.e. modification) to presentation of this kind, Husserl rejects such a characterization and adheres to the view that temporally objects can actually be perceived and that the “primary memory” involved in such perception in no way involves modification." (pp. 48-49)

47. ———. 2004. "Austrian Theories of Judgment: Bolzano, Brentano, Meinong, and Husserl." In Phenomenology and Analysis: Essays on Central European Philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Huemer, Wolfgang, 257-284. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

Reprinted in: R. D. Rollinger, Austrian Phenomenology. Brentano, Husserl, Meinong, and Others on Mind and Object, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2009, pp. 233-262.

"3. Brentano

The notion of judgment is already present early in Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint [1874]. In his attempt to identify a criterion for distinguishing between physical phenomena (such as tones and colors) and psychical ones, the first suggestion he considers is that the latter are “presentations as well as those phenomena for which presentations are the foundations”.(1) “As we use the word ‘present’”, he elaborates, “‘being presented’ is the same appearing’“.(2) While physical phenomena certainly appear and are thus presented, they are certainly neither acts ofpresentations nor phenomena which have such acts as their foundation.

Judgments and certain other phenomena, however, are identified as phenomena founded on presentations. “Nothing can be judged, nor can anything be desired, hoped, or feared unless it is presented”.(3) The thesis that a judgment is based on a presentation remains a principle throughout Brentano theory of judgment." (p. 242 of the reprint)

1 Brentano (1874), p. 104.

2 Brentano (1874), p. 106.

3 Brentano (1874), p. 104.

48. ———. 2004. "Brentano and Husserl." In The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, edited by Jacquette, Dale, 255-276. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"In the present chapter the relationship between Brentano and Husserl will be discussed as follows. Brentano’s philosophical orientation will be exposited only insofar as this was familiar to Husserl.

This is not to say that only Brentano’s views during the period from 1884 to 1886 will be taken into account here. Husserl was indeed an enthusiastic collector of notes from Brentano’s lectures. Moreover, Husserl took special interest in his mentor’s “psychognostic investigations,” as Brentano indicates in a letter to Husserl (circa May 1891).(4) Developments that occur in Brentano’s thought in the later 1890s and especially his reism of the last couple of decades of his life, however, fall outside Husserl’s sphere of familiarity." (p. 255)

(4) Husserl, Briefwechsel I, p. 6.

49. ———. 2005. "Meinong and Brentano." Meinong Studies no. 1:159-197.

Revised version with the title "Brentano and Meinong" in R. D. Rollinger, Austrian Phenomenology: Brentano, Husserl, Meinong, and Others on Mind and Object, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag 2008, pp. 157-187

Summary: "Meinong, like other noteworthy philosophers from central Europe, began his career in philosophy under the guidance of Franz Brentano. Though Meinong's philosophical investigations from early on were very Brentanian in character, he came to develop views that diverged from certain doctrines of his mentor. In epistemology Meinong introduced the notion of immediate evidence of surmise in his views on memory and perception, whereas Brentano found this notion unacceptable. In descriptive psychology Meinong regarded feelings and desires as two distinct classes and introduced an additional class of mental phenomena called "assumptions". Thus he opposed Brentano's classification of mental phenomena into presentations, judgments, and acts of love and hate. In ontology Meinong allowed for non-real objects. In value theory he even introduced the notion of special irrealia corresponding to feelings and desires. Brentano, however, came to reject irrealia altogether. Such differences are discussed here, but attention is also given to the underlying and enduring philosophical affinity between Meinong and Brentano, namely their commitment to the ideal of scientific philosophy as attainable through descriptive psychology (what might be called "descriptive phenomenology"), which is concerned with intentionally directed consciousness as its subject matter and does not in any way differ methodologically from natural science."

50. ———. 2006. "Brentano's Logic and Marty's Early Philosophy of Language." Brentano Studien no. 12:77-98.

51. ———. 2008. "Brentano’s Psychology and Logic and the Basis of Twardowski’s Theory of Presentations." The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication no. 4:1-23.

"1. Introduction

It is widely known that Kasimir Twardowski was a student of Franz Brentano. In view of the fact that Brentano generally had great impact through his lectures, especially during his Vienna period (1874-1895),(2) and consequently became one of the towering figures of Austrian philosophy,(3) it is a matter of no small interest to determine how he influenced Twardowski. There are, however, difficulties in examining the relationship of Twardowski to his teacher, as there are in the case of the relationships between Brentano and his students generally. The main obstacle to this endeavor lies in the fact that Brentano published very little during his lifetime. Moreover, what has been published posthumously is far from adequate in terms of both the quantity of texts and the quality of editing. For this reason it is highly desirable to discuss Brentano in relation to his students by drawing upon his hitherto unpublished manuscripts. This is the strategy that I will pursue in the following analysis of Brentano and Twardowski on the topic of presentations (Vorstellungen)." (p.1, some notes omitted)

(2) For a list of lecture courses that Brentano gave in Vienna, see Werle (1989), pp. 157-162.

(3) Brentano Y 4/13: “In Austria nothing had been accomplished in the domain of philosophy in earlier times. Things have become different in recent times. [In Österreich wurde in früherer Zeit auf dem Gebiete der Philosophie nichts geleistet. In neuerer Zeit ist das anders geworden]”.

52. ———. 2012. "Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint: its Background and Conception." In Franz Brentano's Metaphysics and Psychology, edited by Tănăsescu, Ion, 261-309. Bucharest: Zeta Books.

"Scholarly and philosophical literature on Brentano is of course hampered by a restriction to published and often poorly edited materials. Here I shall attempt to provide the means for circumventing the danger just mentioned and thus for gaining an appreciation for the Psychology as it was originally planned in its entirety. This appreciation may, to be sure, be primarily philological in nature at this stage of Brentano scholarship. It can, however, be the basis for further explorations which may in the future be more properly philosophical. Before we philosophize with Brentano, we must trouble ourselves with what he actually wrote, especially what he wrote in unpublished manuscripts." (p. 263, a note omitted)

(...)

"Conclusion

Brentano’s Psychology was thus meant to be a work which was to meet both of Aristotle’s requirements for an inquiry into the soul. It was to be both exact and concerned with important and remarkable objects. The published part exhibits great exactness in the treatment of seemingly rather small issues, such as the unconscious consciousness, the classification of psychical phenomena, and the unity of consciousness. From this basis, however, Brentano had plans to proceed – in a strictly scientific fashion – to a treatment of a most important and remarkable issue, namely immortality. Along the way, the applications of psychology to the practical branches of philosophy, at least logic and ethics, were to receive attention. At the same time concepts from metaphysics were to come into play as well. His abandonment of this ambitious project was by no means motivated by a loss of his earlier convictions or a growing indifference to the issues (large or small) as conceived of in his original plan, but rather by a deeply felt need to revise his views concerning both the method as well as the subject matter of psychology.

If we understand “psychology from an empirical standpoint” as an ongoing project rather than merely the title of a work consisting of the published volume and even including the projected second one (in outline or in draft), this title may be taken as applicable to almost all of Brentano’s philosophical efforts from start to finish. While his conception of psychology underwent revision, he retained the conviction that psychology was the core of philosophy and therefore destined to prove the most interesting and most important truths. From a practical point of view, it is to give us the means for treating the good, the true, and the beautiful as the highest human goals. From a theoretical point of view, it encompasses within its range of topics: freedom, immortality, and even the existence of God. The truths about such matters were in essence to remain constant in spite of all revisions and reformulations. They are indeed the motivation that lies behind Brentano’s statement that psychology is the science of the future.(116) Until the unpublished materials pertaining to this statement are examined, Brentano’s significance in the history of psychology and philosophy cannot be properly assessed." (p.303-304)

(116) Brentano (1874), p. 32.

53. ———. 2020. Concept and Judgment in Brentano's Logic Lectures: Analysis and Materials. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"The first part of the present volume is an analysis of Franz Brentano’s lectures on logic, primarily on the basis of the notes contained under the signature EL 80 (among his manuscripts as these are preserved in the Houghton Library at Harvard University). Brentano repeatedly used and revised these notes, at first in Würzburg (as early as 1870) and then in Vienna (probably as late as 1877 or later), though they were superceded by another, very different set of notes on logic (EL 72), some of which he used for the winter semester 1878/79, but with considerable revisions and additions for 1884/85 and for an (unannounced) continuation into the summer semester 1885. While EL 80 provides us with an alternative term-logic of his own making, the latter notes are much more remote from what we ordinarily call “logic” in either traditional or contemporary terminology. The former include such staples of logic as a treatment of both deductive and inductive inference. (Brentano’s views on induction and the closely related theory of probability are topics that would better receive treatment in a separate study and are accordingly not subjected to analysis in the present volume.)

The second part of the present volume includes a German edition and English translation of notes that Franz Hillebrand took from Brentano’s lectures on logic in 1884/85, though not from the summer semester 1885. I shall give further details regarding Hillebrand’s notes below. Belonging also to the second part of the present volume is an English translation of Hillebrand’s Die neuen Theorien der kategorischen Schlüsse, in which he elaborates on Brentano’s syllogistic logic in connection with the theory of judgment, as he also defends this logic against contemporaneous rivals regarding the same issues.

This short work by Hillebrand involves elaborations on some points that are not made focal in the first part of the present volume and vice-versa." (Preface, p. VII)

54. ———. 2021. "Brentano and von Ehrenfels on Emotion, Desire, and Absolute Value: An Extreme Contrast in Austrian Phenomenology." In The Philosophy of Brentano: Contributions from the Second International Conference Graz 1977 & 2017, in Memory of Rudolf Haller, edited by Antonelli, Mauro and Binder, Thomas, 312-327. Leiden: Brill Rodopi.

"Conclusion.

Thus we find in Austrian phenomenology a most outstanding contrast in ethics: Brentano’s view that desire and emotion belong to a single class, love and hate, which includes acts of consciousness which can be characterized as correct (or incorrect), and von Ehrenfels’ view that only emotions belong to the class designated by “love” and “hate”, which arise through dispositional desires, and that neither acts of this kind nor the desires that naturally go with them absolutely guarantee values. This is of course not the only important contrast among the Austrian phenomenologists with respect to value theory and ethics, for Alexius Meinong, Edmund Husserl, and Anton Marty also have something to say on this matter. However, all of these three ultimately shared in Brentano’s cognitivist position, whereas von Ehrenfels (at least in his great ethical work of the nineteenth century) does not. Moreover, they complicate the picture by objectifying value, whereas Brentano and von Ehrenfels stay on the psychological plane in their ethical inquiries. The extreme contrast that results from them is well worth noting, for extreme contrasts are often quite helpful as a starting point for investigations. Hopefully the one I have elaborated on here will provide a renewed starting point for further research on this extremely important topic." (pp. 325-326)

55. Runggaldier, Edmund. 1989. "On the Scholastic or Aristotelian roots of 'Intentionality' in Brentano." Topoi no. 8:97-103.

Abstract: "The early Brentano identifies intentionality with “intentional inexistence”, i.e., with a kind of indwelling of the intentional object in the mind. The latter concept cannot be grasped apart from its scholastic background and the Aristotelian—Thomistic doctrine of the multiple use of ‘being’ (to on legetai pollachos). The fact that Brentano abandoned the theory of the intentional inexistence in the course of time does not contradict the thesis that it is intentional inexistence and not the modern conception of reference or directedness to something other which comprises the essence of intentionality for the early Brentano."

56. Russo, Antonio. 2014. "Franz Brentano and Cornelio Fabro: A Forgotten Chapter of the Brentanian Reception." Axiomathes no. 24:157-165.

Abstract: "In celebration of the centenary of the Italian philosopher Cornelio Fabro’s birth (1911–1995), this paper investigates the essential theoretical traits that undergird the framework of Fabro’s 1941 texts, by comparing them with Franz Brentano’s (1838–1817) project of renewing Thomism through a new understanding of Aristotle. The secondary literature concerning the comparison of both these authors is almost nonexistent. Our goal is to clarify some of the central issues regarding the relation between Fabro and Brentano through direct textual analysis of unpublished letters exchanged between Fabro and Agostino Gemelli about Brentano and his pupil Carl Stumpf."

57. Rutte, Heiner. 1986. "On the Problem of Inner Perception." Topoi no. 6:19-23.

"The assumption that there are processes of 'inner perception' is something which comes quite naturally to the epistemologist: consciousness not only consists in intentional acts referring to or directed upon an object, it is not only consciousness of certain contents or objects, but it also consists in a consciousness of these acts themselves -- there is no consciousness which could be ignorant of its acts."

(...)

"In his 'Psychologic vom empirischen Standpunkt', Brentano provides us with a thorough discussion of the problem of this regress, coming to the unequivocal conclusion: there are no specific acts (= activities) of inner perception; rather, inner perception resembles a permanent accompanying phenomenon (Brentano here invokes Aristotle: "Das Wissen und die Empfindung und die Meinung und das Nachdenken scheinen immer auf etwas anderes zu gehen, auf sich selbst aber nebenbei"). (2) Inner perception is a secondary consciousness of something; hence, a primary consciousness of something always has to be presupposed. When somebody hears a sound, this sound will be a primary object for him, and he himself, as somebody hearing the sound, will be a secondary object for himself; that is, he perceives himself as hearing a sound. This does not mean for Brentano that we are dealing with two acts; rather, we are confronted with one act having two "things" for its object: the sound (as the primary object) and the act of hearing itself (as the secondary object).

These two aspects of the act cannot be separated, not even in thought: there can be no secondary consciousness without primary consciousness.(3)" (p. 19)

(2) Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Bd. I (ed. Oskar Kraus), Philosophische Bibliothek Band 192 (Hamburg 1973), p. 185.

(3) Cf. op. cit., p. 180.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on Franz Brentano: Studies in English, Seventh Part: San - Srz

Bibliography

1. Sánchez-Migallón, Sergio, and Martí-Sanchez, Miguel. 2019/20. "The Originality of Franz Brentano's Description of 'Correct Love' and its Aristotelian Nexus." Brentano Studien no. 16:117-136.

Abstract: "One of Brentano’s most original and influential theses is his description of the knowledge of the good in the immediate experience of correct love, encompassing voluntary acts as well as feelings. In that union of will and feelings in a more fundamental class of psychical experiences, Brentano sees a coincidence with Aristotle’s doctrine of órexis. Yet, on Brentano’s account, while Aristotle accurately perceived correct love or desire, he did not correctly set out the knowledge of the good on this basis. The paper discusses this discrepancy and shows that the concurrence is more than merely assumed. Indeed, it is demonstrated that for both thinkers, moral knowledge is deeply rooted in the virtuous or good person."

2. Sanford, David. 1997. "Chisholm on Brentano's thesis." In The Philosophy of Roderick M. Chisholm, edited by Hahn, Lewis. Chicago: Open-Court.

"My purpose in this paper is neither to defend nor to refute Brentano's thesis. Nor shall I address the importance and implications of Brentano's thesis, except to comment that its incompatibility with physicalism depends on what you mean by "physicalism." Brentano's thesis does not imply dualism.(3) It does seem to imply that intentional psychology is conceptually autonomous from pure physics. In this paper I attempt the following: to distinguish proposals about intentionality that are often confused, both by those who support and those who oppose Chisholm's project; to generalize the notion of logical independence; and, based on this notion of independence, to revise some of Chisholm's criteria of intentionality." (p. 202)

(3) See Chisholm 1955-56, where he denies that the linguistic thesis about intentionality indicates “that there is a ghost in the machine” (p. 50).

"Anyone who wants to understand what I have been up to in trying to formulate criteria of intentionality, should read Sanford’s paper." R. M. Chsiholm, "Reply to David H. Sanford", p. 215.

References

Chisholm, Roderick M. 1955-56. “Sentences about Believing.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56: 125-48. Reprinted with revisions in Feigl 1958, pp. 510-20.

Page references are to the version reprinted in Marras 1972, pp. 31-51.

Feigl, Herbert, Michael Scriven, and Grover Maxwell, eds. 1958. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Vol. 2, Concepts, Theories, and the Mind-Body Problem. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Marras, Ausonio, ed. 1972. Intentionality, Mind, and Language. Urbana, IIL: University of Illinois Press.

3. Sauer, Werner. 2013. "Being as the True: From Aristotle to Brentano." In Themes from Brentano, edited by Fisette, Denis and Fréchette, Guillaume, 193-226. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"Attentive readers of Brentano’s interpretation of Aristotle’s being as the true, on hōs alēthes, in his dissertation of 1862, Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles, will not fail to notice therein rather peculiar, if not perplexing features. The central aim of this paper is to show that to understand what Brentano’s account of being as the true is actually concerned with in its overall intention, it must be read in light of Thomas Aquinas’ views on the topic. This paper consists of six sections. In section 1, the stage is set.

Section 2 presents in brief outline an exposition of Aristotle’s own account of being as the true in Metaphysics Δ.7. In section 3, we consider Alexander of Aphrodisias’ commentary on the Δ.7 passage regarding being as the true insofar as it provides Brentano with an important premise for his own interpretation of that passage. Section 4 turns to Aquinas, and focuses in particular on his reading of the Δ.7 passage in his commentary on the Metaphysics. Then in section 5, Brentano himself comes into the picture, and it will be shown that what in his interpretation of Aristotle’s being as the true strikes the reader as rather peculiar is due to his attempt to defend Aquinas’ account in the context of contemporary Aristotle scholarship. Finally, section 6 attempts to show that the conception of being as the true in Brentano’s dissertation already prefigures, so to speak, the doctrine of judgments which he then presents in the Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt of 1874." (p. 193, a note omitted)

4. Schaar, Maria van der. 1999. "Evidence and the Law of Excluded Middle: Brentano on Truth." In The Logica Yearbook 1998, 110-120. Prague: Filosofia.

"Introduction

The central question of my paper is whether there is a coherent logical theory in which truth is construed in epistemic terms and in which also some version of the law of excluded middle is defended. Brentano in his later writings has such a theory.(2) My first question is whether his theory is consistent. I also make a comparison between Brentano’s view and that of an intuitionist at the present day, namely Per Martin-Löf. Such a comparison might provide some insight into what is essential to a theory that understands truth in epistemic terms." (p. 110)

(2) It is inevitable to elaborate strongly on what is published of Brentano’s later ideas. On the one hand, because these ideas were in progress, and not formulated in any definitive and authorized publication. On the other hand, what is published of Brentano’s later writings is very unreliable. Therefore I have checked the passages which are central for my paper by comparing them with the typoscripts of Brentano’s manuscripts at the Husserl Archives at Leuven. I wish to thank the Archives for this possibility. In these passages I found no important deviations from the typoscripts.

5. ———. 2003. "Brentano on Logic, Truth and Evidence." Brentano Studien no. 10:119-150.

Abstract: "Does the criticism raised against the use of judgemental evidence in logic and epistemology still stand, or is the notion crucial in our understanding of truth? First, Brentano’s account of truth and evidence is expounded. Then, the different kinds of criticism that may be raised against Brentano’s account of truth and evidence are presented. Finally, it is argued that, although there is a serious problem with this account of truth and evidence, a modification of the theory can be of importance for philosophy today. In Brentano’s account of truth and evidence, a first-person perspective plays a crucial role, and it is precisely this aspect we need in epistemology and in logic today."

6. ———. 2016. Brentano, Twardowski and Stout: From Psychology to Ontology.

Available at https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/42642/chapter/358145298

Abstract: "This article was commissioned as a supplement to the Oxford Handbook of the History of Analytic Philosophy, edited by Michael Beaney. It focuses on the psychological origins of analytic philosophy. Analytic psychology influenced the emergence of a new method in philosophy and the crucial changes to the notions of judgement and intentionality at the end of the nineteenth century. In particular, G. F. Stout’s analytic psychology played an important role in the formation of Moore’s and Russell’s early analytic philosophy.

Through Stout, the account of judgement and intentionality given by Brentano and Twardowski also had a significant influence on the development of early analytic philosophy."

7. ———. 2018. "Brentano on Truth and Evidence. Understanding Truth from a First-Person Point of View." Brentano Studien no. 16:187-206.

Abstract: "Does the criticism raised against the use of judgemental evidence in logic and epistemology still stand, or is the notion crucial in our understanding of truth? First, Brentano’s account of truth and evidence is expounded.

Then, the different kinds of criticism that may be raised against Brentano’s account of truth and evidence are presented. Finally, it is argued that, although there is a serious problem with this account of truth and evidence, a modification of the theory can be of importance for philosophy today. In Brentano’s account of truth and evidence, a first-person perspective plays a crucial role, and it is precisely this aspect we need in epistemology and in logic today."

8. ———. 2023. "Judgement and intentionality in early Brentano." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 100:151-172.

Abstract: "There are two notions of intentionality: the first contains the thesis that our acts of thinking, judging and loving have a content; the second that our mental acts are about something external to the act. Brentano uses the term ‘intentionality’ only in relation to the first notion; for him, intentionality does not function as a bridge between the mind and the external world. Is it possible for a phenomenologist like Brentano to give an account of the second notion of intentionality? It is argued that this is possible, but not without introducing the notion of judgement. A comparison with Mill’s distinction between connotation and denotation, and with Frege’s distinction between sense and reference shows how original Brentano’s theory is."

9. Schaefer, Richard. 2013. "The Madness of Franz Brentano: Religion, Secularisation and the History of Philosophy." History of European Ideas no. 39:541-560.

Summary. "In recent decades, scholars have shown a distinct new willingness to concede the important place of religion in the life and thought of the philosopher Franz Brentano. However, these studies are still dominated by the presumption that Brentano’s life and thought are best understood according to a model of secularisation as a progressive waning of religion. This essay asks whether such a presumption is the best way of understanding the complex interconnections between various elements of his philosophical and religious ideas. It posits that a better appreciation of his position entails a confrontation with Brentano’s historical imagination, and especially the structuring role of his approach to the history of philosophy as one manifesting regular cycles of decline and regeneration.

Brentano’s theory of the four phases of philosophy, though not the final word on how he viewed history, was nevertheless an exercise in thinking about the ways history accommodates various forms of progress and repetition. It was therefore a salutary means for thinking about the evolution of religion in ways that challenge any simple understanding of secularisation."

10. ———. 2018. "Hopes and Dreams in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Brentano, History and the Jews." Brentano Studien no. 16:157-185.

Abstract: "This essay attempts a fresh interpretation of Franz Brentano’s life and career in Vienna between 1874 and 1895. But rather than ask how Vienna was significant to the evolution of his philosophy or assess his influence in the Austrian capital and beyond, this essay explores some of the circumstances surrounding controversial Meine letzten Wünsche für Österreich, which recounts his battle with the Austrian government to have him reinstated as a full professor of philosophy. The failure to regain his professorship was more than a career setback that embittered Brentano. It was the occasion for him to publicly declare the backwardness of Catholic Austria. I will try to show how this condemnation was shaped by Brentano’s specific experience as an apostate priest at the intersection of Catholic and Jewish segments of Viennese society, and nourished by his views on the course of history. In this way, this essay seeks to enrich our understanding of the interplay between Brentano’s life and thought, and add another chapter to our understanding of the Viennese fin-de-siècle."

11. Schnieder, Benjamin. 2006. "Particularised attributes: an Austrian tale." In The Austrian Contribution to Analytic Philosophy, edited by Textor, M., 130-158. New York: Routledge.

"For philosophers interested in ontological issues, the writings of the important figures of Austrian philosophy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries contain many buried treasures to rediscover.

Bernard Bolzano, Franz Brentano, Alexius Meinong and Edmund Husserl, to give just four grand names of that period, were highly aware of the importance of a feasible ontology for many of the philosophical questions they addressed throughout their works.

In this chapter, I will discuss some ideas that these philosophers had with respect to the ontological category of particularised attributes; the discussion is intended to be a contribution both to the history of ontology, and to ontology itself. In the first part of the chapter I will review three arguments to the effect that we should allow particularised attributes into our ontology. In the second part, I will discuss certain problems for the idea that particularised attributes have a unique bearer and present two alternative solutions to them." (p. 130)

12. Schuhmann, Karl. 2004. "Brentano’s impact on twentieth-century philosophy." In The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, edited by Jacquette, Dale, 277-297. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"A detailed and complete picture of Brentano’s courses can emerge only from the comprehensive shorthand notes taken by his students on the spot.

This too, however, is problematic. The most extensive notes were taken by Brentano’s immediate pupils Anton Marty, Carl Stumpf, and Edmund Husserl, who donated their treasures to the Brentano Archives in Prague.(1) All these materials were, however, lost in 1939 when the Archives were hastily evacuated to England. As a result, it is very difficult – and I will not attempt it here – to describe in detail the role Brentano’s ideas played among his immediate followers and heirs. This is why people have spoken of a certain “invisibility” that Brentano has had in twentieth-century philosophy(2) Since his impact on this philosophy, for the reasons just mentioned, was often channeled through that of his direct disciples, it is worth looking at them first. Brentano’s problems and questions went through many metamorphoses and to a large extent determined the agenda of twentieth century philosophy, but philosophers are often unaware of the fact that they do indeed originate with him." (pp. 277-278)

(1) Husserl in 1935 gave the Archives no less than 28 notebooks. Cf. Oskar Kraus, “Brentano-Gesellschaft in Prag,” Philosophia, 2, 1937, pp. 402–5.

(2) Cf. Roberto Poli, “The Brentano Puzzle: an Introduction,” in, ed., Roberto Poli, The Brentano Puzzle (Aldershot, Brookfield USA, Singapore, Sydney: Ashgate, 1998), p. 1.

13. Seron, Denis. 2014. "Brentano's "Descriptive" Realism." Bulletin d'Analyse Phénoménologique no. 10:1-14.

Abstract" "Brentano’s metaphysical position in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint is usually assumed to be metaphysical realism. I propose an alternative interpretation, according to which Brentano was at that time, as well as later, a full-fledged phenomenalist. However, his phenomenalism is markedly different from standard phenomenalism in that it does not deny that the physicist’s judgments are really about the objective world. The aim of the theory of intentionality, I argue, is to allow for extra-phenomenal aboutness within a phenomenalist framework."

14. ———. 2018. "Intentionality and Epistemological Relativity." Brentano Studien no. 16:207-228.

Abstract: "I will adopt two assumptions without further discussion. First, I take for granted that Brentano’s epistemology, in 1874, was not only empiricist, but also phenomenalist. This view is controversial, but it has some support in the literature (Tolman 1987; Bell 1990: 8–9; Pacherie 1993: 13; Simons 1995; Crane 2006; Seron 2014; Seron forthcoming). Secondly, I assume that Brentano’s aim in the Psychology was to make phenomenalism less problematic by distinguishing two things which standard phenomenalism does not distinguish, namely reference and intentional aboutness. Now, there are good reasons to think that this distinction is the cornerstone of his theory of intentionality (Cayla 1993; Sauer 2006; Fréchette 2012: 330).

Therefore, it is plausible to say that Brentano’s theory of intentionality has as its heart an epistemological concern.

In the first three sections, I examine Brentano’s rejection of epistemological realism and its phenomenalist implications. In sections 4 to 6, I argue that Brentano’s theory of intentionality is better seen as a more sophisticated variant of William Hamilton’s “theory of the relativity of knowledge”. My underlying hypothesis is that the notion of intentionality — the distinction between real and intentional existence, direct and oblique modes — functions primarily as a means for overcoming some of the inherent limitations of standard phenomenalism."

References

Bell, D. (1990). Husserl. New York: Routledge.

Cayla, F. (1993). Husserl, Brentano et la psychologie descriptive. Philosophiques, 20/2, 347–361.

Crane, T. (2006). Brentano’s concept of intentional inexistence. In: The Austrian Contribution to Analytic Philosophy (M. Textor, Ed.). New York: Routledge, p. 20–35.

Fréchette, G. (2012). Deux aspects de l’intentionnalité dans la Psychologie de Brentano. In: Franz Brentano’s Metaphysics and Psychology (I. Tanasescu, Ed.). Bucarest: Zeta Books, p. 310–343.

Pacherie, E. (1993). Naturaliser l’intentionnalité: Essai de philosophie de la psychologie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Sauer, W. (2006). Die Einheit der Intentionalitätskonzeption bei Brentano. Grazer philosophische Studien, 73/1, p. 1–26.

Seron, D. (2014). Brentano’s “descriptive” realism. Bulletin d’analyse phénoménologique, 10/4, p. 1–14.

Seron, D. (forthcoming). Brentano on appearance and reality. In: Handbook of Brentano and the Brentano School (U. Kriegel, Ed.). New York: Routledge [2017]

Simons, P. (1995). Introduction. In: F. Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Engl. trans. by L. McAlister et al. New York: Routledge

Tolman, C.W. (1987). Intentionality, meaning, and evolution. In: Current Issues in Theoretical Psychology (W.J. Baker, M.E. Hyland, H. Van Rappard, A.W. Staats, Eds.). Amsterdam: Elsevier (North-Holland), p. 365–377.

15. ———. 2020. "Franz Brentano's Critique of Free Will." In The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Agency, edited by Keiling, Tobias and Erhard, Christopher, 7-14. New York: Routledge.

"Brentano intended to investigate free will in the fifth of the six planned books of the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, devoted to emotion and will (Brentano 1924: 1, engl. trans.: xxvii, 1925: 110, ftn., engl. trans.: 254) – a book which, unfortunately, he never wrote. Most of Brentano’s reflections on this topic are found in Part 3 of his 1876–1894 Vienna lectures on practical philosophy that were posthumously published as The Foundation and Construction of Ethics by Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand. Other relevant sources include the second volume of the Psychology and the 1889 lecture The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong." (p. 7)

(...)

"Concluding remarks

To conclude with, Brentano presents his determinism as fully compatible with both the law of causality and the view that we are morally perfectible and responsible for our actions. In fact, his claim is even stronger, since he maintains that determinism is the only way to make sense of our moral perfectibility and responsibility. Brentano proposes an interesting variant of virtue ethics based on the idea of self-improvement. Opposing the view that moral life consists in resisting inclinations that would otherwise cause the agent to act badly, he asks us to conceive of the will as being necessarily determined by inclinations and having to strive actively to improve them through self-discipline." (p. 12)

16. ———. 2020. "Consciousness and Representation." In Franz Brentano's Philosophy after Hundred Years: From History of Philosophy to Reism, edited by Fisette, Denis, Frechette, Guillaume and Janoušek, Hynek, 41-53. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "In this chapter, the author raises new objections to the self-representational reading of Brentano. This reading, he argues, is untenable simply because Brentano regards a representational perception as conceptually impossible. He then provides a new construal of Brentano’s theory of intentionality, based on a phenomenological approach to intentionality and consciousness. In his view, the main purpose of

Brentano’s theory of intentionality is to account for mental acts that are not (inner) perceptions, that is, for acts in which something appears without existing."

17. ———. 2021. "Psychology first!" In The Philosophy of Brentano: Contributions from the Second International Conference Graz 1977 & 2017, in Memory of Rudolf Haller, edited by Antonelli, Mauro and Binder, Thomas, 141-155. Leiden: Brill Rodopi.

"Franz Brentano’s aim in his masterpiece, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, as is clearly indicated in the title, was to develop an epistemology of psychology (Seron, 2017a). It is the contention of this chapter, however, that this book is much more than this. In my view, it is not merely about psychology, but about scientific knowledge in general. In his Psychology, Brentano seeks to create not merely an epistemology of psychology, but a general epistemology which assigns the first role to psychology.

Psychology is accorded a preeminent place in the epistemology of Brentano and his pupils—with some notable exceptions like the transcendental Husserl.

My purpose in this chapter is to show that Brentano’s privileging of psychology over the natural sciences is a consequence of his empiricism. Brentano’s version of empiricism involves a certain view of what experience is, and this view of experience entails that psychological knowledge enjoys some sort of priority." (p. 141)

References

Seron, D. (2017a). Brentano’s project of descriptive psychology. In U. Kriegel (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School (pp. 35–40). London: Routledge.

18. ———. 2021. "Brentano and the ideality of time." Revista de Filosofia Moderna e Contemporânea no. 9:35-49.

Abstract: "How is it possible to have present memory experiences of things that, being past, are no longer presently experienced? A possible answer to this long-standing philosophical question is what I call the “ideality of time view,” namely the view that temporal succession is unreal. In this paper I outline the basic idea behind Brentano’s version of the ideality of time view. Additionally, I contrast it with Hume’s version, suggesting that, despite significant differences, it can nonetheless be construed as broadly Humean."

19. ———. 2021. "Brentano and Mauthner on Grammatical Illusions." In Philosophy of Language in the Brentano School. Reassessing the Brentanian Legacy, edited by Dewalque, Arnaud, Gauvry, C. and Richard, Sebastian, 77-94. Cham, Switzerland): Palgrave.

"In the current literature Brentano’s name is usually associated with British empiricism, the Aristotelian tradition, and the so-called ‘Austrian semantic turn’. This paper seeks to suggest a convergence with another tradition within Austrian philosophy—namely the critique of language developed, among others, by Mach, Mauthner, Karl Kraus, the German Vaihinger, and Wittgenstein. My starting hypothesis is that, despite significant differences, the late Brentano’s approach to grammatical illusions has a greatdeal in common with Fritz Mauthner’s critique of language." (p. 77)

20. ———. 2023. "Experiencing the a priori." European Journal of Philosophy:371-379.

Abstract: "Brentano clearly asserts, in his Vienna lectures of 1887–1888, that his descriptive psychology is an a priori or “exact” science. Since he rejects Kant's idea of a synthetic a priori, this means that the descriptive psychologist's laws are analytic. My aim in this paper is to clarify and discuss this view. I examine Brentano's epistemology in the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint and then its later developments. I conclude with a difficulty inherent in Brentano's psychological approach to a priori knowledge."

21. Sheredos, Ben. 2016. "Brentano’s Act Psychology was not Aristotelian (or at least, not empirical)." Brentano Studien no. 14:157-189.

Abstract: "Brentano’s Psychology constantly refers to mental phenomena as “mental acts,” yet there has been surprisingly little effort devoted to discerning the significance of the term “act” in this context. A widespread implicit view is (1) that it is merely a technical term, and does not literally invoke any connotations of action at all. But since many regard the Psychology as riddled with Aristotelian assumptions, some also suggest (2) that Brentano’s talk of “mental acts” is a significant holdover from his Aristotelian pedigree. Here I argue, negatively, that both claims are deeply problematic. First, traditional readings of Brentano (by, e.g., Oskar Kraus) in terms of (1) are incapable of supporting some of Brentano’s most central commitments regarding inner perception and the method of psychology. Second, Brentano’s own conception of Aristotelianism is such that if (2) were true, (1) would be false. Finally, if (2) were true in any significant sense, then Brentano would simply fail to do what he sets out to do in his empirical psychology. I thus call for renewed attention to Brentano’s conception of “mental acts.” ."

22. Siewert, Charles. 2023. "Why we need descriptive psychology." European Journal of Philosophy:341-357.

Abstract: "This article defends the thesis that in theorizing about the mind we need to accord first-person (“introspective” or “reflective”) judgments about experience a “selective provisional trust.” Such an approach can form part of a descriptive psychology. It is here so employed to evaluate some influential interpretations of research on attention to conclude that—despite what conventional wisdom suggests—an “introspection-positive” policy actually offers us a better critical perspective than its contrary. What supposedly teaches us the worthlessness of introspection actually shows us why we need to take it seriously."

23. Simons, Peter M. 1984. "A Brentanian basis for Lesniewskian logic." Logique & Analyse no. 27:297-308.

"Brentano can effectively handle, if not the singular terms of natural languages, then at least something very like them, the singular names of a logical language which boasts a form of singular copula and is closer to traditional and Brentanian logic than is Frege-Russell predicate logic, namely the language of Lesniewski's Ontology.(4) What we show is that it is possible to base Ontology jointly on two primitives employed by Brentano in his reduction: an expression for existence and nominal conjunction. This not only provides (yet) another basis for Ontology: it shows that Brentano's claims for the existential form are considerably stronger than orthodox predicate logic is able to admit. We then sketch how a system of Ontology with extensionality allows even existence to be defined using conjunction, making this the sole undefined notion." (p. 300)

(4) Cf. my "On Understanding Leśniewski", History and Philosophy of Logic 3 (1982), 165-191.

24. ———. 1986. "Brentano's Reform of Logic." Topoi no. 6:25-38.

Reprinted in: Peter Simons, Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski. Selected Essays, Dodrecht: Kluwer, 1992, pp. 41-69.

"This forgotten reform of the logic of terms is based on Brentano's theory of judgement, according to which the basic form of judgement is an affirmation or denial of existence.

Brentano uses term-conjunction and -negation, and recognizes several logical relations among concepts (terms). While, like Boole, Brentano abolishes the requirement of existential import, the reform extends beyond this to the rules of inference, which allow syllogisms and other inferences to be elegantly derived. By treating propositions as fictions, following a suggestion of Brentano, and employing Brentano's rules with minor extensions, it is possible to develop a propositional logic within the term logic. The algebra of Brentano's logic, which interestingly mixes intensional and extensional components, is reconstructed.

While the algebra of extensions of concepts is of course Boolean, concepts themselves form a quasi-Boolean algebra.

1. Introductory.

In his Würzburg logic lectures of 1870/1 Brentano proposed a reform of logic which he believed was an essential improvement on the traditional view. His ideas were mentioned in the Psychologie of 1874, where they became known to a wider public. The basic idea of his theory of judgment was that the logical form of simple judgments is that of an assertion or denial of existence, rather than the subject-predicate form of the tradition.

His reform consists in part of drawing the consequences of this theory of judgment. Detailed presentation of the reform was confined to his lectures on logic, which were continued and modified throughout the period (1874-95) when he was teaching in Vienna, where they influenced a number of notable thinkers, notably Twardowski, who took Brentano's ideas to Poland and introduced them to the first generation of Polish analytic philosophers and logicians. The material of the lectures themselves was not published until 1956 under the title Die Lehre vom richtigen Urteil (hereafter LrU), although more of Brentano's views were made accessible through the work of Hillebrand (1891)." (p. 41 of the reprint)

References

Hillebrand, F.: 1891, Die neuen Theorien der kategorischen Schlüsse, Vienna.

25. ———. 1986. "Tractatus Mereologico-Philosophicus? A Brentanian look at Wittgenstein, and a moral." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 28:165-186.

Reprinted in P. M. Simons, Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff 1992, pp. 339-359.

"The philosophies of late Brentano and early Wittgenstein can be brought closer in two ways. One way discovers a surprising amount of part-whole theory in the Tractatus if we see states of affairs (not wholly wilfully) as thing-like rather than fact-like. This throws up a modal analogue to Chisholm's entia successiva in the form of situations. The other way sees all propositions as truth-functions of existential propositions, supporting Brentano's view that existentials are primary, and incidentally yielding a reistic semantics for the Tractatus. I draw a quick moral, that we should beware of excessive simplicity in metaphysics, and apply it to Chisholm's views on part and whole." (p. 339 of the reprint)

26. ———. 1988. "Brentano's Theory of Categories: a Critical Reappraisal." Brentano Studien no. 1:47-61.

Abstract: "In his doctoral dissertation Von der mannigfaltigen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Anstoteles, Brentano tried to show that (against criticism of this) one could indeed give a principle defense of Aristotle's table of categories as a coherent system. In later texts, Brentano appears sharply critical of Aristotle, mainly in respect to Aristotle's mereology, or theory of part and wbole, and to his theory of substance and accident.

lt is argued that Brentano hadn't observed tbat Aristotle's belief that there are as many predicative senses of ,be' as there are categories of being is based not on his mereology but on his thcory of definition. Overlooking this, Brentano was led to far reaching inadequate ontological consequences."

27. ———. 1989. "Tree Proofs for Syllogistic." Studia Logica no. 48:539-554.

Abstract: "This paper presents a tree method for testing the validity of inferences, including syllogisms, in a simple term logic. The method is given in the form of an algorithm and is shown to be sound and complete with respect to the obvious denotational semantics. The primitive logical constants of the system, which is indebted to the logical works of Jevons, Brentano and Lewis Carroll, are term negation, polyadic term conjunction, and functors affirming and denying existence, and use is also made of a metalinguistic concept of formal synonymy. It is indicated briefly how the method may be extended to other systems."

28. ———. 1996. "Logic in the Brentano School." In The School of Franz Brentano, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Libardi, Massimo and Poli, Roberto, 305-321. Kluwer Academic Publishers.

"The term 'the Brentano School' will here be understood to comprise Brentano and his immediate students, that is, those who studied with him either in Würzburg or in Vienna. In practice, those whose contributions to logic I shall consider in any depth number precisely three: Brentano himself, Meinong, and Husserl. I shall not consider students of students of Brentano, for although some of these, in particular Ernst Mally and Jan Łukasiewicz, contributed to logic, they cannot be reckoned among the Brentano School: Mally belongs to Meinong and Graz, Łukasiewicz to Twardowski and Lvov (later to Warsaw).

However, I shall briefly survey the influence ofthe Brentano School at the end.

I shall consider contributions to deductive logic, the methodology of logic, and the philosophy of logic. I shall not consider inductive logic, the logical structure of scientific theories or the theory of probability, except where they are germane to deductive logic (in the work of Meinong).

The format of the paper is that in each of the three major sections (Brentano, Hussed, Meinong) I first survey the primary literature souces and mention one or two useful works of secondary literature, before proceeding to a summary of the relevant aspects of the work in question. I prefer this to an elaborate system of page references which is out of place in an introductory survey article.(1)'" (p. 305)

(1) There is no general monograph on the logic of the Brentano School. More of the individual papers I have written on various aspects of this topic are collected in my 1992.

References

Simons 1992. P.M. Simons, Philosophy and logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski. Dordrecht, Kluwer.

29. ———. 1999. "Bolzano, Brentano and Meinong: Three Austrian Realists." In German Philosophy Since Kant, edited by O'Hear, Anthony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Although Brentano generally regarded himself as at heart a metaphysician, his work then and subsequently has always been dominated by the Psychology. He is rightly celebrated as the person who reintroduced the Aristotelian-Scholastic notion of intentio back into the study of the mind. Brentano's inspiration was Aristotle's theory of perception in De anima, though his terminology of intentional inexistence was medieval. For the history of the work and its position in his output may I refer to my Introduction to the reprinted English translation. Alongside Aristotle the work shows influences of Descartes, Comte and the British empiricists. The theory of intentionality presented in the Psychology is much less modern and less plausible than almost all recent commentary would have it, and was in any case not where Brentano's main interest lay. Intentionality simply served to demarcate mental phenomena from physical, in Book One, but the main aim was a classification of the mental, outlined in Book Two. Books Three to Five were to have dealt in detail with the three main classes of presentations, judgements and feelings, with the final book considering the metaphysics: mind-body and the immortality of the soul. Brentano's shifting views, recently documented in English with Benito Muller's translation of Descriptive Psychology, a work from the transitional 1890s, made the original plan obsolete. The role of an a priori, philosophical or descriptive psychology, methodologically prior to empirical-experimental genetic psychology, foreshadowed and influenced Husserl's notion of phenomenology, and Brentano's Comtean methodological epoche of desisting from controversial metaphysical statements in favour of an examination of the phenomena likewise presaged Husserl's more ponderous phenomenological reductions.

Brentano's other work covers most areas of philosophy, notably ethics, where he upheld a form of a priori intuitionism much admired by G. E. Moore, the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, philosophy of language, deductive and inductive logic, and the history of philosophy. I shall mention just two areas. In his logic lectures from 1866 onwards (a compilation published 1956) Brentano rejected the subject-predicate analysis of simple judgements and proposed instead (for which he apparently secured written assent from Mill) that all judgements are logical compounds of positive and negative existential judgements. For example the universal judgement All men are mortal becomes the negative existential There are no immortal men. On this basis Brentano radically simplified the inference rules of deductive logic. While unlike de Morgan, Frege and others he does not go beyond logic's traditional scope by recognising relations, within its bounds his reformed-term logic is simple, elegant and easily teachable. Some of his ideas in logic influenced the young Husserl. Unfortunately Brentano took against mathematical logic, which he wrongly associated exclusively with Hamilton's confused doctrine of the quantification of the predicate. His inductive logic, which takes up by far the greater part of his logic lectures, remains unresearched to this day." (pp. 118-119)

30. ———. 2000. "The Four Phases of Philosophy: Brentano's Theory and Austria's History." The Monist no. 83:68-88.

Abstract: "From the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present day, philosophy in Austria has progressed through four phases. The particularities of the first three of these phases have prompted a number of commentators rightly to distinguish a characteristic Austrian, as distinct from German, way of doing philosophy. The main figure of the second phase was Franz Brentano, and his distinctive theory of the four-phase cycle of philosophical development is outlined, and critically compared to other views of the development of philosophy. In Austria itself the caesuras between the phases were marked as much by political as by philosophical events, and the paper shows how philosophy in Austria has been notable in all its phases for the high level and overwhelmingly negative effect of political interference in intellectual life, a doleful saga which continues to this day."

31. ———. 2004. "Judging correctly: Brentano and the reform of elementary logic." In The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, edited by Jacquette, Dale, 45-65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"In this chapter I outline the simple but effective reforms Brentano proposed for elementary deductive logic, basically syllogistic plus; I then discuss briefly how they can be made the basis of a sensible and pedagogically accessible approach to term logic even today, and finally mention their subtle but important influence on logic in the twentieth century." (p. 46)

(...)

"Brentano himself never published his reforms of logic, which is the main reason why historiographers of the subject have passed them by. The reducibility of judgments to the existential form is argued for in chapter VII of the Psychology (PES-E, pp. 201–34) and there are some remarks in the appendix prepared for the 1911 second edition of parts of that book, published as On the Classification of Mental Phenomena. These remarks appear in the English PES-E, pp. 291–301, and Brentano’s negative comments on mathematical logic at pp. 301–6." (p. 47)

32. ———. 2015. "How to Do Things with Things: Brentano’s Reism and its Limits." In Objects and Pseudo-Objects: Ontological Deserts and Jungles From Brentano to Carnap, edited by Seron, Denis, Richard, Sebastien and Leclercq, Bruno, 3-16. Berlin: de Gruyter.

"From about 1904 until the end of his life in 1917, Franz Brentano held an ontological view which has come to be called reism. This is the view that the only things that exist are concrete things (res). The list of objects that this view denies existing is long indeed, and includes: properties and relations, whether considered as individual accidents or as universals; events and processes; facts and states of affairs; numbers, sets and all other mathematical objects; space and time as entities in their own right; intentional contents and objects; propositions, and other abstract senses or meanings. The objects that Brentano does accept as entia realia or things include as individuals mental souls, physical bodies and their parts and lower-dimensional boundaries, and collections of individuals. Brentano conceives it as possible that the primary physical things be of more than three dimensions: he calls such things topoids." (p. 3)

33. Simons, Peter M., and Wolenski, Jan. 1989. "De Veritate: Austro-Polish contributions to the theory of truth from Brentano to Tarski." In The Vienna Circle and the Lvov-Warsaw School, edited by Szaniawski, Klemens, 391-442. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Abstract: "Tarski's essay on truth is the single most important work from the Lw6w-Warsaw school. But it did not come from nothing: its philosophical pedigree goes back to earlier philosophy in Vienna. This paper traces in detail the influences from Brentano, throgh his pupils and their pupils to Tarski, noting the fluctuating nature of Austro-Polish obsession with truth. An examination of the characteristics inherited from this tradition by Tarski's theory enables us to correct several misconceptions about his work."

34. Smith, Barry. 1987. "The Substance of Brentano's Ontology." Topoi no. 6:39-49.

"The literature on Brentano of recent times has manifested an unmistakably deflationary tendency, often presenting Brentano as little more than a forerunner of analytic philosophy, and rarely taking account of more than those few passages in which Brentano talks about something called 'intentionality'. (1) The present paper is an attempt to redress this balance. It seeks to demonstrate that Brentano is to be classified not with the dry logic-and-language-choppers of modem times, but rather with the great metaphysical visionaries of the past, from Leibniz and Spinoza to Bergson and Lord Kelvin. Only in these terms, it may be argued, is it possible to explain the tremendous influence exerted by Brentano on so many of his pupils and disciples.

The paper is a study of'Brentano's ontology, and more specifically of his theory of substance and accident, particularly as put forward toward the end of his life in the materials collected together as the Kategorienlehre." (p. 39)

(1) A notable and heroic exception to this general trend is of course provided by Roderick Chisholm, who is almost single-handedly responsible for the fact that a wider spectrum of Brentanian ideas is at last beginning to make itself felt in certain circles. My indebtedness to him -- and particularly to his classic paper of 1978 [*] which first awakened my interest in Brentano's ontology -- is I hope obvious. He should not, of course, be held responsible for what follows.

[*] Brentano's Conception of Substance and Accident.

35. ———. 1988. "The Soul and its Parts. A Study in Aristotle and Brentano." Brentano Studien no. 1:75-88.

Abstract: "The attempt is made to show that the key for a correct interpretation of Brentano's writings can be derived from an examination of his very early dissertations. The overarching context of all Brentano's writings is the psychology of Aristotle and the ontology of material and immaterial substance that goes together therewith. The present remarks will accordingly consist in an account of Aristotle, and more specifically of Aristotle's conception of the soul, as reflected by Brentano in his Psychology of Aristotle, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint and Descriptive Psychology."

36. ———. 1989. "The primacy of place: an investigation in Brentanian ontology." Topoi no. 8:43-51.

"1. Introdution

What follows is an investigation of the ontology of Franz Brentano with special reference to Brentano's later and superficially somewhat peculiar doctrine to the effect that the substances of the material world are three-dimensional places. Taken as a whole, Brentano's philosophy is marked by three, not obviously compatible, traits. In the first place, his work is rooted in the metaphysics of Aristotle, above all in Aristotle's substance-accident ontology and in the Aristotelian theory of categories. In the second place, Brentano embraced a Cartesian epistemology. He saw the source of all knowledge as residing in our direct awareness of our own mental phenomena and in our capacity to grasp evident incompatibilities in the realm of concepts.(1)

Thirdly, he regarded the existence of an external world as at most probable, and denied outright the existence of a world similar to the world that is given in experience.

Finally, and in some sense linking together these opposing strands, he propagated an idea of what he called "descriptive psychology", a discipline which would on the one hand yield exact knowledge of the structures and categories of mental life, and on the other hand provide an epistemologically sure foundation for other branches of philosophy. As we shall see, it is this psychological aspect of Brentano's philosophy which leads him to his conception of the substantiality of place.

Surprisingly, however, the psychological considerations which underlie Brentano's thinking will be shown to raise a series of questions strictly ontological in nature, questions which are not without a systematic interest of their own."

(1) Knowledge of the first sort he called "empirical"; knowledge of the latter sort "analytic".

37. ———. 1990. "On the Phases of Reism." In Kotarbinski: Logic, Semantics and Ontology, edited by Wolenski, Jan, 137-184. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"The paper will consist of a critical survey of Kotarbinski's development from his early nominalism and 'pansomatistic reism' to the later doctrine of 'temporal phases'. It will be shown that the surface clarity and simplicity of Kotarbinski's writings mask a number of profound philosophical difficulties, connected above all with the problem of giving an adequate account of the truth of contingent (tensed) predications. The paper will examine in particular the attempts to resolve these difficulties on the part of Lesniewski. It will continue with an account of the relations of Kotarbinskian reism to the ontology of things or entia realia defended by the later Brentano.

Kotarbinski's identification of Brentano as a precursor of reism is, it will be suggested, at least questionable, and the paper will conclude with a more careful attempt to situate the Brentanian and Kotarbinskian ontologies within the spectrum of competing ontological views." (pp. 137-138)

38. ———. 1990. "Brentano and Marty: An Inquiry into Being and Truth." In Mind, Meaning and Metaphysics: The Philosophy and Theory of Language of Anton Marty, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, 111-149. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"Aristotle, as is well known, distinguished in his ontology between being in the sense of the categories and being in the sense of being true. (Met., 1017 a 31ff.) The early Brentano, correspondingly, distinguished between things or ens reale on the one hand, and entia rationis or irrealia on the other. Ens reale are for example a soul and its constituents (or 'divisives'), the various mental acts of presentation, judgment, love and hate. Entia rationis are entities such as the existence of A and the non-existence of A, entities which have a role to play in making true our judgments about entia realia.

In the course of time, however, Brentano changed his mind, and his later ontology is an ontology of things alone. Hence there are no entia rationis, and there are no divisives or other non-thingly parts of things. We should talk not of mental acts or psychic phenomena but of 'thinkers' or 'thinking things', all of whom relate exclusively in their thinking to other things (or to themselves) as their objects. 'Thinking' is in this sense univocal. Things are divided into psychic things (minds, presenters, judgers, lovers, haters, and so on) and spatial things (places, hard places, red places, hard red places, and so on)." (p. 111)

39. ———. 1993. "The Soul and its Parts II: Varieties of Inexistence." Brentano Studien no. 4:35-52.

"A Brentanian might criticize contemporary philosophy of mind on at least the following counts:

i. its taxonomy of types of mental act and state is too narrow (thus its repertoire consists, on many standard accounts, in little more than 'beliefs' and `desires');

ii. its treatment of mental acts and states is too slavishly oriented around linguistic factors (thus for example it is standardly suggested that the philosophy of mind is most properly concerned with the so-called 'propositional attitudes');

iii. its treatment of the temporal structures of mental acts and states is overly crude (thus in many standard accounts punctual and episodic acts are not distinguished from enduring states and dispositions);

iv. it presupposes an over-crude theory of the internal structures of mental acts and states and of the corresponding types of parts and unity.

It is with this last that we shall be principally concerned in what follows, and more precisely with Brentano's own account of the part-whole structures obtaining in the mental sphere." (p. 35)

40. ———. 1994. Austrian Philosophy: The Legacy of Franz Brentano. Chicago: Open Court.

Chapter One: Austrian Philosophy and the Brentano School, 7; Chapter Two: Franz Brentano I: On Mind and Its Objects 35; Chapter Three: Franz Brentano II: On Substance and Accident 61.82.

"This book is a survey of the most important developments in Austrian philosophy in its classical period from the 1870s to the Anschluss in 1938." (Preface, p.1)

(...)

"1. Brentano’s Metaphysics

Much of the literature on Brentano has manifested a certain deflationary tendency, often presenting Brentano as little more than a forerunner of Husserl or of analytic philosophy, and rarely taking account of more than those few passages in which Brentano talks about his doctrine of intentionality. Here, in contrast, I shall seek to do full justice to the metaphysical aspects of Brentano’s thinking. At the centre of our concern, as always with Brentano, will be the philosophy of Aristotle, and more specifically Aristotle’s theory of substance and accident, which is given detailed treatment by Brentano in the materials collected together as the Theory of Categories." (p. 61)

41. ———. 2000. "Boundaries: a Brentanian Theory." Brentano Studien no. 8:107-114.

"According to Brentano's theory of boundaries, no boundary can exist without being connected with a continuum. But there is no specifiable part of the continuum, and no point, which is such that we may say that it is the existence of that part or of that point which conditions the boundary. - An adequate theory of the continuum must now recognize that boundaries be boundaries only in certain directions and not in others. This leads to consequences in other areas, too."

42. Smith, David Woodruff. 2020. "Descriptive Psychology and Phenomenology: From Brentano to Husserl to the Logic of Consciousness." In Franz Brentano and Austrian Philosophy, edited by Fisette, Denis, Frechette, Guillaume and Stadler, Friedrich, 49-71. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "In his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874) Franz Brentano launched the discipline of phenomenology as descriptive psychology. Drawing on Brentano’s work, Edmund Husserl developed a conception of phenomenology founded on an enhanced theory of intentionality as a distinctive property of consciousness.

Husserl expanded Brentanian descriptive psychology with an ontology of meaning or content influenced by logical theory, from Bolzano to Frege and beyond.

Here I shall outline an evolving line of phenomenological analysis of the structure of consciousness and its intentionality. This lineage draws key factors from first Brentano and then Husserl with further explication through subsequent forms of ideal meaning and modal ontology. The resulting model of intentional consciousness is a direct legacy flowing from Brentano’s work, though it goes beyond Brentano’s more purely empiricist constraints.

On Brentano’s analysis, an act of consciousness is “directed” primarily toward an object: an object existing “intentionally in” the act. And the act is also directed secondarily, “incidentally”, toward itself: in “inner consciousness”. The primary form of directedness leads into Husserl’s theory of intentionality via phenomenological content or “noematic” meaning. The secondary form of directedness leads into Husserl’s theory of awareness-of-consciousness in “inner time-consciousness”.

Thus, phenomenal intentional consciousness features the way the object is presented in consciousness modified by the way that presentation itself is carried out.

These two features of an act of consciousness define the fundamental form of consciousness.

These features can be further explicated in terms of the way the act is directed via phenomenological content toward the object in “intentionally possible” situations (“in” consciousness) and the way the act itself is executed phenomenally (with “inner consciousness”). The result is a “modal” model of precisely intentionality cum inner awareness.

Recent philosophers of mind have gradually come to focus on features of phenomenological content and inner consciousness that were sharply characterized in Brentano and pursued further in Husserl. The modal model affords a theory of the ideal “logical” structures that define the Brentanian forms of “intentional in-existence” and “inner consciousness”."

43. ———. 2021. "Structures of inner consciousness: Brentano onward." Inquiry. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.

Published online: 26 Apr 2021.

Abstract: "For Brentano, an act of consciousness features a presentation of an object joined with an inner presentation – an ‘inner consciousness’ or inner awareness – of that object-presentation. On Mark Textor’s articulation of Brentano’s model, the act has the structure of a single experience directed upon a plurality, viz.: the object and the experience itself. I consider an alternative development of this Brentanian model. Drawing on Husserl’s part-whole ontology, I submit, the act itself has the structure of a whole formed from two co-dependent parts, viz., the object-presentation and inner awareness of that presentation. Looking to Husserl’s analysis of inner time-consciousness, Textor proposes an enhancement of Brentano’s model of inner consciousness. On Textor’s model, inner awareness is such that one may be aware of one’s experience, in the stream of one’s consciousness, ‘without grasping any adumbrations [of the experience], but temporal ones’. I dig into Husserl’s doctrine of ‘abumbration’ (as where a tree is given visually with adumbrations of its shape on the back side, of its color in gradations, etc.). On my reconstruction, inner awareness of an experience presents the experience within a manifold of ‘adumbrated’ temporal retentions and protentions that place the experience in its stream of consciousness."

44. Soldati, Gianfranco. 2005. "Brentano on Inner Perception, Intrinsic Truth and Evidence." In Experience and Analysis: Papers of the 27th International Wittgenstein Symposium, edited by Reicher, M. E. and Marek, J. C., 63-73. Kirchberg am Wechsel: Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society.

"§ 1. Preliminaries

Brentano’s theory of inner perception, evidence and truth upsets some widespread assumptions in contemporary philosophy. It rests on an unusual notion of inner perception and on a nominal theory of judgement; it attributes a central role to evidence in epistemology and treats mental states as being intrinsically true.

The present contribution aims first at presenting and elucidating some of Brentano’s views on these matters. In some crucial points Brentano’s position will be modified and hopefully enhanced in a way that is compatible with the overall picture.(1) Considerable space will be devoted to the examination of some of the most important objections that have been or might be raised against the position presented on Brentano’s behalf. If by far not invulnerable, the position under scrutiny should hopefully appear more challenging than what it is often taken to be." (p. 63)

(1) References to the passages on which the suggested interpretation of Brentano’s position is based will be provided. The discussion of more problematic texts in Brentano’s work will have to be left for another occasion.

45. Sorabji, Richard. 1991. "From Aristotle to Brentano: the Development of the Concept of Intentionality." In Aristotle and the Later Tradition, edited by Blumenthal, Henry and Robinson, Howard, 227-259. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Reprinted as Essay IV in R. Sorabji, Perception, Conscience and Will in Ancient Philosophy. Variorum collected studies series,Burlington, VT: Ashgate Variorum, 2013.

46. Spiegelberg, Herbert. 1960. The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Second revised edition 1978; Third expanded edition with the collaboration of Karl Schuhmann 1982.

Chapter I. Franz Brentano (1838-1917) forerunner of the phenomenological movement - pp. 27-50.

"Brentano's first concern in psychology was to find a characteristic which separates psychological from non-psychological or 'physical' phenomena. It was in connection with this attempt that he first developed his celebrated doctrine of intentionality as the decisive constituent of psychological phenomena. The sentence in which he introduces the term 'intentionality' is of such crucial importance that I shall render it here in literal translation: Every psychical phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or sometimes the mental) inexistence of an object, and what we should like to call, although not quite unambiguously, the reference (Beziehung) to a content, the directedness (Richtung) toward an object (which in this context is not to be understood as something real) or the immanent-object quality (immanente Gegenständlichkeit). Each contains something as its object, though not each in the same manner. In the representation (Vorstellung) something is represented, in the judgment something is acknowledged or rejected, in desiring it is desired, etc. This intentional inexistence is peculiar alone to psychical phenomena. No physical phenomenon shows anything like it. And thus we can define psychical phenomena by saying that they are such phenomena as contain objects in themselves by way of intention (intentional). (1)Actually, this first characterization of the psychological phenomenon makes use of two phrases: 'intentional inexistence' and 'reference to a content.' It is the first of these phrases which has attracted most attention, and it has even given rise to the view, supported by both anti-scholastics and neo-scholastic critics, that this whole doctrine was nothing but a loan from medieval philosophy. While a quick reading of the passage may seem to confirm this view, it is nevertheless misleading. 'Intentional inexistence,' which literally implies the existence of an 'intentio' inside the intending being, as if imbedded in it, is indeed a Thomistic conception. But it is precisely this conception which Brentano himself did not share, or which in any case he abandoned, to the extent of finally even dropping the very term 'intentionality.' Thus, the second characterization of the psychic phenomenon, 'reference to an object,' is the more important and the only permanent one for Brentano; it is also the one listed exclusively in the Table of Contents, beginning with the first edition. What is more: as far as I can make out, this characterization is completely original with Brentano, except for whatever credit he himself generously extends to Aristotle for its 'first germs' in a rather minor passage of the Metaphysics (1021 a 29). It was certainly none of Brentano's doing that this new wholly unscholastic conception came to sail under the old flag of 'intentionality.' Reference to an object is thus the decisive and indispensable feature of anything that we consider psychical: No hearing without something heard, no believing without something believed, no hoping without something hoped, no striving without something striven for, no joy without something we feel joyous about, etc. Physical phenomena are characterized, by contrast, as lacking such references. It also becomes clear at this point that Brentano's psychological phenomena are always acts, taking this term in a very broad sense which comprises experiences of undergoing as well as of doing, states of consciousness as well as merely transitory processes. Here, then, Brentano for the first time uncovered a structure which was to become one of the basic patterns for all phenomenological analysis." pp. 36-37

(1) Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt I, Buch II, Kapitel I § 5 (pp. 125 f.; English translation p. 88).

47. ———. 1976. "Intention’ and ‘Intentionality’ in the Scholastics, Brentano and Husserl." In The Philosophy of Brentano, edited by McAlister, Linda L., 108-127. London: Duckworth.

Translated from the German by Linda L. McAlister and Margarete Schättle.

The present translation is based on a reprinted version of the German original which appeared in Studia Philosophica, vol. 29 (1970), pp. 189-216.

"The attempt at a more thorough investigation of what is designated by the expressions ‘intention’ and ‘intentional’ in present-day philosophy needs no special justification at the present stage of philosophy. Brentano and Husserl discovered the strategic role of these phenomena within all mental life, and brought it to the fore. Nevertheless, one can hardly claim that the subject and its context have been sufficiently explored. In several respects more clarity is needed. In many cases unexamined or insufficiently examined preconceptions and anticipations are obstructions to the real understanding of the situation. In part these harken back to conscious orunconscious historical recollections by which one is guided or, rather, misguided, in the study of the phenomena. It is the main purpose of this essay to render them harmless and at the same time to work out more clearly the systematic problems that stand behind the historical development.

Not everything, however, that goes by the name ‘intention’ will be dealt with, but only extra-practical intention. ‘Intention’ is commonly understood in the sense of an intention to do something or a purpose. That is the original practical meaning of the term and it has been preserved in ordinary language. This meaning will not be discussed here. By contrast, the extra-practical is secondary; it has been limited to academic philosophy, and is demonstrably derived from the Scholastics of the Middle Ages." (pp. 108-109)

48. ———. 1978. "On the Significance of the Correspondence Between Franz Brentano and Edmund Husserl." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 5:95-116.

"This correspondence, still unpublished, extends over fourty years. Its significance is both biographical and philosophical. Biographically it shows Brentano's tolerant friendship for his emancipated student and Husserl's unwavering veneration for his only philosophical teacher. The philosophical issues taken up are Euclidean axiomatics, Husserl's departure from Brentano in the Logical Investigations by distinguishing two types of logic as the way out from psychologism, and the possibility of negative presentations, but not Husserl's new phenomenology. Few agreements are reached, but the dissents were clarified."

49. Spinicci, Paolo. 1988. "Some Observations on the Concept of Descriptive Psychology in the Philosophy of Franz Brentano." In La Scuola di Brentano. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"In an oft-quoted passage of Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft(1) Husserl characterize descriptive psychology as the mature fruit of Brentano's philosophy, and the most vital part of his thought. Brentano, then fore, is seen by him primarily as a descriptive psychologist: this opinion could be shared, but it leads to several problems of interpretation. The term 'descriptive psychology’ is too vague, and can be applied to very different philosophies.

(...)

Of course some suggestions as to the real meaning of the term ‘descriptive psychology’ can be found in the literature on Brentano (...), but it is only since the recent publication ot Brentano's university courses (1887/88; 1888/89; 1890/91) on psychognosy (Psychognosie)(3) that we are in a belter position to resolve the theoretical problem, which is of such importance in Brentano's philosophy. In the pages of Deskriptive Psychologie, Brentano points out that pure psychology is in principle indipendent from considerations of a physiological-genetic nature, and indicates what he regards as the essential features of psychognosy. According to Brentano, descriptive psychology is a conceptual formulation of our psychic experience which must result in necessarily valid propositions. One can go from here to clarify Brentano's concept of descriptive psychology, pointing out its connection with Husserl's phenomenology, so confirming earlier statements of this relationship(4). Brentano speaks of psychognosy as a pure psychology (reine Psychologie) and as an exact science (exakte Wissenschaft) (see DP, p. 1), and from the beginning he explicitly compares psychognosy with mathematics in order to bring out clearly that its assertions are necessarily true, which leads us inevitably to the pages of Ideen III where Husserl explains the meaning and nature of pure eidetic phenomenology.

Such a relationship does indeed exist, but an evaluation of the historical significance and the theoretical importance of psychognosy should not be limited to this assertion: it must try to clarify exactly what Brentano means by ‘pure psychology’ and ‘exact science’ and to what extent these definitions can explain the nature of his work. In my opinion Brentano really goes beyond the boundaries of such definitions, and a full understanding of his project for a descriptive psychology must take this into account." (pp. 82-83, a note omitted)

(1) E. Husserl, Philosophic als strenge Wissenschaft, (1910 11), edited by W. Szilasi, Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 1971, p. 26.

(3) F. Brentano, Deskriptive Psychologie, edited by R. Chisholm and W. Baumgartner, Meiner, Hamburg, 1982. Abbrv.: DP.

(4) The presence of this relationship - revealed by O. Kraus in his Preface to Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt - has been emphasized mainly by R.M. Chisholm.

50. Srzednicki, Jan. 1962. "Remarks concerning the interpretation of the philosophy of Franz Brentano." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 22:308-316.

"Most of the editors of Brentano's works and his commentators have a tendency to attempt to arrest his thought at a given moment and then to try to work out, in a systematicw ay, his views concerningm ost problems.

So, for instance, Alfred Kastil (in Die Philosophie Franz Brentano's, Salzburg, 1951) ". ..attempted to represent Brentano's teaching in its final form . . ." 1 The same tendency is clearly evident in, e.g., F. Mayer-Hillebrand's edition of Die Lehre vom Richtigen Urteil (Bern, 1956). In order to attain this objective the editor used Brentano's own writings and some writings of Hillebrand, and produced a systematic whole by skillful arrangement, subtle changes and additions. The effect is one of detailed and systematict theory represented as Brentano's final views."

(...)

"Despite a certain sympathy with the attitude, and some respect for the justification produced, I am of the opinion that the treatment does not suit Brentano's philosophy really well; that it is not likely to bring out the best in his work; and finally that it possibly rests to some extent on a misunderstanding of his advice." (p. 308)

51. ———. 1963. "A reply to Professor F. Mayer-Hillebrand." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 23:445-446.

"In this brief comment upon Professor Mayer-Hillebrand's reply to my article, I shall not contest the points concerning Brentano's own earnest permission to have his papers edited in the Kastil ayer-Hillebrand way. I have already admitted its existence and I was doubtful merely because I did suspect that his modesty might have led him to be unwilling to have his pupils spend most of their ability and energies editing his papers. I admit also that this type of edition is often very acceptable. I have great admiration for the painstaking work both of A. Kastil and Mayer-Hillebrand, notwithstanding which, I am under the impression that they might have, to say the least, underemphasized some important aspects of Brentano's philosophy. It was the purpose of my article to re-emphasize them. As to the point of pure scholarship, even if one would agree that EL. 67 belongs firmly to a transitory and formative period, would not the fact that Brentano's philosophy was in this stage after about forty years of active professional life support my general contention? Further, I find it unlikely that Brentano would ever produce a systematic presentation if it meant system-building. The fact that impresses one here is not so much Brentano's late blindness and dictating difficulties, but that he was engaged in new research, as shown by his discussion, admittedly late, of evidence. The open-mindedness with which he approached the subject appertaining to one of the main problems that occupied him for a long time is also significant. Is it really consonant with a system-building attitude? However, I have not denied that Brentano was a systematic philosopher, even if he was not a system-builder." (p. 445)

52. ———. 1965. Franz Brentano's Analysis of Truth. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

"Brentano has established many points and provided a number of important suggestions. Let us now survey briefly those of his observations that appear to be of more importance for the future research into the matter. Brentano has shown that the correspondence theory is not acceptable. His detailed reasoning concerning the nature of the relation itself and the nature of its termini is quite conclusive. The relation itself cannot be properly explained: If it is discussed in general terms it soon degenerates into a mere metaphor. However, if an attempt is made at giving it a more definite meaning, we find that there are grave objections to each suggested solution. None of the suggested particular determinations can account for all past, future and negative assertions. We are in difficulties whether we assume that both termini of the relation must exist or not. It is impossible to characterise sufficiently well the thing with which our judgement is to correspond.

If it is outside the mind, we cannot give a consistent picture of it; even entia rationis will not help because they would naturally correspond to affirmative judgements only. Should they correspond also to negative jUdgements, then how could the same situation correspond closely enough with both? Further difficulties arise with regard to intellectus, etc.(5) In view of all these difficulties, it is quite clear that it is impossible to resurrect the correspondence theory. We must therefore investigate other possibilities." (p. 112)

(5) See Chapter I, Section I and Chapter V, Sections I and 2; also Chapter IV, Sections 3.

53. ———. 1966. "Some Elements of Brentano's Analysis of Language and Their Ramifications." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 20:434-445.

"Brentano's departure from the traditional correspondence theory of truth was precipitated by his qualms about Aristotle's account of judgement as the combination or separation of ideas. We can see it very clearly in his early: Uber den Begriff der Wahrheit (1889) (1). He maintains there that the basic form of judgement is not "A is B", as Aristotle would have it, but "A is", what he calls an existential judgement.

It will be clear that this must put serious strain on Aristotle's theory of truth where he characteristically says: (2)

... he who thinks the separated to be separated and the combined to be combined has the truth, while he whose thought is in a state contrary to that of the objects is in error (tr. W. D. Ross)." (p. 434)

(1) Cf. Wahrheit und Evidenz, F. Meiner, 1930, also translation by R. M. Chisholm, The True and the Evident, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966 (W & E).

(2) Metaphysica, IX, 10, 1051, b, 3.

54. ———. 1998. "Brentano and the Thinkable." In The Brentano Puzzle, edited by Poli, Roberto, 139-150. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"Our original puzzle was that thinkability constituting a common umbrella of consideration tended to reduce all our proposals to questionbegging; this is now resolved at least in principle.

The picture suggested here, without at the moment supplying many details, is that the parameter of ’thinkable' provides us with the possibility of having something as 'the given.' Having that much, we can envisage how object-level choices arise on some natural basis. The parameter of compatibility perspectives can then supply an interconnected matrix that in turn supports various: operations, systems, structures, etc.

This does not deal sufficiently with the whole problem of preferencecompatibility without referring to work beyond what could be presented today. What has been said constitutes, I hope, a demonstration of the importance of the sub-level of the thinkable. That level permits us to make moves capable in principle of resolving a difficult situation sketched above, for it enables us to side-step the main difficulty of questionbegging. Short of it every possible proposal seemed subject to it.

I conclude by suggesting that Brentano's doctrine of Doppelurteile can be developed and applied very usefully in this direction." (p. 150)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography on Franz Brentano: Studies in English, Eight Part: Tai - Z

Bibliography

1. Taieb, Hamid. 2015. "Relations and Intentionality in Brentano’s Last Texts." Brentano Studien no. 13:183-209.

Abstract: "This paper will present an analysis of the relational aspect of Brentano’s last theory of intentionality. My main thesis is that Brentano, at the end of his life, considered relations (Relatives) without existent terms to be genuine relations (Relatives). Thus, intentionality is a non-reducible real relation (the thinking subject is a non-reducible real relative) regardless of whether or not the object exists. I will use unpublished texts from the Brentanian Nachlass to support my argument."

2. ———. 2017. "Brentano on Properties and Relations." In The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School, edited by Kriegel, Uriah, 156-162. New York: Routledge.

"Brentano wrote his doctoral dissertation on Aristotle’s ontology (Brentano 1862/1975a).

However, the books and articles that Brentano published during his lifetime do not contain much information about his own theory of properties and relations. His main texts on this topic can be found in the posthumous volumes The True and the Evident (Brentano 1930/1966b), The Theory of Categories (1933/1981a), and The Renunciation of the Unreal (1966a), which mainly contain documents from after his reistic turn of 1904 (see Chapter 13). The manuscripts “About the Theory of Categories” (Brentano 1992–3), “On Substance” (1993), and “Abstraction and Relation” (2013a/c), all from approximately 1900, are Brentano’s most important published pre-reistic texts on properties and relations.

Some information is also present in Brentano’s logic lectures, given from 1869–1870 until 1877 in Würzburg and Vienna (Brentano, EL 80).(1)(1) Much information on the young Brentano’s theory of properties and relations can be found in the metaphysics lectures given in Würzburg from 1867 onward (ms. M 96), but these lectures are unpublished.

In this chapter, I will focus on Brentano’s theory of properties and relations as established during his mature period, from Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (Brentano 1874) until his death in 1917, and indicate the most important changes that his reistic turn entailed for his theory of properties and relations.(2) First, I discuss the ontological features common to properties and relations (§1); then I deal with relations in particular (§2)." (p. 156)

(1) For the dating of these lectures, see Rollinger 2011.

(2) I will briefly outline the young Brentano’s theory of properties and relations in the footnotes. For the recognition of three periods in Brentano’s ontology, namely “conceptualism” (1862–1874), “ontology of intentionality” (1874–1904), and “reism” (1904–1917), see Chrudzimski 2004, Chrudzimski and Smith 2004.

References

Brentano, Franz (1862). Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles. Freiburg: Herder.

Brentano, Franz (1975a). On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle. Trans. R. George. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Brentano, Franz (1930). Wahrheit und Evidenz. Leipzig: Felix Meiner.

Brentano, Franz (1966b). The True and the Evident. Trans. R. M. Chisholm, I. Politzer, and K. R. Fischer. London: Routledge.

Brentano, Franz (1933). Kategorienlehre. Leipzig: Felix Meiner.

Brentano, Franz (1981a). The Theory of Categories. Trans. R. M. Chisholm and N. Guterman. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Brentano, Franz (1966a). Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen. Bern: Francke.

Brentano, Franz (1993). “Von der Substanz.” Axiomathes 4: 2–40.

Brentano, Franz (2013a). “Abstraktion und Relation,” in Denis Fisette and Guillaume Fréchette (eds.), Themes from Brentano. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Chrudzimski, A. (2004). Die Ontologie Franz Brentanos. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Chrudzimski, A. and B. Smith (2004). “Brentano’s Ontology: From Conceptualism to Reism,” in D. Jacquette (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Franz Brentano. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

3. ———. 2017. "Intentionality and Reference: A Brentanian Distinction." The Monist no. 100:120-132.

Abstract: "Brentano distinguishes between intentionality and reference. According to Brentano, all mental acts are intentionally directed toward something. Some mental acts also refer to something, which is the case when their object exists in reality. For Brentano, such acts, besides their intentionality, have a peculiar relation of similarity to their object. However, there is no mention of Brentano’s distinction between intentionality and reference in the literature. Drawing on some lesser known texts, this paper aims both at showing that Brentano makes such a distinction and at underscoring the philosophical significance of his position."

4. ———. 2018. Relational Intentionality: Brentano and the Aristotelian Tradition. Dordrecht: Springer.

"Indeed, though Brentano’s monograph on Aristotle may have helped to produce some confusions, especially as regards the assimilation of intentionality with causality, nevertheless, in his later works he draws a distinction between the intentional relation, the causal relation and the relation of reference. Moreover, he finds this tripartition already in Aristotle, specifically in Metaphysics Δ.15, which is about the different classes of relation. Similar distinctions were made by authors in antiquity and the Middle Ages, precisely in the context of the reception of Aristotle’s texts on relations. This might make it possible to clear up the confusions mentioned above, in Brentano and perhaps in Aristotle, but also in medieval thinkers and the Aristotelian tradition more generally. The present work is intended to meet these desiderata: from its

point of departure in Brentano, it goes back to Aristotle, then considers Alexander of Aphrodisias and the Neoplatonist commentators, before proceeding to the scholastic philosophers of the late Middle Ages and Suárez in the early modern period; it aims at analyzing these authors’ accounts of intentionality, and the way they distinguish it from the relations of causality or reference. This is, in broad strokes, the topic of this work. From the point of view of method, it will aim to harmonize scholarship over the longue durée with systematic analysis in the history of philosophy." (Preface, pp. VI-VII)

5. ———. 2020. "A Paleo-Criticism of Modes of Being: Brentano and Marty against Bolzano, Husserl, and Meinong." Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy no. 7:849-876.

Abstact: "Brentanians defend the view that there are distinct types of object, but that this does not entail the admission of different modes of being. The most general distinction among objects is the one between realia, which are causally efficacious, and irrealia, which are causally inert. As for being, which is equated with existence, it is understood in terms of “correct acknowledgeability.” This view was defended for some time by Brentano himself and then by his student Anton Marty. Their position is opposed to Bolzanian, Husserlian, and Meinongian ontologies, in which a distinction in the (higher) types of object implies a distinction in their mode of being. These Austro-German discussions anticipate much of the contemporary debate between Quineans, who accept only differences in objects, and neo-Meinongians or other ontological pluralists, who accept different modes of being.

My paper first presents the Brentanian view in detail and then evaluates its philosophical significance."

6. ———. 2020. "Brentanian Association of Ideas." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 97:203-222.

Abstract: "This paper presents and evaluates the Brentanian theory of association of ideas. The topic of association usually brings to mind British Empiricism, which is often thought to have a monopoly on the matter. Brentano, however, adopts an original, alternative account of association.

He argues that all cases of association can be placed under a single general law, that of “habit”.

His explicit account of the topic is rather brief; how- ever, his most faithful pupil, Anton Marty, thoroughly developed his master’s views. Marty presents Brentano’s account of association in detail, and endeavours to defend it against rival theories, notably those which hold that the laws of “similarity”, or of what is called “redintegration”, are able to explain all cases of association. First, the pa- per presents the information found in Brentano himself on association of ideas. Then, it turns to Marty to analyze his developments of the Brentanian view. Finally, the paper evaluates Brentano and Marty’s account by tackling some objections that it may face."

7. ———. 2020. "Husserl on Brentanian Psychology: A Correct Criticism?" In Franz Brentano's Philosophy after Hundred Years: From History of Philosophy to Reism, edited by Fisette, Denis, Fréchette, Guillaume and Janoušek, Hynek, 87-108. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Husserl often pays tribute to his teacher Brentano for having opened the path towards phenomenology. However, the praise is systematically followed by a criticism: Brentano failed to draw all the consequences from his ground-breaking rediscovery of intentionality, and remained stuck in inadequate psychological research.

For Husserl, there are three ways to study mental acts: empirical, eidetic, and transcendental.

What is objected to Brentano is his adherence to empirical psychology. Husserl himself focuses on the second and third levels. It is clear that Brentano never entered into transcendental considerations. However, it seems also clear that he was doing eidetic-like research in psychology in a way similar to Husserl. In the paper, I first present Husserl’s criticism of empirical and, thus, Brentanian psychology. I then turn to Brentano’s and the psychology of his heirs and try to show that Husserl’s criticism is unjustified. In the course of the discussion, I treat the crucial epistemological question of eidetic vs empirical knowledge, both in Husserl and in Brentano."

8. ———. 2020. "Ordinary language semantics: the contribution of Brentano and Marty." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 28:777-796.

Abstract: "This paper examines the account of ordinary language semantics developed by Franz Brentano and his pupil Anton Marty. Long before the interest in ordinary language in the analytic tradition, Brentanian philosophers were exploring our everyday use of words, as opposed to the scientific use of language. Brentano and Marty were especially interested in the semantics of (common) names in ordinary language. They claimed that these names are vague, and that this is due to the structure of the concepts that constitute their meaning: concepts expressed by such names are themselves vague, based on typicality, and have more or less similar items within their extension. After presenting the views of Brentano and Marty, this paper compares them to later accounts of meaning and concepts, notably Wittgenstein’s theory of family resemblances and the prototype theory of concepts, and emphasizes the originality of the Brentanian position."

9. ———. 2021. "Brentano and the Medieval Distinction Between First and Second Intentions." Topoi no. 41:143-158.

Abstract: "Brentano’s account of intentionality has often been traced back to its scholastic sources. This is justified by his claim that objects of thought have a specific mode of being—namely, “intentional inexistence” (intentionale Inexistenz)—and that mental acts have an “intentional relation” (intentionale Beziehung) to these objects. These technical terms in Brentano do indeed recall the medieval notions of esse intentionale, which is a mode of being, and of intentio, which is a “tending towards” (tendere in) of mental acts. However, within the lexical family of intentio there is another distinction that plays an important role in medieval philosophy—namely, the distinction between first and second intentions (intentio prima and intentio secunda), which are, roughly speaking, concepts of things and concepts of concepts respectively. What is less well-known is that Brentano explicitly borrowed this distinction as well, and used it in his account of intentionality. This paper explores this little-known chapter in the scholastic-Austrian history of intentionality by evaluating both the historical accuracy and the philosophical significance of Brentano’s borrowing of the scholastic distinction between first and second intentions."

10. ———. 2021. "Brentano on the Characteristics of Sensation." In The Philosophy of Brentano: Contributions from the Second International Conference Graz 1977 & 2017, in Memory of Rudolf Haller, edited by Antonelli, Mauro and Binder, Thomas, 192-208. Leiden: Brill Rodopi.

"In this paper, I present Brentano’s account of sensation and the way he distinguishes this type of psychic phenomenon from other types. After introducing the three main classes of psychic phenomena in Brentano, I focus on his positive account of sensation. I then address in turn each of the other candidates with which sensation may be confused, and I explain how Brentano distinguishes sensation from them." (p. 193)

11. ———. 2023. "Brentano on the individuation of mental acts." European Journal of Philosophy:431-444.

Abstract: "This paper aims to present and evaluate Brentano's account of the individuation of mental acts. In his early works, Brentano assimilated mental acts to tropes; however, he encountered difficulties in explaining their individuation, since the usual solutions for the individuation of tropes were not readily applicable to his theory of mental acts. In a later period, Brentano introduced into his psychology what he called the “soul,” and this allowed him to explain the individuation of mental acts. Finally, after his “reistic” turn, he excluded mental acts from his ontology, for he rejected abstracta of any kind, including abstract particulars, and admitted only things, or res (in Latin), that is, concrete particulars; in his late philosophy, there are no “thinkings,” but only “thinkers.” However, he still needed to explain what individuates different thinkers, and this was again the soul. In the conclusion, the paper critically compares the different theoretical options considered by Brentano."

12. Taieb, Hamid, and Cesalli, Laurent. 2018. "Brentano and Medieval Ontology." Brentano Studien no. 16:335-362.

Abstract: "Since the first discussion of Brentano’s relation to (and account of) medieval philosophy by Spiegelberg in 1936, a fair amount of studies have been dedicated to the topic. And if those studies focused on some systematic issue at all, the beloved topic of intentionality clearly occupied a hegemonic position in the scholarly landscape. This paper considers the question from the point of view of ontology, and in a twofold perspective: What did Brentano know about medieval ontology and what kind of access did he have to that material (section 1)? What kind of use did Brentano make of medieval material in his own philosophy, and with what kind of results (section 2)?"

13. Tănăsescu, Ion. 2012. "Franz Brentano's Dissertation and the Problem of Intentionality." In Franz Brentano's Metaphysics and Psychology, edited by Tănăsescu, Ion, 154-179. Bucharest: Zeta Books.

"It is well known that Franz Brentano’s dissertation On theSeveral Senses of Being in Aristotle (1862) played a decisive role in the genesis of the problem of being for the young Heidegger." (p. 154, a note omitted)

(...)

"Against this background, the thesis of this study is that in Brentano’s dissertation two phenomenological veins through which Aristotle infl uenced the phenomenology of the XXth century can be identifi ed: the polysemy of being expressly featured by Heidegger, and Brentano’s analysis of Aristotle’s being in the mind. Th ough this latter vein did not receive any attention from Heidegger, convincing arguments can be made in favour of the idea that the analysis of being in the dissertation leads to the problem of intentionality in Brentanian psychology and his School, including the Husserlian phenomenology. For that reason I consider the analysis of being in the mind from the dissertation as the Husserlian phenomenological vein, while the polysemy of being belongs to the Heideggerian phenomenological vein." (p. 155)

14. ———, ed. 2012. Franz Brentano's Metaphysics and Psychology: Upon the Sesquicentennial of Franz Brentano's Dissertation Bucharest: Zeta Books.

Contents: Foreword 7; Edoardo Fugali: Trendelenburg, Brentano und die Aristoteles-Renaissance in der deutschen Philosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts: die Frage nach dem Ursprung der Kategorien 13; Dale Jacquette: Brentano on Aristotle’s Categories: First Philosophy and the Manifold Senses of Being 53; Klaus Hedwig: „...Eine gewisse Kongenialität“ Brentanos Rückgriff auf Thomas von Aquin in seiner Dissertation 95; Susan Krantz Gabriel: Heidegger’s Question and the Fundamental Sense of Being in Brentano 132; Ion Tanasescu: Franz Brentano’s Dissertation and the Problem of Intentionality 154; Josef Seifert: Über das notwendige Dasein Gottes Eine kritische Antwort auf Franz Brentanos Kritik des ontologischen Gottesbeweises 180; Paul Janssen: Die Gottesrede bei Brentano 225; Robin D. Rollinger: Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint: its Background and Conception 261; Guillaume Frféchette: Deux aspects de l’intentionnalité dans la Psychologie de Brentano 310; Denis Seron: The Fechner-Brentano Controversy on the Measurement of Sensation 344; Carlo Ierna: Brentano and Mathematics 368; Roberto Poli: Modes and Boundaries 397; Federico Baccaccini: La vérité efficace: l’origine du concept de vrai chez Brentano entre Evidenzphilosophie et pragmatisme 419; Thomas Binder: Franz Brentanos philosophischer Nachlass. Eine historische Annäherung an einen schwierigen Fall 452-514.

15. ———. 2014. "Categorial relations as truth-makers in Franz Brentano’s dissertation." Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie no. 76:247-260.

"...I shall further understand by the term 'truth-maker' the categorial relations between substance and its accidents, considered as relations by virtue of which the judgments concerning them are true or false. This position allows me to specify the perspective from which the term 'truthmaker' is approached in this essay: this study is not in any way intended to provide a contribution to the contemporary research devoted to this problem. Instead, it will provide an interpretation of categorial relations as being what the term 'truth-makers' designates in the statement concerning the neglect of their role in Brentano's reading and aimsto provide arguments on behalf of the opposite thesis.(8) Therefore what follows is only an exegetical contribution, the goals of which are carefully limited to the way in which Brentano understood Aristotle's correspondence theory of truth in his first work. Also, I am specifying that in order to formulate the ideas that follow I accepted from the beginning the assumption on which the position I call into question relies, namely, that the Aristotelian correspondence theory of truth analysed by Brentano can be discussed in the specific terms of the truth-maker account.

In accord with this, I shall present further arguments in favour of the thesis that, in his dissertation, Brentano did not neglect but, on the contrary, placed a particular emphasis on the role of categorial relations as truth-makers in Aristotle." (pp. 249-250, a note omitted)

(8) See A. Chrudzimski, Die Ontologie Franz Brentanos, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 2004,, p. 60; p. 62.

16. ———. 2015. "The two Theories of Intentionality in Brentano and the Program of Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint." Brentano Studien no. 13:211-231.

Abstract: "The paper defends the following thesis: the intentionality passage from Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874) can be interpreted from two perspectives: intentionality as the most salient distinguishing feature separating the mental from the physical, and intentionality as a theory of the way in which mental acts, with their contents, are related to extra-mental objects. Fundamentally, the theory of intentionality from 1874 is an example of the former. Its role is that of allowing the establishment of psychology as a science. However, it can also be understood as a theory of intentionality in the second sense through a clarification of the relations it entails between the content and the object of the act. For this reason, it could be said that the act–content–extra-mental object distinction was already achieved in the 1874 work, at least at the level of sensory acts. The distinction between the psychical act, the content, and the object presented through this content was already made in the EL 80 Logik manuscript from 1869/70 at the level of nominal presentation, which provides a further argument for the above thesis."

17. ———. 2017. "The Intentionality of Sensation and the Problem of Classification of Philosophical Sciences in Brentano’s empirical Psychology." Axiomathes no. 27:243-263.

Abstract: "In the well-known intentionality quote of his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Brentano characterises the mental phenomena through the following features: (1) the intentional inexistence of an object, (2) the relation to a content, and (3) the direction toward an object. The text argues that this characterisation is not general because the direction toward an object does not apply to the mental phenomena of sensation. The second part of the paper analyses the consequences that ensue from here for the Brentanian classification of mental phenomena: in Brentano’s psychology one can distinguish two concepts of mental phenomena—the mental phenomenon in a broad sense and the mental phenomenon in a narrow sense; the former concept allows the separation of the mental from the physical, while the narrow concept allows the distinguishing of the main classes of mental phenomena. The third part of the paper shows that, with respect to sensation, the absence of a direction toward an object is compatible with both Brentano’s early taxonomies of philosophical sciences, and his early program for the establishment of a new, empirical and non-speculative philosophy. For this reason, I hold that intentionality is important for the foundation of both psychology, and empirical philosophy."

18. ———. 2019. "Monism and Particularism: Methodology in Brentano’s Psychology." Axiomathes no. 29:397-412.

Abstract: "The paper argues that Brentano was the exponent of a methodological monism, which is based on the requirement that science should be grounded on experience, and not on a speculative-idealistic principle, as in the case of German idealism. In Brentano’s psychological writings, this methodological requirement concretized in two different theses: (T1) The method of psychology is identical with the method of natural science; (T2). The method of psychology is inspired by the method of natural science. The thesis of this study is that an important part of Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint is elaborated in accordance with T1. By contrast, Brentano’s Descriptive Psychology illustrates the subsequent decision to give up this idea. In its place, the aforementioned requirement is elaborated in the spirit of a methodological particularism that recommends the scientist elaborate his methods according to the specificity of the phenomena under investigation and to the difficulties that need to be overcome when approaching them."

19. ———. 2020. "The two Theories of Intentionality in Brentano and CHisholm's Ontological and Psychological Theses." Revue Roumaine de Philosophie no. 42:341-350.

Abstract: "R. M. Chisholm interprets Brentano’s theory of intentionality through the lens of two theses: the ontological thesis, according to which the intentionality of the mental designates the fact that there is an immanent object in the act; and the psychological thesis, according to which intentionality consists of the direction of the mental act toward the extra-mental object. In my paper I interpret Chisholm’s and Brentano’s theses on intentionality from two perspectives: intentionality as the most salient distinguishing feature separating the mental from the physical (Chisholm’s ontological thesis), and intentionality as a theory of the way in which mental acts with their content are related to extra-mental but theoretically-constructed objects of physics (Chisholm’s psychological thesis). Thus, an important issue of my paper is also to show that Chisholm’s well-known ontological and psychological theses on Brentanian intentionality rest on presuppositions that do not fit the program of Brentanian psychology."

20. ———. 2021. "Franz Brentano and Anton Marty: Two Versions of Descriptive Psychology?" In The Philosophy of Brentano: Contributions from the Second International Conference Graz 1977 & 2017, in Memory of Rudolf Haller, edited by Antonelli, Mauro and Binder, Thomas, 179-191. Leiden: Brill Rodopi.

"In the following, I attempt to clarify the relation between Anton Marty’s descriptive psychology and Brentano’s empirical and descriptive psychology. In this respect, I shall start by describing the structure of PDP [see Note] and by distinguishing two concepts of descriptive psychology. I want to specify from the very beginning that what follows addresses only the relationship between the published versions of Brentano’s and Marty’s lectures on descriptive psychology. A full assessment of this issue will be possible only after the two manuscript versions of Brentano’s lectures on descriptive psychology become available, and after determining if and to what extent Anton Marty was familiar with them. Given that hitherto specialist literature has highlighted mostly the common features of Marty’s and Brentano’s psychologies (Antonelli, 2011, pp. xxixf.; Marek & Smith, 1987, pp. 38ff.), I shall focus mainly on their differences." (pp. 180-181, notes omitted)

Note: For the sake of brevity, I shall use the following abbreviations: PES for Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint (1874), DP for Franz Brentano’s Descriptive Psychology (1982) and PDP (Prague Descriptive Psychology) for Anton Marty’s Descriptive Psychology (2011).

References

Antonelli, M. (2011). Die deskriptive Psychologie von Anton Marty. Wege und Abwege eines Brentano-Schüler. In A. Marty, Descriptive Psychology, ed. by M. Antonelli & J. C. Marek (pp. xi–lxxviii). Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann.

Marek, J.C., & Smith, B. 1987. Einleitung zu A. Martys “Elemente der deskriptiven Psychologie”. Conceptus, 53/54, 33–47.

21. Tănăsescu, Ion, Bejinariu, Alexandru, Krantz Gabriel, Susan, and Stoenescu, Costantin, eds. 2022. Brentano and the Positive Philosophy of Comte and Mill. Berlin: de Gruyter.

With Translations of Original Writings on Philosophy as Science by Franz Brentano.

Contents: List of Abbreviations IX; Ion Tănăsescu: Introduction 1; Nicholas Capaldi: Comte, Mill, and Brentano on the Intellectual Status of Philosophy and Its Relationship to History 9; Michel Bourdeau: Comte on Psychology: The Criticism of “Inner Observation” and the Constitution of the “Systematic View of the Soul” 31; Ion Tănăsescu: Franz Brentano and Auguste Comte: The Theory of Stages and the Psychology 45; Bianca Savu: Comte and Brentano: Elements for a Theory of Decline 139; Susan Krantz Gabriel: Can We Have Scientific Knowledge About God? Brentano on Comte’s Metaphysical Skepticism 165; Michel Bourdeau, Ion Tănăsescu: Intentionality and the Classification of Phenomena and Sciences in Comte’s Cours de Philosophie Positive and in Brentano’s Empirical Psychology 185; Constantin Stoenescu: Brentano’s View about Natural Science and Methodological Phenomenalism. A Comparison with John Stuart Mill’s Approach 223; Arnaud Dewalque: The Reception of Positivism in Whewell, Mill and Brentano 245; Andreea Eșanu: Franz Bentano’s Multifaceted View of Induction in Empirical and Genetic Psychology 265; Cyril McDonnell: Hume’s “Bundle of Perceptions” and the “Problem of the I” in Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint 279; Carlo Ierna: Brentano’s Mathematical Foundation of Science 309; Robin D. Rollinger: Franz Brentano on the Errors of Mach’s Positivism: Psychology, Metaphysics, Logic 331; Witold Płotka: On the Brentanian Legacy in Twardowski’s Views on Psychology 351; Alexandru Bejinariu: Descriptive and Intentional Contents. Considerations on Husserl’s Logical Investigations from Brentano’s Empirical Point of View 371; Wolfgang Huemer: Brentano’s Four Phases and the Rise of Scientific Philosophy in the Light of His Relation to His Students 401; Thomas Binder: Brentano in Exile: The Brentano Institute at Oxford 415; Appendix: The Idea of Philosophy as Science in Brentano Habilitation Theses 1866 433; Auguste Comte and Positive Philosophy 1869 437; Introduction to the Concept of the History of Philosophy 457; On the Law of Historical Development 475; Philosophy of the History of Philosophy 485; On the Reasons for a Loss of Confidence in the Area of Philosophy 489; On Schelling’s Philosophy 501; On the Future of Philosophy 523; My Parting Wishes for Austria 1894 571-590.

Index 591; Authors 591; Subject 598-616.

22. Tassone, Biagio G. 2011. "Franz Brentano's Phenomenological Transformation of Aristotle's Theory of Judgment." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 42:305-328.

"In what follows Brentano’s early reading, adoption and reformulation of selected, central Aristotelian doctrines pertaining to philosophy of mind and ontology will be examined. Here it will be shown how the epistemological and ontological grounds for the theory of intellectual judgment found in Aristotle’s writings strongly influenced the early Brentano. Nonetheless, for various reasons, Brentano critically rejected certain aspects of the Aristotelian theory of judgment and developed what can be called his phenomenological theory of judgment as an alternative. To better understand Brentano’s phenomenological theory of judgment and its significance, special emphasis will be placed on two related areas: philosophy of mind and the theory of truth. Focusing on selected passages in Brentano’s and Aristotle’s writings that discuss mental reference, representation, semantic content and the nature of truth claims, the implications and consequences of Brentano’s phenomenological transformation of Aristotelianism will be spelled out. The most important consequence of Brentano’s transformation of Aristotle’s theory of judgment will be seen to be the articulation of a new and different understanding of the nature of truth." (p. 305)

23. ———. 2012. From Psychology to Phenomenology: Franz Brentano's 'Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint' and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

"The following book presents an outline and critical reading of Franz Brentano’s philosophy of mind focusing closely on the system outlined in his magnum opus Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint.(1) In this 1874 text Brentano articulates a teleological and neo-Aristotelian framework for understanding the mental as representational. Brentano’s earlier development of Aristotelian metaphysics and ontology in an empirical direction set the stage for the articulation of his philosophical psychology and new theory of the mental. Nonetheless Brentano’s philosophical psychology still forms one of the overlooked alternatives in contemporary philosophy of mind. This is not to deny that the philosophical system of the PES has not had a strong, albeit indirect, influence on subsequent philosophy of mind. Many isolated aspects of Brentano’s thought have been critically examined and commented on in the existing literature, yet the actual position put forth in the PES is almost never examined in itself as a whole and within its historical context.(2)" (p. 1)

(1) Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte, originally published in 1874 by Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig. The Second expanded edition Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt appeared in 1924 and was published by Felix Meiner, Leipzig. The standard and only widely available English translation is by A. C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, & L. McAlister, first published in 1973; the latest edition, edited with an introduction by Peter Simons, is published as Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, London: Routledge Press, 1995.

Henceforth the English edition will be referred to simply as Psychology or PES, the German text will be cited as PES-G. Where the available English translation has been changed or altered in any way, this will be noted, following, the quoted text.

(2) Although there are always exceptions, in the case of Brentano’s PES they do seem to prove the rule. That is, while there have been many full length studies of Brentano’s descriptive psychology and analyses of its philosophical import, such as those by Antos Rancurello (1968), Liliana Albertazzi (2001 & 2006), Robin Rollinger (1999), Arkadiusz Chrudzimski (2001), etc., many of these studies either view the PES as merely a stepping stone in Brentano’s development or read contemporary or non-Brentanian interests into the system he introduces there. Thus, while valuable, they do not make any sustained effort to evaluate the importance of Brentano’s 1874 work as asystematic framework for understanding philosophy of mind.

References

Albertazzi, Liliana, Introduzione a Brentano, Rome-Bari: Editori Laterza, 1999.

——, Immanent Realism: An Introduction to Brentano, Synthese Library, studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science Vol. 333, Springer: Dordrecht, 2006.

Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz, Intentionalitätstheorie beim frühen Brentano, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001.

Rancurello, Antos, A Study of Franz Brentano: His Psychological Standpoint and His Significance in the History of Psychology, New York: Academic Press, 1968.

Rollinger, Robin, Husserl’s Position in the School of Brentano. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999.

24. Tegtmeier, Erwin. 1989. "Individuation, identity and sameness. A comparison of Aristotle and Brentano." Topoi Supplement no. 4:117-126.

25. ———. 2018. "Epistemological realism and correspondence in Brentano." Paradigmi no. 1:21-30.

Abstract: "Brentano is to be credited with overcoming representationalism originating mainly from Descartes. He arrived at direct realism while giving up the correspondence theory of truth which is wrongly equated with epistemological realism. Crucial is Brentano's intentional relation specific to mental acts and relating directly to objects. Moreover, his view that mental acts have objects but no content is also relevant because it excludes that the content can play the role of representative of the object. Brentano not only dropped the correspondence theory of truth, he throws out truth altogether and substitutes it with evidence. This is in line with direct realism which focusses on the object."

26. Terrell, Dailey Burnham. 1966. "Brentano's Argument for Reismus." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 20:446-459.

Reprinted with revisions in: Linda McAlister, The Philosophy of Brentano, pp. 204-212.

"Various sorts of considerations can be advanced in support of such a doctrine as reism. Since it is intended to exclude from the world and from our thought certain alleged entities,(3) Ockham's razor (or the principle of Denkökonomie, as German idiom puts it) can be called upon directly. But the razor is never by itself sufficient. It can cut only what has been shown to be unnecessary. This is the typical role of Sprachkritik in Brentano’s later philosophy. Even though language appears to contain names that designate all sorts of irreal objects, we can show by linguistic analysis that our thought can afford to do without them. All such references can be eliminated by translation into a language containing only the names of realia, i.e. persons and physical things.

Brentano also attempts to support reism by arguments independent of either Ockham’s razor or linguistic analysis. Most of them are indirect arguments in which an absurdity or an infinite regress is shown to be implied by the assertion of an irreal entity of some sort. There is only one general and direct argument for reism, as Reinhard Kamitz acknowledges in his painstaking study of Brentano’s attempts to establish his position.(4)

Professor Mayer-Hillebrand also gives priority to the same argument on which Dr Kamitz places such emphasis, the proof from the univocal significance of vorstellen.(5) Both Professor Mayer-Hillebrand and Dr Kamitz attribute to me certain objections to this argument.(6) In the remainder of this article I shall expand upon these objections and explore some of the features of Brentano’s theory which are brought to our attention by them." (p. 205 of the reprint)

(3) Brentano, unlike Kotarbinski, who coined the expression Reismus, was never a physicalist Both persons and physical things are realia. Excluded are objects of thought as such (e.g. Lockean ideas), abstractions formed by hypostasising adjectives, the existence or the possibility of anything, and so on. For brief accounts of the distinction between realia and irrealia, see Professor Mayer-Hillebrand’s Introduction to Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen (pp. 92ff) and Professor Chisholm’s Introduction to The True and the Evident (pp. vii-viii).

(4) Part II of Franz Brentano’s Lehre vom Wahren Urteil. Dissertation (Innsbruck, 1961).

(5) Abkehr, p. 37: Unter den Argumenten gegen die Vorstellbarkeit nichtrealer Gegenstände überhaupt nimmt die erste Stelle das aus der Einheit des Begriffs des Bewusstseins geschöopfte ein.

6. Abkehr, pp. 399-400, note 69, and Franz Brentano’s Lehre vom Wahren Urteil, pp. 188-97.

27. ———. 1976. "Franz Brentano's Logical Innovations." Midwest Studies in Philosophy no. 1:81-91.

"A comparison with the approach that was taken by Frege provides the spark.

Brentano’s devoted follower, Anton Marty of the German University in Prague, briefly commented on the relationship between the two in one of a series of articles published five years after the Begriffschrift had appeared.(10)" (p. 82)

(...)

"In Marty’s comparision between Brentano’s and Frege’s account of the nature of judgment, we come closer to the nerve of Brentano’s theory than Flint or Land did. Their attention was still fixed on the comparison with the traditional logic, i.e. the categorical forms and the rules of the syllogism. And is curiosity not somewhat enlivened by Marty’s claim that Brentano’s scheme represents a more thoroughgoing and fundamental innovation than Frege’s?

These are the points that emerge from Marty’s comments:

1. A sharp distinction must be drawn between the content or material of judgment, which is by itself neutral, and the judgmental function itself. This is the point of agreement between Brentano and Frege.

2. The content of a judgment may be simple, i.e. it need not be either a) a propositional content, as in Frege, nor b) a combination of ideas, as in the categorical forms and their existential equivalents. Furthermore even when the content is compound, the distinction between subject and predicate is of no logical significance.

3. The judgmental function may be either affirmative or negative, according to Brentano, whereas for Frege the assertion sign is sufficient and negation is assigned to the propositional content.

In sum. the basic description of a judgment within Brentano’s scheme is that it is an affirmation or denial of something; the something, what is affirmed or denied, may be but need not be a “combination of ideas.” (p. 83)

(10) Marty, Anton, Gesammelte Schriften, II, ed. Alfred Kastil (Halle, 1918), 56 ff. The article in which these comments occur originally appeared as the second of a series of articles under the general title “Uber subjektlose Sätze and das Verhältnis der Grammatik zu Logik and Philosophie;” published in Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie. The second article appeared in Volume 8 (1884).

28. ———. 1978. "Quantification and Brentano's Logic." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 5:45-66.

"Brentano's innovations in logical theory are considered in the context of his descriptive psychology, with its distinction between differences in quality and in object of mental phenomena. Objections are raised to interpretations that depend on a parallel between Urteil and assertion of a proposition. A more appropriate parallel is drawn between the assertion as subject to description in a metalanguage and the Urteil as secondary object in inner perception. This parallel is then applied so as to suggest a reinterpretation of substitutional quantification, rendering the substitutional interpretation immune to problems that often arise as to the relation between substitutional range and referential range."

29. ———. 1983. "Brentano's philosophy of mind." In Contemporary Philosophy: A New survey - Vol. 4: Philosophy of Mind, edited by Fløistad, Guttorm, 223-247. The Hague: Nijhoff.

"Despite fluctuations of doctrine and style and the apparent fragmentation of the philosophical enterprise into discrete fields of specialization, topical or temporal boundaries within philosophy continue to be arbitrary. The purpose to be served by this volume establishes at least a rough definition of the period to be covered.

My report on Brentano's philosophy of mind will consider books and articles that have appeared in print during the years 1966 through 1978." (p. 223)

(...)

"So far as the philosophy of mind is concerned, Vol. III of the Psychology, titled Vom sinnlichen und noetischen Bewusstsein [5], is especially important. Its principal subject is the distinction between sensory and noetic consciousness. Most of the themes of Brentano's philosophy of mental phenomena are represented: inner and outer perception, perception and apperception, modes of presentation and perception, the theory of abstraction and the thesis that the intentional reference characteristic of all mental phenomena is always a general reference, varying in degree of generality, never reference to a specific individual." (p. 224)

Brentano, F. [5] Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Vol. III: Vom sinnlichen und noetischen Bewusstsein. Hamburg 1974. Revised edition with introduction by F. Mayer-Hillebrand.

30. Textor, Mark. 2006. "Brentano (and some neo-Brentanians) on inner consciousness." Dialectica no. 60:411-432.

Abstract: "Brentano's theory of inner consciousness has recently had a surprising comeback. However, it is still an open question how it is best understood. It is widely held that according to Brentano a mental act is conscious iff it is self-presenting. In contrast, I will argue that Brentano holds that a mental act x is conscious iff it is unified with an immediately evident cognition ('Erkenntnis') of x. If one understands Brentano's theory in this way, it promises to shed light on standard problems for theories of inner consciousness."

31. ———. 2007. "Brentano on the Doxastic Nature of Perceptual Experience." History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis no. 10:137-156.

Abstract: "Brentano, the founder of phenomenology, argues in his manuscript “Von der Natur der Vorstellungen” [1903] that perception involves the belief in the object presented. The argument from revealed perceptual illusions argues that a perceptual experience can rationally persist even if one knows that it represents the world incorrectly, while the corresponding belief cannot rationally persist in this situation. For this reason, perceptual experiences cannot be beliefs or intrinsically connected to them. Brentano and Marty have responded to this argument by arguing that a revealed perceptual illusion involves manifestly contradictory beliefs. In this paper I will discuss whether Brentano’s controversial response can be defended and supported by independent reasons.."

32. ———. 2013. "Brentano on the dual relation of the mental." Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences no. 12:465-483.

Abstract: "Brentano held that every mental phenomenon has an object and is conscious (the dual relation thesis). The dual relation thesis faces a number of wellknown problems. The paper explores how Brentano tried to overcome these problems.

In considering Brentano's responses, the paper sheds light on Brentano's theory of judgement that underpins his philosophy of mind."

33. ———. 2013. "Unity Without Self: Brentano on the Unity of Consciousness." In Themes from Brentano, edited by Fisette, Denis and Fréchette, Guillaume, 67-86. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"Brentano’s marks of the mental have been received differently. The thesis that intentionality is the mark of the mental was and still is central to discussions in the philosophy of mind. By contrast, the view that only mental phenomena are real and that we are infallible about them has not had many supporters. Finally, Brentano’s thesis that a particular kind of unity is a mark of the mental has been neglected in discussions. In this paper I will expound and assess Brentano’s view that mental phenomena exhibit a distinctive kind of unity. Brentano attempts to explain the unity of consciousness without assuming the existence of an owner of mental phenomena, that is a soul, self or mental substance.(4) What does the unity of consciousness consist in if it does consist in the fact that one and the same self has the mental phenomena? After outlining the Humean background of this question I will develop and assess Brentano’s answer." (p. 69)

(4) Brentano will later change his view and acknowledge the existence of a mental substance. See his manuscript ‘Von der Seele’. In this paper I am only concerned with the position articulated in his Psychologie.

34. ———. 2017. Brentano's Mind. New York: Oxford University Press.

"0.3 Aim of the Book

The primary aim of this book is not historical. I will engage with two philosophical questions-'What is the nature of mind?' and 'What is the structure of consciousness'-through Brentano's work. My interest is not so much to find a plausible reading of Brentano's often dense and difficult texts, but to evaluate the arguments and views that can be distilled from them for truth. I will argue that Brentano gave a defensible and illuminating answer to the second question, while his answer to the first question is in interesting ways wrong. Intentionality is not the mark of the mental. I will argue that Brentano's student Husserl succeeded where Brentano failed: he developed a mark of the mental.

My overall goal is to bring out something true and philosophically illuminating in Brentano's thinking about the mind, in a historically informed way. I don't aim to capture and defend every detail of his philosophy of mind or reconstruct the historical development of his views. I will set aside those aspects of Brentano's thought that don't contribute to a viable philosophical view. The philosophical view that will emerge in this book will, I hope, preserve the spirit and often enough the letter of Brentano's work." (pp. 6-7)

35. ———. 2017. "Towards a Neo-Brentanian Theory of Existence." Philosophers' Imprint no. 17:1-20.

"In analytic philosophy the concept of existence has been approached by investigating the logical grammar of ‘exists’ and its synonyms.

Grammatically, ‘exists’ seems to be a first-order predicate that is true of objects. It occurs in predicate position in subject-predicate sentences such as ‘Pluto (the planet) exists’ and in quantified sentences such as ‘No tame tigers exist.’" (p. 1, a note omitted)

(...)

"Only if we illegitimately assume that the sense of ‘self-identical’ has been independently fixed can we hold on to the view that the sense of ‘self-identical’ and ‘exists’ are different. According to the satisfaction clause, ‘exists’ and ‘is self-identical’ have the same sense.(...).

This is a serious drawback. For intuitively the senses are different. I can have reason to think that A might not have existed. I can have no reason to think that A might not have been identical with itself.

This leaves the proponent of the first-order view with the task of removing “philosophical perplexity” about the concept expressed by ‘exists’. Its sense cannot be articulated in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. Yet it is desirable to articulate it in some way in order distinguish the sense of ‘exists’ from the sense of other universal first-order predicates. I will tackle this task in this paper by drawing on Franz Brentano’s work.(16) Brentano aims to shed light on the concept of existence by appealing to a non-propositional attitude and when it is right to have it. In this paper I will defend the core of Brentano’s approach to existence, but criticise his implementation of it. The proposed Neo-Brentanian view agrees with Brentano that the attitude of acknowledgement grounds our mastery of the sense expressed by ‘exists’.

It disagrees with Brentano in that it does not give an analytic definition of existence in terms of correct acknowledgement."

(16) Schlick 1925, 39–41, and Stumpf 1939, 81–2, are early critical discussions of Brentano’s theory of existential judgement. However, Schlick seems to throw out the baby with the bathwater: while Brentano’s theory may not be a general theory of judgement, it may nonetheless be a promising theory of a particular kind of judgement. Schlick’s criticism, it seems to me, has informed the reception and rejection of Brentano’s ideas in analytic philosophy. The analytic literature on Brentano on existence is therefore sparse. An exception is Prior 1976, 111ff. Vallicella 2001 focuses on Brentano’s treatment of existence, and Kriegel 2015 on the attitude of acknowledgement. Brandl 2002, section 5, gives a helpful overview of Brentano’s view of judgement and its connection with existence. I will discuss Vallicella and Kriegel’s contributions briefly in section 4.

References

Brandl, J. 2002. Brentano’s Theory of Judgement. Online: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Kriegel, U. 2015. How to Speak of Existence: A Brentanian Approach to (Linguistic and Mental) Ontological Commitment. Grazer Philosophische Studien 91, 81–106.

Prior, A.N. 1976. The Doctrine of Propositions and Terms. London: Duckworth.

Schlick, M. 1925. Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre. Second edition. Berlin: Julius Springer.

Stumpf, C. 1939. Erkenntnislehre. Reprint Lengerich: Pabst Science Publishers 2011.

Vallicella, W.F. 2001. Brentano on Existence. History of Philosophy Quarterly 18, 311–27.

36. ———. 2017. "From Mental Holism to the Soul and Back." The Monist no. 100:133-154.

Abstract: "In his Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt Brentano proposed a view of consciousness that neither has room nor need for a subject of mental acts, a soul. Later he changed his mind: there is a soul that appears in consciousness. In this paper I will argue that Brentano’s change of view is not justified. The subjectless view of consciousness can be defended against Brentano’s argument and it is superior to its predecessor."

37. ———. 2017. "Brentano on Consciousness." In The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School, edited by Kriegel, Uriah, 49-60. New York: Routledge.

"Consider a perceptual activity such as seeing a colour, hearing a tone, tasting a flavour.

How are these activities related to one’s awareness of them? I will use Brentano’s struggle with this question to guide the reader through the development of his view on consciousness.

My starting point will be Brentano’s book Die Psychologie des Aristoteles (Brentano 1867), in which he developed an inner sense view of consciousness (§§1–2). Brentano’s early view is underexplored in the literature but is crucial for understanding the development of his thought on the matter. In his major work Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkt (1874), he rejected the existence of an inner sense: the exercises of our five senses yield awareness of the world (or at least of intentional objects) as well as awareness of these perceptions. This same-level view of consciousness has been explored and developed by contemporary philosophers of mind. I will discuss the arguments that moved Brentano to change his mind, outline the view, and, finally, respond to Husserl’s influential criticism of Brentano’s view (§§3–5)."

38. ———. 2018. "Newton’s Intellectual Joy. Or A New Look at Brentano on Intellectual and Sensory Pleasure." Brentano Studien no. 16:277-304.

Abstract: "The paper gives a reconstruction of Brentano‘s distinction between intellectual and sensory pleasures. I will argue that for Brentano a sensory pleasure is a non-propositional liking of a sensory and an intellectual pleasure a non-propositional liking of an intellectual actitvity. In addition, these likings are only conceptual distinct from the activity liked. Sensory pleasures are supposed to be fundamentally different from intellectual ones in that the fromer have, while the later lack intensity. I will deal with a philosophical and exegetical problem that arises from this distinction and use it to shed light on Chisholm‘s reading of Brentano‘s remarks on intellectual pleasure. The so-called 'Brentano-Chisholm view of Pleasure‘ has it that intellectual pleasure is, roughly, a propositional attitude of being pleased that p which causes sensory 'pleasure. I use my reconstruction of Brentano‘s view to argue that the 'Brentano-Chisholm-line'‘ is not Brentano‘s and that Brentano even theorized about a different phenomenon."

39. ———. 2019. "How a Statement Has Meaning by Expressing a Judgement—Brentano Versus Marty on Utterance Meaning." In Anton Marty and Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Bacigalupo, Giuliano and Leblanc, Hélène, 33-57. Cham (Switzerland): Palgrave Macmillan.

"In this paper, I will focus on the second commitment of intentionalist semantics: meaning facts supervene on facts about someone doing something with a communicative intention. My aim is to explore an alternative view of meaning according to which not speaker, but utterance meaning is the basic notion of a theory of meaning. The alternative is suggested in the work of Marty’s philosophical teacher Franz Brentano (1838–1917). In his lectures on logic, Brentano took some utterances to have meaning in the relevant sense of ‘meaning’ independently of whether they are made in order to influence the thought of others. Brentano therefore prioritized utterance meaning over speaker meaning: the primary source of meaning is not a speaker meaning something by doing something, but what she does has meaning.

Brentano’s proposal constitutes a welcome alternative to meaning intentionalism, and I will argue that it solves a number of problems that plague the intentionalist view of Marty and Grice. Hence, while Brentano seems to endorse later elements of meaning intentionalism in unpublished work, he shouldn’t have.(4)

I will start with some scene setting (Sect. 2) and then argue that non-communicative utterances pose a problem for the meaning intentionalism of Marty and Grice (Sect. 3). I will use the problem to expound Brentano’s theory of meaning and argue that it has the potential to solve the problem of non-communicative utterances (Sect. 4). However, the Brentano’s view faces a different problem (Sect. 5). The remainder of the paper (Sects. 6–11) is devoted to answering the problem and thereby to show that Brentano’s original idea can be defended and developed to yield an insight into speaker meaning." (p. 35)

(4) In unpublished manuscripts, Brentano endorsed also an intentional view of utterance, see his MS (‘Die Sprache’ Sp 4d).

40. ———. 2019. "Correctness first: Brentano on judgment and truth." In The Act and Object of Judgment: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives, edited by Ball, Brian Andrew and Schuringa, Christoph, 129-150. New York: Routledge.

"1. Introduction

Truth is one of our most central concepts. Many philosophers tried to get clear about truth by giving defi nitions of this concept that decompose it into its marks. Franz Brentano took this approach to be of limited value. According to him, the primary question about any concept is how we acquire it, not how to define it. He argued that the concept of truth is derived from our awareness of correct judging, where correctness is a notion prior to truth. Truth stands to judgment as goodness to love: x is good if, and only if, x is correctly loved; x is true if, and only if, x is correctly judged. In current philosophy, Brentano’s correctness is often called ‘fittingness’. (1) In this terminology, Brentano proposed that fittingness is the primitive notion that allows us to understand value in general and truth in particular. In this paper, I will use an objection made by Moore to develop and defend Brentano’s story of how we come to acquire the concept of correctness. In particular, I will argue that we need to revise our conception of self-evident judgment if we want to be a fittingness-first theorist like Brentano." (p. 129)

41. ———. 2019. "Brentano's Empiricism and the Philosophy of Intentionality." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 98:50-68.

Abstract: Brentano’s Thesis that intentionality is the mark of the mental is central to analytic philosophy of mind as well as phenomenology. The contemporary discussion assumes that it is a formulation of an analytic definition of the mental. I argue that this assumption is mistaken. According to Brentano, many philosophical concepts can only be elucidated by perceiving their instances because these concepts are abstracted from perception. The concept of the mental is one of these concepts. We need to understand Brentano’s Thesis accordingly: It is a piece of advice on how to become introspectively aware of the distinctive feature of mental phenomena. On this understanding of Brentano’s Thesis standard objections to it no longer arise."

42. Thomasson, Amie. 2000. "After Brentano: a one-level theory of consciousness." European Journal of Philosophy no. 8:190-209.

"I will argue that the presence of an early one-level theory in Brentano’s work is not merely of historical interest, for it can show the way to develop an alternative one-level view of consciousness. Although certain modifications from his original view are required, I will argue that a phenomenologically sensitive one-level view developed along the lines he suggests can provide a better analysis of what consciousness consists in, and what distinguishes conscious from unconscious states, than either higher-order or current one-level representational views of consciousness." (p. 190)

43. Tomasi, Pietro. 2007. "The unpublished "History of Philosophy" (1866-1867) by Franz Brentano." Axiomathes no. 17:99-108.

"There are many difficulties with the existing interpretation of Brentano's works. The problem stems from the fact that Brentano's works, letters, manuscripts, memoirs, etc. remain unpublished or undiscovered. Moreover some Brentano's scholars, namely Kastil and Mayer-Hillebrandt, were incorrect in their method in publishing the philosopher's works. Namely, they misinterpreted his earlier works by incorporating numerous interpolations from different time periods as being the philosopher's final thoughts. More importantly, as evidenced by Antonio Russo's recent discovery (*), they also failed to realise the fact that Brentano's own theoretical views or works were mostly based on Aristotle and Thomas thoughts on metaphysics, that Brentano's main intention was to develop a scientific demonstration on this topic, and that this issue occupied his mind until his death.

It is hoped that this paper goes some way in resolving the said errors and coupled with the continue discovery of new material that the jigsaw of Brentano's works and thinking shall someday be correctly completed."

(*) [See: Russo Antonio (2003)]

44. Torrijos-Castrillejo, David. 2020. "The early Brentano and Plato’s God." Brentano Studien no. 17:137-156.

Abstract: "The interest of the young Brentano for the philosophy of Plato is linked to his Aristotelian studies. Brentano understands Aristotle’s philosophy in deep continuity with Plato’s one. This continuity is clear in one of the most controversial points of Brentano’s interpretation of Aristotle: the nature of God and the status of human soul. Brentano finds in both Plato and Aristotle a personal, monotheistic and creationistic God who also creates human soul, which is immortal. This approach is explained in some texts from the youth of Brentano, although there are signs indicating that he sustained it until the end of his life. In his interpretation of Plato’s God, we see that Brentano identifies Him with the Idea of Good and the Demiurge. The Idea of Good would have even created the other Platonic Ideas, which should be understood as gods."

45. Tucker, Miles. 2020. "Moore, Brentano, and Scanlon: a defense of indefinability." Philosophical Studies no. 177:2261-2276.

Abstract: "Mooreans claim that intrinsic goodness is a conceptual primitive. Fitting-attitude theorists object: they say that goodness should be defined in terms of what it is fitting for us to value. The Moorean view is often considered a relic; the fitting-attitude view is increasingly popular. I think this unfortunate. Though the fitting-attitude analysis is powerful, the Moorean view is still attractive. I dedicate myself to the influential arguments marshaled against Moore's program, including those advanced by Scanlon, Stratton-Lake and Hooker, and Jacobson; I argue that they do not succeed."

46. Twardowski, Kazimierz. 1999. "Franz Brentano and the History of Philosophy." In On actions, Products and Other Topics in Philosophy, edited by Brandl, Johannes and Wolenski, Jan, 243-253. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Translation by Arthur Szylewicz of a review of F. Brentano, Die vier Phasen der Philosophie und ihr augenblicklicher Stand (1895) published in: Przelom, 11 (II) August 3 1895, Vienna, pp. 335-346.

"By defending Brentano' s views in this fashion, I by no means wish to claim that his "four phases" are the last word in the historiosophy of philosophy. I am convinced that even these sorts of investigations advance only gradually, and cannot be made complete and perfect all at once. We should also remember that from a different vantage point, say, one which takes into account the relation of philosophy to religion, other historiosophical laws can be formulated, as Professor Straszewski has done in the work cited in our introduction. It seems to me, however, that as far as philosophy itself is concerned, rather than its relation to other realms in the intellectual evolution of mankind, the philosophy of the history of philosophy that Brentano offers may, for the time being, pass for the relatively best solution to the problems that are mounting in this growing field." (p. 250 of the reprint)

References

M. Straszewski, Dzieje filozofii w zarysie, vol. I [Outline of the History of Philosophy], Kraków: Ksiegarska Spólka Wydawnicza Polska, 1912, p. 67 n.

47. Valentine, Elizabeth. 2003. "The relation of Brentano to British philosophy." Brentano Studien no. 10:263-268.

"Brentano's work has had its greatest influence in Austria, Germany, Poland and Italy, but its importance for an understanding of British analytical philosophy is increasingly being recognised.

Brentano visited England in 1872, meeting with Herbert Spencer amongst others; he had a preference for British philosophy, regarding Kant and Hegel as the height of decadence. Despite this, English editions of his work were slow to appear. For a long time the only work to be translated into English was Our knowledge of right and wrong (1902). The first English edition of Psychology from an empirical standpoint did not appear until 1973. A new edition has recently been prepared (1995).

It could be argued that Brentano's work set the agenda for much twentieth century British philosophy, with regard to method (analysis); topic (reference, intentionality and meaning); and, to some extent, doctrine (the shift from idealism to realism). A key figure in the mediation of thisinfluence was G.F. Stout." (p. 263)

48. Vallicella, William. 2001. "Brentano on Existence." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 18:311-327.

"Franz Brentano is an important transitional figure in the history of philosophy. Although he was steeped in Aristotle and the scholastics, his deflationary linguistic approach to metaphysical questions anticipates twentieth-century analytic treatments.

Indeed, Gustav Bergmann calls him "the first linguistic philosopher."(1) A good example of Brentano's deflationism is his theory of existence, which in some ways anticipates the influential theories of Frege and Russell. My aim here is to present and evaluate Brentano's theory of existence. Although I will be arguing that it is fatally flawed, there is much to learn from it." (p. 311)

49. Vasyukov, Vladimir L. 1993. "Antidiodorean logics and the Brentano-Husserl's conception of time." Axiomathes no. 4:373-388.

Abstracty: "In [Vasyukov 1993] some systems of Legniewskian Ontology were introduced as a toolkit for Husserl's and Meinong's theory of objects. Here such consideration is extended to Brentano-Husserl's theory of time. So-called antidiodorean logics are used as the foundations of the approach undertaken."

References

[Vasyukov 1993] V.L. Vasyukov, "A Leśniewskian Guide to Husserl's and Meinong's Jungle", Axiomathes 1, 59-74.

50. Velarde-Mayol, Victor. 2002. On Brentano. Belmont: Wadsworth.

"Brentano is in the crossroads between the two major philosophical traditions in Western philosophy, namely, Continental and Analytic philosophy. He resurrected the notion of intentionality, which was pervasively used by both philosophical traditions with very different outcomes and applications. In Continental philosophy, phenomenology is a development of Brentano's ideas on intentionality, in such a way, that without this, phenomenology would be impossible. In Analytic philosophy, one of the few notions shared with Continental philosophy is precisely the intentional character of mental acts, but with different application and interpretation. Here, in this book, we will dedicate to Brentano's psychology more attention than to other topics, not only because of its historical influence but also because it plays an essential role in his whole philosophy.

There are some subjects that are missing here: aesthetics and the relations between philosophy and religion. The reason of this lack is only the constraints of space. A decision was made in favor of some topics over others that could illustrate better Brentano's philosophy." (p. 1)

51. Vendrell Ferran, Íngrid. 2020. "Brentano and the Birth of a New Paradigm in Philosophy of Emotion." In Franz Brentano's Philosophy after Hundred Years: From History of Philosophy to Reism, edited by Fisette, D., Frechette, Guillaume and Janoušek, Hynek. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "This chapter argues that the view of the emotions put forward by Brentano, and the modifications and refinements of his claims undertaken by his followers, led to the birth of new paradigm in the philosophy of emotion. The paper is structured as follows. After the introduction, section 2 presents the context in which Brentano’s theory emerged. Section 3 is devoted to Brentano’s three main claims on the emotions, focusing on their intentionality, their dependency on cognitions, and their relation to values. Section 4 offers an overview of the main debates surrounding these claims among the authors belonging to Brentano’s school. Section 5 underlines the parallels between views on the emotions put forward by Brentano and his followers and similar claims defended in contemporary analytic philosophy."

52. Vinogradov, Evgeni G. 1998. "The Rationalistic Paradigm of Franz Brentano and Kazimierz Twardowski." In The Lvov-Warsaw School and Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna and Wolenski, Jan, 101-104. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"In the philosophical heritage ofKazimierz Twardowski the comparatively small work 'Franz Brentano and the History of Philosophy' is probably not very important.

But the breath of a new day and new ideas make it available nowadays, a hundred years after its first publication in Vienna.(1) This work is a summary or a detailed review of Franz Brentano's paper 'The Four Phases of Philosophy and Its Contemporary Stage', in which the Brentanian historical-philosophical conception is put forward.(2)" (p. 101)

(1) K. Twardowski, 'Franciszek Brentano a historya filozofji' (Franz Brentano and the History of Philosophy), Przelom 1, No. 11, 1895, pp. 335--346. Our examination of Twardowski's work is based on B. Dombrowski's translation of K. Twardowski's Rozprawy i artykuly jilozojiczne (Philosophical Dissertations and Articles), Lvov, 1927.

(2) F. Brentano, 'Die vier Phasen der Philosophie und ihr augenblicklicher Stand', Verlag der J.G. Gotta'schen Buchhandlung, Stuttgart, 1895.

53. Volpi, Franco. 1989. "The experience of temporal objects and the constitution of time-consciousness by Brentano." Topoi Supplement no. 4:127-140.

54. Weingartner, Paul. 1978. "Brentano's Criticism of the Correspondence Theory of Truth and the Principle 'Ens et verum convertuntur'." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 5:183-196.

"This paper investigates Brentano's criticism of the correspondence theory of truth within the context of a discussion of his ontological assumptions. Brentano's interpretation of the formula veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus and of the principle ens et verum convertuntur is shown to fit into the history of these principles and into modern interpretations like that of Tarski."

55. Werner, Sauer. 2017. "Brentano’s Reism." In The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School, edited by Kriegel, Uriah, 133-143. New York: Routledge.

"On January 7, 1903, Brentano wrote to Anton Marty that by now he thought it to be “impossible that factuality (Tatsächlichkeit) should belong to an irreale except in dependence on something real” as “concomitantly” occurring (Brentano 1966a: 106). For instance, when someone is thinking of a reale or thing (Ding) A, say the sun or a centaur, there exists concomitantly to the A-thinker (who is a thing) also an irreale, namely, a thought-of thing (Gedankending) which is the thought-of A (Brentano 1930: 31, 48).

Thus, when writing this letter, Brentano still held the view that the realm of beings comprises besides entia realia or things also entia irrealia.(1) But then on September 10, 1903, he tells Marty that now he “is making a new attempt to understand all entia rationis [i.e., irrealia] as fictions, viz., to deny that they are” (1966a: 108). So it was during the time between these two letters that there occurred what has been dubbed the “reistic turn” in Brentano’s ontological thinking.

In the following, we will, first, give a rough outline of the scope of the entia realia; second, what we may call Brentano’s master argument for reism will be discussed; and third, we will attempt to sketch a way out Brentano might have taken in the face of the difficulties inherent in his brand of reism." (p. 133)

(1) Albeit in a restricted way, since before he had acknowledged also irrealia that are entirely independent of realia: see Brentano 1930: 26.

References

Brentano, Franz (1930). Wahrheit und Evidenz. Leipzig: Felix Meiner.

Brentano, Franz (1966a). Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen. Bern: Francke.

56. Willard, Dallas. 1998. "Who Needs Brentano? The Wasteland of Philosophy without its Past." In The Brentano Puzzle, edited by Poli, Roberto, 15-43. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"In the volume of studies which forms the immediate background for this conference,(1) we read of "the oblivion into which the figure and thought of Brentano have fallen," and of his current 'invisibility' (pp. xv, 9, etc.)· I believe Brentano to be someone of great philosophical value in his own right. But it seems to me that the state of affairs thus described with reference to Brentano is much greater than Brentano, and is of profound significance for the understanding of philosophy as a practice and a field of inquiry. Brentano's invisibility is chiefly a matter of what has come to be regarded as 'good philosophical work' in the course of the 20th Century. And this is especially true from the viewpoint of current North American Analytic philosophy, which I shall almost exclusively have in mind with my comments. If we are concerned about the fate of Brentano's thought, it is essential to deal with prevailing assumptions about how philosophy is done and when it is well done.

I think that similar points as I shall make here with reference to current Analytic philosophy in North America and Brentano could also be made with reference to, say, Hermeneutical philosophy from Heidegger on and Brentano, or to the various other forms of what, in the United States, tends to be called 'Post-Structuralism,' or sometimes 'Post-Modernism,' and Brentano. But I cannot cover all these areas, of course, and am most familiar with how 'Analytic' philosophy is now actually practiced in the United States. And it is philosophical practice that lies at the heart of my concerns." (p. 15)

(1) Albertazzi, L., Libardi, M. and Poli, R. (eds) (1996). The School of Franz Brentano, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.

57. Wolenski, Jan. 1989. "Brentano's criticism of the correspondence conception of truth and Tarski's semantic theory." Topoi no. 8:105-110.

"This paper is a sequel to Simons and Wolenski [De Veritate: Austro-Polish contributions to the theory of truth from Brentano to Tarski, 1989], which contains a short discussion of Brentano's arguments against the theory of truth based on the concept of a correspondence between truth-bearers and reality (or its appropriate portions). In that paper we attempt to show that Tarski's conception successfully meets Brentano's objections. l Here I should like to extend as well as, in some points, improve what we said in Simons and Wolenski [1989]. There are several reasons for doing this. First, the renaissance of Brentano's own philosophy and Brentanism in general requires that his arguments deserve considerable attention. Secondly, Brentano's arguments against the correspondence theory of truth have become part of philosophical folklore.

Thirdly, Tarski's semantic truth-definition, despite the reservations raised by several authors, is often considered as a possible modern interpretation of the classical theory of truth. Fourth, Tarski's theory of truth is deeply rooted in the Brentanian theoretical tradition, independent of Tarski's own philosophical consciousness.

It is further interesting to see how, if at all, his definition of truth is affected by critical arguments of his philosophical great-grandfather (via Twardowski, Lukasiewicz, Lesniewski and Kotarbinski)." (notes omitted)

58. ———. 1994. "Brentano, the Univocality of Thinking, 'Something', and 'Reism'." Brentano Studien no. 5:149-166.

"Brentano's argument for Reism from the univocality of 'thinking' is examined. Firstly, Brentano's original formulation is given. Secondly, comments on the argument made by Marty, Kamitz, Teller and Farias are summarized and briefly discussed. The univocality argument is then embedded into the frameworks of two logical systems: predicate calculus and Lesniewskian ontology; the latter system is shown as a more effective basis for reism than the former. Finally, it is argued that a distinction between formal-ontological reism and metaphysical reism should be made."

59. Woleński, Jan. 1996. "Reism in the Brentanist Tradition." In The School of Franz Brentano, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Libardi, Massimo and Poli, Roberto, 357-375. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"The term 'reism' was introduced by Tadeusz Kotarbinski to denote the philosophical view that the category of things is the sole ontological category.(1)

Shortly after Elementy went in print, Kazimierz Twardowski pointed out in a letter to Kotarbinski, that a similar ontological theory has been elaborated by Franz Brentano in the last period of his life. In 1930, Kotarbinski delivered a lecture at 7th International Philosophical Congress in Oxford. After the congress, he received a letter from Georg Katkov with further information on Brentano's reism.(2)" (p. 357)

(...)

"The later course of Brentano's ontology may be seen as a constant departure from his early view.(7)

Brentano became a reist around 1904 but earlier he restricted the categories of irrealia which can be objects of presentations to four kinds, namely immanent objects, contents of mental acts Gudging, loving, hating), relations, and collectiva. Especially, he rejected universals (genera, differentiae specificae) as genuine objects." (p. 358)

(1) Kotarbinski 1929, 67. This letter was published in Kotarbinski's 1966. The termn 'reism' appears on p. 57 of the English edition.

(2) Kotarbinski mentions letters from Twardowski and Katkov in his 1930-1931. This paper contains a brief comparison of his views with those of Brentano. In Kotarbinski 1935 (his review of Kraus 1934) and in Kotarbinski 1976 one finds more comprehensive comparisons written by Kotarbiflski himself. See also Smith 1990, 170-174.

(7) Mayer-Hillebrand 1966, 1-99, 399-403 gives extensive treatment to Brentano's ontological development (page-numbers henceforth according to Meiner's edition, Hamburg 1977); see also Srzednicki 1965.

References

Brentano 1966a F. Brentano, Die Abkehr vom Nichtrealen, ed. by F. Mayer-Hillebrand, Bern, A. Francke Verlag.

Kotarbinski 1929 T. Kotarbinski, Elementy teorii poznania, logikiformalnej i metodologii nauk [Elements of the theory of knowledge, formal logic and the methodology of sciences], Lvov, Ossolineum. Eng!. trans!. in Kotarbinski 1966a.

Kotarbinski 1930-1931 T. Kotarbinski, "Uwagi na temat reismu" [Remarks on reism], Ruch Filozojiczny 12, 7-12.

Kotarbinski 1935 T. Kotarbinski, review of O. Kraus, Wege und Abwege der Philosophie, Przeglad Filozoficzny 38, 163-168.

Kotarbinski 1966a T. Kotarbinski, Gnosiology. The scientific approach to the theory of knowledge, tr. by O. Wojtasiewicz, Oxford / Wroclaw, Pergamon Press Ossolineum.

Kotarbinski 1966 T. Kotarbinski, "Franz Brentano as reist", in McAlister 1976, 194-203.

Mayer-Hillebrand 1966 F. Mayer-Hillebrand, "Einleitung der Herausgeberin", in Brentano 1966a, 1-99, 399-403 (pagination according to second edition, Hamburg,

McAlister 1976 L. McAlister (ed.), The philosophy of Franz Brentano, London, Duckworth.

Smith 1990 B. Smith, "On the phases of reism", in Woleński 1990a, 137-183.

Srzednicki 1965 J. Srzednicki, Franz Brentano's analysis of truth, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff.

Woleński 1990a J. Woleński (ed.), Kotarbinski: Logic, semantics and ontology, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.

60. Zahavi, Dan. 1998. "Brentano and Husserl on Self-Awareness." Études Phénoménologiques no. 27/28:127-168.

"Brentano now continues his analysis by turning to self-awareness, or as he calls it inner consciousness (inneres Bewußtsein). As we have just seen, Brentano takes consciousness to be characterized by a reference to an object, namely to the object that it is conscious of. But as he then points out, the term ‘conscious’, can be used in a twofold sense. On the one hand, we say of an act that it is conscious, insofar as it is aware of an object. On the other hand, we say of an object that it is conscious, insofar as one is aware of it. All psychical acts are characterized by their being conscious of something. The question is whether they are also conscious in the second sense, that is, whether one is also aware of them, or whether one must deny this and consequently admit the existence of unconscious psychical acts.(15)" (p. 5)

(15) Brentano 1874, pp.142-143.

References

Brentano, F.: Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt I (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1874/1973).

61. ———. 2004. "Back to Brentano?" Journal of Consciousness Studies no. 11:66-87.

Abstract: "For a couple of decades, higher-order theories of consciousness have enjoyed great popularity, but they have recently been met with growing dissatisfaction. Many have started to look elsewhere for viable alternatives, and within the last few years, quite a few have rediscovered Brentano. In this paper such a (neo-)Brentanian one-level account of consciousness will be outlined and discussed. It will be argued that it can contribute important insights to our understanding of the relation between consciousness and self- awareness, but it will also be argued that the account remains beset with some problems, and that it will ultimately make more sense to take a closer look at Sartre, Husserl, and Heidegger, if one is on the lookout for promising alternatives to the higher-order theories, than to return all the way to Brentano."

62. Zelaniec, Wojciech. 1996. "Franz Brentano and the Principle of Individuation." Brentano Studien no. 6:145-164.

Abstract: "In this article I discuss a view on individuation exposed by Brentano in his Theory of Categories. According to this view, it is the spatial location of a physical thing that is its principle of individuation. I put forward hypotheses concerning the assumptions on the force of which Brentano might have arrived at this view. I also assess the `price' that has to be paid for making such assumptions."

63. ———. 1997. "Disentangling Brentano: why did he get individuation wrong?" Brentano Studien no. 7:455-463.

64. Zimmer, Alf. 1998. "On Agents and Objects: Some Remarks on Brentanian Perception." In The Brentano Puzzle, edited by Poli, Roberto, 93-112. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"Introduction: the 'invisibility' of Brentano in modern psychology

From my point of view, the Brentano puzzle (Albertazzi, Libardi and Poli, 1996) has two aspects: (i) The quantitative Zeitgeist of psychological science during the second part of the nineteenth century was incompatible with Brentano's genuinely qualitative approach and (ii) the open-mindedness of modem psychology for qualitative analysis can not refer to Brentano because the mental avenue to his Psychology from an empirical point of view is blocked by Husserl's reinterpretation and his rebuttal of psychologism. While the latter part of the puzzle has been analyzed in detail, the first aspect remains unaddressed because the exclusively quantitative orientation of psychological science at the end of the last century appears alien in the light of today's psychology where the most stringent tools of experimentation and mathematics are used to build formal models of qualitative change (see Kruse and Stadler, 1995)." (p. 93)

References

Albertazzi, L., Libardi, Μ. and Poli, R. (1996). introduction. Brentano and His School: Reassembling the Puzzle, in L. Albertazzi, Μ. Libardi and R. Poli (eds), The School of Franz Brentano, Kluwer, Amsterdam, pp. 1-23.

Kruse, P. and Stadler, Μ. (1995). Ambiguity' in Mind and Nature, Springer, Berlin.

65. Zimmerman, Dean W. 1996. "Indivisible Parts and Extended Objects: Some Philosophical Episodes from Topology’s Prehistory." The Monist no. 79:148-180.

"Brentano and Whitehead - last heroes of the old debate. There are, broadly speaking, three doctrines about physical boundaries to be found in the medieval and modern debate; I shall call them "indivisibilism", "moderate indivisibilism", and "anti-indivisibilism". In section II I describe these views, and mention some of their better-known proponents. Then indivisibilism, moderate indivisibilism, and anti-indivisibilism each receives a section of its own. Although this paper will not pretend to offer a decisive answer to the question which of these three (if any) is in fact correct, it is intended to serve as a sort of historical propaedeutic to the consideration of this question. Along the way, I shall try to show that the most promising version of moderate indivisibilism was being developed by Franz Brentano at the same time Alfred North Whitehead was providing mortar to fill the holes remaining in earlier versions of anti-indivisibilism. Whitehead's contribution to anti-indivisibilism is his famous method of extensive abstraction, first developed in a series of papers written between 1914 and 1917. Curiously enough, these were the very years during which Brentano - near the end of his life and by then completely blind - dictated his works on boundaries and continua. Brentano admits physical points, lines, and surfaces as real parts of extended bodies; and, just as Whitehead's work advances the anti-indivisibilist cause, Brentano's is a step forward for moderate indivisibilism. Brentano's work on boundaries trickled out ever so slowly, the lion's share remaining unpublished until 1976. Furthermore, although Whitehead discussed the philosophical problems about boundaries in his first exposition of the method of extensive abstraction, he did not realize that the method contributed to their resolution; and his better known later works omit discussion of these problems altogether. For these reasons, the continuity between the older debate and the contributions of Whitehead and Brentano is easy to miss." (pp. 149-150, notes omitted)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Franz Brentano: Bibliographie der philosophischen Studien in Deutsch

Bibliographie

1. "Die Philosophie Franz Brentano." 1978. Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 5.

Special Issue. Contributions to the Brentano-Konferenz Graz, 4-8 September 1977 (Edited by Roderick Chisholm and Rudolf Haller).

Contents: Edgar Morscher: Brentano and his place in Austrian philosophy 1; George Katkov: The world in which Brentano believed he lived 11; Stephan Körner: Über Brentanos Reismus und die extensionale Logik 29; Burnham Terrell: Quantification and Brentano's logic 45; Klaus Hedwig: Der scholastische Kontext des Intentionalen bei Brentano 67; Dagfinn Føllesdal: Brentano and Husserl on intentional objects and perception 83; Herbert Spiegelberg: On the significance of the correspondence between Franz Brentano and Edmund Husserl 95; Izydora Dambska: François Brentano et la pensée philosophique en Pologne: Casimir Twardowski et son École 117; Peter Geach: Intentionality of thought versus intentionality of desire 131; Elizabeth Anscombe: Will and emotion 139; Heiner Rutte: Brentanos antinaturalistische Grundlegung der Ethik 149; Guido Küng: Zur Erkenntnistheorie von Franz Brentano 169; Paul Weingartner: Brentano's criticism of the correspondence theory of truth and the principle "Ens et verum convertuntur" 183; Roderick M. Chisholm: Brentano's conception of substance and accident 197; Rudolf Haller: Brentanos Sprachkritik, oder dass "man unterscheiden muss was es (hier) zu unterscheiden gibt" 211; Johann Götschl: Brentanos Analyse des Zeitbegriffes 225; Rolf George: Brentano's relation to Aristotle 249; Liste der Teilnehmer an der Brentano-Konferenz 267.

2. Albertazzi, Liliana. 1996. "Die Theorie der indirekten Modifikation." Brentano Studien no. 6.

3. Antonelli, Mauro. 2001. Seiendes, Bewusstsein, Intentionalität im Frühwerk von Franz Brentano. Freiburg: K. Alber.

4. Baumgartner, Elisabeth. 1985. Intentionalität. Begriffsgeschichte und Begriffsanwendung in der Psychologie. Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann.

5. Baumgartner, Elisabeth, and Baumgartner, Wilhelm. 1997. "Von Brentano zu Kulpe: Die Deskriptive Psychologie Brentanos und die 'urzburger Schule' der Denkpsychologie." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 7:31-52.

6. Baumgartner, Wilhelm. 1987. "Die Begründung von Wahrheit durch Evidenz: Der Beitrag Brentanos." In Geiwssheit und Gewissen. Festschrift für Franz Wiedmann zum 60. Geburstag, edited by Baumgartner, Wilhelm, 93-116. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

7. ———. 1989. "Brentanos und Mills Methode der beschreibenden Analyse." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 2:63-78.

8. ———. 1991. "Psychologie - Ontologie - Metaphysik. Zur Tragweite des deskriptiv-phänomenologischen Verfahrens bei Franz Brentano." Perspektiven der Philosophie no. 17 (n/a):23-36.

9. ———. 1992. "Franz Brentano, ein europäischer Denke." In, edited by Feilchenfeldt, Konrad and Zagari, Luciano, 115-128. Berlin: de Gruyter.

10. ———. 2004. "Brentano un die österreischische Philosophie." In Phenomenology and analysis. Essays on Central European philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Huemer, Wolfgang, 131-158. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

11. Baumgartner, Wilhelm, and Burkard, Franz-Peter. 1990. "Franz Brentano: Eine Skizze seines Lebens und seiner Werke." In International bibliography of Austrian philosophy 1982/83 - Internationale Bibliographie zur osterreichischen Philosophie, edited by Baumgartner, Wilhelm and Burkard, Franz-Peter. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

12. Baumgartner, Wilhelm, and Simons, Peter M. 1992. "Brentanos Mereologie." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 4:53-77.

13. Bergmann, Hugo. 1966. "Bolzano und Brentano." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 48:306-311.

14. ———. 1966. "Franz Brentano." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 20:349-372.

15. Binder, Thomas. 2000. "Die Brentano Gesellschaft und das Brentano-Archiv in Prag." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 58-59:533-565.

16. ———. 2000. "Die Prager Brentano Gesellschaft." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 8:259-286.

17. ———. 2019. Franz Brentano und sein philosophischer Nachlass. Berlin: de Gruyter.

18. Brandl, Johannes. 1987. Brentanos Urteilslehre. Eine Studie über die logische Form von Akt und Inhalt. Graz: Forschungsstelle und Dokumentationszentrum für Österreichische Philosophie.

19. Buzzoni, Marco. 1988. "Brentano, Sprache, Ontologie und Person." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 1:153-187.

20. Campos, Eliam. 1979. Die Kantkritik Brentanos. Bonn: Bouvier.

21. Cernoch, Wolfgang. 1998. "Der Subjektivismus bei Franz Brentano in den Grenzen von Psychologie und Logik." In Verdrängter Humanismus — Verzögerte Aufklärung. Bd. 4, Anspruch und Echo: Sezession und Aufbrüche in den Kronländern zum Fin-de-Siécle. Philosophie in Österreich (1880-1920), edited by Benedikt, Michael, Kiss, Endre and Knoll, Reinhold. Edituria Triade.

22. Chisholm, Rm. 1977. "Brentano als analytischer Metaphysiker in Osterreichische Philosophen und Ihr Einfluss auf die analytische Philosophie der Gegenwart. Band 1." Conceptus: Zeitschrift Fur Philosophie no. 11 (28-30):77-82.

23. Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz. 1999. "Die Theorie der Intentionalität bei Franz Brentano." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 57:45-66.

Nachdruck: Franz Brentano über die Intentionalität, in: Intentionalität, Zeitbewusstsein und Intersubjektivität. Studien zur Phänomenologie von Brentano bis Ingarden, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, ss. 17-38.

24. ———. 2000. "Die Theorie des Zeitbewusstseins Franz Brentano im Licht der unpublizierten Manuskripte." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 8:149-161.

Nachdruck: Franz Brentano über das Zeitbewußtsein, in: Intetionalität, Zeitbewusstsein und Intersubjektivität. Studien zur Phänomenologie von Brentano bis Ingarden, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, ss. 39-52.

25. ———. 2001. Intentionalitätstheorie beim frühen Brentano. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

26. ———. 2001. "Die Wahrheitstheorie Franz Brentanos." In Philosophie - Wissenschaft - Wirtschaft. Miteinander denken, voneinander lernen. Vorträge des VI. Kongresses der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Philosophie, Linz 1.-4. Juni 2000, edited by Neumaier, Otto and Born, Rainer, 456-461. Wien: Verlag Hõlder-Pichler-Tempsky.

27. ———. 2002. "Von Brentano zu Ingarden: Die Phänomenologische Bedeutungslehre." Husserl Studies no. 18:185-208.

28. ———. 2002. "Brentano und Meinong. Zur Ontologie der Denkobjekte." In Substanz und Identität. Beiträge zur Ontologie, edited by Löffler, Winfried, 155-166. Paderborn: Mentis-Verlag.

29. ———. 2004. Die Ontologie Franz Brentanos. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

30. ———. 2005. Intentionalität, Zeitbewusstsein und Intersubjektivität. Studien zur Phänomenologie von Brentano bis Ingarden. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

31. ———. 2005. "Brentano, Husserl und Ingarden über die intentionale Gegenstände." In Existence, Culture, and Persons. The Ontology of Roman Ingarden., edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz, 83-114. Frankfurt am Mein: Ontos Verlag.

32. ———. 2006. "Sachverhalte, Objekte und Supervenienz. Brentano, Marty und Meinong." Brentano Studien no. 12:99-119.

33. Danzer, Robert. 1965. Das Allgemeine und das Besondere zur Ontologie Franz Brentanos. Gelsenkirchen: Eurofamilia GmbH.

34. Dölling, Evelyn. 1993. "Brentanos und Freges Urteilslehre - Ein Vergleich." In Philosophie Und Logik: Frege-Kolloquien 1989 Und 1991, edited by Stelzner, Werner, 24-32. De Gruyter.

35. ———. 1997. "Kritik des Urteilslehre: Land versus Brentano, mit Blick auf Frege." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 7:123-146.

36. Ehrenfels, Christian von. 1990. "Über Brentano und Meinong." In Metaphysik, 426-429. München: Philosophia.

Philososphische Schriften, Band IV.

37. Enoch, W. 1894. "Franz Brentano's Reform der Logik." Philosophical Review no. 3 (n/a):357.

38. Fels, H. 1932. "Werner, Alfons, Die psychologisch-erkenntnistheoretischen Grundlagen der Metaphysik Franz Brentanos." Philosophisches Jahrbuch no. 45 (n/a):244-245.

39. Fisette, Denis. 2019. "Einleitung: Franz Brentano Vermischte Schriften." In Franz Brentano: Sämtliche veröffentlichte Schriften: Vermischte Schriften, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Binder, Thomas, XI-XXXV. De Gruyter.

40. Fréchette, Guillaume. 2012. "Brentano uber innere Wahrnehmung und Zeitbewusstsein im Zusammenhang mit seiner Tee zu Einheit des Bewusstseins." In Beiträge zum 9. Kongress der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Philosophie, edited by Dunshirn, Alfred, Nemeth, Elisabeth and Unterthurner, Gerhard, 918-927. Wien: Österreichische Gesellschaft fü Philosophie.

41. Fugali, Edoardo. 2004. Die Zeit des Selbst und die Zeit des Seienden: Bewusstsein und innerer Sinn bei Franz Brentano. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann.

42. Galewicz, Wlodzimierz. 1991. "Die Moglichkeit der Selbstwahrnehmung bei Brentano." Conceptus no. 25:49-57.

43. ———. 1993. "Substanz und Individuation in Brentanos Kategorienlehre." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 4:79-88.

44. ———. 2000. "Brentano und der epistemologische Fundamentalismus." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 8:85-106.

45. George, Rolf. 1990. "Franz Brentano, Über Ernst Machs 'Erkenntnis und Irrtum'. Ed. Roderick M. Chisholm and Johann C. Marek. Studien zur österreichischen Philosophie; Bd. 6." Philosophy in Review no. 10 (6):222-224.

46. Götschl, Johann. 1978. "Brentanos Analyse des Zeitbegriffes." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 5 (1):225-248.

47. Gutierrez-Cortines, Juan. 1972. Das Bewusstsein, die Seienden und ihre Beziehungen in der Philosophie Franz Brentanos. Hamburg.

48. Haller, Rudolf. 1978. "Brentanos Sprachkritik, oder dass "man unterscheiden muss was es (hier) zu unterscheiden gibt"." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 5:211-224.

Reprinted in: R. Haller, - Studien zur Österreichischen Philosophie, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1979. pp. 23-36.

49. ———. 1988. "Franz Brentano, ein Philosoph des Empirismus." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 1:19-30.

50. Hamann, Falk. 2016. "Status und Anzahl der aristotelischen Kategorien." In Substanz denken: Aristoteles und seine Bedeutung für die moderne Metaphysik und Naturwissenschaft, edited by Beier, Kathi and Leidi, Thamar, 19–36. Königshausen & Neumann.

51. Hedwig, Klaus. 1978. "Der scholastische Kontext des Intentionalen bei Brentano." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 5:67-82.

52. ———. 1988. "Die historischen Voraussetzungen un die Rezeption Brentanos." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 1:31-45.

53. Hillebrand, Franz. 1981. Die neuen Theorien der kategorischen Schlüsse. Eine logische untersuchung. Wien: Hölder.

54. Husserl, Edmund. 1919. "Erinnerungen an Franz Brentano." In Zur Kenntnins seines Lebens und siner Lehre. Mit Beiträgen von C. Stumpf und E. Husserl, 151-167. München.

Translated in: Linda McAlister (ed.), The philosophy of Brentano, pp. 47-55.

55. Kamitz, Reinhard. 1977. "Das Problem der Objektivität der Wahrheit im Lichte der Evidenzthorie. Eine logische Analyse eines Arguments von Franz Brentano in Osterreichische Philosophen und Ihr Einfluss auf die analytische Philosophie der Gegenwart. Band 1." Conceptus: Zeitschrift Fur Philosophie no. 11 (28-30):87-91.

56. ———. 1983. "Franz Brentano. Wahrheit und Evidenz." In Grundprobleme der grossen Philosophen: Philosophie der Neuzeit III, edited by Speck, Josef, 160-197. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht.

57. ———. 1989. "Die Rolle der Deskriptiven Psychologie in der Logik Brentanos." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 2:79-90.

58. Kastil, Alfred. 1951. Die Philosophie Franz Brentanos. Eine Einführung in seine Lehre. Bern: A. Francke.

59. Körner, Stephan. 1978. "Über Brentanos Reismus und die extensionale Logik." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 5:29-44.

60. Kraus, Oskar. 1919. Franz Brentano. Zur Kenntnis seines Lebens uns seiner Lehre. Mit Beiträgen von C. Stumpf und E. Husserl. München: Beck.

61. ———. 1924. Franz Brentanos Stellung zur Phänomenologie und Gegenstandstheorie. Leipzig: Meiner.

62. Küng, Guido. 1978. "Zur Erkenntnistheorie Franz Brentano." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 5:169-181.

63. ———. 1989. "Brentano, Husserl und Ingarden über wertende Akte und das Erkennen von Werten." In Traditionen und Perspektiven der analytischen Philosophie. Festschrift für Rudolf Haller, edited by Gombocz, Wolfgang, Rutte, Heiner and Sauer, Werner, 106-117. Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.

64. Mayer-Hillebrand, Franziska. 1952. "Franz Brentanos wissenschaftlicher Nachlass." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 6:599-603.

65. ———. 1966. "Franz Brentano Einfluss auf die Philosophie seiner Zeit und der Gegenwart." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 20:373-394.

66. Melle, Ullrich. 1984. "Die seins- und erkenntnisfrage in der philosophie brentanos." Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie no. 46 (3):418 - 443.

67. ———. 1988. "Zu Brentanos und Husserls Ethikansatz: Die analogie zwischen den Vernunftarten." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 1:109-120.

68. Münch, Dieter. 1986. "Brentanos Lehre von der intentionalen Inexistenz." In Von Bolzano zu Wittgenstein. Zur tradition der Österreichischen Philosophie, edited by Nyiri, Janós, 119-127. Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.

69. ———. 1993. Intention und Zeichen. Untersuchungen zu Franz Brentano und zu Edmund Husserls Frühwerk. Frankfurt a. Main: Suhrkamp.

70. ———. 1996. "Die Einheit von Geist und Leib: Brentanos Habilitationsschrift über die Psychologie des aristoteles als Antwort auf Zeller." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 6:125-144.

71. ———. 2004. "Neues zum frühen Brentano." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 67:209-225.

72. Orth, Ernst-Wolfgang. 1997. "Metaphysische Implikationen der Intentionalität: Trendelenburg, Lotze, Brentano." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 7:15-30.

73. Prechtl, Peter. 1989. "Die Struktur der Intentionalität bei Brentano und Husserl." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 2:117-130.

74. Reimann, Christian. 2018. Das Problem der Ethikbegründung aus evidenzphilosophischer Sicht: Eine Analyse unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Ethik Franz Brentanos. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler.

75. Rogge, E. 1935. Das Kasualproblem bei Franz Brentano: Kohlhammer.

76. Rojszczack, Artur. 1994. "Wharheit und Urteilsevidenz bei Franz Brentano." Brentano Studien no. 5:187-218.

77. Rojszczak, Artur, and Smith, Barry. 2001. "Urteilstheorien und Sachverhalte." In Satz Und Sachverhalt, 9-72. Academia Verlag.

78. ———. 2001. Satz und Sachverhalt: Academia Verlag.

79. Rothenberg, Beno. 1962. Studien zur Logik Franz Brentano's.

Inaugural Dissertation. University Frankfurt am Main.

80. Russo, Antonio. 2008. "Intentionalität und Unendlichkeit beim frühen Franz Brentano (1862-1874)." In Unendlichkeit. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven, edited by Brachtendorf, Johannes, Möllenbeck, Thomas, Nickel, Gregor and Schaede, Stephan, 87-111. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

81. Sauer, Werner. 2000. "Erneuerung der Philosophia Perennis: Über die ersten vier Habilitationsthesen Brentanos." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 58/59:119-150.

82. ———. 2006. "Die Einheit der Intentionalitätskonzeption bei Brentano." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 73:1-26.

"The objective of this paper is to refute the widely held view that in the wake of his so-called reistic turn Brentano subjected his notion of intentionality to a deep-going revision, viz., that he turned from an ontological account of the intentional object by way of identifying it with the thought-of-thing, i.e., the intentional correlate, or by way of attributing to it a peculiar sort of existence, to a non-ontological account thereof. It will be shown that neither the pre-reistic Brentano espoused anything of an ontological account of the intentional object in that he both distinguished it sharply from the intentional correlate and definitely rejected the idea of there being different sorts of existence, and it will be argued that the apparently ineradicable inclination to ascribe to the pre-reistic Brentano an ontological account of the intentional object stems from ignoring the Aristotelian background of Brentano's thinking about relations."

83. Schmit, Roger. 1985. "Allgemeinheit und Existenz. Zur Analyse der kategorischen Urteils bei Herbart, Sigwart, Brentano und Frege." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 23:58-78.

84. Schuhmann, Karl. 1988. "Die Einwirkung Brentanos auf die Mûnchener Phänomenologen." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 1:97-107.

85. ———. 1994. "Der Gegenstandsbegriff in Brentanos 'Psychognosie'." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 5:167-176.

86. Seifert, Josef. 2009. "Franz Brentanos Evidenztheorie der Wahrheit – Eine kritische Analyse." In De Veritate - Über Die Wahrheit, edited by Seifert, Josef, 63-126. Berlin: De Gruyter.

87. Spiegelberg, Herbert. 1936. "Der Begriff der Intentionalität in der Scholastik bei Brentano und bei Husserl." Philosophische Hefte no. 5:75-91.

Revised by the author and translated in: Linda McAlister (ed.), The Philosophy of Brentano (1976), pp. 108-127.

88. ———. 1978. "Zwei Briefe von Edmund Husserl an Franz Brentano über Logik." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 6 (1):1-7.

89. Tănăsescu, Ion. 2002. "Das Sein der Kopula oder was hat Heidegger bei Brentano Versäumt?" Studia Phaenomenologica no. 2:97-123.

90. ———. 2012. "Das Seiende als Wahre und das Sein der Kopula in der Dissertation Brentanos." Brentano Studien no. 10:175–192.

91. ———. 2012. "Die Asymmetrie des Intentionalen bei Brentano." Revue Roumaine de Philosophie no. 56:97-112.

92. ———. 2017. "Die Phasentheorie. Franz Brentano und Auguste Comte." Brentano Studien no. 15:329-360.

93. ———. 2021. Psychologie, Seiendes, Phantasie bei Franz Brentano. Berlin: de Gruyter.

94. Tegtmeier, Erwin. 1994. "Der Hyperdynamismus in der Ontologie der Zeit. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Brentano und McTaggart." Logos. Anales Del Seminario de Metafísica [Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España] no. 1 (1999):83-95.

95. ———. 2000. "Tempus Und Existenz. Eine Kritik Am Solpräsentismus Bei Aristoteles, Augustinus, Brentano Und Prior." Metaphysica no. 1 (1).

96. Tiefensee, Eberhard. 1998. Philosophie und Religion bei Franz Brentano (1838 - 1917). Marburg: Francke.

97. Volpi, Franco. 1978. "Heideggers Verhältnis zu Brentanos Aristoteles-Interpretation. Die Frage nach dem Sein des Seienden." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 32 (2):254 - 265.

98. ———. 1989. "War Franz Brentano ein Aristoteliker? Zu Brentanos und Aristoteles' Auffassung der Psychologie als Wissenschaft." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 2:13-29.

99. Werle, Josef. 1982. "Zur Edition der Vorlseungen Franz Brentanos über Geschichte der Philosophie." Phänomenologische Forschungen no. 12:178-187.

100. ———. 1989. Franz Brentano und die Zukunft der Philosophie. Studien zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte und Wissenschaftssystematik im 19. Jahrhundert. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

101. Werner, Alfons. 1930. Die psychologisch-erkenntnistheoretischen Grundlagen der Metaphysik Franz Brentanos. Hildesheim: Borgmeyer.

102. Wüstenburg, Klaus. 2004. Die Konsequenz des Phänomenalismus. Erkenntnistheoretische Untersuchungen in kritischer Auseinandersetzung mit Hume, Brentano und Husserl. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

103. Zingari, Guido. 1989. "Brentano und Leibniz: Erkenntnistheoretische Grundlagen." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 2:31-42.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliographie choisie des études en français sur Franz Brentano

Bibliographie

1. "Franz Brentano." 1966. Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 78

Sommaire: Hugo Bergman: Franz Brentano 349; F. Mayer-Hillebrand: Franz Brentano Einfluß auf die Philosophie seiner Zeit und Gegenwart 373; Roderick M. Chisholm: Brentano’s Theory of Correct and Incorrect Emotion 395; Lucie Gilson: Science et Philosophie selon F. Brentano 416; Jan Srzednicki: Some Elements of Brentano’s Analysis of Language and their Ramifications 434; D. B. Terrell: Brentano’s Argument for Reismus 446; Tadeusz Kotarbinski: Franz Brentano comme reiste 459; J. C. M. Brentano: The Manuscripts of Franz Brentano 477; Rudolf Fischer: A Recent Contribution of Brentano’s Studies: Franz Brentano’s Philosophy of Evidenz 483-484.

2. "Brentano et son École." 2003. Les Études Philosophiques no. 64

Index: Jocelyn Benoist: Brentano et son école 1; Wilhelm Baumgartner: Le contenut et la méthode des philosophies de Franz Brentano et Carl Stumpf 3; Wojciech Zelaniec: Le Brentano de la "Deskriptive Psychologie": l'homme qui savait décrire (et poursuivait un objectif double en décrivant) 23; Jocelyn Benoist: Sprachkritik ou sémantique: sur le schisme de l'école brentanienne 35; Ronan de Calan: La caractéristique empiriste: la théorie de la rélation de Hume a Ehrenfels 53; Remarques sur le couple forme/matière. Entre ontologie et grammaire chez Anton Marty 65; Wioletta Miskiewicz: Réalisme gnoséologique contre réalisme sceptique: Ingarden et la réception de Brentano en Pologne 83; Claire Marin: L'oeil et la main: la "métaphysique du toucher" dans la philosophie française, de Ravaisson à Derrida 99-112.

3. "Franz Brentano 1838 – 2017." 2017. Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger no. 142

Table des matières: Denis Fisette et Guillaume Fréchette, Brentano et la France 459; Alain de Libera, Le Centaure et le Schimmel. Onto-logique d’une fiction dans la Psychologie du point de vue empirique 471; Kevin Mulligan, Incorrect emotions in ancient, Austrian, and contemporary philosophy 491; Barry Dainton, Brentano on phenomenal unity and holism 515; Uriah Kriegel, Brentano on will and emotion 531–550.

4. "Brentano et la théorie de la connaissance au 19ème siècle." 2017. Revue philosophique de Louvain no. 115

Sommaire: Federico Boccaccini: Brentano et la théorie de la connaissance au xrx• siècle 547; Denis Seron: Sentiment et jugement. Quelques arguments de Brentano contre Wmdelband 551; Bruno Leclercq: Brentano, Frege et le tournant mathématique de la logique 573; Fede:ico Boccaccini: Évidence et logique de l'assentiment: Newman, Brentano Mercier 595; Sébastien Richard: Twardowski sur la vérité 619-645.

5. Antonelli, Mauro. 2006. "La conception de la vérité du jeune Brentano: de la dissertation sur Les significations multiples de l'être aux Leçons de Mètaphysique." In Propositions et états de choses. Entre être et sens, edited by Benoist, Jocelyn, 67-86. Paris: Vrin.

6. ———. 2009. "Franz Brentano et l' "inexistence intentionnelle"." Philosophiques no. 36:467-487.

7. Barsotti, Bernard. 2005. "Le « jugement motivé » et son intensité." Archives de Philosophie no. 2005 (68):465-491.

8. Baumgartner, Wilhem. 2003. "Le contenu et la méthode des philosophies de Franz Brentano et Carl Stumpf." Les études philosophiques no. 64:3-22.

9. Benoist, Jocelyn. 1998. "Qu'est-ce qu'un jugement? Brentano, Frege, Husserl." Études Phénoménologiques no. 14 (27-28):169-192.

10. ———. 2000. "Husserl entre Brentano et Bolzano: jugement et proposition." Manuscrito no. 23:11-39.

11. ———. 2003. "Jugement et existence chez Kant. Comment des jugements d’existence sont-ils possibles?" Quaestio no. 3 (1):207-228.

12. ———. 2004. "Brentano et la théorie réaliste de la vérité." Phainomenon no. 8:9-29.

13. Boccaccini, Federico. 2010. "Intentionnalité et intentionnalisme chez Brentano : La structure métaphysique de la référence intentionnelle." Bulletin d’analyse phénoménologique no. 6:3-28.

14. ———. 2012. "La vérité efficace: l’origine du concept de vrai chez Brentano entre Evidenzphilosophie et pragmatisme." In Franz Brentano's Psychology and Metaphysics, edited by Tanaescu, Ion. Zeta.

15. ———. 2017. "Brentano, la théorie des catégories et la définition de la substance." Les Etudes Philosophiques no. 173:351-366.

16. Bucchioni, Guillaume, and Iglesias, Laurent. 2019. "Le monisme matériel de Franz Brentano." Dialogue no. 58:653-675.

17. Budin, Gerhard. 2007. "L’apport de la philosophie autrichienne au développement de la théorie de la terminologie." Langages no. 2007 (168):11-23.

18. Cayla, Fabien. 2993. "Husserl, Brentano et la psychologie descriptive." Philosophiques no. 20:347-361.

19. Costa, Filippo. 1962. "La théorie du temps chez Brentano." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 67 (4):450 - 474.

20. Courtine, Jean-François. 1998. "L'aristotélisme de Franz Brentano." Études Phénoménologiques no. 14:7-50.

21. ———. 2008. "Brentano et l'ontologie." In Compléments de Substance. Études sur les propriétés accidentelles offertes à Alain de Libera, edited by Erismann, Christophe and Schniewind, Alexandrine, 197-214. Paris: Vrin.

22. Dambska, Izydora. 1978. "François Brentano et la pensée philosophique en Pologne: Casimir Twardowski et son École." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 5:117-130.

23. de Libera, Alain. 2012. "L’Ouverture écossaise : Brentano critique de Bain." Quaestio no. 12:123-154.

24. ———. 2014. "Le direct et l’oblique: sur quelques aspects antiques et médiévaux de la théorie brentanienne des relatifs." In Mind, Values, and Metaphysics: Philosophical Essays in Honor of Kevin Mulligan–Volume 1, edited by Reboul, Anne, 317-347. Cham (Switzerland): Springer

Résumé: "La théorie adverbiale du jugement chez Brentano en tant qu’elle va de pair avec la distinction du modus rectus et du modus obliquus peut apparaître comme une interprétation originale de la théorie de la connotation. On montre que la théorie des noms « connotatifs » et des « noms relatifs » de John Stuart Mill éclaire effectivement l’horizon conceptuel où s’inscrit la distinction brentanienne des deux modes. Transposé à l’acte de penser brentanien, la thèse de Stuart Mill sur les « noms corrélatifs » revient à dire que ‘B est-pensé-par A’ et ‘A pense-B’ connotent exactement le même fait: qu’il y a un A-pensant-B. C’est une des premières amorces de l’adverbialisme. Mais, en ce qui concerne Brentano, c’est loin d’être la seule. On analyse ici deux autres dispositifs: la théorie aristotélicienne des relatifs, telle que l’exposent quelques textes des Catégories et de la Métaphysique; la distinction entre trois types de relations formulée par Thomas d’Aquin dans la Iª Pars, q. 13 a. 7, sur la base d’une distinction générale entre « relations réelles » et « relations de. »

On montre que le troisième type de relation défini par Thomas, où une chose devient ou cesse d’être connue en vertu des états intentionnels d’un connaissant, peut être énoncé sous la forme ‘aR3b’ où a, le connaissant, a une relation réelle à b, le connaissable,

& le sensible b a une relation de raison à a & b acquiert une relation à a du fait d’un changement dans les propriétés de a. C’est cette relation qui caractérise la relation intentionnelle dans la Deskriptive Psychologie. Après une brève comparaison des thèses de Brentano avec celles de Reid et d’Ockham sur la perception, on revient sur le débat Sauer-Chisholm concernant l’Intentionality-thesis. On présente quelques arguments en faveur d’une interprétation continuiste, selon laquelle Brentano affine d’abord sa théorie de la relation intentionnelle dans un sens qui incline au réisme, puis qui en fait partie intégrante. On soutient que les modifications apportées étaient appelées par les caractéristiques mêmes de ses premières théories sur l’inexistence intentionnelle et leur enracinement dans un certain aristotélisme, et qu’elles ont revêtu la forme d’une marche progressive, constante et raisonnée vers l’adverbialisme, vu par Brentano comme l’authentique position d’Aristote."

25. ———. 2017. "Le Centaure et le Schimmel. Onto-logique d’une fiction dans la Psychologie du point de vue empirique." Revue Philosophique de la France Et de L’Etranger no. 142:471-490.

26. Desmeules, Marie-Hélène. 2018. "Normativité et intentionnalité : pour un pluralisme normatif." Bulletin d'Analyse Phénoménologique no. 14:1-33.

27. Dewalque, Arnaud. 2016. "L'intentionnalité cognitive et ses modes : Reinach critique de Brentano." Philosophie no. 128 (1):20-33.

28. ———. 2018. "Conscience interne et connaissance de soi. Descartes et Brentano." In Descartes et la phénoménologie, edited by Pradelle, Dominique and Riquier, Camille, 63-90. Paris: Hermann.

29. English, Jacques. 1998. "Pourquoi et comment Husserl en est venu à critiquer Brentano." Études Phénoménologiques no. 14:51-88.

30. Fisette, Denis, and Fréchette, Guillaume, eds. 2007. À l'école de Brentano. De Würzbourg à Vienne. Paris: Vrin

Table des matières: Denis Fisette et Guillaume Fréchette: Préface 7; Denis Fisette et Guillaume Fréchette: Les legs de Brentano 13; Edmund Husserl: Souvenirs de Franz Brentano 163; Carl Stumpf: Souvenirs de Franz Brentano 175; Christian Ehrenfels; Sur les qualités de forme 225; Alexius Meinong: Sur les objets d'ordre supérieur et leur rapport à la perception interne 261; Kazimierz Twardowski: Fonctions et formations 343; Anton Marty: Sur le rapport entre la grammaire et la logique 385; Références bibliographiques 423; Index des noms propres 441-446.

31. ———. 2017. "Brentsno et ls France." Revue Philosophique de la France Et de L’Etranger no. 142:459-470.

32. Fréchette, Guillaume. 2011. "Contenu et objet du jugement chez Brentano." Philosophiques no. 38:241-261.

33. ———. 2014. "Fixer, interpréter, déterminer. Éléments de psychologie descriptive de Brentano à Bühler." In Anton Marty & Karl Bühler: Between mind and language — Zwischen Denken und Sprache — Entre pensée et langage, edited by Cesalli, Laurent and Friedrich, Jeanette, 79-102. Basel: Schwabe.

34. ———. 2015. "Le moment normatif dans la philosophie austro-allemande." Philosophiques no. 42 (2):375-384.

35. Gens, Jean-Claude. 1996. "La doctrine du jugement correct dans la philosophie de F. Brentano." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 101 (3):361-381.

36. Gilson, Lucie. 1955. La psychologie descriptive selon Franz Brentano. Paris: Vrin.

37. ———. 1955. Méthode et métaphysique selon Franz Brentano. Paris: Vrin.

38. ———. 1966. "Science et philosophie selon Franz Brentano." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 20:416-433

English translation in: Linda McAlister, The Philosophy of Brentano, pp. 68-79.

39. Ierna, Carlo. 2014. "La science de la conscience selon Brentano." In Vers une philosophie scientifique. Le programme de Brentano, edited by Niveleau, C. E.: Demopolis.

40. Ingarden, Roman. 1969. "Le concept de philosophie chez Franz Brentano. Première partie." Archives de Philosophie:458-475.

41. ———. 1969. "Le concept de philosophie chez Franz Brentano. Deuxième partie." Archives de Philosophie:609-638.

42. Janik, Piotr J. 2021. "Irrealia: F. Suárez’s Concept of Being in the Formulation of Intentionality from F. Brentano to J. Patočka and Beyond." In Intentionnalité comme idée. Phenomenon, between efficacy and analogy, edited by Janik, Piotr J. and Canullo, Carla, 31-45.

43. Julien, Maxime. 2016. Brentano et les théories contemporaines de la conscience. Sesto S. Giovanni (Italie): Éditions Mimésis.

44. Kotarbinski, Tadeusz. 1966. "Franz Brentano comme réiste." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 20:459-476

English translation in: Linda McAlister, The Philosophy of Brentano, pp. 194-203.

45. Leclercq, Bruno. 2008. "Les présupposés d'existence de l'école de Brentano à l'école de Frege." Philosophie no. 97 (2):26-41.

46. Majolino, Claudio. 2003. "Le différend logique: jugement et énoncé eléments pour une reconstruction du débat entre Husserl et Marty." Studia Phaenomenologica no. 3 (1):135-149.

47. Mariani, Emanuele. 2020. "De l’être à l’âme, et retour. Brentano, Aristote et le projet d’une philosophie scientifique." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 2:247-269

Résumé : "Dans le dernier quart du XIXe siècle, l’ambition d’une philosophie scientifique inspire la Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt de Franz Brentano. Appelée à refonder sur des bases empiriques l’univers de l’être, cette forme nouvelle de psychologie réactualiserait ainsi, en un sens, un certain héritage de la métaphysique ancienne.

Et Brentano parviendrait à assembler dans une même vision systématique les sources de la pensée grecque, en particulier aristotélicienne, et moderne. Mais peut-on vraiment considérer Brentano comme un aristotélicien en raison de son projet psychologique ?

La question est bien connue et comme Franco Volpi, entre autres, le soutient, il semblerait que l’orientation épistémologique de la psychologie brentanienne ne trouve pas dans l’aristotélisme son véritable motif directeur. Une autre lecture est toutefois possible à nos yeux, si nous considérons qu’à aucun moment Brentano ne prétend faire de la psychologie un moyen pour revenir à Aristote. C’est notre hypothèse de recherche qui nous conduit à lire avec la plus grande attention le traité de 1867, Die Psychologie des Aristoteles : le recours à Aristote resterait alors nécessaire pour comprendre le projet d’une nouvelle psychologie qui n’oublie pourtant pas sa vocation métaphysique."

48. ———. 2020. "L’entrelacs des traditions: Brentano, l’analogia entis et le platonisme." Studia Phaenomenologica no. 20:51-75.

49. Massin, Olivier, and Mulligan, Kevin. 2021. Décrire : La psychologie de Franz Brentano. Paris: Vrin.

50. Mazzù, Antonino. 2004. "Psychologie empirique et psychologie métaphysique chez F. Brentano." Annales de Phénomenologie no. 3:17-57.

51. ———. 2007. "La question du rapport intentionnel chez F. Brentano." In Questions sur l'intentionnalité, edited by Couloubaritsis, Lambros and Mazzù, Antonino, 233-254. Bruxelles: Ousia.

52. McCormick, Peter. 1981. "Sur le développement du concept de l'intentionnalité chez Brentano et Husserl." Philosophiques no. 8:227-237.

53. Mulligan, Kevin. 1997. "Sur l'histoire de l'approche analytique de l'histoire de la philosophie: de Bolzano et Brentano à Bennett et Barnes." In Philosophie analytique et histoire de la philosophie, edited by Vienne, Jean-Michel, 61-103. Paris: Vrin.

54. Münch, Dieter. 2004. "Franz Brentano et la réception catholique d'Aristote au XIX siècle." In Aristote au XIX siècle, edited by Thouard, Denis, 231-248. Villeneuve d'Asq Cédex: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.

55. Niveleau, Charles-Édouard ed. 2014. Vers une philosophie scientifique : Le programme de Brentano. Paris: Demopolis.

56. Olivier, Massin, and Kevin, Mulligan. 2021. Décrire: La psychologie de Franz Brentano: Vrin.

57. Renaudie, Pierre-Jean. 2012. "Le réel et ses signes : Brentano et Husserl sur l’engagement ontologique de l’intentionnalité." Queastio no. 12:243-262.

58. Schultess, Daniel. 1999. "L’Individuation selon Brentano." Philosophiques no. 26 (2):219–230.

59. Sébastien, Richard. 2015. "Sur un débat qui n’a pas eu lieu : approche ingardénienne contre approche meinongienne des objets fictifs." Slavica bruxellensia no. 11:1-14.

60. Sebestik, Jan. 1984. "Bolzano et Brentano. Deux sources autrichiennes du Cercle de Vienne." Fundamenta Scientiae no. 5:219-235.

61. Seron, Denis. 2003. "La critique de la perception interne de Brentano à Heidegger." Études Phénoménologiques no. 37-38:111-142.

62. ———. 2006. "La controverse sur la négation de Bolzano à Windelband." Philosophie no. 90 (3):58.

63. ———. 2008. "Sur l’analogie entre théorie et pratique chez Brentano." Bulletin d'Analyse Phénoménologique no. 4.

64. ———. 2015. "L’équivalence entre « mental » et « conscient » chez Brentano." In Approches phénoménologiques de l’inconscient, edited by Gyemant, Maria and Popa, Délia, 15-36. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

65. ———. 2017. "Sentiment et jugement : Quelques arguments de Brentano contre Windelband." Revue philosophique de Louvain no. 115:551-571.

66. ———. 2020. "Brentano et Husserl sur les valeurs." Azimuth. Philosophical Coordinates no. 1:1-20.

67. ———. 2022. "Carnap contre Brentano sur l’intentionnalité." In Édifier un monde. Autour de la notion d’"Aufbau” chez Carnap et en phénoménologie, edited by Farges, Julien, Fournier, Jean-Baptiste and Pradelle, Dominique. Paris: Sorbonne Université Presses

Résumé : Le chapitre vise à confronter la théorie de l’intentionnalité de Brentano à sa critique carnapienne. D’abord, l’auteur discute quelques convergences et divergences entre la première et la conception fonctionnelle de l’objet défendue par Carnap dans l’Aufbau, détaillant en quel sens l’une et l’autre s’enracinent dans une commune entreprise de critique du langage. Ensuite, il énonce contre l’intentionnalité de Brentano quatre objections directement inspirées de la conception carnapienne, dont il suggère qu’elle est, à certains égards, moins problématique."

68. Taieb, Hamid. 2018. "La place des catégories dans l’ontologie de Brentano." Les Etudes Philosophiques no. 177:435-446.

69. ———. 2019. "Que peut Freud que Brentano ne peut pas?" Revue Philosophique de la France Et de L’Etranger no. 144 (2):183-201.

70. Tănăsescu, Ion. 2010. "Le concept psychologique de la représentation de la fantaisie chez Brentano et sa réception chez Husserl." Studia Phaenomenologica no. 10:45-75.

71. Van Der Schaar, Marietje. 1999. "L'analogie et la vérité chez Franz Brentano." Philosophiques no. 26 (2):203-217.

72. Villevieille, Laurent. 2018. "Du « Je parle » au « Je pense »: l'origine des catégories selon Trendelenburg et Brentano." Philosophie no. 137:39-54.

73. Volpi, Franco. 2004. "La doctrine aristotélicienne de l'être chez Brentano et son influence sur Heidegger." In Aristote au XIX siècle, edited by Thouard, Denis, 277-293. Villeneuve d'Asq Cédex: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliografia scelta degli studi in italiano su Franz Brentano

Bibliografia

1. La Scuola di Brentano. 1988. Dordrecht: Kluwer

Also published as Topoi Supplementary volume 2.

Contents: Wilhelm Baumgartner: Die Rolle des deskriptiven Psychologie Franz Brentanos am Beispiel der 'Wahrnehrung' 5; Stefano Besoli: La psicologia descrittiva e il primato dell'esperienza. Rilievi su alcune divergenze rilevabili tra il sistema concettuale di Dilthey e quello di Brentano 26; Reinhard Mamitz: Deskriptive Psychologie als unerlässliche Grundlage wissenschaftlicher Philosophie? Eine Darstellung und kritische Analyse des Psychologismus Franz Brentanos 58; Paolo Spinicci: Some Observations on the Concept of Descriptive Psychology in the Philosophy of Franz Brentano 82; Enzo Melandri: Emozione, sentimento e conoscenza dal punto di vista fenomenologico 93; Kevin Mulligan: Judgings: Their Parts and Counterparts 117; Natale Stucchi: Perception, Representation and Persuasion in the Scientific Work of Vittorio Benussi 149; Richard Sylvan: Supplanting Maximization, and Other Utilitarian Assumptions, in Western Ethical Ideology. A Satisizing Alternative to Brentano's Foundations 167-194.

2. "Franz Brentano. The Origin and Originality of his Thought and School." 2019. Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 111:775-941

A cura di Gemmo Iocco, Michele Lenoci, SavIna Raynaud.

Sommario: Gemmo Iocco, Michele Lenoci, SavIna Raynaud: La filosofia di Franz Brentano un secolo dopo 775; Beatrice Centi: Conoscere il sentimento. Il confronto con la storia della filosofia e il problema della specificità della terza classe dei fenomeni psichici nella Grundlegung und Aufbau der Ethik 785; Buuno Langlet: Intentionnalité des émotions et conscience affective selon Franz Brentano 797; DavId EzequIel Téllez Maqueo, ¿Es le voluntad distinta al sentimiento? Una comparacion entre Franz Brentano y Tomás de Aquino 807; Federico Boccaccini: Psicologia morale e perfezionismo in Brentano 821; Arnauld Dewalque: Brentano’s Case for Optimism 835; Andrea Sebastiano Staiti: Brentano on Free Will 849; Adriam Maître: Brentano über Herleitung und Geltung von Kausalität 863; Riccaido MartInelli: La percezione sensibile nella Psicologia dal punto di vista empirico di Brentano 875; Carlo Ierna: The Shape of Time: Temporal Topologies in Brentano and Husserl 885; WolFgang Heumer: Is Brentano’s Method a Unifying Element of the Brentano School? 897; Emanuele Mariani: Per una psicologia della storia. Brentano, lettore di Comte, e la teoria delle quattro fasi della filosofia 911; Franz BRentano, Le quattro fasi della filosofia e il suo stato attuale (1894) 925-941.

3. Albertazzi, Liliana. 1990. "Nominalismo e critica delle idee in Brentano." Idee:217-235.

4. ———. 1990. "Nominalismo e critica della lingua in Franz Brentano." Idee no. 13/15:217-232.

5. ———. 1999. Introduzione a Brentano. Bari: Laterza.

6. Albertazzi, Liliana, and Poli, Roberto, eds. 1993. Brentano in Italia. Una filosofia rigorosa, contro positivismo e attualismo. Milano: Guerini

Indice: Giovanni Piana: Presentazione 9; Liliana Albertazzi, Roberto Poli: Introduzione. Brentano: il puzzle incompleto 11; I Pragmatisti 19. Antonio Santucci: Franz Brentano e i pragmatisti italiani 21; Francesca Modenato: Conoscere e volere. L'incontro di Vailati e Calderoni con Brentano 47; Roberto Poli: Le credenze fra logica e mondo. Reismo, pragmatismo e common-sense philosophy: alle soglie del problema dell'analiticità 67; Guido Zingari: Franz Brentano e il problema della conoscenza. Motivi e tematiche a confronto con autori italiani 91; De Sarlo e la sua Scuola 101; Riccardo Luccio, Caterina Primi: De Sarlo e Brentano 103; Simonetta Gori-Savellini: Franz Brentano ed Enzo Bonaventura. Dalla psicologia empirica alla psicologia sperimentale 121; Liliana Albertazzi: Il presente psichico tra analisi concettuale e laboratorio: Franz Brentano e Renata Calabresi 131; Benussi e la psicologia della Gestalt 173; Paolo Bozzi: Vittorio Benussi e la psicologia italiana (intervista a cura di Liana Albertazzi e Roberto Poli) 175; Natale Stucchi: La psicologia teorica di tradizione brentaniana in alcuni lavori sperimentali di Vittorio Benussi 193; Mauro Antonelli: Coscienza e temporalità. Vittorio Benussi e la comprensione del tempo 297; Presenze 235; Wilhelm Baumgartner: I corrispondenti italiani negli archivi di Brentano 237; Luigi Dappiano: Martinetti lettore di Brentano 247; Piero Di Giovanni: Franz Brentano e la biblioteca filosofica di Palermo 261; Inediti. 273; (a) Lettera di Franz Brentano a Giuseppe Amato Pojero (testo originale, p. 286) 275; (b) Corrispondenza Brentano-Salvadori (testi originali, p. 316) 299; Indice dei nomi 335.

7. Antonelli, Mauro. 1990. "Univocità dell'essere e intenzionalità del conoscere: saggio critico sulla genesi e sulle fonti del pensiero di Franz Brentano." Giornale Critico della Filosofia Italiana no. 49:101-123.

8. ———. 1996. Alle radici del movimento fenomenologico. Psicologia e metafisica del giovane Franz Brentano. Bologna: Pitagora.

9. ———. 1996. Franz Brentano psicologo. Dalla 'Psicologia dal punto di vista empirico' alla 'Psicologia descrittiva'. Bologna: Pitagora.

10. Antonelli, Mauro, and Boccaccini, Federico. 2021. Franz Brentano. Mente, coscienza, realtà. Firenze: Carocci.

11. Bausola, Adriano. 1967. "Intenzionalità, verità ed evidenza secondo Franz Brentano." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 59 (n/a):275.

12. ———. 1968. Conoscenza e moralità in Franz Brentano. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

13. ———. 2000. "La dottrina sul giudizio di esistenza e la critica ad alcuni argomenti per l'esistenza di Dio in Franz Brentano." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 92:282-294.

14. Besoli, Stefano. 1986. "Brevi cenni intorno alla recezione brentaniana della filosofia di Thomas Reid." Annali di discipline filosofiche dell'Università di Bologna:25-30.

15. Boccaccini, Francesco. 2010. "Quasi umbræ entium. Suárez e Brentano sull’ens rationis." In Francisco Suárez and His Legacy. The Impact of Suarezian Metaphysics and Epistemology on Modern Philosophy, edited by Sgarbi, Marco, 271-294. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

16. Bonato, Jacopo-Niccolò. 2011. "Gli anni giovanili di Franz Brentano e la dissertazione del 1862 Sui molteplici significati dell'essere secondo Aristotele." Giornale di Metafisica no. 33:413-435.

17. Di Martino, Michele. 2019. La questione filosofica dell'inconscio: inconscio e autocoscienza non riflessiva da Brentano a Husserl: Mimesis.

18. Fano, Vincenzo. 1993. La filosofia dell'evidenza. Saggio sull'epistemologia di Franz Brentano. Bologna: CLUEB.

19. Mangiagalli, Maurizio. 2009. Franz Brentano interprete di Aristotele. Roma: Aracne.

20. Mariani, Emanuele. 2019. "Per una psicologia della storia. Brentano lettore si Comte e la teoria delle quattro fasi della filosofia." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 111:911-924.

21. Marocco, Angelo. 1998. Brentano. Le prove dell'esistenza di Dio. Roma: Studium

Con una scelta di testi di Franz Brentano.

22. Martinelli, Riccardo. 1994. "Rappresentare e giudicare. Sull’origine e il ruolo della dottrina degli oggetti intenzionali nella psicologia di F. Brentano." Discipline Filosofiche no. 1:239-274.

23. ———. 2017. "Brentano sullo statuto ontologico delle sensazioni." Rivista di filosofia: 335-349

Abstract: "Brentano's views on the ontological status of sensations have been almost completely ignored in the scholarly debate on his ontology of the mind. This is rather unfortunate, because such views shed light on the evolution of Brentano's perspective. In his "Psychology" (1874), Brentano claimed that all intentional objects both sensible, and intellectual share the same ontological nature. Yet he later dismissed this whole doctrine and began to distinguish rigorously between sensible and noetic conscience. I argue that this change was due to Brentano's views about the neurophysiology of human sensibility. After a long confrontation with Fechner, Brentano eventually embraced Helmholtz's idea of neural «specific energies» and shaped his newly developed doctrine of sensible qualities in accordance with it. Far from letting his ontology be driven by what he called «genetic psychology», Brentano was nevertheless prudent enough to develop his theories so that any contradiction with ascertained scientific facts could be avoided."

24. Modenato, Francesca. 1979. Coscienza ed essere in Franz Brentano. Bologna: Patron.

25. Poli, Roberto. 1993. "Ontologia e logica in Franz Brentano: giudizi categorici e giudizi tetici." Epistemologia no. 16:39-76

"The various attempts to clarify and interpret Brentano's logical analysis have merely provided a paraphrase of Brentano own words. We will analyse Brentano's proposals against the background of traditional logic. In his Formale Logik, Bochenski explicitly warns us that logic not only "does not give proof of a linear continuity of evolution", but that the logic which follows a long period of decadence "departs, for the most part, from different presuppositions and points of view, uses a different technique, and develops previously neglected aspects of the problematic. It is a different form of logic". I shall bear these remarks of Bochenski's carefully in mind and I shall argue that mathematically-based modern formal logic and syllogistic theory of the past exemplify two distinct formal paradigms. My reference to two different paradigms, and not just to two different calculuses, implies that most of the syllogistic reformulations of this century are, broadly speaking, suspect; and specifically because they take the syllogistic to be a part or a fragment of first-order predicative calculus. Careful study of traditional logic immediately shows that traditional logic expresses specific ontological perspectives which are deeply embedded in its formal structures. From this point of view, Brentano's theory is a brilliant attempt to escape from some of the most difficult impasses of traditional logic and offers tools for new developments. Unfortunately, it arrived too late, just as the Fregean paradigm was about to burst on the scene."

26. ———. 1998. "La teoria del giudizio di Franz Brentano e Anton Marty: giudizi tetici e giudizi doppi." Epistemologia no. 21 (1):41-60.

27. Rossi, Guido. 1926. Giudizio e raziocinio. Studi sulla logica dei brentaniani. Milano: Sodalitas.

28. Russo, Antonio. 2003. "Franz Brentano e Heinrich Denifle: un carteggio inedito." Studium:333-356.

29. ———. 2003. La Scuola cattolica di Franz Brentano: Heinrich Suso Denifle. Trieste: EUT

Con un carteggio inedito F. Brentano - H. Denifle.

30. ———. 2013. "Brentano e Fabro: per un nuovo realismo." In Cornelio Fabro e Franz Brentano. Per un Nuovo Realismo, 17-64. Edizioni Studium.

31. ———. 2013. "San Tommaso ed Aristotele nella formazione di Franz Brentano (1838-1917)." Angelicum no. 90:147-277.

32. ———. 2014. Cornelio Fabro e Franz Brentano. Per un nuovo realismo. Roma: Studium.

33. ———. 2019. "Franz Brentano e la filosofia come scienza. L'inedita «Geschichte der Philosophie» (1866-67)." In Filosofia e scienza a confronto, edited by Genna, Caterina, 55-84. Milano: Franco Angeli.

34. ———. 2019. "Franz Brentano vs Schelling: un confronto alla luce di alcuni inediti. Con una appendice di testi mai prima dati alle stampe." Dada. Rivista di Antropologia post-globale no. 1:7-54.

35. Spinicci, Paolo. 1985. "Realtà e rappresentazione. Saggio sulla genesi della filosofia dell'esperienza nel pensiero di Franz Brentano." Rivista di Storia della Filosofia:229-254.

36. Tomasi, Pietro. 2009. Una nuova lettura dell'Aristotele di Franz Brentano alla luce di alcuni inediti. Trento: Uni Service.

37. Vanni-Rovighi, Sofia. 1938. "La natura delle categorie secondo F. Brentano." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 30 (n/a):362.

38. Volpi, Franco. 1976. Heidegger e Brentano. L'aristotelismo e il problema dell'univocità dell'essere nella formazione filosofica del giovane Martin Heidegger. Padova: Cedam.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on the Theory of Categories of Charles S. Peirce

Bibliography

1. Aronson, Jerrold L. 1969. "Connections: A Defense of Peirce's Category of Thirdness." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 5:158-172.

2. Atkin, Albert. 2016. Peirce. New York: Routledge.

Chapter Six: Metaphysics, "The categories", pp. 226-241.

3. Atkins, Richard Kenneth. 2006. "Restructuring the Sciences: Peirce's Categories and His Classifications of the Sciences." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 42:483-500.

4. ———. 2010. "An “Entirely Different Set of Categories”: Peirce's Material Categories." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 46:94-110.

5. ———. 2012. "A Guess at the Other Riddle: The Peircean Material Categories." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 48:530-557.

6. ———. 2018. Charles S. Peirce's Phenomenology: Analysis and Consciousness. New York: Oxford University Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments IX; Introduction 1; 1. The Kantian Insight 8; 2. The Place of “On a New List of Categories” 28; 3. Peirce’s Reduction Thesis 57; 4. From Phenomenology to Phaneroscopy 73; 5. Phenomenological Investigation 106; 6. The Phenomenological Categories 140; 7. How Seeing a Scarlet Red Is Like Hearing a Trumpet’s Blare 205; Notes 229; Bibliography 239; Index 249.

7. Atkins, Rchard Kenneth. 2024. "Peirce's Formal and Material Categories in Phenomenology." In The Oxford Handbook to Charles S. Peirce, edited by de Waal, Cornelis, 61-76. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Conclusion.

Peirce explores two different hypotheses with respect to classifying the phaneron’s constituents. The first is that they may be classified according to the three basic predicate forms of firstness, secondness, and thirdness. This is the formal classification and the one to which Peirce devotes the most energy. The second is that the phaneron’s constituents may be classified on a continuum between positiveness and negativeness.

There are only hints throughout Peirce’s manuscripts as to how such a classification is to work. Nonetheless, Peirce evidently holds that the formal and material categories can be combined to construct a sort of “phanerochemical” table of constituents.

Much as the chemical elements are classified by their periodicity and atomic weight, a phanerochemical table of constituents would have (I) as its columns (A) firstness, secondness, and thirdness, including these in (B) their logical ingredient relations (the firstness of secondness, the secondness of thirdness, etc.) and (C) their degenerate and genuine forms and (II) as its rows degrees of intensity between positiveness and negativeness.

Yet it must be admitted that Peirce’s project remains largely unfinished and its prospects remain uncertain." (p. 74)

8. Blachowicz, James A. 1972. "Realism and Idealism in Peirce's Categories." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 8:199-213.

9. Buzzelli, Donald E. 1972. "The Argument of Peirce's "New List of Categories"." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 8:63-89.

10. Colapietro, Vincent M. 2001. "A lantern for the feet of inquirers: The heuristic function of the Peircean categories." Semiotica no. 136:201-216.

11. ———. 2008. "Peirce categories and sign studies." In Approaches to Communication: Trends in Global Communication Studies, edited by Petrilli, Susan, 35-50. Madison: Atwood Publishing.

Abstract: "Charles Peirce’s theory of signs greatly depends on his doctrine of categories, since this doctrine informs or inspires virtually all of his classifications of signs (e.g., that of iconical, indexical, and symbolic signs). Thus, an adequate understanding of Peirce’s semiotic or (as he most often spelled it) semeiotic is impossible apart from at least a working knowledge of the Peircean categories. This essay offers a primer of Peirce’s categories of firstness, secondness, and thirdness. Here the author succinctly explains the articulation, definition, number, names, functions, applications, origin, status, derivation, and justification of these categories. Such explanations throw much light on the theoretical structure exhibited by, and the intricate classifications encountered in, Peirce’s minutely detailed theory of signs."

12. ———. 3025. "C. S. Peirce’s Phenomenological Categories: Their Basic Form, Recursive Elaboration, and Heuristic Purpose." Journal Phänomenologie no. 44:10-20.

13. De Tienne, André. 1988. "Peirce's Search for a Method of Finding the Categories." Versus. Quaderni di studi semiotici (VS) no. 49:19-30.

14. ———. 1989. "Peirce's Early Method of Finding the Categories." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 25:385-406.

15. ———. 1996. L’analytique de la représentation chez Peirce : La genése de la théorie des categories. Brussels: Facultés universitaires Sant- Louis.

16. de Waal, Cornelis. 2013. Peirce: A Guide to the Perplexed. New York: Bloomsbury.

Chapter 3: Phenomenology and the categories, pp. 33-46.

17. Dea, Shannon. 2008. "Firstness, Evolution and the Absolute in Peirce's Spinoza." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 44:603-628.

18. DeMarco, Joseph P. 1973. "Peirce's Categories and Normative Inquiry." Journal of Value Inquiry no. 7:214-216.

19. Dilworth, David A. 2014. "Intellectual Gravity and Elective Attractions: The Provenance of Peirce's Categories in Friedrich von Schiller." Cognitio, São Paulo no. 15:37-72.

20. Esposito, Joseph L. 1979. "The Development of Peirce's Categories." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 15:51-60.

21. ———. 1980. Evolutionary Metaphysics: The Development of Peirce's Theory of Categories. Athens: Ohio University Press.

22. Fabbrichesi Leo, Rossella. 1994. "The Relevance of the Concept of Relation in Peirce." In Living Doubt: Essays concerning the epistemology 0f Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Debrock, Guy and Hulswit, Menno, 95-102. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

23. Feibleman, James K. 1946. An Introduction to Peirce's Philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin.

Foreword by Bertrand Russell.

Second edition with a new Introduction pp. XVII-XX, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, The M.I.T. Press, 1969.

Chapter 4. Metaphysics: A. Phenomenology; 144; B. The Phenomenological Categories 156; C. Metaphysics 169; D. The Metaphysical Categories 183-195.

24. Fidora, Alexander. 2007. "Peirce's Account of the Categories and Ramon Llull." Studia Lulliana no. 47:175-186.

25. Forster, Paul. 2008. "What Grounds the Categories? Peirce and Santayana." Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society no. 26:8-18.

26. Fuhrman, Gary. 2013. "Peirce’s Retrospectives on his Phenomenological Quest." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 49:490-508.

27. Gartenberg, Zachary Micah. 2012. "Intelligibility and Subjectivity in Peirce: A Reading of His “New List of Categories”." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 50:581-610.

28. Gorlée, Dinda L. 2009. "A sketch of Peirce’s Firstness and its significance to art." Sign Systems Studies no. 37:205-269.

29. Greenlee, Douglas. 1968. "Peirce's Hypostatic and Factorial Categories." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 4:49-58.

30. Grillo, Eric. 2007. "Peirce on categories: Towards a metaphysical foundation of pragmatics." Semiotica no. 167:309-336.

31. Guardiano, Nicholas Lee. 2015. "The Categorial Logic of Peirce’s Metaphysical Cosmogony." The Pluralist no. 10:313-334.

32. Hartshorne, Charles. 1980. "A Revision of Peirce's Categories." The Monist no. 63:277-289.

33. Hausman, Carl R. 1988. "Fourthness: Carl Vaught on Peirce's Categories." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 24:265-278.

34. ———. 1988. "Value and the Peircean Categories." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 15:203-223.

35. ———. 2008. "Charles Peirce’s Categories and the Growth of Reason." International Journal for the Semiotic of Law no. 21:209-222.

36. Hilpinen, Risto. 1972. "On the Objects and Interpretants of Signs: Comments on T. L. Short's Peirce's Theory of Signs." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 43:610-618.

37. Hookway, Christopher. 1985. Peirce. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Part One. Peirce's project: the pursuit of truth; III. Categories, pp. 80-117.

38. Houser, Nathan. 1990. "Peirce's Pre-Phenomenological Categories." In Semiotics, 1988, edited by Deely, John, Prewitt, Terry and Haworth, Karen, 103-108. Lanham: University Press of America.

39. Ketner, Kenneth Laine. 1989. "Hartshorne and the Basis of Peirce's Categories." In Hartshorne: Process Philosophy and Theology, edited by Kane, Robert and Phillips, Stephen H., 135-149. Albany: State University of New York Press.

40. Krausser, Peter. 1972. "The Three Fundamental Structural Categories of Charles S. Peirce." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 13:189-215.

41. Kruse, Felicia. 1991. "Genuineness and Degeneracy in Peirce's Categories." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 27:267-298.

42. Lee, Harold N. 1980. "One, Two, Three: Peirce's Categories." The Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 18:433-445.

43. Mertz, Donald W. 1979. "Peirce: Logic, Categories, and Triads." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 8:158-173.

44. Michael, Frederick. 1980. "The Deduction of Categories in Peirce's "New List"." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 16:179-211.

45. Michalska, Anna. 2019. "Between Phenomenology and Semantics: Charles S. Peirce’s Conception of Categories Revisited." Archiwum Historii Filozofii i Myśli Społecznej no. 64:113-128.

46. Misak, Cheryl J. 2004. "Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)." In The Cambridge Companion to Peirce, edited by Misak, Cheryl J. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

§ 7: The categories, pp. 19-23.

47. Mittelberg, Irene. 2019. "Peirce’s universal categories: On their potential for gesture theory and multimodal analysis." Semiotica no. 228:193-222.

48. Murphey, Murray G. 1961. The Development of Peirce's Philosophy. Harvard: Harvard University Press.

Reprinted by Hackett, 1993 with a new preface and a new appendix with footnotes keyed to the manuscript classifications by Max Fisch.

49. ———. 1965. "On Peirce's Metaphysics." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 1:12-25.

50. Nadin, Mihail. 1980. "The Logic of Vagueness and the Category of Synechism." The Monist no. 63:351-363.

51. O'Dowd, Sarah. 1982. "Comparative Adjectives in Terms of Peirce’s Phenomenological Categories." In Semiotics 1980, edited by Herzfeld, Michael and Lenhart, Margot D., 355-364. New York: Plenum Press.

Abstract: "This paper explores ways in which semiotic concepts of Charles Sanders Peirce illuminate the meaning-potential of English comparative adjectives. Having classified all phenomena into categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, Peirce describes the three degrees of adjectives in terms of these categories: “Firstness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, positively and without reference to anything else” (Hardwick, 1977: 24). The uncompared positive degree of an adjective such as red or hard, then, is Peirce’s example of Firstness. We return to this idea later."

52. Oehler, Klaus. 1976. "Peirce contra Aristotle. Two Forms of the Theory of Categories." In Proceedings of the C. S. Peirce Bicentennial international Congress, edited by Ketner, Kenneth Laine, 335-342. Lubbock: Texas Tech Press.

53. Ormiston, Gayle L. 1977. "Peirce's Categories: Structure of Semiotic." Semiotica no. 19:209-231.

54. Pitt, Joseph C. 2005. "Hume and Peirce on Belief, or, Why Belief Should Not Be Considered an Epistemic Category." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 41:343-354.

55. Powell, Ralph Austin. 1985. "Kant's Thought Interpreted Through Peirce's Categories." In Semiotics 1984, edited by Deely, John, 325-332. New York: University Press of America.

56. Rosensohn, William L. 1974. The Phenomenology of Charles S. Peirce: From the Doctrine of Categories to Phaneroscopy. Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner.

Contents: Part. I. The elements of Phenomenology. Foreword VII; I. The beginnings of Phenomenology - Introductory 1; II. The birth of Phenomenology (1867-1868) 19; III. The same subject concluded 53; Part II. IV: Phenomenology and Nature (1867-1904) 59; V. Phaneroscopy: the description of the phaneron 77; Appendix 103; Bibliography 105, Index 107-109.

From the Foreword: "To trace the development of Peirce's phenomenology from a doctrine of Categories to the ground on which philosophy and science rest is the purpose of this book. Although parallels with Husserl's thought are inevitable, it has seemed proper to this writer to emphasize the growth of Peirce's own ideas and the scientific-philosophical background out of which they emerged. Thus Peirce's most original contributions, viz., a set of universal categories appearing in thought, nature and experience, the method of their discovery, and Phaneroscopy, the science that describes the phaneron, or the collective total of all that is in any way or in any sense present to the mind, are shown in the context of a single, evolving body of thought - a comprehensive philosophy shaped by Peirce's lifelong interest in logic, the sciences, ethics, aesthetics and metaphysics."

57. Rosenthal, Sandra B. 1988. "Processive Emergence and the Peircean Categories." Versus. Quaderni di studi semiotici (VS) no. 49:121-127.

58. ———. 1997. "Pragmatic Experimentalism and the Derivation of the Categories." In The Rule of Reason: The Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Brunning, Jacqueline and Forster, Paul, 120-138. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

59. Santaella-Braga, Lucia. 1995. "The universality and fecundity of Peirce’s categories." Semiotica no. 154:405-414.

60. Savan, David. 1952. "On the Origins of Peirce's Phenomenology." In Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Wiener, Philip P. and Young, Frederic H., 185-194. Harvard: Harvard University Press.

61. Short, Thomas L. 2013. "Questions Concerning Certain Claims Made for the ‘New List’." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 49:267-298.

62. Staat, Wim. 1993. "On Abduction, Deduction, Induction and the Categories." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 29:225-237.

63. Stern, Robert. 2005. "Peirce on Hegel: Nominalist or Realist?" Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 41:65-99.

64. ———. 2007. "Peirce, Hegel, and the Category of Firstness." Internationales Jahrbuch des deutschen Idealismus = International Yearbook of German Idealism no. 5:276-308.

65. ———. 2007. "Peirce, Hegel, and the Category of Secondness." Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 50:123-155.

66. ———. 2013. "An Hegelian in Strange Costume? On Peirce’s Relation to Hegel I." Philosophy Compass no. 8:53-62.

67. ———. 2013. "An Hegelian in Strange Costume? On Peirce’s Relation to Hegel II." Philosophy Compass no. 8:63-72.

68. Sytko, Yurii L., and Kuzina, Olga A. 2019. "Interpretation of signs in the conception of Ch. S. Pierce via predicabilia and categories of Aristotle." SHS Web of Conferences no. 68:1-5.

Abstract: "The article is devoted to the hypothesis explaining the order of signs’ classes presented in the manuscripts and articles of Ch.S. Pierce via the diagram of relations of Aristotle’s categories which was described in the first translation of Aristotle into Latin conducted after Boethius by Julius Pacius. The hypothesis allows explaining not only the order of categories in the Ch.S. Pierces diagram but also interpreting them via ten categories of Aristotle on the background of scholastic tradition of depicting relations. The conclusion is drawn that the theory of Ch.S. Pierce seems to be the development of Aristotle’s doctrine of categories. The article can contribute to the history of philosophy."

69. Tillerr, Glenn. 2008. "Counting Categories with Peirce and Santayana." Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society no. 26:1-7.

70. Topa, Alessandro. 2017. "The reemergence of Schiller in Peirce’s reminiscences of the Æsthetic Letters: a critical addendum to D. Dilworth’s account of the provenance of Peirce’s categories in Schiller." Cognitio, São Paulo no. 18:326-343.

71. ———. 2018. "The Categories in disguise: a categoriological specification of D. Dilworth’s account of the provenance of Peirce’s Categories in Schiller." Cognitio, São Paulo no. 19:160-178.

72. Turrisi, Patricia A. 1990. "Peirce's Logic of Discovery: Abduction and the Universal Categories." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 26:465-497.

73. Tursman, Dick. 1988. "Analytical Mechanics and Peirce's Categories." Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society no. 24:223-238.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Frege's Ontology: Being, Existence, and Truth

Being

"One of Frege's main semantic principles, is however, missing in Dummett's book, [Frege: philosophy of language] and it is has been ignored by most Frege scholars. That principle is the thesis concerning the ambiguity of the word 'is'. Angelelli come close to attending to it when he makes some remarks on identity and predication, and Matthias Schirn puts special emphasis on the role of the thesis in Frege's work. However, the great majority of Frege scholars have neglected the ambiguity doctrine, even when they have commented on each of the allegedly different meanings of 'is' separately. This is strange in view of the fact that it was Frege and Russell who proposed the thesis and established it as one of the basic ingredients of modern logic. They have in fact been followed by most philosophers. For instance, in the Tractatus Ludwig Wittgenstein emphasizes the ambiguity of the verb 'to be' and stresses the importance of constructing a language which prevents confusions between the different meanings of 'is'. Wittgenstein also remarks that Frege's and Russell's conceptual notation: is such a language although it does not succeed in excluding all mistakes (Tractatus, 3.323 - 3.325). This work sets out to show that a large part of Frege's philosophy is an attempt to make us realize the importance of keeping the different meanings of 'is' apart and to catch the philosophical mistakes brought about our failure to see the ambiguity.

But how is the verb 'is' ambiguous in Fregean logic? Frege distinguishes between the following meaning of 'is':

1) the 'is' of identity (e.g., Phosphorus is Hesperus; a=b),

2) the 'is' of predication, i.e., the copula (e.g., 'Plato is blond'; P(a)),

3) the 'is' of existence,

(i) expressed by means of the existential quantifier and the symbol for identity (e.g., 'God is'; (∃ x) (G=x)),

or

(ii) expressed by means of the existential quantifier and the symbol for predication (e.g., 'There are human beings' / 'There is at least one human being'; (∃ x) H (x)),

and

4) the 'is' of class-inclusion, i.e., generic implication (e.g., 'A horse is a four-legged animal'; (x) (P(x) Q(x)))." (pp. 13-14)

From: Leila Haaparanta, Frege's Doctrine of Being, Helsinki: Acta Philosophica Fennica, vol. 39, 1985.

Existence

"If you want to assign a content to the verb 'to be', so that the sentence 'A is' is not pleonastic and self-evident, you will have to allow circumstances which the negation of 'A is' is possible; that is to say, that there are subjects of which being must be denied. But in that case the concept 'being' will no longer be suitable for providing a general explanation of 'there are' under which 'there are B's' means the same as 'something that has being falls under the concept B'; for if we apply this explanation to 'There are subjects of which being must be denied', then we get 'Something that has being falls under the concept of not-being' or 'Something that has being is not'. There is no way of getting over this once a content of some kind -- it doesn't matter what it is -- is agreed to the concept of being. If the explanation of 'there are Bs' as meaning the same as 'Something that has being is B' is to work, we just have to understand by being something that goes entirely without saying.

For this reason the contradiction still remains if we say 'A exists' means 'The idea of the A has been caused by something affecting the ego'. (...)

We can say that the meanings of the word 'exist' in the sentences 'Leo Sachse exists' and 'Some men exist' display no more difference than does the meanings of 'is a German' in the sentences 'Leo Sachse is a German' and 'Some men are Germans'. But then the sentence 'Some men exist' or 'Something existing is a man' only means the same as 'There are men' if the concept 'existing thing' is superordinate to the concept man. So if such forms of expression are to have the same meaning in general, the concept 'existing thing' must be superordinate to every concept. This is only possible if the word 'exist' means something that goes entirely without saying, and if therefore nothing at all is predicated in the sentence 'Leo Sachse exists', and if in the sentence 'Some men exist' the content of what is predicated does not lie in the word 'exist'. The existence expressed by 'there is' is not contained in the word 'exist' but in the form of the particular judgement. 'Some men are Germans' is just as good an existential judgement as 'Some men exist'. But once the word 'exist' is given a content, which is predicated of an individual thing, this content can be made into the characteristic mark of a concept-a concept under which there falls the individual thing of which existence is being predicated. E.g. if one divides everything into two classes:

1. What is in my mind, ideas, feelings etc.

and

2. What is outside myself, and says of the latter that it exists, then one can construe existence as a characteristic mark of the concept 'centaur', although there are no centaurs. I would not acknowledge anything as a centaur that was not outside my mind; this means that I shall not call mere ideas or feelings centaurs.

The existence expressed by 'there is' cannot be a characteristic mark of a concept whose property it is, just because it is a property of it. In the sentence 'There are men' we seem to be speaking of individuals that fall under the concept 'man', whereas it is only the concept 'man' we are talking about. The content of the word 'exist' cannot well be taken as the characteristic mark of a concept, because 'exists', as it is used in the sentence 'Men exist',,has no content.

We can see from all this how easily we can be led by language to see 'things in the wrong perspective, and what value it must therefore have for philosophy to free ourselves from the dominion of language. If one makes the attempt to construct a system of signs on quite other foundations and 'with quite other means, as I have tried to do in creating my concept-script,,we shall have, so to speak, our very noses rubbed into the false analogies in language." (pp. 65-67)

From: Gottlob Frege, Dialogue with Punjer on Existence (written before 1884), in: Hans Hermes, Friedrich Kambartel, Friedrich Kaulbach (eds.) Posthumous Writings, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1979, pp. 53-67.

Truth

"When entering upon the study of a science, we need to have some idea, if only a provisional one, of its nature. We want to have in sight a goal to strive towards; we want some point to aim at that will guide our steps in the right direction. The word 'true' can be used to indicate such a goal for logic, just as can 'good' for ethics and 'beautiful' for aesthetics. Of course all the sciences have truth as their goal, but logic is concerned with the predicate 'true' in a quite special way, namely in a way analogous to that in which physics has to do with the predicates 'heavy' and 'warm' or chemistry with the predicates 'acid' and 'alkaline'. There is, however, the difference that these sciences have to take into account other properties besides these we have mentioned, and that there is no one property by which their nature is so completely characterized as logic is by the word 'true'. (...) Now it would be futile to employ a definition in order to make it clearer what is to be understood by 'true'. If, for example, we wished to say 'an idea is true if it agrees with reality' nothing would have been achieved, since in order to apply this definition we should have to decide whether some idea or other did agree with reality. Thus we should have to presuppose the very thing that is being defined. The same would hold of any definition of the form 'A is true if and only if it has such-and-such properties or stands in such-and-such a relation to such-and-such a thing'. In each case in hand it would always come back to the question whether it is true that A has such-and-such properties, or stands in such-and-such a relation to such-and-such a thing. Truth is obviously something so primitive and simple that it is not possible to reduce it to anything still simpler. Consequently we have no alternative but to bring out the peculiarity of our predicate by comparing it with others. What, in the first place, distinguishes it from all other predicates is that predicating it is always included in predicating anything whatever." (pp. 128-129)

From: Gottlob Frege, Logic (1897), in: Hans Hermes, Friedrich Kambartel, Friedrich Kaulbach (eds.) Posthumous Writings, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1979, pp. 126-151.

"7. What true is, I hold to be indefinable.

8. The expression in language for a thought is a sentence. We also speak in an extended sense of the truth of a sentence. 12. Logic only becomes possible with the conviction that there is a difference between truth and untruth.

13. We justify a judgement either by going back to truths that have been recognized already or without having recourse to other judgements. Only the first case, inference, is the concern of Logic.

14. The theory of concepts and of judgement is only preparatory to the theory of inference.

15. The task of logic is to set up laws according to which a judgement is justified by others, irrespective of whether these are themselves true.

16. Following the laws of logic can guarantee the truth of a judgement only insofar as our original grounds for making it, reside in judgements that are true.

17. No psychological investigation can justify the laws of logic." (pp. 174-175)

From: Gottlob Frege, "17 Key Sentences on Logic" (1906 or earlier), in: Hans Hermes, Friedrich Kambartel, Friedrich KaulbachPosthumous Writings, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1979, pp. 174-175.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on Frege's Ontology

Bibliography

1. Angelelli, Ignacio. 1967. Studies in Gottlob Frege and Traditional Philosophy. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

Contents: 0. Introduction 1; 1. Ontology 9; 2. Semantics 37; 3. The so-called logical relations 92; 4. The traditional lack of distinction between UF [das Fallen eines Einzelnen unter einen Begriff] and UO [the relation of subordination between two concepts] 107; 5. 'Merkmal-Eigenschaft' 138; 6. Function 150; 7. The idea of levels ('Stufen') in the philosophical tradition 192; 8. 'Wertverlauf' 205; 9. Existence 224; 10. Number 231; 11. The main results of the present investigation 252; Appendix 261; Bibliography 274; Index of names 287; Index of subjects 291.

From the Introduction: "The present work is not intended to be a presentation of or an introduction to Frege's doctrines (though it may be so in some respects). It presupposes a general knowledge of Frege's main doctrines and terminology, as well as of the main recent discussions on Frege.

Fregean terminology or doctrines are explained only so far as is necessary for each single discussion. (For instance, from an explanatory point of view, Frege's ideas on number should have been presented at the beginning, and not in the last chapter.)

As has been said, Frege's different aspects are distributed according to a hierarchy, in which his insight into number has the central place.

Nevertheless, in looking for an answer to our primary question, the method used has been analytical rather than synthetical; thereby, of course, the deep unity of Frege's thought has continually been taken into account.

Some of the philosophically relevant aspects of Frege's philosophy have been, so to speak, isolated, and the general question of his significance in the context of the philosophical tradition has been reiterated in reference to each single aspect. Thus the general question has split into a set of particular investigations, which is reflected in the title of the present work.

(...)

Each one of these 'Studies on G. Frege and Traditional Philosophy' is intended to satisfy simultaneously, at least in some degree, the following three conditions:

(1) that they be a critical discussion of some fragment of Frege's thought;

(2) that they be an application of Fregean doctrines to the philosophical past;

(3) that they be a study of some feature of the philosophical tradition which seems necessary for a better understanding of Frege's doctrines, and this in two ways: (a) intrinsically (i.e., a Fregean doctrine is confusing or not easily intelligible unless it is situated in the whole context of Western philosophy), (b) extrinsically (i.e., a Fregean doctrine, clear enough in itself, may be better appreciated in its full significance by comparing it with some similar doctrine of the philosophical tradition)." pp. 2-4

2. ———. 1967. "On Identity and Interchangeability in Leibniz and Frege." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 8:94-100.

3. ———. 1976. "Friends and Opponents of the Substitutivity of Identical in the History of Logic." In Studien Zu Frege / Studies on Frege I - Iii, edited by Schirn, Matthias, 141-166. Stuttgart: Fromman-Holzboog.

Vol. II

4. ———. 1982. "Frege's Notion of 'Bedeutung'." In Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science Vol. Vi. Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, edited by Cohen, Jonathan, 735-754. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

5. ———. 1984. "Frege and Abstraction." Philosophia Naturalis no. 21:453-471.

I list, and quote from Frege's texts on abstraction (section 1). Their content falls under three rubrics: ordinary abstraction, magical abstraction and definitions by abstraction. Frege's remarks on each of these types of abstraction are examined (sections 2, 3, 4). The result (section 5) is negative: Frege was not interested in abstraction; in fact, he even recommended that the term 'abstraction' be avoided.

The phrase 'definition by abstraction' is mentioned by Frege just once, in a letter to Russell. Although Frege has hardly anything to say about it, that Peanonian phrase leads to a wider historical discussion (section 6) in which two methods are contrasted: the abstraction method (Peano, Weyl, Lorenzen) and the looking-around method (Frege, Carnap et al.). The phrase 'definition by abstraction', originally designed by Peano to refer to the abstraction method, ended up being used, quite inappropriately, as a designation of the looking-around procedure.

Peano's abstraction method may be referred to as "modern abstraction", insofar as it improves upon the traditional theories of abstraction. In section 7 it is argued that modern abstraction rescues the pre-Fregean persistent attempts to define number as product of abstraction. These pre-Fregean attempts, right in their purpose, went astray in their application of abstraction, basically because of lacking a logico-linguistically well defined theory of abstraction. If reconstructed by means of modern abstraction, the pre-Fregean attempts appear (1) to be immune to Frege's criticisms, (2) to yield a better notion of number than Frege's own, "logistic", looking-around inspired definition.

Also in section 7, modern abstraction is shown to establish a "bridge" between the traditional and Fregean theories of predication."

Note: I am grateful to CAMLS (Committee for attendance to meetings of learned societies) as well as to the Liberal Arts Foundations, The University of Texas at Austin, for helping me to attend the VII International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Salzburg, July 1983, where this paper was presented. An abstract of the paper, published at the time of the meeting, needs the following two qualifications: a) "Frege refers to abstraction on several occasions, always negatively": this is wrong to the extent that in Frege's references to ordinary abstraction there is no criticism. (b) "Numbers as set of units" is not a traditional notion "vindicated" by modern abstraction except in the queer sense that the predicate "x is a set of units" might be shown to be invariant with respect to underlying equivalence relation of one-one correspondence among the sets from which number is abstracted.

6. Anscombe, Gertrud Elisabeth. 1988. "Existence and Truth." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 88:1-12.

7. Bar-Elli, Gilead. 1996. The Sense of Reference. Intentionality in Frege. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

8. Beaney, Michael. 1996. Frege: Making Sense. London: Duckworth.

9. ———. 1997. The Frege Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.

10. Beaney, Michael, and Reck, Erich H., eds. 2005. Frege's Philosophy in Context. New York: Routledge.

Gottlob Frege. Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers. Vol. I

11. ———, eds. 2005. Frege's Philosophy of Logic. New York: Routledge.

Gottlob Frege. Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers. Vol. II

12. ———, eds. 2005. Frege's Philosophy of Mathematics. New York: Routledge.

Gottlob Frege. Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers. Vol. III

13. ———, eds. 2005. Frege's Philosophy of Thought and Language. New York: Routledge.

Gottlob Frege. Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers. Vol. IV

14. Bell, David. 1979. Frege's Theory of Judgement. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

15. ———. 1980. "On the Translation of Frege's "Bedeutung"." Analysis no. 60:191-195.

16. ———. 1987. "Thoughts." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 28:36-50.

17. Benoist, Jocelyn. 1998. "Qu'est-Ce Qu'un Jugement? Brentano, Frege, Husserl." Études Phénoménologiques no. 14 (27-28):169-192.

18. Blanchette, Patricia A. 2012. Frege's Conception of Logic. New York: Oxford University Press.

19. Born, Rainer. 1996. "Frege." In Routledge History of Philosophy. Volume Ix: Philosophy of Science, Logic and Mathematics in the Twetieth Century, edited by Kearney, Richard, 124-156. New York: Routledge.

20. Burge, Tyler. 1977. "Belief De Re." Journal of Philosophy no. 74:338-362.

21. ———. 1979. "Sinning against Frege." Philosophical Review no. 88:398-432.

22. ———. 1984. "Frege on Extensions of Concepts, from 1884 to 1903." Philosophical Review no. 93:3-34.

23. ———. 1984. "The Concept of Truth in Frege's Program." Philosophia Naturalis no. 21:507-512.

24. ———. 1986. "Frege on Truth." In Frege Synthesized, edited by Haaparanta, Leila and Hintikka, Jaakko, 97-154. Dordrecht: Reidel.

From the General Introduction by Leila Haaparanta and Jaakko Hintikka: "In his paper, entitled 'Frege on Truth', Tyler Burge suggests that Frege's odd-sounding conclusion about truth and falsity should be taken seriously. In the first section of his article he claims that too little attention has ben paid to the pragmatic basis of Frege's view that truth values are objects. According to Burge, Frege is committed to the doctrine that logic is primarily concerned with the normative notion of truth. The second section of Burge's paper consists mainly of the criticism of Dummett's interpretation of Frege's theses on truth values. In section III Burge purports to show how Frege's identification of the truth values with particular objects has its sources in 'some of his deepest philosophical conceptions'. He holds the view that 'in particular, it proceeds from a theory about the nature of logical objects, from a thesis about the aim and ordering of logic, and from his conceptions of assertion and truth.'" p. 6

25. ———. 1992. "Frege on Knowing the Third Realm." Mind no. 101:633-650.

26. ———. 2005. Truth, Thought, Reason. Essays on Frege. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

27. Carl, Wolfgang. 1994. Frege's Theory of Sense and Reference. Its Origins and Scope. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

28. Currie, Gregory. 1980. "Frege on Thoughts." Mind no. 89:234-248.

29. ———. 1982. Frege. An Introduction to His Philosophy. Sussex: The Harvester Press.

30. Dejnožka, Jan. 1996. The Ontology of the Analytic Tradition and Its Origins. Realism and Identity in Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine. Lanham: Littlefield Adams Books.

Paperback edition reprinted with corrections, 2002; reprinted with further corrections, 2003.

"While many books discuss the individual achievements of Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine, few books consider how the thought of all four thinkers bears on the fundamental questions of twentieth century philosophy. This book is about existence-identity connections in Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine. The thesis of the book is that there is a general form of ontology, modified realism, which these great analysts share not only with each other, but with most great philosophers in the Western tradition. Modified realism is the view that in some sense there are both real identities and conceptual (or linguistic) identities. In more familiar language, it is the view that there are both real distinctions and distinctions in reason (or in language). Thus in modified realism, there are some real beings which can serve as a basis for accommodating possibly huge amounts of conceptual or linguistic relativity, or objectual identities' 'shifting' as sortal concepts or sortal terms 'shift.' Therefore, on the fundamental level of ontology, the linguistic turn was not a radical break from traditional substance theory. Dejnožka also holds that the conflict in all four analysts between private language arguments (which imply various kinds of realism) and conceptual "shifting" (which suggests conceptual relativism) is best resolved by, and is in fact implicitly resolved by, their respective kinds of modified realism. Frege and Russell, not Wittgenstein and Quine, emerge as the true analytic progenitors of 'no entity without identity,' offering between them at least twenty-nine private language arguments and fifty-eight 'no entity without identity' theories."

31. ———. 2007. "Dummett's Backward Road to Frege and to Intuitionism." In The Philosophy of Michael Dummett. The Library of Living Philosophers, edited by Auxier, Randall E., 55-113. La Salle: Open Court.

"This paper is on Michael Dummett's paper, "The Context Principle: Centre of Frege's Philosophy" (read in 1993, published in 1995), in which Dummett revises his thinking on Frege. But it is really on Frege. I argue that Dummett's semantic program for Frege rests on a scholarly and philosophical mistake. Namely, it takes what Russell calls the backward road from reference to sense. Since Dummett endorses the backward road, I must show that the mistake is genuine. But I need not enter the murky waters of "On Denoting" to do so, since I make the mistake independently clear. After arguing that no senses are objects or functions, I show how we can keep Frege's context principle from bifurcating into one principle for senses and another for references. I conclude by showing that intuitionism is a form of the backward road and shares in the mistake." (Jan Dejnožka)

"Thus, I recant my earlier view and am now in full agreement with Jan Dejnožka that senses - even thoughts - cannot be objects. He deserves credit for perceiving this....The whole apparatus of objects, concepts, and functions is inapplicable in the realm of sense. Dr. Dejnožka perceives this too....I think now that Frege ought to have held that view, and I applaud Dr. Dejnožka's recognition of this." Michael Dummett, "Reply to Jan Dejnožka," in The Philosophy of Michael Dummett, 122-23.

32. ———. 2010. "Dummett's Forward Road to Frege and to Intuitionism." Diametros no. 25:118-131.

"This paper continues my discussion of Frege with Michael Dummett in The Philosophy of Michael Dummett (2007). Most of it is about Dummett's adopting my view that Frege's senses cannot be objects. The issues include: the cognitive order versus the ontological order for the forward road; the nature and identity of senses; the different senses of "intension;" the nature of saturation; whether special quantifiers are now needed for senses; and Frege's earlier and later permutation arguments. I also continue our discussion of the implications of the forward road for intuitionism."

33. Dummett, Michael. 1973. Frege: Philosophy of Language. London: Duckworth.

Second edition 1981

34. ———. 1979. "Was Frege a Philosopher of Language?" Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 33:786-810.

35. ———. 1981. The Interpretation of Frege's Philosophy. London: Duckworth.

36. ———. 1995. Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics. Harvard: Harvard University Press.

37. ———. 1996. Frege and Other Philosophers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

38. Falkenberg, Gabriel. 1998. Sinn, Bedeutung, Intensionalität: Der Fregesche Weg. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

39. Føllesdal, Dagfinn. 1994. "Husserl and Frege: A Contribution to Elucidating the Origins of Phenomenological Philosophy." In Mind, Meaning, and Mathematics. Essays on the Philosophical Views of Husserl and Frege, edited by Haaparanta, Leila, 3-50. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Originally published in German as: Husserl und Frege. Ein Beitrag zur Beleuchtung der Enstehung der phänomenologischen Philosophie, Oslo, Aschehoug, 1958.

40. ———. 2001. "Bolzano, Frege and Husserl on Reference and Object." In Future Pasts. The Analytic Tradition in Twentieth Century Philosophy, edited by Floyd, Julet and Shieh, Sanford, 67-80. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

41. Forgie, William. 2000. "Kant and Frege: Existence as a Second Level Property." Kant Studien no. 91:165-177.

42. Gabriel, Gottfried. 1984. "Fregean Connection: Bedeutung, Value and Truth-Value." Philosophical Quarterly no. 34:372-376.

43. Gabriel, Gottfried, and Dathe, Uwe, eds. 2000. Gottlob Frege: Werk Und Wirkung. Mit Den Unveröffentlichten Vorschlägen Für Ein Wahlgesetz Von Gottlob Frege. Paderborn: Mentis.

44. Geach, Peter Thomas, and Anscombe, Gertrud Elisabeth. 1961. Three Philosophers. Oxford: Blackwell.

Contents: Analytical Table of Contents VI-XX; G. E. M. Anscombe: Aristotle: The Search for Substance 1; P. T. Geach: Aquinas 65; P. T. Geach: Frege 127-162.

45. Goldfarb, Warren. 2001. "Frege's Conception of Logic." In Future Pasts. The Analytic Tradition in Twentieth Century Philosophy, edited by Floyd, Julet and Shieh, Sanford, 25-42. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

46. Greimann, Dirk. 2003. Freges Konzeption Der Wahrheit. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

47. ———, ed. 2003. Das Wahre Und Das Falsche. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

48. Grossmann, Reinhardt. 1961. "Frege's Ontology." Philosophical Review no. 70:23-40.

Reprinted in: Edwin B. Allaire [and others], Essays in Ontology, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1963, pp. 106-120; reprinted also in: D. E. Klemke (ed.), Essays on Frege, Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1974, pp. 79-98.

49. ———. 1969. Reflections on Frege's Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

50. Guenthner, Franz. 1984. "Comments on Hintikka's ' a Hundred Years Later'." Synthese no. 59:51-58.

51. Haaparanta, Leila. 1985. Frege's Doctrine of Being. Helsinki: Acta Philosophica Fennica.

Contents: Preface 3; A note on the textual references and the bibliography 5; I. Introduction 9; II. The interpretational framework 27; III. The origin of the thesis concerning the ambiguity of the word 'Is' 47; IV. Identity and predication 59; V. Existence 128; VI. Concluding remarks 159; Bibliography 162; Index of names 179.

"The purpose of this work is to clarify the philosophical basis of Frege's doctrine concerning the word 'is'. Frege's doctrine of being is partly considered in its historical setting, formed mainly by Leibniz and Kant. Since the ambiguity thesis is one of the cornerstones of Frege's new logic, this work will, to some extent, help to indicate how Frege arrived at his great logical innovation. I shall proceed by first presenting a short survey of the different approaches to Frege's philosophy and thereafter outlining Frege's historical setting (Chapter II.1.). Then I shall present the main features of Frege's view of logic (Chapter II.2.). After that, I shall say a few words of the history of the word 'being' in philosophical and philological literature and study Frege's texts concerning the ambiguity doctrine (Chapter III). In Chapter IV there is a discussion on Frege's distinction between identity and predication with reference to Leibniz's and Kant's thought and some remarks are also made on class-inclusion. In Chapter V there are comments on Frege's doctrine of existence with reference to Kant's ideas. Finally, I shall make some concluding remarks on Frege in a wider historical context (Chapter VI). Chapter II will give the interpretational framework for considering Frege's doctrine of being. Chapters IV and V are meant to show how this general hypothesis works in the textual material and thereby to yield a detailed interpretation of Frege's view." pp. 16-17.

52. ———. 1986. "Frege on Existence." In Frege Synthesized, edited by Haaparanta, Leila and Hintikka, Jaakko, 155-174. Dordrecht: Reidel.

From the General Introduction by Leila Haaparanta and Jaakko Hintikka: "In her article 'Frege on Existence' Leila Haaparanta emphasizes that Frege's greatest insight was the idea of first-order language, which, to a large extent, motivated the rest of his innovations. Haaparanta focuses her attention on Frege's concept of existence, which receives special attention in Frege's thought in connection with the thesis concerning the ambiguity of such words for being as the English 'is'. The ambiguity thesis was an important part of the Fregean paradigm of first-order logic. Haaparanta argues that Frege does not only assume the word 'is' to be ambiguous but that he considers 'exists', or the 'is' of existence, to be an equivocal word. She suggests that the equivocity view has a metaphysical and epistemological background in Frege's thought. Her paper thus pushes a great deal further the suggestions of Jaakko Hintikka mentioned earlier in this Introduction." p. 6

53. ———. 1986. "On Frege's Concept of Being." In The Logic of Being. Historical Studies, edited by Hintikka, Jaakko and Knuuttila, Simo, 269-289. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company.

54. ———, ed. 1994. Mind, Meaning, and Mathematics. Essays on the Philosophical Views of Husserl and Frege. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

55. ———. 2001. "Existence and Propositional Attitudes: A Fregean Analysis." Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy no. 4:75-86.

56. Haaparanta, Leila, and Hintikka, Jaakko, eds. 1986. Frege Synthesized. Essays on the Philosophical and Foundational Work of Gottlob Frege. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Contents: Part I. Introduction

Leila Haaparanta and Jaakko Hintikka: General introduction 3; Joan Weiner: Putting Frege in perspective 9;

Part II. Semantics and epistemology

Jean van Heijenoort: Frege and vagueness 31; Hans Sluga: Semantic content and cognitive sense 47; Thomas G. Ricketts: Objectivity and Objecthood: Frege's metaphysics of judgment 65; Tyler Burge: Frege on truth 97; Leila Haaparanta: Frege on existence 155;

Part III. Logical theory

Michael D. Resnik: Frege's proof of referentiality 177; Nino B. Cocchiarella: Frege, Russell and Logicism: a logical reconstruction 197; Robert B. Brandom: Frege's technical concepts: some recent developments 253;

Part IV. Philosophy of mathematics

Philip Kitcher: Frege, Dedekind, and the philosophy of mathematics 299; Gregory Currie: Continuity and change in Frege's philosophy of mathematics 345; A. W. Moore and Andrew Rein: Grundgesetze, Section 10 375; Index of names 385; Index of subjects 388-390.

From the General Introduction: "In recent literature [about Frege], one can also find a wealth of new and sometimes controversial viewpoints. For instance, Jean van Heijenoort has called our attention to an important but neglected aspect of Frege's attitude to logic and language that he calls 'logic as language'. Hans Slugs has challenged on a large scale the received view of Frege as a lonely figure in nineteenth-century philosophy whose ancestry goes to medieval objectivists rather than his German predecessors. Sluga wants to place Frege firmly in the middle of the German philosophical tradition of his day. It is indeed unmistakable that there are, for instance, Kantian elements in his thinking that had earlier been overlooked. Indeed, the idea of logic as language is likely to be one of them. Another one is the sharp contrast between the realm of thinking and understanding and the realm of sense and intuition. Sluga's influence is illustrated amply in several papers in this volume. In an attempt to reverse the traditional priorities, Jaakko Hintikka has suggested, relying partly on van Heijenoort's interpretation, that the crucial part of Frege's work in semantics lies in his ideas about the semantics of the familiar elementary logic (truth-functions and quantification) rather than in Frege's theory of sense and reference, which is merely intensional frosting on a more important extensional cake, even though it is typically given the pride of place in expositions in Frege's semantics. As a part of this attempted reversal of emphasis, Jaakko Hintikka has also called attention to the role Frege played in convincing almost everyone that verbs for being had to be treated as multiply ambiguous between the 'is' of identity, the 'is' of predication, the 'is' of existence, and the 'is' of class-inclusion -- a view that had been embraced by few major figures (if any) before Frege, with the exception of John Stuart Mill and Augustus De Morgan. Hintikka has gone on to challenge this ambiguity thesis. At the same time, Frege's role in the genesis of another major twentieth-century philosophical movement, the phenomenological one, has become an important issue. Even the translation of Frege's key term ' Bedeutung' as 'reference' has become controversial.

The interpretation of Frege is thus thrown largely back in the melting pot. In editing this volume, we have not tried to publish the last word on Frege. Even though we may harbor such ambitions ourselves, they are not what has led to the present editorial enterprise. What we have tried to do is to bring together some of the best ongoing work on Frege. Even though the ultimate judgment on our success lies with out readers, we want to register our satisfaction with all the contributions."

57. Hale, Bob. 1984. "Frege's Platonism." Philosophical Quarterly no. 34:224-241.

58. Heijenoort, Jean van. 1977. "Sense in Frege." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 6:93-102.

Reprinted in: J. Van Heijenoort - Selected essays - Napoli, Bibliopolis, 1985, pp. 55-63

59. ———. 1977. "Frege on Sense Identity." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 6:93-102.

Reprinted in: J. Van Heijenoort - S elected essays - Napoli, Bibliopolis, 1985, pp. 65-69.

60. Hill, Claire Ortiz. 1991. Word and Object in Husserl, Frege, and Russell. The Roots of Twentieth-Century Philosophy. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press.

Reprinted 2001.

Contents: Abbreviations IX; Preliminary terminological comments XI; Glossary XIII; Acknowledgments XIV; Introduction 1.

Part One: Logic, realism and the foundations of arithmetic

1. The argument that Frege influenced Husserl 7; 2. Husserl, Frege, and psychologism 13; 3. Sense, meaning, and noema; 4. Husserl's 1891 critique of Frege 43; 5. Frege's review and the development of Husserl's thought 57; Conclusion: analyticity 91.

Part Two: Conceptual clarity

Introduction 99; 6. Intensions and extensions 103; 7. Presentation and ideas 125; 8. Function and concept 137; 9. On denoting 147; Conclusion: The way things are 163; Notes 175; Bibliography 191; Index 215.

From the Introduction: "As a book by the founder of phenomenology that examines Frege's ideas from Brentano's empirical standpoint, Husserl's Philosophy of Arithmetic is both an early work of phenomenology and of logical empiricism. In it Husserl predicted the failure of Frege's attempt to logicize arithmetic and to mathematize logic two years before the publication of the Basic Laws of Arithmetic in 1893. I hope to show that Husserl did so in terms that would prefigure both the account Frege would give of his error after Russell encountered the paradoxes ten years later and the discussions of Principia Mathematica. Moreover, in locating the source of Frege's difficulties in the ambiguous theory of identity, meaning, and denotation that forms the basis of Frege's logical project and generates Russell's contradictions, Husserl's discussions indicate that these contradictions may have as serious consequences for twentieth century philosophy of language as they have had for the philosophy of mathematics.

This book is about these Austro-German roots of twentieth century philosophy. It is mainly about the origins of analytic philosophy, about the transmission of Frege's thought to the English speaking world, and about the relevance of Husserl's early criticism of Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic to some contemporary issues in philosophy. It is more about Husserl the philosopher of logic and mathematics than it is about Husserl the phenomenologist, and it is principally addressed to those members of the philosophical community who, via Russell, have been affected by Frege's logic.

This makes it very different from work on Husserl and Frege that has focused on the importance of Frege's criticism of Husserl's Philosophy of Arithmetic and attendant issues. The goal of this book is quite the opposite. It studies the shortcomings in Frege's thought that Husserl flagged and Russell endeavored to overcome. One possible sequel to this book would be a thorough study of Husserl's successes and failures in remedying the philosophical ills he perceived all about him, but that goes beyond the scope of this work, which follows the issues discussed into the work of Russell and his successors." (pp. 3-4)

61. Hill, Claire Ortiz, and Rosado Haddock, Guillermo. 2000. Husserl or Frege?: Meaning, Objectivity, and Mathematics. Chicago: Open Court.

62. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1979. "Frege's Hidden Semantics." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 33:716-722.

63. ———. 1981. "Semantics: A Revolt against Frege." In Contemporary Philosophy. Vol. I, edited by Floistad, Guttorm, 57-82. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

64. ———. 1984. "A Hundred Years Later: The Rise and Fall of Frege's Influence in Language Theory." Synthese no. 59:27-50.

65. Holenstein, Elmar. 1983. "The Meaning of "Bedeutung" in Frege. A Philological Inquiry." In History of Semiotics, edited by Eschbach, Achim and Jürgen, Trabant, 311-321. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

66. Imbert, Claude. 1992. Phénoménologies Et Langues Formulaires. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

67. Kemp, Gary. 1995. "Truth in Frege's 'Law of Truth'." Synthese no. 105:31-51.

68. Kenny, Anthony P. 2000. Frege. An Introduction to the Founder of Modern Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell.

69. Kleemeier, Ulrike. 1997. Gottlob Frege: Kontext-Prinzip Und Ontologie. Freiburg: Verlag K. Alber.

70. Klement, Kevin. 2002. Frege and the Logic of Sense and Reference. London: Routledge.

71. Klemke, Elmer D., ed. 1968. Essays on Frege. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Contents: Part 1. Frege's ontology 1;

1. Rulon S. Wells: Frege's ontology 3; 2. Gustav Bergmann: Frege's hidden nominalism 42; 3. E. D. Klemke: Professor Bergmann and Frege's "hidden nominalism" 68; 4. Howard Jackson: Frege's ontology 77; 5. Reinhardt Grossmann: Frege's ontology 79; 6. Charles E. Caton: An apparent difficulty in Frege's ontology 99; 7. Gustav Bergmann: Ontological alternatives 113; 8. E. D. Klemke: Frege's ontology: Realism 157; 9. Moltke S. Gram: Forge, concepts, and ontology 178;

Part 2. Frege's semantics 201;

10. Paul D. Wienpahl: Frege's Sinn und Bedeutung 203; 11. Richard Rudner: On Sinn as a combination of physical properties 219; 12. Max Black: Frege on functions 223; 13. William Marshall: Frege's theory of functions and objects 249; 14. Michael Dummett: Frege on functions: a reply 268; 15. Peter T. Geach Class and concept 284; 16. Michael Dummett: Note: Frege on functions 295; 17. Willliam Marshall: Sense and reference: a reply 298; 18. Michael Dummett: Nominalism 321; 19. John R. Searle: Russell's objections to Frege theory of sense and reference 337; 20. G. E. M. Anscombe: The Fregean Annahme 346; 21. Peter T. Geach: Naming and predicating 349; 22. Howard Jackson: Frege on sense-functions 376; 23. Milton Fisk: A paradox in Frege's semantics 382; 24. Rulon S. Wells: Is Frege concept of a function valid? 381; 25. James Bartlett: On questioning the validity of Frege's concept of function 407;

Part 3. Frege's logic and philosophy of mathematics 409;

26. Bertrand Russell: The logical and arithmetical doctrines of Frege 411; 27. H. R. Smart: Frege's logic 448; 28. Peter T. Geach: Frege's Grundlagen 467; 29. Peter T. Geach: Quine on classes and properties 479; 30. W. V. Quine: On Frege's way out 485; 31. Peter T. Geach: On Frege's way out 502;

Appendices. Three essays by Gottlob Frege 505;

A. The thought: a logical inquiry. Translated by A. M. and M. Quinton 507;

B. Compound thoughts. Translated by R. H. Stoothoff 537;

C. On the foundations of geometry. Translated by M. E. Szabo 559

Selected bibliography 577; Index 583-586.

"As Frege's writings became more widely read, a number of articles were written about various aspects of Frege's work-his ontology, semantics, logic. Many of these papers are of great value for the study of Frege, and it was thought desirable to assemble some of them in a single volume. I have divided these essays into three main categories: (1) Frege's ontology, (2) his semantics, and (3) his logic and philosophy of mathematics. To some extent, these labels are not quite accurate. Thus a paper included in the section on semantics may have something to say regarding Frege's ontology as well. The categorization is a matter of emphasis; if a paper is chiefly about, say, Frege's ontology, then it appears in that section.

Two of the papers that are included in the volume have not been previously published. These are "Frege, Concepts, and Ontology," by Prof. Moltke S. Gram of Northwestern University (who so generously offered to write it for its appearance here), and my essay, "Frege's Ontology: Realism."

I have included as appendices three important essays by Frege, none of which were included in the excellent collection of translations by Geach and Black, but which are valuable for the study of Frege's thought." (from the Preface).

72. ———. 1979. "Frege's Philosophy of Logic." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 33:666-693.

73. Kluge Eike-Henner, W. 1977. "Frege, Leibniz Et Alii." Studia Leibnitiana no. 9:266-274.

74. ———. 1980. "Bolzano and Frege: Some Conceptual Parallels." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 10:21-42.

75. ———. 1980. The Metaphysics of Gottlob Frege. An Essay in Ontological Reconstruction. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

76. ———. 1980. "Frege, Leibniz and the Notion of an Ideal Language." Studia Leibnitiana no. 12:140-154.

77. Kotatko, Peter, and Biro, John. 1995. Frege: Sense and Reference One Hundred Years Later. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

78. Kreiser, Lothar. 2001. Gottlob Frege: Leben, Werk, Zeit. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.

79. Kremer, Michael. 2000. "Judgment and Truth in Frege." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 38:549-581.

80. Kutschera, Franz von. 1989. Gottlob Frege: Eine Einführung in Sein Werk. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

81. Landini, Gregory. 2012. Frege's Notations: What They Are and How They Mean. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

82. Largeault, Jean. 1970. Logique Et Philosophie Chez Frege. Paris: Béatrice-Nauwelaerts.

83. Levine, James. 1996. "Logic and Truth in Frege." Aristotelian Society.Supplementary volume no. 70:141-175.

84. Long, P., and White, R. 1980. "On the Translation of Frege's Bedeutung: A Reply to Bell." Analysis no. 40:196-202.

85. Makin, Gideon. 2000. The Metaphysicians of Meaning: Russell and Frege on Sense and Denotation. London: Routledge.

86. Mendelsohn, Richard. 1981. "Frege on Predication." In Midwest Studies in Philosophy. Volume Vi. The Foundations of Analytic Philosophy, edited by French, Peter, Uehling, Jr.Theodore E. and Wettstein, Howard, 69-82. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

87. ———. 1987. "Frege's Two Senses of 'Is'." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 28:139-160.

88. ———. 2004. The Philosophy of Gottlob Frege. New York: Cambridge University Press.

89. Mohanty, Jitendra Nath. 1974. "Husserl and Frege: A New Look at Their Relationship." Research in Phenomenology no. 4:51-62.

Reprinted in: J. N. Mohanty (ed.) - R eadings on Husserl's Logical Investigations - The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1977 pp. 22-32.

90. ———. 1982. Husserl and Frege. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

91. Moravcsik, Julius M. 1981. "Frege and Chomsky on Thought and Language." In Midwest Studies in Philosophy. Volume Vi. The Foundations of Analytic Philosophy, edited by French, Peter, Uehling, Jr.Theodore E. and Wettstein, Howard, 105-123. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

92. Newen, Albert, Nortmann, Ulrich, and Stuhlmann-Laeisz, Rainer, eds. 2001. Building on Frege: New Essays on Sense, Content, and Concept. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

93. Noonan, Harold W. 2001. Frege: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.

94. Pardey, Ulrich. 2012. Frege on Absolute and Relative Truth. An Introduction to the Practice of Interpreting Philosophical Texts. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

95. Parsons, Terence. 1996. "Fregean Theories of Truth and Meaning." In Frege: Importance and Legacy, edited by Schirn, Matthias, 371-409. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

96. Picardi, Eva. 1989. "Assertion and Assertion Sign." In Le Teorie Delle Modalità. Atti Del Convegno Internazionale Di Storia Della Logica, edited by Corsi, Giovanni, Mangione, Corrado and Mugnai, Massimo, 139-154. Bologna: CLUEB.

"In spite of the fact that a number of semantic notions currently used in modal logic go back to the work of Gottlob Frege as it was interpreted by Carnap in 1947 (1) Frege's rare remarks on the subject of modality show that he considered modal distinctions of little relevance to logic. And this may strike one as rather odd: for was it not one of Frege's aims to show that arithmetical propositions are analytic, if they are derivable as theorems in a sufficiently strong logic, on the basis of impeccable definitions and purely logical axioms? Moreover -- the objector may continue -- analytical propositions are knowable a priori (actually, necessarily so) and whatever is knowable a priori is a necessary truth (though, perhaps, not viceversa). Since in Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik (2) Frege did appeal to some of these notions, the question arises how we are to interpret his statements on the subject of modality. This may at first seem a rather roundabout way of approaching the subject of assertion and assertion sign, and perhaps it is. But if we are to appreciate the profoundly innovative character of Frege's doctrine of truth and assertion it may prove a good strategy to touch briefly on the way in which Frege addressed the subject of analyticity and modality. Accordingly, after my having advanced some tentative suggestions as to the grounds of Frege's disparaging remarks about modality, I shall concentrate on the issue of Frege's recasting certain traditional distinctions in the theory of judgement, epitomized as it were in the introduction of a new sign into his logical notation -- a truly "momentous event" (to borrow a phrase of Wittgenstein's [TLP 5.452]), who, however, emphatically denied that this was a case in point (TLP 4.442) (3). I shall also mention a number of reinterpretations of Frege's judgement stroke proposed by later authors, so that the peculiarity of Frege's symbolic notation can be better appreciated." p. 139

(1) R. Carnap, Meaning and Necessity, 1947 (2nd ed. 1956), Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

(2) G. Frege, Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik. Eine logisch mathematische Untersuchung Über den Begriff der Zahl. 1884, Breslau: W. Koebner. 1986, Centenarausgabe (C. Thiel ed), Hamburg: F.Meiner. 1986, Stuttgart: Reclam.(=GLA). 1950 Engl. transl. by J. L. Austin, 2nd rev. ed. 1953, Oxford: Blackwell.

(3) L. Wittgenstein, Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung (1921) = Tractatus Logico-philosophicus (1922). 1961, Engl. transl. by D. Pears and B. McGuinness, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul (=TLP).

97. ———. 1994. La Chimica Dei Concetti. Linguaggio, Logica, Psicologia 1879-1927. Bologna: Il Mulino.

98. ———. 1997. "Sigwart, Husserl and Frege on Truth and Logic, or Is Psychologism Still a Threat?" Eureopean Journal of Philosophy no. 5:162-182.

99. Potter, Michael, and Ricketts, Thomas, eds. 2010. The Cambridge Companion to Frege. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

100. Reck, Erich H., ed. 2002. From Frege to Wittgenstein. Perspectives on Early Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

101. Resnik, Michael. 1967. "The Context-Principle in Frege's Philosophy." Philosophical and Phenomenological Research no. 27:356-365.

102. Ricketts, Thomas. 1996. "Logic and Truth in Frege." Aristotelian Society.Supplementary volume no. 70:121-140.

103. Rieger, Adam. 2002. "Paradox without Basic Law V: A Problem with Frege's Ontology." Analysis no. 62:327-330.

104. Rosado Haddock, Guillermo. 1986. "On Frege's Two Notions of Sense." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 7:31-41.

"Frege had not one but two different notions of sense, namely, that of 'Uber Sinn und Bedeutung' and one implicit in a letter to Husserl of 1906 and elsewhere. This last one originates in Frege's notion of conceptual content. The distinction is used to clarify some obscurities in Frege's thought. In the last section a sort of 'explicans' of Frege's notion of conceptual content is introduced and applied to the semantic analysis of mathematics."

105. ———. 2006. A Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Gottlob Frege. Aldershot: Ashgate.

106. Rosado Haddock, Guillermo, and Piedras, Rio. 1982. "Remarks on Sense and Reference in Frege and Husserl." Kant Studien no. 73:425-439.

107. Rousseau, André. 1999. "La Sémantique Logique De Gottlob Frege." In Signs and Signification. Vol. I, edited by Gill, Harjeet Singh and Manetti, Giovanni, 195-215. New Delhi: Bahri Publications.

108. Sainsbury, Richard Mark. 2002. Departing from Frege: Essays in the Philosophy of Language. London: Routledge.

109. Salmon, Nathan. 1991. Frege's Puzzle. Cambridge: MIT Press.

110. Schirn, Matthias, ed. 1976. Studien Zu Frege I. Logik Und Philosophie Der Mathematik / Studies on Frege I. Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics. Stuttgart: Fromman-Holzboog.

"The present collection of articles, mainly consisting of new publications, is a critical appreciation of the work of the logician, mathematician and philosopher Gottlob Frege.

Volume I opens the collection with a programmatic contribution determining critically the historical position of Frege's philosophy. The main part of the volume contains papers on logic and philosophy of mathematics. Among other things it is argued that Frege's introduction of the universal quantifier in the Begriffsschrift enabled an integration of the statement- and predicate- calculus, going far beyond Boole's logic. Besides textual analyses of special problems concerning Frege's logical system and an elucidation of the 'logistic thesis' in the context of modern investigations in the foundations of mathematics, Frege's discussion of Hilbert's axiomatic method is subjected to critical analysis. One point made is that, contrary to a prejudice in the recent history of mathematics, Frege's understanding of the axiomatic method is tenable."

Contents: Vorwort 11; Einleitung des Herausgebers. Einige Bemerkungen zum Zusammenhang von Logik, Mathematik und Sprachphilosophie bei Frege 13; Zur historisch-kritischen Standortbestimmung der Philosophie Freges; 1. Hans D. Sluga. Frege as a Rationalist 27; Zum wissenschaftlichen Nachlass Freges; 2. Albert Veraart. Geschichte des wissenschaftlichen Nachlasses Gottolob Frege und seiner Edition. Mit einem Katalog des ursprünglichen Bestands der nachgelassenen Schriften Freges 49; Logik und Philosophie der Mathematik. 3. Victor H. Dudman. From Boole to Frege 109; 4. Robert Sternfeld. The logistic thesis 139; 5. W. D. Hart. Imagination, necessity and abstract objects 161; 6. Michael D. Resnik. Die Frege-Hilbert Kontroverse 193; 7. Friedrich Kambartel. Frege und die axiomatische Methode. Zur Kritik mathematik-historischer Legitimationsversuche der formalistichen Ideologie 215; 8. Michael Dummett. Frege on the consistency of mathematical theories 229; 9. Christian Thiel. Gottlob Frege: Die Abstraktion 243; 10. Charles Parsons. Some remarks on Frege's conception of extension 265; 11. Terrell Ward Bynum. The evolution of Frege's Logicism 279; 12. Christian Thiel. Wahreitswert und Wertverlauf. Zu Freges Argumentation im § 10 de ' Grundlagen der Arithmetik' 287; 13. Franz Kutschera. Freges Begründung der Analysis 301; Abkürzungsverzeichnis 313; Mitarbeiter dieses Bandes 315.

111. ———, ed. 1976. Studien Zu Frege Ii. Logik Und Sprachphilosophie / Studies on Frege Ii. Logic and Philosophy of Language. Stuttgart: Fromman-Holzboog.

"The first papers of volume II deal, in a critical way, with Frege's theory of functions and his concept of logic. An account showing the development of his doctrine of judgment, is followed by two papers on the theory of quantification. The first discusses Frege's change from a substitutional to an objectual definition of quantification, while the second compares Frege's approach with corresponding reflections of Russell and Quine. Finally, several articles discuss problems of identity in Frege under comparative and analytical aspects."

Contents: 14. Reinhardt Grossmann. Structures, functions and forms 11; 15. Wolfgang Carl. Freges Unterscheidung von Gegenstand und Begriff 33; 16. Eike-Henner W. Kluge. Freges Begriff des Logischeinfachen 51; 17. Gottfried Gabriel. Einige Eiseitigkeiten des Fregeschen Logiksbegriffs 67; 18. Hans-Ulrich Hoche. Vom 'Inhaltsstrich' zum 'Waagerechten'. Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklung der Fregeschen Uteilslehre 87;19. Leslie Stevenson. Frege zwei Definitionen der Quantifikation 103; 20. Robert Sternfeld. The mathematization of logic: quantified sentences 125; 21. Ignacio Angelellli. Friends and opponents of the substitutivity of Identical in the history of logic 141; 22. Charles E. Caton. 'The idea of sameness challenges reflection' 167; 23. Matthias Schirn. Identität und Identitätsaussage bei Frege 181; 24. Bertram Kienzle. Notiz zu Freges Theorien der Identität 217; 25. David Wiggins. Frege's problem of the Morning Star and the Evening Star 221; 26. Ronald Suter. Frege und Russell über das 'Paradox der Identität' 257; 27. Haig Khatchadourian. Kripke and Frege on identity statements 271; Abkürzungsverzeichnis 299; Mitarbeiter dieses Bandes 301.

112. ———, ed. 1976. Studien Zu Frege Iii. Logik Und Semantik / Studies on Frege Iii. Logic and Semantics. Stuttgart: Fromman-Holzboog.

"Volume III chiefly contains studies on Frege's theory of sense and reference, generally regarded as the beginning of modern extensional and intensional semantics. Included is an attempt to provide a uniform explanation of the concept ' Bedeutung' and to delimit the scope of the context principle in Frege's philosophy. Further articles deal with special problems of the theory of sense and reference. A fully comprehensive bibliography is appended to the collection."

28. Fred Sommers. Frege or Leibniz? 11; 29. Michael D. Resnik. Frege's Context Principle revisiterd 35; 30. Ernst Tugendhat. Die Bedeutung des Ausdrucks 'Bedeutung' bei Frege. Postskirpt 1975 51; 31. Victor H. Dudman. Bedeutung for predicates 71; 32. David S. Shwayder. On the determination of reference by sense 85; 33. Leonard Linsky. Frege and Russell on vacuous singular terms 97; 34. Howard Jackson / Malcolm Acock. Sense and sense data 117; 35. Richard M. Martin. Some comments of Frege's pragmatic concerms 139; 36. Anhang. Peter Janich. Trägheitsgesetz und Inertialsystem. Zur Kritik G. Freges and der Definition L. Langes 146; Bibliographie 157; Abkürzungsverzeichnis 198; Mitarbeiter dieses Bandes 200.

113. ———, ed. 1996. Frege: Importance and Legacy. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

114. Schmitz, Franois. 1992. "Verité Et Sens: Retout À Frege." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 46:505-526.

115. Sluga, Hans D. 1976. "Frege and the Rise of Analytic Philosophy." Inquiry no. 18:471-487.

116. ———. 1977. "Frege's Alleged Realism." Inquiry no. 20:227-242.

117. ———. 1980. Gottlob Frege. London: Boston and Henley.

118. ———. 1980. Gottlob Frege. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

119. ———, ed. 1993. General Assessments and Historical Accounts of Frege's Philosophy. New York: Garland.

"The philosophy of Frege" - A collection of essay in four volumes - Vol. 1

120. ———, ed. 1993. Logic and Foundations of Mathematics in Frege's Philosophy. New York: Garland.

"The philosophy of Frege" - A collection of essays in four volumes - Vol. 2

121. ———, ed. 1993. Meaning and Ontology in Frege's Philosophy. New York: Garland.

"The philosophy of Frege" - A collection of essay in four volumes - Vol. 3

122. ———. 1993. Sense and Reference in Frege's Philosophy. New York: Garland.

"The philosophy of Frege" - A collection of essay in four volumes - Vol. 4

123. ———. 1998. "Truth before Tarski." Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook no. 6:27-41.

124. Sommers, Fred. 1976. "Frege or Leibniz?" In Studies on Frege. Logic and Semantics, edited by Schirn, Matthias, 11-34. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog.

Volume III

125. Stelzner, Werner, ed. 1993. Philosophie Und Logik. Frege-Kolloquien Jena 1989/1991. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

126. Stevenson, Leslie. 1973. "Frege's Two Definitions of Quantification." Philosophical Quarterly no. 23:207-223.

127. Stuhlmann-Laeisz, Rainer. 1995. Gottlob Freges 'Logische Untersuchungen' : Darstellung Und Interpretation. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

128. Thiel, Christian. 1968. Sense and Reference in Frege's Logic. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company.

129. Tichy, Pavel. 1988. The Foundations of Frege's Logic. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

130. Tugendhat, Ernst. 1970. "The Meaning of Bedeutung in Frege." Analysis no. 30:177-189.

131. Weiner, Joan. 1991. Frege in Perspective. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

132. Wiggins, David. 1992. "Meaning, Truth-Conditions, Proposition: Frege's Doctrine of Sense Retrieved, Resumed and Redeployed in the Light of Certain Recent Criticisms." Dialectica no. 46:61-90.

133. ———. 1994. "The Kant-Frege-Russell View of Existence: Towards a Rehabilitation of the Second-Level View." In Modality, Morality, and Belief: Essays in Honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus, edited by Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, 93-116. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

134. Wolenski, Jan. 2004. "The Reception of Frege in Poland." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 25:37-51.

135. Wright, Crispin, ed. 1984. Frege: Tradition and Influence. Oxford: Blackwell.

136. Yourgrau, Palle. 1987. "Frege on Truth and Reference." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 28:132-138.

137. Zimmermann, Albert. 2004. "Gottlob Freges Erklärungen Des Sinngehalts Von 'Existenz'." In Francisco Suárez. "Der Ist Der Mann". Apéndice Francisco Suárez De Generatione Et Corruptione. Homenaje Al Prof. Salvador Castellote, edited by Schmutz, Jacob, 413-431. Valencia: Facultad de Teología San Vicente Ferrer.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Alexius Meinong's Theory of Objects

The influence of Meinong

"Nowadays, a need for formal tools is strongly felt in the treatment of two special areas of ontological inquiry. One area is concerned with intentional objects, an area which seems to contain difficulties on the level of things, but also on the level of states of affairs, facts and other "propositional" entities. An intentional relation holds between either persons (more generally experiencing subjects) or acts of consciousness on the one hand, and the intentional objects on the other. The latter are what people see, fear, expect, look for; and the problem, naturally, consists in the fact that – contrary to usual predication – the predicates in question truly apply to intentional objects which do not exist in the same sense as my cat in "My cat is on the mat". In short: "We are thinking about Sherlock Holmes" may be true (and in fact is true while we are writing the sentence) in a real-world-context, but "Sherlock Holmes lives on Baker Street" can be true only inside the fictive context of the novels. Nevertheless, intuitively everybody can think about Sherlock Holmes in just the same sense as he can think about Baker Street, which "really" exists in London. Historically, this problem of intentional objects forms one of the roots of formal ontology, as well as of the philosophy of mind.

One of the most influential thinkers of ontology at the beginning of our century was the Austrian philosopher Alexius Meinong, Ritter von Handschuchsheim. His best known conception deals, among other things, with objects that do not exist. This doctrine is part of Meinong's Object Theory (Gegenstandstheorie) which is based on certain assumptions concerning the correspondence of various types of mental states to objects. Thus, there are objects of higher order, founded on the so-called objects of passive perception. Such founded objects are said to subsist (bestehen) rather than exist. According to Meinong, the entities we assume or infer are very complex objects called objectives. Objectives are built from other objects. They do not exist either; they may either be or not be a fact (tatsächlich). They can be expressed, for example by a that-clause, although their being an objective does obviously not depend on their being expressed by a sentence. "Objectives" are the "propositions" of Bertrand Russell and George Edward Moore who were, by the way, heavily influenced in many ways by Meinong. On that basis, non-existing objects or objectives, which are not facts, turn out to be genuine objects or objectives nevertheless – their status does not depend on thought or expression. The non-existence of a huge golden sphere is very different from the nonexistence of a huge uranium sphere, a difference which provides them with an objective status. Yet Meinong never claims that non-existing objects subsist, or have any other form of being (Sein). What he assumes them to have is a certain nature (Sosein), unaffected by their existence or nonexistence. To say that a huge uranium sphere is heavy and round is not to say that there is such a thing. Contrary to Russell's opinion, "there is a P" does not follow from "something is a P". Meinong's incompletely determined objects, which violate the law of excluded middle, play an extremely important role in his theory of knowledge; they are the "pointers" through which the human mind refers to the completely determinate, existing objects. " (pp. 12-13)

From: Jan Faye, Uwe Scheffler and Max Urchs (eds.), Things, Facts and Events, Amsterdam: Rodopi 2000.

Meinong's main works

"Of his two profound and sympathetic Hume-Studien, done under Brentano's supervision, the first (1877), on Hume's theory of abstraction, secured his 'habilitation', the second, on Hume's theory of relations, appeared in 1882: both were published in the Proceedings of the Imperial Academy of Sciences at Vienna, of which Meinong was later to be a Fellow. That Meinong should have served his first serious philosophical apprenticeship with Hume, places him in the Anglo-Saxon rather than the Germanic philosophical tradition, and it was in this tradition that he continued mainly to work. It was in the Anglo-Saxon world, likewise, that his philosophical reputation and influence were at their greatest.

Meinong spent four years (1878-82) as a Privatdozent at Vienna, and then moved on to Graz, where he remained for the rest of his life, first as Professor Extraordinarius (1882-9), and then as Ordinary Professor (1889-1920).

(...)

Apart from the foundation of an Institute of Experimental Psychology in 1894, the first in Austria, there seem to have been few events during Meinong's professorship. His history was the history of his publications and of the academic activities of his small school of pupils.

Among these publications the most notable were the Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur W erttheorie (1894), which almost succeeds in formalizing ordinary morality; the composite school-publication Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie (1904), to which Meinong contributed an article ' Über Gegenstandstheorie'; the valuable (...) epistemological essay Über die Erfahrungsgrundlagen unseres Wissens (1906); the programmatic Über die Stellung der Gegenstandstheorie im System der Wissenschaften (1906-7); the brilliant Über Annahmen (1910), with its manifold contributions to psychology, value-theory, etc., and its important introduction of 'objectives', the Sätze-an-sich of Bolzano, as peculiar entia rationis; the long treatise Über Moglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit (1915), with its important doctrine of 'incomplete objects'; the treatise Über emotionale Presentation (1917), a uniquely original essay in the epistemology of valuation; and the somewhat unpersuasive Zum Erweise des allgemeinen Kausalgesetzes (1918). Meinong wrote many important articles which were collected by his pupils in the two volumes of Gesammelte Abhandlungen, one volume devoted to psychology, the other to epistemology and object-theory: a third, to be devoted to value-theory, was never issued. Several important articles on value-theory, as well as the unreprinted Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen, are therefore practically inaccessible [written in 1962; Meinong's works are now published in the Gesamtausgabe: see the Bibliography]. The Grundlegung zur allgemeinen Werttheorie was published posthumously in 1923, and a work entitled Ethische Bausteine is still in manuscript in the Library at Graz. [now published in the third volume of the Gesamtausgabe, pp. 657-724]." (Preface, pp. V-VII)

From: John N. Findlay, Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1995 (Reprint of the Second edition of 1963).

An overview of Meinong's Theory of Objects

"The two basic theses of Meinong's theory of objects (Gegenstandstheorie) are (1) there are objects that do not exist and (2) every object that does not exist is yet constituted in some way or other and thus may be made the subject of true predication. Traditional metaphysics treats of objects that exist as well as of those that merely subsist (bestehen) but, having "a prejudice in favor of the real," tends to neglect those objects that have no kind of being at all; hence, according to Meinong, there is need for a more general theory of objects.

Everything is an object, whether or not it is thinkable (if an object happens to be unthinkable then it is something having at least the property of being unthinkable) and whether or not it exists or has any other kind of being. Every object has the characteristics it has whether or not it has any kind of being; in short, the Sosein (character) of every object is independent of its Sein (being). A round square, for example, has a Sosein, since it is both round and square; but it is an impossible object, since it has a contradictory Sosein that precludes its Sein.

Of possible objects -- objects not having a contradictory Sosein -- some exist and others (for example, golden mountains) do not exist. If existence is thought of as implying a spatio-temporal locus, then there are certain subsistent objects that do not exist; among these are the being of various objects and the nonbeing of various other objects. Since there are horses, there is also the being of horses, the being of the being of horses, the nonbeing of the nonbeing of horses, and the being of the nonbeing of the nonbeing of horses. And since there is no Pegasus, there is the nonbeing of Pegasus, as well as the being of the nonbeing of Pegasus and the nonbeing of the being of Pegasus.

Meinong's theory must be distinguished from both Platonic realism, as this term is ordinarily interpreted, and the reism, or concretism, of Brentano and Tadeusz Kotarbinski. (Meinong noted that since his view is broader than realism, it might properly be called objectivism.) Thus, the Platonic realist could be said to argue: "(P) Certain objects that do not exist have certain properties; but (Q) an object has properties if and only if it is real; hence (R) there are real objects that do not exist." The reist, or concretist, on the other hand, reasons from not-R and Q to not-P; that is, he derives the contradictory of Plato's first premise by taking Plato's second premise along with the contradictory of Plato's conclusion. But Meinong, like Plato and unlike the reist, accepted both P and R; unlike both Plato and the reist, he rejected Q by asserting the independence of Sosein from Sein; and therefore, again unlike both Plato and the reist, he said that the totality of objects extends far beyond the confines of what is merely real .

This doctrine of Aussersein -- of the independence of Sosein from Sein-- is sometimes misinterpreted by saying that it involves recourse to a third type of being in addition to existence and subsistence. Meinong's point, however, is that such objects as the round square have no type of being at all; they are "homeless objects," to be found not even in Plato's heaven. Bertrand Russell objected that if we say round squares are objects, we violate the law of contradiction. Meinong replied that the law of contradiction holds only for what is real and can hardly be expected to hold for any object, such as a round square, that has a contradictory Sosein.

Russell's theory of descriptions is often thought to constitute a refutation of the doctrine of Aussersein; actually, however, his theory merely presupposes that Meinong's doctrine is false. According to Meinong, the two statements "The round square is round" and "The mountain I am thinking of is golden" are true statements about nonexistent objects; they are Sosein and not Sein statements. The distinction between the two types of statements is most clearly put by saying that a Sein statement (for example, "John is angry") is an affirmative statement that can be existentially generalized upon (we may infer "There exists an x such that x is angry") and a Sosein statement is an affirmative statement that cannot be existentially generalized upon; despite the truth of "The mountain I am thinking of is golden," we may not infer "There exists an x such that I am thinking about x and x is golden." Russell's theory of descriptions, however, presupposes that every statement is either a Sein statement or the negation of a Sein statement and hence that there are no Sosein statements. According to Russell, a statement of the form "The thing that is F is G" may be paraphrased as "There exists an x such that x is F and x is G, and it is false that there exists a y such that y is F and y is not identical with x." If Meinong's true Sosein statements, above, are rewritten in this form, the result will be two false statements; hence Meinong could say that Russell's theory does not provide an adequate paraphrase.

An impossible object, as indicated above, is an object having a Sosein that violates the law of contradiction. An incomplete object, analogously, is one having a Sosein that violates the law of the excluded middle. Of the golden mountains, which most readers will think of on reading the paragraph above, it will be neither true nor false to say that they are higher than Mount Monadnock. And some objects are even more poorly endowed. For example, if I wish that your wish will come true, then the object of my wish is whatever it is that you happen to wish; but if, unknown to me, what you wish is that my wish will come true, then this object would seem to have very little Sosein beyond that of being our mutual object. Meinong said that such an object is a defective object and suggested that the concept may throw light upon some of the logical paradoxes.

The theory of complexes -- that is, the theory of wholes and other such "objects of higher order" -- upon which Meinong wrote at length, also falls within the theory of objects.

None of the objects discussed above is created by us, nor does any of them depend in any way upon our thinking. Had no one ever thought of the round square, it would still be true of the round square that it does not exist; the round square need not be thought of in order not to exist. We draw these objects, so to speak, from the infinite depths of the Ausserseienden, beyond being and not-being." (pp. 115-116)

From: Roderick M. Chisholm, Meinong, Alexius in: Paul Edwards (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York: Macmillan The Free Press, 1967; Second edition: Donald M. Borchert (ed.), New York: Thomson Gale 2006, Volume VI, pp. 114-119.

"Meinong accepted Brentano's thesis of the intentionality of the mental but modified it in a realistic direction, distinguishing, like Twardowski, between the content and object of a mental act; indeed this distinction had been pointed out in 1890 by Meinong and Höfler as an ambiguity in the notion of object. Like Twardowski and unlike Husserl, Meinong regarded it as necessary that a mental act of whatever kind always have an object as well as a content, and in those cases where nothing exists which is targeted by the act, Meinong followed Twardowski in accepting a non-existent item as the object. It is from this use of the accusative term 'object [sc. of an act]' that Meinong derives the term 'theory of objects' which he preferred to such -- as he thought, existentially loaded -- terms as 'metaphysics' and 'ontology'. Both of these, and especially the former, suffered from a prejudice, rampant among materialists and nominalists, but present to some degree in most philosophers, the 'prejudice in favour of the actual', i.e., an unsupported preference for the spatiotemporally situated or real object. Ontological questions always interested Meinong, from his early preoccupation with universals, especially relations, through his interest in Gestalt or higher-order objects and complexes. But object theory as a distinct discipline and forming the nucleus of his philosophical endeavour dominate only late in his career, from about 1899 until his death in 1920.

The first major work in object theory, initially prompted by considerations of the psychology of play and make-believe, is On Assumptions of 1902. What Meinong calls an assumption is roughly any intellectual act regarding what might be the case (nowadays called a 'propositional attitude') that falls short of a firm conviction or judgement. Only while working on this area did Meinong realise that he needed an ontology of the objects of assumptions and judgements, which objects he called objectives, preferring not to use Stumpfs term Sachverhalt (state of affairs), which he thought was loaded in favour of the true. Objectives combine some of the behaviour of propositions and other characteristics of states of affairs. Like propositions, they are there for all judgements and assumptions, including false ones, but like states of affairs their existential status is different for truth than for falsity: the objective of a true judgement or assumption, while not spatiotemporally real, still subsists or obtains (besteht), while the objective of a false judgement or assumption does not even have this kind of being.

The property of objectives corresponding to the truth of judgements Meinong calls factuality, the property corresponding to falsity unfactuality. He reserves 'true' for objectives which are both factual and apprehended by someone; 'false' is similarly restricted. For an objective, to be factual is to subsist, to be unfactual is to not subsist: there is an existential distinction between them. Objectives about an object do not have that entity as part, for an objective can at best subsist, whereas many objects can also be spatiotemporally actual or real. If Graz is in Austria had Graz as part, then it would be a subsistent with a real part, and if Sherlock Holmes is not real had Sherlock Holmes as part, it would have an object as part which does not exist at all. Both cases are absurd, thinks Meinong, so what an objective is about is not part of it.

Object theory received its programmatic statement in the 1904 essay 'The Theory of Objects'. This appeared in a volume by the Graz School commemorating ten years of the Psychology Laboratory and contained Essays on object theory by Rudolf Ameseder and Ernst Mally. Meinong's earlier work was enthusiastically reviewed by Russell in a three-part article for Mind, a journal which Meinong himself had regularly reviewed for German speakers in the 1880s. Russell had presumably hoped that Meinong's theory of impossible objects would offer some help on the solution of the logical paradoxes, but he was disappointed there. It was Meinong's painstaking method that Russell admired. Russell could not accept non-existent objects like the round square, or unfactual objectives: he avoided them initially by adopting Frege's distinction between sense and reference for definite descriptions, and saying that false propositions do exist. (Russell wrongly identified Meinong's objectives with his and Moore's propositions.) In 1905 Russell rejected Frege too: 'On denoting' is a battle on two fronts, one against non-existent objects, one against sense. Russell's initial sympathy gave way to increasing criticism of Meinong, whom he accused (wrongly) of believing in contradictions. Although the dismissal of Meinong in Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy is curt and unfair, in the unpublished 1913 manuscript Theory of Knowledge Russell still discussed Meinong's views extensively, accurately and with some sympathy." (pp. 122-124)

From: Peter Simons, Bolzano, Brentano and Meinong: Three Austrian Realists, in: Anthony O'Hear (ed.), German Philosophy Since Kant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999, pp. 109-136.

Bertand Russell appreciation of Meinong

"Before entering upon details, I wish to emphasise the admirable method of Meinong's researches, which, in a brief epitome, it is quite impossible to preserve. Although empiricism as a philosophy does not appear to be tenable, there is an empirical manner of investigating, which should be applied in every subject-matter. This is possessed in a very perfect form by the works we are considering. A frank recognition of the data, as inspection reveals them, precedes all theorising; when a theory is propounded, the greatest skill is shown in the selection of facts favourable or unfavourable, and in eliciting all relevant consequences of the facts adduced. There is thus a rare combination of acute inference with capacity for observation. The method of philosophy is not fundamentally unlike that of other sciences : the differences seem to be only in degree. The data are fewer, but are harder to apprehend; and the inferences required are probably more difficult than in any other subject except mathematics. But the important point is that, in philosophy as elsewhere, there are self-evident truths from which we must start, and that these are discoverable by the process of inspection or observation, although the material to be observed is not, for the most part, composed of existent things. Whatever may ultimately prove to be the value of Meinong's particular contentions, the value of his method is undoubtedly very great; and on this account if on no other, he deserves careful study." (pp. 205-206)

From: Bertrand Russell, "Meinong's Theory of Complexes and Assumptions", Mind, 1904, reprinted in: Bertrand Russell, Essays in Analysis, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1973, pp. 204-219.

"Presentations, judgments and assumptions, Meinong points out, always have objects; and these objects are independent of the states of mind in which they are apprehended. This independence has been obscured hitherto by the 'prejudice in favour of the existent' (des Wirklichen), which has led people to suppose that, when a thought has a non-existent object, there is really no object distinct from the thought. But this is an error: existents are only an infinitesimal part of the objects of knowledge. This is illustrated by mathematics, which never deals with anything to which existence is essential, and deals in the main with objects which cannot exist, such as numbers. Now we do not need first to study the knowledge of objects before we study the objects themselves; hence the study of objects is essentially independent of both psychology and theory of knowledge. It may be objected that the study of objects must be coextensive with all knowledge; but we may consider separately the more general properties and kinds of objects, and this is an essential part of philosophy. It is this that Meinong calls Gegenstandstheorie.

This subject is not identical with metaphysics, but is wider in its scope; for metaphysics deals only with the real, whereas the theory of objects has no such limitations. The theory of objects deals with whatever can be known a priori about objects, but knowledge of reality can only be obtained by experience. The theory of objects is not psychology, since objects are independent of our apprehension of them. It is also not theory of knowledge; for knowledge has two sides, the cognition, which belongs to psychology, and the object, which is independent. The theory of objects, Meinong contends, is also not to be identified with pure logic, since logic, in his opinion, is essentially practical in its aim, being concerned with right reasoning. (On this point, opinions will differ; but the question is in any case only one of nomenclature.) The conclusion is, that the theory of objects is an independent subject, and the most general of all philosophical subjects. Mathematics is essentially part of it, and thus at last finds a proper place; for the traditional division of sciences into natural and mental left no room for mathematics, because it took account only of the existent. Grammar may be a guide in the general theory of objects, as mathematics in more special parts of the theory." (pp. 77-78)

From: Bertrand Russell, "Review of: A. Meinong, Untersuchungen zur Gegenständstheorie und Psychologie", Mind, 1905, reprinted in: Bertrand Russell, Essays in Analysis, George Allen & Unwin Ltd 1973, pp. 77-88.

Gilbert Ryle: "Object Theory is dead"

"What differences did Alexius Meinong make to philosophy? Are there any big lessons, especially about the nature of thinking, of which we, in 1970, must say either that we did learn them or, repentantly, that we could and should have learned them from Meinong?

Let us frankly concede from the start that Gegenstandstheorie itself is dead, buried and not going to be resurrected. Nobody is going to argue again that, for example, 'there are objects concerning which it is the case that there are no such objects.' Nobody is going to argue again that the possibility of ethical and aesthetic judgments being true requires that values be objects of a special sort.

As Professor Findlay suggests in his fine book Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values, we have to allow in candid retrospect that one important part of Meinong's contribution to twentieth-century thought is precisely the anti- Gegenstandstheorie with which he vaccinated Brentano, Russell and Wittgenstein. We in 1970 do not merely suspect that Gegenstandstheorie will not do; we have learned just why it will not do; and to have learned this is to have learned from Meinong, via Russell and Wittgenstein, an important and new lesson about thinking, though not the one intended by Meinong.

a) Within a year of his famous articles in Mind on Meinong's Theory of Complexes and Assumptions (1904) Russell had written his even more famous and more influential Mind article ' On Denoting', in which he assembled logicians' arguments against the pretensions of various ostensibly entity-designating nominative-phrases, including several that Meinong had championed and that Russell had himself championed in his own Principles of Mathematics of 1903. It was the Platonising Meinong who, in effect but of course not wittingly, spurred the newly Occamising Russell to leapfrog over his back on to a terra firma that he himself was never to reach or even to wish to reach.

Though not everything, much was both new and true in Russell's Theory of Descriptions, in his account of Incomplete Symbols and Logical Constructions, in his doctrine of illegitimate totalities and thence in his Theory of Types. In all of these there were working conscious recoils against Meinong's Theory of Objects, as well as against his own and Moore's recent analogue to it. In the hands of Frege, in the differently moving hands of Russell and in the again differently moving hands of Wittgenstein, Meaning-theory expanded just when and just in so far as it was released from that "Fido"-Fido box, the lid of which was never even lifted by Meinong.

b) Wittgenstein had, via Russell, some second-hand knowledge of Meinong, but apparently he also had a little first-hand knowledge of the thoughts both of Meinong and of Husserl. The opening pages of his Tractatus are unqualified Gegenstandstheorie and their German often echoes Meinong's German. Yet by Tractatus 4.126-4.1274 Wittgenstein has correctly located concepts like object, thing, fact and complex among formal concepts, i.e. category-concepts, as distinct from proper, i.e. genus-concepts or species-concepts. He has thereby disqualified in principle Gegenstandstheorie, including that in his own opening pages, from being informative or even mis-informative about what there is in the world. Moreover he has thereby identified for us just that disquieting but previously elusive feature of Meinong's Higher-Order Objects which had made us all along hanker to protest to Meinong: 'Yes, but notwithstanding all your rigorous arguments, these entia rationis of yours are only the verbalised simulacra of genuine entities.'

For though of course we can think, talk and say true things 1) about Socrates; 2) about the fact that Socrates was snub-nosed; 3) about the snubness of his nose, none the less, when we have done so, we still cannot enumerate three somethings, three members of any one genus or species, that we have thought or talked about --unless we like to speak vacuously of all three as 'subject-matters', or 'remark-topics'; and if we do this, we see at once that the important-sounding word 'object' never did have any other positive function than to be a synonym for 'subject-matter' or 'remark-topic'. The three phrases carry the same ontological burdens --namely none. To parody Kant, ' .... is an object' is not a predicate. 'Is so and so an it? ' is not a proper question. About what can we significantly ask 'Is it an object or not? ' If asked 'How many Objects, i.e. how many its, are mentioned in this newspaper-article? ' we could no more even begin to make a count than we could even begin to make a count of the Events that took place in the course of the Battle of Waterloo; or than we could even begin to make a count of the Actions that someone had performed or the Experiences that he had between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. Category-words do not list countables -- not because they list too many to count, but because they do not provide qualifications for, or disqualifications from being on any list. 'It' does not describe; 'object' does not distinguish." (p. 7)

From: Gilbert Ryle, Intentionality-Theory and the Nature of Thinking, in: Rudolf Haller (ed.), Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein. Beiträge zur Meinong-Forschung, Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt 1972, pp. 7-14.

Meinong's Theory of Objects in contemporary research

"Alexius Meinong and his circle of students and collaborators at the Philosophisches Institut der Universität Graz formulated the basic principles for a general theory of objects.(1) They developed branches and applications of the theory, outlined programs for further research, and answered objections from within and outside their group, revising concepts and sharpening distinctions as they proceeded. The object theory that emerged as the result of their efforts combines important advances over traditional systems of logic, psychology, and semantics.

The fate of object theory in the analytic philosophical community has been unfortunate in many ways. With few exceptions, the theory has not been sympathetically interpreted. It has often met with unfounded resistance and misunderstanding under the banner of what Meinong called "The prejudice in favor of the actual". (2) The idea of nonexistent objects has wrongly been thought to be incoherent or confused, and there are still those who mistakenly believe that the theory inflates ontology with metaphysically objectionable quasi-existent entities.' These criticisms are dealt with elsewhere by object theory adherents, and are not considered here. In what follows, the intelligibility of an object theory such as Meinong envisioned is assumed, and ultimately vindicated by the construction of a logically consistent version. The inadequacies of extensionalist theories of ontological commitment and definite description, hallmarks of the Russell-Quine axis in recent analytic philosophy, justify an alternative intentional Meinongian object theory logic. Analytic philosophy survives the rejection of extensionalist treatments of definite description and ontological commitment, since analytic methods are not inherently limited to any particular set of extensional or intentional assumptions.

A comprehensive historical treatment of Meinong's philosophy is not attempted in these chapters, though some historical issues are addressed. Some of Meinong's most important philosophical writings have now been translated or are expected to appear in the near future, and there are several recent commentaries on Meinong's work, including Richard Routley's Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond, Terence Parsons' Nonexistent Objects, and Karel Lambert's Meinong and the Principle of Independence. These studies have contributed to renewed interest in and unprejudiced reappraisal of object theory. Analyses of the subtle turnings in Meinong's thought over several decades may be found in J. N. Findlay's Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values, Reinhardt Grossmann's Meinong, Robin Rollinger's Meinong and Husserl on Abstraction and Universals, and Janet Farrell Smith's essay "The Russell-Meinong Debate". These works trace the complex development of Meinong's early nominalism or moderate Aristotelian realism in the Hume-Studien to his mature realistic interpretation of relations and factual objectives or states of affairs as subsistent entities, the theory of objects of higher order, and the doctrine of the Aussersein of the pure object. I have relied on these among other sources, I cannot hope to improve on them in some respects, and my topic in any case is somewhat different. I am concerned exclusively with the logic, semantics, and metaphysics or ontology and extraontology of Meinong's theory. Accordingly, I shall not discuss Meinong's epistemology, theory of perception, or value theory, which I nevertheless regard as essential to an understanding of his philosophy as a whole. The logic, semantics, and metaphysics of object theory are in a sense the most fundamental aspects of Meinong's thought, and therefore require the most careful preliminary investigation."

(1) I refer to Meinong's Gegenstandstheorie as a theory of objects, but alternative English equivalents have been proposed which should also be considered. Reinhardt Grossmann argues that the theory must be called a theory of entities because it includes not merely objects (Objekte), but objectives or states of affairs (Objektive). Grossmann, Meinong [1974], pp. 111-12: "If we keep in mind that Meinong will eventually divide all entities (other than so-called dignitatives and desideratives) into objects on the one hand and objectives on the other, we cannot speak of a theory of objects as the all-embracing enterprise, but must speak -- as I have done and shall continue to do -- of a theory of entities." This argument is inconclusive, since objectives are also objects of a kind, which Meinong describes as objects of higher order (höherer Ordnung), superiora founded on inferiora or lower order objects. An objective in any case can be as much an object of thought as any other nonobjective object, as when someone thinks about the fact that Graz is in Austria, and thereby makes that state of affairs an object of thought. In this sense, the theory of objects, of lower and higher order, is already all-embracing in the way Grossmann thinks Meinong's Gegenstandstheorie is meant to be. Nicholas Griffin identifies a further difficulty in Grossmann's terminological recommendation. In "The Independence of Sosein from Sein" [1979], p. 23, n. 2, Griffin writes: "Grossmann standardly uses the term 'entity' for Meinong's ' Gegenstand', which is usually translated as 'object'. Since the Oxford English Dictionary defines 'entity' as 'thing that has real existence', this switch is unsatisfactory. Accordingly I have switched back either to 'object' or to the even more neutral term 'item'." Griffin's choice of translation agrees with Richard Routley's in Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond [1981], where Routley refers to a theory of items distinct in some respects from but directly inspired by Meinong's theory of objects. Routley's 'theory of item'' is perhaps better used to designate his own special version of object theory, which he also denotes 'noneism'. Neither Grossmann's nor Routley's terminology carries the intentional force of 'Gegenstand', which as Meinong explains is etymologically related to 'gegenstehen', to stand against or confront, as objects of thought are supposed to confront and present themselves to the mind.

Notes

(2) Alexius Meinong, "The Theory of Objects" ("Uber Gegenstandstheorie") [1904], pp. 78-81.

(3) In his early work, Meinong expressed the belief that nonexistent objects have what he then called Quasisein. "The Theory of Objects", pp. 84-5. Meinong here refers to the first edition of his Über Annahmen [1902], p. 95. See J. N. Findlay, Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values [1963], pp. 47-8. Routley, Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond [1981], pp. 442, 854. Routley reports that Meinong renounced the theory of Quasisein in favor of the Aussersein thesis by 1899 (presumably with the publication in that year of his essay "Uber Gegenstände höherer Ordnung und deren Verhältnis zur inneren Wahrnehmung"). As a statement of the frequent misinterpretations of Meinong's object theory that persist today, see P.M. S. Hacker, Insight and Illusion: Themes in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, revised edition [1986], p. 8: "The Theory of Descriptions ... enabled Russell to thin out the luxuriant Meinongian jungle of entities (such as the square circle) which, it had appeared, must in some sense subsist in order to be talked about ..." (pp. 1-3)

From: Dale Jacquette, Meinongian Logic: the Semantics of Existence and Nonexistence, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 1996.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Meinong: Editions, Translations and Bibliographic Resources

Main publications in German

A complete list of Meinong's writings is available in:

Reinhard Fabian, Gesamtverzeichnis der veröffentlichten Schriften und Briefe von Alexius Meinong (1873-1978). In: Alexius Meinong. Gesamtausgabe. Vol. VII (1978) 325-342 (Anhang I).

A selection of the most important writings (GA = Gesamtausgabe - Complete Edition in 7 volumes + 1 Supplement):

1. Meinong, Alexius. 1877. "Hume Studien I. Zur Geschichte und Kritik des modernen Nominalismus." Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschften.Philosophisch-historische Klasse no. 78:185-260.

GA I pp. 1-72.

2. ———. 1882. "Hume Studien II. Zur Relationstheorie." Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschften.Philosophisch-historische Klasse no. 101:573-752.

GA II pp. 1-184.

3. ———. 1894. Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie. Graz: Leuschner & Lubensky.

Festschrift der K. K. Karl-Franzens-Universität zur Jahresfeier am 15. November 1894.

GA III pp. 1-244.

4. ———. 1899. "Über Gegenstände höherer Ordnung und deren Verhältniss zur inneren Wharnehmung." Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane no. 21:187-272.

GA II pp. 377-471.

5. ———. 1902. Über Annahmen. Leipzig: Barth.

GA IV pp. 385-489.

6. ———, ed. 1904. Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie. Leipzig: Barth.

Inhalt: Alexius Meinong: Vorwort V; I. Alexius Meinong: Über Gegenstandstheorie 1; II. Rudolf Ameseder: Beiträge zur Grundlegung der Gegenstandstheorie 51; III. Ernst Mally: Unterschungen zur Gegenstandtheorie des Messens 181; IV. Wilhelm Frankl: Über Oëkonomie des Denkens 268; V. Vittorio Benussi: Zur Psychologie des Gestalterfassens (die Müller-Lyerische Figur) 303; VI. Vittorio Benussi und Liel Wilhelmine: Die verschobene Schachbrettfigur 449; VII: Vittorio Benussi: Ein neuer Beweis für die spezifische Helligkeit der Farben 475; VIII. Rudolf Ameseder: Über Vorstellungsproduktion 481; IX. Rudolf Ameseder: Über absolute Auffälligkeit der Farben 509; X: Wilhelmine Liel: Gegen eine voluntaristische Begründung der Werttheorie 527; XI. Robert Saxinger: Über die Natur der Phantasiengefühle Phantasiebegehrungen 579; Register 607.

7. ———. 1904. "Über Gegenstandstheorie." In Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie, 1-50. Leipzig: Barth.

GA II pp. 481-530.

8. ———. 1907. Über die Stellung der Gegenstandstheorie im System der Wissenschaften. Leipzig: Voigtländer.

GA V pp. 197-365.

9. ———. 1910. Über Annahmen. Leipzig: Barth.

Second revised and expanded edition.

GA IV pp. 1-384.

10. ———. 1913. Gesammelten Abhandlungen. Band. I: Abhandlungen zur Psychologie. Leipzig: Barth.

GA I.

11. ———. 1913. Gesammelten Abhandlungen. Band. II:Abhandlungen zur Erkenntnistheorie und Gegenstandtheorie. Leipzig: Barth.

GA II.

12. ———. 1915. Über Möglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit. Beitrãge zur Gegenstandstheorie und Erkenntnistheorie. Leipzig: Barth.

GA VI.

13. ———. 1921. "Selbstdarstellung." In Die Deutsche Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen. (Erste Band), edited by Schmidt, Raymund, 91-148. Leipzig: Meiner.

GA VII pp. 1-62.

14. ———. 1923. Zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Werttheorie. Statt einer zweiten Auflage der "Psychologischen-ethischen Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie". Graz: Leuschner & Lubensky.

With a Preface by Doris Meinong.

GA III 469-656.

15. ———. 1968. "Etische Bausteine, nachgelassenes Fragment." In Gesamtausgabe. Band III, edited by Haller, Rudolf and Kindinger, Rudolf, 657-724. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

16. ———. 1977. "Über Inhalt und Gegenstand (Fragment)." Conceptus no. 11:67-76.

17. ———. 1988. Über Gegenstandstheorie. Selbstdarstellung. Hamburg: Meiner.

Edited by Josef M. Werle with Introduction, bibliography and index (reprinted 1988).

18. ———. 1969. Abhandlungen zur Psychologie. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

Band I.

19. Höfler, Alois. 1890. Logik. Wien - Leipzig: Hölder.

Von Alois Höfler unter Mitwirkung von A. Meinong (by Alois Höfler in collaboration with A. Meinong).

Gesamtausgabe

(7 volumes + 1 supplement) - Edited by Rudolf Haller and Rudolf Kindinger - Graz, Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt (1968-1978).

1. ———. 1969. Abhandlungen zur Psychologie. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

Band I.

2. ———. 1971. Abhandlungen zur Erkenntnistheorie und Gegenstandtheorie. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

Band II.

3. ———. 1968. Abhandlungen zur Werttheorie. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

Band III.

4. ———. 1969. Über Annahmen. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

Band IV.

Anastatic reprint.

5. ———. 1973. Über philosophische Wissenschaft und ihre Propädeutik. Über die Stellung der Gegestandttheorie im System der Wissenschaften. Über die Erfahrungsgrundlagen unserer Wissens. Zum Erweise des allgemeinen Kausalgesetzes. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

Band V.

6. ———. 1972. Über Möglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit. Beiträge zur Gegenstandtheorie und Erkenntnistheorie. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

Band VI.

7. ———. 1978. Selbstdarstellung. Vermischte Schriften. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

Band VII.

8. ———. 1978. Kolleghefte und Fragmente. Schriften aus dem Nachlass. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

Supplement.

English translations

1. Meinong, Alexius. 1879. "Modern Nominalism." Mind no. 4:124.

2. ———. 1960. "On the Theory of Objects." In Realism and the Background of Phenomenology, edited by Chisholm, Roderick M., 76-117. Glencoe: Free Press.

Translation of Über Gegenstandstheorie, (1904), by I. Levi, D. B. Terrell, R. M. Chisholm.

3. ———. 1966. Meinong's Hume's Studies: Translation and Commentary.

Translation of Hume Studien I (pp .98-192) & II (pp. 194-229) by Kenneth Frank Barber.

Unpublished Ph. D. thesis, University of Iowa (umi Dissertation Express order number: 6702592).

4. ———. 1972. On Emotional Presentation. Evanston: Northwestern University Pres.

Translated with an introduction by Marie-Luise Schubert Kalsi and with a foreword by John N. Findlay.

5. ———. 1973. "Toward an Epistemological Assessment of Memory." In Empirical Knowledge. Readings from Contemporary Sources, edited by Chisholm, Roderick M. and Swartz, Robert J., 253-270. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

Translation of Zur erkenntnistheoretischen Würdigung des Gedächtnisses, (1886) - GA II pp. 185-209 by Linda L. McAlister and Margarete Schätte.

6. Grossmann, Reinhardt. 1974. "Meinong." In Meinong, 230-236. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Aee the II Appendix: "Meinong's Life and Work", partial translation of the Selbstdarstellung (Self-presentation) of 1921 by Reinhardt Grossmann.

7. ———. 1974. "Meinong." In Meinong, 224-229. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

See I Appendix: Meinong's Ontology, artial translation of the Selbstdarstellung (Self-presentation) of 1921 by Reinhardt Grossmann.

8. Meinong, Alexius. 1978. Alexius Meinong on Objects of Higher Order and Husserl's Phenomenology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Table of Contents: Marie-Luise Schubert Kalsi: Introduction 1; Alexius Meinong: On the Psychology of Complexions and Relations, 1891 55; Supplementary Notes by Ernst Mally; Alexius Meinong; An Essay Concerning the Theory of Psychic Analysis, 1894. Supplementary Notes by Stephen Witasek 73; On Objects of Higher Order and Their Relationship to Internal Perception, 1899. Additional Notes by Auguste Fischer 137; Critical Notes on E. Husserl's Ideas on a Pure Phenomenology, Volume I. After 1914 209; Index 249-252.

[Translation of: Zur Psychologie der Komplexionen und Relationen (1891) - (GA I. pp. 109-185) - Beiträge zur Theorie der psychischen Analyse (1894) - (GA I. pp. 305-388) - Über Gegenstande Öherer Ordnung und deren Verhältniss zur inneren Wahrnemung (1899) - (GA I pp. 397-441) - Edmund Husserl. Gesamtausgabe Supplementary volume].

9. ———. 1983. On Assumptions. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Edited and translated, with an introduction by James Heanue.

Translation of the second edition of Über Annahmen (1910).

10. ———. 1993. "Abstracting and Comparing." In Meinong and Husserl on Abstraction and Universals. From Hume Studies I to Logical Investagations II, 137-184. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

By Robin D. Rollinger.

Translation of Abstrahieren und Vergleichen, 1900.

11. ———. 1995. Alexius Meinong's Elements of Ethics: with the Translations of the Fragment "Etische Bausteine". Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Translated by Marie-Luise Schubert Kalsi.

Italian translations

1. Meinong, Alexius. 1980. Gli oggetti d'ordine superiore in rapporto alla percezione interna (Alexius Meinong) - Le qualità figurali (Christian von Ehrenfels). Faenza: Faenza Editrice.

Traduzioni e note di Enzo Melandri.

Traduzione di: Über Gegenstande Öherer Ordnung und deren Verhältniss zur inneren Wharnehmung di Alexius Meinong e di Über Gestaltqualitäten di Christian von Ehrenfels.

2. ———. 1991. Empirismo e nominalismo. Studi su Hume. Firenze: Ponte alle Grazie.

Traduzione di Roberto Brigati.

Contiene la traduzione di Hume Studien I and II.

3. ———. 2002. Teoria dell'oggetto. Trieste: Edizioni Parnaso.

Traduzione di Vincenzo Raspa.

Contiene la traduzione di Über Gegenstande Öherer Ordnung und deren Verhältnis zur inneren Wharnehmung, Über Gegenstandstheorie, Selbstdarstellung.

Introduzione di Vincenzo Raspa: Fortuna, significato e origini della teoria dell'oggetto, pp. 13-77 ed estesa bibliografia pp. 79-145.

4. ———. 2003. Teoria dell'oggetto. Presentazione personale. Macerata: Quodlibet.

Traduzione di Emanuele Coccia.

Contiene la traduzione di: Über Gegenstandstheorie, Selbstdarstellung.

French translations

1. Meinong, Alexius. 1999. Théorie de l'objet (1904) et Presentation personelle (1921). Paris: Vrin.

Traduction de Jean-François Courtine and Marc de Launay, avec une présentation de Jean-François Courtine (pp. 7-62).

Traduction de: Über Gegenstandstheorie et Selbstdarstellung.

2. ———. 2007. "Sur les objets d’ordre supérieur et leur rapport à la perception interne." In À l’école de Brentano. De Würzburg à Vienne, edited by Fisette, Denis and Fréchette, Guillaume, 263-343. Paris: Vrin.

Spanish translations

1. Meinong, Alexius. 2008. Teoría del objeto y presentación personal. Madrid / Buenos Aires: Miño y Dávila editores.

Traducción de Carola Pivetta; Presentacción de Emanuele Coccia (pp. 11-43).

Traducción de Über Gegenstandstheorie y de Selbstdarstellung.

Meinong last views on the Theory of Objects

"Meinong's Ontology. (1)

I. We must turn, in the first place, to a philosophical discipline which is not as yet part of the tradition, which is therefore in a certain sense new, and about which I have said some things which were intended to be of a fundamental nature. To begin with, it is impossible to give a regular definition of entity [Gegenstand]; for genus and differentia are lacking, since everything is an entity. However, the etymology of the word ' gegenstehen' yields at least an indirect characteristic, since it points to the experiences which apprehend entities; but these experiences must not be thought of as somehow constituting the entities. Every inner experience, at least every sufficiently elementary one, has such an entity; and insofar as the experience finds an expression – hence first of all in the words and sentences of language – this expression has a meaning[Bedeutung], and this meaning is always an entity. All knowledge, too, deals therefore with entities.

But large and important groups of entities have found no home in the traditional sciences; these sciences, moreover, are for the most part exclusively concerned with a knowledge of reality [Wirklichen], while even unreal things with being, things without being, possibilities, and even impossibilities can be objects of knowledge, namely, of a knowledge which is of interest to the as yet theoretically naive person only, as it were, when it promises to serve as a means for knowledge of reality. In contrast to such a preference for reality, which, in fact, has been overcome so far in no science, there exists the obvious need for a science which deals with entities without any restriction, especially without restriction to the special case of existence, so that it can be called existence-free [daseinsfrei]. This science about entities as such, or about pure entities, I have called the theory of entities.

Much of what belongs to this theory has already been studied under the title 'Logic' (especially: 'Pure Logic'); and that modern mathematical logic belongs completely to the realm of the theory of entities is only concealed by its goal of being a calculus, which seems to favor an extensive externalization [Veräusserlichung] in the sense of the logic of extensions, while it is just a complete internalization [Verinnerlichung] which the theory of entities strives for and makes possible. People have dealt with topics from the theory of entities since antiquity under the heading of 'Metaphysics', and especially, under the heading of 'Ontology' as part of metaphysics; and they have not always failed to recognize the characteristic feature of freedom from existence. But as a goal in itself, the concept of a theory of what is free from existence has, so far as I can see, never been espoused. According to this concept, there belongs to the theory of entities everything that can be made out about entities irrespective of their existence (for example, whatever it is that holds for the class of all colors which make up the 'color space,' as distinguished from the 'color body' which is restricted to the psychologically given); hence, everything that is a matter of a priori knowledge, so that the a priori can be treated as a defining characteristic of the kind of knowledge of which the theory of entities consists.

What belongs to the theory of entities is thus what is rational. Insofar [as it is that], it is therefore anything but a newly discovered country, but rather, in regard to one of its most important parts, mathematics, the justly admired standard of scientific precision. What is new is, perhaps, an insight into the peculiarity of this country and into the nature of its boundaries – unless one should rather speak of its boundlessness. In this respect, it is a kind of companion piece to metaphysics which tries to comprehend the totality of reality, while the theory of entities, because of its freedom from existence, tries to encompass also everything that is not real. Naturally, this freedom from existence does not mean that entities as such cannot have existence in the true sense. The fact that the kind of consideration and knowledge peculiar to the theory of entities therefore also appears where it can be applied to existents, constitutes one of the main values of the postulation of the new science.

Just as the concept of an entity in general is to be determined, at least cum grano salis, with an eye on apprehension, so are the main groups of entities characterized in regard to the main groups of apprehending experiences; and apprehensions are, as mentioned, all elementary experiences. Corresponding to the four main groups of the latter – to presentation [Vorstellen], thought [Denken], emotion [Fühlen], and desire [Begehren] – there are, therefore, four main groups of entities: objects [Objekte], objectives [Objektive], dignitatives [Dignitative], and desideratives [Desiderative]. However, the characteristics of the latter are not derived from the characteristics of the apprehending experiences. For this reason, nothing stands in the way of assigning to the immeasurable realm of objects, for example, also the inner experiences, even though these inner experiences cannot be given through presentations, but can only be apprehended through self-presentation or with the help of imagination."

(1) This is a translation of a part of Meinong's contribution to the book Die Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen (Leipzig, 1923). The part is entitled 'Zur Gegenstandstheorie'. Meinong's contribution to the book was written at the beginning of 1920, shortly before his death on November 27, 1920. Meinong's terminology is at times rather idiosyncratic. I have, therefore, sometimes used his own Latin terms.

From: Reinhardt Grossmann - Meinong - London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, pp. 224-229.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Meinong's Theory of Objects. A Selected Bibliography (First Part: A - L)

Bibliography

General bibliography from 1872 to 1987:

Stock Mechthild and Stock Wolfgang G. Psychologie und Philosophie der Grazer Schule. Eine Dokumentation und Wirkungsgeschichte von Alexius Meinong, Stephan Witasek, Rudolf Ameseder, Vittorio Benussi, Ernst Schwarz, Wilhelm M. Frankl und France Veber. Amsterdam: Rodopi 1990.

1. Meinong-Gedenkschrift. 1952. Graz: "Styria" Steirische Verlagsanstalt.

Contents: John Niemeyer Findlay: The influence of Meinong in Anglo-Saxon countries, 9; Rudolf Freundlich: Die beiden Aspekte der Meinongschen Gegenstandstheorie, 21; Rudolf Kindinger: Das Problem der unvollkommenen Erkenntnisleistung in der Meinongschen Wahrnehmungslehre, 41; Franz Kröner: Zu Meinongs "unmöglichen" Gegenständen, 67; Johann Mokre: Zu den logischen Paradoxien, 81; Kostantin Radakovic: Meinongs Beziehungen zu den Grundlagen unserer Erkenntnistheorie und Weltanschauung, 91; Mila Radakovic: Metaphysische Konsequenzen aus dem Persistenzgedanken Meinongs. Persönliches und Sachliches, 103; Amadeo Silva Tarouca: Die Erkenntnistheorie Meinongs in der Grazer Schultradition, 113; Ferdinand Weinhandl: Das Aussenweltproblem bei A. Meinong, 127; Karl Wolf: Die Entwicklung der Wertphilosophie in der Schule Meinongs, 157-171.

2. "Alexius Meinong." 1973. Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 104-105.

Rudolf Haller: Über Meinong 148; John Niemeyer Findlay: Meinong the Phenomenologist 161; Edgar Morscher: Meinongs Bedeutungslehre 178; Roderick M. Chisholm: Homeless Objects 207; Richard Routley and Valerie Routley: Rehabilitating Meinong's Theory of Objects 224; Gilbert Ryle: Intentionality-Theory and the Nature of Thinking 255; Francis Jacques: Référence et description chez Meinong. De la phénoménologie à l'analyse 266-287.

3. "Meinong and the Theory of Objects." 1995. Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50.

Edited by Rudolf Haller. Papers presented at an "Internationale Meinong-Konferenz" held September, 28-30, 1995 in Graz.

Table of Contents: Rudolf Haller: Zwei Vorworte in einem XVII; Evelyn Dölling: Alexius Meinong: "Der blinde Seher Theiresias" 1; Jaakko Hintikka: Meinong in a Long Perspective 29; Richard Sylvan: Re-Exploring Item-Theory 47; Francesca Modenato: Meinong's Theory of Objects: An Attempt to overcome Psychologism 87; Jan Wolenski: Ways of Dealing with Non-existence 113; Karel Lambert: Substitution and the Expansion of the World 129; Terence Parsons: Meinongian Semantics Generalized 145; Reinhardt Grossmann: Thoughts, Objectives and States of Affairs 163; Peter Simons: Meinong's Theory of Sense and Reference 171; Barry Smith: More Things in Heaven and Earth 187; Michele Lenoci: Meinongs unvollständige Gegestände und das Universalienproblem 203; Maria E. Reicher: Gibt es unvollständige Gegestände? 217; Dale Jacquette: Meinong's Concept of Implexive Being and Nonbeing 233; Herbert Hochberg: Abstracts, Functions, Existence and Relations in the Russell-Meinong Dispute, the Bradley Paradox and the Realism-Nominalism Controversy 273; Jacek Pasniczek: Are Contradictions Still Lurking in Meinongian Theories of Objects? 293; Marie-Luise Schubert Kalsi: Apriorische Elemente im Denken 305; Liliana Albertazzi: Forms of Completion 321; Johann Ch. Marek: Zwei Gegestände und ein Inhalt. Zur Intentionalität bei Meinong 341; Wolfgang Künne: Some Varieties of Thinking. Reflections on Meinong and Fodor 365; Alberto Voltolini: Is Meaning Without Actually Existing Reference Naturalizable? 397; Markus S. Stepanians: Russells Kritik an Meinongs Begriff des Annahmeschlusses 415; Nenad Miscevic: Imagination and Necessity 433; R.D. Rollinger: Meinong on Perception: Two Questions Concerning Propositional Seeing 445; Wolfgang G. Stock: Die Genese der Theorie der Vorstellungsproduktion der Grazer Schule 457; Rudolf Haller: Über Meinongs Wissenschaftstheorie 491; Alfred Schramm: Meinongs Wahrscheinlichkeit 507; Karl Schumann: Der Wertbegriff beim frühen Meinong 521; Wilhelm Baumgartner: Wertpräsentation 537; Ursula Zeglen: Meinong's Analysis of Lying 549: Seppo Sajama: Hitting Reality: France Veber's Concept of Zadevanje 559; Matjaz Potrc: Sensation According to Meinong and Veber 573; Robert Somos: Zwei Schüler Brentanos: Akos von Pauler und Meinong 591; J. C. Nyiri: Palágy Kritik an der Gegenstandstheorie 603; David M. Armstrong: Reacting to Meinong 615-627.

4. "The Philosophy of Alexius Meinong." 1996. Axiomathes no. 7.

Edited by Liliana Albertazzi.

Contents: Liliana Albertazzi: A cubist state of mind: Meinong's ontology 5; Dale jacquette: On defoliating Meinong's jungle 17; Francesca Modenato: A. Meinong: How to get into touch with things 43; Wolfgang G. Stock: Wissenschaftstheorie der Grazer Schule: Meinong und Frankl 61; Karl Schuhmann: Daubert and Meinong 75; R. D. Rollinger: Meinong and Husserl on assumptions 89; Serena Cattaruzza: Meinong and Bühler 103; Liliana Albertazzi: Comet tails, fleeting objects and temporal inversions 111; Natale Stucchi: Seeing and thinking: Vittorio Benussi and the Graz School 137; Roberto Poli: Object and measurement in Mally's Untersuchungen 173; Matja Potrc, Miklavz Vospernik: Meinong on psychophysical measurement 187; Barry Smith: Pleasure and its modifications: Stephan Witasek and the aesthetics of the Grazer Schule 203; Wilhelm Baumgartner, Wojciech Zełaniec: Meinong values 233; Jacek Juliusz Jadacki: Alexius Meinong and Polish philosophy 241; Ursula M. Zeglen: Meinong and Ingarden on negative judgments 267; Jacek Paśniczek: Meinong's ontology vs. Leśniewski's Ontology (toward a Meinongian Calculus of Names) 279-286.

5. "Il pregiudizio a favore del reale. La teoria dell'oggetto di Alexius Meinong fra ontologia e epistemologia." 2005. Rivista di Estetica no. 30.

A cura di Carola Barbero e Venanzio Raspa.

Indice: Carola Barbero e Venanzio Raspa: Introduzione. I pregiudizi hanno le gambe corte 3; Andrea Tabarroni: Gli oggetti inesistenti nella tradizione medievale 27; Marina Manotta: Una “filosofia dal basso”. Empirismo e razionalismo nel pensiero di Meinong 40; Rosaria Egidi: Il “Meinong” di Gustav Bergmann 54; Alberto Voltolini: Varietà nella (supposta) giungla 71; Arianna Betti: Argomenti ontologici genuini e oggetti intenzionali. Commento a Alberto Voltolini 86; Francesco Orilia: La libertà d’assunzione nella filosofia analitica contemporanea 91; Mario Alai: Conciliare Meinong, Frege e Russell. Commento a Francesco Orilia 110; Roberto Poli: Meinong, filosofo empirico 116; Francesco Armezzani: L’oggetto incompleto. Commento a Roberto Poli 140; Maurizio Ferraris: Lineamenti di una teoria degli oggetti sociali 145; Gennaro Auletta: Realismo sociale, non socialista! Commento a Maurizio Ferraris 181; Venanzio Raspa: Forme del più e del meno in Meinong 185; Alessandro Salice: Due taciti assunti. Commento a Venanzio Raspa 220; Carola Barbero: Madame Bovary è concreta come una donna o astratta come una legge? 226; Nevia Dolcini: Personaggi fittizi e “coefficienti di concretezza”. Commento a Carola Barbero 238-243.

6. Alai, Mario. 2006. "Speaking of Nonexistent Objects." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 2:119-159.

7. Albertazzi, Liliana. 1996. "A cubist state of mind: Meinong's ontology." Axiomathes no. 1996:5-16.

8. ———. 1996. "Come tails, fleeting objects and temporal inversions." Axiomathes:111-136.

9. Albertazzi, Liliana, Jacquette, Dale, and Poli, Roberto, eds. 2001. The School of Alexius Meinong. Aldershot: Ashgate.

10. Antonelli, Mauro, and David, Marian, eds. 2016. Existence, Fiction, Assumption: Meinongian Themes and the History of Austrian Philosophy. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Meinong Studies/Meinong Studien Vol. 6.

Contents / Inhalt: Stefania Centrone: Relational Theories of Intentionality and the Problem of Non-Existents 1; Peter Andras Varga: The Non-Existing Object Revisited: Meinong as the Link between Husserl and Russell? 27; Dale Jacquette: Anti-Meinongian Actualist Meaning of Fiction in Kripke’s 1973 John Locke Lectures 59; Michele Paolini Paoletti: Paradise on the Cheap. Ascriptivism about Ficta 99; Xavier de Donato Rodríguez: Meinong’s Theory of Assumptions and its Relevance for Scientific Contexts 141; Jutta Valent: Christian von Ehrenfels. Eine intellektuelle Biographie: Neue Forschungsergebnisse aus dem Nachlass 175; Markus Roschitz: Zu Ernst Mallys Lebensgang, Umfeld und akademischer Laufbahn 207-257.

11. Aquila, Richard. 1976. Intentionality. A Study of Mental Acts. Park: Pennsylvania University Press.

12. Armstrong, David Malet. 1995. "Reacting to Meinong." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:615-627.

"1. Some reasons are given for rejecting the view that there are entities that do not exist. 2. It is suggested, nevertheless, that this view has some plausibility when we consider unrealized empirical possibilities. 3. Even if nonexistent entities are rejected, there remains Meinong's distinction between object and objectives, roughly: things and facts. The author would analyze objects in terms of objectives, yielding a world of facts."

13. Barber, Kenneth. 1970. "Meinong's Hume Studies part I: Meinong's Nominalism." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 30:550-567.

14. ———. 1971. "Meinong's Hume Studies part II: Meinong's Analysis of Relations." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 31:564-584.

15. Barbero, Carola. 2006. "Cry for a shadow. Emotions and Object Theory." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 2:181-211.

16. Baumgartner, Wolfgang, and Zelaniec, W. 1996. "Meinong values." Axiomathes:233-240.

17. Bencivenga, Ermanno. 1986. "Meinong: A Critique from the Left." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:359-374.

"Meinong justifies the need of his Gegenstandstheorie by presenting it as a generalization of (existing) metaphysics, in that the former deals with both existent and non-existent objects, whereas the latter used to deal with existent objects only. But this justification is disingenuous, since the notion of a non-existent object is virtually a contradiction in terms for the traditional paradigm. What Meinong is really proposing is a conceptual revolution of a Kantian variety, and we need to get clearer about the full import of this revolution. This is what the present paper attempts to do."

18. Benoist, Jocelyn. 2001. Représentations sans objet: Aux origines de la phénoménologie et de la philosophie analytique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Table des matières: Introduction. La question des objets inexistants et les "origines communes" de la phénoménologie et de la philosophie analytique 5; Chapitre I. Bolzano et le paradoxe des objets inexistants 17; Chapitre II. Un détour frégéen: la présuppostion de référence 43; Chapitre III. Une première solution intentionnaliste: Twardowski (en passant par Brentano) 67; Chapitre IV: L'objectivation de l'inexistence: Meinong 99; Chapitre V. Le dispositif onto-logique et les deux critiques possibles de Meinong 131; Appendice: Brentano sur les "quelque chose" 169; Chapitre Vi. Husserl critique de Twardowski 173; Index nominum 217-219.

19. Bergmann, Gustav. 1967. Realism. A Critique of Brentano and Meinong. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Reprint: Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag, 2004.

20. Berto, Francesco. 2012. Existence as a Real Property. The Ontology of Meinongianism. Dordrecht: Springer.

21. Beyer, Christian. 2004. "Austrian theories of judgement: Bolzano, Brentano, Meinong, and Husserl." In Phenomenology and Analysis. Essays on Central European Philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Huemer, Wolfgang, 257-284. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

22. Bonino, Guido. 2006. "Why there are no facts in Meinong's world (according to Gustav Bergmann)." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 2:239-275.

"The paper deals with Gustav Bergmann's analysis of Meinong's ontology, carried out in Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong (1967); more specifically it aims at making it clear in what sense Meinong can be regarded as a "reist". Reism is characterized by Bergmann as a position -- largely dominant in the philosophical tradition -- which

(i) neglects the ontological category of facts;

(ii) neglects or downplays nexus (and more in general subsistents);

(iii) tends to consider all entities as things or thing-like.

As a by-product, some light will be thrown on the sense of Bergmann's ontological enterprise."

23. Bottani, Andrea. 2006. "Three kind of incompleteness." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 2:99-117.

24. Bourgeois, Warren V. 1981. "Beyond Russell and Meinong." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 16:653-666.

25. Brigati, Roberto. 1993. Il linguaggio dell'oggettività. Saggio su Meinong. Torino: Thema.

26. Burkhardt, Hans. 1989. "Das Vorurteil zugunsten des Aktualen: die philosophischen Systeme von Leibniz and Meinong." In Le teorie delle modalità. Atti del Convegno internazionale di storia della logica, edited by Corsi, Giovanni, Mangione, Corrado and Mugnai, Massimo, 155-182. Bologna: CLUEB.

27. Butchvarov, Panayot. 1985. "Our robust sense of reality." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:501-531.

"Anti-Meinongian philosophers, such as Russell, do not explain what they mean by existence when they deny that there are nonexistent objects - they just sense robustly. I argue that any plausible explanation of what they mean tends to undermine their view and to support the Meinongian view. But why are they so strongly convinced that they are right? I argue that the reason is to be found in the special character of the concept of existence, which has been insufficiently examined by anti-Meinongian as well as by Meinongian philosophers."

28. Calan, Ronan de. 2006. "L'objectif de l' Objektiv: de l'objet du jugement à la théorie de l'objet." In Propositions et états de choses. Entre être et sens, edited by Benoist, Jocelyn, 51-66. Paris: Vrin.

29. Campbell, Richard. 1972. "Did Meinong plant a jungle?" Philosophical Papers no. 1:89-102.

"This article presents a detailed analysis of Meinong's paper on "Thetheory of objects" in order to untangle the complex dialectic of his argument. It is argued that Meinong's position has been grossly misunderstood; far from maintaining that all objects of reference must have some kind of logical being, Meinong explicitly denies such a 'solution' to the problem of how reference is to be understood when the expression which occurs referentially in a linguistic context fails to refer to an existing object. He is not ontologising the logic of our ordinary use of referring expressions. Rather, Meinong's position is that being is not intrinsic to having the logical status of an object, But rather is only relevant when we come to determine whether the existential proposition concerning some object is true.

The question of being does not arise when an object is considered as such. Just what this is to be taken as meaning is developed through a discussion of intentionality. It is proposed that Meinong can be understood as holding that the meta-Remark 'reference is there being made to x' does not entail the existence, nor the non-existence of x."

30. Cantens, Bernardo J. 1999. Suarez and Meinong on Beings of Reason and Non-Existent Objects, University of Miami.

Available at ProQuest Dissertation Express: reference number 9938315.

31. Capone Braga, Gaetano. 1914. "La teoria degli oggetti e l'ontologia." Cultura Filosofica no. VIII (1914): 197-231; 290-318; IX (1915) 72-85.

32. Capozzi, Mirella. 2006. "Biangoli rettilinei e centauri: l'ontologia di Wolff e Meinong." In Le ragioni del conoscere e dell'agire. Scritti in onore di Rosaria Egidi, edited by Calcaterra, Rosa, 44-56. Milano: Franco Angeli.

33. Cappio, James John. 1981. Meinong and Reference, Princeton University.

Available at ProQuest Dissertation Express: reference number 8119111.

34. Cattaruzza, Serena. 1996. "Meinong and Bühler." Axiomathes:103-110.

35. Centi, Beatrice, and Raspa, Venanzio. 2021. "Le varietà dell’oggetto. Approssimazioni storiche e variazioni teoriche alla Gegenstandstheorie di Alexius Meinong." Paradigmi no. 39:199-208.

Abstract: "Meinong’s thought continually lends itself to alternative solutions, to a critical rethinking of the concepts he developed and to comparison both with the doctrines of other thinkers, and the ideas of his disciples. The essays presented in this issue place his thinking in dialogue with the major figures in the history of philosophy, thinkers as various as Plato and Aristotle, Avicenna, Suárez, Clauberg, Hume and Kant, who appear as ideal interlocutors in order to comprehend in depth the significance of Meinongian object theory.

The purpose underlying these studies is also to illustrate how features and problems of Gegenstandstheorie retain a vital relevance for contemporary philosophy."

36. Centrone, Stefania. 2016. "Relational Theories of Intentionality and the Problem of Non-Existents." Meinong Studies no. 6:1-26.

37. Chisholm, Roderick M. 1963. "Supererogation and offence." Ratio no. 5.

Reprinted in: Brentano and Meinong Studies, pp. 98-113.

38. ———. 1972. "Beyond Being and Nonbeing." In Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, edited by Haller, Rudolf, 245-255. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

Reprinted in: Brentano and Meinong Studies, pp. 53-67.

"Meinong wrote: "There are objects of which it is true that there are no such objects." (1) But he was well aware that this statement of his doctrine of Aussersein was needlessly paradoxical. Other statements were: "The non-real" is not "a mere nothing" and "The object as such ... stands 'beyond being and non-being." (2) Perhaps the clearest statement was provided by Meinong's follower, Ernst Mally: "Sosein is independent of Sein." (3) We could paraphrase Mally's statement by saying: "An object may have a set of characteristics whether or not it exists and whether or not it has any other kind of being."

It is commonly supposed that this doctrine of Aussersein is absurd and that whatever grounds Meinong may have had for affirming it were demolished by Russell's theory of descriptions. I believe, however, that this supposition is false. I shall attempt here to set forth the doctrine in its most extreme form and I shall then consider what may be said in its favor."

39. ———. 1972. "Objectives and intrinsic value." In Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

Reprinted in: Brentano and Meinong Studies, pp. pp. 80-91.

40. ———. 1972. "Einige Hauptpunkte in Meinongs philosophischer Psychologie." In Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, 25-36. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

41. ———. 1973. "Homeless Objects." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 104-105:207-223.

Reprinted in: Brentano and Meinong Studies, pp. 37-52.

"In 1907 Meinong introduced the expression 'homeless object' (Heimatlose Gegenständ) to refer to certain objects which, he said, did not fall within the subject-matter of any of the generally accepted branches of knowledge. One might also characterize such objects by saying that they are neither 'concreta' nor 'abstracta'.

Three such objects are discussed in the present paper: (1) certain 'intentionalia', or objects of thought; (2) what Meinong called 'Objecktive' and what might also be called 'states of affairs'; and (3) 'incomplete objects', or objects that are not completely determinate. Meinong's position with respect to these types of object is here assessed and to a certain extent defended."

42. ———. 1982. Brentano and Meinong Studies. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Contents: Foreword 1; 1. Brentano's theory of Substance and Accident 3; 2. Brentano's theory of Judgment 17; 3. Homeless objects 37; 4. Beyond Being and Nonbeing 53; 5. Correct and incorrect emotion 68; 6. Objectives and intrinsic value 80; 7. The quality of pleasure and displeasure 92; 8. Supererogation and offence 98; 9. Beginnings and endings 114-124.

"I present these papers on Brentano and Meinong in the hope that they will lead the reader back to the originai sources. Some of the papers are expositions and commentaries. Others are developments of certain suggestions first made by Brentano or by Meinong.

(...)

The third and fourth papers are concerned with Meinong's theory of objects, a theory that grows out of Brentano's theoretical philosophy. "Homeless Objects" first appeared in the Meinong issue of Revue Internationale de Philosophie, Vol. 22 (1973). "Beyond Being and Nonbeing" was presented to the Colloquium on Meinong that took place at the University of Graz in September and October, 1970. It first appeared in Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, edited by Rudolf Haller (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1972). The paper makes clear, I think, that Russell's theory of descriptions - despite its great philosophical merit - does not provide a refutation of Meinong's theory.

The four papers that follow are concerned with the theory of value, as it had been conceived by Brentano and developed by Meinong.

(...)

"Objectives and Intrinsic Value" is a revised version of a second paper that I presented to the Meinong Colloquium in 1970; the original version appears in Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein.

>"Supererogation and Offence" first appeared in Ratio, Vol. V (1963). In this work I make use, not only of certain insights of Meinong, but also those of one of his followers, Dr. Ernst Schwarz. Schwarz's excellent book, Uber den Wert, das Soll, und das richtige Werthalten, has been almost entirely neglected. It was first brought to my attention by Hofrat Dr. Rudolf Kindinger who first introduced me to Graz.

I hope that these essays will be thought of as carrying out the tradition of the Brentano school." (From the Foreword)

43. Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz. 2001. "Die Theorie der Intentionalität Meinongs." Dialectica.International Journal of Philosophy of Knowledge no. 51:119-143.

"The most striking feature of Meinong's theory of intentionality is his thesis that every mental act has its reference-object beyond being and non being . This theory seems, at first, to be a clear example of the so called object-theory of intentionality, as it introduces special postulated entities in the target-position of the mental act. Closer examination, however, reveals in Meinong's works important elements of the mediator-theory. Meinong speaks of auxiliary incomplete objects situated between the subject and the object of reference and mediating the intentional access to the (complete) reference-object. Moreover, even if the object of reference is of the simple nominal form, the mediating structure involves essentially propositional entities (objectives). In the paper we attempt to give a set-theoretical interpretation of Meinong's theory in the frame of which we could eventually do without the incomplete mediating objects. Yet, some general epistemological considerations suggest the indispensability of such incomplete mediating structures."

44. ———. 2002. "Brentano und Meinong. Zur Ontologie der Denkobjekte." In Substanz und Identität. Beiträge zur Ontologie, edited by Löffler, Winfried, 155-166. Paderborn: Mentis-Verlag.

45. ———. 2003. "Quine, Meinong und Aristoteles. Zwei Dimensionen der ontologischen Verpflichtung." Metaphysica no. 4:39-68.

46. ———. 2004. "Meinong und supervaluation." In Phenomenology and Analysis. Essays on Central European Philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Huemer, Wolfgang, 105-130. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

"Nowadays the philosophers that are sympathetic to Meinongian ideas are accused of planting an ontological jungle. However in the paper it is shown that a significant part of Meinong's philosophy can be interpreted within the framework of an astonishingly sparse ontology.

The proposed interpretation does not introduce any nonexistent entities but instead uses supervaluational techniques and substitutional interpretation of quantifiers."

47. ———. 2005. "Abstraktion und Relationen beim jungen Meinong." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 1:7-62.

48. ———. 2005. "Drei Versionen der Meinongschen Logik." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 59:49-70.

"The most striking part of Meinong's theory of objects is his thesis that the 'pure objects' should be considered as ontologically neutral.

Meinong says that they are 'beyond of being and non-being'. There are three prima facie plausible ways how this ontological neutrality could be analyzed. It can be construed as (i) an expansion of ontology; (ii) an introduction of an ontologically non-committing quantification; or as (iii) a version of free logic."

49. ———. 2007. Gegenstandstheorie und Theorie der Intentionalität bei Alexius Meinong. Dordrecht: Springer.

Inhaltverzeichnis: Einführung IX-XII; 1. Intentionalität und immanente Objekte. Die Lehre Franz Brentanos 1; 2. Abstraktion und Relationen. Der junge Meinong 53; 3. Inhalt und Gegenständ. Meinongs Lehre um 1900 103; 4. Die Lehre von den Objektiven (1902) 149; 5. Gegenstandstheorie (1904-1920) 179; 6. Meinongs Gegenstände und die intentionale Beziehung 251; 7. Meinong'sche "Konstitutionssysteme" 307; 8. Die Logik des Ausserseins 353; Schlusswort 371; Bibliographie 373; Namenverzeichnis 385-386.

50. Cocchiarella, Nino. 1982. "Meinong reconstructed versus early Russell reconstructed." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 11:183-214.

Reprinted in Logical Studies in Early Analytic Philosophy, pp. 119-151.

"A reconstruction of Bertrand Russell's pre-1905 theory of nonexisting individuals is contrasted with terry parsons' reconstruction of Meinong's theory in this book "nonexistent objects". Meinongian objects, complete and incomplete, possible and impossible, are shown to be parasitic upon Russellian individuals, and Meinong's distinction between nuclear and extra-nuclear properties and relations is explained in terms of the distinction between those properties and relations which can hold only of existing individuals and those which can hold of nonexisting individuals as well."

51. Dappiano, Luigi. 1994. "L'idealismo di Oxbridge tra Lotze e Meinong. A proposito delle origini della filosofia analitica." Axiomathes:279.

52. De Donato-Rodriguez, Xavier. 2016. "Meinong’s Theory of Assumptions and its Relevance for Scientific Contexts." Meinong Studies no. 6:141-173.

53. Dejnožka, Jan. 1988. "Russell's robust sense of reality: a reply to Butchvarov." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 32:155-164.

This paper is now superseded by the Chapter 4. "Russell's robust sense of reality" of "The Ontology of the Analytic Tradition and Its Origins" (1996). (Personal communication by Jan Dejnozka).

54. ———. 1996. The Ontology of the Analytic Tradition and Its Origins. Realism and Identity in Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine. Lanham, Maryland: Littefield Adams.

Paperback edition reprinted with corrections, 2002; reprinted with further corrections, 2003.

55. Dölling, Evelyn. 1995. "Alexius Meinong: "Der blinde Seher Theiresias"." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:1-27.

56. ———. 1997. "On Alexius Meinong's theory of signs." In The Brentano Puzzle, edited by Poli, Roberto, 199-214. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"The Austrian philosopher Alexius Meinong (1853-1920) is known for his works on the theory of objects, epistemology, philosophy of value and psychology. Little attention has so far been paid to his considerations concerning the philosophy of signs (Zeichen). It is the aim of this paper to study this aspect of Meinong's work by way of his book Über Annahmen.

In this book, first published in 1902, and in 1910 in an enlarged second edition, Meinong approached the phenomenon of assuming (Annehmen), on the one hand, by an analysis of semiotic processes and, on the other, by investigating a certain type of objects, the so-called objectives (Objektive), on which Annahmen are directed. Here, he starts from the close relationship between signs and the theory of intentionality of psychic acts developed by Brentano (cf. Brentano 1874). Brentano's definition of psychic phenomena shares a common feature with the definition of sign: their distinguishing characteristic is their being related to something else. Meinong made use of the word Annahme as a technical term for all experiences (Erlebnisse) in the field between presentations (Vorstellungen) and judgments.(2) A judgment is a psychic act by which Something is accepted or rejected. He or she who judges concerning something or believes in something is convinced (überzeugt) of it (cf. Meinong 1977, p. 2). "The two ... factors mentioned, namely conviction and position within the contradiction of yes or no, can without exception be found in everything claimed to be a judgment" (Meinong 1977, p. 3). Examples: (1) Vienna is the capital of Austria, (2) Men exist, (3) Mermaids are fabulous creatures. All judgments are based on having presentations, which is but a passive psychic act and involves neither the moment of conviction nor that of assertion. As far as the psychic act of assuming is concerned it is a matter of judgment without conviction, i.e. Annahmen do not, or do not necessarily, involve being known or even believed. Examples: (4) Assuming a rectangular triangle be given, one leg of which is half as long as the other, (5) / assume that the problem of determinism and indeterminism is unsolvable, (6) Assuming that this stick is a horse, (7) Let us assume that you are Hamlet, (8) If AB and BC hold, so will AC, (9) If it rains today we cannot take the planned trip, (10) Imagine turning yourself into a princess.

In Uber Annahmen Meinong gave much attention to the proof that Annahmen occupy an independent field between presentations and judgments.(3) In the final analysis, however, these considerations only served him as preliminary inquiries to determine the function of Annahmen in the different context in which they are used. In particular he was interested in the function of Annahmen in certain kinds of communicative behaviour such as a lie, play or art. Annahmen both in play and art are especially relevant to a semiotic analysis of Annahmen.

Meinong developed his conception of signs against the background of the semiotics of Richard Gatschenberger, Eduard Martinak and Edmund Husserl. This is why their analyses of signs will be discussed in the first two sections of this paper. In the third section we will study how Meinong modified the mentioned sign conceptions to meet his own purposes and how he exploited them for his semiotic analysis of Annahmen." (pp. 199-200, a note omitted)

(2) Meinong refers to Russell drawing his attention to G. Frege who was probably the first to introduce the concept of Annahme in his paper 'Function und Begriff' (1891). (...)

(3) Meinong’s view that Annahmen are independent psychic acts did not meet general acceptance. Objections were raised mainly in Russell (1904) and Marty (1908). These disputes shall not be discussed here. Rather, Meinong’s view of Annahmen will be largely accepted in the following remarks.

References

Marty, A. (1908). Untersuchungen zur allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Halle.

Meinong A. (1977). Über Annahmen, in: Gesamtausgabe, 4, Graz: Akademische Druck u. Verlagsanstalt.

Russell, B. (1904). 'Meinong's Theory of Complexes and Assumptions,' Mind n.s., 13, pp. 204-219, 336-354, 509-524.

57. ———. 1999. "Wahrheit Suchen und Wharheit Bekennen." Alexius Meinong: Skizze seines Lebens, Studien zur österreichischen philosophie. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

58. ———. 2001. "Meinong in his and our times." In The School of Alexius Meinong, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Jacquette, Dale and Poli, Roberto, 3-48. Aldershot: Ashgate.

59. ———. 2001. "Alexius Meinong's life and work." In The School of Alexius Meinong, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Jacquette, Dale and Poli, Roberto, 49-76. Aldershot: Ashgate.

60. ———. 2005. ""...dieser Umweg führt über sprachliche Ausdrücke, durch die sich Annahmen verraten"

Eine semiotsche Sicht auf Meinongs Annahmenlehre." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 1:129-158.

61. Eames, Elizabeth Ramsden. 1971. "Russell's study of Meinong." Russell.The Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives no. 4:3-7.

"Some commentators have found Russell's treatment of Meinong to be a 'travesty,' but it is argued that the letters between Meinong and Russell and Russell's reading notes (all in the Bertrand Russell archives at McMaster) show Russell to have been a careful student whose interpretation was welcomed by Meinong."

62. Eaton, Howard O. 1930. The Austrian Philosophy of Values. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

63. Elie, Hubert. 1936. Le complexe significabile. Paris: Vrin.

Repris avec le titre: Le Signifiable par complexe. La proposition et son objet. Grégoire de Rimini, Meinong, Russell, Paris: Vrin 2000.

64. Englebretsen, George. 1973. "Meinong on existence." Man and World no. 6:80-82.

"I argue here that on one plausible reading Meinong's theory of objects, far from being mistaken in the way Russell thought it was, shows considerable insight into the notion of existence. In particular, Meinong can be seen as making an important distinction between what can be significantly referred to and what exists. This distinction is very close to one made recently by Fred Sommers."

"I argue here that on one plausible reading Meinong's theory of objects, far from being mistaken in the way Russell thought it was, shows considerable insight into the notion of existence. In particular, Meinong can be seen as making an important distinction between what can be significantly referred to and what exists. This distinction is very close to one made recently by Fred Sommers."

"For several years I was told, and believed, that while Russell's theory of descriptions might he flawed (viz. in the way Strawson showed), his rejection of Meinong's theory of objects, which led to the theory of descriptions, was undoubtedly correct. Now I doubt very much if this is so.

The "official" view is that Meinong had made the mistake of multiplying the senses of "exists" unnecessarily. According to this view, Meinong, since he held that the descriptive components of any meaningful sentence must refer to something, was forced to provide a special kind of existence, subsistence, for entities which are nonexistent but referred to meaningfully. Russell avoided this position by claiming that statements referring to nonexistent entities are meaningful but false (since they logically entail the existence of the entity referred to). I think the official view underestimates Meinong's philosophical abilities. Indeed, I think, rather than engaging in the philosophically dangerous task of multiplying kinds of existence, Meinong was expressing a keen insight into the nature of existential commitment." (p. 80)

65. Farrell-Smith, Janet. 1985. "The Russell-Meinong Debate." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 45:305-350.

66. Findlay, John Niemeyer. 1933. Meinong's Theory of Objects. London: Oxford University Press.

Contents of the Second Edition: Preface to the Second Edition V-XV; I. The Doctrine of Content and Object 1; II. The Pure Object and Its Indifference to Being 42; III. The Theory of Objectives 59; IV: The Modal Moment 102; V. Objects of Higher Order 113; VI. The Theory of Incomplete Objects 152; VII. The Modal Properties of Objectives 185; VIII.The Apprehension of Objects 218; IX. Valuation and Values 264; X. Dignitatives and Desideratives 303; XI. Appraisal of Meinong 322; Index 349-353.

Second edition in 1963 (Gregg Revivals Reprint); the chapters IX and X were added in this edition.

Reprinted with the title: Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values and a new Introduction. Findlay and Meinong by Dale Jacquette (pp. XXV-LIV), Aldershot: Ashgate, 1995.

67. ———. 1973. "Meinong the Phenomenologist." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 104-105:161-177.

68. ———. 1995. Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values. Aldershot: Gregg revivals.

Reprint of the second edition with a new introduction by Dale Jacquette pp. XXV-LIV.

69. Gellman, Jerome I. 1969. "Suter on Russell on Meinong." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 29:441-445.

"The author replies to Ronald Suter's "Russell's 'refutation' of Meinong in 'On denoting'," "Philosophy and phenomenological research," June, 1967. Suter's interpretation of one of Russell's arguments is criticized on exegetical grounds, And his defense of another argument is rebutted on logical grounds. Meinong's thesis is presented as the thesis that all statements of a certain form are true. It is argued that all of Russell's arguments are attempts to pose counter-examples to this single view. Meinong is defended against Russell's counter-examples."

70. Giraud, Thibaut. 2016. "On Modal Meinongianism." Synthese no. 193:3329-3346.

71. Griffin, Nicholas. 1977. "Russell's "horrible travesty" of Meinong." Russell.The Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives:39-51.

"For a long time it was widely believed that Meinong held that every object of reference had being. This has since come to be recognized as a 'horrible travesty' (Findlay's phrase) of Meinong's position.

However, A new horrible travesty has grown up: namely, that the original misinterpretation of Meinong was due to Russell's early discussions of his work. While it is conceded that Russell's later writings contained travesties of Meinong, it is shown (using unpublished documents in the Bertrand Russell archives as well as Russell's published writings) that, in his early critical discussions of Meinong, Russell was fully aware that for Meinong some objects had no kind of being at all."

72. ———. 1979. "The Independence of Sosein from Sein." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 9:27-34.

"Meinong's theory of objects is at last getting some of the attention it deserves, and it now seems that the time has passed when the theory could be dismissed as merely a source of philosophical amusement. But, despite the fact that Meinong's position is now taken much more seriously than it used to be, the theory is, for the most part, still rejected, and even Meinong's more careful critics still fail to do justice to the plausibility of his theory of objects. Recently Reinhardt Grossmann (1) has presented a series of arguments designed to show that the greater part of the theory of objects is mistaken, although he concedes that `Meinong's doctrine is neither too obscure to be understood nor too wrongheaded to be enlightening' (p. 67). In this paper 1 shall be concerned with showing how Meinong's theory can be defended against Grossmann's arguments.

Grossmann usefully lists the four central theses of Meinong's theory of objects (p. 67):

(1) Nonexistent objects (2) have no form of being whatsoever.

(2) Such objects are, nevertheless, constituents of certain states of affairs.

(3) They even have a number of quite ordinary properties - the golden mountain, for example, is golden.

(4) Being is not a part of any object.

He then argues that, of the four, only the first is true. My own view is that all four are true." p. 27

(1) See R. Grosmmann - Meinong's doctrine of the Aussersein of the pure object - Noûs, 8 (1974) pp. 67-82. All references, except where otherwise indicated, are to this paper.

(2) Grossmann standardly uses the term 'entity' for Meinong's `Gegenstand', which is usually translated as 'object'. Since the Oxford English Dictionary defines 'entity' as 'thing that has real existence', this switch is unsatisfactory. Accordingly I have switched back either to 'object' or to the even more neutral term 'item'.

73. ———. 1986. "Russell's critique of Meinong's theory of objects." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:375-401.

"Russell brought three arguments forward against Meinong's theory of objects. None of them depend upon a misinterpretation of the theory as is often claimed. In particular, only one is based upon a clash between Meinong's theory and Russell's theory of descriptions, and that did not involve Russell's attributing to Meinong his own ontological assumption. The other two arguments were attempts to find internal inconsistencies in Meinong's theory. But neither was sufficient to refute the theory, though they do require some revisions, viz. a trade-off between freedom of assumption and unlimited characterization. Meinong himself worked out the essentials of the required revisions."

74. Griffin, Nicholas, and Jacquette, Dale, eds. 2009. Russell vs. Meinong. The Legacy of "On Denoting". New York: Routledge.

Contents: Preface XI; Acknowledgements XIII; Dale Jacquette and Nicholas Griffin: Introduction 1; 1. Alasdair Urquhart: Logic and denotation 10; 2. Graham Stevens: Antirealism and the theory of descriptions 26; 3. Francis Jeffrey Pelletier and Bernard Linsky: Russell vs. Frege on definite descriptions as singular terms 40; 4. Kevin C. Klement: A Cantorian argument against's Frege and early Russell's theories of descriptions 65; 5. Gideon Makin: 'On denoting' appearance and reality 78; 6. Omar W. Nasim: Explaining G. F. Stout's reaction to Russell's 'On denoting' 101; 7. David Bostock: Russell on 'the' in plural 113; 8. Johann Christian Marek: Psychological content and indeterminacy with respect to Being: two notes on the Russell-Meinong Debate 144; 9. Dale Jacquette: Meditations on Meinong's Golden Mountain 169; 10. Nicholas Griffin: Rethinking Item Theory 204; 11. Peter Loftson: Contra Meinong 233; 12. Gabriele Contessa: Who is afraid of imaginary objects? 248; 13. Gregory Landini: Russell's definite descriptions de re 266; 14. Michael Nelson: Quantifying in and Anti-Essentialism 297; 15. Nathan Salmon: Points, complexes, complex points, and a yacht 343; Contributors 365; Index 369.

75. Grossmann, Reinhardt. 1969. "Non-Existent Objects: Recent Work on Brentano and Meinong." American Philosophical Quarterly no. 6:17-32.

76. ———. 1974. Meinong. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Contents: Preface IX-X; I. Individuals and Properties 1; II. Ideal and Real Relations 21; III. Ideas and Their Intentions 48; IV. Objects of Higher Order 57; V. Assumptions and Objectives 78; VI. Being and Aussersein 106; VII. Empirical Knowledge: Perception and Introspection 121; VIII. Relational Knowledge: The Theory of Entities 156; IX. The Apprehension of Objects 182; X. Modalities 199; Appendix I. Meinong's Ontology (by Meinong) 224; Appendix II. Meinong's Life and Work (by Meinong) 230; Notes 237; Index 255.

"This book on Meinong is primarily concerned with his arguments for the positions for which he is famous among some philosophers and infamous among others. But philosophical contentions carry little weight when they are viewed in isolation. Matters are too complex, too difficult, to be settled in an isolated way. Every argument must be evaluated against a background which includes a philosopher's other arguments and some of his basic assumptions or -- if you wish -- prejudices. I therefore discuss Meinong's arguments within the context in which they appear, but with an eye on his earlier positions as well as on his later changes of mind. There are at least two further reasons for adopting this particular approach in Meinong's case.

Findlay, in his classic study of Meinong's philosophy, compares him with G. E. Moore.(1) Although this comparison is apt, there is one respect in which Meinong differs greatly from Moore. Meinong's philosophy develops over the years from a sparse ontology into an ample one. Every new idea is built upon an old one; new problems arise in the wake of earlier solutions; certain questions are raised time and again, but their answers are more and more refined. In short, there is a definite development, with a definite trend, definite stages, and a distinct final view.

I also wished to impress on the reader how misleading the prevalent view is that Meinong was a spendthrift metaphysician who delighted in multiplying entities continuously and needlessly. If one becomes aware of how Meinong's full ontology develops very slowly over many years from very austere beginnings, how he resists the temptation to solve a problem by admitting a new kind of entity, and how he gives in only after a whole series of arguments for the new kind of entity has accumulated, one will, hopefully, be less inclined in future to think of Meinong as the 'supreme entity multiplier in the history of philosophy'.(2)" (from the Preface).

(1) J. N. Findlay, Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1963), p. 348.

(2) This phrase if from Gilbert Ryle's article in the Oxford Magazine 26 October 1933.

77. ———. 1974. "Meinong's Doctrine of the Aussersein of the Pure Object." Noûs no. 8:67-82.

"Meinong's doctrine of the Aussersein of the pure object consists, in my view, of the following four main theses: (1) Nonexistent entities, like the golden mountain and the round square, have no form of being whatsoever. (2) Such entities are, nevertheless, constituents of certain states of affairs. (3) They even have a number of quite ordinary properties-the golden mountain, for example, is golden. (4) Being is not a part of any object. I shall try to explain and evaluate these four theses, and I shall claim that only the first one is true. However, even if my arguments fail to convince, they may at least show that Meinong's doctrine is neither too obscure to be understood nor too wrongheaded to be enlightening."

78. ———. 1984. "Non-Existent Objects vs. Definite Descriptions." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 62:363-377.

"Some years ago, I published an article about Meinong's theory of objects. (1) I listed there four main theses of Meinong's view:

(1) The golden mountain (and other nonexistents) has no being at all.

(2) Nevertheless, it is a constituent of the fact that the golden mountain does not exist.

(3) Furthermore, it has such ordinary properties as being made from gold.

(4) Existence is not a constituent of any object.

And I argued in that paper that only thesis (1) is true. In particular, I insisted that (3), which I consider to be the most characteristic feature of Meinong's view, is false.

Since then, there have been quite a few discussions of Meinong's view. I would like, in response to some of these works, to reiterate my earlier criticism of Meinong. My purpose is threefold. Firstly, I would like to state once more my own view, which is a version of Russell's theory of definite descriptions, as clearly as possible. Secondly, I shall defend my past contention that the golden mountain is not golden against some recent objections. And thirdly and most importantly, I want to describe the dialectic of the philosophical problem as I perceive it. It seems to me to be an exasperating shortcoming of the discussion that most participants do not clearly state the basic options and their reasons for preferring some to others."

(1) 'Meinong's Doctrine of the Aussersein of the Pure Object', Noüs, 8 (1974, pp. 67-81. See also my Meinong (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1974).

79. ———. 2000. "Reid, Meinong and the Argument from Physics." Metaphysica.International Journal for Ontology and Metaphysics no. 1:69-82.

80. ———. 2001. "Meinong's Main Mistake." In The School of Alexius Meinong, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Jacquette, Dale and Poli, Roberto, 477-488. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"Seldom has a modern philosopher become as famous for a view which he does not hold as Alexius Meinong. One generally attributes to him the belief that there are, not just such ordinary things as mountains and relations, but even such things as the golden mountain and the round square. He is therefore often viewed as a spendthrift ontologist who delighted in multiplying entities continuously and needlessly. But this conception, I shall try to show, is mistaken. Anyone who has studied Meinong's philosophy carefully will come to the conclusion that he is not the 'supreme entity-multiplier in the history of philosophy' as Gilbert Ryle claims.(1)

But even though Meinong never embraced the rather extreme view that there are, in addition to existing things in space and time and subsisting things (ideal things) outside of space and time, also such things as the golden mountain, and even such contradictory things as the round square, he nevertheless insisted on another ontological principle not any less mistaken than what I just called the 'extreme' view. It is this insistence, and not his ontological inventory, which I consider to be Meinong's main mistake. I shall, therefore, first defend Meinong against the kind of accusation implied in Ryle's description of Meinong. And then I shall, secondly, show where Meinong really went wrong in his ontology." (p. 477)

(1) See Ryle's article in the Oxford Magazine 26 October 1933.

81. Guigon, Ghislain. 2005. "Meinong on magnitudes and measurement." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 1:255-296.

"The paper comprises a presentation and defence of Meinong's discussion on magnitudes and measurement found in his Über die Bedeutung des Weber'schen Gesetzes. The first and longer part of the presentation examines Meinong's analysis of magnitudes. According to Meinong, we must distinguish between divisible magnitudes and indivisible ones. He argues that relations of

distance, or dissimilarity, are indivisible magnitudes that coincide with divisible magnitudes called stretches. The second part of the presentation is concerned with Meinong's account of measurement as a comparison of parts.

Meinong holds that measuring is comparing parts and, thus, only divisible magnitudes are directly measurable. When indivisible magnitudes like distances are indirectly measured, they are measured by means of divisible magnitudes like stretches. Meinong's account allows us to reject important objections against measurement of similarity and to reconsider the logical form of the sentences involving comparative similarity."

82. Haller, Rudolf. 1966. "Meinongs Gegenstandstheorie und Ontologie." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 4:313-324.

Reprinted in: Rudolf Haller (ed.), Studien zur österreichischen Philosophie. Vol. I. Amsterdam: Rodopi 1979 pp. 49-65.

83. ———, ed. 1972. Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein. Beiträge zur Meinong-Forschung. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

Akten der Kolloquium in Graz, 30 september 4 oktober 1970.

Inhalt: Rudolf Haller: Vorwort 5; Gilbert Ryle: Intentionality-Theory and the Nature of Thinking 7; John N. Findlay: Einige Hauptpunkte in Meinongs philosophischer Psychologie 15; Roderick M. Chisholm: Beyond Being and Nonbeing 25; Karel Lambert: Being and Being So 37; Konrad Marc-Wogau: Die Ontologie Axel Hägerströms 47; Guido Küng: Noema und Gegenstand 55; Karl Wolf: Der Bedeutungswandel von "Gegenstand" in der Schule Meinongs 63; Edgar Morscher: Von Bolzano zu Meinong: Zur Geschichte des logischen Realismus 69; Hans Schermann: Husserls II. logische Untersuchung und Meinongs Hume-Studien I 103; David Lindenfeld: Meinong, The Würzburg School, and the Role of Experience in Thinking — a Historical-Critical Approach 117; Paul Weingartner: Die Fraglichkeit der Extensionalitätsthese und die Probleme einer intensionalen Logik 127; James Heanue: The Replacement of Depentdent Clauses by Infinitive Expressions 179; Hans Poser: Der Möglichkeitsbegriff Meinongs 187; Jaakko Hintikka: Knowledge by Acquaintance — Individuation by Acquaintance 205; Rudolf Haller: Über Annahmen 223; George C. Kerner: Urteil und Gefühl; Glaube und Absicht 229; Gernot Reibenschuh: Über den Begriff des Wertes bei Meinong 245; Roderick M. Chisholm: Objectives and Intrinsic Value 261; Gerhard Zecha: Meinongs moralische Wertklassen und die deontischen Operatoren 271; Christiane Weinberger-Gailhofer: Pflichtenkonflikt und normenlogischer Widerspruch 287; Ota Weinberger: Ideen zur logischen Normensemantik 295; Teilnehmerliste 313.

84. ———. 1972. "Über Annahmen." In Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, edited by Haller, Rudolf, 223-228. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

85. ———. 1973. "Über Meinong." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 104-105:148-160.

86. ———. 1986. Facta und Ficta. Stuttgart: Reclam.

87. ———. 1989. "Incompleteness and fictionality in Meinong's objects theory." Topoi no. 8:63-70.

"In Meinong's object theory the object is by its nature indifferent to being. Incomplete objects are distinguished from complete = existing objects which are objects completely determined, That is, Objects to which one of all possible predicates is predicable. To grasp complete objects we are relying on incomplete ones, Which are objects not determined in every respect. Functional objects are a subclass of incomplete objects, In some cases related -- But never identical -- ith existing (complete) objects."

88. ———. 1995. "From Archives to Edition." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:207-220.

89. ———. 1995. "Über Meinongs Wissenschaftstheorie." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:491-505.

90. ———. 1996. "Psychologische Grundlagen der Gegenstandstheorie Meinongs." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 6:31-41.

91. Heanue, James. 1972. "The replacement of dependent clauses by infinitive expressions." In Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, edited by Haller, Rudolf, 179-186. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

92. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1972. "Knowledge by acquaintance - Individuation by acquaintance." In Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, edited by Haller, Rudolf, 205-222. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

93. ———. 1995. "Meinong in a Long Perspective." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:29-45.

"Meinong’s thought is considered in relation to several major conceptual problems, including the Frege-Russell thesis that words like is are multiply ambiguos and Aristotle’s treatment of existence. This treatment leads to a problem of how to interpret quantifiers. The three main possible interpretations are: (i) quantifiers as ranging over actual individuals (or individuals existing in some one world); (ii) quantifiers as ranging over a set of possible individuals; (iii) quantifiers merely as a way of specifying the interdependencies of the concepts (forms) specified by syllogistic terms. The subsequent history of philosophers' and logicians,' treatments of existence is characterized by a tension between (i)-(iii). Meinong’s position is in the main (iii) whereas Russell in his On Denoting defended (i). The contrast between (i) and (iii) has a counterpart in nineteenth-century discussions about foundations of mathematics."

94. Hochberg, Herbert. 1995. "Abstracts, Functions, Existence and Relations in the Russell-Meinong Dispute, the Bradley Paradox and the Realism-Nominalism Controversy." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:273-291.

"The paper begins by considering Russell's criticism of Meinong's theory of objects and Sosein that center on the notions of negation and existence. The discussion raises issues about functions, properties, predication, the "concept" of existence and relations.

These lead to a consideration of recent revivals of moderate nominalism in the form of trope theories. An argument against such theories suggests a fundamental principle of ontology and a reformulation of the nominalism-realism dispute."

95. ———. 2005. "Being and Nothingness, Nichtsein and Aussersein, Facts and Negation: Meinongian reflections in Sartre and Russell." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 1:199-232.

"The paper explores connections among and problems related to (1) Sartre's notions of Being and Nothingness, (2) Meinong's concerns with non-being, Aussersein, objectives and negation, (3) Russell's diverse views of negative facts, and (4) the respective rejections (and sometimes purported refutations) of idealism stemming from considerations of the act-object distinction and the focus on "intentionality" that characterized the Brentanist turn in philosophy.

Alternative ontological analyses of negation and their connections to the "relations" of diversity and identity are also considered, along with Sartre's attempt to place consciousness outside of any causal framework and to found an "ethic of existentialism" on his accounts of consciousness, being and negation."

96. Hodges, Michael. 1971. "On "Being about"." Mind no. 80:1-16.

"Interest in the concept 'about' has often centered around Meinong's argument: I.) the golden mountain does not exist. II.) sentence (1) is about the golden mountain. III.) if sentence (1) is a sentence about a golden mountain, then there is golden mountain which it is about. IV.) there is a golden mountain. This argument, Which is formally valid, depends on two assumptions: 1) that it is generally correct to say, if a sentence has "x" as its grammatical subject then it is about 'x'; 2) that to say that a sentence is about something is to say the sentence stands in some relation to some object. Most attacks on Meinong's argument deal with the first of these assumptions while I argue that in the relevant sense the second assumption is false. Goodman has developed formal definitions of two senses of "about" which would forestall the argument a step IIIand I show that his definitions are inadequate. Having shown that (2) above is false I examine a number of attacks on Meinong's argument including those of Ryle, Linsky, Strawson and Cartwright. Each of these attacks in the transition from (i) to (ii) above and in so doing runs counter to our intuitions concerning the concept of 'being about'."

97. Höfer, Ulf. 2009. "Defekte Gegenstände und andere Aspekte der Ontologie Meinongs." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 3:241-267.

98. Hunter, Daniel. 1981. "Reference and Meinongian Objects." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 14:23-36.

"Terence Parsons has recently given a consistent formalization of Meinong's theory of objects. The interest in this theory lies in its postulation of nonexistent objects. An important implication of the theory is that we commonly refer to nonexistent objects. In particular, The theory is committed to taking fictional entities as objects of reference. Yet it is difficult to see how reference to fictional entities can be established if Parsons' theory is correct.

This difficulty diminishes the attractiveness of the theory and also raises questions as to the ability of the theory to give a satisfactory account of intentional attitudes towards fictional entities."

99. Ierna, Carlo. 2009. "Relations in the early works of Meinong and Husserl." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 3:7-36.

100. Jacques, Francis. 1973. "Référence et description chez Meinong. De la phénoménologie à l'analyse." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 104-105:266-287.

101. Jacquette, Dale. 1982. "Meinong's Theory of Defective Objects." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 15:1-19.

"In his difficult work On Emotional Presentation, Meinong introduces the concept of defective objects. These are meant to provide part of the solution to Mally's paradox about self-referential thought. But the discussion of defective objects is ambiguous in ways which give rise to a dilemma.

It is not clear whether defective objects are supposed to be a special kind of intentional object on Meinong's theory, or whether they are not really supposed to be intentional objects at all. If defective objects are a special kind of intentional object, then it is possible to put forward a strengthened version of Mally's paradox which cannot be solved by the theory of defective objects. The strengthened paradox represents a counter-example to the intentionality thesis, according to which every psychological experience is directed toward an object of intention. But if defective 'objects' are not really intentional objects at all, then psychological experiences which have defective objects will themselves constitute counter-examples to the intentionality thesis. In either case, the thesis cannot be consistently maintained." (p. 1)

102. ———. 1985/86. "Meinong's Doctrine of the Modal Moment." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:423-438.

"Meinong's doctrine of the modal moment and the watering-down of extranuclear properties to surrogate nuclear counterparts was offered in response to Russell's problem of the existent round square. To avoid an infinite regress of successively watered-down factualities, Meinong stipulates that the modal moment itself cannot be watered-down. This limits free assumption, since it means that the idea of the existent-cum-modal-moment round square cannot be entertained in thought. It is possible to eliminate the modal moment and watering-down from Meinongian semantics in favor of a strict enforcement of the distinction between nuclear and extranuclear properties. This provides a simpler, more economical Meinongian object theory, and regains unrestricted free assumption."

103. ———. 1989. "Mally's Heresy and the Logic of Meinong's Object Theory." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 10:1-14.

"The consistent formalization of Meinong's object theory in recent mathematical logic requires either plural modes of predication, Or distinct categories of nuclear or constitutive and extranuclear or nonconstitutive properties. The plural modes of predication approach is rejected because it is reducible to the nuclear-extranuclear property distinction, But not conversely, And because the nuclear-extranuclear property distinction offers a more satisfactory solution to object theory paradoxes."

104. ———. 1989. "Modal Meinongian Logic." Logique et Analyse no. 125-126:110-130.

"A formalization of four distinct quantificational modal Mcinongian logics is given, with nonstandard model set theoretical semantics. The derivation of Barcan and converse Barcan theorems prompts revision of two systems of modal Meinongian logic to restore congruence of semantic and inferential structures of Mcinongian systems with identical uniform domain distributions of existent and nonexistent objects. The problem of transworld identity of incomplete and impossible objects is examined, and world-indexing of nuclear properties is recommended as a solution."

105. ———. 1990. "The origins of Gegenstandstheorie. Immanent and transcendent intentional objects in Brentano, Twardowski and Meinong." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 3:177-202.

106. ———. 1992. "Meinongian models of scientific law." In Theories of Objects: Meinong and Twardowski, edited by Pasniczek, Jacek, 86-104. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Slodowskiej.

107. ———. 1994. "A Meinongian Theory of Definite Description." Axiomathes:345-360.

108. ———. 1994. "Meinongian logic and Anselm's ontological proof for the existence of God." Philosophical Forum no. 25:231-240.

"The key assumption of Anselm-inspired ontological proofs for the existence of God, that existence is part of God's essence or greatness, is submitted to a Meinongian criticism. Meinong's distinction between nuclear and extranuclear properties disallows existence to be included as a constitutive property of any existent or nonexistent object. The unsolved problem of evil suggests instead that to be omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly benevolent, and the author of an actual world in which there is natural evil, is tantamount to being a round square, Meinongian logic implies that even if God exists, an existent God could not possibly be greater or more perfect than an impossible necessarily nonexistent Meinongian object God."

109. ———. 1994. "Tarski's quantificational semantics and Meinongian object theory domains." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly no. 75:88-107.

110. ———. 1995. "Meinong's Concept of Implexive Being and Nonbeing." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:233-271.

"Meinong introduces the concept of implexive being and nonbeing to explain the metaphysics of universals and as a contribution to the theory of reference and perception. Meinong accounts for Aristotle's doctrine of the inherence of secondary substances in primary substances in object theory terms as the implection of incomplete universals in complete existent or subsistent objects. The derivative notion of implexive so-being is developed by Meinong to advance an intuitive modal semantics that admits degrees of possibility. A set theoretical interpretation of Meinong's mereological concept of the implection of incomplete beingless objects in existent or subsistent complete objects is proposed. The implications of Meinong's concept of implection are exploited to answer extensionalist objections about "Meinong's jungle," defending the ontic economy of an extraontological neo-Meinongian semantic domain that supports individual reference and true predication of constitutive properties to beingless objects."

111. ———. 1995. "Object theory foundations for intensional logic." Acta Analytica no. 13:33-63.

"The logic of existent and nonexistent objects provides a formal theory of reference and true predication for ordinary discourse, the semantics of ontological commitment, and logic of fiction. The intensional logic proposed in what follows offers a rigorous object theory semantics with nonstandard propositional and predicate inference machinery. The system is distinguished from previous formalizations of object theory by formal criteria for nuclear (constitutive) and extranuclear (nonconstitutive) properties, three-valued propositional semantics for predications of nuclear properties to incomplete nonexistent objects for which the objects ostensibly are undetermined, nonstandard set theory semantics with unrestricted comprehension for object theory predicate semantics (licensed by existence restrictions on abstraction equivalence), demonstrations of internal determinacy, consistency, and Henkin completeness, nonstandard deduction theorem, and consistency considerations in light of free assumption and unrestricted comprehension."

112. ———. 1996. Meinongian Logic: The Semantic of Existence and Nonexistence. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Contents: Preface IX; Introduction 1;

Part One: Meinong's theory of Objects.

I. Elements of Object theory 7; II. Formal semantic paradox in Meinong's Object theory 12; III. Meinong's theory of Defective Objects 37; IV. The Object theory intentionality of ontological committment 56; V. Logic, mind and Meinong 70; VI. Meinong's doctrine of the modal moment 80;

Parto Two: Object theory O.

I. Syntax, formation and inference principles 95; II. Semantics 101; III. Developments of the logic 114;

Part Three: Philosophical problems and applications.

I. Twardowski on Content and Object 193; II: Private language and private mental objects 200; III. God an impossible Meinongian Object 230; IV. Meinongian models of scientific law 238; V. Aesthetics and Meinongian Logic of Fiction 256; VI. The Paradox of Analysis 265;

Bibliography 269; Index 285.

113. ———. 1996. "On defoliating Meinong's jungle." Axiomathes:17-42.

114. ———. 1996. "Alexius Meinong (1853-1920)." In The School of Franz Brentano, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Libardi, Massimo and Poli, Roberto, 131-159. Dordrecht: Kuwer.

115. ———. 2000. "Confessions of a Meinongian Logician." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 58/59:151-180.

"In a chapter of- so to speak - an intellectual autobiography I sketch the reasons and ways I became a practitioning Meinongian logician.

The way is a chain of transgressions, e.g., the transgression of extensionalism or of the law of excluded middle, and a struggle against widespread misinterpretations of Meinong’s Gegenstandstheorie. Although the opposition towards Meinong’s theory of objects persists in analytic philosophy, its main insights - that thought is intentional and that logic must be ontologically neutral - haven’t lost their attraction. Moreover: there is no substantive criticism to show that we cannot refer and truely predicate properties of intended objects regardless of their ontic status."

116. ———. 2001. "Aussersein of the pure object." In The School of Alexius Meinong, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Jacquette, Dale and Poli, Roberto, 373-396. Aldershot: Ashgate.

117. ———. 2001. "Nuclear and extranuclear properties." In The School of Alexius Meinong, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Jacquette, Dale and Poli, Roberto, 397-426. Aldershot: Ashgate.

118. ———. 2003. "Meinong on the phenomenology of assumption." Studia Phaenomenologica.Romanian Journal of Phenomenology no. 3:155-177.

"This essay offers a detailed critical exposition of Alexius Meinong's theory of free assumption in its relation to inner perception in his book, On Assumptions. I argue that the concept of free assumption is key to understanding the basic principles of Meinong's bject theory, and his extra-ontology of nonexistent objects, including the golden mountain and round square. I situate Meinong's object theory in the context of Brentano's descriptive psychology, and consider the phenomenological foundations of the Meinongian domain.

Meinong's theory of assumption introduces a fourth category of assumptions to supplement Brentano's tripartite division between presentations, judgments, and emotions, on the grounds that assumptions are phenomenologically distinct from and in some sense stronger than presentations, and also distinct from and in some sense weaker than judgments."

119. ———. 2009. "Logic for Meinongian Object Theory Semantics." In Logic from Russell to Church. Vol. 5 of Handbook of the History of Logic, edited by Dov, Gabbay and Woods, John, 29-76. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

120. ———. 2015. "Domain Comprehension in Meinongian Object Theory." In Objects and Pseudo-Objects: Ontological Deserts and Jungles From Brentano to Carnap, edited by Seron, Denis, Richard, Sebastien and Leclercq, Bruno, 101-121. Berlin: de Gruyter.

121. Jacqutte, Dale. 2016. "Anti-Meinongian Actualist Meaning of Fiction in Kripke’s 1973 John Locke Lectures." Meinong Studies no. 6:59-98.

122. Jadacki, Jacek Juliusz. 1996. "Alexius Meinong and Polish Philosophy." Axiomathes:

241-266.

123. Jorgensen, Andrew Kenneth. 2002. "Meinong's much maligned modal moment." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 64:95-118.

"Russell's objections to object-theory have been refuted by the proofs of the consistency of Meinong's system given by various writers. These proofs exploit technical distinctions that Meinong apparently uses very little if at all. Instead, Meinong introduces a theoretical postulate called the modal moment. I describe this postulate and its place in Meinong's system, and I argue that it has been much under-rated by Meinong's logician expositors."

124. ———. 2004. "Types of Negation in Logical Reconstructions of Meinong." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 67:21-36.

"Russell's criticisms force Meinong to adopt a distinction between two types of negation. Logical expositions of Meinong's theory show the distinction is easily drawn in formal terms, but that alone does not justify the distinction intuitively. I criticise Routley's treatment of the distinction and argue that only Terence Parsons' theory retains and preserves the tight network of conceptual connections between the notions of negation, contradiction and impossibility. Hence, Parsons' approach best expresses the Meinongian perspective."

125. Kerner, George C. 1972. "Urteil und Gefühl; Glaube und Absicht." In Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, edited by Haller, Rudolf, 229-244. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

126. Koehn, Glen R. 1996. Fictional Objects (Terence Parsons, Richard Routley, Edward Zalta, Alexius Meinong), University of Waterloo.

Available at ProQuest Dissertation Express: reference number NN09353.

127. Kroon, Frederick W. 1992. "Was Meinong Only Pretending?" Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 52:499-527.

"In this paper I argue against the usual interpretation of Meinong's argument for nonexistent objects, an interpretation according to which Meinong imported nonexistent objects like "the golden mountain" to account directly for the truth of statements like the golden mountain is golden'. I claim instead (using evidence from Meinong's "On Assumptions") that his argument really involves an ineliminable appeal to the notion of pretense. This appeal nearly convinced Meinong at one stage that he could do without nonexistent objects. The reason, I argue, why he nonetheless embraced an ontology of nonexistents has to do with the phenomenology of representation, and not with semantics."

128. ———. 2006. "Russell's Descriptions and Meinong's Assumptions." In Modes of Existence. Papers in Ontology and Philosophical Logic, edited by Bottani, Andrea and Davies, Richard, 81-104. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

"The paper is structured as follows. In the next section, I describe a problem for Russell's account of the logical form of negative existentials involving descriptions, and suggest a Russellian solution. This solution is one that no one will care to adopt -- it seems to turn negative existentials into self-contradictions -- but I later argue that, properly interpreted, it constitutes a promising way of reconciling some of Meinong's views about negative existentials with the kind of "robust sense of reality" that informed Russell's own analysis. In section 3 I begin the task of articulating this reading of Meinong by describing Meinong's Assumption View as articulated in the second edition of his On Assumptions (Meinong 1910). Because this view presupposes Meinong's infamous commitment to non-existent objects, it would still offend Russell's "robust sense of reality", and so section 4 considers a weakened version of the view, one that retains the appeal to assumptions while giving up the appeal to non-existent objects. (Meinong defends a similar view in the 1902 edition of On Assumptions, which predates his discovery of non-existents.) Section 5 offers the finale: it shows how Meinong had himself tried to apply such a weakened Assumption View to the case of negative existentials, that Russell had known about the attempt (this arguably solves the first, hermeneutic puzzle), and that, properly interpreted, this way of understanding negative existentials provides Russell with a solution to the problem facing his theory of negative existentials." (pp. 82-83)

129. Küng, Guido. 1972. "Noema und Gegenständ." In Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, edited by Haller, Rudolf, 55-62. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

130. ———. 1984. "The intentional and the real object." Dialectica.International Journal of Philosophy of Knowledge no. 38:143-156.

"Starting from examples of genuine perception and naive hallucination, Different theories concerning the relation between the intentional and the real object are being discussed. It is shown that Meinong's theory is the most natural one, But it is argued against Meinong that the notion of "converse intentional property" should play a greater role."

131. Künne, Wolfgang. 1983. Abstrakte Gegenstände. Semantik und Ontologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

132. ———. 1995. "Some Varieties of Thinking. Reflections on Meinong and Fodor." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:365-395.

"The first half of the paper reflects on a couple of folk-psychological notions. "Belief" and "judgement" are selected for special attention.

They cover two varieties of thinking, a mental state and a mental act. Both lay claim to truth, and thereby stand in marked contrast to their nowadays sadly neglected non-committal counterparts. Meinong, of course, did not neglect them, and his notions of "Annehmen (merely entertaining a thought)" and "Denken (entertaining a thought)" play a decisive role in the paper. The Lingua Mentis Hypothesis is a bold contribution to cognitive subpersonal psychology. The second half of the paper tries to show that careful reflection on the conceptual resources of folk psychology makes certain arguments for this Hypothesis as well as certain philosophical arguments against it look rather feeble. The paper culminates in a discussion of Jerry Fodor's Systematicity Argument for the Language of Thought Hypothesis. In this discussion critical use is made of certain Meinongian insights."

133. Lambert, Karel. 1972. "Being and Being So." In Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, 37-46. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

134. ———. 1973. "I. The Theory of objects. A Review Discussion of J. N. Findaly's Meinong's Theory of Objects and Value." Inquiry.An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 16:221-244.

135. ———. 1974. "Impossible Objects." Inquiry.An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 17:303-314.

"This paper deals with the Meinong-Russell controversy on non-subsistent objects. The first part notes the similarity of certain contemporary semantical developments to Meinong's theory of non-subsistent objects.

Then it lays out the major features of Meinong's famous theory, considers Russell's objections to same and Meinong's counter-objections to Russell, and argues that Russell's well-known argument fails. However, It is possible to augment Russell's argument against Meinong with sound Russellian principles in such a way that it presents at least a strong inclining reason against Meinong's theory of impossible objects."

136. ———. 1976. "On "The durability of impossible objects"." Inquiry.An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 19:251-254.

This is a reply to Richard Routley's critique of my original essay, "Impossible objects."

137. ———. 1982. "A Logical Interpretation of Meinong's Principle of Independence." Topoi no. 1:87-96.

"Meinong's principle that being is independent from being so, Borrowed from his disciple Mally, is reconstructed as a claim that a certain traditional informal pattern is invalid. The place of the principle thus reconstructed in Meinong's world picture is outlined."

138. ———. 1983. Meinong and the Principle of Independence. Its Place in Meinong's Theory of Objects and Its Significance in Contemporary Philosophical Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

139. Landini, Gregory. 1986. Meinong Reconstructed versus Early Russell Reconstructed: A Study in the Formal Ontology of Fiction, Indiana University.

Available at ProQuest Dissertation Express: reference number 8617784.

140. Langlet, Bruno. 2020. Meinong et sa théorie des relations. Paris: Classiques Garneir.

Éléments pour un généalogie de la théorie de l'objet.

141. Lejewski, Ceslaw. 1985. "Logic and non-existence." Grazer Philosophische Studien:209-234.

142. Lenoci, Michele. 1970. "Bibliografia degli studi su Alexius Meinong." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 62:437-473.

143. ———. 1972. La teoria della conoscenza in Alexius Meinong. Oggetto, giudizio, assunzioni. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

144. ———. 1995. "Meinongs unvollständige Gegenstände und der Universalienproblem." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:203-215.

145. Libera, Alain de. 1997. "Subsistance et existence: Porphyre et Meinong." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 100:167-192.

"According to K. Perszyk, (*) Meinong's description of homeless objects is a novelty: it does not trace back to any traditional ontological assumption, neither avicennian nor scolastic. While discussing this claim, one focuses on two key-notions in ancient and medieval ontology: subsistence and existence, which seem to be akin to the meinongian bestehen, Sosein vs. Sein and existieren. In this respect, one comments on Porphyry's, Proclus', Abaelard's, Aquinas' and Bacon's theory of general objects, fictitious entities and non-existing particulars."

(*) K. Perszyk, Nonexistent Objects: Meinong and Contemporary Philosophy (Nijhoff International Philosophy Series, 49), Dordrecht-Boston-Londres, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993.

146. Lindenfeld, David. 1972. "Meinong, the Würzburg School, and the role of experience in thinking." In Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, edited by Haller, Rudolf, 117-126. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

147. ———. 1980. The Transformation of Positivism. Alexius Meinong and European Thought 1880-1920. Berkeley: University of California Press.

148. Linsky, Leonard. 1967. Referring. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Meinong 's Theory of Objects. A Selected Bibliography (Second Part: M - Z)

Bibliography

1. Mally, Ernst. 1912. Gegenstandstheoretische Grundlagen der Logik und Logistik. Leipzig: Barth.

2. ———. 1913. "Über den Begriff des Gegenständes in Meinong's Gegenstandstheorie." Jahrbuch der Philosophischen Gesellschaft an der Universität zu Wien.

3. ———. 1926. Grundgesetze des Sollens: Elemente der Logik des Willens. Graz: Leuschner & Lubensky.

Reprinted in: Logische Schriften. Grosses Logikfragment - Grundgesetze des Sollen, Dordrecht: Reidel 1971.

4. Marek, Johann Christian. 1995. "Zwei Gegenstände und ein Inhalt: Zur Intentionalität bei Meinong." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:341-364.

5. Mari, Laura. 2009. "Frege contra Meinong: a new possible outlook." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 3:37-72.

6. Marotta, Marina. 1997. "L'obiettivo di Meinong fra proposizione e stati di cose." Discipline Filosofiche no. 7:211-237.

7. ———. 2002. "Universali e particolari, concetti e intuizioni. Un capitolo della riflessione di Alexius Meinong." In Studi di storia del pensiero moderno (Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Meinong9, edited by Cubeddu, Italo and Raspa, Venanzio, 171-196. Urbino: Montefeltro.

8. ———. 2005. "Sprache, Wahrheit und Rechtfertigung. Alexius Meinong frühe Schaffensperioden zur Erkenntnislehere." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 1:63-94.

9. ———. 2007. La fondazione dell'oggettività. Studio su Alexius Meinong. Macerata: Quodlibet.

10. Martinelli, Riccardo. 2006. "Meinong and music. On musical objects of higher order." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 2:39-71.

"Music represents a crucial issue in nineteenth-century philosophy and science. Scholars generally possessed a good musical competence and contributed to the explanation of sound perception and aesthetic enjoyment in music. Reflexions on musical psychology, in turn, influenced general theories of mind, sometimes in an impressive way. Meinong plays a remarkable role within this context. Together with Mach, Ehrenfels and Stumpf, Meinong contributed to overtake Helmholtz' physical-physiological theory, supporting a more comprehensive approach. He was repeatedly concerned with problems such as tonal fusion, tone quality (Klangfarbe) and melodic perception. Although Meinong did not develop musical problems systematically, he assumed a quite original and interesting position. His ideas have been developed by some of his followers in the School of Graz."

11. Marty, Anton. 1906. "Über Annahmen." Zeitschrift für Psychologie no. 40:1-54.

12. Michaelis, Anne. 1942. "The conception of possibility in Meinong's "Gegenstandstheorie"." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 2:394-403.

13. Miscevic, Nenad. 2001. "L'à priori intuitionnel: Meinong contre Kant." In La philosophie autrichienne de Bolzano à Musil, edited by Cometti, Jean-Pierre and Mulligan, Kevin, 171-188. Paris: Vrin.

14. Modenato, Francesca. 1992. "Alexius Meinong: the theory of relation as a theory of knowledge." In Theories of Objects: Meinong and Twardowski, edited by Pasniczek, Jacek, 9-25. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Slodowskiej.

15. ———. 1994. "A. Meinong: fenomeno, noumeno e percezione esteriore." Axiomathes:361.

16. ———. 1995. "Meinong's Theory of Objects: An Attempt at Overcoming Psychologism." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:87-112.

"I intend to take into account Meinong's theory of objects from a point of view allowed by the author himself, when he agrees that the proper "place" for such a doctrine is the theory of knowledge. According to this suggestion, I think it convenient to explain the doctrine at issue in the light of the definition of knowing as a "double" act, in which the object known is "in front of" the knowing act itself as something comparatively autonomous. From this point of view a comparison with Husserl's "pure logic" - as Meinong again suggests - as well as a valuation of the part played by our philosopher in their common opposition to psychologism seem to be of interest.

Pure logic seems to answer in the most adequate way the demands that induce Meinong to elaborate a theory of pure objects: such objects are taken into consideration as to their positivity and possibility founded on equally pure operations of a subject. At the same time pure logic provides us with a clue to the ambiguity of Aussersein: as a matter of fact, Meinong, freeing himself from the prejudice in favor of what is actual, remains involved in what I would call a prejudice "in favor of what has being"; he thinks it necessary to resort to an assumption, that is to a simulation of being in order to explain our thinking of a non-being object. Furthermore according to him an assumpion is in general demanded in order to think of an object as to his so-being, that is of the outside-being object.

There are two orders of questions: the first one regards the "formal" generality of the fundamental gnosiological problems, leaving out of consideration every "matter" of knowledge, the second refers to the gnosiological-phenomenological foundation of the concepts and of the laws of pure logic. They are absolutely inseparable, and yet strictly distinct. The first order should be the right place for the Aussersein of pure objects."

17. ———. 1996. "A. Meinong: how to get into touch with things." Axiomathes:61-74.

18. ———. 1996. "Evidenza di certezza ed evidenza di supposizione: Memoria e percezione interiore in A. Meinong." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 6:233-2262.

19. ———. 1997. "Meinong and Husserl on objects and meaning of expressions." Axiomathes:143.

20. ———. 1999. "L'obiettivo e la fattualità secondo Meinong." Rivista di Storia della Filosofia no. 56:437-464.

21. ———. 2001. "Gli oggetti incompleti e il principio del terzo escluso secondo Meinong." Rivista di Storia della Filosofia no. 56:63-90.

22. ———. 2006. "Alexius Meinong on ontology and object theory." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 2:73-98.

23. ———. 2006. La conoscenza e l'oggetto in Alexius Meinong. Padova: Il Poligrafo.

24. Morscher, Edgar. 1972. "Von Bolzano zu Meinong: zur Geschichte des logischen Realismus." In, edited by Haller, Rudolf, 69-102. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

25. ———. 1973. "Meinongs Bedeutungslehre." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 104-105:178-206.

26. ———. 2004. "Die Geburt der Gegenstandstheorie aus einem Missverständnis?" In Phenomenology and analysis. Essays on Central European philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Huemer, Wolfgang, 89-104. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

27. Mulligan, Kevin. 2003. "Dispositions, their bases and correlates. Meinong analysis." In Philosophy and logic. In search of the Polish tradition.

Essays in Honour of Jan Wolenski on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday, edited by Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna, 193-212. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

28. ———. 2006. "Facts, formal objects and ontology." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 2:31-46.

29. Nef, Frédéric. 1998. L'objet quelconque. Recherches sur l'ontologie de l'objet. Paris: Vrin.

30. ———. 2001. "La théorie modale de Meinong." In La philosophie autrichienne de Bolzano à Musil, edited by Cometti, Jean-Pierre and Mulligan, Kevin, 81-100. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin.

31. Oliver, Alex. 1999. "A few remarks on logical form." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 99:247-272.

"Grammar (and the bad old traditional logic) says that quantifier phrases such as 'nobody', 'everyone', 'all women', 'some men' and 'a man' are in the same category as names such as 'Milly', 'Molly' and 'Mandy'. So, prior to their first corrective lessons, students are awfully muddled, the first and fundamental problem being the Woozle hunt for somebody called 'nobody'. Hoorah for modern logic and logic teachers!

The story used to justify our current logics is entirely fictional. The claims about names and quantifier phrases in English are wildly false. Two of the heroes of modern logic, Russell and Hilbert, make the very mistakes which are falsely blamed on traditional logic. The villain, Meinong, turns out to have been working a different patch. Ideas ascribed to traditional grammar are modern inventions. Neither logicians nor grammarians can be trusted to tell the history of either grammar or logic."

32. Orilia, Francesco. 1984. Il dibattito Meinong-Russell e l'influenza di Meinong sulla filosofia analititca contemporanea. Palermo: Mazzone.

33. ———. 1991. "Type-Free Property Theory, Bradley's Regress and Meinong and Russell Reconciled." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 39:103-125.

34. ———. 2006. "States of affairs: Bradley vs. Meinong." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 2:213-238.

35. Paoletti, Michele Paolini. 2016. "Paradise on the Cheap. Ascriptivism about Ficta." Meinong Studies no. 6:99-140.

36. Parsons, Terence. 1974. "A Prolegomenon to Meinongian Semantics." Journal of Philosophy no. 71:561-580.

"Meinong's philosophy is at present mostly unknown; where it is known it is mostly regarded as unacceptable. This is partly due to its obscurity, and partly to the apparently devastating criticisms directed at it by Bertrand Russell in 1905. In the present paper I attempt to provide a reconstruction of some of Meinong's philosophy which is simultaneously clear, faithful to the original, and immune from Russell's criticisms. Sections 1, 2 and 4 concentrate on his theory of objects; section 3 sketches how to relate such objects to a canonical symbolism."

37. ———. 1975. "A Meinongian analysis of fictional objects." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 1:73-76.

"Meinong is best known as the loser of the Russell-Meinong debate of 1905. Russell had the last word then, and (unfortunately) most of us know only his version of Meinong's views.' But there is more to be said on Meinong's side. In an earlier paper I tried to develop a version of Meinong's ontology which is clear, consistent, and immune to Russell's attacks. Most importantly, that theory preserves - rather than analyses away - Meinong's radical and exciting ontological views: that there are non-existent objects; that there are impossible objects; etc.

So what? We want more of a theory than clarity and consistency; we also want reason to believe that it's true. How might we offer evidence in favor of such a theory? I think that the only evidence that we ever have in favor of a general metaphysical theory is that it has many interesting applications. The Meinongian theory agrees with more orthodox theories in its treatment of existing objects, so any evidence in its favor will consist of applications to issues concerning non-existent objects. The present paper contains one of these; it's an application of the Meinongian theory to an analysis of fictional objects.

By "fictional" I do not mean "non-existent", but rather "occurring in fiction". Many fictional objects are indeed non-existent, and it is their non-existence that in some sense causes all the problems, but fictional works also abound in reference to real objects, and this fact must be taken into account.

I will begin by giving an exposition of the Meinongian ontology." p. 73

38. ———. 1978. "Nuclear and Extranuclear Properties, Meinong and Leibniz." Noûs no. 12:137-151.

"In A Prolegomenon to Meinongian Semantics (1974) and in A Meinongian analysis of fictional objects (1975) I attempted to develop a theory of objects for a Meinongian ontology. That theory presupposed an account of two sorts of properties, called "nuclear" and "extranuclear" properties. This paper is an attempt to provide such an account. The theory developed here is a rich and parochial one, based on the notion of "possible world." In the last section I will show how, relative to this account of properties, Leibniz's ontology of monads (on one construal, anyway) corresponds to a fragment of Meinong's ontology of objects.

Since most of this paper utilizes the controversial notion of a "possible world," the Editor has requested that I include a defense of this line of approach. Is it really useful to base a theory of properties on such a notion?

I don't believe that this question can be answered with any degree of certainty by anyone right now. In my view, "possible worlds" are theoretical entities, and as such they are as useful or useless as the theories within which they appear. At present, theories using possible worlds are both varied and controversial. Some have a long tradition; for example, probability theory, where possible worlds typically appear under the title "possible cases". More recently they have been used in theories dealing with necessity, possibility, essence, belief, knowledge, proposition, intension, freedom, etc. This is a fruitful tradition, and I don't believe that we know at present whether it will last, or whether it is a blind alley which will eventually be seen as an historical aberation. But even in the latter case there is hope for theories based on possible worlds. For even when scientific or philosophical progress leads to the abandonment of an earlier tradition, many of the "results" of that earlier tradition tend to be preserved in some new guise. So in spite of the controversial nature of possible worlds, I think we have learned enough of lasting value from their employment to justify not terminating their tradition yet."

39. ———. 1979. "The methodology of nonexistence." Journal of Philosophy no. 76:649-662.

"There is apparent evidence that some objects do not exist; i. e., that there are objects that do not exist. "Naive object theory" (sometimes attributed to Meinong) takes this evidence at face value, but leads to contradiction. Several ideas about how to develop a more sophisticated account have been proposed, but not worked out in detail. The paper discusses some issues that will be encountered by any theory of nonexistent objects, using the theory of my forthcoming book, Nonexistent objects, as an example."

40. ———. 1980. Nonexistent Objects. New Haven/London: Yale University Press.

41. ———. 1982. "Are there nonexistent objects?" American Philosophical Quarterly no. 19:365-371.

42. ———. 1995. "Meinongian Semantics Generalized." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:145-161.

"It is tempting to think that Meinong overlooked the "specific/nonspecific" distinction. For example, "I am looking for a grey horse" may either mean that there is a specific horse I am looking for (e.g., one I lost), or just that I am grey-horse-seeking.

The former reading, and not the latter, requires for its truth that there be a grey horse. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether it is defensible to maintain Meinong's theory here: to take nonspecific reading of any verb concerning a possibly nonexistent but incomplete object. This requires essential appeal to the distinction between nuclear and extranuclear properties. Included is a discussion of criticisms of Meinong's own theory and of the Medieval theory of ampliation, according to which psychological discourse can "ampliate" a term such as 'chimera' so as to stand for one or more things that cannot exist, yet are chimeras. The paper concludes inconclusively."

43. Pasniczek, Jacek, ed. 1992. Theories of Objects: Meinong and Twardowski. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Slodowskiej.

Contents: Jacek Pasniczek: Preface 7; Francesca Modenato: Alexius Meinong: the theory of relation as a theory of knowledge 9; Liliana Albertazzi: Is there a transcendental object? 26; Roberto Poli: Twardowski and Wolff 45; Jacek Juliusz Jadacki: The metaphysical basis of Kazimierz Twardowski's descriptive semiotics 57; Jan Wolenski: 'Being' as a syncategorematic word: a completion (?) of Twardowski's analysis of 'nothing' 75; Dale Jacquette: Meinongian models of scientific law 86; Jacek Pasniczek: The Meinongian logic vs. the Classical logic 105-112.

This volume contains a selection of papers from the conference "The Theory of Objects in Central Europe. The Austrian-Polish Connection: Meinong and Twardowski" held in December 1989 in Kraków. It was supported and sponsored by the Jagiellonian University, Centro Studi per la Filosofia Mitteleuropea, The National Research Project "Sign-Language-Reality", and The Institute of Austrian Culture in Warsaw. The conference was organized by Prof. Jan Wolenski with dr. Georg Jankovic's generous assistance.

Alexius Meinong and Kazimierz Twardowski studied philosophy at the University of Vienna at the end of XIX century. Both were under a great influence of Franz Brentano, who is considered the father of contemporary theory of intentionality. He viewed intentionality as the crucial feature of consciousness consisting in „directness to an object". Such conception should presuppose some general theory of objects of consciousness. Meinong and Twardowski adopted Brentano's idea of intentionality subsequently elaborating their own ontologies of objects. What is common in the views of the two philosophers, barring many differences, is that they assume an extensive sphere of non-existent objects that can be possibly objects of intentional acts.

Nowadays there is a growing interest in theories of intentionality and intentional objects on the part of analytic philosophy as well as phenomenology. That is why there is also a renaissance of Meinong's and Twardowski's philosophical thought, although the former philosopher is much better known, more popular, and, what follows, more inspiring. The main purpose of the conference that took place in Kraków was to investigate, from various historical and theoretical perspectives, theories of objects created by the two of Brentano's followers. It is to be regretted that the present volume does not fill a serious gap in philosophical literature: no paper is devoted to direct comparison of Meinong and Twardowski. Nevertheless we hope that the papers collected in the volume may contribute to better understanding of the two philosophers and prepare the ground for such a comparative study.

F. Modenato, in her essay, traces the development of Meinong's idea of relations while linking his views with the views of Hume and Locke. She is concentrating on epistemological relevance of the idea. Relations are treated by Meinong as some complexities and both relations and complexities are higher-order objects. Higher-order objects play the central role in Meinong's theory of knowledge and are of great importance to his ontology.

L. Albertazzi points to some Kantian motives in Twardowski's ontology. The Polish philosopher distinguishes several categories of objects which, according to Albertazzi's interpretation, correspond closely to that distinguished by Kant. In particular, 'the object in general' may be taken as Kant's transcendental object, and 'the general object' as a universal presented individually in the subject of proposition.

R. Poli argues in his paper that many elements of Wolff's ontology can be found in Twardowski's theory of objects. Both philosophers conceive objects as possible wholes. For Twardowski, being an object is ontologically prior to having existence and it is enough for being an object to be representable in an act of presentation.

J.J. Jadacki presents a comprehensive survey of Twardowski's ontological (metaphysical) and epistemological views. On this basis he reconstructs the philosopher's descriptive semiotics focusing his attention on the theory of judgment.

Additionally, Jadacki carries out a formal semantic analysis of Twardowski's semiotics.

J. Wolenski considers the main traditional views of 'being' and wonders if 'being' could be situated somewhere in the formal hierarchy of concepts. He comes to the conclusion that "being" expresses no concept at all and, what follows, it has the syncategorematic character as Twardowski claimed. Wolenski proposes a completion of Twardowski's claim by appealing to modern logic and Lesniewski's ontology.

D. Jacquette sketches informally the principles of Meinongian semantics and shows how the semantics can be applied in formalisation of scientific laws. By contrast to extensionalist models of scientific discourse which admit only existent objects, in Meinongian semantics the reference to ideal and non-existent objects is possible. Many problems of contemporary philosophy of science such as, for example, the justification of induction and confirmation can be uniformely treated and solved on the ground of Meinong's theory.

J. Pasniczek proposes quite a simple logic which obeys the main theses of Meinong's theory of objects. This logic resembles closely the classical predicate logic with respect to syntax and semantics (it is basically extensional). Despite that resemblance, the proposed logic is associated with very rich ontology of objects including various kinds of non-existent objects.

I am deeply indebted to Prof. Jan Wolenski for encouragement and assistance in editing this book." (Preface, pp-7-8)

44. ———. 1992. "The Meinongian logic vs. the Classical logic." In Theories of Objects: Meinong and Twardowski, edited by Pasniczek, Jacek, 105-112. Lublin: Wydawnictvo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Sklodoskiej.

45. ———. 1993. "The Simplest Meinongian Logic." Logique et Analyse no. 143-144:329-342.

"The Meinongian logic is a logic which accommodates main principles of Meinong's theory of objects. This principles give rise to a very extensive ontology which contains various kind of nonexistent entities (e.g., incomplete and impossible ones). In the paper quite a simple Meinongian logic is developed. This logic has the following features: 1) it is extensional, 2) it differs slightly from the classical first-order logic, 3) it is a first-order system, 4) it is closer to the natural language than classical logic, 5) it is much more simple than Meinongian systems created by T. Parsons and E. Zalta."

46. ———. 1994. "Ways of reference to Meinongian objects. Ontological commitment of Meinongian theories." Logic and Logical Philosophy no. 2:69-86.

47. ———. 1995. "Are Contradictions Still Lurking in Meinongian Theories of Objects?" Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:293-303.

"Contemporary formalizations of Meinong's theory of objects prove that Russell's accusation of inconsistency of the theory is not valid.

However, in the same formalizations there has appeared a new source of potential inconsistency. Theories of objects inspired by Meinong's ontology usually include, in addition to basic principles of the ontology, abstraction-axioms for defining objects and properties (relations). Although these axioms seem to be perfectly acceptable, they lead to paradoxes when adopted without any restrictions. These paradoxes may be understood as paradoxes of size (not of self-referentiality): too many objects or too many properties are defined by the axioms. We can avoid them at the cost of counterintuitive stipulations, some of them similar to those applied in set theory or in higher-order logics (like a stratification of formulas). We need, however, to look for phenomenologically well-grounded protections against paradoxes. This search can deepen our understanding of the nature of Meinongian objects."

48. ———. 1996. "Meinong's Ontology vs. Lesniewski's Ontology (Toward a Meinongian Calculus of Names)." Axiomathes:279.

49. ———. 1997. The Logic of Intentional Objects: A Meinongian Version of Classical Logic. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

50. ———. 2001. "The Meinongian logic of fiction." In The School of Alexius Meinong, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Jacquette, Dale and Poli, Roberto, 457-476. Aldershot: Ashgate.

51. Pelletier, Francis Jeffry, and Zalta, Edward. 2000. "How to say goodbye to the Third Man." Noûs no. 34:165-202.

52. Perszyk, Kenneth J. 1989. "What's wrong with impossible objects?" Philosophical Papers no. 18:241-251.

"Meinongians claim that in addition to objects which exist (at some time), there are possible and impossible objects. With the developments of various versions of possible-worlds semantics and modal logics, one might say that hostility to possible objects has abated somewhat, though Meinongian claims that they do not exist or have being in any sense and that some of them are concrete individuals or particulars are highly contentious. Hostility to impossible objects, on the other hand, remains undiminished, if it has not intensified."

53. ———. 1993. Nonexistent Objects. Meinong and Contemporary Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Contents: Preface XI-XIX; 1. Introductory Considerations 1; 2. Meinong's Theoy of Objects 39; 3. The Nature of Meinong's Objects: Existent and Nonexistent 92; 4. Two Main Arguments for Nonexistents 151; 5. Main Arguments Against Nonexistents 224; Bibliography 286-303.

54. Pichler, Hans. 1910. Über Christian Wolffs Ontologie. Leipzig: Dürr.

The first contribution to the history of the theory of objects.

55. Poli, Roberto. 1996. "Object and measurement in Mally's Untersuchungen." Axiomathes:173-186.

56. ———. 2005. "General theses of the theory of objects." In The School of Alexius Meinong, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Jacquette, Dale and Poli, Roberto, 347-372. Aldershot: Ashgate.

57. Poser, Hans. 1972. "Der Möglichkeitsbegriff Meinongs." In Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, edited by Haller, Rudolf, 187-204. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

58. Potrc, Matjaz, and Strahovnik, Vojko. 2005. "Meinongian scorekeeping." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 1:309-330.

"Some commitments at the interface of semantics and ontology, such as numbers, symphonies, incomplete objects, values, oughts or possibilities tend to appear problematic. The scorekeeping approach to semantics introduces contextually shifting parameters that allow for construal of truth as indirect correspondence.

Meinong did recognize diversity and richness that is made possible by the non-reductionist engagement of the scorekeeping approach. Because of his commitment to the deep presupposition of direct correspondence construal of truth though, Meinong had to interpret richness of normative discursive scorekeeping commitments as richness of ontological strata, features and engagements.

Once as Meinong's theory is adapted to the construal of truth as indirect correspondence, many problems related to his objects dissolve, naturally placing his scorekeeping discovery into discursive normative setting. A translation of Meinongian objects into discursive scores confirms that his discovery aims at these indeed, which is obscured by his sticking to the construal of truth as direct correspondence."

59. Potrc, Matjaz, and Vospernik, Miklavz. 1996. "Meinong on psychophysical measurement." Axiomathes:187-202.

60. Pouivet, Roger. 1999. "Lukasiewicz: de l'aristotélisme autrichien à l'aristotélisme polonais." Philosophiques no. 26:263-277.

"En 1910, Jan Lukasiewicz publiait Du principe de contradiction chez Aristote (1). Dans cet article, on explique les points principaux du livre de Lukasiewicz. Ce dernier affirme qu'Aristote n'a pas réussi dans sa tentative pour justifier le principe de contradiction. En fait, ce principe est moins logique qu'éthique, selon Lukasiewicz, et cela explique bien des difficultés posées par la théorie d'Aristote. On discute également de la façon dont Lukasiewicz utilise la notion d'« objets contradictoires », empruntée à la Théorie des Objets de Meinong; on montre que Lukasiewicz se situe dans le cadre d'une version brentanienne de l'aristotélisme. Certaines connexions entre Lukasiewicz et la conception wittgensteinienne de la nécessité ou le conservatisme logique de Quine sont indiquées. Le but de mon article est essentiellement d'encourager une lecture attentive du livre qui n'a pas reçu l'attention qu'il mérite parce qu'il a été écrit à l'origine en polonais. Souvent, les philosophes croient connaître son contenu à travers le résumé que Lukasiewicz écrivit en allemand en 1910, et qui a été traduit en anglais. Mais, en fait, il y a bien des choses importantes dans le livre qui n'apparaissent nullement dans le résumé."

(1) Traduction française par Dorota Sikora: Paris, Editions de l'éclat, 2000, avec une préface de R. Pouivet.

61. Priest, Graham. 2003. "Meinongianism and the Philosophy of Mathematics." Philosophia Mathematica no. 11:3-15.

"If meinongianism isn't dead, nothing is', Gilbert Ryle is reputed to have said, in the heyday of Oxford Philosophy. (1) I think that Ryle was exactly right. No idea in philosophy is ever past its use-by date, at least, no idea of any substance. We may always come back and find new depths in it, new applications for it, new answers to objections that were taken to be decisive. Thus, for example, platonism has re-emerged many times in the history of Western philosophy, most recently in a perhaps unexpected place: in connection with technical results in the foundations of mathematics. Aristotelian virtue ethics has reappeared recently after a long period in which ethics has been dominated by kantianism and utilitarianism. And so the list goes on.

Of course, this is not how Ryle intended his words to be understood. What he meant was that meinongianism was dead for all time. It would perform no Lazarus-like return. For many years I shared Ryle's view. Educated about thirty years ago in Britain, I took it for granted that Russell had shown that meinongianism was little more than superstition (though one that he himself had subscribed to for quite a long time), and that Quine had shown that it was all just simple obfuscation. That which exists is that over which one can quantify; and that's that.

Thus it was that I was outraged when I met Richard Routley (Sylvan as he later became) in the mid-1970s, and found him stoutly defending a version of meinongianism. (Richard never defended a view in any other way!) I could not understand how the view could possibly be taken seriously. It was my good fortune not just to have met Richard, but to have been able to 4

talk with him about the matter over many years. He persuaded me that all the knock-down arguments that I thought I had were lame or just begged the question. He persuaded me that meinongianism is a very simple, natural, and common-sense view. He persuaded me that the theory has many applications to areas of philosophy where more orthodox views creak at the seams. I am still not sure whether or not I believe it.; but I certainly lean towards it in certain areas."

(1) I have not been able to track down the source of this quote; so it may just be hearsay. [Note added by Raul Corazzon: "Let us frankly concede from the start that Gegenstandstheorie itself is dead, buried and not going to be resurrected." Gilbert Ryle, Intentionality-Theory and the Nature of Thinking (1972) - p. 7]

62. Priest, Graham, and Read, Stephen. 2004. "Intentionality: Meinongianism and the medievals." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 82:421-442.

"Intentional verbs create three different problems: problems of nonexistence, of indeterminacy, and of failure of substitutivity.

Meinongians tackle the first problem by recognizing nonexistent objects; so too did many medieval logicians. Meinongians and the medievals approach the problem of indeterminacy differently, the former diagnosing an ellipsis for a propositional complement, the latter applying their theory directly to non-propositional complements.

The evidence seems to favor the Meinongian approach. Faced with the third problem, Ockham argued bluntly for substitutivity when the intentional complement is non-propositional; Buridan developed a novel way of resisting substitutivity. Ockham's approach is closer to the Meinongian analysis of these cases; Buridan's seems to raise difficulties for a referential semantics. The comparison between the Meinongian and medieval approaches helps to bring out merits and potential pitfalls of each."

63. Purtill, Richard. 1973. "Meinongian Deontic Logic." Philosophical Forum no. 4:585-592.

"In modal logic we can think of ourselves as dealing with four "truth values": 1) necessarily true, 2) factually true, 3) factually false, and 4) necessarily false. It turns out that it is not possible to regard modal logic merely as a four-valued logic; what we need in fact is an infinite number of values. But to a limited extend, a four-valued interpretation of modal logic is useful and suggestive. (1) This being so, it is tempting to look for a four-valued interpretation of deontic logic, which has so many parallels with modal logic. But what four values are we to take, and how are they to be related? In this paper I would like to develop a suggestion made by Meinong, and relate it to some modern problems, giving at least the beginnings of a "Meinongian" deontic logic."

(1) For a fuller discussion of these points, se my Four Valued Tables and Modal Logic, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic [11, 1970 pp. 505-511].

64. Rapaport, William J. 1976. Intentionality and the Structure of Existence, Indiana University, Bloomington.

Available at ProQuest Dissertation Express: reference number 7701930.

65. ———. 1978. "Meinongian Theories and a Russellian Paradox." Noûs no. 12:153-180.

"This essay presents a re-examination of Alexius Meinong's article Über Gegenstandstheorie (On the Theory of Objects) and undertakes a clarification and revision of it which, I hope, is both faithful to Meinong and capable of overcoming the various objections to his theory that have appeared in the literature. (1) I then turn to a discussion of a historically and technically interesting Russell-style paradox that arises in the modified theory. I also examine the alternative Meinong-inspired theories of Hector-Neri Castañeda and Terence Parsons, using the modified theory as a sharper tool for investigating their worth than that provided by unaided intuitions or less comprehensive, ad-hoc theory fragments.

As with all theories, many of my claims are not susceptible of proof but, rather, gain their plausibility and value from their ability to deal with data and to provide solutions to various problems. The two main problems which, I believe, a properly constructed Meinongian theory ought to be capable of handling are, first, a linguistic problem of long-standing philosophical concern: that of providing a foundation for a semantics of natural languages, and, second, the problem of intentionality and the analysis of the structure of psychological discourse. Even Quine, ordinarily no friend of intentional language, attests to the importance of the latter problem, considering such discourse to be "less clearly dispensable" than other modalities (Replies [to Follesdal] in: D. Davidson and J. Hintikka (eds.) - Words and objections - Dordrech, Reidel, 1969, p. 336).

For this problem, the theory must embody a characterization of the objects of thought (in the sense of that which is thought about). In order to account for the psychological phenomenon illustrated by puzzles concerning objects

considered under different descriptions (e.g., the morning star and the evening star), the objects of thought must be "non-substitutable"; i.e., it must be possible for a person to believe that an entity, a, has a property, F, without believing (or being committed to the belief) that an entity, b, has F, even when a and b are said to be the same entity.

To serve as a foundation for a natural-language semantics, the theory must account for the uniformity of thought and language with respect to fact and fiction, i.e., our ability to think and talk about anything. This observation, incidentally, is common to all philosophers who countenance non-existing objects. The theory ought also to provide for a total semantic interpretation function by supplying "referents" for all "non-referring" expressions. By means of such a function, the theory can account for the truth values, taken as part of the initial data, of sentences containing "non-referring" expressions (e.g., 'The golden mountain is golden'). To do this, properties must be meaningfully (i.e., truly and falsely) predicable, in some sense, of non-existents. Finally, a means of quantifying over the "referents" of "non-referring" terms will require an underlying "free" logic in which 'exists' will be an informative predicate not embodied in the quantificational machinery of the theory."

(1) Gustav Bergmann, Meaning and Existence, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959.

66. ———. 1979. "An Adverbial Meinongian Theory." Analysis no. 39:75-81.

"A fundamental assumption of Alexius Meinong's Theory of Objects (1904) is the act-content-object (ACO) analysis of psychological experiences. I suggest that Meinong's theory need not be based on this analysis, but that an adverbial theory might suffice. I then defend the adverbial alternative against a recent objection raised by Roderick Chisholm, and conclude by presenting an apparently more serious objection based on a paradox discovered by Romane Clark."

67. ———. 1981. "How to Make the World Fit Our Language: An Essay in Meinongian Semantics." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 14:1-21.

"Natural languages differ from most formal languages in having a partial, rather than a total, semantic interpretation function; e.g., some noun phrases don't refer. the usual semantics for handling such noun phrases (e.g., Russell, Quine) require syntactic reform.

The alternative presented here is semantic expansion, viz., enlarging the range of the interpretation function to make it total. a specific ontology based on Meinong's theory of objects, which can serve as domain on interpretation, is suggested, and related to the work of Castañeda, Frege, Katz and Fodor, Parsons, and Scott."

68. ———. 1982. "Meinong, Defective Objects and (Psycho)-logical Paradox." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 18:17-40.

"Alexius Meinong developed a notion of "defective objects" in order to account for various logical and psychological paradoxes. The notion is of historical interest, since it presages recent work on the logical paradoxes by Herzberger and Kripke. But it fails to do the job it was designed for.

However, a technique implicit in Meinong's investigation is more successful and can be adapted to resolve a similar paradox discovered by Romane Clark in a revised version of Meinong's Theory of Objects (W. J. Rapaport Meinongian Theories and a Russellian Paradox, Noûs, 12, 1978 pp. 153-180; Errata, Noûs, 13, 1979 p. 125). One family of paradoxes remains, but it is argued that they are unavoidable and relatively harmless."

69. ———. 1985. "To Be and Not To Be." Noûs no. 19:255-271.

70. ———. 1986. "Non-existent objects and epistemological ontology." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:61-95.

"This essay examines the role of non-existent objects in "epistemological ontology" - the study of the entities that make thinking possible. An earlier revision of Meinong's Theory of Objects is reviewed, Meinong's notions of Quasisein and Aufiersein are discussed, and a theory of Meinongian objects as "combinatorially possible" entities is presented."

71. Raspa, Venanzio. 1996. "Su ciò che non esiste. Da Bolzano a Meinong: un excursus nella filosofia austriaca." Studi Urbinati.B: Scienze Umane e Sociali no. 67:115-201.

72. ———. 2001. "Signs, shadow-like expression and fictional objects: Meinong's observations of a semiotics of fiction." Zeitschrift für Semiotik no. 23.

73. ———. 2005. "Phantasie, Phantasieerlebnisse und Vorstellungsproduktion bei Meinong." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 1:95-128.

74. ———. 2006. "Fictional and aesthetic objects. Meinong's point of view." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 2:47-80.

75. ———. 2006. "Thinking with and on Meinong in Italy." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 2:7-38.

Introduction to Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien vol. 2: Meinongian Issues in Contemporary Italian Philosophy.

76. ———. 2013. "Meinong on Aesthetic Objects and the Knowledge-Value of Emotions." Humana.Mente. Journal of Philosophical Studies no. 25:211-234.

77. Reibenschuch, Gernot. 1972. "Über den Begriff des Wertes bei Meinong." In Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, edited by Haller, Rudolf, 245-260. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

78. Reicher, Maria Elisabeth. 1996. "Gibt es unvollständige Gegenstände? Unvollständigkeit, Möglichkeit und der Satz vom ausgeschlossenen Dritten bei Meinong." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:217-232.

79. ———. 2000. "Gibt es Gegenstände, die nicht existieren?" Metaphysica.International Journal for Ontology and Metaphysics no. 1:135-162.

"Those who are -- in the tradition of Meinong -- willing to accept the claim that there are objects that do not exist usually argue that the ontological commitment to nonexistent objects allows to resolve a variety of problems of reference and intentionality. The aim of this paper is to show that the commitment to nonexistents does not resolve any of these problems and that, consequently, problems of reference and intentionality do not provide a reason for the assumption that there are objects that do not exist."

80. ———. 2001. "Die Logik der Intentionalität: Meinongs Eigenschaftsarten und Mallys duale Kopula." In Bausteine zu einer Geschichte der Philosophie an der Universität Graz, edited by Binder, Thomas, 219-234. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"The paper deals with Alexius Meinong's theory of "auxiliary objects", which, according to Meinong, provide us with a link between our thoughts and the (extramental) reality our thoughts are directed upon.

In its original form, this theory is contradictory. There are two strategies to free the theory from contradictions: (1) a distinction between "nuclear" and "extranuclear" properties (adopted by Meinong); (2) a distinction between "satisfying" a property and "being determined by" a property (adopted by Mally). It is argued that Meinong's strategy works only if it is interpreted in such a way that it can be reduced to Mally's strategy."

81. ———. 2005. "Russell, Meinong, and the problem of existent nonexistents." In On Denoting 1905-2005, edited by Imaguire, Guido and Linsky, Bernard, 167-193. München: Philosophia Verlag.

"In "On Denoting" Russell attacked Alexius Meinong's so-called "theory of objects" (Gegenstandstheorie), arguing, among other things, that according to Meinong's theory both the sentence "The existent present King of France exists" and "The existent present King of France does not exist" is true, which would render Meinong's theory inconsistent. Some Neo-Meinongians have claimed that one could avoid this consequence by making use of a distinction between two kinds of properties ("nuclear" and "extranuclear" ones), which Meinong worked into his theory several years after "On Denoting". My aim in this paper is to re-evaluate this contemporary attempt to defend Meinong's theory against Russell's attack and to offer an alternative solution."

82. ———. 2006. "Alexius von Meinong: Über Gegenstände, Annahmen und Werte." In Geschichte der österreichischen Humanwissenschaften. Vol 6.2: Philosophie und Religion: Gott, Sein und Solle, edited by Acham, Karl von, 187-205. Wien: Passagen.

83. ———. 2007. "Die Grazer Schule der Gegenstandstheorie." In Bausteine zur Geschichte der Philosophie an der Universität Graz, edited by Binder, Thomas, 173-207. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

84. Richard, Sebastien. 2015. "Meinong and Early Husserl on Objects and States of Affairs." In Objects and Pseudo-Objects: Ontological Deserts and Jungles From Brentano to Carnap, edited by Seron, Denis, Richard, Sebastien and Leclercq, Bruno, 123-141. Berlin: de Gruyter.

85. Rollinger, Robin D. 1993. Meinong and Husserl on Abstraction and Universals. From Hume Studies I to Logical Investigations II. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

86. ———. 1995. "Meinong on Perception: Two-Questions Concerning Propositional Seeing." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:445-455.

"While Meinong makes scattered remarks about perception in various writings, the one text in which he makes a concentrated effort to work out a theory of perception is Über die Erfahrungsgrundlagen unseres Wissens (1905). This paper is a critical examination of the theory which is presented there, hut also some other terxts are taken into account. Special attention will be given to Meinong's views on the object (Gegenstand) of perception, both the propositional object (Objektiv) and the non-propositional object (Objekt) which is allegedly "part" of the propositional object. Also, some contrasts and parallels between these views and those of other members of the Brentano School, e.g. Husserl's notion of categorial perception are discussed."

87. ———. 1996. "Meinong and Husserl on Assumptions." Axiomathes no. 7:89-102.

88. ———. 2004. "Austrian Theories of Judgment: Bolzano, Brentano, Meinong, and Husserl." In Phenomenology and Analysis. Essays on Central European Philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Huemer, Wolfgang, 257-284. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

Reprinted in: R. D. Rollinger, Austrian Phenomenology. Brentano, Husserl, Meinong, and Others on Mind and Object, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag 2009, pp. 233-262.

89. ———. 2005. "Meinong and Brentano." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 1:159-198.

"Meinong, like other noteworthy philosophers from central Europe, began his career in philosophy under the guidance of Franz Brentano. Though Meinong's philosophical investigations from early on were very Brentanian in character, he came to develop views that diverged from certain doctrines of his mentor. In epistemology Meinong introduced the notion of immediate evidence of surmise in his views on memory and perception, whereas Brentano found this notion unacceptable. In descriptive psychology Meinong regarded feelings and desires as two distinct classes and introduced an additional class of mental phenomena called "assumptions". Thus he opposed Brentano's classification of mental phenomena into presentations, judgments, and acts of love and hate. In ontology Meinong allowed for non-real objects. In value theory he even introduced the notion of special irrealia corresponding to feelings and desires. Brentano, however, came to reject irrealia altogether. Such differences are discussed here, but attention is also given to the underlying and enduring philosophical affinity between Meinong and Brentano, namely their commitment to the ideal of scientific philosophy as attainable through descriptive psychology (what might be called "descriptive phenomenology"), which is concerned with intentionally directed consciousness as its subject matter and does not in any way differ methodologically from natural science."

90. Routley, Richard. 1974. "Another "fatal" objection to Meinongian objects." Philosophical Studies.An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition no. 25:131-134.

91. ———. 1976. "The durability of impossible objects." Inquiry.An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 19:247-250.

"Meinong's theory of impossible objects is defended against a number of objections, In particular against Karel Lambert's argument (see "Impossible objects," "Inquiry", Volume 17, 1974, pages 303-14) that no objects are impossible."

92. ———. 1979. "The Theory of Objects as Commonsense." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 9:1-22.

"It is beginning to be appreciated that the Meinong of the mainstream philosophical literature is a mythological figure, that Meinong’s philosophy has in fact been presented in an unfair fashion (perhaps even by largely sympathetic expositors such as Findlay, Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values, Second edition, Clrendon Press, Oxford, 1963), and that the theory of objects in particular has been either widely misunderstood or else deliberately misrepresented. What has not been much appreciated is that Meinong’s theory of objects represents an important alternative to standard (Russellian) logical theory.(1) Whereas the entrenched theory is both reductionist and logico-empiricist in spirit, the alternative is nonreductionist, antiverificationist, and common-sense. Since the theory of objects has often — there are, however, important exceptions — been taken to be the very antithesis of commonsense, there is some explaining to be done. The problems are compounded by the fact that it is not at all easy to say what commonsense amounts to, and even more difficult to show that a philosophical theory is a commonsense one." (p. 1)1. There need be no apology for calling modem, standard, orthodox, “nondeviant”, “classical” logic ‘Russellian’. The orthodox logic of the textbooks consists essentially of variations and improvements (or sometimes the reverse) on the logical theory devised in large measure by Russell, building on the work of Peano and others, and worked out in collaboration with Whitehead in Principia Mathematica [5]. Certainly there have been important additions by Hilbert, Wittgenstein, Tarski, Gentzen and others but these do not affect the general claim. In these terms influential modem logical theories, such as those of Quine [15], are but variations on a theme of Russell’s. And they share the reductionist empiricist assumptions of Russell’s logical theory."

(1) There need be no apology for calling modem, standard, orthodox, “nondeviant”, “classical” logic ‘Russellian’. The orthodox logic of the textbooks consists essentially of variations and improvements (or sometimes the reverse) on the logical theory devised in large measure by Russell, building on the work of Peano and others, and worked out in collaboration with Whitehead in Principia Mathematica, Second edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1950. Certainly there have been important additions by Hilbert, Wittgenstein, Tarski, Gentzen and others but these do not affect the general claim. In these terms influential modem logical theories, such as those of Quine Form a Logical Point of View, Second edition, revised, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1961, are but variations on a theme of Russell’s. And they share the reductionist empiricist assumptions of Russell’s logical theory.

93. ———. 1979. Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond: An Investigation of Noneism and the Theory of Items. Canberra: Australian National University.

94. ———. 1979. "The (logical) inportance of not existing." Dialogue no. 18:129-165.

95. Routley, Richard, and Routley, Valerie. 1973. "Rehabilitating Meinong's Theory of Objects." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 104-105:224-254.

96. Russell, Bertrand. 1904. "Meinong's theory of complexes and assumptions." Mind no. 13:204-219; 336-354; 509-524.

Reprinted in: Essays in Analysis, edited by Douglas Lackey (1973) pp. 21-76.

97. ———. 1905. "Review of: A. Meinong, Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie." Mind no. 14:530-538.

Reprinted in: Essays in Analysis, edited by Douglas Lackey (1973) pp. 77-88.

98. ———. 1905. "On denoting." Mind no. 14:479-493.

Reprinted in: Essays in Analysis, edited by Douglas Lackey (1973) pp. 103-119.

99. ———. 1907. "Review of: A. Meinong, Uber die Stellung der Gegestandstheorie im System der Wissenschaften." Mind no. 16:436-439.

Reprinted in: Essays in Analysis, edited by Douglas Lackey (1973) pp. 89-93.

100. Ryle, Gilbert. 1972. "Intentionality Theory and the Nature of Thinking." In Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, edited by Haller, Rudolf, 7-14. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

Reprinted in Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 27, 1973, pp. 255-265.

101. Sajama, Seppo. 1988. "Meinong on the foundations of deontic logic." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 32:69-81.

"Traditional moral theories appear to be unable to give a credible account of the relationship between deontic and axiological concepts, i.e., Duty and Value. Of the two traditional solutions to this problem, One emphasises the independence of the two realms, Whereas mill argues that duty is definable in terms of goodness. In this paper I present Meinong's law of omission which offers, In my opinion, a promising alternative to these two traditional views."

102. Salice, Alessandro. 2002. Il concetto di Aussersein nella Teoria degli Oggetti di Alexius Meinong.

Tesi di Laurea ineedita sostenuta all'Università di Torino, Anno Accademico 2001-2002, Relatore: Maurzio Ferraris.

103. ———. 2004. "Alexius Meinong: oggetto e Aussersein." Rivista di Estetica no. 44:201-214.

104. ———. 2009. Urteile und Sachverhalte. Ein Vergleich zwischen Alexius Meinong und Adolf Reinach. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"The judgment constitutes a fundamental notion for several disciplines such as descriptive psychology, ontology and logic, and hence its investigation represents a pivotal area of research within theoretical philosophy. Inside the Brentano-School, Alexius Meinong (1853-1920) and Adolf Reinach (1883-1917) made significant contributions to this topic, separating and exploring both the subjective side of judgment (the intentional experience of judging) as well as its objective side (the “state of affairs” or the “objective”). In this publication Meinong’s and Reinach’s lore regarding the psychological and object-theoretical aspects of judgment are explicated, compared and evaluated."

105. Santambrogio, Marco. 1990. "Meinongian theories of generality." Noûs:647-673.

"It is not widely appreciated that Meinong's non-existent objects are closely related with Twardowski's general objects and Locke's general abstract triangle. The latter is usually thought to be an incoherent notion. In order to disprove that, a formal semantics for such objects is outlined. The adequacy conditions it satisfies are discussed in detail. It is argued that general objects are needed e.g., in order to account for such uses of definite descriptions as in 'The whale is a mammal'. The central section of the paper is devoted to discussing which notion of reference is appropriate for general objects."

106. Schermann, Hans. 1972. "Husserl II Logische Untersuchung und Meinongs Hume-Studien I." In Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, edited by Haller, Rudolf, 103-116. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

107. Schubert Kalsi, Marie-Luise. 1980. "On Meinong's pseudo-objects." Southwestern Journal of Philosophy no. 11:115-124.

"Consequences of Meinong's theory of pseudo-objects are discussed, in the context of On emotional presentation chapter 2, they are essential for Meinong's theory of knowledge and for the solving of paradoxes pertaining to self-referential thoughts or expressions. Pseudo-objects are mental entities corresponding directly to presentational experiences. The relationship of pseudo-objects to perceptual and conceptual objects is discussed and also their relationship to idea (contents) and language."

108. ———. 1982. "Meinong's criticism of Husserl's "Ideas I"." In Phenomenology dialogues and bridges, edited by Bruzina, Ronald and Wilshire, Bruce, 213-227. Albany: State University of New York Press.

109. ———. 1985. "On evidence according to Meinong and Chisholm." Philosophical Topics no. 13:77-86.

"The concept of 'evident' (and 'evidence') in Meinong's and Chisholm's writings are investigated. Meinong's term is studied in only one of its several meanings. It was found that 'evident' is a relation holding between a proposition and a person. Its presence is indicated and known by the person by a feeling of justification (Meinong) and sensibly taking (Chisholm). 'evident' is a psychologic epistemological concept and the presence of the relation cannot be objectively ascertained. The relationship between evident and its mark is pre-given and unexplained."

110. ———. 1987. Meinong's Theory of Knowledge. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.

111. ———. 1994. "Incompleteness and Tertium Non Datur." Conceptus.Zeitschrift für Philosophie no. 27:203-218.

"The article investigates Meinong's claim that the tertium non datur does not hold for objects which he calls "incompletely determined" and for objects which have a peculiar kind of deficient or pseudo-being which he calls "Aussersein" as e.g., inherently contradictory objects.

Both, objects and kinds of being are examined: first, existence; second, subsistence and Aussersein; third, completely versus incompletely determined objects. They will be discussed on the basis of Meinong's theory of presentation together with the completeness of fictional objects. It is shown that incomplete determination is not ontologically pregiven. An object is incompletely determined if it is intended to be so. The tertium non datur fails to apply as a consequence of our intentional attitude. Finally, the exceptional status of objectives in respect to incompleteness is acknowledged."

112. Schuhmann, Karl. 1995. "Der Wertbegriff beim frühen Meinong." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:521-535.

113. ———. 1996. "Daubert and Meinong." Axiomathes:75-88.

114. Sierszulska, Anna. 2005. Meinong on Meaning and Truth. Frankfurt am Main: Ontos Verlag.

Introduction: "Most studies of Meinong's philosophy concentrate on ontological issues and they are often accompanied by providing a logical system of so called Meinongian logic. The epistemological problems are raised rarely and primarily in the light of historical considerations. The purpose of this study is to provide a presentation of the views of Alexius Meinong upon truth and related issues, in such a way as to expose the points which may be interesting for analytic philosophers.

Part I contains an outline of Meinong's theory of objects and his account of intentionality. The subjective "contents" of mental acts are contrasted with "objects" of different kinds. Chapter 2 focuses upon objects of higher order and the notion of an objective. Meinong's notion of Aussersein is introduced and it is claimed that objectives are abstract entities belonging to Aussersein.

Part II presents Meinong's theory of meaning and his views related to truth and cognition. The conception of meaning is discussed especially in relation to the views of Husserl and Frege upon this issue. Meinong's theory of truth is shown to be a version of logical realism, where identity of logical structure between an objective intended and reality is the basic idea but no facts as entities in reality are postulated. A Fregean interpretation of Meinong's theory of objectives as function-like entities, and not as states of affairs, is proposed. Factuality of objectives is interpreted non-objectually as the "obtaining" of objectives. The notion of self-evidence of judgments is presented in the role of Meinong's substitute criterion of truth. The problem with subjectivity of the experience of self-evidence is solved in Meinong's conception by means of probability attribution in uncertain epistemic contexts.

Part III contains a discussion of the reception of Meinong's ideas related to truth, since Russell until the present time. This part contains a chapter concerning Russell's interpretation of Meinong's objectives as complexes, in agreement with Russell's early theory of singular propositions. It is shown why this is not a correct interpretation. The issues addressed are the accusations of psychologism directed at Meinong and the mutual misunderstandings about ontological questions between these philosophers. Meinong's reaction to these criticisms is presented, mainly as expressed in the second edition of On Assumptions. Next, there is a polemical discussion with these critics who regard Meinong's objectives either as complexes or as states of affairs. And finally, some objections related to Meinong's understanding of truth and cognition are attended to. These objections concern mainly the traces of Kantian idealism in Meinong's epistemological views. In the case of empirical judgments, there is no certainty whether they are true in the objective sense, but such uncertainty in the process of cognition does not imply that we have no possibility to acquire objective knowledge. Scepticism is overcome, because we know that many of our judgments are highly probable.

Part IV is devoted to an analysis of some typical features of Meinongian-style semantics. Chapters 8 and 9 present Meinong's original views by way of comparing his ideas to later developments within Meinongian semantic theories. It is observed that if a semantic domain is understood in the characteristic Meinongian way, it contains both real and meaning-objects of different kinds. This feature of a Meinongian-style semantics is responsible for what is proposed to be called a "double theoretical approach" to objects. It is shown that two senses of being, of quantification, of predication, of extension and of linguistic reference are required, in order to provide a theoretical framework which applies both to real objects and to abstract sense-entities. The main questions discussed in this part are related to the consequences of introducing "merely semantic" objects into a semantic theory.

The study ends with a conclusion which sums up the results of the discussions with respect to their relevance for the issue of epistemological realism. Meinong's suggestion for developing a probabilistic semantics for undetermined contexts is considered to be a positive way to counterweight scepticism in scientific discourse."

115. ———. 2005. "Meinongian extensions of predicates." Logic and Logical Philosophy no. 14:145-163.

116. Simons, Peter M. 1989. "Lukasiewicz, Meinong and many valued logic." In The Vienna Circle and the Lvov-Warsaw School, edited by Szaniawski, Klemens, 249-292. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Reprinted in: Peter Simons, Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski. Selected Essays, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992, pp. 193-225.

117. ———. 1992. "On what there isn't: the Meinong-Russell dispute." In Philosophy and logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski, 159-191. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Translated from: Über das, was es nicht gibt: Die Meinong-Russell Kontroverse, Zeitschrift für Semiotik, 10, 1988, pp. 399-426.

118. ———. 1994. "Meinong's contribution to the development of non-classical logic." Conceptus.Zeitschrift für Philosophie no. 27:187-202.

"Though himself no logician, Meinong, by his iconoclastic philosophical views, indirectly contributed significantly to the development of nonclassical logic, notably modal, many-valued, probability, deontic, free, paraconsistent and dialectical logics. After outlining Meinong's mature object theory, emphasizing his views on existence, modality and probability, I show how he influenced the younger logical pioneers Lukasiewicz and Mally, as well as more recent logicians such as Parsons, Routley and Lambert."

119. ———. 1995. "Meinong's Theory of Sense and Reference." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:171-186.

"Gilbert Ryle wrote that "Meaning-theory expanded just when and just in so far as it was released from that 'Fido'-Fido box, the lid of which was never even lifted by Meinong." This paper sets out to relieve Ryle's oversimplification about Meinong and the role of meaning theory in his thought. One step away from canine simplicity about meaning is the recognition of a distinction between sense and reference, such as we find in Frege, Husserl, and the early Russell. In Über Möglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit (1915) Meinong seems to corroborate Ryle when he writes, "Word-meanings are objects," but immediately after this, he qualifies it: "Word-meanings are very often auxiliary objects." The distinction between auxiliary and target objects in Meinong's later work allows us to attribute to him a theory of sense and reference which shows him to have indeed lifted the box-lid."

120. ———. 1999. "Bolzano, Brentano and Meinong: three Austrian realists." In German Philosophy since Kant, edited by O'Hear, Anthony, 109-136. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

121. ———. 2001. "Meinong und Modalität." In Bausteine zu einer Geschichte der Philosophie an der Universität Graz, edited by Binder, Thomas, 209-217. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"Meinong's theory of modality (which is also a theory of probability) is an unexplored alternative to standard views. Meinong's ontology allows him a rich and arguably modernizable account which eschews the notion of possible worlds. It is based on his concepts of Objective (state of affairs) and incomplete object. An Objective ascribing a property to an incomplete object is possible if some actual completion of the object has the relevant property, and is possible to degree w, where 0 3/4 w 3/4 1, if the proportion of actual completions having the property to all actual completions is w."

122. ———. 2005. "Meinong, Consistency and the Absolute Totality." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 1:233-254.

"Since Russell, Meinong's ontology has often been accused of inconsistency.

By accepting impossible objects, Meinong appears to play into the hands of his opponents. But his distinction between nuclear and extra-nuclear properties enables him to avoid Russell's criticism, and can be employed to deflect other charges of inconsistency. Meinong accepts a single, absolute totality of objects, including a totality of all truths. This seems also to commit him to paradoxical conclusions, but I show he can avoid these. Within the absolute totality, there should be numerous subcollections constituting alternative possible worlds.

The problem is that we can have no way to construct or evaluate the consistency of such collections, which means we have at best inductive assurance that Meinong's ontology is consistent."

123. Simons, Peter M., and Morscher, Edgar. 2001. "Meinong's theory of meaning." In The School of Alexius Meinong, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Jacquette, Dale and Poli, Roberto, 427-455. Aldershot: Ashgate.

124. Smith, Barry. 1980. "Ingarden vs. Meinong on the logic of fiction." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 41:93-105.

125. ———. 1994. Austrian Philosophy. The Legacy of Franz Brentano. Chicago: Open Court.

See Chapter Five: Alexius Meinong and Stephan Witasek: on art and its objects - pp. 125-154.

126. ———. 1995. "More things in Heaven and Earth." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:187-201.

"Philosophers in the field of analytic metaphysics have begun gradually to come to terms with the fact that there are entities in a range of categories not dreamt of in the set-theory and predicate-logic-based ontologies of their forefathers. Examples of such entia minora would include: boundaries, places, events, states holes, shadows, individual colour- and tone-instances (tropes), together with combinations of these and associated simple and complex universal species or essences, states of affairs, judgment-contents, and myriad abstract structures of the sorts which are studied by the mathematical sciences. How, as hunter-gatherer ontologists, are we to bring order into this vast array? How are we to gauge the ontological merits of given candidate entities, and how are we to understand their relation to entities of more humdrum sorts? Meinong, it turns out, offers a very simple answer to all of these questions."

127. Smith, David Woodruff. 1975. "Meinongian Objects." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 1:43-71.

"This is a study of Meinongian "objects" - specifically, individual objects - and their motivations in intentionality theory. Others have dwelt on their "indifference to being" (Aussersein). Principally, I shall argue that, contrary to what we might have hoped for them, Meinongian objects must be intensional entities if, as asked, they are to serve as objects of thought in an appropriately Meinongian, "object-theoretic" account of intentionality. Briefly, the argument is as follows. (The roman numerals mark off roughly the content of parts I through V of the paper.)

I. Meinong's theory of objects can in general be seen as motivated by the theory of intentionality, for "objects" are assumed to serve as the objects of thought or "intention". What seems largely to distinguish a Meinongian approach to intentionality is the attempt to account for the peculiarities of intention in terms of peculiarities of the objects "intended".

II. One class of objects Meinong propounded are "incomplete", or "incompletely determined", objects. An example is the golden mountain, which is golden and mountainous but otherwise "undetermined".

III. For Meinong, incomplete objects serve to mediate the intention (or apprehension) of complete objects. Meinong believed we cannot properly "intend" complete objects. We intend them only indirectly insofar as we intend incomplete objects which are "embedded" in than. This is Meinong's account of how, as best he thought we can, we intend everyday existing physical individuals, which are complete. (As stated, this is not quite gospel Meinong, which treats of "Soseinsmeinen".)

IV. This theory of the indirect intention of complete objects via incomplete objects also explains another familiar fact about intention, though Meinong himself probably did not put it to this use. It explains in a straightforward way the distinction between, for instance, one's conceiving the morning star and one's conceiving the evening star - and hence, in the "formal mode" the failure of the logical law of substitutivity of identity for terms in intentional contexts. For, on Meinongian lines these intentions would be indirect intentions of the same complete object (Venus, we would say) but intentions proper of distinct incomplete objects ("The Morning Star" and "The Evening Star", as we shall call them), and so they would be distinct intentions.

V. Different sorts of entities have been considered intensional, including Frege's "senses" and Carnap's "intensions". What seems to qualify them as intensional is their role vis a vis, specifically, ordinary physical individuals in a Frege like semantics. Further, it is intensional entities that determine the "directedness" or intentionality of mental acts. Meinong's incomplete objects fill these bills and so, I argue, are intensional. However, since complete objects are continuous in kind with incomplete objects, complete objects too - including ordinary physical individuals - must be intensional.

Generalizing, the genre of Meinongian intentionality theory is characteristically "extensionalist", treating intention straightforwardly as a relation and thus accounting for its peculiarities in terms of the objects intended. We may conclude that any such approach to intentionality must render the objects of intention intensional.

I conclude (in part VI) that such a Meinongian view of intentionality leaves the intensional playing the wrong role in intention. This can be remedied by replacing incomplete objects with something like individual concepts or senses (which are not themselves incomplete) and making them the mediators rather than the objects of intention.

I should stress that this essay is not an historical study in the interpretation of Meinong's writings. It is rather a critical study of the genre of Meinongian object-cum-intentionality theory, of what happens if we make certain assumptions apparently fundamental to Meinong's program. I shall here largely rely on Findlay's lovely book' as a convenient and well-received gathering of Meinong's views. At a few indicated points I shall extend, to some extent modify, or reconstruct Meinong's views as I know them." (pp. 43-44)

128. Smith, Janet Farrell. 1982. "Meinong's theory of objects and assumptions." In Phenomenology: Dialogues and Bridges, edited by Bruzina, Ronald and Wilshire, Bruce, 205-212. Albany: State University of New York Press.

129. ———. 1985. "The Russell-Meinong Debate." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 45:305-350.

"The debates between Bertrand Russell and Alexius Meinong from 1904 to 192.0 dealt with some fundamental issues in philosophy: reference, nonexistent objects, intentionality. Along with the enduring influence of Russell's philosophy, sonic misapprehensions about these exchanges have persisted. One is that Russell's objections to Meinong were definitive. The other stems from taking too seriously Russell's casual remark in 1918 that Meinong's theories evidenced a deficient "sense of reality." Contrary to the impression left by this comment, Russell, during the most intensive years of the debate (1904-1907), felt a real respect for Meinong's theories,' and his main concern lay elsewhere. The exchange did not center on "reality" or "realism," as is often believed, but on the classical laws of logic (noncontradiction, excluded middle) and the correct analysis of logical form, for instance, of existence statements. Russell also took a dim view of the modal concepts Meinong used to support the canons of object theory, but his main concern was that Meinong's overall analysis appeared to threaten the foundation of Russell's philosophical logic. Russell and Meinong's disagreement thus came down to competing logical frameworks tied to different notions of what it is to he an object.

In claiming that Russell's main objection to Meinong's theory was logical, I do not mean to deny that ontology and metaphysics were in the forefront of Russell's concerns up to 1910 or that for him a correct foundational view of logic would tell us much about the way the world is. Russell's motivation for criticizing Meinong may well have been a concern with what is 'real', but his philosophical reasons for rejecting Meinong's object theory in 1905-1907 had to do which logical principles and their reputed violations. Interestingly, during the years Russell was debating with Meinong most intensively (1904-1907) he was also struggling to find the solution to his paradox of classes. With his 1905 invention of the theory of descriptions, Russell believed he had simultaneously found a way to deal with apparent reference to nonexistents in ordinary grammar and a new analysis of classes. It seems that the two difficulties of paradoxical classes and nonexistent objects plagued Russell's sense of consistency in a parallel manner.

In this paper I focus on giving an internal analysis of the objections and replies exchanged by Russell and Meinong to show that Russell's objections failed to be decisive and that the standoff between them came down to fundamentally different frameworks. Some scholarly evidence supports this interpretation as well. Russell's 1904 letter to Meinong emphasizes that what Meinong called "Theory of Objects" Russell had been accustomed to calling "Logic." [See Appendix]' In pressing his contradiction charge, Russell continued to evaluate Meinong's object theory by the standards of his own view of "logic." Lastly, evidence of a more circumstantial nature points to the parallelism of Russell's worries over nonexistent objects and classes."

(1) See the newly published Theory of Knowledge, The 1913 Manuscript, Vol. 7 of Russell's Collected papers, edited by Elizabeth Eames and Kenneth Blackwell (Allen and Unwin, 1983). This manuscript, which contains many accurate references to Meinong's theories, was never published by Russell. He was apparently discouraged by Wittgenstein's criticism of his theory of judgment.

(2) The Appendix contains translations of Russell's three letters to Meinong. See also the chronological Bibliography at the end of this paper.

(3) See Roderick Chisholm, Brentano and Meinong Studies (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1982.), and The First Person, An Essay on Reference and Intentionality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981).

(4) Some issues are treated in my "Meinong's Theory of Objects and Assumptions," in Phenomenology: Dialogues and Bridges, ed. R. Bruzina and B. Wilshire (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982). In a longer study of book length I explore these and other issues in greater depth.

130. ———. 1988. "Russell's re-evaluation of Meinong, 1913-14: an analysis of acquaintance." Russell.The Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives no. 8:179-194.

131. ———. 2005. "Russell's "On denoting", the laws of logic and the refutation of Meinong." In On Denoting 1905-2005, edited by Imaguire, Guido and Linsky, Bernard, 137-166. München: Philosophia Verlag.

132. Stepanians, Markus S. 1995. "Russells Kritik an Meinongs Begriff des Annahmenschlusses." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:415-432.

133. Stock, Wolfgang G. 1996. "Wissenschaftstheorie der Grazer Schule: Meinong und Frankl." Axiomathes:61-74.

134. Suter, Ronald. 1967. "Russell's 'refutation' of Meinong in 'On Denoting'." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 27:512-516.

135. Swanson, Carolyn. 2011. Reburial of Nonexistents. Reconsidering the Meinong-Russell Debate. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"Alexius Meinong claimed to uncover a brave new world of nonexistent objects. He contended that unreal objects, such as the golden mountain and the round square, genuinely had properties (such as nonexistence itself) and therefore, deserved a place in an all-inclusive science. Meinong's notion of nonexistents was initially not well-received, largely due to the influence and criticisms of Bertrand Russell. However, it has gained considerable popularity in more recent years as academics have uncovered shortfalls in Russell's philosophy and strived to explain apparent "facts" about the beingless. Some philosophers have continued Meinong's project, further explaining nonexistent objects or formulating logic systems that incorporate them.

The more recent developments beg for a re-examination of Meinongianism. This book does just that, putting the theory on trial. Part One considers if Russell truly defeated Meinongianism. It addresses Meinongian rejoinders in response to Russell's main criticisms and further defends Russell's alternative solution, his Theory of Descriptions. Part Two explores the rationale for nonexistents and their use in interpreting three types of statements: characterization, negative existential, and intentional. The book argues that, despite appearances, Meinongianism cannot plausibly account for its own paradigm claims, whereas Russell's framework, with some further elucidation, can explain these statements quite well. Part Three primarily addresses claims about fiction, exploring the short-comings of Meinongian and Russellian frameworks in interpreting them. The book introduces a contextualization solution and symbolic method for capturing the logical form of such claims – one with the complexity to handle cross-contextual statements, including negative existential and intentional ones. It finally considers where that leaves nonexistent objects, ultimately rejecting such so-called entities."

136. ———. 2012. "A Meinongian Minefield? The Dangerous Implications of Nonexistent Objects." Human Affairs no. 22:161-177.

Abstract: "Alexius Meinong advocated a bold new theory of nonexistent objects, where we could gain knowledge and assert true claims of things that did not exist. While the theory has merit in interpreting sentences and solving puzzles, it unfortunately paves the way for contradictions. As Bertrand Russell argued, impossible objects, such as the round square, would have conflicting properties. Meinong and his proponents had a solution to that charge, posing genuine and non-genuine versions of the Law of Non-Contradiction. No doubt, they had a clever response, but it may not adequately address Russell’s concern. Moreover, as I argue, genuine contradictions are inherent to the set of all nonexistent objects. And such contradictions lead to even further absurdities, for example, that nonexistent objects have and lack every property. Unfortunately, such implications of the theory make it too treacherous to adopt."

137. Sweet, Dennis J. 1993. "The Gestalt Controversy: The Development of Objects of Higher Order in Meinong's Ontology." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 53:553-575.

"To show how Meinong's ontology developed from the stark "Hume Studies" to the richness of his mature thought, I trace his analysis of complexes in light of the views of Ehrenfels, Cornelius, and Twardowski. Through their influences Meinong was compelled to modify his ontology in two ways. First, he developed a variety of reism that acknowledged ontological heterogeneity within perceptual complexes.

Second, he endorsed the view of perceptual realism. With these modifications Meinong was able to introduce objects of higher order'."

138. Tegtmeier, Erwin. 2000. "Meinong's Complexes." Monist no. 83:89-100.

"The ontological problem of complexity is a most difficult one and has not been solved satisfactorily until the 20th century. Meinong came as close as any philosopher in the 19th century to a solution. Meinong's view of complexes changed. He kept to the principle that there is a relation where there is a complex. But only in his later view does the relation have the role of connector of the complex. The article argues (also against Bergmann and Grossmann) that relational connectors would not be sufficient without facts, that facts connect without connectors though and that facts are the only genuine complexes. Meinong's Objektive are very similar to facts, yet in a crucial respect more like things than like facts."

139. ———. 2005. "Object-Theoretic Foundations of Logic." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 1:297-308.

"Logical semantics is not ontology. Meinong's and Mally's application of their object theory to logic must not be understood as a contribution to logical semantics but as an ontological grounding of logic. The object-theoretical grounding relates logic to the world though it is accompanied by a rationalist interpretation of logical laws. Meinong's and Mally's realist analysis of logic

has been revived and continued by Gustav Bergmann and Reinhardt Grossmann. Both adopt Meinong's category of objective in a more or less modified version. This category is pivotal for Meinong's view of logic."

140. Teroni, Fabrice. 2006. "Meinong on memory." In The Austrian Contribution to Analytic Philosophy, edited by Textor, Mark, 20-35. New York: Routledge.

141. Thrush, Michael. 2001. "Do Meinong's impossible objects entail contradictions?" Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 62:157-173.

Abstract: "Meinong's theory of objects commits him to impossiblia: objects which have contradictory properties. Russell famously objected that these impossiblia were apt to infringe the law of noncontradiction. Meinong's defenders have often relied upon the distinction between internal and external negation, a defense that only works against less exotic impossiblia. The more exotic impossibilia fall victim to an argument that uses an intuitively attractive logical principle similar to the abstraction principle, but which is not subject to Russell's paradox. The upshot is that things are not as bad as Russell claims. Some impossiblia don't entail contradictions. Nevertheless, things are still disastrous for Meinong. Some of his impossiblia do entail contradictions."

142. Varga, Peter Andras. 2016. "The Non-Existing Object Revisited: Meinong as the Link between Husserl and Russell?" Meinong Studies no. 6:27-57.

143. Vasyukov, Vladimir. 1993. "A Lesniewskian guide to Husserl's and Meinong's jungles." Axiomathes:59.

144. Vax, Louis. 2000. "Meinong et les impossibilia: avec une appendice de Gaston Thoma." Philosophia Scientiae no. 4:1-66.

145. Velarde-Mayol, Victor. 1989. "La teoria de los objetos en Alexius Meinong." Pensamiento no. 45:461-475.

146. ———. 1989. La teoria del objeto en Alexius Meinong, Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

Available at UMI Dissertation Express: reference number 9323758.

147. Voltolini, Alberto. 1995. "Is Meaning Without Actually Existing Reference Naturalizable?" Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:397-414.

"According to Jerry Fodor, meaningful expressions denoting no actual entity, like "unicorn", do not constitute an exception to his project of semantic naturalization based on the notion of asymmetrical dependence between causal relations. But Fodor does not give any principled reason in order to show that, say, a non-unicorn caused "unicorn"-token means Unicorn, as he on the contrary does regarding a non-X caused "X"-token for any existing X. Nevertheless, his claim that one such expression has a mere denotational meaning can be accounted for, though in a non-naturalistic way. Suffice it that one appeals to the weak Meinongianism contained in the thesis that one can directly refer to possible entities by means of suitable fixing reference description."

148. ———. 2001. "What is Alive and What is Dead in Russell's Critique of Meinong." In The School of Alexius Meinong, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Jacquette, Dale and Poli, Roberto, 489-516. Aldershot: Ashgate.

149. ———. 2006. "Being, existence, and having instances." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 2:161-180.

150. Weinberger, Ota. 1972. "Ideen zur logischen Normesemantik." In Jeinseits von Sein und Nichtsein, edited by Haller, Rudolf, 295-312. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

151. Weingartner, Paul. 1972. "Die Fraglichkeit der Extensionalitätsthese und die Probleme einer intensionalen Logik." In Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, edited by Haller, Rudolf, 127-178. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

152. Witherall, Arthur. 1998. "Meinongian metaphysics and subjectivity." Journal of Philosophical Research no. 23:29-49.

153. Wolf, Karl. 1968. "Die Grazer Schule. Gegenstandstheorie und Wertlehre." Wissenschaft und Weltbild.Zeitschrift für grundfragen der forschung und weltanschauung no. 21:31-56.

154. ———. 1971. "Ernst Mallys Destruktion des Meinongschen "Gegenständes"." In Akten des XIV. Internationalen Kongresses für Philosophie, Wien, 2-9 Sept. 1968, 584-591. Wien: Herder.

155. ———. 1972. "Der Bedeutungswandel von 'Gegenständ' in der Schule Meinongs." In Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, edited by Haller, Rudolf, 63-68. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

156. Zalta, Edward. 1982. "Meinongian type theory and its applications." Studia Logica no. 41:297-307.

"In this paper I propose a fundamental modification of standard type theory, produce a new kind of type theoretic language, and couch in this language a comprehensive theory of abstract individuals and abstract properties and relations of every type. I then suggest how to employ the theory to solve the four following philosophical problems: (a) the identification and ontological status of Frege's senses; (b) the deviant behavior of terms in propositional attitude contexts; c) the non-identity of necessarily equivalent propositions, and (d) the "paradox" of analysis."

157. ———. 1986. "Lambert, Mally, and the Principle of Independence." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:447-459.

158. ———. 1992. "On Mally's alleged heresy: a reply." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 13:59-68.

159. Zecha, Gerhard. 1972. "Meinongs moralische Wertklassen und die deontischen Operatoren." In Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, edited by Haller, Rudolf, 271-286. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

160. Zeglen, Ursula. 1996. "Meinong and Ingarden on Negative Judgments." Axiomathes:267-278.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Edmund Husserl: Formal Ontology and Transcendental Logic

Introduction

"Husserl's work include lengthy treatment of universals, categories, meanings, numbers, manifolds, etc. from an ontological perspective. Here, however, we shall concentrate almost exclusively on the Logical Investigations, which contain in a clear form the ontological ideas which provided the terminological and theoretical basis both for much of the detailed phenomenological description and for many of the metaphysical theses presented in Husserl's later works.

The ontology of the Logical Investigations is of interest first of all because of its clear conception of a formal discipline of ontology analogous to formal logic. (Here Husserl's thinking parallels Meinong's development of ontology as a general 'theory of objects.). Formal disciplines are set apart from 'regional' or 'material' disciplines in that they apply to all domains of objects whatsoever, so that they are independent of the peculiarities of any given field of knowledge.

Logic, as Husserl sees it, is concerned in the first place with meanings (propositions, concepts) and with associated meaning-instantiating acts. Most importantly, it is concerned with that sort of deductively closed collection of meanings which constitutes a scientific theory. For Husserl, as for Bolzano, logic is a theory of science. Only where we have an appropriate unity and organization also on the side of the objects (states of affairs, properties) to which the relevant acts refer, however, will we have a scientific theory, so that the unity which is characteristic of the latter must involve both (1) an interconnection of truths (or of propositional meanings in general), and (2) an interconnection of the things to which these truths (and the associated cognitive acts) are directed.

Where formal logic relates in the first place to meaning categories such as proposition, concept, subject and predicate, its sister discipline of formal ontology relates to object categories such as object and property, relation and relatum, manifold, part, whole, state of affairs, existence and so on. Logic in a broader sense therefore seeks to delimit the concepts which belong to the idea of a unity of theory in relation to both meanings and objects, and the truths of logic are all the necessary truths relating to those categories of constituents, on the side of both meanings and objects, from out of which science as such is necessarily constituted (including what we might think of as bridge-categories such as identity and truth which span the division between meanings and objects).

Husserl's conception of the science of logic is not an arbitrary one.

For formal-ontological concepts are like the concepts of formal logic in forming complex structures in non-arbitrary, law-governed ("recursive") ways. And because they are independent of any peculiar material of knowledge, we are able to grasp the properties of the given structures in such a way as to establish in one go the properties of all formally similar structures." (pp. 27-29)

From: Barry Smith Barry & David Woodruff Smith, The Cambridge Companion to Husserl, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1995.

"The term 'formal ontology' has been given two different interpretations. The first of these, entirely in keeping with the mainstream of contemporary philosophy, has been what I shall call analytic: formal ontology is that branch of ontology which is analysed within the framework of formal logic. The leading exponent of this approach has undoubtedly been Nino Cocchiarella.' On the premise that each particular science has its own 'mode of being', Cocchiarella has written that 'metaphysics [...] -- or what we might instead call formal ontology --is concerned with the study and development of alternative formalizations regarding the systematic co-ordination of all the 'modes' or 'categories of being' under the most general laws' (1). From this point of view, formal ontology studies the logical characteristics of predication and the various theories of universals.

The other interpretation, which I shall call phenomenological, developed from Husserl's early works, in particular Logical Investigations. As a first approximation, we may say that this approach mainly addresses the problems of parts and wholes and of dependence. Despite their differences, these two varieties of formal ontology quite frequently overlap each other, although to date there has been no systematic study of the categories and layers that constitute formal ontology and no systematic analysis of the issues addressed by it.

(...)

The best way to deal with Husserl's theory of formal ontology, therefore, is to explicate both the connections between the formal and material, and those between the ontological and the logical.

In introducing his distinction between formal and material ontology, Husserl asserts that the former is descriptive and involves analytic a priori judgements, and that the latter involves synthetic a priori judgements. In its most general sense formal ontology concerns itself with characterizing the simple 'something'. Depending on how this 'something' is conceived, Husserl adds, the 'field of formal ontology should be the "formal region" of the object in general' (Formale und transzendentale Logik 1929, art. 38).

Characterizing material ontology is a more complicated matter, because the term can be interpreted in either of two ways. In the genetic interpretation it relates to the field of perception and its foundations (Husserl Krisis 1954, art. 6, sec. 1). In the descriptive interpretation, material ontology is instead ontic and concerns the highest material genera, i.e. the material categories in which single ontologies are rooted (Ideen zu einer reinen Phenomenologie 1913, vol. 1, art. 75). The sphere of material ontology in this sense are the laws of non-independence (2) which delimit the ontological regions. For the genetic interpretation, material ontology precedes formal ontology; for the descriptive interpretation it is the other way round (1913, art. 10). Here emerges 'the fundamental distinction between formal and material ontology': namely, the distinction between analytic a priori and synthetic a priori (Introduction to Formale und transzendentale Logik, 1929).

Detailed treatment has never been given to the stratified connections between material ontology in the genetic sense, formal ontology, and material ontology in the regional sense. It would, however, go beyond my present brief to investigate this question in detail, even though one should have at least a general topographical outline in mind.

The second opposition distinguishes the 'formal' into ontological and logical. In this sense, we must not confuse or superimpose that which pertains to formal logic and that which pertains to formal ontology. Likewise, we should not superimpose or mix the formal and material meanings of the concepts used." (pp. 1-2)

Notes

(1) "Formal Ontology and the Foundations of Mathematics", in: G. Nakhnikian (ed.), Bertrand Russell's Philosophy, Duckworth: London 1974, pp. 29-30.

From: Roberto Poli, "Husserl's Conception of Formal Ontology", History and Philosophy of Logic, vol. 14, 1993 pp. 1-14.

"The Conception of a pure logic - Husserl himself freely admitted that this was anything but a new idea. He mentions Kant, Herbart, Lotze, and Leibniz among its proponents and gives special credit for the nearly forgotten Bernhard Bolzano, 'one of the greatest logicians of all times.' But Husserl's own blueprint shows several original features, among which I shall mention merely what one might call the two-level structure of pure logic. The first level is that of the propositions or 'truths' studied by the logic of statements ('apophantics') as composed of meanings and their various combinations. The second level consists of the 'things' to which these statements refer, i.e., of the states of affairs (Sachverhalte) which they assert, the relations, complexes, and other configurations which they can enter and which are to be investigated by what Husserl calls a formal ontology.

Actually, this two-level pattern incorporates two one-level conceptions of pure logic, formulated most impressively by Bolzano and by Meinong respectively. Bolzano had organized his pure logic on the propositional level around representational ideas, propositions, and truths (Vorstellung an sich, Satz an sich, Wahrheit an sich). Meinong knew only of the 'state of affairs,' which he had named "Objektiv", and of other categories of formal ontology. Husserl's conception incorporated both these levels, that of the propositions, which are valid or invalid, and that of the states of affairs, which do or do not 'subsist,' as Bertrand Russell rendered Meinong's term. ('To be the case' might be a less hypostatizing equivalent of the rather harmless German word 'bestehen'.)However, the development of this pure logic in Husserl's own published writings, originally planned for a third volume '(1) is rather sketchy, although the mathematician Husserl continued to show interest in its mathematical formalization. He even seems to have taken notice of Bertrand Russell's work, but remained sceptical toward the value of a merely symbolic logic and of logical calculus, in which he took no active share. His Formale and transzendentale Logik (1929) contains some important additions to the conception of pure logic. Among them is that of a third level of logic, likewise of ideal structure, namely, that of speech, which consists of the identical sentences that express our propositional meanings: ideal, since, even when uttered at different times and places and by different speakers, they remain identically the same sentences. (...)Husserl's major interest, once he had established the possibility of a pure logic, turned immediately to different problems. He left its more systematic development to works like Alexander Pfänder's Logik (1921), which investigated the logic of concepts, of propositions, and of inferences, and to studies undertaken by some of his students based on this work, which dealt with the logic of questions, of assumptions, and of laws and commands. Roman Ingarden, one of Husserl's Polish students, gave a particularly impressive application of this type of analysis to the literary work of art, in which he explored separately and in considerable detail its main strata such as that of the sounds, that of the meanings, and that of the objects meant, without neglecting additional aspects and the total structure of the work." (pp. 152-153)

Notes

(1) Karl Schuhmann, Husserl-Kronik, Husserliana Documente I. La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977 pp. 63-64. (some notes omitted)

From: Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement. A Historical Introduction, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1963 (third edition).

"Husserl's conception of formal ontology is intimately involved with his conceptions both of logic and of what comprises possible objects of theoretical inquiry. He inherited an Aristotelian metaphysical perspective from the school of Franz Brentano; his conception of logic was informed by an ontology that included both universals and particulars of ontologically dependent and independent types. The elucidation of his conception of logic as formal ontology therefore requires a consideration of his ontology of universal essences and his eidetic method. He distinguishes various types of universal essences (eide) in terms of the relations of generalization and formalization.

Husserl assumes that each thing is an instance of some eidos or essence, and that essences may not only have, but be instances (e.g., he holds that every essence is an instance of the universals "object in general" and "essence'). Besides the relation of instance to essence, he held that there is a second relation (of generalization) defined on essences. In Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie I (1913), the essence "red" is a specification (but not an instance) of the more general essence, "color." Specification and generalization are inverses: for any two essences x and y, x is a generalization of y just in case y is a specification of x.

But the genus "essence" is not a generalization of the essence "red" or the essence "triangle." These are instances (not specifications) of the genus "essence." A (rough) guide for understanding this distinction: the instancing relation is to the generalization relation as the membership relation is to the subset relation; similar and easily confused but different. Husserl provides a part-whole characterization of the difference between the relations of instance to essence and specification to generalization (which he treats under the topics "formalization" and "generalization," respectively). If y is a generalization of x, then y is a part of x (at least in some "comprehensive" use of the term "part" that Husserl is willing to accept). But if y is a part of x (even in the comprehensive use of the term "part"), then y is not a formalization of x.

From this it follows that no formalization is a generalization and vice versa. The relation of specification to generalization enables the definition of some important types of essences. Any essence x is a genus iff there is some different essence y such that x is a generalization of y. Similarly, any essence x is a species iff there is some different essence y such that y is a generalization of x. Any essence x is a highest genus iff it is a genus and not a species, and a lowest species iff it is a species and not a genus. Every essence either is a lowest (infima) species or is specifiable to an infima species, and is either a highest genus, or is generalizable to a highest genus.

Husserl distinguishes between the extension and the empirical extension of an essence. For any essence x, there exists an extension of instances of x. Any y is the extension of an essence x iff y is the class of all possible instances of x. Any y is the empirical extension of an essence x iffy is the class of all actual (i.e., real) instances of x. If both the empirical extension and the extension of a given essence are non-empty, then the former is a proper subclass of the latter.

But Husserl distinguishes further types of extensions relevant to his conception of formal ontology. For any essence x, there exists an eidetic extension of x. The eidetic extension of any essence x is the class of lowest species that are specifications of x. Husserl then distinguishes between two types of eidetic extensions of universals: "material" and "mathematical." Any eidetic extension is mathematical just in case it is a subset of the eidetic extension of the essence "object in general" (etwas überhaupt); otherwise, it is a material eidetic extension.

A second set of distinctions regarding eide are developed by Husserl in terms of his notions of ontological dependence and independence. He calls things that require nothing else (other than the essences they instance) in order to exist ontologically independent (example: the nose of Socrates), and things that require something else (besides the essences they instance) in order to exist ontologically dependent (example: the pugness of the nose of Socrates). He refers to dependent individuals as moments of the things they require in order to exist." (pp. 238-239)

From: Gilbert T. Null, "Formal and Material Ontology", in: Lester Embree et alii (eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1997.

Bolzano and Husserl

"Though Bolzano's propositions in themselves had originally seemed to Husserl to be metaphysical abstrusities, it then became clear to him that what Bolzano had in mind was basically something quite obvious. By proposition in itself, Husserl now understood what people ordinarily called the sense of a statement, what is explained as one and the same when, for example, different persons are said to have asserted the same thing. Or, again. propositions in themselves were simply what scientists called a theorem, for example, the theorem about the sum of the angles in a triangle, which no one would think of considering the product of anyone's subjective experience of judging. This realization demystified Bolzano's teachings for Husserl (Husserl, Early writings in the philosophy of logic and mathematics, 1994, 201-02; Husserl, Briefwechsel. Die Brentanoschule, I (Husserl to Brentano, 27.III. 1905 ) 1994, 37).

It then further became clear to Husserl that this identical sense could be nothing other than the universal, the species, which belongs to a certain moment present in all actual assertions with the same sense and makes that very identification possible, even when the descriptive content of the individual lived experiences of asserting varies considerably otherwise. Interpreted in this way, he found Bolzano's idea that propositions are objects that nonetheless have no existence quite intelligible. They had the ideal being or validity of objects which are universals, the being which is established, for example, M the existence proofs of mathematics (Husserl, Early writings, cit. 1994, 201-02).

So, although Husserl had come to Halle free of Platonic idealism, he was to leave a committed Platonic idealist, who had come to believe that idealistic systems were of "the highest value", that entirely new and totally radical dimensions of philosophical problems were illuminated in them, that "the ultimate and highest goals of philosophy were opened up only when the philosophical method which these particular systems require is clarified and developed" (Husserl, "Recollections of Franz Brentano" (1919) in: Husserl: Shorter works, 1981, 345). Every possible effort, Husserl would write, had been made in the Logical Investigations "to dispose the reader to the recognition of this ideal sphere of being and knowledge ... to side with 'the ideal in this truly Platonistic sense', 'to declare oneself for idealism' with the author" (Husserl, Introduction to the Logical Investigations 1975, 20). Phenomenology would be an "eidetic" discipline. The "whole approach whereby the overcoming of psychologism is phenomenologically accomplished", Husserl explained, "shows that what ... was given as analyses of immanent consciousness must be considered as a pure a priori analysis of essence" (Husserl, Introduction cit. 1975, 42).

This transformation had been prepared, Husserl said, by the study of Leibniz and reflections on his distinction between verités de raison and verités de fait and on Hume's ideas about knowledge about matters of fact and relations of ideas. Husserl had become keenly aware of the contrast between Hume's distinction and Kant's distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments and this became crucial for the positions that he later adopted (Husserl, Introduction cit. 1975, 36).

The early 1890s thus found Husserl striving to develop the true concept of analyticity and to discover the basic philosophical line separating genuine analytical ontology from material, synthetic a priori, ontology, which he believed must be fundamentally distinct from it (Husserl, Introduction cit. 1975, 42-43). In the Logical Investigations, he would condemn Kant's logic as being utterly defective (Husserl, 1900-01, Prolegomena, 58). Kant, Husserl maintained, had not understood the nature and role of formal mathematics and the way in which he had defined the concept of analyticity was totally inadequate and even utterly wrong (Husserl, Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie 1906-07, 23). "Not only", Husserl complained, did Kant "never see how little the laws of logic are all analytic propositions in the sense laid down by his own definition, but he failed to see how little his dragging in of an evident principle for analytic propositions really helped to clear up the achievements of analytic thinking" (Husserl, 1900-01, Sixth Investigation, 66).

Persuaded of the inadequacy of Kant's analytic- synthetic distinction, Husserl came to believe that Bolzano's more Leibnizian approach to analyticity and meaning

harbored the insights logicians needed to prove their propositions by purely logical means. However, in Husserl's opinion, Bolzano never saw the internal equivalence between the analytic nature of both formal logic and formal mathematics made possible by developments in the field of mathematics that had only taken place after his death (Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic 1929, 26; Husserl, Introduction cit. 1975, 36-38).

By drawing the boundary line existing a priori between mathematics and natural sciences like psychology, Husserl believed that he was drawing the line of demarcation and expanding the domain of the analytical in keeping with the most recent discoveries in mathematics. Analytic logic, Husserl would ultimately explain in Formal and Transcendental Logic, is first of all valid as an absolute norm presupposed by any rational knowledge. His "war against logical psychologism, was in fact meant to serve no other end than the supremely important one of making the specific province of analytic logic visible in its purity and ideal particularity, freeing it from the psychologizing confusions and misinterpretations in which it had remained enmeshed with from the beginning". The value of his criticisms of logical psychologism lie, he believed, precisely in his drawing attention to a pure, analytic logic, distinct from any psychology, as being an independent field, like geometry or the natural sciences. Epistemological questions may well arise regarding this pure logic, he considered, but this must not interfere with its independent course, or involve delving into the concrete aspects of the logical life of consciousness. For that would be psychology (Husserl, Formal cit. 1929, 67).

No psychologistic empiricism, Husserl had come to believe, "can change the fact that pure mathematics is a strictly self-contained system of doctrines which is to be cultivated using methods that are essentially different from those of natural science" (Husserl, Ideas. General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology 1913, 29). "The empirical sciences--natural sciences", Husserl wrote to Brentano in 1905, "-- are sciences of 'matters of fact' ... . Pure Mathematics, the whole sphere of the genuine Apriori in general, is free of all matter of fact suppositions .... We stand not within the realm of nature, but within that of Ideas, not within the realm of empirical ... generalities, but within that of the ideal, apodictic, general system of laws, not within the realm of causality, but within that of rationality .... Pure logical, mathematical laws are laws of essence ... " (Husserl, cit. 1905, 37).

Husserl did, though, realize that not all the sciences are theoretical disciplines that, like mathematical physics, pure geometry or pure arithmetic, are characterized by the fact that their systemic principle is a purely analytical one. Sciences like psychology, history, the critique of reason and, notably, phenomenology, he believed, require that one go beyond the analytico-logical model. When they are formalized and one asks what it is that binds the propositional forms into a single system form, one finds oneself facing, Husserl maintained, nothing more than the empty general truth that there is an infinite number of propositions connected in objective ways that are compatible with one another in that they do not contradict each other analytically (Husserl, Logik und allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 1917/18, 54)." (pp. 83-84)

From: Claire Ortiz Hill, "On Husserl's Mathematical Apprenticeship and Philosophy of Mathematics", in: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Phenomenology World-Wide. Foundations - Expanding Dynamics - Life-Engagements. A Guide for Research and Study, Dordrecht: Kluwer 2002, pp. 78-94.

"An aspect of Bolzano's influence on Husserl which is well known is the Husserlian definition of analyticity (Simons, 1992, Ch. 15; Benoist, 1997, Ch. 2). In the Third Logical Investigation, 12, Husserl gives a definition by substitutivity: an analytic proposition is a proposition that keeps its truth-value by substitution of its extra- logical constituents. That definition seems evidently Bolzanian (Bolzano, 1837, 148), and not Kantian.

However, concerning that point, there are also differences. Bolzano's definition of analyticity is not only a logical one (Proust, 1986). According to Bolzano, there is logical analyticity, but also a more general kind of analyticity (defined by the possibility of substituting a determinate representation of the proposition by any other one, without changing the truth value of the proposition). Bolzano is aware of the difficulty of defining the logical constituents of a proposition as opposed to the other constituents (Simons, 1992, Ch. 2). In that sense, he is very far from the contrast between "formal" and "material" constituents that Husserl defends. Husserl was aware of this because he says that Bolzano completely missed the very idea of a "formal ontology".

A remaining point may not be as well known: the Bolzanian idea of "synthetic a priori" may also have had a great influence on Husserl's thought. Bolzano had the idea of synthetic a priori ("internal") relations between concepts, especially (in his early work: cf. Laz, 1993) concepts related to perception. According to him, there was an a priori of color, as well as of spatial extension, etc. Such ideas (of a "conceptual a priori", but one concerning intuition) may have played a decisive role in the invention of a phenomenological a priori (Benoist, 1999).

There are, in fact, numerous similarities between Bolzano's and Husserl's thoughts, and one may say that, along with Brentano, Bolzano was the author who had the greatest influence on Husserl. We are not, however, to forget the fundamental differences which also separate their ways of thinking. Bolzano was above all a realist. He did not care for constitution problems, and Husserl was right when he wrote in Ideas 94 that Bolzano had no idea of what phenomenology actually was. Certainly, the first stage of Husserl's thought, which can be called a "realist" one, was much closer to Bolzano's thought than what came afterward. However, Husserl, who inherited a way of thinking in terms of "acts" from his mentor Brentano, was at that time already of the opinion that consciousness may determine the real, and give an intentional sense to it. The very idea of intentionality is, however, very far removed from Bolzano's thought, which holds to an absolute realism. Such a position can also explain the fact that Bolzano had no idea of the Husserlian concept of "formal object", which is bound up in the concept of categorial operations on the object. Consequently, Husserl remarks, not without reason, that Bolzano was much more of an empiricist than he himself was (Husserl, 1913, 9). In Bolzano's work, a form of semantical realism (and, in another sense, of idealism) is to be found, but no sense of ontological (Platonic) idealities, because Bolzano had no way of constituting them.

The Bolzano-Husserl relation therefore provides an interesting example of a very close relationship, both historical and conceptual, between two ways of thinking founded on very different, even quite opposite presuppositions. Such a paradoxical synthesis may actually constitute the originality of phenomenology, in its unification of both branches (the psychological and the semantical) of the Austrian philosophical tradition." (p. 99)

From: Jocelyn Benoist, "Husserl and Bolzano", in: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Phenomenology World-Wide. Foundations - Expanding Dynamics - Life-Engagements. A Guide for Research and Study, Dordrecht: Kluwer 2002, pp. 98-100.

Frege and Husserl

"There is a historiographical myth or tale in analytic circles according to .which in his youth Husserl was a very naive philosopher who in his Philosophie der Arithmetik (1) of 1891 not only propounded an extreme form of psychologism but also dared to criticize the almighty Frege's views as presented in Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik (2) of 1884. According to the tale, it was Frege's 'devastating' critique of Husserl's book in 1894 and the study by Husserl of other of Frege's writings which were responsible for Husserl's abandonment of psychologism in the first volume of his Logische Untersuchungen (3) of 1900/1901 and his embracing of Frege's views on logic, mathematics and their relationship, and of Frege's distinction between sense and reference of expressions in the First Logical Investigation.

Husserl, however, so says the tale, fell once more out of grace into psychologism in the second volume of Logische Untersuchungen and never freed himself from such a pernicious addiction. To this historiographical myth have adhered many influential scholars in the analytic tradition, e.g., Evert W. Beth in The Foundations of Mathematics, (4) Michael Dummett in Frege: Philosophy of Language, (5) Dagfinn Follesdal in Husserl and Frege, (6) and, of course, almost every Fregean scholar that has ever mentioned issue, e.g., Hans Sluga (7) and Christian Thiel, (8) to name just two of the most distinguished. It is then no mystery that Husserl's views on logic and mathematics have been completely ignored in the analytic tradition.

The historiographical myth has been challenged in my dissertation of 1973 and especially in my paper "Remarks on Sense and Reference in Frege and Husserl," (10) and also by J. N. Mohanty in various writings, (11) and more recently and forcefully by Claire Ortiz Hill in her Word and Object in Frege and Russell (12) and in other writings. The result of such investigations is essentially the following: (1) Philosophie der Arithmetik, although published in 1891, represents Husserl's views at most up to 1890; (2) Husserl made the distinction between the sense and reference of expressions around 1890, and it is present in his review of the first volume of Ernst Schroder's Vorlesungen ber die Algebra der Logik also published in 1891, as Frege himself acknowledged in a letter to Husserl of May of that same year; (13) (3) Husserl's views on logic and mathematics as presented in Logische Untersuchungen and other later writings were developed from 1890 to 1895 with total independence of Frege, but under the influence of Bolzano, Lotze, and others, and of the mathematical work of Riemann, Cantor, and others, and are clearly distinct from Frege's; (4) there was no conversion to psychologism in the second volume of Logische Untersuchungen and later writings. By the way, as Claire Ortiz Hill has shown, (14) Husserl was not the propounder of a naive extreme psychologism in Philosophie der Arithmetik as Frege and his uncritical followers would like us to believe. But even if that were the case, it is a very unusual piece of scholarship to consider only a philosopher's early views on a subject while completely ignoring his mature views. If Kantian scholars from the very beginning had examined only Kant's pre-critical writings, we would very probably never had learnt about his duly famous views on space and time in his critical philosophy." (pp. 199-200)

Notes

(1) E. Husserl, Philosophie der Arithmetik, mit ergänzenden Texten, Husserliana, vol. XII (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1970 [1891]).

(2) G. Frege, Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Hamburg: Centenarausgabe, Meiner, 1986 [1884]), introduction by C. Thiel.

(3) E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Husserliana, vols. XVIII and XIX (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1975 and 1984 [1900/01,2nd ed. rev.,1913]).

(4) E. W. Beth, T he Foundations of Mathematics, 2nd ed. rev. (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1965 [1959]), p. 353.

(5) M. Dummett, Frege, Philosophy of Language (London: Duckworth, 1973), XLII-XLIII and p. 158.

(6) D. Follesdal, "Husserl and Frege,"Mind, Meaning and Mathematics, ed. L. Haaparanta (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), pp. 3-47, translation of his 1958 Norwegian Masters thesis.

(7) E.g., in H. Sluga, Gottlob Frege (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), p..2, and especially pp. 39-40 and his "Semantic Content and Cognitive Sense,"Frege Synthesized, ed. L. Haaparanta and J. Hintikka (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986), pp. 3-47.

(8) E. g. in C. Thiel's Editor's Introduction to the Centenarausgabe edition of Frege's Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik, p. LI.

(9) “Edmund Husserls Philosophie der Logik und Mathematik im Lichte der genwärtigen Logik und Grundlagenforschung," Ph.D. diss., Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, 1973.

(10) “Remarks on Sense and Reference in Frege and Husserl," Kant-Studien 73, no. 4 (1982): 425-39, chapter 2 of the present book. Although published in 1982, this paper was accepted for publication in 1979.

(11) E. g. in J. N. Mohanty, Husserl and Frege (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1982).

(12) C. O. Hill, Word and Object in Husserl, Frege and Russell (Athens, OH: University of Ohio Press, 1991). See also her "Frege's Attack on Husserl and Cantor" (chapter 6 of the present book), "Husserl and Frege on Substitutivity” (chapter 1 of the present book), and "Husserl and Hilbert on Completeness" (chapter 10 of the present book).

(13) See Frege's Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel, ed. G. Gabriel et. al. (Hamburg: Meiner, 1976), pp. 94-98.

(14) See Hill's "Frege' Attack on Husserl and Cantor," chapter 6 of the present book.

From: Guillermo E. Rosado Haddock, "To Be a Fregean or To Be a Husserlian: That is the Question for Platonists", in: Claire Ortiz Hill and F. E. Rosado Haddock, Husserl or Frege? Meaning, Objectivity, and Mathematics, La Salle: Open Court 2000, pp. 199-220.

Husserl's Formal and Transcendental Logic (1929)

"In 1929 Husserl published Formal and Transcendental Logic, which was the product of decades of reflection upon the relationship between logic and mathematics, between mathematical logic and philosophical logic, between logic and psychology, and between psychologism and his own transcendental phenomenology. One of the stated goals of the book was to redraw the boundary line between logic and mathematics in light of the new investigations into the foundations of mathematics. A second goal was to examine the logical and epistemological issues such developments have raised (Husserl, 1929, 10-17).

In Formal and Transcendental Logic, Husserl expressed his conviction that the formalization of large tracts of mathematics in the nineteenth century had laid bare the deep, significant connections obtaining between formal mathematics and formal logic, and had thus raised profound new questions about the deep underlying connections existing between the two fields. Logic and mathematics, he believed, had originally developed as separate fields because it had taken so long to elevate any particular branch of mathematics to the status of a purely formal discipline free of any reference to particular objects. Until that had been accomplished the important internal connections obtaining between the two fields were destined to remain hidden. However, once large tracts of mathematics had been formalized, the parallels existing between its structures and those of logic became apparent, and the abstract, ideal, objective dimension of logic could then be properly recognized, as it traditionally had been in mathematics. Developments in formalization had thus unmasked the close relationships between the propositions of logic and number statements, making it possible for logicians to develop a genuine logical calculus which would enable them to calculate with propositions in the way mathematicians did with numbers, quantities and the like (Husserl, 1929, Chapter 2).

Mathematics, Husserl deemed, has its own purity and legitimacy. Mathematicians are free to create arbitrary structures. They need not be concerned with questions regarding the actual existence of their formal constructs, nor with any application or relationship their constructs might have to possible experience, or to any transcendent reality. They are free to do ingenious things with thoughts or symbols that receive their meaning merely from the way in which they are combined, to pursue the necessary consequences of arbitrary axioms about meaningless things, restricted only by the need to be non-contradictory and in coordination with concepts previously introduced by precise definition. And the same, Husserl contended, was true for formal logic when it was actually developed with the radical purity that is necessary for its philosophical usefulness and gives it the highest philosophical importance. Severed from the physical world, it lacks everything that makes possible a differentiation of truths or, correlatively of evidences (Husserl, 1929, 138, 23, 40, 51).

However, as theoreticians of science in general, philosophical logicians are obliged to contend with the question of basic truths about a universe of objects existing outside of formal systems. They are called upon to seek solutions to the problems that come up when scientific discourse steps outside the purely formal domain and makes reference to specific objects or domains of objects. They are not free to sever their ties with nature and science, to accept a logic that tears itself entirely away from the idea of any possible application and becomes a mere ingenious playing with thoughts, or symbols that mere rules or conventions have invested with meaning. They must step out of the abstract world of pure analytic logic, with its ideal, abstract entities, and confront those more tangible objects that make up the material world of things. In addition, they are obliged to step back and investigate the theory of formal languages and systems themselves, and their interpretations (ex. Husserl, 1929, 40, 52).

So, Husserl believed that formal logic required a complement. Once liberated from things and psychologizing subjectivity, pure logic had to find its necessary complement in a transcendental logic that would take into account the connections that philosophical logic inevitably maintains with both knowing subjects and the concrete world. For Husserl, true philosophical logic could only develop in connection with a transcendental phenomenology by which logicians penetrate an objective realm which is entirely different from them (ex. Husserl, 1929, 40, 42).

However, Husserl always insisted on the primacy of the objective side of logic. He insisted that the subjective order could not be properly examined until the objective order had been, and until the objectivity of the structures girding scientific knowledge had been established and demonstrated. He maintained that pure logic with its abstract ideal structures had to be clearly seen and definitely apprehended as dealing with ideal objects before transcendental questions about them could be asked (Husserl, 1929, 8, 9, 11, 26, 42-44, 92, 98, 100).

It is knowledge of formal logic, he reminded readers in Formal and Transcendental Logic, that supplies the standards by which to measure the extent to which any presumed science meets the criteria of being a genuine science, the extent to which the particular findings of that science constitute genuine knowledge, the extent to which the methods it uses are genuine ones (Husserl, 1929, 7). The world constituted by transcendental subjectivity is a pre-given world, Husserl explained in Experience and Judgement. It is not a pure world of experience, but a world that is determined and determinable in itself with exactitude, a world within which any individual entity is given beforehand in a perfectly obvious way as being in principle determinable in accordance with the methods of exact science and as being a world in itself in a sense originally deriving from the achievements of the physico-mathematical sciences of nature (ex. Husserl, Experience and Judgement, 1939, 11; Husserl, 1929, 26b).

Husserl was perfectly conscious of the extraordinary difficulties that this dual orientation of logic involved. Since, according to his theories, the ideal, objective, dimension of logic and the actively constituting, subjective dimension interrelate and overlap, or exist side by side, logical phenomena thus seem to be suspended between subjectivity and objectivity in a confused way. In Formal and Transcendental Logic, he suggested that almost all that concerns the fundamental meaning of logic, the problems it deals with, its method, is laden with misunderstandings owing to the very fact that objectivity arises out of subjective activity. He even considered that it was due to these difficulties that, after centuries and centuries, logic had not attained the secure path of rational development (ex. Husserl 1929, 8)." pp. 90-94

From: Claire Ortiz Hill, "On Husserl's Mathematical Apprenticeship and Philosophy of Mathematics", in: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Phenomenology World-Wide. Foundations - Expanding Dynamics - Life-Engagements. A Guide for Research and Study, Dordrecht: Kluwer 2002, pp. 78-94.

Ontology in Formal and Transcendental Logic

"In his work Formale und Transzendentale Logik with its significant subheading "An Attempted Critique of the Logic Reason", Husserl formulates his final conception of logic.

We shall deal here only with the principal theses set forth in this work which, we feel, may introduce us into the core of Husserl's conception.

The formal character of logic. What specifically characterizes logic is the generality of its principles (its applicability to all the fields) an aprioristic or essential generality which is formal in nature. Moreover, according to Husserl, the mind itself is a formal concept. In order to define the most general of all concepts, i.e. that of form, which is extremely important in his system, he makes the following remarks: in a certain sense, any essential knowledge is a formation of "pure" reason, i.e. free from any empirical process, but in a second sense, that of principle form, any principle knowledge is not pure. An aprioristic sentence about sounds in general, thought of, hence, in "pure" generality, is pure in the first sense but it is an a priori contingent (Formale und Transzendentale Logik, p. 26). This sentence has in the eidos "sound" its concrete kernel, which transcends the realm of principle generalities and connects the sentence with the "contingent field of ideally possible sounds".

"Pure" reason exceeds not only what is empirical fact, but also any essential sphere related to hylé (the matter), to the concrete. Pure reason - writes Husserl - designates the system of pure principles closed in itself, which principles precede any a priori relating to the hylé (ibidem).

These two aspects of the general induce Husserl to accept two notions of formal: (1) the a priori formal, analytical in nature; (2) the a priori formal, material and contingent in nature.

Summing up, logic is formal for it is but the development of pure reason, which is a formal concept. Logic is thus the self-interpretation of pure reason (die Selbstauslegung der reinen Vernunft) which is a formal activity.

Formal logic is conceived as apophantic analytics. According to Husserl, Aristotle's logic was a formal logic in the above sense, but this was a specific sense. Aristotle was the first, he writes, to have fully brought out the concept of form meant to determine the fundamental sense of a "formal logic", such as we understand it at present and such as Leibniz understood in his synthesis of formal logic (as apophantic logic) and in his formal analysis of a unique mathesis universalis.

(...)

Formal logic, conceived in this way, will have a triple "stratification". Although Aristotle, says Husserl, foresaw this formal logic as an apophantic analytics, he still failed to discriminate all its strata or levels. Here are the three formal levels as conceived by Husserl:(a) Pure morphology of judgements, which is the first logical-formal discipline or the first formal level. It is concerned with the simple possibility of judgements as such without questioning their truth or falsehood. It deals with the generality of judgement forms, the fundamental forms and their variants.

Morphology will also be concerned with the concept of operation as the directing idea in the search for forms.

(b) Logic of consequences (logic of non-contradiction) is the second level of formal logic... This new level, which is one step higher than the first, is the science of the possible forms of true judgements. About these forms Husserl writes: "Particularly as regards the forms of deduction (complex forms of sentences in which correct as well as false deductions are to be found), it is clear that they are not arbitrary forms of sentences which may be associated in order to constitute forms of authentical deductions, of effectively consistent deductions" (op. cit., p. 47).

Thus it is obvious that some forms of deduction have at the same time the value of essential formal laws, especially of general truths relating to judgement consequences.

(c) Formal logic of truth. The third level of formal logic, superior to the other two, is the research of the formal laws of possible truth and its modalities.

Let us now see how logic proceeds from simple forms of the meaning of enunciations, i.e. from the forms of judgement, to become a logic of truth. It is clear that non-contradiction is the essential condition of possible truth. But it is equally obvious, that only by connecting concepts different in themselves can analytics become a logic of truth (op. cit., 49). "This stratification, writes Husserl, has remained alien to the usage of logic so far. It stands to reason that the separation of the formal logic of non-contradiction from the formal logic of truth is something essentially and fundamentally new, no matter how well this separation might have been known, if we only refer to words. For these expressions were themselves aiming at something else, namely at the distinction between the problems of formal logic, taken generally, and in this way leaving out all the material contents of knowledge, and those problems which have to he posed in a wider sense through a logic which, however, is such that it brings into play this material content. This last logic raises questions relating to the possibility of knowing natural reality and to the configuration of truths concerning the real world" (op. cit., p. 63). (...)

Formal apophantic and formal ontology. Examining the relation between formal apophantics (which is concerned with true or false judgements) and formal ontology, Husserl makes an essential distinction. In formal analytics the object is regarded solely as an object of possible judgements, as an object of the forms of judgement attributed to it by analytics. This may also be the case in mathematics. In other words, a formal analytics, as well as a formal mathematics, may be conceived of as a game in itself, with an autonomous aim which does not consider any field whatever where it might be applied. This is formal analytics as a pure play of thought. "Consequently, writes Husserl, mathematics (formal) may remain indifferent to the fact that all these formations are intended to appear within any sort of judgement aimed at knowledge (remaining undetermined in their substance).

(...)

It is therefore necessary to make a clear distinction between these two formal ways of conceiving logic: one aimed at the possibility of sentences being true or false - a domain of apophantics - and another, the domain of formal ontology, which includes knowledge. The first distinction Husserl's makes is the following: formal apophantics is thematically directed towards judgement (which also implies a tendency toward syntactic configurations which appear as constituents in the judgement which has become a theme; formal ontology is directed towards objects and their syntactic forms which are taken as themes in the activity of the judgement, though they are taken in such a way that the judgements and their elements are not themes. The solution of this problem is given by Husserl in this way: the judging act is not directed towards judgement but towards the thematic object. However, when we are considering our own judgements, their constitutive elements, their connections and their relations, this takes place within a new to-judge-act, of a second degree, a judgement about judgements, in which judgements become thematic objects.

Analytics as formal ontology. Since every science has its own field, scientific knowledge is directed towards a thematic object and in this case analytics, being a formal doctrine of science, has, as all sciences have, a real direction, and because of its a priori generality, it may be said to have an ontological direction. It is a formal ontology (op. cit., p. 107). Its a priori truths enunciate what is valid and therefore endowed with formal generality for objects-in-general, for domains of objects in general. They enunciate in what form these objects in general exist or may exist; these enunciations are themselves judgements, for it is in judgements alone that objects-in-general "exist" in the form of categories." (pp. 362-366)

From: Anton Dumitriu, History of Logic, Volume III, Tunbridge Wells: Abacus Press 1977.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on Husserl's Logic and Ontology (First Part: A - J)

Bibliography of Husserl's works

The most complete bibliography is: Edmund Husserl. Bibliography, Compiled by Steven Spileers, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1999, VI + 450 pages.

From the General Introduction: "This bibliography contains the publications of Husserl and the main secondary literature on Husserl, from Husserl's earliest publication (1887) till today (1997), As the collection of material was concluded in June 1997, the list of publications for the year 1997 if of course incomplete.

In this bibliography publications in the following languages have been included: German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch - for both primary and secondary literature. Since this bibliography has been base primarily on the consultation of the included documents (and not restricted to copying already existing Bibliographies), it was not possible to include publications in languages other than those mentioned."

Table of Contents: General Introduction 1; Bibliographies (in chronological order ) 9; Husserliana (Gesammelte Werke) 12; Husserliana-Dokumente III (Briefwechsel) 14; 1 Edited volumes [1-513] 15; 2 Works of Husserl; 2.1 German texts [514-707] 48; 2.2 English translations [708-786] 62; 2.3 French translations [787-872] 68; 2.4 Italian translations [873-923] 75; 2.5 Spanish translations [924-959] 78; 2.6 Portuguese translations [960-965] 81; 2.7 Dutch translations [966-967] 82; 2.8 Texts published by other authors in the Jahrbuch fiir Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung [968-1005] 82; 3 Secondary literature; 3.1 Secondary literature in German [1006-2345] 84; 3.2 Secondary literature in English [2346-4668] 154; 3.3 Secondary literature in French [4669-5433] 266; 3.4 Secondary literature in Italian [5434-6341] 303; 3.5 Secondary literature in Spanish [6342-6959] 344; 3.6 Secondary literature in Portuguese [6960-7067] 374; 3.7 Secondary literature in Dutch [7068-7184] 379; Index of names 386; Index of words 392; Index of keywords 396; Index of Husserl editors 409; Index of Husserl translators 410; Index of editors 412; Index of authors 418; Glossary (German-English) 445.

Bibliography of the studies on Logic and Ontology

1. Albertazzi, Liliana. 1996. "Material and Formal Ontology." In Formal Ontology, edited by Poli, Roberto and Simons, Peter M., 199-232. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

2. Ales Bello, Angela. 1981. "Le problème de l'être dans la phénomenologie de Husserl." In The Great Chain of Being and Italian Phenomenology, edited by Ales Bello, Angela, 41-50. Dordrecht: Reidel.

3. Ameriks, Karl. 1977. "Husserl's Realism." Philosophical Review no. 86:498-519.

4. Aquila, Richard. 1974. "Husserl and Frege on meaning." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 12:377-383.

5. Bachelard, Suzanne. 1968. A Study of Husserl's Formal and Transcendental Logic. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.

Translation by Lester E. Embree from the original French edition: La logique de Husserl. Étude sur Logique formelle et trascendentale, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957.

Paperback edition 1989.

6. Balaban, Oded. 2002. "Epoché: Meaning, object, and existence in Husserl's phenomenology." In Phenomenology World-Wide: Foundations, Expanding Dynamisms, Life-Engagements. A Guide for Research and Study, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 103-114. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

7. Banchetti-Robino, Marina. 1997. "Husserl's Theory of Language as Calculus Ratiocinator." Synthese no. 112:303-321.

"This paper defends an interpretation of Husserl's theory of language, specifically as it appears in the Logical Investigations, as an example of a larger body of theories dubbed `language as calculus'. Although this particular interpretation has been previously defended by other authors, such as Hintikka and Kusch, this paper proposes to contribute to the discussion by arguing that what makes this interpretation plausible are Husserl's distinction between the notions of meaning-intention and meaning-fulfillment, his view that meaning is instantiated through meaning-intending acts of transcendental consciousness, and his view that the content of meaning-intending acts is ideal meaning simpliciter. As well, the paper argues that the phenomenological method of reduction itself presupposes the notion that reality as such can be reached by subtracting the influence of the language of the natural attitude and its ontological commitments and it, thus, presupposes the conception of language as a reinterpretable calculus." (p. 303)

8. Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua. 1956. "Husserl's conception of a purely logical grammar." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 17:362-369.

Reprinted in: Aspects of Language. Essays and lectures on philosophy of language, linguistic philosophy and methodology of linguistics, Jerusalem: The Magnes Press 1970 pp. 89-97.

Reprinted also in: Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Readings on Husserl's Logical Investigations, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1977 pp. 128-137.

9. Bégout, Bruce. 2000. La généalogie de la logique. Husserl, l'antéprédicatif et le catégorial. Paris: Vrin.

"Si le concept husserlien de passivité a fasciné toute une génération de philosophes (Merleau-Ponty, Landgrebe, Levinas, Henry), il a rarement fait l'objet d'une étude qui adopte la perspective du fondateur de la phénoménologie. Husserl considère que la passivité appartient sans reste à la sphère de la constitution et qu'elle consolide par conséquent son transcendantalisme. Loin d'être un domaine de sens irréductible à la rationalité, elle représente même le fondement des opérations de la pensée catégoriale. C'est en son sein que doivent être cherchées les "sources" des formes supérieures de la logique. Toute passive et préconsciente qu'elle soit, l'expérience antéprédicative appartient donc pour Husserl au sujet transcendantal.

Ce travail s'attache ainsi à montrer que la genèse du catégorial à partir de l'expérience passive entre dans le projet général de Husserl d'asseoir la phénoménologie sur le socle originaire de l'expérience du monde."

10. ———. 2001. "La réverbération logique: la phénoménologie des "Prolégomènes à la logique pure" de Husserl." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 99:564-592.

11. Bell, David. 1989. "A Brentanian philosophy of arithmetics." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 2:139-144.

The aim of this paper is to identify the main respects in which Husserl's early philosophy, and in particular his early writings on the foundation of arithmetic, were influenced by Brentano's thought. It is claimed that the doctrinal, conceptual and methodological perspective within which Husserl's Philosophy of Arithmetic is conceived and executed (but which remains very largely suppressed in Husserl's texts) is that which he inherited, more or less without modification, from Brentano in the period to which Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, The Origin of our Knowledge of Right and Wrong, and the lectures on Descriptive Psychology belong. That influence was extensive and profound enough to warrant calling Husserl's philosophy of arithmetic 'Brentanian'."

12. ———. 1991. Husserl. New York: Routledge.

13. Benoist, Jocelyn. 1995. "La découverte de l'a priori synthétique matériel: au-delà du "quelque chose", le tout et les parties (Recherches Logiques III)." Recherches Husserliennes no. 3:3-22.

14. ———. 1996. "Les Recherches logiques de Husserl: Le catégorial, entre grammaire et intuition." In Phénomenologie et logique, edited by Courtine, Jean-François, 33-63. Paris: Presses de l'École normale supérieure.

15. ———. 1997. "De Kant à Bolzano: Husserl et l'analyticité." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 100:217-238.

"In his Logical Investigations, Husserl uses a concept of "analyticity" that seems quite different from the Kantian one. Analyticity is defined as formal and by the possibility of regular variations, so as in mathematical equations which determine relations between variables. In that matter, Husserl is influenced by Bolzano and is much deeply connected with the Austrian tradition of logical studies than with the transcendental tradition of the German Idealism. But he deals also with the problem that Bolzano left unsolved: if analyticity in the "strict" sense means the logical rule, what does "logical" mean?"

16. ———. 1997. Phénoménologie, sémantique, ontologie. Husserl et la tradition logique autrichienne. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

17. ———. 1998. "Qu'est-ce qu'un jugement? Brentano, Frege, Husserl." Études Phénomenologiques no. 14 (27-28):169-192.

18. ———. 1999. "Y a-t-il une "logique de l'expérience"? Remarques sur le contrat phénoménologique dans les Recherches logiques." Recherches Husserliennes no. 12:47-76.

19. ———. 2000. "Husserl entre Brentano et Bolzano: jugement et proposition." Manuscrito no. 23:11-39.

20. ———. 2001. Intentionnalité et langage dans les "Recherches logiques" de Husserl. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

21. ———. 2002. "Husserl and Bolzano." In Phenomenology world-wide: foundations, expanding dynamisms, life-engagements. A guide for research and study, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 98-100. Dodrecht: Kluwer.

22. ———. 2002. "The question of grammar in Logical Investigations, with special reference to Brentano, Marty, Bolzano and later developments in logic." In Phenomenology world-wide. Foundations -- Expanding dynamics -- Life-engagements, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 94-98. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

23. Benoist, Jocelyn, and Courtine, Jean-François, eds. 2003. Husserl. La représentation vide suivi de Les Recherches logiques, une oeuvre de percée. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

24. Bergmann, Gustav. 1960. "The ontology of Edmund Husserl." Methodos:359-392.

25. Bernet, Rudolf. 1990. "Husserl and Heidegger on Intentionality and Being." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 21:136-152.

26. ———. 2002. "Different concepts of logic and their relation to subjectivity." In One hundred years of phenomenology: Husserl's Logical Investigations revisited, edited by Zahavi, Dan and Stjernfelt, Frederik, 19-29. Dodrecht: Kluwer.

27. Bernet, Rudolf, Kern, Iso, and Marbach, Eduard. 1993. An Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology.

Original German edition: Edmund Husserl: Darstellung seines Denkens, Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1989.

28. Bernet, Rudolf, Welton, Donn, and Zavota, Gina, eds. 2005. Edmund Husserl. Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers. New York: Routledge.

Five volumes: 1. Circumspections: Classic Essays on Husserl's Phenomenology; 2. The Cutting Edge: Phenomenological Method, Philosophical Logic, Ontology, and Philosophy of Science; 3. The Nexus of Phenomena: Intentionality, Perception, and Temporality; 4. The Web of Meaning: Language, Noema, and Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity; 5. Horizons: Life-World, Ethics, History, and Metaphysics.

29. Beyer, Christian. 2004. "Bolzano and Husserl on singular existential statements." In Phenomenology and analysis. Essays on Central European philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Huemer, Wolfgang, 69-88. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

30. Blecksmith, Richard, and Null, Gilbert T. 1990. "Matrix representation of Husserl's part-whole-foundation theory." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 32:87-111.

"This paper pursues two aims, a general one and a more specific one. The general aim is to introduce and illustrate the use of Boolean matrices in representing the logical properties of one- and (mainly) two-place predicates over small finite universes, and hence of providing matrix characterizations of finite models for sets of axioms containing such predicates.

This method is treated only to the extent required to pursue the more specific aim, which is to consider axiomatic systems involving the part-whole relation together with a relation of foundation employed by Husserl."

31. Bosio, Franco. 1966. Fondazione della logica in Husserl. Milano: Lampugnani Nigri.

32. Bostar, Leo. 1994. "Reading Ingarden read Husserl: metaphysics, ontology, and phenomenological method." Husserl Studies no. 10:211-236.

33. Bredekamp, Horst. 1999. Thomas Hobbes visuelle Strategien. Der Leviathan: Das Urbild des modernen Staates. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

Traduction française: Stratégies visuelles de Thomas Hobbes. Le Léviathan, archétype de l’Etat moderne. Illustrations des oeuvres et portraits. Préface de Olivier Christin, traduit de l’allemand par Denise Modigliani, Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2003.

34. Brisart, Robert. 2002. "Husserl et Bolzano: le lien sémantique." Recherches Husserliennes no. 18:3-29.

35. ———. 2002. "La logique de Husserl en 1900 à l'épreuve marbourgeois: la recension de Natorp." Phänomenologische Forschungen:183-204.

36. ———, ed. 2002. Husserl-Frege. Les ambiguïtés de l'antipsychologisme. Paris: Vrin.

"Chacune des études rassemblées ici se propose de jeter sur les rapports de Husserl et de Frege un regard neuf et surtout exempt des nombreux préjugés qui, jusqu'ici, ont detérminé les diverses «lectures frégéennes de la phénoménologie». En pointant les différences profondes qui, sous le couvert de quelques similitudes de surface, ont en fait, et de très bonne heure, orienté les deux philosophes sur des voies radicalement opposées, ce recueil permet de se faire une idée plus claire de ce que fut en réalité l'antipsychologisme de Husserl dans tout ce qui le sépare de la version logiciste que lui a donné Frege. De cette manière, il concours également à apporter quelques éclairages nouveaux sur la question des origines de la philosophie contemporaine."

37. Brockdorff, Cay von. 1932. Eine Thomas Hobbes zugeschriebene Handschrift und ihr Verfasser. Ein verehrer Thomas Hobbes' als interpret des Aristoteles. Vol. 1, Veröffentlichungen der Hobbes-Gesellschaft. Kiel: K. J. Rössler.

38. ———. 1934. Die Urform der "Computatio sive logica". Vol. 2, Veröffentlichungen der Hobbes-Gesellschaft. Kiel: K. J. Rössler.

39. ———. 1934. Des Sir Charles Cavendish Bericht für Joachim Jungius über die Grundzüge der Hobbes'schen Naturphilosophie. Vol. 3, Veröffentlichungen der Hobbes-Gesellschaft. Kiel: K. J. Rössler.

40. Brown, Charles S. 1991. "Problems with the Fregean Interpretation of Husserl." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 22:53-64.

41. Bruzina, Richard. 2004. Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink. Beginnings and Ends in Phenomenology, 1928-1938. New Haven: Yale University Press.

42. Bucci, Paolo. 2000. Husserl e Bolzano. Alle origini della fenomenologia. Milano: Edizioni Unicopli.

43. Buonazia, Sabrina. 1996. "Per una formalizzazione della teoria husserliana dell'intero e della parte." Rivista di Filosofia no. 87:287-313.

44. Buongiorno, Federica. 2014. Logica delle forme sensibili: sul precategoriale nel primo Husserl. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.

45. Bussotti, Paolo. 1997. "Alcune note sulla gnoseologia husserliana della "Philosophie der Arithmetik", con particolare riferimento al concetto di numero." Teoria no. 17:119-133.

46. Cairns, Dorion. 1973. Guide for Translating Husserl. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

47. ———. 1976. Conversations with Husserl and Fink. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

48. ———. 2002. "The fundamental philosophical significance of Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen." Husserl Studies no. 18:41-49.

49. Caputo, Anselmo. 2000. "Gli "Studi psicologici per una logica elementare" di Husserl." Aquinas no. 43:31-62.

50. Casadio, Claudia. 1990. "Husserl e il paradigma mereologico." Lingua e Stile no. 25:405-423.

51. Casari, Ettore. 2005. "On Husserl's theory of wholes and parts." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 21:1-43.

"The strongly innovative theory of whole-parts relations outlined by Husserl in his Third logical Investigation-to which he attributed a basic value for his entire phenomenology-has recently attracted a renewed interest. Although many important issues have been clarified (especially by Kit Fine) the subject seems still worth being revisited. To this aim Husserlian universes are introduced. These are lower bounded distributive lattices endowed with a unary operation of defect and a binary relation of isogeneity. Husserl"s contents are identified with nonzero elements of a Husserlian universe and the dependence relations among contents are defined and studied starting from the idea that the defect of x is what x needs in order to "exist" i.e., in order to be "closed" with respect to the closure operation defined as the sup of x and its defect. It turns out that there are (at least) eight dependence relations which are worth to be considered. Many other questions concerning the world of contents (among them the proofs of the famous Husserl"s Satze) may now be discussed and clarified. Then the theory of species and genera is developed. Ultimate species (for short: species) are identified with equivalence classes of contents modulo isogeneity, and species in general (for short: genera) are identified with arbitrary unions of species. On the basis of the relation obtaining among two contents when they are isogeneous to two contents the first of which is a part of the second it becomes possible to develop a rather satisfying interpretation of Husserl"s theory of the dependencies among species and genera and of the material a priori laws. By strengthening the notion of Husserlian universe into the notion of rigid Husserlian universe, the theory of species and genera obtains a stronger version. Three models of the theory are exhibited. The first one, suggested by combinatorial-topological considerations, identifies contents with finite non-empty sets of natural numbers ; the second one identifies contents with non-empty sets of formulas of a formal language; the third one (not totally "rigid") identifies contents with positive integers."

52. Cavallin, Jens. 1997. Content and Object: Husserl, Twardowski and Psychologism. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

53. Celis, Raphael. 1996. "Le problème de la mathématisation du savoir dans l'oeuvre tardive de Husserl." Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie no. 128:1-24.

"The distinction established by Husserl in 1913 between formal and material ontology constitutes the theoretical basis needed in phenomenology to mathematize knowledge, and physics in particular. In "The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology", this distinction appears as a subwork in the sections concerned with Galileo and the birth of modern physics. Through its reformulation. Husserl tried to imagine the foundational range of an eidetic interpretation of nature as entrenched in the "Lebenswelt"."

54. Centrone, Stefania. 2009. Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics in the early Husserl. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

55. Cobb-Stevens, Richard. 1990. Husserl and Analytic Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

56. ———. 1994. "The beginnings of phenomenology: Husserl and his predecessors." In Routledge history of philosophy. Volume VIII: Twentieth-century Continental philosophy, edited by Kearney, Richard, 5-37. New York: Routledge.

57. ———. 1998. "Two stages in Husserl's critique of Brentano's theory of judgment." Études Phénomenologiques no. 14 (27-28):193-212.

58. ———. 2002. ""Aristotelian" themes in Husserl's Logical Investigations." In One hundred years of phenomenology: Husserl's Logical Investigations revisited, edited by Zahavi, Dan and Stjernfelt, Frederik, 79-92. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

59. Cortois, Paul. 1996. "From Apophantics to Manifolds: the structure of Husserl's Formal Logic." Philosophia Scientiae no. 1:15-50.

"A global picture of Husserl's architectonic view of the structure of formal science (including formal mathematics) is offered, as the view got its fullest (yet elliptic) articulation in the first three chapters of Formale und transzendentale Logik (1929). It is shown how Husserl's understanding of the structure of formal science (abstracting from the latter's subjective foundation) requires the independent consideration of at least three dimensions with respect to the formal, in terms, respectively, of 'approaches', epistemic 'interests', and 'successive layers'. First, there is the dimension of apophantic versus ontological approaches; second, the distinction of combinatorial (syntactic) versus truth (semantic) interest; and third, the consideration of the three layers of pure grammar, derivability relations, and systems or manifold theory. Moreover, it is shown how, in Husserl's view, the virtual identity of apophantic and ontological approaches on the top layer (deductive systems and/or manifolds) is supposed to give a kind of technical (if not philosophical) warrant for the unity of formal science."

60. Courtine, Jean-François. 1996. "L'objet de la logique." In Phénomenologie et logique, edited by Courtine, Jean-François, 9-31. Paris: Presses de l'Ecole normale supérieure.

61. ———, ed. 1996. Phénomenologie et Logique. Paris: Presses de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure.

62. Crosson, Frederick James. 1962. "Formal logic and formal ontology in Husserl's phenomenology." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 3:259-269.

63. Cunningham, Suzanne. 1976. Language and the Phenomenological Reductions of Edmund Husserl. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

64. Da Silva, Jairo José. 1999. "Husserl conception of logic." Manuscrito no. 22:367-397.

"This paper presents and discusses Husserl's conception of logic, formal logic in particular. A special emphasis is giving to Husserl's idea of a theory of manifolds as the closure of the thematic field of formal logic. Husserl's own version of logicism in the philosophy of mathematics is also presented and some aspects of his conception of formal logic are highlighted and contrasted with Frege's."

65. ———. 2000. "Husserl's two notions of completeness. Husserl and Hilbert on completeness and imaginary elements in mathematics." Synthese no. 125:417-438.

"In this paper I discuss Husserl's solution of the problem of imaginary elements in mathematics as presented in the drafts for two lectures he gave in Gottingen in 1901 and other related texts of the same period, a problem that had occupied Husserl since the beginning of 1890, when he was planning a never published sequel to "Philosophie der Arithmetik" (1891).

In order to solve the problem of imaginary entities Husserl introduced, independently of Hilbert, two notions of completeness (definiteness in Husserl's terminology) for a formal axiomatic system. I present and discuss these notions here, establishing also parallels between Husserl's and Hilbert's notions of completeness."

66. Dahlstrom, Daniel O., ed. 2003. Husserl's Logical Investigations. Dodrecht: Kluwer.

67. Dangelmayr, Siegfried. 1974. Methode und System. Wissenschaftsklassifikation bei Bacon, Hobbes und Locke. Meisenheim am Glain: Hain.

68. De Oliveira, Nythamar Fernandes. 2000. "Husserl's phenomenology of meaning in the "Logical Investigations"." Veritas no. 45:117-134.

"This article seeks to show that, although emerging out of a so-called traditional, metaphysical view of language, Edmund Husserl's theory of meaning qua ideal species in the "Logical Investigations" cannot be reduced to the linguistic expression of an essentialist, representational adequation, but rather emphasizes the role of intentionality, the ideality of language, and the constitutive character of consciousness in the fulfillment of "meaning" ("Bedeutung")."

69. Dougherty, Charles J. 1979. "The significance of Husserl's Logical Investigations." Philosophy Today no. 23:217-225.

"The purpose of this paper is to explore Husserl's critique of psychologism and his positive theory of mind against both its historical background and the developments that issued from it. The conclusion of the paper is the claim that Husserl's rejection of psychologism led him to ground logic in a realm of ideal relationships made available by way of a new method of non-reductive analysis, phenomenology. Phenomenological analysis itself is shown to be a methodological expression of a theory of mind as an active participant in the constitution of reality."

70. Dreyfus, Hubert L., ed. 1982. Husserl, Intentionality, and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: MIT Press.

71. Drummond, John J. 1991. "Willard and Husserl on logical form." In Phenomenology and the formal sciences, edited by Seebohm, Thomas, Føllesdal, Dagfinn and Mohanty, Jitendra Nath. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

72. ———. 1998. "From intentionality to intensionality and back." Études Phénomenologiques no. 27-28:89-126.

73. ———. 2002. "The Logical Investigations: Paving the way to a transcendental logic." In One hundred years of phenomenology: Husserl's Logical Investigations revisited, edited by Zahavi, Dan and Stjernfelt, Frederik, 31-40. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

74. ———. 2007. Historical Dictionary of Husserl's Philosophy. Lanham: Scarecrow Press.

75. Ducat, Philippe. 1996. "Que veut la "grammaire purement logique" de Husserl?" In Phénomenologie et logique, edited by Courtine, Jean-François, 65-81. Paris: Presses de l'École normale supérieure.

76. Dufourcq, Annabelle. 2011. La dimension imaginaire du réel dans la philosophie de Husserl. Dordrecht: Springer.

77. Dupré, Louis. 1964. "The concept of truth in Husserl's Logical Investigations." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 24:345-354.

"It is stated that Husserl's theory of truth is ambiguous. when Husserl attacked psychological interpretations of truth, a logicism seemed to be predominant; later he inclined toward intuitionism, where truth is constituted by the real presence of the object. Purely logical relations in an eternal order of truth, independent of things, seems to conflict with the idea of evidence, which is a psychological experience. It is concluded that truth is the result of an intuition in which the thing itself is given. Finally, parallels are drawn between Husserl's double truth and Leibniz's truths of reason and truths of fact."

78. Edie, James M. 1987. Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology. A Critical Commentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

79. Elliston, Frederick A., and McCormick, Peter, eds. 1977. Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

80. Elveton, Roy O., ed. 1970. The Phenomenology of Husserl. Selected Critical Readings. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.

Second edition with a new introduction: Seattle: Noesis Press, 2000.

81. English, Jacques. 1996. "Husserl et Hilbert: La phénoménologie est-elle axiomatisable?" In Phénomenologie et logique, edited by Courtine, Jean-François, 83-107. Paris: Presses de l'École normale supérieure.

82. ———. 1998. "Pourquoi et comment Husserl en est venu à critiquer Brentano." Études Phénomenologiques no. 14 (27-28):51-88.

83. ———. 2002. Le vocabulaire de Husserl. Paris: Ellipses.

84. Esfeld, Michael. 1995. Mechanismus und Subjektivität in der Philosophie von Thomas Hobbes. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog.

85. Farber, Marvin. 1943. The Foundations of Phenomenology. Edmund Husserl and the Quest for a Rigorous Science of Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Reprinted with a new introduction, Albany: State University of New York Press 1968.

Reprint of the 1968 edition: Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag 2006.

86. Fiebig, Hans. 1973. Erkenntnis und technische Erzeugung. Hobbes' operationale Philosophie der Wissenschaft. Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain.

87. Fine, Kit. 1995. "Part-Whole." In The Cambridge Companion to Husserl, edited by Smith, Barry and Smith, David Woodruff, 463-485. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

88. Fink, Eugen. 1995. Sixth Cartesian Meditation. The Idea of a Transcendental Method. Boomington: Indian University Press.

With textual notations by Edmund Husserl.

Translated with an introduction by Ronald Bruzina.

89. Fisette, Denis. 1994. Lecture frégéenne de la phénoménologie. Combas: Éclat.

90. ———, ed. 2003. Husserl's Logical Investigations Reconsidered. Dodrecht: Kluwer.

91. ———. 2010. "Descriptive Psychology and Natural Sciences: Husserl's early Criticism of Brentano." In Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences: Essays in Commemoration of Edmund Husserl, edited by Ierna, Carlo, Jacobs, Hanne and Mattens, Filip, 221-253. Dordrecht: Springer.

92. Fisette, Denis, and Lapointe, Sandra, eds. 2003. Aux origines de la phénoménologie. Husserl et le contexte des Recherches Logiques. Paris: Vrin.

"Douze étude ont été réunies dans ce volume afin de souligner le centenaire de la publication de l'ouvrage séminal de la phénoménologie. Fidèles à la vocation que lui assigne le père de la phénoménologie d'être une oeuvre de percée, ces études ouvrent de nouvelles perspectives sur ce monumental Grundwerk. Elles se penchent sur les différents aspects des Recherches logiques en portant une attention particulière à son contexte historique, à ses sources (bolzaniennes et brentaniennes) dans la philosophie du XIXe siècle et à sa réception, du Cercle de Munich jusque dans la philosophie britannique."

93. Flores, Luis. 2002. "Husserl's concept of pure logical grammar." In Phenomenology world-wide: foundations, expanding dynamisms, life-engagements. A guide for research and study, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 100-103. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

94. Føllesdal, Dagfinn. 1972. "An introduction to phenomenology for analytic philosophers." In Contemporary philosophy in Scandinavia, edited by Paul, Anthony, Olson, Raymond and Wright, Georg Henrik von, 417-429. Baltimore, London: The John Hopkins Press.

"Phenomenology is a science of noemata.

An object, for Husserl, is anything toward which an act can be directed. Not all objects are material; there are also immaterial objects, for example, numbers and the other ideal objects of mathematics.

Mathematics and all natural sciences, including psychology, are sciences about the objects of our acts. But we have just noticed that in addition to possibly having an object, every act also has a noema. And what Husserl wanted to create with his phenomenology was a new science, a science of noemata.

Noemata are objects, too. In an act of reflection the noema of one act can be made the object of another act.

Mathematicians and scientists explore what we experience, the world of nature around us. In the phenomenological reduction we disregard this nature, this world of objects toward which our acts are directed. We do not deny that it is there, as if we were sophists, nor do we doubt that it is there, as if we were sceptics, but we, as it were, put it in brackets. We perform an epoché, Husserl said, borrowing a word which the skeptics of antiquity used to denote abstinence from any judgment.

The phenomenologist does not worry about what is or is not in the real world around him. He is not disturbed by the fact that some of our acts have objects, others not, but turns to the noemata of our acts. These are the phenomena he considers. The real world is reduced to a correlative of our acts, which constitute it, bring it forth. All that is transcendent is put in brackets together with the other objects of our acts. What is left, purified of all that is transcendent, Husserl called transcendental. The phenomenological reduction hence leads us from the transcendent to the transcendental.

Phenomenological analysis-

The phenomenologist analyzes the noemata of his acts in order to clarify how the world is 'constituted' by his consciousness. He observes that he expects a tree to have a back, to continue to be there if he turns away from it for a moment, and so forth. He studies the structure of the noemata of his acts. He elucidates how his expectations are arranged in patterns, how new sense impressions can change his expectations and sometimes lead to an 'explosion' of the noemata and make him reject his original supposition about the direction of his act. According to Husserl, phenomenology thereby becomes an analysis of something similar to what Kant called the a priori. If one were to describe phenomenology in brief, it would therefore be this: an investigation of the a priori, the necessary. Its aim is similar to that of many other philosophies from antiquity onward. But its methods, and the general framework of acts, noemata, and objects within which it tries to make sense of this aim, are different.

It is also not difficult to see the close connection between analytic philosophy and phenomenology here. For just as analytic philosophers, especially those of the so-called linguistic variety, analyze meaning, meanings of linguistic expressions, so the phenomenologist analyzes noemata, or meanings of acts in general."

95. ———. 1976. "Husserl's notion of noema." Journal of Philosophy no. 20:680-687.

Reprinted in: Hunert Dreyfus and Harrison Hall (eds.), Husserl. Intentionality and Cognitive Science, Cambridge: The MIT Press 1982, pp. 73-80.

96. ———. 1991. "The justification of logic and mathematics in Husserl's phenomenology." In Phenomenology and the Formal Sciences, edited by Seebohm, Thomas, Føllesdal, Dagfinn and Mohanty, Jitendra Nath, 25-34. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"The problem of justifying our beliefs, giving evidence for them, is central in Husserl's phenomenology. In his writings he comes back again and again to the notions of justification and evidence.

Husserl is particularly interested in perfect evidence, of which he distinguishes two kinds: adequate evidence, which we have when all our anticipations are filled, and apodictic evidence, which we have when the negation of our judgment is self-contradictory. This emphasis on apodictic and adequate evidence, together with Husserl's concern with philosophy as a strict science and with the possibility of establishing absolutely certain and obvious first premisses, might give us the impression that Husserl was a foundationalist: he wanted to establish a firm foundation for science and philosophy of the kind that Aristotle, Descartes, and many others have been striving for.

However, in this paper I shall argue that in spite of appearances, Husserl was not a foundationalist. He was not even a foundationalist in logic and mathematics,- the classical strongholds of foundationalism; on the contrary he was close to the position that was later put forward by Nelson Goodman and some other "holists". (p. 25)

97. ———. 1994. "Husserl and Frege. A contribution to elucidating the origins of phenomenological philosophy." In Mind, meaning, and mathematics. Essays on the philosophical views of Husserl and Frege, edited by Haaparanta, Leila, 3-47. Kluwer: Dordrecht.

Translated from German by Claire Ortiz Hill.

Original edition: Husserl und Frege. Ein Beitrag zur Beleuchtung der Entstehung der phänomenologischen Philosophie, Oslo: I kommisjon hos Aschehoug 1958.

98. ———. 1995. "Gödel and Husserl." In From Dedekind to Gödel, edited by Hintikka, Jaakko, 427-446. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

99. ———. 1998. "La notion d'objet intentionnel chez Husserl." In Jaakko Hintikka: questions de logique et de phénoménologie, edited by Rigal, Élisabeth, 223-233. Paris: Vrin.

100. ———. 2001. "Bolzano, Frege and Husserl on reference and object." In Future pasts. The analytic tradition in twentieth century philosophy, edited by Floyd, Juliet and Shieh, Sanford, 67-80. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

101. ———. 2004. "Husserl and the Categories." In Categories: historical and systematic essays, edited by Gorman, Michael. Washington: The Catholic University of America Press.

102. ———. 2020. "Brentano and Husserl on Intentionality." In Franz Brentano and Austrian Philosophy, edited by Fisette, Denis, Frechette, Guillaume and Stadler, Friedrich, 23-48. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Brentano’s lectures attracted a large number of very gifted students who became fascinated with the idea of intentionality and developed it further in several different directions. Brentano followed up Aristotle’s view on our mind taking on the form of the object and he was particularly influenced by Thomas Aquinas’ approach. His students struggled with how to deal with acts without objects, for example hallucinations, and proposed different solutions. Husserl tried to agree with his teacher as far as he could. He even regarded agreement with one’s teacher as a duty, which could only be forsaken for very good reasons. But he thought he had such reasons. These led him to phenomenology, which is briefly presented in this paper. In a short appendix I use the connection between Aristotle and Husserl to examine the controversy between two prominent Aristotle scholars, Myles Burnyeat (1992) and Richard Sorabji (1974, 1992), and their many followers on both sides concerning the interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of perception. The appendix was presented in lectures at conferences in 1995 and 1996, but never sent off for publication.

It was published in Greek translation in 1997. In the following years, Burnyeat, who died on September 20, 2019, modified his view, probably without knowing about my criticism. As far as I know, Sorabji stands by his view."

References

Burnyeat, Myles. 1992. Is an Aristotelian Philosophy of Mind Still Credible? (A Draft). In Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, ed. M. Nussbaum and A. Rorty, 15–26. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Sorabji, Richard. 1974. Body and soul in Aristotle. In Philosophy 49, pp 63–89. Here quoted from the reprint in Michael Durrant, (Ed.), Aristotle’s De Anima in focus, London: Routledge, 1993.

———. 1991. From Aristotle to Brentano: The Development of the Concept of Intentionality. Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Supplementary volume, pp. 227–259.

103. Gallerand, Alain. 2013. "L’influence de Bolzano sur l’analyse phénoménologique du langage ordinaire chez Husserl." Philosophie no. 120:22-44.

104. ———. 2014. Husserl et le phénomène de la signification. Paris: Vrin.

105. Gardies, Jean-Louis. 1985. Rational Grammar. München: Philosophia Verlag.

Translated from the original French: Ésquisse d'une grammaire pure - Paris, Vrin, 1975 by Kevin Mulligan.

"This enlarged version of a book which originally appeared in French in 1975 provides an introduction to the project of a rational grammar, as it was sketched out by Husserl and partially developed by Ajdukiewicz. Besides investigating the nature of grammaticality, the distinction between logic and grammar and the relation of grammatical structure to the communicative functions of language, the author analyzes a large number of grammatical phenomena (names, verbs, conjunctions, adverbs, mood, tense, aspect, etc.)."

106. Ginev, Dimitri. 1992. "Fundamental ontology and Regional ontology of Humanities." Epistemologia no. 15:87-100.

107. Gobber, Giovanni. 1985. "Alle origini della grammatica categoriale. Husserl, Lesniewski, Ajdukiewicz." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 77:258-295.

108. Haaparanta, Leila. 1988. "Analysis as the Method of Logical Discovery: Some Remarks on Frege and Husserl." Synthese no. 77:73-97.

"There are not too many philosophers who have tried to give a natural explanation for the miracles of nineteenth century logic. We know that a radically new logic came into being in those days. But little, if anything, has been said about the incentives of these innovations. Hans Sluga and Gottfried Gabriel have stressed and worked on the historical perspective of that remarkable period, and I have tried to give an answer to the question, as far as Frege’s logic is concerned, but much can still be done.(1)

If we wish to solve this interpretational puzzle, it is useful and quite instructive to try to find out how the pioneers of modern logic and the philosophers of logic in the nineteenth century did what they did. That is, we must look for the methods which guided their logical studies. This interpretational task amounts to giving a methodological reconstruction of the work of nineteenth century logicians. This paper is an attempt to find out the methods which Frege and Husserl followed in their logical studies." (p. 73)

(1) See Hans D. Sluga: 1980, Gottlob Frege, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, Boston and Henley; and see also Sluga: 1984, ‘Frege: the early years’, in R. Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, and Q. Skinner (eds.): 1984, Philosophy in History: Essays on the Historiography of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 329-56; and 1987, ‘Frege Against the Booleans’, Notre Dame Jourhal of Formal Logic 29, 80-98. For Gabriel’s views, see his 1984, ‘Bedeutung, Value and Truth-Value’, The Philosophical Quarterly 34, 372-76; and his 1986, ‘Frege als Neukantianer’, Kant-Studien 77, 84-101. My philosophical reconstruction of Frege’s conceptual notation can be found in my (1985) book Frege’s Doctrine of Being, Acta Philosophica Fennica 39.

109. ———, ed. 1994. Mind, Meaning, and Mathematics. Essays on the Philosophical Views of Husserl and Frege. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

110. ———. 1998. "L'analyse comme méthode de justification: quelques remarques sur les études logiques de Husserl." In Jaakko Hintikka: questions de logique et de phénoménologie, 234-246. Paris: Vrin.

111. ———. 2006. "Husserl's argument against naturalism and his own foundation of pure philosophy." In Foundations of the formal sciences IV. The history of the concept of the formal sciences, edited by Löwe, Benedikt, Peckhaus, Volker and Rasch, Thomas, 69-79. London: College Publications.

112. Hamacher, Hermes Adelheid. 1992. "Debate between Husserl and Voigt concerning the logic of content and extensional logic." Analecta Husserliana no. 34.

113. Hanna, Robert. 1984. "The relation of form and stuff in Husserl's grammar of pure logic." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 44:323-342.

114. ———. 1993. "Logical cognition: Husserl's "Prolegomena" and the truth in psychologism." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 53:251-275.

"Frege's devastating attack on logical psychologism leaves philosophers of logic in a quandary: If logical propositions exist altogether independently of human acts of thinking, then "how" can they be grasped by thinkers? Husserl's "Prolegomena to Pure Logic" contains a thorough critique of psychologism, but manages to avoid Frege's problem by developing a plausible theory of logical cognition. Husserl's account entails that a) logical propositions are essentially knowable by finite rational minds, but also b) those propositions are irreducible to individual human minds. Hence Husserl shows that there can be a weak form of psychologism that is perfectly consistent with anti-psychologism."

115. Hart, James G. 2004. "Edmund Husserl, Analyses concerning passive and active synthesis. Lectures on transcendental logic." Husserl Studies no. 20:135-159.

116. Harvey, Charles W., and Shelton, Jim D. 1992. "Husserl's phenomenology and the ontology of the natural sciences." In Phenomenology of natural science, edited by Hardy, Lee and Embree, Lester. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

117. Heffernan, George. 1989. "In the beginning was the "Logos": hermeneutical remarks on the starting-point of Edmund Husserl's "Formal and transcendental logic"." Man and World no. 22:185-213.

"According to the leading commentators and the author himself, Edmund Husserl's "Formal and transcendental logic" is the most important work on phenomenological logic ever written. Nonetheless, it has, in general, gained far less attention than the "Logical investigations" and the "Ideas on a pure phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy". In particular, the argument of section 1 of the "Logic", namely, that it is fruitful to start with the meanings of the expression "Logos" in order to develop a genuinely transcendental logic, has received virtually no consideration. This paper takes a step towards filling this empty space by analyzing and criticizing the argument of section 1 as a problem to which (a) solution(s) must be found. Throughout, the paper reads Husserl's "descriptions" as 'arguments' for his positions, thereby avoiding any of the obscurity sometimes infecting work in continental philosophy."

118. ———. 1998. "Miscellaneous Lucubrations on Husserl's Answer to the Question "was die Evidenz sei": A Contribution to the Phenomenology of Evidence on the Occasion of the Publication of Husserliana volume XXX." Husserl Studies no. 15:1-75.

119. ———. 2002. "Language, logic, and logocentrism in transcendental phenomenology: critical reflections on the Sprachvergessenheit of the later Husserl." New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy no. 2:205-247.

120. Hill, Claire Ortiz. 1991. Word and Object in Husserl, Frege, and Russell. The Roots of Twentieth-Century Philosophy. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press.

Reprinted 2001.

Contents: Abbreviations IX; Preliminary terminological comments XI; Glossary XIII; Acknowledgments XIV; Introduction 1.

Part One: Logic, realism and the foundations of arithmetic

1. The argument that Frege influenced Husserl 7; 2. Husserl, Frege, and psychologism 13; 3. Sense, meaning, and noema; 4. Husserl's 1891 critique of Frege 43; 5. Frege's review and the development of Husserl's thought 57; Conclusion: analyticity 91.

Part Two: Conceptual clarity

Introduction 99; 6. Intensions and extensions 103; 7. Presentation and ideas 125; 8. Function and concept 137; 9. On denoting 147; Conclusion: The way things are 163; Notes 175; Bibliography 191; Index 215.

From the Introduction: "As a book by the founder of phenomenology that examines Frege's ideas from Brentano's empirical standpoint, Husserl's Philosophy of Arithmetic is both an early work of phenomenology and of logical empiricism. In it Husserl predicted the failure of Frege's attempt to logicize arithmetic and to mathematize logic two years before the publication of the Basic Laws of Arithmetic in 1893. I hope to show that Husserl did so in terms that would prefigure both the account Frege would give of his error after Russell encountered the paradoxes ten years later and the discussions of Principia Mathematica. Moreover, in locating the source of Frege's difficulties in the ambiguous theory of identity, meaning, and denotation that forms the basis of Frege's logical project and generates Russell's contradictions, Husserl's discussions indicate that these contradictions may have as serious consequences for twentieth century philosophy of language as they have had for the philosophy of mathematics.

This book is about these Austro-German roots of twentieth century philosophy. It is mainly about the origins of analytic philosophy, about the transmission of Frege's thought to the English speaking world, and about the relevance of Husserl's early criticism of Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic to some contemporary issues in philosophy. It is more about Husserl the philosopher of logic and mathematics than it is about Husserl the phenomenologist, and it is principally addressed to those members of the philosophical community who, via Russell, have been affected by Frege's logic.

This makes it very different from work on Husserl and Frege that has focused on the importance of Frege's criticism of Husserl's Philosophy of Arithmetic and attendant issues. The goal of this book is quite the opposite. It studies the shortcomings in Frege's thought that Husserl flagged and Russell endeavored to overcome. One possible sequel to this book would be a thorough study of Husserl's successes and failures in remedying the philosophical ills he perceived all about him, but that goes beyond the scope of this work, which follows the issues discussed into the work of Russell and his successors." (pp. 3-4)

121. ———. 1994. "Frege's attack on Husserl and Cantor." Monist no. 77:345-357.

122. ———. 1997. "Did Georg Cantor influence Edmund Husserl?" Synthese no. 113:145-170.

"Few have entertained the idea that Georg Cantor, the creator of set theory, might have influenced Edmund Husserl, the founder of the phenomenological movement. Yet an exchange of ideas took place between them when Cantor was at the height of his creative powers and Husserl in the throes of an intellectual struggle during which his ideas were particularly malleable and changed considerably and definitively. Here their writings are examined to show how Husserl's and Cantor's ideas overlapped and crisscrossed in the areas of philosophy and mathematics, arithmetization, abstraction, consciousness and pure logic, psychologism, metaphysical idealism, new numbers, and sets and manifolds."

123. ———. 2002. "On Husserl's mathematical apprenticeship and philosophy of mathematics." In Phenomenology world-wide: foundations, expanding dynamisms, life-engagements. A guide for research and study, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 74-94. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

124. ———. 2015. "Husserl’s Way Out of Frege’s Jungle." In Objects and Pseudo-Objects: Ontological Deserts and Jungles From Brentano to Carnap, edited by Seron, Denis, Richard, Sebastien and Leclercq, Bruno, 183-196. Berlin: de Gruyter.

125. Hill, Claire Ortiz, and Da Silva, Jairo José. 2013. The Road Not Taken. On Husserl's Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics. London: College Publications.

126. Hill, Claire Ortiz, and Rosado Haddock, Guillermo. 2000. Husserl or Frege? Meaning, Objectivity, and Mathematics. Chicago: Open Court.

127. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1996. "Husserl: la dimension phénoménologique." Les Études Philosophiques:481-496.

128. ———. 1998. "L'idée de phénoménologie chez Wittgenstein et Husserl." In Jaakko Hintikka: questions de logique et de phénoménologie, edited by Rigal, Élisabeth. Paris: Vrin.

129. ———. 2003. "The Notion of Intuition in Husserl." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 57:169-192.

130. Höffe, Otfried. 2010. Thomas Hobbes. Münster: C. H. Beck.

131. Hopkins, Burt C. 1993. Intentionality in Husserl and Heidegger. The Problem of Original Method and Phenomenon of Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

132. ———, ed. 1997. Husserl in Contemporary Context: Prospects and Projects for Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

133. ———. 2011. The Philosophy of Husserl. Durham: Acumen.

134. ———. 2011. The Origin of the Logic of Symbolic Mathematics: Edmund Husserl and Jacob Klein. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

135. Horstmann, Frank. 2006. Nachträge zu Betrachtungen über Hobbes’ Optik. Berlin: Mackensen.

136. Huemer, Wolfgang. 2004. "Husserl's critique of psychologism and his relation to the Brentano School." In Phenomenology and analysis. Essays on Central European philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Huemer, Wolfgang, 199-214. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

137. Ierna, Carlo. 2008. "Husserl's critique of double judgments." In Meaning and Language: Phenomenological Perspectives, edited by Mattens, Filip, 49--73. Dordrecht: Springer.

138. Iorio, Marco. 2008. "Thomas Hobbes -- der Aristoteliker Überlegungen zu seiner politischen Philosophie." Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie no. 94:295-310.

"Thomas Hobbes is held to be a radical critic of Aristotelian anthropology and social and political theory. This paper aims to refute this claim. Though there are some significant differences between Aristotle's and Hobbes' point of view, it is not true that Hobbes established a new paradigm of political thought."

139. Isermann, Michael. 1991. Die Sprachtheorie im Werk von Th. Hobbes. Münster: Nodus.

140. Jacoby, Eduard G. 1977. "Der "Anti-White" des Thomas Hobbes." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 59:156-166.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on Husserl's Logic and Ontology (Second Part: K - Z)

Bibliography

1. Kaminski, Régine. 2003. Genèse du logique dans la phénoménologie de Husserl. Paris: Editions L'Harmattan.

2. Kaufmann, Matthias. 1995. "Thomas Hobbes über Universalien und die Wahrheit von Sätzen." In Facetten der Wahrheit. Festschrift für Meinolf Wewel 99-110. Freiburg im Breisgau: Alber.

3. Kersting, Wolfgang. 1992. Thomas Hobbes zu Einführung. Hamburg.

Aktualisierte Auflage 2009.

4. Klein, Jacob. 1940. "Phenomenology and the History of Science." In Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl, edited by Farber, Marvin, 141-163. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Reprinted in: Robert B. Williamson and Eliott Zuckerman (eds.), Jacob Klein. Lecture and Essays, Annapolis: St. John's Press, 1985, pp. 65-84.

5. Kontos, Pavlos. 1994. "Heidegger, lecteur de Husserl: logique formelle et ontologie materielle." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 92:53-81.

"The indications provided by Heidegger himself in his course on 'Phenomenological interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason' make it possible to pinpoint his debt to Husserl. It turns out that this course followed the same main steps in its argument as Husserl in 'Formal logic and transcendental logic': a) formal logic and transcendental logic; b) the subordination of formal logic to transcendental logic; c) regional unity as a basis for formal logic; d) transcendental subjectivity as ultimate basis. The account of this parallel structure makes it possible to interpret from a different point of view Heidegger's reading of Husserl and provides the proof of the phenomenological closeness of these two texts as regards the basis of their 'logic'."

6. Koselleck, Reinhart, and Schnur, Roman, eds. 1969. Hobbes-Forschungen. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.

Inhalt: W. H. Greenleaf: Hobbes: The Problem of Interpretation 9; Julien Freund: Le Dieu Mortel 38; Samuel I. Mintz: Hobbes and the Law of Heresy: A New Manuscript 53; François Tricaud: "Homo homini Deus", "Homo homini lupus": Recherche des Sources des deux Formules de Hobbes 61; Winfried Förster: Thomas Hobbes und der Puritanismus 71; Ion Contiades: Zur Verortung des Leviathan. Thomas Hobbes und das Osmanenreich 91; Manfred Riedel: Zum Verhältnis von Ontologie und politischer Theorie bei Hobbes 103; F. O. Wolf: Zum Ursprung der politischen Philosophie des Hobbes 119; Raymond Polin: L’Obligation Morale et Politique chez Thomas Hobbes 133; Howard Warrender: A Postscript on Hobbes and Kant 153; K. R. Minogue: Hobbes and the Just Man 159; Michel Villey: Le Droit de l’Individu chez Hobbes 173; Mario A. Cattaneo: Hobbes Théoricien de l’Absolutisme Éclairé 199; Martin Kriele: Notes on the Controversy between Hobbes and English Jurists 211; Janine Chanteur: Note sur les Notions de "Peuple" et de

"Multitude" chez Hobbes 223; François Tricaud: Quelques Questions Soulevées par la Comparaison du "Léviathan" Latin avec le "Léviathan" Anglais 237; Reinhart Klemens Maurer: Stellungnahme zu einigen Referaten des Hobbes-Kolloquiums 245; Winfried Dalimayr: Hobbes and Existentialism: Some Affinities 259; Reinhard Stumpf: Hobbes im deutschen Sprachraum -- Eine Bibliographie 287-390.

7. Kremer Marietti, Angèle. 2003. Cours sur la première recherche logique de Husserl. Paris: Editions L'Harmattan.

8. Küng, Guido. 1972. "The World as Noema and as Referent." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 2:15-26.

"A major stumbling block in the way of a dialogue between phenomenology and; logistic philosophy is the fact that the semantical terminology of the two movements has developed in opposite directions. In logistic philosophy Frege’s 3-levelled semantics of sign, sense and referent soon gave way to Russell’s 2-levelled semantics of sign and referent. In Husserlian phenomenology, on the other hand, the notion of sense was not abandoned but broadened, especially through the elaboration of the notion of the noema. A closer look at the contemporary discussions in logistic philosophy shows however that the 3-levelled semantical framework is reappearing in a new form. The straightforward realism of Russell has given way to a more Kantian position where the universe of discourse is no longer simply identified with absolute reality. This means that the logistic philosophers are discovering the noematic character of their universes of discourse.

This new logistic distinction between universes of discourse and absolute reality, which parallels the phenomenological distinction between the world as noema and the absolute real world (if there is any), brings with it a distinction between ontology and metaphysics: the description of different universes of discourse, respectively of different noematic worlds, can be called the ontological task, and the question as to which universe of discourse, respectively which noematic world (if any), is the best map of absolute reality is the concern of metaphysics.

The parallelism between the semantics of contemporary logistic philosophy and phenomenology is obscured by a terminological discrepancy due to the above mentioned divergent historical development: in logistic philosophy the signs are said to refer to the entities in the universe of discourse, whereas in phenomenology the noemata are not properly speaking the referents of noetic acts, but are said to belong on the level of sense. However, the phenomenological way of distinguishing noematic world and absolute reality in terms of sense and referent is very important, because it provides the most adequate way of conceiving the puzzling relationship between appearance and reality, and avoids the shortcomings of the causal and the picture theory, the identity theory and the adverbial theory."

9. Künne, Wolfgang. 2003. "Are questions propositions?" Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 57:157-168.

10. Kusch, Martin. 1988. "Husserl and Heidegger on Meaning." Synthese:99-127.

Reprinted as Appendix to: J. Hintikka, Lingua Universalis versus Calculus Ratiocinator: An Ultimate Presupposition of Twentieth-Century Philosophy, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997, pp. 240-266.

11. ———. 1989. Language as Calculus vs. Language as Universal Medium. A Study in Husserl, Heidegger, and Gadamer. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Contents: Preface IX-XI; Part I. Introduction: Language as calculus vs. language as the universal medium 1; Part II. Husserl's phenomenology and language as calculus 11; Part III. Heidegger's ontology and language as the universal medium 135; Part IV. Between Scylla and Charybdis -- Gadamer's hermeneutics 229; Notes to Part I 259; Notes to Part II 260; Notes Part III 290; Notes to Part IV 310; Bibliography 315; Index of names 343; Index of subjects 353.

12. Lampert, Jay. 1995. Synthesis and Backward Reference in Husserl's Logical Investigations. Dodrecht: Kluwer.

13. Landgrebe, Ludwig. 1981. The Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Six Essays. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Edited and with an introduction by Donn Welton.

Content: 1. The Phenomenology of Corporeality and the Problem of Matter; 2. The Problem of Passive Constitution; 3. Husserl's Departure from Cartesianism; 4. The World as a Phenomenological Problem; 5. Regions of Being and Regional Ontologies in Husserl's Phenomenology; 6. The Problem of a Transcendental Science of the A Priori of the Life-world.

14. Lavigne, Jean-François. 2002. "Du psychologisme logique à la phénoménologie pure." Recherches Husserliennes no. 18:59-90.

15. ———. 2004. Husserl et la naissance de la phénoménologie (1900-1913). Des Recherches logiques aux Ideen: la genèse de l'idéalisme transcendantal phénoménologique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

16. Leclerq, Bruno. 2015. Fondements logiques et phénoménologiques de la rationalité mathématique chez Husserl. Paris: Vrin.

17. Lerner, Rosemary. 2002. "Husserl's breaktrough revisited: genesis of the Logical Investigations." Études Phénomenologiques no. 35:71-98.

18. Lohmar, Dieter. 1996. "La genèse du jugement antéprédicatif dans les Recherches logiques et dans Expérience et jugement." In Phénomenologie et logique, edited by Courtine, Jean-François, 217-238. Paris: Presses de l'Ecole normale supérieure.

19. Mays, Wolfe. 2002. "Edmund Husserl's grammar. 100 years on." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 33:317-340.

20. McCarthy, Thomas A. 1972. "Logic, mathematics and ontology in Husserl." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 3:158-164.

21. McGuire, Brigitte. 1998. "L'origine monadique de la logique selon Husserl." Les Études Philosophiques:161-178.

22. Meiland, Jack W. 1976. "Psychologism in logic: Husserl's critique." Inquiry no. 19:325-339.

"Psychologism in logic holds that logic is a branch of psychology. This view has been vigorously defended by John Stuart Mill and by a number of German philosophers of logic, notably Erdmann. Its chief critics have been Husserl and Frege and, to a lesser extent, Russell. Husserl set forth a profound and detailed critique of psychologism in "Logical Investigations".

This paper examines this critique. First, I explain why the psychologistic theory is attractive. Then I show that Husserl's critique is not convincing, partly because he does not take the theory in its most plausible form and partly because he ignores certain important distinctions (for example, between what a statement is about and what it is true in virtue of).

Then I raise two new objections to the psychologistic theory. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the psychologistic theory remains an important and serious position from which we can learn much about the status of logic."

23. Melandri, Enzo. 1960. Logica e esperienza in Husserl. Bologna: Il Mulino.

24. ———. 1990. Le 'Ricerche logiche' di Husserl. Introduzione e commento alla Prima ricerca. Bologna: Il Mulino.

25. Melle, Ulrich. 2001. "La théorie husserlienne du jugement." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 99:683-714.

26. Mensch, James R. 1981. The Question of Being in Husserl's Logical Investigations. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

27. Metcalfe, John F. 1988. "Husserl and early Victorian philosophical logic." Eidos no. 7:15-33.

"I present a detailed itemization of Husserl's criticisms of logical psychologism. I use this to explore H. L. Mansel's formulation of his self-proclaimed psychologism. I argue that Husserl's criticisms do not engage Mansel's views. Thus the common view that Husserl presents a mortal attack on psychologism is misleading. The lessons of this comparison are two: first, the standard cursory dismissal of the Victorian psychologicists' program needs reexamination. And second, the contrasts between this program and its transcendental counterparts need sharpening or dissolution."

28. Miller, Philip J. 1982. Numbers in Presence and Absence. A Study of Husserl's Philosophy of Mathematics. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

29. Mohanty, Jitendra Nath. 1964. Edmund Husserl's Theory of Meaning. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Third edition 1976.

30. ———. 1970. Phenomenology and Ontology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

31. ———. 1974. "Husserl and Frege: a new look at their relationship." Research in Phenomenology no. 4:51-62.

Reprinted in: J. N. Mohanty (ed.), Readings on Husserl's Logical Investigations, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1977, pp. 22-32.

32. ———, ed. 1977. Readings on Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

33. ———. 1982. Husserl and Frege. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

34. ———. 1991. "Husserl's formalism." In Phenomenology and the formal sciences, edited by Seebohm, Thomas, Føllesdal, Dagfinn and Mohanty, Jitendra Nath. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

35. ———. 1997. "The concept of psychologism in Frege and Husserl." Philosophy and Rhetoric no. 30:271-290.

36. ———. 1999. Logic, Truth, and the Modalities: From a Phenomenological Perspective. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

37. ———. 2008. The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl. A Historical Development. Yale: Yale University Press.

This first volume traces the development of Husserl's thought from his earliest investigations in philosophy to his publication of Ideas in 1913.

38. ———. 2011. Edmund Husserl's Freiburg Years: 1916-1938. Yale: Yale University Press.

39. Mohanty, Jitendra Nath, and McKenna, William, eds. 1989. Husserl's Phenomenology. A Textbook. Pittsburgh: University Press of America.

40. Moran, Dermot. 2000. "Husserl's critique of Brentano in the Logical Investigations." Manuscrito no. 23:163-205.

41. ———. 2005. Edmund Husserl: Founder of Phenomenology. Malden: Polity.

42. Moran, Dermot, and Cohen, Joseph. 2012. The Husserl Dictionary. New York: Continuum.

43. Moser, Hans Walter. 1922. Die logische Problematik des Thomas Hobbes und ihre erkenntnistheoretischen Voraussetzungen. Berlin-Steglitz: Könitzer Drckerei.

44. Mulligan, Kevin. 1989. "Husserl on States of Affairs in the 'Logical Investigations'." Epistemologia no. 12:207-234.

45. Mulligan, Kevin, and Smith, Barry. 1986. "Husserl's Logical Investigations." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 27:199-206.

46. Munch, Dieter. 1989. "The early Husserl." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 20:173-178.

47. Natorp, Paul. 2001. "Les Idées pour une phénoménologie pure de Husserl." Recherches Husserliennes no. 15:3-30.

48. Nef, Frédéric. 1998. "L'ontologie formelle de Bolzano à Husserl." In L'object quelconque: recherches sur l'ontologie de l'objet. Paris: Vrin.

49. Nenon, Thomas. 1997. "Two models of foundation in the Logical investigations." In Husserl in contemporary context: prospects and projects for phenomenology, edited by Hopkins, Burt C., 97-114. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

50. Nuki, Shigeto. 1999. "Phenomenology as calculus?" In Phenomenology: Japanese and American perspective, edited by Hopkins, Burt C., 1-14. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

51. Null, Gilbert T. 1980. ""On connoting": the relational theory of the concept in Husserlian phenomenology." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 11:69-76.

52. ———. 1997. "Formal and material ontology." In Encyclopedia of phenomenology, edited by Embree, Lester, 237-241. Dordrecht: Kluwer academic Publishers.

53. Patzig, Günther. 1977. "Husserl on truth and evidence." In Readings on Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations, edited by Mohanty, Jitendra Nath, 179-196. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Translation of an article published in Neue Hefte für Philosophie I, 1971, pp. 12-32.

54. Peruzzi, Alberto. 1989. "Towards a real phenomenology of logic." Husserl Studies no. 6:1-24.

"The paper deals with the phenomenological roots of logic, and suggests a strict link of such roots with concepts of category theory. The project stems from a new consideration of the philosophy of logic developed by Husserl. Differences between this approach and intuitionism are examined. The objectivity of logical constructions is seen from the viewpoint of natural epistemology. An essential complementarity of descriptive and constructive components is reached and related to formal developments in category theory."

55. Peursen, Cornelis van. 1959. "Phenomenology and Ontology." Philosophy Today no. 4:35-42.

56. Picardi, Eva. 1997. "Sigwart, Husserl and Frege on truth and logic, or is psychologism still a threat?" European Journal of Philosophy no. 5:162-182.

"The paper argues that Husserl's criticism of Sigwart's normative conception of logical laws rests on an absolutist conception of truth and content which is itself in need of justification. Also the contrast between psychological laws of holding true and logical laws of being true used by Frege in his criticism of psychologism fails to explain the epistemological status of logical laws. A better understanding of the latter is to be found in Frege's conception of truth and justification. Sigwart's psychologism comes to the fore in the privileged role he assigned in his logic to judgments of recognition and naming. While the attention paid to the indexical component of certain utterances enables Sigwart to give an original account of the import of impersonal judgments, his concentration on a first-person account of sentence meaning prevents him from appreciating the public dimension of meaning, which alone renders communication possible."

57. Pietersma, Henri. 1966. "Husserl's concept of philosophy." Dialogue no. 5:425-442.

58. ———. 1967. "Husserl and Frege." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 49:298-323.

59. ———. 1986. "Husserl's concept of existence." Synthese no. 66:311-328.

60. Poli, Roberto. 1993. "Husserl's Conception of Formal Ontology." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 14:1-14.

"The concept of formal ontology was first developed by Husserl. It concerns problems relating to the notions of object, substance, property, part, whole, predication, nominalization, etc. The idea of formal ontology is present in many of Husserl's works, with minor changes. This paper provides a reconstruction of such an idea. Husserl's proposal is faced with contemporary logical orthodoxy and it is presented also an interpretative hypothesis, namely that the original difference between the general perspective of usual model theory and formal ontology is grounded in the fact that this latter starts from an intended interpretation and not from the set of all the possible interpretations."

"1. Introduction

The term 'formal ontology' has been given two different interpretations. The first of these, entirely in keeping with the mainstream of contemporary philosophy, has been what I shall call analytic: formal ontology is that branch of ontology which is analysed within the framework of formal logic. The leading exponent of this approach has undoubtedly been Nino Cocchiarella. (1) On the premise that each particular science has its own 'mode of being', Cocchiarella has written that `metaphysics [...] - or what we might instead call formal ontology - is concerned with the study and development of alternative formalizations regarding the systematic co-ordination of all the "modes" or "categories of being" under the most general laws' (1974, 29-30). From this point of view, formal ontology studies the logical characteristics of predication and the various theories of universals.

The other interpretation, which I shall call phenomenological, developed from Husserl's early works, in particular Logical investigations. As a first approximation, we may say that this approach mainly addresses the problems of parts and wholes and of dependence. Despite their differences, these two varieties of formal ontology quite frequently overlap each other, although to date there has been no systematic study of the categories and layers that constitute formal ontology and no systematic analysis of the issues addressed by it."( p. 1).

(1) Formal ontology and the Foundations of Mathematics in: G. Nakhnikian (ed.), Bertrand Russell's Philosophy, London: Duckworth, 1974, pp. 29-46 and Logical Investigations of Predication Theory and the Problem of Universals, Naples: Bibliopolis, 1986. For a general reconstruction see: Ontology II: Formal Ontology in: H. Burkhardt and B. Smith (eds.), Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, Münich: Philosophia Verlag, 1991, pp. 640-647.

61. Priest, Stephen. 1999. "Husserl's concept of being: from phenomenology to metaphysics." In German philosophy since Kant, edited by O'Hear, Anthony, 209-222. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

62. Renaudie, Pierre-Jean. 2015. Husserl et les catégories. Langage, pensée et perception. Paris: Vrin.

63. Richard, Sebastien. 2015. "Meinong and Early Husserl on Objects and States of Affairs." In Objects and Pseudo-Objects: Ontological Deserts and Jungles From Brentano to Carnap, edited by Seron, Denis, Richard, Sebastien and Leclercq, Bruno, 123-141. Berlin: de Gruyter.

64. Riedel, Manfred. 1969. "Kausalität und Finalität in Hobbes' Naturphilosophie." Kant Studien no. 60:417-435.

65. ———. 1969. "Zum Verhältnis von Ontologie und politischer Theorie bei Hobbes." In Hobbes-Forschungen, edited by Koselleck, Reinhart and Schnur, Roman, 103-118. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.

66. Rivenc, François. 1996. "Husserl, with and against Frege." Harvard Review of Philosophy no. 6:95-116.

67. Rollinger, Robin D. 1993. "Husserl and Brentano on Imagination." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 75:195-210.

Reprinted with the title: Brentano and Husserl on Imagination in: R. D. Rollinger, Austrian Phenomenology. Brentano, Husserl, Meinong, and Others on Mind and Object, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2009, pp. 29-50.

68. ———. 1993. Meinong and Husserl on Abstraction and Universals. From Hume Studies I to Logical Investigations II. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

69. ———. 1999. Husserl's Position in the School of Brentano. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

70. ———. 2003. "Names, Statements, and their Corresponding Acts in Husserl's Logical Investigations." In Husserl's Logical Investigations Reconsidered, edited by Fisette, Denis, 133-150. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Reprinted with the title: Names, Statements, and Mind-Functions in Husserl's Logical Investigations in: R. D. Rollinger, Austrian Phenomenology. Brentano, Husserl, Meinong, and Others on Mind and Object, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2009, pp. 51-72.

71. ———. 2003. "Husserl's Elementary Logic: The 1896 Lectures in their Nineteenth Century Context." Studia Phaenomenologica no. 3:195-215.

72. ———. 2004. "Austrian Theories of Judgment: Bolzano, Brentano, Meinong, and Husserl." In Phenomenology and Analysis. Essays on Central European Philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Huemer, Wolfgang, 257-284. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

Reprinted in: R. D. Rollinger, Austrian Phenomenology. Brentano, Husserl, Meinong, and Others on Mind and Object, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2009, pp. 233-262.

73. Rosado Haddock, Guillermo. 1991. "On Husserl's Distinction Between State of Affairs (Sachverhalt) and Situation of Affairs (Sachlage)." In Phenomenology and the Formal Sciences, edited by Seebohm, Thomas, Føllesdal, Dagfinn and Mohanty, Jitendra Nath, 35-57. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Reprinted as Chapter 14 in: C. Ortiz Hill and G. Rosado Haddock, Husserl Or Frege?: Meaning, Objectivity, and Mathematics, Chicago, Open Court, 2000, pp. 253-262.

"In his influential paper 'Mathematical Truth' (1) Paul Benacerraf states two requirements for any account of mathematical truth to be worth considering, namely: (i) that the semantic treatment of mathematical statements does not differ essentially from the semantic treatment of non-mathematical statements, and (ii) that the account of mathematical truth harmonize with what he calls a reasonable epistemology. According to him, combinatorial accounts of mathematical truth, which tend to identify mathematical truth with derivability in a formal system, violate the first requirement, whereas, platonist philosophies of mathematics (like Gödel's) violate the second requirement. Such a violation of the second requirement, however, depends on Benacerraf s understanding of, 'reasonable epistemology'. It should be clear that if one identifies 'reasonable epistemology' with empiricist theory of knowledge (causal or not), platonist philosophies of mathematics are not easy to reconcile with reasonable epistemologies. But such an identification need not be taken for granted.

In this paper, however, we are not interested in discussing the merits of Benacerraf's sketch of a causal theory of mathematical truth, but would like to state a third requirement (i. e. a third necessary condition) for a semantics plus epistemology of mathematics, which in our opinion is not satisfied by any

causal account. (iii) A semantics plus epistemology of mathematics must give a satisfactory account of the equivalence -- in the sense of interderivability -- of apparently unrelated mathematical statements -- like the Axiom of Choice and its many mathematical equivalents.

The best known representatives of platonism in the philosophy of mathematics, i. e. Cantor, Frege and Gödel, did not develop enough -- so far as we know -- an epistemology of mathematics. Husserl, however, whose philosophy of mathematics (as developed in Logische Untersuchungen (2) and Formate und transzendentale Logik (3) can also be considered as a sort of platonism, tried to develop in his Sixth Logical Investigation and in Erfahrung und Urteil (4) such an epistemology of mathematics. It is our opinion that Husserl's sketchy epistemology of mathematics plus his somewhat scattered remarks of a semantical nature can be elaborated further to produce a semantics plus epistemology that satisfies all three requirements stated above. In this paper, however, we will limit our consideration to some of Husserl's semantical insights and will try to show rather sketchily how some of these insights can be fruitfuly applied in a semantics of mathematics that satisfies the first and third of the above requirements (i. e. those which are more properly of a semantic nature, since the second is rather a requirement on epistemologies of mathematics).

(1) P. Benacerraf 'Mathematical Truth', in Journal of Philosophy 70, [1973, pp. 661-679] reprinted in P. Benacerraf & H. Putnam (eds.) Philosophy of Mathematics, pp. 403-420.

(2) See Logische Untersuchungen, I, Ch. XI.

(3) See Formate und transzendentale Logik, Chs. 1-3.

(4) See Erfahrung und Urteil, Part II, Ch. 2 and Part III, Chs. 2 and 3.

74. ———. 2000. "The structure of Husserl's Prolegomena." Manuscrito no. 23:61-69.

75. Rosiak, Marek. 1998. "Twardowski and Husserl on wholes and parts." In The Lvov-Warsaw school and contemporary philosophy, edited by Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna and Wolenski, Jan, 85-100. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

76. Rothkamm, Jan. 2009. Institutio oratoria: Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza. Leiden: Brill.

77. Rouilhand, Philippe de. 1996. "Introduction aux problèmes fondamentaux d'une logique du sens." Les Études Philosophiques:107-127.

78. Roy, Jean-Michel. 1996. "La dissociation husserlienne du Sinn et Bedeutung. Part I: Le fondement de la dissociation." In Phénomenologie et logique, edited by Courtine, Jean-François, 149-169. Paris: Presses de l'École normale supérieure.

79. ———. 1996. "Comment peut on parler du sens? Russell critique de Husserl." Les Études Philosophiques:65-90.

80. Scanlon, John. 1975. "Formal logic and formal ontology." Research in Phenomenology no. 5:95-107.

81. Schérer, René. 1967. La phénoménologie des "Recherches logiques" de Husserl. Introduction à la lecture des 'Recherches logiques'. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

82. Schuhmann, Karl. 1984. "Francis Bacon und Hobbes’ Widmungsbrief zu De Cive." Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung no. 38:165-190.

Repris dans: K. Schuhmann, Selected Papers on Renaissance Philosophy and on Thomas Hobbes, edité par Piet Steenbakkers et Cees Leijenhorst, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004, pp. 1-24.

83. ———. 1985. "Geometrie und Philosophie bei Thomas Hobbes." Philosophische Jahrbuch no. 92:161-177.

84. ———. 1987. "Methodenfragen bei Spinoza und Hobbes: Zum Problem des Einflusses." Studia Spinozana no. 3:47-86.

85. ———. 1990. "Husserl's Concept of Philosophy." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 21:274-283.

Abridged and revised version of "Husserls Idee der Philosophie", Husserl Studies, 5, 1988, pp. 235-256.

German version reprinted in K. Schuhmann, Selected Papers on Phenomenology, edited by Cees Leijenhorst and Piet Steenbakkers, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2005, pp. 61-78.

"Philosophy as Universal Science

Husserl insisted from the very beginning that the concept of philosophy involves two different, yet equally essential elements. Philosophical knowledge is both absolutely valid and completely universal. The first aspect concerns the way in which philosophical truths are known, i.e. the quality of philosophical cognition. Philosophy, Husserl says, is apodictic, evident and radical; it yields absolutely legitimized knowledge whose evidence flows from ultimate sources of cognition and is founded upon definitive fundaments. Philosophy, in short, is a rigorous science. The second aspect concerns the object of philosophical knowledge, i.e. the quantity of its field. The range of philosophy, as Husserl conceives it, is the universe of whatever can be known. Philosophy is all comprehensive knowledge or "universal knowledge of what is". Husserl thereby takes up the traditional definition of philosophy as the science of being qua being. But he also goes along with the traditional division of philosophy into a number of special disciplines, which together constitute philosophy as such.

Two main divisions of philosophical disciplines are to be found in Husserl's writings, which at first sight seem to have no connection with one another. On the one hand, he divides philosophy into a theoretical and a practical branch. Philosophy is, first of all, theoretical because it defends the idea of absolute knowledge and is to issue forth in 'pure theory'. The philosopher is from this perspective an uninterested spectator watching over subjective acts and their objective correlates. On the one hand, however, philosophy is practical also because its goal is absolute ethical life and rational practice, and from this perspective philosophy aims at a revolution in our life and habits in order to make us perfect personalities. Its purpose is to bring about a philosophical culture in which reason alone will determine the will and decisions of mankind.

In addition to this however Husserl also, and indeed more frequently, adopts a tripartite division into theoretical, axiological and practical philosophy. This division agrees with the three main areas of reason - cognitive (logical) reason, evaluative and practical. Since the phenomenological elucidation of reason is at the same time a critique of the possibilities of reason, Husserl also says that phenomenology aims at a critique of knowledge, of value and of practice.

Let us first turn to theoretical philosophy. According to Husserl, it is natural that philosophy should "set out from what is most general and from there pass over to the particulars contained under it". Correspondingly he introduces into theoretical philosophy a distinction between a discipline of general forms and the doctrine of their material specifications. The first he calls 'formal ontology'; it deals with the forms of objects. The second he divides into a number of different 'material ontologies', each one of which relates to a region of objects circumscribed by certain features they have in common.

Formal ontology - or, as he also sometimes calls it, mathesis universalis - is, Husserl says, the science of the pure forms of something-in-general and of its modalities or derivations. It treats formal categories such as state of affairs, genus and species, identity and difference, number, whole and part. This shows that formal ontology is the sphere to which Husserl devoted most of his work in the period ranging from the Philosophy of Arithmetic (1891) to the Logical Investigations (1901). He distinguishes between several sub-disciplines of formal ontology, reflecting diverse formal aspects of the object-as-such. Thus as parts of formal ontology he mentions logic (i.e. the formal doctrine of meanings), pure arithmetic and the pure theory of manifolds or sets.

Only in later years did Husserl turn to material ontologies, e.g., in his lectures on nature (1907), on intersubjectivity (1910/11) or in Ideas II (1912ff.), as well as in his various lectures and seminars on Natur and Geist. Nowhere does he give an exhaustive list of disciplines which together would make up the realm of material ontology in its entirety. He does, though, repeatedly mention nature, soul and society as delimiting three corresponding material ontologies." pp. 274-275 (Notes omitted).

86. ———. 1995. "Hobbes und Gassendi." In Veritas filia temporis? Philosophiehistorie zwischen Wahrheit und Geschichte, edited by Puster, Rolf W., 162-169. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Repris dans: K. Schuhmann, Selected Papers on Renaissance Philosophy and on Thomas Hobbes, edité par Piet Steenbakkers et Cees Leijenhorst, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004, pp. 219-225.

87. ———. 2001. "Representation in early Husserl." In The dawn of cognitive science. Early European contributors, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, 167-184. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

88. Seebohm, Thomas. 1988. "Phenomenology of Logic and the Problem of Modalizing." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 19:235-251.

89. ———. 1991. ""Tertium Non Datur:" Husserl's Conception of a Definite Multiplicity." In Phenomenology and the formal sciences, edited by Seebohm, Thomas, Føllesdal, Dagfinn and Mohanty, Jitendra Nath. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

90. ———. 1997. "Individuals, identity, names: phenomenological considerations." In Husserl in contemporary context: prospects and projects for phenomenology, edited by Hopkins, Burt C., 115-150. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

91. Simons, Peter M. 1982. "Three essays in formal ontology." In Parts and moments. Studies in logic and formal ontology, edited by Smith, Barry, 111-260. München: Philosophia Verlag.

92. ———. 1982. "The formalisation of Husserl's theory of wholes and parts." In Parts and moments. Studies in logic and formal ontology, edited by Smith, Barry and Simons, Peter M., 113-160.

Reprinted in: Peter Simons, Philosophy and logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski. Selected essays, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992 pp. 71-116.

93. Smith, Barry. 1975. "The ontogenesis of mathematical objects." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 6:91-101.

94. ———. 1978. "An essay in formal ontology." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 6:39-62.

95. ———. 1978. "Frege and Husserl: the ontology of reference." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 9:111-125.

96. ———. 1989. "Logic and formal ontology." In Husserl's phenomenology. A textbook, edited by Mohanty, Jitendra Nath and McKenna, William, 29-67. Lanham: University Press of America.

97. Smith, Barry, and Smith, David Woodruff, eds. 1995. The Cambridge Companion to Husserl. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

98. Smith, David Woodruff. 2000. "Ontological phenomenology." In The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy - Volume 7: Modern Philosophy, edited by Gedney, Mark. Bowling Green: Philosophy Documentation Center.

99. ———. 2002. "What is "Logical" in Husserl's Logical Investigations ? The Copenhagen interpretation." In One hundred years of phenomenology: Husserl's Logical Investigations revisited, edited by Zahavi, Dan and Stjernfelt, Frederik, 51-65. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

100. ———. 2003. ""Pure" logic, ontology, and phenomenology." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 57:133-156.

101. ———. 2003. "Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations (1900-1901): From logic through ontology to phenomenology." In The classics of Western philosophy. A reader's guide, edited by Garcia, Jorge J.E., 423-439. Malden: Blackwell.

102. ———. 2003. "The unity of the Logical investigations: then and now." In Husserl's Logical investigations reconsidered, edited by Fisette, Denis, 21-34. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

103. ———. 2007. Husserl. New York: Routledge.

See in partcilaur Chapter Three: Logic: meaning in language, mind and science, pp. 86-134, and Four: Ontology: essences and categories, minds and bodies, pp. 135-187.

104. Smith, David Woodruff, and McIntyre, Ronald. 1982. Husserl and Intentionality. A Study of Mind, Meaning, and Language. Dordrecht: Reidel.

105. Snyder, Lee R. 1981. "The concept of evidence in Edmund Husserl's genealogy of logic." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 41:547-555.

106. Sokolowski, Robert. 1968. "The logic of wholes and parts in Husserl's Investigations." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 28:537-553.

107. ———. 1973. "Logic and mathematics in Husserl's "Formal and transcendental logic"." In Explorations in phenomenology, edited by Carr, David and Casey, Edward, 306-327. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Reprinted in: Husserlian Meditations. How words present things, pp. 271-289.

108. ———. 1974. Husserlian Meditations. How Words Present Things. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

109. ———. 1987. "Husserl and Frege." Journal of Philosophy no. 84:521-528.

110. ———. 1988. "Husserl as a Tutor in Philosophy." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 19:296-309.

111. ———. 2002. "Semiotics in Husserl's Logical Investigations." In One hundred years of phenomenology: Husserl's Logical Investigations revisited, edited by Zahavi, Dan and Stjernfelt, Frederik, 171-183. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

112. Soldati, Gianfranco. 1999. "What Is "formal" in Husserl's "Logical Investigations"?" European Journal of Philosophy no. 3:330-338.

"It is sometimes said that questions of form are questions of logic or language. In his "Logical Investigations" Husserl, however, clearly distinguished formal ontology from formal grammar and formal logic. The article attempts to explain Husserl's notion of formal ontology. It investigates the relation between formal and material ontology as well as the relation between epistemic and metaphysical necessity. The article provides an interpretation of Husserl's claim that there are metaphysical necessities which are necessarily recognized by the human mind on the basis of Husserl's well-known distinction between the meanings of mental acts and their objective correlates."

113. ———. 2004. "Abstraction and abstract concepts: On Husserl's Philosophy of arithmetic." In Phenomenology and analysis. Essays on Central European philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Huemer, Wolfgang, 215-232. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

114. Spiegelberg, Herbert. 1972. "Remarks on Findlay's Translation of Edmund Husserl's "Logical Investigations"." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 3:195-196.

"I have the highest admiration for this effort and its result, much higher than for all other Husserl translations known to me. But it would be too bad if the users of this translation were denied the chance of minor emendations which I would like to suggest as a result of an intensive reading of the translation in a seminar at Washington University along with the German text. I shall therefore select some of the more important ones as follows:

1. On page 218 line 20 read "quantitative" for "qualitative," (pointed out by Robert Sokolowski in Inquiry 14 (1971), 347).

2. On page 225 in the first line of paragraph 62 the phrase "unified item in anthropology" (as a characterization of science) for "anthropologische Einheit" might better be rendered as "cultural system". In Husserl's framework anthropology, as introduced in Chapter VII ("Anthropologismus") has no relation to the science of anthropology, at the time mostly physical, but to the emphasis on human factors.

3. In the title of Chapter I in Investigation II (p. 535) the rendition of the German Bestand ("Bewusstsein als phaenomenologischer Bestand des Ich . . .") by "Subsistence" ("Consciousness as Phenomenological Subsistence of the Ego") is misleading, since here the German word (of many meanings) clearly refers to the composition or content of the ego, rather than to any mode of its existence in the sense of Meinong's Bestand of his Objektive (states of affairs).

4. In the title and text of Chapter IV in Investigation VI the rendition of the German Verträglichkeit and Unverträglichkeit by "Consistency and Inconsistency" seems to me debatable, since their German equivalents are Widerspuchsfreiheit and Widerspruchlichkeit. Closer English equivalents of the words in the German title are "Compatibility" and "Incompatibility".

5. On p. 804 line 17 from the bottom the word "own" (repeated in the following line) ought to be dropped.

6. On p. 812 line 10 the proper translation of the idiomatic Mit nichten, wurden wir einwenden would be "By no means, we would object" (rather than "Binding them with nothing . . .").

I have only one serious regret about these two volumes. The distribution of the two very unequal German volumes of the first and even of the second edition (subdividing volume II) may be technically defensible, provided that it does not conceal the fact that the German volumes appeared separately in two subsequent years (1900 and 1901 respectively). It is also only a minor incongruency that volume II begins on the back page of volume I, thus minimizing the break by not even inserting a new page; whereas each of the six Investigations within volume II is preceded by a special title page. But what is really unfortunate is that the title of volume II (Untersuchungen zur Phaenomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis) is missing both on p. 248 and in the Table of Contents, this all the more since the title of volume I ("Prolegomena to Pure Logic") appears correctly in both places. Among other things this conceals the important historical fact that it was in the title of the second volume that Husserl for the first time used the term "phenomenology," still absent from volume I, explicitly and conspicuously. While it is controversial whether the undeniable historical impression was correct that Volume II meant a new departure in Husserl's development, as it was certainly interpreted at the time, the fact that there was definite reason for this impression must not be forgotten." p. 196.

115. Spinicci, Paolo. 1985. I Pensieri dell'esperienza. Interpretazione di 'Esperienza e giudizio' di Edmund Husserl. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

116. Staiti, Andrea. 2006. "Il luogo della verità. La presenza di Agostino nella fenomenologia di Husserl." Quaestio. Journal of the History of Metaphysics no. 6:373-402.

117. Stapleton, Timothy. 1982. "The "logic" of Husserl's transcendental reduction." Man and World no. 15:369-382.

"This article is an attempt to displace many of the traditional, overly Cartesian (epistemological) interpretations of Husserl's transcendental turn, and to replace them with an interpretation based on Husserl's formal ontology as developed in the "Logical Investigations". In particular, the theory of wholes and parts in conjunction with Husserl's principle of intuitive, eidetic rationality, it is argued, lead directly to transcendental idealism. And as a consequence, the fundamental unity of Husserl's entire philosophical project, from the pre-transcendental through the transcendental period, is established."

118. Stepanians, Markus S. 1988. Frege und Husserl über Urteilen und Denken. Paderborn: Schöningh.

119. Stjernfelt, Frederik. 2002. "Categories, diagrams, schemata: the cognitive grasping of ideal objects in Husserl and Peirce." In One hundred years of phenomenology: Husserl's Logical Investigations revisited, edited by Zahavi, Dan and Stjernfelt, Frederik, 147-167. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

120. Ströker, Elisabeth. 1988. "Husserl and Philosophy of Science." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 19:217-234.

121. Taylor, Matt. 2000. "The consistency of Husserl's theory of meaning." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 60:171-196.

122. Textor, Mark. 2000. "Bolzano et Husserl sur l'analyticité." Études Philosophiques 435-454.

123. Tieszen, Richard L. 1998. "Gödel's path from the incompleteness theorems (1931) to phenomenology." Bulletin of Symbolic Logic no. 4:181-203.

"In a lecture manuscript written around 1961 Gödel describes a philosophical path from the incompleteness theorems to Husserl's phenomenology. Using this manuscript as a basis, I present and discuss the arguments in Gödel's recently published papers that led him to the work of Husserl. In particular, I focus on arguments concerning Hilbert's program and an early version of Carnap's program."

124. ———. 2004. "Husserl's Logic." In Handbook of the History of Logic. Vol. III. The Rise of Modern Logic: From Leibniz to Frege, edited by Gabbay, Dov and Woods, John, 207-321. Amsterdam: Elsevier North Holland.

125. Tito, Johanna Maria. 1990. Logic in the Husserlian Context. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

126. Tolley, Clinton. 2017. "Husserl’s Philosophy of the Categories and His Development toward Absolute Idealism." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 94:460-493.

Abstract: In recent work, Amie Thomasson has sought to develop a new approach to the philosophy of the categories which is metaphysically neutral between traditional realist and conceptualist approaches, and which has its roots in the ‘correlationalist’ approach to categories put forward in Husserl’s writings in the 1900s–1910s and systematically charted over the past few decades by David Woodruff Smith in his studies of Husserl’s philosophy. Here the author aims to provide a recontextualization and critical assessment of correlationalism in a Husserlian vein. To this end, the author presents, first, the reasons why, later in his life, Husserl himself found his earlier treatment of categories philosophically naive, and why he increasingly advocated for a more genetic-teleological account. The author then draws upon arguments made a century earlier by Schelling and Hegel, in criticism of Fichte, to point up what might remain philosophically unsatisfying about even the post-correlationalist genetic position of the later Husserl, in light of the pronounced trend in Husserl’s own development, on the questions of reason and spirit, toward absolute idealism."

127. Tönnies, Ferdinand. 1912. Thomas Hobbes. Der Mann und der Denker. Leipzig: A. W. Zickfeldt.

Second revised edition of Tönnies (1896); third edition Stuttgart: Frommann, 1925.

128. Tragesser, Robert. 1977. Phenomenology and Logic. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

129. ———. 1984. Husserl and Realism in Logic and Mathematics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

130. Velarde-Mayol, Victor. 2000. On Husserl. Belmont: Wadsworth.

131. Verley, Xavier. 2005. Pensée, symbole et représentation. Logique et psychologie chez Frege et Husserl. Chennevières-sur-Marne: Dianoia.

132. Watson, Laurence W. 1980. "A remark on Husserl theory of multiplicities." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 11:180-185.

133. Weiss, Ulrich. 1980. Das philosophische System von Thomas Hobbes. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog.

134. Welton, Donn. 1983. The Origins of Meaning: A Critical Study of the Thresholds of Husserlian Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

135. Willard, Dallas. 1980. "Husserl on a logic that failed." Philosophical Review no. 89:46-64.

"In this paper I try to identify the deficiency of logic which Husserl refers to in the "Forward" to his "Logical Investigations" of 1900. Logics known to him were unable to explain how formal systems of signs function to advance knowledge, as in the case of formal arithmetic. Simultaneous efforts to elucidate the procedures of general arithmetic (in the last part of his "Philosophy of arithmetic") and to write a review of Schroder's "lectures on the algebra of logic", made Husserl (by 1891) forsake Weierstrass's program of reconstructing mathematics from the concept of number alone, which he had hoped to carry out with tools drawn from Brentano's psychology."

136. ———. 1984. Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge. Studies in Husserl's Early Philosophy. Athens: Ohio University Press.

" This book attempts to explain the path by which Husserl's concern for an elucidation of mathematical, chiefly arithmetical, knowledge led to an analysis of the mental act which allows for a realist interpretation of science and ordinary perceptual experience. It attempts to go more thoroughly than has been done into the content and significance of his first book, "The philosophy of arithmetic". It provides discussion of many Husserlian texts not available in English and little discussed in the English literature. Its aim is not merely historical, but systematic as well."

137. ———. 2003. "The theory of wholes and parts and Husserl's explication of the possibility of knowledge in the Logical investigations." In Husserl's Logical investigations reconsidered, edited by Fisette, Denis. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

138. ———. 2012. "Realism Sustained? Interpreting Husserl's Progression into Idealism." Quaestiones Disputatae no. 31:20-32.

139. Winance, Eleuthère. 1965. "Intention and nature of Husserl's logic." Philosophia Mathematica no. 2:69-85.

140. ———. 1966. "Logique, mathématique et ontologie comme 'mathesis universalis' chez Edmund Husserl." Revue Thomiste no. 66:410-434.

141. Wojciech, Krysztofiak. 1995. "Noemata and their formalization." Synthese no. 105:53-86.

"The presentation of the formal conception of noemata is the main aim of the article. In the first section, three informal approaches to noemata are discussed. The goal of this chapter is specifying main controversies and their sources concerned with different ways of the understanding of noemata. In the second section, basic assumptions determining the proposed way of understanding noemata are presented. The third section is devoted to the formal set-theoretic construction needed for the formal comprehension of neomata. In the fourth section, definitions of neomata and their various kinds, as well as definitions of other phenomenological notions are formulated. In the last section, possibilities of further developing the proposed formal conception are indicated."

142. Wolenski, Jan. 1997. "Husserl and the Development of Semantics." Philosophia Scientiae no. 2:151-158.

"This paper investigates the role of Edmund Husserl in the development of formal or model-theoretic semantics through glasses of the distinction of language as calculus vs. language as universal medium, introduced by Jaakko Hintikka and Martin Kusch. In particular, the paper raises the question of possible Husserl's influence on the conception of language accepted in Polish philosophy, in particular by Lesniewski and Tarski."

143. Zahavi, Dan. 1992. "Constitution and ontology: some remarks on Husserl's ontological position in the Logical Investigations." Husserl Studies no. 9:111-124.

"One of the major exegetical difficulties in connection with Husserl's Logical Investigations has always been the clarification of his ontological position and the closely related concept of constitution. Ever since the publication of the first edition - which will be the point of departure - in 1900-1, there has been an ongoing discussion as to which concept of reality Husserl had committed himself, initiated with a realistic interpretation by his Gottingen students. My aim in the following paper will be a critical evaluation and interpretation of this relationship, thereby also taking Husserl's philosophical development - especially as concerns his idea of phenomenology - into consideration."

144. ———. 2001. "A propos de la neutralité métaphysique des "Recherches logiques"." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 99:715-736.

145. ———. 2002. "Metaphysical neutrality in Logical Investigations." In One hundred years of phenomenology: Husserl's Logical Investigations revisited, edited by Zahavi, Dan and Stjernfelt, Frederik, 93-108. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

146. Zahavi, Dan, and Stjernfelt, Frederik, eds. 2002. One Hundred Years of Phenomenology: Husserl's Logical Investigations Revisited. Dodrecht: Kluwer.

147. Zalta, Edward N. 1998. "Mally's Determinates and Husserl's Noemata." In Ernst Mally. Versuch einer Neubewertung, edited by Hieke, Alexander, 9-28. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

"In this paper, the author compares passages from two philosophically important texts and concludes that they have fundamental ideas in common. What makes this comparison and conclusion interesting is that the texts come from two different traditions in philosophy, the analytic and the phenomenological. In 1912, Ernst Mally published Gegenstandstheoretische Grundlagen der Logik und Logistik, an analytic work containing a combination of formal logic and metaphysics. In 1913, Edmund Husserl published Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, a seminal work in phenomenology in which noemata are defined and given a crucial role in directing our mental states. In the passages from these two texts reproduced below, the author shows that the abstract `determinates' postulated by Mally in 1912 are assigned much the same role that Husserl assigned to noemata in 1913. Though Mally's determinates are not as highly structured as Husserl's noemata, they have a feature that explains how they manage to play the role assigned to them. The corresponding feature is missing, or at least, not emphasized in Husserl's account of noemata. Therefore, insights from both philosophers, and thus from both the analytic and phenomenological traditions, are needed to give a more complete account of directed mental states."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Kazimierz Twardowski on the Content and Object of Presentations

Introduction

"It is not easy to characterize Twardowski's place in the history of Polish philosophy. This is always difficult with regard to those persons who sacrifice their own creativeness to initiate a school or a movement which may reach a culminating point in the next generation. Twardowski was not so original a thinker, or at any rate not so accomplished as some of his pupils. He gave rise to the analytical movement in Poland, but himself belonged to the period of transition. His original contributions were in the philosophy of mind, which later was developed by Meinong as the theory of object, and which inspired Husserl to create a new branch of philosophy-phenomenology. Twardowski's merit was to advocate effectively the classical (correspondence) concept of truth, the extensive discussion of which accelerated the emergence of semantics in the narrower sense as contrasted with syntax. His greatness lay in his teaching, which led to the creation of a school of philosophy of international reputation. His importance for Poland goes beyond philosophy. One might say about him what John Stuart Mill said about his father: 'He did not revolutionize or create one of the great departments of human thought. But in the power of influencing by mere force of mind and character the convictions and purposes of others, he left few equals among men.' " (p. 55)

From: Henryk Sklolimowski, Polish Analytical Philosophy. A Survey and a Comparison with British Analytical Philosophy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1967.

"Twardowski's little book (...) is one of the most remarkable works in the history of modern philosophy. It is concise, clear, and -- in Findlay's words -- "amazingly rich in ideas." (1) It is therefore a paradigm of what some contemporary philosophers approvingly call 'analytic philosophy.' But Twardowski's book is also of considerable historical significance. His views reflect Brentano's earlier position and thus shed some light on this stage of Brentano's philosophy. Furthermore, they form a link between this stage, on the one hand, and those two grandiose attempts to propagate rationalism in an age of science, on the other hand, which are known as Meinong's theory of entities and Husserl's phenomenology. Twardowski's views thus point to the future and introduce many of the problems which, through the influence of Meinong, Husserl, Russell, and Moore, have become standard fare in contemporary philosophy." (p. VII)

From: Reinhardt Grossmann, "Introduction" to: Kasimir Twardowski, On the Content and Object of Presentations, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1997.

Twardowski's ontology

"1. One of the characteristic features of modern ontology relates to the distinction between a Dasein and a Sosein of objects -- that is, between the existence of objects and their properties. Most of modern ontology is Daseinsfrei: it is an ontology of the nature of objects in general as they are given to thought. And it is this feature that distinguishes modern ontology from traditional metaphysics, since this ontology concerns objects as things (res) and not their existence. (1) This was already to be seen in the school of Brentano, but its origins are in effect even older and can be traced back to the Middle Ages and to the Stoic interpretation of Aristotle, which passed on to Wolff. Starting from Kant the role played by the acts of consciousness has become a fundamental component of ontology.

2. As regards Twardowski's ontology, I shall try to specify its Kantian commitment. Since this analysis is somewhat pioneering, I shall present it in the form of a proposal. Moreover, I shall confine myself to his book of 1894, Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen.

The following features will be of service to my proposal:

a) Its descriptive basis stemming from Brentanian psychology. Twardowski's ontology, like Brentano's, is grounded in inner perception: it is concerned not with the genesis but with the description of the elements of consciousness. (2)

b) The distinction between act, content and object in presentation (Vorstellung). (3)

c) The primacy of the act over the contents of consciousness. In fact every presentation is an act which possesses an intentional object. In the case of Twardowski the intentional object is the content of the act, which pictures an image (Bild) the external object of presentation. (4)

d) The consequent distinction concerning the act of presentation of two different directions:1. towards the object, which is presented in a modified way by consciousness, and 2. towards the content, which is presented in a determinate way. (5)

e) The presence of Kantianism, as Twardowski points out on several occasions in his text, especially at the outset of his ontological analysis (i.e. the description of the object of presentation), in the concept of characteristic, and in its conclusion, concerning the nature of general objects. (6)" (pp. 26-27)

Notes

(1) According to this ontology, existence is a mode or an attribute, not an essential property of all objects. The objects of ontology, therefore, are possible objects.

(2) As we shall see, certain basic concepts in Twardowski' ontology like the object in general, a the outcome of genetic research in the phenomenological sense.

(3) We translate the German word Vorstellung as presentation rather than representation, pointing out the Brentanian meaning of this term: presentation, in fact, refers to the intentional character of the consciousness, directed towards an intentional object. It is worth noting that the term Vorstellung has Kantian origin. Also in the case of Kant, then, we shall adopt presentation instead of representation, even if we are conscious that also in Kant the term is not univocal. Put briefly, we could speak of the representation only at the level of concepts.

(4) The intentional object is the secondary object of presentation and coincides with the content, by means of which the object is presented. On this see Husserl's criticism: Twardowski, according to Husserl, does not distinguish between the mental picture (Bild) proper of content, which has a psychological root, and ideal meaning (Bedeutung). See Logische Untersuchungen (Hua XVII), E. Holestein ed., 1975, First Investigation. Content may vary in relation to different presentations of an object, says Husserl, however meaning remains identical. Meaning is not a constitutive part of the act, it is not psychological but logical. Moreover picture is only a special case of intentional consciousness, related to imagination: in literature or science, in fact, presentations do not occur by means of pictures. What matters, according to Husserl, is the individual capacity to refer to the object on the basis of mental picture. On this see K. Schuhmann, "Husserl and Twardowski", forthcoming. [published in: Coniglione, Francesco, Poli, Roberto, Wolenski, Jan (eds.) - Polish Scientific Philosophy: The Lvov-Warsaw School - Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1993, pp. 41-58]

(5)There is still a way in which aldso the object is given in a determinate way, which is opposed to all others, as etwas überhaupt in presentation.

(6) K. Twardowski, Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen. Eine psychologische Untersuschung, 7 and 15.

From: Liliana Albertazzi, "Is there a transcendental Object?"," in: Theories of Objects: Meinong and Twardowski, edited by Jacek Pasniczek, Lublin: Wydawnictvo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Sklodoskiej 1992, p. 26-44.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography of the philosophical work of Kazimierz Twardoski

Main works in German

Works available only in Polish are not enclosed.

A complete bibliography up to 1997 (with the works published in Polish and not translated in other languages) can be found in: Kazimierz Twardowski, On Actions, Products and Other Topics in Philosophy, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999, pp. 287-297.

1. Twardowski, Kazimierz. 1891. Idee und Perzeption. Eine erkenntnis-theoretische Untersuchung aus Descartes. Wien: Konegan.

2. ———. 1894. Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen. Eine Psychologische Untersuchung. Wien: Hölder.

Nachdruck: München: Philosophia Verlag 1982 mit Einleitung von Rudolf Haller.

3. ———. 1902. "Über sogennante relative Wahrheiten." Archiv für Systematische Philosophie no. 8:415-447.

Translation by M. Wartenberg of a an essay published in Polish (1900).

Reprinted in D. Pearce, Jan Wolenski (eds.), Logische Rationalismus. Philosophische Schriften der Lemberg-Warschauer Schule, Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1989, pp. 38-58.

4. ———. 1902. "Über begriffliche Vorstellungen." Verlag der Philosophischen Gesellschaft in Wien.

Conference held 18th November 1902 (28 pages).

5. ———. 1911. "Seches Vorlesungen über die mittelaterliche Philosophie." Die Philosophie der Gegenwart no. 3:58-59.

German summary of a book in Polish.

6. ———. 1911. "Über die Methode der Psychologie. ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Methodologie der Wissenschaften." Die Philosophie der Gegenwart no. 3:272.

German summary of an articole published in Polish in 1910.

7. ———. 1911. "Über Funktionen und Gebilde. Einige Bemerkungen zum Grenzgebiet der Psychologie, Grammatic, und Logik." Die Philosophie der Gegenwart no. 3:214.

German summary of an essay published in Polish in 1912.

8. ———. 1991. "Selbstdarstellung (1926)." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 39:1-24.

Edited by Jan Wolenski and Th. Binder.

English translation as Self-Portrait in: On actions, Products and Others Topics in Philosophy.

9. ———. 1996. "Funktionen ung Gebilde." Conceptus no. 29:157-186.

Original Polish edition 1912.

English translation in On Actions, Products and Others Topics in Philosophy.

10. ———. 2016. Logik: Wiener Logikkolleg 1894/95. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Herausgegeben von Arianna Betti und Venanzio Raspa.

English translations

1. Brandl, Johannes, and Wolesnki, Jan, eds. 1999. Kazimierz Twardowski on Actions, Products and Other Topics in Philosophy. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Translated and annotated by Arthur Szylewicz.

Contents: Introduction 7; Translator's note 15; Self-portrait (1926/91) 17; Biographical notes 33;

I. On mind, psychology and language.

Psychology vs. physiology and philosophy (1897) 41; On the classification of mental phenomena (1898) 65; The essence of concepts (1903/24) 73; On idio- and allogenetic theories of judgment (1907) 99; Actions and products (1912) 103; The Humanities and psychology (1912/76) 133; On the logic of adjectives (1923/27) 141;

II. On truth and knowledge.

On so-called relative truths (1900) 147; A priori, or rational (deductive) sciences and a posteriori, or empirical (inductive) sciences (1923) 171; Theory of knowledge. A lecture course (1925/75) 181;

III. On philosophy.

Franz Brentano and the history of philosophy (1895) 243; The historical conception of philosophy (1912) 255; On clear and unclear philosophical style (1920) 257; Symbolomania and pragmatophobia (1921) 261;

Address at the 25th anniversary session of the Polish Philosophical Society (1929/31) 271; On the dignity of the University (1933) 277;

Bibliography 287-297.

2. Brożek, Anna, and Jadacki, Jacek, eds. 2014. On Prejudices, Judgments and Other Topics in Philosophy. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

3. Twardowski, Kazimierz. 1977. On the Content and Object of Presentations. A Psychological Investigation. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Translation and introduction by Reinhardt Grossmann of Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen.

4. ———. 1979. "Actions and Products. Comments on the Border Area of Psychology, Grammar and Logic." In Semiotics in Poland 1894-1969, edited by Pelc, Jerzy, 13-27. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Abridged translation by O. Wojtasiewicz of a Polish text of 1912.

New complete translation in On actions, Products and Others Topics in Philosophy.

5. ———. 1979. "On Clear and Obscure Styles of Philosophical Writings." In Semiotics in Poland 1894-1969, edited by Pelc, Jerzy, 1-2. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Abridged translation by O. Wojtasiewicz of a Polish text of 1920.

New complete translation in On actions, Products and Others Topics in Philosophy.

6. ———. 1979. "Symbolomania and Pragmatophobia." In Semiotics in Poland 1894-1969, edited by Pelc, Jerzy, 3-6. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Abridged translation by O. Wojtasiewicz of a Polish text of 1921.

New complete translation in On actions, Products and Others Topics in Philosophy.

7. ———. 1979. "Issues in the Logic of Adjectives." In Semiotics in Poland 1894-1969, edited by Pelc, Jerzy, 28-30. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Abridged translation by O. Wojtasiewicz of a Polish text of 1927.

New complete translation in On actions, Products and Others Topics in Philosophy.

8. ———. 1995. "Imageries." Axiomathes no. 1:79-104.

Original Polish edition 1898.

9. ———. 1995. "Remarks on the Classification of Views on the Relation between the Soul and the Body." Axiomathes no. 6:25-29.

Original Polish edition 1909.

10. ———. 1997. "The Majesty of the University." In The Idea of the University, edited by Brzezinski, Jerzy and Nowak, Leszek, 9-17. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

11. ———. 2015. "Contemporary Philosophy on Immortality of the Soul." Studia Neoaristotelica no. 12:72-83.

Translation of an essay published in Polish in 1895.

12. ———. 2015. "The Metaphysics of the Soul." Studia Neoaristotelica no. 12:84-98.

Translation of an essay published in Polish in 1895.

French translations

1. ———. 2007. "Fonctions et formations." In A l'école de Brentano. De Würzbourg à Vienne, edited by Fisette, Daniel and Fréchette, Guillaume, 343-385. Paris: Vrin.

2. Twardowski, Kazimierz, and Husserl, Edmund. 1993. Sur les objets intentionnels (1893-1901). Paris: Vrin.

French translation of Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen and other texts by Edmund Husserl.

K. Twardowski: Sur la théore du contenu et de l'objet des représentations

E. Husserl: Intuition et re-présentation, Intuition et remplissement, Objets intentionnels et divers extes annexes

Présentation, traduction, notes, remarques et index pat Jacques English.

"Avertissement. Le présent ouvrage est la traduction, d'une part, de l'ouvrage de Kasimir Twardowski, Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen et, d'autre part, de toute une série de textes d'Edmund Husserl, s'échelonnant de 1893 à 1901, qui se rattachent, de près ou de loin, à la question des objets intentionnels, telle que l'avait posée Twardowski, et qui ont tous été publiés (sauf un) par Bernhard Rang en 1979 chez Martinus Nijhoff dans le Tome XXII des Husserliana, Aufsätze und Rezensionen (1890-1910)."

Italian translations

1. Twardowski, Kazimierz. 1988. Contenuto ed oggetto. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.

Italian translation by Stefano Besoli of: Idee und Perzeption. Eine erkenntnis-theoretische Untersuchung aus Descartes (pp. 25-53) and Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen (pp. 57-169).

With an introduction by Stefano Besoli: La rappresentazione e il suo oggetto: dalla psicologia descrittiva alla metafisica, pp. 7-21.

2. ———. 1991. "Sulle cosiddette verità relative." Discipline Filosofiche no. 2:1-31.

Original Polish edition 1900.

English translation in On actions, Products and Others Topics in Philosophy.

3. ———. 1998. "Funzioni e prodotti." Axiomathes no. 3:325-359.

Studies in English about the work of Twardowski

1. Albertazzi, Liliana. 1993. "Brentano, Twardowski and Polish Scientific Philosophy." In Polish Scientific Philosophy: the Lvov-Warsaw School, edited by Coniglione, Francesco, Poli, Roberto and Wolenski, Jan, 11-40. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

2. Betti, Arianna. 2006. "Sempiternal Truth. The Bolzano-Twardowski-Leśniewski Axis." In The Lvov-Warsaw School. The New Generation, edited by Jadacki, Jacek Jusliuz and Pasniczek, Jacek, 371-399. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

3. ———. 2006. "The Strange Case of Savonarola and the Painted Fish. On the Bolzanization of Polish Thought." In Actions, Products, and Things. Brentano and Polish Philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz, 55-81. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

"I have previously discussed in several papers specific Bolzanian elements present in the Polish tradition. This paper will not, for the most part, add anything in particular to that. The new - and rather blunt hypothesis to be put forward here is that, despite appearances, Twardowski also contributed de facto to slowing down the reception of Bolzano's most modem logical discoveries. For in Poland Bolzano was to remain one logician among many for rather long. It was chiefly thanks to two factors that Bolzano's star could, slowly, begin to rise in Poland, or, at least, that the fundamental achievements of his logic could be known. One factor is antipsychologistic (more precisely Platonistic) influence coming from Husserl and from Twardowski's student Łukasiewicz. The other factor is the change in the conception of logic which took Polish logic from, say, Sigwart, to Tarski through Leśniewski and Łukasiewicz," p. 55

4. ———. 2013. "We Owe It to Sigwart! A New Look at the Content/object Distinction in Early Phenomenological Theories of Judgment from Brentano to Twardowski." In Judgement and Truth in Early Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology, edited by Textor, Mark, 74-96. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

5. Betti, Arianna, and Schaar, Maria van der. 2004. "The Road from Vienna to Lvov: Twardowski's Theory of Judgement Between 1894 and 1897." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 67:1-20.

"In several manuscripts, written between 1894 and 1897, Twardowski developed a new theory of judgment with two types of judgment: existential and relational judgments. In Zur Lehre he tried to stay within a Brentanian framework, although he introduced the distinction between content and object in the theory of judgment. The introduction of this distinction forced Twardowski to revise further Brentano's theory. His changes concerned judgments about relations and about nonpresent objects. The latter are considered special cases of relational judgments. The existential judgments are analyzed in a Brentanian way."

6. Bobryk, Jerzy. 2009. "The Genesis and History of Twardowski's Theory of Actions and Products." In The Golden Age of Polish Philosophy. Kazimierz Twardowski's Philosophical Legacy, edited by Lapointe, Sandra, Wolenski, Jan, Marion, Mathieu and Miskiewicz, Wioletta, 33-42. New York: Springer.

7. Brandl, Johannes. 1998. "Twardowski's Distinction between Actions and éroducts." In The Lvov-Warsaw School and Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna and Wolenski, Jan, 23-34. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

8. Brożek, Anna. 2014. "The significance of Kazimierz Twardowski in philosophy and culture." PRO-FIL no. 15:32-46.

9. Buczynska-Garewicz, Hanna. 1980. "Twardowski's Idea of Act and Meaning." Dialectic and Humanism no. 3:153-164.

10. ———. 1985. "Twardowski's Concept of Sign and Meaning." In Semiotics 1984, edited by Deely, John, 557-565. Lanham: University Press of America.

11. Cavallin, Jens. 1996. "The Metaphysics of the Analysis of Mind." Axiomathes no. 3:335-350.

12. ———. 1997. Content and Object. Husserl, Twardowski and Psychologism. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

13. ———. 2001. "Contents. Psycho-physical Products and Representations. Some notes on the Theories of Kazimierz Twardowski." In The Dawn of Cognitive Science. Early European Contributors, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, 185-208. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

14. Czarnecki, Tadeusz. 1998. "Inspirations and Controversies: from the Letters between K. Twardowski and A. Meinong." In The Lvov-Warsaw School and Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna and Wolenski, Jan, 35-42. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

15. Czezowski, Tadeusz. 1948. "Kazimierz Twardowski as a Teacher." Studia Philosophica 1939-1946 no. 3:11-17.

16. ———. 1960. "Tribute to Kazimierz Twardowski on the 10th Anniversary of His Death in 1938." Journal of Philosophy no. 57:209-215.

17. Fréchette, Guillaume. 2012. "Twardowski on Signs and Products." Paradigmi no. 30:61-75.

18. Hickerson, Ryan. 2005. "Getting the Quasi-Picture: Twardowskian Representationalism and Husserl's Argument Against It." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 43:461-480.

19. ———. 2007. The History of Intentionality. New York: Continuum.

Contetns: Acknowledgements IX; Introduction 1; 1. What was Brentano's problem? Physical phenomena in Psychology from empirical standpoint 21; 2. Getting the quasi-picture: Twardowski's On the content and object of representations 45; 3. Not getting the quasi-picture: Husserl critique of Twardowski 57; 4. Phenomenology without phenomena: Husserl's break with Brentano 65; 5. Husserl's riddle and the 'real' content of consciousness: a Jamesian reading of Logical Investigations V 83; Conclusion 109; Appendix: The text and reception of the Logical Investigations 121; Notes 125; Bibliography 159; Index 169.

20. Ingarden, Roman. 1948. "The Scientific Activity of Kazimierz Twardowski." Studia Philosophica 1939-1946 no. 3:17-30.

21. Jacquette, Dale. 1987. "Twardowski on Content and Object." Conceptus.Zeitschrift für Philosophie no. 21:193-199.

"Kasimir Twardowski's reduction of psychological experience to an act, Content, and Object had a decided impact on the development of modern phenomenology and the theory of objects of Alexius Meinong, Ernst Mally, And the Graz school of philosophical semantics and psychology.

Twardowski offers four arguments to show that the content and object of a presentation can never be same. These conclusions are challenged by a formal diagonal counterexample in which it is possible for the content and object of a thought to be precisely identical.

Twardowski's reduction and the act-Content-Object structure of psychological experience may nevertheless be upheld in somewhat different form not as an exclusive but as a nonexclusive kind of distinction."

22. ———. 1990. "The Origins of Gegenstandstheorie. Immanent and Transcendent Intentional objects in Brentano, Twardowski and Meinong." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 3:177-202.

23. ———. 2006. "Twardowski, Brentano's Dilemma, and the Content-Object Distinction." In Actions, Products, and Things. Brentano and Polish Philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Łukasiewicz, Dariusz, 9-34. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

24. Jadacki, Jacek Jusliuz. 1992. "The Metaphysical Basis of Kazimierz Twardowski's Descriptive Semiotics." In Theories of Objects: Meinong and Twardowski, edited by Pasniczek, Jacek, 57-74. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Slodowskiej.

25. ———. 1993. "Kazimierz Twardowski's Descriptive Semiotics." In Polish Scientific Philosophy: the Lvov-Warsaw School, edited by Coniglione, Francesco, Poli, Roberto and Wolenski, Jan, 191-206. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

" Kazimierz Twardowski's contribution to semiotics has been fourfold: as a "critic" of others conceptions, a "constructor" of his own analyses, distinctions, and theses, a "precursor" of new ideas and methods, and an "inspirer" of posterior polemics (especially in Lvov-Warsaw School). The work bears the detail presentation of Twardowski's semiotic views, showing that his theory consists in the psycho-physical conception of signs, the functional conception of expression, the noematic conception of sense, and the discrepant conception of language. The reach bibliography contains the list of 21 Twardowski's works on semiotics, and of 43 works on his views."

26. Jedynak, Anna. 2009. "French and Polish Conventionalism." In The Golden Age of Polish philosophy. Kazimierz Twardowski's Philosophical Legacy, edited by Lapointe, Sandra, Wolenski, Jan, Marion, Mathieu and Miskiewicz, Wioletta, 61-77. New York: Springer.

27. Kleszcz, Ryszard 2016. "Kazimierz Twardowski on Metaphysics." In Tradition of the Lvov-Warsaw School. Ideas and Continuations, edited by Brożek, Anna, Chybińska, Alicja, Jadacki, Jacek and Wolenski, Jan, 135-152. Leiden: Brill.

28. Kujundicz, Nebojsa. 2001. "On the Logic of Adjectives." Dialogue.Canadian Philosophical Review no. 40:803-809.

29. Lapointe, Sandra, Wolenski, Jan, Marion, Mathieu, and Miskiewicz, Wioletta, eds. 2009. The Golden Age of Polish Philosophy. Kazimierz Twardowski's Philosophical Legacy. New York: Springer.

Contents: Acknowledgments V-VI; Sandra Lapointe, Jan Wolenski: Introduction 1; Part I. Twardowski and Polish scientific philosophy. 1. Dariusz Łukasiewicz: Polish metaphysics and the Brentanian tradition 19; 2. Jerzy Bobryk: The genesis and history of Twardowski's theory of actions and products 33; Jan Wolenski: The rise and development of logical semantics in Poland 43; Anna Jedynak: French and Polish conventionalism 61; Part II. Philosophy of logic and mathematics. 5. Grzegorz Malinowski: A philosophy of many-valued logic. The third logical value and beyond 81; 6. Arianna Betti: Leśniewski's systems and the Aristotelian model of science 93; 7. Denis Miéville: Leśniewski, negation, and the art of logical subtlety 113; 8. Roman Murawski: Philosophy of mathematics in the Lvov-Warsaw School 121; 9. Paolo Mancosu: Tarski's engagement with philosophy 131; 10. Douglas Patterson: Tarski on definition, meaning and truth 155; Part III. Polish Philosophy of Mind. 11. Urszula M. Zeglen: A note on Henryk Mehlberg's contribution to the debate on the mind-body problem 173; 12. Wioletta Miskiewicz: Leopold Blaustein's analytical phenomenology 181; Part IV. Around Twardowski's School. 13. Katarzyna Kijania-Placek: Non-classical conceptions of truth in Polish philosophy at the beginning of the 20th century 191; 14. Bernard Linsky: Chwistek's theory of constructive types 203; 15. Claude Panaccio: Konstanty Michalski on late medieval nominalism 221; 16. Roger Pouivet: Jan Samalucha's analytical Thomism 235; Index 247-251.

30. Łukasiewicz, Dariusz. 2009. "Polish Metaphysics and the Brentanian Tradition." In The Golden Age of Polish philosophy. Kazimierz Twardowski's Philosophical Legacy, edited by Lapointe, Sandra, Wolenski, Jan, Marion, Mathieu and Miskiewicz, Wioletta, 19-31. New York: Springer.

31. Moltmann, Friederike. 2014. "Attitudinal Objects and the Distinction between Actions and Products." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 43:579-701.

32. Pasniczek, Jacek, ed. 1992. Theories of Objects: Meinong and Twardowski. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Slodowskiej.

Contents: Jacek Pasniczek: Preface 7; Francesca Modenato: Alexius Meinong: the theory of relation as a theory of knowledge 9; Liliana Albertazzi: Is there a transcendental object? 26; Roberto Poli: Twardowski and Wolff 45; Jacek Juliusz Jadacki: The metaphysical basis of Kazimierz Twardowski's descriptive semiotics 57; Jan Wolenski: 'Being' as a syncategorematic word: a completion (?) of Twardowski's analysis of 'nothing' 75; Dale Jacquette: Meinongian models of scientific law 86; Jacek Pasniczek: The Meinongian logic vs. the Classical logic 105-112.

This volume contains a selection of papers from the conference "The Theory of Objects in Central Europe. The Austrian-Polish Connection: Meinong and Twardowski" held in December 1989 in Kraków. It was supported and sponsored by the Jagiellonian University, Centro Studi per la Filosofia Mitteleuropea, The National Research Project "Sign-Language-Reality", and The Institute of Austrian Culture in Warsaw. The conference was organized by Prof. Jan Wolenski with dr. Georg Jankovic's generous assistance.

Alexius Meinong and Kazimierz Twardowski studied philosophy at the University of Vienna at the end of XIX century. Both were under a great influence of Franz Brentano, who is considered the father of contemporary theory of intentionality. He viewed intentionality as the crucial feature of consciousness consisting in „directness to an object". Such conception should presuppose some general theory of objects of consciousness. Meinong and Twardowski adopted Brentano's idea of intentionality subsequently elaborating their own ontologies of objects. What is common in the views of the two philosophers, barring many differences, is that they assume an extensive sphere of non-existent objects that can be possibly objects of intentional acts.

Nowadays there is a growing interest in theories of intentionality and intentional objects on the part of analytic philosophy as well as phenomenology. That is why there is also a renaissance of Meinong's and Twardowski's philosophical thought, although the former philosopher is much better known, more popular, and, what follows, more inspiring. The main purpose of the conference that took place in Kraków was to investigate, from various historical and theoretical perspectives, theories of objects created by the two of Brentano's followers. It is to be regretted that the present volume does not fill a serious gap in philosophical literature: no paper is devoted to direct comparison of Meinong and Twardowski. Nevertheless we hope that the papers collected in the volume may contribute to better understanding of the two philosophers and prepare the ground for such a comparative study.

F. Modenato, in her essay, traces the development of Meinong's idea of relations while linking his views with the views of Hume and Locke. She is concentrating on epistemological relevance of the idea. Relations are treated by Meinong as some complexities and both relations and complexities are higher-order objects. Higher-order objects play the central role in Meinong's theory of knowledge and are of great importance to his ontology.

L. Albertazzi points to some Kantian motives in Twardowski's ontology. The Polish philosopher distinguishes several categories of objects which, according to Albertazzi's interpretation, correspond closely to that distinguished by Kant. In particular, 'the object in general' may be taken as Kant's transcendental object, and 'the general object' as a universal presented individually in the subject of proposition.

R. Poli argues in his paper that many elements of Wolff's ontology can be found in Twardowski's theory of objects. Both philosophers conceive objects as possible wholes. For Twardowski, being an object is ontologically prior to having existence and it is enough for being an object to be representable in an act of presentation.

J.J. Jadacki presents a comprehensive survey of Twardowski's ontological (metaphysical) and epistemological views. On this basis he reconstructs the philosopher's descriptive semiotics focusing his attention on the theory of judgment.

Additionally, Jadacki carries out a formal semantic analysis of Twardowski's semiotics.

J. Wolenski considers the main traditional views of 'being' and wonders if 'being' could be situated somewhere in the formal hierarchy of concepts. He comes to the conclusion that "being" expresses no concept at all and, what follows, it has the syncategorematic character as Twardowski claimed. Wolenski proposes a completion of Twardowski's claim by appealing to modern logic and Leśniewski's ontology.

D. Jacquette sketches informally the principles of Meinongian semantics and shows how the semantics can be applied in formalisation of scientific laws. By contrast to extensionalist models of scientific discourse which admit only existent objects, in Meinongian semantics the reference to ideal and non-existent objects is possible. Many problems of contemporary philosophy of science such as, for example, the justification of induction and confirmation can be uniformely treated and solved on the ground of Meinong's theory.

J. Pasniczek proposes quite a simple logic which obeys the main theses of Meinong's theory of objects. This logic resembles closely the classical predicate logic with respect to syntax and semantics (it is basically extensional). Despite that resemblance, the proposed logic is associated with very rich ontology of objects including various kinds of non-existent objects.

I am deeply indebted to Prof. Jan Wolenski for encouragement and assistance in editing this book." (Preface, pp. 7-8)

33. Placek, Tomasz. 1996. "Thought as a Product of Thinking." Conceptus.Zeitschrift für Philosophie no. 24:191-203.

"This paper advocates the view that thoughts which are qualitatively the same are also numerically identical. The point of departure is the puzzle: if thoughts are unchanging and eternal inhabitants of a "third realm", then it is mysterious how we grasp them, whereas, the assumption that they are outputs of some mental processes casts doubt on the possibility of communicating thoughts. To solve the puzzle Twardowski's teaching on actions and their products is applied and further elaborated."

34. Poli, Roberto. 1992. "Twardowski and Wolff." In Theories of Objects: Meinong and Twardowski, edited by Pasniczek, Jacek, 45-56. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Slodowskiej.

35. ———. 1993. "Twardowski's Theory of Modification Against the Background of Traditional Logic." Axiomathes no. 4:41-57.

36. ———. 1996. "Kazimierz Twardowski (1866–1938)." In The School of Franz Brentano, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Libardi, Massimo and Poli, Roberto, 207-231. Dordrecht: Reidel.

37. Rojszczak, Artur. 1998. "Truth-bearers from Twardowski to Tarski." In The Lvov-Warsaw School and Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna and Wolenski, Jan, 73-84. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

38. ———. 2005. From the Act of Judging to the Sentence. The Problem of Truth Bearers from Bolzano to Tarski. Dordrecht: Springer.

39. Rollinger, Robin D. 1999. Husserl's Position in the School of Brentano. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

See Chapter 5: Husserl and Twardowski, pp. 139-154.

40. ———. 2009. "Brentano's Psychology and Logic and the Basis of Twardowski's Theory of Presentations." The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication:1-23.

41. Rosiak, Marek. 1998. "Twardowski and Husserl on Wholes and Parts." In The Lvov-Warsaw School and Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna and Wolenski, Jan, 85-100. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

42. Schaar, Maria van der. 1996. "From Analytic Psychology to Analytic Philosophy; the Reception of Twardowski’s Ideas in Cambridge." Axiomathes no. 4:295-324.

43. ———. 2006. "On the Ambiguities of the Term Judgement. An Evaluation of Twardowski's Distinction between Action and Product." In Actions, Products, and Things. Brentano and Polish Philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Łukasiewicz, Dariusz, 35-54. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

44. ———. 2015. Kazimierz Twardowski: A Grammar for Philosophy. Leiden: Brill.

45. Schuhmann, Karl. 1993. "Husserl and Twardowski." In Polish Scientific Philosophy: the Lvov-Warsaw School, edited by Coniglione, Francesco, Poli, Roberto and Wolenski, Jan, 41-58. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

46. Simons, Peter M. 2009. "Twardowski on Truth." The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication no. 4:1-14.

47. Simons, Peter M., and Wolenski, Jan. 1989. "De Veritate: Austro-Polish Contributions to the Theory of Truth from Brentano to Tarski." In The Vienna Circle and the Lvov-Warsaw School, edited by Szaniawski, Klemens, 391-442. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

48. Skolimowski, Henryk. 1967. Polish Analytical Philosophy. A Survey and a Comparison with British Analytical Philosophy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Chapter II. Kazimierz Twardowski and the Rise of the Analytical Movement in Poland, pp. 24-55.

49. Smith, Barry. 1989. "Kazimir Twardowski: An Essay on the Borderlines of ontology, Psychology and logic." In The Vienna Circle and the Lvov-Warsaw School, edited by Szaniawski, Klemens, 313-373. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

50. ———. 1994. Austrian Philosophy. The Legacy of Franz Brentano. Chicago: Open Court.

See the Chapter: K asimir Twardowski: On content and object, pp. 160-195.

51. ———. 2006. "Why Polish Philosophy Does Not Exist." In The Lvov-Warsaw School. The New Generation, edited by Jadacki, Jacek Jusliuz and Pasniczek, Jacek, 19-40. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"Why have Polish philosophers fared so badly as concerns their admission into the pantheon of "Continental philosophers?" Why, for example, should Heidegger and Derrida be included in this pantheon, but not Ingarden or Tarski? Why, to put the question from another side, should there be so close an association in Poland between philosophy and logic, and between philosophy and science? We distinguish a series of answers to this question, which are dealt with under the following headings: (a) the role of socialism; (b) the disciplinary association between philosophy and mathematics; (c) the influence of Austrian philosophy in general and of Brentanian philosophy in particular; (d) the serendipitous role of Twardowski; (e) the role of Catholicism. The conclusion of the paper is that there is no such thing as 'Polish philosophy' because philosophy in Poland is philosophy per se, it is part and parcel of the mainstream of world philosophy -- simply because, in contrast to French or German philosophy, it meets international standards of training, rigour, professionalism and specialization."

52. Vasyukov, Vladimir L. 1998. "Non-Elementary Exegesis of Twardowski's Theory of Presentations." In The Lvov-Warsaw School and Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna and Wolenski, Jan, 153-167. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"In spite of the historical proximity of S. Leśniewski to K. Twardowski, ari attempt to look at Twardowski's heritage through Leśniewski's eyes leads to striking results. Firstly, it results in a wider framework than Leśniewski's Elementary Ontology and secondly, it involves a transition from Formal Ontology to Formai Phenomenology. In this paper an extension of Leíniewskis's Non-Elementary Ontology is presented which is suitable for investìgating Twardowski's Theory of Presentation."

53. Vinogradov, Evgeni G. 1998. "The Rationalistic Paradigm of Franz Brentano and Kazimierz Twardowski." In The Lvov-Warsaw School and Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna and Wolenski, Jan, 101-104. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

54. Wolenski, Jan. 1989. Logic and Philosophy in the Lvov-Warsaw School. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

55. ———. 1992. "'Being' as a Syncategorematic Word: A Completion (?) of Twardowski's Analysis of 'Nothing'." In Theories of Objects: Meinong and Twardowski, edited by Pasniczek, Jacek, 75-85. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Slodowskiej.

56. ———. 1999. "Twardowski and the Distinction between Content and Object." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 8:15-36.

"The content/object distinction was the main philosophical result achieved by Twardowski. However, he had predecessors. This paper discusses the development of the mentioned distinction from Bolzano to Twardowski. Views of Zimmermann, Brentano, Meinong, Höfler are taken into account; also some objections of Husserl against Twardowski are discussed and evaluated. The paper also stresses the general philosophical significance of Twardowski's work."

57. ———. 2002. "From Intentionality to Formal Semantics (From Twardowski To Tarski)." Erkenntnis no. 56:9-27.

"This paper intends to show that the rise of semantics in Poland was related to Kazimierz Twardowski and his understanding of mental acts as intentional (in Brentano's understanding plus the principally realistic conception of intentional objects). Twardowski's theory of language was consequently semantic considering words as products of mental acts and as referring to the world. This view was then refined by Twardowski's students, in particular Stanislaw Leśniewski and Tadeusz Kotarbinski. Both were teachers of Alfred Tarski, the founder of modern formal semantics. These facts suggest that the intentional conception of language was an important philosophical context of Tarski's work."

58. ———. 2009. "The Rise and Sevelopment of Logical Semantics in Poland." In The Golden Age of Polish philosophy. Kazimierz Twardowski's Philosophical Legacy, edited by Lapointe, Sandra, Wolenski, Jan, Marion, Mathieu and Miskiewicz, Wioletta, 43-59. New York: Springer.

Studies in German

1. Brandl, Johannes. 1996. "Kazimierz Twardowski uber Funktionen und Gebilde: Einleitung zu einem text aus dem Nachlass." Conceptus.Zeitschrift für Philosophie no. 24:145-156.

"Among the unpublished writings of Kazimierz Twardowski so far there is an essay in which Twardowski tries to embed the concept of an intentional object' within a theory that comprises at the same time psychological, logical and grammatical aspects. This theory of actions' and products' is presented here and several applications of the theory are discussed. The central question thereby is whether the distinction between actions and products enables Twardowski to counter the objection of psychologism raised against him. Having explained Twardowski's position we describe from an editorial point of view the text in which his theory is transmitted. The text itself is published according to the given editorial principles after this introduction."

[The text is: Funktionen und Gelbilde pp. 157-189]

2. Brożek, Anna. 2012. Kazimierz Twardowski: die Wiener Jahre. Berlin: Springer.

3. Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz. 2007. Gegenstandstheorie und Theorie der Intentionalität bei Alexius Meinong. Dordrecht: Springer.

Inhaltverzeichnis: Einführung IX-XII; 1. Intentionalität und immanente Objekte. Die Lehre Franz Brentanos 1; 2. Abstraktion und Relationen. Der junge Meinong 53; 3. Inhalt und Gegenständ. Meinongs Lehre um 1900 103; 4. Die Lehre von den Objektiven (1902) 149; 5. Gegenstandstheorie (1904-1920) 179; 6. Meinongs Gegenstände und die intentionale Beziehung 251; 7. Meinong'sche "Konstitutionssysteme" 307; 8. Die Logik des Ausserseins 353; Schlusswort 371; Bibliographie 373; Namenverzeichnis 385-386

3.1 Twardowski über Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen (1894), pp. 104-115 and 3.2 Twardowski, Husserl und Meinong (1894-1904), pp. 116-127.

4. Sebestik, Jan. 1989. "Nicht-existierende Gegenstände und strukturale Ontologie bei Twardowski." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 35:175-188.

5. Tanasescu, Ion. 1999. "Der Vorstellungsgegenstand. Zu Twardowskis Rezeption der Psychologie Brentanos." Brentano Studien.Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 8:53-66.

Studies in French

1. Benoist, Jocelyn. 1995. "À l'origine de la phénomenologie: au déla de la réprésentation." Critique:480-506.

2. Betti, Arianna. 2005. "Propositions et états de choses chez Twardowski." Dialogue.Canadian Philosophical Review no. 44:469-492.

"Twardowski's On the Content and Object of Presentations (1894) is one of the most influential works that Austrian philosophy has left to posterity. The manuscript Logik (1894-1895) supplements that work and allows us to reconstruct Twardowski's theory of judgment. These texts raise several issues, in particular whether Twardowski accepts propositions and states of affairs in his theory of judgment and whether his theory is acceptable. This article presents Twardowski's theory, shows that he accepts states of affairs, that he has a notion of proposition, and that his theory is interesting and sophisticated."

3. Dambska, Izydora. 1978. "François Brentano et la pensée philosophique en Pologne: Casimir Twardowski et son École." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 5:117-130.

4. Fisette, Denis. 2003. "Représentations. Husserl critique de Twardowski." In Aux origines de la phénoménologie : Husserl et le contexte des Recherches logiques, edited by Fisette, Denis, 61-91. Paris: Vrin.

5. Rusnock, Paul. 2007. "Qu'est-ce que la représentation? Bolzano et la philosophie autrichienne." Philosophiques no. 30:67-81.

"Largely ignored in Germany during the nineteenth century, Bolzano was certainly better known in Austria, in particular among Brentano's students, who enthusiastically studied his Theory of Science. In this respect it makes sense to speak of Bolzano as belonging to a tradition of Austrian philosophy. Yet an examination of the reception of Bolzano's ideas among Brentano's students indicates that he was not always well understood. This article discusses a particular case, Twardowski's reaction to Bolzano's theory of representation."

6. Sebestik, Jan. 1994. "Twardowski entre Bolzano et Husserl: la théorie de la représentation." Cahiers de Philosophie Ancienne et du Langage no. 1:61-85.

"La plus importante des possibilités ainsi ouvertes consiste sans doute dans le réalisme de Twardowski, dans son orientation en direction de l’objet. L’ “étude psychologique” qui porte sur la représentation finit pas se constituer en une ontologie relationnelle de l’objet. Par delà les analyses psychologiques de l’objet intentionnel, Twardowski a intégré dans sa théorie deux doctrines essentielles de Bolzano : la méréologie, qui forme la base de son système mathématique, et la théorie de l’objet, le noyau de sa sémantique logique.

Malgré la critique husserlienne des “deux faces qui donneraient à l’expression, l’une la signification, et l’autre la détermination de son orientation vers l’objet”, la séparation méthodique et le traitement indépendant du contenu et de l’objet de la représentation, ont permis à Twardowski d’accorder aux objets l’autonomie et l’indépendance nécessaires pour permettre à Tarski, disciple de Łukasiewicz, lui-même disciple de Twardowski, d'établir la sémantique logique."

Studies in Italian

1. Besoli, Stefano. 1991. "La verità del contenuto. Riflessioni intorno alla problematica del giudizio in Twardowski." Discipline Filosofiche no. 2:49-94.

2. Coniglione, Francesco. 1996. Nel segno della scienza. La filosofia polacca del Novecento. Milano: Franco Angeli.

Kazimierz Twardowski e la fondazione della filosofia scientifica, pp. 79-89.

3. Galewicz, Wlodimierz. 1991. "Tra psicologismo e platonismo. Osservazioni sulla teoria dei prodotti mentali di Twardowski." Discipline Filosofiche no. 2:95-116.

4. Modenato, Francesca. 1984. "Atto, contenuto, oggetto: da F. Brentano a K. Twardowski." Verifiche no. 13:55-78.

5. Olejnik, Roman. 1992. "Kazimierz Twardwski filosofo e fondatore." Aquinas.Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia no. 35:653-660.

"The Scholar, who at the start of this century has indicated the direction towards philosophy not only of the School of Leopoli but, in a certain sense, of the whole Poland, was Kazimierz Twardowski. This study presents briefly his biography and his activity as teacher and as organiser. The knowledge of the setting in which he was formed in the intellectual attitude of the founder of the Philosophical School of Leopoli-Warsaw can facilitate a brief exposition of the theories of Twardowski. He was an excellent Brentanist, and in the development of this doctrine he stands midway between F. Brantano and E. Husserl. K. Tardowski is the founder of the School which represents a relevant trend in modern analytical philosophy."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bertrand Russell's Logic and His Ontological Development (1900-1919)

Introduction

"It was Frege and Russell, not Wittgenstein or Quine, who began what may be called the ontology of the analytic tradition."

Jan Dejnožka, The Ontology of the Analytic Tradition and Its Origins, (p. 149)

"Russell, in Principles of Mathematics, may seem to be a radical relativist. I quote this text again:

Numbers cannot be asserted of objects, because the same set of objects may have different numbers assigned to them...; for example, one army is so many regiments and such another number of soldiers. This view seems to me to involve too physical a view of objects: I do not consider the army to be the same object as the regiments. (Principles of Mathematics [POM] 519).

Alternatively, in that every application of a concept 'presupposes numerical diversity', in that every entity has its own immediate identity, Principles suggests a radical realism. The one thing Principles seems to not to be is modified realism, since Russell expressly denies the distinction between real distinction and conceptual distinction (POM 466). But this denial seems quite disingenuous in light of his own distinction between empirical (or actual) existence and mathematical (or logical) existence.

Surely the truth is that Principles indulges in a rich and complex modified realism. Spatial, temporal, and material points are kinds of terms which differ only immediately. (...)

Consider also Russell's distinction in Principles between actual existence, existence, and mere nonexistent being, in order of progressively muted substance substitutes. Empirical existents are much like Frege's concrete objects, existents are much like Frege's abstract objects. Logical existents seem real than empirical existents, but more real than nonexistent beings. Spatiotemporal reals (points and instants) seem to be in between empirical existents and logical existents, since empirical evidence determines the geometry actual world. Being is the general status of which the foregoing are kinds. Objects roughly include both terms and classes as many (POM 55n). Terms are simply beings. Classes as many have mathematical existence, or better, logical existence. Properties and relations are probably hybrid classifications, since some are empirically given and others are logico-mathematical. Possibly there are similar gradations of ontological status among nonexistent chairs, nonexistent material points, nonexistent colors, and so on, though possibly they are all just nonexistent entities. Russell does not address that question.

(...)

Russell rejects substances and essences in the traditional sense. But he admits six sorts of beings or substances, or substance substitutes: (1) All entities, including both being and existence, have timeless being in 1903. (2) Universals' have being in 1912. (3) Being is general timelessness in 1914. (4) Being is logical atoms in 1918. (5) Being is object words in 1940. (6) Being is qualities (particulars, not universals) in 1940-59. 1 described these six sorts of being in my Erkenntnis paper (Dejnožka 1990). In addition, Russell admits two substitutes for material substances: (7) Ordinary physical things are causal lines in 1927-59 (The analysis of matter [AMA] 285; Human Knowledge: its scopes and limits [HK] 453-60, 489-90; My Philosophical development [MPD] 146-47). 'Thus the persistence of substance is replaced by the persistence of causal laws" (AMA 285). (8) Space-time structures are what are probably real in 1927-59 (AMA 249-57; HK 250-66, 460-75, 491-92; MPD 147-48). Russell speaks of 'substantial structures' which replace 'pieces of matter' and also of structures of events (HK 461). Of course, (7) and (8) overlap; a causal line is an instantiated structure.

In his 1914-18 philosophy of logical fictions, in which particulars (sense-data) or perhaps simples are alone real, Russell may seem a radical realist. Bodies, numbers, and minds (except one's own mind) are logical fictions with fictitious identities. And 'there is no such thing as a fiction' (The Philosophy of Logical Atomism [PLA] 189). In 1919 this virtually becomes Hume's neutral monist distinction between impressions and fictions. Like Hume's impressions, Russell's particulars are real beings. Each can logically happen to be the whole universe. But instead of admitting distinctions of reason within lone sense-data, as Hume does within impressions, Russell admits "parts" which, if you attend to them, become 'new' data (new real beings) in their own right (PLA 203; see On the relation of universals and particulars [RUP] 114 and An inquiry into meaning and truth [IMT] 334). Much as with Frege, this is a shifting of phenomenological real identities over time sans any shifting of concepts. Russell assigns particulars the 'logical position' of substances (PLA 204). Particulars are mind-independent (1a), essentially complete (1b), ultimate logical subjects of predication (1c), logically independent (1d), given in acquaintance (l1), the unchanging building blocks in the logical construction of changes (1f), and have phenomenologically real identities as opposed to the conceptual identities of logical fictions (1g). Criterion (1) seems fulfilled-but for radical realism, since logical fictions are said to exist only in a purely nominal sense.

Nonetheless, I classify the 1914-18 Russell as a modified realist. For there is that exception to logical fictions, one's own mind, which ought to be in some sense more substantival than sense-data, despite everything Russell says about sense-data as being as real as anything can be. Only the 1921 Russell's neutral monism, in which even one's own mind is a construction, seems a truly radical realism. It is also worth noting that as series of classes of sensibilia, two constructed bodies are really distinct in sense (2) just in case they have no sensibilium in common.

The 1914-21 Russell's constructionism (this includes neutral monism), in sting unsensed sensibilia to account for perception and physical lawfulness, a scientific explanatory realism. It is also a phenomenological realism in that se-data are physically real events. And third, it is a methodological realism. Analyses end with sensed entities, if not with entities known to be simple.

Russell's 1927-59 representational realism meets criterion (3) of explanatory modified realism. It is a kind of scientific realism. In The Analysis of Matter, Russell defends realism against radical reductionism. He says, "There are many possible ways of turning some things hitherto regarded as 'real' into mere laws concerning the other things. Obviously there must be a limit to this process, or else all the things in the world will merely be each other's washing" ([AMA] 325). Russell says, "We must find some reality for the electron, or else the physical world will run through our fingers like a jelly-fish" (AMA 319). Thus physical structures such as electrons are not mere logical fictions. Indeed, two electrons are really distinct in sense (2) if they have no constituent event in common (AMA 288). Yet Russell reserves metaphysical status for the events which compose electrons, and ultimately for whatever entities may comprise the final interpretation of physics (AMA 2, 9). This suggests a modified realism in which instantiated physical structures are real facts, but are less real than any ultimate, i.e. simple, constituents they may have." (pp. 244-247)

From: Jan Dejnožka, The Ontology of the Analytic Tradition and Its Origins. Realism and Identity in Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine, Lanham: Littlefield Adams Books 1996. (Paperback edition reprinted with corrections, 2002; reprinted with further corrections, 2003).

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on the Logic and Ontology of Bertrand Russell

Studies in English

1. "Bertrand Russell's Early Philosophy. First Part." 1980. Synthese no. 45.

Contents: Peter Hylton: Russell's Substitutional Theory 1; Rosalind Hursthouse: Denoting in the Principles of Mathematics 33; J. Alberto Coffa: Russell as a Platonic Dialogue: The Matter of Denoting 43; Nino Cocchiarella: The Development of the Theory of Logical Types and the Notion of a Logical Subject in Russell's Early Philosophy 71; Nicholas Griffin: Russell on the Nature of Logic (1903-1913) 117-188.

2. "Bertrand Russell's Early Philosophy. Second Part." 1981. Synthese no. 46.

Contents:David Pears:

The Function of Acquaintance in Russell's Philosophy 149; Jaakko Hintikka: On Denoting What? 167; James Cappio: Russell's Philosophical Development 185; William Lycan: Logical Atomism and Ontological Atom 207; Romane Clark: Acquaintance 231; J. Alberto Coffa: Russell and Kant 247; Jaakko Hintikka: Russell, Kant, and Coffa 265; Richard E. Grandy: Forms of Belief 271-284.

3. "Antinomies and Paradoxes. Studies in Russell's Early Philosophy." 1988. Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies no. 8 (1-2).

Table of Contents: Daniel J. O'Leary: The Propositional Logic of Principia Mathematica and Some of Its Forerunners; Jocelyne Couture: Are Substitutional Quantifiers a Solution to the Problem of the Elimination of Classes in Principia Mathematica?; Michel Seymour:

The Referential Use of Definite Descriptions; Martha Harrell: Extension to Geometry of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems II; John G. Slater: Russell's Conception of Philosophy; Janet Farrell Smith: Russell's Re-Evaluation of Meinong, 1913-14: an Analysis of Acquaintance; Michael Bradie: Russell's Scientific Realism; Robert Tully: Russell's Neutral Monism.

The Tenability of Russell's Early Philosophy.

A. J. Ayer (moderator), I. Grattan-Guinness, Nicholas Griffin, Robert Tully, W. V. O. Quine.

Ian Winchester: Introduction ; Nicholas Griffin: The Tiergarten Programme; Ian Winchester: The Antinomy of Dynamical Causation in Leibniz and the Principles and Russell's Early Picture of Physics; Gregory H. Moore: The Roots of Russell's Paradox; Joan Richards: Bertrand Russell's Essay on the Foundations of Geometry and the Cambridge Mathematical Tradition; I. Grattan-Guinness: Russell's Logical Manuscripts [abstract]; Alasdair Urquhart; Russell's Zigzag Path to the Ramified Theory of Types.

4. "100 Years of 'on Denoting'." 2005. Mind no. 114.

Stephen Neale: Editorial Introduction. A Century Later 809;

Articles.

Bertrand Russell: On Denoting 873; Ray Buchanan and Gary Ostertag: Has the Problem of Incompleteness Rested on a Mistake? 889; Richard L. Cartwright: Remarks on Propositional Functions 915; Ólafur Páll Jónsson: The Bike Puzzle 929; David Kaplan: Reading ‘On Denoting’ on its Centenary 933; Saul Kripke: Russell’s Notion of Scope 1005; Alex Oliver and Timothy Smiley: Plural Descriptions and Many-valued Functions 1039; Nathan Salmon: On Designating 1069; Stephen Schiffer: Russell’s Theory of Definite Descriptions 1135; Zoltán Gendler Szabó: The Loss of Uniqueness 1185-1222.

5. Anderson, Anthony C. 1986. "Some Difficulties Concerning Russellian Intensional Logic." Noûs no. 20:35-43.

6. Anellis, Irving H. 1995. "Peirce Rustled, Russell Pierced: How Charles Pierce and Bertrand Russell Viewed Each's Other Work in Logic, and an Assessment of Russell's Accuracy and Role in the Historiography of Logic." Modern Logic no. 5 (3):270-328.

7. ———. 2009. "Russell and His Sources for Non-Classical Logics." Logica Universalis no. 2:153-218.

Abstract. "My purpose here is purely historical. It is not an attempt to resolve the question as to whether Russell did or did not countenance nonclassical logics, and if so, which nonclassical logics, and still less to demonstrate whether he himself contributed, in any manner, to the development of nonclassical logic. Rather, I want merely to explore and insofar as possible document, whether, and to what extent, if any, Russell interacted with the various, either the various candidates or their, ideas that Dejnožka and others have proposed as potentially influential in Russell’s intellectual reactions to nonclassical logic or to the philosophical concepts that might contribute to his reactions to nonclassical logics."

8. Ayer, Alfred Julius. 1971. Russell and Moore: The Analytical Heritage. London: Macmillan.

9. ———. 1972. Russell. London: Fontana.

10. Beaney, Michael, ed. 2007. The Analytic Turn. Analysis in Early Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology. New York: Routledge.

11. ———. 2009. "The Early Life of Russell's Notion of a Propositional Function." The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication no. 4:1-25.

12. ———, ed. 2013. The Oxford Handbook of the History of Analytic Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.

13. Bergmann, Gustav. 1947. "Russell on Particulars." Philosophical Review no. 56:59-72.

Reprinted in: Elmer Daniel Klemke (ed.), Essays on Bertrand Russell.

14. ———. 1957. "The Revolt against Logical Atomism (First Part)." Philosophical Quarterly no. 7:323-339.

Reprinted in: Elmer Daniel Klemke (ed.), Essays on Bertrand Russell.

15. ———. 1958. "The Revolt against Logical Atomism (Second Part)." Philosophical Quarterly no. 8:1-13.

Reprinted in: Elmer Daniel Klemke (ed.), Essays on Bertrand Russell.

16. Bonino, Guido. 2008. The Arrow and the Point. Russell and Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

17. Bonomi, Andrea. 1977. "Existence, Presupposition and Anaphoric Space." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 6:239-267.

18. Bostock, David. 2012. Russell's Logical Atomism. New York: Oxford University Press.

19. Bourgeois, Warren. 1981. "Beyond Russell and Meinong." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 16:653-666.

20. Butchvarov, Panayot. 1986. "Our Robust Sense of Reality." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:403-421.

21. ———. 1988. "Russell's Views on Reality." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 32:165-167.

"Russell's account of existence as satisfaction of a propositional function presupposes a more fundamental notion of existence, which we would employ in deciding what to allow as arguments satisfying a function, a notion he never elucidates. Jan Dejnožka has distinguished three ways Russell used the term "exists," one being the phenomenalist's, in which it refers to correlations of sense-data. I argue that this phenomenalist notion cannot be the one Russell needs, since he explicitly held that existence be understood broadly, so that, e.g., the nonexistence of God would not follow by definition."

22. Candlish, Stewart. 2007. The Russell/Bradley Dispute and Its Significance for Twentieth-Century Philosophy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

23. Cappio, James. 1981. "Russell's Philosophical Development." Synthese no. 46:185-205.

24. Carey, Rosalind. 2007. Russell and Wittgenstein on the Nature of Judgement. New York: Continuum.

25. Carey, Rosalind, and Ongley, John. 2009. Historical Dictionary of Bertrand Russell's Philosophy. Lanham: Scarecrow Press.

26. Cartwright, Richard. 1987. "On the Origins of Russell's Theory of Descriptions." In Philosophical Essays, 95-133. Cambridge: MIT Press.

27. Casullo, Albert. 1981. "Russell on the Reduction of Particulars." Analysis no. 41:199-205.

28. Chihara, Charles. 1973. Ontology and the Vicious-Circle Principle. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

29. Church, Alonzo. 1976. "Comparison of Russell's Resolution of the Semantical Antinomies with That of Tarski." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 41:747-760.

30. ———. 1984. "Russell's Theory of Identity of Propositions." Philosophia Naturalis no. 24:513-522.

31. Clack, Robert J. 1969. Bertrand Russell's Philosophy of Language. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

32. Cocchiarella, Nino. 1973. "Whither Russell's Paradox of Predication?" In Logic and Ontology, edited by Munitz, Milton K., 133-158. New York University Press.

Contributions to a seminar on ontology held under the auspices of the New York University Institute of Philosophy for the year 1970-1971.

"Russell’s paradox has two forms or versions, one in regard to the class of all classes that are not members of themselves, the other in regard to “the predicate: to be a predicate that cannot be predicated of itself.”(1) The first version is formulable in the ideography of Frege's Grundgesetze der Arithmetik and shows this system to be inconsistent. The second version, however, is not formulable in this ideography, as Frege himself pointed out in his reply to Russell. (2) Nevertheless, it is essentially the second version of his paradox that leads Russell to avoid it (and others of its ilk) through his theory of types.

The first version is of course the relevant version with respect to any formulation of the theory of types in which membership in a class is the fundamental notion, that is, a formulation utilizing 'ε' as a primitive binary predicate constant.(3) However, Russell's theory of types (even ignoring its ramification) is essentially concerned with the notion of predication, and only indirectly through the (philosophically questionable) interpretation of predication as the membership relation is the first version of his paradox relevant to this formulation.

Apparently, Russell saw his paradox as generating an aporetic situation in regard to two fundamental “notions,” namely, the notion of membership (in a class) and the notion of predication (of an attribute).(4) In regard to the notion of membership, the application of Russell’s paradox is not here brought into question. However, in regard to the notion of predication, the applicability of the reasoning grounding Russell’s paradox will here be very much brought into question. Indeed, I shall claim that in this case the paradox fails.(5)" (pp. 133-135)

(1) “Letter to Frege,” reprinted in [10], p. 125.

(2) “Letter to Russell,” ibid., p. 128.

(3) Cf. [5], p. 140 for a specific formulation of this kind of type theory.

(4) Gödel (cf. [6], p. 131f.) distinguishes these two forms of Russell’s paradox by referring to them as the “extensional” and the “intensional” forms, respectively. For the purposes of the present paper, this distinction is preferable to Ramsey’s different but better known distinction between “logical” and “semantical” paradoxes.

(5) With this failure of course goes a primary if not sole motivation for the simple theory of ontological types of third and higher order. The ontological scheme of second-order logic remains unaffected, having as it does a natural motivation of its own. Ramification also has its own motivation, and it may be appended to second-order logic (cf. [2], §58.) even though historically it was first appended to the simple theory of types.

References

[2] Church, A., Introduction to Mathematical Logic. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1956.

[5] Fraenkel, A., and Y. Bar-Hillel, Foundations of Set Theory. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1958.

[6] Gödel, K., “Russell's Mathematical Logic,” The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell. P. A. Schilpp (ed.). Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1944.

[10] Van Heijenoort, J., From Frege to Gödel, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967.

33. ———. 1975. "Logical Atomism, Nominalism, and Modal Logic." Synthese no. 31:23-62.

Reprinted as Chapter 7 in Logical Studies in Early Analytic Philosophy, pp. 244-275.

"Logical atomism, through its theory of logical form, provides one of the most coherent formal ontologies in the history of philosophy. It is a coherence which, whether we agree with the ontology or not, renders the framework important and useful as a paradigm by which to compare and better evaluate the coherence of alternative systems based upon alternative theories of logical form and especially alternative theories of predication.

As the basis of a formal ontology, logical atomism, aside from the differences between its realist and nominalist variants, specifies not only a ‘deep structure’ ontological grammar within which all analysis must ultimately be resolved, but determines as well a logistic for that grammar. Both together constitute the formal ontology and serve to indicate how logical atomism views the fundamental structure of reality. Thus, for example, the grammar serves to indicate the formal as well as the material categories of being acknowledged by the ontology, while the logistic, by regulating the proper ‘logico-syntactical employment’ ([TR], 3.327) of the expressions of that grammar serves to indicate not only the logical ‘scaffolding of the world’ ([TR], 6.124) but supplements the grammar in its presentation of the ontological structure of reality.

The distinction between logical scaffolding and ontological structure is fundamental to atomism and pertains to a distinction between material and formal content that grammar alone is insufficient to represent. It is a distinction that any proposed formalization of logical atomism must account for (through the Doctrine of Showing) in order to be an adequate formal representative of that ontology. It is a distinction, however, or so it will be argued here, that cannot be made without the introduction of modal operators for logical necessity and possibility.

The argument for this last claim was already given in chapter 6, but it was there restricted to the level of logical analysis dealing solely with propositional connectives."

(...)

"In what follows we shall be concerned with the problematic extension of these results to the level of analysis involving quantifiers for objects as concrete particulars along with some means for expressing their self-identity and mutual difference. On this level, logical atomism’s theory of predication enters our considerations in a fundamental way. For according to that theory, only elementary predications represent or ‘picture’ a structure with material content, and that content is in all cases external to the constituents of the structure. Such a structure is an atomic situation (Sachlage) and the externality of its content to its constituents consists in both it and its complement being logically possible. The difficulty here is that since objects are quantified over, they are part of the world and therefore contribute to the ontological content of the world (cf. [TR] 5.5561); and in that regard their self-identity and mutual difference or nonidentity, and thereby their total number, would prima facie seem to involve material content. Yet, in atomism, an object’s self-identity or nonidentity with any other object is not an external condition of that object, (3) and, as a consequence of the dependence of logical space on reality, it is logically impossible for the totality of objects, no less the number of that totality, to differ from world to world. In other words, in logical atomism, if not in other ontologies, identity and difference, as well as objectual quantification, are formal and not material aspects of reality. Here already we begin to see the paradigmatic role of logical atomism, for in most other systems identity and difference, as well as objectual quantification, are also said to be formal in content, though propositions regarding that content are not also said to be either logically necessary or logically impossible.

Because our considerations will be restricted to quantifying over objects as concrete particulars and not, for example, over material properties and relations as well, the variant of logical atomism we shall discuss here is nominalistic. Several realist alternatives are sketched in order to highlight the significant theses and/or difficulties of nominalism, though it should be noted that not all forms of nominalism need agree with the special ontological theses of nominalist logical atomism.

Finally, it should also be noted that our concern in this chapter is with an adequate formal representation of the ontology of logical atomism and not with its theory of thought, meaning, or philosophy of language. We wish to leave open how these might or must be developed with respect to the system constructed here, especially with regard to how they might or must pertain to the question of its logistic completeness." (pp. 244-247 of the reprint)

(1) The convention adopted here is to use scare-quotes when speaking of what connectives represent as ‘properties’ or ‘relations’. This is done to mark a special philosophical use which is convenient in our informal discussion but which strictly speaking is ontologically misleading. A similar convention applies throughout when we refer to existence (being-the-case) and nonexistence (being-not-the-case) as material ‘properties’ of atomic situations.

(3) That is, an object’s self-identity or nonidentity with any other object is invariant through all the possible worlds of a logical space containing that object. We must distinguish this ontological invariance from the varying semantical relation of denotation (Bedeutung) between an object and a (non-Tractarian) name or definite description of that object. The former must be accounted for within the formal ontology, the latter only within its applications.

References

[TR] Wittgenstein, L., Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness, trans., 2d. ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971. first ed. 1921).

34. ———. 1980. "The Development of the Theory of Logical Types and the Notion of a Logical Subject in Russell's Early Philosophy." Synthese no. 45:71-115.

Reprinted as Chapter 1 in Logical Studies in Early Analytic Philosophy, pp. 19-63.

"The development of the theory of logical types in Russell’s early philosophy proceeds along a difficult and rather involuted path; and even the final product, the theory as adumbrated in [Principia Mathematica = PM], remains unclear in its syntax and problematic in its semantics. Indeed, one might well be left with the impression that Russell himself, in the end, remained unsure of which parts of the different views he had held along the way are finally to be adopted.

In what follows, we shall attempt to describe and explain the development of Russell’s early views, at least to the extent to which they are available in published form today, from the perspective of the development in those views of the notion of a logical subject. It is the development of this notion in Russell’s early philosophy, we believe, that holds the key to many of the problems confronting Russell in the development of his theory of logical types and that led to the various, and sometimes conflicting, proposals that he made along the way.

It should be noted, however, that in referring to the development of the theory of logical types in Russell’s early philosophy we have in mind only the views developed by Russell up to, but not subsequent to, the 1910—13 publication of the first edition of [PM]. The subsequent views developed by Russell from 1913—25, that is, between the first and second editions of [PM], and summarized to some extent in his introduction (and added appendices) to the second edition, constitute Russell’s version of logical atomism. Except for some concluding remarks in the final section of this chapter, we delay our discussion of those views until chapter 5." (pp. 19-20 of the reprint)

35. ———. 1982. "Meinong Reconstructed Versus Early Russell Reconstructed." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 11:183-214.

Reprinted as Chapter 3 in Logical Studies in Early Analytic Philosophy, pp. 119-151.

"Contemporary philosophy is in a rut, according to Terence Parsons in his recent book Nonexistent Objects, ([NO]), and it is one that stems from the (post-1905) work of Bertrand Russell. The main characteristic of this “Russellian rut” ([NO], 1) is strict adherence to the thesis that being, or being something, amounts to being something that exists—or equivalently that ‘there is’ is to be equated with ‘there exists’ ([NO], 6). This view is now so well entrenched, according to Parsons, that it is a main stay of what he also calls the orthodox tradition.

Now the orthodox view is in a rut, according to Parsons, “because it’s a view in which most of us are so entrenched that it’s hard to see over the edges” ([NO], 1). Naturally, if we want “to look over the edge and see how things might be different” ([NO], 8), as any objective seeker of truth would, then “we need to encounter an actual theory about nonexistent objects” (ibid.). It is the construction and presentation of such a theory that is Parsons’s concern in Nonexistent Objects.

(...)

"Now we do not object to Parsons’s choice of Meinong’s theory here, nor for that matter to his elegant reconstruction and presentation of that theory. We do think, however, that a more balanced recognition of Russell’s overall view is called for and that perhaps the best way to make the Meinongian notion of a concrete object understandable to the orthodox tradition is to compare it with the general Russellian notion of a concrete individual, i.e., the Russellian notion of an individual that can exist but which might in fact not exist. Indeed, on the basis of the analysis and comparison we shall give here, it is our position that the Meinongian notion of a concrete object, at least as reconstructed by Parsons, is parasitic upon, though in a beneficent way, the Russellian notion of a concrete individual, existent or otherwise." (pp. 119-121)

References

[NO] Parsons, Terence, Nonexistent Objects, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980.)

36. ———. 1986. "Frege, Russell and Logicism: A Logical Reconstruction." In Frege Synthesized: Essays on the Philosophical and Foundational Work of Gottlob Frege, edited by Haaparanta, Leila and Hintikka, Jaakko, 197-252. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Reprinted as Chapter 2 in Logical Studies in Early Analytic Philosophy, pp. 64-118.

"Logicism by the end of the nineteenth century was a philosophical doctrine whose time had come, and it is Gottlob Frege to whom we owe its arrival. “Often,” Frege once wrote, “it is only after immense intellectual effort, which may have continued over centuries, that humanity at last succeeds in achieving knowledge of a concept in its pure form, in stripping off the irrelevant accretions which veil it from the eyes of the mind” (Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic, [Fd], xix). Prior to Frege logicism was just such a concept whose pure form was obscured by irrelevant accretions; and in his life’s work it was Frege who first presented this concept to humanity in its pure form and developed it as a doctrine of the first rank.

That form, unfortunately, has become obscured once again. For today, as we approach the end of the twentieth century, logicism, as a philosophical doctrine, is said to be dead, and even worse, to be impossible. Frege’s logicism, or the specific presentation he gave of it in Die Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, ([Gg]), fell to Russell’s paradox, and, we are told, it cannot be resurrected. Russell’s own subsequent form of logicism presented in [PM], moreover, in effect gives up the doctrine; for in overcoming his paradox, Russell was unable to reduce classical mathematics to logic without making at least two assumptions that are not logically true; namely, his assumption of the axiom of reducibility and his assumption of an axiom of infinity regarding the existence of infinitely many concrete or nonabstract individuals.

Contrary to popular opinion, however, logicism is not dead beyond redemption; that is, if logicism is dead, then it can be easily resurrected. This is not to say that as philosophical doctrines go logicism is true, but only that it can be logically reconstructed and defended or advocated in essentially the same philosophical context in which it was originally formulated. This is true especially of Frege’s form of logicism, as we shall see, and in fact, by turning to his correspondence with Russell and his discussion of Russell’s paradox, we are able to formulate not only one but two alternative reconstructions of his form of logicism, both of which are consistent (relative to weak Zermelo set theory).

In regard to Russell’s form of logicism, on the other hand, our resurrection will not apply directly to the form he adopted in [PM] but rather to the form he was implicitly advocating in his correspondence with Frege shortly after the completion of [POM]. In this regard, though we shall have occasion to refer to certain features of his later form of logicism, especially in our concluding section where a counterpart to the axiom of reducibility comes into the picture, it is Russell’s early form of logicism that we shall reconstruct and be concerned with here.

Though Frege’s and Russell’s early form of logicism are not the same, incidentally, they are closely related; and one of our goals will be to reconstruct or resurrect these forms with their similarity in mind. In particular, it is our contention that both are to be reconstructed as second order predicate logics in which nominalized predicates are allowed to occur as abstract singular terms. Their important differences, as we shall see, will then consist in the sort of object each takes nominalized predicates to denote and in whether the theory of predication upon which the laws of logic are to be based is to be extensional or intensional." (pp. 64-65 of the reprint)

References

Frege, Gottlob, [Fd] The Foundations of Arithmetic, trans, by J. L. Austin, Harper & Bros., N.Y. 1960.

Frege, Gottlob, [Gg] Die Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, vols. 1 and 2, Hildesheim, 1962.

Russell, Bertrand, [PM] Principia Mathematica, coauthor, A. N. Whitehead, Cambridge University Press, 1913.

Russell, Bertrand, [POM] The Principles of Mathematics, 2nd ed., W. W. Norton & Co., N.Y., 1937.

37. ———. 1989. "Russell's Theory of Logical Types and the Atomistic Hierarchy of Sentences." In Rereading Russell: Essays on Bertrand Russell's Metaphysics and Epistemology, edited by Savage, C.Wade and Anderson, C.Anthony, 41-62. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Reprinted as Chapter 5 in Logical Studies in Early Analytic Philosophy, pp. 193-221.

"Russell’s philosophical views underwent a number of changes throughout his life, and it is not always well-appreciated that views he held at one time came later to be rejected; nor, similarly, that views he rejected at one time came later to be accepted. It is not well-known, for example, that the theory of logical types Russell described in his later or post-[PM] philosophy is not the same as the theory originally described in [PM] in 1910-13; nor that some of the more important applications that Russell made of the theory at the earlier time cannot be validated or even significantly made in the framework of his later theory. What is somewhat surprising, however, is that Russell himself seems not to have realized that he was describing a new theory of logical types in his later philosophy, and that as a result of the change some of his earlier logical constructions, including especially his construction of the different kinds of numbers, were no longer available to him.

In the original framework, for example, propositional functions are independently real properties and relations that can themselves have properties and relations of a higher order/type, and all talk of classes, and thereby ultimately of numbers, can be reduced to extensional talk of properties and relations as “single entities,” or what Russell in [POM] had called “logical subjects.” The Platonic reality of classes and numbers was replaced in this way by a more fundamental Platonic reality of propositional functions as properties and relations. In Russell's later philosophy, however, “a propositional function is nothing but an expression. It does not, by itself, represent anything. But it can form part of a sentence which does say something, true or false” (Russell, My Philosophical Development, ([MPD]), 69). Surprisingly. Russell even insists that this was what he meant by a propositional function in [PM]. “Whitehead and I thought of a propositional function as an expression containing an undetermined variable and becoming an ordinary sentence as soon as a value is assigned to the variable: ‘x is human’, for example, becomes an ordinary sentence as soon as we substitute a proper name for V. In this view . . . the propositional function is a method of making a bundle of such sentences” ([MPD], 124). Russell does realize that some sort of change has come about, however, for he admits, “I no longer think that the laws of logic are laws of things; on the contrary, I now regard them as purely linguistic” (ibid., 102).

(...)

Now it is not whether [PM] can sustain a nominalistic interpretation that is our concern in this essay, as we have said, but rather how it is that Russell came to be committed in his later philosophy to the atomistic hierarchy and the nominalistic interpretation of propositional functions as expressions generated in a ramified second order hierarchy of languages based on the atomistic hierarchy. We shall pursue this question by beginning with a discussion of the difference between Russell’s 1908 theory of types and that presented in [PM] in 1910. This will be followed by a brief summary of the ontology that Russell took to be implicit in [PM], and that he described in various publications between 1910 and 1913. The central notion in this initial discussion is what Russell in his early philosophy called the notion of a logical subject, or equivalently that of a “term” or “single entity”. (In [PM], this notion was redescribed as the systematically ambiguous notion of an “object.”) As explained in chapter 1 this notion provides the key to the various problems that led Russell in his early philosophy to the development of his different theories of types, including that presented in [PM]. This remains true, moreover, even when we turn to Russell’s later philosophy, i.e., to his post-[PM] views, only then it is described as the notion of what can and cannot be named in a logically perfect language. The ontology of these later views is what Russell called logical atomism, and it is this ontology that determines what Russell described as the atomistic hierarchy of sentences. In other words, it is the notion of what can and cannot be named in the atomistic hierarchy that explains how Russell, however unwittingly, came to replace his earlier theory of logical types by the theory underlying the atomistic hierarchy of sentences as the basis of a logically perfect language." (pp. 193-195 of the reprint)

References

POM] Russell, Bertrand, The Principles of Mathematics, 2d ed. (NY., Norton & Co., 1938).

[PM] Russell, Bertrand and Alfred Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, vol. 1 (1910), vol. 2 (1912), and vol. 3 (1913) (London: Cambridge Univ. Press,).

38. ———. 2000. "Russell's Paradox of the Totality of Propositions." Nordic Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 5:25-37.

Abstract: "Russell’s ‘‘new contradiction’’ about ‘‘the totality of propositions’’ has been connected with a number of modal paradoxes. M. Oksanen has recently shown how these modal paradoxes are resolved in the set theory NFU. Russell’s paradox of the totality of propositions was left unexplained, however. We reconstruct Russell’s argument and explain how it is resolved in two intensional logics that are equiconsistent with NFU. We also show how different notions of possible worlds are represented in these intensional logics."

"In Appendix B of his 1903 Principles of Mathematics (PoM), Russell described a ‘‘new contradiction’’ about ‘‘the totality of propositions’’ that his ‘‘doctrine of types’’ (as described in Appendix B) was unable to avoid. (1)

In recent years this ‘‘new contradiction’’ has been connected with a number of modal paradoxes, some purporting to show that there cannot be a totality of true propositions, (2) or that even the idea of quantifying over the totality of propositions leads to contradiction. (3) A number of these claims have been discussed recently by Mika Oksanen and shown to be spurious relative to the set theory known as NFU. (4) In other words, if NFU is used instead of ZF as the semantical metalanguage for modal logic, the various ‘‘paradoxes’’ about the totality of propositions (usually construed as the totality of sets of possible worlds) can be seen to fail (generally because of the existence of a universal set and the failure of the general form of Cantor’s power-set theorem in NFU). It is not clear, however, how Russell’s own paradox about the totality of propositions is resolved on this analysis, and although Oksanen quoted Russell’s description of the paradox in detail, he did not show how it is explained in NFU after his resolution of the other related modal paradoxes; in fact, it is not at all clear how this might be done in NFU.

One reason why Russell’s argument is difficult to reconstruct in NFU is that it is based on the logic of propositions, and implicitly in that regard on a theory of predication rather than a theory of membership. A more appropriate medium for the resolution of these paradoxes, in other words, would be a formal theory of predication that is a counterpart to NFU.

Fortunately, there are two such theories, λHST* and HST*λ, that are equiconsistent with NFU and that share with it many of the features that make it a useful framework within which to resolve a number of paradoxes, modal or otherwise. (5)" (pp. 25-26)

(1) PoM, p. 527.

(2) See, e.g., Grim 1991, pp. 92f.

(3) See, e.g., Grim 1991, p. 119 and Jubien 1988, p. 307.

(4) See Oksanen 1999. NFU is a modified version of Quine’s system NF. It was first described in Jensen 1968 and recently has been extensively developed in Holmes 1999.

(5) See Cocchiarella 1986, chapters IV and VI for proofs of the connection of NFU with these systems. Also, see Cocchiarella 1985 for how these systems are related to Quine’s systems NF and ML. For a discussion of the refutation of Cantor’s power-set theorem in

these systems, see Cocchiarella 1992.

References

Cocchiarella, N. B. 1985. Frege’s double-correlation thesis and Quine’s set theories NF and ML. Journal of Philosophical Logic, vol. 4, pp. 1–39.

Cocchiarella, N. B. 1986. Logical Investigations of Predication Theory and the Problem of Universals. Bibliopolis Press, Naples, 1985.

Cocchiarella, N. B. 1992. Cantor’s Power-Set Theorem Versus Frege’s Double-Correlation Thesis, History and Philosophy of Logic, vol. 13, 179–201.

Holmes, R. 1999. Elementary Set Theory with a Universal Set. Cahiers du Centre de Logique, Bruylant-Academia, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.

Grim, P. 1991. The Incomplete Universe. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Jensen, R. 1968. On the consistency of a slight (?) modification of Quine’s New Foundations. Synthese, vol. 19, pp. 250–263.

Oksanen, M. 1979. The Russell-Kaplan paradox and other modal paradoxes; a new solution. Nordic Journal of Philosophical Logic, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 73–93.

Russell, B. 1937. The Principles of Mathematics, 2nd edition. W. W. Norton & Co., N.Y.

39. ———. 2017. Epistemological Ontology and Logical Form in Russell's Logical Atomism.

Not yet published.

Preprint available on academia.edu.

Abstract: "Logical analysis, according to Bertrand Russell, leads to and ends with logical atomism, an ontology of atomic facts that is epistemologically founded on sense-data, which Russell claimed are mind-independent physical objects. We first explain how Russell’s 1914–1918 epistemological version of logical atomism is to be understood, and then, because constructing logical forms is a fundamental part of the process of logical analysis, we briefly look at what has happened to Russell’s type theory in this ontology. We then turn to the problem of explaining how the logical forms of Russell’s new logic can explain both the forms of atomic facts and yet also the sentences of natural language. The main problem is to explain the logical forms for belief and desire sentences and how those forms correspond to the logical forms of the facts of logical atomism."

40. ———. 2017. Russell's Logical Atomism 1914-1918: Epistemological Ontology and Logical Form.

Unpublished paper, available on this site.

Abstract: "Logical analysis, according to Bertrand Russell, leads to and ends with logical atomism, an ontology of atomic facts that is epistemologically founded on sense-data, which Russell claimed are mind-independent physical objects. We first explain how Russell's 1914-1918 epistemological version of logical atomism is to be understood, and then, because constructing logical forms is a fundamental part of the process of logical analysis, we briefly look at what has happened to Russell's type theory in this ontology. We then turn to the problem of explaining whether or not the logical forms of Russell's new logic can explain both the forms of atomic facts and yet also the sentences of natural language, especially those about beliefs. The main problem is to explain the logical forms for belief and desire sentences and how those forms do not correspond to the logical forms of the facts of logical atomism."

41. Coffa, Alberto J. 1980. "Russell as a Platonic Dialogue: The Matter of Denoting." Synthese no. 45:43-70.

42. Collins, Jordan E. 2012. A History of the Theory of Types: Developments after the Second Edition of Principia Mathematica. Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing.

43. Copi, Irving M. 1971. The Theory of Logical Types. London: Routledge.

44. Crittenden, Charles. 1970. "Ontology and the Theory of Descriptions." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 31:85-96.

45. Dau, Paolo. 1986. "Russell's First Theory Pf Denoting and Quantification." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 27:133-166.

46. De Rouilhan, Philippe. 1992. "Russell and the Vicious Circle Principle." Philosophical Studies no. 65:169-182.

47. Dejnožka, Jan. 1984. "Russell's Robust Sense of Reality: A Reply to Butchvarov." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 32:155-164.

48. ———. 1988. "A Reply to Butchvarov's Russell's Views on Reality." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 32:181-184.

49. ———. 1988. "A Reply to Umphrey's 'the Meinongian-Antimeinongian Dispute Reviewed." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 32:185-186.

50. ———. 1990. "The Ontological Foundation of Russell's Theory of Modality." Erkenntnis no. 32:383-418.

51. ———. 1996. The Ontology of the Analytic Tradition and Its Origins. Realism and Identity in Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine. Lanham: Littlefield Adams Books.

Paperback edition reprinted with corrections, 2002; reprinted with further corrections, 2003.

52. ———. 1999. Bertrand Russell on Modality and Logical Relevance. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Second edition Ann Arbor, MI: CreateSpace. 2015.

53. ———. 2001. "Origin of Russell's Early Theory of Logical Truth as Purely General Truth: Bolzano, Peirce, Frege, Venn, or Maccoll?" Modern Logic no. 8:21-30.

54. ———. 2001. "Russell and Mccoll: A Reply to Grattan-Guinness, Wolenski, and Read." Nordic Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 6:21-42.

55. ———. 2003. "Russell on Modality: A Reply to Kervick." Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly no. 120:33-38.

56. ———. 2010. "The Concept of Relevance and the Logic Diagram Tradition." Logica Universalis no. 4:67-135.

"What is logical relevance? Anderson and Belnap say that the "modern classical tradition [,] stemming from Frege and Whitehead-Russell, gave no consideration whatsoever to the classical notion of relevance." But just what is this classical notion? I argue that the relevance tradition is implicitly most deeply concerned with the containment of truth-grounds, less deeply with the containment of classes, and least of all with variable sharing in the Anderson-Belnap manner. Thus modern classical logicians such as Peirce, Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine are implicit relevantists on the deepest level. In showing this, I reunite two fields of logic which, strangely from the traditional point of view, have become basically separated from each other: relevance logic and diagram logic. I argue that there are two main concepts of relevance, intensional and extensional. The first is that of the relevantists, who overlook the presence of the second in modern classical logic. The second is the concept of truth-ground containment as following from in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. I show that this second concept belongs to the diagram tradition of showing that the premisses contain the conclusion by the fact that the conclusion is diagrammed in the very act of diagramming the premisses. I argue that the extensional concept is primary, with at least five usable modern classical filters or constraints and indefinitely many secondary intensional filters or constraints. For the extensional concept is the genus of deductive relevance, and the filters define species. Also following the Tractatus, deductive relevance, or full truth-ground containment, is the limit of inductive relevance, or partial truth-ground containment. Purely extensional inductive or partial relevance has its filters or species too.

Thus extensional relevance is more properly a universal concept of relevance or summum genus with modern classical deductive logic, relevantist deductive logic, and inductive logic as its three main domains."

57. Demopoulos, William. 1999. "On the Theory of Meaning of "on Denoting"." Noûs no. 33:439-458.

58. ———. 2013. Logicism and Its Philosophical Legacy. New York: Cambridge Unviersity Press.

59. Donnellan, Keith. 1966. "Reference and Definite Descriptions." Philosophical Review no. 75:281-304.

Translated in Italian as: Riferimento e descrizioni definite in: Andrea Bonomi (ed.), La struttura logica del linguaggio, Milano, Bompiani, 1973.

60. Duran, Jane. 1988. "Russell on Names." Philosophy Research Archives no. 13:463-470.

61. Eames, Elizabeth Ramsden. 1967. Bertrand Russell's Theory of Knowledge. London: Allen and Unwin.

62. ———. 1971. "Russell's Study of Meinong." Russell.The Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives no. 4:3-7.

"Some commentators have found Russell's treatment of Meinong to be a 'travesty,' but it is argued that the letters between Meinong and Russell and Russell's reading notes (all in the Bertrand Russell archives at McMaster) show Russell to have been a careful student whose interpretation was welcomed by Meinong."

63. ———. 1972. "Russell on "What There Is"." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 26:483-498.

64. Farrell-Smith, Janet. 1985. "The Russell-Meinong Debate." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 45:305-350.

65. ———. 1989. "Russell Re-Evaluation of Meinong, 1913-14: An Analysis of Acquaintance." In Antinomies and Paradoxes. Studies in Russell's Early Philosophy, edited by Winchester, Ian and Blackwell, Kenneth. Hamilton: McMaster University Library Press.

66. Fritz, Charles A.Jr. 1952. Bertrand Russell's Construction of the External World. New York: Routledge.

Reprinted 2001.

67. Galaugher, Jolen. 2013. Russell's Philosophy of Logical Analysis, 1897-1905. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

68. Gandon, Sébastien. 2012. Russell's Unknown Logicism: A Study in the History and Philosophy of Mathematics. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

69. Garciadiego, Alejandro R. 1992. Bertrand Russell and the Origins of the Set-Theoretic 'Paradoxes'. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag.

70. Giaretta, Pierdaniele. 1997. "Analysis and Logical Form in Russell: The 1913 Paradigm." Dialectica no. 51:273-293.

71. Gram, Moltke. 1971. "Ontology and the Theory of Descriptions." In Essays on Bertrand Russell, edited by Klemke, Elmer D. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

72. Grattan-Guinness, Ivor. 1974. "The Russell Archives: Some New Light on Russell's Logicism." Annals of Science no. 31:387-406.

73. ———. 1977. Dear Russell - Dear Jourdain: A Commentary on Russell's Logic, Based on His Correspondence with Philip Jourdain. London: Duckworth.

74. ———. 1986. "Bertrand Russell's Logical Manuscripts: An Apprehensive Brief." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 6:53-74.

75. Grayling, A. C. 2002. Russell: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.

76. Green, Keith. 2007. Bertrand Russell, Language and Linguistic Theory. New York: Continuum.

77. Griffin, Nicholas. 1977. "Russell's "Horrible Travesty" of Meinong." Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies no. 25-28:39-51.

78. ———. 1980. "Russell on the Nature of Logic (1903-1913)." Synthese no. 45:117-188.

79. ———. 1985/86. "Russell's Critique of Meinong's Theory of Objects." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:375-401.

"Russell brought three arguments forward against Meinong's theory of objects. None of them depend upon a misinterpretation of the theory as is often claimed. In particular, only one is based upon a clash between Meinong's theory and Russell's theory of descriptions, and that did not involve Russell's attributing to Meinong his own ontological assumption. The other two arguments were attempts to find internal inconsistencies in Meinong's theory. But neither was sufficient to refute the theory, though they do require some revisions, viz. a trade-off between freedom of assumption and unlimited characterization. Meinong himself worked out the essentials of the required revisions."

80. ———. 1986. "Wittgenstein's Criticism of Russell's Theory of Judgement." Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies no. 5:123-145.

81. ———. 1991. Russell's Idealist Apprenticeship. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

82. ———, ed. 2003. The Cambridge Companion to Russell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

83. Griffin, Nicholas, and Jacquette, Dale, eds. 2009. Russell Vs. Meinong. The Legacy of "on Denoting". New York: Routledge.

Contents: Preface XI; Acknowledgements XIII; Dale Jacquette and Nicholas Griffin: Introduction 1; 1. Alasdair Urquhart: Logic and denotation 10; 2. Graham Stevens: Antirealism and the theory of descriptions 26; 3. Francis Jeffrey Pelletier and Bernard Linsky: Russell vs. Frege on definite descriptions as singular terms 40; 4. Kevin C. Klement: A Cantorian argument against's Frege and early Russell's theories of descriptions 65; 5. Gideon Makin: 'On denoting' appearance and reality 78; 6. Omar W. Nasim: Explaining G. F. Stout's reaction to Russell's 'On denoting' 101; 7. David Bostock: Russell on 'the' in plural 113; 8. Johann Christian Marek: Psychological content and indeterminacy with respect to Being: two notes on the Russell-Meinong Debate 144; 9. Dale Jacquette: Meditations on Meinong's Golden Mountain 169; 10. Nicholas Griffin: Rethinking Item Theory 204; 11. Peter Loftson: Contra Meinong 233; 12. Gabriele Contessa: Who is afraid of imaginary objects? 248; 13. Gregory Landini: Russell's definite descriptions de re 266; 14. Michael Nelson: Quantifying in and Anti-Essentialism 297; 15. Nathan Salmon: Points, complexes, complex points, and a yacht 343; Contributors 365; Index 369.

84. Griffin, Nicholas, and Linsky, Bernard, eds. 2013. The Palgrave Centenary Companion to Principia Mathematica. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

85. Griffin, Nicholas, Linsky, Bernard, and Blackwell, Kenneth, eds. 2011. Principia Mathematica at 100.

Special issue of Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies. N.s. 21, no. 1.

86. Griffiths, D.A. 1976. "Russell on Existence and Descriptions." Philosophical Quarterly no. 26:157-162.

87. ———. 1981. "A Reconsideration of Russell's Early Ontological Development." Philosophical Quarterly no. 31:145-152.

88. Hager, Paul J. 1994. Continuity and Change in the Development of Russell's Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

89. Hill, Claire Ortiz. 1991. Word and Object in Husserl, Frege, and Russell. The Roots of Twentieth-Century Philosophy. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press.

Reprinted 2001.

Contents: Abbreviations IX; Preliminary terminological comments XI; Glossary XIII; Acknowledgments XIV; Introduction 1.

Part One: Logic, realism and the foundations of arithmetic

1. The argument that Frege influenced Husserl 7; 2. Husserl, Frege, and psychologism 13; 3. Sense, meaning, and noema; 4. Husserl's 1891 critique of Frege 43; 5. Frege's review and the development of Husserl's thought 57; Conclusion: analyticity 91.

Part Two: Conceptual clarity

Introduction 99; 6. Intensions and extensions 103; 7. Presentation and ideas 125; 8. Function and concept 137; 9. On denoting 147; Conclusion: The way things are 163; Notes 175; Bibliography 191; Index 215.

From the Introduction: "As a book by the founder of phenomenology that examines Frege's ideas from Brentano's empirical standpoint, Husserl's Philosophy of Arithmetic is both an early work of phenomenology and of logical empiricism. In it Husserl predicted the failure of Frege's attempt to logicize arithmetic and to mathematize logic two years before the publication of the Basic Laws of Arithmetic in 1893. I hope to show that Husserl did so in terms that would prefigure both the account Frege would give of his error after Russell encountered the paradoxes ten years later and the discussions of Principia Mathematica. Moreover, in locating the source of Frege's difficulties in the ambiguous theory of identity, meaning, and denotation that forms the basis of Frege's logical project and generates Russell's contradictions, Husserl's discussions indicate that these contradictions may have as serious consequences for twentieth century philosophy of language as they have had for the philosophy of mathematics.

This book is about these Austro-German roots of twentieth century philosophy. It is mainly about the origins of analytic philosophy, about the transmission of Frege's thought to the English speaking world, and about the relevance of Husserl's early criticism of Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic to some contemporary issues in philosophy. It is more about Husserl the philosopher of logic and mathematics than it is about Husserl the phenomenologist, and it is principally addressed to those members of the philosophical community who, via Russell, have been affected by Frege's logic.

This makes it very different from work on Husserl and Frege that has focused on the importance of Frege's criticism of Husserl's Philosophy of Arithmetic and attendant issues. The goal of this book is quite the opposite. It studies the shortcomings in Frege's thought that Husserl flagged and Russell endeavored to overcome. One possible sequel to this book would be a thorough study of Husserl's successes and failures in remedying the philosophical ills he perceived all about him, but that goes beyond the scope of this work, which follows the issues discussed into the work of Russell and his successors." (pp. 3-4)

90. ———. 1997. Rethinking Identity and Metaphysics. On the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy. New Haven: Yale University Press.

91. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1981. "On Denoting What?" Synthese no. 46:167-183.

92. Hiz, Henry. 1977. "Descriptions in Russell's Theory and in Ontology." Studia Logica no. 36:271-283.

93. Hochberg, Herbert. 1956. "Peano, Russell and Logicism." Analysis no. 16:118-120.

Reprinted in: Elmer Daniel Klemke (ed.), Essays on Bertrand Russell.

94. ———. 1966. "Things and Descriptions." American Philosophical Quarterly no. 3:1-9.

Reprinted in: Elmer Daniel Klemke (ed.), Essays on Bertrand Russell.

95. ———. 1978. Thought, Fact and Reference. The Origins and Ontology of Logical Atomism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

96. ———. 1980. "Russell's Proof of Realism Reproved." Philosophical Studies no. 37:37-44.

97. ———. 1995. "Particulars "as" Universals: Russell's Ontological Assay of Particularity and Phenomenological Space-Time." Journal of Philosophical Research no. 20:83-111.

98. ———. 1995. "Abstracts, Functions, Existence and Relations in the Russell-Meinong Dispute, the Bradley Paradox and the Realism-Nominalism Controversy." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:273-291.

99. ———. 1996. "Particulars, Universals and Russell's Late Ontology." Journal of Philosophical Research no. 21:129-137.

100. ———. 1996. "The Role of Subsistent Propositions and Logical Forms in Russell's 1913 Philosophical Logic and in the Russell-Wittgenstein Dispute." In Studies on the History of Logic. Proceedings of the Third Symposium on the History of Logic, edited by Angelelli, Ignacio and Cerezo, Maria, 317-341. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

101. ———. 2000. "Facts, Truths and the Ontology of Logical Realism." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 58-59:23-92.

102. ———. 2000. "Propositions, Truth and Belief: The Wittgenstein-Russell Dispute." Theoria no. 66:3-40.

103. ———. 2001. Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein. The Revival of Realism. Egelsbach: Hänsel-Hohenhausen.

104. Hursthouse, Rosalind. 1980. "Denoting in the Principles of Mathematics." Synthese no. 45:33-42.

105. Hylton, Peter. 1980. "Russell's Substitutional Theory." Synthese no. 45:1-31.

106. ———. 1989. "The Significance of "on Denoting"." In Rereading Russell: Essays in Bertrand Russell's Metaphysics and Epistemology, edited by Savage, Wade C. and Anderson, Anthony C. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

107. ———. 1990. Russell, Idealism, and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

108. ———. 1990. "Logic in Russell's Logicism." In The Analytic Tradition. Meaning, Thought and Knowledge, edited by Bell, David and Cooper, Neil, 137-172. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

109. ———. 2005. Propositions, Functions, and Analysis. Selected Essays on Russell's Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.

110. Irvine, Andrew D. 1999. Bertrand Russell. Critical Assessments. New York: Routledge.

Four volumes: 1. Life, Work and Influence;. 2. Logic and Mathematics; 3. Language, Knowledge and the World; 4. History of Philosophy, Ethics, Education, Religion and Politics.

111. ———. 2009. "Bertrand Russell's Logic." In Handbook of the History of Logic. Volume 5: Logic from Russell to Church, edited by Gabbay, Dov and Woods, John, 1-28. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

"Bertrand Russell is generally recognized as one of the most important English speaking philosophers, logicians and essayists of the twentieth century. Often cited along with G.E. Moore as one of the founders of modern analytic philosophy and along with Kurt Gödel as one of the most influential logicians of his time, Russell is also widely recognized for his sustained public contributions to many of the most controversial social, political and educational issues of his day. Even so, more than anything else, it is Russell's work in logic and the foundations of mathematics that serves as his core contribution to intellectual history and that makes Russell the seminal thinker he is. His most significant achievements include

1. his refining and popularizing of Giuseppe Peano's and Gottlob Frege's first attempts at developing a modern mathematical logic,

2. his discovery of the paradox that bears his name,

3. his introduction of the theory of types (his way of avoiding the paradox),

4. his defense of logicism, the view that mathematics is in some important sense reducible to logic, and his many detailed derivations supporting this view,

5. his ground-breaking advances in technical philosophy, including both his theory of definite descriptions and his theory of logical constructions,

6. his theory of logical relations, including his impressively general theory of relation arithmetic,

7. his formalization of the reals,

8. his theory of logical atomism, and

9. his championing of the many connections between modern logic, mathematics, science, and knowledge in general." (p. 1)

112. Irvine, Andrew D., and Wedeking, Gary, eds. 1993. Russell and Analytic Philosophy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

113. Jacquette, Dale, Griffin, Nicholas, and Blackwell, Kenneth, eds. 2007. After “on Denoting”: Themes from Russell and Meinong.

Special issue of Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies. N.s. 27, no. 1.

114. Jager, Ronald. 1972. The Development of Bertrand Russell's Philosophy. Lodon: Allen & Unwin.

115. Kaplan, David. 1970. "What Is Russell's Theory of Descriptions?" In Physics, Logic and History. Based on the First International Colloquium Held at the University of Denver, May 16-20, 1966, edited by Yourgrau, Wolfgang, 227-244. New York: Plenum Press.

Reprinted in David Pears (ed.), Bertrand Russell: A Collection of Critical Essays.

Translated in Italian as: Che cos'è la teoria delle descrizioni di Russell?, in: Andrea Bonomi (ed.), La struttura logica del linguaggio, Milano: Bompaini, 1973.

116. ———. 1975. "How to Russell a Frege-Church." Journal of Philosophy no. 71:716-729.

117. Klemke, Elmer D., ed. 1970. Essays on Bertrand Russell. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

118. ———. 1971. "Logic and Ontology in Russell's Philosophy." In Essays on Bertrand Russell, edited by Klemke, Elmer D., 416-444. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

119. Korhonen, Anssi. 2013. Logic as Universal Science. Russell's Early Logicism and Its Philosophical Context. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

120. Kremer, Michael. 1994. "The Argument of 'on Denoting'." Philosophical Review no. 103:249-297.

121. Kroon, Frederick W. 2006. "Russell's Descriptions and Meinong's Assumptions." In Modes of Existence. Papers in Ontology and Philosophical Logic, edited by Bottani, Andrea and Davies, Richard, 81-104. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

"The paper is structured as follows. In the next section, I describe a problem for Russell's account of the logical form of negative existentials involving descriptions, and suggest a Russellian solution. This solution is one that no one will care to adopt -- it seems to turn negative existentials into self-contradictions -- but I later argue that, properly interpreted, it constitutes a promising way of reconciling some of Meinong's views about negative existentials with the kind of "robust sense of reality" that informed Russell's own analysis. In section 3 I begin the task of articulating this reading of Meinong by describing Meinong's Assumption View as articulated in the second edition of his On Assumptions (Meinong 1910). Because this view presupposes Meinong's infamous commitment to non-existent objects, it would still offend Russell's "robust sense of reality", and so section 4 considers a weakened version of the view, one that retains the appeal to assumptions while giving up the appeal to non-existent objects. (Meinong defends a similar view in the 1902 edition of On Assumptions, which predates his discovery of non-existents.) Section 5 offers the finale: it shows how Meinong had himself tried to apply such a weakened Assumption View to the case of negative existentials, that Russell had known about the attempt (this arguably solves the first, hermeneutic puzzle), and that, properly interpreted, this way of understanding negative existentials provides Russell with a solution to the problem facing his theory of negative existentials." (pp. 82-83)

122. Lackey, Douglas. 1975. "Russell's Anticipation of Quine Criterion." Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies:27-30.

123. Lambert, Karel. 1970. "Russell's Theory of Definite Descriptions." Dialectica no. 44:137-152.

124. ———. 1992. "Russell's Version of the Theory of Definite Descriptions." Philosophical Studies no. 65:153-167.

125. Landini, Gregory. 1987. "Russell's Substitutional Theory of Classes and Relations." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 8:171-200.

126. ———. 1990. "A New Interpretation of Russell's Multiple-Relation Theory of Judgment." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 11:37-69.

127. ———. 1990. "How to Russell Another Meinongian: A Russellian Theory of Fictional Objects Versus Zalta's Theory of Abstract Objects." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 37:93-122.

128. ———. 1996. "Logic in Russell's Principles of Mathematics." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 37:554-584.

129. ———. 1998. Russell's Hidden Substitutional Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.

130. ———. 2009. Wittgenstein's Apprenticeship with Russell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

131. ———. 2010. Russell. New York: Routledge.

132. Lebens, Samuel. 2017. Bertrand Russell and the Nature of Propositions: A History and Defence of the Multiple Relation Theory of Judgement. New York: Routledge.

133. Lejewski, Czeslaw. 1980. "A Re-Examination of the Russellian Theory of Descriptions." Philosophy no. 35:14-29.

134. Link, Godehard, ed. 2004. One Hundred Years of Russell's Paradox: Mathematics, Logic, Philosophy. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

135. Linsky, Bernard. 1999. Russell's Metaphysical Logic. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

136. ———. 2011. Revising Principia Mathematica: Bertrand Russell's Notes and Manuscripts for the Second Edition. New York: Cambridge University Press.

137. ———. 2011. The Evolution of Principia Mathematica: Bertrand Russell's Manuscripts and Notes for the Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

138. Linsky, Bernard, and Imaguire, Guido, eds. 2005. "On Denoting", 1905-2005. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

139. Linsky, Bernard, and Wishon, Donovan, eds. 2015. Acquaintance, Knowledge, and Logic: New Essays on Bertrand Russell's "the Problems of Philosophy". Stanford, Calif.: Center for the Study of Language and Information.

140. Linsky, Leonard. 1967. Referring. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

141. ———. 1979. Names and Descriptions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

142. Ludlow, Peter, and Neale, Stephen. 1991. "Indefinite Descriptions: In Defense of Russell." Linguistics and Philosophy no. 14:171-202.

143. Lycan, William. 1981. "Logical Atomism and Ontological Atoms." Synthese no. 46:207-229.

144. MacLean, Gülberk Ko. 2014. Bertrand Russell's Bundle Theory of Particulars. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

145. Makin, Gideon. 2000. The Metaphysicians of Meaning. Russell and Frege on Sense and Denotation. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

146. Martinich, Paul. 1976. "Russell's Theory of Meaning and Descriptions (1905-1920)." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 16:183-201.

147. Miah, Sajahan. 2006. Russell’s Theory of Perception 1905–1919. London: Continuum.

148. Miller, Alexander. 2006. "Russell, Multiple Relations, and the Correspondence Theory of Truth." The Monist no. 89:85-101.

149. Monk, Ray, and Palmer, Anthony, eds. 1996. Bertrand Russell and the Origins of Analytical Philosophy. Bristol: Thoemmes Press.

150. Moore, George Edward. 1944. "Russell's "Theory of Descriptions"." In The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, edited by Schilpp, Paul Arthur, 175-225. Lasalle: Open Court.

151. Nakhnikian, George, ed. 1974. Bertrand Russell's Philosophy. London: Duckworth.

152. Nasim, Omar W. 2008. Bertrand Russell and the Edwardian Philosophers. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

153. Neale, Stephen. 1990. Descriptions. Cambridge: MIT Press.

154. Oaklander, Nathan, and Miracchi, Silvano. 1980. "Russell, Negative Facts, and Ontology." Philosophy of Science no. 47:434-455.

"Russell's introduction of negative facts to account for the truth of "negative" sentences or beliefs rests on his collaboration with Wittgenstein in such efforts as the characterization of formal necessity, the theory of logical atomism, and the use of the Ideal Language. In examining their views we arrive at two conclusions. First, that the issue of negative facts is distinct from questions of meaning or intentionality; what a sentence or belief means or is about rather than what makes it true or false. Second, that the ontological use of the Ideal Language is incompatible with the requirements of its employment in the logical study of inferences. On this basis we conclude that despite elaboration by recent proponents, the doctrine of negative facts lacks adequate support, and perhaps more importantly, it is proper ontological method to free the Ideal Language from the exigencies of a symbolism constructed for logical investigation."

155. Ogbozo, Chrysanthus Nnaemeka. 2013. Bertrand Russell's Critiques of Knowledge and Belief as Prolegomena to Complementary Epistemology. Berlin: Rhombos-Verlag.

Preface by Elizabeth Ramsden Eames.

156. Oksanen, Mika. 1999. "The Russell-Kaplan Paradox and Other Modal Paradoxes: A New Solution." Nordic Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 4:73-95.

157. Orilia, Francesco. 1991. "Type-Free Property Theory, Bradley's Regress and Meinong and Russell Reconciled." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 39:103-125.

158. Ostertag, Gary. 1998. Definite Descriptions: A Reader. Cambridge: MIT Press.

159. Passmore, John. 1995. "Editing Russell's Papers: A Fragment of Institutional History." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 49:189-205.

160. Patterson, Wayne. 1993. Bertrand Russell's Philosophy of Logical Atomism. New York: Peter Lang.

161. Pears, David. 1967. Bertrand Russell and the British Tradition in Philosophy. New York: Random House.

162. ———. 1972. "Russell's Logical Atomism." In Bertrand Russell. A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Pears, David, 41-55. Garden City: Anchor Books.

163. ———. 1972. Bertrand Russell: A Collection of Critical Essays. Garden City: Anchor Books.

164. Pincock, Christopher. 2008. "Russell's Last (and Best) Multiple-Relation Theory of Judgement." Mind no. 117:107-139.

165. Prior, Arthur Norman. 1965. "Existence in Lesniewski and Russell." In Formal Systems and Recursive Functions, edited by Crossley, John and Dummett, Michael, 149-155. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

166. Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1966. "Russell's Ontological Development." Journal of Philosophy no. 63:657-667.

Reprinted in: Elmer Daniel Klemke (ed.), Essays on Bertrand Russell.

167. Rao, A. P. 1998. Understanding Principia and Tractatus: Russell and Wittgenstein Revisited. San Francsico: International Scholars Publications.

168. Reicher, Maria Elisabeth. 2005. "Russell, Meinong, and the Problem of Existent Nonexistents." In On Denoting 1905-2005, edited by Imaguire, Guido and Linsky, Bernard, 167-193. München: Philosophia Verlag.

"In "On Denoting" Russell attacked Alexius Meinong's so-called "theory of objects" (Gegenstandstheorie), arguing, among other things, that according to Meinong's theory both the sentence "The existent present King of France exists" and "The existent present King of France does not exist" is true, which would render Meinong's theory inconsistent. Some Neo-Meinongians have claimed that one could avoid this consequence by making use of a distinction between two kinds of properties ("nuclear" and "extranuclear" ones), which Meinong worked into his theory several years after "On Denoting". My aim in this paper is to re-evaluate this contemporary attempt to defend Meinong's theory against Russell's attack and to offer an alternative solution."

169. Ripley, Charles. 1981. "Moore and Russell on Existence as Predicate." Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies no. 37-40:17-30.

170. Rodriguez Consuegra, Francisco. 1987. "Russell's Logicist Definition of Numbers, 1898-1913: Chronology and Significance." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 8:141-189.

171. ———. 1989. "Russell's Theory of Types, 1901-1910: Its Complex Origins in the Unpublished Manuscripts." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 10:131-164.

172. ———. 1991. The Mathematical Philosophy of Bertrand Russell: Origins and Development. Boston: Birkhäuser Verlag.

173. Rosenberg, Jay. 1972. "Russell on Negative Facts." Noûs no. 6:27-40.

174. Saarinen, Esa. 1982. "How to Frege a Russell-Kaplan." Noûs no. 16:253-276.

175. Sainsbury, Mark. 1979. Russell. New York: Routledge.

176. Savage, Wade C., and Anderson, Anthony C., eds. 1989. Rereading Russell. Essays in Bertrand Russell's Metaphysics and Epistemology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

177. Schiffer, Stephen. 2005. "Russell’s Theory of Definite Descriptions." mind no. 114:1135-1183.

178. Schilpp, Paul Arthur, ed. 1944. The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell. La Salle: Open Court.

179. Schoenman, Ralph, ed. 1967. Bertrand Russell Philosopher of the Century. London: Allen & Unwin.

180. Schwartz, Stephen P. 2012. A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy: From Russell to Rawls. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.

181. Schwerin, Alan, ed. 2010. Russell Revisited, Critical Reflections on the Thought of Bertrand Russell. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

182. Simons, Peter M. 1992. "On What There Isn't: The Meinong-Russell Dispute." In Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski, 159-191. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Translated from: Über das, was es nicht gibt: Die Meinong-Russell Kontroverse - Zeitschrift für Semiotik, 10, 1988 pp. 399-426

183. Skosnik, Jeffrey. 1980. "Leibniz and Russell on Existence and Quantification Theory." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 10:681-720.

184. Smith, Janet Farrell. 1985. "The Russell-Meinong Debate." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 45:305-350.

"The debates between Bertrand Russell and Alexius Meinong from 1904 to 192.0 dealt with some fundamental issues in philosophy: reference, nonexistent objects, intentionality. Along with the enduring influence of Russell's philosophy, sonic misapprehensions about these exchanges have persisted. One is that Russell's objections to Meinong were definitive. The other stems from taking too seriously Russell's casual remark in 1918 that Meinong's theories evidenced a deficient "sense of reality." Contrary to the impression left by this comment, Russell, during the most intensive years of the debate (1904-1907), felt a real respect for Meinong's theories,' and his main concern lay elsewhere. The exchange did not center on "reality" or "realism," as is often believed, but on the classical laws of logic (noncontradiction, excluded middle) and the correct analysis of logical form, for instance, of existence statements. Russell also took a dim view of the modal concepts Meinong used to support the canons of object theory, but his main concern was that Meinong's overall analysis appeared to threaten the foundation of Russell's philosophical logic. Russell and Meinong's disagreement thus came down to competing logical frameworks tied to different notions of what it is to he an object.

In claiming that Russell's main objection to Meinong's theory was logical, I do not mean to deny that ontology and metaphysics were in the forefront of Russell's concerns up to 1910 or that for him a correct foundational view of logic would tell us much about the way the world is. Russell's motivation for criticizing Meinong may well have been a concern with what is 'real', but his philosophical reasons for rejecting Meinong's object theory in 1905-1907 had to do which logical principles and their reputed violations. Interestingly, during the years Russell was debating with Meinong most intensively (1904-1907) he was also struggling to find the solution to his paradox of classes. With his 1905 invention of the theory of descriptions, Russell believed he had simultaneously found a way to deal with apparent reference to nonexistents in ordinary grammar and a new analysis of classes. It seems that the two difficulties of paradoxical classes and nonexistent objects plagued Russell's sense of consistency in a parallel manner.

In this paper I focus on giving an internal analysis of the objections and replies exchanged by Russell and Meinong to show that Russell's objections failed to be decisive and that the standoff between them came down to fundamentally different frameworks. Some scholarly evidence supports this interpretation as well. Russell's 1904 letter to Meinong emphasizes that what Meinong called "Theory of Objects" Russell had been accustomed to calling "Logic." [See Appendix]' In pressing his contradiction charge, Russell continued to evaluate Meinong's object theory by the standards of his own view of "logic." Lastly, evidence of a more circumstantial nature points to the parallelism of Russell's worries over nonexistent objects and classes."

(1) See the newly published Theory of Knowledge, The 1913 Manuscript, Vol. 7 of Russell's Collected papers, edited by Elizabeth Eames and Kenneth Blackwell (Allen and Unwin, 1983). This manuscript, which contains many accurate references to Meinong's theories, was never published by Russell. He was apparently discouraged by Wittgenstein's criticism of his theory of judgment.

(2) The Appendix contains translations of Russell's three letters to Meinong. See also the chronological Bibliography at the end of this paper.

(3) See Roderick Chisholm, Brentano and Meinong Studies (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1982.), and The First Person, An Essay on Reference and Intentionality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981).

(4) Some issues are treated in my "Meinong's Theory of Objects and Assumptions," in Phenomenology: Dialogues and Bridges, ed. R. Bruzina and B. Wilshire (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982). In a longer study of book length I explore these and other issues in greater depth.

185. ———. 1988. "Russell's Re-Evaluation of Meinong, 1913-14: An Analysis of Acquaintance." Russell.The Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives no. 8:179-194.

186. ———. 2005. "Russell's "on Denoting", the Laws of Logic and the Refutation of Meinong." In On Denoting 1905-2005, edited by Imaguire, Guido and Linsky, Bernard, 137-166. München: Philosophia Verlag.

187. Soames, Scott. 2003. Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Vol. 1: The Dawn of Analysis. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

188. Stevens, Graham. 2005. The Russellian Origins of Analytical Philosophy: Bertrand Russell and the Unity of the Proposition. London: Routledge.

189. ———. 2011. The Theory of Descriptions: Russell and the Philosophy of Language. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

190. Sullivan, Arthur. 2013. Reference and Structure in the Philosophy of Language: A Defense of the Russellian Orthodoxy. New York: Routledge.

191. Suter, Ronald. 1967. "Russell's 'Refutation' of Meinong in 'on Denoting'." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 27:512-516.

192. Swanson, Carolyn. 2011. Reburial of Nonexistents. Reconsidering the Meinong-Russell-Debate. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"Alexius Meinong claimed to uncover a brave new world of nonexistent objects. He contended that unreal objects, such as the golden mountain and the round square, genuinely had properties (such as nonexistence itself) and therefore, deserved a place in an all-inclusive science. Meinong's notion of nonexistents was initially not well-received, largely due to the influence and criticisms of Bertrand Russell. However, it has gained considerable popularity in more recent years as academics have uncovered shortfalls in Russell's philosophy and strived to explain apparent "facts" about the beingless. Some philosophers have continued Meinong's project, further explaining nonexistent objects or formulating logic systems that incorporate them.

The more recent developments beg for a re-examination of Meinongianism. This book does just that, putting the theory on trial. Part One considers if Russell truly defeated Meinongianism. It addresses Meinongian rejoinders in response to Russell's main criticisms and further defends Russell's alternative solution, his Theory of Descriptions. Part Two explores the rationale for nonexistents and their use in interpreting three types of statements: characterization, negative existential, and intentional. The book argues that, despite appearances, Meinongianism cannot plausibly account for its own paradigm claims, whereas Russell's framework, with some further elucidation, can explain these statements quite well. Part Three primarily addresses claims about fiction, exploring the short-comings of Meinongian and Russellian frameworks in interpreting them. The book introduces a contextualization solution and symbolic method for capturing the logical form of such claims - one with the complexity to handle cross-contextual statements, including negative existential and intentional ones. It finally considers where that leaves nonexistent objects, ultimately rejecting such so-called entities."

193. Umphrey, Stewart. 1988. "The Meinongian-Antimeinongian Dispute Reviewed: A Reply to Dejnožka and Butchvarov." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 32:169-179.

194. Vanderveken, Daniel. 1982. "Some Philosophical Remarks on the Theory of Types in Intensional Logic." Erkenntnis no. 17:85-112.

195. Veatch, Henry. 1971. "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism: A Realism Manqué." In Essays on Bertrand Russell, edited by Klemke, Elmer D., 102-117. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

196. Voltolini, Alberto. 2001. "What Is Alive and What Is Dead in Russell's Critique of Meinong." In The School of Alexius Meinong, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Jacquette, Dale and Poli, Roberto, 489-516. Aldershot: Ashgate.

197. Wahl, Russell. 1993. "Russell's Theory on Meaning and Denotation and 'on Denoting'." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 31:71-94.

198. ———. 2013. Propositions and Facts in the Early Philosophy of Bertrand Russell. Wellington, NZ: Society for Philosophy & Culture.

199. ———, ed. 2019. The Bloomsbury Companion to Bertrand Russell. New York: Bloomsbury.

200. Weiss, Bernhard. 1994. "On Russell's Argument for Restricting Modes of Specification and Domains of Quantification." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 15:173-188.

201. Wettstein, Howard. 1990. "Frege-Russell Semantics?" Dialectica no. 44:113-135.

202. Winslade, William. 1971. "Russell's Theory of Relation." In Essays on Bertrand Russell, edited by Klemke, Elmer D., 81-101. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

203. Yu, Yung-ping. 1995. Generality and Reference. An Examination of Denoting in Russell's Principles of Mathematics, University of Iowa.

Available at ProQuest Dissertation Express. Order number: 9603108.

Studies in French

1. "Bertrand Russell 1872-1970." 1972. Revue internationale de philosophie no. 102.

Sommaire: Gilbert Ryle: Bertrand Russell 1872-1970 436; Brian McGuinness: Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein's 'Notes on Logic' 444; J. R. Leyvraz: Bertrand Russell et l'impact de Wittgenstein 461; Elizabeth R. Ames: Russell on 'What There is' 483; Conrad J. Koehler: Studies in Bertrand Russell's Theory of Knowledge 499; Steen Olaf Welding:Russell's Theory of Definite Descriptions as Opposed to Quine's Singular Terms 513; Jules Vuillemin: Logical Flaws or Philosophical Problems: On Russell's Principia Mathematica 534-556.

2. "Russell En Héritage / Le Centenaire Des Principles." 2004. Revue internationale de philosophie no. 58:247-372.

Sommaire: Philippe de Rouilhan: Présentation 247; Gregory Landini: Russell's Separation of the Logical and Semantic Paradoxes 257; Geoffrey Hellman: Predicativism as a Philosophical Position 295; Solomon Feferman: Comments on “Predicativity as a philosophical position” by G. Hellman 313; Geoffrey Hellman: Reply to Comments of Solomon Ferferman 325; Philippe de Rouilhan: The Basic Problem of the Logic of Meaning (I) 329-372.

3. Heijenoort, Jean van. 1987. "Système Et Métasystème Chez Russell." In Logic Colloquium '85, 111-122. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Proceedings of the Colloquium held in Orsay, France, July 1985. Edited by The Paris Logic Group.

4. Lepage, Franois. 1983. "Réalisme Et Théorie Russellienne Des Descriptions." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 13:209-226.

5. Vernant, Denis. 1993. La Philosophie Mathématique De Bertrand Russell. Paris: Vrin.

6. Vuillemin, Jules. 1968. Leons Sur La Première Philosophie De Russell. Paris: Aramand Colin.

7. ———. 1971. La Logique Et Le Monde Sensible. Étude Sur Les Théories Contemporaines De L'abstraction. Paris: Flammarion.

8. ———. 1975. "Le "Platonisme" Dans La Première Philosophe De Russell Et Le "Principe D'abstraction"." Dialogue no. 14:222-240.

Studies in German

1. Mueller-Goldingen, Christian. 2013. Bertrand Russell. Studien Zu Seinem Philosophischen Werk. Berlin: LIT Verlag.

2. Rheinwald, Rosemarie. 1998. Semantische Paradoxien, Typentheorie Und Ideale Sprache. Studien Zur Sprachphilosophie Bertrand Russells. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

3. Stepanians, Markus S. 1995. "Russells Kritik an Meinongs Begriff Des Annahmenschlusses." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:415-432.

4. Tatievskaya, Elena. 2005. Der Begriff Der Logischen Form in Der Analytischen Philosophie. Russell in Auseinandersetzung Mit Frege, Meinong Und Wittgenstein. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

Studies in Spanish

1. Muguerza, Javier. 1973. "Sobre La Ontologia Del Atomismo Logico De Russell." Pensamiento no. 29:287-312.

2. Rodriguez Consuegra, Francisco. 1991. "El Logicismo Russelliano: Su Significado Filosofico." Critica:15-39.

Studies in Italian

1. Bencivenga, Ermanno. 1974. "Le Descrizioni E Il Problema Ontologico." Rivista di Filosofia no. 65:227-249.

2. Di Francesco, Michele. 1991. Il Realismo Analitico. Logica, Ontologia E Significato Nel Primo Russell. Milano: Guerini e Associati.

3. Donati, Stefano. 2003. I Fondamenti Della Matematica Nel Logicismo Di Bertrand Russell. Firenze: Firenze Atheneum.

4. Granese, Alberto. 1971. Che Cosa Ha Veramente Detto Russell. Roma: Ubaldini.

5. Orilia, Francesco. 1984. Il Dibattito Meinong-Russell E L'influenza Di Meinong Sulla Filosofia Analititca Contemporanea. Palermo: Mazzone.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Levels of Reality in Nicolai Hartmann's Ontology

Hartmann's New Ontology

"With the philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann we once again enter a world of sober, objective and impartial inquiry, which presses beyond man's self and seeks to grasp the universe of being so far as it is revealed to our limited capacity to know. The basic mood of Existence philosophy, as might be expected, is altogether missing from this universal way of viewing matters. (...).

The true concern of his philosophy is to discover the structural laws of the real world, of the world of being, not of some 'world of mere appearances' set out in front of the real world. Traditional philosophy, according to Hartmann, has sinned a great deal in this connection and in a double manner. First, it has always believed that it faced two basic alternatives - to accept an absolute knowledge of being, or else to assume the total unknowability of the 'things in themselves'. The latter course means rejecting the possibility altogether of objective knowledge of being, the former results in closed metaphysical systems that dismiss the irrational aspects of being and hold that the whole of being may in principle be grasped rationally. What has been overlooked is the middle possibility, namely, that being may be partially comprehensible conceptually despite the irrationality of the infinite portion that remains.

The second error of traditional philosophy is the propensity, stemming from the monistic need for unity, to transfer the categories or principles of one province to another that differs from it in kind. Illustrations are the application of mechanistic principles to the sphere of the organic, of organic relationships to social and political life, and, conversely, of mental and spiritual structures to the inanimate world. This infringement of categorial boundaries, as Hartmann calls the theoretical encroachment of one province of being upon another, must be eliminated by rigorous critical analysis; yet the categories must preserve their relative validity for the domain from which they were taken originally. From the standpoint of a critical ontology, the totality of beings then turns out to be a far more complicated structure than finds expression in the traditional metaphysical formulas of unity.

Knowledge belongs to the highest stratum with which we are acquainted, that of spirit or culture. Consequently only an ontology of spiritual being (geistiges Sein) can comprehend the essence of knowledge. At the same time, however, the problem of cognition must already have obtained at least a partial solution if ontological inquiry is to be admissible at all. For to begin with we do not even know whether there is any such thing as objective knowledge of being or a transcendent object independent of the subject of cognition. This fact necessarily places epistemology in a dual position. On the one hand, it must create the foundation for all ontological inquiry; but at the same time it can reach its goal only within the framework of an ontology of spiritual being. Hartmann attempts to do justice to this twofold aspect of knowledge by prefacing his works in ethics and ontology with an investigation of knowledge, by including in this investigation the ontological viewpoint, and by discussing in his ontology the consequences of his findings for the phenomenon of cognition." (pp. 220-221)

From: Wolfgang Stegmüller, Main Currents in Contemporary German, British, and American Philosophy, Dordrecht; Reidel 1969.

"It is not easy to tell what exactly Hartmann understood by his 'ontology,' which he wanted to oppose to the old Pre-Kantian form of ontology. He certainly did not identify it with metaphysics. In this respect Hartmann's enterprise differed fundamentally from the many more or less fashionable attempts to resurrect metaphysics, attempts which have rarely led to more than tentative and precarious results. Superficially Hartmann's 'ontology' may seem to be nothing but what it meant to Aristotle: the science of being qua being in its most general characteristics. In order to determine its actual content, however, it will be best to look first at the type of topics and problems which Hartmann took up under the time-honored name. They comprise not only being qua being, i.e., the most general concept of what is (das Seiende), but existence (Dasein) and essence (Sosein), which he calls Seinsmomente, and the types of being designated by the adjectives 'real' and 'ideal,' named Seinsweisen, all of which are discussed in the first volume of the ontological tetralogy. The second volume deals with the modes of being (Seinsmodi) such as possibility and actuality, necessity and contingency, impossibility and unreality -- particularly impressive and perhaps the most original part of the set. The next major theme is the categories, first the general ones applying to all the strata (Schichten) of the real world and explored in the third volume (Der Aufbau der realen Welt), then the special categories pertaining only to limited areas, such as nature, which Hartmann takes op in the final work.

Finally, there are the categories peculiar to the realm of cultural entities (geistiges Sein) which he discussed in a work whose publication actually preceded the ontological tetralogy.

The mere mention of these topics will make it clear that such an ontology differs considerably from what had passed as ontology before Hartmann. It covers more and less. It adds the spheres of being which have been opened up by the sciences and the new cultural studies as well as by the theory of values. But it omits the traditional metaphysical problems, i.e., the ultimate questions dealing with God and immortality, which were the prize pieces of speculative metaphysics. The fact that Hartmann abandoned this earlier metaphysics did not mean that he denied its problems. Their insolubility even provides the very background for his new ontology. Hence we have no right to simply ignore them.

Ontology thus conceived constitutes really a segment of a metaphysics which is no longer simply a field for speculative treatment by a priori methods. To Hartmann metaphysical problems are those which form the horizon of scientific knowledge, and which are inescapable because of their connection with what we can know scientifically, yet which cannot be solved by the methods of science alone. Some of these problems he considered to be impenetrable and 'irrational' on principle, even though they too contain an ingredient (Einschlag) which can be explored by the rational methods of critical ontology. This 'least metaphysical part' of metaphysics is the proper field of the new ontology." (pp. 309-310)

From: Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement. A Historical Introduction, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1963 (third edition).

The relevance of Hartmann's work for contemparay philosophy

The philosophical debate of the past decades has shown no interest in Hartmann's ideas and contribution to philosophy. Judging from current discussion, the only available conclusion that one can draw is that Hartmann left no legacy behind. Though this is a rather unwelcome conclusion, it seems difficult to deny its validity. How, then, could Axiomathes' readers possibly be interested in Hartmann's ideas? We are not archaeologists concerned with dead fragments of the past. We are scientists and philosophers closely involved in contemporary debate.

One of Axiomathes's fundamental beliefs is that real advances in science may sometimes depend on consideration of the origins and intellectual history of certain key ideas at the forefront of current research. I believe that this applies to Hartmann. He developed ideas and tools that may stimulate a real advancement of contemporary science. I would therefore claim that one of the tasks of those few well acquainted with Hartmann's thought is to reorganize and represent his ideas so that they can be understood by most contemporary researchers.

Hartmann is only one of the many great figures of the past that have lapsed into oblivion, as witnessed by the well-known cases of Brentano, Peirce and Whitehead.

It is well known that the idea of ontology is grounded in the definition put forward by Aristotle at the beginning of the fourth book of Metaphysics: "there is a science which studies being qua being [... ]". The problem is this: why does not Aristotle simply say that ontology is the theory of being? The main reason for distinguishing between theory of being and theory of being qua being rests on Aristotle's contention that the analysis of being simpliciter cannot be developed scientifically. Aristotle's intention to submit being to scientific analysis was therefore the principal reason why he adopted a reduplicative form of analysis. His position derived from the thesis that being is not a genus, whereas scientific analysis can only be developed if there is a common genus for the items under examination. If being does not have a common genus, the study of being cannot be a science.

Aristotle stated very clearly that when one moves from the study of being to the study of being qua being, some of the ways in which one can talk about being are no longer valid. Metaphysics VI, 2 tells us that being simpliciter can be talked about in various ways. On passing from being to being qua being, only two of them remain valid: analysis according to the categories, and analysis according to potentiality and actuality (the latter can be rephrased as what is nowadays called dynamics).

The two main underpinnings of a properly understood Aristotelian ontology are therefore the idea that metaphysics comes after physics that is, the idea that ontology requires science -- and that the theory of being should be replaced by the theory of being qua being (that is, by a categorical framework plus a dynamics).

Hartmann followed the same line of thought: he explicitly claimed that ontology comes after science, that the proper ontological viewpoint is the categorical one and that reality is thoroughly dynamic. Considering that ontology has been a pejorative label for twentieth-century mainstream philosophy, this may help explain why it has been so difficult for Hartmann's achievements to gain recognition.

This issue of Axiomathes is based on the papers presented at the conference The Legacy of Nicolai Hartmann, organized by the recently established MITTELEUROPA FOUNDATION for the fiftieth anniversary of Hartmann's death (Bolzano, June 21-22, 2001).

From Roberto Poli, "Foreword" to Axiomathes, Vol. 12, 2001, Nos. 3-4, Special Issue: The Legacy of Nicolai Hartmann (1882-1950).

Hartmann' auto-presentation

"The projects in ontology constitute a special chapter, although only one of these was actually brought to completion in our period. The famous work of Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, which had evoked great interest both in and out of Germany, was never finished. But its influence has been great even up to the present. (...) On the other hand, Nikolai Hartmann, after Grundlegung der Ontologie (1935) had opened up a new line of development, proceeded to publish two larger works -- Möglichkeit and Wirklichkeit (1938) and Der Aufbau der realen Welt. Grundriss der allgemeinen Kategorienlehre (1940). The third volume of this set, the Spezielle Kategorienlehre (philosophy of nature), could not be published. Nevertheless, the two published writings contain the gist of the scheme, which is further elaborated in a smaller writing, Neue Wege der Ontologie (in Systematische Philosophie, 1942. 2nd ed., 1947). The first of these books presents a new analysis of the modal categories. The main thesis is that the essence of reality, which is so difficult to conceive, if it is understood as the kind of being possessed by the world in which we live, can actually be so conceived in terms of the relation of the modes which govern it. The study shows that the traditional conception of these modes cannot account for the kind of being which reality possesses, and so the modes themselves must be interpreted in a completely new manner. The new interpretation consists of a thorough analysis of their mutual relations -- the " intermodal relations "; and the conclusions lead directly to new determinations of the nature of becoming, obligation, the puzzling character of aesthetic objects, etc. Also a new formulation and justification of the principle of sufficient reason is developed. Consequences are also found for the problem of ideal being, the realm of logic and knowledge, the general conclusion being that these modes and their interrelations vary with each of these realms. The second work develops the new ontological conception of the categories, and applies it to the group of " basic categories " (Fundamental kategorien) -- that is, those categories which are common to all levels, spheres and realms of being, and which are articulated even in the highest levels of being. In this connexion we find a great many " categorial laws ", which underly the stratification of the real world and determine its inner structure. As a result we are led to the so called " laws of dependence ", and eventually to the controversial problem of moral freedom -- for which a new solution is proposed." (pp. 421-422)

From: Nicolai Hartmann, "German Philosophy in the Last Ten Years", translated by John Ladd, Mind, 58, 1949, pp. 413-433.

Metaphysics and Ontolgoy

"In opposition to almost the whole of modern philosophy, Hartmann asserts the ontological nature of all fundamental problems which philosophy attempts to solve. Even idealism or the most extreme subjectivism have, somehow or other, to explain at least the "illusion" of being, no matter how they try to avoid it; there is no form of theoretical thought which can refuse to be basically ontological, that is, does not propose questions about "being as such." It is obviously the essence of thought that one cannot think "nothing," one must think "something," and that "something" immediately raises the problem of being. Furthermore, the natural sciences are in no position to cut themselves off from a metaphysical background. Metaphysics is born of wonder at the fact of life, which cannot be explained either mechanically or teleologically. Psychology, the philosophy of history, logic, aesthetics, and above all epistemology and ethics, are faced with the same problems.

The older metaphysics had made two mistakes. First, it undertook to solve the insoluble. Metaphysics signifies the irrational, and the irrational is the unintelligible. But being has also an intelligible side. The persistence of numerous problems is proof of this, for example in the recurrent contradictions between freedom and determinism, immanence and transcendence, life and mechanism. We cannot hope for a solution of these problems, but with appropriate methods we can advance their elucidation and confine to smaller and smaller compass the unintelligible remainder.

Second, the older metaphysics made the mistake of erecting closed systems and of forcing reality into these molds. The time for such systems is past, says Hartmann. What has weight in the works of the great philosophers is not their systems but the problems which they work out. All systems celebrate triumphs in the empty breeze of speculation. A few principles are laid down and then one proceeds forward by deduction. But even if the unity of the world is to be considered as given we yet do not know what in fact is its ultimate principle. The method that is called for is precisely the opposite. The philosophia prima which is to be evolved can be a p hilosophia ultima for our cognitive capacities only because the ratio cognoscendi moves toward the ratio essendi.

In this critique of the older metaphysics we begin to see how Hartmann wishes the concepts, metaphysics and ontology, to be construed. In contrast to the classical usage of the term he does not regard metaphysics as a science but as a tissue of questions to which there are no answers. The intelligible aspect of being, on the other hand, falls into the domain of ontology.

Ontology in this sense is a science, but it is not identical with phenomenology which has great propaedeutic value but cannot constitute the whole of ontology. Phenomenology glides dangerously over the surface of problems, and on the basis of its very definition it does not reach beyond the external appearance of the real. It remains bound to mere matter of fact and cannot get beyond this.

Hartmann's magnificent and original investigations into the nature of problems as such have shown that even when an intelligible object is under discussion one always discovers it to be a mixture of the known and the unknown. The fact that problems may be distinguished from each other proves that something is known of the matter in hand, just as the fact of inquiring into it shows that it is not known. To state problems is the chief task of philosophy." (pp. 213-216)

From: I. M. (Józef Maria) Bochenski, Contemporary European Philosophy, translated from the German by Donald Nicholl and Karl Aschenbrenner, Berkeley: University of California Press 1957. (Original German published in 1947).

The dimensions and forms of being

"It is now clear that Hartmann's statement of fundamental problems and his theory of knowledge turn first of all on the issue of being qua being (Seiendes als Seiendes). His propositions about being and its properties may now be examined.

Here are encountered the comprehensive investigations of his main four-volume work of which only the most important ideas can be mentioned. The basic principle of Hartmann's doctrine of being is that being develops in two dimensions, namely (1) the four completely distinct spheres of being and (2) the levels of being (Seinsstufen) within these spheres.

In the spheres of being Hartmann distinguishes two primary ones, of real and of ideal being, which may also be designated as modes of being (Seinsweisen) and two secondary, the cognitive and the logical spheres. Real being must not be confused with actuality (Wirklichkeit) for there is both real possibility and ideal possibility, though this distinction is really part of modal analysis. As to the relation between the primary and secondary spheres, there is an intimate cross-relationship between the cognitive and the real modes of being, and between the logical and the ideal. Propositions about the latter are especially important, for Hartmann holds that ideal being is similar to real being in itself in that it can be known, and knowing is always by its very nature the grasp of what has being in itself. The most familiar types of ideal being are the realms of essences and values and of mathematical being. The first of these appears in reality as basic structure but without being exhausted in that context. There are entities in ideal being which do not become real, for example, spaces with more than three dimensions. On the other hand, there is real being which is not subject to the laws of ideal being; for example, the alogical, the value-negating, the real contradiction. All ideal being is general, and is either forms, conformity to law or relations. Compared with the real, the ideal is lesser being. We must reject Plato's view that it is something "higher, more sublime". Ideal being is not identical with the rational for in its domain there is also to be found the irrational, and this incidentally is a proof of its having independent being for the transintelligible is exempt from idealistic criticism.

Hartmann analyzes the other spheres in similar fashion. He then proceeds to specify the character of the second dimension of being, that of the strata or levels of being (Seinsstufen). In real being we find four levels, matter, life, consciousness, and spirit. Being known (Erkenntnissein), by a certain analogy to these, involves perception, intuition, knowledge, and comprehension (Wahrnehmung, Anschauung, Erkenntnis, Wissen). Logical being finally divides, as the tradition has it, into concept, judgment, and inference. These separate levels are determined through the categories, the principles of a given level. Hartmann distinguishes two kinds of categories: modal categories which are accorded a special investigation, and fundamental categories which can be arranged in opposing pairs. In contrast to Kant and Alexander, the latter are not arranged in a definite system but are only loosely strung together in a table of existential opposites (Seinsgegensätze). The twelve pairs involved here include form-matter, inner-outer, determination-dependence, quality-quantity.

Hartmann has devoted extensive study to the question of the categories in his comprehensive work Der Aufbau der realen Welt: Grundriss der allgemeinen Kategorienlehre, the third volume of his Ontologie. After thorough survey of earlier views his theory culminates in the formulation of many categorial laws. Some of the most important are these: the law of strength (the lower is the stronger), and its counterpart, the law of freedom (the higher level is autonomous, for in respect to the lower level it is the richer). While therefore every higher level is borne by a lower one, still their relations are not always the same. The organic, the level of life, is only an over-forming (U berformung) of the spatio-physical aspect of matter, while the levels of consciousness and spirit rise in a ;more independent process of over-building (Überbauung) above life; that is, in this case not all the lower categories reappear.

The second great categorial group, the theory of the modalities of being (Seinsmodi) represents one of the most significant parts of Hartmann's metaphysics. What is notably original is that modal analysis leads to quite different results in the four spheres of being. Thus in each sphere there are distinguishable modalities of being. Of these, however, the laws which hold of real being are the most important. The modalities divide into the absolute modalities (reality and unreality) and the relative (possibility, impossibility, necessity). There is also a negative counter-modality to necessity, namely contingency, of which the rule holds that absolute necessity is likewise absolute contingency. One should further emphasize Hartmann's theory of possibility according to which in real being only that is possible whose conditions are all real. Hence all that is possible is likewise real and necessary, and all that is negatively possible is likewise unreal and impossible. This does not mean of course that the modalities themselves are identical. Implication is not identity. The distinction between positive and negative possibility rests on the law of division of disjunctive possibility which is valid in real being though not in logical being.

In his ontology Hartmann has also addressed himself to the traditional distinction between essence and existence. These he calls "moments of being" (Seinsmomente): the "what" (Sosein) and the "that" (Dasein). It is noteworthy that these moments of being appear differently in both of the primary spheres of being. Thus the ideal "what" and "that" can be known a priori, but the real "that" only a posteriori. One cannot simply equate the "what" with the ideal and the "that" with real being. Actually there is no absolute difference between "what" and "that" in the existential relationships that obtain in the world for it is a question altogether of relative moments. The "that" of the leaf belongs to the "what" of the tree, and the "that" of the latter to the "what" of the forest. The distinction holds only for the whole of the universe and for particular beings." (pp. 217-221)

From: I. M. (Józef Maria) Bochenski, Contemporary European Philosophy, translated from the German by Donald Nicholl and Karl Aschenbrenner, Berkeley: University of California Press 1957. (Original German published in 1947).

Hartmann's phenomenological ontology

"How to get at the basis of Hartmann's ontology? Let us sketch the superstructure, and then descend into the depths of the foundation. Besides the two primary spheres, there are two secondary spheres of being -- the spheres of 'logic' and 'knowledge'. These are mid-way spheres inasmuch as they share the categories of both the primary spheres. (Compare Whitehead's 'hybrid' entities.)

Following the Aristotelian tradition, Hartmann takes ontology as the science of beings as beings. Ontology is concerned with what first makes beings beings. The word "Sein" gives rise to the illusion, as if there is some entity or attribute corresponding to it, something over and above, may be, underlying or pervading the various beings. Hartmann rejects this thought. A science of beings as beings is not a science of any such entity or attribute as Sein. On the other hand, it can only be a science which lays bare the various spheres of being along with their general and special categories and inter-categorial (hence, inter-sphere) relations. Hence, ontology becomes a doctrine of categories, a "Kategorienlehre". To keep these primary and secondary spheres along with their general and special categories before the mind, in their distinctions as well as in their interrelations, is essential for an understanding of Hartmann's ontology. Hartmann displays great acumen in drawing these distinctions and in keeping clearly apart what he considers to be distinct. Through these distinctions, he claims to have the clue in hand for avoiding many of the errors of the traditional ontologies.

There are two primary spheres of being: the real and the ideal. The real consists of the chain of temporal events. The structure of the real sphere is a stratification of various levels: the material, vital, psychical and spiritual. The stratification consists in the relation of "founding". The higher level is "founded" on the lower. The lower provides the basis for the higher. The real sphere has its general categories, those which determine the entire sphere, irrespective of the differences of strata. Such categories are, for example, the modal categories. But each stratum of reality has also its own special categories. The relation in which two levels of reality stand to each other is concretely illustrated in the relation in which the categories of the The key to this entire discussion lies in the formulation of the nature of the ideal sphere. In setting aside what he calls the errors of tradition, Hartmann shows here his capacity at its best." (pp. 116-117)

From: Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Phenomenology and Ontology, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1970, Chapter XI. A Recent Criticism of the Foundations of Nicolai Hartmann's Ontology, pp. 115-128.

"... Hartmann regards ontology to be concerned with: (1) the two aspects ("moments") of being: Dasein and Sosein, or that and what; (2) the two spheres of being: real and ideal; and (3) the modalities of being: actuality, possibility, and necessity.

One of the errors of phenomenology -- including both Husserl's and Scheler's -- is that when it regards itself as investigation into essences, as distinguished from existence (as a consequence of eidetic reduction), it forgets that essences also have their Dasein (existence) and their Sosein, that Dasein is not as such real existence. There is also, as with essences and mathematical idealities such as numbers, and values, ideal Dasein. Husserl does sometimes insist that essences are a kind of objects sui generis, so it may be just right to interpret eidetic reduction not as abstracting from existence, but as abstracting from real existence. But, then there is the curious consequence that essences have both real and ideal existence (when they are taken in their purity). Hartmann seems to have wavered on this question. In his early work Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, he denied existence and individuality to ideal entities, but still ascribed to them A nsichsein, intrinsic being. In Die Grundlegung der Ontologie, he ascribed existence to them, but that only means he was taking "existence" and "Ansichsein" as being the same.

So, for Hartmann, the Dasein-Sosein distinction is not quite the same as real-ideal distinction. In addition, Hartmann insisted that some Soseins are "neutral" as against both real and ideal existence: "roundness" belongs to a real spherical ball as well as a geometrical circle.

If concerns (1) and (2) do not coincide, it is also a mistake to collapse (2) with (3). The latter mistake is committed by those who hold that reality is the domain of all that is actual, while essences are pure possibilities. A corollary of this view is that truths about reality (i.e., about what is actual) are contingent, whereas truths about essences (i.e., about pure possibilities) are necessary. This is a widely held view, and one of Hartmann's important theses is that this view is based on an inadequate analysis of modal concepts.

Hence the importance of modal concepts in Hartmann's thinking. It is only the modal concepts as pertaining to a sphere of being, which explicate the precise mode of being of that sphere. In other words, Hartmann held that while in an important sense we cannot say much about what "real existence" (or "ideal existence") consists in, the best we can do in this regard is to look at how the concepts of "possibility" "actuality," and "necessity" (and their opposites) behave with regard to the domain of reality (or, with regard to the domain of ideality). So we shall turn to his modal theory, but before I do that, perhaps a quick sketch of what he counts as belonging to the two domains would be in order.

The real world is a stratified structure, on Hartmann's view, with nonliving matter at the base, living organisms founded on it, mental reality founded on organic life, and spirit or Geist (including society and all social formations) at the apex. Each of these strata has its own categorial structure, and the entire domain of reality also has certain common structures.

The domain of idealities consists of: mathematical entities (such as numbers), essences, and values. None of the idealities is spatiotemporally individuated. An ideality maybe instantiated or be an ingredient in many real individuals, without surrendering its own identity.

Besides these two primary spheres of being, Hartmann also recognized two intermediate (or hybrid) spheres: those of logic and cognition. With this brief sketch, let us look at his modal theory worked out in Möglichkeit and Wirklichkeit." (pp. 26-27)

From: Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Phenomenology. Between Essentialism and Transcendental Philosophy, Chapter 3: Nicolai Hartmann's Phenomenological Ontology, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1997.

Hartmann's theory of modality

"In his Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit (Berlin 1937, 2nd. ed. 1949), Hartmann gives us an ontological theory of the modes. He starts from a distinction between the modes of the various spheres of being, primary and secondary. The two primary spheres of being, according to his ontology, are the real and the ideal. The two secondary spheres are those of logic and knowledge. The modes of the real world are accordingly contrasted with those of the ideal realm; the modes of the realm of logic are again different from those of knowledge. The modal doctrine is thereby divided into four parts. But there must be also a part on the relations between these different spheres.

Traditional discussion of the problem of modality did not see clearly through these distinctions. This gives to Hartmann's treatment of the problem its originality. Further, these modes of the various spheres are distinguished from the naive day to day consciousness of modality.

The ontological point of view requires specification. For this purpose, we are to distinguish between three different approaches to the problem of modality:

First, it is possible to consider the modalities as criteria for classifying all objects in the three groups, those that are merely possible, those that are both possible and actual, and those that are possible, actual and also necessary.

Secondly, it is possible to consider the modes as if they were different stages of a process. Thus, it may be said that a thing first becomes possible, then is made actual, and further may or may not be necessary. The process however may not be carried to the end; what is possible may never be actualised.

Thirdly, the modes may be taken neither as criteria nor as stages of a process, but as the constituent aspects of the existent or the subsistent, as the case may be. This is the point of view which we may call the critical point of view, because we may trace it to Kant. Kant starts from the given object of experience and then asks how the same is possible, actual and necessary.

Hartmann rejects the first two approaches. Modes are for him neither criteria nor stages, but the most primary characteristics of the being of anything. As such, given an object of experience, we can ask: what makes it possible? What makes it actual? What makes it necessary?

Thus in an important sense, Hartmann's treatment of the problem is similar to Kant's, even though Kant's own solutions are rejected by Hartmann. For Kant, the given is possible when considered in relation to its form and actual when considered in relation to its matter. Hartmann finds this not only inadequate but also misleading; to this however we shall turn later on.

The second approach is attributed to Aristotle. Both the first and the second approaches attribute to the merely possible which is not 'or has not yet become actual' a sort of ghostly existence -- a position in between being and non-being. Aristotle's doctrine of dynamis and energia is further criticised as an illegitimate extension of the categories of the sphere of organic being to the entire domain of being. Further, if a prior stage of mere possibility is admitted, the question arises as to what must be added to it in order to render it actual. Kant had shown that any answer to this question is absurd. For, that which must be so added, argued Kant, must be other than the possible, that is to say, must be impossible! (1)

As such, we come back to the critical formulation of the question. This is one of the points where we begin to see the influence of Kant on Hartmann's ontology which claims the name of critical ontology." (pp. 181-182)

Notes

(1) I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, WW III p. 206, hg. v. Ernst Cassirer.

From: Jitendra Nath Mohanty, "Remarks on Nicolai Hartmann's Modal Doctrine", Kant-Studien, 54, 1963, pp. 181-187.

On the extant as extant in general

"The first one of the four treatises included in the Grundlegung [der Ontologie] is entitled "Vom Seienden als Seienden überhaupt" (On the Extant as Extant at all). It comprises three sections, consisting of ten chapters. The following is a summary of its contents.

Section I. The Concept of the Extant and its Aporia. Chapter 1. The Fundamental Question of Ontology.

A departure can be made from this side of realism and idealism. It only seems to be different because of the habit of understanding Being (Sein) as Being per se (Ansichsein). But the phenomenon must be viewed first without interpretation. One must not form any arbitrarily speculative prejudgment. He who tries to do so, is not yet on realistic grounds.

A careful distinction must be made between Being (Sein) and the Extant, that-which-is (Seiendes). The interrelationship of the two is the same as that of Truth and the True, of Reality and the Real, of Factuality and the Factual -- of esse and ens. Unfortunately, these pairs of concepts have always been confused with each other. Being (Sein) is the One the identical in the manifoldness of the Extant. Naturally, the two must not be separated from each other, but the lack of distinction has led to viewing Being as a substance.

The Aristotelian version of the question is helpful today still. Its chosen task is to explain Being as Extant, or the Extant as such. This clearly points up Being as such as something general, although the wording uses the term "Extant." Aristotle, too, failed to overcome the peril of substantialism, but the latter can be avoided by adhering faithfully to his wording. It is a wonderful formula. Just how wonderful it is can best be recognized by seeing how much it wards off. If Being is regarded as appearance or as something in the state of becoming, the formula is violated. Such a cognition does not involve a cognition of the Extant as Extant. Likewise in the case of the Extant as something posited, meant, imagined and subject-referred. For Being is not absorbed in the objecthood (Gegenstandsein). This is the supreme meaning of the Aristotelian formula which hits well the formal meaning of the fundamental question. Heidegger tried in vain to defend himself against it.

Chapter 2.

It is worth our while to take a closer look at Heidegger's abortive attempt. He abandoned Aristotle's formula for the other one which queries for the sense and meaning of Being. Heidegger's concept of hereness (Dasein) remains completely man-bound. Hereness (Dasein) is Being (Sein) that understands its own Being (*). This is why the Extant (Seiendes), the world, Truth, are the ever-mine. This prejudges everything, and such an analysis of Being ends up as the analysis of givenness. The modes of givenness are the modalities of Being. The objective spirit is de-powered, the stratum of Being (Seinsschicht) of the historical spirit become impalpable. The personal decision of the individual alone is proven right.

It is wrong to twist the question of Being into a question of meaning. It is as proper to inquire about the Being of meaning as about the Meaning of Being. Yet, this is not the general question of Being. Meaning exists always only for somebody. There is no meaning in-itself. The Being of the Extant stands indifferent to whatever the Extant might be "for somebody."

Chapter 3. The Attitude of Ontological Cognition.

Being (Sein) is the ultimate and therefore cannot be defined. It is impalpable, the out-and-out universal. It cannot even be delimited against something else, such as some other universal. Only the contentual element of a mode of Being can be indicated, not the mode of Being itself.

But this irrationality is merely partial. Therefore, it cannot be defined and cannot be typed by characteristics, but the way from the general to the special is open, and this circumstance makes it necessary to bring in certain specific questions. This is the path which we take in this treatise.

There is a circumstance which proves useful in this reflection on the aporia of generality and indeterminacy of the Extant as Extant, of the Extant as such, of Being at all -- ontology is a re-approach to the natural. This makes one ponder the difference between natural and reflected attitude. Cognition is directed at its object, at that which it perceives, and not at that which constitutes the cognition. If we want to reach some conclusion on it, we must go into the attitude called reflection, which is a bending-back (re-flexion), whereas cognition stands for the natural. This bending-back becomes a source of aporias in epistemology. The same thing occurs in psychology. Acts are not given, like objects. The hardest task in this respect is that of logic, if it wants to make its object not the contentual element of the concepts, but the concepts themselves. This is why it has so often slipped from its own plane onto those of psychology, epistemology or ontology. We have thus found three fields in which the natural attitude must be replaced be a reflected one, involving diverse complications.

Borrowing certain concepts from scholasticism, from Wilhelm von Occam in particular, let us call the natural attitude intentio recta, and the reflected bending-back intentio obliqua. Then we can say that ontology is the restoration of the intentio recta.

Chapter 4. Position and Roots of the Problem of Being.

Three principal fields are present in the intentio recta: the natural, the scientific, and the ontological relationships to the world. Moreover, however, we classify epistemology, psychology and logic under the heading "Philosophy," not under "Science." Ontology continues the natural trend which starts in the pre-scientific, and which is taken over by natural science and also by the science of the mind. The recognition of the right, for instance, represents an unreflected mental attitude, and the same holds true for the other fields of objective spirit, in strong contradistinction to epistemology, psychology and logic. Ontology is, therefore, in this respect, a continuation. In the case of the intentio recta of natural science, the external material form of the givenness (Gegebenheit) is still predominant. Thus, all these fields, in contradistinction to the other three, show a common relationship to the Extant, the essential trend of a natural realism which knows that taking something for an object is not the same as taking something for an Extant.

As contrasted with the naive world-awareness, however, enormous contentual differences are involved here, but the unity of the object range remains intact in the four fields. The object is the same, but the view of the object changes. Something of the prescientific naive view is preserved in the theory. The word theory means view.

The intentio obliqua misses the given aspect of the Extant. Reflection gets always only as far as the objects and does not reach the Extant. It is therefore all too likely to wander into the blind alley of the immanence of the awareness.) .Thus, gnosiology wants to hold fast in the reflectedness of the awareness of it. Without gaining a firm footing ontologically, gnosiology here misses it own object -- cognition.

Phenomenology does not get as far as the things (as it so strongly emphasizes), but merely as far as the phenomenon of the thing. It becomes tuned to things through intentio recta -- to the phenomena by intentio obliqua. That which is given is grasped mentally in the reflected attitude. This casts a light on what the phenomenological methods calls "bracketing" (Einklammerung), "reduction" (Reduktion), and raising before the bracket" (Vor-die-Klammer-Heben)." (pp. 15-19)

Notes

(*) It is Being concerned by its own Being, and which thus is Being-in-the-World.

From: Otto Samuel, A Foundation of Ontology. A Critical Analysis of Nicolai Hartmann, New York: Philosophical Library 1953.

Levels of reality and levels of being

"In his architectural ontology, Hartmann distinguishes between levels of reality and levels of being.(1)

As to levels of reality, he distinguishes at least four ontological strata of the real world: the material, the psychological and the social, among which specific forms of categorical and existential dependence exist. Reality, however, is only a section of being.

As to the levels of being, Hartmann distinguishes among ontology, ontics and metaphysics. In particular:

1. Ontology concerns the categorical analysis of entities by means of the knowledge categories able to classify them.

2. Ontics refers to a pre-categorical and pre-objectual connection which is best expressed in the relation to transcendent acts.

3. Metaphysics is that part of ontics or that part of ontology which concerns the residue of being that cannot be rationalized further according to categories.

On the basis of this last distinction, the psychological stratum is of crucial importance in Hartmann's ontology, and for various reasons.

Firstly, because it provides direct access to the ontic. This access is problematic, however, because certain layers of the psychological stratum, due to the lack of adequate knowledge categories, at first sight seem to be excluded from ontological categorization.

Secondly, because the psychological stratum is one of the levels of beginning of new series of categories. It is well known that in Hartmann's ontology the psychic level stands in a twofold relation, as follows:

1 . The relation of overforming (Überformung), which holds among ontological layers. According to this relation every category can constitute the matter of a higher category.

2. The relation of building above (Überbauen), which holds among ontological strata. According to this relation the higher stratum requires the lower one only as its external basis of existential support, but not as matter to be overformed.

Consequently, the psychological level assumes a fundamental role also as regards the problem of the categorical ontological dependences.

Hartmann describes the complexity of the psychological levels in Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, affirming that psychology could deem itself extraneous to the problem of metaphysics as long as reality was considered to be a characteristic of the external world (things, physical being). But the psychic world is as real as the physical world. Psychology must understand of what psychic reality consists from an ontological point of view and then shed light on a complex series of states and acts that are not immediately experienced and are unconscious. Given in immediate experience are not elements but wholes, organized connections, which relate to whatever is not experienced immediately.

How can one explain be shed on the genesis of psychological wholes and organized connections whose components seem inextricable and therefore destined to constitute the nucleus of the non-rationalizable residue of metaphysics?" (pp. 299-300)

Notes

(1) Following Poli we use (i) level as a general term, (ii) s tratum to refer to the relams of being characterized by categorical diverse groups, and (iii) layer to refer to the segmentation internal to each stratum. See Roberto Poli, Alwis: Ontology for Knowledge Engineers, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Utrecht 2001, ch. 8, 124-126.

From: Liliana Albertazzi, "The Roots of Ontics,"Axiomathes 12, 2001, pp. 299-315.

Hartmanns' concept of categories

"All ontology has to do with fundamental assertions about being as such. Assertions of this sort are precisely what we call categories of being. Like the Kantian categories -- which, as far as content is concerned, are also precisely this: fundamental assertions about being -- they have the character of universal constitutive principles comprising all more specialized ontological assertions. Hence, the new ontology might be expected to provide a transcendental deduction also of these ontological assertions. Otherwise, it is argued, it could not guarantee their objective validity. That, however, would mean that this ontology in its turn was in need of an epistemological foundation which would have to provide the justification of a priori principles of an even wider scope.

Thereby a way for ontology is traced, and this way once more follows the scheme of the old deductivity. But it is here that the roads of the old and the new ontology part. Just as in regard to the problem of being it is today no longer a question of substantial forms and of the teleological determination of actual processes by these forms, so also the problem at issue is no longer that of a post factum justification of a priori principles. The categories with which the new ontology deals are won neither by a definition of the universal nor through derivation from a formal table of judgments. They are rather gleaned step by step from an observation of existing realities. And since, of course, this method of their discovery does not allow for an absolute criterion of truth, here no more than in any other field of knowledge, it must be added that the procedure of finding and rechecking is a laborious and cumbersome one. Under the limited conditions of human research it requires manifold detours, demands constant corrections, and, like all genuine scholarly work, never comes to an end.

Here one may truly and literally speak of new ways of ontology. The basic thesis can possibly be formulated like this: The categories of being are not a priori principles. Only such things as insights, cognitions, and judgments can be a priori. In fact the whole contrast between a priori and a posteriori is only an epistemological one. But ontology is not concerned with knowledge, much less with mere judgments, but with the object of knowledge in so far as this object is at the same time "transobjective", that is, independent of whether or to what extent being is actually transformed into an object of knowledge. The principles of the object in its very being are in no way eo ipso also cognitive principles. In some fields they can be quite heterogeneous, as the manifold admixtures of the unknowable in nearly all basic problems of philosophy amply prove. From this alone it follows that the principles of being cannot be a priori principles of our intellect, that they, as a matter of fact, are just as indifferent to the dividing line between the knowable and the unknowable as the being whose principles they are.

At this point it is incumbent upon us radically to unlearn the old and start to learn the new, not only if our approach be from the old ontology, but also if it be from the standpoint of transcendental epistemology. Of course, as far as their content goes, ontological categories can occasionally coincide with cognitive categories; and within certain limits this must be the case wherever an objectively valid knowledge of objects takes place a priori. But it must not be supposed that this occurs everywhere and without limits. The apriorism in our knowledge is subject to a very fundamental limitation, because our categories of understanding coincide at best only in part with the principles of being. This coincidence reaches farthest where it is a question of insights that are practically relevant and indispensable to the business of life -- in other words, in that field of objects to which our understanding is best suited. And correspondingly, it fails most signally where we are confronted with broad theoretical questions concerning our total world picture and its philosophical interpretation. For it is manifest that with our rational principles we can grasps priori only that aspect of the real world which in itself is framed in accordance with those same principles.

One further step must here be taken. The statement that ontological categories are not a priori principles means simply that they cannot be immediately recognized a priori. Inasmuch as they are at all accessible to knowledge, they must be grasped by other methods. For this, a point of departure seems to offer itself in the relation between cognitive and ontological categories. We already know why this relation must involve at least a partial identity. It might then be concluded: In so far as the ontological categories are the same as the cognitive categories, it should be possible to discover the former as included in the latter. In this way one might at least be able to grasp a priori a sector of the ontological principles.

Even this hope proves deceptive. In the first place, we have no criterion to measure the extent of that categorial identity. And precisely where on practical grounds we are more or less certain of this identity-- in everyday life and for our natural orientation in the world -- this identity is philosophically worthless because it does not bear upon the problems of philosophy. But where these begin, it becomes extraordinarily questionable and soon fails us completely. In the second place, in our cognitive apparatus there is lacking one fundamental prerequisite for so exploiting this identity: an immediate knowledge of our own cognitive categories.

It lies in the nature of all knowledge to be directed not toward itself but toward its object. What, in the process of knowing, the knower becomes conscious of are traits of the object only, not traits of his own action. Least of all do the inner conditions of his action fall within his consciousness; but cognitive categories are counted among these. So, philosophy had to pass through a long historical process before it finally began to become aware of a few of the cognitive categories as such. This awareness requires a reversal of the natural cognitive direction, a turning around, as it were, from the object to the knower. And in fact with this reversal, knowledge of a second order sets in where knowledge itself is made the object of knowledge. This epistemological reflection is "secondary" and must be carried through "against" the natural attitude. When it sets in, it does not lead immediately to the categories of understanding but by a special method must be directed toward them.

This is why not only the ontological categories but even our own cognitive categories on which all knowledge a priori rests are not themselves known a priori. In fact, it must be added that generally they remain unknown in the knowledge of the object. They function in our knowledge but do not in turn become an object of knowledge. Only through the intervention of epistemological reflection are they brought to the light of consciousness. But that is a phase of knowledge reached only late in the historical process. Were the functioning of these categories in our knowledge dependent upon our knowledge of them, all human knowledge, even the most naïve, would have to await a philosophy to make them conscious. But since philosophy actually presupposes naive knowledge, philosophy, on this hypothesis, could never have arrived at the simple understanding of objects.

Actually, the reverse order prevails: Although cognitive categories are the first condition of our knowledge -- especially of the a priori elements in it, which are nowhere absent, not even in the naive world view -- they are not the first to be recognized in it. They are not unknowable, but can be known only indirectly, namely as mediated through the simple knowledge of the objects which is based upon their functioning. If they are known at all, they are, we might say, rather the thing known last. And this order is irreversible. That explains why they are hardest to know. The many detours and blind alleys by which epistemology tries to arrive at them provide an unambiguous demonstration of this fact.

Thus the possibility of making ontological categories comprehensible by a detour through the cognitive categories must be considered altogether negligible. One might believe that in the last analysis it is rather the cognitive categories which can be made intelligible by a detour through the ontological categories. The latter, at any rate, lie in the natural direction of cognition--in the background of objects--albeit the simple knowledge of objects may not penetrate to them. But since all knowledge of objects has in it the tendency toward progressive advance, it may very well, by dint of a progressive deepening, lead directly to ontological categories." (pp. 13-17)

From: Nicolai Hartmann, New Ways of Ontology, Chicago: Henry Regnery Company 1953.

"As Hartmann sees it, categories are "the silent presuppositions" that we accept in our interpretations, explanations, and evaluations of objects. Kant had specifically identified twelve. Hegel had many more. But it can readily be shown that there is an as yet undetermined number, for every field of inquiry has its own categories. And this means that the analysis of categories must be concerned with the structure of Being -- not simply with our modes of thinking.

What makes the analysis of categories possible is the basic principle of all a priori cognition, which, as we have seen, asserts that the conditions of the possibility of experience are at the same time the conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience.

Since the world consists of integrated structures at different levels of Being, it has always been tempting to look for its basic categories either at the lowest or at the highest level. The result has been the development of speculative forms of materialism, idealism, rationalism, and theism. But in their one-sided orientations, all of these have been distortions of reality. The new ontology, Hartmann insists, must break with all this, and it must also break with the tradition of constructing speculative systems. Its first task must be to clarify the essential character of each of the interrelated strata, and then to deal with their interrelations. For this purpose the traditional categories of form-matter, potency-act, idea-thing, essentia-ens, and others are hardly adequate. To realize that the unity of the world is a specific order of interrelated strata is but the beginning of an understanding of the whole.

It is tempting to regard the stratification of reality as the result of a development -- as a genesis. But the riddle of the origin of the world -- of this universe of galaxies and cosmic interrelations, of plants and animals and human beings -- is shrouded in a mystery that is far removed from what is actually given. It is and remains one of the unsolvable metaphysical problems.

The stratification of Being itself, however, is a fact, and is observable in the world around us. The order of rank from the merely material to the spiritual is undeniable, and an analysis of categories must clarify the relationships involved. Hartmann's attempt to do so is developed in great detail in Der Aufbau der Realen Welt, which, in effect, is the development of a new type of ontology -- of an ontology whose first task is to clarify whatsoever exists as existing; and whose second task is to deal with the modes of Being of the existent and with their interrelations. We must keep in mind, however, that the categories pertain not to Dasein -- not to existence as such; but to the Sosein of what exists -- to the forms, structures, and contexts that are characteristic of what is real (Aufbau,)." (pp. 33-34)

From: William Henry Werkmeister, Nicolai Hartmann's New Ontology, Tallahassee: Florida State University Press 1990.

"A theory of categories that does justice to the phenomena must at least recognize the distinctions -- but must also recognize the interrelations of Being that transcend them.

For Hartmann there are only three 'cuts' (Einschnitte) in the real world. The most obvious one is that between nature and spirit. The great riddle here is how this 'cut' can go through the center of the human being without destroying it (Aufbau, 196).

A second 'cut' is that between lifeless matter and living organic nature.

The third 'cut' is that between spiritual Being and mental acts.

We thus find four main levels of what is real, and understanding the unity of the world can but mean to understand the world in its structure and stratification. What makes this possible is that, from structure to structure, we find the same relation of the higher stratum resting upon, and being conditioned by, the next lower. Despite this fact, however, the higher stratum has in each case its own mode of Being and its own type of laws. This relation of the strata characterizes the basic unity of the real world. In other words, the structure of the real world is a sequence of supportive strata -- each stratum having its own laws and its specific categorial structure.

There are, however, also categories of such generality that they are common to all strata. Their ontological significance lies in the fact that they are the unitary basis of the real world as a whole. They are the "fundamental categories" that are basic to both the real and the ideal worlds. And these categories are the special concern of a universal theory of categories.

The categorial manifoldness of the world is evident in two respects: in the distinctness of the various strata and in their rank. In this structure, cognition is ontologically secondary. It presupposes the Seiende that is its object; but it is itself also a Seiendes sui generis and can occur only in strata of a specific height -- i.e., only where there is a consciousness which transcends mere mental associations. After all, cognition is a specific function of spiritual Being, and must be understood as included in that specific stratum of the world." (pp. 38-39)

From: William Henry Werkmeister, Nicolai Hartmann's New Ontology, Tallahassee: Florida State University Press 1990.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The Ontology of Nicolai Hartmann: An Annotated Bibliography

Main publications in German

1. Hartmann, Frida, and Heimsoeth, Renate, eds. 1978. Nicolai Hartmann und Heinz Heimsoeth im Briefwechsel. Bonn: Herbert Grundmann.

2. Hartmann, Nicolai. 1908. Über das Seinsproblem in der griechischen Philosophie vor Plato. Marburg: Alfred Töpelmann.

Dissertationschrift.

Philosophische Arbeiten - Band III. Edited by Cohen Hermann and Natorp Paul. Giessen: 1908.

3. ———. 1909. Des Proklus Diadochus philosophische Anfangsgründe der Mathematik. Nach den ersten zwei Büchern des Euklidkommentars dargestellt. Giessen: Topelmann.

In Philosophische Arbeiten - Band IV. Edited by Cohen Hermann and Natorp Paul. Giessen: 1909.

Reprinted Berlin, De Gruyter, 1969.

4. ———. 1909. Platos Logik des Seins. Giessen: Töpelmann.

Reprinted Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1965.

5. ———. 1912. Philosophische Grundfragen der Biologie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

6. ———. 1921. Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis. Berlin - Leipzig: Walter De Gruyter.

7. ———. 1921. Die Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus. I: Fichte, Schelling und die Romantik. Berlin - Leipzig: Walter De Gruyter.

8. ———. 1924. Die seits von Idealismus und Realismus, ein beitrag zur Scheidung des geschichtlichen und übergeschtlichen in der Kantischen philosophie. Berlin: Heise.

9. ———. 1926. Ethik. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter.

10. ———. 1929. Die Philosophie der deutschen Idealismus. II: Hegel. Berlin - Leipzig: Walter De Gruyter.

11. ———. 1931. Zum Problem der Realitätsgegebenheit. Berlin: Pan-Verlagsgesellschaft.

Philosophische Vorträge der Kantgesellschaft, vol. 32.

12. ———. 1933. Das Problem des geistigen Seins. Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der Geschichtsphilosophie und der Geisteswissenschaften. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter.

13. ———. 1935. Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter.

14. ———. 1937. Der Megarische und der Aristotelische Möglichkeitsbegriff . Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des ontologischen Modalitätsproblems. Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften.

15. ———. 1938. Möglichkeit und Wircklichkeit. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter.

16. ———. 1940. Der Aufbau der realen Welt. Grundriss der allgemeinen Kategorienlehre. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter.

17. ———. 1942. Neue Wege der Ontologie. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.

Reprint from: Systematische Philosophie.

18. ———, ed. 1942. Systematische Philosophie. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.

Inhalt: Arnold Gehlen: Zur systematik der Anthropologie 1-53; Erich Rothacker: Probleme der Kulturanthropologie 61-198; Nicolai Hartmann: Neue wege der Ontologie 199-311; Otto Friedrich Bollnow: Existenzphilosophie 315-430; Hermann Wein: Das Problem des Relativismus 431-559; Heinz Heimsoeth: Geschichtsphilosophie 560-646.

19. ———. 1946. Leibniz als Metaphysiker. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

20. ———. 1949. Einführung in die Philosophie. Osnabrück.

21. ———. 1950. Philosophie der Natur. Abriss der speziellen Kategorienlehre. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter.

22. ———. 1951. Teleologisches Denken. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter.

23. ———. 1953. Ästhetik. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter.

24. ———. 1954. Philosophische Gespräche. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

25. ———. 1955. Kleinere Schriften I. Abhandlungen zur Systematischen Philosophie. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter.

1. Systematische Selbstdarstellung (1933) 1; 2. Neue Ontologie in Deutschland (1940) 51; 3. Ziele und Wege der Kategorialanalyse (1948) 89; 4. Die Erkenntnis im Lichte der Ontologie (1949) 122; 5. Zeitlichkeit und Substantialität (1938) 180; 6. Naturphilosophie und Anthropologie (1944) 214; 7. Sinngebung und Sinnerfüllung (1934) 245; 8. Vom Wesen sittlicher Forderungen (1949) 279; 9. Das Ethos del Persönlichkeit (1949) 311.

26. ———. 1957. Kleinere Schriften II. Abhandlungen zur Philosophie-Geschicht. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter.

1. Der philosophische Gedanke und seine Geschichte (1936) 1; 2. Das Problem des Apriorismus in der Platonischen Philosophie (1935) 48; 3. Das Megarische und der Aristotelische Möglichkeitsbegriff (1937) 85; 4. Aristoteles und das Problem des Begriffs (1939) 100; 5. Zur Lehre vom Eidos bei Platon und Aristoteles (1941) 129; 6. Die Anfänge des Schichtungsgedankens in der alten Philosophie (1943) 164; 7. Die Wertdimension der Nikomachischen Ethik (1944) 191; 8. Aristoteles und Hegel (1923) 214; 9. Leibniz als Metaphysiker (1946) 252; 10. Die seits von Idealismus und Realismus (1924) 278; 11. Hegel und das Problem der Realdialektik (1935) 323; 12. Heinrich Maiers Beitrag zum Problem der Kategorien (1938) 346.

27. ———. 1958. Kleinere Schriften III. Vom Neukantismus zur Ontologie. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter.

Abhandlungen und Schriften aus den Jahren 1910-1923.

1. Zur Method der Philosophiegeschichte (1910) 1; 2. Systematische Methode (1912) 22; 3. Systembildung und Idealismus (1912) 60; 4. Philosophische Grundfragen der Biologie (1912) 78

5. Über die Erkennbarkeit des Apriorischen (1914) 186; 6. Logische und ontologische Wirklichkeit (1914) 220; 7. Die Frage der Beweisbarkeit des Kausalgesetzes (1919) 243; 8. Wie ist kritische Ontologie überhaupt möglich? (1923) 268; Beiträge zu Kongress-Vorträgen 1926-1949; 9. Über die Stellung der ästhetischen Werte im reich der Werte überhaupt (1926) 314; 10. Kategorien der Geschichte (1931) 321; 11. Das Wertproblem in der Philosophie der Gegenwart (1936) 327; 12. Alte und neue Ontologie (1949) 333; 13. Thesen zur Logik (aus dem Philosophenlexikon) (1949) 337;

Aufsätze zu Gedanktagen 1924-1931

14. Kant und die Philosophie unserer Tage (1924) 339; 15. Kants Metaphysik der Sitten und die Ethik unserer Tage (1924) 345; 16. Max Scheler (1928) 350; 17. Hegel (1931) 357;

Anhang - Buchbesprechungen

18. Selbstanzeige in den Kantstudien zu: Platos Logik des Seins (1909) 363; 19. Zum Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung (1913-1914) 365; 20. Zu Wilhelm Sesemann (1933) 368; 21. Zu Balduin Schwarz (1936) 374; 22. Zu Arnold Gehlen (1941) 378; 23. Zu Robert Heiss (1950) 393.

28. ———. 1977. Der philosophische Gedanke und seine Geschichte. Zeitlichkeit und Substantialität. Sinngebung und Sinnerfullung. Stuttgart: Reclam.

Selections from the "Kleinere Schriften" published by Walter de Gruyter (1955-1958)

29. ———. 1937. "Der Megarische und der Aristotelische Möglichkeitsbegriff. Ein Beiträg zur Geschichte des ontologischen Modalitätsproblems." Abhandlungen der Preussichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse no. 10:1-17.

30. ———. 1939. "Aristoteles und das Problem des Begriffs." Abhandlungen der Preussichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse no. 13:1-32.

31. ———. 1941. "Zur Lehre vom Eidos bei Platon und Aristoteles." Abhandlungen der Preussichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse no. 8:1-38.

32. ———. 1943. "Die Anfänge des Schichtungsgedankens in der alten Philosophie." Abhandlungen der Preussichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse no. 3:1-31.

33. ———. 1944. "Die Wertdimensionen der Nikomachischen Ethik." Abhandlungen der Preussichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse no. 5:1-27.

34. ———. 1923. "Aristoteles und Hegel." Beiträge zur Philosophie des Deuteschen Idealismus no. 3:1-36.

35. ———. 1934. "Sinngebung und Sinnerfüllung." Blätter für Deutsche Philosophie no. 8:1-38.

36. ———. 1935. "Hegel und das Problem der Realdialektik." Blätter für Deutsche Philosophie no. 9:1-27.

37. ———. 1939. "Zeitlichkeit und Wirklichkeit." Blätter für Deutsche Philosophie no. 12:1-38.

38. ———. 1933. "Systematische Selbstdarstellung." In Deutsche systematische Philosophie nach ihren Gestaltern, edited by Schwarz, Hermann, 284-340. Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt.

39. ———. 1931. "Systematische Philosophie in eigener Darstellung." In Deutsche systematische Philosophie nach ihren Gestaltern - Band I, edited by Schwarz, Hermann. Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt.

40. ———. 1946. "Neue Ontologie in Deutschland." Felsefe Arkivi.

First published in Italian as: Nuova ontologia in Germania - translation by Remo Cantoni - Studi Filosofici - 1943.

The Italian translation has been reprinted in: Nicolai Hartmann, - Introduzione all'ontologia critica - Napoli, Guida 1972

41. ———. 1924. "Wie ist kritische Ontologie überhaupt möglich?" In Festschrift für Paul Natorp. Zum Siebzigsten Geburtstage von Schülern und Freunden Gewidmet, 124-177. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

42. ———. 1910. "Zur Methode der Philosophiegeschichte." Kant-Studien no. 15:459-485.

43. ———. 1915. "Logische und ontologische Wirklichkeit." Kant-Studien no. 20:1-28.

44. ———. 1920. "Die Frage der Beweisbarkeit der Kausalgesetze." Kant-Studien no. 24:261-290.

45. ———. 1924. "Diesseits von Idealismus und Realismus. Ein Beitrag zur Scheidung des Geschichtlichen und Übergeschichtlichen in der Kantischen Philosophie." Kant-Studien no. 29:160-206.

46. ———. 1912. "Systematische methode." Logos no. 3:121-163.

47. ———. 1915. "Über die Erkennbarkeit des Apriorischen." Logos no. 5:290-329.

48. ———. 1949. "Selbstdarstellung." In Philosophen-Lexicon. Handwörterbuch der Philosophie nach Personen, edited by Ziegenfuss, Werner. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter.

49. ———. 1912. "Systembildung und Idealismus." Philosophische Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften:1-23.

50. ———. 1926. "Kategoriale Gestze." Philosophischer Anzeiger no. 1:201-266.

51. ———. 1935. "Das Problem des Apriorismus in der Platonischen Philosophie." Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.Philosophisch-Historische Klasse no. 15:223-260.

52. ———. 1938. "Heinrich Maiers Beitrag zum Problem der Kategorien." Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.Philosophisch-Historische Klasse:38-54.

53. ———. 1948. "Ziele und Wege der Kategorialanalyse." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 2:499-536.

Translations

English

1. Hartmann, Nicolai. 1932. Ethics. London: George Allen & Unwin.

Translated by Stanton Coit with an introduction by John Henry Muirhead.

Reprinted with a new introduction by Andreas A.M. Kinneging, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2002-2004 in three volumes: I. Moral Phenomena (2002); II. Moral Values (2004); III. Moral Freedom (2004).

2. ———. 1949. "German Philosophy in the Last Ten Years." Mind no. 58:413-433.

Translate by John Ladd.

This article is a survey of the philosophical work done in Germany between 1938 and 1948. The survey includes anthropology, epistemology, metaphysics, existentialist ethics, and the history of philosophy.

3. ———. 1952. New Ways of Ontology. Westport: Greenwood Press.

Reprinted with a new introduction by Predrag Cicovacki, Piscataway (NJ): Transaction Publishers, 2012.

Translated by Reinhard C. Kuhn.

Table of Contents: I. The end of old ontology 3; II. The categories of Being 11; III. A new concept of reality 23; IV. The new ontology and the new anthropology 32; V. The stratified structures of the world 43; VI. Old mistakes and new critique 54; VII. Modification of the fundamentals categories 63; VIII. The strata laws of the real world 73; IX. Dependence and autonomy in the hierarchy of strata 84; X. Objections and prospects 99; XI. The stratification of the human being 114; XII. Determination and freedom 123; XIII. A new approach to the problem of knowledge 134-145.

4. ———. 2012. "How Is Critical Ontology Possible? Toward the Foundation of the General Theory of the Categories, Part One (1923)." Axiomathes no. 22:315-354.

Translation by Keith R. Peterson.

Abstract: "Abstract This is a translation of an early essay by the German philosopher Nicolai Hartmann (1882–1950). In this 1923 essay Hartmann presents many of the fundamental ideas of his new critical ontology. He summarizes some of the main points of his critique of neo-Kantian epistemology, and provides the point of departure for his new approach in an extensive criticism of the errors of the classical ontological tradition. Some of these errors concern the definition of an ontological category or principle, and others concern the relations among categories themselves. The outline for the new ontology is sketched through the correctives Hartmann appends to the treatment of each error, prefiguring his mature ontological system."

5. ———. 2013. Possibility and Actuality. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter.

Translation of Möglichkeit und Wircklichkeit (1938) by Stephanie Adair and Alex Scott, with an Introduction by Roberto Poli.

6. ———. 2017. "The Megarian and the Aristotelian Concept of Possibility: A Contribution to the History of the Ontological Problem of Modality." Axiomathes.

Translated by Frédéric Tremblay and Keith Peterson.

Abstract: "This is a translation of Nicolai Hartmann’s article “Der Megarische und der Aristotelische Möglichkeitsbegriff: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des ontologischen Modalitätsproblems,” first published in 1937. In this article, Hartmann defends an interpretation of the Megarian conception of possibility, which found its clearest form in Diodorus Cronus’ expression of it and according to which "only what is actual is possible" or "something is possible only if it is actual." Hartmann defends this interpretation against the then dominant Aristotelian conception of possibility, based on the opposition between dynamis and energeia, and according to which there is always an open multiplicity of simultaneous “possibilities,” the outcome of which remains undetermined. Since, according to Hartmann, reality suffers no indetermination, the Megarian conception of possibility is an account of real possibility, whereas the Aristotelian one is merely an account of epistemic possibility (Frédéric Tremblay)."

French

1. Hatmann, Nicolai. 1969. "Proclus, Principes philosophiques des mathématiques (D'aprés les deux premiers livres du Commentaire d'Euclide)." In Philosophie et mathématique chez Proclus, par Stanislas Breton, 173-243. Paris: Beauchesne.

Traduction de Geneviève de Pesloüan.

2. ———. 1946. Les principes d'une métaphysique de la connaissance. Paris: Aubier.

Traduit et avec une préface de Raymond Vancourt (deux volumes).

3. ———. 1993. "Le concept mégarique et aristotélicien de possibilité. Contribution à l'histoire du problème ontologique de la modalité." Laval Théologique et Philosophique no. 49:131-146.

Traduit par Jean-Pierre Narbonne.

Italian

1. Hartmann, Nicolai. 1943. Filosofia sistematica. Milano: Bompiani.

Traduzione di due saggi: Il pensiero filosofico e la sua storia (1936) e Filosofia sistematica (1933) di. A. Denti e R. Cantoni; Introduzione di Remo Cantoni (nuova edizione riveduta in: Introduzione all'ontologia critica (1972).

2. ———. 1963. La fondazione dell'ontologia. Milano: Fratelli Fabbri.

Traduzione a cura di Francesco Barone.

3. ———. 1969. L'estetica. Padova: Liviana.

Con uno studio di Dino Formaggio su "Arte e possibilità in N. Hartmann".

4. ———. 1969. Etica. Napoli: Guida.

Traduzione di Voncezo Filippone Thaulero.

Vol. 1: Fenomenologia dei costumi (1969) Vol. 2: Assiologia dei costumi (1970):Vol. 3: Metafisica dei costumi (1973).

5. ———. 1971. Il problema dell'essere spirituale. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

Traduzione di Alfredo Marini.

6. ———. 1972. La filosofia dell'Idealismo tedesco. Milano: Mursia.

Traduzione di Valerio Verra.

7. ———. 1972. Introduzione all'ontologia critica. Napoli: Guida.

Traduzione e introduzione di Remo Cantoni.

Indice: Introduzione di Remo Cantoni 5; Parte prima: Il pensiero filosofico e la sua storia 31; Parte seconda: Filosofia sistematica 97; Parte terza: Ontologia nuova in Germania 171; Indice dei nomi 223-226.

8. ———. 1975. Nuove vie dell'ontologia. Brescia: La Scuola.

Traduzione di Giancarlo Penati.

9. ———. 2003. "Ontologia vecchia e nuova." Rivista di Estetica no. 43:160-163.

Traduzione di Tonino Griffero.

10. ———. 2009. Ontologia e realtà. Brescia: Morcelliana.

Traduzione e introduzione di Giuseppe D'Anna.

Spanish

1. Hartmann, Nicolai. 1957. Rasgos fundamentales de una metafísica del conocimiento. Buenos Aires: Losada.

Traducción de J. Rovira Armengol.

2. ———. 1961. Introducción a la filosofía. México: Centro de Estudios Filosóficos, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Traducción de José Gaos.

3. ———. 1960. La filosofía del idealismo alemán. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana.

Translated by Hernán Zucchi.

Translation of: Die Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus

4. ———. 2007. El problema del ser espiritual. Investigaciones para la fundamentación de la filosofía de la historia y de las ciencias del espíritu. Buenos Aires: Leviatán.

Prólog de Ricardo Maliandi. Traducción de Mateo Damasso y Miguel Angel Mailluquet.

5. ———. 1954. La nueva ontologia. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana.

Traducción e introducción de Emilio Estiú.

6. ———. 1954. Ontología I. Fundamentos. México: Fundo de Cultura Econômica.

Traducción de José Gaos. Reeditado en 1965 y 1986.

7. ———. 1956. Ontología II. Posibilidad y efectividad. México: Fundo de Cultura Econômica.

Traducción de José Gaos. Reeditado en 1986.

8. ———. 1959. Ontología III. La fábrica do mundo real. México: Fundo de Cultura Econômica.

Traducción de José Gaos. Reeditado en 1986.

9. ———. 1960. Ontología IV. Filosofía de la naturaleza. Teoría especial de las categorías. Categorías dimensionales. Categorías cosmológicas. México: Fundo de Cultura Econômica.

Traducción de José Gaos. Reeditado en 1986.

10. ———. 1964. Ontología V. Filosofía de la naturaleza. Teoría especial de las categorías. Categorías organológicas. El pensar teleológico. México: Fundo de Cultura Econômica.

Traducción de José Gaos. Reeditado en 1986.

"Nota del Traductor.

La cuarta parte de la Ontología de Hartmann abarca en la edición original toda la "Filosofía de la Naturaleza" o "Teoría Especial de las Categorías" en un solo volumen de 700 páginas; y en uno solo de 136 se publicó en alemán "El Pensar Teleológico", que es en realidad una quinta y última parte de la Ontología, por la razón que se encontrará en el prólogo de ella, a pesar de la dada allí mismo para publicarla aparte. Para esta traducción española de la Ontología pareció mejor equilibrar los volúmenes, publicando como cuarto la primera mitad de la "Filosofía de la Naturaleza", a saber, "Las categorías dimensionales" y "Las categorías cosmológicas", y como quinto la segunda mitad, o sea, "Las categorías organológicas", y "El pensar teleológico", que es un desarrollo del estudio de estas últimas categorías. (...)"

11. ———. 1964. Autoexposición sistemática. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma. Centro de Estudios Filosóficos,.

Translación de Bernabé Navarro

Studies about his work

The best introduction in English to Hartmann's thought are: W. H. Werkmeister, Nicolai Hartmann's New Ontology (1990) and R. Poli, C. Scognamiglio, F. Tremblay (eds.), The Philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann (2011).

1. "The Legacy of Nicolai Hartmann (1882-1950)." 2001. Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems no. 12.

Contents: Roberto Poli: Foreword 157; Predrag Cicovacki: New Ways of Ontology - The Ways of Interaction 159; Wolfgang Wildgen: Natural Ontologies and Semantic Roles in Sentences 171; Ingvar Johansson: Hartmann’s Nonreductive Materialism, Superimposition, and Supervenience 195; Erwin Tegtmeier: Hartmann’s General Ontology 217; Alberto Peruzzi: Hartmann’s Stratified Reality 227; Roberto Poli: The Basic Problem of the Theory of Levels of Reality 261; Maria van der Schaar: Hartmann’s Rejection of the Notion of Evidence 285; Liliana Albertazzi: The Roots of Ontics 299; Antonio Da Re: Objective Spirit and Personal Spirit in Hartmann’s Philosophy 317; Robert Welsh Jordan: Hartmann, Schütz, and the Hermeneutics of Action 327; Gabor Csepregi: The Relevance of Nicolai Hartmann’s Musical Aesthetics 339; Mark Van Atten: Gödel, Mathematics, and Possible Worlds 355; Some Bio-Bibliographical Information on Nicolai Hartmann 365.

2. Albertazzi, Liliana. 2001. "The Roots of Ontics." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems no. 12:299-315.

"According to Hartmann's analysis, the psychological level concerns the following aspects of psychic acts:

(i) The mode of being of psychic acts.

(ii) The nature of the correlates of these acts.

(iii) The relationship of psychic acts with the structures of the physical and/or biological world that underlie them.

(iv) The non-rationalizable residue which makes it a paradigm example of fundamental ontic connection.

Some of these aspects are highly problematic. As Hartmann points out, the difficulty of understanding what types of entities psychic acts are is twofold, because:

(i) They do not appear to us objectively and they are not given to us as objects unless modified in reflection and memory once their presence is no longer actual, with all the `objectual' modifications that the situation brings about.

(ii) Sometimes they are states that are not experienced immediately and are unconscious.

Because of the framework in which it is inserted, Hartmann's ontology of psychic acts can be considered a further development of Brentanian descriptive psychology." p. 300-301.

3. Allen, Michael. 1981. "Nicolai Hartmann's anthropology of knowledge." Journal of the British Society for Phenemenology no. 12:41-54.

"The article is an analysis of Hartmann's efforts to argue for the relevance of anthropological considerations in the context of epistemological realism. It concludes that Hartmann's arguments against Husserl's refusal to admit anthropological considerations into phenomenology are successful; but that realism must be redefined differently than Hartmann would define it. The article also concludes that the factor of "human interest" (Habermas) does not undermine the realist position."

4. Atten, Mark van. 2001. "Gödel, mathematics, and possible worlds." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems no. 12:355-363.

5. Bar-On, Abraham Zvie. 1987. The categories and the Principle of Coherence. Whitehead's Theory of Categories in historical perspective. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.

Chapter IV: The non-speculative way: Nicolai Hartmann - pp. 121-150.

6. Barone, Francesco. 1948. L'ontologia di N. Hartmann. Torino: Edizioni di Filosofia.

7. ———. 1957. Nicolai Hartmann nella filosofia del Novecento. Torino: Edizioni di Filosofia.

8. Baumanns, Peter. 1966. "Der kritische Weg in der Philosophie Nicolai Hartmann." Kant Studien no. 57:296-308.

9. ———. 1968. "La méthode des apories dans la philosophie dans Nicolai Hartmann." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 73:199-204.

10. Beck, Heinrich. 1961. Möglichkeit und Notwendigkeit. Eine Entfaltung der ontologischen Modalitätenlehre im Ausgang von Nicolai Hartmann. Pullach bei München: Verlag Berchmanskolleg.

11. Beck, Lewis White. 1942. "Nicolai Hartmann's criticism of Kant's theory of knowledge." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 2:472-500.

"This article is a historical narrative and philosophical evaluation of Nicolai Hartmann's articles and book Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis (1925) in which he gradually distanced himself from Kant and from Marburg neo-Kantianism."

Revised and shortened version in: Alois Joh. Buch (ed.) - Nicolai Hartmann 1882-1982, pp. 46-58.

12. ———. 1944. "Concerning Landmann's 'Nicolai Hartmann and phenomenology'." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 4:592-594.

13. Becker, Oskar. 1934. "Das formale System der ontologischen Modalitäten (Betrachtungen zu Hartmanns Werk Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit)." Blätter für Deutsche Philosophie no. 16:387-422.

14. Blystone, Jasper. 1982. "Nicolai Hartmann's Homo Ontologicus." In Nicolai Hartmann 1882-1982, 59-69. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann.

15. Bodeus, Richard. 1984. "The problem of freedom according to Nicolai Hartmann." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 24:55-60.

16. Breil, Reinhold. 1996. Kritik und System. Die Grundproblematik der Ontologie Nicolai Hartmanns in transzendentalphilosophischer Sicht. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

17. Breton, Stanislas. 1948. "La théorie de la modalité dans l'ontologie de Nicolai Hartmann (première partie)." Rassegna di Scienze Filosofiche no. 2/3:20-49.

18. ———. 1948. "La théorie de la modalité dans l'ontologie de Nicolai Hartmann (deuxième partie)." Rassegna di Scienze Filosofiche no. 4:30-60.

19. ———. 1954. "Le Problème de l'être spirìtuel." Giornale di Metafisica:397-438.

20. ———. 1962. L'être spirituel. Recherches sur la philosophie de Nicolai Hartmann. Lyon: Vitte.

21. ———. 1963. "Ontology and ontologies: the contemporary situation." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 3:339-369.

22. ———. 1969. Philosophie et mathématique chez Proclus. Paris: Beauchesne.

Translated from German by Geneviève de Pesloüan.

Suivi de 'Principes philosophiques des mathématiques' d'apres le Commentaire de Proclus aux deux premiers livres des Eléments d'Euclide par Nicolai Hartmann.

23. Buch, Alois, ed. 1982. Nicolai Hartmann 1882-1982. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann.

Mit einer Einleitung von Josef Stallmach und einer Bibliographie der seit 1964 uber Hartmann erschienenen Arbeiten.

24. Cadwallader, Eva Hauel. 1984. Searchlight on values: Nicolai Hartmann's twentieth-century value Platonism. Washington: University press of America.

"This critique and defense of an updated value Platonism argues that Hartmann's ethics has been undeservedly neglected because of "guilt by association" with discredited positions it only superficially resembles. After examining Plato's motives for his value Platonism, and discussing G. E. Moore, the author argues that Hartmann's theory rejects both naive value Platonism and dogmatic absolutism while also avoiding vicious Skepticism. Pluralism, fallibilism, and pragmatism are invoked in defending an updated version of "revised value Platonism"."

25. ———. 1984. "The continuing relevance of Nicolai Hartmann's theory of value." Journal of Value Inquiry no. 18:113-121.

"This paper argues that Hartmann's much-neglected value theory has practical relevance for understanding the current American value polarization. First, ten of Hartmann's most permanent

contributions to axiology are outlined. next, these are related to work by psychologists and others (Horney, Maslow, Kohlberg, Benedict, Fromm, Jung, Yankelovich). Third, the heuristic value of

Hartmann's key notion of "the bi-polarity of ethics" is proposed as useful for understanding today's clash between "the moral majority" and "the new morality"."

26. Cantoni, Remo. 1972. Che cosa ha veramente detto Hartmann. Roma: Ubaldini.

27. Cicovacki, Predrag. 2001. "New Ways of Ontology - The Ways of Interaction." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems no. 12:159-170.

"Although Nicolai Hartmann made significant contributions to virtually all areas and disciplines of philosophy, his first and deepest love was ontology. Part of Hartmann's fascination with ontology was due to the fact that at his time the previously considered philosophia prima was practically non-existent. As he remarked, ontology fell in a deep sleep after Christian Wolff. (*) Hartmann certainly tried to awake the sleeping giant and restore its faded glory. Despite his ingenious efforts, ontology is still mostly absent from the philosophical scene. My paper will address some of the questions that this state of affairs gives rise to: Why did Hartmann's prodigious efforts to rebuild ontology not have lasting effects? Why was it that his "new ways of ontology" did not revitalize the old discipline? Could it be that Hartmann's own way of presenting what is new about his ontology made a confusing impression about the real relationship of the old and the new?

Since I have the highest regard for Hartmann's work and nevertheless believe that his own presentation is - at least partially - responsible for possible misunderstandings, I will here attempt to explain his novel contribution in a way different from that employed by him. My strategy will be as follows. In section I, I will present Hartmann's criticism of the old ontology. Section II will bring a brief sketch of his main contributions to ontology. Finally, in section III, I will attempt to clarify Hartmann's "new ways of ontology" by using the model of interaction. If this conception of reality as

an interactive process is indeed useful and illuminating, it will both highlight the novelty of his approach and indicate the direction in which this new ontology should be further developed."

(*) Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1948, 4th ed.), p. XI.

28. ———. 2014. The Analysis of Wonder. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Contents: Chronological Table IX; Introduction: Does Hartmann Matter? 1; Part I: Being. I.1 Philosophical Method 9; I.2 Being as Being 17; I.3 Modifications of Being 23; I.4 Strata of Real Being 29; I.5 Categories of Real Being 35; I.6 Categories of Being and Categories of Cognition 41; I.7. Ontology of Cognition 47; I.8 Critique of Intellectualism 53; Part II: Values. II.1 Nature of Values 65; II.2 Moral Values in General 75; II.3 Four Fundamental Moral Values 83; II.4 Four Forms of Love 89; II.5 Aesthetic Object and Aesthetic Act 95; II.6 Aesthetic Values 101; II.7 Truth in Art 105; II.8 Sublime 111; II.9 Critique of Moralism 117; Part III: Personality. III.1 The Realm of Real Being and the Realm of Values 125; III.2 Personality as a Value 131; III.3 Pseudo, Spurious and Genuine Personality 137; III.4 Fulfillment of Personality 145; Conclusion: Hartmann’s New Ways of Philosophy 153; Bibliography of Hartmann’s Works 163; Index 165.

29. Collins, James. 1945. "The Neo-Scholastic critique of Nicolai Hartmann." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 6:109-132.

"This is a report on the reception of Hartmann's epistemology and ontology by German and Italian Scholastics (1920-40). They appreciated his central attraction to the problem of being, his opening of human cognition to being, and his effort to transcend both idealism and naive realism. But realism can include a critical recognition of the transcendence factor in knowing and valuing, as well as a constant striving with the limits and perspectives of man's study of being. These are marks of human finitude rather than of irrationality in being."

30. Corradini, Antonella. 1985. "La struttura logica delle modalità nel pensiero di N. Hartmann." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 77:118-144.

31. Csepregi, Gabor. 2001. "The relevance of Nicolai Hartmann's musical aesthetics." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems no. 12:339-354.

32. D'Anna, Giuseppe. 2009. Nicolai Hartmann. Dal conoscere all'essere. Brescia: Morcelliana.

33. ———. 2013. Realismi. Nicolai Hartmann «al di là» di realismo e idealismo. Brescia: Morcelliana.

34. Da Re, Antonio. 2001. "Objective Spirit and Personal Spirit in Hartmann's philosophy." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems no. 12:317-326.

"In order to discuss the theme of the relation between the personal and objective spirit in Hartmann's work appropriately, it is necessary at the outset to place his reflections within the context of the wide debate which developed within German philosophy at the beginning of the twentieth century. As is well known, the Hegelian concept of the objective spirit was taken up and reformulated by historicism, in particular by Wilhelm Dilthey, apart from other writers who in various forms had drawn it towards neo-Kantianism (Georg Simmel, Ernst Cassirer). In this paper I hope to be able to highlight the characteristic traits of Hartmann's philosophy of the spirit through a critical comparison with the thoughts of Hegel and those of Dilthey. For this reason, the first part of this paper will be in the form of a brief presentation of the theory of the objective spirit, as is found in the writings of Hegel and Dilthey. In the second part I will summarise the main traits of Hartmann's theory. In the third and last part, I will highlight the critical elements proposed by Hartmann in comparison to Dilthey and above all to Hegel; in so doing Hartmann's innovative contribution to humanist and personalistic thought and philosophy will emerge. This can be summarised thus: (1) the refusal of individualism and the recognition of the existence of super-personal relations of the objective spirit and of the objectivated spirit, (2) the vindication of the autonomy and freedom of the human person."

35. Dahlberg, Wolfgang. 1983. Sein und Zeit bei Nicolai Hartmann. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag A.V.I.V.A.

36. Djeong-Uk, Seo. 1993. Logik und Metaphysik der Erkenntnis: kritischer Vergleich von Hermann Cohens und Nicolai Hartmanns philosophischen Grundpositionen. Frankfurt am Main: Haag & Herchen.

37. Dong-Huyn, Son. 1986. Die Seinsweise des objektivierten Geistes. Eine Untersuchung im Anschluss an Nicolai Hartmanns Problematik des "geistigen Seins". Bern: Peter Lang.

Inhalt: U.a. Ontologische Bestimmung des Geistes in Schichten- und Sphärenlehre N. Hartmanns; Grundformen des geistigen Seins; Ontische Struktur der Objektivation; Seinsweise des objektivierten Geistes.

38. Feucht, Roland. 1992. Die Neoontologie Nicolai Hartmanns im Licht der evolutuonären Erkenntnistheorie. Regensburg: S. Roderer Verlag.

39. Feyerabend, Paul K. 1963. "Professor Hartmann's philosophy of nature." Ratio no. 5:91-106.

40. Forsche, Joachim Bernhard. 1965. Zur Philosophie Nicolai Hartmanns. Die Problematik von kategorialer Schichtung und Realdetermination. Meisenheim am Glan: Hain.

41. Gamba, Alessandro. 2001. "A cinquant'anni dalla 'Nuova ontologia' di Nicolai Hartman." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 93:74-94.

42. ———. 2004. In principio era il fine. Ontologia e teleologia in Nicolai Hartmann. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

43. Gamp, Rainer. 1973. Die interkategoriale Relation und die dialektische Methode in der Philosophie Nicolai Hartmanns. Bonn: Bouvier.

44. Guidetti, Luca. 1999. La realtà e la coscienza. Studio sulla metafisica della conoscenza di Nicolai Hartmann. Macerata: Quodlibet.

45. Harich, Wolfgang. 2000. Nicolai Hartmann. Leben, Werk, Wirkung. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

46. ———. 2004. Nicolai Hartmann - Grösse und Grenzen: Versuch einer marxistischen Selbstverständigung. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

47. Heimsoeth, Heinz. 1952. "Zur Geschichte der Kategorienlehre." In Nicolai Hartmann. Der Denker und sein Weik, edited by Heimsoeth, Heinz and Hein, Robert, 144-172. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

48. Heimsoeth, Heinz, and Hein, Robert, eds. 1952. Nicolai Hartmann. Der Denker und sein Werk. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Funfzehn Abhandlungen mit einer Bibliographie (Fifteenth essys with a Bibliography).

49. Hein, Robert. 1961. "Nicolai Hartmann: a personal sketch." Personalist no. 42:469-486.

50. Hülsmann, Heinz. 1959. Die Methode in der Philosophie Nicolai Hartmanns. Düsseldorf: L. Schwann.

51. Hüntelmann, Rafael. 2000. Möglich ist nur das Wirkliche: Nicolai Hartmanns Modalontologie des realen Seins. Dettelbach: J.H. Röll.

52. James, Helen. 1960. "Nicolai Hartmann's study of human personality." THe New Scholasticism no. 34:204-233.

53. Johansson, Ingvar. 2001. "Hartmann's nondeductive materalism, superimposition, and supervenience." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems no. 12:195-215.

"Nicolai Hartmann's approach to philosophy was both aporetic and systematic. He stressed that philosophy contains genuine but probably insoluble problems at the same time as he was working on an ontological system. Also, he meant that philosophical-ontological systems always have to take the knowledge progress of science into account. In philosophy, this has been, and still is, an unusual combination of views. Hartmann might seem to be completely at odds with a lot of different philosophical traditions; analytic philosophy being one of them. However, today, that is not really the case. In relation to analytic metaphysics there are several overlapping problem areas. This paper is concerned with one such area, the mind- body problem. Iii particular, I will relate Hartmann's view that mind is superimposed on matter to the view of some analytic philosophers that mind is supervenient on matter. Both sides, and many other philosophers interested in the mind-body problem, have something to learn from such a confrontation." (p. 195)

54. Jordan, Robert Welsh. 2001. "Hartmann, Schutz, and the hermeneutics of action." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems no. 12:327-338.

55. Kanthack, Katharina. 1962. Nicolai Hartmann und das Ende der Ontologie. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

56. Kraenzel, Frederick. 1984. "Nicolai Hartmann's doctrine of ideal values: an examination." Journal of Value Inquiry no. 18:299-306.

"This article evaluates Hartmann's claims that values are independent of our judgment of value, that they are independent of the real world, and that they are a multiplicity of ideal forms. By examining our moral consciousness, the article concludes that some values have ideal necessity. However, it is only a conditioned, hypothetical necessity, and the number of different ideal values is very limited."

57. Kuhn, Helmut. 1951. "Nicolai Hartmann's ontology." Philosophical Quarterly no. 1:289-318.

58. Landmann, Michael. 1943. "Nicolai Hartmann and phenomenology." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 3:393-423.

59. Larsen, Allan W. 1982. "The problem of freedom in the philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann." In Nicolai Hartmann 1882-1982, 184-195. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann.

60. Lörcher, Wolfgang. 1972. Ästhetik als Ausfaltung der Ontologie. Meisenheim am Glan: A. Hain.

61. Lotz, Johannes B. 1982. "Zwei Wege der Ontologie. Nicolai Hartmann und Martin Heidegger." In Nicolai Hartmann 1882-1982, 208-222. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann.

62. Lukács, Gyorgy. 1984. Zur Ontologie des gesellchaftlichen Seins. Darmstadt: Luchterhand.

Vol. I, Chapter II. Nicolai Hartmanns Vorstoss zu einer echten Ontologie - pp. 421-467, in: Werke - Vol. 13, edited by Frank Benseler.

The first edition of this volume was the Italian translation: G. Lukács - Per l'ontologia dell'essere sociale - Vol. I - a cura di Alberto Scarponi. Milano, Editori Riuniti, 1976 (Capitolo II. L'impulso di N. Hartmann i direzione di una vera ontologia - pp. 111-162).

63. Makota, Janina. 1986. "Nicolai Hartmann's and Roman Ingarden's Philosophy of Man." Reports on Philosohy no. 10:69-79.

64. Maliandi, Ricardo-Gulielmo. 1966. Wertobjektivität und Realitatserfahrung mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Philosophie Nicolai Hartmanns. Bonn: H. Bouvier u. Co. Verlag.

65. Matteo, Armando. 2000. "Il cammino speculativo del giovane Hartmann: dalla logica dell'essere all'ontologia della logica." Sapienza no. 53:161-184.

66. Mayer, Emmanuel. 1952. Die Objektivität der Werterkenntis bei Nicolai Hartmann. Meisenheim/Glan: Westkulturverlag A. Hain.

67. Meyer, Gerbert. 1962. Modalanalyse und Determinationsproblem. Zur Kritik Nicolai Hartmanns an der aristotelischen Physis. Meisenheim am Glan: A. Hain.

68. Millán Puelles, Antonio. 1947. El problema del ente ideal. Un examen a través de Husserl y Hartmann. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.

Segunda Parte Ontología de la idealidad: Sección segunda. La teoría de la idealidad en Hartmann. Capítulo 7 La idealidad en el ámbito matemático; Capítulo 8 El ser en sí de los objetos ideales.

69. Mohanty, Jitendra Nath. 1957. Nicolai Hartmann and Alfred North Whitehead. A Study in Recent Platonism. Calcutta: Progressive Publishers.

Contents: Preface V; Hermann Wein: Foreword IX; Introduction XV-XL; Chapter I: Nicolai Hartmann's Philosophy of Ideal Being 1; Appendix: Nicolai Hartmann on the Ontological Status of Logic 41; Chapter II: A. N. Whitehead's Doctrine of Eternal Objects 45; Appendix I: Whitehead's Theory of Propositions 102; Appendix II: George Santayana on the Nature of 'Essences' 108; Chapter III: Nicolai Hartmann and Alfred North Whitehead: a Critical and Comparative study 112; Appendix: On the Ontological Status of Logic: The Problem 190; Chapter IV: Conclusions 194; Bibliography 211-214.

"The present work proposes to institute a critical comparison between the philosophies of `ideal being' of two distinguished contemporary philosophers who come from very different philosophical traditions and had, in their lifetime, little to do with each other. Owing to the fact that the philosophers are eminently interested in the nature of the real actual world, we hope that the proposed study may make a contribution towards an evaluation of the meaning, nature, and role of the so-called 'ideal being'. We may even say that it may contribute towards an understanding of the surviving function of the so-called Platonic Ideas today. `Platonism' is an expression that is often used to name the most diverse currents of thought and which, therefore, has contributed towards much confusion. But, if it is not the name but the content of a philosophy that matters, we may as well name the aspect of philosophy which comes up for consideration in this work as 'Platonic'. The name need not lead to any prejudgment; but sometimes by its historical associations, it helps us to isolate an area of problem. We do not intend to insist on this name except for the sake of such convenience.

The very fact that today such a problem is considered as living requires justification. Positivism and pragmatism, analysis and logical empiricism, philosophies of `change' and existentialism, all these diverse currents of thought agree in having declared all sorts of Platonism dead for ever. But, is it really so? Are the problems which Plato tried to tackle solved once for ever? Or, have they been declared, once for ever, as pseudo-problems? We grant that much illusion has been removed, that quite a lot of problems might have been shown to be only pseudo-problems. But making allowance for such modern developments in philosophy, is it not still possible to ask: how best can we understand Plato today?

When we find two contemporary thinkers, alive to the currents of modern thought, still, in some sense or other, recognising the importance of many of Plato's thoughts today, the presumption is that the question can be asked." (pp. XV-XVI).

70. ———. 1963. "Remarks on Nicolai Hartmann's Modal Doctrine." Kant Studien no. 54:181-187.

Reprinted as Chapter XII in: J. M. Mohanty, Phenomenology and Ontology, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970, pp. 129-137.

71. ———. 1970. Phenomenology and ontology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Chapter XI. A recent criticism of the foundations of Nicolai Hartmann's ontology pp. 115-128; Chapter XII. Remarks on Nicolai Hartmann's modal doctrine pp. 129-137.

72. ———. 1997. "Nicolai Hartmann's phenomenological ontology." In Phenomenology. Between essentialism and transcendental philosophy, 25-31. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

73. Morgenstern, Martin. 1992. Nicolai Hartmann: Grundlinien einer wissenschaftlich orientierten Philosophie. Tübingen: Francke Verlag.

74. ———. 1997. Nicolai Hartmann zur Einführung. Hamburg: Junius Verlag.

75. Möslang, Alois. 1964. Finalität. Ihre Problematik in der Philosophie Nicolai Hartmanns. Freiburg, Schweiz: Universitätsverlag.

76. Münzhuber, Joseph. 1943. "Nicolai Hartmann Kategorienlehre." Zeitschrift für Deutsche Philosophie no. 9:187-216.

77. Nosbüsch, Johannes. 1982. "Nicolai Hartmanns Lehre vom idealen Sein." In Nicolai Hartmann 1882-1982, 238-251. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann.

78. Oakeley, Hilda. 1935. "Professor Nicolai Hartmann's concept of Objective Spirit." Mind no. 44:39-57.

79. Oberer, Ariolf. 1965. Vom Problem des objektivierten Geistes. Ein Beitrag zur theorie der konkreten subjektivität im Ausgang von Nicolai Hartmann. Köln: Kölner Universitätsverlag.

80. Patzig, Günther, ed. 1982. Symposium zum Gedanken an Nicolai Hartmann (1882-1950). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

81. Peruzzi, Alberto. 2001. "Hartmann's Stratified Reality." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems no. 12:227-260.

"Which aspects of `critical ontology' can provide effective orientation when confronted by the difficulties inherent to the opposition of logic- inspired philosophy vs phenomenology? Given the cyclical swing between the metaphysical realism of all-embracing Systems and the anti-realistic biases of relativism, does Hartmann offer a really satisfactory equilibrium-point? Is it still possible to construct a philosophical cosmology consistent with the natural sciences, while avoiding positivistic reduction of philosophy to analysis of language? How can we assign philosophy a task that goes beyond the meta-theoretical and the epistemological, while renouncing the temptation to adopt the view-from-nowhere? What about the project of a `new' realism that refrains from positing Absolutes and yet admits the existence of perennially open problems, on which the advances of scientific knowledge seem to have little or no effect at all? How to anchor categorial analysis if not by connecting it to the advances of social, cognitive and natural sciences?"

82. Peterson, Keith R. 2012. "An Introduction to Nicolai Hartmann’s Critical Ontology." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems no. 22:291-314.

"Nicolai Hartmann contributed significantly to the revitalization of the discipline of ontology in the early twentieth century. Developing a systematic, post-Kantian critical ontology ‘this side’ of idealism and realism, he subverted the widespread impression that philosophy must either exhaust itself in foundationalist epistemology or engage in system-building metaphysical excess. This essay provides an introduction to Hartmann’s approach in light of the recent translation of his early essay ‘How is Critical Ontology Possible?’ (1923) In it Hartmann criticizes both the pretensions of epistemology as well as the principal errors of classical ontology, and he proposes a series of correctives that lead to his development of a highly original and elaborate stratified categorial ontology. This introduction explains the most important errors of the ‘old’ ontology, his correctives to them, and further fleshes out these correctives with reference to his mature ontological work."

83. Philipse, Herman. 2001. "What is a Natural Conception of the World?" International Journal of Philosophical Studies no. 9:385-399.

"Continental philosophers such as Heidegger and Nicolai Hartmann and analytic philosophers such as Ryle, Strawson, and Jennifer Hornsby may be interpreted as using competing intellectual strategies within the framework of one and the same research programme, the programme of developing a natural conception of the world. They all argue that the Manifest Image of the world (to use Sellars's terminology) is compatible with, or even more fundamental than, the Scientific Image. A comparative examination of these strategies shows that Hartmann's strategy of stratification is superior to those of Heidegger, Ryle, and Strawson."

84. Pichler, Hans. 1952. "Die Wiedergeburt der Ontologie." In Nicolai Hartmann. Der Denker und sein Weik, edited by Heimsoeth, Heinz and Hein, Robert, 144-172. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

85. Poli, Roberto. 1998. "Levels." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems no. 9:197-211.

"It is plain that the problem of the levels or layers of a work of art is an important part of any theory of the aesthetic object. In other words, what I wish to state clearly from the outset is that of the two components that select the field of interest - that of the object, and that of its aesthetic valence - reference to the object arranges reference to its aesthetic valence. Put otherwise, the theme of the aesthetic object is a particular subdivision of ontology - a subdivision, moreover, which may prove fundamental, shedding light on several aspects of the overall framework of ontology. This was pointed by Nicolai Hartmann, when in the introduction to Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie - one of his main ontological works - he asserted that "the problematic [of art] belongs to the area

of problems in which the ontological problem is rooted." Evidently, when matters are viewed from this point of view, that part of aesthetics which addresses the problem of the aesthetic object may yield results of relevance to more general ontological reflection as well.

Complementary to investigation by objects is investigation by acts. In this case, however, it becomes more difficult to develop the theme that I wish to discuss here, namely that of levels or layers. Hartmann again points out: "the aesthetics of today still concentrates mainly on analysis of the act, and this is why the stratification relationship, although it has often been noted, is not yet familiar to it" ([Hartmann Das Problem des Geistingen Seins 1933], p. 565). The perspective to which I allude was first outlined by the phenomenologist Geiger, who not coincidentally sought to develop a form of phenomenological reduction which mainly involved objects and their structures. This, as we know, was a form of reduction different from the, so to speak, more classically phenomenological ones elaborated by Husserl in order to bring out the structures and operations of consciousness. Moreover, for the purposes of this paper, the decision to give priority to the perspective of the object becomes well-nigh obligatory.

That said, and before I develop with my theme in detail, I must present at least two presuppositions to the arguments that follow. These are two presuppositions that I shall present from perhaps an unusual point of view, but which are of central importance nonetheless."

86. ———. 2001. "The Basic Problem of the Theory of levels of Reality." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems no. 12:261-283.

"Two essential aspects of Hartmann's thought are its categorial perspective and the theory of the levels of reality. They are also aspects which have exerted significant influence on Hartmann's intellectual legacy, however limited that may be. Here I wish to point out their importance for Bertalanffy (see his General Systems Theory, 1968) and Lorenz (see his Behind the mirror: a search for a natural history of human knowledge, 1978). The latter notes the close similarity between his own ideas and those of Hartmann, and he recalls that for Hartmann the world possesses the unity of a system, but it is a system made up of layers. Some pages earlier he writes that he once asked Roberto Corti, who was closely acquainted with Hartmann, how he thought Hartmann would have reacted to a philogenetic interpretation of his thought. Corti replied that Hartmann would undoubtedly have rejected such an interpretation, but then added "And yet this is the only way to do anything with it"." (p. 261)

87. ———. 2015. "Nicolai Hartmann’s Theory of Levels of Reality." In Objects and Pseudo-Objects: Ontological Deserts and Jungles From Brentano to Carnap, edited by Seron, Denis, Richard, Sebastien and Leclercq, Bruno, 223-237. Berlin: de Gruyter.

88. Poli, Roberto, Scognamiglio, Carlo, and Tremblay, Frederic, eds. 2011. The Philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann. Berlin: de Gruyter.

"Nicolai Hartmann was one of the most prolific and original, yet sober, clear and rigorous, 20th century German philosophers. Hartmann was brought up as a Neo-Kantian, but soon turned his back on Kantianism to become one of the most important proponents of ontological realism. He developed what he calls the "new ontology", on which relies a systematic opus dealing with all the main areas of philosophy. His work had major influences both in philosophy and in various scientific disciplines. The contributions collected in this volume from an international group of Hartmann scholars and philosophers explore subjects such as Hartmann's philosophical development from Neo-Kantianism to ontological realism, the difference between the way he and Heidegger overcame Neo-Kantianism, his Platonism concerning eternal objects and his interpretation of Plato, his Aristotelianism, his theoretical relation to Wolff's ontology and Meinong's theory of objects, his treatment and use of the aporematic method, his metaphysics, his ethics and theory of values, his philosophy of mind, his philosophy of mathematics, as well as the influence he had on 20th century philosophical anthropology and biology".

89. Ruttkowski, Wolfgang. 2007. Essays on Aesthetics, Poetics and Terminology of Literary Studies. München: Grin Verlag.

Essay I: Stratum, Structure, and Genre (1973) pp. 4-30.

"The concept of genre can be satisfactorily explained only in comparison with the concepts of stratum and structure. Proceeding from this conviction we shall try here to establish a demarcation of these often used terms and at the same time prove their interdependence."

Essay III: The Main Differences between Roman Ingarden's and Nicolai Hartmann's Strata Systems (1990) pp. 31-48.

"Although both designed strata-models for various kinds of art and especially for literature, the philosophers Nicolai Hartmann and Roman Ingarden never entered into any kind of dialogue. Also in secondary literature there is no exact comparison of their systems to be found.

For that reason, the two strata systems are compared here for the first time and their respective advantages and deficiencies are being pointed out.

Amongst other things. the following topics are being discussed: 1. In what way Hartmann's "Real Foreground" ("Realer Vordergrund") is more specifically subdivided in Ingarden's system. - 2. How, on the other hand. Ingarden's "Stratum of Depicted Objects" ("Schicht der dargestellten Gegenstãndlichkeiten") was more thoroughly subdivided by Hartmann. 3. Why there cannot be found in Hartmann's system a corresponding stratum for Ingarden's ''Stratum of Schematized Aspects" ("Schicht der schematischen Ansichten") - and 4. Why Hartmann's two strata of the Treat Background" (''Irrealer Hintergrund") are consolidated by Ingarden and expressly not seen as a stratum."

90. Sajama, Seppo. 1985. "Supererogation and high values." Theoria no. 51:77-88.

"Nicolai Hartmann's value-theory can be used to generate a five-fold classification of actions: "duties" are actions whose omission is blameworthy and performance not praiseworthy, whereas the performance of "supererogatory" actions is praiseworthy and their omission not blameworthy.

Moreover, the contrary of a duty is a "forbidden" action, that of an supererogatory action is an "excusable" action. Besides these four, there are also "indifferent" actions."

91. Samuel, Otto. 1953. A Foundation of Ontology. A Critical Analysis of Nicolai Hartmann. New York: Philosophical Library.

Contents: Introduction IX-XV; 1. Why must we return to ontology? 1; 2. The incomplete approach of Hartmann 7; 3. On the Extant as Extant in general 15; 4. On the difference betweein Being (Sein) and Extant (Seiendes) 29; 5. The relationship of Hereness (Dasein) and Suchness (Sosein) 45; 6. Modes and modalities of Being 57; 7. The Givenness of Real Being 74; 8. The certainty of Reality 90; 9. The problem and position of Ideal Being 115; 10. The transition to meontology 128; Index 151-155.

Note: Chapters 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 are the outilemes of the teachings of Hartmann. Chapters 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 contain the critical analysis of his views.

"Hartmann's literary accomplishments in life consist of three parts. The first one comprises the new foundations of ontology. It is composed of three books: "Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie" (On the Foundations of Ontology), "Möglichkeit and Wirklichkeit" (Possibility and Factuality), and "Der Aufbau der realen Welt" (The Structure of the Real World). The last of the three presents the general theory of categories (*). The second part covers natural philosophy, an introduction to the special theory of categories, furthermore "Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis" (Outlines of a Metaphysics of Knowledge), and "Das Problem des geistigen Seins" (The Problem of Spiritual Being). The third part is his "Ethik" (Ethics).

The present dissertation will be limited primarily to the first of these books, "Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie." This book consists of a thirty-eight-page introduction (the reader will find here a condensed, five-page summary) and four individual papers - "Das Seiende als Seiendes" (The Extant as Extant), "Dasein and Sosein" (Hereness and Suchness), "Die Realitätsgegebenheit" (The Givenness of Reality), and "Das ideale Sein" (Ideal Being)." pp. X-XI.

(*) [The fourth and last book, "Philosophie der Natur. Abriss der speziellen Kategorienlehre" (Philosophy of Nature. Sketch of Special Theory of Categories) was published in 1950].

92. Schaar, Maria van der. 2001. "Hartmann's rejection of the notion of evidence." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems no. 12:285-297.

"Any one fascinated by the problem of evidence, does well to read Günther Patzig's formulation of the problem given in an article on Husserl (Patzig 'Husserl on Truth and Evidence', in J. N. Mohanty (ed.), Readings in Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977, pp. 179-196) (1). Either evidence is accessible to consciousness, in which case the evidence of our judgement can give no guarantee for (absolute) truth; or evidence is a guarantee for (absolute) truth, but then it cannot be accessible to consciousness. Possibly Patzig's attention was drawn to the problem of evidence by his teacher at Göttingen, Nicolai Hartmann. Although Hartmann was not alone in criticizing the concept of evidence at the first half of the twentieth century, he must be credited for having given a clear formulation of the problem of evidence. This paper attempts an evaluation of Hartmann's criticism of the concept of evidence. Any epistemological theory of evidence has to answer Hartmann's criticism on the notion of evidence. Hartmann's epistemology, and his criticism of the concept of evidence, will be dealt with in the first half of the paper. An outline of an epistemology that meets Hartmann's challenge, in terms of an evidence theory of truth, is presented in the second half of the paper." (p. 285)

(1) 'Evidence not in the sense of piece of evidence for something, but as a characteristic of certain judgements, evidence of.

93. Schaper, Eva. 1956. "The aesthetics of Hartmann and Bense." The Review of Metaphysics no. 10:289-307.

94. Schilling, Kurt. 1951. "Bemergkungen zu Nicolai Hartmanns Ontologie." Archiv für Recht- und Sozialphilosophie no. 39:533-555.

95. Schlittmaier, Anton. 1999. Zur Methodik Und Systematik Von Aporien: Untersuchungen zur Aporetik bei Nicolai Hartmann und Gottfried Martin. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann.

96. Schuetzinger, Caroline. 1966. "The gnoseological transcendence in Nicolai Hartmann's metaphysics of cognition (First part)." The Thomist no. 30:1-37.

97. ———. 1966. "The gnoseological transcendence in Nicolai Hartmann's metaphysics of cognition (Second part)." The Thomist no. 30:136-196.

98. Scognamiglio, Carlo. 2004. La teoria ontologica di Nicolai Hartmann e la processualità del reale. Roma: Edizioni di Filosofia.it.

99. ———. 2007. "Il problema del soggetto nell'ontologia critica di Nicolai Hartmann." In Perspectives sur le sujet / Prospettive filosofiche sul soggetto, edited by Trincia, Francesco and Bancalari, Stefano, 126-145. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

100. ———. 2010. La Persona. Etica e ontologia in Nicolai Hartmann. Lecce: Pensa Multimedia.

101. Seel, Gerhard. 1982. Die Aristotelische Modaltheorie. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Ertse Kapitel: N. Hartmanns generelle Modaltheorie; seine Theorie der Realmodi; seine Interpretation der Aristotelischen Modaltheorie - pp. 1-132.

102. Siitonen, Arto. 1989. Problems of Aporetics. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia.

Contents: Preface 9; Introduction 11; PART I: Towards a Theory of Questions and Problems. Chapter 1; The Greek Background and Its Modern Influence 15; Chapter 2: Nicolai Hartmann's Idea of Aporetics 29; Part II. Hartmann's Influence: Cohen, Nyman. Chapter 1: The Development of Hartmann's Ideas in the Works of His Followers 51; Chapter 2: Related Tendencies 77; Part III. A Critical Approach to Hartmann's Theory of Aporetics. Chapter 1: Appraisal of the Insolubility Thesis 87; Chapter 2: Unknowability Thesis and Progress of Knowledge 99; Chapter 3: Aporia and Argument 113; Chapter 4: Problem Thinking and System Thinking 125; Chapter 5: On Problem History 133; Conclusions 143; Notes 150; Literature 177; Index of Concepts 186; Index of names 190-194.

"The present book represents what may be called “archaelogy of ideas.” Its main aim is to give information on some scarcely known currents of thought and connexions between ideas in the philosophy of the present century, and to evaluate those ideas. The central concept of the book is aporia (impasse, perplexity, doubt), and the main figure is Nicolai Hartmann (1882—1950), a German ontologist and critical realist. Perhaps his most significant idea was that the Aristotelian method of aporetics or problem-discussion should be reactivated and given a basic role in doing philosophy. The Greek background of aporetics is first studied and its modem influence discussed. The dimensions of Hartmann’s aporetics are then analysed in the context of his philosophy. It is examined and evaluated, how Hartmann’s pupils Wein, Landmann and Hartkopf applied his ideas. Related tendencies, represented by Morris R. Cohen and Alf Nyman, are also studied. The main part of the book contains a detailed criticism of Hartmann’s theory of aporetics." p. 9)

103. Sirchia, Francesco. 1969. Nicolai Hartmann dal neokantismo all'ontologia. La filosofia degli scritti giovanili (1909-1919). Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

104. Smith, John E. 1954. "Hartmann's New Ontology." The Review of Metaphysics no. 7:583-601.

105. Spiegelberg, Herbert. 1982. The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Third revised edition; first edition 1960; second edition 1965.

Chapter VI: Phenomenology in the Critical Ontology of Nicolai Hartmann (1882-1950), pp. 305-357.

106. Stallmach, Josef. 1987. Ansichsein und Seinsverstehen. Neue Wege der Ontologie bei Nicolai Hartmann und Martin Heidegger. Bonn: Bouvier.

107. Taubes, Jacob. 1953. "The development of the ontological question in recent German philosophy." Review of Metaphysics no. 6:651-664.

108. Tegtmeier, Erwin. 2001. "Hartmann's General Ontology." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems no. 12:217-225.

"It is striking how many different word combinations containing "being" you find in Hartmann: ways of being (Seinsweisen), modes of being (Seinsmodi), elements of being (Seinsmomente), degrees of being (Seinsstufen), grades of being (Seinsgrade), factors of being (Seinsfaktoren), regions of being (Seinsregionen), spheres of being (Seinssphären), layers of being (Seinsschichten), weight of being (Seinsgewicht), presentation of being (Seinsgegebenheit). I happen to have claimed at several places' that existence does neither allow for differentiation nor for gradation. However, the Phenomenologists, Hartmann's contemporaries, like such verbal combinations, too. And there is, of course, a long tradition of this. The founder of ontology, Aristotle, founded this subject before all on the term "being" and its ambiguities. He distinguishes between the use of "to be" with a substantial and with an accidental predicate, also between its use in actuality and potentiality predication. On the face of it, Aristotle distinguishes between kinds of predicative connection. However, he does not admit genuine connections but only natured things. Thus, he can be taken to claim that substances, things with accidents, actual and potential things exist in different ways. He distinguishes in Hartmann's terms between two ways of existence (Existenzweisen), namely substantial and accidental existence, and two modes of existence (Modi der Existenz), namely actuality and potentiality. Following Plato who granted full existence only to forms and mere half-existence to perceptual things, Aristotle also assumes degrees of existence, accidents, e.g., have a lower degree of existence than substances and relational accidents a lower degree than qualitative accidents. In Aristotle categories are distinguished as different ways of being. Hartmann holds that different ways of being do not already found categories or only in a wide sense. On the whole Hartmann understands the distinction between ways of being as formal and that between categories as material (inhaltlich)." (pp. 217-218)

109. Tertulian, Nicolas. 1984. "La rinascita dell' ontologia: Hartmann, Heidegger e Lukács." Critica Marxista:125-150.

110. ———. 2003. "Nicolai Hartmann et Georg Lukács. Une alliance féconde." Archives de Philosophie no. 46:663-698.

"The encounter between Lukács'philosophy and ontological thought of Nicolai Hartmann is a seldom tackled topic in philosophical historiography. The contact with Hartmann's great ontological works played a key role in the genesis of Ontology of Social Being, the work which has crowned the intellectual and political course of Lukács. This paper aims to clear up the deep affinity between two historical thoughts that all seemed to separate. Hartmann cultivated a philosophia perennis above socio-historical contingences, while Lukács, an engaged philosopher in the battles of the century, built a work which was saturated with Marxian thought. There are nevertheless significant links between them: a critique of Husserlian phenomenology, a critique of neo-positivist currents and, above all, strong reservation with regard to Heidegger."

111. Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa. 1957. Essence et existence. Étude à propos de la philosophie de Roman Ingarden et Nicolai Hartmann. Paris: Aubier Editions Montaigne.

112. Vossenberg, Ewald van den. 1963. Die letzten Gründe der Innerweltlichkeit in Nicolai Hartmanns Philosophie. Roma: Pontificia Università Gregoriana.

113. Wahl, Jean. 1953. La structure du monde réel d'aprés N. Hartmann. Paris: Centre de documentation universitaire.

Cours de la Sorbonne (1952).

114. ———. 1954. La théorie des catégories fondamentales dans Nicolai Hartmann. Paris: Centre de documentation universitaire.

Cours de la Sorbonne (1953).

115. ———. 1955. Les aspects qualitatifs du réel. I. Introduction, la philosophie del'existence; II. Début d'une étude sur Husserl; III. La philosophi de la nature de N. Hartmann. Paris: Centre de documentation universitaire.

Cours de la Sorbonne (1954).

116. Wein, Hermann. 1952. "Nicolai Hartmanns Kategorialanalyse und die Idee einer Strukturlogik." In Nicolai Hartmann. Der Denker und sein Weik, edited by Heimsoeth, Heinz and Hein, Robert, 173-185. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

117. ———. 1959. "Der Streit und die Ordnung und Einheit der Realwelt. Für und wider Nicolai Hartmann." Philosophia Naturalis no. 5:174-220.

118. Werkmeister, William Henry. 1970. Historical Spectrum of Value Theories. I. The German-Language Group. Lincoln: Ne-Johnsen.

119. ———. 1981. "Kant, Nicolai Hartmann, and the Great Chain of Being." In The Great Chain of Being and Italian Phenomenology, edited by Bello, Angela Ales, 69-97. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"At first glance it may seem that relating the philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Nicolai Hartmann to Alexander Pope's conception of the Great Chain of Being is arbitrary to the point of absurdity. However, a closer book at the facts will soon show that it is by no means absurd or even arbitrary, for both Kant and Hartmann are concerned with an interpretation of the Great Chain of Being -- albeit from radically different points of view. This difference Nicolai Hartmann has stressed in his formidable Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis. (1) There he quotes Kant's "highest principle of all synthetic judgments": "The conditions of the possibility of experience as such are at the same time conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience, and therefore have objective validity in a synthetic judgment a priori." (2)

Kant had argued, quite correctly, that synthetic judgments a priori could not validly apply to objects if the conditions of the possibility of experience were imposed upon the subject by the objects of experience. The failure of empiricism in all its forms is proof of this fact. Not one of them can justify the a priori employment of synthetic propositions. Kant had therefore assigned to the subject the role of imposing the conditions of possible experience upon the object. But in doing so, he had overlooked a "third possibility", namely, that the conditions of the possibility of experience are imposed neither by the subject nor by the object; that they are simply metaphysical conditions "this side of idealism and realism" which are equally binding for subject and object.

It is Hartmann's contention that this "highest principle" is obvious to all who understand it, and that it finds its validation in the actual analysis of experience. In what sense, then, does it help us to understand Hartmann's conception of the Great Chain of Being? And how does this differ from Kant's commitment to Pope's idea?" (p. 69)

(1) Second edition (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1925), p. 340

(2) A158 / B197

120. ———. 1990. Nicolai Hartmann's New Ontology. Tallahassee: Florida State University Press.

Contents: Introduction XI-XVII; Chapter I: The epistemological basis of Nicolai Hartmann's New Ontology 1; Chapter II: The structure of the real world 32; Chapter III: An analysis of modalities 69; Chapter IV: Philosophy of Nature 88: Chapter V: The realm of Spiritual Being 134; Chapter VI: Ethics 192; Chapter VII: Aesthetics 223; Bibliography 241; Index 245-252.

"This is an integrative study of "all" of Nicolai Hartmann's publications, with special attention to his epistemology, his categorial analyses of the structure of the real world, of modalities, and the realm of spiritual reality. In all of his works Hartmann begins with the phenomena, not with metaphysical speculation, and carries his analyses out in great detail. There is nothing like it in the philosophy of the early twentieth century."

121. Wildgen, Wolfgang. 2001. "Natural ontologies and semantic roles in sentences." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems no. 12:171-193.

"My central concern in the treatment of Hartmann's "New Ontology" will be the role of language and other "symbolic forms" (in the terms of Cassirer's "Philosophie der symbolischen Formen", 1923-1929)."

122. Wirth, Ingeborg. 1965. Realismus und Apriorismus in Nicolai Hartmanns Erkenntnistheorie. Mit einer Bibliographie der seit 1952 uber Hartmann erschienenen Arbeiten. Berlin: De Gruyter & Co.

123. Wolandt, Gerd. 1963. "Hartmanns Weg zur Ontologie." Kant Studien no. 54:304-316.

124. ———. 1982. "Nicolai Hartmanns Systematik." In Nicolai Hartmann 1882-1982, 290-305. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Adolf Reinach on States of Affairs (Sachverhalt) and Negative Judgments

The work of Reinach and early phenomenology

"Reinach's importance for the development of early phenomenology is particularly remarkable considering the brief life span of 34 years granted him for the development of his ideas and his influence. It was his death in action in 1917 rather than Husserl's going to Freiburg which cut short not only his own promise but that of the Gottingen phenomenological Circle. It is therefore not surprising that Reinach never found the time to formulate a comprehensive plan of a philosophy in which the place of phenomenology was clearly defined." One can only extrapolate such a plan from his Essays and fragments - for he never published a book. His conception would have incorporated a formal and material ontology on realistic lines." (p. 192)

(...)

His examples of the new method, which ranged all the way from mathematics to psychological science, displayed the following major features:I. The phenomenological method is to teach us how to see things which we have a tendency to overlook in our everyday practical attitude, and to see them in their unique whatness or essence without the customary attempts to reduce them to the smallest possible number, an attempt which can lead only to impoverishment and falsification of the phenomena. The prime objective of phenomenology is thus to lead us toward the phenomena and to clarify our conceptions of them.

II. Phenomenology does not restrict itself to making inventories of facts. It wants to explore their essences while disregarding their existence. This actually involves two attitudes, actually not yet sharply distinguished by Reinach: (a) disinterest in reality in the sense of independence of the observer, in contrast to the approach of a natural science, like physics; in Reinach's version this change in attitude did not require the adoption of a special method after the manner of Husserl's phenomenological reduction; (b) interest in pure models, as in geometry, which considers merely ideal types, even where no example can be produced in actual experience; this involves a theoretical idealization, though not Husserl's ideating abstraction or 'eidetic reduction,' which Reinach does not mention in this context.

III. Besides the intuiting of the phenomena and their essences, Reinach stressed one additional step: the study of the essential connections among these phenomena (Wesenszusammenhänge) and their laws (Wesensgesetze). These relations among the phenomena are determined by their essential nature and are expressed, for instance, in such phrases as 'it lies in the nature of movement to have a substratum,' 'it follows from its very nature.' According to Reinach, such essential connections occur not only among the formal structures of logic and general ontology, but also in the structures of concrete 'material' phenomena, for instance among colors in their similarities. They are of two basic types: essential necessities and essential possibilities. To be sure, these are usually so obvious that no one pays attention to them. But it is precisely these neglected 'trivialities' to which phenomenology has to give their due.

In this connection Reinach developed his theory of the phenomenological a priori, which was perhaps the most characteristic feature in his philosophizing. It differed radically from earlier conceptions of the a priori. To begin with, Reinach's a priori was not a property of propositions or acts of judging or knowing, but of states of affairs (Sachverhalte) judged or recognized. It is these ontological states of affairs or, more properly speaking, the connections between the elements of these states of affairs (the object judged about and its property judged), which by virtue of these connections are the carriers of the a priori property. 35 The a priori is thus primarily an ontological, not an epistemological category.

But what does it mean that a state of affairs is a priori? Obviously not that we have an innate idea about it. In fact, Reinach agreed with the Kantian conception of the a priori to the extent of interpreting it as knowledge not grounded in experience, but not as knowledge without experience either. He also concurred with Kant that necessity and universality are important aspects of the a priori: A priori states of affairs are universal for all possible examples, and they are necessary in the sense that the a priori property contained in the Sachverhalt belongs to its carrier by an essential necessity. However, any implication that this necessity is really only a necessity of thought to be derived from the organization of our understanding must be avoided. This, to Reinach, would have meant sheer psychologism. His necessity was an ontological necessity grounded in the things, not an epistemological one based on our reason. Universality and necessity were for Reinach only secondary characteristics of the a priori; they followed from the more basic fact that there are essential connections (Wesenszusammenhänge) which are immediately intuitable and which can be given with complete adequacy. Thus 'a priori' means at bottom nothing but the fact that a certain property is necessarily entailed by the essential structure of an object and can hence be understood as such." (pp. 193-194)

"From: Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement. A historical introduction, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1963 (third edition).

"Only one of Reinach's treatises is historical in character: "Kant's Understanding of the Humean Problem" (Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 141; 1908). It deserves the most careful attention. Reinach's insights into "relations of ideas" and his discovery that Kant wrongly interpreted these as analytical judgments, were, as I studied them at the time, of decisive importance for me on the way to pure phenomenology. Reinach for his part, as an accomplished phenomenologist turning to the study of Kant, detected Kant's misunderstanding and treated of it in a rich and instructive article.

The first of Reinach's systematic-phenomenological Essays, "Towards the Philosophy of the Negative Judgment" (in the Festschrift for his earlier teacher in philosophy, "Munchener philosophische Abhandlungen. Th. Lipps zu seinem 60. Geburtstage gewidmet von fruheren Schulern," Leipzig, 1911) deals in an extraordinarily penetrating way with difficult questions belonging to the general theory of the judgment. It is original in attempting to develop a phenomenological difference between "conviction" and "assertion" and in this way to enrich the theory of the negative judgment by making various phenomenological distinctions. Very important but apparently neglected is Reinach's study, "Deliberation in Its Ethical and Legal Significance" (Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 148 and 149; 1912, 13). The pure phenomenological analysis of the essence of theoretical ("intellectual") and practical ("voluntary") deliberation leads Reinach to fine and significant distinctions in the area of intellectual and practical-emotional acts and states of mind; he then applies his results to questions of ethics and penal law. The most significant and the longest work of Reinach's is also a mature and thoroughly finished work, "On the Apriori Foundations of Civil Law," which appeared in the first volume (1913) of my Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, of which Reinach was a co-editor. This work attempts something completely new with respect to all present and past philosophies of law: on the basis of pure phenomenology it attempts to develop the idea, long held in suspicion, of an apriori theory of right. With inimitable analytic power Reinach brings to light a whole array of "apriori" truths which underlies any real or possible legal code; and these truths, as he shows, are apriori in exactly the sense of the basic axioms of arithmetic and logic, that is, they are truths which are grasped in intellectual insight as being valid without any possible exception, and they are prior to all experience. These apriori truths in the sphere of right, such as that a claim is dissolved by its being fulfilled, or that property, through the act of transfer, passes from one person to another, have nothing to do with the "enactments" (arbitrary determinations that something ought to be) of the positive law. For all positive enactments presuppose concepts such as claim, obligation, property, transfer, etc.; these concepts are thus apriori with respect to positive law. Reinach's apriori principles are simply expressions of absolutely valid truths which are grounded in the essential meaning of these concepts. What is utterly original in this essay of Reinach's, which is in every respect masterful, is the idea that we have to distinguish this apriori, which belongs to the proper nature of any legal order, from the other apriori which is related to positive law as something normative and as a principle of evaluation: for all law can and must be subjected to the idea of "right law"-- "right" from the point of view of morality or of some objective purpose. The development of this idea would lead to a completely different apriori discipline, which however does not, just as Reinach's apriori theory of right does not, go in the direction of realizing the fundamentally mistaken idea of a "natural law." For this apriori discipline (of "right law") can only bring out formal norms of right, and from these one can no more extract a positive law than one can get definite truths in the natural sciences out of formal logic. No one who is interested in a strictly scientific philosophy of right, in a definitive clarification of the basic concepts which are constitutive for the idea of any possible positive law (a clarification which, it is clear, can be achieved only by phenomenologically penetrating into the pure essence of our consciousness of right) can afford to overlook this work of Reinach's which breaks so much new ground. It is for me beyond any doubt that it will secure for its author a permanent place in the history of the philosophy of right."

From: Edmund Husserl, "Obituary notice", Kant-Studien, 13 1919, pp. 147-149, translated by John F. Crosby, Aletheia. An International Journal of Philosophy, 3, 1983, pp. XI-XIII.

"It is characteristic for Reinach that in each of these studies, even if they treat of rather particular problems, Reinach achieves and formulates, often for the first time, general foundational insights. And these insights are at the same time in most instances so precisely formulated that nothing more is needed for us to build on them. Thus the short study entitled, "The Most General Principles of the Inference according to Kant," which is on one level only a critical study of Kant, clarifies one of the basic problems of logic, the problem of the so-called general object, by distinguishing between essence and the indeterminate individual object which participates in the essence. In the same way his paper, "Kant's Understanding of Hume's Problem," in its aim apparently so very specialized, clarifies the nature of authentic causality by distinguishing between modal and material necessity. And in the same way his paper, "Towards the Theory of the Negative Judgment," clarifies the nature of presentation (Vorstellung) and intuition (Anschauung), and makes the foundational distinction within the sphere of theoretical acts between acts in which a position or stance is taken, and acts in which something is grasped or apprehended. This distinction, made in connection with the distinction between presentation and judgment (both in the sense of conviction as well as of assertion), has a fundamental importance which not only far surpasses the sphere of the negative judgment, the subject of this paper, but also surpasses the sphere of the judgment in general and is fundamental for every ontology of acts of the person. This characteristic of Reinach's mind comes out most clearly in his most perfect work, "The Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law." His theme here is one belonging to the philosophy of law, but what he deals with is not just anyone but rather the problem of legal philosophy. The so ambiguous concept of the apriori finds here its definite and classical formulation. The idea of the social acts, with their characteristic need of being heard by the addressee, or of the constitutive importance of certain acts through the performance of which are constituted real, objectively valid relations, withdrawn from our arbitrariness, all this and other ideas as well have an importance which goes far beyond the scope of Reinach's legal theme. We have here insights which are fundamental for the whole ontology of the sphere of personal acts as well as of the sphere of those objectively valid structures which are constituted by the performance of certain acts."

From: Dietrich von Hillebrand, "Written as an Introduction to Reinach' Gesammelte Schriften" (1921), but not published. Translated by John F. Crosby, Aletheia. An International Journal of Philosophy, 3, 1983, pp. XX-XXI.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated Bibliography on Adolf Reinach

Works in German

Abbreviations: (GS = Gesammelte Schriften; SW = Sämtliche Werke)

1. Reinach, Adolf. 1905. Über den Ursachenbegriff im geltenden Strafrecht. Leipzig: J. A. Barth.

(SW pp. 1-43).

"Psychology, Reinach argues, is capable of assisting in the clarification of the legal meaning of the concept of cause via appeal to the notion of a psychic regularity. This same notion can help also in the clarification of the probable intent of specific laws. From the point of view of Reinach's later philosophy, the work may be seen as a study of the legal determinations [Bestimmungen] of positive law and of the development of aids for their practical interpretation. There is as yet however no suggestion of his doctrine of the a priori structures underlying legal formations." (Barry Smith, An Annotated Bibliography, p. 300)

2. ———. 1910. "William James und der Pragmatismus." Welt und Wissen.Hannoversche Blätter für Kunst, Literatur und Leben.

(SW pp. 45-50)

3. ———. 1911. "Die obersten Regeln der Vernunftschlüsse bei Kant." Kant Studien no. 16:214-233.

(GS pp. 36-55; SW pp. 51-65)

4. ———. 1911. "Kants Auffassung des Humeschen Problems." Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik no. 141:176-209.

(GS pp. 1-35; SW pp. 67-93)

5. ———. 1911. "Zur Theorie des negativen Urteils." In Münchener Philosophische Abhandlungen. Festschrift für Theodor Lipps, edited by Pfänder, Alexander, 196-254. Leipzig: J. A. Barth.

(GS pp. 56-116; SW pp. 95-140).

Revised edition in: Metaphysica. International Journal for Ontology and Metaphysics, Vol. 0, April 1999, pp. 37-103.

6. ———. 1913. "Die apriorischen Grundlagen des bürgerlichen Rechtes." Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung no. 1:685-847.

New edition with the title "Zur Phänomenologie des Rechts. Die apriorischen Grundlagen des bürgerlichen Rechts" and a preface by Anna Reinach, München, Kösel, 1953.

(GS pp. 166-350; SW pp. 141-278)

7. ———. 1913. "Die Überlegung: ihre ethische und rechtliche Bedeutung." Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik.

First part Vol. 148 (1912) pp. 181-196; second part Vol. 149 (1913) pp. 30-58.

(GS pp. 121-165; SW pp. 279-311)

8. ———. 1914. "Paul Natorps 'Allgemeine Psychologie nach kritischer Methode'." Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen no. 4:193-214.

(GS pp. 351-376; SW pp. 313-331).

"Natorp had claimed that the I can never be an object of consciousness and thus it cannot form part of the subject-matter of psychology. The latter is restricted to the contents of consciousness, i.e. to all of that of which one is conscious. Reinach argues that it is grounded in the essence of cogitationes that they can exist only as experiences of an I. Thus he defends the Cartesian view according to which the cogito is the starting poing of our knowing, and he insists that the I is present in each and every experience. However, the pure I - as distinct from the empirical person - is not a thing with characteristics; Natorp may therefore be correct in his view that it 'does not admit of any explanation'. But this does not rule out the clarification of the ways in which it interrelates with other elements in essential structures.

In grasping itself the I is both bearer and end-point of a grasping act. Unlike Natorp, who insisted that each relation must have two terms, Reinach sees no difficulty here, since intentionality is not a relation in the usual sense."

Barry Smith, (An Annotated Bibliography, p. 300-301)

9. ———. 1921. Gesammelte Schriften. Halle: Max Niemeyer.

Edited from his students. With a preface by Hedwig Conrad-Martius (XXVI+461 ppages).

(This edition is now superseded by Sämtliche Werke).

10. ———. 1921. "Über das Wesen der Bewegung." In Gesammelte Schriften, 406-461. Halle: Max Niemeyer.

Prepared by Edith Stein fromseminar notes in Reinach's Nachlass.

(SW pp. 551-588).

"Contains an analysis of continuity and of the essence of traversing of space, the results of which are then applied to Zeno's paradoxes. A motion is a continuous process, it should not be thought of as a series of single part-processes somehow combined together.

Reinach asserts that it is self-evident that all real motion requires a bearer, but denies that this implies that all perception of motion involves the perception of a bearer. I can speak of motion and intend motion without at the same intending something that moves."

Barry Smith, (An Annotated Bibliography, p. 301)

11. ———. 1951. Was ist Phänomenologie? München: Kõsel.

With a preface by Hedwig Conrad-Martius Lesson held at Marburg in 1914 with the title Über Phänomenologie and first published in GS pp. 379-405 (SW pp. 531-550).

12. ———. 1989. Sämtliche Werke. Textkritische Ausgabe in 2 Bänden. Mûnchen: Philosophia Verlag.

Critical edition by Karl Schuhmann and Barry Smith in two volumes.

Band I. Die Werke

I. Teil

Kritische Neausgabe (1905-1914)

Geleitwort von Eberhard Avé-Lallement XI; Vorwort der Herausgegeber XIV-XVIII;

1. (1905) 1-43; 2. William James und der Pragmatismus (1910) 45-50; 3. Die obersten Regeln der Vernunftschlüsse bei Kant (1911) 51-65; 4. Kants Auffassung des Humeschen Problems (1911) 67-93; 5. Zur Theorie des negativen Urteils (1911) 95-140; 6. Die apriorischen Grundlagen des bürgerlichen Rechtes (1913) 141-278; 7. Die Überlegung: ihre ethische und rechtliche Bedeutung (1912/13) 279-311; 8. Paul Natorps "Allgemeine Psychologie nach kritischer Methode" (1914) 313-331;

II. Teil

Nachgelassene Texte (1906-1917)

9. Die Grundbegriffe der Ethik (1906) 335-337; 10. Wesen und Systematik des Urteils (1908) 339-345; 11. Über impersonale Urteile (1908?) 347-350; 12. Notwendigkeit und Allgemeinheit im Sachverhalt (1910) 351-354; 13. Nichtsoziale und Soziale Akte (1911) 355-360; 14. Die Vieldeutigkeit des Wesensbegriffs (1912) 361-363; 15. Über Dingfarbe und Dingfärbung (1913) 365-367; 16. Einleitung in die Philosophie (1913) 369-513; 17. Zum Begriff der Zahl (1913/1914) 515-529; Über Phänomenologie (1914) 531-550; Über das Wesen der Bewegung (1914) 551-588; Aufzeichnungen (1916/17): A. Zur Phänomenologie der Ahnungen 589-591; B. Notizen auf losen Zetteln 592-604; C. Bruchstück einer religionsphilosophischen Ausführung 605-611.

Band. II Kommentar und Textkritik

Einleitung: Adolf Reinach (1883-1917) 613

Zu Band I, I. Teil

Allgemeine Vorbemerkung 629; Über den Ursachenbegriff im geltenden Strafrecht 631; William James und der Pragmatismus 639; Die obersten Regeln der Vernunftschlüsse bei Kant 643; Kants Auffassung des Humeschen Problems 649; Zur Theorie des negativen Urteils 657; Die apriorischen Grundlagen des bürgerlichen Rechtes 665; Die Überlegung: ihre ethische und rechtliche Bedeutung 689; Paul Natorps "Allgemeine Psychologie nach kritischer Methode" 697;

Zu Band I, II. Teil

Die Grundbegriffe der Ethik 705; Wesen und Systematik des Urteils 709; Über impersonale Urteile 719; Notwendigkeit und Allgemeinheit im Sachverhalt 725; Nichtsoziale und Soziale Akte 729; Die Vieldeutigkeit des Wesensbegriffs 733; Über Dingfarbe und Dingfärbung 737; Einleitung in die Philosophie 741; Zum Begriff der Zahl 759; Über Phänomenologie 767; Über das Wesen der Bewegung 775; Aufzeichnungen 787; Literaturverzeichnis 813; Sachverzeichnis 831; Personenverzeichnis 845.

13. ———. 2000. "Platons Philosophie [Vorlesung] Summer Semester 1910." In Josef Seifert. Ritornare a Platone. La fenomenologia realista come riforma critica della dottrina platonica delle idee. In appendice un testo inedito su Platone di Adolf Reinach, 224-237. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

German text and Italian translation by Giuseppe Girgenti.

English translations

1. Reinach, Adolf. 1968. "What is Phenomenology." The Philosophical Forum no. 1:234-256.

Translation and introduction (pp. 231-233) by Derek Kelly.

"Reinach's essay is a brief introduction to applied phenomenology. The first part of the essay is exegetical: Reinachexplains the philosophic limitations and problems of the sciences of psychology and of mathematics, and discusses in particular the work of Hilbert and Kronecker. In the second part of the paper, Reinach develops ths concept of the 'a priori.' He rejects both the positivist conception of solely analytic 'a priori,' and also the Kantian notion of necessary conditions for thought. Reinach argues that the 'a priori' is legitimately seen not as subjective or as necessary for thought, but as a necessity of being."

2. ———. 1969. "Concerning Phenomenology." The Personalist no. 50:194-221.

Translation by Dallas Willard.

"This paper attempts to illustrate how phenomenological research is done. For Reinach, phenomenology is an attitude or way of seeing, not a set of truths. It is the examination of essences, or universals, and their interconnections. Reinach discusses and illustrates how such examination is required in descriptive psychology, and how it is essentially dispensed with in mathematics, as understood by Hilbert. There follows a critique of Frege's view of number, and a phenomenological elucidation of the distinction between cardinal and ordinal numbers. Reinach's final remarks are devoted to misinterpretations of the "a priori" and to its correct analysis."

3. ———. 1976. "Kant's Interpretation of Hume's Problem." In David Hume. Many-Sided Genius, edited by Merrill, Kenneth and Shahan, Robert, 161-168. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Translated by Jitendra Nath Mohanty.

Published also in: Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, 7 (1976), pp. 161-188.

4. ———. 1981. "A Contribution Toward the Theory of the Negative Judgement." Aletheia no. 2:15-64.

Translated by Don Ferrari.

5. ———. 1982. "On the Theory of the Negative Judgment." In Parts and Moments. Studies in Logic and Formal Ontology, edited by Smith, Barry, 315-377. München: Philosophia Verlag.

Translated by Barry Smith.

6. ———. 1983. "The Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law." Aletheia no. 3:1-142.

7. ———. 1987. "William James and Pragmatism." In Speech Act and Sachverhalt. Reinach and the Foundations of Realist Phenomenology, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, 291-298. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.

Translated by Barry Smith.

8. ———. 1994. "The Supreme Rules of Rational Inference According to Kant." Aletheia no. 6:81-97.

Translated by James Dubois.

9. ———. 2013. The Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law. Along with the Lecture, “Concerning Phenomenology”. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

Edited by John F. Crosby. With a Foreword by Alasdair MacIntyre.

Translator of The Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law: John F. Crosby.

Translator of “Concerning Phenomenology”: Dallas Willard.

Italian translations

1. Reinach, Adolf. 1990. I fondamenti a priori del diritto civile. Milano: Giuffré.

Traduzione di Daniela Falcioni, presentazione di Bruno Romano.

2. ———. 2000. "Platons Philosophie [Vorlesung] Sommer Semester 1910 - La filosofia di Platone (Lezioni del semestre estivo 1910)." In Ritornare a Platone. La fenomenologia realista come riforma critica della dottrina platonica delle idee, edited by Seifert, Josef, 224-237. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

Appendice al volume di Seifert. Appunti delle lezioni raccolti da Alexandre Koyré.

3. ———. 2008. La visione delle idee. Macerata: Quodlibet.

A cura di Alessandro Besoli e Stefano Salice.

Sommario: Introduzione di Stefano Besoli; Profilo della vita e delle opere; 1. William James e il pragmatismo; 2. Le regole supreme delle inferenze razionali in Kant; 3. L'interpretazione kantiana del problema di Hume; 4. Sulla teoria del giudizio negativo; 5. La riflessione: il suo significato etico e giuridico; 6. Sull'Allgemeine Psychologie nach kritischer Methode di Paul Natorp; 7. Sulla fenomenologia; Agganciarsi a un'anima. Il domandare e i vissuti sociali della coscienza in Adolf Reinach di Alessandro Salice; Nota terminologica; Indice degli argomenti; Indice dei nomi.

French translations

1. Reinach, Adolf. 1996. "Théorie du jugement négatif." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale:384-436.

Traduction et présentation de Marc B. de Launay.

2. ———. 2004. Les fondements à priori du droit civil. Paris: Vrin.

Traduction de Ronan de Calan.

3. ———. 2012. Phénoménologie réaliste. Paris: Vrin.

Le présent volume est un recueil visant à rendre accessible aux lecteurs français le versant théorétique de la pensée de Reinach et se compose à la fois de textes publiés et posthumes – présentés ici dans un ordre thématique, et non chronologique.

Traduit de l’allemand sous la direction de D. Pradelle, par J.-F. Courtine, M. de Launay, A. Dewalque, J. Farges, D. Pradelle, P.-J. Renaudie et D. Seron.

Studies about his work

1. "Adolf Reinach: philosophie du langage, droit, ontologie." 2005. Les Études Philosophiques.

Index: Jocelyn Benoist: Reinach: philosophie du langage, droit, ontologie (avant-propos) 1; Philipp Mayrhofer: Réalisme et fondation chez Adolf Reinach 3; Jocelyn Benoist: Reinach et la visée (das Meinen): décliner l'intentionalité 19; Ronan de Calan: Causalité et nécessité matérielle: Reinach lecteur de Hume 39; Bruno Ambroise: Le problème de l'ontologie des actes sociaux: Searle héritier de Reinach? 55; Sandra Laugier: Actes de langage et états de choses: Austin et Reinach 73; Julien Cantegreil: D'une voie phénoménologique en théorie du droit. Remarques sur le réalisme d'Adolf Reinach 99-112.

2. Ales Bello, Angela. 2004. "The Controversy about the Existence of the World in Edmund Husserl's Phenomenological School: A. Reinach, R. Ingarden, H. Conrad-Martius, E. Stein." Analecta Husserliana.The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research no. 79:97-116.

3. Ambroise, Bruno. 2005. "Le problème de l'ontologie des actes sociaux: Searle héritier de Reinach?" Les Études Philosophiques:55-72.

4. Baltzer-Jaray, Kimberly. 2011. Doorway to the World of Essences. Adolf Reinach and the Early Phenomenological Movement. Düsseldorf: VDM Publishing.

5. Benoist, Jocelyn. 2005. "Reinach et la visée (das Meinen): décliner l'intentionalité." Les Études Philosophiques:19-37.

6. Benoist, Jocelyn, and Kervégan, Jean-François, eds. 2008. Adolf Reinach, entre droit et phénoménologie. De l'ontologie normative à la théorie du droit. Paris: CNRS Éditions.

7. Brown, James. 1987. "Reinach on representative acts." In Speech Act and Sachverhalt: Reinach and the foundations of realist phenomenology, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, 119-131. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

"Austin is certainly the founding father of speech act theory as we have known it in recent decades, and one reason why Reinach's views on social acts are worthy of attention is the extent of their anticipation of Austin's work and their contribution to the understanding of human communicative action. Mother is their bearing on the thesis that fundamental concepts of civil law are found, and not introduced, by positive law. A further reason is that, apart from anticipating the work of others, Reinach explores a kind of social act which appears to have been neglected by subsequent speech act theorists. I refer to representative acts, where one person acts for or on behalf of or in the name of another! I shall first try to set out Reinach's views (sections 1 and 2), and then discuss some issues which they raise, in particular that of sincerity (sections 3 and 4) then that of prior empowerment for representative acts (section 5)." (p. 119)

8. Burkhardt, Armin. 1986. Soziale Akte, Sprechakte und Textillokutionen: A. Reinachs Rechtsphilosophie und die moderne Linguistik. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

"A detailed comparison of Reinach on social acts with the accounts of Searle and Austin who are criticized for committing the 'ontological fallacy': they find forces in utterances."

(Barry Smith, An Annotated Bibliography, p. 307)

9. ———. 1986. "Il filosofo del diritto Adolf Reinach, lo sconosciuto fondatore della teoria degli atti linguistici." Teoria.Rivista di Filosofia no. 6:45-62.

10. ———. 1987. "Verplflichtung und Verbindlichkeit. Ethische Aspekte in der Rechtphilosophie Adolf Reinachs." In Speech Act and Sachverhalt: Reinach and the foundations of realist phenomenology, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, 155-174. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

11. Calan, Ronan de. 2005. "Causalité et nécessité matérielle: Reinach lecteur de Hume." Les Études Philosophiques:39-54.

12. Cantegreil, Julien. 2005. "D'une voie phénoménologique en théorie du droit. Remarques sur le réalisme d'Adolf Reinach." Les Études Philosophiques:99-112.

"Écartant les questions traditionnelles de savoir comment il s'est singularisé dans l'histoire de la doctrine allemande du droit et les raisons qui font de lui l'un des précurseurs de la théorie des actes de langages, la présente étude évalue l'intérêt juridique de l'approche « intuitionniste » de Reinach. L'utilisation conjointe de sa définition de la promesse et des travaux de Jean-Louis Gardies devraient montrer l'impasse théorique et le faible intérêt pratique de son intuitionnisme, et ce faisant contribuer à diriger les recherches phénoménologiques en théorie du droit vers les travaux du Husserl des Idées directrices."

13. ———. 2006. "Adolf Reinach théoricien du droit: sur la causalité." Archives de Philosophie du Droit no. 49:401-416.

"Bien qu'il ait été commenté par les plus illustres (Husserl, Kantorowicz, Radbruch, Villey...) et que l'on ait récemment pris la mesure de son importance en philosophie, Reinach n'a toujours pas su trouver sa place en théorie du droit. Comprendre l'impasse théorique et le faible intérét pratique de son approche intuitionniste avait seulement suggéré de rediriger les recherches phénoménologiques en droit vers les oeuvres tardives de Husserl. La présente analyse propose de relire Reinach à partir d'un texte de jeunesse quasi inconnu, sa Dissertation de 1905 Sur le Concept de cause en droit pénal. Reinach y apparait alors non seulement un représentant exemplaire des contradictions du positivisme de la fin du XIXe siècle, mais aussi une aide précieuse pour conceptualiser la cause en droit. Précurseur en ce qui concerne les actes de langages, Reinach l'est aussi en ce qui concerne le concept de causalité. Reinach théoricien du droit gagne ainsi pertinence, profondeur et actualité."

14. Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz. 2012. "Negative States of Affairs: Reinach versus Ingarden." Symposium. The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy no. 15:106-127.

Abstract: "In Reinach's works one finds a very rich ontology of states of affairs.

Some of them are positive, some negative. Some of them obtain, some do not. But even the negative and non-obtaining states of affairs are absolutely independent of any mental activity. Despite this claim of the "ontological equality" of positive and negative states of affairs, there are, according to Reinach, massive epistemological differences in our cognitive access to them. Positive states of affairs can be directly "extracted" from our experience, while to acquire a negative belief we must pass through a quite complicated process, starting with certain positive beliefs. A possible and reasonable explanation of this discrepancy would be a theory to the effect that these epistemological differences have their basis in the ontology of the entities in question. Our knowledge of the negative states of affairs is essentially dependent on our knowledge of the positive ones precisely because the negative states of affairs are ontologically dependent on the positive ones. Such a theory has, in fact, been formulated by Roman Ingarden. According to him, negative states of affairs supervene on some positive ones and on certain mental acts of the conscious subjects."

15. Crosby, John. 1983. "Reinach's discovery of the social acts." Aletheia no. 3:143-194.

Contents: 1. The significance of Reinach's monograph; 2. Reinach as phenomenologist; 3. Reinach's discovery of the "social acts"; 4. Reinach in dialogue with the speech act philosophers: promising as a social act; 5. Continuation of the dialogue between Reinach and the speech act philosophers: the uninventable essence of promising; 6. Towards developing and deepening Reinach's analysis of the social acts; Reinach and Wojtyla; Reinach and Husserl; 7. Reinach's apriori sphere of right and the natural moral law; 8. Legal obligation and moral duty; 9. Some consequences of Reinach's discovery for political, legal, and moral philosophy; conclusion of the dialogue with the speech act philosophers.

16. Davie, George. 1987. "Husserl and Reinach on Hume's "Treatise"." In Speech Act and Sachverhalt: Reinach and the foundations of realist phenomenology, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, 257-274. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

"In 1929 Husserl wrote that Hume's real greatness was still unrecognised in its most important aspect. Now I believe that the contribution to Hume studies by Husserl - as conveyed by Jean Laporte in France and Kemp Smith in Britain - and by his pupil Reinach, have gone a long way towards changing this state of affairs, because of a new way of reading Hume's Treatise that they introduced. I first set out Husserl's early views on Hume and then turn to Reinach's paper on Hume, which builds on this work, but also goes a long way beyond it and isolates the most important aspect of Hume's achievement." (p. 257)

17. De Vecchi, Francesca, ed. 2012. Eidetica del diritto e ontologia sociale. Il realismo di Adolf Reinach. / Eidetics of Law and Social Ontology. Adolf Reinach, the Realist. Milano: Mimesis.

18. DuBois, James. 1994. "An introduction to Adolf Reinach's 'The supreme rules of rational inference according to Kant'." Aletheia no. 6:70-80.

"In 1911, the same year that he published his work On the theory of the negative judgment, Adolf Reinach published two articles on Kant's philosophy: Kant's understanding of the humean problem and The supreme rules of rational inference according to Kant. More than mere historical studies, these articles extend Reinach's contribution to the fields of ontology and what might be broadly construed as the field of logic."

19. ———. 1995. Judgment and Sachverhalt. An introduction to Adolf Reinach's phenomenological realism. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Contents: Acknowledgements VII; Introduction 1; 1. Judgments and states of affairs 7; 2. Negation and correspondence 47; 3. Insight and the a priori 77; 4. Logic and arithmetic 115; 5. The discovery of social acts 129; 6. Reinach as phenomenologist 145; Bibliography 159; Index 167-168.

"The outline of our study is as follows.

Chapter One explores Reinach's conception of the judgment in terms of a state of belief, an act of assertion, and an ideal meaning-unit. We examine his understanding of states of affairs, the objectual-correlates to judgments of all kinds. We further investigate how it is that the mind becomes directed towards states of affairs, and this involves us in a study of Reinach's understanding of the relationships between intentionality, presentation, and intuitive fullness. Particularly here we see Reinach's indebtedness to Husserl. Towards the end of the chapter we consider briefly the concepts of evidence and knowledge -- for a judgment cannot be considered rational unless it is somehow related to objective being through evidence or direct knowledge.

In Chapter Two, we examine Reinach's claim that negative states of affairs subsist or obtain just as do positive states of affairs. Here a confrontation with Ingarden's ontological investigations is particularly helpful, and something of a compromise position is defended. Reinach's discussion of negation provides us with the opportunity to better understand the nature of concepts and properties, and the peculiar sort of existence espoused by these. Chisholm's view of negative properties and states of affairs is compared to Reinach's, and here too we argue for modifications of both views.

In Chapter Three we examine how Reinach's ontology of states of affairs is seen to lie at the basis of most traditional epistemological distinctions. Thus, distinctions between states of affairs give rise to the differences between necessary and contingent, synthetic and analytic, and formal and material judgments. We investigate further why philosophical insight is possible with regard to the states of affairs grounded in some essences, but not others. At this point we turn to the work of Reinach's student, Dietrich von Hildebrand, where he distinguishes between accidental essential unities, morphic essential unities, and necessary essential unities, only the last of which can be known through insight or essential intuition. We close the chapter with a defense of insight, and a discussion of its place in philosophical argumentation.

By the time we reach Chapter Four, we have already investigated the nature of many logically relevant concepts, such as proposition, truth and falsity, implication, ontological modality, analycity and syntheticity. However, it seems worthwhile to present Reinach's overall conception of logic, a conception which is at the same time classical and original. In connection with his work on logic we discuss briefly Reinach's conception of numbers. Interestingly, Reinach rejects the existence of ordinal numbers, and he argues that cardinal numbers cannot be predicated. As one might expect, his explanation of the ontological correlates to the truths of arithmetic involves a fascinating application of his philosophy of states of affairs.

In Chapter Five we examine his "Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law". Particularly here we are forced to prescind from many interesting and worthwhile ideas. Our interest in this work is restricted to his discovery of social acts (better known today as speech acts), and in particular the nonasserting or nonjudging character of these acts. These acts are neither correct nor incorrect, for they are not "conforming" acts, or acts of "fit". They are rather "grounded" or "ungrounded" and "effective" or "ineffective". A confrontation of his analysis of promising with that of Searle allows us to test the soundness of Reinach's ontology of essences and his recognition of synthetic a priori states of affairs and truths. Finally, we examine Reinach's claim that he has discovered a new sort of object: real, temporal objects, which are neither physical nor mental.

In Chapter Six, our concluding chapter, we look at Reinach as a phenomenologist. By the time we reach this last chapter, many will understand why we call Reinach a realist, but they will wonder what characterizes him as a phenomenologist. We present a few key ideas from his lecture "Concerning Phenomenology" and defend an interpretation of the phenomenological attitude as characterized above all by a rigorous fidelity to what is given. While we refuse to take up a confrontation of Reinach's phenomenological realism with the motives for Husserl's transcendental idealism, we do briefly suggest some philosophical reasons which make intelligible Reinach's unwillingness to espouse the "new developments". We conclude the book by suggesting one sense in which Reinach's analysis of human acts stands in need of a "subjective" grounding, though not of the sort Husserl suggests." (pp. 3-5).

20. ———. 2002. "Adolf Reinach's contributions to meta-ethics and the philosophy of law." In The phenomenological tradition in moral philosophy, edited by Embree, Lester and Drummond, John, 327-346. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

21. Falcioni, Daniela. 1991. Le regole della relazionalità: una interpretazione della fenomenologia di Adolf Reinach. Milano: Giuffré Editore.

22. ———. 2002. "Immanuel Kant und Adolf Reinach: Zwei Linien des Widerstandes im Vergleich." Kant-Studien.Philosophische Zeitschrift der Kant-Gesellschaft no. 93:351-370.

23. Gardies, Jean-Louis. 1987. "Adolf Reinach and the analytic foundations of social acts." In Speech Act and Sachverhalt: Reinach and the foundations of realist phenomenology, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, 107-117. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

"One of the most interesting contributions to philosophy in Adolf Reinach's work The A Priori Foundations of Civil Law is the analysis the author puts forward of what he generally calls social acts. This analysis is extended to deal with such specific types of social acts as promises, orders, prayers, requests, communications (mitteilen), questions, the particulars of which are all gone into by Reinach.

When, much later, Anglo-Saxon authors such as Austin and Searle discovered the quite special character of speech-acts it is almost certain that Reinach could have had no influence on them, for they knew nothing of his work. Even if they had had some indirect acquaintance with the work it is by no means certain that they could have profited from its analyses. The intuitionist style that marks the work, which appeared in 1913 as part of the first large wave of the phenomenological movement removes it almost totally from the purview of the analytic approach of the Anglo-Saxon tradition within which the new theory of speech-acts was to find its natural home. Since the two philosophies use quite different languages it would have been difficult to see that there was a shared subject matter and that some at least of the conclusions were the same." (p. 107)

(...)

"Reinach's merit is to have given superb demonstrations of the a priori character of the pure science of law. He has annihilated psychologism, sociologism andhistoricism in the legal sphere as surely as Frege had annihilated them in the realm of mathematics. It remains to provide each of his remarkable analyses with its theoretical explanation in order to establish that, in the last instance, the a priori judgements whose existence at the basis of civil law he has revealed, are themselves analytic." (p. 117).

24. Habbel, Irmingard. 1959. Die Sachverhaltsproblematik in der Phänomenologie und bei Thomas von Aquin. Regensburg: Josef Habbel.

25. Hillebrand, Dietrich von. 1955. "Die rechtliche und sittliche Sphäre in ihrem Eigenwert und in ihrem Zusammenhang." In Die Menschheit am Scheideweg. Gesammelte Abhandlungen und Vorträge, 86-106. Regensburg: Josef Habbel.

Contains an exposition and development of Reinach's philosophy of law.

26. Hoffmann, Klaus. 1987. "Reinach and Searle in promising. A comparison." In Speech Act and Sachverhalt: Reinach and the foundations of realist phenomenology, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, 91-106. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

"If one is to believe Mephistopheles, even the devil seems to be bound to keep a promise and the explanation of this state of affairs requires more than just a few words.

In the twentieth century various well-known philosophers have gone into great detail in order to clear up the question why promises can give rise to obligations. The works of Adolf Reinach and John Searle are two outstanding examples of attempts to analyse promising. In what follows I shall compare their accounts as precisely as possible in order to provide arguments for and against the view that the famous analysis by John Searle was already anticipated by Adolf Reinach in 1913.

I begin with an examination of the relation between Reinach's (category of) social acts and Searle's (category of) speech acts in which I concentrate on the relations between entities and laws on the one hand and institutional facts and rules on the other. Finally, I scrutinize the different conception of 'obligation' in the two accounts." (p. 91)

27. Hübener, Wolfgang. 1975. "Die Logik der Negation als ontologisches Erkenntnismaterial." In Positionen der Negativität, edited by Weinrich, Harald, 105-140. Munich: Fink.

"pp. 134f. is a discussion of Reinach and Sigwart pn the locus of negation."

Barry Smith, (An Annotated Bibliography, p. 314)

28. Husserl, Edmund. 1975. "Adolf Reinach (In memoriam)." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 35:571-574.

Originally published in Kantstudien, 23, 1919 pp. 147-149.

29. Ingarden, Roman. 1964. Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

"See esp. chapter XI of vol. II/1, Die Form des Sachverhalts. Sachverhalt und Gegenstand (includes extensive critique of Reinach Zur Theorie des Negativen Urteils) and § 62 of vol. II/2, which contains a criticism of Reinach on movement." (Barry Smith, An Annotated Bibliography, p. 316)

30. Kujundzic, Nebojsa. 1997. "Reinach, material necessity, and free variation." Dialogue no. 36:721-739.

31. Künne, Wolfgang. 1987. "The intentionality of thinking: the difference between State of Affairs and Propositional Matter." In Speech Act and Sachverhalt: Reinach and the foundations of realist phenomenology, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, 175-187. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

"For Reinach as for Russell, the state of affairs called "the being snub-nosed of Socrates" contains as "objectual elements" (gegenstiindliche Elemente, gegenstandliche Glieder)37 a "real" as well as an "ideal object"," Socrates and the property of being snub-nosed. Reinach clearly recognizes, what some analytical philosophers do not, that "states of affairs cannot be simply stuck together (zusammengestoppelt), as it were, out of arbitrary elements"? Only if somebody (rightly or wrongly) can judge or believe that a is P, is there such a thing as the (obtaining or not obtaining) state of affairs, the being P of a (See § 3 above).

Reflecting on attributes like possibility and necessity, Reinach stresses "that it is ... states of affairs and only states of affairs, which can adopt such modalities". I shall try now to clarify the relevance of this Reinachian observation in the final section of this paper." (p. 185, notes omitted).

32. Laugier, Sandra. 2005. "Actes de langage et états de choses: Austin et Reinach." Les Études Philosophiques:73-98.

33. Lohmar, Dieter. 1992. "Beiträge zu einer phänomenologischen Theorie des negativen Urteils." Husserl Studies no. 8:173-204.

34. Mayrhofer, Philipp. 2005. "Réalisme et fondation chez Adolf Reinach." Les Études Philosophiques:3-18.

35. Mulligan, Kevin, ed. 1987. Speech Act and Sachverhalt. Reinach and the foundations of realist phenomenology. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.

Contents: Preface VII; Abbreviations employed in the text XIII; Adolf Reinach: an intellectual biography by Karl Schuhmann and Barry Smith 3; Promisings and other social acts: their constituents and structure by Kevin Mulligan 29; Reinach and Searle on promising. A comparison by Klaus Hoffmann 91; Adolf Reinach and the analytic foundations of social acts by Jean-Louis Gardies 107; Reinach on representative acts by James Brown 119; Demystifying Reinach's legal theory by Stanley L. Paulson 133; Verpflichtung und Verbindlichkeit. Ethische Aspekte in der Rechtphilosophie Adolf Reinachs by Armin Burkhardt 155; The intentionality of thinking: the difference between State of Affairs and Propositional Matter by Wolfgang Künne 175; On the cognition of Sates of Affairs by Barry Smith 189; Johannes Daubert Kritik der "Theorie des negativen Urteils" von Adolf Reinach by Karl Schuhmann 227; Husserl und Reinach by Karl Schuhmann 239; Husserl and Reinach on Hume's "Treatise" 257; Adolf Reinachs Vortrag über die Grundbegriffe der Ethik by Karl Schuhmann 275; William James and Pragmatism by Adolf Reinach 291; Adolf Reinach: an annotated bibliography by Barry Smith 299-332; Index 333-344.

"Phenomenology as practised by Adolf Reinach (1883-1917) in his all too brief philosophical career exemplifies all the virtues of Husserl's Logical Investigations. It is sober, concerned to be clear and deals with specific problems. It is therefore understandable that, in a philosophical climate in which Husserl's masterpiece has come to be regarded as a mere stepping stone on the way to his later Phenomenology, or even to the writings of a Heidegger, Reinach's contributions to exact philosophy have been all but totally forgotten. The topics on which Reinach wrote most illuminatingly, speech acts (which he called 'social acts') and states of affairs (Sachverhalte), as well as his realism about the external world, have come to be regarded as the preserve of other traditions of exact philosophy. Like my fellow-contributors, I hope that the present volume will go some way towards correcting this unfortunate historical accident.

Reinach's account of judgements and states of affairs, an account that precedes those of Russell and Wittgenstein, his 1913 treatment of speech acts, his reinterpretation of Hume and aspects of his legal philosophy are the main philosophical topics dealt with in what follows. But his analysis of deliberation as well as his work on movement and Zeno's paradoxes get only a passing mention." (from the Preface)

36. ———. 1987. "Promising and other social acts: their constituents and structure." In Speech Act and Sachverhalt: Reinach and the foundations of realist phenomenology, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, 29-90. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

"The discovery of what Reinach called social acts (in 1913) and Austin speech acts (in 1962) was first and foremost the discovery of a type of linguistic action which, Reinach and Austin are convinced, had simply not been noticed hitherto. It is true that both authors present their discovery within a theoretical framework and that they hoped that their accounts of the phenomenon discovered would be taken as representative of new ways of doing philosophy. It is also true that there are great differences between the frameworks and the hopes of the two philosophers. But both are emphatic that their primary objective is to bring into focus, and fully describe, a phenomenon of which promising is their favourite example. Other social acts dealt with in some detail by Reinach are requesting, questioning, ordering, imparting information, accepting a promise and legal enactment, which - except for the last two - are all at least touched on by Austin. (*)" (p. 29)

(*) Reinach's theory is set out in his monograph The Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law, in particular in § 2 Claim and Obligation, § 3 The Social Acts, § 4 The Act of Promising as the Origin of Claim and Obligation, § 7 Representation, § 8 Enactments and the Propositions which Express Enactments.

37. Paulson, Stanley L. 1987. "Demystifying Reinach's legal theory." In Speech Act and Sachverhalt: Reinach and the foundations of realist phenomenology, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, 133-154. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.

38. Salice, Alessandro. 2009. Urteile und Sachverhalte. Ein Vergleich zwischen Alexius Meinong und Adolf Reinach. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"The judgment constitutes a fundamental notion for several disciplines such as descriptive psychology, ontology and logic, and hence its investigation represents a pivotal area of research within theoretical philosophy. Inside the Brentano-School, Alexius Meinong (1853-1920) and Adolf Reinach (1883-1917) made significant contributions to this topic, separating and exploring both the subjective side of judgment (the intentional experience of judging) as well as its objective side (the “state of affairs” or the “objective”). In this publication Meinong’s and Reinach’s lore regarding the psychological and object-theoretical aspects of judgment are explicated, compared and evaluated."

39. Schuhmann, Karl. 1987. "Johannes Dauberts Kritik der "Theorie des negativen Urteils"." In Speech Act and Sachverhalt: Reinach and the foundations of realist phenomenology, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, 227-238. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

40. ———. 1987. "Husserl und Reinach." In Speech Act and Sachverhalt: Reinach and the foundations of realist phenomenology, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, 239-256. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

41. ———. 1987. "Adolf Reinachs Vortrag über die Grundbegriffe der Ethik." In Speech Act and Sachverhalt: Reinach and the foundations of realist phenomenology, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, 275-289. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

42. ———. 1990. "Elements of speech act theory in the work of Thomas Reid." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 7:47-66.

"The account of social acts sketched by Thomas Reid is shown to constitute an anticipation of the theory of speech acts standardly associated with Austin and Searle. Reid's ideas are compared also with that other (and in many ways more important) pre-Austinian speech act theory worked out by the phenomenologist Adolf Reinach in his monograph on the act of promising of 1913."

43. ———. 1993. "Edith stein und Adolf Reinach." In Studien zur Philosophie von Edith Stein.Internationales Edith Stein-Symposion Eichstätt 1991, edited by Fetz Reto, Luzius, Rath, Matthias and Schulz, Peter, 53-88. München: K. Alber.

Reprinted in: K. Schuhmann, Selected Papers on Penomenology, Dordrecht: Springer 2004, pp. 163-184.

44. Seifert, Josef. 1983. "Is Reinach's "Apriorische Rechtslehre" more important for positive law than Reinach himself thinks." Aletheia no. 3:197-230.

45. ———. 1992. "Die Philosophie Adolf Reinachs: bemerkungen anl?sslich der Veroffentlichung einer neuen kritischen Ausgabe der Schriften Reinachs." Aletheia.An International Yearbook of Philosophy no. 5:432-438.

46. Seron, Denis. 2015. "Adolf Reinach’s Philosophy of Logic." In Object and Pseudo-Objects: Ontological Deserts and Jungles from Brentano to Carnap, edited by Leclercq, Bruno, Richard, Sébastien and Seron, Denis, 167-182. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

47. Smith, Barry. 1978. "An essay in formal ontology." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 6:39-62.

"On the controversy between Reinach and Ingarden concerning negative states of affairs." (Barry Smith, An Annotated Bibliography, p. 328)

48. ———. 1978. "Wittgenstein and the background of Austrian philosophy." In Wittgenstein and his impact on contemporary thought. Proceedings of the Second International Wittgenstein Symposium, 31-35. Vienna: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.

"On early Sachverhalt ontologies."

49. ———. 1978. "Law and eschatology in Wittgenstein's early thought." Inquiry.An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy no. 21:425-441.

"The paper investigates the role played by ethical deliberation and ethical judgment in Wittgenstein's early thought in the light of twentieth-century German legal philosophy. In particular the theories of the phenomenologists Adolf Reinach, Wilhelm Schapp, and Gerhart Husserl are singled out, as resting on ontologies which are structurally similar to that of the Tractatus: in each case it is actual and possible Sachverhalte which constitute the prime ontological category. The study of the relationship between the States of Affairs depicted, e.g., in the sentences of a legal trial and prior fact-complexes to which these may correspond suggests one possible connecting link between the logical and ontological sections of the Tractatus and the ethical reflections appearing at the end. It is argued that the latter can best be understood in terms of the idea of a "Last judgment" (with its associated ethical rewards and punishments) which would relate to the world as a whole as a penal trial relates to individual complexes of facts."

50. ———. 1982. "Introduction to Adolf Reinach 'On the theory of negative judgment'." In Parts and moments: studies in logic and formal ontology, edited by Smith, Barry, 289-314. München: Philosophia Verlag.

51. ———. 1987. "On the cognition of State of Affairs." In Speech Act and Sachverhalt: Reinach and the foundations of realist phenomenology, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, 189-225. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

52. ———. 1987. "Adolf Reinach: an annotated bibliography." In Speech Act and Sachverhalt: Reinach and the foundations of realist phenomenology, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, 299-332. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

"When the present volume was first conceived, it was confidently believed that a survey of the literature on Reinach's thought could be kept within comfortable limits. It rapidly became clear, however, that this was not the case. Reinach's discoveries in the sphere of speech act theory have, it is true, gone almost unnoticed. Reinach has nevertheless enjoyed an enduring notoriety among those working in the philosophy of law, and ever since its appearance in 1913, Reinach's work on "Die apriorischen Grundlagen des burgerlichen Rechtes" has served as the principal representative of phenomenological, aprioristic and ontological/realist approaches in this discipline. His name accordingly appears in the majority of the more substantial general treatises in the discipline (or at least in those treatises and reference works published in countries whose law and philosophy have been influenced by the Germanic tradition: Edwards' great Encyclopedia of Philosophy does not contain even a mention of Reinach).

The goal of completeness has therefore been abandoned in what follows, and items containing merely passing references to Reinach's work have been listed only where they are of particular historical importance or bear evidence of some more substantial influence. The list has been compiled with the assistance of N. Bokhove, A.G. Conte and M.-E. Conte, J. Crosby, N. Duxbury, J. Joerden, S. Paulson, H. Spiegelberg and the indefatigable librarians of the University of Erlangen."

53. ———. 1989. "Logic and the Sachverhalt." The Monist no. 72:52-69.

"Logic is often conceived as a science of propositions, or of relations between propositions. There is an alternativeview, however, defended by Meinong, Pfänder, Reinach and others, which sees logic as a science of Sachverhalte or States of Affairs. A consideration of this view, which was defended especially by thinkers within the tradition of Brentano, throws new light on the problems of intentionality and of mental content. It throws light also on the development of logic in Poland. Here the influence of Brentano's student Kasimir Twardowski is especially important, and the paper concludes with a new interpretation of Tarski's work on truth against the background of Twardowski's thinking."

54. ———. 1993. "An essay on material necessity." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 18:301-322.

Supplementary volume.

55. Smith, Barry, and Schuhmann, Karl. 1987. "Adolf Reinach: an intellectual biography." In Speech Act and Sachverhalt: Reinach and the foundations of realist phenomenology, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, 1-27. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.

56. Spiegelberg, Herbert. 1982. The phenomenological movement. A historical introduction.

Third revised edition (First edition 1960).

About Reinach see pp. 191-200.

57. Stella, Giuliana. 1986. "L' "a priori" della promessa in Adolf Reinach." Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia del Diritto no. 63:392-408.

58. Textor, Mark. 2013. "‘Thereby We Have Broken with the Old Logical Dualism’ – Reinach on Negative Judgement and Negation." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 21 (3):570 - 590.

59. Zelaniec, Wojciech. 1992. "Fathers, kings, and promises: Husserl and Reinach on the a priori." Husserl Studies no. 9:147-177.

"The author examines several examples (given by Husserl and his pupil, Adolf Reinach, and pertaining mainly to the social sphere) of allegedly analytic and synthetic a priori propositions. In a detailed line of argument -- drawing among others on the theory of speech acts -- the author shows difficulties with classifying some of those examples as analytic."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Stanislaw Leśniewski's Logical Systems: Protothetic, Ontology, Mereology

Introduction

"Leśniewski defined ontology, one of his three foundational systems, as 'a certain kind of modernized 'traditional logic' [On the Foundations of Mathematics (FM), p. 176]. In this respect it is worth bearing in mind that in the 1937-38 academic year Leśniewski taught a course called "Traditional 'formal logic' and traditional 'set theory' on the ground of ontology"; cf. Srzednicki and Stachniak, Leśniewski's Systems: Protothetic, 1988, p. 180. On this see Kotarbinski Gnosiology. The Scientific Approach to the Theory of Knowledge, 1966, pp. 253-54 [the Polish original was published in 1929], which Leśniewski praised in [FM]: see in particular pp. 373 ff. Kotarbinski noted that Leśniewski "calls his system 'ontology' in harmony with certain terms used earlier (as in the 'ontological principle of contradiction')", and in strict relation to the Greek root of 'ontology' as the participle of the verb 'to be'. Leśniewski's 'ontology' is therefore "closely connected with traditional Aristotelian formal logic, of which it is an extension and an improvement, while on the other hand it is a terminal point in the attempt to construct a calculus of names in the area of logistic ... If in spite of these reasons we do not use the word 'ontology' here as a name for the calculus of names, this is only because of the fear of a misunderstanding. Misunderstanding could arise from the fact that this name has its roots already in another role, i.e., it has been long agreed to call 'ontology' the enquiry 'on the general principles of existence' conducted in the spirit of certain parts of Aristotelian 'metaphysical' books. It has to be admitted however, that if the Aristotelian definition of the main theory (prote filosofia) discussed in those books is interpreted in the spirit of a 'general theory of objects', then both the word and its meaning, can be applied to the calculus of names of Leśniewski", Kotarbinski 1966, pp. 373-374. Leśniewski commented on Kotarbinski's remarks thus: "I used the name 'Ontology' to characterize the theory I was developing, without offence to my 'linguistic instincts' because I was formulating in that theory a certain kind of 'general principles of existence"' [FM, 374].

Given these premises, we gain clearer understanding of his interest in the principles of non-contradiction [PC] and excluded middle [EM], as well as his references to the theory of conversion (p. 68 ff), of the suppositio (p. 18) and of the validity of the syllogism (p. 71 ff). This inquiry was encouraged by his interest in the history of logic and in the formal treatment of the problems of classical philosophy by the Lvov-Warsaw school. Jan Łukasiewicz's (1886-1939) research into the history of propositional calculus, the Aristotelian syllogistic and the principle of non-contradiction are well known. (...) Twardowski, the founder of the school, was also interested in traditional logic. As a lecturer at the University of Lvov, for many years he taught a course on Attempts to reform traditional logic, in which he outlined the theories of Bolzano, Brentano, Boole and Schröder; cf. Dambska François Brentano et la pensée philosophique en Pologne: Casimir Twardowski et son École, Grazer philosophischen Studien, 5, 1978, p. 123." (pp. 187-188)

From: Roberto Poli and Massimo Libardi, "Logic, Theory of Science, and Metaphysics According to Stanislaw Leśniewski", Grazer Philosophische Studien, 57, 1999, pp. 183-219.

"In the period between the two world wars, Stanislaw Leśniewski (1886-1939), one of the founders and a prominent member of the Warsaw School of Logic, created a system of the foundations of mathematics comprising three deductive theories: Protothetic, Ontology, and Mereology. The point of departure for the construction of this system was his study of logical paradoxes and, in this context, a distinction between the distributive and collective interpretations of a class. This distinction between the two interpretations was reflected in the development of two deductive theories, the theory of collective classes, which he eventually called Mereology, and the theory of distributive classes, called Ontology. Finally, in order to combine Mereology and Ontology into a logically rigorous system, he constructed Protothetic -- the system of "First principles." Leśniewski's ambition was "not to add one more calculus to the variety already invented, nor even to prove general metatheorems about alternative formal calculi, in the interests of "comparative logic"; it was instead to perfect a universally valid classical system of logic and foundations of mathematics, in which he could rigorously formulate generalizations expressible only in the metalanguages of systems poorer in means of expression, [... ] and on which he could rely as a true instrument of deduction and scientific investigation (Luschei, The logical systems of Leśniewski, 1962, p. 24)."This program was initiated by Leśniewski in 1914 with his studies on a general theory of sets (later to be named 'Mereology'). The first version of Mereology appeared in print in 1916 under the title Foundations of a General Theory of Sets. I (in Polish).

In 1919, Leśniewski joined the University of Warsaw as a professor of the philosophy of mathematics. He met a group of gifted mathematicians, Zygmunt Janiszewski, Stefan Mazurkiewicz, Waclaw Sierpidski, whose research interests, like those of Leśniewski, were focused on the foundations of mathematics. In 1920 this group, joined by Jan Łukasiewicz, founded the mathematical journal Fundamenta Mathematicae with Mazurkiewicz and Sierpiriski as editors, and Leśniewski and Łukasiewicz as members of the editorial board. The name, scope, and membership of the editorial board of the journal adequately reflected the research activities of the Warsaw schools of mathematics and logic during the first decade of the journal's existence.

The construction of Ontology in the period between 1919-1921, marked the next step in the formation of Leśniewski's system of the foundations of mathematics, although it was not until 1930 that Ontology appeared in print (cf. Leśniewski, 1930).

The construction of Protothetic began in 1922 and went quickly through numerous improvements and modifications, to be concluded in 1923. By then, Leśniewski's system of the foundations of mathematics was formally ready and, to quote Jordan, it was "the most thorough, original, and philosophically significant attempt to provide a logically secure foundation for the whole of mathematics" (cf. Jordan, 1945).

Even such a critic of the importance of Leśniewski's contribution to modern logic as Grzegorczyk admitted that "Leśniewski's treatment of logic was in his times the most exact; it was simpler than Principia [Mathematica] and had it been published simultaneously with the second edition of the Principia, it would have played a considerable part in the development of logic" (Grzegorczyk, 1955, p. 78)."

The roots of Protothetic can already be found in Leśniewski's early writings between 1912 and 1914. The "deductions" in his 1916 work on the general theory of sets are based on his logical intuitions which eventually were captured in the axioms and directives of Protothetic and Ontology." (pp. VII-VIII)

From: "Editor's Foreword" to Jan Srzednicki, and Zbigniew Stachniak (eds.), Leśniewski’s Systems: Protothetic, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1998.

Applications of Leśniewski's Ontology

Tadeusz Kotarbinski (1) made the following comment on Leśniewski's ontology: " It must be however admitted if the Aristotelian definition of the supreme theory... be interpreted in the spirit of a "general theory of objects", then both the word ["Ontology" -- C. W.] and its meaning are applicable to the calculus of terms as expounded by Leśniewski".

Leśniewski (2) himself fully shared this opinion: "I used the name "ontology" to characterize the theory which I was developing without offence to my "linguistic instincts" because I was formulating in that theory a certain kind of "general principles of existence" (3).

Both quotations suggest looking at Leśniewski's ontology (hereafter LO) for insights for philosophical ontology. This is precisely what I would like to do in this paper (4).

That Leśniewski's logical systems have interesting applications in philosophy has already been pointed out by several authors. For example:

-- Lejewski's (5) works about multicategorial and unicategorial languages and ontologies. In particular, Lejewski shows how Leśniewski's ideas help in speaking on non- existents without falling into Platonism or Meinongianism;

-- Simon's (6) study on parts and wholes ;

-- Lejewski's and Wolenski's (7) attempts to interpret Kotarbinski's reism by means of LO (8) ;

-- Waragai's (9) formalization of fundamental ontological principles in the framework of LO ;

-- Henry's (10) uses of LO in his reconstructions of medieval logic and semantics.

My concern here is more general. I will try to show how to attack the concept of being by means of Leśniewski's logic. Before going on to do this, however, I would like to make some comments on the relation of Leśniewski's logic to nominalism. The first impression is that mereology is particularly important in this respect. Certainly, this is correct, because mereology formalizes the part/whole relation which is crucial for nominalism. The usual interpretation of mereology provides a formalization of the theory of physical parts in Brentano's sense. Simons (11) shows that one can also obtain a nice mereological interpretation of "being a part in the metaphysical sense". Now there remains the problem of mereology which would be suitable for a theory of logical parts. This is probably equivalent to finding a mereology similar in its expressive power to set theory.

At first glance, both first-order logic and Lo seem to be equally good as logical bases for nominalism. However, this is not the case because, although first-order quantifiers range over individuals, the standard semantics for elementary quantification theory must appeal to sets and relations Leśniewski's Logic and the Concept of Being as referents of predicates. On the other hand, if we take Lejewski's (12) ontological tables as semantic models of nominal phrases in LO, we easily see that all nominal expressions exclusively refer to individual things. Moreover, the identity predicate is definable in elementary ontology, though it must be added as a new primitive to elementary logic or defined by second-order means. Finally, looking at nominalism through "Leśniewskian glasses" we can see that the metaphysical nature of individuals is not especially important for nominalism. Now it is not especially surprising that Quine's ontology is sometimes qualified as nominalistic Platonism. It is only strange for anybody who thinks about nominalism as a kind of materialism. What Lo shows is that nominalism consists in abandoning general objects, essences common to many individuals and the like. I am not claiming that the marriage of nominalism and Lo secures victory for the former. My intention rather, is to show that Lo helps nominalists much more than does first-order logic." (pp. 94-96)

Notes

1. T. Kotarbinski, Gniosology, The Scientific Approach to the Theory of Knowledge, tr. by O. Wojtasiewicz, Pergamon Press Ossolineum, Oxford-Wroclaw, pp. 210-211.

2. S. Leśniewski, "O podstawach matematyki" [On the Foundations of Mathematics], Przeglad filozoficzny 34, 142-170 ; Eng. tr. in Leśniewski, Collected Works, ed. by S. J. Surma, J. T. Srzednicki, D. I. Barnett and V. F. Rickey, Kluwer: Dordrecht 1992, p. 374.

3. This translation seems inadequate. It should rather be "general principles of being" (in the Polish original, we have "ogolne zasady bytu", not "ogolne zasady istnienia"). Leśniewski clearly distinguished "being" [byt] from "existence" [istnienie].

4. The same also concerns Leśniewski's mereology.

5. Czeslaw Lejewski "A System of Logic, for Bicategorial Ontology", Journal of Philosophical Logic, 3, 1976, 99-117, "Ontology and Logic", in Philosophy of Logic, ed. by S. Korner, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, pp. 1-28.

6. Peter Simons, Parts, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1987.

7. Czelsaw Lejewski, "Outline of Ontology", Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, v. 59, n° 1, pp. 127-147, 1976, "On the Dramatic Stage in the Development of Kotarbinski's Pansomatism", in Ontologie und Logik / Ontology and Logic, ed. by P. Weingartner and E. Morscher, Duncker und Humblot, Berlin, pp. 197-214, 1979. J. Wolenski, "Reism and Leśniewski's Ontology", History and Philosophy of Logic, 7, pp. 167-172, 1986.

8. Of course, Kotarbinski himself applied LO to his ontology.

9. "Ontological Law of Contradiction and its Logical Structure", The Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, v. 6, n° 1, pp. 43-58, 1980.

10. D. Henry, Medieval Logic and Metaphysics, Hutchinson, London, 1958. î.

11. P. Simons, Parts, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1987.

12. "On Leśniewski's Ontology", Ratio, 1, pp. 150-176, 1958.

From: Jan Wolenski, "Leśniewski's Logic and the Concept of Being", Recherches sur la Philosophie et le Langage, Cahier n. 15, Stanislaw Leśniewski aujourd'hui, (1995) pp. 93-101.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Stanisław Leśniewski: bibliography in English (A - Ind)

Studies on Leśniewski in English

1. Ajdukiewicz, Kazimierz. 1978. "Syntactic Connexion (1936)." In The Scientific World Perspective and Other Essays, 1931-1963, 118-139. Dordrecht: Reidel.

First published in German as: Die syntaktische Konnexität, Studia Philosophica, 1, 1935, pp. 1-27.

"The discovery of the antinomies, and the method of their resolution, have made problems of linguistic syntax the most important problems of logic (provided this word is understood in a sense that also includes metatheoretical considerations). Among these problems that of syntactic connexion is of the greatest importance for logic. It is concerned with the specification of the conditions under which a word pattern, constituted of meaningful words, forms an expression which itself has a unified meaning (constituted, to be sure, by the meaning of the single words belonging to it). A word pattern of this kind is syntactically connected.

The word pattern 'John loves Ann', for instance, is composed of words of the English language in syntactic connexion, and is a significant expression in English. However, the expressiun 'perhaps horse if will however shine' is constructed of meaningful English words, but lacks syntactic connexion, and does not belong to the meaningful expressions of the English language.

There are several solutions to this problem of syntactic connexion. Russell's theory of types, for example, offers a solution. But a particularly elegant and simple way of grasping the concept of syntactic connexion is offered by the theory of semantic categories developed by Professor Stanisław Leśniewski.

We shall base our work here on the relevant results of Leśniewski,(1) adding on our part a symbolism, in principle applicable to almost all languages, which makes it possible to formally define and examine the syntactic connexion of a word pattern.

Both the concept and the term 'semantic category' (Bedeutungskategorie) were first introduced by Husserl.(2)" (p. 118)

(...)

(1) Stanisław Leśniewski, Grundziige eines neuen Systems der Grundlagen der Mathematik. (Reprinted from Fundamenta Mathematicae 14 (Warsaw, 1929), pp. 13 ff., 67 ff.) We borrow from Leśniewski only the basic idea of semantic categories and their type.

Lesśniewski cannot be held responsible for the wording of the definitions and explanations we offer, nor for the details of the content we assign to this term, since his definitions are not general, but apply only to his special symbolism, in a quite distinct, highly precise, and purely structural sense.

(2) 2 Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, vol. ii, part I (2nd. rev. ed. Halle/S., 1913), pp. 294, 295, 305-12, 316-21, 326-42.

2. ———. 1978. "On the Notion of Existence. Some Remarks Connected with the Problem of Idealism (1949)." In The Scientific World Perspective and Other Essays, 1931-1963, 209-221. Dordrecht: Reidel.

First published in Studia Philosophica IV (1949/50).

"I wish to discuss in the present article two notions of existence, namely, the notion of real existence and that of intentional existence. The results obtained I propose to apply to the interpretation of the idealistic thesis which denies real existence to things we encounter in nature according them only an intentional existence, and to base on this interpretation a criticism of this thesis.

The term 'exists' occurs in logical systems in which it is precisely defined.

Such a definition has been given by Russell and Whitehead and also by Leśniewski. Russell's definition is formulated in a manner which allows to apply the term 'exists' only to symbols of classes, relations and descriptions, but its application to proper names is not admissible. This means that an expression consisting of the term 'exists' and a proper name has, in Russell's system, no meaning at all. Leśniewski in whose calculus of names, called Ontology(1) , proper names belong to the same syntactical category as common names, defines the term 'exists' in such a way that every sentence in which the term 'exists' is conjoined with an arbitrary name, irrespective of whether this is a proper name, a class name, or a description, has a definite meaning.

For this reason, as well as because Leśniewski's definition seems closer to everyday language and is better known in Poland, we shall base our considerations on his definition of 'existence'. (p. 209)

(1) Stanisław Leśniewski, Uber die Grundlagen der Ontologie, Comptes rendus des séances de la Soc. Sci. Lett. Varsovie, Classe III, 23, 111 ~ 132.

3. Apostel, Leo. 1960. "Logic and Ontology." Logique et Analyse no. 3:202-225.

"Let us finally examine the fact that for certain logicians, logic was ontology. This was the case for Leśniewski and for Heinrich Scholz (deeply influenced by Leśniewski in this respect). Here the science of logic has quite explicitly as its object the study of certain very general laws of being. In the not well known work of Heinrich Scholz Die Metaphysik als Strenge Wissenschaft and in a famous paper by Leśniewski Über die Grundlagen der Ontologie (Comptes rendus des Séances de la Société des Sciences et des Lettres de Varsovie, classe III, 1930), these opinions have been expressed. Recently they have been clearly explained and analysed by Czesław Lejewski in Logic and Existence (British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1954-1955, p. 104-119) and in On Leśniewskťs ontology (December 1958, Ratio). It will perhaps astonish the reader that we examine such a very divergent view in this context. The reason however is that the definition of existence we meet in Leśniewski's Ontology (we regret not to have been able to consult Prof. Scholz'book) is extremely close to the definitions we have been studying." (pp. 213-214)

4. Asenjo, F. G. 1977. "Leśniewski's Work and Nonclassical Set Theories." Studia Logica no. 36:249-255.

"I. The heuristic value of Leśniewski's mereology

This is the thesis to be upheld. Leśniewski's conception of collective class and of the relationships between parts and wholes is not an idiosyncratic aberration that leads away from sound classical ideas but is, rather, an open door to a world of fresh, alternative ways of looking at the notion of aggregate. Since axiomatic set theory is by no means a closed book and is still today under intensive examination particularly stimulated by Cohen's results on the continuum problem every approach to the idea of aggregate that helps free the mind from traveling well-worn grooves should be welcome indeed. From this point of view, it is a disservice to Leśniewski's originality of outlook to interpret mereology as a Boolean algebra without a zero. Although legitimate from other viewpoints, here such an interpretation would hide more than it reveals. Further, in attempting to pursue the ramifications of Leśniewski's mereology it does not help to add individual atoms to his theory in order to force it into line with current set-theoretic conceptions. The fact that Leśniewski was not trapped by prevailing atomistic prejudices is very much to his credit; this was definitely an intended position on his part at the time of mereology's inception, not an omission, even if later on his feelings about the proper role of individuals may have been less assertive if that is really so." (p. 249)

5. Badejo, O. O. 2011. "Bivalence, Classical Logic and the Problem of Contingent Statements." Lagos Notes and Records no. 17:27-46.

Abstract: "The main objective of this paper is to argue that the principle of bivalence is right, contrary to the view of some philosophers. To fulfil this objective, the paper examined some arguments raised in Philosophy of Logic about the principle of bivalence starting from Aristotle"s challenge to the principle of bivalence based on the idea that the principle cannot accommodate contingent statements. The paper examined Lukasiewicz's challenge of the principle of bivalence and Leśniewski's response to him. The paper evaluated these debates, in Philosophy of Logic, to determine if the principle of bivalence should be rejected. The paper employed the methods of logic. The study showed that the principle of bivalence had been misunderstood by some of the most influential proponents of many-valued logic, for example, Łukasiewicz. It was established that the terms true (or false), in the arguments against bivalence, was used in an epistemic sense and not a logical sense. It was established that contrary to Aristotle's and Lukasiewicz's assumption, contingent statements were necessarily either true or false; hence, the principle of bivalence could accommodate contingent statements. The paper concluded that the principle of bivalence is not in any way limited; it is the core of logic; Furthermore, there may be no conflict between the principle of bivalence and other systems of logic that are not strictly bivalent, if their justification does not rely on a rejection of the principle of bivalence."

6. Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua. 1960. "On categorical and phase structure grammars." The Bulletin of the Research Council of Israel no. 9F:1-16.

Reprinted as Chapter 8 in Y. Bar-Hillel, Language and Information: Selected Essays on their Theory and Application, Chichester: Addison-Wesley 1964, pp. 99-115.

"The present chapter is dedicated to a study of certain more complex types of grammars discussed by Chomsky, which we call simple phrase structure grammars (SPGs), and their relation to what we propose to call categorial grammars (CGs), certain types of which were discussed by Leśniewski [88], Ajdukiewicz [1] and in Chapters 5 and 6.

The plan of this chapter is as follows. In Section 1, the historical background of these grammar types is sketched. In Section 2, the basic concepts to be discussed in this chapter are introduced. Section 3 contains the proof of the main result of the chapter, viz. the equivalence between SPGs and various kinds of CGs. As a corollary, these kinds of CGs are shown to be equivalent to each other. Section 4 contains a short remark on the adequacy of SPGs for representations of natural languages.

In the next chapter, we shall study the behavior of SPGs under Boolean operations and the relation between SPGs and finite automata; there we shall also deal with various decision problems connected with SPGs.

1. Historical survey

The Polish logician St. Leśniewski [88] introduced his theory of semantical categories for certain logico-philosophical reasons, under the impact of Husserl’s Bedeutungskategorien on the one hand and Bertrand Russell’s logical types on the other. However, this theory remained almost unnoticed outside of Poland until, in 1935, K. Ajdukiewicz [1] presented a more generally accessible version of it. In its full rigor, it was meant to apply not so much to natural languages as to artificial language systems and among these more specifically to those written in the so-called Polish (parenthesis-free) notation, i.e., the notation in which the operators (or functors) are always written to the immediate left of their arguments.

This notation allows us, for instance, to distinguish without the use of parentheses between arithmetical expressions which in the ordinary notation are distinguishable only by the use of parentheses. Instead of (a + b)-c and a +(b-c), for instance, the Polish notation has - + abc and +a:be, respectively." (pp. 99-100)

References

[1] K. Ajdukiewicz. Die syntaktische Konnexität. Studia philosophica, vol. 1 (1935), pp. 1-27.

[88] S. Leśniewski. Grundziige eines neuen Systems der Grundlagen der Mathematik, Fundamenta mathematicae, vol. 14 (1929), pp. 1-81.

7. Belnap, Nuel. 1993. "On Rigorous Definitions." Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition no. 72:115-146.

"Definitions are crucial for every serious discipline.(1) Here I consider them only in the sense of explanations of the meanings of words or other bits of language. (I use "explanation" as a word from common speech, with no philosophical encumbrances.) As a further limitation I consider definitions only in terms of well-understood forms of rigor. Prominent on the agenda will be the two standard "criteria" - eliminability and conservativeness - and the standard "rules". There is, alas, hardly any literature on this topic. The discussion will therefore be preliminary, all too elementary, and imperfectly plain." (p. 115)

(...)

"History. The standard theory of definitions seems to be due to Leśniewski, who modeled his "directives" on the work of Frege, but I cannot tell you where to find a history of its development. The standard citation seems to be Leśniewski 1931; see also Leśniewski 1981 (Collected works). I learned most of the theory first from Suppes 1957, who credits Leśniewski (p. 153, note). There should have been mini-histories in either Church 1956 or Curry 1963, but I couldn't find what I was looking for. The matter was well understood by Frege (e.g. in Frege 1964), Couturat (see Couturat 1905), Carnap (e.g. in Carnap 1937) and Tarski (see e.g. Tarski 1941 for some well-chosen elementary words). Tarski himself contributed heavily to the theory, as evidenced in the material translated and reprinted in Tarski 1956. There Tarski gives the dates and circumstances of his own early contributions in the 20s and 30s. But no one of these lays out an account of the history of the matter in its beginnings. The standard histories of logic (Bochenski 1956, Kneale and Kneale 1962) do not discuss modem theories of definition. Neither does Kneebone 1963. Neither does Church's article on "definition" in Runes 1962. The 207-page book Robinson 1950 neither discusses the technical theory nor refers to its history (though there is some reference to the history of nontechnical discussions). The definition article in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1967) [*] does not even mention Leśniewski. The only useful general references I happen to know are the definition article in the Dictionary of Logic, Marciszewski 1981, and some penetrating paragraphs and authoritative citations in Luschei 1962 (see especially pp. 36-37 and nn. 34 and 78)." (pp. 117-118)

(1 Thank to A. Gupta and J. Tappenden for many-sided help.

[*] Raziel Abelson, “Definition,” pp. 314–324 in volume 2.

References

Bochenski, J. (1956) Formale Logik, Freiburg, K. Alber. Translated and edited by I. Thomas, A History of Formal Logic, second edition, New York, Chelsea Publishing Company, 1970.

Carnap, P. (1937) The Logical Syntax of Language, International library of psychology, philosophy and scientific method, New York, Harcourt, Brace. Translation of Logische Syntax der Sprache by A. S. Smeaton (Countess von Zeppelin).

Church, A. (1956) Introduction to Mathematical Logic, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press.

Couturat, L. (1905) "Les definitions mathematiques," L'Enseignement mathematique 7, 27-40.

Curry, H. (1963) Foundation of Mathematical Logic, New York, McGraw-Hill, Inc.

Frege, G. (1964) The Basic Laws of Arithmetic; Exposition of the System, Berkeley, University of California Press. Translated and edited, with an introduction, by M. Furth. The translation is of "the introductory portions of the first volume and an epilogue appended to the second."

Kneale, W. and Kneale, M (1962) The Development of Logic, Oxford, The Clarendon Press. Reprinted from corrected sheets of the first edition, 1966.

Kneebone, G. T. (1963) Mathematical Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics, Princeton, NJ, New York, Toronto, London, D. van Nostrand Publishing Company.

Leśniewski, S. (1931), "Jber Definitionen in der sogenannten Theorie der Deduktion," Comptes rendus des seances de la Societe des Science et des Lettres de Varsovie, Classee III, 24, 289-309.

Leśniewski, S. (1981) Collected Works. S. J. Surma, J. T. J. Srzednicki, and D. I. Barnett (eds.), Synthese library, vol. 118, Boston, D. Reidel Publishing Company.

Luschei, E. C. (1962) The Logical Systems of Leśniewski, Amsterdam, North-Holland Publishing Company.

Marciszewski, W. (1981) "Definition." In: Marciszewski, W. (ed.), Dictionary of Logic, pp. 89-96. The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff.

Robinson, R. (1950) Definition, Oxford, The Clarendon Press.

Runes, D. D. (1962) Dictionary of Philosophy, Totowa, NJ, Littlefield, Adams

Suppes, P. (1957) Introduction to Logic, Princeton NJ, New York, Toronto, London, D. van Nostrand Publishing Company.

Tarski, A. (1941) Introduction to Logic and to the Methodology of Deductive Sciences. Enlarged and revised edition, New York, Oxford University Press. Translated by Olaf Helmer from a work that appeared in Polish in 1936 and the in German translation in 1937.

Tarski, A. (1956) Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics, London and Oxford, The Clarendon Press.

[For a recent study see: Urbaniak, Rafal & Severi Hämäri, K. "Busting a Myth about Leśniewski and Definitions", History and Philosophy of Logic, 33, 2012, pp. 159.189.]

8. Betti, Arianna. 1998. "De veritate: Another Chapter. The Bolzano-Leśniewski Connection." In The Lvov-Warsaw School and Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna and Wolenski, Jan, 115-137. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"In 'De Veritate: Austro-Polish contributions to the theory of truth from Brentano to Tarski' Jan Wolenski and Peter M. Simons related an intriguing story of the "Austro-Polish obsession with truth".(1) Woleński and Simons mention the Bohemian philosopher Bernard Bolzano several times, with particular reference to absoluteness and sempiternity of truth in Twardowski and Leśniewski.

(...)

In the following I wish to point out three issues. First, in the so-called prelogistic writings the early Leśniewski defines truth of sentences in such a way that truth conditions are the same - mutatis mutandis - as Bolzano's.

Secondly, from this point of view the links between the early and the late Leśniewski, in this case between some parts of his early writings and some aspects of Ontology, are closer than they are commonly believed to be. Thirdly, in this perspective it can be shown that some of Bolzano's views come near to Leśniewski's Ontology. In discussing Bolzano's views I shall mostly follow Casari's reading of Bolzano's Wissenschaftslehre. The works of Leśniewski with which I am concerned are essentially 'An Attempt at a Proof of the Ontological Principle of Contradiction' (1912) and its Russian version published in Logical Studies (1913), the translation-revision by Leśniewski himself of the 'Attempt' and of his first article, 'A Contribution to the Analysis of Existential Propositions' (1911).(4)" (p. 115)

(1) Woleński-Simons (1989), ['De Veritate: Austro-Polish Contributions to the Theory of Truth from Brentano to Tarski', in K. Szaniawski (ed.), The Vienna Circle and the Lvov-Warsaw School, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 391-443] p. 391.

(4) Logical Studies are not included in Leśniewski's Collected Works and not available in any West European language.

9. ———. 2004. "Leśniewski's Early Liar, Tarski and Natural Language." Annals of Pure and Applied Logic no. 127:267-287.

Abstract: "This paper is a contribution to the reconstruction of Tarski’s semantic background in the light of the ideas of his master, Stanisław Leśniewski. Although in his 1933 monograph Tarski credits Leśniewski with crucial negative results on the semantics of natural language, the conceptual relationship between the two logicians has never been investigated in a thorough manner. This paper shows that it was not Tarski, but Leśniewski who first avowed the impossibility of giving a satisfactory theory of truth for ordinary language, and the necessity of sanitation of the latter for scientific purposes. In an early article (1913) Leśniewski gave an interesting solution to the Liar Paradox, which, although different from Tarski’s in detail, is nevertheless important to Tarski’s semantic background. To illustrate this I give an analysis of Leśniewski’s solution and of some related aspects of Leśniewski’s later thought."

10. ———. 2004. "Łukasiewicz and Leśniewski on Contradiction." Reports on Philosophy no. 22:247-271.

"It was in 1911 that Łukasiewicz and Leśniewski met. Leśniewski himself reported that at that time he had read Lukasiewicz's masterpiece On the Principle of Contradiction in Aristotle (1910),(1) and, as Lejewski knew from Łukasiewicz, he said he had come to criticize the author.(2) In the same year Leśniewski wrote "An Attempt at a Proof of the Principle of Contradiction", which was published in 1912 on Przegląd Filozoficzny and was addressed on the whole against Lukasiewicz's book.(3)

Whereas the role played by the principle of contradiction in the development of Lukasiewicz's ideas is generally speaking correctly underlined.s it is not so in Leśniewski's case. Surely the oblivion which covered Leśniewski's early writings prevented the scholars from regarding the issue worthy of inquiry in his philosophy.

Yet the controversy between Leśniewski and Łukasiewicz on the principle. of contradiction may be considered quite rightly a touchstone between their very distant philosophical attitudes, which remained that way also later.

It is hard to exaggerate the great weight Lukasiewicz's monograph had in the Polish logico-philosophical scene. Although polemically inspired, Leśniewski did acknowledge the importance of Lukasiewicz's work:

<My> results [...] on the whole oppose the theoretical theses supported by Łukasiewicz [...] But the polemical character <of some passages> should not arouse in the reader the erroneous conviction that I turn

a blind eye to the theoretical value of Łukasiewicz' s work, which I regard as one of the most interesting and original of the entire 'philosophical' literature known to me." (p. 247)

• Added in proof. This paper was written in 1996. Until the publication in this issue it has circulated in various versions and fonns. Although the bibliography has been updated for the occasion, the paper has not been revised as regards content.

(1) Cf. Leśniewski [1927/31], p. 169 (Eng!. trans!. p. 181).

(2) Cf. Lejewski [1995], p. 28.

(3) Cf. Leśniewski [1912].

(4) Cf. for instance Wolenski [1990], p. 191; [1989], p. 119; [1987], p. XXXIV

(5) Leśniewski [1912], p. 202. Translations are mine, unless otherwise indicated.

References

Lejewski, Czeslaw. [1995] "Remembering Stanisław Leśniewski", in: D. Miéville & D. Vernant (eds), Stanisław Lesnietosk! aujourd'hui, Groupe de Recherches sur la philosophie et Ie langage/Centre de Recherches Sémiologiques, Grenoble/Neuchätel.

Leśniewski, Stanisław. [1912] "Przyczynek do analizy zdan egzystencjalnych", Przegląd Filozoficzny XIV, pp. 329-345; Engl, transl, by S.J. Surma and J. Wójcik "A Contribution to the Analysis of Existential Propositions", in Collected Works, Vol. 1, pp. 1-25.

Leśniewski, Stanisław [1927/31] "On the foundation of Mathematics" in Collected Works, Vol. 1, pp. 174-382

Wolenski, Jan. [1989] Logic and Philosophy in the Lvov-Warsaw School. Dordrecht Boston: Kluwer

11. ———. 2006. "Sempiternal Truth: The Bolzano-Twardowski-Leśniewski Axis." In The Lvov-Warsaw School: The New Generation, edited by Jadacki, Jacek Jusliuz and Pasniczek, Jacek, 371-399. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

In 1913 Stanisław Leśniewski published his article on the sempiternity of truth, “Is Truth Only Eternal or Is It both Eternal and Sempiternal?” (Leśniewski 1913a).1 The paper, directed against Kotarbinki’s “The

Problem of the Existence of the Future” (Kotarbiński 1913), made an important contribution to the debate on the excluded middle current in the Lvov circle in those years.(2) The discussion involved at the same time absoluteness, eternity and sempiternity of truth, i.e. truth for ever and truth since ever, and had as ideal reference point Twardowski’s “On the So-Called Relative Truths” (1900),(3) where the founder of the Lvov-Warsaw School had attacked the relativity of truth. Contrasting Kotarbinski’s positions, Leśniewski defended “absolutism,” consequently taking sides with Twardowski.(4) Twardowski had revived Bernard

Bolzano’s ideas on the subject, and, mainly thanks to him, these became known in the Lvov-Warsaw School (see, for instance, Jadacki 1993, p. 191). " (p. 371)

(2) To the discussion belonged also Leśniewski (1913b).

(3) See Twardowski (1900), labeled henceforth in the text Relative Truths. I should warn the reader that the German translation of the latter omits some parts of the text. See infra, nn. 39, 45. This paper and Twardowski (1911) have finally a good translation by Arthur Szylewicz in Kazimierz Twardowski – On Actions, Products and other Topics in Philosophy, J. Brandl and J. Wolenski (eds.), Rodopi, Atlanta/Amsterdam, 1999, resp. pp. 147-168 and 103-132.

References

Coniglione, F., R. Poli and J. Wole?ski, eds. (1993). Polish Scientific Philosophy: The Lvov-Warsaw School. Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, vol. 28. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Jadacki, J.J. (1993). Kazimierz Twardowski’s Descriptive Semiotics. In: Coniglione et al., eds. (1993), pp. 191-206.

Leśniewski, S. (1913a). Czy prawda jest tylko wieczna czy tez i wieczna i odwieczna? [Is Truth Only Eternal or Is It Both Eternal and Sempiternal?] Nowe Tory 8, 493-528.

English translation: Is All Truth Only True Eternally or Is It also True without a Beginning? In: Leśniewski (1991), vol. 1, pp. 86-114.

Leśniewski, S. (1913b). Krytyka logicznej zasady wylaczonego brodka [A Critique of the Logical Principle of the Excluded Middle]. Przegląd Filozoficzny 16, 315-352.

English translation: The Critique of the Logical Principle of the Excluded Middle, in: Leśniewski (1991), vol. 1, pp. 47-85.

Kotarbiński, T. (1913). Zagadnienie istnienia przyszlosci [The Problem of the Existence of the Future]. Przegląd Filozoficzny 16, 74-92. English translation: Prolegomena to Three-Valued Logic, The Polish Review 13 (1968), 7-22.

Pelc, J., ed. (1979). Semiotics in Poland 1894-1969. Dordrecht & Warszawa: D. Reidel & PWN.

Twardowski, K. (1900). O tak zwanych prawdach wzglednych [On the So-Called Relative Truths]. (...) German translation: Über sogenannte relative Wahrheiten. Archiv für systematische Philosophie 8 (1902),

415-447; reprinted in: D. Pearce and J. Wole?ski (eds.), Logische Rationalismus: Ausgewählte Schriften der Lemberg-Warschauer Schule (Frankfurt: Athenäum, 1988), pp. 38-58.

Twardowski, K. (1911). O czynno?ciach i wytworach: Kilka uwag z pogranicza psychologii, gramatyki i logiki [On Actions and Products: Some Remarks on the Border Area of Psychology, Grammar and Logic]. Kraków: Gubrynowicz i syn.English translation of some fragments: Actions and Products: Comments on the Border Area of Psychology, Grammar and Logic, in: Pelc, ed. (1979), pp. 13-27.

12. ———. 2006. "The Strange Case of Savonarola and the Painted Fish. On the Bolzanization of Polish Thought." In Actions, Products, and Things. Brentano and Polish Philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz, 55-81. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

"I have previously discussed in several papers specific Bolzanian elements present in the Polish tradition. This paper will not, for the most part, add anything in particular to that. The new - and rather blunt hypothesis to be put forward here is that, despite appearances, Twardowski also contributed de facto to slowing down the reception of Bolzano's most modem logical discoveries. For in Poland Bolzano was to remain one logician among many for rather long. It was chiefly thanks to two factors that Bolzano's star could, slowly, begin to rise in Poland, or, at least, that the fundamental achievements of his logic could be known. One factor is antipsychologistic (more precisely Platonistic) influence coming from Husserl and from Twardowski's student Łukasiewicz. The other factor is the change in the conception of logic which took Polish logic from, say, Sigwart, to Tarski through Leśniewski and Łukasiewicz," (p. 55)

13. ———. 2008. "Polish Axiomatics and its Truth: On Tarski’s Lesniewskian Background and the Ajdukiewicz Connection." In New Essays on Tarski and Philosophy, edited by Patterson, Douglas, 44-71. New York: Oxford Univerrsity Press.

"In the first chapter of his monograph Tarski credits Leśniewski with crucial results on the semantics of natural language. As I showed in a previous chapter (Betti 2004), Lesniewski’s early solution to the Liar reveals that it was indeed he who first avowed the impossibility of giving a satisfactory theory of truth for ordinary language, as well as the necessity of sanitation of the latter for scientific purposes. Of Lesniewskian origin were also Tarski’s analysis of quotation marks, the idea that truth is language-relative, the notion of a closed language, and the finding that natural language is such a language.

But these are all negative results concerning the semantics of natural language, a diagnosis, if you will. How about the positive results, the medicine? Tarski’s own solution to the Liar and the cure he proposes for the illnesses of natural language apparently did not coincide with his master’s ultimate remedy—at least, nothing similar to the very idea of Tarski’s enterprise can be found in Leśniewski. As Tarski wrote in 1944,

Leśniewski did not anticipate the possibility of a rigorous development of the theory of truth, and still less of a definition of this notion. (1944, 695 note 7)

The reason for this is probably that a Tarski-like theory of truth must have appeared to Leśniewski to offer an insufficiently intuitive solution to the malady of semantic antinomy. But in what sense exactly? A proper answer is still missing. Lack of textual evidence is one reason, but another, equally important reason is that, from a broader point of view, we also do not yet know enough about the specific cultural context in

which the answer must be sought. It is the aim of this chapter to address some aspects of this context." (pp. 44-45)

References

Betti, Arianna (2004) ‘‘Lesniewski’s Early Liar, Tarski and Natural Language.’’ Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 147: 267–87.

Tarski, Alfred 1944) ‘‘The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics.’’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 4: 341–76. Page numbers refer to the reprint in Tarski (1986b): 661–99.

___ (1986b) Collected Papers, S. Givant and R. Mackenzie (eds.), 4 vols. Birkhäuser, Basel.

14. ———. 2009. "Leśniewski’s Systems and the Aristotelian Model of Science." In The Golden Age of Polish Philosophy: Kazimierz Twardowski's Philosophical Legacy, 93-111. Dordrecht: Springer.

"The systems of Lessniewski, like Frege’s, have an unmistakably old-fashioned flavour.

They stand to, say, post-Tarskian, post-Gödelian, post-Hilbertian logic like traditional peasant Tuscan bread soup stands to molecular fusion kitchen. Why is that?

According to suggestions recently put forward, which rely on van Heijenoort’s opposition “Logic as Language vs. Logic as Calculus”, or similar dichotomies, Lesniewski’s attitude to logic was similar to Frege’s insofar as it matched Frege’s “Logic as Language” rather than Boole’s and Schröder’s “Logic as Calculus”.(1) What grounds the old-fashioned aura of Lesniewski’s systems, so goes the suggestion, is Lesniewski’s adherence to the “Logic as Language” paradigm.

Is this correct? In introducing his opposition, van Heijenoort builds on a remark by Frege on the Begriffsschrift as a system embodying two Leibnizian ideals that are in fact not opposed: lingua characteristica and calculus ratiocinator (van Heijenoort 1967: 233). But van Heijenoort’s dichotomy remains very sketchy, so sketchy that one does not seem to get very far by applying it. Two things can be done to save its gist. One is beefin it up. This was done by Jaakko Hintikka in his refurbished Language as Universal Medium vs. Language as Calculus. The other option is tracing the source of van Heijenoort’s opposition in the history of

philosophy, and go back, if at all possible, where it all started. In this paper I shall go for the latter. I shall leave for another occasion an account of why I think this is a much more fruitful option than Hintikka’s. For my purposes here it will suffice to show that there is another way to account for Lesniewski’s conservatism, a way that makes appeal to a millennia-old recipe for building proper deductive systems: a venerable model of scientific rationality to which I will refer in what follows as The Aristotelian Model of Science. The main purpose of this paper is to illustrate, then, that Lesniewski’s systems follow this model closely." (p. 93)

(1) Cf. Sundholm (2003: 113), whom I follow in my (2004).

References

Betti, Arianna (2004) ‘Lesniewski’s Early Liar, Tarski and Natural Language’, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic, 127, 267–287.

van Heijenoort, Jean (1967) ‘Logic as Language and Logic as Calculus’, Synthese 17, 324–30.

Sundholm, Göran (2003) ‘Tarski and Leśniewski on languages with meaning versus languages without use – A 60th Birthday Provocation for Jan Wolenski’, in: J. Hintikka, T. Czarnecki, K.Kijania-Placek, T. Placek, A. Rojszczak† (eds.) Philosophy and Logic – In Search of the Polish Tradition, Essays in honour of Jan Wolenski on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 109–128.

15. ———. 2010. "Leśniewski’s characteristica universalis." Synthese no. 174:295-314.

Abstract: "Leśniewsk’s systems deviate greatly from standard logic in some basic features. The deviant aspects are rather well known, and often cited among the reasons why Leśniewski’s work enjoys little recognition. This paper is an attempt to explain why those aspects should be there at all. Leśniewski built his systems inspired by a dream close to Leibniz’s characteristica universalis: a perfect system of deductive theories encoding our knowledge of the world, based on a perfect language. My main claim is that Leśniewski built his characteristica universalis following the conditions of de Jong and Betti’s Classical Model of Science (2008) to an astounding degree.

While showing this I give an overview of the architecture of Leśniewski’s systems and of their fundamental characteristics. I suggest among others that the aesthetic constraints Leśniewski put on axioms and primitive terms have epistemological relevance."

References

de Jong, W. R., & Betti, A. (2008). The classical model of science: A millennia-old model of scientific rationality. Synthese [Synthese (2010) 174:185–203]

16. ———. 2014. "Leśniewski, Tarski and the Axioms of Mereology." In The History and Philosophy of Polish Logic: Essays in Honour of Jan Woleński, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna and Placek, Tomasz, 242-258. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

"Alongside a respect for philosophically informed formal work and an interest in all things Polish, Jan Woleński and I share a profound admiration for Leśniewski’s oeuvre. As Jan once told me, you can work on Leśniewski for your whole life. Indeed so. Eighteen years after I first met him, on a morning in late March at a bus stop in Sucha Bezkidzka, Southern Poland, here’s a story about the axioms of Leśniewski’s mereology, and Tarski’s complicated role in it.

This story is for Jan." (p. 242)

17. Blass, Andreas. 1994. "A faithful modal interpretation of propositional ontology." Mathematica Japonica no. 40:217-223.

"Inoué [2] gave an interpretation of Ishimoto' propositional ontology [3] in the modal logic K. (The terminology used here will be defined below). He showed that his interpretation is not faithful in general although it is for a restricted class of formulas. In this note we present another interpretation of propositional ontology in K and we show that it is faithful.

In Section 1, we provide some known background information about Leśniewski's ontology and certain fragments of it. We include more in this section than is strictly needed in what follows in order to place propositional ontology in its proper context. Section 2 contains the definitions of propositional ontology and K, and a discussion of their models. In Section 3,

we describe our interpretation, compare it with Inoué's and prove its correctness.

Finally, Section 4 contains the proof that this interpretation is faithful." (p. 217)

References

[2} T. Inouè, Partial interpretations of Leśniewski's epsilon in modal and intentional logics. Lecture at Logic Colloquium '93 Keele. England. July 1993.

18. Bocheński, Jósef. 1949. "On the syntactical categories." The New Scholasticism no. 23:257-280.

Reprinted in Albert Menne (ed.), Logic-Philosophical Studies, Dordrecht: Reidel 1962, pp. 67-87.

"The theory of the syntactical categories (abridged here as 'SCs') has, since the twelfth century, been a traditional part of Scholastic logic. As a matter of fact we owe the idea to Aristotle.(1) After the barbarous period which for logic constitutes the modem centuries (sixteenth century-1847), the first new logicians showed hardly any interest in it. Husserl was the first to outline at the beginning of our century a sketch of a theory of SCS.(2)

Nearly thirty years later, St. Leśniewski elaborated a rigorous system of it(3) - but the present author knows only of one general study on that subject in existence, a paper by Professor K. Ajdukiewicz.(4) It would

seem that in spite of the brilliant development of other parts pertaining to the logical syntax, recent logicians are apt to neglect somewhat the problems of the SC.(5)" (p. 67)

(1) On Interpretation 1-5. 16a1-17a24. This is the first known attempt to classify the SCs; some remarks contained in that part of the works of Aristotle are still unsurpassed, e.g., the definition of a symbol, involved in 16a 2aif., the definition of a sentence, 17a 3ff. etc. There is no doubt that the Scholastics have greatly developed the Aristotelian syntax. But - as is generally the case in the entire domain of Scholastic logic - we

have no information about it, since there does not exist a single satisfactory study on it.

(2) Logische Untersuchungen (Halle an der Salle, 1913) II, 294, pp. 305f; pp. 316f. pp. 326f. Husserl calls them 'Bedeutungskategorien' i.e., categories of meaning.

(3) Grundzüge eines neuen Systems der Grundlagen der Mathematik, Fundamenta Mathematicae, 11 (1929), 13f., 67f. It is unfortunate that St. Leśniewski (1885-1939) who was considered the most eminent Polish logician, died without having published more than a small part of the results of his research. Moreover, even those papers which have been published are seldom read or used.

(4) Die syntaktische Konnexität, Studia Philosophica, Commentarii Societatis Philosophicae Polonorum 1 (1935), pp. 1-28.

(5) The matter has been, of course, often mentioned and several definitions concerning it have been stated. Cf. e.g. A. Tarski, Der Wahrheitsbegriff in den formalisierten Sprachen, Studia Philosophica, 1, 261-406; R. Carnap, Introduction to Semantics (3rd ed., Cambridge, Mass., 1948), p. 43. Also the Grammarians have studied the subject, e.g. o. Petersen, The Philosophy of Grammar (London, 1924), pp. 96lf.

(...)

"The object of the present paper is to develop further the main ideas proposed by Professor Ajdukiewicz(2) by drawing a sketch of such a theory and applying it to some logical and ontological problems. The

method will be a rather informal one; the reader is presumed to know the symbolism and the technique of elementary mathematical logic(3); more complex notions will be shortly explained." (p. 68)

(2) The main ideas explained in I, 1-3 and I, 1 are derived from this important paper, (quoted in footnote 4 on page 67). However, Professor Ajdukiewicz also speaks of semantical, not of syntactical categories; and for the formulation of the definitions and laws the author of the present paper is alone responsible.

(3) A. N. Whitehead and B. Russell: Principia Mathematica. I (2nd ed., Cambridge, 1935); W. Quine, Mathematical Logic (2nd ed., New York, 1947).

19. Bochman, Alexander. 1990. "Mereology as a theory of part-whole." Logique et Analyse no. 129-130:76-101.

"Mereology is now a widely known general name for various theories concerning part-whole relationships (see Simons [13]). The notions of part and whole are highly placed among philosophical concepts and they have been regarded as an important area of philosophical investigation from the time of Aristotle, who gave us the first systematic attempt to explore and employ these notions. Despite much attention given to this area since then, the first formal theory of the part-whole relation, called mereology, was developed only at the beginning of our century by the Polish logician and philosopher Stanisław Leśniewski.." (p. 75)

(...)

"Contemporaneously with Leśniewski, Alfred North Whitehead was developing a philosophical theory, which used some means similar to that ofmereology (see Whitehead [15,16,17]). One of his aims was to build a

theory of space and time which would not be based on the notion of point (resp., instant) as a primitive. In order to define points in terms of extended regions, Whitehead proposed his 'method of extensive abstraction', according to which points are defined roughly as chains of infinitely converging regions, ordered by the relation of being part." (p. 76)

(...)

"As will be clear, the theory proposed below has much in common with Aristotle's views described above and hence could be regarded in some respects as their restoration(1). However, the proposed theory is intended to cover not only continuous structures, but discrete 'wholes' as well." (p. 78)

References

[13) Simons, P.,1987, Parts. A Study in Ontology, Clarendon Press.

[15) Whitehead, A.N., An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge, Cambr., 1919.

[16) Whitehead, A.N., The Concept of Nature, Cambr., 1920.

[17) Whitehead, A.N., Process and Reality, N.Y., 1929.

20. Borowski, Leslaw. 2010. "Some corrections to R. Urbaniak’s paper on ontological functors of Leśniewski’s elementary ontology." Reports on Mathematical Logic no. 10:249-255.

"In the abstract of his recent article (4) Rafa l Urbaniak announces:

We present an algorithm which allows to define any possible sentence-formative functor of Lesniewski’s Elementary Ontology (LEO), arguments of which belong to the category of names.

Other results are: a recursive method of listing possible functors, a method of indicating the number of possible n-place ontological functors, and a sketch of a proof that Lesniewski’s Elementary Ontology is functionally complete with respect to {∧,¬, ∀, "}.

Our claim is the author presented neither a correct algorithm, nor a correct method for intended tasks the sketch being just sketchy and therefore hard to judge. Still, if we were to base the proof on the faulty results

we could obtain wrong conclusions." (p 249)

21. Canty, John Thomas. 1968. "On symbolizing singularity S5 functions." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 9:340-342.

"In what follows Leśniewski's symbols for binary truth functions will be employed for singulary S5 functions and Lukasiewicz's symbols for truth functions will be retained in their usual role. In particular, C, E, and N are used for conditionals, biconditionals and negations (see [5]).

References

[5] Scharle, T. W., "A diagram for functors of two-valued propositional calculus," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, v. 3 (1962), pp. 243-255.

22. ———. 1969. "Leśniewski's terminological explanations as recursive concepts." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 10:337-369.

"In 1929 Leśniewski published terminological explanations for his system of logic [5] where he used certain concepts from his system of mereology along with others such as equiformity. In [1] Peano's axioms

for arithmetic are shown to be derivable in Leśniewski's system of ontology extended by an axiom of infinity. In that exposition use is made of a numerical epsilon, first defined in [2], in order to provide a characteristically ontological model for the natural numbers. It is shown there that analogues for the axiom, rule of extensionality, and rule of definition for the primitive epsilon (ε) of ontology are derivable for the numerical epsilon (ε∞). Thus, one has available for the numerical epsilon analogues of every thesis of ontology involving the primitive epsilon.

The numerical epsilon serves in this paper to reduce Leśniewski's terminological explanations to numerical concepts. That is, each terminological concept is shown to be definable as a numerical concept within

ontology extended by an axiom of infinity. Since the definitions to be given are recursive, the incompleteness of this extension of ontology is readily established." (p. 337)

23. ———. 1969. "Ontology: Leśniewski's Logical Language." Foundations of Language no. 5:455-469.

Reprinted in Jan T. J. Srzednicki, V, F, Rickey (eds.), Leśniewski's Systems: Ontology and Mereology, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1984, pp. 158-163.

"Leśniewski's system of ontology developed out of his investigations of the logical paradoxes which were of concern to logicians at the beginning of this century. In discussing Russell's paradox, he distinguished collective and distributive uses of nouns in a manner not unlike that of the medieval theory of supposition. Roughly speaking, he attributed the existence of the syntactic paradoxes, at least in part, to the failure to treat separately the uses he distinguished. His objection can be paraphrased by maintaining that the existence of paradoxes in Frege, for instance, can be traced to his axioms about classes which assert some of the properties of classes where 'class' is taken by Frege in a distributive sense and some of the properties of classes where 'class' is taken in a collective sense.(1) After his investigation of the paradoxes, Leśniewski developed a theory of collective classes which he eventually called mereology. In his expositions of this system, certain nouns and nominal phrases were clearly indicated as collective, but their logic was couched in a language which employed nouns in a distributive sense. That is, in formally presenting the logic of collective classes, Leśniewski relied on a theory of distributive predication which for a time lacked any formal exposition of its own. In the interest of making his investigations precise, Leśniewski then developed his theory of distributive predication which he called ontology. If, following Leśniewski's analysis of propositions about individuals, one maintains that such propositions are composed of a subject, copula and predicate, then his theory is captured by asserting that any proposition about an individual subject is true only if the subject of the proposition is unique and unempty, while the copula of the proposition is transitive." (p. 158 of the reprint)

(1) Sobocinski [1949-1950].

(...)

"Leśniewski's ontology remains an early source of a language whose terminology is thoroughly explained; whose coherence is contextually deter minate and unambiguous; whose type theory adheres closely to categories which must be recognized in ordinary language; and whose directives for development mirror the contextually determinate development that is to be expected of a vehicle for communication." (p. 163 of the reprint)

References

Sobocinski [1949-1950]. L'analyse de l'antinomie Russellienne par Leśniewski, Methodos, Vol. I, (1949), 94-107, 220-228, 308-316; Vol. II (1950), 237-257.

24. ———. 1969. "The numerical epsilon." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 10:47-63.

"In this paper* Leśniewski's system of ontology extended by an axiom of infinity is used to derive Peano's arithmetic. Section 1 gives the main theses of this derivation which parallels the work of [6]. Using the

numerical epsilon, defined in section 2, Peano's arithmetic is given a characteristically ontological model in section 3. Thus, the paper provides, for Peano's arithmetic, the two ways of treating logical concepts in

ontology, the one, protothetical (section 1), the other, ontological (section 3)." (p. 47, a note omitted)

(...)

"Finally, having supplied an ontological model for Peano's arithmetic in ontology (extended by an axiom of infinity), the incompleteness of this system will follow, if its directives are recursive. In this respect, the

numerical epsilon proves very useful. The directives for ontology were given by Leśniewski [3] in a list of terminological explanations which are developed by employing his mereological concepts. Now, the numerical epsilon provides an efficient means of modeling Leśniewski's original terminological explanations in Peano's arithmetic as given in section 3, thus showing the applicability of Gödel's incompleteness result to ontology.

The details of this work are left for another paper." (p. 62)

References

[3] [3] Leśniewski, Stanisiaw, "Grundzϋge eines neuen Systems der Grundlagen der Mathematik,'' Fundamenta Mathematicae, v. 14 (1929), pp. 1-81. "Uber die Grundlagen der Ontologie," Comptes rendus des seances de la Sociέtέ des sciences et des lettres de Varsovie, Classe III, v. 23 (1930), pp. 111-132.

[6] Whitehead, Alfred N., and Bertrand Russell, Principia mathematica, Vol. I-III, (second edition), The University Press, Cambridge, 1963.

25. Chikawa, Kazuo. 1967. "On Equivalences of Laws in Elementary Protothetics. I." Procedings of Japan Academy no. 43:743-747.

"In his paper [1], J. Stupecki has given some generalizations of the six laws that have described the properties of functions of one argument in elementary protothetics.

In this paper, by using the well known rules of inference and substitution we shall show that each laws on functions of one argument is equivalent to its corresponding laws of functions of two arguments. J. Supecki has not given the proofs of the equivalences

given below in his parper 1. The rules of inference and of substitution used in the systems of elementary protothetics has given in J. Stupecki [1] in detail." (p. 743)

References

[1] J. Siupecki: St. Leniewski’s protothetics. Studia Logica, 1, 44-112 (1953).

26. ———. 1968. "On Equivalences of Laws in Elementary Protothetics. II." Procedings of Japan Academy no. 44:56-59.

"In our previous paper [1], we have proved the equivalences of the two laws (i.e., the law of development and the law on the limit of a function).

In this paper, we shall prove the equivalence of the theorems (a) and (a’) which have been called the generalized law on the limit of a function. The rules of inference, substitution and replacement used in the systems of elementary protothetics has in detail given in J. Stupecki [2], and our paper [1].

References

[1] K. Chikawa." On equivalences of laws in elementary protothetics. I. Proc. Japan Acad., 43, 74-747 (1967).

[2] J. Siupecki: St. Leniewski’s protothetics. Studia Logica, 1, 44-112 (1953).

27. Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz. 2006. "The Young Leśniewski on Existentials Propositions." In Actions, Products, and Things. Brentano and Polish Philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Łukasiewicz, Dariusz, 107-120. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

"It was one of Brentano’s central ideas that all judgements are at bottom existential. In his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint he tried to show how all traditionally acknowledged judgement forms could be reinterpreted as existential statements. Existential propositions, therefore, were a central concern for the whole Brentano School. Kazimierz Twardowski, who also accepted this program (Twardowski 1894, 15f., 25), introduced the problem of the existential reduction to his Polish students, but not all of them found this idea plausible. In 1911 Stanisław Leśniewski published a paper under the title “A Contribution to the Analysis of Existential Propositions” where he criticised Brentano’s translation. According to Leśniewski the consequences of Brentano’s program would be absurd because according to Leśniewski all positive existential propositions are analytically true and all negative ones are contradictory. In his later works Leśniewski repudiated all his early writings (1911–1914) as philosophically immature and formally imprecise. “[…] I regret that they have appeared in print,” he writes, “and formally ‘repudiate’ them herewith […]”. (Leśniewski 1927–31, 198) But in spite of this severe assessment, these early papers are worth considering not only from a historical standpoint. As we will see, Leśniewski’s critique of Brentano is unsound, but it casts an interesting light on his understanding of certain basic metaphysical concepts." (p. 107)

References

Leśniewski, Stanisław, 1927–31. “On the Foundations of Mathematics”, in: Leśniewski 1992, vol. I, 174–382.

Leśniewski, Stanisław 1992. Collected Works, vols. I/II, edited by S. J. Surma, J. T. Srzednicki, D. I. Barnett, V. F. Rickey, Warszawa/Dordrecht/Boston/London: PWN / Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Twardowski, Kazimierz 1894. Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen, Wien: Hölder.

28. Clarke, Bowman L. 1981. "A Calculus of Individuals Based on 'Connection'." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 22:204-218.

"Although Aristotle (Metaphysics, Book IV, Chapter 2) was perhaps the first person to consider the part-whole relationship to be a proper subject matter for philosophic inquiry, the Polish logician Stanisław Leśniewski [15] is generally given credit for the first formal treatment of the subject matter in his Mereology.(1) Woodger [30] and Tarski [24] made use of a specific adaptation of Leśniewski's work as a basis for a formal theory of physical things and their parts. The term 'calculus of individuals' was introduced by

Leonard and Goodman [14] in their presentation of a system very similar to Tarski's adaptation of Leśniewski's Mereology. Contemporaneously with Leśniewski's development of his Mereology, Whitehead [27] and [28] was developing a theory of extensive abstraction based on the two-place predicate, 'x extends over y' which is the converse of 'x is a part of y'. This system, according to Russell [22], was to have been the fourth volume of their Principia Mathematica, the never-published volume on geometry. Both Leśniewski [15] and Tarski [25] have recognized the similarities between Whitehead's early work and Leśniewski's Mereology. Between the publication of Whitehead's early work and the publication of Process and Reality [29], Theodore de Laguna [7] published a suggestive alternative basis for Whitehead's theory. This led Whitehead, in Process and Reality, to publish a revised form of his theory based on the two-place predicate, 'x is extensionally connected with y'. It is the purpose of this paper to present a calculus of

individuals based on this new Whiteheadian primitive predicate." (p. 204)

(1) For an exposition of Leśniewski's system, see [16] and [23].

References

[7] de Laguna, T., "Point, line and surface, as sets of solids," The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 19(1922), pp. 449-461.

[14] Leonard, H. S. and N. Goodman, "The calculus of individuals and its uses," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 5 (1940), pp. 45-55.

[15] Leśniewski, S., " 0 podstawack matematyki," Prezeglad Filosoficzny, vols. 30-34 (1927-1931).

[16] Luschei, E. C, The Logical Systems of Leśniewski, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1962.

[24] Tarski, A., "Appendix E" in The Axiomatic Method in Biology, J. H. Woodger, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1937.

[25] Tarski, A., "Foundations of the geometry of solids," in Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics, transl. J. H. Woodger, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1956.

[27] Whitehead, A. N., An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1919.

[28] Whitehead, A. R, The Concept of Nature, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1920.

[29] Whitehead, A. N., Process and Reality, The MacMillan Company, New York, 1929.

[30] Woodger, J. H., The Axiomatic Method in Biology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1937.

29. Clay, Robert F. 1965. "The relation of weakly discrete to set and equinumerosity in mereology." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 5:325-340.

"This paper deals with a formal system introduced by Leśniewski called mereology, in which, as the name implies, the concept of "party of the whole" is primitive. This system studies the properties of the collective class. Mereology is based on ontology, a formal system in which " is " is the primitive term. Ontology in turn is based on protothetic or on propositional calculus and quantification theory.

The collective class differs greatly from the distributive class. However, under the condition, "the a's are weakly discrete", which we introduce, the collective class of the a's and the distributive class of the a's become alike with respect to equinumerosity. We are thus able to prove the analogs of three important set-theoretic theorems under this condition.

Two of these were previously known for the condition, "the a's are discrete", but the third is an entirely new theorem.

We then prove that for a certain class of statements dealing primarily with equinumerosity, discrete and weakly discrete are inferentially equivalent." (p. 325)

30. ———. 1966. "On the definition of mereological class." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 7:359-360.

Reprinted in Jan T. J. Srzednicki, V, F, Rickey (eds.), Leśniewski's Systems: Ontology and Mereology, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1984, pp. 229-230,

"Consider mereology axiomatized as in [1]. Sobocinski has posed the question, "If the usual definition of class, DMI, is replaced by

[Aa].... AεKI(a).=: AεA:[B]:a ⊂ el(B). = . Aεel(B),

is the resulting system equivalent to the original?". This note gives a negative answer. Theses A12 and A13, together with the two trivial models which follow them, show where the resulting system is weaker than

mereology." (p. 229 of the reprint)

References

[1] R. E. Clay: The relation of weakly discrete to set and equinumerosity in mereology, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, Vol. VI, 1965, pp. 325-340

31. ———. 1968. "The consistency of Leśniewski's Mereology relative to the Real Number System." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 33:251-257.

"It is known that Leśniewski constructed an interpretation of mereology in the real number system using binary expansions.(2) Unfortunately, this construction is no longer extant. The following paper, except for a slight variation, is an attempt to reconstruct this interpretation. Leśniewski probably considered sequences of 0's and 1's (except for the sequence of all 0's) and defined a first sequence as an element of the second if every place in which the first has a 1, so also does the second. Since some real numbers have two binary expansions, one must then construct a one-to-one function from the sequence of 0's and 1's onto the real numbers. Then the definition of element must be carried over to the real numbers by means of the function constructed. We shall eliminate the necessity for the function by considering decimal expansions of 0's and 1's (except for the expansion consisting only of 0's). We thus rule out expansions with all but a finite number of 9's and so no two expansions of the type we use give rise to the same real number. Our interpretation is thus constructed from a proper subset of the real numbers as opposed to Leśniewski's which used the whole set. This distinction is irrelevant to the matter of consistency. We shall consider the real number system as introduced by an axiom system within the framework of ontology. The real numbers are thus objects in ontology. Now if this system composed of the axioms and rules of ontology together with the axioms for the real numbers is consistent, then mereology is consistent. Note that this model does not restrict the rules of procedure to the basic semantical category so that the interpretation we are about to construct is an interpretation in the full sense of the word." (p. 251)

(2) B. Sobocin'ski recollected this fact.

32. ———. 1970. "The Dependence of a Mereological Axiom." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 11:471-472.

Reprinted in Jan T. J. Srzednicki, V, F, Rickey (eds.), Leśniewski's Systems: Ontology and Mereology, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1984, pp. 239-240.

"l;n this note we show that in the standard axiom system for mereology which follows, the reflexive axiom, M2, is dependent on M3, DM, M4 and M5." (p. 239)

33. ———. 1971. "A model for Leśniewski's mereology in functions." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 12:467-478.

"Introduction.

Mereology, it may be recalled, is Leśniewski's system consisting of:

(1) A system of propositional logic, upon which is based

(2) A system for characterizing the meaning of 'is', upon which is based

(3) A system for characterizing the relation of 'part' to the 'whole'.

The partial system of mereology consisting of just (1) is called protothetic. The partial system consisting of (1) and (2) is called ontology.

Up to now, the models of mereology that have been constructed have given an interpretation for the terms 'part' and 'whole' of (3) but have left the term 'is' of (2) uninterpreted (see [3]). In this paper we give the first model for mereology in which 'is* is interpreted as well. In other words, based on ontology, we have a model of mereology that includes a model of ontology." (p. 467)

References

[3] Clay, R. E., "The consistency of Leśniewski*s mereology relative to the real number system," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 33 (1968), pp. 251-257.

34. ———. 1973. "Two results in Leśniewski's mereology." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 14:559-564.

"In section 1 we prove that a certain characterization of class can be proved without the aid of auxiliary definitions. In section 2 we show that the main results in [l] still hold in the weakened system constructed by

replacing the original definition of class by the characterization given in section 1.1 In what follows we assume that the reader is acquainted with the Ontological Preliminaries in [1]."

References

[1] Clay, R. E., ''The relation of weakly discrete to set and equinumerosity in mereology," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, vol. VI (1965), pp. 325-340.

35. ———. 1974. "Some mereological models." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 15:141-146.

"In this paper we show that the non-empty regular sets of any topological space form a Boolean algebra with zero deleted." (p. 141)

36. ———. 1974. "Relation of Leśniewski's Mereology to Boolean Algebra." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 39:638-648.

Reprinted in Jan T. J. Srzednicki, V, F, Rickey (eds.), Leśniewski's Systems: Ontology and Mereology, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1984, pp. 241-252.

"It has been stated in Tarski [1956] and 'proved' in Grzegorczyk [1955] that:

(A) The models of mereology and the models of complete Boolean algebra with zero deleted(1) are identical.

Proved has been put in quotes, not because Grzegorczyk's proof is faulty but because the system he describes as mereology is in fact not Leśniewski's mereology." (p. 241 of the reprint)

(...)

"Since cardinality is primarily a distributive notion, one's intuition should not be violated if the collective class cannot describe it.

Since Leśniewski's mereology includes protothetic and ontology and Boolean algebra is usually given some other logical base, statement (A) needs to be put inio a precise context. There is also need for a formal

definition of complete Boolean algebra with zero deleted. Since statement (A) is in some sense not completely true, we break it up into the following two statements:

(1) Mereology is a complete Boolean algebra with zero deleted.

(2) Complete Boolean algebra with zero deleted is a mereology.

'We shall present two alternative ways of introducing partial ordering into Leśniewski's logic and show that in order for (2) to hold we must be unreasonably restrictive in our definition of complete Boolean algebra with zero deleted." (p. 242 of the reprint)

(1) Deleting zero from a Boolean algebra results in a systcm without a zero except in the case when the Boolean algebra has exactly two elements.

37. ———. 1975. "Corrections for my paper 'A model for Leśniewski's mereology in functions'." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 16:269-270.

I!n my paper, [1], an error was made. The analog for the category of names, denoted by N(σ), is too restrictive. It fails to have an analog for Λ, the empty name." (p. 269)

References

[1] Clay, R. E., "A model for Leśniewski's mereology in functions" Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, vol. XII (1971), pp. 467-478.

38. ———. 1975. "Single axioms for atomistic and atomless mereology." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 16:345-351.

"It is part of the folklore of the subject, that Leśniewski's mereology is neutral with respect to the existence of atoms."

(...)

"Using Rickey's functor " at " Sobocinski axiomatized atomistic mereology in [4]. Lejewski gave the first single axioms for atomistic and atomless mereology in [2]. In this paper we shall give shorter single axioms for both systems." (p. 345)

References

[2] Lejewski, C, "A contribution to the study of extended mereologies," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, vol. XIV (1973), pp. 55-67.

[4] Sobociήski, B., "Atomistic mereology I , " Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, vol. XΠ (1971), pp. 89-103.

39. ———. 1980. "Introduction to Leśniewski's logical systems." Annali dell'Istituto di Discipline Filosofiche dell'Università di Bologna:5-31.

40. Cocchiarella, Nino. 2001. "A Conceptualist Interpretation of Leśniewski's Ontology." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 22:29-43.

"A first-order formulation of Leśniewski"s Ontology is formulated and shown to be interpretable within a free first-order logic of identity extended to include nominal quantification over proper and common-name concepts. The latter theory is then shown to be interpretable in monadic second-order predicate logic, which shows that the first-order part of Leśniewski"s Ontology is decidable."

41. Davis, Charles C. 1976. "A note on the axiom of choice in Leśniewski's Ontology." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 17:35-43.

"This paper generalizes the results of [1] and hence a familiarity with [1] is presupposed."

(...)

"The paper divides naturally into four parts. Section 1 (2) introduces the general form of the definition of the generalized epsilon for nominal (propositional) categories and shows that a thesis having the same

structural form as the primitive axiom for Ontology is derivable. Section 3 (4) presents the demonstration of the equivalence of ACε « and ACH«, where a is a nominal (propositional) category." (p. 35)

References

[1] Davis, C. C , "An investigation concerning the Hilbert-Sierpiήski logical form of the axiom of choice," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, vol. XVI (1975), pp. 145-184.

42. Fleming, Christopher. 1996. Nominalistic Elements in the Work of Stanisław Leśniewski.

Open Access Master's Theses Paper 1547.

"Stanisław Leśniewski (1886-1939) is called a nominalist, even though his published works contain no developed philosophical doctrine. Yet, in order to understand and interpret his logical systems, we must understand his nominalism. This thesis will investigate, in detail, the philosophical origins of the "nominalistic" elements of Leśniewski's logical systems and will offer a characterization of his nominalism.

This thesis will provide a brief historical sketch of Leśniewski's career as a logician and of the times in which his logical systems were developed. A definition of nominalism will be developed within the context of the realist/nominalist debate over the existence of universals and a realists notion of universals will be given as a background against which Leśniewski's philosophical beliefs can be measured. The philosophical origins of Leśniewski's nominalism will be explored and will provide the basis for an

examination of the nominalistic elements of his logical systems and the basis for a characterization of his nominalism.

Leśniewski's nominalism avoids traditional classification and can only be examined indirectly through an analysis of his logical systems and through his attitude towards Russellian classes. In the final analysis, it is best to say that Leśniewski was a philosopher who created consistent logical systems in which to "talk" about objects."

43. Gessler, Nadine. 2007. "Abstraction and Nominalization in Leśniewski's Ontology." In Contemporary Perspectives on Logicism and the Foundation of Mathematics, edited by Joray, Pierre, 63-82. Neuchâtel: Centre de Recherches Semiologiques.

"In this paper I intend to examine certain features that characterize the logicist construction that can be performed within the categorial and expansive framework provided by Leśniewski's Ontology, by putting these features in relation with the question of procedures of abstraction and nominalization. The latter will be placed in the problematic framework of classical logicism, relative to which the treatment of this question acquires all its relevance, given the fully effective resolution that Ontology makes possible." (p. 63)

44. Grzegorczyk, Andrzej. 1955. "The Systems of Leśniewski in Relation to Contemporary Logical Research." Studia Logica no. 3:77-95.

"The logical symbolism used by Stanisław Leśniewski (1886-1939), his specific metalogical terminology and the philosophical introductions. to his formal works evoke in his readers the feeling of the peculiarity of the problems with which he deals. The question thus arises : in what relation are Leśniewski's investigations to the whole trend of logical research in the first half of the 20th century ? In the present paper I wish to give a brief answer to this question. Although I do not feel competent to give a proper historical account of Leśniewski's role in the development of logic, I believe that it might be useful to precede a formal logical discussion of his systems by some general histori? cal remarks." (p. 77)

(...)

"To sum up, Leśniewski's investigations in the years 1917 -1927 dealt with problems which interested all logicians; they were of the nature of discoveries and they were not published. In later years they gradually lost their actuality. Leśniewski's main conceptions, as to which his priority is unquestionable, date back to the first period. These are: the construction of a system of the simple theory of types (called by Leśniewski the system of semantic categories) simultaneously with Chwistek(6) and a philosophical explanation of that system on the basis of an analogy with everyday language; the establishing of the theory of classes (ontology) on the basis of a semantic analysis of the word "is" and thus giving a specific philosophical interpretation to the theory of classes; the construction of a theory grasping the intuitions connected with the word. "part" (mereology); the development of numerous syn.tactical concepts and the construction of many rules of inference which have henceforth become a part of the logical achievements of 20th century, above all the formulation of a rule of definition, the only one that was sufficiently exact; a contribution to the elucidation of severnl problems which were obscure at the time, such as the differentiation betwern. language and metalanguage, with Leśniewski's own solutions of all known logical antinomies;(7) and finally numerous critical remarks with regard to contemporary systems of logic. It is a well know fact that Leśniewski obtained all his results starting from his own specific philofcphical intuitions. Hence the philosophical foundations of his systems and their philosophical interpretations seem particularly interesting.

We shall not deal here with this aspect of his work and we shall concentrate on comparing Leśniewski's systems with other known systems. As we shall see his systems greatly resemble other systems created independently about the same time or somewhat later." (pp. 79-80)

(6) L. Chwistek, Zasady czystej teorii typów (Principles of the pure theory of types). "Przegl. Filoz." (Philosophical Review) Vol. 25 (1922), pp. 359-391.

(7) B. Sobocinski, L'analyse de, l'antinomie russellienne. ,,Methodos" Vol. I (1923) pp. 94-107, 220-228, 308-316.

45. Halina, Święczkowska. 2015. "On the Formal Approach to Describing Natural Language. Notes on the Margin of Leśniewski’s Ontology." Studies in logic, grammar and rhetoric no. 42:67-78.

Abstract: "This article is an attempt to recreate the intuitions which accompanied Leśniewski when he was creating his calculus of names called Ontology. Although every reconstruction is to some extent an interpretation, and as such may be defective, still, there are reasons justifying such reconstruction. The most important justification is the fact that both Leśniewski and his commentators stressed that ontology originated from reflections about ordinary language, in which sentences such as A is B appear in one of the meanings associated with them in Ontology, and that the users of the Polish language use such sentences accordingly and properly identify them. Assumed it is so, let us try, based on Leśniewski’s guidelines as well as comments and elaborations on Ontology (Leśniewski 1992: 364-382, 608-609; Kotarbiński 1929: 227-229; Rickey 1977: 414-229; Simons 1992: 244; Lejewski 1960: 14-29), to evaluate the accuracy of this approach, referring also to certain knowledge of the Polish language. To make it clear, this article is not about Ontology as a formal theory of language. It is solely an attempt to assess whether some syntactical constructs of the Polish language and this language’s properties are significant conditions of a proper understanding of Ontology, and whether Ontology is, in fact, in a relationship with the ethnic language of its author."

46. Henry, Desmond Paul. 1964. "Ockham, suppositio, and modern logic." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 5:290-292.

In a discussion (Philosophical Review, Jan. 1964) of the alleged difficulties of rendering the descensus of Ockham's suppositio-doctrine in terms of modern logic, G. B. Matthews is concerned with the inferences corresponding to the following theses:

. 1 If some man is animal, then this man is animal or that man is animal or ...

.2 If all men are animal then each man is either this animal or that animal or ...

.3 If some man is animal then some man is this animal or some man is that animal or ...

A If all men are animal then this man is animal and that man is animal and ...

5 (3x)(Fx . Gx) ⊃ (Fx1 . Gx1 . v Fx2 . Gx2 . v ...)

"The complaint that modern logic cannot analyse certain theses or forms of expression which occur in medieval logic has become a constantly recurring commonplace in the recent histories of logic; the offending items are dismissed as idiosyncratic (e.g. "homo est species"), or even as "nonsense" (as in the case of "All men exist"). The discussion just summarised attempts to diagnose exactly what the reason for this kind of failure amounts to in the cases described. I want to suggest that such complaints and diagnoses are based on an excessively narrow view of what "modern logic" is. After all, if it fails to accommodate itself to innocent little truths like "All men exist", small wonder that the slightly more complex truths of medieval logic should elude it. I shall now demonstrate the narrowness

of the view presupposed by showing the perfectly straightforward analyses of .1, .2, .3, and .4 which are furnished by the Ontology of S. Leśniewski, and which do full justice to Ockham's position. May account is, for the most part, based on C. Lejewski's "On Leśniewski's Ontology" (Ratio, Vol. I, No. 2 [1958]), and on conversation with him. This system of course by no means abrogates the perfectly reputable predicate calculus in terms of which the discussion was originally based."

References

Gareth B. Matthews, "Ockham's Supposition Theory and Modern Logic", The Philosophical Review, vol. LXXIII, pp. 91-99.

47. ———. 1969. "Leśniewski's Ontology and some medieval logicians." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 10:324-326.

"In the issue of this journal dated October 1966 (Vol. VII, No. 4, pp. 361-364) Professor John Trentman suggested limitations on my claim that Leśniewski's Ontology is of use in furnishing formal analyses of medieval logical theories, his grounds being that certain medieval theories deny what is called the "two-name theory of predication" allegedly common to Ockham and Ontology. Hence while the work of Ockhamists would be analysable with reference to Ontology, that of those "Thomists" who deny the two-name theory would not. Professor Trentman then goes on to suggest that for such "Thomist" analyses to take place, "something like Frege's functional analysis of predication", is needed to show the "disparity of semantic category that holds between the subject and the predicate", thereby implying that no such form is available in Ontology, and that the allegations about the inadequacy of the two-name theory could have escaped my notice.

Neither of these implications is tenable. Ignoring the second of them, I can deal with the first by exemplifying the manner in which the Ontology in question deals with the relations between names and verbs (i.e. functors which when completed with nominal arguments form propositions)." (p. 324)

48. ———. 1972. Medieval Logic and Metaphysics: A Modern Introduction. London: Hutchinson.

"Fortunately it happens that there exists a system of modern formal logic, unfamiliar to many logicians and philosophers, and sometimes misunderstood by others, which allows the investigator to overcome

all of the difficulties stated above, and from the standpoint of which many of the further difficulties which may still be raised can be satisfactorily resolved. This logic is that of the Polish logician S. Leśniewski (1886-1939), a partial account of which may be found in Part II below. This logic is anti-formalist, in that its theorems are interpreted truths, and not mere syntactically-permissible combinations of uninterpreted marks (cf. II §0.00). It has the capacity for the introduction of indefinitely many new parts of speech (semantical categories) and hence can adapt itself to the required degree of exactitude for the purpose of analysing medieval logic, as Part III will demonstrate. It employs an interpretation of the quantifiers which allows dissociation of the latter from its usually necessary entanglement with the notion of existence (II §2.23, II §2.25), and so is in a position to come to more exact terms with medieval discourse on this topic.

It follows that the purpose of the present work is three-fold. After the preliminary consideration of the field which is contained in this introduction, a practical account of one of the central theories of Leśniewski, namely his Ontology, will be presented in Part II. Thus armed, we will be in a position to expose in detail in Part III some examples of the way in which Ontology may be used in the analysis of medieval themes." (pp. 3-4)

49. Hintze, Henning. 1995. "Merits of Leśniewski type nominalism." Logic amd Logical Philosophy:101-114.

"For the sake of explaining the merits of a Leśniewski type nominalism, it should be made clear what is meant by „nominalism” and what the characteristics of this special type of nominalism are. To the first question we can find quite a lot of mutually inconsistent answers. Therefore I will just explain the distinction between two different nominalistic traditions which I hold to be fundamental. I think we should not just focus on the question which so-called abstract entities are rejected but as well look for basic entities nominalists rely on." (p. 102)

50. Hiż, Henry. 1984. "Frege, Leśniewski, and Information Semantics on the Resolution of Antinomies." In Foundations: Logic, Language, and Mathematics, edited by Leblanc, Hugues, Elliott, Mendelson. and Orenstein, Alex, 51-72. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"Frege sharply distinguished functions from objects. The interplay between the two domains led to serious complications to which many logicians of our century have addressed themselves. Perhaps the time has come to bridge this gap and to this end information semantics is a contribution.

Frege supposed that every function uniquely determines an object which is the value range of the function. He assumed also that functions with the same value range apply to the same objects. As is well known, Frege's postulates led to a contradiction. In order to analyze the problems involved in the antinomial character of Frege's theory, it is advisable to abstract from the intuitive sense of such wordings as 'is the value range of' (or 'is a class of'), and to note the relation by using the arbitrary letter 'a' and to see in it only what is stated in the postulates." (p. 51)

(...)

"In Section 3 and 4, I will report the details of Leśniewski's work. I will abstract from the less popular features of Leśniewski's theories. I will place these formulations entirely in the second-order predicate logic.

Leśniewski wrote a book about antinomies. It was never published and, so far as I know, the only handwritten copy of it vanished in Warsaw in 1944. Sobocinski published an extensive paper reconstructing in detail some of the main ideas and proofs.(5) Sobocinski's paper is my main source." (pp. 51-52)

(5) Bolestaw Sobocinski. 'L'analyse de l'antinomie Russellienne par Leśniewski'. Methodos, vol. I (1949), pp. 94-107; pp. 220-28; pp. 308-16; vol. II (1950), pp. 237-57.

Sections 2, 3, and 4 of the present paper constitute a restatement of what is in Sobocinski's paper. (Errata to Sobocinski's paper: p. 226, line 2 from the bottom, put a left-hand parenthesis before 'D'; p. 238, line 18, instead of'=' put'='; p. 238, line 24, instead of 'et' put 'est'.)

51. Hodges, Wilfrid. 2008. "Tarski's Theory of Definition." In New Essays on Tarski and Philosophy, edited by Patterson, Douglas, 94-132. New York: Oxford University Press.

"This chapter reviews what Alfred Tarski said about the theory of definitions during the years 1926–38. It is not the chapter I was expecting to write. I had believed that Tarski had his own well-formed views on definitions, and that I would be able to collect them together from his papers. Not so: his statements about central questions in the theory of definitions are often indirect and sometimes frankly careless. By

contrast he was extremely careful about any questions to do with the relationship between object theory and metatheory. So his true interests reveal themselves.

For the theory of definitions, the effect is a little like playing the violin with gloves on—if you can really play well with them on, you must be terrific with them off.

And so the work of Tarski that revolves around definitions, whatever its motives, did have a fundamental effect on our understanding of definitions. One measure of this is that these papers of Tarski are prominent in Robert Vaught’s masterly summary [73] of Tarski’s contributions to model theory—a part of mathematical logic with definitions close to its heart. Another discipline linked with the theory of definitions is formal semantics; when eventually the history of this discipline is written, Tarski should be named as one of its founders." (p. 94)

References

[73] Robert Vaught, ‘Alfred Tarski’s work in model theory’, Journal of Symbolic Logic 51 (1986) 869–82.

52. Indrzejczak, Andrzej. 2022. "Leśniewski’s Ontology – Proof-Theoretic Characterization." In Automated Reasoning: 11th International Joint Conference, IJCAR 2022 Haifa, Israel, August 8–10, 2022 Proceedings, edited by Blanchette, Jasmin, Kovács, Laura and Pattinson, Dirk, 541-558. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Abstract: "The ontology of Leśniewski is commonly regarded as the most comprehensive calculus of names and the theoretical basis of mereology.

However, ontology was not examined by means of proof-theoretic methods so far. In the paper we provide a characterization of elementary ontology as a sequent calculus satisfying desiderata usually formulated for rules in well-behaved systems in modern structural proof theory. In particular, the cut elimination theorem is proved and the version of subformula property holds for the cut-free version."

53. ———. 2024. When Epsilon meets Lambda: Extended Leśniewski’s Ontology. In Applications of Logic in Philosophy and the Foundations of Mathematics XXVII, Szklarska Poręba, Poland.

Abstract: "Leśniewski’s ontology LO is an expressive calculus of names. It provides a basis for mereology but allows also for direct formalisation of reasoning in natural languages. Recently its elementary part was characterised by means of the cut-free sequent calculus GO. In this paper we investigate its extended version ELO which introduces lambda terms to represent complex descriptive names. The hierarchy of three systems is formalised in terms of sequent calculi which satisfy cut elimination and the subformula property."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Stanisław Leśniewski: bibliography in English (Ino - Lej)

Studies on Leśniewski in English

1. Inoué, Takao. 1994. "The single axiom-schema of March 8th." Bulleliu of Lhe SecLion of Logic no. 24:115.

Get a single axiom-schema for Ishimoto's propositional fragment (see [2], [3] and [1]) of Leśniewski's ontology..

References

[1] T. Inoué, Hintikka formulas as axioms of refutation calculus, a case study, Bulletin of the Section of Logic, 24/2 (1995), str. 105-114.

[2] A. Ishimoto, A propositional fragment of Leśniewski's ontology, Studia Logica, 36 (1977), pp. 285{299.

[3] M. Kobayashi and A. Ishimoto, A propositional fragment of Leśniewski's ontology and its formulation by the tableau method, Studia Logica, 41 (1982), pp. 181{195.

2. ———. 1995. "Partial interpretations of Leśniewski's epsilon in von Wright-type deontic logics and provability logics." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 24:223-233.

"In this paper, we shall propose similar interpretations of Leśniewski's epsilon in von Wright-type deontic logics (i:e: Smiley-Hanson systems of monadic deontic logics) and in provability logics (i:e: the full system PrL of provability logic and its subsystem BML), respectively.

I believe that by this paper, we have a promising step into a recognition that existence, normative concepts and provability(2) have something common to their theories, which seems to me philosophically very interesting." (pp. 223-224)

(2) 2This list can surely be made longer. For example, the deontic logic dealt with in this paper can be interpreted in alethic modal logics with a propositional constant (see [1]).

References

[1] L. Aqvist, Deontic logic, in [2] , pp. 605-714.

[2] D. Gabbay and F. Guenthner (eds.), Handbook of Philosophical Logic, vol. II: Extensions of Classical Logic, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1984

3. ———. 2021. "A Sound Interpretation of Leśniewski's Epsilon in Modal Logic KTB." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 56:455-463.

"One motive from which I wrote [9] and [10] is that I wished to understand Leśniewski's epsilon ε on the basis of my recognition that Leśniewski's epsilon would be a variant of truth-functional equivalence ≡· Namely, my original approach to the interpretation of ε was to express the deflection of ε from = in terms of Kripke models. Another (hidden) motive of rnine for IM iso interpret L_1 in intuitionistic logic and bi-modal logic. It is well-known that Leśniewski's epsilon can be interpreted by the Russellian-type

definite descricription in dassical first-order predicate logic with equality (see [12]). Takano (18] proposed a natural set-theoretic interpretation for the epsilon. To repeat, I do not deny the interpretation using the Russellian type definite description and a set-theoretic one. I wish to obtain another interpretation of Leśniewski 's epsilon having a more propositional character." (p. 460)

References

[9) T. Inoue, Partial interpretation of Leśniewski's epsilon in modal and intensional logics (abstract}, The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, vol. l (1995), pp. 95-96.

[10] T . Inoue, Partial interpretations of Leśniewski 's epsilon in von Wright-type deontic logics and provability logics, Bulletin of the Section of Logic, vol. 24(4) (1995), pp. 223-233.

(12] A. Ishimoto, A propositional fragment of Leśniewski's ontology, Studia Logica, vol. 36 (1977), pp. 285-299.

(18] M. Takano, A semantical investigation into Leśniewski's axiom of his ontology, Studia Logica, vol. 44 (1985), pp. 71-77.

4. ———. 2022. "On Blass Translation for Lesniewski’s Propositional Ontology and Modal Logics." Studia Logica no. 110:265-289.

Abstract: "In this paper, we shall give another proof of the faithfulness of Blass translation (for short, B-translation) of the propositional fragment L_1 of Lesniewski’s ontology in the modal logic K by means of Hintikka formula. And we extend the result to von Wright type deontic logics, i.e., ten Smiley-Hanson systems of monadic deontic logic. As a result of observing the proofs we shall give general theorems on the faithfulness of B-translation with respect to normal modal logics complete to certain sets of well-known accessibility relations with a restriction that transitivity and symmetry are not set at the same time.

As an application of the theorems, for example, B-translation is faithful for the provability logic PrL (= GL), that is, K +□(□φ⊃φ)⊃□φ. The faithfulness also holds for normal modal logics, e.g., KD, K4, KD4, KB. We shall conclude this paper with the section of some open problems and conjectures."

5. ———. 2024. Nontrivial single axiom-schemata and their quasi-nontriviality of Leśniewski-Ishimoto’s propositional ontology L_1.

Preprint Septemper 15, 2024 (The 4th version).

Abstract: "On March 8, 1995, was found the following nontrivial single axiom-schemacharacteristic of Leśniewski-Ishimoto’s propositional ontology L_1 (Inoué [4]).

(AM8) ∈ab ∧ ∈cd. ⊃ .∈aa ∧ ǫcc ∧ (∈bc ⊃ .∈ad ∧ ∈ba).

In this paper, we shall present the progress about the above axiom-schema from 1995 and conjectures about it. Here we shall give two criteria nontiriviality and quasi-nontriviality in order to distinguish two axiom-schemata. As main results, among others, in §6 - §8, we shall give the simplified axiom-schemata (AS1), (AS2) and (AS3N) based on (AM8), their nontriviality and quasi-nontriviality."

References

[4] Takao Inoué, A single axiom-schema of March 8th, Bulletin of the Section of Logic (Łódź, Poland), Vol. 24 (1995), p. 115.

6. Ishimoto, Arata. 1977. "A Propositional Fragment of Leśniewski's Ontology." Studia Logica no. 36:285-299.

Abstract: "In spite of a number of expository works Leśniewski's ontology seems to remain unfamiliar in the contemporary logico-philosophical scene.

Among munerous attempts made so far with a view to making this unfamiliar system more familiar and less puzzling there is Prior's [5], in which the author proposes to interpret Leśniewski's ontology as a broadly Russellian theory of classes deprived of the entities of the lowest type, namely, of individuals.

The purpose of the present paper is to pursue the attempt thus initiated by Prior in the above cited paper. More specifically, it will be proveds among others that a propositional fragment of Leśniewski's (elementary) ontology represents the broadly Russellian theory of classes with no bound class variables and without any occurrences of free individual variables. This will be established through an embedding of the said fragment into first-order predicate logic with equality by way of a translation suggested by Prior. (For Prior's suggestion refer also to Sagal [6], which offers a criticism of such an attempt.)"

References

[5] A. N. Prior, Existence in Leśniewski and Russell. Foral Systems and Recursive Functions, Amsterdam, 1963.

[6] P. Sagal, On how best to make sense of Leśniewski's ontology, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, Vol. XIV, 1973.

7. ———. 1982. "A Lesniewskian version of Montague grammar." In COLING '82: Proceedings of the 9th conference on Computational linguistics - Volume 1, edited by Horecký, Ján, 139-144. Prague: Academia Praha.

Abstract: "We shall be concerned in this paper with the logical analysis of natural language on the basis of Leśniewski's ontology, which is a logical system without type-distinction between individuals and monadic predicates. This, it is believed, is also one of the features of natural language, and use will be made of this feature for developing a fragment of natural language."

8. ———. 1997. "Logicism revisited in the propositional fragment of Leśniewski’s ontology." In Philosophy of Mathematics Today, edited by Agazzi, Evandro and Darvas, György, 219-232. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"Introduction

Although not so popular in the contemporary philosophical and logical scene, logicism dating from Frege and Russell was the first attempt to declare arithmetic as invariantly valid for any model involving an infinite number of individuals.

Now, the purpose of this paper is to locate such an invariance in a more elementary part of logic, namely, a tiny fragment of Leśniewski's ontology, and it will be shown that the fragment to be called Ll is invariant with respect to any model including or not including individual-like names. (The said propositional fragment Ll was introduced by Ishimoto [1977] and has subsequently been elaborated by Kobayashi-Ishimoto [1982], Inoue-Kobayashi-Ishimoto [forthcoming] and others.)" (p. 219)

References

Inoué, T., Kobayashi, M., and Ishimoto, A [forthcoming] Axiomatic rejection for the propositional fragment of Leśniewski's ontology.

Ishimoto, A [1977] A propositional fragment of Leśniewski's ontology, Studia Logica, 36, 285-299.

Kobayashi, M., and Ishimoto, A [1982] A propositional fragment of Leśniewski's ontology and its formulation by the tableau method, Studia Logica, 41,181-195.

9. Iwanuś, Boguslaw. 1969. "An extension of the traditional logic containing the elementary ontology and the algebra of classes." Studia Logica no. 25:97-135.

"In this paper the term "traditional logic" denotes the system of Aristotelian syllogistic - in the axiomatic approach presented by J. Łukasiewicz in the paper [4] - enriched by the nominal negation. Besides the laws of the square of opposition, the law of conversion and the categorical syllogisms there are the laws of obversion, contraposition and inversion of propositions in this system(1).

The paper deals with some axiomatic extension of traditional logic. Its main aim is arriving at a calculus of names in which all of the known laws of the categorical propositions are preserved and which would admit the introduction of notions corresponding semantically to the relation ε (... is ...) of St. Leśniewski's ontology, empty and universal sets and such operations of the algebra of classes as addition, multiplication and subtraction of sets." (p. 97)

10. ———. 1969. "Remarks about syllogistic with negative terms." Studia Logica no. 24:131-137.

"The present paper deals with the axiomatic systems of the traditional logic (syllogistic) of I. Thomas, A. Wedberg and C. A. Meredith (see [7]). Besides, a new axiomatic system of the traditional calculus of names is presented here. This system differs - as I know - from all hitherto constructed axiomatic systems of syllogistic. The systems of Thomas, Wedberg and Meredith are based on the two-valued propositional calculus. The Aristotelian "a" (all... are...) and the sign of nominal negation (i.e. negation of nominal arguments) " ' " are primitive terms of the first and second system. The sign of nominal negation and the functor "e", forming universal negative propositions, are primitive terms of Meredith's system. Each of these three systems has different set of axioms and primitive rules of inference but they are equivalent (see [7], p. 310)." (p. 131)

(...)

"As it has been remarked Wedberg's system contains all laws of the traditional calculus of names. However, Wedberg's set of axioms does not characterize sufficiently the constants of the Aristotelian syllogistic and the sign of nominal negation. In particular - as it has been shown by the example above presented - Wedberg's system does not exclude the interpretation of some categorical propositions which is

not in accordance with the sense of current language or with some known interpretationof these propositions. It seems that Wedberg's system and the equivalent systems of Thomas and Meredith should be strengthened especially by the axioms which exclude the above presented interpretation.

In this paper I attempt to formulate such axioms. The system presented here differs from Wedberg's system among others by the fact that it is based on the first order functional calculus without identity. The number of the axiomatic systems of syllogistic (with nominal negation and without such a negation) is considerable and therefore the construction of new axiomatic system of this kind should be justified." (p. 132)

(...)

"It can be also shown that the whole elementary ontology of S. Leśniewski is a fragment of the system S_2 enriched by the axiom stating that each non-empty set includes a unit subset. (5)

The detailed discussion of these questions, which lies beyond the limits of this paper, will be presented in my paper "Traditional logic, elementary ontology and the algebra of classes"." (p. 136)

(5) This axiom has nearly the same content as the expression α in the paper [10] of A. Tarski (p. 53).

References

[7] A. N. Prior, Formal Logic, Oxford 1962.

[10] A. Tarski, Pojecie prawdy w jezykach nauk dedukcyjnych, Warszawa1933.

Carew Arthur Meredith (1953). "Single axioms for the systems (C,N), (C,0), and (A,N) of the two-valued propositional calculus". Journal of Computing Systems. 1: 155–164.

Ivo Thomas (1952). "A new decision procedure for Aristotle's syllogistic". Mind,. 61: 564–566.

Anders Wedberg (1949). "The Aristotelian theory of classes". Ajatus (Helsinki), 15: 299–314.

11. Iwanus, Boguslaw. 1973. "On Leśniewski’s Elementary Ontology." Studia Logica:73-119.

Reprinted in Jan T. J. Srzednicki, V, F, Rickey (eds.), Leśniewski's Systems: Ontology and Mereology, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1984, pp. 165-215.

"S. Lesniewtlki's calculus of names, often referred to as ontology, originated in 1920. This system like his other systems, mcreology and protothetics, was constructed with the aim on the one hand of bringing logic closer to the intuitions of natural language and on the other of searching for foundations for mathematics. Leśniewski's ontology, in spite of numerous intuitive and formal advantages and in spite of its considerable expressive potential, has bcen underrated and little known for a long time; although half a century has passed since the construction of the system no precise elaboration of it has yet appeared which takes account of its methodological aspect. This situation seems fundamentally to be due to the fact that Leśniewski published no paper presenting his system in more or less final form. The manuscripts that Lesniewtlki left and which covered the remIts of the years of his investigations into ontology were destroyed during world war II. Nor should one ignore the fact that most of the published papers, in which Leśniewski presented his system at the stage of formalisation, were written in a difficult and not easily intelligible style. Leśniewski's complicated symbols, although abounding in interesting ideat;, differ from the familiar logical and set-theoretic symbols and thus create an obstacle to the appreciation of his ideas. This explains the scarcity of exten:sive discussions of the ontology." (p. 165 of the reprint)

12. Jacquette, Dale. 2006. "Bochenski on Property Identity and the Refutation of Universals." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 35:293-316.

Abstract: "An argument against multiply instantiable universals is considered in neglected essays by Stanisław Leśniewski and I.M. Bochenski. Bochenski further applies Lesniewski’s refutation of universals by maintaining that identity principles for individuals must be different than property identity principles. Lesniewski’s argument is formalized for purposes of exact criticism, and shown to involve both a hidden vicious circularity in the form of impredicative definitions and explicit self-defeating consequences. Syntactical restrictions on Leibnizian indiscernibility of identicals are recommended to forestall Lesniewski’s paradox."

13. Jadacki, Jacek Jusliuz. 2020. Stanisław Leśniewski: Genius of Logic. Bydgoszcz (Poland): Oficyna Wydawnicza Epigram.

Translated from the Polish (2016) by Katarzyna Cullen.

"The book consists of five chapters. The focal point of the first chapter, “Life story — personality — milieu”, is the calendarium. Preceded by Leśniewski’s short (and probably only surviving) autobiography, it constitutes the most comprehensive chronological compilation of the events of his life thus far; it is mostly based on reliable sources — and sometimes directly on the relevant documents. A short description of Leśniewski’s personality has been made on the basis of remarks scattered in texts by various authors. The list of students is far from complete.

(...)

3

Chapter two, “Official assessments”, consists of requests and justifications attached to them, which concern the creation of the extraordinary chair for Leśniewski at the University of Warsaw and admitting him the title of ordinary professor. One of the opinions was probably expressed by Wacław Sierpiński (or possibly Stefan Mazurkiewicz?), the other — definitely by Łukasiewicz. Apart from historical value, they also have factual value, as they provide a substantial and competent description of Leśniewski’s work, presented by the greatest contemporary experts, who N.B. have not ceased to be experts up today.

4

In chapter three, “In the eyes of the environment”, there are texts in chronological order by the people who were in direct contact with Leśniewski at various points of his life.

(...)

5

A separate matter is the presence of texts by Leśniewski’s three students from a later period in his life: Jerzy Słupecki, Czesław Lejewski and Henryk Hiż, included in chapter three.

They all wrote about their master on more than one occasion.

Słupecki (1904–1987) published two biographical notes about Leśniewski. Although they contain partially similar information, I decided to include both, since some details are depicted in a different light in them. Also, Lejewski (1913–2001) published two, much more extensive, biographical notes about Leśniewski, but they overlap to a large extent. Therefore, I am including one of them and have added a fragment which is significantly different in both versions. The first of Hiż’s (1917–2006) texts was in a way commissioned by me (I write about it in more detail in the introduction to this text).

The second, although it partly overlaps with the first when it comes to information, is more extensive and contains many significant addenda to the first. This is why I decided to reprint both texts, as in the case of the biographical notes written by Słupecki. At the end of the chapter, I include short statements about Leśniewski found in the preserved legacy of one of his (quasi)mentors (Mścisław Wartenberg), colleagues (Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Leon Chwistek, Kazimierz Kuratowski, Czesław Znamierowski, and Roman Ingarden) or students (Bolesław Sobociński, Kazimierz Pasenkiewicz, nd Józef M. Bocheński).

6

In the fourth chapter, “From the correspondence”, I primarily reprint twenty letters written by Leśniewski to Twardowski, as well as a few letters from Twardowski to Leśniewski: all that has survived from the ravages of history and which is kept in the Archive of the Polish Philosophical Society in Warsaw.

7

Chapter five, “Work — the most important achievements”, is a discussion of the two main aspects of Leśniewski’s genius, written by myself." (pp. 10-15)

14. Joray, Pierre. 2004. "Logicism in Leśniewski's Ontology." Logica Trianguli no. 6:3-20.

Abstract: "The paper presents a logicist construction of Peano’s arithmetic based on the framework of S. Lesniewski’s extensional calculus of names (Ontology). The construction is shown to have three main advantages compared to Principia Mathematica’s classical solution. First, cardinality is defined without the use of classes or sets (even as convenient symbols). Secondly, the dependence of Peano’s axioms vis-à-vis the only non logical assumption (axiom of infinity) is clarified. At last, the use of Lesniewski’s definition rules shows that there is no need of an ad hoc reduction process of unpredicative functions to predicative ones (axiom of reducibility)."

15. ———. 2015. Teaching Leśniewski’s Protothetic with a Natural Deduction System. arXiv.org (Cornell University Library): 1-8.

Abstract: "Protothetic is one of the most stimulating systems for propositional logic. Including quantifiers and an inference rule for definitions, it is a very interesting mean for the study of many questions of metalogic. Unfortunately, it only exists in an axiomatic version, far too complicated and unusual to be easily understood by nowadays students in logic. In this paper, we present a system which is a natural deduction (in Fitch-Jaśkowski’s style) version of protothetic. According to us, this system is adequate for teaching Leśniewski’s logic to students accustomed to natural deduction."

16. ———. 2022. "Definition and Inference in Leśniewski’s Logic." In Logic in Question: Talks from the Annual Sorbonne Logic Workshop (2011–2019), edited by Béziau, Jean-Yves , Desclés, Jean-Pierre, Moktefi, Amirouche and Pascu, Anca Christine, 245-258. Cham (Switzerland): Birkhäuser.

Abstract: "Since Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica, explicit definitions are usually considered to be logically neutral. In this paper, we explore those explicit definitions which were called creative by the members of the Warsaw School.We explain why a definition can be necessary for the proofs of certain results in a formal system and why the eliminability of a definition does not imply its logical neutrality. For this purpose, we explore certain important but often neglected results about definitions established by Leśniewski, Łukasiewicz, and Tarski in the 1920s."

17. Kearns, John. 1967. "The Contribution of Leśniewski." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 8:61-93.

"The present paper aims at giving an account of the logical work of Stanisław Leśniewski. Many other papers, as well as a book, are available, which treat Leśniewski and his work. However, I feel that another paper is called for. None of the articles presently available gives a satisfactory account of what Leśniewski did and why he did it. And the book, The Logical Systems of Leśniewski, by E. C. Luschei, which is a complete

account of certain aspects of Leśniewski's work, does not make it easy for a person who knows little or nothing about Leśniewski to appreciate Leśniewski's work. The present paper attempts to give a brief, sympathetic, and relatively complete account of Leśniewski's work. What Leśniewski did and his reasons for doing it are both interesting and important—important enough to justify still another paper these many years after his death." (p. 61)

18. ———. 1969. "Two views of variables." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 10:163-180.

"This paper has been prompted by the article "Logic and Existence," by Czesiaw Lejewski, which appeared in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 5 (1954). In his article, Dr. Lejewski has considered how

to give a logical analysis of statements where we say that something does or does not exist." (p. 163)

(...)

"I feel that one can distinguish two fundamentally different ways of regarding variables—I will call these two views of variables. The first view I call the Russell-Quine view; the second is the Frege-Leśniewski view

(these will be abbreviated as R-Q and F-L, respectively).4 These two are not the only possible views, but I feel that they are the two basic views; other views will be variants of one or the other, or perhaps combinations of the two." (p. 165)

(4) I will not try to make any historical points about either Russell or Frege. In discussing formal systems and formalized languages, each of these men have made statements which suggest the views to which I have attached their names. It may well be that on other occasions they have made statements inconsistent with these views. With respect to Frege, for example, if one takes the account given by Professor Church in the introduction to Introduction to Mathematical Logic as a natural development of Frege's own view, then the considered Fregian view of variables is distinct from both the Russell-Quine and the Frege-Leśniewski

views.

19. ———. 2006. "An elementary system of Ontology." In The Lvov-Warsaw School - The New Generation, edited by Jadacki, Jacek and Paśniczek, Jacek, 87-112. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"According to Sobocinski (1949), the Polish logician Stanisław Leśniewski devised his logical system Ontology in order to capture or express the notion of a distributive class. However, it isn’t clear to me that Ontology involves any sort of classes. I think Lesniewski’s system is best understood as a theory concerned with some features of common nouns – in contrast to first-order theories, which focus on referring expressions and predicates of individuals. In this paper I will explain my understanding by developing elementary systems of Ontology in which the semantic account makes no provision for distributive classes. After developing these systems of Ontology, I will discuss collections, which I think are close to what Leśniewski understood distributive classes to be.

As it turns out, the elementary systems of Ontology are not suited for making statements about collections. I will finish by sketching changes in one system of elementary Ontology which allow it to incorporate statements about collections." (p. 87)

References

Soboci?ski, B. (1949). L’Analyse de l’Antinomie russellienne par Ledniewski. Methodos 1, 94-107, 220-228, 308-316; 2, 237-257.

20. Kielkopf, Charles S. 1977. "Quantifiers in Ontology." Studia Logica no. 36:301-307.

Abstract: "This paper is a reaction to G. Küng's and J. T. Canty's 'Substitutional Quantification and Lesniewskian quantifiers' Theoria 36 (1970), 165-182. I reject their arguments that quantifiers in Ontology cannot be referentially interpreted but I grant that there is what can be called objectual - referential interpretation of quantifiers and that because of the unrestricted quantification in Ontology the quantifiers in Ontology should not be given a so-called objectual-referential interpretation. I explain why I am in agreement with Küng and Canty's recommendation that Ontology's quantifiers not be substitutionally interpreted even if Leśniewski intended them to be so interpreted. A notion of an interpretation which is referential but yet which does not interpret ∃ as an assertor of existence of objects in a domain is developed. It is then shown that a first order version of Ontology is satisfied by those special kind of referential interpretations which read ∃ as 'Something' as opposed to 'Something existing'."

21. Kobayashi, Mitsunori, and Ishimoto, Arata. 1982. "A Propositional Fragment of Leśniewski's ontology and its Formulation by the Tableau Method." Studia Logica no. 41:181-195.

"In Ishimoto [2] there was proposed a propositional or quantifier-free subsystem of Leśniewski's ontology and it was proved, among other things, that the fragment can be embedded, via a translation, in first-order predicate logic with equality.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate this embedding theorem more constructively by means of the tableau method." (p. 181)

References

[2] A. Ishimoto, A propositional fragment of Lesnieski's ontology, Studia Logica XXXVI (1977), lop. 286-299.

22. Kotarbiński, Tadeusz. 1966. Gnosiology: The Scientific Approach to the Theory of Knowledge. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Original Polish edition 1929; second revised edition 1961.

Translated from the Polish by Olgierd Wojtasiewicz; translation edited by G. Bidwell and C. Pinder.

Part III: Elements of Formal Logic, Chater III: The logical relationships between sentences as dependent on the internal structure of such sentences. Moderne calculus of terms, pp. 190-211.

"Pursuant to these introductory remarks, we shall expound elements of the calculus of terms in principle after Lesniewski’s system. That author introduces only one axiom of the calculus of terms, and in that axiom there is only one primitive term—namely, the word “is” used as the copula between the subject and the subjective complement." (p. 190)

23. Kowalski, James George. 1977. "Leśniewski's ontology extended with the axiom of choice." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 18:1-78.

"Introduction This dissertation deals with the Axiom of Choice in the field of Leśniewski's Ontology. Ontology, a theory of pure logic structured along the lines of a logical type theory, was developed by Stanisϊaw Leśniewski (1886-1939) as a result of his own intensive analysis of the logical paradoxes and his dissatisfaction with the work of Russell and White head in Principίa Mathematica [34] and was intended to provide a secure and intuitively acceptable logical foundation for the formal development

of mathematics."

(...)

"In this dissertation we will show, first, that certain principles known to be equivalent to the Axiom of Choice in the field of Set Theory are also equivalent in Ontology. In particular we show the equivalence of the Axiom of Choice, the Kuratowski-Zorn Lemma, and the Well Ordering Principle though it will be noted that the sense of this equivalence in Ontology is analogous to, but not identical with, the sense of their equivalence in Set Theory. Second, since Ontology's type theoretical structure prevents the addition of the Axiom of Choice as a single formula, but requires the addition of a spectrum of formulas, we give a precise syntactical description of the conditions these formulas must meet. More specifically we provide a modification to the Rule of Ontology which will insure that the Axiom of Choice is available for each semantic category (logical type) expressible in Ontology." (p. 2)

References

[34] Whitehead, A. N., and B. Russell, Principia Mathematica, vol. I-III (second edition), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1963).

24. Kruszewski, Zygmunt. 1984. "Ontology without Axioms (1925)." In S. Leśniewski's Systems: Ontology and Mereology, edited by Srzednicki, Jan, Rickey, Frederick V. and Czelakowski, Janusz, 9-10. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Reprinted in Jan T. J. Srzednicki, V, F, Rickey (eds.), Leśniewski's Systems: Ontology and Mereology, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1984, pp. 9-10.

"Editorial Note: This is an abstract of Kruszewski's lecture delivered at the meeting of the Warsaw Institute of Philosophy on December 20, 1924. The report was published by B. Gawecki in "Przegląd Filozoficzny", Vol. XXVIII (1925) in Polish. Translated by Ewa Jansen."

"The speaker defines all fundamental concepts of ontology and proves as theorems the axiom and all equivalences formulated as definitions in Leśniewski's ontology. With respect to ontological definitions, i.e., definitions formulated by the use of the word "is" (e.g.: x is even = x is a natural number and x is divisible by 2), it is possible to give a general method by means of which equivalences of that sort are obtained straightforwardly given an appropriate logical definition." (p. 10)

25. Kulicki, Piotr. 2012. "An axiomatisation of a pure calculus of names." Studia Logica no. 100:921-946.

Abstract: "A calculus of names is a logical theory describing relations between names.

By a pure calculus of names we mean a quantifier-free formulation of such a theory, based on classical propositional calculus. An axiomatisation of a pure calculus of names is presented and its completeness is discussed. It is shown that the axiomatisation is complete in three different ways: with respect to a set theoretical model, with respect to Leśniewski's Ontology and in a sense defined with the use of axiomatic rejection. The independence of axioms is proved. A decision procedure based on syntactic transformations and models defined in the domain of only two members is defined."

26. Küng, Guido. 1977. "The meaning of quantifiers in the logic of Leśniewski." Studia Logica no. 26:309-322.

"Quine has claimed that Lesniewskian quantification is substitutional.

But this interpretation is incorrect (cf. Küng and Canty [16]). Actually Lesniewskian quantification constitutes a third possibility that lies between objectual (referential) quantification an4 substitutional quantification, and it overcomes the drawbacks of each of its better known alternatives: while objectual quantification is restricted because some names do not have objets and substitutional quantification is restricted because some objects do not have names, Lesniewskian quantification works both for empty names and for nameless objects. This is so because, as we shall see, the range of quantification is neither the set of objects nor the set of names but the set of extensions (i.e. of extensional meanings). And even empty names have an extension, and even nameless objects belong to extensions.

The formulas of substitutional and of Lesniewskian quantification belong to the object language, but their readings are in a certain sense metalingnlistic. For instance, according to Ruth Barcan Marcus '(3x)Fx' is to be read "Some substitution instance of 'Fx' is true" and correspondingly '(x)Fx' is to be read "Every substitution instance of 'Fx' is true" (cf [32] p. 252-253). How is that to be understood? We shall see that in an adequate reading" of those formulas names of expressions occur only in an "implicit" and not in an "explicit" way.

In my opinion the question of how to read quantified statements is of some consequence. The habit of giving merely model-theoretic interpretations and no intuitive paraphrases has tended to obscure some

subtle, but very important aspects of oblique speech. This can best be made clear by taking as a starting point some recent discussions concerning "saying that"." (p. 315, two notes omitted)

References

[16] G. Küng, J. T. Canty, Substitutional quantification and Lemiewskian quantifiers, Theoria, Vol. 36, 1970, pp. 165-182.

[32] R. B. Marcus, Interpreting quantification, lnguiry, Yol. 5 (1962), pp. 252-259.

27. ———. 1981. "Leśniewski’s systems." In Dictionary of Logic as applied in the Study of Language: Concepts, Methods and Theories, edited by Marciszewski, Witold, 168-177. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

"Leśniewski's logic is composed of the three systems: protothetics, ontology

and mereology, which correspond, very roughly speaking, to propositional logic ;

predicate logic (with identity) and set theory; and the calculus of individuals." (p. 168)

(...)

"Protothetics

This most general of Leśniewski's three systems is the science of the proto-theses (the most primitive theses). It is a propositional logic that has equivalence as its only primitive term, but allows (unlike most of the usual propositional calculi) quantification with respect to sentences and even with respect to functors of any category.£ (p. 169)

(...)

"Ontology

Leśniewski's ontology, the science of the copula "is" (and in this sense, of being), must not be confused with ontology in the usual philosophical senses of the word. It is a system of the logic of names, built upon protothetics, with a new primitive term, the copula 'ε', and a new basic category, the category of names." (p. 170)

(...)

"Mereology

Mereology, the science of parts and wholes (from the Greek meros: part), presupposes both protothetic and ontology, but historically it was the first system developed by Leśniewski, for his main aim had been to overcome Russell's antinomy of clarifying the notion of class (cf. Sobocinski 49-50). The notion of a mereological "class", i.e. of a collective whole (a concrete "heap" composed of parts), is of all the explicata of the notion of class the one which is the most easy to understand. The notion of a distributive class is much more controversial. As we have seen, Leśniewski refused to accept such classes as objects and instead

developed ontology, i.e. the logic of distributively referring names." (p. 174)

References

Sobocirlski, B.: L 'analyse de I'antinomie Russellienne par Leśniewski. Methodos 1: 94-107; 2: 237-·257, 1949-1950.

28. ———. 1983. "The Difficulty with the Well-formedness of Ontological Statements." Topoi no. 3:111-119.

Abstract: "When Russell argued for his ontological convictions, for instance that there are negative facts or that there are universals, he expressed himself in English. But Wittgenstein must have noticed that from the point of view of Russell's ideal language these ontological statements appear to be pseudo-propositions. He believed therefore that what these statements pretend to say, could not really be said but only shown. Carnap discovered a way out of this mutism: what in the material mode of speech of the object language looks like a pseudo-proposition can be translated into a perfectly meaningful proposition in the formal mode of speech (in the metalinguistic mode of speech of the logical syntax of language). But is this ascent into the metalanguage necessary? Taking advantage of Leśniewski's logical system there exists another way out- we can expand the number of categories of our ideal language. But Leśniewski's formulas raise another profound problem, the problem of "semantical muteness" (cf. W. G. Lycan 'Semantic Competence and Funny Functors' Monist 64 (1979), 209-222)."

29. Küng, Guido, and Canty, John Thomas. 1970. "Substitutional quantification and Leśniewskian quantifiers." Theoria no. 36:165-182.

"It has been suggested that Leśniewski's use of quantifiers is substitutional(1) and, related to this, that his system is nominalistic. In this paper we consider in what sense these claims are accurate. In particular, various theses in Leśniewski's system of ontology (and in extensions of that system) are considered, in order to determine an accurate interpretation of quantification which is applicable to Lesniewskian systems." (p. 165)

(1) W. V. Quine, "Ontological relativity," The journal of philosophy, vol. 65 (1968), pp. 185-212 (see p. 209), idem, "Existence and quantification," in J. Margolis, ed., Fact and existence, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968) pp. 151-164 (see p. 159). J. T. Kearns, "The logical concept of existence," Notre Dame journal of formal logic, vol. 9 (1968), pp. 313-324; idem, "Two views of variables," ibid, vol. 10 (1969), pp. 163-180 (see p. 167).

30. Lambert, Karel, and Scharle, Thomas. 1967. "A translation theorem for two systems free logic." Logique et Analyse no. 10:328-341.

"During the past decade and a half philosopher-logicians on the westem side of the Atlantic have shown an increasing interest in languages which are free of existence assumptions (i) with respect to their terms and / or (ii) in the sense that their theorems are true in all domains including the empty one. On the western side of the Atlantic, logics free of existence assumptions in sense (i) are c,alled free logics; logics free of existence assumptions in both senses are called universally free logics. For the purposes of the present paper the distinctiion is not important. So we shall use the expression "free logic" to refer 1to languages satisfying (i) and perhaps (ii)." (p. 328)

(...)

"In the 1920's and 1930's, on the eastern side of the Atlantic, Leśniewski[10] developed a language for the foundations of mathematics which in part was concerned with eliminating the same existence assumptions. Within this tradition, Lejewski[9] quite recently has constructed a language, L4, whose first order fragment, L4', will concern us in this paper. This language departs in some important ways from the· languages mentioned earlier. First, the classical predicate logic is retained. Second, the sense of the quantifiers in L4' departs from that in the usual presentations of mathematical logic." (p. 329)

References

[9] Czeslaw Lejewski, "A theory of non-reflexive identity", Proceedings of the 6th Forschungsgesprach: Institut fur Wissenschaftstheorie, Salzburg, September: 1965.

[10) Eugene C. Luschei, The logical systems of Leśniewski, Amsterdam, 1962, pp. 321-323.

31. Le Blanc, Audoënus. 1985. "Investigations in Protothetic." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 26:483-489.

Reprinted in Jan Srzednicki, Zbigniews Stachniak (eds.), S. Leśniewski's Systems: Protothetic, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1998, pp. 289-307.

"In this article I present some results of five years' research into Leśniewski's protothetic.(1) I outline deductions from the axiom An considerably shorter than those previously known (see Sobocinski, 1961a) and I derive the laws of implication from this axiom without using the rule of extensionality.(2) Since this paper can best be read in the light of articles by Professor Sobocinski published in this Journal (see Sobocinski, 1960, 1961a and 1961b),** I have largely adopted his conventions of symbolism (...)" (p. 289 of the reprint)

** [Ed. Note: Cf. paper VI in this volume.]

References

Sobocinski, B. (1960) 'On the Single Axioms of Protothetic. I, II, III' , Notre Dame Jurnal of Formal Logic I (1960), 52-73; II (1961), 111-126 and 129-148.

32. ———. 1985. "New Axioms for Mereology." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 26:437-441.

"In this paper I shall present several new axioms and axiom systems for mereology with an account of their origin. I shall also outline a proof that the two most interesting of these are adequate sole axioms for mereology." (p. 437)

33. ———. 1991. Leśniewski's Computative Protothetic, University of Manchester.

Abstract: "The logician Stanisław Leśniewski devoted most of his academic life to the development of a system of foundations of mathematics, which consists of three deductive theories:

protothetic, ontology, and mereology. Protothetic is the most general of these theories, logically prior to the others; it has been described by its creator as a unique extension of the classical ‘theory of deduction’ or ‘propositional calculus’, though this theory differs from more usual versions in many respects. The ‘standard’ system of protothetic is developed by a rule of procedure corresponding to the traditional style of development incorporating substitution and detachment, but including directives for definition and extensionality.

Leśniewski also developed systems of protothetic whose rule of procedure does not contain directives for substitution or detachment, and whose style of development has been described as ‘computative’ or as involving ‘automatic verification’. The directives may be said to resemble Peirce’s zero/one verification method, though they are extended to allow verification and rejection of expressions containing variables in all semantic categories, and having various numbers of possible ‘values’. Only an informal summary of Lesniewski’s work on these systems survives.

This thesis examines computative protothetic historically, informally, and formally.

It contains a set of directives for a system of computative protothetic which is as close as possible to the lost directives of Lesniewski’s own systems."

34. Lejewski, Czeslaw. 1954. "Logic and Existence." British Journal for the Philosophy of Science no. 5:104-119.

Reprinted in Jan T. J. Srzednicki, V, F, Rickey (eds.), Leśniewski's Systems: Ontology and Mereology, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1984, pp. 45-58.

"The meaning of 'exist(s)' can best be determined on the basis of the logic of noun-ex ressions constructed as a deductive system by Leśniewski .in Warsaw in 1920 and called by him 'Ontology'.(12) The original system of Leśniewski's Ontology is based on singular inclusion (a is b or in symbols a ε b) as the only primitive function. For various reasons, however, I prefer to continue my analysis of 'exist(s)' with reference to a system of Ontology based on ordinary inclusion, with I shall write in the following manner: I shall read it 'all a is b' or 'all a's are b's'. I prefer doing this because ordinary inclusion seems to be more intuitive to an English speaking reader than Leśniewski's singular inclusion. Thus for instance ordinary inclusion has recently been used by Woodger in his 'Science without Properties" (13) for the purpose of constructing a language whose general tendency approximates the tendencies embodied in Ontology." (pp. 57-58 of the reprint)

(12) See Leśniewski [1930].

(13) See Woodger [1952].

"I wish to conclude with a brief summary of the results. The aim of the paper was to analyse rather than criticize. I started by examining two inferences which appeared to disprove the validity of the rules of universal instantiation and existential generalization in application to reasoning with empty noun-expressions. Then I distinguished two different interpretations of the quantifiers and argued that under what I called the unrestricted interpretation the two inferences were correct. Further arguments in favour of the unrestricted interpretation of the quantifiers were brought in, and in particular it was found that by adopting the unrestricted interpretation it was possible to separate the notion of existence from the idea of quantification. With the aid of the functor of inclusion two functors were defined of which one expressed the notion of existence as underlying the theory of restricted quantification while the other approximated the term exist(s) as used in ordinary language.

It may be useful to supplement this summary by indicating some aspects of the problem of existence which have not been included in the discussion. I analyzed the theory of quantification so far as it was applied in connection with variables for which noun-expressions could be substituted and my enquiry into the meaning of exist (s) ' was limited to cases where this functor was used with noun-expressions designating concrete objects or with noun-expressions that were empty. It remains to explore, among other things, in what sense the quantifiers can be used to bind predicate variables and what we mean when we say that colours exist or that numbers exist. These are far more difficult problems, which may call for a separate paper or rather for a number of separate papers." (p. 58 of the reprint)

(1) See J.t ukasiewicz 'The Principle of Individuation', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Sup. Vol. 27, London, 1953, 77 sq.

References

Leśniewski, Stanislav, [1930] tJber die Grundlagen der Ontologie, Comptes rendus des seances de la Société des Sciences et des Lettres de Varsovie, Classe III, 23 Annee, 111-132, Warszawa.

Woodger, Josepgh H. [1952] Science without Properties, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. II, 193-217.

35. ———. 1954. "A Contribution to Leśniewski’s mereology." Roczniki Polskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego na Obczyźnie no. 5:43-50.

36. ———. 1955. "A new axiom for mereology." Polish Society of Arts and Sciences Abroad no. 6:65-70.

37. ———. 1957. "Symposium: Proper Names. II." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. Supplementary vol. 31:191-236.

[The first part was by Peter Frederick Strawson, pp. 191-228]

"In my contribution to the symposium I propose to follow Mr. Strawson's lead as regards the selecting of the main topics for the discussion but I shall try to approach the various problems with which he is concerned from a some- what different angle. The principal aim of Mr. Strawson's paper is, as he puts it himself, to find the rationale of the doctrine that particulars cannot be predicated and to arrive at an understanding of the distinction between reference and predication. I shall also deal with the doctrine but the questions connected with the semantical status of predicate-expressions will be discussed with greater accuracy than other problems." (p. 228)

(...)

"Not unlike Mr. Strawson's paper, the present discussion was primarily devoted to the problem of the distinction between subject-expressions ( or arguments) and predicate expressions (or functors). In the Method of Individual Names I tried to show how a syntactical and semantical theory could be built up, starting with the concepts of truth and falsehood and the semantical relation of designating.

In the Generalized Method [of Leśniewski] I made use of a more comprehensive relation of naming. With the aid of this semantical equipment other concepts required for the semantical analysis of the constituent parts of simple propositions were introduced. In particular it was shown that within the framework of both methods functors which correspond to predicate-expressions could be classified into unshared, shared, and fictitious in analogy to a similar classification of names. The characteristic feature of this classification of functors consisted in complete avoidance of any reference to entities other than individuals. On an example of a certain type of problem propositions, I tried to point out that in ordinary usage ' pseudo-names ' are used to stand for functors. It is the wide use of 'pseudo-names', just in this sense, that accounts for the generally accepted semantical theories which presuppose the existence of entities other than individuals. In the final sections of the paper I suggested a tentative definition of ' proper names ' and then I discussed some of the expressions of ordinary language which seem to satisfy the requirements of the definition." (p. 255)

38. ———. 1958. "On implicational definitions." Studia Logica no. 8:189-206.

1. Fragmentary and full systems of the Calculus of Propositions.The Implicational Calculus of Propositions, i. e. the Propositional Calculus based on implication as a sole primitive function is a fragmentary calculus because it contains implicational theses only. In other words it contains those and only those theses of the Full Propositional Calculus in which the functor of implication occurs as the only constant term."

(...)

"It is with the aid of a rule of definition together with the other two rules of inference that we derive theses with occurrences of other proposition-forming functors for propositional arguments. Only a calculus which in virtue of its rules of inference contains all such theses, truly deserves the name of Full Propositional Calculus."

"In this paper I propose to formulate a quite general rule which extends a system of the ordinary Implicational Calculus into a system of the Full Propositional Calculus in the sense just explained. This new rule I shall call the rule of 'implicational definitions'.

2. Leśniewski's views concerning definitions.As regards definitions in general, the majority of contemporary logicians seem to share the views of A. N. Whitehead and B. Russell expressed on the subject in the Principia Mathematica(2)

These views may be summarized as follows:

(a) Definitions are not propositions. They are neither true nor false.

(b) Definitions do not belong to the system and theoretically are superfluous.

(c) Definitions are concerned with the symbols, not with what they symbolize.

(d) Definitions are mere typographical conveniences.

(e) The sign '= ... Df', which is used to express a definition, is not equivalent to any of the functors of the Full Propositional Calculus.

(f) The definiendum has the same meaning as the definiens.

A different view on the nature of definitions was held by S. Lwaniewski of the Warsaw School. Leniewski regards'definitions as theses of the system.

In this respect they do not differ either from the axioms or from theorems, i. e. from the theses added to the system on the basis of the rule of substitution or the rule of detachment. Once definitions have been accepted as theses of the system, it becomes necessary to consider them as true propositions in the same sense in which axioms are true.(3)" (pp. 189-190)

(2) See Whitehead-Russell (22) p. 11 and p. 94.

(3) In connexion with the definitions in the Prindpia and in Leśniewski's system see Łukasiewicz (13) pp. 28 f.

References

(13) J. Łukasiewicz: On Variable Functors of Propositional Arguments, Proceedings of The Royal Irish Academy, Section A, No 2, 54 (1951), Dublin.

(22) A. N. Whiteheasd and B. Russell: Principia Mathematica, Vol. 1, Cambridge 1935

39. ———. 1958. "On Leśniewski's Ontology." Ratio no. 1:150-176.

Reprinted in Jan T. J. Srzednicki, V, F, Rickey (eds.), Leśniewski's Systems: Ontology and Mereology, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1984, pp. 123-148.

"Leśniewski's criticism of 'pure' formalism shows that he had never ceased to be a philosopher. There are many 'pure' formalists among logicians and mathematicians but there are few 'pure' formalists among philosophers. For philosophers are, for the most part, preoccupied with the problem of meaning. Whether they deal with expressions of ordinary language or with logical formillae, they are concerned with interpretation rather than with formal elegance alone. The doctrine of 'pure' formalists could erhaps be condensed into the following motto: formalization before interpretation. Leśniewski's principle would read in the reverse.

For the most part Leśniewski's published papers present his theories at the stage of formalization with the problems of interpretation either left out or touched upon in an incidental manner. This makes the reading of these papers extremely difficillt. It is the aim of the present contribution to bring the problems of interpretation to e foreground and by so doing serve as an informal introduction to one of the principal theories conceived by Leśniewski." (p. 124 of the reprint)

(...)

"Although Ontology was the subject of several university courses given by I.esniewski during the twenty years of his academic career in Warsaw until his death in 1939, there have been few papers published on it. The fundamental and most authoritative source is Leśniewski [1930]. It is an extremely condensed and difficult paper as it was meant to be a sort of 'identity card' of Ontology and not its 'lengthy biography'.

It gives an axiom of Ontology and, with reference to Leśniewski [1929a, pp. 59-67], it also gives the rules of inference for Ontology stated here with a precision which has not since been improved upon. In addition, the paper contains a brief account of the researches of Leśniewski and his collaborators into the axiomatic foundations of Ontology.(7)

There are two more papers by Leśniewski on special problems theoretically belonging to Ontology. They are Leśniewski [1929a] and Leśniewski [1929b[. These papers are also worth mentioning for the fact that they contain some of the neatest examples of Leśniewski's method of setting out his deductions.

Finally, there is Leśniewski [1927-1931, Ch. XI], where he gives his analysis of the meaning of the primitive constant of Ontology as used in Leśniewski [1930]. Naturally enough this analysis is made from the point of view of the Polish language.

This is all that Leśniewski himself ever published on his Ontology.

His copious notes and manuscripts, which contained a wealth of new results and which were to have been prepared for publication by Sobocinski, were destroyed in 1944 during the war." (pp. 125-126 of the reprint)

References

[1927-1931] 0 podstawach matematyki (On the Foundations of Mathematics) Przegląd Filozoficzny, Vol. XXX (1927), 164-206; Vol. XXXI (1928), 261-291; Vol. XXXII (1929), 60-101; Vol. XXXIII (1930), 77-105; Vol. XXXIV (1931), 142-170. (Polish). (Ellglish translation Leśniewski 1983])

[1929a] Gründzuge eines neuen Systems der Grundlagen der Mathematik, Fundamenta Mathematicae, Vol. XIV, 1-81. (English translation in Leśniewski 1984])

[1929b] tJber Funktionen, deren Felder Abelsche Gruppen in Bezug auf diese Funktionen sind, Fundamenta Mathematicae, Vol. XIV, 242-251. (English translation in Leśniewski 1984])

[1930] tJber die Grundlagen der Ontologie, Comptes rendus des seances de la Société des Sciences et des Lettres de Varsovie, Classe III, 23 Annee, 111-132, Warszawa. (English translation in Leśniewski 1984])

[1931] tJber Definitionen in der sogenannten Theorie der Deduktion, Comptes rendus des seances de la Société des Sciences et des Lettres de Varsovie, Classe III, 24 Annee, 289-309, Warszawa. (English translation in Leśniewski 1984]) and in McCall [1967], 170-187)

[1983] On the Foundations of Mathematics, Topoi, Vol. II, No.1, 7-52. (This is the abridged English translation by Vito F. Sinisi of Leśniewski [1927-1931].)

[1984] Collected Works of Stanisław Leśniewski (edited by Jan Srzednicki, Stanisław J. Surma, and Dene I. Barnett), Synthese Library, D. Reidel Publishing Co./PWN, Dordrecht-BostonjWarszawa, to appear.[1992]

40. ———. 1960. "A re-examination of the russellian theory of descriptions." Philosophy no. 35:14-29.

"The theory of descriptions occupies a very prominent place in Russell's system of logic and indeed in his system of philosophy. Since the publication of the now classical paper "On Denoting" in Mind for 1905 the theory had been incorporated into Principia Mathematica, the first volume of which appeared in 1910. In 1918 Russell discussed descriptions in his lectures on the Philosophy of Logical Atomism, which subsequently were published in The Monist for 1919. A very lucid exposition of the main tenets of the doctrine is to be found in the Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy dating from the same year. Epistemological aspects of the theory of descriptions are examined in "Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description", in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society for 1910-11, and also in Chapter V of The Problems of Philosophy, first published in 1912.(1) It is not an exaggeration to say that the theory of descriptions has become part and parcel of modern logic. Naturally, it has been criticized on different accounts, but the various arguments of the critics seem to have failed to move Russell from the position he took over fifty years ago. I propose to re-examine Russell's theory of descriptions because it seems to me that it raises a few interesting problems which appear to have escaped the notice of its originator, let alone his critics." (p. 14)

(1) The papers "On Denoting" and "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism" are now available in B. Russell, Logic and Knowledge, London, 1956.

41. ———. 1963. "A note on a problem concerning the axiomatic foundations of mereology." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 4:135-139.

"In 1948 Sobociński established that mereology could be based on [a] single axiom.

(...)

!Since then a number of single axioms for other mereological constant terms have been found.(2)

(...)

In I960 I found a thesis, a little longer than U, which could be used as a single axiom of mereology and which involved quantification over nominal variables only." (p. 135)

(2) See C. Lejewski, A Contribution to Leśniewski's Mereology', Polish Society of Arts and Sciences Abroad, Yearbook for 1954-55, London 1955, pp. 43-50, C. Lejewski, 'A New Axiom of Mereology', ibid., Yearbook for 1955-56, London 1956, pp. 65-70, and B. Sobociński, On Well Constructed Axiom Systems', ibid., pp. 54-65.

42. ———. 1963. "Aristotle's syllogistics and its extensions." Synthese no. 15:125-154.

"The task I have set myself in this paper can be described as bridging the gap between Aristotle's syllogistic and Leśniewski's ontology. I propose to suggest a number of successive extensions of syllogistic culminating in a system of what may be regarded as basic ontology. In this way I hope to throw new light on the significance of the Aristotelian logic. At the same time I hope to add a little to the understanding of Leśniewski's ontology, which interestingly enough was conceived by its originator as a modernised continuation of the ancient and medieval tradition.(1)" (p. 125)

(1) For a modern treatment of Aristotle's syllogistic see Łukasiewicz [8]; a condensed but authoritative presentation of ontology is to be found in Leśniewski [6]; an elementary discussion of ontology and some of its problems is contained in Kotarbiński [2], Sobocinski [12], Sobocinski (13], Slupccki (11], and Lejewski [4].

References

(2] Kotarbiński, T., Elementy teorji poznania, logiki formalnej i metodologji nauk (Elements of Epistemology, Formal Logic and Methodology), Lwów, 1929.

[4] Lejewski, C., 'On Leśniewski's Ontology', Ratio 1 (1957-1958).

[6] Leśniewski S., 'Über die Grundlagen der Ontologie', Comptes rendus des seances de la Societé des Sciences et des Lettres de Varsovie, Classe III, 18 (1930).

[8] Łukasiewicz, J., Aristotle's Syllogistic, Oxford, 1951; 2nd edition: Oxford, 1957.

[11] Slupecki, J., 'S. Leśniewski's Calculus of Names', Studia Logica 3 (1955).

[12] Sobocinski, B., 'O kolejnych uproszczeniach aksjomatyki "ontologji" prof. St.Lesniewskiego' (On Successive Simplifications of the Axiom-system of Leśniewski's 'Ontology'), Ksifga Pamiqtkowa - Fragmenty Filozoficzne, Warszawa 1934.

[13] Sobocinski, B., 'L'analyse de l'antinomie Russellienne par Leśniewski', Methodos 1 (1949) and 2 (1950).

43. ———. 1967. "A single axiom for the mereological notion of proper part." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 4:279-285.

"The mereological notion of proper part was used by Leśniewski as a primitive, i.e., undefined, notion in his first system of mereology constructed in 1915.(1)" (p. 279)

(...)

"In the present paper I propose to develop a system of mereology,—I will call it System C[gothic],—whose axiomatic basis consists of [a] single axiom. (p. 280)

44. ———. 1969. "Consistency of Leśniewski's Mereology." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 34:321-328.

Reprinted in Jan T. J. Srzednicki, V, F, Rickey (eds.), Leśniewski's Systems: Ontology and Mereology, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1984, pp. 232-238.

"According to Sobocinski's recollection, the consistency of Mereology was proved by Leśniewski by means of an appropriate interpretation within the framework of the theory of real numbers. His proof was never published, but in a recent paper R. E. Clay has succeeded in reconstructing a version of it.(1) Clay's result amounts to showing that if Leśniewski's Ontology expanded by the addition of the axioms for the real numbers is consistent then Mereology is consistent. Without casting any doubts on the validity of the proof one can hardly fail to note that here we have a case where the consistency of a conceptually simple theory is made to depend on the consistency of a theory which from the point of view of intuition is far from being obvious. What we would like to be in a position to do is to prove the consistency of Mereology relative to a theory which is more obvious than Mereology, or, preferably, relative to a theory which is, in fact, a much weaker subsystem of Mereology. It is with this methodological principle in mind that I propose to outline, in what follows, a new proof of the consistency of the theory under consideration." (p. 232 of the reprint)

(1) See R. E. Clay, Consistency of Leśniewski's mereology relative to real numalber, this Journal, vol. 33 (1968), pp. 251-257.

45. ———. 1970. "Quantification and ontological commitment." In Physics, Logic, andHistory: Based on the First International Colloquium held at the University of Denver, .May 16-20, 1966, edited by Yourgrau, Wolfgang and D., Breck. Allen, 173-181. New York: Plenum Press.

Discussion between Quine, Lejewski, Yourgrau, Kaplan, Mercier, Hintikka, Popper, pp. 181-190.

"In his review of a paper by Ajdukiewicz [1], Quine makes the following comments on Leśniewski's version of the membership connective 'ε':

(...)

If quantificatlon as Leśniewski used it did not commit hirn squarely to a theory of classes as abstract entities, then the present reviewer is at a loss to imagine wherein such commitment even on the part of a professing Platonist can consist [2].

I quote this passage because the last sentence in it poses two problems which I want to make central to the present enquiry. First, is quantification as Leśniewski used it, and as his followers continue to use it, incompatible with the renunciation of abstract entities? Second, in what way can a professing Platonist give expression to his ontological commitment?

The language of Ldniewski's logic differs from the language of the traditional theory of quantification (with identity) in several respects.

But as it happens, we need not go into details because we can solve our problem by first solving it within a more familiar context." (pp. 173-174)

(...)

"To sum up. In the traditional theory of quantification the variables of the first order are correlated with arealm of entities thought of as their values; the variables of a higher order, whether quantified or not, presuppose no additional realm of entities, and quantifying propositional variables within the logic of propositions does not commit us to entertaining the existence of any entities at all." (p. 177)

"Here I propose to bring to an end my examination of the two problems arising from Quine's remarks on Leśniewski's logic of 'ε'. In conclusion I wish to mention a third problem, which is closely connected with the topic under discussion but exceeds the boundaries of the present paper. The problem is this: how can we give expression to what might be called a negative ontological commitment? How can we say, without contradicting ourselves, that there are no abstract entities? How can we renounce, without contradicting ourselves, the universe of classes or the uni verse of numbers, or the universe of any other sort of abstract entities?" (p. 181)

(1) I. K. Ajdukiewicz, "On the Notion of Existence," Studia Philosophica 4 (1949/1950), published in 1951, pp. 7-22.

(2) W. Quine, J. Symholic Logic XVII, 141.

46. ———. 1973. "A Contribution to the Study of Extended Mereologies." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 14:55-67.

"By extended mereologies I understand atomistic mereology and atomless mereology. Either is an extension of general mereology, which is a theory of part-whole relations, first established by Leśniewski about sixty years ago.(1) In presenting what follows, I will assume that the reader will be familiar with mereological vocabulary and also with a few elementary theses of general mereology."

(1) See Leśniewski [6] and Leśniewski [7]; for a general introduction to mereology see Sobociήski [9] and Luschei [8],

References

[6] Leśniewski, S., "Podstawy ogόlnej teoryi mnogosci. I," (The Foundations of a General Theory of Manifolds). Prace Polskiego Koίa Naukσwegow Moskwie, Sekcya matematyczno-przyrodnicza, No. 2, Moskwa (1916).

[7] Leśniewski, S., "O podstawach matematyki" (On the Foundations of Mathematics), Przegląd Filozoficzny (Philosophical Review), vol. 30 (1927), pp. 164-206; vol. 31 (1928), pp. 261-301; vol. 32 (1929), pp. 60-101; vol. 33 (1930), pp. 75-105 and 142-170.

[8] Luschei, E. C, The Logical Systems of Leśniewski, Amsterdam (1962).

[9] Sobociήski, B., "Studies in Leśniewski's Mereology," V Rocznik Polskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego na Obczyznie (The 5th Yearbook of the Polish Society of Arts and Sciences Abroad) (1954-55), pp. 34-43.

47. ———. 1974. "A system of logic for bicategorial ontology." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 3:265-283.

"However, it would seem to be appropriate to make it clear at this stage that the problem to be dealt with in the present paper is not in fact ontological. I shall not be concerned with propounding arguments either for or against a unicategorial ontology, according to which there is only one kind of things, or a bicategorial ontology, which holds that there are two kinds of things, either kind enjoying a different mode of existence, or any other multicategorial ontology. And although in the end my own ontological preferences will probably fail to remain unnoticed, my primary task is that of a logician. On the assumption that there are ontologists who advocate a bicategorial ontology and also those who are anxious to refute it, I propose to suggest a system of logic acceptable to both sides of the dispute. I have chosen bicategorial ontology as the theme of my study because of all multicategorial ontologies it is the simplest. If we can solve, to our satisfaction, some of the logical problems connected with bicategorial ontology then we may hope to be able to use our results as a guide-line for approaching, if need be, the logical problems that any other multicategorial ontology may raise. And, speaking generally, I find this sort of enquiry of some significance for two reasons. First, philosophers have been talking about various categories of being ever since Aristotle. Indeed, the idea that there are various modes of existence should, perhaps, be traced back to Plato or even back to the Pythagoreans. When we turn to more recent developments, Russell’s theory of logical types in its ontological version is the case in point.

Secondly, the views put forward by some logicians as to how one gives expression to one’s commitment to a multicategorial ontology appear to me to be totally unacceptable.(2)" (pp. 265-266)

(2) For criticism of Quine’s doctrine of ontological commitment see. my ‘The Problem of Ontological Commitment’, Fragmenty Filozoficzne (Third Series), PWN, Warszawa 1967, pp. 147-164, and ‘Quantification and Ontological Commitment’, Physics, Logic and History (eds. W. Yourgrau and A. D. Breck), Plenum Press, New York 1970, pp. 173-181.

48. ———. 1977. "Systems of Leśniewski's Ontology with the Functor of Weak inclusion as the Only Primitive Term." Studia Logica no. 36:323-349.

"The original system of Ontology, constructed by Leśniewski in 1920, is based on the functor of singular inclusion as the only primitive ontological term. As regards its meaning, the functor of singular inclusion approximates the meaning of the copula 'is'. In natural languages without indefinite articles, in Latin or in Polish for instance, the approximation appears to be closer than is the case in the languages in which the indefifinite articles have a role to play. It is, therefore, not surprising that English or German speaking logicians find Leśniewski's logical language offending their linguistic intuitions, and treat his Ontology, and the theories which presuppose it, with a certain amount of suspicion. They might have been less mistrustful of Ontology, had Leśniewski based it on a different primitive term. It is quite likely that the functor of weak inclusion would prove to be more acceptable at least to those logicians who had been acquainted with the researches of Boole and Schröder" (p. 323)

49. ———. 1978. "A Note Concerning the Notion of Mereological Class." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 19:251-263.

"In mereology we have a number of equivalences which in various ways characterize the notion of mereological class. Some of these equivalences have been used, in some systems of mereology, as definitions while others have been proved in these systems as theorems." (p. 251)

For a general introduction to mereology see Luschei [6], Sobociήski [7] and Sobociήski [ 8 ] .

References

[6] Luschei, E. C, The Logical Systems of Leśniewski, Amsterdam (1962).

[7] Sobociήski, B., "L'analyse de Γantinomie Russellienne par Leśniewski," Methodos, vol. 1 (1949), pp. 94-107, 220-228, 308-316, and vol. 2 (1950), pp. 237-257.

[8] Sobociήski, B., "Studies in Leśniewski's mereology," V Rocznik Polskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego na Obczyznie, London (1954-1955), pp. 34-43.

50. ———. 1979. "On the dramatic stage in the development of Kotarbinski's pansomatism." In Ontologie und Logik. Ontology and Logic., edited by Weingartner, Paul and Morscher, Edgar, 197-214. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.

Proceedings of an International Colloquium (Salzburg, 21-24 September 1976).

Discussion pp. 215-218.

51. ———. 1980. "A Note Concerning the Notion of Mereological Class. Postrscript." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 21:679-683.

"Since the publication of my note concerning the notion of mereological class have noticed that a system of mereology—I shall refer to it as System B_1—can be based on [a] single axiom." (p. 679)

52. ———. 1981. "Logic and Ontology." In Modern Logic: A Survey, edited by Evandro, Agazzi, 379-398. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"My discussion of the topic prescribed by the title of the paper will consist of two parts. In Part I, I propose to discuss, in very general and informal terms, the nature of logic and ontology, and the relationship that seems to connect these two disciplines. In Part II, I intend to examine, in some detail, a certain specific problem, which concerns logicians as well as ontologists, a problem which has been with us for about forty years, and which lacks a generally acceptable solution." (p. 379)

(...)

"In line with the traditional theory of quantification we are entitled to infer the proposition ‘(∃.F) • F(Socrates)’ from the premiss ‘Socrates is wise’. Now, if, as Quine tells us, the premiss does not commit us to the existence of properties but the conclusion does then the inference cannot be valid. I agree that the premiss carries with it no commitment to the existence of properties but I prefer to regard the inference as valid and reject the view that quantifying predicate variables commits us, within the framework of the traditional theory of quantification, to an ontology with properties or any other abstract entities.

If that is the case, how can the multicategorial ontologist present his doctrine in a standardised language? In my view he can still use any of the three languages we have distinguished, each time specifying informally the universe of discourse (the possible world) he is describing. Every statement of his theory will be about entities belonging to one universe of discourse or possible world. No proposition referring to more than one possible world will be expressible in any of the three languages at his disposal. Moreover, the language of the traditional theory of quantification will not enable him to deny the existence of any possible world as a whole. If he wanted to do that, he would have to turn to the language of free logic or to L4 both appropriately re-interpreted. For the existence of a possible world can only be denied in an ontologically neutral language.

However, logic can offer a better way of helping the multicategorial ontologist in his predicament, a way which is also acceptable to his opponents. It consists in constructing an ontologically neutral multicategorial language. As far as I know, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, the Polish logician, was the first to see the possibility of such a language. Independently, some work in this field has been done by propounders of many-sorted theories (A. Schmidt, Hao Wang). For a concrete example of a standardised language for bicategorial ontology may I refer those who are interested to a paper of mine which I read at another Salzburg Colloquium, held in 1973 (‘A System of Logic for Bicategorial Ontology’, Journal of Philosophical Logic 3 (1974), 265-283)." (pp. 397-398)

53. ———. 1983. "A note on Leśniewski's axiom system for the mereological notion of ingredient or element." Topoi no. 3:63-72.

"A system of mereology in which the notion of ingredient or element plays the role of the only primitive, i.e., undefined mereological notion, was constructed by Leśniewski in 1920 and published in Chapter VII of his 'O podstawach matematyki' [On the Foundations of Mathematics], Przeglad Filozoficzny 33 (1930), 82ff. The axiomatic foundations of the system consist of the following four theses:

(a) if P is an ingredient of Q and it is not the case that Q is P then Q is not an ingredient of P;

(b) if P is an ingredient of Q and Q is an ingredient of R then P is an ingredient of R;

(c) if (every a is an ingredient of P and an ingredient of Q and for all R, if R is an ingredient of P or R is an ingredient Of Q then a certain ingredient of R is an ingredient of an a) then P is Q;

(d) if a certain object is an a then for some P ((for all Q, if Q is an a then Q is an ingredient of P) and for all Q, if Q is an ingredient of P then a certain ingredient of Q is an ingredient of a certain a).

On subjoining to the axioms the definition of the notion of part

(e) P is a part of Q if and only if (P is an ingredient of Q and it is not the case that P is the same object as Q);

and the definition of the notion of mereological class

(f) P is the class of as if and only if (P is an object, (for all Q, if Q is an a then Q isan ingredient of P) and for all Q, if Q is an ingredient of P then a certain ingredient of Q is an ingredient of a certain a).

Leśniewski went on to prove that his new system of mereology was inferentially equivalent to the original system as outlined in [2] and reproduced, in an improved version, in [3].

References

[2] S. Leśniewski, Podstawy ogólnef teoryi mnogości, [Foundations of the General Theory of Manifolds. I], Moskwa, 1916.

[3] S. Leśniewski, 'O podstawach matematyki' [On the Foundations of Mathematics], Chapter IV, Przegląd Filozoficzny 31(1928), 261-291.]." (p. 63)

54. ———. 1985. "Accomodating the informal notion of class within the framework of Leśniewski's Ontology." Dialectica no. 39:217-241.

Summary: "Interpreted distributively the sentence 'Indiana is a member of the class of American federal states' means the same as 'Indiana is an American federal state'. In accordance with the collective sense of class expressions the sentence can be understood as implying that Indiana is a part of the country whose capital city is Washington. Neither interpretation appears to accommodate all the intuitions connected with the informal notion of class. A closer accommodation can be achieved, it seems, if class expressions are interpreted as verb-like expressions of a certain kind as available within the framework of Leśniewski's Ontology."

55. ———. 1986. "Logic and Non-Existence." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:209-234.

"1. Whatever exists, exists, and whatever does not exist, does not exist. And that's that. To put it in a different but equally tautological way

(1) a exists or it is not the case that a exists, whatever a may be or not be

It appears to follow from (1) that between existence and nonexistence there is no half-way house to accommodate subsistent entities or possible entities or fictitious entities. However, having said that, one must admit that a great deal of explaining has to be done before the notions of existence and non-existence lose their powers of confusing and mystifying. They enjoy these powers largely within the precincts of ordinary language and manifest them through inducing philosophers to make statements that are puzzling in the extreme or give rise to never ending controversies.

I propose to begin my inquiry into what there is or is not, by outlining a logic which, in my view, provides a promising basis for the starting of an attack on the problems of non-existence.

2. The logic to which I wish to relate the subject matter of my essay, is Leśniewski's Ontology.(1)"

(1) For an introduction to Ontology see my 'On Leśniewski's Ontology', Ratio, Vol. 1(1958), 150-176. For a comprehensive survey of Leśniewski' theories see E.C. Luschei, The Logical Systems of Leśniewski, Amsterdam

1962.

56. ———. 1986. "Logic, Ontology and Metaphysics." In Philosophy in Britain Today, edited by Shanker, S. G., 171-197. London: Croom Helm.

"The principal characteristic of ontology is, in accordance with Aristotle’s conception of the science of being, its universality. The interest of a special science, Aristotle tells us, is limited to certain objects whereas the science of being studies all objects that there are, and does so generally, concerning itself with particular objects only in special cases. Extending Aristotle’s idea a little further one can stipulate that if there are kinds of entity other than objects then the science of being should study these kinds of entity as well.

Another characteristic feature of the science of being, according to Aristotle, is this: the science of being lends itself to a very precise treatment and can be presented with the degree of exactitude unattainable in other disciplines. Does this mean that ontology, as conceived by Aristotle but elaborated up to the standards of exactitude established long after his time, can eventually be given the form of a deductive system or that of a body of deductive systems? I shall return to this problem at a later stage of my investigations." (p. 172)

(...)

"Can ontology, as conceived by Aristotle, be given the form of a deductive system or that of a body of deductive systems?

Any general description of reality is likely to consist of several theories, and the description just outlined above is no exception.

The interesting point is that the theories which are constituent parts of the reistic description of reality, are not unrelated. Some of them are presupposed by others. A theory A is said to be presupposed

by a theory B just in case the vocabulary exhibited in the theses of A has to be used in the theses of B together with the vocabulary characteristic of B whereas the latter vocabulary is not exhibited in the theses of A at all." (p. 187)

(...)

"This sort of vocabulary will be readily recognised as the vocabulary of the logic of propositions, and it is the logic of propositions that is presupposed by Ontology. It constitutes as it were the first chapter of a systematic presentation of the science of being. It presupposes no other theory, and on this account can be described as the most general theory of all. Every theory of lesser generality presupposes the logic of propositions and uses its vocabulary however limited this use may turn out to be.

Now, what kind of logic of propositions — and there are several kinds of logic of propositions — is the most appropriate theory, from the reistic point of view, to serve as the fundamental presupposition

of any description of reality? As ‘a philosopher interested in ontology I have no hesitation in suggesting that Lesniewski’s Protothetic is such a theory." (p. 188, anote omitted)

57. ———. 1989. "Formalization of functionally complete propositional calculus with the functor of implication as the only primitive term." Studia Logica no. 48:479-494.

Abstract: "The most difficult problem that Leśniewski came across in constructing his system of the foundations of mathematics was the problem of 'defining definitions', as he used to put it. He solved it to his satisfaction only when he had completed the formalization of his protothetic and ontology. By formalization of a deductive system one ought to understand in this context the statement, as precise and unambiguous as possible, of the conditions an expression has to satisfy if it is added to the system as a new thesis. Now, some protothetical theses, and some ontological ones, included in the respective systems, happen to be definitions. In the present essay I employ Leśniewski's method of terminological explanations for the purpose of formalizing Lukasiewicz's system of implicational calculus of propositions, which system, without having recourse to quantification, I first extended some time ago into a functionally complete system. This I achieved by allowing for a rule of 'implicational definition', which enabled me to define any proposition forming functor for any finite number of propositional arguments."

58. ———. 1995. "Remembering Stanisław Leśniewski." In Stanisław Leśniewski aujourd'hui, edited by Miéville, Denis and Vernant, Denis, 25-66. Grenoble: Recherches sur la Philosophie et le Langage.

"Kotarbiński was probably the first philosopher to realize that Lesniewski’s ontology had much in common with Aristotle’s « science of being as being » presented in the books of Metaphysics. Aristotle referred to it, occasionally, as first philosophy, and emphasized its generality. Whereas special sciences were, in his view, concerned with certain objects only to the exclusion of others, the science of being as being searched for principles which were true of everything that existed. Many centuries after Aristotle the science of being as being was given the name of ontology. In the first decade of the 20Ih century it was revitalized by Meinong as the theory of objects [Gegenstandstheorie] only to return to its earlier name in Lesniewski’s system of the foundations of mathematics. In a sense, this system has achieved completion. Arithmetic can be reconstructed within the framework of a part of it, namely within the framework of ontology, and mereology provides an important presupposition on which to base certain theories that belong to geometry(71). Ontology in the traditional sense of the term will never achieve completion. For we shall never be able to give a complete description of reality. Lesniewski’s ontology offers a very general, and - for this reason - a least controversial description of objects. Now ontology can be extended, step by step, into theories which provide more specific descriptions of what there is. The description obtainable within the framework of mereology is still very general but in part controversial, as some ontologist will maintain. In accordance with one of the mereological theses if in this world there are more objects than one then some objects are parts of other objects, and if this is so then some objects must be extended in time or in space, which suggests that mereology ought to be followed by a theory that concerns itself with objects as extended and ordered in time, or by a theory that deals with the extension and distribution of objects in space. Only the former theory, named chronology, is beginning to take form of a deductive theory, which as regards explicitness and precision may one day achieve the standard of Lesniewski’s mereology.(72) The latter theory, which could perhaps be called stereology, is still on the drawing board so to say. It is likely to prove to be more difficult than chronology, but, when successfully axiomatized, it may in conjunction with chronology provide a right framework within which one could try to describe objects in move. Thus, what may come after stereology, is a sort of general kinematics. To develop the above suggested extensions of the theory of objects to the point where they can be seen to have become deductive theories of the standard comparable with that of Lesniewski’s mereology, will probably take several years of concentrated research by philosophers who, in addition to having a keen interest in symbolic logic, would have to be concerned in preserving and advancing the Lesniewskian way of doing philosophy." (pp. 84-86)

(71) B. Sobocinski, «L’analyse de I’antinomie Russellienne par Leśniewski », Methodos, vol. I, 1949, pp. 94-107, 220-228, 308-316 ; Vol. II, 1950, pp. 237-257. For English translation see : Lesniewski’s Systems, ed. Srzednicki, 1984, pp. 11-44.

(72) C. Lejewski, « Accomodating the Informal Notion of Class within the Framework of Lesniewski’s Ontology », in Dialectica, xxxix, 1985, pp. 196-197.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Stanisław Leśniewski: bibliography in English (Lep - Sim)

Studies on Leśniewski in English

1. Lepage, François. 2000. "Partial monotonic Protothetics." Studia Logica no. 66:147-163.

Abstract: "This paper has four parts. In the first part, I present Leśniewski's protothetics and the complete system provided for that logic by Henkin. The second part presents a generalized notion of partial functions in propositional type theory. In the third part, these partial functions are used to define partial interpretations for protothetics. Finally, I present in the fourth part a complete system for partial protothetics. Completeness is proved by Henkin's method using saturated sets instead of maximally saturated sets. This technique provides a canonical representation of a partial semantic space and it is suggested that this space can be interpreted as an epistemic state of a non-omniscient agent."

2. ———. 2009. "Definitions and Contradictions. Russell, Poincaré, and Leśniewski." Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication: no. 4:1-28.

"Introduction

This paper is composed of two independent parts. The first is concerned with Russell’s early philosophy of mathematics and his quarrel with Poincaré about the nature of their opposition. I argue that the main divergence between the two philosophers was about the nature of definitions.

In the second part, I briefly present Leśniewski’s Ontology and suggest that Leśniewski’s original treatment of definitions in the foundations of mathematics is the natural solution to the problem that divided Russell and Poincaré." (p. 1)

3. López-Escobar, E. G. K. , and Miraglia, Francesco. 2002. Definitions: the primitive concept of logics or The Leśniewski-Tarski legacy. Warsaw: Polska Akademia Nauk, Instytut Matematyczny.

"In the 75 years since the publication of Tarski’s result [the reduction of all the classical logical atoms to the equivalence propositional connective (and the universal quantifier)]. there has been an increasing trend for Mathematics to be more constructive. Thus we decided that an appropriate way to acknowledge the work of Lessniewski and Tarski was to develop, ab ovo, a Constructive Protothetic, which we call the New Protothetic; furthermore not only the formalization should reflect constructive intuition, but the metatheory should also be constructively acceptable.

In Part Two of the monograph we set up the New Protothetic, simultaneously explaining why we chose that particular formalization. Then we prove some general results about it, results which further legitimize the system; for example, the completeness with respect to Beth models and proven in an intuitionistic metatheory (which is the version of constructive Mathematics that we are adopting) and the normalization property(12).

To complete Part Two we show that Tarski’s reduction, that conjunction is definable in terms of equivalence and the universal quantifier, is also applicable in the New Protothetic.Thus Part Two may be considered as an extension of the Leśniewski/Tarski project to constructive logics." (p. 11)

(12) Actually the proof of normalization is in Appendix A.

References

[Tarski, 1923a] A. Tarski, O wyrazie pierwotnym logistyki, Przegląd Filozoficzny 26 (1923), 68–89.

[Tarski, 1923b] A. Tarski, Sur le terme primitive de la logistique, Fund. Math. 4 (1923), 196–200.

[Tarski, 1956] A. Tarski, On the primitive term of logistic, in: A. Tarski, Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics. Papers from 1923 to 1938, transl. by J. H. Woodger, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1956.

4. Luschei, Eugene. 1962. The Logical Ssystems of Leśniewski. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

"Prescribing rules of definition as comprehensive and rigorous as his other directives, Leśniewski formalized his system completely, combinatorially on a finite basis, and in extensional terms. It is further distinguished by its “constructively nominalist” and “contextualist” character; its basic grammar of semantic categories; its rigor, generality, and power of expression; its demonstrable relative consistency; its universal validity; and its logical purity, economy, and elegance. It consists of three axiomatic deductive systems in hierarchic order: protothetic, ontology, and mereology etymologically, proto-theses, theory of being, and theory of parts, respectively. Protothetic and ontology together form a unified system of logic comparable in scope and power to Principia Mathematica as a foundation for classical mathematics and for any further axiomatic theory, such as mereology, in a deductive hierarchy.

I rely on context to distinguish Lesniewski’s ontology from the homonymous branch of metaphysics. The names stem from the same root, the genitive case of the participle of the Greek copula, whose initial letter provides the epsilon of singular predication in Lesniewski’s ontology." (p.28)

5. Lyczak, Marcin, and Andrzej, Pietruszczak. 2018. "On the definability of Leśniewski's copula 'is' in some ontology-like theories." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 47:233-263.

Abstract: "We formulate a certain subtheory of Ishimoto’s [1] quantifier-free fragment of Lesniewski’s ontology, and show that Ishimoto’s theory can be reconstructed in it. Using an epimorphism theorem we prove that our theory is complete with respect to a suitable set-theoretic interpretation. Furthermore, we introduce the name constant 1 (which corresponds to the universal name ‘object’) and we prove its adequacy with respect to the set-theoretic interpretation (again using an epimorphism theorem). Ishimoto’s theory enriched by the constant 1 is also reconstructed in our formalism with into which 1 has been introduced. Finally we examine for both our theories their quantifier extensions and their connections with Lesniewski’s classical quantified ontology."

Refences

[1] A. Ishimoto, A propositional fragment of Lesniewski’s ontology, Studia Logica 36 (1977), pp. 285–299

6. Łyczak, Marcin, Porwolik, Marek, and Świętorzecka, Kordula. 2016. "The Universe in Lesniewski’s Mereology: Some Comments on Sobocinski’s Reflections." Axioms no. 5:1-13.

Abstract: "Stanisław Lesniewski’s mereology was originally conceived as a theory of foundations of mathematics and it is also for this reason that it has philosophical connotations. The ‘philosophical significance’ of mereology was upheld by Bolesław Sobocinski who expressed the view in his correspondence with J.M. Bochenski. As he wrote to Bochenski in 1948: “[...] it is interesting that, being such a simple deductive theory, mereology may prove a number of very general theses reminiscent of metaphysical ontology”. The theses which Sobocinski had in mind were related to the mereological notion of “the Universe”. Sobocinski listed them in the letter adding his philosophical commentary but he did not give proofs for them and did not specify precisely the theory lying behind them. This is what we want to supply in the first part of our paper. We indicate some connections between the notion of the universe and other specific mereological notions. Motivated by Sobocinski’s informal suggestions showing his preference for mereology over the axiomatic set theory in application to philosophy we propose to consider Sobocinski’s formalism in a new frame which is the ZFM theory—an extension of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory by mereological axioms, developed by

A. Pietruszczak. In this systematic part we investigate reasons of ’philosophical hopes’ mentioned by Sobocinski, pinned on the mereological concept of “the Universe”."

References

Sobocinski, B. Letter to J. M. Bochenski from Brussels, dated 12.11. 1948, photocopy of the manuscript.

Pietruszczak, A. Metamereologia; Uniw. Mikołaja Kopernika: Torún, Poland, 2000.

7. M., Machover. 1966. "Contextual Determinacy in Leśniewski's Grammar." Studia Logica no. 19:47-57.

"There are several reasons why much of Leśniewski's work has fallen into oblivion. For one thing, a considerable part of it was destroyed during World War II, which started shortly after Leśniewski's death. And what he did publish1 is written in a highly condensed and difficult style. Moreover, as Grzegorczyk [2] has pointed out, the general trend of logical research had meanwhile drifted away from "system building" to metalogical investigations, for which Leśniewski's system (although very admirable as such) is not too convenient. More important still, Leśniewski wished to base mathematics not upon set-theoretical ideas and relations but rather upon a certain kind of Boolean algebra(2). This approach - which is quite out of line with the thinking habits of most mathematicians - is not only built into his formal system, but also determines his mode of expression when speaking about it, in his syntactical explanations, etc. This makes Leśniewski's system uninviting, and his explanations of it intelligible only with great difficulty, to people who do not share his philosophical beliefs and habits of thought. (To this should be added his insistence that the conditions in each metalogical definition be mutually independent - an insistence which is perhaps very laudable in theory, but certainly most cumbersome in practice). All that is quite unfortunate, for many features incorporated in Leśniewski's system of logic have a definite merit by themselves, quite apart from the philosophical doctrine with which they are associated. These features are certainly worth investigating even by mathematical "technicians" and may eventually be employed for various theoretical and practical purposes." (p. 47)

(1) For a bibliography of works by Leśniewski and his disciples see Luschei [3]. This book is an orthodox account of Leśniewski's ideas, together with an ardent (to say the least) defence thereof.

(2) At least, this is one way of looking at what he did - a way to which he himself would presumably not have agreed.

8. Miéville, Denis. 2009. "Leśniewski, Negation, and the Art of Logical Subtlety." In The Golden Age of Polish Philosophy: Kazimierz Twardowski's Philosophical Legacy, 113-120. Dordrecht: Springer.

"Leśniewski essentially developed three theories: Protothetic, Ontology, and Mereology. Since his death in 1939, none of the efforts to reawaken interest in Leśniewski have had much success. In spite of his successive burials, I am among those who persevere in thinking that Lesniewski’s systems present more than a merely historical interest. The richness of Lesniewski’s alternative lies in his approach to truth and falsity, the idea of predicative levels and his conception of logic as something which, so to say, freely “expands”. Lesniewski’s systems can be called to task when it comes to the study of formal languages, the development of higher order logics, definitiona procedures, the search for extreme metalinguistic rigor and the quest for an ontologically neutral language. In this paper, I focus on the following three issues. First, I consider the question of the number of operators a formal system must or can possess. Secondly, I argue that those unsatisfied by the conceptual paucity of classical logics – that is to say, systems that were initially developed specificall as tools for the foundations of arithmetic – should envision a new way of developing formal systems, and that Lesniewski’s work has, in this respect, valuable heuristic potential. Finally, after presenting the main lines of Lesniewski’s project, I will illustrate the value of his approach. Although Leśniewski was a marginal figure as far as both his work and his character are concerned, he occupies a central position in the history of Polish philosophical thought. The fact that he studied and collaborated, namely with Twardowski, Adjukiewicz, Łukasiewicz, and Tarski is not insignificant in this respect (see for instance the papers by Łukasiewicz, Patterson, Wolenski, this volume)." (pp. 113-114)

References

Łukasiewicz, Dariusz, Polish Metaphysics and the Brentanian Tradition, 1-31.

Patterson, Douglas, Tarski on Definition Meaning and Truth, 155-170.

Wolenski, Jan, The Rise and Development of Logical Semantics in Poland, 43-59.

9. Morawski, Roman. 2018. "Ontology of Logic and Mathematics in Lvov-Warsaw School." In The Lvov-Warsaw School. Past and Present, edited by Garrido, Ángel and Wybraniec-Skardowska, Urszula, 645-661. Cham (Switzerland): Birkhäuser.

Abstract: "The aim of the paper is to consider ontological views connected with mathematics and logic of main representatives of Lvov-Warsaw School of Philosophy.

In particular views of the following scholars will be presented and discussed: Jan Luksiewicz, Stanisław Leśniewski, Alfred Tarski, Tadeusz Kotarbiński and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. We shall consider also views of Andrzej Mostowski who belonged to the second generation of the school as well as of Leon Chwistek who was not directly the member of this group but whose conceptions are of interest."

10. Murawski, Roman. 2014. The Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic in the 1920s and 1930s in Poland. Basel: Birkhäuser.

Translated from Polish by Maria Kantor.

Chapter 3: Lvov-Warsaw School of Philosophy, 3.4 Stanisław Leśniewski, pp. 84-91.

11. Obojska, Lidia. 2015. "Some Remarks of Jan Slezynski regarding Foundations of mathematics of Stanisław Leśniewski." Technical Transactions / Czasopismo Techniczne no. 2:235-245.

Abstract: "Jan Śleszyński [1854-1931], a great mathematician, is considered a pioneer of Polish logic; however, he was not connected with the famous Warsaw School of Logic (WSL). He believed that his mission was a critical evaluation of work of other logicians in the field of foundations of mathematics and proof theory. Among his writings we find several notes regarding the work of Stanisław Leśniewski (the co-founder of the WSL) and his collective set theory. These remarks are the subject of investigation of the presented paper."

"Conclusion

Summarizing, in general, the criticism of Śleszyński can be considered very positive. It emphasizes Leśniewski’s accuracy and precision, and the work itself contains neither logical nor formal errors. As for the lack of understanding of certain terms, one can always have doubts, but it is not a formal shortcoming of this work.

It is a pity that Śleszyński’s notes were not published during his life. Perhaps the reception of Leśniewski’s ideas could have been easier. Leśniewski’s systems are not currently used as foundations of mathematics; maybe the reason lies in the language applied by the author. However, his work can be considered a masterpiece of mathematical precision and accuracy." (p. 244)

12. Ozawa, Masanao, and Waragai, Toshiharu. 1985. "Set theory and Leśniewski’s Ontology." Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science no. 6:261-272.

The aim of this paper is to investigate a general logical relation holding between Leśniewski's Ontology and axiomatic set theory. Though a natural and intuitive comparison of these two systems well suggests a close logical relation between them, no direct comparison between them seems to have not undertaken yet, probably because of Leśniewski's extreme nomimalistic standpoint.

We begin this paper with some remarks which are of historical interest.

Fraenkel-Bar-Hillel-Levy [1973] makes mention of the relation between Ontology and axiomatic set theories, stating: "Since Leśniewski's '∈' is not meant to be a symbol for class-membership, it is preferable to regard his ontology not as a variant of set theory but rather as a rival of set theory for the foundation of mathematics. ... . .. How important a rival of set theory ontology is, or could be made to be, is a question which it is still very difficult to decide" [p. 203]. We see two points in this passage, namely 1) the foundational status of Ontology is acknowledged in connection to set theory, while 2) the logical relation which should hold between them is referred to as one left unestablished. Thus the foundational character of Ontology has been realized, whereas it has been left as an open problem.

To this problem, the following remark seems also worth mentioning : "This view does not exclude that counterparts of many set-theoretical axioms tum out under a certain notational transformation - to be ontological theorems or that the ontological axiom should be transformed into a type-theoretical axioms. The latter possibility is easily materialized by interpreting 'x ∈ w' as 'x is a unit-class of individuals, w is a class of individuals and x ⊂ w" [loc. cit. p. 203]. Thus the crux of the problem is to define set-theoretical concepts inside of Ontology and to determine the deductive power of the set theory within Ontology.

We aim to give an answer to this open problem. The main result of this paper is the following : By adding to Ontology one function symbol for class formation, we can define the set, the class and the membership relation within Ontology. The deductive power of the resulting class theory can be also well characterized by an extensionality axiom and an impredicative comprehension axiom. Eventually, this class theory is ultimately innocent of existence of sets. Thus we can conclude that any axiomatic set theory can be developed equivalently in Ontology by adding to it one function symbol for class formation and appropriate axioms for existence of sets." (pp. 261-262)

References

Fraenkel-Bar-Hillel-Levy [1973] : Foondations of Set Theory, North Holland

13. Paśniczek, Jacek. 2023. "Leśniewskian Ontology with Many-argument Predication." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 44:327-336.

Abstract: "Leśniewskian Ontology (LO) is a system in which the basic subjectpredicate formula takes the form of aεb and express one-argument predication, e.g. John is a student. In LO’s language, there is no many-argument form of predication given that would allow for the structural expression of, for example, the sentence John is Anne’s son. In this article, a simple and natural extension of LO is suggested to encompass many-argument predication. The system thus obtained corresponds to polyadic second-order logic."

14. Piętka, Dariusz. 2006. "The philosophy of Stanisław Leśniewski." Organon no. 35:175-190.

"The article presents the views of Leśniewski both from the first and the second period of his work. Although his articles from the period of 1911–1915do not usually get much attention, they should not be completely forgotten as the opinions expressed therein are reflected in his later output. Above all, the method of practicing philosophy changed radically. The purpose of deliberations presented below is a synthetic discussion of the views of Leśniewski, but also presentation of certain connections between his opinions from the grammatical and formal periods." (p. 175)

15. Pietruszczak, Andrzej. 2018. Metamereology. Toruń: The Nicolaus Copernicus University Scientific Publishing House.

Original Polish edition 2000.

Revised and expanded edition translated from the Polish by Matthew Carmody.

16. ———. 2024. "From the History of Lesniewski’s Mereology." Studia Humana no. 13:5-16.

Abstract: "In this paper, we want to present the genesis of Stanisław Lesniewski’s mereology. Although ‘mereology’ comes from the word ‘part’, mereology arose as a theory of collective classes. That is why we present the differences between the concepts of being a distributive class and being a collective class. Next, we present Lesniewski’s original mereology from 1927, but with a modern approach. Leśniewski was inspired to create his concept of classes and their elements by Russell’s antinomy. To face it, Leśniewski had to define the concept of being an element of based on the concept of being part of. Leśniewski showed that in his theory, there is no equivalent to Russell’s antinomy. We will show that his solution has nothing to do with the original approach because, in both cases, we are talking about objects of a different kind. Russell’s original antinomy concerned distributive classes, and Lesniewski’s considerations concerned collective classes."

17. Poli, Roberto, and Libardi, Massimo. 1998. "Leśniewski’s conception of logic." In The Lvov-Warsaw School and Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna and Wolenski, Jan, 139-152. Dodrecht: Kluwer.

"The current availability in English of almost all of Leśniewski's works allows even those scholars unfortunate enough not to read Polish to gain a clearer picture of his ideas. 1 Even a brief reading of Leśniewski's works reveals that his main references are J.S. Mill, Austrian philosophy (Brentano, Marty, Husserl), J. Łukasiewicz and L. Petrażycki.

The first three (Mill, Austrian philosophy and Łukasiewicz) are well-known; what is new is the Russian-Polish thinker Leon Petrażycki.2 His 1905 book, Introduction to the study of law and morality: the bases of emotional psychology, was quoted by Leśniewski in some central passages. Unfortunately the 1955 translation of Petrażycki's book into English does not include the logical part of his work.(3)

In the course of this paper, we propose to present a reconstruction of Leśniewski's position, gathering together and analyzing his general theories and as far as possible - his explicit references to other authors." (p. 139)

(1) 1 S.l Surma, IT. Srzednicki, D.1. Barnett, Y.F. Rickey (eds.): Stanisław Leśniewski. Collected works, 2 vol., Dordrecht, KIuwer Academic Publishers, 1992. The publication has been an arduous editorial undertaking that has occupied Jan Srzednicki for more than eighteen years.

To him we owe our gratitude for the tenacity and the strength of will that enabled him to surmount the many and difficult obstacles that stood in his way. Unfortunately, the English translation is not always crystal clear and certain papers contain some irritating mistakes. For some general assessments, see the critical notice by M. Libardi, Axiomathes, 1993, pp. 105-129, and the review by P. Simons, 'Discovering Leśniewski', History and Philosophy of Logic, 1994, pp. 227-235.(,,,)

(2) For some information about Leon Petrażycki and for a wider analysis of Leśniewski in general, cf. R. Poli and M. Libardi, 'Logic, theory of science and metaphysics according to Stanisław Leśniewski' (submitted).

(3) L. Petrażycki, Law and Morality, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1955. The Leon Petrażycki Society published a German translation in Paris in 1933.

18. ———. 1999. "Logic, Theory of Science, and Metaphysics According to Stanisław Leśniewski." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 57:183-219.

"We can therefore now attempt to draw some conclus ions.

First, the influential role of Lukasiewicz's monograph on the Aristotelian principle of non-contradiction emerges with unexpected salience, but also and especially that of Petrazycki's monograph on the psychological foundation of law.

Lukasiewicz's monograph had important repercussions on Leśniewski's concepts of ontology and of synonymy. From Petrazycki he derived his theories of science, logic and (again) metaphysics/ontology.

An extreme hypothesis, one which is not supported by Leśniewski's writings but which emerges with a certain force from examination of his intellectual career, is the following: it seems that the fundamental purpose of his entire inquiry was to progress towards a formalization and a 'modernization' of Aristotle's Metaphysics.

Indeed, Leśniewski's early works are perfectly in keeping with the Aristotelian revival of the period. One need only consider his papers on the ontological principle of contradiction [PC] and on the principle of the excluded middle [EM], as well as those on the existential propositions [EP] and on truth [EB]. But the most telling evidence is provided by a possible and, in the end quite reasonable, interpretation of the structure of his system of the foundations of mathematics." (p. 216)

The following abbreviations are used in the notes: EP: "A contribution to the analysis of existential propositions", [Collected Works] 1-19; PC: "An attempt at a proof of the ontological principle of contradiction", 20-46; EM:

"The critique of the logical principle ofthe excluded middle", 47-85; EB: "Is all truth true eternally or is it also true without a beginning?", 86-114; FM: "On the foundations of mathematics", 174-382; FF: "Fundamentals of a new system of the foundations of mathematics", 410-605; FO: "On the foundations of ontology", 606-628; IR: "Introductory remarks to the continuation of my article: 'Grundziige eines neuen Systems der Grundlagen der Mathematik''', 649-710.

19. Prakel, Judith. 1983. "A Lesniewskian re-examination of Goodman's nominalistic rejection of classes." Topoi no. 2:87-98.

"In 'A World of Individuals (1)~ Goodman clarifies his earlier rejection of classes. To him, "as a nominalist", he says, "the world is a world of individuals". What is involved in being an individual is made clear by the calculi of individuals. To be an entity is to be an individual: no other sorts of entities are admissible. What makes them inadmissible is their behaving in an unintelligible way, contrary to the principles set forth in the calculi of individuals, because, in effect, the calculi of individuals lay down general principles of intelligibility for being an entity at all.(2) What is unacceptable about class theories, then, is that classes are purported to have properties that individuals cannot have. The problem is not that classes are 'abstract' or 'non-concrete' or "universal', but that they are not individuals. A nominalist, to use class terminology in an intelligible way at all, must be able to reconstrue all claims about classes as claims about individuals." (p. 87)

(...)

"As long then as 'class construction' is to be limited to those 'classes' produced by generating relations, it is going to be very difficult to produce some distinct 'classes' that will go proxy for those distinguished by set theoreticians.

For the same reason that K and L are difficult to distinguish, so are: ∅, the empty set, and {∅} (not to mention the problem of understanding how ∅ can be 'generated' in the first place!); a and {a } (where 'a' is taken to name some individual); (a,b) and (b,a). (the usual ordered pairs of the individuals a and b).

But without these distinctions much of set theory is lost and along with it, many would argue, the possibility of providing logical foundations for much of classical mathematics(3).

What I want to suggest is that there is a way to provide a logical reconstrual of these distinctions which makes them intelligible (and acceptable) while at the same time we are not required to abandon the Principle of Nominalism that there can be no distinction of entities without a distinction of content, nor are we required to accept any non-individuals as entities. The logical reconstrual will be within Lesiewski's systems. I also want to claim that the reconstrual can help us to evaluate, rather more clearly than has previously been possible, the philosophical position of present-day nominalists on the matter of the existence of mathematical entities." (p. 87)

(1) Goodman (1956).

(2) Incidentally, these clarifications of Goodman's ought to suggest that, contra Martin (Martin, 1963), the Principle of Nominalism is to be regarded as a principle of logic, even if as a principle of transcendental logic.

(3) For Martin (Martin, 1963, p. 34) is surely correct that it is not enough to be able to construe the syntax of mathematics nominalistically.

We also need a suitable interpretation.

References

Goodman, Nelson: 1956, 'A World of Individuals', in The Problem of Universals, Notre Dame University Press, Notre Dame, 1956.

Martin, R.M.: 1963, 'The Principle of Nominalism', Philosophical Studies XIV (1963), 33-37.

20. Prior, Arthur Norman. 1955-1956. "Definitions, Rules and Axioms." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 56:199-216.

Reprinted in A. N. Prior, Papers in Logic and Ethics. Geach, P. T. and Kenny, A. J. P. (eds.), London: Duckworth 1976, pp. 39-55.

21. ———. 1965. "Existence in Leśniewski and in Russell." In Formal Systems and Recursive Functions, edited by Crossley, John N. and Dummett, Michael, 149-155. Amsterdam: North Holland.

Proceedings of the Eighth Logic Colloquium. Oxford, July 1963.

22. Richard, Sebastien. 2018. "Leśniewski on metalogic and definitions." Synthese no. 195:2649–2676.

Abstract: "Lesniewski’s metalogic is often considered to be difficult to understand because it differs greatly from its standard formulation. In this paper I try to explain the reasons of these idiosyncrasies. I claim that they have mainly two sources. First of all there is Lesniewski’s conviction that a formal system should be conceived as a set of concrete marks that can always physically and syntactically be expanded by the addition of new theses. Secondly there is Lesniewski’s conviction that definitions should neither be formulas belonging to the metalanguage, nor deduction rules, but formulas belonging to the object-language and expressed with the help of the biconditional functor. The realisation of the first point is linked to the second one in so far as the metalinguistic rule for the writing out of definitions has to be formulated in a way that makes it possible to build the formal system in agreement with Lesniewski’s conception. While explaining these points I give an overview of the main peculiarities of Lesniewski’s metalogic."

23. ———. 2020. "Leśniewski’s Intuitive Formalism." In Formal and Informal Methods in Philosophy, edited by Będkowski, Marcin, Brożek, Anna, Chybińska, Alicja, Ivanyk, Stepan and Traczykowski, Dominik, 206-228. Leiden: Bril Rodopi.

Abstract: "When Stanisław Leśniewski read in 1911 Jan Łukasiewicz’s book The Principle of Contradiction in Aristotle he discovered modern symbolic logic and the Russellian antinomy of the classes, that do not contain themselves. He started then to look for a solution to this antinomy and elaborated his formal theory of wholes and parts. However, if he adopted the new formal tools of logistics, he refused to proceed in his building of formal systems as a “pure formalist”. In particular, for Leśniewski, a formal system must not be interpreted after having been built. An intuitive interpretation must be given from the beginning, the formal system being only a means to communicate the “logical intuitions” of the author. That is the reason why Leśniewski’s unconventional position has been called an “intuitive formalism” by Kearns or an “intuitionistic formalism” by Tarski. In this paper, I try to make these expressions more precise and explain how exactly the relation between intuition and formal systems must be understood according to Leśniewski."

24. Rickey, Frederick V. 1973. "Axiomatic inscriptional syntax. Part I: General syntax." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 13:1-33.

"Inscriptional syntax is that study of syntax wherein the linguistic entities are studied as inscriptions, i.e., as physical objects and not as abstract entities. In this paper we shall axiomatize the syntax which is common to all languages, i.e., General Syntax. In Chapter I of this paper we elucidate the notion of an inscription, expose some pre-logical assumptions, describe the three primitive terms of inscriptional syntax, and discuss our logical basis (viz., Leśniewski's Ontology). In Chapter II we present the axioms for the syntactical system M, define the usual notions of general syntax, and prove some typical theorems of general syntax. Our aim is not to obtain new syntactical results, but rather to put the theory of syntax on a secure foundation. Accordingly, we shall only develop system M to the point where most syntactical investigations begin. In particular, concatenation is defined in our system, whereas it is usually taken as primitive.

The initial task of syntax is to formulate precise statements of the formative and deductive rules of a particular formal language. After these rules have been stated it is of interest to develop their consequences by proving derived rules and to investigate the interconnections between primitive and derived rules. All of these tasks can be accomplished using system M. To support this claim we shall formulate the rule of Protothetic in the second part of this paper." (p. 1, a note omitted)

25. ———. 1973. "Axiomatic inscriptional syntax. Part II: The syntax of protothetic." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 14:1-52.

Reprinted in Jan Srzednicki, Zbigniews Stachniak (eds.), S. Leśniewski's Systems: Protothetic, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1998, pp. 217-288.

"Part 1** of this paper presented an axiomatized theory of general syntax, defined the usual notions of general syntax, and proved some typical theorems of general syntax. We claimed that this system is strong enough to precisely state the formative and deductive rules of formal languages. In Part II we support this claim by formulating, in a very precise way, the rule of procedure of Leśniewski's Protothetic. Section 1 is an informal introduction to Protothetic and its rule of procedure. Our metalogical system is extended there to a theory MP which is concerned explicitly with the syntax of Protothetic. This section is intended to motivate the Terminological Explanations of Section 2 which culminate in the statement of the rule of Protothetic. In Section 3 we sketch a proof that our formulation of the rule is equivalent to that given by Leśniewski (1929). This proof shows that our system is strong enough to conduct certain metalogical investigations." (p 217 of the reprint)

** Part I of this paper appeared in the Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic XIII (1972), pp. 1-33. The author would like to thank Professor Boleslaw Sobocmski for considerable advice.

References

Leśniewski, Stanisław (1929). 'Grundziige eines neuen Systems der Grundlagen der Mathematik', Fundamenta Mathematicae XIV, 1-81.

26. ———. 1975. "Creaive definitions in propositional calculi." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 16:273-294.

"Leśniewski felt that definitions were most naturally stated as equivalences in the object language and as such a rule of procedure governing their introduction is necessary. This view will be accepted here in our investigation of the role played by definitions in propositional calculi. In this paper we construct propositional calculi wherein some of the definitions play a creative role; i.e., they do not function as mere abbreviations and are not, even theoretically, superfluous.

A definition will be said to be creative for a thesis T in a given presentation of a deductive theory iff T does not contain the defined term (nor any defined via it) and is provable using the definition, but not without it.

The usual approach to definitions is to attempt to prescribe conditions which prevent the creativity of definitions. In trying to understand the role that definitions play in deductive theories we approach the subject from the opposite direction and attempt to construct systems which contain creative definitions. In 3 we give axiomatizations of propositional calculi which contain a single creative definition, a finite number of creative definitions, and also examples which contain an unlimited number of creative definitions.

In 1 the history of the problem is presented as best it is known, including a review of the literature. The rules of procedure for propositional calculi and especially the rule of definition are presented informally

in 2 and precisely in the appendix. Several metalogical remarks are presented in 4 including our proof of a hitherto unpublished theorem of A. Lindenbaum which shows that if Cpp is a thesis of a propositional calculus, then that calculus contains no creative definitions." (p. 273)

27. ———. 1977. "A survey of Leśniewski's logic." Studia Logica no. 36:407-426.

Reprinted in Jan Srzednicki, Zbigniews Stachniak (eds.), S. Leśniewski's Systems: Protothetic, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1998, pp. 23-41.

"In the period between the two world wars the eminent Polish logician Stanisław Leśniewski (1886--1939) created a hierarchy of logical systems which are unparalleled for their generality, precision, and intuitive foundations. By way of a careful and insightful analysis of the Russell Antinomy he came to distinguish between two notions of class, the distributive class and the collective class. Investigation of these concepts led to the creation of his systems of Ontology and Mereology, respectively. Then, in order to secure the foundations of these systems, he created the most fundamental system, Protothetic.

We intend to survey the most important technical contributions to these three disciplines. The restriction to technical results is necessary to restrict this paper to manageable proportions. Moreover, the non-technical aspects of Leśniewski's systems are more accessible. There is no doubt that the philosophical aspect of Leśniewski's work is extremely important and interesting.

This, together with historical matters, is enthusiastically discussed in Luschei's book (1962) on The Logical Systems of Leśniewski. Applications to philosophy and linguistics are also omitted. Hopefully, all of these matters will receive full consideration at this conference.(*)" (p. 23 of the reprint)

(*) Ed. Note: The author refers to XXllnd Conference on the History of Logic, July 5-9, 1976, Krak6w, Poland.]

28. ———. 1985. "Interpretations of Leśniewski's Ontology." Dialectica no. 39:181-192.

Summary: "This article proposes to clarify the problem of interpreting Leśniewski's ontology. A distinction is made between two kinds of interpretation: substitutional and "natural". Substitutional interpretation is shown to involve difficulties and limitations. A "natural" ontology, the major principles of which are presented here, is shown to be of considerable interest."

29. Rybaříková, Zuzana. 2016. "Prior’s Definition of Creative Definitions (Sobociński-Prior-Lejewski’s Discussion on the Leśniewskian Definitions)." Organon F no. 23:405-416.

Abstract: "The article introduces Prior’s paper Definitions, Rules and Axioms which deals with Leśniewski’s creative definitions. It presents the origins of Prior’s paper and the discussion which is linked with its final form. Prior’s aim in this paper was to present the Leśniewskian definitions in comparison with Russell’s concept of definitions, demonstrating their advantages and disadvantages. The main source of Prior’s knowledge about the Leśniewskian definitions were Sobociński’s papers and letters, which are stored in the Bodleian library. Although the paper Definitions, Rules and Axioms is a unique attempt at approximating creative definitions, it contains several mistakes. Lejewski identified them in his letter to Prior and also described how they arose. Lejewski’s critique was not severe, however, and Prior coped with it in the introductory page of his paper."

References

Prior, A. N. (1955-1956): Definitions, Rules and Axioms. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56, 199-216 reprinted in A. N. Prior, Papers in Logic and Ethics. Geach, P. T. and Kenny, A. J. P. (eds.), London: Duckworth 1976, 39-55.

30. ———. 2016. "The Reception of Stanisław Leśniewski’s Ontology in Arthur Prior’s Logic." Organon F no. 2:243-262.

Abstract: "Arthur Prior’s logic was influenced, among others, by logicians from the Lvov-Warsaw school. This paper introduces the impact Leśniewski’s Ontology had on Prior’s logical system. The paper describes the main characteristics of Leśniewski’s Ontology,

Prior’s logical system and the manner in which Prior became acquainted with Leśniewski’s logical system. Since Leśniewski was no longer alive when Prior began to develop his logical system and Leśniewski’s papers were not easily available to Prior, this paper also includes Prior’s interpretation of Leśniewski’s logical system which did not always correspond to Leśniewski’s original ideas."

31. ———. 2022. "The Value of Reality to Logic and the Value of Logic to Reality: A Comparison of Łukasiewicz’s and Leśniewski’s Views." Filozofia Nauki (The Philosophy of Science) no. 117:83-94.

Abstract: "Since Kazimierz Twardowski introduced the notions of “symbolomania” and “pragmatophobia,” the relationship between logic and reality was the focus of the philosophers from the Lvov-Warsaw School — inter alia two prominent logicians of the group, Stanisław Leśniewski and Jan Łukasiewicz. Bolesław Sobociński has pointed out, however, that there was a contrast between their approach to logic and reality. Despite being members of the same philosophical group and even colleagues from the same department, their philosophical views on the position of logic in reality differed considerably. Yet they both agreed that reality has a certain importance for logic and that logic could be valuable for reality. The aim of this paper is to introduce their divergent positions and describe in more detail how Leśniewski and Łukasiewicz understood the relationship between logic and the real world."

32. ———. 2023. "Arthur N. Prior and Leśniewski's Concept of Names: Why Prior Adopted It and Why He Left It in His Temporal Ontology." Logic and Philosophy of Time no. 5:1-20.

Abstract: "For a certain period, the concept of names that Stanisław Leśniewski and his followers developed had a certain impact on the concept that appeared in Arthur Prior's temporal ontology. However, this impact seemed to vanish in time. The aim of this paper is to present why Prior was interested in Leśniewski' s concept of names and quantification and to discuss why in Prior's later works Leśniewski's influence is not as apparent as it was in the first works on temporal logic. Namely, the paper suggests three possible solutions; the differences that were between Prior and Leśniewski's views on time and determinism, new concepts of names that occurred at that time, and Leśniewski's extensionalism that opposed Prior's preference for intensional logic."

33. Sagal, Paul T. 1973. "On how best to make sense of Leśniewski's ontology." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 14:259-262.

"Familiarity breeds contempt; on the other hand it can be very comforting. Philosophers find familiar logical systems very comforting.

On the whole they prefer the logic they learned on their mother's knee or in graduate school. When confronted with an unfamiliar system they either resist it or twist and turn to put the unfamiliar in a familiar frame.

A. N. Prior, in his essay Existence in Lesnίewskί and in Russell(1) does a lot of twisting and turning. Prior centers his discussion upon Theorem 24.52 of Russell and Whiteheads's Principia Mathematica. This theorem asserts that there exists at least one individual. But where does a logical system come off telling us that something exists ? Leśniewski's ontology contains no such thesis. Prior's essay investigates how ontology could get away with this when Russell considered 24.52 a necessary evil. This investigation leads Prior to make some general claims about Leśniewski's ontology, and to present its basic ideas in what Prior considers a less puzzling way than is customary. Prior's thesis is "that ontology is just a broadly Russellian theory of classes deprived of any variables of Russell's lowest logical type." (150) If we consider lowest type variables to range over individuals then we are left with a no individual theory. The only logical truths which remain would be those not involving individuals. According to Prior, the above characterization captures the essence of ontology. To give the reader who is completely unfamiliar with ontology enough information to appreciate the following discussion, I will make a few observations about ontology." (p. 259)

(1) A. N. Prior, "Existence in Leśniewski and Russell," in Formal Systems and Recursive Functions, ed. by Crosley and Dummett, North Holland (1963).

34. Sanders, John T. 1996. "Stanisław Leśniewski's Logical Systems." Axiomathes no. 3:407-415.

"In conclusion, it is to be emphasized again that Lesniewski’s motive in building his systems was to formulize intuition. Kearns remarks that in attempting to formalize intuition rather than to devise just any sort of system which “works,” Leśniewski is choosing to understand rather than simply to invent.(25)

That is, the construction of the Lesniewskian systems is an examination and elaboration of basic intuitions about the world and about language.

It is difficult, however, to pin down just what it was that Leśniewski was trying to understand - whether it was language or the world. For although intuitions are surely about the world, they are themselves linguistic in character: Kearns may be correct in suggesting that Lesniewski’s intuition is best described as knowledge of how language must be if it is to adequately and efficiently represent the world.(26)

This emphasizes the linguistic element of Leiniewski’s work. But might not his intuition be described equally fairly as knowledge of what the world must be like, given the distinctive linguistic character of intuitions? In such a formulation, the ontological element of the systems may be seen, along with the justification for Kotarbinski’s remark that Lesniewski’s Ontology is in fact a “theory of what there is, or general principles of being”.(27) Perhaps the best formulation would be that Leiniewski’s Ontology is a theory of what restrictions pure logic places on what can be. This avoids Kearns’s objection that the Kotarbitiski remark ignores Lesniewski’s nominalistic philosophical view, while preserving a kind of ontological characterization of the system. For Leśniewski's nominalism enters the scene only in Mereology: Protothetic and Ontology are independent of it.(28)" (p. 413)

(25) [Kearns 1967), 62-63.

(26) [Kearns 1967), 63.

(27) Kotarbiński, as quoted in [Luschei 1962), 149 and [Kearns 1967), 62; cf.[Lejewski 1958), 152-153 for a similar view of Ontology.

References

[Kearns 1967] J.T. Keams, "The Contribution of Leśniewski," Notre DameJournal of Formal Logic, 8, 61-93.

[Lejewski 1958] C. Lejewski, "On Leśniewski's Ontology", Ratio, 1, 150-176-

[Luschei 1962] E.C. Luschei, The Logical Systems of Leśniewski, North-Holland, Amsterdam-

35. Schâfer, Burkhard. 1998. "Leśniewski-quantifiers and modal arguments in legal discourse." Logic amd Logical Philosophy no. 6:133-155.

Abstract: "Following an idea first proposed by Jerzy Wróblewski, this paper examines the usefulness of formal logic for comparative legal analysis. Subject of the comparison are the doctrines of mistake and attempt in German and English criminal law. These doctrines are distinguished by the interaction of deontic, epistemic and alethic modalities. I propose a purely extensional logic which is based on Leśniewski’s substitutional interpretation of quantification to analyse differences in the logical structure of the various criminal law doctrines."

36. Scharle, Thomas W. 1962. "A diagram of the functors of the two-valued propositional calculus." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 3:243-255.

"By means of arranging the functors of the two-valued propositional calculus in a certain array (to be described below), we find that several properties of the functors are related. Such properties are connected to the possibilities of defining some functors by others, and thus in the diagram we have displayed definitional connections between certain sets of functors.

In this paper we first present the method of diagramming, and certain helpful connections within the diagram, then several theorems on definitions within the propositional calculus. We are then able to show that there are three exhaustive classes for single functors in terms of definitions, of such a nature that we are able to give axioms for a large number of functors.

The paper is concluded with some further consideration on definability in special cases." (p. 243)

37. ———. 1962. "Note on my paper 'A diagram of the functors of the two-valued propositional calculus'." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 3:287-288.

38. Schumann, Andrew. 2013. "On Two Squares of Opposition: the Leśniewski's Style Formalization of Synthetic Propositions." Acta Analytica no. 28:71-93.

Abstract: "In the paper we build up the ontology of Leśniewski’s type for formalizing synthetic propositions. We claim that for these propositions an unconventional square of opposition holds, where a, i are contrary, a, o (resp. e, i) are contradictory, e, o are subcontrary, a, e (resp. i, o) are said to stand in the subalternation. Further, we construct a non-Archimedean extension of Boolean algebra and show that in this algebra just two squares of opposition are formalized: conventional and the square that we invented. As a result, we can claim that there are only two basic squares of opposition. All basic constructions of the paper (the new square of opposition, the formalization of synthetic propositions within ontology of Leśniewski’s type, the non-Archimedean explanation of square of opposition) are introduced for the first time."

39. Simons, Peter M. 1981. "A note on Leśniewski and free logic." Logique et Analyse no. 24:415-420.

"The aim of this note is to correct a misconception which may arise from a paper by Karel Lambert and Thomas Scharle(1) in which systems of free logic as they have been developed in the past quarter century or so in America are compared with the logic, in particular the Ontology, of Leśniewski. I shall draw out some consequences for what I believe is a correct view of the relationship between free logic and Ontology."

(1) Karel Lambert and Thomas Scharle, «A translation theorem for two systems free logic», Logique et Analyse 10 (1967), 328-341.

40. ———. 1982. "On understanding Leśniewski." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 3:165-191.

Reprinted in: Peter Simons, Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski. Selected Essays, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1992, pp. 227-258.

"This paper assesses those features of Leśniewski's ontology which make it difficult to understand for logicians accustomed to more orthodox systems of logic. It is seen that certain general features of presentation and content can, by selective acceptance or modification, be accommodated with a fairly orthodox viewpoint. The chief difficulty lies in the interpretation of Leśniewski's names, and the constant '"?"'. Four interpretations are suggested in turn: Leśniewski's names as monadic predicates; as class terms; as common nouns; and as empty singular or plural terms. This last and least orthodox interpretation is argued to be the most suitable, but it is shown how it can be made to live in harmony with either the common noun or the class interpretation."

41. ———. 1983. "A Lesniewskian Language for the Nominalistic Theory of Substance and Accident." Topoi no. 2:99-110.

"The power of Leśniewski's language and his understanding of the quantifiers as being without existential import enabled him to express without heavy ontological commitment to abstract entities what other philosophers could only say provided they accepted such entities. So it is not surprising that Leśniewski and his followers have tended to be nominalists, both in the traditional sense which involves denying the existence of universals, and in the sense coined by Goodman (4) which involves denying the existence of sets. The possession of a Lesniewskian language leaves room for nominalism in a way which most other languages do not. Some exponents of Leśniewski have followed Kotarbiński in adhering to an extremely sparse form of reism, according to which the only things that exist are spatio-temporally extended bodies.(5) But while the adoption of a Lesniewskian language opens the way for such an ontology, it does not entail its acceptance. Lejewski has shown how a Lesniewskian type of language may be developed to allow the adumbration of a multicategorial ontology, say one involving both concrete individuals and abstract sets,(6) and I have sketched elsewhere how this idea may be naturally extended to form a basis for a simple theory of types.(7) But even within Leśniewski's language as it stands, a Platonist may quite happily claim the right to talk about the abstract entities which he recognises.(8) The point is that Lesniewskian languages free the metaphysician from having to accept the existence of certain entities simply in order to get a language of sufficient expressive power for his purposes. However they do not bind the metaphysician to reism." (p. 99)

(4) * I present a theory of classes as many in my 'Plural Reference and Set Theory', in B. Smith (ed.), Parts and Moments, Philosophia, Munich, 1981.

(5) See N. Goodman, 'A World of Individuals', in Problems and Projects, Bobbs-MerriIl, Indianapolis, 1972, pp. 155-172.

T. Kotarbiński, Gnosiology, Pergamon, Oxford, 1966, p. 55f.

Kotarbiński was not the first reist. Brentano's reism predates Kotarbiniski's, and Leibniz flirts with the position: cf. his New Essays on Human Understanding, C.U.P., Cambridge, 1981, p. 217, a passage quoted by both Brentano and Kotarbiński. Since Leibniz's flirtation consists in suggesting that perhaps accidents (and they alone) are not real, his official position is the same as that adopted in this paper. Brentano's reism, unlike Kotarbinski's accepts souls as well as bodies.

(6) C. Lejewski, 'A System of Logic for Bicategorial Ontology', Journal of Philosophical Logic 3 (1974), 265-283.

(7) Cf. § 9 of my 'On Understanding Leśniewski', [1982].

(8) This would apply to what Lejewski calls a 'unicategorial Platonist': cf. his 'Ontology and Logic', in S. K6rner (ed.), Philosophy of Logic, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 1-27, esp. p. 6. The bicategorical Platonist (ibid.) needs a bicategorial language. But because of the nature of Lesniewskian languages, the opponent of Platonism can still meaningfully discourse with the Platonist without accepting his ontological commitments, thus solving Quine's problem of 'Plato's beard': 'On What There Is', in From a Logical Point of View, Harper & Row, New York, 1953, p. 1f.

42. ———. 1984. "A Brentanian basis for Lesniewskian logic." Logique et Analyse no. 27:297-398.

Reprinted in: Peter Simons, Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski. Selected Essays, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1992, pp. 259-269.

43. ———. 1985. "Leśniewski's logic and its relation to classical and free logics." In Foundations of Logic and Linguistic. Problems and Their Solutions: A Selection of Contributed Papers from the VIIth International Congress of Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, held in Salzburg from the 11th-16th July, 1983, edited by Dorn, Georg and Weingartner, Paul, 369-402. New York: Plenum Press.

Reprinted in: Peter Simons, Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski. Selected Essays, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1992, pp. 271-293.

44. ———. 1985. "A Semantics for Ontology." Dialectica no. 39:193-216.

Reprinted in: Peter Simons, Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski. Selected Essays, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1992, pp. 295-318.

45. ———. 1985. "Leśniewski's Logie and its Relation to Classieal and Free Logics." In Foundations of Logic and Linguistics: Problems and Their Solutions, edited by Dorn, Georg and Weingartner, Paul, 369-400. New York: Springer Science+Business Media New.

Reprinted in: Peter Simons, Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski. Selected Essays, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1992, pp. 271-293.

46. ———. 1987. Parts: A Study in Ontology. Oxford: Clarendons Press.

"That most modern ontology passes mereology by is due to the inadequacy of CEM [Classical extensional mereology] as a conceptual instrument capable of use in the variety of issues found in ontology, coupled with a historically misinformed supposition that mereology is something for nominalists only. If I am right about the formal nature of mereology, it should be neutral on the issue of nominalism/realism. If mereology can be applied universally (and that has not been shown here, because we have not discussed abstract objects), then it should regain a central position in ontology; along with existence and identity, it should take us to the heart of many ontological issues. The topics covered in Parts II and III are meant to show this: Part II for existence in and through time, for identity, matter, and form, and Part III for essence, dependence, substance, unity, integrity, and form. It is notable how many of the issues in Part III are under-represented in the contemporary literature, although they loom large in traditional ontology, where it was felt to pay to be discriminating about different kinds of parts, as the quotation from Aquinas at the beginning of this section shows.

The contemporary field ontologist is better equipped than his predecessors because he is familiar with formal systems, a device we owe to Leibniz. The acquisition of this tool does not render the old resources—experience, wit, authority, the lore of language—obsolete, but it shifts the ontologist's role. He now has a theoretically endless supply of formal templates to hold up to the untamed phenomena, and his job now consists in fair part in constructing such formal systems and testing them for their applicability. It is tempting to be led by the attraction of internal properties of the formalism either into taking the world to be tamer than it is, or into a relativistic, pragmatic attitude to ontology which can be seen at its most significant in Quine. Such attraction, for which again Leibniz is responsible, lies behind CEM’s two errors of omission and two of commission. For different regions, we need different templates, and it is mainly the templates which must be bent to fit, not the world. In the case of mereology, this fails to descend to utter relativism because the theory has a formal skeleton and a range of analogous fleshings out which provides unity in the diversity." (pp. 363-364)

47. ———. 1992. "Lesniewskian Term Logic." Lingua e Stile no. 27:25-45.

"Students of traditional logic, by which I mean the central core of categorical syllogistic with whatever further forms were studied at the time, were drilled in putting the sentences occurring in arguments into «correct logical form», and present-day students do no different when replacing their natural language sentences by the formulas or semiformulas of predicate logic. Both procedures involve doing some violence to natural modes of expression. A sentence like Whoever flies saves time must be replaced by something like Every flier is a time-saver by traditional logicians and by For all x: if x flies then x saves time by modern logicians. As this makes clear, different logical systems may compete in offering prepared forms proximate to a natural specimen, so there may be a real choice as to which system is preferable for a given purpose. This is familiar to observers of modern logic since there are competing logics of definite descriptions, modality, and so on. Of course, if we confine attention just to the opposition between categorical syllogistic and predicate logic, there seems to be no contest. Predicate logic is expressively much the more powerful system, and as these two are the only two logical systems to have enjoyed widespread acceptance as tools for analysing validity of natural arguments, it might seem that only predicate logic remains as a general vehicle for workaday argument assessment. But the large number of introductory logic textbooks which still contain material on categorical syllogistic bears witness to the fact that, within its more limited sphere, the traditional logic of terms is widely felt to be a more natural and useful alternative to monadic predicate logic. Historical interest alone could not compensate for the inconveniences of introducing two quite different systems, with their different sentential analyses, laws, and terminology, to cover the same ground.

It is apparent that one disadvantage of predicate logic for these purposes is its use of bound individual variables, which natural languages do not have, and which they can simulate and match only by rather tortuous use of pronouns and pronominal phases. Of course this helps to account for the greater perspicuity of predicate logic once we leave the simplest sentences behind, but at the most elementary level it is a hindrance. The singular term/predicate analysis of simple predications compels common noun phrases and adjectives used attributively to appear as syntactically inseparable parts of predicates, which correspond most closely to verb phrases in natural language. Again, this is not a huge sacrifice, but it is pervasive, is felt to be unnatural, and contributes to beginners' difficulties in learning logic.

So it is worth considering from a practical and pedagogical point of view whether, in order to gain the considerable benefits conferred by predicate logic - quantification, multiple generality, relational predicates - it is necessary to put up with the disagreeable features of standard predicate logic. I shall argue that it is not, and that a more natural and flexible medium for which to prepare natural language sentences and arguments is provided by the term logic invented around 1920 by Stanisław Leśniewski (1886-1939) and usually known as Ontology. (*)" (pp. 25-26)

(*) The possible confusion of the system of logic with the branch of metaphysics of the same name is not a danger in this context, and in any case I will write the name of the system with a capital letter. Sometimes Ontology is called the Calculus of Names, but this is misleading, since much more than names are involved. It would be nice to have a better name for Ontology.

48. ———. 1992. "Existential propositions." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 42:229-259.

Summary: "By considering a wide and expressly classified range of examples from natural and logical languages, I attempt to isolate from other concomitants the features of existential sentences which make them existential. One such concomitant is the imputation of singularity. There are many ways to say something exists, and their relationships are charted. I deny that there is anything in reality called existence, or any special existential facts."

"So far we have considered how the expression of existence can be divorced from devices expressing singular or plural, and so these features are inessential to the expression of existence as such, but reflect, as it turns out, either the grammatical number of an open nominal or the meaning of a numerical quantifier, or both.

Examination of classical logic alone, with its embedded prejudice in favour of the singular, does not prepare us for this discovery: we need to consider a wider range of languages such as natural languages or Le´sniewskian. By the same score, there is

another dimension of variation covered by neither classical nor Lesniewskian logic, namely the distinction between count and mass nominals." (p. 240)

49. ———. 1993. "Nominalism in Poland." In Polish Scientific Philosophy: The Lvow-Warsaw School, edited by Coniglione, Francesco, Poli, Roberto and Wolenski, Jan. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Reprinted in Jan Srzednicki, Zbigniews Stachniak (eds.), S. Leśniewski's Systems: Protothetic, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1998, pp. 1-22.

"Several prominent Polish philosophers were nominalists. This paper concentrates mainly on the views of Leśniewski and Kotarbiński, in the belief that their views are the most interesting in themselves, the most historically important, and present most clearly the difficulties and challenges that nominalism has to face." (p. 1 of the reprint)

(...)

"Conclusion

The influence of Leśniewski and Kotarbiński goes beyond Tarski of course. Another of their students, Czeslaw Lejewski, is a staunch defender of a reism which is committed to unverifiable theses which even Kotarbiński was reluctant to accept.(51) Lejewski has also, more than any other follower of Leśniewski, gone out of his way to show how to accommodate within Ontology talk which is ostensibly about abstract entities like classes,(52) and to furnish language within which a Lesniewskian nominalist can carry on a dialogue with his Platonist opponent.(53) No doubt there are other Polish nominalists whose thinking was influenced by Leśniewski and Kotarbiński. A more exhaustive cataloguing of the extent of Polish nominalism is something I shall not undertake here, because what is important is not a head-count but the issue of principle: does Polish nominalism contribute essentially to answering the question whether nominalism is correct? My answer is plainly that it does, and the main problem which needs to be overcome is the one at

the heart of the discussions between Quine and Leśniewski: can a powerful higher-order logical language avoid commitment to abstract entities? Thanks to the work of Leśniewski, Kotarbiński, their associates and students, we are closer to an answer than before." (p. 18 of the reprint)

(51) Cf. Lejewski (1976). Lejewski told me that when Kotarbiński received a copy of this he replied that he was not prepared to go as far.

(52) Lejewski (1985).

(53) Lejewski (1974).

References

Lejewski, C. (1974). 'A System of Logic for Bicategorial Ontology', Journal of Philosophical Logic 3, 265-283.

Lejewski, C. (1976). 'Outline of an Ontology', Bulletin of the John Rylands University Lihrary of Manchester 59,127-147.

Lejewski, C. (1985). 'Accommodating the Informal Notion of Class within the Framework of Leśniewski's Ontology', Dialectica 39, 217-241.

50. ———. 1994. "Discovering Leśniewski: Collected Works." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 15:227-235.

"This discussion review examines the English edition of Leśniewski's Collected Works. Points emphasized include: the early (pre-symbolic) period, the quality of translation and typesettings, and the scandalously outdated bibliography."

51. ———. 1994. "Leśniewski and Generalized Quantifiers." European Journal of Philosophy no. 2:65-84.

"Generalized quantifier theory is usually dated to the 1957 paper 'On a generalization of quantifiers' by Andrzej Mostowski. After some use by mathematical logicians, including Lindstrom's 1966 paper 'Predicate logic with generalized quantifiers' it became widely known as a topic of investigation on the borderlines between logic and linguistics with the publication in 1981 of the paper 'Generalized quantifiers and natural language' by Jon Barwise and Robin Cooper. The subject has since expanded rapidly: it has an appealing simplicity and the essentials can be mastered quite quickly.

In this paper I put forward two theses. The first is historical and is the claim that there is a significant anticipation of certain key aspects of generalized quantifier theory in the logic of Stanisław Leśniewski (1886-1939), one of the founders and prime movers of the Warsaw group of logicians in the inter-war years. The second thesis builds on this anticipation and is the claim that Leśniewski's logic provides a framework for working on generalized quantifiers which has definite logical and ontological advantages over the rather eclectic mixture of ordinary language, standard predicate logic, and set theory in terms of which generalized quantifier theory is generally pursued." (p. 65)

52. ———. 1995. "Leśniewski and ontological commitment." In Stanisław Leśniewski aujourd'hui, edited by Miéville, Denis and Vernant, Denis, 103-116. Grenoble: Recherches sur la Philosophie et le Langage.

Abstract: "In the dispute between Quine and Leśniewski as to whether quantification of higher-order variables views Platonistic ontological commitments, it was Leśniewski (who answered negatively) who was right. I analyse here the notion of ontological commitment and show that the axioms and rules of Lesniewski’s logic remain valid even if there are no objects. The fact that there is nevertheless a plurality of different propositive logical constant in this case is to be explained by the « primeval fact » of logic, that truth is not falsity, that to be true is not to be false."

53. ———. 2002. "Reasoning on a Tight Budget: Leśniewski's Nominalistic Metalogic." Erkenntnis no. 56:99-122.

"How can one be a logician and yet believe that there are no abstract entities such as properties, sets, or expression types? Stanisław Leśniewski showed how. Leśniewski was one of the original practitioners of metalogic, and through the influence of his ideas and example on the Polish school many of his incidental ideas entered the mainstream, but his own nominalistic approach to metalogic did not. One of his major achievements was to formulate scrupulous metalogical descriptions of and directives for certain formal systems. The key idea is that directives are not descriptions of actually existing (abstract) expression types but detailed instructions on what expression tokens, if produced, are to count as axioms, definitions, and the acceptable products of inference rules, in a logical system which may grow in time by the addition of new token expressions. The directives are appended to a series of some fifty prescriptive metalogical definitions called ‘terminological explanations’. One of these, a definition of ‘definition’ in protothetic, comprises over two sides of dense symbols in eighteen independent clauses. The terminological explanations are justly notorious for their density and impenetrability, and Leśniewski himself typically took three semesters to work through them with graduate students.

This paper aims to smooth the way for a better understanding of Lesniewski’s distinctive approach to metalogic. After outlining Lesniewski’s philosophical background and illustrating his dissatisfaction with the inexactness of the metalogical practice of his time, I briefly explain the nature of his own system of the foundations of mathematics, before elucidating the idiosyncrasies of his concretist inscriptional approach and his reasons for adopting it. The approach is then illustrated with simple examples from propositional logic." (p. 99)

54. ———. 2006. "Things and Truths: Brentano and Leśniewski, Ontology and Logic." In Actions, Products, and Things: Brentano and Polish Philosophy, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Łukasiewicz, Dariusz, 83-106. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

"When Stanisław Leśniewski went to Lwów in 1910 to study with Kazimierz Twardowski, he was already acquainted with the philosophy of what he later called “the Austrian School”, by which he meant Franz Brentanoand his students, especially Anton Marty and Edmund Husserl, whose works initially captivated Leśniewski. This knowledge had been acquired during Leśniewski’s philosophical education in Germany, Russia and Switzerland, but it is very likely that his doctoral supervisor Twardowski would have made further aspects of Brentano’s work known to him. Despite this, and despite the often remarkable convergences between the philosophical views of Brentano and Leśniewski, there is little evidence of direct influence of the former on the latter. We have the testimony of Leśniewski’s friend and colleague Tadeusz Kotarbiński that the latter’s even closer philosophical parallels to Brentano’s work were acquired independently.(1)

Leśniewski did interact with Brentano’s views, but only at the very beginning of his career, and unsuccessfully. Later parallels are just that: parallels, and we are unlikely to come upon significant new evidence

as to whether there was or was not any direct influence, positive or negative.

Brentano and his philosophy were part of the philosophical wallpaper in Twardowski’s Lwów, but Leśniewski’s interests soon came to settle on logic and the foundations of mathematics, and such figures as Russell,

Frege, Cantor and Zermelo quickly outranked Brentano in their importance for his views. Nevertheless, the parallels are real, interesting, and revealing." (p. 83)

(1) Cf. Kotarbiński 1976, 195, where he points out that his reism, elaborated by him in 1929, owed nothing to Brentano despite Twardowski having been Brentano’s student and Kotarbiński being Twardowski‘s student. The explanation was the late change of mind of Brentano, which took him out of the orbit Twardowski knew into a reism which was not widely read or appreciated when it first appeared around 1914.

References

Kotarbiński, T. 1976. Franz Brentano as Reist. In: L. McAlister, ed., The Philosophy of Brentano. London: Duckworth, 194–203.

55. ———. 2006. "Leśniewski, Stanisław." In Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Second edition, edited by Borchert, Donald M., 290-293. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale.

"Leśniewski had definite ideas about the intellectual economy of logic. A system ought to have as few primitive notions, axioms, and directives as possible; the axioms ought to be as short as possible, logically independent, and organic—that is, not contain provable theses as subformulas. The search for ever shorter axioms was a general feature of the Warsaw School, which Leśniewski and his followers sometimes pursued at the expense of defending controversial aspects of the systems, such as their interpretation of quantification, their radical nominalism, and their thoroughgoing extensionalism." (p. 293)

56. ———. 2006. "Real Wholes, Real Parts: Mereology without Algebra." The Journal of Philosophy no. 103:597-613.

"Although the concept of a part is one of the oldest and most ubiquitous of formal concepts, formal theories of part and whole, or mereologies, emerged only around 1914-1916, independently, in the works of two philosopher-logicians: A.N. Whitehead and Stanisław Leśniewski. Whitehead developed his account of part and whole to serve the abortive fourth volume of Principia Mathematica. Mereology was the basis of his theory of extensive abstraction, which he employed in "La theorie relationniste de l'espace."(1) Whitehead went on to employ mereology and extensive abstraction to define geometric elements such as points and lines in his Principles of 1919.(2)

(...)

"In 1916 Leśniewski put forward the first axiomatization of this theory of part and sum, under the title "Foundations of the General Theory of Sets," but he later changed the name to "mereology" to avoid confusion with what he called "official" set theory.(5) A definitive account of mereology was published in a series of articles from 1927-31 with the title "On the Foundations of Mathematics"." (pp. 598-599)

(...)

"Conclusion

Mereology is an essential part of ontology, but it can easily be overused. For instance, several important computer ontologies use only two formal relations among entities: is_a and part_of.(39) Even if these are interpreted sensibly,(40) this places far too much burden on mereology, not to mention inclusion, exemplification, or whatever is_a is supposed to represent. Even formal ontology is a good deal richer than this. But in particular it cannot be assumed that because the part-relation behaves in one way in one domain -- in the ontology of spatiotemporal regions, say -- that it must behave similarly elsewhere. All that can be guaranteed a priori is that the part-concept has the formal characteristics which are analytic of it.(41) When it comes to the honest toil of investigating the principles governing what objects are parts of others, and what collections of objects compose others, it appears that most ontologists have been following the paradigm of abstract algebra when it would have been better to take a lead from sciences such as geology, botany, anatomy, physiology, engineering, which deal with the real.(42)

(1) Whitehead, "La théorie relationniste de l'espace," Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, xxiii (1916): 423-54. This talk was delivered in April 1914. The published version is a translation of the now lost English original.

(2) Whitehead, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge (New York: Cambridge, 1919; 2nd ed., 1925.

(39) For example, Gene Ontology

(40) That they usually are not is the justified complaint of Barry Smith, "Beyond Concepts: Ontology as Reality Representation," in Varzi and Laure Vieu, eds., Formal Ontology and Information System Amsterdam: IOS, 2004), pp. 73-84.

(41) Simons, Parts, p. 362

(42) A mereologist who has remained quietly unfazed by algebra is David Sanford: see his "The Problem of the Many, Many Composition Questions, and Naive Mereology," Nous, xxvii (1993): 219-28; and "Temporal Parts, Temporal Portions, and Temporal Slices: An Exercise in Naive Mereology," xv (1996): 21-33.

57. ———. 2009. "Leśniewski's Logic." In Handbook of the History of Logic: Vol. 5. Logic from Russell to Church, edited by Gabbay, Dov M. and Woods, John, 305-320. Amstrdam: Elsevier.

"In the course of the 1920s Leśniewski submitted his rigorous but unformalized reasonings regarding propositions, objects, collections and parts to a process of progressive formalization. The axioms of his 1916 mereology were rendered into a formalized axiomatic mereology, where undefined expressions meaning ‘part of’ and ‘collection of’ were taken as primitive. This rendering of mereology and its immediate consequences suffered two drawbacks: the expression for ‘collection of’ needed to be defined in terms of ‘part of’ before being inserted into the axioms; and the logical principles governing names and name-forming functors were not made explicit. The former was easily remedied by a new axiomatization; the latter required another logical system, one dealing with names, predicates, and other functors. This system, which picked up where the early papers left off, but now ditched the notions of connotation and property, Leśniewski came to call ‘ontology’, because he saw it as a general theory of objects in the sense of Aristotle.

But ontology had its own logical presuppositions, a logic of propositions or “theory of deduction” as Whitehead and Russell had called it. This most basic theory of logical first principles Leśniewski called ‘protothetic’. For him it included not just the standard truth-functional connectives, but also higher functors and the basic principles governing the logic of quantifiers." (p. 307)

58. ———. 2014. "Arithmetic in Leśniewski’s Ontology." In The History and Philosophy of Polish Logic: Essays in Honour of Jan Wolenski, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna and Placek, Tomasz, 227-241. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

"Jan Wolenski and I shared more than a merely antiquarian interest in Le´sniewski however. Like myself, Jan also considered that Leśniewski had been somewhat poorly portrayed in subsequent literature, both by Lesniewski’s often ignorant detractors and by his often equally uncritical admirers. We both take a somewhat more detached view than the latter, enabling us, as we think, to give a fair assessment of his important contributions.

I am concerned to exhibit some of the striking advantages of doing more things Lesniewski’s way even today, and this paper falls into that category." (p. 228)

(...)

"Lesniewski’s ontology (the logical system) goes beyond standard Frege-Russell style predicate logic because it is more liberal with its names. Whereas standard predicate logic has only singular names, to which free logic adds empty names, ontology in addition allows plural names: names of several individuals. But it stops there. In a sense it doesn’t take multitudes or groups (the objective counterparts of plurals) fully seriously, since a plural term is just one term for many individuals.

We can have predicates true of multitudes, and with our numerical predicates we have seen how this allows us to bring arithmetic down a level by comparison with its standard (non-set-theoretic) treatment, where numerical terms are quantifiers, or predicates of predicates. And in Lesniewski’s logic we have to use analogous numerical constants from ever higher types to continue the story. However, the illustration from kindergarten arithmetic shows that we naturally use the very same numerical terms for groups as for individuals, and indeed for groups of any desired level or order." (p. 239)

(...)

"While the final form of such a theory is not yet certain, it holds out a number of promises. The first is that it will allow a type-free account of arithmetic that is still beyond Leśniewski. The second is that the principles of Peano arithmetic in this system will have a much weaker existential requirement for their truth: by dint of the ability to ramify multitudes up to any finite order, no more than two individuals are required to kick-start an infinite hierarchy and so ensure that every finite cardinality predicate is satisfied. This is not to give up on Lesniewskian ontological neutrality, since it remains a non-logical fact that even one individual exists, but we can be assured that in any universe we care about, in particular our own, Peano arithmetic will be true.

And finally, the endless resources of such a system of multitudes holds out the promise of doing something that, following Quine, has been universally assumed to be impossible, namely to provide a nominalistically acceptable formal semantics for predicate logic, of first or higher order. These are heady prospects, and tasks for another time. But it all starts from the first step of Leśniewski having the courage and foresight to retain plurally referring names when all around him the logical world was rejecting them." (p. 240)

59. ———. 2018. "Stanisław Leśniewski: Original and Uncompromising Logical Genius." In The Lvov-Warsaw School. Past and Present, edited by Garrido, Ángel and Wybraniec-Skardowska, Urszula, 209-221. Cham (Switzerland): Birkhäuser.

Abstract: "Stanisław Leśniewski was one of the two originators and drivers of the Warsaw School of logic. This article describes his work chronologically, from his early philosophical work in Lvov to his highly original logical systems of protothetic, ontology and mereology. His struggles to overcome logical antinomies, his absolute commitment to logical clarity and precision, and his antipathy towards set theory made his nominalistic approach to logic among the most original of the twentieth century, while his early death and the loss of his papers meant his work was only gradually discovered and appreciated outside Poland."

60. ———. 2018. "Leśniewski and Mereology." In The Lvov-Warsaw School. Past and Present, edited by Garrido, Ángel and Wybraniec-Skardowska, Urszula, 337-359. Cham (Switzerland): Birkhäuser.

Abstract: "This paper surveys mereology, the theory of parts and wholes, focussing on its origins in Leśniewski, and noting its intended employment as a surrogate for set theory.

We examine parallel and independent work by Whitehead, Leonard and Goodman, and outline the subsequent adventures of mereology, both in its formal guises and in its now intensive application within philosophical ontology."

Stanisław Leśniewski: bibliography in English (Sin - Z)

Studies on Leśniewski in English

1. Sinisi, Vito. 1961. "Nominalism and common names." The Philosophical Review no. 71:230-235.

"Edwin Allaire, Gustav Bergmann and Reinhardt Grossmann have objected to the nominalistic analysis of "this is red and that is red" which treats "red" as a common name. Such an analysis, they argued, must assimilate the copula in this sentence to the "is" of identity. sinisi claims that this objection is mistaken. Using a logical system developed by Stanisław Leśniewski, he shows that it is possible to construe "red" as a common name without taking the copula as the "is" of identity."

2. ———. 1965. "Discussion: ``∈ '' and Common Names." Philosophy of Science no. 32:281-286.

"In [6] I tried to show how an objection to "the nominalist's" analysis of (a) "This is red" and (b) "That is red" on the basis of "the doctrine of common names" might be overcome.(1) The objection is that "the nominalist," attempting to analyze (a) and (b) by construing the pronouns in these sentences as two different proper names and "red" as a common name, is forced thereby to construe the copula in both sentences as the "is" of identity, and hence (it is claimed) this and that are identical, i.e., that there is only one red spot and not two. I attempted to show that by using Leśniewski's original axiom of ontology "the nominalist" could construe the pronouns in (a) and (b) as proper names, and "red" as a common name without taking the copula to express identity; he would not be forced to identify this with that.(2) The cogency of my explanation has been recently challenged by Mr. Grossmann [1]. In the first part of this note I shall answer some of his criticisms of my paper, and in the second I shall answer two questions he asks." (p. 281)

(1) The objectors are Edwin B. Allaire, Gustav Bergmann, and Reinhardt Grossmann. references see [6].

(2) Familiarity with [6] is assumed.

References

[1] Grossmann, Reinhardt, "Common Names", ed., Edwin B. Allaire et al., Iowa Publications in Philosophy, vol. 1, Iowa City, The Hague, 1963, 64-7.

[6] Sinisi, Vito F., "Nominalism and Common Names", The Philosophical Review, LXXI (1962), 230-235.

3. ———. 1966. "Leśniewski's analysis of Whitehead's theory of events." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 7:323-327.

"Stanisław Leśniewski (1886-1939) was a leading member of the famous Warsaw school of logicians which flourished between the two Wars. The works of Lejewski and Sobocinski have made many readers of this journal familiar with Leśniewski's three systems of logic: protothetίc, ontology, and mereology. What does not seem to be generally known is that in the course of setting forth mereology [1]: Leśniewski proved that A. N. Whitehead's axiomatic basis for the concept of event is an inadequate foundation for Whitehead's theory of events.

The purpose of this note is to recapitulate Leśniewski's analysis (available only in Polish) of Whitehead's theory of events. Perhaps a knowledge of this analysis will be of value not only to those interested in Leśniewski's work but to that growing number of philosophers concerned with Whitehead's metaphysics and philosophy of science." (p. 323)

[1] Leśniewski, Stanisiaw, "O podstawach matematyki," (On the Foundations of Mathematics), section 4, Przegląd Filozoficzny (Philosophical Review), XXXI (1923), 261-291.

4. ———. 1969. "Leśniewski and Frege on collective classes." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 10:239-246.

"Between 1927 and 1931 Leśniewski published a series of articles on the foundations of mathematics in the Polish journal Przegląd Filozoficzny.65% of the work is devoted to various axiomatizations of Leśniewski's mereology (a theory of collective classes) while the remainder takes up various related issues. In the third part of this series Leśniewski informally sets forth his notion of a collective class, criticizes certain descriptions of distributive classes, and argues that there is no justification in Frege's statement that the conception of a class as consisting of individuals, so that the individual thing coincides with the unit class, cannot in any case be supported.

Leśniewski's refutation of Frege's statement appears to be unknown to western logicians and philosophers. None of the recent books on Frege (e.g., Angelelli, Egidi, Sternfeld, Thiel, Walker) mentions it. Luschei, in his The Logical Systems of Leśniewski, mentions it but does not present it.

My purpose here is to state and explain Leśniewski's refutation in the hope that it will help stimulate interest in his work." (p. 239)

5. ———. 1976. "Leśniewski's Analysis of Russell's Antinomy." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 17:19-34.

"As mentioned above, Leśniewski's third analysis of Russell's antinomy has been published by Sobocinski in [49-50]. Luschei in [62] summarized Leśniewski's second analysis, which was published in [27]. However, the historically important first analysis of 1914, the analysis which determined the character of Leśniewski's later logical theories, is not accessible to those who do not read Polish.(5) This analysis should be of interest not only to those concerned with Leśniewski's Ontology and Mereology but also to those concerned with the antinomy. My purpose here is to state and explain the main points of Leśniewski's 1914 paper "Czy klasa klas, niepodporzadkowanych sobie, jest podporzadkowana sobie?" in order to reveal some of the factors which determined the form of Mereology, and to

help stimulate interest in his work." (pp. 19-20)

(5) Luschei [62], p. 20, asserts that Leśniewski repudiated his paper "Czy klasa klas . . . , " and in his bibliography of Leśniewski's works, p. 321, he lists this paper under the heading "Early writings, later repudiated." Luschei also lists Leśniewski's [16] under this heading. Unfortunately, I have not found any textual evidence to support the claim that Leśniewski repudiated these two works. In [27], pp. 182-183, Leśniewski listed four articles, two published in 1911, and two published in 1913, which he solemnly repudiated, but his list does not contain either the paper "Czy klasa klas . . . " or his [16]. Leśniewski said that he mentioned these four works " . . . because I wish to indicate that I am very distressed that they were published at all, and I herewith solemnly 'repudiate' these works, which I have already done from a university lectern, and assert the bankruptcy of the 'philosophico'-grammatical enterprises of the first period of my research." Furthermore, Luschei [62], p. 67, summarizes Leśniewski's second analysis of the antinomy, which appeared for the first time in Leśniewski's [27], pp. 182-189, but incorrectly he attributes the analysis to Leśniewski's "Czy klasa klas . . . " of 1914. The analyses of [27] and of "Czy klasa klas . . . " are distinct. "Czy klasa klas . . . " is not, as Luschei says, recapitulated in [27].

[The paper of 1914 "Czy klasa klas . . . , " is translated as "Is the Class of Classes not Subordinated to Themselves, Subordinated to Itself?" in the first volume of Lesniwski, Collected Works, pp. 115-128]

References

[16] Leśniewski, Stanisław, Podstawy ogólnej teoryi mnogości. I (Foundations of general set theory. I), Prace Polskiego Kola Naukowego w Moskwie, Sekcya matematyczno-przyrodnicza, No. 2, Moscow (1916).

[27] Leśniewski, Stanisław, "O podstawach matematyki" (On the foundations of mathematics), Przegląd Filozoficzny, vol. XXX (1927), pp. 164-206.

[49-50] Sobocinski, Bolesiaw, "L'analyse de l'antinomie russellienne par Leśniewski," Methodos, vol. I (1949), pp. 94-107, 220-228, 308-316, and vol. II (1950), pp. 237-257.

[62] Luschei, Eugene C., The Logical Systems of Leέniewski, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam (1962).

6. ———. 1983. "The Development of Ontology." Topoi no. 2:53-62.

"Leśniewski published only two works devoted exclusively to Ontology: an article, 'Über die Grundlagen der Ontologie', in 1930, and, a year later, Chapter XI, 'O zdaniach "jednostkowych" typu "A e b" ' ['Singular' sentences of the type 'A e b'], in his series of articles on the foundations of mathematics(1) The first is essentially a highly formalized presentation of the terminological explanations for Ontology, breathtaking in its brevity and rigor; it concludes with a laconic summary of some results obtained by Leśniewski, Sobocifnski, and Tarski during 1921-1929. The second differs radically in style and content; written in colloquial Polish, almost a memoir, it narrates the development of Ontology. My purpose here is to give an analytical review of this narrative which includes many informative and illuminating discussions of the conceptual basis of Leśniewski's Ontology (or 'calculus of names', as it is sometimes called), and which may be helpful to those who are interested in Leśniewski's work but who do not read Polish." (p. 53)

[Chapter XI. "On 'singular' propositions of the type Aεb" is translated in Collected Works, pp. 364-382]

7. ———. 1983. "Leśniewski's Foundations of Mathematics." Topoi no. 3:3-52.

"During 1927-1931 Leśniewski published a series of articles (169 pages) entitled 'O podstawach matematyki' [On the Foundations of Mathematics] in the journal Przegląd Filozoficzny [Philosophical Review], and an abridged English translation of this series is presented here. With the exception of this work, all of Leśniewski's publications appearing after the first World War were written in German, and hence accessible to scholars and logicians in the West.

This work, however, since written in Polish, has heretofore not been accessible to most Western readers, and it is hoped that this translation will encourage both the study of Leśniewski's works as well as the further development of his theories.

Leśniewski's foundations of mathematics consists of three theories: Protothetic, which, according to Leśniewski, roughly corresponds "to what is known in the discipline as the 'calculus of equivalent statements', 'Aussagenkalkul', 'theory of deduction' joined with the 'theory of apparent variables' "; Ontology, "which is a kind of modernized 'traditional logic', and with respect to its content and 'strength' most closely approaches Schröder's 'Klassenkatkul' considered as including a theory of 'individuals' "; and Mereology, an axiomatization of the part-whole relation, which Leśniewski initially called "general set theory".

Mereology presupposed Ontology, which in turn is grounded in Protothetic. When Leśniewski began the publication of his 'O podstawach matematyki' he intended to present all three theories, but was able to present only Mereology.

There is an informal discussion of Ontology in Chapter XI of this series; and the terminological explanations, as his rules were called, for Ontology were published in another journal in 1930. Protothetic was first presented in 1929 in Fundamenta Mathematicae, and in 1938 his last work on Protothetic appeared. A year later, he died at the age of 53. During the Warsaw Insurrection of August, 1944 all of his unpublished manuscripts and lecture notes were destroyed." (p. 3, notes omitted)

"The essay "On the Foundations of Mathematics" is translated in Collected Works, vol. 1, pp. 174-382]

8. Slupecki, Jerzy. 1953. "St Leśniewski's Protothetics." Studia Logica no. 1:44-111.

Reprinted in Jan Srzednicki, Zbigniews Stachniak (eds.), S. Leśniewski's Systems: Protothetic, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1998, pp. 85-152.

"This paper does not bear the character of a historical study on Professor Leśniewski's system as the notes on which it is based were not written by himself. Moreover, the exposition of protothetics given here deviates in many points from that contained in those notes. This seemed to be indicated, in the first place, for didactic reasons, my aim being to make this paper comprehensible also to non-specialists,(2) although it has, of course, been taken for granted that the reader is familiar with the fundamental branches of mathematical logic.

I have taken account of all the results contained in the notes with the exception of a few which I consider either unessential or indeed obsolete.

In order to make the exposition of protothetics both concise and complete I was bound to amplify considerably the material found in the notes. However, all the results given here and not contained in the notes were undoubtedly known to Professor Leśniewski. The paper includes no results of my own but a considerable part of the proofs has been entirely worked out by myself. I mention this so that I alone should be held responsible for any inaccuracies and errors which may have occurred.

This paper is not written with that exactitude which Professor Leśniewski always observed in his lectures and publications. This reservation, however, refers only to the meta-logical considerations whereas in the proofs of theorems of the system I have strictly followed the proofs found in the notes.

The lectures "On Certain Problems of Protothetics", the notes of which form the basis of this paper, were delivered by Professor Leśniewski at the Warsaw University during the academic year 1932-1933. The subject-matter of this paper is discussed in a more detailed way in Section 2." (p. 86 of the reprint)

(2) With the exception of Section 13 (proof of completeness of protothetics).

9. ———. 1955. "S. Leśniewski's Calculus of Names." Studia Logica no. 3:7-70.

Reprinted in Jan T. J. Srzednicki, V, F, Rickey (eds.), Leśniewski's Systems: Ontology and Mereology, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1984, pp. 59-122.

"The only primitive term in Leśniewski's system of the Calculus of Names is the verb 'is' for which the participle 'being' corresponds to the Greek 'ον' (gen. 'ὄντως'). This was by no means the only reason for Leśniewski's use for his system a name indicating one ofthe main branches of philosophy. Thus in Leśniewski's article "On the Foundations of Mathematics"(2) we read:

... I used the term 'outology' for the theory I developed, as this was not opposed to my 'linguistic intuition', just in view of the fact that I formulated in that theory a sort of 'general principles of being'.

In the title of this paper I nevertheless thought it better to use "Calculus of Names", as 'ontology' might cause some misunderstanding, but I shall be using throughout the text 'ontology' for Leśniewski's system." (p. 59 of the reprint)

(...)

"I have subdivided this paper into four sections. Section I discusses the intuitive and formal foundations of ontology. Section II deals with theorems of that part of Leśniewski's system to which I shall refer as elementary ontology(7) and which contains the simplest theorems of the whole system and those nearest to intuition. It is in this section too that I discuss the relation between ontology and traditional logic as well as the algebra of sets. Section III deals with the remaining part of the system, i.e. the non-elementary ontology. However, I shall not give a systematic presentation of non-elementary ontology, as this could only be done in a separate and large treatise. I shall only adduce the theorems and definitions I consider most characteristic of non-elementary ontology. Further, I shall present all those theorems and definitions contained in the notes from Leśniewski's lectures which, though exceeding the limits of elementary ontology, are nevertheless closely related to its theorems and notions. Section IV contains brief methodological considerations on the system."

(2) 2 Leśniewski [1927-1931, Ch. XI, p. 163]. (Editorial Note: English translation Leśniewski [1983].)

(7) The definition of elementary ontology is given in II, § 1.

References

Leśniewski, Stanisław. [1927-1931] O podstawach matematyki (On the Foundations of Mathematics) Przegląd Filozoficzny, Vol. XXX (1927), 164-206; Vol. XXXI (1928), 261-291;

Yol. XXXII (1929), 60-101; Yol. XXXIII (1930), 77-105; Vol. XXXIV (1931), 142-170. (Polish). (English translation - Leśniewski [1983].)

_________ [1983] On the Foundations of Mathematics, Topoi, Vol. II, No.1, 7-52. (This is the abridged English translation by Vito F. Sinisi of Leśniewski [1927-1931].)

10. ———. 1958. "Towards a generalized mereology of Leśniewski." Studia Logica no. 8:131-154.

"The antinomies of the set theory have made it imperative for logicians and mathematicians to investigate its basic assumptions. As a result, consistent systtems were formulated, but at the same time the intuitive interpretations of the "naive" set theory were lost. In all those systems, except the mereology of S. Leśniewski, the set is interpreted so that even sets of perceivable objects are not perceivable objects; thus, e. g., libraries are not sets of books, and constellations are not sets of stars. Mereology, however, is essentially "poorer" than other systems of the set theory. It is, for instance, impossible to build in mereology the arithmetic of natural numbers. In this paper Leśniewski's system is enriched so as to be suitable for laying the foundations of mathematics in the same degree as is the case of other systems of the set theory. This is achieved by including in mereology certain new definitions and by using much stronger logical means than it was done by Leśniewski. The extended system of mereology, however, retains the basic intuitive assumptions of the original system." (p. 131)

11. Smirnov, Vladimir Aleksandrovich. 1983. "Embedding the Elementary Ontology of Stanisław Leśniewski into the Monadic Second-Order Calculus of Predicates." Studia Logica no. 42:197-207.

"The elementary ontology of Leśniewski and the standard calculus of predicates are based on different categorial systems. Categories of name and sentence are fundamental syntactical categories of Le?niewski's ontology, categories of proper name and sentence are fundamental categories of the calculus of predicates. Is it possible to compare logical systems built on different systems of categories? We give an affirmative answer to this question in the case of the elementary ontology and the standard calculus of predicates." (p. 197)

12. ———. 1983. "A Correction to 'Embedding the Elementary Ontology of Stanisław Leśniewski into the Monadic Second-Order Calculus of Predicates'." Studia Logica no. 45:231.

13. Sobocinski, Boleslaw. 1949. "An Investigations of Protothetic." Cahiers de l’Institut d’Etudes Polonaises en Belgique no. 5:1-39.

Reprinted in Storrs McCall (ed.), Polish Logic 1920-1939, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1967, pp. 201-206.

"This paper was intended to appear, under the title 'Z badan natl prototetyką', in vol. 1 of the periodical Collectanea Logica (Warsaw, 1939), pp. 171-6. (...) An English translation of the paper, made by Dr. Sobocinski, appeared as no. 5 of the Cahiers de l'lnstitut d'Etudes polonaises en Belgique (Brussels, 1949). This version is translated anew from the Polish by Z. Jordan." (p. 201 of the reprint).

Reprinted with a new Introduction (pp. 69-75) in Jan Srzednicki, Zbigniews Stachniak (eds.), S. Leśniewski's Systems: Protothetic, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1998, pp. 75-83.

"Protothetic is a deductive theory constructed by the late Stanisław Leśniewski. As we know, he based the whole system of contemporary mathematics on three deductive theories, protothetic, ontology, and mereology, which he conceived and constructed. [ ... ]

I will neither describe the characteristic features of these theories nor comment on the theoretical basis of St. Leśniewski's system. I will only state that:

1. The precision and the conciseness of the formalization, symbolism, and the formulation of the rules of procedure for the above theories are unparalleled among the known deductive systems.

2. The principles on which these theories are based differ in many respects from those that were usually accepted before the discovery of the Russell Antinomy. They allow, nevertheless, to formulate and prove all the theorems of classical logic.

3. There are straightforward proofs that these theories and the entire system are consistent, and, consequently, that no known logical antinomy can be reconstructed in them." (p. 72)

(...)

"While investigating various problems of protothetic, I observed that a number of theorems which, as far as I could ascertain, remained unknown at that time (December 1935), were theses of protothetic. 26 As this finding is closely associated with the theorem of Dr. Alfred Tarski concerning the definability, in protothetic, of conjunction in terms of equivalence, I have decided to publish the theses discovered by myself." (p. 75, notes omitted)

14. ———. 1954-1955. "Studies in Leśniewski’s mereology." Rocznik Polskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego na Obczyźnie no. 5:34-43.

Reprinted in Jan T. J. Srzednicki, V, F, Rickey (eds.), Leśniewski's Systems: Ontology and Mereology, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1984, pp. 217-227.

15. ———. 1960. "On the single axioms of protothetic." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 1:52-73.

Reprinted in Jan Srzednicki, Zbigniews Stachniak (eds.), S. Leśniewski's Systems: Protothetic, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1998, pp. 153-171.

"In this paper I should like to present the results of my unpublished investigations concerning axiom-systems of protothetic. Strictly speaking, only the system of protothetic called S [Gothic] 5 will be considered here. It seems to me that this investigation may interest students of propositional calculus and the related subjects, since the deductions which will be used, sometimes unexpected and rather difficult, not only explain to some degree the structure of protothetic, but can also throw light upon several problems concerning various systems of propositional calculus. Because, generally, protothetic is still a little known theory, at the beginning I have to give several, possibly short, explanations concerning it. Without them the subject of this paper and the proofs presented below would hardly be understandable for the reader.

Thus, in the first section a short description of protothetic and the necessary information about the rules of procedure of the system S [Gothic] 5 will be given.

There will also be added some history of the researches concerning the single axioms of protothetic and related problems. Especially, I shall discuss briefly the metatheorems L (of Leśniewski) and the stronger S (mine). In the second section I shall present a combined proof: (1) that my axiom An can serve as a single (and probably the shortest) axiom of the system S [Gothic] 5 of protothetic, and (2) that the above mentioned metatheorem S is sufficient to check the completeness of any axiom system of protothetic. In the third and the last section it will be shown, in the shortest possible way, how the classical propositional calculus and the quantification theory for protothetical formulas can be obtained in the field of the system S [Gothic] 5 **.

Instead of the authentic symbolism of Lesniewski2 introduced by him mostly in order to formulate the rules of procedure in the most precise way, I shall use here a more convenient Peano-Russelian symbolism modified in a manner which will satisfy the requirements of protothetic. Anyone who is familiar with [elementary] logic will understand these modifications without difficulty." (p. 153 of the reprint, a note omitted)

** [Ed. Note: The third section was never published by Sobocinski; its intended contents is discussed by Rickey in paper II of this volume.]

16. ———. 1961. "On the single axioms of protothetic. II." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 2:111-126.

Reprinted in Jan Srzednicki, Zbigniews Stachniak (eds.), S. Leśniewski's Systems: Protothetic, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1998, pp. 171-188.

17. ———. 1961. "On the single axioms of protothetic. III." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 2:129-148.

Reprinted in Jan Srzednicki, Zbigniews Stachniak (eds.), S. Leśniewski's Systems: Protothetic, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1998, pp. 188-216.

18. ———. 1967. "Successive simplifications of the axiom-system of Leśniewski's Ontology." In Polish Logic 1920-1939, edited by McCall, Storrs, 188-200. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

"The aim of this paper is to provide a detailed account of the successive steps by which the axiom of Ontology was simplified.(1)

I originally intended to present only the results that I obtained myself. However, in my research I took advantage of various contributions, published and unpublished, made by others, namely by Professor Stanisław Leśniewski and Dr. Alfred Tarski.

If no detailed account of their results were given, the reader could have difficulties in following my own proofs. Moreover, this omission could obscure the development of all these investigations, and, contrary to my wishes, belittle the share of some contributors or their contributions. To avoid such misunderstandings and to present a complete picture of the results obtained in this field of research, I decided to give an account of all of them, for which the persons concerned granted me their kind permission." (p. 188)

(1) For the sake of conciseness, in this paper the term 'Ontology' is always used instead of the expression 'Ontology of Stanisław Leśniewski'.

[This paper appeared originally under the title 'O kolejnych uproszczeniach aksjomatyki "ontologji" prof. St. Lesniewskiego' in Fragmenty Filozoficzne, a volume in commemoration of fifteen years' teaching in the University of Warsaw by Professor T. Kotarbiński, Warsaw, 1934, pp. 143-60. Translated by Z. Jordan.]

19. ———. 1984. "Leśniewski's Analysis of Russell's Paradox (1949) (*)." In S. Leśniewski's Systems: Ontology and Mereology, edited by Srzednicki, Jan, Rickey, Frederick V. and Czelakowski, Janusz, 11-44. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Published in French in four parts: Methodos, I - II - III: vol. 1. (1949) pp. 94-107; 220-228; 308-316; IV: vol. 2 (1950) pp. 237-257.

"The purpose of this article is to give, with a minimum of symbolism, a simple, accessible, unpolemical exposition of Leśniewski's analysis of Russell's Paradox.(1)

This analysis merits attention for several reasons. Mainly, because it was the point of departure for the construction of Leśniewski's system for the foundation of mathematics. His method of overcoming the paradox in question is very different from those employed by others. From the start it forced Leśniewski to take a path on which he had to overcome great difficulties related to the problem of the paradoxes; it determined the character of the theories which constitute his system. This system, which differs in many ways from contemporary systems, is non-contradictory (which is easy to prove), and is an adequate base for the construction of contemporary mathematics. However, it is not very easy to get the feel of the system, nor is it easy to penetrate the psychology from which it arose-what precisely were Leśniewski's thoughts about Russell's Paradox.(2)" (p. 11)

* Editorial Note: Translated from the French by Robert E. Clay.

(1) Stanisław Leśniewski (born March 18, 1886, died May 13, 1939) was professor of philosophy of mathematics at the University of Warsaw from 1919 until his death.

(2) Leśniewski presented the essentials of his views on Russell's paradox - Leśniewski [1927-1931, Chs. II-III] (Editorial Note: English translation - Leśniewski [1983].)

However, the formal reasonings given here have never been published.

References

Leśniewski, Stanisław. [1927-1931] O podstawach matematyki (On the Foundations of Mathematics) Przegląd Filozoficzny, Vol. XXX (1927), 164-206; Vol. XXXI (1928), 261-291;

Yol. XXXII (1929), 60-101; Yol. XXXIII (1930), 77-105; Vol. XXXIV (1931), 142-170. (Polish). (English translation - Leśniewski [1983].)

_________ [1983] On the Foundations of Mathematics, Topoi, Vol. II, No.1, 7-52. (This is the abridged English translation by Vito F. Sinisi of Leśniewski [1927-1931].)

20. Srzednicki, Jan, Rickey, Frederick V., and Czelakowski, Janusz, eds. 1984. S. Leśniewski's Systems: Ontology and Mereology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Contents: Editorial Note 7; 1. Z. Kruszewski: Ontology without Axioms (1925) 9; 2. B. Sobocinski: Leśniewski's Analysis of Russell's Paradox (1949) 11; 3. C. Lejewski: Logic and Existence (1954) 45; 4. J. Slupecki: S. Leśniewski's Calculus of Names (1955) 59; 5. C. Lejewski: On Leśniewski's Ontology (1958) 123; 6. J. Canty: Ontology: Leśniewski's Logical Language (1969) 149; 7. B. Iwanus: On Leśniewski's Elementary Ontology (1973) 165; 8. B. Sobocinski: Studies in Leśniewski's Mereology (1954) 217; 9. E. Clay: On the Definition of Mereological Class (1966) 229; 10. C. Lejewski: Consistency of Leśniewski's Mereology (1969) 231; 11. E. Clay: The Dependence of a Mereological Axiom (1970) 239; 12. E. Clay: Relation of Leśniewski's Mereology to Boolean Algebra (1974) 241; Bibliography 253; Index of Names 261-262.

21. Srzednicki, Jan, and Stachniak, Zbigniew, eds. 1998. S. Leśniewski's Systems: Protothetic. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"This edition of papers concerning Leśniewski's logical system Protothetic completes the four volume project - The Leśniewski Collection - a collected edition of Leśniewski's papers and major contributions to Leśniewski's system of the foundations of mathematics. The three volumes published so far are:

(1) Leśniewski's Systems. Ontology and Mereology Edited by J.T.J. Srzednicki, Y.F. Rickey, and J. Czelakowski. Nijhoff International Philosophy Series, 13 (1984).

(2) S. Leśniewski's Lecture Notes in Logic Edited by J.T.J. Srzednicki and Z. Stachniak. Nijhoff International Philosophy Series, 24 (1988).

(3) Stanisław Leniewski: Collected Works Edited by J.T.J. Srzednicki, S.J. Surma, and D. Barnett with an Annotated Bibliography by Y.F. Rickey. Nijhoff International Philosophy Series, 44 (1992)." (Editor's Foreword, p. VII)

Contents: Editor's Foreword VII; 1. Peter M. Simons: Nominalism in Poland (1983) 1; 2. V. Frederick Rickey: A survey of Leśniewski's logic (1977) 23; 3. Alfred Tajtelbaum-Tarski: On the primitive term of logistic (1923) 43; 4. Boleslaw Sobocinski: An investigation in Protothetics (1949) 69; 5. Jerzy Slupecki: St. Leśniewski's Protothetics (1953) 85; 6. Boleslaw Sobocinski: On the single axiom of Protothetic (1960) 153; 7. V. Frederick Rickey: Axiomatic inscriptional syntax. Part II. The syntax of Protothetic (1973) 217; VIII. Audoënus Le Blanc: Investigations in Protothetic (1985) 289; Protothetic bibliography 299; Author Index 309.

22. Stachniak, Zbigniew. 1981. Introduction to Model Theory for Leśniewski's Ontology. Wroclaw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wroclaskiego.

This monograph presents a formal theory of models for a certain extension of Leśniewski's Ontology.

Contents: Chapter 1. Ontology L_DF

1.1 Categories; 1.2 Basic language L; 1.3 Ontological definitions; 1.4 The language of ontology L_DF; 1.5 The system of ontology L_DF; 1.6 Non-creativity of ontological definitions;

Chapter 2. Model Theory

2.1 Ontological atomic Boolean systems; 2.2 Basic atomic Boolean models; 2.3 Generalized atomic Boolean models; 2.4 Completeness and compactness;

Chapter 3. Omitting types theorem and the fundamental theorem of ultraproducts;

3.1 Omitting types theorem; 3.2 The fundamental theorem of ultraproducts.

23. Sundholm, Göran. 2003. "Tarski and Leśniewski on Languages with Meaning versus Languages without Use. A 60th Birthday Provocation for Jan Wolenski." In Philosophy and Logic in Search of the Polish Tradition: Essays in Honour of Jan Wolenski on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday, edited by Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna, 109-128. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"Conclusion

Around 1930 Alfred Tarski, a mathematician by inclination, training, and ability, very much like other contemporary researchers, attempted to apply the techniques of mathematics to problems in logic. Out of necessity this demanded that the formal languages of logic had to be converted into objects of study, from having been major tools for research. For him personally this entailed a conflict between the foundational stance that he had taken over from his teacher Leśniewski and the metamathematical laisser faire towards which he, as a mathematician, was inclined. He resolved this dilemma between 1933 and 1935 and his unequivocal choice was in favour of metamathematics. I have suggested that contributing factors in this decision were, possibly among others, (1) the impact of the achievements of of metamathematics; (2) Tarski's own experience of metamathematical work; (3) the availability of an attractive alternative foundation, namely, Zermelo's axiomatic set theory in relation to the cumulative hierarchy; and (4) unfortunate personal conflicts among his teachers and collaborators." (p. 123)

24. Surma, Stanisław. 1977. "On the work and influence of Stanisław Leśniewski." In Logic Colloquium 76, edited by Gandy, Robin and Hyland, John Martin, 191-220. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

"Concluding remarks

Stanisław Leśniewski's efforts to solve the problem of antinomies resulted in the construction of what he called the New System of the foundations of mathematics, distinguished by originality, comprehensiveness and elegance, a pioneering achievement of the 20-ties.

Leśniewski played a considerable role during the period of elaborarating modern tendencies of mathematical logic and the foundations of mathematics. He was the forerunner and originator of many ideas now incorporated into logical and foundational text-books.

But Leśniewski's writings are done in a highly condensed and difficult style, most cumbersome in practice, his famous terminological explanations are hardly intelligible. He invented a special symbolism, the so called wheel and spoke notation the use of which was an additional factor determining his isolation on the international scene.

This is why Leśniewski's systems have not been so popular as they deserved. Another reason is that general trends of logical research had meanwhile drifted away from "system building" to metalogical investigations mostly of first order languages. All this is quite unfortunate but the fact remains that Leśniewski·systems are not generally accepted as a tool in the foundational practice, and they" are not the systems a mathematician in the street makes use of. But on the other hand, Leśniewski's work has greatly influenced the very phflosophy of logic and of the foundational studies. In this field Leśniewski had worked out an original point of view he had called the "intuitionistic formalism" which he characterized by these sentences:

"I might take this opportunity to point out that. for many months I have devoted a considerable expenditure of systematic work towards the formalization of these systems / ••• / through a clear formulation of their directives using a number of the auxiliary terms whose meaning I fixed in the terminological explanations / •.. /. Having no predilection for various "mathematical games" that consist in writing out according to one or another conventional rule various more or less picturesque formulae which need not be meaningful, or even - as some of the "mathematical gamers" might prefer - which should necessarily be meaningless, I would not have taken the trouble to systematize and to often check quite scrupulously the directives of my system, had I not imputed to its theorems a certain specific and completely determined sense, in virtue of which its axioms, definitions, and final directives / .•. / have for me an irresistably intuitive validity" and further "I know no method more effective for acquainting the reader with my logical intuitions tban the method of formalizing any deductive theory to be set forth./Compare for this Leśniewski /1929/, p.78/." (pp. 212-213)

References

Leśniewski, S. 1929. Grundzuege eines neuen Systems der Grundlagen der Mathematik. §1-§11. Fundamenta Mathematicae,14/1929/,l-81.

25. Świetorzecka, Kordula, and Marek, Porwolik. 2018. "Bolesław Sobociński on Universals. Leśniewski’s Nominalism and Sobociński’s Metaconceptualism." In The Lvov-Warsaw School. Past and Present, edited by Garrido, Ángel and Wybraniec-Skardowska, Urszula, 615-632. Cham (Switzerland): Birkhäuser.

Abstract: "The present paper proposes a comparative analysis of two standpoints on the existence and nature of universals hold by Stanisław Leśniewski and Bolesław Sobocinski. We consider first the nominalistic argumentation of Leśniewski formalized by Sobocinski and described in the correspondence with J. M. Bochenski in 1956. Sobocinski’s formalization revealed a fundamental pragmatic weakness of the reconstructed argumentation which was also mentioned by Sobocinski. He himself was aware of the difficulties connected with an adequate interpretation of the crucial axiom, whose

acceptance Leśniewski imputed to supporters of all theories of universals. Finally, the problem of the existence and nature of universals was elaborated by Sobocinski also in a separate typescript “Uwagi w sprawie powszechników” (Remarks on universals).

The view formulated by Sobocinski comes from a combination of the methodology of deductive systems and the conceptualist standpoint. From the philosophical perspective Sobocinski’s idea is both interesting and original, but it remained unknown to philosophers and logicians in general. For these reason we describe it and compare it with Lesniewski’s approach. We use in this description epistemological notions of R. Suszko. Our analysis enables to speak about universals in sense of Leśniewski, which are described by some universal in sense of Sobocinski."

26. Tajtelbaum-Tarski, Alfred. 1998. "On the primitive term of logistic. Doctoral Dissertation [1923]." In S. Leśniewski's Systems: Protothetic, edited by Srzednicki, Jan and Stachniak, Zbigniew. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"This paper appeared in print in Polish under the title 'O wyrazie pierwotnym logistyki', Przegląd Filozojiczny XXVI (1923), 68-89, by permission of Jan Tarski. Translated by Z. Stachniak." (p. 43)

"The considerations carried out in the present work belong to the area of logistic; the sentences on which I based these considerations are generally accepted among researchers working in this field of knowledge. I do not, however, carry out my considerations on the basis of any specific system of logistic; in particular, I do not make my reasonings dependent on the best known theory of logical types by Russell. Although it is not possible, as I see it, to develop a consistent system of logistic without this or that theory of types, among all the theories of types which could be constructed(2) there unquestionably exist those according to which my arguments, in their present general form, are faultless. One such theory was developed by S. Leśniewski during his lectures on the foundations of arithmetic at the University of Warsaw (in 1920-1921).(3)

The main objective of the present work is to settle the following problem: is it possible to construct a system of logistic with the sign of equivalence as the sole primitive term (in addition, of course, to the quantifiers(4) )?" (p. 43)

(2) The possibility of constructing different theories of logical types was already anticipatedby the inventor of the first of them - Russell. Cf. A.N. Whitehead and B. Russell, Principia Mathematica, Cambridge 1910, Vol. I, p. vii.

(3) One way in which Leśniewski's theory of types affected the layout of this work is that for functions, whose arguments are not sentences, I am using distinct parentheses. Cf. Def. 4 in Section 2 and Def. 6 in Section 3.

(4) I am using the term 'quantifier' in the sense of Peirce ([cf.] 'On the Algebra of Logic', American Journal of Mathematics VII, 1885, p. 197), who denotes with this term the symbols 'Π' (universal quantifier) and 'Σ' (particular quantifier), representing abbreviations of the expressions: 'for every signification of terms ... ' and 'for some signification of terms ... '.

27. Takano, Mitio. 1985. "A Semantical Investigation into Leśniewski's Axiom of His Ontology." Studia Logica no. 44:71-77.

28. ———. 1987. "Embeddings between the Elementary Ontology with an Atom and the Monadic Second-Order Predicate Logic." Studia Logica no. 46:247-253.

29. Tanaja, Shôtarô. 1969. "Lesniewski’s Protothetics S1, S2. I." Procedings of Japan Academy no. 45:97-101.

"The systems S1 and S2 are defined originally by S. Leśniewski [1].

The definitions, theorems and some relations between S1 and S2 are also shown by K. Iski [2]. The equivalences of some laws in S1 are proved by K. Chikawa [3].

In this paper we shall prove that every theorem of S2 is a theorem of S1."

References

(1) S. Leśniewski: Grundzfige eines neuen Systems der Grundlagen der Mathematik. Fundamenta Mathematicae, 65, 1-81 Warszawa (1929).

(2) K. Iski. Symbolic Logic Propositional Calculi (in Japanese.), Vol. 1, Maki publisher (1968).

(3) K. Chikawa: On equivalences of laws in elementary protothetics. I. Proc. Japan Acad., 43, 743-747 (1967).

30. ———. 1969. "Lesniewski’s Protothetics S1, S2. II." Procedings of Japan Academy no. 45:259-262.

31. ———. 1969. "Lesniewski’s Protothetics S1, S2. III." Procedings of Japan Academy no. 45:263-266.

32. Thom, Paul. 1986. "A Lesniewskian Reading of Ancient Ontology: Parmenides to Democritus." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 7:155-166.

Abstract: "Parmenides formulated a formal ontology, to which various additions and alternatives were proposed by Melissus, Gorgias, Leucippus and Democritus. These systems are here interpreted as modifications of a minimal Lesniewskian Ontology."

"There is a tradition of ontological theorising which commences with Parmenides and whose central arguments can can be given a purely formal interpretation. This, of course, is not their only possible interpretation. It is, nonetheless, worthy of consideration, as a means of articulating the continuities and discontinuities within that tradition, and of investigating the prehistory of logic.

The main thesis of this paper is that such a purely formal interpretation of Parmenides, his followers and critics, is best expressed in the language (or, if you wish, in some of the languages) of Leśniewski's Ontology." (p. 155)

33. Trentman, John. 1966. "Leśniewski's Ontology and Some Medieval Logicians." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 7:361-364.

"In a recent issue of this journal (Oct., 1964) Professor Desmond Paul Henry [*] has shown that, although it may be the case that Ockham's descensus in his supposition theory cannot be adequately rendered in the lower functional calculus (Cf. [7]), it can be adequately rendered in the Ontology of S. Leśniewski. Professor Henry, furthermore, suggests that Ontology would be an appropriate tool for analyzing other medieval logical theories, claiming, "It is not difficult to multiply examples of the facility and directness with which Ontology can furnish formal analyses of medieval logical theories, including those cases which are despaired of in the histories." (P. 292)

In this note I wish to suggest an important limitation upon this claim.

For a very fundamental reason Ontology is not an appropriate tool for analyzing a certain class of fourteenth-century logical theories. One can best make this point, however, by emphasizing its usefulness for explicating Ockham's doctrines. Not only will it allow one to express the descensus; it also provides a very close and illuminating explication of Ockham's doctrine of predication, and this is the matter that most concerns me in this note." (p. 361)

[*] Ockham, suppositio, and modern logic, pp. 290-292.

References

[7] Gareth B. Matthews, "Ockham's Supposition Theory and Modern Logic", The Philosophical Review, vol. LXXIII, pp. 91-99.

34. ———. 1976. "On Interpretation, Leśniewski's Ontology, and the Study of Medieval Logic." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 14:217-222.

"The most characteristic thing about D. P. Henry's interesting studies of medieval logic is his persistent use of and appeal to the logical system called Leśniewski's Ontology.

Whether this characteristic of his books and essays is useful or repellent to the reader is a matter of controversy, and the use of this particular interpretative tool has, in fact, been challenged on the ground that if Leśniewski's Ontology is taken as an interpreted system in the sense in which medieval logics must be seen to be interpreted, it must be regarded as committed to a two-name doctrine of predication and, hence, is good Oekhamism but a dubious device for the expression of anti-Ockhamist logics.(1)

Henry has responded that this objection is mistaken.(2) There is no reason to believe that Ontology is thus limited. Nevertheless, Ontology is an interpreted system in the strong sense intended in the criticism. Indeed, he says about my characterization of the difference between logic and an uninterpreted calculus, "In fact the view of logic propounded is exactly the one adopted by Leśniewski. ''(3)

The aim of this note is to attempt some clarification of this controversy about the use of Leśniewski's Ontology as an analytical and historiographic tool. Henry's understanding of what the medieval logicians were trying to do is totally unexceptionable, but I shall suggest it is far from easy to get, either from him or from Leśniewski's other interpreters, a coherent and consistent understanding of the philosophical point of view of Ontology, upon which one might base a judgement about its historiographic usefulness.

The key to the problem is to be found in understanding what it means or can mean to talk about the interpretation of logic; it is here that an attempt at clarifying these issues must begin." (p. 217)

(1) 1 John Trentman, "Leśniewski's Ontology and some Medieval Logicians," Nolre Dame Journal oJ Formal Logic, VII (1966), 361-364.

2 His response first appeared in "Leśniewski's Ontology and some Medieval Logicians," NDJFL, X (1969), 324-326; the substance of his arguments is repeated in his Medieval Logic and Metaphysics (London, 1972). In this note I shall concentrate on Henry's use of Leśniewski and his defence of that use in this book (hereafter cited as MLM).

(3) MLM, p. 54.

35. Urbaniak, Rafal. 2006. "On Ontological functors of Leśniewski's Ontology." Reports on Mathematical Logic no. 40:15-43.

Abstract: "We present an algorithm which allows to define

any possible sentence-formative functor of Leśniewski's Elementary Ontology (LEO), arguments of which belong to the category of names. Other results are: a recursive method of listing possible functors, a method of indicating the number of possible n-place

ontological functors, and a sketch of a proof that LEO is functionally complete with respect to { ∧, ¬ ∀, ∊ }."

36. ———. 2006. "On Representing Sentential Connectives of Leśniewski's Elementary Protothetic." Journal of Logic and Computation no. 16:451-460.

Abstract: "After a brief presentation of Leśniewski's notation for 1- and 2-place sentential connectives of protothetic, the article discusses a method of extending this method to n ≥ 3-place sentential connectives. Such a method has been hinted at b Luschei, but in fact, no general effective method of defining such functors has been clearly and explicitly given. The purpose of this article is to provide such a method."

37. ———. 2006. "Some non-standard interpretations of the axiomatic basis of Lesniewski’s Ontology." Australasian Journal of Logic no. 3:13-46.

"Intuitively, in a slogan, when we give axioms for a given axiomatic system one of our purposes is to characterize constants occurring in these axioms. Following this idea, axioms of Lesniewski’s Ontology aim to characterize ‘univocally’ the primitive constants of this system. Usually, there is only one such a constant specific to Ontology; it is " (sometimes, there are other constants: see

Lejewski [9]). Hence, Lejewski writes:

In the original system of Ontology . . . the meaning of the copula ‘is’ (‘ε"axiomatizations. In order to proceed, we shall (i) introduce the language we will be talking about (ii) say what axioms and rules of inference were accepted in Ontology in some axiomatizations, (iii) present some possible interpretations of quantifiers in Ontology, (iv) explain what is meant by ’semantic interpretation of a given functor’, and, when it will be done, (v) obtain the answer for the main problem.’ in symbols) is determined axiomatically . . . [10, p. 323]

Our purpose will be to investigate, whether in fact axiomatizations of Ontology determine a unique semantic interpretation of the primitive constant(s) of this axiomatizations. In order to proceed, we shall (i) introduce the language we will be talking about (ii) say what axioms and rules of inference were accepted in Ontology in some axiomatizations, (iii) present some possible interpretations

of quantifiers in Ontology, (iv) explain what is meant by ’semantic interpretation of a given functor’, and, when it will be done, (v) obtain the answer for the main problem." (pp. 13-14)

References

[9] Lejewski, C., On Lesniewski’s Ontology, Lesniewski’s Systems. Ontology and Mereology, Editors: Jan T. J. Srzednicki, V. F. Rickey, J. Czelakowski, Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague, 1984, pp. 123-149

[10] Lejewski, C., Systems of Lesniewski’s Ontology with the Functor of Weak Inclusion as the only Primitive Term, Studia Logica, 1977, XXXVI, 4, pp. 323–349

38. ———. 2008. "Leśniewski and Russell's Paradox: Some Problems." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 29:115-146.

Abstract: "Sobocinski in his paper on Leśniewski's solution to Russell's paradox (L'analyse de l'antinomie russellienne par Leśniewski, 1949) argued that Leśniewski has succeeded in explaining it away. The general strategy of this alleged explanation is presented. The key element of this attempt is the distinction between the collective (mereological) and the distributive (set-theoretic) understanding of the set. The mereological part of the solution, although correct, is likely to fall short of providing foundations of mathematics. I argue that the remaining part of the solution which suggests a specific reading of the distributive interpretation is unacceptable. It follows from it that every individual is an element of every individual. Finally, another Lesniewskian-style approach which uses so-called higher-order epsilon connectives is used and its weakness is indicated."

39. ———. 2010. "Response to a critic (definability and ontology)." Reports on Mathematical Logic no. 10:255-259.

Reply to Leslaw Borowski (2010).

"I would like to thank Mr Borowski for his comments, I appreciate his time and effort. It is always uplifting to learn that a topic which one has considered quite hermetic can stir up such emotions. I’ll just briefly respond in a rather relaxed manner to what I think the main points raised by Mr Borowski are." (p. 255)

(..)

"Once again, I would like to thank to Mr Borowski for his criticism – he pointed out a mistake in one of the definitions, and the review brought up to my attention the need for extreme clarity which I, over-relying on the reader’s common-sense, might have neglected." (p. 259)

40. ———. 2013. Leśniewski's Systems of Logic and Foundations of Mathematics. Dordrecht: Springer.

"Leśniewski’s work is interesting for a few reasons.

• If one is interested in history of logic in general, it is hard to deny that Leśniewski was one of the key figures in one of the most important schools of logic in twentieth century. He devoted his research to developing an alternative to the system of Principia Mathematica and this attempt is worth studying in his own right.

• If one is interested in the development of Tarski’s thought it might be useful to learn what his Ph.D. supervisor’s views were and how Leśniewski’s work and Tarski’s ideas are (or are not) related.

• Philosophical discussions in which Leśniewski participated pertained to issues which are discussed quite lively even today. His approach to semantical and set-theoretic paradoxes and his views on the validity of the principle of excluded middle and of the principle of contradiction are philosophically interesting.

• Leśniewski was a nominalist and his systems were a nominalistic attempt to provide a system of foundations of mathematics. It is a major attempt of this sort and as such it is worth an examination.

• His metalogic is quite specific. Nominalist as he was, he wanted to develop a purely inscriptional syntactic description of his systems in a way that did not make any reference to expression types. It is interesting to see how he proceeded.

• His systems have some interesting properties. For instance, in all of them definitions can be creative (and this is not considered to be a problem). The generality of Prothetic admits interesting extensions (intuitionistic (see López-Escobar and Miraglia 2002) or modal (see the works of Suszko and in general, see Sect. 3.7 for references). The language of Ontology (which, in a way, can be viewed as one of the first free formal logics) is, arguably, more suitable for capturing certain aspects of predication and abstract noun phrases as they work in natural language.

This book is devoted to a presentation of Leśniewski’s achievements and their critical evaluation. I discuss his philosophical views, describe his systems, and evaluate the role they can play in the foundations of mathematics. It was my purpose to focus on primary sources and present Leśniewski’s own views and results rather than those present in secondary literature. For this reason, later developments are not treated in detail but rather either mentioned in passing, or described in sections devoted to secondary literature included in some chapters." (Preface, pp. VII-VIII)

References

López-Escobar, E., & Miraglia, F. (2002). Definitions: The primitive concept of logics or the Leśniewski-Tarski Legacy, Dissertationes Mathematicae (Vol. 401). Warszawa: Polska Akademia Nauk.

41. ———. 2015. "Stanisław Leśniewski: Rethinking the Philosophy of Mathematics." European Review no. 23:125-138.

Abstract: "Near the end of the XIXth century part of mathematical research was focused on unification: the goal was to find ”one sort of thing” that mathematics is (or could be taken to be) about. Quite quickly sets became the main candidate for this position. While the enterpize hit a rough patch with Frege’s failure and set-theoretic paradoxes, by the 1920s mathematicians (roughly speaking) settled on a promising axiomatization of set theory and considered it foundational. Quite parallel to this development was the work of Stanisław Leśniewski (1886-1939), a Polish logician who did not accept the existence of abstract (aspatial, atemporal and acausal) objects such as sets. Leśniewski attempted to find a nominalistically acceptable replacement for set theory in the foundations of mathematics. His candidate was Mereology — a theory which instead of sets and elements spoke of wholes and parts. The goal of my talk will be to present Mereology in this context, to evaluate the feasibility of Lesniewski’s project and to briefly comment on its contemporary relevance."

42. ———. 2016. "Potential Infinity, Abstraction Principles and Arithmetic (Leśniewski Style)." Axioms no. 5:1-20.

Abstract: "The paper starts with an explanation of how the logistic project can be approached within the framework of Lesniewski’s systems. One nice feature of the system is that Hume’s Principle is derivable in it from an explicit definition of natural numbers. I generalize this result to show that all predicative abstraction principles corresponding to any second-level relation which is provably an equivalence relation are provable. However, the system fails, despite being much neater than the construction of Principia Mathematica. One of the key reasons is that just as in the case of the system of PM, without the assumption that infinitely many objects exist, (renderings of) most of 8 the standard axioms of Peano Arithmetic are not derivable in the system. I prove that introducing modal quantifiers meant to capture the intuitions behind potential infinity results in the (renderings of) axioms of PA being valid in all relational models of the extended language. The second, historical part of the paper contains a user-friendly description of Lesniewski’s own arithmetic and a brief investigation into its properties."

43. Urbaniak, Rafal, and Severi Hämäri, K. 2012. "Busting a Myth about Leśniewski and Definitions." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 33:159-189.

Abstract: "A theory of definitions which places the eliminability and conservativeness requirements on definitions is usually called the standard theory. We examine a persistent myth which credits this theory to Leśniewski, a Polish logician. After a brief survey of its origins, we show that the myth is highly dubious. First, no place in Leśniewski's published or unpublished work is known where the standard conditions are discussed. Second, Leśniewski's own logical theories allow for creative definitions. Third, Leśniewski's celebrated ‘rules of definition’ lay merely syntactical restrictions on the form of definitions: they do not provide definitions with such meta-theoretical requirements as eliminability or conservativeness. On the positive side, we point out that among the Polish logicians, in the 1920s and 1930s, a study of these meta-theoretical conditions is more readily found in the works of Łukasiewicz and Ajdukiewicz."

44. Vanderveken, Daniel R. 1976. "The Leśniewski-Curry Theory of Syntactical Categories and the Categorially Open Functors." Studia Logica no. 32:191-201.

"The present paper is concerned with the problems which are posed for the Leśniewski-Curry theory of syntactical categories by the categorially open functors.

A categorially open functor of a language L is any functor of L whose syntactical category in L ranges at each occurrence over a set of several different syntactical categories admitted in L, and is determined in each case effectively in function of the categories of one or several of the expressions which it then takes as arguments.

For example, the quantifiers and the identity sign of a logical language with several types of objects are categorially open functors in this language.

The deficiencies of the Leśniewski-Curry theory of categories with respect to the categorially open functors have often been mentioned in the literature, for example, in A. Tarski 1936, § 4, 11th note and in A. N. Prior, 1971, ch. 3, § 7.

Our fundamental purpose in this paper is to define a consistent extension of this theory adequate for the characterisation of these functors.

Since the usual categorial base components of transformational grammars are constructed on the model of Leśniewski-Curry's theory, this new theory of syntactical categories will naturally have interesting consequences for those components." (p. 191)

References

[10] A. N. Proir, Object of thought, edited by P. T. Geach and A. J. P. Kenny, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971.

[11] A. Tarski, Der Wahrheitsbegriff in den formalisierten Sprachen, Studia Philosophica 1, 1936.

45. Vasiukov, Vladimir L. 1998. "Non-elementary Exegesis of Twardowski's Theory of Presentation." In The Lvov-Warsaw School and Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna and Wolenski, Jan, 153-167. Dodrecht: Kluwer.

"In spite of the historical proximity of S. Leśniewski to K. Twardowski, an attempt to look at Twardowski's heritage through Leśniewski's eyes leads to striking results. Firstly, it results in a wider framework than Leśniewski's Elementary Ontology and secondly, it involves a transition from Formal Ontology to Formal Phenomenology. In this paper an extension of Leśniewski's Non-Elementary Ontology is presented which is suitable for investigating Twardowski's Theory of Presentation." (p. 153)

46. Vasyukov, Vladimir. 1993. "A Lesniewskian Guide to Husserl's and Meinong's Jungles." Axiomathes no. 4:59-74.

"The borderline between modem and traditional logics can hardly be drawn in the case of the Lvov-Warsaw Philosophical School. If chronologically we regard 1879 (when Frege's Begriffsschrift was published) as the beginning of the revolution in logic, then the date of the beginning of the activity of the Lvov-Warsaw school (1895) allows us to consider it prima-facie as wholly belonging to modem logic. And undoubtedly many results and ideas of such members of the school as Łukasiewicz, Tarski, Ajdukiewicz etc. belong to the great development of 'modem' twentieth century logic.

(...)

Taking into account that Leśniewski's Ontology is also the theory of objects, it will not be such a surprising endeavour to analyse Husserl's and Meinong's views from the standpoint of Ontology, in search of the common basic features.

The problem is that perhaps the language of Ontology is too poor to describe some aspects of these other theories. And this is quite natural: Leśniewski's task was an inquiry into the deepest and thus simplest intuitive concepts of objects as such.

Our proposals in this case probably would not meet with the approval of Leśniewski himself, but extending logical theories is common enough, so this is the approach that is undertaken here. We shall consider two ways of extending Leśniewski's Ontology which allow us to interpret some aspects of Husserl's and Meinong's theories of objects. I do not think that this will be precisely the remedy for overcoming the "horrors of Meinong's (Husserl's) jungle" but rather an attempt to yield an ontologically oriented language as background for further expeditions and penetrations deep into the heart of these "magical territories." (pp. 59-60)

47. Waragai, Toshiharu. 1979. "Ontological Burden of Grammatical Categories." Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science no. 5:185-205.

"Now the problem about the predicate-quantification disappears, for the category convention of predicates is not that which the category of names has.

They are related to the realm of entities regarding their meanings, or thier extensions.

Having an extention is not the same as naming a set We must introduce some special category, if we want to speak about sets. For some philosophical reason, I shall name the interpretation which I proposed the subjectivistic interpretation of quantification. My philosophical intuition for it is more or less the following.

Our world consists of subjects, which I understand in the sense of traditional ontology; they have their own inner structures within the framework of which they can appear in the world, related to each other again within this framework.

Their classification according as what they are gives us the categories, or predicates3. If we replace a word designating some so-called substantia prima, e.g. Socrates, in a sentence containing this word, say 'Socrates is wise', with 'something' (aliquid, or better aliqua res), then we may be said to be committed to some entity by the use of the sentence 'something is wise', but as to 'wise', the resulting

sentence which we get by replacing this word with 'something' does not make us commit ourselves to any kind of entity. The sentence 'Socrates is something' does not force us to accept any new kind of entity like idea. It only says that Socrates is in some mode of being. Only quantification of the word for the substantial prima forces us to commit ourselves to entities. Hence I call my interpretation

subjectivistic." (p. 199, notes omitted)

"Now let me summarize what I have discussed until now in this chapter. The language I considered has as to noun expressions only one category, and they are in two ways related to the reality by the category conventions C(U) and C(ob).

In general, names are related by C(U) to the reality as to their extensions, but those names which can be the subject of the sentence 'x€y' are related to the reality as entity names. Hence, it is clear that the quantification in this language is not merely substitutional, but rather should be regarded as subjectivistic.(2)

I may stress this fact by saying that existence is not what quantification expresses but what the grammar of a regimented language does." (pp. 201-202)

48. ———. 1980. "Leśniewski on General Objects." Journal of Gakugei no. 29:19-22.

49. ———. 1981. "Leśniewski's Refutation of General Object on the Basis of Ontology." Journal of Gakugei no. 30:49-54.

50. ———. 1981. "The Ontological Law of Contradiction and Its Logical Structure." Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science no. 6:43-58.

"§ 7. System Lo and Leśniewski's Ontology

Though the logico-semantical analysis of Aristotle's argument of descending chain of predicates [*] which is essentially ontological, and at the same time through the analysis of the everyday usage of names and negations, I made clear the logico-semantical content of the ontological law of identity and that of the ontological law of contradiction by constructing a first-order language Lo which is strong enough to perform the logico-semantical analysis of the two ontological dicta.

Historically speaking, this system is a proper part of a more comprehensive logical system constructed by Stanisław Leśniewski (1886-1939), which he named Ontology.(1)

He stated:

I used the name Ontology for the system I constructed, since, when I consider the circumstances that I formulated in the system a kind of "general principle of being", the name did not hurt my "feeling of language"(2).

But what we regret is that he does not seem to have mentioned any philosophical relation between his system Ontology and traditional Ontology.

In this paper, we obtained logical system through a philosophical and logical analysis of Aristotle's argument of descending chain of predicates, and it became clear that the analysis leads us to a logical analysis which is of its essential nature Lesniewskian. This fact helps understand the philosophical relation between Leśniewski's Ontology and traditional Ontology." (p. 58)

[*] described in § 2, with reference to Atistotle, Analytica Posteriora, A, XIX-XXII.

(1) The axiom of Ontology was found during the summer semester in 1919/1920, and officially announced in 1921. On this point; cf. Leśniewski, S.: 'O Podstawach Matematyki', Rozdzial XI ('On the Foundations of Mathematics', Chapter XI). Przegląd Filozoficzny, 34, 1931. (...)

(2) p. 163 of Leśniewski's work mentioned in (1).

51. ———. 1998. "On Some Essential Subsystems of Leśniewski's Ontology and the Equivalence between the Singular Barbara and the Law of Leibniz in Ontology." In The Lvov-Warsaw School and Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Kijania-Placek, Katarzyna and Wolenski, Jan, 169-180. Dodrecht: Kluwer.

"The main aim of this paper is to show that in Leśniewski's Ontology, the law of Leibniz and a special case of Barbara which we refer to as the singular Barbara are equivalent to each other. To show this, we choose a group of theses of Ontology which are sufficient to establish the intended equivalence. From the result it follows that the problematic characters concerning the law of Leibniz reduce either to the validity of the singular Barbara or that of the theses used in establishing the intended equivalence.

We suggest that the most dubious thesis is the one which correctly expresses the operation of comprehension. According to this result, we claim 1) that the dubiousness of the law of Leibniz reduces to that of the notion of comprehension and 2) that not every property is convertible to a name. With respect to these results, the doctrine of limitation of size in set theories will be criticized.

Since I presented and used an extended version of Ontology to show the main results at the conference held in Lvov, I will give a sketch of the system I made use of at the conference. The logical relation between the sole axiom of Leśniewski's Ontology and Russell's theory of description will be made clear, too." (p. 169)

52. Wolenski, Jan. 1986. "Reism and Leśniewski's Ontology." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 7:167-176.

Abstract: "This paper examines relations between Reism, the metaphysical theory invented by Tadeusz Kotarbiński, and Leśniewski's calculus of names. It is shown that Kotarbinski's interpretation of common nouns as genuine names, i.e., names of things is essentially based on Leśniewski's logical ideas. It is pointed out that Lesniewskian semantics offers better prospects for Nominalism than does semantics of the standard first-order predicate calculus."

53. ———. 1989. Logic and Philosophy in the Lvov-Warsaw School. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Chapter VII: Leśniewski's Systems, pp. 141-161.

54. ———. 1995. "Leśniewski's Logic and the concept of Being." In Stanisław Leśniewski aujourd'hui, edited by Miéville, Denis and Vernant, Denis, 93-101. Grenoble: Recherches sur la Philosophie et le Langage.

Abstract: "This paper applies Leśniewski's logical ideas to an analysis of the concept of being. The analysis follows the classical ontology which is based on a distinction of two concepts of being : being in the distributive sense and being in the collective sense. Now it is argued that Leśniewski's ontology (calculus of names) is a much better device for analysizing being in the distributive sense than the standard first-order predicate logic. Moreover, basic intuition connected with the being in the collective sense are nicely captured by mereology."

55. ———. 1995. "Mathematical logic in Poland 1900-1939. People, circles, institutions, ideas." Modern Logic no. 5:363-405.

"Assume that someone would try to predict the development of mathematical logic circa 1900. Probably, he would point out Germany, England, and perhaps France as the central countries. Certainly, this person would not mention Poland, and not only because there was no such country at that time. Thirty year later, Heinrich Scholz, the first modern historian of logic, called Warsaw one of the capitals of mathematical logic. How did a country without special traditions in logic so quickly arrive at the top of this field? What happened that permitted Fraenkel and Bar-Hillel to write: "There is probably no country which has contributed, relative to the size of its population, so much to mathematical logic and set theory as Poland"? This paper tries to explain the phenomenon called "Polish logic" by pointing out the wider context in which logic in Poland was done." (p. 363)

56. ———. 2004. "Polish Logic." Journal of Logic and Computation no. 12:399-428.

Abstract: "This paper outlines the history of logic in Poland in the years 1918-1939 (which some addictions concerning the period before 1918 and after 1945). The disciplinary and social history of logical investigations in Poland is widely described. The author stresses topics characteristic for Polish logic, namely prositional calculus, many-valued logic, Leśniewski's systems, Chwistek's systems and the works in the history of logic."

Section K. Leśniewski's systems, pp. 418-422.

57. ———. 2012. "Truth is Eternal if and only if it is Sempiternal." In Studies in the Philosophy of Herbert Hochberg, edited by Tegtmeier, Erwin, 223-230. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

"The problem addressed in this paper goes back to Aristotle and his considerations about tomorrow’s sea battle. In a famous passage in De Interpretatione (19a 25-30; after The Works of Aristotle, vol. 1: Categoriae and De Intepretatione, tr. by E. M. Edghill, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1928), the Stagirite says:

Everything must be either be or not be, whether in the present or in the future, but it is not always possible to distinguish and state determinately which of these alternatives must necessarily come about.

Let me illustrate. A sea-fight must take place tomorrow or not, but it is not necessary that it either should not take place tomorrow, neither it is necessary that it should not take place, yet it is necessary that it either should or should not take place tomorrow. Since propositions correspond with facts, it is evident that when in future events there is a real alternative, and a potentiality in contrary directions, the corresponding affirmation and denial have the same character.

These words initiated a considerable discussion about the relation between truth and time. Is truth relative and dependent on temporal coordinates or absolute and timeless? The debate concerns several problems, in particular, the validity of some logical principles, fatalism, God’s omniscience, free-will and determinism (see Bernstein 1992, Cahn 1967, Gaskin 1995, Hintikka 1977, Lucas 1989, Prior 1953, Vuillemin 1996. This paper concentrates almost entirely on logical issues." (p. 223)

References

Bernstein, M. H., 1992, Fatalism, University of Nebraska Press, Lincolm

Cahn, S. M. 1967, Fate, Logic and Time, Yale University Press, New Haven.

Gaskin, D. 1995, The Sea Battle Argument and the Master Argument. Aristotle and Diodorus Cronus, de Gruyter, Berlin 1995.

Hintikka, J. (in collaboration with U. Remes and S. Knuuttila) 1977, Aristotle on Modality and Determinism, North-Holland, Amsterdam.

Lucas, J. R 1989, The Future. An Essay on God, Temporality and Truth, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

Prior, A. N. 1953, ‘Three-Valued Logic and Future Contingents’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 317-326.

Vuillemin, J. 1996, Necessity or Contingency. The Master Argument, CSLI Publications, Stanford.

58. ———. 2016. "Truth-Theories in the Lvov-Warsaw School." In Tradition of the Lvov-Warsaw School: Ideas and Continuations, edited by Brożek, Anna, Chybińska, Alicja, Jadacki, Jacek and Woleński, Jan, 73-91. Leiden: Brill Rodopi.

"Final Remarks

There is an esplicit continuity of aletheiology in LWS [Lwow-Warsaw School] from Twardowski to Tarski. Most Polish authors followed Aristotle’s ideas, eventually in a Brentanist shape, accepted the weak correspondence and considered truth as absolute. (SDT) offers a very sophisticated account of these ideas. Although Łukasiewicz was an exception, he defended the eternality of truth, which can be accepted as a weakened absoluteness. Aletheiology in LWS was developed parallel to the growth of mathematical logic. Twardowski, Kotarbiński, early Leśniewski and early Łukasiewicz explained their ideas informally and with quite old-fashioned formal equipment. On the other hand, later works of Leśniewski, Łukasiewicz and. particularly Tarski, involved strong formal logical devices. And this last point is perhaps the most important Polish contribution to contemporary aletheiology." (p. 88)

SDT = A sentence A is true if and only if it is satisfied by every infinite sequence of objects (equivalently; by the empty sequence; by some sequence).

59. Wong, Sen. 2021. "On Reading Leśniewski." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 42:160-179.

"It is well-known that Lesniewski’s logical works are not reader-friendly, which certainly hinters any attempt to approach and not to mention understand his ideas for first-timers.

Peter M. Simons’s On Understanding Leśniewski of this journal (Simons 1982) presents a picture of how to interpret names and the constant ‘ε’ of Le´sniewski’s second system Ontology. As Ontology assumes Protothetic, it seems a good idea to deal with Protothetic first as it is Lesniewski’s first system from the perspective of logical precedence." (p. 160)

(...)

"What follows in this paper is a rough presentation of Protothetic as a template for constructing a nominalist propositional calculus. Some special techniques will be discussed and a method of graphic exposition will be used to describe some of the original TE

[terminological explanations] formulae." (p. 161)

60. Żełaniec, Wojciech. 1998. "Is "Being" Predicated in Only One Sense, after All?" Logic amd Logical Philosophy no. 6:241-258.

"This piece is going to be on a particular difficulty with translating ordinary language (English, in this case) sentences into logical idiom. Difficulties in this area are quite abundant, as is known to everyone who has ever taught logic, but there is one specific family of problems that appears to be of crucial importance. The chief member of this family is this problem: How is the “is” of ordinary English to be translated into logical idiom?

Traditionally, we distinguish between the “is” of predication — the copula —, the “is” of existence and the “is” of identity. This is not an exclusive classification, however, because the “is” of identity is, syntactically speaking, a special case of the “is” of predication: in sentences of form “A is identical with B” the predicate “. . . is identical with B” can be discerned, alongside two others. As regards the “is” of existence, a lot of ink has been spilled on “proving” that existence is or is not a “genuine predicate” — which is itself a piece of evidence that things are not at all clear here. Indeed, apart from quite singular sentences such as “God is” or “He’s the power that was” (said of a politician) we usually make our existence statements in sentences that do not look much different from “ordinary predications”, such as, for instance, “Soldiers are there”, “This technology is available” and the like.

If there is any difference from “ordinary predications” here, it is that of the “is” of localisation (being there, being at some definite place or within some definite domain) and all the other kinds of predication — a difference on which Professor Perzanowski has taught us a lot in a number of articles.

I shall be concerned here with just this: How to distinguish between the “is” of identity and the “is” of other kinds of predication. More precisely, I shall be concerned with the question of which kind of logic allows us to make this distinction with more accuracy. From among all possible kinds of logic as competitors, I shall concentrate on just these two: first-order predicate calculus, as, in the words of Hodges ([8], p. 2), “the simplest, the most powerful and the most applicable branch of modern logic” and Leśniewski’s Ontology, as a modern version of the calculus of names." (p. 241)

References

[8] Hodges, W., “Elementary predicate logic”, in D. M. Gabbay and F. Guenthner, Handbook of Philosophical Logic, vol. I, chapter I.1, p. 2–131, D. Reidel, Dordrecht 1983.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliographie des études en Français sur Stanisław Leśniewski

Études sur Leśniewski en Français

1. Berrendonner, Alain. 1995. "Anaphore associative et méréologie." In Stanisław Leśniewski aujourd'hui, edited by Miéville, Denis and Vernant, Denis, 237-255. Grenoble: Recherches sur la Philosophie et le Langage.

Résumé : "La compréhension d'une « anaphore associative » requiert un raisonnement implicite par lequel on infère un objet non-dit à partir de contenus (objet ou procès) nommés antérieurement. On s'efforce de formaliser, et de ramener à un modèle commun, les divers modes sur lesquels s’opèrent ces inférences. L’hypothèse est qu’il s’agit de divers parcours dans une même configuration-substrat composée de deux sortes de relations : la subsomption sous un type et l’ingrédience méréologique."

2. Fredj, Mounia. 1995. "Implémentation des principes méréologiques." In Stanisław Leśniewski aujourd'hui, edited by Miéville, Denis and Vernant, Denis, 275-295. Grenoble: Recherches sur la Philosophie et le Langage.

Résumé : "Le travail présenté ici s’inscrit dans le cadre général du traitement automatique des langues naturelles, et s’intéresse notamment au problème de représentation des connaissances et des raisonnements « portés » par la langue naturelle.

Nous avons conçu le système Saphir qui a pour objectif de construire le réseau d’objets issus du discours, en décrivant certains des raisonnements mis en œuvre dans les processus d’acquisition de connaissances, et plus particulièrement ceux permettant de résoudre les anaphores associatives. Par discours, nous entendons toute séquence en langue naturelle écrite, texte ou dialogue.

Un modèle de représentation des connaissances contenues dans le discours a été défini. Nous présentons dans ce papier le formalisme qui sous-tend le système Saphir. C’est un formalisme orienté objet, dont les fondements théoriques sont les systèmes logiques de Leśniewski : 'lOntologie et la Méréologie."

3. Gessler, Nadine. 2005. "Introduction à l'oeuvre de S. Leśniewski. Fascicule III - La Méréologie." Travaux de Logique (Neuchâtel).

"Le premier fascicule d'introduction à l'oeuvre de S. Leśniewski présente à la fois quelques aspects biographiques de Leśniewski et la protothétique. Le deuxième insiste sur le développement de l'ontologie et en explore quelques applications.

Ces deux fascicules ont été conçus de manière à présenter l'esprit, l'écriture contextuelle et les mécanismes inférentiels associés à ces systèmes développementaux si particuliers. Ils ont donc valeur de référence.

Ce présent fascicule, troisième du nom, expose la théorie logique appliquée, la théorie générale des classes développée par Leśniewski et connue sous le nom de méréologie. L'intention a été de présenter ce système non pas comme un objet théorique en soi et qui contient la protothétique et l'ontologie, mais davantage comme une théorie à même de résoudre un problème: l'argument de De Morgan, «tout homme est un animal, donc toute tête d'home est une tête d'animal»." (p. XII)

4. ———. 2007. "Introduction à l'oeuvre de S. Leśniewski. Fascicule V. Leśniewski, lecteur de Frege." Travaux de Logique (Neuchâtel).

"Ce fascicule des Travaux de Logique est le cinquième consacré à l' oeuvre de Stanisław Leśniewski et à son histoire scientifique. Il paraît après ceux consacrés à la protothétique (I), à l'ontologie (II), à la méréologie (III) et à l'oeuvre de jeunesse (IV). Cette série spéciale s'achèvera par le fascicule (VI) qui portera sur la présentation de la métalangue formalisée des systèmes logiques de Leśniewski." (p IX)

5. Grize, Jean-Blaise. 1973. Logique moderne III. Implications-modalités, logiques polyvalentes, logique combinatoire, ontologie et méréologie de Leśniewski. Paris/La Haye: Gauthier-Villars et Mouton.

Cinquième partie: Ontologie et Méréologie de Leśniewski, pp. 77-100.

"L’ontologie et la méréologie de Leśniewski, sommairement exposées ici, ont répondu d ’abord à des problèmes relatifs à la théorie des ensembles. Cependant, la façon dont ces systèmes cherchent à rendre compte du verbe ÊTRE, la formalisation de la relation de partie à tout (distincte naturellement de l’inclusion), la notion de classe collective qui contraste avec celle usuelle de classe distributive, l’attitude épistémologique même de Leśniewski en face des systèmes formels - tout cela nous a paru fondamental pour les sciences humaines.

Nous avons ainsi visé à introduire le lecteur dans quelques domaines que nous espérons utiles à ses propres travaux, mais à l’introduire seulement. Cela signifie que ce Fascicule III ne se présente pas exactement

comme les deux premiers. Nous avons cherché à faire connaître l’existence de certaines logiques, à présenter la façon d’aborder les questions sans prétendre écrire un « manuel » au sens courant du terme." (pp. 2-3)

(...)

"Il est de mise aujourd’hui de traiter les systèmes formels comme si l’on ignorait les interprétations que l’on a en vue. L’attitude de Leśniewski est très différente. Il se propose de formaliser certaines notions,

celles par exemple que recouvre est (3e personne du verbe «être»), celle que recouvre l’expression est élément de, etc. Ces locutions ont un sens pour celui qui parle français. Leśniewski se donne pour tâche de

fixer ce sens - plus exactement une partie de ce sens - à l’aide d’axiomes et d’en déduire ensuite les conséquences. Il s’en suit donc:

1) que Leśniewski estime, comme le faisait Aristote, que les langues naturelles véhiculent aussi des rapports logiques et qu’il est légitime d’y prendre appui;

2) que la signification des symboles coexiste avec les règles formelles qui les dirigent.

L’interprétation est donc un guide heuristique permanent et ce ne sont pas les axiomes qui donnent un sens aux signes, mais bien le sens des signes qui justifie et explique les axiomes. Un système formel se présente donc comme le résultat d’une formalisation de nos intuitions." (p. 78)

6. Houdé, Olivier. 1995. "Le "langage méréologique" ajoute-t-il quelque chose aux descriptions psychologiques ?" In Stanisław Leśniewski aujourd'hui, edited by Miéville, Denis and Vernant, Denis, 297-320. Grenoble: Recherches sur la Philosophie et le Langage.

Rsumé : "Le « langage méréologique » ajoute-t-il quelque chose aux descriptions psychologiques ? Les réponses des psychologues à cette question sont partagées. Pour certains, la méréologie de Leśniewski « habille sur mesure » les faits de développement. D'autres émettent de nettes réserves. Sans souscrire à l'une ou l'autre de ces positions extrêmes, notre texte vise à coordonner quelques éléments théoriques susceptibles d'affiner les termes du débat. Trois courants de recherche sont examinés : le structuralisme piagétien, le néostructuralisme et le cognitivisme développemental."

7. Joray, Pierre. 2001. La subordination logique. Une étude du nom complexe dans l’Ontologie de S. Leśniewski. Bern: Peter Lang.

"Introduction

Sous le titre de «On denoting» paraissait en 1905 un court article de Russell qui allait avoir sur la question du nom logique une influence considérable. S’inscrivant à l’opposé de la logique traditionnelle, qui avait toujours accordé au nom une place centrale dans le contenu logique des énoncés, Russell affirmait que la plupart des noms du langage ordinaire ne pouvaient pas être considérés sans difficultés comme des constituants logiques.

(...)

Notre examen critique des systèmes classiques porte essentiellement dans ce travail sur trois points. Le premier consiste à mettre en doute la possibilité théorique d’une élimination complète des noms du langage symbolique. Si Russell n’envisage pas lui-même une réduction aussi radicale, il échoue pourtant dans l’élaboration d’un critère proprement logique de démarcation entre noms et descriptions. Par le second, nous rappelons l’incapacité bien connue des théories classiques à rendre compte d’une manière satisfaisante des pratiques raisonnées faisant un usage de noms vides. Enfin, le troisième porte sur les inconvénients

inhérents au caractère implicite des présupposés ontologiques attachés au traitement classique de la quantification, tel qu’on le trouve en particulier dans les Principia.

Ce travail a pour but de montrer comment il est possible de concevoir un formalisme qui, ne prenant pas pour base la théorie russellienne des descriptions, réussit à s’affranchir des limitations auxquelles elle conduit. En redonnant au nom logique une définition aussi large que possible, nous nous sommes cependant trouvé d’emblée confronté, dans l’analyse formelle, à la diversité considérable des formes qu’il pouvait revêtir dans l’usage ordinaire.

(...)

Après une analyse détaillée, visant à dégager de leurs réalisations discursives les propriétés structurelles propres aux formes logiques de la subordination, il nous fallait encore disposer d’un formalisme adapté à notre projet. Bien entendu, nous ne sommes pas parti de rien. En faisant appel au calcul extensionnel des noms de Stanisław Leśniewski, nous disposions dès le départ d’un outil puissant pour la représentation d’un riche ensemble d’opérateurs nominaux.

La partie originale et constructive de notre travail a alors consisté à développer dans cette logique les instruments indispensables à une formalisation des mécanismes opératoires de la subordination logique.

Face à la théorie russellienne des descriptions, nous montrons enfin qu’un tel calcul constitue une alternative adéquate dans le traitement formel des noms logiques et répond ainsi aux exigences de notre projet." (pp. 3-5)

8. ———. 2005. "La no-class theory de Stanisław Leśniewski." Philosophia Scientiæ no. 9:189-204.

Résumé : "Insatisfait du calcul des classes et des relations de Whitehead et Russell, Leśniewski élabora en 1919-20 une théorie extensionnelle des noms qu’il nomma Ontologie. Sans entrer dans une description technique du formalisme de Leśniewski, nous montrons dans cet article que l’Ontologie permet un traitement général du distributif qui ne s’appuie à aucun moment sur une notion de classe. Nous illustrons enfin cette particularité importante du système de Leśniewski en proposant une définition logiciste de la notion de cardinalité qui répond d’une manière radicale aux impératifs d’une no-class theory."

Abstract: "Leśniewski was not satisfied by Whitehead and Russell’s calculus of classes and relations. In 1919-20, he elaborated an extensional theory of names he called Ontology. Without a description of the full technical apparatus of Leśniewski’s formalism, I show here that Ontology gives rise to a general treatment of distributive predication which makes no use of the notion of class.

In order to illustrate the importance of this peculiarity, I will give a logicist definition of cardinality which is radically conform with the requierments of a no-class theory."

9. ———. 2020. "Un système de déduction naturelle pour la Protothétique de Leśniewski." Argumentum. Journal of the Seminar of Discursive Logic, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric no. 18:45-65.

Abstract : "Stanisław Leśniewski’s system called Protothetic is one of the most stimulating systems of propositional logic. Including quantification and a special rule for introducing definitions among its theorems, it is a powerful means for the study of many questions of logic and metalogic. In this paper we present how to obtain a version of Protothetic in the style of Jaśkowski-Fitch’s natural deduction systems. Unlike Leśniewski’s original system, which requires a fairly laborious learning process, the use of this new version, called PND, is accessible to anyone familiar with the well-known methods of natural deduction for propositional logic. We show that PND contains classical propositional logic and opens the possibility of developments of Protothetic in intensional logic."

10. Joray, Pierre, and Godart-Wendling, Béatrice. 2002. "De la théorie des catégories sémantiques de Leśniewski à l'analyse de la quantification dans la syntaxe d'Ajdukiewicz." Langages no. 36:28-50.

Abstract: "This paper has a double aim. First, in a historical and theoretical part, it shows how Ajdukiewicz's categorial grammar (1935) is directly related to Lesniewski's theory of semantic categories (1922). Secondly, it emphasizes that Ajdukiewicz's analysis of

quantification constitutes a very anticipation of the contemporary categorial solutions which make use of lambda abstraction in order to deal with quantified expressions. In the absence of any published writting concerning the theory of semantic categories,

the main categorial features of Lesniewski's languages are identified in analysing the two logical systems (Protothetics and Ontology) governed by the theory of semantic categories. This study points out the theoretical ideas which will be retained by later categorial grammars and which strongly constrast with Chomsky's transformational model. Furthermore, this analysis reminds that quantifiers were not categorized in Lesniewski's systems and explains this lack's reasons. After a short presentation of Ajdukiewicz's seminal categorial grammar, the paper examines Ajdukiewicz's treatment of quantification and shows how it constitutes an extension of Lesniewski's theory which foreshadows current compositional solutions"

11. Kalinowski, Georges. 1995. "Les démonstrations de la non-existence des objets généraux chez Leśniewski." In Stanisław Leśniewski aujourd'hui, edited by Miéville, Denis and Vernant, Denis, 121-145. Grenoble: Recherches sur la Philosophie et le Langage.

Résumé : "Leśniewski rejette le réalisme au sens de la querelle des universaux. Il précise même qu’il écarte aussi bien le réalisme médiéval que le réalisme antique. Cependant, il n'est pas explicite au sujet de la distinction entre le réalisme radical et le réalisme modéré, contrairement à son ami Kotarbiński, propagateur pourtant de l’ontologie de Leśniewski, qui de son côté en est philosophiquement très proche. Or la question se pose de savoir si les démonstrations de Leśniewski prouvant l’inexistence des objets généraux du réalisme radical valent aussi contre les concepts du réalisme modéré d’un Aristote et d’un Thomas d’Aquin. Tout semble indiquer que la réponse à cette question est négative. S’il en est ainsi, quoique Leśniewski lui-même pense de la portée de la validité de ses démonstrations en question, un réaliste modéré pourrait utiliser l'ontologie de Leśniewski sans se contredire, comme en témoigne l’argumentation d’Ajdukiewicz contre Kotarbiński."

12. Küng, Guido. 1985. "La logique est-elle une discipline des mathématiques out fait-elle partie de l'ontologie?" Dialectica no. 39:243-258.

Résumé : "Heinrich Scholz et J.M. Bochenski ont affirmé que les lois de la logique formelle étaient en fait les lois les plus générales qui caractérisent les choses, les propriétés, les relations, les états de choses etc. D'autres confondent la logique et la théorie des ensembles. Mais l'interprétation des quantificateurs qu'on trouve chez Lešniewski montre que la logique ne fait partie ni de l'ontologie, ni des mathématiques."

Summary: "Heinrich Scholz and J. M. Bochenski have claimed that the laws of formal logic are the most general laws about things, properties, relations, states-of-affairs, etc. Others have mixed up logic and set theory. But Leśniewski's interpretation of the quantifiers shows that properly speaking logic belongs neither to ontology nor to mathematics."

"Leśniewski a appelé sa logique des noms 'ontologie'. Ceci prête à confusion, car la logique des noms n'est pas une théorie ontologique dans le sens usuel du terme, mais bien une théorie purement logique. Leśniewski l'a appelée 'ontologie' car comme nous l'avons dit, son foncteur primitif est une version de la copule 'est'. On peut donc dire qu'en un sens la logique des noms est la théorie grammaticale du verbe 'être' (17). Mais que la logique des noms ne soit pas une théorie ontologique n'empêche pas que cette logique soit un instrument très utile pour celui qui veut clarifier des notions de l'ontologie proprement

dite. Car bien qu'il n'y ait pas d'isomorphisme entre catégories grammaticales et catégories ontologiques, il existe des analogies multiples entre certaines thèses ontologiques et certaines thèses de cette logique (18).." (p. 256)

(17) La logique des noms ne distingue pas entre différentes catégories d'étants. Chiens, chats, nombres, choses, propriétés, états-de-choses, etc., tout ce qui est un étant, peut être dénoté par un nom. La même logique des noms vaut pour tous. On peut donc dire que dans un certain sens la logique des noms est une théorie des étants en tant qu'étants.

(18) Cf. Henry [D. P., Medieval Logic and Metaphysics, London] 1972

13. Lecomte, Alain. 1995. "Une descendance des systèmes de Leśniewski. Le calcul de Lambek (de la grammaire logique aux grammaires de logiques des types)." In Stanisław Leśniewski aujourd'hui, edited by Miéville, Denis and Vernant, Denis, 207-234. Grenoble: Recherches sur la Philosophie et le Langage.

Résumé : "Un des axes de recherche exploré par Leśniewski concerne la notion de grammaire des catégories sémantiques. Cette notion fut reprise est simplifiée par Ajduckiewicz puis par Bar-Hillel sous la dénomination de grammaire catégorielle. Prévue initialement à des fins purement logiques, la grammaire catégorielle a intéressé les linguistes surtout à partir des travaux de J. Lambek qui en donnent une formulation complète et intégrable dans le formalisme du calcul des séquents de Gentzen. Si on enrichit l’ensemble des constructeurs de types (/ \j avec des modalités structurelles, on obtient un formalisme élégant pour décrire les langues naturelles. De plus, le calcul de Lambek intéresse les informaticiens et logiciens dans la mesure où, après les travaux de Girard, il apparaît comme un sous-système non-commutatif de la logique linéaire. Dès lors, des méthodes propres à cette dernière (comme les réseaux de preuves) peuvent s’y appliquer. Il est alors possible de montrer que ces méthodes, appliquées aux grammaires catégorielles de Lambek, ne sont que des extensions conservatrices de l’algorithme de connexité syntaxique d’Ajduckiewicz et Bar-Hillel."

14. Luporini, Valentina. 2019. "Éternité et développement : la question du temps logique chez Leśniewski." Philosophia Scientiæ. Travaux d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences no. 23:173-189.

Résumé : "Le problème du temps tourmente et nourrit la philosophie depuis sa naissance. Dans ce cadre, une lecture métaphysique des textes de S. Leśniewski permet de développer un point de vue original sur certaines propriétés fondamentales du temps logique. En particulier, après une analyse minutieuse des oeuvres philosophiques de jeunesse, et notamment de l’article « La vérité est-elle éternelle ou éternelle et sempiternelle ? » (1913), nous montrons que le temps logique est, chez Leśniewski, inévitablement double : les propositions, dont la vérité doit pouvoir être éternelle, sont des entités qui se développent dans un espace et dans un temps déterminés (qui correspondent à l’espace et au temps de leur construction graphique). De même, cette double temporalité apparaît dans l’Ontologie (1919), un calcul logique des noms dont l’axiomatique est établie à partir du foncteur ε, connecteur logique à la fois inscrit dans un espace et dans un temps et néanmoins sans ancrage temporel.

Ainsi, plusieurs interrogations émergent. Comment pouvons-nous justifier le statut ontologique de cet « être » ayant une connotation atemporelle – lieu indiscuté et indiscutable de toute vérité logique – à l’intérieur d’une perspective évolutive dans laquelle il est inévitablement inscrit ? Quelles sont les conditions de possibilité de la coexistence de ces deux dimensions temporelles ? Afin de répondre à ces questionnements, une analyse approfondie qui porte sur la nature de ce temps logique se révèle nécessaire."

15. Miéville, Denis. 1984. Un développement des systèmes logiques de Stanisław Leśniewski. Protothétique, Ontologie, Méréologie. Berne: Peter Lang.

"Avant-propos

Voici quelques années, J.-B. Grize, directeur du Centre de ’Rcherches Sémiologiques de l'Université de Neuchâtel, mettait en évdence que les objets de la logique naturelle satisfont les propriétés d'une classe collective. L'approfondissement de cette notion l'a conduit à prendre conscience que ces qualités collectives étaient parentes de celles de la classe méréologique de Stanisław Leśniewski.

Participant aux travaux de Grize, nous nous sommes intéressé à comprendre cette notion de classe méréologique ainsi qu'à cerner les systèmes logiques dans lesquels elle prend vie formelle. Cette démarche nous a conduit à pénétrer peu à peu l'oeuvre de Leśniewski, de la prototethétique à sa théorie générale des ensembles, en passant par l'ontologie. La lecture des documents dont nous disposions nous a stimulé, parfois provoqué; elle nous a engagé surtout à proposer un développement des théories logiques de ce savant polonais.

L'ouvrage que nous présentons est un témoignage de cette reconstitution ainsi que l'expression de nos réflexions qui l'accompagnent." (p. VII)

16. ———. 1985. "Un aperçu des caractéristiques et de l'esprit des systèmes logiques de Stanisław Leśniewski." Dialectica no. 39:166-179.

Résumé . "Cet article offre une introduction aux théories déductives si peu connues de S. Lešniewski. Sont exposées les raisons qui ont conduit ce savant polonais à développer une théorie des classes collectives ainsi que les théories logiques qui la fondent. Les trois systèmes de Lešniewski - méréologie, protothétique et ontologie - sont présentés sous l'aspect de leurs caractéristiques essentielles. Cette étude s'accompagne de quelques réflexions épistémologiques."

17. ———. 1987. "Axiomes et définitions chez Leśniewski: Une manière génétique de développer les systèmes formels." Theoria no. 2:285-307.

Abstract: "The logical theories of Stanisław Leśniewski differ profoundly form classical formal systems. Unlike the latter, they do not have an entirely predetermined vocabulary. Nor do they have a determined list of functors of syntactical-semantical categories. Due to formalized directives for definitions, the logics of Leśniewski are constructed progressively, making new theses and consequently functors of new syntactical-semantical categories accesible. In this article we present the genetic aspect associated with these theses-definitions. We also show that the property of creativity makes it possible to bridge some of the fundamental gaps in contemporary classical logics."

18. ———. 1992. "S. Leśniewski ou une manière d'aborder l'ontologie." Sémiotiques no. 2:19-35.

"L'ontologie de Leśniewski est une théorie logique, et comme telle, elle contient des directives inférentielles. Elles sont au nombre de sept: une directive de détachement, une de substitution, une directive opérant sur la quantification, deux directives d' extensionnalité et deux directives de définition. Nous insisterons uniquement sur les directives de définition. C'est à travers elles qu'il est possible d'étendre progressivement le système, d'y introduire de nouvelles significations, et ceci, sur la base des constantes et des catégories syntaxico-sémantiques que contient l'axiome ainsi que celles qui ont été préalablement et progressivement inscrites.

Les directives de définition ont la forme suivante, et répondent aux conditions de toute définition explicite bien formée [Carnap, 1949]. Il est hors de propos d'expliciter ici toutes les conditions associées à ces directives, nous nous contenterons d'en donner une représentation schématique, et de la commenter."(p. 25)

RèFérences

Carnap, R. 1949, Introduction to Mathematical Logic, Princeton University Press.

19. ———. 1995. "Calcul et raisonnement chez Leśniewski." Travaux du Centre de Recherches Sémiologiques no. 63:136-147.

"Préambule

Depuis plusieurs années, je conduis des recherches dans deux directions. Je m'intéresse d'une part au développement d'une logique naturelle, et d'autre part, à l'élaboration de structures logiques plus complexes et subtiles que celle sur laquelle s'est fondée l'exposition de la logique mathématique classique. Bien que l'objet d'étude de chacune de ces recherches est différent, elles sont toutes deux motivées par le même intérêt qui consiste à cerner toujours davantage les mécanismes d'une pensée logique mise en oeuvre dans le processus d'une démarche raisonnée.

Par ailleurs, ces deux travaux se nourrissent, d'une certaine manière, l'un de l'autre dans la mesure où ils contribuent à établir entre eux une frontière fluente. Enfin, l'une et l'autre recherches s'appuient sur des travaux de S. Leśniewski [1886-1939].

Ce savant polonais a su à la perfection privilégier l'étude de la logique dans le sens d'une «investigation aussi analytique que possible, brisant les inférences en un plus grand nombre possible d'étapes, et les exhibant sous les catégories les plus générales

possibles» pour reprendre les termes même de Peirce. Cependant, Leśniewski n'a pas négligé ni méprisé la construction d'un calcul lorsque celui-ci permettait d'accéder à des résultats qui n'étaient pas liés directement à l'analyse et l'exposé des inférences.

Dans la suite de mon propos j'esquisserai les deux dimensions complémentaires «calcul» et «raisonnement» qui sont inscrites dans l'oeuvre logique de Leśniewski, en insistant sur l'originalité de chacune des approches et en mettant en évidence l' actualité

de sa manière d'appréhender la logique." (pp. 135-136)

20. ———. 1995. "Stanisław Leśniewski et l'importance d' une logique développementale." In Stanisław Leśniewski aujourd'hui, edited by Miéville, Denis and Vernant, Denis, 67-92. Grenoble: Recherches sur la Philosophie et le Langage.

Résumé : "Il est bien connu que la logique classique ne peut représenter que quelques aspects du raisonnement ordinaire. Il existe d’autres théories qui sont moins limitées dans leur manière de cerner ce qui relève du discours rationnel. Parmi celles-ci, les systèmes de S. Leśniewski offrent une très grande liberté de création. Grâce à des directives inférentielles de définitions, les logiques de S. Leśniewski peuvent être développées de manière progressive, donnant accès à de nouvelles thèses permettant ainsi d’inscrire progressivement des foncteurs nouveaux d’une quelconque catégorie syntaxique conçue sur celles des noms et des propositions. Dans un premier temps, nous mettrons en évidence certaines lacunes de la logique classique. Puis nous insisterons sur l'aspect développemental des systèmes de Leśniewski et illustrerons notre propos de quelques exemples de ce qu’il est possible d’y représenter."

21. ———. 2001. "Introduction à l'oeuvre de S. Leśniewski. Fascicule I. La Protothétique." Travaux de Logique (Neuchâtel).

"Introduction

Stanisław Leśniewski a écrit une oeuvre remarquable. Celle-ci a été élaborée en réaction, ou pour le moins en marge des travaux logiques de Russell. Aussi remarquable qu'elle soit, cette oeuvre est restée quelque peu confidentielle. Et pourtant les systèmes de Leśniewski, conçus sur les catégories des noms et des propositions, sont, conceptuellement, les plus généreux que l'on connaisse; ils sont des logiques libres, universelles et d'ordre supérieur; ils nous invitent à explorer de nombreuses idées nouvelles tant par rapport à la manière de les développer que par rapport aux subtilités opératoires qu'ils permettent d'exprimer.

Pour offrir une meilleure diffusion de cette oeuvre, nous nous sommes décidés à publier quatre fascicules, chacun d'entre eux présentant une facette particulière de cette oeuvre.

Le premier fascicule exposera d'une part la vie scientifique de Leśniewski et d'autre part la protothétique, théorie des thèses premières. C'est ce que nous offrons dans ce fascicule des Travaux de logique. A travers cette présentation, nous tentons d'expliciter le dynamisme évolutif si caractéristique des systèmes de Leśniewski.

Le deuxième présentera l'ontologie de Leśniewski, un calcul de noms et des relations d'ordre supérieur.

Le troisième explicitera la théorie des relations de parties à tout, théorie connue sous le nom de méréologie.

Enfin, le quatrième fascicule dévoilera les linéaments d'une théorie autorisant: le développement d'une syntaxe constructive.

Par ces travaux, nous espérons contribuer non seulement à la diffusion d'une oeuvre subtile et originale nous souhaitons encore réveiller un débat à propos des théories de Stanisław Leśniewski." (p. 1)

22. ———. 2004. "Introduction à l'oeuvre de S. Leśniewski. Fascicule II. L'Ontologie." Travaux de Logique (Neuchâtel).

23. ———. 2006. "Logique, ontologie et ontologie." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 61:149-162.

"Préambule

Je me suis souvent interrogé sur la nature de l'engagement ontologique des théories logiques. Cette réflexion n'est pas aisée, et cela d'autant plus que je suis de ceux qui sont tributaires de l'héritage d'un glorieux passé logique, un passé qui a cristallisé certains slogans et sédimenté moult habitudes ; en effet, nul n'ignore la devise quinienne : «être c'est être la valeur d'une variable liée» (Quine 1953: 17). Chacun ou presque, accepte et sans souffrir la nature objectuelle de la quantification des théories dites classiques. Trop souvent aussi, on constate, chez certains auteurs, une confusion diffuse entre la sémantique formelle en tant que système de représentation de significations et l'ontologie en tant que théorie de ce qui est. Dans ce modeste essai, j'étudierai quelques aspects de la logique classique et mettrai en évidence la nature des liens qu'elle supporte avec l'ontologie. J'esquisserai également les contours d'une logique ontologiquement neutre ; une telle logique est ainsi qualifiée si elle ne statue pas sur la nature des objets dans le monde, ni sur leur nombre. Elle ne saurait cependant être totalement ontologiquement innocente, dans la mesure où elle est marquée par le concept d'entité individuelle qu'elle veut associer à l'idée d'objet et par le traitement extensionnel auquel elle veut soumettre ces objets." (p. 149)

(...)

"Épilogue

Tout au long de mon propos, j'ai tenté de réagir contre la difficulté d'aborder la syntaxe et la sémantique des théories formelles classiques en des termes ontologiques. En effet, tant leur forme que leurs concepts basiques (nom, ensemble, quantification, ... ) se prêtent difficilement à cette analyse.

Notre inclination naturelle à penser le monde comme un univers peuplé d'entités individuelles conduit le logicien à façonner des systèmes logiques capables d'expliciter un langage à même d'exprimer un traitement extensionnel de ces entités et de leurs organisations. Ils' ensuit la nécessité de développer, avant toute chose, une théorie des noms exempte de tout engagement ontologique.

J'ai défendu ma préférence pour la conception d'un système logique à même d'offrir la plus grande générosité expressive et bannissant toute ambiguïté. Le choix de l'ontologie de Leśniewski s'est donc tout naturellement imposé. Je sais que pour convaincre il faut montrer et dire davantage que je ne l'ai fait. C'est la raison pour laquelle j'invite le lecteur critique à se plonger dans les très beaux textes de Leśniewski." (p. 161)

RéFérences

Quine W. V. 1953, From a logical point of view. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

24. ———. 2009. "Introduction à l'oeuvre de S. Leśniewski. Fascicule VI. La métalangue d'une syntaxe inscriptionnelle." Travaux de Logique (Neuchâtel).

25. Miéville, Denis, and Vernant, Denis, eds. 1995. Stanisław Leśniewski aujourd'hui. Grenoble: Recherches sur la Philosophie et le Langage.

Table des matières: Denis Miéville et Denis Vernant: Présentation 5; Bibliographie de Stanisław Leśniewski 21; Czeslaw Lejewski: Remembering Stanisław Leśniewski 25; Denis Miéville: Stanisław Leśniewski et l'importance d' une logique développementale 93; Jan Wolenski: Leśniewski's logic and the concept of Being 93; Peter Simons: Leśniewski and ontological commitment 103; Georges Kalinowski: Les démonstrations de la non-existence des objets généraux chez Leśniewski 121; Frédéric Nef: Sémantique et ontologie: réflexions sur la théorie des objets et les propriétés 147; Denis Vernant: Logique et pragmatique: la genèse du concept d'assertion 179; Alain Lecomte: Une descendance des systèmes de Leśniewski. Le calcul de Lambek (de la grammaire logique aux grammaires de logiques des types) 207; Alain Berrendonner: Anaphore associatie et méréologie 237; Jacques Roualt: Représentations centrées, objets, formalisation en linguistique et systèmes de Leśniewski 257; Mounia Fredj: Implémentation des principes méréologiques 275; Olivier Houdé: Le "langage méréologique" ajoute-t-il quelque chose aux descriptions psychologiques ? 297; List des numéros déjà publiés 321; Adresses des auteurs 330.

26. ———. 1995. "Présentation." In Stanisław Leśniewski aujourd'hui, edited by Miéville, Denis and Vernant, Denis, 5-19. Grenoble: Recherches sur la Philosophie et le Langage.

"Présentation

Stanisław Leśniewski tient une place toute particulière dans l’histoire de la logique. Au moment même où la publication des Principia Mathematica allait imposer pour de nombreuses décennies les calculs propositionnel et fonctionnels de Russell et Whitehead comme paradigme de la logique symbolique moderne, Leśniewski dénonçait le traitement russellien de l’antinomie des classes, proposait pour l’éviter une définition non plus distributive, mais collective des classes, et élaborait, sans recourir initialement à aucun formalisme tout en introduisant une distinction rigoureuse entre langue et métalangue, les trois systèmes des thèses premières (Protothétique), des classes collectives (Méréologie), des noms (Ontologie) qui, par leur souplesse et richesse, constituent une alternative féconde à la logique russellienne « standard ».

Stanisław Leśniewski professa de 1919 à sa mort à Varsovie où il fonda avec Jan Łukasiewicz la fameuse école de logique dite « École de Varsovie ». La dispersion de cette œuvre après l’invasion de Varsovie et le fait qu’elle ait été écrite en polonais a longtemps empêché sa diffusion, en particulier en France où aujourd’hui Leśniewski reste généralement bien moins connu que Łukasiewicz ou même que son élève Alfred Tarski. Ces deux handicaps sont désormais levés avec la traduction française de l’ouvrage majeur O podstawach matematyki [Sur les fondements de la mathématique] que M. Georges Kalinowski publia en 1989 et la parution en 1992 de l’édition en anglais des Collected Papers. Ainsi nous a-t-il paru opportun de nous interroger sur la fécondité des systèmes logiques de Leśniewski. Nous avons voulu souligner, par-delà son intérêt proprement historique, l’actualité de la pensée lesniewskienne, non seulement en philosophie et logique, mais aussi en philosophie du langage, en linguistique, informatique et psychologie cognitive." (p. 5)

27. Nef, Frédèric. 1995. "Sémantique et ontologie: réflexions sur la théorie des objets et les propriétés." In Stanisław Leśniewski aujourd'hui, edited by Miéville, Denis and Vernant, Denis, 147-177. Grenoble: Recherches sur la Philosophie et le Langage.

Résumé : "L'auteur explore les liens entre sémantique et ontologie dans le cadre de la tradition polonaise en logique (Leśniewski, Kotarbiński, Tarski...). Il se réclame de ceux qui ont identifié ontologie et théorie des objets (Meinong, le Husserl des Recherches Logiques...). Parmi les points examinés : objets arbitraires et déduction naturelle à propos de la généralisation existentielle ; ontologie de la variable ; statut ontologique des objets mathématiques ; individus vagues et vague modal.

Une attention particulière est apportée à l’argument de Berkeley contre les objets généraux (conjonction de propriétés contradictoires), ainsi qu'au problème de l'admission des propriétés dans une ontologie.

L’auteur soutient qu’il est possible d’affaiblir les conditions d’admission des objets dans une ontologie sans pour autant renoncer au rôle normatif de la logique."

28. Peeters, Marc. 2006. "Introduction à l'oeuvre de S. Leśniewski. Fascicule IV. L'oeuvre de jeunesse." Travaux de Logique (Neuchâtel).

"Stanisław Leśniewski a un parcours scientifique étonnant. En plus de son oeuvre, de son génie et de sa perfection conceptuelle, il se caractérise par le fait qu'il semble posséder deux vies scientifiques : l'une philosophique jusqu'en 1914-1915, vie dont il reniera les travaux pour s'engager ensuite dans une réflexion de pure logique. Les choses ne sont cependant pas aussi simples et tranchées que cela, et il était temps d'expliciter la réflexion philosophique de Leśniewski, une réflexion exigeante, subtile, particulière et fermement argumentée. Cette oeuvre philosophique se devait donc d'être étudiée pour révéler les fondements et l'histoire d'une pensée qui s'engage dans le champ de la logique avec une originalité et une pertinence à ce jour inégalées." (p. VI)

29. Rouault, Jacques. 1995. "Représentations centrées, objets, formalisation en linguistique et systèmes de Leśniewski." In Stanisław Leśniewski aujourd'hui, edited by Miéville, Denis and Vernant, Denis, 257-274. Grenoble: Recherches sur la Philosophie et le Langage.

"Nous présentons un modèle « centré objet » pour la représentation des connaissances liées à des textes en langue naturelle. Ce modèle a deux buts : être un formalisme bien adapté aux langues et permettre la mise en œuvre de raisonnements particuliers (de type « abductif »).

Le modèle est défini formellement à l'aide de la primitive du Calcul des Noms et de celles de la Méréologie de S. Leśniewski. Ces systèmes logiques permettent de rendre compte de façon relativement simple des modèles centrés objets, de leur utilisation en traitement des langues et des raisonnements mis en œuvre, notamment par le biais des « anaphores associatives »."

30. Sobocinski, Boleslaw. 1949. "L'analyse de l'antinomie russellienne par Leśniewski." Methodos.

Quatre parties: I - II - III: vol. 1. (1949) pp. 94-107; 220-228; 308-316; IV: vol. 2 (1950) pp. 237-257.

Traduction anglaise dans: J. Srzednicki, V. F. Rickey (éds.), S. Leśniewski's Systems: Ontology and Mereology, 1984: pp, 11-44.

31. Vernant, Denis. 1995. "Logique et pragmatique: la genèse du concept d'assertion." In Stanisław Leśniewski aujourd'hui, edited by Miéville, Denis and Vernant, Denis, 179-206. Grenoble: Recherches sur la Philosophie et le Langage.

Résumé : "Le concept d’assertion fut initialement introduit par Frege, puis repris par Russell. Dans Les Fondements de la mathématique, Stanisław Leśniewski souligne l’ambiguïté de ce concept. Il propose de s’en dispenser. Effectivement, les définitions de la tautologie et de la dérivabilité remplissent les fonctions logiques de !’assertion frégéenne. Mais sa nature pragmatique d’acte subsiste dans la nécessité d’assumer les thèses du calcul logique.

Révélant ainsi sa fécondité, l’analyse frégéenne permet de penser l’assertion comme un acte de discours régissant, selon des modalités différentes, aussi bien le discours logique que l’usage quotidien du langage."

32. ———. 2000. "Sur les fondements de la mathématique de Stanisław Leśniewski." In Logique en perspective : mélanges offerts à Paul Gochet, edited by Beets, François, Gillet, Eric and Antoniol, Lucie, 313-363. Bruxelles: Ousia.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Tadeusz Kotarbinski from Ontological Reism to Semantical Concretism

Introduction

"I reached the chair of philosophy via logic. Teaching logic became the field of my activity as a university professor of philosophy, a member of other humanistic faculties. Emphasis is here placed on the words 'teaching' and 'humanistic'. For my lectures and classes were conceived as an organon in the classical sense of the term, for philosophers as well as for those who, having completed their course of study, would espouse the cause of disseminating humanistic knowledge and thinking, particularly future secondary school teachers. Somewhat later my activity embraced also law students. My linguistic equipment proved to, be very helpful in this respect. For it seems especially important when the problems of an organon of this kind are conceived historically and is quite crucial when pondering the original Organon of Aristotle (or to be more cautious, of the peripatetic school) and its continuators. Conceived in this manner logic was by no means confined to formal logic, but came to comprise the problems of epistemology, semantics and methodology. It is precisely the latter problems - not those of formal logic - that were of particular interest to my mind. Nevertheless, I felt bound to contribute to the study of formal logic. The feeling was encouraged both by my colleagues at Warsaw University and by my awareness of the precise phase that logic had reached in its historical development. It was precisely the moment when mathematical logic was triumphantly entering the scene. The names of Frege, Bertrand Russell, Peano, Burali-Forti, Couturat and many others were on everybody's minds.

Mathematical logic was closely allied with the rapidly developing set theory. The international periodical devoted to the latter, Fundamenta Mathematicae was, and still is, published in Warsaw. The distinguished philosophic-mathematical logicians: Jan Łukasiewicz and his disciple and my colleague, Stanislaw Leśniewski among many others, were active here.

I only mention the names of those persons to whom my studies in mathematically oriented formal logic are particularly indebted. In this respect I owe a lot to my close alliance with Professor Leśniewski. I simply took over his original system of formal logic to suit my own purposes. (1)Relieved thus from the necessity to contribute to formal logic itself, I could concentrate on the problems I faced as a teacher of logic to be used by humanists. These centered around the problem of overcoming the hypostasis of linguistic origin, what Francis Bacon referred to as idola fori. Both our everyday language and the language of the sciences as well are teeming with nouns or noun-like forms. Hence the tendency to perceive an object behind them even when the noun is an abstract one, like for example, 'roundness', 'equality', etc. Once the existence of the alleged objects of such names is admitted, once we agree to the existence of such qualities or relations, human thought is made to wade through a mire of apparent ontological problems. They in turn impose a literal interpretation of the expressions like 'a quality inheres' in an object in the same way as a nail is embedded in a wall: whereas, in point of fact, their meaning is only metaphorical. Leibniz himself was of the opinion (which he expressed in Nouveaux essais 2, XXII, 1) that problems bristling with difficulties can be dispelled as soon as we stick only to the names of concretes in our discourse. Unaware both of these words and equally ignorant of Franz Brentano's similar ideal I formulated in 1929 the principles of the so called reism 2, XXII, 1) that problems bristling with difficulties can be dispelled as soon as we stick only to the names of concretes in our discourse. Unaware both of these words and equally ignorant of Franz Brentano's similar ideal I formulated in 1929 the principles of the so called reism. In its most mature formula it declares war against the hypostasis of linguistic origin on the following lines: inasmuch as it is possible try to formulate statements in a way that would eliminate all names other than the names of objects, that is, physical bodies or parts thereof. Persons ought to be regarded as objects, i.e. sentient objects. Sentences may contain words that are not names, e.g. verbs or conjunctions, etc. The point is, however, to eliminate names other than the names of objects. Let me hasten with an example of a reistic interpretation of sentences. 'Prudence inheres in wisdom' simply means: 'Every man who is possessed of wisdom is prudent.' 'Bonds of brotherhood related Orestes to Electra' simply means: 'Orestes was Electra's-brother.' A reist by no means demands that the use of sentences with abstract expressions like the names of qualities or relations be completely abandoned. Quite the contrary, the necessity of applying them is fully recognized just because their presence may often reduce the length of the statement. The only thing he insists upon is to try to be able to do without names which are not the names of things. I may add, by the way, that at present I prefer to use the term 'concretism' instead of the term 'reism' as my readers were prone to identify 'reism' with 'realism' while the meanings of the two are totally different.

Thus, reism, that is concretism (or somatism - as I identify all objects with bodies and in Greek 'soma' means 'body') proves to be a certain innovation of my organon. It is however, highly debatable as a conception since a number of difficulties inhering in an attempt to interpret reistically theorems of set theory have not yet been overcome." (pp. 3-5)

Notes

(1) Those interested in the system are referred to E. C. Luschei, The Logical Systems of Leśniewski, Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company 1962.

From: Tadeusz Kotarbinski, "Philosophical Self-Portrait", in: Jan Wolenski (ed.), Kotarbinski: Logic, Semantics and Ontology, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1990.

"I feel obliged to begin with an explanation of the term "reism", which I introduced in 1929 into my book on gnosiology, logic, and methodology. Although the book, which had its revised second edition in 1961, also appeared in English in 1966 as Gnosiology, the Scientific Approach to the Theory of Knowledge, I have no reasons to believe that the term in question is well known to my colleagues philosophers outside Poland. As I know that it has already caused misunderstandings, by being identified with the term "realism", which is completely at variance with my intentions, I have been trying for a couple of years to replace it by the term "concretism", to which I impart the same meaning. But what that meaning is ? Whom do I intend to call a reist or a concretist ? Here is my reply which I make as concise as possible. He, and only he, is a reist, or concretist, who goes to the utmost in putting into effect the following intention: for every declarative sentence (statement) that includes abstract terms he tries to find an equisignificant statement including no such terms. By abstract terms I mean here all those which are not concrete, and by concrete I mean all, and only those, terms which are names of things. Thus, the name of a thing is a proper name of a single individual that is a thing, for instance "Vesuvius", or a description that has only one designatum, e.g., "the volcano near Naples", or a general term that has more than one designatum, but on the condition that each of them is a thing, e.g., "a stone", "an overcoat", or a term that has no designatum but has such a meaning that its analytic definition could be: "N is such and such a thing"; for instance, the term "Pegasus" could be defined as "Pegasus is a winged horse". I do not hesitate to give this example, since by a thing I mean any physical body, living organisms included (which automatically includes human beings), or a totality consisting of physical bodies, or any component part of a physical body, or any micro-physical particle or any totality consisting of such particles. Thus it is obvious that reism, or concretism, is a variation of nominalism. The explanations to follow will show in what it differs from its other better known forms. But even now, on the strength of what has been said so far, it can be seen that we have to do here with an ontological approach, and that this approach is physical in nature or, to use a slightly different terminology, materialistic. And perhaps the most pertinent formulation would be to use the term "somatism" in order to bring out the predilection, inherent in reism, i.e., concretism, to single out and to describe bodies: in Greek "soma" means "a (physical) body". I would not feel surprised if some one expressed his astonishment at the fact that a person has come upon the idea of engaging in analyses concerned with a description of reism. In statements and theorems belonging to the various disciplines reference is made incessantly to abstract ideas by means of abstract terms, and people are inclined to believe that this belongs to the very essence of scholarship. Those statements and theorems abound in such terms as property, relation, dependence, point, number, function, etc. Can we do without them without at the same time renouncing the pursuit of scientific activity ? And if so, what induces reasonable people to reformulate statements including abstract terms as equivalent statements devoid of such abstract terms ?Several fairly weighty arguments can be adduced in favour of such a programme. First of all, it seems almost natural to resort to such a reformulation in those simple cases when a statement comprising an abstract term proves to be a metaphorical paraphrase, which can be comprehended only indirectly, of a directly comprehensible statement free from an abstract term. If we say that "the diamond has the property of extraordinary hardness", does it not mean just that "the diamond is extraordinarily hard" ? We have here successfully eliminated the terms "property" and "hardness". The former has disappeared completely, and the latter has been replaced by the term "hard". But whereas "hardness" is an abstract term, "hard" is a concrete term since it names things: it is certain things, including the diamonds, that are hard, and not the properties. Likewise, if we have the statement "the goat belongs to the class of horned ruminants", we are right in interpreting it as a learned equivalent of the simpler formulation, devoid of abstract terms, which is "the goat is a horned ruminant". In this way we have smoothly eliminated the abstract term "class". The same term can also be eliminated from the statement "the class of joiners is included in the class of artisans" if we say simply "every joiner is an artisan". But there is one reason more why we accept the reistic programme, namely the very reflection on the essence of cognition as expressed by declarative sentences (statements). What is human' knowledge, if not a continuation of animal knowledge, improved by the use of language ? And does not animal knowledge reduce to responding perceptively to stimuli in forms of things? We, human beings, also respond perceptively to things, and all our knowledge possibly is nothing else but an intricate structure of fragments of ourselves as beings that respond perceptively to stimuli in the form of things, with the only essential difference in comparison with the animals that in our case the world of the stimuli is accompanied by language signs shaped not only phylogenetically, but mostly historically, by an imitative transmission of language signs that had developed in human communities. But it seems obvious that when we perceive something we always respond to a stimulus in the form of a thing: a thing struck or moved in some way acts on our ears by air waves which result from the fact that the said thing had been struck or moved, and then we hear somehow. It is likewise in other cases, with the difference that it is a vibrating electromagnetic field, and not vibrating air, that is the intermediary between the stimulus, which is the thing perceived, and the eye. Then we see somehow. This applies to all sensory perceptions (introspective perceptions will be discussed later); the simplest case is that of tactile perception, when a stimulus in the form of a thing directly presses the receptor organs of the perceiving individual. From the empirical standpoint adopted here, a standpoint suggested by man's situation in nature and in history, the tentative reduction of all statements to those which do not include abstract terms become a tentative satisfaction of an urge which reaches very far, but is not devoid of rational justification." (pp. 441-443)

From: Tadeusz Kotarbinski, "Reism: Issues and Prospects", Logique et Analyse, 11, 1968, pp. 441-458.

The "Concretism" of Kotarbinski

"In an autobiographical remark, Kotarbinski himself defined 'three ideas which constituted his contribution to philosophy: concretism (both ontological and semantical), praxiology or general theory of efficient action, and the ideal of reliable friend as the guiding rule in ethics. I shall now proceed to discuss them in more detail.

Concretism was first conceived as an ontological doctrine. It was originally meant to be an answer to the problem of reduction of Aristotelian categories. The solution advocated by Kotarbinski is probably the most radical. He maintains that all the categories can be reduced to just one: that of things. The first formulation of this thesis appeared in Kotarbinski's fundamental work, Gnosiology. The Scientific Approach to the Theory of Knowledge (1929, English translation: Pergamon Press, 1966). It runs as follows.

That reduction (of Aristotelian categories -- K. S.) completed, it turns out that there remains only that category of objects -- that is, there are no objects other than things, in other words, every object is a thing, whatever exists is a thing. When metaphorical, abbreviated, picturesque, in a word, substitutive, formulations are eliminated and replaced by the basic formulations, interpreted literally, the latter will include no phrases which would appear to be names of something other than things. They will be statements about things only. But it must be emphasized here that by things we do not mean only inorganic solids. Things are inorganic and organic, inanimate and animate, and "endowed with psychic life" -- that is, they are both things in the narrower sense of the word, and persons, too. So much for the reduction of categories of objects to the category of things. The stand taken here by those In favour of such a reduction might be called reism.

The name 'reism' was intended to stress the unique position of the category of things; it was later replaced by 'concretism' or 'pansomatism', the last word indicating that the concrete objects are bodies, i. e. are of a physical, not spiritual, nature.

Even this first formulation reveals two non-equivalent variants of the thesis of concretism. One of them is a statement about the world. The fundamental philosophical question "What exists?" is answered by: "Things and only things". The other deals with language; it says that all statements made in a descriptive language are reducible to such sentences which refer directly to things alone, i.e. that the only names they contain are individual and general names of things.

The evolution of concretism consisted mainly in replacing the ontological thesis by the semantical one and in substantial weakening of the latter: the statement about has been transformed into a prescription for its users; a doctrine became a programme.

The ontological variant has been put in abeyance (which does not mean rejected) mainly because of certain difficulties involved in attempts to find a consistent formulation for it. Briefly speaking, the point was that statements denying existence of properties, relations, etc., and ascribing it to things alone; violated concretistic criteria of meaningfulness. They contain, in the subject-place, some expressions that are not names of things ('property', 'relation', etc.), which is inadmissible in a concretist's language, provided the sentences are to be interpreted literally. The thesis to the effect that whatever exists, is a thing, remains true; but trivially true, since it results from a decision concerning language. According to this decision, we must construct the language in such a way that literally interpreted sentences should admit, as substitution instances of individual and predicate variables, only names of things.

Two questions immediately arise: Is the programme of semantical concretism workable ? If it is, why should we adopt it ?

The first question amounts to asking whether it is possible to impose the above mentioned restriction upon the descriptive language, without impairing the sense of what is said: Or to put it another way, are the statements of science reducible, in principle, to concretistic formulations?

There is, so far, no definite answer. Two serious difficulties have, however, been pointed out since the time concretism was born. Kotarbinski admitted their seriousness while expressing the hope that they will in time be overcome.

The first difficulty originates in mathematics. In the language of mathematics, the fundamental role is played by the concept of class or set. Now it seems doubtful that this concept can be given concretistic interpretation.

A set of material objects can, of course, be regarded as a thing, viz. material aggregate of its elements (which, in this case, are more properly called its parts). Stanislaw Leśniewski (1886-1939) was among the first to develop this idea; theory of sets so interpreted was called by him mereology.

Leśniewski's thought had a deep influence on Kotarbinski and there is hardly any doubt that, during the initial phase of concretism, he saw in mereology a support of the idea that abstract entities can be dispensed with.

The difficulty that appeared later on consists in the fact that sets in mereological sense of the word have no fixed cardinality. The number of parts in such a set depends on the way the parts are defined: As W. V. O. Quine pointed out in his well known essay “Logic and the Reification. of Universals”, the same heap of stones can be said to consist of, say, a hundred stones and of trillions of molecules. In mathematics, however, the number of elements in a set must be an absolute property of that set; two sets having different members cannot be identical. It follows that sets, as they are understood in mathematics, are abstract.

Kotarbinski was, of course, well aware of this difficulty. He expressed the hope that sets in the abstract, non-mereological sense of the word could, in principle, be eliminated from mathematics by a suitable translation of sentences which ostensibly refer to them. Since the rules of such a translation have, so far, not been found, Kotarbinski's latest standpoints was to suspend judgment as to the (theoretical) possibility of practicing semantical concretism in an absolutely rigorous way.

An additional reason was provided by modern physical theory which throws some doubts on the concept of thing as "an object located in time and space and having certain physical characteristics". This concept is modelled on our perception of objects from the macroworld. Is it, however, compatible with the conceptual apparatus of contemporary physics? Does it; for instance, apply to electromagnetic field? Or to a wave? Or to a meson?

Kotarbinski himself considered this objection less serious than the previous one, based on the concept of set. His reply was that is was up to the physicist to provide a satisfactory explication of concepts that, so far, remain somewhat enigmatic and susceptible to various interpretations. Until this happens, attempts to translate statements in physics into concretistic language must be postponed.

But why should there be such attempts at all? What is the reason for accepting the postulate of semantical concretism? Obviously, belief in ontological concretism would constitute a sufficient justification. If one believes that there is nothing but concrete things (which, according to somatistic interpretation, are bodies) then to refer to objects of other kinds, in particular to abstracts, in such a way as if they really existed, is to indulge in fiction. What, however, if such belief is suspended?

Kotarbinski's answer is that to accept the programme of semantical concretism would be a sound policy for someone who adopts a less restrictive ontology. The point is that concretistic attitude in discourse is the most radical weapon against uncritical speculation, against idola fori Francis Bacon complained of. It acts like Occam's razor, sharpened to the extreme.

To avoid possible misunderstandings, let me stress that what Kotarbinski had in mind was not the actual elimination of abstract names from the discourse (which would result in long and cumbersome circumlocutions) but eliminability in principle. This, in itself, would be a sufficient condition for genuine understanding in verbal communication. As Kotarbinski himself pointed out, the idea goes as far back as Leibniz's New Essays on Human Understanding (Book II, Ch. XXIII, 1). It was Leibniz who said that "most intricate speculations, (of scholastics -- K. S.) fall at one blow if we will banish abstract entities and resolve not to speak ordinarily except by concretes, and not to admit any other terms in the demonstrations but those which represent substantial entities".

This philosophical attitude was in harmony with the spirit of the time. Logical empiricism was then the most influential trend in philosophy, while Polish philosophical thought was dominated by the school founded by Kazimierz Twardowski (1866-1938) whose ideas were very similar. He advocated the necessity of a critical reappraisal of the classical problems of philosophy, with the intention of dismissing those which would not conform to rather rigorous standards. Kotarbinski was one of the most prominent members of this school and semantical concretism is his answer to the question, how to reform the language of philosophy and, more generally, of the humanities.

Viewed in this light, concretism is an attempt to draw a demarcation line between genuine statements and such utterances which only apparently can be qualified in terms of truth and falsehood. It is somewhat paradoxical that the possibility of a consistent realization of concretistic programme has been called in question by results of analysis of the language of mathematics and physics, sciences of the highest rigour. After all, it is not those sciences that are in urgent need of a criterion which would enable them to get rid of some more or less evident nonsense. And yet, owing to a veto put by those sciences (to be, annulated in future?), the original version of concretism, attractive because of its radicalism, has been abandoned. What remained, was a prescription to use expressions translatable into concretistic language, whenever possible." (pp. 25-28)

From: Klemens Szaniawski, "Philosophical ideas of Tadeusz Kotarbinski", Reports on Philosophy, 8, 1984, pp. 25-32.

Kotarbinski, Ontological Reism, by: Mariusz Grygianiec, Institute of Philosophy, Warsaw University, Poland.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on Kotarbinski's Reism and Semantical Concretism

A Selection of works by Kotarbinski

N.B. Works avalaible only in Polish are not enclosed.

1. Kotarbinski, Tadeusz. 1931. "Le réalisme radical." In Proceedings of the seventh International congress of philosophy, held at Oxford, England, September 1-6, 1930, edited by Ryle, Gilbert, 488-500. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2. ———. 1935. "The development of the main problem in the methodology of Francis Bacon." Studia Philosophica no. 1:107-117.

3. ———. 1955. "The fundamental ideas of Pansomatism." Mind no. 64:488-500.

Originally published in Polish in 1935.

4. ———. 1956. "La logique en Pologne." Études Philosophiques no. 11:231-241.

Reprinted in. Raymond Klibansky (ed.), Philosophy in the Mid-Century. A survey - Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1958 pp. 44-52.

5. ———. 1958. "Jan Lukasiewicz's works on the history of logic." Studia Logica no. 8:57-62.

6. ———. 1960. "The concept of action." Journal of Philosophy no. 57:215-221.

7. ———. 1961. "The property of a good plan." Methodos no. 13:189-201.

8. ———. 1961. "Postulates for economic modes of action." Methodos no. 13:175-188.

9. ———. 1961. "The aspiration of praxologists." Methodos no. 13:163-174.

10. ———. 1964. Leçons sur l'histoire de la logique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Original Polish edition 1957.

Translated by Anna Posner and with an introduction by René Poirier.

11. ———. 1965. Praxiology. An Introduction to the Sciences of Efficient Action. New York: Pergamon Press.

Originally published in Polish in 1955.

Translated by Olgierd Wojtasiewicz.

12. ———. 1966. Gnosiology. The Scientific Approach to the Theory of Knowledge. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Original Polish edition 1929; second revised edition 1961.

Translated from the Polish by Olgierd Wojtasiewicz; translation edited by G. Bidwell and C. Pinder.

13. ———. 1966. "Franz Brentano comme réiste." Revue Internationale de la Philosophie no. 78:459-476.

English translation in: Linda Mc Alister (ed.) - The philosophy f Franz Brentano - London, Duckworth, 1976, pp. 194-203.

14. ———. 1968. "Reism: Issues and Prospects." Logique et Analyse no. 11:441-458.

15. ———. 1968. "La philosophie de la technique de Dupréel." Revue Internationale de la Philosophie no. 22:156-166.

16. ———. 1968. "The problem of the existence of the future." Polish Review no. 13:7-22.

Originally published in Polish in 1913.

17. ———. 1968. "La justification active." Logique et Analyse no. 41-42:273-279.

18. ———. 1968. "L'evolution de la praxéologie en Pologne." In Philosophy of science, edited by Klibansky, Raymond, 438-450. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

Contemporary philosophy. A new survey - vol. II.

19. ———. 1970. "The problem of the rationality of reasonings based on imperative sentences." Studia Filozoficzne no. 4:131-137.

20. ———. 1970. "Les formes positives et négatives de la cooperation." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 75:316-325.

21. ———. 1971. "Ethical evaluation." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 11:335-340.

22. ———. 1971. "The methodology of practical skills: concepts and issues." Metaphilosophy no. 2:148-171.

23. ———. 1973. "Notions and problems of general methodology and the methodology of practical sciences." Dialectics and Humanism:157-164.

24. ———. 1974. "Determinism and fatalism in face of activity." Dialectics and Humanism:3-11.

25. ———. 1975. "Sources of general problems concerning the efficiency of actions." Dialectics and Humanism:5-15.

26. ———. 1983. "The general concept of plan." Dialectics and Humanism:15-32.

27. ———. 1990. "Philosophical Self-Portrait." In Kotarbinski. Logic,Semantics and Pntology, edited by Wolenski, Jan, 1-6. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Studies about the work of Kotarbinski

1. Coniglione, Francesco. 2000. "Kotarbinski's Reism and the Vienna Circle." Axiomathes no. 11:37-69.

2. Gasparski, Wojciech. 1993. "A Philosophy of Practicality: A Treatise on the Philosophy of Tadeusz Kotarbinski." Acta Philosophica Fennica no. 53:11-114.

"This monograph answers the question concerning the philosophical outlook and the intellectual heritage of the Polish thinker Tadeusz Kotarbinski.Kotarbinski called his own system praxiology. This book has also a wider aim, namely, to describe the "phenomenon of Tadeusz Kotarbinski in the Polish philosophy of the twentieth century". The reader can see how the whole intellectual period full of new methodological and philosophical ideas emerges and changes due to the influence of Kotarbinski during those eighty years that have passed since the publication of his first, seminal essays. The Polish methodology of science has been wonderfully fruitful and the same can be said of the methodology of practical endeavors, as Professor Gasparski shows in this book."

3. Hiz, Henry. 1954. "Kotarbinski's Praxeology." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 15:238-243.

"Kotarbinski developed a general theory of action. It abstracts from moral, esthetic and other qualities of action and studies only the efficacity. He provides an analysis of what it means to do something, to be an agent, a perpetrator. It means that his voluntary act is a necessary condition for something to occur. An analysis of negligence, refraining from doing something, collective action and a variety of the methods of efficacity is given."

4. Lejewski, Czeslaw. 1979. "On the Dramatic Stage in the Development of Kotarbisnki's Pansomatism." In Ontologie Und Logik. Ontology and Logic., 197-214. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.

Proceedings of an International Colloquium (Salzburg, 21-24 September 1976).

Discussion pp. 215-218.

5. Niiniluoto, Ilkka. 2002. "Kotarbinski as a Scientific Realist." Erkenntnis no. 56:63-82.

"Tadeusz Kotarbinski is widely recognized as a major philosopher of the Lvov-Warsaw school. His reism, which is a contribution to semantics and ontology, is still discussed and debated, and his most original creation, praxiology, has grown into an entire research field. However, Kotarbinski's philosophy of science has not received much attention by later commentators. This paper attempts to correct this situation by considering the hypothesis that Kotarbinski succeeded already in 1929 in formulating a position that can be regarded as an early version of scientific realism. Unlike most other "scientific philosophers'' before the mid-thirties, he was able to combine ontological realism (by defending a form of physicalism and nominalism) and semantical realism (by defending the classical correspondence theory of truth). He was also a critical epistemological realist. Further, in spite of the instrumentalist flavour of his reductionist programme in eliminating terms apparently referring to abstract entities, Kotarbinski accepted theories as statements with truth values and theoretical entities as long as they can be understood as physical bodies."

6. Poli, Roberto. 1993. "The Dispute over Reism: Kotarbinski - Ajdukiewicz - Brentano." In Polish Scientific Philosophy. The Lvov-Warsaw School, edited by Coniglione, Francesco, Poli, Roberto and Wolenski, Jan, 339-354. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"Kotarbinski's ontology (called reism) maintains that there are only things. According to this theory, all genuine names refer to things and all the terms that refer to non-things (properties, qualities, events, etc.) are pseudo-names or onomatoids. After the criticisms of Ajdukiewicz, reism turned into a semantic theory stating that onomatoids should be used only in paraphrasable by other expressions containing only terms. I shall try to restate the ontological reading of reism resorting to the theory of substance and accident advanced by Brentano in his last philosophical analysis."

7. Simons, Peter M. 1993. "Nominalism in Poland." In Polish Scientific Philosophy, edited by Coniglione, Francesco, Poli, Roberto and Wolenski, Jan, 207-231. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"The principal defenders of nominalism in Poland were Lesniewski and Kotarbinski. Several senses of nominalism' are distinguished. Lesniewski attacked Twardowski's theory of general objects, rejected set theory, and proposed an ontologically neutral, nominalistically acceptable logic. I examine how this neutrality is to be attained despite higher-order quantificationKotarbinski denied that there is anything except bodies (reism) and attempted to eliminate statements apparently about other things, but reism is inadequate for explaining true predications. Their student Tarski was also a nominalist, but he did not argue for his views in print."

8. Sinisi, Vito. 1964. "Kotarbinski's Theory of Genuine Names." Theoria no. 30:80-95.

9. ———. 1965. "Kotarbinski's Theory of Pseudo-Names." Theoria no. 31:218-241.

10. ———. 1967. "A Few Comments on a Few Comments on Concretism." Theoria no. 33:72-77.

11. ———. 1983. "The Development of Ontology." Topoi no. 2:53-61.

12. Skolimowski, Henryk. 1966. "A Few Comments on Concretism." Theoria no. 32:75-78.

13. Smith, Barry. 1994. "Tadeusz Kotarbinski. On Things and Their Phases." In Austrian Philosophy. The Legacy of Franz Brentano, 201-254. Chicago: Open Court.

14. ———. 2006. "On the Phases of Reism." In Actions, Products, and Things, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz and Lukasiewicz, Dariusz, 121-182. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

15. Szaniawski, Klemens. 1977. "Philosophy of the Concrete." Dialectics and Humanism no. 4:67-72.

"This is a brief appreciation of the philosophical ideas of Tadeusz Kotarbinski, written on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday. The discussion is limited to his doctrine of Reism, asserting the existence of things only. The evolution of Reism is sketched and some difficulties concerning its tenets are pointed out. Finally, the author stresses the role of Kotarbinski's teaching in the development of philosophy in Poland."

16. ———. 1984. "Philosophical Ideas of Tadeusz Kotarbinski." Reports on Philosophy no. 8:25-32.

17. Wolenski, Jan. 1986. "Reism and Lesniewski's Ontology." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 7:167-176.

"This paper examines relations between Reism, the metaphysical theory invented by Tadeusz Kotarbinski, and Lesniewski's calculus of names. It is shown that Kotarbinski's interpretation of common nouns as genuine names, i.e., names of things is essentially based on Lesniewski's logical ideas. It is pointed out that Lesniewskian semantics offers better prospects for Nominalism than does semantics of the standard first-order predicate calculus."

18. ———, ed. 1990. Kotarbinski: Logic, Semantics and Ontology. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Preface VII; Notes on Contributors IX; Tadeusz Kotarbinski: Philosophical self-portrait 1; Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz: Review-article: T. Kotarbinski's Elements of the Theory of Knowledge, Formal Logic and Methodology of the Sciences 7; Alfred Gawronski: Psychologism and the principle of relevance in semantics 23; Peter Geach: Names in Kotarbinski's Elementy 31; Andrzej Grzegorczyk: Consistent reism 39; Henryk Hiz: A note about reism 47; Janina Kotarbinska: Puzzles of existence 53; Czeslaw Lejewski: On the dramatic stage in the development of Kotarbinski's pansomatism 69; Marian Przelecki: Semantic reasons for ontological statements: the argumentation of a reist 85; Tadeusz Pszczolowski: Philosophical and methodological foundations of Kotarbinski's praxiology 97; Vito F Sinisi: Kotarbinski's theory of genuine names 107; Vito F Sinisi: Kotarbinski's theory of pseudo-names 119; Barry Smith: On the phases of reism 137; Klemens Szaniawski: Philosophy of the concrete 185; Jan Wolenski: Kotarbinski, many-valued logic, and truth 191; Boguslaw Wolniewicz: Concerning reism 199; Ewa Zarnecka-Bialy: The voice of the past in Kotarbinski's writings 205; References 213; Index of names: 225; Index of subjects 229.

19. ———. 1990. "Tadeusz Kotarbinski and the Lvov Warsaw School." Dialectics and Humanism no. 17:14-24.

"This paper is intended to show the place of Kotarbinski's philosophy in the Lvov-Warsaw School and his influence on the development of this movement in Polish philosophy. The author describes links of Kotarbinski's views with ideas developed by other outstanding members of the Lvov-Warsaw School, particularly Twardowski and Lesniewski. Moreover, Kotarbinski's conception of so called small philosophy was a typical exposition of general metaphilosophical views of the Lvov-Warsaw School."

20. ———. 1996. "Reism in the Brentanist Tradition." In The School of Franz Brentano, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Libardi, Massimo and Poli, Roberto, 357-376. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

21. ———. 2001. "Tadeusz Kotarbinski - Reism and Science." In Polish Philosophers of Science and Nature in the 20th Century, edited by Krajewski, Wladyslaw, 47-51. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The Ontology of Wittgenstein's Tractatus

Introduction

This page use the font Lucida Sans Unicode for logical symbols.

"The Tractatus comprises four parts, which correspond to stages of its rocky development: the theory of logic (1912-14), the picture theory (1914), the discussion of science and mathematics (1915-17), and the discussion of the mystical (1916-17). The structure of the book is as follows:

Ontology (1-2.063): although the Tractatus is concerned with symbolic representation (Preface), it starts with ontology, since the nature of representation, and of what represents (thought/language), is isomorphic with the nature of what is represented (reality).

Depiction (2.1-3.5): having claimed that the world is the totality of facts, the Tractatus proceeds to investigate a subset of that totality, namely pictures, in particular PROPOSITIONS, that is, facts which are capable of representing other facts.

Philosophy (4-4.2): unlike science, philosophy does not consist of propositions, since the logical form shared by language and reality cannot be expressed in meaningful propositions, but shows itself in empirical propositions (see SAYING/SHOWING).

Theory of logic (4.21-5.641, 6.1-6.13): Wittgenstein uses truth-functional operations to explain the construction of molecular propositions out of elementary ones -- thereby providing an account of the GENERAL PROPOSITIONAL FORM -- and to establish that logical propositions are tautologies.

Mathematics (6-6.031, 6.2-6.241): mathematics is also explained as an aspect of the logical operations by which propositions are derived from each other.

Science (6.3-6.372): science is treated along Hertzian lines as containing a priori elements, the network of our description of the world. Mysticism (6.373-6.522): ETHICAL and AESTHETICAL value is ineffable. Kicking away the ladder (6.53f.): the Tractatus aims to indicate the limits of the sayable, but acknowledges that its own pronouncements are on the far side of the limit. They should be used as a ladder which can be kicked away once climbed. 'Whereof one cannot speck, thereof one must be silent' (7)." (p. 364)

From: Hans-Johann Glock, A Wittgenstein Dictionary, Oxford: Blackwell 1996.

Frege and Wittgenstein

"For Frege there is some kind of connection between the categories of ontology and the categories of signs. The two primary ontological categories, namely object and function, (39) are in fact linked to the two principal categories of signs, namely saturated expressions and unsaturated expressions. All the different types of objects are linked to saturated expressions and all the types of functions are linked to unsaturated expressions. In what follows we will consider the two main kind of saturated expressions: names and propositions. As we all know, they have both sense and reference. The sense of the name is its Sinn, the mode in which reference is given to us, while reference itself, the Bedeutung, is the object denoted by the name. As regards propositions, their sense is the Gedanke, while their reference is their logical value. It is immediately apparent, therefore, that both categories of signs are articulated into an object (respectively the Bedeutung and the logical value) and into the mode whereby this object is presented to us (respectively the Sinn and the Gedanke). (40) The most debatable aspect of this position concerns propositions.

To understand Frege's account we have to distinguish between 'true' and 'false' as properties (that is as unsaturated expressions) from 'the True' and 'the False' as objects (that is as saturated expressions). When speaking of a logical value as the object referred to by a proposition, we are considering the True and the False as objects and not true and false as properties.

Using a suggestion coming from the last works by Suszko we can distinguish two different kinds of valuation: logical valuation and algebraic valuation. Logical valuations involve what are conventionally called the values of truth and falsity (as unsatured expressions), while those that Suszko termed algebraic valuations assign a referent. (41) By admitting the existence of only two referents, Frege's position collapses logical and algebraic valuations together and thus renders them indistinguishable. (42)

Wittgenstein took up a completely different position, where he rejected –this being the difference whence most of his subsequent distinctions stemmed –what Perzanowski called the principle of semantic homogeneity. According to this principle, the problem of the reference of names and the problem of the reference of propositions are both resolved using similar structures. This is Frege's case, therefore. For Wittgenstein, however, the solution to the nominal reference problem is different from that of the propositional reference problem. For names, the semiotic triangle (name-sense-reference) is reduced by eliminating sense, so that names refer directly to objects and do not require the intermediation of sense. This gives rise to an extremely simple one-to-one correlation. It also means that both names and objects are simple, the one in language the other in reality. By contrast, the simplicity of the name-object semantic relation generates an extremely complex semantic representation for propositions that involves the concepts of 'proposition', 'propositional sign' (preceivable sign of the proposition), 'sense of the proposition' (situation in the logical space connected to the proposition), 'thought' (logical picture of the fact related to the proposition) and 'fact depicted by the proposition'. (43)

It seems, therefore, that there are at least two main different strategies to adopt: if we accept Frege's position that names and propositions are semantically homogeneous entities, we can represent their structures by using the relative semiotic triangles. In this case the procedure is straightforward, and we encounter no major obstacles as long as we accept the idea that Truth and Falsity are in every respect objects of our ontology. If, instead, we follow Wittgenstein and reject the principle of semantic homogeneity, we are stressing that there is an univocal relationship between name and object. On the basis of this relationship each entity is an atom of its universe (the ontological universe in the case of objects, the universe of signs in the case of names). This absolute simplicity as regards names, however, generates major complexity among propositions.

The problem addressed by Wittgenstein was certainly not a new one. The basic issue was whether it was possible to construct an ontologically neutral language. Before Wittgenstein the problem had exercised several other thinkers: Brentano, for example, particularly during his so-called 'reist phase.' The fundamental theoretical problem was how to use language without being trapped by the symbolic features of language itself." (pp. 19-21)

Notes

(39) Note that function make up a number of other categories (1st level concepts, 2nd level concepts, ..., 1st level dyadic relations, etc.).

(40) I follow Perzanowski's 1993 exposition here. See also Perzanowski 1984 and 1990.

(41) See Suszko 1975.

(42) The principle according to which there are only two referents for propositions I shall call, following Suszko, Frege's axiom. It is interesting to note that the independence of Frege's axiom was demonstrated by Tarski in his doctoral dissertation (1923), where he explicitly compared it with Euclid's Fifth postulate. For a brief treatment see Suszko 1977. If all true propositions denote exactly one and the same entity, this means that the real philosophical position underlying the theory is an absolute monism of facts. Suszko's rejection of Frege's axiom prompted him to elaborate his so-called non-Fregean logic. See Suszko 1975 and the paper by Omyla in this volume. [Formal ontology of situations, pp. 173-187]

(43) For details see Perzanowski 1993.

[For the complete Bibliographical references, see the pages about Perzanowski, Suszko and Wolniewicz].

From: Roberto Poli, "Res, Ens and Aliquid", in: Roberto Poli and Peter Simons (eds.), Formal Ontology, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1996, pp. 1-26.

Ppolish philosophers about the Tractatus: Bogluslaw Wolniewicz

"The present set of studies was started long ago in an effort to grasp more clearly the metaphysical system sketched out in Wittgenstein's "Tractatus", and to evaluate its implications. The basic tenets of that system are the theses:

1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

1.2 The world splits into facts."

Thesis 1.1 propounds an ontology of facts; thesis 1.2 propounds a variant of it, known as Logical Atomism.

The studies are based on two concepts. One is that of an "elementary situation", intended as an intermediary between Wittgenstein's "Sachverhalt" and "Sachlage". ("Sachverhalte" are those elementary situations which are atomic and "Sachlagen" are certain sets of the former.) The other is that of a proposition being "verified" by an elementary situation. It has soon turned out that the key to the former concept is lattice theory; and that the latter has to be characterized via the meta-logical concept of a complete set of propositions. The link between them is the concept of a "realization" (or a "possible world"), generalizing Wittgenstein's "Wahrheitsmöglichkeiten der Elementarsätze": realizations are maximal sets of elementary situations, and complete sets of propositions are their images.

In all of the following our point of departure is a universe SE of elementary situations. We consider it at three levels of generality, corresponding to the course our investigations have taken in time. At the first level the universe SE is a lattice, conditionally distributive and of finite length. (Conditional distributivity means here that the identity x Ù (y Ú z) = (x Ù y) Ú (x Ù z) holds only under the proviso that y Ú z ¹ 1.) At the second it appears as an arbitrary join-semilattice with unit. And at the third one it forms merely a quasi-ordering induced by a closure system." (p. 11)

From: Bogusław Wolniewicz, Logic and Metaphysics. Studies in Wittgenstein's Ontology of Facts. Warsaw: Polskie Towarzystwo Semiotyczne 1999.

"The Tractatus is a masterpiece of rare power and ravishing beauty. Its content is a profound and highly coherent philosophy of language, based upon a radically new kind of metaphysics: the metaphysics of facts and situations. (Meinong, with his notion of the 'objective' of a proposition, apparently was moving in the same direction. But he never came near asking himself any of the two crucial questions: (1) When, if ever, are the objectives of different propositions identical? (2) What, if any, is the relation of the objective of a compound proposition to the objectives of its components?) Moreover, the Tractatus anticipated many of the later developments of logical semantics, especially those commencing around 1950 and connected with its algebraization. The kernel of its message may be put down as follows.

The fundamental problem of the Tractatus, as of all philosophy, concerns the relationship of thought and reality. This relationship is mediated by language, and so it may be decomposed into the relative product of two relations: one between thought and language, the other between language and reality. Let us mark the latter by 'φ', the former by 'ψ'.

It has been maintained that according to the Tractatus the projective relation φ between language and reality has to be an isomorphism. This, however, is not borne out by the text. To satisfy the conditions laid down by Wittgenstein it is enough for φ to be a homomorphism, and this already makes a lot of a difference. In the first place, we are confronted now with two delicate questions: (1) Which is the direction of that homomorphism: from language to reality, or the other way round? (2) Is it a homomorphism onto, or merely one into? Neither of these questions has a trivial answer in the context of the Tractatus.

We assume here that the relation φis a homomorphism on the language L onto the reality R, i.e., that φ: L → R.. Thus reality is a homomorphic image of language. But language is the totality of propositions, and the reference of meaningful propositions are possible situations. Consequently, reality is not the world, but the logical space; i.e., it is not the totality of facts, but the totality of possibilities. Thus language is more capacious than the world, and the number of propositions is greater than even that of situations.

The simplest non-trivial homomorphism of that kind is the well-known Fregean one. Language is mapped under it onto the set of the two classic truth-values, and the corresponding two-element Boolean algebra is then the logical space. Thus for Frege there are just two possible situations: the True and the False. This is so because his only stipulation with regard to the reference of propositions is that contradictory propositions cannot have the same reference. In the Tractatus, however, it is stipulated further that logically independent propositions cannot have the same reference either. This move is the gist of its logical atomism, transforming the Fregean homomorphism φ : L { 1, 0 } into the composition of two other ones: φ' on L onto logical space, and φ'' on logical space onto the set of truth-values.(1)

The aim of the Tractatus was to stake out the boundaries of clear thought:

Philosophy (...) should trace the unthinkable from within by means of the thinkable. By presenting clearly what may be expressed it will point to the inexpressible. (2)

The positivistically-minded members of the Vienna Circle deemed to recognize in these words their own 'demarcation problem', together with their own hostility towards 'metaphysics' and their cult of 'science'. It was a monumental misunderstanding. To Wittgenstein the metaphysical is indeed the inexpressible, but this is not to mean that it is regarded as some kind of delusion or hoax. On the contrary, the hoax is the idea of a 'scientific philosophy'.

In the Tractatus the tracing of the boundaries of the inexpressible was to be accomplished at one stroke. Logical space R fills the realm of the expressible E completely, i.e., we have E = R. Consequently, the homomorphism φ' is onto the expressible, and what is left, evidently, is only the inexpressible. This grandiose project, however, was soon to encounter grave technical difficulties, and then Wittgenstein simply dropped it. This was rash. Not all the difficulties were quite as insuperable as they might have seemed, and the Tractatus left room for manœuvre. It might have been helpful, for instance, to weaken the homomorphism φ' to one into the expressible. Then instead of the one language L we could consider a whole series of languages L0, L1,;..., and a corresponding series of logical spaces R0, R1,.... The realm of the inexpressible would be approximated by the latter 'from within' starting from what is expressible in the language L0 at hand. Certainly, the series of logical spaces need not be monotonic, and in advance there would be no telling whether what is inexpressible at a given stage L1 is absolutely or only relatively so. Thus the final tracing of the boundaries of the inexpressible would recede to infinity, but for theory this could hardly count as an objection." (pp. 13-15)

Notes

(1) For details cfr. B. Wolniewicz, "A Wittgensteinian Semantics for Propositions", in: Cora Diamond and Jenny Teichman (eds.), Intention and intentionality. Essays in Honour of G. E. M. Anscombe., Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1979, pp. 165-178.

(2) L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus 4.113-4.114.

From: Bogusław Wolniewicz, Logic and Metaphysics. Studies in Wittgenstein's Ontology of Facts. Warsaw: Polskie Towarzystwo Semiotyczne 1999.

Part I.

More than once Professor Anscombe has expressed doubt concerning the semantic efficacy of the idea of an 'elementary proposition' as conceived in the Tractatus. Wittgenstein himself eventually discarded it, together with the whole philosophy of language of which it had been an essential part. None the less the idea is still with us, and it seems to cover theoretical potentialities yet to be explored. This paper is a tentative move in that direction.

According to Professor Anscombe, Wittgenstein's 'elementary propositions' may be characterized by the following five theses:

(1) They are a class of mutually independent propositions.

(2) They are essentially positive.

(3) They are such that for each of them there are no two ways of being true or false, but only one.

(4) They are such that there is in them no distinction between an internal and an external negation.

(5) They are concatenations of names, which are absolutely simple signs.

We shall not investigate whether this is an adequate axiomatic for the notion under consideration. We suppose it is. In any case it is possible to modify it in one way or another, and for the resulting notion still to preserve a family resemblance with the original idea. One such modification is sketched out below.

Part II

Let us assume the reference of contingent propositions to be possible situations. This fundamental notion is really an offshoot of the correspondence theory of truth. For let a be any true proposition, and let the line R represent all reality in Wittgenstein's sense (i.e., the totality of facts) as shown in Fig. 1:

Fig. 1

Being true, a corresponds to reality, but not all reality is relevant to that. Consequently, R splits up into the segment A referred to by a, and into the vague remainder indifferent to it. Thus A represents here the smallest fragment of reality warranting the truth of a. This is the reference of a, but obviously its truth is warranted also by any fragment A' greater than A. In that case we shall say: a is verified by A'. And any fragment of reality fit to verify a proposition is to be called a situation.

This much is just common sense. The next step, however, is an extremely controversial one, for we expand now the notion of reference so as to cover false propositions as well. Since there are no facts (i.e., real situations), to correspond to them, we postulate to that purpose imaginary ones. Both are possible, and so the totality of facts is embedded in the totality of possibilities. This consists of' all the situations which can be described in the language considered. In a Pickwickian sense we shall still say that a proposition a is verified by a possible situation A, but now that only means that if A were real, a would be true.

An imaginary situation is a non-being. Hence to admit them as the reference of false propositions is to infringe what Plato had called 'the ban of the great Parmenides' : 'Keep your mind from this way of enquiry, for never will you show that non-being is'. (2) In this, however, we follow in the steps of the great Frege, whose minimal semantics for propositions still admits of two situations: (3) the one real (das Wahre), the other one imaginary (das Falsche). The former corresponds to 'the One' of Parmenides and to the totality of facts' of Wittgenstein; the latter obviously has no counterpart in Parmenides, and no clear-cut counterpart in Wittgenstein." (pp. 165-166)

From: Bogulasw Woloniewicz, "A Wittgensteinian Semantics for Propositions", in: Cora Diamond and Jenny Teichman (eds.), Intention and intentionality. Essays in Honour of G. E. M. Anscombe., Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1979, pp. 165-178.

Roman Suszko

"Ludwig Wittgenstein attempted in the Tractatus to build a theory of the epistemological opposition:

Mind (language) - Reality (being)

One may distinguish in the Tractatus the three following components:

1. Ontology, i.e., a theory of being,

2. Syntax, i.e., a theory of the structure of language (mind),

3. Semantics, i.e., a theory of the epistemological relations between linguistic expressions and reality.

I present below the formalized version of Wittgenstein's ontology. The syntax and semantics contained in Tractatus will be not considered here.

Wittgenstein's ontology is general and a formal theory of being. It may be called here shortly: ontology. It concerns (independently of time and space) (*), situations (facts, negative facts, atomic and compound situations) and objects. Thus, the ontology is composed of two parts:

1. s-ontology, i.e., the ontology of situations (Sachlagen),

2. o-ontology, i.e., the ontology of objects (Gegenstände).

The link between the two parts of ontology consists in the somewhat mysterious concept of a state of affairs (Sachverhalt) and that of a configuration of objects. The s-ontology is an original theory of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

It is related in a sense to certain conceptions of G. Frege and to the formalized system of protothetics of St. Leśniewski. The theories of Frege and Leśniewski make use of sentential variables and of operators (e.g. quantifiers) binding them. The s-ontology is also to be formalized by means of sentential variables and corresponding operators binding them.

This is the cause of a certain strangeness of s-ontology and, consequently, of the whole of Wittgenstein's philosophy. Firstly, most formalized languages of contemporary mathematical logic do not use bound sentential variables. On the other hand, the Tractatus essentially uses natural language and the notions and statements of s-ontology formulated in this language may seem to be produced by hypostatising thinking. Certainly, thinking in natural language is much more appropriate to the o-ontology than to s-ontology. Consequently, mathematical thinking in its historical development up to today is concerned with (abstract) objects and not situations." (p. 8)

Notes

(*) There is an opinion that mereology, a formal theory built by St. Leśniewski, is a suitable basis for the theory of spatiotemporal relations.

From: Roman Suszko, "Ontology in the Tractatus of L. Wittgenstein", Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 9, 1968, pp. 7-33.

Jerzy Perzanowski

"The main aim of my paper is to supply evidence that ontology and semantics of the Tractatus (as well as further philosophical theories which are to be found therein) are much more coherent and interconnected than it is usually believed.

2. One evidence comes from the history of Wittgenstein's working on the Tractatus which is now well-known due, mainly, to the efforts of Professors G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright.

Wittgenstein started with the basic question of the philosophy of logic: Why does logic (4) work? The study of this problem led him to questions concerning the nature of language and next to ontological considerations. In Wittgenstein's own words ". . . Yes, my work has extended from the foundations of logic to the nature of the world. . . " (Tractatus 2.8; Notebooks 1914-1916 p. 79). The final text of the Tractatus is logically ordered, i.e. from ontology via theory of language to philosophy of logic, which is the reverse of the historical order of Wittgenstein's investigations.

It may be interesting to add that the conversion of the first philosophy of Wittgenstein into the second one may be outlined as passing from basing philosophy of language and philosophy of logic upon ontology to grounding it on pragmatics and/or epistemology.

3. Surely, essential evidence would be more welcome than a historical one. It may come from a careful, point-by-point reading of the Tractatus, with emphasis put on, let's say; the "deductive closure" of it: on the logical connections between particular Tractarian theses, on their consequences, on looking for arguments and interpretations which eliminate apparent inconsistencies of the Tractatus. For such a method of reading it is really important to solve "puzzles" found in the text. But before discussing several puzzles I wish to present, the most important data concerning the Tractatus ontology should be recalled.

4. The ontological part of the Tractatus occupying its first few pages consists of 49 theses:

1-2063 and concerns 65 notions --from "the world" and "what is the case" in 1 to the "independent" in 2.061 -- introduced with the frequency vrying from 21 uses of one notion (object -- Gegenstand and state of affairs--Sachverhalt) to notions mentioned only once. From the frequency point of view the ontology of the Tractatus is the ontology of objects and states of affairs, but understanding it as the ontology of objects, states of affairs and facts is more common and reasonable.

A very brief account of the Tractatus ontology is as follows: The world is the totality of facts, facts are constituted by states of affairs consisting of objects standing in relations to each other. Objects are simples, the rest consists of complex items (states of affairs, facts, situations, the world): What is complex has a structure, i.e. the way objects hang together in the item and the stuff (or substance), i.e. a collection of objects included in the item: The object is the item which is constant; fixed and necessary, whereas the configuration of objects (complex item!) is the item which is changeable and contingent. Which configuration is possible is determined by internal (essential) properties of objects entering into a given configuration, by their nature. Let me recall 2.012: In logic nothing is accidental, if a thing can occur in a state of affairs, the possibility of the state of affairs must be written into the thing itself." (p. 224-225)

(...)

"10. Now let me pass to the most discussed question of the Tractatus ontology: What are Tractarian objects? Universals? Particulars? Objects of acquaintance? Colours? Geometrical points? and so on.

Many authors, basing their opinion on very few examples, and rather cryptic Tractarian, comments, try to state a general view on Tractatus objects. This seems to be rather hopeless, mainly because the ontology of the Tractatus is indeed a purely "logical" construction, what, according to Wittgenstein's opinion from the time of Tractatus' writing (12), relieve him from a duty to decide a purely empirical question--whether this thing or that is a simple thing or a complex thing.

Therefore, I do not look for concrete examples of objects and I won't hazard establishing a general view on Tractarian objects. Instead, I should like to write a few words of warning, listed in five points below.

(i) Tractarian objects are simples, items which are opposed to complex ones. These two notions: simple--complex are conjugate. Hence any theory of objects must at the same time be a theory of complexes, and any family of concrete objects generates a family of connected complexes. To say which items are objects means to solve the analogous question for complexes.

(ii) The opposition "simple-complex" is relative to a given analysis (See Notebooks 1914-1916), i.e. to a given language of analysis and to some methods of decomposition. Hence, any fruitful discussion of this opposition has to start with description of the language of analysis, particularly with, delimitation and classification of its names, and with indicating the methods of analysis. Let me recall that no language of analysis is described in the Tractatus in a satisfactory way!

(iii) By choosing appropriate language and method(s) of analysis we, in fact, determine its results. This two-parameter relativeness is the most important facet we should take into account when discussing the problem of objects. Several options, all of them in accordance with Tractatus ontology, are left open therein.

(iv) Particularly, taking appropriate "part-whole" methods of analysis (and, of course, an appropriate language) we obtain a very popular option that objects are individuals (or atoms), whereas complexes are some--combinatorial or mereological, etc.--combinations of atoms.

However, if we use method of logical analysis, i.e. when we ask which names of a given language are undefinable, we conclude that category of simples consists of, on the one hand,

all names ostensibly defined (i.e. by indication of examples. as for instance colours), and, on the other hand, the most general notions of the language (i.e. universals), which --according to the classical theory of definition -- are undefinable. To indicate complexes is much more difficult task in the case considered. For instance, some of them must be items equivalent to combinations of universals, f.ex. individuals if we accept the "bundle" theory of individuals (an individual is equivalent to the bundle of all its properties!).

Of course, choosing appropriate language and methods we may obtain also the phenomenalistic option: objects are Russellian objects of acquaintance (sense data). In this case complexes would be like Machian bundles of sensations.

All these conceptions, if only in accordance with Tractatus main claims, are only particularizations of more general Tractatus ontology; they are rather metaphysical than ontological theories.

(v) Bearing in mind how heavily Tractarian ontology depends on objects, esp. on their internal properties, we must, in any option, answer carefully not only what complexes are, but also we should decide what their internal properties are. This important question is very frequently overlooked, perhaps because it is not possible to discuss this question in the original language of analysis. For such a discussion we must introduce a stronger (meta-) language!

11. To sum up, according to the outlined interpretation the Tractatus ontology is, very modal indeed. Not only because many fundamental notions are modal ones, including the notion of "form" which, as I try to show, is the central notion of the Tractatus ontology; but also because the Tractatus ontological machinery works according to rules taking into account both what is done and what can be done--all what is possible (remember--the logical space!). Moreover, it should be pointed out that the crux of the interpretation lies not exactly in emphasizing the role played by "form" in the T ractatus (What was observed previously by several observant authors), but in its explication (II) with subsequent comments which makes clear how heavily Tractarian ontology is based on objects, esp. on their internal properties (*) -- much more heavily than it is usually recognized.

Is my interpretation right? I am offering the following four arguments to support it:

FIRST, I was trying to be so close to Wittgenstein's own words as possible;

SECOND, The interpretation solves in the uniform way several notorious puzzles of the Tractatus;

THIRD, It gives insights into the coherent construction of the main body of the Tractatus, particularly--through the outlined ontological solutions to the semantical puzzles discussed previously--into the way in which Tractarian semantics is based on ontology.

Let me also recall--and this is meant to be an addition to all three first arguments--Wittgenstein's well-known dissatisfaction with early interpretations of the Tractatus, which later on have become standard. The Tractatus ontology seems to be much more close to continental tradition of objects' ontology than it was recognized i.e. by B. Russell and F. Ramsey.

And--last but not least--

FOURTH, When we compare the text of the Tractatus with the text of the Prototractatus we note that Wittgenstein's amendments are, in fact, responsible for the second and the third puzzle. Namely, both 2.033 as well as the theses defining (in the spirit of 2.033) the form of objects, and--in the course--the second definition of the form of representation are not to be found in the Prototractatus, all of them were introduced into the text in the last period of Wittgenstein's working on the Tractatus.

I don't believe that Wittgenstein's intention was to spoil the Tractatus, on the contrary--I do believe--that he introduced these amendments to point out the intended meaning of the text." (pp. 229-230)

Notes

(*) Both Wittgenstein's terminology (internal--external) and his claims about the nature of objects, particularly 2.012-2.0141, confronts us with the following questions: Either the structure of a given configuration consists only of one relation or it may be factorized into relations: Such "structure" relation, in turn, is determined by the nature of objects (i.e. internal properties) standing in it. The relations of a given structure, using the terminology of F. H. Bradley as presented in B. Russell My philosophical development (1959), are internal relations. Hence any relation is the internal one (the axiom of internal relations), provided, that to be a relation is to be a relation in some structure. However, in Russell's opinion the axiom of internal relations implies monism, whereas Tractarian ontology is a pluralistic one. Therefore, the problem of connections between monism and the axiom of internal relations should be reexamined." (pp. 229-230)"

From: "Some Ontological and Semantical Puzzles of Wittgenstein's Tractatus", in: Rudolf Haller (ed.), Aesthetics. Proceedings of the 8th International Wittgenstein Symposium, 15th - 21st August 1983, Kirchberg am Wessel (Österreich), Wien: Holder-Pichler-Tempsky 1984, pp. 224-230.

"Towards Post-Tractatus Ontology. 1. Surely the above title is rather dark. Therefore, let me start with a few words of clarification. "Post-Tractatus" means either after "Tractatus" or a natural prolongation of the books' sequence: "Proto-Tractatus", "Tractatus",... . Hence the title of this paper means either the task of developing ontology built up after "Tractatus" clues, by taking its claims and lesson seriously, or clarification of the "Tractatus" text, by explaining notions and providing its claims with well-grounded arguments, trying thus to develop, step by step, a more advanced and better argumented version of Wittgenstein's treatise. As regards Tractarian ontology realizations of the first task are still rather rare. Instead, most of investigators try to adapt ontology of the "Tractatus" to more common and advanced frameworks, looking for its reconstruction. Quite a lot of people, however, have been involved in realization of the second task (1), producing jointly quite convincing explication of Wittgenstein's text and thus opening a way to the proper post-Tractatus investigations.

(...)

Tractarian Ontology. 3. A brief account of the Tractatus ontology is as follows: The world is the totality of facts. Facts are constituted by states of affairs consisting of things (2) connected together, hence standing in relations to each other. Things are simples, the rest consists of complex items (states of affairs, facts, situations, the world). Every complex has a structure, i.e. the way things hang together in the item, and the substance – formed by complex's things, usually treated as the collection of simples included in the item. It also has a form, intermediary between the substance and the structure, defined as the possibility of the structure. As regards things, they have no structure; they have, however, both the substance and the form. The substance of a thing includes the thing itself, whereas the form of a thing is the possibility of its occurring in appropriate states of affairs (complexes). In addition, things are unalterable, subsistent, necessary and stable; whereas complexes are changeable, accidental and unstable. Things constitute the foundation of the (onto)logical space – the space of all possible states of affairs (more generally – complexes or configurations). Which configuration is possible is determined by internal (essential) properties of things entering into a given configuration. Indeed, by 2.012 the possibility of a thing's occurrence in a state of affairs (configuration) must be written into the thing itself.

This formal substance-determination is basic and necessary. It produces (determines) all basic (or atomic) complexes and, further, the rest of complexes. Synthesis of atomic configurations is thereby no accidental, for things are mutually dependent, but, on the contrary, synthesis of non-atomic complexes is, to some extent, accidental, for states of affairs (complexes) are independent of one another (2.061)." (pp. 185-186)

Notes

(1) Let me mention a few: pioneer works of R. Carnap [1934], A. Maslow [1961], G. E. M. Anscombe [1959] and E. Stenius [1960]; books by J. Griffin [1964], B. Wolniewicz [1968], [1985], M. and J. Hintikka [1968], D. Pears [1987]; and the series of papers representing respectively: Warsaw lattice-theoretical approach – R. Suszko [1968a], [1968b], [1975], B. Wolniewicz [1982], [1983], [1985], M. Omyla [1982], [1986]; its Boolean version – G. J. Lockhorst [1988]; set-theoretical approach – J. Czermak [1978], [1979], K. Mudershach [1978] and others; its combinatorial version – B. Skyrms [1981] and D. Armstrong [1986]; mereological approach – P. Simons [1986]; geometrical interpretation – L. Goddard and B. Judge [1982], etc. Papers dealing with Tractarian modalities should also be mentioned. Most of them look for appropriate modal logics of the "Tractatus", e. g. R. Carnap's [1946], D. Kaplan's [1964], B. Wolniewicz's [1969], [1972], G. H. von Wright's [1972], [1982], N. B. Cocchiarella's [1974], [1975], G. J. Lockhorst's [1988], and mine [1985], [1989]. [Complete references are given in the Selected bibliography.]

(2) From two Wittgenstein's names for simples: things or objects I prefer the former, as the latter by its extreme generality is very useful to denote any item under consideration. Therefore, in combination ontology we change terminology a bit: simple item is called "element", complex - "combination" or still "complex", whereas "object" means both.

From: "Towards Post-Tractatus Ontology", in: Rudolf Haller and Johannes Brandl (eds.), Wittgenstein. Towards a Re-Evaluation: Proceedings of the 14th International Wittgenstein-Symposium, Centenary Celebration, 13th to 20th August 1989cKirchberg am Wechsel (Austria), Dordrecht: Kluwer 1990.

23. Both the Tractarian ontology and its semantics are based on two fundamental oppositions: simple - complex, actual - possible.

The first opposition is defined with respect to a given analysis. Notice double relativeness of this opposition - with respect to the language of analysis and its methods.

Actual means: real or existing. Remember that Tractarian possibilities are necessary, whereas facts are contingent.

24. As regards principles, let me note first that in the Tractatus Wittgenstein has accepted Frege's function-paradigm principle.

Trying to find solid foundations to logic and language he was using, it seems, at least four additional principles:

The Principle of Grounding, or Actuality: What is possible must be, ontologically, grounded on what is real; the realm of possibilities has to be based on the realm of facts, the world.

This is a very old and fashionable philosophical rule used explicitely, inter alia, by Leibniz.

The Principle of Uniformity: All possibilities (possible worlds) are ontologically equivalent. In other words, the (onto)logical space - the space of all possibilities - is uniform in the sense in which in physics we speak about uniformity of the physical space. i.e., no possibility (possible world) is ontologically distinguished; spaces generated seperately by two possible worlds are the same, they are ontologically indistinguishable.

The principle has several applications in the Tractatus, inter alia, direct - in mysterious theses 2.022, 2.023 and 2.025 claiming jointly that any possible world has the same form (=unum formae), probably substance too, as the real one; and indirect - in claim of simple facts' independence.

While the first principle is very Leibnizian in spirit, the last is strongly anti-Leibnizian.

The Principle of Concreteness: A priori (purely formal) components should be eliminated.

The principle expresses an anti-Russellian move of Wittgenstein against Russell's theory of judgements as claiming that any judgement contains an apriori component, its logical form. This move implies that the notion of form should be defined in a way connecting it with ontological concrets - things. And indeed such a definition was provided by Wittgenstein in 2.033.

Once again the principle is very traditional. It motivates, for instance, Leibniz's nominalism or Bradley's critique of relations.

Chance and Necessity Principle: Everything is a fruit of chance and necessity; to be possible is necessary, to exist - contingent.

The principle is stated explicitly in the Tractatus: in thesis 2.012 - In logic nothing is contingent, and in 1.21 - Each item (in the world - J. P.) can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same.

It is a very old principle of Democritus, having many occurrences both in philosophy and in science." (pp. 366-367)

From: Jerzy Perzanowski, "What Is Non-Fregean in the Semantics of Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Why?", Axiomathes, 1993, 4, pp. 357-372.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The Ontology of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Selected bibliography

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"The problem of the relations between the orders of signification, truth and logical consequence is central to logic. The way in which these relationships are established goes some way towards determining the logical theory to which the writer subscribes. This problem has been a major issue in the history of logic. In this essay, I propose to show that the problem of these relations is present in the course of the historical development of logic, and that there is no one solution to it. My aim is thus not to offer an answer to the question posed, but to highlight the contrast between different solutions, approaching this issue from the standpoint defended by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.2 Nor do I intend to provide a detailed explanation of Wittgenstein's view, but only to outline it and bring out the contrasts with other possible solutions, solutions which predate it by some considerable time." (Notes omitted)

25. ———. 1998. "Nombrar kripkeano versus nombrar tractariano: un intento de demarcación." Theoria.Revista de Teoria, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia no. 13:427-444.

"Raymond Bradley, in his book The Nature of All Being, has put forward an essentialist interpretation of the ontology of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-philosophicus and aims to develop the modal dimensions that, in his opinion, are implicit in that work. The aim of this paper is to reassess Bradley's interpretation of tractarian names as rigid designators, by examining the tractarian notion of name and the Kripkean concept of rigid designator in Naming and Necessity, with a view to answering the question as to whether an interpretation of tractarian names as rigid designators is possible, and to bringing to light some similarities and differences between the two theories of meaning."

26. ———. 2004. "La nociones de Sachverhalt, Tatsache y Sachlage en el Tractatus de Wittgenstein." Anuario Filosófico no. 37:455-479.

"In this paper, I develop some reflections on the interpretation of the notion of Sachverhalt in the Tractatus, with a view to show the complexity of the tractarian view and to point out some tensions. I intend to elucidate this notion in the context of its relation to the notions of Tatsache and Sachlage, and in its relation to the two main theories of the Tractatus, the truth-functions theory and the picture theory. I hope that this elucidation sheds some light on a possible comparison between Wittgenstein's and Husserl's views and I point out some suggestions in this sense in the last part of the paper."

27. ———. 2005. The possibility of language. Internal tensions in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

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"This paper aims to explain how the Tractatus attempts to unify logic by deriving the truth-functionality of logical necessity from the thesis that a proposition shows its sense. I first interpret the Tractarian notion of showing as the displaying of what is intrinsic to an expression. Then I argue that, according to the Tractatus, the thesis that a proposition shows its sense implies the determinacy of sense, the possibility of the complete elimination of nonprimitive symbols, the analyticity thesis and the strong analyticity thesis. The picture theory emerges as what provides the only acceptable account of an elementary proposition, subject to the constraint that a proposition must show its sense. The picture theory and the analyticity thesis then entail the contingency thesis and the independence thesis which, together with the strong analyticity thesis, imply that all logical propositions are tautologies."

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31. ———. 1975. "Logical Atomism, nominalism, and modal logic." Synthese no. 31:23-62.

32. Copi, Irving M. 1958. "Objects, properties and relations in the Tractatus." Mind no. 67:145-165.

Reprinted in: Irving M. Copi and Robert W. Beard (eds.) - Essays on Wittgenstein's Tractatus - pp. 167-186.

33. ———. 1976. "Frege and Wittgenstein's Tractatus." Philosophy and History no. 6:447-461.

Reprinted in: Stuart Shanker (ed.) - Ludwig Wittgenstein. Critical assessments - London, Croom Helm, 1986 - Vol. I.

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36. ———. 1979. "Ein Mengentheoretisches Modell der Tractatus Ontologie." In Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle, and critical rationalism. Proceedings of the Third International Wittgenstein Symposium, 13th to 19th August 1978, Kirchberg am Wechsel (Austria), edited by Berghel, Hal, Hübner, Adolf and Eckehart, Köhler, 162-164. Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.

37. Daniels, Charles B., and Davison, John. 1973. "Ontology and method in Wittgenstein's Tractatus." Noûs no. 7:233-247.

"Wittgenstein's method is that of showing the categories of being through a perspicuous language that mirrors the world. For Wittgenstein there are two categories of being, the category of objects and the category of facts. These categories are radically disjoint: no object is a fact, no fact an object. n a perspicuous language facts cannot be named and objects cannot be asserted. A perspicuous language has one and only one name for each object and one and only one proposition for each possible (and in addition one not-so-possible) fact. Material properties and generality are shown to be analyzable; formal properties are seen as not expressible. The unity of reality shows in the general form of a proposition that is given in a manner far clearer and much less ambiguous than Wittgenstein's own version. The Tractarian view of logic and mathematics is developed, and questions are raised concerning it that can be seen to occupy Wittgenstein in his later writings."

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Paperback edition reprinted with corrections, 2002; reprinted with further corrections, 2003.

"While many books discuss the individual achievements of Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine, few books consider how the thought of all four thinkers bears on the fundamental questions of twentieth century philosophy. This book is about existence-identity connections in Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine. The thesis of the book is that there is a general form of ontology, modified realism, which these great analysts share not only with each other, but with most great philosophers in the Western tradition. Modified realism is the view that in some sense there are both real identities and conceptual (or linguistic) identities. In more familiar language, it is the view that there are both real distinctions and distinctions in reason (or in language). Thus in modified realism, there are some real beings which can serve as a basis for accommodating possibly huge amounts of conceptual or linguistic relativity, or objectual identities' 'shifting' as sortal concepts or sortal terms 'shift.' Therefore, on the fundamental level of ontology, the linguistic turn was not a radical break from traditional substance theory. Dejnožka also holds that the conflict in all four analysts between private language arguments (which imply various kinds of realism) and conceptual "shifting" (which suggests conceptual relativism) is best resolved by, and is in fact implicitly resolved by, their respective kinds of modified realism. Frege and Russell, not Wittgenstein and Quine, emerge as the true analytic progenitors of 'no entity without identity,' offering between them at least twenty-nine private language arguments and fifty-eight 'no entity without identity' theories."

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"A conjecture on the metaphysical nature of Tractatus objects is put forward and its interpretative adequacy is tested. The clarification of the true import of the metaphor of logical space and the recognition of the theoretical role played by Wittgenstein's explicit claim that the emptiness of logical space is conceivable enable us to account for the thesis that objects are the substance of the world. Once objects are identified with those universal abstract entities which are qualia, and complexes or states of affairs with their concrete instances, some statements of the Tractatus become liable to a consistent reading: that objects are colourless (TLP 2.0232); that space, time and colour are forms of objects (TLP 2.0251); that Leibniz's Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles, though still holding for complexes, does not apply to objects (TLP 2.0233). Lastly, it is shown how the interpretation of objects as qualia sheds a vivid light on the theme of the relation between objects and time."

Italian version: Sulla natura degli oggetti nel Tractatus - Rivista di estetics. 44, 2004, pp. 61-73.

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50. Glock, Hans-Johann. 1996. A Wittgenstein Dictionary. London: Blackwell.

51. ———. 2006. "Truth in the Tractatus." Synthese no. 148:345-368.

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"The ontology of the Tractatus, in terms of which objects are characterized as property-less simples, is coherent provided Wittgenstein is not mistakenly taken to be a constructive atomist building complexes from simples. A geometrical model is given to illustrate this. It is also shown that an ontology like that of the Tractatus removes much of the conceptual puzzlement of modern particle physics and has implications for current debates about realism, possible worlds and rigid designators."

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"The history of philosophy is full of amazing quirks. One of them is the fact that just two basic ontologies have ruled the roost for the last two thousand years, namely, the Platonic system and the Aristotelian system. But it is even more peculiar that neither system contains the category of state of affairs. The main reason for this neglect seems to be a consideration which has plagued philosophy to this day. There can be no such things as states of affairs, because there simply are no states of affairs for false sentences. Russell, influenced by Wittgenstein's criticism, tried to escape from this conclusion with his so-called multiple relation theory of judgment. But he does not succeed. Wittgenstein claimed to have avoided Russell's mistake and to have presented a correct view about the nature of judgment in the Tractatus. But a study of the few references in the Tractatus to the ontological status of states of affairs represented by false sentences does not show this."

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57. ———. 2004. Wittgenstein et les limites du langage. Paris: Vrin.

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"Ludwig Wittgenstein's conception of the role of objects in our philosophical understanding of the logic of our language is critical for his early philosophy in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. While the important connections between Heinrich Hertz's Principles of Mechanics and Wittgenstein's Tractatus have long been recognized, recent work by Jed Buchwald has deepened our knowledge of the importance of the object-orientation of Hertz's scientific work in a manner that should also deepen our understanding of the nature of objects in the Tractatus. I will argue that there are important ontological links, involving "a certain physical scheme, one that had powerful implications for thinking as well as doing," between Hertz's work and Wittgenstein's early philosophy."

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62. Hintikka, Merrill B., and Hintikka, Jaakko. 1986. Investigating Wittgenstein. Oxford: Blackwell.

63. Hochberg, Herbert. 1969. "Negation and generality." Noûs no. 3:325-343.

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65. ———. 1978. Thought, fact and reference: The origins and ontology of Logical Atomism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

66. ———. 2001. Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein: the revival of realism. Egelsbach: Hänsel-Hohenhausen.

67. Horn, Patrick Rogers. 2005. Gadamer and Wittgenstein on the unity of language. Reality and discourse without metaphysics. Aldershot: Ashgate.

68. Hyder, David Jalal. 2002. The mechanics of meaning. Propositional content and the logical space of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

69. Ishiguro, Hide. 2001. "The so-called Picture Theory: language and the world in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus." In Wittgenstein: a critical reader, edited by Glock, Hans-Johann, 26-46. Malden: Blackwell Publishers.

70. Jacquette, Dale. 2001. "Analysis of Quantifiers in Wittgenstein's Tractatus: A Critical Survey." Logic Analysis and History of Philosophy no. 4:191-202.

"In theTractatus logico-philosophicus, Wittgenstein distinguishes between what can and cannot be said in any language by the general form of propositions. I explain Wittgenstein's method and discuss Robert J. Fogelin's criticism of what he takes to be the incompleteness of Wittgenstein's general form of propositions in his exposition of the 'Naive Constructivism of the Tractatus.' [Chapter 6 of: Robert J. Fogelin - Wittgenstein pp. 78-85]. I argue that Fogelin's objection is mistaken, and that, contrary to Fogelin's claim, Wittgenstein's method when properly applied produces all of the well-formed formulas with mixed multiple quantification that Fogelin maintains it cannot provide. I conclude by offering a critical comparison of similar solutions proposed, among others, by P.T. Geach, Scott Soames, and Matthias Varga von Kibéd."

71. ———. 2004. "Wittgenstein's Tractatus and the logic of fiction." In Wittgenstein and philsophy of literature, edited by Gibson, John and Huemer, Wolfgang, 305-317. London: Routledge.

"Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus articulates a logic and semantics for all possible languages in which states of affairs (Sachverhalten, Tatsachen) as truth-makers are pictured in sentences under analysis. Wittgenstein considers both existent and nonexistent states of affairs as pictured, respectively, by true and false sentences. This raises the question as to whether the Tractatus constitutes or provides the formal basis for a logic of fiction. I identify four criteria for a logic of fiction, and argue that the Tractatus satisfies only the first three. The remaining criterion has to do with logical analysis of a fictional character's psychology internal narration. These are excluded by Wittgenstein's application of Occam's razor in defense of the general form of proposition in the case of fiction just as they are in nonfictional discourse."

72. Kannisto, Heikki. 1986. Thoughts and their subject. A study of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Helsinki: Societas Philosophica Fennica.

73. Kaplan, David. 1964. Foundations of Intensional Logic.

Unpublished Ph. D. thesis; available at ProQuest Dissertation Express, reference number: 6408563.

74. Kenny, Anthony John Patrick. 1973. Wittgenstein. London: Allen Lane.

Second revised edition: Oxford, Blackwell Publishers, 2006.

75. Klement, Kevin C. 2004. "Putting form before function: logical grammar in Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein." Philosopher's Imprint no. 4:1-47.

"The positions of Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein on the priority of complexes over (propositional) functions are sketched, challenging those who take the "judgment centered" aspects of the Tractatus to be inherited from Frege not Russell. Frege's views on the priority of judgments are problematic, and unlike Wittgenstein's. Russell's views on these matters, and their development, are discussed in detail, and shown to be more sophisticated than usually supposed.

Certain misreadings of Russell, including those regarding the relationship between propositional functions and universals, are exposed. Wittgenstein's and Russell's views on logical grammar are shown to be very similar. Russell's type theory does not countenance types of genuine entities nor metaphysical truths that cannot be put into words, contrary to conventional wisdom. I relate this to the debate over "inexpressible truths" in the Tractatus. I lastly comment on the changes to Russell's views brought about by Wittgenstein's influence."

76. Klemke, Elmer D., ed. 1971. Essays on Wittgenstein. Urbana: University Of Illinois Press.

77. ———. 1971. "The ontology of Wittgenstein's Tractatus." In Essays on Wittgenstein, edited by Klemke, Elmer D., 104-119. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

78. Kluge, Eike Henner. 1973. "Objects as universals: a re-appraisal of the Tractatus." Dialogue no. 12:64-77.

79. Küng, Guido. 1967. Ontology and the logistic analysis of language. an enquiry Into the contemporary views on universals. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company.

Translated from German by E. C. M. Mays, and revised by the author]

80. ———. 1983. "The difficulty with the well-formedness of ontological statements." Topoi no. 2:111-119.

81. Landini, Gregory. 2009. Wittgenstein's Apprenticeship with Russell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

82. Latraverse, François. 2002. "Signe, proposition, situation: éléments pour une lecture du Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 56:125-140.

83. Levvis, Gary. 1998. "The so-called (and actual!) Realism of the Tractatus." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 54:45-70.

"David Pears's contention that the Tractatus [in: The false prison - vol. 1 - Chapter 6: The basic Realism of the Tractatus] is to be understood as advancing a form of metaphysical realism is defended against McGuinness's view that Tractatus 1-2.063 is to be treated just as introducing a metaphysical myth that may be employed to bring into prominence salient features of propositions. Starting with a discussion of the involved difficulties, e.g., determining (1) whether Wittgenstein does, in fact, provide an argument for the existence of simple objects, (2) what this object is, and (3) what role the existence of simple objects plays within the Picture Theory of the Proposition, Wittgenstein's argument for the existence of simple objects is reconstructed, augmenting Pears's existing account by providing further details of why Wittgenstein held that determinacy of sense requires the existence of simple objects."

84. Lokhorst, Gert-Jan C. 1988. "Ontology, semantics, and philosophy of mind in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. A formal reconstruction." Erkenntnis no. 29:35-75.

"The paper presents a formal explication of the early Wittgenstein's views on ontology, the syntax and semantics of an ideal logical language, and the propositional attitudes. It will be shown that Wittgenstein gave a 'language of thought' analysis of propositional attitude ascriptions, and that his ontological views imply that such ascriptions are truth-functions of (and supervenient upon) elementary sentences. Finally, an axiomatization of a quantified doxastic modal logic corresponding to Tractarian semantics will be given."

85. Lombardi, Olimpia Iris. 1999. "¿Qué son los objetos del Tractatus?" Revista de Filosofia (Spain) no. 12:55-76.

"In this paper we provide an interpretation of the concept "object", in the context of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. We argue that (1) "objects" are logical entities, the nodes of the logical net which is common to all possible worlds; (2) general words are not "names" and, therefore, "objects" are particulars."

86. Ludwig, Jan. 1976. "'Substance' and 'simple objects' in Tractatus 2.02ff." Philosophical Studies no. 29:307-318.

Reprinted in: John V. Canfield (ed.) - The philosophy of Wittgenstein. A fifteen volume collection - New York, Garland, 1986 - Vol. II - Logic and ontology.

87. Marion, Mathieu. 2004. Ludwig Wittgenstein. Introduction au Tractatus logico-philosophicus. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

88. Maslow, Alexander. 1961. A study in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Berkeley: University of California Press.

From the Preface: "This study in Wittgenstein Tractatus is substantially as it was written in 1933".

Reprinted by Thoemmes Press in 1997.

89. ———. 1961. A Study in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Berkely: University of California Press.

90. Maury, André. 1977. The concepts of "Sinn" and "Gegenstand" in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

" It is argued that the Tractatus notion of propositional sense contains an irreducible modal element. An interpretation of Wittgenstein's early notion of "bipolarity" is given. It is further argued that explicit recognition of the modal element helps us to understand the particular form of the Tractatus ontology. Wittgenstein's early views on sense and modality are contrasted with Frege's and Russell's views. Part II is a defense of the view that the Tractatus objects include predicates. The argument is backed up by reference to later unpublished writings by Wittgenstein. The

development of his views on names and predicates are examined."

91. McDonough, Richard. 1986. The argument of the Tractatus. Its relevance to contemporary theories of logic, language, mind, and philosophical truth. Albany: State University of New York Press.

92. McGinn, Marie. 2006. Elucidating the Tractatus: Wittgenstein's early philosophy of logic and language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

93. McGuinness, Brian. 1972. "Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein' "Notes on logic"." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 26:440-460.

94. ———. 1981. "The so-called realism of Wittgenstein's Tractatus." In Perspectives on the philosophy of Wittgenstein, edited by Block, I., 60-73. Oxford: Blackwell.

Reprinted in: B. F. McGuinness - Approaches to Wittgenstein. Collected papers - pp. 82-94.

95. ———. 2002. Approaches to Wittgenstein. Collected papers. London: Routledge.

96. McManus, Denis. 2006. The enchantment of words. Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

97. Milkov, Nikolay. 2001. "Tractarian scaffoldings." Prima Philosophia no. 14:399-414.

"Wittgenstein's Tractarian ontology has its historical roots in Russell's programme for constructionalism. There is an essential difference between the constructionalism of Russell and that of Wittgenstein though. Whereas Tractarian ontology is approximately Aristotelian, Russell's logical atomism accepts a Platonic penetration of the autonomous world of logical forms into the autonomous world of facts. Russell's logical constructionalism, more precisely, uses the metaphor of a 'logical skeleton' on which the data of experience are fleshed out. In opposition, in the Tractatus Wittgenstein doesn't speak of a skeleton but introduces the concept of 'logical scaffolding' and also of the 'scaffolding of the world' instead. This terminology reflects a new type of ontology, as well as a new type of logic, radically different from that of Russell. Its most important concepts are that of 'object' and 'state of affairs', both of them used in new, idiosyncratic sense."

98. Miller III, Hugh. 1995. "Tractarian Semantics for Predicate Logic." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 16:197-215.

"It is a little understood fact that the system of formal logic presented in Wittgenstein's' Tractano provides the basis for an alternative general semantics for a predicate calculus that is consistent and coherent. essentially independent of the metaphysics of logical atomism. and philosophieall illuminating in its own right. The purpose of this paper is threefold: to describe the general characteristics of a Tractarian-style semantics, to defend the 'Fulcrums system against the charge of expressive incompleteness as levelled by Robert Fogelin, and to give a semantics for a formal language that is the Tractarian equivalent of a first-order predicate calculus. Of note in regard to the latter is the fact that a Trachuus-style truth-definition makes no appeal to the technical trick of defining truth in terms of the satisfaction of predicates by infinite sequences of objects, yet is materially equivalent to the usual Tarski-style truth-definitions."

99. Morrison, James C. 1968. Meaning and truth in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. The Hague: Mouton.

100. Mounce, Howard O. 1981. Wittgenstein's Tractatus. An introduction. London: Basil Blackwell.

101. ———. 2001. "The logical system of the Tractatus." In Wittgenstein: a critical reader, edited by Glock, Hans-Johann, 59-93. Malden: Blackwell Publishers.

102. Mudersbach, Klaus. 1978. "A tentative axiomatization of the ontology of the Tractatus." In Wittgenstein and his impact on contemporary thought. Proceedings of the Second International Wittgenstein Symposium, 29th August to 4th September 1977, Kirchberg/Wechsel (Austria), edited by Leinfellner, Elisabeth, 159-161. Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.

103. Müller, Anselm Winfried. 1967. Ontologie in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Bonn: Bouvier.

104. Newen, Albert. 1991. "Interpretation und Rekonstruktion der Ontologie in Wittgensteins Tractatus." Grazer Philososphiche Studien no. 41:33-65.

105. Noonan, H.W. 1975. "Tractatus 2.0211 - 2.0212." Analysis no. 36:147-149.

"The existence of objects as substances. Tractatus's relationship to the theory of the proposition in Frege."

106. Nordmann, Alfred. 2005. Wittgenstein's Tractatus. An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

107. Oaklander, Nathan L., and Miracchi, Silvano. 1980. "Russell, negative facts, and ontology." Philosophy of Science no. 47:434-455.

"Russell's introduction of negative facts to account for the truth of "negative" sentences or beliefs rests on his collaboration with Wittgenstein in such efforts as the characterization of formal necessity, the theory of logical atomism, and the use of the ideal language. In examining their views we arrive at two conclusions. First, that the issue of negative facts is distinct from questions of meaning or intentionality; what a sentence or belief means or is about rather than what makes it true or false. Second, that the ontological use of the ideal language is incompatible with the requirements of its employment in the logical study of inferences. On this basis we conclude that despite elaborations by recent proponents, the doctrine of negative facts lacks adequate support, and perhaps more importantly, it is proper ontological method to free the ideal language from the exigencies of a symbolism constructed for logical investigation."

108. Omyla, Mieczyslaw. 1986. Zarys logiki niefregowskiej (An outline of non-Fregean logic). Warszawa: Panstwowe Wydawnicztwo Naukowe.

Book written in Polish.

109. Ostrow, Matthew B. 2002. Wittgenstein's Tractatus. A dialectical interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

110. Page, James. 1997. "Unconfigured Tractarian objects." Philosophical Investigations no. 20:39-50.

"According to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, the world consists of atomic objects arranged in various configurations and the ways the world might be are determined by the ways these objects can be configured. I question whether these very objects can be unconfigured as well. Black and Fogelin are nearly alone in their attention to this issue but reach opposite conclusions. Black asserts, essentially without argument, that atomic objects can be configured, while Fogelin is committed to the view that they cannot. I think Black is right and my aim is to show why."

111. Pears, David Francis. 1970. Wittgenstein. New York: Viking Press.

112. ———. 1972. "The ontology of the Tractatus." Teorema:49-58.

"The article is concerned with the status of the ontology of the Tractatus. In it I argue 1) that, although the ontology of the Tractatus is a metaphysic of language like Kant's metaphysic of experience, it is supposed to set the standard of objectivity, and to yield the firmest conclusions about reality; 2) that Wittgenstein abandoned this ontology when he abandoned the theory of language from which it had been deduced, because it expressed too narrow a view of the possible forms that language may take. The article is an attempt to establish in what way Wittgenstein's later philosophy is more anthropocentric than his early philosophy."

113. ———. 1977. "The relation between Wittgenstein's picture theory of propositions and Russell's theories of judgement." The Philosophical Review no. 86:177-196.

Reprinted in: S. G. Shanker (ed.) - Ludwig Wittgenstein. Critical assessments - Vol. 1 - From the Notebooks to Philosophical grammar: the construction and dismantling of the Tractatus (1986) - pp. 92-107.

114. ———. 1987. The false prison. A study of the development of Wittgenstein's philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Two volumes.

Contents of the first volume: Abreviations XI; Part I: Introduction 1; 1. Wide-angle view 3; 2. Close-up: the early system 20; 3. Close-up: the late system 34; Part II: Inside the early system 61; 4. Logical Atomism 63; 5. The basic realism of the Tractatus 88; 6. Sentences as pictures 115; 7. Solipsism 153; 8. Review and prospect 192; Bibliography 197; Index 201.

115. Perszyk, Kenneth. 1988. "The ontology of the Tractatus." Philosophia.Philosophical Quarterly of Israel no. 18:39-59.

" Reading Wittgenstein's Tractatus as an extended answer to the question "what must the world be like for the symbolic logic developed by Frege, Russell, and Whitehead to apply to it?" helps elucidate the connection between its theory of language and its ontology. My main argument is to show that the ontology is derived from the logic of Principia mathematica taken to its completion. throughout the Tractatus. Wittgenstein takes a stance on a number of traditional problems in the history of philosophy, and my aim in discussing some of these is to place the Tractatus in broader historical perspective."

116. Perzanowski, Jerzy. 1984. "Some ontological and semantical puzzles of Wittgenstein's Tractatus." In Aesthetics. Proceedings of the 8th International Wittgenstein Symposium, 15th - 21st August 1983, Kirchberg am Wessel (Österreich), edited by Haller, Rudolf, 224-230. Wien: Holder-Pichler-Tempsky.

117. ———. 1985. "Some observations on modal logics and the Tractatus." In Philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology. Proceedings of the 9th International Wittgenstein Symposium, 19th-26th August 1984, Kirchberg am Wechsel (Österreich), edited by Roderick, Chisholm, 544-550. Wien: Holder-Pichler-Tempsky.

118. ———. 1989. Logiki modalne a filozofia. Krakow: Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego.

119. ———. 1990. "Towards post-Tractatus ontology." In Wittgenstein. Towards a re-evaluation: Proceedings of the 14th International Wittgenstein-Symposium, centenary celebration, 13th to 20th August 1989 Kirchberg am Wechsel (Austria), edited by Haller, Rudolf and Brandl, Johannes, 185-199. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

120. ———. 1992. "Ce qu'il y a de non Fregéen dans la sémantique du Tractatus de Wittgenstein et pourquoi?" In Wittgenstein et la philosophie aujourd'hui: Journées internationales Créteil-Paris, 16-21 juin 1989 à l'occasion du centenaire de la naissance de Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), edited by Sebestik, Jan and Soulez, Antonia, 163-177. Paris: Klincksieck.

Translated in English as: What is non-Fregean in the semantics of Wittgenstein's Tractatus and why? - Axiomathes, 1993, 4, pp. 357-372.

121. Piana, Giovanni. 1973. Interpretazione del Tractatus di Wittgenstein. Milano: Il Saggiatore.

122. Pippin, Robert B. 1979. "Negation and not-being in Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Plato's Sophist." Kant Studien no. 70:179-196.

123. Plochmann, George Kimball, and Lawson, Jack B. 1962. Terms in their propositional contexts in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. An index. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

124. Plourde, Jimmy. 2000. "Ontologie der Modalitäten im Tractatus." Metaphysica no. 1:19-39.

125. ———. 2005. "Wittgenstein et les théories du jugement de Russell et de Meinong." Dialogue.Canadian Philosophical Association no. 44:249-283.

"Un des principaux enjeux de la théorie du jugement de Russell consistait à élaborer une théorie qui n'engage pas à admettre des entités complexes vraies, fausses ou inexistantes tels que les objectifs meinongiens. Dans l'étude du débat entre Russell et Wittgenstein sur cette théorie, on n'a jamais sérieusement envisagé que Wittgenstein n'ait pas suivi Russell sur cette question et qu'il ait plutôt adopté une position plus proche de celle de Meinong. Dans cet article, j'aborde cette question et soutiens que Wittgenstein a trouvé la solution aux problèmes posés par la théorie du jugement de Russell dans la théorie de l'image et qu'il a longuement hésité dans les Carnets entre des versions de la théorie de l'image en accord avec la position de Russell et des versions en accord avec celle de Meinong. Enfin, je soutiens qu'il a finalement tranché la question dans le Tractatus en optant pour une théorie du type de celle privilégiée par Meinong."

126. Poulain, Jacques. 1973. "La possibilité des propositions ontologiques dans le Tractatus logico-philosophicus." Les Études Philosophiques:529-552.

127. Proops, Ian. 2000. Logic and language in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. New York: Garland Publishers.

"This work is a minimally revised version of my Harvard doctoral thesis, which was written during the years 1994-1998. My understanding of Wittgenstein's early philosophy has, of course, continued to evolve since completing the thesis, but because the attempt to incorporate these new ideas seemed likely to result in a wholly new work, I have decided to present the dissertation in its original form, with the exception of a few minor and mostly stylistic changes."

128. ———. 2004. "Wittgenstein on the substance of the world." European Journal of Philosophy no. 12:106-126.

"A reading is offered of Wittgenstein's argument for substance in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Wittgenstein's talk of "substance" is an allusion to Kant's conception of substance in the

"First Analogy" of the Critique of Pure Reason, namely, the concept of some stuff that exists at all times and such that all existence changes are alterations of it. Tractarian substance is the

modal analogue of Kantian substance. It is that which "endures," not literally through time, but figuratively through a "space" of possible worlds. To argue for substance is therefore to argue for necessary existents. From this starting point, a detailed reconstruction of the argument for substance is developed and its coherence (if not soundness) defended."

129. Ramsey, Frank Plumpton. 1923. "Critical notice of the Tractatus." Mind no. 32:465-478.

Reprinted in: F. P. Ramsey -The foundations of mathematics and other logical essays - Edited by R. B. Braithwaite, with a preface by G. E. Moore - New York, The Humanities Press, 1931 (Reprinted Patterson, Littlefield, Adams, 1965)

130. Reck, Erich H., ed. 2002. From Frege to Wittgenstein. Perspective in early analytic philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.

131. Rhees, Rush. 1969. ""Ontology" and "Identity" in the Tractatus. A propos of Black's Companion." In Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, edited by Winch, Peter, 51-65. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

132. ———. 1969. "Ontology and Identity in the Tractatus." In Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, edited by Winch, Peter, 51-65. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Reprinted in: John V. Canfield (ed.), The Philosophy of Wittgenstein. A Fifteen Volume Collection, New York: Garland, 1986, Vol. II: Logic and Ontology.

133. Richter, Duncan. 2004. Historical Dictionary of Wittgenstein's Philosophy. Lanham: Scarecrow Press.

134. Russell, Bertrand. 1919. "The philosophy of Logical Atomism." The Monist.

Reprinted in: B. Russell - Logic and knowledge. Essays 1901-1950 - Edited by Robert Charles Marsh - London, Allen & Unwin, 1956, pp. 175-282

135. Shanker, Stuart, ed. 1986. Ludwig Wittgenstein. Critical Assessments. London: Croom Helm.

Vol. 1: From the Notebooks to Philosophical Grammar. The construction and dismantling of the Tractatus; Vol. 2: From Philosophical investigations to On certainty: Wittgenstein's later philosophy; Vol. 3: From the Tractatus to Remarks on the foundations of mathematics: Wittgenstein on the philosophy of mathematics; Vol. 4: From theology to sociology: Wittgenstein's impact on contemporary thought.

136. Simons, Peter M. 1981. "Logical and ontological independence in the Tractatus." In Ethics: foundations, problems, and applications. Proceedings of the Fifth International Wittgenstein Symposium, 25th to 31st August 1980, Kirchberg am Wechsel (Austria), edited by Morscher, Edgar and Stranzinger, Rudolf, 464-467. Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.

137. ———. 1985. "The old problem of complex and fact." Teoria (Italy) no. 5:205-225.

Reprinted in: P. Simons - Philosophy and logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski. Selected essays - Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1992 pp. 319-338.

138. ———. 1986. "Tractatus mereologico-philosophicus? A Brentanian look at Wittgenstein, and a moral." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 28:165-186.

139. Skyrms, Brian. 1981. "Tractarian nominalism." Philosophical Studies no. 40:199-206.

140. ———. 1981. "Tractarian Nominalism (for Wilfrid Sellars)." Philosophical Studies no. 40:199-206.

141. Soames, Scott. 1983. "Generality, truth functions, and expressive capacity in the Tractatus." The Philosophical Review no. 92:573-589.

Reprinted in: John V. Canfield (ed.), The Philosophy of Wittgenstein. A Fifteen Volume Collection, New York: Garland, 1986, Vol. II: Logic and Ontology.

142. Specht, Ernst Konrad. 1967. The foundations of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. Manchester: Manchster University Press.

Original edition: Die sprachphilosophischen und ontologischen Grundlagen im Spätwerk Ludwig Wittgensteins - Cologne, Kölner Universitäts-Vverlag, 1963.

The first two chapters are about the Tractatus.

143. Stegmüller, Wolfgang. 1966. "Eine modelltheoretische Präzisierung der Wittgensteinschen Bildtheorie." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 7:181-195.

144. Stenius, Erik. 1960. Wittgenstein's Tractatus. A critical exposition of its main lines of thought. Oxford: Blackwell.

145. ———. 1976. "The sentence as a function of its constituents in Frege and in the Tractatus." In Essays on Wittgenstein in honour of G. H. von Wright, edited by Hintikka, Jaakko, 71-84. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

146. Stevens, Graham. 2007. "From Russell's Paradox to the theory of judgement: Wittgenstein and Russell on the unity of the proposition." Theoria.A Swedish Journal of Philosophy no. 70:28-61.

"It is fairly well known that Wittgenstein's criticisms of Russell's multiple-relation theory of judgment has a devastating effect on the latter's philosophical enterprise. The exact nature of those criticisms, however, and the explanation for the severity of their consequences, has been a source of confusion and disagreement amongst both Russell and Wittgenstein scholars. In this paper, I offer an interpretation of those criticisms which shows them to be consonant with Wittgenstein's general critique of Russell's conception of logic and which serves to elucidate some of the notoriously enigmatic passages of the Tractatus. In particular, I seek to show the continuity of Wittgenstein's criticisms of the theory of judgment with his remarks on Russell's paradox and the theory of types."

147. Stocker, Barry, ed. 2004. Post-analytic Tractatus. Aldershot: Ashgate.

148. Stokhof, Martin J.B. 2002. World and life as one. Ethics and ontology in Wittgenstein's early thought. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

"The book's main thesis is twofold. It argues that the ontological theory of the Tractatus is fundamentally dependent on its logical and linguistic doctrines: the tractarian world is the world as it appears in language and thought. It also maintains that this interpretation of the ontology of the Tractatus can be argued for not only on systematic grounds, but also via the contents of the ethical theory that it offers. Wittgenstein's views on ethics presuppose that language and thought are but one way in which we interact with reality."

149. Sullivan, Peter M. 2000. "The totality of facts." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 100:175-192.

"Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus, conceives the world as "the totality of facts." Type-stratification threatens that conception: the totality of facts is an obvious example of an illegitimate totality. Wittgenstein's notion of truth-operation evidently has some role to play in avoiding that threat, allowing propositions, and so facts, to constitute a single type. The paper seeks to explain that role in a way that integrates the "philosophical" and "technical" pressures on the notion of an operation."

150. Suszko, Roman. 1968. "Ontology in the Tractatus of L. Wittgenstein." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 9:7-33.

151. ———. 1968. "Ontologia w "Traktacie' L. Wittgenstein" (Ontology in the Tractatus by L. Wittgenstein)." Studia Filozoficzne:97-120.

Paper witten in Polish

152. ———. 1972. "Description in theories of kind W." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 1:8-13.

Co-author: Mieczyslaw Omyla

153. ———. 1972. "Definitions in theories of kind W." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 1:14-19.

Co-author: Mieczyslaw Omyla

154. ———. 1975. "Abolition of the Fregean Axiom." In Logic Colloquium. Symposium on Logic held at Boston, 1972-73, edited by Parikh, Rohit, 169-239. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Preprint 1973.

155. Tejedor, Chon. 2003. "Sense and simplicity: Wittgenstein's argument for simple objects." Ratio.An International Journal of Analytic Philosophy no. 16:272-289.

"This paper puts forward an alternative interpretation of the argument for simple objects advanced in the 2.0s of the Tractatus. In my view, Wittgenstein derives the simplicity of objects directly from his account of possible states, complex objects and senseful propositions. The key to Wittgenstein's argument is the idea that, if there were no simple objects, possible states would not be necessarily possible. If this were the case, however, there would be no senseful language, in Wittgenstein's view. One of the subsidiary aims of this paper is to question the idea that Wittgenstein posits simples because, without them, language would be infinitely analyzable."

156. Voltolini, Alberto. 2003. "Possibilia, qualia e sensibilia." Rivista di Estetica no. 43:127-137.

"In this paper I will try to show the following two things. First, Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus semantically exiges that Tractarian objects be conceived of as possibilia in the sense of Russell (1903), namely as objects that may exist as well not exist. Second, the Tractatus's general ontological framework suggests to integrate this onto-semantical conception with a view of such objects not as qualia but rather as sensibilia in the sense of Russell (1914), namely as possible sense-data."

157. Weissman, David. 1967. "Ontology in the Tractatus." Philosophy and Phenomnological Research no. 27:475-501.

158. White, Roger M. 2006. Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Readers' guide. New York: Continuum.

159. Wolniewicz, Bogusław. 1968. "A difference between Russell's and Wittgenstein's logical atomism." In Akten des XIV. Internationalen Kongresses für Philosophie. Wien, 2. - 9. September 1968 - Vol. II, 263-267. Wien: Herder.

Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp.193-197

160. ———. 1968. Rzczy i fakty. Wstep do pierwszei filozofii Wittgensteina (Things and Facts. An introduction to the first philosophy of Wittgenstein). Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnicztwo Naukowe.

Book witten in Polish.

161. ———. 1969. "A note on Black's 'Companion'." Mind no. 78:141.

Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - p. 229

162. ———. 1969. "A parallelism between Wittgensteinian and Aristotelian ontologies." In Boston studies in the philosophy of science. Vol. IV, edited by Cohen, Robert S. and Wartofsky, Marx W., 208-217. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company.

Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the philosophy of science 1966/1968.

Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp.198-207

163. ———. 1969. "O formalnych wlasnosciach pojecia faktu (On formal properties of the notion of fact)." Rozprawy Filozoficzne:413-423.

Paper written in Polish.

164. ———. 1971. "Wittgensteinian foundation of non-Fregean logic." In Contemporary East European philosophy. Vol. 3, edited by D'Angelo, Edward, DeGrood, David and Riepe, Dale, 231-243. Bridgeport: Spartacus Books.

165. ———. 1972. "The notion of fact as a modal operator." Teorema:59-66.

"The notion of fact: FP = 'It is a fact that P' is characterized axiomatically, and the ensuing modal systems shown to be equivalent to T, S4 and S5 respectively."

166. ———. 1973. "Zur Semantik des Satzkalküls: Frege und Wittgenstein." In Der Mensch - Subjekt und Objekt (Festchrift für Adam Schaff), edited by Borbé, Tasso. Wien: Europaverl.

167. ———. 1978. "Wittgenstein und der Positivismus." In Wittgenstein, the Vienna circle and critical rationalism. Proceedings of the third International Wittgenstein Symposium, 13th to 19th August 1978, Kirchberg am Wechsel (Austria), edited by Berghel, Hal, Hübner, Adolf and Eckehart, Köhler. Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.

168. ———. 1979. "A Wittgensteinian semantics for propositions." In Intention and intentionality. Essay in honour of G. E. M. Anscombe, edited by Diamond, Cora and Teichman, Jenny, 165-178. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

169. ———. 1982. "A formal ontology of situations." Studia Logica no. 41:381-413.

"A generalized Wittgensteinian semantics for propositional languages is presented, based on a lattice of elementary situations. Of these, maximal ones are possible worlds, constituting a logical space; minimal ones are logical atoms, partitioned into its dimensions. A verifier of a proposition is an elementary situation such that if real it makes true. The reference (or objective) of a proposition is a situation, which is the set of all its minimal verifiers. (Maximal ones constitute its locus.) Situations are shown to form a Boolean algebra, and the Boolean set algebra of loci is its representation. Wittgenstein's is a special case, admitting binary dimensions only."

Contents:

0. Preliminaries;

1. Elementary Situations

1.1.The Axioms; 1.2.Some Consequences; 1.3. W-Independence; 1.4.States of Affairs;

2. Sets of Elementary Situations

2.1.The Semigroup of SE"-Sets; 2.2.The Lattice of Minimal SE"-Sets; 2.3.Q-Spaces and V-Sets; 2.4.V-Equivalence and Q-Equivalence; 2.4.V-Classes and V-Sets;

3. Objectives of Propositions

3.1. Verifiers of Propositions; 3.2. Verifying and Forcing; 3.3. Situations and Logical Loci; 3.4. Loci and Objectives of Compound Propositions 3.5. The Boolean Algebra of Situations;

4. References

170. ———. 1983. "Logical space and metaphysical systems." Studia Logica no. 42:269-284.

"The paper applies the theory presented in "A formal ontology of situations" (Studia Logica, vol. 41 (1982), no. 4) to obtain a typology of metaphysical systems by interpreting them as different ontologies of situations.

Four are treated in some detail: Hume's diachronic atomism, Laplacean determinism, Hume's synchronic atomism, and Wittgenstein's logical atomism. Moreover, the relation of that theory to the "situation semantics" of Perry and Barwise is discussed."

171. ———. 1985. Ontologia Sytuacji (Ontology of Situations). Warszawa: Panstwowe Wydawnicztwo Naukowe.

Book written in Polish.

172. ———. 1990. "The essence of Logical Atomism: Hume and Wittgenstein." In Wittgenstein. Eine Neubewertung. Akten 14. Internationale Wittgenstein-Symposium. Vol. 1, 106-111. Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.

173. ———. 1999. Logic and metaphysics. Studies in Wittgenstein's ontology of facts. Warsaw: Polskie Towarzystwo Semiotyczne.

Contents: Preface 11; Discontinuity of Wittgenstein's philosophy 13; 1. Elementary situations as a lattice of finite length 19; Elementary situations as a semilattice 73; 3. Independence 127; 4. Elementary situations generalized 137; 5. Auxiliary studies 193; 5.1 The Logical Atomisms of Russell and Wittgenstein 193; 5.2 A parallelism between Wittgenstein and Aristotle 198; 5.3 Frege's semantics 207; 5.4. The notion of fact as a modal operator 218; 5.5 "Tractatus" 5.541 - 5.542 224; 5.6 History of the concept of a Situation 229; 6. Offshoots 243 6.1 Languages and codes 243; 6.2 Logic and hermeneutics 254; 6.3 Kotarbinski's Reism 265; 6.4 On Bayle's critique of theodicy 271; 6.5 Elzenberg's axiology 286; 6.6 Needs and values 293; 6.7 Suszko: a reminiscence 302; Supplements 307; Indices: Index of subjects 317; Index of names 326; Index of Tractatus references 329.

174. Wright, Georg Henrik von. 1971. "Historical introduction. The origin of Wittgenstein's Tractatus." In Prototractatus. An early version of Tractatus logico-philosophicus, edited by McGuinness, Brian. London: Routledge.

Revised and expanded in G. H. von Wright - Wittgenstein - Oxford, Blackwell, 1982.

175. ———. 1972. "Some observations on modal logic and philosophical systems." In Contemporary philosophy in Scandinavia, edited by Olson, Raymond E. and Paul, Anthony M., 17-26. Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press.

176. ———. 1982. "Modal logic and the Tractatus." In Wittgenstein, 185-200. Oxford: Blackwell.

177. Zemach, Eddy M. 1976. "Sachverhalte, Tatsachen and properties." Ratio.An International Journal of Analytic Philosophy no. 17:49-51.

178. Zheng, Yiwei. 1999. "Les configurations et les propriétés des objets dans le Tractacus de Wittgenstein." Philosophical Investigations no. 22:136-165.

"In this paper I approach some central problems concerning the Tractarian objects, e.g., the picture theory, the internal and external properties of objects, and the debate whether properties and relations should be included as the Tractarian objects, from a study of configurations of objects. I argue that a detailed study of configurations of objects offers us new insights and helps us reach solutions to some of the important disputes concerning the characteristics of objects, e.g., the dispute whether the Tractarian objects include properties and relations."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Martin Heidegger Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works Edition)

Preliminary note

In its initial form this section will offer five pages:

1) Heidegger's contributions to the interpretation of the Greek word for Truth (Aletheia) as Unconcealment and to the history of his translation in Latin as Veritas;

2) An Annotated bibliography of Heidegger's texts on Aletheia and a selection of critical studies;

3) Heidegger's contributions to the interpretation of the History of Metaphysics as Ontotheology;

4) An Annotated bibliography of Heidegger's texts on the History of Metaphysics as Ontotheology and a selection of critical studies;

5) A complete list of Heidegger's German works published in the Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works Edition).

Introduction

The edition of Heidegger's Collected Works (Gesamtausgabe) is published from 1975 by Vittorio Klostrmann, Frankfurt am Main; this is an updated list of the published volumes.

Abbreviations: SS = Summer semester (from May to July); WS = Winter semester (from November to February); n. p. = not yet published.

The first date is that of composition; the date of publication in the Gesamtausgabe is in square brackets.

I. Published writings 1910-1976

1. Frühe Schriften (1912-16) [1978]

2. Sein und Zeit (1927) [1977]

3. Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (1929) [1991]

4. Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung (1936-1968) [1981]

5. Holzwege (1935-1946) [1977]

6.1 Nietzsche 1 (1936-1939) [1996]

6.2 Nietzsche 2 (1939-1946) [1997]

7. Vorträge und Aufsätze (1936-1953) [2000]

8. Was heisst Denken? (1951-1952) [2002]

9. Wegmarken (1919-1958) [1976]

10. Der Satz vom Grund (1955-1956) [1997]

11. Identität und Differenz (1955-1957) [2006]

12. Unterwegs zur Sprache (1950-1959) [1985]

13. Aus der Erfahrung Denkens (1910-1976) [1983]

14.Zur Sache Denkens (1962-1964) [2007]

15. Seminare (1951-1973): Martin Heidegger, Eugen Fink: Heraklit - Vier Seminare - Anhang: Züricher Seminar [1986]

16. Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges (1910-1976) [2000]

II. Lectures (1923-1944)

a) Marburg Lectures (1923-1928)

17. Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung (WS 1923-1924) [1994]

18. Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen philosophie (SS 1924) [2002]

19. Platon: Sophistes (WS 1924-1925) [1992]

20. Prolegomena zur Geschichte Zeitbegriffs (SS 1925) [1979]

21. Logik. Die Frage nach der Wahrheit (WS 1925-1926) [1976]

22. Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie (SS 1926) [1993]

23. Geschichte der Philosophie von Thomas von Aquin bis Kant (WS 1926-1927) [2006]

24. Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (SS 1927) [1975]

25. Phänomenologische Interpretation von Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft (WS 1927-1928) [1977]

26. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz (SS 1928) [1978]

b) Freiburg Lectures (1928-1944)

27. Einleitung in die Philosophie (WS 1928-1929) [1996]

28. Der deutsche Idealismus (Fichte, Hegel, Schelling) und die philosophische Problemlage der Gegenwart (SS 1929) [1997]

29/30. Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt, Endlichkeit, Einsamkeit (WS 1929-1930) [1983]

31. Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. Einleitung in die Philosophie (SS 1930) [1982]

32. Hegels Phänomenologie Geistes (WS 1930-1931) [1980]

33. Aristoteles: Metaphysik IX 1-3. Von Wesen und Wirklichkeit der Kraft (SS 1931) [1981]

34. Vom Wesen der Wahrheit. Zu Platons Höhlengleichnis und Theätet (WS 1931-1932) [1988]

35. Der Anfang der abendländischen Philosophie (Anaximander und Parmenides) (SS 1932) [2012]

36/37. Sein und Wahrheit. 1. Die Grundfrage der Philosophie (SS 1933). 2. Vom Wesen der Wahrheit (WS 1933-1934) [2001]

38. Logik als die Frage nach dem Wesen der Sprache (SS 1934) [1998]

39. Hölderlins Hymnen "Germanien" und "Der Rhein" (WS 1934-1935) [1980]

40. Einführung in die Metaphysik. (SS 1935) [1983]

41. Die Frage nach dem Ding. Zu Kants Lehre von den transzendentalen Grundsätzen (WS 1935) [1984]

42. Schelling: Vom das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809) (SS 1936) [1988]

43. Nietzsche: Der Wille zur Macht als Kunst (WS 1936-1937) [1985]

44. Nietzsches Metaphysische Grundstellung im abendländischen Denken. Die ewige Wiederkehr Gleichen (SS 1937) [1986]

45. Grundfragen der Philosophie. Ausgewählte "Probleme" der "Logik" (WS 1937-1938) [1984]

46. Zur Auslegung von Nietzsches. II. Unzeitgemässe Betrachtung "Vom Nutzen und Nachteil Historie für das Leben" (WS 1938-1939) [2003]

47. Nietzsches Lehre vom Willen zur Macht als Erkenntnis (SS 1939) [1989]

48. Nietzsche. Der Europäische Nihilismus (1940) [1986]

49. Die Metaphysik deutschen Idealismus. Zur erneuten auslegung von Schelling: Philosophische untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die damit zusammenhängenden Gegenstände (1809) (1941) [1991]

50. Nietzsches Metaphysik 1. (1941-1942).Einleitung in die Philosophie - Denken und Dichten 2. (WS 1944-1945) [1990]

51.Grundbegriffe (SS 1941) [1981]

52. Hölderlins Hymne "Andenken" (WS 1941-1942) [1982]

53. Hölderlins Hymne "Der Ister" (SS 1942) [1984]

54. Parmenides (WS 1942-1943) [1982]

55. Heraklit. 1. Der Anfang abendländischen Denkens (Heraklit) (1943) 2. Logik. Heraklits Lehre vom Logos (SS 1944) [1979]

c) Early Freiburg Lectures (1919-1923)

56/57. Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie. 1. Die Idee der Philosophie und das Weltanschauungsproblem (post war semester 1919); 2. Phänomenologie und transzendentale Wertphilosophie (SS 1919); 3. Anhang: Über das Wesen der Universität und akademischen Studiums (SS 1919) [1987]

58. Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (WS 1919-1920) [1992]

59. Phänomenologie der Anschauung und Ausdrucks. Theorie der philosophischen Begriffsbildung (SS 1920) Phänomenologie religiösen Lebens [1993]

60. Einleitung in die Phänomenologie der Religion 1. (WS 1920-1921); Augustinus und der Neuplatonismus 2. (SS 1921); Die philosophischen Grundlagen der mittelalterlichen Mystik 3. (WS 1918-1919) [1995]

61. Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles: Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung (WS 1921-1922) [1985]

62. Phänomenologische Interpretation ausgewählter Abhandlungen Aristoteles zu Ontologie und Logik (SS 1922) [2005]

63. Ontologie. (Hermeneutik der Faktizität) (SS 1923) [1988]

III. Private monographs and letters

64. Der Begriff der Zeit. (I. Die Fragestellung Diltheys und Yorcks Grundtendenz; II. Die ursprünglichen Seinscharaktere Daseins; III. Dasein und Zeitlichkeit; IV. Zeitlichkeit und Geschichtlichkeit). im Anhang der gleichnamige Vortrag vor der Marburger Theologenschaft Juli 1924. [2004]

65. Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (1936-1938) [1989]

66. Besinnung (1938-1939) [1997]

67.Metaphysik und Nihilismus. 1. Die Überwindung der Metaphysik (1938-1939); 2. Das Wesen Nihilismus (1946-1948) [1999]

68. Hegel. 1. Die Negativität. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Hegel aus dem Ansatz in der Negativität (1938-1939); 2. Erläuterung der "Einleitung" zu Hegels "Phänomenologie Geistes" (1942) [1993]

69. Die Geschichte Seyns - Die Geschichte Seyns (1938-1940) - Koinon. Aus der Geschichte Seyns (1939) [1998]

70. Über den Anfang (1941) [2005]

71. Das Ereignis (1941-1942) -Vorworte - Der erste Anfang - Der Anklang - Der Unterschied - Die Verwindung - Das Ereignis. Der Wortschatz seines Wesens - Das Ereignis - Das Ereignis und das Menschenwesen - Das Daseyn - Der andere Anfang - Weisungen in das Ereignis - as seynsgeschichtliche Denken (Dichten und Denken) [2009]

72. Die Stege Anfangs (1944) [n. p.]

73. Zum Ereignis-Denken [2013]

74. Zum Wesen der Sprache und Zur Frage nach der Kunst [2010]

75. Zu Hölderlin - Griechenlandreisen [2000]

76. Leitgedanken zur Entstehung der Metaphysik, der neuzeitlichen Wissenschaft und der modernen Technik [2009]

77. Feldweg-Gespräche. (1944-1945) [1995]

78. Der Spruch Anaximander (1946) [2010]

79. Bremer und Freiburger Vorträge. 1. Einblick in das was ist. Bremer Vorträge (1949) 2. Grundsätze Denkens. Freiburger Vorträge (1957) [1994]

80. Vorträge (1915-1967) [n. p.]

81. Gedachtes [2007]

IV. Notes and recording

82. Zu eigenen Veröffentlichungen - Anmerkungen zu "Vom Wesen Grun" (1936) - Eine Auseinandersetzung mit "Sein und Zeit" (1936) -Laufende Anmerkungen zu "Sein und Zeit (1936) [n.p.]

83. Seminare: Platon - Aristoteles - Augustinus [2012]

84. Seminare: Kant - Leibniz - Schiller [2013]

85. Vom Wesen der Sprache. Die Metaphysik der Sprache und die Wesung Wortes. Zu Herders Abhandlung "Uber den Ursprung der Sprache" [1999]

86. Seminare: Hegel - Schelling [2011]

87. Nietzsche. Seminare 1937 und 1944. 1. Nietzsches Metaphysische Grundstellung (Sein und Schein) (SS 1937); 2. Skizzzen zu Grundbegriffe Denkens (SS 1944) [2004]

88. 1. Die metaphysischen Grundstellungen des abendländischen Denkens. 2. Einübung in das philosophische Denken [2008]

89. Zollikoner Seminare. Protokolle - Zwiegespräche - Briefe -(under construction) - First edition: Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann, 1987 [2004]

90. Zu Ernst Jünger [2004]

91. Ergänzungen und Denksplitter [n. p.]

92. Ausgewählte Briefe I [n. p.]

93. Ausgewählte Briefe II [n. p.]

94. Überlegungen A [n. p.]

95. Überlegungen B [n. p.]

96. Überlegungen C [n. p.]

97. Anmerkungen A [n. p.]

98. Anmerkungen B [n. p.]

99. Vier Hefte I - Der Feldweg; Vier Hefte II - Durch Ereignis zu Ding und Welt [n. p.]

100. Vigiliae I, II [n. p.]

101. Winke I, II [n. p.]

102. Vorläufiges I-IV [n. p.]

The Natorp-Bericht (Report from Paul Natorp)

"In the midst of this linked pair of courses on 'Phenomenological Interpretations to Aristotle,' in January of 1922, word came from Marburg that Paul Natorp would be retiring shortly, that Nicolai Hartmann would be taking his place, and that as a result the junior position in philosophy would once again be vacant. Natorp had been impressed by Heidegger's book on Duns Scotus and, on the strength of this one publication, had considered Heidegger for this position in both 1917 and 1920. By 1922, Heidegger was renowned in university circles throughout Germany as an outstanding teacher. But he had published nothing since the Scotus book and, moreover, remarks Husserl in a letter to Natorp on February 1, 1922, 'does not want to publish yet,' audibly that this 'highly original personality' is still 'struggling, searching for himself and laboriously shaping his own unique style.' (We have already noted the 'turmoil of transition' evident in WS 1921-22.) But apparently in response not only to Natorp's interest in Heidegger for the chair at Marburg but also to a similar query from Georg Misch regarding Husserl's old chair at Göttingen, plans were soon initiated for Heidegger to publish a work on 'Phenomenological Interpretations to Aristotle' in a forthcoming issue of Husserl's Jahrbuch (vol. 7, 1924/1925). Even so, when Natorp wrote Husserl again in late September for at least a 'publishable manuscript' from Heidegger in support of his candidacy for associate professor (Extraordinarius) at Marburg, Heidegger was still struggling with the problem of how to introduce such a work. For the next three weeks, into mid-October, Heidegger labored over the manuscripts of his Aristotle courses in order to extract and distill from them an Introduction serving to found and develop the 'hermeneutic situation' in which Aristotle's texts were to be interpreted. To this Einleitung (28 pages of typescript), he added an Overview (Übersicht: 22 pages) of Part One of the projected book. On the strength of this typescript, essentially a 'private communication' addressed to his older peers at the two universities, Heidegger was appointed to the post at Marburg in the following year."

From: Theodore Kisiel - The genesis of Being and Time - Berkeley, University of Califormia Press, 1993 pp. 248-249.

First edition of the manuscript: Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. Anzeige der hermeneutischen Situation in: Dilthey-Jahrbruch für Philosophie und Geschichte der Geisteswissenschaften 6 (1989) pp. 237-274.

New edition: Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. Ausarbeitung für die Marburger und die Göttinger Fakultät (1922), Stuttgart, Reclam, 2003.

First English translation: Phenomenological interpretations with respect to Aristotle. Indication of the hermeneutical situation - Preface to and translation by Michael Baur, Man and World 25, 1992, pp. 355-393.

New English translation: Phenomenological interpretations in connection with Aristotle. An indication of the hermeneutical situation - in: Martin Heidegger - Supplements. From the Earliest Essays to Being and Time and Beyond - Edited by John van Buren - New York, State University of New York Press, 2002, pp. 111-145.

Italian translation: Interpretazioni fenomenologiche di Aristotele. Prospetto della situazione ermeneutica - translated by Vincenzo Vitiello e Gian Paolo Cammarota - in: Filosofia e teologia, 4, 1990 pp. 496-532.

French translation: Interprétations phénoménologiques d'Aristote (Tableau de la situation herméneutique) - Translated by Jean-François Courtine, Mauvezin, TER bilingue, 1992.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Martin Heidegger on the History of Metaphysics as Ontotheology

Introduction

"Heidegger's way of understanding the originary phenomenon of truth is to "make clear the mode of being of the cognition itself." His starting point is a proposition that is not based on intuition. Someone says with his or her back to the wall: this picture hangs askew. The proposition embodies the claim to have discovered the picture (as a being) in the "how" (the mode) of its being. The proposition displays this "how" of being in language. In the attempt to verify the proposition by sensuous experience, the recognition, according to Heidegger, is directed only to the intended being (the picture) and not to the proposition. It is directed to the being itself (which is to be verified by perception) in its mode of uncoveredness (Entdeckt-heir), i.e., in its showing-itself. Confirmation (Bewährung) means this showing-itself of the being in the same way in which it is intended in the proposition.

A true proposition shows the being in its mode of uncoveredness. The phenomenon of "originary truth" does not have the character of correspondence. It is the ground of the concept of truth in the sense of correspondence and propositional truth. By unfolding the meaning of alétheia Heidegger shows us a more originary sense of truth as unconcealment (Unverborgenheit). He wants to show that this concept coincides with the first and originary concept of truth in Greek thinking. In this primary sense only the discovering human Dasein can be "true" while it is Being-discovering (Entdeckend-Sein). On the other hand, beings (Seiendes) that we can find in the world can only "be" in a secondary mode, i.e., as being-discovered (Entdecktsein). They can only make a claim to uncoveredness. Their fundament is the Being-discovering of the human Dasein. The being-true of a discovered being is only possible as being discovered by human Dasein as being-in-the-world.

The authentic Being of Dasein, the being-in-the truth, presupposes disclosedness (Erschlossenheit) of the world in states-of-mind (Befindlichkeiten), understanding, and discourse, i.e., the constitution of the being (Seinsverfassung) of human Dasein as thrownness (Geworfenheit) and project (Entwurf). The mode of being of Dasein is characterized equiprimordially (gleichursprünglich) by the possibility of both authenticity (being-in-the-truth) and the deficient mode (Verfallsform) of inauthenticity. In the mode of the "they" (das Man), of obstruction (Verstelltheit), of gossip (Gerede), Dasein is in untruth. Thus the being-in-the-world of human Dasein is determined at the same time by truth and untruth. We must always fight anew for the truth of Dasein (Being-discovering). Following Heidegger, the negative expression "a-létheia" expresses the fact that hiding itself is a main characteristic of Being. In the hiding-itself of Being, human Dasein is hidden for itself in the mode of untruth.

Heidegger wants to make evident how the transition from the originary concept of truth as alétheia to "correspondence" came about. He wants to make clear that correspondence is only a derived form of truth: in a proposition Being should be displayed in the mode of its uncoveredness. In the inauthentic forms of mere reproducing and hearsay, the proposition becomes itself something ready-to-hand (Zuhandenes). Thus we have to engage in the demonstration of the uncoveredness that is preserved in the proposition. In this way the relation between proposition and discovered being then itself becomes something present-at-hand (Vorhandenes) and can be understood as a correspondence of proposition and being (intellectus and res). The fact that we are used to disregarding the originary dimension of truth is an aspect of our forgetfulness of Being (Seinsvergessenheit).

The originary dimension of truth in human Dasein "is given" (gibt es) only as long as there is Dasein. All truth is relative to the being of Dasein. Thus the claim that there could be "eternal truth" seems to Heidegger to be "fantastic." Against the background of this relativity of truth to the being of Dasein, Heidegger asks anew: why must we presuppose that truth "is given"? His answer is that the possibility of truth (authenticity) and untruth (inauthenticity) belongs to the facticity of human Dasein. From the point of view of existential ontology, the being of human Dasein (its disclosedness) and truth are synonims." (pp. 711-712)

From: Dieter Lohmar, Truth, in: Lester Embree et alii (eds.), Encyclopedia of phenomenology, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1997.

Main texts on the history of metaphysics as ontotheology

"Ontotheology: Ontologie is the 'study [logos] of beings [onta]', Theologie the 'study of God [theos]'. Heidegger combines these Greek-derived words to form Onto-Theologie or Onto-Theo-Logie. The idea, but not the words, stem from Aristotle, whose 'first philosophy' considers both beings as such and the highest being (Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, 220 / 150; Einleitung zu 'Was ist metaphysik?', 373 / 75). Thus ontotheology asks two distinct questions: 1. What are beings as such in general? 2. What is the highest being, and what is its nature? (Kant These über das Sein, 443). The questions are easily conflated in German, since Was ist das Seiende?', 'What are beings?', is literally 'What is the being?' or 'What is that which is?', which might be either question 1 or question 2. Sometimes Heidegger gives a different account of the two questions. Question 1 is 'about beings as such [nach dem Seienden als einem solchen]', question 2 is 'about beings as a whole [nach dem Seienden im Ganzen]' (Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, 220 / 150). He imputes this conflation to his earlier self: in Was ist Metaphysik?, 'metaphysics is defined as the question about beings as such and as a whole [nach dem Seienden als solchem and im Ganzen]. The wholeness of this whole [Die Ganzheit dieses Ganzes] is the unity of beings, the ground that brings them forth and unifies them. To anyone who can read, this means: metaphysics is Onto-Theo-Logie' (Identität und Differenz, 51 / 54. Elsewhere he locates the confusion in the whole phrase das Ganze des Seienden als solchen, 'the whole of beings as such', which might mean: 1. 'the most general features of beings', or 2. 'the highest and thus divine being' (Einleitung zu 'Was ist metaphysik?, 373 / 275). (Aristotle is innocent of this confusion: his god is one being among others, not the whole of beings. But in Identität und Differenz Heidegger is dealing with Hegel, whose god is the overall structure of beings, not an individual being.) Biologie is the 'study' or 'science' of living creatures. But in OntoTheologie, -logie plays a grander role. Logos, from legein, 'to lay out, arrange, gather, say, etc.', means 'ground [Grund], letting (things) lie before (us) [Vorliegenlassen]', and also 'gathering [Versammlung], uniting' (Identität und Differenz, 54f. / 57; 67 / 69). Metaphysics does both. It gathers beings together to consider them 'as a whole'. It regards being as the 'ground' of beings: 'Ontology and theology are '-logies' because they get to the bottom [ergründen] of beings as such and ground [begründen] them as a whole [im Ganzen, lit. 'in the whole']' (Identität und Differenz, 56 / 59). Hence Hegel called metaphysics 'logic'; it is Onto-Theo-Logik.

How does God become a being, the highest entity, rather than simply Sein, 'being'? Being and beings are distinct but inseparable. Being 'grounds [gründet]' beings, and conversely beings 'beground [begründen]' being. But beings can beground being only in the form of a single supreme being, a cause that is causa sui, 'cause of itself': 'This is the appropriate name for the god of philosophy. Man cannot pray to this god, nor offer sacrifices to him. Man cannot fall to his knees in awe before the causa sui, nor dance and play music before this god' Identität und Differenz, 70 / 72). Heidegger thinks that 'god-less thinking', in rejecting this god of philosophy, is 'perhaps closer to the divine god' (Identität und Differenz, 71 / 72): 'the ontotheological character of metaphysics has become questionable for thinking, not on the basis of any atheism, but from the experience of a thinking which has seen in onto-theo-logy the still unthought unity of the essence of metaphysics' (Identität und Differenz, 51 / 55). In thinking about this unity, and about the DIFFERENCE that metaphysics discerns only hazily, Heidegger goes beyond metaphysics." (pp. 149-150)

From: Michael Inwoord, A Heidegger Dictionary, Oxford: Blackwell 1999.

Frequency of the terms "onto-theology" and "onto-theological" in the Heideggerian corpus (p. 62)

From: François Jaran, "L'onto-théologie dans l'œuvre de Martin Heidegger. Récit d'une confrontation avec la pensée Occidentale", Philosophie 91, 2006, pp. 37-62.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

A Selected Bibliography on the History of Metaphysics as Ontotheology

Heidegger's Main texts on Ontotheology

Abbreviations: GA = Gesamtausgabe (Collected works); SS = Summer semester (from May to July); WS = Winter semester (from November to February)

1. Heidegger, Martin. 2007. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe Der Logik Im Ausgang Von Leibniz. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.

GA Vol. 26, Lecture course SS 1928. First edition 1978.

Translated by Michael R. Heim as: The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1984.

2. ———. 1991. Kant Und Das Problem Der Metaphysik. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.

GA Vol. 3. First edition Bonn, F. Cohen, 1929, Fourth revised edition 1973.

Translated by Richard Taft as: Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1990; Fifth edition enlarged 1997.

3. ———. 1980. Hegels Phänomenologie Des Geistes. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.

GA Vol. 32, Lecture course SS 1930-31.

Translated by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly as: Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1988.

4. ———. 1988. Schelling: Vom Wesen Der Menschlichen Freiheit (1809). Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.

GA Vol. 42. Sommersemester 1936.

Translated by Joan Stambaugh as: Schelling's Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, Athens, Ohio University Press, 1984.

5. ———. 2000. "Überwindung Der Metaphysik." In Vortrage Und Aufsätze. I, 67-97. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.

GA Vol. 7. First edition Pfullingen, Neske, 1954 (Essays 1936-1953).

See: Overcoming Metaphysics translated by Joan Stambaugh in: Martin Heidegger, The End of Philosophy, San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1973. pp. 84-110.

6. ———. 1997. "Die Metaphysik Als Geschichte Des Seins." In Nietzsche, 399-454. Frank furt am Main: Klostermann.

GA Vol. 6.1 and 6.2. First edition Nietsche, Pfullingen, Neske, 1961 (two volumes).

Translated as Nietzsche by David Farrell Krell, San Francisco, Harper & Row 1979-1987 (four volumes).

Reprinted 1991 in two volumes:

1-2: The Will to Power as Art; The Eternal Recurrence of the Same.

3-4: The Will to Power as Knowledge and Metaphysics; Nihilism.

See: Metaphysics as History of Being; Sketches for a History of Being as Metaphysics; Recollection in Metaphysics.

These three Essays (with the addition of: Overcoming Metaphysics) are also translated by Joan Stambaugh in: Martin Heidegger, The End of Philosophy, San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1973 (respectively pp. 1-54; 55-74; 75-83; 84-110).

7. ———. 1997. "Entwürfe Zur Geschichte Des Seins Als Metaphysik." In Nietzsche. Ii, 455-480. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.

GA Vol. 6.2.

Written in 1941, First edition in: Nietzsche, Pfullingen, Neske, 1961.

Translated by Joan Stambaugh as: Sketches for a History of Being as Metaphysics in: Martin Heidegger, The End of Philosophy, San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1973, pp. 55-74.

8. ———. 1997. "Die Erinnerung in Die Metaphysik." In Nietzsche. Ii, 481-490. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.

GA Vol. 6.2.

Written in 1941. First edition Pfullingen, Neske, 1961.

Translated by Joan Stambaugh as: Recollections in Metaphysics in: Martin Heidegger, The End of Philosophy, San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1973, pp. 75-83.

9. ———. 1997. "Die Seinsgechichtliche Bestimmung Des Nihilismus." In Nietzsche. Ii, 335-398. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.

GA Vol. 6.2.

Written in 1944-46, First edition in: Nietzsche (1961).

Translated by Frank A. Capuzzi and edited by David Farrell Krell as: Nihilism as Determined by the History of Being in: Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche. Vol. IV: Nihilism - New York, Harper & Row, 1982.

10. ———. 1967. "Einleitung Zu "Was Ist Metaphysik?"." In Wegmarken, 365-383. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.

GA 9, 1976, First edition 1949, reprinted in Wegmarken.

11. ———. 2006. "Die onto-Theo-Logische Verfassung Der Metaphysik." In Identität Und Differenz, 31-68. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann.

GA Vol. 11. First edition: Pfullingen, Günther Neske, 1957.

See: Die Onto-theo-logische Verfassung der Metaphysik.

Translated in English with an introduction by Joan Stambaugh as: Identity and Difference, New York, Harper & Row, 1969; second edition: Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2002.

Contents: Introduction by Joan Stambaugh 7; Identity and Difference 19; Preface 21; The principle of identity 23; The Onto-theo-logical constitution of metaphysics 42; Notes 75; Appendix: The German text: Identität und Differenz p. 77-146.

Selected bibliography on Ontotheology

1. Maître Eckhart À Paris. Une Critique Médiévale De L'ontothéologie. 1984. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Les Questions parisiennes n° 1 et n° 2.

Études, textes et traductions par Emilie Zum Brunn, Zénon Kaluza, Alain de Libera, Paul Vignaux, Edouard Wéber.

2. "Saint Thomas Et L'onto-Théologie." 2002. Revue Thomiste no. 95.

3. Aubenque, Pierre. 2005. "La Question De L'ontothéologie Chez Aristotle Et Heidegger." In La Question De Dieu Selon Aristote Et Hegel, edited by Konninck, Thomas de and Planty-Bonjour, Guy, 259-283. Paris: Press Universitaires de France.

4. ———. 2009. Faut-Il Déconstruire La Métaphysique? Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

5. Barash, Jefffrey Andrew. 1994. "Heidegger's Ontological "Destruction" of Western Intellectual Traditions." In Reading Heidegger from the Start: Essays in His Earliest Thought, edited by Kisiel, Theodore and Buren, John van, 111-122. Albany: State University of New York Press.

6. Bernasconi, Robert. 1985. The Question of Language in Heidegger's History of Being. London: Macmillan.

7. ———. 1994. "Repetition and Tradition: Heidegger's Destructuring of the Distinction between Essence and Existence in Basic Problems of Phenomenology." In Reading Heidegger from the Start: Essays in His Earliest Thought, edited by Kisiel, Theodore and Buren, John van, 123-136. Albany: State University of New York Press.

8. Berti, Enrico. 1993. "La Metafisica Di Aristotele: 'Onto-Teologia' O 'Filosofia Prima''?"Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 85:265-282.

Reprinted in: Adriano Bausola, Giovanni Reale (eds.) - Aristotele: perché la metafisica. Studi su alcuni concetti chiave della "Filosofia prima" aristotelica e sulla storia dei suoi influssi - Milano, Vita e Pensiero, 1994, pp. 117-144.

9. Boulnois, Olivier. 1995. "Quand Commence L'ontothéologie? Aristote, Thomas D'Aquin Et Duns Scot." Revue Thomiste no. 95:85-108.

10. ———. 2001. "Heidegger, L'ontothéologie Et Les Structures Médiévales De La Métaphysique." Quaestio.The Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 2:379-406.

11. Brogan, Walter. 1994. "The Place of Aristotle in the Development of Heidegger's Phenomenology." In Reading Heidegger from the Start: Essays in His Earliest Thought, edited by Kisiel, Theodore and Buren, John van, 213-230. Albany: State University of New York Press.

12. ———. 2005. Heidegger and Aristotle. The Twofoldness of Being. Albany: State University of New York Press.

13. Capobianco, Richard. 2010. Engaging Heidegger. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Foreword by William J. Richardson.

"In his long lifetime of thinking, Heidegger safeguarded the originary word of Western philosophical thinking: Being. Several of the Essays in this volume are intended to bring our attention back to this defining feature of his thought. The contemporary analytic and postmodern resistance and even hostility to the very word 'being' has no doubt contributed to the current tendency in Heidegger studies to shuffle the name of Being to the background, if not erase it altogether. Nevertheless, a careful consideration of the texts -- a primary concern of the studies in this volume -- reaffirms that Heidegger, right to the end of his life, continued to reserve and preserve in his thinking the ancient word 'Being' as the name for the fundamental matter for thought (die Sache selbst). The originary, fundamental, and unifying meaning of Being, the Erfragte from the outset of his Denkweg,was properly named by Heidegger as Beyng (Seyn), Being itself (Sein selbst), Being as such (Sein als solches), and Being as Being (Sein als Sein) in distinction from being as beingness (Seiendheit), which he always maintained to be the proper concern of the metaphysical tradition of thinking. The important but often neglected task of carefully parsing Heidegger's language of Being, beingness, and beings is taken up in a number of the Essays." (p. 3).

14. Caputo, John D. 1977. "The Problem of Being in Heidegger and the Scholastics." Thomist no. 41:62-91.

15. ———. 1982. Heidegger and Aquinas: An Essay in Overcoming Metaphysics. New York: Fordham University Press.

16. Chiereghin, Franco. 1993. "L'inizio Greco Dell'europa E La Questione Della Romanitas. Il Cammino Di Heidegger Verso Un Altro Inizio." Verifiche no. 22:95-122.

17. Courtine, Jean-François. 1990. "La Critique De L'ontothéologie I: Aristote-Hegel." In Extase De La Raison. Essais Sur Schelling, 263-289. Paris: Galilée.

18. ———. 1990. "La Critique De L'ontothéologie Ii: Le Renversement De L'argument Ontologique Au Seuil De La Philosophie Positive." In Extase De La Raision. Essais Sur Schelling, 291-311. Paris: Galilée.

19. ———. 1991. "La Critique Schellingienne De L'ontothéologie." In La Questio De Dieu Selon Aristote Et Hegel, edited by Konninck, Thomas de and Planty-Bonjour, Guy, 217-257. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

20. ———. 2001. "Heidegger Et Thomas D'Aquin." Quaestio.The Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 1:213-233.

21. ———. 2003. "La Critique Heideggérienne De L' analogia Entis." In Les Catégories De L'être. Études De Philosophie Ancienne Et Médiévale, 213-239. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

22. ———. 2005. Inventio Analogiae. Métaphysique Et Ontothéologie. Paris: Vrin.

23. Esposito, Costantino. 2001. "Heidegger, Suárez E La Storia Dell'ontologia." Quaestio.The Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 1:407-430.

24. Ferretti, Giovanni. 1997. Ontologia E Teologia in Kant. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier.

25. Ficara, Elena. 2010. Heidegger E Il Problema Della Metafisica. Roma: Casini Editore.

26. Frede, Dorothea. 1993. "The Question of Being: Heidegger's Project." In The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, edited by Guignon, Charles, 42-69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Second revised edition of the book 2006.

27. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1983. "Heidegger Et L'histoire De La Philosophie." Cahiers de l'Herne:169-176.

28. Gourinat, Michel. 1996. "La Querelle De L'ontothéologie. L'interprétation De La Théologie Médiévale Par Heidegger." Cahiers de Recherces Médiévales no. 2:87-93.

29. Guignon, Charles. 2005. "The History of Being." In A Companion to Heidegger, edited by Dreyfus, Hubert and Wrathall, Mark, 392-406. Malden: Blackwell Publishers.

30. Hatab, Lawrence J. 1991. "Heidegger and Myth: A Loop in the History of Being." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 22:45-64.

"The basic aim of Heidegger's thought is often stated in the following way: to uncover the meaning of Being, in its history, beginning with the first thinkers in Greece. Western history, we are told, begins with the philosophical question What are beings?, the question concerning beings as such, beings as a whole. Although this view of history is, of course, appropriate for Heidegger's enterprise, it is a limited view because of a restricted historical sense that I submit even Heidegger does not intend. Before the advent of philosophy in Greece, a fully constituted world was in place, a world disclosed through myth and poetry. Furthermore, there was an historical relation between Greek myth and philosophy, regardless of whether this relation is seen as an evolutionary development, a devolutionary decline or a contest between different modes of disclosure. Consequently one might ask: What role does pre-philosophical myth play in the "history of Being"?

Moreover, since the history of philosophy, for Heidegger, is at once a disclosure of Being and a concealing of that which "grants" disclosure by withdrawing itself (and the history of this concealment includes the great Presocratic thinkers) then one might further ask: Since philosophy to a certain extent displaced myth in Greek history, was there any connection between that displacement and concealment? That is to say, did pre-philosophical myth express a kind of openness that philosophy closed off? Put another way: Was Greek myth in any sense a prefiguration of Heidegger's alternative to philosophy, namely poetical thinking, that which seeks an openness to what is concealed in the disclosure of Being? Finally then: In what sense can Heidegger's later thought be called mythical?

My paper will explore these questions in the following way. Part One will examine myth in relation to Heidegger's thought by selecting certain Heideggerian themes and showing how Greek myth presents a pre-philosophical expression of these themes. Part Two will examine Heidegger's thought in relation to myth by first focusing on references to mythical disclosure in Heidegger's early thought, and then sketching the ways in which Heidegger's later thought itself approached a mythical form. In general, by relating Heidegger's thought and myth, I want to suggest a broader scope and somewhat looping shape for the history of Being, because of certain pre-philosophical echoes in Heidegger's post-philosophical thought."

31. Henrich, Dieter. 1960. Der Ontologische Gottesbeweis. Sein Problem Und Seine Geschichte in Der Neuzeit. Tübingen: Mohr.

32. Inwood, Michael. 1999. A Heidegger Dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

33. Jaran, François. 2003. "Heidegger Et La Constitution onto-Théologique De La Métaphysique Cartésienne." Heidegger Studies / Heidegger Studien no. 19:65-80.

34. ———. 2006. "L'onto-Théologie Dans L'œuvre De Martin Heidegger. Récit D'une Confrontation Avec La Pensée Occidentale." Philosophie no. 91:37-62.

"F. Jaran examine la thèse de la constitution onto-théologique de la métaphysique, qui s'est transformée ces dernières années en un outil exégétique que les historiens de la philosophie n'hésitent plus à reprendre, fût-ce en le critiquant. Il s'attache à en retracer l'élaboration silencieuse dans les textes du début des années 1920, offrant ainsi un éclairage nouveau à la " métaphysique du Dasein " que Heidegger déploie immédiatement après la publication d'Être et temps."

35. Kockelmans, Joseph J. 1988. "' Der Brauch' Als Der Älteste Name Für Das Sein Des Seienden: Heidegger Über Den Spruch Des Anaximander." In Philosophie Und Poesie. Band 2. Otto Pöggeler Zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by Annemarie, Gethmann-Siefert, 77-103. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog.

36. Laffoucrière, Odette. 1968. Le Destin De La Pensée Et "La Mort De Dieu" Selon Heidegger. La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff.

"Le travail de Mademoiselle Laffoucrière, Le destin de la pensée et la mort de Dieu se distingue par un exposé clair et pertinent de ma pensée, Il écarte des malentendus nombreux et répandus. Du même coup, il fournit une bonne introduction à la droite intelligence de l'interrogation sur l'essence de la métaphysique.

Je recommande donc vivement la publication de ce travail; à bien des égards, il peut servir de commentaire aux traductions de mon œuvre jusqu'alors parues en France. Martin Heidegger, 9 novembre 1964." p. IV.

37. Lefebvre, René. 1990. "L'image onto-Théologique De La Métaphysique D'Aristote." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 8:123-173.

38. Mabille, Bernard. 2004. Hegel, Heidegger Et La Métaphysique. Recherches Pour Une Constitution. Paris: Vrin.

39. Magnus, Bernd. 1970. Heidegger's Metahistory of Philosophy. Amor Fati, Being and Truth. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

"Although a few excellent studies of Heidegger's thought have appeared in English in the last decade, they tend to focus on Being and Time and, secondarily, on the relationship of the later works to it. To my knowledge, only one book has appeared to-date [1970] in English which treats an aspect of Heidegger's understanding of the history of philosophy, and not a single critical study. This book endeavors to begin to remedy that deficiency.

It is not the case that Heidegger's understanding of the history of philosophy is merely a theme in his works. It is the theme of his later works in my view. If Being and Time is correctly characterized as a phenomenological description of Dasein, of the human way of being, then Heidegger's subsequent works, in the main, attempt to show how the question of Being (Sein) has been (mis)understood from Plato to Nietzsche. Presumably, the tradition's failure to grasp the human way of being is grounded in its more fundamental failure to articulate clearly the sense of Being, "to be," in general. It is not at all accidental, in short, that the projected second volume of Being and Time was to take as its subject-matter a recapitulation and destruction of the history of ontology. (1)

This book, then, is not intended as still another introduction to the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. It is a critical analysis and exposition of the second phase of his thought.

Heidegger's provocative interpretations of the pre-Socratic philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche, are all conditioned by his inquiry into the meaning of Being. That inquiry determines the character of his historical studies. And although there have been frequent grumblings about the "validity" of such an approach, no sustained efforts have hitherto been made to come to grips with the methodological questions which Heidegger's hermeneutic occasions.

I do not want to suggest that this study covers the full range of problems raised by Heidegger's metahistorical interpretation of the history of philosophy. It does not. I have been forced to circumscribe the range of analysis very sharply. Nietzsche is the center of gravity, point of focus, and, finally, the touchstone for Heidegger's interpretations, in this study. A number of considerations dictated this choice. First, Heidegger has devoted more attention to Nietzsche than he has to all other philosophers combined. His interpretation of Nietzsche as the last metaphysician of the West helps to account for the inordinate amount of material Heidegger has produced concerning Nietzsche. Second, as a consequence of the first, we have a more adequate basis for judging the value of Heidegger's approach to Nietzsche. Third, it is my opinion that Nietzsche's philosophy is inherently more susceptible of conflicting interpretations than is, say, Kant's or Aristotle's.

Rather than serving as a deterrent in explicating and critically assessing Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche, I found this to be an asset. It forces one to make difficult decisions and to be painstakingly careful in advancing an interpretation of Nietzsche, rather than merely passing on accepted, allegedly "standard" interpretations. At the same time it affords the reader a point of reference from which to compare methods of historical-textual criticism." pp. IX-XI.

(1) Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: 7. Aufl., 1953. Cf. Introduction.

40. ———. 1981. "Heidegger's Metahistory of Philosophy Revisited." Monist no. 64:445-466.

Reprinted in: Hubert Dreyfus, Mark Wrathall (eds.) - Heidegger reexamined - vol. II - Truth, realism and the history of Being - New York, Routledge, 2002, pp. 139-160

41. Maly, Kenneth. 2000. "Translating Heidegger's Works into English: The History and the Possibility." Heidegger Studies / Heidegger Studien no. 16:115-138.

42. Marion, Jean-Luc. 1982. "Descartes Et L'onto-Théologie." Bulletin de la Société Française de Philosophie no. 76:117-158.

Discussion pp. 159-171.

Reprinted in: J.-L. Marion (ed)., Descartes, Paris: Bayard, 2007, pp. 39-78.

English translation: Descartes and onto-theology, in: Phillip Blond (ed.), Post-Secular Philosophy, London: Routledge, 1998, pp. 67-106.

43. ———. 1983. "Du Pareil Au Même. Ou: Comment Heidegger Permet De Refaire L' "Histoire De La Philosophie"." Cahiers de l'Herne:177-181.

44. ———. 1995. "Saint Thomas D'Aquin Et L'onto-Théo-Logie." Revue Thomiste no. 95:31-66.

45. ———. 1996. "Heidegger and Descartes." In Critical Heidegger, edited by Macann, Christopher, 67-96. New York: Routledge.

46. McNeill, William. 1992. "Metaphysics, Fundamental Ontology, Metontology 1925-1935." Heidegger Studies / Heidegger Studien no. 8:63-79.

47. Narbonne, Jean-Marc. 2000. "Remarques Sur Une Interprétation Heideggerienne De L'un Plotinien." In La Métaphysique: Son Histoire, Sa Critique, Ses Enjeux, 127-138. Paris: Vrin.

Actes du XXVIIe Congrès de l'Association de Philosophie de Langue Française (ASPLF), août 1998

48. ———. 2001. La Métaphysique De Plotin, Suivi De Henôsis Et Ereignis: Rémarques Sur Une Interprétation Heideggérienne De L'un Plotinien. Paris: Vrin.

Second augmented edition

49. ———. 2001. Hénologie, Ontologie Et Ereignis (Plotin - Proclus - Heidegger). Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

50. ———. 2001. "Heidegger Et Le Néoplatonisme." Quaestio.The Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 1:55-82.

51. Noreña, Carlos G. 1983. "Heidegger on Suárez: The 1927 Marburg Lectures." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 23:407-424.

"Heidegger's thought on Suarez has been studied for the most part by scholastic philosophers with a particular doctrinal intent, in the context of Heidegger's views on the history of ontology, and on the narrow basis of a few passing remarks in some of Heidegger's works.(a) The 1975 publication of Heidegger's (Summer Semester, 1927) lectures on Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, and their recent translation into English by Professor Hofstadter, make possible a better documented and more conclusive analysis of the subject. (b) Unfortunately, other relevant sources still remain unpublished, such as Heidegger's lectures and seminars on the history of philosophy from St. Thomas to Kant, medieval mysticism, St. Augustine, and Renaissance scholasticism. All of them, however, give a clear indication of Brentano's influence upon Heidegger's early thought and demonstrate an interest in medieval philosophy which one seldom finds among contemporary thinkers. In this essay we intend (1) to summarize Heidegger's views on medieval scholastic philosophy in general and those of Suarez in particular, and (2) attempt to retrieve from the Marburg lectures what Heidegger left unsaid and unthought on the scholastic distinction between essence and existence."

(a) Some scholars have argued that Heidegger's criticism of medieval ontology was fully justified when directed against Suarez, but radically unfair to St. Thomas. To this group belong: G. Siewerth, Das Schicksal der Metaphysik von Thomas zu Heidegger (Einsideln, 1959); R. Echauri, Heidegger y la Metafisica Tomista (Buenos Aires, 1970); B. Rioux, L'étre et la verité chez Heidegger et Saint Thomas d'Aquin (Montreal-Paris, 1963); C. Fabro, Participation et causalité selon S. Thomas d'Aquin (Louvain, 1961); J. P. Doyle, "Heidegger and Scholastic Metaphysics", The Modern Schoolrnan, 49 (1972), 201-221; 0. N. Derisi, "Approximaciones y diferencias entre la fenomenologia existencialista de Martin Heidegger y la ontologia de Santo Tomás," Sapientia, 22 (1967), 185-192; W. R. Korn. "La question de l'être chez Martin Heidegger," Revue Thomiste, 71 (1971), 33-58.

More favorable to Suarez were H. Meyer, Heidegger und Thomas von Aquin (Munich. 1968); and M. Schneider. "Der angebliche Essentialismus des Suarez." Wissenschaft und Weisheit, 24 (1961), 40-68. Finally, there are those philosophers who think that both St. Thomas and Suarez fully deserve Heidegger's criticism. See. e.g., H. Siegfried, Die Wahrheit und Metaphysik bei Suarez (Bonn, 1967). Heidegger's references to Suarez can be found in Seitz und Zeit (Gesamtausgabe, ed. by F. W. von Herrmann, vol. 2. Frankfurt am Main, 1977), 30; Die Frage nach der Ding (Tübingen. 1962), 77; and Nietzsche (Pfüllingen, 1961), 11.418.

(b) The lectures Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie were published in 1975 as vol. 24 of the Gesamtausgabe. They were reviewed by M. E. Zimmermann in the International Philosophical Quarterly, 17 (1977). 235-237, and in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 39 (1979), 537-550. Professor A. Hofstadter's excellent translation was published in 1981 by Indiana University Press under the title Basic Problems of Phenomenology.

52. Okrent, Mark B. 1981. "The Truth of Being and the History of Philosophy." Monist no. 64:500-517.

Reprinted in: Hubert Dreyfus, Mark Wrathall (eds.) - Truth, realism and the history of Being - Heidegger reexamined - vol. II - New York, Routledge, 2002, pp. 161-176

53. Peacocke, John. 1998. "Heidegger and the Problem of onto-Theology." In Post-Secular Philosophy: Between Philosophy and Theology, edited by Blond, Phillip, 177-194. New York: Routledge.

54. Prouvost, Géry. 1995. "Apophatisme Et Ontothéologie." Revue Thomiste no. 95:67-84.

55. Robert, Jean-Dominique. 1980. "La Critique De L'onto-Théologie Chez Heidegger." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 78:533-552.

56. Rosemann, Philipp. 2001. "Heidegger's Transcendental History." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 40:501-523.

57. Sadler, Ted. 1996. Heidegger and Aristotle. The Question of Being. London: Athlone Press.

58. Schmucker, Josef. 1980. Die Ontotheologie Des Vorkritischen Kant. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

59. Schüssler, Ingeborg. 1996. "Le Sophiste De Platon Dans L'interprétation De Heidegger." In Heidegger 1919-1929. De L'herméneutique De La Facticité À La Métaphysique Du Dasein, edited by Courtine, Jean-François, 91-111. Paris: Vrin.

Actes du colloque organisé par Jean-François Marquet (Université de Paris-Sorbonne, novembre 1994)

60. Souche-Dagues, Denise. 1999. Du Logos Chez Heidegger. Grenoble: Éditions Jérôme Million.

61. Starr, David E. 1975. Entity and Existence. An Ontological Investigation of Aristotle and Heidegger. New York: Burt Franklin & Co. Inc.

62. Taminiaux, Jacques. 1988. "The Interpretation of Greek Philosophy in Heidegger's Fundamental Ontology." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 19:3-14.

63. Tanzer, Mark Basil. 1999. "Heidegger on Being's Oldest Name: "To Chreón"." Heidegger Studies / Heidegger Studien no. 15:81-96.

64. Thomson, Iain. 2000. "Ontotheology? Understanding Heidegger's Destruktion of Metaphysics." International Journal of Philosophical Studies no. 8:297-327.

Reprinted in: Hubert Dreyfus, Mark Wrathall (eds.) - Truth, realism and the history of Being - Heidegger reexamined - vol. II - New York, Routledge, 2002, pp. 107-138 and in: Iain Thomson - Heidegger on ontotheology. Technology and the politics of education as Chapter 1.

65. ———. 2005. Heidegger on Ontotheology. Technology and the Politics of Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

66. Tilliette, Xavier. 1962. "L'argument Ontologique Et L'histoire De L'ontothéologie." Archives de Philosophie no. 25:128-149.

67. Vick, George. 1971. "Heidegger's Linguistic Rehabilitation of Parmenides' "Being"." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 8.

Reprinted with revisions in: Heidegger and modern philosophy. Critical Essays - edited by Michael Murray - New Haven - Yale University Press, 1978 pp. 203-221

68. Volpi, Franco. 2001. "Heidegger Et La Romanité Philosophique." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale:5-18.

69. ———. 2001. "La Romanité Philosophique Et Son Vocabulaire." In Philosopher En Français. Langue De La Philosophie Et Langue Nationale, edited by Mattéi, Jean-François, 487-499. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

70. Westphal, Merold. 2006. "Aquinas and onto-Theology." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 80:173-191.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Roman Ingarden and the Realism/Idealism Debate

Ontology and Metaphysics

"Ingarden held that philosophy divides into ontology and metaphysics. Ontology is an autonomous discipline in which we discover and establish the necessary connections between pure ideal qualities by intuitive analysis of the contents of ideas. This is an indispensable preparation for metaphysics, which aims to elucidate the necessary truths of factual existence. Each section of philosophy - theory of knowledge, philosophy of man, philosophy of nature and so on - has ontological and metaphysical aspects.

Ingarden argues that every being is a triple unity of matter (contents), form (of the matter) and existence (in a certain mode). Accordingly, ontology as a whole is divided into material, formal and existential ontology. Existence is neither a property nor one of the material or formal moments of an object; it is always the existence of something and what exists determines by its essence a mode of being which belongs to it. Modes of being are constituted from existential 'moments', of which Ingarden distinguishes the following opposite pairs: originality-derivativity, autonomy-heteronomy, distinctiveness-connectiveness and independence-dependence. Taking into account the modes of being thus constituted, there are four basic spheres of being: absolute (supratemporal), ideal (timeless), real (temporal - it has the most numerous forms) and purely intentional (atemporal, sometimes seemingly in time). Ingarden also draws a distinction between three domains: pure ideal qualities, ideas and individual objects. Each individual object is formally a subject of properties whose identity is determined by its constitutive nature. Individual objects of higher order, such as organisms, may be superstructured on autonomous individual objects. Ideas and purely intentional beings have a two-sided formal constitution - besides their own structure they also have contents (in the case of ideas it is constituted by constants and variables, and in the case of purely intentional beings by places of indeterminateness).

Analyses of being in time, of the stream of consciousness and of the world show that their existence is derivative and depends on their relation to original (absolute) being. The foundation of being is placed either in its essence (and ultimately in the content of some idea) or is purely factual in its character. In his analysis of the controversy over the existence of the world, Ingarden first formulates Husserl's transcendental starting point, and then demonstrates and states precisely its assumptions concerning the two elements of initial relation: the real world and the stream of consciousness, together with a subject which belongs to it (pure ego). These considerations lead Ingarden to reject both Husserl's solution and his way of setting the question.

What is real appears in three temporal phases: the future, the present and the past. Objects determined in time include objects enduring in time, processes and events. A human being is an object enduring in time and constituted by a soul, which comprises an ego together with a stream of consciousness, and a body (with a subsystem constituting 'the gate of consciousness'). Living on the border of two spheres, the real (nature, animality), and the ideal (values), human beings create a third sphere of culture. Thus their need to transcend this fragility by a process of self-formation that is subordinated to values makes them prone to tragedy."From: Ingarden, Roman Witold (1893-1970) - by Antoni B. Stepien - Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy p. 790.

"Ontology, in Ingarden's sense, analyses the necessary structures of possible objects: it seeks to establish alternative possible structures of the world, where metaphysics would establish which of these alternatives is in fact realized. Ingarden distinguishes further between existential ontology. which investigates the modes of existence of different kinds of objects; formal ontology, which investigates the forms of objects (as contrasted with their material or qualitative aspects); and material ontology, which deals with these qualitative aspects themselves. The Controversy is divided up accordingly: Volume 1 deals with existential ontology, Volumes 2 and 3 with formal ontology.

The Controversy contains extensive analyses of the modes of existence especially of temporal objects (events, processes. states). of the forms of individual objects, of ideas, states of affairs, relations, regions of being, worlds, and consciousness. Volume 3 contains an analysis of the causal nexus (cause and effect are regarded as simultaneous), of relatively isolated systems and of the problem of determinism.

The metaphysical (and concomitant epistemological) parts of the work were not written, but Ingarden's analyses of temporal existence (cf. 1983) and his stress on the reality of free human actions realizing values, seem to imply the possibility of a metaphysical investigation of man, and the final considerations of Volume 3 may be held to imply a certain priority of at least some metaphysical investigations to material ontology. Ingarden's last work (English translation 1983) is devoted to the ontological foundations of responsibility.

Ingarden is principally known, however, not for his investigations in general ontology and metaphysics but for his writings in aesthetics, and especially for his classic work on the ontology of literature (1931, English translation 1973). Even this, however, was undertaken in order to establish a radical difference of structure as between 'intentional objects' -- objects created by and dependent on acts of consciousness - and objects in reality.

Epistemology, for Ingarden, is divided into 'pure' epistemology - which investigates the ideas or essences of cognitive acts as revealed in "immanent eidetic intuition" and establishes ultimate principles of cognition - and 'applied' epistemology, which is partly empirical, and applies these principles to actual cases. In his epistemology, therefore, Ingarden initially embraces Husserl's notion of pure consciousness as the area where structures of mental acts may be indubitably cognized. Ingarden, however, rejects the necessity of any sort of transcendental reduction in philosophy and his analyses lead to a conception of consciousness not as something independent but as a merely abstract stratum in the real self. Ingarden thereby denies all the ontological features - irreality, self-sufficiency, and separateness - that had been ascribed to consciousness by Husserl. And he thereby undermines, in fact, the very notion of a 'pure' consciousness in the Husserlian mould." (pp. 396-397)

From: Andrzej Poliawski, "Ingarden, Roman" in: Hans Burkhardt & Barry Smith (eds.), Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, Munich: Philosophia Verlag 1991.

"For Ingarden, as for the other earlier phenomenologists, the decisive characteristic of phenomenology consisted in its program of an intuitive study of essences; as a matter of fact he devoted his habilitation thesis, Essentiale Fragen, to a careful analysis of the questions concerning the essence of a thing. To the resulting theory of 'aprioric' necessary truths he gave the name 'ontology.' Husserl himself had been talking in a similar vein of the different regional ontologies (i.e., of the apriori theories of different domains or regions of objects) and of a general formal ontology (i.e., of the apriori theory of the formal structure of any object whatsoever). But Ingarden admitted that he used the term 'ontology' in a somewhat wider sense, because for him ontology included the study of the essence of pure consciousness (die Wesensanalyse des reinen Bewusstseins). Husserl had once defined phenomenology as the study of the essence of pure consciousness, but he had never thought to call this investigation 'ontological.' For him phenomenology could not be a proper part of ontology, since on the contrary he conceived of ontology, the study of the objects of consciousness, as a proper part of phenomenology, the study of consciousness.

There was thus more than merely a terminological disagreement between them. What was at issue was the question whether ontology or phenomenology, namely the transcendental phenomenology of the process of constitution, had to come first. Ingarden was of the opinion that an analysis and evaluation of the constitutive processes involved in our knowledge of things presupposed as a 'guiding thread' the prior possession of a clarified notion of those things, while Husserl maintained that a clarified notion of the things could only be obtained on the basis of a prior understanding of the process of constitution .This difference between Ingarden and Husserl is, in fact, the one which separates the realistic from an idealistic approach to this problem.

However, Ingarden did not reject the program of a transcendental phenomenology as such. Already in his account of 1919 he had devoted a special section to the presentation of the phenomenological reduction and the immanent self-knowledge of pure consciousness, and, unlike most other members of the Göttingen and Munich groups, Ingarden had always accepted the transcendental reduction as meaningful and even necessary, namely necessary for the development of epistemology. To understand Ingarden's position one most know that in his Ph.D. dissertation, in his efforts to criticize the relativist and subjectivist claims made by Bergson, and in his struggle to clarify the issues involved in the idealism-realism controversy, he had been led to make a sharp distinction between epistemological and metaphysical assertions, which, together with his conception of ontology, resulted in a three-fold division of all systematic philosophy. The tasks of the three divisions are as follows: ontology investigates the necessary troths, i.e., delimits the bounds of sense, namely the range of the apriori possible (it covers what in Analytic Philosophy is the realm of conceptual analysis); metaphysics makes existence claims, i.e., it tries to decide what is the nature of that which in fact is the case;'* finally epistemology, which for Ingarden emphatically is not first philosophy, has the task of certifying the validity of the results already obtained by scientific and philosophical investigations. Ingarden's conception of transcendental phenomenology can now be understood. For him the raison d'être of the transcendental reduction is epistemological, it has its rightful place in the program of a non-circular certification of all knowledge. And once the reduction is performed, then a new realm for ontological analysis is opened up (cf. the above mentioned study of the essence of pure consciousness). Furthermore, there are the facts of transcendental consciousness and other facts which might be inferred from them, all of which are part of the domain of metaphysics. Thus transcendental phenomenology is for Ingarden a mixture of epistemological, ontological and metaphysical questions." (pp. 1224-1226)

From: Guido Küng, "Roman Ingarden (1893-1970): Ontological Phenomenology", in: Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement. A Historical Introduction, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1963 (Third edition).

"The ontological analyses of works of art affected Ingarden's entire ontology. Its best elaboration is contained in Spór o istnienie swiata (The controversy over the existence of the world, 1947-48). A being, i.e., an object, can be considered in three different respects: (1) the material one, (2) the formal one, and (3) the existential one (modes of being). Ingarden understands ontology as based on eidetic insight and intuitive analyses of the contents of ideas, i.e., upon the eidetic method, which enables one to discover the necessary and purely possible relations between the pure ideal qualities. Ontology is for him the most general theory of objects. He distinguishes it from metaphysics, which fulfills the role of an applied theory of objects and which, being based on ontology, considers the nature and essence of factual beings. The eidetic character distinguishes metaphysics from the so-called real sciences.

Ontology aims at obtaining a general spectrum of eidetic possibilities and necessities with reference to any objects whatever. In the frame of an existential ontology, which has nothing to do with Martin Heidegger's fundamental ontology, Ingarden distinguishes and clearly defines four mutually exclusive pairs of moments of being: something can be (1) existentially autonomous or heteronomous, (2) existentially original or derivative, (3) existentially separate or not separate, and (4) existentially self-dependent or contingent. Considerations connected with the analysis of the second pair has led Ingarden to an original interpretation of the relation of causality. His analysis of time has brought some additional pairs of existential moments, such as actuality and non-actuality; persistence and fragility; and fissuration and non-fissuration. These differentiations enables him to distinguish and describe four basic modes of being (consisting of noncontradictory combinations of existential moments). These are: ( I ) absolute being (autonomous, original, separate, self-dependent); (2) temporal (real) being; (3) ideal (extratemporal) being; and (4) purely intentional (quasitemporal) being. We cannot experience any existing object without its mode of being.

In epistemology Ingarden distinguishes: (1) the pure theory of knowledge, which is actually a part of ontology, because he describes it as an a priori analysis of the general idea "knowledge"; (2) criteriology, which researches such epistemic values as objectivity and adequacy; and (3) the critique of knowledge, which evaluates factually obtained results of scientific and philosophical cognition." (p. 349)

From: Andrzej Przylebski, "Roman Ingarden" in: Lester Embree et alii (eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1997.

Ontology as a science of pure possibilities

"Ingarden begins with a purely formal ontological analysis, and builds towards an analysis of human being, and the possibility of human meaning. By examining existence in its various modes, he comes to consider the matter and form most readily accessible to cognition: ourselves. Plotting the multiple axes of our existence leads him to an understanding of the nature of our essence. So far, so good, Ingarden appears to be undertaking a classical phenomenological inquiry. But there are several surprises in store for the unsuspecting reader, particularly regarding a few key terms from both phenomenology and existentialism to which Ingarden gives entirely new meaning.

For example, each of his central concerns, essence and existence, turn out to be just the opposite of what we might expect. So too with his fields of inquiry; Tymieniecka's dissertation, Essence and Existence could just as easily have been entitled Ontology and Metaphysics, for from the outset, Ingarden begins to play with seemingly familiar terms. In his view, ontology is neither "a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being" nor "a particular theory about the nature of being or the kinds of existents." Rather, for Ingarden, ontology precedes metaphysics, and metaphysics is (and must be) grounded in ontology. Ingarden declares that ontology proposes to answer the question: "What is the essence of this thing which exists?"

According to Ingarden, three fundamental groups of questions form the basis for the distinction between ontology and metaphysics, corresponding to three distinct types of knowledge, and three distinct modes of inquiry:

l) Scientific knowledge focuses on facts contained within the limits of the real world, including the existence of the world as such, and all the objects found within it. This is the purview of the "particular sciences": chemistry, physics, and so on. Such sciences do not study the essences of things, but rather only the quality and quantity of the constituent elements of their factual existence.

2) Ontology entertains questions regarding what is "purely possible": ideas. Ontological questions establish the linkages between things, the constitutive structural network underlying the possibility of the existence of the world (for example, "if p, then necessarily q..."). In themselves, ontological questions do not study essences as such, but rather inquire into the conditions that must obtain in order for essences to result, as well as the links between essences.

3) Metaphysical questions, by contrast, study the essences of things. It is here that Ingarden reveals his existentialist side. Metaphysics explores the essential characteristics of things in their "pure incomprehensible facticity." Metaphysics also studies the effects of things on one another. Simply put, both the particular sciences and ontology are empty outlines of existence, which are, respectively, entirely composed of content or form. Metaphysics, on the other hand, is the vibrant canvas stretched on the frame of ontology and painted all over with data waiting to be interpreted. Metaphysics, Ingarden asserts, is dependent on ontology to supply a conceptual framework, but surpasses ontology in claiming to know the essences of things, beyond their constitutive physical elements, in knowing what constitutes the unique individual existence of any object." (pp. 185-186 notes omitted)

From: Nancy Mardas, "Essence and Existence in Phenomenological Ontology: Roman Ingarden", in: A. T. Tymieniecka (ed.), The Passions of the Soul in the Metamorphosis of Becoming, Dordrecht: Kluwer 2003, pp. 183-198.

"While it is difficult to find any radical turning points in the philosophy of Roman Ingarden, an inner tension can be detected. Ontology as a science of pure possibilities is set against metaphysics as a science of the essence of actually existing being. The philosopher did not build his metaphysics, he stopped at outlining its conception, as he believed that metaphysical considerations should be preceded by ontological investigations. Ingarden carried out ontological investigations on various levels: the meta- philosophical level (conception of ontology), systematic existential and formal-ontological investigations; the epistemological level (ontology of cognition); the aesthetic level (the ontology of the work of art and aesthetic object); the axiological level (the ontology of value); the level of the philosophy of language (meanings of words as inter- subjective intentional creations). The ontological perspective pervades almost all Ingarden's philosophical thinking, inclining his interpreters to ask the following question: is there a chance of leaving this magic circle of pure possibilities? Let us take into consideration whether the philosopher closed to himself the path leading to actually existing being. Why did Ingarden insist on the necessity of ontological investigations even though they were moving the metaphysical horizon away from him? For metaphysics was, aging the aim and ontology just an introduction to it. What is more, Ingarden's temperament and nature made him a metaphysician (he was interested in being) rather than a phenomenologist (he did not want to confine himself to how being was given to him). On the level of ontological considerations we observe the tension between intuition and discourse (direct and indirect cognition).

The Controversy about the Existence of the World is a systematic presentation of Ingarden's ontology. His earlier works constituted an introduction to it: Essentiale Fragen (1925), which offered the differentiation between an idea (eidos) and essence (Wesen) and an outline of the theory of ideas; Bemerkungen zum Problem Idealismus-Realismus (1929), in which Ingarden distinguished three groups of philosophical issues (ontological, metaphysical and epistemological) and distinguished the modes of existence and existential moments as fundamental notions of existential ontology. The philosopher discussed more specific ontological questions in his other works: -- Das literarische Kunstwerk (1931, the ontology of a purely intentional object); -- Vom formalen Aufbau des individuaellen Gegenstandes (1935, the formal ontology of an autonomous individual object).

Ontology approached as a science on the possible ways of existence occupies a distinguished position in Ingarden's studies. It does not comprise existential assertions (it does not assert what actually exists). Ingarden distinguishes the following domains of existence: a domain of individual objects, a domain of ideas, a domain of ideal qualities. He refers the notion of essence to individual objects (autonomous and non-autonomous). In various individual objects we observe the identity of certain moments which determine their range. This selection of identical moments, to which correspond many individual exemplifications, Ingarden calls an idea. We think about the existence of an idea only because in the world, which is experienced by us, we come across necessary connections between qualities. What is necessary speaks for the rationality of being and this rationality can be explained through the relations between ideal qualities in the content of ideas. Purely factual dependencies (for example, causal dependencies) or phenomenal dependencies are not enough to acknowledge the rationality of being. Therefore Ingarden presents the following argumentation: starting from the data of experience he asks a question on the conditions of the possibility of what is given in experience. He does not mean subjective conditions (what cognitive powers a subject should be equipped with in order to experience in the way he experiences) but objective, ontic conditions (what has being to be like in order to appear in such a way and not another way in experience). Thus experience suggests assuming a certain theoretical hypothesis--a hypothesis on the existence of an idea.

Ideas are characterized by their dual formal structure:--as ideas they have a characteristic structure which differentiates them from individual objects as well as ideal qualities; --they are ideas of something, i.e., they differ from each other by their content, determining the range of individual objects "subjected to them". This dual structure makes it possible to differentiate between the cognitive competence of ontology and metaphysics. Ontology investigates the content of ideas only (that they are ideas of something) and necessary connections between ideal qualities. It is only metaphysics that can formulate statements on the actual existence of ideas.

In the sphere of facts nothing can exist that would be contradictory to pure possibilities. Thus ontological investigations should constitute the beginning of all philosophical considerations. Theoretically they precede individual sciences and they are more general. Ontology eliminates problems and conclusions that are inconsistent with an idea of the investigated objects. Ideal qualities occur in the content of an idea in the shape of constants and variables--existential, formal and material. An ontologist employs an a priori analysis of the content idea (a prioric laws of connection and exclusion), but he does not lose the connection with experience broadly approached. The a priori cognition of ideal qualities is understood by Ingarden intuitively and this enables ontology to establish a wide range of studies." (pp. 186-187, notes omitted).

From: Zofia Majewska, "The Philosophy of Roman Ingarden", in: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.) Phenomenology World-Wide. Foundations - Expanding Dynamics - Life-Engagements. A Guide for Research and Study, Dordrecht: Kluwer 2002 pp. 184-199.

The controversy with Husserl

"Husserl was convinced that rigorous philosophy i.e., phenomenology must begin with a thoroughly elaborated epistemology and eventually develop from that starting point an ontology and metaphysics. Ingarden was equally convinced that any ontology or metaphysics that originated from an idealist epistemology was itself bound and determined to be idealist. His criticisms of Husserl's position bear witness to the legitimacy of that conviction: To attempt to 'defend' Husserl against the charge that his idealism is 'committed to' metaphysical idealism is vain, if for no other reason than that Husserl appears to have felt justified in making metaphysical assertions that he apparently considered to be sufficiently well grounded in his idealist epistemology (although he never explicated this foundational relationship). In the light of Ingarden's criticisms, it seems equally wrongheaded to suggest, as does Farber, that Husserl was committing some kind of transgression against the program of phenomenology as he initially conceived and described it. It appears, rather, that the 'subjectivism' Farber sees winning the day in Husserl's 'system of thought' is not at all the result of any fundamental change in the direction of his thinking but is instead the inevitable conclusion of a development of thought proceeding from his starting point of epistemological idealism. As we have seen, Ingarden found the position of metaphysical idealism impossible to maintain-indeed he appears to have been dissatisfied with idealism per se. Ingarden was convinced it was the very starting point of Husserl's phenomenology in epistemology that directed him toward the ontological solution of metaphysical idealism, and by restricting his own initial approach to the problems regarding the existence of the world to exclusively ontological investigations he hoped to avoid a similar predetermination of the metaphysical position he would later proceed to establish. Ingarden systematically elaborated these ontological investigations in his magnum opus, Controversy Over the Existence of the World." (p. 65)

From: Jeff Mitscherling, Roman Ingarden's Ontology and Aesthetics, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press 1997.

The debate Realism vs. Idealism

"...the idealism/realism controversy was a central philosophical topic in the early decades of this century. With the subsequent reshaping of phenomenology along existentialist lines, primarily as a result of the work of Heidegger and Sartre, and with the increasing popularity of the 'analytic' concern with problems of logic, epistemology, and language, the interest in the ontological dimension of the idealism/realism controversy had greatly subsided before Ingarden finally published the first volumes of Controversy. Throughout his life, however, Ingarden remained committed to working out the ontological problems he had addressed so early in his career, sincerely believing that the idealism/realism debate concerning the existence of the world was of primary philosophical importance. The detailed analyses he presents in Controversy support his belief, and they do so in two respects. First, while his innumerable treatments of major historical figures, from Plato to Husserl, are generally offered for the purpose of either dispelling already existing confusion or clarifying his own use of terms-for example, he devotes the first section of the opening chapter of volume I simply to a detailed description of the manner and sense in which the term "idealism" has been variously employed over the centuries-these treatments at the same time indicate the central position the idealism/realism controversy has occupied throughout the history of Western philosophy, and thereby argue for the necessity of understanding this controversy and appreciating its centrality. But secondly, and more importantly, the excruciating rigour and thoroughness that he brings to his analyses render them compelling: the reader is indeed forced to grant Ingarden his claim that the problems he is dealing with do indeed warrant further investigation, and that our philosophical integrity demands of us that we pursue them further." (p. 80)

From: Jeff Mitscherling, Roman Ingarden's Ontology and Aesthetics, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press 1997.

Excerpts frm his publications (in progress)

Time and Modes of Being

From the Author's Preface:

"In 1946/47 my two volume work, The controversy over the existence of the World (Spór o istnienie Å?wiata Vol. I, 297 pages, Vol II 848 pages) was published under the inprint of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Letters.

The present volume contains the English translation of parts selected from volume I of this work: the Introduction, Chapter III (with its introduction), Chapter VI, and section 31 from Chapter VII.

This selection covers my most important ontological analyses of modes of being and of time, as it is involved with these, which lead to the establishment of fundamental concepts of modes of existence. These investigations constitute the existential-ontological preparation for Volume II, which contains formal-ontological studies clarifying a number of basic formal concepts that are indispensable to an adumbration of prospective possible solutions of the controversy between idealism and realism. Volume II is in preparation.(...) I wish to express my great and sincere appreciation to Mrs. Michejda for her careful preparation of this excellent translation, which completely satisfies every demand of the author."

CONTENTS: Author's Preface V; Translator's Preface VII;

Chapter I. Preliminary considerations 3;

Introduction 3; The foundation and the tentative formulation of the question at issue 8; Different groups of problems requiring delimitation 17;

Chapter II. Introduction 22;

Three main groups of ontological problems 22;

Chapter III. Basic existential concepts 28;

The problem of the possibility of analyzing existence 28; Modes of Being and moments of existence 32; Autonomy and heteronomy 43; Existential originality and existential derivation 52; Existential separateness and inseparateness 82; Existential self-dependence and existential contingency 89; Absolute Being - Relative Being 92;

Chapter IV. Time and modes of Being 99;

Preliminary observations regarding concrete time 99; The mode of Being of events 102; The mode of Being of processes 107; The mode of Being of objects enduring in time 124;

Chapter V. The consequences for the possible solutions of the controversy over the existence of the world when time is taken into account 157; New concepts of modes of Being 157;

Name Index 165; Subject Index 167.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Roman Ingarden: Selected Bibliography A - M

Introduction

A bibliography of Roman Ingarden's works for the years 1915-1989 is published in: Analecta Husserliana - The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research - vol. 30: Ingardeniana II. New studies in the philosophy of Roman Ingarden. With a new international Ingarden bibliography, edited by Hans Rudnik and Jolanta Wawrzycka; the bibliography (pp. 225-296) contains in the first part ("primary sources") 368 items, inclusively of translations and reprints; the second part ("secondary sources") contains 821 references (many in Polish) concerning Ingarden.

I will give an updated bibliography of the most relevant references for Ingarden's ontology.

Bibliography A - M

1. "Roman Ingarden: Forty Years Later." 2010. Polish Journal of Philosophy no. 4.

Contents: Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk: Roman Ingarden: Forty Years Later 5; Władysław Stróżewski: Roman Ingarden: Life and Philosophy 11; Jan Woleński: Meaningfulness, Meaninglessness and Language-Hierarchies: Some Lessons from Ingarden’s Criticism of the Verifiability Principle 35; Nancy Billias: Ingarden and Badiou: A Meeting at the Crossroads 49; Arkadiusz Chrudzimski: Composed Objects, Internal Relations, and Purely Intentional Negativity. Ingarden’s Theory of States of Affairs 63; Ingvar Johansson: Fictions and the Spatiotemporal World — in the Light of Ingarden 81; Victor Kocay: An Evaluation of Ingardenian Values 105; Reiner Matzker: Reality, Mediality and Ideality — Roman Ingarden as Perceived in Thoughts, Letters and Memories 123; Jeff Mitscherling: Aristotelian Metaphysics and the Distinction between Consciousness and the Real World in Husserl and Ingarden 137; Marek Piwowarczyk: Endurance and Temporality 157; Roberto Poli: Spheres of Being and the Network of Ontological Dependencies 171; Daniel von Wachter: Roman Ingarden’s Theory of Causation Revised 183-196.

2. Aarnes, Asbjorn. 1967. "Roman Ingarden en Norvège." Orbis Litterarum no. 72:49-61.

Repris dans Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 72, 1967, pp. 332-343.

3. Ales Bello, Angela. 2004. "The Controversy about the Existence of the World in Edmund Husserl's Phenomenological School: A. Reinach, R. Ingarden, H. Conrad-Martius, E. Stein." In Does the World Exist? Plurisignificant Ciphering of Reality, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 97-116. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 79.

"The aim of the essay consists in analyzing one of the most important points of discussion among some of Husserl's disciples: A. Reinach, R. Ingarden, H. Conrad-Martius, E. Stein, that is the existence of the world and the way to prove it. The research leads to two consequences: to pinpoint Husserl's particular and original interpretation regarding "existence" that concludes to the acceptance of it and the difference between his transcendental phenomenology and that one sustained by his disciples that can be called a realistic phenomenology. In this contest E. Stein assumed a peculiar position that to some extend combines the two attitudes."

"The above outline sought to show very briefly how the discussion about the existence of the world came into being within the phenomenological school. We noted that Husserl's cited disciples are convinced that, as far as the maestro is concerned, the world - understood as external reality that comprises ourselves as human beings - does exist. but doubt that he succeeded in justifying this view moving from his theoretical assumptions. Nevertheless, the objections are more or less mellow and indistinct and all of them are made within the school, that is to say. within a common style of search.

The great common terrain is constituted by essential analysis, which nobody wants to do without. but precisely because the philosophical tradition regards the theme of the essence as related to that of existence, there arises the fear that this latter aspect might he pushed into the background. Furthermore, because for Husserl essential analysis concentrates on subjectivity and opens the road to the transcendental perspective, what is feared is becoming enclosed in subjectivity and concentrating all of reality in it. as in the great lesson of German idealism.

As can be seen. I have endeavored to defend Flossed against his own disciples, trying to delve into his profound intentions, re-balancing - wherever this proves possible - the results of his analysis. comforted in this by the observations of Edith Stein, who was probably closest to the maestro and therefore managed to grasp the principal lines of his position more accurately. The theoretical core always remains the relationship between idealism and realism. with respect to which Husserl's attitude, at least in my opinion, is very balanced, notwithstanding its peculiarity. On the other hand, it is quite readily understandable that his disciples should have committed the "great parricide," to use the expression that Plato used in connection with Parmenides: it may well he that without it one does not achieve theoretical autonomy. All the same, one also has to hear in mind a saying that once again involves Plato: amicus Plato. sell magis amica veritas. which should help us understand the intentions of the other before we raise objections." (p. 113)

4. Andreasik, Jan. 2009. "Enterprise Ontology According to Roman Ingarden Formal Ontology." In Man-Machine Interactions, edited by Cyran, Krzysztof A. , Kozielski, Stanisław , Peters, James F. , Stańczyk, Urszula and Wakulicz-Deja, Alicja, 85-94. Berlin: Springer.

5. Banega, Horacio. 2012. "Formal Ontology as an Operative Tool in the Theories of the Objects of the Life-World: Stumpf, Husserl and Ingarden." Symposium. The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy no. 16:64-88.

Abstract: "It is accepted that certain mereological concepts and phenomenological conceptualisations presented in Carl Stumpf’s Über den psychologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung and Tonpsychologie played an important role in the development of the Husserlian formal ontology. In the third Logical Investigation, which displays the formal relations between part and whole and among parts that make out a whole, one of the main concepts of contemporary formal ontology and metaphysics is settled: ontological dependence or foundation. My main objective is to display Stumpf’s concepts of partial content, independent content, spatial wholes, sound wholes, and the different kinds of connection among parts, in particular, fusion. Second, I will show how Husserl improved this background, in particular with regards to the exact nature of the theory of manifolds, in discussion with Georg Cantor, the father of set theory. Third, I will focus on Ingarden’s use of formal ontology and on the different modes of being that can be justified by appealing to the concept of ontological dependence in its Ingardenian variations. If my interpretation is adequate, it should be inferred that formal ontology is the operative theory of phenomenological philosophy, and this must be acknowledged in its full significance with respect to the supposed independence of the phenomenological method since 1913. A further consequence, not developed in this essay, is that formal ontology can be mathematised."

6. Barska, Katarzyna. 2015. "Theory of the Whole and the Part - Ontological Perspective (E. Husserl, R. Ingarden)." Studia Humana no. 4:12-25.

Abstract: "The purpose of the paper is demonstrate the thesis that Ingarden's ontological system allows a better understanding of the "part-whole" problem then previous theories. Especially, if we take into account the existential ontology of Ingarden, which refers to Husserl "part-whole" theory, we can see that development of terms made by Ingarden sheds new light on old problem. In this context, particularly important is to distinguish between two existential moments: contingency/inseparatness, because thanks to them we can talk about many different types of relationships and hence many types of objects."

7. Bartoszynski, Kazimierz. 1989. "The Ontology of Objects in Ingarden's Aesthetics." In Man within His Life-World: Contributions to Phenomenology by Scholars from East-Central Europe, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 369-383. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 27.

8. Bertolini, Simona. 2016. "Beings in the World: Elements for a Comparison between Nicolai Hartmann and Roman Ingarden." In New Research on the Philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann, edited by Peterson, Keith and Poli, Roberto, 171-189. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

9. ———. 2016. "Idea ed essenza nello sviluppo dell’ontologia di Roman Ingarden." Discipline filosofiche no. 26:171-192.

Abstract: "The purpose of the paper is to describe Roman Ingarden’s detailed study of essence and idea, in terms of their relation to individual objects. This study, which plays a central role in the context of Ingarden’s ontology, is carried out both in Essential

Questions (Ingarden’s habilitation thesis published in 1925) and in the second volume of Controversy over the Existence of the World. What emerges from the comparison of these works is a complex ontological structure in which Jean Hering’s considerations on the same subject matter, published in Husserl’s “Jahrbuch” in 1921, are maintained and at the same time developed."

10. ———. 2017. "Dall'ontologia all'etica: Nicolai Hartmann e Roman Ingarden sulla fondazione della libertà personale." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 109:51-71.

Abstract: "Roman Ingarden and Nicolai Hartmann developed an ontology of the real world in which the analysis of human responsible action and its presuppositions plays an essential role. In this analysis, several common elements can be identified, such as the acknowledgement of the objectivity of values and the centrality of the concept of person, which for both philosophers refers exclusively to the real man in the real world. The aim of the study is to analyze the way in which both Ingarden and Hartmann, on common grounds, explore the specific phenomenon of free will and deal with the issue of its ontological possibility within a deterministically structured world. Despite the differences, what emerges in both cases is a theoretical model that refuses the rigid alternative determinism-indeterminism with the aim of providing the foundations of the self-determination of man."

11. ———. 2019. "Roman Ingarden: Phenomenology, Responsibility and the Ontological Foundations of Morality." Miscellanea Anthropologica et Sociologica no. 20:82-97.

12. Bielawka, Maria. 1991. "The Mystery of Time in Roman Ingarden’s Philosophy." In Ingardeniana III: Roman Ingarden's Aesthetics in a New Key and the Independent Approaches of Others: the Performing Arts, the Fine Arts, and Literature, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 109-117. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 33.

13. Biemel, Walter. 1986. "Reflexionen zu Ingardens Deutung des Bildes." Reports on Philosophy (Jagiellonian University) no. 10:5-41.

Nachdruck mit dem Titel Kritische Bemerkungen zu Ingardens Deutung des Bildes in Hans H. Rudnick (ed.), Ingardeniana II: New Studies in the Philosophy of Roman Ingarden, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1990, pp. 107-122.

14. ———. 1990. "Kritische Bemerkungen zu Ingardens Deutung des Bildes." In Ingardeniana II: New Studies in the Philosophy of Roman Ingarden, edited by Rudnick, Hans H., 107-122. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 30.

15. Billias, Nancy. 2010. "Ingarden and Badiou: A Meeting at the Crossroads." Polish Journal of Philosophy no. 4:49-61.

Abstract: "In its examination of the intersection of ethics and ontology, Roman Ingarden's philosophy bears a striking resemblance to the thought of the contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou. Though no formal influence is claimed, this paper explores several ways in which Badiou's theory of the event and existential agency is foreshadowed in the writings of Ingarden. In so doing, the author suggests the continued importance of this unjustly neglected philosopher for contemporary thinking on questions of value."

16. Biolik, Anna. 1983. "Roman Ingarden—l'idée de l'oeuvre littéraire et sa concretisation." Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes no. 25:225-234.

17. Blaszczyk, Piotr. 2005. "On the Mode of Existence of Real Numbers." In Logos of Phenomenology and Phenomenology of the Logos, Book 1, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 137-155. Dordrecht: Springer.

Analaecta Husserliana. Volume 88.

"Ingarden's ontology is an ontology of an object. An object, as conceived by Ingarden, is, first of all, something which is a unity of matter (referred to by Ingarden as material endowment), form (formal structure) and existence (mode of existence). As examples of objects in this meaning one may offer: a physical object, a process, an event, a Platonic idea, a property of a thing, a negative state of affairs. Yet, not everything is an object. Non-objects are: matter, form and mode of existence as such. The Controversy over the Existence of the World was divided by Ingarden into Existential Ontology and Formal Ontology in order to deal with existential and formal aspects of objects." (p. 137)

18. Bostar, Leo. 1994. "Reading Ingarden Read Husserl: Metaphysics, Ontology, and Phenomenological Method." Husserl Studies no. 10:211-236.

19. Brinker, Menachem. 1984. "Roman Ingarden and the "Appropriate Aesthetic Attitude" to the Literary Work of Art." Poetics Today no. 5:129-148.

20. ———. 1984. "Two Phenomenologies of Reading: Ingarden and Iser on Textual Indeterminacy." Poetics Today no. 1:203-212.

21. Brogowski, Leszeck. 1999. "La détermination, l'indéterminé, une surdétermination. Réflexions sur une ontologie de l'oeuvre d'art à partir de Roman Ingarden." Revue d'Esthétique no. 36:59-73.

22. Brunius, Teddy. 1970. "The Aesthetics of Roman Ingarden." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 30:590-595.

23. Buch, Esteban. 2012. "Relire Ingarden : l’ontologie des oeuvres musicales, entre fictions et montagnes." Intersections: Canadian Journal of Music / Intersections : revue canadienne de musique no. 32:61-81.

24. Bundgaard, Peer F. 2013. "Roman Ingarden's Theory of Reader Experience: A Critical Assessment." Semiotica:171-188.

25. Chojna, Wojciech. 2017. Roman Ingarden’s Philosophy of Literature: Phenomenological Account. Leiden: Brill - Rodopi.

Contents: Preface IX; Introduction 1; 1. Introduction to the Concept of Identity 17; 2. Nature and Identity of a Literary Work in American Aesthetics 31; 3. Phenomenological Concept of Identity 51; 4. Literary Work as a Schematic Structure 77; 5. Aesthetic Experience and Life of a Literary Work of Art 111; 6. Values of Literary Work of Art 131; 7. The Identity of a Literary Work of Art 152; Epilogue 170; Bibliography 175; Index 179-180.

"In the present work I will focus on Ingarden’s theory of the literary work of art, with the special emphasis on its ontology, identity, and value, as well as on the nature of readers’ interactions with literary works, such as aesthetic experience, scholarly cognition, and literary criticism. I will also discuss Ingarden’s attempts to defend the validity of value judgments against the theories that undermine them, such as psychologism, subjectivism, and relativism. All these themes are discussed in Ingarden’s first book, The Literary Work of Art, to be followed by the more detailed analyses of the various types of cognitive, critical and aesthetic experiences of literary works in The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art.

Paradoxically, Ingarden’s first and more well-known book was written as a preliminary study for his larger concern over the problem of realism and idealism, to which he devoted his next and much larger three volume work, The Controversy Over the Existence of the World.(5) Reversing Ingarden’s concerns, I will discuss the latter work only to throw some light on Ingarden’s ontological analyses in the first book. Like all of Husserl’s students who initially embraced Husserl’s new “presupposition-less philosophy”, Ingarden was only willing to make a few steps and did not follow his great teacher all the way. In fact, none of Husserl’s students followed him beyond his initial and still largely ontological analyses of the Logical Investigations, stopping before the gateways into the transcendental phenomenology, i.e., the famed phenomenological reduction or epoché which Husserl initiated in the Ideas.(6) In the Preface to the first German edition of The Literary Work of Art Ingarden admits that although the subject of his investigation was the literary work of art, his ultimate motives were “connected to the problem of idealism-realism”. He was especially worried about “the attempt of Husserl’s transcendental idealism to conceive the real world and its elements as purely intentional objectivities which have their ontic and determining basis in the depths of the pure consciousness that constitutes them”.(7) In order to prove Husserl wrong, Ingarden set out to show that the structure of the purely intentional objects, an example of which is a literary work, is radically different than the nature and the mode of existence of the real objectivities.(8)" (pp. 2-3)

(5) Ingarden, Der Streit

(6) Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. I (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1900), trans. J.N. Findlay, Logical Investigations (London: Routlage & Kegan Paul, 1970); Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, 1. Buch (Halle: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1913), trans. F. Kersten, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1982).

(7) Ingarden, The Literary Work of Art, tr. George Grabowicz, (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 173), lxxii.

(8) Ibid.

26. Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz. 1999. "Are Meanings in the Head? Ingarden's Theory of Meaning." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 30:306-326.

Abstract: "The question in the title should be construed as an epistemological and not an ontological one. Omitting the difficult problems of the ontology of intentionality we will ask if all what is needed to explain the phenomenon of the meaningful use of words, could be found "in our private head" interpreted as a sphere of specific privileged access, the sphere that is in the relevant epistemological sense subjective, private or non-public.

There are many "mentalistic" theories of meaning that force us to the answer: "yes". According to these theories our words are meaningful in virtue of certain intentions of the speaker. And our intentions consist in having some mental states that should be in the relevant sense subjective or private. (Searle, Chisholm) But there are also philosophers (Kripke, Putnam) who claim to have evidence to the contrary. They argue that the meanings of our words could not be "in the head", because of two important reasons. (I) Very often we don't know exactly the meanings of the words that we use meaningfully. Furthermore, our "semantical self-knowledge" is principally corrigible by other people, and hence our access to the meanings we use could be by no means privileged. And secondly (ii) we can imagine a situation in which two subjects with the same mental intention use the same word with the very different meanings.

We will investigate our question on the ground of the Ingarden's philosophy. As we will see, his answer turns out to be in an interesting sense: "yes and no"."

27. ———. 1999. Die Erkenntnistheorie von Roman Ingarden. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

28. ———. 2002. "Von Brentano zu Ingarden. Die Phänomenologische Bedeutungslehre." Husserl Studies no. 18:185-208.

Reprinted as Chapter 6 in: A. Chrudzimski, Intentionalität, Zeitbewusstsein und Intersubjektivität. Studien zur Phänomenologie von Brentano bis Ingarden, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag 2005, pp. 135-160.

29. ———. 2004. "Roman Ingarden: Ontology from a phenomenological point of view." Reports on Philosophy (Jagiellonian University) no. 22:121-142.

30. ———, ed. 2005. Existence, Culture, and Persons: The Ontology of Roman Ingarden. Frankfurt am Mein: Ontos Verlag.

Contents: Introduction 7; Gregor Haefliger, Guido Küng: Substances, States, Processes, Events. Ingarden and the Analytic Theory of Objects 9; Peter Simons: Ingarden and the Ontology of Dependence 39; Daniel von Wachter: Roman Ingarden’s Ontology: Existential Dependence, Substances, Ideas, and Other Things Empiricists Do not Like 55; Arkadiusz Chrudzimski: Brentano, Husserl und Ingarden über die intentionalen Gegenstände 83; Amie L. Thomasson: Ingarden and the Ontology of Cultural Objects 115; Jeff Mitscherling: Concretization, Literary Criticism, and the Life of the Literary Work of Art 137; Edward Swiderski: Ingarden: From Phenomenological Realism to Moral Realism 159; Andrzej Póltawski: Roman Ingardens Ontologie und die Welt 191; Notes on Contributors 221; Index of Names 225.

"Actually, the majority of philosophers who find Ingarden's work valuable and inspiring belong to the growing community of "naïve" or "straight" realists who typically don't even consider transcendental idealism as a serious philosophical option. Ironically, the main goal of Ingarden's philosophical struggle - the refutation of idealism - remained something that very few of his reader are really interested in.

Most of the papers collected in this volume follow this strand of Ingarden's reception. The first three articles concern the basic ontological categories and distinctions. Gregor Haefliger and Guido Küng concentrate on categories of substance, state, process, and event, and compare Ingarden's solutions with some contemporary developments. Peter Simons investigates several concepts of ontological dependence that are central for the especially Ingardenian branch of ontology that Ingarden called "existential ontology". Daniel von Wachter proposes "a Europe-in-seven-days tour through Ingarden's ontology" (p. 55 in this volume). The next three papers concern the topic of Ingarden's philosophy that happened to become the best known of his achievements: the philosophy of fiction and of cultural objects. Arkadiusz Chrudzimski sketches the general problematic of intentional objects and argues that they are by no means useless fictions. Amie L. Thomasson presents an Ingardenian ontology of social and cultural objects such as money, churches, and flags.

Finally, Jeff Mitscherling investigates the difficult topic of the "life" of a literary work of art.

The last two papers open a somewhat wider perspective on Ingarden's work. Edward Swiderski points out an interesting change of perspective that occurred in Ingarden's late work, which was devoted to the problem of responsibility. He argues that there is a tension between the hypothetical scientific and phenomenological sides of his philosophy. Andrzej Póltawski tries to answer the question of what Ingarden's ontology would look like if he developed it according to his deeply personalist picture of the world." (pp. 7-8)

31. ———. 2005. Intentionalität, Zeitbewusstsein und Intersubjektivität. Studien zur Phänomenologie von Brentano bis Ingarden. Frankfurt am Mein: Ontos verlag.

Contents: Einführung 7; 1. Franz Brentano über die Intentionalität 17; 2. Franz Brentano über die Zeitbewusstsein 39; 3. Anton Marty 53; 4. Wozu brauchte Carl Stumpf Sachverhalte? 89; 5. Alexius Meinong 107; 6. Von Brentaon zu Ingarden 135; 7. Husserl und die transzendentale Intersubjektivität 161; Bibliographie 203; Namenregister 211.

32. ———. 2005. "Brentano, Husserl und Ingarden über die intentionalen Gegenstände." In Existence, Culture, and Persons. The Ontology of Roman Ingarden, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz, 83-114. Frankfurt am Mein: Ontos Verlag.

Abstract: "Philosophers who, like Franz Brentano and Roman Ingarden, introduce intentional objects are often criticised. An efficient theory of intentionality, it is claimed, can be developed within the framework of a theory assuming a much more parsimonious

ontology, like the theory of mental content proposed by the early Husserl. In this paper it is shown that this critique is unfair. The theory of mental content faces certain formidable difficulties which don't affect the theory of intentional objects. The most serious of them is that the relation between the mental content and the external target object has to be construed as a primitive (and cognitively accessible) relation, while in the theory of intentional objects it can be easily defined and in a sense explained away."

33. ———. 2008. "Truth, Concept Empiricism, and the Realism of Polish Phenomenology." Polish Journal of Philosophy no. 2:23-34.

Abstract: "The majority of Polish phenomenologists never found Husserl"s transcendental idealism attractive. In this paper I investigate the source of this rather surprising realist attitude. True enough the founder of Polish phenomenology was Roman Ingarden – one of the most severe critics of Husserl"s transcendental idealism, so it is initially tempting to reduce the whole issue to this sociological fact. However, I argue that there must be something more about Ingarden"s intellectual background that immunized him against Husserl"s transcendental argumentation, and that the same background made his students so sympathetic to his “naive” realism. My claim is that this “something” is Ingarden"s realist concept of truth that he learned (at least partially) from Tarski as opposed to Husserl"s epistemic construal that he took from Brentano."

34. ———. 2010. "Composed Objects, Internal Relations, and Purely Intentional Negativity. Ingarden’s Theory of States of Affairs." Polish Journal of Philosophy no. 4:63-80.

Abstract: "Ingarden’s official ontology of states of affairs is by no means reductionist.

According to him there are states of affairs, but they are ontologically dependent on other entities. There are certain classical arguments for the introduction of states of affairs as extra entities over and above the nominal objects, that can be labelled “the problem of composition,” “the problem of relation” and “the problem of negation.” To the first two Ingarden proposes rather traditional solutions, while his treatment of negation proves to be original and interesting. Ingarden doesn’t deny the existence of negative states of affairs altogether, but he (i) accepts only a restricted group of them and (ii) ascribes to them an extremely weak mode of being. Negative states of affairs are construed as supervenient entities, and their supervenience-basis involves two factors: on the one hand the appropriate positive states of affairs, and on the other hand certain mental acts of conscious subjects. They enjoy thus a curious “half-subjective” mode of being."

35. ———. 2012. "Negative States of Affairs: Reinach versus Ingarden." Symposium. The Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy no. 15:106-127.

Abstract: "In Reinach's works one finds a very rich ontology of states of affairs.

Some of them are positive, some negative. Some of them obtain, some do not. But even the negative and non-obtaining states of affairs are absolutely independent of any mental activity. Despite this claim of the "ontological equality" of positive and negative states of affairs, there are, according to Reinach, massive epistemological differences in our cognitive access to them. Positive states of affairs can be directly "extracted" from our experience, while to acquire a negative belief we must pass through a quite complicated process, starting with certain positive beliefs. A possible and reasonable explanation of this discrepancy would be a theory to the effect that these epistemological differences have their basis in the ontology of the entities in question. Our knowledge of the negative states of affairs is essentially dependent on our knowledge of the positive ones precisely because the negative states of affairs are ontologically dependent on the positive ones. Such a theory has, in fact, been formulated by Roman Ingarden. According to him, negative states of affairs supervene on some positive ones and on certain mental acts of the conscious subjects."

36. ———. 2012. "Roman Ingarden." In Storia della fenomenologia, edited by Cimino, Antonio and Costa, Vincenzo, 159-170. Roma: Carocci.

37. ———. 2013. "Varieties of Intentional Objects." Semiotica no. 194:189-206.

38. ———. 2015. "Intentional Objects and Mental Contents." Brentano Studien no. 13:81-119.

Abstract: "In this paper I present a sketch of a theory of intentionality introducing special entities called "intentional objects." Elaborated theories of this kind can be found in the works of Franz Brentano and Roman Ingarden. Nowadays those philosophers who are sympathetic to intentional objects are accused of planting an ontological jungle. All the problems of the theory of intentionality, it is claimed, can be resolved within the framework of a theory assuming a much more parsimonious ontology, like the theory of mental content proposed by the early Husserl or the so-called "adverbial" theory of intentionality. However, I show that the competitors of the theory of intentional objects face serious difficulties, the most important being that within their framework the relation between the representing entity (mental content or "adverbially specified" mental property of the subject) and the external target object has to be construed as primitive, while in the theory of intentional objects it can be easily defined. The consequence is that the partisans of mental contents and adverbialists are forced to require a distinguished kind of epistemic access not only to the representing entity but also to this "representing relation." This consequence, which is very seldom made explicit, seems indeed to be fatal. Intentional objects appear in this light not as products of an ontological extravagance but instead as entities that are indispensable, if we are to be able to explain the phenomenon of intentionality at all. Moreover, it turns out that we gain nothing if we introduce mental contents in addition to intentional objects. The approach to intentionality that I finally advocate postulates an external relation between a conscious subject and an intentional object, and is thus at bottom Brentanian."

39. ———. 2015. "Ingarden on Modes of Being." In Object and Pseudo-Objects: Ontological Deserts and Jungles from Brentano to Carnap, edited by Leclercq, Bruno, Richard, Sébastien and Seron, Denis, 199-222. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

40. ———. 2016. "Ingarden on Substance." In Forme(s) et modes d’être / Form(s) and Modes of Being: L’ontologie de Roman Ingarden / The Ontology of Roman Ingarden, edited by Malherbe, Olivier and Richard, Sébasiten, 211-227. Bern: Peter Lang.

41. Chrzanowska-Kluczewska, Elżbieta. 2015. "Textual Indeterminacy Revisited: from Roman Ingarden Onwards." Journal of Literary Semantics no. 44:1-21.

42. Chwistek, Leon. 2017. "The Tragedy of Verbal Metaphysics." Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy no. 5:1-20.

"This is the first English translation of a review by Leon Chwistek of Roman Ingarden’s Das literarische Kunstwerk, (1931), published in Polish as “Tragedia werbalnej metafizyki (Z powodu ksiażki Dra Ingardena: Das literarische Kunstwerk),” Kwartalnik Filozoficzny, Vol. X, 1932, 46–76. Ingarden’s book was translated as The LiteraryWork of Art (1979). Quotations from the original are taken from this translation. Chwistek’s page references are to the original German version. References to the translation are added to Chwistek’s page references, e.g. “(371 / 357 en)”. B. Linsky assisted the translator with the notes and some points of translation." (Adam Trybus, Translator's note, p. 1)

43. Colomb, Gregory G. 1976. "Roman Ingarden and the Language of Art and Science." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism no. 35:7-13.

44. Czarnik, Tadeusz. 2004. "Causality and Freedom in Roman Ingarden." In Does the World Exist? Plurisignificant Ciphering of Reality, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 603-610. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 79.

45. Dambska, Isidore. 1970. "Roman Ingarden (1893-1970)." Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 160:503-506.

46. De Palma, Vittorio. 2017. "Phänomenologie und Realismus. Die Frage Nach der Wirklichkeit Im Streit Zwischen Husserl und Ingarden." Husserl Studies no. 33:1-18.

Abstract: "I deal with the relation between phenomenology and realism while examining Ingarden's critique towards Husserl. I exhibit the empiricist nucleus of Husserl's phenomenology, according to which the real is what can be sensuously experienced. On this basis, I argue that Husserl's phenomenology is not idealistic, in opposition to the realistic phenomenology, according to which reality consists in entities which cannot be sensuously experienced and are thus ideal. Finally, I attempt to show that the idealistic elements of Husserl's thinking do not originate from the transcendental turn, but from a remainder of psychologism that contradicts his empiricism."

47. De Rizzo, Julio. 2021. "Ingarden on the Varieties of Dependence." European Journal of Philosophy.

First online 3 October 2021.

48. Delle Site, Nadia. 1990. "The Aesthetic Theory of Ingarden and its Philosophical Implications." In Ingardeniana II: New Studies in the Philosophy of Roman Ingarden, edited by Rudnick, Hans H., 71-84. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 30.

49. Donise, Anna. 2014. "Roman Ingarden e il problema dei valori." Archivio di Storia della Cultura no. 27:545-556.

Abstract: "This essay reconstructs the cultural and historical context in which the Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden (1893-1970) articulated his reflection on values. Starting from the survey conducted in 'The Literary Work of Art' (his best-known work, dated 1931), in which the value is defined as "metaphysical quality," the author shows in what sense the value does not have, according to Ingarden, a self-sustaining "mode of being," but on the contrary, is always in need of an object to inhere to. The interpretative hypothesis is that Ingarden's reflection on the concept of "value" is strongly affected by its being originated in the field of aesthetics. The model referred to by the Polish philosopher for his general theory of value is, in fact, that of the relationship between the "object" and its being an "art object." This approach gives several elements of originality to the reflection on values, which has traditionally taken as its paradigm the ethical practical sphere."

50. Dziemidok, Bohdan. 1989. "Ingarden’s Theory of Values and the Evaluation of the Work of Art." In On the Aesthetics of Roman Ingarden: Interpretations and Assesments, edited by Dziemidok, Bohdan and McCormick, Peter, 71-100. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

51. Dziemidok, Bohdan, and McCormick, Peter, eds. 1989. On the Aesthetics of Roman Ingarden: Interpretations and Assessments. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Contents: Foreword IX; I. Danuta Gierulanka: Ingarden’s Philosophical Work: A Systematic Outline 1; II. Anita Szczepanska: The Structure of Artworks 21; III. Janusz Misiewicz: The Work of Art and Aesthetic Categories According to Ingarden 55; IV. Bohdan Dziemidok: Ingarden’s Theory of Values and the Evaluation of the Work of Art 71; V. Henryk Markiewicz: Ingarden and the Development of Literary Studies 101: VI. Richard Shusterman: Ingarden, Inscription, and Literary Ontology 131; VII. John Fizer: Ingarden’s and Mukarovsky’s Binominal Definition of the Literary Work of Art: A Comparative View of Their Ontologies 159; VIII. Peter McCormick: Literary Truths and Metaphysical Qualities 187; IX. Andrzej Pytlak: On Ingarden’s Conception of the Musical Composition 233; X. G. David Pollick: The Sculptural Work of Art: Uniquely ‘Within’ the World 255; XI. Danuta Kuznicka: Ingarden on the Theatre 283; Appendix. Danuta Gierulanka: Select Bibliography of the Philosophical Works of Roman Ingarden 297-301.

52. Falk, Eugen H. 1981. The Poetics of Roman Ingarden. Chapell Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

"This book is meant to introduce the serious student of literature as art to a subject he can no longer afford to ignore. Several classes of graduate students at Chapel Hill have furnished the incentive to prepare this work, and their inquisitive and critical minds have helped to fashion its composition over many years. Almost at the outset of this undertaking it became obvious that we could not achieve a sufficient understanding of Ingarden’s poetics if we limited our study to the two works that have been published in English in the meantime. The notes to the following chapters specify some of Ingarden’s sources and especially parts of his other writings which had to be consulted. In a few instances I felt obliged to develop some points that were left merely implied in Ingarden’s texts, and to smooth out a few wrinkles that resulted from modifications in his evolving conceptions.

I must emphasize that my sole purpose here has been to give an exposition of Ingarden’s works on literature. When the student has clearly grasped Ingarden’s own position, he may wish to assess its merits in relation to different conceptions.

My first chapter contains formulations of basic problems and assumptions, and simplified definitions of terms. It is meant to provide information similar to highway markers indicating principal routes and to the colored lines that explain road classifications. It also contains a geometric theorem which will frequently be used to illustrate some of Ingarden’s typical analyses and syntheses and his conception of structure. The first chapter also hints at the reasons why Ingarden asks certain questions and why he seeks answers that will reveal the essential nature of a literary work of art—of any literary work of art—and what obligations this essential nature imposes on the reader. All the other chapters trace the map (or blueprint) of the “anatomical” structure of the literary work of art, of the functional relations of its elements, of its layers, and of its order of sequence. They also describe the attitude and the procedures a reader of a literary work of art should adopt when he has become acquainted with that map. Literary scholars and critics will find their own functions mapped out." (from the Preface, pp. XI-XII)

53. ———. 1981. "Ingarden's Concept of the Aesthetic Object." Comparative Literature Studies no. 18:230-237.

54. Farber, Marvin. 1973. "On Subjectivism and the World Problem: In Memory of Roman Ingarden." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 7:1-7.

55. Fiedler, Theodore. 1975. "Taking Ingarden Seriously: Critical Reflections on "The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art" Part I." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 6:131-140.

56. Fizer, John. 1976. "Ingarden's Phases, Bergson's Durée Réelle and James' Stream: Metaphoric Variants or Mutually Exclusive Concepts on the Theme of Time." In Ingardeniana. A Spectrum of Specialized Studies Establishing the Field of Research, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 121-139. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

57. ———. 1979. "έφoχή, Artistic Analysis, Aesthetic Concretization Reflection upon Roman Ingarden's Reflections." In Language, Literature and Meaning. Vol. 1, edited by Odmark, John, 352-371. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

58. ———. 1983. "Ingarden’s and Mukarovsky’s Binominal Definition of the Literary Work of Art: A Comparative View of Their Ontologies." Russian Literature no. 13:269-290.

Reprinted in: Bohdan Dziemidok, Peter McCormick (eds.), On the Aesthetics of Roman Ingarden: Interpretations and Assessments, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1989, pp. 159-186.

59. ———. 1986. "Deconstruction of the Subject in Light of Ingarden’s Epistemology." Reports on Philosophy (Jagiellonian University) no. 10:19-26.

60. Freiberga, Elga. 2006. "Phenomenological Interpretation of the Work of Art: R. Ingarden, M. Dufrenne, P. Ricoeur." In Logos of Phenomenology and Phenomenology of the Logos. Book Five: The Creative Logos. Aesthetic Ciphering in Fine Arts, Literature and Aesthetics, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 93-102. Dordrecht: Springer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 82.

61. Galewicz, Wlodzimierz. 1990. "The Aesthetic Object and the Work of Art: Reflections on Ingarden’s Theory of Aesthetic Judgment." In Ingardeniana II: New Studies in the Philosophy of Roman Ingarden, edited by Rudnick, Hans H., 193-210. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 30.

62. ———. 1994. "Das Problem des Seinsstatus der gegenständlichen Sinne und Ingardens Ontologie der rein intentionalen Gegenstände." In Kunst und Ontologie. Für Roman Ingarden zum 100. Geburstag, edited by Galewicz, Wlodzimierz, Ströker, Elisabeth and Strózewski, Wladylasw, 5-20. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

63. ———. 1995. "Ingarden’s Begriff des Intentionalen." In Intentionalität, Werte, Kunst: Husserl, Ingarden, Patocka. Beiträge zur gleichnamigen Prager Konferenz, edited by Bloss, Jochen, Strózewski, Wladyslaw and Zumr, Josef, 40-47. Praha: Filosofia.

64. Galewicz, Wlodzimierz, Ströker, Elisabeth, and Strózewski, Wladylasw, eds. 1994. Kunst und Ontologie: Für Roman Ingarden zum 100. Geburtstag. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Inhalt: Introduction 1; Wlodzimierz Galewicz: Das Problem des Seinsstatus der gegenständlichen Sinne und Ingardens Ontologie der rein intentionalen Gegenstände 5; Liselotte Gumpel: Language as bearer of meaning: The phenomenology of Roman Ingarden 21; Gregor Haefliger: Ens multipliciter dicitur. The ingardian variant of an old thesis 59; Andrzej Poltawski: Painting and the structure of consciousness. Remarks on Roman Ingarden’s Theory of Painting 79; Josef Seifert and Barry Smith: The truth about fiction 97; Peter Μ. Simons: Strata in Ingarden’s ontology 119; Elisabeth Ströker: Fiktive Welt im literarischen Kunstwerk. Zu einer Kontroverse zwischen Roman Ingarden und Käte Hamburger 141; Wladyslaw Strozewski: Art and participation 167; Edward Μ. Swiderski: Individual essence in Ingarden’s ontology 183; Pawel Taranczewski: What Ingarden has to say to painters 207; Adam Wegrzecki: The function of ontology and experience in Roman Ingarden’s axiological investigations 219; Jan Wolenski: Sentences, propositions and quasi-propositions 229-235.

65. Ghighi, Nicoletta. 2010. "Phenomenology and Ontology in Nicolai Hartmann and Roman Ingarden." In Theory and Applications of Ontology: Philosophical Perspectives, edited by Poli, Roberto and Seibt, Johanna, 329-347. Berlin: Springer.

66. Gierulanka, Danuta. 1977. "The Philosophical Work of Roman Ingarden." Dialectics and Humanism no. 4:117-128.

Reprinted in D. Gierulanka (1989).

67. ———. 1977. "L'oeuvre philosophique de Roman Ingarden. Esquisse systematique." Felsefe Arkivi no. 21:3-21.

68. ———. 1989. "Ingarden's Philosophical Work: A Systematic Outline." In On the Aesthetics of Roman Ingarden: Interpretations and Assesments, edited by Dziemidok, Bohdan and McCormick, Peter, 1-20. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Reprint of D. Gierulanka (1977).

"Ingarden's philosophical output does not form a closed system in the sense of a set of statements derived from apriori accepted general assumptions. Following the basic methodological principle of Husserl's phenomenology, Ingarden obtained results in all areas of his philosophy by referring directly to the "things given in experiences" corresponding to the type of object being investigated (in direct intuitive cognition). In spite of the great breadth of topics studied his results constitute a lucidly organized whole, as I shall presently try to demonstrate.

Ingarden's writings (over two hundred items including twenty-seven large books) belong primarily to three areas of philosophy: epistemology, ontology, and aesthetics (including the theory of the work of art). This does not, however, comprise all of his work, as I shall show later.

The first decade of Ingarden's philosophic work already included basic results which set the direction and paths of development of his thought.

I shall discuss the main core of Ingarden's philosophy in several sections, indicating the thought processes leading from one to another. Epistemology, being the least known chapter of his thought, and ontology, which dominates Ingarden's philosophy, will be discussed more extensively." (p. 2).

69. Gołaszewska, Maria. 1975. "Ingarden's World of Values (Selected Problems in Axiology - Further Questions)." Dialectics and Humanism no. 2:133-146.

70. Golaszewska, Maria. 1976. "Roman Ingarden's Moral Philosophy." In Ingardeniana. A Spectrum of Specialized Studies Establishing the Field of Research, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 73-103. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 4.

71. ———. 1988. "Roman Ingarden on the Artistic Creativity." Reports on Philosophy (Jagiellonian University) no. 12:3-18.

72. Górniak-Kocokowska, Krystyna. 1989. "Controversy About Actual Existence: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka Contribution to the Study of Roman Ingarden's Philosophy." In Man Within His Life-World: Contributions to Phenomenology by Scholars from East-Central Europe, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 165-192. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 27.

73. Grabes, Herbet. 2010. "Three Theories of Literary Worldmaking: Phenomenological (Roman Ingarden), Constructivist (Nelson Goodman), Cognitive Psychologist (Schank and Abelson)." In Cultural Ways of Worldmaking: Media and Narratives, edited by Nünning, Vera, Nünning, Ansgar and Neumann, Birgit, 47-59. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

74. Graff, Piotr, and Krzemień-Ojak, Slaw, eds. 1975. Roman Ingarden and Contemporary Polish Aesthetics. Warsaw: Polish Scientific Publishers.

75. Grégoire, François. 1960. "Notes sur la philosophie de Roman Ingarden." Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 150:505-512.

76. Gumpel, Liselotte. 1994. "Language as Bearer of Meaning: the Phenomenology of Roman Ingarden." In Kunst und Ontologie. Für Roman Ingarden zum 100. Geburstag, edited by Galewicz, Wlodzimierz, Ströker, Elisabeth and Strózewski, Wladylasw, 21-58. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"I. Meaning — Removing the Shroud from a Mysterious “Mental Residue”

Roman Ingarden’s work has been generally recognized in the area of ontology, but the same cannot be said about his great contribution to the field of semantics. In appreciation of those endeavors, I have referred to him occasionally as the latter-day “Copernicus of Semantics”, an accolade I hope to justify by the end of this study.(1) The majority of contemporary critics, among them his former Marxist countrymen as well as the various proponents of analytic philosophy this side of the Atlantic, have largely considered Ingarden’s ideas on phenomenological semantics too abstruse, his nomenclature too esoteric, much as they themselves have failed to make any progress in this rather complex field.(2) I shall first reveal some of these crucial problem areas and subsequently explain how they can be solved with the aid of Ingarden’s thesis. Certainly, with Western civilization about to enter its third millennium, the time seems ripe!(3) In the limited space afforded me here, I shall have to put the problematic issues before their eras. Nor is a strictly chronological order called for precisely because there has been no genuine step-by-step advancement in ideas." (pp. 21-22)

(1) Liselotte Gumpel, Metaphor Reexamined: A Non-Aristotelian Perspective (Bloomington; Indiana UP, 1984), p. 8. ff. The work will be identified as “Gumpel, 1984.”

See also Liselotte Gumpel: “Metaphor as Nominalized Meaning: A Phenomenological Analysis of the Lyrical Genre,” diss., Stanford University, 1971; an article of this study (same title) appeared in the Jahrbuch fur Internationale Germanistik, 2 (1975), 48-56; “Die Metapher als fragwürdiges Prinzip sprachlicher Verfremdung,” in Akten des VIII. Intemationalen Germanisten-Kongresses, Tokyo 1990, vol. 5 (1991).

(2) Some of these reservations and objections are cited in Robert Fieguth, ed., Roman Ingarden, Gegenstand und Aufgaben der Literaturwissenschaft: Aufsatze und Diskussionsbeitrage (1937-1964) (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1976), pp. xi, xxvi, 30, 153, and 139, where Ingarden contends with Marxists attacking his “Häresien.” This work will be identified as “Fieguth, 1976.”

(3) Indeed, my work orn metaphor (Gumpel, 1984) based on a new premise of "non-Aristotelian semantics," ha been dedicated to that new millennium.

77. Haefliger, Gregor. 1990. "Ingarden und Husserls transzendentaler Idealismus." Husserl Studies no. 7:103-121.

78. ———. 1994. "Ens multipliciter dicitur. The Ingardian Variant of an Old Thesis." In Kunst und Ontologie. Für Roman Ingarden zum 100. Geburstag, edited by Galewicz, Wlodzimierz, Ströker, Elisabeth and Strózewski, Wladylasw, 59-78. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"Introduction

"The main subject of the investigations presented here is the basic structure and the mode of existence of the literary work, and in particular of the literary work of art." [cited in German by Haeflinger]

This is the first sentence in the preface of Ingarden’s Das literarische Kunstwerk (1931), with which he began his extensive work towards a phenomenological aesthetics.(1) But already in this preface Ingarden stated clearly that his interest in an ontology of the work of art is founded on quite different motives.(2) In fact, on an more general philosophical level, Ingarden (1931) was intended as a “Vorstudie” for an extensive critical examination of Husserl’s transcendental idealism.(3)

Now, one important thesis of Ingarden (1931) is that a literal work exists in a “purely intentional” way. This thesis was later refined in Ingarden (1964), where a theory of the different ways of being is elaborated. Even today, however, his theory has not yet received widespread attention. This is so despite the originality and conceptual transparency of the programme he developed for his theory. And more importantly, his position contains novel viewpoints for an answer to the question of the equivocity of ‘to be’ — a question that has long been one of the fundamental questions of ontology.

The aim of this paper is to elucidate Ingarden’s answer to this “old” question. To this end we must first acquaint ourselves with the fundamentals of his theory of the different ways or modes of existence. Then we shall consider the unique position that Ingarden’s thesis of the equivocity of ‘to be’ occupies in the history of philosophy. Finally some suggestions towards a systematic evaluation of Ingarden’s position will be made." (pp. 59-60)

(1) Later Ingarden published in German Untersuchungen zur Ontologie der Kunst (1962), Vom Erkennen des literarischen Kunstwerks (1968) and Erlebnis, Kunstwerk und Wert (1969). By this publications Ingarden tried to show to a german public “die Umrisse einer phanomenologisch behandelten Asthetik, wie ich sie verstehe” [the outlines of a phenomenologically treated aesthetic, as I understand it] (Ingarden 1931, XIX).

(2) See Ingarden (1931), XII.

(3) Incidentally, Husserl himself was quite aware of this; see, for example, Husserl, 61 ff. (letter XLVI) — Concerning Ingarden’s critical studies on Husserl’s idealism see — from a genetical point of view — Haefliger (1991b); and — from a systematical point of view — Haefliger (1991a).

References

Haefliger, G., “Ingarden und Husserls transzendentaler Idealismus”, Husserl-Studies 7 (1991a), 103-121.

Haefliger, G., “Einleitung” to Ingarden, Einführung in die Phanomenologie Edmund Husserls. Osloer-Vorlesung (1967) (= Bd. 4 der Gesammelten Werke), hrsg. v. G. Haefliger, Tubingen: Niemeyer 1991. (1991b), IX-XXVIII.

Husserl, E., Briefe an Roman Ingarden. Erlauterungen und Erinnerungen an Husserl, ed. by R. Ingarden, Phaenomenologica 25, The Hague: Nijhoff 1968.

79. ———. 1994. Über Existenz: die Ontologie Roman Ingardens. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"This book is a monograph study of Ingarden's investigations into existence. Its aim is to give a clear and formally precise account, as well as a critical evaluation, of his contributions. In the first chapter the basic principles of Ingarden's ontology are reformulated and, contrary to Ingarden, a nominalistic point of view is adopted. Chapters 2 to 4 give a reconstruction of the arguments for the following Ingardenian theses: (1) Existence is not a property; (2) The concept of existence is a principle sui generis of classification; (3) "exist(s)"is an equivocal word. On the basis of this critical doxography Chapters 5 and 6 provide a systematic examination of the Ingardenian position, by confronting it with the results of analytic philosophy (such as early Husserl, Frege, Russell, Moore, Meinong, Bergmann, Hochberg, Castaneda)."

80. Haefliger, Gregor, and Kŭng, Guido. 2005. "Substances, States, Processes, Events. Ingarden and the Analytic Theory of Objects." In Existence, Culture, and Persons: The Ontology of Roman Ingarden, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz, 9-37. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

81. ———. 2006. "Substanzen, Zustände, Prozesse, Ereignisse: Ingarden und die analytische Gegenstandstheorie." In Die Münchener-Göttinger Phänomenologie, edited by Sepp, Hans Rainer. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

82. Hamm, Victor. 1961. "The Ontology of the Literary Work of Art: Roman Ingarden's Das literarische Kunstwerk." In The Critical Matrix, edited by Sullivan, Paul Robert, 171-209. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

83. Hamrick, William S. 1974. "Ingarden on “Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Object”." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 5:71-80.

84. ———. 1975. "Ingarden and Artistic Creativity." Dialectics and Humanism no. 2:39-49.

85. Hanneborg, Knut. 1966. "New Concepts in Ontology: A Review Discussion of Roman Ingarden: Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt." Inquiry no. 9:401-409.

"In his Contemporary European Philosophy Bochenski declared Ingarden's work, The Controversy over the Existence of the World to be one of the most important philosophical publications of our time. The work had then been published only in Polish, a fact which occasioned Bochenski to deplore the widespread habit of publishing professional philosophy in languages other than the main European ones.

Now Spór o istnienie swiata has become Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt, and the decisive language barrier has been broken. Other obstacles may remain: the 1100 pages do offer, even in non-Polish, a certain resistance. Not that the author has not done his share of the work, for he expresses himself with exemplary precision and by no means leaves the reader with the task of reducing confusion to clarity. But his perseverance in analysis and the wealth of rigorously differentiated concepts give us a complicated whole to survey. It is the limited purpose of the present paper to give a short outline of this comprehensive system, and some hints of its place in a larger context." (p. 401)

86. ———. 1990. "Husserl, Ingarden and Tymieniecka." In Ingardeniana II: New Studies in the Philosophy of Roman Ingarden, edited by Rudnick, Hans H., 37-47. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 30.

87. Harley, Maria Anna. 1997. "At Home with Phenomenology: Ingarden's "Work of Music" Revisited." International Journal of Musicology no. 6:9-24.

88. Harnow Klausen, Søren. 2013. "Approaching the abstract: Building blocks for an epistemology of abstract objects." Semiotica no. 194:3-20.

89. Heffernan, George. 1998. "Miscellaneous Lucubrations on Husserl's Answer to the Question 'was die Evidenz sei': A Contribution to the Phenomenology of Evidence on the Occasion of the Publication of Husserliana volume XXX." Husserl Studies no. 15:1-75.

90. Hempolinski, Michal. 1975. "On Ingarden's Conception of 'Pure' Epistemology as a Starting Point to His Criticism of So-Called Psychophysiological Epistemology." Dialectics and Humanism no. 2:49-54.

91. Herman, David. 1997. "Ingarden and the Prague School." Neophilologus no. 81:481-487.

92. Hudzik, Jan P. 1989. "The Reception in Polish Literature of Roman Ingarden's Theory of Painting." In Man within His Life-World: Contributions to Phenomenology by Scholars from East-Central Europe, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 417-436. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 27.

93. Iseminger, Gary. 1973. "Roman Ingarden and the Aesthetic Object." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 33:417-420.

94. Jadacki, Jacek. 1989. "On Roman Ingarden's Semiotic Views: A Contribution to the History of Polish Semiotics." In Man within His Life-World: Contributions to Phenomenology by Scholars from East-Central Europe, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 523-540. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 27.

95. Jechova, Anna. 1986. "Conception et fonction du temps dans la pensée théorique de Jan Mukarovsky et de Roman Ingarden." Russian Literature no. 20:353-380.

96. Johansson, Ingvar. 2009. "Roman Ingarden and the Problem of Universals." Metaphysica.International Journal for Ontology and Metaphysics no. 10:65-87.

"The paper ends with an argument that says: necessarily, if there are finitely spatially extended particulars, then there are monadic universals. Before that, in order to characterize the distinction between particulars and universals, Roman Ingarden's notions of "existential moments" and "modes (ways) of being" are presented; and a new pair of such existential moments is introduced: Multiplicity-Monadicity. Also, it is argued that there are not only real universals, but instances of universals (tropes) and fictional universals, too."

97. ———. 2009. "Proof of the Existence of Universals—and Roman Ingarden’s Ontology." Metaphysica. International Journal for Ontology and Metaphysics no. 10:65-87.

98. ———. 2010. "Fictions and the Spatiotemporal World -- in the Light of Ingarden." Polish Journal of Philosophy no. 4:81-103.

Abstract: "The paper is an attempt to take Ingarden’s unfinished critique of idealism one step further. It puts forward a schematic solution to the external-world realist’s problem of how to explain the fact that we can identify and re-identify fictions, entities that in one sense do not exist.The solution contains three proposals :to accept, with Husserl and Ingarden, that there are universals with intentionality (Husserl’s“intentional essences”), to accept, contra Husserl and Ingarden, an immanent realism for universals, and to accept Ingarden’s view that there is a mode of being distinct from thos put forward in traditional metaphysics, that of purely intentional being. Together, these views imply that all the instances of a specific intentional universal are directed towards the same intentional object; be this object a really existing object or a fiction, a purely intentional being."

99. ———. 2013. "The Basic Distinctions in Der Streit." Semiotica no. 194:137-157.

Abstract: "The paper presents Ingarden’s views on what he calls “modes of being” (“ways of existence”) and “existential moments”; the latter being constitutive parts of the former. Mainstream analytic philosophy has been dominated by the view that “existence” can mean only existence simpliciter. Ingarden, on the other hand, discerns four possible modes of being, one of which is of special interest to semiotics: purely intentional being. It is of relevance for the ontological understanding not only of texts, but also of pictures and other sign-related entities. At the end, an extrapolated Ingardenian semiotic triangle is presented."

100. ———. 2013. "The Ideal as Real and as Purely Intentional: Ingarden-based Reflections." Semiotica no. 194:21-37.

101. Kaelin, Eugene Francis. 1985. "What Makes Philosophical Literature Philosophical?" In Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition The Sea, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 451-467. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 19.

102. ———. 1988. "Etre-dans-un-monde-litteraire." In Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition: Part 2. The Airy Elements in Poetic Imagination, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 407-433. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 23.

103. ———. 1990. "The Debate over Stratification within Aestethic Objects." In Ingardeniana II: New Studies in the Philosophy of Roman Ingarden, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 123-138. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 30.

104. Kalinowski, Georges. 1968. "Ontologie et esthétique chez Roman Ingarden." Archives de Philosophie no. 31:281-287.

105. ———. 1970. "Les thèses principales de l'esthétique Ingardénienne." Atchivts de Philosophie no. 33:945-950.

106. ———. 1991. La phénoménologie de l’homme chez Husserl, Ingarden et Scheler. Paris: Editions universitaires.

107. ———. 1992. Expérience et phénomenologie : Husserl, Ingarden, Scheler. Paris: Éditions Universitaires.

108. Kersten, Fred. 1972. "On Understanding Idea and Essence in Husserl and Ingarden." In The Later Husserl and the Idea of Phenomenology, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 55-63. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 2.

109. Kietz, Cathrine. 2013. "More than an Attitude: Roman Ingarden’s Aesthetics." Semiotica no. 194:207-228.

110. Kobiela, Filip. 2014. "The Causal Structure of the World in Ingarden’s Ontology." In Substantiality and Causality, edited by Rosiak, Marek and Szatkowski, Miroslaw, 93-111. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

111. Kocay, Victor. 1995. "L'axiologie de Ingarden." Philosophiques no. 22:35-52.

112. ———. 1996. Forme et référence. Le langage de Roman Ingarden. Sprimont: Pierre Mardaga.

113. ———. 2002. "Roman Ingarden's Unique Conception of Aesthetic Objects." In Phenomenology World-Wide: Foundations, Expanding Dynamisms, Life-Engagements. A Guide for Research and Study, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 202-210. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 80.

114. ———. 2004. "From Hegel to Ingarden: Aesthetic Objects and the “Creation” of the World." In Does the World Exist? Plurisignificant Ciphering of Reality, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 467-484. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 79.

115. ———. 2010. "An Evaluation of Ingardenian Values." Polish Journal of Philosophy no. 4:105-121.

Abstract: "From recent work on Ingarden it is apparent that values are central to his philosophy, even in the context of his realist ontology. In this evaluation of Ingarden’s work we consider his principal philosophical notions (i.e. his realist ontology, his aesthetics, his reflections on language, and his consideration of values) in the light of what Nietzsche referred to in his own philosophy as the “re-evaluation” or the “inversion” of all values. It is argued that two of Ingarden’s most fundamental values are the notion of communication and the aesthetic dimension of thought."

116. Kołodziejczyk, Sebastian Tomasz. 2010. "Roman Ingarden: Forty Years Later." Polish Journal of Philosophy no. 4:5-7.

117. Kowatzki, Irmgard. 1976. "Die Funktion des konstituierenden BewuBtseins in einem 'Studium flir die Seelenmaler'." In Ingardeniana. A Spectrum of Specialized Studies Establishing the Field of Research, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 149-164. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 4.

118. Krysztofiak, Wojciech. 2007. "The phenonenological idealism controversy in light of possible worlds semantics." Axiomathes no. 17:75-97.

119. Küng, Guido. 1972. "Ingarden on Language and Ontology." In The Later Husserl and the Idea of Phenomenology, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 204-217. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 2.

120. ———. 1972. "The World as Noema and as Referent." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 3:15-26.

121. ———. 1975. "Zum Lebenswerk von Roman Ingarden: Ontologie, Erkenntnistheorie und Metaphysik." In Die Münchener Phänomenologie: Vorträge des Internationalen Kongresses in München, 13.-18. April 1971, edited by Kuhn, Helmuth, 159-173. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Phaenomenologica vol. 65.

122. ———. 1982. "Roman Ingarden: (1893-1970) Ontological Phenomenology." In The Phenomenological Movement, edited by Spiegelberg, Herbert, 223-233. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Third revised edition.

123. ———. 1986. "Brentano and Ingarden on the Experience and Cognition of Values." Reports on Philosophy (Jagiellonian University) no. 10:57-67.

124. Kurpiewski, Wiesław. 2007. "Mind and Ontology. Ingarden’s Phenomenology and Mahayana Philosophy as Opposed Ways of Approach to Reality." In Phenomenology of Life -- From the Animal Soul to the Human Mind: Book II: The Human Soul in the Creative Transformation of the Mind, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 485-508. Dordrecht: Springer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 94.

125. Kuznicka, Danuta. 1989. "Ingarden on the Theatre." In On the Aesthetics of Roman Ingarden: Interpretations and Assesments, edited by Dziemidok, Bohdan and McCormick, Peter, 283-296. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

126. Laskey, Dallas. 1972. "Ingarden's Criticism of Husserl." In The Later Husserl and the Idea of Phenomenology, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 48-54. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 2.

127. Li, You-Zheng. 1989. "Ingarden’s 'Strata-Layers’ Theory and the Structural Analysis of Traditional Chinese Kunqu Opera." Semiotica no. 74:25-41.

128. Limido-Heulot, Patricia. 2002. "Phénomenologie et ontologie chez Roman Ingarden." In Roman Ingarden : Husserl, la controverse Idéalisme-Réalisme (1918-1969), 9-145. Paris: Vrin.

129. ———. 2012. "De l’objet intentionnel à l’objet noématique et retour. Une ambiguïté de l’esthétique d’Ingarden." In Roman Ingarden : ontologie, esthétique, fiction, edited by Schaeffer, Jean-Marie and Potocki, Christophe, 37-50. Paris: Archives Contemporaines Editions.

130. ———, ed. 2013. Roman Ingarden, la Phénoménologie à la croisée des arts. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.

Table des matières : Patricia Limido-Heulot : Avant-Propos 9; Roman Ingarden : Remarques sur le problème du jugement de valeur esthétique 17; Edward Swiderski: L'attitutde esthétique : l'héritage kantien dans l'ethétique de Roman Ingarden 27; Patricia Limido-Heulot : L'oeuvre architecturale est-elle un objet intentionnel? 49; Alexis Malalan : La musique, entre interprétation et partition 69; Hanna Konicka : la place du cinéma dans le « système des arts » selon Roman Ingarden 81; Wioletta Miskiewicz : Les aspects-interface entre l'homme et l'oeuvre d'art 91; Rolf Fieguth : Le spectateur co-artiste, le lecteur co-poète. Un regard sur Roman Ingarden. Avec trois idées pour une recitation de Mallarmé 111; Olivier Malherbe : Quasi-jugements et vérité de l'oeuvre d'art littéraire chez Roman Ingarden 121; Roger Pouivet : L'oeuvre d'art est-elle vraiment un objet intentionnel comme le pensait Roman Ingarden? 143; Bruno Boerner : Quelques catégories ingardéniennes appliqués à l'histoire de l'art médiéval : un abus utile 159; Bibliographie 167, Les Auteurs 169; Index Nominum 173; Index Rerum 175-176.

131. ———. 2013. "Ingarden et l’ontologie de l’oeuvre archtiecturale." In Roman Ingarden. L’oeuvre architecturale. 1945, edited by Limido-Heulot, Patricia, 7-34. Paris: Vrin.

132. ———. 2013. "L’oeuvre architecturale est-elle un objet intentionnel ?" In Roman Ingarden, la Phénoménologie à la croisée des arts, edited by Limido-Heulot, Patricia, 49-67. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.

133. ———. 2016. "Quelques remarques autour de l’identité des objets intentionnels." In Forme(s) et modes d’être / Form(s) and Modes of Being: L’ontologie de Roman Ingarden / The Ontology of Roman Ingarden, edited by Malherbe, Olivier and Richard, Sébasiten, 137-162. Bern: Peter Lang.

134. Lissa, Zofia. 1972. "Einige kritische Bemerkungen zur Ingardenschen Theorie des musikalischen Werkes." International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music no. 3:75-95.

135. Lobsien, Eckhad. 1996. "Modifikation und Konkretisation. Husserls Phänomenologie der Indirektheit und Ingardens Doppeltheorie des literarischen Kunstwerks." Phänomenologische Forschungen no. 30:282-313.

136. Luthe, Rudolf. 1978. "Objectivism or Decisionism? A Critical Interpretation of Ingarden's Value Theory from an Ingardian Point of View." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 9:82-91.

137. Majewska, Zofia. 2002. "The Philosophy of Roman Ingarden." In Phenomenology World-Wide: Foundations, Expanding Dynamisms, Life-Engagements. A Guide for Research and Study, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 184-199. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 80.

138. Makota, Janina. 1975. "Roman Ingarden's Philosophy of Man." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 6:126-130.

Translated from the Polish by the author with the assistance of E. M. Swiderski.

"Ingarden's views concerning man are scattered throughout his writings. But the bulk of them is contained in the chapter entitled "The problem of the form of pure consciousness" in the second volume of Controversy over the Existence of the World (1) and in the posthumous A Booklet on Man, (2) which is a collection of previously published articles, lectures, etc. The most advanced considerations on this subject are contained in the essay On Responsibility. Its Ontic Foundations. (3) What is new in this essay and what proves to be theoretically fruitful is the application, not only to man as a whole, but to his body and to the psychic side of his being as well, of the conception of relatively isolated systems. This notion had been previously employed by Ingarden to explain various types of connections within the world as a whole. (4)"

(1) Der Streit urn die Existenz der Welt, vol. 11/2, Tubingen: Niemeyer 1965, chap. 16: "Das Problem der Form des reinen Bewusstseins".

(2) Ksiazecka o czlowieku (A booklet on Man), Krakow; Wydownictwo Literackie 1972, 2.ed. 1973.

(3) Ueber die Verantwortung. Ihre ontischen Fundamente, Stuttgart: Reclam 1970.

(4) Cf. Der Streit . . . vol. I, Tubingen: Niemeyer 1964, p. 104, and especially Der Streit . . . vol. III Ueber die Kausale Struktur der realen Welt, Tubingen: Niemeyer 1974.

139. ———. 1986. "Nicolai Hartmann's and Roman Ingarden's Philosophy of Man." Reports on Philosophy (Jagiellonian University) no. 10:69-79.

140. ———. 1990. "Roman Ingarden’s Idea of Relatively Isolated Systems." In Ingardeniana II: New Studies in the Philosophy of Roman Ingarden, edited by Rudnick, Hans H., 211-222. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 30.

141. Malherbe, Olivier. 2013. "Quasi-jugement et vérité de l’oeuvre d’art littéraire chez Roman Ingarden." In Roman Ingarden, la Phénoménologie à la croisée des arts, edited by Limido-Heulot, Patricia, 121-142. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.

142. ———. 2016. "Quelques avatars de la Gestalt dans la philosophie d’Ingarden." In Forme(s) et modes d’être / Form(s) and Modes of Being: L’ontologie de Roman Ingarden / The Ontology of Roman Ingarden, edited by Malherbe, Olivier and Richard, Sébasiten, 163-196. Bern: Peter Lang.

143. ———. 2016. "Roman Ingarden et le cinéma : entre visibilité et musicalité." Studia Phaenomenologica no. 16:185-214.

144. ———. 2018. "Roman Ingarden: phénoménologie génétique et ontologie réaliste." Studia Phaenomenologica no. 18:153-181.

Abstract: "Roman Ingarden, one of Husserl’s most gifted students, devoted several thousand pages to the development of an ontological, epistemological, aesthetical and even anthropological framework that would allow him to firmly reject the so-called “idealistic turn” of his master Husserl. This paper aims at reconstructing an often overlooked side of his philosophy: his theory of consciousness and his analysis of the constitutive process involved in sense perception. After emphasizing the distinctive character of Ingarden’s ontological frame and its impact on understanding concepts as fundamental as consciousness or intentionality, this paper tries to sketch Ingarden’s answers to several genetic questions raised by Husserl: the relation between time and consciousness, the nature of the ultimate sense data and the question of motivation."

145. Malherbe, Olivier, and Richard, Sébastien, eds. 2016. Forme(s) et modes d’être. L’ontologie de Roman Ingarden / Form(s) and Modes of Being. The Ontology of Roman Ingarden. Bern: P.I.E. Peter Lang.

Table des matières/Table of contents: Olivier Malherbe, Sébastien Richard: Introduction 9; Liste des abréviations 21; List of abbreviations 23; Sébastien Richard.

Y a-t-il une ontologie existentielle ? Sur l’architectonique ontologique d’Ingarden 25; Antonino Mazzù: Indépendance ontologique et dépendance transcendantale.

À propos de la critique ingardénienne de l’idéalisme husserlien 53; Raphaël Millière: Ingarden’s Combinatorial Analysis of the Realism-Idealism Controversy 67; Edward M. Swiderski: Sujet-homme-personne et les valeurs. La portée et les fondements ontiques de la conscience chez Ingarden 99; Andrzej Póltawski: Roman Ingarden et la métaphysique 123; Patricia Limido-Heulot: Quelques remarques autour de l’identité des objets intentionnels 137; Olivier Malherbe: Quelques avatars de la Gestalt dans la philosophie d’Ingarden 163; Denis Seron: La violation du tiers exclu comme critère d’intentionnalité 197; Arkadiusz Chrudzimski: Ingarden on Substance 211; Peter Simons: Ingarden on Causation 229;

Roman Ingarden: Extrait d’une lettre de Roman Ingarden à Guido Küng du 12 juillet 1969 243;

Roman Ingarden: Extract of a Letter from Roman Ingarden to Guido Küng from 12 July 1969 245-247.

146. Mardas, Nancy. 2003. "Essence and Existence in Phenomenological Ontology: Roman Ingarden." In The Passions of the Soul in the Metamorphosis of Becoming, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 183-198. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

147. Markiewicz, Henryk. 1989. "Ingarden and the Development of Literary Studies." In On the Aesthetics of Roman Ingarden: Interpretations and Assesments, edited by Dziemidok, Bohdan and McCormick, Peter, 101-129. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

148. Matzker, Reiner. 2010. "Reality, Mediality and Ideality -- Roman Ingarden as Perceived in Thoughts, Letters and Memories." Polish Journal of Philosophy no. 4:123-135.

Abstract: "With great sympathy for Roman Ingarden and his work, Edith Stein edited his book project 'The Literary Work Of Art'. In the letters she exchanges with him she reflects on relationship between reality and ideality; she writes that those who do not see the world as a reality must be fools. The political events in the 1930s had an impact on phenomenology. While Edmund Husserl dissociates himself from his protégé Martin Heidegger with regard to the content of his philosophy, as well as with regard to his ideology, Edith Stein distances herself more and more from the phenomenological method, seeing it as removed from reality, and she eventually become a Carmelite nun. Roman Ingarden, on the other hand, reconsiders interpreting phenomenology as aesthetic theory. Literature and film are being reanalysed in terms of phenomenological mediality and as factors of human communication."

149. Mazzoni, Augusto. 2002. "La musica nella prima estetica fenomenologica." Il Saggiatore musicale no. 9:137-150.

150. Mazzù, Antonino. 2016. "Indépendance ontologique et dépendance transcendantale. A propos de la critique Ingardénienne de l’idéalisme husserlien." In Forme(s) et modes d’être / Form(s) and Modes of Being: L’ontologie de Roman Ingarden / The Ontology of Roman Ingarden, edited by Malherbe, Olivier and Richard, Sébasiten, 53-66. Bern: Peter Lang.

151. McCormick, Peter. 1975. "On Ingarden's Account of the Existence of Aesthetic Objects." Dialectics and Humanism no. 4:31-38.

152. ———. 1989. "Literary Truths and Metaphysical Qualities." In On the Aesthetics of Roman Ingarden: Interpretations and Assesments, edited by Dziemidok, Bohdan and McCormick, Peter, 187-232. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

153. ———. 1990. Modernity, Aesthetics, and the Bounds of Art. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Chapter 11: Ingarden and Aesthetic Structures, pp. 274-304.

"In this final chapter I look at still another aspect of the problematic notion of the aesthetic and draw on still another figure in the realist backgrounds of modern aesthetics, in the interest of exploring further reflections on aesthetic objects. In dealing with these complicated issues, as we have seen in the cases of Twardowski and Meinong, some unity has seemed especially requisite. Hence I have decided to treat the issues largely with the help of critical and argumentative contrasts. Although others who deal with these topics are also brought in when their views seem particularly relevant, I have tried to center this discussion mainly on the extremely rich and profound work of Roman Ingarden. This work for some years has strongly influenced that of more widely known theorists such as Mikel Dufrenne in France, Wolfgang Iser in Germany, René Wellek in the United States, and Stefen Morawski in Poland. And now the work deserves a careful rereading in the changing contexts of contemporary aesthetics.

It will be useful to begin with some generalities about Ingarden's work in order to situate the much narrower examination into questions about aesthetic structure that follows. I will turn to the exposition of that doctrine in section 2, reserving a long appendix for the key issue of aesthetic objects, then use section 3 to contrast it with the important alternative views of Monroe Beardsley. Finally, I will attempt to defend Ingarden's position against these particular criticisms and alternatives while leaving the general question about the existence of aesthetic objects open for further reflection. Throughout, my aim will be to draw attention to many of the interesting perspectives Ingarden's work opens up on questions that too often continue to be viewed only in terms of either analytic or hermeneutic approaches." (pp. 274-275, notes omitted)

154. Millière, Raphaël. 2016. "Ingarden’s Combinatorial Analysis of the Realism-Idealism Controversy." In Forme(s) et modes d’être / Form(s) and Modes of Being: L’ontologie de Roman Ingarden / The Ontology of Roman Ingarden, edited by Malherbe, Olivier and Richard, Sébasiten, 67-98. Bern: Peter Lang.

155. Miskiewicz, Wioletta. 1989. "The Work of Art and Aesthetic Categories According to Ingarden." In On the Aesthetics of Roman Ingarden: Interpretations and Assesments, edited by Dziemidok, Bohdan and McCormick, Peter, 53-69. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

156. ———. 2003. "Réalisme gnoseologique contre réalisme sceptique: Ingarden et la réception de Brentano en Pologne." Les Études Philosophiques no. 64:83-97.

157. ———. 2012. "Le concept de situation chez Roman Ingarden et l’idée d’une esthétique phénoménologique." In Roman Ingarden : ontologie, esthétique, fiction, edited by Schaeffer, Jean-Marie and Potocki, Christophe, 69-82. Paris: Archives Contemporaines Editions.

158. ———. 2013. "Les aspects-Interface entre l’homme et l’oeuvre d’art." In Roman Ingarden, la Phénoménologie à la croisée des arts, edited by Limido-Heulot, Patricia, 91-109. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.

159. Mitosek, Zofia. 2012. "Attitude esthétique et fonction poétique : Roman Ingarden face au structuralisme." In Roman Ingarden : ontologie, esthétique, fiction, edited by Schaeffer, Jean-Marie and Potocki, Christophe, 137-146. Paris: Archives Contemporaines Editions.

160. Mitscherling, Jeff. 1985. "Roman Ingarden's "The Literary Work of Art": Exposition and Analyses." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 45:351-382.

"In the Preface to the second edition of The Literary Work of Art, Roman Ingarden calls attention to one of the unfortunate but unavoidable shortcomings of his book: “I am quite conscious of the fact that for literary critics this book would be much more accessible and plastic if I had devoted a series of concrete analyses to individual works of art. But I had to abandon this from the first, since the book would have become unmanageable.” In this paper I present, as briefly as possible, two such concrete analyses. Throughout my analyses, I employ Ingarden’s terminology. For the reader who is unfamiliar with this terminology, and perhaps with Ingarden’s work in general, these analyses must prove difficult to follow, if not entirely incomprehensible. For this reader, I have added, as Part I of this paper, a preliminary exposition of The Literary Work of Art. The reader who is already acquainted with Ingarden’s work may wish to skip this and turn immediately to Part II, in which I present my analyses. In Part III, I conclude with a few remarks on the material presented in both the previous parts." (p. 351)

161. ———. 1997. Roman Ingarden's Ontology and Aesthetics. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.

Foreword by Raymond Klibansky.

162. ———. 2005. "Concretization, Literary Criticism, and the Life of the Literary Work of Art." In Existence, Culture, and Persons: The Ontology of Roman Ingarden, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz, 137-158. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

163. ———. 2010. "Aristotelian Metaphysics and the Distinction between Consciousness and the Real World in Husserl and Ingarden." Polish Journal of Philosophy no. 4:137-156.

164. ———. 2012. "Roman Ingarden’s Aesthetics." Philosophy Compass no. 7:436-447.

165. Mohanty, Jitendra Nath. 1997. "Roman Ingarden's Critique of Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology." In Phenomenology: Between Essentialism and Transcendental Philosophy, 32-45. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

"Roman Ingarden was Husserl's pupil, and remained in lifelong contact with him, continuously questioning Husserl's positions, especially his transcendental idealism. Whereas the members of the Munich and Göttingen schools simply abandoned the master as having deviated from the path of philosophy as a rigorous science, Ingarden continued his efforts to understand the motives and the arguments which led Husserl in that direction. In this relentless effort, he seems to have gone a long way toward understanding, and even agreeing with, Husserl's transcendental-constitutive phenomenology, but he would nevertheless draw a line that he did not want to cross-thereby preserving his own realistic intuitions from being overtaken by what he took to be an idealistic philosophy. While thus seeking to understand Husserl, Ingarden also undertook first his famous work Das Literarische Kunstwerk, and then the large, carefully argued work on the controversy regarding the existence of the world, Die Streit um die Existenz der Welt. One could say that Ingarden's central interest lay in the realism-idealism dispute, and it may also be safely said that no one in the history of philosophy has more carefully analyzed that issue than he. While Das Literarische Kunstwerk is deservedly more famous, Ingarden undertook it as much out of his interest in the subject matter of art as out of the desire to advance the discussion of the realism-idealism issue." (p. 32)

166. Motroshilova, N.V. 1975. "The Problem of the Cognitive Subject as viewed by Husserl and Ingarden." Dialectics and Humanism no. 2:17-31.

167. Mrugalski, Micha. 2018. "From Representation to Enactment: Temporal Perspectives on Literary Objects in East and Central European Structuralism and Ingarden’s Phenomenology." Frontiers of Narrative Studies no. 4:146-171.

168. Murray, Michael. 1989. "Ingarden and the End of Phenomenological Aesthetics." Research in Phenomenology no. 19:171-179.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Roman Ingarden: Selected Bibliography N - Z

Bibliography N - Z

1. Nef, Frédéric. 2012. "Concepts et structures ontologiques de la fiction. Quelques remarques sur l’ontologie et l’esthétique de Roman Ingarden." In Roman Ingarden : ontologie, esthétique, fiction, edited by Schaeffer, Jean-Marie and Potocki, Christophe, 51-59. Paris: Archives Contemporaines Editions.

2. Nyenhuis, Gerald. 1990. "Roman Ingarden’s contribution to the Reading and Analysis of the Literary Text." In Ingardeniana II: New Studies in the Philosophy of Roman Ingarden, edited by Rudnick, Hans H., 95-103. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 30.

3. ———. 2002. "Roman Ingarden's Analysis of the Concepts of Truth in Literature." In The Creative Matrix of the Origins: Dynamisms, Forces and the Shaping of Life. Book II, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 343-358. Dordrecht: Springer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 77.

4. ———. 2004. "Ingarden and the Philologists." In Does the World Exist? Plurisignificant Ciphering of Reality, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 321-326. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 79.

5. Nygaard, Jon. 1975. "An Analysis of Ingarden's Distinction between the Literary Work of Art and Its Related Branches of Art." Dialectics and Humanism no. 2:109-121.

6. Piwowarczyk, Marek. 2014. "“I am a Force” – An Attempt of Ontological Interpretation of Ingarden’s Metaphor." In Substantiality and Causality, edited by Rosiak, Marek and Szatkowski, Miroslaw, 67-89. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

7. Plotka, Witold. 2019. "Twardowski, Ingarden, and Blaustein on Creative Imagination. A Study on Early Phenomenology." Social Imaginaries no. 5:121-141.

Abstract: "The article is a critical elaboration of two phenomenological theories of imagination formulated by Ingarden and Blaustein in their discussion with Twardowski. Ingarden, as well as Blaustein were students of both Twardowski and Husserl, however, they defined imagination in two different contexts: whereas for Ingarden a proper way of analysis of imagination is ontology, for Blaustein imagination is the object of descriptive psychology, connected mainly with an aesthetic experience. As a result, the question of creativity of imagination is described in two different, but intertwined ways. For Ingarden, creative imagination is understood as a noematical structure which generates the imagined object as a purely intentional object. Ingarden’s description expresses the ontological status of the imagined object as ontologically dependent on the act of imagining, and on the content of the imagined object. In his review of Ingarden’s Das literarische Kunstwerk, Blaustein was clear that one has to revise Ingarden’s theory of purely intentional object by adopting it to imaginative intentionality and aesthetic experience. To elaborate Ingarden’s theory of imagination, Blaustein discusses it also with reference to Twardowski. Blaustein claims that Twardowski’s Cartesian differentiation between perceptive, reproductive, and creative imagination is based on a vague criterion, and moreover it does not refer to two key notions of descriptive psychology, i.e., the notion of the representative content, and the intentional object. As a result of his critique, Blaustein limits the concept of creative imagination to ‘fantasy’, understood as secondary imagination."

8. Płotka, Witold. 2019. "From psychology to phenomenology (and back again): A controversy over the method in the school of Twardowski." Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences:1-27.

Abstract: "This paper seeks to define the main trends, arguments and problems regarding the question of method formulated by Twardowski and his students. In this regard, the aim of the paper is twofold. First, I situate Brentano’s project of descriptive psychology within the context of disputes in the school of Twardowski concerning the method of both psychology and phenomenology, arguing that descriptive-psychological analysis was dominant in this respect.

Second, the study explores the notion of eidetic phenomenology, as founded on a methodological procedure, which supposed to guarantee infallibility of its descriptions. To show this, I first reconstruct Brentano’s concept of descriptive psychology, its object, its method and aims. Second, I track the changes and reinterpretations provided by Twardowski in his view of descriptive psychological analysis. Third, I explore Witwicki’s and Bandrowski’s—both early students of Twardowski—discussions of the descriptive approach. I try

to show that the former accepted psychologism, while the latter overcame it by means of logical analysis. Fourth, I suggest that the only student of Twardowski who renounced the Brentanian method was Ingarden, who developed eidetic phenomenology. Finally, I present Blaustein’s—one of the last students of Twardowski—reappraisal of descriptive psychology and his critique of Ingarden’s method. This controversy over the method of descriptive psychology reveals how one can situate Twardowski’s legacy within early phenomenology in Poland."

9. Plotka, Witold. 2020. "A Controversy Over the Existence of Fictional Objects: Husserl and Ingarden on Imagination and Fiction." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 51:33-54.

10. Poli, Roberto. 2010. "Spheres of Being and the Network of Ontological Dependencies." Polish Journal of Philosophy no. 4:171-182.

11. Pollick, G. David. 1989. "The Sculptural Work of Art." In On the Aesthetics of Roman Ingarden: Interpretations and Assesments, edited by Dziemidok, Bohdan and McCormick, Peter, 255-281. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

12. Póltawski, Andrzej. 1972. "Constitutive Phenomenology and Intentional Objects." In The Later Husserl and the Idea of Phenomenology, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 90-95. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 2.

13. ———. 1974. "Consciousness and Action in Ingarden's Thought." In The Phenomenological Realism of the Possible Worlds, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 124-137. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 3.

14. ———. 1975. "Ingarden's Way to Realism and His Idea of Man." Dialectics and Humanism no. 2:65-76.

15. ———. 1978. "The Idea and the Place of Human Creativity in the Philosophy of Roman Ingarden." Dialectics and Humanism no. 5:129-140.

16. ———. 1986. "Roman Ingarden: ein Metaphysiker der Freiheit." Reports on Philosophy (Jagiellonian University) no. 10:43-56.

17. Połtawski, Andrzej. 1994. "Painting and the Structure of Consciousness: Remarks on Roman Ingarden's Theory of Painting." In Kunst und Ontologie. Für Roman Ingarden zum 100. Geburstag, edited by Galewicz, Wlodzimierz, Ströker, Elisabeth and Strózewski, Wladylasw. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"1. Introduction

Classical phenomenologists regarded visual perception as their basic field of investigation and tried to substantiate at least some of their main assertions by analyzing perception. Therefore painting, as a way to create the visual quasi-presence of absent things, seems to be placed in the very centre of the thematic field of phenomenological philosophy, a philosophy which likes to put such a stress on intuition, on seeing.

In consequence, one might wonder why the phenomenologists, while investigating perception and the human senses, did not take full advantage of the analyses of visual arts, and in particular of painting, in order to clarify the nature of consciousness. The reason seems to have been their acceptance of the Cartesian idea of consciousness. In this essay, I shall try to show, starting from a critical analysis of Roman Ingarden’s conception of ‘aspects’ and of their function in our perception of paintings, that an analysis of our contacts with paintings may be of some use in understanding the conscious life of human beings." (p. 59)

18. Póltawski, Andrzej. 2005. "Roman Ingardens Ontologie und die Welt." In Existence, Culture, and Persons. The Ontology of Roman Ingarden, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz, 191-220. Frankfurt am Mein: Ontos Verlag.

19. ———. 2016. "Roman Ingarden et la métaphysique." In Forme(s) et modes d’être / Form(s) and Modes of Being: L’ontologie de Roman Ingarden / The Ontology of Roman Ingarden, edited by Malherbe, Olivier and Richard, Sébasiten, 123-136. Bern: Peter Lang.

20. Porębski, Czeslaw. 2019. Lectures on Polish Value Theory. Leiden: Brill - Rodopi.

Lecture 5 Ingarden: Aesthetics and Phenomenological Value Theory, pp. 55-72.

"1 Art and Philosophy

Of the many works of Ingarden in which axiological motifs appear, his aesthetic writings, especially his analyses of various kinds of art, deserve our notice first. Ingarden was very eager to apprehend and describe not only the characteristics common to all works of art but also the special features of the particular kinds of art, of works of literature, music, painting, architecture, etc.

These aesthetic writings were very closely related to Ingarden’s other theoretical pursuits, his investigations into ontology, axiology, philosophical anthropology and theory of culture. We shall sketch these relations briefly at the end of this chapter.

We begin with the example of Ingarden’s remarks concerning works of architecture. This will allow us to introduce the main ideas of Ingarden’s “general theory of works of art”, and then to pass on to the relations between Ingarden’s aesthetics and his ontology, axiology, anthropology, etc." (p. 55)

21. Potocki, Christophe. 2012. "L’épreuve ontologique de la traduction. Traduction de l’oeuvre d’art littéraire et de l’oeuvre scientifique selon Roman Ingarden." In Roman Ingarden : ontologie, esthétique, fiction, edited by Schaeffer, Jean-Marie and Potocki, Christophe, 157-173. Paris: Archives Contemporaines Editions.

22. Pouivet, Roger. 2012. "Défendre l’ontologie de l’art avec Ingarden." In Roman Ingarden : ontologie, esthétique, fiction, edited by Schaeffer, Jean-Marie and Potocki, Christophe, 61-68. Paris: Archives Contemporaines Editions.

23. ———. 2013. "L’oeuvre d’art est-elle vraiment un objet intentionnel comme le pensait Roman Ingarden ?" In Roman Ingarden, la Phénoménologie à la croisée des arts, edited by Limido-Heulot, Patricia, 143-157. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.

24. Preziuso, Claudia. 2013. "Fenomenologia dei valori. Roman Ingarden tra estetica ed etica." Atti dell'Accademia di Scienze Morali e Politiche (Napoli):69-88.

25. Przybysz, Piotr. 1993. "Polish Discussions about Reism." In Possible Ontologies, edited by Augustynek, Zdzislaw and Jacek, Jadacki, 179-193. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

26. Pytlak, Andrzej. 1989. "On Ingarden’s Conception of the Musical Composition." In On the Aesthetics of Roman Ingarden: Interpretations and Assesments, edited by Dziemidok, Bohdan and McCormick, Peter, 233-254. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

27. Reese, William. 1965. "Phenomenology and Metaphysics." The Review of Metaphysics no. 19:103-114.

28. Ricci, Gabriel R. 2010. "Husserl’s assistants: Phenomenology reconstituted." History of European Ideas no. 36:419-426.

Abstract: "Edmund Husserl devoted much attention to the analysis of internal time consciousness beginning as early as the turn of the twentieth-century. His various notes and lectures were left unorganized and unpublished until Husserl’s capable assistants were given the responsibility of organizing his work for publication. This paper provides a social and philosophical account of the redaction of Husserl’s materials on time consciousness as it involved the activity of his famous assistants Edith Stein, Roman Ingarden and Martin Heidegger. Special attention is given to the way that both Stein and Heidegger appropriated Husserl’s work and at the same time challenged fundamental elements of the master’s phenomenology."

29. Richard, Sébastien. 2016. "Y a-t-il une ontologie existentielle ? Sur l’architecture ontologique d’Ingarden." In Forme(s) et modes d’être / Form(s) and Modes of Being: L’ontologie de Roman Ingarden / The Ontology of Roman Ingarden, edited by Malherbe, Olivier and Richard, Sébasiten, 25-52. Bern: Peter Lang.

30. Richter, Sandra. 2010. A History of Poetics: German Scholary Aesthetics and Poetics in International Context, 1770-1960. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

With Bibliogaphies by Anja Zenk · Jasmin Azazmah · Eva Jost · Sandra Richter.

Chapter 10. Phenomenological and Ontological Poetics: Edmund Husserl and Roman Ingarden (1931), pp. 211-218.

31. Rieser, Max. 1971. "Roman Ingarden and His Time." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism no. 29:443-452.

32. ———. 1975. "Rieser - The Philosophy of Roman Ingarden in a Critical Light." Dialectics and Humanism no. 2:89-94.

33. Riska, Augustin. 1974. "The 'a Priori' in Ingarden's Theory of Meaning." In The Phenomenological Realism of the Possible Worlds, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 138-146. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 3.

34. ———. 1976. "Language and Logic in the Work of Roman Ingarden." In Ingardeniana. A Spectrum of Specialized Studies Establishing the Field of Research, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 187-217. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 4.

35. Rosiak, Marek. 2007. "Existential Analysis in Roman Ingarden's Ontology." Forum Philosophicum: International Journal of Philosophy no. 12:119-130.

Abstract: "Ingarden conceives ontology as a philosophia prima, which deals with being as purely possible (it complies with the essentialistic tradition of Duns Scotus and Wolff). It is an intuitive (anschaulich) and a priori analysis of the content of the relevant ideas (rein apriorische Analyse der Ideengehalte). It consists of three parts: existential, formal and material ontology. Existential ontology deals with the possible modes of existence (Seinsweise). Problems of factual existence pertain to metaphysics, which is a separate branch of theoretical philosophy, based on ontology."

36. ———. 2009. "Formal and Existential Analysis of Subject and Properties." In Essays in Logic and Ontology, edited by Malinowski, Jacek and Pietrsuzczack, Andrzej, 285-299. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Abstract: "The paper is a contribution to the object ontology. The general approach assumed in the investigation is that of Roman Ingarden's The Controversy Over the Existence of the World where an object is the subject-of-properties. The analysis of the form and the mode of existence of properties leads to the rejection of both negative and general properties. Each property is an individual qualitative moment of a particular object. Its form reveals existential heteronomy: the quality of the property is not immanent but refers to the object. The subject of properties has not its own qualitative content: its form is just the internal causality establishing the unity of an object. An object is not causally isolated from other objects, but external causation differs from internal either by being ramified in case of the composition and destruction of an object or reciprocal in case of interaction between coexisting objects."

37. Rozik, Eli. 2006. "Ingarden s Notion of 'Stage-Play'." Maske und Kothurn:7-15.

38. Rudnick, Hans H. 1974. "Roman Ingarden's Aesthetics of Literature." Colloquia Germanica no. 8:1-14.

39. ———. 1976. "Roman Ingarden's Literary Theory." In Ingardeniana. A Spectrum of Specialized Studies Establishing the Field of Research, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 105-119. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 4.

40. ———. 1981. "The Historicity of the Literary Work of Art: An Ingardenian Perspective." Comparative Literature Studies no. 18:251-259.

41. ———. 1982. "The Concretization of Meaning: Roman Ingarden." Semiotica no. 41:247-255.

42. ———, ed. 1990. Ingardeniana II: New Studies in the Philosophy of Roman Ingarden. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 30.

Table of Contents: The Theme: A.-T. Tymieniecka: Roman Ingarden's Timeless Contribution to Philosophy IX; Editor's Introduction XV; Acknowledgments XVII;

Part I: Tymieniecka and the Philosophy of Roman Ingarden Ann-Teresa Tymieniecka: Roman Ingarden's Philosophical Legacy and My Departure from It: The Creative Freedom of the Possible Worlds 3; Jadwiga S. Smith: A New Phenomenology: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka's Departure from Husser! and Ingarden 25; Knut Hanneborg: Husserl, Ingarden, and Tymieniecka 37;

Part II: Ingarden and Literary Theory

Jozef Sivak: Reduction phénoménologique et intuition: A propos du rapport Husserl-Ingarden 51; Nadia Delle Site: The Aesthetic Theory of Ingarden and Its Philosophical Implications 71; Zhang Jin-Yan: The New Criticism and Ingarden's Phenomenological Theory of Literature 85; Gerald Nyenhuis: Roman Ingarden's Contribution to the Reading and Analysis of the Literary Text 95;

Part III: The Applicability of Ingarden's Theory

Walter Biemel: Kritische Bemerkungen zu Ingardens Deutung des Bildes 107; Eugene F. Kaelin: The Debate Over Stratification Within Aesthetic Objects 123; You Zheng Li: Ingarden's "Strata-Layers" Theory and the Structural Analysis of the Ancient Chinese Kunqu Opera 139; Joseph P. Strelka: Ingarden's "Points of Indeterminateness": A Consideration of Their Practical Application to Literary Criticism 157; Hans H. Rudnick: Roman Ingarden and the Venus of Milo 171;

PART IV: Ingarden and the Nature of the Literary Work of Art

Jan Wolenski: The Verifiability Principle: Variations on Ingarden's Criticism 183; Wlodimierz Galewicz: The Aesthetic Object and the Work of Art: Reflections on Ingarden's Theory of Aesthetic Judgment 193; Janina Makota: Roman Ingarden's Idea of Relatively Isolated Systems 211;

Part V: Bibliography

Hans H. Rudnick and Jolanta W. Wawrzycka: Roman Ingarden: An International Bibliography (1915-1989) 225;

Index of Names 297-299.

43. ———. 1990. "Roman Ingarden and the Venus of Milo." In Ingardeniana II: New Studies in the Philosophy of Roman Ingarden, edited by Rudnick, Hans H., 171-179. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 30.

44. Ruttkowski, Wolfgang. 2007. Essays on Aesthetics, Poetics and Terminology of Literary Studies. München: Grin Verlag.

Essay I: Stratum, structure, and genre (1973) pp. 4-30.

"The concept of genre can be satisfactorily explained only in comparison with the concepts of stratum and structure. Proceeding from this conviction we shall try here to establish a demarcation of these often used terms and at the same time prove their interdependence." (p. 4)

Essay III: The main differences between Roman Ingarden's and Nicolai Hartmann's Strata systems (1990) pp. 31-48.

"Although both designed strata-models for various kinds of art and especially for literature, the philosophers Nicolai Hartmann and Roman Ingarden never entered into any kind of dialogue. Also in secondary literature there is no exact comparison of their systems to be found.

For that reason, the two strata systems are compared here for the first time and their respective advantages and deficiencies are being pointed out.

Amongst other things. the following topics are being discussed: 1. In what way Hartmann's "Real Foreground" ("Realer Vordergrund") is more specifically subdivided in Ingarden's system. - 2. How, on the other hand. Ingarden's "Stratum of Depicted Objects" ("Schicht der dargestellten Gegenstãndlichkeiten") was more thoroughly subdivided by Hartmann. 3. Why there cannot be found in Hartmann's system a corresponding stratum for Ingarden's ''Stratum of Schematized Aspects" ("Schicht der schematischen Ansichten") - and 4. Why Hartmann's two strata of the Treat Background" (''Irrealer Hintergrund") are consolidated by Ingarden and expressly not seen as a stratum." (p. 31)

45. ———. 2007. The Main Differences between Roman Ingarden’s and Nicolai Hartmann’s Strata-Systems. München: Grin Verlag.

Abstract: "Although both designed strata-models for various kinds of art and especially for literature, the philosophers Nicolai Hartmann and Roman Ingarden never entered into any kind of dialogue. Also in secondary literature there is no exact comparison of their systems to be found.

For that reason, the two strata systems are compared here for the first time and their respective advantages and deficiencies are being pointed out.

Amongst other things, the following topics are being discussed: 1. In what way Hartmann's "Real Foreground" ("Realer Vordergrund") is more specifically subdivided in Ingarden's system, - 2. How, on the other hand, Ingarden's "Stratum of Depicted Objects" ("Schicht der dargestellten Gegenständlichkeiten") was more thoroughly subdivided by Hartmann, - 3. Why there cannot be found in Hartmann's system a corresponding stratum for Ingarden's "Stratum of Schematized Aspects" ("Schicht der schematischen Ansichten") - and 4. Why Hartmann's two strata of the "Irreal Background" ("Irrealer Hintergrund") are consolidated by Ingarden and expressly not seen as a stratum."

46. Ryle, Gilbert. 1927. "Review of 'Essentiale Fragen: Ein Beitrag zum Problem des Wesens' by Roman Ingarden." Mind no. 36:366-370.

Reprinted in: The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 4, 1973, pp. 72-75.

47. Rynkiewicz, Kazimierz. 2008. Zwischen Realismus und Idealismus. Ingardens Überwindung des transzendentalen Idealismus Husserls. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

48. ———. 2008. "Eine Skizze der Ontologie der Welt und des Menschen bei Wittgenstein und Ingarden." Forum Philosophicum: International Journal of Philosophy no. 13:289-308.

Abstract: "Ziel des vorliegenden Aufsatzes ist es, die Existenz von eventuellen Berührungspunkten zwischen Wittgenstein und Ingarden nachzuweisen. Nach einer kurzen Einführung wird anfangs der Hintergrund der Analyse des Problems formuliert. Darauf hin werden die Positionen Wittgensteins Ontologie mit wenigen Begriffen und Ingardens dreistufige Ontologie jeweils skizzenhaft dargestellt und kritisch auf das Vorhandensein von gemeinsamen Grundlinien geprüft. Als Gesichtspunkte gelten dabei folgende Begriffe: Ontologie, Welt und Mensch, Sprache und Ästhetik. Abschließend werden die charakteristischen Merkmale von Berührungspunkten genannt."

49. Sancipriano, Mario. 1976. "Ingarden et le 'vrai' Bergsonisme." In Ingardeniana. A Spectrum of Specialized Studies Establishing the Field of Research, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 141-148. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 4.

50. Schaeffer, Jean-Marie. 2012. "L’esthétique d’Ingarden aujourd’hui : une mise en perspective." In Roman Ingarden : ontologie, esthétique, fiction, edited by Schaeffer, Jean-Marie and Potocki, Christophe, 83-93. Paris: Archives Contemporaines Editions.

51. Schaeffer, Jean-Marie, and Potocki, Christophe, eds. 2012. Roman Ingarden : ontologie, esthétique, fiction. Paris: Archives Contemporaines Editions.

Sommaire: Jean-Marie Schaeffer: Avant-propos 1; Christophe Potocki : Introduction 5;

Esthétique, ontologie, phénoménologie

Wladislaw Strózowski : lngarden's Ontology and its Role in his Aesthetics 17; Patricia Limido-Heulot : De l'objet intentionnel à l'objet noématique et retour. Une ambiguïté de l'esthétique d'Ingarden 37; Frédéric Nef : Concepts et structure ontologiques de la fiction. Quelques remarques sur l'ontologie et l'esthétique de Roman Ingarden 51; Roger Pouivet : Défendre l'ontologie de l'art avec Ingarden 61; Wioletta Miskiewicz : Le concept de situation chez Roman Ingarden et l'idée d'une esthétique phénoménologique 69; Jean-Marie Schaeffer : L'esthétique d'lngarden aujourd'hui: une mise en perspective 83;

L'oeuvre d'art littéraire

Ionan Vultur Structure et concrétisation dans l'esthétique d' Ingarden 97;

Brian Hill : L'oeuvre littéraire comme construction. Réflexions à partir de Roman lngarden 109; Danuta Ulicka : Time and Duration in lngarden's Concept of the Cognition of the Literary Work of Art. On the Bergsonian Origins of the Narrative Concept of Understanding 119; Zofia Mitosek : Attitude esthétique et fonction poétique : Roman lngarden face au structuralisme 137; Rolf Fieguth : Les« aspects schématisés» chez Baudelaire et Mallarmé. Problèmes et perspectives d'un concept ingardenien 147; Christophe Potocki : L'épreuve ontologique de la traduction. Traduction de l'oeuvrc d'art littéraire et de l'oeuvre scientifique selon Roman Ingarden 157;

Musique, peinture, cinéma

Esteba Buch: Relire lngarden : l'ontologie des oeuvres musicales, entre fictions et montagnes 177; Pawel Taranczewski : La conception de la peinture de Roman Ingarden et la question du caractère technique du tableau 195; Hanna Konicka : « Quelques remarques sur l'art cinématographique» (1947) de Roman lngarden et leur portée actuelle 209:

Valeurs

Karl Tarnowski : Ingarden et le problème des valeurs 221; Edward Swiderski : Roman lngarden : l'ontologie de la responsabilité 231;

Bibliographie 245; Présentation des auteurs 247.

52. Schopper, Werner. 1974. Das Seiende und der Gegenstand: zur Ontologie Roman Ingardens. München: Berchmanskolleg Verlag.

53. Seifert, Joseph. 1986. "Roman Ingarden' Realism and the Motives that Led Husserl to Adopt Transcendental Idealism: critical reflections on the importance and limits of Roman Ingarden's critique of Husserl's transcendental phenomenology." Reports on Philosophy (Jagiellonian University) no. 10:27-42.

54. Seifert, Joseph, and Smith, Barry. 1994. "The Truth about Fiction." In Kunst und Ontologie. Für Roman Ingarden zum 100. Geburstag, edited by Galewicz, Wlodzimierz, Ströker, Elisabeth and Strózewski, Wladylasw, 97-118. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"We recall that according to Ingarden each literary work of art manifests four strata: the stratum of word sounds and sound-complexes; the stratum of meaning-units or of word-meanings and higher-order meaning complexes (the meanings of sentences, etc.); the stratum of represented objectivities (made up of the characters, actions, moods, scenes, etc. which are represented, for example, in a novel); and the stratum of schematized aspects (made up of the sequences of adumbrations in which the represented objectivities are given to the reader).(2(

Our topic here is Ingarden’s account of sentence-meanings, and more precisely his theory of quasi-judgments."

(...)

"5. Concluding remarks

Ingarden’s discovery that there are quasi-judgments, quasi-questions, quasi-wishes, etc., is a very important one for the understanding of literature, and his reflections on apparent judgments, too, represent a philosophical discovery of note. But his views on these matters can nonetheless be criticized, and part of this criticism touches upon the theory of stratification itself; for it appears that an adequate theory of he structure of the literary work must be more complex and subtle than the theory which Ingarden defends. Before concluding, however, it will be worth our while to consider how Ingarden might respond to the charges levied against him in the above, for this will reveal that there are in fact two distinct approaches to literature, only one of which has been properly acknowledged by Ingarden himself." (pp. 116-117)

(2) See Roman Ingarden. The Literary Work of Art, transl. and introd. by George G. Grabowicz (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973).

55. Seron, Denis. 2016. "La violation du tiers exclu comme critère d’intentionnalité." In Forme(s) et modes d’être / Form(s) and Modes of Being: L’ontologie de Roman Ingarden / The Ontology of Roman Ingarden, edited by Malherbe, Olivier and Richard, Sébasiten, 197-210. Bern: Peter Lang.

56. Shusterman, Richard. 1987. "Ingarden, Inscription and Literary Ontology." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 2:103-119.

Reprinted in: On the Aesthetics of Roman Ingarden: Interpretations and Assessments.

57. Simons, Peter M. 1986. "Categories and Ways of Being." Reports on Philosophy (Jagiellonian University) no. 10:89-104.

Reprinted in: Peter Simons, Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski. Selected Essays, Dodrecht: Kluwer, 1992, pp. 377-394.

"Ingarden's most substantial contribution to philosophy was his ontology. Ontology, the science of being as being, was conceived in Plato's wrestling with the Eleatics' to on. Its birth to Aristotle was not without complications for it seemed a single science should have a single genus as object, yet Aristotle denied that to on formed a genus. Given the role Aristotle gives to genera in definition, this is not surprising, but the outcome is that 'to be' is not said according to one genus, and hence has several meanings. Can there then be a science of being as being? Aristotle's solution lay in the idea that all these meanings revolved around the central one of to be said of substances. However, not all philosophers shared Aristotle's denial of a single all-embracing class of objects. Plotinus regarded `ti', 'something', as denoting a highest genus. Bolzano, Brentano, Meinong and Husserl all used univocal term: like 'etwas' and 'Gegenstand' to mark such a class, while Quine has insisted that 'there are' is univocally rendered by the existential quantifier. Ingarden on the other hand follows Aristotle.

The question of the univocity or multivocity of be is still one of the first questions of ontology. In this paper I use historical comparisons to point to where a solution to the problem may lie. Ingarden's account of the different ways or modes of being (Seinsweisen, modi essendi) is a most important philosophical contribution to the problem. By chance 1985 marks not only the fifteenth anniversary of Ingarden's death but also the official 700th anniversary of the birth of the greatest of the late scholastics, William of Ockham, who is also celebrated here. My motive is however primarily systematic: I think be is indeed analogically ambiguous, though for different reasons than Aristotle or Ingarden. (1) But to be precise about what this mean involves comparisons in which one looks for help and enlightenment to the great minds of the past." (pp. 377-378)

(1) Cf. my Class, Mass and Mereology, "History and Philosophy of Logic" 4 (1983, 157-80, also Ch. 4 of my book Parts. A Study in Ontology, 1987).

58. ———. 1988. "Computer Composition and Works of Music: Variation on A Theme of Ingarden." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 19:141-154.

59. ———. 1994. "Strata in Ingarden's Ontology." In Kunst und Ontologie. Für Roman Ingarden zum 100. Geburstag, edited by Galewicz, Wlodzimierz, Ströker, Elisabeth and Strózewski, Wladylasw. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"Abstract

This paper examines the concept of stratum as employed by Ingarden in his ontological investigations of works of art. Attention is focussed on literary works, which are said to have four strata, two belonging to language itself. I find Ingarden's stratified account of language correct in principle but defective in execution. In the ontology of literary works, the stratum of schematized aspects is particularly problematic, and I interpret these as complex meanings, correlated with another element of the work not given sufficient recognition by Ingarden: the Reader. I suggest the terminology of strata for anworks in general is dispensable." (p. 119)

60. ———. 2005. "Ingarden and the Ontology of Dependence." In Existence, Culture, and Persons. The Ontology of Roman Ingarden, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz, 39-53. Frankfurt am Mein: Ontos Verlag.

61. ———. 2016. "Ingarden on Causation." In Forme(s) et modes d’être / Form(s) and Modes of Being: L’ontologie de Roman Ingarden / The Ontology of Roman Ingarden, edited by Malherbe, Olivier and Richard, Sébasiten, 228-242. Bern: Peter Lang.

62. Sivak, Jozef. 1990. "Réduction phénoménologique et intuition. A propos du rapport Husserl-Ingarden." In Ingardeniana II: New Studies in the Philosophy of Roman Ingarden, edited by Rudnick, Hans H., 51-69. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 30.

63. Skwarczyńska, Stefania. 1979. "Roman Ingarden and Literary Genres." In Language, Literature and Meaning. Vol. 1, edited by Odmark, John, 391-467. Amsterdam: Benjamins Press.

English translation by Elias J. Schwartz and Valentine Urbanek.

"Genology—the theory of literary genres—did not lie at the center of Roman Ingarden's scholarly interests, nor did its object have for him a primary character; it can be said that genology was derivative in the most general sense, in his theoretical-literary considerations, and that these considerations in turn resulted from his philosophical inquiries—for philosophy was the principle domain of Roman Ingarden’s scientific work. Thus his views on literary genres crystallized only on the third descending rung of successively emerging levels of investigation.

The consequences of this dual derivativeness of genological problems in Ingarden's research are of two types: those relating to his own scientific achievements, and those relating to the reception of his genological pronouncements in the scientific community. In regard to his own scientific achievements, this derivativeness expressed itself in the fact that genology did not appear as a complete unit,— though it would have been easy to derive such a unit by following the path of Ingarden’s particular statements, his theses, and his manner of reasoning; above all, this refers to his later scientific work, that begun after the Second World War, because during the war such a unit was programmed only—and that merely in a then projected work entitled: Poetyka, Teoria literatury artystycznej ("Poetics, The Theory of Artistic Literature"). In regard to the reception of Ingarden’s views in the world of science, the dual derivativeness of genological problems had as its consequence that his contribution to genology attracted only relatively slight attention from other theoreticians of literature, in spite of the fact that its originality, at times, provoked discussions. Thus there arose, as a result, a general inability to appreciate this contribution." (pp. 391-392, note omitted)

64. Smith, Barry. 1975. "The Ontogenesis of Mathematical Objects." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 6:91-101.

65. ———. 1976. "Historicity, Value and Mathematics." In Ingardeniana. A Spectrum of Specialized Studies Establishing the Field of Research, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 219-239. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 4.

66. ———. 1978. "An Essay in Formal Ontology." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 6:39-62.

"The present paper may be conceived both as a working introduction to certain aspects of the ontological theory put forward by the Polish phenomenologist Roman Ingarden in his mammoth treatise Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt, (1) and also as a development of Ingarden’s views in the light of current tendencies in analytic philosophical logic. The central theme of the paper – though one which does not become apparent until very near the end – is the ontological analysis of states of affairs, and in particular of negative states of affairs, a topic which is of some specific nterest in forming a connecting link between the Brentano-Meinong-Husserl tradition to which Ingarden belonged, and the (Frege)-Russell-Wittgenstein tradition which gave rise to modern philosophical logic." (p. 39)

(1) (Hereafter referred to as StEW.) Ingarden completed two volumes of this work before his death in 1970, and a further volume has since been compiled from manuscripts. Vol. I, Existentialontologie 1964; Vol. II, Formalontologie, Part 1, Form und Wesen, Part 2,

Welt und Bewußtsein, 1965; Vol. III, Über die kausale Struktur der realen Welt, 1974; all published by Niemeyer, Tübingen. For a more general account of Ingarden's project see G. Küng, “Zum Lebenswerk von Roman Ingarden. Ontologie, Erkenntnistheorie und Metaphysik”, in Die Münchener Phänomenologie, ed. H. Kuhn et al., Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1975, pp. 158–73.

67. ———. 1979. "Roman Ingarden: Ontological Foundations for Literary Theory." In Language, Literature and Meaning, edited by Odmark, John, 373-390. Amsterdam: Benjamins Press.

68. ———. 1979. "On Making Sense of Ingarden." In Crisis of Aesthetics, edited by Golaszewska, Maria, 283-289. Cracow: Jagiellonian University.

69. ———. 1980. "Ingarden versus Meinong on the Logic of Fiction." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 41:93-105.

70. ———. 1987. "The Ontology of Epistemology." Reports on Philosophy (Jagiellonian University) no. 11:57-66.

71. ———. 1988. "Practices of Art." In Practical Knowledge. Outlines of a Theory of Traditions and Skills, edited by Nyiri, J. C. and Smith, Barry, 172-209. London: Croom Helm.

72. ———. 1991. "A Theory of Drama and Theatre: A Continuing Investigation of the Aesthetics of Roman Ingarden." In Ingardeniana III: Roman Ingarden's Aesthetics in a New Key and the Independent Approaches of Others: the Performing Arts, the Fine Arts, and Literature, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 3-62. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 33.

73. Smith, David Woodruff. 2015. "On Basic Modes of Being: Metametaphysical Reflections in Light of Whitehead, Husserl, Ingarden, Hintikka." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 91:217-242.

Abstract: "Here I should like to explore a conception of ontological structure that has but few precedents. The idea is that certain structures are basic in the formation of the world, deep structures that define basic modes of being for things in the world, modes that make a thing the thing it is. We might think of this deep structure of a thing as an algorithmic formation of the thing itself. I'll develop a variation on Whitehead's model of "concrescence," or "becoming" a concrete entity, drawing on Husserl's conceptions of dependence, dependent parts, and manifolds, and Ingarden's conception of modes of being. In the end I'll apply this model of concrescence to Husserl's analysis of the deep structure of consciousness, including time consciousness and body consciousness. Into this model I'll draw Hintikka's conception of intentional modalities, including perceptual possibility, to bring out a structure of modes-of-being for a conscious visual experience."

74. Smith, Jadwiga S. 2007. "Ontology and Epistemology of Time in the Stage Play: Revisiting Roman Ingarden’s The Literary Work of Art and The Cognition of Literary Work of Art." In Temporality in Life as Seen Through Literature: Contributions to Phenomenology of Life edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 85-93.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 86.

75. Smoje, Duijka. 1990. " Qu’est-ce qu’une œuvre musicale ? Actualité de la pensée musicale de Roman Ingarden." In XIth International Congress in Aesthetics, Nottingham 1988: Proceedings, edited by Woodfield, Richard, 198-202. Nottingham: Nottingham Polytechnic Press.

76. Sodeika, Thomas. 1989. "The Ingarden-Husserl Controversy: the Methodological Status of Consciousness in Phenomenology and the Limits of the Human Condition." In Man Within His Life-World: Contributions to Phenomenology by Scholars from East-Central Europe, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 209-221. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 27.

77. Spiegelberg, Herbert. 1982. The Phenomenological Movement. A Historical Introduction. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Third revised edition; first edition 1960; second edition 1965.

78. Steinbach, Heribert. 1968. "Ist Ontologie als Phänemonologie möglich? Kritische Betrachtungen zu Ingardens Existentialontologie." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 22:78-100.

79. Strelka, Joseph P. 1990. "Roman Ingarden’s “Points of Indeterminateness”: a Consideration of their Practical Application to Literary Criticism." In Ingardeniana II: New Studies in the Philosophy of Roman Ingarden, edited by Rudnick, Hans H., 157-169. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 30.

80. Ströker, Elisabeth. 1994. "Fiktive Welt im literarischen Kunstwerk. Zu einer Kontroverse zwischen Roman Ingarden und Käte Hamburger." In Kunst und Ontologie. Für Roman Ingarden zum 100. Geburstag, edited by Galewicz, Wlodzimierz, Ströker, Elisabeth and Strózewski, Wladylasw, 141-165. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

81. Strózewski, Ladislao. 2012. "Ingarden’s Ontology and its Role in his Aesthetics." In Roman Ingarden : ontologie, esthétique, fiction, edited by Schaeffer, Jean-Marie and Potocki, Christophe, 17-35. Paris: Archives Contemporaines Editions.

82. Strózewski, Wladylasw. 1963. "Gli studi di estetica di Roman Ingarden." Rivista di Estetica no. 8:131-142.

83. ———. 1976. "Man and Value in Ingarden's Thought." In The Crisis of Culture. Steps to Reopen the Phenomenological Investigation of Man, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 109-123. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 5.

84. ———. 1981. "On the Truthfulness of the Work of Art." The Review of Metaphysics no. 35:251-273.

85. ———. 1988. "Roman Ingarden's Aesthetic Program." Aletheia: an Internation Journal of Philosophy no. 4:226-234.

Translated by Damian Fedoryka.

86. Strózewski, Wladyslaw. 1994. "Art and Participation." In Kunst und Ontologie. Für Roman Ingarden zum 100. Geburstag, edited by Galewicz, Wlodzimierz, Ströker, Elisabeth and Strózewski, Wladylasw, 167-181. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"The aim of this article is an attempt at justification of the thesis that the concept — and the connected with it theory — of participation, methexis, is one of the “keys” necessary to render the mystery of art. It is known how many conceptions have grown around this concept in the history of philosophy. It is also known how important they are for Platonic and Neo-Platonic thought and what role the theory of participation plays in Thomas Aquinas’ metaphysics. The concept of participation, which was almost forgotten in modern philosophy, has revived in our times, not only in contemporary Thomism, but also in the works of such thinkers as L. Lavelle, G. Marcel, M. Buber, Simone Weil. There it appeared not only in metaphysics, but also in the philosophy of man and society. We should also remember that one chapter of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla’s work The Acting Person is entitled “An Outline of the Theory of Participation”." (pp. 167-168)

(...)

"According to Roman Ingarden’s theory, each work of art is existentially dependent on the real object in which it is fixed (recorded). In different kinds of art it is done in different ways: it is even suggested that the way of this recording should become a criterion for classification of fine arts. Ingarden calls the relation of an intentional object and, therefore, of each work of art, to its material basis with the name “founding”. Thus, an image is founded in a painting, an architectonic work — in spatial arrangement of material blocks, a musical or literary work — in the conventional records (e.g., manuscript, print), magnetic tape, etc.

Accepting Ingarden’s theory we can, however, pose a question what the essence of this “founding” of a work of art in its existential foundation consists in: in particular — what this work of art actually owes to this existential foundation, and whether the existential foundation exerts any influence on the work of art, and if so, then what this influence consists in...

The hypothesis which I wish to set up in connection with these questions makes use of the concept of participation. " (p. 170)

87. Strózewski, Wladylasw. 2008. "On Modes of Existence (a Review of Selected Positions)." Dialogue and Universalism no. 18:83-104.

Abstract: "Problems connected with the questions of: being-nonbeing, existence, modes of existence and alike, belong to the basic and most important in metaphysics. The article discusses some answers to the aforementioned issues, as proposed by the ancient philosophers, St Thomas Aquinas, R. Ingarden and A.N. Whitehead. In the Appendix some remarks are made on Aristotle’s and S. Thomas’ theory of act and potency."

88. ———. 2008. "Roman Ingarden’s Philosophy of Time." Dialogue and Universalism no. 18:97-116.

Abstract: "In his classic essay Man and Time, Roman Ingarden outlines two contradictory experiences of time. The paper presents and investigates them."

89. ———. 2010. "Roman Ingarden: Life and Philosophy." Polish Journal of Philosophy no. 4:11-34.

Abstract: "My paper is devoted to the most important and fundamental issues of Roman Ingarden’s philosophy, including the contention between idealism and realism, the controversy between objectivism and subjectivism in the area of axiology, the problem of validity of cognition, and the structure and role of language. I argue for the claim that Ingarden solved several specific philosophical problems (like, for instance, the issue of causality, theory of systems, etc.) and he also frequently shed new light on various issues that had been discussed throughout the history of philosophy, showing how important and up to date they were. Moreover, it is worthy to say that his philosophy is marked by the precise and subtle character of the analyses and the range of the examined problems. It is the whole in which every specific problem finds a proper place for itself."

90. Sweeney, R. D. 1975. "Axiology in Scheler and Ingarden and the Question of Dialectics." Dialectics and Humanism no. 3:91-97.

91. Swiderski, Edward M. 1975. "Some Salient Features of Ingarden's Ontology." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 2:81-90.

"Ingarden conceived and developed his ontology on the basis of the assumed existence of certain ideal entities, namely pure ideal qualities and Ideas. An examination of these entities provides, according to him, a knowledge of the corresponding individual essences of individual objects. Although his starting point in this matter reproduces Husserl's original conceptions, what he found in Husserl's writings on the subject proved finally to be neither sufficient nor clear. For example, with respect to the problem of the existence and nature of Ideas, Ingarden wrote in the second volume of the Controversy over the Existence of the World: "Actually, what he gave us, his students, in this matter was solely the conviction that a rejection of the existence of Ideas-in some special manner-must lead to contradictions". (1) At the same time, the associated problem of the essences of individual objects was felt, not only by Ingarden, but Hering and Spiegelberg as well, (2) to have been inadequately dealt with by Husserl in Ideas I, and it became, consequently, a subject of their own extensive investigations. But what was certainly of value in Husserl, as far as the foundations of ontology were concerned, was his discussion in the Logical Investigations of the a priori, i.e., of the ideal necessities governing the formal and material aspects of objects. (3) It is rather this side of Husserl's work which prompted Ingarden to inquire further into the nature of ideal entities, for they, according to him, are the foundations of the ideal necessities regulating the determinations and the structures of objects.

Accordingly, there are several related subjects to be considered. First, it should be seen how Ingarden conceives objects and their structures in general. This discussion will help clarify the problem whether Ingarden's theory of objects owes its content to the theory of ideal entities, or whether the reverse is true, that the theory of Ideas, etc., is fashioned after the requirements of the theory of objects. The possibility that they might be independent theories is excluded because Ideas, etc., are supposed to furnish a certain kind of knowledge about all sorts of entities whose structures, on the other hand, are already described, in a preliminary general way, by the theory of objects. Second, it should be clarified whether, and if so in what sense, the structures of objects themselves reflect or indeed embody necessary connections of an ideal character. This calls for an analysis of the notions of "concretion" and "moment" and of their relation to ideal entities. Finally, after these discussions, it will be possible to deal with the central task of ontology according to Ingarden, namely with the analysis of Ideas as the proper field of investigations in ontology."

(1) Ingarden, Roman: Spór o istnienie swiata (The Controversy over the Existence of the World) vol. 1, 2nd rev. ed., Warsaw: PWN 1961, p. 63; German ed.: Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt, vol. II/1, Tubingen; Niemeyer, 1965, p. 229.

(2) Hering, Jean: "Bemerkungen über das Wesen, die Wesenheit und die Idee", Jahrbuch fur Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, vol. 4, Halle 1921; Spiegelberg, Herbert: "Uber das Wesen der Ideen", op. cit., vol. 11, Halle, 1930.

(3) Cf. especially Investigation III: "On the theory of wholes and parts" in Logical Investigations, trans.: J. N. Findlay, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1970.

92. ———. 1987. "Ingarden's Puzzling Ontology - Metaphysics Distinction." Reports on Philosophy (Jagiellonian University) no. 11:67-85.

"In this paper I will examine the distinction as well as the connection Ingarden drew between ontology and metaphysics. I want to show that the distinction is problematic and that therefore the connection remains nebulous. The reason Ingarden gives for the distinction is that a philosopher needs to be clear about what in general, for example, a world is and what sorts of things can in general "furnish" the world before he can claim that the factual world, as apprehended in ordinary and scientific experience, is "really" thus and so. Now Ingarden had comparatively little to say about the connection of ontology to metaphysics. However, speaking in his name it seems plausible to envisage a negative and a positive connection. On the negative side, as it cannot be merely assumed that ontology has some special purchase on the factual world, it may be that no, so to speak, "metaphysical commitment" to what is "really real" would be justifiable on ontological grounds. On the positive side, if metaphysical statements are grounded in the same evidence that sustains ontological statements, arid the latter do have purchase on the facts, then it follows that ontology has a prima facie metaphysical import to start with." (p.67)

93. ———. 1994. "Individual Essence in Ingarden's Ontology." In Kunst und Ontologie. Für Roman Ingarden zum 100. Geburstag, edited by Galewicz, Wlodzimierz, Ströker, Elisabeth and Strózewski, Wladylasw, 183-206. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"Essence as a framework category

Roman Ingarden elaborated his stock of ontological categories with an unerring sense of purpose and direction. Each acquisition complemented the categories already in place and reinforced the bulwark of the world structure Ingarden envisaged. The Controversy over the Existence of the World is testimony to the years of unstinting toil given to the analysis of categories apt to capture the ramifications of the idealism-realism issue.

Among these categories several can be designated ‘framework categories’ because of their pivotal role in Ingarden’s overall conception of-the world." (p. 183)

(...)

"It remains, however, that essence is a category to which Ingarden returned repeatedly, at moments coinciding more or less with the treatment of problems that became crucial at given stages of his investigations. At least three such stages are evident. Early in his career, when Ingarden was seeking to champion the benefits for philosophy of phenomenology, he took pains to clarify the concept of essence in the state in which he found it in texts by Husserl and Jean Hering.(3) Later, in the second volume of the Controversy, Ingarden devoted a chapter to the category of the individual essence of an object; the ramifications as well as the preconditions of that analysis were of capital importance in assessing the adequacy or limitations of the categorial framework in which the idealism-realism controversy was couched.(4) Finally, Ingarden broached the issue once again in a posthumously published, unfinished study on the foundations of the theory of knowledge, which remained one of the ‘danglers’ in his doctrine.(5)" p. 184)

(...)

"In considering these accounts from different periods of Ingarden’s career, one question that comes to mind is whether there was any significant change over the course of time in Ingarden’s conception of essence; another question is whether the reiterated concern for essence testifies a deeper concern, ‘ unease even, with the overall picture of the world Ingarden had constructed by the time he completed the first two volumes of Controversy. The answer is clear on the first point, hypothetical on the second: Ingarden did not substantially revise his account of essence, however I believe that he came to question his initial views about its trans-regional significance and consequently its status as a framework category (although the same does not appear to be true concerning the status of the individual object, the concrete particular). The main consideration for the latter contention springs from Ingarden’s shift of emphasis in the last period of his life: the move away from the idealism-realism problematic, in particular the conception of transcendental consciousness, to what can be described as an anthropological orientation based on the standing of the ‘person’ in the world.(6)"

(3) “Essentiale Fragen. Ein Beitrag zum Problem des Wesens”, Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung Bd. 7, Halle, 1925, Ss. 125-304; an earlier synoptic piece also treats essence, cf. “Dazenia fenomenologów”, (1919), reprinted in Z badan nad filozofia wspólczesna, Warszawa, PAN, 1963

(4) Chapter 13, §§ 58,59

(5) U podstaw teorii poznania, Cz. 1, Warszawa, PAN, 1971. An English translation by Arthur Szylewicz has appeared in Aletheia. [Theory of Knowledge as Phenomenology of the "Essence" of Cognitive Experiences and Their Correlates, 1988]

(6) See Roman Ingarden, Man and Value, translation by A. Szylewicz, Philosophia Verlag: Miinchener-Wien, 1983, especially “On Responsibility. Its Ontic Foundations.”

94. ———. 1995. "The Problematic Unity of Culture in Ingarden." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 26:171-188.

95. ———. 2005. "Ingarden: From Phenomenological Realism to Moral Realism." In Existence, Culture, and Persons. The Ontology of Roman Ingarden, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz, 159-189. Frankfurt am Mein: Ontos Verlag.

96. ———. 2012. "Roman Ingarden : l’ontologie de la responsabilité." In Roman Ingarden : ontologie, esthétique, fiction, edited by Schaeffer, Jean-Marie and Potocki, Christophe, 231-243. Paris: Archives Contemporaines Editions.

97. ———. 2013. "L’attitude esthétique: l’héritage kantien dans l’esthétique de Roman Ingarde." In Roman Ingarden, la Phénoménologie à la croisée des arts, edited by Limido-Heulot, Patricia, 27-48. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.

98. ———. 2016. "Ingarden’s “Material-Value” Conception of Socio-Cultural Reality." In The phenomenological Approach to Social Reality, edited by Salice, Alessandro and Schmid, Hans Bernhard, 259-278. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

99. ———. 2016. "Sujet-homme-personne et les valeurs. La portée et les fondements ontiques de la conscience chez Ingarden." In Forme(s) et modes d’être / Form(s) and Modes of Being: L’ontologie de Roman Ingarden / The Ontology of Roman Ingarden, edited by Malherbe, Olivier and Richard, Sébasiten, 99-121. Bern: Peter Lang.

100. Swiecimski, Jerzy. 1974. "Scientific Information Function and Ingarden's Theory of Forms in the Constitution of the Real World." In The Phenomenological Realism of the Possible Worlds, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 165-186. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 3.

101. ———. 1976. "Museum Exhibition as a Work of Art and a Subject of 'Specific Aesthetics." In Ingardeniana. A Spectrum of Specialized Studies Establishing the Field of Research, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 290-322. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 4.

102. Szczepanska, Anita. 1975. "Perspectives of the Axiological Investigations of the Work of Roman Ingarden." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 6:116-125.

Translated from the Polish by the author with the assistance of G. Kung and E. Swiderski. The Polish version of this paper appeared in Studia Estetyczyne, Warsaw, vol. 10 (1973), 239-254.

"It is not my concern here to repeat Ingarden's well-known theses on the aesthetic quality-structure of a work of art. I want, instead, to do the following: (1) to examine the relationship between Ingarden's axiological investigations and his earlier inquiry into the general "anatomy" of works of art - literature, painting, music, etc., (2) to attempt a more detailed characterization of the system of aesthetically significant qualities and, in particular, to state what the system is not, (3) to show the wide field of investigations opened up by the concept of the system of qualities, (4) to show possible directions and make certain suggestions concerning further study of the system of qualities, together with an account of previous attempts and of the difficulties thus brought to light."

103. ———. 1989. "The Structure of Artworks." In On the Aesthetics of Roman Ingarden: Interpretations and Assesments, edited by Dziemidok, Bohdan and McCormick, Peter, 21-54. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

104. Szyszkowska, Małgorzata A. 2018. "Reconsidering Ingarden’s Contribution to European Aesthetics: Aesthetic Experience and the Concept of Encounter." ESPES:47-56.

Abstract: "Entering the discussion about European Aesthetic traditions, their aspirations and achievements, their metamorphosis and developments, author argues in favor of acknowledging the importance of what in her opinion should be seen as milestone in Polish tradition of aesthetics. One such important element of European Aesthetic tradition that author wishes to acknowledge is the phenomenological aesthetics developed by Roman Ingarden (1893-1970) in the 30-ties and especially two concepts which best show lasting power of Ingraden’s contributions. Author describes the concept of aesthetic experience used by Ingarden in his lectures on aesthetics (Ingarden, 1958-70) and its persuasive application to the field of music and literature. She suggests that its meaning deserves to be further explained and appreciated. It is argued that contemporary cognitive theories of aesthetic experience come very close to what Ingarden discovered and outlined in this writings without ever acknowledging preceding examples of complex approaches to aesthetics experience. Author suggests that one more concept from Ingarden’s aesthetics should be appreciated. It is the concept of aesthetic encounter between author, performer and the listener/recipient (spotkanie) that Ingarden tried to introduce as the important category for aesthetic research. These concepts where meant to be discussed and researched across different areas. Underling the differences and developments within European aesthetics in the last century author stresses the achievements and aspirations of axiologically orientated aesthetic theory of Ingarden and purports to affirm its lasting contribution to the European tradition."

105. Takei, Yushiro. 1984. "The Literary Work and Its Concretization in Roman Ingarden's Aesthetics." In Phenomenology of Life in a Dialogue Between Chinese and OccidentalPhilosophy, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 285-307. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 17.

106. ———. 1991. "The Temporal Composition of the Literary Work of Art and the Reader’s Aesthetic Temporality." In Ingardeniana III: Roman Ingarden's Aesthetics in a New Key and the Independent Approaches of Others: the Performing Arts, the Fine Arts, and Literature, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 81-107. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 33.

107. Taranczewski, Pawel. 1994. "What Ingarden Has to Say to Painters." In Kunst und Ontologie. Für Roman Ingarden zum 100. Geburstag, edited by Galewicz, Wlodzimierz, Ströker, Elisabeth and Strózewski, Wladylasw, 207-216. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"I am interested in the possible relationship between painting and the philosophy of Roman Ingarden. Obviously, the relationship is there where Ingarden deals explicitly with painting, and when, starting from the picture, he forms his own conception of the pictorial work of art. But we can also approach the topic from the other way round. So we are free to ask whether Ingarden’s theories can have an effect on artistic creations. In the latter case, Ingarden could provide painters with themes for meditation. This is precisely how I now intend to consider Ingarden’s thought.

Ingarden devoted two essays exclusively to painting: On The Structure of Painting(1) and On So-Called Abstract Painting(2).

The content of the first essay — an accurate and inspiring vision of picture as a multi-layered formation — was treated in greater depth in the second."

(1) cf., Roman Ingarden, Das Bild, in: Untersuchungen zur Ontologie der Kunst, Tubingen 1962.

(2) cf., Roman Ingarden, Uber die sogenannte “abstrakte” Malerei, in: Erlebnis, Kunstwerk und Wert, Tubingen 1969.

108. ———. 2012. "La conception de la peinture de Roman Ingarden et la question du caractère technique du tableau." In Roman Ingarden : ontologie, esthétique, fiction, edited by Schaeffer, Jean-Marie and Potocki, Christophe, 195-208. Paris: Archives Contemporaines Editions.

109. Tarnowski, Karol. 1976. "Roman Ingarden's Critique of Transcendental Constitution." Dialectics and Humanism no. 3:111-119.

110. ———. 2012. "Ingarden et le problème des valeurs." In Roman Ingarden : ontologie, esthétique, fiction, edited by Schaeffer, Jean-Marie and Potocki, Christophe, 221-230. Paris: Archives Contemporaines Editions.

111. ———. 2015. "Le problème de l’existence de Dieu dans la Controverse sur l’existence du monde de Roman Ingarden et le problème des valeurs." In La phénoménologie polonaise et le christianisme, edited by Tarnowski, Karol, 345-372. Paris: Cerf.

112. Tatarkiewicz, Władysław. 1971. "Roman Ingarden, 1893-1970." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 31:460-462.

113. Thomasson, Amie L. 2005. "Ingarden and the Ontology of Cultural Objects." In Existence, Culture, and Persons. The Ontology of Roman Ingarden, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz, 115-136. Frankfurt am Mein: Ontos Verlag.

"While Roman Ingarden is well known for his work in aesthetics and studies in ontology, one of his most important and lasting contributions has been largely overlooked: his approach to a general ontology of social and cultural objects. Ingarden himself discusses cultural objects other than works of art directly in the first section of "The Architectural Work", where he develops a particularly penetrating view of the ontology of buildings, flags, and churches. This text provides the core insight into how his more lengthy studies of the ontology of works of art in The Literary

Work of Art and the rest of The Ontology of the Work of Art, combined with the ontological distinctions of Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt, may be used to understand social and cultural objects. The view that results, I will argue, is based in foreseeing problems with the reductivist and projectivist views that remain popular, and is capable of resolving central problems still thought to plague those who would offer a theory of cultural objects.

Social and cultural objects such as money, churches, and flags present a puzzle since they seem, on the one hand, to be entities that clearly -- in some sense -- depend on minds, and yet, on the other hand, seem to be objective parts of our world, things of which we may acquire knowledge (both in daily life and in the social sciences), and which we cannot merely modify at will. But it is hard to see how any entity could exhibit both of those characteristics - if, on the one hand, we take their objectivity and mind-externality seriously, and consider them to be identifiable with physical objects, we find ourselves saddled with absurd conclusions about the conditions under which such entities would exist and persist, and neglect their symbolic and normative features. If, on the other hand, we treat them as mere creations of the mind, they seem either reduced to phantasms that could not have the recalcitrance and impact on our lives cultural objects apparently exhibit, or we seem to be positing 'magical' modes of creation whereby the mind can generate real, mind-external objects.

Ingarden, I will argue, foresees the problems with each of these alternatives and diagnoses of the root of the problem as lying in too narrow an understanding of the senses in which an entity may be mind-dependent, and too narrow a set of ontological categories for entities there may be.

Once we can make evident the different senses in which something may be mind-dependent, and the different kinds of object there may be, we can find room for cultural objects considered as entities that are neither mere physical objects nor projections of the mind, but instead depend in complex ways on both foundations. Such a moderate realist view, I will argue, can provide the means to overcome the problems thought to plague social ontology and show the way to a more comprehensive ontology."

114. Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa. 1955. Essence et existence. Étude à propos de la philosophie de Roman Ingarden et de Nicolai Hartmann. Paris: Aubier Montaigne.

Second edition 1957.

115. ———. 1955. "Le dessin de la philosophie de Roman Ingarden." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 60:32-57.

116. ———, ed. 1959. For Roman Ingarden: Nine Essays in Phenomenology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Contents: Editorial: The Second Phenomenology 1; J.-M. Fataud: Roman Ingarden, Critique de Bergson 7; C. van Peursen: Some Remarks on the Ego in the Phenomenology of Husserl 29; M. Natanson: The Empirical and Transcendental Ego 42; E. Minkowski: Rencontre et Dialogue 54; J. Hering: Quelques Thèmes d'une Phénomenologie de Rêve 75; ]. Wild: Man and His Life-World 90; F. Kaufmann: Die Verwirklichung des Wesens in der Sprache der Dichtung: Gustave Flaubert 110; ]. F. Mora: Le Langage de la Poesie 147; A. T. Tymieniecka: L' Analyse de l'Idée et la Participation 160-179.

117. ———. 1959. "L’Analyse de l’Idée et la Participation." In For Roman Ingarden: Nine Essays in Phenomenology, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 160-179. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

118. ———. 1965. "Existence Vindicated or the Hundred Real Dollars." The Personalist no. 46:211-221.

119. ———. 1975. "Roman Ingarden's Philosophical Legacy and Beyond: the Creative Freedom of the Possible Worlds." Dialectics and Humanism no. 2:71-87.

120. ———, ed. 1976. Ingardeniana: A Spectrum of Specialised Studies Establishing the Field of Research. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 4.

Table of Contents: Introduction VII; Acknowledgement IX; Roman Ingarden: Probleme der Husserlschen Reduktion. Vorlesung gehalten an der Universitat Oslo, Oktober/November 1967 1; Maria Golaszewska: Roman Ingarden's Moral Philosophy 73; Hans H. Rudnick: Roman Ingarden's Literary Theory 105; John Fizer: Ingarden's Phases, Bergson's durée réelle, and William James' Stream: Metaphoric Variants or Mutually Exclusive Concepts on the Theme of Time 121; Mario Sancipriano: R. Ingarden et le 'vrai' Bergsonisme 141; Irmgard Kowatzki: Die Funktion des konstituierenden Bewusstseins in einem 'Studium für die Seelenmaler'. Die phanomenologische Studie einer Erzahlphase in M. C. Wielands 'Geschichte des Agathon' 149; Jerzy Swiecimski: Museum Exhibition as a Work of Art and a Subject of 'Specific Aesthetics'. A Contribution to Ingarden's System of Aesthetics 165; Augustin Riska: Language and Logic in the Work of Roman Ingarden 187; Barry Smith: Historicity, Value and Mathematics 219; Anna-Teresa Tymienecka: Beyond Ingarden's Idealism/Realism Controversy with Husserl - The New Contextual Phase of Phenomenology 241; Roman Ingarden: The Letter to Husserl about the VI [Logical] Investigation and 'Idealism' 419-438.

121. ———. 1976. "Beyond Ingarden's Idealism-Realism controversy with Husserl: the new contextual phase of phenomenology." In Ingardeniana. A Spectrum of Specialized Studies Establishing the Field of Research, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 241-418. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 4.

122. ———. 1984. "The Tenets of Roman Ingarden's Aesthetics in a Philosophical Perspective." In Phenomenology of Life in a Dialogue Between Chinese and OccidentalPhilosophy, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 271-283. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 17.

123. ———, ed. 1991. Ingardeniana III: Roman Ingarden's Aesthetics in a New Key and the Independent Approaches of Others: the Performing Arts, the Fine Arts, and Literature. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 33.

Table of Contents: Foreword IX;

Part I: Aesthetics of the Performing Arts: Different Penomenological Perspectives

Jadwiga S. Smith: The Theory of Drama and Theatre: A Continuing Investigation of the Aesthetics of Roman lngarden 3; Waclaw M. Osadnik and Lukasz A. Plesnar: On the Sign Character of the Representing Stratum in a Film as Work of Art 63;

Part II: Roman Ingarden: Some New Developments in His Scholarship

Yushiro Takei: The Temporal Composition of the Literary Work of Art and the Reader's Aesthetic Temporality 81; Maria Bielawka: The Mystery of Time in Roman Ingarden's Philosophy 109; Charles J. Rzepka: Thomas de Quincey and Roman Ingarden: The Phenomenology of the "Literature of Power" 119; Roman Ingarden: On Translations (Tr. by Jolanta Wawrzycka) 131;

Part III: Around the 'Pssions f the Soul'

Wolfgang Wittowski: Grand Passions of Humble Folk: "Woyzeck" and ''The Jews' Beech" 195; Bruce Ross: The Enigma of Interpretation in Chagall's Disposition of Space 215; Danny L. Smith: Erotic Modes of Discourse: The Union of Mythos and Dialectic in Plato's Phaedrus 233; Constantin Crisan: The Man of Genius as Artist - Suffering and World Conscience 243; Leo rauch: The Erotic Phenomenology in Kierkegaard's Mozart 249; Marilyn Stewart: The Agamemnon: A Drama of the Passions 259; Hanna Charney: Narrative Time as Interpretation of Human Existence: "Valence" in the Present of The Ambassadors 269;

Part IV: Philosophical Views Reflected in Literature

Mario Sancipriano: Le langage de la création esthétique dans la phénomenologie 281; William S. Haney II: Unity in Vedic Aesthetics: The Self-Interacting Dynamics of the Knower, the Known, and the Process of Knowing 295; Susumu Kanta: An Approach to the Structure of the Japanese Elegy, in the Case of Yamanoue No Okura, a Representative Poet of Mannyoshu (The First Collection of Japanese Poetry) 321; Richard Hull: Fantastic Phenomenology 335; Peter Morgan: Philosophic Filaments in Literature in English: Wordsworth to Pound 349;

Index of Names 357-361.

124. Uemura, Genki. 2019. "Demystifying Roman Ingarden’s Purely Intentional Objects of Perception." In New Phenomenological Studies in Japan, edited by Taguchi, Shigeru and Warren, Nicolas de, 139-162. Chiam, Switzerland: Springer Nature.

125. Ulicka, Danuta. 2002. "The Literary Work of Art as the Creative Power in Man: On the Margin of Roman Ingarden’s Theory of Literary Discourse." In The Creative Matrix of the Origins: Dynamisms, Forces and the Shaping of Life. Book II, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 385-404. Dordrecht: Springer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 77.

126. ———. 2012. "Time and Duration in Ingarden’s Concept of the Cognition of the Literary Work of Art. On the Bergsonian Origins of the Narrative Concept of Understanding." In Roman Ingarden : ontologie, esthétique, fiction, edited by Schaeffer, Jean-Marie and Potocki, Christophe, 119-135. Paris: Archives Contemporaines Editions.

127. Urchs, Max. 1994. "On Causality: Ingarden's Analysis vs. Jaskowski Logic." Logic and Logical Philosophy no. 2:55-68.

128. van Oort, Richard. 1998. "Three Models of Fiction: The Logical, the Phenomenological, and the Anthropological (Searle, Ingarden, Gans)." New Literary History no. 29:439-465.

129. Vergara, Gloria. 2004. "Artistic and Aesthetic Values As the Ontological Foundation for the World of the Literary Work." In Does the World Exist? Plurisignificant Ciphering of Reality, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 435-445. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 79.

130. von Wachter, Daniel. 2005. "Roman Ingarden's Ontology: Existential Dependence, Substances, Ideas, and Other Things Empiricists do not Like." In Existence, Culture, and Persons. The Ontology of Roman Ingarden, edited by Chrudzimski, Arkadiusz, 55-82. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

"Ingarden's ontology is an impressive biotope. It takes Ingarden 1840 pages to set it up. His style is not cryptic, but he writes down not only how he thinks things are and his arguments for his views, but all his thoughts about the matter, in good phenomenological tradition. The editors of this book have asked me to move on a bit more swiftly. As life is short, let us take a Europe-in-seven-days tour through Ingarden's ontology. Preparing the travel we need to clarify what ontology is for Ingarden, how it relates to semantics, and how it relates to metaphysics. Then we shall turn to different kinds of existential dependence and to the distinction between form and matter. Having considered these preliminaries we shall consider Ingarden's conception of a substance and, more briefly, his other categories. While my main aim is to guide you through Ingarden's ontology I shall also indicate where I think the actual world is not as Ingarden describes it." (pp. 55-56)

131. ———. 2008. "Substanzen phänomenologisch untersucht – Roman Ingardens Substanzontologie." In Substantia - Sic et Non: Eine Geschichte des Substanzbegriffs von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart in Einzelbeiträgen, edited by Gutschmidt, Holger, Lang-Balestra, Antonella and Segalerba, Gianluigi, 473-488. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

132. ———. 2010. "Roman Ingarden's Theory of Causation Revised." Polish Journal of Philosophy no. 4:183-196.

Abstract: "This article presents Roman Ingarden’s theory of causation, as developed in volume III of The Controversy about the Existence of the World, and defends an alternative which uses some important insights of Ingarden. It rejects Ingarden’s claim that a cause is simultaneous with its effect and that a cause necessitates its effect. It uses Ingarden’s notion of ‘inclinations’ and accepts Ingarden’s claim that an event cannot necessitate a later event."

133. Vultur, Ioana. 2012. "Structure et concrétisation dans l’esthétique d’Ingarden." In Roman Ingarden : ontologie, esthétique, fiction, edited by Schaeffer, Jean-Marie and Potocki, Christophe, 97-108. Paris: Archives Contemporaines Editions.

134. W., Lamp. John, and Milton, Simon. 2007. "Indexing Research: An Approach to Grounding Ingarden’s Ontological Framework." In Information Systems Foundations: Theory, Representation and Reality, edited by Hart, Dennis N. and Gregor, Shirley Diane, 115-132. Canberra: ANU E Press.

135. Wallner, Ingrid. 1987. "In Defense of Husserl's Transcendental Idealism: Roman Ingarden's Critique Re-Examined." Husserl Studies no. 4:3-43.

136. Wegrzecki, Adam. 1972. "Roman Ingarden: l'homme et son oeuvre." Les Études philosophiques:55-60.

137. ———. 1975. "On the Absoluteness of Values." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 6:109-115.

Translated from the Polish by E. M. Swiderski.

"In his axiological considerations, undertaken with increasing intensity in the last years of his life, Roman Ingarden devoted much attention to the problem of the relativity of values. Above all, he attempted to determine what it is that we have in mind when we talk about this particular aspect of values. He also pointed out in a more or less decided way whether and how it is possible to ascribe "relativity" to a given type of values. He himself was reluctant to accept an axiological relativism, especially in its extreme form according to which all values would be relative in every possible way. He felt that such a radical view on values leads inevitably to subjectivism, to a denial of various axiological qualifications for various spheres of being. Though he was indeed opposed to this view it was not only because of its theoretical and practical consequences, but above all because of the far-reaching simplifications it entailed, the superficiality of the argumentation as well as its disregard for the factual state of affairs accessible to the unprejudiced researcher of value-phenomena.

Nevertheless, Ingarden's opposition to a radical axiological relativism does not mean that he spoke out for a radical axiological absolutism. Such an inference would be too hasty since, as I shall try to show, it would impute to Ingarden a point of view which has no foundation in his investigations of values. In order to ascertain whether Ingarden's theory of values eventually does allow for some conception of an axiological absolutism, a closer analysis must be carried out of those of its assertions which directly or indirectly touch upon the absoluteness of values. In this regard Ingarden's significant methodological postulate must be kept in mind, namely that in axiological considerations the essential differences among types of values are not to be obscured. This means, in the first place, that a mechanical transference of assertions that apply to one type of values to some other type or types is invalid; and, in the second place, that a mechanical extension to various types of values of the validity of a series of general axiological theses having the character of pure theoretical possibilities is also invalid. Hence to determine in what sense Ingarden would be willing to admit an axiological absolutism is not at all the same thing as resolving the question of what kind of absoluteness belongs, according to him, to the given types of values. Most of the remarks in Ingarden's axiology refer to ethical and aesthetic values which makes it possible to determine more exactly their "absoluteness-character" and, at the same time, to indicate which purely theoretical possibilities are "realized" in the case of these types of values.

It is possible to infer from certain of Ingarden's statements that he excludes certain forms of the absoluteness of values encountered in axiological thought. Thus he rejects the view which was once current that values are autonomous objects of a particular kind existing independently of everything and having in themselves the foundation of their continued existence. According to this view, values are simply ideal objects. Ingarden rejects this form of a radically conceived absoluteness of values if only because he considers that a value is always a value of something, or in something, or for something. Moreover, it does not possess the form of an object, whether or not it exists ideally or otherwise, and it always requires the appropriate foundation for its existence. This conviction applies to all values." p. 109.

138. ———. 1994. "The Function of Ontology and Experience in Roman Ingarden's Axiological Investigations." In Kunst und Ontologie. Für Roman Ingarden zum 100. Geburstag, edited by Galewicz, Wlodzimierz, Ströker, Elisabeth and Strózewski, Wladylasw, 219-228. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"Ontology plays a peculiar function in Roman Ingarden’s philosophy. This is partly due to Ingarden’s interest in ontology, partly to his endeavour to construct a philosophy which would lead to metaphysical conclusions, conclusions reached by way of extensive and detailed ontological analyses. Also Ingarden’s persistent efforts to make philosophy as clear and precise as possible, and in particular his stress on elaborating an adequate philosophical terminology have contributed to the status of ontology in his work, inciting him to extensive ontological investigations.

This particular position of ontology understood as ‘an investigation of pure possibilities and necessary relations between elements occurring in the content of an idea’(1) appears in the very structure of Ingarden’s work." (p. 219)

(...)

"This central position of ontology seems to be almost natural, flowing from the nature of philosophy itself; indeed, ontology elaborates various categories of being which enable us to deal with any object we choose to deal with. Without initial ontological — existential, formal and material concepts we cannot speak of anything and in any way. Thus, ontology is fundamental to any region of philosophical reflection.

Could axiology have a position as central as ontology? Could we regard axiological categories as equally fundamental as the general ontological categories? It would probably require a particular, rather metaphysical reinterpretation of the categories of both kinds. But such ‘axiological’ reinterpretation of the general categories of being does not seem to make any sense. Does it, e.g., make sense to speak about ‘the value of a thing as a thing’ or ‘the value of an event as an event’ etc.? Thus, it seems to be rather difficult to ascribe to axiology the central status proper for ontology. However, can we conclude that the domain of axiology is but of marginal importance? Is its position not central in the sense that at least some clues of the philosophical inquiry lead inevitably to it? This seems precisely to be the case in Ingarden’s philosophy. Nevertheless, the part played by axiology in his investigations is rather modest; and thus the position of axiology in relation to ontology seems indeed to be peripheral." (p. 220)

(1) R. Ingarden, Spor o istnienie swiata, (The Controversy over the Existence of the World), vol. I, 3rd ed., Warszawa 1987, Pahstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, p. 54.

139. Wellek, René. 1981. Four Critics. Croce, Valéry, Lukacs and Ingarden. Seattle - London: University of Washington Press.

Chapter 4: Roman Ingarden, pp. 55-73.

140. Wendland, Zbigniew. 2008. "Contemporary Hermeneutics and Ingarden's Aesthetics as Methodological Supports for Dialogue and Communication." In The Dialogue of Cultural Traditions: A Global Perspective, edited by Sweet, William, McLean, George F., Imamichi, Tomonobu, Ural, Safak and Akyol, O. Faruk, 499-509. Washington D.C.: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy.

"The very achievement of Ingarden in matters of truth and meaning, which could be compared with the achievements of representatives of twentieth century hermeneutics like Heidegger and Gadamer, was his interpretation of the work of art as a creation by its author, though not limited to any defined end as expressed through its intended (deliberate) schematic: rather, it has no ultimate concretization. The significance of Ingarden's conception consists in the fact that many authors of works of art left ’empty’ places in their artifacts: these schemata cause allow the life of a work of art to persist, and these gaps and schemata rely on perpetual, ever-new concretizations undertaken by new receivers. Thus every receiver of a work of art is simultaneously its co-creator and there are always many possible new concretizations. A work of art constantly provokes its receivers to discover new meanings in it and to create new interpretations. A great work of art speaks to people of different times and to men shaped in and by different cultures; it offers many meanings and tells them many truths. Ingarden underlined that the work of literature after release (i.e., publishing) leads its own life; it lives in the experiences of receivers as long as its vocabulary retains the same sounds which it possessed in the moment of its arising, and (especially) as long as its words and sentences are comprehensible to future generations. The same is valid for other spheres of art which likewise live in the many concretizations of their receivers.

And so in the case of Ingarden’s phenomenology of aesthetics, the existing work of art causes its permanent transformation into many aesthetic objects, and this status, as in the case of hermeneutical understanding and interpretation, involves peoples and cultures in continual dialogue and communication." (p. 509)

141. Wolenski, Jan. 1986. "Remarks on Primitivity and Secondarity as Moments of Existence." Reports on Philosophy (Jagiellonian University) no. 10:81-87.

"In the summary I should like to say that various problems of Ingarden's existential ontology can be profitably analysed by means of contemporary modal logic. On the other hand, it is highly probable that some elements of Ingardenian ontology may be helpful for modal logicians. In spite of the known Ingarden's very critical assesment of formal logic, there is a need for close cooperation between logicians and philosophers in Ingarden's style. I hope that my considerations justify such an opinion."

142. ———. 1990. "The Verifiability Principle: Variations on Ingarden’s Criticism." In Ingardeniana II: New Studies in the Philosophy of Roman Ingarden, edited by Rudnick, Hans H., 183-192. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 30.

143. ———. 1994. "Sentences, Propositions and Quasi-Propositions." In Kunst und Ontologie. Für Roman Ingarden zum 100. Geburstag, edited by Galewicz, Wlodzimierz, Ströker, Elisabeth and Strózewski, Wladylasw, 229-235. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"What I wish to do in this paper is to apply tools of formal semantics to characterize some Ingarden’s intuitions connected with concepts indicated by the terms “sentence”, “proposition”, and “quasi-proposition”.

For Ingarden, sentences as well as propositions present states of affairs which are determined by their senses; this function is very closely connected with intentionality of our language.(1) The main difference between sentences and propositions consists in the nature of states of affairs as their objectual correlates. Purely intentional states of affairs are correlates of sentences, whereas propositions (true) refer to objective states of affairs." (p. 229)

(1) See Ingarden, Das literarische Kunstwerk, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Halle 1931, §§ 19 and 22. The word “sentence” denotes here declarative sentence.

144. ———. 2010. "Meaningfulness, Meaninglessness and Language-Hierarchies: Some Lessons from Ingarden's Criticism of the Verifiability Principle." Polish Journal of Philosophy no. 4:35-47.

Abstract: "Roman Ingarden offered a strong criticism of the verifiability principle in his talk delivered at the 8th International Congress in Prague in 1934. Ingarden argued that this principle either violates itself or smuggles a hidden sense. In this paper I show that Ingarden-like arguments about smuggled (but this pejorative qualification is skipped) meaning apply not only to the criteria of sense, but also to other semantic assertions within language-hierarchies in Tarski’s sense."

145. Zeglen, Ursula. 1985. "An Attempt at a Formal Analysis of Pure Qualities in Ingarden's Ontology." In Studies in Logic and Theory of Knowledge, edited by Borkowski, Ludwik, 79-89. Lublin.

146. ———. 1996. "Meinong and Ingarden on Negative Judgments." Axiomathes:267-278.

147. Zeuthen, Nikolaj. 2013. "The Wolf: Ingarden to the narratological rescue. A few remarks on a messy situation within the theory of fiction." Semiotica no. 194:159-169.

148. Zhang, Jin-Yan. 1990. "The new Criticism and Ingarden’s Phenomenological Theory of Literature." In Ingardeniana II: New Studies in the Philosophy of Roman Ingarden, edited by Rudnick, Hans H., 85-94. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 30.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Roman Ingarden: German works, French and Italian translations

Selected works by Roman Ingarden

German

Note: Works available only in Polish are not enclosed.

The University of Fribourg (Switzerland) has started to elaborate the Collected Works in German: Gesammelte Werke, Herausgegeben von Rolf Fieguth und Guido Küng, Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag 1992 ss.

1. Ingarden, Roman. 1921. Intuition und Intellekt bei Henri Bergson. Darstellung und Versuch einer Kritik. Halle: Max Niemeyer.

Inaugural Dissertation.

Published also in: Jahrbuch für Philosopjie und phänemonologische Forschung - vol. 5, 1922, pp. 286-461.

2. ———. 1921. "Über die Gefahr einer Petitio Principii in der Erkenntnistheorie." Jahrbuch für Phenomenologie und Phenomenologische Forschung no. 4:545-568.

3. ———. 1925. Über die Stellung der Erkenntnistheorie im System der Philosophie. Halle: Niemeyer.

4. ———. 1925. "Essentiale Fragen. Ein Beitrag zum Wesensproblem." Jahrbuch für Phenomenologie und Phenomenologische Forschung no. 7:125-304.

New edition: Peter McCormick (ed.), Über das Wesen, Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2007.

5. ———. 1929. "Bemerkungen zum Problem Idealismus-Realismus." Jahrbuch für Phenomenologie und Phenomenologische Forschung no. 11:159-190.

Supplementary volume: Husserl Festschrift

6. ———. 1931. Das literarische Kunstwerk. Eine Untersuchung aus dem Grenzgebiet der Ontologie, Logik und Literaturwissenschaft. Halle: Niemeyer.

Second revised edition with a new appendix: Von den Funktionen der Sprache im Theaterschauspiel 1960; Third edition 1965; Fourth edition 1972.

7. ———. 1933. "Review of: Formale und transendentale Logik by Edmund Husserl." Kant Studien no. 38:206-209.

8. ———. 1935. "Vom formalen Aufbau des individuellen Gegenstandes." Studia Philosophica.Commentarii Societatis Philosophicae Polonorum no. 1:29-106.

9. ———. 1936. "Der logistische Versuch einer Neugestaltung der Philosophie. Eine kritische Bemerkung." In Actes du Vlll-eme Congrés International de Philosophie à Prague, 1934. Prague: Comité d'Organisation du Congrès.

10. ———. 1937. "Der Mensch und die Zeit." In Travaux du IX-ème Congrés International de Philosophie (Congrés Descartes) - Vol. 8, 129-136. Paris.

11. ———. 1937. "Über die gegenwärtigen Aufgaben der Phänomenologie." Archivio di Filosofia:229-241.

12. ———. 1938. "Das Form-Inhalt Problem im literarischen Kustwerk." Helicon no. 1:61-67.

13. ———. 1950. "Kritische Bemerkungen zu Husserls Cartesianischen Meditationen." In Edmund Husserl - Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. I: Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vortrage. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Second edition 1963

14. ———. 1957. "Die Asymmetrie der ursachlichen Beziehung." Philosophisches Jahrbuch der Gorres-Gesellschaft no. 66:100-110.

Festschrift für Hedwig Conrad-Martius

15. ———. 1958. "Bemerkungen zum Problem des äestetischen Werturteils." Rivista di Estetica no. 3:414-423.

16. ———. 1959. "Über den transzendentalen Idealismus bei E. Husserl." In Phenomenologica - vol. II - Husserl et la pensée moderne. Actes du II Colloque International de Phenomenologie, Krefeld 1956, 190-204. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Also in French: De l'idéalisme transcendental chez E. Husserl - pp. 205-215

17. ———. 1961. "Poetik und Sprachwissenschaft." In Poetics. Proceedings of the International Conference on Poetics, Warsaw 1960, 3-9. The Hague: Mouton & Co.

18. ———. 1962. Untersuchungen zur Ontologie der Kunst: Musikwerk, Bild, Architektur, Film. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

Contents: Vorwort; 1. das Musikwerk; 2. Das Bild; 3. Das Werk der Architektur; 4. Der Film.

19. ———. 1962. "Prinzipien einer erkenntniskritischen Betrachtung der asthetischen Erfahrung." In Actes du IV-eme Congrés International d'Ésthetique, Athens 1960, 622-631. Athens: Myrtides.

20. ———. 1962. "Bemerkungen zum problem der Begründung." Studia Logica no. 13:153-176.

21. ———. 1964. Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt. - Vol. 1: Existenzialontologie. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.

First Polish edition 1947.

22. ———. 1964. "Husserls Betrachtungen zur Konstitution des physikalischen Dinges." Archives de Philosophie no. 27:356-407.

23. ———. 1964. "Das Problem des Systems der ästhetisch relevanten Qualitäten." In Actes du Ve Congrès International d'Esthétique, Amsterdam 1964, 448-456. The Hague.

24. ———. 1965. Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt. - Vol. 2: Formalontologie - Part 1: Form und Wesen. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.

First Polish edition 1948.

25. ———. 1965. Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt. - Vol. 2: Formalontologie - Part 2: Welt und Bewusstsein. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.

First Polish edition 1948.

26. ———. 1967. "Betrachtungen zum Problem der Objektivität. I." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 21:31-46.

27. ———. 1967. "Betrachtungen zum Problem der Objektivität. II." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 21:242-260.

28. ———. 1968. Vom Erkennen des literarischen Kunstwerks. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

29. ———. 1968. Briefe an Roman Ingarden mit Erläuterungen und Erinnerungen an Husserl. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Letters from Edmund Husserl edited by Roman Ingarden

30. ———. 1968. "Meine Erinnerungen an Edmund Husserl." In Edmund Husserl: Briefe an Roman Ingarden. Mit Erläuterungen und Erinnerungen an Husserl, 106-135. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Phaenomenologica vol. 25.

31. ———. 1968. "Erläuterungen zu den Briefen [Husserls]." In Edmund Husserl: Briefe an Roman Ingarden. Mit Erläuterungen und Erinnerungen an Husserl, 136-184. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Phaenomenologica vol. 25.

32. ———. 1968. "Die ontischen Fundamente der Verantwortung." In Akten des XIV. Internationalen Kongresses für Philosophie, Wien 1968- Vol. I, 235-242. Herder.

33. ———. 1968. Edmund Husserl: Briefe an Roman Ingarden. Mit Erlauterungen und Erinnerungen an Husserl. The Hague: Martnus Nijhoff.

34. ———. 1969. Erlebnis, Kunstwerk und Wert. Vorträge zur Ästhetik 1937-1967. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.

Contents: Erlebnis: 1. Das ästhetische Erlebnis; 2. Bemerkungen zum Problem des ästhetischen Werturteils; 3. Prinzipien einer erkenntnistheoretischen Betrachtung der ästhetischen Erfahrung; Werk: 4. Das Form-Inhalt Problem in literarischen Kunstwerk; 5. Über die sogennante 'abstrakte' Malerei; Wert: 6. Zum problem der 'Relativität' der Werte; 7. Was wir über die Werte nicht wissen; 8. Der ästhetische Wert und das problem seiner Fundierung im Kunstwerk; 9. Künstlerische und ästhetische Werte; 10. Das problem des Systems der ästhetisch valenten Qualitäten; 11. Betrachtungen zum problem der Objektivität; Nachwort.

35. ———. 1970. Über die Verantwortung: ihre ontischen Fundamente. Stuttgart: Reclam.

36. ———. 1970. "Kunstlerische Funktionen der sprache. ein Ausblick." Sprachkunst.Beiträge zur Literaturwissenschaft no. 1:20-31.

37. ———. 1971. "Bericht über meine Studien zur Asthetik." In Contemporary Philosophy. A Survey, - vol. 4, edited by Klibansky, Raymond, 106-110. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

38. ———. 1971. "Die vier Begriffe der Transzendenz und das Problem des Idealismus bei Husserl." Analecta Husserliana no. 1:36-74.

39. ———. 1972. "Ausgangsprobleme zur Bertrachtung der kausalen Struktur der Welt." In Philomates. Studies and Essays in Memory of Philip Merlan, edited by Palmer, Robert D. and Hamerton-Kelly, Robert. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

40. ———. 1972. "Der Brief an Husserl über die VI. Logische Untersuchung und den Idealismus." Analecta Husserliana no. 2:357-374.

41. ———. 1972. "Max Bense und das problem der Anwendung statistischer Methoden in der Literaturforschung." Sprachkunst.Beiträge zur Literaturwissenschaft no. 3:177-213.

42. ———. 1974. Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt. Vol. 3: Über die kausale Struktur der realen Welt. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.

43. ———. 1976. Gegenstand und Aufgaben der Literaturwissenschaft: Aufsätze und Diskussionsbeitrage (1937-1964). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.

Edited, selected and introduced by Rolf Fieguth.

Contents: Notiz ds Herusgegebers: Einleitung by R. Fieguth; 1. Anahang. Gegenstand und Aufgaben des 'Wissens von der Literatur'; 2. Über die Poetik; 3. Poetik. Theorie der künstlerischen Literatur; 4. Ein Grenzfall des literarischen Werks; 5. Kritische bemerkungen zu den Ansichten der Phonologen; 6. Rezension zu Manfred Kridl: Einfûhrung in das Studium des literarischen Werks; 7. Zum Aufbau des lierarischen Kunstwerks. Antwort an Prof. H. Markiewicz; 8. Abschluss der Diskussion mit Prof. H. Markiewicz.

44. ———. 1976. "Probleme der Husserlschen Reduktion." Analecta Husserliana no. 4:1-71.

45. ———. 1979. "Über die philosophischen Forschungen Edith Steins." Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Thelogie no. 26:456-480.

46. ———. 1992. Gesammelte Werke - Band 4: Einführung in die Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls, Osloer Vorlesungen 1967. Tûbingen: Max Niemeyer.

47. ———. 1994. Gesammelte Werke - Band 6: Frühe Schriften zur Erkenntnistheorie. Tûbingen: Max Niemeyer.

48. ———. 1996. Gesammelte Werke - Band 7.1: Zur Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie, 1 Teil: Das Werk. Tûbingen: Max Niemeyer.

49. ———. 1996. Gesammelte Werke - Band 7.2: Zur Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie, 2 Teil: Ergänzende Texte. Tûbingen: Max Niemeyer.

50. ———. 1997. Gesammelte Werke - Band 8: Zur Objektivität der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung. Tûbingen: Max Niemeyer.

51. ———. 1997. Gesammelte Werke - Band 13: Vom Erkennen des literarischen Kunstwerks. Tûbingen: Max Niemeyer.

52. ———. 1998. Gesammelte Werke - Band 5: Schriften zur Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls. Tûbingen: Max Niemeyer.

53. ———. 1999. Gesammelte Werke - Band 3: Schriften zur frühen Phänomenologie. Tûbingen: Max Niemeyer.

French

1. Ingarden, Roman. 1935. "L'essai logistique d'une refonte de la philosophie." Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 120:137-159.

2. ———. 1947. "Quelques remarques sur le problème de la relativité des valeurs." In Actes du III-ième Congrés des Sociétés de Philosophie de langue française, 1-8. Paris.

Lecture undelivered at the Congress because of the absence of the author

3. ———. 1947. "Le temps, l'espace et le sentiment de realité." Revue Internationale de Filmologie no. 1:127-141.

4. ———. 1947. "Quelques remarques sur la relation de causalité." Studia philosophica.Commentarii Societatis Philosophicae Polonorum no. 3:151-166.

5. ———. 1948. "Les modes d'existence et le problème 'idéalisme-réalisme'." In Library of the Xth International Congress of Philosophy. Amsterdam 1948, 236-239. Amsterdam.

Vol. I. Proceedings of the Congress

6. ———. 1949. "Des différentes conceptions de la vérité dans l'oeuvre d'art." Revue d'Ésthetique no. 2:162-180.

7. ———. 1953. "De la structure du tableau." Bulletin International de l'Académie Polonaise des sciences et des lettres 1945:36-39.

8. ———. 1953. "De la poétique." Bulletin International de l'Académie Polonaise des sciences et des lettres 1945:39-42.

9. ———. 1957. "La valeur esthétique et le problème de son fondement objectif." In Atti del III Congresso Internazionale di estetica, Venezia 1956, 167-173. Torino.

10. ———. 1959. "Le problème de la constitution et le sens de la réflexion constitutive chez Edmond Husserl." Cahiers de Royaumont no. 3:242-264.

11. ———. 1959. "L'intuition Bergsonienne et le problème phénomenologique de la constitution." Bulletin de la Société Française de Philosophie:163-166.

Numéro special: Begson et nous. Actes du X-ième Congrés des Sociétées de Philosophie de langue française

12. ———. 1959. "De l'idéalisme transcendental chez E. Husserl." In Husserl et la pensée moderne. Actes du II-ième Colloque International de Phénomenologie. Krefeld 1956, 204-215. The Hague.

13. ———. 1960. "Racourcis de perspective du temps dans la concretisation de l'oeuvre litteraire." Revue de Mètaphysique et de Morale no. 65:19-51.

Translated by Elisabeth Willman

14. ———. 1960. "Note sur l'objet de l'histoire de la hilosophie." Diogène no. 29:130-141.

15. ———. 1960. "L'homme et la nature." In Atti del XII Congresso Internazionale di Filosofia. Venezia 1958, 209-213. Firenze.

16. ———. 1961. "Nature humaine." In Nature humaine. Actes du XI-ième Congrés des Sociétés de Philosophie de langue française. Montpellier 1961, 220-223. Paris.

17. ———. 1962. "Le mot comme élément d'une langue." Logique et Analyse no. 20:212-216.

Thinking and meaning. Entretien d'Oxford 1962

18. ———. 1968. "De la connaissance de l'oeuvre littéraire." Archives de Philosophie no. 31:202-263.

19. ———. 1969. "Le concept de philosophie chez Franz Brentano. Première partie." Archives de Philosophie no. 32:458-475.

20. ———. 1969. "Le concept de philosophie chez Franz Brentano. Deuxième partie." Archives de Philosophie no. 32:609-638.

21. ———. 1983. L'oeuvre d'art littéraire. Paris: L'Âge d'Homme.

22. ———. 1989. Qu'est ce qu'une oeuvre musicale? Paris: Christian Bourgois Éditeur.

23. ———. 1997. De la responsabilité: ses fondements ontiques. Paris: L'Harmattan.

24. ———. 1999. "Lettre à Husserl sur la VIème Recherche logique et l'idéalisme." Alter.Revue de Phénoménologie no. 7:309-329.

25. ———. 2002. Husserl, la controverse idéalisme-réalisme (1918-1969). Paris: Vrin.

26. ———. 2011. Esthétique et ontologie de l'oeuvre d'art. Choix de textes 1937-1969. Paris: Vrin.

Présentation, tradution et notes de Patricia Limido-Heulot.

27. ———. 2013. L'oeuvre Architecturale 1945. Paris: Vrin.

Italian translations

1. Ingarden, Roman. 1957. "I compiti attuali della fenomenologia." Archivio di Filosofia no. 1-2:169-170.

2. ———. 1958. "Osservazioni sul problema del giudizio di valore estetico." In Il giudizio estetico. Atti del Simposio di Estetica. Venezia 1958, 41-50. Padova: Edizioni della Rivista di Estetica.

3. ———. 1961. "La pittura astratta." Rivista di Estetica no. 6:165-190.

4. ———. 1967. "La 'vita' dell'opera letteraria." Il Verri no. 23:3-28.

5. ———. 1968. Fenomenologia dell'opera d'arte letteraria. Milano: Silva.

Traduzione parziale di Das Literarische Kunstwerk by Guliana Brozich-Lipszer and Sergio Checconi.

6. ———. 1982. Sulla responsabilità. Bologna: CSEO Biblioteca.

7. ———. 1989. L'opera musicale e il problema della sua identità. Palermo: Flaccovio.

8. ———. 2011. L'opera d'arte letteraria. Verona: Edizioni Fondazione Centro Studi Campostrini.

Traduzione di Lidia Gasperoni con la collaborazione di Giuseppe di Salvatore.

Postfazione di Daniela Angelucci.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Roman Ingarden: English translations

Bibliography

1. Ingarden, Roman. 1948. "The Scientific Activity of Kazimierz Twardowski." Studia Philosophica 1939-1946 no. 3:17-30.

2. ———. 1958. "The Hypothetical Proposition." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 18:435-450.

Translated by Fritz Kaufmann.

"It is well known that the proper meaning and function of the hypothetical proposition became a problem as early as Theophrastus and Eudemus. Since that time numerous conceptions and interpretations have been propounded. Fundamentally, however, the problem has never been solved.

It is characteristic that the interpretation which is perhaps the best known and most widely recognized one, that of contemporary symbolic logic, is at the same time the one that says least of all about the structure of this type of judgment. At bottom, it abandons any attempt to clarify its meaning - and prides itself on this renunciation even as its greatest merit. Nonetheless, this interpretation plays an extremely important role in the way systems of symbolic logic are constructed. In close connection with the concept of the so-called "material implication," it leads to a number of propositions which are considered "paradoxical," as, for instance, by C. I. Lewis, one of the leading symbolic logicians.

Both this result and the fact of a large variety of interpretations which differ from it as well as amongst each other, suggest a new attempt to understand the meaning and function of the hypothetical proposition in a more adequate way.(1)" (p. 435)

(1) 1 I have listed and, to some extent, critically examined the main types of the prevalent theories in "O sadzie warunkowym," Kwartalnik Filozoficzny, vol. XVIII, Cracow, 1949. In the present article I restrict myself to representing my own interpretation of the hypothetical proposition.

3. ———. 1960. "Reflections on the subject matter of the history of philosophy." Diogenes no. 7:111-121.

Also in French as: Note sur l'objet de l'histoire de la philosophie, pp. 130-140.

"One must distinguish the object of study of a certain science regarded as something which should be examined-the discovery and knowledge of which constitute in various respects the duty of one branch of human knowledge-from the state it is in when encountered at a given moment, which, having been furnished to the scholar, constitutes the points of departure for scientific investigations and becomes the source of knowledge regarding the object of study in the preceding sense.

The object of study of the history of philosophy is therefore:

A. Philosophy itself, in the historical sense-hence the content and characteristics (structural, for example) of the philosophic conceptions and theories that have actually existed in the history of philosophy.

B. The numerous processes related to the existence and development of philosophy in the historic sense, the most significant variations of which we have pointed out above." (p. 119)

"The reconstruction of the conceptions or philosophic works alone does not constitute the history of philosophy; it is only the taking into consideration and examination of facts in the evolution of philosophy which gives a historic character to the history of philosophy. Yet, on the other hand, to omit the reconstruction, in the elaboration of the history of philosophy, of philosophic conceptions themselves in their real aspect under which they had appeared at a given time would deprive the history of philosophy of its specific character as a special study of philosophy. To understand that the object of the study of the history of philosophy possesses this particular double character of process and at the same time of a certain product, arising in the course of history and always in evolution, is one of the indispensable conditions for taking clear cognizance of the cognitive means which the history of philosophy can employ and for being able to constitute the methods proper to its investigation." (p. 121)

4. ———. 1960. "The General Question of the Essence of Form and Content." Journal of Philosophy no. 57:222-233.

"This is a translation of section 2 of the chapter "Form and Content of the Literary Work," contained in Vol. 2 of "Studia z estetyki" (Studies in Esthetics) published by the State Institute of Scientific Publications, in Warsaw, 1958." (p. 222)

"Among the groups of problems that I have distinguished thus far the question of the essence of form and content is relatively least dependent on the solution of the remaining questions and its solution constitutes the basis of their solution. I shall therefore start my further considerations from it.

I have made detailed investigations of this topic elsewhere.(1)

Here I shall be satisfied to give the most important results, taking into consideration especially those things that have a special meaning for the literary work.

As I have mentioned, the words "form" and "content" (matter) have been used with many meanings. These meanings must be distinguished and made more precise if possible.

1. The leading idea of one of the most ancient contrasting conceptions of "form" (morphe) and "content" (matter, hyle) is the concept of determining something by something else. In this case the determining factor is the "form"; what is determined, qualified by form, is "matter" (contents). Within this meaning every property of something, for instance the redness of a sphere, its smoothness, its weight, etc., is "form" while the things which these properties serve are matter.(2) This is the main concept of form (3) as used by Aristotle." (pp- 222-223)

(1) Compare R. Ingarden, Spor o istnienie swiata (Argument about the Existence of the World) , Krakow, 1947-48, Chapter VIII.

(2) This answer can be stated in another way. One could say that every property of something is its form. But in this formulation we have to do already not with the problem of essence but with a certain solution of the constitutive problem of form.

(3) "Main concept" because even in Aristotle this concept is not unequivocal, because it is possible to find with him also other meanings of these terms.

5. ———. 1961. "A Marginal Commentary on Aristotle's Poetics. Part 1." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism no. 20:163-173.

Translated by Helena Michejda.

Reprinted in Selected Papers in Aesthetics, pp. 45-50.

"My aim here is not historical inquiry. It is not my purpose to evaluate Aristotle in the light of Greek thought or to consider his role in its development, leaving him all the while in a world distant and apart from us. Instead, it is my intention to bring Aristotle’s views closer to our own by asking him questions that are important to us today, and thus to discover whether or not he can help solve some of our problems-in short, whether the theories we propound today cannot be found already in embryo in his thought. Through such an approach, it is possible that some of his observations shall appear more significant than they have in the past to scholars who had not yet elaborated a clear formulation of these questions. In particular, I shall discuss some of the statements made by Aristotle in his Poetics from the vantage point of the principles developed for the study of literature by Polish theoreticians in the period between the First and Second World Wars." (p. 163)

(...)

"First of all, let us try confronting Aristotle’s ideas about the literary work of art, which he set forth in the Poetics, with the questions that engage us today. Let us ask what general statements about the literary work of art we should accept if certain of his assertions prove to be true. Aristotle was acquainted - as will be seen - with at least some of the issues that interest modern theoreticians of literature; as to others, he seems to have been conversant with them and, although he did not deal with them expressis verbis, to have solved them indirectly. Finally, there are problems and views of which Aristotle was not aware at all, but these are such that they are not excluded by his basic approach, lying, rather, within the scope of his investigations." (p. 167)

6. ———. 1961. "Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Object." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 21:289-313.

Translated by J. Makota and S. Moser.

Reprinted in Selected Papers in Aesthetics, pp. 107-132.

"As I have already stated, an aesthetic experience is not - contrary to what is often heard - a momentary experience, a momentary feeling of pleasure or displeasure, arising as a response to some data of sense perception, but a composite process having various phases and a characteristic development which contains many heterogeneous elements. That the opposed theory seems plausible is due to the fact that, many a time - in consequence of some irrelevant factors - the process does not attain its full development: it is either interrupted before the aesthetic object has been constituted and before the experience of it has culminated, or in consequence of an artificial preparation, or of some professional habits, it does not commence from the beginning, but from the moment in which an aesthetic object is already constituted (e.g., when we look at a painting which we have already seen many times and which we have learned to see in the way it had been once constituted to us as an aesthetic object of peculiar properties). The duration and the complexity of this process depend, of course, on whether we have before us in a given case a complicated or a simple aesthetic object. Sometimes it is simply a quality of colour or a sound of voice which alone become such objects: than the process of aesthetic experience is corrspondingly a more “fleeting” one, but even then it is not a momentary “feeling of pleasure” or “displeasure”." (p. 295)

Note: This paper is a small part of my book in Polish about the cognition of a literary work (Lwow, 1937). It is a complementary study to the book Das literarische Kunstwerk, Halle: 1931.

A literary work, and especially a literary work of art can be read in many different ways: with a pure cognitive attitude as when we read, for example, a scientific work to obtain knowledge, and likewise with an aesthetic attitude, when we read it as literary consumers. It was therefore necessary to study the aesthetic experience (in German: “Erlebnis”) in general to make clear what occurs in us during an aesthetic perception of a literary work of art.

7. ———. 1962. "A Marginal Commentary on Aristotle's Poetics. Part 2." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism no. 20:273-285.

Translated by Helena Michejda.

Reprinted in Selected Papers in Aesthetics, pp. 51-78.

"Let us examine now, in turn, which of the statements in the Poetics deal with the question: Is there a difference between literary works of art and other written works, and, if so, what is that difference?

But first, let us recall that those of our contemporaries who deny that there is any essential difference between the writings under consideration, and who also contend that the study of “literature,” and of its history in particular, embraces all written productions indiscriminately, take the position that predicative sentences in a literary work are the same kind of judgments as the analogous sentences in scientific works, and therefore that both the first and the second are to be examined as to their being “true” or “false”. Consequently, they also believe that literary works of art fulfill the function of supplying certain information to the reader, and that the value of such works fundamentally hinges upon this function - that is, if being “untrue”, they do not supply such information, they are “bad” or worthless”, and, in the opposite case, they acquire value.

But what can we find on this subject in the Poetics') “Even when a treatise on medicine or natural science is brought out in verse, the name of poet is by custom given to the author; and yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common but the meter, so that it would be right to call one poet, the other physicist rather than poet. On the same principle, even if a writer in his poetic imitation were to combine all the meters, as Chaeremon did in his Centaur, which is a medley composed of meters of all kinds, we should bring him too under the general term poet. So much then for these distinctions” (1447 b, 16-23).

Reading these words of Aristotle, we can be satisfied that he definitely distinguished “poetic” works from the unpoetic, the scientific in particular. " (p. 273)

8. ———. 1962. "Edith Stein on Her Activity as an Assistant of Edmund Husserl. Extracts from the Letters of Edith Stein with a Commentary and Introductory Remarks." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research:155-175.

Extracts from the Letters of Edith Stein with a Commentary and Introductory Remarks. [The text of the Letters is published in German, without and English translation].

An English translation is available: Edith Stein Letters to Roman Ingarden: Edith Stein Self-Portrait in Letters (The Collected Works of Edith Stein Book 12), Washington, D.C. ICS Publications 2014 (162 letters).

"I became acquainted with Edith Stein in 1913 when she came to Göttingen to study the tutorship of Edmund Husserl. But it was only in 1916, when she came to Freiburg to pass her doctor's degree examination, that we made a closer personal acquaintance and became friends.From the summer of 1916 till the beginning of January 1917 we conversed together every day on many subjects, but especially on various details of her personal activities as an assistant. When eventually I went for several months to my own country, a lively correspondence t ok place between us.

At the end of September 1917 I came back to Freiburg, and remained there till the end of January 1918. Hardly a day passed during that period in which we did not meet and talk together. Having passed my doctor's degree examination I returned to Cracow, and from that time till the outbreak of war in 1939 we only met twice, for a few days at a time; but during the whole of that period we continually wrote letters to each other.

After the end of the war I was told that she had been killed.

I have intended several times to select and to publish some excerpts from her letters, considering that she writes a great deal not only about her personal activity as an assistant of Husserl's but also about Husserl himself and his work. However it is an undertaking that would require a great deal of work, and would be a very bulky publication.(1) So I kept putting it off for some other time in the future." (p. 155)

(1) There are over 150 letters, often of two or three sheets of paper each.

9. ———. 1964. Time and Modes of Being. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas.

Translated by Helen Michejda.

Selected part of the first volume of the Polish edition of: Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt (1947).

Contents: Author’s Preface V; Translator's Preface VII; Chapter I: Preliminary Considerations 3; Introduction 3; The Foundations and the Tentative Formulation of the Question at Issue 8; Different Groups of Problems Requiring Delimitation 17; Chapter II: Introduction 22; Three Main Groups of Ontological Problems 22; Chapter III: Basic Existential Concepts 28; The Problem of the Possibility of Analyzing Existence 28; Modes of Being and Moments of Existence 32; Autonomy and Heteronomy 43; Existential Originality and Existential Derivation 52; Existential Separateness and Inseparateness 82; Existential Self-Dependence and Existential Contingency 89; Absolute Being - Relative Being 92; Chaper IV: Time and Modes of Being 99; Preliminary Observations Regarding Concrete Time 99; The Mode of Being of Events 102; The Mode of Being of Processes 107; The Mode of Being of Objects Enduring in Time 124; Chapter V:The Consequences for the Possible Solutions of the Controversy over the Existence of the World When Time Is Taken into Account 157; New Concepts of Modes of Being 157; Name Index 165; Subject Index 167-170.

"In 1946/47, my two-volume work, The Controversy over the Existence of the World (Spor o istnienie swiata, Vol. I, 297 pages, Vol. II, 848 pages) was published under the imprint of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Letters.

The present volume contains the English translation of parts selected from Volume I of this work: the Introduction, Chapter III (with its introduction), Chapter VI, and Section 31 from chapter VII.

This selection covers my most important ontological analyses ol modes of being and of time, as it is involved with these, which lead to the establishment of fundamental concepts of modes of existence. These investigations constitute the existential-ontological preparation for Volume II, which contains formal-ontological studies clarifying a number of basic formal concepts that are indispensable to an adumbration of prospective possible solutions of the controversy between idealism and realism. Volume III is in preparation." (From Author's Preface)

10. ———. 1964. "Artistic and Aesthetic Values." British Journal of Aesthetics no. 4:198-213.

Reprinted in R. Ingarden, Selected Papers in Aesthetics, pp. 91-132.

"In this lecture I shall be concerned mainly, with the differentiation of artistic and aesthetic values. With this in view it will be necessary for me to make various other distinctions: first that between the work of art and the aesthetic object, and also a distinction between an aesthetically valuable quality on the one hand and value and its further determinations on the other. These distinctions have been elaborated in my various writings on aesthetics and theory of art, beginning with the book Das Literarische Kunstwerke (1931), but I shall here try to take further than before the differentiation between artistic and aesthetic values." (p. 198)

(...)

The work of art is the true object to the formation of which the creative acts of the artist are directed, while the fashioning of its existential substrate is a subsidiary operation ancillary to the work of art itself which is to be brought into being by the artist.

Every work of art of whatever kind has the distinguishing feature that it is not the sort of thing which is completely determined in every respect by the primary level varieties of its qualities, in other words it contains within itself characteristic lacunae in definition, areas of indeterminateness: it is a schematic creation. Furthermore not all its determinants, components or qualities are in a state of actuality, but some of them are potential only. In consequence of this a work of art requires an agent existing outside itself, that is an observer, in order—as I express it —to render it concret." (pp. 198-199)

(...)

"In composing his work the artist as it were sees ahead by creative intuition into possible complexes of aesthetically valuable qualities and how they will conduce to the emergence of an over-all aesthetic value in the work as a whole.

At the same time he tries to find the technical means to realize a particular complex by his choice of those aesthetically neutral quahties (colours, sounds, shapes, etc.) which by forming the skeleton of a work create the objective conditions (i.e. those on the^ide of the work of art) necessary for the realization of the subjective conditions, that is the existence of a suitable observer and the achievement of an aesthetic experience, without which neither these neutral qualities could be exhibited nor the aesthetically valuable qualities which together cause the emergence of a particular complex of qualities and the constitution of a corresponding aesthetic value determined by this whole complex substrate.

It will be apparent from what has been said that aesthetic value, madeconcrete on the basis of a given work of art, is nothing else but a particular quality determination markedly a selection of interacting aesthetically valuable qualities which manifest themselves on the basis of the neutral skeleton of a work of art reconstructed by a competent observer." (p. 213)

11. ———. 1967. "Jean Hering 1890-1966." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 27:308-309.

"Hering was the first to present the phenomenological style of investigation to France in his book, Phénomenologie et la Philosophie Religieuse, and he developed an interesting and profound analysis of religious knowledge. Along with the prolific activity of Alexander Koyré, Hering's work as writer and teacher helped Husserl's phenomenology to win its first adherents in France. The Paris lectures of Husserl (1928) which were later published as Méditations Cartésiennes are closely associated with this result. Both Jean Hering and Alexander Koyré represented the viewpoint of the "younger" Husserl and could not identify themselves with the transcendental idealism of Husserl. But Hering was the intimate friend of Husserl until his last years and visited him in Freiburg even in the worst years." (p. 309)

12. ———. 1969. "The Physicalistic Theory of Language and the Work of Literature." In Problems of Literary Evaluation: Yearbook of Comparative Criticism, Vol. 2, edited by Strekla, Joseph P., 80-98. University Park: Penn State University Press.

Translated by Maria Pelikan.

Reprinted in Selected Papers in Aesthetics, pp. 163-179.

"The physicalistic theory of language does not, strictly speaking belong to the theory of art and is not part of aesthetics. However, questions about the nature of language, and about the physicalistic concept of language especially, are important ingredients of contemporary philosophy. This latter theory is not an isolated phenomenon of the twentieth century. As we know, there is a certain interplay of philosophy, science, art, and so on in every cultural epoch. Thus, towards the end of the nineteenth century we can see a relationship between, for instance, impressionism and Bergsonism, as in their treatment of the dimension of time. Certain works of literature are also related: Marcel Proust’s novel in France, and Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain in Germany, and so on. There are analogous situations in the twentieth century. You can see it beginning with post-impressionist painting which led to abstract art. In literature, too, there was Dadain France, and there were other, similar attempts at creating a kind of “abstract” literature-that is, at tracing the work of art back to a mere combination of sounds or to a combination of verbal sounds." (p. 80)

(...)

"Thus, I simply cannot accept the formalistic theory of language and literature because it contradicts my experience. You may now say: “Well, yes, you may be right, there are such experiences and one must give in to them. But what is being experienced? Does that which one experiences exist? Do the people who are depicted exist? No, they are not really existing persons, real people are encountered only in real life and in real surroundings”. And then I must answer: of course, they are not realities. They are not autonomously existing objects; they are, if you like, fictions. But there are such fictions - and this is the core of the matter. It is something I can relate to. And if I were now to think: “There are no depicted worlds, they do not exist in any sense; all these fictions that have been created in European literature for the last three thousand years, and many other fictions, do not exist at all” - well, then I simply lose all of human civilization. There is nothing left but the people who love or do not love each other, who kill each other, and who do not even have anything over which they could fight one another.

What is the manner of existence of these fictions? How is it possible that these non-existent, non-real objects can move me, that they can delight me or awaken hatred in me? That is a problem, I admit. But it is a problem worth considering, worth clarifying. Let us not say right away: “It is so difficult that we do not want to work on it, we would rather work on signs and numbers, which is much easier”. Yes, unfortunately it is true that it is hard to say just how these fictions exist and in what sense they belong to our world, how it is possible that something non-existent can somehow transform me when I am in touch with it. That is the problem, that is the problem of civilization, its existence and its role. And I cannot renounce the possibility of somehow coming to grips with this problem, if I can find the approach to it, and of somehow, in no matter how small a way, making it clear to myself." (pp. 97-98)

13. ———. 1970. "Letters Pro and Con." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism no. 28:541-542.

Letter to Professor John Fizer with a reply by Fizer.

"The problem of areas of indeterminateness in a literary work and particularly in the objects represented in it was important for me in connection with the transcendental idealism of Husserl. It was important to demonstrate that real things must be determinate in all their aspects and also in their individuality, whereas pure intentional objects projected from language means or from conscious acts have necessarily areas of indeterminateness in their content -they contain them not only because they are correlates of language creations but also because a literary work of art (and every literary work) contains only a finite number of propositions and other linguistic determinations. In consequence of it, if there is not difference between the principal functions of language creations and the direct perception (which I mentioned above) in the sense that they both leave areas of indeterminateness, then it is necessary that a finite number of proposition and other modes of determination of a literary work cause the existence of gaps, areas of indeterminateness in the work. And the finiteness of the set of direct perceptions of one and the same things causes only some inadequacy of our knowledge of the object (thing) which in itself is determined in all its parts as aspects; "schematism" in this case is only a "partiality" of what is effectively given; but that which is given is always concrete and strictly individual, and also in these properties and moments which are common to things of the same kind." (p. 542)

14. ———. 1970. "On Responsibility. Its Ontic Foundations." In Man and Value, 53-117. München Wien: Philosophia Verlag.

"Main Thesis of the Study

The problem of responsibility has heretofore been treated primarily as a special problem of ethics, without any more precise investigation of its wider contexts. The main contention of the present discussion is that this is insufficient and that other underlying factual matters (Tatbestände), that lead into deeper problems, have to be taken into account before we can discover the conditions under which one can speak of responsibility in a meaningful way. It also seems that responsibility comes up in realms other than the moral. Moral responsibility is only a certain special case. Thus, the range of cases and examples to be taken into consideration has to be expanded." (p. 53)

(...)

"The circle of problems and of possible solutions which stand in connection with the problem of responsibility in its various forms and contexts is hereby closed. They seem to me to be the most important problems to come into question in this connection, although I would not wish to state that they have been entirely exhausted. The thesis which I should want to defend affirms only that the essence of responsibility in its various forms and contexts not only points to the questions discussed here, but at the same time also demands definite answers. But should it turn out in further investigations that these questions must be answered otherwise, then the danger would arise that the generally accepted postulates for responsible acting, for assuming responsibility and for the right to call to account would have to be put in question. Yet, perhaps the further course of the analysis could show that in order to be better able to ground the meaningfulness and possibility of the realization of responsibility, not the solutions to the problems given here would have to be improved but rather their linguistic formulations." (pp. 112-113)

15. ———. 1970. "Man and Nature." In Man and Value, 17-20. München Wien: Philosophia Verlag.

A contribution to the discussion of the problem “Man and Nature” during the plenary session of the XII. International Congress of Philosophy, Venice, 1958. The main speaker on this theme was Professor Johannes B. Lotz, S.J.

"I agree with the speaker, Prof. Lotz, that man transcends nature, and that by the “power of his essence” he “projects (entwirft) a world, which, despite its always self-sustaining, fundamental form, takes on countless historical guises.” It is also true that his “conscious activeness [Wirken] is expressed primarily in three basic forms: as the cognition of what is true, the doing of good and the shaping of beauty.” But it still remains to be explained what makes up his creative activeness, and the relation between the world created by man and the nature in which he finds himself at the inception of his activity. The essence of man can be clarified by explicating, among other things, the sense and mode of existence of his works, which find their support in nature. It is not important for this problem how one conceives nature itself: whether as the totality of things, or as the totality of what is visible or, finally, as the totality of what is [Gesamtheit des Seienden], The only important thing is the fact that nature exists prior to any activity by man and that it changes within itself, for the most part independently not only of man’s activity, but also of his existence. Nature is also the ultimate foundation of his being, as well as of the existence of his works. This is apparent not so much in the fact of human knowledge as in the intrinsic content and mode of existence of the products of human culture." (p. 17)

16. ———. 1970. "On Human Nature." In Man and Value, 21-24. München Wien: Philosophia Verlag.

"It is surely difficult to define the nature of man. Through his deeds, sometimes heroic but at times horrifying, through the immense diversity of his character and the goals he strives to realize, through the inexhaustible novelty of his works and admirable capacity to regenerate after almost every fall - man transcends the confines of every imposed definition. All efforts at comprehending the plenitude of his essence with a satisfactory and adequate definition have proven vain. Every feature we find in his essence can be juxtaposed to concrete facts appearing to demonstrate something diametrically contrary. And it is certain that there are many irrefutable facts of man’s reality, in the annals of humanity as a whole, which, though real and in fact actualized by him, are still something less than his true nature. But at the same time, there is occasionally in man’s life an occurrence so lofty and exceptional that it could not possibly mark anything but some direction along the path of his noblest evolution, and not a commonly realized goal.

Though we are well aware of the great difficulties inherent in the attempt to grasp man’s very nature, to make the attempt once more is, after all, something enticing - even at the risk of giving, at best, only a partial definition, or one which points to features that are only very seldom realized." (p. 21)

17. ———. 1970. "Man and His Reality." In Man and Value, 25-31. München Wien: Philosophia Verlag.

"I once heard a paper by an eminent biologist concerning man’s status on earth. One of the paper’s main theses was the assertion that man was able to conquer nature to a greater extent than any other species of animal and that his exceptional status among living beings on earth is based precisely on this fact. I then entertained the question whether the unquestionably higher degree of man’s dominion over nature, and for that very reason his greater independence of what happens in it, is really what distinguishes him from beasts in an essential way. This would perhaps be true only if the conception of man defined as homo faber had to be employed as the basis of this contrast. But such a conception does not indeed touch on what is essential for his humanity. Man’s exceptional status in the world does, in fact, depend on something else, so that the fact of his domination over nature and beast is only a certain phenomenon which is, if not altogether derivative, still not the most important. I wish to share a few thoughts with the reader on this topic.

Man is distinguished from thebeastsin that, among other things, he not only dominates nature within limits that are incomparably wider than those attainable by animals, and even transforms and adapts it to suit his needs and demands, but more importantly - and in this lies his essential feature - in that he creates for himself an entirely new reality or, one might say, quasi-reality. Once created, it becomes a significant constituent of the world surrounding him." (p. 259)

18. ———. 1970. "Man and Time." In Man and Value, 33-52. München Wien: Philosophia Verlag.

"We all live in time, and we know it. There are, however, two fundamentally different ways of experiencing time and ourselves in time. According to the first it seems that what ‘truly’ exists is we ourselves', time, on the other hand, is only something derivative and merely phenomenal (erscheinungsmäßig). But according to the second it is time and the changes occurring in it which make up the sole reality; we, on the other hand, are, as it were, subject to complete annihilation by these changes. At best we sustain ourselves in existence as a pure phenomenon, as a certain kind of phantom produced by the changes occurring in the present.

The extreme polarity of these experiences and their apparently equal claim to veracity makes them the ultimate (sometimes unarticulated) basis of mutually opposed metaphysical standpoints. Thus for example at the very beginning of European philosophy the view of Heraclitus on the one hand, and the metaphysics of the Eleatics on the other, have their origin in these experiences. In modern philosophy, the conflict between realism and transcendental idealism is a manifestation of this opposition. More detailed historical analyses could likewise show how two different experiences of time play their role in the particular views concerning time which have appeared in the course of the history of European philosophy. Yet, perhaps the difference between the two experiences of time is most acutely reflected in the problem of the essence of the self, in the conception of the human being in general, and makes this essence into the central problem of philosophy. Let us examine this matter in greater detail." (p. 33)

19. ———. 1970. "What we do not know about Values." In Man and Value, 131-164. München Wien: Philosophia Verlag.

"Interest in various problems concerning values has grown considerably in the post-war years. Some progress even appears to have been made in this direction. Nonetheless, there has been little success in finding satisfactory answers to a series of important questions and in overcoming difficulties encountered by value theory. Great effort is being expended in the treatment of various special problems, mainly within particular realms of values, whereas fundamental, general problems lie fallow."

(...)

"The following are the problems to which I wish to devote some attention here:

(1) On what basis are we to distinguish the fundamental types of values and the realms of values that are correlated with these?

(2) What is the formal structure of a value and its relation to what ‘possesses’ the value (to the ‘bearer’ of the value)?

(3) In what way do values exist, insofar as they exist at all?

(4) What is the basis for the differences between values in regard to their ‘rank’, and is it possible to establish a general hierarchy amongst them?

(5) Are there ‘autonomous’ values?

(6) What is the status of the so-called ‘objectivity’ of values?(1)" (pp. 131-132)

(1) The problem of the so-called 'relativity' of values is discussed in a separate paper. [Remarks on the Relativity of Values]

20. ———. 1970. "An Analysis of Moral Values." In Man and Value, 165-178. München Wien: Philosophia Verlag.

"Let us review the main results of the previous lecture. I tried to establish a series of necessary conditions for some conduct or fact to have a moral value. They are actually the conditions for the realization of the kind of value which characterizes some human virtue or conduct as moral. There were six such conditions in all. The question came up, however, whether all of them taken together provide a sufficient condition for some value to be of a moral nature. That issue was left open. Let us then first of all recall these six conditions (there was still another, whose necessity was not really settled).

1. In every situation where it makes sense to speak of a moral value, an alert, acting subject must participate in the realization of this value, and ‘in functioning as the subject’ of his action [Handeln], this conscious subject must fulfill some further conditions. That is to say, the subject must guide or direct his action, while at the same time recognizing certain facts - in particular, certain values. Both presuppose not only the existence of the subject of action, but also his conscious awareness.

2. Some sort of conduct must be effected by the conscious subject, conduct in a very wide sense of the word, which could also be covered by the expression: some sort of behaviour by the subject. In a special case this will be some active doing, that is an activity that changes something in the world.

3. Values must somehow come into play when this conduct is placed within the context of a more encompassing situation. To the question as to what sort of values these have to be, I answered that they can be of various types. They can be values related to matters of life and death, economic or, more generally, utilitarian values, cultural values, and the like, but I do not exclude the possibility that these can also be moral values. I carried out my analysis within the scope of the problem of fairness. Being fair involves some sort of judgment or the appropriation of some sort of values to someone; these values can be extra-moral just as well as moral ones.

4. There has to be accountability on the part of this alert subject who behaves in a particular manner. There can be no question of any fact or behaviour, in particular of any deed, falling under the category of moral values, without the presence of this accountability. Accountability, for its part, requires the fulfillment of certain conditions for its realization. Some sort of conscious awareness of the acting subject belongs among these conditions, along with his self-identity, which needs be preserved in the course of an action that may extend over a period of time. Responsibility weighs on the subject even after the action has terminated. And in order to be able to weigh on him, his self-identity must have been preserved. Sometimes we speak of a collective responsibility. There were times in European culture when such a notion was operative. There was collective responsibility in the guise of clan law; the whole clan was responsible for any one of its members. In such a case, irrespective of how many accountable subjects there are, there ultimately exists some super-ordinate collective subject, and this too must retain its self-identity if any of this is to make sense.

5. The fifth necessary condition, in my opinion, is the freedom of decision and conduct. Freedom must of course be maintained in the course of executing the decision, that is during the subject’s behaviour, in the course of some prospectively carried out activity and its performance. The subject must also have the option of withdrawing from an action he has already initiated. Once someone is uninvolved, so that from a particular moment on everything runs its course independently of him, he ceases from that instant to be responsible. But if he is to be responsible, if his being morally responsible is to come into play at all, he must be free to behave as he wishes.

6. The sixth point is the thesis that the person himself, the ‘I’ governing in this person, must be the source of decision and the basis of responsibility in the course of executing the given activity. Not only the making of the decision comes from the person, but also backing it in the course of its implementation. This is not to be regarded as some peripheral, external or only physical source of behaviour. The subject’s behaviour ought to have its starting point in the very centre of his whole psycho-physical organization." (pp. 165-166)

21. ———. 1970. "Some Words Concerning Fruitful Discussion." In Man and Value, 179-181. München Wien: Philosophia Verlag.

"Freedom of discussion? - Why, yes, of course. That is a necessary condition of all progress in science, and an equally essential factor in all cultural and social development. Surely there is no need to write anything more about it.

Still, if the discussion is to be essentially fruitful, its freedom cannot be purely formal, cannot consist merely in the fact that one does not beset the discussion with any external, formal obstacles. Fruitful discussion must be characterized by other essential features. First of all, it must emanate from the genuine, inner need of all the participants, and must be conducted under observance of their inner freedom. This inner freedom is borne of the absolute earnestness of thinking, of honesty toward oneself and of striving, undaunted by any circumstances, to attain to an explanation of unexplained matters, matters which are sometimes dogmatically accepted on faith or on the strength of authority. It is borne of the need to check accepted assertions or nurtured beliefs through critical, unbiased research." (p. 179)

22. ———. 1972. "What is New in Husserl's 'Crisis'?" In The Later Husserl and the Idea of Phenomenology. Idealism-Realism, Historicity and Nature, edited by Tyminiecka, Anna-Teresa, 23-47. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Analecta Husserliana. Vol. 2.

"It is now almost common-place to speak of the 'later' Husserl, as if this 'later' Husserl had assumed an entirely new position. In this connection one usually thinks of his Crisis [The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology]. What are the facts of the matter?" (p. 23)

(...)

"In the Crisis there is a tendency which was never expressed so clearly before, to view phenomenology as it were as the end state for which European philosophy was yearning, to see phenomenology as the mature state of European philosophy. Husserl's personal situation makes this understandable. But the interpretations of various schools of modern philosophy which he actually carries out are not persuasive, mainly because there is almost a complete lack of precise textual analysis of the works under discussion. Only the discussion of the manner in which Galileo placed modern natural science upon a mathematical foundation, and the related tendency of a rationalizing nature, forms an important enlargement of our stock of knowledge. Together with the Galileo researches of Alexandre Koyré it is among the true achievements of phenomenology." (p. 25)

(...)

"Husserl has reduced all reality to purely intentional objects (Gegenstandlichkeiten) but he never inquired into the mode of being, and the peculiar form of, intentional objects; he consequently overlooked that they are essentially different in both these aspects from objects with autonomous being (particularly real objects). Thus he also did not see that purely intentional objects have a strange ambivalence of form; on the one hand, they have an intentionally formed content; as such they are supposed to be e.g., a tree, a man, etc. On the other hand, they have a structure which belongs to them qua intentional structures.(9)" (p. 44)

(9) It was no accident that I chose the product of literary art as the topic of the book which I published in 1931. I had supposed that literary productions and the objects which are depicted in them are purely intentional structures (Gebilde) and that they differ in their mode of being as well as in their form from the mode of being and form of real objects in such a way that the latter must not be reduced to the former. My inquiries have confirmed this supposition, and this was the first step in the dispute with transcendental idealism. In that book I made for the first time a distinction between the content and the structure of purely intentional objects (l.c. §20). But the formal difference between (purely intentional) objects of autonomous and of heteronomous being was first conclusively demonstrated with the Streit urn die Existenz der Welt.

23. ———. 1973. The Literary Work of Art. An Investigation on the Borderlines of Ontology, Logic and Theory of Literature. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

With an Appendix on the Functions of Language in the Theatre.

Translated and with an introduction by George G. Grabowicz.

The main subject of the investigations presented here is the basic structure and the mode of existence of the literary work, and in particular of the literary work of art. Their primary purpose is to indicate its peculiar construction and to free the concept of the work from the various kinds of blurring that in the studies to date stem, on the one hand, from the still strong psychologistic tendencies and, on the other, from considerations of a general theory of art and art works. I will deal with the former at greater length in Part I of this book, so it will suffice for me merely to mention it here. Concerning the latter, how ever, one has wavered, since the time of Lessing, between two opposite conceptions. Either one brought the literary work, and in particular the literary work of art, into too close a relation ship with the “visual arts” (above all with painting), or one sought—following Lessing’s first impulse—(as, for instance, T. A. Meyer did) to lay too much stress on the purely linguistic element of the literary work and hence deny the intuitive elements of the literary work of art.(1) In my opinion these two extremes arose from the fact that the literary work was always considered to be a formation having one stratum, whereas in fact it consists of a number of heterogeneous strata; in con sequence, one always considered some—and, according to the various theories, always different—elements of the work as the only constitutive ones. Since my study attempts to bring out the many-layered structure, and consequently the attendant polyphony, as that which is essential for the literary work and thus to take into consideration all the elements appearing in it, my position occupies a middle ground between the two conflicting camps. To avoid undue expansion of my already sizable book and to enable the reader to take a pure attitude toward the object of investigation, I have dispensed with providing extensive connections to existing theories. Usually this has the effect of making the reader attune himself primarily to already existing conceptual schemata, with the result that the pure observation of situations that are really at hand is substantially impeded." (pp. LXXi-LXXII)

(1) For a history of this problem see, among others, Jonas Cohn, Zeitschrift fur Asthetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, II, no. 3 (1907); in addition, see R. Lehmann, Deutsche Poetik (Munich, 1908), § 8.

24. ———. 1973. The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Translated by Ruth Ann Crowley and Kenneth R. Olson.

"Scholars discussed methods of investigation or of “criticism” without even having asked themselves two crucial questions: (i) How is the object of cognition —the literary work of art—structured? and (2) What is the procedure which will lead to knowledge of the literary work; that is, how does the cognition of the work of art come about and to what does or can it lead? Only after having answered these two questions can one meaningfully ask how the literary work of art should be cognized in order to achieve satisfactory results.

In my book The Literary Work of Art I tried to answer the first question. It is now time to take up the second question, before we can even begin to consider methodological problems. I proffered an answer to this question as early as 1936, in the Polish version of my book The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art. I do not doubt that much has changed since that time, in Germany as well as other western European countries. Nevertheless, it seems to me that there is still no satisfactory treatment of the problems concerning the cognition of the literary work of art, and thus my book, now in an expanded edition, can be useful even today." (p. 4)

(...)

"The main question which I am trying to answer is: How do we cognize the completed literary work set down in writing (or by other means, e.g., in a tape recording)? Cognition is, however, only one kind of intercourse a reader can have with the literary work. To be sure, we will not completely ignore the other ways of experiencing the work, but neither will we pay particular attention to them at the moment. Even “cognition” itself can take place in many different ways, which can bring about various results. The type of work read also plays an essential role in determining how cognition takes place." (pp. 5-6)

25. ———. 1973. "On So-Called Truth in Literature." In Aesthetics in Twentieth-Century Poland. Selected Essays, edited by Harrel, Jean and Wierzbianska, Alina, 164-204. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press.

Translated by J. G. Harrel.

Reprinted in Selected Papers in Aesthetics, pp. 133-162.

"Are declarative sentences in a literary work judgments in the strict sense of the word?

In my book Das literarische Kunstwerk I argued that declarative sentences, and especially predicating sentences, in literary works are not strictly judgments but quasi-assertive sentences, and that all other types of sentence, like, say the interrogative sentence, undergo an analogous modification. I then said that in quasi-assertive sentences “nothing is seriously asserted”. As a result of this, objects presented in a literary work acquire the character of reality, but this is merely an external apparel which has no pretension to be taken quite seriously by the reader, although in practice literary works are often read improperly and readers think that they are joining the author in judgments and seriously but mistakenly regard the presented object as real.

The question is whether my position is correct and whether, assuming that quasi-assertive sentences appear in literary works judgments in the strict sense also appear." (p. 133 of the reprint)

(...)

"In conclusion I would like to make two further observations.

(1) The distinction that I have just drawn amounts to a diagnosis based on observation of actual works of art and it is not a value judgment or a statement of principles according to which literary works of art ought to be composed.

(2) Those who maintain that even pure works of literary art contain either general or singular judgments regard the rejection of such a view as tantamount to denying that literature can have a fundamental and positive influence on man’s life. They say that this amounts to taking up a formalistic attitude, according to which the so-called content of the work is of no consequence, and that they ought to oppose such so-called “aestheticism”." (p. 160 of the reprint)

26. ———. 1973. "About the Motives that Led Husserl to Transcendental Idealism." In Phenomenology and Natural Existence: Essays in Honor of Marvin Farber, edited by Riepe, Dale, 95-117. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Partial translation; for the full translation see: On the Motives which Led Edmund Husserl to Transcendental Idealism.

27. ———. 1973. "'A priori' Knowledge in Kant versus 'a priori' Knowledge in Husserl." Dialectics and Humanism:5-18.

28. ———. 1974. "Main Directions in Polish Philosophy." Dialectics and Humanism no. 1:91-103.

Originally written in German in 1936.

"The bieigmning of philosophical research in Poland dates from the end of the XV century. The Polish philosophy from the Renaissance period has to its credit more than one important achievememt, highly appreciated im that period, also abroad. This philosophy is connected with the first period ot the blossoming of the Cracow Jagiellomiam University." (p. 91)

(...)

"Twardowski, a pupil of Franz Brentano and once Privatdozent in Vienna, and then in the years 1895-1931 professor of the Lwow University, unfolded in Lwow a very lively and most effective activity in the field of pedagogics. In the course of only a few years he created there a big philosophical research centre which was constantly gaining in importance, and was predominant in Poland in the first decades of the 20th century. Twardowski educated several generations of independently working philosophers who are today teaching at numerous Polish universities. Naturally, part of them are following other ways than his." (p. 95)

29. ———. 1974. "Psychologism and Psychology in Literary Scholarship." New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation no. 5:215-223.

Translated by John Fizer.

Reprinted in R. Ingarden, Selected Papers in Aesthetics, pp. 79-90 and in J. Fizer, Psychologism and Psychoaesthetics: A Historical and Critical View of Their Relations, Amsterdam: Benjamin Press 1981, pp. 202-216.

"I. Psychology and Psychologism.

First of all, we tend to confuse psychologism with psychology in its application to certain literary matters. As a result, we consider the opponents of psychologism to be enemies of psychology. Whereas in fact they are two different things. Psychology is a science which investigates mental phenomena and subjects and which has its own field of investigation, its own more or less well-defined methods and aims; it is, moreover, a science that has authority not only in its own field but is also one of the important and fundamental branches of science about reality, a branch which can be neither eliminated nor “relegated” to anything else (as, for example, the so-called physicalists wanted to do). However, when psychological research begins to transcend its own field and to dominate, the competence of psychology is terminated. At this point, as for example in logic, epistemology, etc., we begin to deal with “psychologism” in the sense in which it was historically introduced by Husserl. “Psychologism” is a certain philosophical point of view whose essence lies in the fact that it ascribes psychological characteristics to certain objects." (pp. 215-216)

(...)

"IV. The Goal of Psychology in Literary Scholarship.

Finally, there is a group of psychological problems which enters into literary scholarship. The work per se is not psychological. But in its contents there is a stratum of presented objects in which, among other things, there are presented psycho-physical subjects - people or animals. Even though these persons (or animals) are only presented and are derivative-intentional in their ontological essence, determined by the work’s text, in their contents they are nevertheless persons with their own mental life and their own structure which in the investigation of the work must be analyzed as carefully as other components of the work. ... The following has to be kept in mind: (1) In this case the only source is the text of a given work; (2) it is an investigation of certain components of the work rather than some independent thing; (3) finally, it is a preparation for the subsequent study of the work. While studying the experiences and structure of the persons presented in the literary work, we must not use information acquired elsewhere...." (pp. 221-222)

30. ———. 1975. On the Motives which Led Husserl to Transcendental Idealism. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Translated from Arnór Hannibalsson.

Contents: Translator's Preface VII; Introduction 1; Part I: Husserl's Position 4; Part II. Critical Remarks 34; Index 72.

"I have often asked myself why Husserl, really, headed in the direction of transcendental idealism from the time of his Ideas whereas at the time of the Logical Investigations he clearly occupied a realist position. In later years he at last reached a solution whose correctness he could not doubt.

For everyone who knows Husserl's methods of work it will not be surprising that various arguments emerging from his investigations should move him in this direction. For a long time Husserl worked on a certain set of problems which he elaborated according to his interests at the time without being explicitly conscious of the broad connections between them. Only as the years went by did there begin to emerge a certain unified pattern of philosophical problems which Husserl tried to grasp either from a single methodological point of view or by studying the clusters of problems themselves and the relations between them. The totality of this set of problems reached at once in Husserl's eyes such vast dimensions that a single person could not be expected to solve them. Husserl makes many attempts to draw up the outlines of this totality but - in spite of all his efforts - he has to be contented with more or less detailed sketches of parts of it. After he had worked out each of them there followed usually long periods of physical exhaustion and during these periods he never succeeded in organizing any work of great dimensions. These fragments are elaborated in various periods of Husserl's life and differed from each other in various details and crystallized themselves around different central problems or fundamental theses. When we look now at the whole of Husserl's investigations (which are now known to us) it appears necessary to make distinctions between different groups of motives or arguments which, in the last resort, result in transcendental idealism whose total picture is, perhaps, painted most carefully in Formal and Transcendental Logic and in the Cartesian Meditations but which is nevertheless never finally substantiated by Husserl. It will be useful to isolate these groups of arguments or motives which led Husserl to transcendental idealism. It will be of help for a critical consideration of the foundations of his solution. These groups are, to mention only the most important ones, as follows:

I. Assertions regarding Husserl's concept of philosophy as rigorous science.

2. Postulates defining the right method of the theory of knowledge.

3. Positive results of the analysis of outer perception of material objects and also the so-called constitutive analysis.

4. Some fundamental assertions regarding formal ontology.

Before discussing these assertions and their role in the argument for transcendental idealism it may be useful to make clear whether and to what extent it is possible to argue for the view that Husserl was a realist during the period of his Logical Investigations." (pp. 1-3, note omitted)

31. ———. 1975. "On the Ontology of Relations." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 6:75-80.

"In previous chapters I have occupied myself almost exclusively with the states of affairs holding "within" an object or, to put it more accurately, with those involving only one subject, i.e. those states in which it is only one individual object or one object of a higher order which functions as the subject of an inhering property or as the subject of a process or an action which takes place. But there exist also other states of affairs in which partake more than one object, be it that they all function as a foundation for the inherence

of a property in one or more of the objects or that they all function as the foundation for the occurrence of a process or an action." (p. 75)

(...)

"1. A relation of the lowest degree, and in particular its core, has its ontic basis in, at least, two individual, non-relational objects which are included in it as its terms. A relation of a higher degree has its ontic basis in at least two relations which are its terms and which determine its core.

An individual non-relational object. on the other hand. has no such ontic basis.

2. The relation taken in its primary form and before its objectification is one single state of affairs involving two or more genuine subjects in the manner explained earlier. The relation taken as an object which possesses a number of properties is constituted secondarily on the basis of the relation in its primary form. An individual non-relational object, on the other hand, contains an infinite multiplicity of states of affairs with one subject, which states coalesce with one another because the subject is the same. Actually, in this respect there is a formal similarity between an individual, non-relational object and a relation taken as an object (as a subject of properties).

3. Relations differ materially, by the specific moments of their constitutive nature, from nonrelational objects; and also by the possession of properties such as symmetry, transitivity, the having of many places, etc., whose matter is of such a kind that the non-relational objects cannot possess these properties. Inversely, the non-relational objects possess some properties whose matter excludes their appurtenance to relations.

What could be the sense of saying, e.g., that a certain relation was green or heavy, or that it was a good conductor of electricity? The question whether it is possible to detect a general law distinguishing all the non-relational properties (resp. constitutive natures) from the relational ones, could only be answered by a material ontology." (p. 80)

32. ———. 1975. "Remarks Concerning the Relativity of Values." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 6:102-108.

Translated by Guido Küng and E. M. Swiderski.

New translation by Arthur Szylewicz with the title Remarks on the Relativity of Values in R. Ingarden, Man and Value, München Wien: Philosophia Verlag 1983, pp. 119-130.

"The old problem of the relativity of values depends on a number of theoretical attitudes and commitments which as a rule remain hidden beneath the plane of analysis. In striving for a deeper treatment of this problem, we have to proceed carefully, and attempt to unveil the obscurities and ambiguities in the proposed solutions to the attendant problems, solutions which are quite frequently accepted without a detailed and conscientious discussion.

There are three auxiliary problems that are important in connection with the problem of relativity. First, what is the sense of ‘relativity’? Secondly, what are the differences between the particular kinds or types of values, assuming that a multiplicity of values is to be admitted at all? Thirdly, should the problem of the relativity of values be treated quite generally, hence for all values, or should it be formulated separately for each kind of values?" (p. 119)

33. ———. 1975. "Phenomenological Aesthetics: An Attempt at Defining Its Range." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism no. 33:257-269.

Translated by Adam Czerniawski.

Reprinted in R. Ingarden, Selected Papers in Aesthetics, pp. 25-44 and in Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle (eds.), Critical theory since 1965, Tallahassee: University Press of Florida 1986, pp. 185-197.

"We now began to hear about “a general science of literature” (“allgemeine Literaturwissenschaft”) and in Poland about “theory of literature”. In Germany, as far as I know, only Ermatinger used the expression “philosophy of literature” in a collection of essays entitled Philosophie der Literatur (1930).

It is not clear how one is to interpret these three concepts. Nor is the meaning of that generality clear, especially of the way in which “general” predication was to be arrived at. Was it to be by empirical generalizations based on the experience of specific works, and what sort of “experience ” was it to be? Was it, for instance, to be achieved in the way that it is done in comparative literature studies, or in some other manner: for instance, through a consideration of specific works, through an analysis of the general content of a work of art, as the phenomenologists themselves wished to do?

When in 1927 I began writing my first book on this subject it was quite clear to me that one cannot employ the method of empirical generalization in aesthetics, but that one must carry through an eidetic analysis of the idea of a literary work of art or a work of art in general. So I thought it a mistake to set against each other the two lines of enquiry: (a) the general enquiry into a work of art, and (b) the aesthetic experience, whether in the sense of the author’s creative experience or as a receptive experience of the reader or observer. I had therefore suitably shaped the thesis of my book, even though its title was Das literarische Kunstwerk, and even though the German edition of my Untersuchungen zur Ontologie der Kunst (Ontological Investigations in Art) published thirty years later also has a title suggesting a purely object-directed aesthetic enquiry, with not a word about aesthetics." (p. 259)

34. ———. 1976. "The Letter to Husserl about the VI Logical Investigation and Idealism." In Ingardeniana: A Spectrum of Specialised Studies Establishing the Field of Research, edited by Tyminiecka, Anna-Teresa, 419-438.

Analecta Husserliana, Volume 4.

"Miss [Edith] Stein wrote to me a few weeks ago that you are working again on the problem of 'Idealism'. (2) I immediately sat down to work since I am especially interested in the subject. Unfortunately, my finishing touches on the last part of the Bergson-thesis had to suffer from this, but the working hours of the last weeks will actually be for the thesis' benefit. I have once more very thoroughly studied the 5th and 6th Investigation besides having thought over everything essential in this respect from the Ideas. (3) Certainly, and unfortunately too, I cannot say that I have come to a conclusion. But at least I know what I cannot hold as defensible.

Perhaps it will be of interest to you, dear Professor, if I write something about it." (p. 420)

(...)

"But to come to the problem of Idealism, about which I actually wanted to write and which has tormented me already several years. It seems to me that under this name different and fundamentally different problems are concealed. Usually in literature these problems run into one another, and often a system is called 'idealistic' which actually would not so be named. I do not want to talk here about the equivocations, respectively about all the problems laying here, but, with respect to the things interesting us, it seems to me that one has to differentiate three groups of problems: (1) the ontological, (2) the metaphysical (in a slightly different sense as you use this word), (3) the epistemological problems. Naturally, between all groups essential relationships do exist." (p. 422)

(...)

"Presupposed, to begin with, that the meaning of reality is actually to be conceived as I have done, and that it also would be maintained in the constitutive consideration; (in other words, that everything real would be a 'being-in-itself' and the real external world something essentially alien to consciousness). First of all an ontological question arises: is the essence of reality an autonomous essence and especially an essence autonomous over against the essence of consciousness - as essence -, or not?

Principally spoken, four possibilities are given:

(1) Reality (as essence) is dependent and the essence of consciousness is autonomous, i.e. the latter could exist without the essence of reality.

(2) The essence of reality and the essence of consciousness are autonomous.

(3) The essence of reality is autonomous. Consciousness is dependent.

(4) Both are dependent and dependent on each other." (pp. 435-436)

Notes

(2) The letter is dated 24.VI.1918.

(3) It concerns the Investigations of the Vol. II of Logische Untersuchungen.

35. ———. 1978. "On Moral Action." In The Human Being in Action: The Irreducible Element in Man: Part II Investigations at the Intersection of Philosophy and Psychiatry, edited by Tyminiecka, Anna-Teresa, 151-162.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 7.

This section and the following are the first English translations, by Dr Barbara Haupt Mohr, from Roman Ingarden's work entitled Ueber die Verantwortung, which appeared originally in German, Reclam Universai-Bibliothek, Stuttgart, 1970.

"We have treated the question of the responsibility that exists after the completion of an action. But how does the problem of responsibility that grows out of action present itself? How does action take place when it is undertaken in the first place with regard to (or for) the fact that it will result in a particular responsibility on the part of the actor?

It is possible to act without concerning oneself at all with any "responsibility" that one may have for the action. One may simply surrender to the action and aim at bringing about a result. Nevertheless, a person who acts in this way incurs the responsibility for having acted in this way, unconcerned about anything. But one can direct all one's action in such a way that it can result in something evil or something good, aiming to avoid the former and to achieve the latter. One who acts in this manner also takes into consideration that - aside from the possible harm that may ensue - guilt or merit may be assigned to him, the actor. One can act in such a manner that one asks himself at every step of the way whether one's action is "just." The actor must then retain the overview of the values that

may be achieved or destroyed in this way, for it is on the scope of this overview that not only the course of his actions but also his responsibility for them depends." (p. 151)

36. ———. 1983. Man and Value. München Wien: Philosophia Verlag.

Translation by Arthur Szylewicz of Über die Verantwortung.

Table of Contents: Foreword to the Original Polish Edition 9; Foreword to Man and Value 11; Translator’s Preface 16; Man and Nature 17; On Human Nature 21; Man and His Reality 25; Man and Time 33; On Responsibility. Its Ontic Foundations 53; I. Main Thesis of the Study 53; II. Differentiation of Various Situations Involving Responsibility 53; III. Bearing Responsibility 54; IV. Assuming Responsibility 66; V. Responsible Action 67; VI. Value as Ontic Fundament of Responsibility 69; VII. Responsibility and the Identity of its Subject 77; VIII. The Substantial Structure of a Person and Responsibility 80; IX. Freedom and Responsibility 84; X. The Causal Structure of the World 101; XI. The Temporality of the World and Responsibility 105; Remarks on the Relativity of Values 119; What we do not know about Values 131; An Analysis of Moral Values 165; Some Words Concerning Fruitful Discussion 179; Index 183-185.

"Some words about the genesis of this volume.

It was the author’s intention to have it published at some future time. This intention was born at the beginning of 1969, when it was necessary to make a final decision as to which works (including some previously published and scattered in various periodicals and conference acts) were to be included in vol. Ill of Studies in Aesthetics, the next in the series of Roman Ingarden’s Collected Philosophical Works, issued by the Polish Scientific Publishers (PWN). Several very small papers fell into the author’s hands at the time (primarily, the first four contained in the present little volume) which he did not want to include in the projected volume (Aesthetics III), due to its cohesive composition. A somewhat different thematic thread ties these papers together: the nature of man." (Danuta Gierulanka, from the Foreword to the Original Polish Edition, p. 9)

(...)

"The three last major essays of the collection primarily illustrate Ingarden’s approach relative to problems of the first group, i.e. problems concerning the essence of values. As with the pieces that made up the Little Book, these essays differ in their analytical style (from the attempt at a conceptual ordering of the relevant issues in “Remarks on the Relativity of Values”, through a setting out of the general approach to fundamental problems in “What we do not know about Values”, to an attempt at specific phenomenological analyses in “An Analysis of Moral Values”) and make up a small but representative selection of the author’s approach, a fragment of his researches in the domain of axiology. Ingarden never tried systematically to develop axiological investigations in complete generality - in accord with the standpoint of axiological pluralism that emerges in these essays, which dictates that we reckon with the need for separate investigations in each sphere of values."

(...)

"It so happens that thus far I have not mentioned the essay “Man and Time”, the fourth piece in the collection. In a certain sense, more so than all the others, it speaks for itself. It speaks both through the way it was written (most vibrant, and perhaps most fascinating to the reader) and the ‘existential’ (as some are wont to say today) commitment of the author, especially in that part of it that was added on during the War, a part that is most fervently searching and culminates in a solution. This solution, indeed, strikes the most perspicuous chord in the whole book, which binds what is perhaps of the greatest importance to man - the selfrealization of his person, threatened by the annihilating experience of passing on - with the relation of man to values." (Danuta Gierulanka, from the Foreword to Man and Value, p. 12 and 14)

37. ———. 1983. "On Philosophical Aesthetics." Dialectics and Humanism no. 10:55-59.

Translated by A. Półtawski and A. Potocki.

Reprinted in R. Ingarden, Selected Papers in Aesthetics, pp. 17-24.

"Philosophical aesthetics comprises the following subordinate fields of investigation:

(a) The ontology of different works of art (e.g. paintings, literary works, musical compositions).

(b) the ontology of the aesthetic object so far as it is the aesthetical concretization of a work of art, i.e. the ontology of its form and mode of existence.

(c) The phenomenology of creative aesthetic behaviour (of the creative process).

(d) The philosophical investigation of the style of a work of art and of its relation to value.

(e) The phenomenology and ontology of values inherent in works of art and aesthetic objects, i.e. of artistic and aesthetic values; this includes the possible foundation of values in a work of art or in an aesthetic object and also the constitution of values in the aesthetic experience whereby they are actively discovered.

(f) The phenomenology of the receptive aesthetic experience and of its function in the constitution of an aesthetic object.

(g) The theory of cognition of a work of art and of an aesthetic object, in particular the cognition of artistic and aesthetic values; the theory of aesthetic valuation.

(h) The philosophical theory of the meaning and function of art (or aesthetic obj ects) in human life. (The metaphysics of art?)

All these fields stand in different relations one to another and none can be studied entirely apart from the problems and achievements of others. This interdependence is the basis for the systematic unity of the whole of philosophical aesthetics." (pp. 18-19)

38. ———. 1983. "Lectures on Aesthetics." Literary Studies in Poland no. 11:15-37.

"Last time I talked about the ontological foundation of a work of literature in contrast with itself and I distinguished between the vocal material from the sounding o f word (analogically, it is necessary to separate writing from auditory form of word). Writing can either

be equally diversified, non-homogenous, as the vocal material of particular individuals reading or singing a given work, or in a certain way it can approximate the sound of word. Namely. I was saying that the sound of word in a language is a certain typical form, typical

sound quality, one and the same, appearing on diverse backgrounds of voice material. The writing of individual persons is as variable and diversified as voice is, a concrete voice material or manners of speaking. On the other hand, printing or even the writing used

in copying books e.g. in medieval times, are both equally typified to the same extent as word sound is. The point is to retain possibly the same graphic shape that is repeated multiply as very similar." (pp. 23-24)

(...)

"The relation occurring between a work o f literature and its ontological foundation in fact concerns only some elements or some aspects of the sound stratum of a literary work while the semantic stratum, strata o f presented objects and their external appearance

go fully beyond that ontological foundation and beyond any relationship or similarity to it." (p. 37)

39. ———. 1985. Selected Papers in Aesthetics. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

Edited by Peter J. McCormick.

Contents: On Ingarden’s Selected Papers in Aesthetics: An Introduction by Peter J. McCormick 7; On Philosophical Aesthetics 17; Phenomenological Aesthetics: An Attempt at Defining its Range 25; A Marginal Commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics 45; Psychologism and Psychology in Literary Scholarship 79; Artistic and Aesthetic Values 91; Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Object 107; On So-Called Truth in Literature 133; The Physicalistic Theory of Language and the Work of Literature 163; Roman Ingarden Bibliography by R. Jagannathan, P. J. McCormick, A. Poltawski and J. Sidorek 181; Introduction 183; Works by Roman Ingarden: Polish 185; German 209; English 217; French 221; Works about Roman Ingarden 224; Index 262; Editor’s Note 268.

"A number of [Ingarden's] shorter pieces on aesthetics are collected in Polish under the title Studia z estetyki in three volumes, and some of these too have been translated into English. It is the purpose of this volume to gather this material together in one place and, with the help of an extremely comprehensive bibliography of Ingarden’s writings and of writings about him in English, French, and German, to situate this work in the development of his thought in general.

(...)

Some idea, however fragmentary, of the range of his work may be gathered from the analysis Ingarden gave of the different areas of philosophical aesthetics in his late and important paper “Asthetik und Kunstphilosophie” presented at the 14th International Congress of Philosophy at Vienna in 1968.

Philosophical aesthetics involves the following areas of discussion: (1) The ontology of the work of art, and indeed a) the general philosophical theory of the structure and the mode of being of the work of art in general, b) Ontology of the work of art in the several arts (painting, architecture, literary works of art, etc.). (2) Ontology of the aesthetic object as an aesthetic concretization of a work of art. (3) Phenomenology of the creative artistic behaviour. (4) The problem of the style of the work of art and its relation to its own value.

(5) Aesthetic value doctrine (artistic and aesthetic values, their founding in the work of art and their constitution in aesthetic experience). (6) Phenomenology of aesthetic experience and the constitution of the aesthetic object. (7) Theory of knowledge of the work of art and the cognition of aesthetic objects and especially the cognition of aesthetic values (critique of evaluation). (8) Theory of meaning and the function of art (with respect to aesthetic objects in the life of human beings (metaphysics of art?)).(10)

(10) “Asthetik und Kunstphilosophie”, Akten des XIV. Internationalen Kongresses für Philosophie, Wien, 2-9 September 1968, 4, Vienna: 1969, p. 216.

40. ———. 1985. "Reminiscences of Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz." Dialectics and Humanism no. 12:53-59.

41. ———. 1985. "On the Cognition of the Literary Work of Art." In The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present, edited by Mueller-Vollmer, Kurt, 187-213. New York: Continuum.

Selections taken from the first section of The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art.

"Preliminary Sketch of the Problem

The main question which I am trying to answer is: How do we cognize the completed literary work set down in writing (or by other means, e.g., in tape recording)? Cognition is, however, only one kind of intercourse a reader can have with the literary work. To be sure, we will not completely ignore the other ways of experiencing the work, but neither will we pay particular attention to them at the moment. Even "cognition" itself can take place in many different ways, which can bring about various results. The type of work read also plays an essential role in determining how cognition takes place." (pp. 187-188)

42. ———. 1986. The Work of Music and the Problem of Its Identity. London: Macmillan.

Translated by Adam Czerniawski.

"The starting point for our reflections upon the musical work will be the unsystematized convictions that we encounter in daily life in our communion with musical works before we succumb to one particular theory or another. Naturally, 1do not intend in advance to accept these convictions as true. On the contrary, I shall submit them to critical investigations at specific points. But, for the moment at least, they must indicate the direction of further investigations.

For how else could this direction be indicated? These convictions, although naively acquired and perhaps burdened with various mistakes, do after all stem from an immediate aesthetic communion with musical works, a communion that furnishes us, or at least may furnish us, with an ultimate experience of those works, thus endowing with truth the views that match the given of the experience. However fully developed, every theory of musical works that is not mere speculation but seeks a base in concrete facts must refer to

the presystematic convictions that initially gave direction to the search. It seems that there is another reason why we must refer to the given of the immediate musical experience. It is that various theories in the realm of so-called aesthetics or the psychology of music are conditioned too powerfully by the general state of philosophy and of sciences particular to a given epoch and therefore too heavily burdened with theoretical prejudices that make it difficult to reach the experientially given facts. In addition I intend to discuss various problems which have not been raised within the existing literature on musical theory." (p. 1)

43. ———. 1988. "Theory of Knowledge as Phenomenology of the "Essence" of Cognitive Experiences and Their Correlates." Aletheia: An International Journal of Philosophy no. 4:1-106.

Translated by Arthur Szylewicz.

"The following text constitutes a translation of Chapter IV from Roman Ingarden's U podstaw teorii poznania [Foundations of Epistemology], Part I, PWN, Warszawa, 1971. (Part II, announced in the Preface to this volume, has not yet appeared in print.)

Ingarden suggests in his "Introductory Remarks" that epistemology is still relatively young as a self-aware, distinct science. Consequently, it is still struggling to consolidate both a definition of its realm of objects and suitable methods of their investigation. "The truth is . . . that the factual state of research, which in view of the problems it treats has to be assigned to epistemology, is inadequate. We cannot today [1948] point to a single set of epistemological assertions that are adequately grounded or universally accepted. This is doubtless tied up with the fact that thus far epistemology has not been clearly enough bounded off from other disciplines. For neither its domain of research, nor its tasks or methods have been defined in a manner free from basic doubts and objections .. .""In this theoretical situation", he continues further on, "epistemological investigations proper have to be preceded by considering whether and how epistemological problems can be formulated in a way that would avoid the fundamental difficulties which it has thus far encountered in the course of its development; we also need to elucidate what kind of cognitive means can or have to be applied toward their solution. The present book is devoted to this task.... It will turn out in the course of our considerations, however, that we shall have to present and critically discuss certain epistemological standpoints which have with greater or lesser clarity been formulated to this point in the evolution of philosophy."

After having discussed some of the difficulties involved in circumscribing a theory of knowledge, Ingarden proceeds to differentiate five such attempts in the annals of the history of philosophy and, distinguishing them in accordance with their objects of investigation, gives them the following titles:

"I. Psychophysiological theory of knowledge.

II. Descriptive phenomenology of knowledge.

III. Apriori-phenomenological theory of knowledge.

IV. Logicistic theory of knowledge.

V. Autonomous theory of knowledge."

",.. each successive attempt", according to Ingarden, "will try to avoid the errors and difficulties encountered by the preceding ..."

The titles of the three Chapters of the Foundations which precede the one offered here are:

I. The Psychophysiological Theory of Knowledge

II. Critique of the Psychophysiological Theory of Knowledge

III. A Second Attempt at Defining a Theory of Knowledge. Descriptive Phenomenology of Conscious Experiences and their Correlates.

Thus, as the reader may easily convince himself, Chapters I and II correspond to title I, Chapter III to title II, and Chapter IV to title III. Presumably, the unpublished Part II of the Foundations contains discussions of theories corresponding to the remaining two titles." (from Translator's Introduction, pp. IX-X).

"The Issue of "Eidetic" Cognition and Its Employment in a Theory of Knowledge

A new delineation of a theory of knowledge has to take into account the results of the discussion regarding the psychophysiological theory of knowledge as well as eliminate the flaws that surfaced in the descriptive-phenomenological theory of knowledge. Thus, with this new attempt, we have to acknowledge the indispensability of the phenomenological epoché, that is the adoption of a stance of cognitive reserve with respect to all pieces of knowledge acquired in transcendent cognition (1); in addition, we have to satisfy the requirement that follows from the necessity of preserving the rigorous character of a theory of knowledge as well as from the function that the latter is supposed to perform over against all the remaining investigative disciplines, the special sciences in particular. Finally, its domain of research needs to be defined so as to encompass all the factors necessary for a treatment of the problem of the "objectivity" [obiektywnosci = Objektivität] of knowledge in general." (p. 1)

44. ———. 1989. Ontology of the Work of Art: the Musical Work, the Picture, the Architectural Work, the Film. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Translated by Raymond Meyer with John T. Goldthwait.

"The studies collected in this volume were written, in their first version, in the early months of 1928, immediately after, and as an appendix to, my book The Literary Work of Art. However, as 1 prepared that book for the press in 1930, it became apparent that the volume had become too bulky, so that 1 had to forego publication of the appendix. In 1933 I translated a large part of the essay on “The Musical Work” into Polish and published it under the title “The Problem of the Identity of the Musical Work.” The preparation of other publications at that time made it impossible for me to publish these studies before the outbreak of war in 1939. Immediately after the war, in the year 1946, I expanded somewhat the works “On the Structure of the Picture” and “The Architectural Work” and published them here in Polish. In the year 1956, when I was preparing the two volumes of my Studies in Aesthetics for the press, I once again expanded somewhat the study on “The Picture” and published it in Polish in the second volume, together with the study on the architectural and the musical work. In 1957 I rewrote these three works in German, but only now has the opportunity to publish them presented itself. The article on the film was first published in French under the title “Time, Space, and the Feeling of Reality”; it appeared later in Polish in the second volume of Studies in Aesthetics, and is given here in exact translation.

Despite later revisions, all the fundamental ideas of the three first-named studies were already contained in the versions of 1928. They stand in a very close relation with the chief assertions of The Literary Work of Art, and form only an extension of the investigations of that volume. The principal problem with which I was concerned at that time was that of the structure and the mode of being of works of art as determinately constituted, purely intentional objectivities. From the first, clarification of these questions was intended as preparation for unraveling the problem of reality. The continuation of these investigations was in fact given in my work The Controversy over the Existence of the World, in the form of existential and formal-ontological reflections which sought to lay the foundation for working out the problem of idealism versus realism. In consequence of this aspect of my investigations of the ontology of art, as well as of the relationship of these investigations with fundamental philosophical problems, considerations of the problem of artistic or aesthetic value fell outside the focus of the work, as had also been the case in The Literary Work of Art. This was tied in with the conviction I held already that ontological problems must be attacked first in order to create an ontological foundation for the investigation of the problem of value. This, however, does not mean that I wished to exclude or belittle the problem of value, as was often said about The Literary Work of Art. Investigation of the above-mentioned problems of value, however, requires still another basis, namely, clarification of the structure of aesthetic experience, and of the cognitive acts contained in it, with reference to the aesthetic value that is revealed in aesthetic experience." (pp. IX-X, notes omitted)

45. ———. 1991. "On Translations." In Ingardeniana III: Roman Ingarden's Aesthetics in a New Key and the Independent Approaches of Others: the Performing Arts, the Fine Arts, and Literature, edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 139-192. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Analecta Husserliana. Volume 33.

"1. General Definition of Translation of the Literary Work of Art

All written (“literary”) works of art are characterized by the fact that they are many-layered and multi-phase due to the successive arrangement of their parts. There are at least four strata: (a) the stratum of word sounds and phonetic formations; (b) the stratum of semantic units of various orders; (c) the stratum of represented objects;1 and, finally, (d) the stratum of schematized aspects. According to widely known theories of language, there is no necessary connection between the sound of a word and its meaning. It seems therefore, possible to “tie” the same meaning to different word sounds. And conversely, it happens that some word sounds are “tied” to two different meanings. This constitutes the phenomenon of polysemy. It is, therefore, conceivable to substitute all actual sounds in a given work of art with the altogether different sounds taken from another language and thus produce what is commonly known as a “translation” of a work from one language to another. If in the course of this procedure the meanings in the semantic stratum remain unaltered, we usually say the translation is “faithful.”

This general definition of translation and its fidelity, however, will have to be subjected to certain alternations, especially in the context of the translation of the literary work of art. It is necessary then to take a look at the structure of the literary work of art and how it differs from the work of scholarship." (p. 131)

46. Szylewicz, Arthur. 1993. "Roman Ingarden's Review of the Second Edition of Husserl's Logical Investigations." Husserl Studies no. 10:1-12.

Contains the English translation of Ingarden's Review at pp. 4-12.

"The review of the Second Edition of E. Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen was Roman Ingarden's very first publication. At the time of its appearance, 1915, Ingarden was still studying in Freiburg, working on his Ph.D. under Husserl. What could have prompted the youthful Ingarden to write such a review? The fact that the review was written in Polish suggests that Ingarden may simply have grasped an opportunity to arouse the Polish philosophical community's interest in a work that he regarded as monumental and, perhaps more generally, to stir its awareness of phenomenology as a movement. It may be no accident that the review appears in a section of the journal entitled "Survey of Contemporary Systems". More compelling evidence for this occasional motive is the fact that Ingarden's first major publication was an extensive "introduction" to phenomenology. It was meant to remedy the deplorable state of almost total ignorance of phenomenology that Ingarden encountered on his return to Poland following the completion of his studies with Husserl." (Arthur Szylewicz, Introduction, p. 1)

"We may give a general characterization of the new edition of the Investigations by noting that, worked out as it is with the utmost scrupulousness, it offers, aside from the radical changes (whose correctness I cannot go into here), considerably greater clarity in the formulation of statements, as well as a better adaptation of expressions to the intuitively given objects under consideration.

Numerous supplementations with new analyses (such as, e.g., that of nominal presentation and its relation to the judgment, or those concerning the structure of the various forms of the matter of judgments, or the analysis of "thetic" and "synthetic" acts); a more detailed analysis of the problems previously investigated (e.g., that of the association of presentations, or the analysis of the relation between "das Bedeuten" and the intentional presentations fulfilling (erfüllend) it); finally, a precise distinction of the noematic and the noetic "sides" of investigation, accompanied by sharpened assertions and a greater decisiveness in resolving earlier doubts - all this shows that the years separating the two editions brought not only a clarification of the essential significance and goals of phenomenology, but also a rich harvest of newly attained truths. The depth of these truths, and their links to the broadest horizons of philosophical problems, leaves far behind the results obtained fifteen years earlier, but this [maturation] does not emerge in fullest relief until the Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology." (p. 9)

47. Ingarden, Roman. 2013. Controversy over the Existence of the World. Volume I. Bern: Peter Lang.

Translated and annotated by Arthur Szylewicz.

Table of Contents: Translator’s Note 7; Jan Woleński: Introduction 11; Preface 19; Addendum to the German Edition 25; Chapter I: Preliminary Relections 27; Chapter II: Partition of the Three Major Problem Groups 47; Part I. Existential-Ontological Problems of the Controversy over the Existence of the World 93; Chapter III: Basic Existential Concepts 95; Chapter IV: Provisional Survey of the Currently Feasible Variants of a Solution to the Controversy 167; Chapter V: Time and Mode of Being 227; Chapter VI: Consequences of the Time Analysis for the Solution Possibilities of the Idealism / Realism Problem 279; Appendix A - K 301-320.

"Ingarden intended to give a systematic account of realist phenomenology in a work with the general title Spór o istnienie świata (Controversy over the Existence of the World). He projected five volumes, but completed only three.

Volumes I and II appeared in 1947-48. The 2nd, corrected (and supplemented by additional notes) edition of both volumes was published in 1960-61. In 1964-65, Max Niemeyer Verlag, Ingarden’s life-long publisher, issued a German “translation” (by Ingarden himself) as Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt, Vol. I: Existentialontologie and Vol. II: Formalontologie, Welt und Bewusstein. On Ingarden’s own admission, it was not a straightforward translation, but involved considerable revision – especially in Vol. I. The same house published Vol. 3 (Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt: Über die die kausale Struktur der realen Welt) in 1974; this volume deals with the causal structure of the real world. The last Polish edition of Vols. I and II of Spór appeared in 1987 in an edition that

represents a splicing by Danuta Gierulanka, Ingarden’s assistant, of the Polish and German versions; her Polish translation of Vol. III of Streit appeared in 1981." (Jan Wolesnki, Introduction, pp. 13-14)

"The two volumes I hereby present to the public constitute but a fragment of the analyses needed to bring to a resolution the controversy over the existence of the world. They do, however, deal with a sphere of intimately connected problems which, when solved in a particular way, contribute to narrowing the scope of possible options relative to the mode of existence of the real world, so that the further course of research begins to be more sharply delineated. In that sense therefore the two volumes constitute a unified whole containing a closed range [Umkreis] of findings that may prove significant for future research." (From the Preface (1946), p. 24)

(...)

"The Material Ontology of the Real World, which had initially been envisioned as the third volume, had meanwhile to be postponed, because it turned out that a yet more extensive formal-ontological analysis of the world had to be undertaken relative to its causal structure. Thus, I spent the years 1952-54 working on a third volume that was devoted to the problem of causation. The purely ontological treatment of this problem (as a problem pertaining to the structure of the world) had also been concluded sometime toward the

end of 1954. But these ontological conclusions have to confront the findings of contemporary natural science. And this I have not yet managed to do. Hence, this volume will still have to wait for some time before being completed and published.(16) For the time being then, the first two volumes make their appearance (as three volumes in the German version) as a self-contained whole, and may they pave the way for further investigations into the entire problem-complex." (from the Addendum to the German Edition (1962), p. 25

(16) [Vol. III of the Streit appeared as Űber die kausale Struktur der realen Welt, Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1974.]

48. ———. 2016. Controversy over the Existence of the World. Volume II. Bern: Peter Lang.

Translated and annotated by Arthur Szylewicz.

Table of Contents: Translators's Note 6;

Part II/1. VII: The Problem Pertaining to the Essence of Form and its Foundational Concepts 19; VIII. The Form of the Existentially Autonomous Object 71; IX: The Form of purely Intentional Object 171 ; X. The Form of the Idea 225 ; XI: The Form of the State of Affairs. State of Affairs and Object 267; XII: The Form of the Relation. The Relative and non-Relative (Absolute) Characteristics of the Individual Object 311; XIII: The Essence of the Existentially Selfsuffcient Object 357; Part II/2. XIV. The Problem of the Identity of an Individual Temporally Conditioned Object 425; XV. The Form of a Existential Domain and the Form of the World 507; XVI. The Problem of the Form of Pure Consciousness 645; XVII. Application of the Formal-Ontological Results to the Problem of the Existence of the World 743; Index of Names 773-775.

"§ 81. Outlook on the Possible Ontological Resolutions of the Controversy over the Existence of the World with the Findings Obtained Taken into Account

In Sections 26 and 33 [of Vol. I] I gave a summary of the potential resolutions of the controversy over the existence of the world that are suggested on the basis of our existential-ontological investigations. Since we now have at our disposal some formal-ontological results pertaining to the world and pure consciousness, it is time to ponder the consequences that follow from these for the main issue of our controversy.

Perhaps the most important result to emerge from our formal considerations is that every world must be existentially self sufficient, but that it can at the same time be dependent on some external factor – thus, for example, on pure consciousness, provided it does not belong to the world. On the other hand, however, the thesis is important that the constituents of the world must be temporally determined objects, and precisely therewith also autonomous – if they are to exist at all. The autonomy of the (potentially existing) world also follows from other peculiarities of its formal structure, namely from its being everywhere dense and cohesively linked internally, as well as from its being so ordered that it does not permit any completely isolated objects within its realm." (pp. 383-384)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The Ontological Realism of Gustav Bergmann

Introduction

"An ontology may be described as consisting of three kinds of statements: those that set the problems; those that list the kinds of entities that exist; those that show how the existents solve the problems. Ontologies may thus differ in different ways. The most decisive way concerns the kinds of entities deemed to exist. With respect to this way, there are but two types of ontology. One is lavish, cluttered; the other, frugal, sparse. The ontologies of Plato, Meinong, and Frege are lavish; those of Hume, Brentano, and Wittgenstein are frugal.

Gustav Bergmann has propounded both types of ontology in the course of his thirty years of philosophizing. The Bergmann of The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism (1954) and Meaning and Existence (1959) propounds a frugal ontology. The Bergmann of Logic and Reality (1964) and Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong (1967) propounds a lavish ontology. In a way of speaking that Bergmann himself has used, the world of the early Bergmann is a desert, the world of the later Bergmann a jungle. In a way of speaking that is suggestive, speculative, had the early Bergmann written Realism, he would have dedicated it to Brentano rather than to Meinong, as did the later Bergmann.

The difference between the ontologies of the two Bergmanns is great, though it does not greatly strike one in reading Bergmann's Essays. One is rather struck, on the one hand, by his unswerving commitment to the so called ideal language method of philosophizing and, on the other, by his persistent concern with the solutions to, and dialectical connections amongst a seemingly limited number of problems-individuation, universals, necessity, and intentionality. Bergmann's Essays thus appear to be a set of variations on several ontological themes. And at first glance the variations are slight enough to cause one to overlook the amazing difference between the ontologies struck by the early and later Bergmanns. Furthermore, Bergmann himself tends to minimize the difference. He does so, I suspect, first, because he naturally stresses how his later views evolve naturally from 'his earlier ones and, second, because he tries to mediate between the two Bergmanns, telling the early one that the later's ontology is less cluttered than one might initially think. The later Bergmann seems somewhat uncomfortable in the jungle into which he has led himself. Be that as it may, in Bergmann's Essays the difference between the two Bergmanns is muted, obscured, by Bergmann's constant and conspicuous use of the ideal language method, his persistent preoccupation with the same problems, and his reluctance to dwell on and dramatize his evolution from frugality to lavishness.

The emergence of the later Bergmann is ironic. The lavishness is the outgrowth of his method, the very method developed by the early Wittgenstein as a device for solving frugally the problems Frege solved lavishly. The emergence of the later Bergmann is also, and more significantly, inevitable. The ideal language method dictates a lavish ontology. Upon realizing that, Bergmann abandoned frugality and clung to the method. In contrast, Wittgenstein, upon realizing the same thing, abandoned the method and clung to frugality." (pp. 38-39)

From: Edwin B. Allaire, Bergmann's Ontologies in: Moltke S. Gram, Elmer D. Klemke (eds.), The Ontological Turn. Studies in the Philosophy of Gustav Bergmann, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press 1974.

Bibliography

A complete and updated bibliography of Gustav Bergmann (128 titles) and the studies about him (107 titles) is available in Rivista di Estetica, 25, 2004 pp. 113-126; I give only the most relevant publications.

1. Bergmann, Gustav. 1954. The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.

Second edition: Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1967.

Contents: Preface V; Preface to the Second edition IX-X; 1. Logical Positivism (1950) 1; 2. Semantics (1950) 17; 3. Logical Positivism, language, and the reconstruction of metaphysics (1953) 30; 4. Two cornerstones of Empiricism (1953) 78; 5. Two types of linguistic philosophy (1952) 106; 6. Bodies, minds, and acts (1952) 132; 7. Remarks on Realism (1946) 153; 8. Sense data, linguistic conventions, and existence (1947) 176; 9. Russell on particulars (1947) 197; 10. Professor Ayer's analysis of knowing (1949) 215; 11. On nonperceptual intuition (1949) 228; 12. Conditions for an extensional elementaristic language (1948) 232; 13. A note on ontology (1950) 238; 14. Logical Atomism, elementarism, and the analysis of value (1951) 243; 15. Comments on Professor Hempel's "The concept of cognitive significance" (1951) 255; 16. The identity of indiscernibles and the formalist definition of "identity (1953) 268; 17. The problem of relations in classical psychology (1952) 277; 18. Ideology (1951) 300; Author's note 326; Index 328-340.

"This is not a collection of my papers on first philosophy but a selection from them. Nor is the order in which they are arranged chronological. This requires some comment. The papers fall into three groups. Taken together, the first six, of most recent origin, provide an outline of the views I now hold. The second group consists of the next three, which are the earliest included in this volume. Together with three other still earlier ones which I have excluded, they form a unit centered around the realism phenomenalism issue. The excluded papers are "Pure Semantics, Sentences, and Propositions" (Mind, 53, 1944), "A Positivistic Metaphysics of Consciousness" (Mind, 54, 1945), "Undefined Descriptive Predicates" (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 8, 1947). I omit them because for the most part they merely say very badly what I have since said again, a little less badly, in the six essays of the first group. I mention them because there I first struck out on my own, trying to free myself from the influence of Carnapian positivism though not yet, alas, from its apparatus. Having said that much, as I believe I should, I wish to add, as I believe I also should, that this by now radical dissent has not at all affected either my gratitude or my admiration for Carnap. I still think of him as the outstanding figure in a major phase of the positivistic movement. The third group consists of all the remaining essays, some of them very short. These are in the main elaborations of themes struck in the first nine pieces. The arrangement within this last group represents a compromise between their subject matter and the order in which I remember having written them. The concluding essay differs from the rest. Quite nontechnical, it touches at least indirectly on my philosophy in that broader sense in which everyone who is not himself an analytical philosopher speaks of a man's philosophy. Thus it is, perhaps, not out of place at the end of a volume that is otherwise rather technical.

Aside from a few editorial changes I have left the papers as they were originally written."

From the Preface to the Second edition: "The logical positivists of the Vienna Circle were my first teachers. Thus I was faced with an unpalatable choice. Dialectically, metaphysical materialism always seemed and still seems to me the greater evil. (Scientific materialism is but common sense.) So I began my philosophical career as a reluctant phenomenalist in the style of the Circle. Now I am, and have been for some time, a realist of the phenomenological variety. The break occurred in the early fifties, when I proposed an analysis of the act. This book, my first, a collection of essays originally published in 1954, reflects the struggles which led to that break. Much of it I now reject. Yet there are also many analyses, of issues and of movements, including pragmatism, logical positivism, and the so-called linguistic philosophy, which I still think are right.

Two of the essays introduce the act. Another, about semantics, mentions the meaning nexus which has come to play so great a role in my thought. The essay on the problem of relations in classical psychology first manifests what has since become one of my major concerns. The concluding piece, on ideology, has been well received by many social scientists.

By now logical positivism belongs to history. Yet it was a vigorous movement; some of its members were brilliant; its contribution to the philosophy of science remains most valuable. From the record of such a movement much can be learned. This book, in its own peculiar way, is part of the record. Thus, since it is still in demand although it has been out of print for some time, a new edition seems justified." (From the Preface)

2. ———. 1957. Philosophy of Science. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

3. ———. 1959. Meaning and Existence. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Contents: Preface V-X; 1. Intentionality (1955) 3; 2. The revolt against Logical Atomism (1958) 39; 3. Analiticity (1958) 73; 4. Particularity and the new nominalism (1954) 91; 5. (with Herbert Hochberg) Concepts (1957) 106; 6. Elementarism (1957) 115; 7. Individuals (1958) 124; 8. Sameness, meaning, and identity (1958) 132; 9. Professor Quine on analiticity (1955) 139; 10. Some remarks on the ontology of Ockham (1954) 144; 11. Russell's examination of Leibniz examined (1956) 155; 12. Some remarks on the philosophy of Malebranche (1956) 189; 13. Frege's hidden nominalism (1958) 205; 14. Some reflections on time (1958) 225; Author's note 265; Index 267-274.

"The main theme of this book is the analysis of mind. But even the basic problems fall into each other's scopes. Thus other themes had to be sounded, some of them rather fully. Foremost among these is the basic problem of ontology, that is, the search for a complete inventory of the several kinds of existent. An analysis which denies mind the status of an existent, in the full ontological sense of `existent', is patently inadequate. That shows the connection. Yet, all attempts to place mind in any of the less extravagant ontological schemes available led to consequences which flaw the over-all pattern. That shows the difficulty. The book propounds how I propose to conquer it.

The characteristic feature of minds is their intentionality. That makes "Intentionality and Ontology" an accurate two-word title. "Meaning and Existence" sounds less formidable. Ontology asks what exists. This justifies the substitution of `existence' for `ontology'. That of `meaning' for `intentionality' will be justified in a moment.

What a philosopher takes a question to be as well as the sort of answer (rather than, which specific answer) he considers a (possible) solution depends on his conception of the philosophical enterprise. Or, what amounts virtually to the same thing, it depends on his method. That is why philosophers always were method conscious. At the beginning of this century analytical philosophy took what has been called the linguistic turn. The issue, and it still is an issue, is one of method. That is why our generation is even more method conscious than some of its predecessors. My work is in the linguistic stream. Inevitably, therefore, the basic theme of method runs through the whole book. One essay develops it in considerable detail.

The linguistic stream has several currents. I philosophize by means of one of the schemes known as ideal languages. My being in this current in part determines the content of the book. Analyticity, every one agrees, is a very fundamental problem. For a practitioner of my method it is basic. (I am even prepared to grant that the adequate explication of analyticity is the one and only major task for which the method is indispensable.) Moreover, there is a very close connection between the problem of analyticity and the analysis of mind.

To whatever current a linguistic philosopher may belong, the analysis of mind is for him virtually indistinguishable from that of the various ontological and logical aspects of meaning. (This justifies the substitution of `meaning' for `intentionality' in the two-word title.) If he belongs to my current, then the core of the problem is to construct an ideal language into which the relevant uses of `to mean' can be adequately transcribed. I propose such an ideal language. Not surprisingly , for anyone familiar with the course of analytical philosophy in this century, it turns out that this proposal requires radical re-examination and eventual modification of the classical analysts' explicit or implicit notions of analyticity. The connection of my main theme with this major subtheme is thus close indeed.

(...)

This is the second essay collection I publish. The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism (1954) was the first. Since the public for anything of this sort is rather limited, quite a few prospective readers of the second will have either read or at least heard of the first. I shall therefore answer a question which is likely to occur to such readers. What, if any, is the connection between the two books? The central thesis of this book is the proposed analysis of the act (I use the classical term). Its central idea is clearly stated in the first book. However, there is an important difference between a full statement and its central idea, just as there is such a difference between even a full statement and the exploration of its consequences. (Remember what was said about the scopes of philosophical problems.) In the Preface to the first book I promised to apply myself to the tasks I had thus set myself. This book fulfills that promise. In this respect, and I believe also in some others, the first book stands to the second as flower stands to fruit. Whether the fruit was worth gathering is not for me to say." (From the Preface)

4. ———. 1964. Logic and Reality. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Contents: Preface VII-VIII; 1. Acts (1960) 3; 2. Ineffability, ontology, and method (1960) 45; 3. Generality and existence (1962) 64; 4. Meaning (1962) 85; 5. Duration and the specious present (1960) 98; 6. Physics and ontology (1961) 108; 7. Ontological alternatives (1963) 124; 8. Inclusion, exemplification, and inherence in G. E. Moore (1962) 158; 9. Strawson's ontology (1960) 171 10. The ontology of Edmund Husserl (1960) 193; 11. The glory and misery of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1961) 225; 12. Stenius on the Tractatus (1963) 242; 13. Synthetic a priori (1963) 272; 14. Realistic postscript 302; Author's note 341; Index 343-355.

"Some philosophers never change their minds. Those who do are of two kinds. One kind vacillates, often abruptly, between two extremes such as, say, phenomenalism and materialism. With the other kind the changes are gradual and show a direction. I belong to the latter kind.

This is my third book in first philosophy. In The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism (1954) the major concern is with epistemology; the implicit ontology is a reluctant phenomenalism. Since the act is recognized, the phenomenalism is atypical. Recognition, though, is not enough; it merely opens the way. The task is to find a dialectically adequate ontological assay of the act. If this decisive step has been made, then, structurally, realism has been achieved. In Meaning and Existence (1960) ontology has come to the fore; structurally, realism is achieved; much of the phenomenalist debris is cleared away. In this book the realism is explicit and fully articulated. In the concluding essay the last piece of debris is buried. That leaves no doubt about the direction of the several changes. They took me over twenty years. The reprieve, even if only conditional, is welcome.

One who has struck out on his own, either ignoring or challenging the fashions of the day, will not, if he is sober, be certain that everything he has gradually come to believe is true. I am very sober. Yet there is one belief I have come to hold very firmly. One cannot arrive at a dialectically adequate realism without recognizing that the world's form exists. Logic is but a reflection of the world's form. Hence, one cannot fully articulate one's realism without ontologizing logic. That accounts for the title of this book and, more importantly, for its thematic unity. The belief I so firmly hold is the theme. The fourteen essays are fourteen variations on it." (From the Preface)

5. ———. 1967. Realism. A Critique of Brentano and Meinong. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Contents: Preface VII-VIII; Book One: Facts, things, ideas; Part I: General ontology; One: Facts and things 3; Two: Two fundamental ties 22; Three: Connections 42; Four: Parts 71; Five: Perfect particulars and universals 85; Six: Substances; Part II: Representationalism; Seven: Introductory reflections 125; Eight: Cores and fringes 138; Nine: Three schemata 155; Ten: Perception 180; Eleven: Three predicaments 195; Book Two: Brentano and Meinong; Part III: Brentano; Twelve: Introduction 221; Thirteen: The truncated world 238; Fourteen: Minds 264; Fifteen: Double judgments 284; Sixteen: Existence, truth, evidence 302; Seventeen: Places, moments, selves 320; Part IV: Meinong; Eighteen: The truncated world 335; Nineteen: Minds 374; Twenty: Earlier stages 399; Twenty-one: Flaws and gaps 399; Bibliographical note 445; Index 447-458.

"Freud said of The Interpretation of Dreams that it was the sort of book a man writes only once in his life. This book is of that sort. It is also very long. Such a book ought to speak for itself. So I send it into the world without any introduction except for one remark about the way it is written.

There are two kinds of philosophical criticism, and, perhaps, only two kinds of writing in philosophy. The inductive critics try at the same time to make the cross and nail their intended victim onto it. Those who write deductively first make the cross and, while making it, affect, except for an occasional glance, an almost studied unconcern for the victim. I am virtually incapable of writing inductively. The best I can do, therefore, is to do without disguise, pretext, or apology, the one thing which I may hope not to do too badly. This book has four parts. The first is a short treatise on general ontology. The second expounds the dialectics of representationalism. The third deals critically with Brentano; the fourth, with Meinong. The criticism in the last two parts requires a minimum of exposition. But both criticism and exposition are highly selective." (From the Preface)

6. ———. 1992. New Foundations of Ontology. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Edited by William Heald.

Contents: Foreword by Edwin B. Allaire IX-XII; Editor's Note XIII-XX; Editor's introduction 3; 1. Simples and canons 43; 2. Facts and modes 61; 3. Diversity and order 101; 4. Functions and analiticity 134; 5. Thought and language 201; 6. Classes 239; 7. The Linguistic Turn contained 317; Glossary 357; Index 369-372.

"During the last two decades of his life-from the publication of Realism in 1967 until his death in 1987 - Gustav Bergmann published only five essays. One, 'Diversity,' his presidential address to the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association, appeared in 1968; the other four, between 1977 and 1981.

In those decades Bergmann worked as hard and as steadily as he ever had; and he was a hard worker indeed. In the twenty-five years prior to Realism, Bergmann published over a hundred essays, many of which are contained in four essay collections, and Philosophy of Science.

In his presidential address Bergmann made known his dissatisfaction with certain aspects of his ontology, in particular his assays of the facts expressed by universal and existential statements. (See 'Generality and Existence,' Theoria, 28, 1962.) He thus set about to rethink his system. New Foundations of Ontology is the result.

The manuscript seems to have been begun sometime in 1974 and completed in late 1975. Bergmann decided to delay its publication: he had reservations about the penultimate chapter, which deals with classes and arithmetic. He never returned to the manuscript per se. Instead, he led himself into the depths of set theory, a subject he had once known well. (Bergmann earned a PhD in mathematics and from 1928 to 1935 published eight papers in mathematics proper.) " (From the Foreword)

7. ———. 2003. Collected Works. Vol I: Selected Papers I. Frankfurt am Mein: Ontos Verlag.

Edited and with an introduction by Erwin Tegtmeier.

Contents: Introduction 9; Remarks on Realism 18; Sense data, linguistic conventions, and existence 41; Russell on particulars 62; On nonperceptual intuition 80; A note on ontology 84; Bodies, minds, and acts 89; Two types of linguistic philosophy 110; The identity of indiscernibles ad the Formalist definition of identity 136; Logical Positivism, language, and the reconstruction of metaphysics 145; Particularity and the new Nominalism 193; Some remarks on the ontology of Ockham 208; Professor Quine on analyticity 219; Intentionality 224; Russell's examination of Leibniz examined 258; The revolt against Logical Atomism 292; Frege's hidden nominalism 324; Sameness, meaning, and identity 344-350.

8. ———. 2003. Collected Works. Vol II: Selected Papers II. Frankfurt am Mein: Ontos Verlag.

Edited and with an introduction by Erwin Tegtmeier.

Contents: Introduction 7; Acts 13; Ineffability, ontology, and method 55; Ontological alternatives 75; Inclusion, exemplification, and inherence in G. E. Moore 109; Strawson's ontology 121; The ontology of Edmund Husserl 145; The glory and misery of Ludwig Wittgenstein 177; Stenius on the Tractatus 195; Synthetic a priori 225; Realistic postscript 255; Diversity (1968) 295; Sketch of an ontological inventory (1978) 309; Notes on ontology (1981) 321; Notes on the ontology of minds (1981) 345-370.

9. ———. 2004. Collected Works. Vol III: Realism. A Critique of Brentano and Meinong. Frankfurt am Mein: Ontos Verlag.

Reprint of the 1967 edition, edited and introduced by Erwin Tegtmeier.

Studies about his work

1. "Il realismo ontologico di Gustav Bergmann." 2004. Rivista di Estetica no. 25:3-126.

A cura di Guido Bonino e GiulianoTorrengo.

Indice: Premessa 3; Introduzione by Guido Bonino and Giuliano Torrengo 5; I - Cose e fatti by Stefano Caputo and Francesco Martinello 15; II - Universali e particolari by Luca Angelone, Fabio Minocchio, Andrea Pagliardi 49; III - La percezione by Carola Barbero and Giuliano Torrengo 75; IV - Idee e universali by Guido Bonino and Antonio Capuano 97; Bibliografia by Guido Bonino 113-126.

2. Bonino, Guido. 2007. "Why there are no facts in Meinong's world (according to Gustav Bergmann)." Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien no. 2:239-275.

"The paper deals with Gustav Bergmann's analysis of Meinong's ontology, carried out in Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong (1967); more specifically it aims at making it clear in what sense Meinong can be regarded as a "reist". Reism is characterized by Bergmann as a position -- largely dominant in the philosophical tradition -- which

(i) neglects the ontological category of facts;

(ii) neglects or downplays nexus (and more in general subsistents);

(iii) tends to consider all entities as things or thing-like.

As a by-product, some light will be thrown on the sense of Bergmann's ontological enterprise."

3. Gram, Moltke S., and Klemke, Elmer D., eds. 1974. The Ontological Turn: Studies in the Philosophy of Gustav Bergmann. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

Contents: Preface VII;

I. Ontological alternatives

The limits of ontological analysis by Panayot Butchvarov 3; Bergmann's ontologies by Edwin Allaire 38; To Gustav Bergmann: a humble petition and advice by Henry B. Veatch 65;

II: Ontological problems

Bergmann's ontology and the Principle of Acquaintance by Reinhardt Grossmann 89; Consciousness by Timothy L. Sprigge 114; Time, substance, and analysis by Laird Addis 148; Intentions, facts, and propositions by Hebert Hochberg 168;

III. Language, logic, and the philosophy of science

Seeing, seeming, and sensing by Wilfrid Sellars 195; Belief and error by Keith Lehrer 216; Bergmann on the analytic-synthetic distinction by Alan Hausman 230; The problem of color incompatibility by Erik Stenius 245; Perspicuous languages by Robert Ackermann 264; Why I am not aware of your pain by Fred Wilson 276;

Bibliography: Works by Gustav Bergmann 301

Index 311-314.

"The initial plans for this volume in honor of one of the world's most distinguished philosophers were conceived four years ago. After much labor, and with the patience and assistance of all who participated, we are happy to have brought it at last to birth.

It may seem premature to some, at this time, to publish a volume of essays on Professor Bergmann's philosophy, since his recent work has not yet been published. But the widespread interest in many countries in his work, and the growing number of philosophers -- even those who disagree with him --who have followed his philosophical pursuits and have written extensively about them, makes it fitting to present a collection of critical studies now." (from the Preface).

4. Hochberg, Herbert. 1984. "Introduction: ontological analysis and the Linguistic Turn." In Logic. ontology, and language. Essays on truth and reality, 11-47. München-Wien: Philosophia Verlag.

5. ———. 1994. "From Carnap's Vienna to Meinong's Graz: Gustav Bergmann's ontological odyssey." Grazer Philosophischen Studien no. 48:1-50.

"The development of the systematic ontology of Bergmann's posthumous 1992 work New Foundations of Ontology from its roots in his early criticisms of R. Carnap's work on semantics to his acceptance of fundamental Meinongian ideas, is traced, critically examined and compared to views of others, such as G.E. Moore, B. Russell, W.V. Quine, and J. Searle. The discussion, focusing on main themes of his final metaphysical system, deals with problems posed by universals and particulars, predication and the Bradley "paradox", facts, truth, intentionality and non-existent objectives, classes and the membership relation, logic and the analytic-synthetic distinction, arithmetic and logicism, ontological categories and canons, modalities, internal relations, and the question of the phenomenological ground of ontological claims. Some of the critical analyses are developed into alternative analyses."

6. ———. 2000. "Truths and the ontology of Logical Realism." Grazer Philosophischen Studien no. 58-59:23-92.

7. ———. 2001. The Positivist and the Ontologist. Bergmann, Carnap and Logical Realism. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Contents: Preface V-VI; 1. From Positivism to metaphysics: Bergmann's critique of Carnap's semantics 1; 2. Reism, ontological types and Aufbau-type ontological constructions 33; 3. Bergmann's Realism and the critique of Bundle and Trope ontologies 57; 4. Carnapian consequences: Realism and semantic refutation of Realism 105; 5. Bergmann's Reism: Brentano's and Carnap's revenge 147; 6. Relational order, the Russell-Wittgenstein dispute and Meinongian Realism 175; 7. Negation, quantification and intensional isomorphism 217; 8. The phenomenology and ontology of logic, classes and modality 233; 9. Dispositions and laws of nature: Hume, Husserl and the New Causal Realism 289; 10. Avoiding absurdity: Physical Realism, Phenomenalism and Mindless Materialism 319; 11. Extensions, intensions and Carnap's critique of reference 349; 12. Reference reconsidered 371; 13. Logical truth, logical paradoxes and Logical Realism 393-400.

Preface: "Gustav Bergmann's remarkable intellectual journey, beginning as one of the youngest members of the Vienna Circle, and ending, in Hector Castaneda's judgment, as 'the foremost ontologist of the decade' focused on three metaphysical issues that he continuously discussed for thirty years: the problems of individuation, of universals, and of intentionality. Bergmann's turn to metaphysics began with his 1947 paper 'Russell on Particulars,' though he had long insisted that his later concerns with the metaphysics of intentionality, expressed in a 1955 paper on intentionality, are already present in two criticisms of Carnap's semantics published in 1944 and 1945. But a careful reading of the earlier papers, which Carnap (in a letter to Bergmann in the Bergmann archives at the University of Iowa Library) found to be 'mostly Chinese,' show that Bergmann, in 1944 and 1945, is writing as an extreme early Carnapian positivist. In fact he is criticizing Carnap for moving away from positivism and towards a kind of metaphysical realism, by introducing a designation relation between linguistic items and non-linguistic reality. Irrespective of when his turn to metaphysics took place, it was unique among the positivists that emigrated to the United States and England.

This book will trace lines in Bergmann's development from his early philosophical writings, in the mid 1940s, to what I have called, in one chapter, his 'middle phase,' epitomized in his long and complex book, Realism: A Critique of Brentano and Meinong of 1967, and finally to its culmination in his last work in three final published papers and a book manuscript, New Foundations of Ontology, that was posthumously published in 1992 (and from which the final papers were obviously taken). It will also relate them to various themes in Carnap's work in semantics of the 1940s. But, as I am mainly concerned with the basic philosophical issues raised, the book is a study of various attempts to deal with questions posed by the relation between thought and language, on the one hand, and the objects of thought and the referents of linguistic items, on the other. Thus I will be setting out critical assessments of the work of philosophers other than Bergmann and Carnap, including a number of other major figures on the contemporary scene, and of the recent past, in attempting to arrive at a viable realistic ontology that I have called Logical Realism. The basic themes set forth owe much to Bergmann, Carnap, Moore, Russell and the 'early' Wittgenstein. It will also be clear that the analyses set forth owe much to what has come to be called the Austrian Tradition, and the "realism" many of its members espoused, especially Meinong. It is no accident that the early figures of the 'analytic' tradition, Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein, were heavily influenced by the Brentano school -with Russell and Moore reading the works of various members of that school at the turn of the century. Russell, as is well known, wrote extensive critical, but appreciative, studies of Meinong and other members of the Graz school and was influenced by what he read, in spite of being mostly known in that connection for his widely discussed criticisms of Meinong. Moore's development of his philosophy of mind, with its focus on 'mental acts,' clearly derived this theme from his reading of the Austrians, and he, in turn, influenced Russell, who did not abandon mental acts until the years 1919-1921. One no longer needs to comment on Wittgenstein's connection to Austrian thought of the period.

Bergmann was a unique figure in being the only one of the positivists of the Vienna Circle to recombine, in a most fruitful way, the metaphysical themes set forth by Russell and Moore, in what Russell had termed the 'revolt against idealism,' with fundamental ideas derived from the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle, influenced by Wittgenstein and Russell, and important ideas from the Brentano school - particularly Brentano's philosophy of the act, Meinong's theory of objects, and Husserl's phenomenology. In this he would be a remarkable contemporary philosopher and, as Castaneda noted, play a distinctive role on the philosophical scene from the early 1950s thru the 1970s."

8. ———. 2001. "The radical hylomorphism of Bergmann's Aristotelian metaphysics and the ontology of relations." The Modern Schoolman no. 78:257-288.

9. Langlet, Bruno, and Monnoyer, Jean-Maurice, eds. 2009. Gustav Bergmann. Phenomenological Realism and Dialectical Ontology. Frankfurt: Ontos-Verlag.

Table of Contents: Introduction 1; 1. Ewin Tegtmeier: Bergmann on Brentano 7; 2. Fred Wilson: Bergmann's Hidden Aristotelianism 17; 3. Guido Bonino; Space, time, concrete, abstract 69; 4. Jean-Baptiste Rauzy: Sellars et Bergmann lecteurs de Leibniz. La querelle des particuliers 87; 5. L. Natan Oaklander: A critique of Degree Presentism 103; 6. Jiri Benovsky: La théorie des faisceaux et la théorie des substrats 117; 7. Luca Angelone, Giuliano Torrengo: Bare particulars and persistence in Bergmann 139; 8. Fréderic Nef: Bergmann et l'ontologie de la connexion 157; 9. E. Jonathan Lowe: Modes of exemplification 173; 10. Luc Schneider: On Ties and Copulae within the Ontological Square 193; 11. Bruno Langlet, Jean-Murice Monnoyer: Gustav Bergmann et les complexions meinongiennes 209-235.

"The essays collected in this volume were read at the Gustav Bergmann (1906-1987) International colloquium, held in Aix-en-provence, from December 9th to December 11th 2006, for the centennial anniversary of Bergmann's birth. The conference was organized within the framework of the Séminaire de Métaphysique (SEMa), which is hosted by the IHP (Institut d'Histoire de la Philosophie). The (non-official) purpose was to promote some liberal exchanges and debates between some Bergmann's interpreters (American and European) focusing on the "actuality" of his thought; the official one was to greet the first meeting devoted to this philosopher in France, where he is still widely little-known. We publish some of these contributions in French, with the hope of a better understanding of the great influence his philosophy should exert in the next future." (p. 1).

10. Park, Woosuk. 1990. "Scotus, Frege, and Bergmann." The Modern Schoolman no. 67:259-273.

11. Rosenberg, Jay. 1987. "Phenomenological ontology revisited: a Bergmannian retrospective." Philosophical Perspectives no. 1:387-404.

12. Tegtmeier, Erwin. 1999. "Die Bedeutung Gustav Bergmanns." Metaphysica no. 0:19-36.

13. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 1970. "Bergmann's constituent ontology." Nous no. 4:109-134.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Justus Buchler and the Metaphysics of Natural Complexes

Introduction

"Justus Buchler is an American philosopher, long well known as a scholar and teacher and now becoming more widely recognized as the author of a new metaphysics. Utilizing his own system of categories, Buchler has given us an analysis of the basic traits of nature and man, experience and judgment, method and meaning, art, science, and philosophy that differs strikingly from the analyses provided or presupposed by other philosophers. There are others who share some of his commitments or take similar positions on particular topics, but Buchler's major categories are distinctively his own, and his systematic outlook (the position I have called "ordinal naturalism") is without precedent in the history of philosophy." (p. 11)

(...)

Buchler calls the ontology that determines his view of nature a 'metaphysics of natural complexes.' (I shall use the word 'ontology' to refer to metaphysical systems of the highest level of generality, as contrasted with metaphysical theories of lesser scope, such as a metaphysics of morals or Buchler's 'metaphysics of utterance.') His treatment of such topics as experience, knowledge, meaning, truth, inquiry, and art reflect the same metaphysical stance as his ontology and utilize some of the same generic concepts, and he sometimes refers to his entire system by the same name. The root concept of Buchler's ontology is the concept of 'natural complex.' While it retains something of its ordinary sense, within the framework of Buchler's metaphysics this term takes on a special meaning and is his most general ontological category. Rather than seeing nature to be composed of substances, events, processes, matter, spirit, or any other specific type of entity or being, Buchler finds all such categories too narrow. Given the other categories and principles of his ontology, he maintains that there is nothing that cannot be accurately construed as a natural complex. The term is applied by him to attributes as well as entities, to ideas and terms of discourse as well as bodies, human individuals, and the constituents of human experience.

In the language of Buchler's metaphysics, every natural complex is an order. This word, too, has a technical sense for him, resting upon his systematic concepts of 'trait' and 'relation.' All of these will be discussed at length in the chapters of this book devoted to Buchler's ontology. The concept of an order, however, must be introduced here to convey some of the features of ''s version of naturalism. Roughly, an order is an organized multiplicity: a complex distinguishable as a unity in virtue of the pattern of relatedness among its components. In ''s systematic usage, the terms 'natural complex' and 'order' are not completely synonymous: a natural complex is also, in another respect, a trait. But the terms 'complex' and 'order' are coextensive, and Buchler calls the central principle of his metaphysics 'the principle of ordinality.' Thus his system may also be termed a 'metaphysics of orders' or 'metaphysics of ordinality,' or, as some have called it, an 'ordinal metaphysics,' and his outlook may be characterized as an 'ordinal naturalism.' The principle of ordinality that governs Buchler's system is inseparable from his concept of a natural complex, and is the fullest expression of what it means to be a natural complex. For reasons that will later be made clear, Buchler denies that complexes can be composed of simples. Briefly and, perforce, inadequately stated, the principle of ordinality asserts that every complex must be constituted by other complexes, and also that every complex must be a constituent of some other complex or complexes. The term 'order' refers to a complex viewed as having constituents. For a complex viewed as a constituent of an order, Buchler uses the term 'trait', giving to this term a generalized sense which makes words that might be considered synonymous with it (such as 'characteristic' or 'attribute') only types of trait." (pp. 21-22)

From: Beth J. Singer, Ordinal Naturalism. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Justus Buchler, Lewisburg; Bucknell University Press 1983.

Bibliography

A complete list of Justus Buchler's publications his available in: Beth J. Singer - Ordinal Naturalism. An introduction to the philosophy of Justus Buchler - Lewisburg, Bucknell University Press, 1983, pp. 220-225.

1. Buchler, Justus. 1939. Charles Peirce's Empiricism. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.

Reprinted: New York, Octagon Books, Inc. 1966

2. ———. 1940. The Philosophy of Peirce. Selected Writings. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.

3. ———. 1942. Philosophy. An Introduction. New York: Barnes & Noble.

Co-author: John Herman Rabdall, Jr.

Revised edition 1971

4. ———. 1946. Readings in Philosophy. New York: Barnes & Noble.

Co-authors: John Herman Randall, Jr. and Evelyn Shirk

5. ———. 1951. Toward a General Theory of Human Judgment. New York: Columbia University Press.

Second, revised edition with a new introduction, notes, and appendix: New York, Dover Publications, 1979

6. ———. 1955. Nature and Judgment. New York: Columbia University Press.

Reprinted Lanham, University Press of America, 1985

7. ———. 1961. The Concept of Method. New York: Columbia University Press.

Reprinted Lanham, University Press of America, 1985

8. ———. 1966. Metaphysics of Natural Complexes. New York: Columbia University Press.

Second, expanded edition: New York, State University of New York Press, 1990.

Edited by Kathleen Wallace and Armen Marsoobian, with Robert S. Corrington.

Introduction by Kathleen Wallace.

9. ———. 1974. The Main of Light. On the Concept of Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press.

Studies about his work

1. Marsoobian, Armen, Wallace, Kathleen, and Corrington, Robert S., eds. 1991. Nature's Perspectives. Prospects for Ordinal Metaphysics. New York: State University of New York Press.

2. Ross, Stephen David. 1980. Transition to an Ordinal Metaphysics. Albany: State University of New Yor Press.

3. Singer, Beth J. 1983. Ordinal Naturalism. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Justus Buchler. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press.

4. Wallace, Kathleen. 1999. "Ontological Parity and/or Ordinality?"Metaphilosophy no. 30:302-318.

Abstract: "The principles of ontological parity and ordinality have distinct functions in Buchler's ontology. Ontological parity could be independently subscribed to, whereas ordinality signals the positive conception of the nature of reality as irreducibly complex or indefinitely related, which Buchler's metaphysical system seeks to articulate. Both principles inform Buchler's system, but each has a distinctive function. They are not, I suggest, necessarily at odds with one another, as some critics claim. I do identify several difficulties that follow from (1) the level of generality claimed by Buchler and (2) the claim of irreducible complexity or indefinite relatedness."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Roman Suszko and the non-Fregean Logics

Introduction

"I. Roman Suszko (9.11.1919, Podobora – 3.06.1979, Warsaw) was one of the most fascinating personalities in Polish academic community after the Second World War and one of the most outstanding logicians of the time. He was above all a scientist but he also participated in academic life. He was Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at Warsaw University for two terms of office. He studied abstract problems of logic, but also played a part in the satirical film Rejs [The Cruise] directed by M. Piwowski.

Suszko was involved in various scientific problems, for example: logical syntax of natural language, liar antynomy, logical probability; but two of his achievements have the greatest value for philosophy of science, i.e., diachronic logic and non-Fregean logic.

Like Ferdinand de Saussure, who, in his monograph Cours de Linguistique Générale (Lausanne 1916), made a distinction between synchronic and diachronic linguistics, Suszko draws a distinction between synchronic and diachronic formal logic. Diachronic formal logic was for Suszko the application of the models theory to formalized languages in order to describe the abstract structure of the development of knowledge. Non-Fregean logic, on the other hand, was a term used by Suszko to refer to classical logic enriched by identity connective and quantifiers binding sentential variables. The identity connective joins two sentences into a true sentence when sentences describe the same situation. It turns out that nonFregean logic is such a general logical calculus that the classical predicate calculus, classical sentential calculus, Łukasiewicz's finitely-many-valued logics and some modal systems are particular cases of non-Fregean logic. Because of some interpretational difficulties concerning the notion of situation, the logic has not gained among logicians the regard which it deserves.

(...)

In 1966, via Bogusław Wolniewicz's monograph Things and Facts, Introduction to the First Philosophy of Wittgenstein [written in Polish], Suszko became acquainted with Wittgenstein's metaphysical views included in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Since that moment, a new, so-called non-Fregean period in Suszko's work began. In his Tractatus, Wittgenstein expressed his belief that names designate objects and sentences describe situations. According to Suszko, in order to formulate adequate statements concerning objects as well as situations in a formalized language, there must be two types of variables in that language: nominal variables running through the universe of objects and sentential variables running through the universe of situations.

Then, according to the famous principle No entity without identity, Suszko introduced into the language of classical logic the identity connective which is used to mark that two sentences describe the same situation. Such logical calculus was termed by Suszko non-Fregean logic. The name "non-Fregean logic" originates from the fact that it is not an assumption of this logic that the universe of sentential variables, i.e. the universe of situations is two-elements set. Non-Fregean logic is the most general extensional and logically two-valued logical calculus. Its logical two-valuation consists in that each sentence of the language for which this logic is valid, for all interpretations allowed by this logic, is either true or false. Particularly, the assumptions of this logic are classical laws: the law of the excluded middle and the law of non-contradiction. Extensionality, on the other hand, consists in that what any complex expression relates to is marked by the particular constituent expressions of this complex expression. The generality of this logic consists among others in that the principles of that logic do not put any limits on universes, and that the universe of nominal variables is not empty and the universe of sentential variables has at least two elements. The principles of non-Fregean logic require only consequent application of symbols not leading to non-contradiction, while they do not require us to assume any equality which does not result from previously assumed identities.

This logic has interpretations by which it is entirely characterized from the formal point of view and which may be applied to constructing the models of the theory of situations.

In my opinion, the formalization of all ontologies assigning sentences semantic correlates that are different from their logical values and not changing, in any essential aspect, the intuition that they are the correlates of sentences and nit of names, requires non-Fregean logic or, at least, a theory based on it. However, non-Fregean logic is a logical calculus and - just as any logical calculus - it can be developed independently of its origins and philosophical motivations and without making any assumptions concerning reality. Non-Fregean logic does not establish univocal meanings of such terms as "situation" and "object", just as geometry does not establish univocal meanings of such terms as "point" or "straight" line and despite it geometry is applied to the description of the world. What is the universe of nominal and sentential values depends on the application. Similarly, in geometry or the standard models theory, it is the particular application that determines what the point or the object is.

The non-Fregean period was the most creative time in Suszko's life: during that period he wrote 36 scientific papers, all of which concerned non-Fregean logic (compared to the total of 85 publications which he wrote in his lifetime), he supervised 7 doctoral dissertations during that time, 5 of which concerned non-Fregean logic." (pp. 153)

(...)

In science, it happens that an accurate description of certain problems goes beyond the potentiality of natural language. For example, the notion of continuity could not be precisely expressed until the quantifiers were introduced. According to the standards of contemporary logic, in a given formalized language we consider as many categories of beings as many types of variables there are in a given language. In a language in which there appear only various non-sentential variables, we cannot, in turn, formulate philosophical statements concerning the world as a whole. According to Suszko, the invention in the history of human thought of such conceptions as Fregean sentential logic, Leśniewski's Protothetics and Wittgenstein's Tractatus are important, among others, as their formalized versions require languages with sentential variables contrary to theories known from mathematics and other sciences, which require only various nominal variables. Suszko, while inventing non-Fregean logic, had apparent semantic and philosophical reasons, two of which are, in my opinion, most important:

(1) the conviction that reality should be regarded not only as a universe of objects possessing certain features and connected with certain relations, but, for more complete description of the world, reality should be also regarded as a universe of situations some of which at least are describable by the sentences of a certain language;

(2) ontological propositions can be divided into two types: a) those which are manifested in logical syntax and semantics of a language, particularly in relationships of logical consequence holding in a given language, b) those which are explicitly expressed in a object-language and which are ontological propositions that are not of metatheoretical nature.

According to Suszko, in the language of non-Fregean logic we can precisely formulate theorems concerning the world perceived after Wittgenstein as the whole of facts." (pp. 158-161)

From: Mieczyslaw Omyla, "Roman Suszko. From Diachronic Logic to Non-Fregean Logic", in: Wladyslaw Krajewski (ed.), Polish Philosophers of Science and Nature in the 20th Century, Amsterdam: Rodopi 2001, pp. 153-162.

An overview of Suszko's thought

"In Roman Suszko's logical writings there are to be found many remarks and reflections on the idea of logic which is closely related to his work in formal logic. Though the scope of this paper makes it impossible to deal with them all, I would like nevertheless to draw the reader's attention to some of Suszko's views concerning the philosophy of logic. The aim of this study is to call the reader's attention to the most important of them. They may be presented in a knowing way:

1. The subject-matter of logical investigations are any conceptual structures emerging from the process of world cognition. The totality of such structures Suszko calls logical material. It is linguistic in nature and given in the shape of scholarly papers, philosophical treatises and, more loosely, in disputes and lectures of various sorts. The state of logical studies at any time is largely determined by the logical material available as well as the research tools at hand, for logical structures must be based upon the structures originating in direct world cognition. Among various research tools used for studying logical material Suszko -- in agreement with the trends of contemporary logic --clearly gives priority to mathematical instruments, especially to those of the set-theoretical and algebraic type.

Logic is for Suszko closely linked with epistemology and in [5], [6] he even calls it part of epistemology or even formal epistemology. In [1] Suszko writes: "Science, the progress of cognition and natural language which plays an important part in it are the points reference for investigations in formal logic."

2. The intersubjective sense of the expressions of any language L stems from the fact the expressions of this language refer to the same reality R and that they stead in semantic relations to certain appropriate fragments of R. The understanding of expressions by language users is therefore, according to Suszko, derivative with respect to semantic relations, which hold between language and its objective sphere R. In order to study semantic relations of a language one must formalize it, and the reality must be structured within a certain framework, which is, set-theoretical in character. In logic, theory of sets and relations is usually assumed as formal theory of reality.

Set theory was even called by Suszko formal ontology, although in [4] he allows for ontologies other than set-theoretical to be assumed in semantics. However, he considers set theory as the most natural ontology for investigations within formal logic. Suszko thinks that in logical syntax two kinds of investigations can be distinguished: the classificatory-analytical and the constructive ones. The classificatory-analytical investigations are a preliminary phase for the construction of formalized languages. In [2] is presented a method of classificatory-analytical investigations, stressing the semantic aspect of the structural investigations conducted in logical syntax. In logical syntax only those kinds of expressions are distinguished whose syntactic role is closely connected with their semantic function. The simplest of such expressions are called-by Suszko "words in the logical sense". Words in the logical sense include according to Suszko: variables of all sorts-sentential as well as nominal-functors, operators and, possibly, simple names and simple sentences.

From the syntactico-semantic point of view formalized languages studied in logic are more or less exact replicas of natural languages fragments or of languages of particular sciences or hypothetical assumptions about those languages. In logic we investigate some consequences of those assumptions. In [3] [4] Suszko maintains,that

(i) all languages investigated in logic so far may be represented by a one common syntactic scheme,

(ii) there is a scheme of the relation of semantic reference which is common to all those languages.

As a hypothesis which could explain these facts Suszko assumes in [6] that there is a structural syntactic frameworks, by means of which consciousness can grasp reality. This framework has been determined by "the surface of the world" as Suszko calls it in [6]. The surface of the world is anything, whatever has been an objective correlate of the discursive human consciousness, merging from the remotest past. In [6] Suszko writes: "It consists (the surface of the world) of a universe, whose elements are things, not too big and not too small, persisting in the spatio-temporal environment of the primitive man -- as well as of a characterization including simple external features of those things and the relations between them. Upon this model the primitive conceptual apparatus has been built,whose syntactic structure mirrors the ontological structure of the surface of the world".

The logical structure of a language paired with a certain fragment of reality is never arbitrary and purely linguistic but is determined by:

(a) the ontological structure of the fragment of reality to which the language refers.

(b) the semantic principles adopted.

3. The appearance in the logical material of Fregean sentential semantics, Leśniewski's protothetics and Wittgenstein's Tractatus has been important in the development of logico-philosophical reflection. The importance of it consists, in the fact, that contrary to theories known from mathematics and other sciences the formalized of these theories require languages with sentential variables. The sentential variables range over a universe of whatever is presentable in sentences. Suszko follows Wittgenstein in calling the denotations of sentences situations. According to Suszko situations are primitive with respect to events for the latter are objects abstracted from the former. In contemporary science only these theories are studied which are expressed in languages with nominal variables; theories of situations expressed in languages with sentential variables not being considered. In [7] is proved that:

(i) certain theories of situations are mutually translatable into theories of events,

(ii) certain algebras of situations are isomorphic with algebras of events,

and then Suszko asks:

"...What, then, makes our thinking and natural languages discriminate to some extent sentential variables, especially general and existential sentences about situations?

...however, what gives preference to theories of events over theories of situations?"

And in the same paper Suszko answers:

"This is probably due to some deep, historically motivated feature of our thinking and natural language -- a feature, whose investigation and explanation will certainly take much time and effort." These features of our thinking make us grasp world rather as a universe of objects possessing certain properties and connected by certain relations and not like Wittgenstein did in Tractatus as the totality of facts taking place within the logical space.

One of the aspects of this bias in our thinking is, according to Suszko, tendency (originating from logical empiricism) of shifting philosophical problems from the object language to metalanguage. For Suszko, the sentence:

(*) there is a real world

is an extralogical, ontological statement, which Suszko formulates in W-languages (constructed by himself) and whose logical consequences he studies. Suszko maintains that languages which does not contain sentential variables ranging over a certain universe cannot formalise such statements as (*) or any propositions on situational ontology for that matter. W-language (W-from Wittgenstein) have been constructed by Suszko in order to formalise the ontology of the Tractatus. In W-languages both sentential and nominal variables are contained as well as quantifiers binding variables of both sorts, the identity predicate end the identity connective. In those languages a logical calculus called non-Fregean logic is defined.

Non-Fregean logic is a logical calculus created by Suszko in order to formalise a fragment of the ontology in Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-philosophicus.

4. When we define a logical calculus in a formalised language, we specify the meaning of its logical constants. But this is not always all. It may happen that by assuming certain semantic principles we can impose some quantitative and structural conditions on the universe of sentential variables. According to Suszko logic should not impose any conditions upon the universes of situations and objects, that are correspondingly universes of sentential and nominal variable, except that the set of sentential denotations should consist of least two elements and that universe of nominal variables should be non-empty. This condition is satisfied by the non-Fregean logic in contrast with the truth-functional logic (the Fregean one), whose logical thesis is, under the assumptions adopted by Suszko, that the universe of sentential variables (situations) is two elements. The non-Fregean logic is a bi-valued one, because for any admissible interpretation of a language every sentential formula is either true or false. This logic is extensional as well because the denotation of any expression is a function of denotations of its constituent expressions.

The construction of non-Fregean logic and its formal semantics seems to reveal quite a few of Suszko's views on language and logic. Some of these views might be summarised in a simplified form as follows:

The analysis of logical constructions reveals that there are least two kinds of ontological principles:

(i) those reflected in the syntax of a language and the principles of interpretation assumed,

(ii) philosophical theorems, which are explicitly expressible in the sentences of a given language and accepted as theses of that language.

Every logical thesis is an ontological theorem, there are however formal ontological theses which are not logical theorems. The rules of logical inference in a given language should not impose any conditions on the universe of situations and objects if these conditions are not theses of pure logic i.e. they are not consequences of the postulate of consistency. What is peculiar about the ontological principles formulated by Suszko is that no extralogical constant is needed in order to formulate them, for they are expressible in a language which includes logical constants and sentential and nominal variables only. Hence Suszko's ontology constitutes a general and formal theory." (pp. 175-179)

References

[1] "A Formal Theory of the Logical Values I", Polish with English and Russian summaries, Studia logica 6 (1957) pp. 145-237.

[2] "An Outline of the Elementary syntax", Polish, Zeszyty Wydzialu Filozoficznego Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, no. 3 PWN Warszawa (1957).

[3] "Syntactic Structure and Semantical Reference I", Studia logica 8 (1958) pp. 213-244.

[4] "Syntactic Structure and Semantical Reference II", Studia logica 9 (1960) pp. 63-93.

[5] "Lectures on Formal Logic. Part I: An Introduction to the Problems of Logic. Elements of Set Theory", Polish, PWN, Warsawa (1965) 152 pp. Prepared for publication by Barbara Stanosz.

[6] "Formal Logic and Some Problems of the Theory of Knowledge. Diachronic Formal Logic", Polish, in: Logiczna Teoria Nauki, ed. by T. Pawkowski, PWN,Warszawa (1966) pp. 505-576.

[7] "The Reification of Situations", Polish, Studia Filozoficzne no. 2 (69) (1971), pp. 65-82.

From: Mieczyslaw Omyla, "Roman Suszko's Philosophy of Logic", In Jerzy Perzanowski (ed.), Essays on Philosophy and Logic. Proceedings of the XXXth Conference on the History of Logic, Dedicated to Roman Suszko. Cracow, October 19-21, 1984, Cracow: Jagiellonian University 1987, pp. 175-180.

Non-Fregean logic

"14. (...) The story whose outcomes are described below began with a seminar on the Tractatus organized by Tadeusz Czezowski in Torun at the end of the 1950s. The seminar was attended by Bogusław Wolniewicz, who recast its contents in original form. The results of this re-elaboration were set out in Rzeczy i facty [Things and facts], 1968, and in Ontologia sytuacij [Ontology of situations], 1985 (some of Wolniewicz’s works in English are cited in the references). During the 1960s, Roman Suszko met Wolniewicz and read the manuscript of the former book. Thereafter he developed the so-called W-languages (W for Wittgenstein) from which derive the non-Fregean logics outlined below (see the references for Bibliographical details).

Independently of the Polish logicians, Barwise and Perry developed a somewhat similar theory in Situations and Attitudes, As far as I know, a systematic comparison between the two perspectives has not yet been conducted.

15. Semiotic preliminaries

As we know, for Frege there were only two ontological correlates of propositions: the True and the False. All true propositions denote the True, and all false prepositions denote the False. From an ontological point of view, if all true propositions denote exactly one and the same entity, then the underlying philosophical position is the absolute monism of facts.

In what follows I shall seek to disprove what Suszko called ‘Frege’s axiom’: namely the assumption that there exist only two referents for propositions.

Frege’s position on propositions was part of a more general view. Indeed, Frege adopted a principle of homogeneity (Perzanowski, 1992) according to which there are two fundamental categories of signs (Bedeutungen and truth-values) and two fundamental categories of senses (Sinn and Gedanken). Both categories of signs (names and propositions) have sense and reference. The sense of a name is its Sinn, that way in which its referent is given, while the referent itself, the Bedeutung, is the object named by the name." (201-202)

References

Barwise, J. and Perry, J. 1984. Situations and Attitudes, Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press.

Wolniewicz B. 1968. Rzeczy i facty [Things and Facts], Warsaw: PWN [Polish Scientific Publishers).

Wolniewicz, B. 1982. "A Formal Ontology of Situations", Studia Logica, 1982, pp. 381-413.

Wolniewicz, B. 1982. "Logical Space and Metaphysical Systems", Studia Logica, 1983, pp. 269-284.

Wolniewicz, B. 1982. Logic and Metaphysics, Warsaw: Polskic Towarzystwo Scmiotyczne, 1999.

Wolniewicz, B. 1985. Ontologia sytuacij (Ontology of Situations],Warsaw: PWN [Polish Scientific Publishers].

From: Roberto Poli, "Descriptive, Formal and Formalized Ontologies", in: Denis Fisette (ed.), Husserl's Logical Investigations Reconsidered, Dordrecht: Kluwer 2003, pp. 183-210.

"Chapter 6. Fregean logics.

6.1. The Fregean Axiom.

The idea of distinguishing between Fregean and non-Fregean logic is mainly due to Roman Suszko [1968]. The main feature of non-Fregean logic is the distinction made between reference, or denotation, of a sentence and its truth-value. In the logical systems defined by Suszko the distinction between reference and truth-value is embodied in a new binary connective called identity. Connecting two sentences by identity expresses the fact that the two sentences refer to the same thing (they have the same semantic correlate) while the "ordinary" equivalence connective expresses the fact that the two sentences have the same logical value.

The origin of non-Fregean logics is strictly connected with the abolition of the so called Fregean Axiom by Suszko [1975].

(...)

In the Suszko's times the situational theory of meaning did not exist. Thus the principle that the meaning of a sentence coincides with the situation described by this sentence had a purely postulative character at that time - building a situational semantics was a task for future. This task was performed by Wojcicki [1984], [1986] who developed foundations of situational semantics for Suszko's non-Fregean logic with identity. (The restricted, purely sentential version of this logic is discussed below.) He also proved the completeness theorem for this logic with respect to situational semantics. The crucial point consists obviously in the explication of the notion of a situation. This problem gives rise to many questions: what are the components of a situation?; does every situation encompass pragmatical aspects, strictly connected with the process of communication, such as the time, the place, the addressee of an utterance?; are the truth-values situational components? There is no doubt that the situation described by the sentence

"Rome is the capital of Italy"

depends on the meanings of the words that make up this sentence but it also depends on the moment when the sentence was uttered (say, at the beginning of the 19th century or in the 20th century)". (pp. 373-374)

From: Janusz Czelakowski, Protoalgebraic Logics, Dordrecht: Kluwer 2001.

"The expression non-Fregean logic was introduced by Roman Suszko in the article Non-Fregean Logic and Theories (1968). Its cornerstone is the omission of the Fregean axiom. Recall that according to G. Frege, sentences are not only true or false, but they are also names of their truth values. Hence the Fregean axiom can be formulated as follows: all true statements (likewise, all false statements) have the same common referent, the truth (respectively, the falsehood). The Fregean axiom lies at the heart of classical logical calculi. In a model for a language based on classical logic there is no universe corresponding to the sentences of the language, but only a basis for an unambiguous division of the sentences into true and false ones. The Fregean axiom can be seen as the formal counterpart of a philosophical view on the meanings of sentences.

On the other hand, the philosophical foundation of the non-Fregean logic can be summarized as follows: a description of the world is incomplete (in the non-technical sense of the word) if it consists solely of a description of objects, their properties and their relations to each other. A full and adequate description of reality should reflect also the fact that reality is a collection of possibilities, some of which are realized and which can be described with sentences. While maintaining the view that a logical sentence is always either true or false, we should also be able to take into account the fact that reality, which we want to describe, contains denotations for expressions having more than merely syntactic content. Therefore, we should acknowledge the fact that the denotations of names are objects, that the denotations of predicates are sets or relations and that the denotations of sentences are the situations described by them.

The above observations show that the basic philosophical assumption of non-Fregean logic is that the denotations of the sentences of a given language are different from their truth values; the universe of the denotations is commonly called the universe of situations. In order to be able to speak about the situations, we add to the language a new connective, known as the identity connective, which links a pair of sentences to truth when their denotations are the same in a given model, that is, when the sentences describe the same situation. According to Suszko, the identity connective is more basic than other non-truth-functional operators, for instance, the various modal operators. It is basic in the sense that it cannot be eliminated from the logics that have been used and studied without trivializing it into another name for the equivalence connective. In the general case, the identity connective is different from the equivalence connective: two sentences with the same truth value can have different denotations. In other words, the truth value of a sentence is distinct from the situation described by the sentence. Adding the identity connective to classical logic does not, however, conflict with two-valuedness. Non-Fregean logic is two-valued as well as extensional, and it is the weakest logic with that property, while classical logic is the strongest one. Moreover, two-valuedness implies that the universe of situations must have at least two elements. That is the only limitation that non-Fregean logic imposes on the size of the universe of situations. On the other hand, if we add the condition that the universe of situations has at most two elements, we obtain the classical logical calculus, and the identity connective becomes indistinguishable from the equivalence connective. In fact, the Fregean axiom claims exactly this: that the two connectives are the same. Therefore Suszko called the classical logical calculus Fregean logic and the calculus without this axiom non-Fregean logic.

Thus, in a sense non-Fregean logic is an extension of classical logic: the language for building formulae is expanded. However, from another and perhaps more relevant point of view, classical logic is a strengthening of non-Fregean logic. On the other hand, the latter provides such a general logical calculus that most known logics -- classical first-order logic, classical sentential calculus, the many-valued logics of Łukasiewicz as well as some modal logics -- can be formulated in its general framework.

One should not forget about the philosophical applications of non-Fregean logic either. Most importantly, this logic provides excellent tools for the precise formulation of an ontology, for the formalization of the correspondence theory of truth and such concepts as fact, necessity, possible world, state of affairs and event. However, the value of non-Fregean logic does not derive solely from its applications. Non-Fregean logic constitutes an autonomic logical calculus, which can be studied in its own right, irrespectively of any connections with reality.

The sentential calculus based on the principles of non-Fregean logic is called the Sentential Calculus with Identity (SCI)." (pp. 193-194)

From: Joanna Golinska and Taneli Huuskonen, "Number of Extensions of non-Fregean Logics", Journal of Philosophical Logic, 34, 2005, pp. 193-206.

The Fregean Axiom (FA): "all true (and, similarly, all false) sentences describe the same, that is, have a common referent."

"1° How do we have to understand the abolition of the Fregean axiom in the sense of the paper? To answer this question we must follow Suszko's argumentation taken from the section 'Final remarks'. First, we have to remember that from the very beginning the author's intention was to follow essentially Frege's program without, however, accepting the axiom (FA). And pure logic, according to Frege, should be as weak and general as possible. Actually, the non-Fregean logic is very weak (cf. p. 192). On the other hand, there are in fact more important ontological reasons for abolishing the Fregean axiom. The author argues that "non-Fregean logic contains the exact theory of facts, i.e., situations described in true sentences or, in other words, situations which obtain. If one accepts the Fregean axiom one is compelled to be an absolute monist in the sense that there exists only one and necessary fact" (p. 218). Subsequently, R. Suszko takes Wittgenstein, the great opposite of Frege, to task for advocating the non-Fregean approach discussed. Let us remember that the main ontological thesis of the famous Tractatus' is, that "The real world is a totality of facts and not objects". In contrast to the Fregean logic, NFL suits the ontology of the Tractatus and is the weakest and most general two-valued logic. This is the crucial argument against (FA).

A semi-abolition of (FA) is also discussed in the paper. The idea comes from the simple possible-worlds semantics (i.e. in which relational frames of type (W, R) are considered). In that semantics, models associated with frames have just one designated element. This is referred to as the semi-Fregean postulate. The ontological content of that postulate is that there exist plenty of distinct situations, but only one among them is distinguished. But the simple-worlds semantics works only for invariant Boolean G-theories. This means that this semantics is too narrow to comprise other SCI-theories; and it implies a very undesirable ontological assertion which says that there is only one distinguished situation described by true sentences.

2° The paper under review is a summary of a period of investigation of non-Fregean logic by the author and his collaborators. Incidentally, the paper contains general remarks on many logical areas and while reading it R. Suszko appears as a logician:

Suszko's theoretical framework is the general theory of entailment relations. By 'logic' is meant an entailment relation operating on the algebra of formulas. This is an extension of Tarski's methodological ideas, dating back to the thirties, connected with the notion of consequence operation. The author teaches us that in order to learn the properties of a given entailment one must investigate its theories, i.e. sets of formulas closed under the entailment. The smallest theory of a given entailment coincides with the set of all tautologies, that is, the formulas entailed by the empty set of formulas. It is obvious that distinct entailments may have a common set of tautologies. Consequently, given a logic and an entailment . we ought to ask whether . equals (strong completeness) or whether only the sets of tautologies of both entailments are identical (weak completeness). Now, if we did not stop describing the general framework, we would have to discuss problems such as the importance of the so-called complete theories, the problem of adequacy and so on.... But the reader can easily find it in the paper. Actually, we just want to draw the reader's attention to the fact that he can also find there a lot of very deep and original remarks on the theory of entailment. As an example, let us quote the author's opinion about completeness theorems (pp. 216, 217). "Thus, we see that a completeness theorem for a logic is not a golden crown on semantics but just the beginning of it. Already the relativity of completeness theorems forces us to ask how far we can go in semantics beyond (!) the completeness theorem. To construct a logical calculus and prove a kind of completeness theorem for it (not to speak of a weak completeness theorem) appears very often as just a waste of time."

R. Suszko does not tolerate any intensional notions and contexts and he is strongly opposed to intensional formal logic. He is deeply convinced that there is no modal logic which cannot be demolished (by breaking its logical rules) by some intensional construction in natural language. Therefore, on page 200, we are warned that "the building of such logics is a kind of naiveté". On the other hand, we know that some systems of modal logic have appeared to be SCI-theories. This is the reason why the author is afraid of NFL being incorrectly understood as a kind of modal logic. If one has doubts about the non-intensional background of non-Fregean logic, one should carefully read Sections 10-14." (pp. 376-378)

From: Grzegorz Malinowski and Jan Zygmunt, Review of: "Roman Suszko. Abolition of the Fregean Axiom", Erkenntnis, 12, 1978 pp. 369-380.

"3. Abolition of Fregean Axiom.

According to Frege, denotations (Bedeutung) of sentences are logical values. Thus, each sentence denotes either Truth or Falsehood. Suszko, who sought support for his ideas in Wittgenstein, rejects this point of view. For him, the denotation of a sentence is what the sentence says about: a certain "situation". This term was chosen by Suszko to interpret Wittgenstein's Sachlage -- the state of affairs. Situations which exist create positive facts, those which do not exist create negative facts. Sentences having the same logical value need not denote the same. It is a certain fact that Wittgenstein knew Frege just like it is a fact that Wittgenstein exchanged letters with Russell, but these two facts are quite different, and thus two sentences stating these two facts have different denotations although their truth value is the same.

Obviously, Frege was not of the opinion that all true (or false) sentences "say the same" either. In Suszko's apprehension the differences lay in the sense (Sinn) of sentences and not in their denotations. For comparison of Suszko's ideas with those of Frege it is essential that neither Sinn itself nor any of its components is an element of the objective world. Sinn, is a way in which sentences are assigned their logical values (one is tempted to repeat after Ajdukiewicz "the way of how the sentence is understood"), or -- which also can be found in Frege's works -- "the thought conveyed by the sentence". The thought, let me add, understood as a certain abstract object and not an individual mental experience. The differences between Suszko's and Frege's approaches are by no means of verbal character: among the concepts used by Frege there is no counterpart for the notion of situation.

As known, the predicate calculus may be employed only to non-empty domains; analogously, in order to apply SCI -- and more generally NFL -- one must accept certain ontological theses; namely the ones given by the following semantical postulates:

S1. Each sentence has its denotation.

S2. True sentences denote positive facts while false sentences denote negative facts.

S3. The classical truth conditions are satisfied; in particular, the truth value of sentences built by means of truth connectives is determined by the truth values of its components in the usual (i.e. accepted in the classical logic) way.

Observe that S1 stands in disagreement with Wittgenstein's ideas developed in Tractatus. According to Wittgenstein both logical tautologies and inconsistent logical sentences are "senseless" (sinnlose), which however does not mean they are "nonsensical" (unsinnige). With Wittgenstein, nonsense is an expression which does not meet the requirements of grammar which amounts to the fact that nonsensical sentences are not sentences at all. The statement "Rome is Rome" is grammatically correct but it does not convey any information, is senseless, and consequently as it means nothing it denotes nothing.

In order for (S1) - (S3) to be satisfied, there have to exist at least two situations, one of which must be a positive fact and the other -- a negative one. This existential thesis is fundamental for the ontology of SCI. The set of ontological postulates for the entire non-Fregean logic is richer since the logic refers not only to situations but also to individual objects and sets built from them. Consequently, NFL inherits the ontological postulate of the predicate calculus stating that there must exist at least one object." (pp. 326-327)

From: Ryszard Wojcicki, "R. Suszko's Situational Semantics", Studia Logica, 43, 1984, pp. 323-340.

EExcerpts from his publications: Abolition of the Fregean Axiom

This paper is partly stimulated by a talk given by Dana Scott on Lewis' systems in the Symposium on Entailment, December 1971, [Scott 1971]. Any endeavour, however, to reconstruct Lewis' program or to defend it is far beyond my intention. What matters here is the following. Scott makes a great deal of propaganda on behalf of (a) the general theory of entailment relations (or consequence operations) and (b) truth-valuations. Furthermore, "a nagging doubt" in Scott's mind, concerned with possible-world semantics induces him to use both (a) and (b) and a trick of making inferences visible, to arrive eventually at the strong modal systems, S4 and S5.

There are, of course, plenty of ways to obtain modal-systems. Here, I want to call your attention in particular to the somewhat disquieting fact that the strong modal systems (but by no means all modal systems) are theories based on an extensional and logically two-valued logic, labelled NFL, exactly in the same sense that axiomatic arithmetic is said to be based on (pure!) logic [created essentially by Frege, (hence labelled FL) and well-known from text-books of mathematical logic]. This paper is not, however, another exercise in so-called modal logic. I essentially agree by the way, with Quine's comments [Quine 1963] on that kind of logic. The main subject here is the construction of NFL and its basic properties. Also, the relation between NFL and FL will be discussed. The general theory of entailment will serve as a framework for three methods of building NFL. In fact, we will arrive at NFL using truth-valuations, models and logical axioms and rules of inference.

As an intelligent reader you instantly conjecture that there must be some hocus-pocus underlying NFL. Indeed, there is. It consists essentially in following Frege in building pure logic but only to certain decisive point. Of course, you need not use his archaic notation or terminology. Also, you may easily avoid his syntactic shortcomings. For example, you are naturally inclined to keep formulas (sentences) and terms (names) as disjoint syntactic categories. But, when you come to his assumption, called here the Fregean axiom, that all true (and, similarly, all false) sentences describe the same thing, that is, have a common referent, just forget it, please; at least until NFL is constructed. At that time, I am sure, you will better understand what the Fregean axiom is and you'll be free to accept it, if you still like it so much.

The trick underlying NFL is fairly easy and also quite innocent. It is true that it seduced me successfully and I am now addicted to it. I even reject the Fregean axiom. However, I do not insist that you go so far. But try NFL cautiously. I assure you that NFL offers you an intellectual experience, unexpected in its simplicity and beauty, far surpassing all "impossible worlds". But I am frank and fair, by my nature. So I tell you keep the Fregean axiom hidden in your pocket when entering the gate of NFL and be ready to use it at once, when you feel a confusing headache. Formally, you will be collapsing NFL into FL. Informally, you will be expelling yourself from a logical paradise into the rough, necessary world.

Surprisingly enough, logicians do not want NFL. I know it from five years of experience and this is the right way of putting it, believe me. Being even so close to NFL sometimes, Logicians stubbornly strive after something else. When not satisfied with FL they choose to work with the powerset 2I as exposed convincingly by Scott [Scott 1970]. They even can, I admit, work on it as hard as in a sweatshop. So mighty is, Gottlob, the magic of your axiom! Whatever (cheatingly) one calls elements of the index set I, the powerset 2I remains a distinct shadow of the Fregean axiom.

If we want to follow Frege we must consent to his basic ideals of unambiguity and extensionality. To stress this point we start with his famous semantical scheme of Sinn and Bedeutung. It is obvious today that the abyss of thinking in a natural language does not fit into the Fregean scheme. But this is another story. Here, it must suffice to notice that we all live (and cannot completely get out of) that messy abyss with all its diffuse ghosts (in Hermann Weyl's [1940] phraseology) of ambiguity, vague flexibility, intensionality and modality. We really enjoy them. But not always. When forced to construct a theory, we try to make our ideas precise and climb to the heights of extensionality. Then, the structure of our theoretical thought corresponds sufficiently well to the syntax of the Begriffschrift, i.e., a formalized language which does fit into the Fregean semantical scheme." (pp.169-171)

From: "Abolition of the Fregean Axiom". In: Rohit Parikh (ed.), Logic Colloquium. Symposium on Logic held at Boston, 1972-73, Berlin: Springer-Verlag 1975, pp. 169-239.

"14. Final remarks.

The fight with intensional ghosts is boring, unprofitable and, may never end. But, I must finish this paper. So, I conclude with some unelaborated remarks.

1) Modal logicians think that NFL is a kind of modal logic and one badly done at that. Extensionally minded logicians consider FL as the only extensional logic. Thus, either intensional ghosts or the Fregean axiom and, everything else comes from the devil. I know this well. But, why is this so? This is a longer story. Indeed, you must first look at the history of modern logic and you will find there many relevant facts. Secondly, you must dig deeper and deeper in the nonFregean logic and its relationship to the Fregean one.

2) But, if you do that then you will certainly meet a fact which suggests that we may easily get rid of the identity connective and NFL. It is sufficient to translate NFL into FL as shown in [Cresswell 1966] by Cresswell, again. Now, this is something quite different from diffuse intensional ghosts. But things nevere are so simple as they seem. You know that translations may be better or worse and, the bad translations may not be translations at all. What always matters about translations is what are their invariants. If you ask for invariants of Cresswell's translation you will find only a few. It may be considered as a translation only if one wants to get rid of identity connective at any price. But, the real paradox is that it is impossible to get rid of the identity connective at all. What can be done is to equate it with material equivalence. Also, one cannot get rid of situations unless one agrees that thought is about nothing, or, rather, stops talking with sentences.

3) Stimulated by Cresswell's "translation" and some ad hoc construction by Slupecki I built a theory of reification of situations in [Suszko 1971]. It resembles, in a sense, what Quine called reification of universals and also the relationship between Fregean FUNKTIONEN and their WERTVERLAUFE. Reification of situations is performable within a theory in some W-language, based on non-Fregean logic, of course.

If based on a logic as strong as WB it automatically leads to what we are used to talking about in probability theory, viz., events being objects constituting a Boolean algebra in ordinary sense. Finally, this theory is the basis for a translation of Cresswell's type. This translation does not preserve entailment perfectly. But, equations are translatable exceptionally well, naturally.

4) Non-Fregean logic contains the exact theory of facts, i.e., situations described in true sentences or, in other words, situations which obtain. If one accepts the Fregean axiom then one is compelled to be an absolute monist in the sense that there exists only one and necessary fact. So, you see that Fregean axiom should be abolished. Also, only the non-Fregean logic allows us to repeat with full understanding Wittgenstein's thesis that the real world is a totality of facts and not objects. Indeed, what I tried to do in [Suszko 1968] was a formal recostruction of the Ontology of the Tractatus, OT for short, as interpreted by Dr. B. Wolniewicz.(...) At that time, I only had a general idea of which logic OT has to be based on. Now, I may say that NFL suits OT and is the general and weakest extensional and two-valued logic.

(...)

6) Yet, this is not all. SCI-models are structures which may be considered as models of the Fregean logic which makes sentential variables trivially superflous. Thus, again, we may get rid of sentential variables and identity connective similarly as in the Cress-well translation. We may and we really do. This is the point. Of course, this fact does not discredit NFL at all but it hints to some tendency in our thinking which is codified, in a sense, by the Fregean axiom. Be it right or wrong, this tendency is certainly very strong and much older than modern logic. So it seriously calls for an explanation. This may not be easy. Why do we tend to describe the world as consisting of a single necessary fact? But, anyway, I feel

-suggested by the fact that Cresswell's translation is not so good. Moreover, one may say even that the conventional semantics which uses SCI-models is not adequate. Elements of these models are objects; but sentential variables do not actually run over any totality of objects. One cannot denote a situation by a name. It can only be described by a sentence. Thus, an adequate semantics of non-Fregean theories should use a W-language with non-Fregean entailment in it. Hence, we face the task of using(!) a new kind of language with a new entailment. I have shown to you how good this new logic is. Therefore, I think we should try to use it and I hope we will be successful. Frankly, however, I am not sure if we are able to do that." (pp. 217-220)

Referencs

Scott, D. On engendering an illusion of understanding, The Journal of Philosophy 68(1971), 787-807.

Quine, W.V. Comments, in Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht 1963, pp. 97-104.

Scott, D. Advice on Modal Logic, in Philosophical Problems in Logic, edited by K. Lambert, D. Reidel Publ. Comp. 1970, pp. 143-173.

Weyl, H. The Ghost of Modality, in Philosophical Essays in memory of E. Husserl, edited by M. Farbes, Harvard Univ. Press, 1940, reprinted by Greenwood Press, New York, 1956.

Cresswell, M.J. Functions of propositions, The Journal of Symbolic Logic 31 (1966), 545-560.

Suszko, R.: Reifikacja sytuacji (Reification of situations), Studia Filozoficzne 69 (1971), 65-82. [Translated in English in 1994: The reification of situations. In Philosophical logic in Poland. Edited by Wolenski Jan. Dordrecht: Kluwer 1994. pp. 247-270]

Suszko, R. Ontology in the Tractatus of L. Wittgenstein, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 9 (1968), 7-33.

p class="style4">From: "Abolition of the Fregean Axiom". In: Rohit Parikh (ed.), Logic Colloquium. Symposium on Logic held at Boston, 1972-73, Berlin: Springer-Verlag 1975, pp. pp. 169-239.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected bibliography on Roman Suszko and the non-Fregean Logics

Selected publicfations in English

A complete bibliography including publications in Polish can be found in: Mieczyslaw Omyla and Jan Zygmunt, "Roman Suszko (1919-1979): a bibliography of the published work with an outline of his logical investigations," Studia Logica 43: 421-441 (1984).

1. Suszko, Roman. 1951. "Canonic Axiomatic Systems." Studia Philosophica no. 4:301-330.

2. ———. 1955. "On the Infinite Sums of Models." Bulletin de l'Academie Polonaise des Sciences, Classe III no. 3:201-202.

Co-author: J. Los

3. ———. 1955. "On the Extending of Models (Ii). Common Extensions." Fundamenta Mathematicae no. 42:343-347.

Co-author: Jerzy Los.

The first article: On the extending of models (I) was published by Jerzy Los in Fundamenta Mathematicae, 42, 1955 pp. 38-54; the third article: On the extending of models. III. Extensions in equationally definable classes of algebras, written by J. Slominski, was published in: Fundamenta Mathematicae, 43, 1956 pp. 69-76

4. ———. 1957. "On the Extending of Models (Iv). Infinite Sums of Models." Fundamenta Mathematicae no. 44:52-60.

Co-author J. Los

5. ———. 1958. "Syntactic Structure and Semantical Reference (First Part)." Studia Logica no. 8:213-244.

"The syntactical and semantical investigations in contemporary formal logic refer always to the languages with specified syntactic structure, as with respect to such languages one can formulate exactly and, subsequently examine with mathematical tools 1) the rules of transformation (axioms, rules of inference) and the systems based on these rules (formalized theories), 2) the relations of semantical reference which occur between linguistic expressions and elements of objective sphere.

Our considerations belong to that part of logical syntax and semantics which is independent of any assumptions concerning the rules of transformation.

The syntactic structure of some language L is determined 1° by the vocabulary of L i.e. by the list of simple (undecomposable) expressions in L, and 2° by the rules of construction L of which state how the expressions of L', especially the sentences in L are built of simple expressions.

In the first part of this paper we consider the general principles of the syntactic structure of languages. Namely, we shall formulate a scheme of the syntactic structure of language. This scheme will he called the standard formalization and the languages which fall under this scheme will be called the standard formalized languages (1).

The scheme of standard formalization is based on a purely syntactical classification of expressions into so called semantical categories.

The standard formalization is an abstract from the concrete material of artificial symbolic languages which are considered in formal logic. It is general in the following sense: every symbolic language known in formal logic - after carrying some modifications in its calligraphy -- falls directly under the scheme of standard formalization.

In the second part of this paper we consider the fundamental properties of semantic reference. First, we introduce a classification of objects into so called ontological categories. Further making use of some simple and quite natural connexion of conformity between semantical categories of simple expressions and ontological categories of corresponding objects, we can introduce the general notion of a model of any standard formalized language. Namely, for every standard formalized language L we define the family M(L ) of all models of L. Every model of L is a totality to which the expressions of L can refer semantically and, conversely, every totality to which the expressions of L can refer semantically, belongs to the family M(L). Thus, we obtain a general scheme of the relations of semantical reference which is quite closely connected with the scheme of standard formalization. This shows the ideographic character of standard formalized languages.

It may be a reasonable conjecture the content of this paper to be connected with the structural inquires in linguistcs and with some problems of the philosophy of language and of thinking. But, we do not discuss here these connexions." pp. 213-214.

(1) These terms are borrowed from A. Tarski (in collaboration with A. Mostowski and R. M. Robinson) - Undecidable Theories, Amsterdam, 1953 p. 5.

6. ———. 1958. "Remarks on Sentential Logics." Indagationes Mathematicae no. 20:177-183.

7. ———. 1960. "Syntactic Structure and Semantical Reference (Second Part)." Studia Logica no. 9:63-93.

"§ 9. Introductory remarks concerning the relation of semantical reference.

We begin the considerations about semantics of standard formalized languages with some general remarks belonging to the theory of signs or semiotic in the sense of Ch. Morris [1938].

We consider the languages as systems of signs participating in the process of communication between persons belonging to some human group (speech community). Communicative employment of linguistic signs in some group is intertwisted into the whole of activity of members of this group and of their relations to the environment, and the connection between the employment of linguistic signs and the activity of persons of the given speech community grants an intersubjective meaning to the employed signs.

The considerations about signs and languages may be conducted from a historical and descriptive point of view as well from systematical and theoretical one. On the other hand one can distinguish in these considerations three following ranges: syntax, semantics and pragmatics [Morris 1938]. The syntax deals with the relations which do occur between the signs alone. The principles of combination of simple signs into the composite signs are considered by it. Generally speaking with the syntax it is investigated the syntactic structure of languages. Semantics deals with the relations of semantical reference of signs to objects belonging to the objective sphere. These relations bind the signs with that about what the signs in the process of communication are speaking. Finally, pragmatics take into account the role of persons employing the signs.

One may say that the division of the science of signs and languages into syntax, semantics and pragmatics is made from the point of view of formal logic. Namely, pragmatics is strictly connected with the psychology, sociology, history of culture and other sciences dealing with members of speech communities. On the contrary the considerations about linguistic expressions conducted in formal logic are included in the syntax and semantics.

If a language L of some syntactic structure is meaningful in some circumstances (i. e. the expressions of L are participating in the process of communication in some human group) then the language L - as a system of expressions - semantically refers to some complex R of objects which may be called the referent of the whole language L in the given circumstances of meaningfulness of L. I think that the existence of this referent R and the occurence of the relations of semantical reference between the language L and the referent R (and between the expressions of L and fragments of R) is a basis of the intersubjective meaning of expressions of L. On the other hand the syntactic structure of the language L depends 1°) on the referent R and 2°) on the members of the given speech community; the principle of the dual control of linguistic structure, [1938] p. 12.

In the case of formalized languages the situation is much more simple. Firstly, in formal logic we abstract from pragmatical properties and relations of linguistic expressions. In formal logic we consider only the syntactic structure of languages and the relations of semantical reference. Therefore, instead of the referent of a given formalized language L (in the given circumstances of its meaningfulness) we consider here the family of all possible referents of L which are called models of L and the principle of dual control mentioned above is reduced to the connection between the syntactic structure and the common structure of all models of L. This is the connection of conformity of semantical categories with the ontological categories. It will be explained later.

We do not intend here to prove the connection of conformity of categories. It will be enough to remark that this connection is fulfilled in all semantical interpretations of artificial symbolic languages considered in formal logic. We take in our paper the connection of conformity of categories as a fundamental principle by which are characterized the formal properties of relation of semantical reference and, consequently, it is possible to determine the family of all models of any given standard formalized language." pp. 63-64.

Charles Morris - Foundations of the theory of signs - International Encyclopedia of Unified Sciences, vol. I, 2, Chicago, 1938, 5th impr., 1947.

8. ———. 1960. "On the Extending of Models (V). Embedding Theorems for Relational Models." Fundamenta Mathematicae no. 48:113-121.

Co-authors Jerzy Los and J. Slominski

9. ———. 1961. "Concerning the Method of Logical Schemas, the Notion of Logical Calculus and the Role of Consequence Relations." Studia Logica no. 11:185-216.

10. ———. 1962. "A Note Concerning the Binary Quantifiers." Theoria no. 28:269-276.

11. ———. 1965. "A Note Concerning the Rules of Inference for Quantifiers." Archiv für Mathematische Logik und Grundlagenforschung no. 7:124-127.

12. ———. 1966. "Noncreativity and Translatability in Term of Intensions." Logique et Analyse no. 9:360-363.

13. ———. 1967. "An Abstract Scheme of the Development of Knowledge." In Actes Du Xi Congres International D'histoire Des Sciences. Varsovie-Cracovie, 24-31 Août 1965, 52-55. Wroclaw: Ossolineum.

14. ———. 1967. "An Essay in the Formal Theory of Extension and of Intension." Studia Logica no. 20:7-36.

15. ———. 1967. "A Proposal Concerning the Formulation of the Infinitistic Axiom in the Theory of Logical Probability." Colloquium Mathematicum no. 17:347-349.

16. ———. 1967. "Concerning the Infinitistic Axiom in the Theory of Logical Probability." The Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 32:568.

Abstract

17. ———. 1968. "Ontology in the Tractatus of L. Wittgenstein." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 9:7-33.

"The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus of Ludwig Wittgenstein is a very unclear and ambiguous metaphysical work. Previously, like many formal logicians, I was not interested in the metaphysics of the Tractatus. However, I read in 1966 the text of a monograph by Dr. B. Wolniewicz of the University of Warsaw2 and I changed my mind. I see now that the conceptual scheme of Tractatus and the metaphysical theory contained in it may be reconstructed by formal means. The aim of this paper* is to sketch a formal system or formalized theory which may be considered as a clear, although not complete, reconstruction of the ontology contained in Wittgenstein's Tractatus.

It is not easy to say how much I am indebted to Dr. Wolniewicz. I do not know whether he will agree with all theorems and definitions of the formal system presented here. Nevertheless, I must declare that I could not write the present paper without being acquainted with the work of Dr. Wolniewicz. I learned very much from his monograph and from conversations with him. However, when presenting in this paper the formal system of Wittgenstein's ontology I will not refer mostly either to the monograph of Dr. Wolniewicz or to the Tractatus. Also, I will not discuss here the problem of adequacy between my formal construction and Tractatus. I think that the Wittgenstein was somewhat confused and wrong in certain points. For example, he did not see the clear-cut distinction between language (theory) and metalanguage (metatheory): a confusion between use and mention of expressions."

*Presented in Polish at the Conference on History of Logic, April 28-29, 1967, Cracow, Poland.

18. ———. 1968. "A Note Concerning the Theory of Descriptions." Studia Logica no. 22:51-56.

Co-author: H. Lewandowski

19. ———. 1968. "Formal Logic and the Development of Knowledge." In Problems in the Philosophy of Science. Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, London, 1963. Vol. I, edited by Lakatos, Imre and Musgrave, Alan, 210-222. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Suszko's reply to W. V. Quine and J. Giedymin's discussion notes: pp. 227-230.

20. ———. 1968. "Non-Fregean Logic and Theories." Acta Logica no. 11:105-125.

Annals of the University of Bucarest

21. ———. 1969. "Consistency of Some Non-Fregean Theories." Notices of the American Mathematical Society no. 16:506.

Abstract

22. ———. 1970. "A Note on Abstract Logics." Bulletin de l'Academie Polonaise des Sciences, Classe III no. 18:109-110.

Co-authors: Stephen Bloom and D. J. Brown

23. ———. 1970. "Some Theorems on Abstract Logics." Algebra i Logika no. 9:165-168.

Co-authors: Stephen L. Bloom and Donald J. Brown

"An abstract logic consists of a pair <a, cn< where a is an algebra and cn is a consequence (alias 'closure') operation on the carrier of a. In this paper several theorems are given characterizing 'structural' and 'invariant' logics by their completeness properties. the method is a generalization of the Lindenbaum-Tarski construction."

24. ———. 1971. "Quasi-Completeness in Non-Fregean Logic." Studia Logica no. 29:7-14.

"The notion of quasi-completeness (or O-completeness) has been introduced by J. Los [1], [2] into the semantics of theories in open languages with nominal variables. An analogous notion known as Hallden-completeness [3], [4] is applicable to sentential logics. Both notions are of the same formal nature and can be uniformly treated when formulated with respect to W-languages which contain two kinds of variables, sentential and nominal, as well. W-languages considered here are open, that is, not containing bound variables. The aim of this paper is to show that the main theorems of Los concerning the quasi-completeness also hold in non-Fregean logic and semantics.

The author is indebted to Dr. Stephen L. Bloom from Stevens Institute of Technology for comments on the first draft of this paper."

[1] J. Los, The algebraic treatement of the methodology of elementary deductive systems, Studia Logica 2, 1955, 151-211.

[2] J. Los, R. Suszko, On the extending of models II, Fundamenta Mathematicae 42, 1955, 343-347.

[3] S. Hallden, On the semantic non-completeness of certain Lewis calculi, The Journal of Symbolic Logic 16, 1951, 127-129.

[4] S. A. Kripke, Semantical analysis of modal logic II, in: The Theory of Models, Amsterdam 1965, pp. 206-220.

25. ———. 1971. "Semantics for the Sentential Calculus with Identity." Studia Logica no. 28:77-82.

Co-author: Stephen L. Bloom.

"The SCI (Sentential Calculus with Identity) is obtained from the classical sentential calculus by the addition of 1° a new binary connective, the identity connective (denoted by =) and 2° axioms which 'say' that = means "p is identical to q" (also: "the situation p is the same as the situation q"). The new axioms are the weakest possible; no presuppositious about the meaning of "is identical to" are included (other than p = p). We do not attempt to say what the range of the sentential variables p, q, r, ... is. (In the classical propositional calculus, they are intended to range over a two element set.) In this paper, a number of results about the semantics of the SCI are given without proof. The proofs of these and other results are contained in the much longer Investigations into the Sentential Calculus with Identity."

26. ———. 1971. "Identity Connective and Modality." Studia Logica no. 27:7-41.

27. ———. 1971. "Sentential Variables Versus Arbitrary Sentential Constants." Prace z Logiki no. 6:85-88.

28. ———. 1971. "Sentential Calculus with Identity (Sci) and G-Theories." The Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 36:709-710.

Abstract

29. ———. 1972. "Investigations into the Sentential Calculus with Identity." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 13 (3):289-308.

Co-author: Stephen L. Bloom

"The sentential calculus with identity (SCI) is obtained from the classical sentential calculus by the addition of a binary 'identity connective' = and axioms which 'say' that p = q means p is identical to q. the study of the semantics of the resulting consequence operation using Tarski's matrix method yields insights into consequence operations in general and the classical and modal consequence operations in particular. One finitely axiomatizable SCI theory is studied. It is shown that this theory consists of those formulas valid in all topological boolean algebras."

See also the Errata - in: Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, volume 17, 1976) p. 640.

30. ———. 1972. "Description in Theories of Kind W." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 1:8-13.

Co-author: Mieczyslaw Omyla

31. ———. 1972. "Definitions in Theories of Kind W." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 1:14-19.

Co-author: Mieczyslaw Omyla

32. ———. 1972. "A Note on Modal Systems and Sci." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 1:38-41.

33. ———. 1972. "A Note on Adequate Models for Non-Fregean Sentential Calculi." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 1:42-45.

34. ———. 1972. "Sci and Modal Systems." The Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 37:436-437.

Abstract

35. ———. 1973. "Structurality, Substitution and Completeness." The Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 38:348.

Co-authors: Stephen Bloom and D. J. Brown (Abstract).

36. ———. 1973. "Abstract Logics." Dissertationes Mathematicae no. 102:9-41.

Co-author: D. J. Brown

37. ———. 1973. "Adequate Models for the Non-Fregean Sentential Calculus (Sci)." In Logic, Language, and Probability. A Selection of Papers Contributed to Sections Iv, Vi, and Xi of the Fourth International Congress for Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, Bucharest, September 1971, edited by Bogdan, Radu and Niiniluoto, Ilkka, 49-54. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"This note contains the proof of the following theorem: every model, adequate for SCI, is uncountable."

38. ———. 1974. "Dual Spaces for Topological Boolean Algebras." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 3:16-19.

Co-author: E. Quackenbush

39. ———. 1974. "A Note on Intuitionistic Sentential Calculus." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 3:20-21.

40. ———. 1974. "Equational Logic and Theories in Sentential Languages." Colloquium Mathematicum no. 19:19-23.

41. ———. 1974. "Equational Logic and Theories in Sentential Language." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 1:2-9.

A slightly abridged version of the essay published with the same titile in Colloquium Mathematicum.

42. ———. 1974. "Some Notions and Theorems of Mckinsey and Tarski, and Sci." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 3:3-5.

43. ———. 1975. "Abolition of the Fregean Axiom." In Logic Colloquium. Symposium on Logic Held at Boston, 1972-73, edited by Parikh, Rohit, 169-239. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

This paper was also published as a separate booklet by the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw 1972, in a series of preprints.

44. ———. 1975. "Ultraproducts of Sci Models." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 4:9-14.

Co-author: Stephen L. Bloom

45. ———. 1975. "Remarks on Łukasiewicz Three-Valued Logic." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 4:87-90.

46. ———. 1975. "A Note on the Least Boolean Theory in Sci." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 4:136-137.

47. ———. 1976. "Sentential Calculus of Identity and Negation." Reports on Mathematical Logic no. 7:87-106.

Co-author: Aileen Michaels

48. ———. 1976. "En-Logic." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 3:13.

Co-author: Aileen Michaels.

A loose summary of: Sentential Calculus of Identity and Negation.

49. ———. 1977. "On Distributivity of Closure Systems." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 6:64-66.

Co-author: Wojciech Dzik

50. ———. 1977. "On Filters and Closure Systems." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 6:151-155.

51. ———. 1977. "The Fregean Axiom and Polish Mathematical Logic in the 1920s." Studia Logica no. 36:376-380.

Summary of the talk given to the 22nd Conference on the History of Logic, Cracow (Poland), July 5-9, 1976.

52. ———. 1979. "On the Antinomy of the Liar and the Semantics of Natural Language." In Semiotics in Poland 1894-1969, edited by Pelc, Jerzy, 247-254. Dordrecht: Reidel.

English translation by Oligierd Wojtasiewicz of an article published in Polish in 1957.

"The antinomy of the liar has been discussed many times in formal logic. It is associated with remarkable advances in logic: the formulation of the semantic theory of truth [4] and the discovery of undecidable statements and the impossibility of proofs of consistency under specified conditions ([2]; see also [3], Vol. II, pp. 256ff).

All those results make fundamental use of self-referential expressions, which were first used, in the history of logic, in the antinomy of the liar. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate, by quite elementary methods; something that has been known since the birth of semantics, namely, that the concept of truth and other semantic concepts are relative in nature [5] and that using relative semantic concepts, including the construction of self-referential expressions, does not result in antinomies in natural language.

Semantics, and in particular the semantic theory of truth, presupposes syntax. The wealth of semantic analysis thus depends on the wealth of syntactic information about those expressions to which semantic analyses refer. Since in this paper no systematic syntactic studies on the structure of expressions are made, except for the construction of self-referential expressions, the set of concepts used in the semantic theory of truth discussed here is very modest.

(...)

The semantic theory of truth does not result in the antinomy of the liar if we use concepts restricted to a set of statements which does not include statements from the theory of truth which we are studying in a given case.

It can be shown that the same applies to other parts of semantics, namely those in which the other semantic concepts (denoting, satisfying, etc.) are used [4], [5], [6].

To do this it suffices to analyse other antinomies constructed with the aid of semantic concepts, and to modify them in a manner analogical to that applied above in the case of the antinomy of the liar.

The semantic concepts which we can use in semantic research without being involved in antinomies are relative (restricted). They have a certain reference to a type L of expressions, which includes neither those semantic terms which have a reference to L, nor statements containing those semantic terms. Within those semantic analyses in which we use semantic concepts restricted to type L of expressions we can construct, in accordance with general syntactic rules, an expression which can be proved not to be of type L. The proof consists in a reasoning which changes into an appropriate antinomy if the restrictive reference to L, applied to the semantic concepts used in that case, is disregarded."

Works cited:

[1] Carnap, R., 'Die Antinomien und die Unvollstandigkeit der Mathematik', Monatshefte fiir Mathematik und Physik, 41, 1934, pp. 263-84.

[2] Gödel, K., Ober formal unentscheidbare Sätze der "Principia Mathematica" und verwandter Systeme I', Monatshefte far Mathematik und Physik 38, 1931, pp. 173-98.

[3] Hilbert, D., Bernays, P., Grundlagen der Mathematik, Berlin 1934, 1939.

[4] Tarski, A., 'The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages', in: Tarski, A., Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics, Oxford 1956.

[5] Tarski, A., 'The Establishment of Scientific Semantics', ibid. [6] Tarski, A., 'On the Concept of Logical Consequence', ibid.

53. ———. 1979. "Normal and Non-Normal Classes in Current Languages. Studies in the Concept of Class. I." In Semiotics in Poland 1894-1969, edited by Pelc, Jerzy, 255-272. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Co-author: Zdzislaw Kraszewski.

English translation by Olgierd Wojtasiewicz of an article published in Polish in 1966.

"Russell's antinomy of the class of normal classes, i.e., the class of those classes which are not their own elements, emerged when the current concept of class was being given more precision. It is this current concept of class which is blamed for Russell's antinomy.

The task of the present paper is to offer a fairly precise definition of the current concept of class, which has subsequently come to be split into the collective (concretistic) concept of class and the distributive (mathematical) concept of class or set. S..Leśniewski's mereology, to which T. Kotarbinski's concretism refers, is a theory of classes in the collective sense. The theory of classes in the distributive sense has taken the form of mathematical set theory, which originated with E. Zermelo; other versions of the theory of classes in the distributive sense are provided by B. Russell's type theory and S. Leśniewski's Ontology.

After making the current concept of class more precise, which will consist in a systematization of the assumptions concerning that concept, we shall define normal and non-normal classes as well as the class of normal classes and the class of non-normal classes. Several variations of these definitions are possible, and Russell's antinomy can be reconstructed in each case. We shall see, however, that his antinomy cannot be reconstructed in current language, since the corresponding reasonings do not yield a contradiction. The thesis of this paper is that the current concept of class, as described below, is not self-contradictory."

54. ———. 1979. "Normal and Non-Normal Classes Versus the Set-Theoretical and the Mereological Concept of Class. Studies in the Concept of Class. Ii." In Semiotics in Poland 1894-1969, edited by Pelc, Jerzy, 273-283. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Co-author: Zdzislaw Kraszewski.

English translation by Oligierd Wojtasiewicz of an article published in Polish in 1968.

°We shall concern ourselves here with the transition from the current concept of class to the distributive (set-theoretical) and the collective (mereological) concept of class. This transition is linked to the concepts of normal and non-normal class. Preliminary remarks on that issue have already been made in Sec. 8.

We assume here a non-existential axiom system for the current concepts of class and element, as described in Secs. 2 and 3. Consequence and equivalence are interpreted, as before, as consequence and equivalence in the light of that axiom system."

55. ———. 1979. "Filters and Natural Extensions of Closure Systems." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 8:130-132.

Co-author: T. Weinfeld

56. ———. 1994. "The Reification of Situations." In Philosophical Logic in Poland, edited by Wolenski, Jan, 247-270. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

English translation by Theodore Stazeski of an article published in Polish in 1971.

"The great task of the theory of reification is to show in what way the so-called ontological assumptions of the structure of the universe of situations are transferred to events by reifications, and to impose an algebraic structure on them. Such an approach to the theory of reification flows from the earlier expressed opinion that situations are primary and events are derived. One should not confuse this point of view with the false opinion, I believe, that situations are primary in relation to all objects. It is an altogether different and difficult matter, and in this case a certain consultation of Wittgenstein would be very useful. But the fact that situations are primary in relation to their reification is rather natural. The abstract process, of which the formal expression is the reification of a situations, finds - I think - its fragmentary expression in ordinary language; I write `I think' since I enter into the competence of linguists. These examples given by Slupecki are an illustration. Thus, forest fire = reification of the situation that the forest is burning, and Matt's death = reification of the situation that Matt died. These examples do not give evidence that an explicit symbol of the reification of situations, corresponding to the star of Slupecki of our T, exists in natural language. They are examples giving evidence that the grammatical apparatus of a natural language can often, though certainly not always, transform sentences p (describing situations) into names x (designating particular events) such that x = T (p), and sentences containing those names. The opposite transformation is something unnatural, and is hardly taken into consideration by grammarians.

This observation obviously does not remove the most serious difficulties which appear in connection with situations. The principal difficulty appears at the moment of incorporation of non-trivial theories written in natural language with help of (bound) sentence variables. Reading formulas appearing in this theory in natural language immediately raises serious doubts for many logicians with regard to sense or correctness. There are no such difficulties, or they are considerably less, in the reading of formulas with name variables (not sentential. It is probably the symptom of some deep, historical attribute of our thought and natural language, whose examination and explication will certainly be prolonged and arduous.

From the rather narrow point of view of formal logic the following considerations are suggested. The difference between a sentence and a name is not exhausted in their syntactical properties. A certain syntactic analogy even exists between the category of sentences and the category of names, which can stretch very far (for example the rules of operations for quantifiers are formally similar in the case of sentential and name variables). The difference between sentences and names appears first of all in that sentences, and not names, are subject to assertion, as well as that sentences are premises and conclusions in reasoning. These distinctions on the language level are transferred in some manner to that to which the sentences and names semantically refer. Semantical relation (reference), however, of sentences and names are also - formally - to a certain degree analogical.

Names designate and sentences describe. The difference in terminology (designate, describe) is not essential. The essential point is that we attribute reference to something both to names and to sentences, and that this, in the case of a given name and a given sentences, is exactly one; with the assumption, obviously, of a univocal sense of expression and with exclusion of mythological terms.

This analogy, however, is not complete, just like the analogy between sentences and names, with result that a categorial gap exists between that which a sentence describes (a situation) and that which a name designates (an object). The fact that the expressions p = x and p x, where on the left we have a sentence and on the right a name, are not well formed formulas, shows this profound gap.

The analogies between situation and objects as well as that between sentences and names are not complete. But it does not stop at the level of the formation of sentences and names, not at the level of the formal operation on them in accordance with logic. What, therefore, is the cause that our thought and natural language discriminate sentence variables to a certain degree, and particularly, general and existential sentences about situations?

The above considerations about the reification of situations show that the theory of situations and the theory of events are, in certain manner, equivalent. Why, therefore, prefer the theory of events to the theory of situations?" pp. 249-250.

Studies about the work of Roman Suszko

1. Babyonyshev, Sergei V. 2003. "Fully Fregean Logics." Reports on Mathematical Logic no. 37:59-77.

2. Beziau, Jean-Yves. 1999. "A Sequent Calculus for Łukasiewicz's Three-Valued Logic Based on Suszko's Bivalent Semantics." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 28:89-97.

"A sequent calculus S3 for Łukasiewicz's logic L3 is presented. The completeness theorem is proved relatively to a bivalent semantics equivalent to the nontruthfunctional bivalent semantics for L3 proposed by Suszko in 1975. A distinguishing property of the approach proposed here is that we are keeping the format of the classical sequent calculus as much as possible."

3. Bloom, Stephen L. 1971. "Completeness Theorem." Studia Logica no. 27:43-55.

4. ———. 1971. "A Completeness Theorem of 'Theories of Kind W'." Studia Logica no. 27:43-56.

5. ———. 1974. "On 'Generalized Logics'." Studia Logica no. 33:65-68.

6. Caleiro, C., Carnielli, W., Coniglio, M.E., and Marcos, J. 2003. Suszko Thesis and Dyadic Semantics.

Research report, CLC, Department of Mathematics, Instituto Superior Técnico, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal, 2003.

Presented at III World Congress on Paraconsistency, Toulouse, France, July 28-31, 2003.

"A well-known result by Wojcicki-Lindenbaum shows that any tarskian logic is many-valued, and another result by Suszko shows how to provide 2-valued semantics to these very same logics. This paper investigates the question of obtaining 2-valued semantics for many-valued logics, including paraconsistent logics, in the lines of the so-called "Suszko's Thesis". We set up the bases for developing a general algorithmic method to transform any truth-functional finite-valued semantics satisfying reasonable conditions into a computable quasi tabular 2-valued semantics, that we call dyadic. We also discuss how "Suszko's Thesis" relates to such a method, in the light of truth-functionality, while at the same time we reject an endorsement of Suszko's philosophical views about the misconception of many-valued logics."

7. Czelakowski, Janusz, and Pigozzi, Don. 2004. "Fregean Logics." Annals of Pure and Applied Logic no. 127:17-76.

"The main results of the paper: Fregean deductive systems that either have the deduction theorem, or are protoalgebraic and have conjunction, are completely characterized.

They are essentially the intermediate logics, possibly with additional connectives.

All the full matrix models of a protoalgebraic Fregean deductive system are Fregean, and, conversely, the deductive system determined by any class of Fregean 2nd-order matrices is Fregean. The latter result is used to construct an example of a protoalgebraic Fregean deductive system that is not strongly algebraizable."

8. Diankov, Bogdan. 1987. "On the Main Principle Underlying Roman Suszko's Semanic Conception." In Essays on Philosophy and Logic. Proceedings of the Xxxth Conference on the History of Logic, Dedicated to Roman Suszko. Cracow, October 19-21, 1984, edited by Perzanowski, Jerzy, 191-196. Cracow: Jagiellonian University.

9. Golinska, Joanna, and Huuskonen, Taneli. 2005. "Number of Extensions of Non-Fregean Logics." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 34:193-206.

"We show that there are continuum many different extensions of SCI [sentential calculus with identity] (the basic theory of non-Fregean propositional logic) that lie below WF (the Fregean extension) and are closed under substitution. Moreover, continuum many of them are independent from WB (the Boolean extension), continuum many lie above WB and are independent from WH (the Boolean extension with only two values for the equality relation), and only countably many lie between WH and WF."

10. Lukowski, Piotr. 1990. "Intuitionistic Sentential Calculus with Identity." Bulletin of the Section of Logic:92-99.

"The paper concerns the intuitionistic sentential calculus with identity IISCID, mentioned by professor R Suszko in his several papers. The work presents a semantics for ISCI, which combines the ideas of the matrix semantics for sentential calculi with the well-known Kripke-Grzegorczyk for the intuitionistic logic. Besides sketching a proof of the strong completeness theorem for ISCI, there are some straightforward connections between the new semantical construction and the modeling of SCI, i.e., the ordinary calculus with identity. The end of the work deals with a simplified version of the frame-matrix semantics for the intuitionistic logic without sentential identity."

11. ———. 1990. "Intuitionistic Sentential Calculus with Classical Identity." Bulletin of the Section of Logic:147-151.

"Sentential calculus with identity /SCI/ has been created by Professor R Suszko. The discussion on SCI was a subject of many works. The intuitionistic weaking of this calculus /ISCI/ is presented in Pslukowski's "Intuitionistic sentential calculus with identity", Bulletin of the Section of Logic, 19, 3. In fact SCI is a classical propositional calculus with classical identity, while ISCI an intuitionistic propositional calculus with intuitionistic identity. Thus in the present paper two strengthenings of ISCI, i.e., intuitionistic propositional calculus with classical identity /ISCI CI/ and classical propositional calculus with intuitionistic identity /SCI II/ are considered. There are also presented adequate semantics for both calculi."

12. Malinowski, Grzegorz. 1984. "Roman Suszko: A Sketch of a Portrait in Logic." Studia Logica no. 43:315.

13. ———. 1987. "Non-Fregean Logic and Other Formalizations of Propositional Identity." In Essays on Philosophy and Logic. Proceedings of the Xxxth Conference on the History of Logic, Dedicated to Roman Suszko. Cracow, October 19-21, 1984, edited by Perzanowski, Jerzy, 159-166. Cracow: Jagiellonian University.

The aim of the paper "is to present Sentential Calculus with Identity in comparison with other formalizations of propositional identity."

"Final remarks. It is evident that any comparative question concerning the logic of propositional identity may be posed either in reference to a particular language or to a special feature of a formalisation. Among several current requirements the three following seem to be of it particular importance:

(1) Extensionality in the sense at Leibniz Law of indiscernibility of identicals.

(2) Formal character of identity: nothing except general properties such as e.g. reflexivity, symmetry or transitivity has either be assumed or proved

(3) Purely sentential character of formalisation: the language has to contain only sentential variables.

(...)

If one agreed that all the properties (1)-(3) are basic for the logic of propositional identity, SCI would be considered as the only genuine logic of this kind. [The property that logics of identity corresponding to S4 and S5 proved to be axiomatic strengthenings of SCI, cf. [Bloom & Suszko 1972] and [Suszko 1971] supports the conclusion.]

References

S. L. Bloom, R. Suszko, Investigations into the Sentential Calculus with Identity, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 13 (1972), pp. 289-308.

R. Suszko, Identity connective and modality, Studia Logica, 27 (1971), pp. 7-39.

14. ———. 1991. "Sur Les Principes Sémantiques De Frege Et Sur Une Définition Non-Fregéenne De La Notion D'identité Propositionnelle." Mathématiques et Sciences Humaines no. 116:57-62.

"On semantic principles of Frege and non-fregean definition of the concept of propositional identity. A non-fregean realization of the semantic programme of G. Frege elaborated by R. Suszko is one of the most interesting recent logical constructions. The aim of the paper is to present formal and philosophical aspects of the sentential calculus with identity, SCI, constituting the base of that realization."

15. Malinowski, Grzegorz, and Zygmunt, Jan. 1978. "Review Of: Roman Suszko - Abolition of the Fregean Axiom (1975)." Erkenntnis no. 12:369-380.

"According to Professor Suszko's declaration on page 169, the main subject of his paper is the construction of non-Fregean logic (NFL) and its basic properties. To satisfy the reader's curiosity, we may say that NFL is generally speaking a result of the rejection of the Fregean axiom. This amounts to the following:

(FA) all true (and, similarly, all false) sentences describe the same, that is, have a common referent.

Before describing the content of the paper in some detail, we would like to draw the reader's attention to the facts that (1) the paper is concerned with the philosophy of logical constructions and the properties of logic but not with the proofs of theorems; (2) the paper is a survey in which the author presents his own results as well as those of his colleagues. The presentation is against the broad background of the historical development of modern logic and recent research in possible world semantics, modal logics, intensionality and entailment, and all this is in order to strongly criticize 'that messy abyss with all its diffuse ghosts of ambiguity, vague flexibility, intensionality and modality' (cf. p. 171).

The paper under review consists of an introduction, 14 main sections, a supplement and a bibliography. The supplement contains 53 notes which provide us with deeper elaboration of some of the networks, comments, complements, sketches of proofs, etc. presented earlier. The bibliography, also containing 53 items, is not arranged alphabetically but in order of their citation in the main text, and includes the titles of almost all the important works by R. Suszko and his colleagues on non-Fregean logic - and in particular, sentential calculus with identity."

16. Metzler, Helmut. 1987. "Some Remarks on Roman Suszko's Discussion of the Frege-Axiom from the Point of View of Philosophy and Methodology." In Essays on Philosophy and Logic. Proceedings of the Xxxth Conference on the History of Logic, Dedicated to Roman Suszko. Cracow, October 19-21, 1984, edited by Perzanowski, Jerzy, 167-174. Cracow: Jagiellonian University.

"Roman Suszko writes: "The semantical assumption that all true (and, similarly, all false) sentences describe the same, i.e. have a common referent (Bedeutung) is called the Fregean Axiom" (Suszko 1977, p. 377). He himself distinguishes in a strict way between logical and algebraic valuations of expressions of languages and speaks of an amalgamation into an inseparable unity of logical valuations (truth and falsity) end algebraic valuations (reference assignments) in Frege's thinking which he rejects (Suszko 1977, p. 378).

From the point of view of the history of logic it is of interest to know something about the reasons why Frege used this amalgamation of two kinds of valuations. The main theses of this talk are the following

(1) The amalgamation is based on epistemological. assumptions.

(2) Analysing semantical aspects of his general scientific problem of the foundation of mathematics Frege treated a similar subject as the two kinds of valuations, distinguishing referent (truth and falsity) and sense ("Gedanke") of sentences.

(3) The difference between Frege's approach in solving his problem and other authors' approaches is based on different epistemologies.

(4) Distinguishing between the two kinds of valuation of sentences is of interest not only with respect to philosophical aspects of logic but also from the point of view of methodology." p. 167

"The distinction between the two different dimensions of valuation of sentences or logical formulae claimed by Suszko seems to me relevant especially from the point of view of methodology but also for the philosophical dispute over logic. For the second aspect the discussion of so called "paradoxes of material implication" provided an example.

I shall exemplify at this special case how the distinction of the two kinds of valuation can help us to come to a deeper understanding of logical expressions. From the philosophical point of view we can't discuss tautologies only as truth-value functions as they work in inferences, or with other words, we can't discuss them only with respect to inference relation. We have also to ask, which kind of reality will be represented by logical tautologies? What is the ontological aspect of logical tautologies? To find some understanding in this topic we will take attention to the so called paradoxes of material implication.

In so far as formulations like "from the False anything follows" or "the True follows from anything" are regarded only with respect to transformation of truth-values, they have the appearance of paradox. But if we assume that there are other reference assignments besides those of truth-values, then the two logical tautologies can stimulate us to seek them. Then we can reflect that tautologies relate not only to inferences but also to conditions of being. With respect to such reference assignments the two tautologies above lose their paradoxical character. Their interpretation as theorems on being of truth says nothing more then "truth exists by itself" ("truth needs no assumptions") and "falsity is no basis of inference". A methodological value of the claimed distinction is given by a twofold sharpening of scientific research; controlling simultaneously methodical aspects of thinking and the association of content of thoughts. By this I mean: Suszko's criticism has it that logicians should think about the objects of scientific research the way other, practically minded scientists do in their research, because scientists in individual or teamwork control their procedures with concern both for the content of their ideas and the logical validity of their inferences. When we focus logical analysis of scientific labour more strongly on the unity and distinction of the two dimensions of valuation, I think we shall obtain new information for the automation of scientific work, and promote the development of applied logic. Comparing the intention behind, and the results of Frege's distinction between sense and referent may, on the one hand, help to describe scientific work; and, on the other hand, Suszko's distinction between the two kinds of valuation may give new insight in modelling scientific research-processes and help us to increase the efficiency of scientific labour."

17. Omyla, Mieczyslaw. 1976. "Translatability in Non-Fregean Theories." Studia Logica no. 35:127-138.

18. ———. 1978. "Boolean Theories with Quantifiers." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 7:76-83.

19. ———. 1982. "The Logic of Situations." In Language and Ontology. Proceedings of the 6th International Wittgenstein Symposium. 23rd to 30th August 1981 Kirchber Am Wechsel (Austria), edited by Leinfellner, Werner, Kraemer, Eric and Schamk, Jeffrey, 195-198. Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.

"Professor Roman Suszko introduced a broad class of languages into the literature of logic. In honour of Wittgenstein Suszko named these languages W-languages. Syntax, semantics and consequence operations in these languages are based on the famous ontological principle: whatever exists is either a situation, or an object, or a function. The distinguishing property of W-languages is that they contain sentential and nominal variables, identity connectives and identity predicates. The intended interpretation of W-languages is such that sentential variables range over the universum of situations, nominal variables range over the universum of objects. All other symbols in these languages except sentential and nominal variables are interpreted as symbols of some functions both defined over the universum of situations and the universum of objects. Identity connectives correspond to identity relations between situations, and identity predicates correspond to identity relations between objects. It is obvious that the ordinary predicate calculus with identity is a part W-language excluding sentential variables, but the most often used sentential languages are the part of W-languages without nominal variables and identity predicates. In this paper, I will discuss only W-languages containing sentential variables, connectives and possibly quantifiers binding sentential variables." p. 195

20. ———. 1982. "Basic Intuitions of Non-Fregean Logic." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 11:40-47.

21. ———. 1987. "Roman Suszko's Philosophy of Logic." In Essays on Philosophy and Logic. Proceedings of the Xxxth Conference on the History of Logic, Dedicated to Roman Suszko. Cracow, October 19-21, 1984, edited by Perzanowski, Jerzy, 175-179. Cracow: Jagiellonian University.

"In Roman Suszko's logical writings there are to be found many remarks and reflections on the idea of logic which is closely related to his work in formal logic. Though the scope of this paper makes it impossible to deal with them all, I would like nevertheless to draw the reader's attention to some of Suszko's views concerning the philosophy of logic. The aim of this study is to call the reader's attention to the most important of them."

22. ———. 1989. "Non-Fregean Logic and Ontology of Situations." Ruch Filozoficzny no. 47:27-30.

23. ———. 1990. "The Principles of Non-Fregean Semantics for Sentences." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 55:422-423.

24. ———. 1994. "Non-Fregean Semantics for Sentences." In Philosophical Logic in Poland, edited by Wolenski, Jan, 153-165. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

"In this paper I intend to present the general and formal principles of non-Fregean semantics for sentences and to derive the simplest consequences of these principles. The semantic principles constitute foundation of non-Fregean sentential calculus and its formal semantics and the philosophical interpretations of it. Non-Fregean sentential calculus is the basic part of non-Fregean logic. Non-Fregean logic is a generalization of classical logic. It was conceived by Roman Suszko under the influence of Wittgensteinian's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The term "non-Fregean" indicates that the set of semantic correlate of sentences need not contain of just two elements, as it assumed by Frege in Über Sinn und Bedeuting (1892). Frege accepted the following semantic principle:

(A.F.) all true sentences have the same common referent, and similarly all false sentences also have the one common referent.

J. Łukasiewicz interpreted the common referent of true sentences as "Being" and analogically the common referent of all false sentences as "Unbeing". Suszko called the principle (A.F) the "semantical version of the Frege an axiom".

In Abolition of the Fregean Axiom (1975) Suszko wrote: "If one accepts the Fregean Axiom then one is compelled to be an absolute monist in the sense that there exists only one and necessary fact".

According to Suszko (A. F.) has a counterpart in the language of classical logic which is a formula asserting that the universe of sentential variables is a two-element set. This formula is not expressed that fact in the language of non-Fregean logic.

In SCI and modal systems (1972) Suszko presents the properties of his logic as follows: "... non-Fregean logic is the realization of the Fregean program in pure logic, logically bivalent and extensional with two modifications: (1) keep formulas (sentences) and terms (names) as disjoint syntactic categories, having sense and denotations,as well, and (2) drop the desperate assumption that all true or false sentences have the same denotation (not sense that is proposition)"." pp. 153-154.

25. ———. 1996. "A Formal Ontology of Situations." In Formal Ontology, edited by Poli, Roberto and Simons, Peter M., 173-187. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

"The theoretical foundation for this paper is the system of a non-Fregean logic created by Roman Suszko under the influence of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. In fact, we use just a fragment of it called here a non-Fregean sentential logic.

Our basic term is that of a 'situation'. We do not answer the question what situations are. We simply assume that sentences present situations, and we provide a criterion determining when two sentences of some fixed language present the same situation.

The lay-out of this paper is the following. First we set out certain philosophical consequences of the assumption adopted in classical logic that the only connectives of the language in question are the truth-functional ones. Then we sketch out briefly the axiomatics of non-Fregean sentential logic, and of a formal semantics of the algebraic type for it.

Next, for an arbitrary model for a non-Fregean sentential logic, we pick out from the formulae true in that model a theory to be called the 'ontology of situations determined by the model in question' - in contradistinction to all sentences holding contingently in that model, i.e. not determined by its algebra. In the ontology of situations determined by a model we point out those propositions which pertain to possible worlds." p. 173

3. Philosophical Interpretations of non-Fregean Sentential Logic

According to the principles of non-Fregean semantics as presented in Omyla 1975, all sentences of an interpreted language have their references. However, not in every such language are we in a position to put forward universal and existential theorems with regard to the structure of the universe of those references. To be in such position the language in question must contain as its sublanguage the language of non-Fregean sentential logic, or at least a significant part of it. As we are not interested here in the universe of any particular language, but only in that of a quite arbitrary one, let us consider now some philosophical aspects of arbitrary models of that kind. Let M = (U, F) be such a model. The elements of the universe of U do not generally answer to the intuitions we have about the reference of sentences, and about situations in particular. However, the algebraic structure imposed on U by the theory TR(M) is the same as that of a possible universe of situations, with regard to the operations corresponding to logical constants. Moreover, the set F has the formal properties of a possible (or 'admissible') set of situations obtaining in that universe. This is so because sentential variables are at the same time sentential formulae, and because the logical constants get in the model M their intended interpretation. Thus for any model M = (U, F) its algebra U is a formal representation of some universe of situations, and the set F is a formal representation of some admissible set of facts obtaining in some universe of situations. Not all the generalized SCI-algebras represent some algebra of situations; for not all of them contain a set F representing the facts, i.e. such that the couple (U, F) is a model. This depends on how the operations in the algebra U are defined. For the sake of simplicity the algebra of any model M = (U, F) for the language of a non-Fregean sentential logic will be called the algebra of situations occurring in the model M, and the designated set F will be called the set of facts obtaining in M. Such a terminology is appropriate here for we are interested only in the formal properties of those universe of situations which in view of our semantic principles find expression in the logical syntax of the language in question, and in consequence operation holding in it. By the completeness theorem for non-Fregean logic it follows that for any consistent theory T in L there is a model M such that T e TR(M). Hence any theory in the language of non-Fregean sentential logic will be called a theory of situations.

The term 'ontology of situations' we take over from the title of Wolniewicz 1985 [Ontologia sytuacji: Ontology of situations in Polish], but we understand it a bit differently. By an ontology of situations we mean a theory describing the necessary facts of universe of situations fixed beforehand. I.e. an ontology of situations is a set of formulae holding in some fixed universe of situations, independently of which situations there are facts. To be more accurate, by an ontology of situations we mean a set of formulae with the following three properties:

( 1) An ontology of situations is a theory having in its vocabulary just one kind of variable - e. the sentential one. Under the intended interpretation they range over a universe of situations. (Like in modem set theory there are variables of just one kind, i.e. those ranging over sets.)

(2) An ontology of situations is formulated in a language containing logical symbols only, i. e. logical constants and variables. To justify that postulate let us note that such a basic theory should not presuppose any other terminology except the logical one. At most it might adopt some specific ontological terms as primitive, characterizing them axiomatically. However, we shall deal here only with such ontologies of situations which are expressed exclusively in logical terms." pp. 180-181.

26. ———. 2001. "Roman Suszko. From Diachronic Logic to Non-Fregean Logic." In Polish Philosophers of Science and Nature in the 20th Century, edited by Krajewski, Wladyslaw, 153-161. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of Sciences and the Humanities - vol. 74

27. ———. 2003. "Possible Worlds in the Language of Non-Fregean Logic." Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric no. 6:7-15.

"The term "possible world" is used usually in the metalanguage of modal logic, and it is applied to the interpretation of modal connectives. Surprisingly, as it has been shown in Suszko Ontology in the Tractatus L. Wittgenstein (1968) certain versions of that notion can be defined in the language of non-Fregean logic exclusively, by means of sentential variables and logical constants. This is so, because some of the non-Fregean theories contain theories of modality, as shown in Suszko Identity Connective and Modality (1971).

Intuitively, possible worlds are maximal (with respect to an order of situations) and consistent situations, while the real world may be understand as a situation, which is a possible world and the fact.

Non-Fregean theories are theories based on the non-Fregean logic. Non-Fregean logic is the logical calculus created by Polish logician Roman Suszko in the sixties. The idea of that calculus was conceived under the influence of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. According to Wittgenstein, declarative sentences of any language describe situations."

28. ———. 2007. "Remarks on Non-Fregean Logics." Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric no. 23:21-31.

29. Omyla, Mieczyslaw, and Zygmunt, Jan. 1984. "Roman Suszko (1919-1979): A Bibliography of the Published Work with an Outline of His Logical Investigations." Studia Logica no. 43:421-441.

Reprinted in Jerzy Perzanowski (ed.) - Essays on philosophy and logic - Cracow 1987 pp. 203-217

30. Sayward, Charles. 2004. "Roman Suszko and Situational Identity." Sorites.An International Electronic Magazine of Analytical Philosophy no. 15:42-49.

"This paper gives a semantical account for the (i) ordinary propositional calculus, enriched with quantifiers binding variables standing for sentences, and with an identity-function with sentences

as arguments; (ii) the ordinary theory of quantification applied to the special quantifier; and (iii) ordinary laws of identity applied to the special function. The account includes some thoughts of Roman Suszko as well as some thoughts of Wittgenstein's Tractatus."

31. Slavkov-Ristov, S. 1987. "Prof. Dr. Roman Suszko's Views on Some Philoosphical and Methodological Problems of Mathematics." In Essays on Philosophy and Logic. Proceedings of the Xxxth Conference on the History of Logic, Dedicated to Roman Suszko. Cracow, October 19-21, 1984, edited by Perzanowski, Jerzy, 196-201. Cracow: Jagiellonian University.

32. Tsuji, Marcelo, and Lippel, David. 1998. "Many-Valued Logics and Suszko's Thesis Revisited." Studia Logica no. 60:299-309.

"Suszko's thesis maintains that many-valued logics do not exist at all. In order to support it, R. Suszko offered a method for providing any "structural" abstract logic with a complete set of bivaluations. G. Malinowski challenged Suszko's thesis by constructing a new class of logics (called "q"-logics by him) for which Suszko's method fails. He argued that the key for logical two-valuedness was the "bivalent" partition of the Lindenbaum bundle associated with all structural abstract logics, while his "q"-logics were generated by "trivalent" matrices. This paper will show that contrary to these intuitions, logical two-valuedness has more to do with the geometrical properties of the deduction relation of a logical structure than with the algebraic properties embedded on it."

33. Voutsadakis, George. 2007. "Categorical Abstract Algebraic Logic: The Categorical Suszko Operator." 53 no. Mathematical Logic Quarterly:616-635.

34. Wasilewska, Anita. 21984. "Dfc-Algorithms for Suszko, Logic Sci and One-to-One Gentzen Type." Studia Logica no. 43:395-404.

" We use here the notions and results from algebraic theory of programs in order to give a new proof of the decidability theorem for Suszko logic SCI (Theorem 3).

We generalize the method used in the proof of that theorem in order to prove a more general fact that any prepositional logic which admits a cut-free Gentzen type formalization is decidable (Theorem 6).

We establish also the relationship between the Suszko Logic SCI, one-to-one Gentzen type formalizations and deterministic and algorithmic regular languages (Remark 2 and Theorem 7, respectively)."

35. Wojcicki, Ryszard. 1984. "R. Suszko's Situational Semantics." Studia Logica no. 43:323-340.

36. ———. 1986. "Situation Semantics for Non-Fregean Logic." Journal of Non-Classical Logic no. 3:33-67.

37. ———. 1987. "Situation Sematics for Non-Fregean Logic." In Essays on Philosophy and Logic. Proceedings of the Xxxth Conference on the History of Logic, Dedicated to Roman Suszko. Cracow, October 19-21, 1984, edited by Perzanowski, Jerzy, 187-190. Cracow: Jagiellonian University.

38. Wolenski, Jan. 1987. "Suszko's Analysis of the Development of Knowledge." In Essays on Philosophy and Logic. Proceedings of the Xxxth Conference on the History of Logic, Dedicated to Roman Suszko. Cracow, October 19-21, 1984, edited by Perzanowski, Jerzy, 181-185. Cracow: Jagiellonian University.

39. ———. 2003. "The Reception of Frege in Poland." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 25:37-51.

"This paper examines how the work of Frege was known and received in Poland in the period 1910-1935 (with one exception concerning the later work of Suszko). The main thesis is that Frege's reception in Poland was perhaps faster and deeper than in other countries, except England, due to works of Russell and Jourdain. The works of Łukasiewicz, Leśniewski and Czezowski are described."

40. Wolniewicz, Bogusław. 1971. "Wittgensteinian Foundations of Non-Fregean Logic." In Contemporary East European Philosophy. Vol. 3, edited by D'Angelo, Edward, DeGrood, David and Riepe, Dale, 231-243. Bridgeport: Spartacus Books.

41. Zachorowski, Stanislaw. 1975. "Proof of a Conjecture of Roman Suszko." Studia Logica no. 34:254-256.

"It is shown that there is no countable matrix adequate for the consequence operation determined by the theorems of S4 and modus ponens for material implication."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on the Scientific Philosophy of Mario Bunge

Introduction

"The Treatise encompasses what the author takes to be the nucleus of contemporary philosophy, namely semantics (theories of meaning and truth), epistemology (theories of knowledge), metaphysics (general theories of the world), and ethics (theories of value and of right action).

Social philosophy, political philosophy, legal philosophy, the philosophy of education, aesthetics, the philosophy of religion and other branches of philosophy have been excluded from the above quadrivium either because they have been absorbed by the sciences of man or because they may be regarded as applications of both fundamental philosophy and logic. Nor has logic been included in the Treatise although it is as much a part of philosophy as it is of mathematics. The reason for this exclusion is that logic has become a subject so technical that only mathematicians can hope to make original contributions to it. We have just borrowed whatever logic we use.

The philosophy expounded in the Treatise is systematic and, to some extent, also exact and scientific. That is, the philosophical theories formulated in these volumes are (a) formulated in certain exact (mathematical) languages and (b) hoped to be consistent with contemporary science.

Now a word of apology for attempting to build a system of basic philosophy. As we are supposed to live in the age of analysis, it may well be wondered whether there is any room left, except in the cemeteries of ideas, for philosophical syntheses. The author's opinion is that analysis, though necessary, is insufficient - except of course for destruction. The ultimate goal of theoretical research, be it in philosophy, science, or mathematics, is the construction of systems, i.e. theories. Moreover these theories should be articulated into systems rather than being disjoint, let alone mutually at odds.

Once we have got a system we may proceed to taking it apart. First the tree, then the sawdust. And having attained the sawdust stage we should move on to the next, namely the building of further systems. And this for three reasons : because the world itself is systemic, because no idea can become fully clear unless it is embedded in some system or other, and because sawdust philosophy is rather boring." (vol. I pp. V-VI)

From: Mario Bunge, General Preface to the Treatise, in: Treatise on Basic Philosophy, Dordrecht: Reidel 1974.

Main publications

1. Bunge, Mario. 1959. Causality. The Place of the Causal Principle in Modern Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Third revised edition in 1979 with the title: Causality and modern science - New York, Dover Publications.

From the preface to the first edition:

"This is an essay on determinism, with special emphasis on causal determinism -- or causality, for short. To some, causation and determination -- and consequently causalism and determinism -- are synonymous. But to most people, determinism is a special, extreme form of causality -- and even a particularly displeasing one, for it is wrongly supposed to deny man the possibility of changing the course of events. I take sides with the minority that regards causal determinism as a special form of determinism, namely, that kind of theory that holds the unrestricted validity of the causal principle to the exclusion of every other principle of determination. The rational ground for regarding causality as a form of determinism, and not conversely, is that modern science employs many noncausal categories of determination or lawful production, such as statistical, structural, and dialectical, though they are often couched in causal language.

In this book, the causal principle is neither entirely accepted nor altogether rejected. My aim has been to analyze the meaning of the law of causation, and to make a critical examination of the extreme claims that it applies without restriction (causalism), and that it is an outmoded fetish (acausalism). I have tried to do this by studying how the causal principle actually works in various departments of modern science. However, I hope I have succeeded in avoiding technicalities -- save in a few isolable passages. The book is, in fact, addressed to the general scientific and philosophic reader.

The chief result of the above-mentioned examination is that the causal principle is neither a panacea nor a superstition, that the law of causation is a philosophical hypothesis employed in science and enjoying an approximate validity in certain fields, where it applies in competition with other principles of determination. a by-product of this analysis is a fresh examination of various topics in metascience, ranging from the status of mathematical objects to the nature and function of scientific law, explanation and prediction." (pp. V-VI).

Index: Part I. A clarification of meaning. 1. Causation and determination, causalism and determinism; 2. Formulations of the causal principle; Part II. What causal determinism does not assert. 3. An examination of the empiricist critique of causality; 4. An examination of the romantic critique of causality; Part III. 5. What causal determinism assert. 5. The linearity of causation; 6. The unidirectionality of causation; 7. The externality of causation; 8. Causality and novelty; Part IV: The function of the causal principle in science. 9. Causality and rational knowledge; 10. Causality and scientific law; 11. Causality and scientific explanation; 12. Causality and scientific prediction; 13. The place of the causal principle in modern science; Bibliography; Index.

2. ———. 1959. Metascientific Queries. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas Publisher.

3. ———. 1960. "Levels: A Semantical Preliminary." The Review of Metaphysics no. 13:396-406.

4. ———. 1960. "The Place of Induction in Science." Philosophy of Science no. 27:262-270.

5. ———. 1961. "The Weight of Simplicity in the Construction and Assaying of Scientific Theories." Philosophy of Science no. 28:260-281.

6. ———. 1961. "Kinds and Criteria of Scientific Law." Philosophy of Science no. 28:260-281.

7. ———. 1961. "The Complexity of Simplicity." Journal of Philosophy no. 59:113-135.

8. ———. 1961. "Ethics as a Science." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 22:139-152.

9. ———. 1961. "Analiticy Redefined." Mind no. 70:239-245.

10. ———. 1962. Intuition and Science. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

11. ———. 1962. "Causality: A Rejoinder." Philosophy of Science no. 29:306-317.

12. ———. 1963. The Myth of Simplicity. Problems of Scientific Philosophy. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

From the Preface:

"The aims of this book are two. First, to contribute to the elucidation of some key concepts of both philosophy and science, such as those of conceptual analysis, analyticity, truth, law, level, and simplicity. Second, to show the complexity, i.e., the richness, of those very concepts, thereby exploding the myth that simplicity is always either a fact or a desideratum of research. To the extent to which the book succeeds in attaining both goals it should discourage the concoction of naive, oversimplified pictures of knowledge.

The method employed is a kind of philosophic procedure that may be called metascientific elucidation. This kind of clarification may be analytic or synthetic: it may consist either in the analysis or reduction of conceptual entities (concepts, propositions, theories), or in the construction of such entities. In either case, whether in the phase of analysis or in the phase of synthesis, I call this work metascientific if the objects of elucidation are relevant to science and if the task is performed in a way congenial to science and with the help of some of the tools of contemporary scientific philosophy, such as formal logic, semantics, and theory formalization.

To the extent to which the ideas dealt with in this book are relevant to science and therefore of interest to both scientists and philosophers of science, and to the extent to which the analyses and syntheses proposed do take advantage of the tools of scientific philosophy, this is a work on metascientific elucidation." (p. V).

Index: Preface; Acknowledgments; Part I. Analysis. 1. Metascientific elucidation; 2. Analyticity; 3. Levels; Part II. Simplicity and truth. 4. Logical simplicity; 5. Extralogical simplicity; 6. Simplicity and truth, 7. Simplicity in theory construction; 8. Partial truth; Part III. Scientific law. 9. Induction in science; 10. Kinds of criteria of scientific law; 11. Causality, chance, and law. 12. Laws of laws; Index.

13. ———. 1963. "A General Black Box Theory." Philosophy of Science no. 30:346-358.

14. ———, ed. 1964. The Critical Approach to Science and Philosophy. Essays in Honor of Karl Popper. New York: Free Press of Glencoe.

Revised edition in 1999 with the title: Critical approaches to science & philosophy - New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers (with a new introduction).

15. ———. 1965. "Physics and Reality." Dialectica no. 19:195-222.

16. ———. 1967. Scientific Research I: The Search for System. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Revised edition in 1998 with the title: Philosophy of science: from problem to theory - New Brunswick - Transaction Publishers

17. ———. 1967. Scientific Research Ii: The Search of Truth. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Revised edition published in 1998 with the title: Philosophy of science: from explanation to justification - New Brunswick - Transaction Publishers

18. ———. 1967. Foundations of Physics. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

19. ———. 1967. "Physical Axiomatics." Review of Modern Physics no. 39:463-474.

20. ———. 1968. "The Maturation of Science." In Problems in the Philosophy Osf Science, edited by Imre, Lakatos and Alan, Musgrave, 120-137. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

21. ———. 1968. "The Nature of Science." In Contemporary Philosophy. A Survey (Vol. Ii), edited by Raymond, Klibansky, 3-15. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

22. ———. 1968. "Scientific Laws and Rules." In Contemporary Philosophy. A Survey (Vol. Ii), edited by Raymond, Klibansky, 128-140. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

23. ———. 1968. "Philosophy and Physics." In Contemporary Philosophy. A Survey (Vol. Ii), edited by Raymond, Klibansky, 167-199. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

24. ———. 1968. "Problems and Games in the Current Philosophy of Science." In Proceedings of the Xivth International Congress of Philosophy (Vol. Ii), 566-574. Wien: Herder.

25. ———. 1968. "Conjunction, Succession, Determination and Causation." Journal of Theoretical Physics no. 1:299-315.

26. ———. 1968. "La Vérification Des Théories Scientifiques." In Démonstration, Vérification, Justification: Éntretines De L'institut International De Philosophe. Liège, Septembre 1967., 145-159. Lovain-Paris: Éditions Nauwelaerts.

27. ———. 1968. "Les Concepts De Modèle." L'Âge de la Science no. 1:165-180.

28. ———. 1969. "Corrections to Foundations of Physics: Correct and Incorrect." Synthese no. 19:443-452.

29. ———. 1969. "The Metaphysics, Epistemology and Methodology of Levels." In Hierarchical Structures, edited by Law, Whyte Lancelot, G., Wilson Albert and Donna, Wilson, 17-28. New York: Elsevier.

Symposium held at Douglas Advanced Research Laboratories, Huntington Beach, Calif., Nov. 18-19, 1968.

30. ———. 1970. "Problems Concerning Intertheory Relations." In Induction, Physics and Ethics. Proceedings and Discussions of the 1968 Salzburg Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, edited by Paul, Weingartner and Gerhard, Zecha, 285-315. Dordrect: Reidel.

31. ———. 1970. "Theory Meets Experience." In Contemporary Philosophic Thought. (Vol. Ii), edited by Howard, Kiefer and Milton, Munitz, 138-165. Albany: State University of New York Press.

32. ———. 1971. Problems in the Foundations of Physics. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

33. ———. 1971. "Conjunction, Succéssion, Détermination, Causalité." In Les Théories De La Causalité, edited by Jean, Piaget and Bunge, Mario, 112-132. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

34. ———. 1971. "Is Scientific Metaphysics Possible?" Journal of Philosophy no. 68:507-520.

35. ———. 1971. "Scientific Metaphysics: Addenda Et Corrigenda." Journal of Philosophy no. 68:876.

36. ———. 1971. "On Method in the Philosophy of Science." Archives de Philosophie no. 34:551-574.

37. ———. 1972. "A Program for the Semantics of Science." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 1:317-328.

38. ———. 1973. Philosophy of Physics. Dordrecht: Reidel.

39. ———. 1973. Method, Model and Matter. Dordrecht: Reidel.

40. ———, ed. 1973. Exact Philosophy. Problems, Tools and Goals. Dordrecht: Reidel.

41. ———, ed. 1973. The Methodological Unity of Science. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Bertrand Russell Colloquium on exact philosophy (1972-193 Mc Gill University)

42. ———. 1973. "The Role of Forecast in Planning." Theory and Decision no. 3:207-221.

43. ———. 1974. Treatise on Basic Philosophy. I: Sense and Reference. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"This is a study of the concepts of reference, representation, sense, truth, and their kin. These semantic concepts are prominent in the following sample statements: 'The field tensor refers to the field', 'A field theory represents the field it refers to', 'The sense of the field tensor is sketched by the field equations', and 'Experiment indicates that the field theory is approximately true'. Ours is, then, a work in philosophical semantics and moreover one centered on the semantics of factual (natural or social) science rather than on the semantics of either pure mathematics or of the natural languages. The semantics of science is, in a nutshell, the study of the symbol-construct-fact triangle whenever the construct of interest belongs to science. Thus conceived our discipline is closer to epistemology than to mathematics, linguistics, or the philosophy of language. The central aim of this work is to constitute a semantics of science -- not any theory but one capable of bringing some clarity to certain burning issues in contemporary science, that can be settled neither by computation nor by measurement. To illustrate: What are the genuine referents of quantum mechanics or of the theory of evolution?, and Which is the best way to endow a mathematical formalism with a precise factual sense and a definite factual reference -- quite apart from questions of truth? A consequence of the restriction of our field of inquiry is that entire topics, such as the theory of quotation marks, the semantics of proper names, the paradoxes of self-reference, the norms of linguistic felicity, and even modal logic have been discarded as irrelevant to our concern. Likewise most model theoretic concepts, notably those of satisfaction, formal truth, and consequence, have been treated cursorily for not being directly relevant to factual science and for being in good hands anyway. We have focused our attention upon the semantic notions that are usually neglected or ill treated, mainly those of factual meaning and factual truth, and have tried to keep close to live science. The treatment of the various subjects is systematic or nearly so: every basic concept has been the object of a theory, and the various theories have been articulated into a single framework." pp. XI-XII.

Contents: Preface XI; Acknowledgements XIII; Special symbols XV; Introduction 1; 1. Designation 8; 2. Reference 32; 3. Representation 83; 4. Intension 115; 5. Gist and content 142; Bibliography 173; Index of names 181; Index of subjects 183-185.

44. ———. 1974. Treatise on Basic Philosophy. Ii: Interpretation and Truth. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"The present volume start with the problem of interpretation. Interpretation is construed as the assignment of constructs (e.g. predicates) to symbols. It can be purely mathematical, as when the dummy x is interpreted as an arbitrary natural number, or also factual, as when such a number is interpreted as the population of a town. Now, as we saw a while ago, predicated and propositions have both a sense and a reference -- and nothing else as far as meaning is concerned. These, then, are taken to be the meaning components. That is, the meaning of a construct is defined as the ordered couple constituted by its sense and its reference class. Once the meaning of a proposition has been established we can proceed to finding out its truth value -- provided it has one. If the proposition happens to be factual, i.e. to have factual referents, then it may be only partially true -- if true at all. Hence we must clarify the concept of partial truth of fact. This we do by building a theory that combines features of both the correspondence and the coherence theories of truth. The remaining semantical notions, notably those of extension, vagueness, and definite description, are made to depend on the concepts of meaning and truth and are therefore treated towards the end of this work. The last chapter explores the relations between philosophical semantics and other branches of scholarship, in particular logic and metaphysics.

This volume, like its predecessor, has been conceived with a definite goal, namely that of producing a system of philosophical semantics capable of shedding some light on our knowledge of fact, whether ordinary or scientific. We leave the semantics of natural languages to linguists, psycholinguists and sociolinguists, and the semantics of logic and mathematics (i.e. model theory) to logicians and mathematicians. Our central concern has been, in other words, to clarify and systematize the notions of meaning and truth as they occur in relation to factual knowledge. For this reason our semantics borders on our epistemology." pp. Xi-XII.

Contents: Preface XI; Special symbols XIII; 6. Interpretations 1; 7. Meaning 42; 8. Truth 81; 9. Offshoots 133; 10. Neighbors 166; Bibliography 198; index of names 206; Index of subjects 208-210.

45. ———. 1974. "The Relations of Logic and Semantics to Ontology." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 3:195-219.

"Philosophers have argued untiringly, over many centuries, about the ties of logic with ontology. While some have followed Parmenides in identifying the two, others - particularly since Abelard - have asserted the ontological neutrality of logic and, finally, a third party has oscillated between those two extremes.

Unfortunately it has seldom been clear exactly what is meant by the `ontological commitment' of logic: mere reference to extralogical objects, the presupposition of definite ontological theses, or the ontological interpretation of logical formulas? Nor has an adequate tool for investigating this problem - namely a full-fledged semantical theory - been available. (Recall that the only existing semantical theory proper, i.e. model theory, is not competent to handle this problem because it is solely concerned with the relations between an abstract theory and its models, as well as with the relations among the latter.) Much the same holds for semantics, though with a remarkable difference. If semantics presupposes logic, and the latter is ontologically committed, so must be semantics. But of course semantics could be tied to ontology even if logic were ontologically neutral. Therefore we need an independent investigation of the ontological commitment, if any, of semantics.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relations of logic and mathematics to ontology and to do it with the help of a theory of meaning. This theory has been sketched elsewhere (Bunge 1972, 1973) and will be fully expanded in a forthcoming book. We assign meanings to constructs, in particular predicates and propositions, and distinguish two meaning components : sense and reference. The sense of a construct p in a context C is the totality of logical relatives of p in C. If p belongs to a theoretical context then the sense of p is the collection of statements within the theory that either entail p or are entailed by p. And the reference class of a construct p is the totality of individuals "mentioned" (truthfully or not) by p. Finally the meaning of p is the ordered pair constituted by the sense of p and the reference of p. We shall apply these ideas to find out the meaning of the typical constructs of logic and semantics. But before doing so we must formulate those ideas somewhat more carefully. An before we tackle this task we must explain what we mean by a predicate and by a context."

46. ———. 1974. "The Concept of Social Structure." In Developments in the Methodology of Social Science, edited by Werner, Leinfllner and Eckehart, Köhler, 175-215. Dordrecht: Reidel.

47. ———. 1974. "Les Présupposés Et Les Produits Métaphysiques De La Science Et De La Technique Contemporaine." Dialogue no. 13:443-453.

48. ———. 1975. "A Critical Examination of Dialectics." In Dialectics / Dialectique, edited by Chaim, Perelman, 63-77. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Entretiens in Varna, 15-22 September 1973

49. ———. 1975. "Meaning in Science." Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and Humanities no. 1:56-64.

50. ———. 1976. "Possibility and Probability." In Foundations of Probability Theory, Statistical Inference, and Statistical Theories of Science. Proceedings of an International Research Colloquium Held at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada, 10-13 May, 1973, edited by Leonard, Harper William and Alan, Hooker Clifford, 17-33. Dordrecht: Reidel.

51. ———. 1976. "The Relevance of Philosophy to Social Science." In Basic Issues in the Philosophy of Science, edited by William, Shea, 136-155. New York: Science History Publications.

52. ———. 1976. "El Ser No Tiene Sentido Y El Sentido No Tiene Ser: Notas Para Una Conceptologia." Teorema no. 6:201-212.

53. ———. 1977. Treatise on Basic Philosophy. Iii: Ontology: The Furniture of the World. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"This book and its companion, namely Volume 4 of our Treatise, concern the basic traits and patterns of the real world. Their joint title could well be The Structure of Reality. They constitute then a work in ontology, metaphysics, philosophical cosmology, or general theory of systems. Our work is in line with an old and noble if maligned tradition: that of the pre-Socratic philosophers, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hobbes, Helvetius, d'Holbach, Lotze, Engels, Peirce, Russell, and Whitehead. But at the same time it departs from tradition in the matter of method. In fact our aim is to take the rich legacy of ontological problems and hints bequeathed us by traditional metaphysics, add to it the ontological presuppositions of contemporary scientific research, top it with new hypotheses compatible with the science of the day, and elaborate the whole with the help of some mathematical tools.

The end result of our research is, like that of many a metaphysical venture in the past, a conceptual system. It is hoped that this system will not be ridiculously at variance with reason and experience. It is intended moreover to be both exact and scientific: exact in the sense that the theories composing it have a definite mathematical structure, and scientific in that these theories be consistent with and moreover rather close to science - or rather the bulk of science. Furthermore, to the extent that we succeed in our attempt, science and ontology will emerge not as disjoint but as overlapping. The sciences are regional ontologies and ontology is general science. After all, every substantive scientific problem is a subproblem of the problem of ontology, to wit, What is the world like?

After a long period underground, talk about metaphysics has again become respectable. However, we shall not be talking at length about ontology except in the Introduction. We shall instead do ontology. In the process we shall attempt to exhibit the mathematical structure of our concepts and we shall make the most of science. Being systematic our ontology may disappoint the historian. Being largely mathematical in form it will be pushed aside by the lover of grand verbal (but sometimes deep and fascinating) systems - not to speak of the lover of petty verbal matters. And being science-oriented it will fail to appeal to the friend of the esoteric. Indeed we shall be concerned with concrete objects such as atoms, fields, organisms, and societies. We shall abstain from talking about items that are neither concrete things nor properties, states or changes thereof. Any fictions entering our system will be devices useful in accounting for the structure of reality. (Constructs were dealt with in Volumes 1 and 2 of this work.)" pp. XIII-XIV.

Contents: Preface to Ontology I XIII; Acknowledgements XV; Special symbols XVI; Introduction 1; 1. Substance 26; 2. Assembly 39; 3. Thing 108; 4. Possibility 164; 5. Change 215; 6. Spacetime 276; 7. Concluding remarks 330; Bibliography 334; Index of names 344; Index of subjects 348-352.

54. ———. 1977. "A Theory of Properties and Kinds." International Journal of General Systems no. 3:183-190.

Co-author: Arturo Sangalli

55. ———. 1977. "The Gst Challenge to the Classical Philosophies of Science." International Journal of General Systems no. 4:29-37.

56. ———. 1977. "States and Events." In Systems: Approaches, Theories and Applications, edited by William, Hartnett, 71-95. Dordrecht: Reidel.

57. ———, ed. 1978. La Sémantique Dans Les Sciences: Colloque De L'académie Internationale De Philosophie Des Sciences. Paris: Beauchesne.

58. ———. 1978. "The Limits of Science." Epistemologia no. 1:11-32.

59. ———. 1979. Treatise on Basic Philosophy. Iv: Ontology: A World of Systems. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"This volume continues and concludes the task begun in Part 1, titled The Furniture of the World - namely the building of an exact and systematic ontology consistent with contemporary science. However, it can be read independently by anyone willing to take for granted the basic notions analyzed and systematized in the companion volume, namely those of substance, property, thing, possibility, change, space, and time.

The three main themes of this book are wholeness (or systemicity), variety, and change. These three notions are analyzed and systematized, and they occur in some of the main assumptions of our ontology. One of these hypotheses is that the universe is not a heap of things but a thing composed of interconnected things - i.e. a system. This supersystem is composed of subsystems of various kinds: physical, biological, social, etc. Only physical systems may be composed of things that are not themselves systems, such as elementary particles and field quanta. However, even nonsystems are components of some system or other, and every system but the universe is a subsystem of some system: there are no strays. Ours is, in sum, a world of interconnected systems. Moreover it is the only one.

Another postulate of this system of ontology is that concrete systems are not all alike except insofar as they are systems and therefore tractable with the help of a unifying systems-theoretic framework. There are different kinds of system and each is characterized by its own peculiar properties and laws. Surely we sometimes succeed in accounting for the emergence and the history of a system in terms of its composition, environment, and structure. Nevertheless, explaining need not be explaining away: explained systems are not heaps, explained emergence is no mere resultant, and explained novelty is not old. Systemicity, emergence, and qualitative novelty and variety are as genuine as they are capable of being explained. Far from being incompatible with reason, wholeness and emergence can be understood.

A third major thesis of this work is that no system, except for the world as a whole, lasts forever. Systems get assembled, change, and break down. If natural, systems emerge as a result of self-assembly processes - often from debris of former systems. Even modest accretion processes can ensue in systems possessing emergent properties. Order can thus emerge from randomness, systems from physical precursors, living systems from nonliving ones, and so on. (Entropy need not increase in open systems.)

All three theses are by now common knowledge or nearly so. Now they - jointly with many others - have become part and parcel of a science oriented ontological system couched in a fairly exact language. Thus the novelty of this system resides sometimes in its components, and at other times in their organization." pp. XIII-XIV

Contents: Preface to Ontology II XIII; Acknowledgments XV; Special symbols XVI; 1. System 1; 2. Chemism 45; 3. Life 75; 4. Mind 124; 5. Society 186; 6. A systemic world 245; Appendix a. System models 253; Appendix B. Change models 273; Bibliography 292; Index of names 301; Index of subjects 305-308.

60. ———. 1979. "Philosophical Inputs and Outputs of Technology." In The History and Philosophy of Technology, edited by George, Bugliarello and Dean, Doner, 262-281. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

61. ———. 1980. The Mind-Body Problem: A Psychobiological Approach. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Index: Preface; 1. The mind-body problem; 2. The organ; 3. The functions, 4. Sensation and perception; 5. Behavior and motivation; 6. Memory and learning; 7. Thinking and knowing; 8. Consciousness and personality; 9. Sociality; 10. Conclusion: towards understanding mind; Epilogue: a behavioral approach by Donald O. Hebb; Glossary of technical terms; Bibliography; index of names; Index of subjects.

From the Introduction: "This book deals with one of the oldest, most intriguing, and most difficult of all the problems belonging in the intersection of science and philosophy, namely the so-called mind-body problem. This is the system of ancient questions about the nature of the mental and its relations to the bodily.

Here are some of the problems belonging to the mind-body problem circle. Are mind and body two separate entities? If so, how are they held together in the living organism? How do they get in touch in the beginning, how do they fly asunder at the end, and what becomes of the mind after the breakdown of the body? How do the two entities manage to function synchronically: what does it mean to say that mental states have neural correlates? Do these entities interact, and if so how? And which if any has the upper hand?

If, on the other hand, mind and body are not different entities, is the mind corporeal? Or is it the other way around, namely is the body a form of the mind? Or is each a manifestation of a single (neutral) underlying inaccessible substance? In either case: what is mind? A thing, a collection of states of a thing, a set of events in the thing-or nothing at all? And whatever it is, is it just physical or is it something more? And in the latter case -- i.e. if mind is emergent relative to the physical level can it be explained in a scientific manner or can it be described only in ordinary language?

The mind-body problem is notoriously a hard nut to crack -- surely even more so than the problem of matter -- so much so that some scientists and philosophers despair of it being soluble at all. We submit that the problem, though tough, is soluble, and shall outline a solution to it in this work. But before doing so we shall have to do some philosophical scouting and conceptual cleansing, because part of the problem is that it is usually formulated in inadequate terms -- namely in those of ordinary language. These are inadequate not only because ordinary language is imprecise and poor but also because the European languages are loaded with a preconceived solution to the problem, namely psychophysical dualism, or the doctrine that mind and body are separate entities." (pp. XIII-XIV).

62. ———. 1981. Scientific Materialism. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Table of Contents: Preface IX; Part I: Being; Chapter 1: Matter today 3; Chapter 2: Materialism today 17; Part II: Becoming; Chapter 3: Modes of becoming 35; Chapter 4: A critique of dialectics 41; Part III: Mind; Chapter 5: A materialist theory of mind 67; Chapter 6: Mind evolving 91; Part IV: Culture; Chapter 7: A materialist concept of culture 109; Chapter 8: Popper's unworldly World 3 137; Part V: Concept; Chapter 9: The status of concepts 161; Chapter 10: Logic, semantics, and ontology 175; Appendix: New dialogues between Hylas and Philonous 195; Sources 207

63. ———. 1981. "Conceptual Existence." In Transparencies : Philosophical Essays in Honor of J. Ferrater Mora, edited by Priscilla, Cohn, 5-14. Atlantics Highlands: Humanities Press.

64. ———. 1982. "The Revival of Causality." In Contemporary Philosophy: A New Survey (Vol. Ii), edited by Guttorm, Floistad, 133-155. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

65. ———. 1983. Treatise on Basic Philosophy. V: Epistemology and Methodology I: Exploring the World. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"This volume is devoted to general epistemology and methodology; the next, to some epistemological and methodological problems arising in contemporary science and technology. Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge (French gnoséologie, German Erkenntnistheorie), is the field of research concerned with human knowledge in general-ordinary and scientific, intuitive and formal, pure and action-oriented. And methodology -- not to be mistaken for methodics, or a set of methods or techniques - -is the discipline that studies the principles of successful inquiry, whether in ordinary life, science, technology, or the humanities.

In this work epistemology is conceived as a merger of philosophy, psychology, and sociology: it describes and analyzes the various facets of human cognitive processes, whether successful or not, and whether or not they bear on everyday matters. Methodology too is descriptive and analytical, but in addition it is prescriptive or normative: it attempts to find out not only how people actually get to know but also how they ought to proceed in order to attain their cognitive goals. Thus both the epistemologist and the methodologist are supposed to describe and analyze experiment, but the methodologist is primarily interested in well designed experiment. In short, whereas epistemology is concerned with inquiry in general, the task of methodology is to find or perfect optimal inquiry strategies. (...)

This book continues an old tradition or, rather, a whole fan of traditions started in ancient Greece and India. But at the same time this work departs from tradition with regard to method. It is hoped that our inquiry into inquiry will be closer to the cognitive sciences and, in general, closer to contemporary research, than to obsolete dogma. More particularly, we shall proceed as follows. We shall pick up the rich legacy of epistemological problems and hints (often optimistically called `theories') bequeathed to us by the epistemological tradition. We shall enrich it with some of the problems and findings of contemporary scientific, technological and humanistic research, topping it with new hypotheses compatible with the science of the day-in particular neuroscience, psychology, and social science. And we shall elaborate and systematize the whole with the help of a few modest tools such as the concepts of set and function. However, in contradistinction with the former volumes in this Treatise, here we shall adopt a far more modest level of formalization. The result is a greater intelligibility-and length. (The formalizations have been put in parentheses and in the Appendices.)"

Contents: Preface to Epistemology I & II V; Acknowledgements XVII; Special symbols XIX; Introduction 1; Part I. Cognition and communication 19; 1. Cognition 21, 2. Knowledge 61; 3. Communication 97; Part II. Perceiving and thinking 127; 4. Perceiving 129; 5. Conceiving 159; 6. Inferring 199; Part III. Exploring and theorizing 231; 7. Exploring 233; 8. Conjecturing 286; 9. Systematizing 323; Appendices 377; 1. The power of mathematics in theory construction: a simple model of evolution 377; 2. The prose identifying the variables 380; Bibliography 383; Index of names 396; Index of subjects 401-403.

66. ———. 1983. Treatise on Basic Philosophy. Vi: Epistemology and Methodology Ii: Understanding the World. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"This is the sequel to Epistemology I: Exploring the World. In that work we studied cognition as a brain process, and communication as a social transaction. In particular, we studied perception and conception, the formation of propositions and proposals, exploration and systematization, discovery and invention. We regarded knowledge as an outcome of processes occurring in animals that learn by themselves and from one another. We took concepts and propositions, problems and proposals, to be equivalence classes of brain processes rather than ideal objects detached from brains and from society. However, we also stressed the need for studying such abstractions as well as the corresponding real processes.

In other words, we admitted that cognition ought to be studied both concretely (as a biopsychosocial process) and abstractly (with disregard for personal and social idiosyncrasies). We hoped in this way to favor the merger of the various hitherto separate approaches to the study of knowledge and knowledge-directed action: the neurophysiological and the psychological, the sociological and the historical, the epistemological and the methodological ones. After all, these various approaches have a single aim, namely to improve our understanding of the ways we get to know reality, and the ways knowledge can be utilized to alter reality.

In this volume we will study the ways theories and proposals (e.g. technological designs) are put to the test and used to understand or alter reality. We will stress the difference between belief and inquiry. We will study the kinds of knowledge and the ways human knowledge grows, declines, or alters course. We will distinguish basic science from applied science, and both from technology and ideology, and we will seek to demarcate genuine knowledge from bogus. We will analyze the two mechanisms for enhancing the cross-fertilization and the unity of the various branches of knowledge: reduction and integration. We will stipulate the conceptual and empirical conditions a proposition has to fulfill in order to be valued as (sufficiently) true, and a proposal to be regarded as (suitably) efficient. (We shall do so in the light of real cases drawn from contemporary research rather than in obedience to a priori philosophical principles.) We will analyze a number of important yet vague notions, such as those of truth and efficiency, background and framework, paradigm and revolution. And we will explore the possible limits to our exploration of the world, as well as the limitations of the classical philosophies of knowledge.

The upshot of our study is a descriptive and normative epistemology that cannot be compressed into a couple of slogans, although it combines some features of rationalism with others of empiricism. This synthesis may be called scientific realism because the criterion for adopting or rejecting any given thesis is its compatibility or incompatibility with the practice of research in contemporary science (basic or applied), technology, or the humanities. We find no use for a theory of knowledge, however exact or ingenious it may be, that is divorced from knowledge." pp. XI-XII

Contents: Preface to Epistemology II XI; Special symbols XIII; Part IV. Understanding and checking 1; 10. Understanding 3; 11. Producing evidence 59; 12. Evaluating 114; Part V. Variety and unity 155; 13. Epistemic change 157; 14. Kinds of knowledge 194; 15. Upshot 240; Appendices 272; 3. partial truth 272; 4. predictive power 276; 5. Formal structure of experiment 278; 6. Degree of confirmation of a theory 281; Bibliography 283; Index of names 291; Index of subjects 294-296.

67. ———. 1983. "Demarcating Science from Pseudoscience." Fundamenta Scientiae no. 3:369-388.

68. ———. 1984. "Philosophical Problems in Linguistics." Erkenntnis no. 21:107-174.

69. ———. 1985. Treatise on Basic Philosophy. Vii: Epistemology and Methodology Iii: Philosophy of Science and Technology. Part I. Formal and Physical Sciences. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"This is a systematic study in the philosophy of science and technology, or PS & T for short. It struggles with some of the so-called Big Questions in and about contemporary S & T, i.e. questions supposed to be general, deep, hard, and still sub judice. Here is a random sample of such problematics. Is verbal psychotherapy scientific? Is political economy ideologically neutral? Are computers creative? What is the ontological status of machines? Is engineering just an application of basic science? What is language? Are there laws of history? Which are the driving forces of history? Which is the most fruitful approach to the study of mind? Are genes omnipotent? Are species collections or concrete systems? Do the earth sciences have laws of their own? Is chemistry nothing but a chapter of physics? Does contemporary cosmology confirm theology? Has the quantum theory refuted scientific realism? Is there a viable philosophy of mathematics? How are we to choose among alternative logics? What is the ontological status of concepts?

These and other questions of interest to philosophy, as well as to science or technology, are tackled in this book from a viewpoint that is somewhat different from the dominant PS & T. An instant history of our discipline should help place our viewpoint. Modem PS & T began together with modern science and it was cultivated by scientists and philosophers until it became professionalized in the 1920s. At this time it took a logical turn: it was equated with the logical analysis and orderly reconstruction of scientific theories. Experimental and field work were deemed to be ancillary to theorizing, and technology was praised or deprecated, but hardly analyzed. Later on PS & T took a linguistic turn: only the languages of S & T seemed to matter. Facts, problems, theories, experiments, methods, designs and plans were overlooked. More recently, PS & T took a historical turn: everything was seen from a historical viewpoint. The logic, semantics, epistemology, ontology and ethics of S & T were declared subservient to its history or even irrelevant. Even more recently there have been attempts to force PS & T to take a sociological turn. Facts are said to be the creation of researchers, who would act only in response to social stimuli or inhibitors; there would be neither norms nor objective truth.

I believe the time has come for PS & T to take, or rather retake, a philosophical turn: to investigate the logical and semantical, epistemological and ontological, axiological and ethical problems raised by contemporary S & T, leaving the sociological and historical studies to social scientists. The time has also come to approach the problematics of PS & T in a scientific fashion, by paying close attention to current developments in S & T and checking philosophical hypotheses against the findings of S & T. At least this is the approach adopted in the present volume.

Although this book is part of an eight-volume treatise, it is self-contained: it can be read independently of the others. Moreover, each chapter can be read independently of the others. The book is addressed to philosophers, scientists, technologists, and culture watchers. It may be used as a textbook in a one year advanced course in PS & T. Each chapter may also be used in a course in the corresponding branch of PS & T.

To facilitate its use as a textbook, the present volume has been divided into two parts. Part I is devoted to the philosophy of the formal and physical sciences, whereas Part II covers the philosophy of the biological and social sciences as well as of the technologies." p. IX-X.

Contents: Preface to Philosophy of science & technology IX; Acknowledgements XI; Introduction 1; I. Formal science: from logic to mathematics 9; 1. Generalities 9; 2. Mathematics and reality 26; 3. Logic 40; 4. Pure and applied mathematics 75; 5. Foundations and philosophy 95; 6. Concluding remarks 121; II. Physical science: from physics to earth science 124; 1. Preliminaries 124; 2. Two classics 140; 3. Two relativities 155; 4. Quantons 165; 5. Chance 178; 6. Realism and classicism 191; 7. Chemistry 219; 8. Megaphysics 231; 9. Concluding remarks 241; Bibliography 243; Index of names 255; index of subjects 260-262.

70. ———. 1985. "Types of Psychological Explanations." In Contemporary Psychology: Biological Processes and Theoretical Issues, edited by James, McCaugh, 489-501. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

71. ———. 1985. "Que Es Un Individuo Concreto?" Theoria no. 1:121-128.

72. ———. 1985. Treatise on Basic Philosophy. Vii: Epistemology and Methodology Iii: Philosophy of Science and Technology. Part Ii. Life Science, Social Science and Technology. Dordrecht: Reidel.

73. ———. 1986. "Grados De Existencia O De Abstracción?" Theoria no. 1:547-549.

74. ———. 1987. Philosophy of Psychology. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Co-author: Rubén Ardila

75. ———. 1988. "Two Faces and Three Masks of Probability." In Probability in the Sciences, edited by Evandro, Agazzi, 27-50. Dordrecht: Reidel.

76. ———. 1988. "The Scientific Status of History." In Die Philosophie in Der Modernen Welt. Gedenkschrift Für Prof. Dr. Med. Dr. Phil. Alwin Diemer, 16. April 1920-25. Dezember 1986 (Vol. I), edited by Ulrike, Hinke-Dörnemann, 593-602. New York: Peter Lang.

77. ———. 1988. "Niels Bohr 'S Philosophy." Philosophia Naturalis no. 25:399-415.

78. ———. 1989. Treatise on Basic Philosophy. Viii: Ethics: The Good and the Right. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"This book is about values, morals, and human actions. It is also about axiology (the study of value systems), ethics (the study of moral codes), and action theory. It is concerned with both private and public values, morals, and actions. In particular, it seeks to uncover the roots and functions (biological and social) of valuation and morality. As well, it attempts to sketch a value system, a moral code and a general plan of action that may help us tackle the dreadful problems of our time.

(...)

The revival of value theory and ethics can be attested to by anyone who bothers to peruse the philosophical journals published in the course of the latest few years. This revival is particularly welcome at a time when philosophy as a whole is at a low ebb - so much so that some philosophers have proclaimed its death while others have taken leave of reason. But the current flourishing of ethics may be an indicator of the general crisis of modern civilization, for people do not usually reflect on problems about values and morals until they face them, and nowadays most of us face them daily by the dozen.

This is the last volume of my Treatise on Basic Philosophy, on which I started to work two decades ago. It is consistent with the previous volumes, in particular with the naturalistic, dynamicist, emergentist and systemist ontology, as well as with the realistic and ratioempiricist semantics and epistemology formulated therein. However, the present book may be read independently of its companions." p. XIV-XV.

Contents: Preface to Ethics XIII; Acknowledgements XV; Introduction 1; Part I. Values 11; 1. Roots of values 11; 2. Welfare 41; 3. Value theory 61; Part II. Morals 93; 4. Roots of morals 93; 5. Morality changes 133; 6. Some moral issues 158; Part III. Ethics 197; 7. Types of ethical theory 197; 8. Ethics et alia 243; 9. Metaethics 285; Part IV: Action theory 319; 10. Action 319; 11. Social philosophy 354; 12. Values and morals for a viable future 390; Bibliography 400; Index of names 416; Index of subjects 421-424.

79. ———. 1991. "A Critical Examination of the New Sociology of Science. Part I." Philosophy of the Social Sciences no. 21:524-560.

80. ———. 1992. "A Critical Examination of the New Sociology of Science. Part Ii." Philosophy of the Social Sciences:46-76.

81. ———. 1993. "Realism and Anti-Realism in Social Science." Theory and Decision no. 35:207-235.

82. ———. 1996. Finding Philosophy in Social Science. New Haven: Yale University Press.

From the preface: "This book has been written for social scientists curious about philosophy, as well as for philosophers interested in social studies. As suggested by its title, it focuses on the philosophy involved in social studies -- albeit, usually in a tacit manner. I will argue that all social studies,

whether scientific or literary, are crammed with philosophical concepts, such as those of fact, system, process, theory, test, and truth. They also contain or presuppose some philosophical assumptions, such as that societies are (or are not) mere aggregates of individuals, that people can (or cannot) choose and act rationally, and that social facts can (or cannot) be studied scientifically.

Regrettably, most students of society rarely pause to examine the philosophical ideas they adopt. When they do, they often fall under the influence of philosophies that do not match the practice of contemporary social science research. Most of the philosophers who have paid attention to the philosophy in or about social science have held some or all of the following three theses: that there is a clear divide between the social and the natural sciences, there being no mixed or socio-natural sciences; that science and philosophy are mutually disjoint, so cannot learn from one another; that the philosophy of social science is the same as that of the natural sciences -- or else that the two are utterly disjoint. I will argue that all three, and many more received opinions, are false. I will examine some of the key philosophical ideas inherent in the social (and socio-natural) sciences, as well as some of the topical philosophical problems raised by them. Thus I will elucidate the ontological notions of event and causation, the semantic concepts of meaning and truth, the epistemological ideas of hypothesis and indicator, the axiological notions of value and utility, and the ethical concepts of right and duty, I will also wrestle with such classical controversies as individualism versus holism, rationalism versus empiricism, explanation versus understanding, and nomothetic versus idiographic science."

From the Introduction: "The ontology of social science examines the nature of society, the kinds of social process, the difference between law and rule, the roles of causation and chance, and the nature of planning. Hence it is concerned with questions such as: Are there social systems, or only aggregates of individuals? Are cultures systems of values and norms, or concrete social systems? What is a micro-macro link? What are the engines of history: the environment, biological factors, the economy, politics, culture, or all of these? Are there occasionally leaps in social evolution, or was Marshall right in inscribing the maxim Natura non facit saltum on the title page of his classic Principles of Economics? Is society a text to be deciphered by hermeneutics or semiotics? Is human history analogous to biological evolution?" (p. 7).

83. ———. 1996. "The Seven Pillars of Popper's Social Philosophy." Philosophy of the Social Sciences no. 26:528-556.

84. ———. 1997. Foundations of Biophilosophy. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Co-author: Martin Mahner.

From the Preface:

Index: Part I. Philosophical fundamentals. 1. Ontological fundamentals; 2. Semantical and logical fundamentals; 3. Epistemological fundamentals; Part II. Fundamental issues in biophilosophy; 4. Life; 5. Ecology; 6. Psychobiology; 7. Systematics; 8. Developmental biology; 9. Evolutionary theory;10. Teleology; 11. Concluding remarks; References; Name Index; Subject index.

85. ———. 1997. "Mechanism and Explanation." Philosophy of the Social Sciences no. 27:410-465.

86. ———. 1999. Dictionary of Philosophy. Amherst: Prometheus Books.

87. ———. 1999. The Sociology-Philosophy Connection. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

With a preface by Raymond Boudon

88. ———. 2000. Social Science under Debate: A Philosophical Perspective. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

89. ———. 2000. "Ten Modes of Individualism -- None of Which Works -- and Their Alternatives." Philosophy of the Social Sciences no. 30:384-406.

90. ———. 2000. "Systemism: The Alternative to Individualism and Holism." The Journal of Socio-Economics no. 29:147-157.

91. ———. 2001. Scientific Realism: Selected Essays. Amherst: Prometheus Books.

92. ———. 2001. Philosophy in Crisis: The Need for Reconstruction. Amherst: Prometheus Books.

93. ———. 2001. "Function and Functionalism: A Synthetic Perspective." Philosophy of Science no. 68:75-94.

Co-author: Martin Mahner

94. ———. 2002. "Seven Desiderata for Rationality." In Rationality, edited by Joseph, Agassi, 5-15. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.

95. ———. 2003. Philosophical Dictionary. Amherst: Prometheus Books.

New enlarged edition of the "Dictionary of philosophy"

Selected studies on Mario Bunge

1. Agassi, Joseph, and Cohen, Robert S., eds. 1982. Scientific Philosophy Today. Essays in honor of Mario Bunge. Dordrecht: Reidel.

2. Beuchot, Mauricio. 1977. "La 'metafisica scientifica' de Mario Bunge." Revista de Filosofia (Mexico) no. 6:201-212.

3. Forman, Frank. 1989. The metaphysics of liberty. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Chpater 3: Mario Augusto Bunge and scientific metaphysics

4. Manzano, Naria. 1985. "Formalizacion en teoria de tipos del predicado de existencia de Mario Bunge." Theoria no. 1:513-534.

5. Quintanilla, Miguel Angel. 1981. "Conceptos y cosas: acerca del Tratado de filosofia de Mario Bunge." Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofia no. 7:165-176.

6. ———. 2002. "La ontologia cientifica de Mario Bunge." Teorema no. 8:315-320.

7. Russo, François. 1973. "L'épistémologie de Mario Bunge." Archives de Philosophie no. 36:373-393.

8. Schlegel, Richard. 1961. "Mario Bunge on causality." Philosophy of Science no. 28:260-281.

9. Weingartner, Paul, and Dorn, Georg, eds. 1990. Studies on Mario Bunge's Treatise. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities vol. 18.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Fred Sommers on the Logic of Natural Language

Introduction

"The essay before you is the fruit of some fifteen years of investigation into the logical syntax of natural language. In the summer of 1965 I read a paper to the Congress on Logic and Scientific Method at Bedford College, London, that presented an algorithm for the algebraic treatment of syllogistic arguments in which categorical propositions were transcribed as fractions and reciprocals.(1) I spent the next two years looking for a more general algorithm with greater expressive power, one that could transcribe relational, multi-general propositions as well as simple categoricals. (...)The first article on the more general calculus was published in Mind, January 1970, as The Calculus of Terms. Unfortunately its message had little effect although I followed it by a series of articles that exploited the new notation and exposed some important consequences for the philosophy of language. It became clear that the current Fregean logic had fully replaced the more traditional logic of terms and that articles could not do justice to the neo-classical alternative that I was advocating.

I had for some years been planning to write a book on the logic of categories but the lack of response to my more recent interests, the logic of terms and its relation to natural syntax, strongly suggested that I must first do book-length justice to these latter topics. I began writing this essay in 1975 and, after several long interruptions and two revisions, completed it in the summer of 1980. I still hope to write the book on category theory. In the present work chapter 13) I do little more than indicate how traditional logic's way with contrariety leads to the conception of categories that is at the basis of Ryle's seminal work in the forties and my own more formal treatment of categories in the early sixties. Indeed it was my recognition of the need for a notion of contrariety that would allow for saying, for example, that Saturday is neither fed nor unfed (which renders both 'Saturday is fed' and 'Saturday is unfed' 'category mistakes') that prompted me to re-examine traditional Aristotelian logic with its characteristic distinction between contrary terms or predicates and contradictory propositions. This distinction is absent in modern logic which uses the forms 'Px' and '-Px' to represent contrary predicates thereby conflating the two oppositions of contrariety and contradiction so fundamental to the classical term-theoretic standpoint. (2) The current use of propositional negation as the sole form of opposition 'precludes the kind of internal term and predicate structure that makes it possible to treat negation as a means of changing around concepts inside the meanings of terms and predicates'. The quoted words are Jerrold Katz's but they are typical of the sort of reaction one gets from linguists who find the restricted grammar of 'standard' logical languages to be at odds with their intuitions into the logical grammar of empirical languages.

More generally the theory of logical form that has its source in the formation rules for standard languages poses severe problems for the linguist. The older subject-predicate logic with its classical binary noun-phrase verb-phrase analysis of sentences has been discredited and while some linguists appear prepared to abandon the classical analysis in favour of analyses that conform more closely to the syntax of modern predicate logic others may welcome a rehabilitated classical logic of 'categorical' sentences that leaves the fundamental binary structure in place." (pp. VII-VIII)

Notes

(1) 'On a Fregean Dogma'. Apparently I was not alone in representing categorical propositions as fractions. Charles Merchant, a mathematician at the University of Arizona, subsequently wrote me of his independent work on this algorithm.

(2) Early treatments of the distinction between negating a sentence and denying predicate may be found in my 'Predicability' (1963) and 'Truth Functional counterfactuals' (1964).

From: Fred Sommers, The Logic of Natural Language, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1982.

"Today's orthodox logic came into existence about a hundred years ago when it replaced the traditional syllogistic logic, which itself had been the orthodoxy for many centuries. The arguments for abandoning the old logic were not conclusive. Once entrenched, the new logic felt no need for supporting arguments. Today logic students are given at best some bad old arguments against the old logic, and then are simply presented with the new logic to be learned. No one asks 'Why?'. But Sommers has. He has challenged the deeply entrenched presumption that no syllogistic logic can measure up to the great power and beauty of the predicate calculus. What is more, not only has Sommers shown the emperor to have no clothes, he has produced a fine new suit. He has returned to the venerable but forgotten logic of Aristotle, Ockham, and Leibniz, and has shown that it does have hidden assets which make it more than adequate as an alternative to the orthodox system. So I think this rebellion is well worth joining. And, of course, there's that pleasure I referred to earlier. Sommers speaks of "the perverse pleasure of advocacy-in this day and age-of Aristotle over Frege."I have put this collection together for several reasons. As a supplement to Sommers' own work it illustrates the broad scope of Sommers' challenge to modern orthodox views about logic and language. Not all of those whose work is represented here fully endorse Sommers' programme. Some may explicitly reject parts of it. But all recognize its importance." (Preface by the Editor, pp. X-XI)

From: George Englebretsen (ed.), The New Syllogistic, New York: Peter Lang 1987.

"Frederic Sommers was born on 1 January 1923 in New York City. He was educated at Columbia University, where he received his BA and then his PhD in philosophy in 1955, writing a dissertation on "An Empiricist Ontology: A Study in the Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead." Sommers began his academic career at Columbia University, where he was assistant professor of philosophy from 1955 to 1963. He moved to Brandeis University in 1964 as associate professor of philosophy, was promoted to full professor in 1966, and held the Harry Austryn Wolfson Chair of Philosophy from 1965 until his retirement in 1993.

Sommers was a staunch proponent of a traditionalist view of logic, albeit in a "modern" guise. He has consistently expressed the view that progress in logic should have stopped, if not with Leibniz, than at least before Frege, devising a variant of syllogistic very close to that undertaken by Leibniz. His "Calculus of Terms" applies a system of pluses and minuses to the subjects and predicates of categorical syllogisms, to indicate inclusion and exclusion, the copula and the negation of the copula, as well as for affirmation and denial, with a universal statement having the form + (–...) or – (+...) for the subject term and a particular statement having the form + (+...) or – (–...) for the subject term. His system is essentially that of Leibniz's, with Leibniz's "=" and "±" replaced in Sommers's notation by "+" and "–" respectively. In Logic of Natural Language Sommers developed the system in more detail together with a consideration of its purported philosophical implications. He argued that his calculus of terms is significantly different from the predicate logic; but Gregory MCCulloch [1984] argued that there really is no such difference. Sommers claims that his calculus of terms is an elaboration of Leibniz's proposal.

Sommers argued that the subject–predicate semantic analysis of syllogistic propositions with the proper treatment, retains as much deductive power as Frege's calculus, and in a important sense is more expressively powerful than Frege's function-theoretic quantification theory, because it is closer to natural language while being able to handle polyadic relations.

In Sommers's calculus, relational terms are represented in the form ' R ± A ± B ±.... ± K', where R is the relation and some/all A, some/all B, ..., some/all K are objects of R. Thus Sommers is able to analyze such propositions as "All censors withhold some books from minors" as "W + B – M."

Sommers's "Ordinary Language Tree" for mapping relations among Aristotelian categories was based upon his efforts to arithmeticize Aristotelian syllogistic as a calculus of terms. In Sommers's tree, genera and species give way to subjects and predicates, treated as classes. His book The Logic of Natural Language (1982) provides a detailed, systematic and unified elaboration of the Ordinary Language Tree and the Calculus of Terms and explores the philosophical import of this logical system. His Invitation to Formal Reasoning: The Logic of Terms (2000) provides a textbook elaboration of the logic of terms."

From: Irving H. Anellis, "SOMMERS, Frederic Tamler", in: John R. Shook (ed.), The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, Bristol: Thoemmes 2005.

Excerpts from his publications (in progress)

"The thesis I will be arguing for belongs to the premodern -- which is to say, pre-Fregean-tradition of logical theory whose major figures from Aristotle to Leibniz never doubted that the sentences of a natural language like Greek or English that entered into deductive reasoning could, for logical purposes, be parsed in ways familiar to the grammarian. Implicit in the program of traditional formal logic is the idea of a logical syntax of natural language in which the grammarians' nounphrase/verb-phrase analysis is the fundamental pattern. (...)The idea of a logical syntax of natural language stands opposed to what the Fregean believes about logical form. Frege himself held that an adequate account of inferences expressed in natural language requires translation into a new idiom, the idiom of a language expressly constructed for use by logicians.

This new logical language is no mere convenience: Frege believed that the syntax of natural language was logically useless, misleading, and incoherent. Being convinced of this, Frege did not criticize the grammarian for misconstruing natural language. On the contrary, from Frege's standpoint the grammarian could well be right in his description of the syntax of natural language. If so the inadequacy is not in the grammarian but in his subject-matter. Michael Dummett aptly sums up Frege's reaction to the phenomenon that the natural languages lack a perspicuous logical grammar with the words 'so much the worse for natural language'." (pp. 1-2)

From: Fred Sommers, The Logic of Natural Language, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1982.

Extensions of Sommers' Term Logic

"Conclusion.

NTL [Numerical Term Logic] works within the assumption that all logical statements are affirmations as to the quantity of members of a set (or subset). Sommers' logical system and Modem Predicate Logic, although opposed in many ways, have at least one thing in common: they may each formulate statements that affirm only either that a set is empty, or that it is not. In Sommers' system's primary scheme, whether a subset is non-empty is indicated by the copulation of two terms (with a primary "+"), each of which represents one of the intersecting sets; and whether a set is empty is indicated by the denial of such a copulation (with a primary "- "). Despite its quantificational difficulties, Sommers' system is remarkably expressive, deductively powerful, theoretically well founded (as well as relatively faithful to the structure of natural language); indeed, it surpasses MPL [Modern Predicate Logic] in each of these respects. In building upon the notational foundation of Sommers' system, NTL not only retains these important advantages, but, in fact, amplifies them enormously. In NTL, variable numerical quantity is incorporated as a formal element of logical copulation; thus, in an NTL primary scheme analogous to Sommers', to what degree a subset is non-empty would be indicated by the copulation of two terms (with a binary "+x"), each of which represents one of the intersecting sets; and to what degree a subset is empty would be indicated by the denial of a copulation of this kind. NTL therefore becomes infinitely more expressive than Sommers' system-not merely in the fact that it may formulate statements with quantities of infinite magnitude, but also in the fact that it accounts for various types of quantification (fractional, subjective natural language quantification, etc.); it also becomes far more powerful than Sommers' system in its deductive scope (for it handles inferences involving different kinds of numerically quantified statements uniformly), is theoretically stronger (for example, in its accounts of "wild quantity", vacuosity, and subalternation), and is more loyal than Sommers' system to the structure of natural language (for it requires no contortionism in its expression)." (pp. 103-104)

From: Lorne Szabolcsi, Numerical Term Logic, Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press 2008.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Complete Bibliography of Fred Sommers

Bibliography

1. Sommers, Fred. 1952. "The Passing of Privileged Uniqueness." Journal of Philosophy no. 49:392-396.

2. ———. 1953. "Review: Das 'Physikalische Modell' Und Die 'Metaphysische Wirklichkeit'; Versuch Einer Metaphänomenologie, by Erwin Nickel." Journal of Philosophy no. 50:332-334.

3. ———. 1955. An Empiricist Ontology. A Study in the Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead, Columbia University.

Unpublished Ph. D. thesis.

4. ———. 1959. "The Ordinary Language Tree." Mind no. 68:160-185.

"An important part of any investigation into the meaning of an expression E consists of finding what may be called its sense location. This is done by noting which expressions may be conjoined with E and which may not. "E is that expression which goes well with A, C, or G in a sentence but E fails to make sense when used with B, D, F or H, etc." When the mutual sense relations of A, B, C, D, E, F, G . . . are known, then we have a map in which each expression has a sense location with respect to the other expressions under consideration. The question we shall consider is whether the natural language provides any rules for the construction of such a map, whether there is, as it were, an invariant structure to "linguistic cartography" in terms of which it would be possible to give the sense location of any of the expressions in the language. To this question we shall eventually offer an affirmative answer.

The theory of meaning adopted here is a current one. It is the theory of meaning-in-use. Employing a convenient distinction of Ryle's between two kinds of knowing, we may say that a knowledge of meaning is a "knowing how" rather than a "knowing that": to know the meaning of an expression is to know how to use it. Such knowledge includes an ability to formulate a piece of non-absurd discourse containing the expression. Thus to know the meaning of a word is to know how to formulate some sentences containing the word, to know the meaning of a sentence is to know how to formulate some coherent discourse containing the sentence. It is almost true to say that the meaning is this use, i.e. the meaning of E (if "E" is a word or phrase) is the set of sentences containing E and that my knowledge of the meaning of E grows (though not in direct proportion) with my ability to formulate more and more sentences in which E has a proper use. A complete knowledge of E would then be represented by the set of all such sentences. The trouble with this view is that even such a set would not specify uniquely the meaning of any one expression since the set would also specify the meaning of all those expressions which have the same use-at this level of use. For example, the word " short " might be specified by the sentences in which it has a non-absurd occurrence from a purely semantic point of view, but those sentences may also specify the word "tall". We must therefore keep in mind that a map of sense relations giving the locations of a group of expressions does not tell the whole story of "their use in the language", i.e., their meanings. Nevertheless, we shall see that such a map removes ambiguity, ensuring univocity for the expressions located on it. For this reason we shall identify the sense of an expression with its location on a map. This entails a distinction between sense and meaning, a distinction which we shall enforce rather than justify. The sense of an expression will be its location with respect to other expressions, its semantic range. It is what it "makes sense" with as contrasted with what it fails to make sense with. Its meaning is governed only in part by sense rules. " Tall " and " short " may have the same " sense " ; it is because of other rules governing their use that they diverge in meaning. Thus, giving the sense of an expression is not yet the same as giving its meaning. One who wishes to know more about the meaning of a given located expression will enquire at that address." pp. 160-161.

5. ———. 1963. "Types and Ontology." Philosophical Review no. 72:327-363.

Reprinted, with minor corrections, in: Peter Frederick Strawson (ed.) - Philosophical logic - Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1967 pp. 138-169 and in Dale Jacquette (ed.) - Philosophy of logic. An anthology - Oxford, Basil Blackwell 2002 pp. 103-119.

"In this paper (*) I shall be examining several notions of types which have important application in natural languages. I shall show that one of Russell's definitions of a type can be combined with one of Ryle's to give us two other and more powerful type conceptions which are free of the criticisms advanced against each of the former. The results cast considerable light on the relation of `a language' to the sorts of things one can use the language to make statements about; for example, it becomes clear that the number of `sorts of things' discriminated by any natural language is always finite. But far more important, the new type concepts enable us to exhibit formally the type structure of any natural language. It is this structure which determines the way the language discriminates different sorts of things. Since the question of ontology is `What sorts of things are there?' the results may be construed as a formal ontology. The old Russell programme for an ontology which is defined by a logically correct (or corrected) language is thereby reinstated, though in a revised form. That programme has foundered on the type problem for natural languages. Black, for example, has brought out grave difficulties in Russell's type theory as it applies to natural languages, and he used those difficulties to promote scepticism about the Russell programme. But if I am right, a simple and adequate theory of types governs natural language and dictates its ontological commitments to different sorts of things."

(*) There are four sections to the paper. Section I isolates the problem of types for natural language and develops four type concepts appropriate to it. Section II reformulates these concepts syntactically and reconsiders Black's general criticism of a formal theory of types for natural language. In Section III the relation of types to ambiguity, and a problem raised by Black, is examined in detail. Section IV is constructive; the type-structural principle is stated and proved. The ontological meaning of the principle is discussed and the principle is illustratively applied.

6. ———. 1963. "Meaning Relations and the Analytic." Journal of Philosophy no. 60:524-534.

"In his critique of the analytic-synthetic distinction Quine distinguishes two classes of analytic statements: (a1) those that are logically true and (a2) those that lean on extralogical meaning relations. In this paper the same critique that Quine applies against a2 statements is used against a1 statements. By showing that both suffer the same fate at Quine's hands, it is shown that Quine's vital contrast is not a contrast at all and that his criticism goes further than he wants it to go. The paper concludes that the "flight from intension" can become a flight away from the grounds presupposed for any application of logical and linguistic rules."

7. ———. 1964. "A Program for Coherence." Philosophical Review no. 73:522-527.

"The following are some points made in reply to criticism of the author's Types and ontology: (1) if p is a property, define the category of p (cp) as the set of individuals that can "significantly" be said to have p. (2) if any "individual" belongs both to cp and cq, then either cp includes cq or cq includes cp or cp=cq. (3) an ontology is coherent only if it satisfies (2) for all individuals.

Suppose that spirits cannot be characterized as colored or colorless, i.e., they are not in c-colored. Assume also that chairs are not in c-sad. Then neither category includes the other. yet persons are in both. To avoid incoherence we must deny that persons are individuals.

Coherent alternatives to Cartesianism put chairs in c-sad (panpsychism) or spirits in c-colored. The thesis supports Russell's general idea than any coherent ontology is formally isomorphic to linguistic type structure."

8. ———. 1964. "Truth-Functional Counterfactuals." Analysis no. 24:120-126.

9. ———. 1965. "Predicability." In Philosophy in America, edited by Black, Max, 262-281. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

10. ———. 1965. "A Reply to Mr. Odegard's "on Closing the Truth-Value Gap"." Analysis no. 25:66-68.

11. ———. 1966. "Why Is There Something and Not Nothing?" Analysis no. 26:177-181.

"The question is not why it is possible there is something but (granting that something is possible) why is there something? Why not nothing?

This can be answered by way of an ontological proof. For this purpose we define a neglected but important kind of possibility which we call categorial. We say for example that things older than the square root of 2 are not possible things or that unfed theorems are 'categorially' impossible. A thing older than the square root of 2 is not a possible thing because while there is nothing that is older than the square root of 2, neither is there anything that fails to be. Again the statement `some theorems are fed' is a category mistake. There is nothing that is an unfed theorem and nothing that fails to be one since what failed to be one would be a fed theorem or an unfed non-theorem, or a fed non-theorem and there are no such things. So understood, categorial impossibility is existentially definable. More generally, if D is a monadic descriptive term and D is its logical contrary (2) (applicable to all those D-less things that are 'privative' to the state of being D) then D-things are categorially impossible, if and only if there is nothing that is D and nothing that is -D.

By this definition things that are red and blue (all over)-though presumably impossible in some other way-are categorially possible since any table is either red (failing to be blue) or blue (failing to be red) or it fails to be red and also fails to be blue. The logical contrary of the term `red and blue' is truly affirmable of all material objects of whatever colour and also of those that are colourless.

Without having defined possibility in any general way, we are accepting as a premiss of our argument that something is possible. We assume further that whatever is not a categorially possible thing is not a possible thing.

Now suppose there were nothing. It is then true for every predicate term P, that nothing is P. It is also true that there is nothing that fails to be P so that P-things are categorially impossible. If P-things are categorially impossible, they are not possible things. Since this holds for every P, nothing at all is possible. But we have assumed that something is possible and this is incompatible with the nihilist hypothesis. We see then that if something is possible, something is actual.

The same argument can be viewed another way. If something is possible it is categorially possible. For something to be possible there must be some terms predicable of some things. But if there were nothing at all, all terms would be like 'older than the square root of 2'. That some terms are predicable can be argued from the fact that-as matters actually stand-there are many things and many terms truly applicable to those things. But if there were nothing at all, not only would terms like `old' not be truly applicable, they would be altogether impredicable. Nothing would then be possible. But we recall that our question was not `why is anything even possible?' And we see again that if anything is possible, something is actual." pp. 177-178.

(1) Heidegger considers this the crucial question for the philosophy of existence. What is given here is the traditional or "essentialist" reply.

(2) The relation of contrariety holding between a pair of terms (or attributes) does not force us to consider either one of the pair to be negative. Just as being D is a privation of D, so (equally) is being D (or -D) a privation of D. Coloured objects, for instance, fail to be colourless.

12. ———. 1966. "On a Fregean Dogma." In Problems in the Philosophy of Mathematics, edited by Lakatos, Imre, 47-62. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science (Bedford College, 1965).

Discussion: L. Kalmár: Not Fregean and not a Dogma 63; M. Dummett: A Comment on 'On a Fregean Dogma' 63; C. Lejewski: The Logical Form of Singular and General Statements 68; W. V. Quine: Three Remarks 70; F. Sommers: Reply 71-81.

"In the following passage Russell states an accepted and familiar thesis :

The first serious advance in real logic since the time of the Greeks was made independently by Peano and Frege -- both mathematicians. Traditional logic regarded the two propositions 'Socrates is mortal' and 'All men are mortal' as being of the same form; Peano and Frege showed that they are utterly different in form. The philosophical importance of logic may be illustrated by the fact that this confusion - which is still committed by most writers -- obscured not only the whole study of the forms of judgment and inference, but also the relation of things to their qualities, of concrete existence to abstract concepts, and to the world of Platonic ideas . Peano and Frege, who pointed out the error did so for technical reasons ... but the philosophical importance of the advance which they made is impossible to exaggerate.(*)

In what follows I wish to be understood as criticising the quantificational "translation" of general categoricals like 'All men are mortal' only insofar as this is represented as exhibiting such statements to have a different logical form from singular predications. I am not criticising quantification theory as an indispensable logical tool, especially for inference involving statements of more than one variable. The standard general categoricals however are not of this type ; it is for example well-known that quantification is not needed for syllogistic inference. What is not known is that we can treat the categoricals as simple subject-predicate statements on an exact par with singular predications. There is therefore no good logical reason for saying that general and singular statements must differ in logical form.

The doctrine that (1) 'Socrates is mortal' and (2) 'Men are mortal' differ in logical form assumes that the following is the corect account of what these statements say: (a) Both say that 'is mortal' is true of some, thing or things; the first says it is true of Socrates; the second that it is true of whatever 'is a man' is true. It follows (b) that the logical form of the second statement differs from that of the first. For while the first is a simple predication, the second is a "quantified" statement." pp. 48-48.

(*) [ Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy, Lecture II, (1914)]

13. ———. 1966. "What We Can Say About God." Judaism no. 15:61-73.

14. ———. 1969. "On Concepts of Truth in Natural Languages." Review of Metaphysics no. 23:259-286.

"Remarking on alternatives to his conception of truth Tarski rejects a formulation associated with correspondence theories:

If we should decide to extend the popular usage of the term "designate" by applying it not only to names, but also to sentences, and if we agreed to speak of the designata of sentences as "slates of affairs" we could possibly use for the same purpose the following phrase:

(C) A sentence is true if it designates an existing state of affairs. However [this] formulation can lead to various misunderstandings for [it is not] sufficiently precise and clear . . . . It is up to us to look for a more precise expression of our intuitions. (1)

The purpose Tarski speaks of is "to do justice to our intuitions which adhere to the classical Aristotelian conception of truth." Tarski takes this to be some form of correspondence theory. He has earlier considered and rejected an even less satisfactory formula of this sort: 'a sentence is true if it corresponds to reality'. His own semantic conception of truth is meant to be a more precise variant doing justice to the correspondence standpoint. In this spirit I shall presently suggest a revised version of (C).

(1) A. Tarski, "The Semantic, Conception of Truth," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 4 (1944). Reprinted in H. Feigl and W. Sellars, Readings in Philosophical Analysis (New York, 1945), p. 54. (Page reference is to this reprinting.)

15. ———. 1969. "Do We Need Identity?" Journal of Philosophy no. 66:499-504.

"Identity is shown to be definable within traditional syllogistic logic. the idea is to treat singular terms as general terms syntactically. this means we allow singular terms in predicate positions and also allow them to be prefixed by 'every', 'some' and 'no' when in subject position.

However universal and particular singular statements are logically equivalent: if K is a singular term then K is p every K is p some K is p. This equivalence is called the law of wild quantity.

Identity is defined thus: J is identical with K df. some J is K. This definition together with the law of wild quantities gives all the formal properties of the identity relation."

16. ———. 1970. "The Calculus of Terms." Mind no. 79:1-39.

Reprinted in: George Englebretsen (ed.) The new syllogistic - New York, Peter Lang, 1987

17. ———. 1970. "Confirmation and the Natural Subject." Philosophical Forum no. 2:245-250.

18. ———. 1971. "Structural Ontology." Philosophia.Philosophical quarterly of Israel no. 1:21-42.

"Whether a certain sort of things exists is commonly disputed in philosophy. I argue that in some important classical instances the dispute is grounded in another more fundamental one: whether certain entities are individuals or composite. Disputes over individuality or compositeness are generated when certain accepted conditions for individuality seem not to be satisfied. In the last part of the paper I examine the formal condition for non-compositeness (it is not yet a criterion for individuality) tracing it to its logical source. The condition is shown to provide the structural constraints for coherent ontologies."

19. ———. 1973. "Existence and Predication." In Logic and Ontology, edited by Munitz, Milton K., 159-174. New York: New York University Press.

"To contemporary philosophers the question whether 'exists' is a predicate is a syntactical question. Using an older terminology, it is the question whether 'exists' is an autocategorematic or a syncategorematic expression. In more recent parlance it is the question whether 'exists' belongs among the formative-logical signs or among the descriptive-extralogical signs of a logically adequate language.

Those who give canonical status to the idioms of quantification theory have a ready answer to this question. In the syntax of modern logic 'exists' is a syncategorematic expression. In canonical translations 'exists' is never a predicate. To accept this popular view is to assume that the formative expressions enumerated in the formation rules for predicate logic constitute a definitive list. But this overlooks the fact that the line distinguishing certain signs as formative, logical, or syncategorematic from other signs that are descriptive, extralogical, or autocategorematic has been arbitrarily drawn. How, indeed, do we decide whether a sign is syncategorematic or autocategorematic?

There is, of course, the indirect appeal to the power of a logic with this or that list of formatives. For example, if identity is added to the list of logical signs of the lower functional calculus, there is a significant increase in inference power. This, however, is an argument for adding identity to a system whose logical syntax has already been determined by an arbitrarily enumerated list of formatives. It can, for example, be shown that identity is not needed in a logical language whose syntax differs radically from that of the standard first-order functional calculus.(1) The point is that the question whether a certain sign is formative or descriptive cannot be fruitfully answered by considering how an already-constituted logical language will fare with this sign or without it. This retail approach begs the more fundamental question raised by the distinction between logical and extra-logical signs: What principle governs the distinction; what distinguishes the logical signs from the extralogical signs?

The problem in this general form has been raised by Tarski and since discussed by many other writers, most notably by Pap, Popper and Quine. However, the state of the problem has not been significantly advanced beyond the conclusion tentatively offered by Tarski:

Perhaps it will be possible to find important objective arguments which enable us to justify the traditional boundary between logical and extralogical expressions. But I also consider it quite possible that investigation will bring no positive results in this direction so that we shall be compelled to regard such concepts as `logical consequence', 'analytic statement' and 'tautology' as relative concepts which must, on each occasion be related to a definite, although in greater or less degree, arbitrary division of terms into logical and extra-logical.(2)

In this larger perspective the syntactic status of existence can only be determined within some general theory of logical syntax that "justifies" and sharpens the boundary between logical and extralogical signs. As Tarski noted, such a theory will have important bearing on such fundamental notions of logical theory as tautology and validity. But it should also, and, as it were, incidentally, answer our own question, namely, whether 'exists' is a syncategorematic or autocategorematic expression." (pp. 159-160).

(1) See my paper "Do We Need Identity?" The Journal of Philosophy (August 7, 1969).

(2) Alfred Tarski, Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics, (Oxford, 1956), p. 420.

20. ———. 1973. "The Logical and the Extra-Logical." In Methodological and Historical Essays in the Natural and Social Sciences, edited by Cohen, Robert and Wartofsky, Marx, 235-252. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science - vol. 14.

21. ———. 1975. "Distribution Matters." Mind no. 84:27-46.

22. ———. 1976. "Leibniz's Program for the Development of Logic." In Essays in Memory of Imre Lakatos, edited by Cohen, Robert, Feyerabend, Paul and Wartofsky, Marx, 589-615. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company.

Boston studies in the philosophy of science Vol. 39

23. ———. 1976. "Frege or Leibniz?" In Studies on Frege. Logic and Semantics, edited by Schirn, Matthias, 11-34. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog.

Volume III

24. ———. 1976. "Logical Syntax in Natural Language." In Issues in the Philosophy of Language. Proceedings of the 1972 Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy, edited by MacKay, Alfred and Merrill, Daniel, 11-42. New Haven: Yale University Press.

25. ———. 1976. "On Predication and Logical Syntax." In Language in Focus: Foundations, Methods and Systems. Essays in Memory of Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, edited by Kasher, Asa, 41-53. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company.

26. ———. 1978. "The Grammar of Thought." Journal of Social and Biological Structures no. 1:39-51.

27. ———. 1978. "Dualism in Descartes: The Logical Ground." In Descartes: Critical and Interpretative Essay, edited by Hooker, Michael, 223-233. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

28. ———. 1981. "Are There Atomic Propositions?" In Midwest Studies in Philosophy. Volume Vi. The Foundations of Analytic Philosophy, edited by French, Peter, Uehling, Jr.Theodore E. and Wettstein, Howard, 59-68. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

This paper is chapter on of The logic of natural language by Fred Sommers, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982.

29. ———. 1982. The Logic of Natural Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

30. ———. 1983. "The Logic of Natural Language: A Reply to Geach." Times Literary Supplement.

January 14th

31. ———. 1983. "The Logic of Natural Language: A Further Reply to Geach." Times Literary Supplement.

February 18th

32. ———. 1983. "Linguistic Grammar and Logical Grammar." In How Many Questions? Essays in Honor of Sidney Morgenbesser, edited by Cauman, Leigh, Levi, I., Parsons, Charles and Schwartz, R., 180-194. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.

33. ———. 1983. "The Grammar of Thought: A Reply to Dauer." Journal of Social and Biological Structures no. 6:37-44.

34. ———. 1987. "Truth and Existence." In The New Syllogistic, edited by Englebretsen, George, 299-304. New York: Peter Lang.

35. ———. 1990. "Predication in the Logic of Terms." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 31 (1):106-126.

36. ———. 1993. "The World, the Facts, and Primary Logic." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 34 (2):169-182.

37. ———. 1993. "The Enemy Is Us: Objectivity and Its Philosophical Detractors." In The Imperiled Academy, edited by Dickman, Howard, 239-268. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

38. ———. 1993. "Saying What We Think." In Affirmative Action and the University: A Philosophical Inquiry, edited by Cahn, Steven M., 291-294. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

39. ———. 1994. "Naturalism and Realism." Midwest Studies in Philosophy no. 19:22-38.

40. ———. 1996. "Existence and Correspondence to Facts." In Formal Ontology, edited by Poli, Roberto and Simons, Peter M., 131-158. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

41. ———. 1997. "Putnam's Born-Again Realism." Journal of Philosophy no. 94:453-471.

42. ———. 2000. "Term Functor Grammars." In Variable-Free Semantics, edited by Böttner, Michael and Thümmel, Wolf, 68-89. Osnabrück: Secolo Verlag.

43. ———. 2004. "On the Future of Logical Instruction." American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy no. 1:176-180.

44. ———. 2004. "The Holocaust and Moral Philosophy." In Virtue and Vice in Everyday Life, edited by Hoff Sommers, Christina and Sommers, Fred, 150-155. Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth.

45. ———. 2005. "Intellectual Autobiography." In The Old New Logic. Essays on the Philosophy of Fred Sommers, edited by Oderberg, David S., 1-23. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

46. ———. 2005. "Comments and Replies." In The Old New Logic. Essays on the Philosophy of Fred Sommers, edited by Oderberg, David S., 211-231. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

47. ———. 2005. "Belief De Mundo." American Philosophical Quarterly no. 42:117-124.

"Analyzes the theory of belief based on the account of existence and nonexistence as attributes of the world. Argument about the doxastic object in de dicto belief as primitive epistemic act; Truthmaking facts of the positive and negative existential characteristics of the domain under consideration; Approach of the propositionalists towards substitutivity paradoxes."

48. ———. 2005. "Bar-Hillels' Complaint." Philosophia no. 32:55-68.

49. ———. 2008. "Reasoning: How We're Doing It." The Reasoner no. 2:5-7.

50. ———. 2009. "Ratiocination: An Empirical Account." Ratio no. 21:115-133.

"Modern thinkers regard logic as a purely formal discipline like number theory, and not to be confused with any empirical discipline such as cognitive psychology, which may seek to characterize how people actually reason. Opposed to this is the traditional view that even a formal logic can be cognitively veridical -- descriptive of procedures people actually follow in arriving at their deductive judgments (logic as Laws of Thought). In a cognitively veridical logic, any formal proof that a deductive judgment, intuitively arrived at, is valid should ideally conform to the method the reasoning subject has used to arrive at that judgment. More specifically, it should reveal the actual reckoning process that the reasoning subject more or less consciously carries out when they make a deductive inference. That the common logical words used in everyday reasoning -- words such as 'and', 'if,''some', 'is''not,' and 'all -'- have fixed positive and negative charges has escaped the notice of modern logic. The present paper shows how, by unconsciously recognizing 'not' and 'all' as 'minus-words', while recognizing 'and', 'some', and 'is' as 'plus words', a child can intuitively reckon, for example, 'not (-) all (-) dogs are (+) friendly' as equivalent to 'some (+) dogs aren't (-) friendly': -(-D+F) = +D-F."

51. ———. 2009. "Dissonant Beliefs." Analysis no. 69:269-274.

52. ———. 2013. The Mondial and the Ontological.

Forthcoming.

"In 2006 I began working on a book that was to consist of two parts: (1) an account of the tree theory, including a historical background and an appraisal of reactions to the theory, and (2) a summary of Sommers' newer ideas regarding metaphysical issues, with an attempt to integrate the older and newer ideas. By 2009 I had nearly completed part (1), but then, as so often happens with the best laid plans, things changed. Assuming, no doubt based on my sketchy account of what I was up to, that my new book would be primarily about the tree theory, Sommers wrote to me that he was hard at work on a new book of his own, a book in which he was laying out, once and for all, in detail his new metaphysical theory ("mondialism").

Needless to say, that theory and its relation to the tree theory was to be the subject of my part (2). He asked me to help him with his book and I was both eager and happy to do so. Anything I had to say could wait - not so for Sommers (then well into his ninth decade). Sommers' book, The Mondial and the Ontological is forthcoming. As it turned out, much of the work of tying together the tree theory, the term logic, the truth theory and mondialism still needs to be done. So I returned once again to that task."

From: George Englebretsen, Robust Reality. An Essay in Formal Ontology, Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag, 2011, pp. XII-XIII.

53. Sommers, Fred, and Englebretsen, George. 2000. An Invitation to Formal Reasoning. The Logic of Terms. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Co-author: George Englebretsen.

The book "introduces the discipline of formal logic by means of a powerful new system formulated by Fred Sommers.

This system, term logic, is different in a number of ways from the standard system employed in modern logic; most striking is, its greater simplicity and naturalness. Based on a radically different theory of logical syntax than the one Frege used when initiating modern mathematical logic in the 19th Century, term logic borrows insights from Aristotle's syllogistic, Scholastic logicians, Leibniz, and the 19th century British algebraists.

Term logic takes its syntax directly from natural language, construing statements as combinations of pairs of terms, where complex terms are taken to have the same syntax as statements. Whereas standard logic requires extensive 'translation' from natural language to symbolic language, term logic requires only 'transcription' into the symbolic language. Its naturalness is the result of its ability to stay close to the forms of sentences usually found in every day discourse. Written by the founders of the term logic approach, An Invitation to Formal Reasoning is a unique introduction and exploration of this new system, offering numerous exercises and examples throughout the text. Summarising the standard system of mathematical logic to set term logic in context, and showing how the two systems compare, this book presents an alternative approach to standard modern logic for those studying formal logic, philosophy of language or computer theory."

54. Sommers, Fred, and Hoff Sommers, Christina, eds. 1989. Virtue and Vice in Everyday Life: Introductory Readings in Ethics. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Sixth edition: Belmont, Thomson Wadsworth, 2004.

55. Sommers, Fred, and Jarvis, J. 1961. "Review Of: An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus by G. E. M. Anscombe." Philosophy no. 36:374-377.

With J. Jarvis

Studies about his work

For the bibliography of George Englebretsen see the page about him.

1. Altham, J.E.J. 1971. "Ambiguity and Predication." Mind no. 80:253-257.

"Recommends abandoning Sommers' rule about ambiguity, in his Predictability. The rule enforces many implausible judgments. Three arguments for it are defective. One involves confusions over negation of a universal conditional, one rests on a seemingly arbitrary definition, the third rests on an unrealistic assumption about universes of discourse."

2. Brody, B.A. 1972. "Sommers on Predicability." Philosophical Studies no. 23:138-140.

"Sommers has proposed a principle as to when cross-categorial predication is univocal. In this note, I offer some counterexamples, both to his principle and to the premises from which he derives it."

3. Cogan, Robert. 1976. "A Criticism of Sommers' Language Tree." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 17:308-310.

"In The Ordinary Language Tree and three later papers, Fred Sommers has made a number of valuable contributions to formal type theory. Anyone familiar with this work of Sommers understands why it is philosophically attractive: the logical ingenuity shown by Sommers is admirable. However, presuming such familiarity I shall argue that Sommers' restriction to ordinary language is a necessary yet counterformal way of securing mapping applicability for his work, and that it obscures a major obstacle to such application: the fact that genuine doubt about sense-value is systematic in a way rendering it unresolvable by his formal methods. I shall first distinguish between "doubt" in the ordinary sense, and genuine doubt. Next I will show that Sommers' examples of sense arguments are not ones in which genuine doubt is resolved and then define the sense in which genuine doubt is systematic, using his own symbolism. Fourth, I will explain how his restriction to ordinary language tends to obscure this fact, and fifth, in what way the restriction is both necessary and counter-formal."

4. De Sousa, Ronald Bon. 1966. "The Tree of English Bears Bitter Fruit." The Journal of Philosophy no. 63:37-46.

6. "A discussion of Fred Sommers' proposal for a new "test of coherence" for ontologies based on a revised theory of types. The theory leads to intolerably counterintuitive proliferations of senses of terms in natural languages. Its "proof" is shown to rest on the very propositions which the theory is supposed to establish. It presupposes the existence of a well defined set of grammatical but absurd sentence types. This assumption takes two forms. on the first interpretation, it prohibits an individual from turning up in two different categories; on the second interpretation, it amounts to the principle of transitivity of predication. But the first is supposed to be a "consequence" of the theory, ruling out Strawsonian persons; and the second turns up as a "theorem"."

5. Elgood, A.G. 1970. "Sommers's Rules of Sense." Philosophical Quarterly no. 20:166-169.

"There has recently been some discussion on Sommers's rules of sense. Dan Passel (1969) has drawn attention to the incompleteness of one of these rules (R (U)) but is prepared to accept it as " correct ", meaning "that no mistakes about terms having a use with one another follow from its use". Mrs. Susan Haack (1967) has produced what she considers counter-examples to another rule, that for enforcing ambiguity, and R. Van Straaten has alleged that these examples are not well-formed and therefore are not counterexamples. He doubts "for strictly logical reasons" whether anyone can produce a counter-example. Since he does not give any such reasons, and since I find the foundations for Sommers's own derivations unsatisfactory, I offer apparent counter-examples of my own. One counter-example can be used to invalidate several of Sommers's important sense rules. This is so because they have a common logical structure. This logical structure I shall now display."

6. Englebretsen, George, ed. 1987. The New Syllogistic. New York: Peter Lang.

Preface IX; Introduction 1; 1. Fred Sommers: The calculus of terms (reprinted from Mind, 89, (1970) 11; 2. Peter Swiggart: De Morgan and Sommers p. 57; 3. B. H. Slater: Back to Leibniz or on from Frege? 87; 4. Peter Frederick Strawson: Review: The logic of natural language (reprinted from The Journal of Philosophy, 79, (1982) 99; 5. Richard M. Martin: On the semantics of Sommers' 'Some S' (reprinted from Mind, modality, meaning and method (1983) 105; 6. John Bacon: Sommers and modern logic 121; 7. Michael Lockwood: Proofs and pronouns: extending the system 161; 8. W. H. Friedman: Algebraic rules for syllogisms and antilogisms 213; 9. Aris Noah: The two term theory of predication 223; 10. George Englebretsen: Natural syntax and Sommers' theory of logical form 245; 11. Richard Purtill: Some practical and theoretical features of Sommers' cancellation method 273; 12. Charles Sayward: Some problems with TFL [Traditional Formal Logic] 283; 13. Fred Sommers: Truth and existence 299; 14. George Englebretsen: Logical polarity 305; Notes on the contributors p. 313; Bibliography p. 315-322

7. Fjeld, Jon. 1974. "Sommers' Ontological Programme." Philosophical Studies no. 25:411-416.

8. Greenberg, Robert S. 1972. "Individuals and the Theory of Predication." The Journal of Philosophy no. 69:435-448.

"As is known, Fred Sommers has provided rules of sense (*) which can be used to determine: (a) whether certain terms can occur together in a significant subject-predicate sentence, (b) whether things covered by certain terms belong to the same type of thing, and (c) whether certain terms of a theory must be construed as being ambiguous, if the theory is to be coherent. Problems such as these fall within the area of philosophy sometimes called theory of predication, type theory, or, more generally, ontology, and hence the purpose of a large part of Sommers' program is to provide methods for distinguishing and placing in a coherent structure what are generally called categories."

(*) "Predicability" (1965) and "Types and ontology" (1963).

9. Griffin, Nicholas. 1977. "Do We Need Predication?" Dialogue.Canadian Philosophical Review no. 16:653-663.

"The paper is concerned with the standard distinction between the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication. It deals, in particular with attempts by Fred Sommers ("Journal of Philosophy", 1969) and Michael Lockwood ("Philosophical Review", 1975) to show that the distinction is ill-founded since identity statements are predications of singular terms. This proposal is criticized mainly on the grounds that the notion of a singular term depends upon identity and thus can't be used in a program to eliminate identity. An alternative means of removing the distinction between the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication, by eliminating predication in favour of relative identities using Geach's suggestion that "x" is "F" is equivalent to "x" is the same "F" as something, is briefly sketched."

10. Guerry, Herbert. 1967. "Sommers' Ontological Proof." Analysis no. 28:60-61.

11. Haack, Susan. 1967. "Equivocality: A Discussion of Sommers' Views." Analysis no. 28:159-165.

12. Hacking, Ian. 2001. "Aristotelian Categories and Cognitive Domains." Synthese no. 126:473-515.

"This paper puts together an ancient and a recent approach to classificatory language, thought, and ontology. It includes on the one hand an interpretation of Aristotle's ten categories,with remarks on his first category, called (or translated as) substance in the Categories or What a thing is in the Topics. On the other hand is the idea of domain-specific cognitive abilities urged in contemporary developmental psychology. Each family of ideas can be used to understand the other. Neither the metaphysical nor the psychological approach is intrinsically more fundamental; they complement each other. The paper incidentally clarifies distinct uses of the word "category" in different disciplines, and also attempts to make explicit several notions of "domain". It also examines Aristotle's most exotic and least discussed categories, being-in-a-position (e.g., sitting) and having-(on) (e.g., armour). Finally the paper suggests a tentative connection between Fred Sommers' theory of types and Aristotle's first category."

13. Kasher, Asa. 1972. "Sommers' Concept of Natural Syntax." Philosophical Studies (Ireland) no. 20:139-143.

"It is shown that syntactic principles are not sufficient for the solution of semantic paradoxes. Light is shed on Sommers' conception of natural syntax in On concepts of truth in natural languages (1969), by showing that his solution is also semantic in nature."

14. Keating, B.F. 1979. "Lockwood and Mill on Connotation and Predication." Analysis no. 4:183-188.

15. Kelley, David. 1994. The Art of Reasoning. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

See Chapter 9: Categorical syllogisms pp. 233-280.

16. Lockwood, Michael. 1975. "On Predicating Proper Names." The Philosophical Review no. 84:471-498.

"Mill's account of proper names presupposes -- contrary to current logical theory -- that in an identity sentence such as 'Cicero is Tully', 'is' has the same meaning as in sentences which are unquestionably of the 'S is P' form. The purpose of this article is to defend Mill's assumption and explore its implications. It is argued that Mill is inconsistent in holding both that, in the above sentence, 'Tully' is a genuine predicate and that proper names lack connotation. This tension may be removed, however, if we allow that proper names do connote, but that what they connote is merely the having of a certain identity."

17. ———. 1979. "A Question of Connotation: An Answer to Keating." Analysis no. 39:189-194.

18. Martin, Robert L. 1969. "Sommers on Denial and Negation." Noûs no. 3:219-226.

"Sommers' arguments in Predicability (1965) for a distinction between denial and negation (the former applying primarily to predicates, the latter to sentences) are criticized and found not to sustain the distinction. In response to his claim that the distinction permits a simple formal resolution of the predication paradoxes, I present a strengthened version of these paradoxes for which, apparently, the suggested resolution fails."

19. Massie, David. 1967. "Sommers' Tree Theory: A Reply to De Sousa." The Journal of Philosophy no. 64:185-193.

"In a recent article in this Journal Ronald Bon de Sousa attempts to criticize Fred Sommers' category theory, the"tree" theory, as described in "Types and Ontology." Sommers' paper is an important and brilliant contribution to formal linguistic analysis, and deserves critical attention. De Sousa, however, seems to have failed to understand it, in general and in detail; thus his remarks, which tend to be abusive in tone, are unilluminating and largely irrelevant. Since de Sousa may give the impression of having been as careful as he ought to have been, he can easily be misleading on some elementary but essential points in Sommers' theory, and for that reason his comments call for an answer."

20. McCulloch, Gregory. 1984. "Frege, Sommers, Singular Reference." In Frege: Tradition and Influence, edited by Crispin, Wright, 110-125. Oxford: Blackwell.

"In his provocative recent book [ The logic of natural language, 1982] Fred Sommers sets out to formulate a traditional term logic (hereafter TFL) that is a genuine and significant alternative to the Fregean type of logic (MPL) currently accepted as standard. (1) Broadly speaking, his procedure has two components. On the one hand, he tries to develop a logical syntax, based on the TFL model, that is roughly the equal of MPL in terms of expressive and inferential power. On the other, he engages in a sustained effort to show how such a logic would be free of certain logical and semantic commitments, allegedly typical of MPL, that are, according to Sommers, implausible or otherwise unsatisfactory.

In the present paper I do not question the extent of Sommers's success in the first task; nor do I try directly to defend MPL against his strictures. My concern is with one fundamental difference between the two logical frameworks as Sommers sees them. This supposed difference concerns expressions like proper names that appear to make straightforward singular reference to particular objects. Sommers argues at length that many of the significant differences alleged to hold between the two logics can be traced to the way that they handle such expressions. This contention he links to his claim that whereas the basic propositions of MPL are singular, those of TFL are general; and this in turn he links to his view that the two logics are based upon significantly different accounts of the first-order generality expressed by words like 'all' and `some' (Sommers, Ch. 1-5, 11-12). I try to show that these claims are greatly exaggerated.

Even if one grants that Sommers succeeds in giving a novel, TFL-style account of first-order generality, it is a mistake to think, as Sommers does, that this novelty consists in an interesting avoidance of commitment to the idea of singular reference. This is, furthermore, an entirely distinct issue from that of the semantic treatment of proper names. Sommers's claims gain a spurious' plausibility because of his failure to keep these distinct questions apart. And finally, anyway, we see that one's adoption of logical framework - TFL or MPL - does not materially affect one's options when dealing with proper names: both logics can accommodate any of the usual alternatives. If I am right in all this, the appearance of deep differences over singular reference just dissolves.

Sommers's book deserves careful and extended attention. Both in the effort to reinstate TFL as a worthwhile approach, and in the claim to have succeeded, Sommers finds himself in opposition to much received `Fregean' opinion in logic, semantics, and the philosophy of language. Illumination is to be had from a piecemeal treatment of the many issues raised here. This paper is just one restricted contribution to that enterprise."

(1) 'MPL' and `TFL' are Sommers's own abbreviations for 'Modern Predicate Logic' and `Traditional Formal Logic' respectively. He attempts no precise definition of what a logic must be like if it is to count as MPL-type, but seems to have in mind logics that employ quantifier/variable notations in a more or less orthodox manner. Similarly, his use of 'logic' is quite flexible, and is used to apply not merely to a given calculus but to this plus the concepts, notions, and presuppositions that a standard semantic interpretation would employ. I follow him in this, although certain dangers in this are highlighted in §§ II and III.

21. Mendelsohn, Richard L. 1987. "Frege Two Senses of 'Is'." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 28:139-160.

24. "It is widely believed that there are two senses of 'is', the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication, and that this distinction was clearly drawn by Frege in On Concept and Object, although it was anticipated by others, perhaps, e.g., by Plato in the Sophist. As opposed to this received view, I will argue that Frege had not successfully distinguished two senses of 'is', indeed that his argument leads to precisely the opposite conclusion; on the other hand, the distinction Plato had supposedly drawn in the Sophist, which seems to rest on a semantics Frege was explicitly rejecting, is, given that semantic framework, viable.

Frege had introduced this distinction in order to buttress his view that proper names could not serve as genuine predicates: a proper name occupying ostensible predicate position could not be functioning as a predicate because the 'is' in such a statement would have to be the 'is' of identity, not the 'is' of predication.

I will argue that Frege had been mistaken on this point as well. More generally, I will argue that Frege's theoretical analysis of language is not, as he had thought, incompatible with proper names being allowed to play a genuinely predicative role.

My remarks are prompted by Michael Lockwood's stimulating article, On Predicating Proper Names (1975), which contains an extensive and detailed criticism of Frege's position."

22. Murphree, Wallace A. 1998. "Numerical Term Logic." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 39:346-362.

"This paper is an attempt to show that my work to establish numerically flexible quantifiers for the syllogism can be aptly combined with the term logic advanced by Sommers, Englebretsen, and others."

23. Nelson, John D. 1964. "On Sommers' Reinstatement of Russell's Ontological Program." The Philosophical Review no. 73:517-521.

"In this discussion-paper I question four theses that I took Sommers to be advancing, among others, in Types and ontology: (1) that types are indifferent to predicate denial; (2) that a formal method of type discrimination can establish as correct a specific ontology; (3) that subjects of sentences can be located by certain described formal methods; and (4) that there must be one category that includes all others.

See the reply by Sommers: A program for coherence - Philosophical Review, 1964, pp. 522-527.

24. ———. 1965. "An Examination of Sommers' Truth-Functional Counterfactuals." Theoria no. 31:61-63.

25. Noah, Aris. 1980. "Predicate Functors and the Limits of Decidability in Logic." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 21:701-707.

26. Odegard, Douglas. 1964. "On Closing the Truth-Value Gap." Analysis no. 25:10-12.

27. Oderberg, David S. 2005. The Old New Logic. Essays on the Philosophy of Fred Sommers. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Contents: Preface and acknowledgments VII; Foreword by P. F. Strawson XI-XII; 1. Fred Sommers: Intellectual autobiography 1; 2. George Englebretsen: Trees, terms, and truth: the philosophy of Fred Sommers 25; 3. E. J. Lowe: Syntax and ontology: reflections on three logical systems 49; 4. Frank C. Keil: Exploring boundary conditions on the structure of knowledge: some nonobvious influences of philosophy on psychology 67; 5. Alan Berger: General terms, anaphora, and rigid designation 85; 6. Patrick Suppes: The syntax and semantics of English prepositional phrases 101; 7. William C. Purdy: Modeling anaphora in TFL 111; 8. Steven Lindell: An elementary term logic for physically realizable models of information 135; 9. Aris Noah: Sommers's cancellations technique and the method of resolution 169; 10. David S. Odeberg: Predicate logic and bare particulars 183; 11. Comments and replies 211; Works by Fred Sommers 233; Contributors 237; Index 239

28. Passell, Dan. 1969. "On Sommers' Logic of Sense and Nonsense." Mind:132-133.

"Sommers' rule, R(U), for testing sense arguments, taken as an assertion about what makes sense, fails to state a necessary condition of what makes sense. Counterexamples to that assertion occur with terms taken from the same node of his ordinary language tree. For one example, the color terms, alabaster, blue, cream, dun, which obviously do make sense together, cannot be classified as making sense together by the rule. This is because the condition required by the rule for determining that two terms make sense cannot be met for terms at the same node."

29. Peterson, Philip L. 1995. "Contraries and the Cubes and Disks of Opposition." Metaphilosophy no. 26:107-137.

"Prior, Sommers, and McIntosh hold that propositional contrariety is derivative, based on term contrariety. I argue that propositional contrariety is basic. In a proper Aristotelian square, one proposition is contrary to another if and only if the one properly entails the denial of the other.

Term contrariness produces a "cube" of opposition. Contrariety can be further elaborated on "bare" cubes and disks. Geach's analyses involving multiple quantifiers give no support for term-contrariness-as-basic, and there is little hope for developing H. W. B. Joseph's vague idea about "furtherest apart" on a quantitative scale."

30. Purdy, William C. 1992. "On the Question: 'Do We Need Identity?'." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 33:593-603.

31. "This paper formalizes and extends Sommers' position on identity. This formalization is compared with MPL to define precisely the difference in expressive power. The formal language defined for this investigation is similar to the language of MPL (modern predicate logic). The similarity will not only facilitate comparison, but perhaps will also make this formal language more palatable to readers whose experience and/or predisposition favors MPL."

31. Reinhardt, L.R. 1965. "Dualism and Categories." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 66:71-92.

32. Richmond, Samuel A. 1971. "Sommers on Predicability." The Journal of Philosophy no. 68:138-142.

"Sommers has introduced a rule for enforcing ambiguity which indicates the conditions under which a term cannot univocally bridge a type difference. I argue that the theory of predication from which the rule follows is either false or ambiguous in one of its crucial concepts. Sommers suggests the theory of predication may better set the bounds of metaphysics than the theory of knowledge. But the theory of predication itself needs to be justified by showing its epistemic utilities."

33. ———. 1975. "A Possible Empirical Violation of Sommers' Rule for Enforcing Ambiguity." Philosophical Studies no. 28:363-366.

"In an article entitled "Predicability," Fred Sommers has introduced a rule for enforcing ambiguity which indicates the logical conditions under which a predicate cannot univocally bridge a type difference. the rule places unacceptable a priori restrictions on future empirical discoveries.

The plausibility of the rule can be explained by the fact that violation of it in constructing empirical universal generalizations results in dualism and detracts from the unity of science.

Dualism exists when there are two sets of predicates such that members of each set enter into universally general statements only with members of the same set."

34. Routley, Richard. 1969. "Categories. Expressions or Things?" Theoria no. 35:215-238.

"Rival views on the composition of categories hold that categories are categories of things, that they are categories of expressions, or that they are both simultaneously. In view of the significance paradoxes-analogues of the modal paradoxes - here introduced, all these positions must be rejected, and two different sorts of meaninglessness distinguished. This distinction leads to the formulation of two distinct category theories, one apparently concerned with things, the other with descriptions. A case is made out for inclusive categories and against exclusive categories. Systematic ambiguity is attacked and shown to be tantamount to exclusiveness of categories. To allow for inclusive categories the usual notion of 'in the same category as' must be abandoned and replaced by a relative notion, except for certain sorts of categories - minimal categories. A definition of 'in the same category as' is proposed for minimal categories; and some aspects of Ryle's theory and Sommers's theory are examined in the light of these results."

35. Sayward, Charles. 1976. "A Defense of Sommers." Philosophical Studies no. 29:343-347.

"Among the theses of Sommers' type theory are these: every individual belongs to some type; every category is a union of types. A recent criticism of Sommers is directed at these two theses. I argue that the criticism is mistaken."

36. ———. 1978. "Are There Infinitely Many Sorts of Things?" Philosophia.Philosophical Quarterly of Israel no. 8:17-30.

37. ———. 1981. "The Tree Theory and Isomorphism." Analysis no. 41:6-11.

"A main thesis of Fred Sommers' type theory, is that an isomorphism exists between any natural language and the categories discriminated by that language. Here I give an explanation of what this claim comes to. And then I argue that, so understood, the claim is incompatible with Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory. Finally, I argue against trying to salvage the isomorphism thesis by appealing to some other set theory."

38. Sayward, Charles, and Voss, Stephen H. 1972. "Absurdity and Spanning." Philosophia.Philosophical Quarterly of Israel no. 2:227-238.

"On the basis of observations J. J. C. Smart once made concerning the absurdity of sentences like 'the seat of the bed is hard', a plausible case can be made that there is little point to developing a theory of types, particularly one of the sort envisaged by Fred Sommers. The authors defend such theories against this objection by a partial elucidation of the distinctions between the concepts of spanning and predicability and between category mistakenness and absurdity in general. The argument suggests that further clarification of the concepts of spanning and category mistakenness should be sought in reflection upon the more familiar concepts of a sort of thing and a predicate category."

39. Shearson, W.A. 1977. "Speaking of Philosophy: A Reply to Paul Churchland." Dialogue.Canadian Philosophical Review no. 16:502-506.

"In his critique of George Englebretsen's Speaking of persons (1975), Paul Churchland has failed, on several accounts, to grasp the intent of Englebretsen's work. Most importantly, he has not seen that the main task there was to defend a particular theory of persons (videlicet attributism). Much of Churchland's confusion is shown to follow from his inability to connect Englebretsen's work with the logico-linguistic studies of F. Sommers on the one hand and the metaphysical studies of P. F. Strawson on the other."

40. Straaten, R.van. 1968. "Sommers' Rule and Equivocity." Analysis no. 29:58-61.

41. ———. 1971. "A Modification of Sommers' Rule." Philosophical Studies no. 22:16-20.

42. ———. 1971. "Sommers on Strawson's and Descartes' Ontology." Mind no. 80:148-149.

43. Suzman, Jonathan. 1972. "The Ordinary Language Lattice." Mind no. 81:434-436.

"F. Sommers ("Mind" 1959, "Philosophical Review" 1963) claims the predicates (monadic) of natural languages, if grouped by a relation u, or cosignificance, generate topological trees. if true, this would have wide philosophical significance; Sommers' ontology rests on this claim about trees. but it is false, in that the u-relation can be shown not to generate trees but lattices. if any natural languages do have the tree, rather than the lattice structure this would need empirical demonstration. this is proved with the help of two notions, that of the significance range of a term, and that of a constructible predicate true of all items in a terms significance range. it is also shown that u is in fact a vacuous tie, in that all terms are so related."

44. Swiggart, Peter. 1972. "The Limits of Statement Denial." Mind no. 81:437-442.

"This paper discusses Fred Sommers' distinction between statement negation and statement denial, as outlined in 'Predicability' and other papers. First I show that the formal nature of the distinction requires us to regard a given statement as having only a single denial. This point dissipates Sommers' proposed solution to the counterfactual problem, since that solution depends upon the existence of multiple denials of a given statement. Sommers' difficulty is traced to the assumption that an ordinary language sentence like 'S is unclean' can be recognized as a statement denial. But such recognition proves to be inherently ambiguous. Sommers' terminology can be an effective means of introducing the results of type analysis into standard logical notation, but strict and possibly intolerable limits must be placed upon its use in formulating basic type theory or as a help in solving traditional philosophical problems."

45. Szabolcsi, Lorne. 2008. Numerical Term Logic. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press.

Edited by George Englebretsen.

Contents: Preface by George Englebretsen I; Foreword by Fred Sommers V-XII; 1. Introduction 1; 2. Numerical Term Logic 11; 2.1 Logical Notation 11; 2.1.1. Rudiments of the Notational Extension 11; 2.1.2. Non-exceptive Occurrences of "At least" and "Fewer than" 16; 2.1.3. Exact Quantification 20;

2.1.4. Comparatives 22; 2.1.5. Fractional Quantities 24; 2.1.6. Subjective Natural Language Quantifiers 26; 2.2. Inference in NTL 2; 2.2.1. Quantifier Transformation 32; 2.2.2. Guaranteed Reference 35: 2.2.3. Existential Implication 39; 2.2.4 Distribution 42; 2.2.5. Mediate Logical Inference: Quantifier Addition 44; 2.2.6. Algebraic Inference 57; 2.3. Further Developments in NTL 67; 2.3.1. The Plurivocality of "Some" 67; 2.3.2. "Only" 68; 2.3.3. "Most" vs. "The Majority" 70; 2.3.4. Wild Quantity 72; 2.3.5. Definite Descriptions 74; 2.3.6. Subalternation 76; 3. Other Systems of Intermediate Quantification 81; 3.1. Bruce Thompson 82; 3.2. Philip Peterson 92; 3.3. Wallace Murphree 99; 3.4. A Note on Generalized Quantifiers 101; 4. Conclusion 103; 5. Notes 105; 6. Bibliography 115; 7. Index 117-119.

"The ability to reason with numerically quantified propositions is of practical as well as theoretical importance. Lorne's Szabolcsi's valuable unpublished writings should be studied and edited for publication. His pioneering contributions to numerical logic deserve to be recognized and well-known. I know of no better method than his for dealing with numerical arguments." (Fred Sommers, p. XII).

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

D. M. (David Malet) Armstrong's Moderate Realism

Bibliography

Books

1. Armstrong, David Malet. 1978. Universals and Scientific Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge.

Volume One: Nominalism and Realism

Contents: Acknowledgments VI; Index VII-XI; Introduction XIII-XV; Part One: Preliminaries; 1. Predicates 1; Part Two: Theories of Universals; 2. Predicate Nominalism 11; 3. Concept Nominalism 25; 4. Class Nominalism 28; 5. Resemblance Nominalism 44; 6. Arguments for realism 58; 7. Transcendent universals 64; 8. Properties and relations as particulars 77; Part Three: Particulars; 9. Are particulars reducible to universals? 89; 10. The Lockean account of particulars 102; Particulars and universals 108; 12. A world-hypothesis 126; The argument of volume II 133; Glossary of terms and principles formulated 136; Works cited 141; Index to volume I 145.

Volume Two: A theory of Universals

The argument of volume I 1; Part Four: Predicates and universals; 13. Relations between predicates and universals 7; 14. Rejection of disjunctive and negative universals 19; 15. Acceptance of conjunctive universals 30; 16. The identification of universals 43; 17. Different semantic correlations between predicates and universals 53; Part Five: Properties and relations; 18. Properties 61; 19. Relations 75; Part six: The analysis of resemblance 95; 21. The resemblance of universals (I) 101; 22. The resemblance of universals (II): a new account 116; Part Seven: Higher-order universals; 23. Higher-order properties 133; 24. Higher-order relations 148; In conclusion 167; Glossary of terms and principles formulated 169; Works cited 177; Index to volume I and II 183.

"It is argued in this work, first, that there are universals, both monadic and polyadic, that is, properties and relations, which exist independently of the classifying mind. Realism is thus accepted, Nominalism rejected. Second, it is argued that no monadic universal is found except as a property of some particular, and no polyadic universal except as a relation holding between particulars. Transcendent or Platonic Realism is thus rejected. Third, it is argued that what universals there are is not to be determined simply by considering what predicates can be applied to particulars. Instead, it is the task of total science, conceived of as total enquiry, to determine what universals there are. The view defended is therefore a scientific Realism about universals. It might also be called a posteriori Realism. The working out of a scientific Realism about universals is intended to be the special contribution of these volumes.

Contemporary philosophy recognizes two main lines of argument for the existence of objective universals. The first is, or is a descendant of, Plato's One over Many argument. Its premiss is that many different particulars can all have what appears to be the same nature. In the terms used by C. S. Peirce, different tokens may all be of the same type. The conclusion of the argument is simply that in general this appearance cannot be explained away, but must be accepted. There is such a thing as identity of nature.

I take this argument to be sound. But the argument is sometimes presented as an argument from genera words. It is asked how a general term can be applied to an indefinite multiplicity of particulars. It is answered that these particulars must be identical in some respect. There are two disadvantages in presenting the argument in this linguistic fashion. First, it obscures the fact that the same term may apply in virtue of different natures of the different particulars. As a result, where Realism is embraced, it is likely to be a priori rather than scientific Realism. Second, presenting the argument linguistically encourages confusion with an unsound argument to universals from meaning.

This second argument moves from the existence of meaningful general words to the existence of universals which are the meanings of those words. Universals are postulated as the second term of the meaning relation. The argument from ideal cases, such as Plato's perfect circle, is perhaps a special case of this semantic argument to universals.

I regard this second line of argument as completely unsound. Furthermore, I believe that the identification of universals with meanings (connotations, intensions), which this argument presupposes, has been a 'disaster for the theory of universals. A thoroughgoing separation of the theory of universals from the theory of the semantics of general terms is in fact required. Only if we first develop a satisfactory theory of universals can we expect to develop fruitfully the further topic of the semantics of general terms. Philosophers have all too often tried to proceed in the opposite way.

In this first volume, Nominalism and Realism, I criticize at length and reject various versions of Nominalism, together with Platonic Realism. I also examine and reject the view that properties and relations are as particular as the objects which have properties and relations. I conclude that we must admit objective universals which, however, cannot exist independently of particulars. I go on to examine the notion of a particular and reject the view that we can give an account of particulars as "bundles of universals". The conclusion drawn is that particularity and universality, irreducible to each other, are both involved in all existence. I end the first book by sketching a world-hypothesis which admits nothing but particulars having (universal) properties and relations.

The position reached at that point, though contested by many, is, at least in general outline, familiar enough. But in the second volume a detailed attempt is made to work out a theory of universals which is based upon natural science. In making this attempt, I enter relatively unexplored territory. For with the exception of a suggestive paper by Hilary Putnam (1970a) contemporary philosophers, at least, have largely ignored the possibility of developing a theory of objective universals, where the particular universals admitted are determined cm the basis of scientific rather than semantic considerations. It might perhaps be argued that Plato in his later works, Aristotle and the Scholastic Realists were ahead of contemporary philosophy in this matter, although handicapped by the relative backwardness of the science and the scientific methodology of their day.

My contention is that, by accepting this a posteriori Realism, the theory of universals, arguably the central problem of ontology, can be placed on a securer and more intelligible foundation than anything previously available. In particular, such a doctrine makes possible the reconciliation of an empiricist epistemology, which I wish to retain, with ontological realism about universals.

Not all particulars are first-order particulars. Universals themselves fall under universals. That is to say, universals have certain properties and stand in certain relations to each other. In the final part of the second book an attempt is made to work out a theory of higher-order universals, but, again, one which is compatible with an empiricist epistemology. Of quite particular importance is the topic of relations between universals. For this topic may hold the key to an account of the nature of causation and of nomic necessity. By this means, it may prove possible to answer Hume without sacrificing Empiricism.

Finally, a word on the phrase "a posteriori Realism". The phrase may suggest that the theory advanced in this work is supported to be supported by a posteriori reasonings of the sort with which natural science has made us familiar. This is far from being the case. The reasoning will have the characteristically a priori flavour which philosophical reasonings, especially when they concern first philosophy, seem inevitably, if distressingly, to have. What is maintained is the proposition that what universals there are is to be determined a posteriori. The status of this proposition is, however, a further question. It may have to be established, if it can be established, by a priori or relatively a priori reasoning." (Introduction to the First volume).

2. ———. 1989. Universals. An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder: Westview Press.

Contents: Preface XI-XII; 1. The problem 1; 2. Primitive natural classes 21; 3. Resemblance nominalism 39; 4. Particulars as bundles of universals 59; 5. Universals as attributes 75; 6. Tropes 113; 7. Summing up 135; References 141; Index 145.

"This book is intended to be intelligible to the advanced undergraduate student and should also be suitable for graduate seminars. However, I hope that it will also be of interest to professional philosophers, particularly those who are sympathetic to the project of an empirical metaphysics. Since the publication of my book Universals and Scientific Realism in 1978, although my views have remained the same in broad outline, I have become aware of various mistakes and omissions in what I said then. The present work, therefore, besides introducing the topic, tries to push the subject further ahead.

I now think that a particular type of moderate Nominalism, moderate because it admits properties and relations, but a Nominalism because it takes the properties and relations to be particulars rather than universals, can be developed as an important and quite plausible rival to a moderate Realism about universals. In the earlier book I gave such a Nominalism only brief consideration. By contrast, in this work a battle between Nominalists and Realists over the status of properties and relations becomes one main theme.

In general, I have largely confined myself to moderate Nominalisms and moderate Realisms. That host of contemporary philosophers who unreflectively substitute classes of particulars for properties and relations I take to be immoderate Nominalists. However, many of the arguments that I bring against the more moderate Natural Class theory are also arguments against this orthodoxy. I would also classify Quine as an extreme Nominalist (although he himself would not, on the grounds that he recognizes classes and that these are "abstract" or "platonic" entities)." From the Preface.

"Brushing aside the uneconomical view that admits both tropes and universals, we have a choice in Trope theory between natural class and resemblance views. The same sort of consideration that favors resemblances rather than natural classes of "regular" particulars seems to me to favor a Trope theory with resemblance. And although it is orthodox to bundle the tropes, I doubt if they are really well suited to be the substance of the world. We do better, with Locke and C. B. Martin, to hold the trope view in a substance-attribute form.

Our final two contenders, then, I suggest, are a Universals theory and a Trope Resemblance theory, each held in a substance-attribute form. How do we adjudicate between these two?

The Trope theory in its resemblance and substance-attribute form seems to me to face two unpleasantnesses. The first is relatively minor. It is the possibility of swapping exactly resembling tropes, to which attention was drawn in Section IX of Chapter 6. It is a somewhat implausible 'possibility', and is excluded by the substitution of universals for tropes.

The second difficulty is more serious, I think. It is the fact that the features of resemblance, what we have called the Axioms of Resemblance, would be explained with the greatest naturalness, simplicity, and economy if resemblance of nature was always identity of nature, either partial or complete identity. The difficulty, it will be remembered, is that the Axioms of Resemblance can be derived from the properties of identity provided that it is allowed that resemblance can be analyzed in terms of identity, that is, in terms of universals (Chapter 5, Section X). A Resemblance theory must treat this as a mere metaphysical coincidence between the properties of resemblance and the properties of identity. It is a serious difficulty for any resemblance analysis that the irreducibility of resemblance is so implausible an irreducibility.

What of the difficulties faced by the Universals theory? It might be thought that a great difficulty lies in its strange primitive: the cross-categorial and fundamental tie or nexus of instantiation. The Resemblance theory has no such problem because its tie of resemblance is an internal relation, supervening upon the particularized natures of the resembling things.

I do not think that instantiation involves any special difficulty for the Universals theory. Barring the postulation of a special nontransferability for tropes, we have seen the need for states of affairs for all layer-cake theories, including those involving tropes. If tropes are the attributes of substances, which I have argued is the best view of the matter, then a fundamental tie or nexus is involved, that is, there will be states of affairs involving substances, which are particulars, having properties, and also substances standing in relation to each other. If the bundle conception is correct, then a bundling tie (compresence) is still involved, and relations hold between bundles. Instantiations are just states of affairs involving universals and seem to involve no more paradox or difficulty than states of affairs involving tropes.

Where I do see trouble for a Universals theory is the question of the resemblance of universals. Once universals are admitted, it must also be admitted that universals themselves can be ordered and grouped by resemblance relations. These relations, however, involve less than exact resemblance. (Two universals could not resemble exactly!)

The vital question, then, is whether this less than exact resemblance of universals is or is not analyzable. My idea is that it is analyzable, analyzable in terms of a partial, an incomplete, identity of constituents of the universals involved, where these constituents are themselves universals. (In a Trope Resemblance theory, it would be a matter of exact resemblance of some, but only some, constituents of the inexactly resembling tropes.)

If this analysis of the inexact resemblance of universals can be carried through, then the Universals theory is considerably strengthened. But if it cannot be carried through, the theory is weakened, because the inexact resemblances will presumably have to be taken as unanalyzable primitives, strengthening the notion that exact resemblance is no more than the highest degree of this primitive.

So, a great deal turns on whether the analysis of the inexact resemblance of universals can be carried through. I think that it can be carried through, but it faces some formidable ontological and epistemological difficulties. A key question here is the nature of quantities. A quantity is for me a family of property universals bound together by inexact but systematic resemblances, but resemblances that involve identical constituents of the universals involved (see Armstrong - Are quantities relations? 1988). Here is an important area for further work." pp. 136-138.

3. ———. 1989. A Combinatorialist Theory of Possibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Preface IX-XII; Part I: Non-naturalist theories of possibility. 1. The causal argument Part II: A combinatorial and naturalist account of possibility. 3; 2. Non-naturalist theories of possibility 14; 3. Possibility in a simple world 37; 4. Expanding and contracting the world 54; 5. Relative atoms 66; 6. Are there de re incompatibilities and necessities? 77; 7. Higher-order entities, negation and causation 87; 8. Supervenience 103; 9. Mathematics 119; 10. Final question: logic 138; Works cited 141; Appendix: Tractarian nominalism by Brian Skyrms 145; Index 153.

"What is put forward in this essay is a new version of the metaphysic of Logical Atomism. It is a Logical Atomism completely purged of semantic and epistemic atomism. The idea that one can reach the atoms by analysing meanings is utterly rejected. In general, it is not for philosophers to say what the fundamental constituents of the world are. That question is to be settled a posteriori. It is a question for total science.

The version of Logical Atomism put forward here even abstracts from the question of whether there are any atoms at all at the bottom of the world. That too is a question to be decided a posteriori, if it can be decided at all. In Chapter 5 I argue that Logical Atomism can still be sustained even if we never get past merely relative atoms.

But if there may be no genuine atoms, why continue to speak of Logical! Atomism? I do so because, with a little qualification, the scheme presented cleaves to the fundamental idea that the states of affairs into which the world divides (Wittgenstein's and Russell's atomic facts) are logically independent of each other. Each one is, as I will say, distinct from every other.

This becomes the basis of what I think is a simple (and naturalistic) Combinatorial theory of possibility. In his article 'Tractarian Nominalism' (*) Brian Skyrms sketches a metaphysics of facts (states of affairs, as I put it), facts having as constituents individuals and universals (the latter divided into properties and relations). I had already argued for such a position in my book Universals and Scientific Realism (1978). What I had not noticed was what Skyrms pointed out: that this could become the basis for a theory of possibility. The present work is an attempt to develop Skyrms's insight. With his approval, and the permission of the D. Reidel Publishing Company, his article is reprinted at the end of this volume as an appendix." (From the Preface)

(*) [Philosophical Studies, vol. 40, 1981, pp. 199-206]

4. Armstrong, David Malet, Martin, Charles Burton, and Place, Ullin Thomas. 1996. Dispositions. A Debate. New York: Routledge.

Edited and with an introduction by Tim Crane.

Contents: List of authors VII-VIII; Part I. The Armstrong-Place debate; 1. D. M. Armstrong: Dispositions as categorical states 15; 2. U. T. Place: Dispositions as intentional states 19; 3. D. M. Armstrong: Place's and Armstrong's views compared and contrasted 33; 4. U. T. Place A conceptualist ontology 49; Part Ii. The Martin-Armstrong-Place debate; 5. C. B. Martin: Properties and dispositions 71; 6. D. M. Armstrong: Reply to Martin 88; U. T. Place: Structural properties: categorical, dispositional or both? 105; 8. C. B. Martin: Replies to Armstrong and Place 126; D. M. Armstrong: Second reply to Martin 147; 10. U. T. Place: Conceptualism and the ontological independence of cause and effect 153; 11. C. B. Martin: Final replies to Place and Armstrong 163; Index 193.

"This book is about the nature of dispositional properties, or dispositions.

is hard to give an uncontroversial definition of the notion of a disposition, since its very definition is one of the matters under dispute. But we can make a start with the following preliminary definition: a disposition is a property (such as solubility, fragility, elasticity) whose instantiation entails that the thing which has the property would change, or bring about some change, under certain conditions. For instance, to say that some object is soluble is to say that it would dissolve if put in water, to say that something is fragile is to say that it would break if «or instance) dropped in suitable circumstances; to say that something is elastic is to say that it would stretch when pulled. The fragility elasticity) is a disposition; the breaking (dissolving, stretching is the manifestation of the disposition.

The contemporary philosophical controversy over dispositions is the descendant of earlier disputes - for example, Aristotle's view of actualities and potentialities, and Locke's view of secondary qualities as 'powers'. The recent interest in dispositions arose in two main areas of philosophy: the philosophy of science and the philosophy of mind. The interest in dispositions in the philosophy of science resulted from the logical empiricists' worries about unobservables - how could the whole of physics be expressed in terms of propositions about sense-experiences if physics requires attribution of dispositional qualities, which need have no manifestation in sense-experience?' The interest in dispositions in the philosophy of mind largely arose through behaviourist definitions of belief and other mental states, according to which belief is a disposition to act and/or to speak. Among the questions with which the philosophy of mind grappled were: how should such dispositions be defined, and what explains the possession of such dispositions?

The three participants in the present Debate have all made substantial contributions to the philosophy of mind in the last fifty years. U.T. Place is well-known as one of the originators (with Herbert Feigl) of the mind-brain identity theory - and his work influenced other pioneers such as J.J.C. Smart. D.M. Armstrong was one of the first to develop in detail a causal theory of the mind. C.B. Martin had already been an early proponent of the causal theory of mind, and played a crucial role in the development of the philosophy of mind in Australia, which then spread throughout the rest of analytic philosophy's world. Part of Martin's role in influencing the shift from behaviourism to physicalism and functionalism was to insist on the importance of what carne to be called the 'Truthmaker Principle': the principle that when a statement is true, there must be something (some fact or event or property) that makes it true?

Each of these three philosophers has developed a distinct conception of the nature of dispositions, conceptions which are central in their thought on mind, matter and causation. In this Introduction I shall give a brief guide to the difference between them. In order to do this I need to say something (not wholly impartial) about the recent background to the debate about dispositions, and a little about how to characterize dispositional and categorical properties." (From the Introdcution by Tim Crane, pp. 1-2).

5. Armstrong, David Malet. 1997. A World of State of Affairs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Preface XI; -XIII; 1. Introduction 1; 2. Some preliminary doctrines 11; 3. Properties I 19; 4. Properties II 47; 5. Powers and dispositions 69; 6. Relations 85; 7. Particulars 95; 8. States of affairs 113; 9. Independence 139; 10. Modality 148; 11. Number 175; 12. Classes 185; 13. Totality states of affairs 196; 14. Singular causation 202; 15. Laws I 220; 16. Laws Ii 242; 17. The unity of the world 263; References 270; Index 277.

"During the past twenty years or so, I have been working on ontological questions. What are universals, laws of nature, dispositions and powers, possibilities and necessities, classes, numbers? The present essay tries to bring all these topics together in a unified metaphysical scheme, an ontology. As a result, there is a certain amount of recapitulation of earlier writing. But putting the pieces together turned out to be quite difficult. A good deal of further work was necessary. Many mistakes, as I now think of them, had to be corrected. So what follows is not a mere sum of past thinking." (From the Preface)

"The hypothesis of this work is that the world, all that there is, is a world of states of affairs. Others, Wittgenstein in particular, have said that the world is a world of facts and not a world of things. These theses are substantially the same, though differently expressed.

The general structure of states of affairs will be argued to be this. A state of affairs exists if and only if a particular (at a later point to be dubbed a thin particular) has a property or, instead, a relation holds between two or more particulars. Each state of affairs, and each constituent of each state of affairs, meaning by their constituents the particulars, properties, relations and, in the case of higher-order states of affairs, lower-order states of affairs, is a contingent existent. The properties and the relations are universals, not particulars. The relations are all external relations.

It is useful to admit molecular states of affairs. These, however, are mere conjunctions (never negations or disjunctions) of the original states of affairs. Molecular states of affairs constitute no ontological addition to their conjuncts. But in one special case, to be mentioned in a moment, they become very important.

For first-order states of affairs, that is, states of affairs that do not have states of affairs as constituents, the Tractarian thesis of Independence is somewhat speculatively, but nevertheless hopefully, advanced. No such state of affairs entails or excludes the existence of any other wholly distinct state of affairs. Given Independence, a rather simple and straightforward Combinatorial theory of what possibilities there are, can be put forward. If Independence fails, things get more complicated.

The present theory is not biased towards Atomism nor is it biased against Atomism. An epistemic possibility that requires to be noted is the possibility that every (first-order) state of affairs is molecular, that is, analysable into a conjunction of states of affairs. (A simple if to a degree controversial example: a' being F may be equivalent to a's being G & a' being H, with F=G & H. The pattern may be repeated for G and H, and so for ever.) Every first-order state of affairs may be a nest of first-order states of affairs: states of affairs all the way down. To allow for this epistemic possibility, a Combinatorial theory of what possibilities there are requires further elaboration." pp. 1-2.

6. ———. 2004. Truth and Truthmakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Preface XI-XII; 1. An introduction to truthmakers 1; 2. The general theory of truthmaking 4; 3. Epistemology and methodology 26; 4. Properties, relations and states of affairs 39; 5. Negative truths 53; 6. General truths 68; 7. Truthmakers for modal truths, part 1: possibility 83; 8. Truthmakers for modal truths, part 2: necessity 95; 9. Numbers and classes 112; 10. Causes, laws and dispositions 125; 11. Time 145; References 151; Index 155.

"To postulate certain truthmakers for certain truths is to admit those truthmakers to one's ontology. The complete range of truthmakers admitted constitutes a metaphysics, which alerts us to the important point, stressed already but bearing much repetition, that the hunt for truthmakers is as controversial and difficult as the enterprise of metaphysics. I think that proceeding by looking for truthmakers is an illuminating and useful regimentation of the metaphysical enterprise, or at least the enterprise of a realist metaphysics. But it is no easy and automatic road to the truth in such matters.

But this raises the question of Quine, and the signalling of ontological commitment by what we are prepared to 'quantify over'. Why should we desert Quine's procedure for some other method? The great advantage, as I see it, of the search for truthmakers is that it focuses us not merely on the metaphysical implications of the subject terms of propositions but also on their predicates. Quine has told us that the predicate gives us 'ideology' rather than ontology. (*) This saying is rather dark, but it is clear that, to some degree, he has stacked the ontological deck against predicates as opposed to subject terms. But when we look to truthmakers for truths, subject and predicate start as equals, and we can consider the ontological implications of both in an unbiased way.

The doing of ontological justice to the predicate leads us to consider whether we do not require at least selected properties and relations in our ontology. If properties and relations are admitted, we may think that some ontological connection between subjects and predicates is further required, and thus, perhaps, be led to postulate facts or states of affairs among our truthmakers. The propositional nature of truths will in any case push us in the same direction. The existence of negative truths and general truths raises the question whether negative and general facts are required as truthmakers. Ali these difficult metaphysical issues (which will receive discussion in chs. 5 and 6) tend to be swept under the carpet by correlating one's ontology with the subject term only of truths (what one takes to be truths).

Some may argue that what I see here as advantages of thinking in terms of truthmakers are actually disadvantages. The world is a world of things not of facts, it may be said, and so we do not want facts, and the nightmare of such entities as negative facts, in our ontology. This is an arguable position, of course, but, conceding it true for the sake of argument, it can still be accommodated by a doctrine of truthmakers. Let the world be a world of things. The fundamental truths (those that have unique minimal truthmakers) will then have the form 'X exists' and the Xs, whatever they may be, will be truthmakers for these truths." pp. 23-24

(*) Quine writes: 'In science all is tentative, all admits of revision . But ontology is, pending revision, more clearly in hand than what rnay be called ideology - the question of admissible predicates' (Quine, The way of paradox and other essay, New York, Random House, 1966, p. 232).

Essays

1. ———. 1972. "Materialism. Properties and Predicates." Monist no. 56:163-176.

"How are contingent identifications ('heat is mean kinetic energy') possible? It is argued, first, that we require a realistic (but not Platonistic) theory of properties. second, that we must reject the common assumption that to each distinct predicate there corresponds its own peculiar property. Contingent identification occurs where two distinct predicates apply to the same object or objects in virtue of just one property of that object."

2. Armstrong, David Malet, and Forrest, Peter. 1984. "An Argument against David Lewis' Theory of Possible Worlds." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 62:164-168.

3. Armstrong, David Malet. 1986. "In Defence of Structural Universals." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 64:85-88.

4. ———. 1986. "The Nature of Possibility." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 16:575-594.

5. ———. 1991. "Classes Are States of Affairs." Mind:189-200.

"David Lewis argues, and this article accepts, that many-membered classes are nothing more than mereological wholes composed of their unit sub-classes. What, then, is a unit-class? It is a state of affairs, the possession by its member of the property of unithood. These states of affairs are complex, having constituents. But the complexity is non-mereological. Lewis cannot accept this account, since he holds that all composition is mereological."

6. ———. 1992. "Properties." In Language, Truth, and Ontology, edited by Mulligan, Kevin, 15-27. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

1. Why we should admit Properties 15; 2. Universals vs. Tropes 22.

7. ———. 1996. "Categoricalist Versus Dispositionalist Accounts of Properties." Acta Analytica:7-19.

"Should properties be thought of as having a "categorical" nature or should they be thought of as having a "dispositional" nature? The author presents arguments for and against dispositionalism and discusses a middle way between dispositionalism and categoricalism. He defends the position according to which all true properties are nondispositional, they do not have a nature that is exhausted by their possible manifestations. The difficulties for dispositionalism are more serious disadvantage than any facing categoricalism."

8. ———. 2000. "Difficult Cases in the Theory of Truthmaking." Monist no. 83:150-160.

Studies about D. M. Armstrong

1. "The Philosophy of D. M. Armstrong." 2006. Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 84:155-310.

Guest Editor: Peter Anstey.

2. Bacon, John, Campbell, Keith, and Reinhardt, Lloyd, eds. 1993. Ontology, Causality and Mind. Essays in Honour of D. M. Armstrong. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Preface VII; Contributors XII; I. Possibility and identity. 1. William G. Lycan: Armstrong's new combinatorialist theory of modality 3; Reply 18; 2. David Lewis: Many, but almost one 23; Reply 38; II. The theory of universals. 3. Peter Forrest: Just like Quarks? The status of repeteables 45; Reply; John Bigelow: Set are haecceitas 73; Reply 96; 5. D. H. Mellor: Properties and predicates 101; Reply 113; III. Causality and laws of nature. 6. Evan Fales: Are causal laws contingent? 121; Reply 144; 7. J. J. C. Smart: Laws of mature as a species of regularities 152; Reply 169; 8. C. B. Martin: Power for realists 175; Reply 186; 9. Peter Menzies: Laws of nature, modality and Humean supervenience 195; Reply 225; IV. Consciousness and secondary qualities. 10. Frank Jackson: Block's challenge 235; Reply 246; 12: Keith Campbell: David Armstrong and realism about colour 249; Reply 269; Bibliography of the works of D. M. Armstrong 275; Index 285.

3. Bigelow, John. 1986. "Toward Structural Universals." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 64:94-96.

4. Bogdan, Radu, ed. 1984. D. M. Armstrong. Dordrecht: Reidel.

5. Lewis, David. 1986. "Comment on Armstrong and Forrest." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 64:92-93.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bogusław Wolniewicz on the Formal Ontology of Situations

Introduction

"The theory presented below was developed in an effort to clarify the metaphysics of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. The result obtained, however, is not strictly the formal twin of his variant of Logical Atomism. but something more, general, of which the latter is lust a special case. One might call it an ontology of situations. Some basic ideas of that ontology stern from Stenius Wittgenstein's Tractatus, Oxford, 1968 and Suszko Ontology in the Tractatus of L. Wittgenstein - Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 1968.

Let L be a classic propositional language. Propositions of L are supposed to have their semantic counterparts in the realm of possibility, or as Wittgenstein put it: in logical space. These counterparts are situations, and S is to be the totality of them. The situation described by a proposition a is S(a). With Meinong we call it the objective of a." (pp. 381-382)

From: Bogusław Wolniewicz, "A Formal Ontology of Situations", Studia Logica 41, 1982, pp. 381-413.

"Different ontologies adopt different notions of existence as basic. Aristotle's paradigm of existence is given by the equivalence:

(A) to be = to be a substance.

On the other hand, the paradigm of existence adopted in Wittgenstein's Tractatus is given by the parallel equivalence:

(W) to be = to be a fact.

Now, an Aristotelian substance is the denotation of an individual name, whereas a Wittgensteinian fact is the denotation of a true proposition. It seems therefore that the notions of existence derived from these two paradigms should be quite different, and one might readily expect that the metaphysical systems erected upon them will display wide structural discrepancies.

It turns out, however, that in spite of this basic difference there runs between these two systems a deep and striking parallelism. This parallelism is so close indeed that it makes possible the construction of a vocabulary which would transform characteristic propositions of Wittgenstein's ontology into Aristotelian ones, and conversely. To show in some detail the workings of that transformation will be the subject of this paper.

The vocabulary mentioned is based on the following four fundamental correlations:

Aristotle

1) primary substances (substantiae primae)

2) prime matter (materia prima)

3) form (forma)

4) self-subsistence of primary substances (esse per se)

Wittgenstein

1) atomic facts

2) objects

3) configuration

4) independence of atomic facts

Aristotle's ontology is an ontology of substances, Wittgenstein's ontology is an ontology of facts. But concerning the respective items of each of the pairs (1)-(4) both ontologies lay down conditions which in view of our vocabulary appear to be identical. To show this let us confront, to begin with, the items of pair (1): substances and facts.

(The interpretation of Aristotle adopted in this paper is the standard one, to be found in any competent textbook of the history of philosophy. Therefore, with but one exception, no references to Aristotle's works will be given here.)Relatively to the system involved substances and facts are of the same ontological status. Aristotle's world is the totality of substances (summa rerum), Wittgenstein's world is the totality of facts (die Gesamtheit der Tatsachen). For Aristotle whatever exists in the basic sense of the word is a primary substance, for Wittgenstein - an atomic fact. Moreover, both ontologies are MODAL ones, allowing for different modes of being (modi essendi); and both take as basic the notion of 'contingent being' (esse contingens), opposed to necessary being on the one hand, and to the possibility of being on the other. Both substances and facts are entities which actually exist, but might have not existed. The equality of ontological status between substances and facts is corroborated by the circumstance that both are PARTICULARS, there being - as the saying goes - no multiplicity of entities which FALL UNDER them.

Substances and facts stand also in the same relation to the ontological categories of pairs (2) and (3). Both are always COMPOUND entities, a substance consisting of matter and form, and a fact consisting of objects and the way of their configuration. But in neither of the two systems is this compoundness to be understood literally as composition of physically separable parts or pieces. The compoundness (compositio) of a substance consists in its being formed stuff (materia informata), and the compoundness of a fact in its being a configuration of objects.

In view of correlation (4) we have also an equality of relation which a substance bears to other substances, and a fact to other facts. Self-subsistence is the characteristic attribute of primary substances: substantia prima = ens per se. If we take this to mean that each substance exists independently of the existence or non-existence of any other substance we get immediately the exact counterpart of Wittgenstein's principle of logical atomism stating the mutual independence of atomic facts. It should be noted that thus understood the attribute of self-subsistence or independence is a relative one, belonging to a substance - or to a fact - only in virtue of its relation to other substances - or facts.

From a Wittgensteinian point of view Aristotle's substances are not things, but hypostases of facts, and thus their names are not logically proper names, but name-like equivalents of propositions. (By that term we mean roughly either a noun clause of the form 'that p', or any symbol which might be regarded as a definitional abbreviation of such clause.) Surely, from the Aristotelian point of view it might be easily retorted here that just the opposite is the case: substances are not 'reified' facts, but on the contrary - facts are 'dereified' substances. Without passing judgement on these mutual objections let us note in passing that their symmetric character seems to be itself an additional manifestation of the parallelism discussed." (pp. 208-210, notes omitted)

From: Bogusław Wolniewicz, "A Parallelism Between Wittgensteinian and Aristotelian Ontologies", in: Robert S. Cohen and Marx Wartofsky (eds.), Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. IV, Dordrecht: Reidel 1969, pp. 208-217.

Wolniewicz on Wittgenstein's Tractatus

"The Tractatus is a masterpiece of rare power and ravishing beauty. Its content is a profound and highly coherent philosophy of language, based upon a radically new kind of metaphysics: the metaphysics of facts and situations. (Meinong, with his notion of the 'objective' of a proposition, apparently was moving in the same direction. But he never came near asking himself any of the two crucial questions: (1) When, if ever, are the objectives of different propositions identical? (2) What, if any, is the relation of the objective of a compound proposition to the objectives of its components?) Moreover, the Tractatus anticipated many of the later developments of logical semantics, especially those commencing around 1950 and connected with its algebraization. The kernel of its message may be put down as follows. The fundamental problem of the Tractatus, as of all philosophy, concerns the relationship of thought and reality. This relationship is mediated by language, and so it may be decomposed into the relative product of two relations: one between thought and language, the other between language and reality. Let us mark the latter by 'f', the former by '?'.

It has been maintained that according to the Tractatus the projective relation f between language and reality has to be an isomorphism. This, however, is not borne out by the text. To satisfy the conditions laid down by Wittgenstein it is enough for to be a homomorphism, and this already makes a lot of a difference. In the first place, we are confronted now with two delicate questions: (1) Which is the direction of that homomorphism: from language to reality, or the other way round? (2) Is it a homomorphism onto, or merely one into? Neither of these questions has a trivial answer in the context of the Tractatus.

We assume here that the relation f is a homomorphism on the language L onto the reality R, i.e., that f: L ? R. Thus reality is a homomorphic image of language. But language is the totality of propositions, and the reference of meaningful propositions are possible situations. Consequently, reality is not the world, but the logical space; i.e., it is not the totality of facts, but the totality of possibilities. Thus language is more capacious than the world, and the number of propositions is greater than even that of situations.

The simplest non-trivial homomorphism of that kind is the well-known Fregean one. Language is mapped under it onto the set of the two classic truth-values, and the corresponding two-element Boolean algebra is then the logical space. Thus for Frege there are just two possible situations: the True and the False. This is so because his only stipulation with regard to the reference of propositions is that contradictory propositions cannot have the same reference. In the Tractatus, however, it is stipulated further that logically independent propositions cannot have the same reference either. This move is the gist of its logical atomism, transforming the Fregean homomorphism f: L ? {1,0} into the composition of two other ones: f' on L onto logical space, and f' ' on logical space onto the set of truth-values. (1)

The aim of the Tractatus was to trace the boundaries of clear thought:

Philosophy... should trace the unthinkable from within by means of the thinkable. By presenting clearly what may be expressed it will point to the inexpressible. (2)

The positivistically-minded members of the Vienna Circle deemed to recognize in these words their own 'demarcation problem', together with their own hostility towards 'metaphysics' and their cult of 'science'. It was a monumental misunderstanding. To Wittgenstein the metaphysical is indeed the inexpressible, but this is not to mean that it is regarded as some kind of delusion or hoax. On the contrary, the hoax is the idea of a 'scientific philosophy'.

In the Tractatus the tracing of the boundaries of the inexpressible was to be accomplished at one stroke. Logical space R fills the realm of the expressible E completely, i.e., we have E = R. Consequently, the homomorphism f' is onto the expressible, and what is left, evidently, is only the inexpressible. This grandiose project, however, was soon to encounter grave technical difficulties, and then Wittgenstein simply dropped it. This was rash. Not all the difficulties were quite as insuperable as they might have seemed, and the Tractatus left room for manœuvre. It might have been helpful, for instance, to weaken the homomorphism f' to one into the expressible. Then instead of the one language L we could consider a whole series of languages L0, L1, ..., and a corresponding series of logical spaces R0, R1, ... The realm of the inexpressible would be approximated by the latter 'from within', starting from what is expressible in the language L0 at hand. Certainly, the series of logical spaces need not be monotonic, and in advance there would be no telling whether what is inexpressible at a given stage L1 is absolutely or only relatively so. Thus the final tracing of the boundaries of the inexpressible would recede to infinity, but for theory this could hardly count as an objection." (pp. 77-79)

Notes

(1) For details cf. Wolniewicz, B. 1979, 'A Wittgensteinian Sematics for Propositions', in Diamond C. (ed.) Intention and Intentionality: Essays in Honour of Professor G E M Anscombe, Harvester Press, Brighton.

(2) Wittgenstein, L., Tractatus Logoco-Philosophicus, 4.113-4.114.

From: Bogusław Wolniewicz, "On the Discontinuity of Wittgensteins' Philosophy" in: Harry A. Lewis (ed.), Peter Geach: Philosophical Encounters, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1991, pp. 77-81.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography of Bogusław Wolniewicz Writings on Logic and Ontology

Selected publications in English

In 1970 Bogusław Wolniewicz published a Polish translation of Ludwig Wittgenstein Tractatus logico-philosophicus.

1. Wolniewicz, Bogusław. 1968. "A Difference between Russell's and Wittgenstein's Logical Atomism." In Akten Des Xiv. Internationalen Kongresses Für Philosophie. Wien, 2. - 9. September 1968 - Vol. Ii, 263-267. Wien: Herder.

Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp. 193-197

2. ———. 1969. "A Note on Black's 'Companion'." Mind no. 78:141.

Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - p. 229.

"It is a mistake to suppose that in Wittgenstein's "Tractatus" the meaning of Urbild has any connexion with that of picture. "

3. ———. 1969. "A Parallelism between Wittgensteinian and Aristotelian Ontologies." In Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Vol. Iv, edited by Cohen, Robert S. and Wartofsky, Marx W., 208-217. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company.

Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the philosophy of science 1966/1968.

Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp. 198-207

4. ———. 1970. "Four Notion of Independence." Theoria no. 36:161-164.

Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp. 127-130.

WFour (binary) relations of independence I(p,q) between propositions are distinguished: the Wittgensteinian I sub-w, the statistical I sub-s, the modal I sub-m, and the deductive I sub-d. The validity of the following theorem is argued for: I sub-w(p,q) implies I sub-s(p,q) implies I sub-m(p,q) implies Isub-d(p,q). "

5. ———. 1971. "Wittgensteinian Foundations of Non-Fregean Logic." In Contemporary East European Philosophy. Vol. 3, edited by D'Angelo, Edward, DeGrood, David and Riepe, Dale, 231-243. Bridgeport: Spartacus Books.

6. ———. 1972. "The Notion of Fact as a Modal Operator." Teorema:59-66.

Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp. 218-224

"The notion of fact /fp = "it is a fact that p"/ is characterized axiomatically, and the ensuing modal systems shown to be equivalent to tT, S4 and S5 respectively."

7. ———. 1973. "Zur Semantik Des Satzkalküls: Frege Und Wittgenstein." In Der Mensch - Subjekt Und Objekt (Festchrift Für Adam Schaff), edited by Borbé, Tasso. Wien: Europaverl.

8. ———. 1977. "Sachlage Und Elementarsätz." In Wittgenstein and His Impact on Contemporary Thought. Proceedings of the Second International Wittgenstein Symposium, 29th August to 4th September 1977, Kirchberg/Wechsel (Austria), edited by Leinfellner, Elisabeth, 174-176. Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.

9. ———. 1978. "Situations as the Reference of Propositions." Dialectics and Humanism no. 5:171-182.

"The reference of propositions is determined for a class of languages to be called the "Wittgensteinian" ones. A meaningful proposition presents a possible situation. Every consistent conjunction of elementary propositions presents an elementary situation. The smallest elementary situations are the "Sachverhalte"; the greatest are possible worlds. The situation presented by a proposition is to be distinguished from that verifying it, but the greatest situation presented is identical with the smallest verifying. The reference of compound propositions is then determined as a function of their components."

10. ———. 1978. "Objectives of Propositions." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 7:143-147.

"The paper sketches out a semantics for propositions based upon the Wittgensteinian notion of a possible situation. The objective of a proposition is defined as the smallest situation verifying it. Two propositions are assumed to have the same objective iff they are strictly equivalent. Formulas are given which determine the objectives of conjunction and disjunction as functions of the objectives of their components. finally a link with possible-world semantics is established."

11. ———. 1978. "Wittgenstein Und Der Positivismus." In Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle and Critical Rationalism. Proceedings of the Third International Wittgenstein Symposium, 13th to 19th August 1978, Kirchberg Am Wechsel (Austria), edited by Bergehel, Hal, Hübner, Adolf and Eckehart, Köhler, 75-77. Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.

12. ———. 1978. "Les Situations Comme Corrélats Semantiques Des Enoncés." Studia Filozoficzne no. 2:27-41.

13. ———. 1979. "A Wittgensteinian Semantics for Propositions." In Intention and Intentionality. Essay in Honour of G. E. M. Anscombe, edited by Diamond, Cora and Teichman, Jenny, 165-178. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

"More than once Professor Anscombe has expressed doubt concerning the semantic efficacy of the idea of an 'elementary proposition' as conceived in the Tractatus. Wittgenstein himself eventually discarded it, together with the whole philosophy of language of which it had been an essential part. None the less the idea is still with us, and it seems to cover theoretical potentialities yet to be explored. This paper is a tentative move in that direction.

According to Professor Anscombe, (*) Wittgenstein's 'elementary propositions' may be characterized by the following five theses:

(1) They are a class of mutually independent propositions.

(2) They are essentially positive.

(2) They are such that for each of them there are no two ways of being true or false, but only one.

(4) They are such that there is in them no distinction between an internal and an external negation.

(5) They are concatenations of names, which are absolutely simple signs.

We shall not investigate whether this is an adequate axiomatic for the notion under consideration. We suppose it is. In any case it is possible to modify it in one way or another, and for the resulting notion still to preserve a family resemblance with the original idea. One such modification is sketched out below."

14. ———. 1979. "Some Formal Properties of Objectives." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 8:16-20.

"The objectives of propositions as defined in an earlier paper are shown here to form a distributive lattice."

15. ———. 1980. "On the Lattice of Elementary Situations." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 9:115-121.

16. ———. 1980. "On the Verifiers of Disjunction." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 9:57-59.

17. ———. 1981. "The Boolean Algebra of Objectives." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 10:17-23.

"This concludes a series of papers constructing a semantics for propositional languages based on the notion of a possible "situation". Objectives of propositions are the situations described by them. The set of objectives is defined and shown to be a boolean algebra isomorphic to that formed by sets of possible worlds."

18. ———. 1982. "A Formal Ontology of Situations." Studia Logica no. 41:381-413.

"A generalized Wittgensteinian semantics for propositional languages is presented, based on a lattice of elementary situations. Of these, maximal ones are possible worlds, constituting a logical space; minimal ones are logical atoms, partitioned into its dimensions. A verifier of a proposition is an elementary situation such that if real it makes true. The reference (or objective) of a proposition is a situation, which is the set of all its minimal verifiers. (Maximal ones constitute its locus.) Situations are shown to form a Boolean algebra, and the Boolean set algebra of loci is its representation. Wittgenstein's is a special case, admitting binary dimensions only."

Contents:

0. Preliminaries;

1. Elementary Situations

1.1.The Axioms; 1.2.Some Consequences; 1.3. W-Independence; 1.4.States of Affairs;

2. Sets of Elementary Situations

2.1.The Semigroup of SE"-Sets; 2.2.The Lattice of Minimal SE"-Sets; 2.3.Q-Spaces and V-Sets; 2.4.V-Equivalence and Q-Equivalence; 2.4.V-Classes and V-Sets;

3. Objectives of Propositions

3.1. Verifiers of Propositions; 3.2. Verifying and Forcing; 3.3. Situations and Logical Loci; 3.4. Loci and Objectives of Compound Propositions 3.5. The Boolean Algebra of Situations;

4. References

19. ———. 1982. "Ludwig Fleck and Polish Philosophy." Dialectics and Humanism no. 9:25-28.

20. ———. 1982. "A Closure System for Elementary Situations." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 11:134-139.

21. ———. 1982. "On Logical Space." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 11:84-88.

22. ———. 1983. "Logical Space and Metaphysical Systems." Studia Logica no. 42:269-284.

"The paper applies the theory presented in "A formal ontology of situations" (Studia Logica, vol. 41 (1982), no. 4) to obtain a typology of metaphysical systems by interpreting them as different ontologies of situations.

Four are treated in some detail: Hume's diachronic atomism, Laplacean determinism, Hume's synchronic atomism, and Wittgenstein's logical atomism. Moreover, the relation of that theory to the "situation semantics" of Perry and Barwise is discussed."

23. ———. 1983. "Truth Arguments and Independence." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 12:21-28.

24. ———. 1984. "An Algebra of Subsets for Join-Semilatttices with Unit." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 13:21-24.

25. ———. 1984. "A Topology for Logical Space." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 13:255-259.

26. ———. 1984. "Suszko: A Reminiscence." Studia Logica no. 43:317-321.

Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp. 302-306

27. ———. 1985. "Die Grundwerte Einer Wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassaung." Conceptus no. 19:3-8.

"The scientific world-view is one of the fundamentals of our culture. It can be characterized in part by its specific system of values. A world-view is regarded as a scientific one if "truth" is one of its primary values, that is, as a value which is not a means, but an end in itself. Truth is served in particular by the two instrumental values of conceptual clarity and openness to critique. Their standing is (at present) low, for two reasons. (1) Unclear thinking not only promotes social idols; its consequences are also often difficult to see clearly and immediately. (2) In any case truth is of no interest (in a biological sense) to human beings; therefore, critique can at best be a socially tolerated activity. On the other hand, truth is not only a value, but also a force which in the long run cannot be held back; this fact gives some hope to adherents of the scientific world-view. "

28. ———. 1986. "Discreteness of Logical Space." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 15:132-136.

29. ———. 1989. "Entailments and Independence in Join-Semilattices." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 18:2-5.

"The paper generalizes Wittgenstein's notion of independence. in a join-semilattice of elementary situations the atoms are the Sachverhalte, and maximal ideals are possible worlds. A subset of that semilattice is independent iff it is free of "ontic ties". This is shown to be equivalent to independence in von Neumann's sense."

30. ———. 1989. "On Atomic Join-Semilattices." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 18:105-111.

Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp. 307-312.

31. ———. 1990. "A Question About Join-Semilattices." Bulletin of the Section of Logic:108.

32. ———. 1990. "Concerning Reism in Kotarbinski." In Kotarbinski: Logic. Semantics and Ontology, edited by Wolenski, Jan, 199-204. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp. 265-271

33. ———. 1990. "Elzenberg's Logic of Values." In Logic Counts, edited by Ewa, Zarnecka-Bialy, 63-70. Dordrecht: Kluwe.

Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp. 286-292 (with the title: Elzenberg's axiology"

"1. Values are what our value-Judgements refer to, and the passing of Judgements is one of our vital activities, like sleeping and breathing. We constantly appraise things as good or bad, pretty or ugly, as noble or base, well-made or misshapen. No wonder that both the act of appraisal and that which it refers to - i.e. the real or spurious values - have been always the source of philosophical reflexion. In systematic form such reflexion is what we call axiology.

In Polish philosophy it was Henryk Elzenberg (1887-1967) who reflected upon matters of axiology most deeply and incisively.

(...)

3. Leibniz had said somewhere: "There are two mazes in which the human mind is most likely to get lost: one is the concept of continuity, the other is that of liberty". This admits of generalization: all concepts are mazes, viz mazes of logical relations between the propositions that involve them.

One such maze is the concept of 'value'. Possibly, it is even the same as one of the two mentioned by Leibniz, only entered - so to say - by another door. For it would be in full accord with Elzenberg's position - and with that of Kant too - to adopt the following characteristic: values are what controls the actions of free agents. Thus the concepts of value and of liberty should constitute one conceptual maze, or - which comes to the same - two mazes communicating with each other.

To get a survey of such logical maze the first thing is to fix the ontological category of the concept in question. Thus, in our case, we ask what kind of entities are those 'values' supposed to be. (Ontological categories are the most general classes of entities, the summa genera A term even more general has to cover literally everything: like 'entity' or 'something'. For everything is an entity, just as everything is a something.)

Different ontologies admit different sets of categories. The categories most frequently referred to are those of 'objects', 'properties', and 'relations'; the more exotic ones are those of an 'event', a 'set', a 'function', or a 'situation'. One point, however, is of paramount importance: the categories admitted In one ontology have to be mutually disjoint". p. 63; 66.

34. ———. 1990. "The Essence of Logical Atomism: Hume and Wittgenstein." In Wittgenstein. Eine Neubewertung. Akten 14. Internationale Wittgenstein-Symposium. Vol. 1, 106-111. Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.

35. ———. 1991. "Needs and Value." In Logic and Ethics, edited by Geach, Peter Thomas, 289-302. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

36. ———. 1991. "A Sequel to Hawranek/Zygmunt." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 20:143-144.

37. ———. 1991. "On the Discontinuity of Wittgenstein's Philosophy." In Peter Geach: Philosophical Encounters, edited by Lewis, Harry A., 77-81. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Reprinted in: Logic and metaphysics (1999) - pp. 13-17.

"How is Wittgenstein's later philosophy related to his earlier one?

Despite much discussion there is little clarity on that. So let us give it again some consideration.

(...)

Philosophy of language oscillates between the two poles of metaphysics and psychologism; (...) . The main representative of the former trend is Frege, and the Tractatus follows closely in his wake. The Philosophical Investigations, on the other hand, are the expression of a dramatic departure from Frege and towards psychologism. Language is now viewed by Wittgenstein not in its logical capacity as the medium of thought and the bearer of truth-value, but instrumentally as a means of communication. Its relation to reality fades out, and its connexion with feeling, thinking, and doing comes massively to the fore.

Psychologism and positivism go hand in hand. Metaphysics, though not condemned as a vice as in pure positivism, is viewed as a malaise to be cured. Thus Wittgenstein's later philosophy turns into a kind of psychotherapy, exerting itself to bring metaphysics to a stop. What for? This is never made clear, as if it were a matter of course. But it is not." (pp. 80-81)

38. ———. 1993. "A Question of Logic in the Philosophy of Religion." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 22:33-36.

39. ———. 1994. "On the Synthetic a Priori." In Philosophical Logic in Poland, edited by Wolenski, Jan, 327-336. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

40. ———. 1999. Logic and Metaphysics. Studies in Wittgenstein's Ontology of Facts. Warsaw: Polskie Towarzystwo Semiotyczne.

Contents: Preface 11; Discontinuity of Wittgenstein's philosophy 13; 1. Elementary situations as a lattice of finite length 19; Elementary situations as a semilattice 73; 3. Independence 127; 4. Elementary situations generalized 137; 5. Auxiliary studies 193; 5.1 The Logical Atomisms of Russell and Wittgenstein 193; 5.2 A parallelism between Wittgenstein and Aristotle 198; 5.3 Frege's semantics 207; 5.4. The notion of fact as a modal operator 218; 5.5 "Tractatus" 5.541 - 5.542 224; 5.6 History of the concept of a Situation 229; 6. Offshoots 243 6.1 Languages and codes 243; 6.2 Logic and hermeneutics 254; 6.3 Kotarbinski's Reism 265; 6.4 On Bayle's critique of theodicy 271; 6.5 Elzenberg's axiology 286; 6.6 Needs and values 293; 6.7 Suszko: a reminiscence 302; Supplements 307; Indices: Index of subjects 317; Index of names 326; Index of Tractatus references 329.

41. ———. 2000. "Atoms in Semantic Frames." Logica Trianguli no. 4:69-86.

"Elaborating on Wittgenstein's ontology of facts, semantic frames are described axiomatically as based on the notion of an elementary situation being the verifier of a proposition. Conditions are investigated then for suchframes to be atomic, i.e. to have lattice-theoretic counterparts of his "Sachverhalte"."

42. ———. 2001. "Extending Atomistic Frames." Logica Trianguli no. 5.

"A "semantic frame" is bounded join-semilattice of elementary situations, with its maximal ideals to represent possible worlds and mapped into the complete sets of propositions determined by a given abstract logic (L, Cn). A frame is Humean if the elementary situations are separated by its possible worlds, and it is atomistic if the semilattice is so. One frame is the extension of another if the latter is an {0,1}-subsemilattice of the former satisfying certain conditions discussed."

43. ———. 2001. "Tractatus 5.541 - 5.542." In Satz Un Sachverhalt, edited by Neumaier, Otto, 185-190. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

"In Wittgenstein's "Tractatus", thesis 5 is the Principle of Extensionality: all propositions are truth-functions of their clauses. This, however, has been often thrown into doubt. There are - it is said - compound propositions whose truth-value does not depend on that of their clauses. The usual example given are the so-called intensional contexts, like "John thinks that p", or "John says that p". And indeed, the truth-value of "p" is patently immaterial here to that of the whole proposition which it is part of.

Wittgenstein's retort are the following much discussed theses, adduced here in a translation of our own:

5.54 In the general propositional form, propositions occur in one another only as bases of truth-operations.

5.541 At first sight it seems that a proposition might occur in another also in a different way.

Particularly in certain propositional forms of psychology, like "A believes that p is the case", "A thinks p", etc.

For taken superficially, proposition p seems here to stand to the object A in some sort of relation.

(And in modem epistemology - Russell, Moore, etc. - these have actually been construed that way.)

5.542 However, "A believes that p", "A thinks p", "A says p" are clearly of the form " 'p' says p "; and this is not correlating a fact with an object, but a correlation of facts by correlating their objects.

The objection is met here in two steps. Firstly, it is pointed out that a proposition of the form "John says that p" is actually of the form "'p' says that p". The idea is this: the proposition "John says that Jill has a cat" means: John produces the sentence "Jill has a cat", the latter saying by itself that Jill has a cat. In such a way propositions get independent of the persons producing them, and communicate some objective content. It is surely not by John's looks that we come to know about Jill's cat, but merely by his words. Whom they stem from, is irrelevant.

In his second step Wittgenstein follows Frege's interpretation of indirect speech, but with modifications. He points out that the formula " 'p' says that p " is equivalent to some compound proposition in which neither the proposition "p" as a syntactic unit, nor anything equivalent to it, does occur although there occur all the logically relevant constituents of "p" separately.

(...)

The distinction between abstract and concrete states of affairs is not drawn explicitly in the "Tractatus". But it fits well thesis 5.156, if we expand that thesis by a few words of comment, added here in brackets:

5.156(d) A proposition may well be en incomplete image of a particular (concrete) situation, but it is always the complete image (of an abstract one).

The circumstance that in 5.156 not "states of affairs", but "situations" are mentioned, is of no consequence in our context. We assume that states of affairs are just atomic situations, and so the distinction between "concrete" and "abstract" applies to both."

44. ———. 2003. "Extending Atomistic Frames: Part Ii." Logica Trianguli no. 6:69-88.

"The paper concludes an earlier one (Logica Trianguli, 5) on extensions of atomistic semantic frames. Three kinds of extension are considered: the adjunctive, the conjunctive, and the disjunctive one. Some theorems are proved on extending "Humean" frames, i.e. such that the elementary situations constituting their universa are separated by the maximally coherent sets of them ("realizations")."

45. ———. 2005. "On a Minimality Condition." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 34:227-228.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Reinhardt Grossmann and the Ontology of Categories

Ontology, categories and the world

"Ontology, I said at the beginning, asks what the categories of the world are. What is a category? It is a kind of entity. What kind of kind? In answer to this question, we can only give examples. It is that sort of kind, as we have seen, that distinguishes between individuals, on the one hand, and properties on the other. It is that sort of kind, as we have noted, which obeys a certain kind of law, namely, categorial laws. But this reply does not really help much either. We must therefore rest content, as on so many other occasions, with examples rather than definitions. In these most fundamental matters of metaphysics, definitions are impossible." (p. 5)

"The world, I said earlier, is the ultimate object of ontological analysis. But this world must be distinguished from the physical universe. The universe is a complicated spatio-temporal structure. Facts, on the other hand, do not form such a structure. It follows, as Armstrong fails to realize, that a world consisting of facts cannot be identical with the universe. (D. M. Armstrong, Universals and Scientific Realism, 1978, vol. 1, pp. 126-135.) But if the world is not the same as the universe, to what category does it belong? There are a number of plausible answers. It may be said that the world is the totality of entities. Or it may be claimed that it is the totality of facts. (Compare L. Wittgenstein, Tractaus Logico-philosophicus 1961, p. 7.) If these answers imply that the world belongs to the category of class, then I think that they are wrong. But I must admit that I do not know how to argue for my view. I believe that the world is a fact; that it belongs to the category of fact. If this is the correct view, then we can distinguish between two levels of ontological analysis. On the first level, the world can be analyzed into its constituent facts. On this level, we do not arrive at new categories, but discover the kinds of fact there are. We discover, in other words, the subcategories of the category fact. On the second level, we analyze facts which do not consist of further facts into their constituents. It is on this second level of analysis that we encounter the traditional categories of individual, property, relation, etc." (p. 8)

"Ontology asks what are the categories of the world. So far, I have tried to elucidate the crucial terms 'category' and 'world'. But I could have begun instead by saying that ontology attempts to categorize everything there is, and this alternative introduction would have led us earlier to a number of questions which we must now consider.There is an old and hallowed tradition, according to which being comes in many modes. One distinguishes, for example, between the existence of individual things and the mere subsistence of facts. Concrete things are said to exist, while abstract entities are held to subsist. But even though this view has been maintained by some of the recent philosophers I most admire -- by Bolzano, Frege, and Meinong, among others -- I do not think that it is correct. I do not believe that there are modes of being. Existence is the only kind of being there is. I shall later defend this belief. What is of primary interest to us right now is how the possibility of modes of being affects our conception of ontology. It seems to me clear that if there are modes of being, then it is the task of ontology to categorize all entities, irrespective of their particular modes of being. The field of ontology is as wide as the realm of being itself. But it is not any wider: What has no being cannot be categorized. What has no being cannot be the subject of ontology. Meinong, as we all know, would demur. According to him, there is an enterprise that deals, not only with existents and subsistents, but also with objects that have no being whatsoever; with objects like the golden mountain and the round square. And he claims that we are merely prejudiced if we exclude such objects from categorization. (A. Meinong, [On the Theory of Objects] 1904.) But Meinong's defense of a general theory of objects rests on an important assumption which I do not share. He maintains that objects without being may nevertheless have properties and stand in relations. He holds that the golden mountain is golden, that the round square is both round and square. Now, if it were true that objects without being bristle with properties, then it would make sense to attempt to classify them, according to these properties. But if Meinong's assumption is mistaken, as I shall contend in a later chapter, then there simply can be no such classification; for one can only classify what has properties and stands in relations; what has, in short, attributes. My conviction that ontology cannot be extended beyond the realm of being thus rests on my rejection of the view that beingless objects can have attributes." (pp. 9-10)

From: Reinhardt Grossmann, The Categorial Structure of the World, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1983.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated Bibliography of Reinhardt Grossmann

Bibliography

A complete bibliography of the published writings of Reinhardt Grossmann and of the studies about his philosophy has been compiled by Javier Cumpa in the volume edited by him: Studies in the Ontology of Reinhardt Grossmann (2009), pp. 284-289; I give the list of the books and a selection of the most important articles.

Books

1. Grossmann, Reinhardt. 1965. The Structure of Mind. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Contents: 1. Introspection. Inspection of phenomenal objects - Awareness of mental acts - Sensing and perceiving 3; 2. Mental Acts. The relational view - Nonexistent objects - Brentano's idealism 39; 3. Presentation and Judgment: Universals - Concepts - Frege's conceptualism - Abstraction 60; 4. Meaning. Mental contents - Intentional contexts - The behavioristic approach 104; 5. Intentionality. Possible particulars - Possible states of affairs - The intentional nexus 144; 6. Realism. Direct and indirect knowledge - Perceptual and phenomenal objects - Delusive perceptual situations 180; Index 238-248.

"This book avoids a number of traditional problems from the philosophy of mind. Emotions and volitions are hardly mentioned; and very little is said about imagination and memory. I am concerned in the main with only one topic: the realism-Idealism controversy. This concern explains why I limited the discussion to thought and perception. It also explains why at times I had to go rather deeply into the problems of general ontology; for if my analysis is correct, the realism-idealism controversy arises from certain disagreements in general ontology.

Nor does this book deal with a number of currently fashionable topics. I say nothing on whether or not mental states are after all nothing but brain states. I do not discuss this point because I am convinced that there is nothing to be discussed. The correct answer to the question seems to me so obvious that I simply took it for granted in writing this book. The problem of our knowledge of other minds is of quite a different sort: it is, philosophically speaking, interesting and difficult. Since I do not discuss the problem, I may mention here that I consider all solutions in terms of so-called criteria for the application of expressions unsatisfactory. The one fashionable topic which I do discuss, though not under a separate heading and not in the movement's jargon, is the so-called private language argument. I am sure that the attentive reader can construct my position on this matter from the first chapter." (from the Preface).

Translated in Spanish as: La estructura de la mente. Barcelona, Labor, 1969.

2. ———. 1969. Reflections on Frege's Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Contents: Editorial Foreword VII; Preface IX; Note XV-XVI; Chapter I. Begriffschrift: Three Confusions 3. Act and Content 5; Subject and Predicate 13; Identity and Description 19; Function and Argument 23; Chapter II. Grundlagen: Two Distinctions 28; Ideas 29; Concepts 50; Objects 83; Reduction 108; Chapter III. Sinn und Bedeutung: A Solution 153; Identity 154; Truth 181; Chapter IV. Later Papers: Second Thoughts 224; About Sense and Reference 226; About Definitions 248; Index 255-261.

"I chose the title "Reflections on Frege's Philosophy" rather than, say, "An Outline of Frege's Philosophy" because I wanted to indicate that this book is not a systematic treatise on all or even most of Frege's views. I did not set out to write an exposition of Frege's philosophy, nor did I intend to provide a detailed commentary on his most important works.

My goal was rather modest in regard to Frege. I hoped to be able to discuss a few selected ontological problems within a very narrow setting. Frege's philosophy, as I found out, most conveniently provides such a setting. Not only does it center around the very questions which I wanted to take up, but it also deals with them in a manner which I find most congenial. Even though the ontological problems were foremost in my mind, however, I would be very pleased if my efforts contribute to a better understanding of Frege's philosophy as a whole.

(...)

It was clear to me from the beginning that Frege's views would have to be discussed with an eye on their gradual development. There are several definite stages in Frege's advancement, I believe, and his later views grow out of earlier ones. This conviction explains the structure of the present book. The first chapter is about the Begriffschrift. I tr y to uncover the origins of the main themes of Frege's philosophy. These themes have their roots, I think, in three basic confusions: subjective and objective entities are not sharply distinguished; objects are not clearly separated from concepts; and identity is conceived of at times as a relation between signs, and at other times as a relation between entities. In the second chapter, the emphasis is on two cornerstones of Frege's mature philosophy, namely, his distinction between objective and subjective entities, and his notion of the difference between objects and concepts. But his attempt to reduce Arithmetic to logic raises the unsolved problem of identity. These topics are discussed against the background of the Grundlagen. Frege's philosophical development reaches a second peak with the three classical papers published in 1891 and 1892. These articles, especially "Über Sinn and Bedeutung," explain Frege's views on identity and truth. Both of these views rest on his distinction between sense and reference. The third chapter is about that distinction and its consequences. Frege's later published and unpublished manuscripts contain modifications, qualifications, and second thoughts about his earlier solutions. In Chapter Four I deal with some of these later ideas but this is rather an epilogue; the real drama occurs in the second and third chapter." (from the Preface).

(...)

"If, in conclusion, we look back at Frege's system, we see that another of its main flaws has been eliminated. What remains as before is Frege's conviction that there are senses -- both senses of proper names and Thoughts. I have argued that a correct ontology contains states of affairs instead of Fregean senses. What descriptions represent -- as distinguished from what they describe -- are states of affairs, not senses. What sentences represent are states of affairs, not Thoughts. The sense-reference distinction, Frege's most original and most famous metaphysical innovation, must be rejected. Some metaphysical mistakes are so profound that generations of philosophers continue to discuss and learn from them. This is such a mistake." (p. 253).

3. ———. 1973. Ontological Reduction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Contents: Preface 1; Introduction. A Principle of Acquaintance 3; Part One: Numbers and Quantifiers 29; Part Two: Properties and Classes 109; Part Three: Individuals and Structures 141; Conclusion: A List of Categories 177; Notes 191; Index 207-215.

"The structure of this book requires a brief explanation. The philosophical inquiry proceeds simultaneously, as it were, on three different levels. First and foremost, there is the problem of the nature of a ()logical reduction. What reduction devices and methods have been proposed? How does one go about showing that a given ontological kind can be reduced to another? What kinds of definitions are important from a strictly ontological point of view? These and similar questions arise in connection with the main topic of this book I shall contend that most kinds of definitions have no reductive power whatsoever. On the positive side, I maintain that there are only two ways of showing that what is alleged to be an ontological kind reduces In reality to another kind. First, it may be discovered that two expressions which apparently represent different entities or different kinds of entities refer in truth to the very same entity or kind of entity. In most instances, one of the two expressions will then be an abbreviation of the other. Second, it may be discovered that a certain informative identity statement is true. In this case, either a description describes the same entity or kind of entity for which there is also a label, or two different descriptions describe the very same entity or kind of entity.

On the second level there are comments about the status and nature of a selected group of categories. Here the main topics are indicated by the five main parts of this book. The first part consists of some introductory remarks about the so-called principle of acquaintance. The second part deals with numbers and quantifiers in general. In I he third part, the discussion turns to properties and classes. The fourth part is concerned with individuals and structures. The fifth part contains a summary of the most important results and a list of categories.

A discussion of the nature of ontological reduction has to be illustrated by examples. Numbers (and quantifiers in general), properties, classes, individuals, and structures are the five categories selected here as examples. In regard to numbers, it is argued (1) that they cannot be reduced to properties or classes, (2) that they form a subcategory of their own, and (3) that they belong to the main category of quantifiers. In regard to properties, the main contentions are (1) that there are no complex properties-that is, no properties represented by complex propositional forms-and (2) that there are properties which do not determine classes. Classes, I shall affirm, need not be determined by properties. The fourth section consists of Essays about four particular problems which arise because there are structures and, in particular, spatio-temporal structures.

On the third and last level of inquiry, an attempt is made to formulate a complete list of the main categories. But while the problem of ontological reduction is rather thoroughly discussed, and while there is also a fair amount of talk about particular categories, discussion of the hierarchy of categories is admittedly rather sketchy. Nevertheless, a glimpse at the whole system of ontology seemed to me better than no glimpse at all.

Thus, with the three levels of inquiry in mind, you may think of this book in rather old-fashioned terms, as "A discussion of ontological reduction, with special reference to the status of selected categories and culminating in the outline of a list of categories"." (from the Preface)

4. ———. 1974. Meinong. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Contents: Preface IX-X; I. Individuals and Properties 1; II. Ideal and Real Relations 21; III. Ideas and Their Intentions 48; IV. Objects of Higher Order 57; V. Assumptions and Objectives 78; VI. Being and Aussersein 106; VII. Empirical Knowledge: Perception and Introspection 121; VIII. Relational Knowledge: The Theory of Entities 156; IX. The Apprehension of Objects 182; X. Modalities 199; Appendix I. Meinong's Ontology (by Meinong) 224; Appendix II. Meinong's Life and Work (by Meinong) 230; Notes 237; Index 255.

"This book on Meinong is primarily concerned with his arguments for the positions for which he is famous among some philosophers and infamous among others. But philosophical contentions carry little weight when they are viewed in isolation. Matters are too complex, too difficult, to be settled in an isolated way. Every argument must be evaluated against a background which includes a philosopher's other arguments and some of his basic assumptions or -- if you wish -- prejudices. I therefore discuss Meinong's arguments within the context in which they appear, but with an eye on his earlier positions as well as on his later changes of mind. There are at least two further reasons for adopting this particular approach in Meinong's case.

Findlay, in his classic study of Meinong's philosophy, compares him with G. E. Moore.(1) Although this comparison is apt, there is one respect in which Meinong differs greatly from Moore. Meinong's philosophy develops over the years from a sparse ontology into an ample one. Every new idea is built upon an old one; new problems arise in the wake of earlier solutions; certain questions are raised time and again, but their answers are more and more refined. In short, there is a definite development, with a definite trend, definite stages, and a distinct final view.

I also wished to impress on the reader how misleading the prevalent view is that Meinong was a spendthrift metaphysician who delighted in multiplying entities continuously and needlessly. If one becomes aware of how Meinong's full ontology develops very slowly over many years from very austere beginnings, how he resists the temptation to solve a problem by admitting a new kind of entity, and how he gives in only after a whole series of arguments for the new kind of entity has accumulated, one will, hopefully, be less inclined in future to think of Meinong as the 'supreme entity multiplier in the history of philosophy'.(2)" (from the Preface).

(1) J. N. Findlay, Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1963), p. 348.

(2) This phrase if from Gilbert Ryle's article in the Oxford Magazine 26 October 1933.

5. ———. 1983. The Categorial Structure of the World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

For the Table of Contents, see the link at the end of the page.

"This book attempts to give a complete and accurate list of the categories of the world. In other words, it tries to bring Aristotle's Categories up-to-date.

My investigation into the categorial structure of the world was guided by two main ideas, one systematic, the other, historical in nature. The systematic idea is that most ontological disputes concern, all appearances to the contrary, not the existence of certain entities, but rather their nature. In each one of the chapters which deal with distinct categories, I have therefore discussed the main alternative categorizations of the kind of entity in question. Individual things, for example, have been classified either as particulars (as substances, in the traditional sense) or else as bundles of properties. For properties, too, there are two important views: they are categorized either as particulars (located in space and/or time) or as universals. Numbers, to give a third example, have been conceived of as multitudes of units, or as properties of properties, or as classes of properties or of classes. In regard to these three kinds of entity, I come to the conclusions that individuals are particulars rather than bundles, that properties are universals rather than particulars, and that numbers are neither multitudes, nor properties, nor classes, but belong to an entirely different category of quantifier.

The historical idea is that until very recently, an Aristotelian ontology of substance and accidence formed the basis of almost all philosophizing. Descartes, for example, is still a member of this tradition. However, in the 17th century there occurred a decisive break with that ontology. The notion of substance was attacked from the left by empiricists (Berkeley) and from the right by rationalists (Leibniz). As a result, a bundle view of individuals was widely accepted, and the Aristotelian distinction between essential and accidental properties was abandoned. But the acceptance of an ontology of bundles and properties raised a series of new questions. How do bundles of properties differ from mere classes? What role do relations play in the formation of bundles? What is the ontological status of relations? What kind of complex entity is a fact? And so on. The 19th century sees the final destruction of the Aristotelian ontology. Not just one, but several new categories appear on the ontological stage: relations, structures, classes, and facts. In this work, I try to take stock of these ontological innovations of the last hundred years or so.

The manuscript for my book was substantially finished several years ago. I mention this fact because it explains why I have not been able to do two things which I would like to do. Firstly, I would like to discuss in greater detail some of the important contributions to ontology which have recently been published. As it was, I could only insert brief references to the works of Armstrong, Butchvarov, Castañeda, Hochberg, and other philosophers. Secondly, I would now devote a separate chapter to negation, in order to emphasize that it is just as much a fundamental category of the world as, say, the category of property. I think that there are precisely eight categories (not counting existence), namely, individuals, properties, relations, classes, structures, quantifiers, facts, and negation. On second thought, negation really deserves, not just a chapter of its own, but, like existence, a whole separate part; for it is clear that, like existence and unlike the categories, it is not a property. I shall have to write another book called "Negation and Existence"!" (from the Preface).

6. ———. 1984. Phenomenology and Existentialism: An Introduction. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Contents: Preface IX-X; Part I. The background. 1. Descartes: a new conception of the mind 1; 2. Brentano: the thesis of intentionality 29; 3. Kierkegaard: a different conception of man 68; Part Ii. Edmund Husserl: the problem of knowledge 77; 4. The distinction between particulars and universals 79; 5. Husserl's early views on numbers 89; 6. Husserl's distinction between essences and their existences 101; 7. Husserl's distinction between individuals and their aspects 115; 8. The phenomenological method 136; Pat III. Martin Heidegger: the meaning of being 147; 9. Heidegger's project 149, 10. Modes of being 163; 11. The nature of existence 178; Part IV: Jean-Paul Sartre: the question for freedom 199; 12. The structure of the mind 201; 13. The origin of nothingness 226; 14. The pliancy of the past 251; Index 275-278.

"This book is based on lectures which I have given for the last ten years or so. This explains its style. Some other features, I think, require a little more explanation.

Different philosophers have quite different conceptions of what philosophy is all about. I am no exception, and my particular conception of philosophy has shaped my treatment of Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre. In brief, I believe that all important philosophers-whether they know it or not and

whether they admit it or not-deal with certain traditional problems. There is a, sometimes hidden, continuity to philosophy.

No matter how revolutionary a philosophical movement may at first appear to be, and Phenomenology and Existentialism certainly claimed to be revolutionary, a closer look reveals that the same old problems are merely discussed in a new way. I selected three such problems-the problem of knowledge, the problem of existence, and the problem of freedom-in order to provide some focus to the discussion, and because I believe that they were of major concern to Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre, respectively.

But philosophical books are written, not only with a definite conception of philosophy in mind, but also from a particular point of philosophical view. My philosophical view is not easily described in contemporary terms. Although I was schooled in what is now called the 'analytic' tradition, I was also taught to appreciate Plato and Aristotle, Aquinas and Scotus, Descartes and Berkeley. I hope to show with this book that one so schooled can appreciate Heidegger and Sartre as well. It is surely silly to assume that only an Existentialist, say, can understand another Existentialist; as silly, I might add, as to believe that all Existentialists talk nonsense.

Finally, there is the fact that I argue, rather vehemently at times, for my own philosophical views. This will undoubtedly offend those who believe that an introductory text should present an unbiased picture. In defense of my polemical style, I can only plead that I find it very difficult to develop the dialectic of a particular problem -- the arguments and counter-arguments, the choices and limits -- without taking a definite stand myself. I assure the reader that I sound much more dogmatic than I am.

And I invite him to develop the arguments further than I have done, refuting my contentions in the process. This is the very stuff of which philosophy is made.

It goes without saying that Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre have thought and written about things other than knowledge, existence and freedom. Just as it is obvious that there are other Phenomenologists and Existentialists. After all, this is merely an introduction to, not a survey of, Phenomenology and Existentialism. My main criticism of most of the introductions and anthologies in this field is that they contain bits and pieces from numerous sources from Dostojewski to Marcel, without ever following up on any one topic, with the result that the student cannot possibly appreciate the complexity of the issues, or be impressed by the manner in which philosophical problems grow out of each other." (from the Preface)

7. ———. 1990. The Fourth Way: A Theory of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Reprinted with an Introduction by Erwin Tegtmeier: Grossmann's Radical Empiricism (pp. I-IV) in: Reprint Philosophy: Modern Classics of Analytical Philosophy Series, Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag, 2006.

Contents: Preface VII-VIII; One: Knowledge of the External Wold: Perception 1; Two: Knowledge of Our Minds: Introspection 89; Thee: Mathematical Knowledge: Perception Again 127; Bibliography 299; Index 304-311.

"In his commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Vaihinger considers the four possible views which result if one combines the epistemological distinction between rationalism and empiricism with the ontological distinction between realism and idealism. He claims that until Kant, rationalism was always connected with realism, empiricism always with idealism. But Kant discovered a new combination: The marriage of rationalism with idealism. And then Vaihinger mentions in parentheses that the fourth possible combination, empiricism with realism, has always been considered to be impossible (see H. Vaihinger, Kommentar zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, vol. I, p. 52). It is this "impossible" view which I shall defend. That is why I called this book "The Fourth Way."

Empiricism means different things to different people. I have in mind the view that our knowledge of the external world rests entirely on perception, and that knowledge of our own minds is solely based on introspection. I hold that there is no special faculty of the mind, no Platonic "contemplation," no Cartesian "understanding," no Husserlian "eidetic intuition," by means of which we know external objects. My version of empiricism may be called "radical," for it insists, not only that we know the familiar objects around us by perception, but also that we know numbers and other abstract entities by means of perception. I hold that the truths of arithmetic ultimately rest just as much on perception as the truths of physics.

It is in regard to this contention that my view differs most profoundly from other theories of knowledge. While many contemporary philosophers accept empiricism in regard to the "natural sciences," hardly anyone agrees with me that logic, set theory, and arithmetic are a matter of empirical knowledge. But empiricism cannot stand on one leg. An empiricism that claims exception for logic, set theory, and arithmetic is no empiricism at all. Arithmetic, in particular, is the touchstone for any serious attempt to defend empiricism. I shall therefore have to discuss arithmetic knowledge in great detail.

Realism, too, has many meanings. I mean the view that there are such perceptual objects as apples, that these things consist of smaller things like molecules, and that these in turn consist of even smaller objects like elementary particles (or of whatever else the physicist may discover). None of these things is mental. Nor do they depend for their existence or nature on there being minds. But my realism, too, is of a radical sort, for I also hold that there are sets and numbers, and that these things as well do not depend for their existence or nature on minds. Just as an empiricism in regard to science alone can be no more than a paltry evasion of the rationalist's challenge, so realism only in regard to ordinary perceptual objects can be nothing but a worthless response to the idealist's taunt. The realist's work is only half done after he has refuted Berkeley. That an apple is not a collection of ideas is fairly obvious. "That number is entirely the creature of the mind," however, seems to be an unshakable conviction of even the most realistic philosophers.

But even if we rid ourselves of this idealistic bias, even if we accept numbers and sets as part of the furniture of the world, there remains the formidable task of placing these entities somewhere in the hierarchy of categories. Granted that numbers are nonmental, to what category do they belong'? Are they sets? Or are they perhaps properties of properties? This task, I believe, has been so futile up to now because the proper category for numbers was simply not a part of standard ontologies. Philosophers have for generations tried in vain to squeeze numbers into one of the familiar and traditional categories. Until very recently, there was very little to choose from: Numbers had to be either individual things or else properties of individual things. For an idealist, they could only be either intuitions or concepts. A third possibility finally appeared with the reluctant acceptance of the category of set. But this acceptance posed a new challenge: How to reconcile the existence of sets with empiricism.

Vaihinger, as I said, claims that Kant discovered a new combination: the compatibility of rationalism with idealism. I do not think highly either of Kant's rationalism or of his idealism. But Kant discovered -- and proudly insisted on -- one crucial truth: arithmetic is necessary and yet synthetic. With this discovery, he challenged all empiricists as well as all rationalists. Empiricists have to explain how arithmetic can possibly be necessary; rationalists, how it can possibly be synthetic. This challenge, I believe, has not been met." (from the Preface)

8. ———. 1992. The Existence of the World. An Introduction to Ontology. New York: Routledge.

Contents: I. The Discovery of the World: Timeless Being 1; II. The Battle Over the World: Universals 14; III. The Structure of the World: The Categories 46; IV. The Substratum of the World: Existence 91; V. The Enigma of the World: Negation 120: Bibliography 134; Index 137-139.

"The nature of classification.

Ontology asks and tries to answer two related questions. What are the categories of the world? And what are the laws that govern these categories? In chemistry, for comparison, we search for the chemical elements and the laws of chemistry; in physics, for elementary particles and their laws. Categories are for ontology what these basic building blocks of the universe are for the natural sciences. But ontology is not a science among sciences. Its scope is vastly larger than that of any science. And its point of view is totally different from that of the sciences. To see how ontology differs from science, we must first of all understand the notion of a category. Our first question therefore is: what is a category?

(...)

The principle of the classification of the elements, however, is the same as at Empedocles's time: Things are distinguished from each other by means of the properties which they have. Let us call this 'the principle of classification'.

(...)

Someone must have realized that the foundation of all classifications of individual things, namely, the distinction between these things and their properties, is itself a classification. But it is a classification, not of individual things - individual amounts of water or earth, or individual bits of gold or iron, or individual whales or carps - but of entities in general. It is a classification of any kind of existent. It divides up everything there is into two large groups of existents, namely, into individual things, on the one hand, and their properties, on the other. Every 'ordinary' classification rests on this most fundamental classification of things into individuals and their properties. In order to distinguish this classification from all others, we shall speak of a 'categorization'. Entities, we shall say, are categorized. The kinds of thing which the categorization distinguishes are then called 'categories'. We know that there are at least two categories, that is, two kinds of entity (existent), namely, individual things and properties of individual things." (pp. 1-3).

Translated in German as: Die Existenz der Welt. Eine Einführung in die Ontologie, Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag, 2004 and in Spanish as : La Existencia del Mundo. Introduccion a la Ontologia, Madrid, Tecnos, 2007.

9. ———. 2009. Phenomenological Realism Versus Scientific Realism. Reinhardt Grossmann - David M. Armstrong Metaphysical Correspondence. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

"We choose the title "Phenomenological Realism vs. Scientific Realism" because these two terms indicate what is common and what is different in their respective metaphysical positions. The realism common to them involves the ontological acknowledgement of concrete as well as of abstract entities such as universals and numbers which are taken as independent of mind. The attributes "phenomenological" and "scientific" which differentiate between Armstrong and Grossmann refer to the way they support their ontological realism. Armstrong uses evidences of the natural sciences, Grossmann evidences of perception and introspection. The epistemological differences explain part of the disputes between Armstrong and Grossmann, e.g., over the simplicity of universals.

We have divided this work into four parts distributed in thirty two letters from 1976 until 1987, and three isolated commentaries on three works from 1984 until 1992. Thus, the structure of the book includes an important stretch of the intellectual development of both philosophers from the preparation of their cardinal works, Armstrong with "Universals and Scientific Realism" (Cambridge University Press, 1978) and Grossmann with "The Categorial Structure of the World" (Indiana University Press, 1983), until the publication of Grossmann's "The Existence of the World: An Introduction to Ontology" (Routledge, 1992) and Armstrong's "A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility" (Cambridge University Press, 1989)." (from the Introduction, p. 9)

10. Twardowski, Kazimierz. 1977. On the Content and Object of Presentations. A Psychological Investigation. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

English translation and introduction (pp. VII-XXXIV) by Reinhardt Grossmann of: Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen (1894).

"Twardowski's little book - of which I here offer a translation - is one of the most remarkable works in the history of modern philosophy. It is concise, clear, and - in Findlay's words - "amazingly rich in ideas."(1)

It is therefore a paradigm of what some contemporary philosophers approvingly call "analytic philosophy." But Twardowski's book is also of considerable historical significance. His views reflect Brentano's earlier position and thus shed some light on this stage of Brentano's philosophy. Furthermore, they form a link between this stage, on the one hand, and those two grandiose attempts to propagate rationalism in an age of science, on the other hand, which are known as Meinong's theory of entities and Husserl's phenomenology. Twardowski's views thus point to the future and introduce many of the problems which, through the influence of Meinong, Husserl. Russell, and Moore, have become standard fare in contemporary philosophy. In this introduction, I shall call attention to the close connection between some of Twardowski's main ideas and the corresponding thoughts of these four philosophers." (from the Introduction, p. 1)

(1) Findlay, John N., 1963, Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963, p. 8

Translation

- Twardowski, Kazimierz. 1977. On the Content and Object of Presentations. A Psychological Investigation. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

English translation and introduction (pp. VII-XXXIV) by Reinhardt Grossmann of: Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen (1894).

"Twardowski's little book - of which I here offer a translation - is one of the most remarkable works in the history of modern philosophy. It is concise, clear, and - in Findlay's words - "amazingly rich in ideas."(1)

It is therefore a paradigm of what some contemporary philosophers approvingly call "analytic philosophy." But Twardowski's book is also of considerable historical significance. His views reflect Brentano's earlier position and thus shed some light on this stage of Brentano's philosophy. Furthermore, they form a link between this stage, on the one hand, and those two grandiose attempts to propagate rationalism in an age of science, on the other hand, which are known as Meinong's theory of entities and Husserl's phenomenology. Twardowski's views thus point to the future and introduce many of the problems which, through the influence of Meinong, Husserl. Russell, and Moore, have become standard fare in contemporary philosophy. In this introduction, I shall call attention to the close connection between some of Twardowski's main ideas and the corresponding thoughts of these four philosophers." (from the Introduction, p. 1)

(1) Findlay, John N., 1963, Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963, p. 8

A Selection of Papers

1. Grossmann, Reinhardt. 1960. "Acts and Relations in Brentano." Analysis no. 21:1-5.

2. ———. 1960. "Conceptualism." Review of Metaphysics no. 14:243-254.

Reprinted in: Edwin B. Allaire [and others], Essays in Ontology, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1963, pp. 40-49.

"There can be no doubt that one is acquainted in perception with red things rather than redness alone. Nor can there be any doubt that one can name things with which one is acquainted. Each of these two facts forms the commonsensical background for an ontological criterion. According to the first criterion, what exists is what can be presented in perception independently of other things. Call this the independence-criterion.(1) According to the second, what exists is what can be named. Call this the naming-criterion. (p. 40 of the reprint)

(...)

Let us ask, finally, what, if anything, the conceptualist has committed himself to with regard to the "existence" of concepts. It seems that he still has a number of alternatives.

First. The conceptualist could adopt the naming-criterion. Since concepts are named, they would then be said to exist along with the referents of "this" and "that."

Second. He could reject the naming-criterion and instead accept the independence-criterion. From the fact that concepts are named, it would then not follow that they exist. But notice that the independence-criterion was originally tailored to perception alone, not to thought. This shows that there is a third possibility.

Third. The conceptualist could introduce a new criterion of existence which replaces the old independence-criterion for perception. According to this new criterion, what exists is what can be presented either in perception or in thought independently of other things. To grasp that this is a real alternative, consider that according to many philosophers, although one cannot perceive red (or redness) in isolation, one can so think (of) it. If this be true, then upon the new criterion, concepts exist -- not because they are named, but because they can be thought (of) independently.

In the history of philosophy, conceptualism is closely linked with nominalism. More often than not, conceptualists held that concepts subsist rather than exist. Nor is this surprising. Remember the so-called localization-criterion: what exists is what is localized in space and time. This criterion and the conceptualist doctrine that one can in perception be presented only with a particular this are just two sides of the same coin. More precisely, the things that are localized upon the one criterion are often held to be exactly those with which one can be presented upon the other. (Time and space have been called "Formen der Anschauung.") This makes it plausible, to say the least, that the conceptualist, however unwittingly, may also be guided by the localization-criterion. If so, he will deny that concepts exist.

Comparing all three, realist, nominalist, and conceptualist, we note these similarities. All three admit that there are two ontological modes, namely, existents and subsistents. All three are forced to make this distinction because they accept one of several criteria, naming, independence, or localization, as the most significant criterion of existence. The conceptualist, however, stands with the nominalist when it comes to separating existents from subsistents. To one who explicates different ontological uses of "exist" rather than adopting one himself, this is of little consequence. The deepest issue, I submit, is not whether universals are called "properties," or "concepts"; whether, perhaps, they are "parts" of something else; or whether, finally, they should be said to exist rather than merely being called subsistents. What then is this deepest issue? To state it, I avail myself of a metaphor I used a while ago. According to the conceptualist we have,.as it were, two eyes; the eye of perception and the eye of the mind. With the latter we "see" the universal. This fundamental dualism both realist and nominalist reject." (pp. 48-49 of the reprint).

(1) For an excellent analysis of the independence-criterion and its importance for the realism- nominalism issue see Edwin B. Allaire, "Existence, Independence, and Universals," The Philosophical Review, 69,1960, 485-496 and also pp. 3-53 of this book.

3. ———. 1961. "Frege's Ontology." Philosophical Review no. 70:23-40.

Reprinted in: Edwin B. Allaire [and others], Essays in Ontology, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1963, pp. 106-120; reprinted also in: D. E. Klemke (ed.), Essays on Frege, Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1974, pp. 79-98.

"Frege's system has two rather puzzling parts: (1) he insists on the sense-denotation distinction for names but makes no such distinction for concept words; (2) he describes concepts and concept words as being unsaturated. (1) raises the problem whether concept words either denote or express concepts. This problem has been discussed by W. Marshall Dummett.(a) (2) raises a number of different problems, for it led Frege to introduce so-called value ranges and concept correlates. These problems have been discussed by Peter Geach, R. S. Wells, and Gustav Bergmann.(b) Since both kinds of problems arise from Frege's notion of concept, it is plausible, as Bergmann tries to show, that they have their roots in a hidden nominalism. E. D. Klemke, however, has recently argued against Bergmann that Frege was clearly not a nominalist.(c)

In this paper I shall first suggest the structural reasons for Frege's insistence on (1) and (2). Then I shall make some comments about the issue whether or not Frege was a nominalist. But of course a complete discussion of Frege's philosophy must not be expected in this paper."

(a) W. Marshall, "Frege's Theory of Functions and Objects,"Philosophical Review, LXII (1953), 374-390; and M. Dummett, "Frege on Functions, a Reply," ibid., LXIV (1955), 96-107.

(b) P. T. Geach, "Class and Concept," Philosophical Review, LXIV (1955), 561-570; R. S. Wells, "Frege's Ontology," Review of Metaphysics, IV (1951), 537-573; and G. Bergmann, "Frege's Hidden Nominalism," Philosophical Review, LXVII (1958), 437-459 (reprinted in Bergmann's Meaning and Existence, Madison, Wis., 1960).

(c) E.D. Klemke, "Professor Bergmann and Frege's 'Hidden Nominalism',"Philosophical Review, LXVIII (1959), 507-514.

4. ———. 1962. "Brentano's Ontology: A Reply to Mr. Kamitz." Analysis no. 23:20-24.

Reply to Reinhard Kamitz, A reply to Professor Grossman's "Acts and Relations in Brentano", Analysis, 22, 1962, pp. 73-78; followed by: R. Kamitz, Acts and Relations in Brentano: A Second Reply to Professor Grossmann, Analysis, 23, 1963, pp. 36-41.

5. ———. 1962. "Sensory Intuition and the Dogma of Localization." Inquiry no. 5:238-251.

Reprinted in: Edwin B. Allaire [and others], Essays in Ontology, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1963, pp. 50-63.

"Conceptualism, like any other philosophical doctrine of comparable scope, has both ontological and epistemological aspects. Ontologically, however, conceptualism does not differ significantly from certain forms of nominalism.(1) At its root lies an epistemological thesis: All objects of sensory intuition are localized in space and time.(2) In this paper, I wish to explore some of the consequences of this thesis. (p. 50 of the reprint).

(…)

To sum up. The problem of predication forces the conceptualist to part with the dogma of isolation and the dogma of localization. It forces him to admit that there is at least one way in which one is acquainted with things in connection rather than in isolation. And it forces him also to admit that there is at least one way in which one is acquainted with the localized together with the unlocalized. Being aware of these consequences, the conceptualist could retreat to a simplified form of conceptualism." (p. 61 of the reprint).

(1) I have discussed the ontological ramifications and possibilities of conceptualism elsewhere. See "Conceptualism," The Review of Metaphysics, 14,1960,243-54 and also pp. 40-49 of this book.

(2) I shall distinguish between sensory intuition and presentation as two distinct ways in which one might be acquainted with particular things and universals, respectively.

6. ———. 1963. "Particulars and Time." In Essays in Ontology, edited by Allaire, Edwin B., 30-39. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

"Some philosophers agree that there is a connection between particularity and time: Particulars are in time; universals are not. However, they disagree among themselves about the precise nature of this connection. I wish to discuss some of the problems which give rise to their disagreement.

Perceptual objects are continuants. Phenomenal objects, e.g. sensa, mental acts, and the like, are momentary entities. A certain perceptual object A, being a continuant, may change its color from green to red and hence be green at one time and not green at another. Obviously, this situation cannot be described by the sentence 'A is green and A is not green.' The only satisfactory description introduces time in the form of moments: 'A is green at t1 and A is not green at t2'.(1) If one starts the philosophical analysis with continuants, one must introduce moments in order to describe a changing thing. Put differently, a philosopher who starts out with continuants, commits himself to absolute time. But time is relational. It follows that one must start not with perceptual objects (continuants), but rather with phenomenal objects, that is, with momentary things.(2)

This argument for phenomenalism is not sound. The ontological analysis of things shows quite conclusively and on its own ground that (logically) proper names must name particulars, rather than things,(3) According to this analysis, a perceptual object A, say, a colored disk, consists of a particular a which exemplifies certain universals. The same holds for a so-called phenomenal object, say, a colored spot in a visual field. What we ordinarily call a (perceptual or phenomenal) thing, turns out to be a complex entity, only part of which is named by the proper name 'a'. Irregardless, therefore, of whether or not perceptual and phenomenal objects are continuants, philosophical analysis starts with neither. The argument could therefore not possibly establish that it must start with phenomenal rather than perceptual objects.4 Our criticism shows, though, that we need not consider the distinction between perceptual and phenomenal objects, in order to discuss the connection between particulars and time.

But even though it fails, the argument contains a very important point. It seems to prove conclusively that particulars must be momentary entities, if time is relational rather than absolute. To be momentary means in this connection to be changeless. Hence there is a connection between particularity and change: If time is relational, then particulars must be changeless. Yet, a perceptual or phenomenal object may change, even though it consists of nothing else but a particular which exemplifies certain universals. We confront here an apparent inconsistency which ontological analysis must resolve."

(1) Of course, time may be introduced through tenses. But this creates ontological problems of a different sort.

(2) Compare, for example, G. Bergmann: Meaning and Existence (Univ. of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1960), pp. 182-188 and pp. 230-239.

(3) Compare Essays II [Bare Particulars by Edwin B. Allaire] and V [Conceptualism by R. Grossmann] of this book.

7. ———. 1963. "Common Names." In Essays in Ontology, edited by Allaire, Edwin B., 64-75. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

"The doctrine of common names has a long history. It always finds proponents who think that it is a way out of the classical nominalistic difficulties. I wish to show that this doctrine does not even make sense when considered apart from the nominalism which it supposedly vindicates, and that it could be of no help to the nominalist, even if it made sense. (p. 64)

(...)

To sum up. Even if the common name doctrine were acceptable, it could be of no help to a nominalist. For, even if he could explain what it means for a word to name commonly, he cannot explain what there is in or about individual things that collects them under one common name. It is indeed one of the most curious facts in the history of philosophy that a certain type of nominalism should derive from the doctrine of common names. Perhaps the only explanation is that the spurious doctrine of particularized essences and the spurious doctrine of common names tended to reinforce each other." (pp. 74-75).

8. ———. 1969. "Non-Existent Objects: Recent Work on Brentano and Meinong." American Philosophical Quarterly no. 6:17-32.

9. ———. 1972. "Russell's Paradox and Complex Predicates." Noûs no. 6:153-164.

10. ———. 1974. "Bergmann's Ontology and the Principle of Acquaintance." In The Ontological Turn. Studies in the Philosophy of Gustav Bergmann, edited by Graham, Moltke S. and Klemke, Elmer D., 89-113. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

Contents of the Volume: Preface VII; I. Ontological alternatives. The limits of ontological analysis by Panayot Butchvarov 3; Bergmann's ontologies by Edwin Allaire 38; To Gustav Bergmann: a humble petition and advice by Henry B. Veatch 65; II: Ontological problems. Bergmann's ontology and the Principle of Acquaintance by Reinhardt Grossmann 89; Consciousness by Timothy L. Sprigge 114; Time, substance, and analysis by Laird Addis 148; Intentions, facts, and propositions by Hebert Hochberg 168; III. Language, logic, and the philosophy of science. Seeing, seeming, and sensing by Wilfrid Sellars 195; Belief and error by Keith Lehrer 216; Bergmann on the analytic-synthetic distinction by Alan Hausman 230; The problem of color incompatibility by Erik Stenius 245; Perspicuous languages by Robert Ackermann 264; Why I am not aware of your pain by Fred Wilson 276;

Bibliography: Works by Gustav Bergmann 301; Index 311-314.

11. ———. 1974. "Meinong's Doctrine of the "Aussersein" of the Pure Object." Noûs no. 8:67-82.

"Meinong's doctrine of the Aussersein of the pure object consists, in my view, of the following four main theses: (1) Nonexistent entities, like the golden mountain and the round square, have no form of being whatsoever. (2) Such entities are, nevertheless, constituents of certain states of affairs. (3) They even have a number of quite ordinary properties-the golden mountain, for example, is golden. (4) Being is not a part of any object. I shall try to explain and evaluate these four theses, and I shall claim that only the first one is true. However, even if my arguments fail to convince, they may at least show that Meinong's doctrine is neither too obscure to be understood nor too wrongheaded to be enlightening."

12. ———. 1975. "Definite Descriptions." Philosophical Studies no. 27:127-144.

13. ———. 1975. "Perceptual Objects, Elementary Particles, and Emergent Properties." In Action, Knowledge, and Reality. Critical Studies in Honour of Wilfrid Sellars, edited by Castañeda, Hector-Neri, 129-146. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.

14. ———. 1976. "The Factuality of Facts." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 2:85-103.

15. ———. 1976. "Structures, Functions and Forms." In Studien Zu Frege Ii. Logik Und Sprachphilosophie / Studies on Frege Ii. Logic and Philosophy of Language, edited by Schirn, Matthias, 11-32. Stuttgart: Fromman-Holzboog.

Contents of the volume: 14. Reinhardt Grossmann. Structures, functions and forms 11; 15. Wolfgang Carl. Freges Unterscheidung von Gegenstand und Begriff 33; 16. Eike-Henner W. Kluge. Freges Begriff des Logischeinfachen 51; 17. Gottfried Gabriel. Einige Eiseitigkeiten des Fregeschen Logiksbegriffs 67; 18. Hans-Ulrich Hoche. Vom 'Inhaltsstrich' zum 'Waagerechten'. Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklung der Fregeschen Uteilslehre 87;19. Leslie Stevenson. Frege zwei Definitionen der Quantifikation 103; 20. Robert Sternfeld. The mathematization of logic: quantified sentences 125; 21. Ignacio Angelellli. Friends and opponents of the substitutivity of Identical in the history of logic 141; 22. Charles E. Caton. 'The idea of sameness challenges reflection' 167; 23. Matthias Schirn. Identität und Identitätsaussage bei Frege 181; 24. Bertram Kienzle. Notiz zu Freges Theorien der Identität 217; 25. David Wiggins. Frege's problem of the Morning Star and the Evening Star 221; 26. Ronald Suter. Frege und Russell über das 'Paradox der Identität' 257; 27. Haig Khatchadourian. Kripke and Frege on identity statements 271; Abkürzungsverzeichnis 299; Mitarbeiter dieses Bandes 301.

16. ———. 1984. "Non-Existent Objects Vs. Definite Descriptions." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 62:363-377.

"Some years ago, I published an article about Meinong's theory of objects. (1) I listed there four main theses of Meinong's view:

(1) The golden mountain (and other nonexistents) has no being at all.

(2) Nevertheless, it is a constituent of the fact that the golden mountain does not exist.

(3) Furthermore, it has such ordinary properties as being made from gold.

(4) Existence is not a constituent of any object.

And I argued in that paper that only thesis (1) is true. In particular, I insisted that (3), which I consider to be the most characteristic feature of Meinong's view, is false.

Since then, there have been quite a few discussions of Meinong's view. I would like, in response to some of these works, to reiterate my earlier criticism of Meinong. My purpose is threefold. Firstly, I would like to state once more my own view, which is a version of Russell's theory of definite descriptions, as clearly as possible. Secondly, I shall defend my past contention that the golden mountain is not golden against some recent objections. And thirdly and most importantly, I want to describe the dialectic of the philosophical problem as I perceive it. It seems to me to be an exasperating shortcoming of the discussion that most participants do not clearly state the basic options and their reasons for preferring some to others."

(1) 'Meinong's Doctrine of the Aussersein of the Pure Object', Noüs, 8 (1974, pp. 67-81. See also my Meinong (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1974).

17. ———. 1995. "Frege's Fundamental Philosophical Mistakes." In Logik Und Mathematik. Frege-Kolloquium Jena 1993, edited by Ingolf, Max and Stelzner, Werner, 226-231. Berlin: de Gruyter.

"It is one of the most surprising features of Frege's philosophy that he, who correctly analyzed the structures of quantified states of affairs, insisted on treating definite description expressions ('the birthplace of Mozart') like names ('Salzburg') and names like definite description expressions.' I shall argue that Frege's original mistake leads to a string of further mistakes. It leads him to hold that names, like definite description expressions, have both a sense and a reference and, eventually, to the view that sentences name truth-values. In short, it results in his much admired sense-reference theory of meaning." (p. 226).

18. ———. 1995. "Thoughts, Objectives and States of Affairs." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 49:163-169.

"The notion of state of affairs was introduced as the complexly signifiable in the Late Scholasticism and rediscovered by Logicians like Bolzano and Frege. While Bolzano and Frege were primarily interested in the nature of objective truths students of Brentano, among others Meinong, Twardowski and Husserl, developed similar concepts starting out with an interest in the nature of mental acts and judgement. Both Frege's and Meinong's conceptions face similar problems concerning complex referents which are diagnosed to stem from confusions of complexes of properties with complex properties."

19. ———. 1996. "Logic and Ontology." In Logica '95. Proceedings of the 9th Symposium, edited by Childers, Timothy, Kolåi, Petr and Svoboda, Vladimir, 77-83. Prague: Filosofia.

20. ———. 1998. "Wittgenstein and the Problem of Non-Existent States of Affairs." In The Logica Yearbook 1997, 139-146. Prague: Filosofia.

Reprinted in Acta Analytica, 23, 1998, pp. 139/146.

21. ———. 2000. "Reid, Meinong and the Argument from Physics." Metaphysica.International Journal for Ontology and Metaphysics no. 1:69-82.

22. ———. 2001. "Meinong's Main Mistake." In The School of Alexius Meinong, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Jacquette, Dale and Poli, Roberto, 477-488. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"Seldom has a modern philosopher become as famous for a view which he does not hold as Alexius Meinong. One generally attributes to him the belief that there are, not just such ordinary things as mountains and relations, but even such things as the golden mountain and the round square. He is therefore often viewed as a spendthrift ontologist who delighted in multiplying entities continuously and needlessly. But this conception, I shall try to show, is mistaken. Anyone who has studied Meinong's philosophy carefully will come to the conclusion that he is not the 'supreme entity-multiplier in the history of philosophy' as Gilbert Ryle claims.(1)

But even though Meinong never embraced the rather extreme view that there are, in addition to existing things in space and time and subsisting things (ideal things) outside of space and time, also such things as the golden mountain, and even such contradictory things as the round square, he nevertheless insisted on another ontological principle not any less mistaken than what I just called the 'extreme' view. It is this insistence, and not his ontological inventory, which I consider to be Meinong's main mistake. I shall, therefore, first defend Meinong against the kind of accusation implied in Ryle's description of Meinong. And then I shall, secondly, show where Meinong really went wrong in his ontology." (p. 477)

(1) See Ryle's article in the Oxford Magazine 26 October 1933.

Studies about Reinhardt Grossmann

1. Armstrong, David Malet. 1984. "Reinhardt Grossmann's Ontology." Critical Philosophy:63-76.

Critical notice of The Categorial Structure of the World, by Reinhardt Grossmann.

Reprinted as Chapter 3 in: J. Cumpa, Studies in the Ontology of Reinhardt Grossmann, pp. 29-43.

2. Butchvarov, Panayot. 1987. "Review of the Categorial Structure of the World by R. Grossmann." International Studies in Philosophy no. 19:81-82.

3. Cumpa, Javier, ed. 2009. Studies in the Ontology of Reinhardt Grossmann. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

Table of Contents: Acknowledgements 1; Erwin Tegtmeier: Foreword 3; Javier Cumpa: Introduction 5; Abbreviations of Grossmann's Works 8; GROSSMANN STUDIES. 1. Laird Addis: Grossmann on Relations and Intentionality 11; 2. Edwin B. Allaire: It is about Time 27; 3. David M. Armstrong: Reinhardt Grossmann's Ontology 29; 4. Guido Bonino: One- and Two-Level Acts: Bergmann and Grossmann on Realism 45; 5. Panayot Butchvarov: Facts 71; 6. Javier Cumpa: What is a Universal? Main Problems of Property Theory 95; 7. Volker Gadenne: Dualism and The Mind-Body Trilemma 119;

8. J. J. E. Gracia and P. Symington: Grossmann and the Ontological Status of Categories 133; 9. Greg Jesson: The Intersection of the Mind and the World: Reinhardt Grossmann's Ontology of Knowledge 155; 10. J. P. Moreland: Grossmann on Existence and Property-Instances: Suárez's Way Out 177;

11. Peter Simons: Why Categories Matter: Grossmann and Beyond 191; 12. Erwin Tegtmeier: Three Ontologies of the Iowa School: Categories and Composition 211; 13. Fred Wilson: Some Reflections on Grossmann on the Entity Existence 229; APPENDIXES. Appendix I: An Unpublished Manuscript on Philosophy of Mind (1993): Reinhardt Grossmann: Materialism and the New Folk Philosophy 269; Appendix II: A List of the Published Works of R. Grossmann 284; Appendix III: A Bibliography on R. Grossmann's Philosophy 288; Bibliography 291-297.

4. Moreland, James Porter. 1993. "Review of the Existence of the World: An Introduction to Ontology by R. Grossmann." Mind no. 102:407-410.

5. Sprigge, Timothy L.S. 1975. "Review of Reinhard Grossmann's Ontological Reduction." Noûs no. 9:429-445.

6. Tegtmeier, Erwin. 1991. "Review of the Categorial Structure of the World by R. Grossmann." Noûs no. 25:726-728.

7. Wilson, Fred. 1986. "Critical Notice of Reinhardt Grossmann's the Categorial Structure of the World." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 16:163-180.

Reprinted with the title: Grossmann on the Categorial Structure of the World in: F. Wilson, Acquaintance, Ontology and Knowledge. Collected Essays in Ontology, Frankfurt, Ontos Verlag, 2007, pp. 413-442.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The Ontological Realism of Panayot Butchvarov

Annotated bibliography

Books

1. Butchvarov, Panayot. 1966. Resemblance and Identity. An Examination of the Problem of Universals. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Contents: Preface IX-XIV; Introduction 3; 1. The nominalist theory 16, 2. The identity and the resemblance theories 56; 3. The relation of resemblance 101; 4. Generic identity 135; Conclusion 173; Bibliography 199; Index 205.

"The first task of this essay, therefore, is the development of a distinctive and philosophically useful notion of universal, and of a corresponding statement of the problem of universals as a separate philosophical issue. Its second task is the solution of the so-stated problem of universals. Roughly, I shall identify the notion of universal with that of universal quality, in a very wide sense of the word "quality" to be explained in section 1. And I shall offer an explanation of the notion of universal quality that does not depend on the employment of the technical philosophical terms "universal," "particular," or "abstract." I shall identify the problem of universals with the question whether there are universal qualities, i.e., whether the qualities of individual things are universal or particular, or, as I shall actually state it without the use of the terms "universal" and "particular," whether certain qualities of individual things should be described as being one and the same quality or distinct qualities related by a relation of resemblance. Other questions concerning universals, I believe, are either consequences or under modifications of this primary problem, or else independent philosophical issues having no special relation to the puzzles concerning universals. That this is so will become evident, I hope, in the course of our inquiry, especially in sections 1, 2, 5, 13, 17, and 18. But I shall not engage in the historical and exegetic investigations necessary for an actual proof of this claim. My statement of the problem of universals, in particular the identification of the notion of universal with that of universal quality, accords well with important traditional conceptions, such as "the universal is common, since that is called universal which is such as to belong to more than one thing" (Aristotle), and "the universal is that which is in many and of many" (Albert the Great). But does it not fail to take account of the second part of the equally important traditional question "whether genera and species really exist or are bare notions only; and if they exist whether they are corporeal things, or incorporeal and rather separated, or whether they exist in things perceived by the senses and in relation to them," (Porphyry)? For it seems to exclude from consideration one of the major theories of universals: that "genera and species exist not in sensibles but in separation from sensibles," and that universals may exist even if they have no instances. Now if this theory amounts to the claim that qualities, whether particular or universal, need not be qualities of individual things, that the notions of genus and species can be explained independently of those of instantiation or participation, then indeed we need not consider it, since, in virtue of the very notions of quality, genus, and species, it is obviously false. But the theory need not be interpreted so crudely as to become obviously false. It can be interpreted as claiming that there is an enormous, categorial difference between individual things and universal qualities and that because of this difference the senses in which universal qualities can be said to exist and to be in space and time, and the senses in which individual things can be said to exist and to be in space and time are so different that one can assert the existence of a quality on the ground that it can have instances, even if in fact it has not. I shall consider this claim at the end of the book. But the logically prior questions are, "What is a universal quality?" and "Are there universal qualities?" It is mainly to these questions that I shall address myself in this essay. In many ways the problem of universals is the paradigm of a philosophical problem. It bears virtually no resemblance to any issue of experimental science. It is supremely general, in the sense that it concerns a certain fact about all qualities, in any actual or possible world, in complete abstraction from circumstances and contexts. And it is neither overtly nor disguisedly a problem about philosophy, one which is of interest to philosophers only because of their self-consciousness about the status and possibility of their discipline. Perhaps this is why writers on the problem of universals are especially tempted to connect their inquiries with considerations about philosophical method. I have succumbed to this temptation, mainly in Chapter Three. In content, if not in style, this essay is intended to be metaphysical. Part of its purpose is to demonstrate, in the context of a specific philosophical topic, that at least one branch of philosophy is a legitimate cognitive discipline that has as its subject matter, not certain features of language or of mathematics, but the essential and most general characteristics of the world."

2. ———. 1970. The Concept of Knowledge. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Contents: Part One: Primary knowledge 3; Part Two: The objects of a priori knowledge 99; Part Three: Primary Perceptual knowledge 185; Part Four: Derivative knowledge 267; Index 321-325.

"Part One of this book attempts an account of the general concept of knowledge, especially as it is employed in what I shall call primary epistemic judgments, that is, judgments of the form "A knows that p" which would not typically be in need of justification by appeal to other epistemic judgments. (Epistemic judgments that are in need of such justification I shall call derivative, and I shall make a corresponding distinction between primary and derivative knowledge.) We shall find that this account leads to, indeed demands and at the same time illuminates, the division of all knowledge into a priori and a posteriori. But unless then a detailed elucidation of this division is provided, the general account of the concept of knowledge would remain skeletal. There are two questions in particular that such an elucidation must answer. First, what are the objects of a priori knowledge? Second, what is the nature of primary a posteriori knowledge? Our account of the concept of knowledge, like most such accounts, requires that the object of knowledge be a certain truth or fact. But what, if anything, could be an a priori (or necessary) truth or fact? Our account, again in common with most, requires the distinction between primary and derivative knowledge. But can this distinction be made good with respect to our sense-perceptual knowledge of the "external" world of bodies, which is the paradigm and most extensive segment of a posteriori knowledge? That the answers to these questions are not at all settled should be obvious. Yet, unless it includes such answers, an account of the general concept of knowledge cannot be accepted as satisfactory. Part Two of this book will attempt to provide an answer to the first question, and Part Three an answer to the second.

The consideration of a posteriori knowledge in Part Three raises with particular urgency the question of the possibility and nature of derivative knowledge. This is not surprising. That question concerns chiefly derivative a posteriori knowledge, the nature of derivative a priori knowledge being largely the concern of formal logic and its possibility generally unquestioned. The crucial issue regarding derivative a posteriori knowledge is the legitimacy of nondemonstrative inference. In Part Four we return to our inquiry into the general concept of knowledge, but this time with special attention to the issue of nondemonstrative inference and to the nature of derivative knowledge in general, and provide further reasons in support of the chief thesis of Part One.

I shall not, however, discuss the usual philosophical problems about the validity of certain particular kinds of derivative knowledge (e.g., of the future, of bodies, of other minds). Each of these requires careful, detailed treatment in its own right; nothing is gained by sweeping proclamations or refutations of skepticism. And since these problems constitute the familiar subject matter of the theory of knowledge, I offer here only an introduction to that branch of philosophy and not a theory of knowledge as such. Indeed, as is well known, the sort of theory of knowledge one proposes, and most of its tenets, are largely determined by the account one offers of the fundamental epistemic concepts. It is important, however, that such an account be given first and that it be uninfluenced by one's epistemological convictions. For, true or false, these convictions have philosophical value only insofar as they are justified, and their justification cannot be attempted without an account of the key concepts involved. Thus the reader may come to think that our inquiry leads to skepticism. In this, as I shall explain, he would be mistaken. But even if he were not, I would regard such a consequence as acceptable, as long as the rejection of skepticism is not itself grounded in investigations such as ours. Our respect for common sense must not be confused with the possession of a philosophical answer to skepticism. In philosophy, as in any other purely theoretical discipline, it is better to be wrong as the result of inquiry and argument than to be right as the result of mere conviction. The layman who takes the existence of an external world for granted may be right, and the philosophical skeptic whose inquiries lead him to deny the existence of an external world may be wrong. But the skeptic is the philosopher, and the layman is not." pp. 4-5

3. ———. 1979. Being Qua Being. A Theory of Identity, Existence, and Predication. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments IX; Introduction 1; 1. The apparent distinctness of Identicals 9; 2. Objects and entities 39; 3. Indiscernibility 64; 4. Existence 82; 5. essence 122; 6. Substances 154; 7. qualities 184; 8. Accidental connections 212; Appendix A. Relations 239; Appendix B. Idealism 248; Notes 256; Index 267.

"The inquiry into being qua being has been identified with metaphysics. But it would be better to use the term "metaphysics" more broadly, namely, for the branch of philosophy that has as its subject matter the nature of the world, or of reality, rather than the nature of our knowledge, or of our language, or of our sciences about the world. We may then distinguish several levels of metaphysical inquiry. On the least fundamental level metaphysics is concerned with the most general description of the actual world, with the most general kinds of things there are and with the way they fit together. It asks such questions as whether God exists, whether there are both minds and bodies or only minds or only bodies, and if there are both minds and bodies, how they are related. On this level it is closely connected with epistemology, since the main philosophical difficulties such questions pose for us are epistemological in character.

On a more fundamental level, presupposed by the first, metaphysics inquires into the nature of all possible, or at least all conceivable, comprehensible worlds, and thus only indirectly into the nature of the actual world. Can there be a world that consists only of individuals and not also of properties and relations? Or a world that consists only of properties and relations? Can there be nonidentical but indiscernible things? Questions related to those on the previous level can now be asked in complete independence from the usual epistemological considerations. Can there be a world unless there is God? Can there be a world without bodies? Without minds? On this level metaphysics is closely connected with logic. (Immediately following his introduction of the notion of a science of being qua being Aristotle offers a defense of the laws of non-contradiction and excluded middle.) But this connection is no more limited to formal logic than the notion of necessary truth is limited to the truths of forma logic. The criterion of possibility on which it would rely can hardly be mere forma consistency; it must be conceivability or comprehensibility (not of propositions, but of what propositions purport to describe), for, whether we like it or not, we have no other general and ultimate criterion of possibility.

This is why, on this level, metaphysics is also connected with phenomenology, i.e., with the philosophical description of the most genera character of the objects of consciousness qua objects of consciousness.

On the third and most fundamental level metaphysics is concerned with the concepts and principles on the basis of which the questions belonging to the other two levels, i.e., the questions about what things there are or at least there can be, must be answered. Instead of there questions, it asks, what is it for something to be in a world, or for something to be a world? It is on this level, I suggest, that metaphysics is best described as the inquiry into being qua being, or, we might also say, as protometaphysics. Any conception of a world presupposes the conception of what it is for something to exist in that world. Any conception of a thing presupposes the conception of what it is for it to be the subject of predication, both accidental and essential. Any conception of a thing presupposes the conception of what it is for it to be identifiable, not in the sense of being merely singled out but also in the sense of being singled out again or in a different way, of being recognized, of being the subject of a true informative identity judgment.

It follows that the concepts of existence, identity, essential predication, and accidental predication cannot be understood as standing for constituents of the world, presumably for certain properties or relations. They are the concepts in terms of which we must understand what it is for something to be in the world, what it is for something to have a property or be related to another thing, and what it is for something to be a property or a relation. Yet they apply to any possible world; indeed nothing would be a world were it not for their applicability to it. We may call such concepts, which apply without standing for anything, transcendental. The inquiry into being qua being, or protometaphysics, may then be called a transcendental inquiry.

Now the central thesis of this book is that the concepts of existence, identity, accidental predication, and essential predication are intimately related, and moreover that the concept of identity is basic and the other three are to be understood in terms of it. I shall argue that the four puzzles with which we began admit of a common solution, the key to which is to be found in a careful study of the second puzzle, that regarding identity. It is a solution based on a distinction between what I shall call objects and entities. A similar, but not the same, distinction has often been made, most notably by Meinong but also by recent possible-worlds semanticists, in treatments of the first puzzle, that regarding existence. But there it rests on the proposition that there are things of which it is true that there are no such things, a proposition that, I suggest, cannot be made coherent, let alone plausible, except on the basis of considerations external to the topic of existence. A similar, but again not the same, distinction has also been made, e.g., by Carnap and Sellars, in treatments of an aspect of the second puzzle, namely, the seeming failure of the principle of the Indiscernibility of identicals in intentional and modal contexts; I have in mind the distinction between individuals and individual concepts. But if an individual concept is indeed a concept, or at all like a concept, then it is not the object of the propositional attitude, or the subject of the modal property, with respect to which the principle seems to fail, and therefore its relevance is obscure. If it is not really a concept, then how does it differ from the individual with which it is associated? Again, I believe that these questions can be answered only on the basis of considerations both far more general and much deeper than the seeming discernibility of identicals in intentional and modal contexts." pp. 3-5 (notes omitted).

4. ———. 1998. Skepticism About the External World. New York: Oxford University Press.

Contents: Introduction 3; 1. Direct realism 12; 2. The Adverbial theory 35; 3. The skeptic's argument 56; 4. A first answer to the skeptic 89; 5. Our concept of reality 111; 6. The untruth and the truth of skepticism 133; Notes 159; Index 179.

"We are now ready to attempt another answer to the skeptic, one based on the preceding considerations regarding the concept of reality. Can what I have called the particular (nonmodal epistemic) question, namely, Do we know or at least have evidence, in some particular perceptual situation, that what we perceive is a real material object? be given a nonskeptical answer, just as in chapter 4 I gave a non skeptical answer to the general (non-modal epistemic) question, namely, Do we know or at least have evidence that material objects exist? If it can, then we would also have a second nonskeptical answer to the general question, since a nonskeptical answer to the particular question entails a nonskeptical answer to the general question, though not vice versa. Thus my argument in chapter 4 in favor of the latter would receive welcome supplementation. But, as we shall see, we would still need that argument at a crucial point in our search in this chapter for a complete nonskeptical answer to the particular question. The fact is that both answers are needed. There is no circularity here, since the argument in chapter 4 is independent of the argument to be offered in this chapter, It's just that the converse is not quite the case.

Clearly. the question whether a certain perceptual object exists, is real, cannot be answered unless an account of the concept of existence, reality, is offered, even though this fact has been generally ignored by recent Anglo-American philosophers of perception (in striking contrast with continental philosophers). I have already said why Russell's account in terms of the satisfaction of a propositional function is unacceptable; it presupposes a more fundamental concept of existence, which would allow us to decide what to count as admissible arguments of the function and what not to so count. And the familiar proposal that the reality of an object consists in its fitting in the spatiotemporal causal system of the world is conceptually circular; it presupposes the concept of reality, for of course the system in question must be a system of real objects, and the causal relations in it must also be real, rather than imaginary, if the "fitting in" is to be even relevant. For similar reasons. also conceptually circular is the Kantian-phenomenalist account, as I argued in chapter 5.

The failures of those accounts should not be surprising if the existence, the reality, of an object cannot be thought of as one of its properties, relational or nonrelational. It certainly is not observable, and we would he indulging in mere fantasy if we suppose that it is somehow hidden in or behind the object that exists. I have argued that we should think of existence as the indefinite identifiability of the object to which it is attributed, in the sense that there is an indefinite number of objects with each of which it is identical. But their identity is not something in reality. Rather it is imposed on them by our decisions to apply the concept of identity, The same can be said about the concept of existence, reality, since it is to be understood in terms of the concept of identity. Both are transcendental concepts." pp. 133-134

Essays

1. ———. 1974. "The Limits of Ontological Analysis." In The Ontological Turn. Studies in the Philosophy of Gustav Bergmann, edited by Gram, Moltke and Klemke, Elmer, 3-37. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

2. ———. 1977. "Identity." Midwest Studies in Philosophy no. 2:70-89.

"A novel account is offered of the nature of informative identity statements. Special attention is accorded to the intimate connection between the concept of identity and the concept of existence, and to their fundamental role in any intelligible conceptual framework."

Reprinted in: Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr., Howard K. Wettstein (eds.) - Contemporary perspectives in the philosophy of language - Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1979

3. ———. 1981. "The Ontology of Philosophical Analysis." Noûs no. 15:3-14.

"The most striking fact about recent analytic philosophy has been its return to metaphysics. But it is characteristic of most recent analytic ontologies that they do not face the ontological issues directly, but rather consist in the search for definitions that would capture ordinary usage or in paraphrasing ordinary statements supposed to be ontologically problematic. Gustav Bergmann, whose recent work is reviewed here, is an exception. His recent ontology constitutes a genuine and unabashed turn to the things themselves. However, it involves excesses which seem due to insufficient attention to the peculiarities of the ontologically crucial concept of identity."

4. ———. 1986. "Our Robust Sense of Reality." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:403-421.

"Anti-Meinongian philosophers, such as Russell, do not explain what they mean by existence when they deny that there are nonexistent objects - they just sense robustly. I argue that any plausible explanation of what they mean tends to undermine their view and to support the Meinongian view. But why are they so strongly convinced that they are right? I argue that the reason is to be found in the special character of the concept of existence, which has been insufficiently examined by anti-Meinongian as well as by Meinongian philosophers."

5. ———. 1988. "Russell's Views on Reality." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 32:165-167.

"Russell's account of existence as satisfaction of a propositional function presupposes a more fundamental notion of existence, which we would employ in deciding what to allow as arguments satisfying a function, a notion he never elucidates. Jan Dejnožka has distinguished three ways Russell used the term "exists," one being the phenomenalist's, in which it refers to correlations of sense-data. I argue that this phenomenalist notion cannot be the one Russell needs, since he explicitly held that existence be understood broadly, so that, e.g., the nonexistence of God would not follow by definition."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The Conceptual Realism of Nino Cocchiarella

Introduction

I wish to thank Professor Cocchiarella for helping me to complete this bibliography.

"Research Profile: Cocchiarella proved the first completeness theorems in tense logic and second-order modal logic. He was the first to develop several second-order logics with nominalized predicates as abstract singular terms and then to use those systems in a consistent logical reconstruction of both Frege's and Russell's early logics and in the application of those reconstructions to the semantic analysis of natural language. This work also led to Cocchiarella's development of formal theories of predication and comparative formal ontology, including especially logical reconstructions of nominalism, conceptualism, logical realism, and the logic of natural kinds. Cocchiarella also showed how logical atomism is compatible with logical necessity as a modality, and that it is the only ontology in which logical necessity, as opposed to other kinds of modalities, makes sense. Cocchiarella's own preferred ontological framework is conceptual realism, which he has been formally developing for many years, and which contains a logic of both actualism and possibilism in terms of a distinction between concepts that entail concrete existence and those that do not. It also contains a logic of classes as many as plural objects, which is the basis of Cocchiarella's semantics for plurals and mass nouns in natural language, and in which the Leonard-Goodman calculus of individuals (and therefore Leśniewski's mereology as well) is reducible. Cocchiarella has also shown that Leśniewski's ontology, which is also called a logic of names, is reducible to his theory of reference in conceptual realism, and that the medieval supposition theories of Ockham, Buridan, and other medieval logicians can be logically reconstructed in terms of this theory of reference. Cocchiarella is currently continuing his work on different subsystems of conceptual realism, including in particular a logic of events as truth-makers.

Teaching: Cocchiarella has taught introductory, intermediate, and advanced courses in logic, semantics, set theory and Montague Grammar, as well as seminars on some of the most recent areas of research in logic. He has placed an emphasis in his teaching on the logical analysis of natural language and the ontological interpretations of both scientific and mathematical language.

Vision Statement: Cocchiarella sees logic as a powerful tool for the analysis of our scientific theories and the structures that underlie natural language and our commonsense understanding of the world. The study of logical categories in particular provides an important way to study the semantic and ontological categories underlying our scientific and commonsense world views." (pp. 52-53)

From: Dov M. Gabbay, John Woods (eds.), The International Directory of Logicians. Who's Who in Logic, London: College Publications 2009.

Formal ontology

"Formal ontology is the result of combining the intuitive, informal method of classical ontology with the formal, mathematical method of modern symbolic logic, and ultimately identifying them as different aspects of one and the same science. That is, where the method of ontology is the intuitive study of the fundamental properties. modes, and aspects of being, or of entities in general, and the method of modern symbolic logic is the rigorous construction of formal, axiomatic systems, formal ontology, the result of combining these two methods, is the systematic, formal, axiomatic development of the logic of all forms and modes of being. As such, formal ontology is a science prior to all others in which particular forms, modes, or kinds of being are studied.

Logic can be distinguished from formal ontology, but only in the sense of logic as an uninterpreted calculus, Le. as the method of constructing abstract formal systems subject to varying interpretations over varying domains. A formal system in which logical (or syncategorematic) constants can be distinguished from non-logical (or categorematic) constants and in which the axioms and rules are assumed to be logically valid is not an uninterpreted calculus, however, but a logistic system in which logic is a language with content in its own right. The defining characteristic of a logistic system is that it propounds a theory of logical form. which comprises both a pure logical grammar, i.e. a system of categories and rules for generating meaningful expressions, and a system of logical axioms and rules that determine the deductive relations between different sets of expressions of that grammar. The purely formal or non-descriptive content of the existence of any and all physically real individuals or of the natural properties and relations that such individuals might have in nature, is not independent of the different modes of being of such entities, and in fact presupposes such modes in its very articulation."

Edmund Husserl was among the first to characterize a logistic system in this way, and it was he who also first introduced the notion of a formal ontology. For Husserl, logic has both an apophantic (assertional) aspect, which he called formal apophantics (and which amounts to a theory of logical form as characterized above), and an ontological aspect, which he called formal ontology. The switch from a formal-apophantic attitude to an ontological one is achieved primarily through a process of nominalization, and the underlying unity of the two aspects is given through a ‘Law of Denominative Equivalence’, according to which the well-formed expressions of any given category may be transformed into corresponding nominal forms. It is in this way, for example, that propositional forms and their predicative components (as generated in the theory of logical forms) are transformed into nominal forms that stand for states of affairs and properties and relations, respectively. The ‘categorial objectivities’ or ‘correlates’ that originate from such ‘denominative reductions’ (or nominalizations) of the pure forms of apophantic logic are then claimed to make up the fundamental conceptual material of formal ontology (cf. Logical Investigations, Volume I, §§67—8, Ideas, §119, and Formal and Transcendental Logic, Chapter 2, §25). The important connection of ontology with a logistic system is that the logico-grammatical distinctions made in the latter are based ultimately on a distinction between different modes of being, even if that distinction is initially described in terms of different modes of significance. More is required by way of comprehensive grasp, however, before a logistic system can be taken as a system of logic or a formal ontology in its fullest sense. In particular, such a logistic system must be rich enough to contain, when suitable non-logical constants, axioms, and meaning postulates (regarding such constants) are added to it, every scientific theory and the logical analysis of every meaningful declarative sentence of any natural language. In that case such a logistic system can be taken as a lingua philosophica, or what Leibniz also called a characteristica universalis, and as such it is also none other than a comprehensive system of formal ontology.

(...)

Beginning with Aristotle, the standard assumption in (pre-formal) ontology has been that being is not a genus, i.e. that being is multivalent, and that the principal method of ontology is categorial analysis. This raises the problem of how the different categories or modes of being fit together, and of whether one of the senses or modes of being is preeminent and the others somehow dependent on that sense or mode of being. The differential categorial analyses that have been pro-posed as a resolution of this problem have all turned in one way or another on a theory of predication, i.e. on how the different categories fit together in the nexus of predication, and they have differed from one another primarily on whether the analysis of the fundamental forms of predication is to be directed upon the structure of reality or the structure of thought. In formal ontology, the resolution of this problem involves the construction of a formal theory of predication. Aristotle’s categorial analysis, for example, is directed upon the structure of reality and not upon the structure of thought, and the pre-eminent mode of being is that of concrete individual things (or primary substances). Predication, moreover, is explained in terms of two ontological configurations that together characterize the essence-accident distinction of Aristotle’s ontology, viz. the relation between an individual and its species or genera on the one hand, and the inherence of a universal in an individual on the other. Aristotle's moderate realism regarding species, genera, and universals is a form of natural realism and not of logical realism, and a formal theory of predication constructed as an Aristotelian formal ontology must respect that distinction as well as give an adequate representation of the two ontological con-figurations underlying the Aristotelian analysis of predication. In particular, such a theory must contain a logic of natural kinds and must impose the constraint of moderate realism that every natural property or relation is instantiated (i.e. that every natural property or relation exists only in rebus). This constraint leads to Aristotle’s problem of the fixity of species (according to which members of a species cannot come to be except from earlier members of that species, and that therefore there can be no evolution of new species); but, given the modal category of natural necessity and possibility as part of a revised Aristotelian formal ontology of modal natural realism, this problem can be resolved by requiring of every natural property or relation not that it actually be instantiated (at any given time) but only that such an instantiation be within the realm of natural possibility. Such a formal ontology, needless to say, will contain a modal logic for natural necessity and possibility, as well as a logic of natural kinds that is to be described in terms of that modal logic. (Cf. Cocchiarella 1976.) Plato’s ontology is also directed upon the structure of reality, but the pre-eminent mode of being in this framework is not that of concrete or sensible objects but of the Ideas. This leads to the problem of μέθεξις, or of how and in what sense concrete objects participate in Ideas, and also to the problem of χορισμός, or of how and in what sense Ideas are ‘things’ or abstract individuals separate from the concrete individuals that participate in them. A Platonist theory of predication in contemporary formal ontology is the basis of logical realism (where it is assumed that a property or relation exists corresponding to each well-formed predicate expression of logical grammar, regardless of whether or not it is even logically possible that such a property or relation has an instance). When applied as a foundation for mathematics (as was Plato’s own original intent), logical realism is also called ontological logicism. The best-known form of logical realism today is Bertrand Russell’s theory of logical types, which Russell developed as a way to avoid his famous paradox of predication (upon which his paradox of membership is based), a paradox not un-related to Plato’s problem of χορισμός. Whether and to what extent Russell’s theory of logical types can satisfactorily resolve either of Plato’s problems and be the basis of an adequate realist formal ontology is an issue that belongs to what we have called comparative formal ontology. (pp. 640-643)

(...)

Comparative formal ontology, as our remarks have indicated throughout, is the proper domain of many issues and disputes in metaphysics, epistemology, and the methodology of the deductive sciences. Just as the construction of a particular formal ontology lends clarity and precision to our informal categorial analyses and serves as a guide to our intuitions, so too comparative formal ontology can be developed so as to provide clear and precise criteria by which to judge the adequacy of a particular system of formal ontology and by which we might be guided in our comparison and evaluation of different proposals for such systems. It is only by constructing and comparing different formal ontologies that we can make a rational decision about which such system we should ourselves ultimately adopt, and that is a decision that can be made only in comparative formal ontology. (p. 647)

From: Nino Cocchiarella, "Ontology II: Formal Ontology" in: Hans Burkhardt & Barry Smith (eds.), Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, Munich: Philosophia Verlag 1991, pp. 640-647.

Mathematical logic as formal ontology

"Gödel has remarked that mathematical logic “has two quite different aspects. On the one hand, it is a section of Mathematics treating of classes, relations, combinations of symbols, etc., instead of numbers, functions, geometric figures, etc. On the other hand, it is a science prior to all others, which contains the ideas and principles underlying all sciences" (1) In the former case, mathematical logic is principally, though not only, a calculus ratiocinator. Under that aspect, beyond consistency, no special heed need be paid a formal system regarding the philosophical significance of its grammatical forms and the viability of the primitive concepts and assumptions expressed by means of these forms. In the latter case, however, it is quite otherwise. As a science prior to all others, Gödel’s description of mathematical logic is comparable to Aristotle’s description of metaphysics. Only, as a science which is prior to all others, metaphysics, according to Aristotle, is therefore the science of the “modes” or “categories of being”. Where the particular, specialized sciences, including mathematics, are concerned with but their own special “modes of being”, metaphysics and now mathematical logic under its second aspect — or what we might instead call formal ontology — is concerned with the study and development of alternative formalizations regarding the systematic co-ordination of all the “modes” or “categories of being” under the most general laws. Usually, and perhaps most appropriately since this is where ontological commitment comes in, each “mode of being” within a particular formal ontology is represented by a type of bindable variable whose syntactical role is intended to reflect in some philosophically coherent way the ontological role of that “mode of being”. Under this second aspect, mathematical logic, or formal ontology, is concerned with the adequacy of formal systems as alternative formulations of the deepest structural maps of reality.(2)

Viewed in this way, each feature of a proposed formal system is to be evaluated in terms of its purported philosophical significance, how well, for example, it functions as a proposed metaphysical map of reality. Different metaphysical schools, of course, will be interested in different ways of understanding a formal system as a map of reality. Conceptualists, for example, would view the grammar of a formal system together with its logistic behaviour as a proposed formal map of the structuring powers of human cognition, a proposed map, that is, of the structure of constructive cognitive processes of the human mind. Operations of the system must then be devised with limitations built into them that reflect in an appropriate manner the limitations of these same constructive powers of the mind. It is much in this sort of way that the constructivist attitude in the philosophy of mathematics must be understood. Realists, on the other hand, would construe the operations and elements of the formal map as having ontological significance independently of the constructive power of the human mind. Limitations built into the system, whether they apply to the notion of grammatical well-formedness or to the logistic behaviour of the ontological grammar, are evaluated then on grounds other than the nature of thought and its inherent limitations. Some of the most obvious of such grounds for limitation pertain to the way the implicit metaphysical scheme underlying the system proposes to resolve the known antinomies.

Leibniz, as Gödel has pointed out, was one of the first expositors of this view of mathematical logic. Leibniz himself referred to such a formal system as a characteristica universalis. But it was not until Frege and Peano that any significant attempt at the construction of a formal ontology was made. Frege called his system a Begriffsschrift, indicating, as Gödel remarks, that “Frege was chiefly interested in the analysis of thought”.(3) Frege himself in a response to Schroder's criticisms of his Begriffsschrift stated “that, unlike Boole's, his logic is not a calculus ratiocinator, or not merely a calculus ratiocinator, but a lingua characteristica.(4)

Now this Fregean emphasis on concepts (Begriffe) and the nature of thought is significant. For although it would seem, because of this emphasis, that Frege is a conceptualist and that therefore his logic would reflect certain limitations in the nature of human concept formation, it turns out that Fregean concepts are real, objective entities of a “mode of being” which is independent of minds and the subjective ideas by means of which minds think. To be sure, Fregean concepts are not self-subsistent entities, but their ontological dependence is upon the individual objects “falling under” them and not, apparently, upon the nature of thought. Their ontological dependence consists only in their being “unsaturated”. They are nevertheless “real” entities in so far as Frege takes quantification over them as having ontological significance.(5) In this regard, Frege’s ontology is realistic, though somehow it is also an analysis of thought.(6)

I shall not try to account here for this apparent ambiguity in the Fregean enterprise. I mention it in part because it is an ambiguity which Russell apparently shared (or perhaps even inherited from Frege) in the construction of his own formal ontology, the ramified theory of types, and which he never himself adequately resolved. As a formal embodiment of the Russell-Poincaré “vicious circle principle”, the ramified theory of types purports to represent a limitation in the powers of human concept formation, specifically a limitation regarding impredicative concept formation. Adjoining the axiom of reducibility to this formal ontology, however, can be justified only by taking a realistic attitude, an attitude which Russell clearly accepted in at least some of his writings.(7) The two attitudes taken together: the attitude, on the one hand, that the limitations imposed on both the ontological grammar and the logical constructions based upon that grammar are dictated by one’s conceptualist views regarding at least the “higher-order” portion of one’s ontology; and the attitude, on the other hand, that the reality represented by one’s ontological grammar and the operations on that grammar is independent of mind and the nature of thought; these two attitudes though apparently not formally inconsistent, seem not to result in a philosophically coherent formal ontology. It is within this sort of context that I understand Myhill’s concluding remark that "the ramified Principia itself falls uncomfortably between these two positions, and apparently does not correspond to any coherent philosophy of mathematics...” (p. 27).

Let us note that where Myhill speaks to the question of a coherent philosophy of mathematics, I have referred instead to the problem of a philosophically coherent formal ontology. The distinction is minor or not depending on how broad one’s criteria are for the coherence of a philosophy of mathematics. Certainly, since the problem of the nature of mathematical existence is an ontological problem par excellence, every philosophically coherent formal ontology must contain a coherent philosophy of mathematics.(9) Tolerance forbids, I would suppose, maintaining the converse." (pp. 29-32)

From: Nino Cocchiarella, "Formal Ontology and the Foundations of Mathematics" in George Nakhnikian (ed.), Bertrand Russell's Philosophy, London: Duckworth 1974, pp. 29-46 (notes renumbered.)

Notes

(1) K. Gödel, “Russell’s Mathematical Logic“, in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Evanston, Ill., 1944.

(2) cf. G. Bergmann, “Ontological Alternatives“, in E. D. Klemke (ed.), Essays on Frege, Urbana, Ill., 1968, p. 148: “Logic without ontology is merely a calculus. A calculus acquires philosophical import only if its author claims that it is an ideal language (Begriffsschrift), i.e. that it perspicuously reflects an adequate ontology.“

(3) Gödel, op. cit.

(4) J. van Heijenoort, “Logic as Calculus and Logic as Language”, Synthese 17, 3 (1967), p. 324.

(5) Bergmann, op. cit., p. 135, construes Frege’s concepts as syncategorematic entities, but his only reason for this seems to be their ontological dependence on objects. We shall here understand a primitive symbol of a formal ontology to be a syncategorematic sign—and the entity, if any, it represents to be a syncategorematic entity — if it is not a substituend for (and the entity is not “indicated” by) any type of variable in the grammar of the system.

(6) cf. R. Grossman, “Frege’s Ontology”, in Klemke (ed.), Essays on Frege, for a discussion of this issue in regard to Frege’s ontology.

(7) For example, in his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, he says that “logic is concerned with the real world just as truly as zoology, though with its more abstract and general features” (p. 169). We might note that the realism implicit in the reducibility axiom is one in regard to classes and not properties (or, in Russell’s terminology, propositional functions). Indeed, Russell first referred to the axiom as “the axiom of classes”. What is peculiar about this is that Russell took his formal ontology to be a “no class” ontology.

(8) Most proposals regarding the construction of a philosophically coherent formal ontology are programmatic and fragmentary and do not purport to constitute a completed metaphysical system. The importance of formally constructing such partial or fragmentary ontologies is not at issue here. Nor is it being suggested that a fragmentary ontology which defers the question of mathematical existence is for that reason incoherent. Of course, if such a fragmentary ontology cannot be extended so as to contain a coherent account of the nature of mathematical existence, especially vis-à-vis that of concrete or physical existence, then it does indeed represent a philosophically incoherent ontology, even if only fragmentarily. For this reason, metaphysical programmes should not long defer the question of containing a coherent philosophy of mathematics.

Predication theory and the Problem of Universals

"Predication theory has been a subject of philosophical concern since at least the writings of Plato and Aristotle. It is in its way the locus of a number of philosophical issues both in metaphysics and epistemology, not the least of which is the problem of universals. The latter problem, sometimes all too simply put as the question of whether there are universals or not, is especially Germane to the notion of predication since a theory of universals is at least in part a semantic theory of predication; and it is just to such a theory that we must turn in any philosophical investigation of the notion of predication. In doing so, however, we need not assume the truth or superiority of any one theory of universals over another. Indeed, an appropriate preliminary to any such assumption might well consist of a comparative analysis of some of the different formal theories of predication that can be semantically associated with these different theories of universals: for just as the latter provide a semantics for the former, it is only through the logical syntax of a formal theory of predication that the logical structure of a theory of universals can be rendered perspicuous. That, in any case, is the principal methodological assumption for the approach to the problem of universals we shall undertake in the present monograph where we will be more concerned with the construction and comparison of the abstract logical systems that may be associated with different theories of universals than with the metaphysical or epistemological issues for which they were originally designed. It is our hope and expectation, however, that these comparative formal analyses will be instrumental toward any philosophical decision as to whether to adopt a given theory of universals or not."

1. The problem of the predicable nature of universals

The original use of the term 'universal” goes back to Aristotle according to whom a universal is that which can be predicated of things (De Interpretatione 17 a 39). We shall retain the core of this notion throughout this essay and assume that whatever else it may be a universal has a predicable nature and that it is this predicable nature which is what constitutes its universality. Nothing follows from that assumption, however, regarding whether a universal is (1) merely a predicate expression (nominalism) of some language or other; (2) a concept (conceptualism) in the sense of a socio-biologically based cognitive ability or capacity to identify, collect or classify, and characterize or relate things in various ways; or (3) a real property or relation existing independently of both language and the natural capacity humans have for thought and representation (realism). We propose to take each of these interpretations or theories of universals seriously in what follows at least to the extent that we are able to associate each with a formal theory of predication. Our particular concern in this regard, moreover, will be with the explanation each provides of the predicable nature of universals, i.e., of that in which the universality of universals consists. Our discussion and comparison of nominalism, conceptualism and realism, accordingly, will not deal with the variety of arguments that have been given for or against each of them, but with how each as a theory of universals may be semantically associated with a formal theory of predication. Our assumption here, as indicated above, is that insofar as such an associated formal theory of predication provides a logically perspicuous medium for the articulation of the predicable nature of universals as understood by the theory of universals in question, then to that extent the formal theory may itself be identified with the explanation which that theory of universals provides of the predicable nature of universals. It is in the sense of this assumption, moreover, that we understand a philosophical theory of predication to be a formal theory of predication together with its semantically associated theory of universals. (pp. 11-12)

From: Nino Cocchiarella, "Logical Investigations of Predication Theory and the Problem of Universals, Napoli: Bibliopolis 1986.

Theories of universal: A) Nominalism

“Traditionally, there have been three general types of approach to the problem of universals: nominalism, conceptualism, and realism, with nominalism being the most restrictive. Some forms of nominalism, more-over, are even more restrictive in this regard than others. We shall not concern ourselves with these variations here, however, but shall identify (generic) nominalism with three general semantical theses instead. The first general thesis of nominalism is that universals have only a formal mode of existence, i.e., that beyond the predicate expressions that occur or can occur in language there are no universals. Predicate expressions, in other words, do not designate any universals beyond themselves; and therefore predicate expressions are the only entities according to nominalism that have a predicable nature. For this reason, we shall occasionally refer to predicate expressions as nominalistic universals.

We do not dispute here, it will be noted, that there are universals. That is, the problem of universals as we understand it here is not the problem whether there are universals; for indeed all theories of universals acknowledge that there are at least nominalistic universals, though some will assert that there are other universals as well. The problem of universals, as we have already said, is the problem of providing a philosophically coherent explanation of the predicable nature of universals, i.e., of that in which their universality consists. And in nominalism, this problem concerns the sense in which predicate expressions may be predicated of individuals.

The second general thesis of nominalism is the thesis of extensionality, i.e., the thesis that, semantically, predicate expressions may make no finer distinction of content than can be generated by co-extensive predicate expressions; and therefore the thesis that co-extensive predicate expressions are to be interchangeable salva veritate in any applied formal theory of predication suitable for nominalism. This means in particular that only an extensional logic is appropriate to nominalism, a corollary of which is anti-essentialism, i.e., the thesis that no nominalistic universal is necessarily true of some of the things of which it may be predicated without being necessarily true of all. It is sometimes claimed, we should note, that only the latter thesis, or a suitable reconstruction of it, is really necessary to nominalism and that in fact a nominalistic formal theory of predication may contain a modal, and therefore non-extensional, logic after all. We shall evaluate, and reject, this claim at a later section of this chapter. For now, however, we simply assume that nominalism requires the stronger thesis of extensionality.

The third general thesis of nominalism is that there are only individuals (in the logical sense), i.e., that quantificational reference is univocal and applies only to the individual things of which our various predicate expressions may be said to be either true or false. Whether, in addition, all and only concrete particulars are individuals, as has been maintained in more traditional variants of nominalism, we shall leave unspecified. Certainly some contemporary variants of nominalism, such as that of Quine’s, include, e.g., sets as part of their ontology; and no doubt others may include other types of abstract individuals as well.

The third general thesis, it should be noted, does not follow from the first. E.g., one may consistently maintain that there are no universals other than predicate expressions but that the latter in their logico-grammatical role as predicate expressions are unsaturated linguistic structures; and therefore that there is a mode of quantificational reference, viz., that to possible predicate expressions, which is not a form of quantificational reference to individuals. Nevertheless, while it is consistent to maintain this, i.e., to affirm the first and deny the third general thesis of nominalism, we remain unsure that the result can he developed into a philosophically coherent theory of universals. (1) We, in any case, shall not attempt to associate such a combination with any formal theory of predication here. (2) As is well-known, the theory of predication which is commonly associated with nominalism today is standard first-order predicate logic (with identity). Indeed, standard articulation of the predicable nature of universals as understood by the theory of universals in question. Thus the association of nominalism with standard first-order predicate logic is intended not only as a validation of nominalism’s three general semantical theses but also as an explanatory or clarifying thesis to the effect that the predicable nature of nominalistic universals, i.e., of possible predicate expressions, is the logico-grammatical role they are represented as having in the logical forms of standard first- order predicate logic (with identity).

We are in almost complete agreement with this association of nominalism with standard first-order predicate logic (with identity). Our one reservation concerns the fact that the latter, strictly speaking, occurs properly only as the logical component of applied first-order theories. That is, except for the possible use of dummy schema predicate letters, first- order predicate logic cannot be described as a pure formal theory of predication. Dummy schema predicate letters can of course be transformed into predicate variables and quantifiers can be applied to these, resulting thereby in a pure second-order theory of predication. Typically, however, this move has been seen as a violation of nominalism’s first general thesis in that it would appear to commit us to universals other than predicate expressions themselves. The move to a second-order logic, in other words, exceeds the limits of nominalism insofar as predicate quantifiers may be given a referential interpretation.

Fortunately, however, there is another interpretation of predicate quantifiers which does not transcend nominalism and the ontological framework of standard first-order predicate logic (with identity). This is the non-referential or so-called substitutional interpretation of predicate quantifiers whereby the significance of such a quantifier in the context of an applied first-order theory is exhausted by the totality of its substituends, i.e., predicate expressions in the form of the open propositional forms of that theory, rather than by a reference to either real or conceptual universals existing independently of the language of the theory and supplemental to its domain of discourse. By utilizing substitutionally interpreted predicate quantifiers, nominalism can of course be developed as a pure second-order theory of predication.

There will, however, be certain constraints which such an interpretation of predicate quantifiers imposes upon the specification of nominalistic universals; and these constraints are in fact precisely those involved first-order predicate logic is typically taken by nominalists precisely as we are recommending any formal theory of predication should be taken: viz., as a logically perspicuous medium for the in the comprehension principle of standard predicative second-order logic. In this regard we agree with the growing consensus that standard predicative second-order logic is an appropriate medium for the representation of a nominalist theory of predication. (3)” (pp. 29-32)

Notes

(1) Cf. the theory of universals represented by the logically perspicuous language described by Wilfrid Sellars in "Naming and Saying”, «Philosophy of Science», vol. 29, 1962, pp. 7-26. We believe this is really a conceptualist, and not a nominalist, theory of predication, however, albeit it is a form of conceptualism which is very close to nominalism.

(2) Cf. Cocchiarella, N., "Logical Atomism, Nominalism, and Modal Logic”, «Synthese», vol. 31, 1975, pp. 23-62, where such an attempt is made, but with doubtful success, as is suggested in the article itself.

(3) Cf. "A Plea for Substitutional Quantification”, by Charles Parson, «Journal of Philosophy», vol. LXVIII, no. 8, 1971, pp. 231-237.

From: Nino Cocchiarella, "Logical Investigations of Predication Theory and the Problem of Universals, Napoli: Bibliopolis 1986.

Theories of universal: B) Conceptualism vs. Nominalism

"As cognitive capacities which may or may not be exercized on a given occasion, concepts are neither mental images nor ideas in the sense of particular mental occurrences. Concepts, in other words, and predicable concepts in particular, do not have an individual nature but are rather unsaturated cognitive structures whose realization or saturation in thought is what informs particular mental acts with a predicable nature.

Conceptualism, accordingly, rejects the third general thesis of nominalism, i.e., the thesis that there are only individuals, and therefore the sense in which there are concepts is not a restricted form of the sense in which there are individuals. Quantificational reference is not a univocal semantical notion in conceptualism, in other words, but is rather (at least) doubly aspected, depending on whether the reference is through the logico-grammatical role of a subject expression, and is therefore to individuals (in the logical sense), or whether it is through the role of an (n- place) predicate expression, and is therefore to (n-ary) concepts. (We shall also speak of «-ary concepts as relational concepts if n > 1.)

Conceptualism, of course, also rejects the first general thesis of nominalism, i.e., the thesis that there are no universals other than predicate χ expressions. Indeed, according to conceptualism, a genuine predicate expression is precisely such only through having a concept as the semantic ground for its correct or incorrect application. This is not to say, on the other hand, that the possession of a concept will not come to be behaviorally equivalent to the possession of a linguistic ability to correctly apply a predicate expression having that concept as its semantic ground. Nor is it to deny that the possession of such a linguistic ability will naturally come to serve as a criterion for possession of the concept. Nevertheless, all questions of behavioral equivalence aside, being a criterion for the possession of a concept, according to conceptualism, is not the same as being that concept.

Despite their distinctness, however, concepts and predicate expressions do have analogous roles in their respective mediums, and to some ^ extent the development of concepts in the medium of thought is determined by the development of predicate expressions in the medium of language — just as the development of language is determined in part by the development of thought. In holistic conceptualism especially, as we shall see, impredicative concept-formation is a generalized capacity which is achieved only through the capacity for language, and in particular through the capacity to systematically use language for the expression of constructive or predicative concepts. In this regard, impredicative concept- formation is a mediated process, and language and the linguistic ability to use predicate expressions to express predicative concepts is the means used to master and direct such a process. Aside from this meditation, however, the laws of compositionality for systematic concept-formation in holistic conceptualism, and in particular the impredicative comprehension principle (CP) for predicable concepts, greatly exceed the principle of compositionality in nominalism, viz., the comprehension principle (CP!). In this regard, in other words, there can be no question of reducing or otherwise explaining only in terms of nominalistic universals the formal theory of predication we shall come to associate with holistic conceptualism. The prospects are better, no doubt, for a reduction of constructive conceptualism to nominalism; and indeed, in a sense, the formal theory of predication we shall associate with constructive conceptualism is contained in the formal theory determined by nominalism, viz., standard predicative second-order logic.

Nevertheless, whereas it is predicativity in the purely grammatical sense which is the basis of nominalism’s formal theory of predication, it is predicativity in the logico-grammatical sense which is the basis of constructive conceptualism’s formal theory of predication; for, as we shall see (in §2), it is only in this sense that we are to understand the closure conditions of the comprehension principle (CCP!) of constructive conceptualism’s formal theory of predication. Unlike the situation in nominalism, in other words, where wffs that are predicative in the purely grammatical sense are ipso facto predicative in the logico-grammatical sense, in constructive conceptualism not all wffs (of an applied context) that are predicative in nominalism’s purely grammatical sense need also be predicative in the logico-grammatical sense.

One of the consequences of this difference, as we shall see (in §3), is a corresponding difference in the notion of a possible {explicit) definition of a predicate constant. For whereas predicate constants are the paradigms of predicative expressions in nominalism, in constructive conceptualism not all predicate constants of an applied context need themselves be predicative, i.e., they need not all stand in that context for the value of a bound predicate variable. Thus, unlike the situation in nominalism, predicate constants can be definitionally introduced in an applied context of constructive conceptualism with definiens that are impredicative in either or both the purely grammatical and the logico-grammatical sense. That is, whereas such definitions can be proved to be both non-creative and eliminable in constructive conceptualism, they will be both creative and non- eliminable in nominalism, i.e., in standard predicative second-order logic.

These are not trivial or unimportant differences, needless to say, and they indicate the radically different philosophical perspectives involved in a conceptualist as opposed to a nominalist theory of predication. Differences not mentioned here, such as the reducibility or irreducibility of identity in an applied context (cf. §4), and the typical rejection of nominalism’s second general thesis, i.e., the thesis of extensionality, only add to the picture of the important philosophical differences between nominalism and conceptualism. Their only point of real similarity in fact is their common denial — or commitment to denial — of there being anything at all like the so-called logical modalities, since the same argument that proves the essential incompleteness of first-order modal logic described in Chapter I also proves the essential incompleteness of any higher order framework such as those we shall consider here (cf. §9)." (pp. 71-73)

From: Nino Cocchiarella, "Logical Investigations of Predication Theory and the Problem of Universals, Napoli: Bibliopolis 1986.

Theories of universal: C) Realism

“Realism, like conceptualism, goes beyond nominalism in positing the existence of universals other than predicate expressions. Unlike conceptualism, however, the existence of a real universal does not depend upon the existence of the intellect. That is, real universals exist independently of both language and the natural capacity humans have for thought and representation. In keeping with tradition, we shall refer to real universals as properties and relations.

Now the sense in which properties and relations are said to exist is not the same in all forms of realism. We assume, however, that despite their differences all forms of realism fall under two general and exclusive types which we shall call natural and logical realism, respectively. We agree of course that the differences between two variants of a given type may affect the sense in which each claims that there are real universals; but we maintain nevertheless that there is a common core of agreement between these variants which distinguishes them in a radical way from all variants of the other type. It is this agreement and distinction, respectively, which is the basis for our classification of realism into what we will call natural and logical realism.

In all variants of natural realism, for example, properties and relations are said to exist only within nature and that in particular they are integral components of the causal structure of the world. Such universals may exist independently of what is not determined by the causal structure of the world, and in that sense they may be said to exist independently of the world itself (considered as a whole); but, on the other hand, they cannot also exist independently of the causal structure of the world, and in that regard they cannot exist independently of all causal alternatives to the actual world where the same laws of nature hold as hold in the actual world. Traditionally, these universals have been called material properties and relations; but this did not always mean that they were the properties and relations posited in one or another form of materialism — and in particular it did not mean that the only universals in question are physical properties and relations, i.e., the fundamental properties and relations posited in physics. The terminology rather harks back to a distinction between concepts which were said to have a material as opposed to a merely formal significance (as constructions of the intellect), which is only to say that it is a distinction between concepts to which such real universals correspond as opposed to those to which no such real universals correspond. We shall not adopt this terminology here ourselves however, since we wish not to suggest, even inadvertently, that natural realism is committed to one or another form of materialism. Materialism, to be sure, is committed to one or another variant of natural realism (to the extent that it admits properties and relations at all); but not all variants of natural realism, it must be emphasized, need be committed to materialism. What is assumed in natural realism as a general type is only that somehow nature contains within its causal matrix all the properties and relations there are, regardless of whether these properties and relations are those only of physics, or also of chemistry, or also of biology, or also of any other natural science whatsoever.

Now all variants of logical realism, it should be noted, take a completely opposite stand on this issue. That is, all variants of logical realism maintain that real properties and relations exist independently not only of what is not determined by the causal structure of the world but also of that causal structure itself — and, indeed, even of whether there is a world at all! Logically real universals, in other words, exist independently of all forms of concrete existence and the causal grounds for such. They do not exist independently of one another, to be sure, but that dependence obtains only in a timeless, transcendent realm of being which, according to all variants of logical realism, is in fact the semantico-ontological ground for the logical truths we express in thought and language — and it is for this reason, needless to say, that we refer to such a theory of universals as a variant of logical realism. Thus, unlike the situation in natural realism, it is assumed in all variants of logical realism that there is a real universal corresponding to every fully applied wff φ(x1,…, xn), including those which are logically determinate, i.e., those which are logically true or logically false of any individuals whatsoever.

Traditionally, because of their independent and transcendent mode of being, logically real universals have been called Platonic forms. However, because Platonism in general also assumes that universals are individuals, we shall avoid that label here, since there are also variants of logical realism (e.g. Gottlob Frege’s) in which properties and relations are assumed to have only a predicable and not also an individual nature; i.e., variants in which logically real universals are in some sense only unsaturated structures.

It is not clear, incidentally, that natural realism can also allow for variants in which natural properties and relations have an individual as well as a predicable nature. In modal natural realism, for example, we argue that natural properties and relations can only be causally determinate unsaturated structures (the saturation of which results in the facts or states of affairs that obtain in the world). We believe a similar argument can be given with respect to the actual world alone, i.e., independently of modal considerations, if it is allowed that the same natural property or relation need have no instantiations at all during an interval of time between two or more of its instantiations. This argument, however, depends on temporal considerations (where moments, of time play the role of possible worlds) which we shall not go into here (since it requires a formulation of relativity theory as well); and for this reason we shall leave open the question whether all variants of natural realism are committed to natural properties and relations being only causally determinate unsaturated structures; i.e., whether in some variants of natural realism natural properties and relations have an individual as well as a predicable nature.

Finally, it should be noted that there are variants of both natural and logical realism which are committed to the thesis of extensionality as well as those which are committed to its denial and which we shall refer to here as modal natural and modal logical realism, respectively." (pp. 105-107)

From: Nino Cocchiarella, "Logical Investigations of Predication Theory and the Problem of Universals", Napoli: Bibliopolis 1986.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography of Nino Cocchiarella

Books

1. Cocchiarella, Nino. 1966. Tense Logic: A Study of Temporal Reference.

Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, available at ProQuest Dissertation, reference number 6609326.

University of California - Los Angeles, January 7, 1966). Committee in charge: Richard Montague, Charmain, Alfred Horn, Donald Kalish, Abraham Robinson, Robert Stockwell (VI, 251 pages).

N.B. the unpublished Ph. D. thesis can be ordered to ProQuest Dissertation Express.

Abstract: "This work is concerned with the logical analysis of topological or non-metrical temporal reference. The specific problem with which it successfully deals is a precise formalization of (first-order) quantificational tense logic wherein both an appropriate formal semantics is developed and a meta-mathematically consistent and complete axiomatization for that semantics given.

The formalization of quantificational tense logic herein presented adheres to all the canons of logical rigor by being carried out entirely as a definitional extension of (Zermelo-Fraenkel) set theory. Model-theoretical techniques are utilized in the semantics given and the notion of a history is formally developed as the tense-logical analogue of the notion of a model for standard first-order logic with identity. Corresponding to the key semantical concept of satisfaction (and consequently of truth) in a model, by means of which the central standard notion of logical truth is defined, the notion of satisfaction (and consequently of truth) in a history at a given moment of that history is developed, from which development, in turn, the central notion of tense-logical truth is defined. An axiomatic characterization of derivability within tense logic, or t-derivability, is then presented and proved to be both consistent and complete, i.e., it is shown that an arbitrary tensed formula is tense-logically true if and only if it is t-derivable from zero premises, i.e., if and only if it is a theorem of the given axiomatic system.

Quantification within tense logic introduces issues in no manner confronted on the sentential level. Recognition is made that quantification over objects existing prior to the time of assertion is to be distinguished from quantification over objects existing at the time of assertion, both of which in turn are to be distinguished from quantifying over objects existing at the time of assertion. Such distinct kinds of quantification are readily distinguishable within tense logic by means of incorporation of what is here called the logic of actual and possible objects. Precise semantical and syntactical formalization of this double quantification is presented prior to its use within tense logic, and completeness theorems are given for both the full system. and the restricted logic of actual objects, the latter of which may separately be taken as a formalization of a logic which can accommodate denotationless names. These several kinds of quantificational logic lead to separate completeness theorems stated and established for tense logic, depending on the several kinds of quantificational bases possible for this logic."

Table of Contents: Vita, Publications and Field of Study V; Abstract 1;

Chapter 1. The Metalanguage 3

§ 1. Terminology 3

§ 2. Syntax 8

Chapter 2. Formalization of a Logic of Actual and Possible Objects 15

§ 1. Semantics 17

§ 2. Logical Axioms, Derivations and Theorems 23

§ 3. Completeness of the Logic of Actual and Possible Objects 35

§ 4. Standard Logic and the Logic of Denotationless Terms 47

Chapter 3. The Semantics of Tense Logic 59

§ 1. Histories, Moments and Momentary States 60

§ 2. Satisfaction, Truth and Validity in a History 66

§ 3. Tense-Logical Truth 76

§ 4. R-Validity 78

Chapter 4. An Axiomatic Formulation of Tense Logic 95

§ 1. Tense-Logical Axioms, t-theorems and t-derivations 96

§ 2. Partial Histories, Historical Sequences and Complete Decompositions 141

§ 3. A Completeness Theorem for Tense Logic 217

§ 4. Tense Logic with Quantification only over Possibilia 231

§ 5. Tense Logic with Quantification only over Actual Objects 233

Bibliography 250.

2. Cocchiarella, Nino, Epstein, George, Dunn, J.Michael, and Shapiro, S.C., eds. 1975. Proceedings of the 1975 International Symposium on Multiple-Valued Logic. Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, May 13-16, 1975. Long Beach: IEEE Computer Society.

3. Cocchiarella, Nino. 1986. Logical Investigations of Predication Theory and the Problem of Universals. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

Table of Contents: Preface 9; Introduction 11; Chapter 1. Nominalism 29; Chapter 2. Conceptualism 65; Chapter 3. Realism 105; Chapter 4. On The Logic of Nominalized Predicates and Its Philosophical Interpretations 165; Chapter 5. Complex Predicates and The Lambda - Operator 215; Chapter 6. Two Fregean Semantics For Nominalized Complex Predicates 243-265.

"Beginning with Aristotle’s notion of a universal as that which can be predicated of things, I provide in this monograph separate logical analyses of what nominalism, conceptualism and realism take to be the predicable nature of universals. My position throughout is that such an analysis proceeds through the construction of a formal theory of predication on the one hand and a logical semantics on the other. I adopt and apply in this regard the formal and semantical techniques of my former teachers Rudolf Carnap and Richard Montague.

One important way in which I differ from Carnap and Montague, however, is in our respective analyses of so-called “higher order” sentences - that is, sentences in which nominalized predicates, whether simple or complex, occur as the logico-grammatical subjects of other predicates. In this regard, whereas Carnap and Montague formulate and adopt one or another version of a theory of simple logical types as the framework within which to analyze such sentences, I formulate instead, relative to nominalism, conceptualism and realism, systems which do not require any grammatical type distinctions beyond those already found in standard second order predicate logic. All of the theories of predication formulated in this monograph, in other words, are second order theories, including those which contain a logic of nominalized predicates. Russell’s paradox of predication, it turns out, can be resolved without resorting to a theory of types." (From the Preface p. 9)

4. ———. 1987. Logical Studies in Early Analytic Philosophy. Columbus: Ohio University Press.

Table of Contents: Preface XI-XII; Introduction 1; Chapter 1. The Development of the Theory of Logical Types and the Notion of a Logical Subject in Russell's Early Philosophy 19; Chapter 2. Frege, Russell, and Logicism: A Logical Reconstruction 64; Chapter 3. Meinong Reconstructed versus Early Russell Reconstructed 119; Chapter 4. Frege's Double Correlation Thesis and Quine's Set Theories NF and ML 152; Chapter 5. Russell's Theory of Logical Types and the Atomistic Hierarchy of Sentences 193; Chapter 6. Logical Atomism and Modal Logic 222; Chapter 7. Logical Atomism, Nominalism, and Modal Logic 244; Index 285-293.

"The Essays collected here deal with the development of analytic philosophy in the first quarter of the twentieth century. In addition to providing a historical account of early analytic philosophy, these Essays also contain logical reconstructions of Frege’s, Russell’s, Meinong’s, and Wittgenstein’s views during the period in question. Several of these reconstructions can and have been used in the new logico-linguistic developments in pragmatics and intensional logic that make up the vanguard of contemporary analytic philosophy. Others, such as the interpretation of the logical modalities in logical atomism, or the determination of the objects of fiction and dreams in Meinong’s theory of objects or Russell’s early logic, provide a useful introduction, if not also a solution, to a number of problems confronting analytic philosophy today. Indeed, for that matter, all of the Essays collected here provide a useful propaedeutic to much of the research now going on in the study of logic and language.

A number of small changes have been made in all of the Essays reprinted here, mainly for stylistic purposes. Their histories are briefly indicated as follows. Chapter 1 first appeared in Synthese, vol. 45, no. 1 (September I980):71—115, Copyright © 1980 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland. A somewhat longer version of chapter 2 first appeared in Frege Synthesized, L. Haaparanta and J. Hintikka (eds.), 1986, pp. 197-252, Copyright © 1986 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland. The present version was given as a lecture in a seminar on 13 March 1985, for the Bertrand Russell Editorial Project at McMaster University. Chapters 3 and 4 first appeared in Journal of Philosophical Logic, vol. 11, no. 2 (May, 1982): 183-214, and vol. 14, no. 1 (February 1985): 1-39, respectively, Copyright © 1982 by D. Reidei Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland. Chapter 3 was originally given as a lecture to the Société Belge de Logique et de Philosophie des Sciences, Brussels, in December 1981. Chapter 4 was my contribution to An Interdisciplinary Conference on Logic, Truth and Type Theory, given in memory of Alfred Tarski, 6-7 April 1984. Chapter 5 first appeared in Essays in Bertrand Russell's Philosophy, C. Wade Savage and C. Anthony Anderson (eds.), 1987, Copyright © by University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Chapter 6 first appeared in Philosophia, Philosophical Quarterly of Israel, vol. 4, no. 1 (January 1974):41-66. It is reprinted here with the permission of the editor. Chapter 6 was given as a lecture to the Victoria Conference on Formal Ontology at the University of Victoria on 15 October 1972. Chapter 7 first appeared in Synthese, vol. 31, no. 1 (June 1975):23-62, Copyright © 1975 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland. It was originally given as a lecture to the University of North Carolina Fall Philosophy Colloquium in October 1973." (Preface, pp. XI-XII)

5. ———. 2007. Formal Ontology and Conceptual Realism. New York: Springer.

Table of Contents: Preface XI; Introduction XIII-XXIII;

I. Formal Ontology.

1. Formal ontology and conceptual realism 3; 2. Time, Being and Existence 25; 3. Logical necessity and logical atomism 59; 4. Formal theories of predication 81; 5. Formal theories of predication part II 101; 6. Intensional possible worlds 121;

II. Conceptual Realism.

7. The nexus of predication 139;

8. Medieval logic and conceptual realism 169; 9. On Geach against general reference 195; 10. Leśniewski's Ontology 215; 11. Plurals and the logic of classes as many 235; 12. The logic of natural kinds 273; Afterword on Truth-Makers 295; Bibliography 297; Index 307-316.

"The history of philosophy is replete with different metaphysical schemes of the ontological structure of the world. These schemes have generally been described in informal, intuitive terms, and the arguments for and against them, including their consistency and adequacy as explanatory frameworks, have generally been given in even more informal terms. The goal of formal ontology is to correct for these deficiencies. By formally reconstructing an intuitive, informal ontological scheme as a formal ontology we can better determine the consistency and adequacy of that scheme; and then by comparing different reconstructed schemes with one another as formal ontologies we can better evaluate the arguments for and against them, and come to a decision as to which system it is best to adopt.

This book is divided into two parts. The first part is on formal ontology and how different informal ontological systems can be formally developed and compared with one another. An abstract set-theoretic framework, which we call comparative formal ontology, can be used for this purpose without assuming that set theory is itself a superseding ontological system. The second part of this book is on the formal construction and defense of a particular ontological scheme called conceptual realism. Conceptual realism is to be preferred to alternative formal ontologies for the reasons briefly described below, and for others as well that are given in more detail in various parts of the book. Conceptual realism, in other words, is put forward here as the best ontological system to adopt." (From the Introduction, p. XIII)

6. Cocchiarella, Nino, and Freund, Max A. 2008. Modal Logic. An Introduction to its Syntax and Semantics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Table of Contents: 1. Introduction 1; 2. The syntax of modal sentential calculi 15; 3. Matrix semantics 45; 4. Semantics for logical necessity 61; 5. Semantics for S 5 71; 6. Relational world systems 81; 7. Quantified modal logic 119; 8. The semantics of quantified modal logic 153; 9. Second-order modal logic 183; 10. Semantics of second-order modal logic 215; Afterword 253; Bibliography 257; Index 263-268.

"Modal logic is a theoretical field that is important not only in philosophy, where logic in general is commonly studied, but in mathematics, linguistics, and computer and information sciences as well. This book will be useful for students, researchers, and professionals in all of these and related disciplines. The only requirement is some familiarity with first-order logic and elementary set-theory.

The main outline of this book is a development of the logical syntax and semantics of modal logic in three stages of increasing logical complexity. The first stage is a comprehensive development of sentential modal logic, which is followed by a similarly comprehensive development of first-order modal predicate logic. The final stage is a development of second-order modal predicate logic. These stages are introduced gradually, with increasing difficulty at each stage. Most of the important results in modal logic are described and proved in each of their respective stages.

This book is based on a series of lectures given over a number of years at Indiana University by the first author. A draft of the book has also been used by the second author in Costa Rica and Mexico. The book is organized as follows.

We begin in chapter 1 with concatenation theory and the logistic method. By means of this theory and method we describe the construction of expressions, formal languages, and formal systems or calculi. Different modal calculi are then constructed in chapter 2. These cover all of the well-known systems, S1–S5, of Lewis and Langford’s 1932 classic Symbolic Logic. As already indicated, these systems are constructed first on the level of sentential (or propositional) logic and then later in chapter 7 on the level of first-order predicate logic, where we distinguish the quantified modal logic of actualism from that of possibilism.

The systems are then extended yet again to the level of second-order modal predicate logic in chapter 9, where the notion of existence that is central to the actualism-possibilism distinction is given a deeper and finer-grained analysis in terms of existence-entailing concepts, as opposed to concepts that do not entail existence." (From the Introduction, p. 1)

Essays translated in Spanish and Italian

1. Cocchiarella, Nino. 2000. Lógica Como Lenguaje y Lógica Como Cálculo: su Papel en la Teoría de la Atribución. Heredia, Costa Rica: Departamento de Filosofia, Universidad Nacional.

Coleccion Prometeo n. 20.

2. ———. 1974. "La Semantica della Logica del Tempo." In La Logica del Tempo, edited by Pizzi, Claudio, 318-347. Torino: Boringhieri.

Italian translation of the third chapter of the unpublished Ph. D. Thesis: Tense Logic: A Study of Temporal Reference, (1966).

3. ———. 2009. "Logica e Ontologia." Aquinas.Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia no. 52:7-50.

Italian translation by Flavia Marcacci, revised by Gianfranco Basti of Logic and Ontology (2001).

Studies about the work of Nino Cocchiarella

1. Bonevac, Daniel. 1991. "Critical Review of: Nino B. Cocchiarella, Logical Investigations of Predication Theory and the Problem fo Universals." Noûs no. 25:221-230.

2. Chierchia, Gennaro. 1984. Topics in the Syntax and Semantics of Infinitives and Gerunds, University of Massachusetts.

Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis available at ProQuest Dissertation Express, reference number 8410273.

3. ———. 1985. "Formal Semantics and the Grammar of Predication." Linguistic Inquiry no. 16:417-443.

4. Freund, Max A. 1989. Formal Investigations of Holistic Realist Ramified Conceptualism, Indiana University.

Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis available at ProQuest Dissertation Express, reference number 9020685.

5. ———. 1991. "Consideraciones logico-epistemicas relativa a una forma de conceptualismo ramificado." Critica no. XXIII (69):47-72.

"An intuitive interpretation of constructive knowability is first developed. Then, an epistemic second order logical system (which formalizes logical aspects of the interpretation) is constructed. A proof of the relative consistency of such a system is offered. Next, a formal system of intensional arithmetic (whose logical basis is the aforementioned second order system) is stated. It is proved that such a formal system of intensional arithmetic entails a theorem, whose content would show possible limitations to constructive knowability."

6. ———. 1992. "Un sistema logico de segundo orden conceptualista con operadores lambda ramificados." Critica no. XXIV (72):3-25.

"We develop a second order logical system with ramified lambda operators, having ramified conceptualism as its philosophical background. Such a system is shown to relatively consistent. Finally, we construct a non-standard second order semantics and prove a completeness theorem with respect to a notion of validity, provided by the semantics, and certain extensions of the second order system."

7. ———. 1994. "The Relative Consistency of System RRC* and Some of Its Extensions." Studia Logica no. 53:351-360.

8. ———. 1996. "A Minimal Logical System for the Computable Concepts and Effective Knowability." Logique et Analyse no. 37:339-366.

9. ———. 1996. "Semantics for Two Second-Order Logical Systems: =RRC* and Cocchiarella's RRC*." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 37:483-505.

10. ———. 1996. "A Minimal Logical System for the Computable Concepts and Effective Knowability - Some Corrections." Logique et Analyse no. 37:411-412.

11. ———. 2000. "A Complete and Consistent Formal System for Sortals." Studia Logica no. 65:1-15.

12. ———. 2001. "A Temporal Logic for Sortals." Studia Logica no. 69:351-380.

13. Landini, Gregory. 1986. Meinong Reconstructed Versus Early Russell Reconstructed: A Study in the Formal Ontology of Fiction, Indiana University.

Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis available at ProQuest Dissertation Express, reference number 8617784.

14. ———. 1990. "How to Russell another Meinongian: a Russellian theory of fictional objects versus Zalta's theory of abstract objects." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 37:93-122.

15. ———. 1998. Russell's Hidden Substitutional Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.

16. ———. 2009. "Cocchiarella's Formal Ontology and the paradoxes of hyperintensionality." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems no. 19:115-142.

17. Meyer, Robert K. 1972. "Identity in Cocchiarella's T*." Noûs no. 6:189-197.

18. Orilia, Francesco. 1996. "A Contingent Russell's Paradox." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 37:105-111.

19. Park, Woosuk. 1990. "Scotus, Frege, and Bergmann." The Modern Schoolman no. 67:259-273.

20. ———. 2001. "On Cocchiarella's retroactive theory of reference." The Logica Yearbook 2000:79-90.

21. ———. 2016. "Where have all the Californian tense-logicians gone?"Synthese.

To appear in Synthese.

"Arthur N. Prior, in the Preface of Past, Present and Future, made clear his indebtedness to “the very lively tense-logicians of California for many discussions”. Strangely,with a notable exception of Copeland (Logic and reality: Essays on the legacy of Arthur Prior, 1996), there is no extensive discussion of these scholars (as a group, if not a school) in the literature on the history of tense logic. In this paper, I propose to study how Nino B. Cocchiarella, as one of the Californian tense-logicians, interacted with Prior in the late 1960s. By gathering clues from their correspondence available at Virtual Lab for Prior Studies, I will highlight some of the differences between their views on tense-logic, which might still have far-reaching philosophical implications. I will conclude with a sketchof how to study in what ways Prior and Cocchiarella influenced some other Californian tense-logicians."

22. Prior, Arthur Norman. 1967. Past, Present and Future. New York: Oxford University Press.

Various references to the unpublished Ph.D. thesis by Nino Cocchiarerlla.

23. Simms, John Carson. 1980. "A realist semantics for Cocchiarella's T*." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 21:1-32.

24. Turner, Raymond. 1985. "Three theories of nominalized predicates." Studia Logica no. 44:165-186.

25. Vasylchenko, Andriy. 2009. "The problem of reference to nonexistents in Cocchiarella's Conceptual Realism." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems no. 29:155-166.

"This article is a critical review of Cocchiarella's theory of reference. In conceptual realism, there are two central distinctions regarding reference: first, between active and deactivated use of referential expressions, and, second, between using referential expressions with and without existential presupposition. Cocchiarella's normative restrictions on the existential presuppositions of reference lead to postulating two fundamentally different kinds of objects in conceptual realism: realia or concrete objects, on the one hand, and abstract intensional objects or nonexistents, on the other. According to Cocchiarella, nonexistents can be referred to only without existential presuppositions. However, referring to nonexistents with existential presuppositions is an ordinary human practice. To account for this fact, Cocchiarella's normative theory of reference should be supplemented by a descriptive account of referring."

26. Yu, Yung-Ping. 1995. Generality and Reference. An Examination of Denoting in Russell's Principles of Mathematics, University of Iowa.

Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis available at ProQuest Dissertation Express, reference number 9603108.

27. Zacker, David J. 1996. A Study in the Temporal Ontology of Tense Logic, Michigan State University.

Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis available at ProQuest Dissertation Express, reference number 9631366.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography of Nino Cocchiarella 1966-1977

Essays 1966-1977

1. Cocchiarella, Nino. 1966. "A Logic of Actual and Possible Objects." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 31:688.

See note in 1966c.

2. ———. 1966. "A Completeness Theorem for Tense Logic." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 31:689.

See note in 1966c.

3. ———. 1966. "Modality within Tense Logic." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 31:690.

Note to the reprint of these three items in Karel Lambert (ed.) Philosophical Applications of Free Logic, New York: Oxford University Press 1991): " The abstracts are summaries of lectures given at the December, 1965 meetings of the Association for Symbolic Logic.

(A preliminary version of those lectures was given at UCLA in 1963, and a final version was given at UCLA in the spring of 1965 at a public lecture constituting the defense of my doctoral dissertation.)"

4. ———. 1968. "Some Remarks on Second Order Logic with Existence Attributes." Noûs no. 2:163-175.

"In Past, Present and Future A. N. Prior bas suggested an approach towards the concept of existence where, following medieval logicians, we are to distinguish "between predicates (like 'is red', 'is hard', etc.) which entail existence, and predicates (like 'is thought to be red, 'is thought of', etc.) which do not" (p. 161). Let us refer to attributes (including relational attributes) which are designated by the former kind of predicate as existence attributes, or for brevity, e-attributes. It is suggested then that "x exists" is to be defined as "there is some e-attribute which x possesses". A formalization of this (at least) second order logic of existence was recently brought about and reported on by the present author in [6]. The formalization was shown to be complete in the sense corresponding to the completeness of standard second order logic, i.e. in the sense which encompasses normal, non-standard as well standard models. (Cfr. A. Church, Introduction to Mathematical Logic (1956) - § 54). I should like in the present paper to discuss some of the philosophical issues involved in this formalization as well as some issues concerning the general notion of e-attribute." (p. 163)

5. ———. 1969. "A Substitution Free Axiom Set for Second Order Logic." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 10:18-30.

"In what follows we present an adequate formulation of second order logic by means of an axiom set whose characterization does not require the notion of proper substitution either of a term for an individual variable or of a formula for a predicate variable. The axiom set is adequate in the sense of being equivalent to standard formulations of second order logic, e.g., that of Church [1]. It is clear and need not be shown here that every theorem of the present formulation is a theorem of the formulation given by Church. It of course will be shown here, however, that each of Church's axioms are theorems of the present system and that each of his primitive inference rules is either a primitive (and only modus ponens is taken as a primitive rule here) or a derived rule of the present system.

The importance of obtaining an axiomatic formulation such as herein described lies partly in the significance of reducing any axiom set to an equivalent one which involves fewer metalogical notions, especially such a one as proper substitution. However, of somewhat greater importance, it is highly desirable that we possess a formulation of both first and second order logic which can be extended without qualification to such areas as tense, epistemic, deontic, modal and logics of the like. Now proper substitution especially has been the main obstacle to such unqualified extensions of standard logic, and we take it to be of no little significance that at least for first order logic (with identity) a substitution free axiomatic formulation has been provided. (1) The present system extends this earlier result to the level of second order logic. (2)

A second difficulty in unqualified extensions of standard logic concerns the form which Leibniz' law, i.e., the law regarding interchangeability salva veritate, is to take. Generally, in the extensions of standard logic to modal logic, this law has been formulated in an unqualified form applicable to all contexts, thereby lending credence to the questionable view that only ''intensions" or the like can serve adequately as values of the variables for such systems. In the substitution free formulations of first order logic cited, however, Leibniz' law is axiomatically formulated only for atomic contexts, and the qualified form or forms the law takes for contexts involving non-standard formula operators is given in the statement of metatheorems. (3) But again, it is a far different matter having such qualifications stipulated in the form of metatheorems as opposed to having them built directly into the characterization of the logical axioms. As we have said, it is desirable that the standard logical axioms for either first or second order logic be so that axiomatic extensions of standard logic can be made without qualification.4 This desirable feature of the substitution free formulations of first order logic mentioned is retained in our present second order system." (pp. 18-19)

(1) Such a formulation is given by A. Tarski in [2] and developed byD. Kalish and R. Montague in [3]. The present author in [4] and [5] has also formulated a substitution free axiomatization of first order logic without ''existential presuppositions."

(2) Of course, when extending either first or second order logic to tense, epistemic, deontic, or modal logic, qualifications in metatheorems regarding principles of proper substitution will be required. Nevertheless, it is a far different matter having such qualifications stipulated in the form of metatheorems than it is having them built directly into the characterization of the logical axioms themselves.

(3) cf. [4], lemma 4.27 (p. 108) and the discussion on page 106. The objections against an unqualified, general version of Leibniz' principle (or interchangeability salva veritate) are applicable when certain special 'Opaque" contexts are involved, be they modal or otherwise. But all such contexts are—or should be when properly formalized—other than atomic, their "opacity" being generated within the scope of special formula operators. Atomic formulas, because they are atomic, will contain no occurrences of such operators and consequently will uphold par excellence the Leibnizian principle unqualifiedly."

References

[1] Church, A., Introduction to Mathematical Logic, Vol. I, Princeton, 1956.

[2] Tarski, A., "A Simplified Formalization of Predicate Logic with Identity," Arch. f. Math. Logik u. Grundl., 7 (1965), 61-79.

[3] Kalish, D., and Montague, R., 'On Tarski's Formalization of Predicate Logic with Identity," Arch. f. Math. Logik u. Grundl., 7 (1965), 81-101.

[4] Cocchiarella, N., Tense Logic: A Study of Temporal Reference, Doctoral Thesis, UCLA, 1966.

[5] Cocchiarella, N., "A Logic of Actual and Possible Objects," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 31 (1966), 688f.

6. ———. 1969. "A Second Order Logic of Existence." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 34:57-69.

"A. N. Prior in [9] has suggested an approach towards a second order logic of existence where, following medieval logicians, we distinguish “between predicates (like ‘is red’, ‘is hard’, etc.) which entail existence, and predicates (like ‘is thought to be red’, ‘is thought of’, etc.) which do not.“(2) Let us refer to attributes (including relational attributes) which are designated by the former kind of predicate as existence attributes, or for brevity, e-attributes. It is suggested then that *x exists’ be defined as ‘there is some e-attribute which x possesses’. In what follows, this approach regarding the concept of existence is formalized semantically as well as syntactically, and a completeness theorem is established corresponding to the completeness (in a secondary sense, i.e., as including normal, nonstandard models) of standard second order logic (as formulated, for example, in Church [1])."

[For a more philosophical discussion of the present system, especially of the substitution free form of its axiom set, cf. Some Remarks on Second Order Logic with Existence Attributes].

(2) p. 161

References

[1] A. Church, Introduction to mathematical logic, vol. I, Princeton, N.J., 1956.

[9] A. N. Prior, Past, present and future, Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1967.

7. ———. 1969. "Existence Entailing Attributes, Modes of Copulation, and Modes of Being in Second Order Logic." Noûs no. 3:33-48.

"Recently, in [5], I formulated a second order logic of existence which centered around the distinction between those attributes that entail existence and those that do not. (1) The distinction provides

an especially apt explication of the concept of existence and is for this reason especially pertinent to pragmatics and intensional logic, encompassing as they do such areas as tense, epistemic, deontic and modal logic.(2) For example, apropos of tense logic some attributes, such as being red, being round, being hard, etc., cannot be possessed at a time except by objects existing at that time. Other attributes, especially relational attributes between objects whose "lifespans” need not overlap, such as being an ancestor of everyone (someone) now existing, being remembered by someone now existing, (3) etc., may very well be possessed by objects which no longer exist; others, e.g., being a future descendant of everyone (someone) now existing, may be possessed by objects which have yet to exist. Still other attributes such as being believed to be a flying horse may be possessed by objects which never exist. Those attributes which entail existence (at the time of their possession) I shall call existence attributes, or for brevity, e-attributes. By a relational e-attribute I mean an attribute which entails existence with respect to each of its argument places.

In the present paper I shall discuss some of the motivation for distinguishing e-attributes from attributes in general. As indicated, this motivation depends essentially on the desire to use logistic systems in which we are allowed to recognize modes of being other than that of actual existence, e.g., such modes in tense logic as past and future existence, or, in the logic of belief, the mode of "intentional inexistence”. As also indicated, the concept of existence is central to this discussion and I shall here examine informally its explication in terms of e-attributes. In a sequel to the present paper I shall present and discuss a formal analysis of this explication in the context of a semantics for standard second order logic, with quantification over e-attributes distinguished from quantification over attributes in general. The focal point of the formal discussion will be the issue of the logical priority of the notion of e-attribution over that of being an existing object, a priority which exemplifies that of the intensional over the extensional and which, for its clarification, requires some observations on the class-attribute distinction." (pp. 33-34)

(1) For a more philosophical discussion of the axiom set for this formalization, see [4]. I follow Carnap [1], p. 5, in using attribute’ to comprehend both properties and relations (in-intension). Properties are 1-place or unary attributes and are designated by 1-place predicate expressions. Extending Carnap's terminology, propositions are understood to be designated by 0-place predicate expressions and are therefore construed as 0-place attributes (whose extensions are truth-values).

(2) Cf. R. M. Montague [9] and [10] for an elegant and philosophically stimulating formulation of pragmatics and intensional logic. Montague's formulation of intensional logic, supplemented by the distinction between existence entailing and other kinds of attributes, is perhaps the most appropriate general logical framework to which the discussion and observations of the present paper lead.

(3) This example is given by R. M. Montague in [9] and [10].

References

[1] Carnap, R., Introduction to Symbolic Logic and Its Applications (New York: Dover Press, 1958).

[4] Cocchiarella, N., “Some Remarks on Second Order Logic with Existence Attributes,” Noûs, II, 2 (1968): 165-175.

[5] Cocchiarella, N., “A Second Order Logic of Existence,” JSL, forthcoming [1969].

[9] Montague, R. M., “Pragmatics and Intensional Logic,” forthcoming in Dialectica. [published in Synthese, Vol. 22, No. 1/2, Semantics of Natural Language, II (Dec., 1970), pp. 68-94]

[10] Montague, R. M., “Pragmatics,” in Raymond Klibansky (ed.), Contemporary Philosophy—La Philosophie Contemporaine (Florence: 1968).

8. ———. 1969. "A Completeness Theorem in Second Order Modal Logic." Theoria.A Swedish Journal of Philosophy no. 35:81-103.

"In what follows we present a second order formulation of S5 which is shown to be complete relative to a secondary sense of validity corresponding to that relative to which standard second order logic is known to be complete.(1) In our semantical metalanguage we consider various indexed sets of possible worlds and allow that not all objects existing in one indexed world need exist in another. However, as we have therefore confessed in the metalanguage our ontological commitment to all the objects that exist in one world or another, we acknowledge and formalize this confession in our object languages through allowing for quantification over possibilia.

Our means for distinguishing the existent from the mere possible is through a distinction between those attributes that entail existence (with respect to each of their argument places), referred to hereafter as e-attributes, and those attributes that do not.2 Accordingly, we understand 'x exists" to mean There is some e-attribute which x possesses", thus rendering existence essentially impredicative. An alternative and equivalent route—but which we shall not follow here—is possible through taking existence as primitive in the form of quantification over existing objects and defining e-attributes as those attributes which necessarily are possessed only by existing objects." (p. 81)

(1) Cf. Henkin [9].

(2) For a modal free complete (in a secondary sense) formulation of second order logic with existence attributes, see Cocchiarella [5]. For a more philosophical discussion of this approach toward existence, see Cocchiarella [6] and [7].

References

[1] Church, A., Introduction to Mathematical Logic, Vol. I, Princeton, 1956.

[5] Cocchiarella, N., "A Second Order Logic of Existence", Journal of Symbolic Logic., vol. 34 (1969).

[6] Cocchiarella, N., "Some Remarks on Second Order Logic with Existence Attributes", Noûs, 2, 1968, 165-175.

[7] Cocchiarella, N., "Existence Entailing Attributes, Modes of Copulation and Modes of Being in Second Order Logic", Noûs, 3, 1969, 33-48.

[9] Henkin, L., "Completeness in the Theory of Types", Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 15 (1950), 81-91.

9. ———. 1972. "Properties as Individuals in Formal Ontology." Noûs no. 6:165-187.

"Russell’s supposed paradox of predication has occasionally been cited as a source for lessons in ontology. So, for example, Grossmann in [6] has argued that one of the lessons of Russell’s paradox is that there are no complex properties. A recent re-evaluation of the supposed paradox, however, has led me to the conclusion that there is no paradox (cf. [3]). And of course where there is no paradox, there are no lessons of paradox.

There may, however, be lessons of non-paradox, especially if instead of contradiction what results is a highly instructive ontological oddity. In what follows I shall briefly review the considerations that led me to conclude that there is no paradox but instead only this ontological oddity with instructive lessons of its own, relative of course to the ontological framework within which it occurs. I shall then briefly consider several ways of responding to this oddity, where each response presupposes an alternative ontological framework relative to which the response accounts for the oddity by either showing it to rest on an ontological error, as with Grossmann’s response, or by mitigating its effect through what purports to be a deeper or wider framework than the original one in which the oddity occurs." (p. 165)

References

[3] Cocchiarella, N., “Whither Russell’s Paradox of Predication,” forthcoming in Logic and Ontology, vol. 2 of Studies in Contemporary Philosophy, edited by M. K. Munitz and to be published by New York University Press [1973].

[6] Grossmann, R., “Russell’s Paradox and Complex Properties,” Noûs, Vol. 6, No. 2 (May, 1972), pp. 153-164.

10. ———. 1973. "Whither Russell's Paradox of Predication?" In Logic and Ontology, edited by Munitz, Milton K., 133-158. New York University Press.

Contributions to a seminar on ontology held under the auspices of the New York University Institute of Philosophy for the year 1970-1971.

"Russell’s paradox has two forms or versions, one in regard to the class of all classes that are not members of themselves, the other in regard to “the predicate: to be a predicate that cannot be predicated of itself.”(1) The first version is formulable in the ideography of Frege's Grundgesetze der Arithmetik and shows this system to be inconsistent. The second version, however, is not formulable in this ideography, as Frege himself pointed out in his reply to Russell. (2) Nevertheless, it is essentially the second version of his paradox that leads Russell to avoid it (and others of its ilk) through his theory of types.

The first version is of course the relevant version with respect to any formulation of the theory of types in which membership in a class is the fundamental notion, that is, a formulation utilizing 'ε' as a primitive binary predicate constant.(3) However, Russell's theory of types (even ignoring its ramification) is essentially concerned with the notion of predication, and only indirectly through the (philosophically questionable) interpretation of predication as the membership relation is the first version of his paradox relevant to this formulation.

Apparently, Russell saw his paradox as generating an aporetic situation in regard to two fundamental “notions,” namely, the notion of membership (in a class) and the notion of predication (of an attribute).(4) In regard to the notion of membership, the application of Russell’s paradox is not here brought into question. However, in regard to the notion of predication, the applicability of the reasoning grounding Russell’s paradox will here be very much brought into question. Indeed, I shall claim that in this case the paradox fails.(5)" (pp. 133-135)

(1) “Letter to Frege,” reprinted in [10], p. 125.

(2) “Letter to Russell,” ibid., p. 128.

(3) Cf. [5], p. 140 for a specific formulation of this kind of type theory.

(4) Gödel (cf. [6], p. 131f.) distinguishes these two forms of Russell’s paradox by referring to them as the “extensional” and the “intensional” forms, respectively. For the purposes of the present paper, this distinction is preferable to Ramsey’s different but better known distinction between “logical” and “semantical” paradoxes.

(5) With this failure of course goes a primary if not sole motivation for the simple theory of ontological types of third and higher order. The ontological scheme of second-order logic remains unaffected, having as it does a natural motivation of its own. Ramification also has its own motivation, and it may be appended to second-order logic (cf. [2], §58.) even though historically it was first appended to the simple theory of types.

References

[2] Church, A., Introduction to Mathematical Logic. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1956.

[5] Fraenkel, A., and Y. Bar-Hillel, Foundations of Set Theory. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1958.

[6] Gödel, K., “Russell's Mathematical Logic,” The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell. P. A. Schilpp (ed.). Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1944.

[10] Van Heijenoort, J., From Frege to Gödel, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967.

11. ———. 1974. "Fregean Semantics for a Realist Ontology." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 15:552-568.

"T* is a logistic system1 designed to represent the original ontological context behind Russel's paradox of predication. It encompasses standard second order logic, hereafter referred to as T, but goes beyond it by allowing predicate variables to occupy subject positions in its formulas.

Because of a violation of the restrictions imposed for the proper substitution of a formula for a predicate variable, RusselΓs argument fails in T*. Indeed, not only is T* consistent but it is also a conservative extension of T.

It has been suggested that one way of understanding this result is to construe occurrences of predicates in subject positions as referring, not to the properties which occurrences of the same predicates in predicate positions designate, but instead, to individual objects associated with these properties.4 Such a suggestion of course is reminiscent of Frege's ontology. And were it not that Frege is quite insistent in viewing predicates as "unsaturated" expressions and therefore not qualified as substituends for subject positions which can be occupied only by "saturated" expressions, it might be tempting to construe T* as representative of Frege's ontology. Be that as it may, the disproof of the principle that indiscernible properties are co-extensive, which is all that RusselΓs paradox comes to in T*, is reinterpreted according to this suggestion so as to show merely a variant of Cantor's theorem. And that after all is rather appropriate, since Russell's argument for his supposed paradox is really but a variant of Cantor's argument for his theorem.

In what follows we formulate the suggestion semantically and show that although the semantics thus provided does not characterize T*, it does characterize a certain rather interesting subsystem T** of T* supplemented by the extensionality principle that co-extensive properties are indiscernible.(5) The supplemented system, T**+(Ext*), no doubt appears bizarre from the point of view of the original ontological background represented by T*—since in this ontology not all indiscernible properties are co-extensive whereas, according to the supplement, all co-extensive properties are indiscernible, thus suggesting co-extensiveness to be a stronger connection between properties than is the indiscernibility relation.

On the other hand, from the point of view of its quasi-Fregean semantics, the supplement seems rather natural—for according to this semantics the supplement amounts to the stipulation that the same individual object is to be associated with co-extensive properties. Fregean naturalness aside, it should perhaps be noted that the existence of a model-set-theoretic semantics characteristic for T*—or of T* supplemented with principles natural to the ontology of T*—remains yet an open problem." (pp. 552-553)

(2) Cf. [2], §6.

(3) Ibid., §5. We should avoid using 'identical' in place of indiscernible' here. In [3], Meyer has shown that according to T* there exists no relation which satisfies full substitutivity, and, accordingly, insofar as full substitutivity is taken to be a necessary feature of identity, there is and can be no identity relation in the ontology of T*.

(4) This suggestion is implicit, though only in a partial way, in the argument independently arrived at by Zorn and Meyer that T* is a conservative extension of T. It is explicit in the type of model defined below as quasi-Fregean and first recommended to the author as characteristic of T* by N. Belnap.

(5) It is easily seen from the proof in [2] that T* is a conservative extension of T, that this extensionality principle is not a theorem of T*—nor for that matter is its negation.

References

[2] Cocchiarella, N., "Whither Russell's Paradox of Predication?," in Logic and Ontology, edited by Milton K. Munitz, New York University Press (1973), pp. 133-158.

[3] Meyer, R., "Identity in Cocchiarella's T*" Nous, vol. VI (1972), pp. 189-197.

12. ———. 1974. "Formal Ontology and the Foundations of Mathematics." In Bertrand Russell's Philosophy, edited by Nakhnikian, George, 29-46. London: Duckworth.

"In his paper, 'The Undefinability of the Set of Natural Numbers in the Ramified Principia', [*] Myhill has shown that the general concept of a natural number or finite cardinal - general enough, that is, to yield the induction schema - is not definable in terms of ramified type theory in essentially its original form and without the axiom of reducibility. In my commentary I shall examine Myhill's concluding philosophical remarks within the context of general metaphysics or what below I call formal ontology. I shall especially be concerned with the sense in which ramified type theory (without the axiom of reducibility) purports to represent a constructive philosophy of mathematics. In addition, I shall sketch several forms of realism according to which the claim that "impredicativity is present in mathematics from the beginning" is true in an especially apt and interesting sense that goes beyond that intended by Myhill." (p. 29)

[*] In George Nakhnikian (ed.), Bertrand Russell's Philosophy, pp. 19-27.

13. ———. 1974. "Logical Atomism and Modal Logic." Philosophia.Philosophical Quarterly of Israel no. 4:41-66.

Reprinted as Chapter 6 in Logical Studies in Early Analytic Philosophy, pp. 222-243.

"Logical atomism has been construed as both a realist and a nominalist ontology. Despite their different ontological commitments, proponents of both types of atomism have tended to agree that modal operators for necessity and possibility, and thereby strict entailment too, are totally alien to the ontological grammar of logical atomism. The reason for this, apparently, is that any inclusion of modal operators in the ontological grammar of logical atomism, whether that grammar be of the nominalist or realist variants, would represent a commitment to internal properties and relations with material content. And in logical atomism, of course, all internal properties and relations, be they of objects or of situations, are formal and not material in nature. (Cf. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, ([TR]), 4.122).

However, to the contrary, we shall argue that not only are propositional connectives for logical necessity and possibility, and thereby strict entailment too, no more alien to the ontological grammar of logical atomism than are connectives for conjunction and disjunction, but, moreover, that the formal or internal properties and relations of objects and situations in the ontology cannot be adequately represented by the propositional forms of that grammar unless connectives for logical necessity and possibility are included (or definable by others so included) therein.

That is, we shall argue that connectives for logical necessity and possibility, together with their proper “logico-syntactical employment” ([TR], 3.327), represent formal, and not material, internal “properties,” and, moreover, that these formal, internal “properties” are part of the ontology of logical atomism and cannot be adequately represented without the inclusion of such connectives in the ontological grammar of any formal system purporting to represent that ontology.(1)

Our position and argument, incidentally, applies only to modal operators for logical necessity and possibility. All other modal operators, we agree, because they purport to represent internal “properties” or “relations” with real material content (e.g., causality, and even temporality via tense logic), are strictly prohibited within the metaphysical framework of logical atomism. “Superstition is nothing but belief in the causal nexus” ([TR], 5.1361). “The only necessity that exists is logical necessity” ([TR], 6.37).

Moreover, our concern here shall be with logical atomism as the metaphysical framework for a type of formal ontology. Our concern will not be with logical atomism as the framework for either a theory of meaning or a theory of knowledge. Accordingly, neither the Carnapian theory of Protokolsätze nor the Tractarian picture theory of meaning are essential to our present purely ontological considerations. We should note, however, that the Tractarian theory of elementary propositions as pictures contains both a theory of predication and a theory of meaning. It is the theory of predication that is an essential part of the ontology of logical atomism.

In the present chapter we shall limit our formal developments to the level of analysis dealing solely with propositional connectives. Our next chapter will deal with nominalist logical atomism where only individual variables are bindable but where atomism’s theory of predication enters the ontological grammar in a fundamental way. That chapter will also contain a description of several variants of realist logical atomism, one in which material properties and relations of objects are themselves objects, and another where material properties and relations of objects, though indicated by bound predicate variables (as in the first variant of realism), are not themselves objects (values of individual variables) but are nexuses or modes of configurations of objects (as they are in nominalism where they are not indicated by bound predicate variables)." (pp. 222-223 of the reprint)

14. ———. 1974. "La Semantica della Logica del Tempo." In La Logica del Tempo, edited by Pizzi, Claudio, 318-347. Torino: Boringhieri.

Italian translation of the third chapter of the unpublished Ph. D. Thesis: Tense Logic: A Study of Temporal Reference, (1966).

15. ———. 1974. "A New Formulation of Predicative Second Order Logic." Logique et Analyse no. 65-66:61-87.

"In what follows, a predicative second order logic is formulated and shown to be complete with respect to the proposed model theoretic semantics. The logic differs in certain fundamental ways from the system formulated by Church in [1] § 58. The more important differences are noted and discussed throughout the present paper. A more specialized motivation for the new formulation is outlined in § 2.

In regard to the motivation for Church's formulation, this will be found in its natural extension to ramified type theory (without the axiom of reducibility). Within this larger framework, the theory of predication represented by such a formulation can be seen to be constructive: higher order entities are constructible from entities of lower order, with real, nonconstructed individuals as the entities of lowest order. Set theory, to whatever extent it is representable in the framework, appears in the ramified hierarchy only after propositional functions are allowed to be arguments of third and higher order predicates. To introduce sets as real, non-constructed individuals of lowest order would be antithetical to the framework's constructive theory of predication and in violation of its philosophical motivation."

(...)

"Essential to this proposal, however, is a view of the predicative/impredicative distinction radically different from that found in ramified type theory — and hence in Church's formulation of predicative second order logic. The latter framework (barring the axiom of reducibility) represents a constructive theory of predication that rules out all manner of categorial content (indicated by bound predicate variables) or logistic efficacy for impredicative contexts. In the proposed, modified Fregean theory, however, impredicative contexts (wffs) are allowed to have logistic efficacy — and perhaps even categorial content if standard quantifiers ranging over all properties and relations are retained as well.

If, on the one hand, only quantifiers for predicatively specifiable properties and relations are allowed, then in this new formulation of predicative second order logic impredicative contexts — which in general will contain free (schematic) predicate variables or certain predicate constants — will be syncategorematic expressions, since they will not then be permissible substituends of generalized predicate variables. This does not mean that they must then be accorded null content. They may instead represent logical or formal content variant to what Frege calls second and third level "concepts". (4)

This logical content would in effect be the basis of their logistic efficacy. (5)

If, on the other hand, these impredicative contexts are to be given categorial content by retaining standard quantifiers, then care must be made to distinguish these quantifiers from those ranging over only predicatively specifiable properties and relations. Both kinds of quantifiers will bind the same variables, but impredicative wffs will be permissible substituends only of variables bound by the one quantifier. (6)

They remain impermissible substituends of variables bound by the quantifiers for predicative properties and relations.

In the system to be formulated here we are concerned only with the first of the above alternatives, although once formulated it is easily extended to the richer framework. (7)" (pp. 61-64)

(4)We should distinguish at least two kinds of content that expressions of a formal system might have. The first is generally called descriptive, but historically has been called categorial, which we prefer here since even without (applied) descriptive constants the content is still indicated by bound variables, (Hence our reference to categorial content.) The second is generally called logical or formal, or, traditionally, syncategorematic and is understood to be immanent to the logistic system in question. This latter content is usually said to be null or non-existent because it is not denoted or designated by corresponding constants, or, equivalently, because it is not indicated by any type of bound variable. (It may however be «indicated» in a secondary sense by free or schematic variables, and therefore also by constants that are substituends of these free or schematic variables.)

This rather standard view is untenable, however; for if the corresponding or associated expressions have logistic efficacy in the system, that fact can be accounted for only in terms of their representing content of some sort.

On the other hand, because of its immanency, this content need not be therefore accorded categorial existence, i.e., it need not be indicated by bound variables. Our point here, however, is that categorial existence is not the only philosophically viable notion of existence. In ramified typetheory (without the axiom of reducibility), impredicativity has neither categorial nor syncategorial existence. In the new predicative second order logic, impredicativity has syncategorial but not categorial existence. In standard second order logic, impredicativity has categorial existence.

(5) A perspicuous representation of this logistic efficacy is the rule (S) of substitution of wffs for free (schematic) predicate variables or constants occurring in theorems. (Cf. 4 below for a description and derivation of (S).) This rule, though derivable in the predicative second order logic formulated here, is not derivable in Church formulation. Indeed, its addition there as a new rule results in standard, and not predicative, second order logic. This is not the case in the new formulation given here.

(6) The principle of universal instantiation, (UI), of wffs those containing as well as those not containing bound predicate variables — for a generalized predicate variable is now both formulabale and valid when the generalized predicate variable is bound by the standard quantifier. This principle implies the weaker rule (S) and therefore contains, and goes beyond, the logistic efficacy of that rule. (7)" (pp. 61-64)

References

[1] Church, A., Introduction to Mathematical Logic, Princeton University Press, 1956.

16. ———. 1975. "On the Primary and Secondary Semantics of Logical Necessity." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 4:13-27.

"The semantical development of modal logic over the past fifteen years has incorporated a particular model-theoretic artifice which has received little or no critical attention. It is our contention that this artifice introduces, at least within conceptual frameworks typified by logical atomism, a subtle form of descriptive as opposed to merely formal content into the semantics of modal operators. This is particularly noteworthy at least for systems containing operators for the so-called logical modalities, e.g., logical necessity or possibility, or their cognate binary modality, strict implication; for, if any modal operators or connectives had ever been conceptually ordained to represent merely logical or formal operations with no material or descriptive content, it is such as these. Yet, as a result of this model-theoretic artifice, that is precisely what they fail to do.

Relative to a given non-empty universe of objects and a set of predicates of arbitrary (finite) addicity (representing the nexuses of atomic or basic states of affairs), the artifice in question concerns allowing modal operators to range (in their semantical clauses) over arbitrary non-empty subsets of the set of all the possible worlds (models) based upon the given universe of objects and the set of predicates in question. The intuitive and natural interpretation of modal operators for logical modalities, however, is that they range over all the possible worlds (models) of a logical space (as determined by a universe of objects and a set of predicate-nexuses) and not some arbitrary non-empty subset of that totality. The latter interpretation, by allowing the exclusion of some of the worlds (models) of a logical space, imports material conditions into the semantics of modal operators. This exclusion, however appropriate for the representation of non-logical (e.g., causal or temporal) modalities, is quite inappropriate for the representation of what are purported to be merely formal or logical modalities.

This model-theoretic artifice of allowing the exclusion of some of the worlds (models) of a logical Space goes back to Kripke [5] where the notion of universal validity is used instead of the intuitive and primary notion of logical truth. Later semantical developments, by Kripke and others, retained the artifice and supplemented it with additional model-theoretic features, e.g., special accessibility relations between the non-excluded worlds, or semantical clauses allowing objectual quantifiers to range over arbitrary subsets of the universe of objects (thereby importing material content into the semantics of these operators as well). Such additions only deepened and supplemented the type and variability of the material content already induced by modal operators as a result of the artifice in its simplest form. And in that regard, however appropriate these additions may be for the representation of particular non-logical modalities, they only mark a further departure from the supposed purely formal content of operators for logical modalities. For this reason we shall ignore these later developments here and restrict our observations to some of the implications of the artifice in its original and simplest form. It should be kept in mind, however, that our discussion pertains only to operators for the so-called logical modalities." (pp. 13-14)

(...)

"Concluding remarks.

It is not our contention that we should eschew either the model-theoretic artifice of allowing modal operators to range over only some and not all of the worlds (models) of a given logical space or the related artifice of allowing («-place) predicate quantifiers to range over only some and not all of the sets (of «-tuples) of objects in the universe of that space. Indeed, we agree that such artifices are quite appropriate and may in fact be required for operators purportedly representing non-logical modalities (e.g., temporal or causal modalities) or for quantifiers which purportedly range over attributes of a restricted form of content (e.g., perceptual content, or existence-entailing content where past- and future-existence are distinguished from present-existence).

It is our contention, however, that the employment of such an artifice is inappropriate in the semantics of what one considers to be a purely formal or syncategorematic sign. The fact that a secondary semantics which includes such an artifice yields a proof of completeness where the primary semantics showed incompleteness instead does not itself justify employment of the artifice. Rather, to adopt a secondary semantics for this sort of reason is, in our view, to already call into question the sense in which the sign is said to be syncategorematic or the sense in which the content purportedly represented is said to be of a purely formal nature. That of course may in the end be the appropriate question to raise in regard to all our so-called syncategorematic or logical constants. But to raise the question and to answer it adequately are two entirely different enterprises." (p. 28)

References

[5] Kripke, S., ‘A Completeness Theorem in Modal Logic’, Journal of Symbolic Logic 24 (1959), 1-14.

17. ———. 1975. "Second Order Theories of Predication: Old and New Foundations." Noûs no. 9:33-53.

"Second-order theories of predication are based on the assumption that a semantical or ontological interpretation of the forms of predication found in first-order languages will be philosophically adequate only if within the framework of the interpretation there exist entities corresponding to (some if not all of) the predicates occurring in these forms. These entities, depending on the theory in question, may or may not be projected as existing in reality independently of the structure of thought. For convenience, however, we shall refer to them in either case as properties when they are projected as corresponding to monadic predicates and as n-ary relations when they are projected as corresponding to n-place predicates, for n > 1.

Now the nature of the correspondence in which properties and relations are purported to stand to predicates in second-order theories is such that it cannot be identified with or reduced to the relation of denotation between singular terms, e.g., individual constants or variables, and the individuals or objects which they are understood to denote. In some second-order theories it cannot be understood as a relation at all, though in others it will (properly) include the singular-term denotation relation (in the sense that properties and relations can also be denoted therein by singular terms) while still going beyond it in ways that are peculiar to predicates. For this reason, quantification over the theoretically projected or posited properties and relations is primarily effected through quantified predicate variables and not, as it were, through a form of restricted quantification over one or another kind of individual. Informally, we say that properties and relations have in this regard a predicative nature, though in some theories they may have a nominative nature as well.

In what follows we shall be concerned, though somewhat unevenly, with this distinction between second-order theories in which properties and relations have only a predicative nature as opposed to those in which they are purported to have a nominative nature as well. The two general types of second-order theory we have in mind, then, are distinguished according to (1) whether the nature of the correspondence between predicates on the one hand and properties and relations on the other is to (properly) include the singular-term denotation relation so that predicates, within the framework of the theory, are allowable substituends of individual variables; or (2) whether the purported mode of being of properties and relations is strictly of a predicative nature which excludes their being arguments or logical subjects of predication in any sense which is logically similar to that in which individuals in general are. In the first type of theory, properties and relations are themselves individuals, i.e., have a nominative as well as a predicative nature, whereas in the second the categories or modes of being purportedly indicated by quantified predicate and individual variables are ontologically disjoint. Following Frege, we shall speak of properties and relations as unsaturated entities when they are projected entities of a theory of the latter sort." (pp. 33-34)

18. ———. 1975. "Logical Atomism, Nominalism, and Modal Logic." Synthese no. 31:23-62.

Reprinted as Chapter 7 in Logical Studies in Early Analytic Philosophy, pp. 244-275.

"Logical atomism, through its theory of logical form, provides one of the most coherent formal ontologies in the history of philosophy. It is a coherence which, whether we agree with the ontology or not, renders the framework important and useful as a paradigm by which to compare and better evaluate the coherence of alternative systems based upon alternative theories of logical form and especially alternative theories of predication.

As the basis of a formal ontology, logical atomism, aside from the differences between its realist and nominalist variants, specifies not only a ‘deep structure’ ontological grammar within which all analysis must ultimately be resolved, but determines as well a logistic for that grammar. Both together constitute the formal ontology and serve to indicate how logical atomism views the fundamental structure of reality. Thus, for example, the grammar serves to indicate the formal as well as the material categories of being acknowledged by the ontology, while the logistic, by regulating the proper ‘logico-syntactical employment’ ([TR], 3.327) of the expressions of that grammar serves to indicate not only the logical ‘scaffolding of the world’ ([TR], 6.124) but supplements the grammar in its presentation of the ontological structure of reality.

The distinction between logical scaffolding and ontological structure is fundamental to atomism and pertains to a distinction between material and formal content that grammar alone is insufficient to represent. It is a distinction that any proposed formalization of logical atomism must account for (through the Doctrine of Showing) in order to be an adequate formal representative of that ontology. It is a distinction, however, or so it will be argued here, that cannot be made without the introduction of modal operators for logical necessity and possibility.

The argument for this last claim was already given in chapter 6, but it was there restricted to the level of logical analysis dealing solely with propositional connectives."

(...)

"In what follows we shall be concerned with the problematic extension of these results to the level of analysis involving quantifiers for objects as concrete particulars along with some means for expressing their self-identity and mutual difference. On this level, logical atomism’s theory of predication enters our considerations in a fundamental way. For according to that theory, only elementary predications represent or ‘picture’ a structure with material content, and that content is in all cases external to the constituents of the structure. Such a structure is an atomic situation (Sachlage) and the externality of its content to its constituents consists in both it and its complement being logically possible. The difficulty here is that since objects are quantified over, they are part of the world and therefore contribute to the ontological content of the world (cf. [TR] 5.5561); and in that regard their self-identity and mutual difference or nonidentity, and thereby their total number, would prima facie seem to involve material content. Yet, in atomism, an object’s self-identity or nonidentity with any other object is not an external condition of that object, (3) and, as a consequence of the dependence of logical space on reality, it is logically impossible for the totality of objects, no less the number of that totality, to differ from world to world. In other words, in logical atomism, if not in other ontologies, identity and difference, as well as objectual quantification, are formal and not material aspects of reality. Here already we begin to see the paradigmatic role of logical atomism, for in most other systems identity and difference, as well as objectual quantification, are also said to be formal in content, though propositions regarding that content are not also said to be either logically necessary or logically impossible.

Because our considerations will be restricted to quantifying over objects as concrete particulars and not, for example, over material properties and relations as well, the variant of logical atomism we shall discuss here is nominalistic. Several realist alternatives are sketched in order to highlight the significant theses and/or difficulties of nominalism, though it should be noted that not all forms of nominalism need agree with the special ontological theses of nominalist logical atomism.

Finally, it should also be noted that our concern in this chapter is with an adequate formal representation of the ontology of logical atomism and not with its theory of thought, meaning, or philosophy of language. We wish to leave open how these might or must be developed with respect to the system constructed here, especially with regard to how they might or must pertain to the question of its logistic completeness." (pp. 244-247 of the reprint)

(1) The convention adopted here is to use scare-quotes when speaking of what connectives represent as ‘properties’ or ‘relations’. This is done to mark a special philosophical use which is convenient in our informal discussion but which strictly speaking is ontologically misleading. A similar convention applies throughout when we refer to existence (being-the-case) and nonexistence (being-not-the-case) as material ‘properties’ of atomic situations.

(3) That is, an object’s self-identity or nonidentity with any other object is invariant through all the possible worlds of a logical space containing that object. We must distinguish this ontological invariance from the varying semantical relation of denotation (Bedeutung) between an object and a (non-Tractarian) name or definite description of that object. The former must be accounted for within the formal ontology, the latter only within its applications.

References

[TR] Wittgenstein, L., Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness, trans., 2d. ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971. first ed. 1921).

19. ———. 1975. "A Second Order Logic of Variable-Binding Operators." Reports on Mathematical Logic no. 5:13-18.

"It is well-known that Prego distinguished between first- and second-level concepts or functions. First-level concepts he associated with properties and relations between objects. These concepts Frege characterized as functions which assigned truth-values (the true or the false) to (n-tuples of) object(s) (1). An (n-tuple of) object(s) was said to fall under such a concept if it was assigned the true by that concept. In his Begriffsschrift these concepts were indicated by predicate variables.

Second-level concepts or functions, on the other hand, correspond to variable binding operators, e.g., the universal quantifier or, as in Frege’s later development of the Begriffsschrift, the course-of-values abstraction operator. The latter assigns to a monadic concept the class which is its extension while the former assigns a truth-value. Second-level concepts, i.e., second-level functions corresponding to variable-binding operators of the quantifier type, accordingly, can be associated with properties or relations between properties and relations of objects in a sense analogous to (but also different from) that in which first-level concepts are associated with properties or relations between objects. In Frege’s terminology, while an (w-tuple of) object(s) is said to fall under a first-level concept, the latter is said to fall within, not under, a second-level concept if it is assigned the true by that concept.

Third-level concepts corresponding to quantifiers binding predicate variables were also introduced into the Begriffsschrift, but Frege seems to have had some doubts regarding their ontological or objective significance. Indeed, Frege’s attitude toward third-level concepts seems in general to resemble the nominalists’ attitude toward second-level concepts, viz., that they are merely formal or syncategorematic concepts which are immanent to the Begriffsschrift and correspond to nothing objective in reality.

The objectivity of first- and second-level concepts, however, was said by Frege to be “founded deep in the nature of things” (2). These concepts, in other words, have an objective and not merely a formal or syncategorematic content according to Frege. Accordingly, from the point of view of rendering one’s ontological commitments explicit by means of appropriate quantifiers, this indicates that in a framework such as the Begriffsschrift we should allow not only for third-level quantifiers binding predicate-variables (having first-level concepts as their values), as Frege explicitly did allow, but also for fourth-level quantifiers binding second-level quantifier variables (having second-level concepts as their values), as Frege only implicitly allowed. This he did in effect by allowing free or schematic occurrences of second-level quantifier variables (as affixed to schematic individual variables)."

(...)

"Finally, we should perhaps point out that not all second-level concepts need be quantifier concepts. E.g., Frege himself took the “property” of being a property of the number 2 to be a second-level concept ([4], p. 75), and no doubt he intended there to be such a second-level concept corresponding to each and every object. In the present system we remain faithful to Frege’s intentions. Indeed, by (CP-2), it is valid here that for each object x there exists a second-level concept within which fall all and only those first-level concepts under which x falls.

Our approach to the semantics of variable-binding formula operators differs in this regard from that of Mostowski [8], Thomason and Johnson [9], and Issel [5], [6], [7], all of whom, aside from restricting their considerations to first order languages (and, generally, to 1-ary 1-place quantifiers), interpret such operators as designating “quantities” of first-level concepts, i.e., they restrict their considerations to quantifier concepts.

The present system includes these sorts of second-level concepts but goes beyond them to include others as well. However, since the ‘quantifier’ terminology is simpler and more convenient than referring to variable-binding formula operators, we shall hereafter conflate the latter with the former and speak only of “quantifiers”, though of course now quantifiers do not in all cases represent “quantities” (6)." (pp. 13-15)

(1) Frege apparently allowed only for binary relations. We extend his framework to include n-ary relations for arbitrary finite n ^ 2. In addition, we refer to all these relations as (n-ary) concepts. (Frege referred only to properties as concepts.)

(2) Function and Concept, p. 41 of [3].

(6) So-called branched quantifiers represent second-level concepts that are somewhat anomalous to quantifier concepts in general, i.e., to “quantities”. It is well-known, however, that the semantic content of these quantifiers is representable in second order logic, and, accordingly, these concepts too are included among those represented in the system formulated below.

References

[1] Cocchiarella N.: Whither Russel's Paradox of Predication? in Logic and Ontology, ed. Μ. K. Munitz, N.Y.TJ. Press, 1973, 133-158.

[2] Cocchiarella N.: Second Order Theories of Predication: Old and New Foundations, Noûs IX (1975), 33-53.

[3] Geach P. and Black M.: Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, Blackwell, Oxford, 1952.

[4] Frege G.: The Basic Laws of Arithmetic, trs. and edited by Furth, M., U.C.L.A. Press, 1964.

[5] Issel W.: Semantische Untersuchungen über Quantoren, I, Zeitsclir. f. math. Logik und Grundlagen d. Math., Bd. 15, 1969, 353-358.

[6] Issel W.: Semantische Untersuchungen über Quantoren, II, Zeitschr. f. math. Logik und Grundlagen d. Math., Bd. 16, 1970, 281-296.

[7] Issel W.: Semantische Untersuchungen über Quantoren, III, ibid., 421-438.

[8] Mostowski A.: On a Generalization of Quantifiers, Fund. Math., vol. 44 (1957), 12-36.

[9] Thomason B. and Johnson D.: Predicate Calculus with Free Quantifier Variables, JSL, vol. 34 (1969), 1-7.

20. ———. 1976. "A Note on the Definition of Identity in Quine's New Foundations." Zeitschrift für Mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik no. 22:195-197.

21. ———. 1976. "On the Logic of Natural Kinds." Philosophy of Science no. 43:202-222.

"A minimal second order modal logic of natural kinds is formulated. Concepts are distinguished from properties and relations in the conceptual-logistic background of the logic through a distinction between free and bound predicate variables. Not all concepts (as indicated by free predicate variables) need have a property or relation corresponding to them (as values of bound predicate variables). Issues pertaining to identity and existence as impredicative concepts are examined and an analysis of mass terms as nominalized predicates for kinds of stuff is proposed. The minimal logic is extendible through a summum genus, an infima species or a partition principle for natural kinds."

"A standard objection to quantified modal logic is that it breeds such reptiles of the mind as Aristotelian essentialism, “the doctrine that some of the attributes of a thing (quite independently of the language in which the thing is referred to, if at all) may be essential to the thing, and others accidental” ([5], p. 173f.). This objection has been criticized on one front by pointing out that none of the standard systems of quantified modal logic commit us to more than the meaningfulness of the non-trivial versions of the doctrine and that indeed we can, if we so choose, actually deny such versions in these systems (cf. [4]). A more heroic response, however, accepts these versions of the doctrine, at least when properly stated, and finds quantified modal logic the appropriate medium for its formulation. In what follows I shall attempt to formulate one such response, at least for the purpose of clarifying the general sort of logistic framework it presupposes if not also for exposing some of the more fascinating serpents that breed therein." (p. 202)

(...)

"Concluding Remarks. The above are only some of the more obvious principles that come to mind in the development and application of a logic of natural kinds. My objection to including them within the minimal system is based solely upon the rather strong sense of independence from the structure of thought (and therefore of “logic”) which I assume natural kinds to have. Of course, in certain restricted contexts or for specialized applications these principles, and perhaps others as well, may be fully justified and used accordingly.

There are of course other developments and applications which I have not touched upon at all in this paper, e.g., the analysis of causal counterfactuals as based upon natural kinds or of a comparative similarity relation between individuals in terms of the natural kinds they share, etc. Our interests in these sorts of developments or applications should, it is hoped, vindicate at least to some extent the ontology of natural kinds as causal or nomological essences. In any case, such reptiles of the mind as these are taken to be by some philosophers seem hardly poisonous or deadly at all.

Finally, there is the sort of application suggested in section 4 for extending the logic of natural kinds to include nominalized predicates so as to provide a general analysis of the logic and ontology of mass terms. I have only hinted throughout this essay at how this richer framework might be developed, and though I do have some further suggestions which I have not gone into here, it is hoped that perhaps others will also take up the clarion call to defend this rather fascinating serpent of the mind." (. 220)

References

[4] Parsons, T. “Essentialism and Quantified Modal Logic.” Philosophical Review 78 (1969): 35-52.

[5] Quine, W. “Three Grades of Modal Involvement.” Proc. XIth International Congress of Philosophy, Brussells, 1953, voi. 14. Reprinted in Ways of Paradox. New York: Random House, 1966. Pages 156-174.

22. ———. 1977. "Sortals, Natural Kinds and Re-Identification." Logique et Analyse no. 80:439-474.

Reprinted in Lennart Aqvist and Franz Guenthner (eds.), Tense Logic, Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1978.

Abstract: "There are different ways in which we might investigate and represent the successive stages of the development of our common-sense and scientific conceptual frameworks. Jean Piaget’s “fundamental hypothesis” regarding this development is that there is a parallelism between the progress made in the logical and rational organization of knowledge and the corresponding formative psychological processes” ([9], p.13). Piaget’s approach has been a general inquiry into our formative psychological processes, a type of inquiry that requires us “to take psychology seriously” (ibid., p.9). There is an alternative for philosophical logicians, however. For while it is not within our expertise to investigate formative psychological processes, we can nevertheless contribute to the study and representation of “the logical and rational organization of knowledge” through the construction of theories of logical form that are characteristic of at least some of the more important stages in the development of our common-sense and scientific frameworks. We adopt the methodology of such a construction in this paper where our primary concern will be the logical structure of our referential devices for quantifying, identifying and classifying things.

We will be concerned in particular with how this structure is to bear upon the problem of cross-world and cross-time re-identification."

"Investigations into the logical structure underlying ordinary language and our common-sense framework have tended to support the hypothesis that there are different stages of conceptual development and that while the structures elaborated at a later stage are in general not explicitly definable or reducible to those at the earlier they nevertheless presuppose them as conceptually prior bases for their own construction and elaboration— even when the conceptually prior structures are somehow eliminated or completely reconstructed at the later stages. This applies, moreover, not just to the conceptual structures underlying our common-sense framework but to those underlying the development of logic, mathematics and the different sciences as well.

Jean Piaget, for example, as a result of his investigations into genetic epistemology has found that our knowledge of logico-mathematical structures is obtained through a process of “constructive” or “reflective” abstraction that proceeds through a hierarchy of successive stages at which the structures acquired at a previous stage are reconstructed before they are integrated into the new structures elaborated at later stages (cp. [10], p.159). But, as Piaget has also shown, it is not just in logic and mathematics that cognitive activity develops through successive stages of progressive structuration; for the development of intelligence and knowledge in general, whether as represented in our common-sense or our scientific framework, proceeds in essentially the same way. Indeed, the construction of our scientific framework on the basis of our common-sense framework is itself a prime example not only of how conceptual structures acquired at a previous stage are completely reconstructed before they are integrated into those elaborated at a later stage but also of how the later structures, though built upon the earlier, cannot be reduced to or defined in terms of them (cf. Sellars [11]).

Now there are different ways in which we might investigate and represent the successive stages of the development of our commonsense conceptual framework. E.g., because of his “fundamental hypothesis” that there is a parallelism between the progress made in the logical and rational organization of knowledge and the corresponding formative psychological processes” ([9], p.13), Piaget’s approach has been a general inquiry into our formative psychological processes. The first principle of genetic epistemology, according to Piaget, is “to take psychology seriously” (ibid., p. 9).

There is an alternative for philosophical logicians, however. For while it is not within our expertise to investigate our formative psychological processes, we can nevertheless contribute to the study and representation of “the logical and rational organization of knowledge” through the construction of theories of logical form that are characteristic of at least some of the more important stages in the development of our common-sense and scientific frameworks.

One thing in particular that the construction of such a theory would help explain is the sense in which the operations and co-ordinations of concepts that characterize a given stage of conceptual involvement constitute a self-sufficient structured whole which purports to have limits beyond which there is nothing for thought. It would also help explain how the formalization of these operations and the clarification of their limits can be the basis for new and more elaborate operations whose structuration transcends those same limits and leads to a new stage of conceptual involvement.

It is this methodology that we shall adopt in what follows where our primary concern will be the logical structure of our referential devices for quantifying, identifying and classifying things. We shall particularly be concerned with how this structure is to bear upon the problem of cross-world and cross-time re-identification." (pp. 439-441)

References

[9] Piaget, Jean, Genetic Epistemology, translated. by E. Duckworth, Columbia University Press, New York, 1930.

[11] Sellars, Wilfrid, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man,” in Science, Perception and Reality, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1963.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography of Nino Cocchiarella 1978-1992

Essays 1978-1992

1. Cocchiarella, Nino. 1978. "On the Logic of Nominalized Predicates and Its Philosophical Interpretations." Erkenntnis no. 13:339-369.

Errata, Erkenntnis, 14, 103-104, pp. 103-104.

"Predicate nominalizations are transformations of predicates and predicate phrases into nouns or noun phrases. Thus, e.g., ‘pious’ is transformed into ‘piety’, ‘wise’ into ‘wisdom’, ‘triangular’ into ‘triangularity’, and ‘human’ into ‘humanity’. We call these types of derivative nouns abstract singular terms. Some relational predicates are also transformed into abstract singular terms: e.g., ‘identity’ for ‘is identical with’ and ‘indiscernibility’ for‘is indiscernible from’.

There are other forms which predicate nominalizations take as well. E.g., the noun phrase ‘the concept Horse’, especially as used by Frege, amounts to a nominalization of the predicate ‘horse’, and others of a related sort are ‘the property red’ and ‘the relation of being taller than’. These nominalizations have stylistic variations, e.g., ‘redness’ or ‘red’ simpliciter (when used as a singular term rather than as a predicate) and ‘the taller-than relation’ or simply ‘being taller than’.

There are no doubt a number of distinctions relevant to linguistics that should be drawn between these different types of nominalizations. We, however, shall not pursue them here but shall concern ourselves instead with the more formal question of a logic of nominalized predicates in the context of some of its philosophical interpretations. We shall assume in this regard that the occurrences of nominalized predicates in ordinary discourse for which the logic is designed are all singular termsin the modern sense, i.e., that they purport to have singular reference in the same sense in which proper names and (unreduced) definite descriptions are said to have such reference." (p. 339)

2. ———. 1979. "The Theory of Homogeneous Simple Types as a Second Order Logic." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 3:505-524.

"In its original form the theory of simple types, hereafter called ST, is a theory of predication and not, or at least not primarily, a theory of membership. With that original form in mind we construct in this paper a second order counterpart of ST which we call ST*. We briefly compare ST* with an alternative extension of second order logic, viz., the author's system T*(*) of [1], which was proposed as characterizing the original (and yet consistent!) logistic background of Russell's paradox of predication.

In [2], the author showed the completeness of T**, plus an extensionality axiom (Ext*), relative to a Fregean interpretation of subject-position occurrences of predicates, viz., that such occurrences of predicates denote individuals correlated with the properties (or ''classes") designated by predicate-position occurrences of the same predicates. It is observed here that when the semantical Fregean frames characterized satisfy ST*'s stratified comprehension principle instead of T**'s general comprehension principle, then the same Fregean interpretation yields a completeness theorem for monadic ST* + (Ext*) as well. It has been found convenient, on the other hand, to consider (monadic) ST as a theory of membership rather than a theory of predication when axioms of extensionality are

included in its characterization. So considered, Quine proposed his system NF as a first order counterpart of ST, though of course, as is well-known, NF far exceeds ST in deductive powers. We show here per contra that while (monadic) ST* + (Ext*) is motivated in its construction along lines followed by Quine in the construction of his first order counterpart NF, viz., the reduction of ST's metatheoretic feature of typical ambiguity to a stratified comprehension principle, our system, unlike NF, is equiconsistent with ST. This, along with the fact that the non-abstract individuals (or "urelements") of ST are retained unmodified in ST*, indicates that ST*, as a theory of predication, is to be preferred to NF, as a theory of membership, in the interpretation which each gives to STPs metatheoretic feature of typical ambiguity. We show in addition that if to (monadic) ST* +(Ext*) we add the assumption that whatever is a value of an individual variable is also (or, on the Fregean interpretation, is correlated with) a value of a (monadic) predicate variable, i.e., the assumption that every individual is a "class", then the resulting system is equiconsistent with NF. We refer to monadic ST* +(Ext*) as NFU* and show that it contains Jensen's system NFU as well." (pp. 505-506)

References

[1] Cocchiarella, N., "Whither Russell's paradox of predication?" in Logic and Ontology, M. K. Munitz, ed., New York University Press, New York (1973), pp. 133-158.

[2] Cocchiarella, N., "Fregean semantics for a realist ontology?" Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, vol. XV (1974), pp. 552-568.

3. ———. 1980. "Nominalism and Conceptualism as Predicative Second Order Theories of Predication." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 21:481-500.

"There appears to be a growing consensus, even if not unanimity, that standard predicative second-order logic is the appropriate logical medium for the representation of a nominalist theory of predication. We agree that this is indeed the case and formulate in this paper a model-theoretic approach which justifies that claim. (1) Because it is model-theoretic, our approach differs from the truth-value semantics approach of Leblanc and Weaver. (2) Amongst other reasons, we prefer our model-theoretic approach so as to accommodate those nominalists for whom the assumption that there are potentially as many names as there are individuals is not acceptable.

The models involved in our semantics, moreover, are precisely the same models as are already involved in standard first-order logic. Assignments of values (drawn from the domain of a given model) to the individual variables are extended, however, to what, relative to a given first-order language, we call nominalistic assignments to the n-place predicate variables (for each positive integer n) these assign first-order formulas (wffs) of the language in question, relative to the free occurrences of n distinct individual variables occurring in those wffs, to the H-place predicate variables. The satisfaction by such an assignment of a second-order wff in a model is then defined by a double recursion on the logical structure of the wff and on the number of nested predicate quantifiers occurring therein.

It is natural of course that a first-order wff, relative to n individual variables occurring therein as argument indicators, should be understood as representing an n-place predicate expression of the language in question; and in fact in an applied first-order theory based upon that language such a first order wff would constitute the definiens of a possible definition for an n-place predicate constant not already belonging to that language or occurring in that theory. Potentially, of course, there are infinitely many predicate constants that might be introduced into a first-order theory in this way; and it is just over such a potential infinity, and no more, that our predicate quantifiers, nominalistically interpreted, are understood to range when we turn to the predicative second-order counterpart of a given first-order theory.

Finally, in order to better understand the implicit background of our nominalistic semantics, we include in a final section of this paper a brief comparison of nominalism, as represented by standard predicative second-order logic, with a closely related form of conceptualism, represented by a certain nonstandard predicative second-order logic formulated by the author in an earlier paper." (pp. 481-482)

(1) For the consensus view, see Parsons [9], For the dissenting view, at least in regard to the extension of predicative second-order logic to ramified type theory, see Church [2].

It is possible of course that Church intends his demurral to apply only after predicates are ramified and allowed to occur as subjects of higher-order predicates. If so, then we believe that his demurral may have some merit (see Note 10).

(2) For reasons indicated in Note 10, we suspect that ramification may presuppose a linguistic capacity for introducing predicates that exceeds the proper limits of a nominalist theory of predication. Such a capacity does not exceed the limits of a closely related form of conceptualism (briefly discussed in Section 6) which may be represented by the nonstandard predicative second-order logic formulated in [3].

References

[2] Church, A., "Comparison of Russell's Resolution of the Semantical Antinomies with that of Tarski," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 41 (1976), pp. 747-760.

[3] Cocchiarella, N., "A new formulation of predicative second order logic," Logique et Analyse, vol. 17, no. 65-66 (1974), pp. 61-88.

[9] Parsons, C, "A plea for substitutional quantification," The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 68 (1971), pp. 231-237.

4. ———. 1980. "The Development of the Theory of Logical Types and the Notion of a Logical Subject in Russell's Early Philosophy." Synthese no. 45:71-115.

Reprinted as Chapter 1 in Logical Studies in Early Analytic Philosophy, pp. 19-63.

"The development of the theory of logical types in Russell’s early philosophy proceeds along a difficult and rather involuted path; and even the final product, the theory as adumbrated in [Principia Mathematica = PM], remains unclear in its syntax and problematic in its semantics. Indeed, one might well be left with the impression that Russell himself, in the end, remained unsure of which parts of the different views he had held along the way are finally to be adopted.

In what follows, we shall attempt to describe and explain the development of Russell’s early views, at least to the extent to which they are available in published form today, from the perspective of the development in those views of the notion of a logical subject. It is the development of this notion in Russell’s early philosophy, we believe, that holds the key to many of the problems confronting Russell in the development of his theory of logical types and that led to the various, and sometimes conflicting, proposals that he made along the way.

It should be noted, however, that in referring to the development of the theory of logical types in Russell’s early philosophy we have in mind only the views developed by Russell up to, but not subsequent to, the 1910—13 publication of the first edition of [PM]. The subsequent views developed by Russell from 1913—25, that is, between the first and second editions of [PM], and summarized to some extent in his introduction (and added appendices) to the second edition, constitute Russell’s version of logical atomism. Except for some concluding remarks in the final section of this chapter, we delay our discussion of those views until chapter 5." (pp. 19-20 of the reprint)

5. ———. 1981. "Richard Montague and the Logical Analysis of Language." In Contemporary Philosophy: A New Survey. Vol. 2: Philosophy of Language, edited by Fløistad, Guttorm, 113-155. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

"Richard Montague was an exceptionally gifted logician who made important contributions in every field of inquiry upon which he wrote. His professional career was not only marked with brilliance and insight but it has become a classic example of the changing and developing philosophical views of logicians in general, especially during the 1960s and 70s, in regard to the form and content of natural language. We shall, in what follows, attempt to characterize the general pattern of that development, at least to the extent that it is exemplified in the articles Montague wrote during the period in question.

The articles to which we shall especially direct our attention are: ‘Pragmatics’ [1]; ‘Pragmatics and Intensional Logic’ [2]; ‘On the Nature of Certain Philosophical Entities’ [3]; ‘English as a Formal Language’ [4]; ‘Universal Grammar’ [5]; and ‘The Proper Treatment of Quantification in Ordinary English’ [7].

Needless to say, but many of the ideas and insights developed in these papers Montague shared with other philosophers and logicians, some of whom were his own students at the times in question. Montague himself was meticulous in crediting others where credit was due, but for convenience we shall avoid duplicating such references here." (p. 113)

(...)

"Concluding Remarks

There are many other important features of Montague’s grammar for English and of his translation of English by means of that grammar into intensional logic that we cannot go into here. The highly intensional nature of his semantics, for example, provides not only a more direct analysis of the opacity of intensional verbs but also a more direct analysis of the opacity of infinitive phrases as well. And then there is his treatment of relative clauses and of attributive adjectives, which we have not touched upon at all.

In closing then, it will no doubt have crossed the reader’s mind that there may be some irony in the fact that Montague began his philosophical career as an extensionalist who took set theory as the proper theoretical framework for philosophy and as a formal-language philosopher who viewed the formalization of ordinary language as either impossible or extremely laborious, and in any case as certainly not philosophically rewarding. For the fact is that Montague has made important and philosophically innovative contributions toward a fully formalized syntax and semantics for natural language and that the semantics in question is most perspicuously described in terms of an intensional logic that transcends set theory and that in effect constitutes a new theoretical framework for philosophy. If this is not a revolution, it is at least a form of progress in the logical analysis of language." (p. 155)

References

[I] Works by Richard Montague

(The first 9 articles are reprinted in Formal Philosophy, Selected Papers of Richard Montague, edited and with an introduction by R.H. Thomason, Yale University Press, New Haven 1974. All page references here are to this volume. The dates listed are not the dates of publication but of when Montague first presented each paper to a philosophical audience.)

[1] “Pragmatics,”1964.

[2] “Pragmatics and Intensional Logic,”1967.

[3] “On the Nature of Certain Philosophical Entities,”1967.

[4] “English as a Formal Language,”1968.

[5] “Universal Grammar,”1969.

[6] “The Proper Treatment of Quantification in Ordinary English,”1970.

[7] “Syntactical Treatments of Modality,”1963.

[8] Montague and D. Kalish, “That,”1959.

[9] Montague and D. Kaplan, “A Paradox Regained,”1960.

[10] Montague and D. Kalish, Logic: Techniques of Formal Reasoning. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964.

6. ———. 1982. "Meinong Reconstructed versus Early Russell Reconstructed." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 11:183-214.

Reprinted as Chapter 3 in Logical Studies in Early Analytic Philosophy, pp. 119-151.

"Contemporary philosophy is in a rut, according to Terence Parsons in his recent book Nonexistent Objects, ([NO]), and it is one that stems from the (post-1905) work of Bertrand Russell. The main characteristic of this “Russellian rut” ([NO], 1) is strict adherence to the thesis that being, or being something, amounts to being something that exists—or equivalently that ‘there is’ is to be equated with ‘there exists’ ([NO], 6). This view is now so well entrenched, according to Parsons, that it is a main stay of what he also calls the orthodox tradition.

Now the orthodox view is in a rut, according to Parsons, “because it’s a view in which most of us are so entrenched that it’s hard to see over the edges” ([NO], 1). Naturally, if we want “to look over the edge and see how things might be different” ([NO], 8), as any objective seeker of truth would, then “we need to encounter an actual theory about nonexistent objects” (ibid.). It is the construction and presentation of such a theory that is Parsons’s concern in Nonexistent Objects.

(...)

"Now we do not object to Parsons’s choice of Meinong’s theory here, nor for that matter to his elegant reconstruction and presentation of that theory. We do think, however, that a more balanced recognition of Russell’s overall view is called for and that perhaps the best way to make the Meinongian notion of a concrete object understandable to the orthodox tradition is to compare it with the general Russellian notion of a concrete individual, i.e., the Russellian notion of an individual that can exist but which might in fact not exist. Indeed, on the basis of the analysis and comparison we shall give here, it is our position that the Meinongian notion of a concrete object, at least as reconstructed by Parsons, is parasitic upon, though in a beneficent way, the Russellian notion of a concrete individual, existent or otherwise." (pp. 119-121)

References

[NO] Parsons, Terence, Nonexistent Objects, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980.)

7. ———. 1983. "Philosophical Perspectives on Quantification in Tense and Modal Logic." In Handbook of Philosophical Logic. Vol. 2. Extensions of Classical Logic, edited by Gabbay, Dov and Guenthner, Franz, 309-353. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Reprinted in Dov M. Gabbay and F. Guenthner, Handbook of Philosophical Logic, Second Edition, Vol. 7, Dordrecht: Springer 2002, pp. 235-275.

Contents: Introduction 235; 1. The Primary Semantics of Logical Necessity 236; 2. Logical Atomism and Quantified Modal Logic 237; 3. The Secondary Semantics of Metaphysical Necessity 240; 4. Proper Names as Rigid Designators 242; 5. Non-Contingent Identity and the Carnap-Barcan Formula 243; 6. Existence in the Primary and Secondary Semantics 245; 7. Metaphysical Necessity and Relational Model Structures 247; 8. Quantification with Respect to Individual Concepts 250; 9. Individual Concepts and the Elimination of de re Modalities 253; 10. Contingent Identity 2586; 11. Quantifiers as Referential Concepts 258; 12. Singular Reference 259; 13. Conceptualism and Tense Logic 262; 14. The Problem of Reference to Past and Future Objects 266; 15. Time and Modality 268; Bibliography 274-275.

"The trouble with modal logic, according to its critics, is quantification into modal contexts - i.e. de re modality. For on the basis of such quantification, it is claimed, essentialism ensues, and perhaps a bloated universe of possibilia as well. The essentialism is avoidable, these critics will agree, but only by turning to a Platonic realm of individual concepts whose existence is no less dubious or problematic than mere possibilia. Moreover, basing one's semantics on individual concepts, it is claimed, would in effect render all identity statements containing only proper names either necessarily true or necessarily false - i.e. there would then be no contingent identity statements containing only proper names.

None of these claims is true quite as it stands, however; and in what follows we shall attempt to separate the chaff from the grain by examining the semantics of (first-order) quantified modal logic in the context of different philosophical theories. Beginning with the primary semantics of logical necessity and the philosophical context of logical atomism, for example, we will see that essentialism not only does not ensue but is actually rejected in that context by the validation of the modal thesis of anti-essentialism, and that in consequence all de re modalities are reducible to de dicto modalities.

(...)

Besides the Platonic view of intensionality, on the other hand, there is also a socio-biologically based conceptualist view according to which concepts are not independently existing Platonic forms but cognitive capacities or related structures of the human mind whose realization in thought is what informs a mental act with a predicable or referential nature. This view, it will be seen, provides an account in which there can be contingent identity statements, but not such as to depend on the coincidence of individual concepts in the platonic sense. Such a conceptualist view will also provide a philosophical foundation for quantified tense logic and paradigmatic analyses thereby of metaphysical modalities in terms of time and causation. The problem of the objective significance of the secondary semantics for the analyzed modalities, in other words, is completely resolved on the basis of the nature of time, local or cosmic. The related problem of a possible ontological commitment to possibilia, moreover, is in that case only the problem of how conceptualism can account for direct references to past or future objects." (pp. 235-236)

8. ———. 1985. "Two Lambda-Extensions of the Theory of Homogeneous Simple Types as a Second Order Logic." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 26:377-407.

Contents:

0. Introduction 377; 1. HST* revisited 379; 2. An improved axiom set for HST* 380; 3. The grammar of HST* with lambda-abstracts 383; 4. The system lambda-HST* 384; 5. The system HST*lambda 386; 6. An extensional Fregean semantics for nominalized predicates 390; 7. The relative consistency of HST*-lambda + (Ext*) to lambda-HST* + (Ext*) 393; 8. An intensional Fregean semantics for nominalized predicates 395; 9. Identity versus indiscernibility in HST*-lambda 402; Notes 406; References 407.

Abstract: "Two second order logics with lambda-abstracts are formulated as counterparts to the theory of homogeneous simple types. Predicates can be nominalized and occur as abstract singular terms in these logics so that self-predication is meaningful in general and, in certain special cases, even provable. Extensional and intensional Fregean semantics in which nominalized predicates are assigned individuals as concept-correlates are formulated and the extensional and intensional versions of these logics are shown to be complete with respect to their corresponding semantics. The logics are also shown to be consistent relative to weak Zermelo set theory."

"In the theory of simple logical types as originally conceived, it is meaningless for one predicate expression to occur in one of the subject or argument positions of another unless the latter is assigned a higher logical type than the former within the grammar of the object language; and therefore it is meaningless in particular for any predicate expression to apply to itself, i.e., to occur in one of its own subject positions. Russell's paradox of predication is thereby avoided, of course, but the price is high, for the resulting theory is not an accurate representation of the role of predicates in natural language where predicate expressions can apply not only to the nominalizations of other predicates but to their own nominalizations as well -- and without regard at all for the notion of a logical type. In the theory of logical types as a second-order logic, on the other hand, predicate expressions are typed within the grammar of the object language only in the way they are typed in standard second-order logic, i.e., only with respect to their degree or number of subject positions, and they are allowed otherwise to meaningfully occur in the subject or argument positions of other predicates, and of themselves as well, without regard to the notion of a logical type. Russell's paradox of predication can be avoided, it turns out, not by resorting to the notion of a logical type as a part of the grammar of the object language but rather only as a part of the metalinguistic description of the conditions under which properties and relations are to be posited by means of the grammar of the object language. The difference is crucial, needless to say, since it allows for a more accurate representation of the role of predicates and predication in natural language. The resulting theory is not, to be sure, a second-order logic in the "standard" sense used today (though it does contain the latter), but it is a second-order logic in the traditional or pre-type-theoretical sense in which quantifier expressions are allowed to reach into both subject and predicate positions without obliterating the logical and conceptually important distinctions between the two." (pp. 377-378)

9. ———. 1985. "Frege's Double Correlation Thesis and Quine's Set Theories NF and ML." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 14:1-39.

Reprinted as Chapter 4 in Logical Studies in Early Analytic Philosophy, pp. 152-192.

"There are two fundamentally different notions of a class, which, following tradition, we might call the mathematical and the logical notions, respectively. The logical notion is essentially the notion of a class as the extension of a concept, and, following Frege, we shall assume that a class in this sense “simply has its being in the concept, not in the objects which belong to it” (Frege, [PW], 183)—regardless of whether or not concepts themselves differ, as Frege assumed, “only so far as their extensions are different” (ibid., 118). The mathematical notion of a class, on the other hand, is essentially the notion of a class as composed of its members, i.e., of a class that has its being in the objects that belong to it. This notion of a class, we claim, is none other than the iterative concept of set—or at least that is what it comes to upon analysis. Note that although what accounts for the being of a class under the one notion is not the same as what accounts for the being of a class under the other, nevertheless the axiom of extensionality applies equally to both notions. This means that the axiom of extensionality does not of itself account for the being of a class. (1)

Of course the logical notion of a class, especially as developed in Frege’s form of logicism, is usually thought to be bankrupt as a result of Russell’s paradox. This assessment, however, is erroneous. In particular, in “Frege, Russell, and Logicism: A Logical Reconstruction,” ([FRL]), I have explained how Frege’s view of classes in the logical sense can be reconstructed without paradox by modifying in either of two ways what I there referred to as Frege’s double correlation thesis. The two systems that result from these modifications, it turns out, have certain structural similarities with Quine’s two set theories NF and ML, especially when the latter are themselves modified so as to include urelements other than the empty set. This is significant because both NF and ML are commonly said to “lack a motivation” (cf. Boolos’s “The Iterative Concept of Set” ([ICS]), 219). But that is because as theories of sets in the sense of classes that are composed of their members, which is really the only sense to which Quine is willing to commit himself, both NF and ML are incompatible with the iterative concept of set. As theories of classes in the logical sense, however, and in particular of the classes that Frege took to be the correlates of concepts, both NF and ML can be given a very natural motivation, especially when modified to include urelements. In what follows we shall defend this motivation by examining the structural similarities in question." (pp. 152-153 of the reprint)

(1) In an intensional language, the mathematical notion of a class might well assume a stronger axiom of extensionality, viz. one in which classes that are composed of their members are necessarily identical when they have the same members. Such an axiom would not in general hold for classes in the logical sense, since co-extensive concepts are not in general necessarily co-extensive. (It would of course hold for those classes in the logical sense that are the extensions of “rigid” concepts, i.e., concepts that have the same extension in every possible world.)

References

[ICS] G. Boolos, “The Iterative Conception of Set,” Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971):215—31.

|PW| G. Frege, Posthumous Writings, eds. H. Hermes, F. Kambartel and F. Kaulbach; translated by P. Long and R. White (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979).

10. ———. 1986. "Frege, Russell and Logicism: A Logical Reconstruction." In Frege Synthesized: Essays on the Philosophical and Foundational Work of Gottlob Frege, edited by Haaparanta, Leila and Hintikka, Jaakko, 197-252. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Reprinted as Chapter 2 in Logical Studies in Early Analytic Philosophy, pp. 64-118.

"Logicism by the end of the nineteenth century was a philosophical doctrine whose time had come, and it is Gottlob Frege to whom we owe its arrival. “Often,” Frege once wrote, “it is only after immense intellectual effort, which may have continued over centuries, that humanity at last succeeds in achieving knowledge of a concept in its pure form, in stripping off the irrelevant accretions which veil it from the eyes of the mind” (Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic, [Fd], xix). Prior to Frege logicism was just such a concept whose pure form was obscured by irrelevant accretions; and in his life’s work it was Frege who first presented this concept to humanity in its pure form and developed it as a doctrine of the first rank.

That form, unfortunately, has become obscured once again. For today, as we approach the end of the twentieth century, logicism, as a philosophical doctrine, is said to be dead, and even worse, to be impossible. Frege’s logicism, or the specific presentation he gave of it in Die Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, ([Gg]), fell to Russell’s paradox, and, we are told, it cannot be resurrected. Russell’s own subsequent form of logicism presented in [PM], moreover, in effect gives up the doctrine; for in overcoming his paradox, Russell was unable to reduce classical mathematics to logic without making at least two assumptions that are not logically true; namely, his assumption of the axiom of reducibility and his assumption of an axiom of infinity regarding the existence of infinitely many concrete or nonabstract individuals.

Contrary to popular opinion, however, logicism is not dead beyond redemption; that is, if logicism is dead, then it can be easily resurrected. This is not to say that as philosophical doctrines go logicism is true, but only that it can be logically reconstructed and defended or advocated in essentially the same philosophical context in which it was originally formulated. This is true especially of Frege’s form of logicism, as we shall see, and in fact, by turning to his correspondence with Russell and his discussion of Russell’s paradox, we are able to formulate not only one but two alternative reconstructions of his form of logicism, both of which are consistent (relative to weak Zermelo set theory).

In regard to Russell’s form of logicism, on the other hand, our resurrection will not apply directly to the form he adopted in [PM] but rather to the form he was implicitly advocating in his correspondence with Frege shortly after the completion of [POM]. In this regard, though we shall have occasion to refer to certain features of his later form of logicism, especially in our concluding section where a counterpart to the axiom of reducibility comes into the picture, it is Russell’s early form of logicism that we shall reconstruct and be concerned with here.

Though Frege’s and Russell’s early form of logicism are not the same, incidentally, they are closely related; and one of our goals will be to reconstruct or resurrect these forms with their similarity in mind. In particular, it is our contention that both are to be reconstructed as second order predicate logics in which nominalized predicates are allowed to occur as abstract singular terms. Their important differences, as we shall see, will then consist in the sort of object each takes nominalized predicates to denote and in whether the theory of predication upon which the laws of logic are to be based is to be extensional or intensional." (pp. 64-65 of the reprint)

References

Frege, Gottlob, [Fd] The Foundations of Arithmetic, trans, by J. L. Austin, Harper & Bros., N.Y. 1960.

Frege, Gottlob, [Gg] Die Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, vols. 1 and 2, Hildesheim, 1962.

Russell, Bertrand, [PM] Principia Mathematica, coauthor, A. N. Whitehead, Cambridge University Press, 1913.

Russell, Bertrand, [POM] The Principles of Mathematics, 2nd ed., W. W. Norton & Co., N.Y., 1937.

11. ———. 1986. "Conceptualism, Ramified Logic, and Nominalized Predicates." Topoi.An International Review of Philosophy no. 5:75-87.

"The problem of universals as the problem of what predicates stand for in meaningful assertions is discussed in contemporary philosophy mainly in terms of the opposing theories of nominalism and logical realism. Conceptualism, when it is mentioned, is usually identified with intuitionism, which is not a theory of predication but a theory of the activity of constructing proofs in mathematics. Both intuitionism and conceptualism are concerned with the notion of a mental construction, to be sure, and both maintain that there can only be a potentially infinite number of such constructions. But whereas the focus of concern in intuitionism is with the construction of proofs, in conceptualism our concern is with the construction of concepts. This difference sets the two frameworks apart and in pursuit of different goals, and in fact it is not at all clear how the notion of a mental construction in the one framework is related to that in the other. This is especially true insofar as mathematical objects, according to intuitionism, are nothing but mental constructions, whereas in conceptualism concepts are anything but objects. In any case, whatever the relation between the two, our concern in this paper is with conceptualism as a philosophical theory of predication and not with intuitionism as a philosophy of mathematics.

Now conceptualism differs from nominalism insofar as it posits universals, namely, concepts, as the semantic grounds for the correct or incorrect application of predicate expressions. Conceptualism differs from logical realism, on the other hand, insofar as the universals it posits are not assumed to exist independently of the human capacity for thought and representation. Concepts, in other words, are neither predicate expressions nor independently real properties and relations. But then, at least for the kind of conceptualism we have in mind here, neither are they mental images or ideas in the sense of particular mental occurrences. That is, concepts are not objects (saturated individuals) but are rather cognitive capacities, or cognitive structures otherwise based upon such capacities, to identify and classify or characterize and relate objects in various ways. Concepts, in other words, are intersubjectively realizable cognitive abilities which may be exercized by different persons at the same time as well as by the same person at different times. And it is for this reason that we speak of concepts as objective universals, even though they are not independently real properties and relations.

As cognitive structures, however, concepts in the sense intended here are not Fregean concepts (which for Frege are independently real unsaturated functions from objects to truth values). But they may be modeled by the latter (assuming that there are Fregean concepts to begin with) -especially since as cognitive capacities which need not be exercized at any given time (or even ever for that matter), concepts in the sense intended here also have an unsaturated nature corresponding to, albeit different from, the unsaturated nature of Fregean concepts. Thus, in particular, the saturation (or exercise) of a concept in the sense intended here results not in a truth value but a mental act, and, if overtly expressed, a speech act as well. The un-saturatedness of a concept consists in this regard in its non-occurrent or purely dispositional status as a cognitive capacity, and it is the exercise (or saturation) of this capacity as a cognitive structure which informs particular mental acts with a predicable nature (or with a referential nature in the case of concepts corresponding to quantifier expressions)." (pp. 75-76)

12. ———. 1987. "Rigid Designation." In Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics. Vol. 2, edited by Sebeok, Thomas A., 834. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

13. ———. 1987. "Russell, Bertrand." In Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics. Vol. 2, edited by Sebeok, Thomas A., 840-841. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

14. ———. 1988. "Predication Versus Membership in the Distinction between Logic as Language and Logic as Calculus." Synthese no. 75:37-72.

Contents: 0. Introduction; 1. The problem with a set-theoretic semantics of natural language; 2. Intensional logic as a new theoretical framework for philosophy; 3.The incompleteness of intensional logic when based on membership; 4. Predication versus membership in type theory; 5. Second order predicate logic with nominalized predicates; 6. A set theoretic semantics with predication as fundamental; 7. Concluding remarks.

"There are two major doctrines regarding the nature of logic today. The first is the view of logic as the laws of valid inference, or logic as calculus. This view began with Aristotle's theory of the syllogism, or syllogistic logic, and in time evolved first into Boole's algebra of logic and then into quantificational logic. On this view, logic is an abstract calculus capable of various interpretations over domains of varying cardinality. Because these interpretations are given in terms of a set-theoretic semantics where one can vary the universe at will and consider the effect this, has on the validity of formulas, this view is sometimes described as the set-theoretic approach to logic (see van Heijenoort ["Logic as Language and Logic as Calculus", Synthese 17,] 1967, p. 327).

The second view of logic does not eschew set-theoretic semantics, it should be noted, and it may in fact utilize such a semantics as a guide in the determination of validity. But to use such a semantics as a guide, on this view, is not the same as to take that semantics as an essential characterization of validity. Indeed, unlike the view of logic as calculus, this view of logic rejects the claim that a set-theoretic definition of validity has anything other than an extrinsic significance that may be exploited for certain purposes (such as proving a completeness theorem). Instead, on this view, logic has content in its own right and validity is determined by what are called the laws of logic, which may be stated either as principles or as rules. Because one of the goals of this view is a specification of the basic laws of logic from which the others may be derived, this view is sometimes called the axiomatic approach to logic." (p. 37)

(...)

"Concluding Remarks. The account we have given here of the view of logic as language should not be taken as a rejection of the set-theoretical approach or as defense of the metaphysics of possibilist logical realism. Rather, our view is that there are really two types of conceptual framework corresponding to our two doctrines of the nature of logic. The first type of framework is based on membership in the sense of the iterative concept of set; although extensionality is its most natural context (since sets have their being in their members), it may nevertheless be extended to include intensional contexts by way of a theory of senses (as in Montague's sense-denotation intensional logic). The second type of framework is based on predication, and in particular developments it is associated with one or another theory of universals. Extensionality is not the most natural context in this theory, but where it does hold and extensions are posited, the extensions are classes in the logical and not in the mathematical sense.

Russell's paradox, as we have explained, has no real bearing on set-formation in a theory of membership based on the iterative concept of set, but it does bear directly on concept-formation or the positing or universals in a theory based on predication. As a result, our second type of framework has usually been thought to be incoherent or philosophically bankrupt, leaving us with the set-theoretical approach as, the only viable alternative. This is why so much of analytic philosophy in the 20th Century has been dominated by the set-theoretical approach. Set theory, after all, does seem to serve the purposes of a mathesis universalis.

What is adequate as a mathesis universalis, however, need not also therefore be adequate as a lingua philosophica or characteristica universalis. In particular, the set-theoretic approach does not seem to provide a philosophically satisfying semantics for natural language; this is because it is predication and not membership that is fundamental to natural language. An adequate semantics for natural language, in other words, seems to demand a conceptual framework based on predication and not on membership.

(...)

We do not maintain, accordingly, that we should give up the set-theoretic approach, especially when dealing with the philosophy and foundations of mathematics, or that only a theory of predication associated with possibilist logical realism will provide an adequate semantics for natural language. In both cases we may find a principle of tolerance, if not outright pluralism, the more appropriate attitude to take." (pp. 69-70)

15. ———. 1989. "Philosophical Perspectives on Formal Theories of Predication." In Handbook of Philosophical Logic. Vol. 4. Topics in the Philosophy of Language, edited by Gabbay, Dov and Guenthner, Franz, 253-326. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Contents: 1. Predication and the problem of universal 254; 2. Nominalism 256; 3. A nominalistic semantics for predicative second order logic 261; 4. Nominalism and modal logic 266; 5 . Conceptualism vs . nominalism 270; 6. Constructive conceptualism 273; 7. Ramification of constructive conceptualism 280; 8. Holistic conceptualism 286; 9. Logical realism vs holistic conceptualism 289; 10. Possibilism and actualism in modal logical realism 292; 11. Logical realism and cssentialism 301; 12. Possibilism and actualism within conceptualism 306; 13. Natural realism and conceptualism 313; 14. Aristotelian essentialism and the logic of natural kinds 318; References 325-326.

"Predication has been a central, if not the central, issue in philosophy since at least the lime of Plato and Aristotle. Different theories of predication have in fact been the basis of a number of philosophical controversies in both metaphysics and epistemology, not the least of which is the problem of universals. In what follows we shall be concerned with what traditionally have been the three most important types of theories of universals. namely, nominalism, conceptualism, and realism, and with the theories of predication which these theories might be said to determine or characterize.

Though each of these three types of theories of universals may be said to have many variants, we shall ignore their differences here to the extent that they do not characterize different theories of predication. This will apply especially to nominalism where but one formal theory of predication is involved. In both conceptualism and realism, however, the different variants of each type do not all agree and form two distinct subtypes each with its own theory of predication. For this reason we shall distinguish between a constructive and a holistic form of conceptualism on the one hand, and a logical and a natural realism on the other. Constructive conceptualism, as we shall see, has affinities with nominalism with which it is sometimes confused, and holistic conceptualism has affinities with logical realism with which it is also sometimes confused. Both forms of conceptualism may assume some form of natural realism as their causal ground; and natural realism in turn must presuppose some form of conceptualism as its background theory of predication. Both forms of realism may be further divided into their essentialist and non-essentialist variants (and in logical realism even a form of anti-essentialism), and though an essentialist logical realism is sometimes confused with Aristotelian essentialism, the latter is really a form of natural realism with natural kinds as the only essential properties objects can have." (pp. 253-254)

16. ———. 1989. "Russell's Theory of Logical Types and the Atomistic Hierarchy of Sentences." In Rereading Russell: Essays on Bertrand Russell's Metaphysics and Epistemology, edited by Savage, C.Wade and Anderson, C.Anthony, 41-62. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Reprinted as Chapter 5 in Logical Studies in Early Analytic Philosophy, pp. 193-221.

"Russell’s philosophical views underwent a number of changes throughout his life, and it is not always well-appreciated that views he held at one time came later to be rejected; nor, similarly, that views he rejected at one time came later to be accepted. It is not well-known, for example, that the theory of logical types Russell described in his later or post-[PM] philosophy is not the same as the theory originally described in [PM] in 1910-13; nor that some of the more important applications that Russell made of the theory at the earlier time cannot be validated or even significantly made in the framework of his later theory. What is somewhat surprising, however, is that Russell himself seems not to have realized that he was describing a new theory of logical types in his later philosophy, and that as a result of the change some of his earlier logical constructions, including especially his construction of the different kinds of numbers, were no longer available to him.

In the original framework, for example, propositional functions are independently real properties and relations that can themselves have properties and relations of a higher order/type, and all talk of classes, and thereby ultimately of numbers, can be reduced to extensional talk of properties and relations as “single entities,” or what Russell in [POM] had called “logical subjects.” The Platonic reality of classes and numbers was replaced in this way by a more fundamental Platonic reality of propositional functions as properties and relations. In Russell's later philosophy, however, “a propositional function is nothing but an expression. It does not, by itself, represent anything. But it can form part of a sentence which does say something, true or false” (Russell, My Philosophical Development, ([MPD]), 69). Surprisingly. Russell even insists that this was what he meant by a propositional function in [PM]. “Whitehead and I thought of a propositional function as an expression containing an undetermined variable and becoming an ordinary sentence as soon as a value is assigned to the variable: ‘x is human’, for example, becomes an ordinary sentence as soon as we substitute a proper name for V. In this view . . . the propositional function is a method of making a bundle of such sentences” ([MPD], 124). Russell does realize that some sort of change has come about, however, for he admits, “I no longer think that the laws of logic are laws of things; on the contrary, I now regard them as purely linguistic” (ibid., 102).

(...)

Now it is not whether [PM] can sustain a nominalistic interpretation that is our concern in this essay, as we have said, but rather how it is that Russell came to be committed in his later philosophy to the atomistic hierarchy and the nominalistic interpretation of propositional functions as expressions generated in a ramified second order hierarchy of languages based on the atomistic hierarchy. We shall pursue this question by beginning with a discussion of the difference between Russell’s 1908 theory of types and that presented in [PM] in 1910. This will be followed by a brief summary of the ontology that Russell took to be implicit in [PM], and that he described in various publications between 1910 and 1913. The central notion in this initial discussion is what Russell in his early philosophy called the notion of a logical subject, or equivalently that of a “term” or “single entity”. (In [PM], this notion was redescribed as the systematically ambiguous notion of an “object.”) As explained in chapter 1 this notion provides the key to the various problems that led Russell in his early philosophy to the development of his different theories of types, including that presented in [PM]. This remains true, moreover, even when we turn to Russell’s later philosophy, i.e., to his post-[PM] views, only then it is described as the notion of what can and cannot be named in a logically perfect language. The ontology of these later views is what Russell called logical atomism, and it is this ontology that determines what Russell described as the atomistic hierarchy of sentences. In other words, it is the notion of what can and cannot be named in the atomistic hierarchy that explains how Russell, however unwittingly, came to replace his earlier theory of logical types by the theory underlying the atomistic hierarchy of sentences as the basis of a logically perfect language." (pp. 193-195 of the reprint)

References

POM] Russell, Bertrand, The Principles of Mathematics, 2d ed. (NY., Norton & Co., 1938).

[PM] Russell, Bertrand and Alfred Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, vol. 1 (1910), vol. 2 (1912), and vol. 3 (1913) (London: Cambridge Univ. Press,).

17. ———. 1989. "Conceptualism, Realism and Intensional Logic." Topoi.An International Review of Philosophy no. 7:15-34.

Contents: 0. Introduction 15; 1. A conceptual analysis of predication 16; 2. Concept-correlates and Frege's double correlations thesis 17; 3. Russell's paradox in conceptual realism 18: 4. What are the natural numbers and where do they come from? 22; 5. Referential concepts and quantifier phrases 24; 5. Singular reference 24; 7. The intensions of refrential concepts as components of applied predicable concepts 26; 8. Intensional versus extensional predicable concepts 28; 9. The intentional identity of intensional objects 29; Notes 31; Reference 33-35.

"0. Introduction

Linguists and philosophers are sometimes at odds in the semantical analysis of language. This is because linguists tend to assume that language must be semantically analyzed in terms of mental constructs, whereas philosophers tend to assume that only a platonic realm of intensional entities will suffice. The problem for the linguist in this conflict is how to explain the apparent realist posits we seem to be committed to in our use of language, and in particular in our use of infinitives, gerunds and other forms of nominalized predicates. The problem for the philosopher is the old and familiar one of how we can have knowledge of independently real abstract entities if all knowledge must ultimately be grounded in psychological states and processes. In the case of numbers, for example, this is the problem of how mathematical knowledge is possible. In the case of the intensional entities assumed in the semantical analysis of language, it is the problem of how knowledge of even our own native language is possible, and in particular of how we can think and talk to one another in all the ways that language makes possible.

I believe that the most natural framework in which this conflict is to be resolved and which is to serve as the semantical basis of natural language is an intensional logic that is based upon a conceptual analysis of predication in which what a predicate stands for in its role as a predicate is distinguished from what its nominalization denotes in its role as a singular term. Predicates in such a framework stand for concepts as cognitive capacities to characterize and relate objects in various ways, i.e. for dispositional cognitive structures that do not themselves have an individual nature, and which therefore cannot be the objects denoted by predicate nominalizations as abstract singular terms. The objects purportedly denoted by nominalized predicates, on the other hand, are intensional entities, e.g. properties and relations (and propositions in the case of zero-place predicates), which have their own abstract form of individuality, which, though real, is posited only through the concepts that predicates stand for in their role as predicates. That is, intensional objects are represented in this logic as concept-correlates, where the correlation is based on a logical projection of the content of the concepts whose correlates they are.

(...)

Before proceeding, however, there is an important distinction regarding the notion of a logical form that needs to be made when joining conceptualism and realism in this way. This is that logical forms can be perspicuous in either of two senses, one stronger than the other. The first is the usual sense that applies to all theories of logical form, conceptualist or otherwise; namely, that logical forms are perspicuous in the way they specify the truth conditions of assertions in terms of the recursive operations of logical syntax. In this sense, fully applied logical forms are said to be semantic structures in their own right. In the second and stronger sense, logical forms may be perspicuous not only in the way they specify the truth conditions of an assertion, but in the way they specify the cognitive structure of that assertion as well. To be perspicuous in this sense, a logical form must provide an appropriate representation of both the referential and the predicable concepts that underlie an assertion.

Our basic hypothesis in this regard will be that every basic assertion is the result of applying just one referential concept and one predicable concept, and that such an applied predicable concept is always fully intensionalized (in a sense to be explained). This will place certain constraints on the conditions for when a complex predicate expression is perspicuous in the stronger sense — such as that a referential expression can occur in such a predicate expression only in its nominalized form. (A similar constraint will also apply to a defining or restricting relative clause of a referential expression.) In the cases where a relational predicable concept is applied, the assumption that there is still but one referential concept involved leads to the notion of a conjunctive referential concept, a notion that requires the introduction in intensional logic of special quantifiers that bind more than one individual variable. Except for briefly noting the need for their development, we shall not deal with conjunctive quantifiers in this essay." (pp. 15-16)

18. ———. 1991. "Conceptualism." In Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, edited by Smith, Barry and Burkhardt, Hans, 168-174. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

Conceptualism is one of the three types of theories regarding the nature of universals described by Porphyry in his introduction to Aristotle's Categories. The other two are nominalism and realism. Because a universal, according to Aristotle, is that which can be predicated of things (De Int. 17a39), the difference between these three types of theories lies in what it is that each takes to be predicable of things. In this regard we should distinguish predication in language from predication in thought, and both from predication in reality, where there is no presumption that one kind of predication precludes the others.

All three types of theories agree that there is predication in language, in particular that predicates can be predicated of things in the sense of being true or false of them. Nominalism goes further in maintaining that only predicates can be predicated of things, that is, that there are no universals other than the predicate expressions of some language or other. Conceptualism opposes nominalism in this regard and maintains that predicates can be true or false of things only because they stand for concepts, where concepts are the universals that are the basis of predication in thought. Realism also opposes nominalism in maintaining that there are real universals, viz. properties and relations, that are the basis of predication in reality." (p. 168)

(...)

"Conceptualism is by no means a monolithic theory, but has many forms, some more restrictive than others, depending on the mechanisms assumed as the basis for concept-formation. None of these forms, in themselves, precludes being combined with a realist theory, whether Aristotelian (as in conceptual natural realism) or Platonist (as in conceptual intensional realism), or both. Some conceptualists, such as Sellars, have made it a point to disassociate conceptualism from any form of realism regarding abstract entities, but that disassociation has nothing to do with conceptualism as a theory about the nature of predication in thought. Conceptualism’s shift in emphasis from metaphysics to psychology, in other words, while important in determining what kind of theory is needed to explain predication in thought, should not be taken as justifying a restrictive form of conceptualism that precludes both a natural and an intensional realism." (p. 174)

19. ———. 1991. "Logic V: Higher Order Logics." In Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, edited by Smith, Barry and Burkhardt, Hans, 466-470. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"Higher-order logic goes beyond first-order logic in allowing quantifiers to reach into the predicate as as well as the subject positions of the logical forms it generates. A second feature, usually excluded in standard formulations of second-order logic, allows nominal-ized forms of predicate expressions (simple or complex) to occur in its logical forms as abstract singular terms. (E.g., ‘Socrates is wise’, in symbols W(s), contains ‘is wise’ as a predicate, whereas ‘Wisdom is a virtue’, in symbols V(W), contains ‘wisdom’ as a nominalized form of that predicate. ‘Being a property is a property’, in symbols P(P), or with λ-abstracts, PλxP(x)), where λχΡ(χ) is read ‘to be an x such that x is a property’, contains both the predicate ‘is a property’ and a nominalized form of that predicate, viz. ‘being a property’. Frege’s well-known example, ‘The concept Horse is not a concept’, contains ‘the concept Horse’ as a nominalized form of the predicate phrase ‘is a horse’.)" (p. 466)

20. ———. 1991. "Ontology, Fomal." In Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, edited by Smith, Barry and Burkhardt, Hans, 640-647. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"Formal ontology is the result of combining the intuitive, informal method of classical ontology with the formal, mathematical method of modern symbolic logic, and ultimately identifying them as different aspects of one and the same science. That is, where the method of ontology is the intuitive study of the fundamental properties. modes, and aspects of being, or of entities in general, and the method of modern symbolic logic is the rigorous construction of formal, axiomatic systems, formal ontology, the result of combining these two methods, is the systematic, formal, axiomatic development of the logic of all forms and modes of being. As such, formal ontology is a science prior to all others in which particular forms, modes, or kinds of being are studied." (p. 641)

21. ———. 1991. "Russell, Bertrand." In Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, edited by Smith, Barry and Burkhardt, Hans, 796-798. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"Russell held a number of different metaphysical positions throughout his career, with the idea of logic as a logically perfect language being a common theme that ran through each.

(...)

"A fundamental notion of Russell’s logical realism, sometimes also called ontological logicism, was that of a propositional function, the extension of which Russell took to be a class as many. Initially, as part of his response to the problem of the One and the Many, Russell had assumed that each propositional function was a single and separate entity over and above the many propositions that were its values, and, similarly, that to each class as many there corresponded a class as one. Upon discovering his paradox, Russell maintained that we must distinguish a class as many from a class as one, and that a class as one might not exist corresponding to a class as many. He also concluded that a propositional function cannot survive analysis after all, but ‘lives’ only in the propositions that are its values, i.e. that propositional functions are nonentities."

(...)

"As a result of arguments given by Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1913, Russell, from 1914 on, gave up the Platonistic view that properties and relations could be logical subjects. Predicates were still taken as standing for properties and relations, but only in their role as predicates; i.e., nominalized predicates were no longer allowed as abstract singular terms in Russell’s new version of his logically perfect language. Only particulars could be named in Russell's new metaphysical theory, which he called logical atomism, but which, unlike his earlier 1910-13 theory, is a form of natural realism, and not of logical realism, since now the only real properties and relations of his ontology are the simple material properties and relations that are the components of the atomic facts that make up the world. Complex properties and relations in this framework are simply propositional functions, which, along with propositions, are now merely linguistic expressions. (Russell remained unaware that as a result of the change in his metaphysical views from logical to natural realism his original theory of types was restricted to the much weaker sub-theory of ramified second-order logic, and that he could no longer carry through his logicist programme. This reinforced the confusion of nominalists into thinking that Russell’s earlier theory of types could be given a nominalistic interpretation, since such an interpretation is possible for ramified second-order logic.)" (pp. 797-798)

22. ———. 1991. "Quantification, Time and Necessity." In Philosophical Applications of Free Logic, edited by Lambert, Karel, 242-256. New York: Oxford University Press.

Contents: 0. Introduction; 1. A Logic a Actual and Possible Objects; 2. A Completeness Theorem for Tense Logic; 3. Modality Within Tense Logic; 4. Some Observations on Quantifiers in Modal and Tense Logic; 5. Concluding Remarks.

Abstract: "A logic of actual and possible objects is formulated in which "existence" and "being", as second-level concepts represented by first-order (objectual) quantifiers, are distinguished. A free logic of actual objects is then distinguished as a subsystem of the logic of actual and possible object. Several complete first-order tense logics are then formulated in which temporal versions of possibilism and actualism are characterized in terms of the free logic of actual objects and the wide logic of actual and possible objects. It is then shown how a number of different modal logics can be interpreted within quantified tense logic, with the latter providing a paradigmatic framework in which to distinguish the interplay between quantifiers, tenses and modal operators and within which we can formulate different temporal versions of actualism and possibilism."

"The fundamental assumption of a logic of actual and possible objects is that the concept of existence is not the same as the concept of being. Thus, even though necessarily whatever exists has being, it is not necessary in such a logic that whatever has being exists; that is, it can be the case that there be something that does not exist. No occult doctrine is needed to explain the distinction between existence and being, for an obvious explanation is already at hand in a framework of tense logic in which being encompasses past, present, and future objects (or even just past and present objects) while existence encompasses only those objects that presently exist. We can interpret modality in such a framework, in other words, whereby it can be true to say that some things do not exist. Indeed, as indicated in Section 3, infinitely many different modal logics can be interpreted in the framework of tense logic. In this regard, we maintain, tense logic provides a paradigmatic framework in which possibilism (i.e., the view that existence is not the same as being, and that therefore there can be some things that do not exist) can be given a logically perspicuous representation.

Tense logic also provides a paradigmatic framework for actualism as the view that is opposed to possibilism; that is, the view that denies that the concept of existence is different from the concept of being. Indeed, as we understand it here, actualism does not deny that there can be names that have had denotations in the past but that are now denotationless, and hence that the statement that some things do not exist can be true in a semantic metalinguistic sense (as a statement about the denotations, or lack of denotations, of singular terms). What is needed, according to actualism, is not that we should distinguish the concept of existence from the concept of being, but only that we should modify the way that the concept of existence (being) is represented in standard first-order predicate logic (with identity). A first-order logic of existence should allow for the possibility that some of our singular terms might fail to denote an existent object, which, according to actualism, is only to say that those singular terms are denotationless rather than what they denote are objects (beings) that do not exist. Such a logic for actualism amounts to what nowadays is called free logic." (pp. 242-243)

23. ———. 1992. "Conceptual Realism Versus Quine on Classes and Higher-Order Logic." Synthese no. 90:379-436.

Contents: 0. Introduction; 1. Predication versus Membership; 2. Old versus New Foundations; 3. Concepts versus ultimate Classes; 4. Frege versus Quine on Higher-Order Logic; 5. Conceptualism versus Nominalism as Formal Theories of predication; 6. Conceptualism Ramified versus Nominalism Ramified; 7. Constructive Conceptual Realism versus Quine's view of Conceptualism as a Ramified Theory of Classes; 8. Holistic Conceptual Realism versus Quine's Class Platonism.

Abstract: "The problematic features of Quine's 'set' theories NF and ML are a result of his replacing the higher-order predicate logic of type theory by a first-order logic of membership, and can be resolved by returning to a second-order logic of predication with nominalized predicates as abstract singular terms. We adopt a modified Fregean position called conceptual realism in which the concepts (unsaturated cognitive structures) that predicates stand for are distinguished from the extensions (or intensions) that their nominalizations denote as singular terms. We argue against Quine's view that predicate quantifiers can be given a referential interpretation only if the entities predicates stand for on such an interpretation are the same as the classes (assuming extensionality) that nominalized predicates denote as singular terms. Quine's alternative of giving predicate quantifiers only a substitutional interpretation is compared with a constructive version of conceptual realism, which with a logic of nominalized predicates is compared with Quine's description of conceptualism as a ramified theory of classes. We argue against Quine's implicit assumption that conceptualism cannot account for impredicative concept-formation and compare holistic conceptual realism with Quine's class Platonism."

"According to Quine, in one of his later works, the pioneers in modern logic, such as Frege and Russell, overestimated the kinship between membership and predication and in that way came to view set theory as logic (Quine 1970, p. 65). Such a claim, we maintain, is both false and misleading. Frege and Russell did assume a logical kinship between predication and membership, but what they meant by membership was membership in a class as the extension of a concept (where a concept is a predicable entity, i.e., a universal in the traditional sense) and not membership in a set. Sets, unlike classes, as we have said, have their being in their members, and in that regard there need be no kinship at all between predication and membership in a set. Classes in the logical sense, on the other hand, have their being in the concepts whose extensions they are, which means that any theory of membership in a class presupposes a superseding theory of predication. (3) Frege and Russell did not view set theory as logic, but they each did develop a theory

of classes and they each did so based on a superseding higher-order theory of predication." (p. 382)

24. ———. 1992. "Cantor's Power-Set Theorem Versus Frege's Double-Correlation Thesis." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 13:179-201.

Abstract: "Frege’s thesis that second-level concepts can be correlated with first-level concepts and that the latter can be correlated with their value-ranges is in direct conflict with Cantor’s power-set theorem, which is a necessary part of the iterative, but not of the logical, concept of class. Two consistent second-order logics with nominalised predicates as abstract singular terms are described in which Frege’s thesis and the logical notion of a class are defended and Cantor’s theorem is rejected. Cantor’s theorem is not incompatible with the logical notion of class, however. Two alternative similar kinds of logics are also described in which Cantor’s theorem and the logical notion of a class are retained and Frege’s thesis is rejected."

"There is another problem with Russell’s solution, however, in addition to that of the relativisation of classes to each logical type. This problem has to do with the fact that the particular theory of types that Russell adopted is a theory of ramified types, which, unlike the theory of simple types, is based on a constructive (i.e. ‘predicative’) comprehension principle. Such a constructive approach is not without merit, but it does affect the logical notion of a class in a fundamental way. In particular, because of the kind of constructive constraints imposed by the theory on the comprehension principle, Cantor’s theorem, which involves objects of different types, cannot be proved in such a framework (cf. Quine 1963, 265). That is not objectionable in itself, but it does not get at the root of the matter of the real conflict between Cantor’s power-set theorem and the logical notion of class as represented by an impredicative comprehension principle.

An impredicative comprehension principle is provable in the theory of simple types. But in this framework, as in the theory of ramified types as well, Russell’s paradox cannot even be stated (because of the gramatical constraints on the conditions of well-formedness), which means that the description of the class upon which Russell’s paradox is based is meaningless. Thus, not only must the universal class be relativised and duplicated, potentially, infinitely many times in order to avoid Russell’s paradox on this approach, but the paradox must itself be ruled as meaningless. The theory of types, whether simple or ramified, is not really a solution of the problem so much as a way of avoiding it altogether.

There is another way in which we can preserve our logical intuitions and not give up the logical notion of a class in favor of the mathematical (i.e. in favor of set theory), and yet in which not only is Cantor’s theorem formulable but so is Russell’s paradox—though, of course, the latter will no longer be provable. Indeed, there is not just one such way, but at least two (both of which themselves have two alternatives). On the first, it is not the logical notion of a class that must be rejected as the way of resolving Russell’s paradox, but Cantor’s theorem instead. This rejection is not ad hoc or arbitrary on this approach, but is based on a more general principle, which we refer to as Frege’s double-correlation thesis. It is this approach that we shall turn to first. On the second and alternative approach, which we shall turn to later, the trouble lies in neither Cantor’s theorem nor in the assumption that there is a universal class (both of which can be retained without contradiction on this approach), but rather in how the logic of identity is to be applied in certain contexts. On this approach, the claim that a contradiction results by combining Cantor’s theorem with the assumption that the universal class exists is not a ‘truism’ after all but is outright false."

References

Quine, W. V. 1963 Set theory and its logic, Cambridge, Mass. (Harvard University Press).

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography of Nino Cocchiarella 1993-2019

Essays 1993-2019

1. Cocchiarella, Nino. 1993. "On Classes and Higher-Order Logic: A Critique of W.V.O. Quine." Philosophy and the History of Science.A Taiwanese Journal no. 2:23-50.

Abstract: "The problematic features of Quine's set theories NF and ML result from compressing the higher-order predicate logic of type theory into a first-order logic of membership, and can be resolved by turning to a second-order predicate logic with nominalized predicates as abstract singular terms. A modified Fregean position, called conceptual realism, is described in which the concepts (unsaturated cognitive structures) that predicates stand for are distinguished from the extensions (or intensions) that their nominalizations denote as abstract singular terms. Quine's view that conceptualism cannot account for impredicative concept-formation is rejected, and a holistic conceptual realism is compared with Quine's class Platonism."

2. ———. 1995. "Knowledge Representation in Conceptual Realism." International Journal of Human-Computer Studies no. 43:697-721.

"Knowledge representation in Artificial Intelligence (AI) involves more than the representation of a large number of facts or beliefs regarding a given domain, i.e. more than a mere listing of those facts or beliefs as data structures. It may involve, for example, an account of the way the properties and relations that are known or believed to hold of the objects in that domain are organized into a theoretical whole - such as the way different branches of mathematics, or of physics and chemistry, or of biology and psychology, etc., are organized, and even the way different parts of our commonsense knowledge or beliefs about the world can be organized. But different theoretical accounts will apply to different domains, and one of the questions that arises here is whether or not there are categorial principles of representation and organization that apply across all domains regardless of the specific nature of the objects in those domains. If there are such principles, then they can serve as a basis for a general framework of knowledge representation independently of its application to particular domains. In what follows I will give a brief outline of some of the categorial structures of conceptual realism as a formal ontology. It is this system that I propose we adopt as the basis of a categorial framework for knowledge representation." (p. 697)

(...)

" Concluding remarks. We have given here only an overview or sketch of conceptual realism as a formal ontology, i.e. as a theory of logical form having both conceptual and ontological categories - but in which the latter are represented in terms of the former. The categories of natural kinds and of natural properties and relations, for example, are represented in terms of the categories of sortals and predicable concepts, respectively, and the category of abstract objects is represented in terms of the process of conceptual nominalization (reification) as a subcategory of objects. Not all of these categories or parts of this formal ontology will be relevant in every domain of knowledge representation, but each is relevant at least to some domains and is needed in a comprehensive framework for knowledge representation. In those domains where certain categorial distinctions are not needed - such as that between predicative and impredicative concepts, or that between predicable concepts and natural properties and relations, or between sortal concepts and natural kinds, etc. - we can simply ignore or delete the logical forms in question. What must remain as the core of the system is the intensional logic around which all of the other categories are built - namely, the second-order predicate logic with nominalized predicates as abstract singular terms that we call HST*-lambda. It is this core, I believe, that can serve as a universal standard by which to evaluate other representational systems." (p. 721)

3. ———. 1996. "Conceptual Realism as a Formal Ontology." In Formal Ontology, edited by Poli, Roberto and Simons, Peter, 27-60. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Contents: 1. Introduction; 2. Substitutional versus Ontological Interpretations of Quantifiers; 3. The Importance of the Notion of Unsaturedness in Formal Ontology; 4. Referential and Predicable Concepts Versus Immanent Objects of Reference; 5. Conceptual Natural Realism and the Analogy of Being Between Natural and Intelligible Universals; 6. Conceptual Natural Realism and Aristotelian Essentialism; 7. Conceptual Intensional Realism versus Conceptual Platonism and the Logic of Nominalized Predicates

8. Concluding Remarks.

Abstract: "Conceptualism simpliciter, wheter constructive or holistic, provides an account of predication only in thought and language, and represents in that regard only a truncated formal ontology. But conceptualism can be extended to an Aristotelian conceptual natural realism in which natural properties and relations (and natural kinds as well) can be analogically posited corresponding to some of Our concepts, thereby providing an account of predication in the space-time causal Order as well. In addition, through a pattern of reflexive abstraction corresponding to the process of nominalization in language (and in which abstract objects are hypostatized corresponding to our concepts as unsaturated cognitive structures), conceptualism can also be extended to a conceptual Platonism or intensional realism that can provide an account of both the intensional objects of fiction and the extensional objects of mathematics. Conceptual realism is thus shown to be a paradigm formal ontology in which the distinctions between abstract reality, natural reality, and thought and language are properly represented, and in which the traditional opposition between Platonism and Aristotelianism is finally overcome by properly locating their different functions, and the way each should be rep resented, in formal ontology."

"Concluding Remarks. As this informal sketch indicates, conceptual realism, by which we mean conceptual natural realism and conceptual intensional realism together, provides the basis of a general conceptual-ontological framework, within which, beginning with thought and language, a comprehensive formal ontology can be developed. Not only does conceptual realism explain how, in naturalistic terms, predication in thought and language is possible, but, in addition, it provides a theory of the nature of predication in reality through an analogical theory of properties and relations. In this way, conceptual realism can be developed into a reconstructed version of Aristotelian realism, including a version of Aristotelian essentialism. In addition, through the process of nominalization, which corresponds to a reflexive abstraction in which we attempt to represent our concepts as if they were objects, conceptualism can be developed into a conceptual intensional realism that can provide an account not only of the abstract reality of numbers and other mathematical objects, but of the intensional objects of fiction and stories of all kinds, both true and false, and including those stories that we systematically develop into theories about the world. In this way, conceptual realism provides a framework not only for the conceptual and natural order, but for the mathematical and intensional order as well. Also, in this way, conceptual realism is able to reconcile and provide a unified account both of Platonism and Aristotelian realism, including Aristotelian essentialism - and it does so by showing how the ontological categories, or modes of being, of each of these ontologies can be explained in terms a conceptualist theory of predication and its analogical extensions." (p. 60)

4. ———. 1997. "Formally Oriented Work in the Philosophy of Language." In Routledge History of Philosophy. Vol. X - The Philosophy of Meaning, Knowledge and Value in the 20th Century, edited by Canfield, John, 39-75. New York: Routledge.

Contents: 1. The notion of a Characteristica Universalis as a philosophical language; 2. The notion a a logically perfect language as a regulating ideal; 3. The theory of logical types; 4. Radical empiricism and the logical construction of the world; 5. The logical empiricist theory of meaning; 6. Semiotic and the trinity of syntax, semantics and pragmatics; 7. Pragmatics from a logical point of view; 8. Intensional logic; 9. Universal Montague grammar; 10. Speech-act theory and the return to pragmatics.

Abstract: "One of the perennial issues in philosophy is the nature of the various relationships between language and reality, language and thought, and language and knowledge. Part of this issue is the question of the kind of methodology that is to be brought to bear on the study of these relationships. The methodology that we shall discuss here is based on a formally oriented approach to the philosophy of language, and specifically on the notion of a logically ideal language as the basis of a theory of meaning and a theory of knowledge."

5. ———. 1997. "Conceptual Realism as a Theory of Logical Form." Revue Internationale de Philosophie:175-199.

"The central notion in the philosophy of logic is the notion of a logical form, and the central issue is which theory of logical form best represents our scientific (including our mathematical) and commonsense understanding of the world. Here, by a theory of logical

form, we mean not only a logical grammar in the sense of a system of formation rules characterizing the well-formed expressions of the theory, but also a logical calculus characterizing what is valid (i.e., provable or derivable) in the theory. The representational role of the logical forms of such a theory consists in the fact that they are perspicuous in the way they specify the truth conditions, and thereby the validity, of formulas in terms of the recursive operations of logical syntax. In conceptualism we also require that logical forms be perspicuous in the way they represent the cognitive structure of our speech and mental acts, including in particular the referential and predicable concepts underlying those acts.

The purpose of a theory of logical form, accordingly, is that it is to serve as a general semantical framework by which we can represent in a logically perspicuous way our commonsense and scientific understanding of the world, including our understanding of ourselves

and the cognitive structure of our speech and mental acts. So understood, the logical forms of such a theory are taken to be semantic structures in their own right, relative to which the words, phrases, and (declarative) sentences of a (fragment of) natural language, or of a scientific or mathematical theory, are to be represented and interpreted. The process by which the expressions of a natural language or scientific theory are represented and interpreted in such a theory — relative to the aims, purposes and pragmatic considerations regarding a given context or domain of discourse — amounts to a logical analysis of those expressions. (A different group of aims, purposes, etc., might give a finer- or a coarser-grained analysis of the domain.)

Ideally, where the syntax of a target language or theory has been recursively characterized, such an analysis can be given in terms of a precisely characterized theory of translation (1). Usually, however, the analysis is given informally.

In what follows I will briefly describe and attempt to motivate some (but not all) aspects of a theory of logical form that I associate with the philosophical system I call conceptual realism. The realism involved here is really of two types, one a natural realism (amounting to a modem form of Aristotelian essentialism) and the other an intensional realism (amounting to a modem, but also mitigated, form of Platonism). The core of the theory is a second-order logic in which predicate expressions (both simple and complex) can be nominalized and treated as abstract singular terms (in the sense of being substituends of individual variables). In this respect the core is really a form of conceptual intensional realism, which is the only part of the system we will discuss here (2)." (pp. 175-176)

(1) See Montague (1969) for a description of such a theory of translation (for Montague’s type-theoretical intensional logic).

(2) See Cocchiarella (1996), §§ 5-6, for a description of conceptual natural realism as a modem form of Aristotelian Essentialism.

References

Cocchiarella, N.B. (1996), “ Conceptual Realism as a Formal Ontology” , in Formal Ontology, R. Poli and P. Simons, eds., Kluwer Academic press, Dordrecht, pp. 27-60.

Montague, R.M. (1969), “ Universal Grammar” , in Formal Philosophy, Selected papers of Richard Montague, edited by R.H. Thomason, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1974.

6. ———. 1998. "Property Theory." In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Vol. 7, edited by Craig, Edward, 761-767. New York: Routledge.

Abstract: "Traditionally, a property theory is a theory of abstract entities that can be predicated of things. A theory of properties in this sense is a theory of predication -just as a theory of classes or sets is a theory of membership. In a formal theory of predication, properties are taken to correspond to some (or all) one-place predicate expressions. In addition to properties, it is usually assumed that there are n-ary relations that correspond to some (or all) n-place predicate expressions (for n > 2). A theory of properties is then also a theory of relations.

In this entry we shall use the traditional labels 'realism' and 'conceptualism' as a convenient way to classify theories. In natural realism, where properties and relations are the physical, or natural, causal structures involved in the laws of nature, properties and relations correspond to only some predicate expressions, whereas in logical realism properties and relations are generally assumed to correspond to all predicate expressions.

Not all theories of predication take properties and relations to be the universals that predicates stand for in their role as predicates. The universals of conceptual ism, for example. are unsaturated concepts in the sense of cognitive capacities that are exercised (saturated) in thought and speech. Properties and relations in the sense of intensional Platonic objects may still correspond to predicate expressions, as they do in conceptual intensional realism, but only indirectly as the intensional contents of the concepts that predicates stand for in their role as predicates. In that case, instead of properties and relations being what predicates stand for directly, they are what nominalized predicates denote as abstract singular terms. It is in this way that concepts - such as those that the predicate phrases 'is wise', 'is triangular' and 'is identical with' stand for - are distinguished from the properties and relations that are their intensional contents - such as those that are denoted by the abstract singular terms 'wisdom', 'triangularity' and 'identity, respectively. Once properties are represented by abstract singular terms, concepts can be predicated of them, and, in particular, a concept can be predicated of the property that is its intensional content. For example, the concept represented by 'is a property' can be predicated of the property denoted by the abstract noun phrase 'being a property', so that 'being a property is a property' (or, 'The property of being a property is a property') becomes well-formed. In this way, however, we are confronted with Russell's paradox of (the property of) being a non-self-predicable property, which is the intensional content of the concept represented by ' is a non-self-predicable property'. That is, the property of being a non-self- predicable property both falls and does not fall under the concept of being a non-self-predicable property (and therefore both falls and does not fall under the concept of being self-predicable)." (p. 761)

7. ———. 1998. "The Theory of Types (Simple and Ramified)." In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Vol. 9, edited by Craig, Edward, 359-362. New York: Routledge.

Abstract: "The theory of types was first described by Bertrand Russell in 1908. He was seeking a logical theory that could serve as a framework for mathematics and, in particular, a theory that would avoid the so-called 'vicious-circle' antinomies, such as his own paradox of the property of those properties that are not properties of themselves - or, similarly, of the class of those classes that are not members of themselves. Such paradoxes can be thought of as resulting when logical distinctions are not made between different types of entities and, in particular, between different types of properties and relations that might be predicated of entities, such as the distinction between concrete objects and their properties, and the properties of those properties, and so on. In 'ramified' type theory, the hierarchy of properties and relations is, as it were, two-dimensional, where properties and relations are distinguished first by their order, and the by their level within each order. In 'simple' type theory properties and relations are distinguished only by their orders." (p. 359)

8. ———. 1998. "Reference in Conceptual Realism." Synthese no. 114:169-202.

Contents: 1. The core of Conceptual Intensional Realism; 2. Referential concepts, simple and complex; 3. Geach's negation and complex predicate arguments; 4. Active versus deactivated referential concepts; 5. Deactivation and Geach's arguments; 6. Relative pronouns and referential concepts; 7. Relative pronouns as referential expressions; 8. Concluding remarks.

Abstract: "A conceptual theory of the referential and predicable concepts used in basic speech and mental acts is described in which singular and general, complex and simple, and pronominal and non-pronominal, referential concepts are given a uniform account. The theory includes an intensional realism in which the intensional contents of predicable and referential concepts are represented through nominalized forms of the predicate and quantifier phrases that stand for those concepts. A central part of the theory distinguishes between active and deactivated referential concepts, where the latter are represented by nominalized quantifier phrases that occur as parts of complex predicates. Peter Geach's arguments against theories of general reference in "Reference and Generality" are used as a foil to test the adequacy of the theory. Geach's arguments are shown to either beg the question of general as opposed to singular reference or to be inapplicable because of the distinction between active and deactivated referential concepts."

"Concluding Remarks. We do not claim that the theory of relative pronouns as referential expressions proposed in Section 7 is unproblematic, it should be noted. If it should turn out that it cannot be sustained, then we still have the theory proposed in Section 6, where relative pronouns are taken as anaphoric proxies for non-pronominal referential expressions. In other words, whether the proposal of Section 7 is sustained or not, we maintain that Geach's arguments against complex names and general reference do not work against the kind of conceptualist theory we have presented here.

We also do not claim to have proved that our conceptualist theory of reference resolves all problems about reference, but only that it has passed an initial test of adequacy as far as Geach's arguments in (Geach Reference and Generality third edition, 1980) are concerned. It is our view that a conceptualist theory is what is needed to account for reference and predication in our speech and mental acts, and that only a theory of the referential and predicable concepts that underlie the basic forms of such acts will suffice. Such a theory, we maintain, must provide a uniform account of general as well as singular reference, and, in terms of the referential and predicable concepts involved in a speech or mental act, it must distinguish the logical forms that represent the cognitive structure of that act from the logical forms that only represent its truth conditions. That, in any case, is the kind of conceptualist theory we have attempted to describe and defend here." (p. 198)

9. ———. 2000. Lógica Como Lenguaje y Lógica Como Cálculo: su Papel en la Teoría de la Atribución. Heredia, Costa Rica: Departamento de Filosofia, Universidad Nacional.

Coleccion Prometeo n. 20.

10. ———. 2000. "Russell's Paradox of the Totality of Propositions." Nordic Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 5:25-37.

Abstract: "Russell’s ‘‘new contradiction’’ about ‘‘the totality of propositions’’ has been connected with a number of modal paradoxes. M. Oksanen has recently shown how these modal paradoxes are resolved in the set theory NFU. Russell’s paradox of the totality of propositions was left unexplained, however. We reconstruct Russell’s argument and explain how it is resolved in two intensional logics that are equiconsistent with NFU. We also show how different notions of possible worlds are represented in these intensional logics."

"In Appendix B of his 1903 Principles of Mathematics (PoM), Russell described a ‘‘new contradiction’’ about ‘‘the totality of propositions’’ that his ‘‘doctrine of types’’ (as described in Appendix B) was unable to avoid. (1)

In recent years this ‘‘new contradiction’’ has been connected with a number of modal paradoxes, some purporting to show that there cannot be a totality of true propositions, (2) or that even the idea of quantifying over the totality of propositions leads to contradiction. (3) A number of these claims have been discussed recently by Mika Oksanen and shown to be spurious relative to the set theory known as NFU. (4) In other words, if NFU is used instead of ZF as the semantical metalanguage for modal logic, the various ‘‘paradoxes’’ about the totality of propositions (usually construed as the totality of sets of possible worlds) can be seen to fail (generally because of the existence of a universal set and the failure of the general form of Cantor’s power-set theorem in NFU). It is not clear, however, how Russell’s own paradox about the totality of propositions is resolved on this analysis, and although Oksanen quoted Russell’s description of the paradox in detail, he did not show how it is explained in NFU after his resolution of the other related modal paradoxes; in fact, it is not at all clear how this might be done in NFU.

One reason why Russell’s argument is difficult to reconstruct in NFU is that it is based on the logic of propositions, and implicitly in that regard on a theory of predication rather than a theory of membership. A more appropriate medium for the resolution of these paradoxes, in other words, would be a formal theory of predication that is a counterpart to NFU.

Fortunately, there are two such theories, λHST* and HST*λ, that are equiconsistent with NFU and that share with it many of the features that make it a useful framework within which to resolve a number of paradoxes, modal or otherwise. (5)" (pp. 25-26)

(1) PoM, p. 527.

(2) See, e.g., Grim 1991, pp. 92f.

(3) See, e.g., Grim 1991, p. 119 and Jubien 1988, p. 307.

(4) See Oksanen 1999. NFU is a modified version of Quine’s system NF. It was first described in Jensen 1968 and recently has been extensively developed in Holmes 1999.

(5) See Cocchiarella 1986, chapters IV and VI for proofs of the connection of NFU with these systems. Also, see Cocchiarella 1985 for how these systems are related to Quine’s systems NF and ML. For a discussion of the refutation of Cantor’s power-set theorem in

these systems, see Cocchiarella 1992.

References

Cocchiarella, N. B. 1985. Frege’s double-correlation thesis and Quine’s set theories NF and ML. Journal of Philosophical Logic, vol. 4, pp. 1–39.

Cocchiarella, N. B. 1986. Logical Investigations of Predication Theory and the Problem of Universals. Bibliopolis Press, Naples, 1985.

Cocchiarella, N. B. 1992. Cantor’s Power-Set Theorem Versus Frege’s Double-Correlation Thesis, History and Philosophy of Logic, vol. 13, 179–201.

Holmes, R. 1999. Elementary Set Theory with a Universal Set. Cahiers du Centre de Logique, Bruylant-Academia, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.

Grim, P. 1991. The Incomplete Universe. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Jensen, R. 1968. On the consistency of a slight (?) modification of Quine’s New Foundations. Synthese, vol. 19, pp. 250–263.

Oksanen, M. 1979. The Russell-Kaplan paradox and other modal paradoxes; a new solution. Nordic Journal of Philosophical Logic, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 73–93.

Russell, B. 1937. The Principles of Mathematics, 2nd edition. W. W. Norton & Co., N.Y.

11. ———. 2001. "A Logical Reconstruction of Medieval Terminist Logic in Conceptual Realism." Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy no. 4:35-72.

Abstract: "The framework of conceptual realism provides a logically ideal language within which to reconstruct the medieval terminist logic of the 14th century. The terminist notion of a concept, which shifted from Ockham's early view of a concept as an intentional object (the fitcum theory) to his later view of a concept as a mental act (the intellectio theory), is reconstructed in this framework in terms of the idea of concepts as unsaturated cognitive structures. Intentional objects (ficta) are not rejected but are reconstructed as the objetified intensional contents of concepts. Their reconstruction as intensional objects is an essential part of the theory of predication of conceptual realism. It is by means of this theory that we are able to explain how the identity theory of the copula, which was basic to terminist logic, applies to categorical propositions. Reference in conceptual realism is not the same as supposition in terminist logic. Nevertheless, the various "modes" of personal supposition of terminist logic can be explained and justified in terms of this conceptualist theory of reference."

"Conclusion. The framework of conceptual realism provides a logically ideal language within which to reconstruct the medieval terminist logic of the 14th century. The terminist notion of a concept, which shifted from Ockham’s early view of a concept as an intentional object (the fictum theory) to his later view of a concept as a mental act (the intellectio theory), is reconstructed in this framework in terms of the notion of a concept as an unsaturated cognitive structure. Referential and predicable concepts in particular are unsaturated cognitive structures that mutually saturate each other in mental acts, analogous to the way that quantifier phrases and predicate expressions mutually saturate each other in language. Intentional objects (ficta) are not rejected but are reconstructed as the objectified intensional contents of concepts, i.e., as intentional objects obtained through the process of nominalization — and in that sense as products of the evolution of language and thought. Their reconstruction as intensional objects is an essential part of the theory of predication of conceptual realism. In particular, the truth conditions determined by predicable concepts based on relations — including the relation the copula stands for — are characterized in part in terms of these objectified intensional contents. It is by means of this conceptualist theory of predication that we are able to explain how the identity theory of the copula, which was basic to terminist logic, applies to categorical propositions.

Reference in conceptual realism, based on the exercise and mutual saturation of referential and predicable concepts, is not the same as supposition in terminist logic. Nevertheless, the various “modes” or types of personal supposition are accounted for in a natural and intuitive way in terms of the theory of reference of conceptual realism. Ockham’s application of merely confused supposition to common names occurring within the scope of an intensional verb is rejected, as it should be, but its rejection is grounded on the notion of a deactivated referential concept—a deactification that, because of the intensionality of the context in question, cannot be “activated,” the way it can be in extensional contexts." (p. 71)

12. ———. 2001. "Logic and Ontology." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems no. 12:127-150.

Contents: 1. Logic as Language versus Logic as Calculus; 2. Predication versus Membership; 3. The vagaries of Nominalism; 4. The Vindication (Almost) of Logical Realism; 5. Conceptualism Without a Transcendental Subject; 6. Conceptual Natural realism and the Analogy of being Between Natural and Conceptual Universals; 7. Conceptual Intensional Realism; 8. Concluding Remarks.

Abstract: "A brief review of the historical relation between logic and ontology and of the opposition between the views of logic as language and logic as calculus is given. We argue that predication is more fundamental than membership and that different theories of

predication are based on different theories of universals, the three most important being nominalism, conceptualism, and realism. These theories can be formulated as formal ontologies, each with its own logic, and compared with one another in terms of their respective explanatory powers. After a brief survey of such a comparison, we argue that an extended form of conceptual realism provides the most coherent formal ontology and, as such, can be used to defend the view of logic as language."

"Concluding Remarks: Despite our extended discussion and defense of conceptual realism, the fact remains that this is a formal ontology that can be described and compared with other formal ontologies in the set-theoretic framework of comparative formal ontology. Set theory, as we have said, provides a convenient mathematical medium in which both the syntax and an extrinsic semantics of different formal ontologies can be formulated, which then can be compared and contrasted with one another in their logical and descriptive powers. This is the real insight behind the view of logic as calculus. But membership is at best a pale shadow of predication, which underlies thought, language and the different categories of reality. Set theory is not itself an adequate framework for general ontology, in other words, unless based on a theory of predication (as in Quine's nominalist-platonism). Only a formal theory of predication based on a theory of universals can be the basis of a general ontology. This is the real insight behind the view of logic as language. But there are alternative theories of universals, and therefore alternative formal theories of predication, each with its own logic and theory of logical form. A rational choice can be made only by formulating and comparing these alternatives in comparative formal ontology, a program that can best be carried out in set theory. Among the various alternatives that have been formulated and investigated over the years, the choice we have made here, for the reasons given, is what we have briefly described above as conceptual realism, which includes both a conceptual natural realism and a conceptual intensional realism. Others may make a different choice. As Rudolf Carnap once said: "Everyone is at liberty to build up his own logic, i.e. his own form of language, as he wishes." But then, at least in the construction of a formal ontology, we all have an obligation to defend our choice and to give reasons why we think one system is better than another. In this regard, we do not accept Carnap's additional injunction that in logic, there are no morals." (pp. 145-146)

Translated in Italian by Flavia Marcacci with revision by Gianfranco Basti, as: Logica e Ontologia in Aquinas. Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia, 52, 2009.

13. ———. 2001. "A Conceptualist Interpretation of Leśniewski's Ontology." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 22:29-43.

Contents: 1. Introduction 29; 2. Leśniewski’s Ontology as a First-Order Theory 29; 3. The Logic of Names in Conceptual Realism 31; 4. A Conceptualist Interpretation of Leśniewski’s System 35; 5. Reduction of Leśniewski’s Theory of Definitions 39; 6. Consistency and Decidability 40; References 43.

Abstract: "A first-order formulation of Leśniewski’s ontology is formulated and shown to be interpretable within a free first-order logic of identity extended to include nominal quantification over proper and common-name concepts. The latter theory is then shown to be interpretable in monadic second-order predicate logic, which shows that the first-order part of Leśniewski’s ontology is decidable."

"Introduction. One of the important applications of Leśniewski’s system of ontology, sometimes also called the logic of (proper and common) names, (1) has been as a logistic framework that can be used in the reconstruction of medieval terminist logic. (2) This is especially so because the basic relation of Leśniewski’s system, singular inclusion, amounts to a version of the two-name theory of the copula. (3) An alternative reconstruction of medieval terminist logic can also be given within the logistic framework of conceptual

realism, however.(4) This system is preferable in part because, unlike Leśniewski’s ontology, it is not committed to an extensional framework, which is important in the logical analysis of the tensed and modal modification (ampliation) of the terms (names) of medieval logic. (5) It is also possible, as we show below, to reduce or reconstruct Leśniewski’s ontology within the logistic framework of conceptual realism."

(1) See, e.g. Lejewski 1958, p. 152, Slupecki 1955 and Iwanuś 1973.

(2) See, e.g. Henry 1972.

(3) Singular inclusion, as represented by e in the formula 'a e b’, read as 'a is b’, was the only undefined constant of Leśniewski’s original system of ontology. The system could also be based either on partial, weak of strong inclusion as the only primitive as well. See Lejewski 1958, pp. 154-156.

(4) See Cocchiarella 2001. For an account of conceptual realism as a formal ontology see Cocchiarella 1996.

(5) One might, of course, add tense and modal operators to Leśniewski’s ontology, even though he himself was against such a move.

References

Cocchiarella, N. B. 1996. 'Conceptual Realism as a Formal Ontology' , in R. Poli and P. Simons, eds. Formal Ontology Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic pp. 27-60.

Cocchiarella, N. B. 2001. 'A logical reconstruction of medieval terminist logic in conceptual realism', Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy 4, 35-72.

Henry, D. P. 1972. Medieval Logic and Metaphysics, London: Hutchison University Library.

Iwanuś, B. 1973. 'On Leśniewski’s Elementary Ontology', Studia Logica XXXI, 73-119. [reprinted in LS, pp. 165-215]

Lewjewski, C. 1958. 'On Leśniewski's Ontology’ , Ratio 1, 150-176. [reprinted in LS, pp. 123-148]

Slupecki, J. 1955. 'S. Leśniewski's Calculus of Names' , Studia Logica III, 7-72. [reprinted in LS, pp. 59-122]

[LS = Leśniewski's Systems. Ontology and Mereology, edited by Jan T. J. Srzednicki and V. F. Rickey; Assistant Editor: J. Czelakowski, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1984.]

14. ———. 2002. "On the Logic of Classes as Many." Studia Logica no. 70:303-338.

Abstract: "The notion of a “class as many” was central to Bertrand Russell’s early form of logicism in his 1903 Foundations of Mathematics. There is no empty class in this sense, and the singleton of an urelement (or atom in our reconstruction) is identical with that urelement. Also, classes with more than one member are merely pluralities— or what are sometimes called “plural objects”— and cannot as such be themselves members of classes. Russell did not formally develop this notion of a class but used it only informally. In what follows, we give a formal, logical reconstruction of the logic of classes as many as pluralities (or plural objects) within a fragment of the framework of conceptual realism. We also take groups to be classes as many with two or more members and show how groups provide a semantics for plural quantifier phrases."

"There is a notion of a class that has been ignored by most, but not all, philosophers. (4) This is the notion of a “ class as many,” as described, e.g., by Bertrand Russell in his 1903 Principles of Mathematics. (5) A class in this sense is the extension of a common count noun, i.e., the extension of what traditionally has been called a common name. (6) The three important features of this notion are, first, that a vacuous common name, i.e., a common name that names nothing, has no extension, which is not the same as having an

empty class as its extension. Thus, according to Russell, “there is no such thing as the null class, though there are null class-concepts,” i.e., commonname concepts that have no extension. (7) Secondly, the extension of a common name that names just one thing (in the sense of an urelement) is just that one thing. In other words, unlike the singleton sets of set theory, which are not identical with their single member, the class that is the extension of a common name that names just one thing (urelement) is none other than that one thing."

(...)

"We believe that this notion of a class, or of a group, can be usefully developed as part of the broader framework of conceptual realism that we have described elsewhere. (11)" (pp. 304-305)

(4) See, e.g., Simons 1982 for one proposed formulation of this notion. Simons’s formulation is different from the one we give here. Simons doubts that there can be “an exact logic for the quantificatory uses” of common names, which is what the present system is

based on. Also, whereas the present system relies on only one type of “objectual” variable (having both “atoms” and classes as many as values), Simons has three: one for “individuals,” another for “pluralities,” and a third for “neutrals.” There are a number of other

differences as well, but we will not go into them here.

(5) See Russell 1903, chapter VI. Russell’s view in this book precedes his later no-classes doctrine.

(6) Strictly speaking, Russell distinguishes between a common name, e.g., ‘man’, and its plural form, ‘men’, and then takes the latter to denote the class as many of men (§67). We do not distinguish common names from their plural forms here, and we describe the class as many simply as the extension of the common name (and the concept it stands for).

(7) Russell 1903, §69

(11) See, e.g., Cocchiarella 1996 for a description of conceptual realism as a formal ontology.

References

Cocchiarella, Nino B., 1996, “ Conceptual Realism as a Formal Ontology,” in Formal Ontology, Poli, R. and P.M. Simons, eds., Kluwer Academic Press, Dordrecht: 27-60.

Russell, Bertrand, 1903, The Principles of Mathematics, second edition, Norton & Co., N.Y., 1938.

Simons, Peter M., 1982, “ Plural Reference and Set Theory,” in Parts and Moments, Studies in Logic and Formal Ontology, Barry Smith, ed., Philosophia Verlag, Munich and Vienna: 199-260.

15. ———. 2002. "Logical Necessity Based on Carnap's Criterion of Adequacy." Korean Journal of Logic no. 5:1-21.

Abstract: "A semantics for logical necessity, based on Carnap’s criterion of adequacy, is given with respect to the ontology of logical atomism. A calculus for sentential (propositional) modal logic is described and shown to be complete with respect to this semantics. The semantics is then modified in terms of a restricted notion of ‘all possible worlds’in the interpretation of necessity and shown to yield a completeness theorem for the modal logic S5. Such a restricted notion introduces material content into the meaning of necessity so that, in addition to atomic facts, there are "modal facts" that distinguish one world from another."

"...in what follows we will construct a semantics for logical necessity based on Rudolf Carnap’s criterion of adequacy and the metaphysical framework of logical atomism, a semantics, we maintain, that provides a clear and precise account of the connection between logical truth and logical necessity— at least with respect to this kind of metaphysical framework. (4)" (p. 2)

(4) There are reasons to think that no other sort of metaphysical framework can succeed in adequately explaining the connection between logical truth and logical necessity. This is not to say, however, that other frameworks cannot account for notions of necessity other than logical necessity.

16. ———. 2003. "Conceptual Realism and the Nexus of Predication." Metalogicon no. 16:45-70.

Abstract: "The nexus of predication is accounted for in different ways in different theories of universals. We briefly review the account given in nominalism, logical realism (modern Platonism), and natural realism. Our main goal is to describe the account given in a modern form of conceptualism extended to include a theory of intensional objects as the contents of our predicable and referential concepts."

"Introduction. A universal, according to Aristotle, is what can be predicated of things. (1) But what exactly do we mean in saying that a universal can be predicated of things? How, or in what way, do universals function in the nexus of predication?

In the history of philosophy, there are three major types of theories that deal with the problem of universals and that purport to answer these questions: (2)

(1) Nominalism: According to this theory there are no universals, and there is predication only in language; that is, only predicates can be predicated of things, and the only nexus of predication is the linguistic nexus between subject and predicate expressions.

(2) Realism: There are real universals, i.e., universals in reality, that are predicated of things, and the function of predication in language is to represent predication in reality. Different versions of realism explain the nexus of predication in reality in different ways.

(3) Conceptualism: There are conceptual universals, e.g., predicable concepts, that underlie predication in thought, and the nexus of predication in thought underlies the nexus of predication in language.

All three theories agree that there is predication in language though each has a different account of how that kind of predication is possible and what it represents. The theory we will describe here in some detail is a modern form of conceptualism.

Unlike traditional conceptualism (e.g., British empiricism), the conceptualism we describe here is not based on a theory of “ideas” (Vorstellungen), and it includes an intensional realism based on an evolutionary account of concept-formation. In this paper, our main

purpose is to describe the conceptualist account of the nexus of predication.

Before turning to conceptualism, we will make some brief observations about nominalism and realism and our methodology." (pp. 45-46)

(1) De Interpretatione, 17 a 39.

2 These three theories were first described by Porphyry in his [Isagoge or] Introduction to Aristotle’s Categories.

17. ———. 2005. "Denoting Concepts, Reference, and the Logic of Names, Classes as Many, Groups and Plurals." Linguistics and Philosophy no. 28:135-179.

Abstract: "Bertrand Russell introduced several novel ideas in his 1903 Principles of Mathematics that he later gave up and never went back to in his subsequent work. Two of these are the related notions of denoting concepts and classes as many. In this paper we reconstruct each of these notions in the framework of conceptual realism and connect them through a logic of names that encompasses both proper and common names, and among the latter complex as well as simple common names. Names, proper or common, and simple or complex, occur as parts of quantifier phrases, which in conceptual realism stand for referential concepts, i.e., cognitive capacities that inform our speech and mental acts with a referential nature and account for the intentionality, or directedness, of those acts. In Russell's theory, quantifier phrases express denoting concepts (which do not include proper names). In conceptual realism, names, as well as predicates, can be nominalized and allowed to occur as "singular terms", i.e., as arguments of predicates. Occurring as a singular term, a name denotes, if it denotes at all, a class as many, where, as in Russell's theory, a class as many of one object is identical with that one object, and a class as many of more than one object is a plurality, i.e., a plural object that we call a group. Also, as in Russell's theory, there is no empty class as many. When nominalized, proper names function as "singular terms" just the way they do in so-called free logic. Leśniewski's ontology, which is also called a logic of names can be completely interpreted within this conceptualist framework, and the well-known oddities of Leśniewski's system are shown not to be odd at all when his system is so interpreted. Finally, we show how the pluralities, or groups, of the logic of classes as many can be used as the semantic basis of plural reference and predication. We explain in this way Russell's "fundamental doctrine upon which all rests," i.e., "the doctrine that the subject of a proposition may be plural, and that such plural subjects are what is meant by classes [as many] which have more than one term" ([Principles of Mathematics], p. 517)."

"Bertrand Russell introduced several novel ideas in his 1903 Principles of Mathematics [PoM] that he later gave up and never went back to in his subsequent work. Two of these are the related notions of denoting concepts and classes as many. Russell explicitly rejected denoting concepts in his 1905 paper, "On Denoting". Although his reasons for doing so are still a matter of some debate, they depend in part on his assumption that all concepts, including denoting concepts, are objects and can be denoted as such. (1) Classes of any kind were later eliminated as part of Russell’s "no-classes" doctrine, according to which all mention of classes was to be contextually analyzed in terms of reference to either propositions, as in Russell’s 1905 substitution theory, or propositional functions as in Principia Mathematica [PM]. The problem with classes, as Russell and Whitehead described it in [PM], is that "if there is such an object as a class, it must be in some sense one object. Yet it is only of classes that many can be predicated. Hence, if we admit classes as objects, we must suppose that the same object can be both one and many, which seems impossible" (p. 72).

Both notions are worthy of reconsideration, however, even if only in a somewhat different, alternative form in a conceptualist framework that Russell did not himself adopt. In such a framework, which we will briefly describe here, Russell’s assumption that all concepts are objects will be rejected in favor of a conceptualist counterpart to Frege’s notion of unsaturatedness, and we will reconsider the idea of a class as many somehow being both one and many." (pp. 135-136)

18. ———. 2008. "Infinity in Ontology and Mind." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems no. 18:1-24.

Abstract: "Two fundamental categories of any ontology are the category of objects and the category of universals. We discuss the question whether either of these categories can be infinite or not. In the category of objects, the subcategory of physical objects is examined within the context of different cosmological theories regarding the different kinds of fundamental objects in the universe.

objects are discussed in terms of sets and the intensional objects of conceptual realism. The category of universals is discussed in terms of the three major theories of universals: nominalism, realism, and conceptualism. The finitude of mind pertains only to conceptualism. We consider the question of whether or not this finitude precludes impredicative concept formation. An explication of potential infinity, especially as applied to concepts and expressions, is given. We also briefly discuss a logic of plural objects, or groups of single objects (individuals), which is based on Bertrand Russell's (1903, The Principles of Mathematics, 2nd edn. (1938). Norton & Co, NY) notion of a class as many. The universal class as many does not exist in this logic if there are two or more single objects; but the issue is undecided if there is just one individual. We note that adding plural objects (groups) to an ontology with a countable infinity of individuals (single objects) does not generate an uncountable infinity of classes as many."

"Introduction.

Ontology, as originally described by Aristotle, is the study of being qua being, where being is not univocal but is divided into different categories. The two most fundamental categories are those of universals and objects respectively. Here, by a universal, and again we follow Aristotle, we mean that which can be predicated of things.1 Predication, of course, is what connects universals with objects. One important aspect of the role, or significance, of infinity in ontology, accordingly, is whether or not either of these categories, i.e., the category of objects or the category of universals, is, or can be, infinite. How infinity applies to mind in this regard is the question of whether or not there are, or can be, infinitely many concepts as intelligible universals, and whether or not the finitude of the human mind places limitations on the concepts that can be constructed.

The methodology of ontology, which, as we have said, is divided into different categories, is the analysis of those categories and the laws connecting them with one another, including in particular the nature of predication. The clearest and most precise way to analyze these categories is through the development of what is known as formal ontology, where the logico-grammatical forms and principles of a logistic system are formulated for the purpose of representing the different categories and the laws connecting them.2 A formal ontology in which ontological and logical categories are combined in a unified framework will then amount to a comprehensive deductive framework that is prior to all others in both logical and ontological structure. By proving the consistency of such a logistic system we can thereby show that the intuitive ontological framework associated with it is consistent as well.

One important role of infinity in ontology, accordingly, can be understood as the determination of whether or not any of the categories of being, and in particular the categories of objects and universals, are, or can be, infinite as part of such a formal framework. In what follows we will consider some possible answers to this question." (p. 2)

References

(1) Aristotle, De Interpretatione 17a39.

(2) For a more detailed account of formal ontology, see Cocchiarella (2007, Chap. 1).

19. ———. 2009. "Mass Nouns in a Logic of Classes as Many." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 38:343-361.

Abstract: "A semantic analysis of mass nouns is given in terms of a logic of classes as many. In previous work it was shown that plural reference and predication for count nouns can be interpreted within this logic of classes as many in terms of the subclasses of the classes that are the extensions of those count nouns. A brief review of that account of plurals is given here and it is then shown how the same kind of interpretation can also be given for mass nouns."

"Why is the semantics of mass nouns so problematic? One reason, apparently, is that unlike count nouns, which have determinate extensions, mass nouns have extensions that in some cases are said to be indeterminate. The objects in the extension of a count noun are unproblematic because those objects are generally discrete and well-delineated, and hence can be individuated. The objects in the extension of a mass noun, especially mass nouns for different kinds of stuff, are said to be “diffuse” and indeterminate, on the other hand, because there are often an indefinite number of ways to refer them separately as well as together as wholes. (1)

A number of proposals have been made and criticized about the extensions of mass nouns. (2) We will not review those proposals and criticisms here but instead will present a proposal of our own based on what has been called “the simplest plan” of all. (3) We will defend this “plan” in terms of a logical framework designed to represent a form of conceptualism in which the logical forms that represent the cognitive structure of our speech and mental acts are distinguished from the logical forms that represent the truth conditions and deductive relations of those acts." (pp. 343-344)

(1) Cp. Bunt [1], p. 53.

(2) See Pelletier [8] for a review and discussion of some of these proposals.

(3) Pelletier 74, p. 94 f.

References

[1] Bunt, H. (1981). On the why, the how, and the whether of a count/mass distinction among adjectives. In J. A. G. Groenendijk, T. M. V. Janssen, & M. J. B. Stokof (Eds.), Formal methods in the study of language, Part 1. Amsterdam: Mathematish Centrum.

[8] Pelletier, F. J. (1974). On some proposal for the semantics of mass nouns. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 3, 87–108.

9. Pelletier, F. J. (1975). Non-singular reference: Some preliminaries. Philosophia, 5(4), 451–465 (reprinted in: Pelletier, F. J. (1979) Mass terms: Some philosophical problems, Reidel, Dordrecht, pp. 1–14).

20. ———. 2009. "Reply to Gregory Landini's Review of Formal Ontology and Conceptual Realism." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems:143-153.

"1. Some Initial Ontological Distinctions.

In our discussion of Greg Landini's review, we should distinguish how the logical systems lHST* and HST*l that I have developed are to be understood in my reconstructions of Gottlob Frege's and Bertrand Russell's Principles of mathematics (1903) ontologies as opposed to how HST*l is understood as a (proper) part of my ontology of conceptual realism. Both of these systems are type-free second-order predicate logics that allow predicate expressions (complex or simple) and formulas (propositional forms) to be nominalized and occur in formulas as abstract singular terms.(1)

The main logical difference between these systems, as Landini notes, is that whereas lHST* contains standard first-order logic (with identity) as a proper part, the system HST*l is free of existential presuppositions regarding singular terms, including nominalized predicates as abstract singular terms, which is essential to any argument for Russell's paradox of predication. In particular, nominalization of the Russell predicate that is not predicable of itself turns out to be denotationless in HST*l as an abstract singular term.

The main ontological difference between Russell's and Frege's ontologies is that one is intensional and the other is extensional. Russell's (1903) ontology is based on predication as the ontological nexus of propositions, whereas Frege's is based on predication as a function from properties and relations to truth values. (2) In conceptual realism, predication is based on the mutual saturation of referential and predicable concepts as unsaturated complementary cognitive structures, the result being a speech or mental act. (3)

In Russell's ontology, a nominalized predicate denotes, as an abstract singular term, the very same property or relation (in-intension) that the predicate stands for in its role as a predicate. In Frege's ontology, a nominalized predicate denotes the extension (value range, Wertverläufe) of the concept or relation (qua function from objects to truth values) that the predicate stands for in predicate position; and in conceptual realism, a nominalized predicate denotes the intension of the concept (qua cognitive structure) that the predicate stands for in its role as a predicate. Because what a predicate stands for and what its nominalization denotes are not the same type of entity in either Frege's ontology or my conceptual realism, the fact that a nominalized predicate, on pain of contradiction, might fail to denote as an abstract singular term does not affect the objective reality of what that predicate stands for in its role as a predicate.

That is why the system HST*l can be used in a reconstruction of Frege's ontology as well as in my conceptual realism. The system lHST* will also suffice for a reconstruction of Frege's ontology, but a free first-order predicate logic is essential to my analysis of plurals and mass nouns in terms of the logic of classes as many developed in my book, which means that only HST*l is appropriate for conceptual realism.

On the other hand, for a reconstruction of Russell's ontology, where nominalized predicates denote the same property or relation they stand for in their role as predicates, only the system lHST* is appropriate. That is, because it is the same entity involved in both roles in Russell's ontology, we cannot in that framework both affirm the being of what a predicate stands for in its role as a predicate, and also deny that being in the nominalization of the predicate as an abstract singular term." (p. 143)

(1) There is of course a type distinction between object terms and predicates in these systems; but unlike the situation in type theory there is no hierarchy of predicates of different types.

(2) Frege's Begriffe are really Eigenshaften, and in our in present context where we want to distinguish concepts as cognitive capacities from Frege's Begriffe, it is better to speak of his Begriffe as properties instead.

(3) We assume in this discussion a distinction between predication in language, predication in our speech and mental acts, and predication as the nexus of propositions or of states of affairs, or, in Frege's case, as functional application.

21. ———. 2009. "Reply to Andriy Vasylchenko's Review of Formal Ontology and Conceptual Realism." Axiomathes.An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems:167-178.

"Adriy Vasylchenko makes the interesting observation that our references are frequently emotionally charged. A comprehensive theory of reference, Vasylchenko suggests, should include an account of this phenomenon. We agree.

Indeed, as we will see, the theory of reference in conceptual realism can be used to explain an important feature of our emotional states when we read a novel, or watch a play, a movie, or even when viewing a painting. This feature, which in aesthetics is called psychical distance, is connected in part with the difference between active and deactivated reference in conceptual realism. We will take up that issue at the end this reply.

There is, however, an important misunderstanding in Vasylchenko's review of how the notion of existential presupposition applies -- or, as he claims, fails to apply -- to fictional objects and more generally to the abstract intensional objects of conceptual realism. We will discuss this latter issue first, and then turn to the issue of our emotional states and psychical distance when reading fiction or watching a play or a film, and perhaps even when having an aesthetic experience in general." (p. 167)

22. ———. 2009. "Logica e Ontologia." Aquinas.Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia no. 52:7-50.

Italian translation by Flavia Marcacci, revised by Gianfranco Basti of Logic and Ontology (2001).

23. ———. 2010. "Actualism versus Possibilism in Formal Ontology." In Theory and Applications of Ontology. Vol. 1: Philosophical Perspectives, edited by Poli, Roberto and Seibt, Johanna, 105-118. Dordrecht: Springer.

"Comparative formal ontology is the study of how different informal ontologies can be formalized and compared with one another in their overall adequacy as explanatory frameworks. One important criterion of adequacy of course is consistency, a condition that can be satisfied only by formalization. Formalization also makes explicit the commitments of an ontology.

There are other important criteria of adequacy as well, however, in addition to consistency and transparency of ontological commitment. One major such criterion is that a formal ontology must explain and provide an ontological ground for the distinction between being and existence, or, if the distinction is rejected, an adequate account of why it is rejected. Put simply, the problem is: Can there be things that do not exist? Or is being the same as existence? Different formal ontologies will answer these questions in different ways.

The simplest account of the distinction between being and existence is that between actualism and possibilism, where by existence we mean physical existence, i.e., existence as some type of physical object; and by being we mean possible physical existence, i.e., physical existence in some possible world. According to possibilism, there are objects that do not now exist but could exist in the physical universe, and hence being is not the same as existence. In actualism being is the same as existence.

Possibilism: There are objects (i.e., objects that have being or) that possibly exist but that do not in fact exist.

Therefore: Existence ≠ Being.

Actualism: Everything that is (has being) exists.

Therefore: Existence = Being.

Now the implicit understanding in formal ontology of both possibilism and actualism is that the objects that the quantifier phrases in these statements range over are values of the variables bound by the first-order quantifiers ∀and ∃(for the universal and existential quantifiers, respectively), and hence that what has being (on the level of objects) is a value of the (object) variables bound by these quantifiers. In other words, to be (an object, or thing) in both actualism and possibilism is to be a value of the bound object variables of first-order logic. This means that in possibilism, where being is not the same as existence, existence must be represented either by different quantifiers or by a predicate, e.g., E!, which is the predicate usually chosen for this purpose.

Another criterion of adequacy for a formal ontology is that it must explain the ontological grounds, or nature, of modality, i.e., of such modal notions as necessity and possibility, and in particular the meaning of possible physical existence. If the modalities in question are strictly formal, on the other hand, as is the case with logical necessity and possibility, then it must explain the basis of that formality.

This criterion cannot be satisfied by a set-theoretic semantics alone, especially one that allows for arbitrary sets of possible worlds (models) and so-called accessibility relations between those worlds. Such a semantics may be useful for showing the consistency of a modal logic, or perhaps even as a guide to our intuitions in showing its completeness; but it does not of itself provide an ontological ground for modality, or, in the case of logical modalities, explain why those modalities are strictly formal.

We restrict our considerations here to how physical existence, both actual and possible, is represented in a formal ontology. This does not mean that the formal ontologies considered here cannot be extended so as to include an account of how abstract objects might be represented as well, if allowed at all." (pp. 105-106)

24. ———. 2010. "Predication in Conceptual Realism." Axiomathes no. 20:1-21.

Abstract: "Conceptual realism begins with a conceptualist theory of the nexus of predication in our speech and mental acts, a theory that explains the unity of those acts in terms of their referential and predicable aspects. This theory also contains as an integral part an intensional realism based on predicate nominalization and a reflexive abstraction in which the intensional contents of our concepts are "object"-ified, and by which an analysis of predication with intensional verbs can be given. Through a second nominalization of the common names that are part of conceptual realism's theory of reference (via quantifier phrases), the theory also accounts for both plural reference and predication and mass noun reference and predication. Finally, a separate nexus of predication based on natural kinds and the natural properties and relations nomologically related to those natural kinds, is also an integral part of the framework of conceptual realism."

25. ———. 2013. "Representing Intentional Objects in Conceptual Realism." Humana.Mente no. 25:1-24.

Special number edited by Laura Mari (Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa) and Michele Paolini Paoletti (University of Macerata): Meinong Strikes Again. Return to Impossible Objects 100 Years Later.

Abstract: "In this paper we explain how the intentional objects of our mental states can be represented by the intensional objects of conceptual realism. We first briefly examine and show how Brentano’s actualist theory of judgment and his notion of an immanent object have a clear and natural representation in our conceptualist logic of names. We then briefly critically examine Meinong’s theory of objects before turning finally to our own representation of intentional objects in terms of the intensional objects of conceptual realism. We conclude by explaining why existence-entailing concepts are so basic to our commonsense framework and how these concepts and their intensions can be used to model Meinong’s ontology."

26. ———. 2015. "Two Views of the Logic of Plurals and a Reduction of One to the Other." Studia Logica no. 103:757-780.

Abstract: "There are different views of the logic of plurals that are now in circulation, two of which we will compare in this paper. One of these is based on a two-place relation of being among, as in 'Peter is among the juveniles arrested'. This approach seems to be the one that is discussed the most in philosophical journals today. The other is based on Bertrand Russell's early notion of a class as many, by which is meant not a class as one, i.e., as a single entity, but merely a plurality of things. It was this notion that Russell used to explain plurals in his 1903 Principles of Mathematics; and it was this notion that I was able to develop as a consistent system that contains not only a logic of plurals but also a logic of mass nouns as well.

We compare these two logics here and then show that the logic of the Among relation is reducible to the logic of classes as many."

"There are di¤erent views of the logic of plurals that are now in circulation. (1)

One of these is based on a two-place relation of being among, as in ‘Peter is among the juveniles arrested’. This approach seems to be the one that is discussed the most in philosophical journals today. The other is based on Bertrand Russell’s early notion of a class as many, by which is meant not a class as one, i.e., as a single entity, but a mere plurality of things. It was this notion that I developed in 2002 as a provably consistent system that contains not only a logic of plurals but also a logic of mass nouns as well. (2) It also contains, as we show in this paper, the plural logic based on the Among relation. We will first compare these two logics here and then show that the logic of the Among relation in Linnebo [2004] is reducible to the logic of classes as many.

We will first briefly discuss the plural logic based on the Among relation as described by Linnebo. Then we will brie‡y explain the basics of the logic of classes as many, and finally we will show how the logic of the Among relation is reducible to the logic of classes as many." (p. 757)

(1) See, e.g., Boolos [1984], Schein [1993], Cocchiarella [2002], McKay [2006], and Linnebo [2004].

(2) See Cocchiarella [2002], [2007] chapter 11, and [2009].

References

[1] Boolos, George, 1984, “To Be Is To Be a Value of a Variable (or to Be Some Values of Some Variables),” Journal of Philosophy, 81: 430–50.

[3] Cocchiarella, Nino B., 2002, “On the Logic of Classes as Many,” Studia Logica, 70: 303–38.

[5] Cocchiarella, Nino B., 2007, Formal Ontology and Conceptual Realism, Springer, Synthese Library vol. 339, Dordrecht.

[6] Cocchiarella, Nino B., 2009, “Mass Nouns in a Logic of Classes as Many,” Journal of Philosophical Logic, vol. 38, no. 3: 343–361.

[12] Linnebo, Øystein “Plural Quantification,” 2004, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, revised 2010.

[13] McKay, Thomas, 2006, Plural Predication, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[15] Schein, Barry, 1993, Plurals and Events, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

[16] Tarski, A., 1965, “A Simplified Formulation of Predicate Logic with Identity,”Arch. f. Math. Logik und Grundl. vol. 7: 61–79.

27. ———. 2016. "On Predication, A Conceptualist View." In Philosophy and Logic of Predication, edited by Stalmaszczyk, Piotr, 53-92. Bern: Peter Lang.

Abstract: "Predication, as the nexus between a subject and a predicate expression, is the basis of the unity of a speech act, including speech acts in the plural and speech acts that involve mass nouns. A speech act, of course, is an overt expression of a mental act, e.g., a judgment; and therefore the unity of a speech act such as an assertion is really the unity of the judgment that underlies that act. Such a mental act, and therefore the speech act as well, has a unity based on how the referential and predicable roles of the subject and predicate expressions combine and function together respectively. What we propose here is to explain this unity of predication in terms of a conceptualist theory of logical forms that we claim underlies at least some important aspects of thought and natural language. Our conceptualist logic also contains an account of the medieval identity (two-name) theory of the copula, as well as an account of plural and mass noun reference and predication, the truth conditions of which are based on a logic of plurals and mass nouns."

28. ———. 2017. Epistemological Ontology and Logical Form in Russell's Logical Atomism.

Not yet published.

Preprint available on academia.edu.

Abstract: "Logical analysis, according to Bertrand Russell, leads to and ends with logical atomism, an ontology of atomic facts that is epistemologically founded on sense-data, which Russell claimed are mind-independent physical objects. We first explain how Russell’s 1914–1918 epistemological version of logical atomism is to be understood, and then, because constructing logical forms is a fundamental part of the process of logical analysis, we briefly look at what has happened to Russell’s type theory in this ontology. We then turn to the problem of explaining how the logical forms of Russell’s new logic can explain both the forms of atomic facts and yet also the sentences of natural language. The main problem is to explain the logical forms for belief and desire sentences and how those forms correspond to the logical forms of the facts of logical atomism."

29. ———. 2017. Russell's Logical Atomism 1914-1918: Epistemological Ontology and Logical Form.

Unpublished paper, available on this site.

Abstract: "Logical analysis, according to Bertrand Russell, leads to and ends with logical atomism, an ontology of atomic facts that is epistemologically founded on sense-data, which Russell claimed are mind-independent physical objects. We first explain how Russell's 1914-1918 epistemological version of logical atomism is to be understood, and then, because constructing logical forms is a fundamental part of the process of logical analysis, we briefly look at what has happened to Russell's type theory in this ontology. We then turn to the problem of explaining whether or not the logical forms of Russell's new logic can explain both the forms of atomic facts and yet also the sentences of natural language, especially those about beliefs. The main problem is to explain the logical forms for belief and desire sentences and how those forms do not correspond to the logical forms of the facts of logical atomism."

30. ———. 2018. A Modal-Ontological Argument and Leibniz's View of Possible Worlds.

Unpublished paper, available on this site.

Abstract: "We critically discuss an ontological argument that purports to prove not only that God, or a God-like being, exists, but in addition that God's existence is necessary. This requires turning to a modal logic, S5 in particular, in which the argument is presented. We explain why the argument fails. We then attempt a second version in which one of its premises is strengthened. That attempt also fails because of its use of the Carnap-Barcan formula in a context in which that formula is not valid. A third is presented as well using the proper name 'God' as a singular term, but it too fails for the same reason, though in a later section we show how this last argument can be validated under a re-interpretation of the quantifiers of the background logic. In our later sections, we explain what is wrong

with the original first premise as a representation of what Leibniz meant by the consistency of God's existence, specifically as God's existence in a possible world. Possible worlds exist only as ideas in God's mind, and the consistency of God's existence cannot be God's existence in a possible world. Realism regarding possible worlds must be rejected. Only our world is real, the result of an ontological act of creation. We also explain in a related matter why according to Leibniz, Boethius, Aquinas and other medieval philosophers, God's omniscience does not imply fatalism."

31. ———. 2019. Can an AI System Think? Functionalism and the Nature of Mentality.

Unpublished paper, available on this site.

Abstract: "In this paper we consider the philosophical question of whether or not an AI system can think and be self-conscious. We note that in order to take this question seriously, we must reject metaphysical dualism. Then, because Functionalism gives an affirmative answer to our question, we turn to an account of Functionalism as a philosophical theory of the mind and the nature of thought. The basic assumption of Functionalism is that mentality consists essentially of functionality, and that as functional states and processes, mental states and processes can be structurally duplicated in the functionality of the electronic hardware of a suitably programmed AI system. According to Functionalism's basic assumption, structural duplication can be achieved if a functional isomorphism can be achieved between such an AI system and the human mind. We also describe three kinds or levels of self-consciousness and discuss the claim that all three levels can in principle be achieved in an AI system. The first kind, which all animals with a central nervous system have, is expressed in an animal's self-regarding behavior. The second is based on self-reference and reflexive abstraction on the content of thought. This is done in language by means of nominalization where a predicate or declarative sentence is transformed into an abstract noun that denotes the content of that predicate or sentence. The third is based on a double reflexive abstraction on the intentional content of the self by means of a double nominalization. The first nominalization is a transformation of the referential use of the personal pronoun 'I' into a second order predicate true of all and only the properties of the self. The second is a nominalization of that second-order predicate into an abstract noun that denotes the intentional content of the self. In Functionalism, the goal is to achieve a functional isomorphism between the mental states and processes of humans and the electronic states of a suitably programmed AI. Given Functionalism's assumption that the essential nature of mentality is its functionality, such a functional isomorphism would suffice, according to Functionalism, for an AI system to be structurally duplicating, and not merely simulating, the mental states and processes that humans have. And hence an AI system can think and be self-conscious, according to Functionalism, in just the way that humans can."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Richard Sylvan [born Richard Routley] on Nonexistent Objects

Introduction

"On the June 16th, 1996, Richard Sylvan died of a sudden and unexpected heart attack. His death, at the relatively young age of 60, robbed Australasia of one of its greatest philosophers, arguably the most original that it has ever produced.

Richard was born Francis Richard Routley at Levin, New Zealand, on 13 December, 1935. He changed his name to Sylvan -- much to the confusion of a number of people -- when he remarried in 1983. After studying at the Victoria University of Wellington, he took a job at the University of Sydney, in Australia, where he lived for the rest of his life. He had several other jobs in Australia, including one at the University of New England, where, with Len Goddard, he trained a generation of Australian logicians. In 1971, he took up a position at the Australian National University, in Canberra, where he worked until his untimely death.

Richard was a most unusual person -- by any standards. He would rise at dawn, write philosophy till lunch, then pursue his hobbies, like building houses or tending the forests that he owned, till the sun went down, when he would open a bottle of wine and relax. To those who did not know him well, he could appear blunt, aggressive, and he could certainly be a difficult person for university administrators to get on with. But those who got to know Richard well knew that he was a shy, caring, and warm person. For this he was loved by his many friends and students (not disjoint collections). One day, a biography will be written; but this is not it.

Richard made major contributions to many areas of philosophy: relevant and paraconsistent logic, Meinongianism and metaphysics, environmental ethics, to name but the most important. To others, these might seem a rather disparate collection, but for Richard they were all part of one seamless whole; solutions to (and the generation of) many philosophical problems presupposed particular solutions in areas others viewed as far a field. Many philosophical areas, he thought, suffer from the narrow scope of their authors' concerns.

Another of Richard's philosophical trademarks-in fact, perhaps the major one-was taking up grossly unpopular views and defending them doggedly. If relatively few people were ultimately persuaded by him, all had to admit that the views were not as silly and easily disposed of as they had hitherto thought." (p. 1)

From: Dominic Hyde & Graham Priest, "Editors' Introduction" to: Sociative Logic and Their Applications, Aldershot: Ashgate 2000.

"Richard Sylvan (né Routley) was undoubtedly one of Australasia's most wide-ranging and systematic philosophers. The astonishing breadth of his philosophical work includes writings on logic, metaphysics, philosophy of language, epistemology, environmental philosophy, social philosophy, political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of science. philosophy of mind and computation theory. A major reason for this intellectual diversity was his view that 'received logical theory and mainstream philosophical thinking involve ... fundamentally mistaken assumptions'(1) These mistaken assumptions were, in fact, seen as so fundamental that nothing less than 'logical revolution' and the abandonment of 'the main philosophical positions of our times' was called for. 'The same mistaken philosophical moves ... appear over and over again in different philosophical arenas ... in metaphysics, in epistemology, in the philosophy of science, ... in ethics. in political theory, and elsewhere, in each case with serious philosophical costs.' (2) This view, coupled with Sylvan's desire to set things straight, led him to work in all these areas and more. His usual method of work was to rise at dawn and write until lunch. This philosophical writing (decipherable to only a select few until typed by one such) amounted to a considerable body of work. By my reckoning at the time of his death in June 1996 he had published as sole author, joint author or editor, 10 books, 16 booklets and nearly 200 articles in academic philosophy -- as well as numerous unpublished articles and articles contributing to general intellectual debate on social policy and environmental matters. In addition to the wide-ranging nature of this profile outpouring of philosophy, Sylvan's work was also distinctive in character. As noted, he thought that mainstream philosophical thinking was doomed to failure and the theories he argued for were accordingly unorthodox and often highly innovative. (3) Moreover he took the view that philosophy ought to strive for uniformity in its resolution of problems.

'Virtually every philosophical problem has a range of potential resolutions. A coherent philosophy selects and develops its resolutions uniformly, with connected solutions for related problems, not a different sort of solution for every (sort of) problem. (4)

Accordingly, his work is characterized by the attempt to develop and apply these unorthodox theories in a wide range of contexts. Thus his work represents a broad, uniform and unorthodox approach to philosophical problems. Though making a contribution to philosophy (and intellectual life more broadly) well beyond his writings in logic and metaphysics, a survey of Sylvan's work will show that the majority of it concentrates directly on issues in these two areas, and where it does not hear directly on them it typically presents them as having central underlying import. One reason, of course, was his acceptance of the idea of the centrality of logic to philosophy (see Routley 1980, iii) and one has only to look at the Essays gathered together in Sylvan (2000) to see just how seriously he took this idea. (...). However he was also keen to emphasize the importance of metaphysics to all reaches of philosophy and, with the possibilities opened up by research in non-classical logic, substantial developments in metaphysics were there to pursue and pursue them he did." (pp. 181-182)

Notes

(1) Routley, 1980, III.

(2) Routley, 1980, II-III.

(3) He himself wrote in Routley 1980, VII, that it is pleasant to record that much of the material [of Routley 1980] is now regarded as far less crazy and disreputable than it was in the mid-sixties, when it was taken as a sign of early mental deterioration and of philosophical irresponsibility."

(4) Sylvan and Hyde 1993, 1.

References

Routley, Richard. 1980. Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond. An Investigation of Noneism and the Theory of Items. Canberra: Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.

Sylvan, Richard. 2000. Sociative Logics and Their Applications. Essays by the Late Richard Sylvan. Aldershot: Ashgate.

(4) Sylvan, Richard and Hyde, Dominic. 1993. "Ubiquitous Vagueness without Embarrassment". Acta Analytica 10 (1): 7-29.

From: Dominic Hyde, "Richard (Routley) Sylvan: Writings on Logic and Metaphysics", History and Philosophy of Logic, 22, 2001, pp. 181-205.

Routley's Noneism

" Noneism was created by Richard Routley. According to him the universe is a realm that comprises nonexistent objects. In this universe are included, beside real objects, sets that are contradictory or even absurd, and objects that we can think about, or imagine, but that are beyond the limits of reality. For instance, propositions like "the Squond is square" and "the Squond is round", in which Squond is an object that is square and round, are quite legitimate. Of course the Squond does not exist but - and this is the important point - it can be thought. Examples of less aggressive insolence, are more than abundant. For instance "the fairy Wandolina is very gentle" or "Zeus is the most powerful of the Olympian gods" are expressions fully understandable. The noneist system complies the three conditions to be metaphysical theory.

1. It encompasses the whole world, physical and mental,

2. it offers explications of meaning, and explanations of facts, and

3. it is not empirically corroborable.

That it contains objects with certain properties that are described by unverifiable propositions, is essential in an noneist universe. We have just shown two of them. This unverifiability is quite different from the one we find in physical theories. In these theories, when a new fact is discovered, its corresponding proposition must be deduced from the premises that are valid in the system. (*) This means that it must be explained, and to explain a proposition P, means that P must be logically deduced from previous theorems of the system (every axiom is a theorem). (**) This deduction is ordinarily done utilizing classical logic. Some physicists pretend that the only way to deduce quantum propositions, is by means of a "quantum logic". But this is a farfetched methodology, because the reasons they expose to justify their claim, are based on the fact that the De Morgan laws are not valid. But these laws are invalid, because they are identified with the addition of certain states that have nothing to do with logic.

I dare to qualify noneism as a metaphysical theory, because it complies with conditions 1, 2, and 3. That it complies with the first, is evident. Condition 2 is also complied with because noneist theory explains many facts. For instance, how is it possible that a child of five or six years, understands perfectly well a fairy tale. The only explanation of this miraculous fact is that, as the tale advances, the child is apprehending objects that do not exist. This apprehension must not be confounded with imaginative objects. The objects the child imagines do not exist, but they are viewed as subject dependable. On the other hand, the objects we apprehend listening to the story are not subject dependent. The child does not invent them, he (or she) sees the images that the story is suggesting. Different children can "see" different images, but the images that a child has will have a certain structure, and the structure will be the same for all children (and, of course, for all adults). Moreover, if a child "sees" that color Ci is adjacent to color Ck, the other child will "see" other colors Di and Dk but in the same order, that is Di and Dk, will be adjacent.

The third condition is also complied by the system: non-verifiability with respect to sensory objects, and this non-verifiability is absolute. It is assured by definition. We qualify it as "metaphysical", applying a frequent procedure in pure mathematics. If we define a complicated concept having definite properties, say, {A, B, C, D}, then, on behalf of easiness, we devise another concept that includes the first one, but has a note E, (there can be more than one) present in {A, B, C, D, E}. A classical example is the concept of zero. We can develop set theory without employing it. But as the theory advances, it becomes frightfully complicated." (pp. 33-35)

Notes

(*) The word "system" is used in its usual meaning. This meaning is quite different from the way it is employed in physics, in which it means an object.

(**) We say "axioms" because, in mathematical physics, the propositions from which all others must be deduced, play the role of axioms. With the exception of constructive mathematics, some axioms of geometry (for instance, the axioms of "betweenness", and finite set theory, all the axioms are hypothetical propositions. The truth probability of a theory increases through corroborations of its explanations, or through the verification of its predictions.

From: Francisco Miró, "Does Metaphysics Need a Non-Classical Logic?", in: Paul Weingartner (ed.), "Alternative Logics. Do Sciences Need Them?", New York: Springer 2004, pp. 27-39.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography of the logical works of Richard Sylvan [né Routley] (1960-1977)

Bibliography

N. B. In 1983 Richard Routley changed is name in Richard Sylvan and Val Routley changed is name in Val Plumwood.

1. Routley, Richard, and Gunderson, K. 1960. "Mr. Rescher's Reformulation of the Ontological Proof." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 38:246-252.

"In the midst of revived philosophical interest in theological issues, we wish to record our objections to one recent attempt at reformulating the ontological proof for the existence of God. x In trying to navigate around what he calls the three "traditional objections" to the proof viz.: (1) that it "rests upon an explicit definition per genus et differentiam" which in turn "depends upon the thesis that existence has the status of a predicate", (2) that it invokes "the procedure of defining into existence", and (3) that if

the "proof were logically sound, its theological serviceability would be insignificant'--Mr. Rescher, we believe, runs aground on the following criticisms."(p. 246)

(1) "The Ontological Proof Revisited", this Journal, August, 1959.

2. Routley, Richard. 1963. "Review of Abstract Sets and Finite Ordinals, by G. B. Keene." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 41:279-284.

3. ———. 1965. "What Numbers Are." Logique et Analyse no. 8:196-208.

Abstract: "Cardinal numbers are non-distributive properties of certain manifolds. This thesis, the P-C thesis, though often (in effect) proposed, does not seem to have been fully worked out, and has in fact been subject to repeated attacks. Recently the thesis that numbers properties of classes has been criticised by Professor Benacerraf (*). My main aim here is to elaborate the initially plausible P-C thesis and to defend it against criticisms."

(*) In his stimulating article 'What numbers could not be', Philosophical Review LXXIV (1945), 47-73.

4. ———. 1966. "On a Significance Theory." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 44:172-209.

"Not all declarative sentences are statement-capable. A declarative sentence P is statement-capable in context c if and only if P yields a statement in c. Given that all statements are either true or false, P is statement-capable in c if and only if P is truth-valued in c., i.e., yields a truth or falsehood in c." (p. 172)

(...)

"Motivation for developing a significance theory arises from several connected sources: firstly, from the role of significance in the solution of a whole range of philosophical paradoxes and puzzles; secondly, from the fact that philosophers repeatedly appeal to significance considerations and principles; and thirdly, from the fact that many idiolects, both ordinary and technical, distinguish some sentences as non-significant and satisfy some significance principles. The importance of the first source is illustrated by the role significance and category theories have played in epistemology and particularly in the philosophy of mind. With respect to the second source, a significance logic has a similar role to play in assessing the correctness of philosophical arguments and moves as Aristotelian and classical logic have had. Given the

third source, a significance theory is a vital ingredient in attempts to further formalise discourse, and to take further account of both everyday and technical usage." (p. 177)

5. ———. 1966. "Some Things Do Not Exist." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 7:251-276.

"The main objects of this paper are to suggest a definition of 'exists', to propose solutions to difficulties raised within restricted predicate logic with identity by failures of existential presuppositions of purportedly referring expressions such as individual constants and definite descriptions, to develop within a semantical system R*, with the syntax of a restricted applied predicate calculus, the logic of 'exists', and to unify within =R*, i.e. R* with identity, several hitherto distinct logical theories, to construct theories of definite descriptions, and to criticize certain widely accepted criteria for the ontological commitment of a theory. The logical developments in this paper are limited almost entirely to those that can be carried out in a first-order predicate logic with identity but without modal or intensional functors." (p. 251)

6. Routley, Richard, and Goddard, Lenn. 1966. "Use, Mention and Quotation." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 44:1-49.

"It is the thesis of this paper that an extensive revision of those ways of talking about expressions which are usually recognized by logicians is of paramount importance if we are to escape the absurd conclusions and purely technical restrictions which arise from a confusion of the kinds of distinctions which it is often necessary to make both in logical and non-logical contexts. We propose, therefore, to consider in detail the commonly recognized distinction between types and tokens, and secondly between use and mention, in order both to emphasize the deficiencies of the standard account and to indicate the steps which are required for the development of a special and systematic vocabulary for talking about linguistic expressions. It is necessary, however, for the purposes of exposition before new conventions are introduced

to adopt the ordinary practice of using single quotes to indicate the fact that a linguistic expression is being mentioned, and double quotes to indicate reported speech (and other quasi-mentionings);

sometimes, too we set off an expression which is to be mentioned on a line by itself." (p. 2)

7. Routley, Richard, and Montgomery, Hugh. 1966. "Contingency and Non-Contingency Bases for Normal Modal Logic." Logique et Analyse no. 9:318-328.

"Contingency and non-contingency bases for modal logics provide direct bases for various logical investigations of philosophical interest. For example: for logics of causation and causal implication, for certain theories of entailment, for syllogistic systems with only contingent propositions, and for theories of future contingents. Furthermore by taking contingency as primitive various new extensions of weak modal logics - extensions which include systems S6-S8 and provide interpretations of philosophical interest for these neglected systems - are suggested. Contingency and non-contingency bases are also of some formal interest; for instance S5 has a very simple and elegant formulation in terms of non-contingency. In this paper we present contingency and non-contingency bases for familiar normal modal logics, specifically for T, S4 and S5." (p. 318)

8. Routley, Richard. 1968. "Decision Procedures and Semantics for C1, E1 and S0.5." Logique et Analyse no. 11:468-471.

9. ———. 1968. "The Decidability and Semantical Incompleteness of Lemmon's System S0.5." Logique et Analyse no. 12:413-421.

"Two decision procedures are given for the modal system SO.5, a Gentzen style decision procedure and a von Wright-Anderson type decision procedure. The second procedure leads easily, as Cresswell has indicated in [2] using Kripke semantics, to a completeness result for SO.5. However under the intended interpretation for SO.5 proposed by Lemmon in [6] and [7] and adopted by Cresswell, namely that the necessity connective is interpreted as 'it is tautologous (by truth-table) that', the system is incomplete. To complete the system under the intended interpretation conventionalistic theses like ∇ ◻p (contingently necessarily p) must be added to SO.5. But this augmented SO.5 is under its intended interpretation a formalised metalogic of classical sentential logic {see [7]). Hence the (usual) metalogic of classical sentential logic is conventionalistic about modality. (p. 413)

10. Routley, Richard, and Montgomeery, Hugh. 1968. "Non-Contingency Axioms for S4 and S5." Logique et Analyse no. 11:422-424.

"In [3] some contingency and non-contingency bases were developed for normal modal logics. Some of the axioms presented there for extending T to S4 and S5 are sufficiently strong to give these latter systems when added to the non-normal system S3." (p. 422)

References

[3] H. Montgomery and R. Routley, Contingency and non-contingency bases for normal modal logics, Logique et Analyse, n.s. vol. 9 (1966), pp. 318-328

11. ———. 1968. "The Inadequacy of Kripke's Semantical Analyses of D2 and D3." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 33:568.

12. Routley, Richard, and Montgomery, Hugh. 1968. "On Systems Containing Aristotle's Thesis." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 33:82-96.

"Apart from merits or defects of PA1 however, its existence demonstrates the feasibility of a new approach to the logic of propositions involving the principle of subjunctive contrariety. We thus have good reason to investigate the effect this principle, and a concept of conditionality compatible with it, might exert if intro- duced into standard quantification theory, into set theory, into modal logic and into epistemology and the philosophy of science." R. B. Angell(1)

"Introduction. The thesis p → q → ~ ( p → ~ q), Angell's principle of subjunctive contrariety, here called Boethius' thesis(2) or Boethius, has as a consequence Aristotle's thesis(2) ~ (~p → p). The effect of Boethius or even of Aristotle alone, in quite weak sentential logics, is sufficient to cast serious doubt both on the merit of proceeding in the directions Angell suggests and on the value of connexive logics.(3) To show this we examine the consequences of adding to a basic system Z1 which we describe as strong normal implication, the axiom Aristotle. This augmented system Z1a is inconsistent with a number of principles of implication which it is very difficult to reject on semantic grounds. Further semantic problems arise when Z1a is augmented by Fact to give Z1b, and when Z1b is augmented by Antilogism and Mat Taut to give Z1c or by Boethius to give Z1d. As these five systems are all sublogics of both Angell's PA1, and McCall's CCl (see [6]) tlfe'consequent interpretational problems for PA1, and CC1 are immediate. In the Analytica priora (57b-3 f) Aristotle argues that ... it is impossible that the same thing should be necessitated by the being and by the not-being of the same thing"'.

(1) [R. B. Angell, A propositional logic with subjunctive conditionals, this JOURNAL, vol. 27 (1962), pp. 327-343, p. 342].

(2) Following McCall [Storrs MCall, Connexive implication, this JOURNAL, vol. 31 (1966), pp. 415-433, p. 415].

(3) 'Connexive logics' are characterised by McCall in [Connexive implication, pp. 415-416].

Fact p → q → . p . r → q . r Principle of the factor

Antil p.q → r -→. p. ~ r → ~ q Antilogism.

Mat Taut p ⊃ p . p Material tautology.

13. ———. 1968. "Modal Reduction Axioms in Extensions of S1." Logique et Analyse no. 11:492-501.

"Modal logics are commonly formulated with a primitive necessity or possibility operator, though often they may equally well have non-contingency or contingency as the sole modal primitive, necessity and possibility being introduced by definition (1). Examples of normal modal logics with such bases are given in [2], and similar foundations can easily be constructed for the weaker classical systems such as S1, S2 and S3. One attraction of these formulations is that non-contingency extension axioms often provide very simple and illuminating relationships between different modal systems, and another is that iterated modalities are seen from a different aspect (2)." (p. 492)

(1) Sufficient conditions for this to be possible are that SSE is derivable and that p.(□p v □~p) = □p is provable. Example of systems for which these conditions fail are SO.5. S1°. S2°.

(2) By an 'iterated modality' we mean a sequence of zero or more symbols each of which is either a negation symbol or a primitive monadic modal symbol.

References

[2] Montgomery, H. and Routley, R., Contingency and non-contingency Bases for normal modal logics, Logique et Analyse, vol. 9 (1966), 318-328.

14. Routley, Richard. 1969. "The Need for Nonsense." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 47:367-383.

"It is important to have a distinct category of nonsense into which to bundle grammatical indicative sentences which do not express truths or falsehoods.

For, on the one hand, a high redefinition of 'grammar" which brings nonsignificant sentences out as ungrammatical, not only eliminates the valuable distinction between sentences with textbook grammatical defects and nonsignificant sentences; it also makes the quite unwarranted assumption that all non-significance is recursively generated non-significance. But not all nonsense is obvious, or recursive nonsense. Still more damaging, nonsignificant sentences, unlike seriously ungrammatical sentences, can figure in valid arguments and can occur as unquoted components of grammatical sentences. Yet, on the other hand, theories which eschew non-significance as a further sentence-value beyond truth and falsehood are not only bound to be less comprehensive than, and mere special cases of significance theories (see [15]); they are in fact inadequate to deal with the logical and linguistic data--linguistic data which the grammatical theory does acknowledge--which significance theories are designed to handle. (For a sketch of some of the relevant data, see [15], p. 177)." (p. 367)

(...)

"Significance logics are richer than classical logic; for they include all theses of classical logic for suitably restricted significant sentences; but even the fundamental predicate 'S' of significance theory cannot be explicitly defined in classical predicate logic. Now where two theories are not equivalent theories there are two cases to consider. Either the theories cover (roughly) the same data and one or the other contains false or defective sentences.

Then the one that does is false or defective, and the other, if true, is to that extent preferable. Or both theories are true. Then they must cover different fields and so are not distinguishable through simplicity; in particular one theory may be more comprehensive than the other, so overriding simpficity.

Simplicity then is not an adequate ground for deciding against significance theories." (p. 383)

References

[15] R. Routley, 'On a Significance Theory', The Australasian Journal of Philosophy,

Vol. 44 (1966), pp. 172-209.

15. ———. 1969. "A Simple Natural Deduction System." Logique et Analyse no. 12:129-152.

"A natural deduction system ND is introduced and proofs in it illustrated. This system is much simpler and more flexible than familiar natural deduction systems: it avoids completely such complicating devices as subscripting, flagging, ordering of vari- ables, and distinctions of several sorts of variables or parameters. Furthermore proofs are valid line by line. ND is presented as a formal system. It still needs emphasizing that natural deduction systems can be made just as. formal as Hilbert-type systems. The precise conditions on substitution - quite important for natural deduction but often suppressed - are made explicit in the rules of ND." (p. 129)

16. ———. 1969. "Existence and Identity in Quantified Modal Logics." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 10:113-149.

"The aim of this paper is to present a way in which philosophical objections to the development of a combined quantification and modal logic based on S5 can be overcome. In more detail, the objectives are to show that S5 is immune to criticisms directed at those theorems which distinguish it from S4 and T; that problematic theorems(1) of modalised predicate logic like the Barcan formulae [◇(∃x) f (x) ⊃ (∃x) ◇ f (x)] and [◇(∃t) g (x, t) ⊃ (∃t) ◇ g(x, t)] can be appropriately qualified once existence is explicitly treated; that puzzles over identity can be escaped by a more elaborate treatment of identity than the standard treatment; and that difficulties associated with quantification into modal sentence contexts can be cleared away given these treatments of existence and identity. A combination of these moves suffice, so it will be argued, to meet standard objections, most forcefully presented by Quine(2), to quantified modal logics. Admittedly a full elaboration of these moves calls for some sentence/statement distinction, some analytic/synthetic (or necessary/contingent) distinction, and some sense/designation (or connotation/denotation) distinction: but although, consequently, it is not to be expected that a combination of these moves will satisfy Quine, they may satisfy some who have been disturbed by the objections Quine raises." (p. 113)

(1) On the defects and difficulties of such theorems see, e.g., W. and M. Kneale, The Development of Logic, Oxford (1962), and A. N. Prior, Time and Modality, Oxford (1957).

(2) See, especially, W. V. Quine: "The problem of interpreting modal logic," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 12 (1947), pp. 43-48; From a Logical Point of View, Revised edition, Cambridge, Mass. (1961); Word and Object, New York (1960).

17. Routley, Richard, and Montgomeery, Hugh. 1969. "Modalities in a Sequence of Normal Noncontingency Modal Systems." Logique et Analyse no. 12:225-227.

"Some properties of sequences of systems lying between T and S4, and T and S5, having added axioms of the form □n p ⊃ □n+1 p have been investigated in [4] and elsewhere (1). These systems have infinitely many modalities for n > 1. Here we consider an analogous sequence of noncontingency based systems, the i-th member of the sequence being denoted by TΔi where i is any positive integer. The primitive basis of TΔi is given by adding the axiom ∆ip (where ' ∆i denotes i iterations of the noncontingency modal connective '∆', and '∆° p denotes 'p') to either S1∆ (see [3]) or to one of the noncontingency based formulations of T given in [2]. The equivalence of these bases follows from Theorem 5. of [3]. The first member of this sequence, TΔ^1, is deductively equivalent to the Trivial System, the second, TΔ^2, to S5, and the remaining members of the infinite sequence lie between S5 and T. Each system TΔi has 2 (i + 1) distinct modalities" (p. 225)

(1) See remarks and footnotes in [1], pp. 259-260.

References

[1] Hughes, G. E. and Cresswell. M. An Introduction to Modal Logic, Methuen, London (1968).

[2] Montgomery, H. and Routley, R. 'Contingency and non-contingency bases for normal modal logics', Logique et Analyse, vol. 9 (1966), pp. 318-328.

[3] Montgomery, H. and Routley, R., 'Modal reduction axioms in extensions of S1', Logique et Analyse, vol. 11 (1968), pp. 492-501.

[4] Thomas, I., 'Modal systems in the neighbourhood of T', Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, vol. 5 (1964), pp. 59-

18. Routley, Richard, and Routley, Val. 1969. "Categories - Expressions or Things?" Theoria no. 35:215-238.

"Is significance a matter of things or of descriptions of things?

That is to say, is it the couplings of certain individuals and certain properties or relations that are properly said to be significant or non-significant, or is it the couplings of descriptions and predicates?

A common answer is that it is either or both, or that it doesn’t matter which we say. For it is assumed that to any non-significant coupling of an individual and a property there corresponds a nonsignificant

coupling of expressions, and vice versa. This isomorphism thesis(1) can be stated more generally as follows: there is a one-one correspondence between things-relations couplings and description-predicate couplings preserving significance.

Another answer to the main question is that significance is a matter of things and their relations, and not really a question of description at all. There is a strong temptation, supported by tradition and by some ordinary speech, to adopt such a thing or essentialist thesis of significance, to say that significance is concerned with things irrespective of how they are referred to or even whether they are referred to, and that, furthermore, things fall into logical kinds or categories as they do into natural kinds." (p. 215)

(...)

"The distinction between significance and absurdity resolves the initial puzzles, which arose from incompatible ways of looking at significance. Category theories based on both significance and absurdity are viable. Because, however, one theory is not the isomorphic image of the other the isomorphism thesis is false; and since the theories cannot be confused without disastrous consequences, it does matter what we say." (p. 238)

(1) An isomorphism thesis is stated explicitly by F. Sommers ‘Types and Ontology’ Philosophical Review, vol. 72 (1963), pp. 327-363; e.g. pp. 350-1: ’linguistic structures and ontological structures are isomorphic’.

19. ———. 1969. "A Fallacy of Modality." Noûs no. 3:129-153.

"The ancient principle of distributivity of necessity (DN for short), that necessary propositions only entail necessary propositions, has acquired an upstart companion, the distributivity of contingency (DC), which threatens to borrow some plausibility from DN; violations of these principles are sometimes lumped together as "fallacies of modality". The DC principle, according to which contingent statements only entail contingent statements, has played a specially important role in the discussion of entailment; and in particular it has taken a central part in Anderson and Belnap's important theory of entailment E. The DC principle has also had a major part in attacks on linguistic theories of logical necessity. We contend, however, that the principle and minor modifications of it, are false. We argue that the principle provides an example of a strong false thesis drawing its plausibility from its association with a weak but trivial counterpart which cannot however perform the task of the strong principle. We also explain in detail why no version of the principle can fulfill the role for which it is needed in E.

It is our contention that the real fallacy concerning DC is that of taking violations of DC as fallacious. For DC itself is a modal fallacy." (pp. 129-130, a note omitted)

20. Routley, Richard. 1970. "Non-Existence Does Not Exist." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 11:289-320.

"The main aims of this paper are to explain criteria for the identity of individuals, to compare various criteria for the existence of properties and for the existence of propositions, and to present certain theses concerning the existence and identity of individuals, of propositions, and of properties.

Several other topics are, however, treated incidentally; for example an extended sentential logic designed to take care of certain semantical paradoxes and truth-value gaps by allowing for statement-incapable sentences is sketched.

In order to attack in a formal way the question of the existence of properties and relations and to formalise widely employed criteria for the existence of attributes, i.e. of properties and relations, an extended predicate calculus must first be introduced. As a first move it is valuable to determine how much can be done in the simplest and most accessible of higher order functional calculi, viz. second-order functional calculus. Now this logic has to be so designed that it can express such propositions as "Some properties do not exist" and "All properties, whether possible or impossible,... .(e.g. exist)". At first this suggests that a system like R*, which allows for quantification over all possible individual items, be extended to second order.(1)" (p. 289)

(1) The system R* is presented in R. Routley, "Some things do not exist," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, Vol. 7 (1966), pp. 251-276.

21. ———. 1970. "Decision Procedures and Semantics for Fey's System S2^0 and Surrounding Systems." Zeitschrift für mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik no. 16:165-174.

"The systems investigated in detail are Feys system S2° (of [3]), S2e, S2, C2 and E2. The same methods as are used in studying these systems extend to a much larger class of modal logics; some extensions are outlined in section IV. For the systems studied three decisions are provided; in section I by Gentzen methods; in section II by extended truth-table methods; and in section III, as a corollary to completeness results, by the finite model property." (p. 165)

References

[3] R. Feys, Modal Logics. Louvain 1965.

22. ———. 1970. "Extensions of Makinson's Completeness Theorems in Modal Logic." Zeitschrift für mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik no. 16:239-256.

"Completeness theorems are derived, using the maximal consistent set construction, for a large class of sentential modal logics. The paper extends MAKINSON's[1)]method (of [6]) to systems based on the modal logic C2 (cf LEMMON[4]), on the system C2a (of FEYS[1]), on system C2" for each n, and on the weak system C1 (of LEMMON[3]) and S0.5". The systems considered include, among others, all systems treated in MAKINSON[6], all modal systems treated in LEMMON[4] and [5], various systems introduced in [7], all E systems, all C systems, D1 and D2, S0.5, S2°, S2e, S3°, S3e, S4°, T*, Parry's system S3 + □ ◊□ A → □ A, S3.5, S6, S7, S8 and S8.5. (For details of many of these systems see FEYS [1].)

The methods are readily extended to various other systems, e.g. to the conventionalist systems of [7] and, as is well-known, to extensions of 54, and they can be extended to quantified modal logics. For certain systems considered the completeness results are combined with a solution of the decision problem by the finite model property." (p. 239)

References

[l] R. FEYS, Modal Logics. Louvain 1965.

[2] S. A. KRIPKE, Semantical analysis of modal logic II, Non normal modal propositional calculi. Symposium on the Theory of Models, Amsterdam 1965, 206-220.

[3] E. J. LEMMON. New foundations for Lewis modal systems. Journal Symb. Logic 22 (1957), 176- 186.

[4] E. J. LEMMON, Algebraic semantics for modal logics I. Journal Symb. Logic 31 (1966), 46-65.

[5] E. J. LEMMON, Algebraic semantics for modal logics 11. Journal Symb. Logic 31 (1966),

[6] D. MAKINSON, On some completeness theorems in modal logic. This Zeitschr. 12 (1966),

[7] H. MONTGOMERY and R. ROUTLEY Conventionalist and contingency-oriented modal logics (1971).

23. ———. 1971. "Domainless Semantics for Free, Quantification and Significance Logics." Logique et Analyse no. 14:603-626.

"The standard semantics for quantification logics have serious limitations; they are more complicated than they need be and more set theoretical than they should be. In support of this evaluation alternative simpler and leas set-theoretical semantics are provided for quantification and free quantification logics both without and with identity, and for second-order significance logic. These semantics, domainless semantics, are defended against objections as to their intelligibility and satisfactoriness, and appropriate consistency and completeness theorems are proved in order to show the comparative adequacy of the semantics. Domainless semantics, by assigning values en bloc to atomic wff, eliminates the otiose notion of a domain of interpretation and n-place relations on this domain of entities, and thereby eliminates the associated correspondance theory of truth which is built into the reference selections and truth evaluations of standard semantics. It does this without introducing names in the style of, what is similar, the substitution interpretation of quantifiers, and so it avoids legitimate objections that have been made to substitution semantics (1)."

(1) (*) For these objections, and for answers to many objections to substi- tution semantics, see Dunn and Belnap [3].

References

[3] J. M. Dunn and N. D. Belnap, 'The Substitution Interpretation of the Quantifiers', Noûs, vol. 2 (1968), pp. 177-185

24. ———. 1971. "Conventionalist and Contingency-Oriented Modal Logics." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 12:131-152.

"No modal logic so far presented adequately represents radical conventionalism. Yet conventionalism about modalities is a very pervasive doctrine. In this paper we make a start on filling this serious gap in the

literature.

Radical conventionalism is distinguished by the thesis:

(R). All assertions of modalities are contingent.

(...)

Radical conventionalism is inconsistent with all Lewis modal logics, as we shall show. It does not follow, however, that radical conventionalism is, as has often been assumed, inconsistent. One of our main aims is to exhibit a class of consistent modal logics in which thesis (R) is satisfied. This is a major step towards showing that radical conventionalism is a consistent doctrine.

We distinguish radical conventionalism from two other main positions regarding modality which have also been called conventionalisms. For radical conventionalism has frequently been confused with these other

doctrines, to the detriment of each position since each pair of positions entails mutually inconsistent principles." (p. 131)

25. ———. 1971. "Review of A. Trew's 'Incompleteness of a Logic of Routley's." Mathematical Reviews no. 41:1507.

26. ———. 1972. "A Semantical Analysis of Implication System I, and of the First Degree of Entailment." Mathematische Annalen no. 196:58-84.

Abstract: "A semantics for the implicational system I is described, and the completeness and decidability of I and related systems established.

lt is shown that I has the same first-degree logic as Anderson-Belnap system E and Ackermann system π and the same positive logic as Lewis system S3. A detailed semantical investigation is made or the first degree of entailment systems, and important matrices and algebras are derived and thereby interpreted."

27. ———. 1972. "Vredenduin's System of Strict Implication." Logique et Analyse no. 15:435-437.

About P. G. J. Vredenduin, "A system of strict implication", Journal of Symbolic Logic, 4, 1939, pp. 73-76.

28. Routley, Richard, and Meyer, Robert K. 1972. "The Semantics of Entailment II." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 1:53-73.

Abstract: "In the first part of this paper, we developed a semantics for the system R of relevant implication, which is the non-modal part of Anderson-Belnap style systems of entailment. In the present paper, which we have endeavored so far as possible to render self-contained, we add an S4-style theory of necessity, getting the system NR of [1]. This enables us to introduce an entailment connective on the definition. (1) A ⇒ B=df N(A → B), where →, is relevant implication, and accordingly to adapt the semantics for relevant logics developed in [2] to a theory of entailment proper.' We note that although the question whether the NR-theory of entailment coincides exactly with that of E remains open, both the results of [1] and the motivation provided for the pure theory of entailment in [3] suffice to settle it for all practical purposes - every motivating condition ever put forth for E is satisfied in NR, and in all known cases of interest involving formulas built up from entailment and the truth-functions, E and NR coincide exactly with respect to provability. Indeed, although we should like very much to see the remaining open question definitively solved, we hazard here the guess that if E and NR should happen to diverge on some formula, it will be E which turns out thereby to be semantically deficient; we do not think that will happen. In any event, we present with confidence the present results as the semantics for Anderson-Belnap style entailment." (p 53, a note omitted)

References

[1] Meyer, R. K., 'Entailment and Relevant Implication', Logique et Analyse, No. 44 (1968), 472-9.

[2] Routley, R. and R. K. Meyer, 'The Semantics of Entailment - I', to appear in Truth, Syntax Modality (ed. by H. Leblanc), North-Holland, Amsterdam, forthcoming. [1973]

[3] Anderson, A. R. and N. D. Belnap, Jr., 'The Pure Calculus of Entailment', The Journal of Symbolic Logic 27 (1962), 19-52.

29. ———. 1972. "The Semantics of Entailment III." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 1:192-208.

"In [1] and [2], we developed Kripke-style semantical postulates for the system R of relevant implication and the system NR of relevant implication with modality. The latter suffices for a theory of entailment as well, though we left the question open in [2] whether that theory is precisely the Anderson-Belnap system E of entailment. The time has come to extend our semantical methods to other systems of relevant logic besides the system R. We shall do so in two stages. The present paper deals only with positive systems of entailment, since these may be handled quite simply along previous lines; complications arising from negation are put off until the sequel. We do not consider quantified entailment logics explicitly, though quantifiers may be handled in the style of [1] (or differently, if the reader prefers). Accordingly, we present here a semantical analysis of the Anderson-Belnap systems R+ of positive relevant implication, E+ of positive entailment, and T+ of positive ticket entailment; by ringing the changes on the axiomatizations of these particular systems, we include as well related relevant logics; there is, on our approach, a natural minimal one, which we can call B+." (p. 192)

References

[1] R. Routley and R. K. Meyer, 'The Semantics of Entailment' (I), in H. Leblanc (ed.), Truth, Syntax, Modality, North-Holland Publ. Co., Amsterdam, forthcoming [1973].

[2] R. Routley and R. K. Meyer, 'The Semantics of Entailment' (II), The Journal of Philosophical Logic 1 (1972), 53-73.

30. ———. 1972. "Algebraic Analysis of Entailment I." Logique et Analyse no. 15:407-428.

"In [1]-[4], the authors have developed a semantical analysis of Ackermann-Anderson-Belnap style systems of entailment similar to the well-known analyses of Lewis style strict implication due to Kripke, Hintikka, Lemmon, and others. The present paper uses these semantic insights - in particular those of [3] - to develop a general algebraic analysis of entailment logics. Such an analysis has already been furnished by Dunn in [5] for the system R of relevant implication, who interpreted the system R in a certain class of partially ordered algebraic structures, namely the DeMorgan monoids (1). A similar analysis, as we report, will do for entailment logics generally. This present analysis, as it remarkably turns out, is strongly reminiscent of the very differently motivated connections drawn between the theory of combinators and certain theorems of intuitionist logic by H. B. Curry in [6] and [7]. The present paper will analyze chiefly negation-free entailment logics, which are the most natural algebraically; some remarks, however, will be inserted to show where the enterprise tends when negation too is added. Our key algebraic notion will be that of an Ackermann groupoid, defined below, which serves to explicate algebraically the minimal relevant logic B+ of [3] and which comes on the addition of postulates to explicate also more familiar relevant, modal, and intuitionist logics, such as T+, E+, R+, S4+, and the intuitionist sentential calculus J." (p. 407)

(1) The theory of residuation, on which Dunn's and the present work rests, was developed by Ward and Dilworth; cf. [7] for references.

References

[1] Routley, R., and R. K. Meyer, "The semantics of entailment," (I), forthcoming in Truth , Syntax, Modality, ed. by H. Leblanc, N. Holland, Amsterdam, 1973.

[2] Routley, R., and R. K. Meyer, "The semantics of entailment," (II), forthcoming in the Journal of Philosophical Logic.

[3] Routley, R., and R. K. Meyer, "The semantics of entailment," (III), forthcoming.

[4] Routley, R., and R. K. Meyer, "The semantics of entailment," (IV), in preparation.

[5] Dunn, J. M., The algebra of intensional logics, doctoral dissertation (U. of Pittsburgh 1966), University Microfilms, Ann Arbor.

[6] Curry, H. B., and R. Feys, Combinatory logic, v. I, N. Holland, Amsterdam, 1958.

[7] Curry, H. B., Foundations of mathematical logic, McGraw-Hill, N. Y., 1963.

31. ———. 1972. "A Kripke Semantics for Entailment (Abstract)." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 37:442-443.

32. Routley, Richard, and Routley, Val. 1972. "The Semantics of First Degree Entailment." Noûs no. 6:335-358.

"We concentrate on first degree semantics because this sharpens and simplifies the choice among rival systems. For different systems may have a common first degree theory. In particular a large class of strict implication systems (including all Lewis systems) have the same first degree; and the system FD coincides with the f.d. theory of the system E of Anderson and Belnap (presented in [1] and [2]) and also of a number of rival entailment systems both included in, including, and only intersecting E (see [11]). Thus the divergence of entailment from strict implication, and from other implications such as connexive implication,

is already clear at the first degree. Most of the traditional and current disputes come up and can be settled at the first degree level, for example, disputes about the paradoxes and their effects, and as to the adequacy of principles such as Disjunctive Syllogism. Thus choice of a first degree system already fixes in large measure one's position on entailment. Furthermore, for a number of important notions the higher degree structure is either peripheral, as with inclusion of logical content, or, as with causal sufficiency, not well defined.

Finally the first degree has much simpler semantics than the full systems; it is not complicated by questions as to which setups or structures implications are in or what relations hold between set-ups, which determine the fate of higher degree laws." (pp. 335-336)

References

[1] A. R. Anderson, 'Some open problems concerning the system E of entailment' Acta Philosophica Fennica, fasc. 16, (1963): 7-18.

[2] A. R. Anderson and N. D. Belnap, 'Tautological entailments', Philosophical Studies, XIII (1961): 9-24.

[11] R. Routley, 'A semantical analysis of implicational system I and of the first degree of entailment' Mathematische Annalen, 196 (1972): 58-84.

33. Routley, Richard. 1973. The Logic of Significance and Context. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press.

Contents of Volume 1 (the only published): Introduction 1; Part I: Context logic. 1. The semantic theory 21; 2. Elements of the sentential theory 44; 3. Elements of the predicate and quantification theory 120; Part II. The principles of significance. 4. Toward a logic of significance 219; 5. Sentential significance logics I: The matrix approach 256; 6. Sentential significance logics II: The axiomatic approach 368; 7. Intensional and quantified significance logics 431; Bibliography 637-641.

"In spite of the central role which the concept of significance has played in recent philosophy, very little has been done to produce a general theory in terms of which the various claims can be evaluated. Both Russell and Ryle go some way towards the development of particular significance theories which they then apply to the examination of philosophical theses, and Russell's theory of types is expressed partly in terms of formal criteria. But the two theories, though similar, are inconsistent with each other, and each is seriously incomplete. Both depend crucially on the acceptance of intuitive and unstated principles.

It is our purpose to develop a general formal theory of significance in terms of which significance claims, and arguments by means of which they are made, can be assessed. Thus we aim, eventually, to provide a logic, not previously developed, for much of modern philosophy.

This aim might be challenged in one of three ways. First, even though it is accepted that some sentences are nonsignificant, it might be thought that there is no need of a special logic to take account of them since the ordinary principles of classical two-valued logic can be applied to arguments in which they occur. Secondly, it might be said, given that there is a need for a special logic, the peculiar features of nonsignificant sentences make its development impossible. Thirdly, it has sometimes been suggested, nonsignificance can be wholly explained in terms of other well-understood concepts: in particular, it can either be identified with the ungrammatical, in which case nonsignificant sentences should be excluded from all arguments and the only logic which is necessary is the classical two-valued logic over significant sentences; or it can be identified with the necessarily false, and in this case significance claims and arguments can be handled within classical modal logic.

Consider the first objection. The point of and need for a general formal theory of significance can be justified on general grounds by appealing to the usual reasons for underpinning philosophical investigations by logical studies: namely the clarity and systematisation which result, and the fact that the philosophical theory can be tested for consistency and is generally more readily assessed and open to falsification. But it can also be justified on special grounds since, without it, the assessment of particular significance theories, if not impossible, is at best intuitive. Unless general principles are formulated and justified, it remains obscure which critical arguments are valid within and against a particular theory. Thus, without some systematisation of significance principles, many philosophical arguments, such as those of Ryle and Strawson on the philosophy of mind, are impossible to assess.

As one example of the need to make explicit the principles which are assumed, and the need to evaluate them, consider Russell's assumption, which is nowhere justified, that the paradox argument evaporates and the conclusion no longer follows once it has been shown that the premisses are meaningless. This amounts to saying, in general, that a nonsignificant sentence has no implications. But if this is so, then Ryle's reductio ad absurdum technique, and Wittgenstein's declared aim, seem to be illogical. For here, the intention is to show that a given sentence is nonsignificant because it has implications which are nonsignificant. But if it is indeed nonsignificant, then it was so before the actual implications were drawn, and in terms of Russell's principle it cannot have these implications because it has none at all.

In order to resolve problems such as this, it is necessary to construct associated significance logics for particular theories of significance and to ask whether there is an internal inconsistency in either theory, whether there are general principles incompatible with either or both, and whether there is a general theory which can consistently include both. It may be, for example, that the apparent incompatibility of Russell's principle and Ryle's is not real. This would be so if they were adopting different implication connectives; in this case, both principles could consistently appear in the same general theory.

None of these questions can be settled using only a classical two-valued logic, however, since what is in issue is just which relations hold between truth-valued sentences, on the one hand, and nonsignificant sentences, on the other. Similarly, it is inadmissible to evaluate positivist criteria of significance using principles of two-valued logic alone since, given that some sentences are nonsignificant, such a logic cannot hold generally. But the mere recognition that at least a three-valued logic is necessary is of itself inadequate. For unless the relevant three-valued logic is specified, the criteria are still not fully assessable." (pp. 5-7)

34. Routley, Richard, and Brady, Ross. 1973. "Don't Care was Made to Care." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 51:211-225.

"We believe that the deep structure of natural languages, and hence of the languages in which philosophical problems are characteristically formulated, will have to be based on an enriched significance logic which has a third value -- nonsense or non-significance -- and not on a classical two-valued logic which only has truth and falsity as its values. Such logics will be required not just in providing a semantics for natural language but also, for what is even more important, in the assessment of informal reasoning and in determining the scope of valid argument. But our view that there is a need for nonsense as a value has been challenged, most recently by Haack(1) who thinks that a variation on Quine's position can be sustained, that central examples of non-significant sentences are 'Don't Cares' which can be brought within the scope of classical logic by some fairly arbitrary assignments of truth-values to them. Though we shall concentrate on Haack's case against nonsense as a further value, our criticism has more than merely local interest, for many of the defective moves that Haack makes in defence of classical logic have wide currency." (p. 211)

(1) R. J. Haack: 'No Need for Nonsense': this journal, 49 (1971) pp. 71-7. Page references in the text are to this article. Overlapping criticisms may be found in E. Erwin: The Concept of Meaninglessness (1970).

35. Routley, Richard, and Meyer, Robert K. 1973. "Classical Relevant Logics I." Studia Logica no. 32:51-68.

"In a number of papers, the authors have offered semantic and algebraic analyses of the relevant logics of Ackermann, Anderson, and Belnap, and of logics akin thereto. The most interesting of these logics, in our opinion, are the Anderson-Belnap system R, which we analyzed in [1], and our own system B, studied in [5] and [6]. These are respectively the strongest and the weakest relevant logics, others being intermediate. Now one of the chief features of the relevant logics -- indeed, the chief feature on the motivational lines of [7], [8], and [1] -- lies in their blocking the so-called paradoxes of material and strict implication. The paradox which has drawn the most ink, particularly in Meyer's remarks, is the old saw that from a contradiction anything follows: i.e.,

(1) A & ¬ A → B.

One would have thought, accordingly, that addition of (1), with other classical negation principles, to positive relevant logics would result in their breakdown, just as intuitionist logic fails to accomodate, on pain of breakdown, (1) together with excluded middle. Like so many things one would have thought, this is false. In fact, on a semantical analysis akin to that of [1] and [5] but in certain respect more natural as regards negation, the positive insights emerge unscathed. The purpose of this paper is to present that semantics and the classical relevant logics to which it gives rise. Arising out of this analysis are new algebraic insights as well; classical relevant logics are Boolean and so the algebras of these logics -- sufficing in particular for the positive parts of the relevant logics studied to date and in distinction to the algebras developed by Dunn in [9] and by us in [6] -- are just Boolean algebras with an additional binary operation. Indeed, as we show, we may limit our considerations to set algebras -- i.e., algebras whose domain is the power set of some set. This leads to considerable simplification of some outstanding problems for positive relevant logics -- in particular, for the long-open decision question for R+ -- and we suggest lines along which we believe a successful solution of this question can be obtained." (p. 51)

References

[l]-[5] Routley R. and Meyer R. K.: The semantics of entailment, I, II, III, IV, V. I appears in H. Leblanc (ed.): Truth, Syntax and Modality, North-Holland 1973. II appears in The Journal of Philosophical Logic 1 (1972), 53-73. Ill is to appear in the same journal. IV and V are in preparation.

[6] Meyer R. K. and Routley R.: Algebraic analysis of entailment I, to appear [Logique et Analyse, 15, 1972, pp. 407-428]

[7] Anderson A. R. and Belnap N. D. Jr.: The pure calculus of entailment. The Journal of Symbolic Logic 27 (1962), 19-52.

[8] Meyer R. K.: Entailment. The Journal of Philosophy 21 (1971), 808-817.

[9] Dunn J. M.: The Algebra of Intensional Logics (doctoral dissertation), University Microfilms, Ann Arbor 1966.

36. ———. 1973. "The Semantics of Entailment." In Truth, Syntax and Modality: Proceedings of the Temple University Conference on Alternative Semantics, edited by Leblanc, Hugues, 199-243. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

"Word that Anderson & Belnap had made a logic without semantics leaked out. Some thought it wondrous and rejoiced, that the One True Logic should make its appearance among us in the Form of Pure Syntax, unencumbered by all that set-theoretical garbage. Others said that relevant logics were Mere Syntax. Surveying the situation Routley, and quite independently Urquhart, found an explication of the key concept of relevant implication. Building on Routley [1972] , and with a little help from our friends - Dunn and Urquhart in particular, with thanks also due to Anderson, Belnap, V. Routley, and Woodruff - we use these insights to present here a formal semantics for the system R of relevant implication, and to provide it with proofs of consistency and completeness relative to that semantics." (pp. 199-200)

(...)

"Our introductory remarks conclude with the observation that, as a result of this paper and of Urquhart’s [1972] related work, the relevant logics now have a formal semantics; but relating such a semantics to the informal claim that a system of logic has captured one’s intuitions is ever a matter of private judgment, and that judgment we leave, as his rightful due, to the reader." (p. 204)

References

Routley, R., 1972, The Semantics of First-degree Entailment, forthcoming [Noûs, 6, 192, pp. 335-358].

Urquhart, A., 1972, Semantics for Relevant Logics, The Journal of Symbolic Logic, forthcoming [37, 1972, pp. 159-169].

37. ———. 1973. "An Undecidable Relevant Logic." Zeitschrift für mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik no. 19:389-397.

"The purpose of this paper is to exhibit a simple, undecidable sentential calculus in the ANDERSON-BELNAP family of relevant logics. We call this system Q+. We use the semantical methods of [1] and [3] to show that if Q+ is decidable then the word problem for semigroups is solvable, contradicting POST’s [2] and establishing our main result. Q+, we add, is not our favorite sentential logic, but it is closely

related to the viable ANDERSON-BELNAP system R of relevant implication. Accordingly we believe to it be the best approximation yet to HARROP's request in [4] for a philosophically interesting undecidable sentential logic." (p. 389)

References

[l] ROUTLEY R. and R. K. MEYER, The semantics of entailment I. In: H. LEBLANC (ed.). Truth, Syntax and Modality. North-Holland, Amsterdam 1973, 199-243.

[2] POST, E., Recursive unsolvability of a problem of Thue. J. Symb. Log. 12 (1947), 1-11.

[3] ROUTLEYR, and R. K. MEYER , Ts~em~a ntics of entailment 111. J. Philos. Log. 1 (1972).

[4] HARROPR,. , Scme structure results for propositional calculi. J. Symb. Log. 30 (1965).

38. Routley, Richard, and Routley, Val. 1973. "Ryle's Reductio ad Absurdum Argument." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 51:125-138.

"According to Gilbert Ryle (in his Collected Papers) a certain sort of reductio ad absurdum argument, distinct from Euclid's argument, has a central place in philosophical argument. This reductio ad absurdum argument is applied in the following way: if it can be shown that an apparently meaningful thesis, such as that the mind is in the body, implies indisputable cases of absurdity, then the thesis itself is absurd (nonsense). Thus the argument is of the form: If q follows from p and q is absurd then p is absurd,

i.e., using some symbols,

if p > q and -Sq then -Sp (1)

Throughout p > q reads '(that) p entails (that) q' and -Sq reads '(that) q is not significant (is absurd)'. But the notation may alternatively (by trading 'that' in for quasi-quotes) be read metalinguistically.

(...)

We want to argue here that there are grave difficulties in maintaining the correctness of the reductio argument (1), but that, fortunately for the project in The Concept of Mind, it is doubtful that the arguments used

there are in fact of this form or have to depend for their correctness on the correctness of (1). Once again the case for a special philosophical argument appears to fall down." (p. 125)

39. ———. 1973. "Rehabilitating Meinong's Theory of Objects." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 27:224-254.

"Meinong's theory of objects makes an important contribution to the logical theory and semantics of that large and indispensable part of discourse which is intensional. Despite this, his theory has been, and continues to be, the target for a barrage of supposedly devastating criticism and ridicule, which is without much parallel in modern philosophy, so that even to mention Meinong's theory gives rise to amusement, and practically any theory can be condemned by being associated with Meinong (e.g. 'shades of Meinong!' Ryle [1] p. 234; 'Meinong's jungle of subsistence,' 'the horrors of Meinong's jungle' [2] pp. 12, 32, 'the unspeakable Meinong', James cited in [3], p. 187. The effects of this have not merely been an historical injustice to a courageous and original thinker; it has also had the effect of blocking off, or at least inordinately delaying, a whole avenue of research, especially of non existential logic and of alternatives to the entrenched Russellian theory and its modern variations and simplifications. For the fact is that many of the more general objections which are supposed to destroy Meinong's theory would, if correct, be equally effective against non-existential logic, with which Meinong's theory shares important features. Our project of considering these objections has then wider importance than just that of clearing Meinong's name and rehabilitating his theory. In this paper we want to defend Meinong's theory of objects, or rather a modern logical reconstruction of a substantial part of it, against some of the common general objections which are taken to have completely discredited it. (Thus, e.g. Ryle [4]: 'Gegenstandtheorie itself is dead, buried and not going to be resurrected'). We shall argue that these criticisms do not stand up to examination, and that it is not Meinong but his critics who are involved in a naive and mistaken theory of meaning, the Reference Theory." (p. 224)

References

[î] G. Ryle, Collected Papers, Volume I: Critical Essays, Hutchinson, London (1971).

[2] W. Kneale, Probability and Induction, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1949).

[3] J - Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy, Duckworth, London (1957).

[4] G. Ryle, 'Intentionality Theory and the Nature of Thinking', Meinong-Kolloquium: To appear, edited by R. Haller, Graz (1972) [Rudolf Haller (ed.), Jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein. Beiträge zur Meinong-Forschung, Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1972]

40. ———. 1973. "Ideal Objects on a Meinongian Theory of Universals." In Proceedings of the XVth World Congress of Philosophy Varna; 17th to 22nd September, 1973, Varna, Bulgaria. Vol. 5, 581-584. Sofia: Sofia Press.

"The rejection of the Ontological Assumption (hereafter OA), according to which one cannot make true statement about what does not exist, together with the further step of admitting that non entities, i.e. items which do not exist, have determinate properties, makes it possible for a theory of items, such as Meinong’s theory of objects, to avoid the standard positions on universal and many of their difficulties.

(...)

The rejection of the OA does not give a Meinongian position a merely terminological advantage or claim to novelty, nor does the position differ merely terminologically from Platonism (as the official positions are inclined to claim). The distinction is not merely terminological because the question of what exists is not completely uncontrolled by conditions: one cannot say what one likes about what exists. For to exist is to be in the actual world, and the logical properties of entities are controlled by those of the actual world. Hence these conditions which derive from the logical features of the actual world: - first, what exists is consistent; second, what exists is complete or determinate; and third, what exists is unqualifiedly assumptible, e.g. if the x which fs exists then the x which fs does f. In short, in the case of an entity we do not require further guarantees about the suitability of its description: the guarantee is provided by its existence." (p. 581)

(...)

"Terms like ‘the Triangle’ and ‘triangularity’, and also mass terms, are irregular subjects. Accordingly there is nothing to be lost and much to be gained by admitting such subjects within the formal framework of quantification logic (see [3]). But once such subjects are admitted, and the domain of items in the semantical frame correspondingly widened, it is decidedly preferable to switch to a quantified significance logic to cope with the very large class of non significant sentences that result in typical applications of the logic. Then special postulates, each as part of (F), governing the new universal terms can be adjoined, but their exact form has still to be worked or argued out. Likewise a semantical rule for form terms, non trivial enough to verify the admissible half of requirement (F) (though not its converse, except under appropriately restricted conditions) remains, so far as we know, an open problem." (p. 584)

References

[3] L. Goddard and R. Routley, The Logic of Significance and Context, volume l, Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh (1972).

41. Routley, Richard. 1974. "A Rival Account of Deductibility and Logical Consequence." Reports on Mathematical Logic:41-52.

42. ———. 1974. "Another 'Fatal' Objection to Meinongian Object." Philosophical Studies no. 25:131-135.

"Professor Bernard Williams' arguments that "fatal difficulties beset the account of Meinongian 'pure objects'" ([1]), p. 55; my rearrangement) are, I try to show, simply invalid: the main argument effectively distributes a universal quantifier across a disjunction." (p. 131)

(...)

"Meinong's theory of incomplete objects is a going enterprise; but it has yet to be shown so far as I can see, if it can be shown at all, that statements about Universals can always be eliminated, preserving relevant properties, in favour of hypothetical statements about 'ordinary' objects.

All we have been offered by those who would eliminate 'systematically misleading' statements about Universals (e.g. Ryle [3]) are sample eliminations, which however exemplify schemes such as (Q), which break down if applied generally. And it would appear to be an outcome of Ackermann's demonstration of the unsolvability of the elimination problem for second-order predicate logic (see [4], p. 304) that a general elimination of polyadic Universals in the proposed style is impossible." (p. 135)

References

[1] J. Margolis (ed.), Fact and Existence, Blackwell, Oxford, 1969.

[2] A. Meinong, Über Moglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit, Barth, Leipzig, 1915.

[3] G. Ryle, Collected Papers, Volume 2: Collected Essays, Hutchinson, London, 1971.

[4] A. Church, Introduction to Mathematical Logic, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1956.

43. ———. 1974. "Semantical Analyses of Propositional Systems of Fitch and Nelson." Studia Logica no. 33:283-298.

44. Routley, Richard, and Meyer, Robert K. 1974. "Classical Relevant Logics II." Studia Logica no. 33:183-194.

"The purpose of this note is to extend the simplifications of [1] to the system R of relevent implication analyzed semantically in [2]. In [1], it was established that the system R +, which is the negation-free fragment of R, could be furnished with a negation ⅂ more classical in most respects than the preferred negation ─ of [3].

This was rather astonishing, since an important motivating condition on relevant logics had been absence of the classical paradoxes of implication (1). It turned out, however, that one could have the most objectionable of the paradoxes anyway, namely A & ─ A → B and A → B ∨ ⅂ B, without the least interference with the positive ideas." (p. 182)

(1) Other scholars, notably Urquhart and Gabbay, have thought independently about classical negation in relevant logics. But [1], so far as we know, contained the first demonstration that the system R + does not collapse under the admission of such negation." (p.183)

Referencs

[1] R.K. Meyer and R. Routley, Classical relevant logics (I), Studia Logica, 32 (1973), pp. 51-68.

[2] R. Routley and R.K. Meyer, The semantics of entailment (I), Truth, Syntax and Modality, edited by H. Leblanc, forthcoming, North-Holland, 1973.

[3] A.R. Anderson and N.D. Belnap, Jr., Entailment, vol. 1, forthcoming [Princeton: Princeton University Press 1976].

45. ———. 1974. "E is a Conservative Extension of Ei." Philosophia no. 4:223-249.

"The purpose of the present note is to solve the most recalcitrant of the conservative extension questions presented by Anderson for E in [1], by showing that E is a conservative extension of the system Ei, formulated as in [2]. The proof proceeds by reducing this question to the analogous question for the system NR introduced by the first author [Meyer](1) I in [3] and which was studied by us semantically in [4]. By showing that NR is a conservative extension of an appropriate system NRi,, we complete the proof. The result is of interest, as was noted in [1], in that Ei is under more firm control that E, having been Gentzenized and furnished with a decision procedure in [2].(2) The method of proof, too, is of some interest, the most important part of the argument (in II below) lying in the replacement of truth-functional &, V with their intensional analogues -, + in adapting the characterization of [4] of theory and of prime theory in an appropriate completeness proof. One concludes that the point of view of [4], and of related papers, is less dependent on properties of &, V - in particular, their general lattice properties - than one might have thought. Hopefully this will yield further insight into the semantics of E, which though in a sense completed in [6] and [7], remains too formally cluttered to be completely satisfactory.(3)." (p. 223)

(1) Bacon had the idea earlier, and independently. In principle it's due to Anderson and Belnap. And accordingly to Ackermann. And accordingly ... to Adam.

(2) We suppose, too, that Ei and NRi have appropriate finite model properties on the present semantics, given the result of [10] that Ri has the finite model property.

For E and NR and R, on the other hand, these questions are open.

(3) In contrast, e.g., to R.

References

[1] A.R. Anderson, "Some open problems concerning the system E of entailment," Acta Philosophical Fennica 16 (1963), 7-18.

[2] N.D. Belnap, Jr., and John R. Wallace, "A decision procedure for the system Ei of entailment with negation," Zeitschrift fur mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik 11 (1965), 277-89.

[31 R.K. Meyer, "Entailment and relevant implication," Logique et Analyse 11 (1968), 472-9.

[41 R. Routley and R.K. Meyer, "The semantics of entailment II" Journal of Philosophical Logic 1 (1972), 53-73.

[51 A.R. Anderson, and N.D. Belnap, Jr., Entailment, Princeton, 1974.

[6] R. Routley and R.K. Meyer, "The semantics of entailment IV," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, forthcoming [Appendix 1 to Relevant Logics and their Rivals. Vol. 1: The Basic Philosophical and Semantical Theory, (1982), pp. 407-424]

[7] Kit Fine, "Models for entailment," forthcoming [Journal of Philosophical Logic, 3, 1974, pp. 347-372]

46. Routley, Richard, Meyer, Robert K., and Goddard, Lenn. 1974. "Choice and Descriptions in Enriched Intensional languages — I." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 3:291-316.

Reprinted in: Edgar Morscher, Johannes Czermak, Paul Weingartner (eds.). Problems in Logic and Ontology, Graz: Akademische Druk-u Verlaganstalt 1977, pp. 147-172.

"Many intensional logicians have not abandoned, as unrealisable, the dream of something like Leibniz’s characteristica universalis, of an almost universal logical language, with simple components, and with a

precise and acceptable semantics, within which the whole of (English) discourse can be expressed, and whose semantics provides theories of truth, consequence and meaning for the discourse expressed. Admittedly things did seem rather desperate when, after the initial successes of the pioneering days of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Camap’s The Logical Syntax of Language had faded, it was shown that the theories of these texts fail at point after point. However, most of the objections which were taken as winning the day against these theories - for example the inability of the theories to cope at all adequately with intensional discourse, with context dependence, with non-significance and other discourse failures - are now seen to rest on the paucity of the logical, and especially semantical, equipment then available, not in inherent limits to logic and semantical analysis.(1) make the dream a little more real then, both the logical syntax and the semantical framework will have to be much enriched.(2)

Realising the dream involves however a very ambitious program. We don't pretend to know whether it can be brought off, or how exactly.

But we do believe that if the program is to stand a chance of succeeding its logical theory will have to include enrichments like those we go on to discuss. These enrichments in turn however lead to many new problems, several of them philosophical (and the regress in philosophical problems set up by technical solutions to earlier philosophical problems may well be vicious). We opt, in later sections of the paper, to concentrate on one important set of these problems, one which has a special bearing on the shape the grand semantics should take, the general admission of descriptions into intensional discourse, and of a choice descriptor in particular." (p. 291)

(1) This point is elaborated in [1], Chapter 4.

(2) Ideally these developments would be carried out in combination since, as Montague has emphasized (e.g. [2] p. 212), ‘there will often be many ways of syntactically generating a given set of sentences, but only a few of them have semantic relevance’. Ideally - but there is a danger, in the current rudimentary state of semantical and context theory, that important notions, as well as discourse that cannot be properly digested by the theory, will be inadequately or roughly treated, if investigated at all.

References

[1] L. Goddard and R. Routley, The Logic of Significance and Context Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh, 1973.

[2] R. Montague, ‘English as a Formal Language’ in Linguagi nella società e nella tecnica (edited B. Visentini ef al., Edizioni di Communità, Milan, 1970, pp. 189-223. [Reprinted in R. H. Tomason (ed.), Formal Philosophy: Selected Papers of Richard Montague, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974. pp. 188-221]

47. Routley, Richard, and Routley, Val. 1974. "Degree of Conclusiveness of Arguments, and a new Probability Logic (Abstract)." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 39:207.

48. ———. 1974. "The Semantics of Belief and the Laws of Thought and Myth (Abstract)." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 39:206-207.

49. ———. 1974. "Intensional Quantification and Choice in Intensional Logics (Abstract)." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 39:207.

50. Routley, Richard. 1975. "Universal Semantics?" Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 4:327-356.

"It is a vogue idea that semantical analyses of natural languages such as English can be accomplished within the framework of a λ-categorial or type-theoretical language,(1) or of a language which can be included in such a λ-categorial language (e.g. Montague [7], Lewis [ 6], Parsons [8], Tichy [17], Cresswell[3]).

The leading assumption are (1) that the surface structure or grammar of a given language can be transformed, or translated, by a series of reductions into a canonical form, commonly called 'deep structure', which is appropriately λ-categorial or as a special case thereof, categorial), and (2) that the semantic, which it is enough of course to furnish for the deep structure, is (some complication of) a two-valued possible worlds semantics. The assumed procedures is exhibited in a rudimentary way in the pedagogical practice of transforming English arguments into quantified modal logic as a preliminary to assessing validity, etc." (p. 327)

References

[3] M.J. Cresswell, Logics and Languages, Methuen, London, 1973.

[6] D. Lewis, 'General Semantics, Synthese 22 (1970) 18-67; reprinted in Semantics of Natural Language (ed. by D. Davidson and G. Harman), p,p. 169-218.

[7] R. Montague, 'Universal Grammar', Theoria, 36 (1970) 373-398.

[8] T. Parsons, 'A Semantics for English', unpublished draft (1972).

[17] P. Tichy, 'An Approach to Intentional Analysis', Noûs 5 (1971) 273-297.

51. ———. 1975. "The Role of Inconsistent and Incomplete Theories in the Logic of Belief." Communication and Cognition no. 8:185-235.

52. ———. 1975. "Review of Eight Articles in English and German by Riddler, by Ohnishi, and by Matsumoto, on Gentzen Methods in Modal Logic." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 40:97-98.

53. Routley, Richard, and Meyer, Robert K. 1975. "Towards a General Semantical Theory of Implication and Conditionals. I. Systems with Normal Conjunction and Disjunction and Aberrant and Normal Negations." Reports on Mathematical Logic no. 19:67-90.

54. Routley, Richard. 1976. "The Semantical Metamorphosis of Metaphysics." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 54:187-205.

"Much fresh light is cast on traditional metaphysical proposals, and on associated philosophical programmes designed to indicate or explain these proposals, by recent rapid advances in the areas of discourse which succumb to semantical analysis. Indeed, through semantical analysis various pervasive metaphysical proposals--which lie behind and thus propel modern philosophical programmes--can be conclusively demonstrated in appropriately qualified form, and the strength, limitations, and inadequacies of the more traditional forms can be revealed." (p. 187)

(...)

"The main thesis to be argued on this point is simply that many philosophically influential reductive positions, when generously construed, furnish semantical analyses whose correctness can be demonstratively

established. In short, the wide reductions, taken as semantic analyses, are necessarily true, and thus reconcilable with transcendental positions.

Where this is so the reductions furnished are not paradoxical, or wrong, but demonstrably correct, and not trivial, though sometimes virtually platitudinous. So results the promised synthesis.

What has generally happened, however, is that the reductions adopted are intended to work with a narrower reduction base which fits in with some cherished programme, such as empiricism. Under this contraction

of the base, the reductions cease to be demonstrable, and succumb to formal counter-examples and their more familiar intuitive analogues; and it is under these narrow construals that the reductions are paradoxical in Wisdom's sense.[*] But one important reason why the reductions are so appealing, a reason which Wisdom neglects, is that they rely on widened, correct, versions of the reductions where further situations are admitted into the analysis." (p. 193)

[*] See John Wisdom, Paradox and Discovery, Oxford Blackwell, 1965.

55. ———. 1976. "The Durability of Impossible Objects." Inquiry no. 19:247-250.

See the Reply by Karel Lambert (pp. 251-253).

"Meinong's theory of impossible objects, though an enduring contribution to semantics, has been subject to much misrepresentation and to repeated criticism, much of it based on Russell's criticism of the theory. Lambert, in an unusually sympathetic discussion of Meinong's theory argues that:

Russell's well-known argument fails. However, it is possible to augment Russell's argument against Meinong with sound Russellian principles in such a way that it presents at least a strong inclining reason against

Meinong's theory of impossible objects.(1)

The object of this note is to show that Lambert's 'augmentation of Russell's argument to show that there are at any rate no impossible objects' (p. 310) fails, and fails for essentially the reasons that Russell's well-known argument fails." (p. 247)

(1) K. Lambert, 'Impossible Objects', Inquiry, 17 (1974), pp. 303-14; quotation from abstract, p. 303. All page references in the text are to this article.

56. Routley, Richard, and Meyer, Robert K. 1976. "Dialectical Logic, Classical Logic and the Consistency of the World." Studies in Soviet Thought no. 16:1-25.

Italian Translation: "Logica Dialettica, Logica Classica e Non-Contraddittorietà del Mondo", in Diego Marconi (a cura di), La formalizzazione della dialettica, Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier 1979, pp. 324-353.

"Dialectical logic, especially Soviet logic, has customarily received sharp and summary treatment at the hands of Western critics.

(...)

To date classical logic - which is Western mainstream logic - has been strongly on the offensive in the ideological logical warfare between East and West, with many supporters in fact among the Soviets, and dialectical logic has been very much on the defensive. The object of this paper is to try to upset this ideological power structure by furnishing dialectical logic with the framework at least of a viable semantics, and at the same time to shatter the imperviousness of mainstream Western logic, and thereby to assist the cause of that newer, less orthodox and so far minor, logical theory - relevance logic.

It will emerge that the differences between the orthodox Western and Soviet positions cannot be satisfactorily represented as logic, or formal or classical logic, on the one side, and anti-logic or the rejection of formal logic on the other; each position can furnish viable, equally formal, but competing logical theories, and the differences between these positions will come down to philosophical differences about such highly debatable and empirically untestable matters as the consistency of the world." (p. 1)

57. ———. 1976. "Every Sentential Logic has a Two-Valued Worlds Semantics." Logique et Analyse no. 19:345-365.

"No one anywhere will design a sentential logic without a quite familiar kind of semantics, and no one can now scorn any such logic just because it lacks a semantics. For just as every sentential logic has a characteristic Lindenbaum algebra, so, and less trivially, every such logic has a bivalent relational (and also an operational) semantics." (p. 345)

(...)

"But even if the models the method generates are sometimes skew, or even inconsistent, the method promises a big payoff not only in logic, but also for linguistics and philosophy. This payoff will be increased still further when the methods are extended to logics and languages far richer than sentential ones, as they can be (see [8]). Indeed the method presented below already suffices for all zero-order logics under a truth-valued interpretation; but for an objectual semantics further features have to be included in the models (see [10]). We conjecture that every logic has a two-valued worlds semantics ; but there remain some conspicuous problems in the way of proving such a result, e.g. the problem of characterising logics and logical languages generally. The logical payoff comes through the theories and results semantical analyses of logics and languages open up, for example, theories of truth, reference, meaning and consequence, and, less generally, results such as compactness, separation and decidability. The philosophical and linguistic pay-off derives from this logical payoff: it is that any area of language that can be supplied with an exact logical syntax and set of principles can automatically be furnished with an extensional semantics, and so provided with associated logical theories of truth, meaning, consequence and so on. If, for example, the theory of propositional attitudes or notions such as belief or perception have a logic, or a structure, then they have a worlds semantics." (p. 347)

References

[8] R. Routley, «Universal Semantics?» Journal of Philosophical Logic, 4 (1975), 327-356.

[10] R. Routley, «General model theory I. Every quantificational logic is complete». [typescript, Canberra 1974]

58. Routley, Richard, and Montgomery, Hugh. 1976. "Algebraic Semantics for S2° and Necessitated Extensions." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 17:44-58.

"Algebraic techniques are used to show that Feys' system S2°(cf. [1]) and certain necessitated extensions of S2°, such as Lewis' systems S2 and S3, have the finite model property, and accordingly are decidable.

Representation theorems are then used to establish set-theoretical semantics for the modal systems studied. Where the results obtained are not new they improve on earlier results (such as those of Lemmon in [3]) in two respects; first they provide direct algebraic treatments of the systems, and second they furnish better semantical results (see the discussion of theorem J for S2). The techniques used however follow those of McKinsey (in [4]) and Lemmon (in [2] and [3]). Since it is now known that these techniques do not work for all necessitated extensions of S2°, a somewhat piecemeal approach is inevitable. Weak results are also obtained for Feys' system Sl° and Lewis' system SI (for details of these systems see [1])." (p. 44)

References

[1] Feys, R., Modal Logics, E. Nauwelaerts, Louvain (1965).

[2] Lemmon, E. J., "Algebraic semantics for modal logics I," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 31 (1966), pp. 46-65.

[3) Lemmon, E. J., "Algebraic semantics for modal logics II," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 31 (1966), pp. 191-218.

[4] McKinsey, J. J. C., "A solution of the decision problem for the Lewis systems S2 and S4, with an application to topology," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 6 (1941), pp. 117-134.

59. Routley, Richard. 1977. "Meaning as Semantical Superstructure: A Universal Theory of Meaning, Truth and Denotation?" Philosophica (Belgium) no. 19:33-67.

"It is one thing to give a general theory of or semantics for truth, or even for truth and significance, and thereby provide for the main ingredients of a full theory of referential (or denotation style) notions. It is quite another, so it is commonly enough claimed (following Quine [1]), to characterise any of the notions of the full theory of meaning - synonymy, sense, entailment, and so forth. The extent to which this popular dogma - one of the newer dogmas of empiricism - is correct, is an issue even within empiricist semantics." (p. 33)

(...)

"Because intensional discourse has to be encompassed in the theory of truth, the general semantical framework of a satisfactory theory has to include worlds far beyond the actual, or the like. But in including these - especially impossible worlds, which are essential for example, for the semantical analysis of propositional attitudes such as belief (see [14]) - it far exceeds what is empirically admissible. By including these

worlds, however, the full theory of truth offers a framework for definitions of central intensional notions, such as meaning: but a less extensive modelling, with worlds restricted to the actual or to those of modal logics, would not suffice." (p. 36)

References

[1] W.V. Quine, From a Logical Point of View, Second revised edition, Harvard University Press, 1961.

[14] R. and V. Routley, 'The role of inconsistent and incomplete theories in the logic of belief', Communication and Cognition, 8 (1975), 185-235.

60. ———. 1977. "Welding Semantics for Weak Strict Modal Logics into the General Framework of Modal Logic Semantics." Zeitschrift für mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik no. 23:497-510.

"Weak strict modal logics, strict modal logics which are weaker than systems which contain the rule of necessitation (that where A is a theorem so is its necessitation, □A), form an important, but somewhat neglected and under-rated, class of modal logics. They have, however, attractive semantics which form an integral part of general semantics for modal logics. A sentential modal logic is a system which includes as well as classical sentential logic SL-taken to hold at every world-at least one oneplace non-truth-functional connective, □ say. Semantics for sentential modal logics are a special case of the universal semantics of [4], with the rules for classical connectives reducing to classical evaluation rules (such as Iii) and Iiii) below). With just one further modelling condition, a natural semantics for weak strict modal systems emerges. Semantics for such systems are, of course, far from uniquely determined." p. 497)

References

[4] ROUTLEY, R., and R. K. MEYER, Every sentential logic has a two valued words semantics. Logique et Analyse 19 (1976), 174-194.

61. ———. 1977. "Choice and Descriptions in Enriched Intensional languages II." In Problems in Logic and Ontology, edited by Morscher, Edgar, Czermak, Johannes and Weingartner, Paul, 173-204. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

62. ———. 1977. "Choice and Descriptions in Enriched Intensional languages III." In Problems in Logic and Ontology, edited by Morscher, Edgar, Czermak, Johannes and Weingartner, Paul, 205-222. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

63. ———. 1977. "Postscript: Some Setbacks on the Choice and Descriptions Adventure." In Problems in Logic and Ontology, edited by Morscher, Edgar, Czermak, Johannes and Weingartner, Paul, 223-227. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt.

64. ———. 1977. "Ultralogic as Universal?" Relevance Logic Newsletter no. 2:50-90 and 138-175.

Reprinted in: R. Routley, Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond, (1980) pp. 892-962 and in R. Routley, V. Routley, Ultralogic as Universal? The Sylvan Jungle — Volume 4 with notes and commentaries (2019).

65. Routley, Richard, and Meyer, Robert K. 1977. "Towards a General Semantical Theory of Implication and Conditionals II: Improved Negation Theory and Propositional Identity." Reports on Mathematical Logic no. 21:47-62.

66. ———. 1977. "Extensional Reduction I." The Monist no. 60:355-369.

"Philosophers of modern logic have cherished no project more dearly than that of extensional reduction. Despite occasional protests that this project was ill-conceived from the start, or that it fails to account for important areas of experience and thought, the extensionalist mills have been grinding away anyhow. Their grinding has brought with it a number of important technical successes, replete with philosophical claims that light has finally been shed on areas hitherto buried in incomprehensible darkness.

There has, frankly, always been something self-serving about these claims. A man who understands no language but French will find nothing comprehensible until it has been translated into French. This does not mean, surely, that Shakespeare reads better in French than in English. It means rather that those who are unwilling to make the effort to comprehend Shakespeare in his native linguistic habitat will have to make do with what can be preserved of him in a foreign language.

Nevertheless, the fruits of the project have been impressive. Nor is there any doubt that some areas?e.g., Lewis-style modal logics?have been rendered, if not necessarily more intelligible, at least simpler and closer to what one took to be an underlying philosophical motivation?e.g., by Kripke-style possible world analysis.

So, in short, it seems good to us to have another look at the entire program of extensional reduction. We shall ask in particular whether successful extensional reduction should be taken as a touchstone of good semantical analysis. Relevant to this question will be certain technical results to be newly presented here." (p. 355)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography of the logical works of Richard Sylvan [né Routley] (1978-1988)

Bibliography

1. Routley, Richard. 1978. "Semantics for Connexive Logics I." Studia Logica no. 37:393-412.

"According to the third view in the ancient debate on the nature of conditionals,[*] a sound conditional requires a connexion between antecedent and consequent. Both material implication (the first ancient view} and

strict implication (the second ancient view) were rejected by the third view as satisfactory accounts of the conditional relation because they deliver conditionals such as those of the paradoxes of implication which

are unsound, presumably on the ground that they fail to meet the requirement of connexion. We do not know what conditionals were said to meet this requirement, other than Identity, A → A (a principle that was explicitly rejected under the fourth ancient view).

The third ancient view has reappeared in the modern debate as to the nature of entailment, implication and conditionality, where the connexion requirement is commonly imposed as a requirement of meaning

or content connexion between antecedent and consequent of valid implications. This requirement coincides with the broad requirement of relevance: for if antecedent and consequent enjoy a meaning connexion then they are relevant in meaning to one another, and if they are relevant in meaning to one another then they have through the relevance relation a connexion in meaning." (p. 393)

(...)

"Although the semantical analysis resolves many problems concerning connexive logics and provides new means of attacking other problems, it leaves many problems - perhaps too many - open." (p. 410)

[*] Note added: See Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Scepticism, edited by Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 200, II, 110–11 (pp. 95-96).

2. ———. 1978. "An Inadequacy in Kripke-Semantics for Intuitionistic Quantificational Logic." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 7:61-67.

"The semantics for intuitionistic quantificational logic, that have come to be known as Kripke-semantics (see, e.g., [2], p. 246) after the influential presentation of Kripke [1], turn out to be unsound. Since a large body of theory concerning intuitionistic logics and mathematics is now based on these semantics the matter is of more than merely local significance.

Although the points made apply equally against many other presentations of Kripke-semantics for intuitionist logic (e.g. those of Thomason [3], Aczel [4], Gabbay [5] and elsewhere), it is convenient to focus on Kripke [1], and to borrow his terminology and notation. Kripke in turn adopts (see [1], p. 93) the formulation of intuitionistic predicate logic of Kleene [6], and it is advantageous to follow suit. It is worth noting that Kleene's formulation allows both for free variables and for constants (and so also do the formulations adopted by some others: e.g. Thomason [3], p. 1 and Aczel [4], p. 2)." (p. 61)

References

[1] S. A. Kripke, Semantical analysis of intuitionistic logic I, [in:] Formal Systems and Recursive Functions (edited by J. N. Crossley and M. A. E. Dummett), North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1965, pp. 92-130.

[2] A. A. Fraenkel, Y. Bar-Hillel and A. Levy, Foundations of Set Theory, Second Revised Edition, North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1973.

[3] R. H. Thomason, On the strong semantical completeness of the intuitionistic predicate calculus, Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 33 (1968), pp. 1-7.

[4] P. H. G. Aczel, Saturated intuitionistic theories, [in:] Contributions to Mathematical Logic, Proceedings of the Logic Colloquium, Hanover, 1966 (edited by H. A. Schmidt, K. Schütte and H. J. Thiele), North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1968, pp. 1-11.

[5] D. M. Gabbay, On 2nd order intuitionistic propositional calculus with full comprehension, Archiv für mathematische Logik und Grundlagenforschung, vol. 16 (1975), pp. 177-186.

Gabbay's earlier papers on the representative decidability and undecidability of various intuitionistic theories are cited in this paper.

3. ———. 1978. "Choice of Logical Foundations: Ultramodal Logic and Dialectical Foundations (Abstract)." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 43:363-364.

4. ———. 1978. "Constant Domain Semantics for Quantified Non-Normal Modal Logics and for Certain Quantified Quasi-Entailment Logics." Reports on Mathematical Logic no. 10:103-121.

5. ———. 1978. ""Dialectical Set Theory (Abstract)." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 43:363.

6. ———. 1978. "Lewis' Calculus of Ordinary Inference (as amended 1920 and 1977)." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 7:4-11.

"In his original presentation of The System of Strict Implication ([1], chapter V) Lewis considers a `partial system contained in Strict Implication' to which he believes some interest attaches.

If our aim be to create a workable calculus of deductive inference, we shall need to retain the relation of logical product, p & q, but material implication, p ⊃ q, and probably also material sum, p ∨ q, may be rejected as not suffciently useful to be worth complicating the system with. The ideas of possibility and impossibility also are unnecessary complications. Such a system may be called the Calculus of Ordinary Inference ([1], p. 318; with modern notation for connectives." (p. 4)

References

[1] C. I. Lewis, A Survey of Symbolic Logic, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1918.

7. ———. 1978. "Ultramodal Logic as Universal (Abstract)." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 43:355-356.

8. Routley, Richard, and Loparić, Andréa. 1978. "Semantical Analysis of Arruda da Costa P Systems and Adjacent Non-Replacement Relevant Systems." Studia Logica no. 37:301-320.

"Systems in the vicinity of the P systems, first formulated by Arruda and da Costa [1] (1) are logically important, for several reasons. Firstly, it is evident that a naive set theory with an unrestricted comprehension axiom, designed with certain of these systems as underlying logic, will prove to be a non-trivial though inconsistent theory (2). Thus, as remarked in effect in [1], these systems offer important initial bases on which to endeavour to erect mathematically adequate paraconsistent set theories." (p. 301)

(1) Da Costa's use of P systems, and also of other systems than his C systems, was quite unfairly neglected in [8], where it was suggested that da Costa, though having the fine vision of a general theory of inconsistent or (as they are now called) paraconsistent systems, had concentrated on much too narrow a range of systems.

But a theory of sufficient generality of paraconsistent systems -- as distinct from the investigation of just a few systems of the class -- has yet to be worked out.

(2) Inconsistency is readily established by paradox arguments, e.g. by the standard argument for the Russell paradox. The intuitive argument which makes non-triviality evident is as follows: - - It is known from [2] that an extensional comprehension axiom can be added to quantified P systems without trivialising them, that is one can non-trivially adjoin a comprehension axiom limited only by the requirement that set determining wff contain but extensional connectives and quantffiers, i.e. in this context, contain no occurrences of the implicational connective →. But, as the semantics will show in the case of appropriate P systems such as BH, no reduction of nested implication can be effected in these P systems; thus even if implicational connectives should occur in set determining wff they cannot be utilised, they are effectively locked away in the set determining wff. Hence, intuitively at least, an unrestricted comprehension axiom can be added to appropriate P systems without trivializing them.

A proper demonstration of the non-triviality of naive set theory based on appropriate P systems can, it appears, be obtained enlarging on the persistence methods of [2], by adding world by world variation to the modelling that establishes the non-triviality of extensional dialectical set theory. Such a proof is made easier by the simplicity, surprising in view of [3], of the semantics for appropriate P systems. Da Costa and

Arruda have apparently devised a different demonstration of the non-triviality of P with unrestricted comprehension.

References

[1] A. I. ARRUDA and N. C. A. DA COSTA, O paradoxo de Vurry-Moh-Shaw-Kwei, Boletim da Sociedade de Matemática de São Paulo, vol. 18 (1963).

[2] R. T. BRADY and R. ROUTLEY, The non-triviality of extensional dialectical set theory, to appear. [G. Priest, R. Routley, & J. Norman (Eds.), Paraconsistent Logic, essays on the Inconsistent, Munich: Philosophia Verlag 1989, pp. 415–436.]

[3] R. ROUTLEY and R. K. MEYEIR, Towards a general theory of implication and conditionals II, Reports on Mathematical Logic, vol. 9 (1977), pp. 47-62.

[8] R. ROUTLEY and R. K. MEYER, Dialectical logic, classical logic, and the consistency of the world, Studies in Soviet Thought, vol. 16 (1976), pp. 1-25.

9. Routley, Richard. 1979. "The Theory of Objects as Commonsense." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 9:1-22.

"It is beginning to be appreciated that the Meinong of the mainstream philosophical literature is a mythological figure, that Meinong's philosophy has in fact been presented in an unfair fashion (perhaps even by largely sympathetic expositors such as Findlay [2]), and that the theory of objects in particular has been either widely misunderstood or else deliberately misrepresented. What has not been much appreciated is that Meinong's theory of objects represents an important alternative to standard (Russellian) logical theory.(1) Whereas the entrenched theory is both reductionist and logico-empiricist in spirit, the alternative is nonreductionist, antiverificationist, and commonsense. Since the theory of objects has often - there are, however, important exceptions - been taken to be the very antithesis of commonsense, there is some explaining to be done. The problems are compounded by the fact that it is not at all easy to say what commonsense amounts to, and even more difficult to show that a philosophical theory is a commonsense one." (p. 1)

(1) There need be no apology for calling modem, standard, orthodox, "nondeviant", "classical" logic 'Russellian'. The orthodox logic of the textbooks consists essentially of variations and improvements ( or sometimes the reverse) on the logical theory devised in large measure by Russell, building on the work of Peano and others, and worked out in collaboration with Whitehead in Principia Mathematica [5]. Certainly there have been important additions by Hilbert, Wittgenstein, Tarski, Gentzen and others but these do not affect the general claim. In these terms influential modem logical theories, such as those of Quine

[15], are but variations on a theme of Russell's. And they share the reductionist empiricist assumptions of Russell's logical theory.

References

[2] J.N. Findlay, Meinong's Theory of Objects and Values, Second edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963.

[5] A.N. Whitehead and B. Russell, Principia Mathematica, Second edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1950.

[15] W.V. Quine, From a Logical Point of View, Second edition, revised, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1961.

10. ———. 1979. "Some Bad Arguments for and Against Conventionalism." International Logic Review no. 10:84-90.

11. ———. 1979. "Dialectical Logic, Semantics, and Metamathematics." Erkenntnis no. 14:301-331.

"As with the thesis that God exists, so with the Consistency Hypothesis that the world is consistent, there are three main positions that can be taken; namely, a theistic or classical position which accepts the hypothesis, an agnostic or relevant position which suspends judgement, and an atheistic or dialectical position which rejects the hypothesis. (1) Here the world is Wittgenstein's world, the real or actual world of intensional semantics, that is the class T of all truths, and the Consistency Hypothesis, CH, is the thesis that T is simply consistent, that it contains no contradictory pairs of the form A and ~ A, where ~ A is the negation of A. T, whether consistent or not, by no means exhausts the class of statements; for it is an empirical truth that the world is not trivial, that not all statements are true. Neither relevantly nor dialectically, however, does inconsistency lead to triviality; to assume, as classically, that it does is to assume the matter at issue, for the assumption is tantamount to CH (as [1]) explains)." (p. 301)

(...)

"The remainder of this paper endeavours to contribute something further to the discernment of such a dialectical theory, to circumscribing its underlying static logic and furnishing its semantics, to establishing its

adequacy, and to outlining certain of its applications in mathematical and foundational studies." (pp. 302-303)

(1) 1 Whereas in [1] adoption of the relevant position was argued for as the rational course of action, in [3] and [11] the dialectical position is defended. The case for the shift from the agnosticism of 1973-1974 to atheism is explained in [3]. [1] and [11] are desirable background reading for the present paper.

References

[1] Routley, R., and Meyer, R. K., 'Dialectical logic, classical logic, and the consistency of the world', Studies in Soviet Thought 16 (1976), 1-25.

[3] Routley, R., Routley, V., and Meyer, R. K., Relevant Logics and Their Rivals. Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 1980.

[11] Routley, R., Ultralogic as Universal, in the Relevance Logic Newsletter, 2 (1977), 50-90 and 138-175.

12. ———. 1979. "Alternative Semantics for Quantified First Degree Relevant Logic." Studia Logica no. 38:211-231.

Abstract: "A system FDQ of first degree entailment with quantification, extending classical quantification logic Q by an entailment connective, is axiomatised, and the choice of axioms defended and also, from another viewpoint, criticized. The system proves to be the equivalent to the first degree part of the quantified entailment system EQ studied by Anderson and Belnap; accordingly the semantics furnished are alternative to those provided for the first degree of EQ by Belnap. a worlds semantics for FDQ is presented, and the soundness and completeness of FDQ proved, the main work of the paper going into the proof of completeness. The adequacy result is applied to yield, as well as the usual corollaries, weak relevance of FDQ and the fact that FDQ is the common first degree of a wide variety of (constant domain) quantified relevant logics. Finally much unfinished business at the first degree is discussed."

References

Alan R. Anderson, Nuel D. Belnap, Entailment: The Logic of Relevance and Neccessity, Vol. I, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.

13. ———. 1979. "The Semantical Structure of Fictional Discourse." Poetics no. 8:3-30.

"An attempt is made to account for the evident truths supplied by fictional discourse, and to vindicate the ordinary naive theory of fictions, within the single framework of universal semantics and the theory of objects. The theory offered is an elaboration of a contextual theory (which tits easily into universal semantics) according to which the context supplies base-shifting functions which alter the world where truth is assessed. The elaboration consists, firstly, of expansion of the theory of contexts to meet various objections, and, secondly, of deployment of the theory of objects to account for truths concerning fictional objects in non-fictional contexts (as regards the second, various options open on the contextual theory are sketched; but an important option the author now prefers is omitted).

An account is given of fiction and its distinctive semantical features. A work of fiction is regarded as portraying part of a world, so a work of fiction is semantically like a theory. Since there is little restriction on the worlds of fiction, any modal theory of fiction is bound to be inadequate; there is in fact no general uniform logic of fiction. (This corresponds to the unrestricted imagination thesis, fundamental to a comprehensive theory of fiction, to the effect that there are no restrictions on what is imaginable.) Also criticised and rejected are other theories of fiction such as elliptical and dimensional theories.

Not only the statements of fiction but the objects of fiction are considered. The worst logical difficulties concerning the objects of fiction are resolved, so it is argued, by adopting a neutral quantificational framework and by sharply qualifying the Leibniz identity principle.

That the same object, e.g. London, occurs in a given fictional world as in the actual world is a matter of qualified author say so; transworld identity is here stipulative. The final points concern the incompleteness and fictionality of the theory developed." (p. 3)

14. Routley, Richard, and Griffin, Nicholas. 1979. "Towards a Logic of Relative Identity." Loguique et Analyse no. 22:65-83.

"Identity statements in natural language come in two syntactic varieties. Some are of the form 'a is the same as b' or 'a is identical with b' and may be symbolized, after the manner of classical identity theory, as 'a = b'. These will be called absolute identity statements. Others have the form 'a is the same Ф as b' where 'Ф' is some general noun. Statements of this form will be called relative identity statements and will be formalized (following Wiggins [1], p. 2) as 'a =Ф b'. In such statements 'Ф' is called the covering concept of the identity statement." (p. 65)

(...)

"Two theses are of central concern in considering relative identity. The first is the claim (R) that two items may be the same with respect to one general noun but distinct with respect to another; the second is the claim (D) that absolute identity statements are semantically incomplete." (p. 66)

(...)

"In this paper we propose (roughly in order of increasing plausibility) a variety of logics for relative identity theories of the first and second types, that is, theories with both (D) and (R) and theories with (R) but not (D). In doing this we refute two claims about relative identity which have gained currency: firstly, the claim made by Nelson [1] and Ayers [1] that identity theories in which (R) is satisfiable are incoherent; secondly, the claim, implied by Wiggins [1], p. 27, that (R) entails (D). In the case of each theory proposed, the satisfiability of (R) can be demonstrated by adding to the theory appropriate constants which can be used to form an example of (R)." (p. 67)

References

Ayers, Michael R. [1], 'Individuals Without Sortals', Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 4 (1974), pp. 113-148.

Nelson, Jack [1], 'Relative Identity', Noûs, 4 (1970), pp. 241-260.

Wiggins, David [1], Identity and Spatio-Temporal Continuity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967).

15. Routley, Richard, Meyer, Robert K., and Dunn, Jon Michael. 1979. "Curry's Paradox." Analysis no. 39:124-128.

"In short, the conclusion of our examination of Curry's paradox is discouraging in the extreme for the hopeful naive set theorist. One sought to avoid the problems posed by Russell by weakening logic, in order to save the abstraction principle. We were willing to give up the usual aversion to contradiction. We faced with equanimity the sacrifice of the deduction theorem. To continue with the project, a minimal, decent respect even for modus ponens must be given up as well.

We have always held that, in these permissive days, no rule is sacrosanct--except modus ponens. And one may, of course, still cleave to the rule of modus ponens without the modus ponens axiom; indeed, Routley

has conjectured that a naive set theory based on a very weak relevant logic is absolutely consistent. One might look for other escapes, too; e.g., the role of the '⟷' in the abstraction principle above might be

reexamined. But the conclusion is none the less clear; unless we are prepared to give up a great deal of logic--not only of classical logic but of intuitionist and even relevant logic as well-a naive set theory is

untenable." (p. 128)

16. Routley, Richard, and Routley, Val. 1979. "The (Logical) Importance of not Existing." Dialogue no. 18:129-165.

"An adequate theory of meaning and truth is semantically important. Such a theory necessarily includes in its analysis nonentities, items that do not exist. So what is semantically, and hence logically, important is bound to include nonentities. In virtue of the modifier 'semantically', the first premiss is analytic (what is semantically important may not be important), and it is comparatively uncontroversial. By contrast the second premise of the syllogism, which we want to stick to, is decidedly controversial. So too is the thesis (advanced in [2] and [3] and in Chisholm [15]) - which implies the inadequacy of classical logical theories - that there are a great many natural language statements, statements an adequate theory should be able to treat of, which cannot be analysed logically, and semantically, without the equivalent of an appeal to nonentities. Defence of the thesis has been somewhat piecemeal, taking the form that all the theories so far offered which try to dispense with nonentities break down or run into insuperable difficulties, difficulties which are readily surmounted given appropriate talk about nonentities. In what follows we shall outline more general sorts of argument for the thesis, designed to show that no theory which dispenses with nonentities as objects of discourse can do justice to the data.

The thesis of the inadequacy of classical logical theory, basically one of Meinong's theses expanded and dressed up in more modern attire, has not exactly won widespread acclaim, but it has gained some notoriety and has encountered much opposition.

Much of what follows is an attempt to counter some of that opposition; to reinforce the claim that classical theories break down irreparably over the analysis of intensional discourse concerning nonentities; to meet the objection that objectual semantics for Meinongian-style theories of objects have themselves serious flaws; to refute the view that Meinongian theories have no philosophical advantages, only drawbacks; and to show, by way of illustration of the importance of nonentities in solving traditional philosophical problems, how the theory of objects, and only such a theory, can resolve many problems in epistemology, problems in fact generated by the classical theory." (pp. 129-130)

References

[2] R. and V. Routley, 'Rehabilitating Meinong's theory of objects', Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 27 (1973), 224-54.

[3] R. Routley, 'Exploring Meinong's Jungle, I and II', Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic (forthcoming) [not published]. An expanded version will appear as Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond, Rss, Australian National University, 1979. [1980]

[15] R.M. Chisholm, 'Beyond being and nonbeing', Philosophical Studies, 24 (I973)> 245-57; also in Jenseits von Sein and Nichtsein (edited R. Haller), Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, Graz, 1972.

17. Routley, Richard. 1980. Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond. An Investigation of Noneism and the Theory of Items Canberra: Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.

Revised edition in four volumes 2018-2020.

Contents: Preface and acknowledgements I-VIII;

Part I. Older essays revised.

1. Exploring Meinong's jungle and beyond. I Items and descriptions 1; 2. Exploring Meinong's jungle and beyond. Existence and identity when time change 361;

Part II. Newer essays.

3. On what there isn't 411; 4. Further objections to the theory of items disarmed 427; 5. Three Meinongs 489; 6. The theory of objects as commonsense 519; 7. The problems of fiction and fictions 537 8. The importance of not existing 607; 9. The meaning of existence 697; 10. The importance of nonexistent objects and of intensionality in mathematics and the theoretical sciences 769; 11. Rudiments of noneist philosophies of mathematics and science 791; 12. How the theory elaborated differs from other theories of objects in its these and objectives 833;

Preface to the Appendix 892;

Appendix I: Ultralogic as universal? 893;

Bibliography: Works referred to in the text 963; Supplementary bibliography: On Meinong and the Theory of Objects 983;

Index 991-1035.

"A fundamental error is seldom expelled from philosophy by a single victory. It retreats slowly, defends every inch of ground, and often, after it has been driven from the open country, retains a footing in some remote fastness (Mill A system of logic, pp. 73-4).

The fundamental philosophical error, common to empiricism and idealism and materialism and incorporated in orthodox (classical) logic, is the Reference Theory and its elaborations. It is this theory (according to which truth and meaning are functions just of reference), and its damaging consequences, such as the Theory of Ideas (as Reid explained it), that noneism - in effect, the theory of objects - aims to combat and supplant. But like Wittgenstein (in Philosophical Investigations, and unlike Mill, noneists expect no victories against such a pervasive and treacherous enemy as the Reference Theory. Though noneists take it for granted that 'Truth is on their side', and reason too, the evidence that 'Truth and reason will out' is exceedingly disappointing. Nor do they expect the enemy to vanish, even from open country: fundamental error will no doubt persist, to the detriment of philosophy, and of every theoretical and practical subject it touches. For there is great resistance to changing the framework (to amending the paradigm); so there is an attempt to handle everything within the prevailing philosophical frame. There is no need, it is thought, to change the framework, all problems can eventually be solved within the basic referential scheme - at worst by some concessions (1) which absorb some nonreferential fragments, and thereby decrease both the level of dissatisfaction with the going frame, and the prospects for perception of its real character.

The faith that the Reference Theory (and its forms such as extensionalism and empiricism) will find a way out of its impasses, a way to deal adequately with nonexistence and intensionality, is like the faith that technology will find a way to deal with social problems, especially with all the problems it creates (the faith is deeply embedded in the Technocratic Ideology). As with the Technocratic Ideology so with the Reference Theory, the Great Breakthrough which will resolve these problems, (patently) not soluble within the technological or referential framework, is always just around the corner, no matter how discouraging the record of failures in the past. The problems, difficulties, and failings of the Theory are not recognised as reasons for rejecting it and adopting a different theoretical-and ideological framework, but are presented as 'challenges', which further work and technology will doubtless find a way to resolve. And as with Technocracy the 'solution' of a problem in one area is liable to create a rash of new problems in other areas (e.g. increasing energy supply at the expense of increased pollution, forest destruction, etc.), which can, however, for a time at least, be conveniently overlooked in the presentation of the 'solution' as yet another triumph for the theory and its ideology. That is, the procedure is to trade in one problem for another, and hope that nobody notices.

The basic failings of the Reference Theory are at the logical level. The Reference Theory yields classical logic, and directly only classical.

An example of theoretical cooption is the (somewhat grudging) toleration of lower grades of modality and intensionality - which can however be referentially accounted for, more or less.

The basic failings of the Reference Theory at the logical level.

The Reference Theory yields classical logic, and directly only classical logic: in this sense classical logic is the logic of the Reference Theory. An important group of elaborations of the Reference Theory correspond in the same way to logics in the Fregean mode. Accordingly with the breakdown of the Reference Theory and its elaborations all these logics fail; and so, as with the breakdown of modern energy supplies, substantial adjustment and reconstruction is required. In fact no less than the effects of a logical revolution are called for (see Relevant logics and their rivals), though the aim of these essays is to achieve such results in a more evolutionary way, to take advantage of the classical superstructure, to build the new logic in part on what there is. The logical areas where change and improved treatment are especially, and desperately, needed are these:

nonexistence and impossibility;

intensionality;

conditionality, implication and deducibility;

significance; and context.

It is on the first two overlapping areas, the very shabby treatment of which is a direct outcome of the Reference Theory, that the essays which follow concentrate. (The remaining areas - which are, as will become quite evident, far from independent - are treated, still in a preliminary way, in two companion volumes to this work, Relevant logics and their rivals and The logic of significance and context, and in other essays.) When the Reference Theory and its elaborations (such as Multiple Reference Theories) are abandoned the role of logic changes - its importance need not however diminish." (Preface, I)

(1) An example of theoretical cooption is the (somewhat grudging) toleration of lower grades of modality and intensionality - which can however be referentially accounted for, more or less.

18. ———. 1980. "Problems and Solutions in the Semantics of Quantified Relevant Logics. I." In Mathematical Logic in Latin America: Proceedings of the IV Latin American Symposium on Mathematical Logic held in Santiago, December 1978, edited by Arruda, Ayda Ignez, Newton da Costa, Carneiro Affonso and Chaqui, Rolando Basim da, 305-340. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Abstract: "The main problem investigated is the adequacy of constant domain relational world semantics for quantified relevant logics. The problem is solved, though in a disagreeably circuitous way, for many weaker relevant logics, and an outline of how the solution may be extended to stronger logics such as RQ is given.

Alternative necessity and intensional conjunction style rules for the evaluation of quantifiers are studied and shown to simply force the main problems above with the usual (extensional conjunction style) quantifier- rule to reappear, unmitigated, at alternative outlets. Finally some philosophical problems allegedly engendered by constant domain world semantics are examined briefly: it is argued that the "problems" are no problems."

19. ———. 1980. "The Choice of Logical Foundations: Non-Classical Choices and the Ultralogical Choice." Studia Logica no. 39:77-98.

Abstract: "A multiple factor model for choice of best objective (which generalises on the modellings of optimisation theory, and so enables the unification of much decision theory) is developed. Essentially the recipe is to maximize a given function of expected values of the factors subject to a set of constraining relations on the factors and to overriding constraints (the constraining relations are not restricted to certain relations of equality and inequality). The model, which was designed to apply in environmental decision-making situations, has an important role in value theory and in the theory of choice of theories, and it specialises to the matter of choice of logical foundations.

It is argued by way of a series of actual examples that the limited quantifiability or nonquantifiability of the factors does not count against realistic applicability of the model. The factors and constraints in the special case of best choice of logical foundations (for the full range of logical purposes) are sketched and discussed. Important factors are those of scope and applicability to the data. other nonnegligible factors

are such pragmatic factors as simplicity, economy, power, intelligibility, fruitfulness.

In addition to constraints between the factors there is a major overriding constraint, namely that of conformity to the facts.

The theoretical model is applied. First a criticism of other accounts of choice, especially pragmatism, and consistency criteria, is mounted. It is then argued, applying the account of best choice el logical foundations for discourse (including philosophical discourse) that has emerged, and making heavy use of factual constraints, that the choice to make is not a choice of classical logic, not a choice of some extension of

classical logic, but choice of a paraconsistent logic, and among such essentially nonclassical logics, of an ultralogic, i.e. of a relevant inexistential highly intensional logic."

20. ———. 1980. "Review of Entailment by A.R. Anderson and N. D. Belnap." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 58:405-408.

21. Routley, Richard, and Loparić, Andréa. 1980. "Semantics for Quantified Relevant Logics Without Replacement." In Proceedings of the Third Brazilian Conference on Mathematical Logic, edited by Arruda, Ayda I., DaCosta, Newton C. A. and Sette, Antonio Mario, 263-280. Sao Paulo: Sociedade Brasileira de Lógica.

22. Routley, Richard. 1981. "Necessary Limits to Knowledge: Unknowable Truths." In Essays in Scientific Philosophy. Dedicated to Paul Weingartner / Philosophie als Wissenschaft. Paul Weingartner gewidmet, edited by Morscher, Edgar, Neumaier, Otto and Zecha, Gerhard, 97-118. Bad Reichenhall: Comes Verlag.

Reprinted in Synthese, vol. 173, 2010, pp. 107-122.

Abstract: "The paper seeks a perfectly general argument regarding the noncontingent limits to any (human or non-human) knowledge. After expressing disappointment with the history of philosophy on this score, an argument is grounded in Fitch’s proof, [*] which demonstrates the unknowability of some truths. The necessity of this unknowability is then defended by arguing for the necessity of Fitch’s premise—viz., there this is in fact some ignorance."

[*] Fitch, F. B. (1963). A logical analysis of some value concepts. Journal of Symbolic Logic, 28, 135–142.

23. ———. 1982. "On What There Is Not." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 43:151-177.

Reprinted in Michael C. Rea, Arguing about Metaphysics, New York: Routledge 2009, pp. 59-77.

"Consider some thing, d say, that does not exist, for example d is Meinong's round square. Then what does not exist is in this case d; but it in no way follows from "d is non-existent" that "d exists". Such nonentities as d need have no being in any sense. It is basically because whatness and thinghood have been illicitly restricted to what exists or has being, that a puzzle seems to have arisen: for certainly we contradict ourselves if we say that what has being does not have being. There is no contradiction however in saying that what is a thing or object, e.g. d, may have no being in any sense; and this dissolves what Quine nicknames Plato's beard, without using or blunting, Occam's razor. For Occam's razor to remain sharp requires only that entities not be multiplied beyond necessity; but no multiplication of entities has been made, no bloating of the universe (of what exists) has occurred. Indeed the theory of objects enables a very substantial reduction in what is said to exist, so that what is said to exist can coincide with what really does exist, namely only certain individual objects now located in space.(4) But, more to the point, Occam's razor embodies various muddles of the very sort that it is important to remove. In particular, Occam's dictum that entities [or differently, objects] should not be multiplied beyond necessity supposes that it is in our power to increase or decrease the number of entities [or objects]: but of course in that sense - as opposed to the destruction or creation of objects by one's activity - it is not. What we can increase or decrease is not what exists but what we say exists, what we (choose to) talk about, and what our theories commit us to in one way or another. So the dictum, and a use like Quine's of it, confuses what exists with what we (choose to) talk about or what we, or our theories, say exists - a confusion that runs through into recent criteria for ontological commitment, themes of ontological relativity, and programs for ontological reduction." (pp. 152-153)

(4) It was Meinong's thesis that any existing object has a more or less definite location in space and time. It is a corollary that abstract objects do not exist (see further [2], chapter 9).

References

[2] R. Routley, Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, I979.

24. ———. 1982. "How Disjunctive Syllogism can be Seen as a Fallacy of Relevance." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 10:144-151.

25. Routley, Richard, Meyer, Robert K., Plumwood, Val, and Brady, Ross. 1982. Relevant Logics and their Rivals. Vol. 1: The Basic Philosophical and Semantical Theory. Atascadero: Ridgeview.

Contents: Introduction X; 1. The implication connection, and the ensuing inadequacy of irrelevant logics such as classical and modal logics 1; 2. Derivability, deducibility, and the core of entailment 69; 3. The shape of the first degree logical and semantical theory, and competing profiles for higher degree logics 170; 3. The semantics of entailment and sufficiency conditionals, relevant affixing systems with normal conjunction, disjunction and negation, and their extensions 284; 5. Further investigation of relevant affixing systems and their parts 348; Appendix 1. The semantics of entailment IV: E, II' and II'' 407; Appendix 2. The pure calculus of entailment is the pure calculus of entailment 425; Postscript to the Appendices 430; References 435 Index (by Jean Norman) 452-460.

"This volume is primarily a logical and semantical investigation of an extensive class of zero-order intensional logics, i.e. of intensional logics which do not include variable binding devices such as abstraction operators, descriptors, quantifiers or their equivalents. The effect of adding variable binding devices will have to be reserved for another volume. Many of the philosophical investigations and issues which are presupposed by or arise from this predominantly formal study will, we still hope, appear in yet other publications (e.g. Beyond the Possible, long in preparation). The separation of these matters is admittedly deplorable (whether the proposed multiplication of book-entities is also deplorable will be left for readers to decide). The exclusion of quantifiers and descriptors deprives the logics of some of their interest and usefulness in the analysis of natural languages and philosophical and other argumentation, and the partial exclusion of intimately connected and motivating philosophical issues is artificial and weakens the case for such a detailed study of particular intensional logics. However this volume is evidently long enough already.

Relevant and irrelevant logics. We focus on those intensional logics that, satisfying weak relevance principles, have become known as relevant logics. The class of sentential logics that satisfy weak principles of relevance is however wide and includes many logics which are, in principle, rivals to the position(s) we shall be advancing.

We want it to emerge with stark clarity, however, that our main concern is not really relevance at all - the appropriate sort of relevance is a byproduct of any good implication relation, which comes out in the wash. Only one weak necessary condition for relevance features in what follows: that is all'. A study of relevance, of the sorts of relevance, of sufficient conditions for relevance, ... - all these matters are philosophically interesting, and some of them are important, especially for the logics of evidence and probability - but they are not our present concern. For this reason the name 'relevant logics', or 'relevance logic', is not entirely satisfactory - perhaps even, to lodge a much stronger claim, unfortunate - since the name tends to suggest, wrongly, that relevance is of the essence, instead of being a peripheral concern. Nonetheless the name has a point, and it is a little late to change it.

What our concern is with is implication and its varieties, and in particular with genuine implication in the sense that amounts to total sufficiency. Thus our concern is, in the first place, with sufficiency, or, as it is otherwise equivalently put in the logical case, with complete logical dependence, with total inclusion of logical content, and so on. Implication is not confined however to logical implication or deducibility; we are very much interested in having our systems apply to other sorts of sufficiency, physical or law-like sufficiency in particular, and to provide the bases, in enthymematic ways, for analyses of partial sufficiency, for instance for insufficiency conditionals - for conditionals, for example, which are obtained from genuine sufficiency conditionals by suppression of true or necessary antecedents (or, symmetrically, of false or impossible consequents). This will take us back through the usual logics of the textbooks, to intuitionistic logic and modal logics, and, in the extreme case, to classical two-valued logic. (p. X)

26. Routley, Richard, and Plumwood, Val. 1982. "Negation and Contradiction in Wittgenstein." In Sprache und Ontologie. Akten des 6. internationalen Wittgenstein Symposiums 23. bis 30. August 1981, Kirchberg/Wechsel (Österreich), edited by Leinfellner, Werner, Kraemer, Eric and Schank, Jeffrey, 471-474. Wien: Verlag Holder-Pichler-Tempsky.

"In the earlier work, especially the Tractatus, the classical explosion model of negation is adopted; negation is represented as total exclusion. There has, of course, to be more to the account of negation than this. In particular, logical constants such as negation, since they would otherwise raise serious difficulties for the picture theory of meaning, call for special treatment, which they obtain through the theory of math-functions. Negation is simply such a classical function; nothing in reality corresponds to it." (p. 471)

(...)

"A cancellation view, incompatible with the classical model of the Tractatus, is infiltrated in subsequent work. A cancellation picture is already deployed in transitional work, e.g. ‘the rules of Euclidean geometry don't contradict one another, i.e. no rule occurs which cancels out an earlier one (p and ~ p), , ,’ (PG, p. 345). It is a cancellation picture, where contradictions have no content and say nothing (and so are useless), that lies behind Wittgenstein’s assumption that one should not draw any conclusions from a contradiction (LFM, p. 220), or better, that a way should be found of not proceeding from a contradiction (LFM, p. 223).10 Furthermore, many of the pictures and images of negation Wittgenstein later considers are of a cancellation type or can be adjusted to fit a cancellation model. Although Wittgenstein repeatedly alludes to such images, at the same time he depreciates them (e.g. all attempts to explain why a contradiction “won't work” are spurious, LFM, p. xviii): they are all said to convert to no more than substitution of one symbolism for 'another. Even so, such things can have an explanatory and modelling role. Wittgenstein suggests not, because all that is offered is symbolism and figure, so the question of ‘how one is going to use it?’ (LFM, p. 181) remains, since any picture can be used in several ways. He goes on to advance the even more dubious description theme that ‘anything which we give and conceive to be an explanation of why a contradiction does not work is always just another way of saying that we do not want it to work’ (LFM, p. 187).

The assumption that contradictions don't, or won't, work and associated themes, e.g. that contradictions are useless, and associated images, e.g. the jamming picture (LFM, p. 178—9, ascribed to Moore, p. 190), are 'all connexivist in cast. With a contradiction, as when the cogs join, nothing emerges, ‘we cannot do anything with it’ (LFM, p. 191). It is from the same cancellation model that the no-content thesis, which jamming depicts, derives, that contradictions do not say anything, a thesis also equivalently (but misleadingly) expressed in ‘contradictions don’t make sense’.

The cancellation view can be included in the relevant synthesis by appeal to abnormal worlds or language-games, games where contradictions do stop proceedings, and where A & ~A may have no content. But in assuming, as he often appears to, that games are restricted to those that are classical (effectively, in P) or those that are of a cancellation type (in a subclass of W-K), Wittgenstein much too drastically delimits the games, or worlds, needed in giving a full account of negation. And in assuming that abnormal cancellationtype games are characteristic—'that we exclude the contradiction and don't normally give it a meaning is characteristic of our whole use of language’ (LFM, p. 179)—Wittgenstein goes curiously astray. Commonly we do not treat contradictions in this way. We reason on the basis of them (e.g. in reductio arguments), we act on the basis of inconsistent information (cf. the general who acts, and succeeds, on the basis of contradictory reports, LFM, p. 105), and we exploit paradoxes when we can." (p. 474)

References

LFM = Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics

PG = Philosophische Grammatik / Philosophical Grammar

27. ———. 1982. "The Inadequacy of the Actual and the Real: Beyond Empiricism, Idealism and Mysticism." In Sprache und Ontologie. Akten des 6. internationalen Wittgenstein Symposiums 23. bis 30. August 1981, Kirchberg/Wechsel (Österreich), edited by Leinfellner, Werner, Kraemer, Eric and Schank, Jeffrey, 49-67. Wien: Verlag Holder-Pichler-Tempsky.

"In contrast to empiricism the historical alternatives of (traditional) rationalism, Meinongian rationalism, mysticism and idealism are alike in their rejection of what we have selected as the most important characterising thesis of empiricism, that the world can be adequately accounted for or explained just in terms of what exists, in terms of the actual (referential) world G.

Meinongian rationalism has a modern logical expression in noneism, the theory of items elaborated elsewhere (especially in Routley (1979)). The core theses of noneism include the following:—Every (significant) singular term signifies an object, i.e. (in earlier terminology) is about an object. Everything whatsoever—whether it is possible or not, complete or not, paradoxical or not, thinkable or not—is an object. Most objects do not exist, in any way at all, or have any form of being (or other ontological status) at all. Nonexistent objects, nonentities, are constituted in one way or another, and have more or less determinate natures. An object, whether it exists or not, has those properties which characterise it, e.g. the object which fs does f, where f is a characterising property. But existence, and many other properties (especially “higher-order” properties) are not characterising properties.(8)

Additional theses, presupposed in and of some importance for what follows are these: Universals are objects which do not exist (hence also they are something). Objects are not reducible to entities; for instance, nonexistent objects are not in some way constructs from what does exist, and discourse about nonentities is not translatable, without residue, into discourse about entities.(9) Running in tandem with this is a nonreductionist theme (with something of the ring of the later Wittgenstein): Nonentities are mostly perfectly in order as they are, without reduction. With intensionality as with nonexistence, noneism is committed to commonsense theses (again of a later Wittgenstein cast): Very many intensional statements are perfectly in order as they are, without reductive analysis, and are about the objects they appear to be about. For example, ‘Bacon looked for Atlantis’ is about Bacon and Atlantis. There is just one object sought, Atlantis; there is no need to try to resolve the statement into one concerning concepts, or complex set-theoretic constructs, or such like; whether or not Atlantis ever existed.

The foregoing themes lead naturally (once the semantical theory is introduced) to further theses,(10) theses that go to the heart of philosophy (as many have seen it), theses stating conditions on the truth and explanation of things in the world: the truth conditions for the factual world T, and also for its actual subworld G, involve nonentities, essentially. This thesis, that truth depends on nonexistence, derives in part from the earlier theme that there are irreducible truths about what does not exist. Further, the explanation of what exists, and so of the actual world G, involves essential appeal to what does not exist, to other worlds beyond G. It is themes like these that render noneism a transcendental position,(11) and align it with idealism.

Contrary to empiricism, then, we do need to go beyond the factual world and to consider possible and impossible worlds, and beyond entities of the factual world to consider a wide range of other objects, including impossible and merely possible ones. In particular, according to noneism, we cannot adequately understand or explain the actual world, its entities and its phenomena, without going beyond to other worlds, without adverting, in essential ways, to the non-actual. The actual is not sufficient, on its own, to account either for truth or for explanation." (pp. 51-52)

(8) The emerging big theory, noneism, is a kind of amalgam of Meinong with the later Wittgenstein; so however strange the combination may seem, it can claim a good Austrian ancestry.

(9) While a semantical analysis of discourse about nonentities can be given, e.g. through a universal semantics (cf. Routley (1979), 1.24), in terms of what Platonists are pleased to call ‘entities’, the objects involved in the analysis do not exist.

(10) So far only nonepistemic themes have been assembled. For subsequent comparisons, especially with ways of knowing and interworld access of idealism, mysticism, primitivism, etc., it will however be important to introduce epistemic and limitative theses.

(11) In the standard sense of ‘transcendental’, of being other-worldly, necessary for (the explanation of) experience, and not reducible to it.

References

Routley, R. Explorint Meinong' Jungle and Beyond (Canberra 1979)

28. Routley, Richard, and Priest, Graham. 1982. "Lessons from Pseudo Scotus." Philosophical Studies no. 42:189-199.

"Medieval logicians have a great deal to teach their modern descendants.(1)

They discussed issues that are of contemporary importance with an ingenuity and sophistication lost till this century. We will illustrate this by considering an argument produced by a medieval logician, fated to become known as 'Pseudo-Scotus'. It was rescued from oblivion by Bocheński in 1938 and has been commented on more recently, particularly by Benson Mates and Stephen Read.(2) However, a good deal more can be learnt from Scotus' argument as we will show. Specifically we will formulate separate lessons in Sections 2, 4 and 6." (p. 189)

(1) This claim was made at the end of Priest and Read (forthcoming).The present paper goes some way towards bearing it out.

(2) See Mates (1965), which gives details of Bocheński's work and Read (1979) which gives details of other modern commentators.

References

Mates, B. 1965, 'Psuedo Scotus on the soundness of "Consequentiae" in Logic and Methodology, ed. by A-T. Tymieniecka (North Holland).

Priest, G. (forthcoming) [1989], 'Classical logic aufgehoben', in Paraconsistent Logic, ed. by G. Priest and R. Routley.

Priest, G. and Read, S. (forthcoming) [1989], 'Merely confused supposition'. 'Franciscan Studies, [40, pp. 265-297]

Read, S. 1979, 'Self reference and validity', Synthese 42, pp. 265-274.

Routley, R.: 1977, 'Ultralogic as universal?', Relevance Logic Newsletter 2 , pp. 50-90, 187-205. Reprinted as Appendix 1 in Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond, Rss (Australian National University 1979).

Routley, R. and Meyer, R. K. (forthcoming) [1982], Relevant Logics and their Rivals, [Atascadero: Rdgeview].

Routley, R. and Routley, V. 1972, 'Semantics of first degree entailment', Noûs 6, pp. 335-59.

29. Routley, Richard, Routley, Val, Meyer, Robert K., and Martin, E.P. 1982. "On the Philosophical Bases of Relevant Logic Semantics." Journal of Non-Classical Logic no. 1:71-105.

"Criticisms of semantics for relevant logics, Commonly enough encountered in discussion, are beginning to appear in print. For example, such criticism has come from Scott who asserts, without any supporting argument, that 'the recent semantical interpretations [of relevance logics) have as yet no adequate philosophical justification'· (74, p. 154). A rather similar criticism 'of model-theoretical interpretations of existing relevant logics' is implied by Hintikka (81, p. 80). Analogous criticisms are part of Lewis's recent attack on relevant and paraconsistent logics (in 82). But the bulkiest "case", which includes most of the criticisms commonly indicated, has been presented by Copeland:

And the Routley-Meyer semantics, it will be urged, fails to satisfy those requirements which distinguish an illuminating and philosophically significant semantics from a merely formal model theory (Copeland 400)

Although Copeland reiterates this now familiar claim, that the Routley Meyer semantics for relevant logic is a mere formal model theory as distinct from "a semantics" (see also pp. 406, 408, 412), like others he

omits to specify the requirements upon 'an illuminating and philosophically significant semantics': so urging does not give way to arguing in any rigorous way for the theme (thus too the promise of his short title 'When a semantics is not a semantics' is never fulfilled). Furthermore, the supporting considerations offered for the theme are based, like several of the incidental remarks concerning relevant logics, upon faulty but often unstated assumptions and mistaken data. Although the unfavourable conclusions are stated clearly enough, the structure of the argument by which they are reached is often decidedly unclear, and indeed the case relies upon obscurjty and lack of precision. Consequently meeting this often nebulous set of objections requires proceeding beyond what is directly stated to examination of what the case requires if the considerations actually presented are to show anything damaging against relevant semantics in the way declared." (p. 71)

References

[4] COPELAND. B.J., 'On when a semantics is not a semantics: some reasons for disliking the Routley-Meyer semantics for relevance logic'. Journal of Philosophical Logic 8 (1979) 339-413.

[29] SCOTT, 0., 'Rules and derived ru es' in Logical Theory and Semantic Analysis (ed. S. Stenland), Reidel, Dordrecht. 1974.

[32I HINTIKKA, J., 'Intuitions and philosophical method', Revue Internationale de Philosophie 35 (1981) 74-90

[33] LEWIS, D., 'Logic for equivocators', Noûs (1982), to appear. [16, 1982, pp. 431-441]

30. Routley, Richard. 1983. "Introduction: Nonclassical Logic." Logique et Analyse no. 102/103:121, 253.

31. ———. 1983. "Relevantism and the Problem as to When Material Detachment and the Disjunctive Syllogism can be Correctly Used." Research Papers in Logic no. 12.

Reprinted in: Ruch Filozoficzny, 41, 1984, pp-: 127-162.

32. Routley, Richard, and Meyer, Robert K. 1983. "Relevant Logics and their Semantics Remain Viable and Undamaged by Lewis's Equivocation Charge." Topoi no. 2:205-216.

"Is relevant logic but a logic for equivocators? Such Lewis's provocatively entitled 'Logic for equivocators', directed against relevant logic, certainly seems to imply. But the ambiguity interpretation which he proposes he is unable to get to work for relevant logic, so he falls back on the first degree implication (fde) parts(4) of the irrelevant logics LP and RM: in these "we have two logics for ambiguous sentences

- and lo, they are partly relevant" (p. 439). Not only is Lewis well off the relevant target(5) ; but the argument for the conclusion that relevant or cryptorelevant logics are logics of ambiguity, or, for equivocators, is a decidedly poor one. For what we are offered are three-valued interpretations of fde LP and RM through the values: true osd only, i.e. true on all its disambiguations; false osd only, i.e.

false on all its disambiguations; and both true osd and false osd, i.e. true on some disambiguations and false on others (pp. 438-9). The Lewis interpretation is evidently a simple variation on the truth-valued interpretation obtained by, in effect, omitting 'osd', an interpretation - the intended interpretation for LP and RM3 -- which Lewis tries to rule out as "not making sense". (p. 206)

(4) There is a logical howler running systematically through Lewis's paper. He has 'first degree' where he should have 'fde', unless nonstandard names are adopted. But as 'first degree' is nowhere explained, it must be assumed to have its standard sense. It follows, e.g., from what Lewis asserts that the first degree part of E has a four-valued semantics (see p. 433). This is false.

Since everything in the discussion that follows is restricted to the first degree, talk of 'relevant logic' in the singular is (perfectly) in order.

(5) And Io, also, they axe substantially irrelevant. While RM has long been associated with the relevant enterprise, though not as an acceptable explication of the key notions under investigation, LP has not, and, at the time of design and development of LP, Priest explicitly disassociated himself from the relevant enterprise.

(23)

References

Lewis, D.: 'Logic for equivocators', Noûs 16 (1982), 431-441.

33. Routley, Richard, and Priest, Graham. 1983. On Paraconsistency. Canberra: Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.

Reprinted as Research Series in Logic and Metaphysics #1, 1984, 235 pages.

Also reprinted with some modifications in the Introductory chapters of Graham Priest, Richard Routley, Jean Norman (eds.), Paraconsistent Logic: Essays on the Inconsistent (1989): see note 2, p. XIX.

34. Sylvan, Richard, Brady, Ross, Meyer, Robert K., and Mortensen, Chris. 1983. "Algebraic Analyses of Relevant Affixing Logics, and Other Polish Connections." Research Papers in Logic no. 16:56 pages.

35. Sylvan, Richard, and Priest, Graham. 1983. "An Impressionistic Survey of Paraconsistent Positions and Theories." In Collected Papers of the 1982 Foundations of Logic Conference. Waterloo: University of Waterloo.

36. Routley, Richard. 1984. "The American Plan Completed: Alternative Classical-Style Semantics Without Stars, for Relevant and Paraconsistent Logics." Studia Logica no. 43:131-158.

Abstract: "American-plan semantics with 4 values 1, 0, {1, 0} { }, interpretable as True, False, Both and Neither, are furnished for a range of logics, including relevant affixing systems. The evaluation rules for extensional connectives take a classical form: in particular, those for negation assume the form 1 ε t (~ A, a) iff 0 ε t A, a) and 0 ε t (~ A, a) ifI 1 ε t (A, a), so eliminating the star function *, on which much

criticism of relevant logic semantics has focussed. The cost of these classical features is a further relation (or operation), required in evaluating falsity assignments of implication formulae.

Two styles of 4 valued relational semantics are developed; firstly a semantics using notions of double truth and double validity for basic relevant system B and some extensions of it; and secondly, since the first semantics makes heavy weather of validating negation principles such as Contraposition, a reduced semantics using more complex implication M rules for relevant system C and various of its extensions.

To deal satisfactorily with elite systems R, E and T, however, further complication is inevitable; and a relation of mateship (suggested by the Australian plan) is introduced to permit cross-over from 1 to 0 values and vice versa."

37. ———. 1984. "Relevantism, Material Detachment, and the Disjunctive Syllogism Argument." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 14:167-188.

"Relevantism, as a matter of definition, rejects classical logic as incorrect and adopts instead a relevant logic as encapsulating correct inference. It rejects classical logic on the grounds that the rule of Material Detachment, from A and not A or B to infer B, (that is, Disjunctive Syllogism considered as an inferential principle), sometimes leads from truth to falsity. Relevantism - although promoted by some relevant logicians (Routley and Routley), and an integral part of ultralogic (i.e. universal, all purpose, ultramodallogic; cf. [1], [8]) - has recently encountered heavy, but interesting, criticism from relevance logicians themselves (from Belnap, Dunn, and Meyer). Though the discussion that follows accordingly involves some reporting of internal wrangling among relevance logicians, it is feuding of major importance as regards the question of choice of logical theory. For, firstly, if relevantism is right, then orthodox choices of logic, such as classical or intuitionist choices, are wrong. Secondly, the issue is by no means as parochial as relevant logic, but concerns the matter of serious choice of paraconsistent logic as correct, and as working logic (on paraconsistent logics see Arruda [7)). For Material Detachment is inferentially equivalent in a relevant setting to the Duns Scotus principle (A, ∼ A → B, from A and not A to infer B), the rejection of which separates paraconsistent logic from classical (and intuitionistic) logic. The wider issue generated is then: to what extent, and when, can a paraconsistent theory correctly, or legitimately, make use of classical reasoning?" (pp. 167-168)

References

[1] R. Routley, 'Ultralogic as Universal?' Relevance Logic Newsletter, 2 (1977) 50-89 and 138-75; reprinted in [5].

(5] R. Routley, Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond (Interim edition, Rss, Australian National University 1980).

[7] A.l. Arruda, 'A survey of paraconsistent logic,' in A. Arruda, R. Chaqui, N. da Costa, eds., Mathematical Logic in Latin America (North-Holland 1980) 1-41.

(8] R. Routley, 'The choice of logical foundations: nonclassical choices and the ultralogical choice,' Studia Logica, (1979) 76-96.

38. ———. 1984. "Research in Logic in Australia, New Zealand and Oceania: Its brief history and its present state." Ruch Filozoficzny no. 41:127-162.

Reprinted from Research Papers in Logic #14, Research School of Social Sciences, Canberra: Australian National University, 1983.

39. Routley, Richard, and Priest, Graham. 1984. "Introduction: Paraconsistent Logics." Studia Logica no. 43:3-16.

Introduction to a special number dedicated to the paraconsistent logics.

"The papers in this volume are all on the subject of paraconsistency.

This introduction locates the papers in their context and also provides a survey of the general area." (p. 3)

(...)

"The important fact about paraconsistent logics is that they provide the basis for inconsistent but non-trivial theories. In other words, there are sets of sentences closed under logical consequence which are inconsistent but non-trivial. This fact is sometimes taken as an alternative definition of 'paraconsistent' and, given that logical consequence is transitive, it is equivalent to our definition. For this reason we call inconsistent but non-trivial theories paraconsistent .

The equivalence indicates one reason why paraconsistent logics are worthy of study. For there are important inconsistent theories which are non-trivial. Any analysis of their logical structure must therefore be done

using a paraconsistent logic. Clearly, to adopt an explosive logic such as Frege/Russell or intuitionist logic would trivialise them." (p. 3)

40. ———. 1984. "Paraconsistent Logics." Studia Logica no. 43.

Special number dedicated to the paraconsistent logics edited by Routley and Priest.

Contents: Graham Priest; Richard Routley: Introduction: paraconsistent logics 3; Elias H. Alves Paraconsistent logic and model theory 17; Ayda I. Arruda, Newton C. A. da Costa: On the relevant systems P and P* and some related systems 33; Jerzy Blaszczuk: Some paraconsistent sentential calculi 51; Ross T. Brady: Depth relevance of some paraconsistent logics 63; M. W. Bunder Some definitions of negation leading to paraconsistent logics 75; Walter A. Carnielli: Paraconsistent algebras 79; Luiz P. de Alcantara, R. E. Jennings, P. K. Schotch: The preservation of coherence 89; Chris Mortensen: Aristotle's thesis in consistent and inconsistent logics 107; Graham Priest: Semantic closure 117; Richard Routley: The American Plan Completed: alternative classical-style semantics, without stars, for relevant and paraconsistent logics 131; John K. Slaney: A metacompleteness theorem for contraction-free relevant logics 159; Hristo Smolenov: Zeno's paradoxes and temporal becoming in dialectical atomism 169; Neil Tennant: Perfect validity, entailment and paraconsistency 181-200.

41. Sylvan, Richard. 1984. "How Science and Myth and Fiction Step Beyond the Actual and Sometimes Beyond the Possible." Research Series in Unfashionable Philosophy no. 1:1-33.

Abstract: "Sistology, the general Investigation of all items, Is explained. It Is contrasted with its dwarf subtheory, ontology, which is restricted to existent objects. Sistology cannot be recovered from ontology. Sistology, unlike ontology, assigns nonexistent and Impossible objects standing. How this is accomplished logically is outlined; and resulting advantages for linguistics, language and literature are indicated. The theory is then applied to a comparison, in depth, of (failed) science with fiction.

Science and fiction are much more alike than generally supposed. Indeed they do not differ essentially In syntactical ways, and overlap significantly in content. (While they do differ more significantly on technological applications, that is frequently not to sciences credit.) To force what differences there are, a detailed characterisation of science is presented, which is then compared point by point with fiction. What emerges Is that science and fiction form merging families, with deductive closure and qualified confrontation with experience affording main separation features.

What remains of the gap between science and fiction Is bridged by myth, which often provides other cultures versions of science. Leading features of myth are explained and two styles of myth roughly delineated, anthropic myths and naturalistic myths. The latter merge with failed science.

The resemblances are exploited both In criticising fashionable accounts of scientific theories and scientific explanation, and in offering new accounts. A scientific theory is a story, which is closed, in particular under deduction, and which suffers qualified exposure to experience, that Is", which meets reality requirements. Scientific explanation also fits within the story setting, a covering story replacing the orthodox "covering law" model. The account accommodates what Is crucial in much explanation, explanation of what exists by way of what does not exist.

Science is Integrally Involved not merely with what does not exist, but also with what is impossible. The role of Inconsistent theories and other inconsistent objects is Indicated, and the emerging theory is applied to certain psychological puzzles concerning thinking the impossible."

This paper Is to appear In German, In an issue of Zeitschrlft fur Semlotik entitled Zeichen und Fiktlon . [Vol. 9, 1987, with the title: "Wissenschaft, Mythos, Fiktion: Sie alle überschreiten die Grenzen des Wirklichen und manchmal gar die des Möglichen".]

42. Routley, Richard, and Routley, Val. 1985. "Negation and Contradiction." Revista Colombiana de Matematicas :201-231.

Abstract: "The problems of the meaning and function of negation are disentangled from ontological issues with which they have been long entangled. The question of the function of negation is the crucial issue separating relevant and paraconsistent logics from classical theories. The function is illuminated by considering the inferential role of contradictions, contradiction being parasitic on negation.

Three basic modellings emerge: a cancellation model, which leads towards connexivism, an explosion model, appropriate to classical and intuitionistic theories, and a constraint model, which includes relevant theories. These three modellings have been seriously confused in the modern literature: untangling them helps motivate the main themes advanced concerning traditional negation and natural negation. Firstly, the dominant traditional view, except around scholastic times when the explosion view was in ascendency, has been the cancellation view, so that the mainstream negation of much of traditional logic is distinctively nonclassical. Secondly, the primary negation determinable of natural negation is relevant negation. In order to picture relevant negation the traditional idea of negation as otherthanness is progressively refined, to

nonexclusive restricted otherthanness. Several pictures result, a reversal picture, a debate model, a record cabinet (or files of the universe) model which help explain relevant negation. Two appendices are attached, one on negation in Hegel and the marxist tradition, the other on Wittgensein's treatment of negation and contradiction."

43. Sylvan, Richard. 1986. "Toward an Improved Cosmo-Logical Synthesis." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 25/26:135-179.

Originally published as "Towards a CosmoLogical Synthesis", Research Series in Unfashionable Philosophy, 2, 1985, 42 pages.

"There is a persistent tradition implying simple and unassailable logical foundations - as yet undiscovered - for the whole of cosmology. The tradition, which peaked in modern rationalism, continues strong in contemporary cosmological speculation. Thus, for example, recent rationalistic theories of the universe, ambitiously aimed at mathematico-logical expression and capture of nature." (p. 135)

(...)

"Logic reassumes its ancient role as the fundamental science; the Word expresses a logic recipe.

(...)

The synthesis outlined in what follows fits into this more modest setting. It is achieved by suitably relocating cosmology as a part of semantics (generously construed, for example, to admit contextual

elements)." (pp. 135-136)

(...)

"The underlying idea of the synthesis is simply this: a subspace of neutral worlds semantics is also a suitable framework for cosmology, for an interpretation of the logical theory of the universe as a whole." (p. 136)

(...)

"The setting in terms of objects which do not exist, other worlds especially, is essential. For one reason, the idea grew out of investigation (for UQ) of what is normally taken to be a philosophical question, indeed by some such as Heidegger as the fundamental question of metaphysics, namely 'Why does anything at all exist?'. Reset in world terms this becomes a question of the selection of a world such as that we find ourselves in which contains something existent (us among other existent things) as opposed to an alternative world, which contains nothing- a much more tractable question. But the recasting loses explanatory merit should all the worlds involved be taken to exist. For then the old objectionable circle is simply reentered, explaining existence in terms of more existents." (p. 137)

Reference

N. Griffin and R. Sylvan, Provisional Answers to Ultimate Questions , typescript, Canberra, 1984; referred to as UQ.

44. ———. 1987. "A Generous Jainist Interpretation of Core Relevant Logics." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 16:58-66.

Both of the ‘principal philosophical theories’ by which Jainism is commonly distinguished(2), relative pluralism (anekantarada ) and qualified scepticism (syavada ) involve 7-fold lists. In the first there is a categorization of 7 perspectives, while, under the second, more important here, 7 modes of predication are marked out. ‘About a given object, we may assert [with respect to a given feature, or existentially] (1) “Maybe it is”; (2) “Maybe it is not”; (3) “Maybe it both is and is not”; (4) “Maybe it is inexpressible”; (5) “Maybe it both is and is inexpressible”; (6) “Maybe it is not and is inexpressible”; and (7) “Maybe it both is and is not, and is inexpressible”.

The maybe’s here are intended to show that dogmatic assertions are out of place ... (Smart, p. 160). Often the maybe’s are omitted from lists of the modes of predication, and other variations are found e.g. ‘inexpressible’ is alternatively translated as ‘indescribable’, etc.

Thus, given Jainism apparently entailed a correspondence theory of truth (Smart p. 160), for every statement p – (inevitably) or subject predicate form – there are the following assignments of values, all of which may be attained: (1) true, i.e. t, where (maybe) it is; (2) false, i.e. f, where (maybe) it is not; (3) t and f; (4) inexpressible, i.e. i, where (maybe) it is inexpressible; etc." (p. 62)

(2) To be a little more precise than Smart, those are the main epistemological theories which distinguish Jainism. For Jainist bio-conativism, which anticipates Schweitzer and a reverence-for-life position in contemporary environmental philosophy, is certainly a philosophical theory, and apparently that for which Jains are best Known.

References

[7] N. Smart, ’Indian Philosophy’, Encyclopaedia ot Philosophy (ed. P. Edwards), Macmilllan, New York, 1967.

45. ———. 1987. "A Relevant Invalidity in Curry's Foundations." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 16:51-53.

Reply by Jonathan P. Seldin, "A Relevant Invalidity in Curry's Foundations: A Reply to Richard Sylvan", Bulletin of the Section of Logic, 16, 1987, pp. 68-70.

"Curry claims that the positive paradox principle, ⊢ A ⊃ (B ⊃ A) (33) in his elementary statement presentation, ‘is valid in any normal interpretation’ ([1], p.173). By previous definition, 'an interpretation of a system

S is a normal interpretation just when the proposition A is true when and only when ⊢ A' (p.172). But his argument to normal validity (and so truth) is interestingly, and relevantly, invalid." (p. 51)

(...)

"This may seem to make, obscurely at that, no more the familiar concession that the positive paradox (33) does not hold for logical (or strict) implication. But given Curry’s identification of ⊃ as the propositional analogue of a conditional, it says much more than that: it says, correctly, that the positive paradox principle does not hold for the conditional.

Nor do matters end there. There are relevant consequences, to be looked at elsewhere, for illative combinatory logic and type-free λ-theory." (p. 53)

References

[1] H. B. Curry, Foundations of Mathematical Logic , McGraw-Hill, New York, 1963.

46. ———. 1987. "Establishing the Correspondence Theory of Truth and Rendering it Coherent." In Stephan Körner - Philosophical Analysis and Reconstruction , edited by Srzednicki, J. T. J., 75-83. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.

"In his rewarding book, Fundamental Questions of Philosophy , Stephen Körner introduces the correspondence theory of truth as seemingly 'the most natural analysis of truth', explains what the theory tries to do, and what it does not attempt, defends the theory against some standard objections, and advances difficulties for rival theories of truth (see p. 101ff.). What follows removes the limitations Körner claims to find on the correspondence theory; it also elaborates upon what Körner has explained, but at the same time makes one or two significant variations, as will appear." (p. 75)

(...)

"Certainly any idealist who finds classical logic the right medium in which to logically set his or her verificationist proclivities - as the logical positivists thought that this was the right medium for verification, with none of this new-fangled intuitionism - should not be displeased. As for us, well, we can have both correspondence and coherence along with Tarski-Bolzano theory duly generalised.(8) And no doubt other theories of truth can be worked into the synthesis too; but that's a task diverging from KBrner and for another day." (p. 80)

(8) Tarski not only saw the semantic theory as complementing a correspondence theory but also was one of the first to explicate maximal consistent sets; he, if anyone, is behind this whole conspiracy.

References

S. Körner, Fundamental Questions of Philosophy , (Harvester Press, Sussex, 1979).

47. Sylvan, Richard, Pettit, Philip, and Norman, Jean, eds. 1987. Metaphysics and Morality: Essays in Honour of J. J. C. Smart . Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Contents: D.M. Armstrong: Smart and the secondary qualities; L. Jonathan Cohen: Laws, coincidences, and relations between universals; Donald Davidson: Problems in the explanation of action; Brian Ellis: The ontology of scientific realism; R.M. Hare: Why moral language?; Frank Jackson: Group morality; D.H. Mellor: The singularly affecting facts of causation; Hilary Putnam: The diversity of the sciences; Peter Singer: Life's uncertain voyage; J.J.C. Smart: Replies.

48. Sylvan, Richard. 1988. "Intuitionistic Logic - Subsystem of, Extension of, or Rival to, Classical Logic?" Philosophical Studies no. 53:147-151.

"The short well-known answer to the title question is, yes, all of those. It depends, in large measure, on how we formulate the systems, compare them, and apply them. Formulated as a system in connectives {→, V,

&, ~}, Lewis modal system S3 is a subsystem of classical logic S, similarly formulated, which results (for instance) by adjoining Peirce's implausible law. But with S recast as a system in connectives {&, ~} (or

{V, &, ~), S3 reappears as extension of S, got by adding a modal connective →, (interdefinable with □ ) and appropriate postulates.

With relevance logics, such as R and E, which are in many respects like modal logics (S3 is tantamount to E + Antilogism), it is similar: these logics are both subsystems of S and extensions of it. But there is a

most significant difference from the modal situation, which concerns applications. The difference, important for applications to inconsistent and also incomplete theories, turns primarily on the scope of the rule of

Material Detachment MD. A, ~(A & ~B) / B." (p. 147)

(...)

"It is of passing interest, then, that intuitionist logics and some of their neighbours can be construed as maintaining classical, truth-functional, behaviour for connectives 'and' and 'not' (or, to start with, absurdity),

while diverging as regards behaviour of 'or' and 'only if'. From this perspective of course, intuitionism and minimalism become, like modal logics, extensions of classical logic, adding to it intensional connectives

of disjunction and implication -- not rivals to it, though not rulepreserving extensions. Thus are many claims in the standard literature upset, not only those of Fitting, but, for instance, scene-setting assumptions

of Haack concerning intuitionisfic deviance." (p. 150)

References

M. Fitting, Proof Methods for Modal and Intuitionistic Logics, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1983.

S. Haack, Deviant Logic , Cambridge University Press, 1974.

49. ———. 1988. "Assorted Semantics." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 53:334.

50. ———. 1988. "Radical Pluralism - an Alternative to Realism, Anti-Realism and Relativism." In Relativism and Realism in Science , edited by Nola, Robert, 253-291. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"Realism, the dominant 20th century position in Anglo-American thought, is, in the relevant sense, a one world position. There exists a unique actual world, or reality, external to "us", which not only determines

how things are locally and globally, but determines as well truth, and thus also uniquely fixes correctness in science, the correct theory being that which corresponds to reality. Anti-realisms such as idealism

and phenomenalism reject, in one way or another, the tricky externality requirement. Relativism and pluralism, by contrast, reject one of the uniqueness requirements, but in significantly different ways. Relativism

resists, in one fashion or another, the imposition of any ranking better than "equally good" and of any rankings warranting differential choice, on the multiple interpretations or, very differently, multiple realities or

worlds disclosed. Pluralism, however, to set down at once the crucial contrast, permits and typically makes rankings, which enable choice (including realist and idealist and theist choices, among many others).

Pluralism thus comes in two distinct forms: theory or meta-pluralism, according to which there are many correct theories (especially larger philosophical positions) but at most one actual world; and radical or

deep pluralism which goes to the root of these differences in correctness, to be found in things, and discerns a plurality of actual worlds as well as of theories." (p. 253)

(...)

"Why select sistological pluralism, that is, a pluralism based upon object-theory? A first reason is that some selection is practically inevitable.

(...)

Partly to reduce complexity, then, but also partly because of severe limitations of space and energy, only one main form of pluralism has been outlined, sistological pluralism. It is but one style of pluralism, an apparently novel, radical form. It does not, like wishy-washy orientational or entrepreneurial pluralism operate only at the theory level (or meta-level), somehow abandoning the hard-to-separate world level (or object-level) level to realism and its more puritan rivals. There is excellent reason not to do so. For one, sistological pluralism does not need to rely on an implausible sharp cut-off between levels. For another, it does not simply give a pluralistic veneer to orthodoxy and dogma, such as accompanying object-level "realism" may underwrite." (p. 278)

(...)

"Justification for looking at, studying, presenting or showing off a pretty logic, or an unusual radical theory, does not have to be of pragmatic cast, that it does something, succeeds somewhere, works well. It may just be a fine enough thing in its own right - somewhat as a tract of rainforest may be valuable in itself, and, though rather rich and complex, not particularly well-organised, or useful for humans, or good for this or that, or unique. Sistological pluralism is a fine and rich theory, fun to work and play with, and to contemplate, irrespective of whether it is good for much - which, as it fortunately happens, it is. (p. 285)

51. ———. 1988. "Relevant Containment Logics and Certain Frame Problems of AI." Logique et Analyse no. 121-122:11-25.

Abstract: "Relevant containment logics, which combine relevant logics with content containment requirements, are motivated and explained. Semantics for some of these logics are introduced and shown to be adequate. In the light of the semantics the logical theory is improved, and other directions for elaboration are indicated. Finally, the logics are applied to one significant part of the vexatious frame problems of AI , and a route to implementation is suggested."

52. ———. 1988. "Relevant Containment Logics and Frame Problems." In Artificial Intelligence: Developments and Applications , edited by Gero, John S. and Stanton, Robin Barrington, 169-181. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

53. Sylvan, Richard, da Costa, Newton, and Carneiro, Alfonso. 1988. "Cause as an Implication." Studia Logica no. 47:413-427.

Abstract: "An appropriately unprejudiced logical investigation of causation as a type of implication relation is undertaken. The implication delineated is bounded syntactically. The developing argument then leads to a very natural process analysis, which demonstrably captures the established syntactical features. Next relevantly-based semantics for the resulting logical theory are adduced, and requisite adequacy results delivered. At the end of the tour, further improvements are pointed out, and the attractive terrain beyond present developments is glimpsed."

"The notion of cause, having fallen from favour in the heydays of logical positivism, has enjoyed a contemporary resurgence. But despite its fashionability now, especially as a major foundational element in epistemology, the logical and structural properties of causation remain quite insufficiently examined. In this situation, who knows whether the foundations will carry the philosophical castles being built (they are never complete, and invariably ramshackle)? Our preliminary investigation of causal implication suggests they will not; like structurally and materially short-supplied high-rise buildings, they will come tumbling down." (p. 413)

54. Sylvan, Richard, and Goddard, Lenn. 1988. "Reasoning I. Reason for, and also Against." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 53:334.

Reprinted in: Artificial Intelligence in Australia , 1988, p. 37.

55. Sylvan, Richard, and Priest, Graham. 1988. "Answering Another Alleged Dilemma Destroying Dialetheism." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 17:42-52.

"To leave matters in no doubt, we obligingly assert that the Russell class R , i.e. {x : x ∉ x }, both belongs to itself and also does not belong to itself; in short, we assert R ∈ R & ~ (R ∈ R ). To be quite explicit, we assert the contradiction r & ~ r , where r abbreviates R ∈ R . Thus, in convenient symbols, `⊢δ r & ~ r where δ is the group of dialethicians comprising (at least) Priest and Routley. Now Goldstein asserts not, or not just, that we should not do what we have naughtily done, but that we cannot; it “is not that people should not assert contradictions, but that they cannot, even though they may purport to do so” ([1], p. 11).

Goldstein offers a neat, but nontheless fallacious, argument to support his assertion that we, along with distinguished dead dialetheicians (Fichte, Hegel and Peirce are cited), cannot do what we purport to have done, asserted a contradiction." (p. 42)

(...)

"The problem with contradictions, on mainstream perceptions, is not that they cannot be asserted, but that they lead, not nowhere, but everywhere.

But no one with a modicum of logical sophistication, not just dialetheicians, would accept this idea, would grant ex falso quodlibet and its scruffy mates." (p. 47)

References

[1] L. Goldstein, A problem for the dialetheist, Bulletin of the Section of Logic, Polish Academy of Sciences 15/1 (1986), pp. 10–14.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated bibliography of the logical works of Richard Sylvan [né Routley] (1989-2020)

Bibliography

1. Routley, Richard, and Brady, Ross. 1989. "The Non-Triviality of Extensional Dialectical Set Theory." In Paraconsistent Logic: Essays on the Inconsistent, edited by Routley, Richard, Priest, Graham and Norman, Jean, 415-436. München: Philosophia Verlag.

"A uniform dialectical resolution of both the logical and the semantical paradoxes was argued for in earlier work (notably in [9]). But the adequacy of that resolution was by no means established. This paper, which shows the non-triviality of extensional dialectical set theory with a general comprehension axiom, represents a further step in the direction of proving the adequacy of the resolution. The methods of proof used - at the core persistence arguments - extend the methods of [2] and [3]. As pointed out in [5], these methods apply equally in the case of the semantic paradoxes.

It should also be noted that these systemic methods almost exactly resemble the meta-linguistic strategies more recently investigated by Kripke in [6]." (p. 415)

References

[2] Brady R. T.1971 "The consistency of the axioms of abstraction and extensionality in a three-valued logic", Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 12, pp. 447-453.

[3] - 1972 "The relative consistency of the class axioms of abstraction and extensionality and the axioms of NBG in a three-valued logic, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 13, pp. 161-176.

[6] Kripke, S. A., 1975, "An outline of a theory of truth", Journal of Philosophy 72, pp. 690-716.

[9] R. Routley, 1977, "Ultralogic as Universal?", Relevance Logic Newsletter 2, pp. 50-89 and pp. 138-175, and in: Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond, 1980, Canberra: Australian National University.

2. Routley, Richard, and Plumwood, Val. 1989. "Moral Dilemmas and the Logic of Deontic Notions." In Paraconsistent Logic: Essays on the Inconsistent, edited by Routley, Richard, Priest, Graham and Norman, Jean, 653-690. München: Philosophia Verlag.

"1. The paradoxes of deontic logic and the consistency and modal requirements

Especially since mid-century many systems of deontic logic have been advanced, which attempt to explore the logic of such deontic notions as obligation, permission and prohibition, right and wrong. Almost all these systems have been modal systems, which treat deontic notions as modal, i.e. as if strict or provable equivalents are intersubstitutable within them preserving truth(2). All such systems are mistaken in a quite fundamental way. For deontic functors such as obligation and prohibition are not modal functors, but are more highly intensional than modal functors, and so demand a greater degree of propositional discrimination than modal logics can provide.

The damage caused by the mistaken treatment of deontic notions as modal shows up in various ways, but we shall be primarily concerned with only one of these, the consistency requirements and the exclusion thereby of moral dilemmas. Another way in which the modal damage appears is through a series of related paradoxes, such as, directly, the paradoxes of derived obligation, and, less directly, the paradoxes of the Robber and the Good Samaritan.(3)" (p. 653)

(2) This was true even of Mally's pioneering system of 1926 which permitted replacement of logical equivalents within the scope of obligation function a (see F & H, p. 3). Von Wright's seminal work (in 1951), which set the pattern for mainstream deontic logic, was explicitly based on the modal comparison of deontic functors with modal functors, and built modal assumptions in at the bottom of the theory.

The exceptional systems, that break the modal connection, are deontic systems based on relevant logics; on such systems see RLR, chapter 8. (3) These paradoxes are explained, and their modal bases exposed, in 5. On the paradoxes of derived obligation, see further Prior 62, p. 224; and for some of the considerable literature on paradoxes like those of the Robber and Good Samaritan, see the Hilpinen anthologies and especially Vermazen. A detailed uniform treatment of all these and other deontic paradoxes in the framework of relevant logic is given in RLR II.

References

Føllesdal, D. and Hilpinen, R., 1971, "Deontic logic: an introduction" in: Hilpinen, pp. 1-35; referred to as F & H.

Hilpinen, R., ed., 1971, Deontic Logic: Introductory and Systematic Readings, Dordrecht: ReideL

- 1981, New Studies in Deontic Logic, Dordrecht: Reidel.

Mally, E. Grundgesetze des Sollens. Elemente der Logik des Willens. Graz: Leuschner & Lubensky.

Prior, AN., 1962, Formal Logic, Second edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Routley, R. and others, Relevant Logics and Their Rivals, Part I, 1982, and Part II, forthcoming [2003]; Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview; referred to as RLR I and RLR II respectively.

Vermazen B,. , 1977 , "The logic of practical 'ought'-sentences", Philosophical Studies 32, pp. 1-71.

von Wright, G. H., 1951, An Essay in Modal Logic, Amsterdam: North-Holland.

3. Routley, Richard, and Priest, Graham. 1989. "Contradiction, Assertion and 'Frege's Point'." Analysis no. 49:23-26.

"The liar sentence ('This sentence is not true') is both true and not true. The Russell set ({x: x ∉ x}) is both a member of itself and not a member of itself. These and many other contradictions we, the authors, are prepared to assert. Most people would disagree with us - and disagree fairly violently. But there is a minority of people who would refrain from disagreeing on the ground that we have said nothing to disagree with. Though we may have uttered words, no statement is made by them. Explicit contradictions cannot be used to make a statement. This line, though hardly orthodox, has, of course, a distinguished pedigree. It was argued by Aristotle in Metaphysics Γ 3,' and since then has resurfaced from time to time in the cancellation view of negation. (See Routley and Routley [5].) Most recently, it has been advocated by Laurence Goldstein [2], who has produced a novel argument for it. The purpose of this note is to refute the argument. As we shall see, this is not difficult; the dis- cussion, however, raises some points of independent interest." (p. 23)

(...)

"In general, and normally, to assert a conditional is not to assert its consequent; in particular cases, however, it may be.(6) This is, we think, a main lesson of Goldstein's argument." (p. 26)

(6) Similarly for disjunctions. Normally, to assert α V β is not to assert α or β. But for certain instances of α V β (e.g. α V α) it may be.

References

[2] L. Goldstein, 'A Problem for the Dialetheist', Bulletin of the Section of Logic, Polish Academy of Sciences 15.1 (1986), 10-14.

[5] R. Routley and V. Routley, 'Negation and Contradiction', Revista Columbiana de Mathematicas 19 (1985), 201-31.

4. ———. 1989. "First Historical Introduction: A Preliminary History of Paraconsistent and Dialethic Approaches." In Paraconsistent Logic: Essays on the Inconsistent, edited by Routley, Richard, Priest, Graham and Norman, Jean, 3-75. München: Philosophia Verlag.

"Although the notion of system was brought into prominence by Leibniz,(1) it is only in contemporary times that a clear conception of a formal or semantical system has developed. Thus recent definitions of paraconsistency(2) through such systems-in terms of systems which can tolerate some inconsistency without trivializing-are not strictly or directly applicable in a historical quest. Evidence of paraconsistent approaches in earlier times has accordingly to be more circumstantial.

There are however several good indicators of paraconsistent approaches of one sort or another which can be reliably used. For example, admission, or insistence, that some statement is both true and false, in a context where not everything is accepted or some things are rejected, is a sure sign of a paraconsistent approach-in fact of a dialethic approach. It involves not merely recognition of a non-trivial inconsistent theory, as with a (weaker) paraconsistent position, but the assumption that that is how things are, that, in effect, the world is inconsistent. A concession that both a statement, A say, and its negation, ~A, hold, works in a similar way, clearly revealing a strong paraconsistent approach. So does the concession that some statements A and ~A hold in a nontrivial theory or position, thereby revealing a weaker paraconsistent approach.

But often evidence is less direct. For instance, an author may not explicitly say that both A and ~A hold, or hold in a given theory, but what is said obviously implies that they do, and the author can be assumed to be aware that they do, or a case can be made that the author is aware of this. In such cases the approach is still explicitly paraconsistent. But an author may not be (clearly) apprised of what his or her position (obviously) implies, in which event the position will be either implicitly paraconsistent or else trivial, depending on the underlying logic adopted." (p. 3)

(1) According to Rescher, The Philosophy of Leibniz, 1967, chapter 2. [See also Nicholas Rescher, "Leibniz and the Concept of a System", Studia Leibnitiana,13, 1981, pp. 114-122.]

(2) Such as are given in the Introduction to Part Two.

5. ———. 1989. "An Outline of the History of (Logical) Dialectic." In Paraconsistent Logic: Essays on the Inconsistent, edited by Routley, Richard, Priest, Graham and Norman, Jean, 76-98. München: Philosophia Verlag.

"7. Summary and prospects

It will be clear that dialectic, as befits a theory of development, has developed markedly over two and a half thousand years of philosophy. We have isolated two major phases: Classical Greek philosophy and Modem German philosophy. Although they are very different, one is the development of the other, and there is an important parallel between the phases. Both started off concentrating precisely on contradiction within the setting of (perplexing) arguments. Both then developed into a theory of development in which contradiction plays the central role. Finally, both went into a period of decline when the specific essence of dialectic, literal contradiction, was forgotten, and consequently dialectic became a subject of high generality but little content. All this we have documented.

Of course the evolution of dialectic will continue and we think that we are at the start of a new phase of growth, during which symbolic logic will play a fundamental role. It will again start with a concentration on contradiction itself within the framework of argument procedures, especially convincing arguments which lead to contradiction. To an extent this has already happened with the matter of logical paradoxes and of paraconsistent logic.

However it is also evident that a correct understanding of the history of dialectic is essential for further progress. To this end an analysis of the history of dialectic, and particularly Hegel's dialectic, using the techniques of modem logic is essential. From what has been said it is obvious that such an analysis will have to accommodate the notion of a true contradiction.

Thus paraconsistent logic will be essential here too.(94) This analysis has already started, but remains in its earliest stages.(95) Where the whole modem study will take us, we can only speculate." (p. 92)

(94) It follows that the few attempted formalizations that have appeared which use classical logic are doomed to failure. Some of these can be found in Marconi, 1977.

(95) See, for example, Routley and Meyer, 1976; da Costa and Wolf, 1980; Priest, 1982; and Pena, 1980.

References

da Costa, N. C. A. and Wolf, R. G., 1980, "Studies in Paraconsistent Logic I: The Dialectical Principles of the Unity of Opposites", Philosophia 9, pp. 189-217.

Marconi, D., ed., 1979, La Formalizzazione della Dialettlca, Torino, Rosenberg & Sellier.

Peña, L., 1980, Forrnalizacion y Logica Dialetica, Quito: Pontificla Umversidad Católica del Ecuador.

Priest, G. 1982, "To Be and Not to Be: Dialectical Tense Logic", Studia Logica, 41, pp. 249-268.

Routley, R. and Meyer, R. K., 1976, "Dialectical logic, classical logic, and the consistency of the world", Studies in Soviet Thought 16, p. 1-25.

6. ———. 1989. "Systems of Paraconsistent Logic." In Paraconsistent Logic: Essays on the Inconsistent, edited by Routley, Richard, Priest, Graham and Norman, Jean, 151-186. München: Philosophia Verlag.

"Let ⊨ be a relation of logical consequence. ⊨ may be defined either semantically (Σ ⊨ A holds iff for some specified set of valuations, whenever all the formulas in Σ are true under an evaluation, so is A) or proof

theoretically (Σ ⊨ A holds iff for some specified set of rules, there is a derivation of A, all of whose (undischarged) premisses are in Σ), or in some other way. ⊨ is explosive iff for all A and B, {A, ~A}⊨ B. It is paraconsistent iff it is not explosive. A logic is paraconsistent iff its logical consequence relation is. If a logic is defined in terms of a set of theses it may have more than one associated consequence relation. For example, {A_1 ... An} ⊨ B iff ⊢Aj ... ∧ An) → B or ⊢Aj → (... →(An → B) ... ) or A_1 ... An ⊨ B (the last representing the theorem-preserving or weak inferential connection). In this case all its associated consequence relations should be paraconsistent.

Let Σ be a set of statements. Σ is inconsistent iff, for some A, {A, ~A} ⊆ Σ.

Σ is trivial iff for all B, B ε Σ. The important fact about paraconsistent logics is that they provide the basis for inconsistent but non-trivial theories. In other words, there are sets of statements closed under logical consequence which are inconsistent but non-trivial. This fact is sometimes taken as an alternative definition of 'paraconsistent' and, given that logical consequence is transitive, it is equivalent to the original definition. The proof is this: If Σ is an inconsistent but non-trivial theory then obviously the consequence relation is paraconsistent. Conversely, suppose that {A, ~A}≠ B. Let Σ be the transitive closure of {A, ~A} under logical consequence. Then Σ is inconsistent but B ∉ Σ. Because of the equivalence we also call any inconsistent but non-trivial theory paraconsistent, and derivatively, any position whose deductive closure provides a paraconsistent theory.

Why should one be interested in paraconsistent logics? Among the many reasons are proof theoretic and semantic ones." (p. 151)

7. ———. 1989. "Applications of Paraconsistent Logic." In Paraconsistent Logic: Essays on the Inconsistent, edited by Routley, Richard, Priest, Graham and Norman, Jean, 367-393. München: Philosophia Verlag.

"1. Introduction: the variety and types of applications

The most important application of paraconsistent logics is their application to possibly inconsistent theories. However one needs to interpret "theories" here fairly liberally, as any body of doctrine, statements, axioms etc. which can be thought of as inferentially closed. The theories can be historical, current, embryonic or merely entertained. Of course the formalization of such theories often requires much wider logical apparatus than the mere first order deductive logic discussed in the introduction to Part Two of the book. This may include probability, inductive logic, the logic of various modalities and other intentional notions such as belief, and so on. Such things, or at least some of them, have been considered by logicians. But, by and large, the logical theories produced have been tuned to classical or at least intuitionist logic. This is singularly inappropriate since as often as not, the material to which the logical apparatus is applied is inconsistent, as we shall see. Accordingly the ideas of paraconsistency need to be applied to the logical theories of modality, probability, etc. themselves to produce adequate logical machinery. In this essay we will consider first some interesting inconsistent theories, some of them in some detail, and then move on

to consider the remodelling of various logical theories. It should be stressed that the studies of many applications mentioned are in their infancy, and we can often do no more than make suggestions for the directions of future research." (p. 367)

8. ———. 1989. "The Philosophical Significance and Inevitability of Paraconsistency." In Paraconsistent Logic: Essays on the Inconsistent, edited by Routley, Richard, Priest, Graham and Norman, Jean, 483-539. München: Philosophia Verlag.

"Paraconsistency strikes at the root of principles which are fundamental to, and entrenched in, much philosophy. It is therefore bound to be philosophically problematic and to have important philosophical ramifications. In this introduction we will try to chart and analyse some of these issues. By its nature, this will require us to deal with a number of separate and not otherwise connected issues. However, we will start by looking at some important points raised by the arguments for paraconsistency in chapter V [*], section 1 above.

We will then go on to investigate some of the philosophical consequences of paraconsistency." (p. 483)

[*] Systems of Paraconsistent Logic by G. Priest and R. Routley.

9. Routley, Richard, Priest, Graham, and Norman, Jean. 1989. Paraconsistent Logic: Essays on the Inconsistent. München: Philosophia.

Contents: Essays by Richard Routley: I. First Historical Introduction: A Preliminary History of Paraconsistent and Dialethic Approaches (with Graham Priest) 3-75; II. An Outline of the History of (Logical) Dialectic (with Graham Priest) 76-98; V. Systems of Paraconsistent Logic (with Graham Priest) 151-186; XIII. Applications of Paraconsistent Logic (with Graham Priest) 367-393; XV. The Non Triviality of Extensional Dialectical Set of Paraconsistency Theory (with Ross T. Brady) 415-436); XVIII. The Philosophical Significance and Inevitability of Paraconsistency (with Graham Priest) 483-539; XXIII. Moral Dilemmas and the Logic of Deontic Notions (with V. Plumwood) 653-690.

"This book had its conception in a bar in about 1978, though the exact date escapes our collective memory. We had both been working in the field of paraconsistent logic for some years and were aware the subject was gradually gaining momentum. Yet the movement was still a diffuse one. This was, and still is, for two reasons. First, though many people were involved, they were spread fairly thinly over the globe, and communication was not particularly good. Secondly, the major papers that had been published on the subject were published in a variety of journals, some of them fairly inaccessible. It seemed to us that a focal point for work in paraconsistency was necessary, and would be provided by a suitable book.

We could have published a collection of already published essays but decided against it. Instead we wrote to those whom we knew to be working in the area who in turn informed those whom they knew: the book comprises papers that were sent to us in response. (We obtained however more papers than we could use: a number of the others have been published in an issue of Studia Logica devoted to paraconsistency and edited by us. (1)

All the papers in this collection are published here for the first time and some of them are undoubtedly of the first importance for the future of the subject.

Researchers should also find the bibliography of paraconsistency helpful.

Paraconsistency will still be an unfamiliar and fairly esoteric topic to most people. We therefore decided to write a number of introductory essays on various aspects of paraconsistency, and these can be found at the beginning of each section of the book.(2)" (p. XIX)

(...)

"The word "paraconsistent" (meaning "beyond the consistent") was coined by Mira Quesada [*] to apply to the study of theories that are inconsistent but not trivial. In working on this book, however, we found that another piece of terminology was desirable. This was to express the idea that some paraconsistent theories are true. After exhausting all the dictionaries at our disposal (including Greek, Russian and Gaelic), we decided that no extant word would express this idea. So we were forced to coin one. A true contradiction is a Janus-faced creature which faces both truth and falsity.

The word 'dialetheia' ("two-way truth") seemed a fairly appropriate way of expressing this idea. Correspondingly dialethism is the view that there are dialetheias, true contradictions. We use these terms (with a little embarrassment) throughout our essays.

As with the variant spelling of "dialeth(e)ic" and its cognates, so even more with variant notation and referencing, and more still with the spread of heterodox ideas, there is in this book no stifling uniformity." (p. XX)

(1) Studia Logica, volume 43, 1984.

(2) These introductory chapters first appeared in On Paraconsistency, Research Papers of the Logic Group, No. 13, Philosophy Department, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. A few changes have been made due to comments by Newton da Costa, Charles Daniels and Lorenzo Perra, to whom we are grateful.

[*] in a letter to Newton da Costa, Lima, September 29, 1975 (Luis Felipe Bartolo Alegre, "A name for the logics of inconsistent systems. Francisco Miró Quesada Cantuarias (1918-2019)" South American Journal of Logic, 6, 2020, pp. 3-9 (note added by Raul Corazzon)

10. Sylvan, Richard. 1989. "Relational semantics for all Lewis, Lemmon and Feys' modal logics, most notably for systems between S0.3° and S1." Journal of Non-Classical Logic:19-40.

A main object of the present exercise is to provide relational semantics for weak strict modal logics strictly between S0.5 and S2, relational semantics for other systems of the great system pioneers being textbook stuff. A relational semantics evaluates modal functors in terms of a (two-place) relation between situations or worlds: not, as in the much less revealing "neighbourhood" semantics, in terms of a relations between worlds and sets of worlds ( thus relational semantics are in a sense "first order", by contrast with such neighbourhood semantics). The relational semantics for S1 and S1", in particular, are markedly superior to earlier neighbourhood semantics; they fit the systems better, and are more informative and they directly supply interpretable matrices for the logics and attractive algebraic analyses. With the provision of these semantics, furthermore, the supplying of such relational semantics for all the modal sentential logics presented and studied by the great pioneers, Lewis, Lemmon and Feys, is completed(2).

(2) Of course Lewis, Feys and Lemmon were by no means the only important pioneers of modal systems - von Wright and Prior were among others - or always the earliest. Leibniz is now said, in Germany, to have outlined system S2, and MacColl, whose modal systematisation remains neglected, delineated a system in the vicinity of S2. But the cited pioneers did much systematisation and taxonomy of systems; to them primarily we owe present main galaxy of modal systems.

11. ———. 1989. "Philosophical and Linguistic Inroads: Multiply Intensional Relevant Logics." In Directions in Relevant Logic, edited by Sylvan, Richard and Norman, Jean, 269-304. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"Many English sentences contain not just one intensional connective but several.

Philosophical discourse and argument contain a particularly high concentration of intensional connectives, indeed of ultramodal connectives, those beyond the reach of modal logics. For it is not just that the fundamental argument relations of deducibility, implication and conditionality are intensional, indeed themselves ultramodal. So furthermore are central topics of philosophical investigation, such as: knowledge and belief; evidence, confirmation, and explanation; pastness and futurity, and the notions of tense, change and action; value, right and obligation; to begin with a listing. They are one and all intensional, and generally more highly intensional than the modal notions of possibility, necessity and contingency, or of provability and classical probability. The upshot is that any logical theory fit to pass initial adequacy conditions for the formalisation of associated discourse - and especially of philosophical arguments - will have to consider intensional connectives, indeed highly intensional connectives, and not just one at a time, but multiply. But virtually all previous theories fail to accommodate ultramodal notions. This is enough to motivate the present enterprise, that of adding many further, appropriately controlled, connectives to the

implicational systems so far studied in relevant logic investigations (e.g. in the studies surveyed in RLR). Not too surprisingly, however, the further connectives singled out for special study are those that have attracted much philosophical discussion and have, for the most part, already been investigated, much less than satisfactorily, in applications of modal logic." (p. 269)

References

RLR = Routley, R., Plumwood, V., Meyer, R. K. and Brady, R. 1982, Relevant Logics and Their Rivals I, Ridgeview, Atascadero, Ca.

12. ———. 1989. "Semantics unlimited I: A Synthesis of Relevant Implication and Entailment with Non-Transmissable Functions Such as Belief, Assertion and Perception." In Directions in Relevant Logic, edited by Sylvan, Richard and Norman, Jean, 327-376. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"The thesis that philosophy is the logical syntax and semantics of language, that, more comprehensively, the task of philosophy is semiotical analysis, though sponsored especially by Carnap, was adopted by Russell before him and Montague and many others after him. The thesis foundered, so it came to be thought, like "Montague semantics" and "illocutionary logic" after it, on various immovable rocks, a major one being the inadequacy of the semantical framework in terms of which the thesis was to be made good, an inadequacy which left it unable to accommodate and account for much intensional discourse. A chief deficiency

of the framework was, in fact, the restriction to the possible - to possible worlds and possible individuals, in short to possible items, worlds being a sort of item. An important by-product of general semantics for relevant logics is that they have shown how to remove, in a nontrivial way, the restriction to possible worlds (and thereby too that the restriction to possible individuals can be lifted and with it associated restrictions militating against incomplete, vague, and other supposedly recalcitrant items: see JB p.348ff.). We can move out of the modal dark ages." (p. 328)

References

JB = Routley, R. 1979, Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra.

13. ———. 1989. "Conclusion: Further Directions in Relevant Logics." In Directions in Relevant Logic, edited by Sylvan, Richard and Norman, Jean, 399-437. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"There is a great deal to be done, as always. For one thing, research papers commonly open at least as many questions as they resolve. Moreover, as has always been the way with minority research interests, there are few doing the work, especially compared with the numbers defending or propagating dominant "classical" logic and its complex epicycling.

Early in its rise to ascendency classical theory encountered a heavy variety of paradoxes and anomalies quite sufficient to have grounded it, had workable alternatives been available.

There were none with comparable scope. Alternatives have been slow to emerge, dominant positions blinkering discernment of rivals; these alternatives are still few, and none yet has wide appeal. Meanwhile classical theory has been able to fortify its position, to assemble a ring of defences, to pretend, for example, that the paradoxes and anomalies that come with it are inevitable or facts of life. Now with the advent of the two-valued Boolean computer age, it appears that limited skirmishes have been decisively won for the time being by the classical hordes, with the fair and the true roundly defeated by the tough and the crude. All of which is bad news for all subjects, like philosophy, involving reasoning, where two-valued classical logic has done much more harm than good.(1)" (p. 399)

(1) The points are documented in several places; see especially UU, or JB p. 898 ff.; also RLR.

From this angle, the various schools who have refused the enticements of classical logic and tried to persist with an expanded traditional logic (e.g. J. Anderson and the Sydney school) were not entirely wrong. But in avoiding propositional logic, for example, except as distorted through dubious reductions, they gave themselves a severe handicap.

References

JB = Routley, R. 1979, Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra.

RLR = Routley, R., Plumwood, V., Meyer, R. K. and Brady, R. 1982, Relevant Logics and Their Rivals I, Ridgeview, Atascadero, Ca.

UU = Routley, R. 1977, "Ultralogic as universal?", Newsletter 2, "Ultralogic as Relevance Logic 50-90 and 138-175; reprinted in JB.

14. ———. 1989. Bystander's Guide to Sociative Logics: A short interim edition. Canberra: Department of Philosophy. Research School of Social Sciences. Australian National University.

"In a sociative logic, premisses and conclusion of an argument, or correspondingly antecedents and consequent of a valid implication, are associated; they characteristically have enough to do with one another. To that extent any such logic is broadly relevant. But what have become known as relevant logics, the best known of which are the relevance logics largely forged in dirty Pittsburgh, comprise only a quite proper subclass of the broader class of sociative logics, many kinds of which have a much longer and more substantial history than relevant logics. If the story elaborated in this guide is correct early sociative logics did not arise in reaction to noxious irrelevant products; these logics were the original logics. The oversimplification and excessive power of irrelevant systematisation only came later; and then especially in the later middle ages and contemporary times when such systematisation came to dominate, there was a due, though substantially ineffectual, reaction against it.

What the later sociative logics that developed in reaction have in common is primarily the aim to avoid the most obvious paradoxes of dominant logical theorising. The plurality of logical theories and sketches that now make up sociative logics share little else however. There is no common commitment, for instance, to supply an account of entailment, or a theory of relevance, or a technical story of the use of premisses in argument, though there are bound to be commitments to some more central logical enterprises or other, such as elaboration of a theory of argument or inference, an account of reasoning, explication of conditionals, and so on.

What these different commitments were and are, and ought to be, will begin to unfold as the story proceeds." (Preface, p. II)

15. ———. 1989. "Uniform Relational Logics for all Lewis, Lemmon and Feys Modal Logics - With More on the Virtues of Weakness and Nonnormality." Journal of Non-classical Logic no. 6:19-40.

16. Sylvan, Richard, Goddard, Lenn, and Da Costa, N. C. A. 1989. "Reason, Cause, and Relevant Containment with an Application to Frame Problems." Research Series in Logic and Metaphysics no. 3:81 pages.

17. Sylvan, Richard, and Norman, Jean. 1989. "Introduction: Routes in Relevant Logic." In Directions in Relevant Logic, edited by Sylvan, Richard and Norman, Jean, 1-24. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"In relevant logic, a main revolutionary force in contemporary logical unrest, there are many extremely interesting directions to take. The essays included here indicate some significant and exciting directions, and give out widely conflicting opinions and advice on progress and directions - including such advice as: avoid these dangerous paths and byways, and get back on safe and established highways! This introduction and the conclusion, which ignore such well-meaning advice, try to give a wider impression of directions and unmapped regions (the survey is further extended and given historical dimension in the companion

volume BG)." (p. 1)

References

BG = Sylvan, R. 1988, A Bystanders' Guide To Sociative Logics, typescript, Canberra.

18. ———, eds. 1989. Directions in Relevant Logic. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Chapter by Richard Sylvan: Preface (with Jean Norman) VII-VIII; Introduction: Routes in Relevant Logic 1-21; Chapter 19: Philosophical and Linguistic Inroads: Multiply Intensional Relevant Logics 269-304: Chapter 22: Semantics Unlimited I: A Relevant Synthcsis of Implication with Higher Intensionality 327-376; Chapter 24: Conclusion: Further Directions in Relevant Logics 399-437.

"Relevance logics came of age with the one and only International Conference on relevant logics in 1974.

(..)

We thought that the collection of essays was still (even after more than six years in the publishing trade limbo) well worth publishing, that the subject would remain undeservedly esoteric in North America while work on it could not find publishers (it is not so esoteric in academic circles in Continental Europe, Latin America and the Antipodes) and, quite important, that we could get the collection published, and furthermore, by resorting to local means, published comparatively cheaply. It is indeed no ordinary collection. It contains work by pioneers of the main types of broadly relevant systems, and by several of the most

innovative non-classical logicians of the present flourishing logical period.

We have slowly re-edited and reorganised the collection and made it camera-ready.

While we have retained all the completed essays from the Conference sent to us with the exception of essays that have, in the interval, been published elsewhere, we have not limited ourselves to these essays but have, so far as space permitted, invited newer essays. As well we have included overviews, which provide introductions to current directions of research on broadly relevant logics and to many general problems in the area." (Preface, P. VII)

19. Sylvan, Richard, and Urbas, Igor. 1989. "Factorisation Logics." Research series in Logic and Metaphysics no. 5:50 pages.

20. ———. 1989. "Prospects for Decent Relevant Factorization Logics." Journal of Non-classical Logic no. 6:63-79.

21. Sylvan, Richard. 1990. "On Making a Coherence Theory of Truth True." Philosophica (Belgium):77-105.

"In the last half century the coherence theory of truth has largely fallen into disuse and disrepute. While there is now some flirting with coherence approaches, as each approved version of the majority position, the correspondence theory, duly founders, and holism gains in fashionability, still coherence has but few committed friends. Granted, it has had friends of a sort: most notably Rescher, who has made significant contributions, on which others may profitably build. But Rescher, while advocating what he calls a 'coherence theory' has twisted the theory into what it is not, a modified "self-evidence" theory, and has also warped it into a methodological pragmatism that would have made straight old-timers like Bradley and Blanshard blanch. As well the major virtues of the theory - if only it could be got to work, which unfortunately it can't - have been appreciated by isolated explorers of the wide truth terrain, such as Blackburn (see esp. his pp. 237-8). The present exercise supplies one way of enabling the theory to work, without undue warping. That way does not pretend to be an authentic historical way, only an historically controlled and informed way. For the primary purpose here is not historical explication; it lies rather in the development of

coherence theory beyond its previous and varied historical settings, to render it somewhat more adequate and more coherent, and to begin to display some of its further virtues." (p. 77, notes omitted)

References

S. Blackburn, Spreading the Word, Clarendon, Oxford, 1984.

B. Blanshard, The Nature of Thought, London, 1939.

F.H. Bradley, Essays on Truth and Reality, Oxford, 1914.

N. Rescher, The Coherence Theory of Truth, University Press of America, Washington, 1973.

22. ———. 1990. "Variations on da Costa C Systems and Dual-Intuitionistic Logics: I. Analyses of Cw and CCw." Studia Logica no. 49:47-65.

Abstract: "Da Costa's C systems are surveyed and motivated, and significant failings of the systems are indicated. Variations are then made on these systems in an attempt to surmount their defects and limitations. The main system to emerge from this effort, system CCω), is investigated in some detail, and "dual-intuitionistic" semantical analyses are developed for it and surrounding systems. These semantics are then adapted for the original C systems, first in a rather unilluminating relational fashion, subsequently in a more illuminating way through the introduction of impossible situations where and and or change roles. Finally other attempts to break out of impasses for the original and expanded C systems, by going inside them, are looked at, and further research directions suggested."

23. ———. 1990. "Relevant Conditionals: Integrating Semantics for One and Two Place Theories and Elaborating the Theories (Abstract)." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 55.

24. Sylvan, Richard, Fuhrmann, André, and Los, J. 1990. "Assertion and Commitment and Conditional Obligation." Research Series in Logic and Metaphysics:60 pages.

25. Sylvan, Richard. 1991. "Existence II: Existence and Nonexistence." In Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, edited by Burkhardt, Hans and Smith, Barry, 261-263. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"While the topic of existence ought to be a central concern of philosophy, the fundamental notion of ontology, the notion in fact remains remarkably underinvestigated because of certain ancient prejudices, such as referential assumptions embedded deep in mainstream philosophy. Most important among these is the ontological assumption, according to which whatever is a (logical) subject, whatever is genuinely talked about, exists. (The assumption appears in various different guises, e.g. as narrowed to what is truly talked about, and also in derived forms, e.g. as restricted to quantifiable talk, a form sloganized as ‘to exist is to admit of construal as a value of a bound variable’ and the like.) Accordingly, then, discourse that is apparently about what does not exist must be reduced, in one way or another, to proper (logical) form, namely that conforming to the above assumption.

The mainstream result is a grand (but misguided) reduction programme for many types of problematic language, especially that about fictions, i.e. fictional items generally, and that about universals, abstractions, and theoretical items. The so-called ‘riddle of existence’ (or ‘Plato’s beard’) derives from the same assumption. The puzzle is: how is it possible to make true statements, such as ‘Pegasus does not exist', about the nonexistent, since the statement yields both that the subject (Pegasus in the example) exists, by the assumption, and that it does not, because that statement is true? The received resolution involves both an analysis, or removal of ‘Pegasus’ from the class of genuine names and logical subjects, and circumscription of the ‘predicate’ ‘exists’ (and of course its associated negation) under the dogma that existence is not a predicate.

Under the alternative object-theory approach, still a minor philosophical stream but one systematizing much traditional philosophical and everyday practice, all this analytic and reductive activity is avoided. For example, ‘Pegasus does not exist’ is admitted to be what it appears to be, a grammatically satisfactory subject-predicate statement, without existential commitment; it is a statement about (or signifying) a non-existent object, Pegasus, and ascribing to it the property of non-existence. So existence, too, is a predicate, indeed a rather distinguished one, of which it would be reasonable to expect some suitable philosophical characterization. Neither it nor non-existence is especially puzzling, or beyond characterization and therefore discussion; nor is it without criteria because it is not a feature of everything nor is it distributed everywhere.

(...)

The assumption-undermining object-theory alternative does not carry any commitment to traditional doctrines concerning essence, long entangled (in priority and other disputes) with questions of existence. For characterization is a wider, less loaded notion than essence. Characterizations may be fuzzy, not tied to necessary and sufficient conditions but to looser specifications; they themselves are further non-existent items. Nor do they ‘precede' existence, though elements of them are needed in order to ascertain whether something exists or not.

(...)

Although defining existence is a controversial affair, the notion is not entirely uncontrolled; there are fairly uncontroversial) bounds. It is generally taken that such material things as sticks and stones, which can hurt, do exist, but that mere names, as distinct from sounds and marks on surfaces, do not; nor do impossible objects or the characters of pure fiction or imagination or speculation.

But in between are extensive controversial areas. As policy in arriving at an account of existence we could do worse than to heed Ockham's razor, not to multiply what exists beyond necessity, which translates into: begin with those items which obviously exist, not-controversially, such as medium-size material objects, and close under enlargements produced by unavoidable extensions thereof, such as compounding or summation and dissection or analysis. But exclude unnecessary items, such as illusions, imaginary items, dream characters, and unnecessary operations, such as abstraction, idealization, fictional variation, and so forth. The route to an appropriately minimalist definition of existence is now evident. An item exists if it stands in suitable physical relations to the paradigm existents. (Such a definition is refined and synthesized with other accounts of existence in Routley 1980, Chapter 9.)" (pp. 261-263)

26. ———. 1991. "Nature, Ontology of." In Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, edited by Burkhardt, Hans and Smith, Barry, 599-602. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

27. ———. 1991. "Relativism." In Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, edited by Burkhardt, Hans and Smith, Barry, 783-785. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

28. ———. 1991. "Relevant Logics." In Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, edited by Burkhardt, Hans and Smith, Barry, 787-789. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

"Relevant logics are both philosophically and mathematically motivated: but in both cases, a prime objective is to avoid paradoxes or incoherence, of one sort or another, a feat accomplished through restored or improved connections, especially relevant connection in implicational and inferential linkages. Relevant implications, the focus of most research, are those whose components (A and B in implication A → B) are relevant to one another, i.e. have enough to do with one another. Broadly relevant, or sociative logics assert none but relevant implications; all implicational theses of such logics are relevant implications. Under a technical explication (of weak relevance), relevant implications and logics are explained in the following way: a logic or logical system is relevant if its propositional part contains no theorems of the form A→ B where A and B fail to share a parameter. So any system which includes or validates paradoxes of implication - such as that contradictions imply everything and anything implies what is necessary (e.g. in standard symbols of the literature):

A & ~ A → B, B →. C. v ~ C. A &~ A →. C & ~ C, etc.

is irrelevant. Mainstream logics, such as classical and intuitionistic systems, are irrelevant.

(...)

"All these types of sociative logics have historical roots, most reaching back at least to medieval times. For example, semantical reasons for the serious qualification of Disjunctive Syllogism were anticipated in the 15th century by the Cologne School and Domingo de Soto; for they realized that where both A and ~ A hold (as in non-trivial inconsistent theories and many kinds of intensional situations), A does not exclude ~A, A’s negation, so B's holding is in no way guaranteed. Generally, however, the historical connections were rediscovered later, after contemporary investigations had begun. In particular, technical studies of the best known of these sociative types, relevant logics proper, were well advanced before it was realized that some of the ideas (e.g. that relevant implication explicated genuine deducibility) were not quite so new, and that popular arguments against the theory appealing to the logical tradition could be matched by rival traditional arguments from dissenting schools. But certain recently neglected features of logical tradition - notably the requirements of preservation of relevance and necessity in an implication - were early seized upon by Anderson and Belnap (1975), who made these requirements central to their elaboration of entailment, as encapsulated in the system E (of ‘entailment’). To them we owe both the title ‘relevance logic’ and the main systems of relevance logics, a subclass of properly relevant logics in the vicinity of E, a system itself adapted from the (theorem-wise equivalent) system of ‘rigorous implication’ of W. Ackermann (1896-1962), who really initiated contemporary technical studies in 1956." (pp. 787-788)

References

Anderson, A. R., and Belnap, N. D., Jr., 1975, Entailment. The Logic of Relevance and Necessity, vol. I, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press; vol. II, ibid. (1990).

29. ———. 1991. "Sistology." In Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, edited by Burkhardt, Hans and Smith, Barry, 837-840. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

30. ———. 1991. "On Interpreting Truth Tables and Relevant Truth Table Logic (Abstract)." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 56:381.

31. ———. 1991. "On the Foundations of Process Theory (Abstract)." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 56:113.

32. Sylvan, Richard, and Nola, Robert. 1991. "Much Simplified Semantics for Basic Relevant Logics (Abstract)." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 56:381-382.

33. ———. 1991. "Paraconsistent Classical Logic (Abstract)." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 56:382.

34. ———. 1991. "Confirmation Without Paradoxes." In Advances in Scientific Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Paul Weingartner on the Occasion of the 60th Anniversary of His Birthday, edited by Schurz, Gerhard and Dorn, Georg J. W., 5-44. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"Our modest aim is to show how, within a suitable relevant logical framework, all the paradoxes of confirmation vanish - not merely those Hempel and Carnap adduced, but those uncovered by Good, Goodman. Glymour, and others. But, naturally, even removing these paradoxes wholesale still leaves much logical work to be done, work we shall not try to complete here. What we shall indicate however, in the final section, is convergent work undertaken independently by Paul Weingartner and collaborators, which resolves paradoxes in an analogous fashion." (p. 5)

(...)

"To arrive at relevant logic and accompanying semantics of confirmation, we shall try to proceed from what is more secure (such as intersubstitutivity principles) to what is less (such as converse consequence conditions discussed by Hempel). In brief, we build up from weakness (as was the main Taoist-Cartesian methodological stratagem of RLR) rather than adopting the more difficult, if theorem wise intertwining, classical procedure of cutting down from damaging strength. The goal is, of course, a relevant logical theory free from paradoxes. Nonetheless, a subsidiary aim is to achieve substantially a logical theory, to accomplish as much as we reasonably can with logic alone, without undue appeal to outside distinctions or information (which may however enter in applications): in particular, without undue appeal to types of samples, or classes of conditionals or hypotheses, or "theoretically barren contexts" with no illicit background information, or "total available information.". (p. 6)

References

Routley, R., and Others (1982), Relevant Logics and Their Rivals, California: Ridgeview, referred to as RLR.

35. Sylvan, Richard. 1992. "On Interpreting Truth Tables and Relevant Truth Table Logic." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 33:207-215.

Abstract: "Contrary to common mythology, the two-valued truth tables do not yield classical logic. Many contestable assumptions are required to reach classical logic. Indeed some assumptions are required to get anywhere logically.

In between, and in other directions, lie several other logics. For, even logically, there are many ways in which the truth tables can themselves be interpreted.

In particular, they can be variously read inferentially, in one direction or two, or they may be variously read semantically. Along inferential lines, Tennant's one-way reading is reconsidered. It is argued that the tables

do not lead to the logics Tennant claims to reach but can lead to various other decidedly weak logics. Along more orthodox semantical lines, it is shown how the truth tables themselves do not exclude nonclassical situations but can allow for incomplete and inconsistent set-ups. So considered, they provide the framework for a four-valued relevant logic. A four-valued implication is grafted onto this framework, simply by generalising upon two-valued material implication artifice, to deliver the familiar system FDE of tautological entailment. Finally, for comparison, a less contrived semantics than pure truth tabular, a semantics due to Dunn, which now admits of ready higher degree extension, is supplied for FDE."

FDE = First Degree Entailment

References

Dunn, J. M., "Intuitive semantics for first-degree entailments and 'coupled trees'," Philosophical Studies, vol. 29 (1976), pp. 149-168.

Tennant, N., "Truth table logic," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, vol. 30 (1989), pp. 459-484.

36. ———. 1992. "Significant Moments in the Development of Australian Logic: in Critical Appreciation of Leonard Goddard's Major Contribution." Logique et Analyse no. 45:5-44.

"Len Goddard not only initiated wider logical research in Australia, but further he had a major influence on the character and ethos of that investigation; for example, its easy, free-wheeling, unauthoritarian, undogmatic character. He encouraged features of what would now be regarded as logical pluralism of a relaxed and far-reaching kind. Not only were there many logical systems and frameworks worth investigating, some of course of more philosophical or technical merit than others; but more, he freely conceded that there may not be a unique correct one, or absolutely right way, among them. Nor, by contrast with common practice elsewhere, did he discourage heterodox logical work, even such unorthodox thought as that prevailing classical ways might be seriously defective, even downright wrong. To the contrary, he early thought that satisfactory resolutions of a range of paradoxes and puzzles should be sought outside entrenched ways; but he did not try to impose his own ideas or interests. In his own research at the time, which was (rather un-Australianly) nonconfrontational, he was certainly looking for resolutions of logical and semantical paradoxes outside formal classical logic -though by way of what had long stood at the peripheries of British logical investigations (from Mill through Russell and Ryle), namely significance theory and its contextual enlargements. More generally, there was no attempt, with Goddard as guide and director, to pull or push researchers into some standard line; on the contrary, they were encouraged to roam." (pp. 6-7)

37. ———. 1992. "Process and Action: Relevant Theory and Logics." Studia Logica no. 51:379-437.

Abstract: "While process and action are fundamental notions, in ubiquitous use, they lack satisfactory logical treatment in two critical respects: in analyses of the fundamentals themselves and in logical development. For what treatment they have so far received, under classical systematisation, leaves significant lacunae and induces much paradox. A relevant logical relocation, carried through in detail here, removes such problems, and provides solid ground-work for a satisfactory treatment.

Firstly, as to fundamentals: processes should be explicated, so it is argued, as certain sorts of (time) directed functions (from inputs to outputs); thus they can be represented through certain ordered pairs of relations. Significant logical structures they can enter into axe investigated: notably, process lattice and coupled logics, and a generalized category theory (tolerating nonassociativity of composition).

Actions are types of processes, agent-ascribed process. As stock analyses of the differentia, operators and agency, through intentionality, rationality and so on, demonstrably fail, new causal analyses are proposed.

Secondly, as to logical developments: for the most part, the apparently diverse offering of process and action logics to be encountered in the literature are but multiple modal logics: modal logics enriched with further functors of interesting modal sorts. Some, for example, like advertised "process logics" are dynamic logics (themselves basically multiple modal logics) enriched by tense logical functors, themselves modal in character. In a way that is now becoming nonstandardly standard, these modal enterprises can be reworked on relevant logical bases. A main point to such exercises resembles that of other relevant reworklngs: namely, the search for correctness, for adequacy to pre-analytic and linguistic data, and therewith removal of paradoxes and anomalies that accumulate under modal analyses.

Logical components from a properly expanded Humean model of action are supplied with relevant logics and semantics, in particular doing, trying and striving, intention and motivation. The difficult question of formalising practical inference is then addressed.

Relevant dynamic logics, paralleling modal developments, are built up piece by piece, relevant theory change is considered within a dynamic framework, and work on relevant temporal and process logics of programming cast, including functors such as before, during and throughout, is initiated. The present state of logical play is assessed."

38. ———. 1992. "Grim Tales Retold: How to Maintain Ordinary Discourse About - and Despite - Logical Embarrassing Notions and Totalities." Logique et Analyse no. 35:349-374.

39. ———. 1992. "Blending Semantics for IF as a One-Place Assertive With Semantics for the Conditional." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 21:67-71.

"According to the interesting theory of Miguel de Castro [2], the word `if' is not - what conventional logical theory sees it as - a two-place connective coupling a pair of sentences (e.g. even mildy deviant logicians like Belnap and Anderson take this line; see [1], p. 481). It is rather - what it often seems to be { a one-place functor, like its near relative suppose and like would that, one wonders whether, and many wh-expressions. Let us restrict consideration to the one-place connective, i.e. where if is sentence forming, so that, like ~ (for not), where A is a sentence so is if A.

Under the one-place theory, the conventional form if A (then) B, symbolized A > B, plainly derives by compounding, through the two-place connective, ;,or ,then. To make reading more straightforward, we shall assume then insertion (as argued for, in a distinguishing role, in [4] chapter ). The formation rule for ,then is accordingly: where A and B are sentences (or wff) then so is A, then B. Thus A > B admits of syntactical analysis as: (if A), then B.

What is demonstrated here is that this analysis can be extended smoothly to the semantical theory." (p. 67)

References

[1] A.R. Anderson and N.D. Belnap Jr., Entailment, Volume 1, Princeton University Press, 1975.

[2] M. de Castro, if-Strings in English: a new syntactic and semantic analysis, Doctoral dissertation, Australian National University, 1990.

40. Sylvan, Richard, and Priest, Graham. 1992. "Simplified Semantics for Basic Relevant Logic." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 21:217-232.

"When Anderson and Belnap pioneered relevant logic, they proposed a number of systems (E, R, etc.) in proofs theoretic form. When suitable world-semantics for these systems were produced, it became clear that these systems were but the tip of an iceberg.

Moreover, in the light of the semantics, it became clear that the basic (affixing) logic was none of those that Anderson and Belndp had suggested, but the system now called B (or BM if we drop all constraints

on *). This had the most general semantics: other (affixing) systems being obtained by adding extra conditions on the ternary relation, R." (p. 217)

(...)

"In the first part of the paper we will consider the basic positive logic, B+. In the second half we will consider negation-extensions of B+. There are two strategies for handling negation in relevant logic: one uses the Routley *-operation; the other uses four-valued semantics (Routley et al., loc. cit.). We consider both approaches. The extant four-valued semantics for relevant logics contain a complication over and above constraints on R: they require two ternary relations (one to state truth conditions; the other to state falsity conditions). A feature of the present semantics is that only a single ternary relation is needed. Thus, the four-valued semantics are doubly simplified. Moreover, an interesting divergence emerges here. All negative systems add De Morgan laws to B+. The basic negative system with the Routley * adds, in addition, contraposition; that for the four-valued semantics adds, instead, double negation. (B itself, adds both.)

We concentrate in this paper on the semantics of the basic affixing relevant systems. It is clear that simplified semantics for all (affixing) relevant logics, along the lines given here, are to be expected. But since details are not as straightforward as might be expected, we leave this topic for another occasion." (pp. 217-218)

41. Sylvan, Richard, and Hyde, Dominic. 1993. "Ubiquitous Vagueness Without Embarrassment: Logic Liberated and Fuzziness Defuzzed(i.e. Respectibilized)." Acta Analytica:7-29.

Abstract: "Although puzzles surrounding vagueness are ancient, they have been much intensified since the rise of standard "classical" logic. A main trouble is that standard logic proceeds to "validate" both ancient defective arguments (sorites paradoxes) and modern defective arguments (modal paradox analogues). But much evidence has recently accumulated as to the severe philosophical inadequacy of standard logic. Plausibly then ways out of such logic-induced puzzles which work elsewhere, relevant ways which work well, will succeed with puzzles of vagueness also. So it proves, by letting the puzzles constrain the logic, so producing their own demise, we reach elegant logical resolutions with the "very" logics adopted elsewhere for removing other logic-induced problems."

42. Sylvan, Richard, and Urbas, Igor. 1993. "Paraconsistent Classical Logic." Logique et Analyse no. 36:3-24.

Abstract: "The objective is to reformulate classical (prepositional) logic, preserving all theses, so that the spread rule A, ~ A / B, is avoided. There are many ways of doing this - some less, some more satisfactory, all exact formulations no doubt an improvement on standard classical logic. So results a cluster of paraconsistent classical logics. These systems are surveyed and rudimentarily classified, several of them separated, and some exhibited and discussed in more detail. Among the pure systems of the cluster are Hiz' s logic H, a Hilbert-style reformulation of Arruda-da Costa logic J_3, a cut-free formulation of Schütte's system K_1 and various normal-forming logics. Some of these pure systems fit Brasilian and Belgian criteria for paraconsistency very neatly, and significantly better than any Brasilian or Belgian systems."

43. Sylvan, Richard, and Nola, Robert. 1994. "The Irrelevance of Grue." Explorations in Knowledge no. 11:1-11.

44. Sylvan, Richard. 1995. "Re-Exploring Item-Theory. Object-Theory Liberalized, Pluralized and Simplified but Comprehensivized." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:47-85.

Reprinted in R. Routley (Author), M. Eckert (ed.), Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond:

The Sylvan Jungle — Volume 1 with Supplementary Essays, (2018), pp. 546-561.

Abstract: "Re-explored are certain item-theory theses, major problem zones, and newer puzzles and, together therewith, prospects for liberalizing and pluralizing item-theory. Undoubtedly item-theory may be further liberalized, partly by further dissociation from object-theory and the restrictions object imposes, but primarily through substantial deregulation of the styles of characterisations permitted. Then almost anything goes; nonetheless what results is a sufficiently well-organised smooth-running sistological anarchism.

Characterisation is dispersed through a federation of regions: only in old central city regions do the characterisation postulates of older object-theory regularly hold; in the expanding suburbs characterisation by local assumption and postulation (as in neutral postulate-theory) is a distinctive mode, while out in the country implicit intentional characterisation (including ostension and perception, dreaming and imagining) is a common mode. Put differently, there is a rich variety of sources yielding item specifications; only in places like the old city do structural descriptions of items enjoy formerly-imagined priority, but elsewhere alternative characterization principles may operate.

However what holds in situations as a result of such local or regional characterisation may be far removed from what is actual. Characters may be only make-believe or suppositional presented character may differ from more genuine articles, and so on. Bringing the items involved into central evaluation markets, where truth value is assessed, may require preparation of the items, with pruning or regularisation of their properties. Here, at this semantical stage, full pluralization offers further freedom, that is pluralization of truth, with a plurality of actual worlds. A single assignment of truth, the truth at the actual world, is no longer de rigueur; a truth net may be differently cast, different assignments may be adopted, and a selection among alternatives perhaps made. Within this liberalized pluralized setting, resolutions of puzzles induced by certain problem-making items are ventured."

45. ———. 1995. "Freedom Without Determinism: Decent Logics of Relevance and Necessity Applied to Problems of Free Will." Acta Analytica:7-32.

Abstract: "Arguments for determinism do not enjoy the sound logical health that has been attributed to them. The main older argument is fallacious, indeed classically invalid, while a new "rectified" form is relevantly invalid (relying on modally covered form of disjunctive syllogism). What is more, there is no satisfactory way of repairing this form of argument so that it does yield a credible determinism. Other arguments for (non-vacuous) determinism are also dispatched, through a divide-and-dissolve technique, which operates by distinguishing types of determinism (such as logical determinism, which depends on another modal fallacy) and kinds of arguments for determinism (such as rational choice arguments, which inadmissibly assume maximization, and reductionistic arguments, which inadmissibly assume full reduction of choice and deliberation succeeds). In the largest of three appendices (the other two concern logical developments), a reasonable libertarianism is discerned and defended."

46. Sylvan, Richard, and Goddard, Lenn. 1995. "Relevance and Reasoning. Part I: Relevance in Discourse and logic." Dialogue and Universalism no. 5:37-63.

47. Sylvan, Richard. 1996. "Meinong." In Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy, edited by Mautner, Thomas, 261-263. Cambridge: Blackwell.

48. ———. 1996. "Paraconsistent Logic." In Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy, edited by Mautner, Thomas, 309. Cambridge: Blackwell.

49. ———. 1996. "Relevance." In Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy, edited by Mautner, Thomas, 364. Cambridge: Blackwell.

50. ———. 1996. "Relevant Logic." In Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy, edited by Mautner, Thomas, 364-365. Cambridge: Blackwell.

51. ———. 1996. "What Limits to Thought, Inquiry and Philosophy?" Manuscrito.

52. ———. 1996. "Other Withered Stumps to Time." In Logic and Reality: Essays on the Legacy of Arthur Prior, edited by Copeland, Jack, 111-130. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

53. Sylvan, Richard, and Copeland, Jack. 1996. "Heresies of Computability (Abstract)." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 61:20.

54. ———. 1996. "General Annotated Logics, With an Introduction to Full Accounting Logic (Abstract)." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 61.

55. Sylvan, Richard. 1997. Transcendental Metaphysics: From Radical to Deep Plurallism [sic]. Cambridge: The White Horse Press.

From the Note by Nicholas Griffin:

"When Richard Sylvan died in June 1996 the manuscript of this book was already complete. It is true, to take up one of the themes put forward in its pages, that `complete' in this context is not an absolute term: while one typescript was with his publisher at the time of his death, another, bearing further revisions, was with his typist. The changes he made at this time, however, were minor and only the bibliography and references have required much attention from me." (p. XIV)

Contents:

Prologue: Complaints and Acknowledgements XI; Note by Nicholas Griffin XIV; General description and synopsis XV;

I. Basic theory

1. Introducing and placing Full and Deep Plurallisms 3; 2. Explaining full metaphysical Plurallisms: their features, their differences 18;

II. Arguments

3. Paths and arguments leading to Deep Plurallism: Vias Negationis 39; 4. More arguments to Deep Plurallism: Via Positivas 61; 5. Still more positive arguments to Plurallism 93;

III. Theory elaborations

6. Worlds and Wholes: their natures and relevant features 141; 7. Talking and thinking Plurallese as well as more ordinarily: modellings and discourse for and under Plurallism 175; 8. Making a wider metaphysical sweep: traditional notions. Traditional pluralism. Traditional objections 227;

IV: Comparisons

9. Distancing Plurallism from Realism, Anti-Realism and Relativism, and those other isms 259; 10. Plurallistic investigation of Relevant philosophers and philosophical Schools 299;

V. Outcomes

11. Impacts upon philosophy: harmonious applications and further problem-solving 351; 12. What Deep Plurallism does, its intellectual impact, and where it leads 409;

Epilogue. Beyond Intellectual Plurallism -- to Liberating Practice 455; Endnotes 467; Bibliography 507; Index 519-525.

"General description of Form and Content of Transcendental Metaphysics.

There is not merely a plurality of correct theories and of more or less satisfactory world-views: there is a corresponding plurality of actual worlds. Plurality penetrates deeper in full plurallism than linguistic surface or than conceptual or theoretical structure, to worlds. There is no unique actual world such as realism postulates, but many worlds; there is no single fact of the matter, there are facts and matters. Full plurallism itself bifurcates, into two main forms; radical pluralism, which rests with multiple actual worlds, and deep plurallism, which `completes' this multiplicity with a unifying ultimate item, the Wholle, of which the multiplicity comprises various worldifications. Much of the text is devoted to the theoretical elaboration and defence of deep plurallism, both directly and by comparison with past positions.

Overall structure of the book (which is as shown by its short content) is, in brief, as follows: The basic theory is introduced and explained, and several confusions offset. Arguments against the radical theory are deflected and then many arguments for it are advanced. Following that detailed stage, deep plurallism and other pluralisms are further elaborated, in part through a detailed investigation of key notions, both of full plurallisms and also from traditional and religious pluralisms. Next the full theory is set in place through a series of comparisons: firstly with the other standard philosophical positions in realist-idealist-relativist and related debates, and secondly with connected development of many worlds theories and transcendental metaphysics of other philosophers. There too it is demonstrated that deep plurallism is not merely a metaphysics, but one that is transcendental, and various arguments against transcendental metaphysics are repelled. Finally full plurallism is put through its paces, in showing its power in resolving or relocating major philosophical problems, and further in dislodging powerful prevailing ideologies. In a brief epilogue, full plurallism is linked to practice. For instance, its decided merits as regards liberality and tolerance are explained.

Considered one way, the basic theory defended and developed can be seen as a plural realism, with central thesis that actuality is plural, more concretely that there are many actual worlds, not a unique one. Radical plurallism, which is pluralism at this actual world stage, not merely at a theoretical or conceptual scheme level, thus resembles realism, simply as (what is strictly impossible) pluralized. Deep plurallism does more, as it includes at least a nonworldy nondescript transcendental item in addition. From such world pluralism, however augmented, plurality of many other critical notions follows, notably of truth and evidence, truth for instance amounting to what holds at an actual world (of which there are very many).

However the basic theory can be alternatively seen not as a realism at all, because many apparently central themes of both ordinary realism and scientific realism are repudiated (e.g. respectively, uniqueness of the external world, and that that world is substantially as dominant science asserts, with all the existential trappings it alleges and none other). Alternatively again, it may be viewed as an antirealism, because for instance of its rejection, along with contemporary anti-realism, of the stock realist theme that there is a unique recognition-independent reality (or, on a lesser count, because of its questioning of classical bivalence and other truth-value principles). Nonetheless such an assimilation has, like others, limited plausibility, because full plurallism acknowledges many recognition-independent (perceiver and mind transcendent) actual worlds. Alternatively again, full plurallism may be regarded as mere relativism, because of its commitment to - what is less than relativism - relativity principles, for instance that truth is relative to actual world, and therefore is structurally relative. Whereupon it may be wrongly supposed that plurallism, like undiscriminating relativism, is self-refuting. Again, however, such a relativistic comparison is seriously defective - unless quite atypical, much more discriminating relativisms are envisaged. For by no means all positions are admissible, still less equally good. In plurallism there remain both internal and external checks upon adequacy and correctness: but, checks and balances that do not effect unique semantical selections.

Central to pluralistic enterprise (as opposed to fashionable relativism) are arguments, and therefore matters of logic and rival logics. Main arguments for full plurallism begin from plural logical theory, which is pivotal to all rational inquiry. Several different arguments are advanced for the plurality of correct theories; and it is argued from there through correspondence, or directly, to the plurality of actual worlds. Several coupled arguments from methodology are also developed. Stock arguments from rival one (actual) world positions are duly disabled.

Deep plurallism has large corollaries, for intellectual theory and practice, both inside and outside philosophy. To take one example: as it affords a comparatively easy way between the rocks of realism and relativism, so it affords a way between acceptation and rejection of science, of rationality, and more generally of the Enlightenment Project. There is no unique correct Science such as that the Enlightment postulated; but there are various sciences, where not everything goes.

In place of certified logic stands not no logic, but a plurality of logics, including more than one correct logic. Similarly in place of reason and rationality stands not nothing, not a rejection of reason and rational methods, but a pluralization of them (with prominent correct methods rejecting received modern maximization and consistency imperatives). In place of the truth stands not nothing, nihilism, no court of appeal regarding correctness, but several: pluralistic truth. In place of the Enlightenment stands not a return to earlier (and subsequent) dark ages, but a plurallistic flowering, into enlightenments." (pp. XV-XVI)

56. ———. 1997. "Relevant Conditionals, and Relevant Application Thereof." In Logic, Language and Computation, edited by Akama, Seiki, 191-244. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"All that is required for validity of an implication in classical logic is that it be impossible for all the antecedents to be true and the consequent false. (Similarly, with terminology adapted, for validity of inferences.)

This requirement makes all implications with inconsistent antecedents valid. According to relevant logic, more should be required. That more can be explained in various equivalent ways. One is a classical look-alike; that the antecedents be genuinely inconsistent with the negation of the consequent. According to another look-like, truth should be preserved everywhere (including in impossible situations), that is, in whatever situation the antecedents hold so should the consequent. Another, perhaps more revealing, is as follows: not only should it be impossible for the antecedents to be true and the consequent false in a valid implication, but the antecedents and the consequent should also have something in common, or, in other words, the antecedents should be in some way relevant to the consequent. Whence the name relevant or relevance logic.

Relevance itself means, firstly: bearing upon the matter in hand or the point at issue. A statement, a consideration, or the like, that is said to be relevant, must be understood to be relevant to something, i.e.

relevance is always relational. Relevance matters in a wide variety of settings: in statistics (where a defective explication of relevance in terms of alteration of probability is regularly advanced); wherever evidence

is assessed, as in law; in rules of relevance for conduct of meetings; in procedures for selection, as in organisation, where what is selected should enjoy relevant features. As well, relevance has recently assumed

importance in linguistic and pragmatic investigations as to discourse and communication, owing partly to the Grice's widely accepted directive for admissible discourse, Be relevant!, and partly to the associated

theme that most, even all, connectives of ordinary discourse exhibit relevance (i.e. for connector C, where pCq then q is relevant to p)." (p. 192)

57. Routley, Richard, and Copeland, Jack. 1999. "Beyond the Universal Turing Machine." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 77:46-66.

Two of our heresies--in the dictionary sense of 'opinions contrary to the accepted

doctrine on any subject'--are these)(1)

Proposition 1. The so-called Church-Turing thesis is false.

The so-called Church-Turing thesis purports to draw a borderline between computability and non-computability and is, it seems, pretty well universally accepted among computer scientists, cognitive scientists, and philosophers of mind. In point of fact neither Turing nor Church endorses, or even states, this thesis. Their theses, proved equivalent by Turing, concerned the functions that are in principle computable by an

idealised human being unaided by machinery. Careful authors do use the term 'Church-Turing thesis' to refer to one or other of the various equivalent forms of the theses that Church and Turing themselves put forward. Proposition 1. concerns not that equivalence class of theses but a claim lying outside the class and widely but improperly termed 'the Church-Turing thesis'. We distinguish this thesis from members of the

equivalence class by the use of riders such as 'so-called'. The so-called Church-Turing thesis is the claim that the class of well-defined computations is exhausted by the computations that can be carried out by Turing machines.

Proposition 2. Computability is a relative notion, not an absolute one.

There is no such thing as the class of well-defined computations. The extent of the computable functions is resource-relative." (p. 46)

(...)

"In the present paper we focus largely on proposition 1. although much of what we say also bears intimately on proposition 2. Proposition 2. receives further discussion elsewhere (Sylvan and Copeland 199-)." (p. 47)

(1) Richard Sylvan did not live to see this paper written. He contributed a draft of section VIII and fragments of sections I, II and IX. Our collaboration began in August 1994, when Richard became interested in my descriptions of machines forbidden by the so-called Church-Turing thesis, and I in his ideas concerning the extent to which one's notion of computability is relative to one's logic (the topic of Sylvan and Copeland 199-).

References

Sylvan, R. and Copeland, B.J. 'Computability is Logic-Relative', forthcoming in D. Hyde and G. Priest (eds.), Applications of Relevant Logics (199-) [Chapter 8 in Dominc Hyde, Graham Priest (eds.), Sociative Logics and Their Applications: Essays by the Late Richard Sylvan, (2000)]

58. Sylvan, Richard. 1999. "What is that Item Designated Negation?" In What Is Negation?, edited by Gabbay, Dov and Wansing, Heinrich, 299-324. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"Regrettably current logical orthodoxy is astray on negation, perhaps more seriously astray about negation than elsewhere. Unfortunately most of the advertised logical and linguistic alternatives to or elaborations upon classical orthodoxy are wrong also. A more engaging story needs to be told, upon which what follows represents some sort of bumbling beginning.

Negation is an item, an operation which is both one (one determinable which, though widely used, is far from orthodox) and many (having many determinates).

A prime determinate (which proves adequate on its own) is a relevant negation which applies both to sentences and to their unsaturated parts such as predicates.

By contrast, the classical sentence negation of orthodoxy represents but a degenerate determinate, not widely used in normal discourse (for such discourse does not sustain irrelevant inferences, such as from a pair A and not-A to any statement whatsoever, etc.)." (p. 299)

59. Hyde, Dominic, and Priest, Graham, eds. 2000. Sociative Logics and Their Applications: Essays by the Late Richard Sylvan. Aldershot: Ashgate.

On the title: "Much searching went into trying to find a satisfactory term to distinguish these logics. The eventually adopted term, sociative, derived through French from the Latin sociare: 'to combine, unite, etc.' and socius 'companion'. It now means 'expressing or denoting association, conjunction, union': see Oxford English Dictionary. Occasionally, the now obsolete English noun, verb and participle, sociare, will also be deployed." (Note 31, p. 29)

"Chapter 5. A Preliminary Western History of Sociative Logics

This essay originally appeared in 1989 as chapter 4 of BG. [Editors]

Contemporary logical investigations enjoy the advantage of vastly improved logical technology as compared with all earlier terrestrial times. Yet, by comparison with earlier periods of high logical activity, the twentieth century is anomalous in its heavy mainline concentration upon classical logic, and, as a result, appears stodgy and unadventurous. For the deadening effect of the wide educational imposition of a narrow and intellectually disastrous dominant logical paradigm, classical logical theory, has (again) destroyed much logical expression and adventure. Rival logics have become very much a minority and esoteric activity, not even incidental to the serious affairs of life; no longer do even the city crows converse over logical issues. The full flourishing of sociative logics, in their rich variety, has yet to occur.

So far as we know, there have been three main periods in the long history of Western logic when the central issues of logic, as to what makes an argument valid, when deducibility obtains, and whether these connections can be captured in true or necessary conditionals, have been vigorously discussed. The periods are these: around the third century BC when Stoic logic flourished, in the medieval period, especially the twelfth century AD, and in the present century.

The logical investigations carried out in these three significant periods are, thus far, substantially independent. The Stoic enterprise of the third century exerted little or no influence on medieval thought, and indeed details (such as they are in Sextus Empiricus) were not available until after the seminal work of Abaelard's school and rival schools had already been accomplished. Of the main contemporary strands of sociative logic, only connexive and nontransitive logics have clear historical representation, and even there main investigations have proceeded substantially independently of historical inputs. When history has been appealed to in support of relevance logics, for example, it has been rather peripheral and, too often, historically dubious.

Though the main historical settings for sociative logic presupposed a heavy consistency assumption (in particular throughout medieval times), and though paraconsistent logics tend to be missing in expected areas of application (such as treatment of semantical paradoxes), nonetheless the history of sociative logics is deeply interwoven with that of paraconsistent logics. One major reason for the intertwining is of course that a crucial issue for sociative logics is what-by contrast with strict and classical spread and collapse-happens with impossible premisses and assumptions. How is loss of connections to be avoided there? A special section of the theory of obligationes (or suppositional reasoning and commitment) was devoted to this issue in the Middle Ages; and a similar division of research, plainly parasitic on classical logic however, can be seen in contemporary North American research (such as that of Rescher and Brandom and of Woods and Walton). These pretty unsatisfactory ways of shunting off, and sidetracking, significant logical problems fortunately by no means exhaust feasible lines of approach, as the rich history of paraconsistent logics helps disclose. That history has already been documented, admittedly also in a very preliminary fashion, elsewhere (especially in PL [Paraconsistent Logic, 1989] and its extract OP [On Paraconsistency, 1983], which should be read in conjunction with this material - conversely, this material enriches Paraconsistent Logic, which is scanty on several topics of relevant interest). The entertaining story, which overlaps and complements the history of sociative logics, will not be repeated, but elements of it will be drawn upon where appropriate (and readers who seek a fuller picture to begin upon their own investigations should consult that story, as well as, of course, but cautiously, standard texts)." (pp. 53-54)

60. Brady, Ross, ed. 2003. Relevant Logics and Their Rivals: Volume II. A Continuation of the Work of Richard Sylvan, Robert Meyer, Val Plumwood and Ross Brady. Aldershot: Ashgate.

With contributions by Martin Bunder, André Fuhrmann, Andéa Loparic, Edwin Mares, Chris Mortensen, Alasdair Urquhart.

Contents: List of Contributors VIII; List of Figures IX; Preface XI; Prologue by Ross Brady 1; 6. Non-normal relevant systems by Richard Sylvan and Val Plumwood 10; 7. Multiplying connectives and multiply intensional logics by Richard Sylvan, Robert Meyer and Val Plumwood 17; 8. Operational semantics by Richard Sylvan and Val Plumwood 38; 9. The algebraic analysis of relevant affixing systems by Richard Sylvan, Robert Meyer, Ross Brady, Chris Mortensen and Val Plumwood 72; 10. The more general semantical theory of implication and conditionality 141; 11. Recent developments I by Ross Brady 192; 12. Recent developments II by Ross Brady 231; 13. On quantified relevant logics by Ross Brady 309; Appendix: Extensional reduction II by Robert Meyer and Richard Sylvan 352; Bibliography 408; Index 421-425.

"The main writing work, for the two volumes, was done by Richard Routley, making essential use of work of Meyer, Plumwood and Brady in the process. The second volume was also to include Chris Mortensen at least for his work on the algebraic analysis of relevant affixing logics. Moreover, Richard remained the driving force behind the Relevant Logics and their Rivals volumes, providing the layout and material for an integrated work. During the time of writing, Richard had sent most of the chapters to a number of people for comment. However, some of these chapters, earmarked for the second volume, were more complete than others, and four of the tentative chapters (i.e. chapters 10 and 13-15), being fairly incomplete, were not sent out at all.

However, subsequent to the publication of the first volume, there was quite some delay in getting the second volume together, mainly because Richard Sylvan was heavily involved in environmental philosophy and had other interests, both academic and non-academic. Richard made a number of attempts to restart the book, usually by contacting the other authors, but these contacts did not reap much progress. In 1985, he had more or less given up on the chapters of the tentative contents. Richard had subsequently persisted with the idea of rewriting the second volume to bring it more into line with his recent thinking, since the early work of the 1970's was starting to date in relation to more recent advances. He made a start on this revision around 1988-9, producing a number of short separate pieces, which were hard to connect to the chapters previously sent round for comment. Thus, it would be hard to make much use of these pieces in this book, if one relied on the chapters of the tentative contents for guidance.

Unfortunately, Richard died unexpectedly in 1996, at the age of 60, leaving a plethora of unfinished work.

(...)

Upon initial examination of Richard's chapters 6-15, including his relevant archival material, I found that while a lot of it was in good shape for publication, much of the remainder was incomplete, sketchy or inaccurate. This is not entirely unexpected, given the circumstances. Nevertheless, I was put into the dilemma of either trying to complete it as best as I could, in accordance with the tentative contents, or inserting more up-to-date material. The main difficulty about the first approach is the age of the material, since it was done during a period of greater logical experimentation than seems appropriate nowadays, together with the advent of newer developments in the relevant logic area.

So, I have generally proceeded with the second approach by extending Richard's material into some new directions which cover the period from the time of publication of the first volume to the present. Given that Richard was interested in updating the original chapters 6-15 anyway, I feel this second approach is not entirely inappropriate nor against his wishes. I have also been ably assisted in this task by Martin Bunder, Ed Mares, Andre' Fuhrmann, Chris Mortensen and Alasdair Urquhart, who have given me some accounts of their recent work for inclusion.

In this way, much of Richard's work and that of his co-workers, whose Work was interwoven into Richard's material, will be maintained for posterity as an important contribution to logic, upon which others may choose to build." (pp. XI-XIII)

61. Sylvan, Richard. 2003. "The Importance of Nonexistent Objects and of Intensionality in Mathematics." Philosophia Mathematica no. 11:20-52.

With a foreword by Nicholas Griffin (pp. 16-19).

This "is a reprinting, with as little change as feasible from the original typescript, of most of Chapter 10 and the introduction and first section of Chapter 11 of Richard Routley (who changed his name to Sylvan in 1985), Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond: An Investigation of Noneism and the Theory of Items, published by the Philosophy Department of the Research School of Social Sciences of the Australian National University, Canberra, 1980, and still available from it (ISBN 0-909596-36-0)."

"The more comprehensive case for the importance of nonentities includes, as especially significant, their role in mathematics and their roles in the theoretical explanations of science-the whole business, that is, of appealing to ideal simplified objects, which suitably approximate real objects, in problem solving and theoretical explanation. More generally, the theoretical sciences are seriously nonreferential, both in having as their primary subject matter nonentities, and in being ineradicably intensional. This thesis runs entirely counter to empiricist philosophies of science, which have long dominated the subject (to its detriment), according to which the language of science is, or ought to be, referential. Empiricist thinkers have, until very recently,' regarded the citadel of science as exclusively theirs: and the main goals of philosophy, as they conceive them, have been determined by the defense and extensions of the citadel to increase its power over the intellectual landscape. Thus they have taken the language of science, properly refined referentially of course, as the ideal of language, to which much ordinary language is at best a shabby first approximation; and they have characteristically seen philosophy as the handmaiden of science, as like a servant clearing away rubbish in the way of scientific progress or questioning scientific practice and values, or as a subsidiary scientific activity of conceptual analysis and reconstruction aiding the defense or advance of total science. A basic assumption in all this, without which much of the superstructure collapses, is that both the language of science and scientific theories conform to empiricist canons: the assumption is false-so at least it is now argued. The case begins by considering mathematics, which forms an integral part of much theoretical science."

62. Sylvan, Richard, Loparić, Andréa, and Plumwood, Val. 2003. "The More General Semantical Theory of Implication and Conditionality." In Relevant Logics and Their Rivals: Volume II. A Continuation of the Work of Richard Sylvan, Robert Meyer, Val Plumwood and Ross Brady, edited by Brady, Ross, 141-191. Aldershot: Ashgate.

63. ———. 2003. "Appendix: Existentional Reduction II." In Relevant Logics and Their Rivals: Volume II. A Continuation of the Work of Richard Sylvan, Robert Meyer, Val Plumwood and Ross Brady, edited by Brady, Ross, 352-406. Aldershot: Ashgate.

64. Sylvan, Richard, Meyer, Robert K., and Plumwood, Val. 2003. "Multiplying Connectives and Multiply Intensional Logics." In Relevant Logics and Their Rivals: Volume II. A Continuation of the Work of Richard Sylvan, Robert Meyer, Val Plumwood and Ross Brady, edited by Brady, Ross, 17-37. Aldershot: Ashgate.

65. Sylvan, Richard, and Plumwood, Val. 2003. "Non-Normal Relevant Systems." In Relevant Logics and Their Rivals: Volume II. A Continuation of the Work of Richard Sylvan, Robert Meyer, Val Plumwood and Ross Brady, edited by Brady, Ross, 10-16. Aldershot: Ashgate.

66. ———. 2003. "Operational Semantics." In Relevant Logics and Their Rivals: Volume II. A Continuation of the Work of Richard Sylvan, Robert Meyer, Val Plumwood and Ross Brady, edited by Brady, Ross, 38-71. Aldershot: Ashgate.

67. ———. 2003. "The Algebraic Analysis of Relevant Affixing Systems." In Relevant Logics and Their Rivals: Volume II. A Continuation of the Work of Richard Sylvan, Robert Meyer, Val Plumwood and Ross Brady, edited by Brady, Ross, 72-140. Aldershot: Ashgate.

68. Beall, Jc, Brady, Ross, Dunn, J. Michael, Hazen, A. P., Mares, Edwin, Meyer, Robert K., Priest, Graham, Restall, Greg, Ripley, David, Slaney, John, and Sylvan, Richard. 2012. "On the Ternary Relation and Conditionality." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 41:595-612.

Abstract: "One of the most dominant approaches to semantics for relevant (and many paraconsistent) logics is the Routley–Meyer semantics involving a ternary relation on points. To some (many?), this ternary relation has seemed like a technical trick devoid of an intuitively appealing philosophical story that connects it up with conditionality in general. In this paper, we respond to this worry by providing three different philosophical accounts of the ternary relation that correspond to three conceptions of conditionality. We close by briefly discussing a general conception of conditionality that may unify the three given conceptions."

"This paper emerged from some working sessions at the University of Melbourne in 2009.

Beall, Brady, Hazen, Priest, Restall, Ripley, and Slaney were involved on the ground. The work of Dunn and Mares kept coming up during the sessions, and the paper greatly benefited from their joining the effort after the event. Looming even larger in the initial discussions were two others: despite their deaths, much of the early work of Sylvan and Meyer was heavily represented. While we can’t speak for the current views of Bob (Meyer) or Richard (Sylvan), we wanted to honor them for their starting this ternary-relation idea in the first place. Hence, we include them as authors. While not all of us (authors) agree on all ideas herein, we do agree with the main thrust of this paper: namely, that, despite first appearances, the ternary-relation approach to conditionality is very much philosophically plausible as capturing an important aspect of conditionality." (p. 595)

69. Routley, Richard. 2018. Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond: The Sylvan Jungle — Volume 1 with Supplementary Essays. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Edited by Maureen Eckert.

"Thus Sylvan argues that his neo-Meinongian, so-called “noneist” (pronounced none-ist), theory at the heart of the Jungle Book casts new light on supposed long-standing problems like the problem of universals, perception, intentionality, substance, self, and values. Chapters are devoted to metaphysical and associated epistemological problemsthat emerge in the philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science, to developing a satisfactory epistemology more generally, to providing an adequate semantic account of fictional discourse, to an analysis and rejection of Russell’s theory of descriptions and of Quine’s objections to broadly-Meinongian approaches, and so on. The book’s size matches its ambitions. And the book’s author was a man of considerable intellectual ambition. (pp- XIII-XIV, Introduction by Dominic Hyde)

"The future perfect of Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond by Filippo Casati" pp. 583-599-

70. ———. 2018. "Semantic Analysis of Entailment and Relevant Implication: I (1970/1)." Australasian Journal of Logic no. 15:211-279.

Transcription by Nicholas Ferenz of an unpublished manuscript.

"Semantical analyses are provided for several intensional logics, in particular for (substantial parts of) the systems R of relevant implication, □R of relevant implication with necessity, P of ticket entailment, and E of entailment, and what is the same theory as E the system Π of rigorous implication. The analyses provided are used to provide semantical completeness results and decidability results for the main systems discussed, and are applied to settle some of the open questions concerning E and R and their fragments." (p. 212)

71. ———. 2019. Ultralogic as Universal? The Sylvan Jungle — Volume 4 with notes and commentaries. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Edited by Zach Weber.

"Ultralogic is important not least because it boldly advances the value of inconsistent theories, especially in mathematics. Routley urges that consistency is not always the ultimate arbiter of correctness, that some contradictions can be true, a thesis now known as dialetheism. While Priest’s works have become the canonical texts for dialetheism, without Routley, dialetheism would not be what it now is. It was the happy meeting of Priest and Routley in the 1970s that looks to have been the spark." (Editor's Introduction, p. XIII)

Supplementary Essays:

Ross T. Brady: On The Law of Excluded Middle, pp. 161-183;

Chris Mortensen: Implication Principles in Routley Arithmetic, pp. 185-194.

72. Routley, Richard, and Routley, Val. 2019. Noneist Explorations I: The Sylvan Jungle — Volume 2 with Supplementary Essays. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Edited by Domini Hyde.

"With the perspective afforded by time, Richard Sylvan, nè Routley (1935-1996), will, I believe, come to be seen as the most important Australasian philosopher of the 20th Century. This is not at all to denigrate his currently better known compatriot contemporaries: a number of these made highly significant contributions to philosophy. But what set Richard apart was the originality he deployed and the scope of his vision. He made original contributions to logic, metaphysics, the philosophy of language, value theory, environmental philosophy, political philosophy. Moreover, though he never wrote anything that integrated all of these, it is clear to those who know his work that his views on all these matters formed part of an overall and systematic philosophical picture." (Introduction: some personal reflections by Graham Priest, p. XIII)

Supplementary Essays:

Jack Smart: A critique of Meinongian semantics, pp. 343-350:

Maria Elisabeth Reicher: Routley’s theory of fictions, pp. 353-381;

Fred Kroon: Routley’s second thoughts, pp. 383-403.

73. ———. 2020. Noneist Explorations II: The Sylvan Jungle — Volume 3 with Supplementary Essays. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Edited by Dominic Hyde.

"This volume continues the reprinting of a new edition of Richard Routley’s 1980 monograph Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond: An investigation of noneism and the theory of items.

As in Volume 2, some of the work reprinted in this third volume contains material co-authored with Val Plumwood (formerly Val Routley), in particular, chapters 8 and 9.

For this reason, she is listed as co-author." (Editor's Preface)

Supplementary Essays:

Naoya Fujikawa: Hallucination as perceiving nonexistent objects: noneist direct realism of perception, pp. 391-420;

Maureen Eckert and Charlie Donahue: Towards a feminist logic: Val Plumwood’s legacy and beyond, pp. 421-446.

Publications available on line

Articles published in the Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic (PDF format) available at Project Euclid:

Author to search: Routley

1. Some things do not exist (1966)

2. Existence and identity in quantified modal logic (1969)

3. Non-existence does not exist (1970)

4. Conventionalist and contingency-oriented modal logics (1971)

5. Algebraic semantics for S2° and necessitated extensions (1976)

6. Repairing proofs of Arrow's general impossibility theorem and enlarging the scope of the theorem (1979)

Author to search: Sylvan

1. On interpreting truth tables and relevant truth tables logic (1992)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Studies about the logical works of Richard Sylvan [né Routley]

Bibliography

1. Besoli, Stefano. 1984. "Convergences and Diversities between Noneism and Gegenstandstheorie." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 21:133-153.

"The problems that give rise to the conceptual system developed by Routley(1) are largely those suggested by the proposals contained in Meinong's Gegenstandstheorie . By taking up these themes again Routley wishes to legitimate an ideal resumption, a radicalization and an expansion of a number of theses peculiar to Meinongian doctrine. Starting from this remark, he is then led to deal explicitly with the limits of the internal presupposition of classical logic, putting forward, by contrast, the advantages of a recomprehension which attempts to bring to light the logical/ontological topics generally neglected or, rat her, reductionalistically interpreted within the framework of a Russellian theory of logic. The author's constant appeal to a neutral ontology which is close, but not identical, to Meinong's range of Außersein permeates his entire work and supports the emergence of an idoneous theory of items. The Leitfaden is the refutation of Standard Reference Theory (RT) which is the paradigmatic core common empiricism, idealism and materialism, but which also underlies extensionally quantified orthodox logic.

Reference Theory (RT) requires, as an essential condition, that truth and meaning are rigid functions of reference. The original aim of Routley's analysis is to eliminate the prejudice in favour of immediate actuality which is inherent in every referential view. Accordingly, it must be possible to make semantically relevant the occurrence of non-referential statements.

Meinong's philosophical work, together with the influential theories of Th. Reid, suggests the inescapable clauses for a gnosiological alternative which will not relapse into platonism." (p. 133)

(1) We refer mainly to Routley's Exploring Meinong's Jungle , Canberra, 1980, where he gives an enlarged draft of conceptual trends established long ago.

2. Brady, Ross T. 1980. "Two Remarks on The Logic of Significance and Context ." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 21:263-272.

"I wish to make two remarks on two points that Goddard and Routley made in Chapter 5 of their book, The Logic of Significance and Context [6].

The first remark is that the Brady disjunction, 'V',(1) does have applications in ordinary discourse, in answer to the doubts about this expressed by them on pp. 344-5 of [6]. I will defend this position, which I originally made in [1] on p. 30, and also in [2], pp. 172-3, by showing that each of four examples can be interpreted in a way which requires 'V to be used in its formalization. The second remark is that the need for a functionally complete significance logic such as their system S_5 (or S_6) seems very limited. I show this by examining each of their five arguments for a functionally complete system on pp. 348-351 of [6] and by showing how their weaker significance-complete (for definition, see [6], p. 326) system S_3 (or S_4) will suffice, except in exceptional circumstances, to express what they suppose a functionally complete system is needed for." (p. 263)

(1) The symbols and terminology for this paper are taken from Goddard and Routley [6].

References

[1] Brady, R. T., "A 4-valued theory of classes and individuals," Ph.D. thesis, 1971, deposited in the University Library, St. Andrews.

[2] Brady, R. T., "Significance logics," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic , vol. XVII (1976), pp. 161-183.

[6] Goddard, L. and R. Routley, The Logic of Significance and Context, Vol. 1, Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh, 1973.

3. Bradley, Michael. 1978. "On the alleged need for nonsense." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 56:203-218.

"The theory, stemming from Russell, that there are grammatical sentences of English, containing only recognised English vocabulary, which are nevertheless meaningless is a familiar landmark of contemporary Philosophy.

(...)

In recent years, however, the case for the non-significant has been taken up again. In a series of closely argued papers Ross Brady, Leonard Goddard and Richard Routley have urged the necessity for nonsense, and the latter two authors have developed (in [3]) a logic of significance whose justification is largely the supposed need for nonsense. In this paper I examine their reasons for alleging the need, and conclude that they have not established a case.

Because of the extent of the collaboration and agreement between the authors cited it as often pointless to refer a view to one rather than another. In such cases I use the phrase 'our authors'. In other cases where more accuracy seems called for, one or two of them are referred to by name.

Our authors call 'falsidal' those theories which treat sentences such as 'Virtue is square' and 'I likes dancing' as faIse ([1], p. 213; [11], p. 368). They describe and criticise various versions of the falsidal approach, and find all of them deficient. What I wish to propose is a non-arbitrary and epistemologically satisfactory falsidal theory which escapes the difficulties of other versions. I shall only try to assess the arguments given by our authors so far as they seem or are claimed to bear on the falsidal theory which I am

going to propose. These arguments are scattered through a number of places and often conjoined with material not germane to the present task. I have tried to abstract the strongest and clearest exposition of all ma (pp. 203-204)terial I think relevant. Not all the relevant writings by our three authors are mentioned in my bibliography, but only those drawn on. Others will be found detailed in the bibliography to [11], and further relevant material in the notes to [1] and [10]." (pp. 203-204)

References

1. Brady, Ross and Routley, Richard: 'Don't Care Was Made to Care', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 51 (1973) pp. 211-225.

3. Goddard, L. and Routley, Richard: The Logic of Significance and Context Volume I (1973).

10. Routley, Richard: 'On a Significance Theory', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 44 (1966) pp. 172-209.

11. Routley, Richard: 'The Need for Nonsense', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 47 (1969) pp. 367-383.

4. Hyde, Dominic. 2001. "Richard (Routley) Sylvan: Writings on Logic and Metaphysics." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 22:181-205.

Abstract: "Richard Sylvan (né Routley) was one of Australasia's most prolific and systematic philosophers. Though known for his innovative work in logic and metaphysics. the astonishing breadth of his philosophical endeavours included almost all reaches of philosophy. Taking the view that very basic assumptions of mainstream philosophy were fundamentally mistaken, he sought radical change across a wide range of theories. However, his view of the centrality of logic and recognition of the possibilities opened up by logical innovation in the fundamental areas of metaphysics resulted in his working primarily in these two, closely connected fields. It is this work in logic and metaphysics that is the main focus of what follows."

5. Kielkopf, Charles. 1974. "Critique of the Routley's First Degree Semantics." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 52:105-120.

"R. and V. Routley's 'The Semantics of First Degree Entailment '(1) is a clear, careful, but relatively non-technical presentation of a semantics for Anderson and Belnap's so-called tautological entailments. Their paper is a valuable introduction to a treatment of negation in semantics for relevant logics and entailment systems. However, the Routleys' paper is primarily an attempt to build a case for accepting as valid only the first degree inferences warranted by the tautological entailments instead of the much larger class warranted by the tautologies of classical propositional logic. I adapt terminology of the Routleys' to call the tautological entailments, and the first degree inferences warranted by them, FD logic. The Routleys' semantics for FD logic is a special case of semantics for relevant logics(2) whose first degree fragment is the

tautological entailments. In my argument, I shall only sketch the basic idea of their semantics for FD logic since I shall not be concerned with technical uses of the semantics for results Such as completeness. I shall argue that the Routleys' semantics for FD logic does not justify switching from classical to FD logic. However, I shall recommend using their semantics for uncovering tautologies needed, in a special sense of 'needed', in classically valid inferences." (p. 105)

(...)

"Indeed, I hope that I have shown that the Routleys, despite their intriguing semantics and illuminating discussion of suppression, have given no good reasons for switching from classical to FD logic." (p. 120)

(1) Noûs 6 (1972) pp. 335-59. All references, unless otherwise specified are to this paper.

(2) See R. Routley and R. K. Meyer's 'The Semantics of Entailment, in H. Leblanc (ed.): Truth, Syntax and Modality , (1973) pp. 192-243; 'The Semantics of Entailment-lI,' Journal of Philosophical Logic (1972) pp. 53-73; 'The Semantics of Entailment-III,' ibid. pp. 192-203. Section 5 of R. Routley's 'A Semantical Analysis of Implicational System I and of the First Degree of Entailment', Mathematische Annalen 196 (1972) pp. 58-84, is especially helpful for showing that the set-up semantics to be considered here are semantics for the tautological entailments.

6. Lewis, David K. 1990. "Noneim or Allism?" Mind no. 99:23-31.

Reprinted in: D. Lewis, Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 152-163.

"Some few entities - present, actual, particular, spatiotemporal, material, well-bounded things - exist uncontroversially. Scarcely any philosopher denies them. Other alleged entities are controversial: some

say they exist, some say they do not. These controversial entities include past and future things, the dead who have ceased to be and those who are not yet even conceived; unactualized possibilia; universals,

numbers, and classes; and Meinongian objects, incomplete or inconsistent or both. An expansive friend of the entities who says that all these entities exist may be called an allist . A tough desert-dweller who

says that none of them exist may be called a noneist . In between come most of us, the pickers and choosers, some-but-only-someists .

Richard Routley declares himself a noneist.(1)1 If we may take him at his word, he holds that none of the controversial entities exist. But ay we take him at his word?" (p. 23)

"In short: we dispense with existence - but heed what this means and what it does not. Of course we do not dispense with the word 'exist' as one of our pronunciations for the quantifier. Neither do we dispense with a trivially universal predicate of existence, automatically satisfied by absolutely everything. But if 'existence' is understood so that it can be a substantive thesis that only some of the things there are exist - or, for that matter, so that it can be a substantive thesis that everying exists - we will have none of it." (p. 31, a note omitted)

(1) Richard Routley, Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond: An Investigation of Noneism and the Theory ef Items (Australian National University, 1980). For short: Jungle . Routley, as he then was, is now Richard Sylvan, but I shall refer to him by the name under which the book was written.

7. Meyer, Robert K. 1998. "In Memoriam: Richar (Routley) Sylvan 1935-1996)." The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic no. 4:338-340.

"Besides free logic and his work on Meinong, Sylvan was an important contributor to the development of paraconsistent ideas, already in the first degree semantical work with Val Plumwood cited above. This work led him into important collaborations with other logicians, as did his work on relevant logics and on a number of other subjects. Besides those mentioned elsewhere in this note, among Sylvan’s important logical collaborators were Nicholas Griffin, Graham Priest, Ayda Arruda, Dominic Hyde and Jean Norman.

Richard continually applied (and was continually turned down) for promotion to full Professor at ANU [Australian National University]. It is probably not irrelevant that, in all his enterprises, he almost never chose the easy or popular course. His enthusiasms–logical, intellectual and political–were for the alternative. To get the counter-suggestible Sylvan to defend some view, a good move was to remark that the view was now utterly discredited.

So Richard Sylvan is gone. It’s hard to believe; it would be in character for him to be fooling us, spreading the rumour of his death for some deep Sylvanesque purpose. I personally miss him very, very much. When my own career was in ashes, it was Sylvan’s invitation to come Down Under in 1974 that brought it back to life. And now logic and philosophy have suffered a great, great loss. Greater than they know." (p. 340)

8. Paolini Paoletti, Michele. 2013. "Commentary: Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond: an Investigation of Noneism and the Theory of Items by R. Routley." Humana.Mente Journal of Philosophical Studies no. 25:275-292.

"I cannot give here an exhaustive account of Routley’s whole investigation of noneism (i.e., the theory according to which, roughly, there are items that do not exist, or, in other words, that not all the items exist). Considering the structure of the book, it is possible to individuate: a brief presentation and defense of noneist theses (pp. 1–73); a critique of classical logic and the introduction of a revised, neutral (i.e., not existentially committed) logic grounded on the theory of items (this long part includes, among other things, some important remarks on the Characterisation Postulate, on identity, existence, possible worlds, inconsistency, definite descriptions, intensional contexts) (pp. 73–360); a defense of a Meinongian and presentist metaphysical theory of time (pp. 361–409); some replies to Quine’s article On what there is (in the short paper On what there isn’t ) and to other objections (pp. 411–488); the contiguity between noneism and common sense (pp. 519–536); noneist theories of fiction (pp. 537–606), of existence (pp. 697–768), of mathematical and theoretical knowledge (pp. 769–832) and of other topics (e.g., universals and perception) (pp. 607–696); Routley’s interpretation of Meinong’s work (pp. 489–518) and the differences between Routley’s noneism and other theories of items (pp. 833–890); the paper Ultralogic as universal in the Appendix (pp. 892–959).

In this brief commentary, I shall focus on Routley’s denial of the Ontological Assumption and on some theses, such as the Characterisation Postulate and the distinction between characterising and non-characterising properties. Furthermore, I shall present and discuss Routley’s Meinongian Presentism and his theory of fictional items." (pp. 275-276)

9. Parsons, Terence. 1983. "Review of Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond. by Richard Routley." The Journal of Philosophy no. 80:173-179.

"This book is an anthology of interconnected papers by the au- thor. Some have been previously published, but some, including the title essay (Chapter 1, 259 pages), have not previously appeared in print. The theme of the book is a development and defense of a Meinongian theory of objects (called "items" by Routley), coupled with attacks on the "empiricist, reductionist, anti-Meinongian" world view that is now a prevalent theme in Anglo-American phil- osophy. Routley's views are in many ways closer to Meinong's than are those of any other current writer, and this alone would make the work of interest. The book is highly programmatic; in this review I will not try to forecast the ultimate fate of the pro- gram, but instead will try to indicate what I take to be its major themes." (pp. 173-174)

(...)

"This book touches on scores of topics that have not been men- tioned here, including the definition of existence, existing at a time, relations, fictional objects, common-sense philosophy, second- order logic, mathematics, and scientific theories, plus an appendix on what the author calls "ultralogic," which is a logic that applies correctly in all situations, even impossible ones. The discussion is often provocative and almost always highly programmatic. Routley has explored portions of Meinong's jungle, and this edition is a fascinating diary of his journey. We still await a detailed map of the terrain." (p. 179)

10. Priest, Graham. 1997. "Sylvan's Box: A Short Story and Ten Morals." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 38:573-582.

Abstract: "The paper contains a short story which is inconsistent, essentially so, but perfectly intelligible. The existence of such a story is used to establish various views about truth in fiction and impossible worlds-"

"Fictions are certainly not the only context in which impossible worlds—in whatever sense one takes to be correct—arise. Such worlds are also required to evaluate the truth of counterlogical conditionals.

(...)

Another possible place in which impossible worlds may turn up is in an analysis of belief. Suppose that you were naıve enough to have believed my story, as a child might have done. You would then have believed that Sylvan had possessed a box that was both empty and nonempty, but you would not have believed that he had a cow that both did and did not lay eggs. If we parse ‘x believes that s’ as a relation between a

believer and a proposition, we may then take a proposition, in very orthodox fashion, to be the set of worlds/situations in which s is true. This gives the required result.

(Despite this, I doubt that impossible worlds are of much use in an analysis of belief; actual belief seems to have no determinate logical structure at all.)

The final point is less of a moral, more of an observation.

(10) An impossible world, as characterized above, is one where a logical truth is false, that is, its negation is true. There is nothing in this definition that precludes the actual world from being logically impossible. (All the logical truths may still hold there.) And once one agrees that there are impossible worlds, the question obviously arises as to how one can be so sure that the actual world is not one of them. There are, it seems to me, no good a priori reasons to suppose that it is not." (p. 581)

11. ———. 2003. "Meinongianism and the Philosophy of Mathematics." Philosophia Mathematica no. 11:3-15.

"Part of the beauty of meinongianism—or at least of Richard's approach to it, spelled out at length in Exploring Meinong's Jungle [1980]—is its technical simplicity. To do the idea full justice you need to have inconsistent and incomplete worlds, but these you have anyway, at least if you subscribe to some version of relevant logic. But the main technical trick is just thinking of one's quantifiers as existentially neutral. '∀ is understood as 'for every'; '∃' is understood as 'for some'. Existential commitment, when required, has to be provided explicitly, by way of an existence predicate, E , which, pace the way that Kant is often—and erroneously—interpreted, is a perfectly normal predicate. Thus, 'there exists something such that' is '3x(E x ∧ ... x .. )'; and 'all existing things are such that' is '∀x(E x → ...x ...)'. The action of the theory is mainly, therefore, not at the technical level, but at the philosophical level." (p. 4)

12. Rapaport, William J. 1984. "Critical Notice of Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond , by Richard Routley." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 44:539-552.

"Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond is a lengthy work (over 1000 pages) of wide scope, its cast of characters ranging from Abelard to Zeno. The nominal star is Meinong, of course, yet the real hero is Reid.(2) Topically, Richard Routley presents us with a virtual encyclopedia of contemporary philosophy, containing original philosophical and logical analyses, as well as a valuable historical critique of Meinong's work." (p. 539)

(...)

"If Meinong and Reid are the heroes of this work, then the "Reference Theory" (RT) - the theory that "truth and meaning are functions just of reference" (i) - is the villain. Routley sees his task as offering a different paradigm, noneism, which "aims at . . . a very general theory of all items whatsoever.(5). Where RT and its classical logic fail to provide solutions to problems of non-existence, intensionality, deducibility, significance, and context (ii), the noneist Theory of Items will - it is claimed - not only solve all of these, but also enable philosophers to treat adequately for the first time problems from the history of philosophy (including Reid's philosophy, Epicureanism, nihilism, sophism, fatalism, the Third Man), the philosophy of religion, the logic of perception, quantified tense logic, the problem of universals, and more (8-11). Noneism is Routley's patent medicine for all philosophical ills." (p. 540)

(...)

"Conclusion

There is much to admire in Routley's compilation, as well as much to ponder, to question, and to criticize. The book would have been better had it been more coherent (in all sense of that word), but the effort required to plow through it is often rewarded." (p. 551)

(2) Cf., e.g., chap. 6, "The Theory of Objects as Commonsense," especially pp. 529 ff., and chap. 12, sec. i.

(3) See, inter alia, chap. 5, "Three Meinongs."

13. Seldin, Jonathan P. 1987. "A Relevant Validity in Curry's Foundations: A Reply to Richard Sylvan." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 16:68-70.

"Thus, in terms of Curry’s definitions, the positive paradox principle is valid in terms of the metatheory of elementary formal systems (which is what Curry is talking about on p. 173 of [1]). Curry’s claim about the

positive paradox principle is thus that it is valid in a particular context in the formal metatheory of elementary formal systems (as he has defined it).

As the last paragraph on p. 173 of [1] shows, he is not claiming that it is true generally." (p. 70)

References

[1] H. B. Curry, Foundations of Mathematical Logic , McGraw-Hill, New York, 1963.

14. Slater, B.H. 1992. "Routley's Formulation of Transparency." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 13:215-224.

Abstract: "Routley's Formula says, for instance, that if it is believed there is a man then there is something which is believed to be a man. In this paper I defend the formula: first directly, hut then by looking at work by Gensler and Hintikka against it, and at the original work of Routley, Meyer and Goddard for it. The argument ultimately reduces to a central point about the extensionality of objects in Routley, Meyer and

Goddard's intensional system, i.e. in its formulation of transparency."

"In 'Routley's Formula'

O(Ex)Mx ⊃ (Ex)OMx

'O' is an intensional operator on (Ex)Mx, such as 'it is believed that', and 'M' is an ordinary predicate, such as 'is a man'. So the formula says that if it is necessary, permitted . . . known, or supposed that there is a man, it follows that for something it is necessary . . . or supposed that it is a man. Now the formula has ground against many philosophers' intuitions. Indeed, it is invalid in all the standard systems of modal and general intensional logic, except the epsilon calcu!us system of Routley, Meyer and Goddard (Routley, Meyer and Goddard 1974 (hereafter referred to as Routley et alii), Routley 1977). On one view of 'intensional' objects they are world-bound or mentally private objects. On that view, other minds and worlds are like other places and times. So what is there may bear little relation to what is here.

And yet, as we shall see, the formula is true. For, on another view of the matter, if anything is on one's mind, it is a public object, and anything in another world is bound to be in this. Certainly it need not be conceived as it is publicly, or actually, but it is definitely the same object. Indeed the behaviour of 'it', in that last sentence, substantiates the very point which is made in it.

But many systems of logic do not capture the behaviour of such pronouns. And so doubts about Routley's Formula quite often arise. In the full defence of the formula, therefore, it becomes especially important to consider it both formally and informally. Exactly which aspects of Routley et al's system allow the formula to be validated, when all the others invalidate it? And does its very exceptionality, and the range of intuitions against it, not reduce its plausibility entirely?

I shall conciude, in the end, that Routley's Formii!a survives the current arguments against it, and can be given an increased rationale from that provided when it was first defended." (p.215)

References

Routley. R. Meyer. R. K. and Goddard. L. 1974 'Choice and descriptions in enriched intensional languages-I'. Journal of philosophical logic . 3, 291-316.

Routley, R. 1977 'Choice and descriptions in enriched intentional languages, II,III'. in Problems in logic and ontology (ed. E. Morscher. J. Czermak. and P. Weingartner). Graz (Akademische Druck-und Velagsanstalt), 173-222.

15. Trew, A. 1968. "Incompleteness of a Logic of Routley's." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 9:385-387.

"In 'Some things do not exist', Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic , v. VII (1966), pp. 251-276, Routley examines the relations between certain predicate logics. His system R* differs from the usual restricted predicate logic only in having added to it individual constants and a predicate constant Έ ' read 'exist(s)', and in having assigned to its individual variables, a domain consisting of all possible things, in place of the usual domain consisting of all existing things. R* has a standard theory for its quantifiers, (π, Σ)." (p. 385)

(...)

16. von Solodkoff, Tatjana, and Woodward, Richard. 2013. "Noneism, Ontology, and Fundamentality." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 87:558-583.

Abstract: "In the recent literature on all things metaontological, discussion of a notorious Meinongian doctrine—the thesis that some objects have no kind of being at all—has been conspicuous by its absence. And this is despite the fact that this thesis is the central element of the noneist metaphysics of Richard Routley (1980) and Graham Priest (2005). In this paper, we therefore examine the metaontological foundations of noneism, with a view to seeing exactly how the noneist's approach to ontological inquiry differs from the orthodox Quinean one. We proceed by arguing that the core anti-Quinean element in noneism has routinely been misidentified: rather than concerning Quine's thesis that to be is to be the value of a variable, the real difference is that the noneist rejects what we identify as Quine's "translate-and-deflate" methodology. In rejecting this aspect of Quinean orthodoxy, the noneist is in good company: many of those who think that questions of fundamentality should be the proper focus of ontological inquiry can be read as rejecting it too. Accordingly, we then examine the differences between the noneist's conception of ontology and that offered by the fundamentalist. We argue that these two anti-Quinean approaches differ in terms of their respective conceptions of the theoretical role associated with the notion of being. And the contrast that emerges between them is, in the end, an explanatory one."

References

Priest, Graham. 2005. Towards Non-Being . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Routley, Richard. 1980. Exploring Meinong's Jungle . Canberra: Philosophy Department Monographs, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.

17. Witherall, Arthur. 2000. "Lewis and Sylvan on Noneism." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 58-59:181-202.

"Several years ago David Lewis wrote a paper titled "Noneism or Allism?"(1) in which he attacked the idea that Richard Sylvan's (alias Richard Routley) rehabilitation of Meinong's theory of objects was truly what it was supposed to be. Lewis argued that Sylvan was not really a noneist, and that he should be interpreted as claiming that all of the objects that philosophers consider controversial actually exist (rather than none of them, as the name "noneism" implies). This is a drastic re-interpretation of Sylvan's work, and if it were true it would mean that he did not successfully rehabilitate the theory of objects at all.

(...)

Unfortunately, Richard Sylvan died in 1996, without having constructed a reply to Lewis. Although it is therefore difficult to say what kind of a reply he would have made, I believe that I can offer some significant criticisms of my own. I do not claim to represent Sylvan as such, but I claim to be sympathetic to his project, and in this respect I can do something towards refuting Lewis' claims. This is an important defensive task to perform for a Meinongian, because although Lewis' argument does not assail the details of Sylvan's philosophy, it threatens to restore the old orthodox view of Meinongian metaphysics as 'committed' to an unreasonably bloated ontology, and thus to re-instate a serious misinterpretation of the whole enterprise. In assessing Lewis' paper, it must be kept in mind that he does not address any of Sylvan's arguments . He is only concerned with whether Sylvan should be seen as a true noneist or as an allist, with respect to the question of which controversial items exist. Nevertheless, in neglecting Sylvan's arguments, Lewis is deflecting

attention away from the substance of his position, and casting him as the defender of something unintelligible. I will show why this attack ultimately fails." (pp. 181-182)

(1) D. Lewis "Noneism or Allism?" in Mind Vol. 99, January 1990, pp. 23-31.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

George Englebretsen's Contribution to the Rediscovery of Traditional Formal Logic

Introduction

"In two important senses, Englebretsen is not the inventor of the logic of which he writes, though he no doubt deserves the title of the most dedicated and meticulous expositor of it today. In the first place the logic in question is none other than the so-called 'term logic' usually said to have been invented by Aristotle, taught throughout the middle ages, toyed with by Leibniz, forgotten in the enlightenment and surpassed at last by the great developments in mathematical logic associated with names like Boole, Frege, Russell, Quine. So at least runs the textbook history that the average student of logic would learn today. Term logic figures in the contemporary mind as one of the discarded fashions of science, much like the Ptolemaic system in astronomy. Englebretsen does not claim to invent but only to rehabilitate this logic. And such an effort obviously requires a reassessment of its history, of which the present work provides an outline.

But the logic is not Englebretsen's own in a second way. The book is a sustained and systematic exposition of the life work of Prof. Sommers of Brandeis University, whose efforts have revealed the continuity of term logic from Aristotle to Leibniz and also its character an uncompleted project, with unlimited promise in its application to logic of natural language. Sommers' work comes at a crucial moment, just as the problems in applying formal mathematical structures to ordinary language are coming to be recognized. Sommers' unconventional approach, however, has seemed to many to be moving quickly in the wrong direction, toward the 'errors' of the past and he has thus acquired a reputation as the Ishmael of modern logic.

Professor Englebretsen's work is a systematic exposition and defense of Sommers' far-reaching contributions to logic, placing them in the context of a rectified history of the subject. Term logic is a project abandoned prematurely by logicians deceived by the appearance of security which the prestige of mathematics conferred upon mathematical logic. Recent logicians concluded too quickly that term logic was unformalizable, inadequate to reflect many of the actual inference structures of ordinary language, etc. The work of Sommers has demonstrated these claims to be false in the most appropriate way possible, by constructing a term logic of which they do not hold. Moreover Englebretsen has shown that Sommers' reply on behalf of term logic is not a mere riposte; it is a 'programme' of logic in the fullest sense. It contains a rigorously presented theory not just of the syntax, semantics and rules of inference for a term logic, but also a modal logic, a theory of predication, identity, singular terms, categories and ontology. In the reading of this book it is impossible not to get the idea that here is a vital programme for logic which is deserving of careful consideration and which is bound to lead to a re-evaluation of the traditional dogmas of mathematical logic." (pp. I-II)

From: Graeme Hunter, Foreword to: George Englebretsen, Essays on the Philosophy of Fred Sommers. In Logical Terms, Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990.

Bibliography

For the bibliography of Fred Sommers see the page dedicated to him.

1. Englebretsen, George. 1969. "Knowledge, Negation and Incompatibility." Journal of Philosophy no. 66:581-585.

"When epistemologists attempt to establish a distinction between knowledge and belief, very often what they want is a distinction between knowledge and mere belief.

They are interested in the sense of belief that is incompatible with knowing: a sense in which if something is believed it is not known, and if known not believed. This sense of belief (mere belief) is obviously different from the usual notion of belief.

In what follows I want to make a start at analyzing the concept of knowing by outlining the relations between knowledge statements (e.g., x knows that y) and other closely related statements." (p. 581)

2. ———. 1971. "Sommers' Theory and the Paradox of Confirmation." Philosophy of Science no. 38:438-441.

"In order to confirm any statement of the form (a) A are B we consider a sufficiently large number of A in order to check them for having or failing to have property B.

But logic leads us to believe that A are B is equivalent to (b) non-B are non-A. If this is so then it seems reasonable to suppose that we confirm (a) and (b) in the same way. Whatever set of things we consider for confirming one must be the same set that we consider for the other. Yet in confirming (a) the set considered seems to be the set of A, while in confirming (b) the set considered seems to be the set of non-B. How can two logically equivalent statements be confirmable in different ways?

I think this paradox is only apparent. It results from a simple confusion concerning the set of things considered for the confirmation of a statement." (p. 438)

3. ———. 1971. "On the Nature of Sommers' Rule." Mind no. 80:608-611.

"The number of recent journal articles (1) concerning Fred Sommers' "rule for enforcing ambiguity "(2) gives witness to an increasing interest in Sommers' way of doing ontology. Some of these articles can be said to display, at best, an undisguised misunderstanding of

just what the rule says. Others show, at worst, an -unwillingness to say what the intent and nature of the rule is. In this paper I want to say clearly just what the nature of the rule for enforcing ambiguity is and show what Sommers intends by its formulation and use.

In " Types and Ontology "(3) Sommers has established an isomorphism between the structure of ordinary language and the ontological structure. The structure of a language can be represented on a "language tree ". A language tree is a mapping of the " sense" relations which hold between the terms of the language. Two terms, P and Q, have the sense relation U (written " U(PQ) ") just in case they can " make sense " together in a subject predicate sentence. If they do not make sense together, then any subject-predicate sentence formed with them will be a category mistake. A language tree can be formed by writing all the terms of the language so that a solid line is drawn only between U-related terms.(4)" (p. 608)

(1) See: Susan Haack, " Equivocality: A. Discussion of Sommers' Views ", Analysis (April, 1968), L. R. Reinhardt, " Dualism and Categories ", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. lxvi (1965-66), Hugh S. Chandler, " Persons and Predicability ", Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 46, no. 2 (August 1968), and R. van Straaten, " Sommers' Rule and Equivocity ", Analysis (December 1968).

(2) C Predicability ", Philosophy in America, Edited by Max Black (Ithaca New York, 1965).

(3) Philosophical Review, vol. 72 (1963).

(4) For a full account of how to form a language tree see Fred Sommers, " The Ordinary Language Tree ", Mind (1959).

4. ———. 1971. "Elgood on Sommers' Rules of Sense." Philosophical Quarterly no. 21:71-73.

" Several discussions of Fred Sommers's rules of sense have appeared recently. I will examine here the one by A. G. Elgood (this journal, April 1970) because I believe it clearly exemplifies how Sommers's theory is being too often misinterpreted by his critics.' My two points of criticism against Elgood will be brief. First, his formulations for the criterion of type differ- ence are ill-formed. Second, his counter examples fail because they ignore a subtle, but crucial, distinction which can, be extracted from Sommers's theory. " (p. 71)

References

Elgood, A. G. (1970), “Sommers' Rules of Sense,” Philosophical Quarterly, 20: 166-169.

5. ———. 1971. "J. O. Nelson on Logical Notation." Ratio no. 13:88-89.

6. ———. 1972. "True Sentences and True Propositions." Mind no. 81:451-452.

R. J. [Robin J. Haack] and Susan Haack have argued recently that " true " and " false " are, while univocally predicable of both sentences (tokens) and propositions, primarily predicated of sentences.(1) I do not wish to take issue here with the thesis that sentences rather than propositions

are the primary bearers of truth. What I do want to reject is the view that " true " and " false " can univocally be applied to both sentences and propositions." (p. 451)

(1) " Token-Sentences, Translation and Truth-Value ", Mind, vol. lxxix, 1970.

7. ———. 1972. "Persons and Predicates." Philosophical Studies no. 23:393-399.

"My main thesis in this short paper is that the attribute theory of persons is correct but often misunderstood by its critics. We might best begin by comparing our theory with other possible theories of persons. Let us consider three other general sorts of theories: materialism, idealism, and dualism.

According to any materialist theory of persons, a person is nothing more than a material object. Talk about mental (i.e. nonmaterial activities) can be translated into talk about bodily (material) activities. Thus, for the behaviourist, the difference between a person and any other material object lies in the differences between the bodily activities of the two. To say that persons differ from stones in that they (persons) are intelligent is simply to say, on this view, that material objects which are persons often, in certain circumstances, act in ways in which material objects which are stones do not act. This is the view of behaviourists who are materialists. A behaviourist need not be a materialist.

Nor need a materialist be a behaviourist. A materialist might be an 'identity-theorist'. He would hold, then, that a person is nothing more than a material object. But, he distinguishes between persons and other material objects in a way other than that used by the behaviourist materialist.

The identity-theorist argues that a person differs from other material objects in that a person has a mind while other material objects do not. He then goes on to guarantee his materialism by identifying a person's mind with his brain or central nervous system.

For the idealist, a person is simply a mind (or soul or spirit), and minds are immaterial. Here persons differ from material objects simply by not being material. How idealists distinguish persons from other immaterial objects is not always dear. One thing is clear: the idealist who fails to distinguish between immaterial objects which are persons from immaterial objects which are not persons runs the risk of conceiving of persons in terms of those other immaterial objects (e.g. ideas of impressions or sense data) and thus, like Hume, ending up without a concept of persons." (pp. 393-394)

8. ———. 1972. "Vacuosity." Mind no. 81:273-275.

"It is argued here that F. Sommers' notion of vacuousity must be expanded to allow for statements presupposing false statements which may not be existential. the result of this is the enforcement of a distinction between vacuousity and category mistakenness, and, more importantly, a distinction between the spanning and predicability relations which hold between terms and things."

9. ———. 1972. "Sommers on Empty Domains and Existence." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 13:350-358.

10. ———. 1972. "On van Straaten's Modification of Sommers' Rule." Philosophical Studies no. 23:216-219.

"I argue here that R. van Straaten's four modifications of F. Sommers' 'rule for enforcing ambiguity' are based upon a misunderstanding of the basis of the rule and a failure to see the spanning/predicability distinction. The effect is that none of van Straaten's several counterexamples are telling against the rule. In place of van Straaten's modifications I offer the following simple but important changes in the rule: the restriction of things to individuals and the reading of 'makes sense to predicate' and similar phrases in terms of the spanning relation."

11. ———. 1972. "A Revised Category Mistake Argument." Philosophical Studies no. 23:421-423.

12. ———. 1972. "Armstrong on Disembodied Minds." Dialogue no. 11:576-579.

13. ———. 1973. "The Logic of Negative Theology." The New Scholasticism no. 67:226-232.

14. ———. 1973. "Meinong on Existence." Man and World no. 6:80-82.

"For several years I was told, and believed, that while Russell's theory of descriptions might he flawed (viz. in the way Strawson showed), his rejection of Meinong's theory of objects, which led to the theory of descriptions, was undoubtedly correct. Now I doubt very much if this is so.

The "official" view is that Meinong had made the mistake of multiplying the senses of "exists" unnecessarily. According to this view, Meinong, since he held that the descriptive components of any meaningful sentence must refer to something, was forced to provide a special kind of existence, subsistence, for entities which are nonexistent but referred to meaningfully. Russell avoided this position by claiming that statements referring to nonexistent entities are meaningful but false (since they logically entail the existence of the entity referred to). I think the official view underestimates Meinong's philosophical abilities. Indeed, I think, rather than engaging in the philosophically dangerous task of multiplying kinds of existence, Meinong was expressing a keen insight into the nature of existential commitment." (p. 80)

15. ———. 1973. "Presupposition, Truth and Existence." Philosophical Papers no. 2:39-40.

"Ever since Strawson first introduced the notion of presupposition into logical matters, debate has continued over the nature of this operation.

Is presupposition a logical relation between statements? Formal logic or "informal" logic? Does it mean that there are truth-value gaps? Isn't it just material implication?

According to Strawson, a statement which presupposes a true statement is either true or false but a statement which presupposes a false statement is neither true nor false. These latter kinds of statements are vacuous. Compare this notion of presupposition with that of material implication. A statement which materially implies a true statement is either true or false while a statement which materially implies a false statement is false. What is the relation between 'The present King of France is bald' and 'The present King of France exists'? Strawson says it is one of presupposition. Russell said it was material implication. The Russellian rejects the notions of presupposition and vacuousity in order to preserve crucial elements of formal logic (viz. truth-functionality and bivalence). The Strawsonian accepts the concepts of presupposition and vacuousity as reflective of important elements in ordinary discourse, and thus denies those parts of formal logic which his opponent treasures." (p. 39)

16. ———. 1973. "Persons, Predicates and Death." Second Order no. 2:67-70.

17. ———. 1973. "Locke's Language of Proper Names." Locke Newsletter no. 4:25-30.

"It is argued here that recent discussions concerning the compatibility of Locke's theory of nominal essences with Geach's thesis (that each use of a proper name must presuppose the ability to use some corresponding general term) fail to appreciate the important difference between the generation of Lockean general ideas (from ideas of individuals) and the generation of Lockean general terms (not from proper names)."

18. ———. 1973. "Epistemic Logic and Mere Belief." Logique et Analyse no. 63-64:374-378.

"In a previous article (1) I argued that the distinction which epistemologists look for between knowing and believing is actually the distinction between knowing and merely believing, where, unlike belief, mere belief is incompatible with knowledge.

Using Fred Sommers' notion of predicate negation, (2) where the negation of a predicate is equivalent to the disjunction of all those predicates incompatible with it , I formulated several epistemic statements and drew out ten conditionals which should at least be theorems of any epistemic calculus.

In what follows I want to set up the axioms for an epistemic calculus. A few of these wi l come from my previous list of conditionals. I then want to show that in such a system the necessary conditions for mere belief can be adequately formulated." (p. 375)

(1) "Knowledge, Negation and Incompatibility", Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 66 (1969).

(2) "Predicability," in Max Black, ed., Philosophy in America (Ithaca, N.Y., 1965), and "On a Fregean Dogma," in Problems in the Philosophy of Mathematics (Amsterdam 1967).

19. ———. 1973. "Suggested Truth-Tables for a Three-Valued Sentential Logic." International Logic Review no. 8:255-259.

"Truth-tables for the normal sentential connectives are constructed on the basis of the concept of 'partial values'. On this view, every statement has a truth-value which is a function of an ordered pair of partial values. The first member is either T or non-T and the second is either F or non-F. The four combinations of partial values result in three possible truth-values: true, false, and empty."

20. ———. 1974. "Sommers on the Predicate 'Exists'." Philosophical Studies no. 26:419-423.

"In a series of recent journal articles F. Sommers has developed a logic of terms which differs greatly from the usual logic now taught in the schools. However, Sommers has commited himself to a thesis proper to that logic but not to his: everything exists. It is shown here that such a thesis cannot follow from Sommers' previous work. Using his logic proofs that something exists and that something does not exist are given."

21. ———. 1974. "A Note on Contrariety." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 15:613-614.

"It is shown here that S. McCall's proposal, that in addition to the normal sentential operation of negation there is another, more traditional, sentential operation of contrariety ("Contrariety," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 8, 1967) is misguided. There is indeed a contrariety operator. But, it is a predicate operator rather than a sentential operator. The ability to explicate contrariety is just one of the advantages which an Aristotelian logic of terms has over modern sentential logic."

22. ———. 1974. "Brody on Sommers." Philosophical Studies no. 26:149-150.

23. ———. 1974. "Erwin on the Category Mistake Argument." Second Order no. 3:47-53.

24. ———. 1974. "Behaviorism and Perception." Man and World no. 7:149-157.

"After distinguishing the ontological question concerning persons (what is the concept of a person?) from the epistemological question (on what grounds does my knowledge of persons rest?) three kinds of behaviorism are cited as responses to the Cartesian answer to the epistemological question. Unlike physicalism and dispositionism, restricted behaviorism denies that knowledge applies at all to myself and goes on to distinguish behavior from bodily activity. On this theory behavior is taken to be interpreted bodily activity -- bodily activity seen as personal behavior."

25. ———. 1974. "More on Disembodied Minds." Philosophical Papers no. 3:48-49.

26. ———. 1974. "Essentiality." Journal of Critical Analysis no. 5:112-117.

27. ———. 1975. Speaking of Persons. Halifax: Dalhousie University Press.

"This monograph is an attempt to defend an attributist theory of the concept of a person. It is held that our ordinary concept of a person is the concept of a noncomposite (contra dualism), material (contra idealism) object, to which both Strawsonian p- and m-predicates apply. Personal identity is accounted for in terms of bodily continuity "and" sortal continuity. Finally, with the aid of F. Sommers' theory of linguistic-ontological ismorphism, it is argued that an ontological theory compatible with our theory, must reject any sort of spirit, including God."

28. ———. 1975. "Sommers' Proof That Something Exists." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 16:298-300.

"In the concluding remarks of [4] I mentioned that in [8] Sommers had given a proof to the effect that necessarily something exists and that later in [5] this proof was shown to be wrong in principle. Sommers' proof went like this:

1. Something is possible.

2. Whatever is not a categorially possible thing is not a possible thing.

3. Suppose there were nothing (i.e., nothing exists).

4. By definition D-things are categorially impossible if and only if nothing

is D and nothing is D.

5. For any D, nothing is D and nothing is D. (by 3)

6. For any D, D-things are categorially impossible, (by 4 and 5)

7. For any D, D-things are not possible things, (by 2 and 6)

Since 7 is inconsistent with 1, we must reject 1 or 2 or 3 or 4. 1, 2, and 4 seem certain. Thus we must reject 3. This gives us the negation of 3 (Something exists).

Q.E.D.

Guerry attacked Sommers' proof by showing that 4 allows counterexamples and must be rejected rather than 3. What bothered Guerry about 4 was that it allowed Sommers to "derive a necessity (the impossibility of D-things) from a contingency (the nonexistence of D- and D-things)."

Nevertheless, a simple reformulation of this definition (4) can be used to render the proof immune to Guerry's attack. The reformulation is simply what I think Sommers had actually intended by 4. However, this reformulated argument can be shown to be simply invalid requiring Sommers to find a completely new argument for his purposes." (p. 298)

References

[4] Englebretsen, G., "Sommers on empty domains and existence," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, vol. XIII (1972), pp. 350-358.

[5] Guerry, H., "Sommers' ontological proof," Analysis, vol. 27 (1967), pp. 60-61.

[8] Sommers, F., "Why is there something and not nothing?" Analysis, vol. 26 (1966), pp. 177-181.

29. ———. 1975. "Rescher on E!" Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 16:536-538.

"In "Definitions of 'existence'," Philosophical Studies, vol. 7 (1957), pp. 65-69, N. Rescher rejected the definition of 'E!' given by H. S. Leonard in "The Logic of existence", Philosophical Studies, vol. 7 (1956) pp. 49-64.

(...)

In this note I will first briefly show that Reseller's reason for rejecting (L) is unsatisfactory. Then I will show that (c2) must be rejected. Finally, I will make some remarks about the general attempt to formalize a definition of existence."

30. ———. 1975. "Sommers' Theory and Natural Theology." International Journal for Philosophy of Religion:111-116.

31. ———. 1975. "Trivalence and Absurdity." Philosophical Papers no. 4:221-227.

32. ———. 1976. "The Square of Opposition." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 17:531-541.

33. ———. 1976. "Sommers' Tree Theory and Possible Things." Philosophical Studies (Ireland) no. 24:131-139.

34. ———. 1978. "Aristotle on the Subject of Predication." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 19:614-616.

Reprinted in: A. Menne and G. Offenberger (eds.), Zur Modernen Deutung der Aristotelischen Logik, vol. II, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1985, pp. 128-130.

"Aristotle's thesis that universals must always inhere in a primary substance, a particular, has been used recently as evidence that he, like many contemporary logicians, rejected the predication of terms to universal, i.e., nonsingular, subjects. Yet this would force Aristotle to treat quantifiers as ranging over bare, unsorted, particulars. But Aristotle took the notion of an unsorted particular as nonsense. His thesis about the status of universals can no more serve as evidence that he took all subjects as particulars than can his thesis that every particular satisfies some universal serve as evidence that he took no subjects as particular."

35. ———. 1979. "Notes on the New Syllogistic." Logique et Analyse no. 85-86:111-120.

36. ———. 1980. "Singular Terms and the Syllogistic." The New Scholasticism no. 54:68-74.

"It is generally held that singular terms have no place in Aristotle's syllogistic. A variety of reasons have been given for holding this view. Nevertheless, Aristotle did offer examples of syllogisms containing singular terms. It is suggested here that the reasons for denying singulars a place in syllogistic are unacceptable. Thus, singular terms are on a logical par with general terms.

They can be subject terms (thus be quantified) and they can be predicate terms as well (thus be affirmed or denied of subjects). A proper understanding of how this is so comes only from a clear understanding of Aristotle's theory of logical syntax. Recently F. Sommers has provided a syllogistic logic ("the calculus of terms") which shows, among other things, how singulars can be treated syllogistically."

37. ———. 1980. "Noncategorical Syllogisms in the Analytics." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 21:602-608.

"It is a commonplace now among logicians that the logic of categorical syllogisms, first developed by Aristotle, presupposes the now-familiar logic of unanalyzed propositions. Aristotle, however, clearly took the syllogistic to be "basic logic", presupposing no other logic. Since he was not unaware of many important principles now constitutive of the calculus of propositions, it can only be argued that either: (i) Aristotle was blind to the import of such principles for formal logic in general, or (ii) he believed such principles could be accounted for by the syllogistic. In spite of the numerous and illustrious supporters of (i), we shall attempt here a brief defense of (ii).

The question, of course, is not whether Aristotle himself substantiated (ii), but rather: can any syllogistic substantiate (ii)? In answering this question affirmatively we will first cite several arguments which are found in the Analytics, and which make use of well-known principles of the propositional calculus. We shall then make some historical remarks concerning the attempt to reduce the logic of unanalyzed propositions to the logic of analyzed propositions (the syllogistic). Finally, we hope to show how a recently developed syllogistic system offers a technique which can be used to successfully render the arguments cited from the Analytics as categorical syllogisms." (p. 602)

38. ———. 1980. "On Propositional Form." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 21:101-120.

Reprinted in: A. Menne and G. Offenberger (eds.), Zur Modernen Deutung der Aristotelischen Logik, vol. II, Hildesheim: Georg Olms 1985 pp. 131-140.

39. ———. 1980. "Denotation and Reference." Philosophical Studies (Ireland) no. 27:229-236.

40. ———. 1980. "A Note on Predication." Dialogue no. 19:627-628.

Reply to: Nicholas Griffin, "Do we need predication?", Dialogue, 16, 1977, pp. 653-663.

41. ———. 1980. "Chandler on Change." Critica no. 7:81-85.

"Common sense, as Aristotle saw, demands an account of the world which admits both accidental and substantial change. In the first an object ceases to be how-it-is; in the second it ceases to be what-it-is. H. S. Chandler's recent critique of M. Loux's "Substance and attribute" suffers from a misunderstanding of this distinction. Chandler mistakenly concludes from the Aristotle-Loux theory that because an object is necessarily what-it-is, then it is eternally what-it-is."

42. ———. 1980. "Bryant on Sommers." Critica no. 7:87-92.

43. ———. 1981. "A Journey to Eden: Geach on Aristotle." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 14:133-141.

"Peter Geach has charged Aristotle with the sin of corrupting logic by initiating a process which led to the view that a sentence consists logically of just two names. This charge can only result from a clearly mistaken view of Aristotle's theory of logical syntax. Aristotle, unlike Geach, was careful to distinguish subjects from subject-terms and predicates from predicate-terms.

He took both subjects and predicates as syntactical complexes. Geach, following Frege, holds a very different theory of logical syntax which takes predicates, but not subjects, as syntactically complex."

44. ———. 1981. Logical Negation. Assen: Van Gorcum.

Introduction 1; Some historical remarks 3; Negation in mathematical logic 19; Sommers' term logic 28; The symbolism for a term logic 38; Negation and falsity 47; Concluding remarks on the nature of formal logic 56; Index 61-62.

"This monograph examines the notions of negation found in classical, Stoic, and contemporary mathematical logics and argues that for philosophical purposes, and consonant with ordinary discourse, the notions of predicate denial and term negation (Aristotle's) are to be preferred over the sentential negation now favored. Arguments supporting this atavism are drawn from or based upon the work of F. Sommers. A final result of this investigation is new light on falsity."

45. ———. 1981. Three Logicians: Aristotle, Leibniz, and Sommers, and the Syllogistic. Assen: Van Gorcum.

Preface VII; Introduction 1; Three logicians; Aristotle 9; Leibniz 28; Sommers 42; The syllogistic; Contemporary mathematical logic 67; Syllogistic logic 77; Concluding remarks 109; Bibliography 113; Index 116-118.

"In his Introduction to Logical Theory (London, 1952) P.F. Strawson attempted to show that traditional syllogistic logic was more reflective of various features of ordinary language than was modern mathematical logic. P. Geach, the best modern critic of traditional logic, responded to Strawson in "Mr. Strawson on Symbolic and Traditional Logic", Mind, 72 (1963). His brief remarks there show that Strawson's defense of the old logic is, at best, naive. Geach clearly believes that there just can be no sound defense of traditional logic. He even suggests that those who would persist in their allegiance to the old logic are either irrational or lazy. He says:

Many readers will vaguely think Strawson has proved that the traditional system with all its faults is philosophically less misleading than the new-fangled one. Those Colleges of Unreason where the pseudo-Aristotelian logic is presented as the only genuine logic, and those lecturers who would like to teach the philosophy of logic without having to learn any modern logic, may well thus have been supplied with a pretext for supine ignorance.

We believe that syllogistic logic is philosophically defensible. What Geach sees as its faults are either not faults at all or can be remedied. The result of applying such remedies is a new syllogistic - a logic which is broader and stronger than Aristotle's original. It is a logic competitive with the "new fangled" logic of today. This new syllogistic was invisaged, but not built, by Leibniz. The hope for such a logic lay dormant during the period when mathematical logic was being born and nurtured through its rapid maturity. But recently that hope has been revitalized, and virtually fulfilled, in the work of F. Sommers. The best general answer to Geach's overall charge is simply a presentation of this new syllogistic.

While the primary motive in presenting this essay is the defense of syllogistic against its modern detractors, we also believe that it is time for a concise introduction to Sommers' logical work. This work is scattered throughout a wide variety of journals and anthologies; and there is now no available account of it. Given the great originality of Sommers' ideas, and the importance of the issues he has chosen to deal with in logic, this void must be filled. Part of this essay is intended as a modest start at that task." (From the Preface).

46. ———. 1981. "A Further Note on a Proof by Sommers." Logique et Analyse no. 94:271-272.

47. ———. 1981. "On the Terms of Truth." Philosophical Papers no. 10:89-92.

"Correspondence theories of truth require a special relation between sentences and the world.

Relying on suggestions first made by Leibniz, and later expanded by Sommers, it can be shown that the relation called for is simply that of denotation. Since denotation is primarily a relation between a term and things, sentences must be construed as terms. The things denoted by sentences are (pace Sommers) states of affairs."

48. ———. 1981. "Predicates, Predicables and Names." Critica no. 8:105-108.

"It is a canon of modern predicate logic that general terms are predicates and subjects are singular. Traditional logic, by contrast, took all terms to be fit for either the subject or predicate roles. The thesis, recently defended by T. Burge, that names are predicates amounts (once the prejudices of modern logic are abandoned) to the much weaker claim that names can be used as general terms."

49. ———. 1981. "A Note on Identity, Reference and Logical Form." Critica no. 8:75-81.

50. ———. 1982. "Do We Need Relative Identity?" Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 23:91-93.

51. ———. 1982. "Aristotle and Quine on the Basic Combination." The New Scholasticism no. 56:244-249.

"Quine's 'basic combination' is a sentence joining a singular to a general term. The position as the singular is referential -- that of the general is predicational. Singulars and generals are unfit for each other's position. This contrasts with Aristotle's view, which takes such sentences to join a subject and a predicate. A subject is a quantified term -- a predicate is a qualified term. Yet the terms themselves are syntactically homogeneous -- fit for each other's position. One motive behind the Quinean view is the belief that: (i) subjects refer, (ii) singular refer to individuals, (iii) universals cannot be referred to. So, since generals cannot refer without referring to universals, generals are unfit for subjects. the Aristotelian account of logical syntax also avoids Platonic consequences, but not at the cost of an unsupported singular/general distinction."

52. ———. 1982. "Aristotle on the Oblique." Philosophical Studies no. 29:89-101.

53. ———. 1982. "Leibniz on Logical Syntax." Studia Leibnitiana no. 14:119-126.

54. ———. 1982. "Natural Syntax, Logical Syntax and Translation." Australian Logic Teachers Journal no. 6:8-14.

55. ———. 1982. "What in the World is the Truth About Logical Space?" Philosophical Inquiry no. 4:52-61.

56. ———. 1982. "Predication Old and New." Critica no. 14:117-120.

57. ———. 1983. "Presupposition and Existence." Philosophical Papers no. 12:1-8.

58. ———. 1983. "Presumptions of Reference." Philosophical Papers no. 12:9-11.

59. ———. 1983. "Reference, Anaphora and Singular Quantity." Dialogos no. 41:67-72.

60. ———. 1984. "Opposition." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 25:79-85.

61. ———. 1984. "Quadratum Auctum." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 107:309-325.

Reprinted in: George Englebretsen (ed.), Essays on the Philosophy of Fred Sommers, Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press 1990, pp. 133-147.

62. ———. 1984. "Feldman and Sommers on Leibniz's Law." Dialogos no. 43:91-96.

"Following suggestions made recently by F. Sommers it can be shown that Leibniz's law is in fact a principle of term substitutability. Terms are the same if and only if they are intersubstitutable for one another. More importantly for Leibniz's general program for syllogistic is the fact that this principle is but a special case of the dictum de omni."

63. ———. 1984. "Logical Structure and Natural Syntax." Journal of Social and Biological Structures no. 7:219-234.

64. ———. 1984. "Syntactical Complexity." Philosophical Inquiry no. 6:119-126.

65. ———. 1984. "Notes on Quine's Syntactical Insights." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 22:149-157.

66. ———. 1984. "Anselm's Second Argument." Sophia no. 23:34-37.

67. ———. 1984. "Freeman on Induction/Deduction." Informal Logic no. 6:26-27.

68. ———. 1984. "Logical Form and Natural Syntax." Indian Philosophical Quarterly no. 11:229-254.

69. ———. 1985. "Geach on Logical Syntax." The New Scholasticism no. 59:177-184.

70. ———. 1985. "On the Proper Treatment of Negative Names." Journal of Critical Analysis no. 8:109-115.

71. ———. 1985. "Negative Names." Philosophia no. 15:133-136.

"E. M. Zemach's otherwise superb defense of the formal symmetry of names and general terms includes a mistaken view about the nature of negated names. While agreeing with his symmetry thesis I argue that he fails to appreciate (1) that the referents of negated names are not logically impossible, and (2) that the negation of a name is not a name."

72. ———. 1985. "Defending Distribution." Dialogos no. 45:157-159.

"At least one recent defender of the doctrine of distribution has conceded too much to the opposition. Friends of distribution must recognize the crucial distinction between denotation, a semantic feature of all terms, and reference, a semantic feature of quantified expressions. They must also be prepared to apply their doctrine to every kind of term -- including relationals."

73. ———. 1985. "Quine on Aristotle on Identity." Critica no. 17:65-68.

74. ———. 1985. "Zur philosophischen Interpretation der Logik: ein weiter aristotelischen Dialog." In Zur Modernen Deutung der Aristotelischen Logik. Vol. II, edited by Menne, Albert and Öffenberger, Niels, 112-127. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

75. ———. 1985. "Logical Primitives." Indian Philosophical Quarterly no. 12:371-380.

76. ———. 1985. "Semantic Considerations for Sommers' Logic." Philosophy Research Archives no. 11:281-318.

"During the last twenty-five years Fred Sommers has developed a series of inter-related theories of language structure, ontological structure, logical syntax, and truth. Each theory has naturally contained valuable suggestions concerning semantic issues. But Sommers has not yet offered a specifically semantic theory. I attempt here to fill that gap by sketching a theory of semantics based upon his logical theses. The theory holds that terms, as used in statement making sentences, have both denotation and signification. Terms denote objects and signify properties. Terms, when quantified, refer to some or all of their denotations, and, when quantified, characterize the subjects to which they are predicated as having or lacking the properties they signify. The semantic, syntactic, and ontological theses presented in this theory are contrasted with those found in classical, Scholastic, Leibnizian, Fregean, and Quinean theories."

77. ———. 1986. "On Some Alleged Semantic Correlations." The New Scholasticism no. 60:490-500.

"The Fregean replacement of the subject/predicate distinction with the argument/function distinction led to an emphasis on the singular/general distinction for logic. Only singulars could be subjects; only general terms could be predicates. Singulars refer; predicates are true of Ultimately the Fregean syntactic distinction is semantic. The old subject/predicate is not. A semantic theory based on the old logic of subjects and predicates can allow the semantic, syntactic and ontological distinctions their proper places."

78. ———. 1986. "Singular / General." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 27:104-107.

"Modern logic takes the difference between singular and general terms very seriously. It insists that sentences with general subjects have a much more complex logical syntax than sentences with singular subjects.

This is partly because modern logic always treats general terms as predicates and never treats singular terms as anything but subjects. The insistence that the logic of singulars is different from the logic of general propositions is also partly due to modern logic's demand that the logical form of any sentence be a reflection of its truth conditions. 'Socrates is wise' is true just in case Socrates is wise. But 'Some philosopher is wise' is true just in case there is at least one thing which is such that it is a philosopher and it is wise. So the modern logician requires a great deal of semantic information to be reflected in syntax. But how does a logician decide how much semantic information should be so reflected? Surely not all. There's just too much. Just that which determines truth? 'John is a bachelor' has as one of its (necessary) truth conditions that John is a male. Yet the modern logician does not require this bit of semantic information to be revealed syntactically."

79. ———. 1986. "Czezowski on Wild Quantity." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 27:62-65.

"It is well known that if singular sentences are to be fully incorporated into a syllogistic logic, singular subjects must be quantified. Leibniz argued that such subjects are both universal and particular. Similar (but not identical) views have been advanced in this century by Copi, Sommers and Czezowski. but the latter has argued that singular quantity is unique, distinct from the two classical quantities. it is shown here that this is an illusion."

80. ———. 1986. "A Note on Truth and Existence in Leibniz." Manuscrito.Revista Internacional de Filosofia no. 9:7-9.

"Leibniz was able to connect the notion of truth for a sentence with the idea of existence for individuals. Words and sentences are taken to both denote individuals and signify concepts. iI a true sentence two conditions must hold. The concept signified by the subject and the word denoted by the sentence must be the actual word."

81. ———, ed. 1987. The New Syllogistic. New York: Peter Lang.

Preface IX; Introduction 1; 1. The calculus of terms by Fred Sommers p. 11 (reprinted from Mind, 89, (1970); 2. De Morgan and Sommers by Peter Swiggart p. 57; 3. Back to Leibniz or on from Frege? by B. H. Slater p. 87; 4. Review: The logic of natural language by Peter Frederick Strawson p. 99 (reprinted from The Journal of Philosophy, 79, (1982); 5. On the semantics of Sommers' 'Some S' p. 105 by Richard M. Martin p. 105 (reprinted from Mind, modality, meaning and method (1983); 6. Sommers and modern logic by John Bacon p. 121; 7. Proofs and pronouns: extending the system by Michael Lockwood p. 161; 8. Algebraic rules for syllogisms and antilogisms by W. H. Friedman p. 213; 9. The two term theory of predication by Aris Noah p. 223; 10. Natural syntax and Sommers' theory of logical form by George Englebretsen p. 245; 11. Some practical and theoretical features of Sommers' cancellation method by Richard Purtill p. 273; 12. Some problems with TFL [Traditional Formal Logic] by Charles Sayward p. 283; 13. Truth and existence by Fred Sommers p. 299; 14. Logical polarity by George Englebretsen p. 305; Notes on the contributors p. 313; Bibliography p. 315-322.

"This anthology brings together essays by F. Sommers, his defenders and critics concerning his new system of logic based on a traditional logical syntax (the "new syllogistic"). The essays include presentations of the logic, explorations of some of its historical antecedents, examinations of the symbolic algorithm which accompanies it, and discussions of such key topics as pronominalization, truth, syllogistic inference, existence and term-negation."

82. ———. 1987. "Subjects." Studia Leibnitiana no. 19:85-90.

83. ———. 1987. "Natural Syntax and Sommers’ Theory of Logical Form." In The New Syllogistic, edited by Englebretsen, George, 245-272. New York: Peter Lang.

"F. Sommers has challenged the Fregean theory of logical syntax. In particular, he has denied the idea that natural language has no logic. It is possible to articulate a theory of logical syntax for natural language. it construes sentences as concatenations of subjects and predicates. A subject is a quantifier plus a term; a predicate is a qualifier plus a term. Surprisingly, such an analysis accounts not only for categoricals but singulars, identities, rationals and truth-functions."

84. ———. 1987. "Logical Polarity." In The New Syllogistic, edited by Englebretsen, George, 305-311. New York: Peter Lang.

"Both statements and terms can be negated. They come in positively/negatively charged pairs. This polarity is reversible for terms (for any negative term a semantically equivalent positive can be defined) but not for statements. An account of why this is so is offered here."

85. ———. 1987. "Morris on Identity." Analysis no. 47:92-93.

86. ———. 1987. "Truth and Existence." In The New Syllogistic, edited by Englebretsen, George, 299-304. New York: Peter Lang.

87. ———. 1988. "Preliminary Notes on a New Modal Syllogistic." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 29:381-395.

Abstract: "This article consists of five parts. In Section 1 we introduce the topic of modal syllogistic by examining the case of the two Barbaras found in Prior Analytics.

In the second section we briefly review certain aspects of the "new syllogistic" developed in recent years by Fred Sommers. The next two sections examine some of the syntactic and semantic features of modal sentences de dicto and de re respectively. Our final section presents a preliminary sketch of what a syllogistic admitting both de dicto and de re modality would look like."

88. ———. 1988. "A Note on Leibniz's Wild Quantity Thesis." Studia Leibnitiana no. 20:87-89.

89. ———. 1988. "La théorie des catégories de Sommers: une nouvelle introduction." Dialogue no. 27:451-473.

90. ———. 1989. "Formatives." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 30:382-389.

Abstract: "An answer to the question of 'sentential unity' (What makes a sentence a single linguistic unit rather than just a string of words?) is one of the goals of any theory of logical syntax. A 'Fregean' theory claims that a sentence is a function (unsaturated expression, containing gaps) whose gaps are filled with either arguments (saturated, gap-less) or other functions which have already been saturated. A 'Leibnizian' theory construes a sentence as a syntactically complex subject (quantified term) plus a syntactically complex predicate (qualified term). Subjects and predicates just naturally fit one another to form sentences. An 'Aristotelian' theory takes a sentence to consist of a pair of terms connected by a binary formative expression (functor), whose only role is to connect terms to form more complex expressions (e.g., sentences). After an examination of the formal nature of such functors, it is argued that this third sort of theory not only answers better the question of sentential unity, but it also provides a better account of the nature of logical constants in general."

91. ———. 1990. Essays on the Philosophy of Fred Sommers: In Logical Terms. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press.

Contents;

Foreword by Graeme Hunter I; Introduction III; I. A reintroduction to Sommers' tree theory 1; II. Sommers on the subject of a sentence 33; III. On the philosophical interpretation of logic: another Aristotelian dialogue 43; IV. A introduction to (a Sommers-like) logic 63; V. Remarks on the semantics of terms and sentences 109; VI. Qadratum auctum 133; VII. On the logic of phrasal conjunctions 151; VIII. Compound terms 159; IX. Preliminary notes on a new modal syllogistic 169; X. Existing things 189; XI. A brief note on psychologism 197; Bibliography 205; Index of names 229; Index of terms 233.

92. ———. 1990. "A note on Copula and Qualifiers." Linguistic Analysis no. 20:82-86.

93. ———. 1990. "Cartesian Syntax." Philosophical Inquiry no. 12:59-64.

"The "Cartesian" theory of logical syntax was most fully formulated by the Port-Royal logicians. A brief survey of their work, especially the Logique, shows that they took a statement to have a deep structure analyzable as a predication. It is a joining or separating of two terms by a positive or negative copula. Complex terms were also viewed as (implicit) predication. The logical syntax of predication requires no recourse to semantic distinctions among terms, nor does it distinguish atomic from molecular statements."

94. ———. 1990. "The Myth of Modern Logic." Cogito no. 4:150-158.

95. ———. 1992. "Linear Diagrams for Syllogisms (with Relationals)." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 33:37-69.

"A system for diagramming syllogisms is developed here. Unlike Venn, and other planar diagrams, these diagrams are linear. This allows one to diagram inferences which exceed the virtual four term limit onnonlinear systems. It also can be extended (by the use of vectors) to inferences involving all kinds of relational expressions."

96. ———. 1992. "An Algebra for Logic." Canadian Journal of Rethorical Studies no. 2:104-140.

97. ———. 1992. "Plus and Minus." Critica no. 24:73-116.

98. ———. 1992. "Laying the Cards on the Table: Negation Theory and Contradiction." Linguistic Analysis no. 22:96-99.

99. ———. 1994. "A Propos of Nothing." Linguistic Analysis no. 24:32-38.

100. ———. 1996. Something to Reckon With: The Logic of Terms. Ottawa: Ottawa University Press.

With a foreword by Fred Sommers; Preface; Introduction 1; 1. The good old days of the bad old logic (or, Adam's Fall); Aristotle's syllogistic 9; Scholastic additions 16; Cartesian interlude 23; Leibnizian insights 30; Nineteenth-century algebraists 41; 2. A modern success Story (or, Frege to the rescue); Frege 53; Bradley and Ramsey raise some doubts 64; Russell and Wittgenstein 69; Strawson, Geach, and Quine 78; 3. Coming to terms with Sommers 99; The Calculus of Terms 99; The logic of natural language 122; The truth 135; The laws of thought 142; 4. It all adds up 149; Plus/Minus 149; Truth and what 'there' is 185; A new system of diagrams 188; Conclusion 239; Bibliography 243; Index of names 269-274.

101. ———. 1997. "The Unifying Copula." Logique et Analyse no. 159:255-259.

102. ———. 1997. "Religious Discourse and Sommers' Theory of Truth: A Response to Hans H. Penner." Method and Theory in the Study of Religion no. 9:249-258.

103. ———. 1998. Line Diagrams for Logic: Drawing Conclusions. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press.

Preface; Introduction 1; I. Reasoning with diagrams 7; II. Syntax and diagrams 13; III. A word about truth 17; IV. Diagramming categoricals and singulars 19; V. Compound terms and negative names 29; VI. Compound names 37; VII. Syllogistic inference 41; VIII. Relationals 47; IX. Reflexive and personal pronouns; 57; X. The dictum de omni 63; XI. Statement logic as a special part of term logic 67; XII. Diagramming unanalyzed statements 77; XIII. Final remarks 85; Appendix 87; References 99-105

104. ———. 2000. "Preliminaries for a Term-Functor Logic." In Variable-Free Semantics, edited by Böttner, M. and Thümmel, W., 90-99. Osnabrück: Secolo-Verlag.

105. ———. 2000. "Two Important Logical Insights by Lewis Carroll." In Reflections on Lewis Carroll, edited by Soto, Fernando J. Shelburne: The Lewis Carroll Society of Canada.

106. ———. 2002. "Syllogistic: Old Wine in New Bottles." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 23:31-35.

"In the late nineteenth century there were two very active lines of research in the field of formal logic. First, logicians (mostly in English-speaking countries) were engaged in formulating a generally traditional logic as an algebra, a part of mathematics; second, logicians (mostly on the Continent) were busy building a non-traditional logic that could serve, not as a part of, but as the foundation of, mathematics. By the end of the First World War the former line had been pretty well abandoned while the second continued to expand. However, that old abandoned line, stretching from Aristotle, through the Scholastics and then Leibniz to the nineteenth century algebraists, had not been completely forgotten. One of those logicians who has recently worked on the restoration (and, importantly, the extension) of that line is Fred Sommers. His Term Logic preserves a number of traditional insights (especially involving the theory of logical syntax), while also enjoying a power to account for formal inference at least comparable to that of the standard logic now in place."

107. ———. 2004. "Predicate Logic, Predicates, and Terms." In First-Order Logic Revisited, edited by Hendricks, Vincent, Neuhaus, Fabian, Pedersen, Stig Andur, Scheffler, Uwe and Wansing, Heinrich, 75-88. Berlin: Logos Verlag.

Abstract: "My primary aim here is to introduce in a very preliminary way a system of formal logic that has been built by Fred Sommers and myself over the past few years. This term logic matches the inferential power of the standard first-order predicate logic, but enjoys certain advantages in terms of simplicity and naturalness. What I hope this can offer is some insight into ideas concerning formal logic that are extremely old but not often encountered today. I may rightly be accused of atavism for touting such antiques, but perhaps the contrast between these ideas and more contemporary ones will be of interest. So, some of my remarks will concern some central logical concepts (especially the concept of predication), while others will be a bit historical."

108. ———. 2005. "Trees, Terms, and Truth: The Philosophy of Fred Sommers." In The Old New Logic. Essays on the Philosophy of Fred Sommers, edited by Oderberg, David S., 25-48. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

"During the past fifty years Fred Sommers has developed bold and original ideas concerning the sense structure of natural language and how it reveals ontological structure, a powerful and fully expressive version of term logic, and a revitalized theory of truth by correspondence. This essay shows how all these ideas are mutually related to one another. Together they amount to a unified, coherent theory of mind, language and the world. Sommers's work in these areas has influenced research in philosophy of language, logic, and cognitive psychology."

109. ———. 2006. Bare Facts and Naked Truths: A New Correspondence Theory of Truth. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Contents: Preface IX. Part One: Introduction; 1. À la recherche du temps perdu 9; 2. The big MAC attack 37; Part Two: 3. Terminism 79; 4. Facing the facts 1070; 5. Giving the world Its due 141; 6. A nice derangement 153; Conclusion 167; Bibliography 171; Index 189.

"The aim of the present essay is to outline a theory about truth. Since a number of concepts are involved in the concept of truth this means that I shall has to offer clarification, of one sort or another, of a large number of concepts and conceptual clusters. Some of these involve what there is, existence, reality, and the like (so my project is partly metaphysical); some involve knowledge, belief, perception, and so forth (so my project is partly epistemological); others involve sentences, terms, propositions, statements, saying, and so on (so part of my project is in the philosophy of language -- semantics). To illustrate briefly what I've been saying, consider some of the semantic concepts with which we shall be dealing. The terms of art needed to talk about such things as sentences, statements, facts, stating, saying, and what is stated are all plagued by ambiguity (and much else besides). To disambiguate them, trace out their different senses, is to analyze the multiple concepts they can express. Thus a sentence might be either a sentence-type or a sentence-token; a statement might be either a sentence or what is expressed by a sentence; a fact might be either a true sentence, a true statement, a truth expressed by a sentence (or by a statement), or what makes something (a sentence, statement, and so on) true; to state might be to utter, to express, to signify, or to do something else; to say might be to utter or to state; what is stated might be a sentence, a fact, or something else. So here we have just a portion of a large cluster of concepts that is implicated in any account of truth and is in serious need of clarification, analysis, disentanglement -- and I have yet to focus on the concept of a concept. An appropriate way to make progress here is to try to formulate a detailed, specific theory of truth. Along the way, the clarification of various concepts will help push along the development of the theory. Reciprocally, the theory, as it gets formulated, will help shed light on various key concepts and at least show the way to the clarification of others."

110. ———, ed. 2008. Numerical Term Logic, by Lorne Szabolcsi. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press.

111. ———. 2008. "The Dodo and the DO: Lewis Carroll on the Dictum de Omni." Proceedings of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics no. 20:142-148.

Reprinted in: The Carrollian: The Lewis Carroll Journal, 25 (2014), pp. 29-37.

112. ———. 2010. "Making Sense of Truth-Makers." Topoi no. 29:147-151.

113. ———. 2012. Robust Reality: An Essay in Formal Ontology. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

"Because I owe so much to Fred Sommers, I offer the present book as a feeble attempt to fulfill his wish to provide a full account of the tree theory, of the structure of language, its relation to ontology, and the many fruits that can be harvested from it - especially when watered by logic and ripened in the sunlight of truth." (p. XIII).

"In this essay, we have examined systems of formal ontology hinted at by Aristotle, attempted by Ryle, and one fully articulated by Sommers. Each took some formal aspect of language to provide a guide to the formal structure of the ontology. More particularly, each concentrated on semantic relations as key to that structure. This contrasts with more recent theories that take the syntactic forms dictated by modern mathematical logic as the proper guide to ontology. Sommers' semantic-ontological tree theory proved fruitful. For example, it highlighted the fact that term ambiguity, which requires different senses of a term to have different locations on the language tree, is most commonly the result of following rules - rules that "enforce ambiguity" on some terms. Moreover, the theory permitted a rational way to look at the order in which various rules governing language apply - "levels of rectitude".

Given the isomorphism of sense structures for the terms of ordinary language and the inclusion relations among categories of things, the notion of levels of rectitude could be extended to rules governing ontology as well. The key notion of spanning, which holds or fails to hold between a (sense of a) term and thing, helps enrich our understanding of how things can constitute not only sets but categories and types.

In examining the tree theory, with its focus on terms, one can't help noting that much depends on the idea that predication is essentially a relation between a predicable term and another term, which is also predicable. It was this idea, that statements could be parsed as pairs of terms standing in the relation of predication, that led Aristotle away from the view that statements consist of names and verbs. Giving up that grammar-based view freed Aristotle to view statements as consisting of pairs of terms joined together by a logical copula doing the work of predication. Only then was he able to develop formal logic, a term logic, the syllogistic." (pp. 143-144).

114. ———. 2015. Exploring Topics in the History and Philosophy of Logic. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

115. ———. 2016. "Fred Sommers’ Contributions to Formal Logic." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 37:269-291.

Abstract: "Fred Sommers passed away in October of 2014 in his 92nd year. Having begun his teaching at Columbia University, he eventually became the Harry A. Wolfson Chair in Philosophy at Brandeis University, where he taught from 1963 to 1993. During his long and productive career, Sommers authored or co-authored over 50 books, articles, reviews, etc., presenting his ideas on numerous occasions throughout North America and Europe. His work was characterized by a commitment (often implicit) to the preservation and application of historical insights and to the value of a well-articulated, coherent logical system. He was recognized for his independence and refusal to accept any view on the basis of authority alone. This made him a formidable critic but accounted in part for his many innovative and original ideas. In spite of his general contrariness in logic, Sommers earned the respect of the majority of his contemporaries, including Russell, Quine, van Benthem, Hacking, Suppes, and Strawson. In 2005, he was the subject of a Festschrift with contributions by a number of younger philosophers and logicians, just one indication of the continuing importance and influence of his work."

116. ———. 2016. "La Quadrature du Carré." In Soyons Logiques / Let's be Logical, edited by F. Schang, A. Moktefi, et A. Moretti, Moktefi, Amirouche, Moretti, Alessio and Schang, Fabien, 44-59. London: College Publications.

117. ———. 2016. "What Did Carroll Think the Tortoise Said to Achilles?" The Carrollian: The Lewis Carroll Journal no. 28:76-83.

118. ———. 2019. Figuring It Out: Logic Diagrams. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

119. Englebretsen, George, and Sayward, Charles. 2011. Philosophical Logic: An Introduction to Advanced Topics. New York: Continuum.

Co-author Charles Sayward.

Contents: List of Symbols X; 1. Introduction 1; 2. Sentential Logic 13; 3. Quantificational Logic 52; 4. Sententia Modal Logic 74; 5. Quantification and Modality 93; 6. Set Theory 103; 7. Incompleteness 130; 8. An Introduction to Term Logic 139; 9. The Elements of a Modal term Logic 166; References 176; Rules, Axioms, and Principles 177; Glossary 184; Index 195-198.

"Post-Fregean mathematical logic began with a concern for foundational issues in mathematics. However, by the 1930s philosophers had not only contributed to the building and refinement of various formal systems, but they had also begun an exploitation of them for primarily philosophical ends. While many schools of philosophy today eschew any kind of technical, logical work, an ability to use (or at least a familiarity with) the tools provided by formal logic systems is still taken as essential by most of those who consider themselves analytic philosophers. Moreover, recent years have witnessed a growing interest in formal logic among philosophers who stand on friendly terms with computer theory, cognitive psychology, game theory, linguistics, economics, law, and so on. At the same time, techniques developed in formal logic continue to shed light on both traditional and contemporary issues in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and so forth.

In what follows, students who have already learned something of classical mathematical logic are introduced to some other ways of doing formal logic: classical logic rests on the concepts of truth and falsity, whereas constructivists logic accounts for inference in terms of defense and refutation; classical logic usually makes use of a semantic theory based on models, whereas the alternative introduced here is based on the idea of truth sets; classical logic tends to interpret quantification objectually, whereas this alternative allows for a substitutional interpretation of quantifiers. As well, a radically different approach, fundamentally different from any version of mathematical logic, is also introduced. It is one that harkens back to the earliest stages in the history of formal logic but is equipped with the resources demanded of any formal logic today." (pp. 1-2)

120. Sommers, Fred, and Englebretsen, George. 2000. An Invitation to Formal Reasoning. The Logic of Terms. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Preface X; 1. Reasoning 1; 2. Picturing propositions 25; 3. The language of logic (I) 49; 4. The language of logic (II) 77; 5. Syllogistic 109; 6. Relational syllogistic 139; 7. Statement logic 163; 8. Modern predicate logic 213; Rules, laws and principles 253; A note on further reading 259-260.

The book "introduces the discipline of formal logic by means of a powerful new system formulated by Fred Sommers.

This system, term logic, is different in a number of ways from the standard system employed in modern logic; most striking is, its greater simplicity and naturalness. Based on a radically different theory of logical syntax than the one Frege used when initiating modern mathematical logic in the 19th Century, term logic borrows insights from Aristotle's syllogistic, Scholastic logicians, Leibniz, and the 19th century British algebraists.

Term logic takes its syntax directly from natural language, construing statements as combinations of pairs of terms, where complex terms are taken to have the same syntax as statements. Whereas standard logic requires extensive 'translation' from natural language to symbolic language, term logic requires only 'transcription' into the symbolic language. Its naturalness is the result of its ability to stay close to the forms of sentences usually found in every day discourse. Written by the founders of the term logic approach, An Invitation to Formal Reasoning is a unique introduction and exploration of this new system, offering numerous exercises and examples throughout the text. Summarising the standard system of mathematical logic to set term logic in context, and showing how the two systems compare, this book presents an alternative approach to standard modern logic for those studying formal logic, philosophy of language or computer theory."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Jerzy Perzanowski: Modal Logics, Ontology and Ontologics

Introduction

This page use the font Lucida Sans Unicode for logical symbols.

An overview of Perzanowski's thought can be found in the Preface by Janusz Sytnik-Czetwertynsk to the volume Art of Philosophy. A Selection of Jerzy Perzanowski's Works, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag 2011, pp. 15-21.

"Jerzy Perzanowski's publications concerns mainly the problems of metaphysics and logic. His numerous unpublished works forms an important part of his total output, and actions are taken to arrange, edit and publish these works." (ibid., p. 11.)

"1. Philosophy, taken from the point of view of its problems and methods is the collection of distinct philosophical disciplines. In fact meta-philosophical analysis leads to rather troublesome questions: Are philosophical disciplines methodologically and/or essentially related and connected? Are particular philosophical disciplines scientific? And, if the answer is not definite, to what extent is this so? Do philosophic disciplines form a uniform and organized (at least in its depth) system?

The most important factor in the characterization of any scientific discipline is its problematics. Hence, there are as many philosophical disciplines as there are different and autonomous families of philosophic problems.

Certainly, two philosophical disciplines are particularly distinguished: logic - for methodological reasons and ontology - for essential ones.

Instead of considering the initial question in its full complexity, let us go to its kernel - ontology itself.

1. Philosophy, taken from the point of view of its problems and methods, is the collection of distinct philosophical disciplines. In fact, metaphilosophical analysis leads to rather troublesome questions: Are philosophical disciplines methodologically and/or essentially related and connected? Al-e particular philosophical disciplines scientific? And, if the answer is not definite, to what extent is this so? Do philosophical disciplines form a uniform and organized (at least in its depth) system? The most important factor in the characterization of any scientific discipline is its pl-oblematics. Hence, there are as many philosophical disciplines as there are different and autonomous families of philosophical problems. Certainly, two philosophical disciplines are particularly distinguished: logic - for methodological reasons and ontology - for essential ones. Instead of considering the initial question in its full complexity, let's go to its kernel - ontology itself.

Ontology and its parts.

2. Ontology is the theory of what there is, the theory of being. She considers the full ontological universe, all items that are possibles, describing and classifying them and searching for the principles of the universe, principles of taking together the plurality of ontic objects, particular beings, into one - the Being.

Thus, two questions govern ontological investigations: what is possible and why? The second question, concerning the being's principles, may strengthened to the deepest - last in the logical order - question: how that which is given, or rather what there is, is possible? The question above principles of being, i.e., general laws of nature, plus the question: what makes possible what there is and renders impossible what there isn't?

Because of its matter and problematics ontology is the most general discursive discipline. It is the general theory of possibility. By the nature of its questions it is also very modal.

3. Ontology has two sides: descriptive - phenomenological, and theoretical - formal. Hence, it is divided into three parts: onto-ontics (in brief: ontics), ontomethodology and ontologic.

4. Ontics is devoted to the selection of ontological problems and notions, their differentiation, classification and analysis. Doing ontics we construe the conceptual net of a given ontological theory, i.e. its categories. It is also one of the tasks of ontics to state ontological hypotheses, based on the previous analysis of concepts.

Ontics, being a part of ontology, is itself complex. Its further description depends on the general idea of ontology, on accepted classification of ontological concepts. For example, Ingarden has distinguished three parts of ontology: the material ontics, the formal ontics and the existential one. Notice that his ontology is, in our terms, ontics!

5. Ontomethodology concerns ways of doing ontology, methods and types of ontological constructions as well as principles of choice between ontological statements and theories. Examples of such ontomethodic principles are: the principle of non-contradiction, the principle of sufficient reason, and Ockham's razor.

Indication and discussion of the appropriate principles is necessary for sure for any critique of ontological theories, particularly the critique of the logical means used in ontology.

6. Ontologic is a logic of the ontic realm. It is an investigation of ontological connections, concerning particularly logical relations between pieces of ontic information. Also, it is a theory of the fundament of ontic relations.

Ontologic considers the organization of the ontological universe, trying to describe its mechanism. It describes the complexity of the Being, looking for its laws and base - the Logos.

7. Ontics is a purely descriptive and analytical discipline, ontologic is speculative and formal. They are, however, closely connected and interrelated disciplines, affecting one another. The product of ontics is a description, usually complex, of the ontological universe, whereas ontologic supplies different theories of this universe.

Certainly, at present ontic considerations are more common. In ontology we have many descriptions and claims, but not as many theories.

Among Polish ontologists, for instance, Ingarden may be regarded as typical ontics reasoner, while Leśniewski should be treated as a typical ontologician." (pp. 23-25)

(...)

"Comparison and conclusion.

42. We listed and commented on 18 variants of ontology, what certain doesn't exhaust the full spectrum of ontologies. On the other hand, the number of reasonably differentiated types of ontologies is undoubtedly smaller.

The classification of ontologies into types has certainly not to be arbitrary. It should both follow ontologies' goals and consider their contents.

We considered previously two such classifications:

First, following opposite descriptions of synthesis mechanism, into

STATIC vs. DYNAMIC ontologies;

and the second, according to three main planes of being, into

BEING vs. THOUGHT vs. LANGUAGE ontologies.

In addition, at least three more natural, self-explaining classifications should also be mentioned:

The third, according to the nature of ontologies' objects, into

MODAL vs. NON-MODAL ontologies.

It is easy to see that the proper ontologies of being are modal.

The fourth, taking into account the way of doing ontology, into

DESCRIPTIVIST vs. CONSTRUCTIVIST ontologies.

They either try to describe or try to construct the ontological universe.

Surely, the golden mean is the best. Particularly, ontologies of being should be - in proper proportion - both of this and that kind.

And, the fifth, regarding the role of the language in ontology: message vs medium, into

LINGUISTIC vs. EXTRALINGUISTIC ontologies.

Bringing a given ontology into one type we decide, in fact, to what extent the language, including the language of ontology itself, should be taken into account. Moderation is welcome. Certainly, the language is an important but not alone component of the world.

43. Plurality of ontologies is not without a reason.

Namely, we are interested in different aspects of being. Its full picture shows itself, however, only through comparison." (pp. 39-40)

From: Jerzy Perzanowski, "Ontologies and Ontologics", in: Logic Counts, edited by Ewa Zarnecka-Bialy, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1990, pp. 23-42.

"Another string of investigations – which will he analyzed in closer details in 2.3 – involves quantification theory. Logical and linguistic theories of quantifiers try to solve the problem of intentional objects by quantifying over non-existing individuals (allowing, therefore, for empty singular terms), or by skipping the classical presupposition of a non-empty domain (allowing for empty general terms). In that sense, free logics and other quantification theories can and have to be conceived as contributions to formal ontology (...).

The other dominating area of formal ontology, besides the one about intentional objects, is that of complex or compound beings of all kinds. We have already mentioned set theory and mereology, but at least starting with Russell's facts and Davidson's events there is a growing awareness of the fact that several different philosophical entities can tie formed from (or built out of, or defined based on) sentences. The discrimination of these entities provides us not only with a rich, but controlled ontology. It further yields a better understanding of what the objects of intensional logic are: What is it that we believe, what is necessary or possible, what can be promised or forbidden (...)

Again, it was a Polish logician, Jerzy Perzanowski, who first suggested the name "ontologic" for this area of research (see his foreword to Scheffler and Urchs (eds.) - Ontologic. Essays in Formal Ontology - Volume 2 of Logic and Logical philosophy, Torun: Copernicus University Press 1994). Perzanowski's "The Way of Truth" in Poli and Simons (eds.), Formal Ontology 1996 is an example of that kind of investigation. In the framework of what he calls qualitative ontology he starts from the standard Parmenidean principle of identity: Being is and nonbeing is not. He defines five conjugate notions of a being (understood as a subject of qualities). Perzanowski's aim is to prove theorems concerning these notions. For that purpose he needs some appropriate formalism. The axiomatics of "Primitive Theory of Being" is a first, but useful, approximation. He considerably improves the expressive power of this theory by assuming two additional abstract concepts of being: as a collection of all beings and as the unity or idea of all beings. By means of classical logic he thus achieves a substantial contribution to the ancient controversy between Plato and Parmenides concerning being and nonbeing: Beings are; Non beings are not; The being is; The nonbeing is; Being is; and Nonbeing is." (pp. 13-14)

From: Jan Faye, Uwe Scheffler and Max Urchs (eds.), Things, Facts and Events, Amsterdam: Rodopi 2000.

Some definitions

"Ontologic, a part of ontology devoted to the systematic development of formal ontological theories.

0. The general question of Ontology, Leibnizian in spirit, is: How what is possible is possible?, whereas the general question of Metaphysics is: How what is real, or exists, is possible? Clearly, Metaphysics, by definition, is a particular Ontology.

1. Ontology, in its most general and traditional version, is the theory of what there is, the theory of being. It considers the full ontological universe, including all items that are possible.

Two basic questions govern ontological investigation: what is possible and why? Or in a more general and deep way: how that which is possible, is possible?

Because of its questions ontology is the most general discursive discipline. As a matter of fact, it is the general theory of possibility. From other points of view, it is the general theory of relations, the general theory of things and properties or the theory of situations, events and processes.

2. Ontology is divided into three parts: ontics, ontomethodology and ontologic.

Ontics is devoted to the selection of ontological problems and notions, their differentiation, classification and analysis; to construction of the conceptual net of a given ontological theory and to statement of reasonable ontological hypotheses.

Ontomethodology concerns ways of doing ontology, their principles as well as methods and types of ontological constructions.

3. Ontologic is a logic of the ontic realm. It considers the organization of the ontological universe, trying to describe its mechanism.

Ontologic is a discipline of investigation of ontological connections, in particular logical relations between ontic statements.

4. Ontologic is therefore a discipline of logical philosophy. It is made after its receipt: Take an interesting (and real) ontological problem and try to answer it theoretically, i.e., by means of a theory.

To this end, we start with a conceptual analysis (which belongs to ontics), determining relevant primitive concepts and clarifying them enough to find reasonable axioms, which next are subject to logical deduction and appropriate semantical investigation. The method is sound if some theorems answer, or at least illuminate, the starting problem.

Ontologic is ontology done in this way, i.e., ontology produced by answering ontological question by means logical methods and procedures. In short, ontologic is ontology modulo logic: ontologic = ontology / logic."

From: Ontologika (a the text published in: www.filozofia.org.pl, but no more available)

Excerpts fron his publications: ontological modalities

"Alethic modalities are modifiers of semantical and logical components of judgements. Their classification obviously depends on the ontology and semantics that is presupposed. Some modalities are theoretical – useful for reasoning; some are practical or pragmatic – useful for action. Taking the first, at least four kinds of alethic theoretical modalities should be distinguished:

1. A priori, concerning what can be thought, used to delineate the realm of reason. Examples are thinkable, understandable, reasonable, controvertible, etc.

2. Logical, used for collection and comparison: possible, necessary, contingent, etc.

3. Metaphysical, concerning facts, what is real or actual: actual, factual, to be a fact, to be true, making true, making actual, etc.

4. Ontological, useful for describing the general and basic conditions for some families of objects or complexes. They concern the possibility of what there is, or what is possible; hence they are used for delineation of the most general field we can deal with – the realm of all possibilities – the ontological space. Examples are: possibility, necessity, contingency, and exclusion taken in the sense of a condition; compossibility, coexistence, and eminent existence in the sense of Leibniz, (formal) possibility in the sense of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus; combinable, synthetizable and analysable; making possible, making impossible, being ontologically neutral; and several common philosophical modalities de re: by necessity, essentially, by its very nature, etc.

The above classification has a clear counterpart in grammar: some modalities, mostly logical but also a priori and metaphysical ones, are adjective-like, some – chiefly ontological modalities – are noun-like. On the other hand, the logical modalities are quantifier-like modifiers (what is nowadays clarified by relational semantics).

There is a widely shared temptation to reduce some modalities to other ones, particularly ontological to logical modalities (and a fortiori noun- to adjective-modalities). Moreover, where such reduction is difficult or counterintuitive, it is usual to ignore the unmanageable cases.

According to the kind of modalities one prefers, we have several types of modal reductionism: modal apriorism, factualism, etc. The most popular is modal logicism which claims that any alethic modality can and ought to be treated as a logical modality. The extreme version of this position – modal extensionalism (cf. Quine 1953) is the conjunction of two theses: first, that any alethic modality is reducible to logical modality(ies); and second, that any essential use of logical modalities is eliminable, formally expressed as a claim in favour of the eliminability of de re modalities by modalities de dicto. Extensionalism not only reduces modalities; it also substitutes set-theoretical ontology for any intensional ontology.

Ontological modalities are the key to any non-reductionistic ontology. The most august family thereof is that of Leibniz: compossibility, compatibility, coexistence, and eminent existence. Leibniz himself was fully aware of the role they play in ontology, warning against the "confusion of possibles for compossibles" (Philosophical Papers and Letters, ed. L. E. Loemker, 1969, p. 661).

A very manageable family of ontological modalities consists of: making possible (MP), making impossible (MI), being ontologically neutral (ON), which are introduced to formalize the fundamental ontological connections: attraction, repulsion, and indifference.

They are useful especially for the development of the combination ontology dealing, inter alia, with relations simpler than or being in and combinable from (cf. Perzanowski 1989). In addition, they enable us to express the Leibnizian modalities mentioned above.

There are two complementary approaches to the theoretical treatment of these modalities: the axiomatic and the semantic. From the semantic point of view, based on the description of the ontological space, MP is used to express formal conditions of synthesis.

Let o (x) denote the collection of all objects synthetizable from the object x, i.e. objects which can be obtained from the objects connected with x (in the most natural case – from the substance of x), the relation simpler than or being in. The basic idea concerning making possible can now be expressed by:

MP(x,Y) ↔ y∈σ(x);

x makes possible y iff y is synthetizable from x.

The outlined family of ontological modalities enables us to define most of the notions used in ontology. In particular, using MP we can define:

Cons(x) := MP(x,x);

x is ontologically coherent (consistent) iff x makes itself possible.

C(x,y) := MP(x,y) & MP(y,x);

x and y are compossible iff each of them makes possible the other.

E(x,y) := ∃ z y MP(z,x);

x exists eminently in y iff there is something in y which makes x possible.

R(x,y) := ∀zx MP(z,y);

y is (ontologically) alternative to x iff everything in x makes y possible.

The first three notions were used by Leibniz, the last encodes the alternativity relation of the canonical models of relational semantics (cf. Chellas 1980). Using the chosen modalities we can therefore define relational semantics for modal logic, providing it with a solid ontological foundation. Note that the relation R closely connects with Leibniz's notion of eminent existence:

R(x,y) → E(y,x)

y is alternative to x implies that y eminently exists in x.

The axiomatic approach opens a rich field of research. Most of the axioms answer the basic questions of ontology. For example: Does making possible preserve ontological coherence?

A priori we have three positive answers, each of which yields a suitable axiom of preservation:

(CR) MP(x,y) & Cons(x) → Cons(y)

(CL) MP(x,y) & Cons(y) → Cons(x)

(C) MP(x,y) → (Cons(x) ↔ Cons(y))

Is making possible -monotonic? This yields, several axioms of (left/right) mono-tonicity, among others:

MP( ↑ ) : MP(x,y) & x z → MP(z,y)

MP( ↓ ) : MP(x,y) & z y → MP(x,z),

and so on.

Is the ontological universe uniform? I.e., does it include only coherent objects? Only compossible objects?

Again, positive answers to such questions yield the following axioms:

(Ucons) ∀ x Cons(x)

(UC) ∀ x,y C(x,y)

What interconnections hold between basic modalities?

Again, this yields a range of different axioms, for example:

The axiom of ontological trichotomy:

(OT) ∀ x,y (MP(x,y) ∨ MI(x,y) ∨ ON(x,y))

The axiom of full modalization:

(FM) ∀ x,y ON(x,y)

The contrary axiom of ontological extensionality:

(OE) ∀ x,y ON(x,y)

The axiom of ontological excluded middle, i.e., the ontological consistency axiom:

(OC) ∀ x,y (MP(x,y) ↔ MI(x,y)).

By taking appropriate families of axioms a wide range of different ontological theories may be defined.

Finally, notice that the above picture, following Leibniz, is chiefly based on the positive ontological modality making possible (MP). If instead we prefer the negative modality making impossible (MI) this would yield a Hegelian path in ontology." (pp. 560-562)

References

Chellas, B., 1980, Modal Logic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Perzanowski, J., 1989, Logiki modalne a filozofia, Craców: Jagiellonian University Press.

Quine, W. V. O., 1953, From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, Harvard University Press.

From: "Modalities, ontological", in: Hans Burkhardt and Barry Smith (eds.), Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, München: Philosophia Verlag 1991.

Parmenides: The Way of Truth

"1. Introduction

1.1 The Parmenidean 'way of truth' concerns what there is and what there is not: estin te kai os ouk esti me einai. (1) It concerns the basic ontological items: beings and nonbeings, as well as (the) being and (the) nonbeing. As we have learned from Parmenides, Zeno and Plato, (2) the way of Parmenides is the way of difficult truth, the way of metaphysical paradox.

1.2 Quite often the principal truth of Parmenides is formulated as the ontological principle of identity: being is and nonbeing is not. Usually this principle is considered tautologous (3) or even trivial.

I disagree. Triviality presupposes clarity. The principle, however, is neither clear nor evident. Also it is not obvious.

Is it true?

1.3 Both 'being' and 'is' are immediate derivatives of the verb 'be'. The verb itself has several variants. Can all these derivatives and variants be presented in a uniform way? Is, for example, 'Being is' a more adequate expression of the thought of Parmenides than 'Whatever is, is'? Next, to which items does the Parmenidean statement refer: to particular beings - like me, you, a ship, this pencil; or to their totality - the being; or to their unity - Being? Should Parmenides' statement be understood as 'the being is and the nonbeing is not', or rather as 'a being is and a nonbeing is not', i.e., 'any being is and no nonbeing is' or 'beings are and nonbeings are not'?

1.4 The problem was pointed out and discussed by Plato in Sophist as the crux of his refutation of the sophistic claim that nothing is false. Parmenides' spokesman, the Eleatic Stranger, is arguing there for Plato's conclusion that 'nonbeing has an assured existence and a nature of its own', recalling at the same time the warning of Parmenides: 'For never shall this thought prevail, that non-beings are, but keep your mind from this path of inquiry'. (4)

1.5 The answer to Plato's problem clearly depends on an explication of the four notions involved: being, nonbeing, is and is not. From a metalogical point of view it is also determined by the related logics: the logic of our reasoning and an appropriate logic of being.

1.6 Hereafter, the ontological notions are explained according to the qualitative approach to the notion of being: a being is a subject of some qualities the being is the totality of all beings; Being is the unity of all beings.

These quite ancient but yet obscure formulas are crucial for traditional ontology and they therefore deserve clarification.

Such a clarification requires an appropriate theory of qualities, as well as suitable theory of ontological connection connecting qualities with subjects. It is the latter, above all, which will be outlined in the present study.

1.7 Clarification comes, inter alia, through formalization. Formalization requires logic. In what follows I rely exclusively on classical logic. To be mor exact, standard classical logic is used as the logic of reasoning, whereas a suitable applied version of classical logic will serve as our logic of being.

1.8 In what follows a very general theory of ontological connection is provided.

In spite of its generality this theory enables us, as we shall see, to reconsider the classical ontological claims of Parmenides and to refute an anti-ontological claim that the notion of being is syncategorematic.

Also certain ontological theorems will be proved, including: Being is an Nonbeing is (sic!). A being is, whereas a nonbeing is not. Also: Whatever is, is - which is shown to be equivalent to Whatever is not, is not.

1.9 The paper is organized as follows: I start with general remarks concerning ontology and different approaches to the notion of being. Next, several classical questions of traditional ontology are discussed. After making our problems clear, I will introduce a formalism enabling us to study them in the full generality. Finally, the results of the paper are discussed in a manner introducing perspectives for a subsequent theory of qualities." pp. 62-63.

Notes

(1) Cf. Diels 1906, Parmenides B2.3. Notice a rather subtle problem connected with the translation of this claim (see Bodnar 1988b). Inter alia, the following translations have been offered: Diels 1906: "dass [das Seiende] ist und dass es unmöglich nicht sein kann", Bormann 1971: "dass [das Seiende] ist und das Nicht-Seiende ist nicht", Kirk and Raven 1957: "that it is and that it cannot not-be", Burnet 1957: "It is, and... it is impossible for it not to be", Taran 1965: "it is and to not be is not", Mannheim [translator] in Heidegger 1961: "it is, and... nonbeing is impossible".

(2) For Parmenides and Zeno cf. Kirk and Raven 1957, for Plato cf. Parmenides and particularly the Sophist in Plato 1961.

(3) Cf. Tatarkiewicz 1958.

(4) Cf. Sophist, 258 b-d.

References

Bodnar, I.M. et al. (eds) 1988a: Intensional Logic, History of Philosophy and Methodology, Budapest.

Bodnar, I.M. 1988b: "Parmenides B2.3 and 5: The Implications of a Degenerate Case", in Bodnar 1988a, 121-125.

Bormann, K. 1971: Parmenides: Untersuchungen zu den Fragmenten, Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg.

Burnet, J. 1957: Early Greek Philosophy, Meridan Books, New York

Diels, H. 1906: Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin.

Heidegger, M. 1961: An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. by R.Mannheim, Anchor Books, Doubley & Co. Inc., New York.

Kirk, O.S. and Raven, J.E. 1957: The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Plato 1961: Collected Dialogues, ed. by E. Hamilton and H. Cairns, Princeton University Press.

Tarán, L. 1965: Parmenides: A Text with Translation, Commentary and Critical Essays, Princeton Univ.Press.

Tatarkiewicz, W. 1958: Historia Filozofii, PWN, Warszawa.

From: "The Way of Truth", in: Roberto Poli and Peter Simons (eds.), Formal Ontology, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1996, pp. 61-130.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Jerzy Perzanowski: Annotated bibliography of His Writings in English

Publications in English, French and Italian

1. Perzanowski, Jerzy. 1971. "The Deduction Theorems for the System T of Feys-Von Wright." Prace z Logiki no. 6:11-14.

2. ———. 1971. "A Linguistic Criterion of Structural Incompleteness." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 1:18-20.

3. ———. 1971. "The First List of the Deduction Theorems Characteristic for Several Modal Calculi Formalized after the Manner of Lemmon." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 1:21-31.

4. ———. 1973. "A Linguistic Criterion of Structural Incompleteness." Reports on Mathematical Logic no. 1:13-14.

5. ———. 1973. "The Deduction Theorems for the Modal Propositional Calculi Formalized after the Manner of Lemmon. Part I." Reports on Mathematical Logic no. 1:1-12.

6. ———. 1973. "The Development of Cantor's Definition of the Set." In Studies in the History of Mathematical Logic, edited by Surma, Stanislaw, 269-274. Ossolineum: Wroclaw.

7. ———. 1975. "On Homogenous Fragments of Normal Propositional Logics." Bulletin of the Section of Logic no. 4:44-51.

8. ———. 1975. "On M-Fragments and L-Fragments of Normal Modal Propositional Calculi." Reports on Mathematical Logic no. 5:63-72.

9. ———. 1984. "Some Ontological and Semantical Puzzles of Wittgenstein's Tractatus." In Aesthetics. Proceedings of the 8th International Wittgenstein Symposium, 15th - 21st August 1983, Kirchberg Am Wessel (Österreich), edited by Haller, Rudolf, 224-230. Wien: Holder-Pichler-Tempsky.

"The importance of the ontological component of Wittgenstein's Tractatus is generally recognized. And most of the contemporary philosophers (analytical at least) believe that the Tractatus is primarily a product of the first-rate metaphysical (*) thinker. Does it mean that Wittgenstein's ontology and the role it plays in the Tractatus is commonly and completely understood?

Of course, we all know how rich in philosophical theories and insights Tractatus is. Let me mention a few of them: the picture theory of language (i.e. the theory of propositions, meaning and logical syntax), a semantical theory of logical truth (with a concept of "tautology", logical atomism, the principle of extensionality), new theory of identity, remarkable philosophy of logic, theory of philosophy as a "critique of language" as well as the Tractatus insights into ontology (which I am going to discuss below), epistemology (with the Tractatus solipsism and mysticism), religion and ethics. However, many people consider the Tractatus to be rather a bundle of theories and/or claims. The reason for that opinion is drawn from the Tractatus characteristic, aphoristical style and its lack of (fully developed) arguments. For example, Professor Max Black underlines in A Companion to Wittgenstein's Tractatus on the one hand the importance of the ontological component of the Tractatus but on the other hand he writes that Wittgenstein's great contributions to philosophical insights mentioned above are logically independent of his views about the nature of the world (p. 27)

The main aim of my paper is to supply evidence that ontology and semantics of the Tractatus (as well as further philosophical theories which are to be found therein) are much more coherent and interconnected than it is usually believed."

(*) or rather ontological, if we differentiate ontology -- a theory of what and why is possible from metaphysics -- a theory of what and why exists.

10. ———. 1985. "Some Observations on Modal Logics and the Tractatus." In Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Psychology. Proceedings of the 9th International Wittgenstein Symposium, 19th-26th August 1984, Kirchberg Am Wechsel (Österreich), edited by Chisholm, Roderick M., 544-550. Wien: Holder-Pichler-Tempsky.

"[1] The modal character of the Tractarian ontology is now commonly recognized [2]. And it is clear that there must be some modal calculus (or, more carefully, calculi) implicit in the Tractatus. In the subjects' literature we may find several papers dealing with the question. Most of them point to Lewis' calculus S5 as the Tractarian modal logic. Is this answer right? Are arguments in its support convincing?

I do believe that:

(1°) the most popular answer mentioned above, even if true, should be argued for more thoroughly than it has been;

(2°) the modality structure implicit in the Tractatus, even when restricted to purely ontological modalities, is more complex than it looks in its usual descriptions, including the best available at the moment. In particular, both the basic role played by the notion of form-fundamental modality of the Tractatus, as I tried to argue in my Some ontological and semantical puzzles of Wittgenstein's Tractatus (1984) - and the question of its logic is simply omitted by the writers known to me.

However, truth is only one, and if not fully recognized, irrespective of how deeply it is hidden, it sends us words about itself, mainly indirectly, through some inaccuracies and/or inconsistencies in current opinion. This applies to the question under discussion, among others, in the following way: both necessity and possibility operators implicit in S5 or in any similar logic are symmetrical, whereas these two notions in its most frequent Tractarian occurrences are not. Characteristic are also incoherencies which are to be found in claims made by the authors arguing, in fact, along the same line (compare A. Maury 1977 and G. H. von Wright 1972).

In what follows, starting with brief comments concerning D. Kaplan's, G. H. von Wright's and A. Maury's works, I will try to reexamine the problem and to provide some new arguments for a corrected version of von Wright's solution and to extend that solution by basing it on more fundamental theory of the notion of form. This theory, as you will see, provides solid philosophical foundations for relational semantics of intensional logics, foundations which are grounded on the Tractarian ontology." p. 544

[1] The paper's title clearly paraphrases the title of G. H. von Wright's master essay Modal logic and the Tractatus [in G. H. von Wright - Wittgenstein 1982, pp. 185-200]. Its ambiguity is intended, two main claims of the paper are thus hinted at. The first one concerns complexity of the modality structure of the Tractatus and points out several modal logics inhering in it. The second one shows the way of basing modal logics on the Tractarian ontology. To do that one reduces the fundamental notions of modal philosophy and relational semantics of modal logics (compatibility, possible worlds and relation of alternativeness) to the notion of form-the basic ontological modality of the Tractatus (comp. J. Perzanowski - Some ontological and semantical puzzles of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, 1984).

[2] The paper forms a third part of my bigger work in progress (comp. previous parts Some ontological..., cit. and What is non-Fregean in the Tractarian semantics and why? 1993) in which, after having articulated the proper place of ontology in the Tractatus, I am trying to formalize it. Due to the limitation of the paper's length it is still a sort of abstract. Its full text, with all arguments developed, is intended to be published elsewhere as Modal logics and the Tractatus - in preparation [the essay was never published].

11. ———. 1986. "Una Caratterizzazione Del Monismo." In Il Foglio E L'albero, edited by Verdiglione, Armando, 98-104. Milano: Spirali.

Originally published in Italian.

"Fin dall'inizio la filosofia europea si è confrontata con la controversia tra monismo e pluralismo concernente la questione: quante cose esistono realmente? la questione dell'uno e dei molti.

Ovviamente la nostra esperienza ci dice -- Molti; ma tante false affermazioni sono basate sull'esperienza!

Nella tradizione europea ci sono due grandi linee di pensatori. La prima è quella dei filosofi monisti che incomincia con Parmenide di Elea e comprende i filosofi che sostengono che esiste un solo ente, che è costante e a priori. Più tardi il monismo fu generalmente connesso con la pretesa che questo ente unico sia Dio, o la Natura di essenza puramente logica. La seconda linea comprende i filosofi pluralisti e incomincia con Eraclito. Il pluralismo sostiene che ci sono molti enti mutevoli nonché -- nella maggior parte dei casi -- fenomenici. L'opposizione Monismo-Pluralismo non è una questione isolata e puramente teoretica. Ha una sua propria tensione interna, espressa in un senso del mistero per cui Uno è Molti e Molti è Uno; questa sensazione e la principale fonte del misticismo filosofico. In quanto segue cercherò di portare la luce della logica sulla controversia basilare su esposta."

12. ———, ed. 1987. Essays on Philosophy and Logic. Proceedings of the Xxxth Conference on the History of Logic, Dedicated to Roman Suszko. Cracow, October 19-21, 1984. Cracow: Jagiellonian University Press.

Preface: "This volume contains nearly all the papers presented at the XXXth Conference on the History of Logic which was held in Cracow, October 19th-21st, 1984.

The Conference was organized by the Department of Logic, Jagiellonian University and the Cracow Branch of the Polish academy of Sciences.

The papers published in the present Proceedings are published as preprints, whose copyright belongs to the authors. Their extended versions may be submitted elsewhere.

The potential reader should be warned that the traditional name of the Conference should be understood as 'Conference on Logic and Its History'. In fact, majority of papers published here deal with history of logic in a rather indirect way -- contributing directly to logic and/or philosophy.

This motivates the division of papers into three parts.

Papers from the third part are devoted to logical and philosophical achievements of the late Professor Roman Suszko.

It is a good tradition of Cracow Conferences that -- since 1972 -- most of them have been devoted to achievements of the most eminent representatives of the Polish logical and philosophical school.

Dedication of the XXXth Conference on the History of Logic to scientific achievements of the late Professor Suszko as well as obvious to any participant success of the Conference prove that Roman Suszko, pupil and former assistant of Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, is widely recognized as the member of the Polish logical school in the very sense of the word.

The Proceedings of the XXXth Conference on the History of Logic are dedicated to the memory of Professor Roman Suszko, outstanding philosopher and logician, who was greatly respected and admired by all of us. The Editor"

Table of contents:

Preface 5; Program of the Conference 7; List of Participants 9;

Essays IN PHILOSOPHY

1. G. E. M Anscombe: Descartes and Anselm 15;

2. P. Geach: Relative identity 19;

3. Z. Kowalski: Nonsemantic counterparts of Liar Paradox 33;

4. A. Mádarász: The ways of formal pragmatics 39;

5. W. Marciszewski: Was Frege right when attributing extensionalism to Leibnizian logic? 49;

Essays ON LOGIC

6. D. Batens: Two semantically motivated enrichments to relevant logics 65;

7. W. Buszkowski: Lambda-semantics for Categorial Grammar 75;

8. K. Dósen: Negation and impossibility 85;

9. R. Murawski: On the incompleteness of arithmetic once more 93;

10. E. Orlowska: Semantical analysis of inductive reasoning 107;

11. J. Perzanowski: Remarks on proposition embedding and degrees 121;

12. L. W. Szczerba: Classification of elementary sentences 137;

13. M. Urche: Some remarks on formalizing causal relations 143;

14. P. Weingartner: Two simple idea of relevance 149;

ABOUT ROMAN SUSZKO'S THOUGHT

15. G, Malinowski: Non-Fregean logic and other formalizations of propositional identity 159;

16. H. Metzler: Some remarks on Roman Suszko's discussion of the Fregean-Axiom from the point of view of philosophy and methodology 167;

17. M. Omyla: Roman Suszko's philosophy of logic 175;

18. J. Wolenski: Suszko's analysis of the development of knowledge 181;

19. R. Wójcicki: Situation semantics for Non-Fregean logic 187;

20. B. Diankov: On the main principles underlying Roman Suszkos' semantic conception 191;

21. S. Slavkov-Hristov: Prof. dr. Roman Suszko's view's on some philosophical and methodological problems of mathematics 197;

22. A bibliography of the published works of Roman Suszko 203;

23. A list of lectures given by Roman Suszko at Cracow Conferences of the History of Logic (compiled by J. K. Kabzinski) p. 219.

13. ———. 1987. "Remarks on Propositional Embeddings and Degrees." In Essays on Philosophy and Logic: Proceedings of the 30th Conference on the History of Logic, Dedicated to Roman Suszko - Cracow, October 19-21, 1984, edited by Perzanowski, Jerzy, 121-136. Cracow: Jagiellonian University Press.

"This exploratory paper offers, to those familiar with studying logics as consequence relations, an intriguing system of problems along with suggestions for confronting them. The author raises two questions: What is the size and number of matrices needed to characterize a logic given by a consequence relation? He motivates the questions by reminding us that for logics given

axiomatically the questions are simply answered by citing the Lindenbaum algebra for the language. The answers are not so simple when we consider consequence relations. He explores answering the question of how many matrices are needed to characterize a logic by determining the number of maximally consistent extensions of the logic." (Charles F. Kielkopf)

Abstract: "When, for a given propositional logic, we take semantics (say - matrix, algebraic or relational semantics) the most natural question is to estimate it. This means to answer the question: How many and how big matrices (algebras, frames, or - in general - structures) are necessary to characterise the logic?

In the case of matrix semantics, for logics understood traditionally - as sets of formulas closed under chosen rules and substitution - the general answer is easy and well-known: as was shown by A. Lindenbaum, it suffices to take exactly one matrix with the number of elements not exceeding the number of language's expressions.

However, when we consider consequence operators, or equivalently - sets of rules, the question is much more difficult and in many cases still open.

In what follows I will discuss the first part of it: How many structures are needed to characterise a given consequence operator? My general idea is to compare this number with the number of maximally consistent, i.e. Post-complete, logics of this consequence operator."

14. ———. 1988. "Elements of Monadologic (Abstract)." In Leibniz, Tradition Und Aktualität: Vorträge. V. Internationaler Leibniz-Kongress Hannover, 14.-19. November 1988, 734-736. Hannover: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Gesellschaft.

15. ———. 1990. "Towards Post-Tractatus Ontology." In Wittgenstein. Towards a Re-Evaluation: Proceedings of the 14th International Wittgenstein-Symposium, Centenary Celebration, 13th to 20th August 1989 Kirchberg Am Wechsel (Austria), edited by Haller, Rudolf, Haller, Rudolf and Brandl, Johannes, 185-199. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"1. Surely the above title is rather dark. Therefore, let me start with a few words of clarification. "Post-Tractatus" means either after "Tractatus" or a natural prolongation of the books' sequence: "Proto-Tractatus", "Tractatus",... . Hence the title of this paper means either the task of developing ontology built up after "Tractatus" clues, by taking its claims and lesson seriously, or clarification of the "Tractatus" text, by explaining notions and providing its claims with well-grounded arguments, trying thus to develop, step by step, a more advanced and better argumented version of Wittgenstein's treatise.

(...)

The paper is organized as follows: I start with a general review of the ontology of the Tractatus, putting emphasis on its modalities, particularly on its notion of the form. Semi-formalization of the thesis 2.033, in which the form is defined as the possibility of the structure, leads to isolation of the basic ontological modality - making possible. The formal theory of it, which is the crux of combination ontology, is outlined in the fourth chapter of the paper. Finally, several applications of this general ontology to the starting Tractarian ontology are given." p. 185.

16. ———. 1990. "Ontologies and Ontologics." In Logic Counts, edited by Zarnecka-Bialy, Ewa, 23-42. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

17. ———. 1991. "Modalities, Ontological." In Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, edited by Burkhardt, Hans and Smith, Barry, 560-562. München: Philosophia Verlag.

18. ———. 1991. "Ontological Arguments Ii - Cartesian and Leibnizian." In Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology, edited by Burkhardt, Hans and Smith, Barry, 625-633. München: Philosophia Verlag.

19. ———. 1992. "Ce Qu'il Y a De Non Fregéen Dans La Sémantique Du Tractatus De Wittgenstein Et Pourquoi?" In Wittgenstein Et La Philosophie Aujourd'hui: Journées Internationales Créteil-Paris, 16-21 Juin 1989 À L'occasion Du Centenaire De La Naissance De Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), edited by Sebestik, Jan and Soulez, Antonia, 163-177. Paris: Klincksieck.

Translated in English as: What is non-Fregean in the semantics of Wittgenstein's Tractatus and why? - Axiomathes, 1993, 4, pp. 357-372.

20. ———. 1992. "Combination Semantics: An Outline." In Signs of Humanity. Proceedings of the Ivth International Congress, International Association for Semiotic Studies, Barcelona/Perpignan, March, 30th - April 6th 1989, edited by Balat, Michel and Deledalle-Rhodes, Janice, 437-442. Berlin, New York: Mouton De Gruyter.

21. ———. 1993. "What Is Non-Fregean in the Semantics of Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Why?"Axiomathes no. 4 (3):357-372.

"1. Certainly, of the two title questions the second - why? - is more challenging and important. But also much more difficult.

To answer it we must not only collect and evaluate non-Fregean components of the semantics of the Tractatus, thus comparing them with Frege's semantics - which is rather easy; but we must also go into depth on both semantics, looking at their fundamentals and trying to find their basic conceptual and methodological framework. Such research, however, is much more difficult, partly because it leads us out of semantics into the broader and more general field of ontology, and to very fundamental metaphilosophical questions: to metaphilosophical considerations - because we try to compare two general philosophical theories; to ontological investigations - because of the nature of semantics.

2. Semantics provides language with the objective interpretation establishing connections between linguistic expressions and pieces of the world. To this end, however, it must be, if not arbitrary, developed inside a framework common for a language and the world. Such a framework can be provided only by a discipline more general than a theory of language, including semantics, as well as a theory of the world, i.e. by ontology - the most general theory of being, the theory of all possibilities.

Any proper semantics is indeed based on ontology - Frege's and Wittgenstein's semantics as well.

3. Full and well-motivated discussion of the title questions requires a book rather than a short article. Therefore, I shall limit the discussion to differences in the key-schemes of both semantics, plus very brief and rather cryptic remarks concerning the general framework of this comparison.

I start with a few general remarks concerning the type of philosophy which, to my mind, is common to Frege and the young Wittgenstein. Next, I will proceed to a reconstruction of the semantic diagrams which are basic for the two semantics under investigation, emphasizing differences and trying to explain reasons for them." p. 357

22. ———. 1993. "Locative Ontology Part I-Iii." Logic and Logical Philosophy no. 1:7-94.

The First Part is reprinted in: Art of philosophy. A Selection of Jerzy Perzanowski's Works, pp. 87-120.

"To characterize his monograph-length essay, which is to be continued, the author writes: "The work has two aims: a philosophical one-to clarify one of the most important variants of verb-type ontologies, and a mathematical one-to enlarge the body of commonly known theories of order." A verb-type ontology is an axiomatization of the ordering relation of a use of a verb phrase based on the verb 'to be' if this axiomatization is developed for the philosophical purpose of understanding the structure of reality in so far as it is correctly represented with the use of 'to be' in question. Thus, set theory can be an ontology for 'to be a member of', while mereology is an ontology for 'to be a part of'. The author focuses on the locative use of 'to be' which means 'to be in'. Examples of such uses are 'She is in Schaan' and 'I am in her thoughts'.

The author distinguishes the locative use from other uses, especially the mereological use. In general, the locative 'is' is not transitive. Most of the work is the mathematical work of characterizing and axiomatizing the (hitherto undeveloped) ordering relation for 'to be in'. The author explicitly requests readers to judge the mathematical work on its mathematical merits." (Charles F. Kielkopf - Karlsruhe)

"The paper is organized as follows: I start with a general and brief overview of verb-type-ontologies, stressing the importance of the locative one. Next, three main relevant formal theories-of preorders, of mereologies as well as Leśniewski's Ontology - are presented. They are shown to be inadequate to formalise location.

In this survey a special emphasis is put on premereologies intermediate between classical mereologies and preorders. Premereology seems to be very useful in the field of ontology and metaphysics as the first, purely logical, approximation of the idea of condensation, i.e. the internal strength of unifying connections.

Next, I will pass to a discussion of locative ontologies, introducing them as a generalization of preorders, which fill in certain gaps occurring in both mathematical and philosophical approaches to orders. The bulk of locative ontology is presented in the Parts II and III, where locative orders are introduced and related to more familiar structures outlined previously. At the end, the philosophical content of locative ontology is presented and, finally, several cases of location in some important domains are pointed out." p. 11

23. ———. 1994. "Towards Psychoontology." In Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences. Proceedings of the 16th International Wittgenstein Symposium, 15-22 August 1993, Kirchberg Am Wechsel (Austria), edited by Casati, Roberto, Smith, Barry and White, Graham, 287-296. Wien: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.

Reprinted in: Art of philosophy. A Selection of Jerzy Perzanowski's Works, pp. 135-146.

"Psychoontology is the ontology of the psyche and of related matters. Hence, by definition, it is a case of particular and applied ontology.

Here, following Leibniz's idea, ontology is defined (1) by its characteristic question: How is possible? More exactly: How is x possible?

Now, the level of generality of a given ontology depends on the generality of its characteristic question, i.e. on the scope of the variable x. If it is the most general of all, we obtain the general ontology, which is the study of the following, most general, version of the ontological question: How is what is possible, possible?

To answer it we must provide a reason for being possible as well as a framework for the study of the ontological space of all possibilities (2)." p. 287

(1) For a discussion of general ontology in comparison with particular ones cf. Perzanowski Ontology and ontologics.

(2) This is what Wittgenstein in the Tractatus named the logical space.

24. ———. 1994. "Reasons and Causes." In Logic and Causal Reasoning, edited by Faye, Jan, Scheffler, Uwe and Urchs, Max, 169-189. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

"Jerzy Perzanowski starts his considerations on Reasons and Causes with a few general remarks concerning the ontology of causality. Next, the basic family of relevant onto-logical operators, called makers, is introduced. Basic axioms are worked out for a formal setting of the mechanism of causal interactions in his 'Ontologic'. Perzanowski's paper concludes with the following deep truth: 'Anyway, one thing is clear. Determinism needs further, careful and subtle discussion' (188)."

From the review of the book by Klaus Wuttich in: Logic and Logical Philosophy, Vol. 2 (1994), pp. 151-158.

25. ———. 1996. "The Way of Truth." In Formal Ontology, edited by Poli, Roberto and Simons, Peter M., 61-130. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Contents: Index 61; 1. Introduction 62; 2.Beings, the Being and Being 64; 3. Ontological connection 65; 4. Towards a theory of ontological connection 67; 5. Some classical ontological questions 73 ; 6. A linguistic intermezzo 76; 7. An outline of a Primitive Theory of Being - PTB 86; 8. Towards a Extended Theory of Being - ETB 102; 9. Parmenidean statements reconsidered and classical questions answered 122; 10. Summary 127; Acknowledgements 128; References 128-130.

26. ———. 1999. "Fifty Years of Parainconsistent Logics." Logic and Logical Philosophy no. 7:21-24.

"One of the first logicians who questioned the status of the metaphysical and logical versions of the Principle of Consistency was Jan Łukasiewicz, the father of Polish logic and master of Stanislaw Jakowski. In his classic book O zasadzie sprzecznosci u Arystotelesa (On the Principle of Consistency in Aristotle) published in 1910 Łukasiewicz endorsed only the ethical version of the principle of non-contradiction, as the rule which defends us against permanent error and lie, and against madness.

The view of Łukasiewicz, later reintroduced and made popular by Ludwig Wittgenstein, gave rise the question of finding an interesting and sufficiently rich logic which accommodates inconsistencies, allowing for their consistent investigation.

The problem was first solved in the previously mentioned work of Łukasiewicz's student Stanislaw Jaskowski.

Jaskowski's problem was fundamental, its solution profound and inspiring. His work could therefore be described as decisive, crucial for further investigation.

And that is precisely what happened.

Jaskowski's point of departure was a discourse, the situation of a discussion. When one asks: Is it the case that A?, and does not know the answer, one often considers both possibilities at once. Likewise, when defending A, one respects, at least during a honest discussion, an opponent who claims not-A. Which logic applies here?

Usually classical logic, though not in its full power and entirety. In this situation we are not ready to accept, for example, the rule of Duns Scotus, which from the contradiction: A and not-A allows us to infer any statement B, i.e., to conclude just everything. This is a little too much, however.

For, in real discussions between serious and honest opponents inconsistencies neither explode nor overfill the discourse.

Inconsistencies must be examined. Not prejudged. Nor worshipped as idols, as in the case of most Hegelians (excluding Graham Priest and other logical philosophers, I hope).

Quite the contrary. We examine them in order to find a remedy. In search of the understanding about their sources, reasons and real consequences.

From this perspective, the mastery of Jaskowski's solution is simply striking.

Firstly, he created a discursive calculus D2, which fulfilled all the formal criteria we tend to impose on interesting paraconsistent logics.

Secondly, his construction in its deep structure enables us to consider inconsistencies occurring in a theory T as contingent statements in a related modal theory M(T) playing the role of its metatheory.

Thirdly, it often allows for the consistent examination of a given inconsistency. Sometimes even for the understanding of its mechanism and sources." pp. 23-24

27. ———. 1999. "Combination Semantics for Intensional Logics I. Makings and Their Use in Making Combination Semantics." Logique et Analyse no. 42:181-203.

Reprinted in: Art of philosophy. A Selection of Jerzy Perzanowski's Works, pp. 165-174.

Abstract: A very general framework for intensional semantics is outlined. In ontological spaces endowed with suitable ontological modalities (making possible, making impossible, etc.) a formal semantics for logical modalities (possibly, necessary, etc.) is defined. Its very idea is that x realizes possibly A if x makes possible (the combination) A.

Notice that sentences and their sets, as everything but simples, are combinations.

This idea is developed in three different ways generalizing the most common logical semantics and providing them with a natural metaphysical interpretation and foundation.

A special attention is put on the soft combination semantics which is shown to be complete for all intensional logics.

A list of conditions characteristic for basic modal logics is also provided.

"Each proper semantics must be based on ontology.

1. The above statement is a truism. But an important one. It is often forgotten, for in our time it is rather a common (and quite doubtful) conviction, that the only valuable ontology for contemporary semantics is the set-theoretical ontology.

In the past century set-theory indeed played the most important role in mathematics and logic and, in turn, in their philosophical applications. It is also true that the very paradigmatic case of a semantical analysis for formal languages, done by Alfred Tarski, is in fact a combination of set-theoretical and algebraic ideas.

Tarski - type semantics was extended in the sixties to the case of intensional languages providing us, as many believe, with a satisfactory method to deal with real philosophical problems.

2. In part, for sure, it is true. But only in part! If we distinguish, inter alia, between ontology of the being, including metaphysics (i.e., ontology of the world) on the one hand, and - on the other hand - the ontology of language and the ontology of mind (cf. Ontologies and ontologics, 1990), then by their close connection with formal investigations of concepts, set-theoretical and algebraic ontologies are closely connected with two later types of ontology, but not with the first!

Real philosophy, however, is about the being. Therefore, we are still in need of a more suitable and subtle semantics for it.

3. In what follows I will try to outline such a semantics, based on combination ontology, which is a part of a deeply modal version of a general theory of analysis and synthesis.

To this end, I will start with rather general remarks concerning modalities, with particular emphasis put on ontological ones, passing next to a rather general description of a theory of analysis and synthesis." p. 181

28. ———. 2001. "Parainconsistency, or Inconsistency Tamed, Investigated and Exploited." Logic and Logical Philosophy no. 9:5-24.

"In the paper, the notion of inconsistency is studied. The author proposes to use the term 'parainconsistency' rather than 'paraconsistency' with respect to inconsistent logics which contrive their inconsistency. Several illuminating examples of inconsistency are given. A brief history of the research related to the notion of (para)inconsistency is presented. Special attention is paid to the seminal contribution of Jaskowski. Ja´skowski's modal approach to parainconsistency is discussed. G¨odel's and Ja´skowski's interpretations of modalities and contingencies are compared." Anna Gomolinska (Bialystok)

"Any educated person knows, or at least should know (1), that most cases of incoherencies, impossibilities and -- in a theoretical framework -- inconsistencies are rather suspicious members of a domain.

In particular, being inconsistent is a rather bad property of a theory. But why?

Our aim in the paper is, firstly, to discuss several answers to the question, and secondly, and more importantly to provide a proper frames to explain and to exploit inconsistencies. The framework which will force inconsistencies to work in a positive way, i.e., to enlarge and to deep our understanding of problems involved." p. 5

(1) With exceptions of Hegel, Hegelians, etc.

29. ———. 2003. "A Profile of Masonic Synthesis." Logic and Logical Philosophy no. 11/12:167-189.

Reprinted in: Art of philosophy. A Selection of Jerzy Perzanowski's Works, pp. 199-222.

"Everything is a both a product of the decomposition (analysis) of a given object into simpler objects and of the synthesis (composition) of that which is composed of simpler components. In order to come to know a given object, it is necessary to reconstruct the process of analysis and synthesis, in the one and the other direction." p. 167

"Classical metaphysics has come back to life. Yet it has most definitely become a logical, hence scientific discipline not aligned with the Kantians, but one set against them. Those who regenerated first philosophy as a discipline were above all the fathers of contemporary logic. Conceived in the latter half of the nineteenth century, classical logic has enjoyed a era rich in developments. In chronological order, we begin with Bolzano, Boole, Frege, Peirce, and Peano, followed by Russell, Whitehead and Wittengenstein, after whom the names worthy of mention are legion.

A second figure in the revitalisation of classical metaphysics as a live scientific philosophy was Franz Brentano, and beyond him his students and developers, amongst whom we find Kazimierz Twardowski, the father of Polish scientific philosophy.

Brentano united scientific philosophy with descriptive psychology and a resurrected descriptive metaphysics in the style of Aristotle. His pupils divided into schools following paths which, whilst differing from each other, always remained faithful to their source. In the case of phenomenology, special techniques of eidectic analysis were introduced into the Brentanian picture. A different case is that of Meinong and his co-workers, who worked Brentanian ideas into a general theory of objects and properties." pp. 170-171.

30. ———. 2004. "Towards Combination Metaphysics." Reports on Mathematical Logic no. 38:93-116.

Reprinted in: Art of philosophy. A Selection of Jerzy Perzanowski's Works, pp. 45-68.

"Ontology is the general theory of the possibility, i.e., the theory of the realm of all possibilities -- the ontological space. Metaphysics, on the other hand, is the ontology of the world.

The world is the realm of existing items. After Wittgenstein's Tractatus: The world is all what is the case. In other words, all events taken as existing complexes (facts).

2. If we distinguish, inter alia, between the ontology of the being, including metaphysics (i.e., ontology of the world) on the one hand, and -- on the other hand -- the ontology of language and the ontology of mind, then we see, by close connection the later two with formal investigations of concepts, that set-theoretical and algebraic ontologies are closely connected with them, but not with the ontology of being.

True philosophy, however, is about the being. Therefore, we are still in need of a metaphysics based on its background combination ontology with appropriate combination semantics. In need, by definition, of combination metaphysics.

3. In what follows, I will first try to outline such a semantics, based on combination ontology, which is a part of a deeply modal version of a general theory of analysis and synthesis. Next, I will try to apply it to the analysis of the most fundamental metaphysical notions.

To this end, I will start with general remarks concerning modalities, with particular emphasis put on ontological and metaphysical ones, passing next to a rather general description of a theory of analysis and synthesis." p. 93

31. ———. 2007. "In Praise of Philosophy." In The Courage of Doing Philosophy. Essays Presented to Leszek Nowak, edited by Brzezinski, Jerzy, Klawiter, Andrzej, Kuipers, Theo A.F., Lastowski, Krzysztof, Paprzycka, Katarzyna and Przybysz, Piotr, 375-394. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Reprinted in: Art of philosophy. A Selection of Jerzy Perzanowski's Works, pp. 25-40.

The paper is an English translation by Matthew Carmody of en essay published in Polish in 2000.

"Philosophy, in particular logic and ontology, occupy a key place in the structure of human knowledge.

We conceive the world, one might say we grasp it, via concepts, that is mental pictures of the aspects of objects under consideration. Concepts in turn are connected according to the principles of an appropriate grammar, into propositions (logical judgments), that is, logical pictures of mentally-grasped fragments of the world.

Concepts are junctions of information: propositions -- its pieces.

From here comes the role of logic, being the basic theory of those pictures of the world, fragments of grasped information. The logic of names examines the relations between concepts expressed in a given language. The logic of sentences examines the relations between propositions. This leads to an examination of the recombinations of the initial group of pictures, that is, to an examination of possibilities.

Their totality in turn constitutes the ontological space, the space of all possibilities.

Ontology, the true first philosophy, in this way creates the most general conceptual framework for the varied and diverse fields of human knowledge and strives towards the complete working-out of that framework. As a matter of fact. we owe to Leibniz the idea of the above modal definition of ontology and the opportunity of carrying out ontological research by pointing out the proper form of ontological questions: what is possible? And why? And, how is it possible?

In turn, particular ontological questions, for a given x, sound as follows: how is x possible? We have amongst other: metaphysical questions - How is the world possible? How is existence possible? And what, why and how is it that exists?: epistemo-ontological questions - How is knowledge itself possible? In particular, How is mathematical a priori knowledge of that which is real possible? Also questions of axio-ontology and antropo-ontology: What are values? How are they possible? How is evil possible? Who are people so evil?

And many other questions of this form.

The problems of real philosophy are real and great. Therefore they will be with us for as long as will survive human curiosity. For all people by nature strive for knowledge (Aristotle. Metaphysics, I, 1). including the deepest one.

This is why it is so important that reflection on these questions be carried out by true philosophers. For if philosophy, at the insistence of skeptics or under the pressure of positivists, were to give up concerning itself with its real problems, then they would fall into hands of charlatans, causing great mental and social damage.

Therefore people should not forget about philosophical questions and the right way to deal with them." pp. 378-379.

32. ———. 2007. "Modal Logics of Truth and Falsity I. Conceptual and Logical Framework, and Logics of the Matrix Approach of Boole." In Logik, Begriffe, Prinzipien Des Handelns / Logic, Concepts, Principles of Action, edited by Müller, Thomas and Newen, Albert, 95-112. Paderborn: Mentis.

Reprinted in: Art of philosophy. A Selection of Jerzy Perzanowski's Works, pp. 147-164.

Just as 'beautiful' points the way for aesthetics and 'good' for ethics, so do words like 'true' for logic.

...it falls to logic to discern the laws of truth. (Gottlob Frege, Der Gedanke (The Thought) p. 58

Logic stand guard at the border between Truth and False (Jan Łukasiewicz)

INTRODUCTION. "1. The old but still bright and fresh wisdom, expressed in both mottos, says that the chief task of logic is to search for the laws of truth and for rules governing transformations preserving truth, and sometimes falsity. The theory of Truth and Falsity is therefore the true kernel of logic, and logicians duty is, as Łukasiewicz said, to guard the border between Truth and Falsity.

2. In our poor, postmodern time quite a lot of people, including, unfortunately, a few logicians and many philosophers, are following rather Nietzsche than Frege trying to dissolve, at least in human beings' minds, this border together with other natural borders. They like to be happy on wanton vacation without any border, including the border between Truth and Falsity and the border between real and unreal.

Are guardians still doing their job? Do logicians fulfill their duty?

3. The masters certainly do. Recall, for example, seminal work of Tarski clarifying in set theoretical terms the classical definition of truth in the case of an extensional language, or the work of Kripke and others which extend Tarski's analysis to the case of intensional operators.

One gap however is surprising. Despite efforts of G. H. von Wright (1) and his followers we still have no reasonable, easy to catch and use, logics of Truth and Falsity, or rather logics of fundamental logical modalities: T -- is true and F -- is false.(2) Why?

The reasons are mental, not essential. As you will see, they are mainly misunderstanding and propaganda due to a false understanding of Tarski's work and Ramsey's redundancy thesis.

4. In a series of papers, with the present one as the starting item, I will outline natural T&F-logics showing, to my surprise, that between them are most of the basic modal logics. In particular, in the present paper I will pick out T&F-logics connected with the matrix method for classical logic. T&F-logics obtained in such way are counterparts of logics implicit in the matrix (algebraic) way of Boole and the tableau method of Beth, Smullyan and Fitting (cf. Melvin Fitting, Intuitionistic Logic, Model Theory and Forcing, North Holland, 1969).

In subsequent papers I will outline in turn T&F-logics of algebraic automorphisms, connections from the logical square of T and F, next iterations of T and F, cancellation, and deflation. Finally, I will compare logics from my list with T&F-logics pointed out in the literature of the subject.

5. A natural consequence of my list of T&F-logics is to use them to discuss several notorious problems concerning Truth and Falsity, including the most famous one -- the Liar Paradox. In "Modal Logics and the Liar" I will show that a modal approach to the Paradox by means of suitable T&Flogics is powerful and subtle enough to catch both its kernel and mechanism.

As a matter of fact, my interest in the Liar Paradox was the starting point for my investigation of T&F-logics. Since 1986 I have lectured several times in several places trying to explain the power and usefulness of modal logic for a true discussion of the Liar Paradox and of similar obstacles to formal semantics based on the classical idea of being true and being false.(3)" (p. 95-96. N.B: The mottos by Frege and Łukasiewicz in the original are in German and Polish)

(1) Cfr. G. H. von Wright, An Essay in Modal Logic, Amsterdam, 1951.

(2) Called T&F-logics, in short.

(3) Special thanks should go to Jozef Misiek, who awoke me by his provocative claim that there are no proper T&F-logics and no reasons as well to consider the Liar Paradox to be a reasonable and genuine paradox. Read and see!

33. ———. 2011. Art of Philosophy. A Selection of Jerzy Perzanowski's Works. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

The volume contains 12 Essays, (the 2, 4, 6, and 9 are previously unpublished).

"Jerzy Perzanowski, born en 23rd April 1943 in Aix-Les-Bains. An outstanding Polish philosopher of international renown, he passed away on 17th May 2009 in Bydgoszcz. His original philosophical ideas include informatic monadology", "protophysics", and a rather un-usual blend of logic and ontology in what he called onto/logic where the slash is meant to suggest a quotient of ontology by logic. Perzanowski began as a logician, his early works being on modal logic, then gradually shifted his interest to "logical philosophy" (another of Perzanowski's coinages, meaning not so much philosophy of logic as philosophy informed by logic). Later, his interests turned to cognitive science and finally even to mysticism, again of a particular, logically informed, kind." p. 9.

Contents: Janusz Sytnik-Czetwertynski: Biographical Note: Jerzy Perzanowski - Real Man and Real Philosopher 9; Preface: Jerzy Perzanowski's Way to the Monadology 15; 1. In Praise of Philosophy 25; 2. Reasons for Monodeism 41; 3. Towards Combination Metaphysics 45; 4. Onto\logical Melioration 69; 5. Locative Ontology 87; 6. In Search of Onto\logical Conditions for Emergence 121; 7. Towards Psycho-ontology 135; 8. Modal Logics of Truth and Falsity 147; 9. Classical (Modal) Logics of the Square of Opositions 165; 10. Combination Semantics for Intensional Logics. Makings and Their use in Making Combination Semantics 175; 12. A Profile of Masonic Synthesis 199; Bibliography 223-225.

34. ———. 2011. "Reasons for Monodeism." In Art of Philosophy. A Selection of Jerzy Perzanowski's Works, edited by Sytnik-Czetwertynski, Janusz, 41-44. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

35. ———. 2011. "Onto\Logical Melioration." In Art of Philosophy. A Selection of Jerzy Perzanowski's Works, edited by Sytnik-Czetwertynski, Janusz, 69-86. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

36. ———. 2011. "In Search of onto\Logical Conditions for Emergence." In Art of Philosophy. A Selection of Jerzy Perzanowski's Works, edited by Sytnik-Czetwertynski, Janusz, 121-134. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

37. ———. 2011. "Classical (Modal) Logics of the Square of Opposition." In Art of Philosophy. A Selection of Jerzy Perzanowski's Works, edited by Sytnik-Czetwertynski, Janusz, 165-174. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

Main publications in Polish

1. Perzanowski Jerzy. Logiki Modalne a Filozofia. Kraków: Nakladem Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego, 1989.

Modal Logics and Philosophy. Ph.D thesis, Jagellonian University.

Slightly modified version reprinted in Jak filozofowac? Studia z metodologii filozofii, pp. 262 - 346.

"The first part of the essay contains basic information concerning the author's analysis of modalities. It presents a construction of perzanowski-cones (a three-dimensional topography of modal calculi) as well as an outline of his combination ontology. Within this framework he elaborates a new type of relational semantics, called "combination semantics of modal logics", which generalizes standard semantics of modal systems. In a second part the author illustrates his thesis, that modal logic is the main tool of exact philosophy, particularly with respect to ontological rationalism.

He presents general rules concerning formalization of the philosophical modal expressions. He uses a fragment of Wittgenstein's Tractatus to demonstrate various methods which allow to obtain the categorial logic of a philosophical text. The following chapters on "modal fallacy" and contingency contain an extended discussion of his attempt to a modal analysis of "(onto)logical" rationalism. The chapter "Ontic primitivity and secondarity" presents four formalizations of Ingarden's conception of moments of existence. On the one hand, this serves as an exemplification of the previously developed formalities, on the other one it shows that logic has an active influence on philosophy, conducting systematic theoretical research in it. The author's very original and interesting essay ends with an English summary. However, it would be highly desirable to obtain a full version in English or German." Max Urchs (University of Leipzig).

2. ———, ed. Jak Filozofowac? Studia Z Metodologii Filozofii. Warszawa: PWN, 1989.

How to Philosophize? Studies on the Methodology of Philosophy.

3. Perzanowski Jerzy, and Pietruszczak Andrzej, eds. Byt, Logos, Matematyka. Torun: Nicolaus Copernicus University Press, 1989.

Being, Logos, Mathematics.

4. Frankiewicz Malgorzata, and Perzanowski Jerzy, eds. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Pisma Z Teologii Mistycznej. Krakov: Znak, 1994.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Writings on Mystical Theology.

With an Appendix by Jerzy Perzanowski: Teofilozofia Leibniza [Leibniz' s Theophilosophy], pp. 243-351).

5. Perzanowski Jerzy, Pietruszczak Andrzej, and Gorzka Cezary, eds. Filozofia/Logika: Filozofia Logiczna 1994. Torun: Nicolaus Copernicus University Press, 1995.

Philosophy/Logic: Logical Philosophy 1994.

6. Perzanowski Jerzy, and Pietruszczak Andrzej, eds. Logika & Filozofia Logiczna. Flfl 1996–1998. Torun: Nicolaus Copernicus University Press, 2000.

Logic and Logical Philosophy.

7. Perzanowski Jerzy, ed. Izydora Dambska 1904-1983. Materialy Z Sympozjum "Non Est Necesse Vivere, Necesse Est Philosophari". Kraków, 18-19.Xii.1998. Kraków: PAU, 2001.

8. Perzanowski Jerzy, and Pietruszczak Andrzej, eds. Od Teorii Literatury Do Ontologii Swiata. Torun: Nicolaus Copernicus University Press, 2003.

From Theory of Literature to Ontology of the World.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Kit Fine: annotated bibliography. Books and Papers 1970-1981

Books

1. Prior, Arthur Norman, and Fine, Kit. 1977. World, Times and Selves . London: Duckworth.

Contents: Preface by Kit Fine 7; 1. The Parallel between Modal Logic and Quantification Theory 9; 2. Egocentric Logic 28; 3. Supplement to ‘Egocentric Logic’ 46; 4. Worlds, Times and Selves 51; 5. Tensed Propositions as Predicates 67; 6. Modal Logic and the Logic of Applicability 84; 7. Supplement to ‘Modal Logic and the Logic of Applicability’ 102; 8. Postscript by Kit Fine: Prior on the Construction of Possible Worlds and Instants 116; Technical Appendix 162; Index of Symbols 169; Index of Names 171; General Index 173-175.

"Before he died, Prior was working on a book to be entitled ‘Worlds, Times and Selves’. This book was to deal, in one way or another, with the interplay between modal or tense logic, on the one hand, and quantification theory on the other. One of its main concerns was to show that modal and tense logic could stand on their own, that talk of possible worlds or instants was to be reduced to them rather than the other way round.

Unfortunately, only the first chapter was completed. There were jottings for other chapters, but they were far from complete. However, it is clear that some of Prior’s recently published papers would have been incorporated into the book, though probably in considerably modified form. So what I have tried to do is to collate the published and unpublished material in such a way that the result is as close as possible to the book he had in mind.

This should explain the distribution of the unpublished material. The completed chapter appears, as it should, as the first paper of the collection. However, the other passages of unpublished material appear as supplements, in 3 and 7, to already published papers. This is because they are quite obviously expansions or elaborations of those papers. In order to avoid repetition, I have omitted some initial sections from the supplementary papers; and this accounts for their abrupt beginnings. I have also not used some other unpublished material, either because it was expository or because it was too fragmentary to be of interest.

The first paper explains in very simple terms the parallel between modal logic and quantification theory. It is a good introduction to the technical and philosophical problems that arise in the later papers.

The next three papers deal with the egocentric counterpart to ordinary tense or modal logic. They introduce the operator Q that picks out those propositions that correspond to instants, worlds or selves, as the case may be. The last sections of 2 and 4 and most of the supplement 3 are concerned with the formal development of Q or cognate notions.

The last three of Prior’s papers, 5-7, deal with the problem of embedding the theory of instants or possible worlds within orthodox tense and modal logic respectively. Chapter 5 attempts to see how far the opposite view can be maintained. Chapter 6 is a particularly rich paper. It deals, among other things, with a world-calculus for the system Q, the logic of significance, and the extension of embedding results to possibilist quantifiers. The supplement elaborates further on some of these topics.

In his book, Prior would certainly have said more on this question of embedding. In the postscript, I have tried to fill this gap by discussing in detail his proposal for explaining instants and possible worlds within tense or modal logic. I had intended to write on his whole philosophy of time and modality; but, for reasons of space, I decided to stick to this more limited topic.

I should like to thank the editors of Nous, L’Age de la Science, American Philosophical Quarterly , and Theoria for permission to publish papers originally published by them. I should also like to thank Mary Prior, Anthony Kenny and Hans Kamp. They all, in their own ways, helped me to produce this collection. Tom Dimas and Mike Ferejohn prepared the indexes." ( Preface , pp. 7-8)

2. Fine, Kit. 1985. Reasoning with Arbitrary Objects . Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Contents: Preface VII; Introduction 1; 1. The General Framework 5; 2. Some Standard Systems 61; 3. Systems in General 147; 4. Non-Standard Systems 177; Bibliography 210; General Index 215; Index of Symbols 219-220.

"This book deals with certain problems in understanding natural deduction and ordinary reasoning. As is well known, there exist certain informal procedures for arguing to a universal conclusion and from an existential premiss. We may establish that all objects of a certain kind have a given property by showing that an arbitrary object of that kind has that property; and having shown that there exists an object with a given property, we feel entitled to give it a name and declare that it has the property. So we may establish that all triangles have interior angles summing to 180° by showing of an arbitrary triangle that its interior angles sum to 180°; and having established that there exists a bisector to an angle, we feel entitled to give it a name and declare that it is a bisector to the angle.

These informal procedures correspond to certain of the quantificational rules in systems of natural deduction. Corresponding to the first is the rule of universal generalization, which allows us to infer ∀x ɸ (x) from ɸ(a) under suitable restrictions. Corresponding to the second is the rule of existential instantiation, which allows us to infer ∃(a) from ∃x ɸ (x), again under suitable restrictions.

In these inferences, certain terms play a crucial role; and it is natural to ask how they are to be understood. What role is to be attributed to the term a in the inferences from natural deduction? What is to be made of our talk of arbitrary triangles or indefinite bisectors in ordinary reasoning?

The present work is based upon the hypothesis that these critical terms refer to arbitrary or representative objects. The term a in the inferences from natural deduction functions as a name of a suitable arbitrary object. And our talk of arbitrary triangles or of indefinite bisectors is to be taken at its face value as also evincing reference to arbitrary objects.

The core of the work will be taken up with applying this hypothesis to two main systems of natural deduction: the one of Quine’s Methods of Logic [52]; and the other of Copi [54], as amended by Kalish [67] and Prawitz [67]. In the case of each of these systems, we shall propose a generic semantics and then, by reference to that semantics, both establish soundness and motivate the restrictions on the rules.

We shall also be concerned to cover certain other topics. We develop the pure theory of arbitrary objects somewhat beyond the needs of the present application, partly because of its intrinsic interest and partly with a view to other applications. We embark on a general study of systems containing a rule of existential instantiation and prove some general results on what form satisfactory systems of this sort can take. Finally, on the basis of an alternative generic semantics, we develop certain presuppositional systems and relate them to existing systems in the literature. The book is divided into parts according to the topic treated, with the first part dealing with the pure theory, the second with the application to the systems of Copi and Quine, the third with systems in general that contain a rule of existential instantiation, and the last with the presuppositional systems.

The work here is part of a much larger project, one in which the theory of arbitrary objects is to be applied to the use of pronouns in natural language and to the use of variables in informal mathematics and programming languages. These other topics have been altogether ignored, although the perceptive reader may pick up on certain intended points of contact. The closely related topic of developing a generic semantics for the ε- and η-calculi of Hilbert and Bernays [34] and Hailperin [57] has also not been considered; and my hope is that I shall be able to deal with it thoroughly elsewhere.

The book does not need to be read from beginning to end and the first part, in particular, may be consulted according to the demands from the other parts. The reader who is having difficulties may find my ‘Natural Deduction and Arbitrary Objects’ [85] helpful as a somewhat gentler introduction to the subject." ( Introduction , pp. 1-2)

References

Copi, I. 1954 Symbolic Logic , Macmillan: New York, First Edition.

Hailperin, T. 1957 ‘A Theory of Restricted Quantification’, Part I, Journal of Symbolic Logic vol. 22, pp. 19-35, Part II, Journal of Symbolic Logic vol. 27, pp. 113-129.

Hilbert, D. and Bernays, P. 1934 Grundlagen der Mathematik Volume I, Berlin: Springer.

Kalish, D. 1967 Review, Journal of Symbolic Logic vol. 32, p. 254.

Prawitz, D. 1967 ‘A Note on Existential Instantiation’, Journal of Symbolic Logic vol. 32, pp. 81-2.

Quine, W.V.O. 1952 Methods of Logic , Routledge & Kegan Paul: London.

3. ———. 2002. The Limits of Abstraction . New York: Oxford University Press.

Contents: Preface V-VI; Introduction IX-X; 1. Philosophical introduction 1; 2. The Context Principle 55; 3: The analysis of acceptability 101; 4. The general theory of abstraction 165, References 193; Main Index 197; Index of first occurrences of formal symbols and definitions 200-203.

"The present monograph has been written more from a sense of curiosity than commitment. I was fortunate enough to attend the Munich Conference on the Philosophy of Mathematics in the summer of 94 and to overhear a discussion of recent work on Frege's approach to the foundations of mathematics. This led me to investigate certain technical problems connected with the approach; and these led me, in their turn, to reflect on certain philosophical aspects of the subject. I was concerned to see to what extent a Fregean theory of abstraction could be developed and used as a foundation for mathematics and to place the development of such a theory within a general framework for dealing with questions of abstraction. To my surprise, l discovered that there was a very natural way to develop a Fregean theory of abstraction and that such a theory could be used: to provide a basis for both arithmetic and analysis. Given the context principle, the logicist might then arguing that the theory was capable of yielding a philosophical foundation for mathematics, one that could account both for our reference to various mathematical objects and for our knowledge of various mathematical truths. I myself am doubtful whether the theory can legitimately be put to this use. But, all the same, there is surely considerable intrinsic interest in seeing how the theory of abstraction might be developed and whether it might be capable of embedding a significant portion of mathematics, even if the theory itself is in need of further foundation.

The monograph is in four parts. The first is devoted to philosophical matters and serves to explain the motivation for the technical work and its significance. It is centred on thee main questions: What are the correct principles of abstraction? In what sense do they serve to define the abstract with which they deal? To what extent can they provide a foundation for mathematics? The second part (omitted from the original paper) discusses the context principle, both as a general basis for setting up contextual definitions and in its particular application to numbers. The third part proposes and investigates a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for an abstraction principle to be acceptable. The acceptable principles, according to this criterion, are precisely determined and it is shown, in particular, that there is a strongest such principle. The fourth and final part attempts to develop a general theory of abstraction within the technical limitations set out by the third part; the theory is equipped with a natural class of models; and it is shown to provide a foundation for both arithmetic and analysis." ( Introduction , pp. IX-X)

4. ———. 2005. Modality and Tense: Philosophical Papers . New York: Oxford University Press.

Contents: Preface; Introduction 1;

I. Issues in the Philosophy of Language.

1. Reference, Essence, and Identity (previously unpublished) 19; 2. The Problem of De Re Modality (1989) 40; 3. Quine on Quantifying In (1990) 105;

II. Issues in Ontology.

4. Prior on the Construction of Possible Worlds and Instants (1977) 133; 5. Plantinga on the Reduction of Possibilist Discourse (1985) 176; 6. The Problem of Possibilia (2002) 214;

III. Issues in Metaphysics.

7. The Varieties of Necessity (2002) 235; 8. Tense and Reality (2005) 261; 9. Necessity and Non-Existence (previously unpublished) 321;

IV. Reviews.

10. Review of Conterfactuals by David Lewis (1975) 357; 11. Review of The Nature of Necessity by Alvin Plantinga (1976) 366; References 371; Index 379-387.

"This volume collects together my published papers on tense and modality up to the present time. It contains two reviews, since the issues they discuss are still of interest; and it also contains a much expanded version of my paper, ‘The Reality of Tense’, now under the title ‘Tense and Reality’, and two previously unpublished papers. I have not included my technical papers on modal logic, even when they have contained philosophical material or have had an obvious bearing on philosophical questions; and nor have I included any of my philosophical or technical papers on essence, even when they have dealt with the connection between essence and modality. I have added an introduction to the volume, outlining the central content of each paper and bringing out certain issues and themes that may not be evident from the papers themselves." (From the Preface )

5. ———. 2007. Semantic Relationism . Oxford: Blackwell.

Contents: Preface VII; Introduction 1; 1. Coordination among variables 6; 2. Coordination within language 33; 3. Coordination within thought 66; 4. Coordination between speakers 86; Postscript: further work 122; Notes 133; References 141; Index 143.

"The ideas behind these lectures had their origin in the early 1980s.

There was then a great deal of excitement over the “new” theory of direct reference, but many of those who were attracted to the theory were also worried about the challenge posed by Frege’s puzzle. How could they claim, as the theory seemed to require, that the meaning of “Cicero = Tully” was the same as “Cicero = Cicero,” when the one was plainly informative and the other not?

I myself faced a similar problem over the role of variables. I had previously attempted to develop a theory of variable or arbitrary objects. According to this theory, a variable should be taken to signify a variable object, something which we might loosely identify with the variable’s meaning or abstract role. However, even though the variables x and y, when considered on their own, should be taken to signify the same variable object, they should not be taken to signify the same variable object when considered together, since otherwise we would lose the relevant distinction between x = y and x = x. It seemed clear to me that the two problems were essentially the same and that there should be a common solution to them both, even though it was not then clear to me what the solution should be.

I worried about this issue on and off for the next 15 years until it dawned on me that it could only adequately be solved by making a fundamental break with semantics as it is usually conceived. One must take account of the meaning that expressions have, not only when considered on their own but also when they are considered together; the meaning relation between them is not simply to be regarded as a product of their individual meanings. Once we embrace this liberating thought, we can then see how the usual referential view of the meaning of variables and names can be retained and yet the difficulties over Frege-type puzzles avoided.

It was, therefore, opportune when Ernie Sosa asked me to give the first Blackwell/Brown lecture for the Fall of 2002, since this provided me with an opportunity to develop these ideas, which were still in a very inchoate form, and to discuss them with a wonderful group of philosophers.

(...)

The present book is loosely based upon the lectures I gave at Brown and I have tried to keep to something like the original lecture format. This has meant that a number of topics have not been pursued, though I have given a brief account of some of the more important of these topics in the final chapter. It has also meant that scholarly allusions have been kept to a minimum. I have, in particular, made no attempt to compare my own work with the loosely related work of Almog (2006), Fiengo and May (2005), Lawlor (2005), and Lieb (1983). This is a “bare-bones” account, simply intended to convey the essential ideas; and I hope later to provide a fuller account that is both broader in its scope and much more thorough in its treatment of particular topics." ( Preface pp. VII-VIII)

References

Almog, J. (2006) “Is A Unified Treatment of Language-and-Thought Possible?,” Journal of Philosophy , vol. CII, no. 10, pp. 493–531.

Fiengo, R. and May, R. (2005) De Lingua Belief, Cambridge: MIT Press.

Lawlor, K. (2005) “Confused Thoughts and Modes of Presentation,” Philosophical Quarterly , vol. 55, no. 218, pp. 137–48.

Lieb, H.-H. (1983) “ Integrational Linguistics, vol. 1: General Outline ”, Amsterdam; Philadelphia: Benjamins (= Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 17).

6. ———. 2020. Vagueness. A Global Approach . New York: Oxford University Press.

"The material for the lectures has been extracted from a much longer booklength manuscript, which I hope to publish separately. I therefore hope that the reader will bear in mind that many topics that are discussed perfunctorily or not at all in this monograph will be discussed at much greater length in the book. This is a bare bones account, without the usual qualifications or consideration of objections or discussion of alternative points of view.

The first lecture (Chapter 1) was intended as an introduction to a general audience with no special expertise in the topic. It is, for this reason, very sketchy and, except for the last part, not at all original. The subsequent two lectures are more substantive. The first of these (Chapter 2) presents my general account of vagueness and the second (Chapter 3) discusses its application to three topics: the sorites argument (or paradox of the “heap”); the question of luminosity (or whether we can know our own minds); and the problem of personal identity, especially in its connection to the possibility of fission." (from the Preface)

Papers 1970-1981

1. Fine, Kit. 1970. "Propositional Quantifiers in Modal Logic." Theoria no. 36:336-346.

"In this paper Ï shall present some of the results I have obtained on modal theories which contain quantifiers for propositions. The paper is in two parts: in the first part I consider theories whose non-quantificational part is S5; in the second part I consider theories whose non-quantificational part is weaker than or not contained in S5. Unless otherwise stated, each theory has the same language L. This consists of a countable set V of propositional variables p1, p2,, the operators v (or), ~ (not) and □ (necessarily), the universal quantifier (p), p a propositional variable, and brackets ( and ), The formulas of L are then defined in the usual way." (p. 336)

2. ———. 1971. "The Logics Containing S4.3." Zeitschrift für Mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik no. 17:371-376.

"In this paper I prove some general results on logics containing S 4.3. In section 2 I prove that they all have the finite model property. Bull [1] has already proved thia result; but his proof is algebraic, whereas mine is semantic. In sections 3 and 4, I prove that they are all finitely axiomatizable. It follows from these results that they are all decidable. Finally, in section 5, I show that the lattice of S 4.3 logics is isomorphic to one on finite set of finite sequences of natural numbers. Needless to say, these results carry over to the extensions of the intermediate logic LC.

In a paper on logics containing K4, I shall present another semantic proof that S4.3 logics have the finite model property and thereby also establish some results on compactness." (p. 371)

(1) R. A. Bull, "That All Normal Extensions of S4.3 Have the Finite Model Property", Zeitschrift für Mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik , 12, 1966, pp. 341-344.

3. ———. 1971. "Counting, Choice and Undecidability." Manifold no. 11:17-22.

Abbreviations: Continuum Hypothesis = CH; Axiom of Choice = AC.

"In 1900 Hilbert stated 23 problems which he considered to be of crucial iaportance. The first of these was ’prove Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis'. Gödel (1939) and Cohen (1963) have shown that the hypothesis can neither be proved nor disproved. Their proofs are expounded in:

P. J. Cohen, Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis , Benjamin 1966.

P. J. Cohen, "Independence results in set theory", in Studies ln Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics , North-Holland 1965, pp. 39-54.

K. Gödel, "The Consistency of the Axiom of Choice and of the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis with the axiom of set theory", 1939, 4th printing, Princeton 1966·" (p. 71)

(...)

"The question now remains: what attitude should the working mathematician take towards CH? It is important to leave AC on one side at this point because it possesses a degree of self-evidence that CH certainly lacks.

There are, I think, two main attitudes. On the one hand, one could say there is no sense in which CH is true or false and give up looking for ways of settling the question. Instead, one would develop different set theories, with or without CH, somewhat in analogy to the alternative geometries of the 19th century. On the other hand, one could say that CH Is either true or false and look for new ways of determining which.

Two main ways suggest themselves. The first is to dispense with proof and to accept that hypothesis concerning transfinite cardinals which is most fruitful in consequences. The second is to search for new self-evident axioms that might settle CH.

These new axioms might be formulated in terms of set-theoretic notions or in terms of a new notion or new notions altogether.

The adoption of non-deductive procedures or the discovery of non-set-theoretic notions would conflict with two common views about mathematics, viz. that all mathematical knowledge is based upon proof and that all mathematical notions can be given a set-theoretic definition. Although it is too early to talk of feasibility, it is worth noting that these common views are based upon an analysis of extant mathematics. There seems to be no reason, in principle, why they should be true." (p. 82)

4. ———. 1972. "In So Many Possible Worlds." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 13:516-520.

"Ordinary modal logic deals with the notion of a proposition being true at least one possible world. This makes it natural to consider the notion of a proposition being true in k possible worlds for any non-negative integer k. Such a notion would stand to Tarski's numerical quantifiers as ordinary possibility stands to the existential quantifier.

In this paper (1) I present several logics for numerical possibility. First I give the syntax and semantics for a minimal such logic (sections 1 and 2); then I prove its completeness (sections 3 and 4); and finally I show how to extend this result to other logics (section 5)." (p. 516)

(1) The results of this paper are contained in my doctorate thesis, submitted to the University of Warwick in 1969. I am greatly indebted to my supervisor, the late Arthur Prior. Without his help and encouragement this paper would never have been written.

5. ———. 1972. "For So Many Individuals." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 13:569-572.

"In [2], Tarski introduces the numerical quantifiers.

(...)

Because of their definability, the numerical quantifiers have rarely been considered on their own account. However, in this paper I consider a predicate logic without identity which is enriched with numerical quantifiers as primitive. In section 1, I present the syntax and semantics for this logic; and in sections 2 and 3, I establish its completeness." (p. 569)

[2] Tarski, A., Introduction to Logic, Oxford University Press (1946).

6. ———. 1972. "Logics Containing S4 Without the Finite Model Property." In Conference in Mathematical Logic, London '70 , edited by Hodges, Wifrid, 98-102. Berlin: Springer Verlag.

"In [1], Harrop asked whether there were logics containing the intuitionistic logic IL which lack the finite model property [=fmp]. Jankov gave examples of such logics, but they were not finitely axiomatizable. By the Tarski-McKlnsey translation, Harrop's problem relates to the question of whether there exist extensions of the modal logic S4 without fmp. Makinson [2] showed that there are extensions of the modal logic M without fmp, but he could not extend his results to S4. In this paper, I shall exhibit logics containing both IL and S4 which lack fmp, but are finitely axiomatized and decidable." (p. 98)

(...)

"Finally, it should be noted that we can add axioms to the logics described above so as to obtain logics which are decidable, finitely axiomatized, complete for their intended interpretation, and yet without fmp." (p. 101)

[1] Harrop, R., On the existence of finite models and decision procedures, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society , vol. 54 (1958), 1-16.

[2] Makinson, D., A Normal Modal Calculus Between T and S4 Without the Finite Model Property, Journal of Symbolic Logic , voi. 34, Number 1 (1969), 35-38.

7. ———. 1972. "Some Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Representative Decision on Two Alternatives." Econometrica no. 40:1083-1090.

"A social decision rule is one that produces a social decision for each configuration of individuals' decisions. Such a rule is representative if it produces a social decision that is the result of repeatedly applying the rule of simple majority decision to decisions obtained

by that rule. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for a social decision rule for two alternatives to be representative." (p. 1083)

(...)

"The central problem of this paper is to find an alternative characterization of the representative functions. May in [1] gave an alternative characterization of the simple majority decision functions, and Murakami in [2 and 3] established that monotonicity and self-duality are necessary conditions for being a representative or indirect majority decision function. (In fact, Murakami deals with what he calls democratic functions, i.e., representative functions which are non-dictatorial; but this latter condition may be added or left out at will.) However, he was not able to establish any sufficient conditions. In this paper, I establish his conjecture that strong monotonicity with self-duality is a sufficient condition.

I use this result and a new property of not being "zigzag" to prove that monotonicity, self-duality, and not being zigzag are necessary and sufficient conditions. (2)

Finally, I show that the monotonic, self-dual, and positive functions are exactly those definable in terms of the voting and jury operators." (p. 1084)

(2) P. C. Fishburn independently solved this problem in his paper "The Theory of Representative Majority Decision," Econometrica , 39 (1971), pp. 273-284. However, he uses a completely different method of proof and a slightly different condition in place of "not zigzag".

References

[1] MAY, K. O.: "A Set of Independent, Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Simple Majority Decision," Econometrica , 20 (1952), 680-684.

[2] MURAKAMI, Y.: "Formal Structure of Majority Decisions," Econometrica , 34 (1966), 709-718.

[3] MURAKAMI, Y.: Logic and Social Choice . London: Macmillan, and New York: Dover, 1968.

8. ———. 1973. "Conditions for the Existence of Cycles under Majority and Non-Minority Rules." Econometrica no. 41:889-899.

"This paper provides type I necessary and sufficient conditions for transitivity and quasi-transitivity under simple majority rule. (2) For type II conditions, a master list of orderings is acceptable if the social rule generates a "rational" (e.g., transitive) social ordering whenever the individuals select their preference orderings from the list. A list ordering may be selected any number of times, and, in particular, it may not be selected at all. For type I conditions, on the other hand, each list ordering must be selected at least once, so that the list and the configuration of individual orderings must exactly match in the kind of orderings they contain. Thus for type II conditions it is the absence of certain kinds of orderings that blocks irrational social choice, whereas for type I conditions the presence of certain kinds of orderings may also contribute toward blockage.

Type II conditions have been determined for a wide variety of rules and under several definitions of rationality. Our main interest in this paper is in type I conditions for simple majority rule with rationality defined in terms of transitivity or quasi-transitivity. However, our method of argument will yield simple alternative proofs of some standard results on type I conditions and it will also yield the type I and type II conditions for transitivity under non-minority rule.

Section 1 lays down some relevant definitions. Section 2 proves the "min-midmax" theorem, which is the basis for all that follows. Sections 3 and 4, respectively, establish the conditions for transitivity and quasi-transitivity under majority rule.

Finally, Section 5 proves the min-mid-max theorem for the non-minority rule and establishes the condition for transitivity under that rule." (p. 889)

(2) The terminology of type I and II conditions is Pattanaik's [6]. Type II conditions were first proposed by Inada [3] and type I conditions by Pattanaik [5].

References

[3] INADA, K.: "On the Simple Majority Decision Rule," Econometrica , 36 (1969), 490-506.

[5] PATTANAIK, P. K.: "SufficientConditions for the Existence of a Choice Set under Majority Voting," Econometrica , 38 (1970), 165-170.

[6] PATTANAIK, P. K.: Voting and Collective Choice . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.

9. ———. 1973. "Surveys on Deontic Logic, Mathematical Logic and the Philosophy of Mathematics." In UNESCO Survey of the Social Sciences .

10. ———. 1974. "An Ascending Chain of S4 Logics." Theoria no. 40:110-116.

"This paper shows that there exists a continuum of logics containing the modal logic S4. (1) §1 contains preliminary definitions and results; §2 introduces the key notion of a frame formula; §3 establishes the main result and some consequences; and §4 establishes some further results." (p. 110)

(1) Jankov [5] has independently, and previously, proved the analogous result for intuitionistic sentential logic. His method of proof is algebraic, whereas mine is semantic.

References

[5] V. A. Jankov, On the Extension of the Intuitionist Propositional Calculus to the Classical Calculus, and the Minimal Calculus to the Intuitionist Calculus, Journal of Symbolic Logic 38, 1973, pp. 331-332.

11. ———. 1974. "Models for Entailment." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 3:347-372.

Reprinted in: Alan Ross Anderson, Nuel D. Belnap, Jr., with contributions by J. Michael Dunn ... [et al.], Entailment: The Logic of Relevance and Necessity, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992 vol. II, pp. 208-231.

"This paper gives a modelling for Ackermann’s systems Π' and Π" , Anderson’s and Belnap’s system E and R , and several of their subsystems. The distinctive feature of this modelling is a point-shift in the evaluation of negation and entailment: the negation of a formula holds at a point if the formula itself fails to hold at a complementary point; and an entailment holds at a point if whenever its antecedent holds at a point its consequent holds at an appropriately associated point. These rules enable negations of valid formulas to hold at a point and valid formulas themselves to fail to hold at a point. They also provide a grip on certain axioms involving negation or nested entailment." (p. 347, notes omitted)

(...)

The first two sections present the deductive-semantic framework; §51.1 specifies the models, and §51.2 the logics. The following two sections establish completeness; §51.3 for a minimal logic B, and §51.4 for Π', Π", E and the several subsystems. §51.5 outlines various alternative versions of the modeling. The last two sections contain applications of the modeling: §51.6 to the admissibility of modus ponens; and §51.7 to the finite model property and decidability. Many of the systems considered are shown to have these properties; see §63 for a further survey on decidability, and §65 for fundamental undecidabilily results." (pp. 208-209 of the revised reprint)

12. ———. 1974. "An Incomplete Logic Containing S4." Theoria no. 40:23-29.

"This paper uses the standard terminology of modal logic. It should suffice to say that: all logics contain the minimal logic K and are closed under necessitation, substitution and modus ponens; frames consist of a relation defined on a non-empty set of points; models consist of a frame with a valuation; and truth-at-a-point is defined and notated in an obvious way; with the formula □ A true at a point iff A is true at all accessible points. The formula A is true in (satisfied by) a model if it is true in all (some) points of the model; A is strongly verified in a model if all substitution-instances of A are true in the model; and A is valid in a frame if A is true in all models based upon the frame, A set of formulas is true, strongly verified, or valid if all of its members are. Unless otherwise stated, all logics contain S4 and all models and frames possess reflexive and transitive relations.

A logic is complete if any formula valid in all frames that validate the logic is in the logic. This paper exhibits a logic L containing S4 that is not complete." (p. 23)

13. ———. 1974. "Logics Containing K4. Part I." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 39:31-42.

"There are two main lacunae in recent work on modal logic: a lack of general results and a lack of negative results. This or that logic is shown to have such and such a desirable property, but very little is known about the scope or bounds of the property. Thus there are numerous particular results on completeness, decidability, finite model property, compactness, etc., but very few general or negative results.

In these papers I hope to help fill these lacunae. This first part contains a very general completeness result. Let In > be the axiom that says there are at most n incomparable points related to a given point. Then the result is that any logic containing K4 and In > is complete.

The first three sections provide background material for the rest of the papers. The fourth section shows that certain models contain no infinite ascending chains, and the fifth section shows how certain elements can be dropped from the canonical model. The sixth section brings the previous results together to establish completeness, and the seventh and last section establishes compactness, though of a weak kind. All of the results apply to the corresponding intermediate logics." (p. 31)

14. Fine, Kit, and Fine, Ben J. 1974a. "Social Choice and Individual Ranking I." Review of Economic Studies no. 41:303-322.

"This paper investigates social positional rules. The rules are social in that they produce a social output for any configuration of individual preference orderings. They are positional in that the output produced depends only upon the positions occupied by each alternative in the individual preference orderings. (3)

Social rules may be distinguished by the form of their output, be it a quasi-ordering, choice structure or complete ordering. For each form of output, we shall determine the class of social rules that satisfy certain desirable conditions. Part one deals with quasi ordering rules; part two will deal with the other types of rules.

Indeed, this part shows that certain desirable conditions are uniquely satisfied by the so-called positional rule. One alternative is as good as another by this rule if any individual's ranking of these cond alternative can be matched by as high a ranking of the first alternative by some possibly different individual. The individuals'rankings should be as good for the one alternative as for the other." (p. 303)

(*) Some of the results of this paper are contained in B. Fine's B.Phil. thesis, Oxford1971. We should like to thank the editor and a referee for many helpful suggestions.

(3) There have been several recent papers on positional rules. See [2], [3], [5] and [8]. However, most of the results of these papers overlap with the material of Part II (which is forthcoming in this journal) rather than Part I. Further details will be given there, but let us note that Smith [8] also has a variable number of individuals and a composition condition (his separability).

References

[1] Arrow, K. J. Social Choice and Individual Values (New York: Wiley, 1951; 2nd ed. 1963).

[2] Fisburn, P. C. "A Comparative Analysis of Group Decision Methods", Behavioural Science , 16 (1971).

[3] Fishburn, P. C. The Theory of Social Choice (Princeton UniversityPress, 1973).

[4] Gale, D. The Theory of Linear Economic Models (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960).

[5] Gardenfors, P. "Positionalist Voting Functions", forthcoming in Theory and Decision . [September 1973, Volume 4, Issue 1, pp 1-24]

[6] Hansson, B. "On Group Preferences", Econometrica , 37 (1969).

[7] Sen, A. K. Collective Choice and Social Welfare (Holden-Day, 1970).

[8] Smith, J. H. "Aggregation of Preferences with Variable Electorate", forthcoming in Econometrica . [Vol. 41, No. 6 (Nov., 1973), pp. 1027-1041 ]

15. ———. 1974b. "Social Choice and Individual Ranking II." Review of Economic Studies no. 41:459-475.

"In Part I of this paper it was shown that certain appealing conditions forced any social quasi-ordering rule to include the positional rule, which is itself the intersection of all finite ranking (f.r.) rules. These conditions are slightly strengthened in the first three sections of this part, but this allows us to characterize in Section 3 the rules that also satisfy the additional properties as the intersection of some set of f.r. rules. In case a continuity property, which can be interpreted as a non-veto condition applied to groups, does not hold, the set of f.r. rules must be extended to include transfinite weightings. Section 1 finds sufficient conditions for a quasi-ordering rule to be positional. This is used in Section 2 to prove the results contained in Section 3 for the special case of a social ordering rule, when a single f.r. rule emerges. This special case is then generalized in Section 3.

In Section 4, for the first time in the paper, we analyse conditions that recognize social decision depending upon the number of alternatives. Previously, only the number of individuals has been effectively allowed to vary. Again, simple and natural properties have powerful consequences, and it is thereby shown that the Borda rule is a compelling choice for making social decision, given a veil of ignorance, that is no knowledge of the special features of the individuals and alternatives concerned. In case only a quasi-ordering rule is required, social decision is based on the intersection of a set of f.r. rules symmetrical about the Borda rule.

In Section 5 we turn to choice structureules. First a positional choice structure is defined. It is the strongest such rule containing all the f.r. rules, since an alternative in a set belongs to the choice from that set iff for some f.r. it is best in the set. This last condition is shown to be equivalent to demanding that the HC of that element does not belong to the convex hull of the HC of the other alternatives in the set. Then an outline is made for a conditions analysis of the rule: it is found to be the weakest rule satisfying certain conditions, in the sense that any other rule satisfying those conditions must be more decisive. In this, the method, results and analysis correspond to Part I's consideration of the positional quasi-ordering rule.

Section 6 is devoted to an examination of some questions concerned with the independence of conditions and Section 7 contains concluding remarks. The above only sketches the major results of thispaper. In addition,the analysis of normal social quasi ordering rules in Section 2 and Section 3 has obvious relevanceto the theory of production and utility under risk in the presence of indivisibility.

Finally, it should be noted that throughou this part, individual preferences are assumed to be antisymmetrical.Whilst the complications posed by individual indifference were overcome in Part I (Section6), a more general analysis becomes analytically cumbersome and presents more problems here. Nevertheless many of the results, especially analysis by conditions, do apply more generally, though possibly ith slight modifications." (pp. 459-460)

(*) The first part of the paper [1974a] was written up by K. Fine and the second by B. Fine. Both authors have contributed to all sections of the paper, though the first has contributed more to the material on the positional rule and the second to the material on normal social rules. Some of the resultsfor ordering rules in this paper have been independently established by Smith [Smith, J. H. "Aggregation of Preferences with Variable Electorate", Econometrica . Vol. 41, No. 6 (Nov., 1973), pp. 1027-1041].

16. Fine, Kit. 1975. "Vagueness, Truth and Logic." Synthese no. 30:265-300.

Reprinted in: Rosanna Keefe & Peter Smith, Vagueness: A Reader, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996, pp. 119-150.

"My investigation of this topic began with the question "What is the correct logic of vagueness?" This led to the further question "What are the correct truth-conditions for a vague language?" And this led, in its turn, to a more general consideration of meaning and existence.

The contents of the paper are as follows. The first half contains the basic material. Section 1 expounds and criticizes one approach to the problem of specifying truth-conditions for a vague language. The approach is based upon an extension of the standard truth-tables and falls foul of something I call penumbral connection. Section 2 introduces an alternative framework, within which penumbral connection can be accommodated. The key idea is to consider not only the truth-values that sentences actually receive but also the truth-values that they might receive under different ways of making them more precise. Section 3 describes and defends the favoured account within this framework.

According to this account, as roughly stated, a vague sentence is true if and only if it is true for all ways of making it completely precise. The second half of the paper then deals with consequences, complications and comparisons of the preceding half. Section 4 considers the consequences that the rival approaches have for logic. The favoured account leads to a classical logic for vague sentences; and objections to this unpopular position are met. Section 5 studies the phenomenon of higher-order vagueness: first, in its bearing upon the truth-conditions for a language that contains a definitely-operator or a hierarchy of truth-predicates; and second, in its relation to some puzzles concerning priority and eliminability.

Some of the topics tie in with technical material. I have tried to keep this at a minimum.

But the reader must excuse me if the technical undercurrent produces an occasional unintelligible ripple upon the surface. Many of the more technical passages can be omitted without serious loss in continuity." (p. 265)

17. ———. 1975. "Normal Forms in Modal Logic." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 16:229-237.

"There are two main methods of completeness proof in modal logic.

One may use maximally consistent theories or their algebraic counterparts, on the one hand, or semantic tableaux and their variants, on the other hand. The former method is elegant but not constructive, the latter method is constructive but not elegant.

Normal forms have been comparatively neglected in the study of modal sentential logic. Their champions include Carnap [3], von Wright [10], Anderson [l] and Cresswell [4]. However, normal forms can provide elegant and constructive proofs of many standard results. They can also provide proofs of results that are not readily proved by standard means.

Section 1 presents preliminaries. Sections 2 and 3 establish a reduction to normal form and a consequent construction of models. Section 4 contains a general completeness result. Finally, section 5 provides normal formings for the logics T and K4." (p. 229)

[1] Anderson, A. R., "Improved decision procedures for Lewis's calculus S4 and Van Wright's calculus M," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 34 (1969), pp. 253-255.

[2] Bull, R. A., "On the extension of S4 with CLMpMLp," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, vol. VIII (1967), pp. 325-329.

[3] Carnap, R., "Modalities and quantification," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 11 (1946), pp. 33-64.

[4] Cresswell, M. J., "A conjunctive normal form for S3.5," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 34 (1969), pp. 253-255.

[10] Wright, G. H. von, An Essay in Modal Logic, Amsterdam (1951).

18. ———. 1975. "Review of David Lewis ' Counterfactuals '." Mind no. 84:451-458.

Reprinted in: Modality and Tense. Philosophical Papers, as chapter 10, pp. 357-365.

"This is an excellent book. It combines shrewd philosophical sense with fine technical expertise; the statement of views is concise and forthright; and the level of argument is high." (p. 451)

(...)

"Lewis suggests that merely possible worlds are like the actual world, ‘differing not in kind but only in what goes on at them’. Indeed, for him there is no absolute difference between the actual world and the others: the difference is relative to a particular possible world as point of reference. A similar view has been held about the present time, but it is hard to accept for possible worlds. On the logical construction view, the actual world is distinguished by the property that all of its propositions are true. Here ‘true’ is an absolute term. It is not defined as truth in the actual world but, on the contrary, truth-in-a-world is defined as set-theoretic membership." (p. 455).

19. ———. 1975. "Some Connections between Elementary and Modal Logic." In Proceedings of the Third Scandinavian Logic Symposium , edited by Kanger, Stig, 15-31. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

"A common way of proving completeness in modal logic is to look at the canonical frame. This paper shows that the method is applicable to any complete logic whose axioms express a XA-elementary condition or to any logic complete for a A-elementary class of frames. We also prove two mild converses to this result. (1) The first is that any finitely axiomatized logic has axioms expressing an elementary condition if it is complete for a certain class of natural subframes of the canonical frame. The second result is obtained from the first by dropping ‘finitely axiomatized’, and weakening ‘elementary’ to ‘A-elementary’.

Classical logic is used in the formulation and proof of these results.

The proofs are not hard, but they do show that there may be a fruitful and non-superficial contact between modal and elementary logic. Hopefully, more work along these lines can be carried out.

§ 1 outlines some basic notions and results of modal logic. For simplicity, this is taken to be mono-modal. However, the results can be readily extended to multi-modal logics and, in particular, to tense logic.

§ 2 proves the first of the above results and a related result as well; § 3 proves the second of the above results; and finally, § 4 constructs counterexamples to some plausible looking converse results." (pp. 15-16)

(1) After writing this paper, I discovered that A.H. Lachlan had already proved the first of these ‘mild converses’ in [5]. His proof uses Craig’s interpolation theorem, whereas mine uses the algebraic characterization of elementary classes. R.I. Goldblatt [4] independently hit upon this latter proof at about the same time as I did.

He also has a counter-example to the converse of this result. It is similar to the one in § 4.

I should like to thank Steve Thomason for the references above and for some helpful comments on the paper.

References

[4] R.I. Goldblatt, First-order definability in modal logic, [ The Journal of Symbolic Logic , Vol. 40, No. 1 (Mar. 1975), pp. 35-40]

[5] A.H. Lachlan, A note on Thomason’s refined structures for tense logic, Theoria , [Vol. 40, No. 2 (Aug. 1974), pp. 117–120]

20. ———. 1976. "Review of The Nature of Necessity ' (A. Plantinga)." The Philosophical Review no. 86:562-566.

Reprinted in: Modality and Tense. Philosophical Papers, as chapter 11, pp. 366-370.

"This book discusses several topics in the theory of modality: the de re/de dicto distinction, possible worlds, essences, names, possible objects, and existence. In the final two chapters, the preceding material is applied to the problem of evil and the ontological argument. In its philosophical (though not theological) parts, the book is close to Kripke’s Naming and Necessity .

There are similar accounts of the a priori/necessary distinction, proper names, transworld identity, and the identity theory." (p. 562)

21. ———. 1976. "Completeness for the Semi-Lattice Semantics. Abstract." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 41:560.

22. ———. 1976. "Completeness for the S5 analogue of Ei. Abstract." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 41:559-560.

23. ———. 1977. "Properties, Propositions and Sets." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 6:135-191.

"This paper presents a theory of cxtensional and intensional entities. The entities in question belong to a hierarchy that begins with individuals, sets, properties and propositions. The hierarchy extends to higher orders, both extensional and intensional. Thus it contains sets of propositions, properties of sets, properties of such properties, and, in general, it contains relations-in-intension and relations-in-extension over types of entities already in the hierarchy.

The theory does not say what a proposition or property is. Rather, a possible worlds account of these entities is taken for granted. Thus a proposition is regarded as a set of possible worlds, a property as a set of world-individual pairs, and similarly for the other intensional entities.

What the theory does is to characterize and investigate various properties of the entities in terms of possible worlds. These properties include existence, being purely general or qualitative, being logical, having an individual constituent, and being essentially modal. Thus the theory is ontological rather than linguistic. Its main concern is with the ontological status of the various entities and not with their relation to language." (p. 135)

24. ———. 1977. "Prior on the Construction of Possible Worlds and Instants." In Worlds, Times and Selves , 116-168. London: Duckworth.

Postscript to ' Worlds, Times and Selves ', by Arthur Norman Prior, reprinted in: Modality and Tense. Philosophical Papers, as chapter 4.

"Fundamental to Prior’s conception of modality were two theses:

The ordinary modal idioms (necessarily, possibly) are primitive (1)

Only actual objects exist (2)

The first thesis might be called Modalism or Priority, in view of its nature and founder. The second thesis is sometimes called Actualism, and the two theses together I call Modal Actualism." (p. 116)

(...)

"My aim in this chapter is to carry out this programme of reconstruction, at least in outline. I have often followed the lead of Prior, much of whose later work (3) arose from this programme. However, I cannot be sure that he would have approved of all of the steps I take." (p. 118)

(1) Many references might be given. See e.g. ‘Modal Logic and the Logic of Applicability’ Theoria , 34 (1968), reprinted as Chapter 6 above.

(2) See Papers on Time and Tense , p. 143

(3) See the chapter of this book, Ch. XI of Papers on Time and Tense, and V of Past, Present and Future.

25. ———. 1978. "Model Theory for Modal Logic Part I: The ' de re / de dicto' Distinction." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 7:125-156.

"It is an oddity of recent work on modality that the philosopher's main concern has been with quantificational logic whereas the logician's has been with sentential logic. There have, perhaps, been several reasons for this divergence of interest. One is that the area of sentential modal logic is already rich in logical problems; and another is that the semantics for quantified modal logic has been in an unsettled state. But whatever the reasons have been in the past, the time would now seem ripe for a more fruitful interaction between these two approaches to the study of modality.

My aim in these papers has been to bring the methods of model theory closer to certain common philosophical concerns in modal logic. Indeed, most of the results answer questions that arise from some definite philosophical position. In this respect, my approach differs from that of Bowen [1] and others, who attempt to extend the results of classical model theory to modal logic. Although this approach has its attractions, it also suffers from two drawbacks. The first is that most of its results are devoid of philosophical interest; and the second is that many standard results of classical model theory, such as the Interpolation Lemma, do not apply to some standard modal logics, such as quantified S5 (see my paper [5]).

The philosophical position that underlies the results of the first two parts of this paper may be called de re scepticism. It is the doctrine that quantification into modal contexts does not, as it stands, make sense. Call a sentence de dicto if, in it, the necessity operator never governs a formula that contains a free variable. Then for the de re sceptic, only de dicto sentences, or their equivalents, are legitimate." (p. 125)

References

[1] Bowen, K. A., 1975, ‘Normal Modal Model Theory’, Journal of Philosophical Logic 4, 2, 97–131.

[5] Fine, K., ‘Failures of the Interpolation Lemma in Modal Logic’, Journal of Symbolic Logic , (44), 1979, pp. 201-206.

26. ———. 1978. "Model Theory for Modal Logic Part II: The Elimination of ' de re' Modality." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 7:277-306.

"In the first part of this paper, two philosophical positions were introduced: de re scepticism; and anti-Haecceitism. According to the first, quantification into modal contexts does not, as it stands, make sense; and according to the second, the identity or non-identity of individuals in distinct possible worlds is a matter of convention. It was shown that the two positions are equivalent in the sense that whatever first-order modal sentence is legitimate for the one is also legitimate for the other.

A soft and hard version of each of these positions may be distinguished. According to the soft de re sceptic, it is possible to make sense of de re modal discourse; and according to the soft anti-Haecceitist, it is possible to define coherent identity conditions for individuals across possible worlds. Both of the soft positions, then, are compromising ones in that they allow that ordinary modal discourse may be reconstructed. The hard versions of the positions, on the other hand, deny that any such reconstruction is possible.

The soft de re sceptic may reconstruct ordinary modal discourse in various ways. One way is to reinterpret either quantification or modality (or both) so that each de re sentence is equivalent to one that is de dicto . Although this method has been prominent in the literature, I shall deal with it only incidentally here. I hope to deal with it more fully elsewhere. Another way is to add axioms to the standard modal logic so that two conditions are satisfied. The first (eliminability) is that every de re sentence should have a de dicto equivalent relative to the resulting system. The second (conservativeness) is that no dicto sentence should be provable in the resulting system that is not already a theorem of standard modal logic." (p. 277)

27. ———. 1979. "Failures of the Interpolation Lemma in Quantified Modal Logic." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 44:201-206.

"Beth’s Definability Theorem, and consequently the Interpolation Lemma, fail for the version of quantified S5 that is presented in Kripke’s [7]. These failures persist when the constant domain axiom-scheme ∀x □ φ ≡□ ∀x φ is added to S5 or, indeed, to any weaker extension of quantificational K .

§1 reviews some standard material on quantificational modal logic. This is in contrast to quantified intermediate logics for, as Gabbay [5] has shown, the Interpolation Lemma holds for the logic CD with constant domains and for several of its extensions. §§2—4 establish the negative results for the systems based upon S5. §5 establishes a more general negative result and, finally, §6 considers some positive results and open problems. A basic knowledge of classical and modal quantificational logic is presupposed." (p. 201)

References

[5] D. Gabbay, Craig's interpolation lemma for modal logics, Conference in Mathematical Logic , London, 1970, Lecture Notes in Mathematics , no. 255, Springer-Verlag, Berlin and New York, 1972, pp. 111-127.

[7] S. Kripke, Semantical considerations on modal logic, Acta Philosophica Fennica , vol. 16 (1963), pp. 83-94.

28. ———. 1979. "Analytic Implication." In Papers on Language and Logic , edited by Dancy, Jonathan, 64-70. Keele: Keele University Library.

Reprinted in: Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic , 27, 1986, pp. 169-179.

"Parry presented a system of analytic implication in [7] and [8], Dunn [2] gave an algebraic completeness proof for an extension of this system and Urquhart [10] later gave a semantic completeness proof for Dunn's system with necessity. This paper establishes completeness for Parry's original system, (*) thereby answering a question of Gödel [6], and then, on the basis of the completeness result, derives decidability; it also deals with quantificational versions and other modifications of his system.

Section 1 contains some informal remarks on the notion of analytic implication.

They are not strictly relevant to the later analysis, although they may help to place it in perspective. Section 2 presents the semantics and Section 3 exhibits a system of analytic implication. Section 4 helps to demonstrate that the system is equivalent to Parry's, and Section 5 establishes completeness. Finally, Section 6 outlines the theory for some related systems." (p. 64)

(*) I mean the full system of [7] with adjunction, A14 and A15.

[1] Anderson A. R. and N. D. Belnap, Jr., "A simple treatment of truth-functions," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 25 (1959), pp. 301-302.

[2] Dunn, J. M., "A modification of Parry's analytic implication," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, vol. 13, no. 2 (1972), pp. 195-205.

[3] Epstein, D., "The semantic foundations of logic," to appear.

[4] Hughs, G. E. and M. J. Cresswell, An Introduction to Modal Logic, Methuen, London, 1968.

[5] Kielkopf, C. F., Formal Sentential Entailment, University Press of America, Washington, D.C., 1977.

[6] Parry, W. T., "Ein Axiomsystem fur eine neue Art von Implication (analytische Implication)," Ergebrisse eines Mathematischen Colloquiums, vol. 4 (1933), pp. 5-6.

[7] Parry, W. T., "The logic of C. I. Lewis," pp. 115-154 in The Philosophy of C. I. Lewis, ed., P. A. Schilpp, Cambridge University Press, 1968.

[8] Parry, W. T., "Comparison of entailment theories," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 37 (1972), pp. 441 f.

[9] Post, E. L., The Two-Valued Iterative Systems of Mathematical Logic, Princeton, University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1941.

[10] Urquhart, A., "A semantical theory of analytical implication," Journal of Philosophical Logic, vol. 2 (1973), pp. 212-219.

29. ———. 1980. "First-Order Modal Theories. [II. Propositions]." Studia Logica no. 39:159-202.

Abstract. "This paper is part of a general programme of developing and investigating particular first-order modal theories. In the paper, a modal theory of propositions is constructed under the assumption that there are genuinely singular propositions, ie. ones that contain individuals as constituents. Various results on decidability, axiomatizability and definability are established."

"In some recent work ([7], [8], [9], [10]), I have attempted to carry out a dual programme of developing a general model-theoretic account of first-order modal theories, on the one hand, and of studying particular theories of this sort, on the other. The two parts of the programme are meant to interact, with the second providing both motivation and application for the first. The present paper belongs to the second part of the programme and deals with the question of giving a correct essentialist account of propositions.

My approach is distinctive in two main ways, one linguistic and the other metaphysical. On the linguistic side, I have let the variables for propositions be both nominal and objectual. That is to say, the variables occupy the same position as names and are interpreted in terms of a range of objects, which, in the present case, turn out to be propositions. This approach stands in contrast to the earlier work of Prior [17], Bull [1], Fine [4], Kaplan [14] and Gabbay [12], [13], in which the variables are sentential (they occupy the same position as sentences) and are interpreted either substitutionally or in terms of a range of intensional values." (p. 159)

References

[1] R. A. Bull, On modal logic with propositional quantifiers, Journal of Symbolic Logic 34 (1969), pp. 257–263.

[4] K. Fine, Propositional quantifiers in modal logic, Theoria 36 (1970), pp. 336–346.

[7] —, Model theory for modal logic, part I, Journal of Philosophical Logic 7 (1978), pp. 125–156.

[8] —, Model theory for modal logic, part II — The elimination of de re modality, Journal of Philosophical Logic 7 (1978), pp. 277–306.

[9] —, First-order modal theories, part I — Modal set theory, to appear in Nôus . [1981]

[10] —, Model theory for modal logic, part III — Existence and predication, to appear in Journal of Philosophical Logic . [1981]

[12] D. M. Gabbay, Modal logic with propositional quantifiers, Zeitschrift für Mathematische Logic und Grundlagen der Mathematik 18 (1972), pp. 245–249

[13] —, Investigations in Modal and Tense Logics , D. Reidel, Holland, 1976.

[14] D. Kaplan, S5 with quantifiable propositional variables, Journal of Symbolic Logic 35 (1970), pp. 355.

[17] A.N. Prior, Egocentric logic, Nôus , vol. II, no. 3 (1968), pp. 191–207.

30. ———. 1981. "First-Order Modal Theories. I: Sets." Noûs no. 15:177-205.

"The aim of this paper is to formalize various metaphysical theories within a first-order modal language. The first part deals with modal set theory. The later parts will deal with propositions, possible worlds, and facts.

Such an undertaking is relevant both to logic and to metaphysics.

Its relevance to logic lies mainly in its bearing on the model theory for first-order modal languages. I have begun to develop such a theory in [8]. The consideration of particular theories can then provide both an application of and motivation for general results in this field. There is already a fruitful interaction between the proof of general results and the consideration of particular first-order theories within classical model theory; and the hope is that there should be as beneficial an interaction within modal logic.

The relevance of the undertaking to metaphysics consists mainly in the general advantages that accrue from formalizing an intuitive theory. First of all, one thereby obtains a clearer view of its primitive notions and truths. This is no small thing in a subject, such as metaphysics, that is so conspicuously lacking in proper foundations.

But once a formalization is given, one can establish results about the theory as a whole and thereby obtain that overall view of a subject that philosophers often strive for but rarely obtain." (p. 177)

(...)

"The plan of this part of the paper is as follows. §1 contains an informal discussion and justification of our axioms for modal set theory. §2 then presents the formal theories. §3 develops a proof- and a model-theory for class abstracts in modal set theory and establishes a useful result on transferring abstracts from classical set theory into a modal context. In §4, it is shown that the formal theories are equivalent in that any two of them share the same theorems in their common language. The proof of equivalence contains general result on when the possible worlds semantics for a given modal theory can be represented within that theory itself. The next section discusses the adequacy of our formalizations and shows that, in a certain sense, they capture all of the essential truths about sets as such. The last section is concerned with the identity of sets and places the problem within a general account of the identity of objects." (p. 178)

[8] Fine, K., 'Model Theory for Modal Logic I, II, III', The Journal of Philosophical Logic , (1978) 125-56, (1978) 277-306, and to appear. [1981, 293-307]

31. ———. 1981. "Model Theory for Modal Logic. Part III: Existence and Predication." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 10:293-307.

"This paper is concerned with the technical implications of a certain view connecting existence to predication. This is the view that in no possible world is there a genuine relation among the nonexistents of that world or between the nonexistents and the existents. (1) The meaning of the term ‘genuine’ here may be variously explained. On an extreme interpretation, all relations are ‘genuine’, so that none of them are to relate non-existents.

On a milder interpretation, the genuine relations are those that are simple or primitive in some absolute sense. But even without appeal to an absolute concept of simplicity, we can require that all relations should be analyzable in terms of some suitable set of relations, relating only existents to existents.

In order to make our results applicable to the thesis, we shall suppose that the primitive non-logical predicates of our language correspond to the genuine relations, whatever they might be taken to be. Thus, the linguistic formulation of the thesis becomes that the primitive predicates of the language should only be true, in each world, of the existents of that world.

Of course, the thesis might have been given a linguistic formulation, without any reference to relations, in the first place.

The thesis is an instance of what has been called Actualism. This is the ontological doctrine that ascribes a special status to actual or existent objects. Another form of the doctrine, so-called World Actualism, says that the behaviour of nonexistents is supervenient upon the behaviour of the existents, that two possible worlds which agree in the latter respect cannot differ in the former respect. The present thesis, by contrast, might be called Predicate Actualism . It should be clear that Predicate Actualism implies World Actualism, at least if the predicates used to describe the world are to express ‘genuine’ relations; for then there are no relationships involving nonexistents by which two worlds might be distinguished. On the other hand, World Actualism does not, as it stands, imply Predicate Actualism." (p. 293)

(*) This paper is the third and final part of a series (see the references below). It was completed and submitted to the Journal of Philosophical Logic in 1977, at about the same time as the other parts. But because of some mishap in the mail, its publication was delayed. The present part is independent from the other parts in its results, but draws upon the terminology of Section 2 of Part I.

I should like to thank the editor, R. Thomason, for many valuable remarks on the earlier version of the paper.

(1) I have briefly discussed this thesis elsewhere. The reader may like to consult Section 7 of [ 11], pp. 151 and 156-160 of [2], p. 564 of [3], and Section 8 of [7b].

There has been a fair amount of recent literature on the topic. I cannot give a complete survey, but the reader may like to consult Chapters IV-V of [9], p. 86 of [8], Chapters VII-VIII of [10], and pp. 333-336 of [ 11].

References

[l] Fine, K., Postscript to Worlds, Times and Selves (with A. N. Prior), Duckworth, England (1977).

[2] Fine, K., ‘Propositions, Sets and Properties’, Journal of Philosophical Logic 6 (1977), 135-191.

[3] Fine, K., ‘Review of [9]‘, Philosophical Review 86 (1977), 562-66.

[4] Fine, K., ‘Model Theory for Modal Logic - Part I’, Journal of Philosophical Logic 7 (1978), 125-156.

[S] Fine, K., ‘Model Theory for Modal Logic - Part II’, Journal of Philosophical Logic 7 (1978), 277-306.

[6] Fine, K., The Interpolation Lemma Fails for Quantified S5’, Journal of Symbolic Logic 44 (1979), 201-206.

[7a, b, c] Fine, K., ‘FirstaIder Modal Theories - I Sets, II Propositions, III Facts’, in Nous (1981), Studia Logica XXXIX, 2/3 (1980) 159-202, and Synthese (1981), respectively.

[8] Kripke, S., Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic’, Acta Philosophica Fennica 16,83-94. Reprinted in L. Linsky (ed.), Reference and Modality , Oxford University Press (1971).

[9] Plantinga, A., The Nature of Necessity , Clarendon Press,Oxford (1974).

[10] Prior, A. N., Time and Modality , Clarendon Press, Oxford (1957).

[11] Stalnaker, R., ‘Complex Predicates’, Monist 60 (1977), 327-339.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Kit Fine: annotated bibliography. Papers 1982-1998

Papers 1982-1998

1. Fine, Kit. 1982. "The Problem of Non-Existents. I: Internalism." Topoi no. 1:97-140.

Contents: A. Iintroduction. 1. Outline 97; 2. Methodology 99; B. Preliminaries, 1. Contexts and Objects 101; 2. Identity and Being 102; 3. The Identity of Non-existents 104; c. An Internalist Theory. 1. The Rudiments 106; 2. The Extended Theory 108; D. Refinements. 1. Implicit /Explicit Copula 110; 2. Diagonal Difficulties 115; 3. Dual Diagonal Difficulties 120; 4. Correlates 123; 5. Modal Matters 129; E. Criticisms. 1. Against Platonism 130; 2. Against Internalism 132; 3. Other Theories 136; Notes 137; References 139.

"The main philosophical question about non-existents is whether there really are any. My own view is that there are none. But even if this is granted, we may still ask what they are like, just as the materialist may consider the nature of sensations or the nominalist the nature of numbers.

On this further topic, there seem to be three main divisions of thought, which may be respectively labelled as:

(i ) platonism /empiricism;

(ii) literalism /contextualism;

(iii ) internalism / externalism.

Let me attempt a rough characterization of these divisions. More refined formulations will come later. On a platonic conception, the non-existent objects of fiction, perception, belief and the like do not depend for their being upon human activity or upon any empirical conditions at all; they exist, or have being, necessarily.

Under an empirical conception, on the other hand, these objects are firmly rooted in empirical reality; they exist, or have being, contingently. On an extreme conception of this sort, these objects are literally created and are brought into being by the appropriate activity either of or within the agent.

(...)

All in all, the three divisions provide for 8 ( = 2^3) combinations of positions. Each, I think, is coherent, but some are more natural than others. For example it is natural, though not necessary, for the ‘platonist’ to accept internalism and for the ‘empiricist’ to accept externalism; for the means by which the objects are individuated will naturally be taken to provide conditions for their existence or being.

My own view on these questions is given by empiricism, contextualism and extemalism, not that this is a common combination in the literature. This view will be defended in the second part of this paper. In the present part, I am concerned to discuss a view that combines internalism with contextualism and platonism; and in the third part, I shall discuss the literalist position, mainly in association with platonism and internalism. I have not attempted systematically to consider all of the possible combinations of position. I have only looked at the more prominent or plausible of the views, though what I say on them should throw light on what is to be said of the others.

The plan of the present part is as follows. In section A2, I discuss general methodological issues facing any philosophical study of nonexistents and, in particular, defend the claim that one can say what they are like without presupposing that there really are any. In section B, I try first to delineate more precisely the subjectmatter of our theories and then to describe the problems of providing identity and existence conditions with which any such theory should deal. In section C, I give an initial formulation of an internalist theory, which is successively refined in section D. Finally, in section E, I give two major criticisms of the theory as thus developed. A more detailed account of each section is given in the list of contents.

It is of the greatest importance to note that the present part does not contain my own views on the subject. It is only in the last section of this part that the internalist position is criticized, and it is only in the second part of this paper that my own, more positive, views are developed." (pp. 97-99)

2. ———. 1982. "First-Order Modal Theories. III: Facts." Synthese no. 53:43-122.

"This paper forms the third part of a series on the development and study of first-order modal theories. It was not originally intended for this issue, but is relevant to Prior's work in two main ways. First, it does not treat modal logic as a mere technical exercise, but attempts to relate it to common philosophical concerns. This was an approach that Prior himself adopted and perhaps did more than anyone else to foster. Secondly, the paper deals with the more specific topic of facts.

This was a matter upon which Prior had definite views and upon which he had written extensively - in relation to the definition of necessity ([25]), the semantics for the modal system Q ([26]), and the correspondence theory of truth ([27] and [29]). I have found all of these writings useful and, although I have disagreed with him on several points, the influence of his views on my own should be evident.

It is therefore with respect and affection that I dedicate this paper to his memory.

The paper falls into two main parts, one philosophical and the other technical. Either may be read independently of the other, but both are required for an all-round view. The first part is in two sections. One attempts to show that a modal first-order theory of facts is viable, and the other discusses its principles and their bearing on various philosophical issues. The second part is in six sections, which fall into three groups. Those of the first group (§§3--4) deal with the modal theory of possible worlds, both in itself and in its application to other subject-matter. Since I regard worlds as very big facts, it is only natural that they should be considered in this paper. The next section (§5) deals with the theory of facts under the anti-objectualist assumption that they contain no individual constituents. The sections of the last group (§§6-8) deal with facts under objectualist assumptions and include a statement of the appropriate objectualist conditions, a proof of their equivalence to the corresponding conditions for propositions, and an account of the resulting theories. It will be helpful, and sometimes essential, to have the earlier parts of the series ([15] and [16]) at hand.

In the technical part of this paper, I have concentrated on the question of finding a correct essentialist theory of facts. As far as I know, very little work has been done in this direction, although there is a start in [46]. On the other hand, there is now a fair amount of material on facts as a subject, not of object-theory, but of semantical metatheory (see [45], [21] and [43], for example). I do not wish to dispute the interest of this material, either for logic or the philosophy of language; but it will not fall within the purview of the paper." (pp. 43-44)

References

[15] Fine, K. (1979): 'First-Order Modal Theories II - Propositions', Studia Logica 39, 159-202.

[16] Fine, K. (1981): 'First-Order Modal Theories I - Sets', Nous 15, 117-206.

[21] Martin J. (1975): 'Facts and the Semantics of Gerunds', Journal of Philosophical Logic 4, 439-454.

[25] Prior, A. N. (1948): 'Facts, Propositions and Entailment', Mind 57, 62-68.

[26] Prior, A. N. (1957): Time and Modality , Oxford: Clarendon Press.

[27] Prior, A. N. (1967): 'Correspondence Theory of Truth', in Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ed. P. Edwards), New York: Macmillan.

[29] Prior, A. N. (1971): Objects of Thought , England: Oxford University Press.

[43] Taylor, B. (1976): 'States of Affairs' in Truth and Meaning (ed. G. Evans and J. McDowell), Oxford: Clarendon Press.

[45] van Fraassen, B. C. (1969): 'Facts and Tautological Entailments', The Journal of Philosophy 66, 477-487.

[46] Wells, R. S. (1949): 'The Existence of Facts', Review of Metaphysics 3, 1-20.

3. ———. 1982. "Act, Events and Things." In Sprache und Ontologie. Akten des sechsten Internationalen Wittgenstein-Symposiums, 23. bis 30. August 1981, Kirchberg am Wechsel (Osterreich) , edited by Leinfellner, Werner, Kraemer, Eric and Schank, Jeffrey, 97-105. Wien: Holder-Pichler-Tempsky.

"The purpose of my theory is not to provide a reference for ordinary uses of a qua-phrase but to account for the identity of certain olher objects — chairs, tables and the like— to which we clearly do refer.

Qua objects are governed by certain principles; and it is in terms of them that they are best understood.

Existence. The qua object X qua φ exists at a given time (world-time) if and only if x exists and has φ at the given time (world-time);

Identity . (i) Two qua objects are the same only if their bases and glosses are the same, (ii) A qua object is distinct from its basis (or from the basis of its basis, should that be a qua object, and so on).

Inheritance . At any time (world-time) at which a qua object exists, it has those normal properties possessed by its basis." (p. 100)

(...)

"The theory of qua- objects has some other applications worth mentioning. First, the qua objects are very like Aristotle's compounds of matter and form, with the matter corresponding to the basis and the form to the gloss. Aristotle's views, it seems to me, have not been taken seriously enough; many of his more distinctive doctrines have either been forgotten or fallen into disrepute. A modern version of the Aristotelian theory should give us the courage to embrace some of those doctrines and the means to articulate them more clearly.

Secondly, the theory of qua objects is able to throw light on the question of the ground ' for necessary truths." (p. 104)

4. ———. 1983. "The Permutation Principle in Quantificational Logic." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 12:33-37.

"The story goes back to 1940, with the publication of Quine’s Mathematical Logic [5]. He there presents a system of quantificational logic in which only sentences or closed formulas are theorems."

(...)

"The story now goes to 1963, with the publication of papers by Kripke [2] and Lambert [3]. Kripke was concerned to block the derivation of the Barcan formula or its converse within a quantified version of the modal logic S5. He was able to do this by requiring, as in Quine [6], that only closed formulas be theorems. However, because he wished to dispense with the rule of necessitation and because he also wished to allow for the empty domain, he did not quite take Quine’s revised system as the quantificational basis for his modal logic."

(...)

Quite independently, Lambert developed a similar system. Like Kripke, he was concerned to allow for the empty domain; but he also wished to allow for theorems with free variables."

(...)

"As later became clear, Lambert’s full system (with identity) is complete for its intended interpretation. But it was then generally assumed that this system without its identity axioms and the corresponding quantificational part of Kripke’s system (which had not been formulated with identity in the first place) were also complete. Indeed, in their paper [4] of 1970, Leblanc and Meyer gave a metalogical investigation of the Lambert fragment in which it was presupposed that Permutation and related principles were derivable; and, in [2], Kripke claimed completeness for his full modal system, which would have entailed completeness for its quantificational fragment. But then, Lambert pointed out, in a letter to Meyer of around 1968-9, the difficulty of deriving Permutation within the identity-free part of his system; and independently, in his paper of 1970 ([7], p. 286, fn. 6), Trew pointed to the related difficulty of deriving Permutation within Kripke’s system. The problem of deriving the principle became open and, at least within the world of free logicians, achieved some notoriety.

It now appears that Permutation is not derivable within these systems." (pp. 33-35)

References

[1] Berry, G. D. W., ‘On Quine’s axioms of quantification’, Journal of Symbolic Logic 6 (1941), 23-27.

[2] Kripke, S., ‘Semantical considerations on modal logic’, Acta Philosophica Fennica 16 (1963), 83-94.

[3] Lambert, K,, ‘Existential import revisited, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 4 (1963), 288-292.

[4] Leblanc, H. and Meyer, R. K., ‘On prefacing (∀X ) A ⊃X AY/X with (∀Y) - A free quantification theory without identity’, Zeitschrift fur Matkematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik 16 (1970), 447-462.

[5] Quine, W. V., Mathematical Logic (1st edn.), Harvard University Press, Boston, 1940.

[6] Quine, W. V., 2nd edn. of above (1951).

[7] Trew, A., ‘Nonstandard theories of quantification and identity’, Journal of Symbolic Logic 35 (1970), 267-294

5. ———. 1983. "A Defence of Arbitrary Objects." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. Supplementary volume 57:55-77.

Reprinted in: Fred Landman, Frank Veltman (eds.), Varieties of Formal Semantics. Proceedings of the Fourth Amsterdam Colloquium, September 1982, Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1984, pp. 123-142.

"There is the following view. In addition to individual objects, there are arbitrary objects: in addition to individual numbers, arbitrary numbers; in addition to individual men, arbitrary men. With each arbitrary object is associated an appropriate range of individual objects, its values: with each arbitrary number, the range of individual numbers; with each arbitrary man, the range of individual men. An arbitrary object has those properties common to the individual objects in its range. So an arbitrary number is odd or even, an arbitrary man is mortal, since each individual number is odd or even, each individual man is mortal. On the other hand, an arbitrary number fails to be prime, an arbitrary man fails to be a philosopher, since some individual number is not prime, some individual man is not a philosopher.

Such a view used to be quite common, but has now fallen into complete disrepute. As with so many things, Frege led the way." (p. 55)

(...)

"In the face of such united opposition, it might appear rash to defend any form of the theory of arbitrary objects. But that is precisely what I intend to do. Indeed, I would want to claim, not only that a form of the theory is defensible, but also that it is extremely valuable. In application to a wide variety of topics— the logic of generality, the use of variables in mathematics, the role of pronouns in natural language— the theory provides explanations that are as good as those of standard quantification theory, and sometimes better.

Rather than present the finished theory at the outset, we may see it as the outgrowth of the criticisms that have been directed against its cruder formulations. Each criticism, if not deflected, will lead to an appropriate change of formulation. The finished form of the theory will then emerge as the cumulative result of these various criticisms; it will be, if you like, the prize that the proponent of the naive view can carry off with him in the contest with his critics. This is not how I myself came to the theory; but it is perhaps the most congenial approach for those who are already sceptical. (pp. 55-56)

6. ———. 1984. "Critical Review of Parsons' ' Nonexistent Objects '." Philosophical Studies no. 45:95-142.

Review of: Terence Parsons, Nonexistent Objects, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980.

"There has recently been a rebellion within the ranks of analytic philosophy. It has come to be appreciated that, in the debate between Russell and Meinong, Russell was perhaps mistaken in his criticisms and Meinong was perhaps correct in his views. As a consequence, an attempt was made to rehabilitate the Meinongian position, to defend it against the most obvious attacks and to develop it in the most plausible ways. T. Parsons was among the first of the contemporary philosophers to make this attempt, (1) and so it is especially appropriate that his views should now be set out in a book.

I should say, at the outset, that I thoroughly approve of the Meinongian project. As Parsons makes clear (pp. 32— 38), we refer to non-existents in much the same way as we refer to other objects. It is therefore incumbent upon the philosopher to work out the principles by which our discourse concerning such objects is governed. Not that this is necessarily to endorse a realist position towards the objects of the resulting theory. Nominalists and Platonists alike may attempt to set out the principles that govern arithmetical discourse; and it is in the same spirit that the realist or anti-realist may attempt to set out the principles of our fictional discourse.

Despite my approval of the project, I must admit to some misgivings as to how Parsons has carried it out. These misgivings are of two kinds. There are first some internal criticisms, requiring only change within Parsons’ basic approach. There are then some external criticisms, requiring change to the basic approach.

These criticisms, though, should not be thought to detract from the merits of Parsons’ book. It is, in many ways, an admirable contribution to the field.

It gives weight both to the interest and the legitimacy of the Meinongian enterprise; it pinpoints the difficulties which any satisfactory theory must deal with; and in its solution to those difficulties, it sets up a theory with a degree of rigour and systematicity that should serve as a model for years to come. As a well worked-out and accessible contribution to object theory, there is no better book." (pp. 95-96)

(1) Others include Castafieda [1], Rapaport [7], Routley [8] and Zalta [9].

References

[1] Castaneda, H. N.: 1974, Thinking and the structure of the world’, Philosophia 4, pp.3-40.

[7] Rapaport, W.: 1978, ‘Meinongian theories and a Russellian paradox’, Nous 12, pp.153-180.

[8] Routley, R.: 1980, Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond (Australian National University, Canberra).

[9] Zalta, E. N.: 1980, ‘An introduction to a theory of abstract objects’, Ph.D. Thesis (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

7. Fine, Kit, and Mc Carthy, Timothy. 1984. "Truth without Satisfaction." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 13:397-421.

"In his famous paper [7], Tarski gave a definition of truth for a formalized language. Unable to perform a direct recursion on the concept itself, he gave a definition in terms of satisfaction. This makes it natural to ask if such an indirect procedure is necessary or whether a definition of truth can be given without using or somehow invoking the concept of satisfaction.

The question, as it stands, is vague; and later we shall be concerned to make it more precise. But even as it stands, it has an obvious technical interest. The situation that Tarski found himself in is common in mathematics. We wish to define a certain concept, but unable to perform a direct recursion on the concept itself we perform a recursion on a related concept of which the given concept is a special case. It would therefore be desirable to know when the related concept is necessary, both in the case of truth and in general.

The question may also have some philosophical interest. There is a fundamental difference between the concepts of truth and of satisfaction. The former merely applies to certain linguistic units; the latter connects language to an ontology of objects, typically extra-linguistic. A negative result on defining truth without satisfaction may perhaps constrain formal attempts to implement non-referential conceptions of truth. In the present paper, however, we will not be concerned in detail with the philosophical aspects of our question, although we will from time to time mention some points of contact between our discussion and the philosophical literature.

Interest in our question dates back to Wallace [9]; and the topic was subsequently taken up by Tharp [8] and Kripke [3] (especially Section 10).

We have made our presentation self-contained, though the reader may consult the earlier work for general background and for elucidation of particular points.

The plan of our paper is as follows. Section 1 sets out the general framework in which our question and its cognates are posed. Section 2 solves the questions in case the meta-theory is not required to be finitely axiomatized; and Section 3 gives partial solutions in case finite axiomatizability is required, thereby answering a question of Kripke’s [3] and of Tharp’s [8].

Finally, Section 4 considers the question under other provisos on the metatheory." (pp. 397-398)

References

[3] Kripke, Saul, ‘Is there a problem about substitutional quantification?’ in G. Evans and J. McDowell (eds.), Truth and Meaning: Essays in Semantics (Oxford, 1976), 325-419.

[7] Tarski, A., ‘ The concept of truth in formalized languages’, in A. Tarski, Logic, Semantics and Metamathematics (Oxford, 1956), 152-278.

[8] Tharp, Leslie H., Truth, quantification, and abstract objects’, Nous V (1971), 363-372.

[9] Wallace, J., ‘On the frame of reference’, in D. Davidson and G. Harman (eds.), Semantics of Natural Language , D. Reidel, 1972, pp. 219-252.

8. Fine, Kit. 1985. "Natural Deduction and Arbitrary Objects." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 14:57-107.

Reprinted in Philosopher's Annual, vol. 8, 1985.

"This paper is an abridged and simplified version of my monograph Reasoning with Arbitrary Objects [4]. It may be read by the diligent as a preparation for the longer work or by the indolent as a substitute for it. But the reader, in either case, may find it helpful to consult the paper, A Defence of Arbitrary Objects [3], for general philosophical orientation.

This paper deals with certain problems in understanding natural deduction and ordinary reasoning. As is well known, there exist in ordinary reasoning certain procedures for arguing to a universal conclusion and from an existential premiss.We may establish that all objects have a given property by showing that an arbitrary object has the property; and having shown that there exists an object with a given property, we feel entitled to give it a name and infer that it has the property." (p. 57).

References

[3] Fine, K., ‘A defence of arbitrary objects’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. LVII, 55-77 (1983); also to appear in Varieties of Formal Semantics (eds. F. Landman and F. Veltman), GRASS III, Fovis Publications, Dordrecht Cinnaminson (1984).

[4] Fine, K., Reasoning with Arbitrary Objects , to appear in the Aristotelian Society Monograph Series (1984).

9. ———. 1985. "Logics Containing K4. Part II." Journal of Symbolic Logic no. 50:619-651.

"The plan of this part is as follows. §1 presents some elementary results on pmorphisms. §2 introduces the logics to be proved complete and §3 the conditions for which they are complete. §4 contains the completeness proof. In §5 we show that there are a continuum of subframe logics, while in §6 we give various alternative characterizations of the subframe logics and extend our results on the finite model property from logics to theories. The final section, §7, gives a general characterization of those of the subframe logics that are compact and gives reasonably practicable methods for determining when a logic is compact and what condition its axioms express.

I make free use of the material in the first five sections of Part I, and the reader is advised to have that part at hand." (p. 620)

10. ———. 1985. "Plantinga on the Reduction of Possibilist Discourse." In Alvin Plantinga , edited by Tomberlin, James and Inwagen, Peter van, 145-186. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Reprinted in: Modality and Tense. Philosophical Papers, as chapter 5, pp. 176-213.

"Plantinga is what I call a modal actualist. He believes that the idioms of necessity and possibility are to be taken as primitive in preference to talk of possible worlds and that only actuals, as opposed to possibles, are to be granted ontological status. On these two issues, he and I agree.

The modal actualist faces a challenge. Talk of possible worlds and of possible individuals appears to make perfectly good sense. There seems to be a clear meaning, for example, in the claim that some possible object does not exist. So the modal actualist, once he grants that possibilist discourse makes sense, must somehow give it sense. It is on this question of how such a challenge is to be met that Plantinga and I disagree.

He favours a reduction of possibilist discourse in which possible worlds and possible individuals give way to propositions and properties, respectively; I favour a reduction in which reference to possibles becomes a modal manner of reference to actuals. In this paper, I shall attempt to adjudicate between these rival positions.

In the first section, I shall set out the problem of reduction and Plantinga's favoured solution. In the second, I shall present my central criticism of the reduction, viz. that it is question-begging. In the next three sections, I shall consider the related question of whether properties and propositions exist necessarily, first presenting an argument against and then disposing of an argument for their necessary existence. In the final section, I shall present my own reduction and the reasons for preferring it to Plantinga's.

The central theme of this paper is the question of reduction; but it should have a broader significance than such a theme might suggest. Partly this is because other issues, of independent interest, are raised: the connection between existence and predication; the necessary existence of propositions; the Priorian stand on modality. But perhaps more important than this question of particular issues is the question of how the issues are to be approached, of what is to count as a plausible consideration one way or another. Even when I have found myself in agreement with Plantinga on a certain view, I have often also found myself unhappy with the reasons he adduces in its favour. It is in this difference of approach, then, that the paper may also have a broader significance." (pp. 145-146)

11. ———. 1988. "Semantics for Quantified Relevance Logic." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 17:27-59.

Reprinted in: Alan Ross Anderson, Nuel D. Belnap, Jr., with contributions by J. Michael Dunn ... [et al.], Entailment: The Logic of Relevance and Necessity, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992 vol. II, pp. 235-262.

"This paper is a companion piece to my Incompleteness for Quantified Relevance Logics . In that earlier paper, I showed that RQ and other systems of quantified relevance logic were not complete for the standard semantics. In the present paper, I provide a semantics with respect to which they are complete." (p. 27)

(...)

"This section is divided into five subsections. The first two lay out the semantics, the third presents the logics, and the last two establish soundness and completeness. A basic knowledge of the semantics for propositional relevance logic is presupposed (see §51). It is conceivable that the methods of the present section might be used to simplify the proofs of incompleteness for the standard semantics; but this is not here investigated." (p. 239 of the reprint)

12. ———. 1989. "Incompleteness for Quantified Relevance Logics." In Directions in Relevant Logic , edited by Norman, Jean and Sylvan, Richard, 205-225. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Reprinted in: Alan Ross Anderson, Nuel D. Belnap, Jr., with contributions by J. Michael Dunn ... [et al.], Entailment: The Logic of Relevance and Necessity, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992 vol. II, pp. 235-261.

"In the early seventies, several logicians developed a semantics for propositional systems of relevance logic.

(...)

In the light of this work, it seemed reasonable to extend the completeness results to quantificational systems of relevance logic. But what systems should be chosen? One would like, in the first place, to deal with the systems that already exist in the literature, such as quantified R (RQ) or quantified E (EQ). This, at least, is a debt that we owe to the history of the subject. But one would also like to prove completeness for the quantificational analogues of propositional systems that have already been proved to be complete. These analogues might be obtained from the propositional system by adding a standard quantificational component, consisting of such and such axioms and rules. Such a component might be chosen in terms of its intrinsic plausibility as a quantificational basis. Less arbitrarily, it might be chosen so as to yield a complete system when combined with the minimal propositional system (the one complete under no special conditions on o, R or *). Not surprisingly, the pre-existing systems turn out to be equivalent to the systems obtained by the other approach.

The construction of the quantificational analogue is not, in fact, as straightforward as this description might suggest; for the extension of the propositional semantics to the quantificational case is not unique. It must be decided whether the domain I of individuals is to be constant or not. If it is not constant, then there are various ways of dealing with nonexistent individuals, individuals that do not belong to the domain of the world or point under consideration. But once these decisions are made, the choice of the quantificational component can be fixed." (p. 205)

13. ———. 1989. "The Problem of De Re M odality." In Themes from Kaplan , edited by Almog, Joseph, Perry, John and Wettstein, Howard, 197-272. New York: Oxford University Press.

Reprinted in: Modality and Tense. Philosophical Papers, as chapter 2, pp. 40-104.

"I want now to evaluate Quine’s objections to quantified modal logic, dealing first with the metaphysical and then with the logical argument.

I observed before that the metaphysical argument was operator-specific; for different operators it yields different problems. This observation applies as much to different notions of necessity as it does to notions other than necessity. There is not a single problem of essentialism, but a range of problems, that vary according to the notion of necessity in question.

There are perhaps four principal notions of necessity for which the problem arises; these are, respectively, the logical, the analytic, the metaphysical, and the natural. Of these, the most important is undoubtedly the problem for the metaphysical notion. Indeed, not only is this problem of great importance in itself, but it is central, in my opinion, to any attempt to understand the nature of metaphysics.

However, it is not my intention to discuss this problem here. I wish to follow Quine and concentrate my attention on the logical and semantic modalities." (p. 202)

14. ———. 1989. "The Justification of Negation as Failure." In Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science VIII. Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Moscow, 1987 , edited by Fenstad, Jens Erik, Frolov, Ivan and Hilpinen, Risto, 263-301. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

"Prolog is a logic programming language; it is used to answer queries on the basis of information provided by the programmer. For the most part, the logic employed by Prolog is standard. But it uses a highly unorthodox rule for establishing negative facts. This rule, the so-called rule of negation as failure, allows us to deny a statement on the grounds that a certain attempt to prove it has failed.

The rule is not classically valid; and therefore the question arises as to how it is to be justified. There are basically three different kinds of justification that have been proposed in the literature. The first is to re-interpret negation to mean something like unprovability. The second is to assume that the program is complete with respect to truths; all truths are derivable. The third is to suppose that the program is complete with respect to conditions; all sufficient conditions for the application of the predicates have been specified.

My aim in this paper is to evaluate these various proposals and then to make a proposal of my own. I shall argue that the existing proposals all suffer from some defect or another: the first is unable to account for a classical reading of negation; the second delivers too much on programs which employ negation; and the third delivers too little on programs which make no use of negation.

I shall then argue that my own proposal is able to avoid these difficulties. From one point of view, the proposal is not new; it is merely a form of the second proposal stated above, according to which all truths are derivable. However, the concept of derivability which is appealed to is quite novel; for the assumption that all truths are derivable, may itself be used in establishing that a given statement is derivable. The assumption has, in other words, a self-referential character.

The proposal has various other features of interest. It provides a natural way of interpreting inductive definitions in which the positive instances of a predicate are allowed to depend upon its negative instances. It sanctions an extension of the rule of negation of failure, under which not only the finite, but also the transfinite, failure of a statement may constitute a ground for its denial. It is capable of variation in the choice of which other assumptions or rules are used in defining the concept of derivability.

(...)

One feature of my exposition is worthy of special note. I have for the most part confined my attention to the sentential case, under which only truth-functional complexity is ever exposed. Such a case is usually regarded as trivial, since most of the interesting features of Prolog depend upon the use of variables. However, in this regard, the rule of negation as failure is an exception. Most of the problems in justifying the rule already arise at the sentential level; and to solve these problems at this level is to have gone a long way towards solving them altogether. There are, however, certain difficulties which are peculiar to the introduction of variables and terms; and these are considered at the end of the paper. It is argued, in particular, that the usual assumptions concerning an ontology of terms are needlessly strong and that an ordinary ontology of individuals can be countenanced in its place." (pp. 263-264)

15. ———. 1990. "Quine on Quantifying In." In Propositional Attitudes: The Role of Content in Logic, Language and Mind , edited by Anderson, Anthony and Owens, Joseph, 1-26. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University.

Reprinted in: Modality and Tense. Philosophical Papers, as chapter 3, pp. 105-130.

"It is my aim in this chapter to evaluate Quine’s argument against quantifying into modal contexts, dealing first with the peculiarly modal considerations and then with the more general logical considerations." (p. 2)

16. ———. 1991. "The Study of Ontology." Noûs no. 25:263-294.

"A constructional ontology is one which serves to construct complexes from simples. The present paper is concerned with the nature and with the study of such ontologies. It attempts to say, in the first place, how they are constituted and by what principles they are governed. But it also attempts to say how their study may lead one to adopt certain positions and to make certain definitions.

The remarks on the study of ontology are meant to relate to the study of disciplines in general. I am interested in how the study of a discipline gets shaped by the positions which are adopted and the strategies which are pursued. These interact; for the pursuit of certain kinds of strategy will lead to the adoption of certain kinds of position, and the adoption of certain kinds of position will be required by the pursuit of certain kinds of strategy. One therefore needs to understand how they interact.

Certain subsidiary themes run through the paper, all interrelated in one way or another. One concerns a dialectical conception of modality, one that is determined by what is left open at a given stage of enquiry. Another involves a particular way of expressing modal claims, in terms of certain objects requiring others. Yet a third is an interest in a relativist conception of ontology, according to which no ontology stands out as being correct.

The paper concludes with a formal appendix, which attempts to make precise much of what can be made precise in the earlier informal part of the paper. Each part has been designed to be read independently of the other, although a proper understanding of either part depends upon reading them both." (p. 263)

17. ———. 1991. "The Identity of Material Objects." In Topics in Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence , edited by Albertazzi, Liliana and Poli, Roberto, 33-37. Bozen: Istituto Mitteleuropeo di Cultura.

Papers from the International Summer Schools in Bozen - 1989-1990.

"1. The Problem of Identity

What is a question of identity? Two responses to this meta-question of identity may be distinguished, which I call the comparative and the intrinsic. On the comparative conception, one answers a question of identity by saying when two objects of a given sort are the same. On the intrinsic conception, one answers a question of identity by saying what objects of a given sort are "in themselves".

The comparative conception goes back to Locke's famous chapter on identity. It was extended by Frege. Very roughly, we may say that Frege extended the application of the comparative conception from the identity of concrete objects to the identity of abstract objects. This conception is the dominant one of today; it informs the work of Strawson, Quine, Wiggins and of others.

The basic idea behind the comparative conception is to make the what of identity a when: to ask what an object of a given sort is is to ask when objects of that sort are the same. But to ask when two objects are the same invites the trivial answer: when they are the same. We need somehow to distinguish the intended answers to this question.

This can often be done by means of the concept of a presentation. I mean to use this term in a suitably abstract sense. Thus a sentence might be regarded as a presentation of a proposition; there is no need for a presentation to be something mental or even for it to be that by which we grasp the object.

An intended answer to an identity question then says when two presentations are presentations of the same object; and it says this in terms which do not presuppose the identity of the objects at issue.

Different questions of identity - e.g. at a time, across time, across worlds - turn on different accounts of how the objects are to be presented.

There is a fundamental criticism to be made of the comparative conception. For it says what kind of "career" the object has, not what kind of object it is that has the career. For example, a transtemporal criterion of identity for material things is compatible with a material thing being (a) a primitive substance, (b) a mereological sum of time-slices, (c) the embodiment of a form, (d) an event, and so on. Similarly, the extensional criterion of identity for sets is compatible with a set being (a) constructive, (b) "exclusive", i.e. determined by its non-members rather than by its members, (c) logical, i.e. determined by a property with the required extension rather than by its members.

What is missing from the comparative conception? I would like to suggest that often what is missing is an account of how the objects of the given kind are generated or analysed. Thus primitive substances are not generated from anything else at all, mereological sums are generated by aggregation, embodiments are generated by a suitable embodiment operator, and so on. In each case, we need to say how (if at all) the object is to be analysed; we need to say what the object is in itself." pp. 33-34.

18. ———. 1992. "Aristotle on Matter." Mind no. 101:35-57.

"It is my belief that there is still a great deal to be learnt from Aristotle’s views on the nature of substance; and it is my aim in a series of papers, of which this is the first, to make clear what these views are and what it is in them that is of value. (1)

A peculiarity of my approach, compared to current scholarly practice, is the attempt at rigour. I have tried to provide what is in effect a formalization of Aristotle’s views. I have, that is to say, attempted to make clear which of his concepts are undefined and which of his claims underived; and I have attempted to show how the remaining concepts are to be defined and the remaining claims to be derived.

I can well understand a traditional scholar being suspicious of such an approach on the grounds that the various parts of Aristotle’s thought are either too unclear to be capable of formalization or else are clear enough not to require it.

Since the matter is not one for a priori dispute, I can only ask the scholar to put his suspicions at bay until the details of the case are examined. I then think that it will be found that the attempt at rigour provides a most valuable guide for the study of the text.

I have not tried to deal with all aspects of Aristotle’s thought on substance. I have concentrated on those which centre on the concepts of matter, form, part, and change; and I have neglected those which concern the related concepts of predication, function, priority and power. It is to be hoped that the investigation will be rounded out at some later time to include all of the central aspects of his work.

It should also be mentioned that my treatment of the text has not been altogether scholarly. Partly this has been a matter of competence, and partly of inclination. I have been more concerned with the broad sweep of Aristotle’s views than with exegetical detail; and this has led me to conjecture that he held a certain opinion, not because of direct textual evidence but because it is what his view most naturally requires. Thus the Aristotle I have presented here is much more consistent, definite and complete than the Aristotle of the texts." (p. 35)

(1) This paper is based upon the first two sections of my unpublished paper “Aristotle on Substance” . I should like to thank the members of a seminar I held at UCLA in the winter of 1991, and Frank Lewis in particular, for many helpful discussions on some of the topics of the paper. I am also grateful to Richard Sorabji for valuable remarks on an earlier version of the paper.

19. ———. 1992. "Transparent Grammars." In Logic from Computer Science. Proceedings of a Workshop held November 13-17, 1989 , edited by Moschovachis, Yiannis N., 129-151. New York: Springer.

"1 . Introdution

‘Cat’ is a word which occurs in ‘cattle’, but it does not occur as a word; ‘1-1-2’ is a term which occurs in ‘1+ 2.3’, but it does not occur as a term. All such occurrences of expressions might be said to be accidental, since they are accidents of how the syntax of the language happens to be realized.

The notion of accidental occurrence is significant in various areas of thought. In logic, it greatly aids the formulation and proof of meta-logical results if it can be assumed that the underlying language contains no accidental occurrences. For example, a subformula can then simply be defined as a formula which occurs within a given formula rather than as an expression which is thrown up by a parsing of that formula. In philosophy, the issue of whether one can quantify into modal contexts has been seen to turn on such questions as to whether the occurrence of ‘9’ in ‘necessarily, 9 > 7’ is accidental or not; and the absence of accidental occurrence has been regarded as a condition on any “ ideal language” . In computer science and in linguistics, the presence of accidental occurrences has an obvious relevance to parsing, since they lead to the danger that a parser might mistake an apparent constituent of the expression to be parsed for a genuine constituent.

Let us say that a language or grammar is transparent if it permits no accidental occurrences. It is the main purpose of the present paper to investigate the conditions under which a context-free grammar is transparent.

It is shown how any accidental occurrence reduces to a certain “ primitive” case; and it is shown how such primitive occurrences might be detected.

On the basis of these results on reduction and detection, an effective test for transparency is then given.

The concept of transparency represents a strengthening of the more familiar concept of nonambiguity. Any transparent grammar, at least of a well-behaved sort, is unambiguous, though not every unambiguous grammar is transparent. Moreover, what is required for many purposes is not merely an unambiguous but a transparent grammar. It is therefore significant in this regard that there is an effective test for the stronger property even though there is no effective test for the weaker one.

The plan of the paper is as follows. The first two sections introduce the relevant notions from the theory of context-free grammars. The third section explains the connection between nonambiguity and transparency.

The fourth section establishes the reduction of accidental occurrence to the primitive case. The next three sections deal with the question of detecting the primitive accidental occurrences: a more fully articulated or canonical version of the given grammar is introduced; it is shown how accidental occurrences in the given grammar correspond to certain kinds of expression in the canonical grammar; and a precedence analysis is given of those expressions in the canonical grammar which correspond to the primitive

accidental occurrences in the given grammar. An effective test for transparency is then provided in the final section.

The treatment of transparency in this paper has been very brief. Many of the results can be extended; and I have given a much fuller account in Fine [1]." (pp. 129-130)

References

[1] Fine, K., Transparency I and II , submitted to Language and Control.

20. ———. 1994. "Essence and Modality." Philosophical Perspectives no. 8:1-16.

Reprinted in The Philosopher’s Annual for 1994 , volume 16, (edited by Patrick Grim, Gary Mar, Peter Williams), Stanford: CSLI 1996 and in J. Kim, D. Korman, E. Sosa (eds.), Metaphysics: An Anthology , Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell 2011 (second edition).

"The concept of essence has played an important role in the history and development of philosophy; and in no branch of the discipline is its importance more manifest than in metaphysics.

Its significance for metaphysics is perhaps attributable to two main sources. In the first place, the concept may be used to characterize what the subject, or at least part of it, is about.

For one of the central concerns of metaphysics is with the identity of things, with what they are.

But the metaphysician is not interested in every property of the objects under consideration. In asking 'What is a person?', for example, he does not want to be told that every person has a deep desire to be loved, even if this is in fact the case.

What then distinguishes the properties of interest to him? What is it about a property which makes it bear, in the metaphysically significant sense of the phrase, on what an object is?

It is in answer to this question that appeal is naturally made to the concept of essence. For what appears to distinguish the intended properties is that they are essential to their bearers." (p. 1)

(...)

"It is my aim in this paper to show that the contemporary assimilation of essence to modality is fundamentally misguided and that, as a consequence, the corresponding conception of metaphysics should be given up. It is not my view that the modal account fails to capture anything which might reasonably be called a concept of essence. My point, rather, is that the notion of essence which is of central importance to the metaphysics of identity is not to be understood in modal terms or even to be regarded as extensionally equivalent to a modal notion. The one notion is, if I am right, a highly refined version of the other; it is like a sieve which performs a similar function but with a much finer mesh.

I shall also argue that the traditional assimilation of essence to definition is better suited to the task of explaining what essence is. It may not provide us with an analysis of the concept, but it does provide us with a good model of how the concept works. Thus my overall position is the reverse of the usual one. It sees real definition rather than de re modality as central to our understanding of the concept." (p. 3)

21. ———. 1994. "Compounds and Aggregates." Noûs no. 28:137-158.

"Some objects appear to be composed of parts: a quantity of sand of its grains, a throbbing pain of its throbs, a set of its members, and a proposition of its constituents.

There seem to be two fundamentally different ways in which an object can be composed of parts. One is nonstructural in character; the parts just merge. The other is structural; the parts hang together within a structure. Thus of the examples above, the first two, the sand and the pain, are composed from their parts in a nonstructural fashion, while the last two, the set and the proposition, are composed in a structural manner.

The notion of a nonstructural method of composition may be taken to be one which conforms to certain structure-obliterating identity conditions. These are as follows: order and repetition among the composing objects is irrelevant to the result; the composition of a single object is the object itself; and the composition of compositions of objects is the composition of those very objects'. Thus the first of these conditions excludes concatenation as a nonstructural method of composition; while each of the remaining conditions excludes the set-builder (the operation which composes a set from its members).

Let us agree to call any nonstructural method of composition a method of fusion. There is a particular such method, I call it aggregation, which has been very prominent in the literature on part-whole. It may be characterized as a method of composition which conforms to the identity conditions above and which also conforms to the following existence conditions: the aggregate of objects which exist in time exists at exactly those times at which one of the objects exists; and an aggregate of objects which are located in space occupies, at any given time at which it exists, exactly those places which are occupied by one of the objects.

It has often been supposed that aggregation is a legitimate method of composition, that objects may be composed from others in conformity with the conditions set forth above. What has made aggregation so attractive, apart from any intuitive appeal it may have, are two main factors (which will be discussed in more detail later in the paper). The first, and most important, is the identification of a thing with the content of its spatio-temporal extension. The second is the identification of a thing with the fusion of its time-slices. Both of these forms of identification require that the objects fuse in the manner of aggregation.

It has also often been supposed that aggregation is the only legitimate method of fusion. Part of the appeal of this further position may arise from a general hostility to different methods of composition, whether they be methods of fusion or not. Under the form of nominalism championed by Goodman, for example, there can be no difference in objects without a difference in their parts; and this implies that the same parts cannot, through different methods of composition, yield different wholes.

However, I suspect that many of those who would be open to structural methods of composition would still not be open to distinct nonstructural methods of composition. For it is hard to see, especially given the identification of a thing with its spatio-temporal content, what other methods of fusion there might be; and it is hard to see how there could be alternative conceptions of a fusion, of a whole at the same level as its elements and formed without regard to their order or repetition.

Let us call the extreme position, that there is only one method of composition, mereological monism; let us call the less extreme position, that there is only one method of fusion, fusion monism; and let us call that particular version of fusion monism according to which aggregation is the sole method of fusion aggregation monism.

The main purpose of this paper is to show that the last of these three positions is mistaken. I want to show that there is a method of fusion which is not aggregative, i.e. which does not conform to the characteristic existence conditions for aggregates. However, my attack on this position may be relevant to the two other positions as well. For granted that aggregation is itself a legitimate method of fusion, it follows that fusion monism should be dropped in favour of a pluralist position. And to the extent that the adoption of monism depended upon a general hostility to structural considerations, the way is then open to the admission of structural methods of composition.

It is also my intention to attack two related forms of monistic doctrine. For just as we can single out the aggregative method of nonstructural composition, so we can single out the aggregative way of being a nonstructural part and the aggregative kind of nonstructural whole. One might then maintain that not only does aggregation constitute the only nonstructural method of composition, but that it also constitutes the only nonstructural way of being a part and the only nonstructural way of being a whole. We therefore have three forms of monism, one with respect to composition, another with respect to part, and a third with respect to whole. As will later become clear, the two further forms of monism aresuccessively weaker than the original; and so their denials might be taken, in mimicry of Quine, to comprise three grades of mereological involvement.

From the discussion of monism will emerge objections to two other prominent doctrines: extensionalism and mereological atomism. According to the first of these, things are the same when their extensions (spatial, spatio-temporal, or modal-spatio-temporal) are the same; and according to the second, parts are prior to their wholes.

For the purposes of attacking the aggregation monist, I have assumed that aggregation is a legitimate method of fusion. Towards the end of the paper, I suggest that there is no such method and propose a form of fusion monism in which some other method of fusion takes the place of aggregation. However, my tentative endorsement of fusion monism is not meant in any way to lend support to a general monist position." (pp. 137-139)

22. ———. 1994. "A Puzzle Concerning Matter and Form." In Unity, Identity, and Explanation in Aristotle's Metaphysics , edited by Scaltsas, Theodore, Charles, David and Gill, Mary Louise, 13-40. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

"Montgomery Furth has written (1), "given a suitable pair of individuals ... there is no reason of Aristotelian metaphysics why the very fire and earth that this noon composes Callias and distinguishes him from Socrates could not, by a set of utterly curious chances, twenty years from now compose Socrates ...". He does not specify what these "curious chances" might be. But we may suppose that Socrates eats Callias for his lunch and that, owing to the superiority of Callias' flesh and bone, it is the matter of this which remains in Socrates after the period of twenty years.

That such an exchange of matter is possible is a point on which many Aristotelian scholars could agree. However, I wish to argue that such a case gives rise to a fundamental difficulty; for its possibility runs into conflict with certain basic metaphysical principles which are commonly attributed to him and which would also be commonly accepted.

The problem consequently arises as to how this difficulty is to be resolved. This problem itself may be regarded in two somewhat different lights. On the one hand, it may be regarded as a difficulty for Aristotle. The question then is whether one can find a solution which would be acceptable to him, either in the sense that he would or that he could accept it. On the other hand, it may be regarded as a difficulty for a neo-Aristotelian, i.e. to someone who is sympathetic to the analysis of things into matter and form. The question then is to find a solution, regardless of whether or not it would be acceptable to Aristotle.

For the most part, my concern has been with the exegetical question; and even here, my purposes have been somewhat limited. For I have not attempted to settle on one solution as opposed to another. My aim has been to map out the exegetical space rather than to locate the views of Aristotle within it.

However, it should be mentioned that I count myself a neo-Aristotelian (and, indeed, it was my own commitment to hylomorphism which led me investigate Aristotle' views in the first place). It has therefore been of some importance for me to take the purely metaphysical question into account."(p. 13)

(1) Furth, M. Transtemporal Stability in Aristotelian Substances , Journal of Philosophy, 75 (1978), 624-646; reprinted in Substance, Form, and Psyche: An Aristotelean Metaphysics , Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1988. (note abbreviated).

23. ———. 1995. "The Logic of Essence." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 24:241-273.

"Central to this paper is a certain distinction. This is the distinction between objects simply having a property and their having that property essentially or by their very nature. Also central to the paper is a certain claim. This is the claim that the notion of essence, of objects essentially having a property, is not to be understood in terms of the notion of necessity.

The claim is defended in my paper Essence and Modality . But the basic idea behind the defence can be given here. Consider Socrates and the singleton set containing him. Now although it is plausible to suppose that the singleton essentially contains the man, it is not plausible to suppose that the man essentially belongs to the singleton. There is nothing in the nature of Socrates which demands that there be any sets, let alone one that contains him. However, the standard accounts of essence in terms of necessity are unable to account for this asymmetry. For under such an account, the singleton essentially containing Socrates will consist in something like its being necessarily the case that the set contains Socrates if the set exists. But if this is true, then it will also be necessarily the case that Socrates belongs to the set if the man exists." (p. 241)

24. ———. 1995. "Part-Whole." In The Cambridge Companion to Husserl , edited by Smith, Barry and Smith, David Woodruff, 463-485. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Husserl's third Logical Investigation is perhaps the most significant treatise on the concept of part to be found in the philosophical literature. (1) In it Husserl attempts to analyze the notion of dependent part, to lay down the principles governing its use, and to relate it to more general considerations concerning the nature of necessity and unity.

He begins his study with the consideration of objects in the psychological sphere. A typical example of the kind of object he has in mind is that of a visual datum, a red patch, let us say, and its various aspects or "moments"- its colour, say, or its extension. He takes each of these moments to be peculiar to the object in question; no other datum, no matter how great its resemblance to the original datum, will have the very same moments. He also takes the moments to be, in a suitably broad sense, part of the given object; they are thought to be actually present in it." (p. 463)

(...)

"My aim in the present essay is to clarify certain formal aspects of Husserl's thought. I have here and there, inserted some critical comments; but my main concern has been to say what the views are, and not to say whether or not they are right. Husserl himself took the formalization of his ideas to be not only possible, but highly desirable. He writes (§24, 484):

a proper working out of the pure theory we here have in mind would have to define all concepts with mathematical exactness and to deduce all theorems by argumenta in forma, i.e., mathematically. . . . That this end can be achieved has been shown by the small beginnings of a purely formal treatment in our present chapter. In any case, the progress from vaguely formed to mathematically exact concepts and theories is here, as everywhere, the precondition for full insight into a priori connections and an inescapable demand of science.

Thus the present paper can be regarded as an attempt to carry though the project that he began." (p. 464)

25. ———. 1995. "The Problem of Mixture." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly no. 76:266-369.

Reprinted in: Frank A. Lewis and Robert Bolton (eds.), Form, Matter and Mixture in Aristotle, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996, pp. 82-182.

"For Aristotle, the everyday world contains three main kinds of things: the elements, the homogeneous mixtures, and the heterogeneous substances. The topic of mixture was vigorously debated in medieval times (see Maier (1982): 142). But contemporary interest has focused on the objects at the extremes of his ontology -- the elements and the substances -- while the topic of mixture has been relatively neglected. This is unfortunate. For not only is the topic of great interest in its own right, it is also important for a wider understanding of Aristotle's scientific and metaphysical views.

The intrinsic interest of the topic largely arises from the difficulty in seeing how a non-atomistic conception of matter is to be reconciled with a plausible view of mixture. The exegetical interest has perhaps two main sources. The first resides in the special position occupied by mixtures in Aristotle's ontology. For all substances are composed of mixtures; and all elements compose mixtures, in so far as they compose anything at all. Thus the mixtures provide the cushion, as it were, between the elements and the substances; and any account of the role of the elements or of the nature of the substances should deal with the relationship of each to the mixtures.

The other source of exegetical interest lies in the relevance of the topic of mixture to other, more general, topics -- principally, potentiality and change. Just as mixtures occupy a kind of midpoint between the elements and the substances, so mixing occupies a kind of midpoint between accidental and substantial change; and the potentiality of the ingredients in a mixture is one of the more important and problematic forms of potentiality for Aristotle. Thus no exegesis of his views on either change or potentiality can be considered complete unless it takes into account his views on mixture.

We now know that Aristotle's views on mixture are mistaken, and badly mistaken at that. In rejecting atomism he made a critical (though understandable) error; and when one combines the rejection of atomism with the antiquated belief in the four elements, it is easy to conclude that his views are purely of scholarly interest with no real relevance to contemporary concerns. But even though his views may be much further removed from reality than those of modern science, they are much closer in many ways to common sense. In the laboratory we do not suppose that every part of some butter is butter. But in the kitchen we do; and it is convenient, though erroneous, assumptions of this sort that guide us in our everyday life. This therefore suggests that we treat these views of Aristotle as having their most direct bearing, not on the nature of reality, but on the structure of common sense.

There have been recent attempts in cognitive science to formalize the content of folk or naive physics; such a physics is meant to provide the principles that would enable one to construct a robot that could deal with the everyday world in much the same way as we do. If I am not mistaken, the contemporary interest of Aristotle's scientific views may lie as much in their connection with these developments within cognitive science as it does with the content of the established sciences. I might add that the recent attempt to rehabilitate the notion of capacity by Cartwright (1989) and others also gives a topical interest to Aristotle's general views on capacities and on the way they might compose or interact within a mixture.

The paper is in six sections. In the first, I state the problem with which Aristotle opens his discussion of mixture in Generation and Corruption : how is mixture possible? Aristotle thinks he has a solution; and our problem is to understand what that solution is. In the next section, I consider three interpretations of his views on mixture, those of Sharvy (1983), Gill (1989) and Bogen (1995), and find all of them wanting. The main defect with these proposals, from my own point of view, is that they do not take Aristotle's hylomorphic outlook sufficiently seriously. In the third section, I provide a sketch of that outlook and set out the two main accounts of mixture that are in conformity with it, Leveling and Ascent; one places mixture at the same level as the elements, the other at a higher level. The next two sections are the heart of the paper and constitute a sustained argument in favor of Leveling. It is shown how two doctrines -- the doctrines of intermediates and of derived parts -- enable Aristotle to avoid the apparently insuperable difficulties that lie in the way of its acceptance. The final section considers the problem of how mixing, as opposed to mixture, is possible and argues that Aristotle is also in a position to solve this problem." (pp. 82-83).

References:

Bogen, 1995 "Fire in the belly: Aristotelian elements, organisms, and chemical compounds", this volume [pp. 183-216]

Gill, M. 1989 Aristotle on Substance: The Paradox of Unity, New Jersey: Pennsylvania University Press

Maier, A. 1982 On the Threshold of Exact Science, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press

Sharvy, R. 1983 "Aristotle on Mixtures", Journal of Philosophy , 80, 439-457.

26. ———. 1995. "Ontological Dependence." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 95:269-290.

"T'here appears to be a distinctively ontological sense in which one thing may be said to depend upon another. What the one thing is will depend upon the other thing, upon what it is. It is in this sense that one is tempted to say that a set depends upon its members or that a particularized feature, such as a smile, upon the particular in which it is found. For what the set is will depend upon its members; and what the feature is will depend upon the particular that instantiates it. (1)

Granted that there is an intelligible notion of ontological dependence, it would appear to be of great importance to the study of metaphysics. Metaphysics has two main areas of concern: one is with the nature of things, with what they are; and the other is with the existence of things, with whether they are. Considerations of dependence are relevant to both. For central to the question of the nature of any item is the determination of what it depends upon; and if something is taken to exist, then so must any thing upon which it depends. Indeed, it has often been maintained that it is only those things which do not depend upon anything else that can properly be said to exist at all." (p. 269)

(...)

"But how is the notion of dependence itself to be understood? The idea of what something is, its identity or being , is notoriously obscure; and the idea of the being of one thing depending upon that of another is doubly obscure. A natural suggestion at this point is to take the being of something simply to be its existence. Thus in saying that a set depends upon its members, or a feature upon its instantiator, we are taking the existence of the one to depend upon that of the other. Call this the existential construal of dependence. Another natural suggestion is to take the dependence between the beings of the two items, as opposed to the items themselves, to be modal in character. The being of the one will depend upon that of the other in the sense that it is necessary that if the one item has its ‘being’ then so does the other. Call this the modal construal of dependence." (p. 270)

(1) This paper derives from an earlier paper ‘Dependent Objects’ , that was written in 1982 but remained unpublished. Some of the issues raised are discussed at greater length in Fine [1995b]; and no attempt is here made to settle the methodological, as opposed to the conceptual, issues. I should like to thank Ruth Chang and the members of the Wednesday Group at Oxford for helpful comments.

References

Fine K. [1995b] ‘Senses of Essence’, to appear in Festschrift for Ruth Barcan Marcus.

27. ———. 1995. "Senses of Essence." In Modality, Morality and Belief. Essays in Honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus , edited by Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, 53-73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"One may distinguish between tbe essential and accidental properties of an object. A property of an object is essential if it must have the property to be what it is; otherwise the property is accidental.

But what exactly is meant by this account? It has been common to give a further explanation in modal terms. A property is taken to be essential when it is necessary that the object have the property or, alternatively, when it is necessary that it have tbe property if it exist. For reasons that I have already given in my paper “Essence and Modality,’’ I doubt whether this or any other modal explanation of the notion can succeed. Indeed, I doubt whether there exists any explanation of the notion in fundamentally different terms. But this is not to deny the possibility of further clarification; and it is the aim of the present paper to provide it.

What I shall do is to distinguish some of the closely related ways in which the notion may be understood. This will be important for getting clearer both on which claims can be made with its help and on which concepts can be defined with its help. In particular, we shall see that several different senses of ontological dependence correspond to the different senses of essence. The task is also important for the purpose of developing a logic of essentialist reasoning; for most of the different senses of essence that we distinguish will make a difference to the resulting logic. My main concern in this paper has been with making the distinctions, and not with drawing out their implications; but I hope it is clear from the examples what some of these implications are." (p. 53)

28. Fine, Kit, and Schurz, Gerhard. 1996. "Transfer Theorems for Multimodal Logics." In Logic and Reality: Essays on the Legacy of Arthur Prior , edited by Copeland, Jack, 169-214. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

"Many of the modal logics that have been developed contain two or more modal operators. A notable example is the tense logic of Prior, which contains operators for both the past and the future. A more recent example is the logic of programs, which contains infinitely many operators, one for each program.

A multimodal logic will have various monomodal fragments; and in the simplest case, it will be the join of these fragments -- there will be no interactive axioms. Our concern in the present chapter is to investigate the question of when certain properties of the monomodal logics transfer to their join. To answer this question, we develop a very general proof method, which allows us to piece together models for different logics. The resulting theorems provide very general answers to our question, which are positive in most cases, but not in all.

Our investigation is a natural continuation of those begun by Prior.

For he was interested both in the development of multimodal logics and in their relationship to monomodal logics. It is therefore, with a keen sense of his own contribution to the subject that we have pursued the present line of research." (p. 169)

[Note:] Some of the initial ideas behind this chapter were contained in a letter from Fine to Schurz in 1990. The subsequent work has been joint, with Fine writing up sections 1 and 6 and Schurz writing up the rest. The result on strong completeness transfer has been obtained independantly by Valentin Goranko and Solomon Passy; the results on transfer of strong and weak completeness, f.m.p., and of decidability (under the assumption of weak completeness) have 'been obtained independently by Marcus Kracht and Frank Wolter. Our own proof of decidability transfer is based upon ideas in their proof.

29. ———. 1998. "Cantorian Abstraction: A Reconstruction and Defense." Journal of Philosophy no. 95:599-634.

"In what follows I shall concentrate on the views of Cantor, though it should be clear how what I say will can be modifed to apply to the views of Dedekind. I have not attempted to capture all of the nuances or tensions in Cantor's thought but merely to develop what I take to be its spirit, or central idea. And in developing this idea, I have been guided more by what the idea itself requires than by Cantor's own writings.

The plan of the paper is as follows. I begin by setting out what appear to be decisive objections to the Cantorian account. I then show how these objections can be overcome by making use of the theory of arbitrary objects developed in my book ' Reasoning with Arbitrary Objects ' [Chapter VII. The relevant parts of the theory are outlined in section 2; and the application to Cantor's account of number is made in section 3. I show, in section 4, how the approach may be extended to order types and to structure types in general. In the final two sections, I first compare the Cantorian approach to abstraction with the standard approaches of von Neumann and Zermelo, on the one side, and of Russell and Frege, on the other; and I then consider to what extent the Cantorian approach is capable of yielding a structuralist conception of number and order type. In a formal appendix, I briefly indicate how the present theory might be formalized within an extension of ZF [Zermelo-Frankel]." (p. 603)

30. ———. 1998. "The Limits of Abstraction." In The Philosophy of Mathematics Today , edited by Schirn, Matthias, 503-630. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Reprinted in expanded form as The Limits of Abstraction , New York: Oxford University Press 2002.

"This paper has been written more from a sense of curiosity than commitment. I was fortunate enough to attend the Munich Conference on the Philosophy of Mathematics in the Summer of 1993 and to overhear a discussion of recent work on Frege's approach to the foundations of mathematics. This led me to investigate certain technical problems connected with the approach; and these led me, in their turn, to reflect on certain philosophical aspects of the subject. I was concerned to see to what extent a Fregean theory of abstraction could be developed and used as a foundation for mathematics and to place the development of such a theory within a general framework for dealing with questions of abstraction. My conclusions were somewhat mixed: a theory of abstraction could be developed somewhat along the lines that Frege has envisaged; and it could indeed be used as a basis for both arithmetic and analysis. When wedded to a suitable version of the context principle, the theory was capable of accounting for our reference to numbers and other abstract objects. But without the support of the principle, it was not clear that the theory had any great advantage over its rivals. Thus my results would be congenial to someone already committed to the Fregean approach though unconvincing to someone who was not. I therefore present them in somewhat the same spirit as someone who sends off a message in a bottle. I have no desire to announce my communication to the world; but if someone stumbles across it and finds it to be of interest, I shall be pleased.

The paper is in three parts. The first is devoted to philosophical matters, which help explain the motivation for the subsequent technical work and also its significance. It is centred on three abstracts with which they deal? And to what extent can they provide a foundation for mathematics? The second part proposes and investigates a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for an abstraction principle to be acceptable. The acceptable principles, according to this criterion, are precisely determined and it is shown, in particular, that there is a strongest such principle. The third part attempts to develop a general theory of abstraction within the technical limitations set out by the second part; the theory is equipped with a natural class of models; and it is shown to provide a foundation for both arithmetic and analysis.

The original version of the paper contained a lengthy section on the context principle. But this acquired a life of its own (just as reference does under the principle); and it has therefore been omitted. I hope to be able to present the material elsewhere." (pp. 503-504)

31. ———. 1998. "Mixing Matters." Ratio no. 11:278-288.

Reprinted in: David Oderberg, Form and Matter. Themes in Contemporary Metaphysics, Oxford: Blackwell. 1999 pp. 65-75.

Abstract: "Aristotle raised a puzzle about the possibility of mixing whose solution is by no means obvious. I here explicate his solution to the puzzle and attempt to make it plausible within the context of his thought. Although we now know that his specific views on mixing were mistaken, his discussion of the topic raises questions concerning the role of capacities and the relationship of part to whole that are still of interest."

"The topic of mixture plays a central role in Aristotle's metaphysics (1). For every concrete substance is composed of mixtures and underlying every substantial change is a process of mixing.

Thus no understanding of substance or of substantial change is complete without an understanding of mixtures and mixing.

Aristotle's account of mixture may also be of some contemporary interest. For it depends upon a view, still worthy of attention, of how dispositions may conflict.

The main text in which mixture is discussed is chapter I.10 of Generation and Corruption . Aristotle there raises two puzzles that purport to show that mixing is impossible.

(1) The present paper is a much abridged version of Fine [95].

Many people have helped me develop the ideas in these two papers; and I am especially indebted to the work of Boguen [95] and Code [95].

References

Bogen [95] J., 'Fire in the Belly; Aristotelian Elements, Organisms, and Chemical Compounds', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , v. 76, nos 3&4, pp. 370-404.

Code A., [95] 'Potentiality in Aristotle's Science and Metaphysics', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , v. 76, nos 3 & 4, pp. 405-418.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Kit Fine: annotated bibliography. Papers 1999-2011

Papers 1999-2011

1. Fine, Kit. 1999. "Things and their Parts." Midwest Studies in Philosophy no. 23:61-74.

"I wish to sketch a theory of the general nature of material things. It is a theory on which I have been working for some time; and what I present here is the merest sketch. Details are slid over, significant questions not raised, and controversial assumptions left undefended. But I hope, all the same, that enough is said to indicate the relevance of the theory to questions concerning the nature of material things and the plausibility of its answers.

One way into the theory is through consideration of part-whole. Things have parts; and so we are led to consider how they are capable of having the parts that they do. What in their nature accounts for their division into parts? It has often been supposed that we may give an adequate answer to this question by conceiving of a material thing as the material content of a space-time region or as a successive stream of matter. But I believe that there are enormous difficulties with these positions and that, once they are taken into account, we are led to adopt a very different conception of a material thing and of its relationship to its parts.

Central to the paper is a distinction between two different ways in which one thing can be part of another. It can, in the first place, be apart in a way that is relative to a time. It is in this way, for example, that a newly installed carburetor is now apart of my car, whereas earlier it was not, or that certain molecules are now parts of my body though later, through the exercise of natural bodily functions, they no longer will be.

In the second place, one object can be a part of another in a way that is not relative to a time. For something that is a part in this way, it is not appropriate to ask when, or for how long, it is a part; it just is a part. It is in such a way that the pants and the jacket, for example, are parts of a suit or various atoms are parts of a water molecule, or two particular pints of milk are parts of a quart of milk, or various time-slices, if there are such things, are parts of a persisting individual." (p. 61)

2. ———. 2000. "Semantics for the Logic of Essence." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 29:543-584.

"In a previous paper ' The Logic of Essence ’, I presented a system for the logic of essence. In this paper, I present a semantics for a variant of the system and prove it complete with respect to that semantics.

(...)

The basic idea behind the semantics is that a statement should be taken to be true in virtue of the nature of certain objects if it is true in any world compatible with the nature of those objects. We shall make the simplifying assumption that each world is compatible with the nature of all and only those objects that it contains. Thus the condition for a statement to be true in virtue of the nature of certain objects is that it should be true in all those worlds that contain those objects. However, the presence of an object in a world is not taken to guarantee its existence but merely its possibility.

Thus each world will be taken to embody its own ‘view’ of which objects are possible and which are not.

(...)

The first two sections are devoted to the language of the logic (Section 1) and the system of proof (Section 2). The next section gives the semantics (Section 3). The remaining six sections develop the completeness proof. The first three (Sections 4–6) provide lemmas crucial to the construction of the canonical model. The next two sections (Sections 7, 8) show how to build up a ‘diagram’ of the model; and the last section (Section 9) shows how to obtain the model itself. The reader might find it helpful to have the previous paper ‘The Logic of Essence’ at hand (henceforth abbreviated to ‘LE’) and also to consult the papers ‘Essence and Modality’ and ‘Senses of Essence’ for further explanation of the notion of essence and for general philosophical motivation." (pp. 543-544)

3. ———. 2000. "Neutral Relations." The Philosophical Review no. 109:1-33.

"There is a standard view of relations, held by philosophers and logicians alike, according to which we may meaningfully talk of a relation holding of several objects in a given order. Thus it is supposed that we may meaningfully - indeed, correctly - talk of the relation loves holding of Anthony and Cleopatra or of the relation between holding of New York, Washington, and Boston. But innocuous as this view might appear to be, it cannot be accepted as applying to all relations whatever. For there is an important class of metaphysical and linguistic contexts which call for an alternative conception of relation, one for which the order of the relata plays no role and in which the application of the relation to its relata is achieved by other means.

My argument for this conclusion will be roughly Hegelian in form (though not at all in content). I begin with a thesis, the standard view on relations, and consider various problems to which it gives rise (§ 1). After considering what is required of a solution to these problems (§ 2), I propose an antithesis, the positionalist view, according to which each relation is taken to be endowed with a given number of argument-places, or positions, in no specified order (§ 3). But this view is beset with certain ontological and substantive problems; and I conclude with a synthesis, the antipositionalist view, which combines the virtues of the two previous accounts (§ 4) and is seen to lead to a distinctive conception of relations (§ 5).

I have largely confined my attention to metaphysical issues; and as a consequence, two important topics have not been pursued.

One is the logic of complex neutral relations; and the other is the role of neutral relations in the interpretation of language (and in our mental representation of reality). However, I hope enough has been said on the metaphysics of the issue to make clear why these topics are of interest and how they might be developed." (pp. 1-2)

4. ———. 2000. "A Counter-Exemple to Locke's Thesis." The Monist no. 83:357-361.

"Locke's thesis states that no two things of the same sort can be in the same place at the same time. The thesis has recently received extensive discussion, with some philosophers attempting to find arguments in its favour and others attempting to provide counter-examples.(1) However, neither the arguments nor the counter-examples have been especially convincing;and it is my aim, in this short note, to present what I believe is a more convincing counter-example to the thesis." (p. 357)

(...)

"Many philosophers have thought that no two things can necessarily always coincide even if they are not of the same sort. But if this second example is correct, it shows that things may necessarily coincide even when they are of the same sort. (2)" (p. 361)

(1) The detractors include Hughes [97a, b, c], Shorter[77], and Simons ([85], [87], [97]).The defenders include Wiggins ([68], [75], [80]),Odergard [96] and also, of course, all those who hold that no two things can coincide,whether of the same sort or not.

References

Hughes, C. [97a] "Same Kind Coincidents and the Ship of Theseus," Mind , vol. 106, 53-68.

_ [97b] "An IncredibleCoincidence," Mind , vol. 106,769-72.

Leibniz,G.W. [81] New Essays on Human Understanding (trans,and ed. Peter Remnant and Jonathon Bennett), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Locke, J. [75] An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (ed. P.H. Nidditch), Oxford: Clarendon.

Odergard,D. [96] "Coincidence Under a Sortal," Philosophical Review ,vol. 105, 145-72.

Rea, M. [97] "Material Constitution: A Reader," Boston, MA: Rowman & Littlefield.

Shorter, J.M. [77] "On Coinciding in Space and Time," Philosophy 52, 399-408.

Simons,P. [85] "Coincidence of Things of a Kind," Mind 94, 70-75.

_[87] Parts: A Study in Ontology , Oxford: Clarendon.

_ [97] "On Being the Same Ship(s)? or Electron(s): Reply to Hughes," Mind 106, 761-68.

Wiggins, D. [68] "On Being in the Same Place at the Same Time," Philosophical Review 77: 90-95, reprintedin Rea [97].

_ [80] Sameness and Substance , Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press.

5. ———. 2001. "The Question of Realism." Philosopher's Imprint no. 1:1-30.

Reprinted in Andrea Bottani, Massimiliano Carrara, Pierdaniele Giaretta (eds.) , Individuals, Essence and Identity. Themes of Analytic Metaphysics , Dordrecht: Kluwer 2002, pp. 3-48.

"My aim in this paper is to help lay the conceptual and methodological foundations for the study of realism. I come to two main conclusions: first, that there is a primitive metaphysical concept of reality, one that cannot be understood in fundamentally different terms; and second, that questions of what is real are to be settled upon the basis of considerations of ground . The two conclusions are somewhat in tension with one another, for the lack of a definition of the concept of reality would appear to stand in the way of developing a sound methodology for determining its application; and one of my main concerns has been to show how the tension between the two might be resolved.

The paper is in two main parts. In the first, I point to the difficulties in making out a metaphysical conception of reality.

I begin by distinguishing this conception from the ordinary conception of reality (§ 1) and then show how the two leading contenders for the metaphysical conception -- the factual and the irreducible-both appear to resist formulation in other terms. This leads to the quietist challenge, that questions of realism are either meaningless or pointless (§ 4); and the second part of the paper (§§ 5-10) is largely devoted to showing how this challenge might be met. I begin by introducing the notion of ground (§ 5) and then show how it can be used as a basis for resolving questions both of factuality (§§ 6-7) and of irreducibility (§§ 8-9). I conclude with some remarks on the essential unity of these two questions and of the means by which they are to be answered (§ 10)." (pp. 3-4)

6. ———. 2002. "The Varieties of Necessity." In Conceivability and Possibility , edited by Gendler, Tamar Szabo and Hawthorne, John, 253-282. New York: Oxford University Press.

Reprinted in: Modality and Tense. Philosophical Papers, as chapter 7, pp. 235-260.

"Necessity abounds. There are the necessary truths of logic, mathematics and metaphysics, the necessary connections among events in the natural world, the necessary or unconditional principles of ethics, and many other forms of necessary truth or connection. But how much diversity is there to this abundance?

Are all necessary truths and connections reducible to a single common form of necessity? And if not, then what are the different ways in which a truth might be necessary or a necessary connection might hold?

It is the aim of this paper to show that diversity prevails.

I shall argue that there are three main forms of necessity - the metaphysical, the natural and the normative - and that none of them is reducible to the others or to any other form of necessity. Thus what it is for a necessity or possibility of any of these forms to obtain does not consist in the obtaining of some other form or forms of necessity or possibility.

Although the focus of the paper falls squarely within the philosophy of modality, some of my arguments may be of broader interest. For certain currently fashionable views on scientific essentialism and ethical naturalism entail the collapse of forms of necessity that I would wish to keep distinct. Thus I have found it essential to indicate what it is in these views that I take to be in error; and this has required consideration of questions from within the metaphysics of natural kinds and the epistemology of ethical belief." (p. 253)

7. ———. 2003. "The Problem of Possibilia." In The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics , edited by Loux, Michael J. and Zimmerman, Dean, 161-179. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Reprinted in: Modality and Tense. Philosophical Papers, as chapter 6, pp. 214-231.

"Are there, in addition to the various actual objects that make up the world, various possible objects? Are there merely possible people, for example, or merely possible electrons, or even merely possible kinds?

We certainly talk as if there were such things. Given a particular sperm and egg, I may wonder whether that particular child which would result from their union would have blue eyes.

But if the sperm and egg are never in fact brought together, then there is no actual object that my thought is about.(1) Or again, in the semantics for modal logic we presuppose an ontology of possibilia twice over.(2) For first, we coutenance various possible worlds, in addition to the actual world; and second, each of these worlds is taken to be endowed with its own domain of objects. These will be the actual objects of the world in question, but they need not be actual simpliciter, i.e., actual objects of our world. What are we to make of such discourse? There are four options:

(i) the discourse is taken to be unintelligible; (ii) it is taken to be intelligible but nonfactual, i.e. as not in the business of stating facts; (iii) it is taken to be factual but reducible to discourse involving no reference to possibilia; (iv) it is taken to be both factual and irreducible.(3) These options range from a fullblooded form of actualism at one extreme to a full-blooded form of possibilism at the other. The two intermediate positions are possibilist in that they accept the intelligibility of possibilist discourse but actualist in that they attempt to dispense with its prima facie commitment to possibilia. All four positions have found advocates in the literature. Quine, in his less irenic moments, favours option (i); Forbes ([85], p. 94) advocates option (ii), at least for certain parts of possibilist discourse; many philosophers, including Adams [74] and myself, opt for (iii); while Lewis [86] and Stalnaker [75] have endorsed versions of (iv), that differ in how full-blooded they take the possible objects to be.

My focus in the present article is on the third option. I wish to see to what extent reference to possibilia might be understood in other terms. Can we regard talk of possibilia as a mere facon de parler, perhaps somewhat in the same manner as talk of the average man or of infinitesimals? (4) I shall not be concerned to argue directly against any of the other options.

However, any argument for the viability of (iii) is indirectly an argument against the plausibility of these other options.

For (iv), especially in its more extreme forms, offends against what Russell has called our 'robust sense of reality', (i) offends against our even more robust sense of what is intelligible, while (ii) offends against our somewhat less robust sense of what is factual. It is therefore preferable to go with the third option, if we possibly can." (pp. 161-162)

(1) Cf Gupta ([80], 20, n.15.

(2) See Kripke [63] for a standard exposition of the semantics.

(3) See Fine [01] for a general discussion of what these various options amount to.

(4) As should be clear from Fine [01], the viability of any reduction will also depend upon its success in accounting for our understanding of modal discourse and our knowledge of modal

truth. See Peacocke [01] for a broader discussion along these lines.

References

Fine K., [01] 'The Question of Realism', to appear in Imprint . [see Fine 2002]

Gupta A., [80] ' The Logic of Common Nouns ', Yale University Press, 1980.

Kripke S., [63] 'Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic', Acta Philosophica Fennic a 16, 83-94, reprinted in ' Reference and Modality ' (ed. L. Linsky), Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971.

Peacocke C., [01] 'Principles for Possibilia', to appear. [ Noûs , vol. 36, 2002, pp. 486-508]

8. ———. 2003. "The Role of Variables." Journal of Philosophy no. 50:605-631.

Reprinted in the Philosopher's Annual 2003; revised in Joseph Almog, Paolo Leonardi (eds.), The Philosophy of David Kaplan, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009 pp. 109-133.

"It is generally supposed - by logicians and philosophers alike - that we now possess a perfectly good understanding of how variables work in the symbolism of logic and mathematics.

Once Gottlob Frege had provided a clear syntactic account of variables and once Alfred Tarski had supplemented this with a rigorous semantic account, it would appear that there was nothing more of any significance to be said. It seems to me, however, that this common view is mistaken. There are deep problems concerning the role of variables that have never been properly recognized, let alone solved, and once we attempt to solve them we see that they have profound implications not only for our understanding of variables but also for our understanding of other forms of expression and for the general nature of semantics.

It is my aim here to say what these problems are and how they are to be solved, and to indicate the implications fo the rest of semantics. I begin with an antimony concerning the role of variables which I believe any satisfactory account of them should solve (section 1). I then argue that the three main semantical schemes currently on the market - the Tarskian, the instantial and the algebraic -- are unsuccessful in solving the puzzle (sections II-III) or in providing a satisfactory semantics for first-order logic (Sections IV-V). Finally, I offer an alternative scheme that it is capable of solving the antimony (section VI) and of providing a more satisfactory semantics for first-order logic (section VII). It is based upon a new approach to representational semantics, which I call semantic relationism ; and I conclude by discussing the implications of this approach for the semantics of names and belief-reports." (p. 605)

9. ———. 2003. "The Non-Identity of a Material Thing and Its Matter." Mind no. 112:195-234.

"Many philosophers have thought that a material thing is, or may be, one and the same as its matter - that a statue, for example, may be the same as the clay from which it is made or a river the same as the water which flows through it. There appears to be a powerful argument against such views, for the thing in each of these cases would appear to have properties not possessed by its matter.

Thus the clay of a statue may exist even though the statue itself has ceased to exist and the river may be composed of different water at different times even though this cannot be true of the water that composes it at any given time. However, these philosophers have responded to this argument by claiming that the apparent difference in properties represents, not a difference in the objects themselves, but a difference in the descriptions under which they may be conceived. We may conceive of a given thing as a statue or some clay or as a river or a body of water, for example, and, depending upon how the object is conceived, we will say one thing about it rather than another.

It is the aim of this paper to show that this counter-response cannot be sustained and that the original argument against identity should therefore be allowed to stand. This is no easy task since there would appear to be nothing in the immediate linguistic data to settle the question one way or the other.

However, by working through the consequences of the counter-response for the rest of our language, I think it may be shown to be extremely implausible. The paper is in two main parts. The first (§§1-4) is largely concerned with setting up the problem. We characterize the different forms the identity theory can take (§1), explain how the argument in favor of non-identity might in principle break down (§2), present the most plausible versions of such arguments (§3), and then consider the most plausible counter-response to them (§4). The second part (§§5-8) embarks on a detailed investigation of the difficulties with the counter-response. It is shown to be unable to account for a wide variety of different linguistic data, that is loosely classified according as to how reference to a material thing might be achieved. Four main kinds of case will be considered: those in which a sort is explicitly invoked (§5); those in which it is implicitly invoked (§6); those in which the very notion of reference is itself used in securing reference(§7); and those in which there is reference to a plurality of things (§8)." (p. 195)

10. ———. 2005. "Replies [to Comments on ‘Limits of Abstraction']." Philosophical Studies no. 122:367-395.

Replies to critics about The Limits of Abstraction .

"I am extremely grateful to the contributors for their careful, perceptive and sympathetic discussion of my book. For the most part, they have chosen not to criticize what I say but to see how the doctrines of the book might be developed or be used to throw light on other questions. A defense of the book is therefore out of place; and I can do no better than to continue the discussion of some of the questions that they raise. There is perhaps only one point on which there is a substantive disagreement; and this concerns the status of second-order logic. Weir takes it to be epistemologically problematic; I do not. This issue was not discussed in the book, and I have here attempted to explain the grounds upon which I think its epistemic innocence might be defended." (p. 367)

11. ———. 2005. "Précis [of " The Limits of Abstraction" ]." Philosophical Studies no. 122:305-313.

Symposium on Kit' Fine's book The Limits of Abstraction.

" Before dealing with the contributors’ comments, I would like to provide a selective summary of the book. I will focus on two main themes: the development of a general theory of abstraction; and the critique of Hume’s principle as a form of definition. There are several other topics from the book that I would have liked to have covered. They include the question of the identity of abstracts and the viability of the context principle, on the philosophical side (§1.5, §§11.3-5) and the analysis of invariance and the proofs of categoricity, on the technical side (§§6,7). But in the interests of brevity, I have had to exclude them.

The general idea of abstraction is one that has been discussed by philosophers throughout the ages but it was Frege who first showed how the idea could be put on a rigorous footing. For Frege, the idea of abstraction had two main components. The first related to the items upon which the abstraction was to be performed. These were to be taken to be related by an equivalence relation, i.e. by a relation that was reflexive, symmetric and transitive. As examples, we have the relation of parallelism on lines or the relation of equinumerosity on concepts. The second component related to the abstracts themselves. These were to be obtained from the items by means of a suitable operation of abstraction - the operation of forming directions in the case of parallel lines and of forming numbers in the case of equinumerous concepts. These two components, the equivalence relation and the operation of abstraction, were then to be connected by a principle relating the identity of the abstracts to the equivalence of the items from which they were formed." (p. 305)

12. ———. 2005. "Class and Membership." Journal of Philosophy no. 102:547-572.

Abstract: "I wish to describe a construction that is capable of yielding a new solution to the set-theoretic paradoxes. Perhaps what is most dis- tinctive about the construction is the reversal in the roles of the predicate of membership and the ontology of sets. On the usual conception of the cumulative hierarchy of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory (ZF), we think of the membership predicate as given and of the ontology of sets or classes as something to be made out. Thus given an understanding ofmembership, we successively carve out the ontology of sets by using the membership predicate to specify which further sets should be added to those that are already taken to exist. Under the present approach, by contrast, we think of the ontology of classes as given and of the membership predicate as something to be made out. Thus given an understanding of the ontology of classes, we successively carve out extensions of the membership predicate by using conditions on the domain of classes to specify which further membership relationships should obtain. What unfolds is not the ontology of sets or classes but the meaning of membership. This “Copernican revolution” in our conception of class membership, once properly implemented, is capable of yielding a theory of classes that is just as natural as the standard theory of ZF and yet far more powerful in the strength of its principles and the scope of its applications."

13. ———. 2005. "Our Knowledge of Mathematical Objects." In Oxford Studies in Epistemology. Vol. 1 , edited by Gendler, Tamar Szabo and Hawthorne, John, 89-110. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

"I have recently been attempting to provide a new approach to the philosophy of mathematics, which I call ‘proceduralism’ or ‘procedural postulationism’.(1) It shares with traditional forms of postulationism, advocated by Hilbert (1930) and Poincaré (1952), the belief that the existence of mathematical objects and the truth of mathematical propositions are to be seen as the product of postulation. But it takes a very different view of what postulation is. For it takes the postulates from which mathematics is derived to be imperatival, rather than indicative, in form; what are postulated are not propositions true in a given mathematical domain, but procedures for the construction of that domain.

This difference over the status of the posulates has enormous repercussions for the development and significance of such a view. The philosophy of mathematics is faced with certain fundamental problems.

How are we capable of acquiring an understanding of mathematical terms? How do we secure reference to mathematical objects? What is the nature of these objects? Do they exist independently of us or are they somehow the products of our minds? What accounts for the possibility of applying mathematics to the real world? And how are we able of acquire knowledge of mathematical truths? The procedural form of postulationism, in contrast to the propositional form, is capable of providing plausible answers to each of these questions. By going procedural, we convert a view that is beset with pitfalls to one that is worthy of serious consideration.

In what follows I shall focus on the last question concerning our knowledge of mathematics (although this will inevitably involve the other questions). I do this not because this question is the most interesting or even because it provides the most convincing illustration

of the value of our approach, but because it helps to bring out what is most distinctive—and also most problematic—about the approach. If one can go along with what it recommends in this particular case, then one is well on the way to accepting the view in its entirety.

As with the ‘big three’ traditional approaches to the philosophy of mathematics—logicism, formalism, and intuitionism—the present approach rests upon a certain technical program within the foundation of mathematics. It attempts to derive the whole of mathematics—or a significant part thereof—within the limitations imposed by its underlying philosophy. Since the viability of the underlying philosophical view largely depends upon the possibility of carrying out such a program, it will be helpful to give a sketch—if only in the barest form—of what the program is and of how it is to be executed. I hope elsewhere to provide a much more extensive development of the view in both its philosophical and technical aspects." (pp. 90-90)

(1) First broached in Fine (2002: 36, 56, 100).

References

Hilbert, D. (1930) Grundlagen der Geometrie , 7th edn. (Leipzig: Open Court Press).

Poincaré, H. (1952) Science and Method (New York: Dover).

14. ———. 2005. "Reference, Essence, and Identity." In Modality and Tense. Philosophical Papers , 19-39. New York: Oxford University Press.

Previously unpublished and written up in the spring of 1984 as a talk for the conference ‘Themes from Kaplan’.

Chris Peacocke was the commentator.

"There are three main concerns within current thinking on modality. One relates to the problem of essentialism, of making sense of de re modal discourse. Another relates to the problem of transworld identification, of individuating objects across possible worlds. The third relates to the problem of direct reference, of whether any terms can refer to their bearers independently of how they are described.

It has commonly been supposed that these various problems are connected and that a solution to the one will push us in a certain direction in regard to another. But I shall argue that, once the problems are properly understood, it will be seen that they are quite distinct and that the supposed connections among them are illusory." (p. 19)

15. ———. 2005. "Necessity and Non-existence." In Modality and Tense. Philosophical Papers , 321-354. New York: Oxford University Press.

Previously unpublished.

"Is it possible for Socrates to be a man and yet not exist? This is the kind of question that is likely to strike someone from outside philosophy as preposterous and that may not be taken seriously even by philosophers themselves. But I believe that the answer to this question has profound implications for our understanding of the concepts of existence, identity, and modality and for how these concepts connect to one another and to the world.

It is my central contention that, just as there is a distinction between tensed and tenseless sentences, so there is a distinction between worldly and unworldly sentences, between sentences that depend for their truth upon the worldly circumstances and those that do not. It is in terms of such a distinction that we should assess the possibility that Socrates might be a man and yet not exist, since his non-existence will be a matter of the circumstances while his being a man will not. But once the distinction is drawn, it will be seen to have consequences for a wide range of further questions. It will lead us to distinguish, within the realm of what are normally regarded as necessary truths, between the necessary truths proper, those that hold whatever the circumstances, and the transcendent truths, those that hold regardless of the circumstances. It will also lead us to make an analogous distinction, within the realm of what are normally regarded as necessary existents, between the necessary existents proper, those that exist whatever the circumstances, and the transcendent objects, those that exist regardless of the circumstances. Thus some objects will not properly be in the world just as it has been supposed that some objects are not properly in time. Finally, it will be suggested that the identity of an object—what it is—is not, at bottom, a worldly matter; essence will precede existence in the sense that the identity of an object may be fixed by its unworldly features even before any questionof its existence or other worldly features is considered." (p. 321)

16. ———. 2006. "The Reality of Tense." Synthese no. 150:399-414.

Expanded version in: Modality and Tense. Philosophical Papers, as chapter 8, pp. 261-320.

"Is reality somehow tensed? Or is tense a feature of how we represent reality and not properly a feature of reality itself? Although this question is often raised, it is very hard to say what it comes to. For both sides to the debate can agree to certain tensed claims. They can agree that I am sitting right now, for example, or that Queen Ann is dead. So in a clear and obvious sense there are tensed facts. And so how can it sensibly be denied that reality is tensed?

My own view is that the question can only be made clear by drawing a distinction between how things are ( mere reality) and how things are in reality ( metaphysical reality). Thus what the antirealist about tense wishes to dispute is not how things are, which should be common ground between him and his opponent, but how things are in reality. Of course, he will say, Queen Ann is dead but this representation of the facts is not faithful to how things are in reality; and this is so, not because of the reference to Queen Ann or to her being dead, but because of the tense. In a faithful representation of how things are in reality, there will be nothing that corresponds to our use of tense. (1)"

(1) The more formal minded reader may suppose that there is a sentential operator 'in reality,_' by means of which the various realist claims are to be made (Fine 2000). I should add that this paper is a summary of views which are elaborated at much greater length in Fine (2005). In the interests of brevity, I have made no attempt to engage with the extensive literature on the topic.

References

Fine. K.: 2000, 'The Question of Reality', Philosophers Imprint 1 (1).

17. ———. 2006. "Modal Logic and Its Application." EOLSS Survey of Mathematical Logic :1-25.

Summary; "Modal logic is a broad and rapidly expanding area of logic with applications to such diverse areas as computer science, linguistics and philosophy. It deals with the logical behavior of such modal locutions as ‘must’ and ‘might’, ‘was’ and ‘will’, ‘ought’, and ‘may’. It specifies formal languages within which such locutions may be encoded, it lays down axioms and rules by which the locutions are governed, it sets up an interpretation for the resulting symbolism, and it proves various general results concerning the system and its interpretation."

18. ———. 2006. "Arguing for Non-Identity: A Response to King and Frances." Mind no. 115:1059-1082.

"Jeffrey King and Bryan Frances are both critical of my paper, 'The Nonidentity of a Thing and its Matter' (Fine 2003), though in rather different ways. King engages in carpet bombing; his aim is to destroy every argument in sight, even to the extent of showing that the linguistic data cited by the paper favours the monist rather than the pluralist. Frances, by contrast, engages in strategic warfare; by 'taking out' certain key arguments, he attempts to demolish the paper as a whole.

I remain unmoved -- and, I hope, unscathed -- by their attacks.

King's carpet bombing may cause a great deal of collateral damage but not to its intended target; and Frances's strategic bombing may hit its target but without inflicting much harm. Still, their papers raise many interesting issues not discussed -- or, at least, not properly discussed -- in my original paper; and I am grateful to them for providing me with the opportunity to take these issues into account.

My response will be in three main parts: I begin by outlining the central line of argument of my original paper (Sect. 1); I then discuss King's criticisms of the paper (Sects 2, 3, 4); and finally I turn to Frances's criticisms (Sect. 5). I have tried to make my response reasonably self-contained and to bring out the independent significance of the issues under discussion but it would be helpful, all the same, if the reader had all three papers at hand." (p. 187)

Fine, K. 2003: 'The Non-identity of a Material Thing and its Matter' Mind 112, pp. 195-234.

Frances, Bryan 2006: 'The New Leibniz's Law Arguments for Pluralism' Mind 115, pp. 1007-1022.

King, Jeffrey C. 2006: 'Semantics for Monists'. Mind 115, pp. 1023-1058.

19. ———. 2006. "In Defence of Three-Dimensionalism." Journal of Philosophy no. 103:699-714.

Reprinted in: Robin Le Poidevin (ed.), Being: Developments in Contemporary Metaphysics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 1-16.

"Let us use the term 'present' in such a way that a material thing can be said to be present both in space and in time. Thus on this usage we can say that the desk in front of me is present at any moment at which it exists and also that it is present at any position within its spatial location at that moment. We might similarly talk of presence throughout a period of time or a region of space and of the presence of other categories of objects, such as states or events.

Some philosophers, the "three-dimensionalists," have thought that there is a distinctive way in which material things are present in time as opposed to space. They have thought that a thing is somehow "stretched out" through its location at a given time though not through the period of during which it exists and that it is somehow present in its entirety at any moment at which it exists though not at any position at which it is located. Other philosophers, the "four dimensionalists," have denied that this was so; they have thought that a material thing is as equally "stretched out" in time as it is in space and that there is no special way in which it is entirely present at a moment rather than at a position.

We might use the term 'existence' for the way in which 3D-ers have thought that a thing is present in time and 'extension' or 'location' for the way in which 4D-ers have thought that a thing is present in space. The 3D-ers have then held that things exist in time but are extended in space while the 4D-ers hold that things are extended both in space and in time. (1)" (p. 699)

(1) My terms 'presence', 'existence', and 'extension' (deriving from my paper, "Compounds and Aggregates," Nous, xxviii, 2 (1994): 137-58) correspond to the more familiar terminology of 'persistence', 'endurance', and 'perdurance'. I prefer my own terminology since it is somewhat more general, allowing one to talk of existence or extension at a moment when one cannot very well talk of endurance or perdurance at a moment and allowing one to talk of existence or extension in space when one cannot very well talk of endurance or perdurance in space.

20. ———. 2006. "Relatively Unrestricted Quantification." In Absolute Generality , edited by Rayo, Agustin and Uzquiano, Gabriel, 20-44. New York: Oxford University Press.

"There are four broad grounds upon which the intelligibility of quantification over absolutely everything has been questioned-one based upon the existence of semantic indeterminacy, another on the relativity of ontology to a conceptual scheme, a third upon the necessity of sortal restriction, and the last upon the possibility of indefinite extendibility. The argument from semantic indeterminacy derives from general philosophical considerations concerning our understanding of language. For the Skolem-Lowenheim Theorem appears to show that an understanding of quantification over absolutely everything (assuming a suitably infinite domain) is semantically indistinguishable from the understanding of quantification over something less than absolutely everything; the same first-order sentences are true and even the same first-order conditions will be satisfied by objects from the narrower domain. From this it is then argued that the two kinds of understanding are indistinguishable tout court and that nothing could count as having the one kind of understanding as opposed to the other.

The second two arguments reject the bare idea of an object as unintelligible, one taking it to require supplementation by reference to a conceptual scheme and the other taking it to require supplementation by reference to a sort. Thus we cannot properly make sense of quantification over mere objects, but only over objects of such and such a conceptual scheme or of such and such a sort. The final argument, from indefinite extendibility, rejects the idea of a completed totality. For if we take ourselves to be quantifying over all objects, or even over all sets, then the reasoning of Russell's paradox can be exploited to demonstrate the possibility of quantifying over a more inclusive domain. The intelligibility of absolutely unrestricted quantification, which should be free from such incompleteness, must therefore be rejected.

The ways in which these arguments attempt to the undermine the intelligibility of absolutely unrestricted quantification are very different; and each calls for extensive discussion in its own right. However, my primary concern in the present paper is with the issue of indefinite extendibility; and I shall only touch upon the other arguments in so far as they bear upon this particular issue. I myself am not persuaded by the other arguments and I suspect that, at the end of day, it is only the final argument that will be seen to carry any real force. If there is a case to be made against absolutely unrestricted quantification, then it will rest here, upon logical considerations of extendibility, rather than upon the nature of understanding or the metaphysics of identity." (pp. 20-21)

21. ———. 2007. "Response to Correia." Dialectica.International Journal of Philosophy no. 61:85-88.

"Correia’s paper contains two highly novel and interesting suggestions. The first is to generalize the Priorian perspective so that all that is required for there to be a fact about an object is that there be something that is the object though not necessarily something that exists. The second, building on the first, is to see essence as a form of Priorian implication. There is no doubt that these suggestions help to illuminate the concept of essence, in regard to both its Priorian underpinnings and its connection with modality. But I do not think that they are in tension with the central claims of ‘ Essence and Modality ' and nor do I think that they should lead usto suppose that essentialist statements might be formulated more directly in terms of an ‘arrow’ rather than a ‘box’." (p. 88)

22. ———. 2007. "Response to Garcia-Carpintero." Dialectica.International Journal of Philosophy no. 61:191-194.

"I attempted to argue for a supervaluational account of vagueness in an early paper, ‘Vagueness, Truth and Logic’ (VT&L) and Manuel García-Carpintero is concerned, in his rich and wide-ranging paper, to defend such an account against two objections from M. Andjelkovic and T. Williamson, ‘Truth, Falsity and Borderline Cases’, Philosophical Topics 28, 2000, pp. 211–244. I no longer hold a supervaluational view but am inclined to agree with García-Carpintero that the objections are not successful, though not quite for the reasons that he gives." (p. 191)

23. ———. 2007. "Response to Horwich." Dialectica.International Journal of Philosophy no. 61:17-23.

"In a sustained series of articles and books, Horwich has attempted to deflate the pretensions of philosophy by showing how many of its problems are not problems at all and how many of its ‘theories’ are explanations of phenomena standing in no need of explanation and, in keeping with this general line of thought, he is concerned, in the present highly interesting and provocative paper, to show how even the modest aims of ' The Question of Realism ' go too far in attempting to breathe some life into realist disputes. He is concerned to argue, in particular, that two of the principles that are meant to belong to the common ground between the realist and the antirealist might plausibly be questioned and that the strategy of the paper therefore fails (p. 11)." (p. 17)

24. ———. 2007. "Response to Koslicki." Dialectica.International Journal of Philosophy no. 61:161-166.

"Koslicki’s paper is an extraordinarily perceptive and comprehensive discussion of my published work on the nature of material things. Although she is sympathetic to my criticisms of the standard mereological approaches to this topic, she is not so happy with my positive views. She has three main objections in all, which shesummarizes as follows:

Fine’s theory gives rise, first, to a proliferation of primitive sui generis relations of parthood and composition, whose characteristics must be imposed on them stipulatively by means of distinct systems of postulates, tailored to the different domains of objects. Secondly, we noted that, given its ‘superabundance’ of objects, Fine’s theory is committed to its very own population of ‘monsters’. Thirdly, once rigid embodiments are abandoned, the explicitly mereological aspect of Fine’s hylomorphic theory is preserved only at the cost of abandoning the Weak Supplementation Principle. This, in turn, along with the other formal properties of Fine’s system, makes us wonder why one should consider the primitive sui generis operations introduced by Fine’s theory to be genuinely mereological at all (pp. 157–158).

Let me briefly consider the first and third of these objections but devote most of my attention to the second." (p. 161)

25. ———. 2007. "Response to MacBride." Dialectica.International Journal of Philosophy no. 61:57-62.

"Fraser MacBride’s paper is a deep and searching treatment of the topic of neutral relations. He very clearly explains the motivation for wanting a theory of neutral relations, providing much more than my own paper by way of philosophical and historical context, and he subjects the available theories to a number of interesting and difficult challenges. Although he is critical of my own antipositional line, he shows a keen appreciation of the problems it was meant to solve and of the considerations that led me to adopt it.

I should like to take up two main issues from his paper – one concerning the question of symmetric relations and of whether the positionalist can provide an adequate account of them and the other concerning the question of ‘solitary’ relational states and of whether the anti-positional can provide an adequate account of how their relata are related." (p. 58)

26. ———. 2007. "Response to Weir." Dialectica.International Journal of Philosophy no. 61:117-125.

"In a recent paper, ‘Our Knowledge of Mathematical Objects’ (KMO), I have outlined a new approach to the foundations of mathematics. I call it ‘procedural postulationism’ and it is based upon the idea that one may lay down procedures for the expansion of a given domain. The ontology of mathematics is taken to result from the execution of such procedures; and our knowledge of mathematics is to be attained by seeing what would true upon their execution.

Weir has raised some sharp and significant objections to this approach – one concerning the constraints by which postulation is governed, another concerning the ontological neutrality of second-order logic, upon which my approach is based, and a third concerned with my realist construal of the expanded domains.

Let me deal with each in turn." (p. 117)

27. ———. 2008. "Coincidence and Form." Aristotelian Society.Supplementary Volume no. 82:101-118.

Paper read at the Kit Fine Day: Ontology Talks, February 11, 2008, Paris.

Abstract. "How can a statue and a piece of alloy be coincident at any time at which they exist and yet differ in their modal properties? I argue that this question demands an answer and that the only plausible answer is one that posits a difference in the form of the two objects."

"Many philosophers are pluralists about material things. They believe that distinct material things may coincide at a time, i.e. that they may occupy the very same spatial region and be constituted by the very same matter at that time. A familiar example is that of an alloy statue and the piece of alloy from which it is made. They are clearly coincident, and they would also appear to be distinct, given that the piece of alloy may exist before the statue is created or after it has been destroyed.

A number of these philosophers also believe that two distinct material things may coincide in a world, i.e. that they may exist at the same times in the world and coincide at each time at which they exist." (p. 101)

(...)

"The account of an object as a given rigid or variable embodiment may be regarded as a fundamental account of what the object is, one that itself stands in need of no further explanation. We may therefore claim, with some plausibility, to have traced the various features and differences of such objects to their source." (p. 116)

28. ———. 2008. "The Impossibility of Vagueness." Philosophical Perspectives no. 22:111-136.

"I wish to present a proof that vagueness is impossible. Of course, vagueness is possible; and so there must be something wrong with the proof. But it is far from clear where the error lies and, indeed, all of the assumptions upon which the proof depends are ones that have commonly been accepted. This suggests that we may have to radically alter our current conception of vagueness if we are to make proper sense of what it is.

The present investigation was largely motivated by an interest in what one might call the ‘global’ aspect of vagueness. We may distinguish between the indeterminacy of a predicate in its application to a single case (the local aspect) and in its application to a range of cases (the global aspect). In the first case, it is indeterminate how a predicate, such as a bald, applies in a given case; and, in the second case, it is indeterminate how a predicate applies across a range of cases.

Given such a distinction, the question arises as to whether one might understand the indeterminacy of a predicate in its application to a range of cases in terms of its indeterminacy in application to a single case; and considered from this point of view, the result can be seen to show that there is no reasonable way in which this might be done." (p. 111)

(...)

"I begin by giving an informal presentation of the result and its proof and I then consider the various responses that might be made to the alleged impossibility. Most of these are found wanting; and my own view, which I hint at rather than argue for, is that it is only by giving up on the notion of singlecase indeterminacy, as it is usually conceived, and by modifying the principles of classical logic that one can evade the result and thereby account for the possibility of vagueness. There are two appendices, one providing a formal presentation and proof of the impossibility theorem and the other giving a counter-example to the theorem under a certain relaxation of its assumptions. The mathematics is not difficult but those solely interested in the philosophical implications of the results should be able to get by without it.

The general line of argument goes back to Wright [1987] and further discussion and developments are to be found in Sainsbury [1990, 1991], Wright [1992], Heck [1993], Edgington [1993], Gomez Torrente [1997, 2002], Graff-Fara [2002, 2004], and Williamson [1997, 2002]. It would be a nice question to discuss how these various arguments relate to one another and to the argument in this paper. I shall not go into this question, but let me observe that my own approach is in a number of ways more general. It relies, for the most part, on weaker assumptions concerning the underlying logic and the logic of definitely and on weaker constraints concerning the behavior of vague terms; and it also provides a more flexible framework within which to develop arguments of this sort." (p. 112)

References

Edgington D., [1993] ‘Wright and Sainsbury on Higher-order Vagueness’, Analysis 53.4, 193–200.

Gomez-Torrente M., [1997] ‘Two Problems for an Epistemicist View of Vagueness’, Philosophical Issues 8, 237–45.

Gomez-Torrente M., [2002] ‘Vagueness and Margin for Error Principles’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64.1, 107–125.

Graff-Fara D., [2002] ‘An Anti-Epistemicist Consequence of Margin for Error Semantics for Knowledge’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64.1, 127–142.

Graff-Fara D., [2004] ‘Gap Principles, Penumbral Consequence, and Infinitely Higher-Order Vagueness’, in Liars and Heaps (ed. J. C. Beall), Oxford University Press, 195–222.

Heck R., [1993] ‘A Note on the Logic of (Higher-Order) Vagueness’, Analysis 53.4, 201–8.

Sainsbury M., [1991] ‘Is There Higher-Order Vagueness?’, Philosophical Quarterly , 41.163, 167–82.

Williamson T., [1994] Vagueness , London: Routledge-Kegan.

Williamson T., [1997] ‘Replies to Commentators’, Philosophical Issues 8, 255–65.

Williamson T., [2002] ‘Epistemic Modals: Comments on Gomez-Torrente and Gradd’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64.1, 143–50.

Wright C., [1992] ‘Is Higher-Order Vagueness Coherent’, Analysis 52.3: 129–3.

29. ———. 2009. "The Question of Ontology." In Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology , edited by Chalmers, David J., Manley, David and Wassermann, Ryan, 157-177. New York: Oxford University Press.

"There are a number of difficulties with the standard quantificational view. They are for the most part familiar but it will be worth spelling them out, if only to make clear how far removed our understanding of the ontological question is from our understanding of their quantificational counterparts. Philosophers may have learned to live with the disconnect between the two, but their tolerance of the situation should not lull us into thinking that it is tolerable." (p. 138)

"This account of our method for settling ontological dispute requires that we have a grasp not only of an absolute conception of reality, of there being nothing more than ..., but also of a relative conception, of there being nothing more to ... than ... , since it is through our assessment of the relative claims that we attempt to adjudicate the plausibility of the absolute claims. Many philosophers seem to have supposed that our having a good working grasp of such notions depends upon our being able to define them in other terms, so that questions of metaphysics or ontology thereby become questions of semantics or epistemology or total science. I consider this to be a serious methodological error: upon careful reflection we can see that our intuitive grasp of these notions is a sufficient guide in itself to their proper employment; and the attempt to define these notions in other terms has served merely to distort our understanding of the metaphysical questions and of the methods by which they are to be resolved." (p. 176)

30. ———. 2010. "Towards a Theory of Part." Journal of Philosophy no. 107:559-589.

Paper read at the Kit Fine Day: Ontology Talks, Paris, February 11, 2008.

"My aim in this paper is to outline a general framework for dealing with questions of partwhole. Familiar as this topic may be, my treatment of it is very different from more conventional approaches. For instead of dealing with the single notion of mereological part or sum, I have attempted to provide a comprehensive and unified account of the different ways in which one object can be a part of another. Thus mereology, as it is usually conceived, becomes a small branch of a much larger subject. (1)

My discussion has been intentionally restricted in a number of ways. In the first place, my principal concern has been with the notion of absolute rather than relative part. We may talk of one object being a part of another relative to a time or circumstances (as when we say that the tire was once a part of the car or that or that the execution of Marie Antoinette was as a matter of contingent fact a part of the French Revolution) or in a way that is not relative to a time or the circumstances (as when we say that this pint of milk is a part of the quart or that the letter ‘c’ is part of the word ‘cat’). Many philosophers have supposed that the two notions are broadly analogous and that what goes for one will tend to go for the other. (2) I believe this view to be mistaken and a source of endless error. But it is not my aim to discuss either the notion of relative part or its connection with the absolute notion. (3)

In the second place, I have focused on the ‘pure’ theory of part-whole rather than its application to our actual ontology. Once given a theory of part-whole, there arises the question of how it applies to the objects with which we are already familiar. This question becomes especially delicate and intricate on my own approach since, although we may recognize that such and such a familiar object is a part or whole, it may not be clear, according to the theory, what kind of whole or part it is. But despite the considerable interest of this question, my focus has been on the abstract development of the theory itself and not on its application to ontology.

Finally, I have only provided the merest sketch of the framework (on which I hope say more elsewhere). Many points are not developed and some not even stated. I have, in particular, said relatively little about the technical foundations of the subject, which are mathematically quite distinctive, or about some of the broader philosophical issues to which they give rise. I have given a rough map of the terrain rather than a guided tour, but I hope I have done enough to bring out the interest of the approach and to make clear how a more systematic and philosophically informed account might proceed." (pp. 559-560)

(1) The material outlined in this paper has been developed over a period of thirty years. It was most recently presented in a seminar at Princeton in 2000; and I am grateful to Cian Dorr, Michael Fara, Gail Harman, Mark Johnston, David Lewis and Gideon Rosen for their comments.

I am also grateful for some comments I received from Ted Sider and two anonymous referees for the journal; and I owe a special debt of thanks to Achille Varzi for his encouragement.

(2) As in T. Sider, Four Dimensionalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), for example.

(3) The matter is briefly discussed in K. Fine, Things and Their Parts, Midwest Studies in Philosophy XXIII (1999), 61-74.

31. ———. 2010. "Some Puzzles of Ground." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic no. 51:97-118.

"In recent years there has been a growing interest in the concept of ground—of one thing holding in virtue of another, and, in developing an account of ground, a number of philosophers have laid down principles which they regard as unquestionably true of the concept. (1) The purpose of this note is to show that these principles are in conflict with seemingly impeccable principles of logic. Thus a choice must be made; either one or more of the metaphysical principles or one or more of the logical principles should be given up.

Some philosophers—and especially those already unsympathetic to ground—may think that the conflict reveals some underlying defect in the concept. For if acceptance of the concept of ground has such untoward consequences, then this can only be because the concept was no good in the first place. My own view—which I suggest toward the end of the paper—is quite different. It is not that considerations of ground should be ignored or even that the principles of ground should be given up in the light of their conflict with the principles of logic. Rather we need to achieve some kind of reflective equilibrium between the two sets of principles, one that does justice both to our logical intuitions and to our need for some account of their ground. Thus the conflict, far from serving to undermine the concept of ground, serves to show how important it is to arriving at a satisfactory view of what in logic, as in other areas of thought, can properly be taken to hold.

The puzzle to which the conflict of principles gives rise bears some resemblance to the paradoxes of self-reference. It is not itself a paradox of self-reference: the puzzle, on the one side, makes no direct use of self-reference; the paradox, on the other side, makes no direct appeal to the notion of ground. But considerations of ground are often used to motivate certain solutions to the paradoxes, and the puzzle makes clear the reasoning behind these considerations and brings out the critical role played by the notion of ground. (2)" (pp. 97-98)

(1) They include Audi [1], Batchelor [2], Correia [3], Correia [4], Rosen [10], Schneider [11], and Schneider [12].

(2) I especially have in mind the kind of solution to the semantic paradoxes to be found in Kripke [8].

References

[1] Audi, P., “Grounding,” forthcoming, 2010. [Paul R. Audi, 'Grounding: Toward a Theory of the In-Virtue-Of Relation', The Journal of Philosophy 109, 2012, pp. 685-711.]

[2] Batchelor, R., “Grounds and consequences,” Grazer Philosophische Studien , vol. 80 (2010), pp. 65–77.

[3] Correia, F., Existential Dependence and Cognate Notions , Philosophia Verlag GmbH, München, 2005.

[4] Correia, F., “Grounding and truth-functions,” forthcoming in Logique et Analyse [211 (2010), 251–279]

[8] Kripke, S., “Outline of a theory of truth,” Journal of Philosophy , vol. 72 (1975), pp. 690–71.

[10] Rosen, G., “Metaphysical dependence: Grounding and reduction,” pp. 109–36 in Modality: Metaphysics, Logic and Epistemology , edited by B. Hale and A. Hoffman, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010.

[11] Schneider, B., “Truth-functionality,” Review of Symbolic Logic , vol. 1 (2008), pp. 64–72.

[12] Schneider, B., “A logic of ‘because’,” in progress, 2010.

32. ———. 2010. "Semantic Necessity." In Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology , edited by Hale, Bob and Hoffmann, Aviv, 65-80. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In the recent monograph ‘Semantic Relationism’, I made use of a certain notion of what was semantically necessary, or required, in arguing that it might be a semantic requirement that two names were coreferential even though there were no intrinsic semantic features of the names in virtue of which this was so. In the present paper, I wish to consider the bearing of the notion on the nature and content of semantic enquiry. I shall argue that a semantics for a given language is most perspicuously taken to be a body of semantic requirements and that the notion of a semantic requirement should itself be employed in articulating the content of those requirements. There are two main alternatives to this conception to be found in the literature. According to one, a semantics for a given language is taken to be an assignment of semantic values to its expressions; and according to the other, a semantics for a given language is taken to be a theory of truth for that language. I attempt to show how these alternatives do not provide us with the most perspicuous way of representing the semantic facts and that it is only in terms of our conception that one can properly appreciate what these facts are.

The importance of the notion of metaphysical necessity for metaphysics has long been appreciated, in regard to both explicating the nature of the subject and articulating the content of its claims. If the argument of this paper is correct, then it will help to show that the notion of semantic necessity has a similar and equally important role to play in understanding the nature and content of semantics." (p. 65)

33. ———. 2010. "Comments on Scott Soames’ ‘Coordination Problems’." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 81:475-484.

"A major theme of ‘Semantic Relationism’ was that many of the familiar worries over the substitutivity of names in belief contexts may be resolved by going relational. But Soames, in his interesting and actionpacked paper, has argued that even if the more familiar worries are removed there are variants of them that will remain." (p. 475)

(...)

"So we see that the relationist does have a response to the worry that Soames raises. However, the way relationism comes in is not through embedding the speaker’s report in a larger context of belief attributions, as Soames had supposed, but through seeing the speaker’s report and the agent’s belief as forming a single context, in which relationships of coordination relevant to the truth of the report may then be discerned."(p. 476)

34. ———. 2010. "Reply to Lawlor's 'Varieties of Coreference'." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 81:496-501.

"The focus of Krista Lawlor’s challenging paper [*] is on cases of confused reference. By way of illustration, she asks us to suppose that ‘Wally says of Udo, “ He needs a haircut” , and Zach, thinking to agree, but looking at another person, says, ‘he sure does” (p. 4). Zach is confused, since he takes the person he is looking at to be the same as the person Wally was referring to. This might not be a semantic confusion, which is what I think Lawlor is after, but a straight confusion over the facts.

For Zach’s primary intention may be to refer to the same person as Wally or, alternatively, to the person he is looking at and he may mistakenly believe that these two people are the same. But let us suppose that Zach means to use use ‘he’ indifferently as a pronoun anaphoric on Wally’s original use of ‘he’ and as a pronoun that is deictic on the person he is looking at. We would then have a case of confused reference of the kind Lawlor has in mind." (p. 496)

[* Krista Lawlor, "Varieties of Coreference", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81, 2010, pp. 485-495.]

35. ———. 2010. "Comments on Paul Hovda’s ‘Semantics as Information About Semantics Values’." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 81:511-518.

"In SR [ Semantic Relationism ] (7-9), I posed the ‘antimony of the variable’. How can the pair of variables x, y have a different semantic role from the pair x, x when x has the same semantic role as y? In attempting to solve this antimony, I suggested that we appeal to the idea of the values that are taken, not merely by a single variable, but by a sequence of variables (SR, 23-4).

The semantic role of the two pairs of variables can then be distinguished, since the first pair will take a distinct pair of objects from the domain as values (assuming that the domain contains at least two objects) while the second pair will not.

Hovda’s makes a marvelous alternative suggestion. [*] ‘The basic idea’, he writes (pp. 4-5) ‘is that a variable can refer to anything and must refer to exactly one thing.’ The more usual idea is that a variable actually takes all of the objects in the domain as values (or ‘referents’). My own relational account of variables is an instance of this approach, but with the modification that variables can now take their values simultaneously and not merely singly." (p. 511)

[* Paul Hovda "Semantics as Information About Semantics Values", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81, 2010, pp. 485-495.]

36. ———. 2011. "Aristotle's Megarian Manoeuvres." Mind no. 120:993-1034.

Abstract: "Towards the end of Theta 4 of the Metaphysics , Aristotle appears to endorse the obviously invalid modal principle that the truth of A will entail the truth of B if the possibility of A entails the possibility of B. I attempt to show how Aristotle’s endorsement of the principle can be seen to arise from his accepting a non-standard interpretation of the modal operators and I indicate how the principle and its interpretation are of independent interest, quite apart from their role in understanding Aristotle."

"I begin by considering the different ways in which Aristotle’s two principles might be formalized within the framework of propositional modal logic (Sect. 1). I then consider the deductive and semantic consequences of the different ways in which these principles might be formalized, using the apparatus of contemporary modal logic (Sect. 2). It is shown that the difficulties confronting Aristotle are even greater than might have been thought, since the second principle leads to ‘modal collapse’, the collapse of possibility to actuality, which is something that Aristotle had previously argued explicitly against.

Three recent attempts to get Aristotle ‘off the hook’ — those of Brennan (1994), Makin (1999 and 2006), and Nortmann (2006) — are considered and found wanting (Sect. 3). I then propose an alternative solution, which rests upon distinguishing between a world as the locus and as the witness of possibilities (Sect. 4). Once the semantics for Aristotle’s use of the modalities is understood in this way, it becomes perfectly explicable why he would have wanted to endorse the converse principle and how he can avoid modal collapse. I defend this interpretation of Aristotle against some objections and try to indicate why it is of independent interest (Sect. 5). I conclude with an attempt to vindicate Aristotle’s argument for the first principle (Sect. 6)." (pp. 994-995)

References

Brennan, Theodore 1994: ‘Two Modal Theses in the Second Half of Metaphysics Theta.4’. Phronesis , 39, pp. 160–73.

Makin, Stephen 1999: ‘Aristotle’s Two Modal Theses Again’. Phronesis , 44, pp. 114–125.

—— 2006: Aristotle: Metaphysics Theta , tr. and ed. Stephen Makin. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Nortmann, Ulrich 2006: ‘Against Appearances True: On a Controversial Modal Theorem in Metaphysics Theta 4’. Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung , 60, pp. 380–93.

37. ———. 2011. "An Abstract Characterization of the Determinate/Determinable Distinction." Philosophical Perspectives no. 25:161-187.

"My aim in this paper is to provide an account of what it is for the world to have a determinate/determinable structure. Patches have colors, people have heights, particles have mass. These are all instances of the determinate/determinable structure, with a given state of the world consisting in something’s possessing a determinate (be it a given color or height or mass) from within a given determinable (color, height or mass). But what is it for the world as a whole to possess such a structure?

In the Tractatus , Wittgenstein took the atomic propositions, by which the world is to be described, to be completely independent of one another. But he later revised his view (Wittgenstein [1929]) and allowed that the atomic propositions might exhibit the kind of dependence that is characteristic of the way in which different determinants of a given determinable are exclusive of one another. Our question might therefore be put in the form: how in the most abstract terms should we conceive of the post-Tractarian world?" (p. 161)

References

Wittgenstein L., [1929] ‘Some Remarks on Logical Form’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , supplementary volume 9, 162-71.

38. ———. 2011. "The Silence of the Lambdas." The Philosophers's Magazine no. 55:19-27.

James Garvey interview Kit Fine.

"We come finally to Fine’s influential views on vagueness and the so-called “sorites” paradox.

The name comes from the Greek word for heap, “soros”. Eubulides, an ancient Greek philosopher with a thing for paradoxes, asked, roughly, when do you go from a few grains of wheat to a heap? One grain doesn’t count, neither do two or three or four, but keep adding grains and, eventually, you’d say that you do have a heap. The trouble is that for a range of borderline cases, we don’t know what to do with the predicate “is a heap”. There are a number of instances in which “This is a heap” is neither true nor false, but how could that be? When I ask Fine about his views on vagueness, he thinks for a very long minute, noticeably brightening as he does so, and finally tells me he’s found an entirely new way to think about vague predicates.

“I can briefly outline my new view, which is very radical.” He goes on, half smiling, “If I’m right almost everyone else is wrong.” I lean in.

“Predicates can be vague. Take a predicate like bald. It’s vague. Perhaps one way of expressing that is that the predicate is not completely determined in its application. Many people have thought that the phenomenon of vagueness is to be understood though borderline cases: what it is for a predicate to be vague is for there to be borderline cases. My view is that this approach to the problem of vagueness is fundamentally misguided. There is no intelligible notion of borderline case which is relevant to the phenomenon of vagueness. We have to achieve an understanding of vagueness in some other way.

(...)

The new thought is that that’s a mistake, that the indeterminacy cannot be localised in that way.

We cannot point our finger at any one case.

“It means everyone else has been wrong. It leads to a very different conception of vagueness, the logic of vagueness, how you handle various problems. It leads to a completely new logic. It’s something I’ve been thinking about.” (p. 27)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Kit Fine: annotated bibliography. Papers 2012-2022

Papers 2012-2022

1. Fine, Kit. 2012. "What is Metaphysics?" In Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics , edited by Tahko, Tuomas E., 8-25. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"There are, I believe, five main features that serve to distinguish traditional metaphysics from other forms of enquiry. These are: the aprioricity of its methods; the generality of its subject-matter; the transparency or `non-opacity' of its concepts; its eidicity or concern with the nature of things; and its role as a foundation for what there is. In claiming that these are distinguishing features, I do not mean to suggest that no other forms of enquiry possess any of them. Rather, in metaphysics these features come together in a single package and it is the package as a whole rather than any of the individual features that serves to distinguish metaphysics from other forms of enquiry.

It is the aim of this chapter to give an account of these individual features and to explain how they might come together to form a single reasonably unified form of enquiry. I shall begin by giving a rough and ready description of the various features and then go into more detail about what they are and how they are related." (p. 8).

2. ———. 2012. "Guide to Ground." In Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality edited by Correia, Fabrice and Schnieder, Benjamin, 37-80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"A number of philosophers have recently become receptive to the idea that, in addition to scientific or causal explanation, there may be a distinctive kind of metaphysical explanation, in which explanans and explanandum are connected, not through some sort of causal mechanism, but through some constitutive form of determination. I myself have long been sympathetic to this idea of constitutive determination or “ontological ground”; and it is the aim of the present chapter to help put the idea on a firmer footing – to explain how it is to be understood, how it relates to other ideas, and how it might be of use in philosophy. (1)" (p. 37)

(1) A number of other philosophers (they include Audi [forthcoming], Batchelor [2010], Schaffer [2009b], Correia [2005, 2010], Raven [2009], Rosen [2010], Schnieder [2011]) have done related work in defense of the notion; and I have not attempted to make a detailed comparison between their ideas and my own.

I am grateful to the participants at the Boulder conference on dependence and to Neil Tennant for many helpful comments on an earlier draft of the chapter. I should add that, for reasons of space, some of the material in the chapter originally submitted to the volume had been abridged.

References

Audi, P. forthcoming. Grounding: Toward a Theory of the In-Virtue-Of Relation’, Journal of Philosophy [109, 2012, pp. 685-711.]

Batchelor, R. 2010. ‘Grounds and Consequences’, Grazer Philosophische Studien 80: 65–77

Correia, F. 2005. Existential Dependence and Cognate Notions . Munich: Philosophia Verlag

___ 2010. ‘Grounding and Truth-Functions’, Logique et Analyse 53: 251–79

Raven M. 2009. Ontology, From a Fundamentalist Point of View . Ph.D., New York University

Rosen, G. 2010. ‘Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction’, in Hale and Hoffman 2010, (eds.), 2010. Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology . New York: Oxford University Press 109–36

Schaffer, J. 2009b. ‘On What Grounds What’, in Chalmers, Manley, and Wasserman 2009 (eds.), 2009. Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology . Oxford University Press 347–83

Schnieder, B. 2011. ‘A Logic for “Because”’, The Review of Symbolic Logic 4: 445–65

3. ———. 2012. "A Difficulty for the Possible Worlds Analysis of Counterfactuals." Synthese no. 189:29-57.

"A number of different accounts of counterfactual statements have been proposed in the literature. It has been thought that they should be understood in terms of the closeness of possible worlds, for example, with the counterfactual from A to C being true if all sufficiently close worlds in which A is true are worlds in which C is true or that they should be understood in terms of some notion of cotenability, with the counterfactual from A to B being true if A in conjunction with truths cotenable with A entails C. But a common presupposition of almost all of these accounts is that counterfactual claims should be intensional. If the sentences A and AN or C and CN are necessarily equivalent then the substitution of AN for A or CN for C in the antecedent or consequent of a counterfactual should preserve its truth-value. Thus, under the usual form of the possible worlds account, the truth-value of a counterfactual will simply turn on the possible worlds in which the antecedent and the consequent are true and so the account will be unable to distinguish between the truth-values of counterfactuals whose antecedents or consequents are true in the same possible worlds and hence are necessarily equivalent while, under the entailment-based accounts, the entailments will remain the same under the substitution of necessary equivalents and so the truth-values of the counterfactuals will also remain the same. (1)

It is the aim of this paper to show that no plausible account of counterfactuals should take them to be intensional and that if we are to describe the different kinds of counterfactual scenarios in the way we want and to reason about them in the way we would like, then the assumption of intensionality should be abandoned. Indeed, it is not merely the assumption of ‘modal’ intensionality that will fail but also the weaker assumption of‘logical’ or ‘classical’ intensionality. For the cases we shall consider are ones in which the substitution of AN for A or CN for C should not be permitted, even though they are logical and not merely necessary equivalents." (pp. 29-30)

(1) The present paper expands on material in the first part of Fine, ‘Counterfactuals without Possible Worlds’, to appear in Journal of Philosophy [2012].

4. ———. 2012. "Counterfactuals Without Possible Worlds." Journal of Philosophy no. 109:221-246.

"Ever since the pioneering work of Stalnaker and Lewis (1), it has been customary to provide a semantics for counterfactuals statements in terms of possible worlds. Roughly speaking, the idea is that the counterfactual from A to C should be taken to be true just in case all of the closest worlds in which A is true are worlds in which C is true. Such a semantics is subject to some familiar difficulties - counterfactuals involving impossible antecedents, for example, or counterfactuals involving big changes consequential upon small changes. But it is not clear how seriously to take these difficulties - either because they might be met through some modification in the notion of closeness or because the intuitions on which the cases depend might be challenged or because the cases themselves might be dismissed as peripheral to the central use of the counterfactual construction; and nor has it been clear what a more satisfactory alternative to the possible world semantics might be put in its place." (p. 221)

References

(1) Stalnaker, ‘A Theory of Conditionals’ in N. Rescher (ed.) Studies in Logical Theory , American Philosophical Quarterly Monograph Series , No. 2' (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968), 98-112 and Lewis, Counterfactuals (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973).

5. ———. 2012. "Modal Logic and its Applications to the Philosophy of Language." In The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language , edited by Russell, Gilliam and Graff Fara, Delia 609-623. New York: Routledge.

"Modal logic is the logic of possibility and necessity and of other such notions. It began, as did logic in general, with Aristotle, in his theory of the ‘modal syllogism’; and various notions and principles of modal logic were extensively discussed in the middle ages.

But the subject only came into its own at the beginning of the twentieth century (see Goldblatt 2005 for an account of its recent history).

I begin by presenting some basic material on the possible worlds’ approach to modal logic and then show how it relates to certain key topics in the philosophy of language.

For reasons of space, I have had to be very selective and, inevitably, a great deal of interesting material has not been covered." (p. 609)

(...)

"7.6 Limitations

The possible worlds approach to meaning is subject to some well-known limitations. It cannot distinguish, for example, between knowing one necessary truth from knowing another. Or again, it may be permitted that I post the letter but not permitted that I post the letter or post the letter and burn down the post office, even though the two embedded clauses are true in the same possible worlds.

There is a question of how seriously to take these difficulties. My own view is that they cannot properly be overcome or ignored and that the possible worlds approach, for all of its success, can only be regarded as the first step towards a more adequate account of meaning." (p. 622)

References

Goldblatt R. (2005) ‘Mathematical Modal Logic: A View of its Evolution’ in Handbook of the History of Logic : VII (eds. D. M. Gabbay and J. Woods), Amsterdam: Elsevier.

6. ———. 2012. "The Pure Logic of Ground." The Review of Symbolic Logic no. 5:1-25.

"Ground is the relation of one truth holding in virtue of others. This relation is like that of consequence in that a necessary connection must hold between the relata if the relation is to obtain but it differs from consequence in so far as it required that there should also be an explanatory connection between the relata. The grounds must account for what is grounded. Thus even though P is a consequence of P & P, P & P is not a ground for P, since it does not account for the truth of P.

It is the aim of this paper to develop a semantics and proof theory for the pure logic of ground. The pure logic of ground stands to ground as Gentzen’s structural rules stand to consequence. One prescinds from the internal structure of the propositions under consideration and simply asks what follows from what in virtue of the formal features of the underlying relation. Thus the claim that ground is transitive, that if P is a ground for Q and Q a ground for R then P should be a ground for R, is plausibly regarded as part of the pure logic of ground; but the claim that P is a ground for P & P will be part of the applied as opposed to the pure logic of ground, since it turns on the logical properties of &." (p. 1)

7. ———. 2012. "Mathematics: Discovery or Invention." Think no. 11:11-27.

Abstract: "Mathematics has been the most successful and is the most mature of the sciences. Its first great master work – Euclid's ‘Elements’ – which helped to establish the field and demonstrate the power of its methods, was written about 2400 years ago; and it served as a standard text in the mathematics curriculum well into the twentieth century. By contrast, the first comparable master work of physics – Newton's Principia – was written 300 odd years ago. And the juvenile science of biology only got its first master work – Darwin's ‘On the Origin of Species’ – a mere 150 years ago. The development of the subject has also been extraordinarily fertile, particularly in the last three centuries, and it is perhaps only in the last century that the other sciences have begun to approach mathematics in the steady accumulation of knowledge that it has been able to offer. There has, moreover, been almost universal agreement on its methods and how they are to be applied. What we require is proof; and, in practice, there is very little disagreement over whether or not we have it. The other sciences, by contrast, tend to get mired in controversy over the significance of this or that experimental finding or over whether one theory is to be preferred to another."

8. ———. 2013. "A Note on Partial Content." Analysis no. 73:413-419.

"Some philosophers have looked for a notion of partial content for which the content of A is in general part of the content of A & B but the content of A v B is not in general part of the content of A. (1) But they have realized that these two requirements are in tension with one another. For A is logically equivalent to (A _ B) & A and so, if the content of (A _ B) is part of the content of (A v B) & A, it should also be part of the content of A.

There is a related difficulty for allied notions. Thus, one might want A & B to be partially true via A being true though not want A to be partially true via A v B being true (since A v B might be true through B being true, which has nothing to do with A). Or one might want A & B to have at least much truth in it as A even though A does not in general have at least much truth in it as A v B. Or one might want A to confirm A & B but not want A v B to confirm A (since A v B might in its turn be confirmed by B).

In this note, I show that this difficulty is of a quite general nature and does not simply arise from the desire to have the content of A be part of the content of A & B but not have the content of A v B be part of the content of A." (p. 413)

(1) As in Angell 1977, Gemes 1994 and Yablo 2013, for example.

References

Angell, R.E. 1977. Three systems of first degree entailment. Journal of Symbolic Logic 42: 147.

Gemes, K. 1994. A new theory of content. Journal of Philosophical Logic 23: 596–620.

Yablo, S. 2013. Aboutness . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

9. ———. 2013. "Fundamental Truth and Fundamental Terms." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 87:725-732.

Comments on Siders’ ‘Writing the Book

of the World’ [*]

"Ted Sider’s ‘Writing the Book of the World’ is a bold and ambitious work, offering original and provocative answers to a wide range of questions within metaphysics and meta-metaphysics. The book is focused on the topic of fundamentality—of what is fundamental and of what it is to be fundamental and, although Sider is largely concerned to develop his own positive views on the topic, he does devote a couple of sections (§§8.1-2) to my views, as laid out in the paper, ‘The Question of Realism’. (1) I hope I may therefore be forgiven for devoting my attention to some of the more critical points that he makes in these sections." (p. 725)

[*] New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

(1) Imprint, vol. 1, no. 1, 2001, reprinted in ‘ Individuals, Essence and Identity: Themes of Analytic Philosophy ’ (ed. A. Bottani, M Carrara, P. Giaretta), Dordrecht: Kluwer 2002, 3-41.

10. ———. 2014. "Truth-Maker Semantics for Intuitionistic Logic." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 43:549-577.

Abstract "I propose a new semantics for intuitionistic logic, which is a cross between the construction-oriented semantics of Brouwer-Heyting-Kolmogorov and the condition-oriented semantics of Kripke. The new semantics shows how there might be a common semantical underpinning for intuitionistic and classical logic and how intuitionistic logic might thereby be tied to a realist conception of the relationship between language and the world."

"I wish to propose a new semantics for intuitionistic logic, which is in some ways a cross between the construction-oriented semantics of Brouwer-Heyting-Kolmogorov (as expounded in [8], for example) and the condition-oriented semantics of Kripke [6]. The new semantics is of some philosophical interest, because it shows how there might be a common semantical underpinning for intuitionistic and classical logic and how intuitionistic logic might thereby be tied to a realist conception of the relationship between language and the world. The new semantics is also of some technical interest; it gives rise to a framework, intermediate between the frameworks of the two other approaches, within which several novel questions and approaches may be pursued.

I begin with a philosophical discussion and conclude with a long technical appendix. In principle, the two can be read independently of one another but it is preferable if the reader first gains a formal and informal understanding of the semantics and then goes back and forth between the philosophical and technical exposition. (1)" (pp. 549-550)

(1) An earlier version of this paper was presented at a conference on truthmakers in Paris, 2011, and at a conference on the philosophy of mathematics in Bucharest, 2012. I should like to thank the participants of these two conferences for helpful comments and also an anonymous referee for the journal. After completing the paper, I learned that Ciardelli’s thesis [1] on inquisitive logic contains some related work.

In particular, the system HH of the appendix is similar to the system for inquisitive logic while lemma 22 corresponds to the disjunctive-negative normal form theorem for inquisitive logic. It would be worthwhile to explore the connections between the two approaches in more detail. I should like to thank Ivano Ciardelli for bringing his thesis to my attention and for helpful correspondence.

References

1. Ciaredelli, I. (2009). ‘Inquisitive semantics and intermediate logics’, M Sc. Thesis, University of Amsterdam.

6. Kripke, S. (1965). ‘Semantical analysis of intuitionistic logic’. In J. Crossley and M. A. E. Dummett (Eds.), [ Formal Systems and Recursive Functions , Amsterdam: North Holland, 1965], 92–130.

8. Troelstra, A., & van Dalen, D. (1988). ‘Constructivism in mathematics’ (volumes 1 & 2) . Amsterdam: North Holland.

11. ———. 2014. "A New Theory of Vagueness (Abstract)." In Formal Ontology in Information Systems , edited by Garbacz, Pawel and Kutz, Oliver, 4. Amsterdam: IOS Press.

"I propose a new theory of vagueness. It differs from previous theories in two main respects. First, it treats vagueness as a global rather than local phenomenon, i.e. vagueness always relates to a number of cases rather than a single case. Second, it treats vagueness as a logical rather than a material matter, i.e. vagueness can be expressed by logical means alone without the help of additional vagueness-theoretic primitives. I shall criticize alternative views, develop a logic and semantics for my own view, and explain how it deals with the sorites."

12. ———. 2014. "Recurrence: A Rejoinder." Philosophical Studies no. 169:425-428.

"I am grateful to Nathan Salmon (in Salmon [2012]) for being willing to spill so much ink over my monograph on semantic relationism [2007], even if what he has to say is not altogether complimentary. There is a great deal in his criticisms to which I take exception but I wish to focus on one point, what he calls my ‘formal disproof’ of standard Millianism. He believes that ‘the alleged hard result is nearly demonstrably false’ (p. 420) and that the disproof contains a ‘serious error’ (p. 407). Neither claim is correct; and it is the aim of this short note to explain why." (p. 425)

References

Fine K., [2007] ‘ Semantic Relationism ’, Oxford: Blackwell

Salmon N., [2012] ‘Recurrence’, Philosophical Studies 159, 407- 411.

13. ———. 2014. "Permission and Possible Worlds." Dialectica no. 68:317-336.

"It is often taken for granted, by philosophers and linguists alike, that one can give an account of the truth-conditions of statements of permission in terms of possible worlds, that it will be permissible to see to it that p just in case p is true in some permissible or ‘deontically accessible’ world. In this paper, I shall argue that if statements of permission are to serve their purpose as a guide to action then no possible worlds account of their truth-conditions can possibly be correct. In a previous paper, I presented a simple argument against the possible worlds account of counterfactuals (The author [2012a], p. 45); and the present paper arose from my seeing that a similar form of argument applied with even greater force against the possible worlds account of statements of permission.

The objection may be briefly and loosely stated as follows. Suppose God has placed infinitely many apples a1, a2, a3, ... in Alternative Eden and tells Eve (for some reason, this is not mentioned in the Bible) :

You may eat infinitely many of the apples a1, a2, a3, ....

What then is Eve permitted to do?

She might initially have thought that she is permitted to eat all of the apples, say, or all but one, or every other apple, and so on. But whatever her other failings, she is not lacking in logical acumen. She realizes that eating infinitely many of the apples a1, a2, a3, ... is logically equivalent to eating infinitely many of the apples a0, a1, a2, a3,..., where a0 happens to be the apple from the Tree of Knowledge in Original Eden and so, she reasons, if the truth of permission claims is preserved under the substitution of logical equivalents, as it should be under a possible worlds account, then God might just as well have said:

You may eat infinitely many of the applies a0, a1, a2, a3, ....

But if God has said this she would have been permitted to eat the Forbidden Fruit in combination with an infinite selection of the other apples; and so she goes ahead and eats the Forbidden Fruit.

Yet clearly, there is nothing in God’s initial statement of permission that actually justifies Eve in eating the Forbidden Fruit, as she soon discovers to her dismay." (pp. 317-318)

References

Fine, Kit 2012a. "Counterfactuals Without Possible Worlds", Journal of Philosophy 109, 221-246.

14. ———. 2015. "Unified Foundations for Essence and Ground." Journal of the American Philosophical Association no. 1:296-315.

"There are, I believe, two different kinds of explanation or determination to be found in metaphysics - one of identity, or of what something is, and the other of truth, or of why something is so. One may explain what singleton Socrates is, for example, by saying that it is the set whose sole member is Socrates and one may explain why, or that in virtue of which, singleton Socrates exists by appeal to the existence of Socrates. One might talk, in connection with the first, of essence, of what singleton Socrates essentially is and, in connection with the second, of ground, of what grounds the existence of singleton Socrates. (1)

Of course, explanations of identity and of truth also occur outside of metaphysics, but what is characteristic of their occurrence within metaphysics is the especially tight connection between explanandum and explanans. Being a set whose sole member is Socrates is somehow constitutive of what Socrates is; and Socrates’ existing is somehow constitutive of the existence of singleton Socrates. It is perhaps hard to say in general what constitutes a constitutive explanation but it is at least required, in any case of a constitutive explanation, that there should be metaphysically necessary connection between explanandum and explanans. Given that singleton Socrates is essentially a set whose sole member is Socrates, then it is metaphysically necessary that the set is one whose sole member is Socrates; and given that Socrates existence grounds the existence of singleton Socrates, it will be metaphysically necessary if Socrates exists that his singleton exists." (p. 296)

(...)

"My present view is that the relationship between the two kinds of explanation is much closer than I had originally taken it to be. The decisive step towards achieving the desired rapprochement is to see both kinds of explanation as having a generic, as well as a specific, bearing on the objects with which they deal; they must be allowed to have application to an arbitrary individual of a given kind and not just to specific individuals of that kind. Once this step is taken, the initial disparities between essence and ground disappear and we are able to provide a unified and uniform account of the two notions. I had previously referred to essence and ground as the pillars upon which the edifice of metaphysics rests (Fine [2012], p. 80], but we can now see more clearly how the two notions complement one another in providing support for the very same structure." (p. 297)

(1) I should like to thank the members of audiences at Birmingham, Oxford and Oslo for many helpful comments. The present paper is a companion to my paper ‘Identity Criteria and Ground’ and the reader may find it helpful, if not essential, to have the other paper at hand. I should note that Correia [2014] attempts to provide unified foundations, of a very different sort, in terms of an underlying notion of factual identity.

There has been a growing literature on essence and ground in the recent philosophical literature. My own work on essence dates back to Fine [1994]; and a useful reference on ground is the anthology of Correia & Schnieder [2012].

References

Correia F. & Schnieder B. (eds.), [2012] ‘ Metaphysical Grounding ’, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Correia F. [2014] ‘Identity, Essence and Ground’, slides for a talk.

Fine K., [1994] ‘Essence and Modality’, in Philosophical Perspectives 8 (ed. J. Tomberlin) as the Nous Casteneda Memorial Lecture, pp. 1-16, (1994); reprinted in ‘ The Philosopher’s Annual' for 1994, volume 16, (ed. P. Grim), Stanford: CSLI; and reprinted in ‘ Metaphysics: An Anthology ’ (2nd edition), eds. J. Kim, D. Korman, E. Sosa, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell (2011).

Fine K., [2012] ‘Guide to Ground’ in ‘ Metaphysical Grounding ’ (eds. B. Schnieder & F. Correia), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 8-25 pp.; reprinted online in ‘ Philosophers Annual ’ for 2012 (eds. P. Grim, C. Armstrong, P. Shirreff, N-H Stear).

Fine K., [2014] ‘Identity Criteria and Ground’, to appear in Philosophical Studies . [vol. 173, 2016, pp. 1-19]

15. ———. 2016. "Angellic Content." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 45:199-226.

"In a number of publications dating from 1977, Angell developed various systems of analytic entailment. The intended interpretation of a statement A → B of analytic entailment is that the content of B should be part of the content of A, and a guiding principle behind the understanding of partial content is that the content of A and of B should each be part of the content of A ∧ B but that the content of A ∨ B should not in general be part of the content of either A or B. Thus partial content cannot be understood as classical consequence or even as relevant consequence under its more usual interpretation.

Quite independently of Angell’s work, I had attempted to develop a semantics for partial content in terms of truthmakers. It was taken to be an intuitive requirement on a truthmaker, or verifier, for a given statement that the verifier should be relevant to the truth of the statement and I had thought that one might take the analytic entailment A → B to hold if every verifier for A contained a verifier for B and if every verifier for B was contained in a verifier for A.

I was naturally interested in the resulting logic of entailment.

Much to my surprise, I discovered that the resulting logic coincided with the first degree fragment of Angell’s system. Under the proposed account of partial content, his system exactly captures the logic of partial content, once the content of a statement is identified with a suitable set of verifiers."

(...)

"The paper has 10 sections in all. I detail the systems of analytic entailment to be considered (§1). I provide an outline of the truthmaker semantics (§2), give a definition of containment as a relation between contents (§3), and relate containment to the notion of subject-matter (§4). I establish soundness (§5) and then establish completeness by means of disjunctive normal forms (§§6-7). I consider two alternative semantics for the system, one in terms of falsifiers as well as verifiers (§8), and the other in terms of a many-valued logic (§9). I conclude by briefly considering some of the ways in which the system might be extended (§10)."

References

Angell R. B., [1977] ‘Three Systems of First Degree Entailment’, Journal of Symbolic Logic , v. 47, p. 147.

Angell R. B. [1989] ‘Deducibility, Entailment and Analytic Containment’, chapter 8 of Norman and Sylvan [1989], pp. 119 - 144.

Angell R. B. [2002] A-Logic , University Press of America.

Norman J., Sylvan R. (eds) [1989] ‘ Directions in Relevant Logic ’, Dordrecht: Kluwer.

16. ———. 2016. "Identity Criteria and Ground." Philosophical Studies no. 173:1-19.

"Philosophers often look for criteria of identity or think they are not to be found. They may ask for a criterion of identity for sets, for example, or for propositions, or for persons across time, or for individuals across possible worlds. And in response to such requests, they have said such things as: a criterion of identity for sets is their having the same members; or a criterion of identity for persons across time is their psychological continuity. (1)

But what are these philosophers asking for when they ask for such criteria? I shall argue that the usual way of construing these questions is seriously misguided. I shall also propose an alternative - and, I hope, preferable - way of construing these questions and shall briefly indicate its significance for our more general understanding of metaphysical explanation. In what follows, I shall often use the criteria of identity for sets and for persons as examples. But it is important to bear in mind that they are just that, examples, and that the points I make concerning them are meant to apply, across the board, to all identity criteria." (p. 1)

(1) 1I should like to thank Ted Sider, Fatema Amijee and Martin Glazier for their very helpful written comments and members of the audiences at Austin, Birmingham, CUNY, Oberlin, Oxford and Oslo for many helpful oral comments.

17. ———. 2016. "Williamson on Fine on Prior on the reduction of Possibilist Discourse." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. 46:548-570.

"Timothy Williamson’s Modal Logic as Metaphysics (2013; MLM) is a tour de force — comprehensive in its scope, brilliant in its argumentation, and startling in its conclusions. It merits discussion on a wide range of different fronts, but I hope I can be forgiven for focusing on chapter 7 of the book, in which Williamson criticizes my attempt to carry out Prior’s project of reducing possibilist discourse to actualist discourse.

My response is in three main parts. I begin by discussing what the reductive project should be. Williamson and I disagree on this question and, although it is not important for the evaluation of my own reductive proposal, it is important for a broader understanding of the metaphysical issues at stake. I then discuss and evaluate Williamson’s criticisms of my original reductive proposal. Although I believe that these criticisms can to some extent be met, they point to the need for a more satisfactory and less contentious form of reduction. Finally, I lay out the new proposed reduction; it is based on the idea of finding a general way of extending a reduction of first-order discourse to higher order discourse." (p. 548)

18. ———. 2017. "The Possibility of Vagueness." Synthese no. 194:3699-3725.

"I wish in this paper to propose a new approach to the topic of vagueness. It is different from the supervaluational approach, which I had previously advocated in Fine (1975), and from almost all other approaches in the literature of which I am aware.(1) There are two principal respects in which it differs from previous approaches: one concerns the global character of vagueness, of how vagueness relates to a whole range of cases and not merely to a single case; the other concerns the logical character of vagueness, of how it is capable of being conveyed by logical means alone. And so let me say a little more about these two features of the view before proceeding to the account itself." (p. 3699)

(1) The one exception appears to be Zardini (2014), although his view appears to be very different from mine in a number of fundamental respects.

References

Fine, K. (1975). Vagueness, truth and logic. Synthese 30, 265–300. Reprinted in Keefe & Smith (eds.). (1996). Vagueness: A reader. Boston: MIT University Press.

Zardini E. (2014). First-order tolerant logics. Review of Symbolic Logic (forthcoming).

19. ———. 2017. "A Theory of Truthmaker Content I: Conjunction, Disjunction and Negation." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 46:625-674.

Abstract: "I develop a basic theory of content within the framework of truthmaker semantics and, in the second part, consider some of the applications to subject matter, common content, logical subtraction and ground."

"The paper is in two parts - the present part dealing with the familiar concepts of conjunction, disjunction and negation and the subsequent part dealing with the less familiar concepts of subject-matter, common content, logical remainder and ground.

We shall provide an account of the quasi-structural notions of conjunctive and disjunctive part in the present part, but it is only in the second part that the approach will come into its own and its distinctive contribution to the theory of content become most apparent. Each of the two parts begins with an informal exposition of the material and concludes with a technical addendum. In principle, the exposition and addendum could be read independently of the other, though the reader may find it helpful to go back and forth between them." (p. 626)

20. ———. 2017. "A Theory of Truthmaker Content II: Subject-matter, Common Content, Remainder and Ground." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 46:675-702.

"We continue with the development of the theory of truthmaker content begun in part I, dealing with such ‘non-standard’ topics as subject matter, common content, logical remainder and ground. This is by no means an exhaustive list of topics that might have been considered but it does provide an indication of the nature and scope of the theory. As before, the paper is divided into an informal exposition and a technical addendum. Both can be read independently of the other but it would be helpful, in either case, to have the first part of the paper at hand." (p. 675)

21. ———. 2017. "Naive Metaphysiscs." Philosophical Issues. A Supplement to NOÛS no. 27:98-113.

"Metaphysics has two central concerns. One is with the nature of things, with what they are like; and the other is with reality, with what there is.

(...)

We therefore arrive at a traditional distinction within metaphysics between ontology , which is concerned with what there is, and what one might call metaphysics proper , which is concerned with the nature of what there is.(2) I wish, in this paper, to argue that this traditional division in the subject-matter of metaphysics is misguided and the connection between its two branches misconceived and that it should be replaced by a different division of the subject matter — into what I call naive and foundational metaphysics — and by a different conception of how the two branches are related. If I am right, then a good deal of metaphysical enquiry has labored under a false or unduly limited view of what the questions of metaphysics are and of how they are to be answered and it is only by reconfiguring the metaphysical landscape that we can obtain a proper view of how the subject should be pursued." (p. 98)

(2) I have in mind here a recent tradition within analytic philosophy, perhaps derived from Quine, and not the more historical tradition deriving from Aristotle.

22. ———. 2017. "Truthmaker Semantics." In A Companion to the Philosophy of Language. Second Edition. Vol. II , edited by Hale, Bob, Wright, Crispin and Miller, Alexander, 556-577. Malden: Wiley Blackwell.

"My aim in the present chapter is to explain the basic framework of truthmaker or ‘exact’ semantics, an approach to semantics that has recently received a growing amount of interest, and then to discuss a number of different applications within philosophy and linguistics." (p. 556)

23. ———. 2017. "Form." Journal of Philosophy no. 114:509-535.

"This paper is a belated sequel to my paper on Cantorian abstraction.(1) In that paper, I attempted to defend Cantor’s account of cardinal numbers as sets of units, using a theory of arbitrary objects that I had previously developed to explain what the units were.(2) Of course, no one now adopts Cantor’s own account of cardinal number, preferring instead von Neumann’s elegant treatment of cardinal numbers as initial ordinals; this may have led some readers—or potential readers—of my earlier paper to dismiss it as being of purely scholarly interest. But as I had already mentioned in the paper on Cantorian abstraction, “the Cantorian theory can be extended to provide a more general theory of types—covering not merely the abstract formal types of mathematics but also the more concrete types of ordinary and scientific discourse” [p. 602]; in the present paper, I wish to consider the extension of the account to these other kinds of types (or what I now also wish to call forms )." (p. 509)

(1) Kit Fine, “Cantorian Abstraction: A Reconstruction and Defense,” this journal, xcv, 12 (December 1998): 599–634.

(2) Kit Fine, Reasoning with Arbitrary Objects (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).

24. ———. 2018. "Compliance and Command I, Categorical imperative." The Review of Symbolic Logic :1-25.

"The main aim of this series of papers is to develop a truthmaker semantics for the logic of imperative and deontic sentences. The first part deals with categorical imperative sentences, the second with deontic sentences and their interplay with categorical imperative sentences, and the third part with the interplay between indicative, imperative and deontic sentences and with conditional imperative and deontic sentences in particular. It would be helpful, though not strictly necessary, to have some standard exposition of truthmaker semantics at hand (such as Fine [2015]). I have for the most part been content with informal exposition but the reader may consult the appendix for some technical detail." (p. 1)

References

Fine K. [2015] ‘Angellic Content’, to appear in Journal of Philosophical Logic , I-28 (2015).

25. ———. 2018. "Compliance and Command II, Imperatives and deontics." The Review of Symbolic Logic :1-25.

"In this part of the paper, I am interested in providing a semantics and logic for deontic sentences and working out their connection with the previous semantics and logic for imperatives.

(...)

The plan of the paper is as follows. I begin by making some distinctions and stipulations which will be useful in the rest of the paper (§1); I introduce and explain the key notion of a code of conduct, relative to which deontic formulas are to be be interpreted (§2); I give the clauses for when a deontic formula is true or false relative to a code of conduct (§3) and spell out some of the consequences of these clauses, especially in regard to the contrast with the standard possible worlds semantics for deontic logic (§4); I consider various ways of reformulating the criterion of validity for deontic formulas and point, in particular, to a very close connection between this criterion and the criterion of validity for imperative inference proposed in part I (§5); I consider some of the characteristic inferences that are or fail to be valid (§6) and outline a system of deontic logic within the truthmaker approach (§7); I show how one might deal with the problem of deontic updating within the truthmaker framework (§8); and I conclude with a brief formal appendix.

I assume the reader is familiar with the basic material from part I, including the truthmaker semantics for imperatives and the definition of validity for imperative inference; and it would also be helpful for her to have some knowledge of the standard possible worlds semantics for deontic logic." (p. 1)

26. ———. 2018. "The World of Truthmakers." In Being Necessary: Themes of Ontology and Modality from the Work of Bob Hale , edited by Fred-Rivera, Ivette and Leech, Jessica, 36-59. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

"It is a common idea that the full resources of possible worlds semantics are not required to provide an intensional semantics for classical logic. For these purposes, one need only appeal to partial possibilities, or what I shall call ‘states’, as long as one is willing to modify the usual clauses for the connectives or the definition of validity or perhaps both.

Humberstone (1981), Hale (2013), Rumfitt (2015), and Holliday (2015) are among those who have attempted to develop a semantics of this sort; and manifestations of the same idea are to be found within situation semantics and in the more recent work on inquisitive semantics. It is an approach to semantics to which I myself have been attracted, both in earlier unpublished work and in some recent work on ‘exact’ truthmaking; and, indeed, it was from the attempt to relate ‘exact’ truth-maker semantics to the other semantical approaches that the present work arose." (p. 36, notes omitted)

References

Hale, B. (2013) Necessary Beings: An Essay on Modality and Ontology and the Relations between Them , Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Holliday, W. (2015) ‘Possibility Frames and Forcing for Modal Logic’, Working paper series at escholarship - University of California

Humberstone, L. (1981) ‘From Worlds to Possibilities’, Journal of Philosophical Logic 10, 313–39.

Rumfitt, I. (2015) ‘The Boundary Stones of Thought: An Essay in the Philosophy of Logic’, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

27. ———. 2018. "Ignorance of Ignorance." Synthese no. 19:4031-4045.

Abstract: "I discuss the question of when knowledge of higher order ignorance is possible and show in particular that, under quite plausible assumptions, knowledge of second order ignorance is impossible."

28. ———. 2019. "Verisimilitude and Truthmaking." Erkenntnis no. 86:1239-1276.

Abstract: "I provide and defend a hyper-intensional account of verisimilitude within the truthmaker framework."

"The main aim of this paper is to apply the recently developed framework of truthmaker semantics to the problem of verisimilitude, or likeness to the truth. Some important initial steps in this direction were taken by Gemes (2007); and some further steps have been taken by Yablo (2014, §6.7). My own thinking on the topic is somewhat different from theirs, however, both in its general conception of truthmaker semantics and in the specific application of the semantics to the concept of verisimilitude; and my hope is that these various accounts, when taken together, will go some way towards demonstrating the general fruitfulness of the approach." (p. 1239, a note omitted)

References

Gemes, K. (2007). Verisimilitude and content. Synthese, 154(2), 293–306.

Yablo, S. (2014). Aboutness . New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

29. Fine, Kit, and Jago, Mark. 2019. "Logic for Exact Entailment." The Review of Symbolic Logic no. 12:536-556.

Abstract: "An exact truthmaker for A is a state which, as well as guaranteeing A ’s truth, is wholly relevant to it. States with parts irrelevant to whether A is true do not count as exact truthmakers for A .

Giving semantics in this way produces a very unusual consequence relation, on which conjunctions do not entail their conjuncts. This feature makes the resulting logic highly unusual. In this paper, we set out formal semantics for exact truthmaking and characterise the resulting notion of entailment, showing that it is compact and decidable. We then investigate the effect of various restrictions on the semantics. We also formulate a sequent-style proof system for exact entailment and give soundness and completeness results."

30. Fine, Kit. 2020. "The Identity of Social Groups." Metaphysics no. 3:81-91.

"I am of the opinion, along with a number of other philosophers, that social groups and organizations are of the same general nature as material things: the differences, insofar as they exist, are intra- rather than extra-categorical. Thus if we wish to understand what it is to be a member of a group, or to understand how a group can change its members while remaining the same, or to understand how two groups can have the very same members, then the answers we should give will be essentially the same as the answers we should give to the questions as to what it is to be a constituent of a material thing, or how a material thing can change its constitution over time, or how two material things can have the very same material constitution.

I have attempted to answer these questions in the case of material things in an earlier paper (Fine 1999). My view, roughly speaking, is that there are three basic operations by which material things may be formed from some underlying matter. One of these is the familiar operation of compounding or fusion, whereby two or more things may combine to form a sum. The other two operations are less familiar and their admission constitutes a fundamental departure from standard mereological doctrine. I call them rigid and variable embodiment. Rigid embodiment is an operation whereby various objects are combined into a whole whose component parts bear certain properties or stand in certain relations to one another. Thus the component parts are not merely fused but integrated into some kind of structured whole. Variable embodiment, on the other hand, is an operation whereby we may form an object that is manifested as different, more particular, objects at different times or in different counterfactual circumstances. The one operation accounts for the constitution of the object at a time, while the other accounts for the actual or possible changes in its constitution." (p. 81, notes omitted)

31. ———. 2020. "Semantics." In The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding , edited by Raven, Michael J., 501-509. New York: Routledge.

"It has often been supposed that there need only be a modal connection between a truth-maker and the sentence it makes true or that the truth-maker need only be partially relevant to the sentence it makes true, so that the fact that it is raining and windy, for example, would then be a truth-maker for the sentence ‘it is raining or snowing’. It is therefore important to note that the notion of ground gives rise to a quite distinctive notion of truth-making, which requires not merely a modal connection but also a very strong relevant connection.

Truth-making has been used for two quite distinct ends, one metaphysical and the other semantical. By attempting to discern the truth-makers of sentences, it has been thought that we might achieve a better understanding of the world via an understanding of what makes the sentences true and also that we might achieve a better understanding of language via an understanding of how the sentences are made true." (p. 502, note omitted)

32. ———. 2020. "Yablo on subject-matter." Philosophical Studies no. 177:129-171.

Abstract: "I discuss Yablo’s approach to truthmaker semantics and compare it with my own, with special focus on the idea of a proposition being true of or being restricted to some subject-matter, the idea of propositional containment, and the development of an ‘incremental’ semantics for the conditional. I conclude with some remarks on the relationship between truth-maker approach and the standard possible worlds approach to semantics."

References

Yablo, S. (2014). Aboutness . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Yablo, S. (2016). Ifs, ands, and buts: An incremental truthmaker semantics for indicative conditionals. Analytic Philosophy , 57(1), 175–213.

Yablo, S. (2018). Reply to Fine on aboutness. Philosophical Studies , 175(6), 1495–1512.

33. ———. 2020. "Indeterminate Identity, Personal Identity and Fission." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 141-163. New York: Oxford University Press.

"I have recently developed a new approach to vagueness and, in this chapter, I wish to show how this approach applies to ontic indeterminacy—or vagueness in the world.

Although the supervaluational approach, which I previously endorsed in Fine (1975), is often associated with a representational conception of indeterminacy—vagueness in language or in thought, it is worth noting that I have always been sympathetic to the idea of ontic indeterminacy. Thus in footnote 10 of the earlier paper, I write “Philosophers have been unduly dismissive over intrinsically vague entities.” I am therefore especially pleased that the present approach is not only able to rehabilitate the ontic conception of indeterminacy but to rehabilitate it in such a way as to make it continuous with the more usual representational conception of indeterminacy.(1)" (p. 141)

(1) For recent discussion of the general topic, the reader might like to consult the collection of essays in Akiba and Abasnezhad (2014).

References

Akiba, K. and Abasnezhad A. (2014) “Vague Objects and Vague Identity,” Springer.

Fine, K. (1975) “Vagueness, Truth and Logic,” Synthese 30 (April–May 1975): 265-300; reprinted in Vagueness: A Reader, ed. Keefe and Smith, 1997.

34. ———. 2020. "Introduction." In Essence and Existence: Selected Essays by Bob Hale , edited by Leech, Jessica, 1-8. New York: Oxford University Press.

"It is, of course, impossible in a brief introduction to do justice to the full range of his work.What I would like to do instead is to discuss the two papers in the volume that are on truthmaking—chapter 6 on truthmakers for universal statements and chapter 7 on truthmakers for modal statements—which continue a line of work he began in chapter 10 of Hale (2013a). Bob’s treatment of this topic is tentative and exploratory in character yet well worthy, in my opinion, of further study; and, even though the topic is one of many that I might have profitably discussed, I hope my discussion of it will help bring out the extraordinary combination of flair and level-headedness that runs through everything he writes." (p. 1)

References

Chapter 6. What Makes True Universal Statements True? , pp. 104-123. (originally published as Bob Hale, ‘What makes true universal statements true?’ in: The Logica Yearbook 2017 , edited by Pavel Arazim and Tomáš

Lávička, published by College Publications, 2018).

Chapter 7. Exact Truthmakers, Modality, and Essence , pp. 124-140. (first edition in thiv volume).

Hale, Bob. 2013a. Necessary Beings: An Essay on Ontology, Modality, and the Relations between them . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

35. ———. 2020. "Comments on Fred Kroon and Jonathan McKeown-Green’s “Ontology: What’s the (Real) Question?”." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 397-402. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Kroon and McKeown-Green’s (K/M) chapter is a careful and thoughtful discussion of my views on a number of issues concerning the nature of ontology. These include: the connection between what I say on the topic in three different, though related, papers—“What is Metaphysics?” (WM), “The Question of Ontology” (QO), and “The Question of Realism” (QR); my objection that standard quantificational accounts are unable to do justice to full ontological commitment; and the concerns I have against skeptical forms of anti-realism which run counter to received nonphilosophical opinion. In what follows, I shall, for reasons of space, focus on the first two of these issues, although the third is of great interest and importance in its own right." (p. 397)

36. ———. 2020. "Comment’s on Philip Percival’s “Beyond Reality?”." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 403-411. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Percival is interested in what Kierland and Monton (2007: 487) call the “Reality Principle”:

(RP) Reality consists, and only consists, in things and how things are.

He is interested in two different ways in which the all-encompassing conception of reality suggested by this principle may be challenged. We may, on the one hand, wish to restrict reality to only some of the things or to only some of the ways in which things are. This is how my reality predicate from QO and my reality operator from QR work; they effect a division within things or within how things are. We may, on the other hand, wish to allow for something beyond the things or how things are and hence beyond reality itself if reality only consists in things and how things are. Percival considers a number of different ways in which each of these two restrictive conceptions of reality might play out and he considers a striking application of the second conception to the case of time: for under a certain restrictive version of presentism, one may wish to claim both that reality consists in present things or how things presently are and that the past is somehow beyond reality as so conceived.

In what follows, I shall simply focus on the application of the second restrictive conception of reality to the case of time, since I think the framework suggested by my RT and TR may help in providing a proper formulation of the view." (p. 403)

References

Kierland, B. and Monton, B. (2007) “Presentism and the Objection from Being-Supervenience,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85(3): 485-97.

Sigla

QO = Question of Ontology

QR = Question of Realism

RT = The Reality of Tense

TR = Tense and Reality (Chapter 8 of Modality and Tense )

37. ———. 2020. "Comments on Joseph Almog’s “One Absolutely Infinite Universe to Rule Them All: Reverse Reflection, Reverse Metaphysics”." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 412-417. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Joseph Almog’s chapter is a daring and dazzling investigation into the nature of the universe, situated within the grand tradition of absolutist metaphysics, but motivated more by the comparison of the absolute with the set-theoretic universe than with God. It is impossible for me to deal adequately with the deep and difficult issues which his chapter raises and so I hope I may be forgiven if I focus on a few remarks he makes in his Appendix on “the Nature versus Concept/Essence of BO and {BO}.”

Some of my comments are relatively minor and serve simply to clear up possible misunderstandings of my position, but others raise substantive and neglected issues concerning the possible “absolutist” source of necessary truth." (p. 412)

38. ———. 2020. "Comments on Alasdair Urquhart’s “Fine on Arbitrary Objects”." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 418-422. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Alasdair Urquhart’s chapter is a wonderful mix of observations on the theory of arbitrary objects, ranging over a number of historical, logical, and philosophical aspects of the theory. I was especially interested in what he had to say about the evolving conception of variables in the history of mathematics and, in the light of my own previous somewhat casual remarks on the topic, I would now like to follow up on his discussion." (p. 418)

39. ———. 2020. "Comments on Gabriel Sandu’s “Indefinites, Skolem Functions, and Arbitrary Objects." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 423-428. New York: Oxford University Press.

"The main focus of my monograph Reasoning with Arbitrary Objects (Fine 1985) was on the application of arbitrary objects to systems of natural deduction. But as Sandu points out, I also thought that appeal to arbitrary objects “would be useful for the semantic analysis of both mathematical and ordinary language.” Although I spent a great deal of effort at the time in working on these further applications, I did not write up my work. I therefore hope it may be helpful if I say a little more on how I intended these applications to proceed. However, I should warn the reader that my thoughts on the topic are still somewhat tentative and underdeveloped and that I have here made no attempt to defend the position or to compare it with any of the many other competing views on the topic." (p. 423)

40. ———. 2020. "Comments on Kathrin Koslicki’s “Essence and Identity”." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 429-434. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Kathrin Koslicki’s chapter is a wonderfully bold and innovative attack on the question of crossworld-identity: Quine thought Aristotelian essentialism was the problem; and she takes Aristotelian hylomorphism to be the solution." (p. 429)

41. ———. 2020. "Comments on Graeme Forbes’s “Fine’s New Semantics of Vagueness”." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 435-443. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Graeme Forbes is well known for his advocacy of a degree-theoretic approach to vagueness, especially in application to questions of identity; and I am grateful to him for casting his expert and critical eye over my own, very different, approach." (p. 435)

42. ———. 2020. "Comments on Steven T. Kuhn’s “Necessary, Transcendental, and Universal Truth”." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 444-449. New York: Oxford University Press.

"I should begin with an apology. In my paper “Necessity and Non-existence” (NN), I made no reference to the importantly related work of Prior in appendix C of Prior 1957 and to the importantly related work of Steven Kuhn in his superb thesis (Kuhn 1977). The oversight was doubly unfortunate in that Prior was my mentor and Kuhn my student; and my only excuse is that, in the haste to prepare my own paper for publication, I failed to take proper heed to the previous literature, even when it was already known to me.

In NN, I attempted to argue for a distinction between worldly and unworldly sentences, analogous to the distinction between tensed and tenseless sentences. Kuhn is willing to accept the distinction, but he does not like my argument for the distinction and thinks that I mischaracterize the connection between the necessary and the unworldly." (p. 444)

References

Kuhn, Steven. 1977. Many-sorted Modal Logics (Vols I and II) . Uppsala, Sweden: Filosofiska föreningen.

Prior, Arthur. 1957. Time and Modality . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

43. ———. 2020. "Comments on Gideon Rosen’s “What is Normative Necessity?”." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 450-455. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Gideon Rosen supports the central theses of “Varieties of Necessity” (VN) concerning the distinction between metaphysical and normative necessity and the proper formulation of moral supervenience; and he takes the defense of these theses much further than I did in my own paper and makes the case for them especially vivid and compelling. I was especially impressed by his attempt to find out what might lie behind the distinction between metaphysical and normative necessity and the doctrine of supervenience and to show how the resulting metaphysical view might have significant implications for the epistemology of moral belief.

In what follows, I would like to draw a further distinction and to work through some of the consequences of this distinction for various of the issues that Rosen raises. Some of the points I make in this regard may be familiar, though not the general context in which they are made." (p. 450)

44. ———. 2020. "Comments on Bob Hale’s “The Problem of de re Modality”." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 456-460. New York: Oxford University Press.

"There is a great deal in Hale’s chapter which I admire and with which I agree. In particular, I would go along with him in drawing a distinction between the syntactic and semantic de re , in finding no reasonable basis for modality de re within a linguistic conception of modality, and in diagnosing where Quines’s argument (or what I would call his “logical” argument) goes wrong. However, in typical philosophical fashion, I shall focus on two points of disagreement, one concerning the problem of accounting for the de re form of modality within the linguistic conception, and the other concerning whether Quine should be regarded as having one or two arguments against quantifying into modal contexts." (p. 456)

45. ———. 2020. "Comments on Penelope Mackie’s “Can Metaphysical Modality Be Based on Essence?”." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 461-465. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Penelope Mackie’s chapter raises a serious challenge to the essentialist account of modality." (p. 461)

"I would like to think that in a properly systematic account of first-order metaphysical enquiry we could simply take the notion of necessitist essence as primitive and that nothing would be thereby lost, and something even gained, by defining the other notions in terms of it in the way I have explained. But I have to admit that, for certain—perhaps quite limited—purposes, this point of view may be unduly restrictive and that we should therefore be open to there being independently given notions of neutral essence or metaphysical necessity." (p. 465)

46. ———. 2020. "Comments on Fabrice Correia’s “More on the Reduction of Necessity to Essence”." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 466-470. New York: Oxford University Press.

"I have long admired Fabrice Correia’s work on the conceptual foundations of metaphysics and his present chapter is a characteristically judicious and original contribution to the subject.

He is principally concerned with certain reductive theses that I propounded in “Essence and Modality” (EM; 1994). These are that a metaphysical necessity is a proposition true in virtue of the nature of all objects, that a conceptual necessity is a proposition true in virtue of the nature of all concepts, and that a logical necessity is a proposition true in virtue of the nature of all logical concepts. Given that there are different notions of what it is for a proposition to be true in virtue of the nature of some objects, Correia’s interest is in what notion or notions of this sort might underwrite these various reductive claims and, to this end, he is prepared in principle to relinquish any other desiderata one might wish to impose upon these notions." (p. 466)

47. ———. 2020. "Comments on Jessica Wilson’s “Essence and Dependence”." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 471-475. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Jessica Wilson’s paper is a wonderfully sympathetic account of my general approach to metaphysics; and there is a special satisfaction to be had in being, not merely understood, but understood so well.

(...)

But her paper is not all praise. For she wishes to criticize my account of ontological dependence in terms of essence - perhaps as part of a larger critique of the use of a general notion of dependence in etaphysics (§ 4). In a number of papers, I have suggested that an object x will depend upon an object y if and only y figures in the essence of x, i.e., if and only if, in giving an account of what x is, reference must be made

y. But she thinks that this equivalencemay fail in the right to left direction, that an object y may figure in the essence of x without x depending upon y (she may be perfectly happy with the left to right direction, though this is not something that she discusses)." (p. 471)

48. ———. 2020. "Comments on Scott Shalkowski’s “Essence and Nominalism”." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 476-481. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Scott Shalkowski and I share a distaste for the ontological extravagance of modal realism and it is a delight to read him write with such eloquence and passion on the need for “sober metaphysics.”

However, there is a point on which we appear to disagree and this has to do with the formulation and defense of nominalism; and it will perhaps help to illuminate the general doctrines of QR and QO by drawing out the contrast between our different views in this particular case." (p. 476)

Sigla

QR = Question of Realism

QU = Question of Ontology

49. ———. 2020. "Comments on Robert Goldblatt’s “Fine’s Theorem on First-Order Complete Modal Logics”." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 482-484. New York: Oxford University Press.

"I am grateful to Robert Goldblatt for his lucid and masterly chapter on “canonicity” in modal logic.

(...)

I have nothing of a technical interest to add to what Goldblatt writes, but I did think that it might be helpful to say something more about the context in which I pursued some of these early enquiries into the mathematical foundations of modal logic. There is no doubt that the Lemmon Scott notes served as a great stimulus to those of us who were working in the area. Kripke’s original completeness proofs in terms of semantic tableaux were inelegant and unwieldy (as pointed out by Kaplan in his review; 1966), and the Lemmon Scott method of canonical models held out the hope of providing a simple and uniform method of proving completeness for a wide range of modal logics." (p. 482)

References

Kaplan,David (1966). “Review: Saul A. Kripke, Semantical Analysis of Modal Logic I. Normal Modal Propositional Calculi”. In: The Journal of Symbolic Logic 31.1, pp. 120–122.

50. ———. 2020. "Comments on Gary Ostertag’s “Fine on Frege’s Puzzle”." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 485-490. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Gary Ostertag’s chapter is an intriguing and probing investigation into the concept of coordination, or de jure co-reference, in which he is concerned not only to criticize the views on coordination which I presented in “Semantic Relationism” (SR) but also to develop a view of his own, one in which coordination is not a feature of what we say, but of how we say it.

There are perhaps two main points on which Ostertag takes us to disagree: one concerns whether coordination is syntactic in nature; and the other concerns whether a coordinated sentence expresses a oordinated, as opposed to an uncoordinated, proposition. However, as I read through his chapter, it was hard for me to get a firm sense of where our disagreement lay; and I was inclined to think, at the end of the day, that there was perhaps no real disagreement between us at all." (p. 485)

51. ———. 2020. "Comments on Paolo Bonardi’s “Coordination, Understanding, and Semantic Requirements”." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 491-495. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Paolo Bonardi has written extensively and illuminatingly on direct reference theory, and I am grateful for his present comments on the conceptual foundations of semantic relationism.

Central to the doctrine of semantic relationism is the relation of coordination.

(...)

As I mention in Semantic Relationism (p. 40), “other philosophers can acknowledge the phenomenon [of coordination]”; and, indeed, I think that any reasonable view should recognize the distinction between the two kinds of co-reference. What is distinctive about semantic relationism is that the phenomenon of coordination is taken to be both semantic (as opposed to syntactic) and essentially relational (as opposed to supervening on the intrinsic meanings of the individual terms)." (p. 491)

52. ———. 2020. "Comments on Friederike Moltmann’s “Variable Objects and Truth-Making”." In Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 496-502. New York: Oxford University Press.

"The present paper is a characteristically rich, original and thought-provoking contribution to the subject; and I am afraid that I can do no more than pick my way through one or two of the many interesting issues that she raises. However, any criticisms I make on this score should not be seen to detract from my broad agreement with much of what she says." (p. 496, a note omitted)

53. ———. 2021. "Constructing the Impossible." In Conditionals, Paradox, and Probability: Themes from the Philosophy of Dorothy Edgington , edited by Walters, Lee and Hawthorne, John, 141-163. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In recent years, I have been working on a version of situation semantics - one might call it ‘truthmaker semantics’—which is meant to provide an alternative to possible worlds semantics. One of the things that has struck me about this alternative semantics is how easily it is able to accommodate the impossible. Rather than being an artificial addition to the possibilist semantics, the impossible emerges as a natural —one might almost say inevitable — extension of the possible, in much the same way in which the system of real numbers emerges as a natural extension of the rational number system or the system of complex numbers emerges as a natural extension of the real number system. It is the aim of this paper to show how this is so; and, if I am successful, then this will constitute an argument for the admission of the impossible into semantics—something which I myself have been slow to appreciate — but also for truthmaker semantics itself as a viable and valuable alternative to the possible worlds approach.

I begin with an exposition of a standard approach to truthmaker semantics, using possible states in place of possible worlds (Section 9.1). I go on to describe a key construction, analogous to the extension of the rationals to the reals, for extending a space of possible states to one that also contains impossible states (Section 9.2). This has a number of advantages — mathematically and in theory and application — over the more usual approaches (Section 9.3-9.4). I then describe another construction, somewhat analogous to the extension of the reals to the complex numbers, which provides further resources for countenancing the impossible and further applications (Section 9.5).

I conclude with a lengthy formal appendix." (pp. 143-144)

54. ———. 2021. "Truthmaking and the is–ought gap." Synthese no. 198:887–914.

Abstract: "This paper is an attempt to apply the truthmaker approach, recently developed by a number of authors, to the problem of providing an adequate formulation of the is–ought gap. I begin by setting up the problem and criticizing some other accounts of how the problem should be stated; I then introduce the basic apparatus of truth-making and show how it may be extended to include both descriptive and normative truth-makers; I next consider how the gap principle should be formulated, attempting to deal as systematically as possible with the ‘harmless’ counter-examples; I also consider the relationship between the gap principle and various other doctrines concerning the separation between the normative and descriptive realms; and I conclude this part of the paper with some general remarks in favor of adopting the truth-maker approach over some of the alternative approaches. The paper concludes with a formal appendix, which gives precise expression to some of claims made in the previous informal part of the paper."

55. ———. 2021. "Some Remarks on the Role of Essence in Kripke's “Naming and Necessity”." Theoria :1-3.

First on line.

Abstract: discuss the use Kripke makes of the concept of essence in "Naming and Necessity"."

"So much has already been written about Naming and Necessity ; and all that I would like to do in what follows is to make a few brief remarks about the relationship between the notions of essence and de re necessity in that work. Now, it might be thought that these remarks could be very brief indeed." (p. 1)

56. ———. 2021. "Critical Notice. The Metaphysics and Mathematics of Arbitrary Objects, by Leon Horsten. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019." Mind :1-16.

First online.

"This book is an attempt to develop a metaphysical and mathematical account of arbitrary objects. It is focused on two main applications: structuralism in the philosophy of mathematics; and the concept of a random variable in probability theory. However, the book deals with a host of other topics along the way.

(...)

"Clearly, I cannot deal with all of these topics in a single review.(1)

But what I would like to do is to focus on certain central issues over which there is room for reasonable disagreement, even for those of us who are already willing to accept arbitrary objects." (pp. 1-2)

(1) hope to deal with some of these topics, and especially the issue of how the theory of arbitrary objects should be axiomatized, in a new introduction to the re-issue of ‘Reasoning with Arbitrary Objects’ (Fine (1985)), to be published by OUP.

57. Fine, Kit, Boghossian, Paul, and Peacocke, Christopher. 2021. "The Live Concert Experience: Its Nature and Value." In Classical Music , 7-13. Open Edition Books.

"Virgil Thomson, the composer and music critic, wrote thatwe never enjoy a recorded performance in the same way aswe enjoy a live performance (2014: 251). The same applies to live performance in the theatre and to attendance at a sports event, as opposed to seeing a performance or game on DVD or a TV recording. This difference is of great value to us. But why?" (p. 8)

References

Thomson, Virgil. 2014. “Processed Music”, in Music Chronicles 1940-1954 , ed. by T. Page (New York: Library of America, Penguin Random House), pp. 249–252.

58. Fine, Kit. 2022. "Some Remarks on Bolzano on Ground." In Bolzano's Philosophy of Grounding: Translations and Studies , edited by Roski, Stefan and Schnieder, Benjamin, 276-300. New York: Oxford University Press.

"When I developed my own ideas on ground in the 1990s I was oblivious to Bolzano's work on the topic in his Theory of Science (henceforth WL ). It was almost a couple of decades later that I became aware of his work and I was then astonished both by its level of sophistication and by the extent to which he had anticipated many of our contemporary concerns. Although the topic has had a long history, going all the way back to the ancients, there is little doubt in my mind that Bolzano deserves a special place as the first person to embark upon a systematic study of the topic; and I believe his contributions in this area to be as great an intellectual achievement, in their own way, as his contributions to logic or real analysis." (p. 276, a note omitted)

59. ———. 2022. "Some Remarks on Poppers’ Qualitative Account of Verisimilitude." Erkenntnis no. 87:213-236.

Abstract: "The paper sets up a general framework for defining the notion of verisimilitude.

Popper’s own account of verisimilitude is then located within this framework; and his account is defended on the grounds that it can be seen to provide a reasonable structural or Pareto criterion, rather than a substantive criterion, of verisimilitude.

Some other criteria of verisimilitude that may be located within the framework are also considered and their relative merits compared."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Kit Fine: bibliography of the unpublished papers available on line

Unpublished papers

1. Fine, Kit. 1969. For some Proposition and so many Possible Worlds, University of Warwick.

Available at: For some Proposition and so many Possible Worlds

"In this thesis, I deal with the notions of a condition holding for some proposition and a proposition being true in a certain number of possible worlds. These notions are called propositional quantifiers and numerical modalizers respectively.

In each chapter, I attempt to dispose of a system. A system consists of: a language; axioms and rules of inference; and an interpretation. To dispose of a system is to prove its decidability and its consistency and completeness for the given interpretation. I shall, in passing, make applications to de finability, translatability and other topics." (From the Abstract)

2. ———. 2010. "The Structure of Joint Intention (Draft)."1-50.

Available at The Structure of Joint Intention (Draft)

"The topics of joint intention and response dependence are not normally thought to be connected. But it is my belief that that there are problems concerning the very possibility of joint intention that can only be satisfactorily resolved by providing a response dependent account of what it is. Our having a joint intention will in part be realized by our responding to it as a joint intention.

I shall begin by outlining the problems and then consider various attempted solutions to them. None of them turns out to be satisfactory. I shall then outline a theory of response dependent concepts and show how it is able to solve the problems and provide a satisfactory account of joint attention. I conclude by briefly considering the application of the theory of response dependence to other topics in social philosophy, including the prisoners’ dilemma and the concept of law.

The paper was hurriedly written and very rough. Many important topics are barely discussed and some are not even mentioned. But I hope I have said enough to make clear how a number of issues concerning joint intention can be put on a firmer footing and how a theory of response dependence can be of help in resolving them." (p. 1)

3. ———. 2012. "The Essential Glossary of Ground."1.

Available at The Essential Glossary of Ground

"ground - a philosophical foodstuff, considered by some to be the elixir of life and by others to be

a deadly poison." (p. 1)

4. ———. 2015. "Mathematics and the Method of Abstraction."1-10.

Available at Mathematics and the Method of Abstraction

Public Lecture.

"It is a familiar thought that mathematics derives from abstraction.

(...)

Abstraction may be a familiar idea but it is also vague. What exactly is abstraction?

From what do we abstract? To what do we abstract? And how do we get from the one to the other?

These are questions which have been discussed since the beginning of mathematics and philosophy. But what I want to consider is the discussion of the questions in a particular period and by a particular group of people. The period was the end of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. And the people in question were mathematicians who had a strong interest in foundational issues. They were not only concerned to do mathematics but also to put the subject on a firm foundation. All of the mathematicians involved - with one or two exceptions - were German. I do not know whether or not this was accidental, though it does speak to the great contribution that German mathematicians were then making to their subject." (p. 1)

5. ———. 2015. "A Theory of Truth-Conditional Content I: Conjunction, Disjunction and Negation."1-40.

Available at A Theory of Truth-Conditional Content I: Conjunction, Disjunction and Negation

"The semantic content of a statement is often taken to be its truth-conditional content, as constituted by the conditions under which it is true. But there are somewhat different ways to understand what these truth-conditions are. On the clausal approach, especially associated with the name of Davidson, the truth-conditions of a statement are not entities as such but the clauses by which a truth-theory specifies when a statement is true. On the objectual approach, by contrast, the truth-conditions are objects, rather than clauses, which stand in a relation of truthmaking to the statements they make true.

Under the most familiar version of the objectual approach, the truth-conditions of a statement are taken to be possible worlds and the content of a statement may, accordingly, be identified with the set of possible worlds in which it is true. Under a somewhat less familiar version of the entity-based approach, the truth-conditions are not - or not, in general - possible worlds but possible states or situations - fact-like entities that make up a world rather than the worlds themselves; and the content of a statement may, in this case, be identified with the set of verifying states or situations in which it is true.

In this paper I pursue the last of these options. However, my understanding of what it is for a state to verify a statement is somewhat unusual. It is often supposed that verification is monotonic; if a state verifies a statement then so does any more comprehensive state. But on the account that I wish to adopt, this will not be generally true. For it is to be a general requirement on verification that a verifier should be relevant as a whole to the statement that it verifies; and in extending a verifier with additional material, this holistic relevance of the verifier to the statement may be lost." (p. 1)

6. ———. 2015. "A Theory of Truth-Conditional Content II: Subject-matter, Common Content, Remainder and Ground."1-25.

Available at A Theory of Truth-Conditional Content II: Subject-matter, Common Content, Remainder and Ground

"We continue with the development of the theory of truth-conditional content begun in part I, dealing with such ‘non-standard’ topics as subject matter, common content, logical remainder and ground. This is by no means an exhaustive list of topics that might have been considered but it does provide an indication of the nature and scope of the theory. As before, the paper is divided into an informal exposition and a technical addendum. Both can be read independently of the other but it would be helpful, in either case, to have the first part at hand.

One feature of great interest in the present account is that it deals with a number of the topics that lack an adequate treatment either within the possible worlds account or under a structural conception of propositions. The notion of common content, for example, can be readily handled within the present framework but cannot be properly handled in the other two frameworks without either introducing or deriving something like the present conception of verification. Thus we should not simply regard the present ‘extensional’ conception of content as a mere approximation to a structural conception but as an important conception in its own right." (p. 1)

7. ———. 2015. "The Sorites."

Available at The Sorites

"No treatment of vagueness is complete without an account of the sorites argument. This argument, in a familiar form, starts with the premiss that a given man (with no hairs on his head) is bald, it proceeds to the intermediate conclusion that a man with very slightly fewer hairs on his head is bald, given the assumption that a slight difference in the number of cranial hairs can make no difference to whether someone is bald, and it then proceeds, by a large number of further steps of this sort, to the final conclusion that a man with a full head of hair is bald, which is clearly absurd." (p. 1)

8. ———. 2016. "Acts and Embodiment." In, 1-17.

Available at Acts and Embodiment

"I wish in this paper to consider how the theory of embodiment outlined in some of my earlier papers (Fine [1982], [1999]) [2006]) can be applied to questions concerning the identity of acts. This will involve going over some old ground. But I also hope to elaborate on what I previously said and to relate it to some of the more recent literature on the topic." (p. 1)

References

Fine K., [1982] "Acts, Events and Things," Language and Ontology Wien: Holder-Pichler-Tempsky (1982), 97-105 as part of the proceedings of the Sixth International Wittgenstein Symposium 23rd to 30th August 1981, Kirchberg/Wechsel (Austria).

Fine K., [1999] "Things and Their Parts", Mid-west Studies XXIII (ed. French & Wettstein), 61-74.

Fine K., [2006] ‘In Defense of Three-dimensionalism’, Journal of Philosophy , CIII.12, 699-714.

9. ———. 2017. "Mathematical Existence."1-10.

Available at Mathematical Existence

"Anyone who has thought about the nature of mathematics has probably been puzzled over the status of its objects. Are the objects with which mathematics deals - numbers, sets, functions and the like - created or are they discovered? Should we think of them in the manner of the stars and the planets, whose character and existence is entirely independent of our investigations and activities? Or should we think of them in the manner of the objects of fiction, whose existence and character is entirely dependent upon what their authors make of them?" (p. 1)

10. ———. 2019. "Chisholm's Puzzle and Unconditional Obligation."1-19.

Available at Chisholm's Puzzle and Unconditional Obligation

"In this paper, I would like to suggest a new angle on Chisholm’s puzzle concerning contrary-to-duty obligations. It differs from previous approaches in its conception of what the problem is and how it is to be solved. I shall argue that the problem is, in no small part, about unconditional, rather than conditional, obligation and that, once it is viewed in this light, we obtain a somewhat different perspective on how the puzzle might be solved." (p. 1)

11. Fine, Kit, and Martin, Errol. 2020. "Progressive Logic." In, 1-45.

Available at Progressive Logic

"An argument is commonly taken to be circular when the truth of its conclusion is presupposed by its premisses. But exactly what is meant by such an account is not at all clear. For there is a sense in which the truth of the conclusion of any deductively valid argument is presupposed by its premisses. Thus if there is to be a significant distinction between those valid arguments that are circular and

those that are not, then some basis must be found for distinguishing between the trivial kind of presupposition and one that is more substantive." (p. 1)

12. Fine, Kit. 2021. "A Theory of Partial Truth." In.

Available at A Theory of Partial Truth

"I develop a theory of partial truth within the framework of truth-conditional content developed in two earlier papers (Fine [2015a] and [2015b]). It will be helpful, though not essential, to have these two other papers at hand, and especially the first, while reading the present paper. The paper should have interest both as an account of partial truth and as a partial vindication of the truth-conditional framework within which it is developed. For without something like the present framework, it is hard to see how a reasonable alternative account of partial truth might be developed. The concept of partial truth is intimately related to the concept of partial content, since we naturally suppose that a proposition is partially true when some part of it is true. The connection between the two concepts can also be put to work in the opposite direction, since we may provide a semantics for the logic of partial content by appeal to partial truth (as in §9 of Fine [2015]).

There is also a close connection with the concept of verisimilitude. For a proposition will be partially true when it has ‘more truth’ than a proposition that is not partially true; and the investigation of the concept of partial truth may, in fact, serve as a useful prolegomena to the investigation of the more complicated concept of verisimilitude.

(...)

I begin with an informal introduction to some of the main ideas and conclude with a formal appendix. The introduction and appendix can in principle be read in isolation from the other though they are best read together. The most extensive previous treatment of the topic that I know of is in Humbersone [2003]; and a related account of partial truth is given in §1.3 of [2014]. The major difference from Humberstone is that he stipulates the truth-tables for a logic of partial truth while I derive them from an underlying account of partial truth; and the major difference from Yablo is that I provide an account of partial truth directly in terms of truthmakers and not indirectly through the notion of partial content." (p. 1)

References

Fine K. [2014] ‘Truthmaker Semantics for Intuitionistic Logic’, Journal of Philosophical Logic 43.2, pp. 549-77 (2014); reprinted in Philosophers’ Annual for 2014.

Fine K., [2015a] ‘A Theory of Truth-Conditional Content - I’, to appear

Fine K., [2015b] ‘A Theory of Truth-Conditional Content - II’, to appear

Fine K., [2015c] ‘Angellic Content’, to appear

Humberstone L., [2003] ‘False Though Partly True - An Experiment in Logic’, Journal of Philosophical Logic 32: 613-665.

Yablo S., [2014] ‘ Aboutness ’, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

13. ———. 2021. "Quine on Essence." In, 1-11.

Available at Quine on Essence

"There are already many excellent detailed accounts of Quine’s views on de re and de dicto modality, and my principal concern in the present chapter is not to add to them or to survey the field but to point to certain general features of Quine’s views which, in the fog of detail, may easily be overlooked." (p. 1, a note omitted)

14. Fine, Kit, and de Rosseet, Louis. 2021. "A Semantics for the Impure Logic of Ground."

Avalaible at A Semantics for the Impure Logic of Ground

"This paper establishes a sound and complete semantics for the impure logic of ground. Fine [2012a] sets out a system for the pure logic of ground, one in which the formulas between which ground-theoretic claims hold have no internal logical complexity; and it provides a sound and complete semantics for the system.

Fine [2012b, §§6-8] sets out a system for an impure logic of ground, one that extends the rules of the original pure system with rules for the truth-functional connectives, the first-order quantiers, and λ-abstraction. However, it does not provide a semantics for this system. The present paper partly fills this lacuna by providing a sound and complete semantics for a system GG containing the truth-functional operators that is closely related to the truth-functional part of the system of [Fine, 2012b].(1)" (p. 1)

(1) The main differences between the two systems are that we now only allow finitely many formulas to occur to the left of the ground-theoretic operator and that we have added the Irreversibility Rule, which should have been part of the original system.

References

K. Fine. Guide to Ground. In Benjamin Schnieder and Fabrice Correia, editors, Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality , pages 37-80. Cambridge University Press, 2012b. reprinted online in `Philosophers Annual' for 2012 (eds. P. Grim, C. Armstrong, P. Shirre, N-H Stear).

15. Fine, Kit, and Bacon, Andrew. 2022. "The Logic of Logical Necessity." In Saul Kripke on Modal Logic , edited by Weiss, Yale and Padró, Romina, 1-43. Dordrecht: Springer.

Volume not yet published.

Available at The Logic of Logical Necessity

Abstract: "Prior to Kripke's seminal work on the semantics of modal logic, McKinsey offered an alternative interpretation of the necessity operator, inspired by the Bolzano-Tarski notion of logical truth. According to this interpretation, `it is necessary that A' is true just in case every sentence with the same logical form as A is true. In our paper, we investigate this interpretation of the modal operator, resolving some technical questions, and relating it to the logical interpretation of modality and some views in modal metaphysics. In particular, we present an hitherto unpublished solution to problems 41 and 42 from Friedman's 102 problems , which uses a different method of proof from the solution presented in the paper of Tadeusz Prucnal."

References

Harvey Friedman. One hundred and two problems in mathematical logic. Journal of Symbolic Logic , 40(2):113-129, 1975.

Tadeusz Prucnal. On two problems of Harvey Friedman. Studia Logica , 38(3):247-262, 1979

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Kit Fine. Annotated bibliography of the studies on His philosophy

Studies on the Philosophy of Kit Fine

1. Correia, Fabrice. 2005. Existential Dependence and Cognate Notions . München: Philosophia Verlag.

Contents: Preface 3; Introduction 7; 1. Preamble; 13; Introductory Break 35; 2. Simple Dependence: Presentation, and Rejection of Some Accounts 39; 3. Metaphysical Grounding 53; 4. Simple Dependence: The Foundational Approach 65, 5. Some Other Notions of Existential Dependence 89; 6. A Cognate Notion: Supervenience 131; Appendix 151; Bibliography 151; List of Figures 165; List of Symbols and Notations 167; List of Named Propositions, Conditions and Rules 169; Index 171.

"This is a work in analytic metaphysics. Its main purpose is to clarify a notion of central importance in metaphysics since Aristotle, to wit the notion of existential dependence. All currently available analyses of the notion are examined and then rejected, and a new account is defended. This work is the first comprehensive one on the topic. The first chapter is devoted to introducing and explaining some notions which are crucial for the central parts of the work, namely the notions of existence, necessity, (individual and plural) quantification and essence. In chapters 2 and 4 focus is made on the relation of " simple" existential dependence, the relation which holds between two objects when the first cannot exist without the other. Three accounts of simple dependence - each endorsed by some contemporary philosophers, among them Kit Fine, E. Jonathan Lowe, Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Barry Smith - are presented and then rejected. A new account, inspired by suggestions by Fine and Lowe, is defended. According to that account - the " foundational" account - simple dependence is to be defined in terms of a relation called grounding , which is presented in chapter 3. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with relations belonging to the family of simple dependence, among others (i) generic dependence, (ii) various forms of temporal dependence, and (iii) supervenience, a complex dependence relation largely invoked in current debates on the philosophy of mind. It is shown that foundationalist accounts of these notions - i.e. accounts framed in terms of grounding - are superior to other existing accounts. These chapters also contain some applications of the foundational conception of dependence, in particular a characterization of substances and a formulation of the distinction between two well known conceptions of universals, the Aristotelian and the Platonician conception. The last part of the work is a technical appendix where one can find, among other things, a system for the logic of essence, which is proved to be sound and complete with respect to a possible world semantics."

"The notion of metaphysical grounding is close to a notion Fine introduces in [Fine, 2001] (§5) and which he calls ‘ground’. In Fine’s sense, the proposition that A is grounded in the propositions that B, C,... iff its being the case that A consists in nothing more than its being the case that B, C,... According to Fine, grounding propositions explain what they ground. Fine’s notion of ground is strictly stronger than metaphysical grounding: I wish to leave room for the view that the existence of a set is explained by, but does not merely consist in, the existence of its members. And it is likewise strictly stronger than logical grounding.

It is also close to Bolzano’s notion of grounding. (2) One difference is that Bolzano takes this notion to express a relation between propositions or pluralities of propositions, construed as genuine, mind-independent entities. (3) For my part, as I previously stressed, I leave aside the question as to whether statements of ground point to propositions, facts or states of affairs. A second difference lies in that Bolzano takes it that causal connections give rise to facts of grounding: for every causal fact, a proposition describing some relevant features of the effect is grounded in a proposition describing some relevant features of the cause. (4) This presumably does not hold of metaphysical grounding. Bolzano’s notion of grounding is perhaps equivalent to the “logical sum” of all qualified notions of grounding." (p. 56)

(2) [Bolzano, 1973], §§ 168-177 and §§ 198-221.

(3) §§ 19ff. and §§ 168-177.

(4) § 201.3.

References

[Bolzano, 1973] B. Bolzano. Theory of Science, Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

{Fine, K, 2001] K. Fine, "The Question o Realism", Philosophers Imprint , 1(1): 1-30.

2. Dumitru, Mircea, ed. 2020. Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine . New York: Oxford University Press.

Contents: Acknowledgements IX; List of Contributors XI; Mircea Dumitru: Introduction: Kit Fine—A Philosopher’s Philosopher 1;

I. Metaphysics

1. Fred Kroon and Jonathan McKeown-Green: Ontology: What’s the (Real) Question? 12; 2. Philip Percival: Beyond Reality? 38; 3. Joseph Almog: One Absolutely Infinite Universe to Rule Them All: Reverse Reflection, Reverse Metaphysics 52; 4. Alasdair Urquhart: Fine on Arbitrary Objects 87; 5. Gabriel Sandu: Indefinites, Skolem Functions, and Arbitrary Objects 87; 6. Kathrin Koslicki: Essence and Identity 113; 7. Kit Fine: Indeterminate Identity, Personal Identity, and Fission 141; 8. Graeme Forbes: Fine’s New Semantics of Vagueness 164;

II. Modality

9. Steven T. Kuhn: Necessary, Transcendental, and Universal Truth 183; 10. Gideon Rosen: What is Normative Necessity? 205; 11. Bob Hale: The Problem of de re Modality 234; 12. Penelope Mackie: Can Metaphysical Modality Be Based on Essence? 247; 13. Fabrice Correia: More on the Reduction of Necessity to Essence 265; 14. Jessica Wilson: Essence and Dependence 283; 15. Scott A. Shalkowski: Essence and Nominalism 301; 16. Robert Goldblatt: Fine’s Theorem on First-Order Complete Modal Logics 316;

III. Language

17. Gary Ostertag: Fine on Frege’s Puzzle 337; 18. Paolo Bonardi: Coordination, Understanding, and Semantic Requirements 360; 19. Friederike Moltmann: Variable Objects and Truthmaking 368;

IV. Kit Fine’s Responses

Comments on Fred Kroon and Jonathan McKeown-Green’s “Ontology: What’s the (Real) Question?” 397; Comment’s on Philip Percival’s “Beyond Reality?” 403; Comments on Joseph Almog’s “One Absolutely Infinite Universe to Rule Them All: Reverse Reflection, Reverse Metaphysics” 412; Comments on Alasdair Urquhart’s “Fine on Arbitrary Objects” 418; Comments on Gabriel Sandu’s “Indefinites, Skolem Functions, and Arbitrary Objects” 423; Comments on Kathrin Koslicki’s “Essence and Identity” 429; Comments on Graeme Forbes’s “Fine’s New Semantics of Vagueness” 435; Comments on Steven T. Kuhn’s “Necessary, Transcendental, and Universal Truth” 444; Comments on Gideon Rosen’s “What is Normative Necessity?” 450; Comments on Bob Hale’s “The Problem of de re Modality” 456; Comments on Penelope Mackie’s “Can Metaphysical Modality Be Based on Essence?” 461; Comments on Fabrice Correia’s “More on the Reduction of Necessity to Essence” 466; Comments on Jessica Wilson’s “Essence and Dependence” 471; Comments on Scott Shalkowski’s “Essence and Nominalism” 476; Comments on Robert Goldblatt’s “Fine’s Theorem on First-Order Complete Modal Logics” 482; Comments on Gary Ostertag’s “Fine on Frege’s Puzzle” 485; Comments on Paolo Bonardi’s “Coordination, Understanding, and Semantic Requirements” 491; Comments on Friederike Moltmann’s “Variable Objects and Truthmaking” 496;

Bibliography of the Publications of Kit Fine 503;

Index 509-519.

3. Rieber, Steven. 2002. "A Defense of Indeterminism." Acta Analytica no. 17:75-82.

Abstract: "My goal is to defend the indeterminist approach to vagueness, according to which a borderline vague utterance is neither true nor false. Indeterminism appears to contradict bivalence and the disquotational schema for truth. I agree that indeterminism compels us to modify each of these principles. Kit Fine has defended indeterminism by claiming that ordinary ambiguous sentences are neither true nor false when one disambiguation is true and the other is false. But even if Fine is right about sentences, his point does not seem to generalize the utterances. What the indeterminist needs -- and what ordinary ambiguity does not provide -- is an ambiguous utterance where what is being said is indeterminate between two different propositions. I will show that such cases exist. These cases imply that the modifications that indeterminism makes to bivalence and the disquotational schema are required independently of indeterminism, in fact independently of vagueness."

4. Suster, Danilo. 2005. "The Modality Principle and Work-relativity of Modality." Acta Analytica no. 20:41-52.

"If we accept Fine's theory then modal properties, contrary to the modal principle, are not an independent guide to constitutive properties of an artwork. Rather, they depend on a prior decision on the identity of a work. Of course, all essential properties are necessary, so those modal intuitions that track the nature of the object in question still remain a guide to essentiality. But in the first part of my comment I expressed a fear that even those modal intuitions are not a reliable guide, they do not fix something objective and unique. Individual essences are murky properties and I am afraid that our appreciative engagement with a work of art cannot offer objective answers about them. My scruples could be read as scruples about contextualism in general and not directed specifically to Davies' proposal. (*)

Anyway, maybe this is the price we have to pay when we evaluate ontological proposals on the basis of their fit with a more comprehensive philosophical framework that makes sense of our artistic practice as that practice is 'codified' upon rational reflection." (p. 52)

[David Davies, Art as Performance , Oxford, Blackwell 2004.]

5. Sosa, David. 2010. "The Fine Line." Analysis no. 70:347-358.

Critical notice of Kit Fine, Semantic Relationism (2007).

"The purpose of Fine’s book is to show how the guiding idea, the ‘semantic relationism’ of the title, helps with deep puzzles in philosophy of language and mind. Russell’s antinomy of the variable, Frege’s puzzle in both a linguistic and a cognitive version, and Kripke’s puzzle about belief are said to be solved adequately only by adopting his relationism. But the book is also a defence of ‘referentialism’ in philosophy of language. Fine holds that the fundamental semantic relations that need to be added to the assigned intrinsic values in our overall semantic theory, especially the relation he calls ‘coordination’, can do much of the work of sense. A relationist referentialism ‘can secure many of the advantages of the Fregean position without being committed to the existence of sense’.

In this selective review, I will not evaluate how Fine’s line on these matters fares overall. There’s a risk of unfairness in that, since part of any view’s success can be measured only holistically, by balancing whatever disadvantages it might have with such emergent features as its unifying power and generality, and the consistency of its successes (as against its failures). Having signalled this, however, I will focus on just a few specific passages, and raise some corresponding issues and concerns." (p. 347)

6. deRosset, Louis. 2015. "Better Semantics for the Pure Logic of Ground." Analytic Philosophy no. 56:229-252.

Abstract: Philosophers have spilled a lot of ink over the past few years exploring the nature and significance of grounding. Kit Fine has made several seminal contributions to this discussion, including an exact treatment of the formal features of grounding [Fine, 2012a]. He has specified a language in which grounding claims may be expressed, proposed a system of axioms which capture the relevant formal features, and offered a semantics which interprets the language. Unfortunately, the semantics Fine offers faces a number of problems. In this paper, I review the problems and offer an alternative that avoids them. I offer a semantics for the pure logic of ground that is motivated by ideas already present in the grounding literature, and for which a natural axiomatization capturing central formal features of grounding is sound and complete. I also show how the semantics I offer avoids the problems faced by Fine’s semantics."

References

Kit Fine. The Pure Logic of Ground. Review of Symbolic Logic, 5(1):1–25, March 2012a.

7. Correia, Fabrice, and Rosenkranz, Sven. 2012. "Eternal Facts in an Ageing Universe." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 90:307-320.

Abstract: "In recent publications, Kit Fine devises a classification of A-theories of time and defends a non-standard A-theory he calls fragmentalism, according to which reality as a whole is incoherent but fragments into classes of mutually coherent tensed facts. We argue that Fine’s classification is not exhaustive, as it ignores another non-standard A-theory we dub dynamic absolutism, according to which there are tensed facts that stay numerically the same and yet undergo qualitative changes as time goes by. We expound this theory in some detail and argue that it is a serious alternative to the positions identified by Fine."

8. Simons, Peter M. 2008. "Modes of Extension: Comments on Kit Fine's 'In Defence of Three-Dimensionalism'." In Being: Developments in Contemporary Metaphysics , edited by Le Poidevin, Robin, 17-22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"The debate between 3- and 4-dimensionalists is one of the most lively and pervasive in current metaphysics. At stake is a glittering prize: the correct metaphysical analysis of material things and other objects commonly thought to persist in time by enduring. Since we count ourselves among such objects the outcome of the debate is of more than merely academic interest to us. Obviously the ramifications of the debate, even of the points raised by Kit Fine, go far beyond what I can discuss here, so I shall simply select some salient issues and comment on them from my own somewhat heterodox point of view." (p. 17)

9. Cook, Roy T., and Ebert, Philip. 2004. "Discussion Note: Kit Fine's Limits of Abstraction ." British Journal for the Philosophy of Science no. 55:791-800.

"Kit Fine's recent The Limits of Abstraction , an extended version of his [1998] paper, contains four chapters. The first two deal with philosophical aspects of abstraction, while the latter two provide the formal framework for a general theory of abstraction. Here we focus on the philosophical material, and, given the depth and complexity of the material, cannot attempt even a superficial summary of the entirety of the philosophical material. Thus, we content ourselves with sketching the contents. Two particular issues will then be examined in greater detail."

10. Evnine, Simon J. 2009. "Constitution and Qua Objects in the Ontology of Music." British Journal of Aesthetics no. 49:203-217.

Abstract: "Musical Platonists identify musical works with abstract sound structures but this implies that they are not created but only discovered. Jerrold Levinson adapts Platonism to allow for creation by identifying musical works with indicated sound structures. In this paper I explore the similarities between Levinson’s view and Kit Fine’s theory of qua objects. Fine offers the theory of qua objects as an account of constitution, as it obtains, for example, between a statue and the clay the statue is made out of. I argue that Fine’s theory does not adequately characterize the constitution relation and that the problems it faces extend to Levinson’s account of musical works as indicated structures. I develop an alternative theory of constitution, based on the notion of being made out of. This approach to constitution enables me to offer an account of musical works as abstract objects that are constituted by sound structures. I argue that my account has several advantages over the Levinson/Fine approach."

References

Jerrold Levinson, ‘ What a Musical Work Is ’ , Journal of Philosophy , vol. 77 (1980), pp. 5 – 28.

Kit Fine, ‘ Acts, Events and Things ’ , in Sprache und Ontologie (Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1982) (for the theory of qua objects in general)

Kit Fine, ‘ The Problem of Non-Existents. I. Internalism ’ , Topoi, vol. 1 (1982) pp. 97 – 140 (for its application to literary works and, as he notes in passing, to musical works as well.)

11. "The Philosophy of Kit Fine." 2007. Dialectica. International Journal of Philosophy no. 61:3-200.

The papers in this special volume were presented at a conference entitled ‘Fine Philosophy – the Philosophy of Kit Fine’ which took place at the University of Geneva on the 3rd, 4th and 5th of July 2005.

Guest editor: Kevin Mulligan.

Contents: Kit Fine: Introduction 3; Paul Horwich: The Quest for Reality 5; Kit Fine: Response to Paul Horwich 17; Fraser MacBride: Neutral Relations Revisited 25; Kit Fine: Response to Fraser MacBride 57; Fabrice Correia: (Finean) Essence and (Priorean) Modality 63; Kit Fine: Response to Fabrice Correia 85; Alan Weir: Honest Toil or Sheer Magic? 89; Kit Fine: Response to Alan Weir 117; Kathrin Koslicki: Towards a Neo-Aristotelian Mereology 127; Kit Fine: Response to Kathrin Koslicki 161; Manuel García-Carpintero: Bivalence and What Is Said 167; Kit Fine: Response to Manuel García-Carpintero 191; Bibliography of Kit Fine 195–200.

12. Correia, Fabrice. 2007. "(Finean) Essence and (Priorean) Modality." Dialectica.International Journal of Philosophy no. 61:63-84.

Abstract: "In Fine 1994, Kit Fine challenges the (widespread) view that the notion of essence is to be understood in terms of the metaphysical modalities, and he argues that it is not essence which reduces to metaphysical modality, but rather metaphysical modality which reduces to essence.

In this paper I put forward a modal account of essence and argue that it is immune from Fine’s objections. The account presupposes a non-standard, independently motivated conception of the metaphysical modalities which I dub Priorean. Arthur Prior never endorsed that very conception, but in some respects his own views on the topic are so close to it, and different from all (most?) currently accepted views, that the label ‘Priorean’ is perfectly appropriate."

References

Fine, K. 1994, ‘Essence and Modality’, Philosophical Perspectives 8, pp. 1–16.

13. García-Carpintero, Manuel. 2007. "Bivalence and What Is Said." Dialectica.International Journal of Philosophy no. 61:167-190.

Abstract: "On standard versions of supervaluationism, truth is equated with supertruth, and does not satisfy bivalence: some truth-bearers are neither true nor false. In this paper I want to confront a well known worry about this, recently put by Wright as follows: ‘The downside . . . rightly emphasized by Williamson . . . is the implicit surrender of the T-scheme’. I will argue that such a cost is not high: independently motivated philosophical distinctions support the surrender of the T-scheme, and suggest acceptable approximations."

References

Williamson, T. 1994, Vagueness , London: Routledge.

Williamson, T. 1999, ‘Schiffer on the Epistemic Theory of Vagueness’, in: J. Tomberlin, ed., Philosophical Perspectives vol. 13, Epistemology , Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 505–517.

Wright, C. 2004, ‘Vagueness: A Fifth Column Approach’, in J. C. Beall, Liars and Heaps , Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 84–105.

14. Horwich, Paul. 2007. "The Quest for Reality." Dialectica.International Journal of Philosophy no. 61:5-16.

Abstract: "A widespread concern within philosophy has been, and continues to be, to determine which domains of discourse address real, robust, not-merely-deflationary facts, and which do not. But a threat to the legitimacy of this concern (together with the claims provoked by it) is the extreme lack of consensus amongst philosophers on the question of how to tell whether or not a given domain is oriented towards ‘robust reality’. The present paper criticizes Kit Fine’s attempt to settle that question. This discussion is followed by some considerations suggesting that there is no good answer to it, that (as the ‘quietists’ maintain) the notion of ‘robust reality’ is defective and ought to be abandoned."

15. Koslicki, Kathrin. 2007. "Towards a Neo-Aristotelian Mereology." Dialectica.International Journal of Philosophy no. 61:127-159.

Abstract: "This paper provides a detailed examination of Kit Fine’s sizeable contribution to the development of a neo-Aristotelian alternative to standard mereology; I focus especially on the theory of ‘rigid’ and ‘variable embodiments’, as defended in Fine 1999. Section 2 briefly describes the system I call ‘standard mereology’. Section 3 lays out some of the main principles and consequences of Aristotle’s own mereology, in order to be able to compare Fine’s system with its historical precursor. Section 4 gives an exposition of Fine’s theory of embodiments and goes on to isolate a number of potential concerns to which this account gives rise. In particular, I argue that (i) Fine’s theory threatens to proliferate primitive sui generis relations of parthood and composition, whose characteristics must be stipulatively imposed on them, relative to particular domains; (ii) given its ‘superabundance’ of objects, Fine’s system far outstrips the (arguably) already inflated ontological commitments of standard mereology; and (iii) there is a legitimate question as to why we should consider Fine’s primitive and sui generis relations of parthood and composition to be genuinely mereological at all, given their formal profile. These three objections lead me to conclude that we ought to explore other avenues that preserve the highly desirable, hylomorphic, features of Fine’s mereology, while avoiding its methodological and ontological excesses."

References

Fine, K. 1999, ‘Things and Their Parts’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 23, pp. 61–74.

16. MacBride, Fraser. 2007. "Neutral Relations Revisited." Dialectica.International Journal of Philosophy no. 61:25-56.

Abstract: "Do non-symmetric relations apply to the objects they relate in an order? According to the standard view of relations, the difference between aRb and bRa obtaining, where R is nonsymmetric, corresponds to a difference in the order in which the non-symmetric relation R applies to a and b. Recently Kit Fine has challenged the standard view in his important paper ‘Neutral Relations’ arguing that non-symmetric relations are neutral, lacking direction or order.

In this paper I argue that Fine cannot account for the application of non-symmetric relations to their relata; so far from being neutral, these relations are inherently directional."

17. Weir, Alan. 2007. "Honest Toil or Sheer Magic?" Dialectica.International Journal of Philosophy no. 61:89-115.

Abstract: "In this article I discuss the ‘procedural postulationist’ view of mathematics advanced by Kit Fine in a recent paper [*]. I argue that he has not shown that this view provides an avenue to knowledge of mathematical truths, at least if such truths are objective truths. In particular, more needs to be said about the criteria which constrain which types of entities can be postulated. I also argue that his reliance on second-order quantification means that his background logic is not free of ontological commitment and that his doctrine of ‘creative expansion’ only makes sense from a radically anti-realist perspective."

{* Fine, K. 2005, ‘Our Knowledge of Mathematical Objects’, in: T. Z. Gendler and J. Hawthorne eds., Oxford Studies in Epistemology Vol. 1, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 89–109.]

18. Hinzen, Wolfram. 2003. "Constructive versus Ontological Construals of Cantorian Ordinals." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 24:45-63.

Abstract: "In a recent paper, Kit Fine offers a reconstruction of Cantor's theory of ordinals. It avoids certain mentalistic overtones in it through both a non-standard ontology and a non-standard notion of abstraction. I argue that this reconstruction misses an essential constructive and computational content of Cantor's theory, which I in turn reconstruct using Martin-Löf's theory of types. Throughout, I emphasize Kantian themes in Cantor's epistemology, and I also argue, as against Michael Hallett's interpretation, for the need for a constructive understanding of Cantorian 'existence principles'."

19. Kuhn, Steven T. 2006. "Review of Modality and Tense: Philosophical Papers , by Kit Fine." International Philosophical Review no. 46:492-502.

"Fine sees himself as defending two very plausible views--that the distinction between the necessary and the contingent is intelligible and that merely possible worlds are not real in the same sense as the actual world–against pervasive philosophical orthodoxies that deny them. I can’t resist noting that his own theories occasionally lead him to views that seem implausible: Ordinary objects (or at least sequences of them) have logical form, abstract objects may exist contingently. A formula of the form [A if and only if the proposition expressed by A is true] may be false. “Being” should to be distinguished from existence and (as was noted above) there is a sense in which the fountain of youth exists. There are good reasons to embrace the view that reality contains contradictory facts. It is a testament to Fine’s meticulous examination of the issues involved and his skill in communicating it that many of these positions seem quite plausible, and all of them far less implausible, after the book is read." (p. 502)

20. Correia, Fabrice. 2000. "Propositional Logic of Essence." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 29:295-313.

Abstract: "This paper presents a propositional version of Kit Fine's (quantified) logic for essentialist statements, provides it with a semantics, and proves the former adequate (i.e. sound and complete) with respect to the latter."

"The present paper can be considered as a companion to Kit Fine’s papers ‘The Logic of Essence’ and ‘Semantics for the Logic of Essence’. (1) In the first paper Fine presents a logical system for quantified essentialist statements, E5. (2) In the second he presents a semantics for a variant of the system, and proves this system adequate (i.e. sound and complete) with respect to that semantics. I propose here a Kripke-style semantics for E5π, a propositional counterpart of E5, and prove the adequacy of the latter with respect to the former.

There are many, more or less natural, more or less interesting, ways to extend E5π (or one of its cousins) to a system of quantified logic of essence. E5π, together with its semantics, is intended to constitute the core of subsequent, more expressive, logics of essence. So, the study of E5π per se, regardless of possible quantificational extensions, is of great interest.

Another interesting point about the present study lies in the fact that the completeness proof given here is much simpler than the one Fine gives for his quantificational system.

The reader is strongly urged to take a look at Fine’s papers on the logic of essence, if only because no detailed comparison between Fine’s material and mine will be offred." (p. 295)

(1) At the time I worked on the present paper only the first of Fine’s papers was available to me. I became acquainted with ‘Semantics for the Logic of Essence’ after obtaining the results presented here.

(2) Fine aims at developing such a system in response to his own objections to the standard modal contruals of essence. See his ‘Essence and Modality’.

21. Kremer, Philip. 1989. "Relevant Predication: Grammatical Characterisations." Journal of Philosophical Logic no. 18:349-382.

Abstract: "This paper reformulates and decides a certain conjecture in Dunn's Relevant Predication 1: The Formal Theory (Journal of Philosophical Logic 16, 347-381, 1987). This conjecture of Dunn's relates his object-language characterisation of a property's being relevant in a variable x to certain grammatical characterisations of relevance, analogous to some given by Helman, in Relevant Implication and Relevant Functions (in Entailment: The Logic of Relevance and Necessity , vol. 2, by Alan Ross Anderson, Nuel Belnap, and J. Michael Dunn et al.) In the course of the investigation this paper also investigates Kit Fine's semantics for quantified relevance logics, which appears in his appropriately titled Semantics for Quantified Relevance Logic ."

22. Mares, Edwin D., and Goldblatt, Robert. 2006. "An Alternative Semantics for Quantified Relevant Logic." Journal of Symbolic Logic .

Abstract: "The quantified relevant logic RQ is given a new semantics in which a formula ∀x A is true when there is some true proposition that implies all x-instantiations of A . Formulae are modelled as functions from variable-assignments to propositions, where a proposition is a set of worlds in a relevant model structure. A completeness proof is given for a basic quantificational system QR from which RQ is obtained by adding the axiom EC of ‘extensional confinement’: ∀x(A ∨ B) → (A ∨ ∀xB), with x not free in A. Validity of EC requires an additional model condition involving the boolean difference of propositions. A QR-model falsifying EC is constructed by forming the disjoint union of two natural arithmetical structures in which negation is interpreted by the minus operation."

"Kit Fine [10] showed that the quantified relevant logic RQ is incomplete over Routley and Meyer’s relational semantics with constant domains. In its place he developed [9] an increasing domain semantics over which RQ is complete, and for which a model includes a set of frames which are related to one another by a number of relations and operators. This semantics is powerful and ingenious.

But Fine’s semantics is very complicated. Since it was produced it in the mid-1980s relevant logicians have wanted to simplify it. J. Michael Dunn and Greg Restall say [7, p 83]:

[I]t must be said that while the semantic structure pins down the behaviour of RQ and related systems exactly, it is not altogether clear whether the rich and complex structure of Fine’s semantics is necessary to give a semantics for quantified relevance logics.(1)

To those of us who have seriously attempted to simplify Fine’s semantics, it is becoming clear that the “rich and complex structure” is in a certain sense necessary.

The elements of the theory seem to work in concert with one another and eliminating even one operator or relation seems to make the entire structure collapse. Thus, in order to create a simpler semantics for quantified relevant logic we need to take an alternative approach.

In this paper, we take an alternative approach. (2)" (pp. 163-164)

(1) Restall also says [14, p 5]: “The groundbreaking work of [9] is formally astounding but philosophically opaque”.

(2) After seventeen years of trying to modify Fine’s semantics, Mares in particular is glad that an alternative has suggested itself.

23. Savitt, Steven. 2016. "Kit Fine on Tense and Reality." Manuscrito no. 39:75-96.

Abstract: "Kit Fine (2005, 2006) recently described and defended a novel position in the philosophy of time, fragmentalism. It is not often that a new (and even perhaps a radically new) option appears in this old field, and for that reason alone these two essays merit serious attention. I will try to present briefly but fairly some of the considerations that Fine thinks favour fragmentalism. I will also weigh the merits of fragmentalism against the view that Fine presents as its chief rival, relativism, as well as the merits of both against the view that he calls anti-realism. Along the way, we should pick up a clearer picture of fragmentalism itself."

References

Fine, K. “Tense and Reality” in his Modality and Tense: Philosophical Papers . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

______ “The Reality of Tense,” Synthese 150: 399-414, 2006.

24. Almog, Joseph. 2020. "One Absolutely Infinite Universe to Rule Them All. Reverse Reflection, Reverse Metaphysics." In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 52-86. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Three questions are to guide us. They are about the three segments in the title: the nature of the universe proper, reflection (up-to and down-from) the universe and the method with which to describe the metaphysics (as opposed to constructive justification epistemology) of the universe." (p. 52, a note omitted)

25. Bonardi, Paolo. 2020. "Coordination, Understanding, and Semantic Requirements." In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 360-367. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Coordination is the central notion of Kit Fine’s (1007) theory of meaning called semantic relationism .

(...)

The present manuscript attempts to answer the following question: What is coordination between proper names? Fine proposes two characterizations of this sort of coordination, which he also labels representing as the same: an intuitive test; and a technical definition. On the basis of the intuitive characterization, I will maintain that coordination (viz. representing as the same) is grounded in a notion of understanding

distinct from the notion of linguistic competence. Whereas—as I will argue—we need a characterization of understanding in order to elucidate Fine’s coordination, it is unclear how to provide one: three prima facie appealing proposals to characterize it will be examined and then dismissed as intrinsically implausible or as incompatible with Fine’s relational semantics. Not even his technical characterization of coordination, involving the notion of semantic requirement, will enable us to escape the impasse. Ultimately, the problem of determining what exactly coordination between names is will remain open." (p. 360)

26. Correia, Fabrice. 2020. "More on the Reduction of Necessity to Essence." In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 265-282. New York: Oxford University Press.

“Essence and Modality” has had a considerable impact on subsequent philosophical thinking about essence and modality. The paper argues that the traditional view that essence reduces to metaphysical modality is wrong. Many have found these arguments convincing and have accordingly abandoned the view. The paper also argues that the reduction goes the other way around, that is, that it is metaphysical modality which reduces to essence. Twenty years after the publication of “Essence and Modality,” Kit Fine’s reductive view has become widely recognized as one of the main contenders for a reductive account of metaphysical modality.

There are several ways in which such a reductive account can be spelled out. In Correia 2012, I raised objections against one natural way of doing so, and developed an alternative account—the “rule-based” account—which relies on a brief suggestion Fine makes in Fine 1995a. The aim of the present chapter is twofold: first, I wish to strengthen the case for the rule-based account by criticizing alternative accounts,

including some accounts based on other suggestions made by Fine, or inspired by material one can find in his work; and second, I wish to discuss certain objections to the rule-based account and suggest how they can be met." (p. 265)

References

Correia, F. 2012. “On the Reduction of Necessity to Essence,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 84: 639-53.

Fine, K. 1995a. “Senses of Essence,” in W. Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.), Modality, Morality and Belief , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 53–73.

27. Dumitru, Mircea. 2020. "Introduction: Kit Fine—A Philosopher’s Philosopher." In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 1-9. New York: Oxford University Press.

"This book is the first edited volume on the philosophy of one of the most seminal and profound contemporary philosophers. Over the last forty-odd years, Kit Fine has been one of the most influential and original analytic philosophers. He has made provocative and innovative contributions to several areas of systematic philosophy, including philosophy of language, metaphysics, and the philosophy of mathematics,

as well as a number of topics in philosophical logic, such as modal logic, relevance logic, the logic of essence, and the logic of vagueness. These contributions have helped reshape the agendas of those fields and have given fresh impetus to a number of perennial debates." (p. 1)

28. Forbes, Graeme. 2020. "Fine’s New Semantics of Vagueness." In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 164-179. New York: Oxford University Press.

"My conclusion about Fine’s discussion of the three formulations of Sorites reasoning, then, is that it is a very great strength of compatibilist semantics that it diagnoses a problem in each of the three, using the same formal apparatus, and other approaches which cannot do something like this are at an immediate disadvantage.

However, I also think that the fuzzy logic analysis of the three formulations is overall equally as effective, in particular because it is independently plausible that embedding fixed-point negation in “it is the case” produces an operator expressing semantic negation. So the seductiveness of apparent ¬∧-formulations is explained by revealing them to be ∼∧-formulations." (p. 178, note omitted)

29. Godeon, Rosen. 2020. "What is Normative Necessity?" In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 205-233. New York: Oxford University Press.

"If the account I have sketched is cogent, you can now entertain an alternative to Strong Supervenience: the view that the normative supervenes on the natural as a matter of normative necessity. (This follows from the normative necessity of pure moral principles, together with the further assumption that all normative facts are ultimately grounded in pure principles plus nonnormative facts.) These views disagree about the modal classification of remote worlds—worlds in which act utilitarianism is true and the natural facts are just as they are, for example. Everyone agrees that such worlds are impossible in a sense. The open

question concerns the interpretation of the modal word in this formulation.

Having seen the alternative, are you confident that these remote worlds must be metaphysically impossible—ruled out by the natures of the moral properties and relations? If so, you see more deeply into these natures than I do." (p. 228)

30. Goldblatt, Robert. 2020. "Fine’s Theorem on First-Order Complete Modal Logics." In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 316-334. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In his PhD research, completed in 1969, and over the next half-dozen years, Kit Fine made a series of fundamental contributions to the semantic analysis and metatheory of propositional modal logic, proving general theorems about notable classes of logics and providing examples of failure of some significant properties." (p. 316)

(...)

"My interest here is in what was arguably the most influential contribution: the paper “Some Connections between Elementary and Modal Logic” (1975b), and in particular its Theorem 3, which will be referred to as Fine’s Canonicity Theorem . It states that

any logic that is complete with respect to a first-order definable class of Kripke frames must be valid in its canonical frames ." (p. 317)

31. Hale, Bob. 2020. "The Problem of Modality." In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 234-246. New York: Oxford University Press.

"There is no doubt that one major reason why de re modality has seemed especially problematic lies in the broadly linguistic conception of the source of necessary truth which was widely accepted by analytic philosophers throughout the middle decades of last century, in spite of Quine’s major onslaught on the notion of analytic truth or truth in virtue of meaning. Indeed, Quine himself—somewhat surprisingly, given his

misgivings about analyticity—finds the essentialism to which he thinks acceptance of de re modalities commits us unpalatable precisely because it clashes with the logical empiricist orthodoxy that all necessity is rooted in meanings." (p. 235)

32. Koslicki, Kathrin. 2020. "Essence and Identity." In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 113-140. New York: Oxford University Press.

"4 Conclusion

My primary focus in this chapter has been on the question of how essentialists should attempt to meet Quine’s demand for necessary and sufficient conditions for the crossworld identity of individuals. I examined six contenders for the role of crossworld identity principles: (i) an object’s qualitative character; (ii) matter; (iii) origins; (iv) haecceities; (v) world-indexed properties; and (vi) form.

(...)

On balance, then, the sixth option deserves to be taken very seriously as a possible response to Quine’s challenge, especially by neo-Aristotelians who are already motivated for other reasons to take on board a

hylomorphic conception of unified wholes. Many of these hylomorphists also accept a non-modal conception of essence and thus face the further difficult task, over and above what is required to meet Quine’s challenge, of having to explain an object’s de re modal profile in terms of facts about its essence. Haecceities and world-indexed properties are unlikely to be of much help with respect to this second challenge, while the forms of hylomorphic compounds are in fact well suited for this purpose." (p. 136)

33. Kroon, Fred, and McKeown-Green, Jonathan. 2020. "Ontology: What’s the (Real) Question?" In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 13-37. New York: Oxford University Press.

"One way to philosophize is to ontologize: about physical objects, moral properties, properties, possibilia, numbers, sets, and much else. For Kit Fine, ontologizing differs from what happens in ordinary life when I affirm that there are chairs and from what happens at school when I explain that there is a prime number less than three.

(...)

Fine’s most extensive treatment is to be found “The Question of Ontology” (Fine 2009) and related considerations are advanced in “The Question of Realism” (Fine 2001). In the first three, expository, sections of this chapter, we present Fine’s ideas in the context of broader views that he elaborates in “What is Metaphysics?” (Fine 2012). Then we offer our responses." (p. 13)

34. Kuhn, Steven T. 2020. "Necessary, Transcendental, and Universal Truth." In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 183-204. New York: Oxford University Press.

"The argument that Fine’s puzzle, as originally formulated, provides evidence that Socrates’ humanness is a transcendental, rather than a worldly, fact assumes that we are more reluctant to attribute necessity to propositions true because of the nature of individuals than to propositions true because of worldly circumstances, and that we find it still more difficult to attribute necessity to “hybrid” sentences. A simpler

version of the argument, however, reaches the same conclusion under a more plausible understanding of the relation between necessary and transcendental truth. We may question Fine’s emphasis on his two-premise puzzle and even, perhaps, his principal example of a transcendental truth. It is difficulty to deny, however, the interest and importance of the worldly–unworldly distinction and Fine’s thought about it. We should be grateful to him for bringing this, as many other neglected topics in metaphysics, into focus." (p. 203)

35. Mackie, Penelope. 2020. "Can Metaphysical Modality Be Based on Essence?" In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 247-264. New York: Oxford University Press.

"1 Introduction

In his hugely influential paper “Essence and Modality” (1994), Kit Fine argued that the then orthodox view that essence can be understood in terms of metaphysical modality is fundamentally flawed. He proposed, in its place, the view that all metaphysical modality has its source in the essences or natures of things, where the notion of a thing’s essence or nature can be understood in terms of a broadly Aristotelian notion of real definition.

(...)

In spite of the attention that it has received, however, one aspect of Fine’s revolutionary theory seems to me to have been surprisingly neglected. The theory appears to require that the relevant conception of real definition can itself be isolated without appeal to metaphysical modality. And I do not see how this requirement can be met. Hence I am genuinely puzzled about how an “essence-based” theory of metaphysical modality is possible. In this chapter, I explain my reasons for skepticism about this issue. I then briefly consider the implications of my argument for the relation between essence and metaphysical modality." (p. 247)

36. Moltmann, Friederike. 2020. "Variable Objects and Truthmaking." In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 368-394. New York: Oxford University Press.

"This chapter will focus on a philosophically significant construction whose semantics brings together two important notions in Kit Fine’s philosophy: the notion of truthmaking and the notion of a variable embodiment, or its extension, namely what I call a “variable object.”

The analysis of the construction this paper will develop will be based on an account of clausal complements of intensional verbs that is of more general interest, based on truthmaking and the notion of a cognitive product, such as a promise or a belief, rather than that of a proposition. On that account, the clausal complement of, for example, promise will characterize satisfaction situations of the reported promise,

and the clausal complement of believe will characterize the truthmakers of the reported belief." (p. 368)

37. Ostertag, Gary. 2020. "Fine on Frege's Puzzle." In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 337-359. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Kit Fine’s Semantic Relationism (SR) provides a novel defense of referentialism—novel, in part, because of the specific challenge to referentialism it addresses and in part because of the techniques it introduces in its defense. SR takes on a number of interrelated concerns, involving, principally, the interpretation of variables and the phenomenon of strict, or de jure, coreference. The purpose of the current chapter is to clarify, and place in a broader context, the problem of strict coreference and to provide a framework for understanding the proposed solution." (p. 337, a note omitted)

38. Percival, Philip. 2020. "Beyond Reality?" In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 38-51. New York: Oxford University Press.

"My focus is the divide between reality and that which is beyond reality. On what I call an “all-encompassing” view of reality, this is the divide between everything and nothing: reality encompasses everything, and beyond it there is nothing at all.

Opposed to the all-encompassing view is what I call a “restriction” view of reality: reality is coincident with some kind of restriction on, or partition of, what there is; it is not the case that what resides beyond reality is nothing.

I have two main aims: to first classify restriction views of reality (§ 1), and then to assess a species of the restriction view that pertains to time and modality (§ 2)." (p. 38)

39. Sandu, Gabriel. 2020. "Indefinites, Skolem Functions, and Arbitrary Objects." In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 98-112. New York: Oxford University Press.

"1 Introduction: Indefinites

Indefinites can occur in a nested sequence of quantificational phrases like

1. Every student read every paper that a professor recommended and also in combination with anaphoric pronouns as in

2. A man smiles. He is happy.

The nesting, on one side, and the anaphoric link, on the other, create an interpretational tension. The nesting favors a quantificational interpretation of the indefinites according to which they behave more like any other quantificational NP, for example they enter into scopal (dependency) relations with other quantificational phrases. But the presence of discourse anaphora creates some pressure to interpret the indefinites referentially in a way which makes their semantical behavior resemble more that of proper names." (p. 98)

40. Shalkowski, Scott A. 2020. "Essence and Nominalism." In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 301-315. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Kit Fine has produced an extensive and rich body of work bearing on the philosophy of modality.

(...)

"What is less than usual, though, I will also argue that essentialism can be made safe for nominalists. Not only should we be unimpressed with philosophy that expands our ontology for the sake of eliminating modality, we should also be unimpressed with philosophy that expands the domain to admit the abstract when it is in the business of being completely sober, serious, and aiming at non-modal truth-telling.

Abstraction involves not arriving at principled, well-justified beliefs about abstract objects. It simply involves the failure to regard as important more and more features of (concrete) reality. One can hardly discover new ontology by caring less about—or by paying less attention to—the old ontology. The end result will be essentialism that is safe for nominalists." (pp. 301-302, anote omitted)

41. Urquhart, Alasdair. 2020. "Fine on Arbitrary Objects." In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 87-97. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Introduction

Fine’s remarkable theory of arbitrary objects has attracted less attention than it deserves. He expounded his theory in two papers (Fine, 1983; Fine, 19858a), and a monograph (Fine, 1985b). The aim of the present chapter is to provide a brief introduction to the theory, to discuss some of the historical background, and finally to sketch some connections with other areas in logic and philosophy. In the historical section, I shall try to elucidate the extent to which earlier writers anticipated Fine’s theory, while in the last section, I attempt to expand on some of Fine’s brief but suggestive remarks in his monograph." (p. 87)

References

Fine, 1983. Kit Fine. A Defence of Arbitrary Objects. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume , 15:55-77.

Fine, 1985a. Kit Fine. Natural Deduction and Arbitrary Objects. Journal of Philosophical Logic , 14:57-107.

Fine, 1985b. Kit Fine. Reasoning with Arbitrary Objects. Basil Blackwell. Aristotelian Society Monograph Series 3.

42. Wilson, Jessica. 2020. "Essence and Dependence." In Metaphysics, Meaning and Modality: Themes from Kit Fine , edited by Dumitru, Mircea, 283-300. New York: Oxford University Press.

"I have offered certain counterexamples to Fine’s essence-based account of dependence, which more generally pose a difficulty for some of the principles (e.g., Localization) that he takes to characterize the connection between essence and dependence. Still, it will not have been lost on anyone that my criticisms here accept and aim to implement exactly the methodology that Fine took to show that modal accounts of essence and ontological dependence are incorrect, and for the same reason—namely, that it is of the first importance to characterize the key metaphysical notions in such a way that they do not inappropriately exclude any intelligible applications of those notions." (p. 299)

43. Frances, Bryan. 2006. "The New Leibniz' Law Arguments for Pluralism." Mind no. 115:1007-1022.

"Ordinary macroscopic material objects A and B coincide at a time if at that time they share the very same spatial regions and are made of the same underlying matter. Many philosophers hold that some easily possible or even actual material objects that coincide at a time are nonidentical, for example, a statue and the hunk of clay that it is materially coincident with. Following Kit Fine (2003), I will call those philosophers pluralists. Other philosophers, monists, think that there are no pairs of distinct coincident ordinary material objects.

Some of the paradoxes of material constitution are frightfully difficult to solve, and it is almost always agreed that any response to them will be at least somewhat counterintuitive, so the oddity of pluralism is not its refutation. (1) Fine (2003) has developed further than anyone else a new set of Leibniz’s Law arguments for pluralism. Using Leibniz’s Law to argue for pluralism is not new. Many find intuitive the idea that a statue but not the hunk of clay from which it is made cannot survive being flattened; by Leibniz’s Law we can conclude that the statue is not the hunk of clay, or so it appears. The new arguments are intended to be superior to the familiar arguments in two ways: they do not rely on controversial modal and temporal intuitions, and they suggest serious errors in the monist’s replies to the old Leibniz’s Law arguments.

The new arguments are a welcome addition to the literature, as the traditional Leibniz’s Law arguments for pluralism have already been very thoroughly examined. However, it seems to me that the monist has plausible responses to the new arguments. I agree with Fine that monism is probably false, but I do not see how the new arguments mount a good case against it." (pp. 1007-1008)

(1) I do not mean to imply that the problems of coincidence are the only problems of material composition. Even more serious composition problems are found when investigating the questions ‘Under what conditions does composition happen?’ and ‘When taking atoms away from a pumpkin, when does one no longer have a pumpkin?’ Indeed, without a satisfactory solution to the latter problems, I do not see how we can be confident regarding our responses to the material coincidence problems.

References

Fine, Kit 2003: ‘The Non-Identity of a Material Thing and Its Matter’. Mind , 112, pp. 195–234.

44. King, Jeffrey C. 2006. "Semantics for Monists." Mind no. 115:1023-1058.

Abstract: "Assume that the only thing before you is a statue made of some alloy. Call those who think that there is one thing before you in such a case monists. Call those who think there are at least two things before you in such a case pluralists. The most common arguments for pluralism run as follows. The statue is claimed to have some property P that the piece of alloy lacks (or vice versa), and hence it is concluded that they are distinct. Most often, the predicates employed in such arguments to express the crucial property are predicates expressing `temporal properties', such as existing at a certain time; or `modal properties', such as possibly being spherical; or `constitution properties', such as being made of a certain sort of material. In a recent paper, Kit Fine has noted that such predicates suffer from various defects that make it possible for the monist to plausibly resist the relevant versions of the pluralist's arguments. For this reason, Fine considers a number of predicates that do not suffer from these defects, and constructs new versions of the above argument using them. Fine argues that any attempt on the monist's part to resist his versions of the argument force the monist to adopt implausible positions in the philosophy of language. As against this, I argue that the monist has perfectly plausible responses to Fine's arguments that require the monist to adopt only quite reasonable positions in the philosophy of language."

45. Tallant, Jonathan. 2013. "A Heterodox Presentism: Kit Fine’s Theory." In New Papers on the Present: Focus on Presentism , edited by Ciuni, Roberto, Miller, Kristie and Torrengo, Giuliano, 281-306. Munich: Philosophia Verlag.

Abstract: "Kit Fine ([Fine 2005]) has articulated a position according to which reality is fragmented. In this paper I will refer to this view as ‘Heterodox Presentism’. I want to try and do two things. First, I want to try and undermine the arguments presented by Fine in favour of Heterodox Presentism and show that the view is unmotivated—in part by the fact that it fails to meet some of the standards that Fine sets for it. The second target aim is to offer some very informal and sketchy remarks as to how we might better construe the ‘standard’ view of realism, or ‘presentism’ to which Fine objects—the view that I will define here as ‘only present objects exist’. As we shall see, my own view of presentism differs quite substantially from this pithy slogan.

46. Burgess, John P. 2004. "Book Review: Kit Fine. The Limits of Abstraction . Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2002." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic :227-251.

"Kit Fine’s long article [13], introducing his distinctive take on neo-Fregeanism, has now been expanded into a short book of the same title. (For those familiar with the article version, the philosophical material from it appears as chapter 1 in the book, and the echnical material as chapters 3 and 4. According to the book’s preface, “The major change is the addition of a new part on the context principle.” This addition constitutes chapter 2 of the book. There is also an index of technical terms, which would have been more useful if it had been arranged alphabetically.)

The present review of that book is divided into three parts of unequal length.

The long introduction Section 2 surveys recent neo-Fregeanism. Then Section 3 summarizes Fine’s technical contributions, which presumably are what is of primary interest for readers of the present journal. The brief conclusion Section 4 touches on more purely philosophical issues.

References

[13] Fine, K., “The limits of abstraction,” pp. 503–629 in The Philosophy of Mathematics Today (Munich, 1993) , edited by M. Schirn, Oxford University Press, New York, 1998.

47. Correia, Fabrice. 2006. "Generic Essence, Objectual Essence, and Modality." Noûs no. 40:753-767.

Abstract: When thinking about the notion of essence or of an essential feature, philosophers typically focus on what I will call the notion of objectual essence. The main aim of this paper is to argue that beside this familiar notion stands another one, the notion of generic essence, which contrary to appearance cannot be understood in terms of the familiar notion, and which also fails to be correctly characterized by certain other accounts which naturally come to mind as well. Some of my objections to these accounts are similar to some of Kit Fine's compelling objections to the standard modal account of (objectual) essence (Fine 1994). In the light of these objections, Fine advances the view that it is metaphysical necessity which has to be understood in terms of essence, rather than the other way around, and takes essence to be unanalyzable. When formulating his view, Fine had only objectual essence in mind (or had both concepts in mind, but assumed that the generic is a special case of the objectual), and for that reason, I will argue, his account fails. I will suggest that Fineans should modify their view, and take it that metaphysical necessity is to be understood in terms of the two notions of essence—a view I myself find appealing.

Finally, I will end up with suggesting a further move which reduces the objectual to the generic, making metaphysical necessity reducible to generic essence alone—a move with which I myself have some sympathy."

References

Fine, K. (1994) "Essence and Modality", Philosophical Perspectives, 8: 1-16.

48. Asay, Jamin. 2017. "Run Aground: Kit Fine’s Critique of Truthmaker Theory." The Philosophical Quarterly no. 67:443-463.

Abstract: "Kit Fine, the leading proponent of the metaphysical project of grounding theory, has offered a number of potentially devastating objections to truthmaker theory, the branch of metaphysics dedicated to exploring the ontological grounds for truths. In this paper, I show what presuppositions about truthmaker theory Fine’s objections are based upon, and why they are false. I discuss four objections that Fine raises, and demonstrate how truthmaker theorists may respond to them. I then showcase the positive contribution that truthmaker theory can make to metaphysics, including its ability to speak to a core metaphysical topic (the ontological grounds for truths) that Fine’s approach to grounding must ultimately remain silent on. I conclude by exploring what I take to be the best option when it comes to understanding how truthmaking and grounding fit together."

49. Shapiro, Stewart. 2004. "The Nature and Limits of Abstraction." Philosophical Quarterly no. 54:166-174.

"To what extent can abstraction principles serve as a foundation for a branch of mathematics? Like logicism, neo-logicism is an epistemological enterprise. The neo-logicist claims that basic arithmetic principles can become known on the basis of a derivation from Hume’s principle. But of course the epistemic status of the conclusion of a deduction is closely tied to the status of its premises. Thus one key batch of philosophical issues concerns the epistemic status of acceptable abstraction principles, like Hume’s principle. Are they analytic, or otherwise knowable a priori? Fine explores a number of options, and finds them wanting, some more so than others.

One natural possibility is to think of Hume’s principle as a definition. But definitions come in many flavours. An ‘orthodox’ definition is a linguistic device to identify an item - object, property, function, etc. - which is already in the range of the bound variables of the language or theory in use. There are two types of orthodox definitions. An explicit definition stipulates that a new linguistic term is to be equivalent to a given expression. Abstraction principles do not have the form of explicit definitions. For example, Hume’s principle does not provide a single expression that is equivalent to the ‘number of' operator." (p. 168)

(...)

"There is gold in these pages, but it is often difficult to mine. The book contains a number of annoying typographical and other minor errors. In most (but not all) cases, I was able to figure out what was meant, sometimes with effort. Part of the difficulty in reading this book can be traced to the fertile mind of its author. Fine explores many highways, byways and alleyways. For example, the philosophical material deals with intensional and extensional equivalence and with abstractions whose relations are contingent as well as necessary. On several occasions, distinctions are made and discussed for a while, and then dropped, sometimes with a remark that it does not matter. On the technical side, the book deals with both standard models and non-standard Henkin models. The play with predominantly logical abstractions is a result of Fine’s admirable desire for his results to be as strong as possible, but the extra detail required for this introduces a wealth of intricacy that will challenge all but a diligent reader. The second half of the book is full of new technical terms and abbreviations, and it is easy to get lost in the linguistic jungle. The only help the reader gets in this regard is an ‘index of first occurrence of formal symbols and definitions’. Unfortunately, this is arranged in the order in which these terms occur in the book, not in alphabetical order. So the reader who needs to look up a forgotten notion or symbol must look through seven entire columns of terms.

That said, this is a deep and penetrating book. It should be required reading for anyone with more than a casual interest in neo-logicism, or abstraction principles generally. No one can claim to be an expert on these philosophical and logical matters until they have mastered the arguments and ideas contained in this work." (pp. 173-174)

50. Wildman, Nathan. 2013. "Modality, Sparsity, and Essence." Philosophical Quarterly no. 63:760-782.

Abstract: "Rather infamously, Kit Fine provided a series of counter-examples which purport to show that attempts to understand essence in terms of metaphysical necessity are ‘fundamentally misguided’. Here, my aim is to put forward a new version of modalism that is, I argue, immune to Fine's counter-examples. The core of this new modalist account is a sparseness restriction, such that an object's essential properties are those sparse properties it has in every world in which it exists. After first motivating this sparseness restriction, I proceed to show how the resulting sparse modalism circumvents Fine's original counter-examples. After dismissing a potential problem concerning the membership relation, I conclude that, as at least one form of modalism is viable, the project of understanding essence in terms of metaphysical necessity is not so fundamentally misguided after all."

51. Forbes, Graeme. 2008. "Critical Review of Kit Fine’s ' Modality and Tense '." The Philosophical Review no. 117:275-287.

"In this critical review I discuss the main themes of the papers in Kit Fine's Modality and Tense: Philosophical Papers . These themes are that modal operators are intelligible in their own right and that actualist quantifiers are to be taken as basic with respect to possibilist quantifiers. I also discuss a previously unpublished paper of Fine's on modality and existence."

52. "Symposium on Kit Fine's book The Limits of Abstraction ." 2005. Philosophical Studies .

Contents: Kit Fine: Précis [of " The Limits of Abstraction" ] 305; Stewart Shapiro: Sets and Abstracts – Discussion 315; Alan Weir: On Kit Fine's ' The Limits of Abstraction' – Discussion 333; Jamie Tappenden: On Kit Fine's ' The Limits of Abstraction' – Discussion 349; Kit Fine: Replies 347-395.

53. King, Jeffrey C. 1991. "Instantial Terms, Anaphora and Arbitrary Objects." Philosophical Studies :239-265.

In recent work, Kit Fine has sought to resurrect the view that variables in mathematics refer to indefinite or, as he calls them, arbitrary objects. (3) Indeed Fine holds that instantial terms figuring in universal generalization and existential instantiation in systems of natural deduction, and some anaphoric pronouns in natural languages, refer to arbitrary objects as well. As against this, I intend to argue that the arbitrary objects account, like the theories of indefinite numbers that preceded it, obscures rather than highlights the distinctive features of the various expressions it claims to handle; and that there is another view of the semantics of these expressions which is preferable to the arbitrary objects account. (4)

The plan of the present essay is first, to sketch Fine's theory of arbitrary objects; second, to sketch an alternative to Fine's account; third, to argue that Fine's arguments in support of arbitrary object theory also support the alternative; and finally, to argue that this alternative is preferable to arbitrary object theory." (p. 240)

(3) See 'A Defence of Arbitrary Objects' (henceforth, DAO), Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 57, 1983, pp. 55-77; 'Natural Deduction and Arbitrary Objects' (henceforth, NDAO), Journal of Philosophical Logic 14 (1985) 57-107; and Reasoning with Arbitrary Objects Aristotelian Society Series Volume 3 (henceforth, RAO), Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1985.

It may seem provincial of me to limit my attention to Fine s view and the alternative I intend to discuss, given the existence of sophisticated theories of anaphoric pronouns such as that outlined in Hans Kamp's 'A Theory of Truth and Semantic Representation' (in Formal Methods in the Study of Language , J. Groenendijk, T. Janssen, M. Stockhof (eds.), Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam, 1981, pp. 277-322). But Kamp's theory is incapable of handling much of the data that is at issue here. For example, that theory is incapable of handling the anaphoric pronoun in the following discourse

Every female professor has a computer. She is financially responsible for it.

(I intend 'a computer' to have narrow scope with respect to 'Every female professor').

Kamp's rules of DRS [Discourse Representation Theory] construction prevent the construction of what Kamp calls a complete DRS for this discourse; and one must construct a complete DRS for a discourse for Kamp's semantics to handle the discourse. (In particular, Kamp's rule CR3 (p. 311) prevents substituting the "discourse referent" introduced by the processing of 'a computer' for 'it' in the second sentence, in effect preventing anaphoric connection between 'it' and 'a computer'; similarly for 'Every female professor' and' 'she'.) More importantly, even if the rules were changed in order to allow the construction of a complete DRS for this discourse, the semantics would not come out right. For the value of the pronoun 'it' in the second sentence depends on the value of the pronoun 'She' in the sense that the truth of the sentence requires that for any female professor we choose (value of 'She') there must be a computer (value of 'it') such that the professor is financially responsible for the computer. Kamp's semantics does not include a device for keeping track of such dependence between the values of pronouns.

This lack prevents Kamp's theory from handling instantial terms in natural deduction and English arguments, and variables in mathematics as well. But this is just the sort of data that is the subject of this essay.

54. Shapiro, Stewart. 2005. "Sets and Abstracts – Discussion." Philosophical Studies no. 122:315-322.

"Kit Fine’s The Limits of Abstraction (2002) is loaded with interesting and important model-theoretic results about abstraction principles. I propose to explore the bearing of these and related results on the philosophical goals of neo-logicism. I presuppose familiarity with the main themes of the book, at least as outlined in the précis published here.(1) Section 1 below analyzes particular results concerning abstraction principles, indicating consequences for acceptability of the neo-logicist program, at least as that program is articulated in the Fine study. Section 2 explores the role of set-theoretic meta-theory generally in foundational programs like that of neo-logicism (and logicism). What is an advocate of neo-logicism, or a neutral outsider, to make of the whole enterprise of model theory as based on set theory? What is a mathematician watching the neo-logicist development from the outside to make of neo-logicism?" (p. 315)

(1) K. Fine, Precis [of " The Limits of Abstraction" ], Philosophical Studies , 122, 2005, pp. 305-313.

55. Tappenden, Jamie. 2005. "On Kit Fine's ' The Limits of Abstraction' – Discussion." Philosophical Studies no. 122:349-366.

"The best place to begin these comments is to say that I found this to be a wonderful book - genuinely thrilling to read. It is a challenge for me to find a contribution that hasn't been already advanced many times, since the core topics - reference to abstract objects, say, or impredicativity, to choose two among many - have received so much intense attention in recent decades. I'll try not to just repeat arguments that I already know are in the literature. Also, since many other people are in a better position than I am to comment on the technical side of the general theory of abstraction. Ι will refrain from comment, except to indicate my enthusiasm. Looking to a general account rather than remaining content with ad hoc justifications of this or that abstraction principle is clearly a crucial step to understanding the issues. Finally. I will have little that is critical to say, because I'm in broad agreement with those of the central reflections in The Limits of Abstraction on which I may have something novel to contribute. (1)" (p. 349)

(1) This is not to say I agree across the board, only that those disagreements I have – on impredicativity, for example – are for reasons that are completely unoriginal.

56. Weir, Alan. 2005. "On Kit Fine's ' The Limits of Abstraction' – Discussion." Philosophical Studies no. 122:333-348.

"Kit Fine's The Limits of Abstraction is a magisterial study of the philosophical and technical issues raised by the neo-Fregean or neo-logicist project of founding mathematics on abstraction principles. The current interest in neo-logicism was largely generated by Crispin Wright, in his Frege's Conception of Numbers as Objects , and carried forward by Wright and others such as Bob Hale and Neil Tennant. Whatever one thinks of the philosophical plausibility of the project, it has been fortunate to attract the attention of superb logicians such as George Boolos and now Kit Fine, who have unearthed a wealth of interesting mathematical logic from its technical foundations.

Fine writes not as a committed, card-carrying neo-Fregean (see, for example, p. 46) but more as a sympathetic bystander concernedt o see how much light can be cast on mathematics from that perspective. This discussion, then, is not a critical review of Fine's book; rather I want to ask whether his work, in particular his 'General Theory of Abstraction', can be used by neo-Fregeans to rescue themselves from objections which have been made to their position." (p. 333)

57. Forbes, Graeme. 1993. "But a Was Arbitrary…." Philosophical Topics no. 21:21-34.

“I offer a philosophical defense of Gentzen-style quantifier rules which explains why they are sound without employing any such notion as “arbitrary name” or “arbitrary choice”. I argue that while Fine’s arbitrary object semantics directly justifies reasoning in which we seem to appeal to arbitrary objects, a parallel with standard vs. non-standard analysis, in which arbitrary objects are like infinitesimals, suggests that the Gentzen approach is more fundamental.”

58. "Book Symposium - Kit Fine, Semantic Relationism ." 2010. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 81.

Scott Soames: Coordination problems 464; Kit Fine: Comments on Scott Soames ’‘Coordination Problems’ 475; Krista Lawlor: Varieties of Coreference 485; Kit Fine: Reply to Lawlor’s ‘Varieties of Coreference’ 496; Paul Hovda: Semantics as Information about Semantic Values 502; Kit Fine: Comments on Paul Hovda’s ‘Semantics as Information About Semantics Values’ 511-518.

59. Hovda, Paul. 2010. "Semantics as Information about Semantic Values." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 81:502-510.

Abstract: "I suggest that the core ideas of Kit Fine’s Semantic Relationism are the notion of semantic requirement and the notion of manifest consequence, the non-classical logical relation associated with semantic requirement.

Surrounding this core are novel ‘‘relational’’ systems of coordinated sequences of expressions, relational (as opposed to intrinsic) semantic values, coordinated propositions, and coordinated content. I take Fine to take the periphery to be reducible to the core (but see below). I will make some primarily exegetical remarks about the two core ideas, and then make more critical remarks about the periphery. I should say that I find the book, as a whole, illuminating and, for the most part, convincing. I hesitantly suggest that the core constitutes an important and novel model for thinking about semantics (and representation in general), while the periphery might result from an attempt to force the new model into the old mold."

60. Lawlor, Krista. 2010. "Varieties of Coreference." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 81:485-495.

Conclusion: "Does a comprehensive theory of language and cognition require primitive semantic relations? Fine thinks so, and I agree. Will incorporating primitive semantic relations have the result that traditional semantics will need to be dramatically re-written? Again, plausibly Yes—our understanding of compositionality, to take one instance, may have to be more subtle. Is strict coreference the right primitive in such a comprehensive theory? No, I think not—the semantic pro-form is a better primitive, because it affords a more general theory.

Naturally I’ve pressed criticisms here, but I greatly appreciate this book. We have Fine’s work to thank for turning a powerful spotlight on coreference phenomena, illuminating how central they are in thought and language, and forcing us to think harder about how to understand them." (p. 495)

61. Sider, Ted. 2013. "Replies to Dorr, Fine, and Hirsch." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 87:733-754.

Reply to Kit Fine, Fundamental Truth and Fundamental Terms , (2013).

"Kit Fine’s paper raises important and difficult issues about my approach to the metaphysics of fundamentality. In chapters 7 and 8 (*) I examined certain subtle differences between my approach and his. Our approaches are kindred because they share the assumption that fundamentality-theoretic concepts are not to be defined modally, and that some such concepts are themselves to be adopted as conceptually primitive. (1) But they differ over which concepts are to be adopted, and over how those concepts behave."

(*) of Ted Sider, Writing the Book of the World , New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

(1) This is not to say that all the approaches regard the concepts as metaphysically primitive.

62. Soames, Scott. 2010. "Coordination problems." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 81:465-474.

"Although ‘Rxx’ and ‘Rxy’ are both applications of a two-place predicate to a pair of terms, ‘Rxx’ resembles a one-place predicate in that all one needs to evaluate it is an assignment to ‘x’. A similar point applies

to the sequences ‘Fx’, ‘Gx’ and ‘Fx’, ‘Gy’ – even though neither is a one-place predicate. Kit Fine’s semantic relationism aims to extract a common idea uniting these comparisons, and to use it to provide a Millian solution to Frege’s Puzzle." (p. 463)

63. Deng, Natalja. 2013. "Fine's Mctaggart, Temporal Passage, and the A versus B-Debate." Ratio no. 26:19-34.

Abstract: "I offer an interpretation and a partial defense of Kit Fine's ‘Argument from Passage’, which is situated within his reconstruction of McTaggart's paradox. Fine argues that existing A-theoretic approaches to passage are no more dynamic, i.e. capture passage no better, than the B-theory. I argue that this comparative claim is correct. Our intuitive picture of passage, which inclines us towards A-theories, suggests more than coherent A-theories can deliver. In Finean terms, the picture requires not only Realism about tensed facts, but also Neutrality, i.e. the tensed facts not being ‘oriented towards’ one privileged time. However unlike Fine, and unlike others who advance McTaggartian arguments, I take McTaggart's paradox to indicate neither the need for a more dynamic theory of passage nor that time does not pass. A more dynamic theory is not to be had: Fine's ‘non-standard realism’ amounts to no more than a conceptual gesture. But instead of concluding that time does not pass, we should conclude that theories of passage cannot deliver the dynamicity of our intuitive picture. For this reason, a B-theoretic account of passage that simply identifies passage with the succession of times is a serious contender."

64. Gorman, Michael. 2005. "The Essential and the Accidental." Ratio no. 18:276-289.

Abstract: "The distinction between the essential and the accidental is nearly always understood in modal terms. After criticizing some recent writings by Kit Fine that question that understanding, I develop a theory according to which whether a given feature of a thing is essential turns on whether it is explained by other features of that thing. The theory differs from the modal view by leaving room for features that are accidental even though their bearers cannot exist without them. The theory has the additional advantage of being open to the results of scientific theory."

" Fine tries to explain essence in terms of definition but proceeds as if we already know the real definitions of things. I propose that we travel in the opposite direction and say that a good definition of something is a statement of its essence, i.e., a statement of its fundamental characteristic(s). In other words, we first inquire into a thing’s essence, and then, once we know its essence, we can define it. If we do not yet know a thing’s essence, then we are not able to state its real definition, although we might be able to formulate a substitute by invoking some necessary accident that all and only things of that type possess. Such substitutes can be extremely useful. For example, suppose we become convinced that a hydrogen atom’s having exactly one proton is explained by some other fact about it, while being unsure what that other fact might be. In such a situation we would be unsure of the definition of hydrogen, but we would still be able to make a lot of progress investigating the characteristics of ‘atoms with exactly one proton’.(22)" (p. 289)

(22) On substitutes for definitions see Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 29, a. 1, ad 3. Oderberg connects essence with definition and also makes a point closely related to my remarks about substitutes, namely, that a grasp of proper accidents is the best means to grasping something’s essence; see ‘How to Win Essence Back’, pp. 36-8, 40.

References

David S. Oderberg, ‘How to Win Essence Back from Essentialists’, Philosophical Writings , XVIII (Autumn 2001), 27-45.

65. deRosset, Louis. 2014. "On Weak Ground." Review of Symbolic Logic no. 7:713-744.

Abstract: "Though the study of grounding is still in the early stages, Kit Fine, in ”The Pure Logic of Ground”, has made a seminal attempt at formalization. Formalization of this sort is supposed to bring clarity and precision to our theorizing, as it has to the study of other metaphysically important phenomena, like modality and vagueness. Unfortunately, as I will argue, Fine ties the formal treatment of grounding to the obscure notion of a weak ground. The obscurity of weak ground, together with its centrality in Fine’s system, threatens to undermine the extent to which this formalization offers clarity and precision. In this paper, I show how to overcome this problem. I describe a system, the logic of strict ground (LSG) and demonstrate its adequacy; I specify a translation scheme for interpreting Fine’s weak grounding claims; I show that the interpretation verifies all of the principles of Fine’s system; and I show that derivability in Fine’s system can be exactly characterized in terms of derivability in LSG. I conclude that Fine’s system is reducible to LSG."

66. Bird, Alexander. 2009. "Essences and Natural Kinds." In The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics , edited by Le Poidevin, Robin, Simons, Peter, McGonigal, Andrew and Ross, P. Cameron, 497-506. New York: Routledge.

"Essentialism as applied to individuals is the claim that for at least some individuals there are properties that those individuals possess essentially. What it is to possess a property essentially is a matter of debate. To possess a property essentially is often taken to be akin to possessing a property necessarily, but stronger – although this is not a feature of Aristotle’s essentialism, according to which essential properties are those properties a thing could not lose without ceasing to exist. Kit Fine (1994) takes essential properties to be those that an object has in virtue of its identity, while other essentialists refer (as Fine also does) to the nature of an object as the source of its essential properties.

It is sometimes important to distinguish the essential properties of a thing and the “full” essence of a thing. The latter is the set of the essential properties of a thing, when that set necessarily suffi ces to determine the thing’s identity. One might hold that something has essential properties without agreeing that it has an identity-determining essence.

(...)

"In this chapter I shall fi rst outline certain claims and arguments concerning essentialism concerning individuals (second section). I shall then (third section) introduce the notion of a natural kind in more detail before discussing natural kind essentialism (fourth section)." (pp. 497-498)

References

Fine, K. (1994) “Essence and Modality,” in J. Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 8 of Logic and Language , Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview, pp. 1–16.

67. San Ginés, Aránzazu. 2014. "On Skolem Functions, and Arbitrary Objects. An Analysis of a Kit Fine’s Mysterious Claim." Teorema. Revista Internacional de Filosofía no. 33:137-150.

Abstract: "In 1985, i n his book Reasoning with Arbitrary Objects , Kit Fine observed and stressed three, in his opinion, important differences between A-objects and Skolem functions. The present paper rests on one of them. According to Fine, there is some kind of dependence relationship between objects that cannot properly be represented by any function. We will analyze this claim from the perspective of natural language, and discuss the improvement that the use of arbitrary objects seemingly provides over Skolem functions in dealing with dependence."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Ontology and Psychology in the Work of Liliana Albertazzi

Bibliography

Books

1. Albertazzi, Liliana, ed. 1998. Shapes of Forms. From Gestalt Psychology and Phenomenology to Ontology and Mathematics. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

2. ———, ed. 2000. Meaning and Cognition. A Multidisciplinary Approach. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

3. ———, ed. 2001. The Dawn of Cognitive Science. Early European Contributors. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Contents: Liliana Albertazzi: Introduction: back to the origins 1; Liliana Albertazzi: The primitives of presentation. Wholes, parts and psychophysics 29; Martin Kusch: the politics of thought: a social history of the debate between Wundt and the Wurzburg School 61; Riccardo Luccio: Representation in psychophysics 89; Robin D. Rollinger: Lotze on the sensory representation of space 103; Jan Sebestik: Ernst Mach's evolutionary theory of representation 123; Gianni Zanarini: Hermann von Helmholtz and Ernst Mach on musical consonance 135; Salvo D'Agostino: The Bild conception of physical theories from Helmholtz to Hertz 151; Karl Schuhmann: Representation in early Husserl 167; Jens Cavallin: Contents, psycho-physical products and representations 185; Elisabeth R. Valentine: G.F. Stout's philosophical psychology 209; Theo Herrmann and Steffi Katz: Otto Selz and the Würzburg School 225; Serena Cattaruzza: The instrumental model of language in Karl Buhler 237; Alfred Zimmer: The concept of perceptual 'field' and the revolution in cognition caused by Köhler's physische Gestalten 251; David Woodruff Smith: Consciousness and actuality in Whiteheadean ontology 269; Wolfgang Wildgen: Kurt Lewin and the rise of the 'cognitive sciences' in Germany: Cassirer, Bühler, Reichenbach 299; Ruggero Pierantoni: Children's drawings as sensible probes into the realm of representations 333.

4. ———, ed. 2001. Unfolding Perceptual Continua. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

5. ———, ed. 2006. Visual Thought. The Depictive Space of Perception. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

6. Albertazzi, Liliana, Jacquette, Dale, and Poli, Roberto, eds. 2001. The School of Alexius Meinong. Aldershot: Ashgate.

7. Albertazzi, Liliana, and Poli, Roberto, eds. 1991. Topics in Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence. Bolzano: Istituto Mitteleuropeo di Cultura.

8. Albertazzi, Liliana. 2006. Immanent Realism. An Introduction to Brentano. Dordrecht: Springer.

Contents: Acknowledgements ix; Terminological note xi; Introduction 1; Chapter 1. A life. a novel 5; Chapter 2. Brentano and Aristotle 43; Chapter 3. Psychology from an empirical standpoint 83; Chapter 4. Metaphysics and the science of the soul 123; Chapter 5. A woodworm in the intentional relation 155; Chapter 6. Ficciones 189; Chapter 7. Continua 233; Chapter 8. Reverse Aristotelianism: metaphysics of accidents 269; Chapter 9. Other writings: ethics, aesthetics and history of philosophy 295; Chapter 10. A history of Brentano criticism 313; Chapter 11. A wager on the future 335; Bibliographic notes 341; References 355; Index of names 373.

"This Introduction to Brentano' is primarily aimed at conceptual interpretation even though it has been written with scrupulous regard to the texts and sets out its topics according to their chronological development. I have concerned myself at length with historical questions on other occasion, as when editing the Italian versions of the three volumes of Brentano's Psychologies published by Laterza in 1997. Again for Laterza, and in accompaniment to the Psychologies I have written a short Introduzione a Brentano (Introduction to Brentano) of which this book is the development.

Before these publications, I have sought to outline the origin and influence of the theses put forward by the school of Brentano, and subsequently those of the school of Meinong with colleagues (L. Albertazzi et. al. ed., The School of Franz Brentano, Dordrecht, Kluwer 1996, and L. Albertazzi et. al. ed., The School of Alexius Meinong, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2001).

I have concentrated on these matters long enough to realize that it is still premature to attempt an exhaustive monograph on Brentano. Apart from the few texts published by Brentano during his lifetime, his writings -- and especially those published posthumously by his pupils -- are in a parlous state. And at the moment there seems to be no way out of the impasse." p. 1.

Essays

1. Albertazzi, Liliana. 1992. "Is There a Transcendental Object?" In Theories of Objects: Meinong and Twardowski, edited by Pasniczek, Jacek, 26-44. Lublin: Wydawnictvo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Sklodoskiej.

"Twardowski's ontology is to be listed among the jungle of ontologies which seem to be in fashion in contemporary philosophy. It has in common with Meinong's Gegenstandstheorie the description and definition of objects. But two are peculiar to Twardowski's ontology: the object in general and the general object. This stems from Twardowski's Kantian heritage and has to be related to a general Wolffian influence on the ontology of the Brentanists."

2. ———. 1995. "Forms of Completion." Grazer Philosophische Studien no. 50:321-340.

"The essay underlines the complementarity between theory and experimentation as a characteristic feature of the Meinong-school. In particular, it deals with the nucleus of a theory of presentation implicit in the theory of production. In fact, on the basis of Benussi's experimental results, I distinguish between presentation and representation, relatively to the various phases of the moment-now as the qualitative primitive of cognition. This result has various consequences which shed light on the act-side: it shows that the production relation relates to the act and not to the produced object, clarifying some difficulties concerning the nature of ideal objects in Meinong's ontology; that the psychological act granter the objects of knowing on the basis of cognitive determinants which are assimilative determinants and determinants of connection. These cognitive aspects of the act are indeed forms of completions of the known objects. Endly, the essay deals with the a-modal development of Benussi's theory of the cognitive aspects of the act as performed by the Italian Gestaltist Gaetano Kanizsa."

3. ———. 1996. "Anton Marty." In The School of Franz Brentano, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Libardi, Massimo and Poli, Roberto, 83-109. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

4. ———. 1996. "Edmund Husserl." In The School of Franz Brentano, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Libardi, Massimo and Poli, Roberto, 175-207. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

5. ———. 1996. "From Kant to Brentano." In The School of Franz Brentano, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Libardi, Massimo and Poli, Roberto, 423-465. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

6. ———. 1996. "Material and Formal Ontology." In Formal Ontology, edited by Simons, Peter and Poli, Roberto, 199-232. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"We owe the concept of formal ontology to Husserl, who called it the 'formal theory' of objects. However, the concept of formal as used by Husserl in his definition should not be understood in the conventional sense, since in his thought 'formal' is equivalent to 'categorial'; it is closely connected with the structures of the intentional acts and, as we shall see, has morphodynamic implications.

In contemporary philosophy, formal ontology has been developed in two principal ways. The first approach has been to study formal ontology as a part of ontology, and to analyse it using the tools and approach of formal logic: from this point of view formal ontology examines the logical features of predication and of the various theories of universals. The use of the specific paradigm of set theory applied to predication, moreover, conditions its interpretation. The second line of development returns to its Husserlian origins and analyses the fundamental categories of object, state of affairs, part, whole, and so forth, as well as the relations between parts and the whole and their laws of dependence - once all material concepts have been replaced by their correlative formal concepts relative to the pure 'something'. This kind of analysis does not deal with the problem of the relationship between formal ontology and material ontology." p. 199. (Notes omitted)

7. ———. 1997. "Continua, Adjectives and Tertiary Qualities." Axiomathes no. 8:7-30.

8. ———. 1998. "Perceptual Saliences and Nuclei of Meaning." In The Brentano Puzzle, edited by Poli, Roberto, 113-138. Aldershot: Ashgate.

9. ———. 1999. "Form Metaphysics." In Shapes of Forms. From Gestalt Psychology and Phenomenology to Ontology and Mathematics, 257-305. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"A not up-to-date premise.

Can metaphysics be a science? The question has long been dismissed as obscurantist and in bad taste, as well as being obfuscatory, impossible to frame and methodologically inadequate. And yet it is an entirely legitimate question when stated in the following simple terms:

(i) what exists?

(ii) what are the best methods with which to describe it?

and, subordinately, why do things sometimes appear differently from what they are?

Questions of this kind stem from an empirical and experimental vocation.

The first step to take in analysis of an "elementary doctrine of the components of experience", as Kant put it, is an apparently simple one. One asks oneself, in order to remain on certain ground, what it is that exists here and now in the present moment.

A first answer concerns those apparently indubitable situations in which something - that is, objects of some kind - are seen, felt, smelt or touched. Yet an immediate certainty based on sounds, colours and things that are experienced apparently without mediations and usually with an emotional connotation - the bold red of a dress, the strident sound of violently applied brakes, the glittering gold of the decoration on the facade of a Viennese building, the pale moon that fades with the morning - at once raises the problem of the terms used to describe it, since these are extremely difficult to manipulate. Here, now, something, object, and so on, but also and more simply colour, sound, emotion, etc., are all terms which are widely abused and apparently bankrupt if analysed on the basis of linguistic definitions. And as for seeing, feeling, hearing, etc., these are veritable speculative pitfalls for the unwary. Are they acts? If they are, on what do they rest? Do they have some sort of substratum or are they wholly unconnected? And then, what is their origin? Metaphysics thus seems to oscillate perilously between the mute deixis ad oculos of the moment-now and the atemporality of abstract definitions of terms such as be, exist, become, and so on.

Not surprisingly, therefore, several philosophers have given up in the attempt and devoted themselves to the much more reassuring theories of epistemological models and logics of the existent, declaring metaphysics to be 'off limits'.

For those who persist in their empirical endeavour, the only option is to adopt a different approach: a minimalist one which analyses the situation to which these terms refer and their genesis in the duration. This is an essentially descriptive approach; it has close ties with psychology and it is, specifically, an experimental phenomenology." p. 257 (Notes omitted)

10. ———. 2000. "Which Semantics?" In Meaning and Cognition. A Multidisciplinary Approach, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, 1-24. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

11. ———. 2001. "Back to the Origins." In The Dawn of Cognitive Science. Early European Contributors, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, 29-60. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

12. ———. 2001. "Presentation and Production." In The School of Alexius Meinong, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Jacquette, Dale and Poli, Roberto, 239-259. Aldershot: Ashgate.

13. ———. 2001. "The Primitives of Presentation. Parts, Wholes and Psychophysics." In The Dawn of Cognitive Science. Early European Contributors, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, 29-60. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

14. ———. 2002. "Continua." In Unfolding Perceptual Continua, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, 1-28. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

15. ———. 2002. "Towards a Neoaristotelian Theory of Continua. Elements of an Empirical Geometry." In Unfolding Perceptual Continua, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, 29-79. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

16. ———. 2003. "Franz Brentano Psychology Today. A Programme of Experimental Metaphysics." Brentano Studien: Internationales Jahrbuch der Franz Brentano Forschung no. 10:107-118.

17. ———. 2003. "Natural Semiosis. On Identity of Perceptual Objects." Versus.Quaderni di studi semiotici no. 93:113-133.

18. ———. 2004. "Aristotle and Brentano. The Psychophysics of the Soul." In Aristote Au Xix Siècle, edited by Thouard, Denis, 249-275. Paris: Presses Universitaires du Septention.

19. ———. 2006. "Introduction to Visual Spaces." In Visual Thought. The Depictive Space of Perception, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, 3-34. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

20. ———. 2006. "Retrieving Intentionality. A Legacy from the Brentano School." In The Lvov-Warsaw School. The New Generation, edited by Jadacki, Jacek Juliusz and Pasniczek, Jacek, 291-314. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

21. Albertazzi, Liliana, Jacquette, Dale, and Poli, Roberto. 2001. "Meinong in His and Our Times." In, 3-48. Aldershot: Ashgate.

22. Albertazzi, Liliana, Libardi, Massimo, and Poli, Roberto. 1996. "Brentano and His School: Reassembling the Puzzle." In The School of Franz Brentano, edited by Albertazzi, Liliana, Libardi, Massimo and Poli, Roberto, 1-25. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Brian Cantwell Smith On the Origins of Objects

Introduction

Contents: Preface VIII-XII; Introduction 3; Part I. Analysis; 1. Computation 27; 2. Irreduction 77; 3. Realism 85; 4. Particularity 117; 5. Physics 137; Part II. Construction; 6. Flex & slop 191; 7. Registration -- I 213; 8. Registration -- II 243; 9. Middle distance 277; 10. Transition 315; 11. Metaphysics 317; 12. Conclusion 345; Indexes; Sections 379; Figures 383; Sidebars 385; Topics 387; Names 407; References 411.

From the back-cover: "On the Origin of Objects is the culmination of Brian Cantwell Smith's decade-long investigation into the philosophical and metaphysical foundations of computation, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science. Based on a sustained critique of the formal tradition that underlies the reigning views, he presents an argument for an embedded, participatory, 'irreductionist,' metaphysical alternative. Smith seeks nothing less than to revise our understanding not only of the machines we build but also of the world with which they interact.

Smith's ambitious project begins as a search for a comprehensive theory of computation, able to do empirical justice to practice and conceptual justice to the computational theory of mind. A rigorous commitment to these two criteria ultimately leads him to recommend a radical overhaul of our traditional conception of metaphysics.

Along the way, Smith offers many fascinating ideas: the distinction between particularity and individuality, the methodological notion of an "inscription error," an argument that there are no individuals within physics, various deconstructions of the type-instance distinction, an analysis of formality as overly disconnected ("discreteness run amok"), a conception of the boundaries of objects as properties of unruly interactions between objects and subjects, an argument for the theoretical centrality of reference preservation, and a theatrical, acrobatic metaphor for the contortions involved in the preservation of reference and resultant stabilization of objects. Sidebars and diagrams throughout the book help clarify and guide Smith's highly original and compelling argument.".

From the Preface: "This is a book about metaphysics-one that attempts to do justice to the tundra, to gardening, to politics, to rock. As indicated, my path into these subjects has come through computer science, but that is mostly by the way. Although some technical material is reviewed in chapter i, computational considerations are largely set aside, in order to tell a tale about the territory into which that long exploration has led. The result is something of a metaphysical romp-occasionally riding rough-shod over turf already well explored (and well tilled) by generations of writers: from philosophy, feminism, theology, science studies, physics, poetry. Notwithstanding the germ of truth in the remark that "progress is made by stepping on the toes of giants," links with these literatures need to, and at some later point will, be forged. Nevertheless, my aim for the present text is simple: by presenting the story stripped of its computational heritage, to open up a conversation about perspectives, requirements, insights, and struggles-a conversation with others who have been led, via different routes, to this same metaphysical terrain.

To those inspired to take the trip-whether from explicit professional wrestling with such issues, or as the result of late night reservations about how to participate authentically in academic life-I hope to say two things. First: yes, it is possible to base uncompromising theoretical inquiry on alternative foundations: messier foundations, contested foundations, foundations that run closer to the wry and weathered texture of ordinary life. No one, least of all God, has decreed that intellectual rigor must (or even can) be founded on a pristine foundational atomism. Second, though, I also want to make evident just how much such a transformation costs. Politics, creativity, ambiguity, irreverence-none of these can be grafted, at a later stage, onto a silent steel core, or even poured, like life-giving water, over inherently desiccated foundations. The whole story has to be turned upside down." p. IX-X.

From the Conclusion: "To say that this book has opened more doors than it has closed is not to say much, since anyway it is an argument against closed doors. Still, an attempt has been made to tell a coherent story, a story it will pay to review. For one thing, it is important to see how many of the desiderata laid down in the first few chapters have been met. Since I have barely scratched the surface of a positive proposal, it is also important to understand what work remains to be done. And a number of other loose ends need to be attended to, to bring even this much of an introduction to a close.

Overall, the project was to develop what I called a successor metaphysics, one that would honor the following pretheoretic requirements:

1. Do justice to what is right about:

a. Constructivism: a form of humility, or so at least I characterized it, requiring that we acknowledge our presence in, and influence on, the world around us; and

b. Realism: the view that adds to constructivism's claim that "we are here" an equally profound recognition that we are not all that is here, and that as a result not all of our stories are equally good.

2. Make sense of pluralism: the fact that knowledge is partial, perspectival, and never wholly extricable from its (infinite) embedding historical, cultural, social, material, economic and every other kind of context. The account of pluralism must:

a. Avoid devolving into nihilism or other forms of vacuous relativism, and in particular not be purchased at the price of (successors notions of) excellence, standards, virtue, truth, or significance; and

b. Not license radical incommensurability, provide an excuse to build walls, or in any other way stand in the way of interchange, communion, and struggle for common ends.

Two additional criteria were applied to how these intuitions are met:

3. Be irreductionist -- ideologically, scientifically, and in every other way. No category, from sociality to electron, from political power to brain, from origin myth to rationality to mathematics, including the category "human," may be given a priori pride of place, and thereby be allowed to elude contingency, struggle, and price.

4. Be nevertheless foundational, in such a way as to satisfy our undiminished yearning for metaphysical grounding. That is, or so at least I put it, the account must show how and what it is to be grounded simpliciter - without being grounded in a, for any category a.

Along the way, the account should:

5. Reclaim tenable, lived, work-a-day successor versions of many mainstay notions of the modernist tradition: object, objective, true, formal, mathematical, logical, physical, etc." (pp. 345-346)

From: Brian Cantwell Smith, On the Origin of Objects, Cambridge: The MIT Press 1996.

Critical judgments and B. C. Smith' replies

"Smith's work may be aligned with the situated cognition tradition due to Barwise and Perry (Situations and attitudes, 1983). This approach emphasizes the importance of context in determining meaning. The situated semanticist is inclined to begin her theory of meaning with indexicals and other radically context sensitive representations. Tokens of 'I' have very little meaning independent of how, when, where, and by whom they are used. More generally, the situated approach to cognition places significant emphasis on the contribution of the situation of the organism to that organism's cognitive processes.

Smith argues that as soon as we register the world using a system of representation, we make a set of strong assumptions about the way the world is. His task has been to show the profound consequences of this insight for the study of systems of representation.

Smith makes use of an engaging imaginative strategy to draw attention to the theoretical moves required to explain the occurrence of representation using only the resources of a representation-free physical world. Smith urges us to consider whether we need to think in terms of objects at all. Might an ontology consisting only of Strawson's (Individuals, 1959) 'features' be sufficient? When we declare that 'It's raining' we are drawing attention to a feature (raining) without being committed to any particular object that has that feature. Smith suggests we begin by thinking of the physicist's world as populated not by objects but field-densities. This field-theoretic description can be comprehensive while admitting only of field-densities for a small range of properties (for example, gravitational fields, electromagnetic fields, etc.).

Smith suggests that the common-sense world of middle-sized objects is an achievement of our representational practices. Representation is achieved when one aspect of the mish-mash of fields is able to separate in a certain way from the rest of the mish-mash. This region, the 's-region', is (or is becoming) the subject-something that represents the world. Smith first emphasizes the distance required between the representation and the represented, and secondly the need for coordination between the two. This coordination is likened to the actions of an acrobat who dances around a stage, but keeps a torch beam focused on one spot. The torch must undergo dramatic changes in orientation to maintain its focus at one point. The intentional acrobat is similarly dynamic in keeping its intentional objects stably registered." (p. 220)

From: Hugh Clapin (ed.), Philosophy of Mental Representation, Oxford: Clarendon Press 2002.

"Why re-tool our ontology? If we don't, if we complacently (or opportunistically) cling to the standard inventory, we will commit what Smith calls inscription errors or pre-emptive registration: (1) a tendency for a theorist or observer, first, to write or project or impose or inscribe a set of ontological assumptions onto a computational system (onto the system itself, onto the task domain, onto the relation between the two, and so forth), and then, second, to read those assumptions or their consequences back off the system, as if that constituted an independent empirical discovery or theoretical result. (Smith, On the origin of objects 1996 p.50) Pre-emptive registration is a sort of metaphysical anachronism, back-projecting onto our vision of ultimate-or at any rate more fundamental reality a category or assumption that is in fact the effect or artefact of some later, higher-level, more 'expensive' development." (p. 224)

Notes

(1) The term 'inscription error' is from Smith (1996). Since writing the book, Smith has shifted to using the phrase 'pre-emptive registration,' on the grounds that it is more illuminating (based on 'pre-emptive representation', from Cussins, Constructions of thought, in preparation).

From: Daniel Dennett: "Brian Cantwell Smith on Evolution, Objectivity, and Intentionality", in: Hugh Clapin (ed.), Philosophy of Mental Representation, Oxford: Clarendon Press 2002.

"The first remark has to do with the project of naturalizing ontology. 'Why bother?' asks Dennett. The main reason, of course, is because I believe the subject matter demands it. What ends up as a methodological commitment is grounded in an empirical claim: that the theory of ontology and the theory of representation and intentionality are about intrinsically interconnected phenomena. To study one without studying the other would be like studying time without studying space. Time is not space, of course; no one thinks they are identical. But you would not get an adequate account of either space or time by studying it on its own. So too, I believe, for representation and ontology. How things are and how we take them to be, though by no means identical, are co-constituted in intricate ways.

I might say that I haven't always believed this.(*) During the 1980s I spent a long time trying to develop a theory of representation independent of ontology. I was particularly interested in taxonomies of representational types (symbols, icons, descriptions, models, simulations, etc.)-a theory, I might say, in which isomorphisms figured. Now I didn't have the smarts to invent targets to do the work that representations couldn't do. But my fundamental problem was that I couldn't hold the ontology fixed -- couldn't stabilize it adequately-in order to develop satisfying accounts of the plethora of correspondences that held between them. I was unable to determine (except by fiat, which didn't satisfy me) which items were objects or basic elements, which were properties of those elements, and which were relations among them. Small variations in how I registered the basic domains wreaked havoc with how I ended up classifying the representations defined over those domains. In the end I was forced to admit that the (ontological) question of whether something was an object could not be answered except with reference to the (epistemological) question of whether it was being objectified by a representing or cognizing subject. That is: my independence assumption did not work. So there is a lot of failure behind this claim that representation and ontology are parts of the same subject matter. That really is the bottom line.

So I started over, to reconstruct ontology and representation together. It is not just an exercise, at the end of which you end up with the same recognizable parts. The theory that comes out-the benefits it gives you -- are different."(*) That's not quite true. What's more accurate is that I haven't always approached the subject, in my intellectual work, from an integrated perspective. Even in graduate school, I believed that ultimately they would have to be understood together. In fact my doctoral dissertation (1982) started out as one chapter in an integrated but unwieldy metaphysical project that, at the time, I was hopelessly unprepared to complete. On the origins of objects is essentially what that project turned into." (p. 238)

From: Brian Cantwell Smith, "Reply to Dennett", in: Hugh Clapin (ed.), Philosophy of Mental Representation, Oxford: Clarendon Press 2002.

"The identification and re-identification of objects involves an epistemic process of abstraction over the infinitely rich (and often surpassingly messy) ur-structure of the world. Among other things, the normative character of the intentional projects that agents are engaged in, when they commit these acts of abstraction, figures in the resulting 'clumping' of the world's effectively infinite detail. To be an object is to be a region or patch of the world that is successfully abstracted -- where the issue of 'success' is tied into the normative conditions governing the dynamic project of which the act of abstraction is a constitutive part. The fundamental character of (what it is to be) an object is thus intrinsically hooked into the intentional life practices of the objectifying subject.

One more point on this topic. As a way to muster support for simply availing ourselves of 'common-sense ontology', Dennett says 'Look, why not just assume sub-atomic particles and tables and mountains and galaxies, in the way that science does?' This leads me to mention a radical thesis that I hold, although I can't give it much defence here: namely, that science may not be committed to objects at all. Consider: an amoeba splits. Biology doesn't care about the individuals in the situation: whether one amoeba died and two new ones were born; or whether we now have a spatial distribution of unitary amoeba-ness; or whether one of the two emerging amoebae is the original one, and the other one is new; or any other possibility. Another example: in California I own an ancient redwood tree that has clumps of very substantial shoots (some as much as 50 feet high) sprouting around its base. How many redwood trees are there? Science doesn't know, and science doesn't care. Similar conclusions hold for fog, for the units of selection, for a myriad other examples. What this leads me to believe is that scientific laws (like animals) may in fact deal only in features; and that the objects we think of as constitutive of science may merely be simplifying epistemic devices that allow humans to calculate. Objects in science, that is, are in my view properly understood as part of the epistemic apparatus involved in the conduct of science as an intellectual activity (on a par with mathematical models); they are not ontological commitments of the theory as a whole.

Put it this way: ontology and abstraction need naturalizing as much as meaning, semantics, and content. Assuming a 'standard ontological inventory' for purposes of giving a naturalistic account of intentionality, as Dennett suggests, is thus a doomed project: it is viciously circular. Think about how appalled we would be (or anyway naturalistically unsatisfied) if someone were to propose a theory of representation that dined out on intentional notions, as if they were freely available. The naturalistic challenge is to explain intentionality without viciously presuming intentionality. A similar moral holds for ontology, in my view. Because ontological categories are in part intentionally constituted, attempting to explain representation while dining out on ontology is, for analogous reasons, fatally circular." (pp. 241-242, notes omitted)

From: Brian Cantwell Smith, "Reply to Dennett", in: Hugh Clapin (ed.), Philosophy of Mental Representation, Oxford: Clarendon Press 2002.

Main publications

1. Smith, Brian Cantwell. 1982. "Linguistic and Computational Semantics." In Proceedings of the 20th Conference on Association for Computational Linguistics, edited by Bates, Madeleine, 9-15. Cambridge: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.

2. ———. 1986. "Varieties of Self-Reference." In Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge. Proceedings of the 1986 Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Reasoning About Knowledge, edited by Halpern, Joseph Y., 19-43. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc.

Abstract: "The significance of any system of explicit representation depends not only on the immediate properties of its representational structures, but also on two aspects of the attendant circumstances: implicit relations among, and processes defined over, those individual representations, and larger circumstances in the world in which the whole representational system is embedded. This relativity of representation to circumstance facilitates local inference, and enables representation to connect with action, but it also limits expressive power, blocks generalisation, and inhibits communication. Thus there seems to be an inherent tension between the effectiveness of located action and the detachment of general-purpose reasoning.

It is argued that various mechanisms of causally-connected self-reference enable a system to transcend the apparent tension, and partially escape the confines of circumstantial relativity. As well as examining self-reference in general, the paper shows how a variety of particular self-referential mechanisms --- autonymy, introspection, and reflection --- provide the means to overcome specific kinds of implicit relativity. These mechanisms are based on distinct notions of self: self as unity, self as complex system, self as independent agent. Their power derives from their ability to render explicit what would otherwise be implicit, and implicit what would otherwise be explicit, all the while maintaining causal connection between the two. Without this causal connection, a system would either be inexorably parochial, or else remain entirely disconnected from its subject matter. When appropriately connected, however, a self-referential system can move plastically back and forth between local effectiveness and detached generality."

3. ———. 1987. The Correspondence Continuum. Menlo Park: Center for the Study of Language and Information.

4. ———. 1995. "The Limits of Correctness in Computers." In Computers, Ethics and Social Values, edited by Johnson, Deborah G. and Nissembaum, Helen, 456-473. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

5. ———. 2001. "The Language of Matter." In Faith in Science: Scientists Search for Truth, edited by Richardson, Mark W. and Slack, Gordy, 51-69. London: Routledge.

6. ———. 2002. "God, Approximately." In Science and the Spiritual Quest: New Essays by Leading Scientists, edited by Richardson, Mark W., 207-232. London: Routledge.

7. ———. 2002. "Cummins - or Something Isomorphic to Him." In Philosophy of Mental Representation, edited by Clapin, Hugh, 170-190. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

8. Cummins, Robert. 2002. "Comments on Smith on Cummins." In Philosophy of Mental Representation, edited by Clapin, Hugh, 191-218. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

9. Dennett, Daniel. 2002. "Brian Cantwell Smith on Evolution, Objectivity, and Intentionality." In Philosophy of Mental Representation, edited by Clapin, Hugh, 222-236. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

10. Smith, Brian Cantwell. 2002. "Reply to Dennett." In Philosophy of Mental Representation, edited by Clapin, Hugh, 237-292. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Index of the section "History of Truth in Western Philosophy"

History of Truth in Ancient Greece

Aletheia in the Ancient Greek Thought. General Introduction

Pre-Philosophical Concepts of Truth

Selected Bibliography on the Concept of Truth in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy

Selected Bibliography on Ancient Greek Authors from Homer to the Hellenistic Period

Aletheia dans la Pensée Grecque d'Homère à l'Âge Hellenistique

Pages under construction:

Parmenides

Sophists

Plato's Doctrine of Truth

Aristotle's Definition of Truth

Epicureanism

Stoicism

Skepticism

Neoplatonism

History of Truth in the Middle Ages

Veritas in the Middle Ages from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Selected Bibliography on the Theories of Truth in Medieval Philosophy

Selected Bibliography on Medieval Authors from Hilary of Poitiers to Paul of Venice

History of Truth from Descartes to Heidegger

Descartes's Definition of Truth (under construction)

Leibniz's Definition of Truth (under construction)

Martin Heidegger on Aletheia (Truth) as Unconcealment

Selected Bibliography on Heidegger's Interpretation of Aletheia as Unconcealment

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

History of Truth: Aletheia and Related Terms in Ancient Greek

Introduction

"Aristotle defines truth for classical philosophy: 'to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.' (Metaphysics 1011b) This seems simple, but it is important to see that it is not. The formula synthesizes three distinct and in no way obvious or unobjectionable assumptions, assumptions which prove decisive for the career of truth in philosophy.

First, the priority of nature over language, culture, or the effects of historical experience. One can say of what is that it is just in case there exists a what which is there, present, with an identity, form, or nature of its own.

Second, the idea that truth is a kind of sameness, falsity a difference, between what is said and what there is. In another formula Aristotle says, 'he who thinks the separated to be separated and the combined to be combined has the truth, while he whose thought is in a state contrary to the objects is in error' (1051b). To be true, what you think separated must be what is separated-that is, they must be the same (the same form or eidos). To accommodate the priority of nature, however, truth has to be a secondary sort of sameness: according to the classical metaphor, the imitation of original by copy. It is up to us to copy Nature's originals, whose identity and existence are determined by causes prior to and independent of local convention. Thus a third feature of classical truth: the secondary and derivative character of the signs by which truth is symbolized and communicated. Classical truth subordinates the being (the existence and identity) of signs (linguistic or otherwise) to the natural, physical, finally given presence of the non-signs they stand for." (pp. 9-10)

Heidegger remarks that 'in ontological problematic, being and truth have from time immemorial been brought together if not entirely identified (Sein und Zeit, 228). He thinks this is a kind of hint. There is, however, reason to think it is an originally meaningless accident of historical grammar. To be is spoken in many ways, but for Aristotle 'it is obvious that of these the what-something-is, which signifies the substance, is the first' (1028a). In a study of the Greek verb 'be' (einai), Charles Kahn shows the priority of its use as a predicating copula and the corresponding insignificance of the difference between existing and not existing. 'Both of them,' he writes of Plato and Aristotle, 'systematically subordinate the notion of existence to predication, and both tend to express the former by means of the latter. In their view to be is to be a definite kind of thing.' In contrast to what something is, the factor of existing, if it appears at all, appears secondary and of no distinct significance. For both, 'existence is always einai ti, being something or other, being something definite. There is no concept of existence as such.' This is not to say that Aristotle, for instance, is oblivious of the difference between what a thing is and its existence. Joseph Owens observes, 'Aristotle does not for an instant deny existence. He readily admits it in Being per accidens. But he does not seem even to suspect that it is an act worthy of any special consideration, or that it is capable of philosophical treatment.' (1) Kahn also describes a so-called veridical use of the Greek 'be' according to which it 'must be translated by 'is true,' 'is so,' 'is the case,' or by some equivalent phrase.' He remarks that 'instead of existence ... it was another use of to be that gave Parmenides and Plato their philosophical starting point: the veridical use of esti and on for 'the facts' that a true statement must convey. Thus the Greek concept of Being takes its rise from ... this notion of what is as whatever distinguishes truth from falsehood ... doctrines of Being first arose in Greece in connection with the question: what must reality be like for knowledge and informative discourse to be possible and for statements and beliefs of the form X is Y to be true?' To ask what reality must be like for sentences to be true implies that truth in sentences is their being like what is. Kahn writes, 'the pre-philosophic conception of truth in Greek ... involves some kind of correlation or fit between what is said or thought, on one side, and what is or what is the case or the way things are on the other side.' As veridical, the Greek esti 'poses a relation between a given descriptive content and the world to which it refers or which it purports to describe ... truth depends on some point of similarity or agreement between the two.' Truth, in Greek, is the virtue of a discourse that subordinates itself to what is, assuming second hand the same form as the beings whose being makes the discourse true. 'If we bear in mind the structure of the veridical use of the verb, we will easily see how the philosophers' interest in knowledge and truth, taken together with this use of 'to be,' immediately leads to the concept of Being as ... the facts that make true statements true.' (2)" (pp. 14-15)

Notes

(1) Charles H. Kahn "Retrospect on the Verb 'To Be' and the Concept of Being," in Simo Knuuttila & Jaakko Hintikka (eds.), The Logic of Being: Historical Studies, Dordrecht: Reidel, (1986), pp. 21-22; and "Why Existence Does Not Emerge as a Distinct Concept in Greek Philosophy," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 58 (1976), 333. Joseph Owens, Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian "Metaphysics," 3d ed. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1978), p. 309.

(2) Charles H. Kahn, "Retrospect," pp. 8, 22; "Why Existence," p. 329; and The Verb "Be" in Ancient Greek, Dordrecht: Reidel, (1973), pp. 313, 363.

The idea of a veridical "be" has been questioned by Mohan Matthen, "Greek Ontology and the 'Is' of Truth," Phronesis 28 (1983) pp. 113-135.

From: Allen Barry, Truth in Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1993 (notes abbreviated).

"Our question is: how is truth related positively to historicity? Our guiding suggestion is that such an investigation itself needs to be conducted in a historical manner, by working through the generation of our present ways of thinking about truth. To propose this way of investigating the topic of truth and historicity is, however, to be brought face-to-face with a recurring problem. For straight away the topic of our investigation seems to pose a dilemma for us at the level of method.

On the one hand, if we are to take our own historicity seriously, it would seem that the investigation will have to be undertaken in a historical manner; in short, to be an inquiry into the history of the idea of truth and of the idea of historicity. Yet, on the other hand, the topic of the relation of truth to historicity seems, in itself, to be a philosophical issue which a historical survey could, at best, only illustrate. Thus philosophy and history, as two different kinds of inquiry, seem to exhibit just that same polar opposition as do the ideas of truth and historicity. Accordingly, it is not surprising that the enterprise of carrying out an inquiry which is at once historical and philosophical should seem impractical. This methodological stumbling-block warrants careful pondering. (p. 7)

The historian of philosophy is operating with a consciousness different from that of the historical philosopher. The directedness of the former's thinking remains focused upon the thinkers of the past; their thoughts are what the inquiry is about. Thus, there is an inevitable epistemological 'distance' between the historian as subject and the past as object. But whoever philosophizes historically is engaged essentially in a complex act of self-consciousness. One enters into the past only to return to oneself; indeed, one recognizes elements of one's own way of thinking there in the past, and recognizes them as one's own. The historian of philosophy may be struck by flashes of self-recognition too, just as contrariwise the inquiry might lead to the revision of beliefs held now. But from the point of view of the teleology of the discipline, those results are accidental side-effects. For the historical philosopher, such outcomes are essential to the kind of self-conscious reflection engaged upon. Again, unrealized possibilities for thought forgone by past thinkers may be identified by historians of philosophy, especially by those whose procedure is hermeneutically sensitive. But for those who philosophize historically such identifications are only the first step towards the development of one's own position, in full self-consciousness, as both growing out of the inherited past and yet going beyond it." (p. 10)

From: Richard Campbell, Truth and Historicity, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.

Alethéia in Ancient Greek

"The study of early Greek notions of truth is still dominated, fifty years later, by Heidegger's influential restatement (1) of the view (2) that to a-lêthes is, originally and essentially, to mê lanthanon -- i.e., the "unhidden" or "unforgotten". If Heidegger and his followers are correct, alêtheia must be a quality inherent in objects perceived or information received: a certain self-evidence, abiding clarity or memorableness (3). Against this view (though also, by implication, against those who reject altogether the correctness or relevance of the derivation from the root lath- (4) Bruno Snell has recently suggested (5) that the lêthê excluded by a-lêtheia is something found in persons rather than things: forgetfulness rather than hiddenness or being forgotten. A-lethes is that which is retained in the memory without any of the gaps to which such lêthê would give rise. (p. 7)

In this "subjective" reformulation of the established, "objective" interpretation, aletheia becomes the result of the way an original apprehension remains in the perceiving subject's memory, not an aspect of objects or information as originally apprehended. But perception or apprehension continues to be of major, if no longer central, importance. The discussion which follows accepts Snell's subjective interpretation in the main but argues for further reformulation, this time in terms of the processes of communication rather than perception: alêtheia is that which is involved in, or results from, a 'transmission of information that excludes lêthê ', whether in the form of forgetfulness, failure to notice, or ignoring (6). The semantic development thus posited, by which a word that originally meant something like "conscientious reporting" became a synonym for truth (etymon or eteon in the earliest attested Greek) has a close parallel in the transformation of Latin accuratus ("careful", usually of speech or writing) into English "accurate". The Greek counterpart to this development is more complex and harder to trace: alêtheia absorbs some of the original meaning of two other more specialized terms (nêmertês, atrekês) and transmits some of its own to a third (akribês) before finally becoming, in the mid-fifth century, the most general and important word for truth. Moreover, the initial and terminal stages of its history are much better documented than the intervening ones. But the development in all its phases is worth an attempt at reconstruction, even if the consequences for the history of Greek thought are less spectacular here than where the Heideggerian etymology serves as a point of departure.

Snell's subjective reformulation, whether as originally presented by him or in the revised version to be offered here, removes the most 'crucial ' problem posed by its objective alternative. Hiddenness (or failure to be remembered) and its opposite are conditions which should attach to things as well as to the content of statements. Yet it is almost, exclusively to the latter that alêthes refers in its first two and a half centuries of attestation. A Greek may, from the very beginning, speak the truth (or "true things"), but it is not until much later that he is able to hear it (Aesch. Ag. 680), or see it (Pind. N. 7,25), or be truly good (Simonides 542,1 Page), or believe in true gods (Herodotus 2, 174, 2). And it is later still that alêtheia comes to refer to the external reality of which discourse and art are imitations. Other lanthanein derivatives -- lathra, lathraios (and alastos, if it belongs to this group)--are applied freely, at all periods of their use, to persons, things and situations; why not alêthes as well (7). The question becomes fairly easy to answer if alêtheia is taken to be, in origin, a kind of "unforgettingness", a specifically human quality and one which is most crucially and consistently important in the realm of human discourse. (p. 28)

Notes

(1) In Sein und Zeit 33 and 220-223. Cf., also, Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, 26-33 and ' Aletheia (Heraklit, Fragment 16) ', 54-61.

(2) First stated by J. Classen, Beobachtungen über den homerischen Sprachgebrauch, Frankfurt 1867, 197 [reprint Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1977] (*)

(3) See, most briefly, the articles in the etymological dictionaries of Frisk (s.v. 'alethês' ) and Chantraine (s.v. 'lanthanô '), and, most exhaustively, J.-P. Levet, Le vrai at le faux dans la pensêe grecque archaique, Paris 1976.

(4) E.g., A. W. H. Adkins, 'Truth, Kosmos and Arete in Homer', Classical Quarterly 66, 1972, 6-7. Cf., also, Friedländer's suggestion (P1ato (2nd edition) vol. 1, eng. transl. New York 1958, 221 -- modified and largely abandoned in Plato (3rd edition) vol. 1, Berlin 1964, 234-236) that the word may not even be Indo-European.

(5) In ALETHEIA, Festschrift für Ernst Siegmann (= Wurzbiirger Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaft 1, 1975), 1-18. See, especially, 14 "ἀλήθες ist das rm Gedächtnis lückenlos Festgehaltene (das in seiner Fülle hergezählt werden kann)", and 11, "... in einen bestimmten Wissens-Kontinuum nichts der Lethe anheimfallen lassen". Snell seems indebted to T. Krischer's study, ' ΕΤΥΜΟΣ und ΑΛΗΘΗΣ', Philologus 109, 1965, 161-174 for his notion of aletheia as the larger whole from all of whose parts the process or idea associated with the lath- root is excluded. For Krischer this idea is that of being "unnoticed" rather than "unhidden" or "forgetful", so that an alethes logos is "... der Bericht der die Dinge darstellt... ohne das dabei etwas unbemerkt bleibt" (op. cit. 167; cf. 165: "... so aussagen das nichts [dem Angeredeten] entgeht) ".

(6) As in the corresponding verbs lanthano and lethomai, the distinction between unintentional forgetting or failure to notice and intentional ignoring is not strictly observed. The meaning posited is broad enough to include both.

(7) Usage thus tells strongly against the relevance of W. Luther's contention (Wahrheit, Licht und Erkenntniss in der griechischen Philosophie bis Demokrit', Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 10, 1966) that the Homeric world is one which knows "keinen Unterschied zwischen Wahrheit und Wirklichkeit" (31), and in which "die Dinge und die sie bezeichnenden Wörter noch in einem untrennbaren Wirkungszusammenhang stehen" (37). This may be true in general, and for etymos (text, p. 13), but not for alêthes . Cf. Snell (above, n. 5) 11, n. 4, and 17.

(*) [Note added by Raul Corazzon: The text by Johannes Classen is: "Wahr ist den Griechen das Unverhüllte, ἀ-λήθες (von λήθω, λανθανω) und die Wahrheit, ἀλήθεια, kommt den Dingen und Worten zu, in so fern sie sich unsrer Einsicht nicht entziehen." in: Über eine hervorstechende Eigentümlichkeit der griechischen Sprache (1850), reprinted in Beobachtungen... cit.]

From: Thomas Cole, Archaic Truth, Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, Nuova Serie, 13, 1983.

Remarks on the etymology of Alethéia

"Aletheia is the most important Greek counterpart of our 'truth'; alethes (true), alethos (truly) and alethein (to speak the truth) are related words. However, the Greek "truth-family" is much more comprehensive and consists of 14 words, among others (adjectives): atrekes, nemertes, adolos, ortos, apseudos, etymos and etetymos. It is characteristic that several words, including aletheia also, belonging to this variety begin with ' a'. The most common interpretation of this lexical phenomenon it to consider ' a' as a sign of privativum, that is, as a negative noun or adjective. This understanding of aletheia was proposed by Sextus Empiricus, Plutarch, Ohimpiodoros and the so-called Lexicon Gudianum in antiquity (see [Wilhelm Luther, "Wahrheit" und "Lüge" im ältesten Griechentum (1935), pp. 12-13; Paul Friedländer, Platon: Seinswaheheit und Lebenswrklichkeit, (1954) pp. 222, 375]). In our times, it was recalled by Leo Myers in his influential Handbuch der griechischen Etymologie (1901) and popularized by Rudolf Bultmann (see [Der griechische und hellenistische Sprachgebrauch von ἀλήθεια, p. 239]): "aletheia - etymologisch das Nicht(s) - verheimlichen - bedeutet". According to this interpretation, we should consider such words as complexes of the following structure: a-letheia, a-trekes, a-dolos or a-pseudos; nemertes can be understood in a similar way, because ' ne' functions as ' a', that is, as an indicator of a privative character. As far as the matter concerns aletheia, its etymology is derived as a + lethe + suffix. Aletheia as a noun occurred with so-called verba dicendi, [verbs of saying] that is, verbs like Greek counterparts of "to tell" or "to hear". So much about matters of lexicology and a simple grammar. Of course, semantic matters are much more important. Very schematically, if V (aletheia), where the letter V stands for a verbum dicendi, represents an aletheia-context, to V an aletheia consisted in issuing a concrete sentence in the present tense about something, usually supported by direct experience, particularly seeing (see [H. Boeder, Der frügeschichte Wörtgebrauch von Logos und Aletheia (1959) pp. 68-71]). Then, applications of aletheia-contexts were extended to past and future events. Finally, aletheia became an abstract noun, denoting a property of sentences (judgements, etc.)." (p. 341)

From: Jan Wolenski, Aletheia in Greek Thought Until Aristotle, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic, 127: 2005, pp. 339-360.

A synthetic overview of Alethéia in Ancient Greek

1. For many years there has been a tendency in biblical studies to over-generalize about the uses of alétheia and aléthes in classical Greek. This has been done partly with a view to drawing a clear-cut contrast between Greek and Hebraic concepts of truth. It is then argued that whilst some New Testament writers preserve the Hebraic concept, other writers, especially John, achieve a fusion of these two views. Thus R. Bultmann too readily speaks of "the Greek use" of alétheia as over against "the semitic use" (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament I 238). According to this theory, alétheia in classical Greek denotes truth in contrast to mere appearance, whilst in Hebrew the parallel word denotes stability or faithfulness. It is also urged that truth in Greek writers is timeless, raised above the temporal and material world. It relates only to extra-historical being. Most scholars also insist that the basic meaning of alétheia in classical Greek is that of unhiddenness or unveiling. These traditional claims of nineteenth- and twentieth-century biblical scholarship are valid up to a point, but can be misleading unless they are carefully qualified.

2. The traditional approach depends largely on three arguments. (a) Much is made of the etymology of alétheia in ancient Greek. The word is said to derive from letho or lanthano, meaning to escape notice or to cause to forget, together with Alpha privative prefix, which negates the idea. The difficulty, however, is to show that the etymology of the word played a decisive part in determining its meaning in later Greek of the classical and Hellenistic periods. Indeed, even Homer shows little evidence that the word has this special nuance.

(b) alétheia does indeed mean truth in contrast to mere appearance in much Greek philosophy. But the vast majority of classical Greek writers and readers were not philosophers. J. B. Skemp observes, "There is one particular vice in the theological picture (or rather, caricature) of the Greeks. They are always represented as philosophical thinkers.... Such a description of the Greeks ignores the fact that many other Greeks at all the relevant times thought differently, and that a multitude of them did not think in this systematic way at all" (The Greeks and the Gospel, 1964, 3-4).

(c) The notion of truth as against mere appearance and as that which belongs only to the realm of timelessness and immateriality finds strong support in Parmenides and especially in Plato. This need not be denied. Nevertheless, even within Greek philosophy itself there are other views of truth besides Plato's, for example, that of the Sophists, which Plato himself attacks, and also that of Aristotle. In these writers truth has a more positive relation to the material world.

3. (a) In Homer alétheia is most frequently used in contrast to the telling of a lie or to the withholding of information, e.g. "Tell me all the truth [pasan alétheian] whether my son is by the ship" (Ilyad 24, 407); "I will tell you all the truth" (Odyssey 11, 507). When Odysseus with cunning "spoke not the truth", he simply tells a lie (Od. 13, 254). Achilles set an umpire to tell the truth of a race, i.e. the state of affairs as it really was (Il. 23, 361). However, this is not the only meaning of alétheia or alethes in Homer. In Il. 12, 433 gyne chernetis alethes means a woman who is careful, honest, accurate, or even perhaps reliable. (b) alétheia usually stands in opposition to falsehood in Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophanes. For example, the cowherd in Herodotus "tells the truth" under threat of violence (l, 116). Thucydides speaks of "the actual truth" in contrast to mere empty boasts (2, 41, 2). An oracle provides true answers to enquiries (Herodotus., l, 55). (c) This usage also persists in later Hellenistic writers. Thus Epictetus contrasts telling the truth with deceiving flatteries (Discourse IV, l, 6, 7). Philo writes that Moses marvelled at the delusion (pseudos) which the multitude had bartered for the truth (alétheia) (De Vita Moses 2, 167). The evil spies sent out to view the land prefer deceit (apate) to truth (Vit. Mos. l, 235). Josephus uses alétheia in several different senses.

(i) Truth is that which corresponds to the facts of the matter. Thus Jonathan did not question the truth (veracity) of David's words (Antiquities of the Jews 6, 225).

(ii) Truth is also proved to be such by historical events. The words of a prophet are thus proved true (Antiquities 2, 209); whilst in the previous passage Jonathan does not wait to see David's words proved true (Antiquities 6, 225). (iii) Josephus also uses alethes in the sense of "genuine" or "real". Thus Ahab killed the real owner (ton alethe despoten) of the vineyard (Antiquities 8, 360).

4. The use of alethes in Greek philosophical texts is best seen in Parmenides, the Sophists, Plato, and Aristotle. Some of Plato's uses also appear in Philo.

(a) Parmenides asks what is the nature of real being, and draws a contrast between the way of truth and the way of seeming. Change belongs only to the material world, which is the realm of mere appearance. There can be no change in what really exists (Fragment 8, 29). "What is not" is unthinkable and unknowable, but change would be the supposed movement of what is to what is not, or of what is not to what is. Hence truth, in contrast to appearance, belongs to the extra-historical realm of the changeless. That such a view occurs in Greek philosophical literature is therefore clear. What is less certain is the extent to which ordinary Greek writers shared the view of Parmenides.

(b) The Sophists clearly held a different view. In particular Protagoras refused to view the material world as mere illusion. His famous dictum that "man is the measure of all things" was not intended merely, as Plato implied, as an extreme form of relativism. He cited the example of a wind which may seem warm to one person and cool to another. It is not necessary, he urged, to say that one view is true and the other false. Each may be true for the person concerned. In this way Protagoras comes near to the modern notion of existential truth.

(c) Plato rejects this view.

(i) He replied that if "true" and "false" are only relative to the individual thinker, then as soon as someone says that the philosophy of Protagoras is false for him, it is therefore false (Theaetetus 171 a). Falsehood, for Plato, is a matter of deception. It conceals reality (ta onta). False words, he believed, are merely a copy (mimem) of deception in the soul (Republic 2, 21, 382a-383b). Falsehood is the presentation of what is only appearance (phantasma). By contrast "the divine and the divinity are free from falsehood [apseudes ... to theion]". God is true in deed and word (alethes en to ergo kai en logo) and neither changes himself nor deceives others (382e). Plato thus returns to the view, earlier outlined in Parmenides, that truth stands in contrast to appearance and to change, although he goes further than Parmenides in locating it in the realm of eternal ideas.

(ii) At the same time Plato also uses alétheia and alethes in more ordinary and less metaphysical ways. Truth sometimes means simply "the facts of the matter" (Epistles 7, 330). alétheia stands in contrast to legend (Timaeus 22d). "Equal to equal ... because of truth" (Legibus 2, 668a).

(d) Aristotle takes us closest to the view of truth found in modern propositional logic. Firstly, Aristotle distinguishes between the genuine proposition, which is true-or-false, and sentences such as pleas or commands. "We call propositions only those (sentences) which have truth or falsity in them" (On Interpretation 4, 17a, 4). Secondly, he considers the logical conditions under which the truth of a proposition entails the denial of its contrary. If it is true to say "Socrates is well", it is therefore false to say "Socrates is ill" (Categories 10, 13b, 14-35). Thirdly, he argues that "the truth of a proposition consists in corresponding with facts" (hoi logoi aletheis hosper ta pragmata, On Interpretation 9, 19a, 33). The principle is said to include statements about future states of affairs (18a-b). Often, however, the actual word alétheia is used in its ordinary everyday sense without philosophical content. The philosopher seeks to discover "the truth" that is in the universe (De Mundo 4, 39la).

(e) Philo uses alétheia in ordinary ways, as we have seen. As a Jewish theologian he speaks of "true doctrine" (alethes dogma, Legum Allegoriae 3, 229). But as a speculative writer who has been influenced by Platonism he also contrasts truth with mere appearance: "Moses desired truth rather than appearance [tou dokein]" (De Vita Moses 1, 48). However, he also sees the truth of God manifested in historical events, as in a quick punishment for unbelief (Vit. Mos. 2, 284).” pp. 874-877

From: Anthony C. Thiselton, "Truth", in Colin Brown (ed.) The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Vol. III. Exeter: Paternoster Press 1978, pp. 874-902.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Pre-philosophical Concepts of Truth in Ancient Greece

The prephilosophical usage of Alethéia

Homer

Studies:

"As scholars have often pointed out, the word Aletheia only occurs in the Iliad and the Odyssey in connection with verbs of saying, and its opposite is a lie or deception. Someone always tells the truth to another. Of the seventeen occurrences, (a) this triadic pattern is explicit in all but six, and in those few cases the reference to a hearer is clearly implied. Truth has to do with the reliability of what is said by one person to another.

What is not so often pointed out are some quite distinctive features of the Homeric use of Aletheia. This is not the only word Homer uses to mean truth; he has a number of other words which mean 'true', 'genuine', 'accurate', and 'precise' (atrekes, eteos, etetumos, etumos). These words, as adjectives or adverbs, occur freely in the midst of stories and speeches. By contrast, Aletheia occurs almost always as a noun or neuter adjective (once the cognate adverb alethes is used). It is the word Homer uses when he wishes to signify 'the truth'.

Furthermore, it is very revealing that the sentence, 'Then verily, child, I will tell you the truth', occurs five times in the Odyssey with but minor variations. (b) It is a high-sounding formula used to introduce a speech. The repetition of lines and formulaic phrases-sometimes, indeed, a number of lines-is a feature of the Homeric style. That Aletheia should occur in such a context suggests that the sentence is one that has come down in the tradition as a ready-made formula which Homer inherited.

Again, significantly, the word often occurs in the phrase 'the whole truth' (pasan alétheien). (c) To tell the truth in this sense is not just to utter some sentence which is true-that is a much more modern conception. It is to give a whole account, to tell the entire narrative. So, for example, at Iliad 23.361, Achilles sets Phoenix as umpire to watch a chariot-race and to report back the truth. The same meaning underlies Odyssey 13.254, where Odysseus is about to address Athena, the daughter of Zeus, in a very fulsome account 'yet he spoke not the truth but checked the word ere it was uttered'. In many other occurrences one of the characters is entreated to tell the truth, or undertakes to do so, in relation to certain questions which have been asked. Here again, the notion is that the account given has to be complete and accurate, with nothing held back and with no deception. The Homeric notion of Aletheia which emerges from examining its uses is precisely the same, with the same force and flavour, as that enshrined in the traditional oath or solemn affirmation required of a witness in court proceedings: to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Given this use in Homer, it appears that Aletheia is a matter of being truthful and open in one person's dealings with another, so that what is said can be taken by hearers as reliable and trustworthy. That being so, the meaning discernible in its use coincides with the etymology of the word given by most scholars, both ancient and modern. The word is generally taken to be derived from a root meaning 'to escape notice, detection'. The same root, with much the same meaning, underlies the Latin lateo, 'am hidden', 'remain unnoticed', from which English derives 'latent'. The word lethe in Greek means 'forgetfulness'. How prominent the nuance of not forgetting is taken to be in Aletheia is debatable. But from the evidence it does appear that in Homer the nuance of not hiding is strong. People speak the truth if they hide or conceal nothing from their hearers. (d)" (pp. 32-33)

Notes

(a) That is, excluding the occurrence of aléthes at Iliad 12.433, which is probably a corruption of aletis -- see H. J. Mette, ' Aléthes', in Bruno Snell (ed.), Lexicon des frühgriechischen Epos (Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1955- ).

(b) Odyssey 3.354, 16.61, 16.226, 17.108, 22.420.

(c) e.g. in the Odyssey 3.354 and 16.6, (already cited) and in 11.507, 17.297, and Iliad 24.407.

(d) See Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides, 64 ff., and C. H. Kahn, The Verb 'Be' in Ancient Greek (Foundations of language Suppl. Series, 16; Reidel, Dordrecht, 1973), 364 ff.

From: Richard Campbell, Truth and Historicity, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1992.

"The result is that the epic texts entertain an endless dialogue and conversation on all the topics of archaic Greek thought. To begin with the notion of truth in relation to the language of poetry, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Hesiod eavesdrop on each other, the Odyssey teasing slightly the notion of kleos [glory] in the Iliad, the Odyssey providing the foil for Hesiod's attack on the poets, gasteres oion, "mere bellies." In the age of writers, a man as wise as Xenophanes is not content with attacking by name, author to author, the hexametric poetry of Homer and Hesiod: he goes on to quote, and he quotes by alluding to a line of the poet he is condemning. So Xenophanes fragment 36, which reads tauta dedoxastho men eoikota tois elumoisin, "let these things be considered to resemble truth," cannot be separated either from Hesiod Theogony 27 or from Odyssey 19.203. (10) The textual parallels between Parmenides and the Odyssey, as Alexander Mourelatos writes, "have been commonplace for almost a century," and several incorporations of Odyssean phrases by Parmenides' text have in recent years been shown to contain a specific set of allusive interactions. (11)

The perception that the poetic language maintains a difficult and problematic relation with truth belongs to all the texts in question, but the economy of this relation and the strategies that are devised to save the notion of truth from the contiguity of falsity are as different as are the texts.

The question of truth (aletheia) in relation to being (to on) and to language (logos) remains fundamental. Heidegger has elaborated these questions in the Greek context beginning with Iliad 1.70, ta t'eonta, ta t'essomena pro t'eonta, in a famous essay, (12) where he defines being of einai as presencing and connects the Iliadic ta eonta with Anaximander's ta eonta. (pp. 242-243)"

Notes

(10) The resemblance between Xenophanes frag. 36 and Hesiod Theogony 27 is evident to some critics: see André Rivier, "Rémarques sur les fragments 34 et 35 de Xénophane," Revue de Philologie 30 (1956): 37-61.

(11) See Eric A. Havelock, "Parmenides and Odysseus,"Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 63 (1958): 133-43; and Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides (New Haven: Yale University Press. 1970), pp. 17-34.

(12) Martin Heidegger, "The Anaximander Fragment," in Early Greek Thinking, trans. David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), pp. 36 ff.

From: Pietro Pucci, Odysseus Polutropos. Intertextual readings in the Odyssey and the Iliad, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1987.

"Truth beginning with the presocratic Parmenides assumed some kind of at least prοtο-eidetic, nοn-immediate and reflected status in the Greek culture. This was not the case in Homer's texts, where how a statement "rang true" depended to a much greater extent οn its traditional linguistic power than on the idiosyncratic, individual behavior of a specific character or some universalized sense of character that Aristotle was yet to create in the Nicomachean Ethics. Homeric truth lay in a factual mythos ("myth'), not a fictive logos ("argument"). The archaic mythos was defined in its factual, even artifactual, relationship to an immediately recognizable "deed" (ergοn), not to an ergon that Aristotle might wish to judge, through a problematically narrated logos, "certainly" (akribes), "decοrously" (to prepon), and ultimately universally or "absolutely" (haplos). Consequently, as Vico perceived in his De Antiquissima, for Homer fact implied truth (verum-factum). Vico was to attribute to the ancient Latins the different Aristotelian notion that only certainty implies truth (verum-certum). So arises yet another difference linked to a common source, in this instance '"truth. Again, it suggests a shift or skew that is central to our rhetoric and its powers of interpretation, that is, its hermeneutics". (p. 64)

"Der Weg (*) is an important collection of those essays that most clearly reveal Snell's insights into the idiosyncratic properties of Homeric experience. Chapter 5 ("The Development of the Notion of Truth among the Greeks") was written specifically against Heidegger false notion of archaic "Truth" and, as such, succeeds in dismissing any putative "onto-theological" essence of "Truth" from the Homeric treasure house of nonrepresentational mental activity. The chapter is a shortened version of an earlier essay entitled "ALETHEIA" (Festschrift Ernst Siegmann [Würzburg: Schoning 1975], 9-17) which should be read by whose interested in more Homeric examples to bolster the argument. In both pieces, as is the case in Snell's most popular work, Die Entdeckung des Geistes, 4th ed. (Göttingen, Vandenhοeck & Ruprecht, 1975), there lies an Aristotelian differentiatiοn that too easily skews the cultural continuity of Homeric experience, with which we all must deal. If indeed, as Snell argues generally, mental activity moves from the concrete sense of Homeric experience to an abstract reflection of the philosophical sort, two reservations must always apply to any statement about how the Greeks or we 'think": (1) the opposition concrete/abstract is purely an Aristotelian formulation designed by him, along with his notion of particulars and universals to arrive at a "proper judgment", and (2) the philosophical penchant for an abstract lexis does not in any way minimize the continual operation of Homeric perception to the present day.

Snell defines "the three significant aspects, under which Homer sees what one later named the truth." Here, too, it is necessary to identify the Aristotelian, philosophical lexis that tends to creep into Snell's modern German prose:

alethes is that consistent, solid surety in memory (that in its fullness can be enumerated), ["Memοry" in any functional sense is not found in the Homeric texts; mnemosyne appears as hapaxlegomenon at Iliad 8.181, with an imperative: mneomosyne tis epeita pyros deioio genestho ("then let some memory of blazing fire come about") "Fullness" and "enumeration" are, however, characteristically Homeric perceptions of experience, especially when linked to "cataloguing".]

eteon is the factual [Tatsächliche], an objective Being, [ein objektiv Seiendes] (that as such draws necessarily specific consequences, in sharp antithesis [Gegensatz] to Not-Being [Nichtseienden].

["Objective Being" suggests too strongly the De Anima, and Snell's argument is not convincing that at Iliad 2.299-300, when Odysseus asks the host to wait ophra daomen / e eteon Kalchas manteuetai, ee kai ouki ("that we may learn whether what Calchas foretells is true, or whether indeed it is not"), there arises the question of Being and Not-Being (Snell, Der Weg, 95-96). "Antithesis" or "opposition," moreover, too easily falls into some Aristotelian readings of a pre-Socratic, not entirely Homeric structure οf thought. It is the relationship between eteon and the factual that is the insight here.]

nemertes is the Not-Falling [Nicht-Verfehlende] in especially the replying word (the "Ant-Wort"), that something factual [ein Tatsächliches] (eteon), at last come about [trifft], when one make inquiries about him. (Snell, Der Weg, 100)

It is Snell's understanding of nemertes as "truth" that forms a common definition of all lexical choices in Homer that attempt to express the force of the human experience. Snell's attempt to color alethés with a "subjective" tone over an "objective" one (Der Weg, 109) is probably explained by a zeal to crush Heidegger's "objective" fiction. Unfortunately, the philosophical debate tends to blur the central issue of language and human discourse that the root sense of all "truth" in Homer suggests (Cole "Archaic Truth", 27). (For distinctions among nemertes, atrekes, and alethes that Snell is unwilling to draw [Der Weg, 98], see Cole "Archaic Truth", 17)." (pp. 79-80)

References

Thomas Cole (1983). "Archaic Truth", Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, Nuova Serie, 13, pp. 7-28.

Bruno Snell (1978). Der Weg zum Denker und zur Wahrheit. Studien zur frühgriechischen Sprache, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

From: Raymond A. Prier, Achilles Rheter? Homer and proto-rhetorical truth in: Brenda Deen Schildgen (ed.), The Rhetoric Canon, Detroit: Wayne State University Press 1997.

"As we look beyond Homeric diction, however, at later stages in the history of Greek poetics, we can find evidence for the emergence of yet another word that marks speech as special -- so special that it is set apart even from múthos, which in such contexts then becomes in its own turn "ordinary." I mean "ordinary" only to the extent that the given opposing word becomes even more special. The word in question is alethés 'true' or alétheia 'truth'. In the diction of a fifth-century poet like Pindar, for example, this word is used in explicit opposition to the word múthos in contexts where true speech is being contrasted to other forms of speech that are discredited, that cannot be trusted (αλαθἢ λόγον) versus μύθοι at Olympian 1.29-30, μύθοις versus αλαθειαν at Nemean 7.23-25)." (42)

There is, to be sure, nothing post-Homeric about the actual word alethés 'true' or alétheia 'truth', or even about the concept inherent in the formation of the word, which expresses an explicit denial, by way of the negative element a-, of forgetting, leth-, and thereby an implicit affirmation of remembering, mné-. (43) As Martin has shown convincingly, the Homeric word múthos is associated with narrating from memory, (44) which he describes as the rhetorical act of recollection. (45) This speech-act of recollection, which qualifies explicitly as a múthos (as at Iliad 1.273), is the act of mné- 'remembering'. An ideal example is the wording of Phoenix in Iliad 9.527 as he introduces the story of the hero Meleagros to Achilles and the rest of the audience: μέμνημαι 'I remember [mné-]'.(46) The failure of any such speech-act is marked by the act of léth- 'forgetting' (as with λήθἐαι at Iliad 9.259).(47)

The very concept of aléthés 'true' or alétheia 'truth' expresses the need to avoid such failure in the speech-act, the múthos, of recollection or narrating from memory, and Homeric diction can actually combine aléthés 'true' with a derivative of múthos, the verb muthéomai 'make a múthos', as in the expression alethéa muthésasthai 'speak true things' at Iliad 6.382 (the whole speech in question is introduced as a múthos at 6.381). The Homeric meaning of muthéomai 'make a múthos' has all the force of múthos itself, as we see from this description by Martin: "When this word for speech occurs, the accompanying discourse has a formal nature, often religious or legal; full detail is laid out for the audience, or is expected by the interlocutor in the poem; at times, a character comments on the formal qualities of the discourse labelled with this verb." (48)

Granted, then, that there is nothing post-Homeric about the actual word aléthés 'true' or alétheia 'truth'; also, that this word does not enter into opposition with múthos in Homeric diction. In post-Homeric traditions, however, as we have seen, for example, in the diction of Pindar, múthos has indeed become an opposite of aléthés 'true' or alétheia 'truth', which is now marked as being distinct from múthos. In the Pindaric examples that we have already considered, the word múthos has defaulted into a vague plural (μύθοι at Olympian 1.30, μύθοις at Nemean 7.23), representing a murky multiplicity of discredited versions against which backdrop the singular truth of alétheia is being highlighted in shining contrast.(49) In brief, as I have argued at length in my earlier work on such post-contexts, the meaning of múthos as a speech-act has thus become marginalized.(50)

There are traces of this marginalization at even earlier stages. Let us consider the expression aléthea gerúsasthai 'announce true things' in Hesiod Theogony 28, which is a formulaic variant of aléthea muthésasthai 'speak true things', as attested at Iliad 6.382. (51) It appears from such variations that gerúomai 'announce' has become the marked member in opposition to muthéomai 'speak', which then becomes unmarked.(52) Similarly with aléthea muthé sasthai 'speak true things', as attested at Homeric Hymn to Demeter 121, as also at Iliad 6.382: this formula is in turn a variant of etétuma muthésasthai 'speak genuine things', as attested at Homeric Hymn to Demeter 44. Just as gerúomai 'announce' has become the marked member in opposition to muthéomai 'speak', so also aléthea 'true things' has become the marked member in opposition to etétuma or étuma 'genuine things'.(53) The latter opposition is made explicit in the quoted words of the Muses themselves in Hesiod Theogony 27-28, where the unique truth-value of the Theogony itself is heralded by the goddesses as alethéa 'true things' (28) in opposition to a multiplicity of versions that look like étuma 'genuine things' but are in reality pseúdea 'fallacies' ('many fallacies that look like genuine things' 27).(54)

In my earlier work, I have argued at length that such variations result from a chain of differentiations setting off a single marked pan-Hellenic version from a multiplicity of unmarked versions that are perceived as local or at least more local.(55) For now I need only emphasize that this newer concept is marked as distinct from earlier concepts that thereby default into an unmarked category. As the word aléthes ‘true’ or alétheia ‘truth’ becomes marked in opposition to mûthos, which in turn becomes unmarked in the context of such opposition, the meaning of mûthos becomes marginalized to mean something like ‘myth’ in the popular sense of the word as it is used today in referring to the opposite of ‘truth’. (pp. 122-124)

(...)

In short, the expression aléthea gerúsasthai ‘to herald true things’ in Theogony 28 designates not just the process of speaking something that is privileged: it explicitly marks a speech-act, an utterance with special authority. It seems to me not enough to establish that the adjective aléthescan be interpreted as ‘verifiable’, in the etymological sense that it negates the idea of “escape one’s consciousness,” as implicit in the root from which it is derived, léth- as in léthe‘oblivion’ and lantháno¯ ‘escape the consciousness of’.(57) Yes, aléthes conveys the idea of seeing something "for real," but there is more to it: the negation of leth- serves as the equivalent of the positive concept mne-, which as we have seen means not just 'remember' but something like 'narrate from memory'. We may recall the intuitive formulation of Jean-Pierre Vernant, who defines mne- as 'recover the essence of being'.(58) In ancient Greek mythical thought, such an essence is beyond sensible reality, beyond time.(59) Even more important, as Marcel Detienne has shown, ancient Greek tradition claims that this essence is controlled by the poet, master of "truth" or alétheia.(60)

A problem remains: alethéa in Theogony 28 is opposed not to lethe but to pseúdea 'fallacies' in the previous line. It has been argued that such an antithesis represents "a later, more rational way of thinking, where alétheia means 'truth'.(61) It is as if a new rationalistic opposition of alethéa 'true things' versus pseúdea 'fallacies' were superimposed on an older myth-centered opposition of alétheia in the sense of 'no lapse of consciousness' versus lethe 'lapse of consciousness', with the result that the two oppositions overlap and in fact coexist.(62) Further, it has been argued that there is overlap even between alétheia and lethe, as also between aléthea and pseúdea, to the extent that no act of remembering is free of some kind of forgetting, no telling of the truth is free of some deception.(63) I agree that there is a thought-pattern where mne- in the sense of 'remember' includes an aspect of leth- 'forget'.(64). I disagree, however, with the notion that the adjective alethés and the noun alétheia are similarly inclusive; rather, as I have argued at length elsewhere, alethés and alétheia explicitly exclude a lapse of the mind.(65) The non-ambiguity or even absolutism of the words alethés and alétheia is a key to their denotation of a speech- act endowed with a distinctly authoritative and authorizing force." (pp. 125-127)

Notes

(42) See extensive discussion of the relevant passages in Nagy Pindar's Homer: The Lyric possession of an Epic Past Baltimore 1990 (revised paperback edition 1994): 65-68, 134, 203 n. 17, 423-424.

(43) There is a detailed discussion at Nagy Pindar's Homer 58-61.

(44) Richard P. Martin The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad Ithaca, N.Y. 1989 44.

(45 Ibid., 80. Martin adds: "As a general rule, characters in the Iliad do not remember anything simply for the pleasure of memory. Recall has an exterior goal." (...)

(46) On the function of the myth of Meleagros as retold by Phoenix to Achilles and the rest of the audience, see Nagy Pindar's Homer:196-197, 205, 253, 310 n. 164 (...)

(47) See the extensive discussion in Martin The Language of Heroes: 77-88; of special interest is p. 78.

(48) Ibid., 40.

(49) Nagy Pindar's Homer: 65-66.

(50) Ibid., 66-68.

(51) In fact, alethéa muthésasthai 'speak true things' is attested as a textual variant of alethéa gerúsasthai 'announce true things' in Hesiod Theogony 28: see Nagy Pindar's Homer: 68 n. 84.

(52) Ibid.

(53) Ibid.

(54) Ibid.

(55) Ibid., 52-81. (...)

(56) Nagy Greek Mythology and Poetics Ithaca, N.Y., 1990 66.

(57) There is an admirable survey of the semantics of alethés, and of various interpretations, in Cole Archaic Truth (1983), who resists Heidegger's formulation of an "objective" truth-value inherent in the word (the truth not "hidden" in what is perceived). Cole's own interpretation is a reformulation of earlier solutions insisting on a "subjective" truth-value (the truth not "forgotten" by the one who perceives). He suggests (p. 12) that "the forgetting excluded by alétheia involves primarily the process of transmission -- not the mental apprehension on which the transmission is based." Thus alétheia refers "not simply to non-omission of pieces of information through forgetting or failure to take notice or ignoring, but also to not forgetting from one minute to the next what was said a few minutes before, and not letting anything, said or unsaid, slip by without being mindful of its consequences and implications" (ibid.).

(58) Vernant Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs Paris 1985:108-136 (from a chapter first published in 1965).

(59) Cf. Thalmann Conventions of Form and Thought in Early Greek Epic Poetry, Baltimore 1984:147, paraphrasing Vernant. I have adopted his translation of Vernant's "le fond de l' être" as "the essence of being," described as the reality that lies beyond the sensible world" (ibid.).

(60) Detienne Les maître de vérité dans la Grèce archaique, Paris 1973:9-27.

(61) Thalmann 1984:148 (also p. 230 n. 31), following Detienne 1973:75-79.

(62) Thalmann 1984: 148.

(63) Ibid., following Detienne 1973 and Pucci Odysseus Polyropos: Intertextual Readings in the Odyssey and Iliad Ithaca, N. Y. 1987.

(64) Nagy 1990:58, following Detienne 1973:22-27.

(65) Nagy 1990:59-61.

From: Gregory Nagy, Homeric Questions, Austin: University of Texas Press 1996.

Hesiod

Texts:

ἴδμεν ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγειν ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοι̂α,

ἴδμεν δ', εὐ̂τ' ἐθέλωμεν, ἀληθέα γηρύσασθαι.

"we [the Muses] know how to say many lies as if they where true,

and when we want, we know how to speak the truth"

Hesiod's Theogony, 27-28 - Translated, with introduction, commentary, and interpretive essay by Richard S. Caldwell - Cambridge, Focus Information Group, 1987, p. 29.

Studies:

"It was customary for a Greek singer to preface his recitation with a hymn to a god, of the kind represented by the extant 'Homeric hymns'. When the Iliad and Odyssey were written down, no introductory hymn was attached to them. This might indicate that they were not at that time intended for continuous recitation, though there might be other explanations. The Theogony and Works and Days, on the other hand, both had hymns attached from the first. The Works and Days is introduced by a short invocation of Zeus, the Theogony by a much fuller hymn to the Muses. Both types are paralleled in the Homeric collection.

(...)

The hymn to the Muses begins with a description of some of their characteristic activities (dancing and singing on Helicon by night) (1-21). This leads to an account of a particular occurrence in which they were involved -- their epiphany to Hesiod himself (22-34). Then we return to their habitual activities (singing to Zeus on Olympus) (35-52)."

From: Hesiod, Theogony, edited with Prolegomena and Commentary by Morris L. West, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1966, p. 150.

"The cryptic words that follow have provoked floods of controversy:

We know how to compose many lies indistinguishable from things that are real;

And we know, when we wish, to pronounce things that are true. (Theogony 27-28)

Commentators have traditionally interpreted these enigmatic lines as Hesiod's proclamation of the truth of his song as opposed to the songs of other poets who only pronounce pseudea polla. Accordingly, the Muses' declaration should be understood as a polemic directed at Homer or perhaps at heroic epic in general.(38) Svenbro views Hesiod's polemic in social terms as an attack on those poets who depend on their aristocratic patrons, as opposed to Hesiod himself, who prides himself on his autonomy.(39) According to Nagy, on the other hand, Hesiod's targets are the poets who perform theogonies of only local interest, whereas his own is Panhellenic in its scope.(40) Recently, Arrighetti has proposed another interpretation of the Muses' mysterious statement: the object of Hesiod's polemics is not Homer, but his character, Odysseus, or indeed anyone like him, who may possess the ability to persuade and even enchant his audience, but who has not received from the Muses the gift of truthful song. (41)

To offer an exhaustive doxography of the Muses' enigmatic statement would lead too far afield.(42) Nevertheless, the importance of these verses for any reading of the Theogony requires us to grapple with their implications." (p. 58)

(...)

Aletheia, then, consists of "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth".(50) The legal terminology readily springs to mind, since aletheia involves a complete and veracious account of what one has witnessed. If the archaic Greek conception of aletheia has a far narrower range than our "truth," then the Greek pseudos has a wider range of meaning -- to which the Muses' assertion of the multiplicity of lies (pseudea polla) draws attention -- in comparison to our notion of falsehοοd.(51) Pseudea embrace not only consciously misleading statements intended to deceive, but also unwitting errors, omissions, and inaccuracies, as well as additions, embroideries, and even figurative speech. While the Muses would seem to be immune from simple mistakes, they seem quite proud to lay claim to all other kinds of pseudea. (52)." (pp. 61-62)

Notes

(38) Cf Puelma (1989) 75.

(39) Svenbro (1976) 46-73. For a critique of Svenbro, see Judet de la Combe (1993) 26-28.

(40) Nagy (1990) 45 Neitzel (1980) believes lines 27 and 28 refer to other poets who composed competing but inferior accounts of the gods. Otto (1952) 51-52, while regarding the lines as Hesiod's claim for the veracity of his song, detects in the pseudea polla not polemic, but the "Bezauberung durch die lebensvollen Bilder der Phantasie" which are also part of the Muses domain.

(41) Arrighetti (1996) 53-60.

(42) For a summary of views, see Svenbro (1976) 46-49; Stroh (1976) 90-97; and Neitzel (1980).

(...)

(50) Cf. Cole (1983) 12: "What is involved is strict (or strict and scrupulous) rendering or reporting - something as exclusive of bluster, invention or irrelevance as it is of omission or understatement." Also Krischer (1965) 167 for the distinction between άληθής and έτνμος relevant to the Hesiodic passage: "der Anwendungsbereich von άληθής ist im wesentlichen auf den Augenzeugenbericht beschrankt, also den Fall, in dem der Sprecher aus genauer Kenntnis spricht und nut darauf zu achten braucht, doss ihm kein Lapsus unterlauft, wird hingegen eine Aussage als έτνμος bezeichnet, si ist es ganz gleichgültig, woher der Sprecher seine Information hat: er mag Vermutungen angestellt haben, geträumt haben, er mag Wahrheiten in eine Lüge streuen, was zutrifft, ist έτνμος. Cf. Pratt (1993) 96 defines aletheia as "an accurate account of what really happened provided to a reliable reporter by honest eyewitnesses."

(51) Cf. Luther (1935) 80-90 for the wider range of Greek pseudos, also Leνet (1976) 201-14.

(52) For a clearly positive valuation of the ability to make ψεύδεα ... έτύμοισιν όμοϊα, see Theognis 713, where after listing various kinds of human excellence -- the sophrosyne of Rhadamanthus and the cleverness of Sisyphus -- Theognis ascribes this skill to Nestor.

References

Arrighetti. A. (1996). “Hésiode et les Muses: Le Don de la vérité et la conquête de la parole,” in Le Métier du mythe: Lectures d’Hésiode, eds. F. Blaise, P. Judet de la Combe, and P. Rousseau. Lille, 1996: 53–70. Italian version in Athenaeum 80 (1992) 45–63.

Cole, T. (1983). “Archaic Truth,” Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 13: 7–28

Judet de la Combe, P. (1993). “L’Autobiographie comme mode d’universalisation. Hésiode et Hélicon,” in La Componente Autobiografica nella Poesia Greca e Latina fra Realtà e Artificio Letterario: Atti del Convegno Pisa 16–17 maggio 1991, eds. G. Arrighetti and F. Montanari. Pisa: 25–39.

Krischer, T. (1965). “ΕΤΥΜΟΣ und ΑΛΗΘΗΣ,” Philologus 109: 161–73.

Levet, J. P. (1976). Le Vrai et le faux dans la pensée grecque archaïque. Paris.

Luther, W. (1935). “Wahrheit” und “Lüge” im ältesten Griechentum. Borna–Leipzig.

Nagy, G. (1990). Greek Mythology and Poetics. Ithaca.

Neitzel, H. (1980). “Hesiod und die lügenden Musen,” Hermes 108: 387–401.

Otto, W. F. (1952). “Hesiodea,” in Varia Variorum: Festgabe für Karl Reinhardt. Cologne: 49–57.

Pratt, L. (1993). Lying and Poetry from Homer to Pindar: Falsehood and Deception in Archaic Greek Poetics. Ann Arbor.

Puelma, M. (1989). “Der Dichter und die Wahrheit in der griechischen Poetik,” Museum Helveticum 46: 65–100.

Stroh, W. (1976). “Hesiods lügende Musen,” in Studien zum antiken Epos, eds. H. Görgemanns and E. A. Schmidt. Meisenheim: 85–112.

Svenbro, J. (1976). La Parole et le marbre. Lund.

From: Jenny Strauss Clay, Hesiod's Cosmos, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003.

"The beginning of the Works and Days with its prayerful attitude clearly differs from the hymnic note struck at the opening of the Theogony. Hymns can be sung even on Olympus, but prayers originate on earth. The Muses further emphasize the distance separating gods and men in the Works and Days by concluding their celebration of their father with the phrase: "high-thundering Zeus, who inhabits the most exalted halls" (Zώς ύψιβρεμέτης, ός ύπέρτατα δώματα ναίει, 8). Now suddenly, and even more abruptly, Hesiod breaks off a second time, without even the usual hymnic salutation (χαίρε) to Zeus:

δίκῃ δ' ἴθυνε θέμιστας τύνη· ἐγὼ δέ κε, Πέρση, ἐτήτυμα μυθησαίμην.

Yours to make straight the decrees with justice,

But, as for me, I would declare to Perses the way things are. (Works and Days 9-10) (103)

Here again a significant difference between the Theogony and the Works and Days. In the former, Hesiod could indeed transmit the words of the Muses, but he could not guarantee the truth of those words, because of his inevitable mortal incapacity to distinguish aletheia from pseudos, that is, to ascertain the correspondence between the words of the Muses and reality. But in the Works and Days, where he speaks of human things whose knowledge is granted to men through their own experience, Hesiod can declare to Perses his intention to tell him etetuma, "things as they are." (104) Hesiod will immediately offer an illustration of the differences between the human and divine perspectives that inform the two compositions. In speaking about Eris, he revises the earlier teaching of the Muses by telling us that "on earth, it turns out that there are two Erides" -- not one, as claimed in the Theogony. What this means is that from the point of view of the gods, there is only one Eris, whereas for mankind, there are two.

"To summarize the complex scenario of the proem to the Works and Days: the Muses are to celebrate, i.e. praise their father Zeus and his power over mankind, more specifically, his power to punish. Zeus is to listen, observe and act. Zeus's actions, it becomes clear, affect specifically those who would pronounce crooked decrees, i.e. the kings; Hesiod, for his part, will tell etetuma to his brother.(105) This cooperative undertaking and its division of labor, outlined in the proem, will structure the poem that follows. If in the Theogony Hesiod takes up the Muses' instructions to celebrate, i.e. praise the gods, here he pointedly does not praise; he tells things as they are.""

"Both the formal elements and the contents of the opening lines of the two Hesiodic poems reveal their respective orientations. On the basis of our foregoing analysis of the two proems, we can now offer an admittedly schematic but perhaps still useful diagram that plots the coordinates of the two compositions and demonstrates their complementarities (see the table)." (pp. 77-78)

To conclude: from its beginning, the Works and Days characterizes itself in opposition to the Theogony: the latter, through the mediation of the Muses, offers an Olympian perspective on the cosmos; the Works and Days, by contrast, directly and without the need for a divine intermediary, presents the human viewpoint. The task these two poems set for us entails highlighting these two visions and, while respecting their differences, integrating their perspectives into a larger whole. The best way to accomplish this goal would appear to be to examine the presentation of human beings in the Theogony and, conversely, the role of the gods in the Works and Days. But we must admit right at the outset to a certain lack of symmetry between the two compositions. That the gods should play an important role in human affairs is not surprising; their crucial presence in the Works and Days is hence predictable. But given the announced subject-matter of the Theogony, to sing the immortal gods and the "race of those that are forever," the γένος αίέν έόνι ων, seems rather to exclude mention of the mortal race of men, which is, by definition, ephemeral. But if mankind is doomed to die and inevitably evanescent, the human condition, as established by Zeus through his eternal decrees, is nevertheless eternal. Consequently, we may nevertheless discover within the confines of the Theogony an exploration of those eternal laws that determine the human condition." (p. 80)

Notes

(103) Rousseau (1996) 106-10 notes the urgent tone here and understands the phrase as "straighten the decrees which are crooked."

(104) Cf. Rousseau (1996) 113-13. Nagy (1990) 68, n. 84 and (1996) 50-52 conceives of έrήτυμαμυθήσασθαι as an earlier expression, which becomes an unmarked member as opposed tο the newer, marked άληθέa γηρύσcσθαι. This diachronic interpretation would blur the important distinction Hesiod makes between the contents of the two poems.

(105) Cf. Mazon (1914) 36.

References

Mazon, P. (1914). Hésiode: Les Travaux et les Jours Paris.

Nagy, G. (1990). Greek Mythology and Poetics. Ithaca.

Nagy, G. (1996). “Autorité et auteur dans la Théogonie hésiodique,” in Le Métier du mythe: Lectures d’Hésiode: 41–52.

Rousseau, P. (1996) “Instruire Persès: Notes sur l’ouverture des Travaux d’Hésiode,” in Le Métier du mythe: Lectures d’Hésiode: 93–167.

From: Jenny Strauss Clay, Hesiod's Cosmos, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003, pp. 58-62

"When the Muses come to the shepherds on Helicon and confer upon the intrepid Hesiod the letters patent for his poetic mission, they formally declare their authority by means of an opposition.

They inform their audience (at Theogony 27-8) that they know how to say 'many false things that are like the genuine' (pseudea polta etymoisin homoia), but also, when they wish, how to 'speak true' (alethea gerysasthai). (2) Which said, they give Hesiod a sceptre of laurel and invest in him the power to celebrate the gods in song (29-34). Pietro Pucci finds in the Muses' declaration a general thesis about the medium of their power, language (or, as he puts it, 'the logos'): namely, that 'the logos signifies things by imitating them with some obliquity, distortion, and addition', because 'the "original" signified is always absent'; a thesis he explicitly labels as Derridean, comparing 'Derrida's insight that the . . . "signified" is always caught in the web of the differential, deferring, negative relationships that allow the emergence of meaning and can never appear as present hic et nunc'. (3) Pucci's Derridean interpretation has been followed as such and developed by Marilyn Arthur. Summarizing Pucci's position, she asserts that in Hesiod's formulation 'both the true discourse and the false one are "imitations", but the true logos ... imitates "things as they are", while "the concept of false discourse derives from the idea of imitation as difference from things, simulation of identity with things" '; and declares on her own account that 'in order to understand what Hesiod says' we must bring to bear 'the recognition that language itself -- the logos -- is a form of fiction, that representation itself is always, in some sense, a "lie" (4)

Both interpretations of the Muses' words have the merit of appreciating that in so generally phrased a statement, and one put on the lips of poetry's presiding spirits at the moment when the poet is confirmed in his craft, we would do well to look for an insight into how Hesiod conceived of the very workings of language -- the mastery of which he here accepts as the Muses' gift. Alternative interpretations of these much-contested lines, by contrast, have long sought to make the allusion more specific and locate the truth and falsehood to which the Muses refer in particular poems or bodies of poetry, Hesiodic and Homeric. Of course, the two lines of interpretation are not mutually exclusive; Hesiod could perfectly well be putting out a general statement about poetic language with particular targets in mind, or he could be conducting a special polemic which nevertheless through its phrasing reveals how he conceives of poetic languages as such. And any attempt to settle for one or the other of these latter alternatives would swiftly be reduced to mere speculation. The important point is that the possibility of these lines having a particular target should not be allowed to block exploration of what they reveal, directly or indirectly, about Hesiod's more general conception of language. (5)

That the line of interpretation inspired by Derrida has vaulted this block is a significant achievement. However, the actual thesis that it distils from this passage of Hesiod seems to me to miss what is special -- and especially interesting -- about Hesiod's view of language. What I find striking in these two lines of the Theogony is that only of falsehoods, and precisely not of language in general, do the Muses say that they are 'like the genuine'. In expressing their capacity for truth-saying, the Muses make no reference to a relation of likeness or a talent for imitation, but simply state that they know how to 'speak true' (or 'truths'). Pucci and Arthur, invoking Derrida, generalize the 'obliquity' of likeness or imitation to describe the metaphysical relation between words and world; but for Hesiod's Muses such indirectness seems to characterize only the false things we say about the world, not the true things.

In effect, Pucci and Arthur read the couplet as if the line in which the Muses mention their ability to imitate the genuine (or 'real' or 'true') were in fact a general statement of their mastery of language, of which the following line describes a special case: to wit, when the result of their imitation is itself something true. They treat the second line as subordinate to the first, rather than coordinate with it. This is no straightforward misreading on their part. I have reproduced in this section only their conclusions, and have not yet considered the steps by which they come to their opinion. Before I do so, however, I will fill out what I take to be the widespread and philosophically intriguing pattern of archaic Greek thought which shows through this text on my reading of it, and which I feel their reliance on Derrida has led them to miss. I can then appeal to the distinctive character of this material in order to resist their attempted assimilation of it to the Derridean model." pp. 45-47.

Notes

(2) The use of polar opposition to express a god's power is frequent in archaic texts. A famous example is that of the two jars of Zeus at Iliad XXIV 527, one containing good, the other bad fortune; so too in Hesiod's Works and Days we read that a safe time for sailing is fifty days after the summer solstice, unless Poseidon or Zeus are set against it, 'for in them lies the determination of both good and evil' (669); and cf. Theognidea 157-8 (West -- to whose edition of the work I refer throughout this paper). These examples set a positive against a negative value; but this is not invariably the case: e.g. Odyssey v 47-8 (Hermes uses his staff both to put mortals to sleep and to wake them from sleep, as he chooses); and x 22 (Aelus has the power to calm and to stir the winds, whichever he wishes). Thus we cannot tell simply from their use of the motif whether Hesiod's Muses in the Theogony, by setting lies against truth, are opposing something bad to something good. I have tried to make my translation of their words broad enough to reflect the fact that the Greek terms rendered as 'true', 'false', 'genuine' do not distinguish 'truth' -- a linguistic property applicable only to propositions -- from 'reality', said of things in general.

(3) The quotations are from P. Pucci, Hesiod and the Language of Poetry, Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977, pp. 12, 13 and 13-14 respectively.

(4) I take the quotations from M. Arthur, ' The dream of a world without women: poetics and the circles of order in the Theogony prooemium', Arethusa XVI 1, 2, p. 105 (citing Pucci, op. cit., p. 16) and p. 106. Henceforth in this chapter 1 will refer to these two articles simply by author's name and page number.

(5) The variety of non-Derridean interpretations of the Muses' message is considerable, and beyond my brief to consider here. A good conspectus of the range can be extracted from the following sources: W. Stroh, 'Hesiods lügende Musen', in H. Gorgemanns and E. A. Schmidt (eds.) Studien zum antiken Epos, Meisenheim am Glan, Anton Hain, 1976; H. Neitzel, ' Hesiod und die Lügenden Musen', Hermes CVIII, 5, 1980, pp. 387-401; G. Nagy, ' Hesiod', in T. J. Luce (ed.) Ancient Writers, vol. I, New York, Scribner's, 1982, pp. 43-73; E. Belfiore, ' "Lies unlike the truth": Plato on Hesiod, Theogony 27', Transactions of the American Philosophical Association CXV, 1985, pp. 47-57.

From: Giovanni Ferrari, Hesiod's mimetic Muses and the strategies of deconstruction - in: Andrew Benjamin (ed.), Post-structuralist Classics, New York: Routledge 1988, pp. 45-78.

"In the Works and Days, Hesiod seems to offer us not only a different model of narrative reference through the ainos and its relatives but, in the word etetuma, an entirely different model of poetic truth from that suggested by the Iliad 2 [484-87] and Odyssey 8 [487-91] passages, a notion compatible with fiction in a way that those passages are not. Like alethes, etetumos is normally translated 'true.' This has encouraged many interpreters to assimilate Hesiod's claim to speak etetuma to Homer's claim in Iliad 2 and to a larger conception of archaic poetry as committed to aletheia. Nonetheless, several scholars who have examined the archaic vocabulary of truth in detail have argued that etetumos actually represents a notion of truth distinct from that represented by aletheia.(a) I will not discuss that work in detail here, some of which I do not perfectly understand, but I will discuss a few distinctions I think most easily defined.

Aletheia has a subjective component that etetumos does not.(b) The speaker of aletheia has fully in mind what really happened and wishes to speak it forth honestly and fully; the speaker's knowledge and good intentions are equally essential. A speaker of etetuma (or of etuma, I do not believe the two are distinguishable) need have no such knowledge or intention. The word merely describes a correspondence between the speaker's words and the reality he or she describes. For example, one may speak etumon (singular form) in conjecture, as Nestor does at Iliad 10.534, when he wonders if the sounds of approaching horses might signal the return of Odysseus and Diomedes, or as Helen does at Odyssey 4.140, where she ventures to identify Telemachus as Odysseus' son. Both ask before they speak, 'Will I say something true (etumon), or will I speak a falsehood (pseusomai)?' Likewise, dreams may come 'true' (etuma). In this case, truth has nothing to do with a knowledgeable or honest .speaker; etuma describes the correspondence between reality and the description of reality in the dream. The etymologies of the two words seem to bear this distinction out: aletheia entails an absence of deception (lethe) that could only be possible in an account given by a knowledgeable and well-intentioned speaker, etuma is related to the verb 'to be' and thus reflects only conformity with 'what is.' Though both words may be opposed to pseudos (falsehood), etumos is used when that falsehood is of an unintentional kind, and aletheia is used when the falsehood is a deliberate fiction.(c)There is a certain amount of overlap between the two concepts. Though all examples of etetuma are not aletheia -- some are not spoken by a knowledgeable speaker with the desire to reveal what he or she knows -- some clearly are. Moreover, I find it difficult to think of an example of aletheia that would not also be etetuma. Nonetheless, the two words have different emphases: aletheia places a much greater emphasis on the speaker's intentions. Thus, it is virtually always used in promises. In fact, Hesiod deviates rather strikingly from a familiar Homeric formula of promises (alethea muthesthai) when he uses the metrically equivalent expression etetuma muthesaimen."

Notes

(a) See Krischer 1965 and Levet 1976 on etumos and alethes.

(b) My conclusions are based on two sets of comparisons: between the use of the adjectives alethes and et(et)umos, and between the use of the neuter substantive et(et)uma and the neuter substantive alethea plus the noun aletheia. I can see no obvious distinction between etetumos and etumos or between alethea and aletheia. It should be noted that etetuma and alethea are metrically equivalent, so their differing uses can not be explained by metrical exigencies.

(c) See Odyssey 14.125, Theogony 27-28, and Hymn to Hermes 560-63 for the contrast aletheia / pseudos. All three passages explicitly mention desire as a necessary criterion for the speaking forth of aletheia.

References

Krischer, T. (1965). “ΕΤΥΜΟΣ und ΑΛΗΘΗΣ,” Philologus 109: 161–173.

Levet, J. P. (1976). Le Vrai et le faux dans la pensée grecque archaïque. Paris.

From: Louise H. Pratt, Lying and Poetry from Homer to Pindar. Falsehood and Deception in Archaic Greek Poetics, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1993 pp. 100-101.

Pindar

Studies:

"Pindar makes only two overt claims to truth (aletheia). Both occur in association with oaths and therefore seem intended to vouch for the sincerity of the poet's claims and for his personal knowledge of their validity. In Olympian 2, Pindar introduces his praise of Theron with the line 'I will speak forth a sworn report with truthful [alathei] intention' (O. 2.92). With truthful (alathei), Pindar seems to state his intention to reveal fully and honestly what he knows. Pindar also juxtaposes truth and oaths at Olympian 13.98-100. Here the voice of the herald, which is said to be both true (alathes) and made under oath, 'vouches for' (Nisetich, Frank - Pindar's Victory Songs - Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1980) or 'lends weight to' (Slater, William J. Lexicon to Pindar - Berlin, Walter de Gruyter,1969) Pindar's claims that the victor's family has won sixty victories at the games. There can be little question that Pindar is here using a notion of truth that is both referential and non-fictional. Indeed, Pindar can not acknowledge that in transferring such information, he is making things up or lying. At Nemean 7.63, Pindar claims to speak true (etetumon) praise. Here the focus may be more on validity than on the speaker's intent. The net effect of all three claims is, however, the same: to suggest a correspondence between the victor's worth and the praise offered, to insist on the validity of the poet's praise. Again, all of these passages discuss a specific responsibility of the epinician poet and therefore tell us little about the poet's appreciation of fictional narrative.

In two related passages, Pindar not only demands aletheia of his poetry, but asks the goddess Truth, Alatheia, to fend off lies (pseudea; fr. 205). The characterization of Alatheia in this passage as the 'font of great excellence' suggests that we are again in a context where the correspondence between praise and true worth, the evaluation of character, is essential. In a similar way, when Pindar calls on Olympia as the mistress of truth (alatheias; Olympian 8.2), he seems to have in mind the Olympic games as a testing ground for a man's true worth (Slater 1969).

In the opening lines to Olympian 10, Pindar calls on the Muse and Alatheia:

Read out for me the Olympian victor, son of Archestratos, where he is written on my heart. For owing him a sweet song, I forgot [epilelath] O Muse, you and Alatheia, the daughter of Zeus, with straight hand, fend off the reproach that I mislead my friends with lies. (Olympian 10.1-6)

Here Pindar clearly plays on a notion of aletheia as a kind of unforgetting. (a) But this passage does not make truth synonymous with memory, for Pindar also opposes lies (pseudea) to truth here. Having made a promise, Pindar forgot; his promise thus turns out to be an invalid kind of speech. In Greek terms, because intentions are not an essential component of the pseudos, this makes the initial promise a falsehood (pseudos). (b)Pindar now wishes to bring his earlier promise to fulfillment and thereby to make it true. Consequently, he calls on Alatheia. (c) She may also be present to vouch for Pindar's original sincere intention."

Notes

(a) I tend to see this more as deliberate word play than as reflecting a mythical notion of truth.

(b) See also Iliad 19.107, 7.351, where the unintentional breaking of a promise and an oath makes the speakers of the oath / promise liar.

(c) The Muses probably represent the presence of memory that can counter Pindar's forgetfulness.

From: Louise H. Pratt, Lying and Poetry from Homer to Pindar. Falsehood and deception in Archaic Greek poetics, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press 1993 pp. 118-119.

"In portraying himself as an interpreter of the Muse's oracle, Pindar draws attention to himself as master of an ambiguous code that transmits some divinely certified truth. (5) But he does not mean to suggest, even in the most oblique way, that his interpretations constitute or "construct" a realm of truth. That would imply an interpreter who does not discover truth, but fashions it himself through the persuasive power of poetic language. His use of oracle imagery to set forth his poetics goes out of its way to discourage any view that credits the poet with constructing the truths he communicates. It promotes instead the suggestion that he discovers them. Oracles utter coded messages of which interpretations are either correct or incorrect; oracular utterances have a determinate meaning, a right interpretation. In likening the poet to the specially skilled interpreter of an oracle, then, Pindar claims that he is able to give the correct interpretation, one that discovers (does not construct) its true meaning. To suppose that Pindar's interpretations aim to provide merely a reading or a theory would be to neglect his model of poetry as interpretation that captures a divinely authoritative message." pp. 63-64 (notes abbreviated)

"We are now in a position to draw some conclusions about Pindar's place in place in the development of early Greek conceptions of literary fiction. Recent criticism emphasizes Pindar's role in a developing awareness οf poetic language's persuasive power. Truth is not a matter that pits fact over fiction, but solely a matter of what poetry has the power to make appear convincing through its particular charm. According to this account, Hesiodic poetics began to question the Homeric assumption of poetry's truth by admitting the possibility that the Muses can fashion "lies similar to true things." Pindar pushes things a step closer to Simonides' more blatant claim that "appearance forces even truth." (fr. 598 Poetae Melici Graeci)Simonides' remark implies that there is no such thing as truth, but merely appearance; telling the "truth" is simply a matter of saying something persuasive. (25) Pindar is thought to move toward the Simonidean perspective by recognizing the "authenticating power of poetic language" in his own poetry. The power of language to create the appearance of truth is, according to this view, displayed not only by the poetry Pindar criticizes as "deceptive," but, together with a certain amount of self-consciousness, by his own poetry. In his highly self-conscious revision of the Tantalus story, for example, Pindar describes the deceitful versions as "embellished" and "intricate. " (Olympian 1. 29) But elsewhere he applies the same terms to his own poetry with no negative connotation. (Nemean 8. 15 fr. 94b)

(...)

This account of the development of conceptions of truth confuses several issues and must be adjusted. Hesiod's poetics retains the idea of factual truth and holds to assumptions inconsistent with Simonides' radical view. In adopting the possibility that Μuses deceive, Hesiod assumes that there is some reality about which the Muses are either truthful or deceptive. For the Muses to exercise their powers to deceive by conveying falsehoods, there must be some truths about which they can deceive mortals. Hesiod does not, then, question the idea of factual truth. Unlike Homer, however, he does deny that poetry provides men with knowledge of that truth. Hesiod's innovation is epistemological rather than metaphysical: the audience is no longer provided a knower's master of any truths that Hesiod's poetry may convey. That there are truths to be shared or deceived about remains beyond question for Hesiod. In contrast, Simonides' view leaves no room for Hesiod's deception because for him there is no falsehood of which an audience can be persuaded.

Like Hesiod's, Pindar's poetics assumes that there are facts for poetry to convey. We have seen how, in his version of the Tantalus myth, Pindar promises to provide factual accuracy. Furthermore, in claiming that other versions of the tale are deceptive, he shares Hesiod's assumption that there is something about which to be truthful or deceptive. Pindar renders human access to truth problematic, but in a way very much milder than Hesiod. Pindar's Muse is not a potential deceiver like Hesiod's; in this respect Hesiod's is the more radical, and Pindar's the more traditional, view. But as the interpreter of the Muse's "oracle," Pindar admits the possibility that the poet may misinterpret the Muse. For example, in fragment 205 he prays to avoid stumbling into falsehood. For Pindar, then, human shortcomings rather than divine deception can break the audience's epistemological connection to the truth that poetry can convey. Although he admits the possibility of conveying falsehood, the focus in Pindar is on his poetry's truth.33 It is not the authenticating power of poetic language that lies at the root of that truth, although Pindar indeed advertises the nearly magical power of poetic language and suggests that the particular charm of that language contributes to the persuasiveness of his poetry. But the truth his poetry conveys holds independently of charm or persuasion. As we have seen, the truths that are particularly of interest to Pindar praise his subjects. The Muse reveals such truths to him in a cryptic form that the poet must interpret. If Pindar interprets the Muse correctly and conveys such truths to his audience, then he conveys the moral reality behind the gods' evaluation of the victory, the victor, and his kinsmen. Provided that Pindar's poems interpret their inspiration accurately, they convey the god's evaluation, not the poet's or not only the poet's. From a Socratic perspective, Pindar's poetics command no authority. Pindar will be vulnerable to the charge of promoting moral authoritarianism, adhering to moral evaluations grounded only in avowed divine authority. Socrates will expose the poet's claim to enjoy a natural, god-given knowledge as more often than not efforts to allow Pindar and others to uphold conventional, aristocratic values without defending them on any grounds more substantial than an appeal to divine decree. pp. 72-74 (notes omitted)

Notes

(5) Pindar explicitly connects the Muse with Truth at Olympian 10. 1-6: ("Read me the name of the Olympic victor, / the son of Archestratos, where it is written / in my mind, for I owe him a sweet song and have forgotten. O Muse, but you and Zeus' daughter, / Truth, with a correcting hand / ward off from me the charge of harming a guest friend / with false promises.") See also Olympian 4. 17-18; 6. 20-21; 7. 20-21; 13. 52; 10. 3-4; Pythian 1. 86-87; fr. 205.

From: Grace M. Ledbetter, Poetics before Plato. Interpretation and authority in early Greek theories of poetry, Princeton: Princeton University Press 2003, p 63 n. 5.

"As Marcel Detienne has documented in his survey of Archaic Greek poetics, the poetic power of mnemosune 'remembering' is traditionally associated with light, which is in conflict with the darkness of Léthé 'forgetting'. (32) What is illuminated or obscured by poetry is what is respectively preserved or lost in the tradition.

The concept of léthé 'forgetting', however, is not only negative. As Detienne points out, léthé is not only the opposite of mnemosune 'remembering': it can also be an aspect of mnemosune. (33) For example, the goddess Mnemosune is described in the Theogony of Hesiod as giving birth to the Muses, divine personifications of the poet's power, so that they, through their poetry, may provide mnemosune 'forgetting' of sadnesses and of worries for humankind (53-55); whoever hears the Muses no longer memnetai 'remembers' his own ills (Theogony 98-103). By implication the highlighting of the glory of poetry is achieved by shading over anything that detracts from it. A bright light needs a background of darkness.

Such a concept of mnemosune can be achieved only through an ever-present awareness of its opposite, léthé. Without the obliteration of what need not be remembered, there cannot be memory -- at least, from the standpoint of Archaic Greek poetics.

Let us reformulate these thought patterns in terms of an opposition between unmarked and marked categories. (34) In an opposition of mne- 'remember' vs. leth- 'forget', mne- would be the unmarked member and leth-, the marked, in that leth- can be included by mne- as an aspect of mne-. Besides the passage just considered from the Theogony, I cite another striking illustration, from a different source: in the ritual of incubation connected with the cult of Trophonios, the initiate drinks from the springs of both Lethe and Mnemosune; this way the undesired mental state can be shaded over while the desired mental state is highlighted (Pausanias 9.39.8). (35)

To pursue the subject of these thought patterns even further, I cite an example of unmarked and marked opposition in the English language. In an opposition of the pronouns he and she, he is the unmarked member and she, the marked, in that she is included by he as the feminine aspect of being he. The masculine aspect of being he, by contrast, has to be achieved through an ever-present negation of the feminine. We may say something like: this is not a she, this is a he. Otherwise he does not, of and by itself, convey a masculine aspect. In generalizing statements, for example, he can stand for both he and she, as in "everyone may interpret as he chooses." (36)

Where the unmarked member excludes the marked member through a negation of the marked, the unmarked member receives a minus interpretation; where the unmarked member includes the marked, it receives a zero interpretation. (37) The minus interpretation of the unmarked member is ever- present in the context of a given Archaic Greek poem's references to itself as absolute truth, conveyed by a specialized mnemosune 'remembering' that excludes lethe instead of including it. These relationships can be visualized as a larger circle of mnemosune 'remembering' that includes an inner area of lethe 'forgetting' surrounding a smaller circle of specialized mnemosune 'remembering' that excludes the outer area of lethe 'forgetting'. The area of forgetting is visualized as the ongoing erasure of things not worth remembering, erasure by way of lethe 'forgetting'; the smaller circle of remembering, within the larger circle, is highlighted by the area of darkness surrounding it, the area of forgetting. In fact, a special word in the diction of Archaic Greek poetry formalizes this specialized and exclusive kind of remembering: that word is the negation of lethe 'forgetting', namely a-letheia, normally glossed in English as 'truth'. A comparable case of minus interpretation in English can be seen in the word unforgettable. The aletheia 'truth' of the poet is the nonerasure of the poetic glory that is his to confer.38 The same concept is evident in the periphrastic expression oude me/se/he lethei 'it does not escape my/your/his-her mind', which conventionally reinforces injunctions to be memnemenos 'mindful, remembering'. (39)

Besides contrasting with negative thoughts about human ills, (40) or erroneous thoughts that lead to injustice, (41) the aletheia of Greek poetry tends to contrast with the divergence of local poetic versions in the overarching process of achieving a convergent version acceptable to all Hellenes. (42) This argument brings us back to the observation of Levi-Strauss that the latest performance of myth is in principle an occasion for selecting from and thereby potentially erasing versions available from countless previous performances. (43) In what survives of Archaic Greek poetry -- and now I am using the word poetry in the broadest sense -- what we keep finding is the ultimate extension of this principle, to the point where the latest version becomes the last version, a canonization that brings to a final state of crystallization what had been becoming an ever-less fluid state of variation in performance. (44) I attribute this canonization not so much to the phenomenon of incipient literacy as to the broader social phenomenon of Panhellenization. (45) I reiterate that this phenomenon is relative from the standpoint of an outsider to the tradition, in that some compositions are more Panhellenic in scope than others. From the standpoint of the insider to the tradition, however, in the here and now of performance, the Panhellenic perspective is the absolutist perspective of aletheia 'truth' . (46)"

Notes

(32) Detienne Les maître de vérité dans la Grèce archaique, Paris 1973 22-27. For example, Léthé or 'Forgetting' personified is descended from Night in Hesiod Theogony 227/224; Mnemosune 'Remembering' is contrasted with darkness in Pindar Nemean 7.12-16.

(33) Detienne, pp. 69-80.

(34) For these terms, see the Introduction, p. 5: The second of the two basic concepts of linguistics that I use throughout this book is the distinction, from a synchronic perspective, between the marked and unmarked members of any opposition within the system of language. These terms are defined as follows by Roman Jakobson: "The general meaning of a marked category states the presence of a certain (whether positive or negative) property A; the general meaning of the corresponding unmarked category states nothing about the presence of A." (R. Jakobson Shifters, Verbal categories, and the Russian verb Cambridge, Mass. 1957; reprinted in Selected writings The Hague , Mouton, 1971 pp. 130-147). The unmarked category is the general category, which can include the marked category, whereas the reverse situation cannot hold.

(35) See the discussion by Detienne, p. 74.

(36) Waugh 1982 compares the French usage of the masculine gender as the unmarked member of an opposition with the feminine, in that the masculine can stand for the category as a whole: thus an adjective describing both masculine and feminine categories will be put into the masculine: des hommes et des femmes intelligents.

(37) (omitted)

(38) Given that the smaller circle within the larger circle symbolizes the specialized sort of mné, that is, a-letheia, I would say that the larger circle that contains leth- would correspond to the function of the Muses, who help humans forget some things so that they may remember others. The root * mna- of mne- 'remember' may in fact be related to the root * mon-t- (or * mon-th-) of Mousa 'Muse' (Hesiod Theogony 53-55, 98-103). The etymological connection is certain if Mousa is to be derived from the root * men-, expanded as * mon-t- (or * mon-th-), which is one of several possibilities entertained by Chantraine Dictionnaire Étymologique de la Langue Grecque 716. The relationship of the root * men- with the expanded form * mna-, as in mne-, is clear: Chantraine, p. 703.

(39) The pertinent passages are discussed in Nagy Sema and Noesis: some illustrations Arethusa (1983 16:35-55) 44. This expression oude me/se/he lethei 'it does not escape my/your/his-her mind' implies a synchronic understanding of the word aletheia as a compound consisting of privative a- and the root leth-. In the formulation of Cole 1983 12, the reference of aletheia is "not simply to non-omission of pieces of information ... but also to not forgetting from one minute to the next what was said a few minutes before, and not letting anything, said or unsaid, slip by without being mindful of its consequences and implications." (For a critique of Heidegger's celebrated explanation of aletheia, see Cole, pp. 7-8.) Cf. also Detienne 1973 48g107.

(40) I cite again Hesiod Theogony 53-55, 98-103.

(41) On this theme, see Detienne 1973, 29-50.

(42) This is not to say, of course, that the convergent version may not be complex, containing multiformities within its overarching uniformity.

(43) Cf. p. 57; cf. also p. 80.

(44) A. P. Royce The anthropology of dance Bloomington 1977 104 points out, with reference to traditions of dance, that various structures of performance, as they become progressively more rigid, can suffer "abrupt confrontation and loss."

(45) The threat of "abrupt confrontation and loss," to use the expression quoted immediately above, could help promote an impetus for recording by way of writing. But a critical attitude toward myth is caused not by the technology of writing but rather, more fundamentally, by the between variants of myth. See p. 57.

(46) We may well ask: how does the local perspective contribute to the Panhellenic, and to what degree does the Panhellenic perspective recognize the local? From the standpoint of the local tradition, the best chance for self-assertion is a process of self-selection that accommodates the Panhellenic tradition. Note the discussion by Royce 1977 164 of the repertory of some 90 sones (dances) among the Zapotec of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec: in asserting their identity to outsiders, the Zapotec tend to select just three of these 90 sones. Royce notes (ibid.) that "these three are the dances that any non-Zapotec would name if asked about 'typical' dances of the Isthmus," and that it is these three dances that are synthesized by the Ballet Folklorico in its suite "Wedding in Tehuantepec."

From: Gregory Nagy, Pindar's Homer. The lyric possession of an epic past, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990 pp. 58-61

Poets of Alexandrine Age: Callimachus, Theocritus, Apollonius of Rhodes, Herondas

Studies:

"This study aims at identifying and clarifying the meaning carried by the noun άλήθεια, the adjectives άληθής, άληθἰνός, and their synonyms in the works of the four most representative authors of the Alexandrine age: Callimachus, Theocritus, Apollonius of Rhodes, and Herondas.

The study breaks down into five chapters.

The first chapter analyses all passages of Callimachus' works featuring the adjectives άληθής and άληθινός.

Similarly, all excerpts including the lexemes άλάθεια, άλαθής, and άλαθινός in Theocritus, and the lexemes άληθείη, άληθής, άληθἰνός in Herondas, are examined in the second and third chapters, respectively.

The fourth chapter is dedicated to Apollonius' Argonautica. As no record of either the noun άλήθεια or the adjectives άληθής and άληθινός is available in the four books of the Argonautica, the study concentrates on the synonyms of άληθής and άληθινός used by Apollonius: έτεός, έτήτνμος, νημερτής, άτρεκής.

The fifth chapter focuses on the synonyms of άληθής and άληθινός which can be found in the works of Callimachus: έτεός, έτήτνμος, έτυμος, άτρεκής; Theocritus: έτεός, έτήτνμος, έτυμος, άτρεκής; and Herondas: έτυμος.

An introductory essay provides a detailed account of the study's general objective and specific aims.

The results of the research are summarised in the conclusions, which offer an overview of the analogies and differences of the authors under consideration with respect to their specific understanding of the notion of 'truth'.

The study also contains a bibliography and an index."

Abstract of the Thesis by Barbara Giubilo: L'Aletheia e i suoi sinonimi nella poesia alessandrina (Callimaco, Teocrito, Apollonio Rodio, Eronda) Roma, Università "Tor Vergata", 2007.

Thucydides

Studies:

History of the Peloponnesian War: Chapter 1.1 - 1.23 ("Thucydides' Archaelogy")

"Because the means by which a world is disclosed are hidden and, indeed, withdraw from view, there are several issues in the key programmatic sections of 1.21-3 that I believe have been consistently misunderstood. There is no better way further to illustrate the subtle workings of Thucydides's Archaeology than to dissolve some of the errors that surround it. The issues I will discuss relate to "unconcealedness" (aletheia), "what is appropriate" (ta deonta), "pre-text" (prophasis), "compulsion" (ananke), and "kind" (toioutos).

Unconcealedness (Aletheia)

Thucydides does seem interested in aletheia, which is usually translated as "truth." Truth is understood conventionally as positing a correspondence between word and world, and so, this interpretation maintains, when Thucydides discusses the importance of aletheia, he is emphasizing the importance of matching up his language to events (logos to ergon). Yet Thucydides uses neither aletheia nor to alethes particularly often in these opening sections (or generally, especially not in his own voice). He does, as we have seen, employ numerous visual words, such as to saphes, at crucial places. These words are in turn often translated in terms of "truth," even "historical truth," (1) but such translations put the cart before the horse. The converse seems far more apt; that is, aletheia should be understood in terms of to saphes and other visual terms rather than the other way around.

In Thucydides's Archaeology visual metaphors dominate vis-a-vis truth claims. (2) Further, in specific contexts, Thucydides is quite able to assert that a claim or description is true in the sense that it corresponds to reality,3 but Thucydides does not do this often, and he does not do it in the Archaeology. And thus we should not efface the explicit visual language as somehow "primitive" (i.e., aspiring to real truth) or metaphorical, especially when there is a sophisticated philosophical tradition both before and after Thucydides that takes the priority of vision seriously -- see the preceding discussion of the Presocratics, eros in both Gorgias's Helen and Plato's Phaedrus (also the allegories in the Republic), and sophia in the Nicomachean Ethics. And it is not just the philosophical tradition, there is also the tragic tradition, which, as we have seen, relies upon and dramatizes the human situation as bounded by vision of a complex sort. Human vision is further complicated by its tendency not to see that which it has most need of seeing.

The word aletheia is generally, though not uniformly, believed to retain the visual force of its etymology -- "as that which is not concealed." (4) If this is true, then we have all the more reason for associating claims concerning aletheia with the dominant visual imagery. Thomas Cole has maintained (contra Friedlander) that aletheia does retain a connection with lethe (oblivion) and that this connection is exploited as late as Plato's Phaedrus. (5) Hence the significance of the words a-letheia and a-kribeia in the key sections of Thucydides's Archaeology. These two related alpha privative words convey the difficulty of using logos in a manner that does not cover up as much as, if not more than, it succeeds in bringing to light. (6) In fact, Cole observes that akribeia is a characteristic especially associated with written texts, and it is in Thucydides that for the first time aletheia too is claimed to be the product of the type of precise method seemingly possible only through writing. (7)

It can be argued that there is a prima facie distinction between "not-not-noticed" and "unconcealed." (8) I must admit that I have a hard time grasping this distinction because in both cases aletheia is a visual accomplishment related to logos. I presume that somehow not-not-noticed is more reasonable. (9) Heidegger's notion of unconcealedness sounds as if the objects of aletheia are glowing, demanding to be seen, (10) whereas what a logos can do is merely to keep a hero mentioned among human subjects again and again -- no glowing is required. Heidegger does employ visual vocabulary to illustrate his point about aletheia, but in so doing, he sees himself as following a tradition (which he is), and it appears dubious to object to his position merely on account of the violence with which he brings vision to the fore. After all, Heidegger plausibly rejects the whole subject-object distinction upon which Cole (following Snell) would seem to rely. If it is nonsense to say that truth lights up objects, it is, arguably, at least as nonsensical (though very modern) to claim that to be true is to be kept in the minds of human subjects.

Finally, it is procrustean to read the bulk of Thucydides's narrative as something that corresponds to reality. Correspondence presupposes exactly that separation between logos and the world that I believe Thucydides's text is remarkable for constantly challenging. Indeed, Thucydides's success in opening a world through logos is a decisive argument against reifying this distinction." (pp. 155-157)

Notes

(1) Macleod (1983) in C. Macleod, Collected Essays, Oxford (1983), "Reason and Necessity," 64.

(2) See previous readings of 1.22.4 and of 1.23.6, as well as the general concern with clarity and vision (e.g., 1.1.3). There is also Thucydides's concern with the visual impression made by Athens and Sparta in connection with his thought experiment (1.10) and his general contempt for hearsay (1.20.1) and pleasing hearers (1.21.1, 1.22.4) .

(3) See, e.g., 3.20.3, 4.122.6.

(4) See, e.g., Heidegger (1962), 262/219.

(5) Cole (1983), 7-10. Cole's discussion is only one of many treatments. See also Bernasconi (1985), 15-27; Allison (1997), 232; Shrimpton (1997), 7. 24. 6.90 2-4.

(6) Cole (1983), 25-7; Heidegger (1997), 47. 25. 7.66.2.

(7) Cole (1983), 27 n.48.

(8) This has been argued by many, including not only Cole and Snell, but also Mark Griffith (in conversation).

(9) Cole (1983), 8-9.

(10) For an account of what it might mean for a phenomenon to demand to be seen, see Appendix III.

References

Allison, J. (1997). Word and Concept in Thucydides. Atlanta: Scholars Press.

Bernasconi, R. (1985). The Question of Language in Heidegger’s History of Being. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International.

Cole, T. (1983). "Archaic Truth", Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, Nuova Serie, 13, pp. 7-28.

Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time, translated by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. New York: Harper and Row.

Heidegger, M. (1997). Plato’s Sophist, translated by R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Macleod, C. (1983). Collected Essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Shrimpton, G. (1997). History and Memory in Ancient Greece. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press.

From: Darien Shanske, Thucydides and the Philosophical Origins of History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Aletheia dans la Pensée Grecque d'Homère à l'Âge Hellénistique

Vrai et Faux dans la pensée del la Grèce ancienne

"Par l'effet d'une particularité tout à fait singulière, la langue grecque désigne cette notion de vérité par des termes négatifs : l'adjectif αληθής et le substantif αλήθεια. IΙ y a là un mystère étonnant, qui n'est peut-être pas dépourvu de liens avec ce que l'en appelle le 'miracle grec'. Mais il ne faut pas oublier qu' ληθής et αλήθεια ne sont pas les seuls mots qui, à l'origine, s'appliquent à l'idée de vérité, bien que Platon et Aristote n'emploient pratiquement qu'eux pour la représenter, bίen qu'ils traversent l'histoire du grec, d'Homère jusqu' aujourd'hui, bien qu'enfin, d'Homère à l'âge classique, ils connaissent un prodigieux développement, qui est contemporain de la disparition progressive de leurs anciens parents sémantiques. L'expression du vrai, en grec ancien, relève, en réalité, d'une terminologie complexe, composée de mots négatifs et positifs, que l'οn se propose d'étudier ici, sans les séparer de leurs antonymes.

I. Les mots négatifs signifiant vrai.

Α côté d'άληθής et d'άλήθέια, d'άληθώς, d'άληθεύειν, d'άληθίζεσθαι, d'άληθινός, d'αληθινώς et d'άληθοσύνη (ainsi que des composés dont le premier membre est άληθο- οu le second -αληθής), οn remarque l'emploi d'άτρεκής, άτρεκεως, ατρεκείη, άτρεκειν (le substantif άτρεκότης est tardif) (1), de νημερτής (ναμερτής), νημέρτέια (ναμέρτεια), νημερτεως, d'άψευδής, άψευδεια, άψευδειν, άψευδέως (2).

II. Les mots positifs voulant dire vrai.

Α époque ancienne, la représentation positive du vrai est assurée par la famille d'έτός. Outre έτός, qui est connu grâce à une glose d'Ηésychius (3) et à des fragments de Callimaque (4) (il apparaît peut-être aussi dans quelques textes anciens) (5), elle comprend έτεός, 'τυμos, έτύμως, έτήτυμος, έτηιύμως. 'Ετητυμία est tardif (6). 'Ετανός, έτυμώνιον, qui est éolien, έταυτώs, έτἐωνια, έτεωνειν, ne figurent que dans des gloses d'Hésychius (7). Les composés en έτυμο- se laissent classer en deux groupes différents, puisque l'on peut séparer ἐτυμόδρυς, qui se lit chez Théophraste (8), et ετυμηγόρος (9) des termes dans lesquels έτυμο- désigne le vrai sens d'un mot, son sens étymologique. Cette dernière valeur d'έτυμος figure pοιιr Ιa première fois chez Αristοte (10). Les composés en έτἐο/ω- sont peu nombreux. On doit citer 'Ετἐοζουτάδης, έτεοδμώς (dont l'existence même est douteuse), 'Ετεόκρητες, έτεόκριθος (11), 'Ετέόκλἐιoς, 'Ετεοκληειη et différents anthroponimes.

Bien après l'époque de rédaction des textes homériques, apparaissent dans la langue (en particulier dans la prose classique) quelques formes bâties sur la racine du verbe ειναι (όντως, τω όντι, συσία) et l'adjectif ακριζής (dont sont issus le substantif άκιἰζεια, l'adverbe ακριζώς, le verbe άκριζουν et différents composés). Ces mots contribuent à Ι'expression de concepts voisins de celui de vrai : le concept de réel et celui d'exact." (pp. 1-3)

Notes

(1) Il apparait dans une scholie (Euripide, Hyppolite, 1114).

(2) Ροur άλανές άληθές (Hésychius), mot difficile à classer dοnt l'étymh1ogie est mal connu, voir W. Prellwitz, Glotta, 19, 1930, p. 105 sq., et K. D. Georgoulis, Platon, 8, 1956, p. 228-229. Hésychius donne encore άλανέως όλοσχερως, Ταραντϊνοι et αλλανής ασφαλής, Αάχωνες ; W. Prellwitz hésite entre deux étymologies : άλανές peut-être apparenté à λανθάνω et αληθής ou à άλλανής, άλανέως, αλανέως (Εlis).

(3) Cf. infra, § 39.

(4) Fragment 70 Pfeiffer ετά = "vraiment", "réellement" ώς ετά Τημενίδος χρύσεον γένος fragment 75, 39 Pfeiffer ετως η δ ἀν ἐτως πᾶν ἐχαλυψεν ἐπος fragment 202, 19 Pfeiffer ...ετης εὐχη[σι] "avec des prières véritables, authentiques."

(5) Cf. infra IIe partie.

6) Il apparaît chez Callimaque, Αίτια, 3, 75-76 Pfeiffer.

7)) 'Ετανόν ληθώς, σφόδρα -- έταυτώς άληθώς -- έτυμώνιον άληθές -- έτεώνια άληθή -- έτεωνέω άληθεύὠ.

8) Histoire des Plantes, 3, 8, 2.

9)) Αrgonautiques d'Orphée, 4, 1183.

10) Du monde, 399α, 400a, 401a (έτύμως).

11)) Théophraste, Des Causes des Plantes, 3, 22, 2.

Extrait de: Jean-Pierre Levet, Le vrai et le faux dans la pensée grecque archaïque. Étude de vocabulaire. Paris : Les Belles Lettres 1976. Tome I. Présentation générale. Le vrai et le faux dans les épopées homériques.

Subjectivité et objectivité en grec ancien et en français

"En fin de compte, les analyses proposées ici distinguent quatre niveaux différents dans un énoncé :

- Le niveau de l'énoncé proprement dit détermine un acte de parole avec des interlocuteurs dans une situation de discours.

- Le niveau de la source de l'énoncé détermine un point de vue, ou un énonciateur, ou les deux.

- Le niveau du contenu de l'énoncé détermine la représentation d'une situation événementielle qui a pour support référentiel le référent du sujet.

- Le niveau inférieur est d'ordre lexical. Il détermine un procès abstrait avec sa structure actancielle, mais sans représentation spatio-temporelle (avant la promotion d'un actant en sujet, c'est-à-dire en support référentiel).

On peut admettre que toutes les catégories verbales peuvent être définies par rapport à ces différents niveaux et à leurs éléments. Rien n'empêche donc d'observer des distinctions semblables dans une autre langue, par exemple en français moderne. Cependant, en français moderne, certaines distinctions sont moins nettes, sans doute parce que la syntaxe en est moins subjective. C'est ce que semble confirmer un petit aperçu sur le vocabulaire du vrai et du réel.

1. Aperçu de syntaxe contrastive du grec et du français :

Le français moderne (comme le latin) ne connaît que deux types principaux de systèmes hypothétiques. Ils correspondent respectivement aux hypothèses d'addition et aux hypothèses de substitution du grec :

- Type I : si + indicatif quelconque (= I et II du grec).

- Type II : si + formes d'indicatif en -ais (= III et IV du grec).

Des subdivisions sont cependant possibles, qui correspondent aux divisions du grec, mais imparfaitement :

Dans le type I, l'indicatif futur, souvent exclu, est cependant parfois admis : - Type I, 1 : « Si vraiment tu viendras demain » I du grec) (14).

- Type I, 2 : « Si tu viens demain » II du grec).

Dans le type II, les formes composées sont parfois employées pour marquer une valeur d'irréel, sans considération temporelle :

- Type II, 1 : « Si tu venais demain » (= III du grec).

- Type II, 2 : « Si tu étais venu demain » (= IV du grec).

Voici comment on peut rendre compte des nuances entre I et II du grec et I, 1 et I, 2 du français.

- Le type I, 1 du français suppose une assertion objective, c'est-à-dire une assertion vraie pour tous. Le sens est exactement « s'il est reconnu par tous que » = « s'il est vrai que ». C'est une hypothèse de vérité, pas tout à fait identique à « si quelqu'un dit que », hypothèse d'assertion subjective du grec.

- Le type I, 2 du français suppose un fait objectif et ne correspond pas tout à fait au type II du grec, qui suppose non le fait lui-même, mais l'événement qui le manifeste, qui lui donne sa représentation subjective. En français le sens exact est « s'il arrive que », en grec, c'est « s'il se manifeste que ».

Si le grec distingue nettement hypothèse d'assertion et hypothèse de manifestation, le français distingue peu hypothèse de vérité et hypothèse de réalité, de même que vrai et réel sont peu distincts dans le vocabulaire (15).

Voici comment on peut rendre compte des nuances entre III et IV du grec et I, 1 et I, 2 du français.

- Le type I, 1 du français suppose une situation de vérité non actuelle, donc fictive. Le sens exact « s'il était vrai que » ne correspond pas tout à fait à « s'il apparaissait que », hypothèse de point de vue non actuel du grec (16).

- Or une situation de vérité, notion objective et générale, ne peut être qu'actuelle ou non actuelle, c'est-à-dire liée ou non à la situation de discours. En revanche un point de vue, qui est subjectif et particulier, peut en outre être actuel et non réel, c'est-à-dire être lié à la situation de discours mais en contredisant le point de vue réel du locuteur. C'est le type de point de vue que caractérise l'indicatif secondaire modal du grec.

Le système dominant du français n'a pas d'irréel analogue à celui du grec. Mais il a la possibilité de spécifier comme caduque et devenue impossible une situation de vérité non actuelle. Il a pour cela recours à la forme composée, celle-ci perdant alors sa valeur temporelle pour une valeur modale, comme dans « si tu étais venu demain » qui implique « tu ne viendras pas demain »(17). Il faut cependant pour cela que le contexte empêche toute interprétation temporelle. Ainsi « s'il avait plu hier » n'est pas ainsi spécifié, car on peut le dire sans savoir s'il a plu hier.

Il faut cependant se garder de trop figer les systèmes. Si, dans les protases hypothétiques, l'imparfait français correspond bien à l'optatif grec, il a des emplois différents qui en font un irréel. Dans « Un peu plus, le train partait sans moi », il correspond à un indicatif secondaire modal du grec. Ne serait-ce pas la marque d'une détermination plus subjective, l'expression d'un point de vue actuellement caduc ? Le plus-que-parfait du subjonctif dans « s'il eût été là » peut aussi déterminer un point de vue subjectif (18). Inversement le grec tend à rendre plus objectives ses déterminations syntaxiques, comme le montrent l'affaiblissement de l'opposition de ὀν et l'emploi devenant mécanique de ἄν, la généralisation de l'augment...

Néanmoins, on peut dire qu'en général grec ancien et français moderne s'opposent comme le plus subjectif au plus objectif, surtout sur les deux points suivants :

- Là où le français détermine un fait, le grec ancien déterminait la représentation d'un fait dans une conscience.

- Là où le français détermine une situation de vérité valable pour tous, le grec ancien déterminait un point de vue particulier.

Ce résultat est une confirmation de l'opinion exprimée par Guillaume, Temps et Verbe, Paris 1929, p. 48 : « L'hypothèse, primitivement élément intérieur de visée, est devenue en français moderne un élément extérieur objectivable sur la ligne d'actualité. »

2. Le vocabulaire du réel et du vrai en grec et en français :

Le français parle en principe d'un fait réel et d'une assertion vraie, c'est-à-dire conforme au réel. Mais la distinction n'est pas très tranchée. Réalité et vérité peuvent se confondre dans l'usage courant, et on a vu que réel n'a pas le même sens selon qu'il est opposé à éventuel ou à irréel. Confusion et ambiguïté tiennent sans doute à l'objectivité des termes. En effet la vérité repose directement sur la réalité des faits, vérité et réalité s'impliquent réciproquement.

Rien dans le grec homérique ne correspond exactement aux mots français réel et vrai, qui sont positifs et objectifs. Les deux mots homériques qui s'en rapprochent le plus, αληθής et νημερτής sont négatifs et subjectifs, comme l'a montré Levet, Le vrai et le faux dans la pensée grecque archaïque. Étude de vocabulaire (19).

αληθήςς signifie étymologiquement « non voilé ». Ce mot qualifie le réel en tant qu'il est dévoilé à une conscience humaine. Ce n'est pas « le réel qui est », mais le réel qui se manifeste dans l'expérience. Pour un Grec donc, les faits objectifs en eux-mêmes ne suffisent pas à établir la réalité, et par suite la vérité ; encore faut-il qu'ils soient perçus comme tels. Cette conception subjective de la réalité, que révèle le vocabulaire, se trouve correspondre à ce que que nous avons dit du contenu de l'énoncé à partir de nos analyses syntaxiques : c'est un événement représenté, qui n'est pas ce qui arrive, mais ce qui se manifeste.

Aussi peut-on dire que le mensonge hypothétique d'Euryclée à Pénélope doit être découvert pour exister comme événement.

Νημερτή, quant à lui, qualifie étymologiquement l'absence d'erreur (ἄμαρτάνειν « se tromper »), c'est-à-dire « l'interprétation droite ». Pour un grec donc, la vérité ne découle pas simplement des faits, ni même de leur simple observation, mais d'une juste interprétation de ce qu'on observe. Cette conception de la vérité est illustrée par la notion de point de vue de vérité que nous avons tirée de l'analyse syntaxique de l'énoncé assertif. L'énoncé assertif est fondamentalement senti comme résultant d'un traitement personnel de l'information.

Les termes grecs ne caractérisent donc pas le fait réel et la proposition vraie (au sens logique de cette expression), mais l'expérience révélatrice et le jugement correct. Ces deux notions subjectives sont relativement indépendantes l'une de l'autre, contrairement à celles de réalité et de vérité. En effet l'expérience révélatrice n'implique pas nécessairement un jugement correct, alors que la réalité d'un fait s'exprime automatiquement dans une proposition vraie.

On pourrait facilement poursuivre cet aperçu sur le vocabulaire grec. Ainsi le ψευδος n'est pas le contraire du vrai, c'est-à-dire le faux, mais l'invention subjective (20.

Dans l'ensemble, les termes grecs du vrai et du faux reposent sur des significations plus subjectives que leurs homologues français. Cette plus grande subjectivité se retrouve dans les significations des catégories verbales du grec. De ce fait, celles-ci distinguent plus nettement qu'en, français source énonciative et contenu de l'énoncé verbal. C'est pourquoi l'analyse syntaxique a abouti à distinguer trois sortes d'objets imaginaires qui déterminent les différents types de protases grecques : une assertion (type I, et chez Homère type IV), un événement (type II), un point de vue (type III, et après Homère type IV)." (pp. 246-250)

Notes

(14) Cf. Grévisse, Le bon usage, Paris: Ducoulot 1975, p.1034.

(15) L'emploi de l'indicatif dans « si tu viens demain » suggère que l'indicatif français est moins assertif que l'indicatif grec (en tant que mode non marqué ?). Aussi le français confond-il habituellement l'hypothèse à vérifier (« s'il est vrai que ») et l'hypothèse à réaliser (« s'il arrive que »).

(16) Il y a de même une correspondance imparfaite entre l'optatif oblique du grec (point de vue passé) et l'imparfait français de concordance des temps, qui est « un imparfait de récit » (situation de vérité passée, cf. Le Guern, Notes sur le verbe français, 1986, pp. 26-9).

(17) Le tour avec forme en -ais composée est apparu au XVIIe siècle, en concurrence avec le plus-que-parfait du subjonctif, qu'il a presque supplanté (Robert Léon Wagner, Les Phrases hypothétiques commençant par "si" dans la langue française, des origines à la fin du XVIe siècle, Paris : Droz 1939).

(18) De façon analogue, la valeur parfois non temporelle, mais encore aspectuelle de « j'ai mangé » (= « je suis repu ») suggère une conception plus subjective du contenu verbal (non le fait en lui-même, mais tel qu'il est perçu).

(19) Voir l.l. pp. 78-105 pour ἀλεθηες et 141-60 pour νημερτής. Ετεόὁ, ἐτυμος, ἐτετυμος, signifient « verifié, véridique ». Un autre mot négatif, ἀτρεκής, qualifie l'énonciation sincère (ibid. pp. 124-40).

(20) Levet, 1976, pp. 201-214

Extrait de : Louis Basset, La syntaxe de l'imaginaire. Étude des modes et des négations dans l'Iliade et l'Odyssée, Lyon, Maison de l'Orient, 1989.

Homère

"Dans sa célèbre analyse de la mimésis, Éric Auerbach attrait déjà l'attention sur le "réalisme" singulier de l'épopée homérique. En se fondant sur l'étude d'un épisode bien connu de l' Odyssée, la "cicatrice d'Ulysse", il y montre l'existence d'une conception de la vérité située aux antipodes de celle que met en scène l'univers biblique : "On a souvent taxé Homère de mensonge ; mais ce reproche ne diminue en rien l'effet des poèmes homériques : il n'a pas besoin de fonder ses récits sur une vérité historique, sa réalité est suffisamment puissante (...). La Bible ne prétend pas seulement à la vérité de façon beaucoup plus expresse qu'Homère, elle y prétend tyranniquement (...) Le monde des histoires de l'Écriture sainte ne revendique pas seulement la vérité historique, il se donne pour vérité unique" (155) Ainsi, à la Vérité conçue comme valeur universelle l'épopée homérique préfèrerait une autre mesure de la vérité, la réalité.

(...)

Il semble, en effet, que l'homme iliadique soit plus vigilant à ne pas déformer ce qu'il rapporte ou conserve de la réalité, qu'à transmettre une vérité objective pour tous. J. P. Levet a bien mis en évidence l'importance des verbes de déclaration dans les conditions de manifestation du "vrai" : "c'est dans l'échange verbal, écrit-il, que se dessine la fonction première de la langue, traitée comme outil privilégié et irremplaçable de communication, entre deux ou plusieurs consciences, d'une science qui est, primitivement, uniquement sensorielle" (159)

Car percevoir est toujours, dans les Poèmes Homériques, un acte concret, indépendant de toute réflexion au sens théorétique du terme (160) et c'est justement parce qu'elle est fondée sur l'observation fine et méticuleuse des phénomènes que la connaissance, qui chez Homère n'est jamais théorique (161), transgresse la démarcation entre les sensations et la raison (162). Or, cette manière sensorielle d'acquérir la connaissance (dont nous avons constaté le rôle essentiel dans la querelle opposant Ajax et Idoménée), et les contraintes liées à sa communication, interdisent à l'homme de raisonner directement sur la réalité en sortant de lui-même pour aller au-devant de ce qui est objectivement. Comme l'a exprimé justement L. Basset, "ce n'est pas le réel qui est, mais le réel qui se manifeste dans l'expérience, qui constitue le vrai" (163), ce qui revient à souligner l'importance structurelle de la focalisation dans la présentation des choses. L'individu est contraint de "travailler sur le donné installé en lui". Il ne peut transmettre la réalité telle qu'elle est et s'efforce de la rapporter telle qu'elle est reproduite en lui, sans la déformer (164). C'est pourquoi l'adverbe ἀτρεκέως, qui exprime la démarche de l'esprit dans son effort de passivité pour ne pas déformer ce qui est déposé en lui (165), convient bien à une énonciation qui doit à chaque instant capter avec acribie les fluctuations de la réalité en les nommant avec la plus grande précision, comme le fait l'aède dans l'épisode des jeux. Or, nous avons constaté que les locuteurs emploient fréquemment cet adverbe avec le verbe καταλέγειν, ce qui souligne à la fois que ce verbe désigne un mode d'expression bien connu des Grecs archaïques et que "l'on a pris au sérieux cette manière de donner des renseignements, en relation avec une manière de concevoir la réalité et limitée à la situation du donneur de renseignements" (166). Lorsqu'un sujet ne peut pas accéder directement à la réalité ou y faire accéder son interlocuteur (soit parce qu'il ne dispose plus que d'un souvenir, soit qu'il soupçonne son interlocuteur de déloyauté, soit pour une autre raison) tout ce qu'il peut faire, dit J. P. Levet, c'est lui donner un aperçu fidèle "point par point" de la réalité telle qu'elle est conservée en lui.

Pour l'homme homérique, la réalité n'est donc inscrite ni dans les choses (167), ni dans leur seule observation, mais elle prend forme dans la présentation que l'observateur en fait pour son destinataire, c'est-à-dire dans l'interaction où se construit Ie sens. Et le discours en catalogue, dont nous avons observé le pouvoir interactif, se révèle le mode discursif adéquat pour communiquer cette réalité, comme l'illustre avec force l'épisode où Ulysse n'entre en réelle communi(cati)on avec son épouse qu'au moment où il lui décrit en catalogue la fabrication de leur lit (168).

C'est sans doute la célèbre analyse que le philosophe M. Heidegger a menée sur la Vérité comme άλήθeια (169), qui explique la fascination des commentateurs des Poèmes homériques pour ce concept, en dépit de la rareté de ses occurrences dans les Poèmes, surtout dans l' Iliade (170). Ainsi, tout en critiquant l'interprétation étymologique heideggerienne de l'alétheia comme "dés-occultation" ou "dé-voilement" et "ouverture", T. Krischer pense pouvoir mettre en relation ce terme avec le verbe καταλέγειν (171). Conformément au sens premier du verbe καταλέγειν que Krischer propose, à partir du sens de l'expression εμέ ἐλαθε, de traduire par "ne pas remarquer" (et non comme on le fait souvent, au prix de ce qu'il considère comme un " glissement sérieux ", par " être caché "), l'adjectif άληθής désigne en effet, si l'on tient compte de son préfixe privatif, le fait qu'un objet présent attire l'attention et est perçu par un témoin oculaire (172). T. Krischer préconise alors d'interpréter l'expression άλήθέα εἰπειν comme le fait de produire un énoncé qui présente l'objet de façon détaillée afin qu'il ne demeure pas "non remarqué". Or, ajoute-t-il, c'est le verbe καταλέγειν qui exprime en grec cette façon de dire précisément et concrètement quelque chose, d'en faire une "présentation réaliste et exacte qui la traverse point par point", sans rien laisser dans l'ombre, en considérant que chaque détail a son importance. Il conclut de ces remarques que "celui qui connaît la vérité sait la dénombrer et celui qui dénombre bien prouve par là qu'il dit la vérité", établissant ainsi un rapport de contiguïté entre la vérité comme alétheia et l'énonciation catalogale qu'il considère comme le mode privilégié de dénombrement du Vrai (173).

Si l'on ne peut que souscrire aux remarques lumineuses de T. Krischer concernant d'une part le sens perceptif de l'adjectif άληθής, d'autre part l'exhaustivité inhérente à la démarche présentative du καταλέγειν, on peut toutefois lui objecter que l'adjectif άληθής n'est jamais employé avec le verbe καταλέγειν. On trouve en revanche, associé à ce verbe, le substantif άλήθeια, une fois dans l' Iliade, dans le passage controversé de l'entretien entre Priam et Hermès en XXIV 407 (174, et six fois dans l' Odyssée, le plus souvent dans un vers formulaire. Or, à la différence de l'adjectif άληθής dont le sens reste concret, le substantif άλήθeια recouvre un concept dont la signification abstraite (175) ne peut s'adapter à la valeur sémantique concrète de καταλέγειν, ce que T. Krischer semble d'ailleurs pressentir lorsqu'il rappelle que "le concept abstrait est un outil qui rend l'énumération concrète superflue (176)." (pp. 279-284)

Notes

(155) Mimesis. La représentation de la réalité dans la littérature occidentale, 1946, traduction française Gallimard, Paris 1984 pp. 22-23, je souligne.

(159) Le vrai et le faux dans la pensée grecque archaïque, op. cit. p. 57.

(160) C'est ce qu'ont montré différentes analyses du mode de perception des anciens Grecs. En particulier K. von Fritz, dans un article éclairant ("Noos and Noein in the homeric poems", (Classical Philology XXXVIII, 1943, 79-93), explique comment, chez les Grecs d'Homère, la connaissance naît d'une perception (visuelle ou olfactive) et ne s'identifie jamais à in raisonnement. Certes, J. H. Lesher ("Perceiving and Knowing in the Iliad and the Odyssey", Phronesis XXVI 1981, 2-24) critique fortement ce pont de vue, alléguant que si connaissance et visualité étaient synonymes, l'illusion, qui abonde dans l' Odyssée comme l'a bien remarqué Aristote (Poétique 1459b) y serait impossible (p.14 sq.). En fait, von Fritz n'a jamais identifié sensation visuelle et connaissance (p. 90). Il montre que dans l'acte de noein, se manifeste l'usage d'un "sixième sens", une faculté de pénétrer pleinement une situation afin d'en saisir toute la signification, comme le peut celui qui, par exemple, ayant beaucoup voyagé, dispose de l'horizon vaste d'une perception élargie du monde (comme en Iliade XV 80 sq. et I 508 où Zeus est présenté comme celui qui "voit loin" - euruopa-). Mais s'il y a bien une différence entre 1'apparence d'une chose et la saisie de toute la subtilité de sa réalité, cette saisie n'est jamais abstraite. Comme l'ont souligné M. Detienne et J. P. Vernant (Les Ruses de l'Intelligence, la Métis des Grecs, Paris, 1974), elle est redevable de la métis, cette capacité de l'intelligence à s'orienter et à agir dans une situation concrète et complexe (p. 28), qui suppose un sens aiguisé de l'observation et de l'opportunité correspondant à ce que von Fritz appelait le "sixième sens", capable d'anticiper une réalité soumise au hasard. Voir aussi les remarques convergentes de G. Nagy, "Sêma and Noèsis : some illustrations", Arethusa 16, 1983, p. 38.

(161) Voir Ch. Mugler (Les Origines de la Science Grecque chez Homère, Paris 1963 pp. 15-22, 46 et 158). B. Snell montre aussi qu'il n'existe pas d'abstraction chez Homère (Die Entdeckung des Geistes, Hambourg 1948). Selon R. A. Prier ("Some thoughts on the archaic use of metron", The Classical World 1976, 161-169), la pensée archaïque est même en deçà de l'opposition abstrait / concret qui prévaudra à partir de l'irruption de la pensée philosophique et rationaliste du VIème siècle. Le noûs y est la faculté de saisir la dynamique immanente à une situation offerte naturellement (p. 167) et d'approprier le geste à la situation concernée.

(162) Ch. Mugler, Les Origines, op. cit. p. 215, et l'analyse de R. Brague ("Le récit du commencement. Une aporie de la raison grecque"La Naissance de la Raison en Grèce, Actes du Congrés de Nice, dir. J. F. Mattéi, Paris, PUF 1990, pp. 25-27) qui souligne le rôle essentiel de la vue dans le mode de connaissance archaïque.

(163) La syntaxe de l'Imaginaire, Paris 1989, p. 249.

(164) Ibid. p. 237.

(165) Voir supra pp. 28-29.

(166) J. P. Levet, Le Vrai, op. cit. p. 169.

(167) Comme le souligne M. Merleau-Ponty (Le Visible et l'Invisible, Paris 1964 p. 173), "nous ne voyons pas les choses toutes nues parce que le regard même les enveloppe, les habille de sa chair".

(168) Voir supra p. 189 sq.

(169) Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit 1943 ; Alétheia in Vortrâge und Aufsätze 1954. La question est bien résumée par J. P. Levet, Le Vrai..., op. cit. pp. 48-51.

(170) Le terme apparaît sept fois dans l' Odyssée (on trouvera le relevé des occurrences chez J. P. Levet, ibid. p. 59) et seulement deux fois dans l' Iliade : en XXIV 407 (avec καταλέζω), et dans un passage de la course de chars en XXIII 361.

(171) "ETYMOΣ und AΛΗΘΗΣ", Krischer, T. (1965) “ΕΤΥΜΟΣ und ΑΛΗΘΗΣ,” Philologus 109: 1965, p. 164.

(172) Ibid, p. 162. Ainsi, en Iliade XIII 272-273, le verbe καταλέγειν a pour antonyme ἰδμεναι dont le rapport sémantique avec la perception visuelle est bien connu. G. Nagy, dans un article où il s'intéresse précisément à certains passages du chant XXIII de l' Iliade, montre que l'expression ουδἓ με ληεσει y est souvent utilisée comme synonyme de νομσω), verbe de perception qui exprime simultanément "the noticing of signs and the recognition of what they mean" ("Sêma and noesis...", art. cit. 1983, p. 38).

(173) Cette interprétation inspire aussi les analyses de M. Finkelberg qui substitue à l'idée de dénombrement celle de succession narrative ("Homer's view of the epic narrative : some formulaic evidence", Classical Philology LXIII 1987, p. 138) : "The ordered succession was regarded as the form of a truthful narration and the truth as the content of a point-by-point narrative succession". Elle conclut son étude en affirmant que pour Homère, la "narration catalogale" constitue "le modèle formel de toute narration véridictive" (p. 138). Or nous avons pu établir au fil de cette étude que καταλέγειν ne désigne en toute rigueur ni un dénombrement, ni une narration, encore moins un modèle narratif de véridicité.

(174) Passage étudié supra p. 37.

(175) Voir P. Chantraine, La formation des Noms en Grec Ancien, Paris 1933, pp. 86-88, et J. P. Levet, Le Vrai..., op. cit. p. 78.

(176) Art. cit. 1965, p. 172.

Extrait de : Sylvie Perceau, La parole vive. Communiquer en catalogue dans l'épopée homérique, Louvain: Peters, 2002.

Hésiode

Théogonie. Les travaux et les jours. Le bouclier - Paris, Belles Lettres, 1928 (réédition 2002)

ἴδμεν ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγειν ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοι̂α,

ἴδμεν δ', εὐ̂τ' ἐθέλωμεν, ἀληθέα γηρύσασθαι.

"si nous savons dire bien des mensonges qui ont tout l’air d’être réalité

nous savons, quand nous le voulons, faire entendre des vérités"

(Hésiode, Théogonie et autres poèmes suivi des Hymnes homériques, Édition de Jean-Louis Backès, Paris : Gallimard, 2001, vv. 27-28)

"La Vérité et le Mensonge.

Le "vrai et le "faux" en tant que compléments de verbes énonciatifs, indiquent le conformité (ou la non-conformité d'un énoncé aux choses.

Pour dire qu'un énoncé est vrai, Hésiode dispose de deux termes. Le premier, employé deux fois, se présente sous les formes έτυμος et έτητυμος, cette dernière variante comportant, selon Chantraine, un redoublement expressif (204). Ces termes désignent des paroles conformes à la réalité (205), au point qu'on a supposé une origine commune du terme avec εΐναι et suggéré un type d'exactitude vérifiable dans la réalité sensible (206. On observe en effet cette conformité aux choses dans les développements des Travaux que le poète a annoncés comme des έτήτυμα destinés à instruire Perses de ses devoirs. Ces paroles exactes sont le fait du poète et des Muses, même si le vers 27 de la Théogonie les intègre au "savoir dire" des déesses au prix d'un détour par les mensonges "de même valeur que des paroles véridiques".

La valeur d'αληθής, "non caché", a fait l'objet de discussions. Pour certains, l'adjectif désigne une qualité des choses : dire des άληθέα signifie "reproduire dans un discours quelque chose qui existe sans se dissimuler (qui se révèle) au monde (207). Pour d'autres, il s'agit d'une qualité de la formulation, "dire la vérité de manière que l'objet qu'on a en vue ne demeure plus caché" (208). Je ne suis pas sûre qu'il y ait lieu de choisir : "dire le vrai nom" d'un jour, par exemple, suppose que ne soient cachés ni les actes auxquels il est propice ni sa désignation exacte. Pour Detienne, est άληθης ce qui n'est pas de l'ordre de l'oubli (λήθη) et relève de la mémoire (209). Cette valeur de l'adjectif est rendue particulièrement visible dans son emploi à propos de Nérée, dit à la fois "sincère" (άληθης) et "n'oubli(ant) pas" (ουδε λήθεται) la justice (210). Elle ne contredit pas celle de "non caché", mais la complète : l'une et l'autre répondent aux sens attestés chez Hésiode pour les verbes λανθάνω, λήθω et έπιλήθω qui signifient à l'actif "être caché, échapper à la connaissance" et peuvent prendre au moyen la valeur d' "oublier" (211). Dans les cas οù ces "vérités" renvoient à un énoncé, elles sont compléments des verbes signifiant "dire le nom" et "faire connaître par la voix" (212), qui supposent un savoir préalable que la parole rappelle ou révèle ; il n'y a pas de dévoilement sans mémoire et, si Hésiode accorde à cette dernière une place de choix dans la révélation du vrai, cela tient à sa conception de la parole poétique dont il sera question plus loin (213).

Ces termes exprimant diversement 1a vérité sont employés dans le sens qu'ils ont déjà chez Homère, où, quand ils sont impliqués dans des situations d'énonciation, les mots άληθης et αληθείη supposent un exposé complet, un compte-rendu sans dissimulation (214) ; έτήτνμος s'applique à des paroles qui disent les choses comme elles sont (215) et s'oppose au non réalisé (216).

Cependant la qualité de vrai, chez Homère, concerne des propos que l'on exige οu tient présentement. Elle ne prend jamais la valeur générale que les constructions hésiodiques lui assignent : les "paroles véridiques" que le poète va "dire" désignent le poème dans son ensemble ; les "vérités" que les Muses savent "proclamer" semblent n'avoir d'autre limite que leur bon vouloir.

Il en va de même pour le faux, que les textes homériques appliquent au contexte étroit alors qu'Hésiode fait des Pseudéa des divinités emblématiques. On relève en outre une différence sémantique entre les deux poètes. Chez Hοmère, ψευδεα peut désigner l'erreur de bonne fοi (217) οu un acte (la violation d'un pacte) (218). Aucun de ces deux sens ne figure chez Hésiode : les contextes supposent toujours une situation verbale et une distorsion consciente de soi. Le mensonge caractérisé est néanmoins plus net dans le verbe que dans le nom : le faux témoignage et la vantardise auxquels le verbe est associé dans les Travaux, la sévérité de la punition à laquelle expose le mensonge divin appuyé d'un parjure, donnant lieu à un exposé de plus de vingt vers dans la Théogonie, sont l'objet d'une dénonciation claire (219). Le nom "mensonges", quant à lui, semble, comme les λόγοι auxquels il est associé trois fois sur quatre (220), constituer une catégorie de talents rhétoriques dont l'effectuation précise n'est pas véritablement prise en compte. C'est évidemment le cas pour les puissances emblématiques descendant de Nuit, les frères Pseudéa et Logoi. Chez la femme, les "mensonges et discours trompeurs" s'intègrent dans la liste des qualités qui lui sont conférées à titre permanent lors de sa création. L'homme né le sixième jour sera beau parleur en toutes catégories : railleries, mensonges, discours trompeurs et furtifs. Dans les deux cas où ψευδεα et λόγοι sont employés séparément, chez les Muses et chez Zeus, ce caractère de généralité s'estompe. Les "discours trompeurs" de Zeus à Métis s'intègrent dans un épisode précis où un but leur est assigné (221). Les distorsions constitutives du savoir des Muses sont limitées par la vérité à laquelle elles sont reliées syntaxiquement et sémantiquement.

Mis en situation, ψεύδεα et λόγοι s'en vont dans des sens divergents. Chez Zeus, la tromperie l'emporte sur le discours, réduit à l'état de moyen. Chez les Muses, sont mis au premier plan, avec l'expression ιδμεν...λέγειν, la parole et le savoir, mais aussi la valeur de vérité de ces ψευδεα ετυμοισιν óμoἰα. Contrairement aux άληθέα, indéterminés et ainsi absolus, les "mensonges" s'inscrivent dans l'horizon de la vérité et se définissent par rapport à elle. Il paraît raisonnable de leur attribuer la valeur de "fictions" mentionnée par Chantraine (222). Il serait en effet paradoxal de supposer qu'au moment même de son initiation, le poète prête aux Muses qui le légitiment une intention aussi manifestement contraire aux prétentions véridiques qu'il affiche. D'autre part la notion de "mensonge" se définit par la convergence de deux champs de signification qui peuvent être indépendants : l'intention d'induire en erreur sur le fond et l'inexactitude des paroles. Plusieurs emplois homériques mentionnés plus haut ne retiennent que la seconde acception. Rien n'interdit à Hésiode de choisir le cas de figure inverse : des distorsions intentionnelles au plan du récit sans intention de tromper sur le fond, et comportant au contraire, sous le contrôle du savoir des Muses, l'intention de ramener à la vérité. Des fables, par exemple, que même des têtes dures peuvent comprendre. Nous y reviendrons.

Ainsi les deux noms qui, chez les hommes, nomment une qualité générale, présentant le double caractère de la tromperie et de l'habileté rhétorique, se spécialisent-ils chez les dieux dans l'un οu l'autre registre tout en conservant plus οu moins à l'amère-plan la deuxième partie de leur sens. Inversement, la proclamation des vérités par les Muses a toutes les apparences d'une qualité générale. Il semble donc y avoir au moins la trace d'une différence entre hommes et dieux dans l'aptitude à dire vrai ou faux." (pp. 67-72)

Notes

(203) En Th. 233, l'adjectif prend la valeur de "franc". Il s'agit d'une qualité de Nérée et non d'une énonciation. Il en va de même pour άψεvδής (ibid.).

(204) Chantraine, 1968, s.v. έτόος. Lüther, 1935, p. 51 ss.

(205) Chantraine, ibid. ; Pucci, 1976, p. 12.

(206) Krischer, 1965, p.166. Verdenius, 1962, p. 119, estime que les "vérités", au vers 10 des Travaux, suggèrent que la Théogonie n'a pas dit toute la vérité.

(207) Heitsch, 1962, p. 24-33 ; 1966 b., p. 193-235. Voir les remarques de Detienne, 1967, p. 48, 147. Ultérieurement Hommel, 1969. C'est la notion heideggerienne de Unverborgenheit ; voir par exemple Sein und Zeit, 1927, trad. fr. Vezin p. 270-271, et la conférence intitulée Aletheia des Vortrage und Aufsätze, trad. fr. Essais et Conférences, Paris, 1958.

(208) Mette, Lexicon, 1955-, s.v. άληθής.

(209) Detienne, 1960, p. 27-35, et surtout 1967. Également Krischer, 1965, p. 165.

(210) Th. 233, 235-236. La mémoire et l'oubli constituent une antithèse appuyée aux vers 54-55 et 102-103 de la Théogonie. Léthé et les Pseudéa sont frères, Th. 227, 229.

(211) Exception : λςινθάνομαι au sens d' "être caché", Th. 471. λανθάνω : Οp. 52 (actif), 264 (moyen) ; λήθω : Οp. 268, 491 (actif) ; Th. 236, 547 (moyen) ; επιληθω : Th. 102, 560 ; Οp. 275 (moyen).

(212) Voir Chantraine, Dict., s.v. γήυς. Au vers 768 des Travaux, la construction met l'accent sur la détermination du vrai et non sur sa formulation.

(213) Voir infra, p. 204-221.

(214) Il. 6.382 ; 23.361 ; 24.407 ; Od.3.247, 254 ; 7.297 ; 11.507 ; 13.254 ; 14.125 ; 16.61, 226 ; 17.15, 108, 122 ; 18.342 ; 21.212 ; 22.420. Cole, 1983, relève les connotations de précision et d'ordre d'άληθής.

(215) Il. 10.534 ; 18.128 ; 22.438 ; 23.440 ; Od.1.174 ; 4.140, 157, 645 ; 13.232 ; 14.186 ; 19.203 ; 23.62 ; 24.258, 259, 297, 403.

(216) Od. 19.567.

(217) Il. 10.534 ; Od. 4.140.

(218) Il. 4.235 ; 7.352.

(219) Th. 783-804.

(220) Theraios, 1974, p. 139 relève cette proximité. Boeder 1959, p. 90, 99, suggère que l'emploi du pluriel λόγοι a quelque rapport avec l'erreur ; l'emploi du terme au singulier ouvrirait au contraire la voie de la vérité.

(221) Th. 890.

(222) Chantraine, Dict., s.v. ψυυδομaι.

Termes pour le vrai et le faux dans l'œuvre d'Hésiode (Leclerc, 1993 p. 68) : Th. = Théogonie, Op. = (Opera et Dies) Les travaux et les jours.

References

Boeder, H. (1959). "Der Frühgriechische Wortgebrauch Von Lógos Und Alétheia", Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, 4, pp. 82-112.

Chantraine, P. (1968). Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, Paris: Klincksieck.

Detienne, M. (1960). "La notion mythique d'Ἀλήθεια", Revue des Études Grecques, 73, pp. 27-35.

Detienne, M. (1967). Les Maîtres de vérité dans la Grèce archaïque, Paris: François Maspero.

Heitsch, E. (1962). "Die Nicht Philosophische Alétheia,"Hermes 90, pp. 24-33.

Hommel, H. (1969). "Wahrheit und Gerechtigkeit. Zur Geschichte und Deutung eines Begriffspaars", Antike und Abendland, 15, pp.159-186.

Krischer, T. (1965). “ΕΤΥΜΟΣ und ΑΛΗΘΗΣ,” Philologus 109: 161–173.

Wilhelm Luther, (1935). “Wahrheit” und “Lüge” im ältesten Griechentum, Borna–Leipzig.

Pietro Pucci, (1976). Hesiod and the Language of Poetry, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Snell B., und Mette, H. J. (1955). Lexicon des frühgriechischen Epos, Göttingen.

Theraios, D.-K. (1974). "Logos bei Hesiod (Theog. 1-35)", Hermes, vol. 102, pp. 136-142.

Verdenius, W. J. (1962). “Aufbau und Absicht der Erga,” in Hésiode et son Influence, Geneva: Fondation Hardt, pp. 109-159.

Extrait de : Marie-Christine Leclerc, La parole chez Hésiode. À la recherche de l'harmonie perdue. Paris : Les Belles Lettres 1993.

"Celui-ci [Hésiode] fait en effet précéder le proème traditionnel de la Théogonie (v. 104-115) d'un autre proème, plus développé (v. 1-103), qui indique l'horizon de préoccupation à partir duquel l'héritage épique se trouve à la fois assumé et dépassé. La logique de cette mise en perspective réfléchissante, dont la complexité et la virtuosité technique ont souvent été remarquées (3), est résumée dans l'adresse des Muses (v. 26-28) qui prélude au sacre du poète.

Hésiode y distingue les réalités fictives (pseudéa), qui naissent de l'imitation parfaite des réalités sensibles (etuma) dans l'élément du langage, des réalités vraies (alétheia), qui semblent relever d'un autre registre de la parole. Cette distinction n'instaure cependant pas, comme on l'a souvent soutenu, une opposition franche, voire polémique, entre la poésie didactique, que revendiquerait Hésiode, et la fiction traditionnelle, représentée par Homère. En effet, rien ne permet de penser que les Muses réservent à Hésiode une moitié seulement de leur double pouvoir. Bien au contraire, le fait même qu'elles rappellent leur habileté à forger des fictions, avant de faire état de leur capacité de proférer, à leur gré ), des vérités, suggère qu'il existe un rapport étroit entre les deux registres de l'invention pure et de la connaissance.

La qualité cognitive exprimée par l'adjectif αληθής [aléthes] a été cernée à partir de deux hypothèses diamétralement opposées. La première est parfaitement représentée par l'article d'E. Heitsch, qui s'inspire de l'interprétation heideggérienne du terme (4). Partant de l'étymologie probable (ἀ-ληθη), qui indique quelque chose comme la suppression (α-) de l'état de non-perception (ληθη), l'auteur donne à la notion d'ἀληθέἰα le sens de "révélation" ou de "manifestation". Serait alors αληθής ce qui fait irruption dans l'univers des représentations familières pour y introduire une dimension méconnue du réel. La seconde hypothèse est défendue par H. J. Mette (5). Suivant son analyse, est ἀληθης ce qui est toujours déjà présent, mais échappe seulement à mon attention. En effet, le verbe λανθανω ne signifie pas que j'ignore ce qui va se révéler ou se manifester en surgissant d'un ailleurs absolu, mais plutôt que je n'ai pas conscience de quelque chose qui est déjà là, pour ainsi dire sous mes yeux, et qui m'échappe parce que je me trouve momentanément incapable d'y porter mon attention. L'enquête minutieuse que T. Krischer a consacrée à l'ensemble des occurrences d'αληθήςς et d'ἐτυμος dans Homère (6) étaie les conclusions de Mette. Si ἐτυμον désigne, en accord avec l'étymologie (cf. εταζο), une réalité susceptible d'être vérifiée par un critère objectif et quasiment "expérimental", αληθής, au contraire, évoque une réalité qui n'est pas vérifiable par un critère extérieur, mais qui s'impose immédiatement à la conscience. Ce qui frappe ainsi l'esprit ne saurait être confondu avec les données brutes de la sensation, même si la qualité particulière de la perception dite vraie prend appui sur une réalité d'abord présente dans les sens. De là s'explique que le terme d'ἀληθης ne sert pas tant à caractériser les faits eux-mêmes que le contenu du discours qui les rapporte. Dans la formule homérique "dire la vérité", l'accent est mis sur l'exactitude et l'exhaustivité du discours qui traite son objet sans rien ne déformer ni omettre. Les réalités dites vraies appartiennent à la réalité seconde du discours, par opposition aux réalités sensibles auxquelles il se réfère. La parole devient le seul garant des choses qu'elle recense quand celles-ci échappent au contrôle direct, en raison de leur éloignement dans l'espacez ou de leur inscription éphémère dans le temps (8).

Ce dispositif conceptuel relativement simple, qui oppose les réalités appartenant à l'expérience sensible à leur restitution fidèle dans le discours, se trouve compliqué par l'existence d'un registre de la parole qui vient s'interposer entre l'un et l'autre type de certitude. Le caractère plausible des fictions mensongères d'Ulysse (9), qui permet au récit homérique tout entier de se refléter dans l'adresse inventive de son héros, fait découvrir une dimension du langage dont l'efficacité se confond avec l'essence même de la narration. Celle-ci est l'apanage premier des Muses, qui soumettent les ressources infinies de l'imagination au principe régulateur de la mémoire. Or l'univers ordonné de la fiction narrative creuse comme un écart avec le monde de l'expérience sensible et permet de redéfinir et d'approfondir la notion de la vérité.

C'est ce que fait Hésiode quand il prête aux Muses, outre le pouvoir d'imiter les réalités sensibles, la faculté de dire le vrai. En effet, les réalités dites vraies (ἀληθεα) se dégagent, à condition d'y prêter attention, du mouvement même de la fiction comme autant d'effets de signification dont l'évidence, purement intellectuelle, relève de l'ordre de la connaissance. Alors que les réalités sensibles (ετυμα) sont à la portée de tous les hommes, même des plus frustes, comme les bergers que vise l'invective du vers 26 et dont le ventre constitue la principale instance de vérification, l'appréhension des significations suppose l'acculturation à l'aide de la fiction, qui fournit le support nécessaire à leur élaboration. Ainsi, la Théogonie se trouve définie comme une œuvre qui, avec les moyens de la fiction, déploie des significations vraies que la philosophie continuera à travailler pour en tirer ses systèmes.

Si le discours philosophique s'éloigne progressivement de la fiction, en passant de la cosmogonie à la cosmologie, puis à l'ontologie, le récit théogonique reste attaché à l'évocation fictionnelle d'événements s'inscrivant dans l'expérience sensible du monde, tout en faisant apparaître un ensemble d'articulations noétiques qui ne sauraient être vérifiées par les sens. Ces choses vraies, qui ne sont pas encore la vérité des philosophes mais qui l'annoncent, se présentent sous la forme d'un certain nombre d'implications conceptuelles (mises en relief par l'analogie et la répétition) qui confèrent aux événements relatés le statut réglé de la signification." (pp. 17-19)

Notes

(3) Voir notamment Pierre Judet de La Combe, "L'autobiographie comme mode d'universalisation. Hésiode et l'Hélicon", dans : G. Arrighetti-F. Montanari (éds.), La Componente autobiografica nella poesia greca e latina fra realtà e artificio letterario, Pise, 1993, p. 25-39.

(4) Hermes 90, 1962, p. 24-33.

(5) Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos, s.v. αληθής, p. 477.

(6) “ΕΤΥΜΟΣ und ΑΛΗΘΗΣ,” Philologus 109: 1965, p. 161-173.

(7) Cf. Iliade XXIV, v. 407, où Priam demande à Hermès de l'informer fidèlement sur l'état du cadavre d'Hector.

(8) Voir Iliade XXIII, v. 361, où Phénix doit observer la course de chars et rendre compte avec précision de ce qui s'est passé.

(9) Cf. Odyssée XIX, v. 203

(10) Cf. Iliade I, v. 70

Extrait de : Heinz Wismann, "Propositions pour une lecture d'Hésiode". In Le métier du mythe. Lectures d'Hésiode. Édité par Fabienne Blaise, Pierre Judet de la Combe, et Philippe Rousseau -Villeneuve-d'Ascq, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion 1996.

"Il ne me semble pas suffisant d'établir que l'on peut interpréter l'adjectif alèthés comme signifiant "vérifiable" au sens étymologique où le mot nie l'idée d' "échapper à la conscience" implicite dans la racine dont il est dérivé, lèth-, de léthé "oubli" et lanthánô "échapper à la conscience de" (21). Il est vrai qu' alèthés exprime l'idée de voir quelque chose "pour de vrai" mais il y a plus que cela : nous devons examiner de quelle manière la négation de léth- sert d'équivalent au concept positif me-. La clé se trouve dans le fait que mnè- ne signifie pas seulement "se souvenir" mais très précisément "recouvrer l'essence de l'être" comme l'a montré Jean-Pierre Vernant (22). Dans l'ancienne pensée mythique grecque une telle essence est au-delà de la réalité sensible, au-delà du temps (23). Et surtout, comme Marcel Detienne l'a montré, l'ancienne tradition grecque affirme que cette essence est contrôlée par le poète, maître de "vérité" ou alétheia (24).

Reste un problème : au vers 28 de la Théogonie, alêthéa n'est pas opposé à léthè mais à pseûdea "choses fallacieuses" dans le vers précédent. On a soutenu que cette antithèse représentait " une manière de pensée plus tardive, plus rationnelle, dans laquelle alétheia signifie 'vérité' " (25). Tout se passe comme si une opposition nouvelle, d'esprit rationaliste, entre alêthéa "choses vraies" et pseûdea "choses fallacieuses" se surimposait à une opposition plus ancienne, mythique, entre alétheia pris au sens de "non-défaillance de la conscience" et léthé "défaillance de la conscience", avec le résultat que les deux oppositions se chevauchent et coexistent en fait (26). Et l'on a soutenu de surcroît qu'il se produisait même un chevauchement entre alétheia et léthê aussi bien qu'entre alêthéa et pseûdea au point qu'aucun acte de mémoire n'est exempt d'une certaine mesure d'oubli, aucune expression de la vérité exempte d'une certaine tromperie (27). J'accorde qu'il existe bien un schème de pensée dans lequel mnê- au sens de "se souvenir" inclut un aspect de léth- "oublier " (28). Mais je ne suis pas d'accord pour autant avec l'idée que l'adjectif alèthés et le nom alétheia se comportent de même ; tout au contraire, comme je l'ai montré longuement ailleurs, arêtes et alétheia excluent explicitement une inadvertance de l'esprit (29).

L'absence d'ambiguïté, voire la valeur absolue, des mots alèthés et alétheia explique qu'ils dénotent un acte de parole et de fait, à son tour, explique l'autorité et le pouvoir d'autoriser qui s'attachent à leur force illocutoire." pp. 45-47

(21) Cole, "Archaic Truth", Quaderni Urbinati, n.s. 13, 1983, p. 7-28, donne un exposé admirable de la sémantique d' aléthes et des interprétations proposées dans lequel il rejette la thèse heideggérienne qu'une valeur "objective" de la vérité est inhérente au mot (la vérité non "cachée" dans ce qui est perçu). L'interprétation propre de Cole est une reformulation de solutions plus anciennes insistant sur une valeur de vérité "subjective" (la vérité non "oubliée" par celui qui perçoit). Il suggère (p. 12) que " l'oubli exclu par alétheiaa concerne au premier chef le processus de la transmission -- et non l'appréhension mentale sur laquelle repose la transmission". Par suite alétheia "ne désigne pas seulement la non-omission d'éléments d'information du fait de l'oubli, du manque d'attention ou de l'ignorance, mais aussi le fait de ne pas oublier d'une minute à l'autre ce qui a été dit quelques minutes auparavant et de ne pas laisser passer quoi que ce soit de dit ou de non-dit sans être conscient de ses conséquences et de ses implications " (p. 12).

Notes

(22) Vernant, Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs, 2ème éd., Paris, 1985, p. 108-136 (lère éd. : I, p. 80-107).

(23) Thalmann Conventions of form and thought in early Greek poetry, Baltimore/Londres, p. 147, paraphrasant Vernant. J'ai adopté sa traduction de l'expression de Vernant "le fond de l'être " (Mythe et pensée I, p. 86) par " l'essence de l'être "définie comme" la réalité qui s'étend au-delà du monde sensible " (Thalmann, ibid.).

(24) P. 9 à 27.

(25) Thalmann, p. 148 (et p. 230, n. 31), qui suit Detienne, p. 75 à 77.

(26) Thalmann, ibid.

(27) Thalmann, ibid., à la suite de Detienne et de Pucci, Hesiod and the Language of Poetry, Baltimore/Londres, 1977.

(28) Pindar's Homer : the lyric possession of an epic past, Baltimore, 1990, p. 58, à la suite de Detienne, p. 22-27.

(29) Pindar's Homer, p. 59-61.

Extrait de : Gregory Nagy, "Autorité et auteur dans la Théogonie hésiodique". In Le métier du mythe. Lectures d'Hésiode. Édité par Fabienne Blaise, Pierre Judet de la Combe, et Philippe Rousseau -Villeneuve-d'Ascq, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion 1996. pp. 41-52.

"La profondeur et le sérieux de la réflexion à laquelle Hésiode soumet l'héritage épique traditionnel, tant en ce qui concerne le patrimoine expressif que le réseau complexe des valeurs et des idéaux ou, encore, les principes de la poétique propre à l'épopée, sont désormais des réalités bien établies (1). Dans ces conditions, la reprise quasi littérale du vers 203 d' Odyssée XIX, "Il fit paraître de nombreux mensonges semblables aux réalités", par le vers 27 de la Théogonie, "Nous savons dire de nombreux mensonges semblables aux réalités" peut, je crois, trouver une explication convaincante (2). Il est en effet légitime de se demander encore une fois quelle intention définie sous-tend la référence au texte homérique, à ce texte homérique précis : la référence à Odyssée XIX, v. 203 -- qui intervient dans un contexte polémique et dont il est difficile de penser qu'elle ne soit pas polémique elle-même -- n'a-t-elle qu'une valeur indicative, c'est-à-dire ne sert-elle qu'à désigner toute la poésie homérique -- ou, pour le moins, la tradition de la poésie héroïque --, ou bien peut-on y déceler des objectifs plus précis et plus circonscrits, et si oui, lesquels ?

La possibilité ou l'impossibilité de saisir les intentions d'Hésiode constitue selon moi le nœud du problème. Renoncer à définir l'objet de la polémique contenue dans le vers 27 (l'épopée dans son ensemble ou une partie ou un élément de l'épopée) reviendrait en effet à admettre qu'Hésiode n'a indiqué aucun critère qui permette de définir la part de mensonge et la part de vérité qui entrent selon lui dans ce type de production poétique. Autrement dit, si l'on n'établit pas une référence précise, hors de l'œuvre d'Hésiode, pour Théogonie, v. 27, il faut alors accepter comme présupposé fondamental et contraignant pour toute interprétation de son œuvre qu'il lui est impossible de sortir d'une situation d'incertitude entre mensonge et vérité, puisque les Muses peuvent inspirer aussi bien l'un que l'autre. Ce serait une position parfaitement légitime si chez Hésiode pris dans sa totalité, c'est-à-dire du premier vers de la Théogonie au dernier vers des Travaux, ne se manifestait pas la conscience claire et sûre de connaître la vérité et de posséder les moyens de l'enseigner à autrui (3). Nier cela revient à méconnaître le trait caractéristique de la poésie d'Hésiode, à savoir son intention didactique." (pp. 53-54)

Notes

Il n'est pas inutile de rappeler que j'ai déjà discuté ailleurs plusieurs des problèmes présentés dans ce texte, notamment dans les soixante premières pages de mon livre Poeti, eruditi e biografi. Momenti della riflessione dei Greci sulla letteratura, Pise, 1987 (Biblioteca di studi antichi, 52). Mais si ce travail suppose les développements que j'ai présentés dans cet ouvrage, je ne cherche pas à donner ici un résumé ou une répétition de ces pages, mais plutôt un prolongement et une confirmation des hypothèses que j'y propose. Par ailleurs, j'aborde ici des textes et des problèmes parmi les plus discutés par la critique hésiodique, et la bibliographie qui les concerne est très abondante. Je n'ai donc pas cru nécessaire d'exposer tous les travaux des autres (ce que j'ai fait ailleurs) ; les indications bibliographiques que je donnerai seront donc limitées aux recherches qui m'ont paru les plus significatives pour les questions que j'aborde ici. Il vaut la peine de signaler qu'entre-temps est paru le livre important de Marie-Christine Leclerc, La Parole chez Hésiode (Collection d'Études Anciennes, 121, série grecque), Paris, 1993, qui traite beaucoup de problèmes analogues à ceux qui sont discutés ici. Je voudrais, enfin, exprimer ma gratitude à Pierre Judet de La Combe, qui a traduit mon texte (publié, avec quelques modifications, dans : Athenaeum, n.s. 80, 1992, p. 45-63)."

(1) Voir G. Arrighetti, Poeti, eruditi e biografi, 1ère partie, chap. 1, et également G. A. : "Notte e i suoi figli : tecnica catalogica ed uso dell'aggettivazione", dans : Tradizione e innovazione nella cultura greca da Omero all'età ellenistica, Scritti in onore di Bruno Gentili, vol. I, Rome, 1993, p. 101-114.

(2) Sur le rapport formel entre le vers 27 de la Théogonie et Odyssée XIX, V. 203, voir par exemple H. Neitzel, Homer-Rezeption bei Hesiod (Abhandl. Kunst-, Musik-, Literaturwissenschaft, 189), Bonn, 1975, p. 8-10, avec la bibliographie. Il ne fait maintenant plus de doute, je crois, qu'avec le vers 27 Hésiode fait allusion à la production poétique des autres, par opposition à la sienne, et qu'avec le vers 28 il attribue à sa propre poésie le mérite de la véridicité. C'est le sens le plus clair et le plus évident que suggèrent les vers 26-28, et que confirme l'ensemble des contenus de l'œuvre d' Hésiode.

Cependant, pour établir cela encore une fois, il a fallu tout l'effort déployé par Neitzel dans son article d'Hermes 108, 1980 (p. 387-401). Pour ce qui est de la polémique contre les autres poètes, je suis absolument convaincu qu'Hésiode suppose chez ses destinataires une connaissance précise de l'épopée homérique ; voir sur cette question, J. U. Schmidt, Würzburger Jahrbücher, n.s. 14, 1988, p. 41 s. Schmidt fait également remarquer (p. 44) que les termes employés par les Muses au vers 27 sont une mise en garde de caractère général concernant toute poésie composée en leur nom. C'est vrai, mais la cible de la polémique, au vers 27, se laisse plus précisément identifier et circonscrire.

(3) La tentative de K. Latte (Kleine Schriften, Munich, 1968, p. 71-73) de définir en quoi la vérité d'Hésiode s'oppose à l'épopée doit être prise au sérieux, même si elle ne satisfait pas entièrement. Cette vérité serait la conscience, permanente chez Hésiode, de la mission d'enseignement de sa poésie et se manifesterait dans l'attention qu'il prête à la réalité concrète de la vie humaine : "la vérité que la Muse sait transmettre... est... la relation à sa propre existence". C'est vrai, mais cela ne vaut quasiment que pour les Travaux.

Extrait de : Giovanni Arrighetti, "Hésiode et les Muses. Le don de la vérité et la conquête de la parole". In Le métier du mythe. Lectures d'Hésiode. Edité par Fabienne Blaise, Pierre Judet de la Combe, et Philippe Rousseau, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion 1996. pp. 53-70.

Hérodote

"Dans les Histoires, le champ lexical de l' alêthéia se compose de 81 occurrences : 28 du substantif lui-même, 17 de l'adverbe alêthéôs, 34 de l'adjectif aléthês et 2 du verbe aléthizomai (333). Or Hérodote n'emploie ce vocabulaire qu'à quinze reprises dans des déclarations d'une portée généralement limitée. Ces déclarations se répartissent en effet en quatre catégories : ce sont ou bien des réserves sur la réalité du fait discuté et cela par neuf fois ; ou des "opinions de vérité (334)", dans deux cas ; ou encore, et à deux reprises, des précisions érudites de pur détail qui n'engagent nullement l'ensemble du développement dans lequel elles s'insèrent ; ce sont enfin des assertions hésitantes, dans deux cas seulement.

Examinons de plus près les passages ainsi répartis. Les réserves prennent parfois la forme de suppositions. Au lieu de s'interroger sur la réalité du fait, l'enquêteur adopte l'attitude surprenante qui consiste à faire l'hypothèse de son existence, afin de poursuivre une réflexion sur les modalités de sa réalisation ou sur ses conséquences. Il écarte ainsi une question qu'il ne peut ou ne veut résoudre -- celle de savoir si le fait s'est réellement produit -- et préfère examiner comment il s'est déroulé et ce qu'il a entraîné -- à supposer qu'il se soit produit.

La fondation conjointe de deux oracles de Zeus, l'un en Libye et l'autre à Dodone, en Grèce, fait, comme nous l'avons vu précédemment (335), l'objet de deux récits que l'enquêteur combine pour élaborer sa propre version des événements (11, 56). Et, de toute évidence, il est plus préoccupé de conduire cette synthèse que d'en prouver le fondement, entendons l'origine thébaine des oracles, et l'enlèvement perpétré par les Phéniciens, lorsqu'il déclare en introduction : "Quant à moi, je suis de l'opinion que voici. Si véritablement les Phéniciens enlevèrent les femmes consacrées et allèrent vendre l'une d'elles en Libye et l'autre en Grèce, je pense que cette dernière fut vendue..." Suit l'évocation du déroulement de cet événement dont l'existence même pose problème. Notons cependant que tout ce passage est placé sous le signe de l'opinion (gnômé ; dokéei moi). S'agit-il de la fontaine de jouvence des Éthiopiens "Longue-vie" ? Il suppose qu'elle existe réellement pour traiter de ce que produirait son éventuelle existence : la longévité du peuple qui utiliserait ses eaux. "Si cette eau est vraiment à leur disposition telle qu'on le dit, prend-il soin de déclarer, ce pourrait être grâce à elle que, s'en servant de façon constante, les Éthiopiens ont une longue vie" (111,23).

Il en va un peu différemment du chapitre IV,195, car, après avoir émis des réserves sur la réalité du fait, comme dans les cas précédents, l'enquêteur ne se résout pas à n'en rien pouvoir dire et à dévier sa recherche. C'est pourquoi il demande au raisonnement analogique de pallier les carences de son information et de le conduire, sinon à l' alêthéia, du moins sur la voie de celle-ci. Ce passage offre l'exemple exceptionnel dans les Histoires d'une recherche dans laquelle l'enquêteur place l' alêthéia en point de mire, tout en avouant qu'elle reste hors de sa portée et qu'il n'établit que du vraisemblable. Il fait un effort analogue pour évaluer le récit qui veut que le plongeur Skyllias de Skionè ait déserté chez les Grecs en plongeant aux Aphètes pour ne refaire surface que quatre-vingts stades plus loin, à l'Artémision (VIII,8). Après l'avoir mis en doute : "Je me demande avec étonnement si ce que l'on dit est véritable", il essaie cette fois de montrer que ce récit est mensonger en alléguant les autres traditions qui courent sur le plongeur : "On raconte sur le compte de cet homme beaucoup de choses qui ont tout l'air de mensonges et quelques-unes qui sont vraies." Mais il n'arrive pas plus à démontrer qu'un fait et le récit qui le rapporte sont faux qu'il ne parvient à établir leur réalité/vérité ; aussi conclut-il sur un avis personnel montrant qu'à ses yeux l'histoire de Skyllias est une fable : "Pour cette fois, qu'il me soit permis de dire qu'à mon avis il gagna l'Artémision sur un esquif." Hérodote reste en deçà du mensonge comme de la vérité.

Ces quelques exemples donnent raison à W. Luther (336) pour qui l' alêthéia hérodotéenne a gardé le sens de celle que, dans l' Iliade (XXIII, v. 361), Achille attend de Phoenix, quand il place son compagnon à l'extrémité de la carrière de sorte qu'il puisse observer la course de chars, en graver le souvenir dans sa mémoire (337) et en faire plus tard le récit. Dans tous les cas, le mot renvoie à la réalité du fait considéré et à la fidélité du discours qui en rend compte. Mais, si ses autres occurrences ne nous apprennent rien de plus sur son sens, nous croyons en revanche qu'elles sont de nature à remettre en question l'idée, également soutenue par W. Luther, que toute la recherche hérodotéenne s'efforce d'atteindre l' alêthéia (338).

Ailleurs, le mot entre dans des formules qui mettent le fait étudié en doute, mais l'enquêteur ne tente plus de transformer en incertitude l'ignorance où il se trouve ou bien de détourner sa réflexion sur un thème annexe pour éviter l'aporie. Il s'en tient à une manifestation de scepticisme. Il en est ainsi pour les récits qui prétendent que l'île égyptienne de Chemmis flotte (11,156), ou que le Perse Mégabatès avait une fille que Pausanias aurait volontiers épousée (V,32).

Enfin, dans les deux derniers textes qu'il nous reste à examiner dans notre première rubrique (IV,18 et 187), Hérodote, qui a fait mine d'affirmer la réalité d'un phénomène, s'empresse de relativiser la portée de son assertion comme s'il voulait atténuer une audace : "Au-dessus des Androphages commence un désert véritable sans aucune population humaine, autant que nous Ie sachions" (IV,18). "En vérité, les Libyens sont, de tous les hommes que nous connaissions, les plus sains" (IV,187).

Le vocabulaire de l' alêthéia, en ce qu'il figure dans des formules permettant à l'enquêteur de poursuivre ses récits ou ses réflexions sans se laisser arrêter par des connaissances insuffisantes, et parce qu'il témoigne aussi que ce dernier n'est pas dupe de ses informateurs ou de la puissance de ses propres capacités de recherche, dessine en somme une notion de vérité aux fonctions contrastées. D'une part, cette notion autorise des pratiques qui d'emblée l'ont évincée et ont renoncé à l'atteindre et, de l'autre, elle constitue le but inaccessible de l'effort de recherche. Mais, facteur de libération et d'expansion de la recherche ou concept essentiel d'une critique négative de la connaissance qui tente de s'élaborer, la vérité se dérobe toujours et se place constamment hors de portée de l'enquêteur." (pp. 165-167)

Notes

(333) Cf. J. E. Powell, A Lexicon to Herodotus, Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1977, s.v. "Alèthès", "Aléthéàs", "Alèthizomai".

(334) L'expression peut surprendre mais elle rend assez bien compte de tournures de phrases dans lesquelles l'enquêteur souligne l'écart entre la vérité et le sentiment personnel qu'il en a, autrement dit sa vérité.

(335) Cf. seconde partie, chap. 1,2, "La voix des autres".

(336) W. Luther, "Der frühgriechische Wahrheitzgedanke im Lichte der Sprache", Gymnasium, LXV, 1958, p. 75-107, en particulier p. 104 sq.

(337) On consultera G. Nenci ("Il martus nei poemi omerici", La parola del passato, XIII, 1958, p. 221-241, et " Il giudice nei poemi omerici ", Giustizia e società, septembre-octobre 1963, p. 1-6) et M. Détienne (Les Maîtres de vérité en Grèce archaïque, Paris, Maspero, 1967), sur les problèmes des rapports de la vérité avec l'observation directe et la mémoire dans les poèmes homériques.

(338) W. Luther, "Der frühgriechische Wahreitzgedanke...", art. cité, p. 104 sq.

Extrait de : Catherine Darbo-Peschanski, Le discours du particulier. Essai sur l'enquète hérodotéenne, Paris, Seuil, 1987.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Annotated Bibliography on the Concept of Truth in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy

General studies on the History of the concept of Truth

1. Aenishanslin, Jean-François, O'Meara, Dominic, and Schüssler, Ingeborg, eds. 2004. La vérité. Antiquité - Modernité. Lausanne: Payot.

2. Allen, Barry. 1993. Truth in Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

See in particular Part One. Historical Introduction 1. Classical Philosophy of Truth pp. 9-28; 2. Modern Truth pp. 29-37, for a brief sketch of the history of theories of truth.

"I begin with a historical introduction. What I call the classical philosophy of truth is an ensemble of four interdependent ideas in ancient philosophy (Greek and Christian) concerning truth's relation to nature, language, being, and the good. Together they define the historical discourse on truth I call onto-logic. The first principle of onto-logic is that the "logical" possibility of sentential truth-value derives from the "ontological" possibility of beings that "are what they are," that have an identity of their own. For onto-logic, truth is true to such beings; it takes its measure from what is, whose nature truth discloses.

In Part One, I look at versions of onto-logic first in Greek and Christian sources, then in modern philosophy. But it is not my intention to write the history of Western truth. The historical studies in Part One merely establish some context for the discussion of six philosophers which follows: Nietzsche and William James (Part Two); and Heidegger, Derrida, Wittgenstein, and Foucault (Part Three)."

3. Annas, Julia E. 1980. "Truth and Knowledge." In Doubt and Dogmatism. Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology, edited by Schofield, Malcolm, Burnyeat, Myles and Barnes, Jonathan, 84-104. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

4. Brague, Rémi, Cassin, Barbara, Laugier, Sandra, Libera, Alain de, Rosier-Catach, Irène, and Sinapi, Michèle. 2004. "Vérité." In Vocabulaire Européen des Philosophies. Dictionnaire des intraduisibles, edited by Cassin, Barbara, 1342-1364. Paris: Le Robert - Seuil.

5. ———. 2004. "Truth." In Dictionary of Untranslatables, edited by Cassin, Barbara, 1159-1179. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

6. Campbell, Richard. 1992. Truth and Historicity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Contents: 1. Introduction: Our contemporary intellectual predicament 1; 2. Doing philosophy historically 7; 3. Truth as Divine norm 18; 4. Timeless truth 40; 5. Truth and the Divine Intellect 75; 6. Doing the truth 101; 7. Truth and Judgements 120; 8. The forms fracture 145; 9. Truth as the positive reality of ideas 170; 10. Truth and the new way of ideas 203; 11. Truth in a contingent world 222; 12. The emergence of historicity 251; 13. The True as a historical result 269; 14. Individual existence and the appropriation of truth 292; 15. Truth as a social construct 322; 16. Truth and the analysis of logical form 355; 17. The historicity of truth 395: 18. Truth in action 412; Select bibliography 441; Index 449-463.

7. Colish, Marcia L. 1983. "The Stoic Theory of Verbal Signification and the Problem of Lies and False Statements from Antiquity to St. Anselm." In Archéologie du Signe, edited by Brind'Amour, Lucie and Vance, Eugène, 17-43. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

8. Enders, Makus, and Szaif, Jan, eds. 2006. Die Geschichte des philosophischen Begriffs der Wahrheit. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Inhalt: Vorwort V-VI; Jan Szaif: Die Geschichte des Wahrheitsbegriffs in der klassischen Antike 1; Ludwig Fladerer: Der Wahrheitsbegriff im griechischen Neuplatonismus 33; Thomas Böhm: Das Wahrheitsverständnis in Bibel und Früher Kirche 49; Markus Enders: „Wahrheit“ von Augustinus bis zum frühen Mittelalter: Stationen einer Begriffsgeschichte 65; Walter Senner: Wahrheit bei Albertus Magnus und Thomas von Aquin 103; Theo Kobusch:

Adaequatio rei et intellectus. Die Erläuterung der Korrespondenztheorie der Wahrheit in der Zeit nach Thomas von Aquin 149; Walter Senner: Robert Grosseteste zur Wahrheitsfrage 167; Marianne Schlosser:

Wahrheitsverständnis bei Bonaventura 181; Dominik Perler: Satz, Seele und Sachverhalt. Der propositionale Wahrheitsbegriff im Spätmittelalter 191; Sabrina Ebbersmeyer: Varietas veritatis. Perspektiven des Wahrheitsbegriffs in der Philosophie der Renaissance 211; Michael Albrecht: Wahrheitsbegriffe von Descartes bis Kant 231; Rainer Schäfer: Das holistisch-systemische Wahrheitskonzept im deutschen Idealismus (Fichte-Hegel) 251; Hans-Ulrich Lessing; Das Wahrheitsproblem im Historismus: Droysen und Dilthey 275; Christian Krijnen: Der Wahrheitsbegriff im Neukantianismus 287; Markus Enders: Das Verständnis von Wahrheit bei Sören Kierkegaard, Ludwig Feuerbach und Friedrich Nietzsche 301; Holger Zaborowski: Wahrheit und die Sachen selbst. Der philosophische Wahrheitsbegriff in der phänomenologischen und hermeneutischen Tradition der Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts: Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger und Hans Georg Gadamer 337; Richard Schantz; Wahrheitstheorien in der analytischen und pragmatistischen

Tradition 369; Personenindex 397-404.

9. Fleischer, Margot. 1984. Wahrheit und Wahrheitsgrund. Zum Wahrheitsproblem und zu seiner Geschichte. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

10. Florensky, Pavel Aleksandrovich. 1997. The Pillar and Ground of the Truth. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

See: III. Letter Two: Doubt (on the words for "truth" in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Russian).

11. Nuchelmans, Gabriel. 1973. Theories of Proposition. Ancient and Medieval Conceptions of the Bearers of Truth and Falsity. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Contents: Preface V; 1. Introduction 1; 2. Plato 13; 3. Aristotle 23; 4. The Stoic lekton 45; 5. The Stoic axioma 75; 6. Later developments in Greek antiquity 89; 7. The transition to the Latin West 105; 8. Boethius and the beginning of the Middle Ages 123; 9. Abelard 139; 10. The doctrine of the dictum in the century after Abelard 165; 11. Preliminaries to the fourteenth century debate 177; 12. The complexum theory of Ockham and Holkot 195; 13. Some reist opponents of Ockham and Holkot 209; 14. The theory of the complexe significabile 227; 15. The oppositions against the theory of the complexe significabile 243; 16. The significate of a true propositio 273; Selective bibliography 281; Indices 289-309.

12. ———. 1980. Late-Scholastic and Humanist Theories of Proposition. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Contents: Part One: Late-Scholastic theories of the proposition. 1. Introduction 3; 2. Different kinds of propositions and their ways of signifying 9; 3. The tie between the principal parts of a proposition 27; 4. The adequate signification and the adequate significate of a proposition 45; 5. Disguised propositions 74; 6. Judgment 90; 7. The object of judgment 103; 8. Propositions as bearer of truth-values 114; Part Two: Humanist theories of proposition. 9. Introduction 143; 10. The first attempt at reorientation 146; 11. The Melanchtonian treatment of a theme 159; 12. Peter Ramus 168; 13. The diffusion of Ramist terminology 180; 14. Eclectics 189; Epilogue 204; Bibliography 209; Indices 224-237.

13. ———. 1983. Judgment and Proposition. From Descartes to Kant. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Contents: 1. The Legacy of Scholasticism and Humanism 9; 2. Idea and Judgment in Descartes 36; 3. Repercussions of Descartes' Theory of Judgment 55; 4. Arnauld and the Port-Royal Logic 70; 5. Some Eighteenth-Century Critics of the Port-Royal View 88; 6. Geulincx's Contribution to Cartesian Philosophy of Logic 99; 7. Ideas and Images. Gassendi and Hobbes 121; 8. The Heyday of British Empiricism 139; 9. Sensationalism and its Critics in France 174; 10. Common Sense Philosophy and Nominalism in Great Britain 194; 11. Leibniz's Logical Realism 214; 12. The German Enlightenment 233; 13. Some Problems in Kant and His Contemporaries 246; Epilogue 257; Bibliography 262; Indices 280-295.

14. Pisani, Vittore. 1936. "Parole indo-europee per "vero" e "falso"." Rivista Indo-Greco-Italica di Filologia, Lingua, Antichità no. 20:111-112.

15. Pritzl, Kurt, ed. 2010. Truth: Studies of a Robust Presence. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

Contents: Kurt Pritzl: Introduction 1; 1. Kurt Pritzl: Aristotle's Door 15; 2. Mitchell Miller: A More "Exact Grasp" of the Soul? Tripartition in the Republic and Dialectic in the Philebus 40; 3. Timothy Noone: Truth, Creation, and Intelligibility in Anselm, Grosseteste, and Bonaventure 102; 4. Jan A. Aertsen: Truth in the Middle Ages: Its Essence and Power in Christian Thought 127; 5. Daniel Garber, Religion and Science, Faith and Reason: Some Pascalian Reflections 147; 6. Sean Dorrance Kelly: On Time and Truth 168; 7. Daniel O. Dahlstrom: The Prevalence of Truth 185; 8. Brian H. Bix: Will versus Reason: Truth in Natural Law, Positive Law, and Legal Theory 208; 9. Robert E. Wood: Art and Truth: From Plato through Nietzsche to Heidegger 232; 10. John Milbank: Truth and Identity: The Thomistic Telescope 277; 11. Susan Haack, Truth and Progress in the Sciences: An Innocent Realist Perspective 310; Bibliuography 337; Contributors 357; Index 361-368.

16. Rivenc, Frnçois, ed. 2019. Figures de la vérité. London: ISTE Editions.

Table des matières : François Rivenc : Introduction 1; Partie 1. La vérité : histoire de la philosophie 9; Chapitre 1. Francis Wolff : La défense aristotélicienne de la « vérité-adéquation » 11; Chapitre 2. Laurent Cesalli et Frédéroc Goubier : La notion de vérité dans la philosophie médiévale 33; Chapitre 3. Handi Mlika : Perspectives sur la notion de vérité dans la philosophie arabe 59; Chapitre 4. Jocedlyn Benoist : Absolument vrai 79; Chapitre 5. François Clementz : L’explication du vrai 97; Chapitre 6. Maryam Ebahimi Dinani : La conception déflationniste de la vérité 119; Chapitre 7. Michel Seymour : Pluralisme aléthique et unité de la vérité 149; Chapitre 8. Henri Galinon : Des preuves par la vérité 165; Chapitre 9. Philippe de Rouilhan : L’idée d’un système de la science à l’épreuve du Menteur. 185; Chapitre 10. Petr Horák : De l’idée de la vérité chez Jan Patočka 199; Chapitre 11. Volodymyr Yermolenko : Les désastres de la dialectique 209; Liste des auteurs 229-230.

17. Ruggenini, Mario. "Veritas e ἀλήθεια. La Grecia, Roma e l’origine della metafisica cristiano-medioevale." Quaestio. Journal of the History of Metaphysics no. 1:83-112.

18. Schaerer, René. 1964. "Alétheia. Héritage antique et vérité d'aujourd'hui." In Actes du XIIe Congrés des Sociétés de Philosophie de langue française (Bruxelles et Louvain 22-24 août 1964. Thème principal: la verité. Vol. II, 87-106. Paris: Béatrice-Nauwelaerts.

19. Szaif, Jan, and Enders, Markus, eds. 2006. Die Geschichte des philosophischen Begriffs der Wahrheit. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

20. Williams, Bernard. 2002. Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

See: Endnote. The Vocabulary of Truth: An Example, pp. 271-278.

21. Wolenski, Jan. 1994. "Contributions to the History of the Classical Truth-Definition." In Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. Vol. IX, 481-495. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Uppsala, Sweden, August 7-14, 1991.

Reprinted in: Jan Wolenski, Essays in the History of Logic and Logical Philosophy, Cracov: Jagiellonian University Press 1999, pp. 139-149.

"Although truth belongs to the family of crucial philosophical categories, writing its general history still remains a serious challenge for historians of philosophy. Also historical accounts of particular truth-theories are rather fragmentary. Since the classical (also called 'the correspondence') theory of truth has become the most popular and influential among all hitherto proposed answers to the philosophical problem of truth, a lack of its written history is specially strange, more than in the case of their various rivals; this theory maintains, roughly speaking, that truth consists in a relation of correspondence (agreement, adequacy or conformity) which holds between so-called bearers of truth (judgements, ideas, thoughts, propositions, statements or sentences) and reality.

This paper presents a sketch of how the gap could be filled with respect to the classical concept of truth (CCT for briefly). It is just a sketch which by no means pretends to any completeness. The history of the classical (as well as every other) theory of truth requires taking into account at least four points, namely:

(A) Statements which have been explicitly intended as definitions (or other explications) of CCT.

(B) Formulations which could be interpreted as definitions (or rather explications) of CCT independently of the intentions of their authors.

(C) The philosophical environment of formulations collected under (A) and (B); it is especially important for cases falling under (B).

(D) Criticism of CCT and its defenses against raised objections.

I would like to touch each of (A)-(D) but my principal goal is to contribute to (A) and (B)." (p. 139 of the reprint).

The concept of Truth in ancient Greek philosophy

1. Barnes, Jonathan. 2007. Truth, etc. New York: Oxford University Press.

2. Barnouw, Jeffrey. 2002. Propositional Perception. Phantasia, Predication, and Sign in Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. Lanham: University Press of America.

Appendix 1. Declarative Predication vs. Kahn’s Veridical Be 327-340.

3. Basset, Louis. 1989. La syntaxe de l'imaginaire. Étude des modes et des négations dans l'Iliade et l'Odyssée. Lyon: Maison de l'Orient.

4. Boeder, Heribert. 1959. "Der frühgriechische Wortgebrauch von Lógos und Alétheia." Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte.Bausteine zu einem Historischen Wörterbuch der Philosophie no. 4:82-112.

Nachdruck: Heribert Boeder, Das Bauzeug der Geschichte. Aufsätze un Vorträge zur griechischen und mittelalterlichen Philosophie, (hrsg. Gerald Meier), Würzburg: G. Meier, 1994.

"Die folgenden Untersuchungen beabsichtigen eine Klärung des Wortgebrauchs von Lógos und Alétheia in den frühgriechischen Sprachwerken - die philosophischen ausgenommen. Gemäß der Eigenart der Zeugnisse und der entsprechenden zeitlichen Verteilung ist die Darstellung in zwei Abschnitte gegliedert, deren erster den Bereich des frühgriechischen Epos behandelt, der andere die Folgezeit bis zur Mitte des fünften Jahrhunderts etwa. Dabei wird das Wort Lógos jeweils vor dein Wort Alétheia erörtert, weil es so der innere Zusammenhang beider nachleget." p. 82

5. Böhm, Thomas. 2004. "Das Wahrheitsverständnis in Bibel und Früher Kirche." In La verité. Antiquité - Modernité, edited by Aenishanslin, Jean-François, O'Meara, Dominic and Schüssler, Ingeborg, 49-64. Lausanne: Payot.

6. Bultmann, Rudolf. 1928. "Untersuchungen zum Johannesevangelium." Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft no. 27:113-163.

Reprinted in: R. Bultmann - Exegetica. Aufsätze zur Erforschung des Neuen Testaments - Tübingen, J. C. B. Mohr P. Siebeck, 1967, pp. 124-173.

"Alétheia in der griechischen und hellenistischen Literatur" pp. 134-163 (144-173 of the reprint).

7. ———. 1964. "Alétheia." In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Vol. I, edited by Kittel, Gerhard, 232-247. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Original German edition 1933.

8. Cassin, Barbara. 1991. "Les Muses et la philosophie. Élements pour une histoire du pseudos." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 291-316. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

9. Cherubin, Rose Mathilde. 2009. "Ἀλήθεια from Poetry into Philosophy. Homer to Parmenides." In Logos and Muthos. Philosophical Essays in Greek Literature, edited by Wians, William, 51-72. Albany: State University of New York Press.

"Parmenides' philosophical work depends both on poetic features and on their transformation through critical analysis. His identification of the central role of deductive argument and thematic exploration of to éon grows from his engagement with poetry, and specifically from his view of alétheia as the orientation on a road to inquiry. A survey of the use of alétheia in archaic poetry (e.g., Homer, Od. 11, 507 ; Bacchylides 9, 81-87) shows that alétheia is opposed not only to falsehood, but also to léthe and its relatives; and illustrates the novelty of Parmenides' approach : by associating alétheia with a method of inquiry, Parmenides implies that there can be knowledge of something beyond what is available through observation, divine revelation, or reports."

10. Cole, Thomas. 1983. "Archaic Truth." Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica no. 64:7-28.

11. Conte, Amedeo G. 2007. "Alétheia: illatenza e latenza del nome greco della verità." Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia Del Diritto no. 84:197-199.

12. Darbo-Peschanski, Catherine. 1987. Le discours du particuler. Essai sur l'enquête hérodotéenne. Paris: Seul.

Préface de Paul Veyne.

Table: Introduction 11; 1. Le domain de l'enquête. 1. Les dieux, les hommes, l'enquêteur 23; 2. Les limites de l'information 84; 2. La voix de l'enquêteur; 1. L'enquêteur et les autres 107, 2. Les raisonnements 127; 3. Le règne de l'opinion 154; 1. La part de la vérité 165; 2. L'opinion 184; Conclusion 193; Notes 197; Bibliographie 223; Index 239-240.

Voir en particuler 3.1 La part de la vérité. L'aletheia et les autre façons de dire la vérité pp. 165-183

13. Denyer, Nicholas. 1991. Language, thought and falsehood in ancient Greek philosophy. London: Routledge.

14. Detienne, Marcel. 1960. "La notion mythique d'Alétheia." Revue des Études Grecques no. 73:27-35.

15. ———. 1996. The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece. New York: Zone Books.

Foreword by Pierre Vidal-Naquet; translated by Janet Lloyd.

With a new preface to the American edition.

Original French edition: Les Maîtres de vérité dans la Grèce archaïque - Paris. Maspéro 1967 (reprinted 1981, 1990).

Translated in Italian as: I maestri di verità nella Grecia arcaica - Bari, Laterza 1983.

16. ———. 2007. The Greeks and us. A comparative anthropology of Ancient Greece. Boston: Polity.

The wide-open mouth of truth pp. 60-75.

17. DuBois, Page. 1991. Torture and Truth. New York: Routledge.

Chapter 9: Some Presocratics 93-106; Chapter 10: Plato's Truth 107-122; Chapter 12: Plato and Heidegger 127-140.

"The truth of the pre-Socratics is not the truth of integrity, of the monumental wholeness of the text of Homer and Plato. In fact, we now know the monumental Homeric corpus to have its own fragmentariness, not the fragmentation of the Analysts, who wanted to discard parts of the received text as interpolations, but a sedimentation, a complicated series of origins, an unevenness due to its oral composition that prevents it from being what was once considered the seamless, intentional production of an "author." So from the beginning, as we approach the pre-Socratics' work, their aphorisms, bits and pieces recorded in later philosophers, traces of their reputation shaping even in their absence the work of others, we cannot yet-perhaps we can never- achieve a sense of coherence, of systematic development of philosophical ideas, such as is perhaps possible with the works of Kant or Hegel.

I want to approach the notion of truth in the pre-Socratics fragmentarily, then, by looking at truth in the fragmentary remains of the work of Herakleitos and Parmenides, two radically different thinkers. I have not attempted here to present an encyclopedic survey of all occurrences of alêtheia in Homer, Hesiod, all the pre-Socratics. Rather, I want to give a sense of a cultural paradigm, of the ways in which the word alêtheia works within a semantic field, in its contrasts, for example, with other words for truth, and as it fits into a cultural and social field of seeking out the genuine, the true. Herakleitos seems to offer a suggestive and idiosyncratic notion of truth that has certain affinities with the dialogical practices of the later democracy, while Parmenides' sense of truth is more compatible with the traditions of epic and of the consultation of oracles." (p. 96)

"Plato returns to the pre-classical notion of the basanos as a proof of loyalty and truth; but even more importantly, he presents both a paradigm of truth as recollection, the recalling of time -- buried truth -- and a paradigm of the production of truth through the elegkhos, the philosophical conversation, a version of truth as dialectic, as process, as the making of a truth in time, between people, not as the revelation of something lost in the past but as the production of something in the present. This latter element seems to me the trace of the democratic in Plato, a trace that may be represented only to be disavowed within the larger corpus of Plato's arguments." (p. 107)

18. Dumitriu, Anton. 1990. "Essai sur l'idée de vérité dans la Grèce antique." In Actualité de la philosophie, 149-166. Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Latines.

Actes du Congrès, 13-14 octobre 1989.

19. Finkelberg, Margalit. 1998. The birth of literary fiction in ancient Greece. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

See Chapter V: 'Lies resembing truth' pp. 131-160.

20. Fiorentino, Fernando. 2002. Il problema della verità nei filosofi antichi. Napoli: Editrice Domenicana italiana.

21. ———. 2004. "Il problema della verità in Plotino." Sapienza no. 57:145-184.

22. Fladerer, Ludwig. 2006. "Der Wahrheitsbegriff im griechischen Neuplatonismus." In Die Geschichte des philosophischen Begriffs der Wahrheit, edited by Szaif, Jan and Enders, Markus, 33-48. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

23. Frisk, Hjalmar. 1936. "Wahrheit" und "Lüge" in den indogermanischen Sprachen. Einige morphologische Beobachtungen. Göteborg: Wettergren & Kerbers Förlag.

With an Appendix: "Anhang: die Wörter für 'Lüge' und 'Wahrheit' in den Dard- und Kafirsprachen" (p. 35-38) by Georg Morgenstierne.

Reprinted in: Hjalmar Frisk - Kleine Schriften zur Indogermanistik und zur griechischen Wortkunde - Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell, 1966 pp. 1-35.

24. Galluzzo, Gabriele. 1999. "Il tema della verità in Plotino, fonti platoniche e presupposti filosofici." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 10:59-88.

25. Garcea, Alessandro. 2008. "Consule ueritatem : Cicéron, Varron et un chapitre de l’histoire de la vérité à Rome." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 57:93-110.

Résumé : "Dans cet article, je me concentrerai sur le concept de ueritas en lien avec la grammaire et la rhétorique à la fin de la République romaine, au moment où elles devenaient des disciplines indépendantes. D’un point de vue intralinguistique et « autonome », la ueritas peut être conçue comme un système conventionnel de procédures de vérification établissant une correspondance entre chaque unité et les règles analogiques.

Tel est l’arrière-plan sur lequel se découpent tant l’excursus grammatical de l’Orator de Cicéron que le De lingua Latina de Varron. Mais un autre point de vue, extralinguistique et hétéronome celui-là, figure également dans l’oeuvre de ces deux auteurs. Cicéron

élabore une théorie philosophique et rhétorique du uerisimile, afin de prétendre à la même force persuasive que celle que détiennent les choses elles-mêmes, autrement dit la réalité de l’évidence. Varron estime que la reconstruction d’un système totalisant, tel que celui du langage, gouverné par l’analogie, conduit à l’acquisition d’une vérité universelle qui peut être découverte par le biais de l’analyse morpho-étymologique des mots latins."

26. Halliwell, Stephen. 2011. Between Ecstasy and Truth: Interpretations of Greek Poetics from Homer to Longinus. New York: Oxford University Press.

27. Heitsch, Ernst. 1962. "Die nicht philosophische Alétheia." Hermes no. 90:24-33.

28. ———. 1963. "Wahrheit als Erinnerung." Hermes no. 91:36-53.

29. ———. 1966. "Das Wissen des Xenophanes." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie no. 109:193-235.

Contains a short history of alétheia from Hesiod to Parmenides.

30. ———. 1979. "Der Ort der Wahrheit. Aus der frühgeschichte der Wahrheitsbegriffs." In Parmenides und die Anfänge der Erkenntniskritik und Logik, 33-69. Donauwörth: Ludwig Auer.

Nachdruck: E. Heitsch, Gesammelte Schriften II. Zur griechischen Philosophie, München - Leipzig: K. G. Saur, 2001 pp. 89-116.

31. ———. 2011. Aletheia. Eine Episode aus der Geschichte des Wahrheitsbegriffs. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.

32. Hoffmann, Philippe. 2000. "La triade Chaldaïque eros, aletheia, pistis: de Proclus à Simplicius." In Proclus et la Théologie platonicienne, edited by Segonds, Alain-Philippe and Steel, Carlos, 459-489. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Actes du colloque international de Louvain (13-16 mai 1998) en l'honneur de H. D. Saffrey et L. G. Westerink.

33. Hommel, Hildebrecht. 1969. "Wahrheit und Gerechtigkeit. Zur Geschichte und Deutung eines Begriffspaares." Antike un Abendland.Beiträge zum Verständnis der Griechen und Römer und ihres Nachlebens no. 15:159-186.

34. Jens, Walter. 1951. "Das Begreifen des Wahrheit im frühen Griechentum." Studium Generale no. 4:240-246.

35. Käetzler, Joachim. 1959. Pseudos, dolos, mechanema in der griechischen Tragödie, Tübingen.

Unpublished PH. D. dissertation.

36. Kahn, Charles H. 1973. The verb 'be' in ancient Greek. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Volume 6 of: John W. M. Verhaar (ed.) - The verb 'be' and its synonyms: philosophical and grammatical studies - Dordrecht, Reidel

Reprinted by Hackett Publishing, 2003 with new introduction and discussion of relation between predicative and existential uses of the Greek verb einai.

37. ———. 2004. "A return to the theory of the verb Be and the concept of Being." Ancient Philosophy no. 24:381-405.

38. Knight, Thomas E. 1993. "The Use of Aletheia for the "Truth of Unreason": Plato, the Septuagint, and Philo." American Journal of Philology no. 114:581-609.

39. Krischer, Tilman. 1965. "Etymos und Aléthes." Philologus no. 109:161-174.

40. Kurz, Dietrich. 1970. Akribeia. Das Ideal der Exaktheit bei den Griechen bis Aristoteles. Göppingen: A. Kümmerle.

41. Ledbetter, Grace M. 2003. Poetics before Plato. Interpretation and authority in early Greek theories of poetry. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

42. Lee, Mi-Kyoung. 2005. Epistemology after Protagoras. Responses to relativism in Plato, Aristotle, and Democritus. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Chapter 2: Protagora's Aletheia - pp. 8-29.

43. Levet, Jean-Pierre. 1976. Le vrai et le faux dans la pensée grecque archaïque. Étude de vocabulaire. Paris: Belles Lettres.

Tome I. Présentation générale. Le vrai et le faux dans les épopées homériques.

"Ce livre est la première partie d'une thèse de doctorat d'État qui a été sutenue le 11 mai 1974 en Sorbonne" (Avant-propos).

44. ———. 2003. "L'expression du vrai et de la vérité dans les Posthomerica de Quintus de Smyrne." In Des Géants à Dionysos. Mélanges offerts à Francis Vian, edited by Accorinti, Domenico and Chuvin, Pierre, 357-384. Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso.

45. ———. 2008. Le vrai et le faux dans la pensée grecque archaique d'Hésiode à la fin du Ve siècle. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

"Ce livre forme un ensemble avec la première partie d'une thèse de doctorat d'État soutenue à la Sorbonne en 1974 et parue en 1976." (Avant-Propos).

"L'analyse lexicale de la conception et de l'expression du vrai et du faux fait apparaître, dans l'Iliade et dans l'Odyssée, l'existence d'un système ancien, qui repose sur des énoncés subjectifs se révélant conformes au réel objectif (familles d'etéos, etmos,et etétumos, d'atrekéos et de ypertés) ou procédant de l'invention de pures fictions (pseudos, pseudomai).

Indépendamment de lui, l' alethein ancienne correspond à une révélation véridique prenant la forme d'un non-voilé-dévoilant.

Avec des prodromes déjà perceptibles chez Homère, la mutation de la psychologie de la connaissance tend progressivement à conduire à voir dans la vérité, dont le faux devient une déformation, le réel objectif connu, convenablement interprété par l'intelligence et fidèlement transmis.

Les catégories du faux et du vrai qui apparaissent alors relèvent dans le lexique de pseudos et d'aletheia, le terme, compatible, dès l'origine, avec la démarche décrite (un contenu objectif est communiqué), étant pourvu de nouvelles valeurs sémantiques. L'évolution est lente et considérable. Elle se fait par une série d'étapes successives.

D'Hésiode au Ve siècle, traits anciens et caractères nouveaux coexistent, mais petit à petit ceux-ci éliminent ceux-là. Un équilibre relatif est encore perceptible chez Hésiode, mais rapidement notions et mots archaïques s'effacent au profit de ce que représentent alethés et aletheia, pseudos et pseudomai, ainsi que les termes qui leur sont apparentés, tandis que se développent parallélement des concepts et des vocables nouveaux. Ils entrent dans les structures évoluées de la cognition et de la communication du vrai et du faux telles que alethés et aletheia, pseudos et pseudomai en montrent l'existence et la nature.

C'est l'histoire de cette évolution majeure, considérée comme formant un ensemble cohérent, que décrit le présent livre, dans la continuité de l'apport homérique, sur le fondement d'une étude sémantique menée à partir d'une analyse des textes littéraires, rédigés en vers ou non, d'Hésiode à la fin de l'âge archaique et avant la grande floraison de la prose classique.

Le critère permettant d'opposer archaique et classique est celui que fournit, au moins en ce qui concerne l'attique, la disparition de l'usage vivant des concepts les plus anciens et de leurs supports linguistiques." (Présentation Générale).

46. Lotz, Johannes B. 1960. "Aletheia und Orthotes. Versuch einer Deutung im Lichte der Scholastik." Philosophische Jahrbuch no. 68:258-268.

Reprinted in: Johannes B. Lotz, Sein und Existenz. Kritische Studien in systematischer Absicht, Freiburg: Herder, 1965, pp. 120-134.

47. Luther, Wilhelm. 1935. "Wahrheit" und "Lüge" im ältesten Griechentum. Leipzig: Verlag Robert Noske.

48. ———. 1954. Weltansicht und Gestesleben. Versuch einer wissenschaftlichen Grundlegung der philosophischen Sprachanalyse an Beispielen aus der griechischen Geistesgeschichte von Homer bis Aristoteles. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

49. ———. 1958. "Der frühgriechische Wahrheitsgedanke im Lichte der Sprachen." Gymnasium no. 65:75-107.

50. ———. 1966. "Wahrheit, Licht und Erkenntnis in der griechischen Philosophie bis Demokrit. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung des Zusammenhangs von Sprache und philosophischen Denken." Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte.Bausteine zu einem Historischen Wörterbuch der Philosophie no. 10:1-240.

51. Marincola, John. 2007. "Alétheia." In Lexicon Historiographicum Graecum et Latinum (LHG&L), edited by Porciani, Leone, 7-29. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale.

Fascicle II.

52. Martínez, Marzoa Felipe. 1974. "Einai, physis, logos, aletheia." Emerita no. 42:159-175.

53. Matthen, Mohan. 1983. "Greek Ontology and the 'Is' of Truth." Phronesis no. 28:113-135.

"This is an essay about the ontological presuppositions of a certain use of ‘is’ in Greek philosophy — I shall describe it in the first part and present a hypothesis about its semantics in the second.

I believe that my study has more than esoteric interest. First, it provides an alternative semantic account of what Charles Kahn has called the ‘is’ of truth, thereby shedding light on a number of issues in Greek ontology, including an Eleatic paradox of change and Aristotle’s response to it. Second, it finds in the semantics of Greek a basis for admitting what have been called ‘non-substantial individuals’ or ‘immanent characters’ into accounts of Greek ontology. Third, it yields an interpretation of Aristotle’s talk of‘unities’ which is crucial to his treatment of substance in the central books of the Metaphysics." (p. 113)

54. Mette, Hans Joachim. 1955. "Alethein, alethes." In Lexicon des frühgriechischen Epos. Vol. I, edited by Snell, Bruno, 476-477. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

55. Mielert, Ernest. 1958. Ausdrücke für Wahrheit und Lüge in der attischen Tragödie. München: Otto Brunn.

56. Mignucci, Mario. 1985. "Temporalità e verità nella filosofia greca." In Sapienza antica: Studiin onore di Domenico Pesce, 163-191. Milano: Franco Angeli.

57. Nagy, Gregory. 1990. "The crisis of performance." In The Ends of Rhetoric: History, Theory, Practice, edited by Bender, John B. and Wellbery, David E., 43-59. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

On Alethéia see pp. 47-53.

58. Perceau, Sylvie. 2002. La parole vive. Communiquer en catalogue dans l'épopée homérique. Louvain: Peeters.

Chapitre III. Une éthique et une approche du monde § 2.3 Katalegein et alétheia pp. 279-287.

59. Pratt, Louise H. 1993. Lying and Poetry from Homer to Pindar. Falsehood and Deception in Archaic Greek Poetics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

60. Prier, Raymond Adolph. 1989. THAUMA IDESTHAI. The phenomenology of sight and appearance in archaic Greek. Tallahassee: The Florida State University Press.

"This work is a study of the archaic phenomenology of Homer. Particular attention is paid to linguistic and stylistic characteristics of signification. Comparisons are made between Homeric and Aristotelian thought.

Also the author critically examines contemporary readings of Homer including those of Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida."

61. Puelma, Mario. 1989. "Der Dichter und die Wahrheit in der griechischen Poetik von Homer bis Aristoteles." Museum Helveticum no. 46:65-100.

62. Ruggenini, Mario. 2001. "Veritas e aletheia. La Grecia, Roma e l'origine della metafisica cristiano-medioevale." Quaestio.The Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 1:83-212.

63. Santos, José Trinidade. 2004. "El nacimiento de la verdad." Méthexis no. 17:7-23.

"This paper aims to outline the course of 'truth' in Plato's and Aristotle's works, where it begins as the veridical reading of einai, and ends as a function of logos. In Plato's Socratic dialogues truth has no methodological implications. The dialogues on the theory of forms sustain the polysemy of being, using truth as a means of establishing the consistency of arguments Phaedo 100a). The difficult coexistence of truth with infallibility (Theaetetus 152a-179c) leads to its emergence as a poion of logos (Sophist 263b). Aristotle's De interpretatione 1-6 points to a correspondence theory of truth, showing that only by affirming or denying logos is true or false."

64. Scalera McClintock, Giuliana. 1990. "Alétheia nel pensiero orfico. II. Alétheia nelle tavolette di Olbia Pontica." Filosofia e Teologia no. 4:78-83.

"II. In the context of the Bacchic mysteries, the bone tablets from Pontic Olbia open up space for theological meditation, documenting with direct sources from the mid-fifth century B.C. the belief in immortality seen darkly in the mania, the disembodiment of the concept of the soul, and an idea of truth so strong that it cannot be attributed only to a religion which defines itself in respect to others. Thus a new tessera can be added to the comprehension of the relation between Orphic thought and the initiation rites in which the first philosophy takes root."

65. Segal, Charles. 1986. "Naming. truth, and creation in the poetics of Pindar." Diacritics no. 16:65-83.

Reprinted in: C. Segal - Aglaia. The poetry of Alcman, Sappho, Pindar, Bacchylides, and Corinna - Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 1998, as Chapter 6 pp. 105-132.

66. Simondon, Michèle. 1982. La Mémoire et l'oubli dans la pensée grecque jusqu'à la fin du 5. siècle avant J.-C. Psychologie archaïque, mythes et doctrines. Paris: Belles Lettres.

67. Siorvanes, Lucas. 2000. "The problem of truth in the Platonic Theology." In Proclus et la Théologie platonicienne, edited by Segonds, Alain-Philippe and Steel, Carlos, 47-63. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Actes du colloque international de Louvain (13-16 mai 1998) en l'honneur de H. D. Saffrey et L. G. Westerink.

68. Snell, Bruno. 1975. "Aletheia." Würzburger Jahrbucher für die Altertumswissenschaft no. 1:9-17.

Festschrift Ernst Siegmann.

69. ———. 1978. Der Weg zum Denker und zur Wahrheit. Studien zur frühgriechischen Sprache. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Chapter 5: "Der Entwicklung des Wahrheitsbegriffe bei den Griechen" pp. 91-104.

Translated in Italian as: Il Cammino del pensiero e della verità: studi sul linguaggio greco delle origini, Ferrara: Gallio Editori 1991, pp. 105-120.

70. Spicq, Ceslas. 1994. "Alétheia." In Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, 1-67. Peabody: Endrickson.

Translated and edited by James D. Ernest from: Notes de lexicographie neo-testamentaire. Vol. III: Supplément, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982, pp. 16-37.

71. Starr, Chester G. 1968. "Ideas of Truth in Early Greece." La Parola del Passato no. 23:348-359.

Reprinted in: C. G. Starr, Essays on Ancient History. A Selection of Articles and Reviews, Edited by Arther Ferrill and Thomas Kelly, Leiden: Brill, 1979, pp. 163-174.

"In the modern world truth is a fundamental intellectual and moral virtue. Courts of law demand, in a famous phrase, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; statesmen must appear to be devoted to the truth; scholarly work is judged first on its truth and only thereafter for other qualities. The historian, for example, seeks to say true things, and hopes to guarantee the reputation of his work by amassing verified, precise detail, the hallmark of which is the learned footnote.

Recently I have been investigating the origins of this attitude along with other aspects of the incipient historical spirit, during the archaic period of Greek history (700-500 B.C.). (1) To my surprise there seems to have been only limited consideration of what the Greeks in this era generally meant by truth '. Correspondingly, the fact that their ideas of truth often differed markedly from modern concepts has not been stressed, even though early Greek views on the matter had a lasting influence not only on ancient historiography but also on classical thought. The following remarks are intended as a sketch of the evidence which may hopefully encourage more intensive discussion; my intent, let me be clear, is to suggest how varied were the meanings of truth at the time, not to analyze their relations to modern epistemological theories.

A cynic, indeed, might argue that here as elsewhere, the Greeks were simply more honest; for truth only slowly became a conscious, abstract virtue in Greek civilization, and never gained that unquestioned priority which we theoretically assign to it today. While Homer assessed the reality of events and distinguished' true statements from prevarications, the words which he and other early Greeks used to express these ideas initially lacked the absolute quality implicit in the modern truth ' and lie '. In time the verbal distinctions became theoretical and general; otherwise history and philosophy could scarcely have emerged. Yet thinkers had a cankering fear that only the gods could really know the truth, and rarely felt passionately the need for truth.

By 400 B.C. - the boundary of this essay - two modes of establishing verity, the speculative and the empirical, had emerged, but so. too had conscious intellectual scepticism; only thereafter did epistemological analysis begin to develop. Perhaps even more devastating in its effects, as regards the mastery of the ideal of truth, was the emphasis upon form as a mode of evaluating the truth of a work."

(1) Chester G. Starr, The Awakening of the Greek Historical Spirit (New York, 1968).

72. Storz, Gerhard. 1922. Gebrauch und Bedeutungsentwicklung vonvon Alétheia und begriffsverwandten Wörten in der griechischen Literatur von Platon. Tübingen.

Ph.D. Dissertation.

73. Striker, Gisela. 1996. "Kriterion tes aletheias." In Essays on hellenistic epistemology and ethics, 22-76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Originally published in German: Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften zur Göttingen, I. Philosophische-historische Klasse, 2,1974 pp. 48-110.

74. Szaif, Jan. 2006. "Die Geschichte des Wahrheitsbegriffs in der klassischen Antike." In Die Geschichte des philosophischen Begriffs der Wahrheit, edited by Szaif, Jan and Enders, Markus, 1-32. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

75. Thiselton, Anthony C. 1978. "Truth." In The New international dictionary of New Testament theology. Vol. III, edited by Brown, Colin, 874-902. Exeter: Paternoster Press.

76. ———. 2006. "Does lexicographical research yield "Hebrew" and "Greek" concepts of truth? (1978) and How does this research relate to notions of truth today? (New summary)." In Thiselton on hermeneutics. Collected works with new essays, 267-286. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans.

"Although this was originally written as a dictionary article, this work is neither merely didactic nor merely a lexicographical survey. With the editor's agreement it entirely replaced the German- language article that it was first designed only to supplement, The article in the German edition had presupposed the dichotomy between "Hebrew" and "Greek" concepts of truth in ways that were open to question in the light of both semantic theory (not least in the work of James Barr), and actual lexicographical research, which invited fresh evaluation. The inclusion of the classical and Old Testament backgrounds makes the fallacies of the older approach clearer. (...)

The article, comes from Colin Brown (ed.), The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, volume 3 (Exeter Paternoster Press, 1978), pp. 874-902, but has been abbreviated in order to omit material that may not bear directly on the argument. The breadth of lexicographical data might seem at times to verge on the tedious, but the argument depends on covering a fair range of specific cases and evidence, The original article concluded with a substantial discussion of modern philosophical theories of truth. This is too lengthy to retain here, but a brief summary has been rewritten for this volume (2004) to demonstrate the role of the argument for the "second horizon" of hermeneutics."

77. Tortorelli Ghidini, Marisa. 1990. "Alétheia nel pensiero orfico. I. "Dire la verità": sul v. 7 della laminetta di Farsalo." Filosofia e Teologia no. 4:73-77.

"I. The Homeric formula 'to tell the truth' involves the idea of starting from beginning and proceeding, point by point, to the end. In the Orphic Pharsalos tablet, that epic formula occurs again but the meaning turns out to be completely modified. According to this religious context 'telling the truth' and 'drinking at the spring of Mnemosyne' are identical: the truth, associated with a cosmic Memory, becomes a fundamental religious virtue. The link between religious and logical truth arises here."

78. Wolenski, Jan. 2005. "Aletheia in Greek Thought Until Aristotle." Annals of Pure and Applied Logic no. 127:339-360.

"This paper investigates the concept of aletheia (truth) in ancient philosophy from the pre-Socratics until Aristotle. The meaning of aletheia in archaic Greek is taken as the starting point. It is followed by remarks about the concept of truth in the Seven Sages. The author discusses this concept as it appears in views and works of philosophers and historians. A special section is devoted to the epistemological and ontological understanding of truth. On this occasion, influential views of Heidegger are examined. The paper is concluded by a review of various meanings of truth in Aristotle."

79. Yialoucas, Costantinos Savva. 1990. The Conflict of Doxa and Aletheia in Euripides and His Predecessors. Nicosia - Cyprus: The Cyprus Association of Greek Philologists "Stasinos".

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

History of Truth. Selected Bibliography on Ancient Primary Authors

Homer

1. Accame, Silvio. 1963. "L'invocazione Alla Musa E La Verità in Omero E in Esiodo (Prima Parte)." Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica no. 41:257-281.

2. ———. 1963. "L'invocazione Alla Musa E La Verità in Omero E in Esiodo (Seconda Parte)." Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica no. 41:385-415.

3. Adkins, Arthur W.H. 1972. "Truth, Kosmos, and Arete in the Homeric Poems." Classical Quarterly no. 22:5-18.

4. Levet, Jean-Pierre. 1976. Le Vrai Et Le Faux Dans La Pensée Grecque Archaique. Étude De Vocabulaire. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Tome I. Présentation générale. Le vrai et le faux dans les épopées homériques.

Avant-Propos: "Ce livre est la première partie d'une thèse de doctorat d'État qui a été soutenue le 11 mai 1974 en Sorbonne".

"A la description de l'état homérique de la langue et de la pensée succédera, dans une seconde partie, une étude du vocabulaire historique. Cet examen accompli, il restera à depeindre l'évolution de chaque élément lexical jusqu'à la fin du Ve siècle, à travers le Hymnes Homériques, la poésie lyrique et élégiaque, les œuvres des poètes tragiques et comiques anciens, les écrits d'Hérodote, de Thucydide et d'Antyphon, les fragments des Présocratiques et les passages du Corpus Hippocratiique que l'on peut dater du Ve siècle. On composera enfin une dernière synthèse résumant l'ensemble de l'évolution constatée et présentant l'état de langue et de pensée dont hérite le IVe siècle." (p. 5, note omise).

5. Nagy, Gregory. 1996. Homeric Questions. Austin: University of Texas Press.

See Chapter 4: Myth as exemplum in Homer - particularly pp. 122-128.

6. Prier, Raymond Adolph. 1997. "Achilles Rheter? Homer and Proto-Rhetorical Truth." In The Rhetoric Canon, edited by Schildgen, Brenda Deen, 63-81. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

7. Pucci, Pietro. 1987. Odysseus Polutropos. Intertextual Readings in the Odyssey and the Iliad. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

See Chapter I.8 Disguising truth: fiction pp. 83-109

8. Puelma, Mario. 1989. "Der Dichter Und Die Wahrheit in Der Griechischen Poetik Von Homer Bis Aristoteles." Museum Helveticum no. 46:65-100.

9. Riezler, Kurt. 1943. "Homer's Contribution to the Meaning of Truth." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 3:326-337.

Hesiod

1. Arrighetti, Graziano. 1992. "Esiodo E Le Muse: Il Dono Della Verità E La Conquista Della Parola." Athenaeum no. 80:45-63.

2. ———. 1996. "Hésiode Et Les Muses. Le Don De La Vérité Et La Conquête De La Parole." In Le Métier Du Mythe. Lectures D'Hésiode, edited by Blaise, Fabienne, Judet de la Combe, Pierre and Rousseau, Philippe, 53-70. Villeneuve-d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.

3. Buongiovanni, Angelo. 1987. "La Verità E Il Suo Doppio (Hes. Theog. 27-28)." In Interpretazioni Antiche E Moderne Di Testi Greci, 9-24. Pisa: Giardini editore.

Ricerche di filologia classica. Vol. III.

4. Daix, David-Artur. 2006. "Réalités Et Vérités Dans La Théogonie Et Les Travaux Et Les Jours D'Hésiode." Métis.Anthropologie des Mondes Grecs Anciens no. 4:139-164.

"Et d'abord quelle est cette vérité que nous chante Hésiode ? Nous pourrions répondre qu'il s'agit à l'évidence d'une vérité "poétique", autrement dit d'une vérité qui s'exprime au sein d'une composition littéraire -- étant entendu que la nature orale de cette composition ne nuit en rien à son caractère littéraire --, d'un ensemble de récits auxquels nous donnons souvent le nom de "mythes", où l'imagination et la fiction tiennent une place prépondérante. Toutefois, cette réponse fait surtout ressortir l'écart entre la conception que pouvaient avoir Homère ou Hésiode d'un discours véridique et celle que développera un philosophe comme Platon ou, dans un autre registre, un historien comme Thucydide, qui l'un comme l'autre se méfient hautement des artifices poétiques, au point de souhaiter les censurer, voire les expurger. Mais elle ne nous apprend en rien ce qu'Hésiode lui-même entend par "vérité". p. 140

(...)

"Conclusion.

Ni le mythe de Prométhée et de Pandora - qui, tel qu'il apparaît dans la Théogonie précisément, servirait à merveille le projet des Travaux et les Jours - - ni l'Éris iliadique n'ont perdu leur sens quand ils apparaissent au milieu des "réalités" qu'Hésiode rappelle à Persès. Mais ils sont en décalage par rapport à la perspective qu'adopte le poète et au monde qu'il veut célébrer.

Hésiode redéfinit les notions de lutte et d'exploit, de querelle et d'envie. Et, de même, il modifie l'équilibre entre les récits sur lesquels s'appuie sa démonstration. Il n'échappe pas pour autant au poids de la tradition, mais il assure la pertinence de son chant et se montre ainsi fidèle à ses patronnes, les Muses, "les filles à la langue habile du puissant Zeus" (29), dont les paroles sont toujours ajustées à leur propos, et au pouvoir dont elles l'ont investi.

La vérité est au coeur des préoccupations d'Hésiode. Toujours ses compositions prétendent la dire. Reste que cette vérité même pose problème, tant il est vrai qu'elle offre, paradoxalement, elle aussi, deux visages, selon qu'elle habite le temps des dieux ou celui des hommes."

5. Ferrari, Giovanni. 1988. "Hesiod's Mimetic Muses and the Strategies of Deconstruction." In Post-Structuralist Classics, edited by Benjamin, Andrew E., 45-78. New York: Routledge.

"This essay has a narrow focus but a large penumbra. My focus is a current interpretation of the couplet spoken by the Muses in the prologue to Hesiod's Theogony, an interpretation avowedly influenced by the work of Jacques Derrida. I think it not just mistaken, but mistaken in an exemplary fashion. That is, in considering how it goes wrong I hope to reveal something more general about the impact of Derrida's work, actual and potential, bad and good, on classical studies. (This will eventually involve me in a quite detailed analysis of an exemplary piece by Derrida himself.) (1) In addition, I will offer the beginnings of an account of a significant and general pattern of archaic Greek thought evinced by Hesiod's couplet (one which has particular importance for the later development of Greek philosophy); a pattern which, I argue, is obscured by a certain pervasive anachronism that classicists engaged by Derrida have imported from his work."

(1) " Signature, événement, contexte" and its companion piece " Limited, inc. a b c..." which I come to in the fourth section [both essay reprinted in: J. Derrida - Limited Inc. - Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1988]

6. Heiden, Bruce A. 2007. "The Muses' Uncanny Lies: Hesiod, Theogony 27 and Its Translators." American Journal of Philology no. 128:153-175.

7. Judet de la Combe, Pierre. 1993. "L'autobiographie Comme Mode D'universalisation. Hésiode Et Hélicon." In La Componente Autobiografica Nella Poesia Greca E Latina Fra Realtà E Artificio Letterario, edited by Arrighetti, Graziano and Montanari, Franco, 25-39. Pisa: Giardini.

8. Leclerc, Marie-Christine. 1993. La Parole Chez Hésiode. À La Recherche De L'harmonie Perdue. Paris: Belles Lettres.

9. Nagy, Gregory. 1992. "Authorisation and Authorship in the Hesiodic Theogony." Ramus no. 21:119-130.

"Strict attention to poetic truth, aletheia, as the 'recovered essence of being' and to the sharp contrast between muthos and epos (especially in diachronic perspective) reveals a pan-Hellenism in Hesiod's Theogony that confers authority on the poem and authorship on the poet."

10. ———. 1996. "Autorité Et Auteur Dans La Théogonie Hésiodique." In Le Métier Du Mythe. Lectures D'Hésiode, edited by Blaise, Fabienne, Judet de la Combe, Pierre and Rousseau, Philippe, 41-52. Villeneuve-d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.

11. Neitzel, Heinz. 1980. "Hesiod Und Die Lügenden Musen. Zur Interpretation Von Theogonie 27f." Hermes no. 108:387-401.

12. Otto, Walter F. 1952. "Hesiodea." In Varia Variorum. Festgabe Für Karl Reinhardt Dargebracht Von Freunden Und Schülern Zum 14. Februar 1951, 49-57. Münster: Böhlau.

13. Pretagostini, Roberto. 1995. "L'incontro Con Le Muse Sull'elicona in Esiodo E in Callimaco: Modificazioni Di Un Modello." Lexis no. 13:157-172.

Ristampato in. R. Pretagostini - Ricerche sulla poesia alessandrina II. Forme allusive e contenuti nuovi - Roma, Edizioni Quasar, 2007

14. Pucci, Pietro. 1976. Hesiod and the Language of Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

See Chapter I: The true and false discourse in Hesiod - pp. 8-44

15. Rudhardt, Jean. 1996. "Le Préambule De La Théogonie. La Vocation Du Poète. Le Langage Des Muses." In Le Métier Du Mythe. Lectures D'Hésiode, edited by Blaise, Fabienne, Judet de la Combe, Pierre and Rousseau, Philippe, 25-39. Villeneuve-d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.

16. Strauss, Clay Jenny. 2003. Hesiod's Cosmos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

See pp. 58-64 on Theogony, 27-28.

17. Stroh, Wilfried. 1976. "Hesiods Lügende Musen." In Studien Zum Antiken Epos, edited by Görgemanns, Herwig and Schmidt, Ernst A., 85-112. Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain.

18. Svenbro, Jesper. 1976. "La Parole Et Le Marbre. Aux Origines De La Poétique Grecque." In. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Chapitre 1.2 Hésiode: la vérité comme relation sociale pp. 46-73.

"Au VIIe Chant [de l ' Odyssée], Alcinoos donne un banquet en l'honneur d'Ulysse. "Laissez-moi manger dans ma détresse, dit Ulysse, car il n'y a rien de plus chien que le ventre odieux ( ou gar ti stugeréi epl gastéri kúnteron allo épleto)" ; sans nourriture, Ulysse ne pourrait raconter ses aventures car, dit-il, son ventre lui "commande de manger et de boire" et lui "fait oublier" ( ek... léthanei) ce qu'il a éprouvé. Or, la signification de la notion archaique d'alétheia, étudiée entre autres par Detienne, nous permet de faire l'observation suivante: loin de correspondre à notre conception de "vérité", 1'alétheia archeíque tend à garder son sens "étymologique" et signifie le "non-oubli" (a-létheia), de sorte qu'on pourrait dire d'Ulysse qu'il ne saurait dire l'a-létheia qu'à condition de recevoir à manger. C'est aussi le cas des trois Vierges dans l'Hymne homérique à Hermès qui après avoir mangé du miel blond disent volontiers la vérité (alétheién agoreúein)" tandis qu'elles "deviennent menteuses ( pseúdontai)" aussitôt qu'elles en sont privées. (*)" p. 54

(*) Hymnes homériques IV.560-3.

19. Wismann, Heinz. 1996. "Propositions Pour Une Lecture D'Hésiode." In Le Métier Du Mythe. Lectures D'Hésiode, edited by Blaise, Fabienne, Judet de la Combe, Pierre and Rousseau, Philippe, 15-22. Villeneuve-d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.

Pindar

1. Hubbard, Thomas K. 1985. The Pindaric Mind. A Study of Logical Structure in Early Greek Poetry. Leiden: Brill.

See Chapter II.3 Alathea / Pseudos pp. 100-106.

2. Komornicka, Anna Maria. 1972. "Quelques Rémarques Sur La Notion D' Alétheia Et De Pseudos Chez Pindare." Eos.Commentarii Societatis Philologa Polonorum no. 60:235-253.

3. ———. 1979. Studia Nad Pindarem I Archaiczna Liryka Grecka W Kregu Pojec Prawdy I Falszu. Lodz: Uniwersytet Lodzki.

In Polish: Studies on Pindar and Archaic Greek lyric. Terms denoting true and false (with a French summary, pp. 252-272).

4. ———. 1981. "Termes Déterminant Le Vrai Et Le Faux Chez Pindare." In Aischylos Und Pindar. Studien Zu Werk Und Nachwirkung, edited by Schmidt, Ernst Günther, 81-89. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

"L'analyse de ces deux notions (le Vrai et le Faux) donne lieu à maintes conclusions. Citons, à titre d'exemple, deux réflexions. Or, contrairement au Faux -- sur le plan moral -- qui est toujours double (diplóos) ou même multiple, bariolé, sinueux, furtif, qui se tapit dans l'obscurité, la Vérité morale, elle, est toujours unique, simple (aletós). Par ailleurs, ce qui m'a frappée au cours de mes recherches, c'est le fait que tandis que la vérité morale en tant que franchise, véracité, loyauté est claire, manifeste, ouverte à tous et dévoilée -- la vérité rationnelle-cognitive, elle, est cachée, difficile à trouver, invisible et insaisissable, résidant dans les profondeurs. Une autre observation -- que je partage avec M. Detienne (*) -- c'est le fait que le domaine du Vrai et du Faux se trouve gouverné -- dans toute la poésie archaïque grecque -- par deux lois fondamentales -- celle de la contradiction et celle de l'ambiguïté -- autrement dit, que ces notions résident dans un couple de contraires antithétiques et complémentaires." pp. 88-89

(*) M. Detienne, Les maitres de vérité dans la Grèce archaique, Paris, 1967, p. 146.

5. Nagy, Gregory. 1990. Pindar's Homer. The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

The Mar Flexner Lectures, 1982 Bryn Mawr College.

On Alétheia see pp. 58-71.

6. Ortega, Alfonso. 1970. "Poesia Y Verdad En Pindaro." Helmantica no. 21:253-272.

Thucydides

1. Allison, June. 1997. Word and Concept in Thucydides. Atlanta: Scholars Press.

On Alethéia see pp. 206-237.

2. Moles, John L. 1993. "Truth and Untruth in Herodotus and Thucydides." In Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World, edited by Gill, Christopher and Wiseman, Timothy Peter, 122-146. Exeter: University of Exter Press.

"In this discussion, I want to mediate between `literary' and 'historical' approaches to the question, primarily through a close reading of the prefaces of Herodotus and Thucydides (presented in my own very literal, and sometimes controversial, translations). What emerges, I think, from the content and form of these programmatic statements is the way in which 'literary' and 'historical' objectives are alike present and deeply interfused.

On the one hand, both writers see themselves as inheritors of the tradition of epic narrative, especially as expressed in Homer's commemoration of a great war in the Iliad. Both writers also see themselves as developing the project built into Homer's poem (a project itself not without a certain `historical' concern), namely that of analysing the causation and process of war and conflict, and of doing so by the invention of significant speeches and by the selection and presentation of concrete events. On the other hand, both writers also see themselves as engaged in a project which is distinctive from that of the poetic tradition in its attempt to establish factual truth and to distinguish this from factual 'untruth' or 'falsehood'.

Thucydides is more explicit about the nature and methodology of this project than Herodotus, and also about the kind of history (that is, primarily, recent history) in which this project can be pursued effectively. Indeed, in this respect especially, he presents himself as a critic, and rival, of Herodotus as well as a successor. But, in the prefaces of both historians, as in their full-scale narratives, we can recognize the combination of objectives (the perpetuation of epic narrative and interpretation and the innovative search for factual truth) that makes it so difficult to characterize their writings either in terms of 'literature' or 'history'. This combination also makes it difficult to characterize their work in terms of 'truth', 'falsehood' or 'fiction', though if we examine their own descriptions of their project, we have a better chance of seeing how these concepts match with theirs."

3. Romilly, Jacqueline de. 1990. La Construction De La Vérité Chez Thucydide. Paris: Juillard.

Heraclitus

Texts

Studies

1. O'Meara, Dominic. 2004. ""Dire Le Vrai" Chez Héraclite." In La Verité. Antiquité - Modernité, edited by Aenishanslin, Jean-Franois, O'Meara, Dominic and Schüssler, Ingeborg, 11-17. Lausanne: Payot.

Parmenides

Texts

Studies

1. Constantineau, Philippe. 1987. "La Question De La Vérité Chez Parménide." Phoenix.Journal of the Classical Association of Canada no. 41:217-240.

"This article proposes a new interpretation of Fragment 2 based on a reading of verses 3 and 5 as questions rather than as assertions, a reading which is supported by references to similar Homeric formulae. It is argued that this reading solves all the problems that have plagued all previous interpretations of this fragment. It also sheds new light on the starting point of Parmenides' ontology as set against the background of the traditions of epic poetry and of Ionian cosmology."

2. Germani, Gloria. 1988. " Aletheie in Parmenide." La Parola del Passato no. 43:177-206.

3. Mourelatos, Alexander. 1970. The Route of Parmenides. A Study of Word, Image and Argument in the Fragments. New Haven: New Haven University Press.

New, revised edition including a new introduction, three additional essays and a previously unpublished paper by Gregory Vlastos Names of Being in Parmenides - Las Vegas, Parmenides Publishing, 2008.

4. Papadis, Dimitris. 2005. "The Concept of Truth in Parmenides." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 23:77-96.

"Studies Parmenides' tripartite cognitive scheme: a) doxa, true or false, b) ta dokounta = true doxai, primarily of universal reference, and c) aletheia. Doxa and ta dokounta refer to the perceptible aspect of the world, whereas aletheia refers to the inner Being of the world. Although in the Poem access to the truth is reserved to Parmenides, it is understood that such access is also possible for everyone possessed of exceptional spirituality."

Sophists

Texts

Studies

1. Classen, Carl Joachim. 1989. "Protagoras' Aletheia." In The Criterion of Truth, edited by Huby, Pamela and Neal, Gordon, 13-38. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

2. Huby, Pamela, and Neal, Gordon, eds. 1989. The Criterion of Truth. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Essays written in honour of George Kerferd together with a text and translation (with annotations) of Ptolemy's On the Kriterion and Hegemonikon.

Plato's Doctrine of Truth

Texts

Studies

1. Belfiore, Elizabeth. 1985. ""Lies Unlike the Truth": Plato on Hesiod, Theogony, 27." Transactions of the American Philological Association no. 115:47-57.

Plato's text is: Republic 2, 376-383.

2. Benardete, Seth. 1963. "The Right, the True and the Beautiful." Glotta no. 41:54-62.

3. Bury, Robert Gregg. 1973. The Philebus of Plato. New York: Arno Press.

Edited with introduction, notes and appendices (first edition 1897).

See Appendix F (on aletheia) pp. 201-211.

4. Casertano, Giovanni. 2007. Paradigmi Della Verità in Platone. Roma: Editori Riuniti.

5. Des Places, Édouard. 1961. "La Langue Philosophique De Platon: Le Vocabulare De L'accès Au Savoir Et De La Science." Syculorum Gymnasium no. 16:71-83.

Repris dans: É. Des Places - Études plationiciennes 1929-1979 - Leiden, Brill, 1981 pp. 36-48 (sur alétheia pp. 44-46).

6. Fiorentino, Fernando. 2002. "Il Problema Della Verità in Platone." Sapienza no. 55:3-38.

7. Frede, Michael. 1992. "Plato's Sophist on False Statements." In The Cambridge Companion to Plato, edited by Kraut, Richard, 397-424. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

8. Gill, Christopher. 1993. "Plato on Falsehood - Not Fiction." In Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World, edited by Gill, Christopher and Wiseman, Timothy Peter, 88-121. Exeter: University of Exter Press.

"I begin by drawing three types of distinction between kinds of discourse. The first relates to the speaker's intended form of communication with a listener. This distinction involves two aspects: that between factual and fictional discourse, and that between forms of factual discourse. Factual discourse is intended either to convey to the listener what the speaker takes to be true (`veracious'), or to convey what the speaker takes to be false (`lying'). Fictional discourse is different in kind from factual: its statements (and other forms of expression) do not constitute truth- telling or lying, and in this sense fiction has no truth-status.

The second type of distinction differs from the first in that it characterizes discourse by reference to whether it is in fact true or false rather than whether the speaker intends to convey what he or she takes to be true or false.

The third type of distinction relates to the mode of expression. I have in mind such distinctions as that between analytic discourse and non-analytic (representative or narrative); between prosaic discourse (historical, philosophical) and poetic (epic, dramatic, lyric); between literal discourse and figurative (imagistic, musical); and between general and specific discourse. This type of distinction differs from the first two in several ways, notably in not designating truth-status in either of the senses involved in those distinctions. But I include this distinction here because the question of the truth-status of a given discourse is often connected closely with that of the mode of expression involved. Thus, for example, a given statement may be false (in intention or fact) on the literal level but true (in intention or fact) on the figurative level; or it may be false in a specific case but true in general. This is only the most obvious way in which the distinctions drawn in the first two types may be connected with those in the third type.

My claim is that these distinctions, while broadly intelligible to modern readers, do not correspond in one crucial respect to the conceptual framework presupposed by Plato. The distinction between factual and fictional discourse, which is familiar to us, has no obvious equivalent in Plato's framework." pp. 39-40

9. Guillamaud, Patrice. 1987. "La Doctrine De La Vérité Dans Le Cratyle De Platon." Revue de l'Enseignement Philosophique no. 38:1-9.

10. Hestir, Blake E. 2000. "A Conception of Truth in Republic V." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 17:311-332.

"Plato sometimes refers to truth ( aletheia) as an object. The thesis of this paper is that Plato's "object" truth is being, an object of knowledge. I provide an examination of the difficult stretch of text at "Republic" V 476e-480a, where Plato argues for the separation of knowledge, belief, and ignorance with respect to their objects. Plato claims that knowledge is "set over" being, by which he means forms. Since philosophers are lovers of the sight of truth and Plato thinks that in one respect forms are truth, it follows that the being knowledge is set over is truth."

11. ———. 2003. "A Conception of Truth in Plato's Sophist." Journal of The History of Philosophy no. 41:1-24.

" Plato's solution to the problem of falsehood carries a notorious reputation which sometimes overshadows a variety of interesting developments in Plato's philosophy. One of the less-noted developments in the Sophist is a nascent conception of truth which casts truth as a particular relation between language and the world. Cornford and others take Plato's account of truth to involve something like correspondence; some find the origin of Aristotle's "correspondence" account of truth in Plato's Sophist. But all this assumes a lot about Plato, much less Aristotle. For one, it assumes that to claim that the statement 'Theaetetus is sitting' is true is to claim that it is true because it corresponds with the fact that Theaetetus is sitting. Other scholars have been reluctant to accept Cornford's view, but few offer any explanation of what sort of account of truth we might ascribe to Plato by the end of the Sophist. Tarski has argued that truth is a simpler notion than that of correspondence. In fact, he claims his own "conception" of truth is similar to the classical conception we find in Aristotle's Metaphysics -- a conception of truth formulated in Greek in much the same way Plato formulates it in the Sophist. Unfortunately, Tarski never sufficiently explains what it is about the classical conception that makes it closer to his own. I argue that Tarski is generally right about the ancient conception of truth, but this is not to claim that Tarski's own conception is in Plato. By interpreting Plato's solution to the paradox of not-being and his solution to the problem of falsehood, I argue that Plato's account of truth implies a simpler notion of truth than correspondence. I outline various types of correspondence theory and show that none of these fits what Plato says about truth, syntax, and meaning in the Sophist."

12. ———. 2004. "Plato and the Split Personality of Ontological Aletheia." Apeiron no. 37:109-150.

"I argue that Plato conceives of truth in at least two distinct and fundamentally important ways: (T1) truth is simply that being or substance which he identifies as forms, and (T2) truth is the ontological stability of the forms which is the precondition for the forms being what they are insofar as they are forms and for each form having the particular F-property it has by virtue of itself, and which guarantees that each form will satisfy the Parmenidean requirements for knowledge. Plato's ontological truth has a split personality, the latter of which (T2) I argue has been misunderstood."

13. Jenks, Rod. 2001. The Contribution of Socratic Method and Plato's Theory of Truth to Plato Scholarship. Levinston: Edwin Mellen Press.

Contents: 1. The problem of the Socratic method; 2. The Coherence Theory of Truth; 3. The Coherence Theory within the Platonic corpus; 4. Coherence and anamnesis; 5. Socratic ignorance and the Coherence Theory of Truth; 6. The uniqueness of the world; conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

14. Knight, Thomas. 1993. "The Use of "Alétheia" for the "Truth of Unreason": Plato, the Septuagint, and Philo." American Journal of Philology no. 114:581-609.

"Orthodoxy about the semantic evolution of Aletheia in the Hellenistic period represents Philo Judaeus and Plutarch as the non-Christian representatives of a line of development beginning in Plato (where Aletheia is said to denote abstract, conceptual Truth, 'die Wahrheit') (1) and ending in the sense of absolute truth, specifically 'the content of Christianity as absolute truth.' (2) The problem of such a stemma is that it fails to stand up to close inspection; the present study considers one of the circumstances under which 'truth' was equated with doctrinal content in the Hellenistic period. (3) Specifically, I undertake to demark the distinction between 'truth' as Philo Judaeus understands it from 'truth' as it is used by the philosophers who are his stylistic and intellectual models; I intend to show that Philo's notion of pure truth is not a natural semantic extension of Platonic (or even contemporary philosophic) usage, but is rather an expression of deeper cultural determinants." p. 581

(1) Bultmann, 'Alétheia.' The passages he cites here in support of this development (Plut. De Isid et Os. 351c, e, and Hierocles Carm. Aur. 21-23 Mullach) are far too late to represent the direct semantic development of Platonic usage of the term. The same objection holds for Bultmann's citation of Epictit. (Diss. 1.4, 31; 3.24, 40) for the extension of Alétheia into 'the sense of `correct learning.' From these observations he proceeds into his second major heading in the discussion of the Classical and Hellenistic evolution of the word, 'The Usage of Dualism.' In this section he again fails to make the crucial distinction between fourth- and third-century (and later) usage.

(2) Bauer,Arndt, and Gingrich, Lexicon, s.v. 'Alétheia', cite Plutarch (Is. and Os. 351e) and Philo (Spec. Leg. 4.178, 'the proselyte is a metanastàs eis aletheian') as the non-Christian antecedents for Alétheia denoting 'the content of Christianity as absolute truth.'

15. Marcos De Pinotti, Graciela. 1987. "La Distinción Platónica Entre Episteme Y Doxa Alethes a La Luz Del Tratamiento Del Error ( Teeteto 188 a-C)." Revista de Filosofia no. 2:135-154.

16. Miller, Mitchell. 2010. "A More "Exact Grasp" of the Soul? Tripartition in the Republic and Dialectic in the Philebus." In Truth. Studies of a Robust Presence, edited by Pritzl, Kurt, 40-101. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

17. Rankin, H.D. 1963. " A-Letheia in Plato." Glotta no. 41:51-54.

18. Szaif, Jan. 1996. Platons Begriff Der Wahrheit. Freiburg / München: Verlag Karl Alber.

Revised paperback edition 1998.

19. ———. 2000. "Platon Über Wahrheit Und Kohärenz." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 82:119-148.

"This article tries to explain how the concepts of truth and coherence feature in Plato's theory of knowledge. It sets out Plato's concept of coherence ( homologia, symphonia) in connection with the methods of his dialectic, gives a critical assessment of the evidence for the foundationalist or intuitionist interpretations of his theory of knowledge, and tries to unearth the presuppositions that allow Plato to combine his specific criterion of coherence with the hard realism of his concept of truth."

20. ———. 2001. "Sprache, Bedeutung, Wahrheit. Überlegungen Zu Platon Und Seinem Dialog Kratylos." Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie no. 26:45-60.

21. ———. 2004. "Die Aletheia in Platons Tugendlehre." In La Verité. Antiquité - Modernité, edited by Aenishanslin, Jean-Franois, O'Meara, Dominic and Schüssler, Ingeborg, 19-45. Lausanne: Payot.

22. Wolz, Henry G. 1966. "Plato's Doctrine of Truth: Orthótes or Aletheia?" Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 27:157-182.

Aristotle's Definition of Truth

Texts

Studies

1. Ademollo, Francesco. 2010. "The Principle of Bivalence in De Interpretatione 4." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 38:97-113.

"Aristotle's definition of the declarative sentence in De interpretatione 4 appears to conflict with his denial of unrestricted bivalence in chapter 9 of the same treatise. The problem can be solved by interpreting chapter 4 to assign truth-value only to some declarative sentences rather than to all and only declarative sentences."

2. Ben-Zeev, A. 1984. "Aristotle on Perceptual Truth and Falsity." Apeiron no. 18:118-125.

3. Berti, Enrico. 1978. "The Intellection of "Indivisibles" According to Aristotle De Anima Iii 6." In Aristotle on Mind and the Senses. Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Aristotelicum, edited by Lloyd, G.E.R. and Owen, G. E. L., 141-163. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

4. ———. 2000. "I Luoghi Della Verità Secondo Aristotele: Un Confronto Con Heidegger." In I Luoghi Del Comprendere, edited by Melchiorre, Virgilio, 3-27. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

5. Brentano, Franz. 1862. Von Der Mannigfachen Bedeutung Des Seienden Nach Aristoteles. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder.

New edition edited by Werner Sauer, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014.

English translation by Rolf George: On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975, Chapter III. Being in the Sense of Being True, pp. 15-26.

6. Brown, Montague. 1993. "Aristotle and Augustine on the Way to Truth: The Essential Agreement and Existential Difference." Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association no. 67:253-267.

7. Busche, Hubertus. 2002. "Die Interpretierende Kraft Der Aisthesis : Wahrheit Und Irrtum Der Wahrnehmung Bei Aristoteles." In Interpretationen Der Wahrheit, edited by Figal, Günter, 112-142. Tübingen: Attempto.

8. Caston, Victor. 1998. "Commentary on Pritzl: Aristotle on the Conditions of Thought." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy no. 14:202-211.

9. Cosci, Matteo. 2014. Verità E Comparazione in Aristotele. Venezia: Istituto veneto di lettere, scienze e arti.

"This research aims to study the Aristotelian notion of truth (αλήθεια) in relation to the development of the so called logic of comparison from a historical and philosophical standpoint. The logic of comparison (or comparative logic) is defined as the proportioning way to make comparisons between different terms through major, minor or equal measure (Casari 1984; 1985). The main thesis of this research is that the Aristotelian notion of truth is not a gradable value, i. e. declinable by “more” or “less”, but, because of that, it could be considered as the ultimative reference of validity for comparative logic. This is argued through the analysis of three chosen key-concepts: gradationism, truth and comparison. Firstly, it is shown how some Aristotelian conceptions about “more” or “less” were unduly taken over with ontological (mis)understanding by later metaphisics, up to consider them as logical justification of existence for degrees of being and corresponding truths, despite Aristotle’s thought, from faulty sensibility to a highest level of absolute Truth. Some recent authoritative studies about the subject of the Aristotelian theory of αλήθεια are been considered here and the result is that none of those allows to attribute such a gradable notion to Aristotle. Then it is proposed a critique evaluation about the problem of the origins of the ancient comparative logic, showing that presumed degrees of truth are not detectable at all in the Aristotelian dialectic, but only more or less sound arguments always based on the criterion of bivalence (truth/false) provided by the Principle of Excluded Middle. Finally, the research ends arguing the groundlessness for attributing to Aristotle the idea of an intuitive and pre-predicative truth as different, prior and superior to an alleged predicative truth through the contextual critique of the interpretations of A. Trendelenburg (1846), F. Brentano (1862) and M. Heidegger (1930) and their common Neo-Scholastic background. - From a theoretical point of view, the whole thesis can be read as a critique to the idea of «truer»."

References:

Ettore Casari, "Note sulla logica aristotelica della comparazione", Sileno, 10, 1984, pp. 131-146.

Ettore Casari, "Logica e comparativi", in Corrad Mangione (ed.), Scienza e filosofia. Saggi in onore di Ludovico Geymonat, Milano: Garzanti, 1985, pp. 392-418.

Adolf Trendelenburg, Geschichte der Kategorienlehre I. Aristotle Kategorienlehre, Berlin: Verlag von G. Bethge, 1846, (reprint: Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1979).

Franz Brentano, Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder Verlag, 1862 (new edition with an introduction by Mauro Antonelli and Werner Sauer, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014).

Martin Heidegger, Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. Einleitung in die Philosophie [lecture course held at Freiburg in the Summer Semester 1930], now in the Gesamtausgabe, XXXI, 1982.

10. Crivelli, Paolo. 1999. "Aristotle on the Truth of Utterances." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 17:37-56.

11. ———. 2004. Aristotle on Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments IX; Notes on the text X; List of abbreviations of titles of Aristotle's works XI; Introduction 1; Part I. Bearers of truth or falsehood 45; 1. States of affairs. thoughts. and sentences 45; 2. Truth conditions for predicative assertions 77; 3. Truth conditions for existential assertions 99; Part II. 'Empty' terms 129; 4. Truth as correspondencb129; 5. 'Vacuous' terms and 'empty' terms 152; Par III. Truth and time 183; 6. Truth and change 183; 7. Truth and determinism in De Interpretatione 9 198; Appendix I. Metaph. Theta 10 1051b 1: the text 234; Appendix 2. Metaph. Theta 10 1051b 2-3: the text 238; Appendix 3. Int. 7, 17b 16-18: the text 239; Appendix 4. The two place relations in Aristotle's definition of truth 254; Appendix 5. Aristotle's theory of truth for predicative assertions: formal presentation 258; Appendix 6. The failure of Bivalence for future-tense assertions formal presentation 266; References 284; Index of names 313; Index of subjects 319; Index of passages 321.

"Tbe study of truth is a central part of the philosophical tradition we have inherited from classical Greece. Aristotle played an important role in developing and sharpening the debate in this area and on many issues that are connected with it. I have two primary goals: to offer a precise reconstruction of all of Aristotle’s most significant views on truth and falsehood and to gain a philosophical understanding of them. In this introduction I first offer an overview of Aristotle’s theory of truth and then discuss the methodology I adopt in pursuing my primary goals.

I AN OVERVIEW OF ARISTOTLE’S THEORY OF TRUTH

Why an overview? Aristotle speaks about truth and falsehood in passages from several works, mainly the Categories (chapters 4, 5, 10, and 12), de Interpretatione (chapters 1-9), Sophistici Elenchi (chapter 25), de Anima (chapter 3.6), and the Metaphysics (chapters Γ 7, Δ 7, Δ 29, Ε 4, and Θ 10). Truth and falsehood are not the main topic of these works: their discussions of truth and falsehood are asides. Reconstructing an Aristotelian theory of truth and falsehood on the basis of such asides poses complicated problems of various sorts. To help readers to keep their orientation through the many bifurcations of the arguments addressing these problems, I decided to offer a concise but precise map of the territory — an overview of Aristotle’s theory of truth. References to the passages from Aristotle’s works that substantiate the attribution of a certain view to him, and an examination of the relevant secondary literature, will be found in the chapters that follow this introduction." (p. 1)

12. Dougherty, M. V. 2004. "Aristotle's Four Truth Values." British Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 12:585-609.

13. Engmann, Joyce. 1976. "Imagination and Truth in Aristotle." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 14:259-265.

14. Ferejohn, Mchael T. 1981. "Aristotle on Necessary Truth and Logical Priority." American Philosophical Quarterly no. 18:285-293.

15. Fiorentino, Fernando. 2001. "Il Problema Della Verità in Aristotele." Sapienza no. 54:257-302.

16. Fleischer, Margot. 1984. Wahrheit Und Wahrheitsgrund. Zum Wahrheitsproblem Und Zu Seiner Geschichte. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

II Kapitel. Aristoteles, pp. 14-28.

17. Harvey, Peter John. 1978. "Aristotle on Truth and Falsity in De Anima Iii,6." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 16:219-220.

18. Hestir, Blake. 2013. "Aristotle’s Conception of Truth: An Alternative View." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 51:193-222.

19. Imbert, Claude. 1985. " La Vérité D'aristote Et La Vérité De Tarski." In Histoire Et Structure. A La Mémoire De Victor Goldschmidt edited by Brunschwig, Jacques and Imbert, Claude, 173-193. Paris: Vrin.

20. Long, Christopher P. 2011. Aristotle on the Nature of Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

21. Maslankowski, Willi. 2010. Aristoteles: Von Der Wissenschaft Der Wahrheit. Gedanken Aus Seinen Schriften Bad Honnef: Bock.

22. Moreau, Joseph. 1961. "Aristote Et La Vérité Antéprédicative." In Aristote Et Les Problèmes De Méthode. Communications Présentées Au Symposium Aristotelicum Tenu À Louvain Du 24 Août Au 1 Septembre 1960, 21-33. Paris: Béatrice Nauwelaerts.

23. Negro, Giovanni. 1997. "Alcune Note Sul Vero in Aristotele : L'αλήθεια Come Isoformismo Di Essere E Conoscere." Atti dell'Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti no. 155:353-35.

24. Pearson, Giles. 2005. "Aristotle on Being-as-Truth." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 28.

25. Pritzl, Kurt. 1993. " Ways of Truth and Ways of Opinion in Aristotle." Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association no. 67:241-252.

26. ———. 1998. "Being True in Aristotle's Thinking." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy no. 14:177-201.

27. ———. 2010. "Aristotle's Door." In Truth. Studies of a Robust Presence, edited by Pritzl, Kurt, 15-39. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

28. Razzino, Giuseppe. 1990. "Essere E Verità in Aristotele. Una Rilettura Di E, 4 E Theta, 10 Della Metafisica." Filosofia e Teologia no. 4:84-97.

"The problem of the relation between the determinations of the concept of truth in the chapters E, 4 and Theta, 10 of Metaphysics in the modern exegesis has been prevalently framed in the distinction between a logical meaning and an ontological one of truth. In this article it is re-examined with reference to the strict connection between thought and being as a peculiar character of the Aristotelian (and generally Greek) thought of truth. The result is the character of arché and aitia of truth of asuntheton (as it presents itself in the noein) in relation to every determinable truth in the dianoein, and so the character of original foundation of the eidos, as it shows itself to the thought in the simplicity of the intellectual intuition."

29. Sonderegger, Erwin. 2004. "La Vérité Chez Aristote." In La Verité. Antiquité - Modernité, edited by Aenishanslin, Jean-Franois, O'Mear, Dominic and Schüssler, Ingeborg, 47-63. Lausanne: Payot.

30. Spangler, G. A. 1976. "Aristotle on Saying Something." Apeiron no. 10:38-46.

31. Tugendhat, Ernst. 1992. "Der Wahrheitsbegriff Bei Aristoteles." In Philosophische Aufsätze, 251-260. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

32. Upton, Thomas. 2004. "Truth Vs. Necessary Truth in Aristotle's Sciences." Review of Metaphysics no. 57:741-753.

33. Vigo, Alejandro. 1998. "Die Aristotelische Auffassung Der Praktischen Wahrheit." Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie no. 2:285-308.

34. Visentin, Mauro. 1999. "La Sospensione Del Linguaggio Fra Verità E Realtà in Aristotele: Breve Commento Filosofico Del « de Interpretatione » " Annali dell'Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici no. 16:125-200.

35. Weidemann, Hermann. 2005. "Überlegungen Zum Begriff Der Praktischen Wahrheit Bei Aristoteles." Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung no. 59:345-357.

36. Wheeler, Mark Richard. 2011. "A Deflationary Reading of Aristotle's Definitions of Truth and Falsehood at Metaphysics 1011 B 26-7." Apeiron no. 44:67-90.

"Aristotle's definitions of truth and falsehood at Metaphysics 1011 B 26-7 are deflationary: they presuppose that there are assertions, intentional contents of assertions, ontological correlates of these, and a weak relation of correspondence-as-correlation, but they do not presuppose philosophical theories of any of these."

37. Williams, K. J. 1978. " Aristotle's Theory of Truth." Prudentia no. 10:66-76.

38. Wilpert, Paul. 1940. "Zum Aristotelischen Wahrheitsbegriff." Philosophische Jahrbuch no. 53:3-16.

39. ———. 1940. "Die Wahrhaftigkeit in Der Aristotelischen Ethik." Philosophische Jahrbuch no. 53:324-338.

40. ———. 1940. "Zum Aristotelischen Wahrheitsbegriff." Philosophisches Jahrbuch no. 53:3-16.

Reprinted in: Fritz-Peter Hager (ed.), Logik und Erkenntnislehre des Aristoteles, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972, pp. 106-121.

41. Wolff, Francis. 1999. "Proposition, Être Et Verité: Aristote Ou Antisthène? (À Propos De Métaphysique Δ, 29)." In Théories De La Phrase Et De La Proposition De Platon À Averroès, edited by Büttgen, Philippe, Diebler, Stéphane and Rashed, Marwan, 43-63. Paris: Éditions Rue d'Ulm / Presses de l'École normale supérieure.

" Lorsque, en Metaphysique Δ, 29, Aristote parle de la « chose vraie », cela ne signifie pas que le Stagirite possède, outre sa conception de la vérité propositionnelle, une conception de la vérité ontologique. Dans le texte en question, Aristote adopte, pour les besoins de la polémique, la conception antisthénienne de la proposition et de la vérité, selon laquelle il ne peut y avoir qu'un logos par objet, ce qui entraîne l'impossibilité de la contradiction. Cette conception donne lieu à des paradoxes, auxquels Platon se heurte notamment dans le Sophiste; mais qui n'ont été définitivement résolus que par la distinction analytique effectuée par Aristote entre sujet et prédicat, distinction qui marque la naissance de la notion de proposition proprement dite."

Epicureanism

Texts

Studies

1. Everson, Stephen. 1990. "Epicurus on the Truth of the Senses." In Epistemology. Companions to Ancient Thought. Vol. 1, 161-183. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2. Striker, Gisela. 1977. "Epicurus on the Truth of Senses Impressions." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 59:125-142.

Reprinted in: G. Striker - Essays on Hellenistic epistemology and ethics - Cambridge, Cambridge Universipty Press, 1996, pp. 77-91

Stoicism

Texts

Studies

1. Long, Anthony Arthur. 1971. "Language and Thought in Stoicism." In Problems in Stoicism, edited by Long, Anthony Arthur, 75-113. London: Athlone Press.

2. ———. 2006. "The Stoic Distinction between Truth ( Aletheia) and the True ( Alethes)." In Les Stoiciens Et Leur Logique, edited by Brunschwig, Jacques, 61-78. Paris: Vrin.

Second revised edition; first edition 1976.

Skepticism

Texts

Studies

1. Groarke, Leo. 1990. Greek Scepticism. Anti-Realist Trends in Ancient Thought. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.

2. Long, Anthony Arthur. 1978. "Sextus Empiricus on the Criterion of Truth." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies no. 25:35-58.

Neoplatonism

Texts

Studies

1. Beierwaltes, Werner. 1979. " Deus Est Veritas. Zur Rezeption Des Griechischen Wahrheitsbegriffes in Der Frühchristlichen Theologie." In Pietas. Festschrift Für Bernhard Kotting, edited by Dassmann, Ernst and Frank, K.Suso, 15-29. Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung.

Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)

Texts

Studies

1. Muchnova, Dagmar. 1980. "Veritas Dans Les Traités Philosophiques De Marcus Tullius Cicéron." Graecolatina Pragensia no. 8:41-51.

"L'examen des synonymes et antonymes et l'analyse de l'emploi de veritas, surtout du point de vue sémantique, montrent que Cicéron a contribué à la diffusion de ce terme, ainsi qu'à celle du mot verum, et qu'il les a enrichis d'un sens philosophique."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

History of Truth: Veritas in Latin Middle Ages from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Introduction

It is in the Middle Ages that for the first time were written treatises under the title of De veritate and the medieval definition of truth as "adequation of intellect to the thing" is well known; this page is about his history and the criticism made against it.

"The first medieval work on truth is the dialogue De veritate of Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1080-85). It is in many regards an original treatise. In Chapter One Anselm writes, "I do not recall ever having found a definition of truth; but if you wish, let us inquire as to what truth is by going through the various things in which we say there is truth." In the next chapters he examines not only what truth of the proposition and of thought is, but also that of the will, of action, of the senses and of things. In all these cases the analysis results in establishing truth as rightness or rectitude (rectitudo), denoting that something is as it ought to be, that it does that "for which it is made" (Ch. 2). Anselm's definition, then, is ultimately (Ch. 11), "rightness perceptible only to the mind" (rectitudo mente sola perceptibilis) - the addition is meant to exclude cases of a merely visible rectitude, e.g., that of a (straight) stick.

The definition rectitude reminds us of the rightness (Richtigkeit) of which Heidegger spoke. But Anselm's analysis is carried out on yet a different level. To be sure, Anselm too deals with the truth of the proposition (although as one of the areas in which truth can be found), and also for him an enunciation is true when it signifies that that which is, is. It is here, however - in the "rightness", if one will - that truth manifests itself as rectitude, since in this way the statement fulfils the end contained in its nature. It is primarily this inner conformity which Anselm means by rightness, not the "correctness" of the proposition with respect to the outer world.

The adaequatio-formula is not mentioned by Anselm anywhere in the dialogue - another indication that, to quote De Rijk, the Middle Ages are not "typically medieval". Neither does the idea expressed in the formula play a crucial role. (...)

In the second medieval work on truth, the Questiones disputatae De veritate of Thomas Aquinas (1256-59), the matter is different, however In this writing the adaequatio-formula is to be found again and again. It is therefore especially owing to Thomas Aquinas that the formula has become so current.

In the first disputation he mentions a series of definitions of truth, derived from various traditions. Greek philosophy is represented by Aristotle, early Christian thought by Augustine, and pre- scholastic thought by the above-mentioned definition of Anselm, who was one of Thomas's main interlocutors in this disputation. Furthermore, Arabic philosophy is represented by Avicenna. Among the many determinations of truth is also the formula adaequatio rei et intellectus, ascribed by Thomas to a tenth-century Jewish philosopher, Isaac Israëli. No one, however, has been able to locate this definition in Israëli's works. Scholars suggest Avicenna and Averroës as possible sources." (pp. 5-6)

From: Jan A. Aertsen, Medieval Reflections on Truth. Adaequatio ei et intellectus. Amsterdam: VU Boekhandel 1984.

Veritas in ancient Latin

"Verus as an adjective was a very old Latin word that had several meanings. It could be used as a simple explicative or affirmative (verum!). Most often, in Plautus and Republican literature, it meant "true" in the sense of firm, capable of withstanding a test or trial. For example: "Farewell, ... continue conquering with true [vera, stalwart] courage as you have done so far" (Casina 87-88). In this sense the Romans seem to have related verus to words with similar sounds and meanings: assevere, persevere, severus. Cicero's Laelius affirms that "a public meeting, though composed of very ignorant men, can, nevertheless, usually see the difference between a 'demagogue' (popularis), that is, a shallow, flattering citizen, and one who is constans, verus, and gravis. " (De amicitia 95).

Veritas seems to have begun its Latin life as the abstraction of a quality of human behavior, like gravitas or simplicitas. It appears in a few instances as early as Terence and has a meaning not far from severitas (rigor, sternness, austerity, integrity of judgment), as opposed to compliance or levity: "There was stern veritas in his face, fides in his words" (Tristis veritas inest in voltu atque in verbis fides [Andria 858]). "Obsequium secures friends, veritas only enemies" (Obsequium amicos, veritas odium paret [Andria 68-69]). Livy's Capitolinus declares, "I know that I could say other things that you would be happier to hear, but necessity compels me, even if my ingenium did not admonish me, to speak vera pro gratis, the vera rather than the gratis. h is not that I do not wish to please you, Quirites, but I wish, much more, for you to be safe" (Livy 3. 68.9). Cicero, the first to make frequent use of the word veritas to translate the abstract truth, the aletheia of Greek philosophers, still, on occasion, employed it with its ancient associations with selflessness, severity, and constancy. "Friendships are nurtured by veritas, alliances by fides, dose relationships by pietas" (veritate amicitia, fide societas, pietate propinquitas colitur [Pro Quinctio 6.26])." (p. 68, notes omitted)

From: Carlin A. Barton, Roman Honor. The Fire in the Bones, Berkeley: University of California Press 2001.

Veritas: Origin of the definition "Adaequatio intellectus ad rem"

"Almost everyone knows that it was Aristotle who proposed the classical (or correspondence) theory of truth for the first time. However, the fact that his writings contain different and often mutually non-equivalent statements on truth is less recognized. This is a sample of Aristotelian explanations concerning the concept of truth (...):

3) To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true (Metaphysics 1011 b).

4) The fact of the being of a man carries with it the truth of the proposition that he is; and the implication is reciprocal: for if a man is, the proposition wherein we allege that he is, is true, and conversely, if the proposition wherein we allege that he is true, then he is. The true proposition, however, is no way the cause of the being of the man, but the fact of the man's being does seem somehow to be the cause of the proposition, for the truth or falsity of the proposition depends on the fact the man's being or not being (Categories 14 b).

5) But since that which is in the sense of being true or is not in the sense of being false, depends on combination and separation, and truth and falsity together depend on the allocation of a pair of contradictory judgements; for the true judgement affirms where the subject and predicate really are combined, and denies where they are separated, while the false judgement has the opposite of this allocation (Metaphysics 1027 b).

6) he who thinks the separated to be separated and the combined to be combined has the truth, while he whose thought is in a state contrary to that of the objects is in error (Metaphysics 1051 b).

7) It is not because we think truly that you are pale, that you are pale, but because you are pale we who say this have the truth (Metaphysics 1051 b).

8) Propositions correspond with facts (Hermeneutics [De interpretatione] 19 b).

The formulation 3) is usually taken as Aristotle's official definition of truth. Now 4) repeats the content of 3) but adds that being is in a sense more basic for truth than an assertion which is qualified as true. The two statements are not equivalent because neither does () follow from 3) nor does the reverse entailment hold. Statements 5) and 6) introduce an explicit ontological parameter, namely combination and separation; these statements seem to be equivalent (or at least "nearly" equivalent). On the other hand, there is no direct entailment from 5) (or 6)) to 3) or 4), and back.

Perhaps one might say that "a is b" is true if and only if the relation which holds between referents of a and b is mapped by the relation holding between a and b, and false if the mapping is not in case. If we decide to label mapping as "combination" and not-mapping as "separation", we obtain something very close to 5) and 6). And if we look at combination as correspondence and separation as non-correspondence, 5) and 6) become popular formulations of the classical definitions of truth.

The statement 7) seems to exemplify previous explanations, particularly 3). Finally, 8) explicitly speaks about facts and correspondence but it is only a marginal remark made by Aristotle when he considered the celebrated sea-battle problem. Hence, there are no sufficient reasons to treat (8) as a serious proposal to define the concept of truth.

If we take 3) as Aristotle's official truth-definition (and, a fortiori, as the first mature explanation of CCT; [Classical Concept of Truth]), than other Aristotelian formulations should be understood rather as more or less auxiliary comments than proper definitions of truth. The point is very important because no idea of correspondence is directly involved in 3). Although, as my previous remarks show, "combination" can be replaced by "correspondence" but nothing forces us to dress Aristotle's truth-theory into "correspondence talk". In fact, 3)- 7) may be explained without any reference to such ideas as correspondence, agreement, adequacy or conformity; recall that 8) is only a marginal remark. I think that the best understanding of what is going on in Aristotle's theory of truth consists in looking at 3) as something which is very closely related to 1) and 2). Then if we think of Plato's philosophy of truth as a further step in the tradition beginning with old Greeks poems and continued by the Pre-Socratics, Aristotle should also be considered in the same way. Under this assumption, 3) schematically says how to answer the question: how is it? Although Aristotle supplements 3) with considerable ontological equipment, his main intuition concerning the concept of truth seems very simple.

Various explanations by Pierre Abélard of the concept of truth offered in his Logica Ingredientibus lead to (see De Rijk [Petrus Abaelardus Dialectica, Assen 1956] p. LIV):

(9) the sentence p is equivalent with "p is true" if and only if p is the case. Clearly, (9) anticipates the semantic definition of. truth but it was not properly understood in the Middle Ages (nor later).

The most famous medieval explanation of the concept of truth comes from Thomas Aquinas. His formulation is this:

10) Veritas est adaequatio intellectus et rei, secundum quod intellectus dicit esse quod est vel non esse quod non est (De Veritate 1,2).

The passage which begins with the word secundum, is simply a repetition of Aristotle's main formulation (see (3) above). But the first part of 10) -- veritas est adaequatio intellectus et rei -- is an obvious addition to Aristotle, actually related to (5) or (6). Usually, (10) is quoted in its simplified version limited to its first part: veritas est adaequatio intellectus et rei; in fact, this shortened formula is the most popular wording of the classical truth-definition. However, everybody who employs this simplified record of CCT as "Aristotelian", must remember that it is certainly not Aristotelian to the letter. The question whether and to which extent it is Aristotelian in spirit requires special investigations that exceed the scope of this paper. So I restrict myself to some remarks on adaequatio intellectus et rei.

One can link the meaning of adaequatio in 10) with the second (Aristotelian) part of this formula. However, Aquinas also uses such terms as conformitas, corresponde n tia and convenientia to explain his understanding of CCT. It suggests his adaequatio expresses (or at least might express) a content which is not quite reducible to Aristotelian intuitions.

What is going on in the first part of 10)? There are several possible answers. Let me indicate three. Firstly, veritas est adaequatio intellectus et rei may be regarded as a counterpart of 5) or 6). Secondly, the fact that the adaequatio-formula opens Thomas' definition seems to suggest that he changed the centre of gravity in the Aristotelian truth-theory in such a way that adaequatio, correspondentia, conformitas or convenientia became crucial ideas in defining truth. Thirdly, the adaequatio-formula was invented by the Schoolmen to capture intuitions concerning truth in a simple way; the Schoolmen very much liked brief formulations. It is very difficult to decide today which interpretation (I am very far from claiming that my three cases exhaust all possible interpretations of 10)) is correct with respect to Aquinas' original intentions. However, the next development of Thomism rather followed the second interpretation. For instance, Francisco Suárez says that veritas transcendentalis significat entitatem rei, connotando cognitionem seu conceptum intellectus, cui talis entitas conformatur vel in quo talis res representatur (Disputationes metaphysicae, 8, 2.9). The content of 3) is completely absent in Suárez. He proposes instead an analysis of truth with the help of the concept of representatio and seems to assume that a conformitas (adaequatio, correspondentia) holds between thoughts and their objects. That is what I mean by "changing the centre of gravity". Most post-medieval thinkers adopted this route in their thinking on truth and tried to explain how adaequatio should be understood.

It is now proper to introduce an important distinction (see Wolenski-Simons [1989]), namely that of weak and strong concept of correspondence. If the concept of correspondence is governed by 3) (or similar statements), we are dealing with correspondence in the weak sense. On the other hand, Suárez's approach employs correspondence in the strong sense. I am inclined to regard the distinction of the two concepts of correspondence as fairly crucial for the history of CCT. Thus, we must always ask which concept of correspondence is used in particular truth-theories because many difficulties with interpreting philosophers' views on truth are rooted in their view of the distinction in question. As far as the matter concerns the concept of correspondence, it has been explained by notions like sameness, similarity, model, picture, co-ordination, isomorphism or homomorphism (...).

Let me finish this section with some historical remarks (see Gilson [1955]). Aquinas notes that his definition of truth is derived from Liber de definitionibus by Izaak ben Salomon Israeli; Aquinas also refers to Avicenna in this context. However, adaequatio does not occur in Israeli's truth-definition which (in Latin version) is this: Et sermo quidem dicentis: veritas est quod est, enuntiativus est nature veritatis et essentiae ejus, quonian illud sciendum quod es res, vera est; est veritas nonnisi quod est; this formula is fairly Aristotelian. Avicenna in his Metaphysics says (in Latin translation) that veritas [...] intelligitur dispositio in re exteriore cum est ei aequalitas; the last word suggests the strong sense of correspondence. It was William of Auvergne who introduced the term adaequatio in philosophy for the first time. He refers (in De universo) to Avicenna in the following way: et hoc [intentio veritas] ait Avicenna, est adaequalio orationis et rerum. Then William adds that the truth is intellectus ad rem. In Albertus Magnus' treatise De bono we find that truth is adaequalio rei cum intellectu. Then comes 10)." (pp. 141-144 of the reprint).

From: Jan Wolenski, "Contributions to the History of the Classical Truth-Definition", in: Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science Vol. IX. Amsterdam: Elsevier 1994 pp. 481-495, Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Uppsala, Sweden, August 7-14, 1991. (Reprinted in: Jan Wolenski, Essays in the History of Logic and Logical Philosophy, Cracov: Jagiellonian University Press 1999, pp. 139-149.

"In the Summa Theologica (I, q. 16; a. 2, ad 2) of St. Thomas Aquinas we read: "Praeterea, Isaac dicit in libro De efinitionibus, quod "veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus"." Also in his De Veritate, q. 1, a. 1, we find the statement: " Et sic dicit Isaac, quod veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus ".

B. Geyer in his work, Die Patristische and Scholastische Philosophie (Berlin, 1928), p. 334, says " Bonaventura, Heinrich von Gent, Thomas von Aquin entnehmen die bekannte scholastische Wahrheitsdefinition: veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus dem "Buch der Definitionen Isaaks. " He gives a reference to St. Bonaventure's commentary on First Book of Sentences (d. 40, a. 2, q. 1) where the definition is found. It is not there attributed to Isaac by St. Bonaventure and the footnote referred to below. is repeated distinctly saying it does not occur in Isaac.

In the work S. Thomas d'Aquin by A.-D. Sertillanges (Paris, 1910) Tome I, p. 41, we read: "Quant à celle d'Isaac, que saint Thomas semble affectionner par-dessus les autres: "La vérité est l'adéquation des choses et de l'intelligence" (adaequatio rei et intellectus), c'est une définition à double entente." J. de Tonquédec, in his La Critique de la Connaissance (Paris, 1929, p. 512) says: " Le vrai, dit Isaac, est l'équation de la chose et de l'esprit ", and in a footnote it is stated: "La définition de la vérité se trouve dans le Livre des Définitions, comme le dit saint Thomas."

In the Encyclopedia Britannica (ed. IV, 1929, it is not in the 1910 edition) s. v. Israeli, Isaac Ben Salomon we read: " Through the labours of Gundissalinus he became very popular with the thirteenth century scholastics who took from his definitions the famous definition: veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus. (1)" (p. 5)

(...)

Several other references might be given to modern writers on mediaeval philosophy who attribute the definition to Isaac.

Among mediaeval writers, St. Albertus Magnus attributes the following definition of truth to Aristotle: " Dicit enim Aristoteles in V primae philosophiae, quod "veritas est adaequatio rerum et intellectuum" " (Summa Theologica, P. II, Tr. 1; q. 1; m. 2; a. 1, Arg. 4.). Moreover he gives Isaac's definition of truth as follows: " Complexi autem sermonis veritas est secundum Isaac in libro de Definitionibus, affirmatio rei de qua vere praedicatur, vel negatio rei de qua vere negatur. " (I. Sum. Theol., Tr. VI, q. 25, m. 1). " Et hoc modo veritas, ut dicit Isaac in libro de definitionibus, quod veritas non est nisi quod est et quod res vere est. " (I. Sum. Theol., T. 6, q. 25, m. 1). " Dicit enim Isaac quod "veritas est id quod est res", vel secundum aliquos, "veritas est sermo quem confirmat demonstratio". " (I. Sum. Theol., T. 6; q. 25, m: 2.). " Secundum Isaac et secundum Augustinum, verum est id quod est. " (Ibid. No. 3.). " Et secu idum hoc dicit Isaac, quod "veritas est sermo quem aff rmat demonstratio vel sensibiliter vel actualiter. " 1. Sum Theol., T. 6, q. 25, m. 1.

St. Bonaventure quotes the definition "adaequatio rei et intellectus" several times, (v. g. Sent., Lib. I, D. 40; Art. 2; q. 1. Sent., Lib. I, D. 46; Art. 1; q. 4. Sent., Lib. II, D. 37; Art. 2; q. 3. In Hex. Collationes, III. par. 8), but so far as I have discovered, he does not state where it is to be found.

In the Quaracchi Edition of his works (1882), Tom. I. p. 707, note 5, the editors call attention to the fact that they had read one ms. of Isaac (Monac. B. R. 8001, ff. 151v.-154r.) without finding the definition of truth which St. Thomas attributes to him. They quote from Isaac a definition which will be referred to later on. In several other places where St. Bonaventure quotes the definition veritas est sermo quem confirmat demonstratio, they refer the reader to this note or repeat it in full." (pp. 6-7)

(...)

I have just finished reading three mss. of Isaac De definitionibus, viz. (a) Paris B. N. 6443, ff. 187r-190r; (b) Paris B. N. 14700, ff. 153r-160v. Catalogued as belonging to the XIII. century, it bears the book-mark of the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris. (...) In none of these mss. did I find the definition of truth so persistently attributed to Isaac.

On f. 156v, 14700, there begins a long list of definitions which continue to the end of the work. This list is also in 6443, but the Vatican ms. lacks it. In these mss. Isaac gives the following definitions of truth: 1. "Diffinitio namque veritatis est quod est ; et diffinitio vani tatis est quod non est aliquid aut, narratio rei absque eo quod est." 14700, f. 155r. C. 1, 11. 12-13; 6443, f. 147v. C. 2, 11. 45. The Vatican ms. reads the same except that it has autem for namque, and falsitatis for vanitatis. (F. 47v. C. 2, 11. 25 sq.)2. Diffinitio veritatis; and there is written in the margin, by the same hand I think, veritas est quod est res. And then the text goes on: " et diffinierunt eam disertores. Dixerunt enim, veritas est sermo quem firmat demonstratio aut sensibiliter aut intellectualiter. ... hec diffinitio est assumpta ex qualitate veritatis, non ex eius quiditate. Et illud ideo, quoniam cum aliquis dicit quid est veritas, est responsio in eo est quod est res, et cum dicit qualis est, dicitur ei quod est sermo quem demonstratio firmat aut intellectualiter aut sensibiliter... et sermo quidem dicentis veritas est quod est enuntiativus est nature veritatis et essentie eius, quoniam illud secundum quod est res, vere est veritas, non nisi quod est. ... falsitas est non quod est res, et dicitur falsitas, narratio rei cum diverso quod est ipsa et ipsius . contrario. " (14700, 158v, C. 2, 11. 30 sq.) Ms. 6443 is a very poor text. The above passage is faulty but the important parts relative to this question are the same. In the margin of 189r. C. 2, 1. 21 there is written in the first hand: " diffinitio veritatis; veritas est quod res est, " and in the same column 1. 39, we read: " sermo quidem dicentis: veritas est quod est essentiativum (sic) est nature veritatis et essencie eius quoniam illud secundum quod est res vera est; est veritas non nisi quod est. "3. " Verum est affirmare rem rei cui est secundum veritatem aut expellere rem a re a qua vere removetur. ... Falsum est affirmare rem rei que ab ea removetur vere et removere rem a re que ei affirmatur secundum veritatem. " (14700, 159 r. C. 1, 11. 22 sq. = 6443, 189r C. 2, 11. 48 sq.) Monacensis 3001 as quoted in the Quaracchi Edition varies somewhat in wording from the above, but the meaning is much the same.

The definition of verum (number 3) perhaps comes nearest to the definition ascribed to Isaac by St. Thomas, yet it is by no means the same either in meaning or language. Perhaps some reader may know of a different manuscript tradition of Isaac wherein the classic definition is found." (pp. 7-8)

Notes

(1) The statement in the Encyclopedia Britannica might lead one to believe that Gundissalinus quoted the definition from Isaac. I have also read recently a ms. of Gundissalinus De anima, Vat. Lat. 2186, f. 104r.-119v. I found there this definition of truth; veritas autem cuiusque rei est id quod ipsa est. f. 118 v., 1. 30

From: Joseph Thomas Muckle, "Isaac Israeli's Definition of Truth", Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Age 8, 1933 pp. 5-8.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on the Theories of Truth in Latin Middle Ages

Bibliography

1. Aertsen, Jan A. 1984. Medieval Reflections on Truth. Adaequatio rei et intellectus. Amsterdam: VU Boekhandel.

Inaugural address on the occasion of his taking up the chair of Medieval philosophy of the Free University in Amsterdam on November 9, 1984.

"There are certain basic words which form the undertone of our thinking and of the manner in which we experience things. These basic words are not unchangeable; they often receive a different content . . . One such basic word is 'truth'."

This is the start of the report of the Synod of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, issued in 1981, "On the nature of the authority of Scripture".(1) How does it happen that the Bible is read so differently? In searching for an answer to this problem, the report adopts a course remarkable within the. Reformed tradition. It poses a truly philosophical question: "What is truth?" That the Bible is read differently is related to the fact that not all people mean the same by what they call "truth".

If I want to raise this same question today, then I am in good company - though I must add at once that it is the matter rather than the company that motivates me. From the outset, that is, as early as with the Greeks, philosophy and truth are seen in an intimate connection. Aristotle, for example, describes philosophy as the "theory" of truth.(2) It is in the Middle Ages, however, that for the first time treatises appear under the title of De veritate, where truth itself is explicitly made the object of reflection. I would like to draw your attention to medieval observations on the query about truth.

'Adaequatio rei et intellectus' as the medieval formula of truth and the criticism of it.

Is an exposition on this theme worthwhile, though? Do we not already know what truth was in the Middle Ages? Probably there is no formulation in scholastic thought that has become more widely known. Even those who did not enjoy the privilege of a classical education are able to say that truth is adaequatio rei et intellectus. What is meant by that seems to be clear. The formula appears to express the "natural" idea of truth, i.e., the correspondence between thought and reality. The determination of truth as adaequatio has become so self-evident that, as the Handbuch philosophischer Grundbegriffe states, it is the point of depart and reference for all contemporary discussions on truth.(3) It can be added that this occurs mostly in a critical sense. Two examples may suffice.

In the above-mentioned synodal report the first chapter sketches the changes in the concept of truth over the course of time. The so-called subject/object relation underlies the entire exposition, apparently from the unquestioning presupposition that this relation is fundamental to the phenomenon of truth as such. The changes in the concept of truth, then, are described in three phases. Successively the report speaks of "objective truth", "subjective truth" (in systems of thought like idealism and existentialism), and finally, of a newer conception called the "relational" concept of truth - the objective and the subjective in one. This means that "truth always occurs within a relation, within the 'relatedness' of man to something else."(4) As the report claims, moreover, this relational concept of truth links up with what the Bible calls truth.

The objective concept of truth - the most current idea of truth - is represented by the medieval formula, phrased "truth is the correspondence of the human way of picturing things with the matters themselves." The human way of imagining things, the human consciousness, is like a mirror able to reflect "the objective state of affairs". This conception of truth is not only ascribed to Thomas Aquinas, but to a great variety of people: " . . . Greek philosophers, . . . the classical Reformed theologians, . . . the logician Bertrand Russell, . . . the Marxist Lenin". The drawback of this conception, in the assessment of the report, is that man is very passive. Does knowing the truth not demand man's activity, research; and wrestling? Without a human spirit there is no truth.

An entirely different criticism can be found in Heidegger, who dealt most thoroughly with the western conception of truth. The lectures he delivered at the University of Freiburg during the winter semester of 1942-43 appeared in 1982 in the Gesamtausgabe of his works under the title Parmenides.(5) Strictly speaking, the title is misleading for actually these lectures deal with the essence of truth, the identical subject that engaged Heidegger in writing Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, which dates from the same time. In the lectures, however, there is "a more direct confrontation with the history of western thought".(6) In his view a change in the essence and "locus" of truth has evolved in philosophy. Truth becomes "rightness" (Richtigkeit) of knowing and asserting; it is no longer "unconcealedness" (aletheia) of being, as it was for the early Greek thinkers. The medieval formulation fixes this essential transformation. " `Veritas est adaequatio intellectus ad rem' Im Sinne dieser Umgrenzung des Wesens der Wahrheit als Richtigkeit denkt das gesamte abendländische Denken von Platon bis zu Nietzsche. "(7) Truth becomes a characteristic of a mental act within man. Inevitably the problem then arises how a psychical process in the inner man can be brought into agreement with things outside.(8) This traditional and current conception of truth, however, is derivative (abkünftig). Parmenides' thought reveals "the road of truth, far away from the beaten track of men". (Fragm. B 1, 27). It can give us a reminder of the forgotten "primordial" sense of truth, the unhiddenness of being, which is the ground of the possibility of rightness.

But when the proper function of philosophy is to "re-mind", we are also allowed to ask of this twofold criticism: do we recall the meaning of truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus at all? Does it have a merely derivative sense, i.e., the rightness of thought? On the other hand, does the formula imply that truth is "reflection" and leave the human mind out of account? These questions lead, me this afternoon to focus on medieval views of truth, in which the idea of the adaequatio plays a central role." (pp. 3-5)

Concluding observations.

Looking back over the course of this discussion, we may conclude that the criticism of the medieval adaequatio-formula, outlined at the beginning, did not grasp its original meaning. Neither is this conception concerned with truth in a merely derivative sense, nor does it ignore man's activity. For in the previous analysis we observed that Thomas's notion of true includes first, transcendentality, second, relationality, third, anthropocentrism, fourth, the fulfilment in an act of the intellect, fifth, the necessity of a norm and measure, sixth the intrinsic connection with the word, seventh, the relation to the divine Logos, and finally, the identity with God Himself. These moments are implicitly or explicitly expressed in the formula adaequatio rei et intellectus, in which every term is charged with meaning.

Compared to the breadth of this conception, modern theories appear to be a reduction of the integral process of truth. It is philosophically important to note that in the medieval approach what is fundamental to truth is not the duality of subjective and objective from which then their togetherness has to be conceived. Rather, it is the primordial conformity of being and intellect that is fundamental to truth. Indeed, as we have seen, being and thinking are the same in the Origin.

Another remarkable aspect in this medieval view is the attempt to integrate philosophical and religious truth. This endeavour runs parallel to the philosophical introduction of the synodal report of the Reformed Churches, with which I began this address. Its intention is that the "relational" concept of truth links up with what the Bible calls truth. Thomas's conception lies concretely in the notion of word, a good example of the way in which his understanding of truth is deepened by a theological reflection. But that which fundamentally enables the integration is the basic idea of the transcendentality of truth. This conception underlies his entire discussion.

The medieval doctrine of the transcendentals - being, one, true, good, and beautiful - forms "the heart of scholastic ontology and metaphysics."(93) This doctrine will be the subject of my research over the coming years. Today I wanted to present you with a sample of it.(94)

Notes:

(1) In the Dutch original, the report carries the title God met ons . . . over de aard van het Schriftgezag, published in: Kerkinformatie, nr. 113 (Febr. 1981). The report was translated into English by the Secretariat of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod, Grand Rapids, Mich., U.S.A.

(2) Metaphysica II, c. I, 993 a 30. Cf. 993 b 20.

(3) L.B. Puntel - Wahrheit, in: Handbuch philosophischer Grundbegriffe III, München, 1974, 1651. Cf. Th. de Boer - De eindigheid van de mens en de oneindigheid van de waarheid. De geschiedenis van het fenomenologisch waarheidsbegrip van Brentano tot Levinas, in: De eindige mens?, Bilthoven, 1975, 55 f.

(4) o.c., 10 (in the English translation).

(5) Frankfurt am Main, 1982 (Gesamtausgabe II. Abteilung, Bd. 54).

(6) Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, in: Wegmarken, Frankfurt am Main, 1967, 73-97. See also for Heidegger's view of truth Sein und Zeit, VIII ed., 1957, 212 f.; Vom Wesen des Grundes, in: Wegmarken, 25 f.; Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, in: id., 109-144; Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, Frankfurt am Main, III ed., 1965, 31 f.; 107 f.; 112 f.

Cf. W. Brettschneider - Sein und Wahrheit. Über die Zusammengehörzgkeit von Sein und Wahrheit im Denken Martin Heideggers, Meisenheim, 1965; J. van der Hoeven - Heidegger, Descartes, Luther, in: Reflecties, Opstellen voor Prof. dr. J.P.A. Mekkes, Amsterdam, 1968, 71-116; Th. de Boer - o.c., 78 f.; E. Tugendhat - Heideggers Idee von Wahrheit, in: G. Skirbekk (Hrsg.) - Wahrheitstheorien. Eine Auswahl aus den Diskussionen fiber Wahrheit im 20. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt am Main, 2nd edition, 1980, 431-448.

(7) Parmenides, 73.

(8) id., 74.

(93) J.B. Lotz - Zur Konstitution der transzendentalen Bestimmungen des Sein nach Tomas von Aquin, in: Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter (Hrsg. P. Wilpert), Berlin, 1963, (Miscellanea Mediaevalia Bd. 2) 334.

(94) Cf. my essay "The Convertibility of Being and Good in St. Thomas Aquinas" to be published in The New Scholasticism [59, 1985, pp. 449-470]

2. ———. 2001. "Fröhliche Wissenschaft: Wahrheit im Mittelalter." In Ende und Vollendung: eschatologische Perspektiven im Mittelalter, edited by Aertsen, Jan A. and Pickavé, Martin, 48-65. Berlin: de Gruyter.

3. ———. 2010. "Truth in the Middle Ages: Its Essence and Power in Christian Thought." In Truth: Studies of a Robust Presence, edited by Pritzl, Kurt, 127-146. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

4. Beer, Jeanette M.A. 1981. Narrative Conventions of Truth in the Middle Ages. Genève: Droz.

5. Beierwaltes, Werner. 1980. "Deus est veritas. Zur Rezeption des griechischen Wahrheitsbegriffes in der frühchristlichen Theologie." In Pietas. Festschrift für Bernhard Kotting, edited by Dassmann, Ernst and Frank, K.Suso, 15-29. Münster: Aschendorff.

6. Cesalli, Laurent. 2007. Le réalisme propositionnel. Sémantique et ontologie des propositions chez Jean Duns Scot, Gauthier Burley, Richard Brinkley et Jean Wyclif. Paris: Vrin.

7. Colish, Marcia L. 1983. "The Stoic theory of verbal signification and the problem of lies and false statements from Antiquity to St. Anselm." In Archéologie du signe, edited by Brind'Amour, Lucie and Vance, Eugène, 17-43. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

8. Enders, Markus. 2006. "'Wahrheit' von Augustinus bis zum frühen Mittelalter: Stationen einer Begriffsgeschichte." In Die Geschichte des philosophischen Begriffs der Wahrheit, edited by Szaif, Jan and Enders, Markus, 65-102. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

9. Goris, Harm. 2006. "A Reinterpretation of Aquinas' Correspondence Definition of Truth." In Intellect et imagination dans la philosophie médiévale / Intellect and Imagination in Medieval Philosophy / Intelecto e imaginação na filosofia medieval, edited by Pacheco, Maria Candida da Costa Reis M. and Meirinhos, José Francisco, 1431-1443. Turnhout: Brepols.

10. Graeser, Andreas. 1978. "Aristotle and Aquinas on Being as Being True." In Métaphysique, Histoire de la Philosophie. Recueil d'études offert à F. Brunner, edited by Brunner, Fernand and Boss, Gilbert, 85-97. Neuchâtel: Editions de la Baconnière.

Reprinted in A. Graeser, Issues in the Philosophy of Language Past and Present. Selected Papers, Bern: Peter Lang, 1999, pp. 145-158.

11. Kann, Christoph. 1999. "Wahrheit als Adaequatio: Bedeutung, Deutung, Klassifikation." Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales no. 66:209-224.

12. Lotz, Johannes B. 1960. "Aletheia und Orthotes. Versuch einer Deutung im Lichte der Scholastik." Philosophische Jahrbuch no. 68:258-268.

Reprinted in: Johannes B. Lotz - Sein und Existenz. Kritische Studien in systematischer Absicht - Freiburg, Herder, 1965, pp. 120-134

13. Marrone, Steven P. 2001. The Light of Thy Countenance. Science and knowledge of God in the Thirteenth century. Leiden: Brill.

Two volumes.

14. Moody, Ernest Addison. 1953. Truth and Consequence in Mediaeval Logic. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Reprinted in 1976 Westport, Greenwood Press-

15. Morse, Ruth. 1991. Truth and Convention in the Middle Ages: Rhetoric, Representation, and Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

16. Noone, Timothy. 2010. "Truth, Creation, and Intelligibility in Anselm, Grosseteste, and Bonaventure." In Truth: Studies of a Robust Presence, edited by Pritzl, Kurt, 102-126. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

17. Nuchelmans, Gabriel. 1973. Theories of Proposition: Ancient and Medieval Conceptions of the Bearers of Truth and Falsity. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

18. Perler, Dominik. 1992. Der propositionale Wahreitsbegriffe im 14. Jahrhundert. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter.

19. Schüssler, Ingeborg. 2001. La question de la vérité. Thomas d'Aquin, Nietzsche, Kant, Aristote, Heidegger. Lausanne: Editions Payot.

Table des matières: Introduction 5;

Première partie: La questione de la vérité dans l'histoire de la philosophie. Thomas d'Aquin, Nietzsche, Kant, Aristote

Chapitre I. La fondation du concept traditionnel de la vérité chez Thomas d'Aquin. De Veritate, Quaestio I, Articuli I-II 19; Chapitre II. L'expérience de la perte de la vérité chez Nietzsche Fragments choisis 43; Chapitre III. La fondation transcendentale de la vérité chez Kant. L'essence des concepts a priori de l'entendement ou des catégories. Critique de la raison pure, § 9 e § 10 80; Chapitre IV. La double essence de la vérité chez Aristote. Métaphysique, Livre VI, chapitre 4; Livre IX, chapitre 10 119;

Seconde partie: La répétition de la question de la vérité dans la pensée postmétaphysique de Heidegger. Textes choisis 167

Indications bibliographiques 287-297.

20. Wülfing von Martitz, Peter. 1968. "Verus, verum und veritas." Glotta no. 46:278-293.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

History of Truth. Selected Bibliography on Medieval Primary Authors

The Authors to which I will devote an entire page are marked with an asterisk (*).

- Hilary of Poitiers

- Augustine of Hippo (*)

- Boethius (*)

- Isidore of Seville

- John Scottus Eriugena (*)

- Isaac Israeli

- Avicenna (*)

- Anselm of Canterbury (*)

- Peter Abelard (*)

- Philip the Chancellor

- Robert Grosseteste

- William of Auvergne

- Albert the Great

- Bonaventure

- Thomas Aquinas (*)

- Henry of Ghent

- Siger of Brabant

- John Duns Scotus (*)

- Hervaeus Natalis

- Giles of Rome

- Durandus of St. Pourain

- Peter Auriol

- Walter Burley

- William of Ockham (*)

- Robert Holkot

- John Buridan (*)

- Gregory of Rimini

- William of Heytesbury

- Peter of Mantua

- Paul of Venice

Hilary of Poitiers (ca. 300 - 368)

Texts

1. Meijering, E.P. 1982. Hilary of Poitiers on the Trinity. De Trinitate 1, 1-19, 2, 3. Leiden: Brill.

In close cooperation with J. C. M: van Winden.

On truth see I, 1-14.

Studies

Augustine of Hippo ( 354 - 430)

Texts

Studies

1. Boyer, Charles. 1921. L'idée De Vérité Dans La Philosophie De Saint Augustin. Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne.

2. Kuntz, Paul G. 1982. "St. Augustine's Quest for Truth: The Adequacy of a Christian Philosophy." Augustinian Studies no. 13:1-21.

3. Vilalobos, José. 1982. Ser Y Verdad En Agustín De Hipona. Sevilla: Publicaciones de la Universidad de Sevilla.

Boethius (ca. 480 - 524/5)

Texts

Studies

1. Magee, John. 1989. Boethius on Signification and Mind. Leiden: Brill.

2. Mignucci, Mario. 1989. "Truth and Modality in Late Antiquity: Boethius on Future Contingent Propositions." In Atti Del Convegno Internazionale Di Storia Della Logica. Le Teorie Della Modalità. San Gimignano, 5-8 Dicembre 1987, edited by Corsi, Giovanna, Mangione, Corrado and Mugnai, Massimo, 47-78. Bologna: CLUEB.

3. Rijk, Lambertus Marie de. 1981. "Boèce Logicien Et Philosophe: Ses Positions Sémantiques Et Sa Métaphysique De L'être." In Atti Del Congresso Internazionale Di Studi Boeziani (Pavia, 5-8 Ottobre 1980), edited by Obertello, Luca, 141-156. Genova: Accademia Ligure di scienze e lettere.

"Le grand historien Etienne Gilson a bien remarqué que c'est à propos du problème du Bien que la pensée de Boèce fut la plus personnelle et la plus féconde. Avec Platon et Saint Augustin, il identifie dans son opuscule Quomodo substantiae l'être au Bien (comme le Mal au non-être). Il est évident que dans l'opinion de Boèce la doctrine de l'être obtient une importance décisive comme base de la théorie du Bien. Aussi la solution du problème du Bien et du Mal fut esquissé dans sa métaphysique de l'être.

L'identification de l'être et du Bien implique que pour tout ce qui est, c'est une seule et même chose d'être et d'être bon. Mais si les choses sont substantiellement bonnes, en quoi diffèrent-elles du Bien en soi, qui est Dieu? Dans cette question la problématique du Sophiste de Platon a dû revivre. On sait que dans cette dialogue Platon a essayé de resoudre le problème fondamental de l'être des choses périssables par une analyse vraiment pénétrante des notions de «Même» ( tauton)et «Autre» ( heteron).

Il me semble que Boèce fait une chose comparable. Il n'est pas étonnant qu'il commence (dans De hebdomadibus = Quomodo substantiae etc.; voir l'edition de Stewart-Rand) ses exposés approfondis sur la notion de l'être par l'axiome qui a dû provoquer tant de commentaires pendant le moyen âge: diversum est esse et quit quod est (II 28-30: «il ya diversité entr "être" et "ce qui est"»). Cette formule, qui est valable pour tout être composé concerne la différence ontologique entre l'élément constitutif, ou la forme, de tout être composé d'un côté, et la chose elle-même, ou le tout établi par cette forme, de l'autre. Le tout doit son être à l'élément constitutif qui est la forme substantielle, sans laquelle il n'est pas du tout. Cependant la question sur son essence ne peut pas être resolue en désignant cette forme. (...)

Il semble être utile de prendre au sérieux la suggestion des commentateurs médiévaux et d'entreprendre la réponse à notre question du point de vue sémantique. Je propose de discuter d'abord (1) la notion de qualitas chez Boèce (2), ensuite son modèle sémantique (3), et ses idées sur le rôle (logico-sémantique) du nom et du verbe (4-5); enfin la signification exacte de sa notion de l'être ( esse) sera discutée (6) et éclarcie en mettant en lumière le but et la méthode du traité Quomodo substantiae (7)." pp. 141-142 (Notes omitted).

Isidore of Seville (ca. 560 - 636)

Texts

Studies

1. Henderson, John. 2007. The Medieval World of Isidore of Seville. Truth from Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

John Scottus Eriugena (ca. 800 - 877)

Texts

Studies

1. Ansorge, Dirk. 1996. Johannes Scottus Eriugena: Wahrheit Als Prozess. Eine Theologische Interpretation Von "Periphyseon". Wien: Tyrolia Verlag.

2. Moran, Dermot. 1989. The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena. A Study of Idealism in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

3. O'Meara, John Joseph. 1983. "The Problem of Speaking About God in John Scottus Eriugena." In Carolingian Essays. Andrew W. Mellon Lectures in Early Christian Studies, edited by Blumenthal, Ute-Renate, 151-167. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

Isaac Israeli (ca. 855 - ca. 955)

Texts

Studies

1. Muckle, Joseph Thomas. 1933. "Isaac Israeli's Definition of Truth." Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Age no. 8:5-8.

Avicenna (980 - 1037)

Texts

Studies

1. Goichon, Amélie-Marie. 1942. La Philosophie D'Avicenne Et Son Influence En Europe Médiévale. Paris: Maisonneuive.

Forlong Lectures 1940.

Second edition, corrected and augmented 1984.

English translation: The philosophy of Avicenna and its influence on medieval Europe - Translated from the French with notes, annotations, and a preface by M. S. Khan - Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1969.

Anselm of Canterbury (ca. 1033 - 1109)

Texts

Studies

1. Adams, Marilyn McCord. 1990. "Saint Anselm's Theory of Truth." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 1:353-372.

2. Cavini, Walter. 1993. "Verità E Inerenza. Un'analisi Del De Veritate Anselmiano." Rivista di Storia della Filosofia:569-585.

3. Dreyer, Mechthild. 1997. "Veritas - Rectitudo - Iustitia: Grundbegriffe Ethischer Reflexion Bei Anselm Von Canterbury." Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales no. 64:67-85.

4. Enders, Markus. 1999. Wahrheit Und Notwendigkeit. Die Theorie Der Wahrheit Bei Anselm Von Canterbury Im Gesamtzusammenhang Seines Denkens Und Unter Besonderer Berücksichtigung Sener Antiken Quellen (Aristoteles, Cicero, Augustinus, Boethius). Leiden: Brill.

5. Flasch, Kurt. 1965. "Zum Begriff Der Wahrheit Bei Anselm Von Canterbury." Philosophische Jahrbuch no. 72:322-352.

6. Goebel, Bernd Wilhelm. 2001. Rectitudo, Wahrheit Und Freiheit Bei Anselm Von Canterbury. Eine Philosophische Untersuchung Seines Denkensatzes. Münster: Aschendorff.

7. Synan, Edward A. 1988. "Truth: Augustin and Anselm." Anselm Studies.An occasional journal no. 2:275-295.

Peter Abelard (1079 - 1142)

Texts

Studies

1. Lewis, Neil T. 1987. "Determinate Truth in Abelard." Vivarium no. 25:81-109.

2. Tweedale, Martin. 1967. "Abailard and Non-Things." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 5:329-342.

"I explain how Abailard thinks he can justify saying that certain items, particularly what is said by a sentence, are not things. His grounds are that they are never referred to by any noun. He holds that nominalizations of sentences and of verbs, which appear to be nouns with such a reference, are not logically speaking nouns, and sentences which have a nominalization for a grammatical subject do not have any logical subject."

3. ———. 1976. Abailard on Universals. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

"This work shows how Abailard elaborated and defended the view that universals are words, avoided the pitfalls of an image theory of thinking, and propounded a theory of "status" and "dicta" as objects of thought without treating them as subjects of predication. His defense of these views is shown to depend on certain fundamental departures from the Aristotelian term logic of his day, including a proposal for subjectless propositions, the treatment of copula plus predicate noun as equivalent to a simple verb, and a transformation of the 'is' of existence into the 'is' of predication."

Philip the Chancellor (1165/86 - 1236)

Texts

Studies

1. Pouillon, Henri. 1939. "Le Premier Traité Des Propriétés Transcendentales." Revue Néoscolastique de Philosophie no. 42:40-77.

Robert Grosseteste (1168 - 1253)

Texts

Studies

1. Marrone, Steven P. 1983. William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste. New Ideas of Truth in the Early Thirteenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

William of Auvergne (1180/90 - 1249)

Texts

Studies

1. Marrone, Steven P. 1983. William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste. New Ideas of Truth in the Early Thirteenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Albert the Great (ca. 1200 - ca. 1280)

Texts

Studies

1. Ruello, Francis. 1969. La Notion De Vérité Chez Saint Albert Le Grand Et Saint Thomas D'aquin De 1243 À 1254. Paris: Béatrice-Nauwelaerts.

Bonaventure (1217 - 1274)

Texts

Studies

1. Bougerol, Jacques Guy. 1988. Introduction À Saint Bonaventure. Paris: Vrin.

2. Quinn, John Francis. 1973. The Historical Constitution of St. Bonaventure's Philosophy. Toronto: Pontificial Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

Thomas Aquinas (1125/6 - 1274)

Texts

Studies

1. Aertsen, Jan A. 1988. Nature and Creature. Thomas Aquinas's Way of Thought. Leiden: Brill.

Chapter 4: The Way of Truth ( Via veritatis) pp. 141-190.

2. ———. 1992. "Truth as Transcendental in Thomas Aquinas." Topoi.An International Journal of Philosophy no. 11:159-171.

"Aquinas presents his most complete exposition of the transcendentals in De veritate 1, 1, that deals with the question "What is truth?". The thesis of this paper is that the question of truth is essential for the understanding of his doctrine of the transcendentals.

The first part of the paper (sections 1--4) analyzes Thomas's conception of truth. Two approaches to truth can be found in his work. The first approach, based on Aristotle's claim that "truth is not in things but in the mind", leads to the idea that the proper place of truth is in the intellect. The second approach is ontological: Thomas also acknowledges that there is truth in every being. The famous definition of truth as "adequation of thing and intellect" enables him to integrate the two approaches. Truth is a relation between two terms, both of which can be called "true" because both are essential for the conformity between thing and intellect.

The second part of the paper (sections 5--7) deals with the manner in which Thomas gives truth a place in the doctrine of the transcendentals, and shows that his conception of truth leads to important innovations in this doctrine: the introduction of relational transcendentals and the correlation between spirit and being. If "truth" is transcendental, it must be convertible with "being". Sect. 6 discusses objections that Thomas advances himself to this convertibility.

Sect. 7 deals with a difficulty in his account of truth as a relational transcendental. Ontological truth expresses a relation to an intellect but the relation to the human intellect is accidental for the truth of things. Essential for their truth can only be a practical intellect that causes things. In this way, Thomas argues, the divine intellect relates to all things."

3. ———. 1996. Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals. The Case of Thomas Aquinas. Leiden: Brill.

Chapter Six: True as Transcendental pp. 243-289.

4. Bartel, Tomasz. 1990. "Nouvelle Interpretation De La Définition Veritas Est Adaequatio Rei Et Intellectus Chez St. Thomas D'aquin." In Knowledge and the Science in Medieval Philosophy. Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy (S.I.E.P.M.) Vol. Ii, edited by Knuuttila, Simo, Työrinoja, Reijo and Ebbesen, Sten, 119-126. Helsinki: Yliopistopaino.

5. Brouwer, Christian, and Peeters, Marc. 1997. "Thomas D'aquin. Première Question Disputée De Veritate. Analyse Méréologique, Constitution Historique Et Principes De Traduction." In Éditer, Traduire, Interpréter. Essais De Méthodologie Philosophique, edited by Lofts, Steve G. and Rosemann, Philip W., 105-141. Louvain-la-Neuve: Éditions Peeters.

6. Foucat, Yves. 2004. "La Vérité Comme Conformité Selon Saint Thomas D'aquin." Revue Thomiste no. 104:49-102.

7. Galluzzo, Gabriele. 2000. "Il Tema Della Verità Nell' " Expositio Libri Peryermeneias" Di Tommaso D'aquino." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 11:217-258.

8. Schulz, Gudrun. 1992. Veritas Est Adaequatio Intellectus Et Rei. Untersuchungen Zur Wahrheitslehre Des Thomas Von Aquin Und Zur Kritik Kants an Einem Überlieferten Wahrheitsbegriff. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers.

9. Vande Wiele, Jozef. 1954. "Le Problème De La Verité Ontologique Dans La Philosophie De Saint Thomas." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 52:521-571.

10. Waddell, MIchael M. 2003. "Truth or Transcendentals: What Was St. Thomas's Intention at De Veritate 1.1?" Thomist no. 67:197-219.

11. Wippel, John F. 1989. "Truth in Thomas Aquinas I." Review of Metaphysics no. 43:295-326.

Reprinted in: J. F. Wippel, Metaphyscal Themes in Thomas Aquinas, Vol. II, Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2007, pp. 65-112.

12. ———. 1989. "Truth in Thomas Aquinas Ii." Review of Metaphysics no. 43:543-567.

Reprinted in: J. F. Wippel, Metaphyscal Themes in Thomas Aquinas, Vol. II, Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2007, pp. 65-112.

Henry of Ghent (ca. 1217 - 1293)

Texts

Studies

1. Decorte, Jos. 2001. "Henri De Gand Et La Définition Classique De La Vérité." Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales no. 68:34-74.

2. Marrone, Steven P. 1985. Truth and Scientific Knowledge in the Thought of Henry of Ghent. Cambridge: Medieval Academy of America.

Siger of Brabant (ca. 1240 - after 1372)

Texts

Studies

1. Dodd, Tony. 1998. The Life and Thought of Siger of Brabant, Thirteenth-Century Parisian Philosopher. An Examination of His Views on the Relationship of Philosophy and Theology. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press.

2. Putallaz, Franois-Xavier, and Imbach, Ruedi. 1997. Profession: Philosophe: Siger De Brabant. Paris: Éditions du Cerf.

John Duns Scotus (ca. 1266 - 1308)

Texts

Studies

1. Manno, Ambrogio. 1977. "Scoto Alla Ricerca Della Verità Fondante." Studi Francescani:87-119.

2. McGrath, Sean J. 2003. "Heidegger and Duns Scotus on Truth and Language." Review of Metaphysics:339-358.

Hervaeus Natalis (1250/60 - 1308)

Texts

1. Hervaeus, Natalis. 2008. A Treatise of Master Hervaeus Natalis (D.1323) the Doctor Perspicacissimus on Second Intentions. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Volume One - An English translation and Volume Two - A Latin edition by John P. Doyle.

"These volumes present a first critical Latin edition and an English translation of an important, but very difficult to read and understand, medieval treatise. As almost everyone knows, the notion of intentionality comes from the Middle Ages. What is less known is that Hervaeus Natalis, O.P. (d. 1323) was the first one explicitly to consider it as such. Even less known is the fact that he carne to it not immediately from the Aristotelian De Anima, but rather from the division in Aristotle's Metaphysics between "being as being" and "being as true." Least of all known is the fact that Hervaeus, who uses the term"intentionality" in the present work 235 times, regards its significance as a relation of reason which runs in the direction of known or knowable to knower. Apart from its exceedingly obscure Latin style, what particularly makes this work difficult to understand is its multi-layered reflection on things and non-things, its reflection on Hervaeus thinking itself, and its reflection on his thinking about his thinking about things and non-things."

Studies

Giles of Rome (ca 1243 - 1316)

Texts

Studies

1. Conti, Alessandro D. 1992. "Conoscenza E Verità in Egidio Romano." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 3:305-361.

Durandus of St. Pourain (ca. 1270/5 - 1334)

Texts

Studies

1. Iribarren, Isabel. 2005. Durandus of St Pourcain. A Dominican Theologian in the Shadow of Aquinas. New York: Oxford University Press.

2. Perger, Mischa von. 2004. "Der Wahrheitsbegriff Nach Durandus Von Saint-Pourain Mit Der Quästion 'Utrum Veritas Sit in Rebus Vel in Anima' Aus in Sent. I, Fassung a, Und Darauf Bezogenen Texten." Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum no. 74:127-224.

Peter Auriol (ca. 1280 - 1322)

Texts

Studies

1. Boehner, Philotheus. 1948. " Notitita Intuitiva of Non-Existents According to Peter Aureoli, O.F.M. (1322)." Franciscan Studies no. 6:388-416.

2. Friedman, Russell L. 1999. "Peter Auriol on Intentions and Essential Predication." In Medieval Analyses in Language and Cognition. Acts of the Symposium: The Copenhagen School of Medieval Philosophy, edited by Ebbesen, Sten and Friedman, Russell L., 415-430. Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.

Walter Burley (ca. 1275 - 1344)

Texts

Studies

1. Conti, Alessandro D. 2000. "Significato E Verità in Walter Burley." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 11:317-350.

William of Ockham (ca. 1285 - 1347)

Texts

Studies

1. Adams, Marilyn McCord. 1989. "Ockham on Truth." Medioevo no. 15:143-172.

2. Boehner, Philotheus. 1945. "Ockham's Theory of Truth." Franciscan Studies no. 5:138-161.

Reprinted in: P. Boehner - Collected articles on Ockham - Edited by E. Buytaert - Louvain, Nauwelaerts, 1958 pp. 174-200.

3. ———. 1946. "Ockham's Theory of Supposition and the Notion of Truth." Franciscan Studies no. 6:261-292.

Reprinted in: Collected articles on Ockham (pp. 237-267)

4. Kaufmann, Matthias. 1994. "Ockham Und Davidson Über Die Wahrheit." In Analyomen. Vol. I, edited by Meggle, Georg, 453-462. Berlin: de Gruyter.

5. Müller, Paola. 1991. "Esistenza E Verità in Guglielmo Di Ockham." Medioevo no. 17:249-280.

6. Yrjönsuuri, Mikko. 1997. "Supposition and Truth in Ockham's Mental Language." Topoi no. 16 (1):15-25.

"In this paper, Ockham's theory of an ideal language of thought is used to illuminate problems of interpretation of his theory of truth. The twentieth century idea of logical form is used for finding out what kinds of atomic sentences there are in Ockham's mental language. It turns out that not only the theory of modes of supposition, but also the theory of supposition in general is insufficient as a full theory of truth. Rather, the theory of supposition is a theory of reference, which can help in the determination of truth values within the scope of simple predications. Outside this area, there are interesting types of sentences, whose truth does not depend on whether the terms supposit for the same things or not for the same things."

Robert Holkot ( ? - 1349)

Texts

Studies

1. Dal Pra, Mario. 1956. "Linguaggio E Conoscenza Assertiva Nel Pensiero Di Roberto Holkot." Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia no. 11:15-40.

John Buridan (ca. 1300 - after 1358)

Texts

Studies

1. Reina, Maria Elena. 1960. "Il Problema Del Linguaggio in Buridano. Ii. Significazione E Verità." Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia no. 15:141-165.

Gregory of Rimini (ca. 1300 - 1358)

Texts

Studies

1. Bermon, Pascal. 2007. L'assentiment Et Son Objet Chez Grégoire De Rimini. Paris: Vrin.

2. Conti, Alessandro D. 2004. " Complexe Significabile and Truth in Gregory of Rimini and Paul of Venice." In Medieval Theories on Assertive and Non-Assertive Language, edited by Maierù, Alfonso and Valente, Luisa, 473-494. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki.

William of Heytesbury (before 1313 - 1372/3)

Texts

Studies

1. Maierù, Alfonso. 1966. "Il Problema Della Verità Nelle Opere Di Guglielmo Heytesbury." Studi Medievali no. 7:40-74.

Peter of Mantua ( ? - 1400)

Texts

Studies

1. Bos, Egbert P. 1985. "Peter of Mantua's Treatise De Veritate Et Falsitate, Sive De Taliter Et Qualiter." In Mediaeval Semantics and Metaphysics. Studies Dedicated to L. M. De Rijk, edited by Bos, Egbert P., 291-312. Nijmegen: Ingenium Publishers.

2. Maierù, Alfonso. 1973. "Il Problema Del Significato Nella Logica Di Pietro Da Mantova." In Antiqui Und Moderni. Traditionsbewusstsein Und Fortschrittsbewusstsein Im Späten Mittelalter, edited by Zimmermann, Albert, 155-170. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Paul of Venice (1369 - 1429)

Texts

Studies

1. Conti, Alessandro D. 1996. Esistenza E Verità. Forme E Strutture Del Reale in Paolo Veneto E Nel Pensiero Filosofico Del Tardo Medieovo. Roma: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Martin Heidegger on Aletheia (Truth) as Unconcealment

Introduction

"We come now to a decisive point in Heidegger's development. The effort to ground metaphysics (fundamental ontology) began as a search to illuminate the intrinsic correlation between the Being-process as such and the finitude of the being that comprehends it, sc. There-being. The first step (Sein und Zeit) was to analyse There-being phenomenologically in order to find in the pre-ontic comprehension of Being some means of discerning the sense of Being. Subsequently the author has become more and more preoccupied with Being itself, but chiefly in terms of the problem of truth, since the sense of Being is its truth. The growing importance of the problematic of truth is discernible in all of the works that followed SZ and culminates now in the essay "On the Essence of Truth," where Heidegger thematizes the problem, retaining as intrinsic to it the problem of finitude, sc. the negativity of truth which he calls "un-truth."

Although published late (1943), the text dates initially from 1930. The author admits to several subsequent revisions, which, however, left the point of departure, fundamental position and basic structure of the original work unchanged. Taking him at his word, we assume that the text represents his thought as of 1930, and, although the matter would be very illuminating, must leave to historians the task of disengaging what alterations were made when.

We are relatively well prepared for the study we are about to undertake and do not approach it in a vacuum. We know: that the truth of conformity (between judgement and judged) supposes a still more fundamental truth that resides in the being to-be-judged and enables us to discern whether or not the judgement is conformed to it; that this truth of the being-to-be judged is basically an un-hidden-ness, or open-ness, of that being to the knower; that beings become un-hidden to a finite knower because this knower has a comprehension of their Being- structure antecedent to his encounter with them; that this antecedent comprehension may be conceived as an open horizon, or domain of encounter, or the World (or, for that matter, Non- being), within which beings and There-being meet; that this sphere of open-ness is instituted by the transcendence of the finite There-being; that the transcendence of finite There-being is ontological truth, which, since it renders possible the encounter that occurs in There-being's comportment with other beings, enables the beings-to-be-judged to become manifest (ontic truth); that this transcendence liberates the beings which it encounters from the obscurity that initially enshrouds them by letting them be (manifest), hence must be called freedom; that this transcendence (freedom) is the primary sense of truth; that this transcendence is profoundly finite, therefore negatived, so that truth comports non-truth; that one consequence of the negativity of There-being as transcendence (freedom, truth) is that it is prone to become absorbed in its preoccupation with the beings that measure the truth of its judgements, and forget its true self; that it re-collects its self in re-solve, which thus becomes the eminent mode of truth." (pp. 211-212, notes omitted)

From: William J. Richardson, Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to Thought, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1974.

Heidegger's reading of Plato

"For Heidegger, the de-volution of Western thought began with Plato, for it was with him that νοείν ceased to have the sense of containing the advance of over-powering φύσις and began to assume the special relation to ίδέα, which evolved into what the tradition would call "reason" (Vernunft). We discern the transition best, however, by examining not Plato's use of νοείν but rather the implications of ίδέα, for it was thus that he understood the Being which his predecessors had understood as φύσις. It was Plato's conception of Being rather than of thought which was decisive in the birth of metaphysics. If we recall that φύσις (emergent-abiding-Power) was for the pre-Socratics the process of truth, then the transformation of φύσιςinto ίδέα may be discerned by examining what Plato understood by truth. This the author disengages by an essay upon the famous metaphor of the cave (Politeia VII, 514 a, 2 to 517 a, 7)." (p. 301)

(...)

In Plato metaphysics in the traditional sense takes its rise, for it is he who first conceives of thinking Being as a going "beyond" the beings of experience to their being-ness, which he conceives as their what-ness, their see-ableness, their Idea. Such a conception is possible only because a consequence of φύσις (process of shining-forth) is taken to be the essence of it. Hence φύσις itself becomes for him that-which-is-to-be-seen, a being (είδος). Being thus becomes conceived as a being. Likewise truth, no longer non-concealment, becomes correctness of view, conformity with the Ideas." (p. 308)

From: William J. Richardson, Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to Thought, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1974.

"Plato's Doctrine of Truth.(34) This text was composed, according to Heidegger's notes, in 1940 and first published in 1942. (*) Heidegger indicates in a note that the origin of this text is the 1931-32 lecture course on "The Essence of Truth," which contains a long interpretation, first, of the cave analogy in the Republic, then of a portion of the Theaetetus, principally the discussion of Theaetetus's second (though Heidegger calls it the "first") answer to the question of what is episteme, "knowledge is perception." The relationship between the published text, "Plato's Doctrine of Truth," and the lecture course is curious and deserves some initial comment. First, the lecture course contains the most careful, nuanced development of which I am aware of Heidegger's now well-known understanding of aletheia as "unhiddenness." Within its pages are careful, often rich reflections on certain implications both of the cave analogy and of the section of the Theaetetus that he treats." (p. 53)

(...)

Heidegger announces on the first page his guiding thesis: the "unsaid doctrine" that he will elicit in the cave analogy is "a change in what determines the essence of truth" (p. 155). That change, we discover, is from the more originary notion of truth as aletheia, "unhiddenness," to truth as "correctness of vision," a change which, as Heidegger tells us toward the end of the essay, puts us on the fateful path toward modern subjectivism. Let us trace the crucial steps of this change, as Heidegger develops it.

Heidegger's first point is to show, very convincingly, that aletheia in its originary sense of unhiddenness is still very much at work in the cave analogy. He notes that the deeply visual character of the analogy, the notion of moving from shadows to seeing the fire to moving outside the cave to see the things that are "more unhidden," makes sense only within a framework of truth as unhiddenness. As he puts it, "Only the essence of truth understood in the original Greek sense of aletheia--the unhiddenness that is related to the hidden (to something dissembled and disguised)--has an essential relation to this image of an underground cave. Wherever truth has another essence, wherever it is not unhiddenness or at least is not co-determined by unhiddenness, there an 'allegory of the cave' has no basis as an illustration" (p. 172). So truth as unhiddenness is still present in the cave analogy.

But no longer purely. Heidegger now announces that truth as unhiddenness is already infected, as it were, by another, different and more problematic conception of truth that is also at work here. "And yet, even though aletheia is properly experienced in the 'allegory of the cave' and is mentioned in it at important points, nonetheless in place of unhiddenness another essence of truth pushes to the fore. However, this also implies that unhiddenness still maintains a certain priority" (p. 172). This fateful other essence of truth is truth as "correctness of vision"." (pp. 57-58)

Notes

(34) Heidegger adds in a reference note that the “train of thought goes back to the Freiburg lecture course of winter semester 1930–31, “On the Essence of Truth.” It later was published as part of the collection, Wegmerken (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1967). Available in English as Pathmarks, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. The essay is pp. 155–182, the “reference” note on p. 380. The essay is translated by Thomas Sheehan, whose translation I shall usually follow.

From: Drew A. Hyland, Questioning Platonism. Continental Interpretations of Plato, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004.

"Heidegger's analysis of Plato attempts to show that a transformation occurs in the nature of truth in Plato's philosophy, as a consequence of which Being is subordinated to the correct perception of beings. This subordination, Heidegger maintains, characterizes the history of Western n philosophy as metaphysics.

Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit(31) is an interpretation of Plato's Republic, 514A - 517A; an interpretation of the allegory of the cave. It is a reflection upon the relationship between education (paideia), truth (alétheia) and the good (agathon), with the transformation of alétheia as the principal concern.

The allegory of the cave is, for Heidegger, an illustration of the nature and process of paideia. At each level of ascent -- within the cave to the light, and out of the cave to the sun -- the individual experiences a painful blinding. Each stage requires an adjustment and transformation in vision. This transformation in vision expresses the turning of the soul from what is disclosed in one region to what is disclosed within another. This is paideia, according to Heidegger. The relationship of paideia, in this new sense, to alétheia is not apparent because, as Heidegger sees it, we have not only misunderstood the nature of education but, more importantly, have misconceived the nature of alétheia by conceiving it as "truth." If paideia is a transition from one abode to another, affected by the soul's receptivity to what is disclosed within each region, then alétheia is disclosure itself: "At first truth meant what was wrested from a concealment. Truth, then, is just such a perpetual wresting-away in this manner of uncovering." (ibid. p. 32)

Unlike the case of the two distinct senses in which Heidegger employs the term "metaphysics," the two senses in which he employs the term "truth" are made very explicit. Truth, conceived as alétheia, is the plenary mode; truth conceived as a correspondence between an idea and the thing it represents is a derivative mode. Because Heidegger invariably assigns the correspondence concept of truth to "metaphysics," understood in the restricted sense in which it designates the history of Western philosophy, we have called it the "epistemological" concept of truth. "Ontological" truth, on the other hand, designates disclosure itself -- specifically, Heidegger's attempted disclosure of Being.

Heidegger's earliest systematic analysis of the epistemological concept of truth, as well as rejection of it, occurs in Being and Time.

Three theses characterize the way in which the essence of truth has 'been traditionally conceived and the way it is supposed to have been first defined: (1) that the "locus" of truth is assertion (judgment); (2) that the essence of truth lies in the "agreement" of the judgment with its object; (3) that Aristotle, the father of logic, not only assigned truth to the judgment as its primordial locus, but has set going the definition of "truth" as "agreement." (Sein und Zeit, 7 Aufl., Tübingen, 1953, p. 214).

In keeping with the original emphasis in Being and Time, Heidegger asserts the presence of this conception of truth in Aristotle, Aquinas and Kant, (rather than Plato and Nietzsche), before continuing with his explicit analysis of the "epistemological" concept of truth. In the course of his analysis several important points are raised. The problem underlying what we have called the "epistemological" concept of truth, Heidegger points out, is the nature of the agreement -- adequatio, correspondentia, convenientia -- between a judgment and its object: "Every agreement, and therefore 'truth' as well, is a relation. But not every relation is an agreement." (p. 215) Heidegger goes on to raise and answer in the negative the question whether the "agreement" can be conceived as a relation of equality. But "If it is impossible for intellectus and res to be equal because they are not of the same species, are they then perhaps similar?"(p. 216) With reference to similarity as a possible basis for the relation called "agreement," Heidegger points out that within the judgment itself we must distinguish between the psychical process and the ideal content of judgment. Any "similarity" relation of a judgment to its object (truth) must refer to the ideal content, rather than the psychical processes of judgment. But such a distinction merely raises an additional problem: "How is the relation between ideal being and real being to be grasped ontologically?" (ibid.)

To this question, Heidegger maintains, the philosophic tradition has no meaningful answer: "Is it accidental that no headway has been made with this problem in over two thousand years?" (pp. 216-217) In fact, Heidegger goes even further in the sentence which immediately follows the preceding one, by suggesting that this entire procedure -- trying to discern the nature of the adequatio which characterizes a truth relationship between rei et intellectus -- may be fruitless: "Does the perversion of the problem already lie in the approach, in the ontologically unclarified separation of Real and Ideal?" 38 It is of some importance to emphasize that Heidegger not only discussed and rejected the "epistemological" concept of truth, as early as Being and Time (1927), but that he regarded it the sustaining one to be found in Western ontology. And, of course he suggested an alternative as well. The alternative, which I have called "ontological" truth, remains in its essential features the basis for his later critique of Plato and the history of metaphysics.

Heidegger indicates that what "truth" means is not so much a correspondence as it is a disclosure.

(...)

It may be instructive to remember once again that the duality of truth, epistemological and ontological, occupied Heidegger's thought almost from the period immediately after the publication of Being and Time, 1927, until 1947: "The publication [on Nietzsche] when reflected upon as a whole, ought to offer an insight into the path of thought which I have travelled from 1930 to the Letter on Humanism (1947). For the two small lectures, Plato's Theory of Truth (1942) and On the Essence of Truth (1943), which were published during the aforesaid period, were already conceived during the years 1930--'31." 42 Heidegger's early concern with "truth" apparently led to a step backward in the history of metaphysics, from Aristotle to Plato, in locating the "decisive" stages in man's forgetfulness of Being, through the transformation of ontological into epistemological truth." (pp. 69-73 som notes omitted)

Notes

(31) A. Francke, Bern, 1947.

From: Bern Magnus, Heidegger's Metahistory of Philosophy: Amor fati, Being and Truth, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1970.

Heidegger on truth

"Heidegger's way of understanding the originary phenomenon of truth is to "make clear the mode of being of the cognition itself." His starting point is a proposition that is not based on intuition. Someone says with his or her back to the wall: this picture hangs askew. The proposition embodies the claim to have discovered the picture (as a being) in the "how" (the mode) of its being. The proposition displays this "how" of being in language. In the attempt to verify the proposition by sensuous experience, the recognition, according to Heidegger, is directed only to the intended being (the picture) and not to the proposition. It is directed to the being itself (which is to be verified by perception) in its mode of uncoveredness (Entdeckt-heir), i.e., in its showing-itself. Confirmation (Bewährung) means this showing-itself of the being in the same way in which it is intended in the proposition.

A true proposition shows the being in its mode of uncoveredness. The phenomenon of "originary truth" does not have the character of correspondence. It is the ground of the concept of truth in the sense of correspondence and propositional truth. By unfolding the meaning of alétheia Heidegger shows us a more originary sense of truth as unconcealment (Unverborgenheit). He wants to show that this concept coincides with the first and originary concept of truth in Greek thinking. In this primary sense only the discovering human Dasein can be "true" while it is Being-discovering (Entdeckend-Sein). On the other hand, beings (Seiendes) that we can find in the world can only "be" in a secondary mode, i.e., as being-discovered (Entdecktsein). They can only make a claim to uncoveredness. Their fundament is the Being-discovering of the human Dasein. The being-true of a discovered being is only possible as being discovered by human Dasein as being-in-the-world.

The authentic Being of Dasein, the being-in-the truth, presupposes disclosedness (Erschlossenheit) of the world in states-of-mind (Befindlichkeiten), understanding, and discourse, i.e., the constitution of the being (Seinsverfassung) of human Dasein as thrownness (Geworfenheit) and project (Entwurf). The mode of being of Dasein is characterized equiprimordially (gleichursprünglich) by the possibility of both authenticity (being-in-the-truth) and the deficient mode (Verfallsform) of inauthenticity. In the mode of the "they" (das Man), of obstruction (Verstelltheit), of gossip (Gerede), Dasein is in untruth. Thus the being-in-the-world of human Dasein is determined at the same time by truth and untruth. We must always fight anew for the truth of Dasein (Being-discovering). Following Heidegger, the negative expression "a-létheia" expresses the fact that hiding itself is a main characteristic of Being. In the hiding-itself of Being, human Dasein is hidden for itself in the mode of untruth.

Heidegger wants to make evident how the transition from the originary concept of truth as alétheia to "correspondence" came about. He wants to make clear that correspondence is only a derived form of truth: in a proposition Being should be displayed in the mode of its uncoveredness. In the inauthentic forms of mere reproducing and hearsay, the proposition becomes itself something ready-to-hand (Zuhandenes). Thus we have to engage in the demonstration of the uncoveredness that is preserved in the proposition. In this way the relation between proposition and discovered being then itself becomes something present-at-hand (Vorhandenes) and can be understood as a correspondence of proposition and being (intellectus and res). The fact that we are used to disregarding the originary dimension of truth is an aspect of our forgetfulness of Being (Seinsvergessenheit).

The originary dimension of truth in human Dasein "is given" (gibt es) only as long as there is Dasein. All truth is relative to the being of Dasein. Thus the claim that there could be "eternal truth" seems to Heidegger to be "fantastic." Against the background of this relativity of truth to the being of Dasein, Heidegger asks anew: why must we presuppose that truth "is given"? His answer is that the possibility of truth (authenticity) and untruth (inauthenticity) belongs to the facticity of human Dasein. From the point of view of existential ontology, the being of human Dasein (its disclosedness) and truth are synonims." (pp. 711-712)

From: Dieter Lohmar, Truth, in: Lester Embree et alii (eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1997.

Heridegger on Alétheia

"alétheia and truth: Alétheia is Greek for 'truth; truthfulness, frankness, sincerity'. Aléthés is 'true; sincere, frank; real, actual'. There is also a verb, alétheuein, 'to speak truly, etc' (cf. GA XIX, 21ff.). The words are related to lanthanein, with an older form léthein, 'to escape notice, be unseen, unnoticed', and lithe, 'forgetting, forgetfulness'. An initial a- in Greek is often privative, like the Latin in- or the Germanic un-. (The 'privative alpha' occurs in many Greek-derived words: 'anonymous', 'atheism', etc.) Aléthés, alétheia are generally accepted to be a-léthes, a-létheia, that which is 'not hidden or forgotten', or he who 'does not hide or forget'.

We reach the 'essence of truth', the 'openness of the open', from two directions: from 'reflection on the ground of the possibility of correctness (adaequatio)' and from 'recollection of the beginning (alétheia)' (GA LXV, 338). The first procedure is characteristic of Being and Time and early lectures, the second of later works. But early on Heidegger says that alétheuein is 'to take out of hiddenness [Verborgenheit], to uncover [entdecken]' (GA XXII, 25. Cf. GA XXI, 131; Being and Time, 33, 219); alétheia is 'uncovering' (GA XXI, 162); and aléthes is 'unhidden [Unverborgen(es)]' (BT, 33, 219). This has three implications: 1. Truth is not confined to explicit assertions and discrete mental, primarily theoretical, attitudes such as judgements, beliefs and representations. The world as a whole, not just entities within it, is unhidden - unhidden as much by moods as by understanding. 2. Truth is primarily a feature of reality - beings, being and world - not of thoughts and utterances. Beings, etc. are, of course, unhidden to us, and we disclose them. Heidegger later coins entbergen; Entbergung; Entborgenheit, 'to unconceal; -ing; -ment', since unlike unverborgen, they can have an active sense: 'aléthes means: 1. unconcealed [entborgen], said of beings, 2. grasping the unconcealed as such, i.e. being unconcealing' (XXXI, 91). But beings, etc. are genuinely unconcealed; they do not just agree with an assertion or representation. 3. Truth explicitly presupposes concealment or hiddenness. DASEIN is in 'untruth [Unwahrheit]' as well as truth. In Being and Time (222, 256f.) this means that falling Dasein misinterprets things.

'Untruth' is not plain 'falsity', nor is it 'hiddenness': it is 'disguisedness [Verstelltheit]' of the truth (GA XXXI, 91). Later, 'untruth' is still not 'falsity', but 'hiding, concealing [Verbergung]' (GA LXV, 362). What conceals is no longer man, but being. There are two types of unconcealing: (a) of the open, the world or beings as a whole; (b) of particular beings within this open space. The first type (a) involves concealment: everything was hidden before the open was established, and concealment persists in that the open reveals only certain aspects of reality, not its whole nature. The second type (b) involves a concealment that we overcome 'partially and case by case' (GA LXV, 338f.). Plato errs in assimilating truth to light. We lose the idea of hiddenness and thus the privative force of a-létheia: the light is constant - never switched on or off - and reveals everything there is to anyone who looks. We lose the idea of the open, which must persist throughout our unconcealing of beings: a single light cannot account both for the openness of the open and for the unconcealing of particular entities (LXV, 339).

Plato's error was fateful. He - not Aristotle, who did his best to repair the damage (Nietzsche II, 228 / Nietzsche IV [English translation], 171) - initiated the decline of a-létheia into 'correctness' and truth as agreement (GA XXXIV, 21ff; Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, 201ff./ 215ff.). Alétheia was originally the basic feature of phusis (roughly, 'nature') and thus 'essentially rejects any question about its relation to something else, such as thinking' (LXV, 329). In Plato it 'comes under the yoke of the idea' (Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, 228). Idea, from the Greek idein, 'to see', refers, on Heidegger's account, to the visual 'aspect [Aussehen]' of entities. The ascent of the prisoners out of the cave is a progressive 'correction' of their vision of this idea and the entity whose idea it is. Hence alétheia is no longer primarily a characteristic of beings: it is 'yoked' together with the soul, and consists in a homoiósis, a 'likeness', between them. Homoiósis has since become adaequatio and then 'agreement', and since Descartes, the relation between soul and beings has become the subject-object relation, mediated by a 'representation', the degenerate descendant of Plato's idea. Truth becomes correctness, and its 'elbow-room [Spielraum]', the open, is neglected (GA LXV, 198, 329ff.)." (pp. 13-14)

Notes

"In references to Heidegger's texts, a slash separates the pagination of the German work from the pagination of the published English translation".

Heidegger Gesamtausgabe, Frankfurt: Klostermann 1975ss. = GA

From: Michael Inwoord, A Heidegger Dictionary, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers 1999.

The "Romanization" of truth: from ἀλήθεια to veritas

"As Heidegger puts it elsewhere, in Plato and Aristotle beings with the gigantomachia, the struggle between Being and beings, for Being is now understood as the highest or first being (GA [Gesamtausgabe] vol. 33, pp. 24, 43-44; cf. The End of Philosophypp. 9-10). As he explains in his wartime Parmenides lectures, in and with the philosophical tradition's understanding of truth and falsehood, aletheia is opposed to pseudos, to falsehood in the sense of incorrectness, which displaces the inceptive Greek senses of unconcealing and concealing (GA Vol. 54, pp. 24-56). The translation of aletheia as veritas is related to the political-moral economy of ancient Rome, and therewith, Heidegger makes clear, to the manifold successors to Rome: medieval Christianity, modernity, Nietzsche, and--I agree with William V. Spanos on this point--National Socialism (pp. 57-72).(14)

The Latin falsum has the sense of "bringing to a fall" or "downfall," which is "only a subsequent effect [Wesensfolge] within the essential domain [Wesensbereiches] of dissembling and concealing which makes up the essence of psuedos" (p. 58).(15) "Imperium" and the "imperial" constitute the "essential domain" decisive for the "experiential domain" (Erfahrungsbereich) in, from, and for which "bringing to a fall" acquires its status as the designation for the counter-essence of "what the Greeks experience as alethes, the 'unconcealing' and the 'unconcealed.' " The experience of imperium is that of "command," of the taking over of a territory, which is ruled by commandment. "Command," then, is the "essential ground of sovereignty" (Wesensgrund der Herrschaft) and, moreover, describes the characteristic actions of the god of the Old Testament and the gods of Rome, but not those of Greece (p. 59). In a further specification, "command" determines Roman law and right, ius and iustum; iustitia "has a wholly other [ganz anderen] essential ground than that of dike, which arises from aletheia." "Being superior" (Obensein) belongs to "command" and is the "constant surmounting [Überhöhung] of others, who are thereby the inferiors [Unteren]." Surmounting requires the power to "oversee" (übersehen), which means, therefore, to "dominate" (beherrschen) (59-60). The "overseeing" of imperium requires constant "action," by which enemies or rivals will be brought to fall through " 'direct' attack" (Ansturm) or "subterfuge" (Hintergehen) or "trick," which, "not accidentally," is an "English" word (p. 60). Those who fall are not destroyed but rather "raised up" (aufgerichtet) within the boundaries established by those who rule; this "fixing" (Abstecken) is Roman peace. Indeed, the greatness of the imperial, Heidegger writes, lies in the subterfuge by which it secures its dominion. The expansion of early Rome through treaties and treachery shows this (pp. 60-61).

The "Romanizing" of the Greeks conditions not only all subsequent understanding of them in the history of the West but also the historical and metaphysical Auseinandersetzung of the modern world and antiquity. Even Nietzsche's metaphysics, as a modern attempt to recover antiquity, is conditioned by Rome and thus is ultimately "unGreek." The Roman experience of beings, encountered under the "Roman stamp" (der Romisch Prägung), reaches into Christianity and hence to the medieval and modern ages (pp. 64-72; cf. The End of Philosophy p. 13). "Romanization in the essential sense of the Greco-Roman historical domain," Heidegger writes, must be understood as a "change in the essence of truth and Being"; it is an "authentic event [Ereignis] in history" (p. 63). The transformations of aletheia and pseudos as correlates with the imperial experience mark an epochal boundary. "The imperial as a mode of Being of historical collectivities [Menschentums]," Heidegger explains, is not the ground for the essential change of aletheia into truth as correctness but is rather a following of the enfolding of truth into the meaning of correctness (pp. 62-63). Heidegger makes clear that there is something "make-shift" (Notbehelf) in the phrase "change in the essence of truth," which does not speak clearly enough of the way "in which it unfolds itself and history 'is' (wie sie selbst west and die Geschichte 'ist']" (p. 63). This process exhibits the inner connection of the coherent modes of action which ground Western history, and is not to be understood causally." (pp. 180-181)

Notes

(14) William V. Spanos, Heidegger and Criticism: Retrieving the Cultural Politics of Destruction, pp. 148-49, 291 n. 22. Cf. Véronique M. Fóti, "Aletheia and Oblivion's Field: On Heidegger's Parmenides Lectures," and especially Éliane Escoubas, "Heidegger, la question romaine, la question impériale: Autour du 'Touruant.' "

(15) Heidegger agrees with the Brothers Grimm, who understood falsch as an "un-German" word. He goes on to add verum to this list (G54 57, pp. 67-73). For other such words, see The Principle of Reason (e.g., p. 29).

From: James F. Ward, Heidegger's Political Thinking, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press 1995.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on Heidegger's Interpretation of Aletheia as Unconcealment

Heidegger's main texts on Alétheia and Veritas

Abbreviations: GA = Gesamtausgabe (Collected works); SS = Summer semester (from May to July); WS = Winter semester (from November to February)

In his work Besinnung (GA 67 p. 107), Heidegger give a list of nine texts where he examines the question of truth (I cite from the English translation, Mindfulness, translated by Parvis Emad and Thomas Kalary, New York, Continuum, 2006, pp. 89-90:

"Question of Truth: A directive.

1. Vom Wesen der Wahrheit (lecture of 1930) (1); in addition, interpretation of the simile of the cave in the lecture-course of 1931/32 (2)

2. Vom Ursprung des Kunstwerks (Freiburg lecture of 1935) (3)

3. Vom Ursprung des Kunstwerks (Frankfurt lectures of 1936) (4)

4. Vom Wesen der Wahrheit (lecture of 1937/38) (5)

5. Die Grundlegung des neuzeitlichen Weltbildes durch die Metaphysik (lecture of 1938) (6)

6. Anmerkungen zu Nietzsches II. Unzeitgemässe Betrachtung, Abschnitt VI Wahrheit und Gerechtigkeit, lecture-seminar of 1938/39 (7)

7. Lecture course of summer semester of 1939 (Nietzsche, Wille zur Macht, III. Buch, Der Wille zur Macht als Erkenntnis) (8)

8. Beiträge zur Philosophie, 1936, section: Gründung (9)

9. Zu Aristoteles, Physik B 1 (physis), third term of 1940, pp. 22 ff. (10)"

Notes:

(1) To appear in Vorträge, GA 80.

(2) See Vom Wesen der Wahrheit: Zu Platons Hölengleichnis und Theätet, lecture in the summer semester of 1931/32, GA 34, ed. Hermann Mörchen (Frankfurt am Main: 1988).

(3) To appear in Vorträge, GA 80.

(4) See Holzwege, GA 5, pp. 1-74.

(5) See Grundfragen del Philosophie. Ausgewählte "Probleme" der "Logik", lecture in the winter semester of 1937/38, GA 45 ed. F.-W. v. Hermann (Frankfurt am Main: 1984).

(6) Published under the title "Die Zeit des Weltbildes", in Holzwege, GA 5, pp. 75-113.

(7) See Zu Auslegung von Nietzsches II: Unzeitgemasse Betrachtung, lecture-seminar in Freiburg in the winter semester 1938/39, GA 46, ed. Hans-Joachim Friedrich (Frankfurt am Main: 2003).

(8) See Nietzsches Lehre vom Willen zur Macht als Erkenntnis, lecture of the summer semester of 1939, GA 47 ed. Eberhard Hanser (Frankfurt am Main: 1989).

(9) See Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), GA 65, ed. F.-W. v. Hermann (Frankfurt am Main: 1989) pp. 293-392.

(10) On the 'fore-concept' of 'metaphysics', elucidated out of Aristotle's concept of physis see Metaphysik und Wissenschaft, to appear in GA 76.

The following is a more complete list in chronological order; references are to the German edition of the complete works by Martin Heidegger.

The first date is that of the Gesamtausgabe volume, English translation are cited when available.

1. Heidegger, Martin. 1989. Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. Ausarbeitung für die Marburger und die Göttinger Fakultät (1922)

First German edition 1989; new edition Stuttgart, Reclam, 2003.

Phenomenological Interpretations in Connection with Aristotle. An Indication of the Hermeneutical Situation, in: Martin Heidegger, Supplements. From the Earliest Essays to Being and Time and Beyond, edited by John van Buren, New York: State University of New York Press, 2002, pp. 111-145.

On Aletheia see: Eth. Nic. VI, pp. 129-145.

2. ———. 1994. Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung

Lecture course at the University of Marburg, WS 1923-1924.

GA 17, 1994.

Introduction to Phenomenological Research, Bloomington: translated by Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Indian University Press, 2005.

See Chapter Four: Going Back to Scholastic Ontology: the VerumeEsse in Thomas Aquinas, pp. 120-147.

3. ———. 1992. Platon, Sophistes

Lecture course at the University of Marburg, WS 1924-1925.

GA 19, 1992.

Plato's Sophist, translated by Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

See in particular:

Preliminary Considerations § 3. First Characteristic of alétheia pp. 10-13.

Introductory Part: The Securing of alétheia as the Ground of Plato' s Research into Being. Interpretation of Aristotle: Nichomachean Ethics Book VI and Book X, Chapters 6-8; Metaphysics Book I, Chapters 1-2, pp. 15-155.

4. ———. 1976. Logik. Die Frage nach der Wahrheit

Lecture course at the University of Marburg, WS 1925-1926.

GA 21, 1976.

Logic. The Question of Truth, translated by Thomas Sheehan, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2010.

Translated in Italian as: Logica. Il problema della verità by Ugo Maria Ugazio - Milano, Mursia, 1986.

5. ———. 1977. Sein und Zeit

First edition 1927. GA 2, 1977.

Being and Time, translated by by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (1962); reprinted Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.

Also translated by Joan Stambaugh, New York: State University of New York Press, 1996.

See § 44: Dasein, Disclosedness, and Truth

a) The traditional conception of truth, and its ontological foundations;

b) The primordial phenomenon of truth and the derivative character of the traditional conception of truth;

c) The kind of being which truth possesses, and the presupposition of truth.

6. ———. 1996. Einleitung in die Philosophie

Lecture courses at the University of Freibug, WS 1928-1929.

GA 27, 1996.

Not translated in English.

Italian translation: Avviamento alla filosofia, edited by Maurizio Borghi with the collaboration of I. De Gennaro and G. Zaccaria, Milano: Christian Marinotti Edizioni, 2007.

See Chapter 3: Wahrheit und Sein. Vom ursprunglichen Wesen der Wahrheit als Unverborgenheit pp. 68-124.

7. ———. 1967. Vom Wesen der Wahrheit

Lecture given in 1930, first edition 1943.

Reprinted in: Wegmarken (Essays 1919-1961), 1967 pp. 177-202.

GA 9, 1976. Revised and expanded 1978.

On the Essence of Truth, in: Heidegger, Pathmarks, edited by William McNeill, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 136-154.

8. ———. 1982. Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit. Einleitung in die Philosophie

Lecture course at the University of Freiburg, SS 1930.

Ga 31, 1982.

The Essence of Human Freedom. An Introduction to Philosophy, translated by Ted Sadler, New York: Continuum 2002.

See: Chapter Two, § 9, d, The Greek Understanding of Truth (alétheia) as Deconcealment. The Being which is True (aléthes on) as the Most Proper Being. The Most Proper Being as the Simple and Constantly Present. pp. 65-74.

9. ———. 1988. Vom Wesen der Wahrheit. Zu Platons Höhlengleichnis und Theätet

Lecture course at the University of Marburg, WS 1931-1932.

GA 34. 1988.

The Essence of Truth. On Plato's Cave Allegory and Theaetetus, translated by Ted Sadler, London, New York: Athlone Press, 2002.

10. ———. 1967. Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit

Lecture of 1931/32 revised 1940; first edition 1942, then in 1947 with the Brief über den Humanismus.

Reprinted in: Wegmarken (Essays 1919-1961), 1967 pp. 203-238 (second edition 1978 pp. 421-438).

GA 9, 1976. Revised and expanded 1978.

Plato's Doctrine of Truth, in: Heidegger, Pathmarks, edited by William McNeill, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 155-182.

11. ———. 2001. Sein und Wahrheit. 1. Die Grundfrage der Philosophie. 2. Vom Wesen der Wahrheit.<br>Vom Wesen der Wahrheit. Lecture course at the University of Freiburg, WS 1933-1934.

GA 36/37 2001.

On the Essence of Truth, in: Being and Truth, translated by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.

12. ———. 1953. Einführung in die Metaphysik

Lecture course at the University of Freiburg, Summer Semester 1935.

GA 40, 1983 (First edition 1953).

Introduction to Metaphysics, translated by Gregory Fried and Richard Polt, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.

See Chapter Four: The restriction of Being, in particular pp. 107-122 and 201-210.

13. ———. 1977. Der Ursprung der Kunstwerkes

Written in 1935-36, first edition in: Holzwege pp. 1-72, 1950. GA 5. 1977.

The Origin of the Work of Art, in: Off the Beaten Track, translated by Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2002, pp. 1-56.

Index: a) The thing and the work; b) The work and truth; c) Truth and art; d) Afterword; e) Appendix.

This essay is also translated in Basic Writings, edited by David F. Krell, New York: Harper & Row, 1977, (second expanded edition 1993, pp. 139-212) and in: Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter, New York: Harper & Row, 1971, pp. 15-86.

14. ———. 1984. Grundfragen der Philosophie. Ausgewählte "Probleme" der "Logik"

Lecture course at the University of Freiburg, WS 1937-38.

GA 45, 1984.

Basic Questions of Philosophy. Selected "Problems" of "Logic", translated by by Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.

See: Chapter 3. The Laying of the Ground as the Foundation for Grasping an Essence, pp. 69-94; Chapter 4. The Necessity of the Question of the Essence of Truth, on the Basis of the Beginning of the History of Truth, pp. 95-134.

15. ———. 1989. Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis)

Written 1936-1938.

GA 65, 1989.

Contributions to Philosophy: from Enowning, translated by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

See: Section V. Grounding, c) The Essential Sway of Truth, §§ 204-237.

16. ———. 1997. Besinnung

Written 1938-1939.

GA 66. 1997.

Mindfulness, translated by Parvis Emad and Thomas Kalary, New York: Continuum, 2006.

See Section V. Truth and Knowing-Awareness, §§ 35-47.

17. ———. 1982. Parmenides

Lecture course in the University of Freiburg, WS 1942-1943.

GA 54 1982.

Parmenides, translated by Andre Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.

18. ———. 1979. Heraklit. 1. Der Anfang des abendländischen Denkens (Heraklit) 2. Logik. Heraklits Lehre vom Logos

Lecture courses at the University of Freibug, SS 1943 and SS 1944.

GA 55 1979.

Heraclitus: The Inception of Occidental Thinking. Logic. Heraclitus' Teaching of the Logos, translted by Marnie Hanlon, New York: Continuum, 2013.

Translated in Italian by Ugo Franco Camera: Eraclito. L'inizio del pensiero occidentale. Logica. La dottrina eraclitea del Logos, Milano: Mursia, 1993.

19. ———. 2000. Alétheia (Heraklit, Fragment 16)

Written in 1951, first edition in: Vortrage und Aufsätze 1954 (Essays 1936-1953).

GA 7, 2000. pp. 249-274.

Aletheia (Heraclitus, Fragment B 16), in: Early Greek Thinking, translated by David F. Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi, New York: Harper & Row, 1975, pp. 102-123.

20. ———. 1967. Hegel und die Griechen

Written in 1958.

First edition in: Wegmarken (Essays 1919-1961), 1967 pp. 255-272 (second edition 1978 pp. 421-438).

GA 9, 1976. Revised and expanded 1978.

Hegel and the Greeks, in: Pathmarks, edited by William McNeill, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 323-336.

21. ———. 2007. Das Ende der Philosophie und die Aufgabe des Denkens

Written in 1964, originally published in French as: La fin de la philosophie et la tâche de la pensée in: Jean Beaufret et François Fédier, (eds.), Kierkegaard vivant, Paris: Gallimard, 1966, p.167-204.

First German edition in: Zur Sache des Denkens, Tübingen, Max Niemeyer, 1969, pp. 61-80.

GA 14, 2007.

The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking, in: On Time and Being, translated by Joan Stambaugh, New York: Harper & Row, 1972, pp. 55-73; reprinted Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

22. ———. 1986. Vier Seminare. Seminar in Le Thor 1966, 1968, 1969, Seminar in Zähringen 1973

First edition in: Seminare (1951-1973), 1977.

GA 15, 1986.

Four Seminars: Le Thor 1966, 1968, 1969, Zahringen 1973, translated by Andrew Mitchell and François Raffoul, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003.

See: Parmenides: The Well-rounded, Unshaking Heart of Truth, pp. 94-97.

Selected bibliography on Alétheia in Heidegger's works

1. Adkins, Arthur W.H. 1962. "Heidegger and Language." Philosophy no. 37:229-237.

2. Agnello, Chiara. 2006. Heidegger e Aristotele: verità e linguaggio. Genova: Il Melangolo.

3. Bambach, Charles. 2003. Heidegger's Root. Nietzsche, National Socialism, and the Greeks. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

See in particular Chapter 1.IV "On the Essence of Truth" and the subterranean philosophy pp. 38-45 and Chapter 4.Ii. Heidegger's Elegy of Aletheia and the Greek beginning pp. 189-195.

4. Bassler, O.Braldey. 2001. "The birthplace of thinking: Heidegger's late thoughts on tautology." Heidegger Studies / Heidegger Studien no. 17:117-133.

5. Beaufret, Jean. 2002. "Le sense de la philosophie grecque." Heidegger Studies / Heidegger Studien no. 18:23-43.

6. Berti, Enrico. 1990. "Heidegger e il concetto aristotelico di verità." In Herméneutique et ontologie. Mélanges en hommage à Pierre Aubenque, edited by Brague, Rémi and Courtine, Jean-François, 97-120. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

"Heidegger seeks to show the purely revelatory nature of the concept of truth when applied to the intellection of essences which, in 0 10. A. distinguishes this from the truth of judgements. In his 1925-6 course on logic (Logik. Die Frage nach der Wahrheit) Heidegger follows Bonitz in adding a negation (ouk) at 1051 b 32-3 and thus reading the passage as saying, 'with respect to these things, we search for what a thing always is and not whether it has this nature or not'. This negation is not to be found in any manuscript and may derive from a comment by pseudo-Alexander, who wanted to see in this passage an allusion to the vision of God. But, for Aristotle the intellection of essences too is infallible in the sense that the only alternative is ignorance. It is expressed in a definition and so does require that we enquire into whether it has this nature or not."

7. ———. 1997. "Heideggers Auseinandersetzung mit dem platonisch-aristotelischen Wahrheitsverständnis." In Die Frage nach der Wahrheit, edited by Richter, Ewald, 89-106. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.

8. ———. 2000. "I luoghi della verità secondo Aristotele: un confronto con Heidegger." In I luoghi del comprendere, edited by Melchiorre, Virgilio, 3-27. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

9. ———. 2005. "Heidegger and the Platonic concept of truth." In Heidegger and Plato: toward dialogue, edited by Partenie, Catalin and Rockmore, Tom, 96-107. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

10. Bertuzzi, Giovanni. 1991. La verità in Martin Heidegger. Dagli scritti giovanili a Essere e tempo. Bologna: Edizioni Studio Domenicano.

11. Biemel, Walter. 1952. "Heideggers Schrift Vom Wesen der Wahrheit." Symposion.Jahrbuch für Philosophie no. 3:473-508.

12. ———. 1994. "Marginal notes on Sallis's peculiar interpretation of Heidegger's "Vom Wesen der Wahrheit"." In The path of Archaic Thinking: Unfolding the Work of John Sallis, edited by Maly, Kenneth. Alabany: State University of New York Press.

13. Boeder, Heribert. 1997. "Heideggers Vermächtnis zur Unterscheidung der Alétheia." In Die Frage nach der Wahrheit, edited by Richter, Ewald, 107-123. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.

14. ———. 1998. "Heidegger's legacy: on the distinction of 'Alétheia'." Research in Phenomenology no. 28:195-210.

15. ———. 2003. "Das Wahrheits-Thema in der Ersten Epoche der Philosophie." Sapientia no. 58:5-22.

"The purpose of the article is a reassessment of Heidegger's central and dominating assertion on the role of aletheia in the origin of Occidental thought. It demands an epoché that allows for transcending resolutely his stance in the horizon of modernity -- as achieved by the distinction of the tasks of "reason" realized in its either "natural" or "mundane" or "conceptual" determination (cfr. H. Boeder, "Seditions", State University of New York Press 1997, ed. by Marcus Brainard). Only the latter has introduced the topic of aletheia into philosophy; contrary to Heidegger's assumption of an original concealment of physis. Not this, but the thematization of a primary logos and its divine revelation motivated the Parmenidean discussion of truth as distinct from human opinion. How then does Heidegger approach the truth in the first epoch of philosophy? Only seemingly. In truth -- quod erat demonstrandum --he deviates in each case and obliterates its motive thoroughly. He fulfills the modern destiny of thought not to recognise the achievement in conceptual thinking. His is an apocalyptic destiny, that he shares with Marx and Nietzsche -- not approaching to any fulfillment, but exhaustion. In this he is of admirable consequence: that of the "evil eye" (Nietzsche). It dooms necessarily, what was formerly regarded as "metaphysics". What enables to dismiss this assessment properly? In one word: the epoché due to "logo-tectonics".

16. Boutot, Alain. 1987. Heidegger et Platon. Le problème du nihilisme. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Chapitre III a): La mutation dans l'essence de la vérité pp. 184-216.

17. Brancacci, Aldo. 1990. "Le vrai et le droit: la notion d'orthon chez Mélissos." In La naissance de la raison en Grèce. Actes du Congrès de Nice, mai 1987, edited by Mattéi, Jean-François, 197-206. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

"Dans sa Platons Lehre Heidegger a consacrè des pages fort intéressantes à la mise en évidence du concept d'orthotés, dont le philosophe allemand retrouve, à tort, la première formulation chez Platon. Il est bien connu que, pour Heidegger, l'instauration de la notion de Richtigkeit marquerait l'avènement d'une primauté de l'idea sur l'alethéia: donc la constitution d'un concept de "cohérence" qui se substituerait à la notion de vérité comme dévoilement (Unverborgenheit). Dans cette perspective, l'orthotés en viendrait à exprimer l'adéquation entre le percevoir et l'énoncer, le se diriger (Sichrichten) qui se conforme (gleicht an) à ce qui doit être vu (was gesichtel sein soll), condition préalable d'une conception de la vérité comme adaequatio (19). Les textes de Mélissos que j'ai examinés montrent combien cette interprétation -- qu'Heidegger lui-même a rétractée dans un écrit de 1964, sans pourtant mettre en question la compréhension du concept d'ortothés qu'elle suppose (20) -- doit être revue et repensée. En effet, si l'on peut admettre que la constitution de la notion d'ôrthón est liée à l'instauration d'une conception du vrai qui pose le Sujet par rapport à l'Objet, il n'en reste pas moins que cette notion apparaît comme la conséquence de la thèse ontologique elle-même, qui l'engendre nécessairement et dont elle continue de dépendre. En d'autres termes, c'est à partir des thèses éléatico-mélissiennes qui posent l'être que s'élabore un concept d'orthon envisagé comme le critère qui rend possible la connaissance, ou qui la rendrait possible au cas où le ghinoskein aurait comme objet la réalité: ta onta. Dans les deux cas, la notion de relation est une notion centrale et désigne tantôt un lien positif, constitutif, entre le principe de la réalité et l'articulation de l'être en concepts, tantôt l'échec de la relation qui s'instaure, au sein d'un monde dépourvu de fondement ontologique, entre les facultés de la connaissance et leur objet, entre la réalité, toujours présupposée, et son apparaître. Dès lors, je crois être en mesure de conclure que le concept mélissien de rectitude exprime une notion éminemment catégoriale: orthon, entendu donc en tant qu' "orthogonalité", où Sujet et Objet sont à la fois unis et distincts." pp. 205-206

19. Cf. M. Heidegger, Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, Bern, 1954, p. 42.

20. Cf. M. Heidegger, La fin de la philosophie et la tâche de la pensée, in Questions IV, tr. fr. J. Beaufret et F. Fédier, Paris, 1976, p. 111-139.

18. Brasser, Martin. 1997. Wahrheit und Verborgenheit. Interpretation zu Heideggers Wahrheitständnis von "Sein und Zeit" bis "Vom Wesen der Wahrheit". Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

19. Brogan, Walter A. 2005. Heidegger and Aristotle. The Twofoldness of Being. Albany: State University Of New York Press.

See The Sophist Course: Aristotle's Recovery of Truth After Plato, pp. 169-178 and The 1925-1926 Logik Course: Aristotle's Twofold Sense of Truth pp. 178-187.

20. Campbell, Richard. 1984. "Heidegger: truth as Alétheia." Dialectic no. 23:1-13.

Reprinted in: Robin Small (ed.) - A hundred years of phenomenology: perspectives on a philosophical tradition - Aldershot, Ashgate, 2001 pp. 73-88

21. Caputo, John. 1988. "Demythologizing Heidegger: alétheia and the history of Being." Review of Metaphysics no. 41:519-546.

Reprinted in: John D. Caputo - Demythologizing Heidegger - Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1993, pp. 9-38.

22. Chiereghin, Franco. 1984. "Essere e Verità. Note a Logik. Die Frage nach der Wahrheit di Martin Heidegger." In. Trento: Verifiche.

23. Courtine, Jean-François. 1990. "Le platonisme de Heidegger." In Heidegger et la phénomenologie, 129-158. Paris: Vrin.

"Conférence prononcée à Rome (Institut Goethe 1988)"; pp. 151-158.

24. ———. 1992. "Une difficile transaction: Heidegger, entre Aristote et Luther." In Nos Grecs et leurs modernes, edited by Cassin, Barbara, 337-362. Paris: Seuil.

25. ———. 1992. "The preliminary conception of phenomenology and of the problematic of truth in Being and Time." In Martin Heidegger. Critical Assessments. Vol I. Philosophy, edited by Macann, Christopher, 68-93. New York: Routledge.

26. ———. 1996. "Les "Recherches logiques" de Martin Heidegger: De la théorie du jugement à la vérité de l'être." In Heidegger 1919-1929. De l'herméneutique de la facticité à la métaphysique du Dasein, edited by Courtine, Jean-François, 7-31. Paris: Vrin.

Actes du colloque organisé par Jean-François Marquet (Université de Paris-Sorbonne, novembre 1994)

27. Dahlstrom, Daniel. 2001. Heidegger's Concept of Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

28. ———. 2003. "The Clearing and its Truth: reflections on Tugendhat's criticisms and Heidegger's concessions." Études Phénoménologiques no. 37-38:3-25.

29. Dostal, Robert J. 1985. "Beyond Being: Heidegger's Plato." Journal of The History of Philosophy no. 23:71-98.

Reprinted in: Christopher E. Macann (ed.) - Martin Heidegger: Critical Assessments - Vol. II. History of philosophy - New York, Routledge, 1992 pp. 61-89.

"Heidegger's attack on metaphysics is equivalently an attack on Platonism. Brief comments about Plato are not uncommon in Heidegger's published works, but there is only one published essay devoted exclusively to a text of Plato: Plato's Doctrine of Truth.

This essay's principal thesis is that Plato transformed the notion of truth from unconcealment (Unverborgenheit) to correctness. Though this was written at a time (1930/31) when Heidegger's thought was making the famed and controverted turn (Kehre), the critique of Plato remains essentially the same throughout Heidegger's work. There is, of course, the late concession in The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking that "the assertion about the essential transformation of truth [in Plato] ... from unconcealment to correctness is... untenable.'' But, as we will see below, this does not alter Heidegger's unrelenting critique of Plato. Unlike other aspects of Heidegger's work, his Plato critique has not elicited widespread discussion, presumably because he himself wrote so little on Plato. The best responses to Heidegger's essay on Plato have come from those close to and sympathetic with Heidegger's work yet unsympathetic with his Plato interpretation."

30. Doz, André. 1990. "Heidegger, Aristote et le thème de la vérité." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 1:75-96.

31. Escoubas, Éliane. 1988. "Heidegger, la question romaine, la question impériale: autour du 'Tournant'." In Heidegger: Question ouvertes, edited by Escoubas, Éliane, 173-188. Paris: Éditions Osiris.

32. ———. 1992. "Heidegger and the Imperial question." In Martin Heidegger. Critical assessments - Vol. IV, edited by Macann, Christopher, 145-158. New York: Routledge.

33. Fóti, Véronique M. 1992. "Aletheia and oblivion's field: on Heidegger's Parmenides Lectures." In Ethics and Danger. Essays on Heidegger and Continental Thought, edited by Scott, Charles E., Dallery, Arleen B. and Holley, Roberts P., 71-82. Albany: State University of New York Press.

"Martin Heidegger insists, in his 1941-42 lecture course on Friedrich Hölderlin's "Andenken," that it is the poet who institutes (stiftet) history, whereas the thinker establishes its foundation (grundet). In his Parmenides lectures of the following year, Heidegger interlinks this poetico-philosophical understanding of historical origination with the problematic of aletheia which, by his own account, had preoccupied him intensely since the early 1930s, and which he then still understood in the sense of truth, rather than in the later sense of the pure opening (Lichtung). Although, as Jürgen Habermas points out, Heidegger "rigidly maintained the abstraction of historicity (as the condition of historical existence itself) from actual historical processes," his effort to think historicity as rooted in the aletheic "power to bring to word," which he pits against "a crude biological interpretation of history" (PL 83), carries historicopoliticaI import. This import and concern are not explicitly thematized; but they account for the fact that, as Manfred Frings notes, "long stretches of the lecture hardly deal with Parmenides himself" but seem to ramble over a bewildering plethora of topics. Frings advocates conjoining the text with Heidegger's 1943-44 lectures on Heraclitus which continue to develop a similar problematic. The present essay, however, will focus strictly on the Parmenides lectures. It will seek to show not only that this text is meaningfully organized and internally coherent, but also that it reveals certain important aspects of the historicopolitical dimension of Heidegger's thought." pp. 71-72 (notes omitted).

34. Franck, Didier. 2004. "De l'aletheia à l' Ereignis." In Heidegger l'énigme de l'être, edited by Mattéi, Jean-François, 105-130. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

35. Friedlander, Paul. 1969. Plato. An Introduction. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Second edition, with revisions (First edition 1958).

Translated from the German Platon: Seinswaheheit und Lebenswrklichkeit, 3 vols. Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1954 by Hans Meyerhoff: I. An introduction [2d edition with revisions]; II. The Dialogues, First Period; III. The Dialogues, Second and Third periods.

First German edition 1928: Platon. I. Eidos, Paideia, Dialogos; II. Die platonischen schriften; second revised edition 1954; third revised edition Berlin, Walter de Gruyter 1964: I. Seinswahrheit und Lebenswirklichkeit; II. Die platonischen Schriften, erste Periode; III. Die platonischen Schriften zweite und dritte Periode.

See in the First volume the Chapter XI: Alétheia. A discussion with Martin Heidegger, pp. 221-229.

36. Frings, Manfred, ed. 1968. Heidegger and the Quest for Truth. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.

37. ———. 1974. "Protagoras Re-discovered: Heidegger's Explication of Protagoras' Fragment." Journal of Value Inquiry no. 8:112-123.

"This paper is written against the background of Heidegger's grasp of the destruction of metaphysics and its end in Nietzsche's concept of world, history and values through absolute subjectivity (over-man). It traces pre-socratic thought in light of the absence of subjectivism in Protagoras by showing how his fragment deals with being and nothingness, not with subjective relativism (sophism). Heidegger's identification of 'aletheia' and 'chaos' (Hesiod) is complemented by a novel look at the origin of language and myth."

38. ———. 1988. "Parmenides: Heidegger's 1942-1943 Lecture Held at Freiburg University." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 19:15-33.

"In what follows, I wish to present a number of essentials of Heidegger's lecture, originally entitled, "Heraclitus and Parmenides," which he delivered at Freiburg University in the Winter Semester of 1942/1943. This was at a time when the odds of World War II had turned sharply against the Nazi regime in Germany. Stalingrad held out and the Germans failed to cross the Volga that winter. Talk of an impending "invasion" kept people in suspense. Cities were open to rapidly increasing and intensifying air raids. There wasn't much food left.

It is amazing that any thinker could have been able to concentrate on pre-Socratic thought at that time. In the lecture, there are no remarks made against the allies; nor are there any to be found that would even remotely support the then German cause. But Communism is hit hard once by Heidegger, who says that it represents an awesome organization-mind in our time.

There are two factors that somewhat impeded my endeavor of presenting the contents of this lecture:

1. Heidegger had originally entitled the lecture "Heraclitus and Parmenides." The 1942/43 lecture was followed in 1943 and 1944 by two more lectures on Heraclitus. When I read the manuscripts of the 1942/43 lecture for the first time, I was stunned that Heraclitus was mentioned just five times, and, even then, in more or less loose contexts. I decided that the title of the lecture should be reduced to just "Parmenides" in order to accommodate the initial expectations of the reader and his own thought pursuant to having read and studied it.

2. While reading the lecture-manuscripts for the first time, another troubling technicality came to my attention: long stretches of the lecture hardly even deal with Parmenides himself, and Heidegger seems to get lost in a number of areas that do, prima facie, appear to be irrelevant to Parmenides. And Heidegger was rather strongly criticized for this in the prestigious literary section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to the effect that it was suggested that I could have done even better had I given the lecture an altogether different title and omitted the name Parmenides."

(Notes omitted).

39. ———. 1990. "Heraclitus: Heidegger's 1943 Lecture Held at Freiburg University." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 21:250-264.

"In what follows I wish to present the pivots of thought of the second of three lectures on Pre-Socratic thought Heidegger held during the period of 1942-1944. The content of the first, Parmenides, was covered in this Journal's Vol. 19, No. 1 (January 1988). When Heidegger delivered the second lecture that we are about to familiarize ourselves with, he was fifty-five years of age, and yet to live another thirty-three. During this remaining time of his life he gained global attention, albeit not always acceptance of his thought.

The summer of 1943 during which the second Pre-Socratic lecture was delivered, entitled: Heraclitus. The Inception of Occidental Thought, was marked by the end of the African and Sicilian campaigns of World War II, the breakdown of the German-Italian axis, and Mussolini's downfall. As was the case with the 1942/43 Parmenides lecture, Heidegger appears to have secluded himself from the turmoil of the War. His thought appears to dwell near the Inception of Western thought, out of which his own time, too, must have grown.

As I indicated at the beginning of the transferring into English of the pivotal points of the Parmenides lecture, the three lectures - as can clearly be seen from what follows - must be studied, and comprehended, in conjunction with one another in order to fully comprehend his doubtless novel contribution to the study of the Pre-Socratics.

On Heidegger's own invitation in 1976, I edited this second, and the third (1944) Heraclitus lectures for Vol. 55 of the German Gesamtausgabe (Collected Edition). Concerning the general state of the manuscript involved, I wish to refer the reader to my technical remarks to the coverage of the Parmenides lecture.

The last of the three Pre-Socratic lectures by Heidegger, entitled: Logic. Heraclitus' Doctrine of Logos (1944), will also appear in this Journal."

40. ———. 1991. "Heraclitus: Heidegger's 1944 Lecture Held at Freiburg University." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 22:64-82.

"There are two crucial points to be made concerning our third pre-Socratic lecture:

(1) The main goal of the 1943 Heraclitus lecture had been to establish an arrangement of ten Heraclitian fragments in terms of "thinking proper" (eigentliches Denken). Heidegger thought through ten fragments of which the second through the tenth were "falling into", as I then put it, the first, namely, Diels fragment 16. This "first" fragment we showed to be not "first" in terms of a sequence; rather, it showed itself as both center for, and surrounding the other eight. Further, it was shown that Heidegger's first fragment (16) does not "contain" the rest, but that it is "nearest" the "inception" itself of thinking-proper. Thus, the arrangement of the nine fragments falling into the scope of 16 ensued from thinking-proper, and neither from logical nor speculative argument.

(2) By contrast, the present 1944 Heraclitus lecture does not continue on from what had in 1943 been achieved. Heidegger does not investigate further fragments in the light of the exceptional, and inceptional, significance of fragment 16. Surprisingly enough, in 1944 fragment 16 is mentioned only three times (320, 350, 391). Instead, he now tells us that he will check into fragments "chosen" because of their containing the word "logos". This very different, now objective procedure brings with it that the 1944 lecture is only loosely tethered to the preceding two lectures which, we saw, are much intertwined. One such loose tether was already hinted at in the coverage of the 1943 lecture when we stated: "Logic, too, cannot match thinking proper. It cannot reach into the inception from which its own territory arises. The next 1944 Heraclitus lecture will have to say a lot more on this point." Some of the other links to the previous lectures will be shown in what follows.

The first 1943 Heraclitus lecture I divided into two parts in its German edition in Volume 55 of the Collected Works (Gesamtausgabe). I, on the other hand, divided the manuscripts of the 1944 lecture into three parts. Heidegger left it to the judgment of the editors that such divisions and other minor emendations be made to secure the maximum of clarity. My threefold division of the manuscripts will guide us in the following coverage of the lecture:

1. Logic: Its Name and Subject-Matter.

2. The Staying-Away of Original Logos and the Paths of its Access.

3. Regress into the Original Region of Logic."

41. ———. 1991. "Heidegger's Lectures on Parmenides and Heraclitus (1942-1944)." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 22:197-199.

"This is a discussion of the coverage of three Lectures Heidegger held on Parmenides and Heraclitus from 1942 to 1944. It is designed on the background of his personal experience during the trip he made to Greece in 1962 as recorded in his diary. The question is raised whether his 1943 arrangement of 10 Heraclitus fragments could be extended by "refitting transformations" of other fragments. The three Lectures are seen as tethered to Heidegger's 1966/67 Heraclitus Seminar. Central to his trip was the island of Delos where he seemingly experienced the free region of Aletheia. A "fragment" in his diary is suggested as a motto for all three Lectures."

42. Fritsche, Johannes. 2005. "With Plato into the Kairos before the Kehre: on Heidegger's different interpretatons of Plato." In Heidegger and Plato: toward dialogue, edited by Partenie, Catalin and Rockmore, Tom, 140-177. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

43. Galston, William. 1982. "Heidegger's Plato: a critique of Plato's doctrine of truth." Philosophical Forum no. 13:371-384.

44. Gattinara, Giulio. 1995. "Heidegger interprete di Platone ovvero la traduzione errante." Aufidus no. 9:71-97.

45. Gethmann, Carl Friedrich. 1989. "Heideggers Wahrheitskonzeption in seinen Marburger Vorlesungen. Zur Vorgeschichte von Sein und Zeit (§ 44)." In Martin Heidegger: Innen- und Assenansichten, 101-150. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Reprinted in: Hubert Dreyfus, Mark Wrathall (eds.) - Truth, realism and the history of Being - Heidegger reexamined - vol. II - New York, Routledge, 2002, pp. 21-52.

Translated in Italian as: La concezione della veritò nello Heidegger di Marburgo - in: Stefano Poggi, Paolo Tomasello (eds.) - Martin Heidegger. Ontologia, fenomenologia, verità - Milano, LED, 1995, pp. 329-355.

46. Giordani, Alessandro. 2001. Il problema della verità. Heidegger vs Aristotele. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

47. Gonzalez Escudero, Santiago. 1983. "Una precision sobre el es en Parmenides." El Basilisco no. 15:62-70.

48. Gordon, Haym, and Gordon, Rivca. 2006. Heidegger on Truth and Myth: A Rejection of Postmodernism. New York: Peter Lang.

49. Greisch, Jean. 1983. "La déesse vérité. Histoire du plus long oubli." In La Vérité, edited by Greisch, Jean, 43-60. Paris: Beauchesne.

50. Greve, Jens. 2000. "Heideggers Wahrheitskonzeption in "Sein und Zeit": Die Interpretationen von Ernst Tugendhat und Carl Friedrich Gethmann." Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung no. 54:256-273.

"First, it is shown that Gethmann has raised a convincing objection to Tugendhat's interpretation, according to which, Heidegger's definition of truth goes beyond that given by Husserl. Contrary to Tugendhat's view, Gethmann argues that Heidegger has not moved away from Husserl's definition of truth. Gethmann claims that Heidegger rather uses "truth" with two different meanings, one referring to the truth of assertions, whereas the second ("truth in a more primordial sense") describes the preconditions for the first. Secondly, with regard to this relationship, it is argued that Heidegger and Gethmann cannot provide an adequate analysis, primarily because truth in the primordial sense does not account for the difference between being true or false."

51. Grieder, Alfons. 1988. "What Did Heidegger Mean by "Essence"?" Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 19:64-89.

"The word `Wesen' (`Essence') frequently occurs in Heidegger's writings. It is indeed one of his key-words. Unless we understand what he means by it we are unlikely to understand his philosophy. After all, philosophy was for him essential thinking (wesentliches Denken). Yet 'Wesen' is also one of his most enigmatic terms and greatly in need of elucidation, despite the fact that he commented on its meaning in many places, scattered throughout his writings, from the thirties right through to the seventies. It is not only tedious to collect these comments but, as we shall soon see, difficult to understand and adequately interpret them.

In the following I shall focus on the three periods 1925-30, 1934-38, and 1949-57. In all three periods Heidegger's meaning of `Wesen' is inseparable from that of 'Sein' (`Being') and `Wahrheit (`Truth'), and by the fifties its connection with 'Language', 'World' and 'Thing' assumes a new significance. From the mid-thirties he uses the word in an increasingly unfamiliar and puzzling manner. Its change of meaning is closely associated with the famous 'turn' ('Kehre'). One has to come to grips with this metamorphosis, otherwise what the later Heidegger has to say, for instance on art and technology, will hardly be intelligible.

Unfortunately, few commentators have bothered to analyse this term 'Wesen', and to my knowledge none has done so in sufficient detail and in a way which makes sense to the uninitiated too. Obviously, little is achieved by simply repeating Heideggerian phrases and assertions as if they were crystal-clear. (As a rule they are not at all.) I am aware, of course, that the following remarks and analyses are still in some sense provisional and cannot fill this important gap in the Heidegger literature: they will almost certainly have to be complemented and revised in the light of the many still outstanding volumes of the Gesamtausgabe."

52. Grondin, Jean. 1982. "L' alétheia entre Platon et Heidegger." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 87:551-556.

53. Gurtler, Gary M. 2007. "Commentary on Gonzalez." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy no. 23:112-117.

54. Hahn, Robert. 1979. "Truth (alétheia) in the context of Heidegger's critique of Plato and the Tradition." Southwest Philosophical Studies no. 4:51-57.

"According to Heidegger, the Pre-Socratic experience of "truth" as "unconcealment" is transformed by Plato so that "truth" becomes "correctness of perception" -- this marks both the origin of the "western tradition" and its decline. The paper examines Heidegger's "fourfold", a twentieth century expression of truth as "unconcealment", as a constructive response to the shortcomings of the "Tradition". Finally it is suggested that one way of reading what I call the "fourfold" in Plato's "Philebus" and "Timaeus" is to see Plato's project as the very one which Heidegger sets out to accomplish and which he denies to Plato."

55. Harrison, Bernard. 1991. "Heidegger and the Analytic Tradition on Truth." Topoi no. 10:121-136.

56. Hatab, Lawrence. 1990. "Rejoining Alétheia and Truth: or Truth is a Five-Letter Word." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 30:431-447.

57. Heitsch, Ernst. 1970. "Platon und das Problem der Wahrheit." In Durchblicke. Martin Heidegger zum 80. Geburstag, edited by Klostermann, Vittorio, 207-234. Frankfurt: Klostermann.

58. Helting, Holger. 1997. "A-létheia Etymologien vor Heidegger im Vergleich mit einigen Phasen der a-létheia Auslegung bei Heidegger." Heidegger Studies / Heidegger Studien:93-107.

59. ———. 2006. "Alétheia." In Hidegger und die Antike, edited by Günther, Hans-Christian and Rengakos, Antonios, 47-70. München: Beck.

60. Herrmann, Fredrich-Wilhelm von. 2002. Wahrheit, Freiheit, Geschichte. Eine systematische Untersuchung zu Heideggers Schrift 'Vom Wesen der Wahrheit'. Frankfurt: Klostermann.

61. Hestir, Blake E. 2003. "A "conception" of truth in Plato's Sophist." Journal of The History of Philosophy no. 41:1-24.

62. Hyland, Drew. 1995. Finitude and Transcendence in the Platonic Dialogues. Albany: State University of New York Press.

See Chapter 6: Truth and Finitude: On Heidegger's reading of Plato pp. 139-163.

63. ———. 2004. Questioning Platonism. Continental interpretations of Plato. Albany: State University of New York Press.

See Chapter One: Heidegger's Plato pp. 17-122.

"I shall begin with Heidegger's early (winter semester, 1924-25) lecture course on Plato's Sophist, where Heidegger, still very strongly under the influence of Husserlian phenomenology, interprets Plato (and Aristotle) largely from the standpoint of the exitent to which they prepare the way tor something like philosophy as scientific research in the phenomenological mode. From this vantage point, as we shall see in detail, Plato is to be criticized as falling far short of Aristotle. Since this is the only work of Heidegger's that engages in a thorough interpretation of an entire Platonic dialogue, I shall examine it in the greatest detail. The second text to be considered will be, significantly, Heidegger's only formally published work on Plato, "Plato's Doctrine of Truth," from 1931 to 1932 (although I shall also consider briefly several lecture courses from the same time period). There, Plato will again be criticized, but this time more as the thinker who begins the fateful transformation of aletheia, truth as "unhiddenness," into truth as "correctness," and so the beginning of the "forgetting of Being" that becomes the Western metaphysical tradition. As such, Plato's thinking is, so far as possible, to be got beyond, if not indeed overcome. Later, as Heidegger becomes more oriented toward the poetical and even mythic, both in his writing style and the matters he addresses, he becomes somewhat more sympathetic to Plato and to the dialogue form, while remaining in the end still profoundly suspicious of Plato's thought. I shall consider third, then, an example from this later, more poetic period in Heidegger's thinking, his 1943-44 lecture course on Parmenides. I shall there suggest that Heidegger's own movement away from philosophy as science and toward a more poetic way of thinking ought to make him much, much more sympathetic to Plato than he in fact becomes. Finally, I shall consider two works of Heidegger's in which Plato is never mentioned, but in which it might be argued that the influence of Plato is -- or ought to be -- most apparent: Heidegger's two later attempts at writing dialogues, the "Dialogue with a Japanese," and "Conversation on a Country Path." There, we shall evaluate Heidegger's engagement not so much with his assessment of Plato's so-called doctrines, but with the Greek's choice of writing format." pp. 17-18

64. Inwood, Michael. 2005. "Truth and untruth in Plato and Heidegger." In Heidegger and Plato: toward dialogue, edited by Partenie, Catalin and Rockmore, Tom, 72-95. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

65. Izquierdo Labeaga, José Antonio. 1993. "Nove definizioni di verità. L' "alétheia" nel confronto tra Heidegger e Tommaso." Il Cannocchiale no. 3:3-52.

66. Jeanmart, Gaelle. 1998. "Le concept de vérité dans les interprétations hégélienne et heideggérienne et l'allégorie de la caverne." De Philosophia no. 14:19-38.

"This paper is devoted to the methodological concept of truth and that the discrepancy between Heidegger's alètheia and Hegel's absolute Wahrheit will induce opposite interpretations of a major philosophical text."

67. ———. 1999. "Episteme et amathia: le tournant dans la conception platonicienne du langage: lecture heideggérienne du Cratyle." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 17:109-133.

68. Kisiel, Theodore. 1993. The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time. Berkeley: University of California Press.

See in particular: Part II. Confronting the ontological tradition. Chapter 6. Aristotle again: from Unconcealment to Presence (1923-24) pp. 276-308.

69. Kisiel, Theodore, and Sheehan, Thomas, eds. 2007. Becoming Heidegger. On the trail of his early occasional writings, 1910-1927. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

70. Kockelmans, Joseph, ed. 1972. On Heidegger and Language. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

71. Krell, David Farrell. 1975. "On the Manifold Meaning of Alétheia: Brentano, Aristotle, Heidegger." Research in Phenomenology no. 5:77-94.

Reprinted in D. F. Krell, Intimations of Mortality. Time, Truth, and Finitude in Heidegger's Thinking of Being, University Park: Pennsylvania State Press, 1986, pp. 67-79 with the title: The Manifold Meaning of Alétheia.

"Do the intimations of mortality in Heidegger's thought evanesce once he has abandoned the project of fundamental ontology? Or does the object of his fundamental ontology — finite existence as the site of all understanding of Being perdure even after the meta ontological and frontal ontological turns? Does not the site of such understanding of Being, broaching as it does the questions of the truth and the clearing of Being, persist in bearing traces of finitude? That truth is always accompanied by untruth, and clearing by concealing and withdrawal — are these not also intimations of mortality in Heidegger's work?

The following three chapters will try to trace these intimations in Heidegger's interpretation of truth as alétheia and of the clearing of Being as revealing concealing. They will do so by focusing on three quite specific themes: first, Heidegger's early "discovery" of the question of "truth" and "being" in Brentano's Aristotle: second, the burgeoning notion of "the clearing" in Being and Time and in the later work; and third, the question of the imputed "turning" from Man to Being in Heidegger's career of thought.

Let me now address the first of these themes. One of the four senses attributed to "being" in Franz Brentano's dissertation on Aristotle is on hós aléthes, "being in the sense of the true." Does Brentano's account of "being in the sense of the true" have significant bearing on Heidegger's response to alétheia as the unconcealment of beings in presence? This chapter tries to answer that question by offering (1) a general account of Brentano's thesis, (2) a detailed résumé of its third chapter, concerning on hós aléthes, (3) a condensed treatment of what John C. Caputo lias called Heidegger’s "alethiological" notion of Being, and (4) a summary of results." (p. 67)

72. Kusch, Martin. 1988. "Husserl and Heidegger on meaning." Synthese no. 77:99-127.

73. Lafont, Cristina. 2000. Heidegger, language, and World-Disclosure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Revised and updated edition translated from German by Graham Harman.

Original edition: Sprache und Welterschliessung - Verlag am Main, Suhrkamp, 1994.

See in particular Chapter 3: World-Disclosure and Truth pp. 109-175.

74. Maly, Kenneth. 1985. "Parmenides: circle of disclosure, circle of possibility." Heidegger Studies / Heidegger Studien no. 1:5-23.

75. ———. 1990. "From Truth to Alétheia to Opening and Rapture." Heidegger Studies / Heidegger Studien no. 6:27-42.

76. Margolis, Joseph. 2005. "Heidegger on Truth and Being." In Heidegger and Plato: toward dialogue, edited by Partenie, Catalin and Rockmore, Tom, 121-139. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

77. Martel, Christoph. 2008. Heideggers Wahrheiten. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

78. Martineau, Emmanuel. 1986. "Le 'coeur' de l' alétheia." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 4:33-86.

79. Marx, Werner. 1971. Heidegger and the Tradition. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Translated from the German: Heidegger und die Tradition: Eine problemgeschichtliche Einführung in die Grundbestimmungen de Seins (1961) by Theodore Kisiel and Murray Greene.

See Part III. The basic traits of Being in the first beginning - Chapter 4: Alétheia pp. 145-152.

80. McGaughey, Douglas R. 1976. "Husserl and Heidegger on Plato's Cave Allegory: a study in philosophical influence." International Philosophical Quarterly no. 16:331-348.

"A historical discussion of the intellectual relationship between Husserl and Heidegger and an analysis of articles on Plato's cave allegory by Heidegger and Fink demonstrates: (1) that Heidegger's project is true to (not contrary to) the spirit of Husserl's phenomenology by its being a more radical quest into "presuppositions" questioning the "givenness" of the structure of intentionality; (2) Fink's "what does the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl want to accomplish," throws light on the discussion of Bildung in Heidegger's "Plato's doctrine of truth." Fink and Husserl perceive the allegory as primarily concerned with "education;" Heidegger perceives the "unsaid" of the shift in the essence of truth from aletheia to adaequatio intellectus et rei, indicating a difference of focus for both projects rather than contradictions between them; and (3) essay concludes by suggesting that an adequate "phenomenological" description of the constituting of meaning in consciousness requires sensitivity to both moments: Husserl's description of intentionality and Heidegger's Seinfrage."

81. McGrath, Sean J. 2003. "Heidegger and Duns Scotus on Truth and Language." Review of Metaphysics no. 57:339-358.

82. Mikulic, Borislav. 1987. Sein, Physis, Alétheia: zur Vermittlung und Unmittelbarkeit im ursprunglichen Seinsdenken Martin Heideggers. Würzburg: Konigshausen Neumann.

In particular Chapter II. Sein und Wahrheit pp. 59-119.

83. Morrison, James C. 1969. "Heidegger's criticism of Wittgenstein's conception of truth." Man and World no. 2:551-573.

Reprinted in: Harold A. Durfee (ed.) - Analytic philosophy and phenomenology - The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1976, pp. 125-146.

"In Being and Time Heidegger characterizes the traditional concept of truth, which comprises three theses:

(1) The 'place' of truth is the statement (the judgment).

(2) The essence of truth lies in the `correspondence' of the judgment with its object.

(3) Aristotle held theses (1) and (2).

In a later work, On the Essence of Truth, he gives the following account of the traditional concept of truth. "A statement is true if what it means and says corresponds with the thing about which it speaks. Also we say here : it agrees (es stimmt). But now, what agrees is not the thing but rather the proposition." (p. 7).

Heidegger goes on to say that this agreeing has a twofold character "... on the one hand the agreement of a thing with is meant in advance about it and on the other hand the correspondence of what is meant in the statement with the thing." (ibid.) That is, since the agreement or correspondence is a relation between two "terms" -- the statement and the thing

presupposes that both terms can enter into the relation, i.e., agree with one another. The two-fold character of this agreement is determined by these two "aspects" of the relation: the first is the "objective" aspect, where the thing corresponds to the statement or what is meant by the statement, the second is the "linguistic" aspect where the statement or what it means corresponds to the thing. The first is "objective truth," the second "propositional truth."

In this essay I propose to discuss Heidegger's first two theses about the traditional concept of truth (1) and (2) above in terms of Wittgenstein's own concept of truth as it is presented in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. My main purpose in doing so is to see to what extent Heidegger's criticism of this concept is relevant to Wittgenstein and what this criticism really is. That is, I wish to generate a philosophical "dialogue" between these two thinkers who, on the face of it, are worlds apart in their philosophical methods, aims, interests, and conclusions. Many philosophers today, especially those in the English-speaking world, would seriously doubt the possibility of such a dialogue. Even if they admitted that Heidegger's views are meaningful and important they might suppose that what he says is not really relevant to the kinds of problems Wittgenstein, or any other philosopher sharing his philosophical tradition, is concerned with. Thus, my first task is to show what Heidegger says about the traditional concept of truth is relevant to Wittgenstein. Second, in order to show the force of his criticisms they must be presented in such a way that they can be seen to meet Wittgenstein on his own terms. To achieve this a mere confrontation of two opposing philosophical positions must be avoided, at least so far as this is possible. Such an arbitrary confrontation would simply beg the question and lead nowhere. Rather, it must be shown that Heidegger's criticisms point out the inadequacies of Wittgenstein's position from within, and that these inadequacies point to, and can only be overcome by, Heidegger's own position. Heidegger's criticism of the traditional ("correspondence") theory of truth is that it is ultimately inadequate, i.e., it is only a partial and hence dependent explication of the nature of truth, and thus requires a foundation in a radically different understanding of truth, which understanding Heidegger claims to provide. Thus, I must try to show the nature of, and reasons for, this partiality and dependence. In the end, I hope to have indicated why a radically new rethinking of the essence of truth is necessary, and that Heidegger himself has opened up the path for this rethinking. I have oI' this paper. I will begin by discussing thesis (2) (above) - that the essence of truth is a correspondence between judgment and object - and will then Inn) to thesis (I) -- that the "place" of truth is the judgment. However, I wish to emphasize that this division is adopted only for the purposes of exposition. It will be seen that they are both intimately related, and that this relationship is a necessary one." (Notes omitted). pp. 125-127 of the reprint.

84. Naas, Michael. 1999. "Keeping Homer's word: Heidegger and the epic of truth." In The Presocratics after Heidegger, edited by Jacobs, David C., 73-99. Albany: State University of New York Press.

85. Nwodo, Christopher. 1979. "Friedlander versus Heidegger: A-létheia Controversy." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 10:84-93.

"Professor Heidegger is certainly one of the leading philosophers, perhaps the leading philosopher of our time. He has influenced, and continues to influence, in a profound and far-reaching manner, the thinking of contemporary scholars in various fields. He has also given rise to many a controversy particularly in connection with the way he interprets other philosophers and the basic concepts of traditional philosophy. In this article (1) some attempt will be made to analyze one (2) such controversy, namely, Professor Friedlander's disagreement with Heidegger over the latter's interpretation of a-letheia. This paper is therefore divided into three parts. Part One deals with a brief analysis of Friedlander's criticism. Part Two attempts a short sketch of the development of the concept of a-letheia in the two works of Heidegger cited by Professor Friedlander. Part Three concludes with an evaluation of both views.

Friedlander's criticism is limited to two works of Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (1927) (3) and Platons Lehre Von der Wahrheit (1947), (4) where Heidegger deals with the concept of aletheia. In these works Heidegger reconstructs alethes and aletheia as a-lethes and a-letheia (with the alpha privative). Furthermore, he construes the Greek a-letheia, as truth not in the sense of a correspondence or correctness, but as unconcealment or unhiddenness.

In PLW Heidegger claims that the primordial meaning of a-letheia was unconcealment and that the current interpretation of it as correspondence is a form of degeneration. More specifically, he situates the beginning of this degeneration in Plato's allegory of the cave (Chapter Seven of the Republic). A reasonable thing to do as a contribution to philosophy and to truth would be to reverse this process of degeneration in order to retrieve the original and therefore authentic meaning." p. 84

1. This article developed out of a section of Christopher S. Nwodo: A Study of Martin Heidegger's Thinking on Art: With Special Reference to "The Origin of the Work of Art." Louvain University, unpublished doctoral thesis, 1974, pp. 252-257.

2. The word "one" is used in a double sense here. First of all, the a-letheia controversy is only one among many. There are others over Logos and Physis. See J. L. Mehta: The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger, New York, Harper & Row, 1971, p. 46 note 65. Secondly, Paul Friedlander's criticism is not the only one concerning a-letheia, G. Kruger is also involved. See Mehta, Ibid.

3. Sein und Zeit, Tubingen, Max Niemeyer, 1963 (1 Auflage 1927) (Hereafter SZ). English translation, Being and Time by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, New York, Harper & Row, 1962 (7th edition), (Hereafter BT)

4. Platons Lehre Von der Wahrheit, mit einem Brief über den "Humanismus", Bern, Switzerland, Verlag A. Francke, 1954 (1 Auflage 1947), (Hereafter PLW). English translation, "Plato's Doctrine of Truth" by John Barlow in Philosophy in the Twentieth Century edited by Barrett and Aiken, New York, Harper & Row paperback edition, 1971. Vol. III, pp. 173-192, (Hereafter ET).

86. Paredes, Mara del Carmen. 2005. "Amicus Plato magis amica veritas: reading Heidegger in Plato's Cave." In Heidegger and Plato: toward dialogue, edited by Partenie, Catalin and Rockmore, Tom, 108-120. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

87. Partenie, Catalin, and Rockmore, Tom, eds. 2005. Heidegger and Plato. Toward Dialogue. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

88. Pellecchia, Fausto. 1990. "Martin Heidegger. Essenza e verità." Filosofia e Teologia no. 4:119-132.

"The essay concerns two central themes of Heidegger's meditation on the essence of truth, which, intertwining and reacting on each other since the era of Sein und Zeit, lead to the Kehre of asking what implicitly underlies the lecture Vom Wesen der Wahrheit:

1) the impossibility of the theory, as a genuine discourse on truth, which discounts within its own structure the essence of truth as an auto-presupposition and which inevitably removes the problem;

2) the radical non-identity and, at the same time, co-appendage of aletheia and "truth" (adaequatio), that obstructs all dialectical "overcoming", in which it still would act as the presupposition of aletheia as the truth of "truth"; rather it refers to impropriety and to intimate discarding, concealed in the very possibility (essence) of the adaequatio, which the intellect must assume positively as truth of essence (being)."

89. Peperzak, Adriaan T. 1993. "Heidegger and Plato's Idea of the Good." In Reading Heidegger. Commemorations, edited by Sallis, John, 258-285. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

"Heidegger's interpretation of Plato, as defended in his publications from 1927 until 1932 and in "Plato's doctrine of truth" (1942) is analyzed and criticized, especially with regard to "aletheia, paideia, idea" and "to agathon". Heidegger's characterization of Plato's thinking as "metaphysics" is challenged and some consequences of a different interpretation are indicated."

90. Philippousis, John. 1976. "Heidegger and Plato's notion of truth." Dialogue.Canadian Philosophical Review:502-504.

"This short discussion tries to re-examine Heidegger's famous interpretation of Plato's notion of "truth" ("Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit") and, proposing a new interpretation of the Platonic idea in the myth of the cave, It reaches the conclusion that Plato himself understood the notion of aletheia not as exactitude (orthotes) but as the unfolding of the ousia itself."

91. Polt, Richard. 1996. "Heidegger's topical hermeneutics: the Sophist lectures." Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology no. 27:53-76.

Reprinted in: Hubert Dreyfus, Mark Wrathall (eds.) - Truth, realism and the history of Being - Heidegger reexamined - vol. II - New York, Routledge, 2002, pp. 53-76.

92. Power, Anne-Marie. 1998. "Truth and aletheia in Heidegger's thought." De Philosophia no. 14:109-120.

"In response to the controversy in the tradition concerning Heidegger's treatment of truth, I argue that Heidegger's early approach to that concept parallels his later approach to language, both of which seek the broader foundation of our common notions. I show that Heidegger takes us behind "truth as adequation" towards a more primordial conceptualization which is rooted in the Greek term, aletheia. Time and translation have deprived that word of much of its original meaning, but Heidegger holds that a deeper understanding of truth requires our recapturing its lost sense."

93. Proimos, Constantinos. 2002. "Reading Platonic and Neoplatonic notions of mimesis with and against Martin Heidegger." In Neoplatonism and the Arts, edited by Cheney de Girolami, Liana and Hendrix, John, 65-80. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press.

"Analyses some of the reasons for Heidegger's condemnation of the Platonic theory of mimesis, which goes hand in hand with the German philosopher's preference for aletheia (non-representational "unhiddenness") over orthotes (correctness of representation) in the theory of truth. Yet Heidegger underestimates such Neoplatonists as Plotinus, who also criticizes and transforms Platonic mimesis."

94. Radloff, Bernhard. 2000. "Heidegger's critique of Imperial truth." Existentia.An International Journal of Philosophy no. 10:51-68.

"With particular reference to Heidegger's Parmenides of 1942-43, and to the Contributions to Philosophy, the author argues that Heidegger offers a critique of imperialism as founded in the transformation of truth from aletheia to veritas. The "imperial" implicates the falseness and subjection of nature, and of a subject population, to the "imperial subject" of modernity. The

argument of the essay is especially unfolded by reference to the political projects of Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke, and concludes that modern technology, and imperial, socio-technical discourses, are intimately linked."

95. ———. 2007. Heidegger and the Question of National Socialism. Disclosure and Gestalt. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Conclusion: Imperial Truth and Planetary Order pp. 411-428.

96. Richardson, William J. 1963. Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to Thought. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

With a preface by Martin Heidegger.

97. Riedel, Manfred. 1996. "Verwahrung und Wahrheit des Seins. Heideggers ursprüngliche Deutung der Alétheia." In Denken der Individualität. Festschrift für Josef Simon zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Majetschak, Stefan and Hoffmann, Thomas Sören, 275-293. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

98. Rioux, Bertrand. 1963. L'être et la vérité chez Heidegger et Saint Thomas d'Aquin. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

99. Ruggenini, Mario. 2001. "Veritas e aletheia. La Grecia, Roma e l'origine della metafisica cristiano-medioevale." Quaestio.Yearbook of the History of Metaphysics no. 1:83-212.

100. Sallis, John. 1994. "The truth that is not of knowledge." In Reading Heidegger from the Start: Essays in His Earliest Thought, edited by Kisiel, Theodore and Buren, John van, 381-392. Albany: State University of New York Press.

101. Schuh, Franzjosef. 1957. Aletheia, Vorläufige Untersuchungen zu einer phänomenologischen Destruktion der Seinsgeschichte der Griechen als materiale Vorarbeiten zu einer neuen Bestimmung der Wahrheit als die Idee des Menschen.

Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis.

102. Schüssler, Ingeborg. 2001. La question de la vérité. Thomas d'Aquin, Nietzsche, Kant, Aristote, Heidegger. Lausanne: Editions Payot.

Table des matières: Introduction 5; Première partie: La questione de la vérité dans l'histoire de la philosophie. Thomas d'Aquin, Nietzsche, Kant, Aristote Chapitre I. La fondation du concept traditionnel de la vérité chez Thomas d'Aquin. De Veritate, Quaestio I, Articuli I-II 19; Chapitre II. L'expérience de la perte de la vérité chez Nietzsche Fragments choisis 43; Chapitre III. La fondation transcendentale de la vérité chez Kant. L'essence des concepts a priori de l'entendement ou des catégories. Critique de la raison pure, § 9 e § 10 80; Chapitre IV. La double essence de la vérité chez Aristote. Métaphysique, Livre VI, chapitre 4; Livre IX, chapitre 10 119; Seconde partie: La répétition de la question de la vérité dans la pensée postmétaphysique de Heidegger. Textes choisis 167

Indications bibliographiques 287-297.

103. Segura Peraita, Carmen. 2002. "La crítica de Heidegger a la noción tradicional de verdad (desde Sein und Zeit hasta los Beiträge zur Philosophie)." Pensamiento no. 58:255-272.

104. Shin, Sang-Hie. 1993. Wahrheitsfrage Und Kehre Bei Martin Heidegge. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

105. Sousa, Rui de. 2000. Martin Heidegger's interpretation of ancient Greek alétheia and the philological response to it, Mc Gill University, Montreal.

Available at ProQuest Dissertation Express ref. number NQ69866.

Abstract: "This thesis tries to provide a critical review of Heidegger's interpretation of ancient Greek truth in the different stages of his career and it also examines the philological response that his work on this question elicited. The publication of Sein and Zeit made Heidegger's views on alétheia available to a wide public and thereby launched a heated debate on the meaning of this word. The introduction tries to give an account of the general intellectual background to Heidegger's interpretation of ancient Greek truth. It also looks at the kind of interpretative approach favored by the philologists responding to Heidegger's views on alétheia. The thesis first examines his arguments on ancient Greek truth and language in Sein and Zeit from the point of view of the larger philosophical project of Heidegger's seminal work. It then looks at some initial philological responses to Heidegger along with Heidegger's views on alétheia in a few works following the publication of Sein and Zeit. As a next step, the bulk of the philological work responding to Heidegger is carefully examined with a special focus on the interpretative approaches of the various authors. Heidegger's attempt to respond to some of these philologists is also reviewed. Finally, Heidegger's retraction of his earlier views on alétheia is examined in light of a growing critical consensus among philologists. The very latest philological responses to Heidegger are also considered. The conclusion looks at the contributions made by Heidegger and his philological respondents to our knowledge of ancient Greek truth. Some suggestions are also made for future research on this topic."

106. Spanos, William V. 2001. "Heidegger's Parmenides: Greek modernity and the Classical legacy." Journal of Modern Greek Studies no. 19:89-115.

One of Heidegger's most insistent assertions about the identity of modern Europe is that its origins are not Greek, as has been assumed in discourses of Western modernity since the Englightenment, but Roman, the epochal consequence of the Roman reduction of the classical Greek understanding of truth, as a-letheia (un-concealment), to veritas (the correspondence of mind and thing). In the Parmenides lectures of 1942-43, Heidegger amplifies this genealogy of European identity by showing that this Roman concept of truth--and thus the very idea of Europe--is also indissolubly imperial. Heidegger's genealogy has been virtually neglected by Western historical scholarship, including classical. Even though restricted to the generalized site of language, this genealogy is persuasive and bears significantly on the conflicted national identity of modern, post-Ottoman Greece. It suggests that the obsessive pursuit of the unitary cultural ideals of the European Enlightenment, in the name of this movement's assumed origins in classical Greece, constitutes a misguided effort to accommodate Greek identity to the polyvalent, imperial, Roman model of the polity that informs European colonial practice. Put positively, Heidegger's genealogy suggests a radically different way of dealing with the question of Greek national identity, one more consonant with the actual philosophical, cultural, ethnic, and political heterogeneity of ancient Greece (what Martin Bernal has called the "Ancient Model") and, thus, one less susceptible to colonization by Europe."

107. Stambaugh, Joan. 1992. The Finitude of Being. Albany: State University of New York Press.

108. Starr, David E. 1975. Entity and Existence. An Ontological Investigation of Aristotle and Heidegger. New York: Burt Franklin & Co. Inc.

See Chapter IV. Truth and essence in Heidegger's thought pp. 107-167.

109. Taminiaux, Jacques. 1995. "La mise en oeuvre de l' aletheia. Platon, les Présocratiques et Sophocle dans les leçons de Heidegger (1935 et 1942)." In Le théâtre des philosophes, 167-237. Grenoble: Millon.

110. Tanzer, Mark Basil. 1999. "Heidegger on Being's oldest name: "to chreón"." Heidegger Studies / Heidegger Studien no. 15:81-96.

111. Tugendhat, Ernst. 1970. Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

112. ———. 1993. "Heidegger's Idea of Truth." In The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader, edited by Wolin, Richard, 245-263. London: MIT Press.

English translation by Richard Wolin of: Heideggers Idee von Wahrheit - in: Otto Pöggeler (ed.) - Heidegger: Perspektiven zur Deutung seines Werkes - Königstein, Athenäum, 1984 pp. 286-297

Reprinted also in: Christopher Macann (ed.) - Critical Heidegger - New York, Routledge, 1996, pp. 227-240.

113. Versényi, Laszlo. 1965. Heidegger, Being, and Truth. New Haven: Yale University Press.

114. Vigo, Alejandro. 1994. "Wahrheit, Logos und Praxis. Die Trasformation der aristotelischen Wahrheitskonzeption durch Heidegger." Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie no. 1:73-95.

115. Ward, James F. 1995. Heidegger's Political Thinking. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

See Chapter 6: Politics at/of the Inception: Plato and the Polis pp. 169-204.

116. White, David A. 1974. "Truth and Being: A Critique of Heidegger on Plato." Man and World no. 7:118-134.

"Heidegger has carried on many thoughtful "conversations" with the central figures in the Western philosophical tradition. But one of the sources of this tradition - Plato - is an infrequent protagonist in these conversations. Although a quotation from the Sophist heads Sein und Zeit and Heidegger alludes to Plato in a variety of contexts, Plato's work as such is the explicit subject of just a single essay. But that essay expounds an especially important set of interpretations in light of Heidegger's conviction that subsequent philosophy has been a series of distorted variations on Platonic themes. Therefore, an evaluation of Heidegger on Plato is crucial for determining the legitimacy of what Heidegger takes as historically "given" when he attempts to rectify these distortions through his own work!'

Heidegger's conversations with other philosophers are notorious for their apparently arbitrary stresses, omissions, and random divinations. For example, he has himself admitted that Kant must be handled "with violence" before the ultimate significance of his philosophy becomes evident. There is substantial evidence to indicate that a "violence" of sorts has been done to Plato as well. But in this case violence is not just wrenching Plato from the shapes which the standard interpreters claim to apprehend. If interpretive violence is required to establish new perspectives on honorable and ancient philosophy, let there be violence. The violence I wish to describe emerges when Heidegger draws inferences from his interpretations of Plato which he claims are incompatible with his own understanding of being (Sein), when in fact he has not given arguments to prove that these inferences must be incompatible. The violence is thus of a rather humble logical form. Plato may well be the primary source of the distortions Heidegger finds in the history of Western philosophy. But Heidegger has not given us reasons to accept the subsidiary claim that these distortions necessarily imply that being is distorted for Plato himself.

My evaluation is divided into three parts. Part I is a summary of Heidegger's essay "Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit," with references to other works introduced when relevant. Part II is a commentary on the key steps in Heidegger's argument. Part III is a defense of Plato against Heidegger in light of the "violence" just mentioned." (p. 118)

117. Wiplinger, Fridolin. 1961. Wahrheit und Geschichtlichkeit. Ein Untersuchung über die Frage nach dem Wesen der Wahrheit im Deneken Martin Heideggers. Freiburg / München: Verlag Karl Alber.

118. Wolenski, Jan. 2005. "Aletheia in Greek thought until Aristotle." Annals of Pure and Applied Logic no. 127:339-360.

"This paper investigates the concept of aletheia (truth) in ancient philosophy from the pre-Socratics until Aristotle. The meaning of aletheia in archaic Greek is taken as the starting point. It is followed by remarks about the concept of truth in the Seven Sages. The author discusses this concept as it appears in views and works of philosophers and historians. A special section is devoted to the epistemological and ontological understanding of truth. On this occasion, influential views of Heidegger are examined. The paper is concluded by a review of various meanings of truth in Aristotle."

119. Wolz, Henry. 1966. "Plato's doctrine of truth: orthótes or alétheia ?" Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 27:157-182.

120. Wrathall, Mark. 1999. "Heidegger and Truth as Correspondence." International Journal of Philosophical Studies no. 7:69-88.

Reprinted in: Hubert Dreyfus, Mark Wrathall (eds.), Heidegger Reexamined, Vol. II: Truth, Realism and the History of Being, New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 1-20.

"I argue in this paper that Heidegger, contrary to the view of many scholars, in fact endorsed a view of truth as a sort of correspondence. I first show how it is a mistake to take Heidegger's notion of 'unconcealment' as a definition of propositional truth. It is thus not only possible but also essential to disambiguate Heidegger's use of the word 'truth', which he occasionally used to refer to both truth as it is ordinarily understood and unconcealment understood as the condition of the possibility of truth. I then show how Heidegger accepted that propositional truth, or 'correctness', as he sometimes called it, consists in our utterances or beliefs corresponding to the way things are. Heidegger's objection to correspondence theories of truth was not directed at the notion of correspondence as such, but rather at the way in which correspondence is typically taken to consist in an agreement between representations and objects. Indeed, Heidegger took his account of unconcealment as explaining how it is possible for propositions to correspond to the world, thus making unconcealment the ground of propositional truth. I conclude by discussing briefly some of the consequences for Heidegger interpretation which follow from a correct understanding of Heidegger's notion of propositional truth."

121. ———. 1999. "The Conditions of Truth in Heidegger and Davidson." The Monist no. 82:304-323.

"In this paper I hope to demonstrate that, despite dramatic differences in approach, Analytic and Continental philosophers can be brought into a productive dialogue with one another on topics central to the philosophical agenda of both traditions. Their differences tend to obscure the fact that both traditions have as a fundamental project the critique of past accounts of language, intentionality, and mind. Moreover, writers within the two traditions are frequently in considerable agreement about the failings of past accounts. Where they tend to differ is in the sorts of positive accounts they give. By exploring the important areas of disagreement against the background of agreement, however, it is possible to gain insights unavailable to those rooted in a single tradition.

I would like to illustrate this in the context of a comparison of Heidegger's and Davidson's accounts of the conditions of truth. I begin, however, with a brief discussion of some crucial differences between the Analytic and Continental ways of doing philosophy. An understanding of these differences provides the basis for seeing how Heidegger and Davidson, all appearances to the contrary, in fact follow a parallel course by resisting theoretical attempts at the redefinition or reduction of our pre-theoretical notion of truth. Indeed, both writers believe that truth is best illuminated by looking at the conditions of truth-that is, they both try to understand what makes truth as a property of language and thought possible in the first place. Both answer the question by exploring how , what we say or think can come to have content. I conclude by suggesting that Heidegger's "ontological foundations" of "the traditional conception of truth" can be seen as an attempt at solving a problem which Davidson recognizes but believes is incapable of solution-namely, the way the existence of language and thought presuppose our sharing a finely articulated structure which only language and thought seem capable of producing." p. 304

122. ———. 2004. "Heidegger on Plato, Truth, and Unconcealment. The 1931-32 Lecture on The Essence of Truth." Inquiry no. 47:443-463.

"This paper discusses Heidegger's 1931-32 lecture course on The Essence of Truth. It argues that Heidegger read Platonic ideas, not only as stage-setting for the western philosophical tradition's privileging of conceptualization over practice, and its correlative treatment of truth as correctness, but also as an early attempt to work through truth as the fundamental experience of unhiddenness. Wrathall shows how several of Heidegger's more-famous claims about truth, e.g. that propositional truth is grounded in truth as world-disclosure, and including Heidegger's critique of the self-evidence of truth as correspondence, are first revealed in a powerful (if iconoclastic) reading of Plato."

123. ———. 2005. "Unconcealment." In A Companion to Heidegger, edited by Dreyfus, Hubert and Wrathall, Mark, 337-357. Oxford: Blackwell.

124. ———. 2006. "Truth and the Essence of Truth in Heidegger's Thought." In Cambridge Companion to Heidegger (Second edition), edited by Guignon, Charles, 241-267. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

125. ———. 2010. Heidegger and Unconcealment. Truth, Language, and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

126. Zanatta, Marcello. 1990. Identità, logos e verità. Saggio su Heidegger. L'Aquila: Japadre Editore.

127. Zarader, Marlène. 1986. "Le miroir au trois reflets. Histoire d'une évolution." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 3:5-32.

Translated as: The Mirror with the Triple Reflection in: Christopher Macann (ed.), Critical Heidegger, London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 7-26.

128. ———. 1990. Heidegger et les paroles de l'origine. Paris: Vrin.

Translated in Italian as: Heidegger e le parole dell'origine, Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1997.

129. Ziegler, Susanne. 1991. Heidegger, Hölderlin und die Alétheia. Martin Heideggers Geschichtsdenken in seinen Vorlesungen 1934/35 bis 1944. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.

130. ———. 1994. "Hölderlin unter dem Auspruch der Alétheia?" Heidegger Studies / Heidegger Studien no. 10:163-182.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Index of the section "History of the Doctrine of Categories"

Historical Introduction

The Doctrine of Categories from an Historical Perspective

Aristotle's Categories

Semantics and Ontological Analysis in Aristotle's Categories

Aristotle's Categories. Annotated Bibliography of the studies in English:

First part: A - C

Second part: D - Het

Third part: Hin - N

Fourth part: O - Z

Bibliographie des études en français sur les Catégories d'Aristote

Bibliografia degli studi italiani sulle Categorie di Aristotele

Bibliographie der deutschen Studien zur Aristoteles Kategorien

The Stoic Doctrine of Categories

The Stoic Doctrine of Supreme Genera (Categories)

Bibliography on The Stoic Doctrine of Supreme Genera (Categories)

The Neoplatonic Doctrine of Categories

Plotinus' Criticism of the Doctrine of Categories (Enneads VI, 1-3)

Selected Bibliography on Plotinus' Criticism of the Doctrine of Categories

Ancient Greek Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Selected Bibliography on the Ancient Greek Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

The Doctrine of Categories in the Middle Ages

Eriugena, Periphyseon Book I: Aristotelian Logic and Categories

Latin Medieval Commentators on Aristotle's Categories

Selected Bibliography on the Latin Medieval Commentators:

Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Commentators on Aristotle's Categories

The Doctrine of Categories from Descartes to Kant

(Under Construction)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The Doctrine of Categories from an Historical Perspective

Introduction

"Metaphysics, in its minimal form, is the activity of categorial description. Its subject matter is the most fundamental aspects of the way we think about and talk about reality, the most fundamental features of reality as it presents itself to us. We divide the world into horses and trains, people and mountains, battles and towns, and a whole complex structure of different kinds of things; our language is the repository of this enormously rich furnishing of the world. But we can discern within this richness some overall divisions, between things and their properties for example, or between events and the times and places in which they happen, and it is with the overall pattern of our categorising of elements of the world that metaphysics concerns itself. The basic divisions which our thought and talk about reality entail are the quarry of categorial describers.

(...)

Aristotle's categories are 'predicables' because (with reservations to be looked at later) they are things predicated of something: when we say, for example, that 'Socrates is a man' we are predicating being a man of Socrates, i.e. a certain kind of substance. Again, when we say that 'Aristotle is in the Lyceum', we are predicating being in the Lyceum of Aristotle, i.e. a certain place, physical location. The ten predicables listed are the ten kinds of things that can be said of something. Now 'thing' is used here intentionally to convey the fact that Aristotle is, in the first place, talking about the world and not about language. It is being in the Lyceum as such that is predicated or said of Aristotle, not the expression 'in the Lyceum' which is (if at all, and certainly in a different sense of 'said of') said of 'Aristotle' the name.

But 'thing' is used also to convey another fact about Aristotle's ten predicables, namely that the list involves a division into ten types or kinds of what can be variously called 'things', 'entities', 'existents' or 'beings'. Socrates is one kind of thing, a substance, and so is Aristotle; in-the-Lyceum is another kind of entity, a place or location; four-foot is a quantity; white is a quality; yesterday is a time; and so on. Aristotle, in drawing up a list of the ten different kinds of things predicable of something else, is drawing up a list of the ten different kinds of beings, entities, existents, or things. According to Aristotle we have to distinguish the categories of substance, place, time, quality, action and so on.

Now where does Aristotle get all this from, and is he right? (...)

How on earth could Aristotle have come up with this classification of things in existence in terms of ten categories? Clearly he did not engage in an empirical investigation of the things around him and arrive at his result as he would at a classification of species of animals or plants. The answer has to be that, insofar as the list is the product of investigation it was investigation of our thought and talk about the things which Aristotle could find around him. One commentator on Aristotle's list suggests that it was arrived at by distinguishing different questions which may be asked about something and noticing that ... only a limited range of answers can be appropriately given to any particular question. An answer to 'where?' could not serve as an answer to 'when?'. Greek has, as we have not, single-word interrogatives meaning 'of what quality?' and 'of what quantity?' ... and these, too, would normally collect answers from different ranges. (*)

Something along these lines has to be right, since Aristotle could not have investigated reality directly, and that for at least two reasons. One is that reality is not something which itself lies beyond or prior to our thought and talk about it in a way that allows of independent perusal, since reality is for us the very thing which our thought and talk concerns. If that looks tautological, let it be: a more substantial claim needs greater argument than I can offer now. The second reason is that any perusal of reality would need to rest upon a way of classifying what is discovered in it: are we going to list places and times, qualities and numbers, relations and events? Well, that depends on the categories involved in our thought and talk. It is the very result of category division in our thinking and talking that the world divides up as it does. A way of putting this point is in terms of perception. To perceive the world is not, as a naive Lockean might think, to passively notice what is there; it is to conceptualise and hence pigeonhole what is there. And categories are the broadest, most fundamental and most general of our pigeonholing devices." (pp. 2-4)

References

(*) J. L. Ackrill, Aristotle's Categories and De Interpretatione, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1963, p. 78.

From: Brian Carr, Metaphysics. An introduction, London: Macmillan 1987.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Semantics and Ontological Analysis in Aristotle's Categories

Introduction

"The Categories, ascribed to Aristotle, has played a unique role in our tradition. It is the only philosophical treatise that has been the object of scholarly and philosophical attention continuously since the first century B.C., when people first began writing commentaries on classical philosophical texts. From early late antiquity until the early modern period, one would begin the study of Aristotle and the study of philosophy quite generally with the Categories and Porphyry's Isagoge. For several centuries, these two treaties, and the De Interpretatione, formed the core of the philosophical corpus which was still being seriously studied. Thus, it is hardly surprising that our received view of Aristotle -- whether we are aware of this in all its details or not -- was colored substantially by the Categories.

Already in late antiquity, however, doubts were raised about its authenticity, (1) though we know of no ancient scholar who, on the basis of such doubts, declared the treatise to be spurious. On the contrary, Ammonius claims that everyone agreed that it was authentic. (2) The writers of the Middle Ages and the scholastics of the early modern period seem to have had no doubt about the authenticity of the treatise; (3) presumably, they were relying mainly on the authority of Boethius. (4) It is tempting to suppose that this acceptance of the treatise by the scholastics is precisely what led Renaissance scholars like Luis Vives (5) and Francesco Patrizi (6) to raise doubts about this very foundation of both scholasticism and traditional logic, though they did not attempt to provide any detailed arguments for their conclusion. It remained for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to examine the Categories critically with the aid of the new philology. And soon enough, there was an impressive roster of those staunchly maintaining that the treatise was not genuine. (7) Even H. Bonitz considered it to be of doubtful authenticity. (8) During the present century, opinion has again shifted in favor of the view that it is a genuine work of Aristotle's, though, to be sure, the doubts have not been entirely silenced. I. M. Bochenski, writing in 1947, thought the treatise of doubtful authenticity; (9) and in 1949, S. Mansion tried to argue against its authenticity. (10) Doubts especially about the second part, the so-called Postpraedicamenta, have never really ceased. (11)

Given the enormous influence this treatise has had on our view of Aristotle and on our interpretation of his writings, it seems extremely important to me to try, as far as possible, to lay these doubts to rest. Yet, I hope this investigation will also be of interest to those already firmly convinced that the Categories is a genuine work of Aristotle's; for it raises questions that interpreters of the treatise, in general, do not address and whose answers might well alter the standard view of this text.

The question of authenticity, however, turns out to be crucially linked to the question of unity. Given that it seems highly questionable whether the Postpraedicamenta were originally part of the treatise or were appended by a later editor, (12) it might seem as if the question regarding the authenticity of the treatise needs to be asked as two questions, viz., questions regarding the authenticity of the first and second part individually. Many authors have indeed taken this for granted and have thus assumed that the first part was authentic, the second either probably or certainly not. (13) Since, however, interest traditionally has focused almost exclusively on the first part of this treatise, we also find the tendency to regard the question of authenticity as primarily the question of the authenticity of the first part and so to leave the question of unity and the problem of the authenticity of the second part to more or less take care of themselves. Buhle already exhibits this tendency characteristic of many modern interpreters.(14) After having called attention to the apparent lack of connection between the Postpraedicamenta and the Praedicamenta and after briefly remarking (without providing any specifics) that some things in the Postpraedicamenta do not mesh well with other aspects of Aristotle's thought, he writes: "sed fac esse postpraedicamenta spuria, non idem tamen de Categoriis statuendum est." It is obvious -- as long as the authenticity of the first part is secure, it does not much matter to Buhle whether or not one considers the second part genuine. Such an approach, however, is methodologically highly suspect because the questions of unity and of authenticity cannot be separated without both prejudging the issue of unity and presupposing a certain interpretation of the Categories, especially since the lack of unity itself has been taken as providing strong prima fade grounds for judging the treatise to be spurious. (15) Therefore, in what follows, I will pay particular attention to the question of unity. The dangerous tendency to consider this treatise almost exclusively with reference to the first part and thus to jeopardize the status of the second part is, of course, reinforced considerably by the title. Hence. I will also discuss the title in connection with the question of unity." (pp. 11-12)

Notes

(1) Olymp., Prol. 22, 38ff.; Schol. 33a 28ff.; Brandis.

(2) Ammon., In Cat. 13, 25.

(3) The question of authenticity is either not discussed at all (cf. Ockham, Expositio aurea, Bologna 1469, f. gii) or discussed only very superficially and mechanically (cf. De Soto, Absolutissima commentaria, Venice 1574, 247ff.; Complutenses, Disputationes in Arist. dialecticam, Leiden 1668, 160; Gennadios, œuvres, VII, 119, 9, Paris 1936).

(4) Cf. Peter Abailard, Logica Ingredientibus, 116; Conimbricenses, In universam dialecticam, Cologne 1607, c. 297.

(5) De causis corrupt., art. 99 (according to Fabricius, Bibl. Gr., vol. II, 109).

(6) Discuss. Peripat., vol. I, Basle 1581, 20.

(7) C. Prantl, Geschichte der Logik, 1, 90; C. Prantl, in: Zeitschrift für die Altherthumswissenschaft IV (1846) 641-652; L. Spengel, in: Gelehrte Anzeigen (Munchen), 1845, c. 33-56; V. Rose, De Aristotelis librorum ord., 234ff.; A. Gercke, in: Arch. f G. d. Ph. 4 (1891) 424-441; E. Dupréel, in: Arch. f. G. d. Ph. 22 (1909) 230-251.

(8) Über die Kategorien des Aristoteles, in: Sitzungsber. Wien 1853, 593.

(9) La logique de Théophraste, 32.

(10) "La doctrine aristotélicienne de la substance et le Traité des Catégories" in: Proc. 10th Internat. Congr. of Philosophy, Amsterdam 1949, 1097-1100; cf. also her earlier paper, "La première doctrine de la substance: la substance selon Aristote" in: Rev. Philos. de Louvain 44 (1946) 349- 360.

(11) I. Düring says only that the authenticity of the Postpraedicamenta is likely (Aristoteles, 55); D. Ross thought that the Postpraedicamenta were generally regarded as spurious (Aristotle, 24 n. 2).

(12) See J. G. Buhle, Aristotelis Opera, vol. I, 1791, 436; Ch. A. Brandis in: Abh. Berlin 1811, 268ff.; E. Zeller. Philos. d. Gr., II 2 (4th edition), 1921, 67 n. 1; Th. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, IV, 514; Überweg-Praechter, 379; D. Ross, Aristotle, 10; L. M. De Rijk, The Authenticity, in: Mnemosyne. 4 (1951), 159; I. Düring. R E Suppl, XI, s v. Aristoteles, 205, 61; J. L. Ackrill, 70; V. Sainati, Storia, 151ff. Some ancient authors took this line (Olymp., In cat. 133, 14), especially Andronicus (Simpl., In cat. 379, 8ff.).

(13) E.g. J. G. Buhle, 436; E. Zeller, II 2 (4 ed.) 24, 1921, 67; H. Maier, Die Syllogistik, II 2, 292 n. We hear of this view being taken by some in antiquity (Ammon., In cat. 14, 18ff.; Olymp., In cat. 133, 14ff.). Whether Andronicus was among these, as is often claimed, is doubtful; at any rate, we never hear that he argued against the authenticity of the Postpraedicamenta; we would assume, if this had been the case, that he would be referred to by name when their authenticity was being discussed.

(14) J. G. Buhle, 436.

(15) O. Hamelin, Le systeme d'Aristote, 27 and 131.

From: Michael Frede, The Title, Unity, and Authenticity of the Aristotelian Categories. In Essays in Ancient Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1987, pp. 11-28.

"There is a theory called the theory of categories which in a more or less developed form, with minor or major modifications, made its appearance first in a large number of Aristotelian writings and then, under the influence of these writings, came to be a standard part of traditional logic, a place it maintained with more or less success into the early part of this century, when it met the same fate as certain other parts of traditional logic.

There are lots of questions one may ask about this theory. Presumably not the most interesting question, but certainly one for which one would want to have an answer if one took an interest in the theory at all, is the following: What are categories? It turns out that this is a rather large and difficult question. And hence I want to restrict myself to the narrower and more modest question, What are categories in Aristotle?, hoping that a clarification of this question ultimately will help to clarify the more general questions. But even this narrower question turns out to be so complicated and controversial that I will be content if I can shed some light on the simple questions: What does the word "category" mean in Aristotle? What does Aristotle have in mind when he talks of "categories"?

Presumably it is generally agreed that Aristotle's doctrine of categories involves the assumption that there is some scheme of classification such that all there is, all entities, can be divided into a limited number of ultimate classes. But there is no agreement as to the basis and nature of this classification, nor is there an agreement as to how the categories themselves are related to these classes of entities. There is a general tendency among commentators to talk as if the categories just were these classes, but there is also the view that, though for each category there is a corresponding ultimate class of entities, the categories themselves are not to be identified with these classes. And there are various ways in which it could be true that the categories only correspond to, but are not identical with, these classes of entities. It might, e.g., be the case that the categories are not classes of entities but rather classes of expressions of a certain kind, expressions which we--following tradition--may call "categorematic." On this interpretation these categorematic expressions signify the various entities we classify under such headings as "substance," "quality," or "quantity." And in this case we have to ask whether the entities are classified according to a classification of the categorematic expressions by which they are signified, or whether, the other way round, the expressions are classified according to the classification of the entities they signify. Or it might be thought that the categories are classes of only some categorematic expressions, namely, those which can occur as predicate-expressions. Or it might be the case that the categories themselves are not classes at all, neither of entities nor of expressions, but rather headings or labels or predicates which collect, or apply to, either entities or expressions, i.e., the category itself, strictly speaking would be a term like "substance" or "substance word." Or it might be the case that categories are neither classes nor terms but concepts. All these views have had their ardent supporters." (pp. 1-2)

From: Michael Frede, Categories in Aristotle. In Dominc O'Meara (ed.), Studies in Aristotle, Washington: Catholic University Press 1981, pp. 1-25. (Reprinted in: M. Frede, Essays in Ancient Philosophy, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 29-48).

"The precise position to be assigned to the Categories in the Aristotelian system has always been somewhat of a puzzle. On the one hand, they seem to be worked into the warp of its texture, as in the classification of change, and Aristotle can argue from the premiss that they constitute an exhaustive division of the kinds of Being (A. Pst. I 22, 83b15). On the other hand, both in the completed scheme of his logic and in his constructive metaphysic they retire into the background, giving place to other notions, such as causation, change, actuality and potentiality. Investigation, has, moreover, been hampered, especially in Germany, by attempts to correlate them with the Kantian Categories, with which they have obvious points of contact. But Kant's formal a priori concepts by which the mind makes for itself a world, to use Mr Bosanquet's phrase, imply an attitude to knowledge and reality so utterly opposed to the Aristotelian that the comparison has tended to confusion rather than elucidation. Scholars now realise better that the Aristotelian Categories can only be understood in connexion with the problems of Aristotle's own age.

The best general account of the Categories known to me is that given by Maier, who accepts the interpretation of Apelt in its main lines, correcting it in some important points. (1) It is the great merit of Apelt to have firmly grasped the principle that, whatever the applications to which Aristotle put the scheme of the Categories, it is primarily connected with the use of linguistic thought to make assertions about reality and hence with the proposition, the judgment as expressed in language. In details, I think, he is misled by the associations of post-Kantian logic, which prevent him from entering fully into the attitude adopted by the early Greek logic towards the fact of assertion.

In view of the undoubted fact that the scheme of the Categories follows the lines of Socratic-Platonic thought, Gercke's suggestion (2) is tempting that it originated in the Academy. Gercke, whose own view of the Categories is strongly coloured by Kantianism, relies almost entirely on the greater point given to the arguments in the Ethics against the Idea of the Good if we suppose them to accuse Plato of inconsistency with his own doctrine of the Categories. Except as supplementing strong independent evidence an argument of this kind carries no weight. The case is certainly weakened if it can be shown that Aristotle uses the Categories to solve a philosophical problem in explicit opposition to the solution offered by the Academy. This can be done, I think. In Meta. XIV 2, 1088b18 he sets the Categories against Platonist doctrine. He is criticising the indefinite dyad, and traces the origin of this conception to 'their old-fashioned way of setting problems': the Platonists found it necessary to attack the Parmenidean dictum and establish the existence of 'what is not' (cf. Plato, Sophist 237A, 256D). But how will this account for the plurality of being (for being means sometimes substance, sometimes that it is of a certain quality, and at other times the other categories: 1089a7)? In the corresponding passage of the Physics (I 2, 184b15 sqq.) Aristotle solves the Parmenidean difficulty through the multiplicity of the Categories (186a25), and alludes to the inadequacy of the Academic solution (187a1).

The inference to be drawn from these passages, in conjunction with the chapter in the Ethics on which Gercke relies, is the negative one that Plato and his successors in the Academy did not apply the scheme of the Categories to the fundamental philosophical questions of Being and Good. Positive evidence must be sought in another aspect of the doctrine. Now the Topics exhibits the Categories in intimate association with dialectical logic. The work itself purports to codify methods in regular use but not hitherto systematically treated. That these methods were employed in the Academy is amply attested by the Platonic dialogues. (3) Further, as the Topics and particularly the Sophistici Elenchi show, they were developed in close connexion with the eristic logic of Antisthenes and the Megarians. This fact at once establishes a contact with the treatment of the problem 'one thing, many names' in Plato's Sophist (251A). This difficulty was removed by drawing a distinction between different kinds of being, and Aristotle himself regards it as finally disposed of by the doctrine of the Categories. That some of the kinds of being included in the scheme were already recognised in the Academy is plain. In the Topics relatives have a number of their own topoi and the varieties of relatives enumerated in the Categories follow closely on the lines of division in the Charmides. (4) Much of the matter of the Topics must have been common to Academy and Lyceum. But this is not to say that the Categories as a complete and exhaustive scheme belonged to the Academy. Eudemus tells us that Plato solved the difficulties of Lycophron and others by a dual distinction of being.

I shall accordingly assume in what follows that the scheme of the Categories was evolved in the course of efforts to establish a doctrine of judgment which should settle the difficulties raised by Megarian and other critics; that the application to the solution of the larger metaphysical problems was a later development; that the foundations of the scheme were laid in the Socratic tradition of the Academy; that the completed scheme is probably Aristotle's own; and that the original working out of the scheme did not contemplate extension beyond the metaphysics implied in predication to the more fundamental metaphysics of the First Philosophy. Hence we must look to the analysis of empirical propositions for the origin of the scheme.

Now if we examine the scheme itself, we find three aspects of it to have special significance:

(a) The first is the distinction between accidental predication (kata sumbebékos) and essential predication (kath' hauto). (5) What is musical may be literate, but only 'in virtue of something else' (kat' allo), viz.: qua Callias; Callias is literate essentially (kath' hauton). This distinction provides the first condition of scientific predication, and is regarded as of fundamental importance by Aristotle, who prefaces his accounts of such notions as unity and being with references to the accidental uses of these terms (Meta. V 6, 1015b16; 7, 1017a7).

(b) Closely connected with the previous distinction is the doctrine that all the Categories (including substance as predicate) imply a subject (hupokeimenon), which is the point of real connexion between the predicates, and provides the basis of their coexistence. The Categories classify the many 'names' which we apply to the individual (e.g. a man, Sophist251A), and give expression to the fact that he does not lose his unity in the process.

(c) Furthermore, all direct relations of implication and incompatibility lie within the Categories severally. They are, so to say, independent variables. The relation of genus to species is everywhere confined within the limits of a category and so is the relation of contrary opposition. This suggests a close connexion with the Platonic division, which, as we know from the Sophist and the Politicus and from Aristotle, was so prominent in the Platonic conception of scientific method." (pp. 75-77)

Notes

(1) Heinrich Maier, Die Syllogistik des Aristoteles, 3 volumes, Tübingen, 1896-1900, vol. II, pp. 277 ff.; Otto Apelt, Beitrage zur Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie, Leipzig, 1891, pp. 106 ff.

(2) Alfred Gercke, Ursprung der aristotelischen Kategorien, Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie 4, 1891, pp. 424 ff.

(3) Analysis of the arguments in the Charmides shows that nearly all make use of topoi dealt with by Aristotle in the Topics.

(4) Cf. with Cat. 6a36 sqq., Charmides, 168A. The list in Rep. 437B is the same and in the same order.

(5) See the distinction of 'being kata sumbébekos' and 'being kath' hauto' (Meta. V 7, 1017a7 ff.). Apelt's equation of 'being kath' hauto' with 'being said in virtue of no combination' (op. cit. 117) is manifestly wrong. Kath' ho or kath' hauto means that the determination attaches to the subject in respect of the subject itself and not in respect of the determination. See kath' ho and kath' hauto, Meta. V 18, 1022a14 ff.

Charles Melville Gillespie, The Aristotelian Categories, The Classical Quarterly 19, 1925, pp. 79-84. Reprinted in: J. Barnes, M. Schofield, R. Sorabji (eds.), Articles on Aristotle - Vol. 3, Metaphysics, London: Duckworth, 1979, pp. 1-12

The problem of the authenticity of the Categories

"The little treatise of Aristotle which stands at the head of the Organon has caused a great deal of difficulty to students, both ancient and modern. The bulk of the discussion has centred about the question of its place in the Organon and in Aristotle's system, and the character of the ten categories to which the greater part of the book is devoted. But there have been found also critics who expressed a doubt as to the authenticity of all or part of the treatise in question. To say nothing of the ancient commentators of Aristotle, the earliest attempt in modern times to cast a doubt on the genuineness of the work seems to be that of Spengel in Münchener Gelehrte Anzeigen (Vol. XX [1845], No. 5, pp. 41 sq.). He was followed by Prantl in Zeitschrift für Altertumswissenschaft (1846, p. 646), and in his Geschichte der Logik (I, p. go, n. 5), also by Valentinus Rose in De Aristotelis librorum ordine et auctoritate (p. 234 et seq.). Zeller, on the other hand (Philosophie den Griechen, 2nd ed., II, pt. a, p. 67, n. 1), decides in favour of the genuineness of the first part of the work, the Categories proper, and against the so--called Postpredicamenta from Chapter X to the end.

(...)

When we pass over to matters of doctrine, it si surprising how many points of contact there are between the two works [Categories and Topics]. I shall follow the Categories and point out the parallels in the Topics.

The homonyms, which are given a definition and an illustration in the beginning of the Categories, have a whole chapter devoted to them in the Topics, the fifteenth of the first book, where they are also called pollachos legomena. Of particular significance is 107a 18-20, for in 20 we seem to have a direct allusion to the definition in the Categories. We must see, Aristotle says, if the genera designated by the given name are different and not subordinate to one another, (...) (which is therefore a homonym), for the definition of these genera as connected by the name is different (...). The greater space given to homonyms in the Topics is not due so much to a development in doctrine as to the necessities of the subject. The object of the Topics is a purely practical one, to provide the disputant with ready arguments properly pigeon-holed, and a single general definition of homonyms is not adapted to such use. We must needs go farther and show in what different special ways homonyms can be detected. The Categories have more the appearance of materials gathered in the shape of preliminary definitions of necessary concepts.

Synonyms are referred to in the Topics 109b 7, 123a 27, 127b 5, 148a 24, and 162b 37. Of these, the first is the most important, since it states that the genera are predicated synonymously of their species; for the latter admit both the name and the definition of the former (...), assuming it as established that this condition constitutes synonymity. This is neither more nor less than a silent reference to the definition in the Categories (1a 6) [When things have the name in common and the definition of being which corresponds to the name is the same, they are called synonymous]. Moreover we have almost the very words of the Topics in another place in the Categories, 3b 2, [And the primary substances admit the definition of the species and of the genera, and the species admits that of the genus; for everything said of what is predicated will be said of the subject also.] 148a 24 also gives the same definition of synonyms merely in passing. Aristotle is dealing with the definition, and makes a statement that if the opponent makes use of one definition for homonyms it cannot be a correct definition, for it is synonyms and not homonyms that have one definition connoted by the name (...). He speaks of the definition as already known. (...).

Paronyms also are made use of in the Topics, 109b 3-12, in a way which shows the definition in the Categories is not purely grammatical, as it may seem at first sight, but has a logical significance quite as important as that of the former two. Paronymous predication is predication per accidens, as contrasted with synonymous, which may be per se (cf. also Trendelenburg, Geschichte der Kategorienlehre, p.27 et seq. and 30). Here also paronyms are not defined. It is assumed that the reader knows what they are. (...)

Categories 3, p. 1b 10-15 expresses very much the same thought as Topics IV, 1, p. 121a 20-6. The former states that whatever is true of the species is true of the individuals under the species (...), the latter that to whatever the species applies the genus does also (...). They both involve the logical hierarchy of genus, species and individual, and the two principles are: (1) The genus applies not only to the species but also to the individual ; (2) to the individual belongs not only the species but also the genus. What is especially important to notice is that, in the Topics, the principle is stated as already known and is applied to the particular case, thus assuming the existence of another treatise where these principles are stated and proved for the first time.

The treatment of the difference develops gradually in the Topics in the following passages: 107b 19 sq., 144b 12 sq., and 153b 6. The first of these is word for word the same with the statement in the Categories, 1b 16 sq., and they were both quoted above. Moreover the way in which the passage in the Topics is introduced, (...) makes it a direct reference to the Categories. Aristotle's doctrine concerning the difference so far is that of different genera which are not subordinated one to the other: the differences are different in species. In the second passage quoted above, 144b 12, Aristotle corrects this view by adding that the differences in the given case need not be different unless the different genera cannot be put under a common higher genus. In the third passage, 153b 6, Aristotle adds some more qualifications which make it clear that in the preceding statements the word etéron, in the phrase etéron ghenon, must be understood as including contrary genera (enantía). For there the case is different. If the contrary genera belong to higher contrary genera, their differences may be all the same.

The preceding examination seems to show very clearly that the Topics build upon the basis laid down in the Categories and carry the structure higher and broader. It would be a very absurd alternative to suppose that a later writer, making use of the Topics, found nothing else on the subject of logical difference than the first passage, which he copied verbatim in his treatise, where,' besides, it has no particular reason for existence. As a thought tentatively suggested, with the view of further elaboration and insertion as a proper link in a chain, the passage in the Categories assumes a different meaning, and its lack of connection with the preceding and following ceases to cause us serious difficulty.

If the view of the Categories taken here is justified by the preceding arguments and by what is still to come, it might even be a legitimate procedure to make use of the Topics in determining a disputed reading in the Categories. And we have one at hand in the passage quoted above on the difference." (pp. 97-103)

From: Isaac Husik, The Categories of Aristotle, in: Milton C. Nahm and Leo Strauss (eds.), Philosophical Essays, Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern, Oxford: Blackwell, 1952, pp. 96-112. (Greek text of the citations omitted).

The recent critical edition by Richard Bodéüs (Aristote. [Catégories], Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2001) contains a detailed status questionis on the problem of authenticity at pp. XC-CX.

The conclusion is: "Malgré ses doutes sur l'authenticité de l'ouvrage, l'éditeur, nous semble-t-il, reste donc autorisé à imprimer celui-ci sous l'autorité traditionnelle d'Aristote." p. CX. (Despite his doubts about the authenticity of the book, the editor, seems to us, remains authorized to print it under the traditional authority of Aristotle.)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Aristotle's Categories. Annotated bibliography of the studies in English: A - B

Bibliography

1. Ackrill, John Lloyd, ed. 1963. Aristotle's Categories and De interpretatione. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Translated with notes and glossary by John Lloyd Ackrill.

Contents: Translations. Categories 3; De Interpretatione 43; Notes. Introductory Note 69; Categories 71; De Interpretatione 113; Note on Further Reading 156; Glossary 159; Index of Subjects 161-162.

Chapter I-V are reprinted in: J. M. E. Moravcsik (ed.), Aristotle. A Collection of Critical Essays, Garden City (NY): Doubleday, pp. 3-12 (translation) and 71-91 (notes).

"The Categories divides into three parts. Chapters 1-3 make certain preliminary points and explanations. Chapters 4-9 treat of the doctrine of categories and discuss some categories at length. Chapters 10-15 deal with a variety of topics, such as opposites, priority, and change. The second part fades out in Chapter 9, and the passage serving as a transition to the third part (11b10-16) is certainly not genuine Aristotle. The third part itself (the Postpraedicamenta) has only a loose connexion with what precedes. There is no reason to doubt its authenticity, but probably it was not a part of the original Categories but was tacked on by an editor. The concept of categories plays an important part in many of Aristotle's works, specially the Metaphysics. But it undergoes developments and refinements as Aristotle's thought develops. So the study of the Categories is only a first step in an investigation of Aristotle's ideas about categories." (pp. 69-70)

2. ———. 1972. "Aristotle on "Good" and the Categories." In Islamic Philosophy and the Classical Tradition. Essays Presented by His Friends and Pupils to Richard Walzer on His Seventieth Birthday, edited by Stern, S.M., Hourani, Albert and Brown, Vivian, 17-25. London: Bruno Cassirer.

"in the Nicomachean Ethics 1.6. 1096a23-29 Aristotle argues that goodness is not a single common universal: if it were it would be “said” in only one category, whereas in fact it is, like being, “said” in all the categories.

Aristotle discusses in many places the transcategorial character of ον and of εν, but most of his accounts of types of goodness or senses of “good” do not rest upon the point about categories — a point which is, however, taken up in the traditional treatment of bonum along with ens and unum as categorially unclassifiable. The Ethics passage is therefore of considerable interest, and it has not, I think, received sufficient attention or final elucidation from the commentators. The present discussion will be far from exhaustive, but it may raise some questions worth further examination." (p. 17)

3. Ademollo, Francesco. 2021. "The Anatomy of Primary Substance in Aristotle's Categories." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 60:145-202.

Abstract: "This paper investigates two related aspects of Aristotle’s conception of primary substances in the Categories. In Section 1 I distinguish different interpretations of the relation between a primary substance and its accidental attributes: one (A) according to which a primary substance encompasses all of its attributes, including the accidental ones; another (B) according to which a primary substance encompasses only its essential attributes, whereas the accidental attributes are extrinsic to the substance, though related to it; and a third, intermediate one (C) according to which a primary substance encompasses neither all of its attributes nor only the essential ones, but all the necessary ones. I trace the history of all three interpretations and argue in favour of (B). In Section 2 I defend the view that a particular human being, their soul, and their body all count as primary substances, and that the relation between these three substances is that soul and body are parts of the substance. I show that this hypothesis harmonizes both with some views advanced in the Categories and with some passages from other Aristotelian works. I conclude by drawing a comparison between this view and Aristotle’s mature hylomorphic doctrine."

4. Allen, Reginald E. 1969. "Individual Properties in Aristotle's Categories." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 14:31-39.

"At Categories 1 a 23-29, (1) Aristotle marks off a set of items which are present in but not predicable of a subject. Thus, for example, a certain knowledge of grammar (ή τις γραμματική) is present in a subject, the soul, and a certain white (το τι λευκόν) present in a subject, the body; but neither is predicable of a subject." (p. 31)

(...)

What is present in a subject as individual and one in number is incapable of existing apart from the particular subject it is in; for at 1 a 24-25, Aristotle defines presence as follows: "By present in a subject I mean what is in something, not as a part, but as incapable of existing separately from what it is in." It would seem to follow from this that an item present in an individual subject is itself individual, and numerically distinct from items present in other individual subjects.

Suppose this is so. Then if there are two pieces of chalk, A and B, and if they are of the same determinate shade of color, say, white, there will be a particular instance of white in A and a particular instance of white in B. Call those instances respectively s and t. Then s and t are the same in that they are instances of the same shade of color.

But they are different in that they are themselves numerically different individuals, and this difference is to be explained by the fact that they are present in numerically different subjects: s is the white of A, and t is the white of B. Thus s and t are different members of the same species, the given shade of white, in a way precisely analogous to the way in in which A and B are members of the same species, chalk. This situation will obtain generally in categories other than substance; that is, it will obtain, not only for qualities such as colors, but for sizes, shapes, places, times, and so on for any items present in but not predicable of a subject.

At least in outline, the foregoing interpretation of particular properties in the Categories has been widely accepted.4 But it has recently been challenged by Professor Owen.(5)" (p. 32)

(...)

"Professor Owen's interpretation has the virtue of simplifying the ontology of the Categories by doing away with the cloud of particulars that most readers have found in categories other than substance. A world which can dispense with these extraneous particulars is a neater, and therefore a better world than one which cannot: entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. Supposing that Professor Owen's interpretation is mistaken, it remains worth asking why Aristotle should have been led to multiply particulars with so lavish a hand." (p. 38)

(1) 1 Line numbers cited from the Oxford text of L. Minio-Paluello.

See, for example: W. D. Ross, Aristotle, London, 1923, p. 24, n. 1; G. E. M. Anscombe, Three Philosophers, Oxford, 1963, pp. 8-10; J. L. Ackrill, op. cit., [Aristotle's Categories and De Interpretatione, Oxford, 1963] pp. 74-75; K. von Fritz, Phronesis ii (1958), pp. 72-3.

6 G. E. L. Owen, "Inherence", Phronesis x (1965), pp. 97-105.

5. ———. 1973. "Substance and Predication in Aristotle's Categories." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy:362-373.

Supplementary vol. I: E. N. Lee, A. P. D. Mourelatos, R. M. Rorty (eds.), Exegesis and Argument. Studies in Greek Philosophy presented to Gregory Vlastos, Assen: Van Gorcum, 1973.

Abstract: "It is a characteristic common to every substance not to be in a subject. For a primary substance is neither said of a subject nor in a subject. And as for secondary substances, it is obvious at once that they are not in a subject. For man is said of the individual man as subject but is not in a subject: man is not in the individual man. Similarly, animal also is said of the individual man as subject but animal is not in the individual man. Further, while there is nothing to prevent the name of what is in a subject from being sometimes predicated of the subject, it is impossible for the definition to be predicated. But the definition of the secondary substance, as well as the name, is predicated of the subject: you will predicate the definition of man of the individual man, and also that of animal. No substance, therefore, is in a subject.(1)"

(1) Categories 3a7-21, of. 2al9-34, la20-22, trans. J. L. Ackrill, Aristotle's Categories and De Interpretatione (Oxford, 1963). I should like to acknowledge my debt in what follows to Professor Ackrill's admirable translation and notes; textual references to the Categories are to the edition of L. Minio-Paluello.

6. Angelelli, Ignacio. 1967. Studies in Gottlob Frege and Traditional Philosophy. Dordrecht: Reidel.

On Aristotle's Categories see: 1. Ontology 9; 1.1 Contemporary logic and ontology 10; 1.2 The ontological square (Categoriae, 1a, 20-1b, 10) 11; 1.3 Universal-singular, substance-accident in other works of Aristotle 15; 1.4 Universal-singular, substance-accident in the philosophical tradition 16; 1.41 Middle Ages and Renaissance 16; 1.42 Descartes, Port-Royal, Locke, Reid 18; 1.43 Leibniz-Russell 19; 1.44 'Parallelism' of singular-universal, substance-accident 21; 1.45 Husserl. Pseudo-properties of properties: Carnap, Ingarden, F. Kaufmann 22; 1.46 Frege 24; References 26-36.

"The ontological square ('Categoriae', 1a, 20-1b, 10).

This passage of Categoriae is traditionally understood as making a distinction between universal substances, particular substances, universal accidents and particular accidents. The history of commentaries on the Organon provides an extensive number of paraphrases and presentations of this text. Boethius' text and other ancient commentators illustrate our, quoted passage by means of a diagram similar to ours above: a square in each of whose vertices one of the four classes of entities is located. The Aristotelian text explicitly states that this is a classification of entities, but it is of course contrary to traditional Aristotelianism to call universals entities simpliciter. In fact, Ioannes a Sancto Thoma elegantly modifies the formulation(17). Still, universals do enjoy an objective being, and ens rationis falls under ens communissime sumptum.

The classification of entities into four classes is achieved by means of two relations: to be in a subject and to be said of a subject." (pp. 12-13)

(17) Ioannes a Sto. Thoma, Cursus philosophicus thomisticus. Tomus primus (ed. Reiser), Marietti, Torino 1930, p. 476: "Atque ita in hoc tertio antepraedicamento distinguit Aristoteles duplex genus entium, scilicet substantiam et accidens, et duplex genus intentionum, scilicet universalitatis et singularitatis."

7. Annas, Julia. 1974. "Individuals in Aristotle's Categories: Two Queries." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 19:146-152.

"Mr. Barrington Jones, in his recent article in Phronesis,(1) has suggested a new way of solving the standing debate about the nature of non-substance individuals in the Categories. Mr. Jones' article suggests some exciting new approaches to the Categories, but I would like to put forward two difficulties I find with the way he proposes to cut through the main problem.

In the Categories, but nowhere else, there seem to be individuals in non-substance categories, corresponding to primary substances. What sort of thing are these non-substance individuals? According to Ackrill (2) they are non-repeatable individual instances of (for example) a property. An example would be the particular instance of white exhibited by this paper: it is peculiar to this piece of paper and will perish when it does. According to Owen (3) they are the most specific types of (for example) a property. The white exhibited by this piece of paper and all the paper in the same batch would be an example: it can continue to exist when this piece of paper perishes, as long as some other piece of paper from the batch continues to exhibit it.

I shall not go into the controversy that has arisen over these differing interpretations of Aristotle. I have the more limited objective of examining the way Jones proposes to restate the terms of the debate.

If Jones is right the alternatives just sketched represent a false dichotomy: the new solution supersedes them both. It is merely the proffered new solution that is my concern." (p. 146)

(1) "Individuals in Aristotle's Categories", Phronesis XVII (1972) 107-123.

(2) In his notes on the Categories and De Interpretatione, Oxford 1963.

(3) "Inherence", Phronesis X (1965) 97-105.

8. Anscombe, Elizabeth G. M. 1961. "Aristotle: The Search for Substance." In Three Philosophers, edited by Anscombe, Elizabeth G. M. and Geach, Peter Thomas, 1-63. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Contents: Analytical Table of Contents VI-XX; G. E. M. Anscombe: Aristotle: The Search for Substance 1; P. T. Geach: Aquinas 65; P. T. Geach: Frege 127-162.

"The doctrine of his Categories is very straightforward. First substance is introduced, and explained in the first place as what neither is asserted of nor exists in a subject: the examples offered are ' such-and-such a man ‘ such-and-such a horse ’. A ' first substance ’ then is what is designated by a proper name such as the name of a man or of a horse, or again, if one cared to give it a proper name, of a cabbage. .A proper name is never, qua proper name, a predicate. Thus what a proper name stands for is not asserted of a subject.

Aristotle explains the second point, that first substance does not exist in a subject, by giving as an example of what is ' in ' a subject: ‘ such-and-such grammarianship. He means that an individual occurrence of grammatical science, such as a particular man’s knowledge of grammar, while not being asserted of a subject, exists in a subject. The example is slightly obscure to us; ' such-and-such a surface ' would perhaps be a better one. If we think of a particular surface, such as the surface of my wedding ring, this is not something that is asserted of a subject, but it exists in a subject—namely, the ring. (He explains that when he speaks of things being in a subject, he is not speaking of parts, such as arms and legs which are parts of a man.) Thus, we can see that when he speaks of ‘ first substance ’ Aristotle is talking about what modern philosophers discuss under the name ' particulars ’ or ‘ individuals ’. But his doctrine has features not found in modern treatments. The most notable of these are, first the distinction we have just noticed between individuals that do, and individuals, or particulars, that do not, exist in subjects (though Aristotle rarely calls what exists in something else an individual, using that term mostly for substances); and second, that he speaks of ' first substance ' and ' second substance '. Second substances, he says, are the kinds to which belong the first substances, such as man, horse, cabbage.

It will help us to understand this if we remember, and see the mistake in, Locke’s doctrine that there is no ‘ nominal essence ’ of individuals. Locke said that if you take a proper name, ‘A’, you can only discover whether A is, say, a man or again a cassowary, by looking to see if A has the properties of man or a cassowary. This presupposes that, having grasped the assignment of the proper name ‘A you can know when to use it again, without its being already determined whether ‘A’ is the proper name of, say, a man, or a cassowary: as if there were such a thing as being the same without being the same such-and-such. This is clearly false. Aristotle’s ‘ second substance ’ is indicated by the predicate, whatever it is, say ‘ X that is so associated with the proper name of an individual that the proper name has the same reference when it is used to refer to the same X: with the restriction that the individual is not such as to exist in a subject, like an individual surface." (pp. 7-8)

9. Anton, John Peter. 1957. Aristotle's Theory of Contrariety. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Contents: Preface VII; Acknowledgments IX; Chapter I. Approaching Aristotle 1; Chapter II: The Ontological foundations of Contrariety and Its Relation to Substance as Nature 19; Chapter III. From the Cosmological to the Ontological Use of the Principle of Contrariety 32; Chapter IV. Contrariety in the Locus of Process and in the Categories 49; Chapter V. The Prime Contrariety and the Ontological Analysis of Determinate or Linear Processes 69; Chapter VI. Contrariety in the Theory of Opposition in Language as as the Foundation for the Law of Non-Contradiction 85; Chapter VII. Process and the Principle of Soul 104; Chapter VIII. Being and the Range of Knowledge 136; Chapter IX. Contrariety and the Range of Conduct 171; Epilogue 200; Appendix 203; Bibliography 242; Index of Subjects; 247; Index of Names 253-253.

Preface: "The present volume is the result of several years of research in ancient philosophy. It began with the main purpose of elucidating the theme of contrariety and the role it played in the Aristotelian treatises. But the many vexing problems which made their appearance as my inquiry progressed led me to extend my studies of this theme and look into its pre-Aristotelian history. A number of valuable ideas came to light as a result of the investigations into the concept of contrariety and its place in the various types of philosophical thinking from the early pre-Socratics down to Aristotle. This work in no wise claims to be an exhaustive study of contrariety in all ancient Greek thought, for a task of this kind would doubtlessly require the space of many volumes. The bulk of this work is centred around the philosophy of Aristotle with whom the principle of contrariety received, I believe, its most clear and classical formulation. The discussion on the pre-Aristotelian uses of this principle is so designed as to throw only what historical light was required for the full appreciation of the main theme. At the same time I have tried to avoid doing injustice to Aristotle’s predecessors by paying as close attention as possible to their own original writings, fragmentary as they are."

"The very fact that contrariety is necessarily joined with process, change, and development imposes the demand that it cannot occur in all the categories. Thus, contrariety is present only in those genera of categoriae which imply change: (35) substance, quantity, quality, and place. Within each of these four categories, there are two distinguishable termini which form the extremities of a distinct and inclusive categorical contrariety: (36) (1) in substance it is form-privation; (2) in quantity it is completeness-incompleteness; 3) in place it is up-down; and (4) in quality it presents no exhaustive general extremities; instead it yields a variety of contrarieties, such as white-black, hot-cold, (37) etc.

Each categorical contrariety when developmentally conceived stands for two directions or types of change characteristic of each category, as subsequent analysis will show." (p. 61)

(36) Phys. 201a 3-9; Phys. I, ch. 6, 189a 13.

(37) The qualitative pairs of contraries were hypostatized by Anaxagoras, who made them the ultimate constituents of the universe. See Diels, Die Frag. der Vors.. (Anaxagoras), B 6; B 12.

10. ———. 1968. "The Aristotelian Doctrine of 'Homonyma' in the Categories and Its Platonic Antecedents." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 6:315-326.

Reprinted as Chapter 4 in: J. P. Anton, Categories and Experience. Essays on Aristotelian Themes, Oakdale, N.Y.: Dowling College Press, 1996, pp. 87-114.

"The Aristotelian doctrine of homonyma is of particular historical interest at least for the following reasons: (1) It appears that the meaning of homonyma was seriously debated in Aristotle's times and that his own formulation was but one among many others. Evidently, there were other platonizing thinkers in the Academy who had formulated their own variants. According to ancient testimonies, the definition which Speusippus propounded proved to be quite influential in later times.(2) The fact that Aristotle chose to open the Categories with a discussion, brief as it is, on the meaning of homonyma, synonyma, and paronyma, attests to the significance he attached to this preliminary chapter. Furthermore, there is general agreement among all the commentators on the relevance of the first chapter of the Categories to the doctrine of the categories. (3) The corpus affords ample internal evidence that the doctrine of homonyma figures largely in Aristotle's various discussions on the nature of first principles and his method of metaphysical analysis. This being the case, it is clear that Aristotle considered this part of his logical theory to have applications beyond the limited scope of what is said in the Categories.

Since we do not know the actual order of Aristotle's writings it is next to the impossible to decide which formulation came first. It remains a fact that Aristotle discusses cases of homonyma and their causes as early as the Sophistici Elenchi. Special mention of the cause of homonyma is made in the very first chapter of this work. Wc find it again in the Topics, de Interpretatione, the Analytics and the other logical treatises. He opens the Sophistici Elenchi with a general distinction between genuine and apparent reasonings and refutations, and then proceeds to explain why some refutations fail to reach their goal, that is, establish the contradictory of the given conclusion.(3)" (pp. 87-88)

(2) See De Speusippi Academici scriptis, ed. P. Lang (Bonn, 1911), frag, 32. Simplicius comments that Speusippus defended this formulation and remarks that once the definition is granted, it could be shown that homonyma are also synonyma, and vice versa (In Aristotelis Categorias Commentarium, ed. C. Kalbfleisch, Commentaria in Aristotelis Graeca, VIII [Berlin, 1907] 29, 5-6).

(3) "It is impossible in a discussion to bring in the actual things discussed: we use their names as symbols instead of them; and, therefore, we oppose that what follows in the names, follows in the things as well, just as people who calculate suppose in regard to their counters. But the two cases (names and things) are not alike. For names are finite and so is the sum-total of formulae, while things are infinite in number. Inevitably, then, the same formulae, and a single name, have a number of meanings. Accordingly just as, in counting, those who are not clever in manipulating theirs counters are taken in by the experts, in the same way in arguments too those who are not well acquainted with the force of names misreason both in their own discussions and when they listen to others. For this reason, then, and for others to be mentioned later, there exists both reasoning and refutation that is apparent but not real” (165a 5-20, Oxford trans.).

11. ———. 1968. "The Meaning of ‘Ο λόγοσ τῆς οὐσίας in Categories 1a." The Monist no. 52:252-267.

Reprinted as Chapter 3 in: J. P. Anton, Categories and Experience. Essays on Aristotelian Themes, Oakdale, N.Y.: Dowling College Press, 1996, 61-85.

"The purpose of this paper is to inquire into the meaning of the troublesome Aristotelian expression ό λόγοσ τῆς οὐσίας; as it occurs at the very opening of Categories 1a 1-2, 7. That the passage has presented serious difficulties to commentators and translators alike can be easily ascertained through a survey and comparison of the relevant literature. It would seem from the disagreements among translators that the passage is either vague in the original Greek or that Aristotle did not have a special doctrine to put across at the very opening such that would require technical formulations that would comply with the ontology presented in this treatise.

The main body of this paper is given to an examination of the diverse difficulties the passage raises in connection with the doctrine of homonymy and the ontology which supports it. On the basis of this analysis, and after consideration of the available evidence, textual and historical, attention is given to the possibility of proving the thesis that ό λόγοσ τῆς οὐσίας; (hereafter abbreviated as L of O, L for logos and O for ousia) has is special doctrinal meaning and is, therefore, free from terminological imprecision. Accordingly, the interpretation defended in this paper advocates a definite reading for logos and for ousia, and one that forbids a strict identification of ousia with the variant meaning of tode ti (individual existents or particular substances),(2) let alone taking liberties with the notion so that it may include in its denotation the symbebetkota (accidental properties). More pointedly, an argument is presented in favor of interpreting ousia to mean substance in the sense of species, on the ground that only in this sense is ousia definable.(3)

The thesis that the expression L of O has a precise and technical meaning can be put as follows: if we admit that ousia can occur as both subject and predicate, and that as ultimate subject it denotes individual substances whereas as predicate it ranges in denotation from infima species to summa genera, it can be shown that Aristotle means to say in this context that ousia must be understood in the sense of being (a) definable and (b) predicable. If so, then, it can only mean secondary substance, with the added restriction that the highest genera be excluded on account of their undefinability. The context of the first chapter is unmistakably one in which homonymy is presented and explained as a topic highly requisite to the exposition of the ontology that undergirds the general doctrine presented in the Categories." (pp. 61-62)

(2) Cat. 3b 10; Post. An. 73b 7, 87b 29.

(3) For infima species, Post. An. esp. passim; 73a 32. It must be remembered that unless ousia means species, infima or otherwise, it cannot be defined. Post. An. 83b 5.

12. ———. 1975. "Some Observations on Aristotle's Theory of Categories." Diotima.Epitheoresis Philosophikes Ereunes no. 3:66-81.

Reprinted as Chapter 6 in: J. P. Anton, Categories and Experience. Essays on Aristotelian Themes, Oakdale, N.Y.: Dowling College Press, 1996, 153-174.

"This paper deals with what seems to be a rather small topic but one, as I hope to show, which has significant implications. At many interpreters before me have said, the treatise titled Categories brings together certain basic logical and ontological views of Aristotle. I find myself in agreement with this interpretation but I take it a step further to say that the treatise contains enough evidence to support the view that Aristotle intended and in fact did make a basic distinction between a theory of being and a theory of categories, and even more sharply than has been hitherto recognized.

I will argue that this distinction has been largely overlooked and even ignored by every major interpreter of Aristotle, with the subsequent result that these two basic doctrines as presented in the Categories, instead of being kept apart, have been treated as identical theories. One of the most serious consequences of the tendency to collapse the meanings of the key terms “being” and “category” is not so much that they have been used interchangeably, but more importantly, that their fusion obscures our understanding of that treatise. I propose to show that Aristotle's intent was to correlate the ultimate genera of being, ta gene tou ontos, and the logically fundamental modes of predication, ta schemata tes kategorias. I do not contend that scholars have been remiss to notice the fact that Aristotle has a theory which deals with these modes of predication but only that they have been misled by the prevailing tendency to overlook the difference between the two concepts, “being” and “category.” (pp. 153-154)

13. ———. 1990. "The Unity of Scientific Inquiry and Categorial Theory in Aristotle." In Greek Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, edited by Nicolacopoulos, Pantelis, 29-43. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"The concept of the unity of the sciences as interrelated domains ofinquiry, aside from its recent setting, had also an Aristotelian setting in antiquity. Its usefulness in the latter period was not to serve as the logical basis to build a system of systems. Although there is much to recommend it as a solution to the communication of 'public' knowledge, it also seems to have functioned as the basis for the continuity between being and the perception of being, between fact and value. There is more to the concept of the unity of the scientific inquiries than the sharing of methodological principles; for instance, the pervasive axioms and the requirement for special theses and hypotheses, as Aristotelian terminology would have it in the concluding chapters of the Posterior Analytics, Book II. There is also the model of the ordered facts, i.e. the conceptual determination of the ultimate facts within a type of subjectmatter: the Aristotelian model of wholes qua ousiai, which constitute the ontological counterparts of the proper subjects of statements. These ontic wholes are the ultimate loci of the fundamental properties of typical facts, they are the irreducible wholes of parts. Thus the articulation of the mode of attribution of properties of facts to the facts as wholes, i.e. the connecting the symbebekota (co-incidentals) to their ousiai, is the function of scientific predication. Language, when it is canonical discourse covering the full span of all subject-matters, serves us well, both in announcing encountered facts and attributing propertiesto facts. Given that universal and near-universal statements can be made in each of the sciences, the explanation of phenomena, the securing of a conclusion in any demonstrative syllogism, is tied to the quest for middle terms, itself in line with the model of wholes and the rules of categorial theory." (p. 29)

14. ———. 1992. "On the Meaning of kategoria in Aristotle's Categories." In Aristotle's Ontology, edited by Preus, Anthony and Anton, John Peter, 3-18. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Reprinted as Chapter 7 in: J. P. Anton, Categories and Experience: Essays on Aristotelian Themes, Oakdale, N.Y.: Dowling College Press, 1996, 175-201.

"In a paper written in 1974 and subsequently published in 1975, (1) I argued that the Aristotelian texts, particularly that of the Categories, allow for a parallel yet distinct interpretation to the traditional and prevalent one that takes the categories to be terms, ultimate classes, types, and concepts. (2) My position there was that the primary use of kategoria refers to well-formed statements made according to canons and, to be more precise, to fundamental types of predication conforming to rules sustained by the ways of beings.

In trying to decide how Aristotle uses the term kategoria in the treatise that bears the same name, Categories, (3) provision must be made for the fact that there is nothing in the text to justify the meanings that ancient commentators and also modern writers assigned to it and that found their way both into translations of Aristotle's works and into the corpus of established terminology. (4) The present article is written in the hope that it will contribute in some small measure to understanding why certain distinctions in the treatise Categories should have prevented interpreters from assigning the traditional meaning of "genera of being" to the term category, hence giving it the meaning of "highest predicate" rather than "fundamental type of predication"." (p. 175)

(1) Anton 1975, 67-81.

(2) The paper published here was presented at the December 28, 1983, meeting of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy, Boston, MA.

(3) The title of the treatise was a subject of considerable dispute in antiquity. For a recent survey on this problem see M. Frede 1987b, 11- 28. According to Frede "the question of authenticity is crucially linked to the question of unity" (12). The problem of the unity covers the relation of the early part of the treatise to the part that discusses the postpredicamenta.

(4) There are many surveys of interpretations concerning the categories. I do not plan to offer another survey, for my main interest lies in the investigation into what we can learn about the theory of categories in the Categories. Nor am I concerned with reproducing and commenting on the table of enumeration of the "categories" in Aristotle's works. The list can be readily found in Apelt 1891, conveniently reproduced in Elders 1961, 194-96. One can still raise the question about the intent of the list or lists. If a defense of objections can be made to the reading that makes the list of "categories" refer to classes of being, then we have an alternative before us, which has not been adequately explored, namely whether the list refers not to classes of being or classes of predicates, but to the types of statements that pertain to the attribution of genuine features present in the entity named in the subject position. It is the existence of the concrete individual qua subject that sets the context for the selective lists of relevant types of attribution.

15. ———. 1996. Categories and Experience: Essays on Aristotelian Themes. Oakdale: Dowling College Press.

Table of Contents: 1. Introduction 7; 2. Aristotle's Principle of Contradiction: Its Ontological Foundations and Platonic Antecedents (1972) 35; 3. The Meaning of 0 Logos tes Ousias in Categories 1a (1968) 61; 4. The Aristotelian Doctrine of Homonyma (1968) 87; 5. Ancient Interpretations of Aristotle's Homonyma (1969) 115; 6. Observations on Aristotle's Theory of Categories (1975) 153; 7. On the Meaning of Kategoria in Aristotle's Categories (1992) 175; 8. Aristotle's Theory of Categories and Post-Classical Ontologies (1981) 203; 9. The Unity of Scientific Inquiry: The Scope of Ousia (1989) 215; 10. Revolutions and Reforms (1988) 237; 11. Politeia and Paideia: The Structure of Constitutions (1988) 249; 12. Aristotle on Justice and Equity (1989) 279; 13. Ideal Values and Cultural Action (1991) 293; 14. Timely Observations on Aristotle's Architectonic of Politike Techne (1994) 307; Bibliography 325; Index 333; About the Author 337-338.

16. Antonelli, Mauro. 2017. "In Search of Lost Substance. Brentano on Aristotle’s Doctrine of Categories." Brentano Studien no. 15:177-233.

Abstract: "Brentano’s doctoral dissertation 'On the Manifold Senses of Being in Aristotle' (1862) takes up Aristotle’s ontology and theory of categories in order to show that a realistic ontology requires the interweaving of factual being and its adequate logical expression. The scheme of categories manifests itself on a grammatical-linguistic level – as Trendelenburg pointed out – , but it is grounded in the variety and multiplicity characterising the level of real things – as Aquinas held. The logic-linguistic side of the categories is thus dependent on the ontological and founded by it. Brentano’s first book thus has two main interpretative sources, one which is fundamental but hidden, the other more explicit but superficial: the first is Thomas Aquinas – for Brentano as a young catholic seminarian, of course, 'sine Thomas mutus esset Aristoteles' – , the second Adolf Friedrich Trendelenburg, his Berlin teacher and leader of the Aristotelian revival in Protestant Germany. The Thomist influence lead Brentano to propose a univocal reading of the Aristotelian ontology, allowing that deduction of the categories from the general concept of being, that Aquinas had already worked out during the Middle Ages. Considering the Aristotelian ontological framework compatible with a deductive trend, which was aimed at bringing the equivocal nature of being back to an analogical structure, Brentano forced, at least partially, an interpretation that would be particularly appreciated by Heidegger, to the point that according to him it is due to Brentano that “the systematic impact of Aristotelian philosophy begins”. This Thomist influence is also analysed through a comparison between the printed version of the dissertation and its preliminary version, dating back to 1861, which is preserved as a manuscript in Brentano’s Nachlass (Werkmanuskripte, Frühe Schriften, Ms. 16)"

17. Asztalos, Monika. 2014. "Qualities in Aristotle's Categories." In PARADEIGMATA. Studies in Honour of Øivind Andersen, edited by Emilsson, Eyjólfur Kjalar, Maravela, Anastasia and Skoie, Mathilde, 155-161. Athens: The Norwegian Institute at Athens.

"It is commonly taken for granted that Aristotle’s main concern in Categories is to propose a classification in which each thing occupies one, and only one, place in a hierarchy consisting of genera that are divisible into species. Any passage in this work that seems to contradict this assumption is considered perplexing or even taken as evidence of ‘a weakness in the foundations of Aristotle’s theory of categories’.(1) So strong is this belief that the authenticity of 11a20–38, which comes at the end of the discussion of qualities in chapter 8, has been doubted.(2) The purpose of this contribution is to show that there is indeed a weakness, not, however, in Aristotle’s theory but in the commonly held assumptions about it. A full investigation of all problems involved and of previous research requires much more space than is available on this occasion.

Thus, my main focus will be on chapter 8, and I will refer to the translation and commentary by J. L. Ackrill, a work that has been, and still is, hugely influential on determining how Categories is understood.(3)" (p. 155)

(1) This is the verdict of Ackrill 1963, 109.

(2) One important instance is in Frede 1987, 13.

(3) Günther Patzig’s appreciation has in all likelihood contributed to the influence: ‘Als eine Erklärung des Textes, die auch Sachfragen erörtet, hat Ackrill’s knappes Buch einen neuen Standard für die Interpretation antiker philosophischer Text gesetzt.’ Patzig 1996, 105.

References

Ackrill, John L. (1963) Aristotle’s Categories and De Interpretatione. Translated with Notes. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Frede, Michael. (1987) ‘The Title, Unity, and Authenticity of the Aristotelian Categories’. In Essays in Ancient Philosophy, 11–28. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Patzig, Günther. (1996) ‘Bemerkungen zu den ‘Kategorien’ des Aristoteles’. In Gesammelte Schriften III. Aufsätze zur antiken Philosophie, 93–114. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag.

18. Aygun, Omer. 2017. The Middle Included: Logos in Aristotle. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

"Outline

Our attempt to solve the question of logos in Aristotle’s philosophy shall cross six chapters: the first two on his logical works (Categories, On Interpretation), the third and fourth on his work of philosophy of nature (Physics and On the Soul), and the fifth and sixth on his ethical-political works (Nicomachean Ethics and Politics).(93)

Let me give a more concrete outline of the book. In chapter 1, “Being,” we will discuss the function of logos in Aristotle’s Categories. At the very inception of the Categories, logos distinguishes homonymy and synonymy by providing an answer to the question: “What is it for this being to be?” (Cat. 1, 1a2ff.).

Through a discussion of the questions emerging from its context, I will argue that logos here must mean something like “standard.” For, without this standard, the commonality between an ox and a human being as “animals” will be reduced to a relation between mere namesakes like a “spelling bee” and a “honey bee.” Thus, logos in the sense of “standard” requires a relation between a being and “what it is for it to be.” That a being has such a standard means that it holds on at once to its own being and to its claim concerning what it is for itself to be, without letting one yield, or remain indifferent, to the other. Yet what would such a standard mean if it is not truly inherent to the being in question, but arbitrarily imposed from without? How are we to warrant that a standard is in fact inherent to the being at hand?" (Introduction, p 27)

(93) The reader will notice that the use of logos in the Metaphysics (especially books VII and VIII) is scattered throughout the book.

19. Bäck, Allan. 2000. Aristotle's Theory of Predication. Leiden: Brill.

Table of Contents: Acknowledgments IX; Preface XI, Notation and Conventions XIV; Introduction 1; Chapter One The Linguistic Evidence 11; Chapter Two Aristotle's Precursors 31; Chapter Three Aristotle on the Uses of 'Be' in Greek 59; Chapter Four The Statement 98; Chapter Five The Categories as Predicates 132; Chapter Six Type of Predication 166; Chapter Seven Negations 199; Chapter Eight Inference 228; Chapter Nine Consequences 264; Bibliography 321; Index 339-346.

"In Categories 2 Aristotle presents a fourfold division of beings, known as the ontological square. There he distinguishes substance and accident, and the universal and the singular. The distinctions that he makes parallel distinctions that he makes elsewhere for types of predications: the essential versus the accidental, and, again, the singular versus the universal. Aristotle also uses these distinctions in his various discussions of the ten categories.

In the next chapter I shall discuss the types of predication. Here I wish to investigate the relation between Aristotle's theory of the categories and his views on predication. After all, 'category' ('κατηγορία') means 'predication', and Aristotle has said that the categories are the different ways in which being per se may be said.(1) He even calls the ten ultimate sorts of being, substance (τί εστίν) quantity, relation, ..., "the figures of predication". [Metaph. 1017a23] Above I have claimed that whatever, S, has being per se is such that 'S is' is true, where 'is' means real presence, and can be specified further through certain additional predicates. The categories would then be the types, or figures, of such predicates. In this way, Aristotle's doctrines about being per se in the Metaphysics embody the aspect theory of predication, so I have claimed. Here I shall consider whether what Aristotle says about the various categories agrees with this interpretation. Now Aristotle says too that "being" is divided into the four divisions of the ontological square. So I shall also have to consider the relationship between these two classifications, the one into four, the other into ten divisions." (p. 132)

(1) 'Predication' in the sense that "the kinds of predication define classes or kinds of predicates, namely the classes of those predicates which occur in a statement of a given kind of predication,"[sc., of being per se], as Michael Frede, "Categories in Aristotle," p. 32, says.

He also notes that Aristotle is using 'κατηγορία' in a new way. L. M. De Rijk, "On Ancient and Mediaeval Semantics and Metaphysics: 4. The Categories as Classes of Names," pp. 18-9; 21, notes that 'κατηγορία' here means 'predication', but originally 'accuse', or better 'reveal'.

20. Barnes, Jonathan. 1971. "Homonymy in Aristotle and Speusippus." Classical Quarterly no. 21:65-80.

Reprinted with the title Aristotle and Speusippus on Homonymy, in J. Barnes, Logical Matters: Essays in Ancient Philosophy II, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 284-311.

"1. 'There are important differences between Aristotle's account of homonymy and synonymy on the one hand, and Speusippus' on the other; in particular, Aristotle treated homonymy and synonymy as properties of things, whereas Speusippus treated them as properties of words. Despite this difference, in certain significant passages Aristotle fell under the influence of Speusippus and used the words "homonymous" and "synonymous" in their Speusippean senses.

These sentences are a rough expression of what I shall call the Hambruch thesis. The thesis was advanced by Ernst Hambruch in 1904 in his remarkable monograph on the relation between Academic and early Aristotelian logic. (*)

Hambruch singled out Topics A 15 as peculiarly Speusippean, and he conjectured that it was based on some written work of Speusippus." (p. 65)

(*) Ernst Hambruch, Logische Regeln der platonischen Schule in der aristotelischen Topik, Berlin, 1904, pp. 28-29. [Reprinted with Curt Arpe, Das ti en einai bei Aristoteles (1938), New York: Arno Press, 1976].

21. ———. 2011. "Aristotelian Quantities." In Studi sulle Categorie di Aristotele, edited by Bonelli, Maddalena and Guadalupe Masi, Francesca, 337-370. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert.

"A quantity is usually conceived to be a kind of property. It is thought to be a kind of property that admits of degrees, and which is therefore to be contrasted with those properties which have an all-or-none character (for example being pregnant, or being crimson). According to this conception, objects possess quantities in much the same way as they possess other properties, usually called ‘qualities’(1).

That conception of quantities is Aristotelian:

Of things said without any complexity, each signifies either a substance or a quantum or a quale (...) Roughly speaking, substances are, say, a man, a horse; quanta, say, two-foot, three-foot; qualia, say, white, cultivated [...](2).

(Arist. Cat. 4, lb25-29)

Quanta (or quantities, as they are usually called) form the second of the ten groups of items (or the ten categories, as they are usually called) which Aristotle discusses in the central part of his Categories and to which he not infrequently alludes in his other philosophical writings. The third group of items consists of qualia (or qualities, as they are usually called): quanta stand alongside qualia, and objects are supposed to possess them ‘in much the same way’ as they possess qualia.

Quanta have a chapter to themselves in the Categories, and another in Book Δ of the Metaphysics', and there are remarks scattered elsewhere in the corpus3. But all told, Aristotle says little about quanta (in part perhaps because much of his science was qualitative rather than quantitative); and what he says in the Categories does not always chime with what he says in the Metaphysics. Moreover, the whole business (or so I find) is curiously elusive." (p. 337)

(*) This is a revised version of a paper which I gave at a Colloquium held in Bergamo in December 2010. The paper excited a flurry of criticism, to my great advantage. I thank also, and in particular, Maddalena Bonelli, who both organized and animated the Colloquium.

(1) Cf. Ellis 1966, 24.

(2) Τών κατά μηδεμίαν συμπλοκήν λεγομένων έκαστον ήτοι ουσίαν σημαίνει ή ποσύν ή ποιόν ή πρός τι ή ποΐ) ή ποτέ ή κείσθαι ή έχειν ή ποιεΐν ή πάσχειν. έστι δέ ούσία μέν ώς τυπφ είπεϊν οϊον άνθρωπος, ίππος· ποσόν δέ olov δίπηχυ, τρίπηχυ· ποιόν δέ οϊον λευκόν, γραμματικόν [...]

(3) Notably in Book I of the Metaphysics and in the discussions of motion, place and time in the Physics. The following pages largely restrict themselves to the chapters in Cat. and Metaph. Δ - and they touch on only some of the issues which those chapters raise."

References

B. Ellis, Basic Concepts of Measurement, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1966.

22. ———. 2012. "Aristotle's Categories and Aristotle's 'categories'." In Logical Matters: Essays in Ancient Philosophy II, 187-265. New York: Oxford University Press.

Revised English translation of: Les Catégories et les catégories, in Otto Bruun, Lorenzo Corti (éds.), Les Catégories et leur histoire, Paris: Vrin, 2005, pp. 11-80, with an Appendix on the new critical edition by Richard Bodéüs, Aristote. Catégories, Paris: Les Belles Lettres 2001, pp. 258-265.

"The history of Aristotle’s theory of categories is the history of a doctrine and the history of a text — or rather, of a small corpus of texts. For the text which Aristotle himself wrote — the Categories — was abridged and paraphrased and attacked and defended and commented upon and translated, so that its fifteen pages are accompanied by a vast library of secondary literature. The Categories had an extraordinary success, in late antiquity and after, and the doctrine of the categories had an immense influence on the history of philosophy — ancient, medieval, and modern. But if the theory was familiar in all parts of the republic of letters, knowledge of the Aristotelian doctrine did not always carry with it an acquaintance with Aristotle's text. Sometimes it is plain that an author who ‘cites’ the Categories has read no more than an epitome or a doxographer’s report. Often enough, Aristotle’s theory is exploited on the basis of a paraphrase or a commentary. And in any event — what ought to depress but not to astonish — an understanding of the doctrine was always filtered through the secondary literature, and the doctrine took some flavour from the particular filter it passed through.

With hindsight, the triumph of the doctrine may seem inevitable — after all, a glorious future presupposes a distinguished past, and if the past is distinguished, then the future is likely to be rosy. But in reality things were otherwise. The birth of the doctrine (as I have just recalled) was difficult. Its adolescence was neither robust nor promising.

Aristotle’s successors often worked on the same subjects and wrote under the same titles as he had done: they attempted to fill the gaps which he had left (and sometimes indicated), they tried to state more clearly what he had set out obscurely or approximatively, and they sometimes sought to mend his errors." (pp. 198-199)

23. Barnes, Kenneth T. 1977. "Aristotle on Identity and Its Problems." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 22:48-62.

Abstract: "There are certain problematic arguments, collective reference to which is often compressed into the expression, "the problems of identity."

Strictly speaking, of course, there are no problems of identity. But there are problems, if only apparent, for a certain view about identity, namely, the view that identicals are indiscernible. In light of the seeming freshness of these philosophical problems, it is remarkable that we find in Aristotle's early writings what seems to be a formulation of the view that identicals are indiscernible, as well as a confrontation with certain arguments that raise apparent difficulties for that view. Philosophers have not always been clear about these arguments, and some have taken them to prove the need to qualify the view that identicals are indiscernible. Aristotle is among those who have drawn such a conclusion, but so are some contemporary philosophers. In this paper I examine Aristotle's solution to certain problems of identity. I attempt to state the solution clearly and indicate the mixture of insight and error that influenced it."

24. Baumer, Michael R. 1993. "Chasing Aristotle's Categories Down the Tree of Grammar." Journal of Philosophical Research no. 18:341-349.

Abstract: "This paper addresses the problem of the origin and principle of Aristotle's distinctions among the categories. It explores the possibilities of reformulating and reviving the 'grammatical' theory, generally ascribed first to Trendelenburg. the paper brings two new perspectives to the grammatical theory: that of Aristotle's own theory of syntax and that of contemporary linguistic syntax and semantics. I put forth a provisional theory of Aristotle's categories in which (1) I propose that the categories sets forth a theory of lexical structure, with the ten categories emerging as lexical or semantic categories, and (2) I suggest conceptual links, both in Aristotle's writings and in actuality, between these semantic categories and certain grammatical inflections."

25. Benson, Hugh. 1988. "Universals as Sortals in the Categories." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly no. 69:282-306.

"In his essay Individuals in Aristotle,(1) Michael Frede suggests that in the Categories Aristotle attempts to maintain the independence of the Platonic distinction between universals and particulars on the one hand, and his new distinction between properties and objects, on the other. Thus, according to Frede, in the Categories there are universal objects and particular objects as well as universal properties and particular properties.

As a result, Frede thinks we must reject, at least in the context of the Categories, what might be called the traditional analysis of the universal.

In this essay I want to defend this suggestion at greater length.(2)"

(...)

"First, I will briefly explain the distinction between the traditional analysis of the universal, (TA), and what I will call the sortal system analysis, (SA). The former is traditional in that it is commonly accepted as Aristotle’s analysis of the universal/particular distinction. The latter may be equivalent to Frede’s subjective part analysis.(3) Second, I will defend the claim that in the Categories Aristotle is committed to the existence of particular properties, (A). This is a corollary of the suggestion that Aristotle took the universal/particular and property/object distinctions to be independent. Third, I will explain why such a commitment leads us to reject the traditional analysis, and why the sortal analysis is an appropriate replacement. Finally, I will sketch how an appeal to such an analysis might solve one of the more traditional problems of the middle books of the Metaphysics." (pp. 282-283)

(1) Frede (1978), first appeared as 'Individuen bei Aristotles’ in Antike and Abendland.

Anscombe (1967) also suggests the independence of these distinctions when she discusses the two ‘most notable’ features of Aristotle’s doctrine not found in modern treatments (p. 8).

(2) As we will see, this should not be taken as suggesting that I agree with either his position concerning the trope controversy (cf. n. 24 below) nor with his position concerning his resolution to one of the traditional difficulties of the central books of Metaphysics.

(3) Cf. n. 15 below.

References

Anscombe, G.E.M. (1967), “Aristotle” in G.E.M. Anscombe and P. T. Geach, Three Philosophers, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Frede, M. (1978), “Individuals in Aristotle” in Essays in Ancient Philosophy, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 49-71.

26. Benveniste, Émile. 1971. "Categories of Thought and Language." In Problems in General Linguistics, 55-64. Coral Gables: University of Miami Press.

English translation by Mary E. Meek of Catégories de pensée et catégories de langue (1958).

"We must enter into a concrete historical situation, and study the categories of a specific thought and a specific language. Only on this condition will we avoid arbitrary stands and speculative solutions. Now, we are fortunate to have at our disposal data which one would say were ready for our examination, already worked out and stated objectively within a well-known system: the Aristotle's categories. In the examination of these categories, we may dispense with philosophical technicalities. We will consider them simply as an inventory of properties which a Greek thinker thought could be predicated of a subject and, consequently, as the list of a priori concepts which, according to him, organize experience. It is a document of great value for our purpose.

Let us recall at first the fundamental text, which gives the most complete list of these properties, ten in all (Categories 4, 1)

(...)

Aristotle thus posits the totality of predications that may be made about a being, and he aims to define the logical status of each one of them. Now it seems to us-and we shall try to show-that these distinctions are primarily categories of language and that, in fact, Aristotle, reasoning in the absolute, is simply identifying certain fundamental categories of the language in which he thought. Even a cursory look at the statement of the categories and the examples that illustrate them, will easily verify this interpretation, which apparently has not been proposed before." (p. 57)

(...)

"In working out this table of "categories," Aristotle intended to list all the possible predications for a proposition, with the condition that each term be meaningful in isolation, not engaged in a συμπλοκή, or, as we would say, in a syntagm. Unconsciously he took as a criterion the empirical necessity of a distinct expression for each of his predications. He was thus bound to reflect unconsciously the distinctions which the language itself showed among the main classes of forms, since it is through their differences that these forms and these classes have a linguistic meaning. He thought he was defining the attributes of objects but he was really setting up linguistic entities; it is the language which, thanks to its own categories, makes them to be recognized and specified.

We have thus an answer to the question raised in the beginning which led us to this analysis. We asked ourselves what was the nature of the relationship between categories of thought and categories of language. No matter how much validity Aristotle's categories have as categories of thought, they turn out to be transposed from categories of language. It is what one can say which delimits and organizes what one can think. Language provides the fundamental configuration of the properties of things as recognized by the mind. This table of predications informs us above all about the class structure of a particular language.

It follows that what Aristotle gave us as a table of general and permanent conditions is only a conceptual projection of a given linguistic state." (pp. 60-61)

27. Blackwell, Richard J. 1957. "The Methodological Function of the Categories in Aristotle." The New Scholasticism no. 31:526-537.

"It is a curious fact that the ten categories are listed in only two places in the writings of Aristotle.(1) In the majority of cases only five or less categories are listed.(2) Furthermore Aristotle unlike St. Thomas does not designate the categories by the definite number" ten" but rather merely gives a listing, usually a partial one, of the individual categories.

This situation, plus the lack of any explicit statement by Aristotle as to how the individual categories are established, has led to a complicated controversy among modern scholars regarding the nature and origin of the doctrine of the categories.

Most of the literature on this problem centers around the question of how Aristotle arrived at the listing of the ten categories which have become a permanent part of the Aristotelian tradition. The results have by no means been conclusive.

The controversy began with F . A. Trendelenburg's position that the categories are derived from the distinction of the various grammatical parts of speech. H. Bonitz disagreed with this interpretation, claiming that the categories indicate the different determinations in which the notion of being is predicated.(4)" (p. 526)

(1) Categories, 1 b 26, and Topics, 103 b 22.

(2) For a complete catalogue of the listing of the categories in Aristotle and the Greek terms used in each case, see Otto Apelt, "Kategorenlehre des Aristoteles," Beiträge zur Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophie (Leipzig, 1891) pp. 140-41.

(3) Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, "Geschichte der Kategorienlehre," Historischer Beiträge zur Philosophie (Leipzig, 1846) I, 23 ff., 194 ff.

(4) H. Bonitz, Ueber die Kategorien des Aristoteles (Wien, 1853).

28. Block, Irving. 1978. "Predication in Aristotle." Philosophical Inquiry no. 1:53-57.

Abstract: "This article traces briefly the development of Aristotle's thoughts on predication as this progressed from the Categories to the Posterior Analytics with the Topics coming somewhere in between. In the Categories predication is only of essential attributes and the subject of a predicating statement need not be a substance. In the Posterior Analytics, predication is the attribution of either essential or accidental attributes and the subject must be a substance, otherwise it is not predication in the true sense. The Topics represents a half-way house in between as it makes no mention of the predication-inherence distinction of the Categories on the one hand, and on the other gives no predominance to the notion of substance when discussing the subject of predication, as we find in Posterior Analytics."

29. Bolton, Robert. 2013. "Two Doctrines of Categories in Aristotle: Topics, Categories, and Metaphysics." In Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics, edited by Feser, Edward, 68-101. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

"Introduction. The aim of this chapter is to offer support for the view – one contrary to the main tradition represented by Alexander and most more recent commentators – that there are, in fact, two different sets and two different, and incompatible, doctrines of categories in Aristotle. I do not have in mind here any difference between the Categories, or the Organon, and the Metaphysics. Rather, both doctrines are present in the Organon and even in a single chapter of the Organon, Topics I.9. The proper explanation for this striking fact is not, as some would suggest, historical or developmental – that one doctrine came earlier in Aristotle’s thinking, the other later. Nor is it, as others have suggested, that both doctrines need to be mastered to adequately employ dialectic, so that both are present in the Topics. Instead, as we shall see, one doctrine, for Aristotle, is precisely suited to the needs of the art of reasoning kata doxan, i.e. to the practice of dialectic, the other to procedure kat’ aletheian, or to the needs and the practice of science, indeed of metaphysical science. I go on to consider a main question for this result, one whose proper resolution helps us to understand better Aristotle’s scientific method overall and the special, if limited, role of dialectic in it. I begin by developing a problem for the interpretation of Topics I.9." (p. 68)

30. Bostock, David. 2004. "An Aristotelian Theory of Predication?" Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 27:141-175.

"In Section I I briefly assemble some reminders of what Aristotle has to say about predication in his logical works (and I shall confine my attention to these works only). To keep my discussion within reasonable bounds I have here had to be somewhat dogmatic on some issues which are still controversial, and I apologize for this.

In Section 2 I outline a modern reconstruction of why Aristotle may have thought as he did, and sketch in modern terms the theory to which it gives rise. In Section 3 I ask whether there really is good reason to attribute this theory to Aristotle. In Section 4 I ask whether it has merit anyway as a philosophical account of predication, irrespective of whether we may call it Aristotle's theory." (p. 141)

31. Brakas, George. 1988. Aristotle's Concept of the Universal. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Contents: Acknowledgments 1; Preface 3; I: Recent Views of Aristotle's Universal 11; II: The Definition of Aristotle’s Early Concept of the Universal 17; III: Interpretations of Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Categories in Recent Times 21; Chapter IV: A Consideration of the Main Interpretations 31; V: The Categories and the Meaning of ‘an Existent’ at the Time of the Prior Analytics 55; VI: Fundamentals of Aristotle’s Theory of the Simple Statement at the Time of the De Interpretatione and Prior Analytics 65; VII: Interpretations of 'is Said of' in the Recent Literature 77; VIII: The Senses of 'Is Asserted of' 87; IX: Aristotle’s Early, Middle and Late Views of the Universal 97; Selected Bibliography 111-113.

"The main interpretations. The fundamental question concerning Aristotle’s doctrine of the categories is: Just what is it supposed to classify? Even on this most fundamental issue the chorus of voices arguing for one interpretation over another seems a virtual Tower of Babel — the literature, vast as it is, seems to encompass interpretations of every possible and impossible variety. This is to exaggerate, of course, but not by so very much.

It is possible, however, to sort out what has been said on this question in recent times. In the last 150 years or so there have been mainly five interpretations of what the doctrine is supposed to classify. According to one, the categories are categories of existing things — that is, of that general domain, not some sub-category of it; according to a second, they are categories of concepts — either ‘real’ of ‘in the mind’; according to a third, they are categories of subject and predicate expressions; according to a fourth, they are categories of the meanings of subject and predicate expressions; and according to a fifth, they are categories of the different senses of the copula. Most commentators, I would venture to say, have accepted one or another of these interpretations — either in these ‘pure’ forms or some approximation of them, either one singly or several in combination. To illustrate this, let us consider some of the major studies of Aristotle’s doctrine that have appeared in recent times. (p. 21)

The views of Trendelenburg, Bonitz, Brentano, Apelt, and De Rijk.

"Let us sum up this discussion. Trendelenburg seemed to hold that Aristotle’s doctrine classifies subject and predicate expressions; Bonitz held that it classifies beings; Brentano held that it classifies beings, concepts (that is, ‘real concepts’) and predicates; Apelt held that it classifies concepts, predicates and copulae; and De Rijk, it seems, held that it classifies ‘reality’, the meanings of subjects and predicates, and the senses of the copula. These scholars, then, illustrate that most commentators have accepted one or another of the five interpretations indicated at the outset - either in their ‘pure’ forms or some approximation of them, either one singly or several in combination.

However, other prominent writers have expressed views on the nature of Aristotle’s categories, and we should consider at least some of these. For, even though they do not appear as the theses of major studies of the doctrine, these writers are prominent, and it therefore behooves us to consider whether what they have to say offers anything of interest that has not already been mentioned." (p. 26)

The views of H. W. B. Joseph (*), W. D. Ross, Ernst Kapp, Joseph Owens, Kneale and Kneale, J. L. Ackrill, and J. Μ. E. Moravcsik.

(*) [An Introduction to Logic, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 1916), pp. 48-66. First edition published in 1906].

"We can see, then, that these additional interpretations offer little that is new. Except for Joseph’s view that the doctrine classifies universals and Owens’ that it classifies individuals, every one of these interpretations is a combination of two or more of those indicated at the outset, either in their ‘pure’ forms or in some approximation to them." (p. 29)

32. Brentano, Franz. 1975. On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Translation of Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles (1862) by Rolf George.

Contents: Editor's Preface XI; Preface XV; Introduction1; Chapter I. The Fourfold Distinction of Being 3; Chapter II. Accidental Being 6; Chapter III. Being in the Sense of Being True 15; Chapter IV. Potential and Actual Being 27; Chapter V. Being According to the Figures of the Categories 49; Notes 149-197.

"This is Brentano's doctoral dissertation and his first book. In it he contemplates the several senses of "being," using Aristotle as his guide. He finds that (in Aristotle's view) being in the sense of the categories, in particular substantial being, is the most basic; all other modes, potential and actual being, being in the sense of the true, etc., stand to it in a relation of well-founded analogy. Many of his mature views are prepared in this work.

For example his discussion of being in the sense of being true appears to be the foundation of his later nonpropositional theory of judgment." (Editor's Preface XI)

"Thus the discussion of the several senses of being form the threshold of Aristotle's Metaphysics. This makes clear why these considerations must have had great importance for him, and this importance becomes even more obvious if one considers that in this context there is considerable danger of confounding several concepts which have the same name. For, as he remarks in the second book of the Posterior Analytics 10, it becomes more and more difficult to recognize equivocation the higher the degree of abstraction and generality of concepts. Thus the possibility of deception must be greatest with being itself since, as we have already seen, it is the most general predicate.

But we have not yet established the fact that, according to Aristotle, being is asserted with several significations, not only with one (Categories 1. 1a1. 6). To begin with we shall establish this through several passages of the Metaphysics and show, at the same time, how the various distinctions of the several senses of being can be initially subordinated to four senses of this name; subsequently we shall proceed to a special discussion of each of them." (p. 2)

"The modes of predication naturally correspond to the modes of being if one makes the subject [hypokeimenon] of all being into the subject of the sentence.

" 'To be' signifies as many different things as there are different ways of using it (Met. V. 7. 1017a23)." (p. 131)

33. ———. 1981. The Theory of Categories. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Translated by Roderick M. Chisholm and Norbert Guterman.

"This book contains the definitive statement of Franz Brentano's views on metaphysics.

It is made up of essays which were dictated by Brentano during the last ten years of his life, between 1907 and 1917. These dictations were assembled and edited by Alfred Kastil and first published by the Felix Meiner Verlag in 1933 under the title Kategorienlehre. Kastil added copious notes to Brentano's text.

These notes have been included, with some slight omissions, in the present edition; the bibliographical references have been brought up to date.

Brentano's approach to philosophy is unfamiliar to many contemporay readers. I shall discuss below certain fundamental points which such readers are likely to find the most difficult. I believe that once these points are properly understood, then what Brentano has to say will be seen to be of first importance to philosophy." (From the Introduction to the Theory of Categories by Roderick M. Chisholm. p. 1)

(...)

"Turning back now to Aristotle, we may say that he was mistaken in assuming that there is no unitary concept of being for both substance and accident. The categories, therefore, should not be thought of as different senses of being, nor even as constituting the different highest predicates or highest genera. It would be more nearly accurate to say that they are the various highest differences of being. But this is not entirely correct and it does not enable us to characterize the distinction between substances and the different types of accidents. For there are also several highest substantial differences which as such do not stand behind the highest accidental differences. ISS To arrive at the true concept of a category, we must take into consideration the results of what has just been said, for only in this way can we see the distinction between a subject and that which the subject underlies. The highest classes of that which holds accidentally of a subject are greater in number than Aristotle had thought. And this may be said even though several of the determinations that he took to be accidental- for example, sensible quality, place, real time, and perhaps also extension and shape - are in fact substantial determinations." (pp. 99-100)

34. Butler, Travis. 1997. "The Homonymy of Signification in Aristotle." In Aristotle and After, edited by Sorabji, Richard, 117-126. London: Institute of Classical Studies.

"In using the notions of indication and announcement above, I have not intended to provide an ultimately illuminating analysis of Aristotle's concept of signification. Rather, I have tried only to sketch one way in which the homonymy of signification might have been seen by Aristotle as more than chance homonymy. According to the sketch, the definitions of being corresponding to the name 'signifier' in the case of words and things differ importantly, but they share the element of indication or announcement, or some similar notion. Given the sketch, moreover, it is likely that for Aristotle, as for Grice, the · more fundamental notion of signification is the notion which has application to nonlinguistic items (e.g. primary substances), since this sort of signification depends not for its existence on the conventions of a linguistic community. Put the other way round, the way in which signification is said with respect to words is in some sense a descendant of the way in which it is said with respect to pieces of nonlinguistic reality. Drawing this conclusion together with the conclusion of Part I, it turns out that Aristotle's claim that nonlinguistic things signify is not only not a source of puzzlement for the semanticist interpreter, it is rather to be welcomed as a place from which analysis begins." (p. 126)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Aristotle's Categories. Annotated bibliography of the studies in English: C - F

Bibliography

1. Carson, Scott. 2000. "Aristotle on Existential Import and Non Referring Subjects." Synthese no. 124:343-360.

Abstract: "Much contemporary philosophy of language has shown considerable interest in the relation between our linguistic practice and our metaphysical commitments, and this interest has begun to influence work in the history of philosophy as well.(1) In his Categories and De interpretatione, Aristotle presents an analysis of language that can be read as intended to illustrate an isomorphism between the ontology of the real world and how we talk about that world. Our understanding of language is at least in part dependent upon our understanding of the relationships that exist among the enduring πράγματα that we come across in our daily experience. Part of the foundations underlying Aristotle’s doctrine of categories seems to have been a concern, going back to the Academy, about the problem of false propositions: language is supposed to be a tool for communicating the way things are, and writers in antiquity were often puzzled by the problem of how we are to understand propositions that claim that reality is other than it is.(2) Aristotle’s analysis of propositions raises a particular problem in this regard: if the subject of a proposition does not refer to anything, how can the proposition be useful for talking about a state of the world?

The problem falls into two separate but related parts: propositions whose subjects are singular terms and hence make claims about some particular thing, and propositions whose subjects are general terms and hence make claims about classes. In this paper I will explain Aristotle’s treatment of each kind, focusing in particular on what has widely been perceived as a problem in his treatment of singular terms. My discussion of his treatment of general terms will be more brief, but will show that his treatment of them is consistent with his treatment of singular terms."

(1) An interesting treatment of this topic that illustrates how such concerns intersect with issues in the history of philosophy can be found in Diamond (1996), Introduction II (pp. 13–38). Whittaker (1996) also touches on these themes.

(2) On the treatment by ancient philosophers of the problem of falsehood see Denyer (1991).

References

Denyer, N.: 1991, Language, Thought and Falsehood in Ancient Greek Philosophy, Routledge, London.

Diamond, C.: 1996, The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Whittaker, C.: 1996, Aristotle’s De Interpretatione: Contradiction and Dialectic, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

2. ———. 2003. "Aristotle on Meaning and Reference." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 20:319-337.

"I. Meaning: language and Reality.

This part of the paper is divided into two Sections. Section I examines a three-part relation among objects, thought, and language from the De interpretatione that shows how Aristotle conceived of the nature of mental representation. Section II has to do with a parallel three-part relation from the Categories that shows how this conception of mental representation also grounds a conception of linguistic representation that serves to link the natural and the conventional aspects of psychosemantics in a unique account of meaning." (p. 320)

(...)

I.2 The Categories Scheme [pp. 326-332]

"The formal isomorphism that we have been examining in the De interpretatione lies in a three-place relation among things (pragmata), affections of the soul, and words (either spoken or written). There is a similar three-place relation described in the Categories that will serve to show how Aristotle conceives of the formal isomorphism between language and ontology that will complete our account of his representational scheme. The three-place relation that we find in the Categories is among things (here the phrase used is not ta pragmata, but ta onta, things that are), accounts (logoi) of what those things are, and names (onomata) that stand for those accounts. In this scheme ta onta and onomata play the same roles played by ta pragmata and the words (spoken and written signs) of the De interpretatione scheme. The middle place in the relation - the affections of the soul in the De interpretatione scheme - is held in the Categories scheme by "accounts" of the essences (ousiai) of the things being represented. It is not immediately clear that these "accounts" play the same role as that played by the affections of the soul in the De interpretatione scheme, but in what follows it will be seen that the roles are, indeed, the same. Showing the relation between the two schemes vis-a-vis this central part of the three-part relation will help to make clear how Aristotle conceived of the connection between the natural part of his scheme and the conventional." (p. 327)

3. Chen, Chung-Hwan. 1957. "On Aristotle's Two Expressions: ϰαθ᾿ὑποϰειμένου λέγεσθαι and ἐν ὑποϰειμένῳ ἐιναι: Their Meaning in Cat. 2, 1a20-b9 and the Extension of This Meaning." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 2:148-159.

"In the second chapter of the Categoriae Aristotle deals chiefly with the division of entities; (I) ϰαθ᾿ὑποϰειμένου λέγεσθαι (II) ἐν ὑποϰειμένῳ ἐιναι serve here as two principles of division. By their combination, both in their affirmative (Ia, IIa) and in their negative (Ib, IIb) forms, entities are divided into four groups: first group characterized by Ia and IIb, for instance, man; second group characterized by Ib and IIa, for instance, a certain grammatical knowledge, a certain whiteness; third group characterized by Ia and IIa, for instance, knowledge; fourth group characterized by Ib and IIb, for instance, a certain man.(1)

The meaning of these two principles is far from being clear; each of them needs some explanation. First of all, let us note at once that the term ὑποϰειμένοv is very equivocal. ὑποϰειμένοv means in (I) the subject of which something is predicated, and in (II) the substrate in which something is present. Thus the two principles are of quite different nature: the one is a logical, and the other a metaphysical principle. Whether a clear distinction between the logical and the metaphysical is really Aristotelian or not, the fact remains that these two principles set up here are meant to be different from each other. Otherwise their combination would not divide entities into four different groups. Hence each of these principles must have a distinct realm in which it has its application." (p. 149)

(1) 1, a 20-b 6.

4. ———. 1960. "Aristotle's Theory of Substance in the Categoriae as the Link between the Socratic-Platonic Dialectic and His Own Theory of Substance in Books Z and H of the Metaphysics." In Aristotelismo padovano e filosofia aristotelica. Atti del XII Congresso Internazionale di Filosofia. Vol. IX, 35-40. Firenze: Sansoni.

"In the Sophist Plato located the ultimate principles of individual things in the μέγιστα γένη. Aristotle is of a different opinion; for him the μάλιστα καθόλου are not ultimate principles. On the contrary, he holds in Books Z and H of the Metaphysics είδος, which is in fact the least universal, to be one of the constitutive principles of individual things. It seems the development of philosophy from Plato to Aristotle in respect of the location of principles is simply a lowering of άρχη from the most universal to the least universal. This may be true in general, but in detail the matter is more complicated. Aristotle’s theory of substance in the central books of the Metaphysics is the final result of a development which takes its start from Plato’s theory of Ideas, or, more backward, from Socrates’ searching for universals. But where does the middle-stage between these two extreme stages lie? If the right way of understanding a development is to follow its process step by step, then what else should we do in the present case than looking for this missing stage? Where does it really lie? It lies in the Categoriae. As a link its fifth chapter, the chapter on substance, connects these two extreme stages. How is it connected with the final stage we showed on another occasion [*]; we have to show here only how it is connected with the Socratic-Platonic dialectic." (p. 35)

[* See Chen, Chung-Hwan, "Aristotle's Concept of Primary Substance in Books Z and H of the Metaphysics", Phronesis 2, 1957, pp. 46-59.]

5. Chriti, Maria. 2019. "Aristotle’s semiotic triangle in On Interpretation and in the Categories: language and thinking in the frame of logic." In Proceedings of the World Congress Aristotle 2400 years, edited by Sfendoni-Mentzou, Demetra, 489-495. Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Abstract: "In Aristotle’s semantic passage in On Interpretation, the text “with the greatest influence in the history of semantics/semiotics”, scholarship traces the first attempt to formulate a “structuralistic” theory on interpreting mental states by means of linguistic utterance. According to Aristotle’s “semiotic triangle”, conventional spoken sounds represent the data of reality via mental states and the intrinsic connection between mental states and language is declared by the philosopher.

The Categories, on the other hand, is considered to be a treatise where the philosopher classifies the data of reality into ten general classes, giving a name to each class. However, does the philosopher apply his own “semiotic triangle” when he suggests names for his categories? The controversial issue of whether the Categories constitute an ontological or a linguistic treatise, i.e., of whether things were first and language followed in Aristotle’s categorization or vice versa, has a long tradition in scholarship.

This paper aims at contributing to the above discussion by investigating whether Aristotle as a name-giver in the Categories applies what he describes as name-giving in On Interpretation: does Aristotle’s semantic theory reveal — at least partly — the way he choses names/terms for his categories? For the specific purpose, two particular aspects of Aristotle’s “semantic triangle” are basic: a) the priority and common character that Aristotle attributes to mental states in comparison to language and b) his concept of ‘convention’ when it comes to human linguistic communication. By using also evidence from Aristotle’s other treatises concerning his name-giving policies, the significance of conceptual affinities in Aristotle’s linguistic use is quite evident and also of vital importance for understanding his logic."

6. Cleary, John J. 1988. Aristotle on the Many Senses of Priority. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Contents: The Journal of the History of Philosophy Monograph Series XI; Preface XIII; Abbreviations XVI; Introduction 1; 1. Platonic Background of the Topics 7; 2. The Senses of Priority in the Categories 21; 3. The Senses of Priority in Metaphysics Delta 33; 4. The Focal Sense of Priority 53; 5. Getting the Priorities Right 64; Conclision 93; Notes 97; Bibliography 122; Index 126-132.

"Aristotelian Commentators from all ages have usually acknowledged the thesis about the multiple senses of 'being' as a basic part of Aristotle's claim to have made significant progress over his philosophical predecessors. In contemporary scholarship, however, what is not adequately recognized is that this is closely related to an equally important thesis about the many senses of 'priority,' which itself is crucial for his break with Platonism. Therefore, in this monograph I intend to explore the significance of this latter thesis for the development of Aristotle's problematic about substance and the related question about the ontological status of mathematical objects. My point of departure will be a curious passage in the Topics,[*] where he appears to accept a schema of priorities that would make mathematical entities more substantial than sensible things. Given his own categorical framework, such an implication represents a reversal of what are taken to be Aristotle's standard views on substance. In order to make sense of this, I will survey his treatment of priority in the Categories, while giving special attention to the criterion for natural priority. Through a comparison with the more expansive treatment of priority in Metaphysics Delta, I will try to show that at least some of the criteria are inherited from Plato. Even though this systematic treatment lists many of the ''ways" of priority shared by his predecessors, it also facilitates Aristotle's basic claim that substance is prior in every important sense." (p. 1, notes omitted)

[*] Book VI, Chapter 4.

7. Code, Alan. 1985. "On the Origins of Some Aristotelian Theses About Predication." In How Things Are. Studies in Predication and the History of Philosophy and Science, edited by Bogen, James and McGuire, James E., 101-131. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"To facilitate the discussion of the TMA [Third Man Argument] and the [Metaphysics] Z6 thesis, I begin by stating briefly how the notion of predication figures into Aristotle's thought. (5)

Taking the two-place relations Being and Having as primitive, we may define essential and accidental predication as follows:

DEF 1: Xis essentially predicable of Y iff Y Is X.

DEF2: Xis accidentally predicable of Y iff Y Has X.

Predication is defined in terms of the disjunction of essential and accidental predication; identity is simply two-way, or reciprocal, essential predication.

A universal is an item that can be truly predicated of something distinct from itself; a particular is an item that cannot be predicated, either essentially or accidentally, of anything distinct from itself; an individual is an item not essentially predicable of anything distinct from itself.

Ontological predication helps us to understand linguistic predication. A universal is essentially predicable of a logical subject X if and only if both the name and the definition of that universal truly apply to X; otherwise, either the universal is not predicable of X, or it is accidentally predicable. One consequence of this, crucial to my assessment of the significance of the TMA is that, since the definition of man applies to particular men, the associated universal is an essential predicate of those particulars. Furthermore, since the definition applies to both the universal man and the particular men, the universal is essentially predicable of itself and those particulars in the same way.

According to Aristotelian doctrine, a particular is a logical subject, or subject for predication, in virtue of the fact that it Is something (definable) essentially. The species under which a particular falls is the definable something that it, the particular, must essentially Be if it is to be anything at all."

(...)

"Some linguistic predicates, such as 'man', signify universals that are essentially predicable of all the particulars of which they are predicable. These terms may be used to classify particulars according to their natural kinds. In the Categories, though not in the middle books of the Metaphysics, particulars are primary substances, the natural kinds that are essentially predicable of them (i.e. their species and genera) are secondary substances, and there are no other substances besides these." (pp. 103-104, some notes omitted)

(5) The ideas sketched in this section are given an extended treatment in my 'Aristotle: Essence and Accident', Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories and Ends, ed. by R. Grandy and R. Warner (Oxford, 1985). The definitions are adapted from unpublished work by H. P. Grice.

8. ———. 1986. "Aristotle: Essence and Accident." In Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends, edited by Grandy, Richard E. and Warner, Richard, 411-439. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

"In order to make sense of the development of Aristotle's thought on predication and his debt to Plato, it is necessary to see his metaphysical investigations against a shared background of problems, principles, and concepts. It is important to see both the Categories and the middle books of the Metaphysics as rejecting some of, but continuous with, Platonic metaphysics." (p. 411)

"The main task of this paper is to show that the logic of Being and Having is a promising tool for the articulation of some of the basic ideas that Aristotle employs in his efforts to construct a sophisticated and flexible semantics together with a metaphysics of substance. Consequently, in what follows I offer the results of my own attempts to reconstruct Aristotle's understanding of Plato and the subsequent development of his own ideas on essence and accident. When characterizing and contrasting a 'Platonic' position and two Aristotelian positions (roughly, the Cat. and Metaph.), I present textual evidence and argument in order to make the main outline of my interpretation plausible, but still more detailed analysis of individual passages and arguments is required to sustain it. Often my interpretation is simply stated without adequate discussion of the alternatives." (p. 414)

9. Cohen, Sheldon Marc. 1973. "'Predicable of' in Aristotle's Categories." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 1:69-70.

"If Stonecutter is said of Socrates, so is philosopher, Greek, and troublemaker. What is "said of a thing" is usually understood to specify what that thing is, in the sense of what its essence or nature is.

If that is correct, Socrates will be essentially a philosopher, Greek, troublemaker, and stonecutter; a most unaristotelian conclusion.

We might say that though the definition of a stonecutter is predicable of Socrates, to classify Socrates as a stonecutter is not to classify him in an absolutely fundamental way. But then we need a criterion for whether ø is said of x over and beyond whether the definition of ø may be said of x. Is there such a criterion in the Categories?

I do not think that there is. But I think there is the beginning of such a criterion, in the first section of chapter two." (p. 69)

10. ———. 2008. "Kooky Objects Revisited: Aristotle's Ontology." Metaphilosophy no. 39:3-19.

Abstract: "This is an investigation of Aristotle's conception of accidental compounds (or ''kooky objects,'' as Gareth Matthews has called them) -- entities such as the pale man and the musical man. I begin with Matthews's pioneering work into kooky objects, and argue that they are not so far removed from our ordinary thinking as is commonly supposed. I go on to assess their utility in solving some familiar puzzles involving substitutivity in epistemic contexts, and compare the kooky object approach to more modern approaches involving the notion of referential opacity. I conclude by proposing that Aristotle provides an implicit role for kooky objects in such metaphysical contexts as the Categories and Metaphysics."

11. Corkum, Phil. 2009. "Aristotle on Nonsubstantial Individuals." Ancient Philosophy no. 29:289-310.

"As a first stab, call a property recurrent if it can be possessed by more than one object, and nonrecurrent if it can be possessed by at most one object. The question whether Aristotle holds that there are nonrecurrent properties has spawned a lively and ongoing debate among commentators over the last forty-five years.

One source of textual evidence in the Categories, drawn on in this debate, is Aristotle’s claim that certain properties are inseparable from what they are in.

Here the point of contention is whether this commits Aristotle to holding that these properties are inseparable from individuals, since it is commonly held that a property is nonrecurrent, if it is inseparable from an individual. I argue that this evidence is neutral on the question whether there are nonrecurrent properties in Aristotle. One of my aims here is to disentangle the question of recurrence from local issues of individuality and universality in the Categories. But another aim is to turn from the textual considerations, which have dominated the debate, to broader methodological considerations. It is a shared assumption among all those who look to textual evidence from the Categories, so to decide whether Aristotle believes there are nonrecurrent properties, that in this work Aristotle is engaged in a project where the question of recurrence is relevant. I argue that Aristotle’s concerns in the Categories are disjoint from the question of recurrence, and so this shared assumption is false." (p. 289)

12. ———. 2013. "Aristotle on Predication." European Journal of Philosophy:793-813.

Abstract: "A predicate logic typically has a heterogeneous semantic theory. Subjects and predicates have distinct semantic roles: subjects refer; predicates characterize.

A sentence expresses a truth if the object to which the subject refers is correctly characterized by the predicate. Traditional term logic, by contrast, has a homogeneous theory: both subjects and predicates refer; and a sentence is true if the subject and predicate name one and the same thing. In this paper, I will examine evidence for ascribing to Aristotle the view that subjects and predicates refer. If this is correct, then it seems that Aristotle, like the traditional term logician, problematically conflates predication and identity claims. I will argue that we can ascribe to Aristotle the view that both subjects and predicates refer, while holding that he would deny that a sentence is true just in case the subject and predicate name one and the same thing. In particular, I will argue that Aristotle’s core semantic notion is not identity but the weaker relation of constitution. For example, the predication ‘All men are mortal’ expresses a true thought, in Aristotle’s view, just in case the mereological sum of humans is a part of the mereological sum of mortals."

13. Crivelli, Paolo. 2017. "Being-Said-Of in Aristotle's Categories." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica:531-556.

Abstract: "The ontology of the Categories relies on several fundamental relations that obtain between beings. One of these is the relation of being-said-of. The most widespread view among commentators is that the relation of being-said-of amounts to essential predication.

After drawing attention to some relatively neglected textual evidence that tells against such an interpretation, I explore a different account of the relation of being-said-of.

On this alternative picture, while the relation of being-said-of is essential predication when it obtains between universals, it coincides with mere predication when it obtains between a universal and an individual. The relation of being-said-of turns out to be closely linked with paronymy: in most (but not all) cases where a property (e.g. generosity) is in an individual, a paronymous universal (e.g. generous) is said of that individual.

Also the alternative picture faces difficulties, however. In conclusion, it remains unclear what position, if any, can be coherently attributed to Aristotle."

14. Czerkawski, Maciej. 2023. "Aristotelian rhapsody: did Aristotle pick his categories as they came his way?" Inquiry. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy:1-23.

Published first online.

Abstract: "In the first Critique, Kant raises two objections against Aristotle’s categories.

Kant’s concern, in the first instance, is whether Aristotle generated all categories that there are and if he did not generate any spurious categories.

However, for Kant, this is only a symptom of the second – deeper – flaw in Aristotle’s thinking. According to Kant, Aristotle generated his categories ‘on no common principle.’ This paper develops the two Kantian objections, offers an overview of Brentano’s (1862. Von der Mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles. Freiburg im Brisgau: Herder’sche Verlagshandlung.) reconstruction of Aristotle’s categories (which claims to have addressed them), develops three objections to this reconstruction, and recommends (Trendelenburg, A. 1846. Geschichte der Kategorienlehre. Berlin: Verlag von G. Bethge.) as a better – albeit still flawed – Aristotelian reply to Kant."

15. Dancy, Russell. 1975. "On Some of Aristotle's First Thoughts about Substances." The Philosophical Review no. 84:338-373.

"But here I shall be concerned only indirectly with Aristotle's criticism of Platonism; my primary object is getting clear on Aristotle's way of answering the question "What are the substances?" (p. 338)

(...)

"V. Conclusion. There is a cloud on Aristotle's horizon; we have glanced at it before. It is worth another, very brief, look. Nothing in the Categories tells us how to describe such drastic changes as the death and cremation of Socrates, or Jago's becoming a baboon. We need the notion of matter for that, and if we introduce that as a subject for predicates on a level lower than that of Socrates and Jago, we are in trouble: we shall no longer be able to pick out the primary substances by looking for rock-bottom subjects. And that same trouble may threaten from another direction, only I have been suppressing it. Aristotle talks as if the real subject that underlies white and black (2. 1a27-28, 5. 2a31-34, b1-3, 4a3-4, 8. 4a34-35) and disease and health (10. 12a5-6, 11. 14a1I6) were the body of the man or animal, and as if the real subject that underlies literacy (2. 1a25-26), knowledge (1b1-2), insanity, irascibility (8. 9b33 ff.), justice and injustice (11. 14a17-I8) were the soul of the man or animal. Only once (that I know of) does he make the man himself the underlying subject (compare 10. 12a13-14). But then, which are the primary substances ? What are the interrelationships between matter, form, and the compound? Aristotle owes us something here; elsewhere he tries to pay the debt. I shall leave the question whether his balance is enough to cover his check for another occasion." (pp. 372-373)

16. ———. 1978. "On Some of Aristotle's Second Thoughts About Substances: Matter " The Philosophical Review no. 87:372-413.

"In Metaphysics Z 3, Aristotle tells us (1029a3-4) that by "matter" he means, "for example, the bronze" of which a statue is made, and a few lines later, at a20-2 1, that by "matter" he means "what is not in its own right called either something or so big or any of the other things by which being is determined." But the bronze of which a statue is made is something in its own right, and in the Meteorologica (Γ 6 and elsewhere), Aristotle is prepared to tell us something about what it is in its own right.

The explanation I shall try to provide for this apparent contradiction makes it a reflection of a larger apparent contradiction.

Most of Metaphysics Z 3 is an examination of the claim of "subjects" ("things that underly," [ὑποκείμενα) to be substances (realities, οὐσίαι). It turns out that this claim at best demands clarification and at worst rejection, since people who take subjects to be substances might be forced into saying that matter is the ultimate subject, and so the chief substance - but matter isn't anything in its own right, and isn't knowable in its own right. So such people would be making substances, the ultimate realities, things about which there is no saying what they are. And that is no good. So the claim of subjects to be substances must either be clarified or rejected. But that claim was one Aristotle himself advanced, in the Categories especially, and it was fundamental in his rejection of Platonism. So Aristotle is attacking a view of his own.

What is needed is a sorting out of the various concepts: matter, subject, substance. That is what Z 3 is about, and that is what this paper is about. The job is not done at the end of Z 3: the notion of form remains foggy. So it does in this paper. And the problem does not arise only at the beginning of Z 3: the Organon and the physical works had set it up. So let us first go back to the Categories and the rest of the Organon." (P. 373)

17. Derrida, Jacques. 1982. "The Supplement of Copula: Philosophy Before Linguistics." In Margins of Philosophy, 175-205. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Translation, with Additional Notes, by Alan Bass of Le supplément de copule. La philosophie devant la linguistique (1972).

Also translated by James S. Creech and Josué Harrani in Georgia Review, 30, 1976, pp. 527-564.

"We know that Benveniste, in "Categories of Thought and Language,"(6) analyzed the limiting constraints which the Greek language imposed upon the system of Aristotelian categories.

Benveniste's propositions are part of a stratified ensemble; nor does he restrict himself to the text which directly states the thesis of the ensemble. We will have to take this into account when the time comes. Moreover, this thesis already has encountered objections of the philosophical type;(7) together the thesis and the objections form a debate which in its development will be invaluable for us.

First, the thesis: "Now it seems to us—and we shall try to show—that these distinctions are primarily categories of language and that, in fact, Aristotle, reasoning in the absolute, is simply identifying certain fundamental categories of the language m which he thought" (p. 57)." (pp. 179-180)

(...)

"The concept or category of the category systematically comes into play in the history of philosophy and of science (in Aristotle's Organon and Categories) at the point where the opposition of language to thought is impossible, or has only a very derivative sense. Although Aristotle certainly did not reduce thought to language in the sense intended here by Benveniste, he did attempt to take the analysis back to the site of the emergence, that is to the common root, of the language/thought couple. This site is the site of "Being." Aristotle's categories are simultaneously of language and of thought: of language in that they are determined as answers to the question of knowing how Being is said (legetai); but also, how Being is said, how is said what is, in that it is, such as it is: a question of thought, thought itself, the word "thought" which Benveniste uses as if its signification and its history went without saying, in any case never having meant anything outside its relation to Being, its relation to the truth of Being such as it is and in that it is (said)." (p. 182)

(6) In Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics, trans. Mary E. Meek (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1971). All further references are to this edition.

(7) See Pierre Aubenque, "Aristote et le langage, note annexe sur les catégories d'Aristote. A propos d'un article de M. Benveniste," Annales de Ia faculté des Lettres d'Aix 43 (1965); and J. Vuillemin, De la logique a Ia théologie. Cinq études sur Aristote (Paris: Flammarion, 1967), pp. 75ff.

18. Devereux, Daniel. 1992. "Inherence and Primary Substance in Aristotle's Categories." Ancient Philosophy no. 12:113-131.

"In chapter 2 of the Categories, Aristotle makes use of two predication relations, being said of a subject and being in a subject, to distinguish four classes of entities. (i) Some things are neither said of nor in a subject: (ii) some are said of but not in any subject; (iii) some are both said of and in a subject; and (iv) some are in but not. said of any subject. There is general agreement about the kinds of entities belonging to in the first class: in the first class are particular substances, e.g., a particular human being or a particular tree; in the second are the species and genera of these particular substances, e.g., Man, Animal, Tree; in the third class are the general kinds or types falling under non-substance categories, e.g. Color as a kind of quality, or Larger Than as a kind of relation. As one successively divides these non-substance kinds into species and sub-species, one arrives at entities such as 'this particular white' or 'this particular knowledge of grammar' which cannot be further subdivided. There has been a spirited debate in recent years over the exact nature of these entities belonging to the fourth class. Is the 'particular white' a specific shade of white that can be shared by a number of things? Or is it a particular instance of such a shade, belonging uniquely to one individual?

Entities in the fourth class have traditionally been regarded as instances or tokens of types, and it has been thought that this view is required by Aristotle's special notion of what it is to be in a subject. Recent opponents of the traditional view have argued that a correct understanding of 'being in a subject' does not support the claim that entities of the fourth class are particular instances of qualities, quantities, etc., and that the weight of the textual evidence in the Categories. supports the view that they can be shared by a number of subjects.

In the following discussion I shall try to show that there are passages in the Categories that clearly imply that type (iv) entities cannot be shared by a number of subjects - passages that have not been exploited by defenders of the traditional view. I will then turn to the question of what Aristotle means by 'being in a subject', and will argue for an interpretation that seems lo make better sense of the relevant texts than other views in the current literature." (p. 113)

19. ———. 1998. "Aristotle's Categories 3B10-21: A Reply to Sharma." Ancient Philosophy no. 18:341-352.

"In an article published several years ago in this journal (Devereux 1992). I argued for a new way of understanding Aristotle's explanation of what he means by the expression 'in a subject' at Categories 1 a24-25. One of my contentions was that although this explanation does not imply that things that are in but not said of a subject are particulars, there are other passages in the Categories that do have this implication: i.e., there are passages besides1 a24-25 that clearly imply that 'first-order accidents' (things in but not said of a subject) are not universals but what are called 'tropes' in the contemporary literature. This latter claim is challenged by Ravi Sharma in a recent note in this journal (Sharma 1997).

Though his arguments have not persuaded me to give up my view, I have learned from Sharma's acute discussion." (p. 341)

References

Devereux, Daniel: "Inherence and Primary Substance in Aristotle's Categories", Ancient Philosophy, 12, 1992, pp. 113-131.

Sharma, Ravi K.: "A New Defense of Tropes? On Categories 3b10-18", Ancient Philosophy, 17, 1997, pp. 309-315.

20. Di Vincenzo, Silvia. 2024. Aristotle’s Categories in the ArabicTradition. Works of Philosophy and Their Reception: 1-37.

Available on academia.edu

21. Dobreski, Brian. 2021. "Re-examining Aristotle's Categories as a Knowledge Organization System." Proceedings from North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization no. 8:1-10.

Abstract: "In his Categories, Aristotle details the kinds of being that exist, along with what can be understood and predicated of existing things. Most notably within this work, Aristotle advances a set of ten, top-level categories that can be used to classify all kinds of being. Even today, the influence of the Categories is felt in many domains, particularly in knowledge organization (KO). Here, Aristotle’s Categories bear deep, long-standing connections with works examining categorization, subject analysis, and theory of classification. Though its relation to ontology might seem obvious, connections to KO perspectives on knowledge organization systems (KOSs) and ontological modeling are curiously lacking. The aim of this work is to offer a re-examination of the Categories as a KOS, particularly through the lens of the KO field’s understandings of ontology. Utilizing Zeng’s [*] classification of KOSs as a theoretical framework, this study draws parallels between the first two sections of the Categories and the defining features of ontologies and offers an initial ontological model of this work. The results of this re-examination stand to offer a new view of a fundamental work in the KO canon, draw further connections between past and present perspectives in KO, and further contribute to the theoretical grounding of contemporary KOS research and practice."

[*] Zeng, Marcia L. 2008. “Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS).” Knowledge Organization 35, nos. 2-3: 160-82.

22. Driscoll, John A. 1979. "The Platonic Ancestry of Primary Substance." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 24:253-269.

"Chapter Five of the Categories contains the earliest version of Aristotle's theory of substance. In spirit, the chapter is strongly anti-Platonic."

(...)

While attempts have been made to find Academic antecedents for the doctrine of categories as a whole,(4) the properties shared by primary substances and the Receptacle have, as far as I can determine, passed unnoticed in the literature.

(...)

In this paper I will not examine the three-sided relationship between the Receptacle, primary substance, and primary matter. Such an examination would afford an interesting perspective from which to study the development of Aristotle's theory of substance from the Categories to the Metaphysics, but it would raise many difficult issues not easily resolved in a short paper. I will instead simply list the properties shared by the Receptacle and primary substance and discuss one important consequence of the link thereby established between Timaeus 49-52 and Categories V: that the well-known controversy between G. E. L. Owen and Harold Cherniss over the dating of the Timaeus must be decided in favor of Owen, at least with respect to the relative dating of the Timaeus and the Sophist. I propose to show, in other words, that Categories V owes a much greater debt to Plato than is usually thought and that an examination of this debt increases our understanding not only of Anstotle's theory of substance but also of the development of Plato's later philosophy." (pp. 253-254, notes omitted)

23. ———. 1981. "EIΔH in Aristotle's Earlier and Later Theories of Substance." In Studies in Aristotle, edited by O'Meara, Dominic, 129-159. Washington: Catholic University Press.

"My object in this paper is to cast doubt on the view of M. J. Woods (1) and G. E. L. Owen(2) that the species which is a secondary substance in the Categories is elevated to the status of primary substance in Metaphysics Z. Woods and Owen(3) commit themselves to this view in the course of very interesting discussions of the differences separating Aristotle's early Categories theory and his later Metaphysics ΖΗΘ theory of sensible substance.(4) However, serious objections have been raised against both writers on the basis of Aristotle's remarks in chapter 13 of Ζ. My strategy will be to show that these objections can be met and the most important of Woods' and Owen's insights on Aristotle's two theories of sensible substance maintained provided only that their view on the upgrading of Categories species is abandoned.

The εἶδος which is primary substance in Z, I will suggest, is neither the species of the Categories, as Woods and Owen hold, nor the particular form of a particular substance, as Wilfrid Sellars(5) Edward Harter,(6) and Edwin Hartman(7) insist, but a third entity to be described below.(8)" (p. 129, notes abbreviated)

(1) M. J. Woods, "Problems in Metaphysics Z, Chapter 13,'' in Aristotle: A Colleclion of Critical Essays, ed. J. M. E. Moravcsik (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor, 1967), pp. 215-38.

(2) E. L. Owen, "The Platonism of Aristotle," Proceedings of the British Academy, 51 (1965): 125- 50, esp. p. 137; reprinted in Studies in the Philosophy of Thought and Action, ed. P. F. Strawson (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 147-74. References below are to the British Academy pagination.

(3) My reasons for believing that Owen is committed to the thesis as stated will be given in section 2 below.

(4) I will follow Woods and Owen in assuming that the Categories is an early authentic work of Aristotle and that Books ΖΗΘ of the Metaphysics date from much later in his career.

(5) Wilfrid Sellars, "Substance and Form in Aristotle," Journal of Philosophy, 54 (1957): 688- 99, and "Aristotle's Metaphysics: An Interpretation," in Wilfrid Sellars, Philosophical Perspectives (Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas Publishers, 1959), pp. 73- 124.

(6) Edward D. Harter, "Aristotle on Primary Ousia," Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie, 57 (1975): 1- 20.

(7) Edwin Hartman, "Aristotle on the Identity of Substance and Essence," Philosophical Review, 85 (1976): 545-61; reprinted with revisions as chapter two of Edwin Hartman, Substance, Body, and Soul: Aristotelian lnvestigations (Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 57-87.

(8) See section 3 below, especially note 58. My aim here will not be to disprove the Sellars-Harter-Hartman position (a major undertaking which would require extended discussion of their complex arguments) but only to isolate a defensible alternative to it.

24. Duerlinger, James. 1970. "Predication and Inherence in Aristotle's Categories." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 15:179-203.

"In Categories and De Interpretatione (Oxford, 1963), J. L. Ackrill has performed the notable task of clearly delineating a number of questions and alternative answers to these questions involved in the interpretation of Aristotle's discussions about predication and inherence in the Categories. As a result of Ackrill's excellent translation and penetrating analysis of the text of the Categories, we have arrived at a point at which Aristotle's early distinction between predication and inherence may be discussed with some degree of exactness and clarity. Although I do not agree with everything that Ackrill has said about predication and inherence, my disagreement is grounded in an account of the text which his translation and analysis have helped to make possible. In recent papers G. E. L. Owen ("Inherence," Phronesis, 1965) and J. M. E. Moravcsik ("Predication in Aristotle," Philosophical Review, 1967) have attempted to improve upon Ackrill's account of Aristotle's distinction between predication and inherence.

I shall use Ackrill's commentary and translation as a base from which to launch an investigation of predication and inherence in the Categories, but I shall find it convenient at times to refer to the comments of Owen and Moravcsik. I shall begin with a very rough summary of what I have to say about predication and inherence, and then discuss them in more exact terms." (p. 179)

25. Duncombe, Matthew. 2015. "Aristotle’s Two Accounts of Relatives in Categories 7." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 60:436-461.

Abstract: "At Categories 7, 6a36-7 Aristotle defines relatives (R1), but at 8a13-28 worries that the definition may include some substances. Aristotle introduces a second account of relatives (R2, at 8a31-2) to solve the problem. Recent commentators have held that Aristotle intends to solve the extensional adequacy worry by restricting the extension of relatives. That is, R2 counts fewer items as relative than R1. However, this cannot explain Aristotle’s attitude to relatives, since he immediately returns to using R1. I propose a non-extensional reading. R1 and R2 do not specify different sets of relatives, but rather different ways to understand each relative."

26. ———. 2018. "Aristotle’s Categories 7 Adopts Plato’s View of Relativity." In Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy, edited by Bryan, Jenny, Wardy, Robert and Warren, James, 120-138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Since the 1960s, scholars have thought that the Categories is an anti- authoritarian work. Aristotle engages with Platonism, rather than straightforwardly rejecting or blindly adopting any element of it. In particular, Owen argued that the Categories evinces an anti- Platonic linguistic theory."

(...)

"On the micro-level of Categories 7, scholars take a similar anti-authoritarian attitude. After defining relatives at 6a36, Aristotle draws out some formal features of them: some relatives have a contrary (6b15– 19); some come in degrees (6b19– 27); all reciprocate with their correlatives (6b28– 7b14); some are simultaneous with their correlative (7b15– 8a12).

Aristotle then raises a worry: some substances are relatives (8a13– 28). A hand is a substance, since a hand is part of a secondary substance, but a hand is also a relative, since a hand is said of something. To address this worry Aristotle introduces a second account of relatives (8a31– 2). He then describes a test for whether a relative falls under the second account (8a35– b21).

(...)

"In part I, I argue Plato and Aristotle share a view of relativity.

First, I give textual evidence that both share the ‘intensional’ view of relatives. Second, Aristotle’s formal features have antecedents in Plato. In the second part of the paper, I argue that Aristotle draws directly on Plato’s view. For relativity, there is neither a shared source nor an intermediate source. In the third part, I show that Aristotle retains the first account of relatives." (pp. 120-122, notes omitted)

27. ———. 2020. Ancient Relativity: Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, and Sceptics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 5: Relativity in Categories 7, Topics, and Sophistical Refutations, pp. 90-117; Chapter 6: Aristotle on the distinction between substances and relatives, pp. 188-139.

"Chapter 2 begins to argue that Plato has a constitutive view of relativity, with an inference to the best explanation: key formal features of constitutive relativity are exclusivity, reciprocity, aliorelativity, and existential symmetry; Plato’s texts rely on such formal features; so, Plato at least tacitly endorses constitutive relativity. Chapter 3 begins to apply these results to look at constitutive relativity in the context of the separation of Forms and participants in the Parmenides’ critique of the Forms. Chapter 4 continues to examine how constitutive relativity works, this time in the context of Plato’s tripartite psychology. Chapter 5 shows that, although Aristotle is not the earliest thinker to have deep things to say about relativity, he gives a clear statement of constitutive relativity, and works out some of the language and formal features that constitutive relatives have. Chapter 6 shows why Aristotle introduces a nuance into his constitutive view of relativity, although he does not abandon the view. Chapter 7 continues to look at Aristotle’s view of relativity, this time his account in the Metaphysics. Chapter 8, again, concerns relativity and the Forms, but this time looks at relativity and independence, driven by Aristotle’s critique of the Forms, as recorded by Alexander of Aphrodisias. Chapters 9 and 10 argue for the presence of constitutive views of relativity in the Stoics. Chapter 11 looks at Sextus’ brand of Pyrrhonian scepticism, again showing that he assumes a version of the constitutive view of relativity." (pp. 21-22)

28. Edel, Abraham. 1975. "Aristotle's Categories and the Nature of Categorial Theory." The Review of Metaphysics no. 29:45-65.

Abstract: "The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I want to propose a fresh approach to Aristotle's Categories. Second, I want to reflect, in the light of the outcome, on the expectations we can have for categories in metaphysics. No apology is needed for starting with Aristotle. Ever since the Categories was placed at the head of the Corpus, the foundational character of categorial theory has been explicit. That is why a fresh way of looking at the Categories is at the same time a fresh way of looking at Aristotle's metaphysics, and suggests a mode of reckoning with categorial theory generally."

29. Edelhoff, Ana Laura. 2020. Aristotle on Ontological Priority in the Categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Abstract: "The main objective of this Element is to reconstruct Aristotle's view on the nature of ontological priority in the Categories. Over the last three decades, investigations into ontological dependence and priority have become a major concern in contemporary metaphysics. Many see Aristotle as the originator of these discussions and, as a consequence, there is considerable interest in his own account of ontological dependence. In light of the renewed interest in Aristotelian metaphysics, it will be worthwhile - both historically and systematically - to return to Aristotle himself and to see how he conceived of ontological priority (what he calls "priority in substance" (proteron kata ousian) or "priority in nature" (proteron tei phusei), which is to be understood as a form of asymmetric ontological dependence."

30. Erginel, Mehmet. 2004. "Non-Substantial Individuals in Aristotle's Categories." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 26:185-212.

"Aristotle's Categories (1) classifies entities by using two predication relations, being ‘said of’ a subject and being ‘in’ a subject.(2)

(...)

The traditionally accepted view, which I shall call the ‘traditional view’, is that a non-substantial individual is a property that cannot be shared by (be ‘in’) more than one individual substance; thus, on this view, the individualwhite ‘in’ Socrates cannot also be ‘in’ Plato (or anyone else). This interpretation of the Categories as challenged by Owen, setting of the modern debate.(4)

Owen and Frede(5) have argued that non-substantial individuals are maximally determinate properties, which can be shared by more than one individual substance; on this view, an individual white would be a particular shade of white, which could be ‘in’ both Socrates and Plato. One way of putting the difference is that the latter view does, whereas the former view does not, allow the recurrence of non-substantial individuals.

In this paper I shall defend a version of the latter view, arguing that the non-substantial individuals of the Categories may be ‘in’ several individual substances. I shall proceed by first discussing, and o·ering an interpretation of, 1A24–5, the critical passage that the traditional view originates from. After defending an interpretation of 1A24–5 that allows recurrence, I shall argue, in Section 2, that the interpretation commonly held by proponents of the traditional view is inconsistent with various passages in the Categories. In my third section I shall challenge attempts to find other passages that support the traditional view, and I shall show that the traditional view does not enjoy the purported textual support." (pp. 185-186)

(1) In this paper I mostly rely on, but occasionally differ from, J. L. Ackrill’s translation in Aristotle: Categories and De interpretatione [Categories], translation and notes (Oxford, 1963).

(2) I shall use the terms ‘said of’ and ‘in’ in quotation marks when they are meant in Aristotle’s technical sense. Likewise, it is the technical sense of ‘in’ that is meant when I refer to the ‘x is in y’ relation.

(4) G. E. L. Owen, ‘Inherence’, Phronesis, 10 (1965), 97–105, repr. in id., Logic, Science and Dialectic: Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy, ed. M. Nussbaum (Ithaca, NY, 1986), 252–8.

(5) M. Frede, ‘Individuals in Aristotle’ [‘Individuals’], in id., Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Minneapolis, 1987), 49–71.

31. Findlay, John N. 2007. "Aristotle and Eideticism II." Philosophical Forum no. 37:333-386.

"This article continues our publication of lectures given by J. N. Findlay (1903–87) at Boston University in 1978. The present article concludes Findlay’s discussion of Aristotle, the first part of which was published in The Philosophical Forum, XXXVI, No. 4 (Winter 2005)." (The Editors).

"The Categories, probably an early treatise of Aristotle’s and very individualistic in doctrine, deals with the basic types of predication, substantial and definitory, quantitative, relational, qualitative etc., which leads up, though this is not so clearly stated as elsewhere, to various different genera of entities each of which can be said to have being in a different sense, some primary some derivative in various manners. The issue is complicated by the fact that secondary and derivative entities can have their own series of divergent predications, some substantial and definitory, others quantitative, relational, qualitative etc. There are not only entities parasitic on primary entities in various manners, but entities parasitic on the parasites in a corresponding variety of manners. All this renders the ontology very complex. Though Aristotle approaches many issues through language, what he is dealing with is always conceived of as ontic, not linguistic." (p. 334)

[Follows a description of Categories 1-9, pp. 334-339.]

32. Fine, Gail. 1983. "Relational Entities." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 65:225-249.

"Aristotle's theory of universals is sometimes thought to differ from Plato's in being nonrelational; it does not hold that Socrates' being a man, or being rational, consists in or involves his standing in some relation to the universal man, or to the universal rationality." (p. 225)

(...)

"Why should a nonrelational account be preferred? Matthews and Cohen suggest that Plato's relational theory is vulnerable to an awkward dilemma: either particulars are "bare particulars", or else they are "mere relational entities" that owe their identity and continued existence to the relations they bear to other things. Aristotle's allegedly nonrelational theory is thought to go between the horns of this dilemma.(5)" (p. 226)

(...)

"I am sympathetic to some features of this general view. I agree that, on some accounts of relationality, Plato has a relational theory of universals. I also agree that Plato, but not Aristotle, separates universals.

I agree too that relational accounts are vulnerable to Matthews and Cohen's dilemma. But I do not agree that Aristotle's theory of universals is nonrelational. Or, at least, the arguments used to commit Plato to a relational account seem to me to commit Aristotle to one as well. Nor do I conclude that Plato's and Aristotle's theories are therefore both hopelessly misguided; for I do not find both horns of the dilemma unattractive. Although I reject bare particulars, I accept relational entities.(6) If it is a consequence of Plato's or Aristotle's theory that particulars are relational entities, that is a desirable consequence.

I ask first what a relational analysis is (I). I then turn to Matthews and Cohen's dilemma (II). In subsequent sections I ask whether Plato and Aristotle are vulnerable to their dilemma and, if so, whether that is an undesirable consequence of their views." (pp. 226-227)

(...)

"It is important to note, first of all, however, that nowhere in the Categories, at least, does Aristotle say that primary substances could exist if nothing else did; perhaps their privileged status does not consist in existential independence from everything else. Certainly that is not the only sort of priority Aristotle recognizes.(48)" (p. 247)

(5) See, e.g., pp. 634f., 643f. Matthews and Cohen also suggest another difficulty with relational accounts or, at least, with Plato's holding one; see p. 633f. It is also often objected that relational accounts are vulnerable to a regress. See, for example, Armstrong I, Part 2, passim; P.P. Strawson; Individuals (London, 1959), esp. pp. 168-181; F.H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 2nd. ed. (Oxford, 1897), chapter 3.

Plato considers a regress argument, The Third Man Argument, at Parm. 132 ab. I do not discuss the TMA or regress arguments here ; but see my "Aristotle and the More Accurate Arguments, in Language and Logos, edd. M. Nussbaum and M. Schofield (Cambridge, 1982), and my "Owen, Aristotle, and the Third Man", Phronesis 27 (1982), pp. 13-33.

(6) As I shall use the phrase, a relational entity is an entity that possesses at least one essential property relationally. This is to be distinguished from Bradley's doctrine of internal relations, according to which all of a thing's relational properties are essential to it; I do not discuss Bradley's views in this paper. For Bradley, see esp. pp. 16-25.

(48) For some discussions of priority, see Cat., chapter 12; Met. Δ, chapter 11; Ζ 1.

Referenecs

D.M. Armstrong, Universals and Scientific Realism, 2 volumes (Cambridge, 1978),

G.B. Matthews and S. Marc Cohen, "The One and the Many", Review of Metaphysics 21 (1968), pp. 630-655.

33. Finn, Collin. 1974. "The Concept of Substance in the Categories and the Physics." Danish Yearbook of Philosophy no. 11:72-119.

"The subject of the present paper is the Aristotelian concept of substance as treated in the Categories and in the Physics. Its form is determined by the faet that the contents and the definition of this concept depend on the wider philosophical context, in which Aristotle discusses it. From this it follows that, in the first place, it is not possible to give a single, summarized account of this concept which would cut across the two mentioned works.

It is necessary to divide the discussion, taking the concept of substance in the Categories and the concept of substance in the Physics each by itself, even though naturally there is a considerable common core in this concept as treated in the two works. In the second place, it follows from the mentioned connection that the concept of substance, like the other central notions in Aristotle's philosophy, cannot be discussed in isolation from the context, the philosophical relationship, in which it appears. This necessitates treating these contexts at least briefly, in other words, reviewing the further philosophical lines of thought in the works which I have taken as my point of departure. I intend also to discuss various problems of detail in these works, not all of which are problems within the doctrine of substance.

To throw light on the concept of substance is, however, the goal towards which the discussion is constantly aimed." (p. 72)

34. Franklin, James. 2014. "Quantity and Number." In Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, edited by Novotný, Daniel D. and Novák, Lukáš, 221-244. New York: Routledge.

"Quantity is the first category that Aristotle lists after substance. More than any other category, it has an extraordinary epistemological clarity. “2 + 2 = 4” is the paradigm of objective and irrefutable knowledge, and “2 million + 2 million = 4 million” is not far behind in certainty, despite its distance from immediate perception. Indeed, certainties about quantity extend to the infinite—for example, we know that the counting numbers do not run out. Nor does this certainty come at the expense of application to reality. If we put two rabbits and two rabbits in a box and later find five rabbits in there, it is our absolute certainty that 2 + 2 = 4 that allows us to infer that the rabbits must have bred.

Continuous quantities are no less open to perfection of knowledge: The quantity π, the ratio of the circumference of any circle to its diameter, is calculable to any degree of precision that computers can cope with (currently claimed to be ten trillion decimal places). The mathematics of quantity delivers certainty about reality, to the envy of other disciplines, including philosophy.

Despite its clarity, quantity is subject to some philosophical subtleties and unresolved puzzles. Let us start with two crucial distinctions that organize the types of quantity: extensive (or divisible) versus intensive quantity and continuous versus discrete quantity." (p. 221)

35. Fraser, Kyle. 2003. "Seriality and Demonstration in Aristotle's Ontology." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 25:131-158.

"Abstract: "In Aristotle’s ontological framework, non-substances are defined as those entities that exist in virtue of inhering in a substrate On account of their essential dependency on the category of substance the non-substances are held to be definable only in a secondary and derivative way, which Aristotle designates at Metaphysics as definition ‘by addition’ Each non-substance contains, as part of its explanatory definition, the name or definition of the substance kind in which it essentially inheres, just as male and female must be defined as properties of animals, snubness as a property of noses, or colour as a property of surfaces. The non-substances are not only accidentally dependent on the category of substance; their derivative status is built into their essential being. Thus, for example, while pallor is per se independent of Callias or Socrates, or any individual who just happens to be pale, it is essentially dependent on ‘surface’ and must be defined by the inclusion of ‘surface’ in its explanatory account (1029616-17). Leaving aside the per accidens entanglements of the non-substances, we discover that every nonsubstance is essentially the predicate of some substance kind, and thus can be said to have an ‘essence’ only in a derivative way."

36. Frede, Michael. 1981. "Categories in Aristotle." In Studies in Aristotle, edited by O'Meara, Dominic, 1-25. Washington: The Catholic University Press.

Reprinted in: M. Frede, Essays in Ancient Philosophy, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987, pp. 29-48.

"But one reason why he [Aristotle] actually makes so surprisingly little use of the categories in the Topics seems to be exactly this, that he does not have a clear view of the logical properties which might serve to distinguish the categories from each other in a systematic fashion.

Nor does it seem that Aristotle arrives at his list of categories by grammatical considerations as has been proposed again recently by Benveniste. It is true that Aristotle thinks that certain grammatical forms tend to go with certain categories; the active form of verbs, e.g., naturally goes with the category of doing and the passive with the category of suffering. But he also is aware of the fact that grammatical form in this respect can be quite misleading, and he thinks that a large number of fallacies are due to this.

It will, of course, be suggested that Aristotle arrives at his list of categories neither by logical nor by grammatical considerations, but by an ontological inquiry.

It will be suggested that Aristotle first established a list of ultimate classes of what there is by an ontological inquiry into what there is and then just assumed corresponding categories. On this view Aristotle, e.g., first determined that there is an ultimate class of entities consisting of all qualities and then introduced a category of quality which is characterized by the fact that the item predicated belongs to the antecedently determined class of qualities. Now, though this matter would require quite a bit of detailed argument, it seems to me that things are exactly the other way round. When Aristotle in the treatise Categories tries to give a general characterization of qualities, he relies on the fact that we already know what it is to say of something what it is like. Qualities are just those items which we attribute to something when we say what it is like; quantities are just those items which we refer to if we say of something of what amount it is, and so forth." (pp. 47-48)

37. ———. 1987. "The Title, Unity, and Authenticity of the Aristotelian Categories." In Essays in Ancient Philosophy, 11-28. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

English translation of: Titel, Einheit und Echtheit der aristotelischen Kategorienschrift, (1983).

"The Categories, ascribed to Aristotle, has played a unique role in our tradition.

(...)

Already in late antiquity, however, doubts were raised about its authenticity,(1) though we know of no ancient scholar who, on the basis of such doubts, declared the treatise to be spurious."

(...)

"The question of authenticity, however, turns out to be crucially linked to the question of unity. Given that it seems highly questionable whether the Postpraedicamenta were originally part of the treatise or were appended by a later editor,(12) it might seem as if the question regarding the authenticity of the treatise needs to be asked as two questions, viz., questions regarding the authenticity of the first and second part individually. Many authors have indeed taken this for granted and have thus assumed that the first part was authentic, the second either probably or certainly not.(13)"

(...)

"Therefore, in what follows, I will pay particular attention to the question of unity. The dangerous tendency to consider this treatise almost exclusively with reference to the first part and thus to jeopardize the status of the second part is, of course, reinforced considerably by the title. Hence, I will also discuss the title in connection with the question of unity." (pp. 11-12)

(...)

"Thus, it is by no means the case that the incompatibility of the two theories of substance forces us to reject the Categories as spurious. On the contrary, it seems as if the theory of the Categories ought, rather, to be seen as a stage in a long development that proceeds from the forms of Plato's middle dialogues to the substantial forms of Aristotle's Metaphysics.

Thus, we have met the objection against the authenticity of the Categories that has survived the longest; and so we can, indeed, follow the tradition and attribute the treatise to Aristotle. However, we have also seen that we have reason not to follow the tradition blindly in its understanding of the treatise. Unlike the tradition, which sought to gloss over the differences between the Categories and the Metaphysics, we ought to take care not to project the universals of the Categories into the ontology of the Metaphysics." (p. 28)

(1) Olymp., Prol. 22, 38ff.; Schol. 33a 28ff.; Brandis.

(12) 12. See J. G. Buhle, Aristotelis Opera, vol. I, 1791, 436; Ch. A. Brandis in: Abh. Berlin 1833, 268ff.; E. Zeller, Philos. d. Gr., II 24, 1921, 67 n. 1; Th. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, IV, 514; Uberweg-Praechter, 379; D. Ross, Aristotle, 10; L. M. De Rijk, The Authenticity, in: Mnemos. 4 (1951), 159; I. During, R E Suppl. XI, s.v. Aristoteles, 205, 61; J. L. Ackrill, 70; V. Sainati, Storia, 151ff. Some ancient authors took this line (Olymp., In cat. 133, 14), especially Andronicus (Simpl., In cat. 379, 8ff.).

(13) E.g., J. G. Buhle, 436; E. Zeller, II 24, 1921, 67; H. Maier, Die Syllogistik, II 2, 292 n.

We hear of this view being taken by some in antiquity (Ammon., In cat. 14, 18ff.; Olymp., In cat. 133, 14ff.). Whether Andronicus was among these, as is often claimed, is doubtful; at any rate, we never hear that he argued against the authenticity of the Postpraedicamenta; we would assume, if this had been the case, that he would be referred to by name when their authenticity was being discussed.

38. ———. 1987. "Individuals in Aristotle." In Essays in Ancient Philosophy, 49-71. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

English translation of: "Individuen bei Aristoteles", Antike und Abendland, 24, 1978, pp. 16-39.

"By way of introduction, I offer a few remarks to give an overview of the subject of this paper. Aristotle assumes that, in addition to objects, there are properties of objects. This assumption is rather stronger than one might think, since it turns out that statements about properties are not just reducible to statements about objects; on the contrary, the truth of at least some statements about objects is to be explained by assuming that there are properties."

(...)

"Besides this division of things into objects and properties, Aristotle, in the Categories, makes use of the distinction between general and particular, between individuals and universals. Although Aristotle does not, in this treatise, use any term like 'universal' (katholou), he does speak of 'individuals', and he contrasts these with their kinds. These two divisions, into objects and properties, on the one hand, and into particular and general, on the other, do not turn out to be the same. For Aristotle counts as general not only properties but also the kinds, into which objects fall, i.e., the genera, species, and differentiae of substances; and these are to be differentiated strictly from properties."

(...)

"At this point, three difficulties arise. First of all, how is it possible to speak of individuals in the case of properties; second, how can there be a single notion of being an individual that can be applied to objects as well as properties; and third, what sorts of objects are these general objects, the genera and species, supposed to be? These difficulties, especially the first two, will be our concern in the first part of this paper, which deal with the Categories." (pp. 49-50)

39. Fritz, Kurt von. 1954. "Review of: The Place of the Categories of Being in Aristotle's Philosophy by L. M. De Rijk." The Philosophical Review no. 63:600-605.

"The author of this book tries once more to solve the difficult problem of the meaning of Aristotle's theory of categories or, more specifically, the question of whether the categories are a system of grammatical, of logical, or of ontological distinctions. He rejects from the outset the explanation of the categories as grammatical distinctions though he does admit-which is very important-that Aristotle in his metaphysical and logical analyses is, generally speaking, guided by the structure of his native tongue. Concerning the two other main explanations which have been offered, he points out in his introduction that "the later distinction between the logical and the ontological aspect qua a conscious opposition which is carried through rigorously" should not be applied to ancient thought, i.e., to that of Aristotle, and expresses the opinion that "the seeming difficulty of interpretation disappears" if this distinction is not made. He tries to show that the solutions offered by his predecessors are all wrong or insufficient because they did not follow this principle of interpretation.

The author then elaborates his theory in six chapters and an appendix. The first three chapters deal with various aspects of the relation between logic and ontology in Aristotle's philosophy, namely: Aristotle's doctrine of truth, the distinction between "essential and accidental being" (κατ' αυτό and κατά συμβεβηκός), logical and ontological accident. The second series of three chapters deals with the problem of the categories directly, first the categories in the Metaphysics, then the categories in the special treatise devoted to that subject, the first treatise of the Organon, and finally the use which Aristotle makes of the categories in his philosophy in general. The appendix deals with the various expressions by which Aristotle designates the categories, with their origin and their relation to the logical and the ontological aspects of the categories. Each chapter, as well as the appendix, concludes with a convenient summary of the theses which the author has tried to prove." (pp. 600-601)

40. ———. 1958. "Once More ϰαθ᾿ ὑποϰειμένου and ἐν ὑποϰειμένῳ." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 3:72-73.

"On p. 148 ff. of the second volume of Phronesis Mr. Chung-Hwan Chen has published an article on the above subject taking his starting point from a review of a book by the Dutch scholar L. M. De Rijk which I had published some time ago in The Philosophical Review, vol. 53 (1954), p. 600 ff., but without knowledge of the book reviewed itself. As a consequence some special points have remained in the dark; and since this is in no way Mr. Chung-Hwan Cheng's fault, who was unable to obtain a copy of the book reviewed, but to a large part my own fault and to a certain extent perhaps the fault of Mr. De Rijk, I would appear to be under some obligation to clear up the question." (p. 72)

(...)

"It is one of the main contentions of Mr. De Rijk in the book which I reviewed that it is wrong to make a sharp distinction between the ontological and the logical aspect of Aristotle's theory of the categories because the ontological aspect is always the essential one and the logical only its reflection. In contrast to this I had contended that Aristotle's theory has an ontological, a logical, and to some extent a grammatical aspect; and that to understand its philosophical meaning, as well as the difficulties with which Aristotle had to struggle in its elaboration fully, it is necessary to distinguish sharply between them." (p. 73)

41. Furth, Montgomery. 1988. Substance, Form and Psyche: An Aristotelean Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Preface XI; §0. A short discourse on method 1; I. Cross- and Intra-Categorial Predication in the Categories 9; II. Substance in the Metaphysics: A First Approximation 49; III. The Zoological Universe 67; Bibliography 285; Index 291-300.

"My aim in what follows is to explain and to motivate a theory of essence, existence and individuation that I think is to be found in the later and more advanced of the extant writings of Aristotle. The view to be explored has several features that are noteworthy from a scientific as well as a philosophical standpoint: it centers especially, though not exclusively, on a concept of what an individual material object is - a concept that has both intrinsic interest and (if some suggestions I shall advance as to its provenance and motivation are accepted) a historical significance that has not always been accurately appreciated." (p. 1)

(...)

"largely dispense with questions like what differentiates the various nonsubstantial categories from one another, the rationale (if there be one) for comprehending into a single category the monstrous motley horde yclept Quality, the justification (which seems to me quite hopeless) for a category, co-ordinate with the others, of Time, and other such. It will be seen that numerous particular points will emerge along the way in the course of the general discussion of Inherence. But enough has even now been fixed to allow statement of three general truths about the relationship between the tetrachotomy of "things that are" and the total categorial scheme. None of them is explicitly stated in the work, but all of them are in practice observed with great fidelity, and their controlling place in the theory will become more evident in what follows (were one to essay the project, conceivably worthwhile, of axiomatizing the theory, they would be plausible candidates for axioms):

(i) said-of is always intra-categorial, and conversely,

(ii) inherence is always cross-categorial, and conversely,

(iii) substances and only substances can be subjects of inherence." (p. 14)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Aristotle's Categories. Annotated bibliography of the studies in English: Gar - Kun

Bibliography

1. Garver, Newton. 1974. "Notes for a Linguistic Reading of the Categories." In Ancient Logic and its Modern Interpretations, edited by Corcoran, John, 27-32. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"1. If AristotIe's Categories provide a classification of things and not of sayings, as is traditionally insisted, the things classified are at any rate 'things that can be said'. It is interesting, therefore, to inquire whether the Categories may be regarded as containing, in rudimentary form, results that might be more appropriately and more completely presented in terms of current methods of linguistic analysis, applied to a level of language or discourse that linguists usually ignore.

2. Both the name 'categories', which signifies predications or sayings, and the position of the work at the beginning of the Organon, which deals with matters of logic and language, reinforce the temptation to interpret the Categories linguistically. Although neither the title nor the position of the work in the corpus is directly due to Aristotle, they do show that the inclination to treat the Categories as at least partially linguistic goes back to the very earliest tradition of Aristotelian scholarship.

3. The determination that the categories can be given a linguistic interpretation - even the conclusion that they are linguistic, AckriIl (1) and Benveniste (2) notwithstanding - would not suffice to show that they are not also (in some sense) metaphysical, nor that they are not universal.

4. The most useful linguistic method to employ in this inquiry is distinctive feature analysis, (3) which has been used in several kinds of linguistic analysis. Passages in the Categories can be interpreted as employing a related method, if not an early version of the method itself." (p. 27)

(1) J. L. Ackrill, Aristotle' s 'Categories' and 'De Interpretatione', Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963, p. 71. I have used Ackrill's translation. His notes, to which I refer here, are both helpful and stimulating.

(2) E. Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics, Univ. of Miami Press, Coral Gabies; 1971, Chapter 6.

(3) This method of analysis is due to Roman Jakobson more than to anyone else. See R. Jakobson, C. G. M. Fant, and M. HalIe, Preliminaries to Speech Analysis, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1952; N. Chomsky and M. HalIe, Sound Pattern of English, Harper and Row, New York, 1968; and Fred W. Householder, Linguistic Speculations Cambridge Univ. Press, London, 1971. Most recent linguistic textbooks have a discussion of features.

2. Georgiadis, Costantine. 1973. "Two Conceptions of Substance in Aristotle." The New scholasticism no. 47:157-167.

"In Aristotle we find the view that an individual thing is a substance but we also find the view that form is substance. Is the meaning of substance ( οὐσία) the same in the two cases? As the title of my paper suggests, I hold that it is not. I shall argue that there are two distinct, though related, conceptions of substance in Aristotle. These are what I call, on the one hand, the reistic conception of substance, according to which substance is an individual thing (res) (2) and, on the other hand, the archological (3) conception of substance, according to which substance is a principle (ἀρχή) of the individual thing." (p. 157)

(2) The use of the term 'reistic' here does not imply the narrowing of reality to individual objects alone as in T. Kotarbinski's philosophy of reism but only underlines the central position of the individual within reality.

(3) Giovanni Reale, in his book Il Concetto di Filosofia Prima e l'unità della Metafisica di Aristotele, wrongly uses the term archeologia in the sense of aitiologia. He should have used the term archologia.

3. Ghimpu, Anca gabriel. 2011. "The lack of a deduction: Kant's opinion on Aristotle's theory of categories." Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai - Philosophia no. 2:103-111.

Abstract: "This essay argues against Kant's reproach to Aristotle's deduction of categories as formulated in the Critique of the Pure Reason. In the first part we try to summarize the philosophical context in which Kant formulates his reproach, while in the second part we focus on Aristotle's perspective underlying philosophical aspects in the light of which Kant's objection seems unfounded. The most important aspects which our argumentation is based on are: first, we are dealing with two different philosophical intentions (categories of being versus categories of the understanding); secondly, Kant's reproach turns against him, so to speak, as he does not provide a principle of deduction either."

4. Gill, Mary Louise. 1984. "Aristotle on the Individuation of Changes." Ancient Philosophy no. 4:9-22.

Abstract: "In Physics V 4 Aristotle lists a set of conditions that must be met for a change to be an individual. This account should be viewed against the background of the Categories, where the problem of individuals is first addressed. In the Categories changes apparently fall into the two nonsubstance categories of doing and suffering. So one might expect that the characterization of individual changes in Physics V 4 will fit the account of individual nonsubstances proposed in the Categories. I do not think it does.

This paper aims to show how the two treatments differ and why individual changes require a different analysis from other nonsubstances."

5. ———. 1995. "Aristotle on Substance and Predication." Ancient Philosophy no. 15:511-520.

"Michael Loux and Frank Lewis share a perspective about Aristotle's Metaphysics, though they defend their positions in quite different ways. They agree that Aristotle revised his view from the Categories, where he treats individual physical objects as primary οὐσίαι, or substances, and that he defends instead the primacy of substantial forms. They also agree that he adapts his theory of predication from the Categories to the project of the Metaphysics. On their view Aristotelian forms are universals, and the ultimate subject of predication is prime matter, a stuff that has no character in its own right but is a subject for other things. Since Loux and Lewis defend a similar position, I shall treat their views together.

(...)

In this discussion I shall focus on Aristotle's treatment of predication (a relation between entities, not between liguistic items), which Loux and Lewis takeAristotle to adapt from the Categories. I shall argue that he replaces that account with a more flexible scheme, but one that still yields the result that Loux and Lewis want: form predicated accidentally of matter. It also yields some results that they do not want: form predicated of the composite, and the composite predicated of matter. Some of these results are also unacceptable to Aristotle, and to avoid them he introduces a new relation between form and matter: form as actuality, and matter as potentiality." (p. 511)

6. Gillespie, Charles Melville. 1925. "The Aristotelian Categories." Classical Quarterly no. 19:79-84.

Reprinted in: J. Barnes, M. Schofield, R. Sorabji (eds.), Articles on Aristotle, 3. Metaphysics, London: Duckworth, 1979, pp. 1-12.

"The precise position to be assigned to the Categories in the Aristotelian system has always been somewhat of a puzzle. On the one hand, they seem to be worked into the warp of its texture, as in the classification of change, and Aristotle can argue from the premiss that they constitute an exhaustive division of the kinds of Being (An. Post. I. 22, p. 83 b 15). On the other hand, both in the completed scheme of his logic and in his constructive metaphysic they retire into the background, giving place to other notions, such as causation, change, actuality and potentiality." (p. 75)

(...)

"I shall accordingly assume in what follows that the scheme of the Categories was evolved in the course of efforts to establish a doctrine of judgment which should settle the difficulties raised by Megarian and other critics; that the application to the solution of the larger metaphysical problems was a later development ;(3) that the foundations of the scheme were laid in the Socratic tradition of the Academy; that the completed scheme is probably Aristotle's own; and that the original working out of the scheme did not contemplate extension beyond the metaphysics implied in predication to the more fundamental metaphysics of the First Philosophy. Hence we must look to the analysis of empirical propositions for the origin of the scheme." (p. 76)

(3) a Here I follow Maier [Die Syllogistik des Aristoteles, (3 voll., Leipzig: K. F. Koehler, 1896–1900)].

7. Gotthiel, Richard J. H. 1893. "The Syriac Versions of the Categories of Aristotle." Hebraica no. 9:166-215.

Reprint: Piscataway, NJ, Gorgias Press 2007.

8. Grafton-Cardwell, Patrick. 2021. "Understanding Mediated Predication in Aristotle’s Categories." Ancient Philosophy no. 41:443-462.

Abstract: "I argue there are two ways predication relations can hold according to the Categories: they can hold directly or they can hold mediately. The distinction between direct and mediated predication is a distinction between whether or not a given prediction fact holds in virtue of another predication fact’s holding. We can tell Aristotle endorses this distinction from multiple places in the text where he licenses an inference from one predication fact’s holding to another predication fact’s holding. The best explanation for each such inference is that he takes some predication facts to be mediated by others. Once the distinction between direct and mediated predication has been explained and argued for, I show how it can help solve a persistent problem for the traditional view of non-substantial particulars in the Categories—that is, the view that non-substantial particulars are particular in the sense of being non-recurrent. Along with vindicating the traditional view, the direct/mediated predication distinction gives us a distinctive way of understanding what it is for something to be recurrent (or non-recurrent) as well as a better understanding of Aristotle’s broader commitments in the Categories as a whole."

9. Graham, Daniel W. 1987. Aristotle's Two Systems. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Contents: "Preface VII; List of figures XIV; Abbreviations XV; 1. The Two Systems Hypothesis 1; 2. S1: Atomic Substantialism 20; 3. S2: Hylomorphic Substantialism 57; 4. The Incommensurability of the Systems 84; 5. The Hylomorphic Turn 119; 6. The Growth of S2: The Four Causes 156; 7. The Growth of S2: Potentiality and Actuality183; 8. The Paradoxes of Substance: Matter 207; 9. The Paradoxes of Substance: Form 233; 10. S2 Without S1: What Aristotle Should Have Said 263; 11. The Two Systems Theory as an Interpretation of Aristotle 290; References 333; Index Locorum 347; Subject Index 354-359.

"The idea for this study emerged while I was still working on my dissertation, which I wrote on a topic in Aristotle's philosophy of action. As I was researching the history of the potentiality- actuality distinction, I discovered that Aristotle did not use his word 'matter' anywhere in the logical works. The discovery was a discovery only to me; it had long been known. Yet it seemed amazing to me that a principle as important as that of matter should not appear in so large a body of work. Did this omission have important consequences for the interpretation of Aristotle? I found that interpreters saw the omission as at most a curiosity; after all, the subject-matter of the logical works was unique. Yet the same interpreters had long ago abandoned the assumption that the logical works were purely devoted to logic. In particular, the Categories is commonly taken to be a prime source of information about Aristotle's early metaphysical theory. But how could Aristotle have formulated anything like this mature metaphysical theory without the matter-form distinction? Was the unity of Aristotle's thought not really an illusion? Were there not really two sets of theories, two metaphysical conceptions, two philosophical systems?" (p. VII)

(...)

"In what follows I have tried to give my vision of Aristotle's two systems concrete expression in an argument with historical, philological, but above all philosophical dimensions. If the argument is right, a fact about Aristotle's development that has been relegated to asides and footnotes should have a central place in interpretations of Aristotle--should be a point of departure for many studies and provide a limit of inquiry for others. At present few scholars would agree with such claims. To be sure, many would grant that the metaphysical assumptions of the Categories are different from those of the Metaphysics; but this fact does not seem to have any far-reaching implications for their interpretations of Aristotle, and so I infer that they do not subscribe to a dualistic interpretative theory. A mere handful of scholars have advocated a two-systems theory in some form or other, and I believe that there is only one person who holds the Two Systems Theory with all its ramifications. However, as Socrates has taught us, it does not matter what the many think, but what the expert in truth has to say--that is, what the outcome of the argument is." (p. IX)

10. Granger, Edgar Herbert. 1980. "A Defense of the Traditional Position Concerning Aristotle's Non-Substantial Particulars." Journal of Philosophy no. 10:593-606.

"In this paper I shall defend the traditional claim that Aristotle's nonsubstantial particulars discussed in the second chapter of the Categories are unsharable particulars against G. E. L. Owen's claim that they are sharable universals. I shall proceed by presenting first a sketch of the traditional position that makes explicit why it holds that non-substantial particulars are unsharable particulars. (1) Secondly, I shall sketch Owen's position and recount how it differs in certain important respects from the traditional position. (2) Thirdly, I shall present some of my own considerations that I believe support the traditional position at the expense of Owen's position. Finally, I shall offer what I take to be the primary reason Aristotle was committed to the existence of such odd items as non-substantial particulars." (pp. 593-594)

(1) My reconstruction of the traditional position is based on the following sources: W. D. Ross, Aristotle, 5th ed. (London: Methuen, 1949): 23-24, 24, n. 1 (hereafter cited as Arist.); J. R. Jones, "Are the Qualities of Particular Things Universal or Particular?" Philosophical Review 58 (1949): 152-156, 162-163; G. E. M. Anscombe and P. T. Geach, Three Philosophers: Aristotle, Aquinas and Frege (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1961): 8-10; R. E. Allen, "Individual Properties in Aristotle's Categories," Phronesis 14 (1969): 31-32; Ignacio Angelelli, Studies on Gottlob Frege and Traditional Philosophy (New York: Humanities Press, 1967): 12-15. Angelelli's account is especially important because it reflects the opinion of scholars from late antiquity to the present.

(2) G. E. L. Owen, "lnherence," Phronesis 10 (1965): 97-105.

11. ———. 1984. "Aristotle on Genus and Differentia." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 22:1-23.

Abstract: "In Aristotle's writings there are at least three accounts of the nature of genus and differentia. These accounts may be briefly described in these terms: (I) genus and differentia are radically distinct in character, and the genus is the more important element in the definition; (II) genus and differentia are very similar in character and importance; (III) genus and differentia are similar in character, but the differentia is the more important element in the definition. These accounts represent, I believe, three stages in the development of Aristotle's thought. In this paper I shall examine each account and explain, at least in part, why Aristotle adopts them."

12. Granieri, Roberto. 2016. "Systems of Predication. Aristotle’s Categories in Topics, I, 9." Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale no. 27:1-18.

Abstract: "In this paper I investigate Aristotle’s account of predication in Topics, I, 9. I argue for the following interpretation. In this chapter Aristotle (I) presents two systems of predication cutting across each other, the system of the so-called four ‘predicables’ and of the ten ‘categories’, in order to distinguish them and explore their mutual relationship. I propose a semantic interpretation of the relationship between them. According to this reading, every proposition formed through a predicable constitutes at the same time a predication according to one of the ten categories, and, consequently, signifies one of them, expressing one of the predicative relationship conveyed by them. Further, Aristotle (II) explains the predicative connection between these two systems and the ten items signified by the ‘things said without any combination’ enumerated in Chapter 4 of the Categories, whose list is almost identical with that of categories in Top., I, 9, with the only exception of their first members."

13. Gregoric, Pavel. 2006. "Quantities and Contraries: Aristotle's Categories 6, 5b11-6a18." Apeiron no. 39:341-358.

"The immediate purpose of this paper is fairly modest. I would like to provide an analysis of Aristotle's three counterexamples to his claim that no quantity has a contrary in Categories 6. I will have something to say about Aristotle's discussion of the first two counterexamples, although the bulk of my paper will be devoted to his discussion of the third counterexample at 6a11-18,a passage which has not received due attention by modem commentators. My analysis will then provide a basis for some suggestions of wider significance.

In Categories 6, 5b11 Aristotle introduces one salient characteristic of quantities, namely that none of them has a contrary (enantion). Immediately following the statement of this characteristic, Aristotle takes on an anticipated objection. The objection consists of two counterexamples: to the many the contrary is the few, to something large the contrary is something small. Each pair of terms is supposed to present a counterexample to Aristotle's characteristic for one type of quantity: the former pair for discrete quantities, the latter for continuous quantities. Aristotle takes each pair of terms in turn,and shows that what they introduce are (a) neither quantities (b) nor contraries." (p. 341)

14. Hacking, Ian. 2001. "Aristotelian Categories and Cognitive Domains." Synthese no. 126:473-515.

Abstract: "This paper puts together an ancient and a recent approach to classificatory language, thought, and ontology.It includes on the one hand an interpretation of Aristotle's ten categories, with remarks on his first category, called (or translated as) substance in the Categories or What a thing is in the Topics. On the other hand is the idea of domain-specific cognitive abilities urged in contemporary developmental psychology. Each family of ideas can be used to understand the other. Neither the metaphysical nor the psychological approach is intrinsically more fundamental; they complement each other. The paper incidentally clarifies distinct uses of the word 'category' in different disciplines, and also attempts to make explicit several notions of 'domain'. It also examines Aristotle's most exotic and least discussed categories, being-in-a-position (e.g., sitting) and having-(on) (e.g., armour). Finally the paper suggests a tentative connection between Fred Sommers' theory of types and Aristotle's first category."

15. Hadgopoulos D. J. 1976. "The Definition of the Predicables in Aristotle." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 6:110-126.

"It is a common belief among Aristotelian scholars that, according to Aristotle, per se accidents are properties in the following sense of the word:

Top. 102: a Property that which, while not showing the essence of its subject, belongs counterpredicated of thing.

But in 1970, Jonathan Barnes published a paper(1), where he defended the view that per se accidents are not properties. A consequence of this was that the 'predicables' were not well defined by Aristotle.

In this paper, I will try to show that Barnes is mistaken. The argument he offers in support of his view seems to be a very good one, but it involves a faulty move." (p. 110)

(1) Barnes, Jonathan, "Property in Aristotle's Topics", Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie 52 (1970) 136-155.

16. Hamlyn, David W. 1961. "Aristotle on Predication." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 6:110-126.

"In dealing with the Greek Philosophers we tend to take the notion of predication for granted: we tend to assume that we have the right to use the term 'predicate' without question, in discussing the theories put forward by e.g. Plato and Aristotle. An example of this tendency is the common assertion that Plato held that the Forms were self-predicable. While this assertion may be in some sense true, it does assume that the notion of predication may be taken for granted. This assumption is, perhaps, partly due to a further assumption that the notion of predication is a logical or even grammatical notion, and that Plato and Aristotle must therefore have seen its importance and employed it accordingly. I wish to question that assumption in Aristotle's case.

I have already questioned it in connection with Plato,(1) saying that Plato was continually trying to account for what we should call predication in terms of notions akin to that of identity. It is tempting to assume that because Aristotle had the term 'predicate' at his disposal, he must have known all about the notion. It is moreover, a feasible suggestion that in Aristotle 'κατηγορέιν' is a technical term the origins of which are obvious. The use of the phrase 'κατηγορέιν τι κατά τινος' stems from legal contexts; it thus comes to mean 'to maintain or assert something of something' and it perhaps retains something of an accusatorial aura.

But while the use of the phrase implies that Aristotle knew in some sense something about what it is to assert something of another thing, it does not imply that he could ipso facto provide the correct theory about it. What is true is that the trend of Aristotle's metaphysical thought led him towards a view of predication which involved treating it as something much more than a mere grammatical notion." (p. 110)

(1) See my "The Communion of Forms and the Development of Plato's Logic" Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 5. No. 21, I9S5, pp. 289 ff.

17. ———. 1978. "Focal Meaning." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society no. 78:1-18.

"In recent years much philosophical scholarship has been devoted to the place in Aristotle's thinking of what G. E. L. Owen has called 'focal meaning'; and much is due to Professor Owen in particular in this connexion. Less attention has perhaps been given to the question whether Aristotle should be complimented on that idea - whether, that is, the concept is one that we should welcome and accept into our inherited philosophical treasury. It is this question with which I am mainly concerned in this paper; a full answer would no doubt

demand a broader conspectus of Aristotle's thought than I can take in the space available." (p. 1)

(...)

"I have pointed out that the explanation of the uses of 'healthy' by reference to health provides no true instances of primary and secondary uses or senses of a word, let alone cases. But when Aristotle says the substance is said to be in the primary way while things in the other categories are said to be in a secondary way we may be provided with an instance of primary and secondary senses, or so it might appear. In fact we are not provided with this in a technical sense, since Aristotle does not operate with a sense and reference distinction. That is why I, as in effect Aristotle normally does, put the point in terms of something's being said to be in a primary or secondary way.

That homonymy is for Aristotle something that belongs to things in relation to words rather than to words simpliciter is notorious; hence he approaches the relation between words and things from the side of things, rather than from the side of words as we are perhaps inclined to do." (pp. 6-7)

18. Harari, Orna. 2011. "The Unity of Aristotle's Category of Relatives." Classical Quarterly no. 61:521-537.

"In Categories 7 Aristotle discusses relative terms, which he defines in the opening paragraph of this chapter as ‘things as are said to be just what they are, of or than other things, or in some other way in relation to something else’ (6a36–7).(1) In clarifying this definition, he presents two lists of examples; the first contains ‘greater’ and ‘double’ and the second contains ‘states’, ‘conditions’, ‘perception’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘position’ (6a38–b3). The terms of the second list seem to be foreign to this discussion. The definition of relatives and the terms presented in the first list suggest that relatives are incomplete predicates or relational attributes,(2) but states, conditions, perception, knowledge and position are complete predicates.

Linguistic usage does not require these terms to be followed by a preposition.

The difficulty involved in understanding the place of conditions and states in the category of relatives extends beyond linguistic considerations. Other linguistically complete predicates are included in Aristotle’s category of relatives, but their categorial status seems pretty obvious. ‘Slave’, for instance, is a linguistically complete term, but it can easily be construed as implicitly referring to the correlative ‘master’: that is, the proposition ‘x is a slave’ may be construed as implying the proposition ‘x is a slave of y (when y stands for x’s master). Similarly, the term ‘large’, though linguistically complete, implies (as Aristotle says in Categories 6) that its subject is larger than other things of its kind (5b15–20). By contrast, the categorial status of conditions and states remains uncertain, even if their correlatives are supplied, because they seem to be internal dispositions of their subjects rather than relational attributes." (p. 521)

(1) Ackrill’s translation.

(2) For this interpretation see J.L. Ackrill, Aristotle’s Categories and De Interpretatione (Oxford, 1962), 98; M. Mignucci, ‘Aristotle’s definition of relatives in Categories 7’, Phronesis 31 (1986), 101–29, at 103–4.

19. Harter, Edward D. 1975. "Aristotle on Primary ΟΥΣΙΑ." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 57:1-20.

"In Categories 1-5 Aristotle argues that the primary ουσία (the most fundamental sort of being there is) is the concrete individual and that the secondary ουσία (the second-most fundamental sort of being there is) is the είδος (species) or γένος (genus) of a concrete individual. In Metaphysics Z-H he argues that the primary ουσία is the είδος of a concrete individual, that the secondary ουσία is the concrete individual, and that the γένος is not ουσία at all.

This raises some serious questions concerning the Categories, the Metaphysics, and primary ουσία.

Some scholars have maintained that this difference between the two treatises is merely apparent (e. g., terminological) and that the doctrine in the Metaphysics does not conflict with the one in the Categories; others that it is real and that the doctrine in the Metaphysics is the precise contrary of the one in the Categories.

l believe that neither of these views is correct, and I shall argue that the difference is indeed real but that it does not consist in this simple volte-face. The difference consists in the fact that in the Metaphysics εϊδος is conceived as the particular form, and not merely the universal species, of a concrete individual, whereas it is not so conceived in the Categories; this marks a radical development in Aristotle's metaphysical reasoning. I shall begin by developing briefly each of the two doctrines of ουσία (Section I); I shall then examine the relations between them (Sections II—IV); and I shall conclude by making some general observations on the Categories and the Metaphysics (Section -V)." (p. 1)

20. Hegarty, Seamus. 1969. "Aristotle’s Notion of Quantity and Modern Mathematics." Philosophical Studies (Dublin) no. 18:25-35.

21. Heinaman, Robert. 1981. "Non-Substantial Individuals in the Categories." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 26 (295):307.

Abstract: "There is a dispute as to what sort of entity non-substantial individuals are in Aristotle's Categories. The traditional interpretation holds that non-substantial individuals are individual qualities, quantities, etc. For example, Socrates' white is an individual quality belonging to him alone, numerically distinct from (though possibly specifically identical with) other individual colors. I will refer to these sorts of entities as 'individual instances.'

The new interpretation (1) suggests instead that non-substantial individuals are atomic species such as a specific shade of white that is indivisible into more specific shades. On this view, non-substantial individuals are what we would call universals (2) which can be present in different individual substances, but are labelled 'individuals' by Aristotle because, like individual substances, there is nothing they are said of. (3)

In this paper I will defend the traditional account by attempting to show that it is supported by the slender textual evidence that is available. I will begin by stating three serious objections to the traditional interpretation. Next I will show that in works later than the Categories Aristotle accepted individual instances of properties of the sort found in the Categories by the traditional interpretation. Finally, I will set out the evidence that supports the traditional interpretation and answer the three objections."

(1) G. E. L. Owen, "Inherence," Phronesis (1965), pp. 97-105; Michael Frede, "Individuen bei Aristoteles," Antike and Abendland (1978), pp. 16-31. In fact, it is not clear to me what Professor Frede considers non-substantial individuals to be. While he refers approvingly to Owen, Owen's account collapses the distinction between είδει εν and ἀριθμό εν in the case of non-substances whereas it appears that Frede wishes to retain this distinction (pp. 23-24). Since he does not explain what individual non-substances which are numerically different but specifically identical are supposed to be or in virtue of what they are numerically different, by the "new interpretation" I will mean solely that explained in the text.

(2) This is not, as Allen, Matthews and Cohen think, an objection to the new interpretation (R. E. Allen, "Individual Properties in Aristotle's Categories," Phronesis (1969), p. 37; Gary Matthews and S. Marc Cohen, "The One and the Many," Review of Metaphysics (1968), pp. 640-41). There is no justification for the presupposition that Aristotle must have used the terms 'individual' and 'universal' in the Categories in the same way as in later works or as they are used today. (Of course, the word καθόλου' does not appear in the Categories).

(3) That is, for any individual x there is no y such that the name and definition of x are predicable of y (2a19-27).

22. Hetherington, Stephen. 1984. "A Note on Inherence." Ancient Philosophy:218-223.

"In Aristotle's Categories (2a34-b6: see also Meta. VII. 1), the category of substance is claimed to be prior in existence to the various categories of nonsubstance.

This priority is articulated in the Categories largely via Aristotle's relation of inherence. The latter is one of two relations whereby Aristotle purports to quarter the furniture of the world, the members of the categories. The other is that of 'being said of'. The quartering is effected thus (Cat. 1 a20-b9): some things are said of others but are not in anything: other things are said of a subject as well as being in a subject: still others are not said of anything, but are in a subject: the rest are neither said of nor in something; and these four combinations are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive.

Now, while the said-of relation is fairly straightforward, the inherence relation is not. According to Cat. 2a1 9-26, y is said of x if and only if y's name and y's definition, or account, are both predicated of x. And y is in x if and only if... what?

There are several competing interpretations of Aristotle's inherence relation, but it is not my aim in this paper to choose among them. I do want, however, to sharpen the terms of the debate by formulating a particularly important one of those interpretations, G .E.L. Owen's, much more clearly than it has hitherto been formulated.

We will then be in a better position to evaluate the various merits of Owen's interpretation, some of which, up to now, have not been clearly perceived. Aristotle's notion of inherence is a technical one, but it is one that relies on a comparatively nontechnical notion of inherence. We shall see that understanding the latter is the key to the former, and hence that once the technical notion is precisely understood, Owen's interpretation can itself be properly assessed." (p. 218, notes omitted)

23. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1959. "Aristotle and the Ambiguity of Ambiguity." Inquiry no. 2:137-151.

Reprinted as Chapter 1 in: J. Hintikka, Time and Necessity. Studies in Aristotle's Theory of Modality, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973 pp. 1-26.

"Chapter I is a revised and expanded version of a paper which appeared under the same title in Inquiry, 2 (1959), 137-51. In its present form it also incorporates most of my note, 'Different Kinds of Equivocation in Aristotle', Journal of the History of Philosophy, 9 (1971), 368-72." (Time and Necessity, Preface, VII).

"Homonymy v. synonymyAristotle explains his sense of homonymy (together with that of the contrary notion of synonymy) in the beginning of the Categories.

According to these explanations, two things are synonymous if both the same name (i.e. term) and the same definition (λόγος) are applicable to them. They are homonymous if they share only the name, the definitions (λόγοι) being different in the two cases. (In these definitions, λόγος should perhaps be understood as an explanatory phrase or an account of the meaning of the name rather than as a definition.) I have already pointed out that Aristotle sometimes violates his own definition of homonymy.

Similarly, he violates the definition of synonymy at least once by calling a pair of objects synonyms although, according to his own considered judgement, they share only the name but not the definition. (6)

These violations are little more than occasional reversions to looser usage. But in another respect Aristotle violates the definitions of homonymy and synonymy given in Categories 1 almost systematically. In so far as the definitions are concerned, only things can be called homonymous or synonymous, not words. And two things can be called synonymous only if the same term is applied to them. Both these limitations are transgressed by Aristotle. A word is said to be homonymous in De Gen. et Corr. 1 6. 322b29 ff.; (7) and similar uses of the notion of synonymy are found in Top. VIII 13. 162b37, Soph. El. 5. 167a24 and in Rhet. III 2. 1404b37-1405a2. In many other passages, too, Aristotle is obviously interested exclusively in the word and not in the things to which it is applied. In fact, he sometimes seems to express synonymy and homonymy by such phrases as εν σεμαινειν and πολλά σεμαινειν (or πλείω σεμαινειν), respectively. In the sequel, we shall take the same liberty as Aristotle and talk about synonymy (homonymy) in connection both with certain terms and with the entities to which they are applied." (p. 9)

(6) See Met. A 6. 987b10; cf. 9. 990b6, 991a6, and Met. I 10. 1059a13.

(7) Cf. also Top. V 2. I 29b30 ff.

24. ———. 1983. "Semantical Games, the Alleged Ambiguity of 'Is' and Aristotelian Categories." Synthese no. 54:443-468.

Reprinted in: J. Hintikka, Analysis of Aristotle. Selected Papers, Vol. 6, Dordrecht: Springer 2004, pp. 23-44.

"Our findings concerning the multiple relations between different semantical phenomena may thus be summed up in the form of a list of correlated distinctions. They amount to differences among the following:

(10) (i) Different wh-words (and phrases).

(ii) Different widest classes of entities over which English quantifiers can range.

(iii) Different uses of the existential is in English.

(iv) Different uses of the is of identity in English.

(v) Different uses of the predicative is in English.

(vi) Different classes (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive) of simple predicates of English." (p. 35)

(..)

"Aristotelian categories reconstructed

At this point, a philosophical reader is likely to have a vivid déjà vu experience. For what seems to be emerging as a consequence of the basic assumptions of game-theoretical semantics is nothing but a modernized version of Aristotle’s doctrine of categories, not in its details (after all, Aristotle was dealing with a different language), but in all of its leading theoretical ideas. Aristotelian scholars have found the combination of different ideas in Aristotle’s distinction between different categories intensely puzzling. These different aspects of Aristotle’s theory include the following:

(11) (i) Different questions one can ask about a given entity, and hence different question words (and certain related phrases) in a language. (Cf. Ockham (Loux), pp. 8–9; Ackrill, p. 79; Gomperz, p. 39; Kahn, passim.) Several scholars have argued on this basis that Aristotle’s distinction is firmly based on the structure of Greek (Trendelenburg, Benveniste, Kahn).

(ii) Different highest predicates under one or other of which everything that is has to fall (Bonitz et al.).

(iii)–(v) Different senses of verbs for being in their different uses: (iii) existential, (iv) copulative (Apelt, etc.), (v) identifying.

(vi) Different widest classes of primitive predicates in the language in question. Indeed, (vi) is closest to Aristotle’s explanation of the categories in his Categoriae (see 1b25–2a10)." (pp. 35-36)

References

Apelt, O.: 1891, Beiträge zur Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie, Leipzig.

Benveniste, Emile: 1966, ‘Categories de pensée et catégories de langue’, in Problèmes de linguistique générale, Gallimard, Paris, pp. 63–74.

Bonitz, Hermann: 1853, Uber die Kategorien des Aristoteles, Staatsdruckerei, Vienna.

Gomperz, Theodor: 1912, Greek T hinkers, vol. 4 (tr. by G.G. Berry), Murray, London.

Kahn, Charles: 1978, ‘Questions and categories’, in Henry Hiz (ed.), Questions, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, pp. 227–78.

Loux, Michael J.: 1974, translator and editor, Ockham’s Theory of Terms, Notre Dame.

Trendelenburg, Adolf: 1846, Geschichte der Kategorienlehre, Bethge, Berlin.

25. ———. 1986. "The Varieties of Being in Aristotle." In The Logic of Being: Historical Studies, edited by Knuuttila, Simo and Hinitkka, Jaakko, 81-114. Dodrecht: Kluwer.

"In this paper, I shall try to enhance our understanding of Aristotle's thought by relating it to certain contemporary problems and insights of philosophical logicians. Now one of the most central current issues in philosophical logic is a challenge to a hundred-year old dogma. Almost all twentieth-century philosophers in English-speaking countries have followed Frege and Russell and claimed that the words for being in natural languages - "is", "ist", ἔστι, etc. - are ambiguous between the is of predication, the is of existence, the is of identity, and the generic is. The significance of this ambiguity thesis has not been limited to topical discussions but has extended to historical studies, including studies of ancient Greek philosophy." (p. 81).

(...)

"One of the most fundamental and most perplexing questions concerning Aristotle's distinction between different categories is: What is being distinguished from each other? What is Aristotle classifying in separating the different categories from each other?"

(...)

"Scholars have debated intensively which of these different things Aristotle "reaJly" meant. For example, one persuasion maintains that the categories represent the different kinds of questions one can (according to Aristotle) ask of a given entity. This view is in different variants held by among others Ockham, Charles Kahn, Benveniste, and Ackrill.

Other scholars hold that Aristotelian categories are what he says they are, predicables. Others, led by the formidable Hermann Bonitz, have held that categories were for Aristotle first and foremost the widest genera of entities." (p. 100)

(...)

"Still others have held that Aristotle's category distinction is primarily a differentiation between several senses of esti, a reminder of the "systematic ambiguity" of words for being in Aristotle. This view is found, e.g., in Phys. A 2, 185 b 25 - 32. Among commentators, it has been represented by Heinrich Maier, and in a sense it can be maintained that G. E. L. Owen is another case in point. He has certainly been followed by a host of younger scholars." (pp. 100-101)

26. Hood, Pamela M. 2004. Aristotle on the Category of Relation. Washington: The University Press of America.

Contents: Preface IX; Acknowledgements XI; Part One: The Exegesis; Chapter 1: The Critics' Charges 1; Chapter 2: Categories 7 21; Chapter 3: Metaphysics V.15 55; Chapter 4: Interpreting Aristole's Relatives 85; Chapter 5: Epistemological Issues; Chapter 6: Conclusion 141; Notes 143; Bibliography 147; Index 151-154.

"Many philosophers believe that Aristotle does not have, and indeed could not have, a theory of relation, even one that accounts for relations involving two terms, i.e., dyadic relations. Aristotle's logical, metaphysical and ontological views, especially his substance-accident ontology, are seen as restricting Aristotle to only one-place or monadic relations, and prohibiting the logical space for a separate entity, relation, to exist. Hence, Aristotle's conception of relation is perceived to be so divergent from our own that it does not count as a theory of relation at all. I aim to show that the critics are wrong to speak so poorly of Aristotle's account of relation.

I argue that Aristotle's theory has some of the basic features that a theory of relation must have. I begin in Part One by sketching out the critics' charges. I then outline the main features of Aristotle's philosophy that inform his treatment of the category of relation, and briefly survey Aristotle's discussion of relational issues scattered throughout the corpus. Next, I present an exegesis of Aristotle's two central texts on relation, Categories 7 and Metaphysics V 15, and discuss the various accounts of relational entities or relatives therein. In Part Two, I examine two problems. First, I address the problem of how best to interpret Aristotle's relatives. Second, I explore the epistemological difficulties stemming from Aristotle's view in the Categories that relation involves two relative items or terms and that if one relative item is known definitely the other item must also be known definitely.

I conclude that Aristotle's treatment of relatives reveals his commitment to the view that there be a dyad, i.e., at least two items, involved in a relation. Furthermore, I show that Aristotle includes in his theory something that accounts for the relation itself, i.e., something approaching a logical relational predicate. I do not suggest that Aristotle attempts to construct a relational theory comparable to our own. But I do suggest that given Aristotle's grasp of the dyadic nature of relation, we have good reason to believe Aristotle's theory of relation is more robust than many suspect." (Preface, p. IX)

27. Husik, Isaac. 1904. "On the Categories of Aristotle." The Philosophical Review no. 13:514-528.

Reprinted (conjoined with Husik 1939) in: I. Husik, The Categories of Aristotle (1942).

"The little treatise of Aristotle which stands at the head of the Organon has caused a great deal of difficulty to students, both ancient and modern. The bulk of the discussion has centered about the question of its place in the Organon and in Aristotle's system, and the character of the ten categories to which the greater part of the book is devoted. But there have been found also critics who expressed a doubt as to the authenticity of all or part of the treatise in question. To say nothing of the ancient commentators of Aristotle, the earliest attempt in modern times to cast a doubt on the genuineness of the work seems to be that of Spengel in Münchener Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1845, Vol. XX, No. 5, pp. 41 sq. He was followed by Prantl in Zeitschrift für Alterthumswissenschaft, 1846, p. 646, and in his Geschichte der Logik, I, p. 90, Note. 5, also by Valentinus Rose in De Aristotelis librorum ordine et auctoritate, p. 234 sq. Zeller, on the other hand (Philos. d. Griechen, second edition, II, pt. 2, p. 67, note i), decides in favor of the genuineness of the first part of the work, the Categories proper, and against the so-called Postpraedicamenta from ch. X to the end." (p. 514)

(...)

"I have shown, I trust, not only that the treatise of the Categories is closely related to that of the Topics, but also that it was written before the latter and serves as a basis for it upon which it builds, very often going beyond the Categories. This applies to the first nine chapters, properly called Categories, in the same measure as to the Postpraedicamenta. The unity of the book of the Categories as we now have it is also maintained by Valentinus Rose (De Arist. libr. ord., etc., p. 235). Ergo, the whole work is genuine, and its peculiar character is to be explained on the ground of its being one of the earliest attempts of Aristotle." (p. 528)

28. ———. 1939. "The Authenticity of Aristotle's Categories." Journal of Philosophy no. 36:427-431.

With a postrscrit by William David Ross.

Reprinted (conjoined with Husik 1904) in: I. Husik, The Categories of Aristotle (1942).

"Habent sua fata libelli. Thirty-four years ago I published a paper, "On the Categories of Aristotle," in the Philosophical Review.(2) Like the case of the proverbial Irishman who desired to be buried in a Jewish cemetery because that was the last place the devil would look for an Irishman, so it seems that the Philosophical Review at that time was the last place where an Aristotelian scholar would look for a literary-historical article on the Categories of Aristotle. And so the article was stillborn. No European student of Aristotle knew about it and it did not find its way into the bibliographies of the subject. Dupréel, whose article on the same subject appeared five years later,(3) does not refer to my article and shows no knowledge of it." (p. 427)

(...)

"There would be no point in reproducing here the arguments advanced in my article of long ago. All I need do here is to give the gist of the argument, which can be done in a few sentences.

An examination of the treatise of the Categories and a comparison thereof with the Topics, in respect of terminology, style, and doctrine, proves conclusively that they are either the work of one author or that one was a close and deliberate imitator of the other. The same examination shows that the Categories was written before the Topics. Hence, since no one doubts the genuineness of the Topics, the Categories must be equally genuine, for no one has suggested that some one before Aristotle wrote the Categories, which Aristotle imitated in the Topics.

Dupréel, as I said before, is the only one who has made a considerable contribution to the question since my article was published.

His argument has no point of contact with mine, for he compares the Categories not with the Topics, but with the Metaphysics, and finds that they do not agree in doctrine.

I have no reason to quarrel with Dupréel when he tries to show that the first nine chapters, the categories proper, and the last six chapters, the Postpraedicamenta, are a unit and the work of the same author, for my comparison of the treatise with the Topics has led me to the same conclusion." (p. 429)

(2) Vol. XIII (1904), pp. 514-528. "Differences" on page 517, line 10 from bottom, should read "diffuseness."

29. ———. 1942. "The Categories of Aristotle." In Philosophical Essays in Honor of Edgar Arthur Singer Jr., edited by Clarke, F. P. and Nahm, C. M., 317-334. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Two articles conjoined: "The Categories of Aristotle" (1930) and "On the Categories of Aristotle" (1904).

Reprinted in: I. Husik, Philosophical Essays. Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern, Edited by Milton C. Nahm and Leo Strauss, Oxford: Blackwell, 1952, pp. 96-112.

30. Irwin, Terence H. 1981. "Homonymy in Aristotle." The Review of Metaphysics no. 34:523-544.

"What, then, are Aristotle's conditions for homonymy and multivocity?

It is often assumed that the conditions are different, but that they both reflect differences in the senses of words. 1 I will argue" that each of these assumptions is less than the whole truth; homonymy and multivocity are often the same, and neither is intended to mark different senses of words." (pp. 523-524, note omitted)

(...)

[Aristotle] search for homonymy is not meant to encourage skepticism about the existence of essences for words to name, but to forestall skepticism that might result from the rejection of the Platonic attempt to see one essence for every name; Aristotle does not want to renounce the search for essences, but only to recognize different essences correlated with the same name. While the Wittgensteinian arguments about family resemblance are arguments against essentialism, Aristotle's arguments are a defence of essentialism. The difficulties in his doctrine of homonymy are difficulties in his general views about real essences." (p. 544)

31. Jacobs, William. 1979. "Aristotle and Nonreferring Subjects." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 24:282-300.

"It is a widely accepted view amongst scholars that Aristotle believed that the subject of an assertion might fail to refer. Two texts, De Interpretatione xi 21 a 25-28 and Categories x 13 b 12-35, are generally cited as evidence for this belief. In this paper I will argue that both passages have previously been misunderstood and that Aristotle did not accept the possible referential failure of the subject of an assertion. In Section I, after first discussing the standard interpretations of both texts, I note the difficulties which result from these accounts. In Section II I offer a brief general argument showing that Aristotle's own account of what an assertion is implies that it is impossible for the subject of an assertion to fail to refer. In Section III I present my own analysis of each passage and show that when properly understood neither is in any way concerned with the problem of referential failure." (p. 282)

32. Jacquette, Dale. 2012. "Brentano on Aristotle’s Categories: First Philosophy and the Manifold Senses of Being." In Franz Brentano's Psychology and Metaphysics: Upon the Sesquicentennial of Franz Brentano’s Dissertation, edited by Tănăsescu, Ion, 53-94. Bucharest: Zeta Books.

"Brentano’s 1862 dissertation, Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles, is a scholarly historical study and philosophical consideration of Aristotle’s theory of categories.

The categories in Aristotle’s first philosophy, as Brentano interprets them, are the mutually independent predicates of being at the highest levels of generality, in the variety of ways in which we speak about being. If correctly identified, the categories should correspond exactly to the multiple modes of existence or ways of being that are available to primary substances in the actual world as Aristotle conceptualizes them. As such, they are the categories not only of our predicative thoughts, but of the real existence of primary substances.

Aristotle’s categories accordingly constitute the rock bottom of his first philosophy. They are his ontology, built on the Greek word “ontos” for “being”; or, better, melding “ousia” as Aristotle’s Greek term for ‘substance’, they are the fundamental concepts of his ousiology. The categories as the hierarchy of ways in which substance can have being are at the heart of Aristotle’s metaphysics in his theory of pure being, of being as such or being qua being. To the extent that Aristotle’s conceptual scheme for the being of substances captures the truth about the real objects whose multiple senses of being are thereby conceptualized, the categories of an Aristotelian first philosophy, as Brentano understands them, systematize the nature of being itself, of the most general ways and general senses in which anything can exist or be correctly said to exist. These not merely correspond to but are constitutive of the manifold ways in which being can be intelligibly predicated of things." (pp. 53-54 a note omitted)

33. Jansen, Ludger. 2011. "Aristotle's Categories." Topoi no. 26:153-158.

"We need reliable techniques of information retrieval: search engines, indices, and categorisation.

Faced with such an urgent need for categorisation, a book on categories is more than welcome.

Aristotle, a young philosopher from Athens in Greece with a Macedonian background, has now published a philosophical investigation on this topic.

Such could be the beginning of a review of Aristotle’s Categories, were it published today. The aim of this essay as an ‘‘Untimely Review’’ is to speculate how such a review would continue. Such an exercise in counterfactual history is easier when we review some neglected and hitherto uninfluential text. For such a text can really have a fresh impact on contemporary philosophy, whereas a classic text, being neither neglected nor uninfluential, is, as a rule, already an active force that has shaped and continues to shape the philosophical landscape. This applies in particular in the case of Aristotle’s Categories, which has been for more than two millennia one of the most influential textbooks in philosophy." (p. 353)

(...)

"How could such a review conclude? Maybe thus: Aristotle’ Categories can help to find our way around the internet. The first question of any retrieval technique that is more than a search for strings of characters should be: To which category does the thing that I am searching for belong? Aristotle’s little treatise suggests helpful changes in perspective that could benefit contemporary ontology, and especially the steadily growing field of applied ontology. They can give new impulses towards applications in biomedical, legal or business information sciences, but also inspire new work on the old question: What is being?" (p. 158)

34. Jones, Barrington. 1972. "Individuals in Aristotle's Categories." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy:107-123.

"With the publication of J. L. Ackrill's translation of the Categories(1) and G. E. L. Owen's paper "Inherence"(2) a dispute has arisen over what Aristotle means in that work by an individual where the individuals in question are not prime substances. The bulk of published opinion has favoured Ackrill's account of the matter,(3) an account which is also found in the writings of W. D. Ross and Miss Anscombe.(4) However, this account involves certain difficulties.

The major difficulty is an internal one, the question of the interpretation of 2 a 34-b 6. This passage is described by Ackrill as "compressed and careless,"(5) while Owen claims that the matter "is put beyond question" in favour of his own view by the lines, and that "by themselves they settle the issue."(6) A second immediate difficulty is that such non-substantial individuals do not seem to reappear elsewhere in the Aristotelian corpus and are absent even from his discussion of the various categories in the Categories itself." (p. 107)

(...)

"Accordingly, I wish to re-examine the issue. I shall try to show that what Aristotle means by a non-substantial individual is fully captured by neither of the two current accounts, that 2 a 34-b 6 has been misconstrued by both parties, that Aristotle's account is entirely reasonable, relying simply on an accurate observation of what is presupposed by the activity of counting, and, finally, that the account offered in the present paper enables us to understand aright his distinction between synonymy, homonymy and paronymy.(9)" (p. 108)

(1) Aristotle's Categories and De Interpretatione (Oxford, 1963).

(2) Phronesis, X (1965), pp. 97-105.

(3) v. J. M. E. Moravcsik, "Aristotle on Predication," Philosophical Review, LXXVI (1967), pp. 80-96; G. B. Matthews and S. M. Cohen, "The One and the Many," Review of Metaphysics, XXI (1968), pp. 630-655; R. E. Allen, "Individual Properties in Aristotle's Categories," Phronesis, XIV (1969), pp. 31-39.

(4) W. D. Ross, Aristotle (London, 1923), p. 24, n.1.; G. E. M. Anscombe and P. T. Geach, Three Philosophers (New York, 1961), pp. 7-10.

(5) Ackrill, p. 83.

(6) "Inherence," p. 100.

(9) I shall suppose that the Categories is a genuine work of Aristotle's. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from the Categories are those of Ackrill and all translations from elsewhere in the corpus are my own. The technical vocabulary of the Categories is used according to Ackrill's translation throughout.

35. ———. 1975. "An Introduction to the First Five Chapters of Aristotle's Categories." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 20:146-172.

"In an earlier paper (1) I have argued that a satisfactory account of Aristotle's postulation of individuals, both substantial and nonsubstantial, in the Categories can be achieved by taking seriously his characterization of these individuals as things that are 'one in number' and by interpreting this characterization as 'a unit in a possible act of enumeration'. This approach to the Categories as important consequences for the interpretation of the remainder of the work.

In this essay I wish to present an account of the first five chapters (bar chapter 4 which lays out the categories themselves) based on the former paper.

In particular, I wish to examine the fourfold division of 'the things that are' in chapter 2 and the two relations of 'being said of' and 'being in' (or, rather, 'existing in') that are used to construct this fourfold division, and the nature of 'primary substance' (or, rather, 'primary being') and the basis for its distinction from 'secondary substance' (or, rather, 'secondary being'). The account that will be developed here is substantially and importantly different from any other that I am aware of, and, even if it does not secure conviction, its publication will hopefully make the dogma that the Categories is a 'common-sensical' work less readily tenable and force a re-thinking of the usual account of the work." (p. 146)

(1) "Individuals in Aristotle's Categories," Phronesis, 17 (1972) 107-123.

36. Jones, J. R. 1949. "Are the Qualities of Particular Things Universal or Particular?" The Philosophical Review no. 58:152-170.

"There are some curious things in the opening chapters of Aristotle's Categoriae. One is the admission, which seems to justify Porphyry's inclusion of the species as a fifth predicable, that "man" can be predicated of "the individual man." Another is the hint of a sense in which the qualities of a particular thing share in its particularity.

A distinction drawn in the second chapter between "presence in a subject" and "assertability of a subject" yields a division of fundamental entities in which the opposition of "man" to "this individual man" is paralleled by a similar opposition of "white" to "this individual white." This doctrine is nowhere else repeated in Aristotle' and may have little relevance to a study of the development of the Peripatetic philosophy. But it does seem to me to provide a significant alternative to the view that all that is adjectival to a thing, that is, every quality of it, is universal. I have become increasingly dissatisfied with this view and would like, in what follows, to examine the alternative to it which seems to be implied in the passage of Aristotle's to which I am referring." [Cat. 1a, 16-1b, 9.] (p. 152)

(...)

"I submit that Aristotle pointed to the correct solution of his problem (but regrettably missed the significance of it) when he suggested that what is "present in" substance, namely, its accidents or attributes, can be "individual and one in number." For the moment it is thus recognized that characters may occur unrepeatably, the bare substantival "this" becomes clothed in the content of an adjectival or attributive "thisness" and its individual essence need no longer be sought in an empty material substratum.(34)

The view that characters are necessarily universals has been held by philosophers who have insisted that recognition presupposes acquaintance with a bare "this." But I should have thought it selfevident that an object which we may know by merely confronting must have content, as well as an existence, that is irrecurrably its own." (p. 170)

(34) It is sometimes claimed that Aristotle redeemed his doctrine of individual essence by suggesting that the individual may possess a distinct form as well as distinct matter, that is, content, as well as a substrate, that is irrecurrably its own. But, as Cook Wilson has seen, it is only in terms of a doctrine of particular qualities that this suggestion can be made good. Speaking of Aristotle's description of particularity as "matter which has the form," he points out that "form" here must be "the particular quality of the thing and not the universal; it is the particular definiteness of the thing" (S.I. ii, 713).

37. Kahn, Charles H. 1978. "Questions and Categories. Aristotle's Doctrine of Categories in the Light of Modern Research." In Questions, edited by Hiz, Henry, 227-278. Dordrecht: Reidel.

"The categories of Aristotle do not represent a complete logical inventory, a classification of all terms or concepts represented in language. They do attempt to classify all the terms of a basic object language, where these terms are specified by the questions that can be asked or answered concerning an individual subject. Hence the number of categories will be determined by the number of fundamentally distinct questions that can be raised concerning such a subject. As has often been pointed out, the full list of ten given in the Categories and in Topics 1.9 suggests that Aristotle must have taken a human being as his specimen subject, for only in this case would the two minor categories, Posture and Having (or Clothing) be natural topics of inquiry.

There is, then, a factual connection between Aristotle's list of categories and the linguistic forms of question or inquiry. But what is the philosophical significance of this connection? Reflection on this matter may proceed along two quite distinct lines of thought, each of which could provide material for a study devoted to questions and categories. On the one hand, we might consider Aristotle's doctrine simply as an early example of the genre, and widen the concept of category to include modern theories of logical, conceptual, and grammatical categories. Our topic would then become: the connection between interrogative forms and categorial distinctions in general. On the other hand, we may keep our attention fixed on Aristotle's doctrine but generalize the remark about interrogative forms to include other grammatical or linguistic considerations. Our topic will then be: the significance of the connections between Aristotle's scheme of categories and certain facts of grammar, including the grammar of questions in Greek. It is this second topic that I propose to study here: I will discuss Aristotle's theory, not category theories in general." (pp. 227-228, notes omitted)

(...)

"The doctrine of categories is not, after all, the central thesis in Aristotle’s ontology. It provides a kind of introduction to metaphysics and to theoretical philosophy in general, by sorting and circumscribing the domain of things that are beings per se, ‘in their own right’. When the categorial scheme is applied in connection with the focal meaning of being, it effects a preliminary unification and ordering of this domain in its ontological dependence on substance or ‘entity’. But in the final analysis the scheme does not tell us what is to count as an entity or how the structure of a substance is to be understood. The deeper analysis of substance itself and its relation to the dependent beings must be carried out by the use of different concepts, φυσικώς not λογκίώς as Aristotle will sometimes say, concepts derived not from the theory of predication but designed specifically for the analysis of natural motion and change: concepts like mover and goal (τέλος), matter and form, potency and act. Both physics and metaphysics culminate in the theory of the Unmoved Mover, the entity (or entities) whose being is actuality, the final cause of all motion and change, the ‘primary substance’ on which all other substances depend (Λ.7, 1072b 14; cf. Γ.2, 1003b16—17, E.1, 1026a27-31). In this ultimate perspective for ontology, which Aristotle himself never worked out in full detail, the preliminary contribution of the categories in distinguishing substance from the various kinds of dependent beings must seem quite modest and elementary. All the more reason, however, why the categorial scheme itself should be firmly rooted in humble, everyday questions like What is it? How big? Of what sort or quality? In relation to what? Where? and When?" (p. 266)

38. Kampa, Samuel, and Wilkins, Shane Maxwell. 2018. "Aristotle as a Non Classical Trope Theorist." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 35:117-136.

"A common refrain in Aristotle scholarship is that Aristotle countenances tropes. Roughly, trope theory is the view that properties are abstract particulars. In contemporary metaphysics, trope theory is an alternative to realism—the view that properties are abstract universals—and to nominalism—the view that properties are neither abstract particulars nor abstract universals. While contemporary trope theorists sometimes cite Aristotle as an influence, Aristotle’s trope theory has yet to be thoroughly cashed out in the language of contemporary metaphysics. Contemporary trope theory is not monolithic, so the claim that “Aristotle is a trope theorist” only communicates so much about Aristotle’s view. A more informative analysis would specify what kind of trope theorist Aristotle is. In this paper, we provide such an analysis.

We begin by describing realism, nominalism, and trope theory interms recognizable to both historians of philosophy and contemporary metaphysicians. We distinguish two species of trope theory: classical and nonclassical. On the basis of critical passages from Aristotle’s Categories and Metaphysics, we argue that Aristotle’s view of properties aligns most closely with nonclassical trope theory. We conclude with a call for further research on Aristotle’s distinctive contribution to debates in contemporary trope theory." (p. 117)

39. Kapp, Ernst. 1942. Greek Foundations of Traditional Logic. New York: Columbia University Press.

Contents: Preface V-VIII; I. The origin of logic as a science 5; II. Concepts, terms, definitions, ideas, categories 20; III. Judgments, subject and predicate 43; IV. Syllogisms 60; V. Induction: ancient and modern logic 75; Books cited 89; Index 91-95.

On the categories see pp. 36-42.

"There is no doubt that the book Categories is partly responsible for the contents of this first part of traditional logic, because it professes to deal with the significance of unconnected parts of sentences; but the Topics, our earliest document, not only of Aristotle's treatment of syllogisms but also of categories, shows that the doctrine of categories was originally a doctrine of sentence-predicates and was only later transformed by Aristotle himself into some scheme for pigeonholing whatever carries a single word as its name." (p. 23)

(...)

"[Categories] contains, on the basis of a short but very interesting preparatory section (chaps. I-III), which one might call more·logical than ontological, a minute description of the first four categories (substance, quantity, relation, and quality), in which an ontological point of view seems to prevail. The doctrine here revealed is far from the flexible subtleties of Aristotle's fully developed metaphysics, but there are some striking coincidences with statements otherwise peculiar to the Topics; and the conclusion that the treatise Categories was a comparatively early work by Aris.totle himself is fairly safe.

In any case, even without reference to the question of authorship and chronology it can be stated that nowhere else in Aristotle's writings is the source of the difficulties which are inherent in the later form of the doctrine so transparent as here." (p. 40)

40. ———. 1942. Greek Foundations of Traditional Logic New York: Columbia University Press.

Contents: I. The origin of logic as a science 3; II. Concepts, terms, definitions, ideas, categories 20; III. Judgments, subject and predicate 43; IV. Syllogisms 60; V. Induction, ancient and modern logic 75; Books cited 89; Index 91-95.

"As we learn from the Topics, it was the original function of the list of different "categories" to protect against fallacies and mistakes caused by the similar linguistic form of different predications." (p. 37)

(...)

"In any case, even without reference to the question of authorship and chronology it can be stated that nowhere else in Aristotle's writings is the source of the difficulties which are inherent in the later form of the doctrine so transparent as here. The book explains its subject in the following way. Assuming that there are "things which are said," it divides them into two groups (1a,16-19): some "are said" in sentence composition, for example "(a) man runs,""(a) man wins," others "are said" without such composition, for example, "man," "ox," "runs," "wins." Now, each of these latter things-which "are said" out of sentence composition and, accordingly, without being either true or false-signifies one of the ten categories (substance or quality or quantity, and so forth). This looks at first sight as if the author were going to classify the significations of all uncombined words of language and as if the mention of sentences was merely complementary. But in fact nothing but the ten classes of sentence predicates is presented to the reader, and the actual function of the mention of sentences (previous to "things said without sentence composition") is to direct his attention exclusively to such "things said" as may be constituents of sentences like "man runs," and "man wins." Thus, there is actually no extension of the doctrine beyond its original limited subject matter; the only real difference is that things like "man," and "ox" may now be understood as sentence subjects, whereas in the original form of the doctrine the signification of the first category was derived from the meaning that predicates like "is (a) man" and "is (a) horse" display as soon as they are opposed to and compared with predicates like "is white" and "is six feet high."

Yet the historical importance of this seemingly slight change in the presentation of the doctrine of categories can scarcely be overestimated.

For, if nothing else, the illusion is certainly created that the ten classes of categories had been intended from the beginning and might be used, without scruple or further investigation, to cover the whole field of the possible signification of single words; and this is something that in ancient times, without modern transcendentalism and without modern psychology, nobody could in the long run keep distinguished from the field of "things in general." Because of the almost exclusive predominance of the treatise Categories in the development of traditional logic it is not necessary for us to consider, in their own aspect, the passages in undoubtedly Aristotelian writings, where use is made of the doctrine of categories in a wider sense than the original sense; but the complete lack of a new discussion of its principle of enumeration shows clearly that Aristotle himself was the first victim of such an illusion." (pp. 40-41)

41. Kenny, Anthony John Patrick. 1983. "A Stylometric Comparison Between Five Disputed Works and the Remainder of the Aristotelian Corpus." In Zweifelhaftes im Corpus Aristotelicum. Studien zu einigen Dubia. Akten des 9. Symposium Aristotelicum, Berlin, 7-16 September 1981, edited by Moraux, Paul and Wiesner, Jürgen, 345-366. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

[The five dubious works examined are: Categoriae, Meteorologica IV, De Motu Animalium, Metaphysica α, Metaphysica Κ.]

"What can stylometric techniques tell us about the authenticity of the five possibly Aristotelian works which are the topic of this Symposion? In the present state of our knowledge it is not easy to give a precise answer to this question. There is no doubt, to my mind, that the statistical examination of literary style is a valuable auxiliary tool in the study of the questions which interest the philologist and the philosopher who approach an ancient text. But to decide whether a work is genuine or spurious is one of the most difficult tasks for stylometry." (p. 345)

(...)

"A firm stylometric conclusion about the authenticity of the works which are the topic of this symposion would have to be based on a truly gigantic amount of investigation: investigation which would take a very long time even now when machine-readable texts of Aristotle are available and when computers will produce concordances, word counts, and statistical analyses with a modicum of effort. The present essay offers only a minute contribution to such an investigation. It studies the use of twenty-four common particles and connectives in the dubious works, comparing the four commonest of them with virtually the whole Aristotelian corpus, and the other twenty with a large sample of some three hundred thousand words, which constitute about thirty per cent of the round million words of the entire corpus. The essay will provide only tentative indications of the genuineness or spuriousness of the works in dispute; but it will illustrate the difficulties and pitfalls of the use of stylometric methods in authorship attribution studies.

The four commonest particles in the Aristotelian corpus are καί, δέ, γάρ and μέν, in that order. Between them these four particles constitute around fourteen per cent of a typical Aristotelian text. Because of their frequency and topic-neutrality they provide suitable material for statistical study. We shall use them as a starting-point for a comparison between the dubious works and the rest of the Aristotelian corpus." (pp. 346-347)

(...)

"The overall conclusion, then, of this study is as follows. We have discovered in our examination of twenty four particles no real evidence suggesting the spuriousness of Metaph. K or of Mot. Anim. But the frequencies of άλλά, δή, διό, ώσπερ and γε in Cat. and of καί, μέν, δέ, αν, γε, διό in Mete. IV are eccentric enough to be suspicious. And the overall picture of particle usage in Metaph. α appears to be quite different from that in other works of Aristotle." (pp. 365-366)

42. King, Colin Guthrie. 2018. "Aristotle’s Categories in the 19th Century." In Aristotelian Studies in 19th Century Philosophy, edited by Hartung, Gerald, King, Colin Guthrie and Rapp, Christoph, 11-36. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Abstract: "This chapter explores interpretive debates about Aristotle’s Categories in the 19th century. The interpretation of this text became the locus to pursue the further philosophical aim of defending logic against an epistemological recalibration of concepts such as that found in the transcendental and metaphysical deductions of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. As Colin Guthrie King argues, this was the ultimate philosophical ambition of Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg’s interpretation of Aristotle’s doctrine of categories, but perhaps more important than this project itself were its derivatives: a model for the proper philosophical interpretation of an ancient philosophical text, and an exemplary model of how to defend such a text against an influential anachronistic interpretation."

43. Kohl, Markus. 2008. "Substancehood and Subjecthood in Aristotle's Categories." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 53:172-179.

Abstract: "I attempt to answer the question of what Aristotle’s criteria for ‘being a substance’ are in the Categories. On the basis of close textual analysis, I argue that subjecthood, conceived in a certain way, is the criterion that explains why both concrete objects and substance universals must be regarded as substances. It also explains the substantial primacy of concrete objects. But subjecthood can only function as such a criterion if both the subjecthood of concrete objects and the subjecthood of substance universals can be understood as philosophically significant phenomena. By drawing on Aristotle’s essentialism, I argue that such an understanding is possible: the subjecthood of substance universals cannot simply be reduced to that of primary substances. Primary and secondary substances mutually depend on each other for exercising their capacities to function as subjects. Thus, subjecthood can be regarded as a philosophically informative criterion for substancehood in the Categories."

44. Kosman, Louis Aryeh. 1967. "Aristotle's First Predicament." The Review of Metaphysics no. 20:483-506.

Reprinted in: Mary L. O'Hara (ed.), Substances and Things. Aristotle's Doctrine of Physical Substance in Recent Essays, Washington: University Press of America, 1982, pp. 19-42.

"Is the aristotelian list of categories, enigmatically entitled "κατηγορίαι-predicates," a list of terms classifying types of predicates, or a list of predicates classifying types of entities? Consider two ways in which a list of categories might be generated. Given some entity, we may distinguish different types of questions which we ask about it, such that each type determines a limited and exclusive range of appropriate answers."

(...)

"Alternatively, we might attend not to the different answers appropriate to different questions asked about the same entity, but to the different answers which result when, about different entities, the same question is asked repeatedly, the question "What is it?"

(...)

"Each ultimate answer will signify a supreme and irreducible genus of entity, not a type of predicate, but a predicate, effecting a classification of things into their ultimate types." (pp. 483-484)

45. Kung, Joan. 1986. "Aristotle on "Being Is Said in Many Ways"." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 3:3-18.

"It is a well-known Aristotelian dictum that "that which is may be so called in many ways" (Met. 1003a33). He also says,"Such things as signify the schemata of predication are said to be per se. For to be signifies in the same number of ways as these are spoken of' (Met. 1017a23), and he speaks of "categories of being" (e.g. at Met. 1045b28-29). Gareth B. Matthews(1) has raised the following question with regard to passages such as those just cited: Is Aristotle supposing in such passages that (a) there are different senses of "being,"(2) or (b) there are different kinds of being, or (c) both? Matthews has shown that the claims that a term has different senses and that it refers to different kinds are not two ways of saying the same thing. We should note also that his question is not the same question as whether the categories range over things or senses. I shall assume we may be confident that Aristotle takes himself to be talking about extra-linguistic and extra-conceptual entities, and I shall say a bit more about this in Section IV below. To answer the latter question, however, is not to answer the former." (p. 3)

(1) Gareth B. Matthews, "Senses and Kinds," The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 69 (1972), pp. 149-157. (2) The presence of a neuter "the" before "being" at 1003a33 may provide some slight evidence that he is speaking of the word.

46. Kunkel, Joseph C. 1971. "A New Look at Non-Essential Predication in the “Categories”." The New Scholasticism no. 45:110-116.

"Recent commentators appear in general agreement over the essential nature of the expression 'predicated of' in Aristotle's Categories(1) 'Predicated of' denominates the genus-species-individual or essence-singular relationship. Only the species, genus, or essence is predicable of the individual subject. Accidental predication is prohibited. Moreover, the species and genera can be subjects, but individuals can never be predicates.

My opposition is not to the expression 'predicated of' including the species, genera, or essences as predicable of individuals, but to this expression as only including, or being equivalent to, that type of predication. Does 'predicated of' exclude accident. as predicable of substances? Reflecting the thinking or the other commentators, C.-H. Chen says, "What it is still more important to observe in this connection is that in the Categoriae no intergeneric predication and, therefore, also no intercategorical predication are conceived to be genuine predication.(2) I think the limitation of predication to essential, categorical lines is untenable for three reasons." (p. 110)

(1) Cf. S. Mansion, "La doctrine aristotélicienne de la substance et le traité des Categories," Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Philosophy, I, pt. II (Amsterdam, 1949), pp. 1097-98; L. M. de Rijk, The Place of the Categories of Being in Aristotle's Philosophy {Assen, 1952), p. 70; C.-H. Chen, "On Aristotle's Two Expressions: ϰαθ᾿ ὑποϰειμένου λέγεσθαι and ἐν ὑποϰειμένῳ ἐιναι" Phronesis, 2 {1957), 149-50; J. Owens, "Aristotle on Categories," Review of Metaphysics, 14 (1960-61), 75-76; J. L. Ackrill, Aristotle's Categories and De Interpretatione (Oxford, l963), pp. 74-76 ; G. E. L. Owen, "Inherence," Phronesis, 10 (1965). 97-98; and J. M. E. Moravcsik, "Aristotle on Predication," Philosophical Review, 16 (1967), 85-93.

(2) Chen, Phronesis, 2, 150.

47. Kuntz, Marion Leathers, and Grimley, Kuntz Paul. 1988. "Naming the Categories: Back to Aristotle by Way of Whitehead." The Journal of Speculative Philosophy no. 2:30-47.

"Any one who looks at Aristotle's Categories in Greek must notice that the main category is expressed by a pronoun, and all the others are adverbs and verbs.(1) Without going through innumerable commentaries and translations one cannot have a full story; but the result in Latin and English is generally to edge out the pronoun 'τι' in the question τι εστί' and to use only Aristotle's noun οὐσία and from then on all adverbs and verbs are translated into Latin or English nouns. This may seem a trivial point of grammar and indeed the dullest and somewhat dubious aspect of grammar, parts-of-speech. But if our language is to help us in ordering our activities and grouping our experiences into the structure of things and events, surely it makes a great difference whether we communicate in verbs or in nouns. If we communicate with an emphasis on the verb, we go naturally to the adverb to distinguish more subtly. If we communicate in nouns, we go to adjectives to make distinctions. It is the latter that leads to classification." (p. 30)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Aristotle's Categories. Annotated bibliography of the studies in English: Kwa - Ras

Bibliography

1. Kwan, Tze-Wan. 2008. "The Doctrine of Categories and the Topology of Concern." In The Logic of the Living Present (Analecta Husserliana, Vol. 46), edited by Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, 243-301. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

"Introduction. There is little doubt that the problem of categories has been among one of the most frequently discussed topics in philosophy ever since Aristotle.

Important as it was, the problem of categories has however become in the eyes of todays' students of philosophy an old-fashioned or even out-dated problem. If philosophy itself is for most people a marginal discipline of little practical value, then the problem of categories would turn out to be the most abstract and most detached issue of all. But is the problem of categories really that abstract?

Compared with more sensuous problems such as "Life and Death", "Freedom" or "Justice", the problem of categories gives us the impression of being a matter of theoretical technicality that is of mere scholastic interest. However, we will see bit by bit in the following, that the problem of categories has in the last analysis a strong relevance to the basic concerns of philosophy as well as to the very world perspective of man.

We will also show that as man's basic concerns vary from culture to culture and from one age to another, the respective systems of categories will take up an utterly different structural outlook." (p. 243)

(...)

"To sum up Benveniste's observation of the ten categories, we can end up with the following table:

Οὐσία [τί ἐστι] Substantive

Ποσόν Adjective (quantitative)

Ποιόν Adjective (qualitative)

Πρός τι Adjective (comparative)

Ποῦ Adverb of place

Πότε Adverb of time

Κεῖσθαι Verb - middle voice

Εχειν Verb - perfect

Ποιεῖν Verb - active voice

Πάσχειν Verb - passive voice" (p. 260)

2. Labuda, Pavol. 2019. "The Ontological Status of Human Speech in Aristotle‘s "Categories"." Filosoficky Casopis no. 67:877-894.

Abstract: "The subject of this paper is the issue of human speech in Aristotle, especially in his work Categories. Its primary goal is to elaborate an interpretation of Aristotle’s statements about human speech as a quantity (Cat. 4b20–b39, 5a15–b2) that would allow them to fit reasonably into the whole of Aristotle’s theory of language. The structure of the paper is as follows. In the first part a certain approach to the question of the reconstruction of Aristotle’s theory of language is proposed. The second part, by means of the introduction of the criteria of separability and ontological priority of the first substance, creates a framework for the subsequent analysis of the two basic classifications, which constitute the main theme of Categories. The third part supplies its own interpretation of the ontological status of human speech in the context of the classification schemes in Categories, and this, in the fourth part, is inserted into the greater whole of Aristotle’s theory of language."

3. Lang, Helen. 2004. "Aristotle's Categories "Where" and "When"." In Categories: Historical and Systematic Essays, edited by Gorman, Michael and Sanford, Jonathan J., 21-32. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

"The word “category” itself comes from the verb κατηγορέω, meaning “to denounce,” “to accuse,” or, as we shall see in Aristotle, “to be predicated.” In his entry “Categories” in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Manley Thompson turns first to “Aristotelian Theory” and asserts:

The word “category” was first used as a technical term in philosophy by Aristotle. In his short treatise called Categories, he held that every uncombined expression signifies (denotes, refers to) one or more things falling in at least on of the following ten classes: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, posture, state, action, and passion.(1)

This list of categories is almost always attributed to Aristotle. But in fact it does not reflect Aristotle's language either in the Categories, which Thompson cites, or in the rest of the corpus. With the exception of the first category, substance, none of Aristotle’s categories is a noun;(2) they are adjectives, adverbs, infinitives, and in one case (“relation”) a prepositional phrase, made to stand as substantives. Although classical Greek certainly allows for the formation of substantives by means of a definite article, Aristotle does not always use an article when specifying categories, and even when he does, these expressions seem odd. Indeed, they are part of the reason why Aristotle’s Greek is often thought of as Hellenistic rather than “classical,” strictly speaking.

The question for a philosopher is not translation per se but what is at stake substantively in this apparently linguistic matter. Here I shall consider two of Aristotle’s categories. They appear above as “place” and “time,” but I shall argue that they are more properly “where” and “when”—indefinite adverbs that are sometimes best translated as “somewhere” and “sometime.” I shall conclude that the translations “place” and “time” obscure important substantive issues at stake in these categories. These issues appear clearly in both the historical origins of these categories in Plato and in the relation of these categories to Aristotle’s physics." (pp. 21-22)

1. Manley Thompson, “Categories,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 2:46–47.

2. A good deal of work has been done on the etymology of Aristotle’s word οὐσία. For example, see the excellent discussion in Joseph Owens, The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics, 3d ed. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978), 137–54.

4. Leszl, Walter. 1970. Logic and Metaphysics in Aristotle (Aristotle's Treatment of Types of Equivocity and Its Relevance to His Metaphysical Theories). Padova: Antenore.

Contents: Preface 1; Introduction 7; Part I. Aristotle on Meaning and What Is Meant 23; Chapter I. The meaning of words 25; Chapter II. The unity of the components of definition 50; Chapter III. The structure of reality 60; Part II. Homonymy, Sinonymy and Related Concepts 81; Chapter I. Aristotle’s classification of the uses of predicate words and expressions and of sentences 83; Chapter II. Generalities on focal meaning and on analogy 114; Part III. Some Intepreters Treatment of Focal Meaning and Analogy 133; Chapter I. The prevailing accounts of focal meaning and of analogy and of Aristotle’s employment of them in the context of his metaphysics 135; Chapter II. The synonymy account of focal meaning as applied to the being of the categories 162; Chapter III. The synonymy account of focal meaning as applied to the model-copy situation 182; Part IV. Close Analysis of the Logical Mechanism of Focal Meaning and f Analogy According to the Various Competing Accounts 203; Chapter I. Criticism of the synonymy account of focal meaning as applied to the being of the categories 205; Chapter II. Criticism of the synonymy account of focal meaning as applied to the model-copy situation 252; Chapter III. Introduction of some logical distinctions concerning relations and related terms and of some other accounts of focal meaning 285; Chapter IV. The homonymy account of focal meaning and of analogy 303; Part V. Evidence for and Againt each of the Competing Accounts of Focal Meaning and of Analogy 327; Chapter I. Examination of the evidence concerning Aristotle’s alleged changes in his treatment of words with focal meaning and with analogy 329; Chapter II. Interpretation of the evidence concerning analogy 373; Chapter III. Interpretation of the evidence concerning focal meaning 387; Part VI. Aristotle's Criticism of Platonic Metaphysics 451; Chapter I. Self-defeating character of Aristotle's objections to Plato on the traditional account of his metaphysical thought 453; Chapter II. Suggestions towards the elimination of the alleged contradictions in Aristotle's metaphysical thought 486; Chapter III. Aristotle's methodology as contrasted with the methodology of the Academics 539; Bibliography 553; Indexes 567; Index of Texts 569; Index of Greek terms 579; Index of Subjects 583; Index of Persons 595-601.

"The generality of the main title of the present work may be misleading as to its actual scope, which is more appropriately defined by its subtitle. It is an inquiry into Aristotle’s treatment of ομωνυμία and of its species, considered in the background of his metaphysical theories, which both condition and are conditioned by that logical treatment. It is the prevalence of an interest in these two-way conditionings which is expressed by the main title.

Tn spite of misgivings, then, I have preserved it on this ground, and also because the work is meant to be a part of a more comprehensive treatment of logic and metaphysics in Aristotle, which should include a detailed examination of the way in which the logical distinctions here introduced are used in dealing with fundamental words like “being”, “one” and “good”. At least in the conclusive chapter I have actually gone beyond (he theme defined by the subtitle by showing that Aristotle’s treatment of types of equivocity is only one instance, if probably the most important and interesting one, of his methodology of definition." (Preface, p. 1)

5. Lewis, Frank A. 1991. Substance and Predication in Aristotle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Part I: Aristotle's Ealier Metaphysical Theory, pp. 3-82.

"The book is organized into four parts, corresponding to what I take to be the different stages in Aristotle’s metaphysical thinking. Part I offers a sketch of perhaps the earliest phase of Aristotle’s thinking in the Categories and his reaction to the background in Plato’s metaphysical theory. Part II examines Aristotle’s notions of substance, accident, accidental compounds, and the two sameness relations ‘x is accidentally the same asy ’ and ‘x is the same in being as y’. Part III extends the treatment of accidental compounds in Part II to form-matter compounds and to the notions of form and matter, which do not appear in Aristotle’s earlier works but are central to the theories of the Metaphysics. Part IV, finally, addresses the special problems that Aristotle’s new metaphysical theory brings. I set out some of the classic puzzles that bedevil Aristotle’s later metaphysics - for example, the puzzle of how in the Metaphysics an Aristotelian form is apparently both a primary substance and a universal, while Aristotle also insists that “no universal is a substance,” or again, the puzzle of how form is a primary substance and a universal, and hence predicated of many, while “primary substance is not predicated of any subject” - and argue that they result from Aristotle’s attempt to adapt the various requirements on primary substance developed in his earlier works (the Categories and Topics especially) to the very different metaphysical picture - including a different choice of what to count as primary substance! - in the Metaphysics. I also show how the solutions I suggest to these puzzles fit within the overall theory, large parts of which have already been laid out in earlier chapters." (p. X)

6. ———. 2004. "Aristotle on the Homonymy of Being." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 68:1-36.

"The topic of homonymy, especially the variety of homonymy that has gone under the title, “focal meaning,” is of fundamental importance to large portions of Aristotle’s work-not to mention its central place in the ongoing controversies between Aristotle and Plato. It is quite astonishing, therefore, that the topic should have gone so long without a book-length treatment.

And it is all the more gratifying that the new book on homonymy by Christopher Shields should be so comprehensive, and of such uniformly high quality.(1)

Everyone who cares about Aristotle will be in his debt.

Shields’s book falls into two parts. In the first, he is concerned to lay out the basic structure of Aristotle’s views about homonymy; in the second part, we are led through the various applications of the idea, to the analysis of friendship, for example, the homonymy of the body, the account of goodness and, not least, the homonymy of being. Shields’s book brings out well how the topic of homonymy weaves in and out of the fabric of Aristotle’s thinking in a variety of areas. I will resist the temptation to follow Shields through these various subject-matters, and instead take up essentially two topics. First, (I), the basic outline of Aristotle’s notion of homonymy, more or less independently of its different applications (here, I follow Shields’s example in the first half of his book). Thereafter, I discuss a single application: the homonymy of being (this is the subject of Shields’s last and longest chapter). Here, I will be interested (II) in how homonymy relates to the theory of the categories; and (III) in the application of homonymy to the analysis of substance in the Metaphysics." (p. 1)

(1) Shields, Christopher (1999), Order in Multiplicity: Homonymy in the Philosophy of Aristotle, Oxford.

7. Lloyd, Antony C. 1962. "Genus, Species and Ordered Series in Aristotle." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 7:67-90.

"Aristotle claims that when objects have an order of priority their common predicate or universal is not something apart from them.

It will be convenient from time to time to refer to such objects as terms, for they are terms of an ordered series; and for a similar convenience the groups containing them will be called P-series. Aristotle's claim is expressly used as the premiss of more than one argument in his works; and the Neoplatonists made very interesting comments on it.

I wish to ask and to suggest an answer to the questions what Aristotle meant by it and why he made it. The matter was expounded some fifty years ago by Cook Wilson, not for the first time but in a way of his own which has been repeated (among others) by Sir David Ross.(1) Their interpretation is, I feel sure, quite misleading and I believe it to be just wrong. Apart from that there are more questions to be asked about the Aristotelian passages than it was Cook Wilson's purpose to ask and perhaps more than he recognised. Thirdly the ancient commentators' arguments, which he ignored, are both to the point and worth considering for their own development of Aristotelianism. Some of them are echoed in the criticisms of modern idealists. These arguments are concerned with the logical relationship of species to genus. I shall try to show that Aristotle's thesis about P-series raises the crucial problem how an "appropriate differentia" is to be distinguished from any apparently defining characteristic; and to solve this is to discover how the relation of a species like man or dog to the genus animal differs from the relation of a quasi-species like male or female." (p. 67)

(1) J. Cook Wilson, "On the Platonic doctrine of ἀσύμβλητοι ἀριθμοί", Classical Review XVIII (1904), pp. 247-60, esp. §§ i and 7; W. D. Ross ad Ar. Met. B 999a6-10. L. Robin, Théorie pIatonicienne des idées et des nombres ...., pp. 614-18 uses more material from A. but really says less that explains.

8. ———. 1966. "Aristotle's Categories Today." Philosophical Quartely no. 16:258-267.

Review-article of: Aristotle's Categories and De Interpretatione, translated with notes, by J. L. Ackrill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963).

"The Categories have always had at least three centres of interest: the distinction of primary and secondary substances, the concept of homonymy and synonymy and its application to the concept of being, and the more or less formal properties discovered in the categories one by one. I shall be concerned mostly with the first.

To my judgement there is a comparatively simply way into the categories according to which the word translated ' substance ' means 'being ' and the primary notion of being is existence. (This is the είναι απλώς opposed to είναι επί μέρους, i.e.είναι τοδί ή τοδί (of An. Post. II 2 and Met. Z 1, 1028a31.) About existence we can ask (or so it seems) " what is it to exist? " and "what exists" The first question is given, though not in the Categories, the answer "to be active " (energeia). The second question could be a request to identify everything that there is, which would not even prima facie be a sensible request. Or it could be a request to identify the sorts of thing that exist: this is given two answers in the Categories, individuals and those genera and species which are composed of individuals. But so as to understand the ten categories we can distinguish these two kinds of things from all the kinds of things-or, what it is superfluous to add, all the kinds of things there are (onta), which are the ten categories. The individuals and the species and genera are then called 'beings', in the plural and in the usage which has regularly been translated 'substances'." (p. 258)

9. Losev, Alexandre. 2019. "Aristotle's Categories, why 10?" Philosophical Alternatives no. 6:101-111.

"Aristotle's Categories is beyond dispute one of the most remarkable books in the Western intellectual tradition and it is hardly necessary to rehearse the historical circumstances of this fact. Observing the incalculable amount of commentaries devoted to it(1), the lack of consensus on the very principles underlying this brief treatise becomes obvious.

Incompatibilities or inconsistencies with other passages from the Aristotelian corpus are a source of puzzlings and misunderstandings. Among the various questions inquiries include usually considerations on the state of the transmitted text which is also problematic, to the point that its authorship has been questioned. Scholastics tried in every way to smooth out the problems, but the modern attitude does not allow to ignore them. Not so long ago, a researcher warned that it was "a common mistake to consider the theory from The Categories for the Aristotle‘s theory of categories(2), which is a brutal reminder of how inevitable seem the moves to other places from the corpus and from there, imperceptibly, to things said by others. New readings appears to demand a stepping out of the tradition, that is to say, to reject the Neo-Platonic suggestions along with all ontotheology: Aristotle is not overly committed to hierarchizing and he is not obsessed about (non)existence." (p. 101)

(1) Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, Berlin: Reimer, 1882 – 1909; Lloyd N., Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008, p.1; listied in Lohr C., 1967 – 73, Medieval Latin Aristotle Commentaries, Traditio vols.23 – 29 ; Gorman M. and Sanford J., (eds) (2004) Categories: Historical and Systematic Essays Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press 2004; Special Issue on Categories, Monist (v.98. no3) July 2015 (еds.) Javier Cumpa and Peter M. Simons; Categories: Histories and Perspectives, (eds.) Giuseppe DʼAnna and Lorenzo Fossati 2017; Catégories de langue, catégories de l’être, Les Études philosophiques 2018/3, (N° 183).

(29«cette erreur est fréquente - considérer la théorie du Traité des Catégories comme la théorie aristotélicienne des catégories» ([Madeleine van] Aubel, [Accident, catégories et prédicables dans l'oeuvre d'Aristote, Revue Philosophique de Louvain, 71, pp. 361-401], 1963:377).

10. Loux, Michael. 1997. "Kinds and Predications: An Examination of Aristotle's Theory of Categories." Philosophical Papers no. 26:3-28.

"The classificatory framework Aristotle calls the categories appears repeatedly throughout the corpus. The treatise that opens the corpus has come to be known as the Categories and is apparently concerned to delineate the central features of the most important and potentially most puzzling of the categories listed there.(1) The categories reappear in subsequent works of the Organon, where they are put to substantive philosophical use in the resolution of semantical, logical, and epistemological problems. In numerous places in the Physics, we meet with the claim that there is a variety of different categories, each with its own distinct ontological properties, and the claim plays a significant role in delineating the general contours of the concept of change. In the De Anima, Aristotle’s attempt to characterize the soul takes the classification provided by the categories as its theoretical backdrop.

Again, in the Metaphysics, there is regular reference to the framework of the categories, and the distinctions expressed by the framework prove crucial to the treatment of ontological problems about being, unity, and substance. Even in the ethical writings, Aristotle reminds us that there are different categories of being and uses the reminder as a vehicle for introducing us to central metaethical claims about the semantics of ‘good’. It is not unreasonable, then, to conclude that Aristotle took the classification associated with the categories to be a fundamental feature of his own approach to philosophical issues." (p. 3)

(1) For doubts about the traditional reading of the Categories, see Michael Frede, ‘Categories in Aristotle’ in his Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 1987, pp. 29-48.

11. Mahlan, John Robert. 2019. "Aristotle on Secondary Substance." Apeiron no. 52:167-197.

Abstract: "At the beginning of Categories 5, Aristotle distinguishes between two kinds of substance: primary substance and secondary substance. Primary substances include particular living organisms, inanimate objects, and their parts.

Secondary substances are the species and genera of these. This distinction is unique to the Categories, which raises the question of why Aristotle treats species and genera as substances. I argue that Aristotle has two distinct reasons for doing so, and contrast my interpretation with recent alternatives. On my view, species and genera enjoy two kinds of fundamentality – ontological and epistemological – in virtue of which they warrant their status as substances."

12. Malcolm, John. 1981. "On the Generation and Corruption of the Categories." The Review of Metaphysics no. 33:662-681.

"It is tempting to assume that an obvious way in which Aristotle determined his list of categories was to take a primary substance as subject and classify its predicates. (1) The advantage of this suggestion is that it appears to give us the list of categories given at Categories 1 b25 ff. For example, if we take Socrates as subject, then, when we predicate man of him, we get a predicate which is a substance (ousia). When we consider "Socrates is grammatical" we get a predicate in quality or "how qualified" (poion). "Socrates is in the market place" gives us place or "where" (pou) and so on.

Although I shall propose that, in the case of the first category, ousia, this is not how Aristotle, in fact, proceeds in the Categories (see p. 674 below), the major shortcoming of this procedure is that it cannot account for individuals, and a fortiori individual substances, as items in the categories." (p. 662)

(...)

"My procedure, therefore, will not be to start with the SRPR [subject restricted to substance predicate retive] option and try to adjust it to harmonize with the dctrine of the work entitled Categories, nor indeed to take this work as my point of departure, for, somewhat paradoxically, I shall contend that the list of Categories 1b25 ff. was assembled in a rather haphazard fashion. I shall, in fact, begin with Topics 1.9 and, taking this as basic, endeavor to explain the other relevant passages in the Aristotelian corpus in the light of what is to be found there." (p. 663)

(1) See J. Ackrill, Aristotle's Categories and De Interpretatione (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 78-79, for this alternative.

13. Malink, Marko. 2007. "Categories in Topics I.9." Rhizai. A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science no. 4:271-294.

"In the first sentence of Topics 1.9, Aristotle proposes to determine the γένη τών κατηγοριών. These are the ten categories he is going to discuss in this chapter. He seems to think of them as genera classifying items which are referred to as κατηγορίαι. What are these items? Commentators tend to agree that they are either predications or predicates.(1) In the first case, the categories would classify items such as ‘Socrates is white’ or ‘man is animal’. In the second case, they would classify terms such as ‘white’ or ‘animal’ which are able to serve as predicates of predications. The two options need not be incompatible with each other, for the categories might provide a classification both of predicates and of predications. At any rate, we should like to determine the criteria by which the categories manage to classify either predicates or predications or both." (p. 271)

14. Mann, Wolfgang-Rainer. 2000. The Discovery of Things: Aristotle's Categories and Their Context. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments IX; A Note on Citations XI; Introduction 3; Part I. Setting the stage: The "Antepraedicamenta" and the "Praedicamenta" 39; Part II: Plato's metaphysics and the status of things 75; PART III. The categories picture once more: an alternative to Platonism and late-learnerism 184; Epilogue 205; Select Bibliography 207; Index Locorum 219; Index Rerum 226-231.

"1. The Project

In two of his early works—in the Categories especially, but also in the Topics—Aristotle presents a revolutionary metaphysical picture. This picture has had a peculiar fate. Its revolutionary theses are so far from being recognized as such that they have often been taken to be statements of common sense, or expressions of an everyday, pretheoretical ontology.2 The most striking and far-reaching of those theses is the claim that, included among what there is, among the entities (τά δντα), there are things. Aristotle, famously, goes on to maintain that these things are ontologically fundamental. All the other entities are (whatever they are)3 by being appropriately connected to the things, for example, either as their features (their qualities, sizes, relations-to-each-other, locations, and so on), or as their genera and species, that is, the kinds under which the things fall.4 These further claims and their proper interpretation have received considerable discussion. Yet the fundamental one has gone virtually unnoticed. To formulate it most starkly: before the Categories and Topics^ there were no things. Less starkly: things did not show up ^5 things, until Aristotle wrote those two works." (pp. 3-4)

(...)

"With a better understanding of Plato’s metaphysical picture before us, we will be in a position to appreciate just how revolutionary and innovative Aristotle is being in the Categories and Topics. We will also be able to see how Aristotle set the stage for turning “the unaccustomed” into “longstanding custom” (Heidegger’s phrase). The unique and central role which the Categories played in the philosophical curricula of late antiquity and the Latin middle ages obviously contributed enormously to this philosophical picture’s successful ascendancy, to the point where it truly could appear to be nothing more than a reflection of common sense, precisely because it had become a part of common sense. And I am inclined to believe that this success, to a large extent, also explains why Plato is read in the ways he is commonly read: the mistake is neither one of simply overlooking something obvious—or not so obvious—nor one of inadvertently smuggling in Aristotelian notions. Rather, the ascent and dominance of the ontological picture of the Categories has so thoroughly eclipsed other pictures and interpretative possibilities that they cannot even come into view, much less be made to seem plausible, without considerable effort." (p. 6)

15. Matthen, Mohan. 1978. "The Categories and Aristotle's Ontology." Dialogue.Canadian Philosophical Review no. 17:228-243.

Abstract: "What where Aristotle's aims in the Categories? We can probably all agree that he wanted to say something about different uses of the verb 'to be' - something relevant to ontology. The conventional interpretation goes further: it has Books Γ and Ζ of the Metaphysics superseding theories put forward in the Categories. We should expect then that the Categories and these books of the Metaphysics try to do the same sort of thing. Most exegetes do indeed ascribe to the earlier work fairly elaborate ontologies, though they are in disagreement as to what theory Aristotle held while writing it. I shall argue in this paper that the whole enterprise of reconstructing the ontology of the Categories from its small stock of clues is misguided; that the business of the Categories is to set out data for which the Metaphysics tries to account. This view is not without consequences relevant to some widely held theses. I shall claim that the differences between the Categories and the Metaphysics cannot uncritically be used to trace the development of Aristotle's ontology, that the differences between the two doctrines has been greatly exaggerated. More of this later: let me first explain the distinction on which I shall depend."

16. Matthews, Gareth B. 1989. "The Enigma of Categories 1a20ff and Why it Matters." Apeiron no. 22:91-104.

Of things there are: (a) some are said of a subject but are not in a subject ... (b) some are in a subject but not said of any subject. (By 'in a subject' I mean what is in something, not as a part, and cannot exist separately from what it is in.) ... (c) Some are both said of a subject and in a subject ... (d) some are neither in a subject nor said of a subject, ...'(1)

Perhaps no passage in Aristotle has excited more attention in recent years, or aroused more controversy, than the second paragraph of Chapter 2 of the Categories, from which the above quotation is taken.

I want to offer a fresh assessment of this recent discussion, as well as some thoughts on why the controversy remains philosophically important.

Paradoxically, I shall offer my fresh assessment by presenting some of the discussion of an ancient commentator, Ammonius.(2) After we have learned what we can from Ammonius, I shall say a little about why it matters which interpretation of Cat. 1a20ff we accept." (p. 91)

(1) Categories 1a20ff. The translation is by J.L. Ackrill, Aristotle's Categories and De Interpretatione, (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1963).

(2) I choose Ammonius, not because he is especially original, but because I am currently working with Marc Cohen on an English translation of his commentary on the Categories and hence am most familiar with it. [Ammonius, On Aristotle’s Categories, translated by

S. Marc Cohen and Gareth B. Matthews, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1991]

Citations of Ammonius will give the page and line numbers in volume IV.4 of Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca, Berlin Academy edition of 1895, edited by A. Busse.

17. ———. 2009. "Aristotelian Categories." In A Companion to Aristotle, edited by Anagnostopoulos, Georgios, 144-161. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.

"That which is there to be spoken of and thought of, must be.

Parmenides, Fragment 6 (McKirahan trans.)

The short treatise entitled Categories enjoys pride of place in Aristotle's writings. It is the very first work in the standard edition of Aristotle's texts. Each line of the thirty columns that make up this treatise has been pored over by commentators, from the first century BCE down to the present. Moreover, its gnomic sentences still retain their fascination for both philosophers and scholars, even today.

In the tradition of Aristotelian commentary, the first works of Aristotle are said to make up the Organon, which begins with the logic of terms (the Categories), then moves on to the logic of propositions (the De Interpretatione) and then to the logic of syllogistic argumentation (the Prior Analytics). But to say that the Categories presents the logic of terms may leave the misleading impression that it is about words rather than about things. That is not the case. This little treatise is certainly about words. But it is no less about things. It is about terms and the ways in which they can be combined; but this "logic" of terms is also meant to be a guide to what there is, that is, to ontology, and more generally, to metaphysics.

The Categories text was not given its title by Aristotle himself. Indeed, there has long been a controversy over whether the work was even written by Aristotle. Michael Frede's discussion of this issue in "The Title, Unity, and Authenticity of Aristotle's Categories" (Frede 1987: 11-28) is as close to being definitive on this issue as is possible. Frede concludes that the Categories can only be the work of Aristotle himself or one of his students.

The question of authenticity is often connected with the issue of whether the last part of the Categories, chapters 10-15, traditionally called the "Postpraedicamenta," and the earlier chapters really belong to the same work. We shall have very little to say about the Postpraedicamenta here." (p. 144)

18. Matthews, Gareth B., and Cohen, S. Marc. 1968. "The One and the Many." The Review of Metaphysics no. 21:630-655.

The Platonic argument that Aristotle calls "The One Over Many" ([Metaphysics, Book 1] 990b13; 107B69) (1) doubtless had something like this as its key premiss:

Whenever two or more things can be properly said to be F, it is by virtue of some one thing, F-ness, that they are properly called F.

The following sentence from Plato's Republic suggests such a premiss:

We are in the habit of assuming one Form for each set of many things to which we give the same name.(2)

The pattern of reasoning is familiar. x and y are round. It must be in virtue of roundness ( or in virtue of their participating in roundness) that they are properly said to be round. Exactly what is established by the reasoning -- for that matter, what is supposed to be established-is not obvious. Taken in one way, Plato's Theory of Forms presents us with nothing more than a manner of speaking.

(...)

But if we take Plato's theory this way, we ignore the perplexities that give rise to it. There are at least two distinguishable perplexities that lead to a doctrine like Plato's.(3) One perplexity is ontological: Why is it that things naturally fall into kinds? The other - -and it is this perplexity especially that gives life to the One-Over-Many Argument -- is linguistic.(4) The puzzle is this: How can it be that many things are properly called by one name? To take this puzzle seriously we must indulge (I) the inclination to take the case of one name for each thing named (i.e., the case of an ideal proper name) as the paradigm case of a name, and also (II) the inclination to suppose that 'wise' in 'Pericles is wise' and 'a man' in 'Callias is a man' are names. If we go along with these inclinations, then the puzzle, How can it be that many things are properly called by one name?, becomes real.

(...)

We want to try to show that the Categories, on at least one plausible interpretation, offers a more general answer to Plato than has usually been thought to be the case. We shall then make some comments toward assessing the philosophical strengths and weaknesses of this Aristotelian answer." (pp. 631-632, some notes omitted)

(1) Line references, unless otherwise identified, are to the works of Aristotle.

(2) Republic 696A. Translations of passages from Plato and Aristotle are our own.

(3) Cf. David Pears's two questions, "Why are things as they are?" and "Why are we able to name things as we do?" in his article, "Universals," in Logic and Language (2nd series), ed. by A. Flew (Oxford, 1963), pp. 61-64.

19. Menn, Stephen. 1995. "Metaphysics, Dialectic and the Categories." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 100:311-337.

Abstract: "I examine the status and function of the Categories in Aristotle's philosophy. The work does not belong to «first philosophy, » or indeed to philosophy at all, but to dialectic; not as a « dialectical discussion » of being, but in the strict sense that it is intended, together with the Topics, to help the dialectical disputant to decide whether a given term can fall under a proposed definition or a proposed genus. Although the Categories, like dialectic in general, has uses in philosophical argument, the supposed opposition between the accounts of substance in the Categories and in the Metaphysics depends on a misunderstanding of the different aims of the two works."

20. Mesquita, António Pedro. 2015. "Individual Substances and Individual Accidents in the "Categories" of Aristotle." Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia no. 71:399-421.

Abstract: "In the second chapter of Categories, Aristotle introduces a conceptual scheme in accordance to which, using only two criteria, "being in a subject" and "said of a subject", it is possible to distribute reality over four types of beings: individual substances, which are neither in a subject nor are said of a subject; universal substances, which are said of a subject but are not in a subject; individual accidents, which are in a subject, but are not said of a subject; and universal accidents, which are in a subject and are said of a subject. The problem arises with the third type of entity, individual accidents (or, in modern words, 'inherences'), due to the way they are defined in the text, namely as something which "cannot exist separately from what it is in". The importance of this clause, and therefore of its correct interpretation, goes far beyond the mere decision on textual or even doctrinal matters, if restricted to the passage and to the question under consideration. What is at stake here is the significance that Aristotle wishes to attribute to the individuality of inherences and, through that, the way in which the ontological distinction between individual substances and individual accidents - that is to say, between primary substances and their accidents as diverse types of individual items - is conceived by him. Here, then, is the scope of this paper: to grasp the meaning and the rationale of the distinction between individual substances and individual accidents in Aristotle, based on the analysis of the statute of inherences in the second chapter of the Categories."

21. ———. 2025. Aristotle on Natural Simultaneity of Relatives in the Categories. New York: Routledge.

Abstract: "This book addresses the issue of natural simultaneity of relatives, discussed by Aristotle in Categories 7, 7b15– 8a12.

Natural simultaneity is a form of symmetrical ontological dependence that holds between items that are not causally linked. In this section of the Categories, Aristotle introduces this topic in his analysis of relatives and maintains that although relatives seem to be for the most part simultaneous by nature, there seem to be some exceptions. He mentions two pairs of relatives as exceptions, namely the pairs knowledge/ knowable and perception/ perceptible, and argues at length for the priority of the second relative over the first one in each case. Through a close reading of this text, the author analyses Aristotle’s arguments for the thesis of the exceptional character of these pairs and shows that all of them are unsuccessful in supporting the thesis. In order to draw this conclusion, the author highlights and carefully considers the properties that Aristotle is committed to attributing to relatives, taking into account the metaphysical framework of the Categories as well as their specificities within the set of non- substantial categories. Then, he shows that Aristotle’s mature views on relatives in the Metaphysics can be construed as committing him to the rejection of such a thesis.

Although the issue of natural simultaneity is just one of several that Aristotle considers in his discussion of relatives throughout Categories 7, it is a particularly relevant issue, since it involves a number of puzzles whose analysis allows for a better understanding of the very notion of relativity in Aristotle. This is the first book to explore this issue from the perspective of illuminating the Aristotelian views on relatives."

22. Mignucci, Mario. 1986. "Aristotle's Definitions of Relatives in Categories Chapter 7." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 31:101-127.

Reprinted in Andrea Falcon, Pierdaniele Giaretta (eds.), Ancient Logic, Language, and Metaphysics: Selected Essays by Mario Mignucci, New York: Routledge 2020, pp. 300-322.

"Chapter 7 of Aristotle's Categories is dedicated to a study of relatives, which are called "πρός τι". (p. 101)

(...)

"To sum up, I take Aristotle's definition of relatives to mean exactly that a property F is said to be a relative property if, and only if, it can be expanded into a relation that determines F univocally." (p. 104)

(...)

"Aristotle does not clarify the nature of the link that there is between a relative property and its constitutive relation. As we have seen, it is surely an intensional connection, which involves the senses both of the property and of the relation. But how senses are implied is not explicitly stated by him. Shall we leave the problem here? Perhaps an advance can be made if the definition of P1-relatives [he class of relatives identified by Aristotle's definition] at the beginning of Cat. 7 is compared with another definition of relatives which is discussed at the end of the same chapter." (p. 106)

(...)

"Many problems remain. One concerns the nature and meaning of stereotypes. Can they be conceived in the way in which Johnson-Leard has devised them, i.e. as frame systems in which default values are given?(26) And is this view consistent with Aristotle's doctrine about meanings and concepts?

I cannot try to answer these questions here. What my attempt to explain Aristotle's view aims at is to show that his position is far from being trivially false, as it is on the traditional interpretation, and that it can be credited with having some philosophical importance. Moreover, his attempt is stimulating because it approaches a modern problem from a different point of view. Nowadays we are accustomed to consider what is entailed by the fact that substitutivity does not hold in cognitive contexts, and we try to explain why it does not obtain. Aristotle is well aware of these restrictions, (27) but he is more interested in isolating cases in which substitutivity can be safely applied. Perhaps this change of perspective may help to refresh our own patterns of analysis." (p. 126)

(26) Cf. Johnson-Laird, pp. 26-29.

(27) Cf. e.g. SE [De Sophisticis Elenchis] 24, 179a35-b5.

References

Johnson-Laird, P.N.: "Formal Semantics and the Psychology of Meaning", in Peters, S. and Saarinen, E. (eds.), Processes, Beliefs, and Questions, Essays on Formal Semantics of Natural Language and Natural Language Processing, Dordrecht 1982, pp. 1-68.

23. Minio-Paluello, Lorenzo. 1945. "The Text of the Categoriae: the Latin Tradition." Classical Quarterly no. 39:63-74.

Reprinted in: L. Minio-Paluello, Opuscola: the Latin Aristotle, Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert 1972, pp. 28-39.

Abstract: "The Latin versions of Aristotle's Categoriae have never received much attention from the editors of the Greek text. J. Th. Buhle (Arist. Op. Omn. I, Bipont. 1791) and Th. Waitz (Arist. Organ. I, Lpz., I844) availed themselves of Latin texts, but in a very unsatisfactory way; and since them the Latin field has remained unexplored throughout the last hundred years, in which both Hellenists and Orientalists have done much to increase our knowledge of the textual tradition of the Categ. It is the purpose of these pages to give a summary account of the Latin tradition and to contribute to a revision of the Greek text by a collation of Boethius' recently discovered translation with the best printed Greek and Oriental sources."

24. Moon, Kyungnam. 2021. "Aristotle’s Disturbing Relatives." Apeiron no. 54:451-472.

Abstract: "In Categories 7, Aristotle gives two different accounts of relatives, and presents the principle of cognitive symmetry, which seems to help distinguish between relatives and some secondary substances. I suggest that the longdisputed difference between the two accounts lies in a difference in the determination of the categorial status of the object in question, and I formulate the principle of cognitive symmetry such that it plays a crucial role in making explicit how one conceptualizes the categorial status of the object. I then set out some consequences following from this understanding for certain interpretive issues, such as the unity of the Categories."

25. Morales, Fabio. 1994. "Relational Attributes in Aristotle." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 39:255-274.

Abstract: "Aristotle's theory of relations involves serious difficulties of interpretation. By attempting to solve some of the problems posed by J. L. Ackrill in his famous commentary on the Categories (Ackrill, 1963), I hope to contribute to a better understanding of Aristotle's statements on the nature and status of relational attributes. In general, my procedure has been to analyze the criteria by which entities are supposed to fall under the category of 'the relative'. The following topics will be considered: i) Aristotle's two definitions of relatives in Categories 7, ii) the pseudo-relational character of the parts of substances, and iii) the threefold classification of relatives in Metaphysics chapter 15. A corollary of these discussions will be that relations may have played for Aristotle a far more conspicuous role in the 'definition' of substances and attributes than has been hitherto acknowledged."

26. Moravcsik, Julius M. E. 1967. "Aristotle's Theory of Categories." In Aristotle: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Moravcsik, Julius, 125-145. New York: Anchor Books.

"In several of his writings Aristotle presents what came to be known as a "list of categories." The presentation of a list, by itself, is not a philosophic theory.

This paper attempts a few modest steps toward an understanding of the theory or theories in which the list of categories is embedded. To arrive at such understanding we shall have to deal with the following questions: What classes of expressions designate items each of which falls under only one category? What is the list a list of? and what gives it unity? To show this to be a worthwhile enterprise, let us consider a few passages in which the list of categories is introduced or mentioned." (p. 125)

(...)

"Conclusion. The theory of categories is partly a theory about language and partly a theory about reality.

With regard to language it states that certain elements of a language have key-designating roles, the full understanding of which requires that we understand the designata as falling within those classes which jointly form the set definitive of that to which a sensible particular must be related. We can see from this that Aristotle did not think of the structure of language as mirroring the structure of reality. But he did believe that there are specific items of language and reality the correlation of which forms the crucial link between the two." (p. 145)

27. ———. 1967. "Aristotle on Predication." The Philosophical Review no. 76:80-96.

Erratum, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 76, No. 4 (Oct., 1967), p. 543.

28. Morrison, Donald. 1992. "The Taxonomical Interpretation of Aristotle's Categories: A Criticism." In Aristotle's Ontology, edited by Preus, Anthony and Anton, John Peter, 19-46. Albany: State University of New York Press.

"In the Topics, Categories, and De Interpretatione, Aristotle is struggling with a variety of problems that span the fields of metaphysics and philosophy of language. Both the problems and the attempted solutions have much relevance to some of the main issues in contemporary British and American philosophy. Thus it is unfortunate that though there is a large number of ancient commentaries on these texts, little has been written on these matters in modern times that is of genuine philosophical significance. Professor Ackrill's new translation and notes (1) make a fine contribution toward remedying this deficiency."

(...)

"One of the reasons for selecting predication as the nest of problems to be discussed is that though much has been written on this during the past sixty years, we seem far from any adequate solution." (p. 80)

(...)

"The point of this review is not to show that Aristotle succeeded in answering the general question that contemporary philosophers failed to answer. Aristotle did not attempt to answer that general question.

He discusses in the Categories -- to which we shall limit our attention several interesting features of predication, and then distinguishes between at least two different types of configuration that underlie predication. The suggestion of this review is that paying attention to these less sweeping problems of predication might be a useful way of adopting a fresh approach to this topic.

The following four claims will be discussed. (a) Ackrill interprets Aristotle as holding that general terms and the correlated abstract singular terms, whether in subject or predicate position, introduce the same entity. (b) Aristotle seems to be committed to the view that general terms have meaning both inside and outside of sentences. (c) Aristotle distinguishes at least two different ontological configurations underlying predication. (d) Aristotle takes predication to be showing the ontological dependence of the entity denoted by the predicate on the entity denoted by the subject." (p. 82)

(1) Aristotle's "Categories" and "De Interpretatione," trans. with notes by J. L. Ackrill (Oxford, i963), pp. VI, 162.

29. Norris, Christopher. 1998. "Deconstruction, ontology, and philosophy of science: Derrida on Aristotle." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 52:411-449.

"Jacques Derrida's essay 'The Supplement of Copula' contains of the most detailed and convincing anii-relativist arguments found anywhere in the recent philosophie literature. (1) I have stated the case thus baldly — and italicized the crucial prefix — since claim is likely to conjure scepticism (or outright disbelief) among many readers." (p. 411)

(...)

"In 'The Supplement of Copula' Derrida takes issue with some claims advanced by the linguist Emile Benveniste concerning Aristotle's doctrine of the catégories or modes of predicative judge ment. (10) According to Benveniste these had their origin in a certain natural language (the ancient Greek) whose lexical resources and grammatical structures are everywhere drawn upon in Aristotle's quasi-universalist mode of argument. (11) Thus: 'Aristotle, reasoning in the absolute, is simply identifying certain fundamental catégories of the language in which he thought'. (12) And the same would apply to those thinkers after Aristotle (Kant among them) who criticized his table of the catégories but who sought to overcome its limitations through a further, more rigorous exercise of reason. For in their case also, as Benveniste contends, there is a failure to grasp that any such claim must rest upon this unconscious transfer of attributes from language to the putative laws of thought or a priori conditions for valid reasoning." (pp. 414-415)

(...)

"Rather than summarize Derrida's lengthy and complex response, shall begin by examining one crucial passage from 'The Supplement of Copula'. It is devoted to a single sentence in Benveniste's text, the only place — so Derrida maintains — where the issue cornes clearly (if not perhaps consciously) into focus. This question of conscious ness is crucial to his argument since it is Benveniste's claim that Aristotle, in his treatment of the catégories, was unconscious of the fact that these supposedly absolute (non-language-relative) necessities of thought were themselves the product of a merely contingent, 'empirical' set of lexico-grammatical constraints pertaining to Greek language." (p. 416)

(1) Jacques Derrida, 'The Supplement of Copula', in Margins of Philosophy, [trans.] Alan Bass (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1982, pp. 175-205.

(10) Derrida, 'The Supplement of Copula' (op. cit.): all further references given by title and page-number in the text. See also Emile Benveniste, Problems In General Linguistics, trans. Mary E. Meek (Coral Gables : University of Miami Press, 1971.

(11) The passages of Aristotle here referred to are to be found in the Catégories, Chapter Four and Metaphysics, Chapter Six.

(12) Benveniste, Problems (op. cit.), p. 57.

30. Novak, Michael. 1965. "Toward Understanding Aristotle's Categories." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research no. 26:117-123.

"There are three positions one must gain in order to interpret the first five chapters of the Categories and, specifically, the meaning and role therein of 'present in a subject'. The first of these positions is a rejection of univocity; the second is the dual conception of accident; the third is the principle of discrimination on which Aristotle (implicitly) relies in sorting out the strands of his description "of things," (1a20)." (p. 117)

(...)

"'Present in a subject' thus operates in Categories 1-5 as a definition of accident, inadequately distinguished from secondary substance. It is inadequately distinguished because its meaning (incapable of existence apart from a subject) applies just as well to secondary substance, though for a different reason, and this reason is never stated by Aristotle. He says (3a8-10) that secondary substances are not present in a subject, while of course (1a24.1) accidents are. But neither accidents nor secondary substances are; capable of existence apart from primary substances (2b5-6). Some unspoken criterion is therefore operating to distinguish the exact natures of secondary substance, accident, and primary substance.

I have argued that the discriminating factor is the differing relation which each bears to the act of intelligence operating with imagination.

Secondary substances are universalizations of the necessity grasped in insight, are essences, apart from particulars, and yet arising exclusively from insight into concrete particulars. They are not 'present in a subject', yet are incapable of existence apart from a subject. Accidents are, on the one hand, incapable of science because, occurring neither always nor for the most part, they are not necessarily relevant to any particular thing; and, on the other hand, are not capable of being pointed to as a 'this'. They alone are properly 'present in a subject.' Primary substance can be pointed to as a 'this', a unity, grasped not, however, by mere sense knowledge, nor imagination, but by intelligence which distinguishes the inessential from the essential, the permanent and independent from the adventitious, in the presentations of sense and imagination. They are not 'present in a subject,' but are subjects." (pp. 122-123)

31. O'Farrell, Frank. 1982. "Aristotle's Categories of Being." Gregorianum no. 63:87-131.

"It is no exaggeration to say that the understanding of Aristotle's First Philosophy and hence of his philosophy as a whole depends largely on the interpretation one gives to his categories of being. For as far as they express the theme itself of First Philosophy - being as being - to their understanding can be justly applied Aristotle's oft quoted words: « The beginning is greater in potentiality than in magnitude and therefore a small mistake in the beginning becomes immense in the end» (1).

But though one must agree with Brentano when he writes « Aristotle's division of categories has in a wonderful way defied the change time brings. When one follows the history of the doctrine of the categories, one sees how even their adversaries unconsciously pay homage to them » (2). Yet in the course of the two thousand odd years since Aristotle formulated them they have met with very varied and opposed interpretations. These changing interpretations have acted as a sort of apriori, a kind of pre-judice for each succeeding age trying to reach Aristotle's thought. For they formed part of the history of being in the Heideggerian sense of the word (3), i.e. what has become the universal unquestioned foreknowledge according to which and in function of which in each epoch one encounters reality."

(...)

"Being for Aristotle is not a subsistent idea - auto to on - as it is for Plato, but it is the categories (162). And being is the categories because of the plurality implied by hupokeimenon in its to be. And hupokeimenon in its to be is being as being according to Aristotle's way of conceiving it. Because therefore Aristotle understands being itself as meaning the categories, being is perceived by the ways of necessary predication (163).

Hence it is not the modes of necessary predication which found the categories of being, as Aubenque seems to believe (164), but it is the categories of being which require these modes of predicating to bring themselves to view and to be known in their truth. « For as each thing is as regards to be so is it as regards truth» (165)"."

(1) De Coelo, 1.5. 271 b 13.

(2) Franz Brentano, Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1862, 193.

(3) Cf. M. Heidegger, Die Metaphysik als Geschichte des Seins (1941) and Entwürfe zur Geschichte des Seins als Metaphysik (1941) in Nietzsche, Bd. 2, 399-457; 458-480.

(162) I. Düring, (Aristoteles, Darstellung und Interpretation seines Denkens, Heidelberg, 1966, 60) remarks appositely: « The word Kategoria in the sense of predication (Aussage) does not occur in Plato: we find it only once (Theait. 167 a) in this sense. The choice of this word shows that Aristotle wanted consciously to distance himself from his older contemporaries in the Academy».

(163) E. Tugendhat, Ti kata tinos, Freiburg-Miinchen, 1958, 23.

(164) P. Aubenque, Le probleme de l'être chez Aristote, Paris, 1962, 170.

(165) Met. α (2), 1, 993 b 32.

32. Oehler, Klaus. 1976. "Peirce contra Aristotle: Two Forms of the Theory of Categories." In Proceedings of the C. S. Peirce Bicentennial international Congress, edited by Ketner, Kenneth Laine, 335-342. Lubbock: Texas Tech Press.

"The founder of the theory of categories is Aristotle. He made the word 'category' a technical term in philosophy, and his theory dominated the discussion of categories up to Kant. But even after Kant, Aristotle's

influence On some important points persisted, because Kant built his new conception of categories on the old Aristotelian foundations. Not until Peirce did a philosopher develop a radically new theory of categories, and he did this by using a set of new logical instruments that neither Aristotle nor Kant had at their disposal. To this extent it can be said that the form Peirce gave to the theory of categories is a rejection of the whole tradition established by Aristotle in this field. To recognize the fundamental difference between both conceptions, a brief reconstruction of both theories would be helpful. Then the questions of the superiority of Peirce's conception in comparison with the traditional one and its usefulness in the contemporary discussion of categories will be raised." (p. 335)

33. Owen, Gwilym Ellis Lane. 1960. "Logic and Metaphysics in some Earlier Works of Aristotle." In Aristotle and Plato in the Mid-Fourth Century. Papers of the Symposium Aristotelicum held at Oxford in August, 1957, edited by Düring, Ingemar and Owen, Gwilym Ellis Lane. Göteborg: Elanders Boktryckeri Aktiebolag.

Reprinted in: G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science and Dialectic. Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy, Edited by Martha Nussbaum, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1986, pp. 180-199.

"Much of Aristotle’s early work in logic sprang from the practice and discussions of the Academy in Plato’s lifetime. This is a commonplace, but I have tried to illustrate it here by evidence which throws an unfamiliar light on the development of some of Aristotle’s most characteristic theories.The commonplace itself is not to be confused with a narrower thesis about the origins of the theory of syllogism: on that well-worn issue I have nothing to say here. I have confined myself to another part of Aristotle’s logical studies, namely that part which shaped his views on the nature and possibility of any general science of to on hêi on (‘being qua being’), any inquiry into the general nature of what there is. Here his major issues were problems of ambiguity, particularly the ambiguity that he claimed to find in ‘being’ or to on as that expression is used in the different categories. And his problems were shared by his contemporaries in the Academy. By opposition and by suggestion they helped to form the logic that underlay First Philosophy." (p. 180)

(...)

"In sum, then, the argument of Metaphysics IV, VI seems to record a new departure. It proclaims that 'being' should never have been assimilated to cases of simple ambiguity, and consequently that the old objection to any general metaphysics of being fails. The new treatment of to on and cognate expressions as pros hen kai mian tina phusin legomena, - or, as I shall henceforth say, as having focal meaning - has enabled Aristotle to convert a special science of substance into the universal science of being, 'universal just inasmuch as it is primary." (p. 184)

(...)

"Nor does focal meaning find formal recognition in the class of paronyms which is introduced in the Categories and recognized in the Topics, for the definition of paronyms is merely grammatical. It shows, not how subordinate senses of a word may be logically affiliated to a primary sense, but how adjectives can be manufactured from abstract nouns by modifying the word-ending. Plainly the Categories does not and could not make any use of this idea to explain how the subordinate categories depend on the first. Nor does it use focal meaning for that purpose (2b4-6). If focal meaning can be seen in the Categories it is in the analysis of some one category - clearly enough in the definition of quantity (5a38-b10), ) far more doubtfully in the account of the two uses of 'substance' (2b29-37, 3b18-21) - but not in that logical ordering of different categories and different senses of 'being' which lies at the root of the argument in Metaphysics IV." (pp. 188-189)

34. ———. 1965. "Inherence." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 10:97-105.

Reprinted in: G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science and Dialectic. Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy, Edited by Martha Nussbaum, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1986, pp. 252-258.

"Often in the Categories and once in the Topics Aristotle draws a distinction between being in a subject and being said, or predicated, of a subject (Cat. 1a20-b9, 2a11-14, 2a27-b6, 2b15-17, 3a7-32, 9b22-24; Postpred. 11 b38-12 a 17, 14a 16-18; Top. 127b 1-4). Elsewhere he makes no use of the distinction, at least in this form. Once in the Categories he blankets it under the formula belonging to something (11b38-12a17). But it has earned a good deal of attention, and there is a fashionable dogma about it that I should like to nail. Hints of the dogma can be seen in older writers such as Porphyry and Pacius. Its modern exponents are Ross, Aristotle p. 24 n. 1; Jones, Phil. Rev. 1949 pp. 152-170; and most recently Miss Anscombe in Three Philosophers pp. 7-10, and Mr. Ackrill in Aristotle's 'Categories' and 'De Interpretatione' pp. 74-5, 83, 109." (p. 252)

(...)

"To say that if the Idea of man is a substance it cannot exist apart from that of which it is the substance is to say that its existence requires (indeed consists in) the existence of at least one individual falling under the classification human. And to say that pink or a particular shade of pink cannot exist apart from what contains it is to say, as Aristotle always says against Plato, that something must contain it if it is to exist at all." (p. 258)

35. ———. 1965. "Aristotle on the Snares of Ontology." In New Essays on Plato and Aristotle, edited by Bambrough, Renford, 69-95. New York: Humanities Press.

Reprinted in: G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science and Dialectic. Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy, Edited by Martha Nussbaum, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1986, pp. 259-278.

"Aristotle’s commonest complaint against other philosophers is that they oversimplify. One oversimplification to which he is especially attentive is the failure to see that the same expression may have many different senses. And among such expressions there is one arch-deceiver against which he often issues warnings: the verb ‘to be’, ‘einai'. I shall discuss part of his attempt to unmask this deceiver, namely his account of the verb in what is ordinarily, and too sweepingly, called its ‘existential’ use." (p. 259)

36. ———. 1965. "The Platonism of Aristotle." Proceedings of the British Academy no. 50:125-150.

Reprinted in: J. Barnes, M. Schofield, and R. Sorabji (eds.), Articles on Aristotle, Vol. 1 (Duckworth, 1975), pp. 14-34 and in G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science and Dialectic. Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy, Edited by Martha Nussbaum, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1986, pp. 200-220.

"Eight years ago, in a memorable Dawes Hicks Lecture to this Academy ,(1) David Ross spoke of Aristotle’s development as a philosopher. One theory of that development he singled out as having established itself in the fifty years since it appeared. It was pioneered in this country by Thomas Case and in Germany, with great effect, by Werner Jaeger. It depicts Aristotle, in Sir David’s words, as ‘gradually emerging from Platonism into a system of his own’. Aristotle’s philosophical career began in the twenty years that he spent learning and practising his trade in Plato’s Academy, and it ended in the headship of his own school. So it is tempting to picture him first as the devoted partisan, then as arguing his way free of that discipleship." (p. 200)

(...)

"Next, in saying that Aristotle’s logic was bred of discussion in the Academy, I do not imply that it was a donation from his colleagues. There used to be a myth, promoted by Burnet and Taylor, that the theory of categories was a commonplace of the Academy, derived from scattered hints in Plato’s writings. This myth was exposed, not simply by the obvious lack of system in the supposed hints, but by the fact that no other Academic known to us endorsed the theory and that Xenocrates, Plato’s self-appointed exegete, denounced it as a pointless elaboration and went back to a simpler distinction derived from Plato’s dialogues. Nor again do I mean that Aristotle’s logic had come to full maturity before Plato’s death. The division of the categories and probably the general theory of the syllogism, had been worked out by then; but Aristotle continued to review and develop these doctrines in his later work. The same is true of his theory of definition and, more generally of his theory of meaning. What is beyond question is that these theories wera developed in practice and not as an independent exercise. The theory of definition was modified to keep pace with the work of a biologist who had once held that a definition could be reduced to a single differentia and then found himself, when he set out to define any natural species, faced with a set of competing criteria. The theory of meaning, of synonymy and homonymy, was enlarged to allow a value to philosophical inquiries which had been earlier denounced as trading on an equivocation. At every stage Aristotle’s logic had its roots in philosophical argument and scientific procedure: it would be an anachronism to think otherwise. So what arguments lie at the root of his early account of substance and the categories?" (p. 207)

37. Owens, Joseph. 1960. "Aristotle on Categories." The Review of Metaphysics no. 14:73-90.

Reprinted in J. Owens, Aristotle, the Collected Papers of Joseph Owens, Edited by John R. Catan, New York: State University of New York Press 1981, pp. 14-22.

"In particular, the present paper would inquire whether the notion of category construction was intended in its beginnings to be an arbitrary procedure, whether it was meant to categorize words, and how it stands up to later examples of category mistakes. The paper, accordingly, will first examine briefly the doctrine of categories in its original Aristotelian setting; secondly, it will try to determine the type of treatment found there; and finally it will confront the Aristotelian doctrine with some irritant instances of category mistakes." (p. 14)

(...)

"This brief glance at the Aristotelian doctrine of categories and its confrontation with instances of category mistakes will indicate, it is hoped, some pertinent features of the earliest explicit category construction. It was based upon the natures of things and not upon the use of language. Because it was concerned with natures and not primarily with words, it was not at all an arbitrary procedure. The natures of things resist the manipulations of human whims, and keep the universe from becoming a world where everything is nonsense. But these natures exist in two ways, in reality and in cognition. Some predicates will belong to the nature just of itself, no matter where it is found. Other predicates ·will belong to a nature only in real existence. They are those concerned with its real history in some individual. Still other predicates will belong to it only as it exists in intellectual cognition, for instance that it is a species or a genus. These considerations show why categories are the concern of both the metaphysician and the logician, and why confusion in the three ways in which predicates apply will necessarily give rise to category mistakes. The Aristotelian doctrine likewise shows why the intrinsic principles of things cannot be placed directly in a category.

Its basic grooves of category construction, along with this warning, still serve quite well as dissolvents for such category mistakes as the ghost in the machine, the elephant with the baggage, or murder a relation. The category doctrine as found originally in the Stagirite's works is open to a great amount of development and elaboration, both to smooth out its own difficulties and to meet problems of current discussion. It offers a solid basis for profitable philosophic construction. It is far from complete, but what is there is very good." (pp. 21-22, notes omitted)

38. Perin, Casey Carlton. 2007. "Substantial Universals in Aristotle's Categories." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 33:125-144.

"Aristotle in the Categories, but not elsewhere, presents the distinction between individual substances such as Socrates or Bucephalus and their species and genera as the distinction between primary (πρώται) and secondary (δευτέραι) substances (2A11–19).

The distinction between primary and secondary substances, in turn, is a distinction between substances that are particulars and substances that are universals.

(...)

"Therefore, according to the definitions of ‘universal’ and ‘particular’ Aristotle gives in De interpretatione, a primary substance is not a universal but a particular. In the Categories a secondary substance is the species or genus of a primary substance (2A14–19).The species human being, for instance, is said of, and so predicated of, all individual human beings (Socrates, Callias, Coriscus, etc.). The genus animal is said of, and so predicated of, its species (human being, horse, dog, etc.) as well as all individual animals (Socrates, Bucephalus the horse, Fido the dog, etc.). Since a secondary substance is predicated of more than one being or entity as its subject, it is not a particular but a universal. The question I want to try to answer here is why, according to Aristotle in the Categories, certain universals such as the species human being or the genus animal are substances." (pp. 126-127, notes omitted)

(...)

"On Aristotle’s view in the Categories, then, the species or genus of a primary substance is both a subject for inherence, and for this reason a substance, and, being a universal, a predicable predicated of (said of) a plurality of subjects. The non-substantial items that

inhere in the species or genus of a primary substance are all of those non-substantial items that inhere in the primary substances of which that species or genus is predicated. As a result the species or genus of a primary substance, unlike a primary substance itself,

is a subject for inherence in which contraries can inhere at one and the same time. This view obviously invites a question that, as far as I know, no commentator has yet answered: what kind of being or entity could this be?" (pp. 142-143)

39. Polsky, Elliot. 2022. "Secondary Substance and Quod Quid Erat Esse: Aquinas on Reconciling the Divisions of "Substance" in the Categories and Metaphysics." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 96:21-45.

Abstract: "Modern commentators recognize the irony of Aristotle’s Categories becoming a central text for Platonic schools. For similar reasons, these commentators would perhaps be surprised to see Aquinas’s In VII Metaphysics, where he apparently identifies the secondary substance of Aristotle’s Categories with a false Platonic sense of “substance” as if, for Aristotle, only Platonists would say secondary substances are substances. This passage in Aquinas’s commentary has led Mgr. Wippel to claim that, for Aquinas, secondary substance and essence are not the same thing and that Aristotle’s notion of essence is absent from the Categories. This paper—by closely analyzing the apparently contradictory divisions of “substance” in Aquinas’s In V and VII Metaphysics—shows that essence and secondary substance are not altogether distinct for Aquinas. Moreover, when the Categories is viewed by Aquinas as a work of logic, it is found largely to cut across the disputes between Platonism and Aristotelianism."

40. Raspa, Venanzio. 2020. "Brentano on Aristotle’s Categories." In Franz Brentano's Philosophy after Hundred Years: From History of Philosophy to Reism, edited by Fisette, Denis, Frechette, Guillaume and Janoušek, Hynek, 185-203. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.

Abstract: "Brentano’s dissertation Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles (On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle) (1862) is examined in the light of the nineteenth-century debate on the Aristotelian categories. After providing an exposition of the conceptions of the main representatives of this debate, Adolf Trendelenburg and Hermann Bonitz, this paper assesses Brentano’s point of view on

the meaning and origin of the Aristotelian categories. It shows (i) that Brentano assumes non-Aristotelian elements in his reading of the Aristotelian categories, (ii) that this depends on the fact that he shares Bonitz’s thesis, and (iii) that his reading is incomplete in the light of certain Aristotelian statements about non-being."

41. ———. 2025. "Kant and the Debate on Aristotle's Categories in the Nineteenth Century." In Aristotle’s Organon in Old and New Logic 1800–1950, edited by King, Colin Guthrie and Raspa, Venanzio. New York: Bloomsbury.

"In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant posed the celebrated question of “the guiding thread to the discovery of all pure concepts of the intellect.” Aware of the criticisms traditionally directed at the Aristotelian theory of categories, that is, that the choice is arbitrary and the list incomplete, Kant searches for a principle that will justify both the choice and the number of categories. From this perspective, he accuses Aristotle of collecting his categories in a “rhapsodic” fashion and regards such a procedure as the cause of the defects of his theory.

Many people reacted to Kant’s criticism during the nineteenth century, sparking a lively debate on Aristotle’s categories that was to unfold over seven decades. Scholars have detected three main interpretations in these discussions: (1) Trendelenburg’s linguistic-grammatical approach; (2) Bonitz’s ontological perspective, and (3) Apelt’s logical-semantic standpoint. This reconstruction, however, requires some refining and adjusting. Its main flaw lies in that it mixes the problem of the origin of the categories with that of their meaning. For Trendelenburg, who opened the debate, categories have a grammatical origin, but not a grammatical meaning; for Bonitz, categories have an ontological meaning, but not an ontological origin.

I will argue, first, that Kant not only criticized but also provided an interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of categories; secondly, that many interpretations given during the nineteenth century, while intending to respond to Kant, move largely within the conceptual framework outlined by Kant, contain Kantian elements, both conceptual and terminological, or develop hints provided by Kant. In retracing the debate, we will also see that these interpretations are not all reducible to the three mentioned above."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Aristotle's Categories. Annotated bibliography of the studies in English: Rij - Z

Bibliography

1. Rijk, Lambertus Marie de. 1951. "The Authenticity of Aristotle's Categories." Mnemosyne no. 4:129-159.

"Most scholars either deny Aristotle's authorship of the first treatise of the Organon, or else consider the problem of authorship to be insoluble. I maintain, however, that such judgements are wrong and that the treatise is of genuine Aristotelian authorship, and of considerable importance for our knowledge both of Aristotle's own development, and also that of later Platonism. I shall try to show the authenticity of the treatise in the following study, and shall divide my investigation into the following main divisions:

A. The view of the ancient commentators concerning the authenticity of Categories Chs. 1-9; B. Modern criticism of the authenticity of Categories Chs. 1-9;

C. The authenticity of Categories Chs. 10-15." (p. 129)

[See also the following note to Ancient and mediaeval semantics and metaphysics (Second part), Vivarium, November, 1978, p. 85: "Unlike some 30 years ago (see my papers published in Mnemosyne 1951), the present author has his serious doubts, now, on the authenticity of the first treatise of the Organon" and the review by Kurt von Fritz (1954)].

2. ———. 1952. The Place of the Categories of Being in Aristotle's Philosophy. Assen: Van Gorcum.

Contents: Bibliography I-III; Introduction 1-7; Chapter I. Aristotle's doctrine of truth 8-35; Chapter II. The distinction of essential and accidental being pp. 31-43; Chapter III. Logical and ontological accident 44-52; Chapter IV. The nature of the categories in the Metaphysics 53-66; Chapter V. The doctrine of the categories in the first treatise of the Organon 67-75; Chapter VI. The use of the categories in the work of Aristotle 76-88; Appendix. The names of the categories 89-92; Index locorum 93-96.

"It seems to be the fatal mistake of philology that it always failed to get rid of Kantian influences as to the question of the relation of logic and ontology. Many modern mathematical logicians have shown that the logical and the ontological aspect not only are inseparable but also that in many cases it either lacks good sense or is even impossible to distinguish them. Accordingly, the distinction of logical and ontological truth (especially of propositional truth and term-truth), that of logical and ontological accident and that of logical and ontological categories, has not the same meaning for modem logic as it seems to have for 'traditional' logic (for instance the logic of most Schoolmen).

I hope to show in this study that the distinction of a logical and an ontological aspect (especially that of logical and ontological categories) can be applied to the Aristotelian doctrine only with the greatest reserve. A sharp distinction carried through rigorously turns out to be unsuitable when being applied to Aristotelian logic. For both aspects are, for Aristotle, not only mutually connected but even interwoven, and this in such a way that the ontological aspect seems to prevail, the logical being only an aspect emerging more or less in Aristotle's generally ontological way of thinking." (pp. 6-7)

3. ———. 1978. "On Ancient and Mediaeval Semantics and Metaphysics. Part II. The Multiplication of Being in Aristotle's Categories." Vivarium no. 16:81-117.

"3. The Multiplication of Being in Aristotle's Categories 3.1. Introduction. One of the results of the preceding section may be that Lloyd (1956, p. 59) seems to be wrong in asserting that in Plato's view the rôle of the universal is played by the Idea exclusively, and that only by the time of the Middle Academy, that is, for the Platonists of the first two centuries A.D., the performers of this rôle have been multiplied. As a matter of fact the distinction between Plato and his followers of the Middle Academy on this score would seem to be a different one. The ontological problems of participation were felt as early as in the Platonic dialogues (see our section 2), as well as the logical ones concerning predication (which will be discussed in a later section). Well, the Platonists of the first two centuries A.D., introduced explicitly a threefold distinction of the Platonic Form or rather of its status which was (only) implied with Plato. I think, Lloyd is hardly more fortunate in ascribing (ibid.) this introduction chiefly to the influence of Aristotelian logic on Platonic interpretation. It is true, in stating the basic distinction between en hypokeimenôi and kath' hypokeimenou Aristotle tried to face the same cluster of fundamental problems which induced later Platonists to the distinction of the Forms as taken before or after the methexis (cf. Simplicius, In Arist. Categ. 79, 12ff.). However, Plato's disciple, Aristotle (the most unfaithful one, in a sense, as must be acknowledged) was as deeply engaged on the same problems as were his condisciples and the Master himself in his most mature period. It is certainly not Aristotle who played the rôle of a catalyst and was the first to provoke the multiplication of the Platonic Form in order to solve problems which were not recognized before in the Platonic circle. On the contrary, Plato himself had saddled his pupils with a basic and most intricate problem, that of the nature of participation and logical predication. It was certainly not left quite unsolved in the later dialogues, but did still not have a perspicuous solution which could be accepted in the School as a scholastic one. So any of his serious followers, (who were teachers in the School, at the same time) was bound to contrive, at least, a scholastic device to answer the intricate question. To my view, Aristotle's solution should be discussed in this framework. For that matter, Aristotle stands wholly on ground prepared by his master to the extent that his works on physic and cosmology, too, are essentially discussions held within the Academy (Cp. Werner Jaeger, Aristotle. Fundamentals of the history of his development, Oxford 1949, 308)." (pp. 81-82)

3.2. Aristotle's classification of being as given in the Categories; 3.2.1. The common view: categories = predicates; 3.2.2. The things said 'aneu symplokés'; 3.2.3. The doctrine of substance given in the Categories; 3.2.4. The ontological character of the classification; 3.2.5. Some obscurities of the classification; 3.2.6. The different status of the 'things' meant; 3.2.6.1 The first item of the classification; 3.2.6.2. The second item of the classification; 3.2.6.3. The third item of the classification; 3.2.6.4. The ontological status of the 'things' meant in the items (2) and (3); 3.2.6.5. The fourth item of classification; 3.2.7. The relation between the different 'things'; 3.3. Categories and predicables; 3.3.1. The opposition of category and predicable; 3.3.2. The impact of the opposition; 3.3.3. The obscure position of the differentia; 3.3.4. Conclusion.

4. ———. 1980. "On Ancient and Mediaeval Semantics and Metaphysics. Part III. The Categories as Classes of Names." Vivarium no. 18:1-62.

"4. The Categories as Classes of Names; 4.1. Status quaestionis. The previous sections contain several hints to the close interrelation between three major issues in Plato's doctrine, viz. the question about the true nature of the Forms and those about participation and predication. Indeed, for the founder of the theory of the Forms, predication was bound to become a problem. Forms are immutable and indivisible; yet other Ideas have to participate in them; they are unique, by themselves and subsistent; yet, when saying 'John is man' (or white), `Peter is man' (or white), should there be one perfect, eternal, immutable etc. Form of MAN (or WHITE) in the one and another in the other? Or, as I have put it above [1977: 85]: if John, Peter, and William are wise, does this mere fact mean that there must be something which they are all related to in exactly the same manner, namely WISDOM itself? And if 'John is wise', 'Peter is wise', and 'William is wise' are all true statements, what exactly is the meaning of the predicate name 'wise'? The former question is concerned with participation, the latter with predication. Well, that the crux of the latter problem is not the separate existence of the Forms (chôrismos) clearly appears from the fact that also the author of the Categories, who had entirely abandoned all kind of chôrismos, could apparently not get rid of a similar problem: if the categories really are classes of 'things there are' (1 a 20) (i.e. 'real' substances, 'real' natures, and 'real' properties), rather than concepts (i.e. logical attributes), what kind of 'thing' is meant by a term qua 'category'? So for Aristotle the semantic problem still remained. His distinction between en hypokeimenôi and kath' hypokeimenou could only hide the original problem. It is often said that these phrases refer to different domains, the metaphysical and the logical one, respectively. We have already found some good reasons to qualify this opposition (see [1978], 84; 88). It seems to be useful now to collect all kind of information from Aristotle's writings, not only the Categories, about the proper meaning of the categories. This will be the aim of our sections 4.2-4.7." (pp. 1-2)

4.2. On some modern interpretations of 'kata symplokên'; 4.3. Aristotle's use of the categories; "For this section see also my Utrecht dissertation, The place of the Categories of Being in Aristotle's philosophy, Assen 1952 pp. 76-88. I have to correct or to adjust my former views on several points."; 4.31. The categories as a classification of reality; 4. 32. The categories as a classification of sentence predicates; 4.33. The categories as a classification of 'copulative being'; 4.4. How did Aristotle arrive at his list of categories?; 4.5. Are the categories the 'highest predicates'?; 4.6. The categories taken as names in Metaph. Z 1-6 and Anal. Post. I 4; 4.7. An attempt at a reinterpretation of Categories, chs. 1-5; 4.8. Aristotle's view on relatives; 4.9. Conclusion.

5. ———. 1988. "'Categorization' as a Key Notion in Ancient and Medieval Semantics." Vivarium no. 26:1-18.

"The aim of this paper is to argue for a twofold thesis: (a) for Aristotle the verb 'katêgorein' does not as such stand for statemental predication, let alone of the well-known 'S is P' type, and (b) 'non-statemental predication' or 'categorization' plays an important role in Ancient and Medieval philosophical procedure.

1.Katêgorein and katêgoria in AristotleAristotle was the first to use the word 'category' (katêgoria) as a technical term in logic and philosophy. It is commonly taken to mean 'highest predicate' and explained in terms of statement-making. From the logical point of view categories are thus considered 'potential predicates'.(*)

(...)

1.3 Name giving ('categorization') as the key tool in the search for 'true substance'

What Aristotle actually intends in his metaphysical discussions in the central books of his Metaphysics (Z-Th) is to discover the proper candidate for the name 'ousia'. According to Aristotle, the primary kind of 'being' or 'being as such' (to on hêi on) can only be found in 'being-ness' (ousia; see esp. Metaph. 1028b2). Unlike Plato, however, Aristotle is sure to find 'being as such' in the domain of things belonging to the everyday world. Aristotle's most pressing problem is to grasp the things' proper nature qua beings. In the search for an answer name-giving plays a decisive role: the solution to the problem consists in finding the most appropriate ('essential') name so as to bring everyday being into the discourse in such a way that precisely its 'beingness' is focussed upon.

(...)

2. The use of 'praedicare' in BoethiusThe Greek phrase katêgorein ti kata tinos is usually rendered in Latin as praedicare aliquid de aliquo. The Latin formula primarily means 'to say something of something else' (more precisely 'of somebody'). Of course, the most common meaning of the Latin phrase is 'to predicate something of something else in making a statement of the form S = P'. However, the verb praedicare, just as its Greek counterpart katêgorein, is used more than once merely in the sense of 'naming' or 'designating by means of a certain name', regardless of the syntactic role that name performs in a statement. In such cases praedicare stands for the act of calling up something under a certain name (designation), a procedure that we have labelled 'categorization'. (...)

Boethius' use of praedicare is quite in line with what is found in other authors. Along with the familiar use of the verb for statemental predication, Boethius also frequently uses praedicare in the sense of 'naming' or 'designating something under a certain name' whereby the use of the designating word in predicate position is, sometimes even explicitly, ruled out." (pp. 1, 4, 9-10)

(*) See L. M. de Rijk, The Categories as Classes of Names (= On Ancient and Medieval Semantics 3), in: Vivarium, 18 (1980), 1-62, esp. 4-7

6. ———. 2002. Aristotle: Semantics and Ontology. Volume I: General Introduction. The Works on Logic. Leiden: Brill.

"In this book I intend to show that the ascription of many shortcomings or obscurities to Aristotle resulted from persistent misinterpretation of key notions in his work. The idea underlying this study is that commentators have wrongfully attributed anachronistic perceptions of 'predication', and statement-making in general to Aristotle. In Volume I, what I consider to be the genuine semantics underlying Aristotle's expositions of his philosophy are culled from the Organon. Determining what the basic components of Aristotle's semantics are is extremely important for our understanding of his view of the task of logic -- his strategy of argument in particular.

In chapter 1, after some preliminary considerations I argue that when analyzed at deep structure level, Aristotelian statement-making does not allow for the dyadic 'S is P' formula. An examination of the basic function of `be' and its cognates in Aristotle's philosophical investigations shows that in his analysis statement-making is copula-less. Following traditional linguistics I take the 'existential' or hyparctic use of `be' to be the central one in Greek (pace Kahn), on the understanding that in Aristotle hyparxis is found not only in the stronger form of 'actual occurrence' but also in a weaker form of what I term 'connotative (or intensional) be' (1.3-1.6). Since Aristotle's 'semantic behaviour', in spite of his skilful manipulation of the diverse semantic levels of expressions, is in fact not explicitly organized in a well-thought-out system of formal semantics, I have, in order to fill this void, formulated some semantic rules of thumb (1.7).

In chapter 2 I provide ample evidence for my exegesis of Aristotle's statement-making, in which the opposition between 'assertible' and `assertion' is predominant and in which 'is' functions as an assertoric operator rather than as a copula (2.1-2.2). Next, I demonstrate that Aristotle's doctrine of the categories fits in well with his view of copula-less statement-making, arguing that the ten categories are 'appellations' ('nominations') rather than sentence predicates featuring in an 'S is P' formation (2.3-2.4). Finally, categorization is assessed in the wider context of Aristotle's general strategy of argument (2.5-2.7).

In the remaining chapters of the first volume (3-6) I present more evidence for my previous findings concerning Aristotle's 'semantic behaviour' by enquiring into the role of his semantic views as we find them in the several tracts of the Organon, in particular the Categories, De interpretatione and Posterior Analytics. These tracts are dealt with in extenso, in order to avoid the temptation to quote selectively to suit my purposes." (pp. XV-XVI)

7. Rohr, Michael D. 1978. "Aristotle on the Transitivity of Being Said of." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 16:379-385.

Aristotle, in several of his treatises, discusses or makes use of the ontological tie or relation' being said of (and its converse partaking of), whose importance to his thought has been recognized by many scholars. Its pervasiveness guarantees that there will be difficulties in its interpretation. (2) To isolate it as an object of Aristotelian exegesis, I shall tentatively identify it with the sortal tie and so take it as connecting (in Aristotelian terms) each genus to all the species and individuals falling under that genus and each species to all the individuals and subordinate species (if any) falling under that species." (p. 379), two notes omitted)

(2) Some recent attempts at interpreting it may be found in Chung-Hwan Chen, "On Aristotle's Two Expressions," Phronesis 2 (1957):148-59; Aristotle's Categories and De Interpretatione, trans. J. L. Ackrill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 75-90; R. E. Alien, "Substance and Predication in Aristotle's Categories," in Exegesis and Argument, ed. E. N. Lee, A. P. D. Mourelatos, and R. M, Rorty (New York: Humanities Press, 1973), pp. 362-73; and Russell Dancy, "On Some of Aristotle's First Thoughts About Substances," The Philosophical Review 84 (1975): 338-73.

8. Ross, William David. 1939. "The Authenticity of Aristotle's Categories." Journal of Philosophy no. 36:431-433.

"Professor Husik (*) has done a service to students of Aristotle by reminding them of his earlier article, which, buried in the decent obscurity of a learned journal, had escaped my attention, as well as that of many other students.

The authenticity of the Categories is well attested by external evidence. The work was accepted as genuine by almost all the ancient scholars (πάντες παρτυρώσι, says Philoponus). A succession of scholars wrote commentaries on it as on a genuine work of Aristotle, from the third century A.D. onwards -- Porphyry, Dexippus, Ammonius, Philoponus, Simplicius, Olympiodorus, not to speak of the later commentators, Elias and David. Its genuineness was, however, probably doubted by some scholars, for several of the commentators devote themselves to refuting arguments against its genuineness -- e.g., Philoponus 12.34-13.5, Simplicius 379.7-380.15, Olympiodorus 22.38-24.20. The arguments which they set themselves to meet-arguments derived from supposed contradictions between the Categories and certain works of Aristotle- are invariably weak, and the answers given by the commentators are convincing." (p. 431)

[* I. Husik, "The Authenticity of Aristotle's Categories", Journal of Philosophy, 1939]

9. ———. 1995. Aristotle. London and New York: Routledge.

Sixth edition. With an introduction by John L. Ackrill (First edition 1923, fifth revised edition 1953); on the Categories see pp. 22-26.

"Ross’s book gives a concise and comprehensive account of Aristotle’s philosophical works—and no better account exists.

In this Introduction I will say something about Ross and about his book, and I will then outline some of the ways in which the study of Aristotle has developed in the years since he wrote it." (From the Introduction by J. L. Ackrill, p. VII).

(...)

"It is highly probable that the doctrine [of categories] began as an attempt to solve certain difficulties about predication which had troubled the Megaric school and other earlier thinkers.(18) Aristotle’s object seems to have been to clear up the question by distinguishing the main types of meaning of the words and phrases that can be combined to make a sentence. And in doing this he arrived at the earliest known classification of the main types of entity involved in the structure of reality.

Why are they called categories? The ordinary meaning of is ‘predicate,’ but the first category has for its primary members individual substances, which according to Aristotle’s doctrine are never properly predicates but always subjects. It has sometimes, therefore, been thought that primary substances do not fit properly into the doctrine of the categories. But this is not the case. ‘Socrates’ is, indeed, on Aristotelian principles no proper predicate; but if we ask what Socrates is, the ultimate, i.e. the most general, answer is ‘a substance,’ just as, if we ask what red is, the ultimate answer is ‘a quality.’ The categories are a list of the widest predicates which are predicable essentially of the various nameable entities, i.e. which tell us what kinds of entity at bottom they are." (pp. 23-24)

(18) This view is ably expressed in O. Apelt’s: Kategorienlehre des Aristoteles in Beiträge zur Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophie. Leipzig, 1891

10. Rossitto, Cristina. 2017. "Aristotle and the “Categories”." In Categories: Histories and Perspectives, edited by D'Anna, Giuseppe and Fossati, Lorenzo, 11-34. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

"In order to conclude, in this short and compendious description of the ategories, contained in the treatise called Categories, we tried to highlight just few aspects that may invite to further reflections. The Aristotelian conception of categories is very “rich” by itself, namely into the same Aristotle’s background.

This constitutes one of reasons which have decreed its fortune, following on the recovery and resumption, in the philosophical tradition—and not just philosophical—, since ancient times up to now and beyond.

As for Aristotle, it is possible having an idea about what “he should have interiorized that” by only naming two of the copious places in which he uses what is widely known as his doctrine of categories. By electing that we have detached both from the three main perspectives we used before—linguistic, logic and ontological—, and in the strictly philosophical field, precisely theoretical or, as Aristotle would have said, of first philosophy.

It deals with two passages, the first contained into a work of psychology, namely of physics, as Aristotle affirmed at the beginning of De anima I, and the second of an ethical work, that is in the Eudemian Ethics:

First, surely, it is necessary to establish in which of the genera (ἐν τίνι τῶν γενῶν) the soul lies and what it is; I say it is this-somewhat and a substance, or quality or quantity or some other of the categories (κατηγοριῶν) which I have distinguished. Further, if the soul belongs to the beings potentially, or is it rather actually. This is not, in fact, something small (De an. I 1, 402a 23–27).

The good is called in many ways, indeed in as many ways as being (πολλαχῶς γὰρ λέγεται καὶ ἰσαχῶς τῷ ὄντι τὸ ἀγαθόν). Being, as has been set out elsewhere, signifies what-is, quality, quantity, when...; and the good occurs in each one of these categories—in substance, intelligence and God (ὁ νοῦς καὶ ὁ θεός); in quality, the just (τὸ δίκαιον); in quantity, the moderate (τὸ μέτριον), in the when, the right occasion (ὁ καιρός) (Eth. Eud. I 8, 1217b 25–32; Aristotle 1982 [Eudemian Ethics. Books I, II and VIII. Transl. and Commentary M. Woods, Oxford: Clarendon Press] : 9–10)." (p. 34)

11. Sanford, Jonathan J. 2004. "Categories and Metaphysics: Aristotle's Science of Being." In Categories: Historical and Systematic Essays, edited by Gorman, Michael and Sanford, Jonathan J., 3-20. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

"The relationship between Aristotle’s Categories and his Metaphysics is a matter of some debate. If one assumes that the Categories is fundamentally a metaphysical work, then there appear to be irreconcilable differences between the notion of substance presented in the Categories and that presented in Metaphysics Z (VII). The Categories account of substance does not present matter as a component of hylomorphic substance, nor does it consider substance as a formal cause of unity, both of which are key ideas of Metaphysics Z (VII). The Metaphysics therefore represents a break with Aristotle’s older metaphysical scheme. On the other hand, if one assumes that the Categories is fundamentally a logical work that makes no pretence to being a work of metaphysics, then the account of substance and the other categories in the Categories is at worst irrelevant to, and at best only obliquely related to, what Aristotle attempts to accomplish in the Metaphysics. I think that the truth lies somewhere between these two views. The Categories is best understood as both a logical and a metaphysical account. The metaphysics presented in the Categories is by no means complete, but Aristotle does not claim that it is. Aristotle does not, in the Metaphysics, break with his ideas in the Categories, but deepens them and works to fill out his metaphysics. In this essay I consider the relationship between Aristotle’s metaphysics and his theory of categories from the perspective of the requirements of science. The Metaphysics presents Aristotle’s science of being, but, as his logical works show, science depends on categories.

Thus the Metaphysics cannot be understood apart from the works—especially the Categories, the Topics, and the Posterior Analytics—in which Aristotle explains what categories are, how they are used, and what their relationship to science is. There are indeed some difficulties in positing a close relationship between Aristotle’s earlier and later works, especially in regard to what gives unity to a science and the importance of being in the sense of potentiality and actuality. Still, these problems are not so great as to constitute a disjunction between Aristotle’s earlier and later works. Indeed, Aristotle’s attempts to describe being in each of its four senses in the Metaphysics are possible only because of the close relationship between logic and metaphysics, a relationship that he elucidates in his Categories and some other earlier works." (pp. 3-4, notes omitted)

12. Scaltsas, Theodore. 1981. "Numerical versus qualitative Identity of Properties in Aristotle's Categories." Philosophia no. 10-11:328-345.

13. Scheu, Marina M. 1944. The Categories of Being in Aristotle and St. Thomas. Washington: Catholic University of America Presss.

Contents: List of tables VIII; Preface IX; List of abbreviations XIII; Part I. Categories in Aristotle. I. The history and general nature of the categories 3; II. The logical aspect of the categories in Aristotle 13; III. The metaphysical aspect of the categories in Aristotle 23; Part II. Categories in St. Thomas. IV. The history of the categories from Aristotle to St. Thomas 38; V. General nature of the categories in Thomistic philosophy 46; VI. The nature of substance 64; VII. The nature of accident 77; Summary and conclusion 96; Bibliography 98; Index 102-109.

""Knowledge to be of value must be founded on reality. Hence it follows that unless our ideas faithfully reflect reality, our judgments about it will be false. One of the most evident illustrations of this fact is found in the divergent views philosophers have taken with regard to our widest universal concepts, the categories of being. It is, therefore, an important task of metaphysics to inquire into the modes which characterize the being that these concepts represent.

Aristotle, the first philosopher known to have undertaken this task, presents a classification of categories in his logical treatise entitled Categories. Nor does he confine his doctrine to but this one of his works. Numerous references to the categories are found in practically all of his writings, especially in the Metaphysics.

To St. Thomas Aquinas, however, we owe the development and perfection of the theory of the categories. He, it is true, wrote no authentic logical treatise' on the subject as did Aristotle, but his doctrine of the categories can be culled from his numerous discussions of them throughout his more metaphysical works in particular, especially from the Quaestiones Disputatae, the Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, and the Summa Theologica.

It is the purpose of this study, which is to be primarily metaphysical and Thomistic in character, to present the general teaching of St. Thomas on the categories. Our treatment of Aristotle, then, is to give the proper background, since obviously it is the Aristotelian plan that is the point of departure for all Thomistic study of the subject. Without this Aristotelian environment in which St. Thomas worked, his position would be much less clear. In a word, the Thomistic section of this study will reveal that St. Thomas developed and perfected Aristotelian thought.

The problem of the categories is twofold: logical, in so far as it involves a classification of our generic concepts ; metaphysical, in that it must necessarily regard and classify the objects of those concepts, that is, real beings Therefore, after considering the history and general nature of the categories in the first chapter of the Aristotelian section, we shall examine the logical and metaphysical aspect in the two chapters following. Chapter four will present the historical transition from Aristotle to St. Thomas. Since St. Thomas wrote no logical treatise on the categories, nor any commentary on Aristotle's logical treatment of them, it will be necessary for us to proceed in a somewhat different manner in the Thomistic section of our work. In keeping with the primarily metaphysical trend in St. Thomas' thought, which is particularly evident in his treatment of the categories, we propose to present in the last three chapters respectively the general character of his teaching on the categories and a consideration of the nature of substance and the nature of accidents." (pp. IX-X notes omitted)

14. Scholz, Donald F. 1963. "The Category of Quantity." Laval Théologique et Philosophique no. 19:229-256.

"Because quantity itself is relatively well known to us, an analysis of its genus is not too difficult. This fact alone makes it interesting to us. Further, an examination of this genus is useful in coming to an understanding of Aristotle’s procedure in the Categories as a whole.

For these reasons it would seem appropriate to reflect a little upon Aristotle’s treatment of quantity in the Categories." (p. 229)

(...)

"In reflecting upon the ways in which Aristotle determines the properties of quantity, we can see that he proceeds inductively in all cases, showing the properties of quantity from its species. This might be taken as a sign of what we said at the beginning of our examination of this category, the genus is so general, so potential, that it can be understood only by making reference to something more actual, its species.

We have now completed our treatment of the category of quantity. We have seen how it is made known and we have seen its properties. We have judged Aristotle’s method in exposing this doctrine to have been the proper one. Perhaps, by analyzing the other categories in this way, one would be able to obtain a relatively distinct knowledge of all of them. This in itself -would be no small accomplishment." (p. 256)

15. Sedley, David. 2002. "Aristotelian relativities." In Le style de la pensée. Recueil d'hommages à Jacques Brunschwig, edited by Canto-Sperber, Monique and Pellegrin, Pierre, 324-352. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Originally published in Italian as: "Relatività aristoteliche", Dianoia, 2, 1997 pp. 11-15 (first part) and 1998, 3, 11-23 (second part).

"In chapter 7 of the Categories, devoted to the category of relativity (πρός τι), Aristotle starts with a definition of the relative (6a 36-b 8)" (p. 324)

(...)

"At the end of the chapter (8a 13ff.) he raises a worry about whether this definition will allow some substances to be relative, namely those which are themselves the organic parts of larger substances. We must recall that in the Categories he has none of his later qualms about allowing some substances to be composed of substances (1). Hence his question: won't those substances which are parts of larger substances be relative, namely to the wholes of which they are parts? The worry is a proper one, because he has already spoken of the parts of substances as falling into both categories: in chapter 5, at 3a 29-32, they were substances, yet in chapter 7, at 6b 36-7 a 22, relatives include «wing», «head» and «rudder»." (p. 325)

(...)

"Aristotle's point is metaphysical, not linguistic. It is important not to be misled into thinking that he is in any way appealing to what can and cannot be said in the Greek language. It is not even obvious that Greek usage would consider an expression like πρός τι χείρ unacceptable. His observation about primary and secondary substances is rather, I suppose, as follows. If a hand appears to be relative, namely to its owner, it is not in virtue being this particular hand that it is relative, but in virtue of being a hand- that is, not because of

its individuality, the hallmark of a primary substance, but because of its species, the hallmark of a secondary substance." (pp. 325-326)

(...)

"I hope that I have made a sufficient case, based on Aristotle's own text,. for attributing to him the distinction between what I have called soft and hard relativity. But now let me confess that my reading him this way was inspired by a much more lucid version of the same distinction, attributed by Simplicius to the Stoics. The report comes from his commentary on Aristotle's Categories (166.15-29) (22)" (p. 339)

(22) SVF [Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta] II 403. The translation here is based on that at LS [A. A. Long, D. N. Sedley (eds.), A. A. Long, D. N. Sedley (eds.), The Hellenistic Philosophers, Cambridge University Press, 1987] 29B.

16. Sharma, Ravi K. 1997. "A New Defense of Tropes? On Categories 3b10-18." Ancient Philosophy no. 17:309-315.

"A long-standing debate among interpreters of the Categories concerns the nature of first-order accidents, the entities designated by expressions such as 'the particular white' (το τι. λευκόν). Some interpreters maintain that Aristotle takes them to be universals, entities that may be present in many substances; others, that Aristotle takes them to be tropes, each of which is peculiar to a single substance.(1)

In a recent issue of this journal, Daniel T. Devereux offers a new defense of the tropes-reading, one that is not based, as most others have been, on Aristotle's cryptic remark concerning the present-in relation at 1a24-25.(2) If Devereux is right, the debate has now been settled in favor of tropes. In this note, I shall maintain that Devereux misreads the passage crucial to his argument and that the proper reading undermines his proposed defense." (p. 309)

(1) 1 Throughout this discussion, I italicize 'present in' (ἐν) and 'said of (λέγεσται κατά) when those locutions are used technically, for relations between entities.

(2) See Devereux 1992 ['Inherence and Primary Substance in Aristotle's Categories', Ancient Philosophy 12: 113-131]. The term 'trope' is my choice; Devereux expresses the same idea by speaking of tokens, or particular instances, of types.

17. Shatalov, Keren Wilson. 2020. "Hypokoiemenon versua substance." The Review of Metaphysics no. 74:227-250.

"Thre is a curious lacuna in scholarship on Aristotle’s logic and metaphysics, in that few authors investigate Aristotle’s notion of ὑποκείμενον, or subject, in its own right, even by confining this investigation to his logical works. Though they tend to agree that it is offered as a criterion for substancehood in Categories, discussion of what it is to be a ὑποκείμενον is generally offered only in passing. There is a reason for this: Substance seems the more compelling topic, since it is about this that Aristotle is in a disagreement with Plato, and it is in the interest of this disagreement that Aristotle introduces the notion of ὑποκείμενον. But if being a ὑποκείμενον is so key to Aristotle’s exposition of his anti-Platonic view of substance, at least in his logical works, to the extent that we do not understand being a ὑποκείμενον we cannot understand what Aristotle is trying to tell us about what it is to be an οὐσία, or substance." (p. 227)

(...)

"When comparing the different sciences and considering the way in which they are related, one finds oneself in the perspective of metaphysics, according to which substance is the only, the ultimate, ὑποκείμενον. It is according to this perspective, the perspective of metaphysics, that Aristotle is writing in Categories when he so closely associates being a subject with being a substance.! (p. 250)

18. Shields, Christopher. 1999. Order in Multiplicity. Homonymy in the Philosophy of Aristotle. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Contents: Abbreviations XIII; Introduction 1; Part I: Homonymy as Such. 1. The Varieties of Homonymy 9; 2. The Promises and Problems of Homonymy 43; 3. Homonymy and Signification 75; 4. Core-Dependent Homonymy 103; Part II: Homonymy at Work. 5. The Body 131; 6. Oneness, Sameness, and Referentia Opacity 155; 7. The Meaning of Life 176; 8. Goodness 194; 9. The Homonymy of Being 217; Afterword: Homonymy's Promise Reconsidered 268; Bibligraphy 271; Index of Passages Cited 281; General Index 287-290.

"Aristotle's treatments of the homonymy of core philosophical concepts, including especially being and goodness, are sometimes highly abstract, and they must be understood as arising from the polemical contexts which motivate them.

For these reasons, I consider these topics only after recounting Aristotle's general framework for introducing homonymy. Accordingly, I divide the study into two parts.

In Part I, I consider homonymy as such, mainly by reflecting on the uncontroversial cases upon which Aristotle himself relies when trying to explicate and motivate homonymy. I begin, in Chapter 1, by recounting Aristotle's introduction of homonymy in the Categories, settling some exegetical difficulties concerning his general conception of its nature."

(...)

In Part II, I investigate homonymy at work. I do not move through Aristotle's appeals to homonymy seriatim. Rather, I consider a very few cases, selected for their importance, interest, and representative character. In two cases, I urge that some of Aristotle's critics have failed to appreciate the power of homonymy in meeting objections to substantive Aristotelian theories.

(...)

Although I maintain that Aristotle cannot establish the homonymy of being, I do not infer that his commitment to homonymy as such is misguided. On the contrary, I maintain that outside this one application, Aristotle's commitment to homonymy is altogether well motivated; in particular, the method of definition it introduces is of genuine and lasting importance. At the very minimum, I argue,Aristotle is right to advocate homonymy as a form of constructive philosophical analysis. He has identified a framework which has too often been overlooked by those disenchanted with the prospects for genuine philosophical progress. Accordingly, I end Part II with a concluding afterword in which I appraise in a fully general way homonymy's enduring value." (pp. 3-5)

19. Simons, Peter. 1988. "Aristotle's Concept of State of Affairs." In Antike Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie, edited by Gigon, Olof and Fischer, Michael W., 97-112. Bern: Peter Lang.

"The concept of state of affairs (Sachverhalt) is one which is of general interest in philosophy in connection with the theory of truth, but is also of special interest for legal philosophy.(1) Its heyday in philosophy was the late (2) nineteenth century and early twentieth century ; it is therefore tempting to regard the concept in its philosophical employment as a thoroughly modern invention. Nevertheless, a similar concept was known to medieval philosophy(3), and the medievals in question - as was usual then - referred back to the authority of Aristotle in support of their views. I claim that those medievals who ascribed something like a concept of state of affairs to Aristotle were right.(4) Discussing the identity of concepts, especially over a time-span of millennia, is fraught with difficulties, so I shall need first to establish what conditions a concept must satisfy to be a concept of state of affairs. This will occupy § 2. I shall then in § 3 endeavour to show that Aristotle’s works employ a concept closely answering these conditions." (p. 97)

(...)

"The evidence from Aristotle

The texts supporting my interpretation come mainly from the logical works ’’Categories” and ”De interpretatione”. In particular, I claim that the term pragma is used on several occasions with a meaning corresponding closely to that of "state of affairs” as specified above. First, some preliminary remarks on interpreting these texts.

We must be clear from the start that in these works Aristotle's discussion is so compressed and so full of ambiguities that no interpretation can be uncontroversial. In discussing semantic matters, Aristotle uses no specially developed terminology, and he is also sparing in his use of examples. It is no accident that medieval commentators on these writings of Aristotle, which were for a long time the chief source of information on his work, diverged widely in their interpretations. Having now got used to making distinctions and employing more specific semantic concepts than Aristotle, it would be futile for us to expect to find, sitting in his work, a concept of state of affairs which unambiguously coincides with the one specified in the previous section. The best we can expect, even using plausible interpolations and taking interpretative risks, is an anticipatory approximation. But while Aristotle does not have a fully-fledged modern concept of state of affairs, it is surprising, in view of the subsequent history of semantics, how close he comes to one. (pp. 101-102)

20. Stein, Nathanael. 2011. "Aristotle’s Causal Pluralism." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 93:121-147.

Abstract: "Central to Aristotle’s metaphysics and epistemology is the claim that ‘aitia’ – ‘cause’ – is “said in many ways”, i.e., multivocal. Though the importance of the four causes in Aristotle’s system cannot be overstated, the nature of his pluralism about aitiai has not been addressed. It is not at all obvious how these modes of causation are related to one another, or why they all deserve a common term. Nor is it clear, in particular, whether the causes are related to one another as species under a single genus, such that there is a univocal definition of ‘aitia’ which applies to all of them, or whether Aristotle means to assert that the four causes are homonyms. It is argued here that although there are strong reasons to group the four causes together, there are also powerful considerations on the side of homonymy. It is further argued that the four causes are more closely tied to the ontological theory of categories and predication than is often recognized. As a result, we can reconcile the competing demands of unity and plurality by taking one mode of causation, the formal cause, as basic, and accounting for the other modes with reference to it, in the manner of so-called pros hen homonyms."

21. Stough, Charlotte L. 1972. "Language and Ontology in Aristotle's Categories." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 10:261-272.

"Yet there is an attendant danger in reading the Categories freely in the light of later works such as the Metaphysics. It is altogether too easy to find in that early text the more sophisticated ideas of a maturer period of Aristotle's philosophical development and hence unwittingly to incorporate into our procedure the assumption, dubious at best, that Aristotle's views remained virtually unchanged throughout his philosophical career. Thus there would seem to be prima facie reason for raising some questions of a rather special sort about the body of the Categories as such --- about what can be said of Aristotle's notion of categories of being without going beyond that work (or at least the Organon) for support.

One question in particular deserves attention, because it strikes at the very center of the theory expounded in the Categories. Granted that Aristotle attached a privileged status to the category of substance -- a status importantly not enjoyed by the other nine categories -- we want to know what he conceived that special status to be. Our question concerns the relation between substance and the remaining categories. Aristotle had some important things to say on this subject in later works, (1) but how much of that was originally central to the theory of categories cannot be uncovered by his subsequent remarks. Very little can be said about the philosophical significance of the early doctrine of categories until we understand precisely how Aristotle ordered the category of substance in relation to the nine nonsubstantial forms of predication in the Categories itself. As might be expected, Aristotle offers no easy answer to this question, but his own words are suggestive in ways that are worth exploring and yet, at the same time, quite easily overlooked." (p. 261)

(1) For example, Met., Zeta 1 (cf. Delta 11); Aristotle's doctrine of τα πρός έν λεγόμενα set forth in central sections of the Metaphysics may represent his most finished thoughts on this subject.

22. Striker, Gisela. 2011. "A Note on the Ontology of Aristotle’s Categories, chapter 2." In Episteme, etc.: Essays in Honour of Jonathan Barnes, edited by Morison, Benjam and Ierodiakonou, Katerina, 141-151. New York: Oxford University Press.

Abstract: "This paper argues that the four-fold classification of entities in chapter 2 of Aristotle’s Categories, with its unusual terminology, contains a criticism of Plato’s metaphysics, showing that the term ‘participation’ covers two distinct relations. This criticism prepares the way for the reversal of priorities in chapter 5, in which Aristotle bestows the rank of primary substance on concrete individuals. However, the ontological status of the species of primary substances—universals that are not attributes—remains ambiguous. A possible solution of these difficulties may be found in Metaphysics Z.13, with the rejection of universals as substances from Aristotle’s ontology."

23. Studtmann, Paul. 2003. "Aristotle's Category of Quality: A Regimented Interpretation." Apeiron no. 36:205-227.

"In Chapter Eight of the Categories, Aristotle divides the genus, quality, into four species: (1) habits and dispositions; (2) natural capabilities and incapabilities; (3) affective qualities and affections; and (4) shape." (p. 205)

(,,,)

"in this paper, I argue that there is an alternative interpretation to the canonical interpretation, what I will call the regimented interpretation, that can go some way toward removing the dissatisfaction that he and others have had with it. I do not think that such an interpretation can entirely remove all the difficulties with Aristotle's discussion — some peculiarities will remain. Nonetheless, as I hope to show, there is a way to regiment the category that makes it vastly more systematic, and as a result, far more philosophically interesting than the canonical interpretation suggests.

My main argument for the regimented interpretation proceeds in two stages. First, I examine the details of Aristotle's discussion of the first three canonical species and conclude not only that they are subsumed under the single genus of dispositions but also that the genus of dispositions admits of a more or less systematic and symmetrical differentiation.

As a result, the category of quality should be understood as being primarily divided into two species: shape and dispositions. And because the genus of dispositions is systematically differentiated and Aristotle does not differentiate shape at all, any arbitrariness in the category of quality must be located in the division of the genus, quality, into the two species, shapes and dispositions. In the second stage of the argument, I propose a hypothesis about the way Aristotle understands the nature of quality itself, a hypothesis that leads to a very plausible division of quality into shape and dispositions. Hence, the divisions in the category of quality can be understood as flowing systematically from the very nature of the genus being divided." (p. 207)

24. ———. 2004. "Aristotle's Category of Quantity: A Unified Interpretation." Apeiron no. 37:69-91.

"Aristotle provides two different treatments of the category of quantity: one in Categories V and one in Metaphysics V 7. Interestingly (and perhaps not surprisingly) the treatments differ in important respects. In the Categories, Aristotle provides two different differentiations of quantity.

According to the first, quantity divides into continuous and discrete quantity; the former then divides into line, surface, body and time, and the latter into number and speech. According to the second, quantity divides into quantities whose parts have a relative position with respect to one another and quantities whose parts do not (Cat. 4b20-2). Although the differences between these two differentiations are interesting, for the purposes of this paper I shall focus on the first. For, in the first instance, the differentiations appear to be compatible; and second, by presenting the division into continuous and discrete quantities before the other division, Aristotle, it would seem, gives priority to the former. In this paper, therefore, not only will I assume that the two differentiations do not need philosophical correction to make them compatible but I will also follow Aristotle's lead and take the division into continuous and discrete quantities to be the more fundamental." (p. 69)

25. ———. 2008. The Foundations of Aristotle's Categorial Scheme. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Contents: Chapter 1: Whence the Categories? 7; Chapter 2: The Body Problem in Aristotle 25; Chapter 3: Form 49; Chapter 4: Prime Matter 79; Chapter 5: Quality 101; Chapter 6: Quantity 125; Chapter 7: Substance 141; Index 173-175.

"Aristotle’s categorial scheme had an unparalleled effect not only on his own philosophical system but also on the systems of many of the greatest philosophers in the western tradition.

The set of doctrines in the Categories, what I will henceforth call categorialism, play, for instance, a central role in Aristotle’s discussion of change in the Physics, in the science of being qua being in the Metaphysics and in the rejection of Platonic ethics in the Nicomachean Ethics."

(...)

"Despite its influence, however, categorialism raises two fundamental questions that to this day remain open. The first concerns Aristotle’s list of highest kinds." (p. 7)

(...)

"Unlike the first question, the second concerns the way in which categorialism relates to doctrines Aristotle articulates in other works. The question arises as a result of a rather common story that is told about the categories and its apparent deep tensions with hylomorphism." (p. 9)

(...)

"This book contains a series of interrelated chapters that collectively support an interpretation that provides answers to the two great questions concerning Aristotle’s categories. According to the interpretation, Aristotle’s categorial scheme is derivable from his hylomorphic

ontology, which itself is derivable from very general theses about the nature of being." (p. 15)

26. ———. 2012. "Aristotle's Categorial Scheme." In The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle, edited by Shields, Christopher, 63-80. New York: Oxford University Press.

"In this chapter I shall discuss a tradition of interpretation that has for the most part been abandoned and shall do so by way of discussing two questions concerning Aristotle’s categorialism that are not often treated together. By pointing out just how controversial any approach to Aristotle’s Categories is bound to be, I hope to forestall any initial strong objections to the admittedly non-standard approach I shall take. And even if I fail to convince the reader of the cogency of the approach by the end of the chapter, I hope that the reader will have benefitted from seeing Aristotle’s categorial scheme treated from a heterodoxical perspective. For what it is worth, it is my contention that Aristotle’s categorial scheme, as is the case with many works in the history of philosophy, is best illuminated by opposing beams of interpretive light.

The following discussion is framed by two questions concerning Aristotle’s categorialism: (1) How did Aristotle arrive at his list of categories? and (2) What is the connection between Aristotle’s categories and his hylomorphic ontology. These questions are not often treated together, which is not altogether surprising, since each question is extremely difficult to answer in its own right. Hence, treating them together piles difficulty upon difficulty. Moreover, owing to their difficulty scholars have given wildly different answers to each of the questions. So the amount of scholarly disagreement about the issues involved is rather daunting. Nonetheless there is an interpretively and philosophically interesting reason for discussing both questions in a single paper, namely the possibility of interestingly co-ordinated answers to the questions.The possibility stems from a tradition of interpretation that finds its origin in the Middle Ages. Because of its medieval origin, the interpretation is out of step with recent scholarly trends. Nonetheless, I hope at least to show the interest in the interpretation. Mygoial in this chapter is not to present anything like a definitive case for an interpretation of Aristotle's Categories but rather to discuss what I take to be a provocative and interesting interpretation that has the resources to provide systematic and co-ordinated answers to two very large questions concerning Aristotle's categorial scheme. In short, according to the interpretation, Aristotle’s list of highest kinds can be derived a priori from his hylomorphic ontology. To understand the import of such a claim, however, first requires a discussion of the two questions I have just mentioned." (pp. 64-65)

27. Surdu, Alexandru. 2006. Aristotelian Theory of Prejudicative Forms. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

Contents: Vorwort des Herausgebers IX; Foreword XI; List of Signs XV; Part I. Hermeneutic Investigations 1; 1. Interpretation of the First Two Chapters of Aristotle’s Categoriae 3; 2. Interpretation of the Third Chapter of Aristotle’s Categoriae 19; 3. Interpretation of the Fifth Chapter of Aristotle’s Categoriae 25; 4. The Problem of Prejudicative Relations in other Aristotelian Works 33; 5. 5. Commentaries and Interpretations 61; 6. Specificity of Prejudicative Relations 105; Part II. Logical Significance of Prejudicative Relations 125; 1. A Short Characterization 127; 2. Introducing the Symbolic Notation 129; 3. Classical-Traditional Analysis of Prejudicative Relations 133; 4. Logical-Mathematical Significance of Prejudicative Relations 167; Part III. General Philosophical Conclusions 209; 1. A Short Characterization 211; 2. Subsistence, Existence, and Being 213; 3. The Five Voices, Essence, and Quiddity 217; 4. The Problem of the Universal (General) 221; 5. Intellect, Reason, and Rational Intellect 223-228.

"The starting point of the present paper was the symbolic interpretation - of a logical-mathematical type - of the first chapters of Aristotle’s work Categoriae - work which is usually not taken into account by the modems. Beginning with the first attempts I was surprised to notice that the mentioned texts are lending themselves -more than any other text - to a logical-mathematical formalisation, the difference being that they show, besides the currently interpretable forms, other ones that are not to be found either within symbolic logic, or within the classical-traditional one. We named them “prejudicative forms”, since they have a certain resemblance with the classical judgements, but precede them, without being judgements in their own right, that is affirmations or negations.

The prejudicative forms represent an unstudied field, so far. Their affinity with symbolic forms grants them a prejudicative character and complete these last ones in many respects, which leads to the conclusion that, although the symbolic logic is the most recent logic, its field is anterior - from a logical point of view - to the classical field. And certainly Aristotle and some ancient commentators of the Organon had this intuition.

By means of the entities they focus on, the prejudicative forms -the individual, the singular, the species, the genus and the supreme genus - contribute to the solving of some of the generally philosophical issues which are still debatable on, as the problem of universal, which also appeared in relation with Aristotle’s logic and was pointed out by Porpyhrius Malchus in his famous Isagoge.

Coming back to Aristotle, one can indeed wonder whether it was possible for him to accomplish so many things in the field of logic and, moreover, to foresee - explicitly or not - problems which find a reasonable explanation just nowadays. One should not forget that subtle scholars preceded Aristotle, and that the problems of logic were so to say “floating” in the atmosphere of Greek philosophy. Moreover, once discovered, the field of logic could have been unrestrictedly covered, as these were no hindrances. Aristotle did cover it. Faced with a savage and hardly coverable field, he was often forced to clear it. Today, these soundings are astonishing, since the field is crossed by large railways and rapidly covered. Nevertheless, there are some moments when nobody can say “Dig here!”

Aristotle did not finish, but he gave a lot of suggestions, and, if we do not think in a different way, but we think something else, his logic will still be a precious source of hints and information." (Foreword, pp. XII-XIII)

28. Tarán, Leonardo. 1978. "Speusippus and Aristotle on Homonymy and Synonymy." Hermes.Zeitschrift für klassische Philologie no. 106:73-99.

Reprinted in: Leonardo Tarán, Collected Papers 1962-1999, Leiden: Brill, 2001, pp. 421-454.

"Modern scholarship since the middle of the last century has generally accepted it as an established fact that Speusippus made an exhaustive classification of words or names (ὀνόματά) in relation to the concepts they express and that he gave definitions of homonyma and synonyma only in reference to words and their meanings; that is to say that for him homonyma and synonyma are properties of linguistic terms and not of things, whereas for Aristotle, especially in the first chapter of the Categories, they are properties of things." (p. 421)

(...)

"He [Jonathan Barnes, "Homonymy in Aristotle and Speusippus," Classical Quarterly, N.S. 21 (1971), pp. 65-80] contends, in the first place, that Speusippus's conception of homonyma and synonyma is essentially the same as that of Aristotle, the slight differences between their respective definitions of each being trivial, and, secondly, that even though in a few places Aristotle does use homonyma and synonyma as properties of linguistic terms, this is due to the fact that Aristotle's use of these words is not as rigid as the Categories would lead one to believe; he could not have been influenced by Speusippus because the latter conceived homonymy and synonymy as properties of things and, in any case, if influence of one on the other be assumed, it could as well have been Aristotle that influenced Speusippus.

Though I believe that his two main contentions are mistaken, I am here mainly concerned with the first part of Barnes' thesis; for, if he were right in believing that for Speusippus homonyma and synonyma are properties of things and not of names or linguistic terms, then Hambruch's [*] notion that Speusippus did influence Aristotle when the latter uses synonymon as a property of names would be wrong, even though Barnes himself were mistaken in his analysis of the Aristotelian passages he reviews in the second part of his paper. Whereas, on the other hand, if Speusippus's classification is really of ὀνόματά, then, since Barnes himself admits that Aristotle does sometimes use homonyma and synonyma as properties of names, the influence of Speusippus on Aristotle is at least possible; and it becomes plausible and probable, regardless of the relative chronology of their respective works, when it is seen, as I shall try to show, that in some cases Aristotle is in fact acracking doctrines which presuppose a use of homonyma and synonyma such as can be ascribed to Speusippus or is using synonymon in the Speusippean sense, different from Aristotle's own notion of synonymous words." (pp. 422-423)

(...)

"Our only source for Speusippus's classification of names is the three texts that Lang has assembled as frags. 32a, 32b, and 32c, (7) three passages from Simplicius's commentary on Aristotle's Categories."

[*] E. Hambruch, Logische Regeln der platonischen Schule in der aristotelischen Topik (1904).

References

Margherita Isnardi Parente, Speusippo: Frammenti; Edizione, traduzione e commento, Naples: Bibliopolis 1980 (Greek text and Italian translation; see Fragments 13, 14, 15).

Paul Lang, De Speusippi academici scriptis accedunt fragmenta, Bonn 1911; reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1965.

29. Titcomb. Margaret Rae. 2015. "Aristotle’s Category Construction and the Why Behind It." Akadimia Filosofia no. 1:9-15.

Abstract: "Aristotle’s Categoriae, or the Categories, is a comprehensive classification system for every object of human understanding that can be either a subject or a predicate of a proposition. There are ten categories: Substance, Quantity, Qualification, Relative/Relation, Place, Time, Position, State (Condition), Action, and Affection. The first part of this paper will explain each of the categories in the order in which they are presented in the chapters of Categoriae. The second half of the paper will discuss the guity in the approach Aristotle uses to both construct and find meaning in these categories. Fr. Joseph Owens examines the use of metaphysical, logical and grammatical ways in which Aristotle presents the categories. Owens observes the benefits and disadvantages of Aristotle’s mixed approach, and questions the usefulness of the system as a whole. This paper will argue that Aristotle successfully uses all three approaches, sometimes separately and sometimes in combination, to create a thorough process for systematizing all objects of human cognition."

30. Thorp, John. 1974. "Aristotle's Use of Categories. An Easing of the Oddness in "Metaphysica" Δ 7." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 19:238-256.

"We are accustomed to think that when Aristotle introduces a list of categories into an argument he is effecting a division of the matter into ten separate kinds or predicates or senses. For example, at de anima 410 a 23 when he is wondering what sort of thing the soul is,

he gives a list of the categories to show what sorts of things there are and goes on to ask of each sort whether the soul belongs to it.

The list of categories divides up all that is into ten departments for easier handling. Again in the Categoriae he divides up predicates into ten sorts by a list of categories, and goes on in the rest of the book to give the peculiar logical and grammatical features of the sorts - although the treatment of the later sorts is not extant. Here the list of categories serves almost as a table of contents, dividing up the matter for piecemeal treatment. Let us call this use of a list of categories to divide the matter into ten departments "use (a)". No doubt this is the most prevalent use in Aristotle: a philosopher of analytic temperament like the Master is always dividing things up." (pp. 244-245)

(...)

"Conclusion

The orthodox view of the mesh of four uses with ten senses - that only per se being has ten senses - can now be revised. There are five uses of εἶναι, not four, and only the fifth, the existential use (not mentioned in A 7) is divided into ten senses according to the categories.

Per se being is semantically unvarying. (p. 256)

31. Ushida, Noriko. 2003. "Before the Topics? Isaak Husik and Aristotle's Categories revisited." Ancient Philosophy no. 23:113-134.

"I. Husik, in arguing for the authenticity of the Categories (in: Philosophical Review 13, 1904, pp. 514-528), substantially overstated the case for the similarity of that treatise to the Topics. The two works differ greatly in their treatment of the theory of substance (Cat. 5, 3 B 10-21; SE 22, 178 B 38ff.)."

32. van Polanen Petel, H. P., and Reed, K. 2021. "How to Derive Aristotle’s Categories from First Principles." Axiomathes no. 41:1-35.

First online: 5 September 2021.

Abstract: "We propose a model of cognition grounded in ancient Greek philosophy which encompasses Aristotle’s categories. Taking for First Principles the brute facts of the mental actions of separation, aggregation and ordering, we derive Aristotle’s categories as follows. First, Separation lets us see single entities, giving the simple concept of an individual. Next, Aggregation lets us see instances of some kind, giving the basic concept of a particular. Then, Ordering lets us see both wholes-with-parts as well as parts-of-some-whole, giving the subtle concept of a relational or Gestalt. The basic and the subtle concept give us the major and minor categories. The categories constitute a top-level ontology and describe universal usage so that any other category necessarily describes particular or domain usage."

33. Verdenius, Willem Jacob. 1948. "Two Notes on the Categories of Aristotle " Mnemosyne no. 4:109-110.

"Cat. 6 a, 19-22: Aristotle does not say: "A thing which is two cubits long does not possess its length to a higher degree than a thing of three cubits possesses its length of three cubits", but: "One thing cannot be two cubits long to a higher degree than another". That means: a thing of a certain length does not possess this length to a higher degree than things which are longer or shorter, for these things do not have this length at all. The same applies to numbers: "three is not three to a higher degree than five is three, nor is five five to a higher degree than three is five", i.e. a number does, or does not, possess a certain amount. This meaning is clearly expressed by the traditional text." (p. 109)

(...)

"Cat. 8 a, 31-32: Aristotle wants to say that the use of a wide definition should not induce us to suppose that the possession of a relation makes a thing essentially relative in the sense that its existence can only be explained in terms of a relation to another thing."(p. 110)

34. Ward, Julie K. 2007. Aristotle on Homonymy: Dialectic and Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments VII; Abbreviations IX; Introduction 1; 1. Aristotle's theory of homonymy in Categories 1 and its precursors 9; 2. Homonymy in the Topics 43; 3. Systematic homonymy 77; 4. The homonymy of Being 103; 5. Physis, Philia, and homonymy 137; 6. Homonymy and science 168; Afterword 201; Bibliography 207; Index of passages 215; General index 219-220.

"The present book had its origin in many puzzles I encountered about pros hen predication." (p. VII)

(...)

"This work examines homonymy, a topic that lies within Aristotle’s theories of language and predication. In Aristotle’s work, the idea of homonymy is paired with that of synonymy, and in fundamental ways, rests upon it. To English speakers, homonymy s known as a grammatical category referring to the case in which the same word has different meanings, and synonymy, the case in which different words have the same meaning. In contrast, Aristotle finds homonymy and synonymy to be concerned not merely with words, but also, and primarily, with things. As he explains in Cat. 1, synonymy refers to the situation in which two or more things have the same name, or term, and the same defining character (cf. Cat. 1a6–7)." (p. 1)

(...)

"The present book on homonymy seeks to augment recent discussions, particularly aspects of Irwin’s and Shields’ work, by furthering the investigation in some areas and initiating study in others. In brief summary, the present chapters fall into three areas: (1) Aristotle’s account of homonymy in Cat. 1 and its possible precursors, (2) the utility of homonymy for refining premises in scientific arguments, and (3) the application of homonymy to specific concepts." (p. 3)

35. Wardy, Robert. 2000. Aristotle in China. Language, Categories and Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Preface page IX; 1. The China syndrome: language, logical form, translation 1; 2. Aristotelian whispers 69; Epilogue 150; Glossary of technical terms 153; References 161; Index 166-170."

"Aristotle in China is about the relation between language and thought. That is, of course, a topic of absurdly ambitious scope: it is only slightly less absurd to say that it concerns the particular question of the relation between language and philosophical thought, or even the relation between the Chinese language and Chinese logic. Perhaps readers will concede at the outset that my decision to explore these huge issues through reading Aristotle’s Categories in Chinese is mere wilful circuitousness, rather than outright absurdity; and I trust that, if they persevere, they will discover that indirection has its compensations.

Chapter 1 introduces, defines and dissects varieties of linguistic relativism, with specific reference to the China question. Chapter 2 is entirely devoted to a reading of the (ming li t’an), ‘The Investigation of the Theory of Names’, a seventeenth century translation of Aristotle’s Categories into Chinese; indeed, one of my goals is to reanimate an ancient tradition, both Chinese and Western, by producing a sort of metacommentary.

In principle, philosophers could read chapter 1 and dispense with chapter 2; and Sinologists could study chapter 2 and avoid philosophy: but of course my intention is to address philosophers, classicists, Sinologists, linguists, anthropologists and devotees of missionary studies throughout." (p. IX)

36. Warnock, Mary. 1950. "A Note on Aristotle: Categories 6 a 15." Mind no. 59:552-554.

"In Categories 6a 11 Aristotle says that though it is a characteristic of quantities that they cannot have opposites, it looks as if they could in the case of spatial measurements. This lead him to make a general remark on the notion of opposition, namely that when people talk of opposites they are using a spatial metaphor; that they mean by " opposites " those things which, in the same class, are separated by the greatest possible distance from each other. There are two things to notice here. First that Aristotle aims to distinguish, at least roughly, between kinds of terms, by asking whether or not they have opposites. Secondly, that, while he talks about a spatial metaphor, his only attempt to elucidate this metaphor is by translating it into another spatial metaphor, that of " greatest distance between"." (p. 552)

37. Wedin, Michael. 1979. ""Said of" and "predicated of" in the Categories." Philosophical Research Archives no. 5:23-34.

Abstract: "Anyone with more than casual interest in Aristotle's Categories knows the convention that "predicated of" ["κατηγορεἳται"] marks a general relation of predication while "said of" ["λέγεται"] is reserved for essential predication. By "convention" I simply mean to underscore that the view in question ranks as the conventional or received interpretation. Ackrill, for example, follows the received view in holding that only items within the same category (not arbitrarily, of course) can stand in the being-said-of relation and, thus, that only secondary substances can be said of primary substances. Despite its long received status the convention has never received a fully comprehensive examination and defense. In fact such an account is needed because, while enjoying considerable textual support, certain passages of the Categories appear to clash with the convention. My aim in this paper is, first, to develop and defend the standard interpretation, as I shall call it. Since the standard interpretation has lately been challenged in a closely argued article by Russell Dancy, my defense will proceed partly with an eye to his criticisms. Having met these, I go on to raise some difficulties with the rather unorthodox reading Dancy gives the Categories. The crucial point here turns out to be what Aristotle understands by a paronym."

38. ———. 1993. "Non-Substantial Individuals." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 38:137-165.

Abstract: "The rock bottom items of the Categories are individuals. Those neither present-in nor said-of a subject are unproblematic. They are primary substances such as Socrates and Secretariat. But the exact nature of those that are present-in but not said-of a subject is a matter of lively debate. Roughly, two schools of thought dominate discussion. For some, type-III individuals, as I call them, are nonrecurrent accident particulars; for others, they are fully determinate accident properties. I begin with Ackrill's version of nonrecurrence, the progenitor of the modern debate, and then turn to Owen's attack, which established what may be called the new orthodoxy. (1) After assaying Owen's arguments, I consider a kindred but improved version due to Frede. Finally, I argue for a revised version of the standard nonrecurrence view."

(1) Owen, G. E. L. 1965. "Inherence." Phronesis 10, 97-105.

39. ———. 1997. "The Strategy of Aristotle's Categories." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 79:1-26.

"The Categories begins without fanfare. Missing is the promotional pitch customary in Aristotle's works, and even the obligatory announcement of subject matter is absent. Instead, we are given definitions of three technical notions: homonymy, synonymy, and paronymy. That is all the first chapter contains. In particular, there is no hint as to why Aristotle begins with these notions or how they fit into the Categories as a whole. In fact, by most accounts it is not clear that much would be lost were the first fifteen lines simply omitted. Indeed, chapter two's discussion of τα οντά or things that are is arguably a more natural starting place for what follows. For this reason, perhaps, most scholarship has focused on the three onymies themselves to the neglect of their wider role in the Categories. Some scholars would go so far as to maintain that the first four chapters are little more than a random assemblage of scraps. I shall argue, on the contrary, that the three onymies are part of a carefully drawn strategy that underwrites the unity of the first five chapters of the Categories. In particular, I propose that they are grouping principles, introduced to isolate the one relation that is able to provide the foundation for the system of categories, namely, synonymy." (p. 1, notes omitted)

40. ———. 2000. Aristotle's Theory of Substance. The Categories and Metaphysics Zeta. New York: Oxford University Press.

"This book offers a compatibilist account of the relation between the Categories and Metaphysics Z. The basic idea is a simple one. The incompatibilist is worried, for example, about the fact that each of these treatises makes a different proposal about the identity of primary substances. According to the first, primary substances are substance individuals—items such as Socrates, Secretariat, and Madame Curie. To avoid unwieldy tags, such as “Categories-primary-substances," I shall call these items c-substances. According to the second treatise, primary substances are the forms of c-substances. Because these proposals are deemed incompatible, so are the theories containing them, and likewise for the treatises themselves. However, this line of reasoning, a staple of incompatibilism, assumes that Aristotle meant the theories to occupy the same explanatory space. This seems to me to be false. The theory of Metaphysics Z is meant, rather, to explain central features of the standing theory of the Categories and so, in effect, it presupposes the essential truth of the early theory. This is the basic idea." (pp. 2-3)

41. Weidemann, Hermann. 1980. "In Defence of Aristotle's Theory of Predication." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 25:76-87.

"One of the most characteristic features of Aristotle's theory of predication is the fact that he divides, as G. E. L. Owen puts it,

all the predicates of any individual into two groups: those which hold good essentially or per se of their subject, as man does of Socrates; and those which merely happen to be true of their subject, as white does of Socrates.(1)

(...)

The first part of present paper is intended to show that Aristotle's argument in 1007a20-33 relies on a way of distinguishing between essential and accidental predications which does not commit him at all to the alleged confusion of the former with statements of identity that has been ascribed to him not only by Kirwan, but also, as it seems, by Owen, to whom the second part of the present paper is intended to be a rejoinder." (p. 76)

(1) G. E. L. Owen, "The Platonism of Aristotle," in: P. F. Strawson (ed.), Studies in the Philosophy of Thought and Action, London/Oxford/New York 1968, pp. 147-74 (originally printed in the Proceedings of the British Academy, 1965); p. 160.

42. Wheeler, Mark Richard. 1999. "The Possibility of Recurrent Individuals in Aristotle’s Organon." Gregorianum no. 80:539-551.

"In 1965, G.E.L. Owen's article "Inherence" sparked a contemporary debate concerning whether or not the nonsubstantial individuals posited by Aristotle in the Organon are universals.(1) Owen's antagonists claim that nonsubstantial individuals are nonrecurrent particulars. Owen's defenders claim that nonsubstantial individuals can recur and, hence, are universals.

In this paper, I present an analysis of Owen's position in "Inherence", arguing that Owen commits Aristotle to the possibility of recurrent nonsubstantial individuals which are one in number. The implications of Owen's position for Aristotle's theory of primary substance in the Organon are considered. I demonstrate that the modal status of recurring individuals cannot be determined by Aristotle's explication of being present in a subject at 1a24 of the Categories. I then argue that, according to the sameness conditions laid down by Aristotle in the Topics, it is impossible for something which is one in number to recur and, hence, that it is impossible both for substantial individuals and for nonsubstantial individuals to be universals." (pp. 539-540, notes omitted)

(1) See, for examples of the early debate in the journal literature, Ackrill [1963], Owen [1965], Matthews and Cohen [1968], Allen [1969]. See Frede [1978], Devereux [1992], and Wedin [1993] for examples of how the debate has developed since.

References

Ackrill, J.L. (1963). Aristotle's Categories and De Interpretatione, translation and notes by Ackrill, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Allen, R.E. (1969). "Individual Properties in Aristotle's Categories," Phronesis, 14, pp. 31-39.

Devereux, Daniel T. (1992). "Inherence and Primary Substance in Aristotle's Categories," Ancient Philosophy 12, pp. 113-131.

Frede Michael. (1978). "lndividuen bei Aristoteles," in Antike und Abendland, Walter De Gruyter & Co. Translated as "Individuals in Aristotle" in Essays in Ancient Philosophy by Michael Frede (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).

Matthews, Gareth B. and Cohen, S. Marc. (1968). ''The One and the Many," The Review of Metaphysics, pp. 630-655.

Owen, G.E.L. (1965). "Inherence," Phronesis 10, pp. 97-105. Reprinted with original page numbers noted in Logic, Science, and Dialectic, ed. M. Nussbaum, Ithaca: Cornell University Press (1986), pp. 252-258.

Wedin, Michael V. (1993). "Nonsubstantial Individuals," Phronesis 38, pp. 137-165.

43. ———. 2001. "κατηγορία in the Topics and the Categories." Journal of Neoplatonic Studies no. 8:37-60.

"The term kategoria in Aristotle's Topics and Categories denotes predicates. Hence the categories are best understood as classifying predicates and not predications. The equivocal use of the term in Top. 1, 9 is related to its use in signifying either linguistic or non-linguistic entities, and not because it can be used to mean predication."

44. Zingano, Marco. 2024. "Aristotle’s Categories: Ontology Without Hylomorphism." In New Essays on Aristotle’s Organon, edited by Mesquita, António Pedro and Santos, Ricardo, 35-49. New York: Routledge.

"In examining Aristotle’s Categories, I will mainly focus on attempting to understand what Aristotle means to do with the list of categories he provides us with in Chapter 4 of this treatise, some of which he goes on to examine in detail.(1) This is a classical topic and a hotly debated one since antiquity as well. My goal is limited, for I only want to see whether the text as it now stands can give us clues about this issue when we pay attention to its formal structure and put aside – even if only momentarily – other works, especially his Metaphysics, in which hylomorphism is the key notion on which to ground the categories. Hylomorphism is absent from the Categories, and I will try to read this treatise neither as announcing it nor as being conceived under its shadow. Whether or not such an enterprise pays off depends on how far we are willing to read the Categories free from Aristotle’s favoured and most celebrated view of matter and form as the principles of what there is.

My proposal is thus to read the Categories free from any shadow of hylomorphism.

Avoiding hylomorphism requires one not only to abandon the search for the concepts of matter and form, or their antecedents, but also, and more importantly, not to seek for a causal link between primary substances and the secondary substances or the other categories. Hylomorphism, in effect, is doctrine in which form is the cause of this piece of matter being the determinate object it is. In the Categories, in contrast, Aristotle is keen on emphasising his grounding thesis as he reiterates six times in Chapter 5 that individuals or primary substances are the basic ontological items because everything else is either said of them (secondary substances) or inhere in them (all the other categories) but eschews from engaging in any causal explanation of his dependency doctrine. He does speak of soul and body in the Categories but does not take them as pieces of an explanatory scheme of what a thing is, nor is he interested in examining the nature of soul or its relation to the body. When writing the Categories, Aristotle is, or so I will argue, innocent of hylomorphism; and I would like to see how successful such an enterprise can be, and to which extent." (p. 35)

(1) I take for granted the unity and authenticity of the Categories. For an illuminating study on this issue, see Michael Frede’s paper (1987), originally published in 1983 and, more recently, Bodéüs (2001).

References

Bodéüs, Richard, trans. 2001. Catégories. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Frede, Michael. 1987. “The Title, Unity and Authenticity of the Aristotelian Categories”. In Essays in Ancient Philosophy, 11–28. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliographie des études en Français sur les Catégories d'Aristote (A - F)

Bibliographie

1. Achard, Martin. 2000. "Tradition et histoire de l'Aristotélisme. Le point de vue des indices externes dans le problème de l'authenticité du traité des Catégories." Laval Théologique et Philosophique no. 56:307-351.

Résumé : "Un examen critique des indices externes mis de l'avant pour défendre l'authenticité des Catégories ne permet pas de conclure de façon positive. On trouvera ici un résumé de l'état de la question de ce point de vue externe, plutôt qu'une analyse du contenu du traité qui seule pourrait faire avancer le débat."

2. Aubenque, Pierre. 1962. Le problème de l'être chez Aristote. Éssai sur la problématique aristotélicienne. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

"Notre ambition est simple et se résume en peu de mots : nous ne prétendons pas apporter du nouveau sur Aristote, mais au contraire tenter de désapprendre tout ce que la tradition a ajouté à l 'aristotélisme primitif. On pourrait sourire de cette prétention et n' y voir que la fausse modestie de tout interprète, toujours préoccupé d 'annoncer qu'il va laisser parler son auteur. Mais cette volonté de dépouillement et de retour aux sources a, lorsqu 'il s' agit d'Aristote, un sens précis. Ce n 'est pas ici le lieu de rappeler dans quelles conditions, de mieux en mieux dégagées par l 'érudition contemporaine (3) , l 'oeuvre d 'Aristote a été transmise à la postérité.

Mais il n'est pas indifférent, même et surtout pour la compréhension philosophique, d'avoir touj ours présentes à l'esprit les circonstances particulières de cette transmission : l 'Aristote que ous connaissons n 'est pas celui qui vivait a u ive siècle av. J .-C., philosophe philosophant parmi les hommes, mais un Corpus plus ou moins anonyme édité au 1er siècle av. J .-C. Il n 'est pas surtout que, dans l'ignorance de la chronologie, nous ayons décidé d 'envisager ces écrits comme s' ils étaient contemporains les uns des autres et que nous ayons entrepris d ' en dégager une doctrine commune : il va de soi que notre compréhension du kantisme en eût été singulièrement altérée et probablement affadie. Une première conclusion s'impose, qui va à l 'encontre d'une erreur d'optique largement répandue : les commentateurs, même les plus anciens, et même s'ils avaient en leur possession des textes que nous avons perdus depuis lors, n'ont par rapport à nous aucun privilège historique. Commentant Aristote plus de quatre siècles après sa mort, séparés de lui non par une tradition continue, mais par une éclipse totale de son influence proprement philosophique, ils n'étaient pas mieux placés que nous pour le comprendre. Comprendre Aristote autrement que les commentateurs, même grecs, ce n'est donc pas nécessairement le moderniser, mais peut-être s'approcher davantage de !'Aristote historique." (pp. 3-4. deux notes omises)

(3) Cf. surtout P. Moraux, Les listes anciennes des ouvrages d'Aristote, Louvain, 1951.

3. ———. 1967. "Aristote et le langage." Annales de la Faculté des Lettres d'Aix no. 43:85-105.

Avec une "Note annexe sur les Catégories d'Aristote. Á propos d'une article de M. Benveniste" (pp. 103-105), sur Émile Benveniste, Catégories de pensée et catégories de langage, Études Philosophiques, 4, 1958.

Repris dans: P. Aubenque, Problèmes aristotéliciens. I. Philosophie théorique, Paris, Vrin 2009, pp. 11-30.

"L’étude ci-dessus était entièrement rédigée lorsque nous avons pris connaissance d’un important article de M. E. Benveniste sur «Catégories de pensée et catégories de langage », qui nous avait échappé lors de sa première publication (Études philosophiques, n° 4,1958) et qui vient d’être reproduit dans un ouvrage du même auteur, Problèmes de linguistique générale (Paris, 1966, p. 63-74). Dans cette étude, l’éminent linguiste veut montrer, en prenant comme exemple la liste des dix catégories d’Aristote, que des catégories qui se donnent pour des « catégories de pensée », donc pour des «catégories universelles», sont, en réalité, quoique de façon «inconsciente» (p. 63), des «catégories linguistiques», lesquelles sont toujours « catégories d’une langue particulière» (p. 65): ainsi, «Aristote, raisonnant d’une manière absolue, retrouve simplement certaines des catégories fondamentales de la langue dans laquelle il pense » (p. 66)." (p. 26)

(...)

"Le langage est avant la lettre pour Aristote l’équivalent de ce que Kant appellera le « transcendantal » et quel’ auteur de la Critique de la Raison pure aura peut-être le tort de vouloir chercher dans une pensée qui serait en deçà du langage - comme si une telle pensée existait. En tout cas, lorsque M. Benveniste dit des «penseurs grecs» que «les catégories [grammaticales] qu’ils ont instaurées (nom, verbe, genre grammatical, etc.) reposent toujours sur des bases logiques ou philosophiques» (p. 19), nous ne pouvons pas le suivre, dans l’exacte mesure où lui-même nous montre que la philosophie grecque des catégories et la logique grecque de l’attribution tirent leur substance de leur substrat linguistique. En fait, la grammaire grecque dérive bien de la logique et de la philosophie, mais d’une logique et d’une philosophie qui, chez Aristote du moins, sont une réflexion sur le langage. C’est ce mouvement qui, du langage spontané, conduit par la philosophie à son « administration » par la logique et la grammaire, que nous avons essayé de décrire chez Aristote." (p. 29)

4. ———, ed. 1980. Concepts et catégories dans la pensée antique. Paris: Vrin.

Table de matières : Pierre Aubenque : Preface VII-XIV; I. Denis O'Brien : Bibliographie annotée des études principales sur les Catégories d'Aristote (1794-1975) 1; Bertrand Dumoulin : Sur l'authenticité des Catégories d'Aristote 23; II. Jean-François Courtine : Note complémentaire pour l'histoire du vocabulaire de l'êtr e: les traductions latines d'ousia et la comprehénsion romano-stoïcienne de l'être 33; Denis O' Brien : Quantité et contrariété : une critique de l'école d'Oxford 89; Françoise Caujolle-Zaslawsky : Les relatifs dans les Catégories 167; Michel Narcy : Qu'est-ce une figure? Une difficulté de la doctrine aristotélicienne de la qualité (Catégories 8, 10b 26 - 11a 14) 197; Philippe Hoffmann : Les catégories pou et pote chez Aristote et Simplicius 217; Lauri Routila : La definition aristotélicienne du temps 247; Nicolas Vamvoukakis : Les catégories aristotéliciennes d'action et de passion vues par Simplicius 253; Jean Pépin : Clément d'Alexandrie, les Catégories d'Aristote et le fragment 60 d'Héraclite 271; III.Rémi Brague : De la disposition. A propos de diathesis chez Aristote 285; Pierre Hadot : Sur divers sens du mot pragma dans la tradition philosophique grecque 309; Alexandre J.-L. Delamarre : La notion de ptôsis chez Aristote et les Stoïciennes 321; Index des passages cités 347; Index des noms propres 355.

"Les études ici rassemblées sont issues des travaux du Centre de recherches sur la Pensée antique de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Centre Léon-Robin), laboratoire associé au C.N.R.S. Elles s’inscrivent dans un projet d’ensemble, qui vise à dégager les interférences entre pensée et langage dans le monde antique. Il nous a semblé que la question devait être envisagée d’abord à propos des catégories, ces concepts généraux qui organisent la perception et la compréhension que nous avons des choses et du monde et dont on peut se demander s’ils sont des structures universelles de toute pensée ou s’ils sont liés aux particularités sémantiques ou syntaxiques d’un système linguistique déterminé." (Préface, VII)

(...)

"Dans le séminaire qui est à l’origine des contributions qu’on lira ci-dessous, nous avons pris pour base le texte du traité aristotélicien des Catégories et son commentaire par Simplicius, lequel nous a du reste amenés à étendre nos recherches du côté du néoplatonisme. Après une bibliographie critique due à D. O’Brien et une étude de B. Dumoulin, qui s’interroge sur l’authenticité aristotélicienne du traité des Catégories, on trouvera dans ce recueil des études consacrées à chacune des principales catégories : l’essence et ses traductions latines (J. F. Courtine), la quantité (D. O’Brien), la relation (F. Zaslawsky), la qualité (M. Narcy), l’action et la passion (N. Vamvoukakis), le lieu et le temps (Ph. Hoffmann et L. Routila). Une étude qu’a bien voulu nous confier J. Pépin éclaire ensuite, sur un point particulier, la postérité des catégories aristotéliciennes.

A la façon dont le traité des Catégories se termine par des « Post-prédicaments », nous avons joint à ce recueil trois études portant sur des notions générales et difficilement définissables, liées d’une façon ou d’une autre à la problématique des catégories, et dont l’examen autorise d’intéressantes comparaisons entre l’aristotélisme et d’autres doctrines, notamment le stoïcisme : il s’agit des notions de pragma (P. Hadot), de diathesis (R. Brague) et de ptôsis (casus) (J. L. Delamarre)." (Préface, XIV)

5. ———. 1980. "Pensée et langage chez Aristote. À propos des Catégories." In Concepts et catégories dans la pensée antique, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, VII-XIV. Paris: Vrin.

Repris dans P. Aubenque, Problèmes aristotéliciens. Philosophie théorique, Paris: Vrin 2009, pp. 31-38.

"La question des rapports entre la pensée et le langage s’est cristallisée dans l’Antiquité autour de la notion de catégorie. Cette expression désigne à partir d’Aristote les concepts généraux qui organisent la perception et la compréhension que nous avons des choses et du monde. Certes, de tels concepts apparaissent à Aristote comme des catégories objectives de l’être et non comme des catégories subjectives de la pensée. Mais cette opposition n’est pas aussi tranchée qu’il y paraît, car les catégories sont d’abord et avant tout des catégories du langage. Or il est permis aujourd'hui de se demander, avec les progrès de la linguistique et de la philosophie comparée, si les catégories aristotéliciennes sont des structures universelles de toute pensée, universelles parce que reflets objectifs de la réalité, ou si elles sont liées aux particularités contingentes, tant syntaxiques que sémantiques, d’un système linguistique déterminé.

Pour apporter quelques éléments de réponse à cette question, on voudrait ici, sinon esquisser une histoire de la doctrine des catégories, du moins indiquer quels problèmes d’interprétation ont été soulevés à leur propos dès l’Antiquité et montrer comment cette problématique traditionnelle s’est enrichie depuis le xixe siècle de perspectives nouvelles." (p. 31)

6. Barnes, Jonathan. 2005. "Les Catégories et les catégories." In Les Catégories et leur histoire, edited by Bruun, Otto and Corti, Lorenzo, 11-80. Paris: Vrin.

"Bien que maintes préfaces affirment le contraire, les actes d’un colloque ne constituent jamais un livre. Les Actes du Colloque de Genève ne font pas exception: même si un thème commun les unifie, ils ne racontent pas une histoire linéaire. C’est pourquoi nous avons ajouté aux Actes une longue introduction. Ce chapitre, Les Catégories et les Catégories, de la plume de Jonathan Bames, vise à esquisser, dans ses grandes lignes, l’histoire des Catégories d’Aristote et de la théorie aristotélicienne des Catégories, et d’y encadrer les différents épisodes décrits par chacun des chapitres suivants. Un lecteur qui voudrait lire ce volume comme on parcourerait un livre pourrait donc suivre le texte de l’introduction, tout en y intercalant les chapitres là où une note en bas de page les mentionne. L’index nominum et rerum, l’index locorum et la bibliographie, qui se trouvent à la fin de ce volume et qui s’appliquent à tous les chapitres, lui permettront d’établir d’autres liens entre eux." (Préface, p. 7)

7. Benveniste, Émile. 1958. "Catégories de pensée et catégories de langue." Les Études Philosophiques no. 13:419-429.

Repris dans: É. Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique générale, Paris: Gallimard, 1966, pp. 63-74.

Translated in English as Categories of Thought and Language, by Mary E. Meek in: Problems in General Linguistics, Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1971, pp. 55-64.

"Tout en admettant que la pensée ne peut être saisie que formée et actualisée dans la langue, avons-noue le moyen de reconnaître à la pensée des caractères qui lui soient propres et qui ne doivent rien à l'expression linguistique ? Nous pouvons décrire la langue our elle-même. Il faudrait de même atteindre directement la pensée. S'il était possible de définir celle-ci par des traits qu lui appartiennent exclusivement, on verrait du même coup comment elle s'ajuste à la langue et de quelle nature sont lrurs relations.

Il semble utile d'aborder le problème par la voie des « catégories » qui apparaissent en médiatrices. Elles ne présentent le même aspect suivant qu'elles sont catégories de pensée ou catégories de langue. Cette discordance même pourrait nous éclairer sur leur nature respective.

(...)

"Or, nous avons la bonne fortune de disposer de données qu'on dirait prêtes pour notre examen, élaborées et présentées de manière objective, intégrées dans un ensemble connu : ce sont lea catégories d'Aristote."

(...)

"Aristote pose ainsi la totalité des prédicats que l'on peut affirmer de l'être, et il vise à définir le statut logique de chacun d'eux. Or, il nous semble - et nous essaierons de montrer - que ces .distinctions sont d'abord des catégories de langue, et qu'en fait Aristote, raisonnant d'une manière absolue, retrouve simplement certaines des catégories fondamentales de la langue dans laquelle il pense. Pour peu qu'on prête attention à l'énoncé des catëgories et aux exemples qui les illustrent, cette interprëtation, non encore proposée apparemment, se vérifie sans longs commentaires. Nous passons en revue successivement les dix termes." (pp. 65-66)

8. Bernier, Réjane. 1999. "La quantité chez Aristote : son rôle en physique, mathématique et métaphysique." Archives de Philosophie no. 62:595-637.

Résumé : "L'article présente d'abord quelques considérations épistémologiques et rappelle que, pour Aristote, le principe de connaissance de la quantité est le sens commun qui regroupe et unifie les données des sens propres relativement à chacun de leurs objets. Par la suite, l'étude analyse les différents modes de quantité : discrète et concrète et montre que, en physique, c'est surtout la quantité concrète qui joue un rôle dans l'être matériel en étant à l'origine des déterminations des espèces de qualités : 1) états - dispositions et aptitudes - inaptitudes ; 2) qualités sensibles ; 3) forme-figure. L'article soulève les difficultés du passage de la physique à la mathématique et recherche la nature de la quantité utilisée en géométrie. En dernier lieu, il propose une réflexion sur l'être de la quantité et signale les difficultés soulevées par la considération d'une part, de la quantité comme accident proposée dans les Catégories et d'autre part, de celle de la matière composante de la substance de la théorie hylémorphique. L'étendue au terme de l'abstraction des dimensions est-elle autre que la matière ?"

9. Bodéüs, Richard. 1984. "Aux origines de la doctrine aristotélicienne des Catégories." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 2:121-137.

"Les commentateurs anciens d'Aristote avaient l'habitude de justifier le titre des ouvrages du Stagirite qu'ils se proposaient d'expliquer(1). Touchant le court traité des Catégories, certains ont eu soin de noter d'emblée que le terme Κατηγορία n'avait point, en l'occurrence, la signification ordinaire que lui confère la langue du droit ("accusation" ou "chef d'accusation") (2). Mais aucun ne s'est risqué à dire si la signification du même terme dans le langage spécialisé de la logique avait quelque rapport avec celle, d'ailleurs historiquement plus ancienne, que possède le mot dans le vocabulaire judiciaire. Aussi bien n'ont-ils pas, non plus que les modernes à notre connaissance, posé la question de savoir dans quelle mesure la notion aristotélicienne de "catégorie" et, plus généralement, la doctrine des figures de prédication pouvaient être héritées des réflexions que fit naître, en Grèce, la pratique des tribunaux et des cours de justice.

C'est cette question que nous voudrions ici tâcher d'éclairer." (p. 121, note 3 omise)

(1) A ce sujet, voir, en dernier lieu; P. Donini, Le scuole, l'anima, l'impero: la filosofia antica da Antioco a Plotino, Turin, 1982, pp. 54 sqq.

2. Comparez, par exemple: Olympiodore dans CIAG, XII, p. 22; Philopon dans CIAG, XIII, l, p. 12 et Elias dans CIAG, XVIII, p. 127.

CIAG = Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca.

10. ———. 1995. "Sur l'unité stylistique du texte des Catégories." In Aristotelica Secunda. Mélanges offerts a Christian Rutten, edited by Motte, André and Denooz, Joseph, 141-154. Liège: Université de Liège. Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres.

"Monsieur Christian Rutten a jadis proposé une chronologie relative de différents morceaux découpés dans le texte des Catégories(= C) (1). Mais il a naguère reconnucomme « non négligeables» les arguments de M. Frede en faveur de l'unité de ce texte sur le plan linguistique(2). Il acceptera donc, je l'espère, de considérer les observations que j'avance ici à l'appui de la même thèse.

L'enjeu de celle-ci est la question de savoir si le texte de C, comme on le croit traditionnellement, juxtapose artificiellement l'ébauche d'un traité des « catégories» (chap. 1-9 = CA) et les notes qui constituent les « postprédicaments » (chap. 10-15 = CB) ou bien s'il présente, au contraire, les pièces d'une enquête unitaire, d'abord intitulée Avant les lieux, où entrent, au même titre, les exposés de Ia première et ceux de la seconde partie, de la même façon que dans le répertoire analogue de Métaphysique Λ. En faveur de la seconde hypothèse, il y a précisément le parallélisme des matières principales traitées en C et en Λ 3. Ce parallélisme ne nie pas les différences de toutes sortes, spécialement doctrinales, entre les deux répertoires, mais il établit empiriquement la possibilité que C soit, lui aussi, comme Λ, un répertoire qui unit en série les distinctions de CA et de CB. L'unité stylistique de ces deux parties devrait offrir à cet égard un argument supplémentaire. On l'établira, ci-après, en relevant les ressemblances significatives qu'on peut observer entre CA et CB et qui paraissent opposer leur style commun à celui, différent, de Λ." (pp. 141-142)

(1) Voir Chr. Rutten, Stylométrie des Catégories, in Aristotelica. Mélanges offerts à Marcel De Cane, Bruxelles-Liège, 1985, p. 315-336.

(2) Introduction à Aristote. Categoriae. Index verborum. Listes de fréquence, par B. Colin et Chr. Rutten, Liège, 1993, p. 11, qui renvoie à M. Frede, Titel, Einheit und Echtheit der aristotelischen Kategorienschrifts, in Zweifelhaftes lm Corpus Aristotelicum, Akten des 9. Symposium Aristotelicum, herausgegeben von P. Moraux und J. Wiesner, Berlin-New York, 1983, p. 19-20; étude reprise en anglais dans M. Frede, Essays in Ancient Phylosophy, Minneapolis, 1987, p. 11-28 (spécialement p. 22-23).

(3) Comparez CA, 5 et Λ, 8 ; CA, 6 et Λ, 13 ; CA, 7 et Λ, 15 ; CA, 8 et Λ, 14 ; CB, 10 et Λ, 10 ; CB, 12 et Λ, 11; CB, 15 et ÀΛ, 23.

11. ———. 1996. "En relisant le début des Catégories. L'expression λόγος τς οσίας." Revue des Études Grecques no. 109:709-718.

"Les commentateurs anciens d'Aristote avaient l'habitude de justifier le titre des ouvrages du Stagirite qu'ils se proposaient d'expliquer(1). Touchant le court traité des Catégories, certains ont eu soin de noter d'emblée que le terme κατηγορία n'avait point, en l'occurrence, la signification ordinaire que lui confère la langue du droit ("accusation" ou "chef d'accusation") (2). Mais aucun ne s'est risqué à dire si la signification du même terme dans le langage spécialisé de la logique avait quelque rapport avec celle, d'ailleurs historiquement plus ancienne, que possède le mot dans le vocabulaire judiciaire. Aussi bien n'ont-ils pas, non plus que les modernes à notre connaissance, posé la question de savoir dans quelle mesure la notion aristotélicienne de "catégorie" et, plus généralement, la doctrine des figures de prédication pouvaient être héritées des réflexions que fit naître, en Grèce, la pratique des tribunaux et des cours de justice.

C'est cette question que nous voudrions ici tâcher d'éclairer (3)." (p. 709)

(1) A ce sujet, voir, en dernier lieu; P. Donini, Le scuole, l'anima, l'impero: la filosofia antica da Antioco a Plotino, Turin, 1982, pp. 54 sqq.

(2) Comparez, par exemple: Olympiodore dans CIAG, XII, p. 22; Philopon dans CIAG, XIII, l, p. 12 et Elias dans CIAG, XVIII, p. 127.

(3) Simplicius (Comm. in Cat., 2, pp. 15 - 25), suivi par Ammonios (Comm. in Cat., 14, 1 - 3; 54. 3), déclarait que l'inventeur des catégories n'était pas Aristote, mais Archytas de Tarente. Il ajoutait cependant que l'ordonnance des catégories en système était l'oeuvre d'Aristote. En l'absence de renseignements précis sur l'originalité d'Archytas, nous sommes exposés au risque de prêter au Stagirite des trouvailles dont il

n'a peut-être pas le mérite. Nous tâcherons ici d'éviter l'écueil en considérant principalement la systématisation des catégories en une doctrine et en nous demandant ce que pareille systématisation pourrait devoir à une réflexion sur les pratiques judiciaires.

CIAG = Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca

12. ———. 1997. "Le texte grec des "Catégories" d'Aristote et le témoignage du Commentaire de Porphyre." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 8:121-141.

13. ———. 1997. "Sur un passage corrompu des Catégories d'Aristote." Philologus no. 141:39-45.

"Je voudrais ici tâcher de résoudre un problème épineux que pose l'établissement du texte d'Aristote en Catégories, 5, 2b 3 - 6 et tirer les enseignements que suggère la solution de ce probleme.

Voici le contexte où prend place le passage litigieux que je considère. Ayant distingué la substance de ses accidents (qui sont dans un sujet) et la substance premiere de la substance seconde (qui se dit d'un sujet) , Aristote pose, en 2 a 34-35, la these suivante: «tout le reste ou bien se dit de sujets que sont les substances premieres ou bien se trouvent en elles comme sujets». Cette these étant posée, le philosophe passe ä son illustration ä l'aide de deux exemples, l'un de nature substantielle, l'autre de nature accidentelle (1 a 35-b 3), puis, il conclut. C'est ici que se situe le passage controverse." (p. 39)

14. ———. 1997. "Une glose chrétienne fourvoyée dans le texte des Catégories d'Aristote." Revue des Études Grecques no. 110:627-631.

"Le texte intitulé traditionnellement Catégories, qui fait partie du Corpus Aristotelicum, n'a rien d'un texte théologique. Et s'il y est question de la «substance première» (2 A 11 et sqq.), cette appellation ne vise pas la substance divine ; elle est réservée à toutes les individualités substantielles, par opposition à leurs espèces et à leurs genres, réputés « substances secondes ».

En fait, l'époque hellénistique semble d'abord avoir reconnu dans ce texte un recueil de distinctions à l'usage de la dialectique. Il portait alors le titre Avant les lieux (Τα προ τών τοπών), attesté dans les plus anciens catalogues des oeuvres d'Aristote (Diogène-Laërce, V, 24; Vita Menagiana, n° 57 dans Ar. opera, III, Ed. Ο. Gigon, Berlin, 1987, p. 25 a 8). Encore défendu comme authentique au IIe siècle de notre ère, notamment par Adraste d'Aphrodise et Herminos, ce titre ancien paraît avoir été disqualifié très tôt au profit de l'appellation Catégories, peut-être déjà par Andronicos de Rhodes (Ier siècle avant J.-C.) et ses principaux successeurs, qui placèrent l'ouvrage en question en tête du Corpus.

Cette situation nouvelle entraîna plusieurs conséquences. Passant pour une introduction à la philosophie aristotélicienne, le traité reçut une avalanche de commentaires jusqu'à la fin de l'Antiquité et bien au-delà. D'autre part, l'attention des commentateurs se concentra sur la première partie du texte, la seule où il soit question des quatre principales « catégories » (substance, quantité, relation et qualité), et avec laquelle, selon certains manuscrits médiévaux, s'achève le traité des Catégories (τέλος τών 'Αριστοτέλους κατηγοριών, lit-on, après 11 b 15, dans le Vat. Urbinas 35, le Ven. Marcianus gr. 201 et le Flor. Laurentianus gr. 72,5). Quoique beaucoup plus maigres, des commentaires anciens de la seconde partie sont néanmoins conservés.

Ceux de Dexippe, Ammonios, Simplicius, Philopon, Olympiodore et David (Elias) l'ont été dans des manuscrits indépendants. Certains alternent, dans d'autres manuscrits, avec le texte des Catégories lui-même; on en retrouve aussi la trace sous forme de gloses marginales, dans plusieurs manuscrits (à commencer par Y Urbinas 35), qui transmettent essentiellement le texte des Catégories et où se mêlent d'autres gloses de provenances diverses, que l'on n'a pas encore étudiées en profondeur. Je propose ici d'identifier l'une de ces dernières gloses, qui paraît d'origine chrétienne et qui s'est introduite dans le texte des Catégories, tel que rapporté dans plusieurs manuscrits importants, parce qu'anciens." (p. 627)

15. ———. 2001. "Introduction." In Aristote. [Catégories], XI-CLXXXVII. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

"D'un point de vue particulier, les « catégories » sont simplement les différents genres d'indications fournies par les imputations que supposent l'attribution à un sujet de son espèce ou de son genre. D'un point de vue universel, les mêmes imputations sont ramenées à l'unité d'un genre nouveau (l'essence), et celles qui peuvent en outre s'attribuer à «autre chose» (c'est-à-dire, le plus souvent, à la substance) apparaissent à titre d'imputations accidentelles. Le point de vue est plus universel parce qu'il introduit une distinction plus générale que la première, faisant apparaître, de façon explicite, que toutes les imputations peuvent être essentielles et, de façon implicite, que toutes, sauf celle qui indique une substance, peuvent être aussi accidentelles. Mais cette nouvelle distinction (de l'essence et de l'accident) n'empêche pas de voir que ce qui fondamentalement distingue les imputations les unes des autres, c'est la nature de l'indication fournie sur un sujet par un prédicable. L'indication d'une qualité, à titre essentiel ou non, se distingue de l'indication d'une quantité, uniquement par la nature des prédicables. Et, à titre essentiel, elle ne se distingue également de l'indication d'une substance qu'en raison de la nature des prédicables en cause.

Par conséquent, on peut légitimement supposer, sans contradiction, deux tables des « catégories », l'une universelle, qui prend en considération le genre des imputations essentielles aux côtés des neuf imputations non essentielles, et l'autre, particulière mais incluse dans la première, qui se borne à considérer les imputations essentielles." (p. LXXXV)

16. ———. 2005. "La substance première dès Catégories à la Métaphysique." In La "Métaphysique"d'Aristote : Perspectives Contemporaines, edited by Narcy, Michel and Tordesillas, Alonso, 131-144. Paris: Vrin.

"L’opinion commune aujourd’hui veut que la Métaphysique (en tout cas. les livres centraux ΖΗΘ) modifie l’ontologie ancienne qu’Aristote aurait défendue dans le traité des Catégories. Cette opinion « génétiste » repose sur deux arguments. D’un côté, la Métaphysique transférerait sur la forme individuelle la primauté sustantielle reconnue par les Catégories au composé individuel ; de l’autre, elle refuserait désormais le statut de substance attribué à l’universel par les Catégories. La théorie des Catégories serait ancienne en ceci qu’elle témoignerait d’une époque où l’individu substantiel n’aurait pas encore été analysé de façon appropriée en forme et matière(2).

L’opinion commune et ses arguments perdent de leur crédit si l’on peut montrer d’abord que l’analyse de l’individu se présente, en fait, de manière identique dans tous les textes incriminés." (pp. 131-132)

(2) « L’analyse des Catégories est antérieure. [...] Aucun des ouvrages inclus dans l’Organon [...] ne mentionne la matière. La raison peut en être (i) qu’Aristote n’y avait pas , encore pensé (sic), ou (ii) qu’il pensait que cela n’avait rien à voir avec les sujets étudiés dans l’Organon. La première explication est probablement (bien qu’elle n’ait rien d’incontestable) préférable » (T. Irwin & G. Fine, Aristotle : Sélections, Translated with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary, Indianapolis-Cambridge, 1995, p. xvi).

17. Brague, Rémi. 1980. "De la disposition. A propos de DIATHESIS chez Aristote." In Concepts et catégories dans la pensée antique, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 285-307. Paris: Vrin.

"Le mot diathesis a connu dans l’histoire de la langue et de la pensée grecques, depuis son apparition, probablement chez Antiphon le Sophiste, jusqu’à l’explosion rhétorique, patristique, scientifique, un parcours long et mouvementé. Il ne s’est jamais fixé sur une seule acception technique, et il est resté toujours ouvert sur l’évolution vivante de la langue, dont il a sans cesse reçu de nouvelles spécialisations. S’il est difficile d’en isoler le sens ou les sens proprement philosophique(s) de ses autres acceptions, techniques ou non, il est facile de le traduire : le français « disposition » le décalque assez exactement, et en reprend à peu près tous les aspects. Chez Aristote également, le mot, ainsi que les verbes qui y correspondent, a de multiples sens. Plutôt que d’en rechercher une unité a priori ou que de classer ses différentes acceptions, nous essaierons de parcourir la série de celles-ci en suivant la logique interne du concept." (p. 285)

18. Brentano, Franz. 1992. Aristote. Les diverses acceptions de l’être. Paris: Vrin.

Traduction française par Pascal David de Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles (1862).

Présentation. "Cette dissertation légendaire de Franz Brentano (1838-1917), éditée à Fribourg en 1862, prend pour fil conducteur de son interprétation de la « métaphysique » comme science de « l’être en tant qu’être » le leitmotiv : « l’être se dit pluriellement ». Mais quelle en est alors la signification directe et unitaire?

L’ambition de Brentano est de reconstituer une doctrine dont il s’agit à la fois de montrer et de sauver la conhérence. Le primat accordé à l’acceptation catégoriale de l’être amène à restituer un « arbre généalogique » des catégories dont le chatoiement correspond strictement à la diversité des modes de prédication de la « substance première ». Même si la question reste posée de savoir si la plurivocité de l’être se ramène essentiellement à la diversité catégoriale, ou si, au contraire, les catégories n’illustrent qu’une pluralité restreinte, au sein d’une acceptation de l’être dont elles déclinent les « modalités » ou les « figures », mais dont rien ne dit qu’elle serait souveraine, cette magistrale initiation demeure un jalon incontournable dans l’histoire de la réappropriation moderne d’Aristote et du problème que pose la constitution d’une ontologie."

19. Brière, Véronique, and Lemaire, Juliette, eds. 2019. Qu'est-ce qu'une catégorie? Interprétations d'Aristote. Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters.

Table des matières : Véronique Brière : Présentation 1; Leone Gazziero : οἰκείως τῇ λογικῇ πραγματείᾳ (Simplicii in Aristotelis categorias commentarium, 12.11). Contraintes disciplinaires – anciennes et modernes – de l’interprétation logique des Catégories d’Aristote 9; Francis Wolff : Des genres de la prédication aux genres de l’être 59; Annick Jaulin : L’usage aristotélicien des catégories dans la Métaphysique 81; Stephen Menn : Métaphysique, Dialectique et traité des Catégories 99; Richard Bodéüs : La postériorité des relatifs selon Aristote 131; Maddalena Bonelli : Les relatifs dans les Catégories d’Aristote 149; Jonathan Barnes : Syllogistique et classification des prédicats 169; Véronique Brière : Catégories et enjeux du skhêma dans les Réfutations sophistiques 191; Jean Baptiste Gourinat : Les stoïciens et les catégories d’Aristote 231; Valérie Cordonier : Problématique passion : les catégories du changement selon Alexandre d’Aphrodise 261; Annexe : traduction de la Question I, 21 313; Philippe Hoffmann : Les analyses de l’énoncé : catégories et parties du discours selon les commentateurs néoplatoniciens 315; Juliette Lemaire : Vers les catégories et au-delà. Porphyre et les catégories 363; Bibliographie 379-399.

"L’objet de ce volume n’est pas le traité des Catégories en tant que tel, pas plus qu’il ne s’agit de discuter des traductions en tant que telles ; nous souhaitions tenter de synthétiser, à partir de quelques-une des lectures actuelles les plus pertinentes, les perspectives sur des questions de fond, touchant en particulier à la cohérence et à l’unité potentielle des analyses et des usages aristotéliciens de la kategoria : par l’interprétation des liens et des continuités entre les différents textes, au gré de l’écho donné par les lectures anciennes qui ont voulu prendre la mesure de ce concept aristotélicien (par les néoplatoniciens et les stoïciens), les études rassemblées ici illustrent la profondeur même de la doctrine des catégories, en reconnaissant aussi bien une identité formelle, une certaine permanence de l’objet kategoria et de son contenu, que la diversité même des styles d’approche ou des usages de la notion par Aristote." (p. 4)

20. Brunschwig, Jacques. 1969. "La proposition particulière et les preuves de non-concluance chez Aristote." Cahiers pour l'Analyse no. 10:3-26.

Repris dans Albert Menne, Niels Öffenberger (Hrsg.), Über den Folgerungsbegriff in der aristotelischen Logik, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1982, pp. 182-205.

"Je me propose ici d' étudier une incidence particulière avec quelque détail: le problème que posent le sens et l'usage de la proposition particulière, notamment en rapport avec le rôle qu'elle joue dans les procédures par lesquelles est démontrée la non-concluance des couples de prémisses autres que ceux des modes syllogistiques valides. J'espère en effet montrer que les textes relatifs à ces questions manifestent une modification significative de l'attitude d'Aristote, et qu'ils permettent de saisir sur le vif le travail du logicien, d'abord victime des équivoques du langage naturel, prenant ensuite de ces équivoques une conscience progressive, sous la poussée interne des problèmes eux-mêmes, et parvenant enfin à les maîtriser. Au terme de cette évolution, la proposition particulière abandonne celles de ses connotations usuelles qui perturbent son maniement logique, et n'est plus définie que par sa place dans un système d'oppositions, avec toutes les conséquences que cela comporte." (p. 5)

21. Caujolle-Zaslawsky, Françoise. 1980. "Les relatifs dans les Catégories." In Concepts et catégories dans la pensée antique, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 167-195. Paris: Vrin.

"La présente étude des relatifs (τά προς τι) porte exclusivement sur les Catégories, notre intention étant de souligner que la recherche menée dans ce traité a un caractère propre et distinct, caractère dont l’originalité semble échapper aux commentateurs qui ont lu les Catégories à la lumière de la Métaphysique.

1. La question de l'ordre des catégories. Le point de vue logique.

Les relatifs n’occupent pas toujours la même place dans l’énumération des catégories : on les trouve — notamment — tantôt avant et tantôt après la qualité. Ainsi, par exemple, dans la liste du début des Catégories (1b 25 sqq.), ils sont précédés par la substance, la quantité et la qualité, alors que dans le corps de l’ouvrage ils sont étudiés avant la qualité, tout de suite après la quantité ; l’ordre initialement indiqué n’étant d’ailleurs pas mieux respecté pour les catégories restantes : en fin de compte, seules les deux premières catégories de la liste (substance et quantité) conserveront leur rang initial. Dans les autres ouvrages, les relatifs sont promenés de la cinquième place de la table jusqu’à la première elle-même, suivant les circonstances. C’est en quatrième position, toutefois — après la substance, la quantité et la qualité (ou la qualité et la quantité), qu’ils figurent le plus souvent dans les textes (énumérations simples ou analyses de détail)." (p. 167)

22. Colin, Bernard, and Rutten, Christian. 1994. Aristote. Categoriae. Index Verborum. Liste De Fréquence. Liège: Centre Informatique de Philosophie et Lettres.

23. Côté, André. 1964. "Le nombre des catégories aristotéliciennes." Laval théologique et philosophique no. 29:165-175.

"Il nous est parvenu d ’Aristote un petit traité de logique(2) dont l’unique but, semble-t-il, est de vouloir ramener toutes choses à l’une ou l’autre de dix catégories. L’usage constant que fait l’auteur des noms de ces catégories dans tous ses autres traités n’est pas sans suggérer qu’il serait tout à fait impossible de faire oeuvre de science telle que l’entend Aristote sans l’aide de ces catégories. Or, l’on est forcé de noter que l’énumération qu’il en fait lui-même en plusieurs traités différents n’est pas toujours la même : en fait, et le nombre et l’ordre des choses énumérées varient.

La chose n’a pas été sans attirer l’attention de nombreux successeurs d ’Aristote, et, disciples comme critiques lui ont le plus souvent accordé un intérêt qui dépassait la simple curiosité. Mais les explications

proposées par les uns ou les autres n’ont pas toujours touché, à notre avis, le fond du problème qui nous apparaît comme étant strictement d’ordre logique. Il semble donc que toute solution éventuelle du problème tel que posé devrait s’appuyer sur les réponses aux deux questions préliminaires suivantes, à savoir : quel est le rôle précis que jouent les Catégories dans l’ensemble de la logique aristotélicienne; et, est-il possible de démontrer, d’une preuve proprement logique, le nombre de ces catégories ?

Nous nous limiterons ici à suggérer une réponse à ces deux questions, réponse que nous croyons se rattacher à une certaine tradition logique à laquelle nous aimerions associer les noms de Porphyre, Boèce et Albert le Grand en particulier." (p. 165, une note omise)

(2) Aristote, Organon, I Catégories, Nouvelle traduction et notes par J. Tricot, aris, Vrin, 1946.

24. Couloubaritsis, Lambros. 1986. "Legomenon et Katégoroumenon chez Aristote." In Philosophie du langage et grammaire dans l'Antiquité, 219-238. Bruxelles: Ousia.

25. Courtine, Jean-François. 2004. "La question des catégories : le débat entre Trendelenburg et Bonitz." In Aristote au XIX siècle, edited by Thouard, Denis, 63-80. Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Unversitaires du Septentrion.

"La critique de Bonitz

Le petit traité de Hermann Bonitz (Über die Kategorien des Aristoteles,1853) trouve son point de départ dans une confrontation critique explicite avec Trendelenburg; «l’objet de la recherche et la nécessité d’un débat critique explicite avec Adolf Trendelenburg», telle est l’ouverture du traité où l’auteur déclarait d’emblée : « Je ne peux pas être d’accord, sur des points essentiels, avec les résultats que présente Trendelenburg». Ce que Bonitz se propose donc d’étudier, en «philologue», c’est le sens qu’avait la doctrine des catégories, «pour Aristote lui-même», ainsi que la place et lu fonction de cette doctrine dans la « structure globale » de sa pensée. C'est seulement après que ce point de départ aura été solidement assuré quil deviendra ensuite possible de s’interroger sur l’évolution de la problématique et ses transformations éventuelles à travers les époques (44).

Ainsi, même si Bonitz partage avec Trendelenburg certains présupposée communs : l’importance du «retour» à Aristote en particulier, et s’il peut faire siennes les déclarations de Trendelenburg dans les Logische Untersuchungen, que nous avons rappelées ; s’il est, lui aussi, soucieux de proposer une nouvelle articulation philosophique et philologique, anti-idéaliste (en sens postkantien), il entend pourtant et d’emblée « défendre un point de vue différent », en s’attachant à ces deux questions directrices :

1) Quelle est la signification des catégories pour Aristote ?

2) Comment Aristote est-il parvenu à établir cette table des catégories ?" (p. 74)

(...)

"Et s'il faut accorder à H. Bonitz que les catégories aristotéliciennes sont bien des catégories de l’être, qu’elles renvoient au «tout de l’expérience», à «ce qui est», cette référence (Bezug, Bedeutung), parfaitement reconnue par Trendelenburg, n’est elle-même possible, dans le registre du traité Catégories, qu’en raison de l’entrelacement entre «dire et être», ou mieux encore rt plus précisément, parce que ce qui se dit est aussi et du même coup ce qui est dit des étants (conformément aux deux acceptions, indissociables, du verbe λέγεσθαι)." (p. 77)

26. Crubelllier, Michel. 2015. "Domestiquer l’excès de l’être. La catégorie des relatifs entre Platon et Aristote." Quaestio. Journal of the History of Metaphysics no. 13:3-15.

"A l’intérieur du corpus aristotélicien, la notion des relatifs (pros ti) est présente dans deux types de contextes sensiblement différents :

(I) Des contextes dialectiques, et plus précisément topiques, c’est-à-dire des contextes qui concernent la pratique de l’argumentation : des prédicats sont examinés dans la perspective de leur utilité pour construire des arguments. J’appelle « propriétés topiques » les propriétés qui concernent la recherche des arguments ; ce sont des propriétés du prédicat en tant que prédicat. Par exemple, puisque les relatifs admettent des contraires(1) et qu’ils admettent le plus et le moins(2), ils pourront être utilisés pour argumenter a contrario ou a fortiori.

Les deux principaux passages pertinents sont le chapitre 7 et le chapitre 10 des Catégories. Dans ces occurrences, il est intéressant de noter que les relatifs posent manifestement des problèmes de délimitation : ils figurent notamment dans la plupart des « cas de catégorisation litigieuse », c’est-à-dire les cas où un même terme semble pouvoir être rangé dans (au moins) deux catégories différentes(3).

(...)

(II) Des contextes métaphysiques, dans lesquels Aristote souligne le peu de consistance ontologique et la position en quelque sorte marginale des objets qui relèvent de la catégorie des relatifs.

Outre la notice de Métaphysique Δ 15 spécifiquement consacrée à la notion du pros ti, les principaux passages pertinents se trouvent dans des discussions tournées contre Platon et l’ancienne Académie, et tendent à souligner le peu de consistance ontologique et la position en quelque sorte marginale des objets qui relèvent de la catégorie des relatifs(6)." (pp. 3-4)

(1) Aristote, Catégories, 7, 6b15-19.

(2) Aristote, Catégories, 7, 6b19-27.

(3) L’expression « catégorisation litigieuse » est de F. Ildefonse et J. Lallot, qui parlent aussi de « chevauchement de catégories ». Voir F. Ildefonse / J. Lallot, Aristote : Catégories, présentation, traduction et commentaires, Le Seuil, Paris 2002, pp. 162-178, pour un inventaire et une discussion approfondie de ces cas.

(6) Il faut rattacher à cette liste différents contextes physiques, dans lesquels la caractérisation d’un objet ou d’un phénomène comme un relatif vise à diminuer ou à rejeter entièrement sa réalité et sa valeur explicative. Un passage typique est celui de Physique, V, 2, cité plus loin (cf. infra, p. 13 ).

27. Delamarre, Alexandre J.L. 1980. "La notion de πτῶσις chez Aristote et les Stoïciens." In Concepts et Catégories dans la pensée antique, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 321-346. Paris: Vrin.

"Lorsque Denys le Thrace, disciple d’Aristarque, définit la grammaire comme « l’étude empirique de l’usage le plus courant de la langue chez les poètes et les prosateurs », il apparaît encore comme un philologue attaché à l’examen des textes. Mais son ouvrage lui-même, un petit opuscule qui porte précisément le titre de Grammaire, est en fait la première grammaire de l’histoire, et l’origine de toutes les grammaires postérieures(1). Traduite, transposée, adaptée, elle domine la théorie occidentale de la langue, et nous la retrouvons dans les manuels des écoliers. Que contient cet opuscule? Une division et une définition systématiques des principales catégories grammaticales. Les éléments : voyelles, semi-voyelles, consonnes ; les diphtongues, les muettes, les aspirées, les liquides, l’accent; les parties du discours, au nombre de huit (§ 13) : le nom, le verbe, le participe, l’article, le pronom, la préposition, l’adverbe, et enfin la conjonction. On remarque que, presque à chaque fois, le terme français semble être, plus encore que la traduction, la transcription exacte, par l’intermédiaire du latin, du terme grec original. Ainsi, par exemple, le participe, μετοχή, qui participe de la propriété des noms comme de celle des verbes. Cependant, nous ne nous interrogerons pas sur ce passage du grec au latin, et sur les effets qui en sont résultés. Nous voudrions au contraire remonter au-delà de la grammaire elle-même, pour déterminer l’origine prégrammaticale d’une de ses catégories." (p. 321)

(1) Sur ces problèmes, voir Steinthal, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, II. [1863].

28. Delcomminette, Sylvain. 2009. "Catégories. prédication et relation." Anais de Filosoifa Clássica no. 3:30-49.

Résumé : "Contre les interprétations qui voient dans les catégories d’Aristote des notions primordialement métaphysiques, le présent article cherche à montrer que l’origine des catégories se situe dans la théorie logico-linguistique de la prédication telle qu’elle s’élabore en particulier dans le De Interpretatione. Pour ce faire, il se concentre sur le chapitre 9 du premier livre des Topiques et en dégage la notion de fonction prédicative, qui s’avère la plus apte à rendre compte de la signification des catégories aristotéliciennes et permet de comprendre en quoi celles-ci peuvent être caractérisées aussi bien comme des genres de prédications que comme des genres de prédicats ou encore des genres de l’être. Les catégories ainsi conçues ont pour rôle principal de structurer l’expérience pour la transformer en objet de science possible."

29. Denooz, Joseph. 1996. "L'étendue du lexique chez Aristote." In Aristotelica Secunda. Mélanges offerts a Christian Rutten, edited by Motte, André and Denooz, Joseph, 81-90. Liège: Université de Liège. Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres.

"Pour ce volume d'hommage, nous avons choisi un sujet qui s'inscrit dans la ligne des études stylométriques que le Professeur Christian Rutten a consacrées au Stagirite: il s'agit d'une enquête comparative sur la diversité du vocabulaire chezquelques auteurs grecs." (p. 81)

(...)

"Dans les tableaux que nous présentons ci-dessous, nous ne prendrons en compte que trois données, à savoir la longueur du texte exprimée en nombre de mots-formes, le nombre de vocables et la moyenne d'emploi de chaque vocable. Cette dernière se calcule, pour un texte donné, en divisant le nombre de mots-formes par le nombre total de vocables.

À partir du nombre de mots-formes que nous désignerons par n, du nombre de vocables symbolisé par v et de la moyenne d'emploi représentée par m, on peut considérer comme l'a proposé Ch. Muller(2) que le vocabulaire de l'oeuvre x est plus riche que le vocabulaire de l' oeuvre y si vx > vy et nx < ny." (p. 82)

(...)

"Les valeurs observées pour le Stagirite montrent que, dans la Métaphysique et la Physique, le vocabulaire est plus pauvre que dans le De partibus animalium.

De même, le lexique des Catégories est moins étendu que celui de la Poétique : la différence entre ces deux oeuvres est nettement marquée puisque la Poétique, avec 154 mots-formes de moins que les Catégories, contient à peu près exactement le double de vocables (640-1241).

La moyenne d'emploi du De anima (15,82) comparée à celle des Catégories (16,37) montre que le vocabulaire du premier est plus riche, étant donné les valeurs de n et de v pour ces deux oeuvres. De même, le lexique est plus étendu dans le De partibus animalium que dans les Catégories." (pp. 84-85)

30. Derrida, Jacques. 1971. "Le supplément de copule. La philosophie devant la linguistique." Langages:14-39.

Repris dans J. Derrtida, Marges de la philosophie, Paris: Éditions de Minuit 1972, pp. 211-246.

"Si, à partir de l'opposition, naïvement reçue, entre langue et parole, langue et discours, on tentait d'élaborer une théorie du discours philosophique, il serait difficile de contourner la question classique: le discours philosophique est-il réglé — jusqu'à quel point et selon quelles modalités — par les contraintes de la langue ? En d'autres termes, si nous considérons l'histoire de la philosophie comme un grand discours, une puissante chaîne discursive, ne plonge-t-elle pas dans une réserve de langue, réserve systématique d'une lexicologie, d'une grammaire, d'un ensemble de signes et de valeurs ? Dès lors n'est-elle pas limitée par les ressources et l'organisation de cette réserve ?

Comment déterminer cette langue de la philosophie ? Est-ce une « langue naturelle » ou une famille de langues naturelles (grec, latin, germain, indo-européen, etc. ) ? Est-ce plutôt un code formel élaboré à partir de ces langues naturelles ? Ces questions ont une vieille histoire, elles remontent sans doute à l'origine de la philosophie elle-même. Mais on ne pourrait les ré-élaborer sans transformer ou déplacer les couples de concepts qui la constituent." (p. 211)

(...)

"Au lieu de suivre cette immense problématique en pleine mer, si l'on peut dire, peut-être vaut-il mieux, étant donné les exigences et les limites de cet essai, partir ici des propositions d'un linguiste moderne. On sait que Benveniste a analysé dans « Catégories de pensée et catégories de langue » (6) les contraintes par lesquelles la langue grecque limiterait le système des catégories aristotéliciennes.

Ses propositions font partie d'un ensemble stratifié; il ne selimite pas au texte qui en énonce directement la thèse. Nous devrons en tenir compte le moment venu. Cette thèse, d'autre part, a déjà rencontré des objections de type philosophique(7) qui forment donc avec elle un débat dont l'élaboration nous sera précieuse.

Voici d'abord la thèse: « Or, il nous semble — et nous essaierons de montrer — que ces distinctions sont d'abord des catégories de langue, et qu'en fait Aristote, raisonnant d'une manière absolue, retrouve simplement certaines des catégories fondamentales de la langue dans laquelle il pense » (p. 66).

(...)

(6) 1958, repris in Problèmes de linguistique générale, éd. Gallimard, 1966, p. 63.

(7) Cf. P. Aubenque, « Aristote et le langage, note annexe sur les catégories d'Aristote. A propos d'un article de M. Benveniste », in Annales de la faculté des lettres d'Aix, t. XLIII, 1965, et J. Vuillemin, De la logique à la théologie, Cinq études sur Aristote, Flammarion, 1967, p. 75 sq.

31. Dorion, Lous-André, ed. 1995. Aristote. Les réfutations sophistiques. Paris: Vrin.

"Les interprètes d’Aristote ne se sont semble-t-il pas avisés que ce passage [*] constitue un démenti formel d’une thèse qui connut naguère un certain retentissement, à savoir celle où Benveniste (1958) affirme que les catégories aristotéliciennes ne sont en fait que la transposition inconsciente des catégories de la langue grecque. […]. En présence de trois verbes qui ont manifestement tous le même type de signifiant (ὑγιαίνειν, τέμνειν et οἰκοδομεῖν), soit un signifiant caractéristique des verbes à l’actif, Aristote nous met en garde contre la tentation de les considérer tous trois comme des “actions”. En effet, le verbe ὑγιαίνειν n’est pas une action, et ce en dépit du fait que son signifiant est habituellement la marque distinctive des verbes qui expriment une action. Ce passage fournit donc un exemple d’un cas où Aristote établit une distinction entre des mots dont les signifiants semblent attester l’appartenance à une même catégorie linguistique. […]. Les considérations d’ordre purement linguistique ne suffisent donc pas à expliquer pourquoi les verbes ὑγιαίνειν et νοσεῖν ont été rangés sous la catégorie de la disposition. La décision du Stagirite de ne pas considérer ὑγιαίνειν comme une action prouve, s’il en était besoin, que les catégories ne sont pas le décalque inconscient des catégories de langue » (pp. 230-231)

[*] Aristoteles Topica et sophistici elenchi, W. D. Ross (éd.), Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1958, 4, 166b 18-21: οϊον τό ύγιαίνειν ομοίως τω σχήματι τής λέξεως λέγεται τω τέμνειν ή οίκοδομεΐν· καίτοι τό μεν ποιόν τι κα'ι διακείμενον πως δηλοϊ, τό δέ ποιεΐν τι. τον αύτόν δέ τρόπον καί έπΐ τών άλλων. (En effet, il est possible de signifier par l’expression ce qui ne relève pas des actions comme une des actions; par exemple « être en bonne santé » est dit de la même façon par a forme de l’expression que « couper » ou « construire »; cependant le premier montre une qualité et un certain état, alors que les autres montrent une action. Et en va de même pour les autres cas.]

32. Duhot, Jean-Joël. 1994. "L'authenticité des Catégories." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 12:109-124.

"L'authenticité des Catégories d'Aristote, qui n'avait fait l'objet d'aucune suspicion pour les Grecs(1), a commencé à être mise en cause au début de ce siècle. Jaeger, A. et S. Mansion, arguant de la singularité de la doctrine de la substance que présente l'opuscule, inclinaient à ne pas y voir la main du Stagirite(2). Reprenant les deux séries d'arguments, B. Dumoulin reconnaît ne pas pouvoir trancher la question(3). En revanche, d'un tout autre point de vue, la stylométrie, C. Rutten se montre favorable à l'authenticité(4). Nous nous proposons d'aborder ce problème à travers un autre critère, qui nous semble permettre l'authentifïcation de l'opuscule : l'origine même du terme de catégorie. Le concept titre de l'opuscule a suscité bien des interrogations. On a dépensé beaucoup d'habileté à essayer d'établir des relations entre les sens philosophique et judiciaire (accusation) du terme. Plutôt que de rapprocher catégorie et accusation, ce qui peut donner lieu à des subtilités gratuites, il semble opportun d'examiner le texte d'Aristote." (p. 100)

(1) Nous ne tenons pas compte ici des cinq derniers chapitres, ou Postprédicaments, déjà mis en doute par les Anciens.

(2) S. Mansion, "La première doctrine de la substance: la substance selon Aristote", et "La doctrine aristotélicienne de la substance et le traité des catégories", recueillis dans Études aristotéliciennes, Louvain, 1984, pp. 282 - 303, et 305 - 308; Le jugement d'existence chez Aristote, Louvain, 1976, n. 94.

(3) "Sur l'authenticité des Catégories d'Aristote", Concepts et catégories, Paris, 1980, pp. 22 - 32.

(4) "Stylométrie des Catégories", in Aristotelica, Bruxelles-Liège, 1985, pp. 315 - 329."

33. Dumoulin, Bertrand. 1980. "Sur l'authenticité des Catégories d'Aristote." In Concepts et catégories dans la pensée antique, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 23-32. Paris: Vrin.

"L’ouvrage intitulé Catégories, généralement attribué à Aristote, témoignerait, selon Werner Jaeger, d’une «inversion nominaliste»(1) de la doctrine propre au Stagirite. Il caractériserait, selon le même historien, « la période de naturalisme et d’empirisme qui a marqué le Lycée après la mort d’Aristote »(2). Si on prend à la lettre l’expression de Jaeger, dans la proposition « Socrate est un homme », les Catégories voient en Socrate la substance première et dans homme la substance seconde, alors que dans la perspective d’Aristote, homme serait au contraire la substance première, et Socrate la substance seconde !"

(...)

"S. Mansion défendait une position presque aussi radicale : «le traité des Catégories doit-il être tenu pour un ouvrage de jeunesse d’Aristote? a-t-il été écrit par un de ses disciples? ou par un Académicien de cette époque? Il paraît sûr en tout cas que l’opuscule ne reflète pas la pensée du Stagirite arrivée à sa maturité et cela nous justifie d’avoir négligé le contenu du traité pour notre exposé sur la substance aristotélicienne.»(3)

Disons tout de suite que nous n’allons pas chercher à résoudre en lui-même et dans son ampleur le problème de l’authenticité des Catégories. Occupé présentement à l’analyse génétique de la Métaphysique d’Aristote, nous voudrions seulement montrer le caractère inacceptable du jugement cité de W. Jaeger, et le caractère excessif de certaines formules de A. Mansion (selon qui le traité des Catégories « couvre des conceptions qui ne sont guère conciliables avec celles de la Métaphysique »(4). Nous aboutirons cependant à des conclusions de fond et de méthode voisines de celles que nous venons de citer sous la plume de S. Mansion...

W. Jaeger et A. Mansion semblent considérer que, mises à part les Catégories, il existe chez Aristote une doctrine uniforme de la substance, et que les Catégories sont aberrantes par rapport à cette doctrine. Il importe donc de montrer l’évolution de la doctrine aristotélicienne de la substance." (pp. 23-24)

(1) « Die nominalistische Umkehrung der aristotelischen Lehre von der ersten und zweiten οὐσία in der Kategorienschrift lässt sich nicht wegraümen oder -denken », W. Jaeger, Aristoteles, Grundlegung einer Geschichte seiner Entwicklung, Berlin, 1923, p. 45, n. 1 ; nous citerons sous le titre Aristotle la trad. angl., 1934, ici p. 46, n. 3.

(2) Jaeger, Aristotle, même page.

(3) S. Mansion, Le jugement d'existence chez Aristote, Louvain, 1946, p. 233, n. 61.

« Les suspicions que nous avons élevées contre l’authenticité des Catégories n’ont pas réussi à ébranler l’opinion traditionnelle à leur sujet », reconnaît l’auteur dans une longue note, assortie d’une bibliographie, ajoutée à la réédition de son livre, mais elle réaffirme et précise sa position de 1946 (voir Le jug. d'exist. chez Ar., Louvain, 1976, note 94, p. 351-354).

34. ———. 1983. "L'ousia dans les Catégories et dans la Métaphysique." In Zweifelhaftes im Corpus Aristotelicum. Studien zu einigen Dubia. Akten des 9. Symposium Aristotelicum, Berlin, 7-16 September 1981, edited by Moraux, Paul and Wiesner, Jürgen, 57-72. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Je tiens d’abord à dire que je ne suis pas un spécialiste du traite des Catégories, ni de la logique d’Aristote en général. Mon travail a jusqu’ici porté sur les Ethiques, sur le premier Aristote, et sur la Métaphysique; je cherche à reprendre à nouveaux frais l’entreprise illustrée par l’Aristoteles de Werner Jaeger, car cet historien me paraît avoir mêlé des confusions dommageables à des intuitions profondes. C’est mon essai d’une analyse génétique de la Métaphysique [*] qui m’a donné la conviction que le traité des Catégories n’était pas l’oeuvre d’Aristote, mais celle d’un disciple plus ou moins éloigné. L’aimable insistance de P. Moraux m’amène aujourd’hui à tenter de vous faire partager cette conviction." (p. 57)

(...)

"L’originalité de mon propos consistera donc à tenter de résoudre le problème de l’authenticité des Catégories en situant ce traité dans la courbe évolutive de l’ousiologie d’Aristote. Pour ce faire, je vais surtout m’attacher à des textes dont l’authenticité n’est pas contestée (par exemple, je ne ferai guère usage du livre K de la Métaphysique) (3).

Pour retracer les grandes lignes de la doctrine aristotélicienne de l’ousia, je commencerai par quelques remarques sur les Topiques (I). Je considérerai ensuite les chapitres 9 et 10 du livre M de la Métaphysique (II), puis je résumerai la doctrine du livre Z de la Métaphysique (III). J’en viendrai alors au point névralgique de mon exposé, qui consistera dans une comparaison entre l’ousiologie des Catégories et celle de Métaphysique M 9 - 10 (IV). Une remarque de méthode pour terminer cette introduction: l’analyse génétique n’a des chances d’être concluante que si elle s’appuie sur l’examen du vocabulaire avant de rechercher l’enchaînement chronologique des idées." (p. 58)

[* Recherches sur le premier Aristote, Paris: Vrin 1981.]

35. Dupréel, Eugène. 1909. "Aristote et le traité des Catégories." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 22:230-251.

"La question de savoir si l'écrit intitulé Κατηγορίαι est ou n'est pas l'oeuvre d'Aristote, après avoir été débattue déjà dans l'Antiquite, s'est posée de nouveau des que l'etude critique de laristotelisme a été remise en honneur. Spengel, Valentin Rose et Prantl(1) furent les premiers adversaires modernes de l'authenticité du traité des Categories.

Je dirai tout de suite que ces auteurs me paraissent avoir justifié leur thèse, bien qu'un certain nombre de leurs arguments se trouvent être sans valeur : mais la majorité des savants n'en a pas jugé ainsi, et la thèse classique de l'authenticité du Traité, profitant d'une reaction qui dure encore contre le radicalisme critique, a trouve plus de defenseurs que d' adversaires. Zeller(2) a rallié a l'opinion traditionnelle la plupart des savants qui ont formulé leur avis sur la question, et recemment Gomperz(3), traitant de l'activité scientifique d'Aristote, a pris le traité des Categories comme point de départ et comme base de son exposé." (p. 230)

36. Fortis, Jean-Michel. 2024. "Trendelenburg, Adolf. 2023. Doctrine des catégories d’Aristote. Présentation, annotation et traduction par Patrick Cerutti & Emanuele Mariani." Histoire Épistémologie Langage no. 46:189-199.

"Cet ouvrage nous propose la première traduction française d’une partie de la Geschichte der Kategorienlehre [Histoire de la théorie des catégories], 1846, d’Adolf Trendelenburg (1802-1872), celle consacrée aux catégories d’Aristote. Le texte original est divisé en deux traités. Le premier, intitulé Aristoteles Kategorienlehre, occupe plus de la moitié du livre. Le second traité, Die Kategorienlehre in der Geschichte der Philosophie, est une histoire globale des catégories, depuis les Présocratiques jusqu’à Fichte et à Trendelenburg lui-même. Le présent ouvrage ontient la traduction de l’Aristoteles Kategorienlehre ainsi que la partie du second

traité où sont résumés les acquis du premier." (p. 189)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliographie des études en Français sur les Catégories d'Aristote (G - Z)

Bibliographie

1. Gambra, José Miguel. 2013. "La définition des relatifs dans les Catégories et son emploi dans les Topiques." Philosophie antique no. 13:225-242.

Résumé : "Le premier livre des Topiques constitue une sorte d’introduction théorique à la compilation de stratégies dialectiques présentée dans les livres centraux de cette oeuvre. Nombre des notions principales employées dans les règles d’inférence contenues dans les τόποι sont systématiquement exposées et ordonnées dans ce premier livre. Parmi elles, l’exemple le plus clair est celui des «prédicables». Il y a, néanmoins, d’autres notions, dont l’exposition doctrinale doit être recherchée dans les Catégories. Par exemple, les diverses sortes d’opposition entre termes, qui sont abondamment utilisées dans les Topiques, mais ne s’y trouvent pas définies. Dans cet article, je présente une analyse formelle des deux définitions des relatifs que l’on trouve dans Cat. 7, pour montrer ensuite comment elles sont employées dans les τόποι qui impliquent la prédication essentielle des relatifs,démontrant ainsi la cohérence de cette théorie et la dépendance étroite entre les deux oeuvres."

2. Gazziero, Leone. 2019. "οἰκείως τῇ λογικῇ πραγματείᾳ (Simplicii in Aristotelis categorias commentarium, 12.11). Contraintes disciplinaires – anciennes et modernes – de l’interprétation logique des Catégories d’Aristote." In Qu'est-ce qu'une catégorie? Interprétations d'Aristote, edited by Brière, Véronique and Lemaire, Juliette, 1-57. Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters.

Abstract: "In addition to understanding the very notion of « category » according to its different Aristotelian contexts, the first order of business of an archaeology of Aristotle’s categories is to inquire into its influential evolution at the hands of Late Ancient commentators. The essay retraces the origin and development of the « logical » interpretation which held sway both in ancient and modern times. It shows first that the key to understand the debate between Benveniste and Derrida over Aristotle’s categories is to be found in the Neoplatonic exegesis of the work of the same name. It shows next the powerful dynamic that led the commentators to dismiss more than a few hints in the text itself in order to build a remarkably consistent interpretation that understood the notion of category as the simplest and most fundamental element in a building block theory of linguistic expression and argumentation."

Résumé : "Face au foisonnement qui caractérise l’instruction contemporaine du dossier des « catégories » d’Aristote, il est encore et toujours utile de suivre le fil historique inauguré par Adolf Trendelenburg, réinventé par Emile Benveniste et élevé par Jacques Derrida au rang d’impératif méthodologique. Le geste inaugural d’une archéologie de la notion de « catégorie » consiste donc à se prémunir contre le risque d’évacuer le problème historique des catégories à la faveur d’une catégorialité anachronique ou passe-partout : ce qui n’est possible qu’à condition de replacer les « catégories » dans les différents contextes aristotéliciens où elles sont utilisées et d’interroger les contraintes disciplinaires qui ont structuré le débat autour de leur nature chez les commentateurs de l’Antiquité tardive."

3. Goldschmidt, Victor. 1956. "La théorie aristotélicienne du lieu." In Mélanges de philosophie grecque offerts à Mgr. Diès par ses élèves, ses collègues, ses amis, 79-119. Paris: Vrin.

Repris dans V. Goldschmidt, Écrits, Tome I. Études de philosophie ancienne, Paris: Vrin, 1984, pp. 21-62.

4. Ildefonse, Frédérique. 2018. "Présentation a Adolf Trendelenburg, Les catégories d’Aristote." Les Études Philosophiques no. 183:337-343.

"Ainsi, toutes les parties du discours, peut-on penser, ont donné lieu à leur catégorie. Il reste certes les conjonctions ; mais, puisque les catégories sont issues de la dissolution de l’énoncé*, les conjonctions sont par elles mêmes exclues des catégories. Quant aux pronoms qui, une fois mise à part la matière propre des notions si l’on peut dire, ne conservent que la nature du genre, tant s’en faut qu’on puisse leur assigner des catégories propres, qu’ils ont imposé leur nom, à une grande partie de ces catégories. Ousia en effet est qualifié habituellement de tode ti**, par quoi on signifie ce qui est défini à tous égards de telle sorte qu’on puisse le montrer dans son lieu. La seconde et la troisième catégorie sont intitulées poson et poion, qui sont des pronoms adjectifs ; pou et pote, qui sont des expressions du lieu et du temps, pourraient être appelés des pronoms adverbiaux.

Voilà à peu près ce qui dans les catégories se ressent de son origine grammaticale.

Tel ne fut pas, pourtant, le tour d’esprit d’Aristote de ne s’attacher qu’aux simples formes de langues ; toutes les traces qu’il paraît en avoir décelées, il les a perfectionnées de façon à faire porter son investigation sur les contenus des notions, après avoir mis à l’écart ces formes." (p. 358)

(...)

"Donc, une fois abandonnée l’idée d’une origine pythagoricienne des catégories, il fallait rechercher leurs causes dans le système même de la philosophie aristotélicienne. Si nous avons réussi, sinon à mettre en évidence l’ensemble des causes, du moins à en élucider une espèce, qui ait conduit le philosophe à établir précisément ces genres de notions, il nous semble avoir en tout cas fait avancer la question." (p. 362)

* « Κατὰ μηδεμίαν συμπλοκὴν λεγόμεναι », Catégories, chap. 4 [1b25 ; « Ce qui se dit sans combinaison», p. 61]

** Cf. Aristote, De l’âme, I, 1, § 3 [412a], p. 206 de notre commentaire [Iéna, Walz, 1833].

5. Ildefonse, Frédérique, and Lallot, Jean. 2002. "Introduction." In Aristote. Catégories, 9-53. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

"Ce qui frappe d’abord à la lecture des écrits de ces deux savants(39), c'est l’étroit parallélisme, à un premier niveau, des observations que leur inspire à chacun la liste du chapitre 4. Chacun d’eux à son tour(40) présente comme des évidences, d’une part, la relation qui unit les catégories à des classes linguistiques du grec - parties du discours ou sous-classes de l’une d’elles -, d’autre part, l’orientation de cette relation - de la catégorie de langue vers la catégorie de pensée." (p. 26)

(...)

"Confronté à de telles affirmations, plus d’un lecteur a élevé des objections, et chacun a pris position. Si nous devons le faire à notre tour, sur le point précis des rapports des catégories à la langue grecque, nous dirons ceci.

1) Comme nous l’avons noté à plusieurs reprises, la langue grecque, sous les espèces de ‘ce qui se dit’, est constamment présente dans la réflexion de l’auteur des Catégories. Un des exemples les plus forts à nos yeux du poids dont pèse la langue sur cette réflexion est la façon dont Aristote définit et traite la catégorie du relatif. Au-delà encore de ce que relèvent Trendelenburg et Benveniste, à savoir la prise en compte de la catégorie grammaticale du comparatif, la définition du relatif comme ce dont l’être même «est dit être d’autres (choses), ou, de quelque autre manière que ce soit, relativement à autre chose » renvoie, nul ne le conteste, à la construction syntaxique des relatifs, caractérisée par une complémentation adnominale, prototypiquement au génitif, occasionnellement à un autre cas. Dans l’examen de la catégorie au chapitre 7, la prégnance de cette composante syntaxique se manifeste à chaque instant(42).

2) Cela étant, nous ne pouvons pas ne pas prendre au sérieux le constat de correspondance entre catégories de langue et catégories de pensée qu’ont fait indépendamment l’un de l’autre, à un siècle d’intervalle, un grand historien de la logique et un grand linguiste.

3) Cependant, comme le montrent, entre autres, les critiques qui furent adressées à l’article de Benveniste, le problème se pose d’interpréter cette correspondance et de mesurer les conclusions qu’elle autorise. Paul Ricœur, dans la Métaphore vive(43), nous montre la voie pour avancer dans cette direction :

La corrélation établie par É. Benveniste est indiscutable, aussi longtemps qu’on considère seulement le trajet qui va des catégories d’Aristote, telles que celui-ci les énumère, en direction des catégories de langue. Mais qu’en est-il du trajet inverse?

Nous comprenons que ce qui est «indiscutable», c’est l’idée, commune à Benveniste et à Trendelenburg, selon laquelle la liste des dix catégories aristotéliciennes nous renvoie à des structures linguistiques du grec. Quant au «trajet inverse», nous y voyons celui que mentionnait Trendelenburg en termes d’« étude approfondie » (pertractatio), désignant par là l’élaboration philosophique des catégories ‘soufflées’, certes, par la langue, mais aussi assumées sélectivement, retravaillées et intégrées à un nouvel appareil conceptuel."

(39) Trendelenburg (1833, 1846) ; Benveniste (1958).

(40) Et chacun ayant le sentiment d’innover : « la chose n’a guère été vue», écrit Trendelenburg (1833 : 12); « pour peu qu’on prête attention à l’énoncé des catégories et aux exemples qui les illustrent, cette interprétation, non encore proposée apparemment... », fait écho Benveniste (1966 [1958] : 66). Le fait que Benveniste ait ignoré Trendelenburg ne donne que plus de force à la convergence des points de vue.

(42) Voir Glossaire : relatif.

(43) Ricœur 1975 : 328.

Références

Benveniste, Émile 1966. Problèmes de linguistique générale, Paris, Gallimard.

Ricoueur, Paul 1975. La métaphore vive, Paris, Seuil.

Trendelenburg, Friedrich Adolf 1833. De Aristotelis categoriis, Berlin, Petsch (fac-similé in Reale 1994 : 376-399).

Trendelenburg, Friedrich Adolf 1846. Geschichte der Kategorienlehre (= Historische Beiträge zur Philosophie I), Berlin, Bethge (trad. ital. in Reale 1994 : 71-281.

6. Jaulin, Annick. 1996. "Form, individu et universel." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 14:57-73.

"L'intitulé de ma communication : "Forme, individu et universel" tend à établir une partition entre la forme d'une part, l'individu et l'universel d'autre part. Cette partition reflète la distinction, proposée au livre Z, entre ce qui est nommé ousia prôtè - la forme -, et les deux sortes d'ousiai synoloi que sont l'universel et l'individu. Le développement de cette distinction, bien établie par le livre Z, me paraît de nature à éclairer les débats récurrents sur le fait de savoir si l'ousia est un universel ou un individu : l'ousia n'est ni l'un ni l'autre. La récurrence des débats (qui s'illustre par les conclusions opposées de deux livres parus la même année : 1988, M. Frede, G. Patzig, Metaphysik Z (München, Beck) pour qui l'ousia est un individu, tandis qu'elle est un universel pour M. Furth, Substance, Form and Psyche : An aristotelian Metaphysics (Cambridge University Press) me paraît être le signe de la non-pertinence de la question plus que celui de son aspect bien-fondé. Si, en outre, le fait de distinguer l'ousia, comme ousia prôtè, des deux formes de synoloi que sont l'universel et l'individu, permet d'établir la cohérence de la théorie de l'ousia proposée dans le traité des Catégories et dans les traités métaphysiques, il semble valoir la peine d'essayer de convaincre que cette distinction est nécessaire." (p. 57)

7. ———. 2011. "Les Catégories d’Aristote : instrument ou doctrine ?" Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 201:3-16.

"Il est sans doute important de rétablir le statut dialectique du traité des Catégories, car « les dialecticiens argumentent sur tout ; or l’être est commun à tout et, à l’évidence, ils argumentent sur ces questions parce qu’elles sont propres à la philosophie »(2). Ainsi les questions dialectiques sont également philosophiques. Sans ouvrir le dossier complexe du rapport entre dialectique et philosophie première chez Aristote, il suffit ici de rappeler qu’elles sont le fait de la même « puissance (dunamis) »(3). La question ne sera plus alors de savoir si la logique est un instrument ou une partie de la philosophie, mais si une philosophie peut aller plus loin que les instruments qu’elle se donne.

La Métaphysique ne semble pas utiliser dans la recherche des causes, lors de la critique des thèses platoniciennes, des instruments autres que les catégories. Quelles que soient les subtilités herméneutiques déployées par Porphyre et ses successeurs pour contourner, à partir de la primauté de la forme dans les traités métaphysiques, le statut premier des substances sensibles dans les Catégories(4), il semble difficile de nier que l’ordre instauré entre les substances par ce traité ait quelque conséquence doctrinale. La question principale sur les objets présentés par le traité se trouverait ainsi déplacée : elle ne concernerait plus tant la nature des objets que l’ordre de leur présentation." (p. 16)

(2) Métaphysique, Γ, 2, 1004b 19-22.

(3) Métaphysique, Γ, 2, 1004b 24.

(4) Voir sur ce débat, Lloyd P. Gerson, Aristotle and Other Platonists (2005, Cornell University Press), notamment ch. 3, « The Categories of Reality », p. 76-100.

8. Majolino, Claudio. 2004. "De la grammaire à l'ontologie et retour. Le rapport entre catégories de l'être et grammaire philosophique selon Trendelenburg et Marty." In Aristote au XIX siècle, edited by Thouard, Denis. Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Unversitaires du Septentrion.

"S’il est bien vrai que le propre de la logique c’est le jugement - dit Trendelenburg -, le lieu du vrai et du faux, et que dans le jugement il faut bien reconnaître une forme de synthèse (la συμπλοκή), tout le problème est dans la façon dont il faut comprendre la nature d’une telle synthèse. Or, la première Critique kantienne nous avait appris que les catégories sont déduites à partir des formes du jugement, et c’est en ce sens précis que Kant peut reprocher à Aristote de ne pas avoir suivi un critère systématique dans la compilation de sa table des catégories (KdrV, A 81/B 107). La critique kantienne à l’égard d’Aristote est double : n’ayant pas reconnu que la Verbindung [connexion] propre au jugement est à l’œuvre dans l’activité synthétique de I'entendement et, en dernière instance, de la connexion entre sujet et prédicat opérée par le Je pense - qui lie aussi bien le multiple dans l’intuition que le sujet et le prédicat dans le jugement -, Aristote n’a pas pu reconnaître non plus le seul critère qui préside à la déduction des catégories : le critère transcendantal. Deux objections donc, dont l’une est la prémisse de l’autre : 1) Aristote s’est trompé au sujet de la véritable nature de la synthèse et donc 2) il n’a pas suivi un critère cohérent pour la déduction des catégories.

Or, dans le texte de 1833, Trendelenburg répond aux deux objections en retournant contre Kant ses propres arguments. La thèse, d’ores et déjà exposée de façon claire et nette, est la suivante : chez Aristote les catégories sont tirées non pas des formes du jugement, mais plutôt de ses parties, et parce que Kant, lui, s’est trompé quant à la nature du caractère synthétique du jugement qu’il a pu accuser Aristote de ne pas avoir suivi un critère systématique pour la déduction des catégories." (pp. 85-86)

9. Mansion, Suzanne. 1946. "La première doctrine de la substance : la substance selon Aristote." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 44:349-369.

Repris dans S. Mansion, Études aristoteliciennes. Recueil d'articles, Louvain-la-Neuve: Éditions de l'Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, 1984, pp. 282-303.

10. ———. 1949. "La doctrine aristotélicienne de la substance et le traité des Catégories." In Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Philosophy. Amsterdam (11-18th August, 1949), edited by Beth, Evert Willem, Pos, H.J. and Kollah, J.H.A., 1097-1100. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Vol. I, fasc. 2.

Repris dans S. Mansion, Études aristoteliciennes. Recueil d'articles, Louvain-la-Neuve: Éditions de l'Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, 1984, pp. 305-308.

11. ———. 1968. "Notes sur la doctrine des Catégories dans les Topiques." In Aristotle on Dialectic: The Topics. Proceedings of the Third Symposium Aristotelicum (Oxford, 1963), edited by Owen, Gwilym Ellis Lane, 189-201. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Repris dans S. Mansion, Études aristoteliciennes. Recueil d'articles, Louvain-la-Neuve: Éditions de l'Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, 1984, pp. 169-182.

12. Mariani, Emanuele. 2018. "Le fils des catégories : Trendelenburg, Kant et la réception de l'Aristoteles Kategorienlehre (1846)." Les Études Philosophiques no. 183:447-462.

"C’est à Trendelenburg que revient le mérite d’avoir relevé la critique adressée à Aristote par Kant puis réitérée, dans une tout autre perspective, par Hegel à l’égard de l’absence d’un critère directif de la table des catégories, dont l’énumération n’aurait été que le résultat fortuit d’une rapsodie." (p. 448)

(...)

À défaut d’une solution en principe définitive, nous estimons que ces apories peuvent du moins indiquer la « question » avec laquelle l’analyse est appelée à se confronter. C’est là notre hypothèse de recherche qui nous amène à réévaluer la réception que l’Aristoteles Kategorienlehre a généralement rencontrée : dans les hésitations du texte aristotélicien, Trendelenburg entrevoit les lignes directrices d’un plus vaste projet en vue d’une nouvelle philosophia fundamentalis, à même de combiner logique et métaphysique(13)." (p. 451)

(13) 12. F. A. Trendelenburg, Aristoteles Kategorienlehre, p. 189 : « La doctrine des catégories » – nous lisons en 1846 – « ne trouvera son accomplissement que lorsque l’origine des concepts et la génération des choses procéderont ensemble. »

13. Morrison, Donald. 1993. "Le statut catégoriel des différences dans l' Organon." Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Étranger no. 183:147-178.

"Il n'est pas facile d'arriver à comprendre clairement la conception aristotélicienne de la différence. Les théories d'Aristote sur la division, sur la définition, sur l'essence et la substance, sur l'explication scientifique et la démonstration, exercent toutes un effet sur la notion de différence ; et inversement, elles sont toutes affectées par cette notion.

De plus, la conception qu'Aristote s'est faite de la différence a évolué de façon significative dans le cours de sa carrière. Beaucoup des questions qui entourent la théorie aristotélicienne de la différence ont fait l'objet de discussions étendues. Mais il est un problème majeur qui n'a reçu que peu d'attention soutenue de la part des interprètes modernes : celui du statut catégoriel de la différence." (p. 147)

14. Narcy, Michel. 1980. "Qu'est-ce qu' un figure ? Une difficulté de la doctrine aristotélicienne de la qualité." In Concepts et catégories dans la pensée antique, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 197-216. Paris: Vrin.

"Au chapitre 8 des Catégories, consacré à la qualité (ποώτης), Aristote, comme il l’a fait à propos des catégories précédentes (substance, quantité, relation), fait suivre son exposé de l’examen de deux questions : savoir, si dans l’ordre de la qualité (κατά το ποών 10 b 12) se trouvent contrariété (έναντώτης) et accroissement ou diminution (το μάλλον και τό ήττον). On peut noter d’ailleurs qu’à la réponse à ces deux questions se limiteront, au chapitre 9, les indications fournies au sujet des catégories de l’action et de la passion. Questions dont on a pu reconnaître qu’elles constituent comme l’application aux catégories aristotéliciennes d’un système catégorial plus ancien, provenant de l’Académie et dérivé, à travers le platonisme, du pythagorisme(1). Il peut paraître étrange de délimiter ici, en vue d’une étude de la catégorie de qualité, un passage d’allure adventice, où vient pour ainsi dire s’entrecroiser avec le fil de l’exposé d’Aristote, et contredire l’assurance de sa classification(2), une problématique qui semble d’autant moins lui appartenir en propre qu’elle contribue surtout à jeter le doute sur la cohérence de l’exposé qui précède." (p. 197)

1)Cf. Ph. Merlan, Beitrâge zur Geschichte des antiken Platonismus I. Philologus 89 (1934), pp. 44-46.

(2) Aristote distingue, rappelons-le, quatre sortes de qualités : état et disposition (έξις καί διάθεσις 8 b 26-9 a 13), aptitude et inaptitude (δύναμις-άδυναμία 9 a 14-27), qualités affectives et affections (παθητικαί ποιότητες καί πάθη 9 a 28-10 a 10), enfin figure et forme (σχήμα καί μορφή 10 a 11-26).

15. Nef, Frédéric. 2009. "Les catégories aristotéliciennes et la division de l’être : types de divisions et types d’ontologies." Cahiers de philosophie del’université de Caen no. 46:1-26.

"L’ontologie catégorielle a ses racines dans la doctrine aristotélicienne exposée dans le traité éponyme et plus particulièrement dans le fameux chapitre deuxième. L’interprétation de ce texte bute notamment sur deux problèmes : s’agit-il d’une division de la réalité ou de l’espace conceptuel ? Existe-t-il dans la doctrine d’Aristote des accidents individuels, des particuliers abstraits ? La réponse à ces questions détermine le sens de ce chapitre de l’histoire de l’ontologie. Je me propose de discuter de ces questions à la lumière de l’ontologie contemporaine. Les travaux récents de R. Chisholm et de E. J. Lowe en l’ontologie catégorielle montrent l’actualité de la doctrine aristotélicienne : la réponse aux questions que nous venons de mentionner n’a pas seulement des conséquences historiques, mais peut contribuer à déterminer la place des catégories dans l’ontologie et plus largement à poser le problème du découpage catégoriel de la réalité. Je commencerai par examiner le sens de la division de l’être, puis je livrerai quelques réflexions sur le texte d’Aristote, avant d’exposer les développements des représentations semi-formelles sous forme de représentations géométriques (carrés, arbres, cubes), puis je discuterai des propositions de E. J. Lowe.

L’hypothèse que je serai conduit à évaluer consiste à soutenir que dans l’histoire del’interprétation des Catégories il y a une corrélation, d’une part, entre le développementd’ontologies de constituant et les représentations sous forme d’arbres et, d’autre part, entre l’émergence d’ontologies des relations et les modèles sous forme de carrés. L’intérêt de ces carrés ontologiques est alors (si l’hypothèse a quelque vraisemblance) de contenir au moins en puissance une théorie des relations – une autre manière de voir les choses est de dire que ces représentations obligent à expliciter les relations entre les pôles des figures et jouent donc implicitement un rôle de catalyseur pour la réflexion." (pp. 1-2)

Références

R. Chisholm, A Realistic Theory of Categories: an Essay in Ontology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996.

J. E. Lowe, The Four-Category Ontology, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006.

16. O'Brien, Denis. 1978. "Aristote et la catégorie de quantité : divisions de la quantité." Les Études Philosophiques:25-40.

"L'analyse de la quantité, au chapitre 6 des Catégories, se fonde principalement sur la distinction entre ce qui est discret et ce qui est continu (4 b 20 sqq.). La quantité discrète est représentée par le nombre et par le logos; la quantité continue, quant à elle, est représentée principalement par la ligne, la surface et le corps, et d'une façon complémentaire (cf. παρά ταύτα) par le temps et le lieu (4 b 20-25)." (p. 25)

17. ———. 1980. "Aristote: quantité et contrariété. Une critique de l'école d' Oxford." In Concepts et catégories dans la pensée antique, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 89-165. Paris: Vrin.

" L'école d'Oxford et le commentaire du Professeur J. L. Ackrill sur les ‘ Catégories ’ d'Aristote. L’influence de la philosophie dite « linguistique » ou « analytique » de l’école d’Oxford se fait ressentir dans plus d’une faculté de philosophie en Angleterre. Qui plus est, l’intérêt des philosophes de cette école ne s’est pas borné aux problèmes de la pensée contemporaine ; en effet, malgré l’esprit délibérément novateur — pour ne pas dire iconoclaste — d’un Ayer ou d’un Ryle, un intérêt porté à certains aspects de la philosophie de l’antiquité fait bien partie de la tradition qui s’inspire des ouvrages, Language, truth and logic (1936) et The concept of mind (1949) ; en témoignent, entre autres choses, les deux séries de la Clarendon Press dédiées, la première à Aristote (à partir de 1962), la seconde à Platon (à partir de 1973).

Les contributions à ces deux séries se caractérisent par des traits communs ; on y voit notamment une tendance à privilégier la portée proprement philosophique d’un ouvrage de l’antiquité, par rapport aux problèmes de philologie et d’histoire. Évidemment, cette manière d’aborder le sujet soulève des questions de méthode fondamentales pour la recherche sur la pensée de l’antiquité ; et je ne cache pas, pour ma part, les réserves que m’inspirent les réponses contenues implicitement dans les ouvrages parus jusqu’ici dans les deux collections citées.

Il ne s’agit pourtant pas d’approfondir ce problème en une soixantaine de pages ; ce n’est donc que pour signaler l’existence du problème, et pour poser un tout premier jalon, que l’exposé actuel s’est présenté sous la forme qu’il a. Je m’y suis borné, en effet, à l’étude d’un seul texte, et à l’examen du commentaire qu’en a fait l’un des adhérents les plus distingués de l’école d’Oxford. Le texte, celui des Catégories où Aristote cherche à montrer que les quantités ne peuvent pas avoir un rapport de contrariété (chap. 6, 5b11 sqq.) ; le commentaire, celui du Professeur J. L. Ackrill, qui occupe en ce moment une chaire de philosophie à l’Université d’Oxford, et qui s’intéresse notamment aux philosophes de l’antiquité.

Je ne m’en tiendrai pas cependant à une œuvre purement critique — à fabriquer le commentaire d’un commentaire ; en passant par la critique, j’espère pouvoir apporter des éléments positifs pour éclairer les problèmes, à la fois linguistiques et conceptuels, qui ont fait de ce texte l’un des plus difficiles dans le traité des Catégories." (pp. 89-90, notes omises)

18. ———. 1980. "Bibliographie annotée des études principales sur le 'Catégories' d'Aristote 1794-1975." In Concepts et catégories dans la pensée antique, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 1-22. Paris: Vrin.

19. Pellegrin, Pierre, and Crubellier, Michel. 2007. "Introduction." In Aristote. Catégories. Sur l'interprétation. Organon I-II, edited by Pellegrin, Pierre. Paris: GF Flammarion.

Introduction géenérale à l'Organon par Pierre Pellegrin.

Introduction, traduction, notes et index des Catégories par Peirre Pellegrin et Michel Crubellier.

Introduction, traduction, notes et index de Sur l'interprétation par Catherine Dalimier.

"A l’issue de cette brève présentation du texte des Catégories, beaucoup d’incertitudes demeurent. Non seulement nous n’avons pas tranché le problème de l’authenticité du traité, mais nous n’avons finalemenl même pas donné un argument qui rendrait l’authenticité plus probable que l’inauthenticité ou l’inverse. Au moins avons-nous tenté de relativiser l’importance de certains problèmes qui avaient paru cruciaux à nos prédécesseurs. Qu’importe, après tout, que nos Catégories aient été directement inspirées par Aristote ou soient le manuel d’un Péripatéticien tardif ? Ce qui est sûr, c’est qu’il reflète une doctrine qui est l’une des conditions d’existence de l’aristotélisme. (...) Quant à la question, qui elle aussi a paru fondamentale, de savoir si les Catégories penchaient du côté du dire ou de l’être, nous avons tenté de retrouver la tranquille assurance de l’auteur lui-même qui juxtapose sans l’ombre d’une réticence les deux points de vue. Il ne fait guère de doute qil'Aristote a conçu les catégories comme des types de prédication et/ou de prédicats, mais aussi comme une Mine de réseau qui structure la réalité. Mais nous n'avons pas déchu les Catégories de leur place capitale, pour reprendre l’image de Syrianus et de Simplicius." (pp. 86-87)

20. Pelletier, Yvan. 1987. "Le propos et le proème des Attributions (Catégories) d'Aristote." Laval Théologique et Philosophique no. 43:31-47.

Résumé : "Le but de cet article est de manifester qu'Aristote, dans ses Attributions (Catégories), a pour propos de fournir le prémier principe systématique de toute recherche de definition. Ce but est atteint en deux temps: 1) par l'exposé direct de la conception que s'en fait l'auteur de l'article; 2) par la verification de cette conception à travers une lecture rigoureuse des quatre premiers chapitres formant le proème aux Attributions."

21. Philippe, Marie-Dominique. 1958. "Le relatif dans la philosophie d'Aristote." Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques no. 42:689-710.

"Sans prétendre à une étude exhaustive, essayons ici de dégager la pensée d 'Aristote sur le relatif, selon les étapes suivantes : 1° partir des critiques qu'Aristote fait aux platoniciens sur ce point, puisque c'est à partir du platonisme et face à lui qu'il élabore sa propre philosophie ; 2° analyser Catégories. Il conviendra alors d'approfondir déterminer du point de vue métaphysique du relatif ; 4° ses modalités spécifiques dont Aristote le met en oeuvre dans ses divers traités." (pp. 689-690)

(,,,)

"Voilà bien les deux catégories extrêmes [substance et relatif] qui s'éclairent mutuellement : l'une exprime ce qui est entièrement soi-même, ce qui ne dit référence à rien d'autre, ce qui constitue un «premier» tant dans l'ordre de la détermination que du point de vue de l'existence; l'autre exprime ce qui est pure référence à un autre, ce qui est entièrement dit en dépendance d'un autre ou orienté vers un autre, et qui par le fait même n'est en rien pour soi.

Ces deux catégories ne font d'ailleurs que traduire les deux manières extrêmes dont notre intelligence exprime le réel : ou bien comme un absolu ayant sa propre détermination et sa manière propre d'exister; ou bien comme un relatif totalement orienté vers un autre, incapable de posséder sa propre forme par lui-même." (p. 692)

22. Purnelle, Gérald. 1996. "La proportion des conjonctions de subordination dans six oeuvres d'Aristotle." In Aristotelica Secunda. Mélanges offerts a Christian Rutten, edited by Motte, André and Denooz, Joseph, 91-102. Liège: Université de Liège. Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres.

"Mon propos sera ici d'utiliser les méthodes habituelles de la stylométrie dans une perspective différente de celle des études de chronologie et d'authenticité, afin d'appréhender, indépendamment de ces implications, certains traits stylistiques des textes étudiés. Je m'intéresserai aux matériaux étudiés (les mots, les catégories, leur fréquence) pour eux-mêmes, en cherchant à déterminer la manière dont les emploie Aristote dans six de ses textes.

Les mots outils, même s'ils sont moins porteurs de sens que les mots pleins, n'en sont évidemment pas totalement exempts. Prépositions, conjonctions de subordination et même particules participent à la construction du sens de la phrase et du texte. S'il n'y a aucun inconvénient à regrouper toujours dans une même catégorie des mots tels que και. (conjonction) et τε, on conviendra que les conjonctions de subordination, par exemple, sont sémantiquement très différentes les unes des autres, et qu'une proposition causale n'est pas une consécutive. Il m'a dès lors paru intéressant d'aller plus loin que le simple dénombrement indifférencié des représentants d'une partie du discours, en éclatant l'une de ces catégories afin d'examiner la fréquence, dans quelques textes, de chacun des vocables qui lui appartiennent.

Dans cette perspective, les conjonctions de subordination constituent un premier cas intéressant à étudier. Les différents vocables qui entrent dans cette classe sont peu nombreux (bien moins que les substantifs, les verbes ou les adverbes), et ce sont typiquement des mots outils. En outre, en tant que telles, les conjonctions participent à la construction du sens du texte d'une manière différente, par exemple, de celle des prépositions : le niveau de syntaxe auquel elles participent (les propositions) est supérieur à celui des prépositions.

(...)

Les textes examinés sont au nombre de six ; ce sont ceux qui ont été lemmatisés et analysés au LASLA et ont été constitués en fichiers informatisés contenant, pour chaque mot, une code de catégorie grammaticale. Il s'agit des Catégories, du Traité de l'âme (De Anima), de la Métaphysique, des Parties des animaux, de la Physique et de la Poétique. Cet ensemble paraît relativement varié, où se mêlent traités de philosophie, de logique et de biologie." (p. 92, note omise)

23. Rutten, Christian. 1985. "Stylométrie des Catégories." In Aristotelica: mélanges offerts à Marcel de Corte, edited by Motte, André, 315-336. Bruxelles: Éditions Ousia.

24. Stevens, Annick. 2000. L'ontologie d'Aristote. Au carrefour du logique et du réel. Paris: Vrin.

"Les définitions de l’homonymie, de la synonymie et de la paronymie constituent la première partie du traité des Catégories, tandis que dans sa dernière partie figurent de nombreux exemples de termes plurivoques à propos desquels il n’est jamais précisé si cette plurivocité correspond à l’une des trois formes définies. Cette constatation, et aussi le fait qu’après les trois définitions le texte passe abruptement à une autre problématique, a pu faire douter de l’homogénéité du traité et, partant, de l’authenticité des chapitres 1 et 10-14. Cependant, dans toute son œuvre, Aristote utilise toujours ces termes en accord avec les définitions données ici et en reproduit quelquefois des parties (cf. Topiques, VI 10, 148 a 23 sq.) En outre, la disposition des problématiques ne doit pas nous étonner, car le traité des Catégories se veut un inventaire, successivement, des différentes portées sémantiques d’un mot (champ sémantique unique ou multiple), des différents types d’expressions (combinées ou non combinées), des différents statuts ontologiques auxquels renvoient les mots (sujet, attribut, inhérent), des principaux genres des étants (les dix catégories), et enfin de quelques déterminants qui peuvent s’appliquer à des étants de chaque genre (comme « opposé », « antérieur », « ensemble »...). On peut donc considérer les définitions fournies comme une base fiable pour aborder les termes plurivoques dans le corpus." (p. 62)

25. Surdu, Alexandru. 1971. "Interprétation symbolique des premiers chapitres des Catégories d'Aristote." Revue Roumaine de Philosophie et Logique no. 15:235-248.

26. Thillet, Pierre. 1960. "Remarques sur les Catégories d'Aristote." Mélanges de la Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne no. 8:28-36.

27. Thivel, Antoine. 1992. "Comment se forme un vocabulaire philosophique ? Essai de comparaison entre le grec, l'indien et le chinois." Lalies.Actes des Sessions de Linguistique et de Littérature no. 10:377-387.

Résumé : "La célèbre théorie de Benveniste sur les catégories de pensée et les catégories de langue, par laquelle il essayait de prouver que la pensée n'est qu'un reflet de la langue, en analysant les catégories selon Aristote, ne résiste pas à l'examen quand on essaie de l'illustrer par des comparaisons entre la philosophie et la grammaire en sanskrit et en chinois.

Les notions grammaticales sonî inconscientes et élaborées par le sens commun, tandis que les concepts fondamenraux mis au point par les philosophes sont une formalisation consciente des idées cosmologiques de chaque peuple."

28. Thouard, Denis. 2004. "Une métacritique des catégories : l'usage critique d'Aristote chez Trendelenburg." In Aristote au XIX siècle, edited by Thouard, Denis, 37-62. Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Unversitaires du Septentrion.

"Aristote est un partenaire essentiel pour la discussion de la question des catégories qui fut vive au cours du siècle. Remise par Kant à l’ordre du jour, cette question fut l’un des enjeux de l’idéalisme, en tant que celui-ci s’est donné pour tâche de ramener la pensée à ses conditions subjectives : non seulement ce qui apparaît, le phénomène, n’est qu’à la condition d’être présenté en tant que tel dans les formes générales de la subctivité, mais les grandes fonctions de la pensée, qui lui donnent un contenu déterminé et se répartissent en catégories, sont intégralement réductibles à l’auto-position de la subjectivité. Le primat du jugement établi par Kant doit être fondé par la réconduction des catégories à l’acte de la pensée. Autrement dit, la déductibilité des catégories est une pièce décisive du projet idéaliste en tant qu’il a partie liée avec l’élaboration du «synthétique a priori». Mais cette recherche d'un unique fondement des catégories a suscité des réserves sceptiques. Ces réticences se sont volontiers exprimées à travers un retour à Aristote, retour qui signifiait dans le même temps une interrogation sur la formation de la langue de la philosophie, sur le vocabulaire grec des catégories, sur le latin scolaire et sur la philosophie en langue nationale. L’attention aux catégories s’inscrit, comme on peut le montrer, dans la problématique générale de la métacritique, autrement dit d’une remise en question de la critique kantienne à partir du langage, soit pour l’invalider, soit pour la compléter. Cette orientation, quasiment contemporaine de la critique kantienne, a nourri l’opposition à l’idéalisme philosophique avant d’être reprise dans l’orientation anti-spéculative de la «critique du langage» ou Sprachkritik, puis dans la réduction de la philosophie à l’analyse du langage." (p. 37, une note omise)

29. Touratier, Christian. 1992. "Catégories de langue et catégories de pensée : (Benveniste lecteur d'Aristote)." Lalies.Actes des Sessions de Linguistique et de Littérature no. 10:367-376.

Résumé : "Alors que Benveniste pense que les catégories de la logique d'Aristote ne sont que la transposition des catégories de la langue grecque, on essaie de montrer que, même chez Aristote, les catégories linguistiques ne sont pas parallèles aux catégories logiques, et que s'il y a parallélisme c'est entre les catégories aristotéliciennes et les définitions logicisantes des catégories linguistiques, que la tradition grammaticale a du reste abusivement empruntées à la logique d'Aristote elle-même."

30. Trendelenburg, Friedrich Adolf. 2018. "Les Catégories d'Aristote." Les Études Philosophiques no. 183:345-362.

"Ainsi, toutes les parties du discours, peut-on penser, ont donné lieu à leur catégorie. Il reste certes les conjonctions ; mais, puisque les catégories sont issues de la dissolution de l’énoncé*, les conjonctions sont par elles mêmes exclues des catégories. Quant aux pronoms qui, une fois mise à part la matière propre des notions si l’on peut dire, ne conservent que la nature du genre, tant s’en faut qu’on puisse leur assigner des catégories propres, qu’ils ont imposé leur nom, à une grande partie de ces catégories. Ousia en effet est qualifié habituellement de tode ti**, par quoi on signifie ce qui est défini à tous égards de telle sorte qu’on puisse le montrer dans son lieu. La seconde et la troisième catégorie sont intitulées poson et poion, qui sont des pronoms adjectifs ; pou et pote, qui sont des expressions du lieu et du temps, pourraient être appelés des pronoms adverbiaux.

Voilà à peu près ce qui dans les catégories se ressent de son origine grammaticale.

Tel ne fut pas, pourtant, le tour d’esprit d’Aristote de ne s’attacher qu’aux simples formes de langues ; toutes les traces qu’il paraît en avoir décelées, il les a perfectionnées de façon à faire porter son investigation sur les contenus des notions, après avoir mis à l’écart ces formes." (p. 358)

(...)

"Donc, une fois abandonnée l’idée d’une origine pythagoricienne des catégories, il fallait rechercher leurs causes dans le système même de la philosophie aristotélicienne. Si nous avons réussi, sinon à mettre en évidence l’ensemble des causes, du moins à en élucider une espèce, qui ait conduit le philosophe à établir précisément ces genres de notions, il nous semble avoir en tout cas fait avancer la question." (p. 362)

* « Κατὰ μηδεμίαν συμπλοκὴν λεγόμεναι », Catégories, chap. 4 [1b25 ; « Ce qui se dit sans combinaison », p. 61]

** Cf. Aristote, De l’âme, I, 1, § 3 [412a], p. 206 de notre commentaire [Iéna, Walz, 1833].

31. van Aubel, Madeleine. 1963. "Accident, catégories et prédicables dans l'oeuvre d'Aristote." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 61:361-401.

"La philosophie scolastique, lorsqu · elle définit la notion d'accident, accorde à ce terme, c'est bien connu, une double signification.

Elle parle d'accident logique (ou prédicable) et d'accident métaphysique (ou prédicamental).

Cette présentation, qui se réfère à deux théories bien distinctes - la théorie métaphysique des Catégories ou genres suprêmes de l'être, et celle des prédicables ou modes de la prédication -, se réclame d'ordinaire directement de la philosophie de saint Thomas, et indirectement de celle d'Aristote.

Or, lorsqu'on entreprend l'étude du sens qu'avait pour Aristote le terme το συμβεβηκός - traduit accidens par les scolastiques -, on est amené bien vite à se demander s'il est permis d'attribuer à Aristote la distinction précise et explicite établie depuis des siècles entre l'accident logique et l'accident ontologique.

Car, s'il est indiscutable que l'on trouve chez Aristote tous les éléments qui ont permis la distinction aujourd'hui nettement définie entre les deux théories dont nous parlons, il n'apparaît cependant pas de façon aussi claire qu'elle soit déjà Jormellement perçue par Aristote, que celui-ci ait déjà présenté comme tels un accident logique et un accident métaphysique bien distincts l'un de l'autre.

Face à cette constatation, nous nous sommes posé la question qui constituera l'objet de cette étude : comment Aristote comprenait-il l'accident ?

Cela nous force d'ailleurs à nous demander préalablement ce que représentaient pour le Stagirite la théorie des prédicables et celle des catégories, et à tenter ensuite de déterminer la place qu'occupait la notion d'accident dans la pensée du philosophe." (p. 361)

32. van Schilfgaarde, Paul. 1963. "Les catégories d'Aristote." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 68:257-267.

"Par catégories aristotéliciennes, on entend le plus souvent des énonciations, déclarations, expressions, prédicats; mais le verbe grec signifie " s'adresser à " avec le sens accessoire d'accuser, obliger. Je ne discute pas ce qu'ont entendu les autres, dans une autre façon de penser, cette notion : dans l'esprit d'Aristote la vérité du monde ou de l'univers est adressée par les catégories et en même temps cette vérité est jugée responsable de cette dénomination ou qualification, de telle façon ce n'est pas l'homme qui en raisonnant attribuerait quelque chose monde ou qui ferait des observations plus ou moins véridiques sur monde (thèse jusqu'à présent maintenue par un nominalisme soit ouvert, soit déguisé) ; mais bien que le monde est appelé par la raison l'homme par son vrai nom - un appel qui à la fois contient un défi une accusation. Si l'on s'adresse, par exemple, à la nature animale par désignation " cruelle ", sous condition que ce nom soit accepté par nature animale (c'est-à-dire qu'il soit " vrai "), alors cette nature male est responsable (dans le sens scientifique, non pas dans le moral) de sa crudélité et en porte la " culpabilité ". "(p. 257, notes omises)

33. Villevieille, Laurent. 2018. "Du « Je parle » au « Je pense » : l'origine des catégories selon Trendelenburg et Brentano." Philosophie:39-54.

"La présente étude n’entend donc pas établir l’importance, pour la lecture d’Aristote, de l’apport trendelenburgien, auquel de nombreux travaux, ces dernières décennies, ont pleinement rendu justice. Encore moins vise-t-elle à donner raison à Trendelenburg dans le débat qui l’oppose à Bonitz. Elle tente plutôt de débusquer, derrière le débat avec Bonitz qui, justement, leur ont longtemps fait écran, les enjeux proprement philosophiques de l’interprétation trendelenburgienne des catégories d’Aristote. Nous tenterons en effet de montrer que ces enjeux exigent, au-delà de la fausse alternative bonitzienne entre catégories de langue et catégories de l’être, de reconduire la lecture trendelenburgienne à la véritable alternative où elle s’inscrit : l’alternative entre catégories de langue et catégories de pensée.

Sans doute la meilleure illustration de ce débat décisif peut-elle être trouvée, comme nous le verrons un peu plus loin, dans le rapport que le plus illustre élève de Trendelenburg, Franz Brentano, a entretenu avec l’héritage de son maître." (p. 40)

34. Vuillemin, Jules. 1967. "Le système des Catégories d'Aristote et sa signification logique et métaphysique." In De la logique à la théologie. Cinq études sur Aristote, 44-125. Paris: Flammarion.

Deuxième étude: Le sistème des Catégories d'Aristote et sa signification logique et métaphysique, p. 44-125.

"Dans la querelle toujours renaissante concernant la signification des catégories d’Aristote, un linguiste éminent(1) est intervenu pour montrer que celles-ci appartiennent d’abord à la langue grecque et que si l’on prétend les traduire dans une langue très eloignee du groupe indo-européen, la même notion se voit exprimée par plusieurs catégories linguistiques sans que d’ailleurs ces categories possèdent, pour tout autre que pour un sujet formé a la langue grecque, une unité propre." (p. 75)

(...)

"Cette démonstration possède un double mérite.

D’abord, elle fait apercevoir l’organisation de la table des catégories à laquelle on avait toujours reproché son caractère rhapsodique.(2) Les six premières catégories se réfèrent toutes à des formes nominales, les quatre dernières à des formes verbales." (p. 75)

(..)

"En second lieu, on conclut que, croyant classer des notions, Aristote a classé en réalité des catégories de langue, eu sorte que les particularités de la langue grecque ont dominé le destin de la philosophie en Occident.

Cette seconde conclusion, toutefois, outrepasse ce que l’argumentation a démontré. En effet, de ce qu’une philosophie emprunte aux oppositions d’une langue les concepts et les oppositions reconnues fondamentales pour la pensée, il est légitime de conclure non seulement que la langue propose ses suggestions à la pensée, mais qu’il est impossible de penser ce qui n’y est pas exprimé; toutefois, il est illégitime de conclure que la table des catégories de la pensée reflète celle des catégories de la langue. Pour pouvoir aller jusque- là, il faudrait avoir montré que le tableau des catégories empruntées à la langue est aussi le tableau complet de ces catégories quant à la langue. Dans le cas contraire, il y aura sélection et, si le philosophe choisit dans les catégories linguistiques, c'est que son choix n’est précisément plus dicté uniquement par la considération de la langue. Or c’est bien ce qui se passe, puisqu’on ne saurait prétendre que la structure des catégories de la langue grecque est exhaustivement exposée dans le tableau d’Aristote.

En fait, celui-ci suit une articulation logique qui, en même temps, possède une portée ontologique et c’est en ressaisissant la nature de cette articulation, une fois qu’elle a été mise au jour par l’analyse de la langue, qu’on trouvera peut-être le fil directeur de la déduction aristotélicienne, qui semble avoir jusqu’ici échappé à l’analyse." (pp. 76-77)

(2) Par exemple Kant, Critique delà raison pure, trad. Tremesaygues et Pacaud, p. 95

35. Zaslawski, D. 1969. "Termes, propositions, contrariété et contradiction." L'Âge de la Science no. 2:21-54.

36. Zhang, Yijing. 2019. "Les catégories d'Aristote à l'épreuve du «sophiste» chinois Gongsun Long." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 117:3-30.

Résumé : "Confrontées au chinois, l’universalité des catégories aristotéliciennes pose deux questions: (1) ces catégories sont-elles traduisibles en chinois? (2) La pensée chinoise possède-t-elle les mêmes catégories? Nous les examinons ici l’une et l’autre par le biais d’une aporie célèbre: «Cheval blanc n’est pas cheval» – cas où les deux traditions philosophiques sont les plus «comparables» puisqu’il s’agit du même problème du rapport entre la couleur blanche et un corps blanc, mais aussi les plus «incomparables» puisque les différences linguistiques et philosophiques sont très frappantes. En réinterrogeant les positions de certains chercheurs modernes qui défendent, les uns l’universalité de la logique aristotélicienne, les autres la singularité de la pensée chinoise, nous mettons en lumière la difficulté à se dégager des concepts occidentaux en interprétant la pensée chinoise, difficulté par excellence de tout dialogue transculturel."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Aristotele, Categorie. Bibliografia degli studi Italiani

Bibliografia

1. Apelt, Otto. 2020. La dottrina delle categorie di Aristotele. Macerata: Quodlibet.

A cura e con un saggio di Venanzio Raspa. Traduzione di Italo Cubeddu e Venanzio Raspa.

"Se alla dottrina aristotelica spetta un qualche duraturo significato filosofico, ossia più che meramente storico, allora essa deve in qualche modo poter essere spiegata e legittimata anche a partire dalla natura e dallo stato della nostra conoscenza. E non crediamo di metterci dalla parte del torto, se abbiamo il coraggio di chiamare in causa le conquiste della più recente filosofia per valutare le concezioni aristoteliche. Una cosa è giudicare un autore antico partendo da nuovi punti di vista, un’altra è attribuirgli qualcosa di nuovo e di estraneo. Rifiutare fin dal principio una valutazione filosofica dell’intera questione, come fa Bonitz a p. 35 (5), significa in sostanza rinunciare a un suo vero apprezzamento. Davvero la filosofia, nel corso dei millenni, non ha conseguito risultati sicuri? Si deve veramente giudicare Aristotele solo a partire da Aristotele e non è possibile farlo diversamente senza diventare ingiusti? Questa per noi moderni sarebbe quasi una dichiarazione di bancarotta. Ma come, se in questo modo non soltanto si comprendesse meglio Aristotele, ma anche lo si giustificasse? E come, se ad esempio proprio Kant ci venisse in soccorso, e se, attraverso il controllo reciproco dell’antico mediante il nuovo e del nuovo mediante l’antico, le concezioni di entrambi trovassero la loro conferma? Vale la pena tentarlo!

A questo però ci apriamo innanzi tutto una strada interrogando precisamente lo stesso Aristotele sull’intento che egli ha avuto con la sua suddivisione categoriale. Qui naturalmente solo lui ha la parola, qui cioè ci guardiamo nella maniera più rigorosa dall’interferire con recenti concezioni, concedendo piuttosto ad Aristotele di essere il commentatore di sé stesso. Come ho già detto, cercheremmo inutilmente negli scritti di Aristotele specifiche ed esplicite informazioni sull’origine e l’intento di questa dottrina. Tuttavia, egli non ci lascia completamente soli con accenni alla via che ha seguito per arrivare alla sua esposizione. Soprattutto, menziona almeno il campo che ritiene di avere completamente suddiviso con le sue categorie. È possibile che, con una corretta spiegazione dell’idea che sta alla base della suddivisione, si riesca a sollevare in una certa misura il velo dietro il quale si cela il mistero.

Non è nelle Categorie che dobbiamo cercare questa spiegazione.

La troviamo in altri scritti, e prima di tutto nella Metafisica. Ma si vedrà che il primo scritto non è in contraddizione con il secondo, soprattutto perché mi sembra che, per il suo contenuto, il trattato sulle categorie sia assolutamente autentico, anche se la forma non può essere attribuita interamente ad Aristotele." (pp. 100-101)

(5) Cfr. trad. it. Sulle categorie di Aristotele, p. 97.

2. Belardi, Walter. 1976. "Le Categorie aristoteliche e la cultura linguistica dell’epoca." De Homine no. 57:3-24.

Ristampato ed ampliato in W. Belardi, Filosofia, grammatica e retorica nel pensiero antico, Roma: Edizioni dell'Ateneo, 1985, capitolo VII, pp. 147-165.

"Secondo alcuni c'è un argomento filosofico che più di ogni altro sembra implicare uno stretto collegamento tra filosofia e grammatica: le dieci categorie aristoteliche. Poiché Aristotele non ci informa sulla via da lui percorsa per arrivare alla individuazione e alla definizione delle dette categorie, la critica ha supposto in alternativa tre possibili diverse genesi: logica, grammaticale, ontologica. Secondo la prima ipotesi le categorie rifletterebbero universali logici, colti direttamente dal pensiero speculativo di Aristotele, ispirato, in parte, da riflessioni di predecessori; per la seconda, invece, le categorie sarebbero una trasposizione sul piano logico dei fondamentali valori formalizzati, cioè grammaticali, propri della lingua greca antica; secondo la terza ipotesi, le categorie sarebbero dei πρώτα metafisici necessari per pensare la sostanza nei suoi aspetti. In genere, la prima ipotesi non tiene conto del fatto che le categorie - come dice lo stesso Aristotele in 1 b 25 - si colgono attraverso la considerazione di «dicibili», con i quali si costruisce il discorso. La seconda ipotesi - riproposta di recente da E. Benveniste - è programmaticamente riduttiva nel ricondurre le categorie aristoteliche a fatti e classi grammaticali; la terza, nella considerazione dell'essere circoscritto tnscura il fatto che la pensabilità si attua passando attraverso i «significati» ai quali Aristotele si riferisce più volte nella Metafisica. L'origine logica - cosl autorevolmente sostenuta soprattutto da O. Apelt(1) - sarebbe dimostrata dall'essere le categorie dotate di « logische Bedeutung »; ma c'è da chiedersi di che tipo sia la logicità che inerisce a predicati come «giace » o « è armato », esempi della settima e dell'ottava categoria. L'origine « ontologica metafisica », riproposta da G. Reale(2), sembrerebbe indubitabile, solo nella misura, però, in cui il discorso si sposta, illegittimamente, dal predicabile all'oggetto di cui si predica, altrimenti l'ontologismo delle categorie si riduce al solo fatto che virtualmente la categoria ha una riferibilità ontologica, come altre espressioni semantiche per lingua. Per quanto i fautori più accorti della seconda ipotesi pensino che l'operazione di trasposizione non sia stata preceduta e accompagnata da consapevolezza critica, la seconda ipotesi reclama di necessità che si ammetta la presenza in Aristotele di una sensibilità per i valori linguistici assai accentuata anche se inconscia, e sviluppata al punto da cogliere nella lingua greca tutti quei valori grammaticali che poi nell'Organon ci vengono presentati come « categorie logiche »." (pp. 147-148 della ristampa)

(1) O. Apelt, Kategorienlehre des Aristoteles, in Beitrage zur Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophie, Leipzig 1891.

(2) G. Reale, Filo grasmmaticale e filo conduttore ontologico nella deuzione delle categorie aristoteliche, in « Riv. di filosofia neoscolastica » 49 (1957), pp. 423-458. 1l fatto che le categorie riguardino l'ὅν non basta a farle essere ontologiche.

3. Benveniste, Émile. 1971. "Categorie di pensiero e categorie di lingua." In Problemi di linguistica generale, 79-92. Milano: Il Saggiatore.

"Con questa tavola delle « categorie » Aristotele intendeva passare in rassegna tutti i possibili predicati della proposizione, a condizione che ciascun termine fosse significante da solo, non inserito in una συμπλοκή, noi diremmo in un sintagma. Inconsciamente ha seguito come criterio la necessità empirica di una espressione distinta per ciascun predicato. Era quindi destinato a ritrovare, senza volerlo, le distinzioni che la lingua stessa rende evidenti fra le principali classi di forme, dato che è per le loro differenze che tali forme e tali classi hanno un significato linguistico. Aristotele credeva di definire gli attributi degli oggetti, mentre non enuncia che degli enti linguistici: è la lingua che, grazie alle proprie categorie, permette di riconoscerli e di specificarli. Abbiamo cosi una risposta alla domanda formulata all’inizio e che ci ha condotti a fare questa analisi. Ci domandavamo di che natura fossero le relazioni fra categorie di pensiero e categorie di lingua. Nella misura in cui vi si riconosca una validità, per il pensiero, le categorie di Aristotele si rivelano come la trasposizione delle categorie di lingua. È ciò che si può dire che delimita e organizza ciò che si può pensare. La lingua fornisce la configurazione fondamentale delle proprietà che la mente riconosce alle cose. Questa tavola dei predicati ci informa dunque prima di tutto sulla struttura delle classi di una particolare lingua. Ne consugue che quanto Aristotele ci dà come un quadro di condizioni generali e permaneti non è che la proiezione concettuale di una data situazione linguistica. Si può anzi estendere questa osservazione. Al di là dei termini aristotelici, al di sopra di questa categorizzazione, si spiega l’idea di «essere» che racchiude tutto. Pur senza essere un predicato, l’« essere » è la condizione di tutti i predicati. Tutte le varietà dell’« essere in un certo modo », dello « stato », tutte le idee possibili del « tempo », e cosi via, dipendono dalla nozione di « essere ». Anche qui, questo concetto riflette una proprietà linguistica molto specifica. Il greco non soltanto possiede un verbo « essere » (cosa che non è affatto una necessità di ogni lingua), ma ne fa degli usi del tutto singolari. Gli fa svolgere una funzione logica, quella di copula (Aristotele stesso già osservava che in tale funzione il verbo non ha un significato proprio, ma opera soltanto una synthesis), e ha perciò avuto un’estensione maggiore di qualsiasi altro." (pp. 86-87)

4. Bernardini, Marina. 2009. "Modulazioni della sostanza aristotelica nelle Categorie." In La filosofia come servizio. Studi in onore di Giovanni Ferretti, edited by Mancini, R and Migliori, Maurizio, 144-164. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

5. ———. 2016. "Saggio introduttivo alle Categorie." In Aristotele. Organon, edited by Migliori, Maurizio, 7-52. Milano: Bompiani.

"L'unità che le Categorie formano con le altre opere logiche di Aristotele e, dunque, .l'unità dello studio del linguaggio e del sillogismo appaiono, in realtà, molto più forti nell'interpretazione stoica che nello stesso Aristotele. Bodéüs ha sottolineato come, diversamente dall'impianto stoico della logica - in cui i ragionamenti complessi possono essere scomposti in proposizioni complesse, e queste, a loro volta, in proposizioni semplici e in ulteriori elementi -, la teoria del sillogismo formale, in Aristotele, non necessita di uno studio preliminare delle premesse, in quanto i sillogismi vengono definiti dalla posizione relativa dei termini contenuti nelle premesse e simboleggiati da lettere.(9)

(9) Cfr. Bodéüs Aristote, Catégories ... , pp. XIX-XX.

6. Bonelli, Maddalena, and Guadalupe Masi, Francesca, eds. 2011. Studi sulle Categorie di Aristotele. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert.

Maddalena Bonelli e Francesca Guadalupe Masi: Prefazione 11;

Prima Parte: Introduzione.

Carlo Natali: Struttura e organizzazione del trattato aristotelico detto Categorie 17;

Seconda parte: Saggi di analisi e commento.

Paolo Fait: Aristotele, Categorie, 1. Omonimi, sinonimi, paronimi 33; Barbara Botter: Aristotele, Categorie, 2. Individuo e individuazione 51; Barbara Botter: Aristotele, Categorie, 3. La predicazione delle differenze 77; Carlo Natali: Aristotele, Categorie, 4. La lista delle categorie 89; Francesca Guadalupe Masi: Aristotele, Categorie, 5, 2a11-3a6. Sostanza prima e sostanze seconde 95; Stefano Maso: Aristotele, Categorie, 5, 3a7-4b19. Sostanza, differenza, contrari 113; Elisabetta Cattanei: Aristotele, Categorie, 6, 4b20-5b10. Le quantità in senso proprio 135; Francesca Guadalupe Masi: Aristotele, Categorie, 6, 5b11-6a35. Le caratteristiche della quantità 157; Maddalena Bonelli: Aristotele, Categorie, 7, 6a36-7b14. La prima definizione dei relativi e alcune loro proprietà 173; Diego Zucca: Aristotele, Categorie, 7, 7b15-8b24. Lo status aporetico dei relativi 191; Cristina Viano: Aristotele, Categorie, 8, 8b25-10a10. Stati e disposizioni, capacità e incapacità naturali, qualità affettive e affezioni 213; Stefano Maso: Aristotele, Categorie, 8, 10a11-11a39. Forma, qualità, relativi 229; Carlo Natali: Aristotele, Categorie, 9. Fare, subire e le altre categorie 245; Cristina Rossitto: Aristotele, Categorie, 10. Gli ‘opposti’ e la loro classificazione 249; Cristina Rossitto: Aristotele, Categorie, 11. La contrarietà 265; Lisa Bressan: Aristotele, Categorie, 12. I significati di ‘anteriore’ 289; Lisa Bressan: Aristotele, Categorie, 13. I significati di ‘simultaneità’ 305; Rita Salis: Aristotele, Categorie, 14. Il movimento e le sue specie 315; Rita Salis: Aristotele, Categorie, 15. La categoria dell’ ‘avere’ 327;

Terza parte: Saggi critici.

Jonathan Barnes: Aristotelian quantities 337; Walter Cavini: Vero e falso nelle Categorie 371;

Indici 407.

"Il volume si articola in tre parti. La prima parte contiene un saggio introduttivo curato da Carlo Natali sul tema e la struttura delle Categorie.

La seconda parte riporta i saggi di analisi e commento ai diversi capitoli dell’opera, curati da Maddalena Bonelli, Barbara Botter, Lisa Bressan, Elisabetta Cattanei, Paolo Fait, Francesca Masi, Stefano Maso, Carlo Natali, Cristina Rossitto, Rita Salis, Cristina Viano, Diego Zucca. La divisione dei saggi, da un lato, riflette la divisione degli argomenti adottata durante il seminario, dall’altro, rispecchia l’esigenza di suddividere la tematica in unità più brevi e più adatte alla segmentazione e ai tempi delle lezioni o delle sessioni dei seminari universitari. In molti casi, perciò, uno stesso capitolo è stato suddiviso in due parti e affidato all’analisi di più studiosi. Ogni contributo, inoltre, è pensato per introdurre il lettore alle principali problematiche affrontate da Aristotele in ciascun capitolo dell’opera e per orientarlo nelle diverse posizioni e soluzioni critiche che si sono presentate sia nella tradizione esegetica antica che in quella moderna e contemporanea. Abbiamo lasciato che ogni autore interpretasse liberamente questa indicazione. Ne è risultata, tuttavia, con nostra soddisfazione, un’impostazione tutto sommato omogenea. I saggi dedicati ai primi nove capitoli dell’opera riportano una traduzione, per quanto possibile originale, del passo esaminato, un’analisi e una divisione degli argomenti trattati nella porzione di testo considerata, un esame puntuale del testo in forma, per lo più, di commento continuo. I saggi dedicati ai Postpraedicamenta, data la loro tematica e la loro articolazione interna del tutto peculiari, sono stati pensati diversamente dagli altri, vale a dire non come un commento continuo, bensì come un’esposizione complessiva del tema affrontato e della sua funzione nel contesto complessivo dell’opera.

La terza parte è occupata da due articoli di approfondimento rispettivamente scritti da Jonathan Barnes e Walter Cavini e dedicati l’uno ad una riflessione teorica più generale sulla categoria della quantità e l’altro sulle nozioni di vero e falso nelle Categorie.

Seguono ai contributi critici gli indici. Per quanto riguarda quest’ultimi, abbiamo optato per una soluzione il più possibile agile e minimale. L’indice analitico, in particolare, riporta solo le nozioni intorno a cui ruotano i saggi. L’indice delle fonti registra i passi tratti da opere diverse dalle Categorie effettivamente commentati e/o citati, nonché i passi delle Categorie discussi e citati nei saggi di Natali, Cavini e Barnes." (p. 13)

7. Bonitz, Hermann. 1995. Sulle categorie di Aristotele. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

Traduzione italiana di Über die Kategorien des Aristoteles (1853).

Prefazione (7-9), introduzione (13-31), Nota bio-bibliografica (33-43), di Giovanni Reale; traduzione e indici di Vincenzo Cicero.

"Bonitz ha scritto questo saggio che presento nel 1853, come ho già detto, proprio in polemica con Trendelenburg, rilanciando in modo massiccio la prima delle tesi sopra elencate (le categorie come figure dell’essere), cercando di darle una ben precisa coerenza e consistenza.

(...)

In questo saggio sulle categorie, Bonitz, seguendo un criterio metodologicamente assai corretto, non parte dalla discussione della tesi di Trendelenburg, che intende confutare, ma fa questo nella seconda parte, dopo aver stabilito, mediante una accurata analisi dei testi, quale sia il vero e proprio significato delle categorie e quale sia stata la via percorsa da Aristotele per stabilire la tavola di esse.

In particolare, Bonitz vorrebbe, nella misura del possibile, rileggere e interpretare la problematica delle categorie aristoteliche senza lasciarsi condizionare dagli influssi dei vari ripensamenti teoretici delle medesime (errori in cui non pochi studiosi sono caduti), e quindi accertare in modo preciso quanto segue: la questione più importante è la seguente: quale significato aveva la dottrina in questione per lo stesso Aristotele, e in quale rapporto sta con l’impalcatura globale del suo pensiero? Solo a partire da questa domanda, infatti, sarà possibile misurare interamente l’ampiezza delle trasformazioni e delle evoluzioni che le singole dottrine hanno subito nelle fasi successive»(7).

Ecco, allora, le due domande di fondo che Bonitz si pone: in primo luogo, bisogna stabilire quale sia oggettivamente il significato che le categorie di Aristotele assumono nei suoi testi; in secondo luogo, bisogna cercare di stabilire quale sia stata la via percorsa da Aristotele per giungere alla scoperta delle categorie.

Per rispondere in maniera metodologicamente corretta a tali domande, dal momento che Aristotele non presenta nei suoi scritti una precisa definizione del concetto di «categoria», Bonitz nella prima parte del suo saggio(8) inizia con l’esame dettagliato di alcuni passi-chiave nei quali Aristotele nel discutere problemi di vario genere fa uso del concetto di «categoria», per giungere a una serie di chiarificazioni intorno a tutti i termini usati dallo Stagirita in connessione con tale concetto.

Nella seconda parte del saggio(9), Bonitz cerca di ripercorrere, come ho già detto, quella via seguendo la quale Aristotele è pervenuto alla dottrina delle categorie, ed è proprio nel corso di questa parte che egli ingaggia una serrata polemica con la tesi di Trendelenburg." (Giovanni Reale, p. 15)

(7) Infra, pp. 49-50.

(8) Dal titolo II significato che le categorie assumono per Aristotele, cfr. infra, pp. 9-93.

(9) Dal titolo La via percorsa da Aristotele per stabilire le categorie, cfr. infra, pp. 95-127.

8. Botter, Barbara. 2010. "La predicazione delle differenze nelle Categorie di Aristotele." Journal of Ancient Philosophy no. 1:1-18.

Abstract: "In chapter 3 of the Categories Aristotle introduces a principle that is widely taken to assert the transitivity of the said-of relation. In this paper we shall show than something different may be going on in the transitivity principle that straightforward invocation of the transitivity of the said-of relation."

9. Brentano, Franz. 1995. Sui molteplici significati dell'essere secondo Aristotele. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

Traduzione italiana di Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles (1862).

Prefazione, introduzione, traduzione dei testi greci, progettazione e impostazione editoriale di Giovanni Reale; traduzione del testo tedesco e indici di Stefano Tognoli.

Indice: Prefazione di G. Reale IX; Saggio introduttiv:o di G. Reale XIII; Note al Saggio introduttivo LVII; Nota bibliografica LXV-LXXIII;

Sui molteplici significati dell'essere secondo Aristotele Premessa 5; Introduzione 7; Note all'introduzione 9; I. L'essere è un omonimo: la molteplicità dei suoi significati si ordina nella quadruplice distinzione dell'essere per accidente, dell'essere come vero,

dell"essere delle categorie e delr essere in potenza e in atto 13; Note al capitolo primo 17; Il. L'essere per accidente 19; Note al capitolo secondo 29; IlI. L'essere nel significato di vero 35; Note al capitolo terzo 47; IV. L'essere in potenza e in atto 55; Note al capitolo quarto 79; V. L'essere secondo le figure delle categorie 91; Note al capitolo quinto 195-243.

"Abbiamo conosciuto l'essere in tre significati, ma, ciononostante, la parte più difficile del nostro lavoro non è stata ancora compiuta. Più importante di tutti, infatti, è quel quarto significato dell'essere che viene indicato più esattamentte come l'essere secondo le figure delle categorie (κατὰ τὰ σχήματα τῶν κατηγοριῶν Metaph.; Θ 10, 1051 a 34). Vedremo in dettaglio che esso stesso comprende, a sua volta, una grande molteplicità di significati, e che si rivelerà, per questo, ai fini della nostra trattazione, tanto fecondo di risultati quanto irto di difficoltà. Comunque troveremo qui un aiuto di non poco conto nei lavori di moderni ricercatori e soprattutto nel meritevole scritto di Trendelenburg (Storia della dottrina delle categorie) a cui va la nostra piena gratitudine. Alle sue approfondite spiegazioni rinvieremo spesso, quando non riterremo opportuno proseguire oltre una questione che ci condurrebbe troppo lontano." (p. 91)

10. Cavini, Walter. 1979. "Categorie e predicazione in Aristotele." Annali dell'Istituto di Filosofia - Università di Firenze no. 1:1-16.

"Le Categorie aristoteliche contengono sia una teoria della predicazione ( e dei tipi di enti possibili) o Antepraedicamenta ( capp. 1-3), sia una teoria dei Praedicamenta o categorie dell'essere (capp. 4-9), che insieme formano il nodo essenziale di logica e metafisica, teoria del discorso apofantico e filosofia prima, caratteristico di tutto il pensiero aristotelico; nodo che nei Postpraedicamenta (capp. 10-15) viene a includere, in particolare con la nozione di' mutamento' (κίνησις), anche i principi della :fisica o filosofia seconda.

(...)

Si tratta dunque di delineare tali rapporti fra predicazione, categorie e copula in Aristotele." (pp. 1-3, note omesse)

11. ———. 2011. "Un nuovo papiro delle «Categorie». PHarris I 2 e Arist. Cat. 10." In Papiri filosofici. Miscellanea di studi VI, 241-251. Firenze: Olschki.

"Quando nel 1936 Enoch Powell pubblicò P.Harris i 2 in The Rendel Harris Papyri of Woodbroke College di Birmingham, ritenne evidente che i frammenti di testo contenuti nelle due colonne superstiti derivassero da un trattato di retorica («evidently from a treatise on rhetoric») e li considerò parte di una definizione dei termini ἀπόφασις e κατάφασις, suggerendo come modello quella datane da Aristotele in Int. 6, 17a25-37." (p. 241)

"In conclusione, nessuna delle tesi enunciate inizialmente da Enoch Powell si è rivelata sostenibile. il papiro, come già avevano visto Kapp, Snell e Körte, non contiene un trattato di retorica, ma uno scritto di logica; non riguarda la definizione di affermazione e negazione, ma quella di affermazione e negazione opposte; infine, il testo a cui riferirsi non è il De interpretatione di Aristotele, ma le Categorie, dove l’affermazione e negazione opposte sono definite per esemplificazione tramite gli enunciati aperti ‘x è seduto’ e ‘x non è seduto’." (p. 251)

12. ———. 2011. "Vero e falso nelle Categorie di Aristotele." In Studi sulle Categorie di Aristotele, edited by Bonelli, Maddalena and Guadalupe Masi, Francesca, 371-406. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert.

"Nelle Categorie aristoteliche non compaiono mai i sostantivi ‘verità’ (ἀλήθεια) e ‘falsità’ (ψεῦδος), ma sempre gli aggettivi corrispondenti ‘vero’ (ἀληθής) e ‘falso’ (ψευδής o ψεῦδος usato come aggettivo) applicati agli enunciati dichiarativi (λόγοι) e alle credenze (δόξαι) che essi esprimono. Questo lavoro vuole essere una lettura mirata del testo aristotelico alla luce dei predicati semantici ‘vero’ e ‘falso’ allo scopo di delineare la teoria della verità e falsità soggiacente all’uso di tali aggettivi. La coppia di antonimi ‘vero’/‘falso’ ricorre nel testo aristotelico sia come coppia disgiuntiva ‘vero o falso’ sia come coppia congiuntiva ‘vero e falso’. Nel § 1 esamino il significato della coppia disgiuntiva ‘vero o falso’ sia applicata al singolo enunciato sia applicata alla coppia di enunciati contraddittori. Nel primo caso la coppia disgiuntiva ha valore disgiuntivo: ogni enunciato dichiarativo è vero o falso (Principio di Bivalenza); nel secondo caso invece ha valore distributivo: ogni affermazione e negazione opposte sono l’una vera l’altra falsa (Regola delle Coppie Contraddittorie). Nel § 2 esamino il significato che la coppia congiuntiva ‘vero e falso’ assume alla fine di Categorie 5, cioè quello di ora vero ora falso, in relazione al problema della variazione diacronica dei valori di verità degli enunciati e delle credenze, e del mero cambiamento à la Cambridge cui sono soggetti rispetto al cambiamento reale cui è soggetta la sostanza. Nel § 3, infine, esamino un passo di Categorie 12 in cui Aristotele enuncia sia i principi di discesa e ascesa semantiche (da essere vero a essere e da essere a essere vero), sia il principio di priorità causale di essere o non essere rispetto a essere vero o falso. La tesi che intendo sostenere è che vero e falso nelle Categorie, e in generale nel pensiero aristotelico, sono da considerarsi non proprietà ontiche o reali, ma proprietà logiche genuine degli enunciati e delle credenze che essi esprimono." (pp. 371-372, note omesse)

13. Cicero, Vincenzo. 1994. "L'interpretazione linguistica delle categorie aristoteliche in E. Benveniste." In Adolf Trendelenburg. La dottrina delle categorie in Aristotele, 285-353. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

"Il problema moderno del filo conduttore grammaticale nell'interpretazione delle categorie di Aristotele.

Friedrich Adolf Tredelenburg è stato il primo studioso a tematizzare in modo esplicito la possibilità che lo schema categoriale di Aristotele fosse il risultato di una deduzione sistematica condotta a partire da un principio ben definito. In particolare, la sua tesi per cui a far da guida nella costruzione di questo schema sarebbe stato, almeno in un primo momento, un filo conduttore grammaticale, ha costituito nel corso della seconda metà del XIX secolo un punto di riferimento imprescindibile, sebbene quasi sempre polemico, per tutti coloro che hanno rivendicato la presenza di un'impalcatura quanto meno organica nella dottrina delle categorie di Aristotele.(1)" (p. 287)

(...)

"È un fatto, però, che l'esito delle ricerche di Trendelenburg sia stato inequivocamente aporetico. Esso potrebbe riassumersi nel modo seguente: Aristotele sembra aver scoperto le categorie, in quanto predicati supremi, seguendo un filo conduttore grammaticale (un proteron pros hemas), cioè la scomposizione della proposizione, e precisamente l'analisi dell'espressione e della forma del giudizio; le categorie, però, hanno anche un significato «reale», ontologico, e perciò in diversi luoghi delle opere aristoteliche il fondamento generativo, ciò che è anteriore per natura (il proteron tei physei), è apparso come il vero punto di vista della classificazione; in conclusione, «alla questione, posta in termini aristotelici: in che misura questo "primo per noi" (proteron pros hemas) coincide con il "primo per natura" (proteron tei physei), ovvero in che senso se ne distingue?, non riceviamo alcuna risposta».(10)" (pp. 289-290)

(...)

"La nostra trattazione si propone piuttosto di collocare una volta per tutte il problema del filo conduttore grammaticale nella sua giusta dimensione speculativa, e in questo senso sarà dedicata prevalentemente ad un confronto diretto con le critiche «radicali» che Benveniste, prendendo lo spunto dalle categorie aristoteliche, ha mosso al pensiero filosofico in generale." (p. 292)

(1) Cfr. l'elenco bibliografico riportato nel Saggio introduttivo di G. Reale, supra, p. 19, n. 7.

(10) Trendelenburg, La dottrina..., supra, p. 270.

14. Cubeddu, Italo. 2006. "La deduzione aristotelica delle categorie." In Le ragioni del conoscere e dell’agire. Scritti in onore di Rosaria Egidi, edited by Calcaterra, Rosa M., 69-81. Milano: FrancoAngeli.

15. Esposti Ongaro, Michele. 2005. "Dialettica e grammatica nella dottrina delle categorie di Aristotele." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 26:33-64.

"Una tradizione storiografica assai antica ha interpretato le Categorie di Aristotele come un’analisi logica dei concetti del giudizio, e dunque come un’opera propedeutica al De interpretatione e agli Analitici, dedicati, rispettivamente, alla trattazione della proposizione e a quella del sillogismo.

Nella recente edizione francese dell’opera(1), il curatore R. Bodéüs, oltre a rivedere il testo stesso e i criteri che avevano presieduto alle edizioni precedenti, ha chiarito definitivamente l’arbitrarietà di tale collocazione e il carattere artificioso del sistema dottrinale costituito dall’Organon: l’ordinamento delle opere aristoteliche, stabilito da Andronico di Rodi nel I secolo a.C., sarebbe stato accettato successivamente dai filosofi neoplatonici al fine di creare un impianto logico in parte simile a quello della dottrina stoica, e ad esso rivale." (p. 33)

"L’aspetto prettamente filologico dello studio di Bodéüs sembra difficilmente contestabile, e non intendo metterne in discussione né il metodo né le conclusioni: ma tale aspetto concerne esclusivamente

la collocazione dottrinale e il titolo dell’opera(13). Le altre conclusioni chiamano invece in causa specifiche opzioni ermeneutiche, che rivelano a mio avviso elementi di debolezza. Ritengo infatti che proprio l’ipotesi della continuità tra Topici e Categorie dovrebbe condurre a un esame critico del concetto di categoria, un esame che prenda in considerazione non solo il significato del concetto, ma anche la funzione della tavola delle categorie nella filosofia aristotelica e, soprattutto, il problema della deduzione della tavola delle categorie. L’analisi di questi tre aspetti consente a mio avviso di convalidare l’ipotesi di una matrice linguistico-dialettica dello scritto, sancendone al contempo il carattere autenticamente aristotelico.

E tale matrice deve essere a sua volta posta in connessione con l’ipotesi, che costituisce l’oggetto principale della presente indagine, secondo la quale la deduzione della tavola delle categorie ha seguito un filo conduttore di tipo grammaticale." (pp. 36-37)

(1) R. Bodéus (ed.), Aristote. Catégories, texte établi et traduit (“Collection des Universités de France”), Paris 2001.

(13) tal proposito si veda anche M. Frede, The Title, Unity, and Authenticity of the Aristotelian ‘Categories’, in Essays in Ancient Philosophy, Oxford 1987, pp. 11-28.

16. Fait, Paolo. 2004. "La predicazione linguistica nelle Categorie di Aristotele." Rivista di Estetica no. 44:23-36.

Abstract: "The paper deals with the relations of being said of and being in which are indirectly introduced in Aristotle's' Categories. Is Aristotle distinguishing two kinds of ontological predication, corresponding respectively to essential predication and accidental predication, or not? Unlike many interpreters who answer this question in the affirmative, I deny being in to be a kind of predication at all. My aim is to show that in the few passages of the Categories in which Aristotle has recourse to a generic concept of predication, covering both essential and accidental predication, what he has in mind is just linguistic predication. The problem with linguistic predications, however, is that sometimes they do not mirror their ontological underpinnings, thereby misleading people into such absurd positions as that held by the "late-learners" depicted in Plato's Sophist."

17. Lugarini, Leo. 1955. "Il problema delle categorie in Aristotele." Acme.Annali della Facolta di Filosofia e Lettere dell'Universita di Milano no. 8:3-107.

Ristampato in volume, Milano: Nuvoletti, 1955.

18. Maso, Stefano. 2008. "Come determinare la sostanza? Aristotele, 'Categorie' 5." Lexis no. 26:185-200.

"È noto a tutti gli studiosi di Aristotele che, intorno all’individuazione e alla definizione della sostanza, si gioca gran parte dell’ontologia aristotelica. Lo Stagirita affronta il problema a più riprese, in particolare nel capitolo V delle Categorie e nel libro VII della Metafisica. Si tratta di due opere molto diverse quanto a concezione, storia e tradizione. La prima, insieme ai Topici, è oggi pressoché concordemente riconosciuta autentica e ritenuta uno tra i primi lavori del filosofo (almeno tra quelli pervenutici), destinata a essere messa a disposizione dei discepoli per le indagini di fisica e metafisica.

Appartenenti all’Organon, le Categorie infatti esibiscono immediatamente il loro carattere logico-linguistico, strumentale alla determinazione di ciò di cui ci si occupa allorché si fa filosofia e, insieme, all’analisi del linguaggio che tale ricerca e tale determinazione consente." (p. 185, note omesse)

19. Melandri, Enzo. 2017. Alcune note in margine all' Organon aristotelico. Macerata: Quodlibet.

Settima nota. Sulle categorie, 45-57; Ottava nota. Sul problema delle categorie 59-69.

"Precisazione terminologica - La parola " categoria" (latino medievale praedicamentum) deriva da "kategorein " _(accusare, giudicare, asserire) e quindi dovrebbe significare semplicemente "predicato", nel senso verbale di participio passato (ciò che è giudicato vero, valido ecc.). In realtà la parola e i suoi derivati ("categorico", "categoriale"), in senso tecnico, assumono tre diversi significati:

(i) Quanto alla forma della predicazione, una proposizione o un giudizio si dicono " categorici" quando presentano la struttura soggetto-predicato, con qualità positiva o negativa della copula ("è" oppure "non è") e quantità universale o particolare del termine soggetto (''tutti" oppure " non-tutti"). In questo senso si parla anche di forma "categoriale" del giudizio.

(ii) Quanto alla modalità dell'asserzione, una proposizione o un giudizio si dicono " categorici" quando asseriscono l'esistenza o la non esistenza di qualcosa, cioè quando valgono quali "verità di fatto",indubitabili ma contingenti, ossia non necessarie e non impossibili.

(La modalità assertoria comprende il "vero" e il "falso"; le altre modalità, quelle così dette in senso stretto, sono il "possibile" e !"'impossibile", il "necessario" e il "non-necessario"). In questo senso si suole contrapporre alla modalità "categorica" (il vero o il falso) del giudizio la modalità "precategoriale" (o "antepredicativa") del concetto, con riferimento al suo non essere né vero né falso.

(iii) Quanto alla generalità del predicato, si dicono " categorie" i generi sommi. A questo riguardo, sarebbe bene evitare (per le ragioni di cui si veda la nota successiva) di chiamare "categorie" quei concetti fondamentali che (come per esempio l"' essere") non si predicano in forma categoriale." (p. 50)

20. Natali, Carlo. 2011. "Struttura e organizzazione del trattato aristotelico detto Categorie." In Studi sulle Categorie di Aristotele, edited by Bonelli, Maddalena and Guadalupe Masi, Francesca, 17-30. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert.

"A conclusione di questo percorso, rispetto alla divisione tradizionale delle Categorie in Prepraedicamenta (capitoli 1-3), Praedicamenta (capitoli 4-9) e Postpraedicamenta (capitoli 10-15)15, noi vorremmo proporre alcune modifiche. Le Categorie ci paiono composte di tre blocchi, ma diversi tra loro, e dalla divisione tradizionale, sia per estensione sia per struttura. I tre blocchi costitutivi ci paiono essere (1) Categorie 2-9, (2) Categorie 10-15, (3) Categorie 1.

Il blocco (1) mostra un filo conduttore lineare e coerente, inizia con un’affermazione universale e poi la sviluppa nei dettagli, come tante altre opere di Aristotele. Nella nostra analisi la svolta concettuale più importante si situa a metà del capitolo 2, e questo potrebbe sembrare strano, ma va ricordato che la divisione in capitoli non è aristotelica e ad essa non va data eccessiva importanza. Il blocco (2) è un insieme di capitoli distinti, accomunati dall’essere tutti analisi della molteplicità dell’uso di termini o di specie di un genere. Esso somiglia alle analisi della seconda parte del blocco (1), capitoli da 5 a 8, perché, come in quella sezione, anche qui si studiano i molti sensi dei termini e degli enti. Il blocco (3) analizza alcune distinzioni tra i modi di dire un termine non univoco, utili sia alle discussioni del blocco (1) sia alle discussioni del blocco (2), e richiamate qua e là in essi. In modo poco felice gli editori più antichi hanno pensato di porre questo blocco alla testa degli altri due. Lasciamo da parte qui la questione della seconda versione delle Categorie, prima citata, che, modificando il testo, cerca di dare ragione del perché il blocco (3) sia stato posto all’inizio dell’opera. Essa comunque attesta che un certo disagio per l’ordinamento dello scritto venne percepito già in epoca molto antica." (p. 27)

21. Negro, Camillo. 1960. "Note per una definizione del concetto di categoria in Aristotele, Cat . 1-5." In Miscellanea Adriano Gazzana. Vol. II, 5-22. Milano: Marzorati.

22. Palù, Chiara. 2000. "Le definizioni dei relativi nelle Categorie di Aristotele: una risposta a David Sedley." Diánoia no. 5:39-55.

"This paper analyzes the two definitions of relatives in chapter 7 of Aristotle's Categories starting from David Sedley's recent article on this topic. In particular, using Simplicius's Commentary, I suggest some new arguments for Sedley's emendation at 8b18, which make it possible to read the expression 'aute e kephale' in the sense of the head in itself (a substance) in opposition to the head as a part of the body ('per accidens'). The consequence of this interpretation is that it changes the meaning of the second definition of relatives, making it able to distinguish between what is a relative as such and what is a relative accidentally."

23. Ragnisco, Pietro. 1871. Storia critica delle categorie, dai primordi della filosofia greca sino ad Hegel. Firenze: Cellini.

Due volumi.

"Noi esponghiamo la. dottrina delle categorie di Platone non nel senso logico o formale, ma nel terreno della dialettica reale, perchè reale è appunto il valore della logica platonica. Le categorie poi di Aristotele meritano un particolare esame intorno al valore non solo formale, ma specialmente metafisico di che la nostra storia soprattutto deve tener conto: lo che sarà chiaro quando avremo dimostrato come la logica è inspirata sopra i principii della metafisica. Finalmente le categorie degli stoici saranno ancora esaminate nel valore logico e reale: e si dimostrerà come la dottrina delle categorie perdeva nella scienza il suo interesse a misura che la scienza stessa-non era animata .da nuovi principii.

Tutto ciò formerà l'argomento del primo libro della storia delle categorie : esso mostrerà come sia nata la dottrina delle categorie, come sf sia elevata a poco a poco al più alto apogeo in Platone ed in Aristotele, e come sia decaduta dalla metafisica nella grammatica. La dottrina delle categorie nella filosofia greca è di sommo rilievo, e noi abbiamo fatto particolari e diligenti investigazioni per mostrare come in essa

si contenga il fiore dell'ellenico sapere.

Il secondo libro contiene la storia delle categorie platoniche aristoteliche e stoiche, ovvero la storia dei diversi modi onde quelle furono interpetrate. La dottrina delle categorie seguì l' istessa fortuna della filosofia. Dopo i grandi sisterni_ di Platone, di Aristotele e degli· stoici, la scienza si versò nei commenti e nella foterpetrazione di quelle dottrine senza nulla aggiungere che fosse veramente grandioso." (pp. 53-54)

(...)

"Il secondo libro perciò verserà intorno alla storia delle categorie di Aristotele, esponendo non solo il vario modo onde fu interpetrata ognuna delle dieci categorie, ma soprattutto il valore di quelle. In esso poco o. nulla di nuovo abbiamo ad osservare; poichè, tranne le categorie di Plotino, di Erigena, e di Lullo in cui si trova qualche idea diversa da Aristotele, il resto non contiene altro che un cumulo di commenti

inutili e di nessuno interesse. Bisogna aspettare sino ai tempi del Cusano, del Bruno e del Campanella per avere qualche cosa di notabile nella scienza delle categorie. Questi filosofi però sono i profeti detla filosofia. moderna e fanno quasi parte più del terzo che del secondo libro." (pp. 55-56)

24. Raspa, Vincenzo. 2020. "Categorie e linguaggio. Trendelenburg interprete di Aristotele." Paradigmi:293-335.

Abstract "Trendelenburg’s essay De Aristotelis categoriis is presented for the first time in Italian translation.[*]

It exposes the famous theses concerning the derivation of the Aristotelian categories from the analysis of the proposition and their correspondence with the parts of speech.

While highlighting the connection of the Aristotelian categories with the spoken language, at the same time it points out that Aristotle’s primary interest was in the nature of things and concepts. The introduction, through a biographical draft, sketches Trendelenburg’s cultural formation; subsequently, it presents an analysis of De Aristotelis categoriis; finally, it discusses the reception of Trendelenburg’s interpretation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In addition to the criticisms of scholars like Heinrich Ritter, Eduard Zeller, Hermann Bonitz, Carl Prantl, Franz Brentano and Otto Apelt, it examines the affinities between Trendelenburg’s concept and those of two front-ranking linguists, Émile Benveniste and Louis Hjelmslev. The bibliography contains all the works cited in Trendelenburg’s essay and those related to it."

[*] Traduzione di De Aristotelis categoriis a cura di Valentina Basili, pp. 313-330.

25. ———. 2020. Origine e significato delle categorie di Aristotele. Il dibattito nell'Ottocento. Macerata: Quodlibet.

"Il presente volume verte su un singolo capitolo, breve ma significativo, della storia delle interpretazioni dei testi di Aristotele. Esso non vuole però essere solo un lavoro storiografico e, quindi, offrire uno sguardo complessivo sulla produzione filosofica e filologica che in un determinato periodo storico, precisamente nel xix secolo nei paesi di lingua tedesca, ha interessato la teoria delle categorie di Aristotele.

Intende, invece, offrire uno strumento interpretativo utile per la comprensione di tale teoria e, allo stesso tempo, dare uno specifico contributo a una storia dei concetti filosofici. Il xix secolo non ha senz’altro esaurito il discorso sulla dottrina delle categorie di Aristotele, un discorso che è proseguito, proprio perché le interpretazioni date allora non sono apparse decisive, anche se non pochi risultati sono stati acquisiti; ma ha offerto al secolo successivo una scelta accurata del materiale su cui lavorare, nuove piste da esplorare, intuizioni da approfondire. Intraprendendo il tentativo di dipanare il groviglio di fili che, intrecciati, costituiscono il dibattito ottocentesco sulle categorie di Aristotele, questo piccolo volume intende, a sua volta, offrire un commento." (pp. 18-19)

26. Raspa, Venanzio. 2020. "L’interpretazione logico-semantica delle categorie di Aristotele. Otto Apelt e il dibattito nell’Ottocento." In Otto Apelt. La dottrina delle categorie di Aristotele, 11-81. Macerata: Qudlibet.

"Il saggio di Otto Apelt (1845-1932) Die Kategorieenlehre des Aristoteles [La dottrina delle categorie di Aristotele] fu pubblicato nel 1891 all’interno di una raccolta di testi dell’autore intitolata Beiträge zur Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie [Contributi alla storia della filosofia greca]. Con esso Apelt prendeva posizione all’interno di un dibattito sulla dottrina delle categorie di Aristotele che aveva attraversato la filosofia di lingua tedesca per gran parte del xix secolo.

Il saggio rappresenta il punto più maturo di tale dibattito e si pone quasi a suo suggello. Alla rigorosa analisi testuale e alla profonda conoscenza degli scritti aristotelici, Apelt unisce una tesi interpretativa forte, per mezzo della quale ci introduce con sapienza filologica e acume filosofico nella teoria delle categorie di Aristotele." (p. 11)

27. Reale, Giovanni. 1957. "Filo conduttore grammaticale e filo conduttore ontologico nella deduzione delle categorie aristoteliche." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 49:423-458.

Edizione riveduta col titolo: Filo conduttore grammaticale, filo conduttore logico e filo conduttore ontologico nella deduzione delle categorie aristoteliche e significati polivalenti di esse su fondamenti ontologici, in: Adolf Trendelenburg, La dottrina delle categorie in Aristotele, Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1994, pp. 17-70.

"Conclusioni riassuntive sulla tesi di Trendelenburg

Possiamo fissare la tesi di Trendelenburg nei seguenti punti:

l) Le categorie sono state scoperte grazie ad osservazioni di indole linguistico-grammaticale, precisamente, in base all'analisi e alla scomposizione della proposizione semplice.

2) Le considerazioni grammaticali non chiariscono invece l'articolazione delle categorie in dieci concetti, nel senso che non chiariscono come esse non possano essere più o meno quanto al numero.

3) Inoltre, il filo conduttore grammaticale non guida la deduzione dei «modi» di ogni singola categoria, i quali non si articolano da una unità di pensiero, ma sono semplicemente posti l'uno accanto all'altro.

4) Infine, il punto di vista grammaticale non guida la determinazione della successione, la Reihenfolge, la quale si chiarisce, invece, in funzione deL criterio antologico di: ciò che è primo per natura

(πρότερον τή φύσει).

Se grammaticale è l'origine delle categorie, nell'ambio della grammatica esse non esauriscono il loro valore: «lta Aristateles categoriarum genera ex grammaticis fere orationis rationibus invenisse videtur, inventas autem ita pertractavit, ut, relicta origine, ipsam notionum et rerum naturam spectarent»(50).

La valenza antologica delle categorie non viene, in generale, misconosciuta, ma è ben lungi dall'essere ritenuta definitoria; sull'aspetto logico Trendelenburg fa leva nel precisare la natura delle categorie; le categorie sono «logische Kategorien»: precisamente, sono i sommi generi della predicazione (summa praedicationis genera)(51), sono i predicati più universali (die allgemeinsten Prédicate)(52), dunque, figure della logica." (pp. 32-33)

(50) Trendelenburg, Elementa..., p. 57.

(51) Trendelenburg, Elementa..., p. 56.

(52) Trendelenburg, La dottrina.,., infra, p. 98.

28. ———. 1995. "Significato e importanza del saggio di Hermann Bonitz “Sulle categorie di Aristotele”." In Hermann Bonitz. Sulle categorie di Aristotele, 11-31. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

"Bonitz ha scritto questo saggio che presento nel 1853, come ho già detto, proprio in polemica con Trendelenburg, rilanciando in modo massiccio la prima delle tesi sopra elencate (le categorie come figure dell’essere), cercando di darle una ben precisa coerenza e consistenza.

(...)

In questo saggio sulle categorie, Bonitz, seguendo un criterio metodologicamente assai corretto, non parte dalla discussione della tesi di Trendelenburg, che intende confutare, ma fa questo nella seconda parte, dopo aver stabilito, mediante una accurata analisi dei testi, quale sia il vero e proprio significato delle categorie e quale sia stata la via percorsa da Aristotele per stabilire la tavola di esse.

(...)

Ecco, allora, le due domande di fondo che Bonitz si pone: in primo luogo, bisogna stabilire quale sia oggettivamente il significato che le categorie di Aristotele assumono nei suoi testi; in secondo luogo, bisogna cercare di stabilire quale sia stata la via percorsa da Aristotele per giungere alla scoperta delle categorie.

Per rispondere in maniera metodologicamente corretta a tali domande, dal momento che Aristotele non presenta nei suoi scritti una precisa definizione del concetto di «categoria», Bonitz nella prima parte del suo saggio8 inizia con l’esame dettagliato di alcuni passi-chiave nei quali Aristotele nel discutere problemi di vario genere fa uso del concetto di «categoria», per giungere a una serie di chiarificazioni intorno a tutti i termini usati dallo Stagirita in connessione con tale concetto.

Nella seconda parte del saggio(9), Bonitz cerca di ripercorrere, come ho già detto, quella via seguendo la quale Aristotele è pervenuto alla dottrina delle categorie, ed è proprio nel corso di questa parte che egli ingaggia una serrata polemica con la tesi di l'rendelenburg." (p. 14)"

(9) Dal titolo II significato che le categorie assumono per Aristotele, cfr. infra, pp. 9-93.

29. ———. 1995. "Il significato e l’importanza teoretica e storico-ermeneutica del libro di Franz Brentano Sui molteplici significati dell’essere secondo Aristotele e alcune osservazioni critiche di complemento." In Franz Brentano. Sui molteplici significati dell’essere secondo Aristotele, XIII-LXVI. Milano: Vuta e Pensiero.

"Aristotele non presenta un solo elenco dei vari significati dell’essere, ma su tutti uno emerge in modo preminente: quello illustrato nel settimo capitolo del libro quinto, elenco che fa da schema nel corso del libro sesto, in particolare ai capitoh secondo, terzo e quarto.

Questo elenco presenta quattro significati:

1) essere per accidente,

2) essere come vero e non essere come falso,

3) essere come categorie,

4) essere come potenza e come atto.

Vedremo che più che di quattro significati si tratta, in realtà, di quatto gruppi di significati, così che la molteplicità dei significati dell’essere si infittisce ulteriormente." (p. XV)

(...)

"Con la discussione sulle categorie Brentano raggiunge i vertici della propria trattazione e, sotto certi aspetti, ci presenta il meglio che nel secolo scorso sia stato scritto sull’argomento.

Ancora oggi, queste pagine contengono osservazioni che si impongono come punti di rifermento irrinunciabili.

Brentano distingue tre posizioni assunte dagli interpreti circa l’essenza e il significato delle categorie(28).

La prima intende le categorie non come concetti, bensì come strutture o schemi in cui si collocano i vari concetti. Si tratterebbe, in altri termini, di strutture di classificazione che ordinano i diversi concetti, e che quindi non sono semplici predicati, ma si pongono al di sopra di essi. Eduard Zeller, che a questa tesi ha dato un’ampia risonanza con la sua Filosofia dei Greci, scrive: «Le categorie non sono esse stesse, immediatamente, predicati; bensì indicano solo il luogo per certi predicati»(29). Dunque, secondo questa prima interpretazione, esse rappresenterebbero forme di predicazione, più che semplici predicazioni.

Un secondo gruppo di interpreti ha sostenuto, invece, che le categorie sono veri e propri concetti considerati in rapporto con il giudizio, o meglio parti del giudizio, ossia predicati, e precisa-mente i predicati più universali. Come esempio emergente Brentano cita Adolf Trendelenburg, il quale afferma: «Le categorie appaiono pertanto come i concetti universali sotto i quali cadono i predicati della proposizione sempEce [...]. Le categorie sono i predicati più universali»(30).

Un terzo gruppo di interpreti ritiene invece che le categorie siano concetti reali. Hermann Bonitz, per esempio, ha dimostrato che le categorie aristoteliche indicano «i diversi significati in cui noi esprimiamo il concetto di essere»; esse sono «i supremi generi dell’essere»31.

Brentano è convinto che la terza interpretazione sia quella preferibile, ma riconosce anche alle altre due «elementi fondati che ci sembrano del tutto compatibili con la terza»(32.)

(28) Infra, pp. 91 ss., § 1.

(29) E. Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, II 2, p. 189 n. 1.

(30) A. Trendelenburg, Geschichte der Kategorienlehre, parte I Die Kategorienlehre des Aristoteles, Berlin, 1846, p. 20 [La dottrina delle categorie in Aristotele. Con in appendice la prolusione accademica del 1833 “De A ristotelis categoriis”, Prefazione e saggio introduttivo di G. Reale. Traduzione e saggio integrativo di V. Cicero, Vita e Pensiero, Milano 1994, pp. 98 s.].

(31) H. Bonitz, Über die Kategorien des Aristoteles, «Sitzungsberichte der Kais. Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien. Philos.-hist. Klasse», Bd. X, Heft 5. (1853), pp. 623, 622 [Sulle categorie di Aristotele, Prefazione, introduzione, progettazione e impostazione editoriale di G. Reale. Traduzione del testo tedesco e indici di V. Cicero, Vita e Pensiero, Milano 1995, pp. 93, 92],

(32) Infra, p. 97.

30. Rini, Enrico. 2010. "L'analisi aristotelica dei relativi." Rivista di Storia della Filosofia no. 65:623-656.

Abstract: "This article discusses the ontological status of the parts of substances in Aristotle's theory of categories. Since in this theory the substantial parts, as well as the wholes, are primary subjects of predication, i.e. substances, a part may be to its whole as Socrates is to Callias so that the mereological composition of substances can be regarded as an accident (a relation). It is argued here

that in Cat. 7 Aristotle is trying to rule out this possibility by redefining the boundaries of the category of relatives itself. Starting from the framework of the Academic debate and then following closely the text of Cat. 7, the author provides a detailed reconstruction of Aristotle's argument in order to establish the reason for which the parts of substances hold such an uncertain status. Furthermore, he shows that the Categories do not provide a definitive solution to the mereological problem, which has rather to be sought in the Metaphysics. The following results are attained: a moderately systematic component is revealed in Aristotle's Categories and a mereological element is detected in the very core of his theory of substance."

31. Sainati, Vittorio. 1968. Storia dell'Organon aristotelico. Firenze: Le Monnier.

Vol.1: Dai Topici al De interpretatione (1968); vol. 2: L'analitica - Parte I - La crisi epistemologica della Topica (1973).

Nuova edizione del I volume a cura di Mauro Mariani, Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2011.

Ristampa del II volume nella rivista "Teoria" 13, 1993, pp. 1-117.

Sulle Categorie: Vol. I, Cap. III, Le "Categorie" e la teoria della predicazione, pp. 146-198.

32. Seminara, Lauretta. 2002. "Aristotele: omonimia e sinonimia." Castelli di Yale no. 5:25-36.

"Vista l'importanza dell' omonimia nella filosofia aristotelica, è curioso costatare che solo nelle Categorie troviamo una definizione esplicita di enti omonimi e di enti sinonimi; secondo alcuni studiosi, peraltro, la definizione concernente gli enti omonimi non sarebbe per nulla chiara, e si riuscirebbe a capirne il senso solo con l'aiuto di scritti successivi alle Categorie. Oltretutto, tale definizione si trova proprio all'inizio del trattato e Aristotele non ci spiega se e come essa servirà nel seguito di questo. Del resto, vi sono state numerose discussioni, sia tra i commentatori antichi sia tra gli studiosi moderni, di quale sia l'oggetto dell'intero trattato Categorie - parole o enti e di che cosa siano le categorie stesse.

Fatta questa premessa, vorrei ora esaminare la definizione di enti omonimi e di enti sinonimi data in Categorie 1 con lo scopo di mostrare che, al contrario di quanto molti ritengono, Aristotele, già nelle prime opere - le Categorie sono un'opera concordemente ritenuta dell' Aristotele giovane -, aveva una nozione di omonimia e di sinonimia ben definita." (p. 25)

33. ———. 2004. "Omonimia e sinonimia in Platone e Speusippo." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 24:289-320.

34. Sillitti, Giovanna. 1985. "La concezione del pros ti e il problema degli enti astratti in Aristotele." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 6:357-377.

35. Sorbi, Luca. 1999. Aristotele. La logica comparativa. Firenze: Olschki.

Capitolo quarto: La coordinazione delle categorie, pp. 109-153.

36. Trendelenburg, Friedrich Adolf. 1994. La dottrina delle categorie in Aristotele. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

Traduzione italiana a cura di Giovanni Reale di Aristotle Kategorienlehre, primo saggio di Geschichte der Kategorienlehre, zwei Abhandlungen (1846).

Saggio introduttivo di Giovanni Reale: Filo conduttore grammaticale, filo conduttore logico e filo conduttore ontologico nella deduzione delle categorie aristoteliche e significati prevalenti di esse us fondamenti ontologici (pp. 17-70).

In appendice: A. Trendelenburg, De Aristotelis categoriis (1833), pp. 375-399. [traduzione italiana di Valentina Basili in appedice al saggio di Venanzio Raspa, Categorie e linguaggio. Trendelenburg interprete di Aristotele, (2020), pp. 313-330].

"Già nel 1833 [Trendelenburg] pubblicava la sua prolusione accademica dal titolo De Aristotelis categoriis, in cui anticipava la sua tesi, divenuta subito assai celebre, sul «filo conduttore grammaticale» nella deduzione delle categorie aristoteliche.

Nel 1846 pubblicava la sua Geschichte der Kategorienlehre, contenente due saggi: un primo dal titolo Aristoteles Kategorienlehre e un secondo dal titolo Die Kategorienlehre in der Geschichte der Philosophie. Il primo è senza paragone più denso e originale del secondo. Infatti, il primo è di quasi duecento pagine, mentre il secondo, che va dai Presocratici a Hegel e alle Logische Untersuchungen dell’autore stesso, è di poco più di centosessanta pagine. L’originalità del Trendelenburg si manifesta, comunque, a tutti gli effetti, soprattutto nel primo." (Giovanni Reale, p. 32)

37. Valore, Paolo. 1999. La categoria di sostanza in Aristotele: Cat. 1 b 25-4 b 19 Milano: CUEM.

38. Wesoly, Marian. 1984. "Verso un'interpretazione semantica delle categorie di Aristotele." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 5:103-140.

Versione originale in tedesco: "Zur semantischen lnterpretation der aristotelischen Kategorien", Symbolae Philologorum Posnaniensium, 6, 1983, pp. 57-72.

39. Zanatta, Marcello. 1989. "La genesi e il significato dottrinale delle categorie." In Aristotele. Categorie, 5-298. Milano: Rizzoli.

"Il II maggior assertore della genesi grammaticale delle categorie è stato il Trendelenburg, il quale, sia nella De Aristotelis Categoriis prolusio, Berlin 1833 che — soprattutto — in Historische Beiträge zur Philosophie, Bd. 1, Geschichte der Kategorienlehre, Zwei Abhandlungen: I Aristoteles Kategorienlehre (pp. 1-195); II Die Kategorienlehre in der Geschichte der Philosophie (pp. 196-380), Berlin 1946, dopo aver Indicato la caratteristica precipua delle categorie nell’essere esse i supremi predicati («die Kategorien sind die allgemeine Prädicate»), ne puntualizza la derivazione dalla grammatica nel modo seguente: la categoria della sostanza corrisponde al sostantivo, quelle della quantità e della qualità all’aggettivo (la prima può essere espressa anche dal numerale, la seconda ridà invece le proprietà particolari), la relazione ha un signifieato più ampio di quello che può esprimere l’aggettivo al grado comparativo, ma porta sicuramente in sé le tracce della sua derivazione da questo, il dove e il quando corrispondono agli avverbi di luogo e di tempo, il fare e il patire esprimono la forma attiva e passiva del verbo, il giacere esprime, almeno in parte, la condizione dei verbi intransitivi, l'avere le particolarità del perfetto. Il significato logico delle categorie è stato affermato soprattutto da O. Apelt, Die Kategorienlehre des Aristoteles, in Beiträge zur Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie, Leipzig 1891, pp. 140 sgg., (...)

Oltre ad un significato linguistico e logico, il Bonitz ha rivendicato alle categorie anche un significato ontologico (cfr. H. Bonitz, Über die Kategorienlehre des Aristoteles, in «Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften», Philosophische-historische Klasse, 10 Band, 5 Heft, Wien 1853, pp. 591-645). Sul valore ontologico delle categorie si sono recentemente espressi, in Italia, G. Reale. Filo conduttore grammaticale e filo conduttore ontologico nella deduzione delle categorie aristoteliche, in «Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica» XLIX (1957), pp. 423-458; L. Lugarini, Il problema delle categorie in Aristotele, in «Acme» VII (1955), pp. 3-107. Una interpretazione semantica delle categorie è stata sostenuta da M. Wesoly, Verso un’interpretazione semantica delle categorie di Aristotele, in «Elenchos» V (1984), pp. 103-140. Va anche segnalato il tentativo di R. Bodéus, Aux origines de la doctrine aristotélicienne des Catégories, in «Revue de Philosophie ancienne» III (1984), pp. 121-137, di individuare ncll'ambito giuridico greco la genesi delle categorie." (pp. 81-82)

40. ———. 2010. "Omonimia, non-omonimia e sinonimia nell'«argomento dei relativi» del De Ideis " Éndoxa: Series Filosóficas no. 25:13-42.

Riassunto: "La nozione di «non-omonimia» surruga nel Perì ideon quella di sinonimia, istituita nelle Categorie sulla base della già effettuata critica delle Idee platoniche, in un momento, quale quello della composizione del Perì ideon, in cui Aristotele si accinge a operare detta critica. L’uso, qui, della nozione di sinonimia avrebbe infatti comportato l’introduzione di una nozione non ancora fondata."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Aristoteles Kategorienlehre: Bibliographie von deutschsprachen Studien

Bibliographie

1. Apelt, Otto. 1891. "Die Kategorienlehre des Aristoteles." In Beiträge zur Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie, 101-216. Leipzig: Teubner.

Nachdruck: Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1975.

"Sind die Kategorien des Aristoteles die Grundbegriffe, auf denen die Möglichkeit der Erfahrung überhaupt und die Regeln ihrer inneren Verknüpfung und Einheit beruhen? Das war es, was Kant unter Kategorie verstand und war er, zufolge eines verzeihlichen Vorurteils, auch als die eigenliche Absicht der aristotelischen Kategorieenlehre ansah. Dafs die aristotelischen Kategorieen dies nicht sind ttnd nicht sein sollten, hat sieb in der Folge immer sicherer herausgestellt. Tieferes Studium und wachsendes Verständnis der aristotelischen Schriften führten zu der Erkenntnis, dafs es sich bei dieser Lehre nicht um die obersten Regelbegriffe der Naturerkenntnis, sondern um eine Einteilung der Begriffe überhaupt handele. Über Ursprung und Bedeutung aber dieser Einteilung gingen die Meiungen wit auseinander." (ss. 103-104)

2. Baumgartner, Hans-Michael, Gerhardt, Gerd, Konhardt, Klaus, and Schönrich, Gerhard. 1976. "Kategorie, Kategorienlehre." In Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Band 4, edited by Ritter, Joachim and Gründer, Karlfried, 714-776. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

"Kategorie (griech. κατηγορία, wörtl. Anklage, i. ü. S. Aussageform, von κατηγορέω, ich spreche gegen jemanden, ich klage an; lat./ital. categoria, frz. catégorie, engl. category), Kategorienlehre. – Die philosophische Entdeckung des K.-Begriffs ist nicht gleichen Ursprungs mit dem Anfang philosophischer Reflexion selbst. Der Terminus ‹K.› verdankt seinen Ursprung nicht der die anfängliche philosophische Fragestellung bestimmenden Erkenntnishaltung der intentio recta, sondern einer eigenartig kritischen Rückwendung der philosophischen Reflexion auf sich selbst, auf Bestimmungen des «Logos», die ebenso dem Sprechen wie dem Denken eignen, sofern beides auf Sein und Seiendes bezogen ist und dieses inhaltlich auslegend zu definieren und zu klassifizieren unternimmt.

Aus diesem Grunde indizieren Verständnis und Bestimmung des K.-Begriffs ebenso ein spezifisches Selbstverständnis von Philosophie im Ganzen, wie umgekehrt jene durch dieses erklärt und interpretiert werden können. «Was für eine K.-Lehre man wählt, hängt davon ab, was für ein Philosoph man ist» [1]. In dieser Perspektive ist die Geschichte des K.-Begriffs [2] zugleich eine Geschichte philosophischer Selbstinterpretation." (714)

[1} [1] E. LASK: Die Logik der Philos. und die Kl., in: Ges. Schr. 2, 4.

[2] Vgl. A. TRENDELENBURG: Gesch. der Kl. (1846); C. PRANTL: Gesch. der Logik im Abendlande 1–3 (1855–1885); P. RAGNISCO: Storica crit. delle cat., dai primordi della filos. greca sino ad Hegel 1. 2 (Florenz 1870)

3. Berka, Karel. 1960. "Uber einige Probleme der interpretation de aristotelischen Kategorienlehre." Studia antiquano. 8:35-43.

"Wenn wir nun unsere Aufmerksamkeit auch auf die ontologischen und logischen Aspekte der aristotelischen Kategorienlehre richten werden, so stossen wir auf weitere Probleme, an denen sich ebenfalls die Unklarheiten seiner Lehre aufweisen lassen. Die ontologischen und logischen Aspekte seiner Kategorienlehre zeigen sich am schärfsten in seinen Erwägungen über die οὐσία, die die wichtigste Kategorie seiner ganzen Lehre ist. In den 'Kategorien' wird die Substanz in zwei Unterklassen geteilt: in die πρῶτη οὐσία und die δευτεραῖ οὐσίαῖ. In beiden Fällen ist die Substanz dadurch gekennzeichnet, dass nur dieser Kategorie eine selbständige und unabhängige Existenz angehört. Darum ist gerade nur die οὐσία, wie dies besonders in der 'Metaphysik' betont wird, die Grundlage aller Veränderung, der Träger aller anderen Kategorien, die dann von diesem ontologischen Aspekte aus gesehen nur als συμβεβηκότα betrachtet werden. Aus demselben Grunde bildet sie auch die Grundlage der Prädikation im kategorischen Urteil. Dies führt aber zu der Ansicht, dass die Substanz in einem richtig gebildeten kategorischen Urteil nie Prädikat sein kann.(25) Diese Einschränkung, in der sich klar de Unstimmheit des logischen und ontologischen Charakters der Substanz äussert, bezieht sich in Wirklichkeit offensichtlich nur auf die da ein Individuum, z. B. 'Κallias', von keinem Subjekt ausgesagt werden kann. Die δευτεραῖ οὐσίαῖ, obzwar sie auch die Grundlage der Prädikation bilden, können allerdings ganz beliebig im kategorischen Urteil als Subjekt oder Prädikat vorkommen. Falls wir ferner die einzelnen Kategorien selbst vom Standpunkt ihrer Funktion in den hierarchisch geordneten Begriffsreihen als die umfangreichsten Begriffe auffassen, von denen nichts mehr ausgesagt werden kann, so ist es ganz verständlich, dass sie im kategorischen Urteil nur als Prädikate stehen können, z. B. 'Der Mensch ist eine Substanz'. Von diesem Aspekt aus können wir dann die Kategorien selbst als die höchsten Prädikate(26) ansehen. Diese Auffassung ist wohl richtig nur in dem Falle, dass wir den Begriff der Substanz lediglich im Sinne der Sevregat οὐσίαῖ auffassen. Dies wird höchstwahrscheinlich der Hauptgrund gewesen sein, warum Aristoteles die πρῶτη οὐσία in seinen späteren logischen Erwägungen nicht mehr in Betracht zieht." (ss. 40-41)

(25) Cat. с. 5 p. 2а 11 nn ; p. 2a 34n.

(26) Vergl. Eth. Nik. I c. 4 p. 1095a 16.

4. Bonitz, Hermann. 1853. "Über die Kategorien des Aristoteles." Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften no. 10:591-645.

Nachdruck: Darmstadt, Wissenchaftliche Buch-Gesellschaft, 1967.

Traduzione italiana: H. Bonitz, Sulle categorie di Aristotele, Prefazione, introduzione, progettazione e impostazione editoriale di Giovanni Reale. Traduzione del testo tedesco e indici di Vincenzo Cicero, Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1995.

5. Brandt, Reinhard. 1963. "Die Darstellung der ΠΟΙΟΤΗΤΕΣ ΠΑΘΗΤΙΚΑΙ in der Kategorien-Schrift des Aristoteles (9a 28-10a 10)." Hermes:499-503.

6. Brentano, Franz. 1862. Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder.

Neuauflage herausgegeben von Werner Sauer, mit einem Vorwort von Thomas Binder und Arkadiusz Chrudzimski zur Ausgabe der veröffentlichten Schriften, eingeleitet von Mauro Antonelli und Werner Sauer, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014.

Inhalt: Vorwort der Herausgeber VII;

Mauro Antonelli, Werner Sauer: Einleitung XI; I. Präliminarien XI; II 1. Das Seiende nach den Figuren der Kategorien XXII; II.1. Der ontologische Charakter der Kategorien XXII; II.2. Die Kategorien und die Analogie des Seienden XXX; II.3. Die Ableitung der Kategorientafel XLI; III. Das Seiende im Sinne des Wahren XLV; III.1. Aristoteles XLIX; III.2. Alexander von Aphrodisias LV; III.3 Thomas von Aquin LIX; III.4. Brentano LXVIII; IV. Zu dieser Ausgabe LXXVI;

Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles 1

Inhalt

Einleitung 11; I. Kapitel. Das Seiende ist ein ὁμώνυμον. Die Mehrheit seiner Bedeutungen ordnet sich der vierfachen Unterscheidung des ὂν κατὰ συμβεβηκός, des ὂν ὡς ἀληθές, des ὄν der Kategorien und

des ὂν δυνάμει καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ unter 15; II. Kapitel. Von dem ὂν κατὰ συμβεβηκός 18; III. Kapitel. Von dem ὂν ὡς ἀληθές 29; § 1. V on dem Wahren und Falschen 29; § 2. V on dem ὂν ὡς ἀληθές und dem μὴ ὂν ὡς ψεῦδος 38; IV. Kapitel. Von dem ὂν δυνάμει καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ 45; § 1. Bestimmung der Bedeutung dieses Seienden 45; § 2. V erbindungen von Zuständen der Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit. Die κίνησις 55; V. Kapitel. Von dem Seienden nach den Figuren der Kategorien 73; § 1. Einleitende Bemerkungen. Die Kategorien sind von Aristoteles in bestimmter Zahl aufgestellt. Verschiedene Auffassungen der Aristotelischen Kategorien durch neuere Erklärer 73; § 2. Die Kategorien sind reelle Begriffe 81; § 3. Die Kategorien sind verschiedene, analoge Bedeutungen des ὄν. Nähere Bestimmung ihrer Analogie 84; § 4. Die Kategorien sind die höchsten Gattungen des Seienden 95; § 5. Die Kategorien sind die höchsten Prädicate der ersten Substanz 98; § 6. Princip der Kategorieneintheilung 103;

Stellenregister 197; Personenregister 203-206.

"In drei Bedeutungen haben wir das Seiende kennen gelernt, aber dennoch ist der schwerste Theil unserer Arbeit noch nicht gethan, denn jene vierte Bedeutung des Seienden, in welcher es näher bezeichnet wird als das Seiende nach den Figuren der Kategorien, τὸ ὂν κατὰ τὰ σχήματα τῶν κατηγοριῶν (Metaph. Θ, 10. p. 1051, a, 34.), ist die wichtigste von allen, und da sie selbst wieder, wie wir des Näheren sehen werden, eine große Mannigfaltigkeit der Bedeutungen umfaßt, so ist sie insbesondere für unsere Abhandlung ergiebig sowohl als reich an Schwierigkeiten. Indessen werden wir hier in den Arbeiten neuerer Forscher und vorzüglich in Trendelenburgs verdienstreicher Schrift: „Geschichte der Kategorienlehre,“ eine nicht geringe Hülfe finden, die unseren vollen Dank verdient. Auf seine gründlichen Darlegungen werden wir auch öfter verweisen, wo wir eine Frage, die uns zu weit fortführen würde, nicht weiter verfolgen wollen." (s. 73)

7. ———. 1933. Kategorienlehre. Leipzig: Felix Meiner.

Herausgegeben von Alfred Kastil. Nachdruck: Hamburg: Meiner 1985.

"Blicken wir nach dieser Erorterung auf Aristoteles zuriick, so zeigt sich, dafi er mit Unrecht dem Begriffe des Seienden die Einheitlichkeit fur Substanz und Akzidens abgesprochen hat. Von den Kategorien kann darum nicht im Sinne von verschiedenen Bedeutungen des Seienden, noch auch von verschiedenen hochsten Pradikaten oder hochsten Gattungen, sondern nur etwa von verschiedenen hochsten Differenzen des Seienden gesprochen werden. Doch auch dies ware nicht das Rechte und reichte zur Charakteristik des Unterschiedes der Substanzen und der verschiedenen Klassen von Akzidentien nicht aus. Gibt es doch auch mehrere hochste substanzielle Differenzen, welche als solche hinter hochstens akzidentellen nicht zuriickstehen. Der wahre Begriff einer Kategorie ist nur zu gewinnen im Hinblick auf die Ergebnisse der eben von uns gefiihrten Untersuchung, welche den Unterschied von Subjekt und etwas, dem ein Subjekt unterliegt, erkennen lafit. Auch zeigt sich, dafi die Unterschiede, welche sich bei der Bestimmung der hochsten Klassen dessen, was einem Subjekt akzidentell zukommt, ergeben, noch mannigfaltiger sind als Aristoteles geglaubt hatte, obwohl manche der von ihm fur akzidentell gehaltenen Bestimmungen, wie z. B. sinnliche Qualitat, Ort und reale Zeit, sowie vielleicht Ausdehnung und Figur vielmehr zu den substanziellen gehoren." (s. 129)

8. ———. 1993. "Zur Kategorienlehre. Ein unveröffentlichter Text (Nachlass Metaphysik 91)." Brentano Studien no. 4:251-272.

Herausgegeben von Mauro Antonelli.

9. Detel, Wolfgang. 1998. "Eine terminologische Rekonstruktion von Aristoteles, Categoriae 1-5." In Amicus Plato magis amica veritas. Festschrift für Wolfgang Wieland zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Enskat, Rainer, 60-81. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Aristoteles unterscheidet im Rahmen seiner frühen Ontologie in der Kategorienschrift vier Arten von Entitäten, und ein bedeutender Teil der Forschung hat sich seit jeher mit der Rekonstruktion dieser Entitäten beschäftigt.

Die traditionelle Interpretation, die bis heute ihre Vertreter gefunden hat, nimmt an, daß Aristoteles eine ontologische Klassifikation in konkrete Einzeldinge („individuelles Substantielles", erste Usia), Spezies und Genera („allgemeines Substantielles", zweite Usia), bestimmte, individuelle Eigenschaften („individuelles Nichtsubstantielles") und allgemeine Eigenschaften oder Spezies bzw. Genera von individuellen Eigenschaften („allgemeines Nichtsubstantielles") mit einem ontologischen Primat der ersten Usia vorschlagen wollte. Dabei wird unterstellt, daß individuelle Eigenschaften nur durch ihre Träger individualisiert werden, nicht mehreren Dingen zugesprochen werden können und jeweils mit ihren individuellen Trägern untergehen.

Die vieldiskutierte Untrennbarkeitsbehauptung in Cat. 2, 1 a 24 —25 wird daher so verstanden, daß eine individuelle Eigenschaft ihrer Existenz nach von der Existenz genau ihres spezifischen individuellen Trägers abhängig ist.(1)" (p. 60)

(1) Vgl. Oehler (1984) [Aristoteles, Kategorien. Übersetzt und erläutert von K. Oehler, Berlin], ad Cat. 2.

10. Ebert, Theodor. 1985. "Gattungen der Prädikate und Gattungen des Seienden bei Aristoteles. Zum Verhältnis von Kat. 4 und Top. I.9." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 67:113-138.

"Die Untersuchungen (des ersten Teils) der Kategorienschrift sind zwar, wie gerade Kat. 2 deutlich macht, am Leitfaden der prädikativen Aussage orientiert; aber sie fragen nicht nach deren Struktur, sondern benutzen bestimmte Strukturen prädikativer Aussagen, um etwas über die Struktur der Welt in Erfahrung zu bringen. Der Begriff, der dabei eine prominente Rolle übernimmt, ist nun gerade nicht der Begriff des (prädizierbaren) Prädikates, ist nicht der Begriff der κατηγορία, sondern der Begriff des Subjektes: ὑποκείμενον ist das Schlüsselwort im analytischen Instrumentarium der Kategorienschrift. Für eine ontologische Untersuchung scheint das auch nur natürlich. Denn nur die Frage nach dem, was Subjekt und was nur Subjekt sein kann, führt die Ontologie zu einem sicheren Fundament.

Diese ontologische Thematik der Kategorienschrift wird aber durch ihren jetzigen Titel nur verunklärt. Vielleicht sollten wir tatsächlich dem bei Simplikios überlieferten Vorschlag folgen und ihr den Titel „Über die Gattungen des Seienden" zurückgeben." (s. 138)

11. Ermano, Andrea. 2000. Substanz als Existenz. Eine philosophische Auslegung der prōtē ousia: mit Text, Übersetzung und Diskussion von: Aristoteles, Categoriae 1-5. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

"Meine Fragestellung ist die folgende: Was für einen Sinn und was für eine Bedeutung kann die Aristotelische? Grundkategorie der ersten Substanz (πρώτη οὐσία) für ein philosophisches Verständnis unserer Existenz haben? Um diese Frage dreht sich die vorliegende Untersuchung, die in drei Teile gegliedert ist, in welchen vor allem die Hervorhebung folgender Aspekte des Substanzbegriffs anvisiert wird: ı) Die logisch-ontologische Funktion der Kategorien und in erster Linie der Substanz hinsichtlich der Bildung eines ganz allgemeinen Begriffs des Seienden gemäß seiner Möglichkeit, sich zu ‘bewegen’.(5) - ii) Der spezifische Sinn der πρώτη οὐσία im Kontext einer Reflexion über das Wesen des Menschen, sofern dies als unabhängige, individuelle und veränderungsfähige Existenz gedacht wird. - iii) Die ganz besondere

Bedeutung unserer Grundkategorie im Bereich einer ‘archäologischen’ Verankerung der Wahrheit in der Anerkennung des Anderen gemäß seiner ontologischen Würde und also seiner eigenen Substantialität.(6)

In fortschreitender Annäherung an diese fundamentale Bedeutung der Substanz wird eine philosophisch engagierte Auslegung der Aristotelischen Ousiologie aufgrund der Kategorienschrift versucht. Die Stellung der Grundkategorie πρώτη οὐσία im Selbstverständnis unserer Existenz wird am Schluß der Untersuchung hervorgehoben. Die hermeneutische Beziehung zwischen Text- und Selbstverständnis spielt allerdings von Anfang an eine wichtige Rolle. Dieser methodische Ansatz ist für die Interpretation des Aristotelischen Textes einfach entscheidend.

Und deshalb läuft die ganze Textinterpretation wiederum auf ein bestimmtes, wenngleich nicht systematisch entfaltetes Seinsverständnis hinaus, das auf der ersten Substanz als Existenz des Anderen beruht. Im Sinne dieser methodischen Auffassung wird also der Aristotelische Substanzbegriff als Grundkategorie der Existenz zum Gegenstand der Auslegung gemacht." (ss. 26-27)

(5) Unter ‘Bewegung’ (κίνησις) fallen nicht nur die Veränderungen in der Natur, sondern auch die innerhalb der menschlichen Seele - von der einfachsten Empfindung bis zum praktischen Schluß des vernünftigen Willensaktes.

(6) In der Sprache Heideggers zusammengefaßt, entsprechen die drei erwähnten Aspekte, die in den drei Teilen der Arbeit hervorgehoben werden sollen, der ontischen, der ontologischen bzw. der fundamentalontologischen Dimension der Substanz.

12. Fonfara, Dirk. 2003. Die Ousia-Lehren des Aristoteles. Untersuchungen zur Kategorienschrif und zur Metaphysik. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Im Corpus Aristotelicum findet sich nicht nur die in der Metaphysik vertretene Substanz- oder Ousia-Lehre, sondern es lassen sich bei Aristoteles zwei unterschiedliche Versionen der Ontologie-Konzeption ausmachen: (1) Gemäß einer frühen Ontologie in der Kategorienschrift (Cat. 5) gilt als erste Ousia das bestimmte Einzelwesen (τόδε τι), nur als .zweite Ousiai' (δεύτεραι ούσίαι) werden hingegen die Gattungen (γένη) und Arten (είδη) bezeichnet, welche jeweils ein bestimmtes Einzelwesen als erste Ousia voraussetzen.

Diese Ousia-Lehre transformiert damit implizit die Ontologie Platos (vgl. Kap. I 5), nach der die Idee in ihrer Allgemeinheit sich als Ousia erweist. Bei Plato erhielt der Terminus, der von τό δν (das Seiende) abgeleitet ist und zunächst die konkrete Bedeutung ,Anwesen', .Besitz' hatte, eine philosophische Bedeutung als das an sich und beständig Seiende, die Idee. Trotz jener inhaltlichen Umdeutung bleibt auch für Aristoteles die Ousia die leitende Bedeutung des Seienden als Bezeichnung für das primär Seiende.

(2) Nach der späteren Lehre des Aristoteles in Met. Ζ (vgl. Kap. III-IV), die in Met. Δ 8 angedeutet ist (vgl. Kap. II), gilt das Eidos als erste Ousia (Met. Ζ 7, Ζ 11). Wenn aber das Eidos als Definiens der Wesensbestimmung (ορισμός) ein Allgemeines ist (Met. Ζ 12), wie kann es dann Ousia, ja sogar Ousia im primären Sinne sein, als welche in der Kategorienschrift noch das bestimmte konkrete Einzelindividuum (τόδε τι) angesehen wurde?

Handelt es sich bei der Ousia-Lehre von Met. Ζ mit ihrer Auszeichnung des Eidos als erster Ousia um eine Rückkehr des Aristoteles zur Platonischen Ontologie?

Dies ist unmöglich, da in Met. Ζ 13 behauptet wird, kein Allgemeines könne Ousia sein (1038b8-12). Inwiefern gilt dann aber angesichts dieser Entsubstantialisierung des Allgemeinen das Eidos als erste Ousia? Oder bleibt Aristotelesvielmehr dabei, daß primäre Ousia weiterhin das bestimmte Einzelwesen (τόδε τι) ist, dessen ontologische Bestimmungen und konstitutive Möglichkeitsbedingungen nun eingehend zu analysieren sind?

Die These der Arbeit lautet, daß das Eidos erste Ousia ist, aber nicht das Eidos als solches, sondern nur, sofern es die Essenz (το τί ήν είναι, zum Terminus vgl. Kap. II 2d) eines Einzelwesens darstellt, die dessen wirkliches Sein und wesentliches Wassein ausmacht, während das Eidos im Rahmen der Definition - gedacht in der letzten Differenz - ein Allgemeines ist, damit aufgrund seiner Unveränderlichkeit und Notwendigkeit gemäß den Analytica posteriora Gegenstand der Wissenschaft ist und auf diese Weise erst eine wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis des jeweiligen Einzelnen ermöglicht. Darin liegt die epistemologische Bedeutung des Eidos4; denn gerade das stofflich bestimmte, konkrete Einzelwesen ist als solches nicht definierbar und damit philosophischer Erkenntnis unzugänglich (vgl. Met. Ζ 15)." (ss. 1-2, Notizen weggelassen)

13. Frede, Michael. 1978. "Individuen bei Aristoteles." Antike und Abendland:16-39.

"Mit diesen Schwierigkeiten, vor allem den ersten beiden, beschäftigt sich der erste Teil des Aufsatzes, welcher die aristotelische Kategorienschrift betrifft.

In der Metaphysik nun bestreitet Aristoteles die Existenz des Allgemeinen, zumindest jedenfalls die Existenz von Arten von Gegenständen. Folglich verwirft er auch den Indivnduenbegriff der Kategorienschrift, welcher die Existenz des Allgemeinen, die Existenz von Universalien voraussetzt. Da aber Aristoteles nicht die Eigenschaften mit dem Allgemeinen identifiziert, hat auch die Leugnung des Allgemeinen keineswegs zur Folge, daß niun der Begriff des Individuums mit dem des Gegenstandes zusammenfällt. Vielmehr bringt es die Leugnung des Allgemeinen mit sich, daß nun erst recht die Beziehung zwisdien Gegenständen und Eigenschaften nicht als die zwischen Einzeldingen und allgemeinen Begriffen, unter welche die Dinge fallen, betrachtet werden kann. Daraus ergeben sich in der Metaphysik des Aristoteles merkwürdige Konsequenzen dafür, was eigentlich als der einzelne, individuelle Gegenstand, was als die erste Substanz zu gelten habe. Mit diesen Konsequenzen beschäftigt sich der zweite Teil des Aufsatzes." (ss. 16-17)

14. ———. 1983. "Titel, Einheit und Echtheit der aristotelischen Kategorienschrift." In Zweifelhaftes im Corpus Aristotelicum. Studien zu einigen Dubia. Akten des 9. Symposium Aristotelicum, Berlin, 7-16 September 1981, edited by Moraux, Paul and Wiesner, Jürgen, 1-29. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"In Anbetracht des Einflusses, welchen die Schrift auf unser Aristotelesbild und auf unsere Interpretation der aristotelischen Schriften hat, scheint es mir von großer Wichtigkeit zu sein, diese Zweifel soweit wie

möglich aufzuklären. Jedoch hoffe ich, daß eine solche Untersuchung auch für die von Interesse ist, die ohnehin schon fest von der Echtheit der Schrift überzeugt sind. Denn sie wirft Fragen auf, mit denen sich die Interpreten der Schrift in der Regel nicht auseinandersetzen und deren Beantwortung das gängige Bild von der Schrift erheblich verändern könnte.

Die Frage nach der Echtheit der Schrift wird nämlich von der Frage "Deshalb werde ich im folgenden gerade der Frage der Einheit besondere Beachtung schenken. Die gefährliche Tendenz, unsere Schrift fast ausschließlich vom ersten Teil her zu betrachten und damit den Status des zweiten Teils zu präjudizieren, wird natürlich durch den Titel der Schrift erheblich verstärkt.

Und so werde ich im Zusammenhang mit der Einheit der Schrift auch auf ihren Titel eingehen."nach ihrer Einheit überlagert." (ss. 2-3)

(..)

"Deshalb werde ich im folgenden gerade der Frage der Einheit besondere Beachtung schenken. Die gefährliche Tendenz, unsere Schrift fast ausschließlich vom ersten Teil her zu betrachten und damit den Status des zweiten Teils zu präjudizieren, wird natürlich durch den Titel der Schrift erheblich verstärkt.

Und so werde ich im Zusammenhang mit der Einheit der Schrift auch auf ihren Titel eingehen." (s. 4)

15. Fritz, Kurt von. 1931. "Der Ursprung der aristotelischen Kategorienlehre." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 40:449-496.

Nachdruck: K. von Fritz, Schriften zur griechischen Logik, Stüttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1978, vol. 2, pp. 9-61; Fritz-Peter Hager (ed.), Logik und erkenntnislehre des Aristoteles, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buch-Gesellschaft, 1972.

"Ein Versuch, die Kategorienlehre des Aristoteles historisch zu verstehen, wird von diesem zweiten Element der Kantischen Kritik — ganz gleichgültig, wie man sich zur Kantischen Philosophie als solcher verhält — zunächst absehen müssen. Sie wird vielmehr von jenen Voraussetzungen ausgehen, die Aristoteles selbst für die Beurteilung seiner Kategorien an die Hand gibt, und dies um so mehr, als Aristoteles selbst nirgends eine genaue Begriffsbestimmung der Kategorie gibt. Sie wird also vor allem prüfen, ob die Kategorien diesen Voraussetzungen entsprechen, und worin die Schwierigkeiten liegen, wenn dies nicht der Fall ist. Sie wird weiter den eigentlichen Kern dieser Unstimmigkeiten suchen, indem sie in jedem Falle fragt, aus welchen ganz konkreten Problemen die Kategorienlehre des Aristoteles bzw. die verschiedenen Formen, in denen sie in seinen einzelnen Schriften erscheint, zum erstenmal hervorgegangen sind. Erst damit wird eine ganz sichere Unterlage für eine philosophische Kritik sowohl dieser Problemstellung selbst als auch der Lösung der Probleme durch Aristoteles gegeben sein." (s. 450)

16. ———. 1935. "Zur aristotelischen Kategorienlehre." Philologus no. 90:244-248.

Nachdruck in Fritz-Peter Hager (Hrsg.), Logik und erkenntnislehre des Aristoteles, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buch-Gesellschaft, 1972.

17. Fugali, Edoardo. 2012. "Trendelenburg, Brentano und die Aristoteles-Renaissance in der deutschen Philosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts: die Frage nach dem Ursprung der Kategorien." In Franz Brentano's Psychology and Metaphysics: Upon the Sesquicentennial of Franz Brentano’s Dissertation, edited by Tănăsescu, Ion, 13-52. Bucharest: Zeta Books.

"Sowohl für Trendelenburg als auch für Brentano geht es hauptsächlich um die Neubegründung einer Fundamentalphilosophie. Trendelenburg legt ihren Schwerpunkt aber an erkenntnistheoretische Fragen und gestaltet die Beziehung zwischen Logik und Metaphysik zugunsten des ersten Moments. Das ist der Grund dafür, dass er auf dem sprachlich-grammatikalischen Ursprung der Kategorien besteht und ihre Genese in der Zerlegung der Satzverbindung – und damit im Urteil – erkennt. Die Bedeutung des Seins nach den Kategorien fällt also mit der unechten Bedeutung des Seienden nach dem Wahren und dem Falschen zusammen und die Kategorien werden auf die Tätigkeit des Urteilens des erkennenden Subjekts verlegt. Im Einklang mit der romantischen Physiognomie seiner organischen Weltanschauung will Trendelenburg die Entstehung der Sprache – und im Allgemeinen unserer Einstellungen zur Wirklichkeit – auf die schaff ende, als konstruktive Bewegung aufgefasste Tätigkeit des Geistes zurückführen. Von der Komponenten der konstruktiven Bewegung legt Trendelenburg unter dem zweifachen Einfl uss Aristoteles und Kants den Vorrang der Anschauung und der Imagination bei. Die durch die konstruktive Bewegung erzeugten Formen – vorerst die Sprache – sind das notwendige Vermittlungsglied für jede Beziehung zum Seienden. Es ist also kein Zufall, dass Trendelenburg unter den Kategorien jene der Relation auf Kosten der Substanz bevorzugt. Die Sache verhält sich anders bei Brentano, der sich für die metaphysische Relevanz der Kategorienlehre ausspricht, obwohl er eine gewisse Plausibilität der These Trendelenburg zuspricht, und in der Kategorie der Substanz das Prinzip erkennt, das die Deduktion der übrigen Kategorien leitet. Brentano erarbeitet also eine univozistische Ontologie, die dazu neigt, die aristotelische These der mannigfachen Bedeutungen des Seienden zugunsten des Vorrangs der Substanz herabzusetzen. Das zeigt sich insbesondere bei Brentanos Wahl des Prinzips der Analogie nach einem einzigen Terminus anstatt jenes der Proportionalität wie in Trendelenburg, um die Beziehungen zwischen den verschiedenen Kategorien zu bestimmen." (ss. 48-49)

18. Gercke, Alfred. 1891. "Ursprung der aristotelischen Kategorien." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 4:424-441.

19. Graeser, Andreas. 1977. "Probleme der Kategorienlehre des Aristoteles." Studia Philosophica.Jahrbuch der Schweizerischen Philosophischen Gesellschaft no. 37:59-81.

20. ———. 1983. "Aspekte der Ontologie in der Kategorienschrift." In Zweifelhaftes im Corpus Aristotelicum. Studien zu einigen Dubia. Akten des 9. Symposium Aristotelicum, Berlin, 7-16 September 1981, edited by Moraux, Paul and Wiesner, Jürgen, 30-56. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"In Cat. 2 skizziert Aristoteles eine Grundeinteilung dessen, was ist (όντα). Diese Einteilung hat folgendes Aussehen:

[A] Es gibt Dinge wie Spezies (ζ. B. Mensch), die von einem Subjekt gesagt werden, aber in keinem Subjekt sind (1 a 20—22).

[Β] Es gibt Dinge von der Art einer bestimmten Grammatikkenntnis (ή τίς γραμματική) oder eines bestimmten Weiß-Tones (το τί λευκόν), die zwar in einem Subjekt sind, jedoch von keinem Subjekt gesagt werden (1 a 23-29).

[C] Es gibt Dinge wie Spezies nicht-substantieller Dinge (z.B. Wissen), die sich in einem Subjekt (z.B. Seele) finden und von einem Subjekt ( z. B. Grammatikkenntnis) gesagt werden. Doch handelt es sich nicht um das gleiche Subjekt (1 a 29—b 3).

[D] Es gibt Dinge von der Art primärer Substanzen (vgl. 5, 2 a 11 — 14), die sich weder in einem Subjekt finden noch von einem Subjekt gesagt werden (1 b 3—6).

Diese Ontologie ist nicht nur erheblich komplexer als die der dicho tomischen Einteilungen in Metaph. Γ 1,1003 b 6—10 und Ζ 1, 1028 a 13—20. Sie ist auch reichhaltiger. Denn sie rechnet nicht nur mit der Existenz von Individuen und Eigenschaften, sondern auch mit der Existenz von Spezies und Gattungen derselben. Eine vergleichbare Einteilung findet sich in Anal. Pr. I 27, 43 a 25 - 43." (ss. 30-31(

21. Heimsoeth, Heinz. 1952. "Zur Geschichte der Kategorienlehre." In Nicolai Hartmann. Der Denker und sein Werk, fünfzehn Abhandlungen mit einer Bibliographie, edited by Heimsoeth, Heinz and Heiß, 144-172. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

22. Hirschberger, Johannes. 1960. "Paronymie und Analogie bei Aristoteles." Philosophisches Jahrbuch no. 68:191-203.

"Einer der Hauptsätze der mittelalterlichen Analogielehre lautete: Die Analogie ist ein Mittleres zwischen Äquivokation und Univokation."

(...)

"Da das Mittelalter sich in seiner Analogielehre ständig auf Aristoteles beruft, denkt man bei der Behauptung eines Mittleren zwischen Äquivokation und Univokation natürlich an den locus classicus, an dem die beiden Begriffe erklärt werden, an den Anfang der Kategorienschrift, die man ja Aristoteles zuzuteilen pflegt. Aber das Buch tut uns nicht den Gefallen, nach der Homonymie (Äquivokation) und der Synonymie (Univokation) die Analogie wenigstens zu erwähnen, sondern bringt den Begriff der Paronymie.

Der Optimist, der seine sogenannte thomistisch-aristotelische Philosophie bei Aristoteles daheim glaubt, kommt aber nicht in Verlegenheit. Er beruft sich eben dann auf die bekannte Lehre des Aristoteles von den verschiedenen Bedeutungen des Seienden, die alle auf einen Ursinn von Sein bezogen sind, den Begriff der Substanz. Das Beispiel, das Aristoteles dafür bringt (Met. Γ, 2; K 3), ist das von gesund und Gesundheit, eben dasjenige, das das Mittelalter auch immer für Analogie zu bringen pflegt. Allein Aristoteles tut uns wieder nicht den Gefallen, diese Sache Analogie zu heißen. Er nennt das vielmehr die Pros-hen- oder Aph-henos-Aussage, was man mit „bezogene Vieldeutigkeit“ wiedergegeben hat, und was hier einfach denominative Prädikation genannt werden soll. Boethius übersetzt paronyma mit denominativa (In Arist. categ. I; Migne lat. 64, 167 ss.). Da sich uns zeigen wird, daß in der Paronymie die Pros-hen-Aussage steckt, benützen wir diesen Terminus auch für sie selbst.

Die Beobachtung, daß bei Aristoteles nicht auch Analogie heißt, was später so genannt wurde, - wenn idi recht sehe, hat in neuerer Zeit zunächst Muskens(1) darauf hingewiesen, dann Owens(2) und Lyttkens3(3) könnte zu der Ansicht führen, daß bei Aristoteles überhaupt keine Seinsanalogie vorliege, zumal er bekanntlich die Analogie für die Ethik und das Gute reklamiert, für das Sein aber auf seiner Pros-hen-Aussage besteht.

Man sollte sich da freilich vor allzu großer Eile hüten; denn in der Philosophie hängen die Dinge zwar auch an den Termini, aber es ist nicht immer so; und wenn der Terminus fehlt, kann die Sache trotzdem da sein, dann eben unter einem anderen Namen. Wir wollen Aristoteles daraufhin untersuchen, und zwar im Anschluß an einen Begriff, der in dem so verdienstvollen Werk von H. Lyttkens über die Analogie bei Thomas und ihren ideengeschichtlichen Hintergrund nicht eigens vorgenommen wurde, den Paronymie-Begriff." (ss. 191-192)

(1) G. L. Muskens, De vocis analogias significatione et usu apud Aristotelem (Groningen 1943).

(2) /. Owens, The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics (Toronto 1951).

(3) The Analogy between God and the World. An Investigation of its Background and Interpretation of its Use by Thomas of Aquino (Uppsala 1952). — Im vorigen Jahrhundert haben Trendelenburg und Brentano die Frage in einer heute noch beachtenswerten Weise diskutiert.

23. Jansen, Ludger. 2006. "Aristoteles' Kategorie des Relativen zwischen Dialektik und Ontologie." Philosophiegeschichte und logische Analyse no. 9:79-104.

"Ein alter Streit geht darum, ob die Kategorienschrift nicht zu Unrecht unter die logischen Schriften des Aristoteles gezählt wird und nicht vielmehr ein Text zur Ontologie ist. Tatsächlich erfüllen die Kategorien sowohl logisch-dialektische als auch ontologische Funktionen. Dies will ich im Folgenden anhand der Kategorie des pros ti, des Relativen oder Bezüglichen, erläutern. Es ist der Wunsch, Fehlschlüsse zu verhindern, der eine eigene Kategorie für das Relative aufgrund der dialektischen Funktion der Kategorien erforderlich macht (§ 1). Das Relative hat zudem aber einen besonderen Seinsmodus, der auch aufgrund der ontologischen Funktion der Kategorien eine eigene Kategorie für das Relative rechtfertigt (§ 2).

Ich werde zeigen, daß diese beiden Funktionen voneinander unabhängig sind und keineswegs dieselben Elemente der Kategorie des Relativen zuordnen (§ 3). Die konsequente Berücksichtigung dieser doppelten Funktion hilft bei der Interpretation der zwei Definitionsvorschläge in Cat. 7 (§ 4.i) und der Behandlung der Eigenschaften des Relativen (§ 4.2), der Frage nach der Gleichursprünglichkeit oder ontologischen Unabhängigkeit korrespondierender Relativa (§ 4.3), dem am Ende von Cat. 8 angesprochenen Genus-Spezies-Problem (§ 4.4) und der kategorialen Zuordnung von dynamis und energeia (§ 4.5)." (s. 79)

24. Kapp, Ernst. 1968. "Die Kategorienlehre in der aristotelischen Topik." In Ausgewählte Schriften, edited by Diller, Hans and Diller, Inez, 215-253. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Habilitationsschrift, München 1920.

"Die sogen. Kategorienlehre spielt in den verschiedenen Teilen der aristotelischen Philosophie eine mehr oder weniger bedeutsame Rolle und erscheint, abgesehen von der kleinen Schrift mit dem traditionellen Titel Κατηγορίαι, in den Analytiken, in der Physik, der Schrift über Entstehen und Vergehen, über die Seele, über die Träume, in der Metaphysik, der Ethik und der Rhetorik. Wenn gleichwohl der folgenden Untersuchung im Gegensatz zu den bisherigen Behandlungen nur ein einziges Werk, die Topik, zugrunde gelegt wird, so ist damit von vornherein auf Vollständigkeit verzichtet. Freilich glaube ich, daß diese Beschränkung der Aufgabe, wie die Dinge liegen, nicht nur äußere Vorteile mit sich bringt. Nahegelegt wird sie durch die bekannte, aber überhaupt noch wenig ausgenutzte Sonderstellung der Topik den größeren übrigen philosophischen Lehrschriften gegenüber, die m. E. allerdings zwingt, sie bis auf einzelne Zusätze (namentlich in Buch Θ) relativ früh anzusetzen, jedenfalls aber, da die Topik in erster Linie der

Übung dienen will, zu der Erwartung verhältnismäßig einfacher und durchsichtiger philosophischer Voraussetzungen berechtigt." (s. 215)

25. Korvin-Krasinski, Cyrill von. 1964. "Die zehn kategorien des Aristoteles im Lichte der altasialtischen Seinsstufen Symbolik." Symbolon no. 4:119-146.

26. Merlan, Philipp. 1934. "Beiträge zur Geschichte des antiken Platonismus. I. Zur Erklärung der dem Aristoteles zu geschriebenen Kategorienschrift." Philologus no. 89:35-53.

Nachdruck: P. Merlan, Kleine philosophische Schriften, hrsg. von F. Merlan, Hildesheim: Geog Olms, 1976, pp. 51-69.

"Zur Erklärung der dem Aristoteles zu geschriebenen Kategorienschrift

Anläßlich der Erörterung der Kategorien der ουσία, des ποσόν, des πρός τι, des ποιόν, des ποιειν, endlich des πάσχειν werden in der Kategorienschrift immer wieder zwei Fragen aufgeworfen: die erste, ob die unter die betreffende Kategorie fallenden Gegenstände ein εναντίον haben, die zweite, ob sie ein μάλλον και ήττον zulassen.

So heißt es bei der Kategorie der ουσία (c. III, 18, 3b 24—25): υπάρχει δε ταις ουσίαις και τό μηδέν αύταϊς εναντίον είναι — der bestimmte Mensch, das bestimmte Lebewesen hat keinen Gegensatz. — Weiter (c. III, 20, 3b 34—35) liest man: δοκεί δε ή ουσία μη έπιδέχεσϋ·αι τό μάλλον και τό ήττον. Dies bedeutet nicht etwa, daß jede ουσία in demselben Maße ουσία ist, wie jede andere, denn dies trifft nur auf die ούσίαι einer bestimmten Stufe untereinander, dagegen nicht mehr auf das Verhältnis der zweiten usw. ουσία zur ersten zu (των δέ δευτέρου ουσιών μάλλον ουσία τό είδος του γένους — c. III, 6, 2b 7—8); vielmehr heißt dies, daß jede ουσία das, was sie ist, nicht mehr noch weniger sein kann. Die ουσία ανϋρωπος kann weder μάλλον noch ήττον diese ουσία, d. h. αν&ρωπος, sein." (s. 35)

27. Oehler, Klaus. 1984. "Einleitung." In Aristoteles. Kategorien, 41-182. Berlin: Akademie-Varlag.

Einleitung: 1. Zur Geschichte der Kategorienlehre 41; 2. Stationen der Auslegungsgeschichte der Kategorien seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts 65; 3. Einleitung in die aristotelische Kategorienlehre 96; 4. Zur Überlieferung und literarischen Form der Kategorien 128; 5. Bibliographie 143; A.Textausgaben 143; B.Kommentare 144; C. Übersetzungen145; D. Untersuchungen und Darstellungen 147; E. Literatur zur Geschichte der Kategorienlehre 171-182.

"Der Anfang des Kategorienproblems ist nicht identisch mit dem Anfang der Philosophie. Erst als das Denken sich selbst als Gegenstand entdeckte und sich der Beziehung zwischen Sein, Denken und Sprechen bewußt wurde, begann die Untersuchung der Formen des Logos, der in der für griechisches Welterleben charakteristischen Weise beides ist : Sprache und Gedanke. Im Zusammenhang mit der Reflexion auf Strukturen des Logos entstand das Kategorienproblem, das fortan die Philosophie als eines ihrer Hauptprobleme begleitete, und zwar so konstant, daß seitdem an der Geschichte des Kategorienproblems die Geschichte der Philosophie ablesbar ist." (s. 41)

28. Patzig, Günther. 1973. "Bemerkungen zu den Kategorien des Aristoteles." In Einheit und Vielheit. Festschrift für Carl Friedrich v. Weizsachker zum 60. Geburstag, edited by Scheibe, Erhard and Süssmann, Georg, 60-76. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Nachdruck in G. Patzig, Gesammelte Schriften. Bd. III: Aufsätze zur antiken Philosophie, Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag 1996.

29. Pronay, Andreas. 2005. "Die Echtheit der Aristotelischen Kategorienschrift." Elenchos.Rivista di Studi sul Pensiero Antico no. 26:421-441.

30. Rapp, Christof. 1992. "Ähnlichkeit, Analogie und Homonymie bei Aristoteles." Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung no. 46:526-544.

"Ähnlichkeiten werden von Aristoteles, zum Teil auch in der Form von Analogien oder Homonymien, immer dann herangezogen, wenn das allgemeine Art-/Gattungsgefüge Lücken aufweist oder sich die sonst verbindlichen Genauigkeits- und Rationalitätsstandards als nicht anwendbar erweisen.

Dieses Phänomen des Ausweichens auf nur Ähnliches oder sich Nahestehendes ist in der Aristoteles-Forschung anhand von Begriffen wie Analogie, Topos oder Umriß (τύπος) geläufig. Bemerkenswert ist nun, daß Aristoteles, wenn er auf Ähnlichkeitsverhältnisse zurückgreift, die so erfolgten Bestimmungen gar nicht – wie man es aufgrund seines Akribieverständnisses erwarten müßte – als etwas Defizientes zu behandeln

scheint, sondern hierin eine eigenständige, in sich konsequente Begründungsebene mit ihren eigenen Rationalitätskriterien sieht. Nach einem Blick auf die Aristotelische Einordnung der Ähnlichkeit behandelt der

vorliegende Aufsatz verschiedene, voneinander unabhängige Zusammenhänge, in denen Aristoteles Ähnlichkeitsverhältnissen eine solchermaßen selbständige und durch begriffliche Qualifikationen nicht ersetzbare

Funktion überträgt." (ss. 536-527)

31. ———. 1995. Identität, Persistenz und Substantialität. Untersuchung zum Verhältnis von sortalen Termen und Aristotelischer Substanz. Freiburg-München: Alber.

32. Reisinger, Klaus. 1974. "Kategorien und Seinsbedeutung bei Aristoteles." In Sein und Geschichtlichkeit. Karl-Heinz Volkmann-Schluck z. 60 Geburtstag, edited by Schüssler, Ingeborg and Janke, Wolfgang, 37-41. Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann.

33. Routila, Lauri. 1967. "Über die "beiden" Fassungen der Kategorienlehre des Aristoteles." Ajatus no. 29:62-78.

34. Sainati, Vittorio. 1985. "Die 'Kategorien' und die Theorie der Prädikation." In Zur modernen Deutung der Aristotelischen Logik. Band II: Formale und nicht-formale Logik bei Aristoteles, edited by Menne, Albert and Offenberger, Niels, 26-79. Ildesheim: Georg Olms.

Übersetzung aus V. Sainati, Storia delI'Organon Aristotelico, I: Dai Topici al Ide Interpretatione, Firenze: Le Monnier 1968, S. 146-198.

"Der unangebrachte Streit um die Echtheit der Kategorien

Der Traktat über die Kategorien hat bei den Aristoteles-Interpreten seit jeher Unbehagen und Verlegenheit ausgelöst. Auch wenn an dieser Stelle von der vielfältigen und häufig spekulativen Argumentation um den Begriff der "Kategorien" abgesehen werden soll, (die von Plotin bis Kant bzw. Hegel, sowie von Mill bis zum italienischen Neoidealismus von polemischen Angriffen auf den aristotelischen Ansatz geprägr war) muss, dennoch auf die fortdauernden Divergenzen zwischen den Historikern über die authentische Bedeutung der Lehre bzw. über ihre Zugehörigkeit zum aristotelischen Textbestand (wie bereits im vorhergehenden Kapitel angedeutet) eingegangen werden.

Zur Zeit muß man jedoch eine notwendige Voraussetzung für alle zukünftigen Diskussionen - wenn es sich dabei nicht um einfache Schulübungen handeln soll - hervorheben: die Anerkennung der Echtheit der Kategorien. Es lassen sich beim aktuellen Forschungsstand keine stichhaltigen Gründe anführen, die die aristotelische Urheberschaft der Kategorien in Frage stellen könnten." (s. 26)

35. Schüssler, Ingeborg. 1988. "Sprache und Logos: Die Entdeckung der Kategorien in der Kategorienschrift des Aristoteles." Perspektiven der Philosophie: Neues Jahrbuch:398-419.

36. Schütze, Alfred. 1972. Die Kategorien des Aristoteles und der Logos. Stuttgart: Verlag Urachhaus.

37. Strobel, Benedikt. 2009. "Von einem Subjekt ausgesagt werden und an einem Subjekt vorliegen: zur Semantik genereller Terme in der aristotelischen Kategorienschrift." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 54:40-75.

Abtract: "According to the Greek Commentators in late antiquity, Aristotle’s Categories is primarily concerned with simple expressions in so far as they signify things. But what is it for a simple expression to signify a thing? As for (non-empty) singular terms, it is safe to say that they denote things. But what about general terms? How do they signify things? The question is crucial to the theory of the Categories, since, as is argued in the first section of this paper, there is some truth in the Commentators’ thesis that (part of ) the Categories aims to elucidate the signifi cation of simple expressions, including general terms. Of course, various prima facie plausible accounts of how general terms signify things are available; the second section discusses the basic assumptions which underlie them. A detailed analysis of Cat. 2a19-34 in the third section shows that the Categories’ account is two-fold: On the one hand some general terms denote things (among the latter, the most prominent are τὰ καθ’ ὑποκειμένου λεγόμενα). What is denoted by a given general term does not stand in any relation to the objects falling under the term but is something that they are. Some general terms, on the other hand, connote things. What is connoted by a general term is a property

which the objects falling under the term are related to by virtue of having it (τὰ ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ ὄντα are such properties)."

38. Trendelenburg, Friedrich Adolf. 1846. Geschichte der Kategorienlehre. Zwei Abhandlungen. Berlin: G. Bethge.

Band I: Aristotle Kategorienlehre; II: Die Kategorienlehre in der Geschichte der Philosophie.

Nachdruck: Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1963, 1979.

Traduzioni italiane:

A. Trendelenburg, La dottrina delle categorie in Aristotele, Con in appendice la prolusione accademica del 1833 De Aristotelis categoriis, Prefazione e saggio introduttivo di Giovanni Reale. Traduzione e saggio integrativo di Vincenzo Cicero, Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1994.

F. A. Trendelenburg, La dottrina delle categorie nella storia della filosofia. Profilo e valutazione critica, A cura di Renato Pettoello, Monza: Polimetrica, 2004.

"Wenn die Kategorien die höchsten und letzten Begriffe darstellen, die als solche allen andern festen Halt und sichere Ordnung geben: so müssen sie in einem so ausgebildeten System der Philosophie, wie das aristotelische ist, ihre Beziehungen und Consequenzen offenbaren.

Es ist daher nicht genug, sie in ihrer nackten Eintheilung zu betrachten. Erst wo sie wirken, wird man erkennen, was sie leisten oder was sie nicht vermögen; und wo an ihre Stelle durch die Sache selbst andere Begriffe treten, da bemerkt man ihre Mängel. Sie werden erst im Zusammenhang mit den realen Fragen und in der Anwendung auf besondere Begriffe wahrhaft erkannt; und was der Urheber mit ihnen wollte, sieht man erst da, wo sie in seiner Hand zu Werkzeugen der Untersuchung werden. Es sind zwar von Alters her über Aristoteles Kategorien viele Commentare geschrieben, und sie sind ebenso oft in Auszügen dargestellt. Aber man hat die Aufgabe immer in beschränktem Sinne gefasst und sich um die eben bezeichneten Gesichtspunkte selbst da nicht bekümmert, wo die Philosophie des Aristoteles in ihrem Zusammenhange sollte angeschauet werden. Man hat in den Commentaren über die Kategorien allerhand Eigenes bemerkt und für und wider die gegebenen Bestimmungen gesprochen; aber man hat meistens versäumt, sie als aristotelisch aus dem Aristoteles zu erläutern."(s. 2)

39. Vollrath, Ernst. 1969. Studien zur Kategorienlehre des Aristoteles. Ratingen bei Dusseldorf: A. Henn.

Inhaltsübersicht: Die Fragestellung 1; Die Kategorien und der Bereich des Bezuges von Aussage und Vorliegen 6; I. Die Deutung des Logos aus seinem Bezug auf das Vorliegen 6; II. Die Rechtfertigung der Deutung des Logos aus seinem Bezug auf das Vorliegen 23; III. Der Aufweis der Kategorien aus dem Bereich des Bezuges von Aussage und Vorliegen 44; IV. Die Bestätigung des Aufweises der Kategorien aus dem Bereich des Bezuges von Aussage und Vorliegen 58; V. Die Begründung der Kategorien in dem Bereich des Bezuges von Aussage und Vorliegen 76; Wesen und Wesensherkunft der Kategorien 101; Exkurs I : Die aristotelische Schrift über die Kategorien 105; Exkurs II : Aristoteles und die formale Logik 111; Anmerkungen 125; Ausgaben, Kommentare und Übersetzungen 132; Literaturverzeichnis 133-134.

"Die Kategorienlehre des Aristoteles hat die Philosophiehistorie der letzten hundert Jahre stark beschäftigt. Vornehmlich standen dabei der Ursprung und das Wesen der Kategorien im Blick der Forschung. Ein Entscheid über das Wesen der Kategorien ist ersichtlich auch ein Entscheid über ihren Ursprung und umgekehrt. Eine kurze Übersicht über die hauptsächlichsten Positionen soll dazu dienen, die Fragestellung dieser Untersuchungen klar zu machen. Vollständigkeit ist dabei nicht angestrebt.

TRENDELENBURG erklärt, daß "die Kategorien die aus der Auflösung des Satzes entstandenen Elemente" sind (Geschichte der Kategorienlehre, 13). Die Kategorien sind bei ihm grammatische Prädikate (a.a.O., 18 f.). Mit dieser Ansicht ist Trendelenburg allerdings allein geblieben.

BONITZ deutet die Kategorien als "die obersten Geschlechter, deren einem jedes Seiende sich muß unterordnen lassen" (Über die Kategorienlehre des Aristoteles, 623). Die Kategorien werden als Bedeutungen bestimmt, in denen der Begriff des Seienden gebraucht und ausgesagt werden kann (a. a.O., 622). Man kann diese Deutung der Kategorien als die ontologische bezeichnen (siehe Prantl, Geschichte der Logik im Abendland, I, 195, und Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen, II, 2, 186).

Dir kann die logische Deutung der Kategorien entgegengestellt werden, wie sie hauptsächlich APELT vertreten hat (Die Kategorienlehre des Aristoteles). Danach sind die Kategorien die Arten der Aussage im Urteil (a.a.O., 105). Das Sv ist für ihn nicht wie für BONITZ das ens reale; er nimmt es vielmehr als die Bezeichnung des kopulativen "ist" (a.a.O., 107), dessen verschiedene Bedeutungen in den Kategorien gefaßt werden (a. a. O., 119).

MAIER (Die Syllogistik des Aristoteles, II 2, 297) hält dafür, daß die Kategorien eine Klassifikation aller Bedeutungen des Seins sind, während die kopulative nur eine davon ist." (s. 1)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Aristóteles, Categorías. Estudios en Español y Portugués

Estudios en español

1. Beuchot Puente, Mauricio Hardie. 1986. "El problema de las categorías en Aristóteles y Gilbert Ryle." Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofía no. 12:193-198.

2. Calvo, Tomás. 1991. " La fórmula 'kath' hautó' y las categorías: a vueltas con Metafísica V 7." Méthexis no. 4:39-57.

"En este artículo pretendo comentar el conocido pasaje del libro quinto de la Metafísica de Aristóteles (c. 7, 1017a7-30) en que se contraponen y explican las expresiones 'ser accidentalmente' (katà symbebekós) por sí mismo' ( kath' hautó). Como es bien sabido, el paso de lo primero a lo segundo se abre con la siguiente declaración: "Por otra parte, dice que son por sí mismas (kath hautá) todas las cosas significadas las distintas figuras de la predicación" ( 1017a20-21). Esta afirmación ha provocado a menudo cierta perplejidad entre los estudiosos y comentaristas de Aristóteles, especialmente entre los contemporáneos. A discutir y esclarecer esta tesis aristotélica dedicaré las páginas siguientes. de subrayar las dificultades que el texto plantea, comenzaré (un análisis de la oposición entre 'accidentalmente' y por sí' recorriendo aquella línea que lleva lógicamente a aplicar la última fórmula ('por mismo', kath' hautó) exclusivamente a las entidades o sustancias. A continuación, (II) someteré a crítica ciertas interpretaciones contemporáneas de nuestro pasaje. Por último, (III) tras ofrecer algunas consideraciones acerca de las distintas aplicaciones y sentidos que Aristóteles atribuye a la fórmula, concluiré proponiendo aquella interpretación que considero más razonable y congruente no sólo con el contexto inmediato sino también con la doctrina aristotélica de los distintos sentidos de ser'." (p. 39)

3. Garcia Norro, Juan José. 2002. "¿Es correcta la divisiòn aristotélica de los predicables?" Anuario Filosófico:165-182.

"En la Edad Media la cuestión de la sufficientia praedicabilium consistía en mostrar sobre todo que el elenco de los cinco predicables que Porfirio propone en su Isagoge era completo, en el sentido de que todo lo que se predica, todo lo universal, es género, especie, diferencia, propio o accidente. Como se sabe, Porfirio se limitó a enumerar los predicables y a exponer sus rasgos distintivos, amén de compararlos entre sí para poner de relieve sus semejanzas y diferencias, pero en ningún pasaje de su celebrado opúsculo aclaró de modo explícito cuáles eran las razones que avalaban su enumeración de cinco predicables. Por tanto, sus comentaristas heredaron la tarea de probar que la división pentapartita de lo universal que Porfirio propuso en su Isagoge era adecuada y correcta. La cuestión se volvía tanto más acuciante cuanto que divergía de la enumeración del propio Aristóteles que podemos leer en los Tópicos." (p. 165)

4. González Suárez, Lucero. 2020. "Sobre los sentidos de la ousía en las Categorías y la Metafísica de Aristóteles." Logos no. 134:75-95.

Resumen: "Partiendo del reconocimiento y de la dificultad que supone la comprensión de la noción ousía, esta reflexión busca explicitar los sentidos que la misma adquiere tanto en las Categorías como en la Metafísica. La finalidad última es explicar que la aparente contradicción provocada por el hecho de que en las Categorías Aristóteles sostiene que la proté ousía es el individuo (sýnolon), mientras que en la

Metafísica dice que es el eîdos, se resuelve al entender que éste último no es una forma abstracta sino el principio de determinación del compuesto individual."

5. Mié, Fabián. 2004. "Identidad y substancia en la posición original de la teoria aristotélica de las categorías." In Diálogo con los griegos: estudios sobre Platón, Aristóteles y Plotino, edited by Santa Cruz, María Isabel, Marcos, Graciela E. and Di Camillo, Silvana G., 217-238. Buenos Aires: Colihue Universidad.

"Entre los principales problemas que presenta actualmente la interpretación de la teoría aristotélica de las categorías (TAC) se destacan dos cuestiones interrelacionadas. Por un lado, algunos autores (Michael Frede, Theodor Ebert) han tratado de explicar que el concepto original de las categorías debe entenderse en el sentido de un tipo de predicación o tipo de predicado. El intento que guía esta interpretación es el de explicar la discutida vinculación entre los llamados ‘predicables’ –que aparecen en los Tópicos– y las ‘kategoríai’. El diagnóstico al que arriba Frede dice que no existe equiparación posible entre las categorías –entendidas por él como ‘clases de predicados’– y los tipos de predicación representados por los tradicionales predicables(1). La buena orientación de esta interpretación –en tanto ella procura explicar la vinculación entre predicables y categorías sin dar por supuesta la TAC que se presenta en Categorías(2)– tiene su contrapartida en un aspecto que, a mi juicio, debe llevar a revisarla."

(1) Cf. Michael Frede, “Categories in Aristotle”, en Essays in Ancient Philosophy, Minneapolis, Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 29-48, p. 36.

(2) Tal es el intento programático en la elucidación del significado de ‘ousía’ en Tóp. I 9, llevado adelante por Frede, ob. cit. Theodor Ebert, “Gattungen der Prädikate und Gattungen des Seienden bei Aristoteles. Zum Verhältnis von Kat. 4 und Top. I 9”, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 67 (1985), 113-138, por su parte, diferencia los ‘géneros de los predicados’ (Tóp. I 9) de los ‘géneros del ser’ (Cat. 4).

6. ———. 2006. "Sustancia e inherencia en las Categorías de Aristóteles." Diánoia no. 55:17-53.

Resumen: "Las combinaciones y los tipos de relaciones posibles entre las distintas entidades que acepta la ontología de las Categorías regulan la economía ontológica de la primera metafísica aristotélica, estableciendo vínculos de prioridad y posterioridad entre las sustancias sobre la base de ciertos criterios que Aristóteles se esfuerza por clarificar. Pero el primer esencialismo aristotélico se elabora a medida que el autor de las Categorías fija una distinción entre propiedades esenciales y accidentales a fin de explicar qué es necesariamente una cosa y qué puede o no tener sin que por ello se vea afectada su propia identidad. Este texto pretende reconstruir la relación transversal entre sustancias y accidentes, perfilando la noción de accidente junto a otras de orden semántico. Esta relación, R2, se distingue de la predicación esencial, R1, que tiene lugar verticalmente entre sustancias segundas y primeras."

7. Stahl, Gérold. 1989. "Categorías aristotélicas y categorías intensionales." Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia no. 4:461-469.

Abstract: "Did Aristotle, with his categories, classify only expressions or also some thing extralinguistic? In the second case his classification seems to be not exclu sive, at least if the usual universes of discourse are considered. However, if we use certain enlarged universes, which may have more than one individual for each individual of the usual universes, we may construct exclusive general cla ssifications that approach the aristotelian categories. The latter ones should then be considered second order classes that classify classes of (extralinguistic) indivi duals. If the individuals are taken from one of the indicated enlarged universes, we can obtain the exclusivity that we do not have for the usual universes."

Estudos em português

1. do Nascimento Flores, Valdir , Gomes, Filipe Almeida, and Hoff, Sara Luiza. 2022. "A relação pensamento-língua em Benveniste e a preeminência do linguístico." Acta Scientiarum. Language and Culture no. 44:1-11.

Resumo: "O presente texto busca apresentar uma leitura do artigo seminal de Émile Benveniste ‘Categorias de pensamento e categorias de língua’. Para isso, realiza-se uma análise intratextual rigorosa desse texto. Observa-se que, quando de sua publicação, o artigo obteve grande repercussão e também recebeu severas críticas no meio filosófico em função da análise empreendida pelo linguista das categorias aristotélicas. Tendo isso em vista, este artigo busca, em um primeiro momento (cf. Introdução), contextualizar alguns aspectos da recepção do texto e apresentar alguns argumentos filosóficos que ilustram a crítica recebida por Benveniste em função de seu artigo. Em seguida, na primeira seção, opera-se uma leitura detalhada do artigo, explicitando não somente os argumentos apresentados pelo linguista, mas também o modo como eles são expostos ao longo do texto. Finalmente, na segunda seção, busca-se fundamentar uma hipótese segundo a qual Benveniste assume o ponto de vista do linguístico para propor a sua reflexão, enfatizando a função desempenhada pela língua na relação pensamento-língua. Demonstra-se, assim, que não é possível avaliar a reflexão do linguista no âmbito da compreensão da metafísica aristotélica."

2. Morici, Igor Mota. 2015. "O problema das categorias nas Categorias de Aristóteles: uma abordagem baseada nos relativos." Ética e Filosofia Política no. 18:76-96.

Resumo: "O propósito deste artigo é elucidar a noção de categoria tal como figura nas Categorias de Aristóteles. Embora tal noção seja central no pensamento de Aristóteles, jamais recebeu em seus textos qualquer definição. Após criticar a influente ideia de que as categorias são gêneros supremos, procuramos explicar o que são as categorias e qual é o papel que desempenham no opúsculo em questão. Através de uma análise dos relativos, caracterizamos a predicação como uma relação, cujos termos são as categorias. Assim, pensamos ter obtido uma chave de leitura para o problema."

3. Oliveira, Thiago Silva Freitas. 2019. "Em defesa das Categorias de Aristóteles." Prometheus no. 30:299-318.

Resumo: "Já se tornou chavão começar qualquer texto sobre as Categorias de Aristóteles tentando justificar sua inserção ou não no plano ontológico do autor, bem como sua autenticidade. Esse não é o nosso propósito aqui. Não que em leituras posteriores não possamos tentar apontar para alguma relação entre o texto em questão e outros que comporiam o eixo ontológico do pensamento de Aristóteles. De fato, e a despeito de todas as críticas (bem fundamentadas, inclusive) à linguagem, estrutura e propósito das Categorias, acreditamos que essa obra cumpriu um papel peculiar no pensamento do autor, a saber, que lhe permitiu iniciar uma distinção, mesmo que precária, entre tipos de entes, e suas classificações."

4. Santos da Silva, Flávia, and Chaves-Tannús, Marcio. 2017. "A interpretação de Benveniste sobre as Categorias de Aristóteles." Educação e Filosofia, Uberlândia no. 31:1033-1054.

Resumo: "As Categorias de Aristóteles, sobre o estudo do termo e dos diferentes gêneros do ser, têm provocado uma série de discussões e interpretações no meio científico, tanto na Filosofia como em outras disciplinas a ela relacionadas. A esse respeito, Émile Benveniste escreve o artigo “Catégories de pensée et catégories de langue”, em 1958. Esse texto, por sua vez, foi lido por alguns especialistas da Filosofia e recebeu interpretações. Dentre elas, Lallot e Ildefonse (2002) afirmam que Benveniste defende um tipo de determinismo linguístico e Pellegrin e Crubellier (2007), que a relação entre língua e pensamento é posta por ele apenas em termos gramaticais. Desta maneira, neste trabalho, temos o objetivo de examinar essas duas interpretações, comparando-as com o próprio texto de Aristóteles, a fim de discutir alguns problemas postos pela tradição por oportunidade da leitura desse autor."

5. Zingano, Marco Antônio de Ávila. 2013. "As Categorias de Aristóteles e a doutrina dos traços do ser." DoisPontos no. 10:225-254.

Resumo: "Neste artigo, propõe-se uma leitura das categorias no tratado aristotélico homônimo como um primeiro esboço de uma ontologia regional, centrada nas substâncias sensíveis. Tendo por foco substância, quantidade, qualidade, relativo, agir e sofrer, este trabalho busca expor as duas estratégias principais que Aristóteles parece empregar para chegar a uma lista das categorias: (a) características básicas, cuja satisfação ou não satisfação de cada uma determina a natureza categorial de cada item e (b) a propriedade única que caracteriza cada categoria em contraste com todas as outras. São, então, feitas considerações para vincular esse primeiro esboço ontológico a temas discutidos nos livros Lambda e Zeta da Metafísica, de modo a sugerir as direções principais que a sua ontologia nova (e geral) seguirá ao evoluir para uma teoria unificada da substância."

6. Zuppolini, Breno Andrade. 2014. "Forma lógica das proposições científicas e ontologia da predicação: Um falso dilema nos Segundos Analíticos de Aristóteles." Philósophos - Revista de Filosofia no. 19:11-45.

Resumo: "Nos Segundos Analíticos, Aristóteles impõe alguns requisitos à formulação de proposições científicas: (i) seus termos têm de poder desempenhar tanto a função de sujeito como de predicado; (ii) seus termos devem ser universais; (iii) toda demonstração deve envolver sujeitos “primeiros”, designados por termos que não podem “ser ditos de um subjacente distinto”. Diversos intérpretes, inspirados por teses do tratado das Categorias, julgaram que este terceiro requisito remete a nomes ou descrições de substâncias particulares como sujeitos básicos de enunciados predicativos, por se tratar de termos que não podem desempenhar a função lógica de predicado. Esta leitura, porém, coloca o terceiro requisito em conflito com os dois primeiros. Argumentarei que a mencionada interpretação está equivocada e que este terceiro requisito não atribui a termos singulares o papel de sujeitos básicos do discurso científico, mas apenas reconhece certa prerrogativa de predicados substanciais para ocorrerem em locuções denotativas. Consequentemente, as três exigências de Aristóteles revelar-se-ão compatíveis entre si."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The Stoic Doctrine of Supreme Genera (Categories)

Introduction

"In addition to developing the hypothetical syllogism, Stoic logic also elaborated categories, which likewise stand in contrast to Aristotelian thought. The Stoics teach that there are four categories: substance, quality, disposition, and relative disposition.(140) Rather than being horizontal, signifying aspects of an enduring substance which are accidental and which can be shorn from it without destroying its essence, the Stoic categories are vertical. They move from lesser to greater levels of concreteness. None is accidental; all must be present in a given reality if that reality is to be grasped in all its individuality. Substance denotes the materiality of a thing and is possessed by everything except the incorporeals. Quality denotes the way in which matter is organized to form an individual being. Disposition includes times, places, actions, size, and color. It describes the particular situation and attributes of the individual. All the features covered by the category of disposition, including color,(141) are regarded by the Stoics as inherent in the individual. This view harmonizes with the doctrine in Stoic physics that bodies create their own extension and their own time and space, so to speak, through their tonos and activity. Relative disposition denotes the way that an individual thing is related to other phenomena. None of the four Stoic categories can be removed from an individual being without that being ceasing to be itself. At each level of specificity the categories refer to something integral to the individual being's reality. The categories mirror the physics of concrete individual events taught by the Stoa. Although officially classified under logic, the Stoic categories are really pertinent to physics since they are modes of expressing reality.(142)"

(142) Bochenski, Ancient Formal Logic, p. 87; Bréhier, Chrysippe, pp. 132-33; Phillip De-Lacy, "The Stoic Categories as Methodological Principles,"Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 76 (1945), 246-63; Goldschmidt, Le système stoïcien, p. 23; Sambursky, Physics of the Stoics, p. 18; Sandbach, The Stoics, pp. 93-94. On the other hand, A. C. Lloyd, "Grammar and Metaphysics in the Stoa," in Problems in Stoicism, ed. Long, p. 65 and Rist, Stoic Philosophy, pp. 15260 argue that the categories should be regarded entirely as lekta. (pp. 55-56)

From: Marcia L. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. I. Stoicism in Classical Latin Literature, Leiden: Brill 1985.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography on The Stoic Doctrine of Supreme Genera (Categories)

Bibliography

1. Alesse, Francesca. 2004. "Il concetto di sostanza nello Stoicismo antico." In Metafisica logica filosofia della natura. I termini delle categorie aristoteliche dal mondo antico all'età moderna, edited by Canone, Eugenio, 79-96. Sarzana: Agorà Edizioni.

2. Barwick, Karl. 1957. Probleme der Stoischen Sprachlehre und Rhetorik. Berlin: Akademie Verlag

Abhandlungen der sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaft zu Leipzig, phil.-hist. Klasse 49.3.

3. Brunschwig, Jacques. 2003. "Metaphysics." In The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, edited by Inwood, Brad, 206-232. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

See in particular § 5.'First genera' (The So-Called Stoic Categories) pp. 227-232.

4. de Lacy, Phillip. 1945. "The Stoic Categories as Methodological Principles." Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association no. 76:246-263

"The Stoics used the four categories, substance, quality, disposition, and relative disposition, as methodological principles in all three branches of their philosophy. Moreover, in each case the third and fourth categories, disposition and relative disposition, embraced the most important questions. To the extent that the categories supply a methodological framework common to all three departments of philosophy, they constitute a unifying element. Perhaps they cannot provide an instrument for resolving all the contradictions attributed to the Stoics, but at least they give a clue to that inner unity of which the Stoics themselves boasted."

5. Delamarre, Alexandre J.L. 1980. "La notion de πτῶσις chez Aristote et les Stoïciens." In Concepts et Catégories dans la pensée antique, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 321-346. Paris: Vrin.

6. Duhot, Jean-Joël. 1991. "Y-a-t-il des catégories stoïciennes?" Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 45:220-244.

7. Evangeliou, Christos. 1994. "Plotinus on the Stoic Set of Categories." Journal of Neoplatonic Studies no. 2:21-36.

8. Goldschmidt, Victor. 1953. Les système stoicien et l'idée de temps. Paris: Vrin

Deuxième édition 1969; troisième édition 1977; quatrième édition 1979.

Voir le I. Chapitre: Les catégories pp. 13-25.

9. ———. 1972. "Hyparxein et Hyphistanai dans la philosophie stoicienne." Revue des Études Grecques:331-345.

10. Graeser, Andreas. 1971. "A propos hyparkein bei den Stoikern." Archiv für Begriffgeschichte no. 15:299-305.

11. ———. 1972. Plotinus and the Stoics. A Preliminary Study. Leiden: Brill

See in particular Chapter Four: Plotinus on the Stoic Categories of Being, pp. 87-100.

12. ———. 2006. "The Stoic Categories." In Les Stoiciens et leur logique, edited by Brunschwig, Jacques, 347-367. Paris: Vrin

Deuxième édition revue, augmentée et mise a jour (Première edition 1978, pp. 199-214).

Reprinted in: A. Graeser, Issues in the Philosophy of Language. Psst and Present. Selected Papers, Bern: Peter Lang, 1999, pp. 99-120.

13. Hadot, Pierre. 1969. "Zur Vorgeschichte des Begriffs 'Existenz'. Hyparchein bei den Stoikern." Archiv für Bregiffsgeschichte no. 13:115-127

"Das Wort exsistentia erscheint erstmalig im Lateinischen-in den theologischen Werken des Marius Victorinus, in denen es fast immer zur Übersetzung von hyparxis; dient, im Gegensatz zu dem Wort substantia das ousia übersetzt, und zu subsistentia, das hypostasis wiedergibt. (1) Exsistentia ist abgeleitet von exsistere, das in der philosophischen Sprache oft für esse eintrat, zumal in der Form des Partizips.(2) Exsistere seinerseits wurde auch zur Übersetzung von hyparkein verwendet, wie aus der Timaios-Übersetzung des Calcidius ersichtlich.(3)

Für das Verständnis der Vorgeschichte des Begriffes Existenz ist es daher unerläßlich, sorgfältig die Bedeutung zu präzisieren, die das Wort hyparkein innerhalb des technischen Wortschatzes der griechischen Philosophie aufweist, und die vorliegende Studie möchte einen Beitrag zu einer derartigen Untersuchung liefern. Zunächst soll zu zeigen versucht werden, daß das Wort hyparkein innerhalb der Stoa eine Seinsweise bezeichnet, die dem Geschehen, dem Akzidenz, dem Prädikat zukommt und der Seinsweise des Subjektes gegenübergestellt wird. Danach soll diese Bedeutung des hyparkein einerseits mit dem aristotelischen, andererseits mit dem neuplatonischen, Gebrauch dieses Wortes verglichen werden." p. 115

(1) Marius Victorinus Adversus Arium, III, 7, 9, Henry-Hadot (Sources Chrétiennes, Paris, 1960); deutsche Übersetzung, Bibliothek der alten Welt, Artemis Verlag, S. 244-245, Hadot-Brenke); Adversus Arium, II, 4, 48-57 (S. 221, Hadot-Brenke); Candidi Arriani (= Marii Victorini) ad Marium Victorinum rhetorem, I, 2, 18 (S. 74, Hadot-Brenke).

(2) CICERO, De officiis, I, 30, 107: "Ut in corporibus magnae diaim;litudines suns, sic in animis exsistunt maiores etiam uarietates " Marius Victorinus, Adversus Arium, I, 33, 7: "In potentia exsistens ad id quod est esse."

(3) Calcidius, Timaeus, 50, 23, Wasznik: "In reputatione quidem et consideratlone, uere existentis uereque peruigilis naturae." Cf. Plato, Tim. 52 B.

14. ———. 1980. "Sur divers sens du mot pragma dans la tradition philosophique grecque." In Concepts et catégories dans la pensée antique, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 309-319. Paris: Vrin

Repris dans P. Hadot, Études de philosophie ancienne, Paris: Les Belles Lettes 2010, pp. 61-76.

"Les articles consacrés au mot pragma dans les dictionnaires de la langue grecque sont en général assez longs et ils énumèrent d’habitude les sens suivants : au singulier, le résultat de l’action, l’action elle-même, l’affaire, notamment au sens juridique, le sujet en question, la chose comme réalité concrète ; au pluriel, les circonstances, les affaires de l’état, les ennuis et désagréments. Mais il se trouve assez souvent que le mot pragma prend, dans les textes philosophiques, des sens techniques très précis, pour lesquels les dictionnaires apportent peu de secours. Il est vrai que, dans ces cas difficiles, les traducteurs en difficulté recourent la plupart du temps au mot « chose » ou au mot « fait » qui permettent, par leur généralité et leur imprécision, de dissimuler le problème. La présente étude voudrait recenser quelques-uns de ces sens techniques du mot pragma et en laisser entrevoir l’arrière-plan rhétorique et philosophique." (p. 309)

(...)

"Nous avons donc étudié six types d’emplois différents du mot pragma dans la langue philosophique grecque. Ces emplois sont, en général, étroitement liés. De la notion de « ce dont on parle », on passe naturellement à celle de « sens », de « contenu conceptuel », d’« unité de sens » et d’« incorporel ». Dans tous ces sens, pragma est étroitement lié au discours et à la pensée. Il est dangereux de traduire, dans ces cas, pragma par le mot « chose », si l’on entend par « chose » une réalité extralinguistique, indépendante, extérieure à la pensée et au discours, alors que, précisément, pragma connote très souvent un rapport au discours et à la pensée. Ou bien alors, il faudrait réviser complètement la notion traditionnelle de « chose ». La présente étude pourrait ainsi apporter une modeste contribution à la réflexion sur des notions les plus confuses et pourtant les plus centrales de la tradition philosophique." (p. 319)

15. Imbert, Claude. 1986. "Pour une réinterpétation des catégories stoiciennes." In Philosophie du langage et grammaire dans l'Antiquité, 263-285. Bruxelles: Éditions Ousia.

16. Ioppolo, Anna Maria. 2004. "Le categorie del pos echon e del pros ti pos echon nello Stoicismo antico." In Metafisica logica filosofia della natura. I termini delle categorie aristoteliche dal mondo antico all'età moderna, edited by Canone, Eugenio, 63-78. Sarzana: Agorà Edizioni.

17. Isnardi Parente, Margherita. 1986. "Simplicio, gli Stoici e le categorie." Rivista di Storia della Filosofia no. 41:3-18.

18. Menn, Stephen. 1999. "The Stoic Theory of Categories." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 17:215-247.

19. Reesor, Margaret E. 1954. "The Stoic Concept of Quality." American Journal of Philology no. 78:63-82.

20. ———. 1957. "The Stoic Categories." American Journal of Philology no. 75:40-58.

21. ———. 1972. "Poion and Poiotes in Stoic Philosophy." Phronesis no. 17:279-285.

22. Rist, John Michael. 1969. "Categories and Their Uses." In Stoic Philosophy, edited by Rist, John Michael, 152-172. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Reprinted in A. A. Long (ed.), Problems in Stoicism, London: Athlone Press, 1971, pp. 38-57.

23. Schubert, Andreas. 1994. Untersuchungen zur stoischen Bedeutungslehre. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Inhalt: Vorwort 7; Einleitung 9; I. Kapitel: Die Identität des Lektons 15; II. Die Identität der unvollständingen Lekta und die stoischen "Fälle" 57; III. Die Unkörperlichkeit der Lekta 110; IV. Das Konzept des Lektons in seiner Genese und in der philosophischen Diskussion 131; V. "hyparchein" und "hyphistasthai" bei den Stoikern 149; VI. "Bedeutungslehre" bei Aristoteles und Augustinus und ihr Verhältnis zur stoischen Semantik 175; VII. Die stoische "Kategorienlehre" 199; Appendix: Bemerkungen zu "hyparchein" und "hyphistasthai" im philosophischen Schriftttum und im Corpus Hippocraticum 246; Abkürzungsverzeichnis 261; Bibliographie 263; Index nominum 275; Index locorum 278-284

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Plotinus' Criticism of Aristotle's Categories (Enneads VI, 1-3) [42-44]

Introduction

"In VI, 1-3 [42-44] Plotinus severely criticizes the Aristotelian (VI, 1 [42], 1-24) and the Stoic (VI, 1 [42], 25-30) doctrines of categories. Following in the footsteps of Plato for the Intelligible world (VI, 2 [43]), he proposes five categories, being, identity, otherness, movement and repose, the "greatest kinds" of the 'Sophist'. For the sensible world he presents us with an emended and simplified system of five Aristotelian categories, substance, quantity, quality, relation and movement (but he certainly seems to derive these latter from the Intelligible in VI, 2 [43], 21,24-59).

1) What are the categories of the sensible world and what is their status? Are they classifications of words, concepts or things? Does Plotinus subordinate the Aristotelian categories to the Platonic genera or does he accept Aristotle's categories as proposed but limit their usefulness exclusively to the domain of the sensible? Evangeliou argues that Plotinus accepted only the ontological interpretation of the Aristotelian categorical theory and, therefore, rejected them. Anton tends more to the view that while Plotinus rejects Aristotelian doctrine, he also subordinates it to the Platonic genera of VI, 2 [43]. Wurm also holds the view (at the beginning of his book) that Plotinus uses Aristotle's categories to express the divisions of the sensible world and presents them as a sort of intermediate help to the knowledge of the intelligibles, but he also contradicts this at the end of his book, which perhaps accurately reflects Plotinus' altogether negative attitude in VI, 3 [44]. (25)

2) How is sensible substance, then, to be related to intelligible substance? C. Rutten had argued that Plotinus' treatment of the categories was nominalistic, that it made of his system an absolute idealism re Intelligibles, but a nominalism re sensibles. Against this mistaken, but widely accepted thesis, Wurm has shown convincingly that Plotinus' philosophy is objective, not merely psychological, and that the objective knowledge of Intelligible entities is the ground for the perception of sensible substances, which are a collection of qualities in matter manifesting intelligible logoi and not merely a projection of thought upon appearances. Therefore, the charge of nominalism re sensibles is not well founded.

3) But how is homonymous sensible substance grounded in Intelligible substance? Plotinus refuses to grant that the term "substance" can be attributed synonymously to all the substances admitted by Aristotle. But at VI, 1 [42] 3,1-5 he does suggest that we might take Intelligible substance, matter, form and compound together as an individual category in the same way as we might say the clan of the Heracleidae constitutes one genus, in the sense that they are all derived from one source. This would make of Intelligible substance the focal unity of the otherwise purely homonymous principles, form and matter, in sensible things and would perhaps permit of interpretation along the lines of an Aristotelian pros hen equivocal.

Hadot, in a fascinating and extremely careful piece of detective work, (26) has uncovered, from the commentary of Dexippus on the 'Categories', a residue of a lost commentary by Porphyry on the 'Categories' and addressed to Gedalius (and transformed by lamblichus in Simplicius according to Iamblichus' own metaphysical assumptions), in which Porphyry tried to show that the systematisation of substances in Bk. XII of the 'Metaphysics' was not incompatible with the Plotinian doctrine of substance (Dexippus, In Categ., 40, 13 --42, 3 Busse). Aristotle speaks of three kinds of substance (two sensible and one an immobile, Intelligible substance), Porphyry of a) sensible, composite substance, b) physical substance i.e. incorruptible substance in the light of the incorruptible principles of the physical world, matter and form, and c) Intelligible substance (Dexippus, p. 41); and they are related in such a way that although there is homonymy between sensible and Intelligible substance, there is also a relation of analogy based upon developments in that notion in Metaph. XII (1070 B 30-1071 B 3) which require that all substances ultimately have reference to Intelligible substance from which they come forth (Hadot, p. 44).

Aubenque, by contrast, has stressed (1) that it is from Plato (Rep. 508 BC), and not from Aristotle, that the idea could be developed that analogical unity is founded on the unity of convergence pros hen) or dependence (aphi enós) (27) and (2) that there is a genuinely Aristotelian refusal (implicit in Plotinus, explicit in Proclus) to confuse focal unity and analogy and to play simultaneously on the two tableaux, the vertical and the horizontal. Such a confusion, according to Aubenque, would be to suppress the liberty of the One in favour of "une sorte d'administration de la procession", (73-74). This makes us see quite clearly how important is the radical gulf between Intelligible reality and its images. This concern has also been urged by Hadot.

4) Wurm (Substanz and Qualitat, Berlin, 1973) has maintained, in a similar vein, that Plotinus only employs the Aristotelian immanent, substantial form in such cases where there is no nearer concept. Hence, the disappearance of the substantial form in sensible substances in VI, 3 [44] is Plotinus' true position, perhaps a correction of his earlier avowed position in II, 6 [17], according to which quality may be viewed in either of two ways: as inhering in substance it is an act, as coming after substance it is pure quality (for the 'correction' VI, 2 [43], 14). Strange (Diss. U. of Texas, Austin, 1981) sees this as clear evidence for a development in Plotinus' thought. This new position where the sensible species of the object is nothing more than the conjunction of the sensible differentiae leads to the position of the 'Isagoge' (18, 23-19, 3), that the form-species is constituted by the sum of the differentiae. Szlezák (GGA 227, 216-225) criticizes Wurm's position; the productive logos of VI, 3 [44], 15, 27ff. is the Aristotelian form, which Plotinus does not reject. One may say in review of Szlezák's view that, on the one hand, it does not square with the sharp dichotomy of the logical treatises between Intelligible and sensible; on the other hand, however, the foundation of discourse is what is important to Plotinus here. In VI, 1 [42] and 3 [44] the ultimate ground is matter and, therefore, no principle of inner organic unity can reveal itself. Perhaps then one should not reject too strictly a place for the "psychological" in Plotinus' thinking. But there is no need because of the Platonic form of argument in VI, 103 [42-44] to disregard genuine dialogue with Aristotle in a context elsewhere. Plotinus' thought is full of apparent inconsistencies, but the difference between II, 6 [17] and the logical treatises may still only be one of standpoint. Where the inquiry is founded upon Being, then quality, quantity, movement, even matter and bodies (as Porphyry's argument in Dexippus might well be understood to claim) will be discovered "there" (VI, 2 [43], 21, 24-59) to be reflected later in an ad hoc "material" classification which has already lost the focus of any objective foundation for thought.

In the views of this "new wave" of scholars, then (Wurm, Szlezák, Evangeliou, Anton, Strange, Hadot, Henry), Plotinus' treatment of the genera of being is given a more sympathetic treatment. Anton emphasizes the importance of Plotinus' reconstruction of categorical theory for the history of the criticism of classical Aristotelianism.

Hadot, Henry and Wurm have done most to bring about this change of attitude by locating Plotinus' written philosophy within the larger context of Plato and Aristotle or of a Plotinian oral teaching on substance, quantity etc. in Porphyry, Dexippus and Simplicius. Thus, it has become legitimate to ask not only (1) what does Aristotle mean, (2) how does Plotinus understand and refute him and (3) how is this viewed by later commentators, but also (4) who is right, to what degree and in what sense. (28)" (pp. 579-581)

Notes

(25) C. Evangeliou, "The Ontological Basis of Plotinus' Criticism of Aristotle's Theory of Categories", in: The Structure of Being, ed. R. B. Harris, Albany, N. Y. 1982, 73-82; J. Anton, "Plotinus' Approach to Categorical Theory", in: The Significance of Neoplatonism, ed. R. B. Harris, Albany, N. Y. 1976, 83-100; K. Wurm, Substanz und Qualität, Berlin 1973.

(26) "L'harmonie des philosophies de Plotin et d'Aristote selon Porphyre", in: Plotino e il Neoplatonismo, Rome 1974, 31-47.

(27) "Néoplatonisme et analogie de l'être", in: Néoplatonisme, Cahiers de Fontenay, 1981, 63-67.

(28) P. Henry, "The Oral Teaching of Plotinus", Dionysus, 6, 1982, 4-12, cf. also Id., "Trois apories Orales de Plotin sur les Catégories d'Aristote", in: Zetesis, 1973, 234-267.

From: Kevin Corrigan, Padraig O'Clereigh, "The Course of Plotinian Scholarship from 1971-1986". In Wolfgang Haase (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (ANRW). Teil II: Principat. Band 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. I. Teilband: Philosophie (Historische Einleitung; Platonismus), Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 1987, pp. 571-623.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography on Plotinus' Criticism of Aristotle's Categories

Bibliographical resources on Plotinus

1. Mariën, Bert. 1949. "Bibliografia Critica Degli Studi Plotiniani Con Rassegna Delle Loro Recensioni." In Plotino. Enneadi, 389-651. Bari: Laterza.

In: Plotino, Enneadi. Prima versione integra e commentario critico a cura di Vincenzo Cilento. Vol. I: Enn. I, II, 1947; Vol. II: Enn. IIII, IV, 1948; Vol. III, Parte I, Enn. V, VI, 1949; Vol. III, Parte II Commento ad Enn. V, VI e Bibliografia, 1949.

Pubblicata anche in volume a parte (1463 titoli).

2. Bonetti, Aldo. 1971. "Studi Intorno Alla Filosofia Di Plotino." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 63:487-511.

Review of the most significant studies on Neoplatonism beginning with Eduard Zeller (1903) up to Pietro Prini (1968).

3. Blumenthal, Henry J. 1987. "Plotinus in the Light of Twenty Years' Scholarship, 1951-1971." In Aufstieg Und Niedergang Der Römischen Welt (Anrw). Teil Ii: Principat. Band 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. I. Teilband: Philosophie (Historische Einleitung; Platonismus), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 528-570. Berlin: de Gruyter.

"The text of this article was completed in January 1973. - Though some important work appeared thereafter, the general picture remained substantially the same four years later, when the bibliography was added. This, combined with supervening pressures, dissuaded me from attempting to rewrite the whole Forschungsbericht at that time (April 1977). Details of work known to me up to the beginning of 1977 which had not been taken into account in the article itself will be found in the bibliography, which was compiled then, at the editors' request. It also includes some works that were not thought worth mentioning in the original article. In view of the constantly impending but repeatedly delayed imminent publication of the volume in which it appears, I have made no further changes since 1977." p. 528

"The year 1951 easily chose itself for the start of a survey of recent work on Plotinus. It saw two events of outstanding importance. First the appearance of the first volume of HENRY and SCHWYZER'S edition, undoubtedly the most important contribution to Plotinian scholarship since Porphyry published the 'Enneads'. In the same year was published SCHWYZER'S article 'Plotinos' in PAULY-WISSOWA, the first comprehensive and scholarly survey of Plotinus. It remains the best and most reliable introduction to the study of Plotinus even after the considerable progress that has been made over the last twenty years. This article will not attempt to emulate SCHWYZER'S work, or to produce what could be little more than a condensed version of it, but will refer the reader to it for an introduction, and much more, to the subject: he will find that all work of any importance up to that time has there been taken into account. Instead it will try to show what has been done since, against a background of the hitherto accepted position, and to indicate some of the more important tasks for the immediate future." p. 529.

4. Corrigan, Kevin, and O'Cleirigh, Padraigh. 1987. "The Course of Plotinian Scholarship from 1971-1986." In Aufstieg Und Niedergang Der Römischen Welt (Anrw). Teil Ii: Principat. Band 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. I. Teilband: Philosophie (Historische Einleitung; Platonismus), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 571-623. Berlin: de Gruyter.

See in particular: The Categories and the genera of Being pp. 579-580.

5. Dufour, Richard. 2001. "Plotinus: A Bibliography 1950-2000." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 46:235-411.

Compiled by Richard Dufour with help in translation from Hanneke Teunissen.

Contents: Acknowledgments 235; Introduction; 237-239; Reference Works 241; Abbreviations 243; List of collected volumes, miscellanea and Conference proceedings 253; Greek text and translations 257; Studies 271 [1542 entries] 271; Index of themes 395; Index of Authors and Themes 401; Index of Treatises 409; Index of Greek Words 411.

Reprinted as separate volume: Leiden, Brill, 2002.

From the Introduction: "This bibliography covers the fruits of Plotinian scholarship over the last fifty years (1950-2000). Completed with four different indexes, it will provide students and scholars with easy access to modern Plotinian studies.

My work derives much inspiration from Luc Brisson's bibliography of Plato, which served as an exemplary model and the principles of which have guided me throughout the compilation of this bibliography. With the exception of the indexes, the presentation of my bibliography follows the general principle of Luc Brisson's work in Lustrum (now published by Vrin).

This bibliography aims to be exhaustive. References were systematically taken from indexes, bibliographies, journals, conference proceedings, annuals and collections of articles. A full list of these is given later.

Fewer references are listed for 1995 and the following years due to the fact that most Bibliographical reference works have not yet reached the Year 2000. L'Année Philologique, for example, has just published the volume covering the year 1997. For this reason we not only miss three full years of indexing up to 2000, but also supplements to the preceding years. It is possible, in fact, that the volume covering the year 2000 will provide bibliographic references from 1995 to 2000. In order to close the gap, I studied library catalogues, frequented bookshops and consulted most recent issues of the major journals. These efforts, however, can never contend the incredible amount of work by institutions like L'Année Philologique. As a result, the exhaustiveness of this bibliography is slowly reduced as we near the new millennium.

(...)

Four different indexes may be consulted referring to all information in the respective entries. In order, these indexes are arranged by:

1) Theme. Key-words are arranged in alphabetical order.

2) Author-theme. All entries which include an author other than Plotinus are listed in this index. Sub-categories have been added in order to facilitate specific searches. It is thus possible to search for all articles pertaining to, for example, Plotinus and Aristotle.

3) Treatise. Adhering to the Porphyrian system of classification of the Enneads, a list of studies concerning a specific treatise has been assembled. Only references which explicitly refer to one treatise are listed. For example, not every article concerning the Gnostics is automatically included in Column II, 9. All references to Gnostics may be found in the index "Author-theme" under the heading "Gnostics".

4) Greek word. All words and expressions in ancient Greek occurring in the entries are listed in transliterated form." pp. 237-239.

6. ———. 2009. "Bibliographie Plotinienne: 2000-2009." Études Platoniciennes no. 6:295-365.

Critical editions of the Enneads

1. Plotinus. 1951. Plotini Opera. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer.

Editio maior: vol. I: Porphyrii Vita Plotini / Enneades 1-3 (1951); vol. II Enneades 4-5. / Plotiniana Arabica [The Theology of Aristotle] / ad codicum fidem anglice vertit Geoffrey Lewis (1959); vol.III: Enneas 6 (1973).

2. ———. 1964. Plotini Opera. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Editio minor: vol. I: Porphyrii vita Plotini. Enneades 1-3 (1964); vol. II; Enneades 4-5 (1977); vol. III: Enneas 6 (1982).

Translations of Enneads VI 1-3 [42-44]

1. Plotinus. 1966. Enneads. London: Heinemann.

Greek text with and English translation by A. H. Armstrong in seven volumes.

2. ———. 2008. Traités 42-44. Sur Les Genres De L'être, I, Ii Et Iii. Paris: GF Flammarion.

Présentés, traduits et annotés par Luc Brisson.

3. ———. 1994. Plotino. Enneadi Vi 1-3. Trattati 42-44 Sui Generi Dell'essere. Napoli: Loffredo.

Introduzione, testo greco, traduzione, commento a cura di Margherita Isnardi Parente.

Selected bibliography on the Categories in Plotinus

1. Anton, John P. 1976. "Plotinus' Approach to Categorical Theory." In The Significance of Neoplatonism, edited by Harris, Ramson Baine, 83-100. Norfolk: International Society for Neoplatonism Studies.

2. Aubenque, Pierre. 1985. "Plotin et Dexippe, exégètes des Catégories d'Aristote." In Aristotelica. Mélanges offerts à Marcel de Corte, 7-40. Bruxelles: Ousia

Repris P. Aubenque, Problèmes aristotéliciens. I: Philosophie théorique, Paris: Vrin 2009, pp. 281-304.

3. ———. 1991. "Une occasion manquée: la genèse avortée de la distinction entre l' "étant" et le "quelque chose"." In Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 365-387. Napoli: Bibliopolis

Repris dans P. Aubenque, Problèmes aristotéliciens. I: Philosophie théorique, Paris: Vrin 2009, pp. 307-320.

4. Baltzly, Dirk C. 1998. "Porphyry and Plotinus on the reality of relations." Journal of Neoplatonic Studies no. 6:49-75

"Porphyry and Plotinus disagree over the question whether Aristotle was successful in dividing the world at its joints in the Categories, with Plotinus (Enn. VI, 1-3) arguing that he was not successful, Porphyry (in his commentary on the Categories) arguing that he was. Porphyry, however, has the clearer account of relations and relational properties and, consequently, Plotinus' account does not adequately meet objections to the autonomy of Aristotle's category of relation. This is a problem for Plotinus because he retains the category of relation in his own five-fold scheme of categories."

5. Bauloye, Laurence, and Rutten, Christian. 2004. "Genres et catégories chez Aristote, chez Plotin et chez Averroès." In Platon et Aristote. Dialectique et Métaphysique, edited by Tsimbidaros, Ilias, 103-119. Bruxelles: Ousia.

6. Caluori, Damian. 2008. "Plotinus on Primary Being." In Substantia - Sic et Non. Eine Geschichte des Substanzbegriffs von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart in Einzelbeiträgen, edited by Gutschmidt, Holger, Lang-Balestra, Antonella and Segalerba, Gianluigi, 85-103. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.

7. Charles-Saget, Annick. 1988. "Polémique et philosophie: Plotin, Ennéades, VI. I, 4-5, Aristote, Catégories, 6." Les Études Philosophiques:157-165.

8. Chiaradonna, Riccardo. 1996. "Porfirio e Giamblico critici di Plotino nei commenti alle Categorie di Dexippo e Simplicio." Florentia Iliberitana no. 7:77-91.

9. ———. 2002. Sostanza Movimento Analogia. Plotino critico di Aristotele. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

10. ———. 2004. "The categories and the status of the physical world: Plotinus and the Neo-Platonic commentators." In Philosophy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries. Vol. One, edited by Adamson, Peter, Baltussen, Han and Stone, M.W.F., 121-136. London: Institute of Classical Studies, University of London.

11. ———. 2004. "Le categorie in Plotino: tra logica e fisica: il caso della sostanza (Enn. VI 3[44], 8.12-37)." In Metafisica logica filosofia della natura. I termini delle categorie aristoteliche dal mondo antico all'età moderna, edited by Canone, Eugenio, 137-154. Sarzana: Agorà Edizioni.

12. Cilento, Vincenzo. 1973. "Categorie del sensibile." In Saggi su Plotino, 83-96. Milano: Mursia

Recensione di Christian Rutten, Les catégories du monde sensible dans les Ennéades de Plotin, Paris: Les Belles Lettres 1961.

13. Collette, Bernard. 2002. Dialectique et hénologie chez Plotin. Bruxelles: Ousia

"Qu'est que le monde intelligible pour Plotin et comment l'homme peut-il y accéder ? Telles sont les deux questions à la base de cet ouvrage dans lequel l'auteur a choisi de confronter le dire et le faire, la doctrine métaphysique et la pratique philosophique. Pour y répondre, il analyse, dans un premier temps, la théorie des facultés de connaître et celle du langage telles qu'elles se laissent dessiner au fil des Ennéades, afin de mettre en évidence à la fois les potentialités propres à chacune de ces facultés et le type de discours philosophique le plus apte à révéler le monde intelligible dans toute sa complexité. De la première recherche, il ressort que : ce que Platon, dans le Sophiste, appelle la " science des hommes libres " apparaît, chez Plotin, comme la "partie précieuse de la philosophie" dont le lieu propre est le Noûs. Dans la deuxième partie de l'ouvrage, l'auteur explique comment, dans le traité VI.2 (43) intitulé Des genres premiers de l'Être, Plotin se sert de la méthode dialectique pour révéler les cinq genres premiers que sont l'être, le mouvement, le repos, le même et l'autre. Par là, il nous donne l'occasion de rentrer dans l'un des plus difficiles traités plotiniens et aussi l'un des moins commentés, où le monde intelligible se dévoile comme une suntaxis, un système d'ordonnancement, à travers les deux structures héno-logiques que sont le genre-espèces et le tout-parties."

14. ———. 2007. Plotin et l'ordonnancement de l'être. Paris: Vrin.

15. Donini, Pierluigi. 2006. "Plotino e la tradizione dei neoplatonici e dei commentatori aristotelici." In Plotino e l'ontolologia, edited by Bianchetti, Matteo, 17-32. Milano: Albo Versorio.

16. Dufour, Richard. 2006. "Plotin et les stoïciens." Études Platoniciennes no. 3:177-194.

17. Elsby, Charlene. 2014. "Plotinus on the Reality of the Category of Reality." Quaestiones Disputatae no. 4:42-57.

18. Evangeliou, Christos. 1982. "The ontological basis of Plotinus' criticism of Aristotle's theory of categories." In The Structure of Being. A Neoplatonic Approach, edited by Harris, Ramson Baine, 73-82. Albany: State University of New York Press.

19. ———. 1985. "Aristotle's doctrine of predicables and Porphyry's Isagoge." Journal of the History of Philosopy no. 23:15-34

"Porphyry's Isagoge was intended as an introductory study to the dialectical methods by way of clarifying the meanings and logical functions of the five predicable terms. To consider the Isagoge as an introduction to Aristotle's Topics or Categories and to criticize Porphyry for failing to present accurately the doctrines of Aristotle is therefore unfair and misleading."

20. ———. 1987. "The Plotinian reduction of Aristotle's Categories." Ancient Philosophy no. 7:147-162

Reprinted in: A. Preus, J. P. Antony (eds.), Aristotle's Ontology. Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy, Vol. V - Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992, pp. 47-67.

21. ———. 1988. Aristotle's Categories and Porphyry. Leiden: Brill.

22. ———. 1994. "Plotinus on the Stoic set of categories." Journal of Neoplatonic Studies no. 2.

23. ———. 2001. "Plotinus' criticism of materialism." In Neoplatonism and Indian Philosophy, edited by Gregorios, Paulos, 199-209. New York: State of New York University Press

"In Ennead VI. 1, Plotinus criticized not only Aristotle's set of categories, but also what he considered as the Stoic set of categories. He found both sets of categories unacceptable for many reasons, but especially for their inapplicability to the intelligible realm of being which, for him, is more important than the realm of sensible becoming. The study examines critically the reasons for Plotinus's criticism of the Stoic doctrine of categories, to the logic of which he objected primarily because of its presupposed ontological materialism."

24. ———. 2002. "Plotinus' Set of Categories for the κόσμος αἰσθητός." In Neoplatonism and Nature. Studies in Plotinus' Enneads, edited by Wagner, Michael F., 209-239. Albany: State University of New York Press

"In Ennead VI. 1, Plotinus criticized Aristotle's categories one by one. He found the Aristotelian doctrine of categories as a whole unacceptable for many reasons, but especially for its inapplicability to the intelligible realm of being and its superficiality regarding the sensible realm of becoming, for which it was intended. In Ennead VI.3, he proposed a new set of categories for the kosmos aisthetos, which is characterized by a reduction of Aristotle's set by fifty per cent and by the introduction of motion as one of the five categories. The study examines critically Plotinus's reasons for such a radical reduction and such a Platonic innovation."

25. Gerson, Lloyd P. 1994. Plotinus. New York: Routledge

See in particular Chapter Five: Categories and the tradition pp. 79-103: 1. The criticism of Stoic categories 79; 2. The criticism of Aristotle's categories 84; 3. Aristotelian essentialism 93, 4. The Plotinian categories 96-103 (Notes to Chapter Five: 256-261).

26. Graeser, Andreas. 1972. Plotinus and the Stoics. A Preliminary Study. Leiden: Brill

Part II. Essays - Chapter IV: Plotinus on the Stoic Categories of Being, pp. 87-100.

27. Gurtler, Gary M. 1988. "The origin of genera. Ennead VI, 2,[43],20." Dionysius no. 12:3-15

"Plotinus' apparent incapability of accomplishing his general purpose in VI, 1-3 [42-44] and his specific task in VI, 2[43] 20 of relating Neoplatonic ontology and Aristotelian logic is due to a mistranslation and misinterpretation of two sections, vi, 2, 20, 4-6 and vi, 2, 20, 20-32."

28. Haas, Frans A.J.de. 2001. "Did Plotinus and Porphyry Disagree on Aristotle's Categories?" Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 46:492-526

"In this paper I propose a reading of Plotinus Enneads VI.1-3 [41-43] On the genera of being which regards this treatise as a coherent whole in which Aristotle's Categories is explored in a way that turns it into a decisive contribution to Plotinus' Platonic ontology. In addition, I claim that Porphyry's Isagoge and commentaries on the Categories start by adopting Plotinus' point of view, including his notion of genus, and proceed by explaining its consequences for a more detailed reading of the Categories. After Plotinus' integration of the Categories into the Platonic frame of thought Porphyry saw the possibilities of exploiting the Peripatetic tradition both as a means to support the Platonic interpretation of the Categories and as a source for solutions to traditional questions. His allegiance to a division of being into ten, and his emphasis on semantics rather than ontology can be explained from this orientation. In the light of our investigation the alleged disagreement between Plotinus and Porphyry on the Categories changes its appearance completely. There are differences, but these can be best explained as confirmation and extension of Plotinus' perspective on the Categories and its role in Platonism." (p. 492)

29. ———. 2004. "Context and strategy of Plotinus' treatise on The Genera of Being (Enn. VI 1-3 [42-44])." In Aristotele e i suoi esegeti nepolatonici. Logica e ontologia nelle interpretazioni greche e arabe, edited by Celluprica, Vincenza and D'Ancona, Cristina, 39-53. Napoli: Biblipolis

Atti del Convegno Internazionale. Roma 19-20 ottobre 2001.

30. Hadot, Pierre. 1974. "L'harmonie des philosophies de Plotin et d'Aristote selon Prophyre dans le Commentaire de Dexippe sur les Catégories." In Plotino e il neoplatonismo in Oriente e in Occidente, edited by Cerulli, Vincenzo, 31-47. Roma: Accademia nazionale dei Lincei.

31. Hartmann, Eduard von. 1899. Geschichte der Metaphysik. Leipzig: Hermann Haacke

Erste Band:

Plotin als Wendepunkt der alten und mittelalterlichen Philosophie.

Plotins Verhältnis zu den Vorgängern 106; a) Die Kategorien der Sinnenwelt 108; Die relativistischen Kategorien und die Usia 108; Der Stoff 111; Quantität 113; Qualität 115; Kraft 117; Bewegung und Ruhe 118; Zeit 120; Raum 122; Relation 123; Kausalität 125; Universelle Sympathie 127; Teleologischer Panlogismus 128; Notwendigkeit 129; Aktive und passive Möglichkeit 131; Die Lehre vom intelligiblen Stoff 133; b) Die Kategorien der intelligiblen Welt 135; Das Problem 135; Quantität, Qualität und Relation vom Intelligiblen ausgeschlossen 137; Das intelligible Ineinandersein der Ideen 139; Ständigkeit und intelligible Bewegung 141; Die intellektuelle Anschauung und ihr Geschautes 144; Energie und Hypostase 145; Nus, Logos und Sophia 147; Aufstieg vom Nus zum Einen 149; c) Das Eine im Verhältnis zu den Kategorien 153; Das Ringen nach dem Substanzbegriff 153; Das Eine als überseiender Grund des Seins 155; Die positiven Bestimmungen des Einen 157; Die "analogen" Bestimmungen des Einen 159; d) Das Verhältnis der drei Kategoriensphären 160; Unterschied und Verwandtschaft der Kategorien der drei Sphären 160; Richtiges und Unrichtiges in Plotins Kategorienlehre 162; Die Kategorien in der Weltseele 164; Das Intelligible in der Weltseele und im Nus 166; Der Nus als logische Allmöglichkeit 169; Die Immanenz des Einen in den übrigen Sphären 172; Die Stufenreihe der Hypostasen 174-186.

32. Henry, Paul. 1973. "Trois apories orales de Plotin sur les Catégories d'Aristote." In Zetesis. Festschrift für E. de Strycker, 234-265. Antwerpen/Utrecht: De Nederlandsche Boekhandel.

33. ———. 1987. "Apories orales de Plotin sur les Catégories d'Aristote." In Aristoteles. Werk und Wirkung. Paul Moraux zum 65 Geburtstag gewidmet - Band 2: Kommentierung, Uberlieferung, Nachleben, edited by Wiesner, Jürgen, 120-156. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

34. Lask, Emil. 1911. Die Logik der Philosophie und die Kategorienlehre: eine Studie über den Herrschaftsbereich der Logischen Form. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr

Second edition 1923 (E. Lask - Werke - Vol. 2); reprinted in 1993 and in 2003 by Dietrich Scheglmann Reprintverlag, Jena, with the essay Die Lehre vom Urteil.

On Plotinus see the IV Chapter: Die philosophischen Kategorien in der Geschichte der theorischen Philosophie. pp. 222-243.

35. ———. 2002. La logique de la philosophie et la doctrine des catégories. Étude sur la forme logique et sa souveraineté. Paris: Vrin

Traduit de l'allemand par Jean-François Courtine, Marc de Launay, Dominique Pradelle et Philippe Quesne.

Table des matières: Préface de Marc de Launay 7; Avant-propos 31; Introduction 33; Première partie: Logique des catégories de l'être 53; Seconde partie: Logique des catégories philosophiques 107; Chapitre I: Logique des catégories philosophiques 107; Chapitre II: L'image d'ensemble du système des catégories 147; Chapitre III: Las connaissance philosophique 189; Chapitre IV: Les catégories philosophiques dans l'histoire mde la philosophie théorique 226; Conclusion 265; Appendice (Extrait d'une lettre à Heinrich Rickert du 27 novembre 1910) 268; Glossaire 281; Index nominum 287-288.

Sur Plotin voir: Chapitre IV, Première section. Aristote. Plotin. Le Moyen Age pp. 226-243.

36. Maskaleut, Steve. 2005. "Critique du relatif par Plotin: le traité des genres de l'être VI, 1[42], 6-9." Dionysius no. 23:7-29

"Plotinus' treatise on the kinds of being (VI, 1[42]) criticizes the category of the relative (pros ti) found in Aristotle and in Stoic writers. Starting from a different foundation, Plotinus postulates certain Platonic principles which control his own theory of the relative -- a theory he does not explain, but which he uses in part in order to support his criticism. Examination of the premises of Plotinus' criticism, its logic, and its limitations allows us to evaluate its pertinence compared with the two other theories of the relative against which it argues. Plotinus effects a separation between two different kinds of relative. From this premise come certain consequences : 1) Plotinus does not succeed in giving sense and unity to the relative except by way of detour into the Forms. 2) Thus Plotinus does not respond directly to the problem posed by the relative. 3) The unity of the relative in Aristotle implicates a necessary variability which Plotinus has not taken into account, because it conflicts with the idea of a homogenous ordered sequence. 4) The question of what relation the Forms have to each other remains open."

37. Montet, Danielle. 1996. Archéologie et Généalogie. Plotin et la théorie platonicienne des genres. Grenoble: J. Millon.

38. Nebel, Gerhard. 1929. Plotins Kategorien der intelligiblen Welt. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Idee. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr

The first part is on the theory of forms; the second on the theory of categories.

39. Rutten, Christian. 1961. Les catégories du monde sensible dans les Ennéades de Plotin. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

40. Schroeder, Frederic M. 2020. "The Categories and Plotinian Aesthetics." Science et Esprit no. 72:115-136

Summary: "Aristotle regards the informed particular as primary substance and real.

Plotinus as a Platonist sees intelligible substance as real and the particulars that belong to a genus as secondary substance and ontically deficient. To avoid the infinite regress involved in predicating the Form both of the particular and the Form Aristotle locates the Form in the particular. Plotinus preserves the transcendence of Form by replacing the Aristotelian predication by synonymy with a system of predication built on pros hen equivocity. The Form then becomes eidos aneideon, “formless form.” This formless form is, not a restricted entity, but rather as an ocean of possibity. As such it dismisses the world of Aristotelian science and opens up new possibilities for understanding art. The Form is regarded as an individual aspect of the intelligible world which is expressed in a P-series which extends from the intelligible world to sensible reality."

41. Strange, Steven K. 1987. "Plotinus, Porphyry, and the Neoplatonic Interpretation of the Categories." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Teil II: Principat. Band 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technick. II. Teilband: Philosophie (Historische Einelietung, Platonismus), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 955-974. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

42. Szlezák, Thomas Alexander. 1975. "[Rezenzion:] K. Wurm, Substanz und Qualität. Ein Beitrag zur Interpretation der Plotinischen Traktate VI 1,2 und 3, 1973." Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen no. 227:216-225.

43. Wurm, Klaus. 1973. Substanz und Qualität. Ein Beitrag zur Interpretation der Plotinischen Traktate VI 1, 2 und 3. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter

Inhalt: Vorwort V; Einleitung und Übersicht 1; Erster Teil. Substanz und Qualität bei Platon und Aristoteles; Kapitel I. Der kategoriale Gegensatz von Sein und ERscheinung und die Form seiner Vermittlung bei Platon 7; Kapitel II. Die aristotelische Kategorienlehre als Theorie der bewegten Wirklichkeit 60; Zweiter Teil. Substanz und Qualität bei Plotin; Kapitel III. Die kategoriale Unterschiedenheit von geistigen und sinnlich wharnehmbarem Sein als Ausgangspunkt der plotinischen Aristoteles-Kritik 133; Kapitel IV. Die Trennung von Seinsaussage und Seinsbegründung als Voraussetzung für die Anerkernnung der aristotelischen Kategorien durch die Platoniker 167; Kapitel VC. Plotinus Frage nach der Leistung des diskursiven Denkens bei der Seinserkenntnis als Grundlage seiner Aussagen zum Kategorienproblem 221-262.

44. Zeller, Eduard. 1903. Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung dargestellt. Leipzig: Fues Verlag

IV. Edition Band III, 2.

45. Zhyrkova, Anna. 2004. "The Doctrine of Categories in Neoplatonism." In Being or Good? Metamorphoses of Neoplatonism, edited by Kijewska, Agnieszka. Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL.

A selction of studies on Plotinus (in progress...)

1. Les sources de Plotin. Dix exposés et discussions. 1960. Genève: Fondation Hardt.

Table des matières: E. R. Dodds: Numenius and Ammonius; W. Theiler: Plotin zwischen Platon und Stoa; Pierre Hadot: Être, vie, pensée chez Plotin et avant Plotin; H: C. Puech: Plotin et les gnostiques; H. Dorrie: Die Frage nach dem Transzendenten im Mittelplatonismus; V. Cilento: Mito e poesia nelle Enneadi di Plotino; R. Harder: Quelle oder Tradition?; H: R. Schwyzer: "Bewusst" und "unbewusst" bei Plotin; A. H. Armstrong: The background of the doctrine "That the intelligibles are not outside the intellect"; P. Henry: Une comparaison chez Aristote, Aléxandre et Plotin.

2. Abbate, Michele. 2016. "Il noeîn parmenideo (DK 28 B3) nella concezione plotiniana del Noûs." Methodos. Savoirs et Textes no. 16:1-21.

English abstract: "The present paper aims to show how Plotinus, in a perspective that remains essentially Platonic, interprets the notion of noeîn in Parmenides, especially in the light of the well known Fr. 3 DK, on the identity of being and thought. It needs to point out that Plotinus, with Clement of Alexandria, is our source of this fragment. The plotinian interpretation is essential to understand the nature and the ontological-metaphysical function of Plotinus’ hypostasis Nous. The Parmenidean conception of the identity of eînai and noeîn is profoundly reshaped by Plotinus and integrated into a perspective compatible with the Platonic and Neoplatonic ontology. According to the plotinian theory, in the hypostasis of Noûs, i.e. in the intelligible reality as a whole, being and thought are connected to each other in a dynamic and not motionless identity, which characterizes the nature of Noûs as uni-multiplicity (hen pollá). In accordance with what Plato states in Sophist, Plotinus conceives the intelligible reality as something intrinsically living and alive. Plotinus’ conception of Noûs and his interpretation of Parmenidean noeîn in Fr. 3 DK appear to be central in the whole Neoplatonic tradition and in particular in Proclus’ reflection on the nature of intelligible world."

3. Armstrong, Arthur Hilary. 1940. The Architecture of the Intelligible Universe in the Philosophy of Plotinus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Reprint: Amsterdam, Hakkert, 1967.

4. ———. 1967. "Plotinus." In The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, 193-268. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

5. ———. 1979. Plotinian and Christian Studies. London: Variorum Reprints.

6. Bales, Eugene. 1983. "A Heideggerian Interpretation of Negative Theology in Plotinus." The Thomist no. 47:197-208.

7. Bréhier, Émile. 1928. La philosophie de Plotin. Paris: Vrin.

Dernière réimpression: 2000.

8. Brisson, Luc. 1985. "Temps et éternité dans la philosophie grecque." In Mythes et représentations du temps, edited by Tiffeneau, Dorian, 59-85. Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

Rèsumé: "Le concept d'éternité tel qu'on le rencontre chez Plotin ne se truve chez aucun de ses prédécesseurs. Or, c'est Plotin lui-même qui a occulté ce fait d'histoire, en se donnant pour le disciple fidèle de Parménide et de Platon, qu'il s'évertue à défendre contre le matérialisme d'Aristote.

En vérité, Platon et Aristote ont ceci de commun qu'ils pensent l'éternitè comme absence de temps et de changement, et non comme absence de durée. Plotin, au contraire, oppose le temps à l'éternité comme la durée à son absence, introduisant ainsi le concept d'éternité qui sera celui de Boèce et de tout le Moyen Age."

9. ———. 2000. "Le Logos chez Plotin." In Ontologie et dialogue. Mélanges en hommage à Pierre Aubenque avec sa collaboration à l'occasion de son 70e anniversaire, edited by Cordero, Nestor-Luis, 47-68. Paris: Vrin.

10. Brunner, Fernand. 1990. "L'aspect rationnel et l'aspect religieux de la philosophie de Plotin." Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie no. 122:417-430.

11. Bussanich, John. 1988. The One and Its Relation to Intellect in Plotinus. A Commentary on Selected Texts. Brill: Leiden.

12. Charles-Saget, Annick. 1988. "Polémique et philosophie: Plotin, Ennéades, VI. I, 4-5, Aristote, Catégories, 6." Les Études Philosophiques:157-165.

13. Charrue, JeanMichel. 1978. Plotin, lecteur de Platon. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

14. Chiaradonna, Riccardo. 2002. Sostanza Mivimento Analogia. Plotino critico di Aristotele. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

15. ———. 2004. "Plotino e la teoria degli universali. Enn. VI 3 [44], 9." In Aristotele e i suoi esegeti neoplatonici. Logica e ontologia nelle interpretazioni greche e arabe. Atti del Convegno internazionale Roma 19-20 ottobre 2001, edited by Celluprica, Vincenza and D'Ancona Costa, Cristina, 1-35. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

16. ———. 2009. Plotino. Roma: Carocci.

17. Chrétien, Jean-Louis. 1989. "L'analogie selon Plotin." Études Philosophiques:305-318.

18. Cilento, Vincenzo. 1973. Saggi su Plotino. Milano: Mursia.

19. Collette, Bernard. 2002. Dialectique et hénologie chez Plotin. Bruxelles: Ousia.

20. Collette-Ducic, Bernard. 2007. Plotin et l'ordonnancement de l'être. Étude sur les fondements et les limites de la "détermination". Paris: Vrin.

21. Corrigan, Kevin. 1987. "Amelius, Plotinus and Porphyry on Being, Intellect and the One. A Reappraisal." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, vol. 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. II. Teilband: Philosophie (Platonismus, [Forts.]; Aristotelismus), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 975-993. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

22. ———. 2005. Reading Plotinus. A Practical Introduction to Neoplatonism. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press.

23. D'Ancona, Cristina. 2006. "The Arabic version of Enn. IV 7[2] and its Greek model." In Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy. From the Many to the One: Essays in Celebration of Richard M. Frankk, edited by Montgomery, James E., 127-155. Leuven: Peeters.

24. Deck, John N. 1967. Nature, Contemplation, and the One. A Study in the Philosophy of Plotinus. Toronto: Toronto University Press.

25. Fielder, John. 1982. "Plotinus and self-predication." In The Structure of Being. A Neoplatonic Approach, edited by Harris, Ramson Baine, 83-89. Albany: State University of New York Press.

26. Gerson, Lloyd P. 1994. "Plotinus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Metaphysics." In Aristotle in Late Antiquity, edited by Schrenk, Lawrence P., 3-21. Washington: Catholic University Press of America.

27. ———. 1994. Plotinus. New York: Routledge.

28. ———, ed. 1996. The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

29. ———. 2002. "Being and Knowing in Plotinus." In Neoplatonism and Indian Philosophy, edited by Gregorios, Paulos Mar, 107-125. Albany: State University of New York Press.

"This paper is a study of Plotinus's analysis of the idea behind Parmenides' famous claim that "it is the same thing for thinking and for being". Plotinus's analysis depends on his reading of Plato as well as his co-option of Aristotle in the service of Platonism. It also depends on his original insights into self -consciousness as a property of cognition and on his non-representationalist theory of knowledge."

30. Graeser, Andreas. 1972. Plotinus and the Stoics. A Preliminary Study. Leiden: Brill.

31. Hadot, Pierre. 1987. "Structure et thèmes du traité 38 (VI ,7) de Plotin " In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (ANRW). Teil II: Principat. Band 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. I. Teilband: Philosophie (Historische Einleitung; Platonismus), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 624-676. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

32. ———. 1999. Plotin, Porphyre. Études néoplatoniciennes. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

33. Halfwassen, Jens. 1992. Der Aufstieg zum Einen. Untersuchungen zu Platon und Plotin. Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner.

Zweite, um einen Forschungsbericht erweiterte Auflage, München/Leipzig: K.G. Saur, 2006.

34. ———. 2004. Plotin und der Neuplatonismus. München: C. H. Beck.

35. Henry, Paul. 1938. Études plotiniennes. Paris: Desclée De Brouwer.

Deux volumes: I. Les états du texte de Plotin (1938); II. Les manuscrits des Ennéades (1941).

36. Henry, Pail. 1973. "Trois apories orales de Plotin sur les Catégories d'Aristote." In Zetesis : Album amicorum door vrienden en collega's aangeboden aan Prof. Dr. E. de Strycker ter gelegenheid van zijn 65e verjaardag, 234-265. Antwerpen: De Nederlandsche boekhandel.

37. Horn, Christoph. 1995. Plotin über Sein, Zahl und Einheit. Eine Studie zu den systematischen Grundlagen der Enneaden. Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner.

38. Isnardi Parente, Margherita. 1984. Introduzione a Plotino. Bari: Laterza.

39. Lacrosse, Joachim. 2007. "Trois remarques sur la réception de la chrasis stoïcienne chez Plotion." Revue de Philosophie Ancienne no. 25:53-66.

40. Leroux, Georges. 1974. "Logique et dialectique chez Plotin. Ennéade 1.3 (20)." Phoenix no. 28:180-192.

"This passage provides a statement of the distinction between dialectic and logic which aids the understanding of the subsequent development of the latter as a separate discipline. Plotinus also sets up a contrast between the philosophy of the Stoics and the Peripatetics."

41. Meijer, Pieter A. 1992. Plotinus on the Good or the One (Enneads VI, 9). An Analytical Commentary. Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben.

42. Moutsopoulos, Evanghélos. 2005. "De quelques conceptions préplotiniennes de la notion de participation." Philosophia.Yearbook of the Research Center for Greek Philosophy atthe Academy of Athens no. 35:211-215.

"All mentions of the notion of participation ('methexis') prior to Plotinus have influenced his considerations on it, primarily, but not exclusively ontologically, the architectonic of the Plotinian system being directly inspired from Plato's Sophist. The eclosion of the notion of 'methexis' seems to have followed a long itinerary before its flourishing within the framework of Neoplatonism."

43. Narbonne, Jean-Marc. 2001. La métaphysique de Plotin. Suivi de Heidegger - Plotin: Henôsis et Ereignis. Paris: Vrin.

44. ———. 2001. Hénologie, Ontologie et Ereignis (Plotin – Proclus – Heidegger). Paris: Belles Lettres.

45. O'Brien, Denis. 1991. Plotinus on the Origin of Matter. An Exercise in the Interpretation of the Enneads. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

46. ———. 1999. "La matière chez Plotin: son origine, sa nature." Phronesis no. 44:45-71.

47. O'Meara, Dominic J. 1975. Structures hiérarchiques dans la pensée de Plotin. Étude historique et interprétative. Leiden: Brill.

48. ———. 1993. Plotinus. An Introduction to the Enneads. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

49. Oosthout, Henri. 1991. Modes of Knowledge and the Transcendental. An introduction to Plotinus Ennead 5.3 [49] with a Commentary and Translation. Amsterdam: B. R. Grüner.

50. Rist, John M. 1967. Plotinus: the Road to Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

51. Sciaparelli, Annamaria. 2009. "Plotinus on dialectic." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 91:253-287.

52. Stamatellos, Giannis. 2007. Plotinus and the Presocratics. A Philosophical Study of Presocratic Influences in Plotinus' Enneads. New York: State University of New York Press.

53. Torchia, Natale Joseph. 1993. Plotinus, Tolma, and the Descent of Being. An Exposition and Analysis. New York: Peter Lang.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Ancient Greek Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Introduction

“The five introductions to the study of Aristotle by Ammonius, Olympiodorus, Elias, Philoponus and Simplicius give us a very good idea of the organization of the neoplatonic exegesis. The elaborated plan, and the long list of predecessors which Simplicius gives, make it certain that the five extant prolegomena are the result of a long development. Part of the material used in the prolegomena is old, especially the facts presented in the chapter on the names of the different philosophic schools (see Diels, Doxographi p. 246). But the scholastic approach and outlook is so apparent even in the earliest of these prolegomena, that of Ammonius, that we cannot go too far back. Porphyry, Iamblichus, Syrian and Proclus were great individualists, compared to Ammonius and his disciples, and their prolegomena have a different character. Simplicius says, CIAG [Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca] VIII, p. 3.3, that he has freely used and transcribed Iamblichus' commentary, and it is possible that Iamblichus added prolegomena of the later type, but on the whole I am more inclined to regard Ammonius as the real originator of this scholastic type of introduction. Littig and, more recently, Moraux are certainly wrong in assuming that the elaborate neoplatonic classification of Aristotle's writings goes back to Andronicus. Firstly, there is no ancient evidence at all for this hypothesis, and that in itself ought to be enough; secondly, the prolegomena are throughout coloured by neoplatonic conceptions and doctrines; thirdly, they are intimately connected with a type of scholastic and professional study of Aristotle which cannot have existed earlier than in the fourth or fifth century; they are also so closely connected with Porphyry's famous Isagoge that, as Praechter says, the whole course could be entitled "Erklarung von Porphyrius' Eisagoge mit Einleitung in die Philosophie". Generally speaking, the highly speculative character of this classification is incompatible with what we know of Andronicus and his period. We may compare the Alexandrian and Hellenistic approach in the extracts preserved by Diogenes III 65.

The edition of Aristotle's works used in the neoplatonic school in Athens about 500 A. D. was the same as that we possess, i.e., in principle, Andronicus' edition. It was introduced by the Categories, preceded by a short biography of Aristotle, late copies of which we possess in the Vitae Marciana and Vulgata. This biography, which included a list of Aristotle's writings, was an epitome of Ptolemy's Vita.” ( pp. 444-445)

From: Ingemar Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell 1957.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected bibliography on the Ancient Greek Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Editions of the Ancient Commentaries to Aristotle's Categories and Porphyry's Isagoge

Eight Neoplatonic commentaries are extant: seven in Greek by Porphyry, Dexippus, Ammonius, Philoponus, Olympiodorus, Simplicius, Pseudo-Elias (David), published in the series of Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca by the Berlin Academy (1882-1909, 23 volumes; this edition is reprinted by Walter de Gruyter) and one in Latin by Boethius.

1. Porphyry. 1887. Porphyrii Isagoge et in Aristotelis Categorias commentarium . Berlin: Reimer

Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca: IV/1, edidit Adolf Busse.

2. Dexippus. 1887. Dexippi In Aristotelis Categorias commentarium . Berlin: Reimer

Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca: IV/2, edidit Adolf Busse.

3. Boethius. 1860. "In Categorias Aristotelis." In Manlii Severini Boethii opera omnia , edited by Migne, Jacques Paul. Paris: Garnier

Patrologia Latina, v ol. 64, colL 159A - 294C.

A critical edition and an English translation are in preparation by Monika Asztalos: "At present I am editing the text and at the same time preparing an English translation of it to appear in Ancient Commentators on Aristotle." (" Boethius on the Categories ", in Alain Galonnier (éd.), Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs , Louvain-Paris: Éditions Peeters, 2003, p. 195.)

4. ———. 1906. Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii In Isagogen Porphyrii commenta . Vienna: Tempsky

Copiis a Georgio Schepss comparatis suisque usus, recensuit Samuel Brandt.

Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum vol. 38.

Anastatic reprint: New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1966.

First Commentary on Isagoge pp. 3-132; Second Commentary on the Isagoge pp. 135-348.

5. Ammonius. 1895. In Aristotelis Categorias commentarius . Berlin: Reimer

Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca: IV/4, ediddit Adolf Busse.

6. Philoponus. 1898. Philoponi (olim Ammonii) In Aristotelis Categorias commentarium . Berlin: Reimer

Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca: XIII/1, ediddit Adolf Busse.

7. Olympiodorus. 1902. Olympiodori Prolegomena et In Categorias commentarium . Berlin: Reimer

Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca: XII/1, edidit Adolf Busse.

8. Simplicius. 1907. Simplicii In Aristotelis Categorias commentarium . Berlin: Reimer

Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca: VIII, edidit Karl Kalbfleisch.

9. Pseudo-Elias, (David). 1900. Eliae In Porphyrii Isagogen et Aristotelis Categorias commentaria . Berlin: Reimer

Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca: XVIII.1, edidit Adolf Busse.

10. Porphyre. 2008. Commentaire aux Catégories d'Aristote . Paris: Vrin

Édition critique, traduction française, introduction et notes par Richard Bodéüs.

11. Szlezák, Thomas A., ed. 1972. Pseudo-Archytas über die Kategorien . Berlin: Walter de Gruyter

Vorbermerkung VII-VIII; Inhalt IX-X; Einleitung 1; Texte pp. 27-68; Übersetzung pp. 69-86; Kommentar 87; Index Verborum 189; Stellenregister 211; Literaturverzeichnis 22-226.

Modern translations of the Ancient Commentaries to Aristotle's Categories

English translations

1. Ammonius. 19911. On Aristotle Categories, Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. London: Duckworth

Translated by S. Marc Cohen and Gareth B. Matthews.

2. Dexippus. 1990. On Aristotle Categories, Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. London: Duckworth

Translated by John Dillon.

3. Porphyry. 1992. On Aristotle Categories, Ancient Commentators on Aristotle. London: Duckworth

Translated by Steven K. Strange.

4. Simplicius. 2003. On Aristotle Categories 1-4, Ancient Commentators of Aristotle. London: Duckworth

Translated by Michael Chase.

5. ———. 2001. On Aristotle Categories 5-6, Ancient Commentators of Aristotle. London: Duckworth

Translated by Frans A. J. de Haas and Barrie Fleet.

6. ———. 2002. On Aristotle Categories 7-8, Ancient Commentators of Aristotle. Londo: Duckworth

Translated by Barrie Fleet.

7. ———. 2000. On Aristotle Categories 9-15, Ancient Commentators of Aristotle. London: Duckworth

Translated by Richard Gaskin.

8. Philoponus. 2014. On Aristotle Categories 1–5 with Philoponus: A Treatise Concerning the Whole and the Parts. New York: Bloomsbury

Translated by Riin Sirkel, Martin Tweedale and John Harris ; with "A Treatise Concerning the Whole and the Parts", by Philoponus translated by Daniel King.

9. ———. 2019. On Aristotle Categories 6–15. New York: Bloomsbury

Translated by MIchael Share.

10. Ammonius. 2019. Interpretation of Porphyry’s Introduction to Aristotle’s Five Terms. New York: Bloomsbury

Translated by Michael Chase.

Traduction françaises

1. Simplicius. 1990. Commentaire sur les Catégories. Fascicule I. Introduction, Première partie (p. 1-9,3 Kalbfleisch). Leiden: Brill

Traduction commentée sous la direction de Ilsetraut Hadot.

Traduction de Philippe Hoffmann (avec la collaboration de Ilsetraut Hadot et Pierre Hadot).

Commentaire et notes à la traduction par I. Hadot avec des appendices de P. Hadot et J.-P. Mahé.

2. ———. 2001. Commentaire sur les Catégories d'Aristote. [Fascicule II.] Chapitre 2-4. Paris: Les Belles Lettres

Traduction par Philippe Hoffmann avec la collaboration de Ilsetraut Hadot et Pierre Hadot.

Commentaire par Concetta Luna.

3. ———. 1990. Commentaire sur les Catégories. Fascicule III. Préambule aux Catégories. Leiden: Brill

Commentaire au Premier Chapitre des Catégories (P. 21-40, 13 Kalbfleisch).

Traduction de Philippe Hoffmann (avec la collaboration d'Ilsetraut Hadot, Pierre Hadot et Concetta Luna).

Commentaire et notes à la traduction par C. Luna.

Bibliography

For a general bibliography on the Greek Commentators on Aristotle see: Selected bibliography on the Neoplatonic Commentators

1. "Ancient and Medieval Interpretations of Aristotle’s Categories." 2014. Quaestiones Disputatae no. 4.

Edited by Joseph Almeida and Sarah Klitenic Wear.

Contents:

Introduction: Joseph Almeida, Sarah Klitenic Wear: Ancient and Medieval Interpretations of Aristotle’s Categories 4;

Prolegomena to the study of Aristotle’s Categories:

Lloyd P. Gerson: The Aristotelian Commentaries and Platonism 7;

Ancient Commentary

Michael Griffin: What is an aisthêton? “Ordinary things” among the Neoplatonist commentators on the Categories 24; Charlene Elsby: Plotinus on the Reality of the Category of Relation 42; Sarah Klitenic Wear: Syrianus the Platonist on Aristotle’s Categories 8a13–b24: The Ontological Place of Skhesis in Later Platonic Metaphysics 58; Joseph Almeida: Simplicius on Categories 1a16–17 and 1b25–27: An Examination of the Interests of Ancient and Modern Commentary on the Categories 73; Gary Gabor: The Justification and Derivation of Aristotle’s Categories in Ammonius and Simplicius 100-113.

2. Anton, John Peter. 1969. "Ancient Interpretations of Aristotle's Doctrine of Homonyma." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 7:1-18.

Reprinted as Chapter 5 in: J. P. Anton, Categories and Experience. Essays on Aristotelian Themes, Oakdale, N.Y: Dowling College Press, 1996, pp. 115-149.

"The main purpose of this paper is to offer an exposition and a critical examination of the ancient interpretations of Aristotle's doctrine of homonyma.(1) A circumlocution of what Aristotle means by homonyma things is given in Categories, ch. 1. The ancient interpretations with which we are concerned in this paper are to be found in the extant commentaries on this treatise. Evidently, more commentaries had been written on the Categories than the vicissitudes of time allowed to survive, but we have only those of the following writers: Porphyrius (c. 233-303), Dexippus (fl. c. 350), Ammonius (fl. c. 485), Philoponus (c. 490-530), Olympiodorus (fl. c. 535), Simplicius (fl. c. 533), Elias (ft. c. 550). One might add here the relevant writings of John Damascene (675-749), Photius (820-91), and Michael Psellus (1018-79), which are useful paraphrases rather than full commentaries; for that reason, the interpretations they support are not discussed in this paper.

The main body of this paper is given to a discussion of the interpretations which the ancient commentators offered and to an analysis of the assumptions which underlie them. It can be stated here in anticipation of what follows that the commentators often attached to Aristotle's meaning of homonyma aspects that were quite foreign to his views and that by doing so these commentators were taking extensive liberties with the text at hand. As we hope to show, the commentators brought into their discussions of this particular portion of the Categories issues and views that were far more relevant to their own ontologies and logical theories than to Aristotle's doctrines. In order to show how this is the case, we must first give a summary of what we believe our text permits us to say about the meaning of homonyma, as given in the opening chapter of the Categories. Suffice it to add at this point that the interpretations of the doctrine of homonyma with which we are concerned here are only those that are discussed exclusively in the relevant commentaries on this work." (pp. 115-116)

(1) This essay, the second of a two-part article, was originally published in The Journal of the History of Philosophy, VII/1 (1969), 36-57, and is printed with minor changes. It was based on an invited paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy in New York City, Dec. 27, 1965. For a full discussion of the doctrine of homonyma and the background against which it can be understood, see my “The Aristotelian Doctrine of homonyma in the Categories and its Platonic Antecedents,” also in The Journal of the History of Philosophy VI, 4 (Oct., 1968), 315-326). I tried to show in that paper how Aristotle's formulation is indebted linguistically to Plato but was worked out not in response to Plato's usage but to his own philosophical position and as part of his logical apparatus to attack the Speusippean wing of the Academy. On the whole, the textual evidence from the Platonic writings indicates clearly that Plato had not proposed a technical use of homonyma. Speusippus and Aristotle, however, offered two different and opposing technical formulations intended to fit their respective ontologies.

3. ———. 1981. "Aristotle's Theory of Categories and Post-Classical Ontologies." In Proceedings of the World Congress on Aristotle. Thessaloniki August 7-14, 1978, 214-220. Athens: Ministry of Culture and Sciences.

Reprinted as Chapter 8 in: J. P. Anton, Categories and Experience. Essays on Aristotelian Themes, Oakdale, N.Y: Dowling College Press, 1996, pp. 203-213.

4. Asztalos, Monika. 1993. "Boethius as a transmitter of Greek logic to the Latin West: the Categories." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology no. 95:367-407.

5. ———. 2003. "Boethius on the Categories." In Boèce ou la chaîne des savoirs. Actes du colloque international de la Fondation Singer-Polignac Paris, 8-12 juin 1999, edited by Galonnier, Alain, 195-205. Louvain: Éditions Peeters.

6. Aubenque, Pierre. 1985. "Plotin et Dexippe, exégètes des Catégories d'Aristote." In Aristotelica. Mélanges offerts à Marcel de Corte, 7-40. Bruxelles: Ousia.

Repris dans P. Aubenque, Problèmes aristotéliciens. I: Philosophie théorique, Paris: Vrin 2009, pp. 281-304.

7. Baltussen, Han. 2008. Philosopy and Exegesis in Simplicius. The Methodology of a Commentator. London: Duckworth.

8. Baltzly, Dirk. 1998. "Porphyry and Plotinus on the Reality of Relations." Journal of Neoplatonic Studies no. 6:49-75.

9. Barnes, Jonathan. 2005. "Les Catégories et les catégories." In Les Catégories et leur histoire, edited by Bruun, Otto and Corti, Lorenzo, 11-80. Paris: Vrin.

"Bien que maintes préfaces affirment le contraire, les actes d’un colloque ne constituent jamais un livre. Les Actes du Colloque de Genève ne font pas exception: même si un thème commun les unifie, ils ne racontent pas une histoire linéaire. C’est pourquoi nous avons ajouté aux Actes une longue introduction. Ce chapitre, Les Catégories et les Catégories, de la plume de Jonathan Bames, vise à esquisser, dans ses grandes lignes, l’histoire des Catégories d’Aristote et de la théorie aristotélicienne des Catégories, et d’y encadrer les différents épisodes décrits par chacun des chapitres suivants. Un lecteur qui voudrait lire ce volume comme on parcourerait un livre pourrait donc suivre le texte de l’introduction, tout en y intercalant les chapitres là où une note en bas de page les mentionne. L’index nominum et rerum, l’index locorum et la bibliographie, qui se trouvent à la fin de ce volume et qui s’appliquent à tous les chapitres, lui permettront d’établir d’autres liens entre eux." (Préface, 7)

10. Bärthlein, Karl. 1990. "Zur Kategorienforschung in der Antike." In Kategorie und Kategorialität. Historisch-systematische Untersuchungen zum Begriff der Kategorie im philosophischen Denken. Festschrift für Klaus Hartmann zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Koch, Dietmer and Bort, Klaus, 13-48. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.

11. Bechtle, Gerald. 2008. "Metaphysicizing the Aristotelian « Categories »: two references to the « Parmenides » in Simplicius' « Commentary on the Categories » (Simplicius, In Categorias 4 [CAG 8, 75, 6 Kalbfleisch] and In Categorias 8 [291, 2 K.])." Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum no. 12:150-165.

12. Berchman, Robert M. 1992. "Origen on The Categories: A Study in Later Platonic First Principles." In Origeniana Quinta. Papers of the 5th International Origen Congress Boston College, 14-18 August 1989, edited by Daly, Robert J., 231-252. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

13. Blumenthal, Henry. 1981. "Pseudo-Elias and the Isagoge Commentaries Again." Rheinisches Museum no. 124:188-192.

14. Bodéüs, Richard. 1997. "Le texte grec des "Catégories" d'Aristote et le témoignage du Commentaire de Porphyre." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 8:121-141.

15. ———. 2001. "Les interlocuteurs fictifs dans le commentaire de Porphyre aux Catégories d'Aristote. Une mise au point." Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques no. 85:669-678.

16. Boys-Stones, George. 2017. "Are We Nearly There Yet? Eudorus on Aristotle’s Categories." In From Stoicism to Platonism: The Development of Philosophy, 100 BCE–100 CE, edited by Engberg-Pedersen, Troels, 67-79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

17. Cardullo, R. Loredana. 2014. "Sulla categoria aristotelica della sostanza. Variazioni esegetiche da Plotino ad Ammonio." Peitho. Examina Antiqua no. 5:59-89.

18. ———. 19977. "La Νοερα θεωρία di Giamblico, come chiave di lettura delle Categorie di Aristotele: alcuni esempi." Syllecta Classica no. 8:79-94.

19. Chase, Michael. 2000. "Études sur le commentaire de Porphyre aux Catégories d'Aristote adressé à Gédalios." Annuaires de l'École pratique des hautes études, Section des sciences religieuses no. 108:505-510.

20. Chiaradonna, Riccardo. 2004. "The Categories and the Status of the physical World: Plotinus and the Neo-Platonic Commentators." In Philosophy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries. Vol. I, edited by Adamson, Peter, Baltussen, Han and Stone, Martin William Francis, 121-136. London: Institute of Classical Studies, University of London.

21. ———. 2009. "Autour d'Eudore : Les débuts de l'exégèse des Catégories dans le Moyen Platonisme." In The Origins of the Platonic System. Platonisms of the Early Empire and their Philosophical Contexts, edited by Bonazzi, Mauro and Opsomer, Jan, 89-111. Louvain: Peeters.

22. ———. 2013. "Platonist approaches to Aristotle: from Antiochus of Ascalon to Eudorus of Alexandria (and beyond)." In Aristotle, Plato, and Pythagoreanism in the First Century BC, edited by Schofield, Malcolm, 28-52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

23. ———. 2020. "Boethus of Sidon on Forms and Qualities: Some Remark." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 31:39-56.

24. ———. 2020. "Boethus of Sidon on Forms and Qualities: Some Remarks." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 31:39-56.

25. Chiaradonna, Riccardo, Rashed, Marwan, and Sedley, David. 2013. "A Rediscovered Categories Commentary." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 44:129-194.

Reprinted as Chapter 8 in R. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Re-Interpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators, London: Bloomsbury, 2016, pp. 313-325.

26. Chiesa, Curzio. 2005. "Porphyre et le problème de la substance des Catégories." In Les Catégories et leur histoire, edited by Bruun, Otto and Corti, Lorenzo, 81-101. Paris: Vrin.

27. Chriti, Maria. 2019. "Neoplatonic Word Classes that Designate Aristotle’s Categories." Blityri no. 8:17-32.

Abstract: "The subject of this paper is the way that Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle treat the word classes that designate the philosopher’s categories.

In the Categories Aristotle provides us with the first “model” of a conceptual classification. These classes are designated by specific linguistic utterances, the possible categorization of which has been puzzling thinkers and scholars ever since antiquity: why did the philosopher choose these specific terms for his categories? Neoplatonic philosophers who comment on the first logical treatise believe that only certain linguistic utterances can render Aristotle’s ten classes and their approach emerges from: i) the treatment of the Categories’ purpose, as related to the subject matter of On Interpretation; ii) their discussion of the ‘parts of expression’ (lexis) in connection with the grammatical ‘parts of speech’ (logos)."

28. Conti, Alessandro Domenico. 1983. "La teoria della relazione nei commentatori neoplatonici delle Categorie di Aristotele." Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia no. 38:259-283.

29. Courtine, Jean-François. 1980. "Note complémentaire pour l'histoire du vocabulaire de l'être. Les traductions latines d' ousía et la compréhension romano-stoïcienne de l'être." In Concepts et Catégories de la pensée antique, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 33-87. Paris: Vrin.

Repris dans J.-F. Courtine, Les catégories de l'être. Études de philosophie ancienne et médiévale, Paris: Press Universitaires de France, 2003, pp. 11-77.

30. de Haas, Frans A, J. 2001. "Did Plotinus and Porphyry disagree on Aristotle's Categories?" Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 46:492-526.

31. Dillon, John. 1997. "Iamblichus' Νοερα θεωρία of Aristotle's Categories." Syllecta Classica no. 8:65-77.

"An examination of Simplicius In Cat. 2, 5-9ff ; 3, 10-17 ; 13, 4ff ; and 13, 13-16 shows that Iamblichus applied his allegorical technique of interpretation to the Categories, which he read as a coherent description of the Neoplatonic intelligible world. Two important features of his noerà theoria were the search for ontological rather than merely logical explanations, and discreteness and continuity as manifestations of the power of the One."

32. Doucet, Dominique. 2001. "Augustin, Confessions 4, 16, 28-29, Soliloques 2, 20, 34-36 et les « Commentaires des Catégories »." Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica no. 93:372-392.

33. Ebbesen, Sten. 1981. "The contribution of the Greek Commentators on the Organon to the formation of Western Scholasticism." In Proceedings of the World Congress on Aristotle. Thessaloniki August 7-14, 1978 (Vol. 1 of four), 183-186. Athens: Publication of the Ministry of Culture and Science.

34. ———. 1987. "Boethius as an Aristotelian Commentator." In Aristoteles. Werk und Wirkung. (Vol. II), edited by Wiesner, Jürgen, 266-311. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Reprinted in: R. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed, London: Duckworth, 1990, pp- 373-391.

35. Ellis, John. 1994. "Alexander’s Defense of Aristotle’s Categories." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 39:69-89.

36. Evangeliou, Christos. 1985. "Aristotle's Doctrine of Predicables and Porphyry's Isagoge." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 23:15-34.

"Porphyry has recently been criticized for "muddling" Aristotle's doctrine of predicables by adding species to the list. I argue that a careful comparison of the two lists shows that they differ more profoundly than Porphyry's critics suspect, and that these modern critics, unlike the ancient commentators, have been mislead by the title of Isagoge which they interpret as "Introduction" to Topics or Categories exclusively. it is shown that this is not the case."

37. ———. 1988. Aristotle's Categories and Porphyry. Leiden: Brill.

38. Falcon, Andrea. 2018. "The Early Reception of Aristotle’s Categories: Comments on Michael Griffin." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 29:1-12.

Abstract: "Griffin’s book [*] provides a compelling narrative to tell the intricate story of the rediscovery of the Categories and its subsequent appropriation by philosophers working in different traditions between Andronicus of Rhodes (first century BC) and Alexander of Aphrodisias (late second and early third century AD). Andronicus is clearly the hero in this story. By placing the logical writings at the outset of the Aristotelian corpus, and the Categories at the head of the logical writings, Andronicus gave a prominent position to this hitherto obscure work. But a slightly different story could be told. In this alternative story, the focus is shifted away from Andronicus of Rhodes in order to concentrate on Boethus of Sidon (first century BC) and his important contribution to the reception of the Categories in the ancient commentary tradition."

[*] M. Griffin, Aristotle's Categories in the Early Roman Empire, 2015.

39. Flannery, Kevin L. 1999. "The Synonymy of Homonyms." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 81:268-289.

40. Frede, Michael. 2005. "Les Catégories d'Aristote chez les Pères de l'Église Grecs." In Les Catégories et leur histoire, edited by Bruun, Otto and Corti, Lorenzo, 135-173. Paris: Vrin.

41. Furlani, Giuseppe. 1933. "Le Categorie e gli Ermeneutici di Aristotele nella versione siriaca di Giorgio delle Nazioni." Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Roma) Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche no. 5.

42. Gabor, Gary. 2014. "The Justification and Derivation of Aristotle’s Categories in Ammonius and Simplicius." Quaestiones Disputatae no. 4:99-112.

43. Gambra, José Miguel. 2015. "To Be in a Subject and Accident." Vivarium no. 53:170-193.

Abstract: "Boethius identifies beings that are in a subject with what the Scholastics called predicamental accident, and predication by accident with the predication of what is in a subject. The first of these questionable assimilations went on to become terminology commonly accepted by Scholastics of all eras. On the other hand, the second, whichseems quite consistent with the thinking of Aristotle, was only admitted with many reservations, probably because of the bewildering claims of Aristotle in Cat. 5, 2a27-34 about the predication of what is in the subject. In what follows I will try to show how these phrases, properly understood, are consistent with the idea that what is in the subject is said by accident of the substance, although they implicate a difficulty poorly resolved by Boethius himself and those who followed him on this point, of whom I will only mention by way of example some Scholastics from the 16th century."

44. Gannagé, Emma. 2005. "Sur les « Catégories » d'Aristote un fragment inédit en version arabe." Mélanges de l'Université Saint-Joseph no. 58:81-106.

45. Gaskin, Richard. 1998. "Simplicius on the Meaning of Sentences: A Commentary on 'In Cat. 396,30 - 397,28'." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 43:42-62.

Abstract: "At Categories 12b5-16 Aristotle appears to regard the referents of declarative sentences, such as 'Socrates is sitting,' as what later writers were to call 'complexe significabilia', i.e., items such as 'that Socrates is sitting'. Simplicius's discussion of this passage in his commentary on the Categories clearly shows the influence of Stoic philosophy of language; but, if we follow the text printed by Kalbfleisch, Simplicius's commentary is seen to be a muddle of Stoic and Aristotelian elements, neither properly understood. It is possible, however, by making a crucial emendation. On that line Simplicius would be adopting the view that a declarative sentence refers to a thought in the first instance and a 'complexe significabile' in the second instance. This view is plausibly the upshot of combining the Categories text with the first chapter of De Interpretatione."

46. Georr, Khalil. 1948. Les Catégories d'Aristote dans leurs versions syro-arabes. Beyrouth.

47. Gerson, Lloyd P. 2005. Aristotle and other Platonists. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Chapter 3: The Categories of Reality pp. 76-100.

48. Gioè, Adriano. 1993. "Severo, il medioplatonismo e le categorie." Elenchos no. 14:35-53.

49. Gottschalk, Hans B. 1990. "The Earliest Aristotelian Commentators." In Aristotle Transformed. The Ancient Commentators andTheir Influence, edited by Sorabji, Richard, 55-81. London: Duckworth.

50. Granata, Daniele. 2016. "The Practice of ὀνοματοποιεῖν: Some Peculiar Statements in the Ancient Neoplatonic Commentators on Aristotle." Peitho. Examina Antiqua no. 7:215-228.

Abstract: "This paper shows the role of ὀνοματοποιεῖν in Neoplatonism and how this practice is ruled by an onto-logical canon. While ὀνοματοποιεῖν itself means the making of a brand new name, its usage is manifold.

As Aristotle explains in Rh. III 2, poets take advantage of ὀνοματοποιεῖν to catch the undefined and give it a recognisable image, by means of a metaphorical name. In science, this practice, codified by Aristotle, is twofold: ὀνοματοποιεῖν meant both to re-semanticize words well known and to create names ex novo for things not discovered or studied yet. After analysing ὀνοματοποιεῖν’s recurrence in Aristotle, I illustrate that, according to Neoplatonic Commentators, impositio can be, both natural and technical, only of things in actuality, having a solid consistency.

Intermediates between contraries, presumed relatives and powers as qualities are nameless – as Philoponus notices in his In Categorias – since they haven’t an independent status and aren’t definable. This bond between the original rhetorical practice and the ontological perspective, sketched in Int. 1, was strengthened by Alexander, who filled Aristotle’s gaps, stating that names signify things’ being, i.e. the form acquired in actuality."

51. Granieri, Roberto. 2021. "Xenocrates and the Two-Category Scheme." Apeiron no. 54:261-285.

Abstract: "Simplicius reports that Xenocrates and Andronicus reproached Aristotle for positing an excessive number of categories, which can conveniently be reduced to two: τὰ καθ᾽αὑτά and τὰ πρός τι. Simplicius, followed by several modern commentators, interprets this move as being equivalent to a division into substance and accidents. I aim to show that, as far as Xenocrates is concerned, this interpretation is untenable and that the substance-accidents contrast cannot be equivalent to Xenocrates’ per se-relative one. Rather, Xenocrates aimed to stress the primacy of Plato’s binary distinction of beings, as presented at Sophist 255c13–4, over Aristotle’s list of the categories."

52. Griffin, Michael J. 2012. "What has Aristotelian dialectic to offer a Neoplatonist? A possible sample of Iamblichus at Simplicius on the Categories 12,10-13,12." International Journal of the Platonic Tradition no. 6:173-185.

53. ———. 2012. "What does Aristotle Categorize? Semantics and the Early Peripatetic Reading of the « Categories »." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London no. 55:69-108.

"One of the more provocative mysteries of later ancient philosophy is how Porphyry came to situate the Categories of Aristotle at the outset of the nascent Neoplatonic curriculum." (p. 69)

(...)

"In this essay, I would like to offer a possible explanation for the tension that I have attributed to Porphyry above, which I think also sheds light on the early surge of interest in the Categories. Specifically, I will argue that the protreptic to the study of the Categories contained mainly in Porphyry’s shorter surviving commentary By question and answer – that is, the ‘semantic’ treatment of the Categories as a map of the genera of being, only insofar as it is a map of the genera of simple, significant terms – is derived more or less unaltered from a Peripatetic tradition dating to Andronicus of Rhodes, while Porphyry’s own critical response to this tradition was developed primarily in his longer, now lost commentary addressed To Gedalius. The former semantic theory, I argue, has been somewhat blurred by our effort to filter it through the lens of the rather different theory from which Porphyry, in his longer commentary, developed his own considered view." (p. 72)

(...)

"Through this sketch of the evidence, I hope to have suggested that there is, in any case, more to the ‘bipartite’ theory than a compendious treatment or compression of the ‘tripartite’ material by Porphyry, and that attention should be drawn to it as a separate and distinct layer of the tradition. I have also explored some of the ways in which both ‘layers’ may be seen as predating Porphyry, while Porphyry’s approach to the Categories in the shorter commentary could be seen as building on an earlier source." (p. 90)

In Appendix: I. Selected texts on the Semantical Reading of Categories 93-96; II. Analysis & context of the ‘bipartite’ theory 96-101; III. Early Sources for T9 and the bipartite reading 101.

54. ———. 2013. "Which 'Athenodorus' Commented on Aristotle's Categories?" The Classical Quarterly no. 63:199-208.

55. ———. 2015. Aristotle's Categories in the Early Roman Empire. New York: Oxford University Press.

56. ———. 2020. "Articulating Preconceptions: A Reconsideration of Aristotle's Categories in the Early Roman Empire." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 31:1-38.

Abstract: "In this contribution, I respond to several points raised by Andrea Falcon, Stephen Menn, and Riccardo Chiaradonna in the course of their engagements with my monograph Aristotle’s Categories in the Early Roman Empire. In particular, I reply to concerns raised by Falcon about my reliance on evidence from Ptolemy for Andronicus’ catalogue, and try to situate more clearly my focus on Andronicus’

pedagogical treatment of the Categories within the wider context of evolving scholarship on its early reception. In response to challenges raised by Menn, I also argue in favour of Andronicus’ interest in a

principled distinction between essential and accidental predication, and defend the value of Boethius’ De Divisione as a witness to Andronicus, while highlighting Menn’s ingenious reconstruction of Andronicus’ interpretation of the ‘said of’ and ‘in’ relations in Categories, 2. Finally, in response to concerns raised by Chiaradonna in the opening chapter of Rashed and Chiaradonna’s new and standard setting edition and discussion of Boethus of Sidon, I offer a provisional justification for my attribution to Andronicus and Boethus of a pedagogical view about the elementary articulation of kinds of

predication, motivating the introductory role of the Categories in logic and philosophy."

57. Haas, Frans A.J.de. 1997. John Philoponus' New Definition of Prime Matter. Aspects of His Background in Neoplatonism and the Ancient Commentary Tradition. Leiden: Brill.

Chapter four: Second Objection: A Category Mistake, pp. 165-250.

58. Hadot, Ilsetraut. 1987. "Les introductions aux Commentaires exégetiques chez les auteurs néoplatoniciens et les auteurs chrétiens." In Les règles de l'interprétation, edited by Tardieu, Michel, 99-122. Cerf.

"Le present article décrit les différents types de schémas introductifs contenus dans les commentaires des néoplatoniciens tardifs sur les oeuvres d'Aristote et de Platon, en essayant de determiner leur signification exégétique ainsi que l'origine de plusieurs d'entre eux. Il apparait que les deux schémas en dix points qui introduisent respectivement à la philosophie d'Aristote et à celle de Platon ont de toute vraisemblance eté codifiés par Proclus au V siècle de notre ère, tandis que certains points des schémas en six points introduisant aux différents traités d'Aristote ou aux divers dialogues de Platon apparaissent déjà au III siècle chez Origène qui a dû s'inspirer des commentaires platoniciens de son temps."

59. ———. 1991. "The Role of the Commentaries on Aristotle in the Teaching of Philosophy According to the Prefaces of the Neoplatonic Commentaries on the Categories." In Aristotle and the Later Tradition, edited by Blumenthal, Henry and Robinson, Howard, 175-189. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

60. ———. 1992. "Aristote dans l'enseignement philosophique neo-Platonicien: les Préfaces des Commentaires sur les Catégories." Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie no. 124:407-426.

Résumé: "Cet article répresente une contribution de plus à ma critique générale des thèses de Praechter selon lesquelles l'école neo-Platonicienne dite "d'Alexandrie" se distinguerait, non seulement par le lieu de son enseignement, de celle dite "d'Athènes", mais encore et surtout par ses doctrines philosophiques et par son attitude envers l'oeuvre d'Aristote. La comparison entre elles des Prefaces des cinq commentaires neo-Platoniciens des Catégories d'Aristote, dont l'un, celui de Simplicius, appartiendrait, selon Praechter, a l'école d'Alexandrie, fait apparaítre la concordance fondamentale de la philosophie neo-Platonicienne qui était enseignée à Athènes avec celle qui était enseignée à Alexandrie: toutes deux interprètent la philosophie d'Aristote dans la même perspective neo-Platonicienne et la même volonté d'harmoniser Platon et Aristote."

61. Hadot, Pierre. 1959. "Un fragment du commentaire perdu de Boèce sur les Catégories d'Aristote dans le codex Bernensis 363." Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge no. 26:11-27.

Repris dans P. Hadot, Plotin, Porphyre. Études néoplatoniciennes, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1999, pp. 383-410.

62. ———. 1974. "The Harmony of Plotinus and Aristotle According to Porphyry." In Aristotle Transformed. The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence, edited by Sorabji, Richard, 125-140. London: Duckworth.

English translation of: "L'armonie des philosophies de Plotin et d'Aristote selon Porphyre dans le commentaire de Dexippe sur les Catégories", in: Plotino ed il Neoplatonismo in Oriente e in Occidente, Roma: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1974, pp. 31-47.

63. ———. 1974. "L'harmonie des philosophies de Plotin et d'Aristote selon Porphyre dans le commentaire de Dexippe sur les Catégories." In Atti del Convegno internazionale sul tema: Plotino e il neoplatonismo in Oriente e in Occidente : (Roma, 5-9 ottobre 1970), 31-47. Roma: Accademia nazionale de Lincei.

Repris dans P. Hadot, Porphyre: Études néoplatoniciennes, Paris: Les Belles Lettres 1999, pp. 355-382.

64. ———. 1980. "Sur divers sens du mot pragma dans la tradition philosophique grecque." In Concepts et catégories dans la pensée antique, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 309-319. Paris: Vrin.

Repris dans P. Hadot, Études de philosophie ancienne, Paris: Les Belles Lettes 2010, pp. 61-76.

"Les articles consacrés au mot pragma dans les dictionnaires de la langue grecque sont en général assez longs et ils énumèrent d’habitude les sens suivants : au singulier, le résultat de l’action, l’action elle-même, l’affaire, notamment au sens juridique, le sujet en question, la chose comme réalité concrète ; au pluriel, les circonstances, les affaires de l’état, les ennuis et désagréments. Mais il se trouve assez souvent que le mot pragma prend, dans les textes philosophiques, des sens techniques très précis, pour lesquels les dictionnaires apportent peu de secours. Il est vrai que, dans ces cas difficiles, les traducteurs en difficulté recourent la plupart du temps au mot « chose » ou au mot « fait » qui permettent, par leur généralité et leur imprécision, de dissimuler le problème. La présente étude voudrait recenser quelques-uns de ces sens techniques du mot pragma et en laisser entrevoir l’arrière-plan rhétorique et philosophique." (p. 309)

(...)

"Nous avons donc étudié six types d’emplois différents du mot pragma dans la langue philosophique grecque. Ces emplois sont, en général, étroitement liés. De la notion de « ce dont on parle », on passe naturellement à celle de « sens », de « contenu conceptuel », d’« unité de sens » et d’« incorporel ». Dans tous ces sens, pragma est étroitement lié au discours et à la pensée. Il est dangereux de traduire, dans ces cas, pragma par le mot « chose », si l’on entend par « chose » une réalité extralinguistique, indépendante, extérieure à la pensée et au discours, alors que, précisément, pragma connote très souvent un rapport au discours et à la pensée. Ou bien alors, il faudrait réviser complètement la notion traditionnelle de « chose ». La présente étude pourrait ainsi apporter une modeste contribution à la réflexion sur des notions les plus confuses et pourtant les plus centrales de la tradition philosophique." (p. 319)

65. ———. 1985. "Les commentaires de Boèce et de Porphyre sur les Catégories d'Aristote." Annuaire de l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. V Section, Sciences Religieuses no. 93:335-337.

66. Henry, Paul. 1973. "Trois apories orales de Plotin sur les Catégories d'Aristote." In Zetesis : Album amicorum door vrienden en collega's aangeboden aan Prof. Dr. E. de Strycker ter gelegenheid van zijn 65e verjaardag, 234-265. Antwerpen: De Nederlandsche boekhandel.

67. Hijsmans, B. L. 1975. "Athenodorus on the Categories and a Pun on Athenodorus." In Kephalaion: Studies in Greek Philosophy and its Continuation Offered to Professor C. J. de Vogel, edited by Mansfeld, Jaap and de Rijk, Lambertus Marie, 105-114. Assen: Van Gorcum.

68. Hoffmann, Philippe. 1980. "Les catégories ποῦ et ποτέ chez Aristote et Simplicius." In Concepts et Catégories dans la pensée antique, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 217-245. Paris: Vrin.

"L’exposé que l’on va lire ne se propose pas d’étudier les concepts de lieu (τόπος) et de temps chez Aristote et son commentateur Simplicius (1), mais de scruter les quelques indications qu’Aristote, dans son Traité des Catégories, nous donne sur les prédicats ποῦ et ποτέ, ou que l’on peut trouver dans certains passages de Physique IV. La matière fournie par les textes aristotéliciens étant peu abondante, notre attention se portera principalement sur le Commentaire de Simplicius.

Si les catégories ποῦ et ποτέ ne se confondent pas avec les concepts de lieu et de temps, c’est pourtant par rapport à eux, c’est-à-dire par différence avec eux, qu’elles prennent sens et consistance. C’est pourquoi, et bien que ce ne soit qu’à titre secondaire, la méditation sur le temps et le lieu nourrit le commentaire de Simplicius, chez qui elle fonde (ainsi d’ailleurs que chez nombre de commentateurs antérieurs) l’ordre relatif des deux catégories : selon que le temps, ou le lieu, est considéré comme plus « proche » de l’essence, plus « apparenté » à elle, la catégorie ποτέ (ou la catégorie ποῦ) se situera plus près de Ουσία dans la liste des catégories. Tel étant le critère du classement, l’analyse catégoriale court toujours le risque d’être remplacée par une étude « physique » du temps ou du lieu. Mais Simplicius situe la doctrine des catégories au niveau d’une étude des signifiés et des significations. Un second danger se présente alors, qui est de confondre l’analyse catégoriale et l’analyse grammaticale des « parties du discours ». En effet, les catégoriesποῦ et ποτέ correspondent presque exclusivement à deux classes d’adverbes, qui sont, respectivement, les adverbes de lieu et les adverbes de temps(2).

Nous verrons que Simplicius, analysant et classant les significations des adverbes (et compléments) de lieu, ne fait que reprendre, sur ce point, la doctrine grammaticale classique, telle qu’on la voit exposée dans la Grammaire de Denys le Thrace, dans les Scholies relatives à cette Grammaire, ou chez un auteur comme Apollonius Dyscole. Guidé par l’idée d’une étroite parenté entre les catégories kou et ttots, Simplicius étudie les adverbes de temps en suivant comme modèle la doctrine grammaticale des adverbes de lieu.

A la suite de Jamblique, il défend contre les attaques de Plotin la thèse soutenue par Aristote dans son Traité des Catégories : twk et koü sont des catégories distinctes et propres, tandis que temps et lieu relèvent de la quantité. Pour fonder cette distinction, Jamblique et Simplicius établissent que koü signifie « la relation au lieu de ce qui est dans le lieu », et 7cot£ « la relation au temps de ce qui est dans le temps ». D’autre part, koü et 7cot£ se différencient des relatifs, en ce que la relation constitutive de ces derniers est convertible, ce qui n’est pas le cas de la relation constitutive de ces deux catégories : il s’agit, par exemple, de la relation au lieu de ce qui est dans le lieu, et non de la relation du lieu à ce qui est en lui." (pp. 217-218)

(1) Aristote, Traité des Catégories, ch. IV, 1 b 25 - 2 a 10 ; 11 b 10-15. Simplicius, Commentaria in Aristolelem Graeca VIII, pp. 340-364.

(2) Cette affirmation peut sembler contestable, du fait que les exemples donnés par Aristote et repris par les commentateurs sont « έν Λυκειώ », « έν αγορά », et ne sont pas à proprement parler des adverbes. On peut répondre à cela que le « titre » de la catégorie est un adverbe, et que Simplicius, à la suite, semble-t-il, des grammairiens, établit une équivalence sémantique entre de telles expressions et les adverbes de lieu : c’est cette équivalence qui nous importe, puisque la table des catégories est issue, aux yeux de Simplicius, d’une analyse des significations.

69. ———. 1985. "Sens et dénomination: Homonymie, analogie, métaphore selon le Commentaire de Simplicius sur les Catégories d'Aristote." Annuaire de l'École Pratique des Hautes Études.Section des Sciences Religieuses no. 93:343-356.

70. ———. 1987. "Catégories et langage selon Simplicius. La question du skopos du traité Aristotelicien des Catégories." In Simplicius. Sa vie, son oeuvre, sa survie. Actes du Colloque international de Paris (28 septembre -1 octobre 1985), edited by Hadot, Ilsetraut, 61-90. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

71. ———. 1987. "Le Prologue du Commentaire de Porphyre par questions et réponses sur les Catégories d'Aristote." Annuaire de l'École Pratique des Hautes Études.Section des Sciences Religieuses no. 95:295-305.

72. ———. 1988. "Recherches sur les Introductions néoplatoniciennes aux Catégories d'Aristote." Annuaire de l'École Pratique des Hautes Études.Section des Sciences Religieuses no. 96:272-281.

73. ———. 1992. "Le Commentaire de Dexippe sur les Catégories d'Aristote." Annuaire de l'École Pratique des Hautes Études.Section des Sciences Religieuses no. 100:299-305.

74. ———. 1997. "La problématique du titre des traités d'Aristote selon les commentateurs grecs: quelques exemples." In Titres et articulations du texte dans les œuvres antiques. Actes du colloque international de Chantilly, 13-15 décembre 1994, edited by Fredouille, Jean-Claude, Goulet-Cazé, Marie-Odile, Hoffmann, Philippe and Petitmengin, Pierre, 75-103. Turnhout: Brepols.

75. ———. 1999. "Les analyses de l'énoncé: catégories et parties du discours selon les commentateurs néoplatoniciens." In Théories de la phrase et de la proposition: de Platon à Averroès, edited by Büttgen, Philippe, Diebler, Stéphane and Rashed, Marwan, 209-248. paris: Éditions Rue d'Ulm.

76. ———. 2000. "Les catégories aristotéliciennes pote et pou d'après le Commentaire de Simplicius. Méthode d'exégèse et aspects doctrinaux." In Le commentaire entre tradition et innovation, edited by Goulet-Cazé, Marie-Odile, 355-376. Paris: Vrin.

Actes du Colloque International de l'Institut des Traditions Textuelles (Paris et Villejuif, 22-25 septembre 1999).

77. Huby, Pamela. 1981. "An Excerpt from Boethus of Sidon’s Commentary on the Categories?" Classical Quarterly no. 31.

78. Isnardi Parente, Margherita. 1986. "Simplicio, gli stoici e le categorie." Rivista di Storia della Filosofia no. 41:3-18.

79. ———. 1990. "Ancora su Simplicio e le categorie." Rivista di Storia della Filosofia no. 45:723-732.

80. Karamanolis, George. 2004. "Porphyry: the first Platonist commentator on Aristotle." In Philosophy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries (Vol. One), edited by Peter, Adamson, Baltussen, Han and Stone, M.W.F., 97-120. London: Institute of Classical Studies, University of London.

81. ———. 2006. Plato and Aristotle in Agreement? Platonists on Aristotle from Antiochus to Porphyry. New York: Oxford University Press.

See in particular Chapters 6. Plotinus pp. 216-242 and 7. Porphyry pp. 243-330.

82. Kenny, Anthony. 2005. "Les Catégories chez les Pères de l'Église latins." In Les Catégories et leur histoire, edited by Bruun, Otto and Corti, Lorenzo, 135-173. Paris: Vrin.

83. Kustas, George L. 1973. "The Commentators on Aristotle's Categories and on Porphyry's Isagoge." In Studies in Byzantine Rhetoric, edited by Kustas, George L., 101-126. Thessaloniki: Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies.

84. Lachance, Geneviève. 2011. "La querelle des universaux : analyse comparative de l’Isagôgè et du Commentaire aux Catégories d’Aristote de Porphyre." Ithaque no. 9:1-22.

85. Libera, Alain de. 1995. "Boèce et l'interprétation médiévale des Catégories. De la paronymie à la denominatio." In Aristotelica Secunda. Mélanges offerts a Christian Rutten, edited by Motte, André and Denooz, Joseph, 255-264. Liège: Université de Liège. Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres.

86. ———. 1999. "Entre Aristote et Plotin : l'Isagoge de Porphyre et le problème des catégories." Cahiers de la Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie no. 20:7-27.

Métaphysiques Médiévales. Études en l'Honneur d'André de Muralt, Éditées par Curzio Chiesa et Léo Freuler.

87. ———. 2005. "L'onto-théo-logique de Boèce: doctrine des catégoreies et théorie de la predication dans le De Trinitate." In Les Catégories et leur histoire, edited by Bruun, Otto and Corti, Lorenzo, 175-222. Paris: Vrin.

88. Luna, Concetta. 1987. "La relation chez Simplicius." In Simplicius. Sa vie, son oeuvre, sa survie, edited by Hadot, Ilsetraut, 113-147. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

89. ———. 2013. "Boéthos de Sidon sur les relatifs." Studia Graeco-Arabica no. 3:1-35.

90. Marenbon, John. 1993. "Medieval Latin Commentaries and Glosses on Aristotelian Logical Texts, before c. 1150 A.D." In Glosses and Commentaries on Aristotelian Logical Texts: The Syriac, Arabic and Medieval Latin Traditions, edited by Burnett, Charles, 77-127. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London.

Reprinted as Chapter II in: John Marenbon, Aristotelian Logic, Platonism, and the Context of Early Medieval Philosophy in the West, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.

91. ———. 1997. "Glosses and Commentaries on the Categories and De interpretatione before Abelard." In Dialektik und Rhetorik im früheren und hohen Mittelalter. Rezeption, Überlieferung und gesellschaftliche Wirkung antiker Gelehrsamkeit vornehmlich im 9. und 12. Jahrhundert, edited by Fried, Johannes, 21-49. München: Oldenbourg.

Reprinted as Chapter IX in: John Marenbon, Aristotelian Logic, Platonism, and the Context of Early Medieval Philosophy in the West, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.

92. Matthews, Gareth B. 1992. "Container Metaphysics According to Aristotle’s Greek Commentators." In Aristotle and His Medieval Interpreters, edited by Bosley, Richard and Tweedale, Martin, 7-23. Calgary: University of Calgary Press.

93. Menn, Stephen. 2018. "Andronicus and Boethus: Reflections on Michael Griffin’s Aristotle’s Categories in the Early Roman Empire." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 29:13-42.

Abstract: "Griffin, Rashed, and Chiaradonna have shown how we can use Simplicius’ Categories commentary to reconstruct much of Porphyry’s greater Categories commentary (also witnessed by the Archimedes Palimpsest), and then use this to reconstruct much of the work of Boethus, and to a lesser extent Andronicus, on the Categories. In some cases building on Griffin, in other cases disagreeing with him, I bring out some ways in which Andronicus and Boethus differ from most later interpreters; this can help us understand Alexander’s and Porphyry’s responses. I reconstruct (i) Andronicus’ interpretation of ‘in’ and ‘said of’, which is based on Aristotle’s distinction between abstract nouns and paronymous concrete nouns, and avoids the metaphysical freight that later interpreters load onto the notion of ‘said of’; (ii) Boethus’ use of De Interpretatione 1 to explain how a universal term can be synonymous without positing either universals in re or Stoic λεκτά, and the consequences he draws for the different aims of the Categories and De

Interpretatione; and (iii) Boethus’ solution to the tension between Aristotle’s hylomorphism and the Categories’ account of substance. Boethus, unlike later interpreters, thinks the form is in the matter, and is therefore not a substance but (typically) a quality, but that it is nonetheless able to constitute the composite as a substance distinct from the matter. I bring out the Aristotelian basis for Boethus’ reading, connect it with Boethus’ accounts of differentiae and of the soul, and show how Boethus’ views help motivate Porphyry’s responses. In some cases Porphyry constructs his views by triangulating between Boethus and Alexander."

94. Merlan, Philip. 1934. "Beitrage zur Geschichte des antiken Platonismus: I. Zur Erklarung der dem Aristoteles zugeschriebenen Kategorienschrift." Philologus.Zeitschrift für das klassische Altertum no. 89:35-53.

95. Militello, Chiara. 2014. " Aristotle’s Topics in the Greek Neoplatonic Commentaries on the Categories." Peitho. Examina Antiqua no. 5:91-117.

96. Minio-Paluello, Lorenzo. 1942. "The Genuine Text of Boethius' Translation of Aristotle's Categories." Medieval and Renaissance Studies no. 1:151-177.

Reprinted in: L. Minio-Paluello, Opuscola: the Latin Aristotle, Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1972, pp. 1-27.

97. ———. 1945. "The Text of the Categories: the Latin Tradition." Classical Quarterly no. 39:63-74.

Reprinted in: L. Minio-Paluello, Opuscola: the Latin Aristotle, Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1972, pp. 28-39.

98. Moraux, Paul. 1984. Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen von Andronikos bis Alexander von Aphrodisias. Zweiter Band: Der Aristotelismus im I. und II. ]h.n.Chr. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

99. ———. 2000. L'Aristotelismo presso i Greci. Vol. secondo, tomo 2: L'Aristotelismo nei non-Aristotelici nei secoli I e II d. C. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

Traduzione di Stefano Tognoli. Revisione e indici di Vincenzo Cicero.

Prefazione di Giovanni Reale. Introduzione di Thomas A. Szlezak.

100. Morison, Benjamin. 2005. "Les Catégories d'Aristote comme introduction à la logique." In Les Catégories et leur histoire, edited by Bruun, Otto and Corti, Lorenzo, 103-120. Paris: Vrin.

"Pourquoi les commentateurs antiques, tel Simplicius, estimaient-ils que les Catégories devaient être lues préalablement aux œuvres de logique ? Dans quel sens pensaient-ils que l’étude de la logique présupposecelle de) la doctrine des catégories ?

Les commentateurs affirment que les Catégories constituent l’introduction naturelle à l’Organon, lequel sert à son tour d’ouverture au reste du corpus aristotélicien. Il n’est peut-être pas inutile de traiter brièvement des raisons sur lesquelles ils se fondent pour considérer l'Organon comme I'introduction appropriée à l’ensemble du corpus. Cela exerce en effet une certaine influence sur les motifs avancés par les commentateurs qui regardent les Catégories comme l’ouverture de l'Organon.

Ammonius, Simplicius, Élias et Philopon débutent tous leurs commentaires sur les Catégories par dix questions relatives à l’étude du corpus aristotélicien(2). Cela est dû au fait que les Catégories constituent l'ouverture traditionnelle du corpus aristotélicien. Il ne semble pas qu’il existe une unité particulière entre les questions et on pourrait en soulever davantage ; il est difficile de résister à la pensée peu charitable que le nombre de dix ait pris une certaine signification en raison des dix catégories." (p. 103)

(...)

"Parmi ces questions, celles qui nous intéressent dans la liste principale concernent la nature du corpus aristotélicien, la subdivision des écrits, et l’endroit où nous devons débuter la lecture ; dans la sous-liste générée par la dixième question, [Pour chaque traité d’Aristote, quels sont les principaux points à examiner, combien sont-ils et quelle est leur justification?] notre intérêt porte sur le problème de l’utilité des Catégories et de leur place dans l’ordre de lecture des œuvres d’Aristote."

Texte traduit de l’anglais par Annick Weizmann.

(2) Proclus semble être l’auteur de ces questions (Élias, In Cat. 107.24-6). Quelques commentaires consacrés à d’autres œuvres possèdent également les mêmes questions. Voir K. Praechter, compte rendu des Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, dans Byzantinische Zeitschrift, XVIII, 1909, p. 516-538. [Traduction anglaise: Karl Praechter: Review of the Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, in: Richard Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed, London: Duckworth 1990, pp. 31-54]

(3) Simplicius, In Cat. 3.18-29; dans les notes, j’indique où la version de Simplicius diffère de celle d’Ammonius (In Cat. 1.3-13).

101. Narbonne, Jean-Marc. 1987. "Définition et description : le problème de la saisie des genres premiers et des individus chez Aristote dans l'exégèse de Simplicius." Archives de Philosophie no. 50:529-554.

Résumé : "Simplicius utilise (et transforme) le concept d'υπογραφή (ďorigine stoïcienne) pour décrire les genres premiers et les êtres sensibles qui, chez Aristote, ne sont pas susceptibles de définition. Or un examen attentif du statut de la science chez Aristote (en référence à la doctrine de l'incommunicabilité des genres et au problème de lo'individuation) montre que la tentative de Simplicius est inconciliable, ou difficile à concilier, avec l'aristotélisme (d'Aristote)."

102. Narcy, Michel. 1981. "L'homonymie entre Aristote et ses Commentateurs néoplatoniciens." Les Études Philosophiques no. 35:35-52.

103. Panagopoulos, Spyros P. 2020. "Arethas of Caesarea’s Platonism in his commentary on the Categories of Aristotle: Aristotelianism vs. Platonism in 10th century Byzantium." Philotheos no. 20:51-67.

104. Pattin, Adrien. 1969. "Pour l'histoire du "Commentaire sur les Catégories d'Aristote" de Simplicius au moyen âge." In Arts libéraux et philosophie au Moyen Âge, 1073-1078. Paris: Vrin.

105. Pèpin, Jean. 1980. "Clément d'Alexandrie, les Catégories d'Aristote et le fragment 60 d'Heraclite." In Concepts et catégories dans la pensée antique, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 271-284. Paris: Vrin.

106. Pfligersdorffer, Georg. 1950. "Zur Frage nach dem Verfasser der pseudo-augustinischen Categoriae decem ex Aristotele decerptae." Wiener Studien:131-137.

107. ———. 1953. "Andronikos von Rhodos und die Postprädikamente bei Boethius." Vigiliae Christianae no. 7:98-115.

108. Rashed, Marwan. 2004. "Priorité de l’εἶδος ou du γένος entre Andronicos et Alexandre: vestiges arabes et grecs inédits." Arabic Sciences and Philosophy no. 14:9-63.

Repris dans M. Rashed, L'héritage aristotélicien. Textes inédits de l'antiquité, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2007, pp. 29-83.

109. ———. 2013. "Boethus’ Aristotelian ontology." In Aristotle, Plato and Pythagoreanism in the First Century BC: New Directions for Philosophy, edited by Schofield, Malcolm, 53-77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Boethus is surely one of the most important thinkers of the first century bc.

Though only few testimonies, and no clear fragment, remain, their number and content are sufficient to show how insightful he was in commenting upon Aristotle.(1) It is not just that he was typical of this first generation of commentators who have struck modern historians by the free spirit with which they approached Aristotle’s text.(2) Boethus’ fragments on substance testify to more than a free attitude towards the Philosopher: it is also possible to recognise, through the many layers of the tradition – Alexander,

Porphyry, Iamblichus and Simplicius – a coherent and unitary doctrine.

His doctrine, of course, is not un-Aristotelian; it does not even stand somewhere halfway between Aristotle and other thinkers of antiquity, the Stoics in particular (even if it is obviously inspired by a general Stoic atmosphere). Boethus has consciously built, out of a few indications in the text of Aristotle, a certain kind of Aristotelianism among other possible ones.(3) This doctrinal approach is probably both the cause and the effect of a cultural fact: the Peripatos’ nearly exclusive focus, in the first century bc, on the Categories.(4) For sure, the treatise of the Categories, by itself, does not necessarily produce a definite account of the world. But by contrast with what is the case with other parts of the Aristotelian corpus, its basic ontological features seem naturally at home in the framework of a doctrine upholding the primacy of the individual material substance." (p. 53)

(1) Curiously enough, there has been until now no collection of Boethus’ fragments. I am currently working, together with Riccardo Chiaradonna and Philippe Hoffmann, on just such a project. Our book, to be published with de Gruyter, will include all the fragments (Greek and Arabic), a French translation, and a commentary. [R. Chiaradonna, M. Rashed (eds.), Boéthos de Sidon – Exégète d’Aristote et philosophe, Berlin: de Gruyter 2020]

(2) See Moraux 1973: 98–9 and 105–13.

(3) See Rashed 2007a: 22–6.

(4) See R. Chiaradonna’s chapter in the present volume.

References

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"A re-examination of the question why, in the revival of interest, in the first century B.C. in Aristotle's esoteric works, as opposed to his doctrines, the work Categories played so large a part. The answers suggested are that the work aroused interest just because it did not easily fit into the standard Hellenistic divisions of philosophy and their usual agendas, and that, more than Aristotle's other works with the possible exception of the Metaphysics, it revealed aspects of Aristotle's thought that had become unfamiliar during the Hellenistic period."

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Reprinted in: Richard Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed. The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence, London: Duckworth, 1990 and in: Manfred Fuhrmann and Joachim Gruber (eds.), Boethius, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1984 pp. 155-181, with a Postscript (1983) pp. 182-183.

115. ———. 1987. "The Greek copy of Porphyrios' Isagoge used by Boethius." In Aristoteles. Werk und Wirkung. Paul Moraux zum 65 Geburtstag gewidmet - Band 2: Kommentierung, Uberlieferung, Nachleben, edited by Wiesner, Jürgen, 312-340. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

116. Sluiter, Ineke. 1999. "Commentaries and the Didactic Tradition." In Commentaries – Kommentare, edited by Most, Glenn. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

117. Solmsen, Friedrich. 1944. "Boethius and the History of the Organon." American Journal of Philology no. 65:69-74.

Reprinted in: F. Solmsen, Kleine Schriften II, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1967 pp. 38-43 and in: Manfred Fuhrmann and Joachim Gruber (eds.) Boethius, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1984 pp. 127-132.

118. Strange, Steven K. 1987. "Plotinus, Porphyry, and the Neoplatonic Interpretation of the Categories." In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Teil II: Principat. Band 36: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technick. II. Teilband: Philosophie (Historische Einelietung, Platonismus), edited by Haase, Wolfgang, 955-974. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

119. Stump, Eleonore. 1988. "Categories and Predicables." In Boethius's In Ciceronis Topica, 244-255. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Translated with notes and an introduction by Eleonore Stump.

120. Szlezak, Thomas Alexander. 1972. Pseudo-Archytas uber die Kategorien. Texte zur griechischen Aristotelesexegese. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

121. Taormina, Daniela. 1997. "Giamblico contro Plotino e Porfirio: il dibattito sull' atto e sul movimento (apud Simplicio, In categorias 301, 20-308, 10)." Syllecta Classica no. 8:95-112.

"On Iamblichus' exposition of the categories poiein kai paschein and his new theory about act, action, and entelechy based on his criticism of Porphyry's treatment of active and passive movement, and Plotinus' assimilation of act and movement."

122. Taormina, Danieal Patrizia. 1999. "L'antiaristotelismo di Plotino e lo pseudo-aristotelismo di Giamblico. Due interpretazioni di Aristotele, Categ. 6, 5b 11 ss." In Antiaristotelismo, edited by Natali, Carlo and Maso, Stefano, 231-250. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert.

123. Tarrant, Harold. 2008. "Eudorus and the Early Platonist Interpretation of the Categories." Laval Théologique et Philosophique no. 64:583-595.

"The hermeneutic tradition concerning Aristotle's Categories goes back to Eudorus and his contemporaries in the 1st cent. B.C. Initially a perplexing text, it forces the Platonist to consider a variety of new dialectical questions. The criticisms of Eudorus demonstrate the desire for orderly arrangements and pose questions that the hermeneutic tradition, culminating in the commentary of Simplicius, would try to answer. His pursuit of a critical agenda does not warrant the labels "anti-Aristotelian" or "polemical", but it does show why he preferred to be known as an Academic rather than a Peripatetic."

124. Terezis, Christos, and Artemi, Eirini. 2015. "Arethas of Caesarea and Aristotelian Studies." Vox Patrum no. 35:475-489.

125. Thiel, Rainer. 2004. Aristoteles Kategorienschrift in ihrer antiken Kommentierung. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

126. Tuominen, Miira. 2009. The Ancient Commentators on Plato and Aristotle. Stocksfield: Acumen.

Contents: Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction; 2. Epistemology; 3. Science and logic; 4. Physics; 5. Psychology: perception and intellect; 6. Metaphysics; 7. Ethics; Chronology; Glossary of names; Guide to further reading; Bibliography; Index.

127. Vamvoukakis, Nicolas. 1980. "Les catégories aristotéliciennes d'action et de passion vues par Simplicius." In Concepts et Catégories dans la pensée antique, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 253-269. Paris: Vrin.

128. Verbeke, Gérard. 1972. "Le commentaire de Simplicius sur les Catégories." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 70:279-282.

129. Zhyrkova, Anna. 2004. "The doctrine of categories in Neoplatonism." In Being or Good? Metamorphoses of Neoplatonism, edited by Kijewska, Agnieszka, 83-93. Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Eriugena, Periphyseon Book I: Aristotelian Logic and Categories

Logic and Categories in the Periphyseon

Categories are discussed in the Book I (462D 8 - 524B 12); numbers are that of columns in Heinrich Joseph Floss (ed.), Joannis Scoti opera quae supersunt omnia in: Jacques-Paul Migne (ed.), Patrologia Latina, vol. 122, Paris 1853, coll. 439-1022 and are reproduced in modern editions and translations.

"[John the Scot] unique qualities appear first in the treatise that Archbishop Hincmar commissioned in 850 as a reply to Gottschalk's thesis of double predestination.(26) To Gottschalk's argument that God has without qualification predestined the just to salvation and the unjust to perdition John the Scot replied by asserting the fundamental unity of God. We cannot know this unity. We can know, if only by analogy, the manifestations of this unity: God's will, his life, his power. We can recognize also that created nature is itself a manifestation of God: another form in which he is partly accessible. However trivial, and however misguided, individuals may be, as part of that creation they are all inescapably manifestations of the one ultimate unity. Gottschalk's thesis, whereby part of creation is absolutely opposed to another part (the just to the unjust), has always been so opposed and cannot conceivably resolve this opposition, introduces into creation a division that goes right back to God himself, dividing his will, and beyond that his unity; which is unthinkable. Now John is arguing here along familiar Neoplatonist lines. Where he is exceptional (for the ninth century at least) is in seeing the relationship of God to the creation in terms of contemporary logic. In the treatise against Gottschalk this is not spelled out. John makes it clear in his major independent work, the De divisione naturae. For the ultimate genus, which covers everything, including God. John proposes the name natura.(27) The genus natura sums up four species: the first creates and is not created, the second is created and creates, the third is created and does not itself create, the fourth neither creates nor is created. Now this raises a host of questions, which cannot be discussed here. But the essential is that within the all-embracing genus nature John has included both God and the created world. The further analysis of the first species, the uncreated creator, God, takes up the rest of Book I of the De divisione naturae. In what sense can the ten logical categories of substance, quantity, quality, and the rest be applied to God? How are these categories related one to another? In this rather violent change of direction we can see what is almost certainly the major logical text underlying Book 1. A discussion of genera and species that points in the direction of John's comprehensive natura can be found in the Isagoge,(28) Aristotle's fundamental account of the categories alone was known, though not widely available.(29) Where the two are combined, and a much closer precedent offered for John's natura, is in the De decem categoriis, the late fourth-century text that I have mentioned already as a source for Sedulius Scotus. The author of the De decem categoriis begins with the idea of species building up into ever more comprehensive genera. Finally, he says, the vast name of infinite capacity which comprehends everything else is substance, beyond which nothing can be found or thought to exist. This is one of the ten categories.(30)

He goes on to expound each of the categories in turn. Though John the Scot has not followed the De decem categoriis slavishly, he could find in it a model for the general structure of Book I of the De divisione naturae, as well as the source for specific passages. Hugh of Saint Victor saw the parallel when he called John's treatise the De decem categoriis in Deum.(31) Both in the first book of the De divisione naturae and in the argument already cited from his treatise on predestination, John the Scot is thinking within the framework of the De decem categoriis.

The first book of the De divisione naturae is John's most explicit statement of the logical basis of his theology. The rest of the treatise, however, depends principally on texts that he himself had translated from the Greek: the writings of the Pseudo-Denis, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor.(31) Here John the Scot had gone so far beyond his contemporaries that this part of his work had very little immediate effect. He had opened up a vein that no one else at that time could develop. We may remember the reception that the writings of Pseudo-Denis had met with in France earlier in the century. The Greek emperor had sent a copy to Louis the Pious, who gave it to Abbot Hilduin of Saint Denis. Within twenty four hours of its arrival at Saint Denis, nineteen miracles had been recorded from the mere presence of the wonderful volume within the walls of the abbey.(32) To do Hilduin justice, he then sat down and translated it; but the first reaction is the more typical, even for the later ninth century. The Greek philosophers were totally removed from the main currents of contemporary learning; and here John by his fluency in Greek was to some extent isolated from the ordinary masters of his day.

I have spoken so far of individual scholars and their work: Gottschalk, Sedulius, John the Scot. With John the Scot we are brought up against the question of what impression, if any, was made by these great men on the ordinary school curriculum. Though the study of any one institution here is bound to be inadequate, we can see the beginnings of an answer in the group of masters who taught at the monastery of Saint Gerrnanus in Auxerre. Their founder seems to have been the monk Haimo, who was active as a teacher circa 840 to 860.(34) Younger than Haimo and roughly contemporary with each other were Heiric, also a monk of Saint Germanus, and Hucbald his pupil, who was a monk of Saint Amand, near Tournai, Finally the youngest and most prolific of the group was Remigius, who taught in Auxerre circa 876 to 893 and then moved on to Rheims and possibly Paris.(35) The school of Auxerre had a continuous existence for over fifty years: during that whole period the library was being built up; and successive masters could establish a routine of accepted texts. We do not know how far their currency elsewhere was due to the school of Auxerre; we can see only that they are in practice the texts that are generally available in France and Germany over the next hundred years.

In the first place the school of Auxerre confirms the growing interest in logic. The first (and perhaps the only) commentary on the De decem categoriis is attributed to Heiric of Auxerre, who had himself been taught by a pupil of John the Scot. There is a trace of John's influence at the very beginning, where a phrase from Alcuin's preface is explained by a quotation from the De divisione naturae, but substantially it is a sober and meticulous exposition of the text. It seems to have been exactly what was needed; for it was copied again and again throughout the tenth and eleventh centuries, until the De decem categoriis itself went out of use.(36) The other major texts of the logica vetus were already furnished with the commentaries of Boethius. So on the face of it there was less need to produce new ones. What we do find, however, are adaptations of the Boethian commentaries to meet current needs. A series of glosses on the Isagogefor example, which should perhaps be ascribed to Heiric's pupil Hucbald of Saint Amand, is essentially based on Boethius's commentaries on the same text.(37) The author has drawn attention to the passages that are specially important, and quoted the parts of the Boethian exposition that he thinks will he helpful. This might he dismissed as a mere abridgment, were it not so typical of the way in which the Isagoge and similar texts were to be treated in the future. Like Heiric's commentary on the De decem categoriis, these notes are an attempt to drill the ordinary student in logic: to pitch the Boethian commentary at classroom level. Here they exemplify the principal concern and achievement of scholarship over the next 150 years. Both in France and Germany marginalia of this type can be found throughout the tenth and eleventh centuries.(38) Notker's German paraphrases of the Categories and the De interpretatione have the same purpose.(39) Though material of this kind is not philosophically original, it is of the greatest interest as an index of where and how the logica vetus was being mastered. Heiric's commentary on the De decem categoriis and the glosses on the Isagoge that may be the work of his pupil Hucbald are representative of a great deal of later work in the same field. On the linguistic side of the curriculum the school of Auxerre made a contribution that was clearly useful, and may prove to have been fundamental.

The other aspect of Carolingian learning may broadly be called "scientific": the enthusiasm for speculating on how the universe is put together - what keeps the stars on their courses and the material of this world in a coherent order. Most students would encounter such questions first in their study of Vergil." (pp. 6-9)

Notes

(26) De divina praedestinatione sap. 2. PL 122.360B-4C; cf. K. Vielhaber, Gottschalk der Sachse (Bonn 1956) 68-74.

(27) De divisione naturae 1, ed. Sheldon-Williams, Scriptores l.atini Hibernici 7 (Dublin 1968) 36.

(28) Isagoge Porphirii, ed. Minio-Paluello (Bruges 1966) 6-14: Aristoteles latinus 1.6.

(29) Minio-Paluello "Note sull'Aristotele latino medievale XV,"Opuscula. The Latin Aristotle (Amsterdam 1972) 448-458.

(30) "Postremo, licet abunde prospexerat dispersa passim genera speciali nota concilians, tamen ingenii quodam et capaci ad infinitum nomine omne quicquid est comprehendens dixit οὐσία extra quam nex inueniri aliquid nec cogitari potest. Haec est una de categoriis decem": De decem categoriis 5, ed. Minio-Paluello, (Bruges 1961) 134: Aristoteles latinus 1.5.

(31) Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon 3.2, ed. Buttimer (Washington 1939) 49.

(32) I. P. Sheldon-Williams, "Johannes Scottus Eringena,"The Cambridge History of later Greek and early Medieval Philosophy, ed. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge 1967) 518-533.

(33) PL 106.16BC, cf. H. F. Dondaine, Le corpus dionysien de l'université de Paris au XIIIe siècle (Rome 1953) 25.

(34) R. Quadri, "Aimone di Auxerre alla luce dei Collectanea di Heiric di Auxerre,"Italia medioevale e umanistica 6 (1963) 7-18.

(35) R. Quadri, I "Collectanea" di Eirico, di Auxerre (Freiburg 1966: Spicilegium Friburgensis 2 3-28. For Hucbald see A. van de Vyver, "Hucbald de Saint Amand, écolâtre et l'invention du Nombre d'or," in Mélanges Auguste Pelzer, (Louvain 1947) 61-79. For Remigius see C. E. Lutz, Remigii Autissiodorensis Commentum in Martianum Capellam (Leiden 1962) 1-2, 5-16. The school of Auxerre as a whole is discussed by Quadri (1966) and E. Jeaneau, "Les écoles de Laon et d'Auxerre au IXe siècle,"Settimane di studio Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo 19 (Spoleto 1972) 495-522.

(36) It is likely that several scholars contributed to this gloss: see L. Minio-Paluello (n. 29 above) 451 and again in the discussion of Jeauneau's paper (n. 35 above) 558-560.

(37) C. Baeumker and B. S. von Waltershausen, "Frühmittelalterliche Glossen des angeblichen Jepa zur Isagoge des Porphyrius,"Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters (Münster 1924) 24.1; cf. Cappuyns, (Jean Scot Érigène: sa vie, son œuvre, sa pensée, Louvain 1933) 72-73; 73 app.

(38) See for example Munich Clm. 14372, 14516 (S. Emmeram, Regensburg); Paris Bibliothèque Nationale lat. 11127 (Echternach): Orléans, Bibl. mun. 277 (Fleury: cf. A. van de Vyver, Abbonis Floriacensis Opera inedita (Bruges 1966) 25).

(39) ed. Piper, Schriften Notkers und seiner Schule (Freiburg 1882) 1, 2-3.

From: Margaret Gibson, "The Continuity of Learning circa 850- circa 1050", Viator, 6, 1975, pp. 1-14 (reprinted as Essay X in: M. Gibson, 'Artes' and Bible in the Medieval West, Aldershot, Variorum, 1993.

"The first book of Eriugena's Periphyseon can and should be read as a text within the tradition of commentary on the Categories. Although the object of Eriugena's remarks is the pseudo-Augustinian Categoriae decem, the paraphrase of the Categories that, in the era of Constantius and Theodosius, originated in the school of Themistius, his treatment of predication is altogether systematic and is at least as conformable to Aristotle's text as is the commentary of Ammonius. (1) That the Categoriae decem is a text derivative from that of Aristotle, Eriugena well understands. (2)

Since there is no evidence than, apart from the Categoriae decem, Eriugena enjoyed access to the Corpus Aristotelicum, it seems that he could not have brought, as did Ammonius, the interpretative weight of such works as the Metaphysics to bear on his understanding of the Categories. Thus, for Eriugena, but unlike Ammonius, matter has no place in the category of substance.

Since Eriugena, is treating the categories, upholds it as a cardinal principle that all the categories, considered in themselves, are incorporeal, (3) he already has grounds for thinking that corporeal beings, with their matter, are at least as marginal as Ammonius had understood them. Believing, as he does, that substance -- in itself -- is incorporeal, Eriugena maintains that whatever inhere in substance is likewise incorporeal. (4) So the investigation of substance, for Eriugena, requires no investigation of matter.

As Eriugena would have it, the category of substance does include genera, species, and individuals but, because no substance is extended, no substance may be corporeal. The contents of the category of substance are, therefore, purely formal. As being purely formal, they are completely immaterial." (p. 19)

Notes

(1) The text of Categoriae decem is in: Aristoteles latinus I, Categoriae vel praedicamenta, ed. Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, Bruges/Paris 1961.

(2) Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae periphyseon. De divuisione naturae (Liber primus), ed. I. P. Sheldon-Williams, Dublin 1968, 493A

(3) ibid., 478D-479A.

(4) ibid., 478D-479A.

From: Jack C. Marler, "Ammonius and Eriugena: On Matter and Predication", in: Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, Alexander Fidora, Pia Antolic (eds.), Erkenntnis und Wissenschaft. Knowledge and Science / Probleme der Epistemologie in der Philosophie des Mittelalters. Problems of Epistemology in Medieval Philosophy, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Introduction: the place of logic in Late Antiquity

"The centuries between Aristotle and Porphyry bequeathed few logical works to the early Middle Ages. Cicero wrote a Topics, professedly based on Aristotle's work on the subject, but probably derived from a later source. The book was quite widely read in the Middle Ages, at the time when Aristotle's Topics was unknown. A work attributed to Apuleius, and bearing the same Greek title (transliterated) as the De Interpretatione – Peri hermeneias – enjoyed a certain vogue among the earliest medieval logicians. For modern scholars, it is a useful source of Stoic logical theories; but its philosophical content is slight.

By the time of Porphyry, however, a development had taken place in the status, rather than the doctrine, of Aristotelian logic, which would be of great importance for medieval philosophy. Aristotelian logic had been adopted by the Neoplatonists and given a definite place in their programme of teaching. Whereas their use of Aristotle's philosophical works was piecemeal and distorting, his logic was studied faithfully as a whole. Aristotle had rejected the notion of Platonic Ideas; and he had consequently treated genera and species in his logic purely as class-designations for individual things. The Neoplatonists assimilated this approach, which contradicted the very basis of their metaphysics, by limiting the application of Aristotelian logic to the world of concrete things. Stripped of its metaphysical relevance, the tendency was for logic to become more purely formal than it had been for Aristotle. However, the extra-logical aspects of the Categories and the De interpretatione were too intrinsic to these works to be ignored; and the result was the growth of a body of philosophical discussion and commentary within the Neoplatonic logical tradition, only vaguely related to Neoplatonic metaphysics, and sometimes seemingly antithetical to its principles.

Porphyry himself did more than anyone to establish Aristotelian logic within the Platonic schools. He commented the Categories and the De interpretatione and wrote a short Isagoge (Introduction') to logic, which quickly became established as a prologue to the Aristotelian corpus. The Isagoge is devoted to explaining five concepts which play an important part in the Categories: genus, species, difference, property and accident. It illustrates well Porphyry's formal approach to logic; and he avoids a philosophical discussion of the nature of genera and species, listing various opinions, but refusing to discuss them further in a work which is designed as an introduction.

The language of philosophy in the Roman Empire was Greek. The few philosophers who wrote in Latin were of vital importance in transmitting the logical tradition to the Middle Ages, even -perhaps especially - where their activity was limited to translation and paraphrasing. From the circle of Themistius (c. 317-88) derives a Latin epitome of the Categories, known as the Categoriae Decem, much read in the ninth and tenth centuries. This work adds some further remarks, on quantity, space and the relationship between ousia and the other categories, to a summary of Aristotle's text. The author begins by treating Aristotle's text as a discussion of speech (133:1-8) -- a term he believes should principally apply to nouns and verbs which, unlike other words, designate things (133:11-15). He searches for a word which will include (that is, presumably, designate) all things, and arrives (134:16-20) at the conclusion that this word is ousia 'one of the ten categories'. This seems a fair enough conclusion from Aristotle's theory, since every thing is an ousia and can therefore be signified by the word ousia. But, a little later (145:25-146:2), the author produces a similar definition, but one which this time applies not to the word 'ousia', but the concept designated by it: 'ousia has no genus because it sustains everything'. The suggestion here is that ousia refers, not to the individual thing as in the Categories (although this definition is also given by the paraphraser), but to that which every individual has in common by virtue of being something at all. The implication may well not have been intended by the epitomist who, in general, tries to give a faithful impression of Aristotle's text; oversight or not, it proved influential.

Marius Victorinus seems to have been a prolific translator of philosophical and logical works into Latin. Augustine used his versions of the Platonists' books' (probably parts of Plotinus and Porphyry); Boethius - whose opinion of him was low - used his adaptation of Porphyry's Isagoge in his first commentary on it (see below, pp. 30-1); and there is evidence that he wrote a commentary on Cicero's Topics. But the only part of his logical work which reached the Middle Ages intact was a brief treatise De diffinitione, an aid to studying the Topics.

In the Middle Ages, the Categoriae Decem was attributed, wrongly, to Augustine. But Augustine's authentic comments about the Categories, as well as the misattributed work, made him an authority for the earliest medieval logicians. In the Confessions (iv.xvi.28), Augustine describes his first contact with Aristotle's treatise, which he found himself capable of understanding without the aid of his teacher. When he came to write his De trinitate, he included a discussion (v. ii. 3) of a type frequent among the Neoplatonists, about the Categories and their inapplicability to God. But he stated that ousia could be applied to God: indeed, that it was God to whom it most properly applied. This idea, fully consistent with Augustine's ontology (see above, pp. 15-16), was to influence ninth-century interpretations of the Categories. A short treatise, De dialectica, was also attributed to Augustine in the Middle Ages; and most scholars now accept its authenticity. The work is remarkable for its linguistic approach to dialectic. Having separated words into single and combined (I) - as Aristotle distinguishes at the beginning of the Categories between things said with and without combination - Augustine devotes most of his energies to discussing single words, how they gain their meaning and how 26 The antique heritage ambiguity is possible. Dialectic includes, says Augustine (iv), the discussion of the truth or falsity of sentences and conjunctions of sentences; but the treatise does not go on to consider this topic." (pp. 23-26)

From: John Marenbon, Early Medieval Philosophy (480-1150). An Introduction, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1983.

Note about the history of the Commentary genre

"It is generally assumed that Homer was the first author to be subjected to commenting, and I see no reason to dispute this most reasonable assumption. It is scarcely imaginable that anything meriting the name of commentary was composed before 400 BC, but by 300 BC the literary commentary must have been around for some time, and the philosophical commentary appears. The first one evidenced was by Crantor and dealt with Plato's Timaeus (2).

We have to wait almost half a millennium to find a fully preserved philosophical commentary. Indeed, the second- to third-century Aristotelian commentaries of Aspasius and Alexander of Aphrodisias are among the oldest commentaries on any text that we have got and among all preserved commentaries from Antiquity those on Aristotle or Plato are massively represented -- the two philosophers are in the heavyweight league together with the Bible and Hippocrates. The bulk of the preserved commentaries are from the fifth or the sixth century, with a special concentration of Aristotle commentaries in the sixth century. Most of them are in Greek, the most notable exception being Boethius' works, which belong in the sixth-century group.

The sixth century, then, was to have a very strong influence on the medieval approach to philosophical texts, whether in the East, where people read Aristotle with Ammonius, Simplicius and Philoponus at their elbow; or in the West, where Boethius alone made an impact as strong as that made by his three Greek colleagues together in the East. In the formative period of Western scholasticism in the twelfth century, commentators imitated the format and the formulae of Boethius' Aristotle commentaries, and even commentaries on Plato's Timaeus use a Boethian format rather than that used by Calcidius in his exposition of Plato's work. (3)

Teachers, whether ancient or medieval, Greek or Latin, would give their pupils a few hints about the general contents of the relevant text in their introductory lectures, which appear as proems in the written versions of commentaries. But much more important than those lectures were the compendia, the sort of books that since Antiquity have often carried the title of Introduction to... whatever the subject (Eisagogé, Introductiones...). Most of the extant ancient specimens, insofar as they are philosophical, are about logic. In principle, and sometimes in practice, such works can be independent of any particular authoritative text. Thus there is no reason to see Galen's Introduction to Logic as a sort of summary of one or two of the classics of logic. On the other hand, Boethius' Introduction to Categorical Syllogisms4 makes no secret of the fact that it tries to summarize the syllogistics presented in Aristotle's Prior Analytics, and for good measure, it starts with a summary of the doctrine of terms and propositions from the Perihermeneias. Basically the same matter is covered in Apuleius' Perihermeneias.

Boethius used a work by Porphyry for his models. We cannot tell for certain how closely he followed his model, but at least the general structure is likely to have been the same in Porphyry. If so, Porphyry's Introduction to the Categories (the Isagoge) and his Introduction to categorical syllogisms together offered a compendium of a very large part of the Organon.

A brief compendium of logic may also be found in Martianus Capella and an ultra-brief one in Cassiodorus. Together with Boethius they gave inspiration to the revitalizing of the compendium genre in medieval Latin scholasticism, with Peter of Spain's Summulae as the most famous specimen. The genre also survived in Byzantium, but only barely so -- only three reasonably complete ones are extant, dating from 1007, ca. 1260, and ca. 1325, respectively ; there is convincing evidence that not a lot more ever existed'. The typical Latin compendium or summulae is characterized by combining sections that summarize certain parts of the Organon with sections that deal with more recent parts of logic. This is not the case with the Byzantine compendia.

Most often people would read a compendium before they read the original texts. In that way the compendia could be very influential by preconditioning students for a certain way of reading the authoritative texts." (pp. 1-3)

Notes

(2) Referred to by Plutarch in De animae procreatione in Timaeo, and by Proclus in his In Timaeum. The sources do not allow us to decide whether his work was some sort of essay on the Timaeus or more like a series of explanatory notes on the text.

(3) Thus in the anonymous scholia on Timaeus published as Bernhard of Chartres, Glosae super Platonem. Edited by P.E. Dutton, Studies and Texts 107, PIMS, 1991.

(4) I use this title for the work of which the first version appears as De syllogismo categorico in Migne's Patrologia Latina 64, whereas the incomplete revised version appears as Introductio ad syllogismos categoricos. Christina Thomsen Thornqvist of the university of Gothenburg will discuss the title question in her forthcoming critical edition of the first version. [Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii De syllogismo categorico. Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg 2008.]

(5) See Patrologia Latina 64 : 813C " ipse Porphyrius ", and cf. 814C " Hos ergo quatuor in prima figura modos in Analytics suis Aristoteles posuit. Caeteros vero quinque modos Theophrastus et Eudemus addiderunt, quibus Porphyrius, gravissimae vir auctoritatis, virus est consensisse ".

(6) See S. Ebbesen, “Western and Byzantine Approaches to Logic”, in Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen Age Grec et Latin, 62 (1992), pp. 167-178, at p. 172.

(7) Already in ancient times hypothetical syllogisms had been added to the Organon material, but then hypothetical syllogisms had also found their way into the commentaries on Prior Analytics.

From: Sten Ebbesen, "Late-Ancient Ancestors of Medieval Philosophical Commentaries", in Il Commento filosofico nell'Occidente latino (secoli XIII/XV) / The Philosophical Commentary in the Latin West (13 - 15th Centuries). Edited by Fioravanti Gianfranco, Leonardi Claudio, and Perfetti Stefano. Turnhout: Brepols 2002, pp. 1-15. Reprinted as Chapter 7 in: S. Ebbesen, Greek-Latin Philosophical Interaction. Collected Essays of Sten Ebbesen. Volume 1, Aldershot: Ashgate 2008, pp. 97-106.

Problems in Aristotle' Categories

"Among the main problems of Aristotle's theory of the categories are the nature of their members, their number and how this number is arrived at. We find these problems discussed in modern research (1), but they are also dealt with in medieval philosophy.

To have a better understanding of the theories of the categories, we would like to point out that, in our view, ancient and medieval authors took for granted a parallelism between thought and reality. By 'parallelism' we mean that they accepted that there are things that exist in reality, and that there can be, and is knowledge of those things. These things as conceived by human understanding are designated by a term. So human understanding involves a subjective element when the thing is conceived or named, but thanks to the parallelism, the thing conceived by man is also the thing in nature. Now different authors put emphasis on different things, i.e. either on the things conceived (the objective (point of view) or on the conception of things (the subjective point of view). The question need not be asked whether a kind of gap had to be overcome: there is no gap. (2)

In a number of studies, L.M. de Rijk has made a fruitful distinction between a name in its descriptive function and in its deictic function. The use of e.g. the term 'man' implies a descriptive function, by which we can describe the class of men, and a deictic function, by which we can refer to the members of the class. Within the latter he distinguishes between 'actuality' and 'factuality'. A term in its deictic function refers to things, though they need not factually exist, i.e. they are contingent. Signification of factual existence is a complementary function of the name.(3)

In the categories of being items are collected and ordered by which man can name reality, or by means of which he can form complex wholes (for instance 'white man'), and even propositions (for instance 'men are white'), by which he can speak about reality and refer to it in the way he wants. So the theory of the categories is fundamental for philosophy. One could even say that the choice of a particular theory of categories depends on what kind of a philosopher one is.

What is the nature of the members of the categories? Are these members primarily terms which refer to something in reality? Or are they things so far as, and only so far as, these are captured in a linguistic expression or thought? When the nature of the members of the categories has been determined, the question arises for medieval philosophers how they are divided, i.e. how many categories there are, and which. Is their number ten, which is usually supposed to be held by Aristotle. Can this number be established by proof (or deduction)? Especially from John Duns Scotus onwards, not only positive terms, which are a privileged group, are studied, but also non-positive terms, such as 'blindness', fictional terms (for instance 'chimera'), terms of second intention, negative terms etc., which complicates the interpretation of the categories." (pp. 183-184)

Notes

(1) See for a general survey of the problems, H. Baumgartner, 'Kategorie, Kategorienlehre', in J. Ritter and K. Gründer (eds.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie IV, Darmstadt 1976, cols. 714-725.

(2) See esp. L.M. de Rijk, 'Categorization as a Key Notion in Ancient and Medieval Semantics', Vivarium XXVI, 1 (1988), 1-19.

(3) L. M. de Rijk, 'Ist Logos Satz?', in M.F. Fresco a.o., (eds.), Heideggers These vom Ende der Philosophie. Verhandlungen des Leidener Heidegger-Symposiums, April 1984, Bonn 1989, 21-32.

(4) E. Lask, Die Logik der Philosophie und die Kategorienlehre, 1923 (1911) (Gesammelte Schriften 2, 4): Was für eine Kategorienlehre man wählt, hangt davon ab, was für ein Philosoph man ist.

From: Egbert Peter Bos and A. C. van der Helm, "The Division of Being over the Categories According to Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus". In E. P. Bos (ed.), John Duns Scotus (1265/6-1308): Renewal of Philosophy, Amsterdam: Rodopi 1998, pp. 183-196.

The importance of the Commentaries on the Categories

"Aristotle's Categories is the subject of an extensive number of commentaries and of an unusual amount of debate, and for good reasons.(1) To begin with, in spite of its relatively short length, it can be a rather difficult text to understand, even for the trained philosopher, to say nothing of those who are just beginning their study of philosophy. Yet, because it laid the foundation for many subsequent philosophical discussions in general, and for logic in particular, it was, during much of the Middle Ages, often the very first philosophical text students encountered. Even contemporary philosophers who are steeped in philosophy and who have studied the Categories in depth often find it difficult, albeit for different reasons. One difficulty, as the ancient commentators on the Categories recognized, is that Aristotle himself is ambiguous about the subject of the work. What exactly is he categorizing? Is it 'things that are' or 'things that are said' or something in between, such as a concept? Furthermore, depending on how one understands its purpose, the Categories can be seen in harmony with, in contrast to, or even in contradiction to, Plato's own theory of the five highest genera. For all of these reasons the Categories has historically acted like a magnet, attracting commentaries from Aristotelians, Platonists, and Stoics alike. Quite naturally, some of these commentaries defend Aristotelianism, whereas others defend either Platonism or Stoicism by attacking Aristotle's Categories. Finally, still others, especially during the Late Middle Ages, use the Categories as a means to expound their own philosophical systems in the process of interpreting Aristotle.

Though many of the ancient and medieval commentators, such as Porphyry, Boethius and Albert the Great, did write original treatises on philosophical issues, their commentaries are in themselves valuable contributions to philosophy, particularly those from the later Middle Ages.(2) Consequently, studies of the various commentaries, and especially those dealing with the Categories, are valuable projects, as the following Essays amply demonstrate. As Robert Andrews points out, medieval "Categories commentaries are the repository of centuries of analyses of the basic concepts of Western thought, all carefully organized and awaiting modern rediscovery." (3) And while most of those commentaries are still awaiting rediscovery, the following Essays, I hope, will convince everyone that the effort is worthwhile." (pp. 1-2)

Notes

(1) According to my count of the texts listed by Charles Lohr, roughly two hundred extant Latin commentaries on the Categories were written during the Middle Ages. Of course, this number does not take into account the commentaries that are not extant, nor the ones written in Greek, Arabic, or Hebrew. Cf. the lists of extant commentaries cited by Charles Lohr in Traditio, vols. 23-29.

(2) Compare Fr. Wippel's description of St. Thomas' commentaries: of his theological commentaries, "two are commentaries in the strict sense, i.e., on the De Hebdomadibus of Boethius and on the De divinis nominibus; the other two offer brief expositions of the texts of Boethius and of Peter and use them as occasions for much fuller and highly personal disquisitions by Thomas himself." John E Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 2000), p. XVIII.

(3) Robert Andrews, "Question Commentaries on the Categories in the Thirteenth Century,"Medioevo 26 (2001), 265-326, p. 266.

From: Lloyd A. Newton, "The Importance of Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories", in: Lloyd A. Newton (ed.), Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories, Leiden: Brill, 2008, pp. 1-8.

"The interest of Categories commentaries for the contemporary philosopher is worth reviewing. Categorization of items constituting the world is today called ontology; the medievals attempted to classify the world according to the ten categories of Aristotle. The modern accusation, that medieval philosophers were actually dealing with linguistic classification, was in fact acknowledged by many medievals. While the medieval treatment of some categories (and here I am thinking especially of relation) was arcane, resulting from a particular interaction of theology and philosophy, other discussions, such as on the nature of number, involved speculative thought comparable to modern reflections on the subject. Medieval discussions have contributed directly to the development of contemporary philosophical concepts, such as intentionality, "haecceity", and the distinction de ditto / de re. Medieval Categories commentaries are the repository of centuries of analyses of the basic concepts of Western thought, all carefully organized and awaiting modern rediscovery.

The study of the Categories is uniquely able to take advantage of the continuity and traditionalism of the Middle Ages. Not only was the Categories the first Aristotelian work introduced to the Latin Middle Ages, but it was the only work of dialectic available for several centuries, in one form or another. During the beginnings of Latin scholasticism, when the study of philosophy faced a struggle for acceptance, Church Fathers such as Tertullian and Peter Damian denounced all pagan learning, including Aristotle. Against them it was argued that the study of dialectic (and grammar) is useful for the correct interpretation of Sacred Writings. The utilization of the Categories during the period of the seventh through tenth centuries escaped censure in special measure because it was available in two vehicles associated with St. Augustine. Augustine' s De trinitate systematically analyzes whether each category can be applied to God. Boethius' s De trinitate – a model and paradigm of the application of dialectic to theology – follows the relevant sections of Augustine. Furthermore, to Augustine was mistakenly attributed the Themistian paraphrase De decem praedicamentis, (2) placating those who feared the pagan Aristotle. This work was utilized by commentators during the time when no complete work of Aristotle was accessible, as informatively recounted by Marenbon in From the Circle of Alcuin to the School of Auxerre.(3)

When the logica vetus began circulating with the commentaries of Boethius in the 11th century, (4) the Categories was packaged with Porphyry's Isagoge, a work purporting to be an introduction to and an explication of key concepts in the Categories. When the logica nova was introduced, the Categories was recognized as first in a ranked order of logical works; its subject matter, individual words, is requisite for the understanding of sentences (in De interpretatione), syllogisms (Prior analytic) and science (Posterior analytic). This order was later overturned by the terminist logicians, who proposed an analysis of language which treated sentences, rather than words, as fundamental." (266-267)

Notes

(2) Pseudo-Augustini, Paraphrasis Themistiana, ed. L. Minio-Paluello, Brill, Leiden 1961 (A.L. 1, 5).

(3) Marenbon, From the Circle of Alcuin to the School of Auxerre: Logic, Theology and Philosophy in the Early Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1981.

(4) Marenbon, From The Circle of Alcuin, 16.

From: Robert Andrews, "Question Commentaries on the Categories in the Thirteenth Century", Medioevo. Rivista di Storia della filosofia Medievale 26, 2001, pp. 265-326.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography on the Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Bibliography

1. "Ancient and Medieval Interpretations of Aristotle’s Categories." 2014. Quaestiones Disputatae no. 4.

Edited by Joseph Almeida and Sarah Klitenic Wear.

Contents:

Medieval Commentary

Lloyd A. Newton: Platonic Elements in Albert the Great’s Commentary on the Categories 114; Gregory T. Doolan: Aquinas on the Metaphysician’s vs. the Logician’s Categories 133; Mark Roberts: The Second Sense of Being 156; Mark Gossiaux: James of Viterbo on the Nature and Division of the Categories 167; Andrew LaZella: The Simplicity of Being in Duns Scotus’s Quaestiones Super Praedicamenta Aristotelis and Later Works 191-210.

2. Adamo, Luigi. 1967. "Boezio e Mario Vittorino traduttori e interpreti dell' Isagoge di Porfirio." Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia no. 22:141-164.

3. Adams, Marylin McCord. 2000. "Re-reading De Grammatico, or Anselm's Introduction to Aristotle's Categories." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 11:83-112.

4. Amerini, Fabrizio. 2013. "Fourteenth-Century Debates about the Nature of the Categories." In Aristotle's Categories in the Byzantine, Arabic and Latin Traditions, edited by Ebbesen, Sten, Marenbon, John and Thom, Paul, 217-244. Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.

5. Andrews, Robert. 1988. Peter of Auvergne's Commentary on Aristotle's Categories: Edition, Translation, and Analysis.

Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cornell University, 1988 (two volumes), available at ProQuest Dissertation Express, reference number: 8804534.

6. ———. 2001. "Question Commentaries on the Categories in the Thirteenth Century." Medioevo.Rivista di Storia della filosofia Medievale no. 26:265-326.

"A philosophical genre new to the thirteenth century was the question commentary. Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories (a book "read by children"), extending in an unbroken tradition back to antiquity, by 1300 had developed into sophisticated analyses of the fundamental concepts underlying the rest of logic and philosophy. In this article I present, from both published and manuscript sources, texts selected with two purposes in mind: to examine the development of the question commentary out of the inserted dubia of the literal commentary, and to point out a particular shift in the concept of quantity, which may serve as a criterion for relative dating of Categories commentaries."

7. Ashworth, Earline Jennifer. 1991. "A Thirteenth-century interpretation of Aristotle on equivocation and analogy." Canadian Journal of Philosophy no. Supplementary volume 17:85-101.

"This paper is a case study of how Aristotle's remarks about equivocation were read in the thirteenth century. I analyze the divisions of equivocation and analogy found in an anonymous commentary on the Sophistici Elenchi written in Paris between 1270 and 1280; and I show the part played by four sources: 1) the Greek commentators of late antiquity; 2) the new translations of Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics; 3) Arabic works, particularly those of Averroes; 4) new grammatical doctrines, notably modi significandi."

8. ———. 1997. "L'analogie de l'être et les homonymes. Categories, 1 dans la "Guide de l'étudiant"." In L'enseignement de la philosophie au XIII siècle. Autour du "Guide de l'étudiant" du ms. Ripoll 109. Actes du Colloque International, edited by Lafleur, Claude and Carrier, Joanne, 281-295. Turnhout: Brepols.

9. Asztalos, Monika. 1993. "Boethius as a Transmitter of Greek Logic to the Latin West: the Categories." Harvard Studies in Classical Philology no. 95:367-407.

"...my purpose in this paper is to bring out what these commentaries, and especially the ones on the Isagoge and the Categories, reveal about Boethius’ working methods in his earliest works on Greek logic. I intend to deal less with the end product than with the road to it, and to point to the stages of development and improvement exhibited within these early works." (p. 367)

(...)

"Boethius devoted his first effort in Greek philosophy to Porphyry’s Isagoge, and later, in the year of his consulate (510), when he was in all likelihood in his late twenties, he spent all his spare time commenting for the first time on a work by Aristotle, the Categories. Ever since Samuel Brandt attempted a chronology of Boethius’ works on the basis of their internal references, it has been commonly held that when Boethius began commenting on the Categories, he had already written both his expositions of Porphyry’s Isagoge (hereafter Isag. 1 and Isag. 2), the first one a dialogue in two books based on Marius Victorinus’ apparently incomplete Latin version, the second a five book commentary on his own, complete translation. (2) This is certainly not the place for a full discussion of the chronology of Boethius’ works, but for the arguments of this paper it is necessary to establish the order between Isag. 2 and the commentary on the Categories (CC)." (p. 368)

(..)

"... I am not in a position to judge whether or not Boethius displays real originality in his later, more mature works. But I think that it would be unfair to expect novel interpretations in commentaries like the Isag. 1 and CC, which, if my assumptions in the first sections of this paper are correct, are not only the earliest of Boethius’ works on Greek philosophy but also the context in which he first encountered Aristotle. He seems to have come quite unprepared to both the Isagoge and the Categories, unarmed with proper translations and unfamiliar with the work he was commenting on. Boethius is indeed an epitome of the expression docendo discimus." (p. 407)

(2) 2 S. Brandt, “Entstehungszeit und zeitliche Folge der Werke von Boethius,” Philologus 62 (1903), 141-154 and 234-275. See also pp. XXVI-XXIX of the Prolegomena to Anicii Manlii Severini Boethii In Isagogen Porphyrii commenta, rec. S. Brandt, Corpus

Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 48, Wien/Leipzig, 1906. In his “ Stylistic Tests and the Chronology of the Works of Boethius,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 18 (1907), 123-156, A. P. McKinley’s conclusions concerning the chronology of Isag. 7,

Isag. 2, and the commentary on the Categories (hereafter CC) are the same as Brandt’s.

McKinley studied the frequency of certain particles in these commentaries as well as in Boethius’ translations of the Isagoge and Categories, assuming that Boethius’ language was influenced by his translations of Porphyry and Aristotle. Now, some of McKinley’s data corroborate Brandt’s chronology whereas others support the one I will suggest below. Furthermore, McKinley’s tests were made before the appearance of L. MinioPaluello’s critical editions of Boethius’ translations in the Aristoteles Latinus and would therefore have to be remade. I also believe that a necessary preliminary stage in examining whether Boethius’ translating activities influenced his choice of particles is to compare his Latin commentaries with the extant Greek sources. Since there is no adequate source apparatus in any of the editions of Boethius’ commentaries, this would mean a great deal of work. Concerning the question whether Boethius wrote Isag. 2 before or after CC, L. M. De Rijk follows Brandt’s view on pp. 125-127 of “On the chronology of Boethius’ works on logic,” Vivarium 2 (1964), 1-9 and 125-162, on exactly the same grounds as the ones on which Brandt based his conclusions and without corroborating them further.

10. Bechtle, Gerald. 2008. "Metaphysicizing the Aristotelian Categories. Two References to the Parmenides in Simplicius’ Commentary on the Categories (Simplicius, In Categorias 4

[CAG 8, 75,6 Kalbfleisch] and In Categorias 8 [291,2 K.])." Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum / Journal of Ancient Christianity no. 12:150-165.

11. Biard, Joël. 1991. "Sémiologie et théorie des catégories chez Albert de Saxe." In Itinéraires d'Albert de Saxe, Paris-Vienne au XIVe siècle, edited by Biard, Joël. Paris: Vrin.

12. ———. 2003. "Le traité sur les catégories de Blaise de Parme." In La tradition médiévale des Catégories (XIIe-XVe siècles), edited by Biard, Joël and Rosier-Catach, Irène, 365-378. Leuwen: Éditions Peeters.

13. Biard, Joël, and Rosier-Catach, Irène, eds. 2003. La tradition médiévale des Catégories (XIIe-XVe siècles). Louvain: Peeters.

Actes du XIIIe Symposium européen de logique et de sémantique médiévales (Avignon, 6-10 juin 2000).

Table des matières: Introduction V-XI;

A. Nombre et nature des categories.

Valentin Omelyantchyk: La question d'Alexandre dans les commentaires medievaux sur les Catégories 1; Giorgio Pini: Scotus on Deducing Aristotle's Categories 23; Mischa von Perger: Understanding the Categories by Division: Walter of Burley vs. William of Ockham 37; William McMahon: Some non-standard views and their definition in Ockham's Nominalism 53; Allan Bäck: Avicenna on relations 69;

B. Problèmes linguistiques et logiques.

Costantino Marmo: Types of Opposition in the Post-predicamenta in Thirteenth-century Commentaries 85; C. H. Kneepkens: Clarembald of Arras and the Notionistae 105; E. Jennifer Ashworth: L'equivocité, l'univocité et les noms propres 127; Claude Panaccio: Connotative Concepts and Their Definition in Ockham's Nominalism 141; Fabienne Pironet: Siger de Brabant et les catégories: la signification des termes accidentels 157; Fabrizio Amerini: Catégories et langage mental: une critique de Francois de Prato a Guillaume d'Ockham 173; Richard Gaskin: Complexe significabilia and Aristotle's Categories 187;

C. Problèmes physiques, psychologiques, métaphysiques.

E. P. Bos: Petrus Thomae on Unity that is less than Numerical 207; Christopher Martin: The Role of Categories in the Development of Abelard's Theory of Possibility 225; William Courtenay: The Categories, Michael of Massa and Natural Philosophy at Paris, 1335-1340 243; Simo Knuuttila: Locating Emotions in the Categories 261;

D. Problemes theologiques.

Andrea Tabarroni: "Utrum deus sit in praedicamenta": Ontological Simplicity and Categorical Inclusion 271; Luisa Valente: "Talia sunt subiecta qualia predicata permittunt": le principe de l'approche contextuelle 289;

E. Monographies.

Yukio Iwakuma: William of Champeaux on Aristotle's Categories 313; Joke Spruyt: Twelfth-Century Gloses on Categories 329; Sten Ebbesen: Anonymus D'Orvillensis on the Categories 347; Joël Biard: Le traité sur les catégories de Blaise de Parme 365.;

Bibliographie 379; Index des noms 399-401.

14. Bos, Egbert Peter. 1998. "The division of Being over the Categories according to Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus." In John Duns Scotus (1265/6-1308): renewal of philosophy, edited by Bos, Egbert Peter, 183-196. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Acts of the Third Symposium organized by the Dutch Society for Medieval Philosophy Medium Aevum (May 23 and 24, 1996).

"In this contribution we shall investigate the views held by Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus concerning the nature and number of the categories. As is traditional in medieval logic, one first has to determine the nature of something, and then its division (in this case their number). Each in their own way, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas intended to safeguard the number of ten by way of a proof, i.e. a deduction. Duns Scotus, however, believes that such a proposition is impossible. He also investigates the opinions of those who try to infer the nature of the categories from the various modi predicandi, thus possibly criticizing Albert and Thomas -- be it justly or unjustly. In his opinion, the members of the categories refer to distinct 'realities' ('realities' in a Scotistic sense). None of them can be reduced, neither to each other, nor to something else. All members possess a certain formal reality, although this is not merely identical with the being of an actual thing. (5) Scotus accepts the number of ten categories with reference to tradition, (6) but he gives some negative arguments. He demonstrates that there are neither more categories (for instance motus as an eleventh category), (7) nor less than ten (for instance ens per se and ens in alio alone). So he concludes to the number of ten in a negative way: there are no more, and no less." pp. 183-185

(5) Th. Kobusch, 'Substanz und Qualität. Die Reduzierung der Kategorien nach Wilhelm von Ockham' in D. Koch and Kl. Bort (eds.), Kategorie und Kategorialität. Historisch-systematische Untersuchungen zum Begriff der Kategorie im Philosophischen Denken. Festschrift für Klaus Hartmann zum 65. Geburtstag, Würzburg 1990, 79.

(6) Just as his (supposed) disciple Francis of Mayronnes would. E. P. Bos, 'The Theory of Ideas According to Francis of Meyronnes (Commentary on the Sentences (Conflatus) I, dist. 47), in L. Benakis (ed.), Néoplatonisme et philosophie médiévale. Acts du colloque international de Corfu, 6-8 octobre 1995, Bruges 1997, 211-227.

(7) Which is also suggested by Aristotle in one place of his work, where it said that for each category there is a substrate, for instance for the quale, for the quantum, for the when, for the where, and for the motion. See Aristotle, Metaphysics, VII, 4 1029b 25.

"Conclusions.

1. The number of categories turns out to be a problem for medieval philosophers. It is pointed out that the Philosopher himself was not too consistent in his listings of the categories. Avicenna, for instance, does not accept the number of ten just like that.

2. Some Medievals try to deduce the ten categories. Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas do so each in their own (although quite similar) ways, starting from their own respective ontology.

3. Scotus does not undertake any kind of deduction. He stresses the realiter difference between the diverse categories. He only accepts the number of ten categories on the basis of tradition. He differentiates between the way the metaphysician and the logician views the list of ten categories.

4. Scotus does reduce non-entia, figmenta, and so on to entia, as members of the categories. To Scotus this seems to be a matter of far greater concern than it was to his predecessors. After Scotus philosophers are very much interested in the problem whether those non-positive terms can be regarded as members of the ten traditional categories." (p. 196)

15. Bos, Egbert P. 1999. "John Buridan on Substance in his Commentary (Summulae) on Aristotle's Categories." In Signs and Signification. Vol. I, edited by Gill, Harjeet Singh and Manetti, Giovanni, 85-99. New Delhi: Bahri Publications.

"As a master of arts John Buridan commented on Aristotle's logic. The quaestiones, in which specific problems are discussed in the traditional medieval form, are more elaborate and detailed commentaries.

One of Aristotle's text to be commented are the Categories (Praedicamenta). The Quaestiones in Praedicamenta have been edited recently by J. Schneider (München, 1983); I have prepared a critical edition of Buridan's commentary (summulae) on the same work, which is due to appear soon. This edition is part of an intemational project, of which it is the intention to issue the first complete edition of Buridan's Summulae, which contains eight treatises, supplemented with a new edition of his Sophismata.

In the present contribution I shall give an analysis of Buridan's commentary on the category of substance. Before entering this subject, I shall make some remarks on the general nature of the work. This contribution is practically the same as a part of the introduction to my forthcoming edition." p. 85

"4. A summary of the Contents

Buridan starts with a discussion on aequivocatio, univocatio and denominatio. Sometimes, he says, aequivocatio is attributed to a word having signification, sometimes to things signified. Here (3.1.1.) Buridan attributes aequivocatio to things as far as they are signified equivocally by one and the same word. This signification is not matched by one concept (ratio, 3.1.2), but by two, or more, one for each thing. E.g. a dog, a star and a fish are signified by the word canis ('dog') that may have supposition for them under different concepts.

There is univocation when the several things signified are united, not only by a common designation, but also by a common definition. Buridan emphasizes (3.1.2) that both equivocatio and univocatio are on the level of conventional terms and propositions, and are not properties of mental terms and propositions.

Equivocation and univocation are mutually opposed in an exhaustive division. The third item of the Antepraedicamenta, denomination (denominatio), is different. For a term to be denominative it must satisfy both a morphological-cum-semantical criterion and a purely semantical one. First, (1.a) it must be a concrete term (a term signifying concrete entities), and (1.b) it must be morphologically related to the corresponding abstract term; album ('white [thing]') satisfies (1.a-b), having albedo ('whiteness') as its abstract counterpart. Second, (2) the term must have appellation. This, Buridan explains, means that it must 'evoke' or 'connote' some disposition which is extrinsic to the nature of that for which the term supposits. Album (`white [thing]') satisfies this condition; it may supposit, say, for a man, but it also connotes something which is extrinsic (nonessential) to man, namely whiteness. By contrast, homo ('man') only satisfies criteria (1.a-b); it is a concrete noun with a morphologically related abstract counterpart, viz. humanitas. Criterion (2) remains unsatisfied because humanity is essential to all supposits of homo and thus cannot fulfil the role of an extrinsic disposition connoted by the term." p. 91 (notes omitted).

16. Bos, Egbert Peter. 2000. "Some Notes on the Meaning of the Term 'Substantia' in the Tradition of Aristotle's 'Categories'." In L'élaboration du vocabulaire philosophique au Moyen Âge, edited by Hamesse, Jacqueline and Steel, Carlos, 511-537. Turnhout: Brepols.

Actes du Colloque international de Louvain-la-Neuve et Leuven, 12-14 septembre 1998 organisé par la Société Internationale pour l'Étude de la philosophie Médiévale

17. ———. 2002. "John Versor's Albertism in his Commentaries to Porphyry and the Categories." In Chemins de la pensée Médiévale. Études offertes à Zénon Kaluza, edited by Bakker, Paul J.J.M., Faye, Emmanuel and Grellard, Christophe, 47-78. Turnhout: Brepols.

18. Boulnois, Olivier. 2008. "Les catégories selon Duns Scot." In Giovanni Duns Scoto. Studi e ricerche nel VII Centenario della sua morte in onore di P. César Saco Alarcón. Vol I, edited by Nuñez, Martín Carbajo, 357-377. Roma: Antonianum.

"...la question des catégories constitue une aporie que toute métaphysique doit traverser, et que Duns Scot lui-même a parcouru minutieusement. Son traitement des catégories est-il déjà un fondement de l'univocité? Ou, a contrario, une doctrine qu'il lui a fallu abandonner?

L'élucidation du statut des catégories va évidemment de pair avec une interprétation de l'ouvrage éponyme (attribué à Aristote, mais peut-être d"origine scolaire): les Catégories. Lïndécision portant sur le skopos du traité donne aux interprètes du grain à moudre. En tous cas, si nous pouvons maintenant s"efforcer de renouer avec une compréhension de l'aristotélisme authentique, nous le pouvons qu'en tenant compte de la tradition de lïnterprétation. et notamment de l'interprétation médiévale. Celle-ci, tantôt a fait surgir des questions essentielles, tantôt a recouven le texte de questions étrangères. Dans un cas comme dans l'autre. il nous faut les reprendre, soit pour les faire nôtres, soit pour les détruire.

Dans ce cadre historique et herméneulique plus vaste, je me limiterai ici à une de ces interprétations, celle de Duns Scot. Nous bénéficions depuis peu d'une nouvelle édition critique de son Commentaire par questions sur les Catégories. Pour l'architecture d'ensemble de l'ouvrage, il est frappant que Scot ajoute une réflexion préliminaire sur le concept de catégorie en général, alors qu'une telle réflexion est absente chez Aristote. JI consacre en effet 4 questions à des considérations générales sur les catégories, - avant d'examiner en 7 questions l'objet des chapitres 1 à 3 des Catégories (Univoques, équivoques et paronymes; genres et espèces). et de consacrer 33 questions aux diverses catégories en particulier, ainsi qu'aux postprédicaments.

Ces quatre questions sont les suivantes:

1. Le livre des Catégories pone-t-il sur dix sons vocaux signifiants? (Problème du rapport entre la grammaire et la logique).

2. Ce livre a-t-il pour sujet les dix catégories? (Problème du rapport entre le nominalisme et le réalisme).

3. Y a-t-il un prédicat intentionnel commun à ces termes les plus généraux?

4. L'être est-il univoque aux dix catégories?

Je suivrai le fil conducteur de ces 4 questions." (pp. 357-358, note omise)

19. Breton, Stanislas. 1962. "La déduction thomiste des catégories." Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 60:5-32.

20. Brower, Jeffrey E. 1996. Medieval Theories of Relations Before Aquinas: Categories Commentaries, A.D. 510-1250, University of Iowa.

Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation available at ProQuest Dissertation Express ref. n. 9715116.

21. Bruun, Otto, and Corti, Lorenzo, eds. 2005. Les Catégories et leur histoire. Paris: Vrin.

Table des matières. Jonathan Barnes: Les Catégories et les Catégories 11; Curzio Chiesa: Porphyre et le problème de la substance des Catégories 81; Benjamin Morison: Les Catégories d'Aristote comme introduction à la logique 103; Anthony Kenny: Les Catégories chez les Pères de l'Église latins 121; Michael Frede: Les Catégories d'Aristote et les Pères de l'Église Grecs 135; Alain de Libera: L'onto-théo-logique de Boèce: doctrine des catégories et théorie de la prédication dans le De Trinitate 175; John Marenbon: Les Catégories au début du Moyen Âge 223; Sten Ebbesen: Les Catégories au Moyen Âge et au début de la modernité 245; Stéphane Dieble: Catégories, conversation et philosophie chez al-Fàràbi 275; Katerina Ierodiakonou: La réception byzantine des Catégories d'Aristote 307; Otto Bruun et Lorenzo Corti: Bibliographie 341; Index locorum 363; Index nominum et rerum 369-396.

22. Conti, Alessandro D. 1985. "Thomas Sutton's Commentary on the Categories According to MS Oxford, Merton College 289." In The Rise of British Logic. Acts of the Sixth European Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics Balliol College, Oxford, 19-24 June 1983, edited by Lewry, Osmund, 173-213. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

23. ———. 1992. "Elenco delle Dubitationes e delle Quaestiones contenute nei commenti di Giacomo da Piacenza all' Isagoge e alle Categorie." In L'insegnamento della logica a Bologna nel XIV secolo. Atti del Seminario (Bologna, settembre 1990). edited by Buzzetti, Dino, Ferriani, Maurizio and Trabattoni, Andrea, 441-453. Bologna: Istituto per la storia dell'Universitá di Bologna.

24. Côté, André. 1964. "Le nombre des catégories aristotéliciennes." Laval Théologique et Philosophique no. 20:165-175.

"Il nous est parvenu d ’Aristote un petit traité de logique dont l’unique but, semble-t-il, est de vouloir ramener toutes choses à l’une ou l’autre de dix catégories. L’usage constant que fait l’auteur des

noms de ces catégories dans tous ses autres traités n’est pas sans suggérer qu’il serait tout à fait impossible de faire oeuvre de science telle que l’entend Aristote sans l’aide de ces catégories. Or, l’on est forcé de noter que l’énumération qu’il en fait lui-même en plusieurs traités différents n’est pas toujours la même : en fait, et le nombre et l’ordre des choses énumérées varient.

La chose n’a pas été sans attirer l’attention de nombreux successeurs d ’Aristote, et, disciples comme critiques lui ont le plus souvent accordé un intérêt qui dépassait la simple curiosité. Mais les explications proposées par les uns ou les autres n’ont pas toujours touché, à notre avis, le fond du problème qui nous apparaît comme étant strictement d ’ordre logique. Il semble donc que toute solution éventuelle du problème tel que posé devrait s’appuyer sur les réponses aux deux questions préliminaires suivantes, à savoir : quel est le rôle précis que jouent les Catégories dans l’ensemble de la logique aristotélicienne ; et, est-il possible de démontrer, d ’une preuve proprement logique, le nombre de ces catégories ?

Nous nous limiterons ici à suggérer une réponse à ces deux questions, réponse que nous croyons se rattacher à une certaine tradition logique à laquelle nous aimerions associer les noms de Porphyre,

Boèce et Albert le Grand en particulier." (p. 165, notes omises)

25. Courtenay, William J. 2003. "The Categories, Michael de Massa, and Natural Philosophy at Paris, 1335–1340." In La tradition médiévale des catégories (XIIe–XVe siècles), edited by Biard, Joël and Rosier-Carach, Irène, 243-260. Louvain: Peeters.

Reprinted as Chapter XV in W. J. Courtenay, Ockham and Ockhamism. Studies in the Dissemination and Impact of His Thought, Leiden: Brill 2008, pp. 329-346.

26. Courtine, Jean-François. 1980. "Note complémentaire pour l'histoire du vocabulaire de l'être. Les traductions latines d' ousía et la compréhension romano-stoïcienne de l'être." In Concepts et Catégories de la pensée antique, edited by Aubenque, Pierre, 33-87. Paris: Vrin.

Repris dans: J-F. Courtine, Les catégories de l'être. Études de philosophie ancienne et médiévale, Paris: Press Universitaires de France 2003, pp. 11-77.

27. Demetracopoulos, John A. 1996. "Aristotle's Categories in the Greek and Latin Medieval exegetical tradition. The case of the argument for the non-simultaneity of relatives." Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen-Âge grec et latin no. 66:117-134.

28. ———. 2006. "Alcuin and the Realm of Application of Aristotle's Categories." In Intellect et imagination dans la philosophie médiévale / Intellect and Imagination in Medieval Philosophy / Intelecto e imaginação na filosofia medieval, edited by Pacheco, Maria Candida da Costa Reis M. and Meirinhos, José Francisco, 1733-1742. Turnhout: Brepols.

29. Desbordes, Françoise. 1988. "Homonymie et synonymie d'aprés les textes théoriques latins." In L'ambiguité. Cinq études historiques, edited by Rosier, Irène, 51-102. Lille: Presses Universitaires.

30. Diebler, Stéphane. 2005. "Catégories, conversation et philosophie chez Al-Farabi." In Les Catégories et leur histoire, edited by Bruun, Otto and Corti, Lorenzo, 275-305. Paris: Vrin.

31. Ebbesen, Sten. 1993. "Medieval Latin Glosses and Commentaries on Aristotelian Logical Texts of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries." In Glosses and Commentaries on Aristotelian Logical Texts: The Syriac, Arabic and Medieval Latin Traditions, edited by Burnett, Charles, 129-177. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London.

32. ———. 1999. "Anonymus D'Orvillensis' commentary on Aristotle's Categories." Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen-Âge grec et latin no. 70:229-423.

33. ———. 2001. "A Porretanean commentary on Aristotle's Categories." Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen-Âge grec et latin no. 72:35-88.

34. ———. 2002. "Late-ancient ancestors of medieval philosophical Commentaries." In Il Commento filosofico nell'Occidente latino (secoli XIII/XV) / The philosophical commentary uin the Latin West (13 - 15th centuries), edited by Fioravanti, Gianfranco, Leonardi, Claudio and Perfetti, Stefano, 1-15. Turnhout: Brepols.

Reprinted as Chapter 7 in: S. Ebbesen, Greek-Latin Philosophical Interaction. Collected essays of Sten Ebbesen. Volume 1, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008, pp. 97-106.

35. ———. 2005. "Les Catégories au Moyen Âge et au début de la modernité." In Les Catégories et leur histoire, edited by Bruun, Otto and Corti, Lorenzo, 245-274. Paris: Vrin.

36. Ebbesen, Sten, Marenbon, John, and Thom, Paul, eds. 2013. Aristotle's Categories in the Byzantine, Arabic and Latin Traditions. Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.

37. Erismann, Christophe. 2005. "La genèse du réalisme ontologique durant le haut Moyen Âge." École pratique des hautes études, Section des sciences religieuses. Annuaire no. 114:429-434.

Étude doctrinale des théories réalistes de la substance dans le cadre de la réception latine des Catégories d'Aristote et de l'Isagoge de Porphyre (850-1110).

38. ———. 2012. "Identité et ressemblance. Marius Victorinus, lecteur d'Aristote." Les Études philosophiques no. 101:181-190.

39. ———. 2014. "Paternités multiples. Les débats sur les relatifs entre Anselme et Abélard." Medioevo. Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Medievale no. 39:11-30.

40. Galonnier, Alain. 2017. "Nature, orientation exégétique et postérité des Dix catégories du Pseudo Augustin." HAL.archives ouvertes.fr:1-51.

41. Gibson, Margaret. 1982. "Latin commentaries on logic before 1200." Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale no. 24:54-64.

42. Girard, Charles. 2018. "Logique ou métaphysisque ? L'enjeu de la science catégoriale d'après Raoul le Breton." Les Études philosophiques no. 183:415-424.

43. Gossiaux, Mark. 2014. "James of Viterbo on the Nature and Division of the Categories." Quaestiones Disputatae no. 4:166-189.

44. Goubier, Frédéric. 2000. "Influences prédicatives et conséquences référentielles : un aspect de l'approche terministe de la première moitié du XIIIe siècle." Cahiers de l'institut du Moyen Âge grec et latin no. 71:37-70.

45. Hadot, Pierre. 1959. "Un fragment du commentaire perdu de Boèce sur les Catégories d'Aristote dans le Codex Bernensis 363." Archives d'histoire doctrinale et httéraire du Moyen Age no. 34:11-27.

Repris dans P. Hadot, Plotin, Porphyre: études néoplatoniciennes, Paris: Les belles Lettres, 1999, pp. 383-410.

46. ———. 1968. Porphyre et Victorinus. Paris: Études augustiniennes.

Two volumes; Vol. 2 contains Latin texts of Victorinus and Greek texts, with French translation, of Porphyry.

47. Hall, Alexander W. 2008. "John Buridan: on Aristotle's Categories." In Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories, edited by Newton, Lloyd A., 295-316. Leiden: Brill.

48. Hansen, Heine. 2012. John Pagus on Aristotle's Categories: A Study and Edition of the "Rationes super Praedicamenta Aristotelis". Leuven: Leuven University Press.

49. Hereza Modrego, David. 2021. "Catégories et réflexion. Maimon, lecteur d'Aristote." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 109:7-25.

50. Hissette, Roland. 1997. "Les éditions anciennes de la traduction attribuée à Guillaume de Luna du commentaire moyen d'Averroès sur les Catégories." Bulletin de Philosophie Medievale no. 39:163-173.

51. ———. 2001. "Les titres intermédiaires et le terme dixit dans la version latine médiévale du commentaire moyen d'Averroès sur les Catégories." Bulletin de Philosophie Medievale no. 43:61-74.

52. Hochshild, Joshua. 2001. "Words, concepts and things. Cajetan on the subject of the Categories." Dionysius no. 19:159-166.

53. Hugonnard-Roche, Henri. 1997. "Les "Catégories" d'Aristote comme introduction à la philosophie, dans un Commentaire syriaque de Sergius de Res' aina (d. 536)." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Medievale no. 8:339-364.

54. Ierodiakonou, Katerina. 2005. "La réception byzantine des Catégories d'Aristote " In Les Catégories et leur histoire, edited by Bruun, Otto and Corti, Lorenzo, 307-339. Paris: Vrin.

55. Iwakuma, Yukio. 2003. "William of Champeaux on Aristotle's Categories." In La tradition médiévale des Catégories (XIIe-XVe siècles), edited by Biard, Joël and Rosier-Catach, Irène, 313-328. Leuwen: Éditions Peeters.

56. Kenny, Anthony. 2008. "Aristotle Categories in the Latin Fathers " In From Empedocles to Wittgenstein. Historical Essays in Philosophy, 62-73. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Originally published in French in: O. Bruun, L. Corti (éds.), Les Catégories et leur histoire, Paris: Vrin, 2005, pp. 121-134.

57. Klima, Gyula. 1999. "Ockham's Semantics and Ontology of the Categories." In The Cambridge Companion to Ockham, edited by Spade, Paul Vincent, 118-142. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

58. Kneepkens, C. H. J. M. 2003. "Clarembald of Arras and the Notionistae." In La tradition médiévale des Catégories (XIIe-XVe siècles), edited by Biard, Joël and Rosier-Catach, Irène, 105-126. Leuwen: Éditions Peeters.

59. Korolec, Jerzy. 1975. "Commentaires de Prague sur les Catégories, la Physique, la Métaphysique et sur le Traité de l'âme d'Aristote en tant que sources à l' historie de la querelle sur les universaux au cours des XIVe et XVe siècles." Mediaevalia Philosophica Polonorum no. 21:145-152.

60. Libera, Alain de. 1995. "Boèce et l'interprétation médiévale des Catégories. De la paronymie à la denominatio." In Aristotelica Secunda. Mélanges offerts a Christian Rutten, edited by Motte, André and Denooz, Joseph, 255-264. Liège: Université de Liège. Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres.

61. Livesey, Steven J. 2001. "Medieval Latin Aristotle Commentators: addenda and biographical precisions." Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale no. 43:95-132.

62. Lohr, Charles H. 2000. "Renaissance Latin translations of the Greek commentaries on Aristotle." In Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Kraye, Jill and Stone, M.W.F., 24-40. New York: Routledge.

63. Maierù, Alfonso. 1982. "Alcune note sulla Expositio super universalia Porphyrii et artem veterem Aristotelis di Paolo Veneto: analogie e differenze con i corrispondenti commenti di Walter Burley." In English Logic in Italy in the 14th and 15th Centuries, edited by Maierù, Alfonso, 293-303. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

64. Marenbon, John. 1980. "John Scottus and the 'Categoriae Decem'." In Eriugena: Studien zu seinen Quellen. Vorträge des III. Internationalen Eriugena-Colloquiums (Freiburg/Br. 27.-30.10. 1979), edited by Beierwaltes, Werner, 117-134. Heidelberg: C. Winter.

Reprinted as Chapter V in: John Marenbon, Aristotelian Logic, Platonism, and the Context of Early Medieval Philosophy in the West, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.

65. ———. 1981. From the Circle of Alcuin to the School of Auxerre. Logic, theology and philosophy in the early Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

66. ———. 1992. "Vocalism, Nominalism and the Commentaries on the Categories from the Earlier Twelfth Century." Vivarium no. 30:51-61.

Reprinted as Chapter XIII in: John Marenbon, Aristotelian Logic, Platonism, and the Context of Early Medieval Philosophy in the West, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.

67. ———. 1993. "Medieval Latin Commentaries and Glosses on Aristotelian Logical Texts, before c. 1150 A.D." In Glosses and Commentaries on Aristotelian Logical Texts: The Syriac, Arabic and Medieval Latin Traditions, edited by Burnett, Charles, 77-127. London: The Warburg Institute, University of London.

Reprinted as Chapter II in: John Marenbon, Aristotelian Logic, Platonism, and the Context of Early Medieval Philosophy in the West, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.

68. ———. 1997. "Glosses and commentaries on the Categories and De interpretatione before Abelard." In Dialektik und Rhetorik im früheren und hohen Mittelalter. Rezeption, Überlieferung und gesellschaftliche Wirkung antiker Gelehrsamkeit vornehmlich im 9. und 12. Jahrhundert, edited by Fried, Johannes, 21-49. München: Oldenbourg.

Reprinted as Chapter IX in: John Marenbon, Aristotelian Logic, Platonism, and the Context of Early Medieval Philosophy in the West, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.

69. ———. 2005. "Les Catégories au début du Moyen Âge." In Les Catégories et leur histoire, edited by Bruun, Otto and Corti, Lorenzo, 223-243. Paris: Vrin.

70. ———. 2013. "The Tradition of Studying the Categories in the early Middlle Ages (until c. 1200): a revised working catalogue of glosses, commentaries and treatises." In Aristotle's Categories in the Byzantine, Arabic and Latin Traditions, edited by Ebbesen, Sten, Marenbon, John and Thom, Paul, 139-173. Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.

71. Marmo, Costantino. 1992. "La teoria delle relazioni nei commenti alle Categorie da Gentile da Cingoli a Matteo da Gubbio." In L'insegnamento della logica a Bologna nel XIV secolo. Atti del Seminario (Bologna, settembre 1990). edited by Buzzetti, Dino, Ferriani, Maurizio and Trabattoni, Andrea, 353-391. Bologna: Istituto per la storia dell'Universitá di Bologna.

72. McCord Adams, Marylin. 2000. "Re-reading De Grammatico, or Anselm's Introduction to Aristotle's Categories." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 11:83-112.

73. McMahon, William. 1981. "Radulphus Brito on the sufficiency of the categories." Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen-Âge grec et latin no. 39:81-96.

74. ———. 1987. "Aristotelian Categorial Theory Viewed as a Theory of Componential Semantics." In Papers in the History of Linguistics: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on the History of the Language Sciences (ICHoLS III), Princeton, 19-23 August 1984, edited by Aarsleff, Hans, Kelly, L. G. and Niederehe, Hans-Josef, 53-64.

"Many people throughout the centuries have been fascinated by Aristotle's theory of the categories. Here I would like to put forth the view that in terms of contemporary linguistic theory it may be regarded as a theory of componential semantics. This discussion will be primarily historical, tracing the development of the theory up to what may be considered its high point in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. The history of the theory will also stand as the main argument for the interpretation herein, in lieu of a detailed treatment of specific points in terms of current semantical theory.

Following Lyons (1977:317-335), we can define a theory of componential semantics as a view that the meanings of words (lexemes) in languages exhibit structural relations within conceptual fields. Within these fields there are atomic sense components (SC's) into which meanings can be factorized.

The 'basic', literal, semantical meanings within language are thus regarded as molecular structures built up from atomic SC's. Elsewhere (McMahon 1980b:147-148) I have taken the fairly standard position that Aristotle's categories are semantical. Here I want to add the contention that the ten Aristotelian categories are a suggested list of atomic SC's. and hence the theory of the categories would actually be the original theory of componential semantics within Western thought." (p. 53)

References

Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McMahon, William E. 1980b. "Albert the Great on the Semantics of the Categories of Substance, Quantity, and Quality." Historiographia Linguistica, 7. No. 1/2, 145-157.

75. ———. 2002. "The Medieval Sufficientiae: Attempts at a Definitive Division of the Categories." Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics no. 2:12-25.

76. ———. 2003. "Some non-standard views of the Categories." In La tradition médiévale des Catégories (XIIe-XVe siècles), edited by Biard, Joël and Rosier-Catach, Irène, 53-67. Louvain: Peeters.

77. Newton, Lloyd A., ed. 2008. Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories. Leiden: Brill.

Contents: Preface VII-VIII; Lloyd A. Newton: The Importance of Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories 1; Michael Chase: The Medieval Posterity of Simplicius ’ Commentary on the Categories: Thomas Aquinas and al-Fārābī 9; Allan Bäck: Avicenna The Commentator 31; Bruno Tremblay: Albertus Magnus On the Subject of Aristotle’s Categories 73; Robert Andrews: Interconnected Literal Commentaries on the Categories in the Middle Ages 99; Paul Symington: Thomas Aquinas on Establishing the Identity of Aristotle’s Categories 119; Giorgio Pini: Reading Aristotle’s Categories as an Introduction to Logic: Later Medieval Discussions about Its Place in the Aristotelian Corpus 145; Martin Pickavé: Simon of Faversham on Aristotle’s Categories and The Scientia Praedicamentorum 183; Lloyd A. Newton: Duns Scotus’s Account of a Propter Quid Science of the Categories 221; Todd Bates: Fine-tuning Pini ’s Reading of Scotus ’s Categories Commentary 259; Giorgio Pini: How Is Scotus’s Logic Related to His Metaphysics? A Reply to Todd Bates 277; Alexander W. Hall: John Buridan: on Aristotle's Categories 295; Alessandro D. Conti: A Realist Interpretation of the Categories in the Fourteenth Century: The Litteralis sententia super Praedicamenta Aristotelis of Robert Alyngton 317; Robert Andrews: Thomas Maulevelt's Denial of Substance 347; Appendix: Thomas Maulevelt: Quaestiones super Praedicamenta: Quaestio 16 358; Alessandro D. Conti: Categories and Universals in the Later Middle Ages 369; Bibliography 411; List of Contributors 429; Index 433-439.

"Originally, I planned to include essays on all three main philosophical traditions alive throughout the Middle Ages, namely, those written by Jewish, Christian and Islamic philosophers. Essays pertaining to the Jewish tradition, however, are noticeably absent due to the lack of contemporary scholarship in this area. Consequently, the preponderance of the remaining articles focuses mainly on Christian philosophers. The scope of the project has, however, stayed away from theological issues, even though discussions of the categories often have tremendous theological implications, especially concerning the doctrines of Transubstantiation and the Trinity. Consequently, the issues raised in the following essays are properly philosophical issues, not theological.

What follows is a collection of fourteen original essays, all devoted to one or more medieval commentaries on Aristotle's Categories, written by a wide variety of philosophers from Europe, Canada, and the United States." (p. 2)

78. Pattin, Adriaan. 1969. "Pour l'histoire du Commentaire sur les Catégories d'Aristote de Simplicius au Moyen." In Arts libéraux et philosophie au Moyen Age, 1073-1078. Paris: Vrin.

Actes du Quatrième Congrés International de philosophie Médiévale. Université de montréal, Montréal, Canada 27 août - 2 septembre 1967.

79. Perger, Mischa von. 2005. "Eriugenas Adaption der aristotelischen Kategorienlehre." In Logik und Theologie. Das Organon im Arabischen und im Lateinischen Mittelalter, edited by Perler, Dominik and Rudolph, Ulrich, 239-304. Leiden: Brill.

80. Pinborg, Jan. 1975. "Petrus de Alvernia on the Categories." Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen-Âge grec et latin no. 14:40-46.

81. Pini, Giorgio. 2002. Categories and Logic in Duns Scotus. An Interpretation of Aristotle's Categories in the Late Thirteenth Century. Leiden: Brill.

82. ———. 2003. "The Transcendentals of Logic: Thirteenth-Century Discussions on the Subject Matter of Aristotle's Categories." In Die Logik des Transzendentalen. Festschrift für Jan A. Aertsen, edited by Pickavé, Martin, 140-159. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

83. ———. 2003. "Scotus on deducing Aristotle's categories." In La tradition médiévale des Catégories (XIIe-XIVe siécles). XIIIe Symposium européen de logique et de sémantique médiévales. Avignon 6-10 juin 2000, edited by Biard, Joël and Rosier-Catach, Irène, 23-35. Louvain: Éditions Peeters.

84. ———. 2005. "Scotus's Realist Conception of the Categories: His Legacy to Late Medieval Debates." Vivarium no. 43:63-110.

85. Porro, Pasquale. 2020. "Keeping Language under Control: Late-Antique and Medieval Interpretations of the First Chapter of Aristotle’s Categories." In The Origin and Nature of Language and Logic: Perspectives in Medieval Islamic, Jewish, and Christian Thought, edited by Germann, Nadja and Harvey, Steven, 349-368. Turnhout: Brepols.

86. Rijk, Lambertus Marie de. 1988. "'Categorization' as a Key Notion in Ancient and Medieval Semantics." Vivarium no. 26:1-18.

"The aim of this paper is to argue for a twofold thesis: (a) for Aristotle the verb 'katêgorein' does not as such stand for statemental predication, let alone of the well-known `S is P' type, and (b) 'non-statemental predication' or `categorization' plays an important role in Ancient and Medieval philosophical procedure.

1. Katêgorein and katêgoria in Aristotle

Aristotle was the first to use the word `category' (katêgoria) as a technical term in logic and philosophy. It is commonly taken to mean `highest predicate' and explained in terms of statement-making. From the logical point of view categories are thus considered `potential predicates'.(*)

(...)

1.3 Name giving ('categorization') as the key tool in the search for 'true substance'

What Aristotle actually intends in his metaphysical discussions in the central books of his Metaphysics (Z-Th) is to discover the proper candidate for the name 'ousia'. According to Aristotle, the primary kind of 'being' or 'being as such' (to on hêi on) can only be found in 'being-ness' (ousia; see esp. Metaph. 1028b2). Unlike Plato, however, Aristotle is sure to find 'being as such' in the domain of things belonging to the everyday world. Aristotle's most pressing problem is to grasp the things' proper nature qua beings. In the search for an answer name-giving plays a decisive role: the solution to the problem consists in finding the most appropriate ('essential') name so as to bring everyday being into the discourse in such a way that precisely its 'beingness' is focussed upon.

(...)

2. The use of 'praedicare' in Boethius

The Greek phrase katêgorein ti kata tinos is usually rendered in Latin as praedicare aliquid de aliquo. The Latin formula primarily means `to say something of something else' (more precisely `of somebody'). Of course, the most common meaning of the Latin phrase is `to predicate something of something else in making a statement of the form S = P'. However, the verb praedicare, just as its Greek counterpart katêgorein, is used more than once merely in the sense of `naming' or `designating by means of a certain name', regardless of the syntactic role that name performs in a statement. In such cases praedicare stands for the act of calling up something under a certain name (designation), a procedure that we have labelled `categorization'. (...)

Boethius' use of praedicare is quite in line with what is found in other authors. Along with the familiar use of the verb for statemental predication, Boethius also frequently uses praedicare in the sense of `naming' or `designating something under a certain name' whereby the use of the designating word in predicate position is, sometimes even explicitly, ruled out." pp. 1, 4, 9-10.

(*) See L. M. de Rijk, The Categories as Classes of Names (= On Ancient and Medieval Semantics 3), in: Vivarium, 18 (1980), 1-62, esp. 4-7

87. Rink, Alexandra. 2006. Aristoteles in Sankt Gallen: Notkers des Deutschen Kategorien-Bearbeitung (Kapitel 1-17) auf Grundlage der Übersetzung und des Kommentars des Boethius. Bern: Peter Lang.

88. Scheu, Marina. 1944. The Categories of Being in Aristotle and St. Thomas. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

89. Senko, Wladyslaw. 1959. "Le Commentaire de Thomas Sutton sur les Catégories d'Aristote dans le ms. Q 3 de la bibliothèque de l'Université de Wroclaw." Mediaevalia Philosophica Polonorum no. 4:35-38.

90. Synan, Edward A. 1967. "Master Peter Bradley on the Categories." Mediaeval Studies no. 29:273-327.

91. Trego, Kristell. 2012. "Substance, sujet, acte. La première réception latine d'Aristote: Marius Victorinus et Boèce." Les Études philosophiques no. 101:233-256.

92. Wippel, John F. 1987. "Thomas Aquinas's Derivation of the Aristotelian Categories (Predicaments)." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 25:13-33.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on the Latin Medieval Commentators of Aristotle's Categories

A selection of Latin Commentators on Aristotle's Categories

(Page under construction)

For the bibliography on medieval authors see: Charles H. Lohr - Latin Aristotle Commentaries. Vol. II. Renaissance Authors - Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1988; Vol. III: Index initiorum; Index finium - Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1995; Vol. V: Bibliography of secondary literature - Firenze: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2005.

To facilitate research, for every author I give the name in English, Latin, French and Italian.

Marius Victorinus ca. 300 - 370 [Victorinus Afer (Caius Marius Victorinus) - Marius Victorinus - Mario Vittorino]

(Pseudo) Augustine 4th century [(Pseudo) Augustinus - (Pseudo) Augustine - (Pseudo) Agostino]

Boethius ca. 480 - 524/5 [Boethius Anicius Manlius Severinus - Boèce - Boezio]

John Scottus Eriugena ca. 800 - ca. 877 [Johannes Scotus (Eriugena) - Jean Scot Érigène - Giovanni Scoto Eriugena]

William of Champeaux ca.1070 - 1122 [Guillelmus de Campellis - Guillaume de Champeaux - Guglielmo di Champeaux]

Gerlandus of Besançon 11th century [Garlandus - Gerlando]

Peter Abelard 1079 - 1142 [Petrus Abaelardus - Pierre Abélard - Pietro Abelardo]

Gilbert of Poitiers 1085/90 - 1154 [Gilbertus Porretanus - Gilbert de la Porrée - Gilberto Porretano]

William of Sherwood 1200/5 - 1266/71 [Guillelmus de Shirwode - Guillaume de Shyreswood - Guglielmo di Shyreswood]

Albert the Great 1193/1206 - 1280 [Albertus Magnus - Albert le Grand - Alberto Magno]

Thomas Aquinas 1225/6 - 1274 [Thomas de Aquino - Thomas d'Aquin - Tommaso d'Aquino]

Lambert of Auxerre 13th century [Lambertus Autissiodorensis - Lambert d'Auxerre - Lamberto di Auxerre]

Boethius of Dacia 13th century [Boethius Dacus - Boèce de Dace - Boezio di Dacia]

Peter of Spain 13th century [Petrus Hispanus - Pierre d'Éspagne - Petro Ispano]

John Pagus 13th century [Johannes Pagus - Jean Pagus - Giovanni Pago]

Robert Kilwardby ca. 1215 - 1279 Robertus de Kilwardby - Robert Kilwardby - Roberto Kilwardby]

Roger Bacon 1214 - 1294 [Rogerius Bacon - Roger Bacon - Ruggero Bacone]

Martin of Dacia d. 1304 [Martinus de Dacia - Martin de Dacie - Martino di Dacia]

Peter of Auvergne - d. 1304 [Petrus de Alvernia - Perre d'Auvergne - Pietro d'Alvernia]

Simon of Faversham ca. 1260 - 1306 [Simonis de Faversham - Simon de Faversham - Simone di Faversham]

Thomas of Sutton ca. 1250 - ca. 1315 [Thomam de Sutona - Thomas of Sutton - Thomas of Sutton]

Giles of Rome ca. 1243 - 1316 [Aegidius Romanus - Gilles de Rome - Egidio Romano]

John Duns Scotus c. 1265/6 - 1308 [Johannes Duns Scotus - Jean Duns Scot - Giovanni Duns Scoto]

Radulphus Brito ? - d. 1320 [Radulphus Reginaldi Britonis - Raoul le Breton - Rodolfo il Bretone]

(Pseudo) Richard of Campsall ca. 1324-34 [(Pseudo) Richard de Campsall - (Pseudo) Richard de Campsall - (Pseudo) Riccardo di Campsall]

Walter Burley (or Burleigh) 1274/5 - 1344 [Gualterius de Burley (Burleaus) - Walter Burley - Walter Burley]

William Ockham ca. 1285 - 1347 [Guillelmus de Ockham - Guillaume Ockham (Occam) - Gugliemo di Ockham (Occam)]

Gerardus Odonis ? - 1348 [Gerardus (Giraldus) Odonis - Geraldus Odonis - Geraldus Odonis]

John Buridan ca. 1300 - after 1358 [Johannes Buridanus - Jean Buridan - Giovanni Buridano]

William of Heytesbury before 1313 - 1372/3 [Guillelmus de Heytesbury (Heitesbeurus) - Guillaume Heytesbury - Guglielmo Heytesbury]

Marsilius of Inghen ca. 1340 - 1396 [Marsilius de Inghen - Marsil d'Inghen - Marsilio di Inghen]

Robert Alyngton ? - 1398

Blasius of Parma ? - 1416 [Blasius Pelacanius de Parma - Blaise de Parme - Biagio Pelacani da Parma]

Paul of Venice 1369 - 1429 [Paulus Nicolettus Venetus - Paul de Venise - Paolo Veneto]

Marius Victorinus

Author of the first Latin translation of the Categories (now lost).

Texts

For the extant Fragments of Victorinus' translation see Boethius: Categoriarum supplementa.

Studies

(Pseudo) Augustine

Texts

- "Pseudo-Augustini Paraphrasis Themistiana [Categoriae Decem]." In Categoriae Vel Praedicamenta. Translatio Boethii, Editio Composite, Translatio Guillelmi De Moerbeka, Lemmata E Simplicii Commentario Decerpta, Pseudo-Augustini Paraphrasis Themistiana, edited by Minio-Paluello, Lorenzo. 133-175. Bruges: Desclée De Brouwer, 1961.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

Texts

- Categoriae Vel Praedicamenta. Translatio Boethii, Editio Composite, Translatio Guillelmi De Moerbeka, Lemmata E Simplicii Commentario Decerpta, Pseudo-Augustini Paraphrasis Themistiana. Bruges: Desclée De Brouwer, 1961.

"This volume contains five Latin versions of Aristotle's Categories. Numbers 1 and 2 both stem from Boethius, who is responsible for the Latin translations that were most widespread. One of them is more literal, the other more elegant. William of Moerbeke, on the other hand, was the author of a Latin version not only of Aristotle's work, but also of Simplicius' commentary, which contains the abbreviated lemmas of the Aristotelian text. Moreover, Aristotle's work was known by means of a Roman paraphrase attributed to Augustine and influenced by Themistius."

- Categoriarum Supplementa. Porphyrii Isagoge, Translatio Boethii, Et Anonymi Fragmentum Vulgo Vocatum "Liber Sex Principiorum". Bruges: Desclée De Brouwer, 1966.

"This volume constitutes a supplement to the Latin versions of the Categories. It contains Porphyry's famous Introduction to Aristotle's Categories in Boethius' translation and an extract of an anonymous 12th century Latin writing, which was widespread under the title Liber sex principiorum: it deals mainly with the last six categories, treated more briefly in Aristotle's work. The volume also contains the fragments quoted by Boethius from an older Latin version of Porphyry's Introduction, done by Marius Victorinus."

Studies

William of Champeaux

Texts

Available only in manuscript (C8 in Marenbon's list: Medieval Latin Commentaries and Glosses on Aristotelian Logical Texts, before c. 1150 A.D. - see bibliography)

Studies

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Index of the section "The Problem of Universals"

Antiquity and Middle Ages

The Problem Universals in Antiquity and Middle Ages

Bibliography on the Problem of Universals in Antiquity and Middle Ages

Peter Abelard and the Rise of Nominalism (under construction)

The Realist Ontology of John Duns Scotus

Selected Bibliography on John Duns Scotus

The Nominalist Ontology of William of Ockham

Selected Bibliography on William Ockham

Modern Era

The Problem of Universals: the Contemporary Debats

Selected Bibliography on The Contemporary Problem of Universals

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The Problem of Universals in Antiquity and Middle Ages

Introduction

"One of the most debated problems during the Middle Ages was the problem of the nature of general concepts. Greek logic, after long discussions, established the theory of the concept, which became classic, and was transmitted by commentators in their manuals and compendia. In the Middle Ages, the problem of the nature of general concepts, called by the logicians of the time universalia, was placed in the centre of logical and philosophical concerns, and gave rise to the famous "dispute of the universals".

(...)

This dispute lasted throughout the Middle Ages, though in certain periods a particular conception might prevail. This problem originates from a famous passage in Porphyry's Introduction to Aristotle's Categories -- Isagogé -- translated by Boethius, a treatise which represented the corner-stone of all dialectical studies. This passage appears at the beginning of the above mentioned work and it raised the following problem: are genera and species real, or are they empty inventions of the intellect? Here is that famous passage, opening the Prooemium in Porphyry's Isagogé: De generibus speciebus illud quidem sive subsistent, sine in nudis intellectibus posita sunt, sive subsistentia corporalia sent an incorporalia, et utrum separata a sensibilibus an in sensibilibus posita et circa ea constantia, dicere recusabo; altissimum mysterium est hujus modi et majoris indigens inquisitionis ("I shall avoid investigating whether genera and species do exist in themselves, or as mere notions of the intellect, or whether they have a corporeal, or incorporeal existence, or whether they have an existence separated from sensible things, or only in sensible things; it is quite a mystery which requires a more thorough investigation than the present one"). This problem, raised by Boethius, had been left aside for a while in the Middle Ages, but it arose again as soon as Aristotle's texts became better known.

(...)

Let us now see how this extraordinary problem of the universals arose. Aristotle said, (...) that there was no other science but of the universal. This thesis was adopted by the Scholastic logicians, who kept repeating: Scientia est de universalibus, existentia est singularium -- "Science concerns the universals, existence refers to singular (objects)" or, with another formula: Nulla est fluxorum scientia -- "There is no science of transient (ephemeral) things". It is therefore clear that the universal will be the central problem of any science, its whole foundation, its starting point. They granted such a great importance to this problem because they wanted first and foremost to lay the basis of science, without which science itself could not exist. Also, at the beginning of this dispute, a nominalist thinker, Roscelin, appeared, who denied the universal; this shocked the Aristotelian and Latin minded Middle Ages and gave rise to the discussion.

The treatises on the history of philosophy simplify, generally, the solutions the Scholastic proposed to the problem of the universals, and deal with only three or four main solutions. This simplification is made in order to detect the general directions of the Scholastics' thinking. As we shall see, the problem was far more complicated and subtle. Of course, it appeared simple to the first Scholastics. F. J. Thonnard remarks (Précis d'histoire de la philosophie, Paris, Tournai, Rome, 1963 p. 285) : "In the Middle Ages, the first philosophers did not realise initially all the nuances, and they answer by yes, or by no". According to Thonnard, only two groups of philosophers should be considered: (1) the realists, embracing a metaphysical point of view, and who assert that the universals are definitely objects; (2) the antirealists, adopting a psychological standpoint, and raising objections which force the realists to be more precise in their solutions.

The problem of the universals, as defined by Porphyry, and taken over by Boethius, was called prima quaestio -- "the first problem". Great importance was attached to this problem because of the numerous trends and nuances implied by the solutions. We possess a complete classification of these solutions, made by a mediaeval logician, John of Salisbury (twelfth century), in his. work Metalogicus (Metalogicon). In this work, the author enumerates 13 directions in the problem of the universals.

Metalogicus was a treatise on logic which the author himself confessed to have written (1159) from memory, after a rather long interruption of his studies of logic. His intention was to prove the usefulness of logic, opposing the attacks against this discipline by certain philosophers. The value of the work is that it is a vast source of information about the conceptions of the time.

Here are the 13 conceptions in the problem of the universals, such as given by John of Salisbury.

1) Roscelin's conception, in keeping with which the universals are mere words -- votes (nominalism).

2) Abelard's, and his disciples' conception, with whom the general concepts are reduced to sermons, predication being possible only in sermo (judgement), as the predicate of an object cannot be an object.

3) Another position upheld that the universal is intellectus (idea), or notio, such as Cicero (that is the Stoics) had seen it. Thinking cannot discriminate the particular and corporeal concrete from the sensation, but only the abstract, namely the general abstract, which is devoid of reality.

4) Walter of Mortaigne's position, who maintained the universals to be closely united with the individuals (res sensibiles), but to have a mode of existence -- status -- according to which way they are considered. It is the so-called theory of the status.

Walter of Mortaigne was a professor in Paris, and died as a bishop of Laon in 1174. His position is interesting because he professed, basically, a multiplicity of ontological status. The species and genera, up to the supreme genus, have different existential states. So, the status of the general, united to the individual, depends on the consideration of the individual as belonging to one or to another species. (This idea, of "the multiple states of the Being" originated with Aristotle. See the relevant chapter). The idea of multiple ontological states has appeared in contemporary logic since the establishment of the many-valued logics where the proposition can have more than two values, truth and falsehood. A close examination of Walter of Mortaigne's theories in this respect would certainly prove very interesting.

5) The platonic realism of Bernard of Chartres.

6) Gilbert of Poitiers' conception concerning the native forms - forma nativae.

Gilbert de la Porrée, bishop of Poitiers (1076-1154), is known also as Gilbertus Porretanus, or Pictaviensis (of Poitiers). His most important work on logic is De sex principiis, which played an important part later on. He started from the Platonic conception of ideas -- principles; these have copies -- the native forms -- which become multiple ant distinct in the individuals. Comparing these forms, the intellect shapes by abstraction a unique form, the genus, or the species, which conforms with the divine idea. Therefore in Plato's existence he saw a special "subsistence"subsistentia -- the essence of the individual Plato, this "Platonicity" -- Platonitas --, his distinct form, a copy of the idea of man.

7) Gauslenus of Soissons' opinion, according to which the universal exist only in collections.

Gauslenus of Soissons (1125-1151), bishop of Soissons, held that the universal concept exists only in the collection of individuals belonging to the same class, and not in the individual. The author of the treatise Metalogicus wrote that "Gauslenus Suessonensis episcopus situated the universal in objects gathered in a collection" (rebus in unum collectis) and denied it with isolated individuals.

8) The so-called theory of "manners" -- maneries.

This conception, just like that of Gauslenus of Soissons, of the collections or of native forms, is to be found in a work, written in the Middle Ages, De generibus et speciebus. This conception is a nominalist variant, in keeping with which the thing -- res -- is mere word -- vox.

The term maneries means "way of treating" or "way of handling", and is the origin of the French "manière". The canonist Huguccio (d. 1212), author of Summa Decretorum defined, in this sense, the species (species) as being rerum maneries (the "manner" of things). In short, a thing is a word -- vox --, and genus is its manner -- maneries.

9) The opinion according to which the universals are abstract form similar to the mathematical forms.

10) The so-called ratio indifferentiae doctrine, in keeping with which one thing can be at the same time individual and universal, although there is nothing universal in things, but the universal is what is similar between them.

Charles de Rémusat in Abélard (2nd ed., Paris, 1855) supplied a few excerpts from Abelard Glossulae super Porphyrium which explain this ratio indifferentiae conception. What in Plato, or in Socrates, is non-differentiated, or similar, indifferens vel consimile. Certain things are mutually convening, or agreeing, that is similar in nature, such as animals, bodies, so they are both universal and particular -- universal in that they are several in a community of essential attribution, and particular in that each of them is different from the other.

11) William of Champeaux's (1070-1120) opinion, who held a rather strange realism, finally coming to a theoria indifferentiae.

12) The conception according to which the distinction between genus and individual lies merely in a particularity of existence, as the universal exists at the same time in several and in the particular object.

13) The conception of the unknown author of the above mentioned -- De generibus et speciebus, a sort of Platonism, the "theory of identity". According to it, the genus, mankind for instance, is unique and identical with all the individuals, which are only accidentally distinct." (pp. 62-66)

From: Anton Dumitriu, History of Logic, Vol. II, Tunbridge Wells: Abacus Press 1977.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on the Problem of Universals in Antiquity and Middle Ages

Bibliography

1. "Twelfth-Century Nominalism Bibliography." 1992. Vivarium no. 30:211-215.

2. Adams, Marilyn McCord. 1977. "Ockham's Nominalism and Unreal Entities." Philosophical Review no. 76:144-176.

3. Amerini, Fabrizio. 2005. "What Is Real: A Reply to Ockham's Ontological Program." Vivarium no. 43:187-212.

"When Ockham's logic arrives in Italy, some Dominican philosophers bring into question Ockham's ontological reductionist program. Among them, Franciscus de Prato and Stephanus de Reate pay a great attention to refute Ockham's claim that no universal exists in the extra-mental world. In order to reject Ockham's program, they start by reconsidering the notion of "real", then the range of application of the rational and the real distinction. Generally, their strategy consists in re-addressing against Ockham some arguments extracted from Hervaeus Natalis's works. Franciscus's and Stephanus's basic idea is that some universals are not acts of cognition, but extra-mental, predicable things. Such things are not separable from singulars, nonetheless they are not the same as those singulars. Consequently, it is not necessary to allow, as Ockham does, that if two things are not really identical, they are really different and hence really separable. According to them, it is possible to hold that two things are not really identical without holding that they are also really non-identical and hence really different. Basically, their reply relies on a different notion of the relation of identity. Identity is regarded as an intersection of classes of things, so that it is possible to say that two things are really identical without saying that they also are the same thing. Franciscus and Stephanus, however, do not seem to achieve completely their aim."

4. Beal, M.W. 1973. "Universality without Universals: A Deleted Argument from Berkeley's Introduction to the 'Principles'." Modern Schoolman no. 50:301-310.

5. Benson, H. 1988. "Universals as Sortals in the Categories." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly no. 69:282-306.

"In this essay I argue that Aristotle is committed to a sortal analysis of the universal. According to this analysis something is a universal ("to katholou") just in case it is predicated "essentially" of a plurality of entities. I find evidence for such an analysis in the Categories, Posterior analytics, and Metaphysics Gamma. Finally, I suggest that an appeal to this analysis may help resolve a longstanding difficulty in Metaphysics Zeta, viz., Aristotle's commitment to (a) substances are not universals; (b) forms ("eide") are substances; and (c) forms ("eide") are predicated of a plurality of entities."

6. Boler, John. 1963. "Abailard and the Problem of Universals." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 1:37-51.

7. ———. 1985. "Ockham's Clever." Franciscan Studies no. 45:119-144.

8. Bonino, Guido. 2008. Universali / Particolari. Bologna: Il Mulino.

9. Bosley, Richard. 1985. "What Revision of Realism Could Meet Ockham's Critique." Franciscan Studies no. 45:111-118.

10. Boulnois, Olivier. 1992. "Réelles Intentions: Nature Commune Et Universaux Selon Duns Scot." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 87:3-34.

11. Brakas, George. 1988. Aristotle's Concept of the Universal. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

12. Caruso, Ester. 1979. Pedro Hurtado De Mendoza E La Rinascita Del Nominalismo Nella Scolastica Del Seicento. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

13. Caston, Victor. 1999. "Something and Nothing: The Stoics on Concepts and Universals." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 17:145-213.

"The Stoics did not have a single, unified account of concepts and universals, but with respect to Platonic Forms they were eliminativist rather than reductionist. According to virtually all Stoic accounts, Platonic Forms are literally nothing."

14. Chiaradonna, Riccardo. 2004. "Plotino E La Teoria Degli Universali. Enn. Vi 3 [44], 9." In Aristotele E I Suoi Esegeti Neoplatonici. Logica E Ontologia Nelle Interpretazioni Greche E Arabe, edited by Celluprica, Vincenza and D'Ancona, Cristina, 1-35. Napoli: Bibliopolis.

Atti del Convegno Internazionale Roma, 19-20 ottobre 2001.

15. Chiaradonna, Riccardo, and Galluzzo, Gabriele, eds. 2013. Universals in Ancient Philosophy. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale.

Contents:

Introduction

Riccardo Chiaradonna, Gabriele Galluzzo: Introduction 1; Mauro Bonazzi: Universals before Universals: Some Remarks on Plato in His Context 23; Francesco Ademollo: Plato's Conception of the Forms: Some Remarks 41; Marwan Rashed: Plato's Five Worlds Hypothesis ( Ti. 55cd), Mathematics and Universals 87; David Sedley: Plato and the One-over-Many Principle 113; Laura M. Castelli :Universals, Particulars and Aristotle's Criticism of Plato's Forms 139; Mauro Mariani: Universals in Aristotle's Logical Works 185; Gabriele Galluzzo: Universals in Aristotle's Metaphysics 209; Ada Bronowski: Epicureans and Stoics on Universals 255; Riccardo Chiaradonna: Alexander, Boethus and the Other Peripatetics: The Theory of Universals in the Aristotelian Commentators 299; Peter Adamson: One of a Kind: Plotinus and Porphyry on Unique Instantiation 329; Michael Griffin: Universals, Education, and Philosophical Methodology in Later Neoplatonism 353; Riccardo Chiaradonna: Universals in Ancient Medicine 381; Johannes Zachhuber: Universals in the Greek Church Fathers 425; Bibliography 471; Index locorum 509; Index of names 537.

16. Conti, Alessandro. 1982. "Teoria Degli Universali E Teoria Della Predicazione Nel Trattato 'De Universalibus' Di William Penbygull: Discussione E Difesa Della Posizione Di Wyclif." Medioevo no. 8:137-203.

17. ———. 1983. "A Short Scotist Handbook on Universals: The 'Compendium Super Quinque Universalia' of William Russell, O.F.M." Cahiers del l'Institut du Moyen-Âge Grec et Latin no. 44:39-60.

18. Courtenay, William J. 1972. "Nominalism and Late Medieval Thought: A Bibliographical Essay." Theological Studies no. 33:716-734.

Reprinted as Essay 12 in: W. J. Courtenay, Covenant and Causality in Medieval Thought. Studies in Philosophy, Theology and Economic Practice, London, Variorum Reprints, 1984.

19. ———. 1983. "Late Medieval Nominalism Revisited: 1972-1982." Journal of the History of Ideas no. 44:159-164.

Reprinted as Essay 13 in: W. J. Courtenay, Covenant and Causality in Medieval Thought. Studies in Philosophy, Theology and Economic Practice, London, Variorum Reprints, 1984.

20. ———. 1991. "In Search of Nominalism: Two Centuries of Historical Debate." In Gli Studi Di Filosofia Medievale Tra Otto E Novecento: Contributi a Un Bilancio Storiografico. Atti Del Convegno Internazionale, Roma, 21-23 Settembre 1989, edited by Maierù, Alfonso and Imbach, Ruedi, 214-233. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.

Reprinted as Chapter One in: W. J. Courtenay, Ockham and Ockhamism. Studies in the Dissemination and Impact of His Thought, Leiden, Brilll, 2008, pp. 1-19.

21. ———. 1991. "Nominales and Nominalism in the Twelfth Century." In Lectionum Varietates. Hommage À Paul Vignaux (1904-1987), edited by Jolivet, Jean, Kaluza, Zénon and Libera, Alain de, 11-48. Paris: Vrin.

Reprinted as Chapter Four in: W. J. Courtenay, Ockham and Ockhamism. Studies in the Dissemination and Impact of His Thought, Leiden, Brilll, 2008, pp. 39-80.

22. Cresswell, Max J. 1975. "What Is Aristotle's Theory of Universals?" Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 53:238-247.

"Aristotle's theory of universals is expounded by contrast with Plato's. Where Plato had said that X is F iff X participates in the form of F, Aristotle has two analyses. If F is a substance predicate then X is F iff X is specifically identical with an F. If F is an accidental predicate then X is F iff there is a Y in X which is specifically identical with an individual in the appropriate category for F."

23. Cross, Richard. 2007. "Aristotelian Substance and Supposits: Relations, Universals, and the Abuse of Tropes." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.Supplementary Volume no. 79:53-72.

" Scotus's belief that any created substance can depend on the divine essence and/or divine persons as a subject requires him to abandon the plausible Aristotelian principle that there is no merely relational change. I argue that Scotus's various counterexamples to the principle can be rebutted. For reasons related to those that arise in Scotus's ailed attempt to refute the principle, the principle also entails that properties cannot be universals."

24. Da Gama Cerqueira, Hugo. 2003. "Ockham E O Problema Dos Universais: Um Comentário Ao Argumento Da Summa Logicae." Veritas.Revista de Filosofia no. 48:441-454.

"In this article, the author tries to explain the central aspects of Ockham's arguments on the nature of universals, giving attention to the analysis of the semantic properties of signification and supposition as they were exposed by Ockham in the first part of his Summa logicae. After presenting the doctrine of intuitive and abstractive knowledge, the author discusses Ockham's critics to realism and his specific way of conceiving universals."

25. Dafonte, César Raña. 2007. "El Tema De Los Universales En Juan De Salisbury." Revista Española de Filosofia Medieval no. 6:233-239.

"This work presents the information that John of Salisbury provides us in his Metalogicon about the problem of the universals in the 12th century. He is especially careful when he treats Aristotle's solution, philosopher for whom he shows great admiration."

26. Dahlstrom, Daniel. 1980. "Signification and Logic: Scotus on Universals from a Logical Point of View." Vivarium no. 18:81-111.

27. Devereux, Daniel. 1998. "Aristotle's "Categories" 3b 10-21: A Reply to Sharma." Ancient Philosophy no. 18:341-352.

28. Ebbesen, Sten. 1986. "The Chimera's Diary. Edited by Sten Ebbesen." In The Logic of Being, edited by Knuuttila, Simo and Hintikka, Jaakko, 115-143. Dordrecht: Reidel.

29. Erismann, Christophe. 2011. " Non Est Natura Sine Persona. The Issue of Uninstantiated Universals from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages." In Methods and Methodologies. Aristotelian Logic East and West, 500-1500, edited by Cameron, Margaret and Marenbon, John, 75-91. Leiden: Brill.

30. ———. 2011. L'homme Commun. La Genèse Du Réalisme Ontologique Durant Le Haut Moyen Âge. Paris: Vrin.

"Le présent livre propose l'étude de la constitution, durant le haut Moyen Âge latin, d'une position philosophique: le réalisme de l'immanence à propos des universaux. Cette position est fondée sur la conviction qu'il existe, dans le monde qui nous entoure, certes des individus particuliers -- ce tilleul, cette tortue --, mais aussi des entités universelles. Ces entités n'existent pas séparées des individus, mais intégralement réalisées en eux, sans variation ni degré. Cet engagement philosophique résulte d'une exégèse des Catégories d'Aristote, réinterprétées selon des philosophèmes issus de la pensée de Porphyre. La généalogie de cette position est ici retracée en abordant successivement ses sources tant grecques que latines et ses ancêtres patristiques (avant tout Grégoire de Nysse), puis son élaboration conceptuelle durant les premiers siècles du Moyen Âge latin jusqu'à la critique qu'en donnera Pierre Abélard, et ce, par l'analyse de l'ontologie des quatre philosophes qui l'ont soutenue: Jean Scot Érigène, Anselme de Canterbury, Odon de Cambrai et Guillaume de Champeaux. Ce parcours permet de dessiner les contours d'un projet philosophique: comprendre, analyser et décrire le monde sensible au moyen des concepts issus de la logique aristotélicienne."

31. Gentile, Luigi. 1975. Roscellino Di Compiègne Ed Il Problema Degli Universali. Lanciano: Editrice Itinerari.

32. Gerson, Lloyd P. 2004. "Platonism and the Invention of the Problem of Universals." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 86:233-256.

"In this paper, I explore the origins of the 'problem of universals'. I argue that the problem has come to be badly formulated and that consideration of it has been impeded by falsely supposing that Platonic Forms were ever intended as an alternative to Aristotelian universals. In fact, the role that Forms are supposed by Plato to fulfill is independent of the function of a universal. I briefly consider the gradual mutation of the problem in the Academy, in Alexander of Aphrodisias, and among some of the major Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle, including Porphyry and Boethius."

33. Gill, Mary Louise. 2001. "Aristotle's Attack on Universals." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. 20:235-260.

34. Henry, Desmond Paul. 1986. "Universals and Particulars." History and Philosophy of Logic no. 7:177-183.

"The medieval version of the Problem of Universals centers around propositions such as '"man" is a species' and '"animals" is a genus'. One of C. Lejewski's analyses of such propositions shows that semantic status of their terms by means of Ajdukiewicz-style categorical indices having participial or infinitive forms as their natural-language counterparts. Some medievals certainly used such forms in their corresponding analyses, thus avoiding the alleged referential demands generated by nominally-termed propositions. Boethius exemplifies the confusion which may still arise from the traditional definition of "universal" in terms of predication "of many". Unnecessary adherence to nominally-termed analyses not only grounded a tendency towards Nominalism and Platonism, but also towards the moderns' 'way of ideas'."

35. Hönigswald, Richard. 1961. Abstraktion Und Analysis. Ein Beitrag Zur Problemgeschichte Des Universalienstreites in Der Philosophie Des Mittelalters. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer.

Edited by Karl Barthlein

36. Hull, Gordon. 2006. "Hobbes's Radical Nominalism." Epoché.A Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 11:201-223.

"This paper analyzes Hobbes's understanding of signification, the process whereby words come to have meaning. Most generally, Hobbes develops and extends the nominalist critique of universals as it is found in Ockham and subsequently carried forward by early moderns such as Descartes. Hobbes's radicality emerges in comparison with Ockham and Descartes, as, unlike them, Hobbes also reduces the intellectual faculty entirely to imagination. According to Hobbes, we have nothing in which a stabilizing, prediscursive mental language could inhere.

Hobbes thus concludes that all thinking is affective and semiotic, and depends on the regulation of conventionally established regimes of signs. Establishing this regulation is one of the central functions of the Hobbesian commonwealth."

37. Iten, Richard J.van, ed. 1970. The Problem of Universals. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

38. Jolivet, Jean. 1975. "Vues Médiévales Sur Les Paronymes." Revue Internationale de Philosophie no. 113:222-242.

39. ———. 1992. "Trois Variations Médiévales Sur L'universel Et L'individu: Roscelin, Abélard, Gilbert De La Porrée." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 97:111-158.

40. Kaluza, Zénon. 1988. Les Querelles Doctrinales À Paris : Nominalistes Et Réalistes Aux Confins Du Xive Et Du Xve Siècles. Bergamo: Lubrina.

41. Karger, Elizabeth. 1999. "Walter Burley's Realism." Vivarium no. 37:24-40.

42. King, Peter. 1982. Peter Abailard and the Problem of Universals in the Twelfth Century.

Ph. D. Dissertation, Princeton University.

43. ———. 2001. "John Buridan's Solution to the Problem of Universals." In The Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy of John Buridan, edited by Thijssen, Johannes M.M.H. and Zupko, Jack, 29-48. Leiden: Brill.

44. Klima, Gyula. 2003. "Natures: The Problem of Universals." In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy, edited by McGrade, Arthur Stephen, 196-207. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Aristotelian science seeks to define the essential nature of a thing and then to demonstrate the features the thing must have because of that nature. A philosophically inevitable question thus arises for Aristotelians: what is a nature? Is it a reality over and above (or perhaps "in" the things whose nature it is? Is it a mental construction, existing only in our understanding of things, if so, on what basis is it constructed? This is the medieval problem of universals, or at least one way of thinking about the problem. In a classic formulation, Boethius states the problem in terms of the reality of genera and species, two main types of universals involved in an Aristotelian definition of essential nature (as in "a human being is a reasoning / speaking animal," which places us in the genus of animals and marks off our species by reference to our "difference" from other animals in reasoning or using language): "Plato thinks that genera and species and the rest are not only understood as universals, but also exist and subsist apart from bodies. Aristotle, however, thinks that they are understood as incorporeal and universal, but subsist in sensibles."' A rigorous tradition of, mainly Aristotelian, discussion originates from Boethius's tentative exploration of the problem thus stated. But a more Platonic solution had been put into play about a century before Boethius by Augustine, and this, too, would have a rich development."

45. Kneepkens, Corneille Henri. 1992. "Nominalism and Grammatical Theory in the Late Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries. An Explorative Study." Vivarium no. 30:34-50.

46. Lafleur, Claude, Piché, David, and Carrier, Joanne. 2004. "Porphyre Et Les Universaux Dans Les Communia Logice Du Ms. Paris, Bnf, Lat. 16617." Laval Théologique et Philosophique no. 60:477-516.

"This article offers the first edition of the beginning of the Communia logice ( et grammatice), a substantial didascalical compilation emanating from the Arts faculty of the University of Paris during the first half of the thirteenth century and preserved in a manuscript bequeathed by master Peter of Limoges (d. 1306) to the old library of the Sorbonne. After a general presentation (section I) and before some clarifications on the Ratio edendi (section III), the doctrinal study (section II) which precedes this edition (section IV) shows how the author-compiler of the Communia logice answers - while reformulating it - to the well known porphyrian set of questions about the universals."

47. Lahey, Stephen. 1998. "William Ockham and Trope Nominalism." Franciscan Studies no. 56:105-120.

"William Ockham's ontology as outlined in Summa Logicae and elsewhere is sufficiently like the trope nominalism described in D.M. Armstrong's Universals: An Opinionated Introduction to warrant the attention of contemporary metaphysicians, so long as one bears in mind (a) Ockham's fundamentally theological presuppositions, and (b) his Aristotelian logic and philosophy of language."

48. Landini, Gregory. 1991. "The Persistence of Counterexample: Re-Examining the Debate over Leibniz Law." Nous no. 25:43-61.

49. Largeault, Jean. 1971. Enquête Sur Le Nominalisme. Louvain: Éditions Nauwelaerts.

50. Libera, Alain de. 1981. "Théorie Des Universaux Et Réalisme Logique Chez Albert Le Grand." Revue des Science Philosophiques et Théologiques no. 113:1-24.

51. ———. 1982. "The Oxford and Paris Traditions in Logic." In The Cambrdige History of Later Mediaeval Philosophy, edited by Kretzmann, Norman, Kenny, Anthony P. and Pinborg, Jan, 174-187. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

52. ———. 1992. "Questions De Réalisme. Sur Deux Arguments Anti-Ockhamistes De John Sharpe." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 97:83-110.

53. ———. 1996. La Querelle Des Universaux. De Platon À La Fin Du Moyen Age. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

54. ———. 1999. L'art Des Généralités. Théories De L'abstraction. Aubier: Paris.

55. Mackey, Louis. 1979. "Singular and Universal: A Franciscan Perspective." Franciscan Studies no. 39:130-164.

56. Maioli, Bruno. 1973. Gli Universali. Alle Origini Del Problema. Roma: Bulzoni.

57. ———. 1974. Gli Universali. Storia Antologica Del Problema Da Socrate Al Xii Secolo. Roma: Bulzoni.

Chapters about: Boethius, John Scot Erigene, Roscelin of Compiègne, William of Champeaux, Adelard of Bath, Abelard, John of Salisbury.

58. Marciszewski, Witold. 1991. "Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz and the Polish Debate on Universals." Quaderni del Centro per la Filosofia Mitteleuropea no. 3:7-16.

59. Martin, Christopher. 1983. "The Compendium Logicae Porretanum: A Survey of Philosophical Logic from the School of Gilbert of Poitiers." Cahiers del l'Institut du Moyen-Âge Grec et Latin no. 46:1XVIII-XLVI.

60. Matteo, Anthony M. 1985. "Scotus and Ockham: A Dialogue on Universals." Franciscan Studies no. 45:83-96.

61. McInerny, Ralph. 1980. "Albert on Universals." In Albert the Great. Commemorative Essays, edited by Kovach, Francis J. and Shahan, Robert W., 3-18. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

62. Moody, Ernest A. 1965. "Buridan and a Dilemma of Nominalism." In Harry Austryn Wolfson Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of His Seventy-Fifth Birthday. English Section - Vol. Ii, 577-596. Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research.

Reprinted in E. A. Moody - Studies in medieval philosophy, science, and logic. Collected papers 1933-1969 - Berkeley, University of California Press, 1975, pp. 353-370

63. Nolan, Lawrence. 1997. "The Ontological Status of Cartesian Natures." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly no. 78:169-194.

"In the Fifth Meditation, Descartes makes a remarkable claim about the ontological status of geometrical figures. He asserts that an object such as a triangle has a 'true and immutable nature' that does not depend on the mind, yet has being even if there are no triangles existing in the world. This statement has led many commentators to assume that Descartes is a Platonist regarding essences and in the philosophy of mathematics. One problem with this seemingly natural reading is that it contradicts the conceptualist account of universals that one finds in the Principles of Philosophy and elsewhere. In this paper, I offer a novel interpretation of the notion of a true and immutable nature which reconciles the Fifth Meditation with the conceptualism of Descartes's other work. Specifically, I argue that Descartes takes natures to be innate ideas considered in terms of their so-called 'objective being'."

64. ———. 1998. "Descartes' Theory of Universals." Philosophical Studies.An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition no. 89:161-180.

"I argue that Descartes holds a conceptualist account of both the ontology and the origin of universals. Universal mathematical objects, such as the number two, are merely innate ideas that are made occurrent by a process of abstraction. Although Descartes's conceptualism is fairly explicit textually, the details of his theory are not. I recover this theory by linking it to his account of attributes--an attribute being something which we distinguish from a substance within our thought where there is no distinction in real.

This approach uncovers Descartes's diagnosis of how the realist goes wrong in positing universals outside thought."

65. Norena, Carlos P. 1981. "Ockham and Suarez on the Ontological Status of Universal Concepts." New Scholasticism no. 55:348-362.

66. Normore, Calvin G. 1987. "The Tradition of Mediaeval Nominalism." In Studies in Medieval Philosophy, edited by Wippel, John F., 201-217. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

67. Nuchelmans, Gabriel. 1973. Theories of the Proposition. Ancient and Mediaeval Conceptions of the Bearers of Truth and Falsity. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company.

68. Panaccio, Claude. 1992. "Intuition, Abstraction Et Langage Mental Dans La Théorie Occamiste De La Connaissance." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 97:61-82.

69. ———. 1999. "Le Nominalisme Au Xiie Siècle." In Signs and Signification. Vol. I, edited by Gill, Harjeet Singh and Manetti, Giovanni, 17-33. New Delhi: Bahri Publications.

70. Pannier, Russell, and Sullivan, Thomas D. 1994. "Aquinas's Solution to the Problem of Universals in "De Ente Et Essentia"." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 68:159-172.

71. Piché, David. 2005. Le Problème Des Universaux À La Faculté Des Arts De Paris Entre 1230 Et 1260. Édition Critique Sélective, Traduction Français e, Analyses Structurelle Et Formelle Et Étude Historico-Philosophique. Paris: Vrin.

72. Pinborg, Jan. 1972. Logik Und Semantik Im Mittelalter. Ein Ueberblick. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog.

73. Resnick, Irven M. 1997. "Odo of Tournai, the Phoenix, and the Problem of Universals." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 35:355-374.

74. Rijk, Lambertus Marie de. 1992. "John Buridan on Universals." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 97:35-60.

75. Rubenstein, Eric M. 2002. "Nominalism and the Disappearance of the Problem of Individuation." Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy no. 5:193-204.

"While the medievals spilled much ink over the 'problem of individuation', the moderns scarcely mention it. My aim here is to explore what philosophical reasons, as opposed to historical or sociological ones, might lie behind the disappearance of a philosophical problem that vexed minds for centuries. I argue that Ockham clearly saw that a commitment to nominalism removes the need to take seriously the problem of individuation. Suarez, who did take seriously the problem, but who also advocated nominalism, will be shown to be subject to important Ockham-inspired arguments. To the extent, then, that Ockham's nominalism carried the day into the moderns, it is understandable, philosophically, that the moderns should turn a deaf ear to the problem of individuation."

76. Sacksteder, William. 1986. "Some Words Aristotle Never Uses: Attributes, Essences, and Universals." New Scholasticism no. 60:427-453.

77. Scaltsas, Theodore. 1994. Substances and Universals in Aristotle's Metaphysics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

78. Schoedinger, Andrew B., ed. 1992. The Problem of Universals. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press.

79. Sedley, David. 1985. "The Stoic Theory of Universals." Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 23:87-92.

Supplementary volume.

80. Sharma, Ravi K. 1997. "A New Defense of Tropes? On "Categories" 3b10-18." Ancient Philosophy no. 17:309-315.

"Daniel Devereux has argued that "Categories" 3b10-18 provides evidence for the view that Aristotle's first-order accidents are tropes. However, the passage should be interpreted differently than as Devereux proposes and the proper interpretation is neutral as between a tropes-view and a universals-view."

81. Sharples, Robert. 2005. "Alexander of Aphrodisias on Universals: Two Problematic Texts." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 50:43-55.

"Two texts that raise problems for Alexander of Aphrodisias' theory of universals are examined. De anima 90.2-8 appears to suggest that universals are dependent on thought for their existence; this raises questions about the status both of universals and of forms. It is suggested that the passage is best interpreted as indicating that universals are dependent on thought only for their being recognised as universals. The last sentence of Quaestio 1.11 seems to assert that if the universal did not exist no individual would exist, thereby contradicting Alexander's position elsewhere. This seems to be a slip resulting from the fact that species with only one member are the exception rather than the rule."

82. Sorabji, Richard. 2006. "Universals Transformed: The First Thousand Years after Plato." In Universals, Concepts and Qualities. New Essays on the Meaning of Predicates, edited by Strawson, Peter Frederick and Chakrabarti, Arindam, 105-126. Aldershot: Ashgate.

83. South, James B. 2002. "Singular and Universal in Suárez's Account of Cognition." Review of Metaphysics no. 55:785-823.

"In this essay, I argue that the typical way of thinking about the problem of universals and the cognition of them (realism vs. nominalism, abstraction) is inapplicable to the account Suárez gives in his Commentary on the De anima. I show how he justifies objective universal concepts while rejecting the notion of a common nature, as well as the typical nominalist appeal to intuitive cognition. His proposal, I conclude, provides an interesting contrast to the traditional nominalist account of cognition, while retaining the emphasis on the primacy of the singular in intellectual cognition."

84. Spade, Paul Vincent, ed. 1994. Five Texts on the Mediaeval Problem of Universals: Porphyry, Boethius, Abelard, Duns Scotus, Ockham. Indianapolis: Hackett.

Contents: Introduction VII; Note on the text XVI; Porphyry the Phoenician: Isagoge 1; Boethius: From his Second Commentary on Porphyry's Isagoge 20; Peter Abelard: From the " Glosses on Porphyry" in His Logica 'ingredientibus' 26; John Duns Scotus: Six questions on individuation from his Ordinatio II. d. 3, part 1, qq. 1-6 57; William of Ockham: Five questions on universals from his Ordinatio d. 2, qq. 4-8 114; Glossary 232; Bibliography 235-238.

"It is well known that the problem of universals was widely discussed in mediaeval philosophy --indeed, some would say it was discussed then with a level of insight and rigor it has never enjoyed since. The five texts translated in this volume include the most influential and some of the most sophisticated treatments of the problem in the whole Middle Ages.

The first text is Porphyry's Isagoge, translated here in its entirety. Porphyry was a third-century Greek neo-Platonist, a pupil and the biographer of Plotinus, and the one who arranged Plotinus's writings into six groups of nine essays (the " Enneads").

(...)

Despite its importance in this respect, perhaps the main influence of the Isagoge lies not in what it says, about the predicables or anything else, but in what it does not say. For in his introductory remarks, Porphyry raises but then modestly refuses to answer three questions about the metaphysical status of universals, saying only that they belong to "another, greater investigation". [ Isagoge, 2] It is this brief passage that raised the problem of universals in the form in which it was first discussed in the Middle Ages. It contains some of the most consequential lines in the entire history of philosophy.

Porphyry's silence means that there really is no detailed theory of universals in the Isagoge -- or for that matter in his other writings. Taken by himself, therefore, Porphyry would not have been a very important figure in the history of our problem. But he cannot be taken by himself. His importance lies in the fact that his Isagoge was translated into Latin in the early Middle Ages and used as the occasion for discussing the problem of universals directly and in detail. It was as though commentators found his silence intolerable and were irresistibly drawn into the very questions Porphyry himself had declined to discuss.

The most important of these early mediaeval discussions is undoubtedly Boethius's.

(...)

In addition to works of Aristotle, Boethius also translated Porphyry's Isagoge and wrote two commentaries on it. (His first commentary was based on an earlier translation by Marius Victorinus, who is known to readers of Augustine's Confessions VIII. 2 & 4.) Although Boethius addressed the problem of universals in several places, the discussion in his Second Commentary on Porphyry was the longest and probably the most inIluential. The relevant portion of that commentary is translated below.

(...).

Abelard wrote on the problem of universals in several places. The most well known of them is in the " Glosses on Porphyry" in his Logica 'ingredientibus'. Once again the relevant passage is a discussion of Porphyry's three unanswered questions.

(...)

By the time of the last two authors represented below, John Duns Scotus (c. 1265-1308) and William of Ockham (c. 1285-1347), philosophy had become a specialized and highly technical academic discipline, carried on almost exclusively in a university context. These last two texts are here translated into English for the first time, and are by far the longest and most intricate in this volume. " pp. VII-XI.

85. ———. 2005. "The Problem of Universals and Wyclif's Alleged "Ultrarealism"." Vivarium no. 43:111-123.

"John Wyclif has been described as "ultrarealist" in his theory of universals. This paper attempts a preliminary assessment of that judgment and argues that, pending further study, we have no reason to accept it. It is certainly true that Wyclif is extremely vocal and insistent about his realism, but it is not obvious that the actual content of his view is especially extreme. The paper distinguishes two common medieval notions of a universal, the Aristotelian/Porphyrian one in terms of predication and the Boethian one in terms of being metaphysically common to many. On neither approach does Wyclif 's theory of universals postulate new and non-standard entities besides those recognized by more usual versions of realism. Again pending further study, neither do Wyclif 's views appear to assign philosophically extreme or novel roles to the entities he does recognize as universal. On the contrary, by at least one measure, his theory of universals is less extreme than Walter Burley's, as Wyclif himself observes. For Wyclif, the universal is numerically identical with its singulars, but numerical identity is governed by something weaker than the Indiscernibility of identicals."

86. Spruyt, Joke. 1996. "Gerardus Odonis on the Universal." Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge no. 63:171-208.

87. Thompson, Augustine. 1995. "The Debate on Universals before Peter Abelard." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 33:409-429.

88. Trentman, John. 1968. "Predication and Universals in Vincent Ferrer's Logic." Franciscan Studies no. 28:47-62.

89. Tweedale, Martin. 1976. Abailard on Universals. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

"This work shows how Abailard elaborated and defended the view that universals are words, avoided the pitfalls of an image theory of thinking, and propounded a theory of "status" and "dicta" as objects of thought without treating them as subjects of predication. His defense of these views is shown to depend on certain fundamental departures from the Aristotelian term logic of his day, including a proposal for subjectless propositions, the treatment of copula plus predicate noun as equivalent to a simple verb, and a transformation of the 'is' of existence into the 'is' of predication."

90. ———. 1984. "Alexander of Aphrodisias Views on Universals." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 29:279-303.

91. ———. 1987. "Aristotle's Universals." Australasian Journal of Philosophy no. 65 (4):412-426.

"This paper is devoted in the main to arguing for certain negative theses of the general form: Aristotle did not himself hold such and such a view of universals; but in the course of the discussion some points about Aristotle's own positive conception of universals, to the limited extent that he had one, will emerge. In fact, Aristotle's negative remarks about universals, e.g. that they are not substances, not separate, not in addition to the particulars, etc., are much clearer and less tentative than any of his positive ones, and it is little wonder that interpreters through the ages have attributed to him radically different and opposed positive theories. The words they found in their authority could not easily be used to decide the issue between their competing interpretations.

In order to clarify the aim of this essay I want first of all to distinguish with regard to any topic Aristotle treats the question of what view he himself held, if any, from the question of what view he should have held given the basic tenets and thrust of his whole philosophy. The views which are definitely not, as I shall claim, ones Aristotle himself held, i.e. not defensible answers to the first question, may well be tenable answers to the second. Indeed, I am rather inclined to think there are several mutually incompatible theories that will answer as well as any the question of what view Aristotle should have taken of universals. On that whole matter I shall have nothing more to say in this place.

The two interpretations I shall discuss see Aristotle as a nominalist and a conceptualist respectively. By `nominalism' I mean any theory which says that what is universal is universal only in so far as it is a certain sort of sign. In other words, being a sign is necessary to being a universal, although the converse is not true. Just what the things are which serve as universal signs is left entirely open on this definition of nominalism. Signs may be spoken sounds, written marks, mental images, mental states or any thing you please. Also the definition is non-committal on just what sort of a sign it is that is universal; theories about this will vary with the semantic theory the nominalist adopts. There is perhaps a place for a narrower sense of `nominalism' in which the nominalist must maintain that universals are all certain expressions of a written or spoken language. In this narrower sense Ockham, for example was not a nominalist since the signs he thought of as universal were primarily those of a mental language, although he was certainly a nominalist in the broader sense I first proposed.

By `conceptualism' I mean the view that nothing could be a universal unless there were in existence thought and cognition of an intellectual sort. In this broad sense all nominalists are conceptualists, since presumably there could not be signs unless there were thought. But there is a narrower sense of `conceptualism' too, in which the conceptualist must maintain that universality applies only to mind-dependent entities, e.g. concepts, mental images, etc. (Even words when they are conceived as not identifiable with their physical manifestations are things that cannot exist unless there are minds and so are mind-dependent in my sense.)

The difference between the broad and narrow senses has this noteworthy consequence: someone can be a conceptualist in the broad sense and believe that what is universal is some entity independently existing outside the mind as long as they also accept that it is a universal only when it is thought of or conceived in some way. But such a person is not a conceptualist in the narrow sense. Also nominalists need not be conceptualists in the narrow sense since they can hold that the things which are signs are mind-independent objects with a wholly physical existence, for example sounds or marks.

My task will be to convince the reader that Aristotle was neither a nominalist nor a conceptualist in any of these senses. I shall begin with the nominalist proposal, but to some extent my refutation of it will be incomplete until I have finished with conceptualism. From the fact that Aristotle was not a conceptualist in the broad sense it will follow that he was not a nominalist, so the evidence against broad conceptualism argues against nominalism as well." pp. 412-413.

92. ———. 1993. "Duns Scotus' Doctrine on Universals and the Aphrodisian Tradition." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 67:77-93.

93. ———. 1999. Scotus Vs. Ockham - a Medieval Dispute over Universals. Vol. I: Texts. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press.

Texts translated into English with commentary.

94. ———. 1999. Scotus Vs. Ockham - a Medieval Dispute over Universals. Vol. Ii: Commentary. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press.

95. Vanni Rovighi, Sofia. 1978. Studi Di Filosofia Medievale. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

I. Da sant'Agostino al XII secolo; II. Secoli XIII e XIV.

96. Vignaux, Paul. 1930. "Nominalisme." In Dictionnaire De Théologie Catholique: Contenant L'exposé Des Doctrines De Théologie Catholique, Leurs Preuves Et Leur Histoire. Vol. 11, edited by Vacant, Alfred and Mangenot, Alfred-Eugène, 717-784. Paris: Librairie Letouzey et Ané.

97. ———. 1977. "La Problématique Du Nominalisme Médiéval Peut-Elle Éclairer Des Problèmes Philosophiques Actuels?" Revue Philosophique de Louvain no. 75:293-331.

98. Wagner, Michael F. 1981. "Supposition Theory and the Problem of Universals." Franciscan Studies no. 41:385-414.

99. Woods, Michael. 1991. "Universals and Particulars Forms in Aristotle's Metaphysics." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy no. Supplementary volume:41-56.

100. Zonta, Mauro. 2000. "Una Disputa Sugli Universali Nella Logica Ebraica Del Trecento. Shemuel Di Marsiglia Contro Gersonide Nel "Supercommentario" All' "Isagoge" Di Yehudah Ben Yishaq Cohen." Documenti e Studi sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale no. 11:409-458.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The Realist Ontology of John Duns Scotus

The first object of knowledge according to Duns Scotus

"The problem from which a systematic reconstruction of Scotistic thought must take its start is the problem of the proper object of the human intellect. It is only thus that the natural logical order of the Scotistic system is properly emphasized.

The Subtle Doctor was confronted with two conflicting solutions. Henry of Ghent, who was at the time the most influential representative of the Augustinian school, taught that the first and proper object of the human intellect is God, or the supreme being. This thesis is implicitly contained in every theory of intellectual illumination, such as that prevalent, with very few exceptions, among the Augustinians of the thirteenth century. Henry of Ghent is to be credited with having stated explicitly what had been previously said in a confused manner. The advantages of this doctrine are evident. If God is the proper object of the human intellect, one can readily understand why man should not concentrate upon any created thing, for man is led by an interior logic to fix his attention upon what is eternal, infinite, absolute. This deep interior "drive" might well be called man's divine vocation.

In contrast with the Augustinian solution, stands the Aristotelian-Thomistic doctrine, according to which the proper object of the human intellect is the quiddity of a material thing. This is tantamount to saying that the natural object of our knowledge is the essence abstracted from matter. This opinion seems to be confirmed by our daily experience, which shows that all human knowledge has sensation as its necessary starting point.

Duns Scotus is not satisfied with either of the two solutions, and he makes this clear by pointing out their grave disadvantages. When the first object of the intellect is discussed, it is immediately necessary to define the meaning of the term "first." The question, "What is the first object of the human intellect ?" can be understood in different ways. One way of stating it is, "What is the first thing that man knows in the order of time ?" Another way is, "What is the most perfect thing (first in the order of perfection) that can be known by the human mind?" Still another way of stating it is, "What is the object to which the human intellect is directed by its very nature ?" It is in this third sense that the question is taken here. To ask, therefore, what the first object of the human intellect is, is equivalent to asking, "What is the adequate object, that is, the object that fully corresponds to the natural power of the human intellect?"

Man is not born perfect. This means that man is not in possession from the first moment of his existence of all the acts of which he is capable. Like all other creatures, man is a complex of potentialities, to be developed gradually as he comes in contact with reality. To the law of this gradual development and becoming, not only his body is subject but also his soul. Thus man's intelligence and will have a natural tendency toward the possession of their objects. When this possession is completed, the perfection of these two faculties is attained, i.e., fully actuated.

The object specifies the faculty, i.e., the object is the measure of the perfection of the faculty. Moreover, any development of the faculty is only possible in virtue of its object, in the sense that it is necessarily a pursuit of its object, since it is only in view of its object that the faculty is determined to act.

By applying these general considerations to the particular case of human knowledge, it becomes evident: (1) that the human intellect can know nothing that does not somehow enter the sphere of the natural object for which it was made; (2) that the human intellect knows things in the light of its object, which thus becomes the necessary point of view from which it sees everything. This can be realized in a perfect way, as in the case of God, who knows all possible things in the unique object of His divine mind, or imperfectly, as in the case of man, who does not know all things in the idea of being, yet cannot know anything apart from the idea of being. In fact, "the adequacy of the object," writes Scotus, "can be considered from the point of view of its power (secundum virtutem) and from the point of view of its predication (secundum praedicationem). From the point of view of its power, that object is adequate to its faculty which, once it is known, makes all other possible objects knowable to the intellect. In this sense the divine essence is the adequate object of God's intellect. From the point of view of its predication, that object is adequate to its faculty which is per se and essentially the predicate of all things that can be known by the intellect.(1)" (pp. 27-29)

Notes

(1) De anima, q. 21 n. 2.

From: Efrem Bettoni, Duns Scotus. The Basic Principles of His Philosophy, Washington: Catholic University of America Press 1961.

The univocity of the concept of being

"The obvious consequences that follow from such a standpoint did not escape Duns Scotus. The first of such consequences is the univocity of the concept of being. The proper object of a faculty, in the sense that has just been explained, must be only one, just as the faculty is only one. Therefore, in order that being be the proper object of our intellect, and consequently the point of view from which and the reason why we know God and creatures, immaterial and material beings, it must be predicated univocally, i.e., in the same sense, of all things. It cannot be otherwise, for the simple fact that being is the means by which, and the light through which, all things are known.

In the Augustinian philosophy there remained the difficulty of explaining how, from the concept of God, man could descend to the concept of creatures without passing through the intuition of the divine essence. In the Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy the difficulty was reversed: a way had to be shown how one could ascend from the concept of creatures to the concept of God. Both Augustinians and Thomists solved the difficulty with the doctrine of analogy: an analogy that goes from God to creatures for the Augustinians, an analogy that goes from creatures to God for the Thomists. With his doctrine of the univocity of the concept of being, and consequently of the other transcendental concepts, Duns Scotus opens a new way to the solution of the problem. He does so very modestly, as the following passage indicates:

"In the second place, it can be said, although not definitely because it is not in accordance with the common opinion, that of God we possess not only concepts which are analogous to those of creatures, that is, entirely different from those had of created things, but also concepts which are univocal to God and creatures.(2)" (pp. 33-34)

Notes

(2) Opus Oxoniense, I, d. 3, q. 2, n. 5. [Obviously, in this passage Duns Scotus does not use the term "analogous" in the sense it is used by modern Thomists. When he states that the concepts we possess of God are "entirely different" from the concepts we have of creatures, he simply means that the reality expressed by these concepts is in itself essentially different. God is an infinite, self-subsistent being; creatures are limited, participated beings. (Translator: B. Bonansea) ]

From: Efrem Bettoni, Duns Scotus. The Basic Principles of His Philosophy, Washington: Catholic University of America Press 1961.

Duns Scotus on the Problem of Universals

"In Quaestiones in librum Metaphysicorum VII, quaestio 18 Scotus recognizes three meanings for the term 'universal'. In one sense it refers to universality, i.e. the property of being suitable to be predicated of many; in another sense it means what has that property. But, he says, something can be either the near (proximate) subject of that property or the remote subject;but it is not easy to see what this latter distinction amounts to. Scotus says that the near subject is of itself a numerically single entity with an indeterminateness which rejects its being identified with any particular case of the universal in question. If we are talking about the universal human in this sense, then it is numerically one, but it cannot be any one individual human; likewise, the universal animal is numerically one, but it cannot be any particular species of animal. The remote subject, on the other hand, is not of itself numerically one and though it is not of itself determined to any one particular of the universal-in question, it does not reject such determination either.

It is clear that the remote subjects of universality are the natures that we have discussed earlier. Scotus takes over from Avicenna the doctrine that there are three ways of talking about natures: (1) where there is no assumption of either the existence or non-existence of the nature and all that is true of the nature concerns what that nature is and is not of itself; (2) where we say what is true of the nature on account of its actual existence in real things; (3) where we say what is true of the nature on account of its existence in the mind. When we say that a nature is universal we are talking about what holds of it in the third sort of discourse. Universality is a "thing of second intention" and hence can only belong to first intentions, which are natures existing as objects of thought. Things existing as objects of thought are said to have esse objectivum and to be entia objectiva. An ens objectivum is another one of Scotus's accidental beings; it comes into existence as soon as something becomes an object of thought. Since esse objectivum does not belong to a nature taken absolutely and in itself; it is accidental to that nature, just as is individuation, as we saw above. We may think of the ens objectivum as the nature-as-conceived-by-a-mind; it is a single, mind-dependent entity whose own numerical oneness derives ultimately from the numerical oneness of the mind doing the conceiving.

As Scotus and other scholastics view the matter, the ens objectivism is the immediate object of thought and represents the nature, which then becomes the remote object of thought. This theory is saved from the idealism that afflicts representational theories of thought in modern times only by this doctrine that the ens objectivum just is the nature-as-thought. It is not some real entity distinct from the nature itself, and from whose character we are somehow to infer the character of the nature; rather in apprehending it we are apprehending the nature directly but in a certain way.

The near subject of universality, according to Scotus, is this ens objectivum through which we apprehend the nature. The nature itself is only a universal because this ens objectivum is the nature-as-thought. To be a universal something must be suitable to be predicated of many, and, on the sort of view Scotus and many other scholastics subscribed to, only something that is a single object of thought, yet intrinsically indeterminate in respect of its particular instances could have this suitability. The item which is predicated has to be some single thing which many can be said to be; otherwise, the singleness of meaning of the predicate over its many applications to different particulars would evaporate." (pp. 409-410)

From: Martin Tweedale, Scotus vs. Ockham - A Medieval Dispute over Universals. Vol. II: Commentary. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press 1999.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on the Ontology of John Duns Scotus

Bibliography

1. De Doctrina Ioannis Duns Scoti. Vol. Ii: Problemata Philosophica. 1968. Roma: Commissionis Scotisticae.

Acta Congressus Scotistici Internationalis Oxonii et Edimburgi 11-17 sept. 1966 celebrati.

2. "John Duns Scotus." 1993. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 67.

Special issue on John Duns Scotus. Table of contents: Allan B. Wolter, O.F.M.: Reflections on the life and works of Scotus pp. 1-36; Francis J. Catania: John Duns Scotus on Ens Infinitum pp. 37-54; Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B.: Duns Scotus on potency opposed to act in Questions on the Metaphysics, IX pp. 55-76; Martin M. Tweedale: Duns Scotus's doctrine on Universals and the Aphrodisian tradition pp. 77-94; Allan B. Wolter, O.F.M.: Scotus on the divine origin of possibility pp. 95-108; John Boler: Transcending the natural: Duns Scotus on the two affection of the will pp. 109-126; Mary Elizabeth Ingham, C.S.J.: Scotus and moral order pp. 127-140

3. Aertsen, Jan. 1998. "Being and One: The Doctrine of the Convertible Transcendentals in Duns Scotus." Franciscan Studies no. 56:47-64.

4. Alanen, Lilli. 1985. "Descartes, Duns Scotus and Ockham on Omnipotence and Possibility." Franciscan Studies no. 45:157-188.

5. Andrews, Robert. 2003. "The Modistae and John Duns Scotus's Questiones Super Perihermeneias." In Aristotle's Peri Hermeneias in the Latin Middle Ages Essays on the Commentary Tradition, edited by Braakhuis, Henk A.G. and Kneepkens, Corneille Henri, 67-83. Groningen: Ingenium Publishers.

6. Balic, Karl. 1965. "The Nature and Value of a Critical Edition of the Complete Works of John Duns Scotus." Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy no. 3:368-379.

7. ———. 1965. "The Life and Works of John Duns Scotus." In John Duns Scotus, 1265-1965, edited by Ryan, John K. and Bonansea, Bernardine, 1-27. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

8. ———. 1966. John Duns Scotus: Some Reflections on the Occasion of the Seventh Centenary of His Birth. Roma: Scotistic Commission.

9. Barth, Timotheus. 1965. "Being, Univocity and Analogy According to Duns Scotus." In Johon Duns Scotus 1265-1965, edited by Ryan, John K. and Bonansea, Bernardine, 210-262. Washington: The Catholic University of America Press.

10. Bastit, Michel. 1997. Les Principes Des Choses En Ontologie Médiévale: Thomas D'Aquin, Scot, Occam. Bordeaux: Éditions Bière.

11. Bérubé, Camille. 1984. "La Première École Scotiste." In Preuve Et Raisons À L'université De Paris. Logique, Ontologie Et Théologie Au Xive Siècle, edited by Kaluza, Zénon and Vignaux, Paul, 9-24. Paris: Vrin.

"En 1928, étudiant en philosophie, je me voyais assigner comme dissertation une synthèse de la métaphysique scotiste. Je remis un essai sur l'être, la distinction formelle, les universaux et la nature commune. Je ne sais ce qu'il me faut admirer le plus des deux: ma présomption juvénile ou le charisme prophétique de mon professeur. C'est ce noviciat scotiste qui me vaut de vous parler, un demi-siècle plus tard, de la première école scotiste, dans cette université où l'esprit subtil d'un frère mineur d'Écosse lui a donné naissance.

Je me suis initié au scotisme dans la Philosophie du Bx Jean Duns Scot d'Ephrem Longpré, et dans l'Avicenne et le point de départ de Duns Scot d'E. Gilson, deux médiévistes qui faisaient alors une tournée de conférences à Montréal. Quelques années plus tard, je voulus déposer un sujet de thèse sur l'être, objet de l'intelligence et de la métaphysique selon Duns Scot. Quand le professeur eut compris que je me proposais de critiquer mes deux guides, il m'avisa de changer le sujet, parce qu'aucun jury ne me donnerait raison contre ces deux médiévistes chevronnés, même s'ils n'étaient pas d'accord entre eux. Autant valait changer tout de suite. Je me rabattis sur la théorie de la connaissance chez Duns Scot pour finir par La connaissance de l'individuel au moyen âge La publication de l'ouvrage aux Presses universitaires de France et la préface magistrale de Paul Vignaux me valurent de passer pour son élève. Je me sens donc à l'aise parmi vous que l'amitié réunit autour d'un vénérable maître, avec qui j'ai partagé pendant vingt ans l'enseignement de la pensée franciscaine à l'Institut d'études médiévales de l'université de Montréal.

I. La naissance du scotisme.

Je me suis intéressé de bonne heure à l'école scotiste, en raison de l'imbroglio que j'y découvris au sujet de la connaissance du singulier et dont je trouvai la clef en dépistant parmi les incunables de la bibliothèque un livre, fait de textes de Scot, dont l'auteur était Antoine André. Je compris que, pour remonter jusqu'à Scot à partir des scotistes, il me fallait passer par sa médiation. Il y a quelques années, en faisant la recension du volume VII de l'Ordinatio de Scot, je manifestai quelque réticence sur l'efficacité du recours au commentaire littéral d'Antoine André sur la Métaphysique d'Aristote, publié sous son nom en 1482, mais édité de nouveau sous le titre d'Expositio, en 1501, par Maurice du Port l'attribuant cette fois à Scot, parce que, selon les éditeurs de l'Ordinatio, le disciple n'aurait, en somme, que repris à son compte un commentaire du Docteur Subtil. J'avais consigné le résultat de ma première étude dans mon livre sur la connaissance du singulier, mais puisque cela était passé inaperu, il fallait reprendre le problème du crédit à accorder à Antoine André comme témoin et interprète de Scot, là où Aristote entre en jeu. J'y reviendrai dans la dernière partie de cette communication.

En parlant de l'école primitive, je veux me limiter à un point de vue. J'ai essayé de comprendre dans quel esprit et selon quelles méthodes les disciples de Scot ont transmis ce trésor de doctrines émanées des lèvres de leur Maître autant que de ses écrits. Cela me paraît une condition préalable pour rejoindre à travers eux le message original de Scot dans sa verdeur primitive, et comprendre ce qui fait du Docteur Subtil un des grands penseurs de l'histoire." pp. 9-10

12. Bettoni, Efrem. 1961. Duns Scotus. The Basic Principles of His Philosophy. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

Translated from the Italian edition (1946) and edited by Bernardine Bonansea.

Reprint: Westport, Greenwood Press, 1978.

13. ———. 1966. Duns Scoto Filosofo. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

14. Boler, John. 1965. "Scotus and Intuition: Some Remarks." Monist no. 49:551-570.

"The thesis of this article is that Scotus makes a special contribution with his theory of intuition, not for giving new answers to the questions asked, for example, by Aquinas, but for asking different questions; and that the significance of this contribution cannot be appreciated until one sees why, with respect to the questions asked by Aquinas, Scotus is in (substantial) agreement with the Aristotelian analysis. The author tries, in an informal way, (1) to point out some confusions that have led to a misunderstanding of Scotus's (or anyone else's) defense of an Aristotelian account of abstraction, and (2) to isolate the phenomena that makes Scotus's theory of intuition suggestive."

15. ———. 1990. "The Moral Psychology of Duns Scotus: Some Preliminary Questions." Franciscan Studies no. 50:31-56.

16. Bonansea, Bernardine. 1983. Man and His Approach to God in John Duns Scotus. Lanham: University Press of America.

17. Bos, Egbert Peter. 1987. "The Theory of the Proposition According to John Duns Scotus' Two Commentaries on Aristotle's Perihermeneias." In Logos and Pragma. Essays on the Philosophy of Language in Honour of Professor Gabriel Nuchelmans, edited by Rijk, Lambertus Marie de and Braakhuis, Henk A.G., 121-139. Nijmegen: Ingenium Publishers.

18. ———, ed. 1998. John Duns Scotus (1265/6-1308). Renewal of Philosophy. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Acts of the Third Symposium organized by the Dutch Society for Medieval Philosophy Medium Aevum (May 23 and 24, 1996).

Contents: E. P. Bos: Introduction VII-XIV; 1. Wolfgang Kluxen: On metaphysics and the concept of freedom in the philosophy of John Duns Scotus 1; 2. Jan A. Aertsen: Being and the One: the doctrine of the convertible transcendentals in Duns Scotus 13; 3. Jos Decorte: Creatio and conservatio as relatio 27; 4. A. Vos: Duns Scotus and Aristotle 49; 5. A. Vos: Knowledge, certainty and contingency 75; 6. Ria van der Lecq: Duns Scotus on the reality of possible worlds 89; 7. Eef Dekker: Does Duns Scotus need Molina? On divine foreknowledge and co-causality 101; 8. Eef Dekker: Scotus's freedom of the will revisited 113; 9. A. J. Beck: 'Divine psychology' and modalities: Scotus's theory of the neutral proposition 123; 10. Joke Spruyt: Duns Scotus's criticism of Henry of Ghent's notion of free will 139; 11. Rudi te Velde: Natura in seipsa recurva est: Duns scotus and Aquinas on the relationship between nature and will 155; 12. H. Paul F. Mercken: Necessity and the moral order: Scotus's interpretation of the Lex Naturae in the perspective of Western philosophical ethics 171; 13. E. P. Bos and A. C. van der Helm: The division of Being over the categories according to Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus 183; Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen: Scotus and the Scotist school. The tradition of Scotist thought in the medieval and early modern period 197; Bibliography 211; Indexes 227-237.

19. Boulnois, Olivier. 1989. "Analogie Et Univocité Selon Duns Scot: La Double Destruction." Études Philosophiques:347-369.

20. ———. 1992. "Réelles Intentions: Nature Commune Et Universaux Selon Duns Scot." Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale no. 97:3-34.

21. ———. 1995. "Quand Commence L'ontothéologie? Aristote, Thomas D'Aquin Et Duns Scot." Revue Thomiste no. 95:85-108.

22. ———. 1999. Être Et Représentation, Une Généalogie De La Métaphysique Moderne À L'époque De Duns Scot, Xiiie-Xive Siècle. Paris: Press universitaires de France.

23. ———. 1999. "Théologie, Métaphysique Et Répresentation De L'être Selon Duns Scot." Cahiers de la Revue de Théolgie et de Philosophie no. 20:83-102.

Métaphysiques Médiévales. Études en l'Honneur d'André de Muralt - Éditées par Curzio Chiesa et Léo Freuler.

24. Boulnois, Olivier, Karger, Elizabeth, Solère, Jean-Luc, and Sondag, Gérard, eds. 2004. Duns Scot À Paris 1302-2002. Turnhout: Brepols.

Actes du Colloque de Paris, 2-4 septembre 2002.

Contents: Introduction IX; Index siglorum XXIII;

I - PARIS, 1302

Antonie Vos: Duns Scotus at Paris 3; Elsa Marmursztejn - Sylvain Piron: Duns Scot et la politique. Pouvoir du prince et conversion des Juifs 21;

II - THÉORIE DE L'ESPRIT, ÉPISTÉMOLOGIE, SÉMANTIQUE

Peter King: Duns Scotus on mental content 65; Dominique Demange: "Objet premier d'inclusion virtuelle". Introduction à la théorie de la science de Jean Duns Scot 89; Christopher J. Martin: Formal consequence in Scotus and Ockham: towards an account of Scotus' logic 117; Jacques Chollet - Gérard Sondag: Sur la signification du terme fortè dans le latin de Jean Duns Scot 151;

III - MÉTAPHYSIQUE

Ludger Honnefelder: Étienne Gilson et Jean Duns Scot: l' Être et l'essence et l'histoire de la métaphysique 179; Pasquale Porro: Duns Scot et le point de rupture avec Avicenne 195; Olivier Boulnois: Au-delà de la physique? 219; Timothy B. Noone: L'univocité dans les Quaestiones super libros de anima 255; Giorgio Pini: Substance, accident, and inherence. Scotus and the Paris debate on the metaphysics of the Eucharist 273; Fabrizio Mondadori: The independence of the possible according to Scotus 313; Joachim R. Sider: La doctrine scotiste de la contingence dans la Reportatio I A 375; Joel Biard: Duns Scot et l'infini dans la nature 387;

IV - PSYCHOLOGIE ET ÉTHIQUE

Mary B. Ingham: La genèse de la volonté rationnelle de la Lectura à la Reportatio 409; Christophe Cervellon: L'affection de justice chez Duns Scot. Justice et luxure dans le péché de l'ange 425; Jean- Michel Counet: Le lien entre la prudence et les vertus morales chez Duns Scot 469; Tobias Hoffmann: L'akrasia selon Duns Scot 487; Gilles Berceville o.p: Du miracle au surnaturel. De Thomas d'Aquin à Duns Scot: un changement de problématique 563; Luc Mathieu o.f.m: Était-il nécessaire que le Christ mourût sur la croix? Réflexion sur la liberté absolue de Dieu et la liberté de Jésus-homme, d'après Jean Duns Scot 581;

VI - PARIS, 2002

Axel Schmidt: The concept of time in theology and physics 595; Ansgar Santogrossi o.s.b: Soi, intersubjectivité et langage chez Duns Scot 607; Emmanuel Falque: L'autre singulier: l'haeccéité d'autrui et l'horizon de la finitude 623;

INDEX

Index scotisticum 665; Index manuscriptorum 675; Index nominum 677.

25. Brown, O.J. 1979. "Individuation and Actual Existence in Scotistic Metaphysics: A Thomistic Assessment." New Scholasticism no. 53:347-361.

26. Brown, Stephen F. 1965. "Avicenna and the Unity of the Concept of Being. The Interpretations of Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus, Gerard of Bologna and Peter Aureoli." Franciscan Studies no. 25:117-150.

"This article treats the question of the analogy and the univocity of being in Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, Hervaeus Natalis, Gerard of Bologna and Peter Aureoli. Each provides his own view of the concept of being and thus each gives a different interpretation to Avicenna's metaphysical starting point"

27. Carbajo Núñez, Martín, ed. 2008. Giovanni Duns Scoto. Studi E Ricerche Nel Vii Centenario Della Sua Morte. In Onore Di P. César Saco Alarcón. Roma: Antonianum.

Due volumi.

28. Cesalli, Laurent. 2007. Le Réalisme Propositionnel. Sémantique Et Ontologie Des Propositions Chez Jean Duns Scot, Gauthier Burley, Richard Brinkley Et Jean Wyclif. Paris: Vrin.

29. ———. 2009. "Le Signifié Propositionnel Selon Jean Duns Scot Et Gauthier Burley." In Philosophical Debates at Paris in the Early Fourteenth Century, edited by Brown, Stephen F., Dewender, Thomas and Kobusch, Theo, 465-482. Leiden: Brill.

30. Cross, Richard. 1998. The Physics of Duns Scotus. The Scientific Context of a Theological Vision. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

31. ———. 1999. Duns Scotus. New York: Oxford University Press.

32. ———. 2002. The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

33. Da Costa Santos, Rogério. 1998. L'ontologie Du Contingent Selon Jean Duns Scot. Ètude Sur Les Origines Du Possible Et De La Représentation En Dieu. Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion.

34. Dahlstrom, Daniel. 1980. "Signification and Logic: Scotus on Universals from a Logical Point of View." Vivarium no. 18:81-111.

35. Day, Sebastian. 1947. Intuitive Cognition. A Key to the Significance of the Later Scholastics. St. Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute.

36. Demange, Dominique. 2007. Jean Duns Scot. La Théorie Du Savoir. Paris: Vrin.

37. ———. 2008. "Pourqoi Duns Scot a Critiqué Avicenne." In Giovanni Duns Scoto. Studi E Ricerche Nel Vii Centenario Della Sua Morte in Onore Di P. César Saco Alarcón. Vol I, edited by Nuñez, Martín Carbajo, 195-232. Roma: Antonianum.

38. Dumont, Stephen. 1987. "The Univocity of the Concept of Being in the Fourteenth Century: John Duns Scotus and William of Alnwick." Mediaeval Studies no. 49:1-75.

39. ———. 1987. "The Univocity of the Concept of Being in the Fourteenth Century: Ii. The De Ente of Peter Thomae." Mediaeval Studies no. 50:186-256.

40. ———. 1989. "Theology as a Science and Duns Scotus's Distinction between Intuitive and Abstractive Cognition." Speculum no. 64:579-599.

41. ———. 1992. "Transcendental Being: Scotus and Scotists." Topoi no. 11:135-148.

"Of singular importance to the medieval theory of transcendentals was the position of John Duns Scotus that there could be a concept of being univocally common, not only to substance and accidents, but even to God and creatures. Scotus''s doctrine of univocal transcendental concepts violated the accepted view that, owing to its generality, no transcendental notion could be univocal. The major difficulty facing Scotus''s doctrine of univocity was to explain how a real, as opposed to a purely logical, concept could be abstracted from what agreed in nothing real, in this case, God and creatures. The present article examines Scotus''s solution to this difficulty and its interpretation in four of his noted fourteenth-century followers. It is shown that the balance Scotus''s solution achieved between the competing demands of the real diversity between God and creatures, on the one side, and the conceptual unity of transcendental being, on the other, is taken in opposed directions by his interpreters. Either the real diversity of God and creatures is given priority, so that the concept of being becomes a purely logical notion, or the real unity of the concept of being is stressed, so that some sort of real community is posited between God and creatures."

42. ———. 1992. "The Propositio Famosa Scoti: Duns Scotus and Ockham on the Possibility of a Science of Theology." Dialogue.Canadian Philosophical Review no. 31:415-430.

43. ———. 1995. "The Origin of Scotus's Theory of Synchronic Contingency." Modern Schoolman no. 72:149-167.

"It has been widely accepted in the literature that Scotus was the first to advance the so-called synchronic' view of contingency, where something is contingent if, at the very moment when it occurs, there is a real possibility for its opposite. This is usually contrasted with a statistical' construction of contingency, found in Aristotle and scholastics before Scotus, according to which something is contingent if its opposite can be actually realized at some other time. The present article examines the background to Scotus's treatment of this theory of synchronic contingency and traces its proximate origin to Peter Olivi."

44. ———. 1999. "L'univocité Selon Duns Scot Et La Tradition Médiévale De La Métaphysique." Philosophie no. 61:27-49.

45. ———. 1999. "La Doctrine Scotiste De L'univocité Et La Tradition Médiévale De La Métaphysique." Philosophie no. 61:27-49.

46. ———. 2005. "Duns Scotus's Parisian Question on the Formal Distinction." Vivarium no. 43:7-62.

"The degree of realism that Duns Scotus understood his formal distinction to have implied is a matter of dispute going back to the fourteenth century. Both modern and medieval commentators alike have seen Scotusrsquos later, Parisian treament of the formal distinction as less realist in the sense that it would deny any extra-mentally separate formalities or realities. This less realist reading depends in large part on a question known to scholars only in the highly corrupt edition of Luke Wadding, where it is printed as the first of the otherwise spurious Quaestiones miscellaneae de formalitatibus. The present study examines this question in detail. Cited by Scotusrsquos contemporaries as the Quaestio logica Scoti, we establish that it was a special disputation held by Scotus at Paris in response to criticisms of his use of the formal distinction in God, identify its known manuscripts, and provide an analysis based upon a corrected text, showing in particular the total unreliability of the Wadding edition. Our analysis shows that the Logica Scoti does not absolutely prohibit an assertion of formalities as correlates of the formal distinction, even in the divine Person, so long as their non-identity is properly qualified. That is, the positing of formalities does not of itself entail an unqualified or absolute distinction."

47. Etzkorn, Girard J. 1991. "The Scotus Edition: John Duns Scotus's Philosophical Works." Franciscan Studies no. 51:117-130.

48. Frank, William A., and Wolter, Allan Bernard. 1995. Duns Scotus, Metaphysician. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press.

49. Gilson, Étienne. 1952. Jean Duns Scot. Introduction a Ses Positions Fondamentales. Paris: Vrin.

50. Gracia, Jorge J.E. 1998. "Scotus Conception of Metaphysics: The Study of the Transcendentals." Franciscan Studies no. 56:153-168.

51. Grajewski, Maurice. 1944. The Formal Distinction of Duns Scotus. A Study in Metaphysics. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

52. Harris, Charles Reginald Schiller. 1959. Duns Scotus. New York: The Humanities Press.

Two volumes: 1. The place of Duns Scotus in medieval thought; 2. The philosophical doctrines of Duns Scotus.

Reprint: Bristol, Thoemmes Press, 1994.

53. Hechich, Barnaba. 2008. "Il Problema Delle 'Reportationes' Nell'eredità Dottrinale Del B. Giovanni Duns Scoto." In Giovanni Duns Scoto. Studi E Ricerche Nel Vii Centenario Della Sua Morte in Onore Di P. César Saco Alarcón. Vol I, edited by Nuñez, Martín Carbajo, 59-128. Roma: Antonianum.

54. Hoffmann, Tobias. 2002. Creatura Intellecta. Die Ideen Und Possibilien Bei Duns Scotus Mit Ausblick Auf Franz Von Mayronis, Poncius Und Mastrius. Münster: Aschendorff.

55. Honnefelder, Ludger. 1979. Ens Inquantum Ens. Der Begriff Des Seienden Als Solchen Als Gegenstand Der Metaphysik Nach Der Lehre Des Johannes Duns Scotus. Münster: Aschendorff.

56. ———. 1990. Scientia Transcendens. Die Formale Bestimmumg Der Seiendheit Und Realitat in Der Metaphysik Des Mitt Elalters Und Der Neuzeit (Duns Scotus - Suarez - Wolff - Kant - Peirce). Hamburg: Meiner.

57. ———. 1997. "Zum Begriff Der Moglichen Welt in J.A. Comenius's 'Consultatio Catholica'." Franciscan Studies no. 54:277-288.

58. ———. 2005. Johannes Duns Scotus. München: C. H. Beck.

59. Honnefelder, Ludger, Wood, Rega, and Dreyer, Mechtild, eds. 1996. John Duns Scotus. Metaphysics and Ethics. Leiden: Brill.

Contents: Vorwort IX; Ludger Honnefelder: Metaphysik und Ethik bei Johannes Duns Scotus: Forschungsergebnisse und - perspektiven. Eine Einführung 1;

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Allan B. Wolter: Reflections about Scotus's early works 37; Stephen D. Dumont: William of Ware, Richard of Conington and the Collationes Oxonienses of John Duns Scotus 59; Mechthild Dreyer: Eissenschaft als Satzsystem. Die Theoremata des Johannes Duns Scotus und die Entwicklung des kategorisch-deduktiven Wissenschaftsbegriffs 87; Gordon A. Wilson: The presence of Henry of Ghent in Scotus's Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum 107;

MODALITY

Simo Knuuttila: Duns Scotus and the foundations of logical modalities 127; John Boler: The ontological commitment of Scotus's account of potency in his Questions on the Metaphysics, book IX 145; Calvin G. Normore: Scotus, modality, instants of nature and the contingency of the present 161; Steven P. Marrone: Revisiting Duns Scotus and Henry of Ghent on modality 175; Stanislav Sousedïk: Der Streit urn den wahren Sinn der scotischen possibilienlehre 191; Neil Lewis: Power and contingency in Robert Grosseteste and Duns Scotus 205;

INDIVIDUATION

Jorge .J. E. Gracia: Individuality and the individuating entity in Scotus's Ordinatio: an ontological characterization 229; Rega Wood: individual forms: Richard Rufus and John Duns Scotus 251; Woosuk Park: Understanding the problem of individuation: Gracia vs. Scotus 273;

BEING AND UNIVOCITY

Olivier Boulnois: Duns Scot, théoricien de l'analogie de l'être 293; Maria Burger: Univozität des Seienden - Univozität der Person: Zwei Grenzbegriffe 317; Stephen F. Brown: L'unité du concept d'être au début du quatorzième siècle 327; Theo O. Kobusch: Das Seiende ais transzendentaler oder supertranszendentaler Begriff. Deutungen der Univozität des Begriffs bei Scotus und den Scotisten 345; Jan P. Beckmann: Entdecken oder Setzen? Die besonderheit der relationstheorie des Duns Scotus und ihre Bedeutung für die metaphysik 367; Gérard Sondag: Universel et natura communis dans l ' Odinatio et dans les Questions sur le Perihermeneias (une brève comparaison) 385; Jakob Hans Josef Schneider: Utrum haec sit vera: Caesar est animal, Caesare non existente. Zum Peri-Hermeneias-Kommentar des Johannes Dyns Scotus 393;

THE EXISTENCE OF THE FIRST BEING

Alessandro Ghisalberti: Ens infinitum e dimostrazione dell'esistenza di Dio in Duns Scoto 415; Timothy O'Connor: From First Efficient Cause to God: Scotus on the identification stage of the cosmological argument 435; Luis Alberto de Boni: bedeutung und grenzen des aristotelischen Denkens im Gottesbeweis von Duns Scotus 455; Rolf Schönberger: Negations non summe amamus. Duns Scotus' auseinandersetzung mit der negativen Theologie 475;

ETHICS

Marilyn McCord Adams: Scotus and Ockham on the connection of the virtues 499; Fernando Inciarte: Scotus' Gebrauch des Begriffs der praktischen Wahrheit im philosophiegeschichtlichen Kontext 523; Hans-Joachim Werner: Die Erfassung des Schönen in seiner personalen und ethischen Bedeutung bei Duns Scotus 535; Mary Elizabeth Ingham: Practical wisdom: Scotus's presentation of Prudence 551; Hannes Möhle: Wille und Moral. Zur Voraussetzung der Ethik des Johannes Duns Scotus und ihrer Bedeutung für die Ethik Immanuel Kants 573;

Indices 595; Index fontium 597; Index nominum 600; Index rerum 606.

60. Iammarrone, Luigi. 1999. Giovanni Duns Scoto Metafisico E Teologo: Le Tematiche Fondamentali Della Sua Filosofia E Teologia. Roma: Miscellanea Francescana.

61. Ingham, Mary Elizabeth. 2003. Scotus for Dunces: An Introduction to the Subtle Doctor. St. Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute Publications.

62. Ingham, Mary Elizabeth, and Dreyer, Mechtild. 2004. The Philosophical Vision of John Duns Scotus. An Introduction. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

63. King, Peter. 2001. "Duns Scotus on Possibilities, Powers, and the Possible." In Potentialität Und Possibilität. Modalaussagen in Der Geschichte Der Metaphysik, edited by Buchheim, Thomas, Kneepkens, Corneille Henri and Lorenz, Kuno, 175-199. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog.

64. Knuuttila, Simo. 1986. "Being Qua Being in Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus." In The Logic of Being. Historical Studies, edited by Knuuttila, Simo and Hintikka, Jaakko, 201-222. Dordrecht: Reidel.

65. Krop, Henri A. 1987. "The Self-Knowledge of God. Duns Scotus and Ockham on the Formal Object of Scientific Knowledge." In Ockham and Ockhamists, edited by Bos, Egbert Peter and Krop, Henri A., 83-92. Nijmegen: Ingenium Publishers.

66. Langston, Douglas. 1979. "Scotus and Ockham on the Univocal Concept of Being." Franciscan Studies no. 39:105-129.

67. ———. 1993. "Scotus's Doctrine of Intuitive Cognition." Synthese no. 96:3-24.

68. Lusser, Dominik. 2006. Individua Substantia. Interpretation Und Umdeutung Des Aristotelischen Ousia-Begriffs Bei Thomas Von Aquin Und Johannes Duns Scotus. Bern: Peter Lang.

69. Manno, Ambrogio Giacomo. 1994. Introduzione Al Pensiero Di Giovanni Duns Scoto. Bari: Levante.

70. Marmo, Costantino. 1989. "Ontology and Semantics in the Logic of Duns Scotus." In On the Medieval Theory of Signs, edited by Eco, Umberto and Marmo, Costantino, 143-193. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

71. Marrone, Steven P. 1983. "The Notion of Univocity in Duns Scotus' S Early Writings." Franciscan Studies no. 43:347-395.

72. ———. 1988. "Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus on the Knowledge of Being." Speculum no. 63:22-57.

73. ———. 1998. "Duns Scotus on Metaphysical Potency and Possibility." Franciscan Studies no. 56:265-289.

74. Martinich, Aloysius P. 1977. "Scotus and Anselm on the Existence of God." Franciscan Studies no. 37:139-152.

75. McKeon, Richard. 1965. "The Relation of Logic to Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Duns Scotus." Monist no. 49:519-550.

"In the development of logical theory from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth century, the "new logic" was distinguished from the "old logic" when the last four books of Aristotle's "Organon" were translated, and the "modern logic" was distinguished from the "ancient logic" when the principles of demonstration were found in rhetorical or dialectical topics or sophistical paradoxes rather than in analytical causes. The "old logic" and the "new logic" continued to be used to designate two sets of problems, and William of Ockham wrote treatises on both. "Moderns" was not a synonym for "nominalists" in the Fourteenth century, and the innovations in logic of that century were made by both "ancients" and "moderns." According to Duns Scotus the problems of the old logic are problems of the interpretation of sentences and the definition of simple terms from that interpretation; the problems of the new logic are problems of the analysis of inference and the interpretation of sentences from that analysis."

76. Noone, Timothy B. 1993. "Alnwick on the Origin, Nature and Function of the Formal Distinction." Franciscan Studies no. 53:231-245.

77. O'Brien, Andrew Joseph. 1964. "Duns Scotus' Teaching on the Distinction between Essence and Existence." New Scholasticism no. 38:61-77.

78. O'Meara, William. 1965. "Actual Existence and the Individual According to Duns Scotus." Monist no. 49:659-669.

79. Parisoli, Luca. 2008. "Oggetti E Norme: Ontologia E Volontà Nella Lettura Oaraconsistente Di Giovanni Duns Scoto." In Giovanni Duns Scoto. Studi E Ricerche Nel Vii Centenario Della Sua Morte in Onore Di P. César Saco Alarcón. Vol I, edited by Nuñez, Martín Carbajo, 395-427. Roma: Antonianum.

80. Park, Woosuk. 1988. "The Problem of Individuation for Scotus: A Principle of Indivisibility or a Principle of Distinction." Franciscan Studies no. 48:105-123.

81. ———. 1988. Haecceitas and the Bare Particular: A Study of Duns Scotus' Theory of Individuation, State University of New York at Buffalo.

Available at ProQuest Dissertation Express. Order number: 8905467.

82. ———. 1990. "Scotus, Frege and Bergmann." Modern Schoolman no. 67:259-273.

83. ———. 1990. "Haecceitas and the Bare Particular." Review of Metaphysics no. 44:375-397.

84. Perler, Dominik. 1993. "Duns Scotus on Signification." Medieval Philosophy and Theology no. 3:97-120.

"In both versions of his Commentary on the Sentences, Scotus alludes to a great controversy among his contemporaries over the question of whether a spoken word signifies a thing or a concept.

He does not give a detailed account of this controversy, but confines himself to saying, "in short, I grant that what is properly signified by a spoken word is a thing." This brief statement may seem trivial at first sight, but it turns out to be innovative when it is assessed against the background of medieval Aristotelian semantic theory. From Boethius onwards, the overwhelming majority of the commentators on De interpretatione held that it is a concept and not a thing that is primarily and directly signified by a spoken word.

In this paper, I intend to examine the reasons that led Scotus to criticize and revise the dominant theory. Such an examination can scarcely be restricted to a logico-semantical analysis. An adequate understanding of the relationship between a sign and its significate not only necessitates an examination of the question of how this relationship is established, but also a discussion of the question of what exactly the sign and the significate are-what kind of entities they are. Therefore, the following analysis aims at investigating not only the semantic aspects of Scotus's theory of signification, but also its ontological commitments." (notes omitted).

85. Pickavé, Martin. 2010. "Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus on Skepticism and the Possibility of Naturally Acquired Knowledge." In Rethinking the History of Skepticism. The Missing Medieval Background, edited by Lagerlund, Henrik, 61-96. Leiden: Brill.

86. Pini, Giorgio. 1999. "Duns Scotus' Commentary on the Topics: New Light on His Philosophical Teaching." Archives d'Histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age no. 66:225-243.

87. ———. 2000. "Species, Concept, and Thing: Theories of Signification in the Second Half of the Thirteenth Century." Medieval Philosophy and Theology no. 8:21-52.

88. ———. 2001. "Signification of Names in Duns Scotus and Some of His Contemporaries." Vivarium no. 39:20-51.

89. ———. 2002. Scoto E L'analogia. Logica E Metafisica Nei Commenti Aristotelici. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore.

90. ———. 2002. Categories and Logic in Duns Scotus. An Interpretation of Aristotle's Categories in the Late Thirteenth Century. Leiden: Brill.

91. ———. 2005. "Scotus' Realist Conception of the Categories: His Legacy to Late Medieval Debates." Vivarium no. 43:63-110.

92. Prentice, Robert. 1968. "Univocity and Analogy According to Scotus' Super Libros Elenchorum Aristotelis." Archives d'Histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age no. 35:39-64.

93. ———. 1970. The Basic Quidditative Metaphysics of Duns Scotus as Seen in His De Primo Principio. Roma: Antonianum.

94. ———. 1974. An Anonymous Question on the Unity of the Concept of Being (Attributed to Scotus). Roma: L.I.E.F.

95. Reichmann, James B. 2006. "Scotus and Haecceitas, Aquinas and Esse: A Comparative Study." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 80:63-75.

"This study compares the teachings of Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus on the issue of being and individuality. Its primary aim is to contrast Scotus's individuating principle, haecceitas, with Aquinas's actualizing principle, esse, attending both to their rather striking similarities as well as to their significant differences. The article's conclusion is that, while Scotus's crowning principle, haecceitas, is the unique entity internal to each thing, rendering the nature complete and singular as nature, Aquinas's crowning principle, esse, actualizes the nature without individualizing it. This is not to imply that Scotus overlooked the importance of a thing's being, any more than Aquinas overlooked the importance of a being's singularity. It does mean, however, that the primal integrating focus and the resulting philosophical synthesis of these two seminal thinkers of the Middle Ages did significantly differ. The conclusion of the paper might be stated thus: what most distinguishes their respective philosophies is that, while Scotus's primary concern was with the existing individual, Aquinas's was with the existing individual."

96. Richter, Vladimir. 1991. "Duns Scotus' Text Zur Univozität." In Historia Philosophiae Medii Aevi. Studien Zur Geschichte Der Philosophie Des Mittelalters, edited by Mojsisch, Burkhard and Pluta, Olaf, 899-1028. Amsterdam: R. Grüner.

97. Rijk, Lambertus Marie de. 2003. "The Logic of Indefinite Names in Boethius, Abelard, Duns Scotus, and Radulphus Brito." In Aristotle's Peri Hermeneias in the Latin Middle Ages. Essays on the Commentary Tradition, edited by Braakhuis, Henk A.G. and Kneepkens, Corneille Henri, 207-233. Groningen: Ingenium Publishers.

98. Ryan, John K., and Bonansea, Bernardine, eds. 1965. John Duns Scotus, 1265-1965. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

Contents: J. K. Ryan: Foreword VII; 1. Charles Balic: The life and works of John Duns Scotus 1; 2. Efrem Bettoni: The originality of the Scotistic synthesis 28; 3. John K. Ryan: The Formal Distinction 45;

4. S. F. Watson: A problem for Realism: our multiple concepts of individual things and the solution of Duns Scotus 61; 5. Bernardine Bonansea: Duns Scotus' voluntarism; 6. J. R. Cresswell: Duns Scotus on the Common Nature 122; 7. Felix Alluntis: Demonstrability and demonstration of the existence of God 133; 8. Roy Efer: Duns Scotus and the physical approach to God 171; 9. Geoffrey G. Bridges: The Problem of the demonstrability of immortality 191; 10. Timotheus A. Barth: Being, univocity, and analogy according to Duns Scotus 210; 11. Walter Hoeres: Francis Suarez and the teaching of John Duns Scotus on Univocatio Entis 263; 12. Ignatius Brady: William of Vaurouillon, O.F.M., a Fifteeenth century Scotist 291; 13. Heiko Augustinus Oberman: Duns Scotus, nominalism, and the Council of Trent 311; 14. Béraud de Saint-Maurice: The contemporary significance of Duns Scotus' philosophy 345; 15. Charles Balic: The nature and value of a critical edition of the complete works of John Duns Scotus 368; Notes on Contributors 380; Index 382-384.

"The names of certain of the great scholastic thinkers of the middle ages-St. Ansb1m, Abelard, Hugh of St. Victor, St. Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, Roger Bacon, John Duns Scotus, Henry of Ghent, and the rest-are familiar not only to students of philosophy and theology but also in varying degrees to the educated public. Abelard is known for his Historia calamitatum and as a figure in romantic literature, if not for his work in ethics and the theory of knowledge. Like Zeno's paradoxes and the Cartesian "cogito ergo sum," a passage in St. Anselm has become the subject of unending discussion. Certain of St. Bonaventure's books have been translated and find readers. But with the exception of St. Thomas Aquinas first-hand knowledge of the writings of the medieval masters is not a common thing.

For reasons that have varied throughout the modern era John Duns Scotus has not always received the general recognition that what he was and what he did should have brought to him. However, inadequate understanding and even hostility are being displaced by something better. Appropriately, this change is due in large measure to the research and writings of his fellow Franciscans, but the books and articles of many other scholars have aided them in their labors. As a result, the record of Scotus' life has been made fuller and clearer, what he actually taught on various subjects has been brought to light, and translations of his writings begin to appear. But the most important thing of all is the essential work of the Commissio Scotistica on the canon and the critical edition of his writings, which proceeds year by year in spite of the inherent difficulties of the task and those caused by the turmoil of our era. To all such labors the present volume, a cooperative effort of European, American, and Canadian scholars, is added as a further monument raised in honor of John Duns Scotus on the seventh centennial of his birth." (from the Foreword).

99. Shircel, Cyril L. 1942. The Univocity of the Concept of Being in the Philosophy of John Duns Scotus. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

100. Söder, Roland. 1998. Kontingenz Und Wissen. Die Lehre Von Den Futura Contingentia Bei Johannes Duns Scotus. Münster: Aschendorff.

101. Sondag, Gérard. 1997. "Le Sistème Des Causes Dans La Philosophie Naturelle De Jean Buridan." In Perspectives Arabes Et Médiévales Sur La Tradition Scientifique Et Philosophique Grecque, edited by Hasnawi, Ahmad, Elamrani-Jamal, Abdelali and Aouad, Maroun, 505-521. Leuven: Peeters.

Actes du colloque de la SIHSPAI (Société internationale d'histoire des sciences et de la philosophie arabes et islamiques) Paris, 31 mars - 3 avril 1993.

102. ———. 1997. "La Solution Scotiste Au Problème De L'individuation, Avec Une Conjecture Sur Ses Sources Immédiates." In Perspectives Arabes Et Médiévales Sur La Tradition Scientifique Et Philosophique Grecque, edited by Hasnawi, Ahmad, Elamrani-Jamal, Abdelali and Aouad, Maroun, 505-521. Leuven: Peeters.

103. ———. 2005. Duns Scot. La Métaphysique De La Singularité. Paris: Vrin.

104. Spruyt, Joke. 2003. "The Semantics of Complex Espressions in John Duns Scotus, Peter Abelard and John Buridan." In Aristotle's Peri Hermeneias in the Latin Middle Ages. Essays on the Commentary Tradition, edited by Braakhuis, Henk A.G. and Kneepkens, Corneille Henri, 275-303. Turnhout: Brepols.

105. Sylwanovicz, Michael. 1996. Contingent Causality and the Foundations of Duns Scotus' Metaphysics. Leiden: Brill.

106. Traina, Mariano. 1965. "La Dialettica in Giovanni Duns Scoto." In Arts Libéraux Et Philosophie Au Moyen Age, 923-938. Montreal: Institut d'études médiévales.

107. Tweedale, Martin M. 1963. "Scotus and Ockham on the Infinity of the Most Eminent Being." Franciscan Studies no. 23:257-267.

108. ———. 1993. "Duns Scotus' Doctrine on Universals and the Aphrodisian Tradition." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 67:77-93.

109. ———, ed. 1999. Scotus Vs. Ockham - a Medieval Dispute over Universals. Vol. I: Texts. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press.

Texts translated into English with commentary by Martin M. Tweedale.

"This work is meant to make accessible to students of philosophy and later medieval thought the key texts in one of the most crucial philosophical debates of that period. The concentration is on Scotus's positive doctrine since it is difficult and has not received the detailed attention it deserves. Ockham's polemic against Scotus raises a host of objections to the internal coherence of Scotus's reworking of the traditional line. Some of these are ones it seems to me Scotus could have countered quite easily; others would have required some revisions, but ones that are basically within the spirit of the doctrine. Some, however, are very difficult indeed, and I shall leave to the commentary and its introductory essay the exposition of my own view on whether Scotus's position can survive intact. There is also a positive side to Ockham's views about universals, and that is only partially covered in what follows. The texts that show how Ockham envisioned preserving all the essentials of Aristotelian science even after real universals have been excised, are presented and discussed, and the very real issue of whether Ockham's effort here could possibly succeed is broached but not definitely resolved one way or the other."

110. ———. 1999. Scotus Vs. Ockham - a Medieval Dispute over Universals. Vol. Ii: Commentary. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press.

"The commentary which composes the greater part of this volume attempts not only to explain the texts translated in the Iirst volume and to understand the positions adopted by the protagonists in this debate, but also to assess the cogency of the various arguments put forward. After all that work is done, however, there remains the task of drawing attention to the crucial issues that have emerged and arriving at some understanding of the debate as a whole and the relative merits of the positions put forward. It is this task that this introductory essay undertakes. Perhaps it would be better read after a thorough study of the commentary, but I am inclined to think that some awareness of the general issues and positions taken by Scotus and Ockham helps in making one's way through the individual texts and their often elaborate argumentation. In explaining these issues and positions I have made free use of philosophical ideas of our own day, at least to the extent that this is not grossly anachronistic."

111. Vos, Antonie. 1985. " On the Philosophy of the Young Duns Scotus. Some Semantical and Logical Aspects." In Mediaeval Semantics and Metaphysics. Studies Dedicated to L. M. De Rijk, Ph. D. On the Occasion of His 60th Birthday, edited by Bos, Egbert Peter, 195-216. Nijmegen: Ingenium Publishers.

112. ———. 2006. The Philosophy of John Duns Scotus. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

113. Wengert, R.G. 1965. "The Development of the Doctrine of the Formal Distinction in the Lectura Prima of John Duns Scotus." Monist no. 49:571-587.

"This article is a discussion of the vocabulary and arguments in Scotus' "Prima Lectura" which seeks to show the close relationship between the doctrine of "formal distinction" and the notion of "ultimate abstraction". The paper also suggests that in the "Prima lectura" One is in at the birth of the fully developed notion of "formal distinction" in Scotus' own thought."

114. Williams, Thomas, ed. 2003. The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Contributors IX; Abbreviations and method of citation XIII; Duns Scotus in English translation XV; Thomas Williams: Introduction: the life and works of John Duns the Scot 1; 1. Peter King: Scotuus on metaphysics 15; 2. Neil Lewis: Space and time 69; 3. Timothy B. Noone: Universals and individuation 100; 4. Calvin G. Normore: Duns Scotus's modal theory 129; 5. Dominik Perler: Duns Scotus's philosophy of language 161; 6. James F. Ross and Todd Bates: Duns Scotus on natural theology 193; 7. William E. Mann: Duns Scotus on natural and superanatural knowledge of God 238; 8. Richard Cross: Philosophy of mind 263; 9. Robert Pasnau: Cognition 285; 10. Hannes Möhle: Scotus's theory of natural law 312; 11. Thomas Williams: From metaethics to action theory 332; 12. Bonnie Kent: Rethinking moral dispositions: Scotus on the virtues 352; Bibliography 377; Citations of works attributed to John Duns Scotus 395; Index 405.

115. Wolter, Allan Bernard. 1946. The Transcendentals and Their Function in the Metaphysics of Duns Scotus. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

116. ———. 1962. "The Realism of Scotus." Journal of Philosophy no. 59:725-735.

"The realist-nominalist controversy in the fourteenth century owes its origin to Duns Scotus and William Ockham, the two men whom C. S. Peirce in his Harvard lectures on British logicians praised as "decidedly the greatest speculative minds of the middle ages, as well as two of the profoundest metaphysicians that ever lived." Scotus's reputation as a realist, even if his realism be what neo-scholastics call "moderate" and Peirce "halting," rests on his conception of how the specific nature of anything exists in individuals of any given kind."

117. ———. 1990. The Philosophical Theology of John Duns Scotus. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Contents: Foreword by Marilyn McCord Adams VII-IX; Introduction 1;

METAPHYSICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY

1. The Formal Distinction 27; 2. The Realism of Scotus 42; 3. A "Reportatio" of Duns Scotus' Merton College. Dialogue on language and metaphysics 54; 4. Scotus' Individuation theory 68; 5.

Duns Scotus on intuition, memory, and our knowledge of individuals 98;

ACTION THEORY AND ETHICS

6. Duns Scotus on the natural desire for the Supernatural 125; 7. Native freedom of the will as a key to the ethics of Scotus 148; 8. Duns Scotus on the will as rational potency 163; 9. Duns Scotus on the will and morality 181;

PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGY

10. The "Theologism" of Duns Scotus 209; 11. Duns Scotus and the existence and nature of God 254; 12. Is existence for Scotus a perfection, predicate, or what? 278; 13. Scotus' Paris Lectures on God's knowledge of future events 285;

A Bibliography of Allan B. Wolter, O.F.M. 335; Index of Names 345; Index of Subjects; 347-356.

"Over the last four decades, Allan B. Wolter, O.F.M., has done more than anyone else to make the philosophical theology of John Duns Scotus accessible to the English-speaking world, by preparing English translations of primary sources as well as interpretative essays introducing readers to Scotus' central ideas.

These tasks have been both hindered and made more urgent by the painfully slow progress of the new Vatican edition of Scotus' writings (volume I containing the Prologue of Scotus' Oxford commentary on the Sentences appeared in 1950; as of 1988, only nine volumes have been published, and the critical edition of the Oxford commentary is not yet complete). Although useful, the seventeenth-century Wadding edition is unreliable both in its attributions and readings. Difficult issues of authenticity, dating, and the interrelation of Scotus' works remain. Thus, beginning with his dissertation, Wolter formed the habit of reverting to the manuscripts to produce his own provisional editions, consulting with Vatican editors on the Scotus Commission where possible.

Wolter's career as a Scotus translator began in 1947, when Paul Weiss requested some material for the first volume of his new journal Review of Metaphysics. Remarking on Scotus' notoriously tangled Latin, Wolter described the work of translating it as "a special vocation" and vowed never to do it again. Necessity is a sign of calling, however, and Wolter began translating topical selections for summer-school students at the Franciscan Institute in the early fifties. Many of these were published, with Wolter's Latin editions on the facing pages, in Duns Scotus: Philosophical Writings: A Selection (first published by Thomas Nelson, 1962, and English only in Bobbs-Merrill's Library of Liberal Arts series, 1962; reprinted by Hackett, 1987). Over the years, Wolter has made many more of Scotus' works available, always preferring the format of publishing the English and Latin together: principally, John Duns Scotus: God and Creatures, the Quodlibetal Questions (with Felix Alluntis); John Duns Scotus. A Treatise on God as First Principle. A Latin Text with English Translation of the De Primo Principio; and Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality. By now, Wolter has given us enough for a reasonably comprehensive and balanced course on Scotus.

Duns Scotus is not called "the Subtle Doctor" for nothing, however. Diving into his highly technical philosophical corpus without benefit of an interpretive guide is heroic at best. Yet, when Wolter began, reliable guides were unavailable. While not without value, the secondary literature was on the whole confused and confusing, and/or marred by polemical distortion. Together with Wolter's pioneering first book on Scotus, his published dissertation The Transcendentals and Their Function in the Metaphysics of Duns Scotus (finished in one semester of intensive interaction with Philotheus Boehner), Wolter's interpretive essays over the last forty years supply us with our needed map. Collected here from many (often inaccessible) journals and books, they are a paradigm of method and a treasure of illuminating insights. Wolter's consistent response to interpretive puzzlement has been to return to the primary sources and to offer readings as detailed and philosophically subtle as the texts themselves. Thus, in the early days, when Scotus' ideas were "known" and criticized mostly from hearsay, Wolter refuted misguided attacks with careful analyses of the texts (see chapters 10 and 11 below). Throughout, Wolter's own philosophical penetration of the material has enabled him to make clear what seems in Scotus complex and confusing (e.g., regarding the formal distinction, chapter 1, and Scotus' theory of universals, chapter 2). Again, Wolter's identification of Scotus' doctrine of the will as the key to his ethics resolves old and false puzzles (see chapters 7-9). At the same time, Wolter's sensitivity to philological issues and to the historical development of Scotus' thought has enabled him to illuminate Scotus' notion of intuitive cognition (see chapter 5) as well as his account of Divine foreknowledge (see chapter 13). All of the essays reflect Wolter's philosophical and historical curiosity and a reasoned and reasonable open-mindedness. Paying Scotus the respect due a great philosopher, Wolter was glad to return to old topics because he always learned something new (e.g., his treatment of formal distinction in chapter 1 makes new points not found in his dissertation). Wolter's interests in analytic philosophy surface as he relates Scotus' semantics and metaphysics to twentieth-century analytic thought (see chapters 3 and 12)." (from the Forewored)

118. ———. 1993. "Reflections on the Life and Works of Scotus." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 67:1-36.

119. ———. 1993. "Scotus on the Divine Origin of Possibility." American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly no. 67:95-107.

120. ———. 2003. Scotus and Ockham. Selected Essays. St. Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute.

121. Wood, Rega. 1987. "Scotus's Argument for the Existence of God." Franciscan Studies no. 47:257-277.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

The Nominalist Ontology of William of Ockham

Introduction

"Like most philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition, Ockham distinguishes between propositions and the terms out of which they are composed. Central to Ockham's analysis of the concept of a term is his distinction between categorematic and syncategorematic terms. We can get at this dichotomy if we distinguish between expressions that do and expressions that do not yield a meaningful proposition when substituted for x in 'This x -es' or 'This is (a/an) x'. The former (including predicate-expressions, proper names, demonstratives, and pronouns) Ockham calls categorematic terms; the latter (including articles, particles, interjections, quantifiers, and truth-functional connectives) he calls syncategorematic terms.

It is among categorematic terms that Ockham locates the distinction between singular and general, or employing Ockham's own terminology, the distinction between discrete and common terms. Very roughly, this is the distinction between categorematic terms that can and categorematic terms that cannot function as predicate in subject-predicate propositions, or that at least is the way a contemporary Ockhamist would express the dichotomy. Ockham himself construes the subject-predicate nexus more broadly to include identity-statements, existential propositions, and propositions incorporating either the universal or particular quantifier. Against this broad interpretation of subject-predicate discourse, Ockham tells us that while the discrete term is predicable of just one thing, the common term is predicable of many.

I have indicated that this distinction has traditionally been associated with the distinction between universals and particulars. For the medieval, the view that these two distinctions are related was legitimized by Aristotle's claim that the universal is that which is predicable of many. In a number of medieval philosophers this relation was explicated in terms of the notion of signification. The claim was that while discrete or singular terms signify particulars, common or general terms signify universals.

In medieval semantics, 'signify' was used as a transitive verb linking categorematic terms with their non-linguistic counterparts. Underlying this usage was the notion that categorematic terms are signs of objects, and the concept of a sign at work here was interpreted in psychological terms. A categorematic term is the sign of an object in the sense that the utterance of the expression has the effect of "bringing that object before the mind" of anyone familiar with the conventions governing the language in which the expression is embedded. The fact that signification involves a word-thing relationship suggests that the medieval notion of signification corresponds to the contemporary notion of reference; but in fact, the two concepts are quite different. The contemporary view tends to be that terms refer (or are used to refer) to objects only within the context of a proposition. The medievals, however, held that the signification of a term is a property which it exhibits quite independently of its role in any particular proposition; and they claimed that, at least in the case of univocal terms, the significatum of a categorematic expression is invariant over the various referential uses to which the term is put. Although it is explicitly relational, the medieval notion of signification is probably closer to the contemporary notion of meaning. In contemporary terms, the medievals were claiming that to know the meaning of a categorematic term is to know which object is its significatum." (pp. 1-2)

From: Michael J. Loux, "The Ontology of William of Ockham", in: William of Ockham's Theory of Terms. Part I of the Summa logicae. Notre Dame: University of Indiana Press 1974. (Reprint: South Bend, St. Augustine's Press 1998).

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on the Ontology of William of Ockham

Bibliography

1. Adams, Marilyn McCord. 1963. "Things Versus "Hows", or Ockham on Predication and Ontology." In Essays in Ontology, edited by Allaire, Edwin B., 175-188. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Ockham's account of the truth conditions for categorical propositions of the forms ' N is B' and ' A is B' is dictated by his two-fold ontological program: to eliminate universals other than names or concepts and to restrict particular things ( res) to the categories of substance and quality.(1) For endorsing

(T1) ' N is B' is true if and only if B-ness inheres in N

and

(T2) ' A is B' is true if and only if something that is A has B-ness, or B-ness inheres in something that is A

for all substitutions of proper names for ' N', concrete general terms for ' B', and abstract general terms for ' B-ness' would be tantamount to adopting the ontology of the moderns with a distinct kind of thing for each of the ten Aristotelian categories. According to Ockham's description in the Summa Logicae, the moderns saw substances such as Socrates as having a certain layer-like structure: at the core is a particular substance composed of prime matter with several substantial forms; it is made one by the inherence of discrete quantity and extended by the inherence of dimensive quantity; other absolute quality-accidents such as color, flavor, odor, shape, etc. inhere in dimensive quantity immediately and substance mediately. Accidents in the remaining seven categories are relative things ( respectus) that have their foundations either in the substance, quantity, or qualities and their term in something else. For example, when Socrates and Plato are similar, a relative similarity thing inheres in Socrates' whiteness and is Socrates' similarity to Plato, while another relative similarity-thing inheres in Plato's whiteness and is Plato's similarity to Socrates. For reasons that lie beyond the scope of this paper,(2) Ockham thought this ontology was as prolific of contradiction and absurdity as it was of entities. His own contention is that the truth of a proposition depends not merely on which things exist, but on how they exist.

In what follows, I shall explain how Ockham sacrifices the simplicity of across-the-board adherence to (T1) and (T2), applying them only to a certain range of case in the category of quality. Then I shall examine a series of objections that his own ontology offers no advantage commensurate with this loss. (p. 175).

(...)

"SUMMARY. Ockham's theory of truth-conditions is calculated to accomodate his ontology. He adopts a two-name theory of predication for categories involving absolute terms only, and admits the inherence-analysis for only a restricted range of concrete quality terms. Although he argues extensively that its wider application to the last eight Aristotelian categories of accident leads to contradiction and absurdity, his own positive proposal -- to treat all terms in those categories as connotatives that signify particular substances and/or particular qualities existing one way or another -- remains essentially programmatic. A full development of it would involve supplementing (T3)-(T7) by stating truth-conditions for statements about how things are related, quantified, active, etc., using absolute terms that name only substances and qualities. Ockham never delivers on the promissory notes he issues. Nevertheless, we must ask how many nominalists have gone further, and by how much, and how recently? In Ockham's view, the realists' program is demonstrably impossible; how much less an evil, if his own is merely incomplete." (p. 188.).

(1) Although Ockham thinks that unaided natural reason will restrict its ontology to substances and qualities, he himself feels forced by the doctrines of revealed Christian theology -- viz., the Trinity, the Incarnation, and transubstantiation -- to admit really distinct relations of Paternity, Filiation, and Spiration in the Godhead, a relation of assumption in the human nature of Christ, real relations of inherence between matter and form, substance and accident, and relation of union between parts of the continuum ( Ordinatio I, d. 30, q. 4; OT IV, 360-374).

(2) See my forthcoming book, Ockham, Part One, Chapters 5-9. [Adams 1987].

2. ———. 1973. "Did Ockham Know of Material and Strict Implication? A Reconsideration." Franciscan Studies no. 32:5-37.

3. ———. 1976. "Ockham on Identity and Distinction." Franciscan Studies no. 36:5-74.

4. ———. 1977. "Ockham's Nominalism and Unreal Entities." Philosophical Review no. 76:144-176.

5. ———. 1978. "Ockham's Theory of Natural Signification." Monist no. 61:444-459.

6. ———. 1987. William Ockham. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Two volumes.

7. ———. 1989. "Ockham on Truth." Medioevo no. 15:143-172.

8. ———. 1990. "Ockham's Individualisms." In Die Gegenwart Ockhams, edited by Vossenkühl, Wilhelm and Schönberger, Rolf, 3-24. Weinheim: VCH-Verlagsgesellschaft.

9. ———. 1998. "Ockham on Final Causality: Muddying the Waters." Franciscan Studies no. 56:1-46.

10. Alanen, Lilli. 1985. "Descartes, Duns Scotus and Ockham on Omnipotence and Possibility." Franciscan Studies no. 45:157-188.

11. Alféri, Pierre. 1989. Guillaume D'ockham, Le Singulier. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit.

12. Andrés, Teodoro de. 1969. El Nominalismo De Guillermo De Ockham Como Filosofia Del Lenguaje. Madrid: Editorial Gredos S. A.

13. Andrews, Robert. 1997. "The 'Defensorium Ockham'." Franciscan Studies no. 54:99-122.

14. Ariew, Roger. 1977. "Did Ockham Use His Razor?" Franciscan Studies no. 37:5-17.

15. Bastit, Michel. 1997. Les Principes Des Choses En Ontologie Médiévale: Thomas D'aquin, Scot, Occam. Bordeaux: Bière.

16. Baudry, Léon. 1949. Guillaume D'occam; Sa Vie, Ses œuvres, Ses Idées Sociales Et Politiques. Paris: Vrin.

Vol. I: L'homme et les œuvres (only published).

17. ———. 1957. Lexique Philosophique De Guillaume D'ockham. Étude Des Notions Fondamentales. Paris: P. Lethellieux.

18. Beckmann, Jan P., ed. 1992. Ockham - Bibliographie 1900-1990. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.

Inhalt: Danksagungen 6; Einleitung des Herausgegebers 7; Tei I. Primärbibliographie; 1. Editionen 13; 2. Übersetzungen 21; Teil II. Sekundärbibliographie; Alphabetisches Verzichnis der Schriften über Ockham 1900 - 1990 31; Teil II: Indices; Personenregister (Index auctorum) 135; Werkregister (Index operum) 141; Systematisches Register (Index systematicus) 143; Sachregister (index rerum) 155; Anhang: Schema "Ockham-Literatur 1900-1990" 168.

19. ———. 1996. Wilhelm Ockham. München: C. H. Beck.

20. ———. 1998. "Ockham, Ockhamismus, Und Nominalismus: Spuren Der Wirkungsgeschichte Des Venerabilis Inceptors." Franciscan Studies no. 56:77-95.

21. Beierle, John. 1984. "A Truth-Functional Non-Modal Interpretation of Ockham's Theory of Consequences." Franciscan Studies no. 44:71-80.

22. Beretta, Beatrice. 1999. Ad Aliquid: La Relation Chez Guillaume D'occam. Fribourg: Éditions universitaires.

23. Berger, Harald. 1989. "Extensionale Versus Intentionale Semantik Am Beispiel Der Sprachphilosophie Ockhams Disziplin." Acta Analytica:171-186.

24. Biard, Joel. 1981. "La Redéfinition Ockhamiste De La Signification." In Sprache Und Erkenntnis Im Mittelalter. Akten Des Vi. Internationalen Kongresses Für Mittelaterliche Philosophie Der Société Internationale Pour L'etude De La Philosophie Médiévale, edited by Kluxen, Wolfgang, 451-458. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Vol. I

25. ———. 1984. "L'unité De Monde Selon Guillaume D'ockham (Ou La Logique De La Cosmologie Ockhamiste)." Vivarium no. 22:63-84.

26. ———. 1991. "Les Logiciens Médiévaux Face Aux Textes D'aristote. L'exemple De Guillaume D'ockham." In Penser Avec Aristote, edited by Sinaceur, Mohammed Allal, 307-324. Toilouse: Erès.

27. ———. 1997. Guillaume D'ockham. Logique Et Philosophie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

28. ———. 1997. "Intention Et Signification Chez Guillaume D'ockham. La Critique De L'être Intentionnel." In Langages Et Philosophie. Hommage À Jean Jolivet, edited by Libera, Alain de, Elamrani-Jamal, Abdelali and Galonnier, Alain, 201-220. Paris: Vrin.

29. Boehner, Philotheus. 1946. "The Realistic Conceptualism of William Ockham." Traditio no. 4:307-335.

Reprinted in: Boehner, Collected articles on Ockham pp. 156-174

30. ———. 1958. Collected Articles on Ockham. Louvain: E. Nauwelaerts.

31. Boh, Ivan. 1968. "Burleigh and Ockham. An Ontological Confrontation." In Proceedings of the 7th Inter-American Congress of Philosophy. Vol. Ii, 255-262. Québec.

32. ———. 1984. "Propositional Attitudes in the Logic of Walter Burley and William Ockham." Franciscan Studies no. 44:31-60.

33. ———. 1990. "Epistemic Logic and Ockham's Theory of Demonstration." In Die Gegenwart Ockhams, edited by Vossenkühl, Wilhelm and Schönberger, Rolf, 241-255. Weinheim: VCH-Verlagsgesellschaft.

"When the treatises on knowing and doubting first appeared as separate specialized pieces of logical literature in the first half of the 14th century, (1) Ockham was already deeply involved in political controversies.(2) His work on logic and theoretical philosophy was certainly behind him by 1330 and his personal Odyssey began, ending in Munich in 1347. Although he left us with many detailed discussions of the most important logical theories of the day, his treatment of epistemic-logical materials indicate that he was himself struggling to understand what little he found on the subject in his predecessors, to fit it properly into his own Summa logicae and to show its use in the formulation of the theory of scientific demonstration.(3) The main aim of this paper is to identify the epistemic principles involved in a demonstrative syllogism and to recognize the pragmatic dimension of language in which such a syllogism is expressed. To achieve our goal, we must begin with observations about the state of epistemic logic in Ockham's time and about some of the problems which comprised such logic." p. 241

"Summary and Conclusion.

Ockham's contributions to epistemic logic are diversified, ranging from his recognition of several special modes (scire, credere, opinari, dubitare, etc.), through his extensive concern with epistemic syllogistic moods in all three figures, and through his perceptive judgment regarding composite and divided sense of epistemic proposition, and culminating perhaps in his epistemization of the theory of demonstration. Although there is a sparsity of the most general rules of consequence (i.e. the propositional rules) in Ockham, there are at least some. Moreover, Ockham says enough in various places on the basis of which we can reconstruct his most important presuppositions and his implied awareness of general principles of epistemic logic, especially those which are relevant for the theory of demonstration. One such principle is that if the antecedent is known by a, the consequent is known by a, but only on the condition that a knows that the consequence is sound. Whereas other writers on Post. Anal. and on scientific demonstration concentrated on the objective side of the matter, treating demonstration as if it were a matter of logical and extra-logical connections independently of the investigator, questioner, or doubter, Ockham showed a great deal of attention to the role of the knower and he recognized most vividly that the reference to the epistemic subject in the statement of epistemic/doxastic principles is essential and not accidental or superfluous." p. 255

(1) One of the earliest special treatises on the subject of knowing and doubting was written by Ockham's younger contemporary William Heytesbury whose De scire et dubitare appeared as one of the chapters of Regulae solvendi sophismata (ca. 1335). In this chapter Heytesbury refers back to the famous Grosseteste's characterization of the various senses of 'to know' (scire), but, unlike Ockham, he concerns himself with explicating primarily the nature of knowing in the sense of knowing "necessary" propositions of the sort which can become objects of scientific demonstration.

(2) The most comprehensive presentation of Ockham's ideas is undoubtedly that of Marilyn McCord Adams, William Ockham (2 vols.), Notre Dame University Press (Publications in Medieval Studies, 26), 1987, xvii + 1402 pp. The unique contribution to Ockham studies, however, goes to the editors of Collected Works of William of Ockham at the Franciscan Institute at St. Bonaventure University who finally made possible studies grounded in definitive, critically-edited texts. One should also keep in mind the studies of two other scholars, Philoteus Boehner and Ernst A. Moody, who made the thought of the great medieval thinker palatable to modern tastes. Cf. P. Boehner, Collected Articles on Ockham. Ed. Eligius M. Buytaert. Franciscan Institute. St. Bona-venture, N.Y. 1958; and E. A. Moody, The Logic of William Ockham. Russell & Russell, New York 1965.

(3) For an attempt to identify the most general aspects of Ockham's epistemic logic and to relate them to similar concerns in the works of Burley see I. Boh, "Propositional Attitudes in the Logic of Walter Burley and William Ockham", Franciscan Studies 44 (1984), 31-59

34. Boler, John. 1986. "Ockham' Cleaver." Franciscan Studies no. 45:119-144.

35. ———. 1997. "Accidents in Ockham's Ontological Projects." Franciscan Studies no. 54:79-97.

36. ———. 1998. "Ockham on Difference in Category." Franciscan Studies no. 56:97-111.

37. Bos, Egbert Peter. 1987. "William of Ockham and the "Predication of a Thing"." In Ockham and Ockhamists. Acts of the Symposium Organized by the Dutch Society for Medieval Philosophy Medium Aevum on the Occasion of Its 10th Anniversary (Leiden, 10-12 September 1986), edited by Bos, Egbert Peter and Krop, Henri A., 71-79. Nijmegen: Ingenium Publishers.

38. Bos, Egbert Peter, and Krop, Henri A., eds. 1987. Ockham and Ockhamists. Nijmegen: Ingenium Publishers.

Acts of the Symposium organized bt the Dutch Society for Medieval Philosophy Medium Aevum on the occasion of its 10th anniversary (Leiden, 10-12 September 1986).

39. Bosley, Richard. 1985. "What Revision of Realism Could Meet Ockham's Critique." Franciscan Studies no. 45:111-118.

40. Brown, Stephen. 1966. "Sources for Ockham's Prologue to the Sentences." Franciscan Studies no. 26:36-65.

41. ———. 1972. "Walter Burleigh's Treatise De Suppositionibus and Its Influence of William of Ockham." Franciscan Studies no. 32:15-64.

42. Corcoran, John, and Swiniarski, John. 1978. "Logical Structures of Ockham's Theory of Supposition." Franciscan Studies no. 38:161-183.

43. Courtenay, William J. 1991. "In Search of Nominalism: Two Centuries of Historical Debate." In Gli Studi Di Filosofia Medievale Fra Otto E Novecento. Contributo a Un Bilancio Storiografico, edited by Imbach, Ruedi and Maierù, Alfonso, 233-251. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.

Reprinted as Chapter one in: W. J. Courtenay, Ockham and Ockhamism. Studies in the Dissemination and Impact of His Thought, Leiden, Brill, 2008, pp. 1-19.

44. ———. 2008. Ockham and Ockhamism. Studies in the Dissemination and Impact of His Thought. Leiden: Brill.

45. Davies, Julian. 1998. A Compendium of Ockham's Teachings. A Translation of the Tractatus De Principiis Theologiae. St. Bonaventure: The Franciscan Institute.

46. Day, Sebastian. 1947. Intuitive Cognition. A Key to the Significance of the Later Scholastics. St. Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute.

47. Dieterle, Jill. 2007. "Ockham's Razor, Encounterability, and Ontological Naturalism." Erkenntnis no. 55:51-72.

48. Eco, Umberto. 1984. "Signification and Denotation from Boethius to Ockham." Franciscan Studies no. 44:1-30.

49. Fitzgerald, Michael Joseph. 1978. "Ockham's Implicit Priority of Analysis Rule?" Franciscan Studies no. 38:213-219.

50. Flórez, Alfonso. 2002. La Filosofía Del Lenguaje De Ockham. Exposición Crítica E Interpretación Cognitiva. Granada: Editorial Comares.

51. Freddoso, Alfred J. 1980. "Ockham's Theory of Truth Conditions." In William of Ockham's Theory of Propositions. Part Ii of the Summa Logicae. Notre Dame: University of Indiana Press.

Introduction to the translation.

Reprint: South Bend, St. Augustine's Press, 1998.

52. ———. 1991. "Ontological Reductionism and Faith Versus Reason: A Critique of Adams on Ockham." Faith and Philosophy no. 8:317-339.

53. Gál, Gedeon, and Wood, Rega. 1991. "The Ockham Edition: William of Ockham's 'Opera Philosophica Et Theologica'." Franciscan Studies no. 51:83-101.

54. Ghisalberti, Alessandro. 1972. Guglielmo Di Ockham. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

55. Gibson, Arthur. 1998. "Ockham's World and Future." In Routledge History of Philosophy. Volume Iii: Medieval Philosophy, edited by Marenbon, John, 329-367. New York: Routledge.

56. Goddu, André. 1984. The Physics of William of Ockham. Leiden: Brill.

57. ———. 1990. "William of Ockham's "Empiricism" and Constructive Empiricism." In Die Gegenwart Ockhams, edited by Vossenkühl, Wilhelm and Schönberger, Rolf, 208-231. Weinheim: VCH Acta Humaniora.

58. ———. 1993. "Connotative Concepts and Mathematics in Ockham's Natural Philosophy." Vivarium:106-139.

"Connotation plays a central role in Ockham's analysis of the language of natural philosophy and mathematics. Some simple connotative terms belong to the deep structure of mental language. Ockham's program cannot guarantee the objectivity of things being quantified or located in space and time without his connotation-theory. Ockham's theory provides a partial explanation of why fourteenth- century philosophers shifted attention from discussion about the objects of mathematics to discussion of mathematics as a language. The shift explains in part the adoption of mathematical and metalinguistic approaches to philosophical and theological problems."

59. Grellard, Christophe, and Ong-Van-Cung, Kim Sang. 2005. Le Vocabulaire D'ockham. Paris: Ellipses.

60. Guelluy, Robert. 1947. Philosophie Et Théologie Chez Guillaume D'ockham. Paris: Vrin.

61. Hamesse, Jacqueline. 1986. "Les Problèmes Posés Par L'édition Critique Des Reportations." Franciscan Studies no. 46:107-118.

62. Henninger, Mark. 1985. "Peter Aureoli and William of Ockham on Relations." Franciscan Studies no. 45:231-244.

63. Henry, Desmond Paul. 1965. "Ockham and the Formal Distinction." Franciscan Studies no. 25:285-292.

64. Hoffmann, Fritz. 1998. Ockham-Rezeption Und Ockham-Kritik Im Jahrzehnt Nach Wilhelm Von Ockham in Oxford 1322-1332. Münster: Aschendorff.

65. Hülsen, Reinhard. 1998. "Burleigh and Ockham on Anaphoric Pronouns." Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie no. 80:30-51.

"Many medieval grammar and logic texts contain treatments of relativa grammaticalia, expressions some of which we now call anaphoric pronouns. The first philosopher who paid attention to these treatments seems to have been Peter Geach. Apparently, Geach found their treatments both stimulating and frustrating.' In his main work on semantics, Reference and Generality (1), he presents some theses of Walter Burleigh's on this topic, a fourteenth century logician and opponent of William Ockham, at considerable length. Elsewhere, however, he remarks that while 'the logic of pronouns with antecedents was extensively studied by medieval logicians in their chapters de suppositione relativorum; [...t]his medieval treatment of pronouns was inconclusive" (2) and that '[...] the medievals who discussed relativa - pronouns with antecedents - were groping in the dark despite all their ingenuity'. (3) What Geach deplored was the apparent tendency of 'the medievals' to treat anaphoric pronouns, relativa grammaticalia substantiae identitatis in terms of co-reference, of ' supponere pro eodem'. As is well known, Geach himself favors a rather different approach, according to which it is nonsense to talk about the reference of such pronouns at all, for they act like bound variables. His view on pronouns has now a considerable number of adherents and a few critics - most notably Gareth Evans. (4)

I am not concerned here with the question whether Geach's own theory of pronouns is correct, but whether his verdict about medieval theories of relativa is justified. His verdict is of unrestricted generality: it is not some medieval treatment of pronouns that is inconclusive, but "the" medieval treatment. This makes his claims an easy target for counterattack: Just find some medieval logician, whose theory does not fit Geach's claims. I have done this elsewhere. (4) Here I want to consider two logicians Geach has actually dealt with himself: Burleigh and Ockham.

(1) Geach (1962), Reference and Generality: An Examination of Some Medieval and Modern Theories, Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press (3rd edition) 1980.

(2) Geach (1960-61), "Ryle on Namely-Riders"; Analysis 21/3, repr. in Geach, Logic Matters, Oxford 1972, pp. 88-92, p. 92. All page-references will be to this edition.

(3) Geach (1968-69), "Quine's Syntactical Insights", Synthese 19, repr. in Geach, Logic Matters, pp. 115-127, p. 118. All page-references will be to this edition.

(4) Evans (1977), "Pronouns, Quantifiers, and Relative Clauses (I), Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7, pp. 467-536.

(5) On a few such logicians see my Die Semantik anaphorischer Pronomina, Leiden 1994.

66. Jordan, Michael. 1985. "What's New in Ockham's Formal Distinction?" Franciscan Studies no. 45:97-110.

67. Karger, Elizabeth. 1976. A Study of William of Ockham's Modal Logic.

Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis, University of California, Berkeley.

68. ———. 1980. "Would Ockham Have Shaved Wyman's Beard?" Franciscan Studies no. 40:244-264.

Reprinted in: H. A. G. Braakhuis, C. H. Kneepkens, L. M. de Rijk (eds.) - English logic and semantics. From the end of the Twelfth century to the time of Ockham and Burleigh - Nijmegen, Ingenium Publishers, 1981, pp. 389-407.

69. ———. 1991. "Référence Et Non-Existence Dans La Sémantique De Guillaume D'occam." In Lectionum Varietates. Hommage À Paul Vignaux, edited by Jolivet, Jean, Kaluza, Zénon and Libera, Alain de, 163-176. Paris: Vrin.

70. ———. 1993. "Propositions Et Syllogismes "À L'oblique" Dans La Logique D'ockham." Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Age no. 60:147-164.

71. ———. 1994. "Théories De La Pensée, De Ses Objets Et De Son Discours Chez Guillaume D'occam." Dialogue.Canadian Philosophical Review no. 33:437-456.

72. ———. 1995. "William of Ockham, Walter Chatton and Adam Wodeham on the Objects of Knowledge and Belief." Vivarium no. 33:171-196.

73. ———. 1999. "Ockham's Misunderstood Theory of Intuitive and Abstractive Cognition." In The Cambridge Companion to Ockham, edited by Spade, Paul Vincent, 204-226. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

74. Kaufmann, Matthias. 1994. Begriffe, Sätze, Dinge. Referenz Und Wahrheit Bei Wilhelm Von Ockham. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

"This volume gives an introduction to William Ockham's theory of signs, his ontology, his epistemology, and the interrelations between these fields. Some recent results of analytic philosophy turn out to be useful instruments for the interpretation of Ockham's thought.

Part one contains a presentation of the basic concepts of Ockham's semantics. It is followed by an investigation of his ontology, including a comparison with modern ontology. Part three deals with the common and different elements in the conceptions of supposition and of quantification. Part four shows some similarities of Ockham's views on the truth of sentences with those of Davidson. The final part presents Ockham's epistemology within the discussion of his contemporaries and confronts it with actual issues raised by Quine and Putnam."

75. ———. 2003. "The Discussion on the Nature of the Concept in Ockham's Perihermeneias Commentary." In Aristotle's Peri Hermeneias in the Latin Middle Ages Essays on the Commentary Tradition, edited by Braakhuis, Henk A.G. and Kneepkens, Corneille Henri, 119-133. Groningen: Ingenium Publishers.

76. Kaye, Sharon M. 1999. "Russell, Strawson and William of Ockham." In The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy. Volume 2 Metaphysics., edited by Rockmore, Tom, 207-216. Bowling Green: Philosophy Documentation Center.

77. Kaye, Sharon M., and Martin, Robert M. 2001. On Ockham. Belmont: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.

78. Kelley, Francis. 1978. "Some Observations on the 'Fictum' Theory in Ockham and Its Relation to Hervaeus Natalis." Franciscan Studies no. 38:260-282.

79. King, Peter. 2005. "Le Rôle Des Concepts Selon Ockham." Philosophiques no. 35:435-447.

80. Klima, Gyula. 1999. "Ockham's Semantics and Ontology of the Categories." In The Cambridge Companion to Ockham, edited by Spade, Paul Vincent, 118-142. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

81. ———. 2008. "The Nominalist Semantic of Ockham and Buridan: A 'Rational Reconstruction'." In Mediaeval and Renaissance Logic, edited by Gabbay, Dov and Woods, John, 389-431. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Handbook of the history of logic: Vol. 2.

"This paper is going to outline the innovative semantic theories of the two great 14th-century nominalist thinkers whose work eventually gave rise to the quasi institutional separation of the nominalist via moderna, the "modern way", from the realist via antiqua, the "old way" of doing logic, science, philosophy, and theology in the late Middle Ages. The person who initiated these changes was the English Franciscan theologian, William Ockham. However, the person who was primarily responsible for establishing Ockham's nominalism as a genuinely viable theoretical alternative was the French secular Master of Arts, John Buridan." p. 389 (note omitted)

"Buridan's semantics starts out in the same way as Ockham's. Acknowledging the subordination of written to spoken, and spoken to mental terms (i.e., concepts), establishes for him a "semantic triangle", in which concepts are natural signs of whatever we conceive by means of them, whereas the utterances and inscriptions subordinated to them are the conventional signs of the same, in virtue of their conventional subordination to concepts. Not all concepts have, however, the function of conceiving something; some concepts merely serve to determine how we

conceive of things conceived by other concepts. This is the basis of Buridan's primary distinction between categorematic and syncategorematic concepts, and the corresponding spoken and written terms." p. 414

82. König-Pralong, Catherine. 2005. Avènement De L'aristotélisme En Terre Chrétienne. L'essence Et La Matière: Entre Thomas D'aquin Et Guillaume D'ockham. Paris: Vrin.

83. Krop, Henri A. 1987. "The Self-Knowledge of God. Duns Scotus and Ockham on the Formal Object of Scientific Knowledge." In Ockham and Ockhamists, edited by Bos, Egbert Peter and Krop, Henri A., 83-92. Nijmegen: Ingenium Publishers.

84. Lagerlund, Henrik. 2006. "What Is Singular Thought? Ockham and Buridan on Singular Terms in the Language of Thought." In Mind and Modality. Studies in the History of Philosophy in Honour of Simo Knuuttila, edited by Hirvonen, Vesa, Holopainen, Toivo J. and Tuominen, Miira, 217-237. Leiden: Brill.

85. Lahey, Stephen. 1997. "William Ockham and Trope Nominalism." Franciscan Studies no. 54:105-120.

86. Lambertini, Roberto, Marmo, Costantino, and Tabarroni, Andrea. 1997. " Virtus Verborum: Linguaggio Ed Interpretazione Nel Dialogus Di Guglielmo Di Ockham." In Langages Et Philosophie. Hommage À Jean Jolivet, edited by Libera, Alain de, Elamrani-Jamal, Abdelali and Galonnier, Alain, 221-236. Paris: Vrin.

87. Langston, Douglas. 1979. "Scotus and Ockham on the Univocal Concept of Being." Franciscan Studies no. 39:105-129.

88. Leff, Gordon. 1975. William of Ockham. The Metamorphosis of Scholastic Discourse. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

89. Leffler, Oliver. 1995. Wilhelm Von Ockham: Die Sprachphilosophischen Grundlagen Seines Denkens. Werl/Westfalen: Dietrich Coelde Verlag.

90. Leite, Pedro Gilberto Junior. 2007. "Univocity of Being in William of Ockham's Thought: A First Approach." In New Essays on Metaphysics as Scientia Transcendens, edited by, Pich, Roberto Hofmeister, 303-320. Louvain-la-Neuve: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales.

91. Lenzen, Wolfgang. 1993. "Ockhams Modale Aussagenlogik." Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie no. 75:125-159.

92. Longeway, John. 2007. Demonstration and Scientific Knowledge in William of Ockham. A Translation of Summa Logicae Iii-Ii : De Syllogismo Demonstrativo, and Selections from the Prologue to the Ordinatio. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

93. Loux, Michael J. 1974. "The Ontology of William of Ockham." In William of Ockham's Theory of Terms. Part I of the Summa Logicae, 1-21. Notre Dame: University of Indiana Press.

First introductory essay to the translation.

Reprint: South Bend, St. Augustine's Press, 1998.

"The distinctions between singular and general terms, on the one hand, and abstract and concrete terms, on the other, play crucial roles in discussions of ontological issues. Although these dichotomies can be expressed in purely grammatical terms, they have traditionally been thought to point to two over-arching distinctions among things. Philosophers have frequently claimed that the singular-general term distinction is rooted in a distinction between objects that are particulars and objects that are universals; whereas, the distinction between concrete and abstract terms forces us to confront the distinction between substances (minimally interpreted to include material bodies and persons) and the various characteristics they possess or exhibit.

But because they appear to carry these far-reaching metaphysical implications, these grammatical dichotomies receive detailed treatment at the hands of the nominalist. If his theory is to be at all plausible, the nominalist must have the resources for providing a metaphysically neutral account of the singular-general and concrete-abstract dichotomies. In this essay I want to examine William of Ockham's ontology by focusing on his treatment of these distinctions. My aim here is twofold. By examining Ockham's analysis I hope to provide an introduction to the central themes of Part I of the Summa Logicae and to clarify the concept of a nominalistic ontology in general." p. 1

94. ———. 1974. "Ockham on Generality." In William of Ockham's Theory of Terms. Part I of the Summa Logicae, 23-46. Notre Dame: University of Indiana Press.

Second introductory essay to the translation.

Reprint: South Bend, St. Augustine's Press, 1998.

95. Marmo, Costantino. 1984. "Guglielmo Di Ockham E Il Significato Delle Proposizioni." VS Versus.Quaderni di Studi Semiotici no. 38/39:115-148.

96. Martin, Gottfried. 1949. Wilhelm Von Ockham. Untersuchungen Zur Ontologie Der Ordnungen. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

97. Massobrio, Simona. 1984. "The Individuation of Matter in Ockham's Philosophy." Franciscan Studies no. 44:197-210.

98. Matteo, Anthony M. 1985. "Scotus and Ockham: A Dialgue on Universals." Franciscan Studies no. 45:83-96.

99. Maurer, Armand. 1978. "Method in Ockham's Nominalism." Monist no. 61:426-443.

100. ———. 1984. "Ockham's Razor and Chatton's Anti-Razor." Mediaeval Studies no. 46:463-475.

101. ———. 1999. The Philosophy of William of Ockham in the Light of Its Principles. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

102. McGrade, Arthur Stephen. 1985. "Plenty of Nothing: Ockham's Commitment to Real Possibles." Franciscan Studies no. 45:145-156.

103. Michon, Cyrille. 1994. Nominalisme. La Théorie De La Signification D'occam. Paris: Vrin.

104. ———. 1996. "Asimétries: Thomas D'aquin Et Guillume D'occam Précurseurs De Frege." Études Philosophiques:307-321.

105. Miralbell, Ignacio. 1998. Guillermo De Ockham Y Su Crítica Lógico-Pragmática Al Pensamiento Realista, Serie Universitaria Del La Universidad De Navarra. Pamplona: Cuadernos de Anuario Filosófico.

106. Moody, Ernest. 1935. The Logic of William of Ockham. New York: Sheed & Ward.

Reprinted New York, Russell & Russell, 1965.

107. Müller, Paola. 1985. " Terminus E Nomen Nella Logica Di Ockham." Rivista di Filosofia neo-scolastica no. 77:599-611.

"The author analyses philologically and philosophically the two different expressions 'nomen' and 'terminus' used by Ockham in the chapters given up to the supposition theory in his "Summa logicae". By that we can say that Ockham's logic of terms is interested primarily in the words, and in the concepts just with reference with these last ones, without qualifying Ockham's logic as 'nominalist': in fact 'nomen' receives his own capacity of meaning by the concept as natural linguistic sign."

108. ———. 1986. "La Discesa Al Particolare Nella Logica Di Ockham." Rivista di Filosofia neo-scolastica no. 78 (3):353-377.

109. ———. 1989. "Nominare L'essenza Divina. La Distinzione Xxii Dell' ordinatio Di Ockham." Rivista di Filosofia neo-scolastica no. 81:224-254.

110. ———. 1991. "Esistenza E Verità in Guglielmo Di Ockham." Medioevo no. 17:249-280.

111. ———. 1994. "Le Obligationes Nella Summa Logicae Di Guglielmo Di Ockham." In Filosofia E Teologia Nel Trecento. Studi in Ricordo Di Eugenio Randi, edited by Bianchi, Luca, 85-104. Louvain-la -Neuve: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études Médiévales.

112. ———. 2012. La Logica Di Ockham. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

113. Muralt, André de. 1976. "La Connaissance Intuitive Du Néant Et L'évidence Du 'Je Pense'. Le Rôle De L'argument De Potentia Absoluta Dei Dans La Théorie Occamienne De La Connaissance." Studia Philosophica no. 36:107-158.

Introduction, traduction et commentaire du Prologue des Sentences de Guillaume d'Occam quaestio 1, 1.

114. ———. 1999. "La Critique De La Notion Scotiste D' esse Objectivum, Le "Psychologisme" Et Le "Nominalisme" Occamiens." Cahiers de la Revue de Théolgie et de Philosophie no. 20:113-148.

Métaphysiques Médiévales. Études en l'Honneur d'André de Muralt - Éditées par Curzio Chiesa et Léo Freuler.

115. Norena, Carlos P. 1981. "Ockham and Suarez on the Ontological Status of Universal Concepts." New Scholasticism no. 55:348-362.

116. Normore, Calvin Gerard. 1976. The Logic of Time and Modality in the Later Middle Ages: The Contribution of William of Ockham, Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Toronto.

117. ———. 1999. "Some Aspects of Ockham's Logic." In The Cambridge Companion to Ockham, edited by Spade, Paul Vincent, 31-52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

118. Novaes, Catarina Dutilh. 2000. A Study of William of Ockham's Logic - from Suppositio to Truth Conditions, University of Amsterdam.

119. Nuchelmans, Gabriel. 1987. "Ockham on Performed and Signified Predication." In Ockham and Ockhamists, edited by Bos, Egbert Peter and Krop, Henri A., 55-62. Nijmegen: Ingenium Publishers.

Reprinted in: G. Nuchelmans - Studies on the history of logic and semantics, 12th-17th century - Edited by E. P. Bos - Aldershot, Ashgate, 1996.

120. Nute, Donald. 1974. "A Contradiction in Ockham's Theory of Language." Philosophical Studies no. 25:417-422.

"It is argued that Ockham's theory of language either fails to provide a principle of individuation to account for the diversity of mental entities he posits or is committed to certain spoken terms both having and not having some one entity as a significant. It is suggested that this problem can be solved by allowing that every categorematic term is subordinated to an infinite number of concepts and by modifying Ockham's supposition theory."

121. Panaccio, Claude. 1974. "Langage Ordinaire Et Langage Abstrait Chez Guillaume D'occam." Philosophiques no. 1:37-60.

122. ———. 1978. Signification Et Nomination. La Logique De Guillaume D'occam, Ph. D. Dissertation University of Montreal.

123. ———. 1981. "Guillaume D'occam Et Les Pronoms Demonstratifs." In Sprache Und Erkenntnis Im Mittelalter. Akten Des Vi. Internationalen Kongresses Für Mittelaterliche Philosophie Der Société Internationale Pour L'étude De La Philosophie Médiévale (First Volume), edited by Beckmann, Jan P., Honnefelder, Ludger, Jüssen, Gabriel, Münxelhaus, Barbara, Schrimpf, Gangolf, Wieland, Georg and Kluxen, Wolfgang, 465-470. Berlin, New York: Wlater de Gruyter.

124. ———. 1987. "Nominalisme Occamiste Et Nominalisme Contemporain." Dialogue.Canadian Philosophical Review no. 26:281-287.

125. ———. 1992. Les Mots, Les Concepts Et Les Choses. La Sémantique De Guillaume D'occam Et Le Nominalisme D'aujourd'hui. Paris: Vrin.

126. ———. 1993. "Guillaume D'ockham Et La Perplexité Des Platoniciens." In Contre Platon. Tome I: Le Platonisme Devoilé, edited by Dixsaut, Monique, 117-135. Paris: Vrin.

127. ———. 1995. "La Philosophie Du Langage De Guillaume D'occam." In Sprachtheorien in Spatantike Und Mittelalter, edited by Ebbesen, Sten, 184-206. Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.

128. ———. 1999. Le Discours Intérieur. De Platon À Guillaume D'ockham. Paris: Editions du Seuil.

About this volume see the special number of "Laval Théologique et Philosophique" vol. 57 n. 2 (June 2001)

129. ———. 2002. "Propositionalism and Atomism in Ockham's Semantics." Franciscan Studies no. 44:61-70.

130. ———. 2004. Ockham on Concepts. Aldershot: Ashgate.

131. ———. 2005. "Le Nominalisme D'ockham Et La Représentation Mentale. Précis De Ockham on Concepts." Philosophiques no. 35:423-426.

132. ———. 2005. "Réponses À Mes Critiques." Philosophiques no. 35:449-457.

Replies to the essay by E. J. Ashworth and P. King in the same journal.

133. ———. 2008. "L'ontologie D'ockham Et La Théorie Des Tropes." In Compléments De Substance. Études Sur Les Propriétés Accidentelles Offertes À Alain De Libera, edited by Erismann, Christophe and Schniewind, Alexandrine, 167-181. Paris: Vrin.

134. Panaccio, Claude, and Piché, David. 2010. "Ockham's Reliabilism and the Intuition of Non-Existents." In Rethinking the History of Skepticism. The Missing Medieval Background, edited by Lagerlund, Henrik, 97-118. Leiden: Brill.

135. Pelletier, Jenny E. 2012. William Ockham on Metaphysics. The Science of Being and God. Leiden: Brill.

136. Perini-Santos, Ernesto. 2002. "L'extension De La Liste Des Modalités Dans Les Commentaires Du Perihermeneias Et Des Sophistici Elenchi De Guillaume D'ockham." Vivarium no. 40:174-188.

137. ———. 2003. "A Explicaão Ockhamiana De Proposiões Passadas, Ou Instruões Ára Um Aprendiz." Analytica.Revista de Filosofia no. 7:49-64.

"Within the Ockhamist semantics, the predicate 'true' is explained by another more basic semantical relation, the relation of supposition.

The author shows how this relationship between two semantical predicates figures in the analysis of the truth-conditions of propositions about the past, and demonstrates that it is a model that can be extended to propositions about both the future and the possible. The author indicates how the semantics of alethic modalities is in continuity with the semantics of propositions about the past and about the future. If we consider another aspect of Ockham's modal theory, viz., the fact that modalities are defined as any term that can be predicated of a whole proposition, the importance of this point becomes clear. In conclusion, the author points out the different levels of analysis of alethic modalities within an Ockhamist framework."

138. ———. 2006. La Théorie Ockhamienne De La Connaissance Évidente. Paris: Vrin.

139. Perler, Dominik. 1991. "Kopulatheorie Und Seinsbegriff. Zum Verhältnis Von Logik Und Metaphysik Bei Wilhelm Von Ockham." In Historia Philosophiae Medii Aevi. Studien Zur Geschichte Der Philosophie Des Mittelalters, edited by Burkhard, Mojsisch and Pluta, Olaf, 805-829. Amsterdam: R. Grüner.

140. Putallaz, Franois-Xavier. 1983. "Autour De La Connaissance Intuitive Des Non-Existants Chez Ockham." Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie no. 30:447-467.

141. Rabade, Romeo Sergio. 1966. Guillermo De Ockham Y La Filosofía Del Siglo Xiv. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto "Luis Vives" de Filosofía.

142. Read, Stephen. 1977. "The Objective Being of Ockham's Ficta." Philosophical Quarterly no. 27:14-31.

143. ———. 2007. "William of Ockham's the Sum of Logic." Topoi no. 26:271-277.

"William of Ockham's Summa Logicae is a classic of analytical metaphysics, using a typical fourteenth century logic treatise to defend a reductionist ontology. For Ockham, everything is an individual, and this is to be shown by the correct logical analysis of language, reinterpreting Aristotle's Categories as a taxonomy of the many ways in which terms can be predicated. The ultimate

basis is the attribution of an individual quality to an individual substance. This theory of the signification of terms is then extended to an account of the truth-conditions of propositions and the truth-preservation of arguments, but always with the reduction to individuals as the key. This classic work in the logical analysis of language still contains lively insights for contemporary scholars."

144. Rijk, Lambertus Marie de. 1987. "War Ockham Ein Antimetaphysiker? Eine Semantische Betrachtung." In Philosophie Im Mittelalter. Entwicklungslinien Und Paradigmen. Wolfgang Kluxen Zum 65. Geburstag, edited by Beckmann, Jan P., Honnefelder, Ludger and Wieland, Georg, 313-328. Hamburg: F. Meiner.

Reprinted as chapter XIV in: Through language to reality: studies in medieval semantics and metaphysics.

"IV. Schlußbetrachtung. Ockham anerkennt ohne Einschränkung den transzendenten Bezirk, d. h. das Metaphysische oder Übersinnliche als Bezirk; in diesem Sinne ist er also gewiß kein Antimetaphysiker. Aber verwirft er denn die Metaphysik als Wissenschaft, oder höhlt er sie zumindest aus? Zuerst muß anerkannt werden, daß Ockham im Prinzip der Metaphysik das Weisungsrecht über die Seienden (d. h., für Ockham, die individuellen Seienden) keineswegs abspricht. Zugleich kann nicht geleugnet werden, daß bei ihm der Metaphysik eine auffallend bescheidene Stelle zukommt. Wie läßt sich das unter Berücksichtigung von Ockhams unzweifelbarer Ehrfurcht vor dem Übersinnlieben erklären?

Der Schlüssel zur Lösung dieser Frage liegt nicht bloß in Ockhams Ontologie des individuellen Seins, sondern auch in seinen anthropologischen Auffassungen. Der Mensch ist nach ihm in seinen Denken und Sprechen nicht imstande, das Erhabene wesentlich zu durchforschen. Dessen soll sich der Mensch fort während eingedenk sein. Dies ist für Ockham in zwei deutliche Strategien übersetzbar:

a) nicht jedem modus significandi oder loquendi entspricht ein modus essendi in der Wirklichkeit

b) viele maßgebende Aussagen, sowohl sakrale wie profane, soll man nicht de virtute sermonis (dazu reicht unser Sprechen zuwenig aus), ondern der Ab sicht des Redners oder Schriftstellers entsprechend deuten." pp. 326-327 (Notes omitted).

145. ———. 1987. "Logic and Ontology in Ockham. Some Notes on His View of the Categories of Being and the Nature of Its Basic Principles." In Ockham and Ockhamists. Acts of the Symposium Organized by the Dutch Society for Medieval Philosophy Medium Aevum on the Occasion of Its 10th Anniversary (Leiden, 10-12 September 1986), edited by Bos, Egbert Peter and Krop, Henri A., 25-40. Nijmegen: Ingenium Publishers.

Reprinted as chapter XIII in: L. M. De Rijk, Through language to reality: studies in medieval semantics and metaphysics, (edited by E. P. Bos), London, Variorum Reprintsa, 1989.

" Conclusion. There is no single reason, I think, to ascribe to Ockham any feelings of hostility towards metaphysics on this account. God created 'true and real being', but He created it in shaping 'what is truly and really being', individual beings, that is. As created, it is radically changeable and contingent as well. Uncreated, unchangeable being is not to be created, not even as some mysterious constituent present in creatural being. Human beings are not entitled to sublimate their (indispensable) conceptual tools (e.g. universal terms) so that they represent unchangeable ontic standards. Whenever we are inclined to do so, Ockham's razor comes in, not however, to make us say that the metaphysical domain is void. Rather logic (and human thought in general) should make us recognize our own limitations, and refrain from speaking about the unspeakable when, and inasmuch as, our linguistic tools are bound to lead us astray. The same applies to Ockham's view of proofs of God's existence. He only admits the proof of God as first preserver of these actual things in this actual world and rejects all atemporal proofs. However, his faith is unshakeable and not involved in any philosophical thinking either. Likewise it is Ockham's ontology (doctrine of being) which is modest, the onta 'beings') are as abundant as they are. For that matter, Ockham let them really be ( ontôs einai Plato would say). Well, in order to let them be, human thinking should be prudent in cautiously managing its homemade conceptual apparatus." pp. 38-39

146. ———. 1990. "Ockham's Theory of Demonstration: His Use of Aristotle' S Kath' Holou and Kath' Hauto Requirements." In Die Gegenwart Ockhams, edited by Vossenkühl, Wilhelm and Schönberger, Rolf, 232-240. Weinheim: VCH-Verlagsgesellschaft.

"Far from being a sceptic William of Ockham made every effort to corroborate the basis of philosophical and theological thought by purifying it of all sorts of untenable presuppositions. His main contribution to fourteenth century philosophical and theological development lies in systematically rethinking scholastic doctrines, and especially their assumptions, on the firm basis of his own favourite leading principles: the strictly individual nature of all that really is and the radical contingency of all creatural being.

These two principles also play a major part in Ockham's way of dealing with the Aristotelian theory of demonstration. The present paper aims at investigating Ockham's doctrine of demonstrative proof, focusing on the way in which he felt forced to adapt or rephrase the special requirements Aristotle had laid down for propositions to enter into syllogistic proof, especially strict proof (the so-called ' demonstratio potissima'). Our main argument will concern Aristotle's rather peculiar ' kath holou' requirement and Ockham's appliance of the ' kath hauto' (Latin: `per se') notion which is also involved in framing correct premisses for demonstrative proofs. A few preliminary remarks will be made about the essentials of Aristotle's theory of demonstration." p. 232

(...)

"Conclusions.

To sum up our findings: Ockham's adaptations and manipulations of Aristotle's requirements for genuine demonstrative propositions are as many demands imposed by his own metaphysical views. He comments on Aristotle, always starting from his own favourite views. Though Aristotle is the Master, Ockham is the one to say what the Master meant, or what he should have meant. On the other hand, his introducing the ` per se strictissimo modo' rather seems to be a matter of technicality. Whereas in Posterior Analytics Aristotle deals with the scientific procedure of apodeixis in general, in which the apodeictic syllogism is merely a vehicle for correctly framing an apodeixis, the Medievals, and Ockham in particular, were apt to reduce Aristotle's theory of demonstrative proof to a theory of demonstrative syllogism. That is why the ' demonstratio potissima' (including its specific demands) so heavily influenced Ockham's theory of demonstration." p. 239

147. ———. 1995. "Ockham as the Commentator of His Aristotle. His Treatment of Posterior Analytics." In Aristotelica Et Lulliana: Magistro Doctissimo Charles H. Lohr Septuagesimum Annum Feliciter Agenti Dedicata, edited by Domínguez Reboiras, Fernando, Imbach, Ruedi, Pindl, Theodor and Walter, Peter, 77-127. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

1. Introduction; 2. Preliminary: Aristotle on demonstrative or epistemonic proof; 2.1 On the three requrements 'kata pantos', kath' 'hauto', 'kath' holou', 2.2 On the notion of necessity; 2.3 On the four types of questions. On 'Middle' and 'Definiens'; 2.3.1 Subject and attribute. The Middle; 2.3.2. On definition and the four question-types; 2.3.3 The role of definitions in epistemonic proof; 2.3.4 Recipes for the discovery of definitions; 2.4 The ' kath' holou' requirement revisited; 2.5 Particulars and the proper objects of Aristotle's epistemonic proof; 3. Ockham as a Commentator of Posterior Analytics; 3.1 Ockham's treatment of the four basic question-types; 3.2 Ockham's view of the ' kath' holou' requirement; 3.3 The impact of Ockham's ontology upon his theory of demonstration; 3.3.1 Ockham's problem concerning the First Subject; 3.3.2 Ockham's introduction of 'Non-First Subject'; 3.3.3 ' Demonstratio particularis' in Ockham; 3.3.4 Ockham's view of necessity; 3.5 ' Dici per se' and ' propositio per se vera' in Ockham; 3.5.1 Two kinds of 'per se' assignment; 3.5.2 The ' propositio per se (vera)' in Ockham; 3.5.3 The strict and strictest senses of ' per se'; 4. Comclusion.

"The present paper aims to clarify the attitude towards Aristotle adopted by one of the leading lights of fourteenth century philosophical and theological thought, William of Ockham, by investigating (a) how in some of the vital subjects of Aristotelian doctrine, the Venerable Inceptor understood and interpreted the Master, (b) how and why on specific occasions, he deliberately took the liberty to stray from Aristotle's teachings. It goes without saying that in such an undertaking, one has to confine oneself to certain doctrinal themes the choice of which might seem quite arbitrary. The present author has picked out the Aristotelian doctrine of demonstrative proof as interpreted by Ockham." p. 78

148. ———. 1995. "Ockham's Horror of the Universal. An Assessment of His View of Individuality." Mediaevalia.Textos e Estudos no. 7-8:473-497.

Quodlibetaria: miscellanea studiorum in honorem prof. J. M. da Cruz Pontes anno iubilationis suae, Conimbrigae MCMXCV

149. Salamucha, Jan. 2003. "The Propositional Logic in William Ockham." In Knowledge and Faith, edited by Swietorzecka, Kordula and Jadacki, Jacek Juliusz, 139-167. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Originally published in Polish in Przeglad Filozoficzny 38, 1935, pp. 208-239.

150. Schulthess, Peter. 1992. Sein, Signifikation Und Erkenntnis Bei Wilhelm Von Ockham. Berlin: Akademia Verlag.

151. Scott, Theodore Kermit. 1969. "Ockham on Evidence, Necessity, and Intuition." Journal of the History of Philosophy no. 7:27-50.

152. Shapiro, Herman. 1957. Motion, Time and Place According to William Ockham. St. Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute.

153. Shimizu, Tetsuro. 1990. "Time and Eternity: Ockham's Logical Point of View." Franciscan Studies no. 50:283-307.

154. Spade, Paul Vincent. 1981. "Ockham on Terms of First and Second Imposition and Intention, with Remarks on the Liar Paradox." Vivarium no. 19:47-55.

155. ———. 1990. "Ockham, Adams and Connotation. A Critical Notice of Marilyn Adams, William Ockham." Philosophical Review no. 99:593-612.

156. ———. 1997. "The Logic of ' Sit Verum' in Richard Brinkley and William of Ockham." Franciscan Studies no. 54:227-250.

157. ———. 1998. "Three Versions of Ockham's Reductionist Program." Franciscan Studies no. 56:347-358.

158. ———. 1999. "Ockham's Nominalist Metaphysics: Some Main Themes." In The Cambridge Companion to Ockham, edited by Spade, Paul Vincent, 100-117. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

159. ———, ed. 1999. The Cambridge Companion to Ockham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

160. Stump, Eleonore. 1987. "Consequences in Ockham's Summa Logicae and Their Relation to Syllogism, Topics and Insolubles." In Logos and Pragma. Essays on the Philosophy of Language in Honour of Professor Gabriel Nuchelmans, edited by Rijk, Lambertus Marie de and Braakhuis, Henk A.G., 141-159. Nijmegen: Ingenium Publishers.

161. ———. 1999. "The Mechanisms of Cognition: Ockham on Mediating Species." In The Cambridge Companion to Ockham, edited by Spade, Paul Vincent, 168-203. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

162. Tabarroni, Andrea. 1984. "A Note on a Short Treatise Attributed to Ockham: The Super Terminos Naturales." Franciscan Studies no. 44:329-349.

163. ———. 1989. "Mentl Signs and the Theory of Representation in Ockham." In On the Medieval Theory of Signs, edited by Eco, Umberto and Marmo, Costantino, 195-224. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

164. Tachau, Katherine. 1988. Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham. Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations of Semantics 1250-1345. Leiden: Brill.

165. Turnbull, Robert G. 1962. "Ockham's Nominalist Logic: Some Twentieth Century Reflections." New Scholasticism no. 36:313-329.

Reprinted in: Edwin B. Allaire [and others], Essays in Ontology, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1963, pp. 79-91.

"The logic of William of Ockham is commonly -- and, I believe, rightly - thought to be nominalistic. It is also commonly -- and, I believe, wrongly -- thought to be helpful in the solution of those philosophical problems which cluster about the issue of the "one and the many." The allegedly helpful features of his logic are the theories of signification and supposition. I intend to show that these theories, far from being helpful, lead to certain intolerable results, in particular, (1) construing singular propositions, like "Socrates is a man," either as analytic or as no propositions at all (i.e., neither true nor false) and (2) construing all general propositions as either analytic or contradictory. These results follow from taking Ockham as offering object language analyses of object language propositions. Taking him as offering metalanguage analyses of object language propositions is to start off with attributing an intolerable "result" to his logic. It will be helpful, at the end, briefly to compare his logic with that of a contemporary nominalist, Nelson Goodman, for neither of the intolerable results follows from Goodman's logic. Whether the latter is, therefore, acceptable is another issue.

My strategy is as follows. In Part I, I wish to show that a rather straightforward interpretation of Ockham does have him offering metalinguistic analyses of object language propositions and also to show how certain contemporary interpreters and Ockham himself have managed to blind themselves to this fact. In Part II, I wish to show that the so-called "descent to singulars" affords a possibility of construing Ockham as offering object language analyses of object language propositions and to show how, given the doctrines discussed in Part I, he is led to adopt the 'is' of identity, the latter in such a way as to lead into the "intolerable results" mentioned above. In Part III, I wish to make the brief comparison with Goodman's logic.

No detailed descriptions of the Ockhamite theories of signification and supposition will be attempted. Ockham states them quite clearly, and there exist excellent contemporary accounts of both, especially those of Fr. Boehner and Prof. Moody.(*) I shall discuss just what is necessary to make good the several claims listed above. The discussion will, furthermore, be limited to Ockham's doctrine of categorical propositions of present time. This is quite enough, for his doctrines of past, future, and modal propositions are directly dependent upon his doctrine of present-time categoricals." (pp. 79-80 of the reprint).

(*) Cf. P. Boehner, Collected Articles on Ockham, ed. E. Buytaert (St. Bonaventure, N. Y., 5958); E. Moody, The Logic of William of Ockham (New York, 5935); E. Moody, Truth and Consequence in Medieval Logic (Amsterdam, 1953).

166. Tweedale, Martin. 1963. "Scotus and Ockham on the Infinity of the Most Eminent Being." Franciscan Studies no. 23:257-267.

167. ———. 1992. "Ockham's Supposed Elimination of Connotative Terms and His Ontological Parsimony." Dialogue.Canadian Philosophical Review no. 31:38-54.

168. ———, ed. 1999. Scotus Vs. Ockham - a Medieval Dispute over Universals. Vol. I: Texts. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press.

Texts translated into English with commentary by Martin M. Tweedale.

"This work is meant to make accessible to students of philosophy and later medieval thought the key texts in one of the most crucial philosophical debates of that period. The concentration is on Scotus's positive doctrine since it is difficult and has not received the detailed attention it deserves. Ockham's polemic against Scotus raises a host of objections to the internal coherence of Scotus's reworking of the traditional line. Some of these are ones it seems to me Scotus could have countered quite easily; others would have required some revisions, but ones that are basically within the spirit of the doctrine. Some, however, are very difficult indeed, and I shall leave to the commentary and its introductory essay the exposition of my own view on whether Scotus's position can survive intact. There is also a positive side to Ockham's views about universals, and that is only partially covered in what follows. The texts that show how Ockham envisioned preserving all the essentials of Aristotelian science even after real universals have been excised, are presented and discussed, and the very real issue of whether Ockham's effort here could possibly succeed is broached but not definitely resolved one way or the other."

169. ———, ed. 1999. Scotus Vs. Ockham - a Medieval Dispute over Universals. Vol. Ii: Commentary. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press.

"The commentary which composes the greater part of this volume attempts not only to explain the texts translated in the Iirst volume and to understand the positions adopted by the protagonists in this debate, but also to assess the cogency of the various arguments put forward. After all that work is done, however, there remains the task of drawing attention to the crucial issues that have emerged and arriving at some understanding of the debate as a whole and the relative merits of the positions put forward. It is this task that this introductory essay undertakes. Perhaps it would be better read after a thorough study of the commentary, but I am inclined to think that some awareness of the general issues and positions taken by Scotus and Ockham helps in making one's way through the individual texts and their often elaborate argumentation. In explaining these issues and positions I have made free use of philosophical ideas of our own day, at least to the extent that this is not grossly anachronistic."

170. Vossenkühl, Wilhelm. 1985. "Ockham and the Cognition of Non-Existants." Franciscan Studies no. 45:33-46.

171. Vossenkühl, Wilhelm, and Schönberger, Rolf, eds. 1990. Die Gegenwart Ockhams. Veinheim: VCH Acta humaniora.

172. Webering, Damascene. 1953. Theory of Demonstration According to William Ockham. Louvain: E. Nauwelaerts.

173. Weidemann, Hermann. 1979. "William of Ockham on Particular Negative Propositions." Mind no. 88:270-275.

174. White, Graham. 1984. "Ockham's Real Distinction Betweeen Form and Matter." Franciscan Studies no. 44:211-226.

175. Willing, Anthony. 1985. "Buridan and Ockham: The Logic of Knowing." Franciscan Studies no. 45:47-56.

176. Wood, Rega. 1990. "Ockham on Essentially-Ordered Causes, Logic Misapplied." In Die Gegenwart Ockhams, edited by Vossenkühl, Wilhelm and Schönberger, Rolf, 25-50. Weinheim: VCH-Verlagsgesellschaft.

177. Zheng, Yiwei. 1998. "Metaphysical Simplicity and Semantical Complexity of Connotative Terms in Ockham's Mental Language." Modern Schoolman no. 75:253-264.

178. ———. 1998. "Ockham on Connotative Terms." In.: The Paideia Project On-Line. Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy. Boston, Massachusets U.S.A. 10-15 August 1998.

179. ———. 2001. "Ockham's Connotation Theory and Ontological Elimination." Journal of Philosophical Research no. 26:623-634.

"The importance of the connotation theory in Ockham's semantics and metaphysics can hardly be overstated--it is the main mechanism that brings forth Ockham's famous ontological elimination. Yet none of the extant interpretations can satisfactorily accommodate three widely accepted theses: (1) there is no synonym in mental language; (2) a connotative term has a semantically equivalent nominal definition; and (3) there are simple connotative terms in Ockham's mental language. In this paper I offer an interpretation that I argue can accommodate all."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Index of the section "Comparative Philosophy"

Intercultural and Comparative Philosophy

Intercultural and Comparative Philosophy: An Overview

Bibliography: A-Den

Bibliography: Deu-K

Bibliography: L-N

Bibliography: O-S

Bibliography: T-Z

African Philosophy. A Survey of Contemporary Studies

Selected Bibliography on African Philosophy

Bibliographies under construction:

Ancient Chinese Philosophy

Ancient Indian Philosophy

Ancient Buddhist Philosophy

Ancient Islamic (Arabic and Persian) Philosophy

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Comparative Philosophy: Non-Western Logic and Ontology

Preliminary note

The purpose of these pages is to give both the beginner and the more experienced reader a brief guide to the literature on ontology and logic available in non-Western traditions.

This is an important and original, but often neglected, subject and I will made an attempt to list the more important studies of African, Buddhist, Chinese, Indian and Arabic traditions that are available in English.

In its initial form the page will contain a selection of readings, with brief annotations on the content (for the most important books, also the index will be included); subsequently these will be expanded to include more specific Essays on selected problems and the most relevant studies in French, Italian and German.

This is a very hard job and will require a long amount of time to be completed; suggestions and criticisms will be particularly welcome. In the sections for beginners, preference will be given to those books more readily available. In other sections some books could be out of print; if your Library does not possess the volume, it may be possible to obtain it via interlibrary loan.

Every effort will be made to provide details that facilitate Bibliographical research.

The task of Comparative Philosophy

"Comparative philosophy is a field of inquiry that has been little explored. It could not have come into existence before intellectually significant contacts among the philosophical traditions. China had such a contact with India during the early centuries of the Christian era, mainly through Buddhism; but India remained unaffected. Between Greece and India the encounter was sporadic and short-lived; neither made a deliberate attempt to study the other. But the world situation has now changed. The East and the West have come once for all into intimate contact on a vast scale. Each feels the necessity for mutual understanding and even for assimilating whatever in the other is true and useful. This need to understand is no longer a matter of mere intellectual curiosity but of survival. The eastern and western minds need to be integrated. It has been asserted and is still being maintained today that each has a different kind of soul. But if the two are to be integrated, we have to assume a deeper soul comprehending the manifest souls of both. This common soul must always have been, without either component being conscious of its presence. The encompassing soul has to be discovered and understood; and in its terms the separate souls have to be reappraised.

There have been works useful for the study of comparative philosophy, such as source books, treatises on philosophical beginnings, separate histories, evaluations of cultures, and some syntheses. However, they have not presented the philosophical traditions with a unified perspective from which they can be studied comparatively. Comparative philosophy must have a philosophical aim. Only when the aim is clarified can the work be given a definite shape. The aim has to illuminate the perspective; then the traditions thrown into perspective take on a definite meaning and significance. The aim of comparative philosophy is the elucidation of the nature of man and his environment in order that a comprehensive philosophy of life and a plan for thought and action may be obtained. It is with this end in view that the present the Indians who are acquainted with both western and Indian philosophies have little knowledge of the Chinese. Similarly, many Chinese know very little of the western and the Indian except Buddhism. Moreover, each has many wrong notions about the other philosophies and cannot get the feel of them. There is therefore a need for a book in which all three traditions are given in outline. From this book the reader can learn the general trends and central ideas of each.

In comparing and evaluating, the reader should be allowed to draw his own conclusions. He need not accept those given by authors, not even by the present writer. But he can draw his own conclusions only if the traditions are presented according to a single plan, and if he is given some insight into them. He should know fairly well what he is to compare before he does compare.

There are many standard works on the separate histories of the philosophical traditions. But often they are so detailed that it is difficult to understand the main trends and interests. One cannot easily rise above the minutiae in order to view all the traditions together. There are also briefer histories of philosophy. But they have not been written from any single point of view, not even according to any single plan, with the result that one becomes confused when attempting to get a comparative view. The reader belonging to any one tradition should get an understandable impression of the others. This purpose can be achieved only if all the traditions can be presented according to a generally common plan and common concepts. This volume undertakes to do this in a modest fashion by introducing the western, Indian, and Chinese readers to each others' philosophies.

A few books have been written about the world's philosophies, but often without an adequate grasp or exposition of their natures. The result is that the reader finds the unfamiliar traditions strange and outlandish, and is unable to form an opinion about them. Some of the authors treat several different philosophies sympathetically. Yet sympathy, though essential, is not enough, unless it leads to deeper understanding. That is why their interpretations are often curious, and not very helpful. If reason is the same everywhere and many of life's problems are shared, this strangeness ought to be minimized. Any presentation of all philosophies together should lessen this strangeness and increase understandability.

One great hurdle in preparing a work on comparative philosophy is the difficulty of learning all the languages involved. The project could have taken the form of a symposium by a number of specialists.

Nevertheless, even when a uniform plan is outlined, it is hard to obtain uniformity of treatment, since the minds of individual investigators operate along different lines.

How long, then, are we to wait till a master of all languages and philosophies offers the world a work on comparative philosophy?Some one has to start the task, and the author, along with a few others before him, has ventured to begin, even though aware of the perils.

He accepts dependence on translations as inevitable for any treatment of comparative philosophy. One who attempts to master several languages as well as the philosophies written in them risks shallowness.

The language barrier is likely to confront every writer on comparative philosophy who wishes to base his work entirely on original sources, but any defect that may result from the difficulty will rectify itself in course of time, as thinkers of different traditions, interested in comparative philosophy, cooperate with one another through mutual criticism." (Preface, pp. V-VII)

From: P. T. Raju, Introduction to Comparative Philosophy, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1962.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography of Intercultural and Comparative Philosophy: A-Den

Bibliography

1. Abe, Masao. 1975. "Non-Being and Mu - the Metaphysical Nature of Negativity in the East and the West." no. 11:181-192.

Reprinted in Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought, London: Macmillan, pp. 121-134.

"In Volume I of his Systematic Theology, Paul Tillich says, 'Being precedes nonbeing in ontological validity, as the word "nonbeing" itself indicates.'(1) Elsewhere, he says 'Being "embraces" itself and non being' ,(2) while 'Nonbeing is dependent on the being it negates. "Dependent" points first of all to the ontological priority of being over nonbeing.(3) Tillich's statements reflect a tendency among some Christian thinkers to take God as Being itself. The same understanding of the relation of being to non-being can be discerned in major strands of Greek philosophy in the ideas of to on and me on.

(...)

An objection must be made to this understanding of being, however, for in reality there is no ontological ground on which being has priority over non-being. It is assumed that being embraces both itself and non-being. But the very basis on which both being and non-being are embraced must not be 'Being' but 'that which is neither being nor non-being'. That being has priority over" is somehow superior to, and more fundamental than, non-being, has been assumed, perhaps uncritically, not only by Tillich in particular but for quite some time by the West in general." (p. 121)

(1) Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. I, (The Univ. of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 189.

(2) Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be, (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1957), p. 34.

(3) Ibid., p. 40.

2. ———. 1985. Zen and Western Thought. London: Macmillan.

Edited by William R. LaFleur.

Foreword by John Hick.

"The selection of essays constituting this book were written at one time or another during the past eighteen years. The focus is on Zen, Buddhism, and the comparative study of Buddhism and Western thought. The essays were selected primarily to present my understanding of Zen, especially its philosophical and religious significance in its encounter with Western thought. Some address themes with which I was asked to deal, while others elucidate subjects I myself wanted to explore. Several were directed to Japanese readers and hence were originally written in Japanese. Others were directed to a Western audience and were written in English. The selection includes addresses which were originally delivered orally and are hence somewhat informal in comparison to the more academic articles. Accordingly, the book was not written systematically with a consistent intention. Heeding the advice of the editor, Professor William R. LaFleur, I have tried to select and compile the essays in such a way as to make the work as systematic as possible. The result is the book now before you." (p. XXI)

3. ———. 1997. Zen and Comparative Studies. London: Macmillan.

Edited by Steven Heine.

Part two of a two-volume sequel to Zen and Western Thought.

"The title of this collection of essays, which I wrote over a period of two decades, highlights the sharp contrast and conflict as well as the areas of compatibility and complementarity between Zen and comparative studies. In Part One, Fundamentals of Zen, I elucidate the meaning of Zen as a self-transmission of mind in its own terms. These essays take up the topics of 'ordinary mind is Tao,' life and death and good and evil, emptiness, selfhood, and education. On the other hand, in the essays in Part Two, Zen, Buddhism, and Western Thought, I situate Zen in a comparative philosophical context thought discussions of the Aristotelian notion of Substance, Whitehead's notion of process, and Plato's idea of Form (eidos). Focusing on the problem of death, the article on 'The Problem of Death in the East and West' tries to elucidate the essential characters of Platonism, Christianity and Buddhism, especially Zen, through a systematic comparative approach.

In Part Three, Current Issues in Buddhism, I pick up a number of contemporary topics such as monotheism versus monism, time and self, human rights and religious tolerance from the angle of comparative studies. Finally, Part Four, Zen and Japanese Culture, attempts to clarify the role of Zen in terms of the intellectual history of Japan from ancient literature and Tokugawa Shinto thought to modem philosophy." (pp. XII-XIV)

4. Agbakoba, Joseph C. Achike, and Ajah, Anthony C., eds. 2016. Universalism, Relativism, and Intercultural Philosophy. Washington, D. C.: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy.

Nigerian Philosophical Studies IV.

Contents: Joseph C.A. Agbakoba: Preface V-VI; Matthew C. Chukwuelobe & Anthony C. Ajah: Introduction 1;

Part I. On the Equality of Cultures and the Fear of Hegemony

1. Jibrail Bin Yusuf & Hashir A. Abdulsalam: Time, Knowledge and the Clash of Civilizations: An Islamic Approach 23;

Part II. Globalization and the Question of Cultural Identity

2. Uduma Oji Uduma: Between Universalism and Cultural Identity: Revisiting the Motivation for an African Logic 39; 3. Dorothy U. Olu-Jacob: Intercultural Philosophy, Africa’s Predicament and Globalization: Finding the Missing Link 65;

Part III. Cultural Ontology and Social Organization

4. Joseph N. Agbo: The Ontological Basis for the Failure of Liberal Democracy in Africa: A Phenomenological Rescue 79; 5. Alloy S. Ihuah: The Politics of Gender Power in Tiv Aesthetic Tradition: Liberation, Centering or Empowerment 105;

Part IV. On Philosophy with an Intercultural Frame and Focus

6. Marietta Stepanyants: Philosophy and Inculturation: The Context of Universalism 131; 7. Francis M. Isichei: Universalism and Relativism in Philosophy: Nature, Problems, and Contemporary Significance 149; 8. Martin F. Asiegbu: Intercultural Philosophy: Toward an Adequate Cross Cultural Dialogue between African Philosophy and Western Philosophy 161; 9. Benjamin Ewelu: Intercultural Philosophy – A Quest for Unity in Diversity: What Can African Language Contribute? 183; 10. Edward J. Alam: Reflections on Intercultural Philosophy: Avoiding the Extremes 201;

Part V. On the Possibilities of Intercultural Communication

11. William Sweet: Migrating Texts and Traditions in Intercultural Philosophy 211; 12. Anthony C. Ajah: Communicative Rationality and Cross-Cultural Communication 235;

Part VI. Hermeneutics as the Role of Philosophy, and as a Principle of Intercultural Encounters

13. Evaristus E. Ekweke: Intercultural Philosophy in Consultation with a Hermeneutic Approach to Natural Science: An African Perspective 259;

Index 273-276.

5. Allen, Douglas, ed. 1997. Culture and Self: Philosophical and Religious Perspectives, East and West. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Edited with the assistance of Ashok Malhotra.

Contents: Preface IX; Douglas Allen: Introduction XI-XV;

Part 1: Multiple Asian and Western Perspectives

1. Douglas Allen: Social Constructions of Self: Some Asian, Marxist, and Feminist Critiques of Dominant Western Views of Self 3; 2. Alan Roland: How Universal Is Psychoanalysis? The Self in India, Japan, and the United States 27;

Part 2: Chinese and Western Perspectives

3. Mary I. Bockover; Ethics, Relativism, and the Self 43; 4. Henry Rosemont, Jr.: Classical Confucian and Contemporary Feminist Perspectives on the Self: Some Parallels and Their Implications 63; 5. Kenneth K. Inada: Buddho-Taoist and Western Metaphysics of the Self 83;

Part 3: Indian and Western Perspectives

6. Ananyo Basu: Reducing Concern with Self: Parfit and the Ancient Buddhist Schools 97: 7. Ashok K. Malhotra: Sartre and Samkhya-Yoga on Self 111;

Part 4: Japanese and Western Perspectives

8. Graham Parkes: Nietzsche and Nishitani on Nihilism and Tradition 131; 9. Mara Miller: Views of Japanese Selfhood; Japanese and Western Perspectives 145; Bibliography 163; About the Book and Editor 173; About the Contributors 175;

Index 177-184.

"Traditional scholars of philosophy and religion, in both the East and the West, have often placed a major emphasis on analyzing the nature of self. But with a few significant exceptions, they have dismissed or devalued the role of culture in their specific formulations of “the self,” arguing instead for some view of an objective, ahistoric, universal self. When they have cited cultural conditionings and variables, moreover, these scholars have usually described them as subjective, illusory, and distorting influences, thus obscuring the deeper, underlying, objective view of “the self” that transcends all such par¬ ticular historical and cultural expressions." (Introduction, p. XI)

(...)

"The chapters of this book—with their primary emphasis on comparative philosophy, religion, and culture—have been divided into four parts: Multi¬ ple Asian and Western Perspectives, Chinese and Western Perspectives, In¬ dian and Western Perspectives, and Japanese and Western Perspectives. In¬ cluded among these analyses are Vedanta, Samkhya-Yoga, and other Hindu approaches; Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist, and other Indian, Chinese, and Japanese perspectives; Cartesian and other dominant Western perspectives; and Marxist, Nietzschean, Sartrean, feminist, and other challenges to domi¬ nant Western interpretations of culture and self." (Introduction, p. XII)

6. Allinson, Robert E. 2001. "The Myth of Comparative Philosophy or the Comparative Philosophy Malgré Lui." In Two Roads to Wisdom? Chinese and Analytic Philosophical Traditions, edited by Mou, Bo, 269-291. La Salle, IL: Open Curt.

""Comparative philosophy" such as it has been practiced is normally "comparative-inclusive," "comparative-exclusive," or a mixed type.(8)"

(...)

Comparative exclusive philosophy, practiced as a discipline separate from philosophy proper can be classified into two streams.(10) One stream, represented by the positive comparativist, searches for likenesses and unlikenesses between the two traditions but normally shows a preference for the likeness. This stream, while searching for positive correlations, does not generally attempt to borrow from the content or the methodology of the other tradition or lend the content or the methodology of its own tradition to the other tradition. Generally speaking, the positive comparativist searches for analogues of Western concerns, issues, and methodology in Chinese philosophy. Normally, the positive comparativist does not first find issues, concerns, and methodologies in the Chinese tradition that are borrowed for use within the Western tradition.

The standpoint of the positive comparativist is a stand-alone standpoint in which parallel developments in each tradition may be noted, bur normally there is no active expropriation of issues, concerns, or methods found originally the other tradition and consequent alteration of methods in one's own tradition.

Another stream, represented by the negative-exclusionist comparativist (for future reference, for convenience's sake these types will be referred to as negative or positive comparativists), possesses the tendency to find that the traditions or the terms compared are incommensurable. This stream also remains intact within the secure boundaries of its own philosophical heritage. Negative comparativists are nor completely negative since, irrespective of the internal inconsistency in approach this implies, generally consider that Western categories are useful in understanding the other tradition even though the other tradition remains alien to one's own." (pp. 271-272, some notes omitted)

(8) This set of types is not intended to be an exhaustive classification of types but it does represent a good starting point for investigations. (...)

(10) This is not intended at an exhaustive classification of comparative philosophy but only as an identification of two tendencies. (...)

7. Ames, Roger T. 1990. "Directory of Comparative Philosophers." Philosophy East and West no. 40:73-97.

Second part: vol. 41, pp. 537-556.

"One important function of Philosophy East and West is to keep our readership informed on the progress of scholarly research in the field of Asian and comparative philosophy. In an effort to realize this objective, in the late summer of 1988 a letter was circulated to our active list of comparative philosophers in order to begin compiling a directory which will describe the ongoing research and the recent publications in our field. This compilation also provides the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy with a resource from which to draw the themes and potential participants for future panels and programs.

In this issue, we are bringing to print the first installment of the Directory of Comparative Philosophers, and, at the same time, are again circulating a letter in preparation for the second installment, to be published at the beginning of next year. We encourage active comparative philosophers to provide us with the appropriate information on their research projects and publications to help us keep colleagues with similar interests informed.

Roger T. Ames, Editor" (p. 73)

8. Angle, Stephen C. 2006. "Making Room from Comparative Philosophy: Davidson, Brandom, and Conceptual Distance." In Davidson Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy: Constructive Engagement, edited by Mou, Bo, 73-100. Leiden: Brill.

"Over the last three decades, one of the principal resources on which comparative philosophers could draw when they sought assurance has been the work of Donald Davidson." (p. 73)

(...)

"Davidson has argued convincingly that anything we can recognize as a language must, in principle, be translatable into any other language.

As I will elaborate below, this argument has sometimes been misunderstood, but it nonetheless stands as an important support for the enterprise of comparative philosophy.

As significant as Davidson’s work has been, however, my thesis in this essay is that comparative philosophers need still more than Davidson’s theory is able to provide. It is not enough to know that translation is possible in principle: we need to be able to talk about conceptual differences with more subtlety, and to reason about what is at stake in overcoming them." (p. 74)

(...)

"Davidson is not wholly without resources to explain the range of conceptual differences and the dynamics of language change. I will point to some promising ideas in his later work, as well as to some

elaborations of his basic theories proposed by others. But in the end, the best solution to these matters is to be found in the work of Robert Brandom. In many respects Brandom’s views are Davidsonian; turning to Brandom is not to abandon Davidson’s core insights, but to recast them in a framework that allows them fuller expression.

My goal will be to show why the creative philosophical projects of contemporary comparative philosophy are possible, even though they are often difficult." (p. 74)

9. ———. 2010. "The Minimal Definition and Methodology of Comparative Philosophy. A Report from a Conference." Comparative Philosophy no. 1:106-110.

Abstract: "In June of 2008, the International Society for Comparative Studies of Chinese and Western Philosophy (ISCWP) convened its third Constructive Engagement conference, on the theme of “Comparative Philosophy Methodology.” During the opening speeches, Prof. Dunhua ZHAO, Chair of the Philosophy Department at Peking University, challenged the conference’s participants to put forward a minimal definition of “comparative philosophy” and a statement of its methods. Based on the papers from the conference and the extensive discussion that ensued, during my closing reflections at the end of the conference I offered a tentative synthesis of the conference’s conclusions. That summary has already been published on-line as part of the bi-annual ISCWP newsletter (Angle 2008). In this brief essay, I recapitulate the themes of my earlier summary and expand, in my own voice, on some of the key points."

References

Angle, Stephen C. (2008), “Conclusions drawn from ISCWP’s 2008 conference on comparative methodology”, ISCWPNewsletter 6:2.

10. Bahm, Archie John. 1977. Comparative Philosophy: Western, Indian and Chinese Philosophies Compared. Albuquerque: Universal Publications.

Contents: Acknowledgments VIII; Preface IX; I. What is Comparative Philosophy? 1; II. Standards for Comparative Philosophy 25; III. Eastern and Western Philosophies Compared 45; Appendix 82; Index 95-98.

"Comparative philosophy is a relatively new field of study, research, achievement in understanding and teaching. The purpose of this work is to help clarify the nature of comparative philosophy; to survey views about the kinds of standards that may be used as bases for comparisons; and to propose an hypothesis comparing pervasive traits of the philosophies of Western, Indian and Chinese civilizations." (Preface, p. IX)

11. Balslev, Anindita N. 1997. "Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Conversation: Some Comments on the project of Comparative Philosophy." Metaphilosophy no. 28:359-370.

Abstract: "This paper seeks to highlight the East-West asymmetry in philosophical exchanges. It draws attention to the absence of Eastern thought in the curriculum of philosophy in the West and suggests that cliches and stereotypes about cultures in general and thought-traditions in particular are perpetuated in this manner. The aim of the paper is to encourage ‘cross-cultural conversation’ among philosophers. A critical review of the project of ‘comparative philosophy’ is made to disclose the fact that despite the difficulties of such an endeavor, it is an attempt to bring thought-traditions together and is thereby useful for promoting intercultural understanding."

12. Benesch, Walter. 1997. An Introduction to Comparative Philosophy: A Travel Guide to Philosophical Space. London: Macmillan.

"This travel guide to philosophical space in the broadest sense is a comparative introduction to philosophy and philosophizing as these are aspects of the human condition everywhere. It focuses in a more specific sense upon the concern for meaning and the corresponding development of thinking methodologies in certain Greco-European, Indian, and Chinese philosophical systems. The text introduces these Eastern and Western traditions in two unique ways:

Firstly: It addresses philosophical space as four different but related dimensions of human thought and experience: ( 1) the significance and nature of the objects of experience and their interrelationships about which we think; (2) the significance and nature of the thinking subject in whose awareness objects mean what they mean; (3) the significance and nature of the situations in which thinking subjects encounter both their own awareness and the objects of which they are aware; ( 4) the nature and significance of these subject, object and situational elements as aspects and perspectives within a human/nature continuum. These are the sources of the object, subject, situational, and aspect/perspective dimensions of philosophical space. They are introduced and explained using texts from various Eastern and Western philosophies.

Secondly: The guide is more than a compilation of information on various Eastern and Western views, for in each dimension, once it has been explained and explored, one or more of the thinking and reasoning techniques that have been developed within it, will be presented so that readers can incorporate these techniques into their own thinking processes. The travel guide is both an introduction to comparative philosophy and to comparative philosophizing.

The reader will encounter the object logics of the West, the subject logics of the Indian Jains, the situational logics of the Buddhists and Nyaya, and the aspective/perspective logics of the Taoists, Confucians and Mohists." (pp. 1-2)

13. ———. 2002. "Comparative Philosophy as Feedback Loops and Fractals of Philosophical Space: The Butterfly Effect Meets the Butterfly Dream." APA Newsletters no. 2:32-35.

"Conclusions

The physicist, Erwin Schroedinger once said that “…it may perhaps be possible for logical thinking to disclose at least this much: that to grasp the basis of phenomena through logical thought may in all probability be impossible, since logical thought is itself a part of phenomena, and wholly involved in them.”(15) The molecular biologist, Friedrich Cramer in applying chaos theory and the idea of fractals to ‘living systems’ maintains that “Systems are fundamentally complex if, despite deterministic initial conditions, they have indeterminate or chaotic solutions. In these systems, predictability fails not only for practical reasons but also for fundamental ones.”(16) I would suggest that just as the discovery of chaos and fractals in physical spaces offers a new access to and awareness of the nature aspect of the nature/mind continuum, so do chaos and fractals as paradoxes in philosophical space offer a new access to and appreciation of the mind aspect of the continuum." (p. 35)

(15) Erwin Schroedinger, My View of the World (Cecily Hastings tran.), Ox Bow Press, Woodbridge, CT, 1983, p. 19.

(16) Friedrich Cramer, Chaos and Order, VCH Publishers, New York, 1993, p. 214.

14. Berger, Douglas. 2021. Indian and Intercultural Philosophy: Personhood, Consciousness, and Causality. New York: Bloomsbury Acdemic.

"There are, to be sure, many exemplary collections on Indian philosophy already in print, penned by the last several generations of scholars who have achieved monumental successes in making classical and modern Indian thought accessible to and most relevant for intercultural philosophical discussion today. And so, in putting forward my own assemblage of republished and original chapters here, I am obligated to set forth for the reader what is distinctive about these contributions. I will do so in three steps. First, I will rehearse in brief outline my own autobiography of learning in Indian philosophy in order to narrate who my teachers and greatest influences were, as well as what topics and issues in Indian and intercultural philosophy have been most important to me. Next, I will provide a skeleton review of the parts and chapters found in this volume, to give the reader a glimpse at which problems I have been most concerned to resolve in these fields. Finally, I will attempt to accentuate the most important discoveries I have so far made as a result of my encounters with Indian philosophical traditions. These discoveries not only relate to important aspects of India’s traditions, but have to a great degree shaped my own philosophical views." (pp. 1-2)

15. Berger, Douglas, and Kramer, Eli. 2019. "Lessons from Intercultural Philosophy: Getting Over Reductive Comparisons and Attending to Others: Douglas Berger interviewed by Eli Kramer." Eidos: A Journal for Philosophy of Culture no. 1:134-140.

"EK: What are the most important tools for doing cross-cultural/comparative philosophy of culture in a responsible, thoughtful, and impactful way?

DB: I would say at this point that the three most important tools for doing intercultural philosophy responsibly and thoughtfully – impact can never be guaranteed by oneself – are:

1) an openness to learn the ideas, concepts, frameworks and assumptions of the tradition with which one is trying to engage;

2) either a solid comprehension of the language(s) of the tradition with which one is trying to engage or at least good translations of their source texts or narrative traditions and discourse and;

3) a community of mutually interested engagement.

The first tool is vital because, as the last four centuries or so of European colonial history have amply and tragically demonstrated, one all-too-easy but all-too-flawed way of approaching cross-cultural philosophy is to take the entire or partial European history of philosophy, with its stock of ideas, vocabulary and assumptions about the world, persons, ethics, and even of philosophy itself, as normative and judge other philosophical positions on those bases. This approach has led to a variety of more or less unfortunate consequences. The consequences range from merely distorting the ideas of a philosopher or tradition of thought, or in some cases an entire cultural heritage, by claiming they are pursuing the same ideals and ends as one’s own, to claiming that other cultural traditions are incapable of attaining the supposedly truly philosophical status of European cultures, to using one’s knowledge and assessments of another cultural tradition in order to politically rule it or control it." (pp. 134-135)

16. Bilimoria, Purushottama, and Hemmingsen, Michael, eds. 2016. Comparative Philosophy and J.L. Shaw. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Contents: 1. Purushottama Bilimoria and Michael Hemmingsen: Introduction 1;

Part I Language

2. Partha S. Das: J.L. Shaw on Meaning 9; 3. David Lumsden: Noun Phrases and Truth in the Nyāya and Western Pragmatics 19; 4. Amitabha Dasgupta: Controversy Over the Availability of Frege’s Sense in Indian Philosophy of Language: The Case of J. L. Shaw and the Nyāya 27; 5. Fred Kroon: The Radical Emptiness of Empty Terms: Saving the Buddhists from the Nyāya 39; 6. Tamoghna Sarkar: The Nyāya on Identity Relation and Identity Statements 55;

Part II Epistemology

7. Jaysankar Lal Shaw: The Relevance of Indian Epistemology to Contemporary Western Philosophy 83; 8. Payal Doctor: Nyāya, J. L. Shaw and Epistemic Luck 103; 9. Anand Jayprakash Vaidya: The Nyāya Misplacement Theory of Illusion & the Metaphysical Problem of Perception 123; 10. Monima Chadha: Contents of Experience: Revisited 141;

Part III Mathematics and Logic

11. Nicholas Griffin: What Part of ‘Not’ Don’t We Understand? 161; 12. Purushottama Bilimoria: Negation (abhāva), Non-existents, and a Distinctive pramāṇa in the Nyāya-Mīmāṃsā 183; 13. Toshihiro Wada: The Logical Structure of the Third and Fifth Definitions in the Vyāptipancaka Section of Gaṅgeśa's Tattvachintāmaṇi 203; 14. Rafal Urbaniak: Mathematical Existence via Necessary Properties: Some Conceptual Challenges to J.L. Shaw 217; 15. G.S. Mahalakshmi: Application of Nyāya to Intelligent Systems 225;

Part IV Ethics

16. Papia Mitra: Artificial Intelligences and Karma: An Evaluation of Information Technology in Light of J.L. Shaw’s

Concept of Moral Free Will 247; 17. Gordon F. Davis: Conceptions and Intuitions of the Highest Good in Buddhist Philosophy: A Meta-ethical Analysis 263;

Index 277-279.

"This volume attests to the impact of Dr. Shaw’s career, if in no other way than the extent and quality of the articles represented here from leading philosophers, thinkers and logicians from all over the world. Jaysankar Shaw has tirelessly worked to solve some of the pressing and key problems of contemporary philosophy of language, logic, epistemology, metaphysics and morals from the perspectives of classical Indian philosophers using comparative analytical approaches, as his 11 books and some 90 published papers testify. Thus the significance, in no small, measure, of Indian, especially Nyāya logic, epistemology, semantics and cognitive ontology has not escaped the attention of Western scholars who have seen the convergence or at least a point of fecundity with the long tradition of systematic thinking in these areas." (p. 2)

17. Blitstein, Pablo A. 2016. "Sinology: Chinese Intellectual History and Transcultural Studies." The Journal of Transcultural Studies no. 7:136-167.

"The guest editors of this journal issue have kindly asked me to provide a short overview of the relation between transcultural studies and Chinese intellectual history in Euro-American academia. There was a certain risk in accepting this request, as it might be either too small or too big a task. It would be too small if I narrowed it down to a review of explicit references to transcultural studies within Chinese intellectual history; but it would be too big if I extended it to a study of all the questions, approaches, and methods that the two fields have developed in the last few decades. To overcome these difficulties, I decided to focus on the legacy of one shared methodological point: the critique of so-called “methodological nationalism,” that is, of the assumption (explicit or not) that the nation is the ultimate framework of research.(1) This critique has become a constitutive principle of transcultural studies, while it came to represent only a particular approach within Chinese intellectual history. Still, the two fields have developed a shared agenda in this regard. This essay limits itself to pointing out the presence of this critique in both fields—which might be as much a sign of open scholarly exchanges as evidence of the parallel adoption of common references—and offers an illustration of the complex relations that exist between institutional labels, methodological agendas, scientific communication, and actual scholarly practice."

(1) This concept, undoubtedly inspired by “methodological individualism,” seems to have first been used in the 1970s. The term has become more widespread in the last few decades, partly because of its critical use in global history and transcultural studies. For a discussion of this methodological assumption and a brief history of the expression, see Andreas Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller, “Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration and the Social Sciences,” Global Networks 4, no. 4 (2002): 301–334.

18. Blocker, Gene H. 1999. World Philosophy: An East-West Comparative Introduction to Philosophy. New York: Prentice Hall.

Contents: Preface VII-XII; 1. Introduction: What is Philosophy? 1; 2 Logic and Language 42; 3. Epistemology, or Theory of Knowledge 78; 4. Metaphysics 105; 5. Ethics 159; 6. Social and Political Philosophy 201; Bibliography 232; Glossary 235; Timelines 244-246.

"In this book, Chinese, Indian, and Western philosophers of roughly the same sort and of comparable stature are brought together on the same philosophical topics and issues (arranged, for convenience, in traditional clusters-logic in chapter 2, epistemology in chapter 3, metaphysics in chapter 4, ethics in chapter 5, and social and political philosophy in chapter 6)." (p. VII)

(...)

"In this book, I treat the strictly philosophical arguments as being roughly similar across cultures, while the larger cultural contexts in which they occur I present as being considerably different. The Indian background of karma, for example, is quite distinct from anything in the West (except, perhaps, Socrates's and Plato's belief in reincarnation), but karma raises serious questions about the nature of causality, and when Indian philosophers tackle the problem of causalitv, their analyses are very similar and certainly comprehensible to their Western counterparts (who also are interested in causality, but for different reasons). Thus, students will get a chance to learn something about the differences among Western and non-Vt'estern cultures, while at the same time recognizing some of the philosophical similarities." (p. XI)

19. Bonevac, Daniel, and Phillips, Stephen. 1993. Understanding Non-Western Philosophy: Introductory Readings. Mountain View: Mayfield.

Contents: Preface; Time Line;

PART I. AFRICA

Ancient Egypt: From The Instruction of Ptahhotep; The Song from the Tomb of King Intef; The Dispute Between a Man and His Ba; From The Instruction of Any; From The Book of the Dead; Enlightenment Ethiopia: Zera Yacob, from The Treatise of Zera Yacob; Walda Heywat: from The Treatise of Walda Heywat; Contemporary Perspectives: Frantz Fanon: from The Wretched of the Earth; Kwasi Wiredu: from Philosophy and an African Culture

PART II. WEST ASIA, NORTH AFRICA, AND SPAIN

Platonism: Philo: from Allegorical Interpretation; Philo: from On the Account of the World’s Creation Given by Moses; Philo: from On Drunkenness; Philo: from On the Confusion of Tongues; Philo: from The Special Laws; Philo: from On Rewards and Punishments; Philo: from Concerning Noah’s Work as a Planter; Origen: from On Principles; Augustine: from The Enchiridion; Augustine: from The City of God; Augustine: from Answer to Skeptics;

Creationism: Al-Kindi: from On First Philosophy; Saadia ben Joseph: from The Book of Beliefs and Opinions; Al-Ghazali: from The Incoherence of the Philosophers; Maimonides: from The Guide of the Perplexed; Maimonides: The Purpose of Man;

Rationalism: Al-Farabi: from Principles of the Views of the Citizens of the Best State; Avicenna: from A Treatise on Logic; Avicenna: On the Nature of God; Averroës: from The Incoherence of the Incoherence;

PART III. SOUTH ASIA

Samkhya, Yoga, and the Bhagavad Gita: from the Katha Upanishad; From the Bhagavad Gita (Song of God); From the Yogasutra; Isvarakrsna: from the Verses on Analysis of Nature (Samkhya-karika);

Early Buddhism: The First Sermon; From the Majjhima-Nikaya; Buddhaghosa: from The Path of Purification (Visuddhi-Magga); From Questions to King Milinda (Milindapanha); Buddhaghosa: The Duration of Life;

Jainism: From the Acaranga Sutra; Vadi Devasuri: from The Ornament Illuminating the Means and Principles of Knowledge (Pramana-naya-tattvalokalankarah);

Nagarjuna and Madhyamika Buddhism: Nagarjuna: from Averting the Arguments; Candrakirti: from Reasoning into Reality;

Buddhist Idealism and Logic: From The Surangama Sutra; Dignaga: from The Investigation of the Object of Awareness (Alambanapariksa) With Extracts from Vinitadeva’s Commentary; Dharmakirti: from The Pith of Right Thinking (Nyayabindu) With a Commentary by Dharmottara;

Mimamsa (Exegesis): Kumarila: from The Slokavarttika;

Carvaka Skepticism: From Madhava’s Compendium of Philosophy;

Nyaya-Vaisesika Epistemic Logic and Ontology: From the Vaisesika Sutra; From the Nyaya-sutra With a Commentary by Vatsyayana; Udayana: from Proofs of the Existence of God; Gangesa: from The Jewel of Thought about Reality (Tattvacintamani);

Vedanta: From the Rg Veda; From the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad; From the Mundaka Upanishad; Sankara: from Brahmasutra Commentary; Sriharsa: Critique of Difference; Rupa Gosvami: The Mystical Theology of Passion; Vivekananda: Addresses at the Parliament of Religions; Aurobindo, from The Life Divine;

Modern Academic Philosophy: J. N. Mohanty: Gilbert Ryle’s Criticisms of the Concept of Consciousness; B. K. Matilal: from Perception: An Essay on Classical Indian Theories of Knowledge;

PART IV. EAST ASIA

Confucianism: Confucius: from The Analects; The Great Learning; Mencius: from The Book of Mencius; Hsun Tzu: from the Hsun Tzu;

Taoism: Lao Tzu, from Tao-te Ching; Chuang Tzu: from the Chuang Tzu; The Yang Chu Chapter;

Other Schools: Mo Tzu: from Universal Love; Wang Ch-ung: from Balanced Inquiries;

Chinese Buddhism: Hsuan-tsang: from The Treatise on the Establishment of the Doctrine of Consciousness-Only; Fa-tsang: from Treatise on the Golden Lion; Fa-tsang: from Hundred Gates to the Sea of Ideas of the Flowery Splendor Scripture; The Recorded Conversations of Zen Master I-Hsuan;

Neo-Confucianism: Chu Hsi: from The Philosophy of Human Nature; Wang Yang-Ming: from Instructions for Practical Life; Wang Yang-Ming: from Record of Discourses; Wang Yang-Ming: from Reply to Ku Tung-Ch’iao; Wang Fu-chih: from The Surviving Works of Wang Fu-Chih;

Japanese Buddhism: Kitaro Nishida: from An Inquiry into the Good; D. T. Suzuki: from Zen Buddhism; Keiji Nishitani: from Science and Zen;

Pronunciation Guide; Glossary; Index.

20. ———. 2009. Introduction to World Philosophy: A Multicultural Reader. New York: Oxford University Press.

Abstract: "Ethics in the philosophical traditions of India -- Chinese ethics -- Ancient Greek ethics -- Medieval Christian, Jewish, and Islamic ethics -- Ethics in modern philosophy -- African ethics -- The self in Indian philosophy -- The self in Chinese Buddhism -- Ancient Greek philosophy of mind -- Mind and body in early modern philosophy -- African philosophy of mind -- Indian theories of knowledge -- Chinese theories of knowledge."

21. Bontekoe, Ron. 2017. "Some Opening Remarks on the Exclusionary Tendency in Western Philosophy." Philosophy East and West no. 67:957-965.

"There is a serious danger involved in taking the idea of the “philosophical tradition” too narrowly. Many readers of this journal will be familiar with the dangers of cultural exclusion — in particular with the long-standing tendency of many Western

philosophers to reject out of hand the legitimacy of Chinese, Indian, and Japanese philosophy, on the grounds that these Asian modes of thinking do not appear o address the same problems that Western philosophers are interested in, in the same kind of way that Western philosophers prefer to approach these problems. This culturally myopic view of what is entitled to be called “philosophy” is deplorable, and needs to be resisted, but it probably helps to remember in this regard that the Asian philosophical traditions have not been the only victims of this attitude.

It was not that long ago, no more than fifty or sixty years, in fact, that many Anglo-American analytic philosophers were adopting a similarly exclusionary attitude toward European Continental philosophy — declaring that Nietzsche and Heidegger, for example, were “not philosophers.” This, it turned out, meant little more than that coming to understand these alien thinkers required more effort than the deniers of their philosophical bona fides were willing to put in. In time influential thinkers emerged — William Barrett and Walter Kauffman come immediately to mind — who were willing to put in the effort required to understand what these seminal Continental figures were saying, and to explain their messages in terms that more typical Anglo-American analytic philosophers could grasp. And thus the legitimacy of the phenomenological and existential approaches to philosophy came gradually to be accepted even in the most die-hard analytical departments." (p. 957

22. Botz-Bornstein, Thorsten. 2006. "Ethnophilosophy, Comparative Philosophy, Pragmatism: Toward a Philosophy of Ethnoscapes." Philosophy East and West no. 56:153-171.

"In this essay I would like to reflect on the place of philosophy within a "globalized" world and reconsider its status as a phenomenon that is potentially linked to a "local" culture. Whenever we question the authority of "general" truths and we look for ways of integrating "local discourses" into the overall construction called "global philosophy," we come across the old idea of "ethnophilosophy." Far from suggesting ethnophilosophy as a model for the philosophy of the future, I intend to rethink certain themes of ethnophilosophy and contrast them with disciplines such as "comparative philosophy" and pragmatism. I will sketch an approach that I believe to be appropriate for the development of philosophy in times of globalization.

One of the negative undertones of the term "globalization" is that it is seen as a uniformizing and flattening power that eliminates existing cultural differences. On the other hand, there is an important side effect of globalization represented by those movements acting against it, stressing the importance of "localization" or "regionalization."

Ethnophilosophy, in spite of its outdated origin and its potential dangers, remains interesting as an intellectual model as long as it is not formulated in a radical fashion. When it is formulated in a radical fashion it has to face the reproach of relativism and of enclosing itself in a cultural sphere that it declares to be inaccessible to others." (p. 153)

23. Bradley, D. Park. 2006. "The Critical Presence of the Other: Comparative Philosophy, Self-Knowledge, and Accountability." Journal of Philosophy and Culture no. 3.

Abstract: "Western philosophy has traditionally taken justification as necessary for constituting genuine knowledge. On the contemporary scene, however, several influential epistemological theories (Gadamer, Polanyi, Kuhn, Sellars) see the project of epistemological transparency as undermined by the fact that implicit conditions necessarily underlie our explicit knowing. In this paper, I argue that “we” must engage non-Western traditions of thought, if we are to remain committed to justifying the conditions of our knowing. To put it differently, philosophical accountability requires discarding the delusion of self-critique and coming to recognize our dependence on the critical distance provided by Other traditions."

24. Brooks, Thom. 2013. "Philosophy Unbound: The Idea of Global Philosophy." Metaphilosophy no. 44:254-266.

Abstract: "The future of philosophy is moving towards "global philosophy." The idea of global philosophy is the view that different philosophical approaches may engage more substantially with each other to solve philosophical problems. Most solutions attempt to use only those available resources located within one philosophical tradition. A more promising approach might be to expand the range of available resources to better assist our ability to offer more compelling solutions.

This search for new horizons in order to improve our clarity about philosophical issues is at the heart of global philosophy. The idea of global philosophy encourages us to look beyond our traditions to improve our philosophical problem solving by our own lights. Global philosophy is a new approach whose time is coming. This essay offers the first account of this approach and an assessment of its future promise."

25. Brown, Nahum, and Franke, William, eds. 2016. Transcendence, Immanence, and Intercultural Philosophy. Cham (Switzerland): Palgrave Macmillan.

Contents: Preface IX, Introduction XI;

Part I The Debate: Methodological Position Statements

1. Roger T. Ames: Getting Past Transcendence: Determinacy, Indeterminacy, and Emergence in Chinese Natural Cosmology 3; 2. William Franke: Classical Chinese Thought and the Sense of Transcendence 35; 3. William Franke: Equivocations of “Transcendence”: Responses to Roger Ames 67; 4. Yonghua Ge: Transcendence, Immanence, and Creation: A Comparative Study of Christian and Daoist Thoughts with Special Reference to Robert Neville 79; 5. Karl-Heinz Pohl: “Immanent Transcendence” in the Chinese Tradition: Remarks on a Chinese (and Sinological) Controversy 103; 6, Hans Rudolf Kantor: Emptiness of Transcendence: The Inconceivable and Invisible in Chinese Buddhist Thought 125;

Part II Critical Reflections on Traditions of Transcendence

7. William Desmond: Idiot Wisdom and the Intimate Universal: On Immanence nd Transcendence in an Intercultural Perspective 153; 8. Nahum Brown: Transcendent and Immanent Conceptions of Perfection in Leibniz and Hegel 183; 9. Antonia Pont: An Exemplary Operation: Shikantaza and Articulating Practice via Deleuze 207; 10. Michael Eckert: Future as Transcendence: On a Central Problem in Ernst Bloch’s Philosophy of Religion 237; 11. Mario Wenning: The Fate of Transcendence in Post-secular Societies 259; 12. Heiner Roetz: Who Is Engaged in the “Complicity with Power”? On the Difficulties Sinology Has with Dissent and Transcendence 283;

Index 319-327.

"What is still divisive in this question of transcendence and immanenceis something like what makes the question of belief, especially religious belief or faith, so fractious. Our ability to reason critically and to attempt to persuade one another by logical argument has limits. Some of our conclusions and convictions seem to be not less firm and certain simply because of their being more difficult to explain and justify rationally to others. There are some things that we appear to know without knowing exactly how and why we know them. Even a strict Aristotelian logic of knowing allows for first principles that are self-evident and not subject to further grounding discourses. A decision to favor either transcendence or immanence is likely to presuppose some kind of unmediated assumption or presumed truth that implicitly excludes mediation by its opposite.

In an experiment to see whether forging such a mediation might not be possible after all, Nahum Brown and William Franke convened an international conference at the University of Macau under the auspices of the Programme of Philosophy and Religious Studies in March 2015 in order to explore this key issue in the area specifically of intercultural philosophy. We present the results of our investigation and exchange in the form of this collective volume of selected essays by participants in the conference combined with several supplementary invited contributions." (preface, p. X)

26. Bruya, Brian. 2017. "Ethnocentrism and Multiculturalism in Contemporary Philosophy." Philosophy East and West no. 67:991-1018.

"In what follows, I will make a case for diversifying philosophy in regard to subject matter. I’ll do this in several steps. First I will motivate the project by describing a certain generic model of ethnocentrism. Like the implicit bias project, this model of ethnocentrism demonstrates a depressing fact about human decision making, but rather than leaving it at the level of the individual, it considers the effects of individualaction at the level of the group. What is especially distressing about this model is that the decision-making mechanism leverages the strategy of cooperation to implement exclusionism, thereby masking discrimination beneath the self-congratulatory appearance of altruism. The second step will be to give a justification for the benefits of diversity in problem solving, drawing largely from the work of Scott Page, a specialist in political philosophy and complex dynamic systems. Next, I will highlight the benefits of multiculturalism at the individual level from the perspective of experimental psychology. For this, I will draw on the work of psychologist Ying-yi Hong 康 螢儀 among others. From these three mathematical and empirical resources, I will conclude that increasing diversity in philosophy by increasing its multicultural content is instrumentally desirable for students and for the profession. Having established the need for cultural diversity, I show how micromotives biased by ethnocentrism in philosophy are having macroeffects on the field. Finally, I suggest ways to act to help promote cultural diversity in the field of philosophy." (pp. 991-992)

27. ———. 2017. "Reply to Robert Neville." Philosophy East and West no. 67:1021-1022.

"First, a clarification. Professor Neville says that “the point is not to bring in more Chinese (and other ethnic groups with minority status in America) philosophers.”

This is stated correctly in the sense that my main point is not about identity diversity, but the statement could be misconstrued as an opposition on my part to increasing identity diversity in philosophy programs. I want to prevent such a misconstrual by

stating plainly that I think the demographic makeup of American philosophy departments should more or less reflect the demographic makeup of American society." (p. 1021)

28. Burik, Steven. 2009. The End of Comparative Philosophy and the Task of Comparative Thinking: Heidegger, Derrida, and Daoism. Albany: State University of New York Press.

"The idea of comparative philosophy which guides me in this book thus has the following characteristics: Comparative philosophy should focus on two things: similarities and diff erences between ways of thinking.

It should however not content itself with merely pointing to these similarities and diff erences but should instead seek to make them productive in the sense that through these similarities and diff erences we come to understand better first of all what we are comparing, and second the way in which we compare these philosophies, and that means also our contemporary philosophies and presuppositions of how we perceive our world. I do not believe in one overarching theory or methodology of comparative philosophy. In that sense my approach is hermeneutic, in that it recognizes the necessity of perspectives. There are however a couple of ideas which comparative philosophy should adhere to. It should seek a dialogue, between two different cultural perspectives (and it must be noticed that the Western philosophical tradition, although often one of the interlocutors, is not necessarily always involved), that is based on equivalence. This dialogic approach means that comparative philosophy should try as much as possible to position itself in-between the different cultures. How this in-between is to be perceived is addressed in this book." (p. 4)

29. ———. 2018. "Comment on "Comparative Philosophy: In Response to Rorty and Macintyre" by Rui Zhu." Philosophy East and West no. 68:266-270.

"The brief response by Rui Zhu provides an interesting take on the (by now) perennial problem of what comparative philosophy is or should be. While Zhu makes some interesting observations about and suggestions for comparative philosophy, he chooses contributions to the thinking about the possibilities and methodologies of comparative philosophy that are rather old, though, and my first wonder is: why these two papers, and not more recent contributions to the development of the methodology of comparative philosophy, as can be found in numerous recently published work? Such more recent publications tend to take a more nuanced approach to the idea of (in-)commensurability than the two essays from 1991, given the developments in comparative philosophy in the last twenty-five years."

(...)

"In my view, it is a definite advancement that recent comparative philosophy is trying to step away from essentialism, the concept of ‘essence’ not even being prominent in other traditions such as the Chinese in the first place. This means that postmodern thinkers who have actively challenged the dominant Western tradition provide a more fruitful platform for comparison, since they display the kind of openness often lacking in the ‘stricter’ philosophers.

Second and following up on this, using the term ‘philosophy’ is problematic for comparative philosophers since by the very nature of our profession we would then have to widen the scope of philosophy, which would inevitably result in disagreements about the limits and boundaries of what philosophy is in general." (pp. 266-267)

References

Zhu, Rui (2018).

30. ———. 2022. "Comparative Philosophy without Method: A Plea for Minimal Constraints." In Comparative Philosophy and Method: Contemporary Practices and Future Possibilities, edited by Burik, Steven, Smid, Robert W. and Weber, Ralph, 203-222. New York: Bloomsbury.

"When Robert, Ralph, and I first met to discuss this project, my first impression was that I would write a paper on what I thought was the methodology of comparative philosophy. Then I realized that what I thought was the method that I would employ in my work would only be one of the various possible methods. Then I thought that if this was the case, there may virtually be no limit to the number of methods of comparative philosophy. And that informs my claim here: that methodological constraints on comparative philosophy should be minimal and kept minimal." (p. 203)

31. Burik, Steven, Smid, Robert W., and Weber, Ralph, eds. 2022. Comparative Philosophy and Method: Contemporary Practices and Future Possibilities. New York: Bloomsbury.

Contents: Steven Burik, Robert Smid, and Ralph Weber: Introduction 1;

Constellation I Necessary Conditions

1. Robert Cummings Neville: Reflections on Methods of Comparative Philosophy 17; 2. Jaap van Brakel and Lin Ma: Necessary Preconditions of the Practice of Comparative Philosophy 31;

Constellation II Generalization and Essentialization

3. Roger T. Ames: Unloading the Essentialism Charge: Some Methodological Reflections in Doing Philosophy of Culture 55; 4. François Jullien ( trans. Steven Burik): From the Ecart to the Unfamiliar: Thinking Paths Reference Points 71;

Constellation III Translation

5. Souleymane Bachir Diagne (trans. Philippe Major): Translation as Method; 6. Elisa Freschi: Thinking Along with Texts from Afar: Why One Doesn't Understand Texts without Philosophical Reflection and Can't Do Philosophy without Inspiration 97;

Constellation IV Postcolonialism and Globalization

7. Gabriel Soldatenko: Reflections for Comparative Method from a Latin American Philosophical Perspective 119; 8. Jonardon Ganeri: Why Philosophy Needs Sanskrit, Now More than Ever 139; 9. Arindam Chakrabarti and Ralph Weber: Global Post-Comparative Philosophy as Just Philosophy;

Constellation V Plurality, Neutrality, and Method

10. Robert Smid: On the Taming of Comparison: Methodological Myopathy, Plurality, and Creativity 181; 11. Steven Burik: Comparative Philosophy without Method: A Plea for Minimal Constraints 203; 12 Jonathan O. Chimakonam and Amara E. Chimakonam: Two Problems of Comparative Philosophy: Why Conversational Thinking Is a Veritable Methodological Option 223;

Steven Burik, Robert Smid, and Ralph Weber: Epilogue 241;

Notes on Contributors 257; Index 261,

"This volume was brought to fruition out of a recognition that, while comparative philosophy is thriving, and while a number of texts within that field of study have been written in a manner that is explicit about its methodological commitments, very little work has been done to bring these many considerations on method and methodology in comparative philosophy together." (p.1)

(...)

"The intended audience for this book is intentionally broad. On the one hand, it is meant to serve as a primer for anyone looking to undertake the task of comparative philosophy. Because there are currently no clear and accessible resources laying out the variety of methodological considerations that are available, younger scholars should find this a valuable resource for weighing these considerations, making an informed choice among them, or perhaps even developing their own approach.

On the other hand, it is also intended to broaden the awareness of even seasoned veterans, who would benefit from a more concise, explicit, and recent account of these methods for use in their own work. Ultimately, then, this should be an important resource for anyone writing on comparative philosophy, since upon publication of this text there should be no excuse for any lack of methodological awareness in such works." (pp. 5-6)

32. ———. 2022. "Introduction." In Comparative Philosophy and Method: Contemporary Practices and Future Possibilities, edited by Burik, Steven, Smid, Robert W. and Weber, Ralph, 1-15. New York: Bloomsbury.

"In the early texts of Philosophy East and West, a lot of discussion revolved around world philosophical synthesis (Behuniak 2017) and the desire for world peace is palpable, given that the Second World War had just ended. One would have to assume that our own positionalities and political environments have similar impacts not only on the aims and purposes we attach to our work in comparative philosophy but also to discussions of method within it.

This book seeks to join ongoing efforts to remedy this situation by presenting, in a concise and accessible format, a diverse set of methodological considerations for comparative philosophy. While it would not be possible to include all of the available alternatives within one volume, presenting a substantially diverse array of such alternatives is enough to challenge myopic understandings of comparative method and encourage a more informed consideration of method.

Accordingly, this book includes essays by scholars from East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and America, with representatives from a wide variety of philosophical traditions.

Each essay is meant to be cutting edge insofar as it reflects the authors' latest work in methodology, so that every chapter can serve as an up-to-date methodological resource and viable methodological alternative for any would-be philosophical comparativist." (p. 5)

References

Behuniak,Jim (2017), 'john Dewey and East-West Philosophy," Philosophy East and West, 67 (3): 908-16.

33. ———. 2022. "Epilogue." In Comparative Philosophy and Method: Contemporary Practices and Future Possibilities, edited by Burik, Steven, Smid, Robert W. and Weber, Ralph, 241-255. New York: Bloomsbury.

"One of the primary purposes of this volume has been to capture the present methodological moment in the history of comparative philosophy. This collection of essays from a wide array of contemporary comparativists reflects on the methodological challenges of our day. Although hardly exhaustive, it provides a snapshot of the present moment, a collective record of sorts, representing many of the shared assumptions, live disagreements, and anticipated possibilities for our field of study in the early part of the twenty-first century. Yet in this century, such documentation is hardly enough:" (p. 241)

34. Burtt, E. A. 1948. "How Can the Philosophies of East and West Meet?" The Philosophical Review no. 57:590-604.

With my own attempt to understand the philosophies of the East I found myself making little headway until a key idea which I had hitherto failed to appreciate dawned in my mind." (p. 590)

(...)

"The key idea which has brought considerable and steadily increasing illumination to my mind as I confront this situation is that which the modern West usually denotes by the word "context." It gradually became clear to me that when one approaches the philosophy of a different culture whatever success he achieves will be contingent on his pursuing the task in two ways: (I) making full use of such apparent linguistic equivalents as are already available for probing his way into the details of that culture and its specialized forms of thinking; and (2) catching, as soon as he can, something of the genius of its point of view toward life and the world as a whole, and using that insight to throw light on the ideas which have perplexed him and their pattern of relationships with others. Each of these approaches is necessary, because the second cannot be performed in any promising fashion apart from the first, while if the first dispenses with the second it may yield some understanding of the technology, art, and science of the culture studied, but it will not open the door to its philosophy. The indispensability of the second approach is naturally indicated by the term "context," in the special meaning of an all inclusive orientation conceived to be required for the understanding of this or that philosophically relevant detail." (p. 591)

35. Butnor, Ashby, and McWeeny, Jennifer. 2009. "Why Feminist Comparative Philosophy?" APA Newsletters no. 9:4-5.

"We see feminist comparative philosophy as a natural outgrowth of both comparative philosophy and feminist philosophy. East-West comparative philosophy and feminist philosophy already share much in terms of methodology: a hermeneutic of openness and respect for difference, a crossing of philosophical boundaries and traditions, a rejection of the dichotomy of theory and practice, and the pursuit of new ways of looking at the world. In our work, we seek to show how bringing diverse philosophical traditions into dialogue with each other can provide fresh insights on questions of specific interest to feminists and global theorists generally. We believe that what distinguishes feminist comparative philosophy from transnational/global/postcolonial feminist theories is that feminist comparative methodology engages an analysis of original and primary philosophical sources from the tradition in question. Most importantly, we wish to emphasize that feminist comparative methodology fosters the development of original, creative concepts and ideas that may not have emerged had the philosopher been thinking within the confines of one tradition only" (p. 5)

36. Chakrabarti, Arindam. 2002. "Analytic versus Comparative: A Bogus Dichotomy in Philosophy." APA Newsletters no. 2:39-42.

"In the rest of this paper, I propose to indicate a specific research-program in (what Mark Siderits, one of the finest practitioners of analytic comparative Indian philosophy has called) “fusion philosophy,” that derives its inspiration from an in-depth study of Abhinavagupta’s epistemology of self-consciousness.

Such fusion philosophy is nothing very new.

In a profoundly creative way, K.C. Bhattacharya practiced it when he wrote his “Subject as Freedom” although his writing style is more phenomenological than analytic. In our own times, besides J.N. Mohanty who combines analytic clarity with phenomenological concerns and deep roots in Indian philosophy, Mark Siderits, Jonardon Ganeri and Roy Perrett have published quite a lot of Indian-Western fusion-analytic

philosophy in the journals." (p. 40)

37. Chakrabarti, Arindam, and Weber, Ralph, eds. 2016. Comparative Philosophy without Borders. New York: Routledge.

Contents: Notes on Contributors VI; Arindam Chakrabarti and Ralph Weber: Introduction 1; 1. Tom J. F. Tillemans: Count Nouns, Mass Nouns, and Translatability: The Case of Tibetan Buddhist Logical Literature 35; 2. Barry Hallen: Translation, Interpretation, and Alternative Epistemologies 55; 3. Chien-hsing Ho: Resolving the Ineffability Paradox 69; 4. Laurie L. Patton: The Bowstring is Like a Woman Humming: The Vedic Hymn to the Weapons and the Transformative Properties of Tools 83; 5. Arindam Chakrabarti: How Do We Read Others’ Feelings? Strawson and Zhuangzi Speak to Dharmakirti, Ratnakīrti, and Abhinavagupta 95; 6. Masato Ishida: The Geography of Perception: Japanese Philosophy in the External World 119; 7. Ralph Weber: Authority: Of German Rhinos and Chinese Tigers 143; 8. Sari Nusseibeh: To Justice with Love 175; 9. Sor-hoon Tan: Justice and Social Change 205; Arindam Chakrabarti and Ralph Weber: Afterword/Afterwards 227; Index 241.

38. ———. 2016. "Introduction." In Comparative Philosophy without Borders, edited by Chakrabarti, Arindam and Weber, Ralph, 1-33. New York: Routledge.

"Three concepts need to be clarified before we can speak intelligibly about Comparative Philosophy without Borders avoiding calculated confusion or foreseeable misunderstanding: the concept of philosophy, the concept of comparison (from which the concept of “comparative” is derived), and the concept of borders. Everybody understands and agrees that “without” simply means lacking, which, in this context, must signify coming to lose or erase rather than never having had. Therefore, we need not dwell separately and tediously on the meaning of “without,” although in some branches of classical and contemporary Indian metaphysics, the meaning of the particular sort of negation that expresses that peculiar “absence” whereby one thing lacks or sheds another thing or property is also a hot topic. Of the three crucial concepts, then, let us start with the concept of a border, since the concept of philosophy is inexhaustibly controversial (two sides across a border often do not mean the same by “philosophy”) and paradox-generatingly self-inclusive and we shall have much more substantial and provocative things to say about comparison." (p. 1)

39. ———. 2022. "Global Post-Comparative Philosophy as Just Philosophy." In Comparative Philosophy and Method: Contemporary Practices and Future Possibilities, edited by Burik, Steven, Smid, Robert W. and Weber, Ralph, 159-179. New York: Bloomsbury.

"This chapter revisits some recent controversies around the apparent difficulty of integrating comparative and "non-European philosophy" into philosophy departments in an attempt at distinguishing political from philosophical concerns. How to frame and label the philosophical concerns is important for the political discussion and crucial for achieving a more just philosophy. We argue for a global post-comparative approach, similar to what is also called fusion philosophy. But the results of such an approach should also constitute just-and nothing more than-philosophy, that is, amount to nothing qualitatively different from philosophy. The gist of the matter has to do with methodology, that is, with how to do philosophy. In this spirit, we offer two brief methodological arguments, one pertaining to a weak historicism, the other to the philosophical value of polyglotism, hopefully working toward facilitating the non-exclusionary inclusion of "non-European philosophy," no longer deserving of the label, in a future globally decentered philosophy."

40. Chakrabarti, Kisor K. 2002. "The Problem of Induction: A Comparative Approach." APA Newsletters no. 2:36-38.

"The classical problem of induction was introduced into Indian philosophy fairly early. The legendary figure commonly associated with this is Carvaka (6th century BCE?). His own writings are lost. But many later writers have carefully developed his views." (p. 36)

(...)

"We do not imply that Carvaka and Hume hold exactly the same views. [For example, one difference is that for Hume but not for Carvaka, memory is knowledge.] But the similarities are patent enough to merit a comparison. For Hume, the inductive leap from observed to unobserved cases cannot be justified unless one assumes the principle of uniformity of nature and that the future will resemble the past; this involves begging the question. For Carvaka induction cannot be justified by observation alone because the inductive leap invariably goes beyond observation. At the same time, induction cannot be justified by inference or any other non-observational means. The latter must depend on premises that go beyond observation and are themselves dependent on further premises that too go beyond observation. This is doomed to end in infinite regress or circularity; this is similar to Hume’s argument. Both again hold that this has no bearing on practical activities that can go on from expectation or habit based on probable opinion rather than knowledge." (p. 36)

41. Chimakonam, Jonathan O., and Chimakonam, Amara E. 2022. "Two Problems of Comparative Philosophy: Why Conversational Thinking Is a Veritable Methodological Option." In Comparative Philosophy and Method: Contemporary Practices and Future Possibilities, edited by Burik, Steven, Smid, Robert W. and Weber, Ralph, 223-239. New York: Bloomsbury.

"This chapter will investigate what we take to be two of the most urgent comparative philosophy problems. These preceding discussions will pave the way for our proposal of conversational thinking as a veritable methodological option for comparative philosophy. Part of our goal will be to offer "conversational thinking," a bourgeoning cross-cultural method, as another veritable option besides Mou's proposal. Another goal would be to produce a conception of comparative philosophy that clearly delineates its boundary. And then, in aligning both our conception and the method of conversational thinking, we will plot a new but clear trajectory for the field of comparative philosophy." (p. 225)

42. Chmielewski, Janusz. 1978. "The Principle of Reductio ad Absurudum against a Comparative Background." Studia Semiotyczne — English Supplement no. VIII-XII:139-222.

Originally published as ”Zasada redukcji do absurdu na tle porównawczym,” Studia Semiotyczne 11 (1981), 21–106. Translated by Lesław Kawalec.

"The subject of this discussion is the peculiar applications of the logical principle that states that if any sentence implies its own negation, the sentence is false and thus its negation is true." (p. 139)

(...)

"Of the issues that merit particular attention in comparative terms, three groups ought to be mentioned that could be summed up in the following initial propositions:

1. firstly, the principle of the reductio ad absurdum was first devised independently (in the sense of being applied in peculiar reasonings) in all three ancient cultural circles that had created their own philosophical speculation: European (Greek), Chinese and Indian (Buddhist Indian);

2. secondly, relevant reasonings, testified to in these otherwise different philosophies using different languages, are not only similar in form but concern similar if not identical issues and serve similar goals, with the Buddhist Indian circle differing uniquely from the others,

3. thirdly, the reductive reasonings, which were revelatory in their day, in the light of modern semantics, prove to be covert paralogisms, which in practice do not so much constitute examples of the application of the principle of the reductio ad absurdum but, rather, illustrations of unconscious overuse of the principle." (pp.138-139)

43. Collins, Randall. 1998. The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press.

"The topic of this book is a sociology of philosophies, which is to say the abstract conceptions produced by networks of specialized intellectuals turned inward upon their own arguments. This network displays definite social dynamics over the expanse of world history. This topic is not the same thing as the production of popular culture, such as the advertising, pop stars, tourist industry, personal apparel, electronic networks, and their multiplex intercombinations that make up the topics for postmodernist sociology of culture." (p. 12)

(...)

"The first three chapters present the general theory. Chapter 1 lays out the theory of interaction ritual chains, which is the micro-core of the argument for the social predictability of intellectuals’ thinking. Chapter 2 gives a theory of the network structure which determines the location of creativity, and compares the evidence of networks of Chinese and Greek philosophers over several dozens of generations. The subsequent chapters confront the theory with long-term segments of these intellectual networks and those of India, Japan, the medieval Islamic, Jewish, and Christian worlds, and the European West through the 1930s. Each chapter highlights a particular analytical theme. The chapters need not be read in any particular sequence, although Chapter 3, on ancient Greece, presents some central principles that figure in what follows. A

brief summary of the analytical model is given in “Conclusions to Part I: The Ingredients of Intellectual Life.” Chapter 15 presents the conclusions of the entire analysis in a sketch of the pathways along which intellectuals through their debates drive the sequence of ideas during long periods of time. The reader may find it useful as a road map of the book. The Epilogue draws epistemological conclusions from the whole argument." (p. 15)

44. Connolly, Tim. 2015. Doing Philosophy Comparatively. New York: Bloomsbury.

"This book is divided into three parts. Part I covers the definition of comparative philosophy and its central concepts. Critics have challenged both the comparative and the philosophical aspects of the field, and we begin by considering whether these criticisms are justified, focusing first on the definition of "philosophy" in comparative philosophy (Chapter 1). From there we turn our focus to the meaning of "comparison;' examining two main ways in which the study of thinkers and texts from culturally distinct traditions has been thought to be philosophically fruitful (Chapter 2). Finally, we look at the meaning of "culture" and "tradition'' themselves and how they are related to the practice of comparative philosophy (Chapter 3).

Part II focuses on the central methodological problems of comparative philosophy. Because the thinkers or texts being compared have been formed according to the languages, concepts, and standards of justification of their distinctive cultures and traditions, there is the issue of whether it is possible for philosophers from one tradition to understand and evaluate those from another-the problem of incommensurability (Chapters 4 and 5). Even if it is possible, the forced or unequal application of one tradition's categories can lead to a distorted image of the other-the problem of one-sidedness (Chapter 6). Finally, there is the difficulty of situating the items compared within the larger cultural traditions of which they are part-the problem of generalization (Chapter 7). We will consider the various challenges each problem poses as well as the main strategies that comparative philosophers have developed to overcome them.

Part III gives brief discussions of four approaches to comparative philosophy: universalism (Chapter 8), pluralism (Chapter 9), consensus (Chapter 10), and global philosophy (Chapter 11). While in reality there are as many approaches to comparative philosophy as there are comparative philosophers, I focus on these four because they illustrate basic orientations toward similarity and difference. Universalism emphasizes points of convergence between different philosophical-cultural traditions; pluralism, points of divergence; consensus, a means of balancing points of convergence and divergence; and global philosophy, a rejection of the convergence / divergence model of comparison in favor of creative interaction between traditions at specific points. I hope that this last section of the book not only gives readers some sense of the competing models under which productive work in comparative philosophy has taken place, but also encourages them to think about how to improve or go beyond these models." (p. 7)

45. Cooper, David E. 2002. World Philosophies: A Historical Introduction. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Second revised edition (First edition 1996).

"The title of this book is ambiguous. ‘World philosophies’ might refer to philosophies from around the world, or it might mean something like ‘world- views’, theories on the grand scale about ‘The World’. My title is intended to bear both senses, so it is a pun." (Introduction, p. 1)

(...)

"The present book, then, attempts to redress an imbalance: the ‘world philosophies’ it presents are indeed from ‘around the world’, sizeable chunks of it, at any rate: India, China, Japan, the Near and Middle East, and Africa, as well as Europe and North America." (p. 2)

(,,,)

"Indeed, it is not only geographical comprehensiveness that the book lacks: for its subject is not philosophy at large, but philosophies. ‘Philosophy’, as the name of a very general intellectual activity, does not have a plural, no more than does ‘music’; and philosophies no more exhaust the field of philosophy than music consists entirely in the outpouring of musicals. Philosophies, like musicals, are particular products of the more general activity." (p. 2)

46. Creller, Aaron B. 2016. "Introducing the World: Making Time for Islamic and Chinese Material alongside the Western Canon." ASIANetwork Exchange no. 23:124-138.

Abstract: "In this essay I consider the challenges faced by non-specialists in comparative philosophy. I address several familiar objections to incorporating non-Western material into standing philosophy courses (i.e., the view that the material is, indeed, not included in the category philosophy, or the worry that there simply is not enough time to cover such material). In answering these objections, I emphasize that what we today call the “Western” canon has historically been shaped by a plurality of cultures. I then conclude with several sample course modules, designed to help non-specialists incorporate sessions on Islamic and Chinese philosophy into introductory classes."

47. ———. 2018. Making Space for Knowing: A Capacious Approach to Comparative Epistemology. Lanham: Lexington Books.

"Contemporary mainstream epistemology suffers from an overly narrow focus on propositional knowledge." (p. X)

(...)

"In this book, I focus on illustrating not only how this narrow definition has prevented analytic epistemology from adequately integrating its own accounts of non-propositional knowledge (i.e. skill-based knowledge or interpersonal knowledge), but also on how it fails to adequately account for the structure of propositional knowledge itself. In response to this narrow definition, I construct an alternative using Western and non-Western resources that both solves this initial problem as well as addresses the problems of objectivity and cross-cultural, comparative approaches to knowledge. In this way, I seek to reopen the space closed by analytic epistemology in order to better account for knowledge in its various forms, especially across cultural divides." (p. XI)

48. Dallmayr, Fred. 1996. Beyond Orientalism: Essays on Cross-Cultural Encounter. Albany: State University of New York Press.

"This book is a collection of essays rather than a systematic treatise - for reasons having to do with the topic of inquiry. Proceeding in linear fashion from start to finish, a systematic treatise presupposes a standpoint outside or above the welter of competing cultures and life-forms, a standpoint permitting an objective and "totalizing" overview.

This assumption goes against the very grain of cross-cultural encounter, which has to start "from the ground up" and in a dialogical fashion, offering only the uncertain prospect of a learning experience. Coming from a European or Western background, I certainly cannot pretend to a superior or encompassing perspective; all I can claim is to have been sometimes the instigator and always the beneficiary of cultural learning-in a manner which hopefully will also be beneficial to readers. In the contemporary political climate, I definitely do not wish to give aid and comfort to a homogenizing globalism or universalism, which often is only a smokescreen for neocolonial forms of domination.

Although a collection of essays, this book Is not simply a string of haphazardly linked vignettes. In a cautious and subdued manner. the sequence of chapters is held together by a Iine of argument which moves forward (without being coercively systematic). The opening chapter discusses the broad range of possible "modes" of cross-cultural encounter in a historical perspective. Following a path of normative-ethical ascent, the discussion ranges from strategies of conquest, conversion, and assimilation to more benign forms of Interaction, culminating in a model of dialogical reciprocity and exchange. Drawing its inspiration chiefly from Gadamer and Derrida, the book then develops as preferred option the notion of a 'deconstructive dialogue' or a 'hermeneutics of difference' where dialogical exchange respects otherness beyond assimilation. Concentrating on the relation between India and the West, subsequent chapters examine the work of several prominent bridge builders across cultures, primarily the Indian philosophers Radhakrishnan and J. L. Mehta and the German-American philosopher and lndologist Wilhelm Halbfass. Proceeding to a broader comparative leveL a centerpiece of the book juxtaposes Western thought and Indian thought along the lines of a distinction between decontextualized and context-bound modes of cultural discourse. The remaining chapters shift the accent to more concrete social-political problems, including the issues of social development (or "modernization"), multiculturalism, and the prospects of a globalized democracy." (Preface, pp. XI-XII)

49. Davidson, Donald. 1974. "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme." Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association no. 47:5-20.

Reprinted in D. Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1984, pp. 183-198.

"Philosophers of many persuasions are prone to talk of conceptual schemes. Conceptual schemes, we are told, are ways of organizing experience; they are systems of categories that give form to the data of sensation; they are points of view from which individuals, cultures, or periods survey the passing scene. There may be no translating from one scheme to another, in which case the beliefs, desires, hopes and bits of knowledge that characterize one person have no true counterparts for the subscriber to another scheme. Reality itself is relative to a scheme: what counts as real in one system may not in another.

Even those thinkers who are certain there is only one conceptual scheme are in the sway of the scheme concept; even monotheists have religion. And when someone sets out to describe "our conceptual scheme," his homey task assumes, if we take him literally, that there might be rival systems.

Conceptual relativism is a heady and exotic doctrine, or would be if we could make good sense of it. The trouble is, as so often in philosophy, it is hard to improve intelligibility while retaining the excitement. At any rate that is what I shall argue." (p. 5)

50. Davis, Bret. 2009. "Step Back and Encounter: From Continental to Comparative Philosophy." Comparative and Continental Philosophy no. 1:9-22.

Abstract: "By drawing on the insights of a number of continental as well as Asian thinkers, this article reflects on the “significance” of comparative philosophy—both in the sense of discussing the “meaning” and in the sense of arguing for the “importance” of this endeavor. Encountering another culture allows one to deepen one’s self-understanding by learning to “see oneself from the outside”; this deeper self-understanding in turn allows one to listen to what the other culture has to say. These two moments, or movements, are interdependent and mutually supportive. Without the step back to self-understanding, we unknowingly reduce the other to the unrecognized categories of our own thinking; but without encountering another culture, our understanding of our own culture remains shallow. This article argues that an engagement with non-Western philosophy, particularly with a set of traditions as rich and radically different as those of Asian thought, can and should take place as a hermeneutic circling between self-understanding and openness to encounter: the dialogical step back and step forward are mutually supportive endeavors. For only by way of such dialogue do we attain the concrete freedom and possibility for transformation and change, that is, the ability to critically and creatively develop old customs or modes of thought and to critically and creatively adopt new ones. Moreover, only through such dialogue can we learn to not only let others be, but to share insights with them, and to build together a global community which neither reifies nor abolishes cultural differences."

51. Daye, Douglas Dunsmore. 1976. "Language and the Languages of East-West Philosophy: An Introduction." Philosophy East and West no. 26:113-115.

"To continue the lineage of workshops sponsored by the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, there was held in the Spring, 1975, a series of four panels, which focused upon various aspects of the theme of this year's workshop, Language and the Languages of Philosophy: East and West. This workshop, held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies on March 23 and 24, 1975, consisted of three major papers and three critics during each of four sessions."

(...)

"From the twelve excellent papers noted above, five were chosen to be included in this issue, since they illustrated many of the various philosophical directions exemplified in the four panels." (p. 113)

Papers included in in this issue:

Richard S. Y. Chi, A Semantic Study of Propositions, East and West, pp. 211-223.

Ashok K. Gangadean, Formal Ontology and Movement between Worlds, pp. 167-188.

Robert M. Gimello, Apophatic and kataphatic Discourse in Mahāyāna: A Chinese View, pp. 117-136.

Luis O. Gómez, Proto-Mādhyamika in the Pāli Canon, pp. 137-165.

Chad D. Hansen, Mass Nouns and "A White Horse Is Not a Horse", pp. 189-209.

52. Defoort, Carine. 2001. "Is There Such a Thing as Chinese Philosophy? Arguments of an Implicit Debate." Philosophy East and West no. 51:393-413.

"It is certainly not my intention to solve the crucial question concerning the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy once and for all - this would be an impossible task given the indecision governing the definition of the concept of philosophy even in the West. Nor do I wish to call into question the legitimacy or value of two domains that are closely adjacent to the theme of this essay, namely philosophy in China - the philosophical activities of contemporary Chinese academics - and current Chinese philosophy, insofar as this refers to a purely geographical variant of something like contemporary Continental philosophy. The arguments presented here concern only the traditiona Chinese body of thought, which is generally labeled as Chinese philosophy. A clear definition of our domain is thus our first task." (p. 394, a note omitted)

53. ———. 2020. "The Exclusion of Chinese Philosophy: “Ten Don’ts,” “Three Represents,” and “Eight Musts”." Philosophy East and West no. 70:214-225.

Book discussion of: Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought. By Eric S. Nelson. London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi,Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.

Abstract: "The legitimacy of Chinese philosophy is a thorny topic that has returned in waves during the last decades. The high tides were 2003 and 2016. While the topic can and has been discussed from a wide variety of points of view, most debates focus on the Chinese side: either on the nature and quality of early Chinese master texts (e.g., “Do they fit the demands of philosophy?”) or on current research at Chinese philosophy departments (e.g., “How should the Chinese intellectual heritage be studied?” “Is it philosophically interesting?”). Such reflections are important and deserve to be continued.

However, one side of the issue usually remains out of view: the Western philosophers themselves, who lay the burden of proof almost exclusively with the Chinese masters or scholars. Since when, where, and how have scholars denied Chinese masters the label of “philosophy”? How explicit has the debate been? What were the various views and their historical or intellectual contexts? How did the debate evolve? What are its current implications and future prospects? These historically inspired philosophical questions differ in orientation from the dominant approaches. Even though they may not necessarily solve the disagreement concerning the legitimacy of Chinese philosophy, they do throw a fascinating light on the nature of (Western) philosophy." (A note omitted)

54. Deng, Xize. 2010. "Problem and Method: The Possibility of Comparative Study—Using “Lun Liujia Yaozhi” as an Example." Frontiers of hilosophy in China no. 5:575-600.

Abstract: "On the basis of general characteristics, comparative studies can be restricted by cross-cultural comparison in a narrow sense. In this paper, I take “Chinese philosophy” as an example to investigate the current problems within comparative studies. However, it is possible to embark on comparative study.

“Lun Liujia Yaozhi” 论六家要旨 (“Discussion on the Main Points of the Six Schools”) conducts a successful comparison, from which we can extract the comparative method of “Problem and Method,” and it points directly to the basic structure of survival activities, and furnishes the possibility for cross-cultural comparisons."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography of Intercultural and Comparative Philosophy: Deu-K

Bibliography

1. Deutsch, Eliot, ed. 1991. Culture and Modernity: East-West Philosophics Perspectives. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Contents: Preface XI; Acknowledgments XVII;

The Crisis of Modernity

Richard Rorty: Philosophers, Novelists, and Intercultural Comparisons: Heidegger, Kundera, and Dickens 3; Lucius Outlaw: Lifeworlds, Modernity, and Philosophical Praxis: Race, Ethnicity, and Criticial Social Theory 21; David L. Hall: Modern China and the Postmodern West 50; Svetoza Stojanovic: From Marxism to Post-Marxism 71;

Incommensurability

Richard J. Bernstein: Incommensurability and Otherness Revisited 85; Alasdair MacIntyre: Incommensurability, Truth, and the Conversation Between Confucians and Aristotelians about the Virtues 104; Karl H. Potter: The Commensurability of Indian Epistemological Theories 123;

Relativism

Bilal K. Matilal: Pluralism, Relativism, and Interaction between Cultures 141; JIang Tianji: The Problem of Relativism 161; Ferenc Feher: Between Relativism and Fundamentalism: Hermeneutics as Europe's Mainstream Political and Moral Tradition 174;

Language and Non-Western Cultural Traditions

A. C. Graham: Conceptual Schemes and Linguistic Relativism in Relation to Chinese 193; Thomas P. Kasulis: The Origins of the Question: Four Traditional Japanese Philosophies of Language 213; Roger T. Ames: Meaning as Imaging: Prolegomena to a Confucian Epistemology 227; Li Zhilin: On the Dual Nature of Traditional Chinese Thought and Its Modernization 245;

Culture and the Ethical

Karl Otto Apel: A Planetary Macroethics for Humankind: The Need, the Apparent Difficulty, and the Eventual Possibility 261; Antono S. Cua: Reasonable Challenges and Preconditions of Adjudication 279; Hilary Putnam: The French Revolution and the Holocaust: Can Ethics Be Ahistorical? 299; Joel K. Kupperman: Tradition and Moral Progress 313;

Culture and ther Aesthetic

Arthur C. Danto: The Shape of Artistic Pasts, East and West 331; Megumi Sakabe: Surrealistic Distortion of Landscape and the Reason of the Milieu 343; Richard Wollheim: Why Art Changes 354;

Culture and the Religious

Frederick J. Streng: The Transcendental in a Comparative Context 367; Margaret Chatterjee: Reflections on Religious Pluralism in the Indian Context 385; Lenn E. Goodman: Three Enduring Achievements of Islamic Philosophy 401; G. C. Pande: Two Dimensions of Religion: Reflections Based on Indian Spiritual Experience and Philosophical Traditions 430;

Culture and the Political

Graham Parkes: Between Nationalism and Nomadism: Wondering about the Languages of Philosophy 455; Aziz Al-Azmeh: The Discourse of Cultural Authenticity: Islamist Revivalism and Enlightenment Universalism 468; Kwame Gyekye: Traditional Political Values and Ideas: An Examination of Their Revelance to Developments in Contemporary African Political Order 487;

Cultural Identity

Maria L. Herrera: On the Interpretation of Traditional Cultures 505; Roop Rkha Verma: The Concept of Progress and Cultural Identity 526; Agnes Heller: Moses, Hsüan-tsang, and History 535; Daya Krishna: Secularism: Sacred and Profane 548;

Scientif Progress

Larry Laudan: Scientific Progress and Content Loss 561; Marcello Pera: A Dialectical View of Scientific Rationality and Progress 570; Ilkka Niiniluoto: Scientific Progress Reconsidered 593; Lorenz Krüger: Does Progress in Science Lead to Truth? 615;

Contributors 629; Index 637-641.

"The essays in this volume from among many of the leading thinkers from numerous countries throughout the world were first presented at the Sixth East-West Philosophers' Conference, which was held in August 1989 in Honolulu, Hawaii, and which I had the honor to direct. While never forming a melody quite as lovely as any of Mozart's, the authors did address several common problems under the general theme "Culture and Modernity: The Authority of the Past" in a spirit which sought mutual cross-cultural understanding through careful interpretation and frank critical engagement. Many voices were heard and listened to artfully.

Although there is always something of a tension among philosophers engaged in comparative work between those who are disposed to look for, find, and announce similarities and those who seek, discover, and celebrate differences in modes of thought, styles of argumentation, basic ideas, and presuppositions among diverse cultures and different individuals within those cultures, the conference on the whole was concerned more with the plurality issuing from differences than with the singularity following from sameness—while all the time its participants being very much aware of a common human/natural/spiritual world that has emerged so suddenly in world history and whose very fate rests so largely on the success of cooperative undertakings by those who rep resent very different worlds within that common matrix." (Preface, pp. X-XI, a note omitted)

2. ———. 1997. Introduction to World Philosophies. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

"This text presents a collection of readings - from classical and modern Western and Asian philosophical traditions. Explores basic problems and enduring issues in philosophical anthropology, ethics and political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion."

3. ———. 2002. "Comparative Philosophy as Creative Philosophy." APA Newsletters no. 2:23-26.

"Comparative philosophy — or what we might today better call “cross-cultural,” “trans-cultural,” or simply “global” philosophy — has throughout its history and development exhibited a rich diversity of aims, methods and styles. Let me briefly sum-up a few of the most enduring of these and then set forth some features of what I take to be its most vital intentionality, namely to contribute to creative philosophical thinking." (p. 23)

4. Deutsch, Eliot, and Bontekoe, Ron, eds. 1997. A Companion to World Philosophies. Oxford: Blackwell.

Contents: List of Contributors IX; Preface XII; Guide to Pronunciation XV;

Part I: Historical Background

1 Tu Weiming: Chinese Philosophy: A Synoptic View 3; 2 J. N. Mohanty: A History of Indian Philosophy 24; 3 John Charlot: Classical Polynesian Thinking 49; 4 D. A. Masolo: African Philosophy: A Historical Overview 63; 5 Ninian Smart: A Survey of Buddhist Thought 78; 6 Tamara Albertini: Islamic Philosophy: An Overview 99;

Part II: Philosophical Topics

The Chinese Tradition

7 Shun Kwong-Loi: Ideas of the Good in Chinese Philosophy 139; 8 Roger T. Ames: The Chinese Conception of Selfhood 148; 9 P. J. Ivanhoe: Human Beings and Nature in Traditional Chinese Thought 155; 10 Carine Defoort: Causation in Chinese Philosophy 165; 11 Henry Rosemont, Jr: Chinese Socio-Political Ideals 174; 12 Chung-Ying Cheng: Reality and Divinity in Chinese Philosophy 185; 13 A. S. Cua: Reason and Principle in Chinese Philosophy: An Interpretation of Li 201; 14 David L. Hall: The Way and the Truth 214; 15 Stephen J. Goldberg: Chinese Aesthetics 225;

The Indian Tradition

16 Daya Krishna: Socio-Political Thought in Classical India 237; 17 Gerald James Larson: Indian Conceptions of Reality and Divinity 248; 18 Arindam Chakrabarti: Rationality in Indian Philosophy 259; 19 John M. Koller: Humankind and Nature in Indian Philosophy 279; 20 J. N. Mohanty: The Idea of the Good in Indian Thought 290; 21 Edwin Gerow: Indian Aesthetics: A Philosophical Survey 304; 22 Stephen H. Phillips: The Self and Person in Indian Philosophy 324; 23 Amita Chatterjee: Truth in Indian Philosophy 334;

The Buddhist Tradition

24 P. D. Premasiri: Ideas of the Good in Buddhist Philosophy 349; 25 John Ross Carter: Reflections on Social and Political Ideals in Buddhist Philosophy 360; 26 G. C. Pande: Causality in Buddhist Philosophy 370; 27 Knut A. Jacobsen: Humankind and Nature in Buddhism 381; 28 Kenneth K. Inada: Buddhist Reality and Divinity 392; 29 Thomas P. Kasulis: The Buddhist Concept of Self 400; 30 David Bastow: Rationality in Buddhist Thought 410; 31 Matthew Kapstein: Buddhist Perspectives on Ontological Truth 420;

The Islamic Tradition

32 Andrey Smirnov: Truth and Islamic Thought 437; 33 Seyyed Hossein Nasr: Islamic Aesthetics 448; 34 Josep Puig Montada: Reality and Divinity in Islamic Philosophy 460; 35 John Walbridge: Selfhood/Personhood in Islamic Philosophy 472; 36 Mourad Wahba: The Concept of the Good in Islamic Philosophy 484; 37 Andrey Smirnov: Causality and Islamic Thought 493; 38 Majid Fakhry: Rationality in Islamic Philosophy 504;

Part III: The Contemporary Situation

39 Roger T. Ames: Contemporary Chinese Philosophy 517; 40 Shigenori Nagatomo: Contemporary Japanese Philosophy 523; 41 Bina Gupta: The Contemporary Indian Situation 531; 42 John Charlot: Contemporary Polynesian Thinking 542; 43 Segun Gbadegesin: Current Trends and Perspectives in African Philosophy 548; 44 Michiko Yusa: Contemporary Buddhist Philosophy 564; 45 Marietta Stepaniants: Contemporary Islamic Thought 573;

Index 581-587.

"The purpose of this work is to provide a sophisticated, one-volume companion to the study of select non-Western philosophical traditions. It has become increasingly evident to many teachers and students of philosophy as well as to general readers that philosophy is not the exclusive province of the West: that indeed other traditions have a depth and range comparable to Western thought and exhibit distinctive features, the knowledge of which can enrich philosophical understanding and creativity wherever it occurs. This volume wit strive at once to introduce some of the finest thinking within and about non-Western traditions to teachers, students and general readers, and to offer interpretations and insights relevant to the work of other scholars in the field." (from the Introduction, p. XII)

5. Devaraja, N. K. 1967. "Philosophy and Comparative Philosophy." Philosophy East and West no. 17:51-59.

"The philosophical temper both in the East and in the West, being rooted in human nature, is more or less the same, the differences in the lines of development followed and results obtained being due largely to historical and cultural factors. In particular, I wish emphatically to deny the distinction that, as against the rational method employed by Western philosophers, Indian thinkers are inclined to use the method of intuition. Currency to such a view was given, during the latter half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, by some spokesmen of the Indian tradition who were unaccustomed to doing philosophy in a rigorous way, and had but passing acquaintance with the golden age of logico-epistemological development in Indian thought lying between the first and the tenth centuries A.D. I am more inclined to agree with the view of Dr. P. T. Raju that the Indian philosophical tradition is naturalistic and rationalistic." (pp. 58-59)

6. Dilworth, David A. 1989. Philosophy in World Perspective: A Comparative Hermeneutic of the Major Theories. New Haven: Yale University Press.

"In this work I will sketch the outline of the architecture of theories, East and West, by examining the implications of a series of comparative judgments. In essence, I will show that all the major theory-formations fall under four generic types, themselves systematically related—Sophistic, Democritean, Platonic, and Aristotelian. (This nomenclature refers to and is drawn from historical paradigms, for the principles of philosophy come to light in exemplary texts and can be known in their essential variety from no other source. But I will demonstrate that, while they are associated with classical Athenian philosophers, the four pure types transcend their historical models.)

All the other possible theory-formations are contractions of these four types. In a current economic idiom, the mixed types of philosophical texts are subsidiaries. While they seem to function independently, they still presuppose and ultimately rely on their parent companies. In this sense each of the four pure modalities of theory-formation has its own synoptic character." (p. 7)

7. Dorter, Kenneth. 2018. Can Different Cultures Think the Same Thoughts? A Comparative Study in Metaphysics and Ethics. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

"The project of this book has two aims. One is to explore issues in metaphysics and ethics, including the way metaphysics can be foundational for ethics. I approach these issues through the works of major thinkers in the three main philosophical traditions—India, China, and the West— comparing philosophers from two traditions in each chapter. An advantage of this approach is that examining a subject from different directions gives us different perspectives and allows us to see limitations and assumptions that may be inconspicuous otherwise. The comparison may also provide us with a perspective that is more than the sum of its parts.

Each of the chapters addresses its theme through the work of a different pair or group of philosophers, while the Conclusion compensates for this diversity of voices with an overview of the book as a whole." (Preface, p. IX)

8. Du Oluwagbemi, Jacob. 2010. "Intercultural Philosophy, Africa’s Predicament and Globalization: Finding the Missing Link." Annals of Humanities and Development Studies no. 1:301-312.

Abstract: "That the world has become a global community is no longer an issue. What has become an issue is the paradox in the midst of this globality. This paradox manifests in the clash between cultural identity and cultural diversity. Against the backdrop of particularism, as pursued by the vanguards of interculturality, I examine the essential ingredients of intercultural philosophy with a view to showing how this approach can be used by African philosophers to address the pressing issues of contemporary Africa. The thesis of this paper is: in light of the interdependence and intensification of inter-relations within the globe, no culture, African or non African can remain shut up in its cocoon or operate as a windowless monad because the globalizing dynamics call for mutual complementarity and enrichment.Within the universalizing phenomenon of globalization, Africa can find its missing link through interculturality. This will not only enable African philosophers to reflect and interpret other cultures but also appropriate what has enabled other cultures to excel in order to transform the African condition."

9. Dussel, Enrique. 2009. "A New Age in the History of Philosophy: The world dialogue between philosophical traditions." Philosophy & Social Criticism no. 35:499-516.

Abstract: "his article argues the following points. (1) It is necessary to affirm that all of humanity has always sought to address certain ‘core universal problems’ that are present in all cultures. (2) The rational responses to these ‘core problems’ first acquire the shape of mythical narratives. (3)

The formulation of categorical philosophical discourses is a subsequent development in human rationality, which does not, however, negate all mythical narratives. These discourses arose in all the great urban neolithic cultures (even if only in initial form). (4) Modern European philosophy confused its economic, political and cultural domination, and the resulting crises in other philosophical traditions, with a Eurocentric universality claim, which must be questioned. (5) In any case there are formal universal aspects in which all regional philosophies can coincide, and which respond to the ‘core problems’ at an abstract level. (6) All of this impels entry into a new age of inter-philosophical dialogue, respectful of differences and open to learning from the useful discoveries of other traditions. (7) A new philosophical project must be developed that is capable of going beyond Eurocentric philosophical modernity, by shaping a global trans-modern pluriverse, drawing upon the ‘discarded’ (by modernity) own resources of peripheral, subaltern, postcolonial philosophies."

10. Escande, Yolaine, Shen, Vincent, and Li, Chenyang, eds. 2013. Inter-culturality and Philosophic Discourse. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Contents: Yolaine Escande, Vincent Shen and Chenyang Li: Introduction 1;

Part I: Intercultural Dialogue/Inter-Translatability

Chapter One. Vincent Shen: Intercultural Philosophy and the Interpretation of Chinese Philosophical Texts 13; Chapter Two. Jean-Marie Schaeffer: About Some Forms of Artistic Transmission 29; Chapter Three. François Flahault: A Source of Misunderstanding between Chinese and Western Philosophy: The Difficulty of Forming a Clear Idea of the Foundation of Western Culture 45; Chapter Four. Chung-Ying Cheng: Between the West and China: What Difference Chinese Philosophy Makes 55; Chapter Five. He Jinli: “The Third Kind of Tragedy”: How Wang Guowei Departs from Schopenhauer 71; Chapter Six. Rafal Banka: Ontological Intuitions and their Interpretational Problems: The Case of Dao 81; Chapter Seven. Maud M’bondjo: A Brief Survey of the Question of Cheng?: From Inter-Culturalism to Trans-Culturalism 97;

Part II: Philosophy and Ethics

Chapter Eight. Byung-do Moon: Mencius’ Four Sprouts of Virtue and Two-Level Utilitarianism 117; Chapter Nine. Jiang Dandan: From Environmental Ethics to the Ethics of Life: Cross-Cultural Dialogue on Zhuangzi 131; Chapter Ten. Wing-cheuk Chan: Mou Zongsan’s Typology of Neo-Confucianism: Its Hidden Sources 147; Chapter Eleven. Victor Vuilleumier: The “Chinese Culture” as Ethical and National Spirit in Some Works

of Liang Shuming 163; Chapter Twelve. Wang, Wen-Sheng: Divinity and Beauty in the Process of Indication: A Phenomenological Approach 179;

Part III: Aesthetics and Art

Chapter Thirteen. Yolaine Escande: Chinese Aesthetics: A Hermeneutical Approach 197; Chapter Fourteen Wan, Xiaoping: Zhu Guangqian on Wang Guowei’s Theory of Poetical States: A Reappraisal 215; Chapter Fifteen. Sandra A. Wawrytko: Aesthetic Principles of Epistemological Awakening: Juxtapositioning (Bi ? and Xing ?) in Basho’s Haiku Pedagogy 233; Chapter Sixteen. Jérôme Pelletier, Yolaine Escande, Marine Taffou, Kenneth Knoblauch, Aure-Élise Duret-Lerebours and Stéphanie Dubal: Brushstrokes with Emotion 251; Chapter Seventeen. Park, So Jeong: Sound, Tone, and Music in Early China: The Philosophical Foundation

of Chinese Sound Culture 271; Chapter Eighteen. Antonio Mezcua López: Struggles for Power: The Relation between Entertainments, Sports, and Landscape in the Song Dynasty 291; Chapter Nineteen. Huang, Kuan-Min: Passage in and from Landscape 305.

Contributors 321-327.

11. Fleming, Jesse. 2003. "Comparative Philosophy: Its Aims and Methods." Journal of Chinese philosophy no. 30:259-270.

"My first answer to all such objections to the enterprise of comparative philosophy is that it is almost inevitable that we understand, or interpret, the new and unfamiliar by comparing it with that with which we are already familiar. According to this phenomenological or hermeneutic principle, someone first encountering the I Ching, for example (or any other alien philosophical system), will always think about ways in which this unfamiliar philosophy is similar to the philosophical terrain that is our conceptual “home turf” so to speak. After first identifying what we take to be similarities between the two philosophical theories (or systems, concepts, or traditions), we naturally move on to identifying significant differences: similarities and differences in regard to logic and method of proof, in regard to values, assumptions, and aims. It is by identifying both similarities and differences that we can better understand the two (or more) things (here, theories) better. There is a natural, if logically and epistemologically unjustifiable, tendency to see similarity of different philosophical theories as somehow confirming each of them (insofar as they are similar), just as in science a theory or experiment gains credence if repeated elsewhere under similar but different circumstances.

At the very least, such comparisons (of say, the “Tao” with “Nature”) help shed light on how one concept or theory in comparison with others could have been proven differently from the way it was, or what its practical consequences might be, contrary to what one has usually assumed them to be. In fact, it seems obvious to me that highlighting similarities (and differences) between two philosophical theories or traditions helps us to notice assumptions we make without being aware of it—assumptions regarding how a theory can be proven to be true (or false), and what the theoretical and practical implications of a philosophical position are." (p. 2670)

12. Frazier, Jessica. 2020. "‘The View from Above’: A Theory of Comparative Philosophy." Religious Studies no. 56:32-48.

Abstract: "What if doing philosophy across cultures is always implicitly a matter of metaphilosophy – of articulating more clearly the nature of philosophy itself? What if it forces us to ‘stand back’ hermeneutically and map out a ‘view from above’ of the underlying fabric of ideas – in their constitutive concepts, their relations to other ways of thinking, and their potential to be configured in alternative fascinating and fruitful ways?

This article incorporates existing approaches to comparative philosophy within a single scheme of complementary philosophical activities, and a single overarching metaphilosophical project. These approaches are (1) ‘archival’ (exploring parallel but separate philosophical traditions), (2) ‘equivalentist’ (comparing traditions in terms of analogies and contrasts), and (3) ‘problem-solving’ (using multiple traditions to provide philosophical solutions). I situate these within (4) the overarching hermeneutic project of ‘mapping’ concepts and their possibilities. This entails the theory that philosophies drawing on multiple perspectives are always implicitly engaged in mapping out the underlying eidetic structure upon which philosophy does its work, and charting the conceptual possibilities surrounding any idea."

13. Freschi, Elisa. 2022. "Thinking Along with Texts from Afar: Why One Doesn't Understand Texts without Philosophical Reflection and Can't Do Philosophy without Inspiration." In Comparative Philosophy and Method: Contemporary Practices and Future Possibilities, edited by Burik, Steven, Smid, Robert W. and Weber, Ralph, 97-117. New York: Bloomsbury.

"In this chapter, I will argue in favor of doing intercultural philosophy confronting philosophers of the past. I will start by discussing whether at all one needs to engage with other philosophers while doing philosophy and claim that comparisons are just the normal way we think, and that in this sense the real choice is not between comparing and not comparing but between comparing explicitly or implicitly, that is, between comparing while being aware of what one is doing and comparing while being unaware of the way one is accessing a new idea through the lenses of a familiar one. Next, I will argue in favor of the engagement with philosophical texts that are remote in time, space, or other circumstances, in order to challenge our ideas and seeming intuitions. I will then move on to the constructive part of this paper, in which I will promote engaging with great thinkers of the past, since this engagement will sharpen one's understanding of them as well as one's philosophical acumen. The greatness of an author depends on what one is looking for and, for instance, an epistemologist might not recognize the greatness of Martin Buber and viceversa.

(...)

Last, I will speak in favor of the very unfashionable topic of translations as a philosophical exercise.

(...)

How do the topic of engaging with philosophers of the past and that of translations hold together? Because the latter is an indicative test of the effectiveness of the former and because both require a close engagement. In both cases, one needs to step out of one's comfort zone and move toward a confrontation with the other thinker." (pp. 97-98, notes omitted)

14. Freschi, Elisa, and Keating, Malcolm. 2017. "How Do We Gather Knowledge Through Language?" Journal of World Philosophies no. 2:42-46.

The present issue of Journal of World Philosophies will host a series of papers discussing the phenomenon of linguistic communication2 from a philosophical point of view and from a cross-cultural perspective.

The papers’ authors discussed the topic together with some other scholars in a workshop in Athens, 2015.

(...)

The present series of contributions will deal with these topics from different points of view, elaborating on materials from the classical Indian, ancient Greek, and medieval Arabic traditions. We hope to contribute to a debate whose foundations have been set by works such as Matilal and Chakrabarti’s Knowing from Words,(6) which focused on the topic of testimony from the perspective of Indian Philosophy (especially Nyāya) and of analytic philosophy.

The contributions are organized around the following four issues:

1. What do we know?

2. How (through which instrument of knowledge) do we know it?

3. What is the role of language as a medium?

4. What is the role of the social context?" (p. 42, some notes omitted)

(6) Knowing From Words: Western and Indian Philosophical Analysis of Understanding and Testimony ed. Bimal Krishna Matilal and Arindam Chakrabarti (Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1989).

15. Frisina, Warren G. 2016. "Thinking Through Hall and Ames: On the Art of Comparative Philosophy." Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy no. 15:563-574.

Abstract: "With the publication of their first collaborative book Thinking Through Confucius, David Hall and Roger Ames launched a comparative philosophical project juxtaposing American pragmatism and Chinese Confucianism (Hall and Ames 1987).

This essay focuses on the role pragmatic assumptions play in Hall’s and Ames’s announced goal of opening a “new route” into Chinese intellectual history. Hall and Ames aim to teach scholars whose scholarly sensibilities have been formed in the West what they must acknowledge about their own traditions before they can engage Chinese thinkers constructively. After happily acknowledging my own debt to Hall and Ames and defending as hugely helpful the broad arc of their work, this essay raises questions about the way they deploy pragmatic assumptions as tools for “removing the useless lumber” that they claim “block” Western thinkers’ access to Chinese intellectual history. Specifically it argues that the “useless lumber” metaphor is misplaced."

16. Ganeri, Jonardon. 2016. "Symposium: »Is Reason a Neutral Tool in Comparative Philosophy?«." Confluence: Online Journal of World Philosophies no. 4:134-142.

149Abstract: "Is Reason a Neutral Tool in Comparative Philosophy? In his answer to the symposium’s question, Jonardon Ganeri develops a »Manifesto for [a] Re:emergent Philosophy.« Tracking changes in the understanding of ›comparative philosophy,‹ he sketches how today’s world of academic philosophy seems to be set to enter an »age of re:emergence« in which world philosophies will (and can) be studied through modes of global participation. In their responses, the symposium’s discussants tease out implications of this Manifesto for different issues: While Mustafa Abu Sway suggests that comparative philosophy be understood as an intra-philosophical dialogue, whose aim depends on its participants, Paul Boghossian questions whether there can be conflicting, yet equally valid, ways of arriving at justified beliefs about the world. For her part, Georgina Stewart draws out the similarities between Ganeri’s understanding of comparative philosophy and the ethical stance involved in studying Maori science. In his Reply, Ganeri fleshes out his understanding of a pluralistic realism. Only an epistemic culture, which is open to a plurality of epistemic stances, he contends, can propel polycentric modes of knowledge production."

Contents: Jonardon Ganeri: A Manifesto for Re:emergent Philosophy, 134; Responses: Mustafa Abu Sway: On the Possibility of Rational Neutrality in Comparative Philosophy: A Response to Jonardon Ganeri 144; Paul Boghossian: Is Comparative Philosophy Based Upon a Mistake? A Reply to Ganeri’s ›Re:emergent Philosophy‹ 149: Georgina Stewart: What’s In a Name? In Support of A Manifesto for Re:emergent Philosophy 154; Reply; Jonardon Ganeri: Reflections on Re:emergent Philosophy 164; References 183-186.

17. ———. 2022. "Why Philosophy Needs Sanskrit, Now More than Ever." In Comparative Philosophy and Method: Contemporary Practices and Future Possibilities, edited by Burik, Steven, Smid, Robert W. and Weber, Ralph, 139-158. New York: Bloomsbury.

"Let me begin by trying to identify the sources of the doctrine that European philosophical tradition, its classics and its canon, occupies a privileged position in the global intellectual history of humanity. I'll then review a different, Sanskritic, conception of classicity, and go on to describe the critique of European exceptionalism by anticolonial thinkers from the first half of the twentieth century.

That part of the chapter will be diagnostic, but I also want to say something constructive, and I'll move in the final third of the chapter to sketch an alternative model for philosophical practice to that which currently prevails, one grounded in a defense of pluralism, a pluralism about ways of interrogating the single reality we share, and a model itself retrieved from Sanskrit thinkers." (p. 139)

18. Gangadean, Ashok K. 1976. "Formal Ontology and Movement between Worlds." Philosophy East and West no. 26:167-188.

"In this article I shall focus on one aspect of a general problem of movement between worlds. The concept of a world is an ontological one. Different worlds involve different ontologies. A world, an ontology, is reflected in a language.

Thus, from an ontological point of view, different languages are worlds apart.

When I speak of different languages in this article I do not mean different in terms of linguistic criteria but different from an ontological point of view. This means that movement between worlds involves movement between different languages.(1)"

(1) When I speak of different languages here I mean different in terms of ontological criteria.

Thus, although English and French are from a linguistic point of view different languages, from an ontological point of view they may well be the same language. Alternatively, although English may, from a linguistic point of view, be considered one language, it is possible that from an ontological point of view it involves more than one language. Criteria determining what is to count as one language is discussed in part II.

19. ———. 1980. "Comparative Ontology: Relative and Absolute Truth." Philosophy East and West no. 30:465-480.

"Perhaps the most important challenge for comparative thought is whether there can be univocal truth between different worlds. For if there is not an interworld concept of truth, a concept of truth which is prior to and independent of any particular world, an ontologically neutral truth which is common to all possible worlds, in short, an absolute truth, then the possibility of rational discourse between worlds is questionable. The urgency of this concern is seen when the radical difference between worlds is appreciated. A world, in the classical ontological sense, is a particular categorial structure which materially defines what is possible and intelligible for experience and human understanding as a whole. What makes sense in one world may fail to make sense in another. What is possible in one world may not be a possibility in another. This means that worlds differ in the most radical way-propositional content and ontological possibilities being radically incommensurable between different worlds. And since meaning and truth are relative to a given particular ontology (for an ontology or worldview defines the very possibility of meaning and truth for the world in question) this seems to preclude the possibility of an absolute truth which is univocal, ontologically neutral, and common to all worlds." (p. 465. a note omitted)

20. Garfield, Jay L., and Edelglass, William, eds. 2011. The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Contents: Jay L. Garfield and William Edelglass: Introduction 3;

PART I CHINESE PHILOSOPHY, EDITED BY CHENYANG LI

Chenyang Li: Chinese Philosophy, 9

1. Chung-Ying Cheng: The Yijing: The Creative Origin of Chinese Philosophy, 13; 2. Peimin Ni: Classical Confucianism I: Confucius, 26; 3. Manyul lm: Classical Confucianism II: Mencius and Zunzi, 37; 4. Liu Xiaogan: Daoism: Laozi and Zhuangzi, 47; 5. Chris Fraser: Major Rival Schools: Mohism and Legalism, 58; 6. Brook Ziporyn: Chinese Buddhist Philosophy, 68; 7. John Berthrong: Neo-Confucianism, 82; 8. Shu-hsien Liu: Contemporary Confucianism, 95;

PART II NON-BUDDHIST INDIAN PHILOSOPHY, EDITED BY NALINI BHUSHAN

Nalini Bhushan: Non-Buddhist Indian Philosophy, 109;

9. Arnita Chatterjee: Nyaya-Vaise~ika Philosophy, 112; 10. T. S. Rukmani: Samkhya-Yoga, 127; 11. Dan Arnold: Mimamsa, 138; 12. John Taber: Vedanta, 147; 13. Jeffery D. Long: Jain Philosophy, 159; 14. Nalini Bhushan: Anglophone Philosophy in Colonial India, 170;

PART III INDO-TIBETAN BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY, EDITED BY WILLIAM EDELGLASS AND JAY L. GARFIELD

William Edelglass and Jay L. Garfield: Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy, 187

15. Jan Westerhoff: Abhidharma Philosophy, 193; 16. John Dunne: Madhyamaka in India and Tibet, 205; 17. John Powers: Yogacara, 222; 18. Tom J. F. Tillemans: Buddhist Epistemology (pramāṇavāda), 233; 19. Matthew T. Kapstein: Buddhist Thought in Tibet: An Historical Introduction, 245; 20. Anne Carolyn Klein: Dzogchen, 265; 21. Barbra R. Clayton: Buddhist Ethics, 279;

PART IV JAPANESE AND KOREAN PHILOSOPHY, EDITED BY KOJI TANAKA

Koji Tanaka: Japanese and Korean Philosophy, 297

22. Robert E. Carter: Japanese Ethics, 302; 23. Mara Miller: Japanese Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art, 317; 24. Bret W. Davis: Natural Freedom: Human/Nature Nondualism in Japanese Thought, 334; 25. Bret W. Davis: The Philosophy of Zen Master Dogen: Egoless Perspectivism, 348; 26. John C. Maraldo: Nishida Kitaro: Self, World, and the Nothingness Underlying Distinctions, 361; 27. Jin Y. Park: Korean Buddhist Philosophy, 373;

PART V ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY, EDITED BY TAMARA ALBERTINI

Tamara Albertini: Reintroducing Islamic Philosophy: The Persisting Problem of "Smaller Orientalisms", 389;

28. Andrey Smirnov: The Hellenizing Philosophers, 397; 29. Hossein Ziai: Philosophy of Illumination, 410; 30. Erik S. Ohlander: Sufism, 419; 31. Eric Ormsby: Islamic Theology, 432; 32. Robert Gleave: Muslim Jurisprudence, 447;

PART VI PHILOSOPHY IN AFRICA AND THE AFRICAN DIASPORA, EDITED BY ALBERT MOSLEY AND STEPHEN C. FERGUSON II

Stephen C. Ferguson II: Philosophy in Africa and the African Diaspora, 461;

33. Tsenay Serequeberhan: Africana Philosophy: Prospects and Possibilities, 467; 34. Barry Hallen: African Philosophy, 478; 35. Clevis Headley: Afro-Caribbean Philosophy, 489; 36. John H. McClendon III and Stephen C. Ferguson II: African American Philosophy: A General Outline, 509; 37. Albert Mosley: Race in Contemporary Philosophy, 524; 38. Rodney C. Roberts: Affirmative Action, 533;

PART VII RECENT TRENDS IN GLOBAL PHILOSOPHY, EDITED BY CYNTHIA TOWNLEY

Cynthia Townley: Recent Trends in Global Philosophy, 545

39. Christine M. Koggel: Global Feminism, 549; 40. Adam Arola: Native American Philosophy, 562; 41. Workineh Kelbessa: Indigenous Environmental Philosophy, 574; 42. Gillian Brock: Cosmopolitanism 582; 43. J. Angelo Corlett: Reparations, 596;

Index 611-633.

21. Gorong, Yang. 2008. "Being and Value: From the Perspective of Chinese-Western Comparative Philosophy." Philosophy East and West no. 58:267-282.

"When a human being begins to examine a thing, the following questions will always be asked: "What is it?" "What does it mean?" "What should it be?" The first question mainly concerns the inherent specifications or simply the features of the thing; the second, its meaning to the human being; and the third, the necessity and way of realizing such a meaning.1 Both of the last two questions relate particularly to the issue of value. The inherent connection of the three questions is rooted in the close relationship between being and value and consequently the very concreteness of

being." (p. 267)

22. Graham, Angus Charles. 1989. "Conceptual Schemes and Linguistic Relativism in Relation to Chinese." Synthesis Philosophica no. 4:713-732.

Reprinted in in A. C. Graham, Unreason within Reason: Essays of the Outskirts of Rationality, La Salle, IL: Open Court 1992, pp. 59-83 and in Bo Mou (ed.), Philosophy of Language, Chinese Language, Chinese Philosophy: Constructive Engagement, Leiden: Brill 2018, pp. 247-268.

"Philosophers discussing conceptual schemes seem generally to treat them as assumptions in propositional form behind the thought of different cultures, cosmologies, or phases in the history of science. On the one hand, conceptual schemes appear as conflicting systems of assumed truths which are only imperfectly testable by observation, and bring us uncomfortably near to epistemological chaos; on the other, suspicion arises that the notion of a conceptual scheme may not be coherent at all: As Donald Davidson argues in his paper, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme”, we seem to end up with nothing definite but “the simple thought that something is an acceptable conceptual scheme or theory if it is true.”(1) For inquirers into the thought and language of other cultures, the issue is inescapable. That very idea is one of their indispensable tools, to which Davidson’s objections do not directly apply, since their own tendency is to think of it in terms, not of propositions,(2) but of classification by naming, and perhaps of syntactic structures. I wish to argue that examination of their usage can open up a different perspective on the philosophical problems.

At the roots of the systems of propositions called ‘conceptual schemes’ by philosophers there are patterns of naming pre-logical in the same sense as patterns of perception are pre-logical, and I shall myself use the term exclusively of these." (p. 713)

(1) Davidson in Post-Analytic Philosophy, ed. John Rajchman and Cornel West (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 139.

(2) For practical reasons I shall speak of ‘propositions’ where Davidson and others say ‘sentences’, reserving the latter for sentences in natural languages, English, Chinese.

23. Hackett, Stuart Cornelius. 1979. Oriental Philosophy: A Westerner’s Guide to Eastern Thought. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

"This book will attempt to explain, in language intelligible to the Western reader and with as few technical complications as possible, the main philosophical positions associated with the religious traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism.

It is a real introduction to oriental thought directed to the level of the upperclass college student and therefore explicitly intended as a basic text for courses in this area. It is, however, not an exhaustive treatment of the subject, and its ideal function would be to provide an expository and critical framework to be supplemented both by class lectures and by supplementary readings in primary source materials, such as those listed in the bibliography.

As it stands, the book has numerous qualities that contribute to its usefulness: it contains not only expositions of the perspectives discussed, but also evaluative critical sections which attempt to assess these views along lines carefully explained in the introduction. A further distinctive feature is the marginal outline, which provides a basis both for understanding the text and for developing organized insight into the views discussed. There is also a glossary which briefly and clearly defines the principal special terms that are used, as well as a general bibliography which will guide the reader into accessible literature on the subject in the English language. A final unusual quality of the book is that each section ends wit" (Preface, p. VII)

24. Halbfass, Wilhelm. 1985. "India and the Comparative Method." Philosophy East and West no. 35:3-15.

Reprinted in W. Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Philosophical Understanding, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988, pp. 419-433.

"The expression "comparative philosophy" itself is ambiguous. It does not make it clear whether philosophy is the subject or the object of comparing.

Do we philosophize while we are comparing, i.e. in and through comparison, or do we just deal with philosophy or philosophies as objects of comparative historical or anthropological research? If "comparative philosophy" is supposed to be philosophy, it cannot just be the comparison of philosophies. It cannot be the objectifying, juxtaposing, synoptic, comparative investigation of historical, anthropological or doxographic data.

Comparative philosophy is philosophy insofar as it aims at self-understanding.

It has to be ready to bring its own standpoint, and the conditions and the horizon of comparison itself, into the process of comparison which thus assumes the reflexive, self-referring dimension which constitutes philosophy. And, of course, in applying the term and concept of philosophy cross-culturally and beyond the sphere in which it was created and originally used, we cannot be sure whether we are indeed comparing philosophies, or whether we are comparing the Western tradition of philosophy with other traditions which, in spite of all analogies, are ultimately not philosophical traditions. But this might be a deeper challenge to self-understanding than merely dealing with what is explicitly referred to as philosophy, i.e. with the history of philosophy under the secure and thoughtless guidance of the word "philosophy." (p. 433)

25. Hall, David L. 2001. "Just How Provincial Is Western Philosophy? ‘Truth’ in Comparative Context." Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge no. 25:285-297.

"I shall claim that the putative absence of speculations concerning ‘truth’ in the Chinese tradition is a direct consequence of quite different approaches the Chinese have taken to the three Western suppositions cited above—namely, the necessity to distinguish things as they appear from the way they really are; the belief that the cosmos or world is a one rather than a many, and the preference for substantive over processive understandings of the way of things. I would argue that these are necessary cultural requisites for the development of truth theories as we have come to think of them in the West.

In the following section I will provide some evidence that the cultural requisites for the development of Western-style truth theories were not effective in shaping the development of classical Chinese cultural sensibilities." (p. 288)

(...)

"In the West, truth is a knowledge of what is real and what represents that reality. For the Chinese, knowledge is not abstract, but concrete and specific. Truth is not representational, but performative and participatory. It is a kind of know-how, a practical understanding of how to follow the proper path.

Truth-seekers begin with —a wide-eyed wonder at the natural world around them—and proceed to the development of theories of the way things are, and finally become well-nigh obsessed with discovering if their theories are true. This leads to a concern for propositional and doctrinal consensus, orthodoxy.

Way-seekers search out those forms of action that promote harmonious social existence. Theirs is a concern for orthopraxy. For the way-seekers, truth is a quality of persons, not of propositions. Truth as ‘way’ refers to the genuineness and integrity of a fully functioning person.

26. Hamminga, Bert, ed. 2005. Knowledge Cultures: Comparative Western and African Epistemology. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Contents: Bert Hamminga: Introduction 7; Yoweri Kaguta Museveni: The Power of Knowledge 11; Kwame Anthony Appiah: African Studies and the Concept of Knowledge 23; Bert Hamminga: Epistemology from the African Point of View 57; Bert Hamminga: Language, Reality and Truth: The African Point of View 85; Leszek Nowak: On the Collective Subjects in Epistemology: The Marxist Case and a Problem for the African Viewpoint 117; Bert Hamminga: The Poznan View: How To Mean What You Say 129; Contributors 141; Index and Glossary 143-147.

27. Hashi, Hisaki. 2016. "The Logic of ‘Mutual Transmission’ in Huayan and Zen Buddhist Philosophy- Toward the Logic of Co-existence in a Globalized World." Asian Studies no. 4:95-108.

Abstract: "Is it true that in the history of East Asian cultures there was less “philosophy”, less “logic” and “rationality” before the process of modernization began in the nineteenth century? A number of scholars of East Asian Studies believe this is a form of prejudice. For example, Nishida Kitarō stated that in East Asian cultures there is another form of logic, which can be called the “logicus spiritus” (心の論理). This article examines the essential parts of this logic with regard to Huayan and Zen Buddhist philosophy, and is thus an effort at comparative philosophy."

28. Hengelbrock, Jürgen. 1996. "Some reflections on Aristotle's notion of time in an intercultural perspective." In Time and Temporality in Intercultural Perspective, edited by Tiemersma, D. and Oosterling, H.A.F., 43-52. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"It may be surprising to look back at Aristotle's way of thinking from an intercultural point of view. Aristotle is reputed as the thinker of the universals suppressing the differences, as the theorist of abstraction, neglecting particularities - natural particularities as well as those which are constitutive elements of culture.

Indeed Aristotelian philosophy aims at transgressing what we name cultural phenomena. It tries to constitute a universal science of being, beings and essences, valid for all people at all times.

On the other hand Aristotle's thought seems to have derived from the Greek language. The structure of Greek syntax: had it not been the model of his doctrine of categories? In his well-known book on the Hopi language {1956) B. J. Whorl even suggests that Aristotle was duped by his Greek mother tongue. From this point of view, the Aristotelian ontological substance is the equivalent to the subject of the Greek sentence, and the grammatical complement in the sentence is transformed into the ontological accident. Aristotle's ontology, in this context, is just the grammar of Greek language. From this point of view the Aristotelian assumption that there is a universal science appears as a grand illusion. Today someone might even consider this assumption as grand arrogance: by his pretention he imposes the Greek model of understanding on mankind as the only valid one." (p. 43)

References

Carroll John (ed.), Language, Thought and Reality. Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, Cambridge, MA, The M.I.T. Press 1956.

29. Hershock, Peter D., and Ames, Roger T., eds. 2019. Philosophies of Place: An Intercultural Conversation. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press and East-West Philosophers’ Conference.

Contents: Peter D. Hershock and Roger T. Ames: Introduction 1;

Part I Conversations of Place in Intercultural Philosophy

1 David B. Wong and Marion Hourdequin: Hiding the World in the World: A Case for Cosmopolitanism Based in the Zhuangzi 15; 2 Steven Burik: Between Local and Global: The Place of Comparative Philosophy through Heidegger and Daoism 34; 3 Britta Saal: About the Taking Place of Intercultural Philosophy as Polylogue 51; 4 John W. M. Krummel: Place and Horizon 65; 5 James Buchanan: The Proximate and the Distant: Place and Response-Ability 88;

Part II The Critical Interplay of Place and Personal Identity

6 Joshua Stoll: Where Is My Mind? On the Emplacement of Self by Others 107; 7 Meera Baindur: Accommodation, Location, and Context: Conceptualization of Place in Indian Traditions of Thought 127;

Part III Personhood and Environmental Emplacement

8 Michael Hemmingsen: Public Reason and Ecological Truth 147; 9 Justas Kučinskas and Naglis Kardelis: The Wisdom of Place: Lithuanian Philosophical Philotopy of Arvydas Šliogeris and Its Relevance to Global Environmental Challenges 159; 10 Rein Raud: Landscape as Scripture: Dōgen’s Concept of Meaningful Nature 177;

Part IV Shared Places of Politics and Religion

11 Albert Welter: Public Places and Privileged Spaces: Perspectives on the Public Sphere and the Sphere of Privilege in China and the West 195; 12 Takahiro Nakajima: Seeking a Place for Earthly Universality in Modern Japan: Suzuki Daisetz, Chikazumi Jōkan, and Miyazawa Kenji 216; 13 Bindu Puri: Transforming Sacred Space into Shared Place: Reinterpreting Gandhi on Temple Entry 228; 14 Michael Warren Myers: Israel and Palestine: A Two-Place, One-Space Solution 251;

Part V The Emotionally Emplaced Body

15 Ilana Maymind: Exile as “Place” for Empathy 271; 16 Carl Helsing: Sprouts, Mountains, and Fields: Symbol and Sustainability in Mengzi’s Moral Psychology 288; 17 Lara M. Mitia: The Place of the Body in the Phenomenology of Place: Edward Casey and Nishida Kitarō 302; 18 Kathleen Higgins: Putting the Dead in Their Place 318;

Contributors 329; Index 339-344.

30. Heubel, Fabian. 2011. "Kant and Transcultural Critique: Toward a Contemporary Philosophy of Self-Cultivation." Journal of Chinese Philosophy no. 38:584-601.

"How may it be possible to relate German and French critical theory on the one side and contemporary Neo-Confucianism on the other, two philosophical movements that have had very little mutual influence on and interest for each other? In an earlier article, I mainly refer to theConfucian manifesto of 1958 and the critical reflection on Chinese modernity, which undertakes to give a preliminary answer to this question.(1) In this article, the constellation of modernity, capitalism, subjectivity, and self-cultivation serves as a point of entry. More precisely, the contrast between two paradigms of self-cultivation, that of spiritual cultivation in Pierre Hadot and that of aesthetic cultivation in Michel Foucault, is what now constitutes an analytic perspective that allows us to establish a connection between aesthetic cultivation in Foucault and spiritual (or moral) cultivation in contemporary Neo-Confucianism." (p. 584)

(1) (Fabian Heubel), "Transcultural Critique and Philosophical Reflections on Chinese Modernity" [in Chinese] 跨文化批判與中國現代性的哲學反思 。文化研究》。第八期 8 (2009): 89–95.

31. Hofmeyr, Murray. 2004. "The Promise and Problems of Inferculfural Philosophy." Phronimon no. 5:51-76.

Abstract: "In this paper I sketch the main elements of Heinz Kimmerle's conceptualisation of intercultural phïlosophy: a new concept of difference that makes possible a new take on "different and equal" which is the foundation for real dialogue. I interrogate the concept of culture in intercultural philosophy, and argue that for the South African context sufficient emphasis must be placed on power relations as they impact on cultures and the legacy of a hlstory of cultural domination. I try to show that Kimmerle's notion of the equality of cultures implies that a particular context is taken seriously as aalid instance of the human condition, and in that sense it is of equal status with all other situations. All 'localities" are linked in some way or another. It thus belongs to adequately conceptualising the thoughts and feelings of a specific locality that the need for dialogue should be reflected. A philosophy that negates these shifts would be dlsqualified as inadequate. The fact that it seeks dialogue is indicative of the experience of an aporia.

It is lack, incompleteness, which is universa!. I also tentatively propose "contextual phlïosophy" as a more appropriate name for intercultural philosophy in South Afriea."

32. Hongladarom, Soraj. 2019. "How to Understand the Identity of an Object of Study in Comparative Philosophy." Comparative Philosophy no. 10:119-126.

"Bo Mou has presented a list of methodological principles concerning how to maintain adequate methodological guiding principle in doing philosophy comparatively. It is main idea is that these principles should maintain rationality and objectivity of comparative philosophy. Perhaps the most important principle in his list is the first one: in Mou’s words, “A methodological guiding principle is considered adequate (in this connection) if, given an object of study, it enables the agent to recognize that there is a way that the object objectively is such that it is not the case that “anything goes,” and we can all talk about that same object even though we may say different things (concerning distinct aspects of the object) about it.” (Mou 2018,1-2 [Mou 2016, 269-70]). In other words, an adequacy condition for a fruitful undertaking of comparative philosophy is that both sides recognize that there exists at least an object in common.

(...)

In this paper I would like to take up this argument and show that in some cases comparative philosophy and constructive dialogs between different philosophical traditions could indeed take place successfully even without sharing an objective individual thing that Mou argues for. This, however, does not imply that “anything goes” because both the traditions can engage in a common enterprise even though they don’t share any individual object in common. My example will come from comparing Buddhist philosophy with Aristotle’s philosophy on individuals. The Buddhist and the Aristotelian can, as I shall argue, engage in a very constructive dialogue with each other even though they don’t share anything in common in their respective ontologies. Not sharing anything does not entail that anything goes because the Buddhist and the Aristotelian still can debate and understand each other’s point through translations of their respective vocabularies." (pp. 119-120)

References

Mou, Bo (2018), “On Adequacy Conditions for How to Adequately Maintain Methodological Guiding Principles to Look at Distinct Approaches”, presented at the 24th World Congress of Philosophy, 15th August 2018, Beijing, China. [Editorial note: the partial contents of this unpublished paper under the engaging discussion in this “Constructive-Engagement Dialogue” section previously appear in Bo Mou (2016), “How Constructive Engagement in Doing Philosophy Comparative is Possible", Synthesis Philosophica 62.2: 265-277; the interested reader can see them in this published article.]

33. Hoogland, Jan. 1996. "The necessity of intercultural philosophy." In Time and Temporality in Intercultural Perspective, edited by Tiemersma, D. and Oosterling, H.A.F., 25-41. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"In some of his writings Heinz Kimmerle states that there is a 'philosophical-historical necessity' (philosophiegeschictliche Notwendigkeit) for an intercultural dialogue within philosophy (eg. Kimmerle 1994, 131f.). I think he is right. At the same time I have some critical questions about the meaning of this concept of necessity. In this essay I will make clear that a truly open dialogue between philosophers from different cultures can be hindered by a certain kind of dogmatism, which is characteristic for Western thinking. I will show this on the basis of the work of Herman Dooyeweerd. This does not mean that I will undermine the thesis that this dialogue is necessary as such. On the contrary, it is once again Dooyeweerd's philosophy which can illustrate how necessary such a dialogue is, because of the prejudices in his judgements about 'primitive' cultures.

In another essay I already investigated the meaning of the concept of 'necessity' in Kimmerle's argument.(1) In this essay I will consider the subject from a different perspective. In his Die Dimension des Interkulturellen Kimmerle illustrates his thesis by means of the problem of time in Western thought (Kimmerle 1994). Starting from the critique of Derrida on the Western way of thinking about time, he pleads for an intercultural exchange of ideas about this subject to overcome the aporias within the Westem concept of time." (p. 25)

(1) J. Hoogland 'Die Ansprüche einer interkulturellen Philosophie' (The claims of an intercultural philosophy); not yet published. [Heinz Kimmerle (ed.), Das Multiversum der Kulturen: Beiträge zu einer Vorlesung im Fach ‘Interkulturelle Philosophie’an der Erasmus Universität Rotterdam, Leiden: Brill 1996, pp. 57-75]

34. Izutsu, Toshihiko. 1983. Sufism and Taoism: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Abstract: "In this deeply learned work, Toshihiko Izutsu compares the metaphysical and mystical thought-systems of Sufism and Taoism and discovers that, although historically unrelated, the two share features and patterns which prove fruitful for a transhistorical dialogue.

His original and suggestive approach opens new doors in the study of comparative philosophy and mysticism.

Izutsu begins with Ibn ‘Arabi, analyzing and isolating the major ontological concepts of this most challenging of Islamic thinkers. Then, in the second part of the book, Izutsu turns his attention to an analysis of parallel concepts of two great Taoist thinkers, Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzi. Only after laying bare the fundamental structure of each world view does Izutsu embark, in the final section of the book, upon a comparative analysis. Only thus, he argues, can he be sure to avoid easy and superficial comparisons. Izutsu maintains that both the Sufi and Taoist world views are based on two pivots—the Absolute Man and the Perfect Man—with a whole system of ontological thought being developed between these two pivots. Izutsu discusses similarities in these ontological systems and advances the hypothesis that certain patterns of mystical and metaphysical thought may be shared even by systems with no apparent historical connection."

35. Jenco, Leigh Kathryn. 2007. ""What Does Heaven Ever Say?" A Methods-centered Approach to Cross-cultural Engagement." American Political Science Review no. 101:741-755.

Abstracty: "How can we conduct cross-cultural inquiry without reproducing the ethnocentric categories that prompt critique in the first place? Postcolonial and comparative political theorists have called into question the "universal" applicability of Western liberal political norms, but their critiques are drawn most often from competing Western discourses (e.g., poststructuralism) rather than from the culturally diverse traditions of scholarship whose ideas they examine. In contrast, I suggest attending to these culturally situated traditions of scholarship, especially their methods of inquiry, in addition to their substantive ideas. This method-centered approach reinterprets cross-cultural engagement, not as a tool for modifying existing parochial debates on the basis of "non-Western" cases, but as an opportunity to ask new questions through alternative frames of reference. Examining the interpretive methodologies of two Chinese classicists, I show how their methods offer not only new ideas but also new methods for the

practice of political and cross-cultural theory."

36. ———. 2012. "How meaning moves: Tan Sitong on borrowing across cultures." Philosophy East and West no. 62:92-113.

"This essay offers an attempt at a cross-cultural inquiry into cross-cultural inquiry by examining how one influential Chinese reformer, Tan Sitong (1865–1898), thought creatively about the possibilities of learning from differently situated societies." (p. 92)

(...)

"I center my discussion on a theory about the relationship between dao and qi that the radical reformer Tan Sitong formulated around 1895, in support of “total Westernization” (quanpan Xihua). Following but ultimately contesting the dominant ti/yong paradigm of the more conservative Foreign Affairs School, Tan parses the problem out in this way: how, if at all, are the particular concrete manifestations of the Western world that seem so brilliantly useful — steam engines, guns, tall buildings — related to the values or principles that Western people seem to uphold? How can they come not only to be imitated by Chinese but also to have meaning for them? Tan recognized that these meanings were related but irreducible to the ideas individuals held separately in their minds, or the values enforced by state institutions. In response, he produces an original and unusually metaphysical account of how values and meaning are produced and consumed across society, as well as how they work to support more observable external phenomena such as parliamentary government, technological development, and social practices of equality." (p.93)

37. Jiménez Estrada, Vivian M. 2005. "The Tree of Life as a Research Methodology." Australian Journal of Indigenous Education no. 34:44-52.

Abstract: "This paper is grounded on the premise that research, as a colonising practice, needs constant reconceptualisation and rethinking. I propose a methodology based on some of the values, visions and stories from my own Maya Indigenous culture and knowledge in addition to other Indigenous cultures across the world. I argue that researchers need to constantly acknowledge and change the negative impacts of ignoring multiple ways of knowing by engaging in respectful methods of knowledge collection and production. This paper contributes to the work Indigenous scholars have done in the area of research methodologies and knowledge production. First, a general overview of the values and concepts embedded in the Ceiba or the "Tree of Life" is presented; then, a discussion of what respectful research practices entail follows; finally, it concludes with a reflection on how the Ceiba is a small example of how researchers can adapt their research methodology to the local context."

38. Jung, Hwa Yol. 2011. Transversal Rationality and Intercultural Texts: Essays in Phenomenology and Comparative Philosophy. Athens: Ohio University Press.

"This book of thirteen selected essays spans almost half a century from 1965 (chapter 3) to 2009 (chapters 9 and 13). Many, if not all, of them are experimental and exploratory in nature." (Introduction, p. X)

(...)

"Chapter 2 advances the concept of transversality, which is central to the main themes of this book. It begins with a critique of the notion of universality in modern Western philosophy. It targets Hegel— the modernist incarnate— in particular, who had a dark view of the non- Western world, particularly China and India. His overarching Eurocentric universality is founded on the fallacious assumption that what is particular in the West is made universalized whereas what is particular in the non- West remains particular forever." (p. XII)

(...)

"Transversality means to overcome and go beyond (“trans”) the clash of ethnocentrisms both “Orientalist” and “Occidentalist” as a result of “essentializing” (to use Edward W. Said’s phrase) the Orient or the Occident. We are warned not to take it simply as a middle point between bipolar opposites. Rather, it breaks through bipolarity itself (theory and practice, philosophy and nonphilosophy, mind and body, femininity and masculinity, humanity and nature, Europe and non-Europe, etc.). What must be recognized as important is the fact that transversality is the paradigmatic way of overcoming all polarizing dichotomies and ready for the conceptualization of “world philosophy.” The end product of transversality in the fusion of cultural (and disciplinary) horizons is hybridity or creolization. Viewed in this way, what is traditionally called “comparative philosophy” is not just a neglected and underdeveloped branch of philosophy, but it is poised to transform radically the very conception of philosophy itself." (pp. XII-XIII)

39. Kaipayil, Joseph. 1995. The Epistemology of Comparative Philosophy: A Critique with Reference to P. T. Raju's Views. Rome: Centre for Indian and Inter-Religious Studies.

"Comparative philosophy has been in existence as an organized discipline with plausible aims and methods of its own for over the past fifty years. Its potential was well exploited to facilitate East-West understanding, exchange, and cooperation in philosophy. For all this, the debate about the philosophicai rationale of comparative philosophy, i.e. its place and function in the wider context of philosophical enterprise, is far from over. Now it is time for us to do a "stocktaking" or a state of the art assessment of the subject, and this is what we intend to do by analysing P .T, Raju' s views on comparative philosophy. Raju is used as a case study because he, of all writers on/in comparative philosophy to date, is of singular importance and special consideration for both the theoretical contribution to the subject and the amount of literature produced in the field.

As for the format of our study, the work consists of a general introdurticm and four chapters. The first three expository chapters present Raju's views on comparative philosophy and his philosophical synthesis. As a rule these chapters contain Raju' s views only, excepting those comments and observations we make in the footnotes. The fourth chapter offers critiques of Raju' s comparative philosophy and calls for a paradigm shift in East-West studies in philosophy. While we question the justification for pursuing comparatie philosophy as an independent discipline, we maintain the need and relevance of cross-cultural and comparative studies in philosophy and argue for a fresh perspective of philosophical studies and a new syllabus for history of philosophy." (From the Preface)

40. Kakol, Peter. 2002. "A General Theory of Worldviews Based on Madhyamika and Process Philosophies." Philosophy East and West no. 52:207-223.

Abstract: "The aim of this essay is to make a contribution to the emerging field of "cross-cultural analysis of worldviews" by showing how the basic insights of process philosophy and Madhyamika Buddhism can be combined into a comprehensive theory of worldviews that is both developmental and typological (or diachronic and synchronic). It is hoped that this theory of worldviews will enable cross-cultural analyses of worldviews to go beyond mere comparison of similarities and differences between worldviews by showing how worldviews can mutually transform one another through dialogue. I will begin by outlining the basic ideas of both process thought and Madhyamika Buddhism, their respective theories of worldviews, and how these relate to contem- porary thought. I will then argue that these two theories are compatible with one another and that their combination can contribute to the development of a general theory of worldviews. Finally, I will show how such a general theory of worldviews- which is also necessarily a general theory of values-can be used in the evaluative analysis of worldviews.

41. Kalmanson, Leah. 2015. "Have We Got a Method for You! Recent Developments in Comparative and Cross-Cultural Methodologies." Confluence: Online Journal of World Philosophies no. 3:205-214.

Abstract: "Recent developments in comparative and cross-cultural philosophy converge on the question of philosophical methods. Three new books address this question from different perspectives, including feminist comparative philosophy, Afrocentricity, and metaphilosophy. Taken together, these books help us to imagine interventions in the methodologies dominant in Western academic philosophy through a fundamental reevaluation of how we think, reason, and argue. Such reevaluation underscores the problems that Eurocentrism poses for feminist discourse and the resources that comparative philosophy offers for addressing these problems."

References

J. McWeeny, and A. Butnor (eds.), Asian and Feminist Philosophies in Dialogue: Liberating Traditions, New York: Columbia University Press, 2014;

A. Monteiro-Ferreira, The Demise of the Inhuman: Afrocentricity, Modernism, and Postmodernism, Albany: SUNY Press, 2014;

S. Mattice, Metaphor and Metaphilosophy: Philosophy as Combat, Play, and Aesthetic Experience, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014.

42. ———. 2017. "The Ritual Methods of Comparative Philosophy." Philosophy East and West no. 67:399-418.

"In several recent articles, Leigh Kathryn Jenco questions the use of Eurocentric methodologies in conducting cross-cultural research within and about Chinese traditions.(3)" (p. 399)

(...)

"In what follows, I begin with Jenco’s claim that we might look to several scholars of the Ming and Qing dynasties for examples of research practices that could be adopted widely today. These include meditation routines meant to prepare the mind for scholarly research, and memorization techniques aimed at internalizing texts to catalyze philosophical insight and, ultimately, self-transformation. As I show, these methods are part of a general “ritual methodology” evident across all the sanjiao 三 教(8) traditions (i.e., the “three teachings” of Ruism,(9) Daoism, and Buddhism) and informed by a certain conception of the mirror-like functioning of the mind. From within this context, I consider both the viability and desirability of such a ritualized approach to scholarship for contemporary professional philosophers." (p. 400)

References

(3) In particular, see Jenco, “How Meaning Moves: Tan Sitong on Borrowing across Cultures,” [Philosophy East and West 62, no. 1] pp. 92–113, and “‘What Does Heaven Ever Say?’ A Methods-centered Approach to Cross-cultural Engagement,” [American Political Science Review 101, no. 4] pp. 741–755.

(8) Sanjiao or the “three teachings” is a term that goes back to at least the Sui dynasty; I use it here to emphasize certain methodological similarities that underlie these various East Asian traditions.

(9) Following Robert Eno in The Confucian Creation of Heaven, I use “Ruism” in place of “Confucianism” to better approximate the Chinese term rujia 儒家 or “scholarly lineage.”

43. Kasulis, Thomas P. 2002. Intimacy or Integrity: Philosophy and Cultural Difference. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.

The 1998 Gilbert Ryle Lectures.

"This book is not a study of any particular culture, although I cannot deny I have often had specific cultures or subcultures in mind as I developed the theory. As the next chapter will explain, for example, I doubt that I would have developed the reiterative patterns in this way if it had not been for my exposure to Japanese culture. Yet the book is not intended to be an analysis of any single culture, even Japanese culture. It is more like a thought experiment that raises fundamental issues about the nature of culture itself, especially the relation between culture and thought. One aim of this book is to present the case for understanding at least some cultural phenomena in terms of the reiterative or recursive analysis. The role of the philosopher is not just to analyze but also to give us better tools for analysis. My readers are therefore invited, indeed encouraged, to use the tools in relation to whatever cultures or subcultures they wish. It is unlikely that any culture is ever a perfect example of either an intimacy-dominant or integrity-dominant culture (generalities always have qualifications or exceptions), but the hope is that the analysis and critical tools presented here may help us see connections and differences we might have otherwise missed. If this hope is realized, communication and understanding across cultures will be assisted and the book will have served its ultimate purpose." (p. 11)

44. Kessler, Gary E. 2015. Voices of Wisdom: A Multicultural Philosophy Reader. Andover (Hamshire): Cengage Learning.

Ninth edition.

"Since the publication of the first edition of Voices of Wisdom, I am gratified to note that more introductory textbooks now incorporate a multicultural perspective, a perspective that was unique to this introductory reader when it was first published in 1992.

At that time the introductory readers that were available treated philosophy as if it were entirely an Anglo-European male phenomenon. Little or no attention was given to Hindu, Buddhist, Chinese, African, Native American, Latin American, and feminist philosophy. Voices of Wisdom helped to change that situation, offering to those who wished it the possibility of assigning significant readings that represent the global nature of philosophizing." (preface, p. XI)

45. Kimmerle, Heinz. 1996. "How can time become time (again)? How to repeat what never has been?" In Time and Temporality in Intercultural Perspective, edited by Tiemersma, D. and Oosterling, H.A.F., 11-23. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

"Time can never become what it essentially is: the pure openness of being and of becoming. But we can work on a way of understanding it, which is more open, less fixed into the opposition of time or no time, of being or not being.

We can do this if we opt for a pluriformity of time or Being as being experienced in different ways. I do not mean this in a highly speculative sense, rather in a more practical sense. How can we think and act in ways which are more adequate to the being of time? On the one hand we can follow the thinking of Heidegger, Derrida and Lyotard who deal with this difficult question. On the other hand we can find the pluriformity of being and of time directly and concretely in the pluriformity of cultures. And it is a very practical exercise to work on the maintenance of this pluriformity. Therefore, with regard to our present issue, we will first ask how time is thought of by Lyotard and also by Heidegger and Derrida and secondly how time is experienced in other cultures and how this experience is conceptualized. As an example I have chosen the concept of time in African thought. Thus a highly speculative and a more practical approach come together, for thinking is also a way of living and as philosophers we have to learn how we can to live by working out how we must think. This 'must', of course, is not a purely logical imperative; nor is it orientated to a certain direction: east or west, south or north, but to the openness of Being as happening to be." (p. 12)

46. ———. 2007. "Transdisciplinary research in the cooperation between intercultural philosophy and empirical sciences." TD: The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa no. 3:95-103.

Abstract: "This article will examine how philosophy and empirical sciences can cooperate in research. It is presupposed that in philosophy and in the empirical sciences different types of discourses are used. This difference causes a large gap between them, which has to be bridged. Intercultural philosophy is understood as a specific approach to philosophy as a whole. It is necessary to make philosophy fit into a world in which exchanges are happening on a global level in many fields. In the dialogues between the philosophies of different cultures, support is needed from certain empirical sciences for the understanding of the philosophy, which is based on the the participation of philosophers in everyday life and everyday language. Therefore, in addition to the the support by empirical sciences, living in a foreign culture, participating in its life, is necessary for intercultural philosophers."

47. ———. 2010. "My Way to lntercultural Philosophy." Recerca. Revista de Pensament i Analisi no. 10:35-44.

Abstract: "My way of philosophical thought led me from hermeneutics, via dialectics and philosophies of difference to intercultural philosophy with special attention for African philosophy. I studied hermeneutics with the theologians Gerhard Ebeling and Ernst Fuchs at Tübingen, Philipp Vielhauer at Bonn and the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer at Heidelberg in the 1950ies. Reading Hegel and Marx I came to accept the position of materialist dialectics. My favorite author was Ernst Bloch who combines his position of materialist dialectics with a critical interpretation of religion, especially Jewish-Christian religion. Jacques Derrida's deconstruction of Hegelian dialectics brought me to the philosophies of difference. The concept of the Other in these philosophies formed the entrance to contribute to the foundation and the development of intercultural philosophy."

48. ———. 2011. "Respect for the Other and the Refounding of Society: Practical Aspects of Intercultural Philosophy." In lntermedialities: Philosophy, Arts, Politics, edited by Oosterling, Henk and Plonowska Ziarek, Ewa, 137-152. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

"The aim of "lntercultural" philosophy is to add a new dimension to Western philosophical traditions. From a Western point of view, this type of philosophizing is carried out by leading dialogues between Western and non-Western traditions of thought. The position that every culture has its own specific way or style of thought and of philosophy is taken as an important starting point. Or, to formulate it in a negative manner, Western philosophy is not chosen as the criterion for judging where philosophy can or cannot be found. If philosophy occurs in traditional African ways of thought, which is generaIly acknowledged since African philosophy is a regular section at the World Congresses ofPhilosophy, this means that philosophy can be found also in cultures that do not practice primarily written forms of communication and tradition. From here the step can be taken to ascribe philosophy to aIl cultures. The reflection of a culture on the right of its existence and its specific way of life among other cultures and in the middle of nature brings about philosophy in that particular culture. The dialogues between the philosophies of different cultures are treating topics, which are of common interest for them and/or of an importance that exceeds the problems of one of the cultures in

question. Intercultural philosophical dialogues presuppose that the philosophies of aIl cultures are equivalent in rank and different in style as weIl as in contents." (p. 137)

49. King, R. A. H., ed. 2015. The Good Life and Conceptions of Life in Early China and Græco-Roman Antiquity. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Contents: I Methods

R.A.H. King: Introduction 3; G.E.R. Lloyd: Models for living in ancient Greece and China. A supplementary note on methodology and aims 21; Ralph Weber: On Comparing Ancient Chinese and Greek Ethics: The tertium comparationis as Tool of Analysis and Evaluation 29;

II China

Paul R. Goldin: The Consciousness of the Dead as a Philosophical Problem in Ancient China 59; Guo Yi: The Ideas of Human Nature in Early China 93; Dennis Schilling: Cosmic Life and Human Life in the “Book of Changes” 117; Christoph Harbsmeier: Good Fortune and Bliss in Early China 145; Elisabeth Hsu: Bing-distress in the Zuo zhuan: the not-so-good-life, the social self andmoral sentiment among persons of rank in Warring States China 157; Michael Nylan: Pleasures and Delights, Sustaining and Consuming 181;

III Greece and Rome

William Charlton: Is the Concept of the Mind Parochial? 213; Jörg Hardy: Taking Thoughts about Life seriously. The existential dimension of Socratic Inquiry in Plato’s Apology 227; Richard Stalley: Filial Piety in Plato 247; Hua-kuei Ho: The Good Life for Plato’s Tripartite Soul 265; Thomas Buchheim: Good counsel and the role of logos for human excellence. On the rhetorical anthropology of “the measure of all things” 281; Michael Erler: Hedonê in the Poets and Epicurus 303;

IV Comparisons

Lisa Raphals: Autonomy, Fate, Divination and the Good Life 321; R.A.H. King: Mencius and the Stoics – tui and oikeiôsis 341; Lee H. Yearley: The Role and Pursuit of the Virtue of Equanimity in Ancient China and Greece 363;

Index locorum 387; General index of subjects 395-402.

50. Kirloskar-Steinbach, Monika, and Kalmanson, Leah. 2021. A Practical Guide to World Philosophies: Selves, Worlds, and Ways of Knowing. New York: Bloomsnury Academic.

"As our subtitle indicates, this introduction to "world philosophies" is also a book about selves, worlds, and ways of knowing. As such, it accomplishes two interrelated tasks: (1) it not only brings a world philosophical approach to bear on these fundamental issues; but (2) it also shows how our very understanding of the meaning of the terms "selves;' "worlds;' and "knowing" is transformed in the process.

Although we intend for this volume to stand on its own as an exercise in world-philosophical practice, we have also designed it to serve as a guidebook to the Bloomsbury series Introductions to World Philosophies. The series is an educational resource that provides in-depth introductory texts in world-philosophical traditions appropriate for classroom use as well as accessible to a general audience. Each volume in the series responds to the thematic framework indicated in our subtitle, such that together the contributions provide a diverse array of philosophical perspectives on fundamental questions related to selves, world, and ways of knowing." (p. 1)

51. Kirloskar-Steinbach, Monika, Ramana, Geeta, and Maffie, James. 2014. "Introducing Confluence: A Thematic Essay." Confluence: Online Journal of World Philosophies no. 1:7-63.

Abstract: "In the following thematic introduction, we seek to situate Confluence within the field of comparative philosophy and substantiate why we deem a new publication necessary. For this purpose, we reconstruct the salient stages in the development of comparative philosophy in Section I, and then proceed to expound the rationale underlying Confluence in Section II. Our reconstruction of these stages pursues an exploratory rather than a documentary approach."

52. Koller, John M. 2018. Asian Philosophies. New York: Routledge.

Seventh edition (First edition 1970).

"By studying the great philosophical traditions of Asia, it is possible for us to understand these traditions' carefully considered answers to these questions, answers that are supported by profound insights and good reasons. Because these answers have guided the thought and action of the peoples of Asia over the centuries, they provide the basic clues to the guiding ideas and values of Asian societies today. And in today's world, where the very future of humankind depends upon understanding and cooperation among people with diverse values and ideas, it is imperative that these values and ideas be understood.

As each of us tries to creatively develop our own personal philosophy, we can benefit enormously from an understanding of the different ways that the basic questions of life have been answered by the great thinkers in the Asian traditions." (from the Preface)

53. Kramer, Eli. 2021. Intercultural Modes of Philosophy, Volume One: Principles to Guide Philosophical Community. Leiden: Brill.

"This work is part of a larger project, a three-volume series entitled "Intercultural Modes of Philosophy". Each volume engages the reader in a different philodynamic image of a mode of the philosophical life. My method in this project is what I call radically empirical philosophy of culture, which transitions Cassireren cultural phenomenology out of critical idealism and into a Jamesian and Whiteheadian inquiry into the higher thresholds of experience (human culture). In this first volume, I explore the neglected communal mode of philosophy (philosophical community) through meta-ethical principles that articulate what makes it robust, successful, and valuable. In the second volume, I will trace the enactions of philosophical wanderers. These philosophical wanderers enact reflective life as the force that, as an exercise in being obnoxious, awakens culture out of its settled dogmatisms and onto new and more ethically rich routes in the wider world. The third volume will meditate on and with philosophical speculators, as those who create and maintain philodynamic cosmic images for reconstructive contemplation. In other words, it will explore the structure of systematic philosophical inquiry both for creator and audience. To gether, these three modes of philosophy can be thought of as the "three tripod legs" that support (ground) robust philosophical life within, and effective for, a culture." (Preface)

54. Krishna, Daya. 1988. "Comparative Philosophy: What It Is and What It Ought to Be." In Interpreting Across Boundaries. New Essays in Comparative Philosophy, edited by Larson, Gerald James and Deutsch, Eliot, 71-83. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Reprinted in N. Bhushan, J. L. Garfield, D. Raveh (eds.), Contrary Thinking. Selected essays of Daya Krishna, New York: Oxford University Press 2011, pp. 59-67.

"To search for the distinctive philosophical problems seen as problems or for distinctiveness in the solutions offered to similar problems is not only to see the alien tradition in a new way but to enrich oneself with the awareness of an alternative possibility in thought, a possibility that has already been actualized.

The awareness of this alternative actualized possibility may, one hopes, free one's conceptual imagination from the unconscious constraints of one's own conceptual tradition.

Thus comparative philosophy has the chance to function as a mutual liberator of each philosophical tradition from the limitations imposed upon it by its own past, instead of being what it is at present, the imposition of the standards of one dominant culture upon all the others and the evaluation of their philosophical achievements in terms of those alien standards." (p. 83)

55. Kupperman, Joel J. 2001. Classic Asian Philosophy: A Guide to the Essential Texts. New York: Oxford University Press.

"I came therefore to view this book, which is a generalist rather than a specialist project, as an extension of teaching.The organizing principle is simple. Each of the eight chapters focuses on one classic Asian text (or, in one case, cluster of texts), which is widely available in paperback, frequently in more than one translation. Each of these eight books, incidentally, is one that at some time or other I have used as one of the assigned books in an undergraduate course. The goal of each chapter is not only to explicate the text (or texts) but also to make it come alive. That is, we should be able to see Asian philosophers as struggling with important questions, ones that could matter to us too, and as offering answers that (even were we to find in the end that we cannot entirely accept them) would be plausible—in relation to those questions—to an intelligent person." (Preface, VI)

56. ———. 2002. "The Purposes and Functions of Comparative Philosophy." APA Newsletters no. 2:26-29.

"There are many reasons for comparative study of philosophies that represent different traditions and possibly originate in different cultures. The two that stand out are (1) appreciation, including deeper understanding of philosophical texts, and (2) the suggestiveness of philosophy in an unfamiliar tradition, providing new prompts for philosophical investigation. The first can grow out of fascination with great philosophy of a variety of kinds. The second can emerge in a working life, part of which is designed to create new philosophy." (p. 26)

57. Kwee, Swan Liat. 1951. "Methods of Comparative Philosophy." Philosophy East and West no. 1:10-15.

"Methodical evaluation goes farther than the formal preparatory stages of translation and collation. Comparative philosophy is a multiple and integral approach to the common issues of philosophy. In its historical development, from about the middle of the last century to the present, we see many phases." (p. 12)

(...)

"The comparative approach. This involves, as a next step, the schematic analysis of the total subject matter of philosophy, and may center about problems ( comparative metaphysics, comparative logic, comparative ethics, etc.) or about pervasive attitudes ( realism, idealism; monism, dualism, pluralism, etc.). This method of schematic comparison is the first stage in evaluation. Comparison involves the finding of analogies and, as a result, of specific differences. This process deepens our insight into the structural correlations in philosophy. Comparison may be considered as the most fundamental element in evaluation. The danger in attempts at comparison is that the starting point, the viewpoint of comparison, may be biased. Many Western scholars try to evaluate Eastern systems of thought by comparing them from a Christian standpoint, which tacitly is assumed as the only correct one. Comparison must do justice to every item compared both by stating the common analogical pattern and by relevating important specific differences. Both methods deserve equal attention. Comparison tends to overstress the analogy and to neglect the essential differences, often resulting in a false conviction that all philosophy or religion is essentially the same." (p. 13, notes omitted)

58. ———. 1953. Methods of Comparative Philosophy. Scheveningen - Leiden: Offsetdrkkerij Dorsman.

Contents: Preface V-IX; Part One: The Meaning of Comparative Philosophy. 1: Introduction 3; 2. Analysis of the phenomenon 18; 3. A historical perspective 30; Part Two: The Meaning of Philosophy. 4. Phenomenology of philosophy 61; 5. The function of philosophy 68; 6. The contents of philosophy 84; 7. The systematics of philosophy 92; Part Three: The Methods of Comparative Philosophy. 8. A triangulation of methods 111; 9. The historical and sociological approach 120; 10. The anthropological and psychological approach 139; 11. The linguistic and logical approach 154; 12. The transcendental re-evaluative approach 171; Bibliography 187; Index 207-217.

"The analysis of methods of comparative philosophy, originally intended to serve as a base for the design of a new program of applied philosophical studies in Indonesia, is presented here as a general survey of the phenomenon of comparative philosophy as such, without references to Indonesian thought. As a survey it strives after comprehensiveness rather than completeness. No such survey has been attempted yet. Those who are engaged in the study of comparative philosophy may have some knowledge of some of the other projects with analogous purposes, but a comprehensive and systematic treatment of comparative philosophy, covering the whole field of studies, is still lacking. The present study by no means pretends to fill up this gap completely. It does not attempt to give a detailed and accurate picture of the scene, but rather to indicate the main horizons. As in a usual triangulation some points of reference are marked off with some emphasis while inter mediate areas are left out of consideration. The only possible merit of such an undertaking lies in what has-not-yet-been-said rather than in what is actually propounded, It serves to stimulate to further, more systematic and more integral researches rather than to registrate objectively what has been achieved at the moment. It serves to link apparently disconnected projects and themes, and so to open unexpected vistas and to readjust and enlarge existent perspectives, When it succeeds to evoke some fertile criticism, to bring about more-effective co-ordination in the many contemporary projects of comparative philosophy, and to contribute to the growth of practical transcultural understanding, the author's main intentions have been amply rewarded.

Because this work is itself a survey it is impracticable to add a summary to it. The three parts of which it is composed, respectively dealing with a systematic analysis of the phenomenon of comparative philosophy, asystematic analysis of the phenomenon of philosophy itself, and the current methods of comparative philosophy, constitute a systematic whole." (pp. VI-VIII)

"This study is composed of three parts.

The first part will be an analysis of the meaning of comparative philosophy. A first mapping of the phenomenon is carried out in three sections. Some of the most significant recent studies are mentioned in this chapter. A second chapter will be devoted to an analysis of the main problems. Then, the phenomenon is viewed in a historical perspective.

The second part will contain an analysis of the meaning of philosophy itself. The phenomenon of philosophy being the formal object of study in comparative philosophy, a mapping of this phenomenon itself is indispensable for an adequate integration of the various fragmentary endeavours in comparative philosophy. On the base of a comprehensive phenomenology of philosophy the systematic study of comparative philosophy will be facilitated. The third and last part is a comprehensive survey of current methods of comparative philosophy. A triangulation of methods is an efficient means to reveal the actual character of comparative philosophy as a consistent discipline." (pp. 4-5)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography of Intercultural and Comparative Philosophy: L-N

Bibliography

1. Lacertosa, Massimiliano. 2017. "For a philosophy of comparisons: the problems of comparative studies in relation with Daoism." Asian Philosophy no. 27:324-339.

Abstract: This paper reflects on the problems of cross-cultural interpretations and translations analysing how these are rooted in theories and philosophical assumptions. Inquiring the concept of philosophy per se, the paper discusses key passages of Heidegger and the related problem of 有(you) and 無(wu). The conclusion is that to translate such terms, it is necessary to revise the coercive ontotheological assumptions of metaphysics. This can trigger a process of re-grounding grounds with the consequent possibility of language transformation, which, in turn, activates new relations between cultural diversities. Thus, philosophy itself becomes an eminently comparative dialogue between cultures. Without setting a single method for all these problems, the paper argues that comparisons themselves call for necessarily different methodological approaches. Hence, whilst Daoism helps to illuminate these issues defining one of the possibilities that a philosophy of comparisons entails, this same reasoning opens a way for another

reading of the Daodejing."

2. Larson, Gerald James, and Deutsch, Eliot, eds. 1988. Interpreting Across Boundaries: New Essays in Comparative Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Contents: Preface VII-IX; Gerald James Larson: Introduction: The “Age-Old Distinction Between the Same and the Other” 3; Karl H. Potter: Metaphor as Key to Understanding the Thought of Other Speech Communities 19; Henry Rosemont, Jr: Against Relativism 36; Daya Krishna: Comparative Philosophy: What It Is and What It Ought to Be 71; Ben-Ami Scharfstein: The Contextual Fallacy 84; Charles Hartshorne: Sankara, Nagarjuna, and Fa Tsang, with Some Western Analogues 98; Raimundo Panikkar: What Is Comparative Philosophy Comparing? 116; Hajime Nakamura: The Meaning of the Terms ‘Philosophy’ and ‘Religion’ in Various Traditions 137; Frederick J. Streng: Mechanisms of Self-Deception and True Awareness According to C. G. Jung and the Eight-Thousand-Line Perfection of Wisdom Sutra 152; Eliot Deutsch: Knowledge and the Tradition Text in Indian Philosophy 165; Ninian Smart: The Analogy of Meaning and the Tasks of Comparative Philosophy 174; Sengfaku Mayeda: Sankara and Narayana Guru 184; Frits Staal: Is There Philosophy in Asia? 203; Wingh-Tsit Chan: Chu Hsi and World Philosophy 230; Roger T. Ames: Confucius and the Ontology of Knowing 265; A. S. Cua: Reflections on Moral Theory and Understanding Moral Traditions 280; Wm. Theodore de Bary: Neoconfuciamsm as Traditional and Modern 294; Contributors 311; Index 313-316.

3. Leaman, Oliver. 1999. Key Concepts in Eastern Philosophy. New York: Routledge.

"The premise on which I am working here is that Eastern philosophy is philosophy, and not something special and esoteric which we need special non-philosophical tools to operate. On the other hand, there is no doubt that Eastern philosophy is closely connected with the religions of the East, and it is impossible to understand that philosophy unless one also understands something of the religions. I have tried to explain enough about the relevant religion or culture to make the context of the philosophy comprehensible. For this reason I have included some material that is far more relevant to religion than to philosophy.

It is always difficult to know if one has gone into enough depth, and if one has spent too much time on the religion and not enough on the philosophy. This is a book on philosophy, and not on religion, and a book on religion would include far more discussion of the key religious concepts than I have done." (Introduction, p. XI)

4. Levine, Michael. 2016. "Does Comparative Philosophy Have a Fusion Future?" Confluence: Online Journal of World Philosophies no. 4:208-237.

Abstract: "This essay challenges the claim that fusion philosophy is the successor to comparative philosophy. Comparative philosophy should find itself deeply at odds with the approach to various philosophical problems and traditions that fusion philosophy is taking, and comparative philosophers will surely deny Mark Siderits (2003: xi) claim that they have been superseded. The manner then in which fusion philosophy dismisses comparativist concerns and objections is to admit that such objections are valid in some case but to deny that they are intrinsic to good fusion philosophy. Comparativists however generally do not claim that fusion philosophy is necessarily or inherently bound to make the mistakes and contribute to misunderstandings that they claim it often does. Their claim is that from the start such philosophy often does make just these kinds of problematic errors and assumptions, and that this is what comparativist philosophy must seek to avoid. By the time fusionists are done defending – actually sanitizing – fusion philosophy from comparativist objections, one is left not with fusion philosophy but with what is – from the comparativist perspective – comparative philosophy. There is no succession from comparative philosophy to fusion philosophy and no segue from one to the other."

5. Li, Chenyang. 1999. The Tao Encounters the West: Explorations in Comparative Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments IX; Introduction 1; Chapter 1. Being: perspective versus substance 11; Chapter 2. Truth: Confucius and Heidegger 35; Chapter 3. Pragmatic versus semantic 63; Chapter 4. Ethics: Confucian Jen and Feminist Care 89; Chapter 5. Family: duty versus rights 115; Chapter 6. Religion: multiple participation versus exclusionism 139; Chapter 7. Justice: Confucian values and democratic values 163; Concluding remarks 191; Notes 193; Bibliography 217; Index 229.

From the Introduction: "The book may be seen as a study of Chinese and Western versions Tao. "Tao", as the word is used in Chinese, is not limited to Taoism; in all major Chinese systems it refers to the right way (the Ways or cosmic order even though different schools have different interpretations.' Chinese philosophy, therefore, may be seen as studies of various aspects of the Tao. Neither Chinese nor Western philosophy is homogeneous. There are, however, certain philosophies and philosophers who have had a defining influence within their own cultures and traditions, and I believe that a comparative study of these philosophies and philosophers can be used to demonstrate different thought patterns of the two cultures. Such a study illuminates the Chinese harmony model of life, which serves as a cornerstone of my argument for the coexistence of Confucianism and democracy.

This book serves a dual purpose. While each chapter contributes directly or indirectly to the main thesis, each also stands on its own as a comparative study of a specific dimension of Western and Chinese philosophical and ethico-religious traditions.

Chapter 1, "Being: Perspective versus Substance," investigates the differences between Chinese ontology and Aristotelian ontology, which is the most influential in the West. Aristotle's view of being is a substance ontology, according to which the world is composed of various individual substances. The Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zi's ' ontology, which reflects on the background of Chinese thinking in general, is a perspective ontology. According to this ontology, the being or identity of an entity is always contextually situated and perspective-dependent. These ontological differences occur at a fundamental level and thus underlie many other philosophical positions that distinguish Chinese from Western views. Communication and mutual understanding can be enhanced with a clear understanding of these differences. For example, the Chinese "contextual perspective" ontology has profound implications for people's attitudes toward many other significant aspects of life, including truth, morality, and religious practice. Because of the significance of Chinese ontology for Chinese philosophy in general, this first chapter not only provides the basis for chapter 2, on truth, it also has direct relevance to chapters 4 and 5 as the foundation of the Confucian understanding of `personhood."

Chapter 2, "Truth: Confucius and Heidegger," investigates various concepts of truth, which is a central value in the West and in China. In the West, truth is usually understood semantically; it is a relation between language and reality. The Chinese understand it primarily as a matter of being a good person, as a way of life; being true is the way to realize one's potential for becoming fully human. Different understandings of truth in Western and Chinese philosophies affect value judgments in significant ways. Heidegger is chosen here not because he represents a typical Western understanding of truth (he does not), but because he presents a root metaphor of truth that is shared by both the Chinese and the Westerner. Through exploring Heidegger's view on truth, this chapter demonstrates how the Chinese and Western notions of truth, although sharing the same common metaphor of "unveiling (aletheia)," lead in different directions. This understanding of Chinese truth as a way of life and self-realization provides further ground for discussion in chapters 4, 5. 6, and 7." (pp. 2-3)

6. ———. 2002. "Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies. From the Editor." APA Newsletters no. 2:19.

"Comparative philosophy can be understood broadly as philosophizing across two or more philosophical systems or traditions. Today, when people say comparative philosophy they typically mean philosophizing across cultural traditions, even though the lines between cultures are not always easily drawn. We do not need a precise definition of comparative philosophy to see the value and benefit of doing comparative philosophy. Different philosophies may have different issues to deal with because of their respective understandings of the world and human society; they may also share same philosophical problems, even if they do not tackle these problems in the same way. As we compare, we see both differences and similarities. Seeing differences helps us better understand one another; seeing similarities makes us feel less distant from one another and enhances our human solidarity.

Comparative philosophy, however, is not merely about seeing differences and similarities across traditions. Drawing rich resources from other traditions can help one’s own practice of philosophy become more fruitful. Philosophizing across traditions enables us to expand our horizons and to see things from different perspectives. In the contemporary world, philosophizing without looking beyond one’s own philosophical system or tradition proves increasingly impoverished and parochial."

7. ———. 2016. "Comparative Philosophy and Cultural Patterns." Dao. A Journal of Comparative Philosophy no. 15:533-546.

Abstract: "As a genus of philosophy, comparative philosophy serves various important purposes. It helps people understand various philosophies and it helps philosophers develop new ideas and solve problems. In this essay, I first clarify the meaning of “comparative philosophy” and its main purposes, arguing that an important purpose of comparative philosophy is to help us understand cultural patterns. This function makes comparative philosophy even more significant in today’s globalized world."

8. Liang, Shuming. 2001. "The Cultures of the East and West and Their Philosophies." Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy no. 1:107-127.

Translated by Andrew Covlin and Jinmei Yuan.

"Editor's note: This is the first installment of a series of translations of selected articles from the important debate on the Cultures of the East and West which took place in China during the early twentieth century. Generally speaking, this debate involved two groups of people: Proponents of Western Culture, and proponents of Eastern Culture. The former, represented by Hu Shi, believed that traditional Chinese culture was no longer viable in the modem world and maintained that we should accept Western culture as a whole; the latter, represented by Liang Shuming, the author of the following selection, argued that Chinese culture is superior to Western culture and represents the future of world culture.

Translated below is chapter 2 of Liang's famous book, The Cultures of the East and West and their Philosophies. It can be seen in this chapter that although Dang is a proponent of Eastern Culture, he also tries very hard to incorporate into Chinese culture what he sees as valuable aspects of Western culture, particularly Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy. The section numbers are added by translators.."

9. Libbrecht, Ulrich. 2006. Within the Four Seas... Introduction to Comparative Philosophy. Leuven: Peeters.

"The purpose of Part I is not to deal with the problem of globalization in depth: this is far beyond my capacities. It intends only to prove that comparative philosophy must actually be the culmination of globalism, because it studies encounters between civilizations in depth, not as commercial or political strategies. Some scholars are of the opinion that comparative thinking is nothing more than an academic diversion alienated from political, economic and social reality. ActualJy, it is a project for the future, a revival of Erasmus' dream on a worldwide scale, free from traditional Eurocentrism, and also far removed from flat commercialism." (pp. 1-2)

(...)

"It is not the task of a comparative philosophy to blend these philosophies into a kind of world philosophy, but to bring them together in a model that enables global dialogue. Such a dialogue does not aim at a kind of ecurnene or mutual respect and tolerance in the first place, but at a philosophical act which brings out the similarities and especially the differences, because precisely the latter augment the spiritual wealth of mankind. In Part 2 we try to buld a model which makes this comparison possible. In Part 3 we shall deal with the three main philosophies themselves, restricting our analysis to the most extreme world-views: Greek rationality, Buddhist mysticism and Taoist nature philosophy.

It is perhaps not superfluous to remind the reader that we are not dealing with religions, but only with philosophies." (p. 44)

10. Lin, Ma, and van Brakel, Jaap. 2018. "On the Interpreter’s Choices: Making Hermeneutic Relativity Explicit." Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy no. 17:453-478.

Abstract: "In this essay, we explore the various aspects of hermeneutic relativity that have rarely been explicitly discussed. Our notion of “hermeneutic relativity” can be seen as an extension, with significant revisions, of Gadamer’s notion of Vorurteil. It refers to various choices and constraints of the interpreter, including beliefs concerning the best way of doing philosophy, what criteria are to be used to evaluate competing interpretations, and so on. The interpreter cannot completely eliminate the guidance and constraint originating from his/her “background.” However, in principle the interpreter can “choose” to be guided by other constraints. Hence, we speak of “choices” or “commitments.” Hermeneutic relativity is the major cause for the variation of competing interpretations."

11. Lloyd, G. E. R., and Zhao, Jingyi Jenny, eds. 2018. Ancient Greece and China Compared. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

In collaboration with Qiaosheng Dong.

Contents: List of Figures VII; AcknowledgementsX; Notes on Editions XI; List of Contributors XIII; G.E.R. Lloyd: Introduction: Methods, Problems and Prospects 1;

Part I Methodological issues and goals 31

1. Nathan Sivin: Why Some Comparisons Make More Difference than Others 33; 2. Walter Scheidel: Comparing Comparisons 40; 3. Roberet Wardy: On the Very Idea of (Philosophical?) Translation 59;

Part II Philosophy and religion 81

4. R. A. H. King: Freedom in Parts of the Zhuangzi and Epictetus 83; 5. Jingyi Jenny Zhao: Shame and Moral Education in Aristotle and Xunzi 110; 6. Lisa Raphals: Human and Animal in Early China and Greece 131; 7. Michael Puett: Genealogies of Gods, Ghosts and Humans: The Capriciousness of the Divine in Early Greece and Early China 160;

Part IIi Art and Literature 187;

8. Jeremy Tanner: Visual Art and Historical Representation in Ancent Greece and China 189; 9. Yiqun Zhou: Helen and Chinese Femmes Fatales 234;

Part IV Mathematics and Life Sciences 257

10. Reviel Netz: Divisions, Big and Small: Comparing Archimedes and Liu Hui 259; 11. Karine Chemla: Abstraction as a Value in the Historiography of Mathematics in Ancient Greece and China: A Historical Approach to Comparative History of Mathematics 290; 12. Vivienne Lo and Eleanor Re'em: Recipes for Love in the Ancient World 326;

Part V Agriculture, Planning and Insitutions 353

13. Xinyi Liu, Evi Margaritis and Marin Jones: From th Harvest to the Meal in Prehistoric China and Greece: A Comparative Approach to the Social Context of Food 355; 14. Michael Nylan: On Libraries and Manuscript Culture in Western Han Chang'an and Alexandria 373;

Michael Lowe: Afterword 410;

Index 420-430.

12. Lott, Tommy L. 2011. "Comparative Aspects of Africana Philosophy and the Continental-Analytic Divide." Comparative Philosophy no. 2:25-37.

Abstract: "Critical engagement involving philosophers trained in continental and analytic traditions often takes its purpose to be a reconciliation of tensions arising from differences in style, or method. Critical engagement in Africana philosophy, however, is rarely focused on method, style, or orientation because philosophic research in this field, regardless of orientation, has had to accommodate its empirical grounding in disciplines outside of philosophy. I focus primarily on the comparative dimensions of three important strands of this research: (1) a history of ideas, (2) a problem-orientation, and (3) a sub-area specialization, to indicate why a need to reconcile tensions between continental and analytic orientations has very little currency in Africana philosophy. Socio-economic problems faced by African-descended people require multiple perspectives to accommodate the wide variety of diasporic social contexts for a given proposal. I employ a selection of cases to illustrate how Africana philosophy benefits from an interplay of many intersecting factors and that, as an interdisciplinary area of research with a commitment to the incorporation of multiple perspectives, it fosters cross-pollination and hybridization of continental and analytic traditions."

13. Loy, David. 1988. Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Reprint: Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1997.

"This study divides naturally into two parts. Part | extracts various claims from the major nondualist traditions, Buddhism, Vedanta, and Taoism, in order to construct a “core doctrine” of nonduality largely consistent with all three. The process of selection is unsystematic, making use of assertions and arguments that provide helpful insights while ignoring most of the rest. This yields a theory about the nature of nondual experience that also explains the apparent “delusion” of our more usual way of understanding experience. But the disagreements among the nondualist systems—especially between Mahayana Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta—cannot be lightly dismissed. So part 2 works backward, using the core theory as a perspective from which to approach and resolve the disagreements. There we shall be able to understand how the same phenomenological experience may be subjected to different and even contradictory descriptions.

In this introduction, the term nonduality refers exclusively to the nonduality of (more narrowly) seer and seen, (more broadly) subject and object. Such nonduality is my main concern, but is by no means the only meaning of the term in the literature. At least five different meanings can be distinguished, all of them intimately related; three of those are of interest in part 1. Chapter I sets the parameters of the study by discussing the role of these three nondualities within Buddhism, Vedanta, and Taoism. It demonstrates their prevalence, importance, and relationships, dwelling particularly upon the third nonduality of subject and object, of self and nonself, of my consciousness and the world “I” find myself “in.” Each of the following chapters of part 1 investigates what such nonduality might mean in one particular mode of our experience—perceiving, acting, and thinking, respectively. How can we understand the assertion that each of these is actually nondual?" Introduction, p. 9)

14. Lu, Mingjun. 2020. Chinese-Western Comparative Metaphysics and Epistemology: A Topical Approach. Lanham: Lexington Books.

"A primary objective of this project is to examine the wisdom of Chinese and Western sages through a comparative analysis of their philosophical discourses. By wisdom, I refer chiefly to the metaphysical knowledge of universality, a view that draws on Aristotle’s (384–322BC) definition of wisdom in his Metaphysics. Aristotle calls metaphysics philosophia prima, the “first science” or “first philosophy” that takes “wisdom” or “truth” as its object of study (1026a28–30).2 Unlike empirical study that aims at action, Aristotle observes, the end of metaphysical inquiry is “knowledge of the truth” (993b20–21). By wisdom or truth, he means “knowledge about certain causes and principles,” especially “the first causes and principles of things” (982a1; 981b29). Since great wisdom “must belong to him who has in the highest degree universal knowledge,” Aristotle remarks, “wisdom is a science of first principles” (982a20–21; 1059a18). In his Nicomachean Ethics, he declares that wisdom of universality is “the most finished of the forms of knowledge” (NE 1141a16)." (p. 2)

(...)

"It is a key argument of this project that Chinese wisdom or truth resides in its metaphysics of the first principle as well. As to be demonstrated in Chapter 1, the first principle also constitutes the primary hypothesis of Chinese originative metaphysics as represented in the Laozi of Laozi 老子 (c. 600–531 BC), founder of the Taoist philosophy, and the ten commentaries made by Confucius 孔子 (551–479 BC) and his followers on the Yijing 易 经, The Book of Changes.

Laozi’s work is also called Daode Jing 道德经, The Dao and Its Virtue. The ten Confucian commentaries or “wings” are collected and give rise to the Yizhuan 易传, which will be referred to as the Yi Commentaries. Like Aristotelian metaphysics, Chinese originative metaphysics as represented in the Taoist and Confucian classics constitute the foundational framework for later philosophers to think about metaphysical and epistemological issues." (p. 3, a note omptted)

15. Ma, Lin, and van Brakel, Jaap. 2016. Fundamentals of Comparative and Intercultural Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press.

"The title of this book is “Fundamentals of Comparative and Intercultural Philosophy,” but yet we often solely use the expression “intercultural philosophy” in a broad scope, including every intercultural philosophical activity that involves translation, interpretation, and exposition of the conceptual schemes of a certain philosophical tradition in terms of the conceptual schemes of another tradition. Sometimes, we shorten this long phrase to “cross-cultural interpretation” or “interpretation across traditions.” Because intercultural and comparative have different semantic fields in philosophy, we use both in the title. However, except for a few cases,(1) we use the phrase intercultural philosophy to include comparative philosophy. In terms of “fundamentals” in the title, this book is concerned primarily with the necessary preconditions of intercultural philosophy. Occasionally we address the methodology of intercultural philosophy, but this is not our main subject. “Necessary preconditions” is more fundamental than “methodology.” (p. 1)

(...)

"In the remaining part of this introduction we present an overview of all the chapters. In the first chapter, we provide preliminary explications concerning the central concepts of philosophy and language and introduce the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativism. After reviewing a number of views with respect to Western, Chinese, and African philosophy, we argue that philosophy is a family resemblance concept.

Interaction across traditions does not require that the two sides employ the same concept of philosophy. Similarly, no sharp boundaries between “philosophy” and other reflective practices are needed; partitions such as those among philosophy, history, religious studies, and literature are conventional, and classifications may be different, as in the history of the Chinese traditions." (p. 5)

(1) We may use the words compare or comparative when the author(s) whose work is discussed use such words. We use the words intercultural and cross-cultural as synonyms.

16. ———. 2016. "On the Conditions of Possibility for Comparative and Intercultural Philosophy " Dao. A Journal of Comparative Philosophy no. 12:297-312.

Abstract: "In this essay, we present a theory of intercultural philosophical dialogue and comparative philosophy, drawing on both hermeneutics and analytic philosophy.

We advocate the approach of “de-essentialization” across the board. It is true that similarities and differences are always to be observed across languages and traditions, but there exist no immutable cores or essences. “De-essentialization” applies to all “levels” of concepts: everyday notions such as green and qing 青, philosophical concepts such as emotion(s) and qing 情, and philosophical categories such as forms of life and dao 道. We argue that interpretation is a holistic multi-directional process constrained by the principle of mutual attunement. It is necessary to assume that “the other” is a human being, who, in most cases, is consistent and stating that which is true or right. This is the condition of possibility for intercultural philosophical dialogue and comparative philosophy. No more necessary conditions are needed.

There is no need to presuppose concepts or categories that are universal for all humans and their languages (such as emotion(s) and qing 情)."

17. ———. 2016. "A Theory of Interpretation for Comparative and Chinese Philosophy." Dao. A Journal of Comparative Philosophy no. 15:575-589.

Abstract: "Why should interpretation of conceptual schemes and practices (forms of life) across traditions work at all? In this paper we present the following necessary conditions of possibility for interpretation in comparative and Chinese philosophy: the interpreter must presuppose that there are mutually recognizable human practices; the interpreter must presuppose that “the other” is, on the whole, sincere, consistent, and right; the interpreter must be committed to certain epistemic virtues. Some of these necessary conditions are consistent with the fact that interpretation is not thwarted by the “danger” of relativism or of incommensurability. Some other conditions are suggestive of reorientations of methodologies of comparative and Chinese philosophy.."

18. ———. 2018. "On the Interpreter’s Choices: Making Hermeneutic Relativity Explicit." Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy no. 17:453-478.

Abstract: "In this essay, we explore the various aspects of hermeneutic relativity that have rarely been explicitly discussed. Our notion of “hermeneutic relativity” can be seen as an extension, with significant revisions, of Gadamer’s notion of Vorurteil. It refers to various choices and constraints of the interpreter, including beliefs concerning the best way of doing philosophy, what criteria are to be used to evaluate competing interpretations, and so on. The interpreter cannot completely eliminate the guidance and constraint originating from his/her “background.” However, in principle the interpreter can “choose” to be guided by other constraints. Hence, we speak of “choices” or “commitments.” Hermeneutic relativity is the major cause for the variation of competing interpretations."

19. MacDonald, Paul. 2013. "Palaeo-Philosophy. Archaic Ideas about Space and Time." Comparative Philosophy no. 4:82-117.

Abstract: "This paper argues that efforts to understand historically remote patterns of thought are driven away from their original meaning if the investigation focuses on reconstruction of concepts, instead of cognitive ‘complexes’. My paper draws on research by Jan Assmann, Jean-Jacques Glassner, Keimpe Algra, Alex Purves, Nicholas Wyatt, and others on the cultures of Ancient Greece, Israel, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Etruria through comparative analyses of the semantic fields of spatial and temporal terms, and how these terms are shaped by their relation to the sphere of the sacred. It shows that there are three super-ordinate timeframes - the cyclical, the linear and the static - each of which is composed of lower-order cycles (days, lunar months, and seasons). These timeframes reflect their cultures’ ideas about the nature, scope and power of the gods, and structure the common point-of-view about the present, the past and eternity. There are also super-ordinate spatial frames which reflect their cultures’ ideas about the heavens and which structure both the sacred precinct and the profane field of action and exchange. Close analysis of texts that use words such as eternity, forever, past, present, and future, for example, do not reveal that there is anything like a general abstract concept of time in virtue of which some thing or event can be said to be in time or to have its own time. Archaic patterns of thought do not differ from our “modern” patterns in having different concepts, but in not having anything like concepts at all."

20. MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1991. "Incommensurability, Truth, and the Conversation Between Confucians and Aristotelians about the Virtues." In Culture and Modernity: East-West Philosophics Perspectives, edited by Deutsch, Eliot, 103-121. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

"We may compare Confucianism and Aristotelianism from a Confucian standpoint, or from an Aristotelian; or we may compare both or either with some third, different, equally incompatible and incommensurable standpoint, such as that of Buddhism or of Kantianism, but we cannot find any legitimate standing ground outside the context of the points of view. And when we have undertaken comparative study in a manner which recognizes this, we shall soon find that our task is not so much that of comparing Confucianism and Aristotelianism as that of comparing Confucian comparisons of Confucianism and Aristotelianism with Aristotelian comparisons of Confucianism and Aristotelianism. The key to comparative studies is the comparison of comparisons." (p. 120)

21. Maffie, James. 2001. "Editor's Introduction: Truth from the Perspective of Comparative World Philosophy." Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy no. 15:263-273.

"What role does this issue of Social Epistemology play in the dialogue of comparative world philosophy? The issue’s contributors address from a variety of perspectives the theme of truth. Do all philosophical traditions possess the concept of truth, and if so, do they incorporate truth into their conceptions of epistemology and knowledge? If not, what do they use in place of truth?

Many Western philosphers view correspondence truth as occupying the centre stage of Western epistemology’s conceptions of knowledge and justification since Plato and Aristotle." (p. 267)

(...)

"Contemporary Western philosophy, however, standardly regards truth as applying primarily and literally to propositions alone and only derivatively and metaphorically to persons and things. Smith and Deutsch point out that this emphasis is unique to Western philosophy. In non-Western traditions, truth is typically conceived primarily as a predicate of persons or things, not propositions. Smith situates contemporary Western philosophy in historical and what he calls ‘spatial’ context: ‘To lift from the pool of truth’s total, undifferentiated meaning a single referent—propositions—and develop its meaning in that direction is our Western contribution to the subject’ (Smith, 1980, p. 425). There are different emphases in other cultures’ conceptions of truth, differences that were originally subtle but have become gradually more pronounced as each culture developed its own distinctive identity. Over time South Asia has tied truth to things; East Asia, to persons; the West, statements. In sum, conceiving truth as a predicate of propositions is a historically novel development of post-Renaissance Western philosophy; one not shared by East and South Asia.10" (p. 268)

(10) Despite his prominence as a scholar of world religions, Huston Smith neglects to test the merits of his thesis regarding the threefold nature of truth beyond the pale of Europe, East Asia and South Asia.

References

Deutsch, E., 1979, On Truth: An Ontological Theory (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press).

Smith, H., 1980, Western and comparative perspectives on truth. Philosophy East and West, 30, 425–437.

22. Malhotra, Ashok. 1980. "Introductory Remarks on the Symposium "The Problem of Truth"." Philosophy East and West no. 30:421-424.

Abstract: "This article offers a brief summary of the main points raised in the four papers read in the Symposium on "East-West perspectives on truth" which was organized by the society for Asian and comparative philosophy from December 27-28, 1978 in Washington, d c. The papers covered the Chinese, Japanese, Indian and comparative perspectives on truth. The Symposium revealed that the time had come when a dialogue between Eastern and Western philosophers was not only important but necessary. the Symposium achieved its aim of broadcasting this essential message."

23. Mall, Ram Adhar. 1998. "Philosophy and Philosophies – Cross-culturally Considered." Topoi no. 17:15-27.

"The central thesis proposed, discussed and defended here is this: There are different philosophical traditions of cultures which can make substantial contributions to philosophy in general and to the various philosophical disciplines in particular. This they may accomplish by drawing our attention to the philosophical questions put and to the philosophical answers suggested. This is where an intercultural philosophical orientation begins, and it leads us to consider the philosophies of other cultures with a view to their contributions to the general concept of philosophy which is always a response to a felt need in the face of the problems we are confronted with in our attempt to understand and explain the world of things and beings.

That we are all human beings makes one thing abundantly clear: in spite of cultural differences, there are fundamental similarities between different philosophical traditions. Philosophy in world context today, i.e. philosophy cross-culturally considered pleads for the thesis that the general applicability of the concept of philosophy remains unaffected by our recognition and acceptance of more than one genuine philosophical tradition. The naive dogmatism of identifying philosophy exclusively only with one particular philosophical convention amounts to some sort of ethnocentrism, and such a move is always suspect. One particular contextual and relative perspective is thereby put in an absolute universal position. The Western philosophy, backed by so many extra-philosophical factors e.g. social, economic, imperial, colonialistic and religious did universalize itself from the days of Diogenes Laertius up to say Husserl, Heidegger and even Gadamer and Rorty." (p. 15)

24. ———. 2014. "Intercultural Philosophy: A Conceptual Clarification." Confluence: Online Journal of World Philosophies no. 1:67-84.

Abstract: "In this paper I would like to show how belonging to different cultures does not impede intercultural philosophizing and instead favors it. To that end, I will first pinpoint what exactly intercultural philosophy stands for in Section II. In Section III I will sketch certain crucial features of what is in fact a hermeneutical situation. In Section IV I will develop my own theory of an interculturally-oriented »analogous hermeneutic« and then try to show in Section V that it can furnish what is necessary to do comparative philosophy. A short conclusion will follow in Section VI."

25. Marchal, Kai. 2020. "A Few Thoughts on the Possibility of Intercultural Thinking in a Global Age." Philosophy East and West no. 70:238-246.

Book discussion of: Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought. By Eric S. Nelson. London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi,Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.

"Until recently, most humanities scholars (including philosophers) in North America and Europe lived in a world where China was notable for its absence.

(...)

Only most recently, with the changed geopolitical situation, are Chinese thinkers starting to receive more attention. In this context, Eric S. Nelson’s book Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought makes an important contribution to further opening up the West to Chinese discourses. Nelson’s book is a historical study about the reception of Chinese philosophy by German-speaking philosophers in the early twentieth century.

The history of Western philosophy, Nelson writes programmatically in his introduction, “is historically already interculturally and intertextually bound up with non-Western philosophy” (p. 3)." (p. 238)

(...)

"Reviewers have already highlighted the numerous strengths of this volume. It is a landmark study in intercultural philosophy that will shape the research field for years to come. In my essay, I would like to describe a few difficulties that, in my understanding, still hamper a project like Nelson’s. I want to focus on two aspects: (1) the relationship between philosophy and its history and (2) Heidegger and the “hermeneutic primacy of interpretation”." (p. 239)

26. Masson-Oursel, Paul. 1926. Comparative Philosophy. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.

Reprint: London: Routledge, 2000.

Translated from the French edition: La philosophie Comparée, Paris: Alcan, 1923.

"Thus, although comparative philosophy ought to be universal, we have the right and the duty, by virtue of a methodological opportunity, to restrict it for the present to the study of those peoples already dowered with a history.

For the rest, little as we are able to illuminate the historic times by the dark earlier ages, the arcana of prehistory will only be reduced by the progress of history, gradually pursued from the more to the less known. And amongst the fractions of mankind susceptible of historical investigation, only three are met with whose development has taken place in strict parallel during some three millennia; these three are precisely those of which the past has been or can be best elucidated. We refer to Europe, India, and China." (pp. 35-36)

27. ———. 1951. "True Philosophy is Comparative Philosophy." Philosophy East and West no. 1:6-9.

Translated from the French by Harold E. McCarthy. [Editor's note.]

"Just as it is possible to compare religions, so it is possible to compare philosophies. Such a comparison will not take the form of a simple inventory, or the form of a pure theory, although we are familiar with both.

Rather, comparative philosophy will be the general examination of the ways in which human beings of all races and cultures reflect upon their actions and act upon their reflections.

The scope of comparative philosophy is universal history and the cosmos.

But each individual is situated within his own little sphere, and each people within its own historical tradition and its own habitat. Man's dependency upon the world does not have the same significance for primitive peoples that it had for Plato and Newton, because concrete consciousness is to be located elsewhere than in astronomical time and geometrical space. In like manner, each individual lives in society without being localized there as a physical object, for he delights in residing in himself-indeed, in God. Thus, comparative philosophy is neither psychology nor sociology, but the study of modes of action which are, at one and the same time, both individual and collective, capable of becoming stabilized in structures which are certainly not eternal but are, rather, temporal and changing." (pp. 6-7)

28. Matilal, Bimal Krishna, and Shaw, Jaysankar Lal, eds. 1985. Analytical Philosophy in Comparative Perspective: Exploratory Essays in Current Theories and Classical Indian Theories of Meaning and Reference. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Contents: Preface IX; Bimal K. Matilal: Analytical Philosophy in Comparative Perspective: An Introduction 1; M. J. Cresswell: We Are All Children of God 39; Paul Gochet: The Syncategorematic Treatment of Predicates 61; William Lycan: The Paradox of Naming 81; Steven E. Boer: Substance and Kind: Reflections on the New Theory of Reference 103; Frank Jackson: The Easy Examination Paradox 151; Krister Segerberg: Models for Actions 161; Kalidas Bhattacharya: Some Problems Concerning Meaning 173; Sibajiban Bhattacharya: Abstraction, Analysis and Universals: The Navya-Nyāya Theory 189; J. N. Mohanty: Psychologism in Indian Logical Theory 203; Karl H. Potter: A Speech-Act Model for Understanding Navya-Nyāya Epistemology 213; Douglas D. Daye: Some Epistemologically Misleading Expressions: "Inference", and "Anumana", "Perception" and "Pratyaksa" 231; Mark Siderits: The Prabhakara Mīmāṁsā Theory of Related Designation 253; Arindam Chakrabarti: Plato's Indian Barbers 299; J. L. Shaw: Proper Names: Contemporary Philosophy and the Nyāya 327; Bimal K. Matilal: Awareness and Meaning in Navya-Nyāya 373; Index 393-406.

29. McDermott, Charlene, ed. 1983. Comparative Philosophy: Selected Essays. Lanham: University Press of America.

"By drawing on a wide variety of views and belief systems, the prense volume makes available to the reader a rich stock of alternatives for purposes of comparison and contrast. Fundamental epistemological and metaphysical issues are introduced by means of selections from writers of the first rank — both Eastern and Western. Each selection is preceded by an explanatory essay, making it a self-contained unit. In addition, a bibliography of suggested readings is appended to each of the two principal subsections. Finally, a glossary of technical terms and a set of notes on each philosopher or philosophical school included in the anthology further serve to make the book useable with minimal burden on the reader. In this way, speculations from a far-off century of an exotic cultural milieu can be held up as a kind of ’’distant mirror"(2) in which to view critically the outline of more familiar theories and reflections with a freshness not otherwise possible." (Preface, pp. IX-X, a note omitted)

(2) The phrase is Barbara Tuchman’s. See her A Distaf Mirror. The Calamitous 14th Century. Alfred Knopf, New York, 1978.

30. McEvilley, Thomas. 2002. The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies. New York: Allworth Press.

"I will not telegraph now what my own methods and conclusions are. In the following twenty-five chapters of argument from evidence I will make a measured attempt to establish significant intrusions first from India to Greece in the pre-Socratic period, then from Greece back to India in the Hellenistic period. In addition I will continue to extend and refine the typological comparisons that scholars have been making since Jones in 1799. Perhaps other scholars will correct me on one point or another, an event which would be welcome, for this is a shared human project that deserves the involvement of many minds. Surely the relationship between ancient Greek and Indian traditions of thought is the foundational level of comparative philosophy." (Form the Foreword)

References

William Jones, The works of Sir William Jones, London : G. G. and J. Robinson 1799.

31. McWeeny, Jennifer, and Butnor, Ashby, eds. 2014. Asian and Feminist Philosophies in Dialogue: Liberating Traditions. New York: Columbia University Press.

Contents: Eliot Deutsch: Foreword XI; Acknowledgments XIII; Ashby Butnor and Jennifer McWeeny: Feminist Comparative Philosophy: Performing Philosophy Differently 1;

Part 1 Gender and Potentiality

1. Hsiao-Lan Hu: Kamma, No-Self, and Social Construction: The Middle Way Between Determinism and Free Will 37; 2. Kyoo Lee: On the Transformative Potential of the "Dark Female Animal" in Daodejing 57; 3. Ranjoo Seodu Herr: Confucian Family-State and Women: A Proposal for Confucian Feminism 78;

Part 2 Raising Consciousness

4. Keya Maitra: Mindfulness, Anātman, and the Possibility of a Feminist Self-consciousness 101; 5. Jennifer McWeeny: Liberating Anger, Embodying Knowledge: A Comparative Study of María Lugones and Zen Master Hakuin 123;

Part 3 Places of Knowing

6. Xinyan Jiang: What Would Zhuangzi Say to Harding? A Daoist Critique of Feminist Standpoint Epistemology 147; 7. Vrinda Dalmiya: "Epistemic Multiculturalism" and Objectivity: Rethinking Vandana Shiva's Ecospirituality 167;

Part 4 Cultivating Ethical Selves

8. Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee: Confucian Care: A Hybrid Feminist Ethics 187; 9. Erin McCarthy: The Embodied Ethical Self: A Japanese and Feminist Account of Nondual Subjectivity 203; 10. Ashby Butnor: Dōgen, Feminism, and the Embodied Practice of Care 223;

Part 5 Transforming Discourse

11. Namita Goswami: De-liberating Traditions: The Female Bodies of Sati and Slavery 247; Chela Sandoval: Philosophy Uprising: The Feminist Afterword 271; Feminist Comparative Philosophy and Associated Methodologies: A Bibliography 279; Contributors 301; Index 305.

32. ———. 2014. "Feminist Comparative Philosophy: Performing Philosophy Differently." In Asian and Feminist Philosophies in Dialogue: Liberating Traditions, edited by McWeeny, Jennifer and Butnor, Ashby, 1-33. New York: Columbia University Press.

"In this introduction, we provide an initial articulation of the scope, methods, content, and aims of feminist comparative philosophy with reference to three guiding questions: 1. What is the relationship between feminist comparative philosophy and each of its namesakes—feminist philosophy and comparative philosophy? 2. How can this new methodology overcome those patterns of exclusionary vision that have frustrated its predecessors’ capacities for consistently recognizing privilege and difference? and 3. Why does it makes sense to think of feminist comparative philosophy as a liberatory practice, that is, as an activity that helps people politically and spiritually? After addressing these defining questions in the following three sections, we go on to provide summaries of the book’s themes and chapters.

We conclude by considering the future of feminist comparative philosophy in terms of its potential for development and transformation." (p. 3)

33. ———. 2014. "Feminist Comparative Philosophy and Associated Methodologies: A Bibliography." In Asian and Feminist Philosophies in Dialogue: Liberating Traditions, edited by McWeeny, Jennifer and Butnor, Ashby, 279-300. New York: Columbia University Press.

"The purpose of this bibliography is to provide readers with a sense of what has already been published in the emerging fi eld of feminist comparative philosophy and to serve as an invitation to further explore its literature, history, and methodologies.

Consistent with our present desire to render visible those philosophical inquiries that emerge jointly from the insights of feminist and Asian traditions, we have limited our list of publications in feminist comparative philosophy to those that engage Asian philosophical texts. However, as explained in this book’s introduction, we believe that many other pairings of cultural and social locations are consistent with feminist comparative practice and we hope that the future of this fi eld will blossom with a diversity of fresh juxtapositions. In regard to this bibliography’s sections on “Feminist Methodology” and “Comparative Methodology,” we have sought to list only those resources that speak to these philosophical methodologies in general and have therefore not included publications on specialized methodologies like those used to address, for example, feminist ethics or Chinese-Greek comparisons. Moreover, our accounts of feminist methodology and comparative methodology respectively refl ect those sources most relevant to the development and proliferation of feminist comparative practice, rather than to diff erent or broader understandings of feminism and comparative studies." (p. 279)

34. Mizumoto, Masaharu, Ganeri, Jonardon, and Goddard, Cliff, eds. 2020. Ethno-Epistemology: New Directions for Global Epistemology. New York: Routledge.

Contents: Masaharu Mizumoto: Introduction 1; 1 Jonardon Ganeri: Epistemic Pluralism: From Systems to Stances 19; 2 Masaharu Mizumoto, Shun Tsugita, and Yu Izumi: Knowing How and Two Knowledge Verbs in Japanese 43; Yngjin Xu: 3 “The Rectification of Names” as a Confucian Theory of Epistemic Justification 77; 4 Shane Ryan, Chienkuo Mi, and Masaharu Mizumoto: Testimony, Credit, and Blame: A Cross-Cultural Study of the Chicago Visitor Case 94; 5 Elin McCready: Linguistic Strategies Against Epistemic Injustice 114; 6 Cliff Goddard: Overcoming the Linguistic Challenges for Ethno-epistemology: NSM Perspectives 130; 7 Julianne Chung: Skeptical Arguments, Conceptual Metaphors, and Cross-Cultural Challenges 154; 8 Dominic Murphy: Delusions Across Cultures 184; 9 Søren Harnow Klausen: Challenges for an Anthropology of Knowledge 201; 10 Satoshi Nakagawa: How to Buy Knowledge in Ende—An Ethnoepistemology from Eastern Indonesia 216; 11 Thomas Grundmann: Conceptual Construction in Epistemology: Why the Content of Our Folk Terms Has Only Limited Significance 227; 12 Anand Vaidya and Purushottama Bilimoria: Analytical and Experimental Philosophy in the Reflection of Comparative Philosophy 248; List of Contributors 272; Index 273-281.

35. Moeller, Hans-Georg. 2018. "On Comparative and Post-Comparative Philosophy." In Appreciating the Chinese Difference: Engaging Roger T. Ames on Methods, Issues, and Roles, edited by Behuniak, Jim, 31-45. Albany: State University of New York Press.

"In sum, four general forms of comparative philosophy as de-barbarization developed between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries at a time when Europe modernized and globalized itself: (1) an approach of incorporation of and improvement by Oriental philosophy à la Leibniz, (2) a “primitivist” inclusion of Chinese thought into the development of the “world spirit” à la Hegel, (3) an interpolation of European religions and philosophy into ancient Chinese texts à la Richard Wilhelm, and (4) a syncretic embrace of Chinese Philosophy as a major source for the foundation of post-Christian modern “spirituality.” (p. 36)

36. Moore, Charles Alexander, ed. 1946. Philosophy - East and West. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Contents: Preface VII-IX; I. William Ernest Hocking: Value of the Comparative Study of Philosophy 1; II. George P. Conger: An Outline of Indian Philosophy 12; III. Chan Wing-tsit: The Story of Chinese Philosophy 24; IV. Junjiro Takakusu: Buddhism as a Philosophy of "Thusness" 69; V. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki: An Interpretation of Zen-Experience 109; VI. Shunzo Sakamaki: Shinto: Japanese Ethnocentrism 130; VII. Chan Wing-tsit: The Spirit of Oriental Philosophy 137; VIII. Filmer S. C. Northrop,: The Complementary Emphases of Eastern Intuitive and Western Scientific Philosophy 168; IX. George P. Conger: Eastern and Western Metaphysics 235; X. Charles A. Moore: Comparative Philosophies of Life 248; Who's Who of Contributors 321; Index 323-334.

37. ———. 1951. "Some Problems of Comparative Philosophy." Philosophy East and West no. 1:67-70.

"At the second East-West Philosophers' Conference, held at the University of Hawaii during the summer of 1949, a great deal was accomplished in directing the attention of the philosophical world to the important area of East-West philosophy. Those who participated in the proceedings of the Conference were convinced that philosophy is now entering upon a new stage of its development, a stage that will be characterized by trans-cultural co-operation and world perspective. Although the Conference members attempted to come to some tentative conclusions in the three fields of methodology, metaphysics, and ethical theory, everyone realized the difficulties involved in formulating any con- crete conclusions at all, however tentative. It was realized in the first place that Eastern philosophies cannot be simply grouped together as a homo- geneous unit compared as such with Western philosophies similarly grouped together. It was realized, moreover, that no characterizations of either the Eastern or the Western philosophical tradition could possibly indicate more than general, and sometimes rather vague, tendencies. It was also realized that where definite conclusions could be agreed upon by Conference members such agreement would sometimes be gained only by partially ignoring important variations of interpretation." (p. 67)

38. ———. 1951. Essays in East-West Philosophy. An Attempt at World Philosophical Synthesis. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

"The report of the Second East-West Philosophers' Conference, held at the University of Hawaii from June 20 to July 28, 1949."

39. ———. 1952. "Keys to Comparative Philosophy." Philosophy East and West no. 2:76-78.

"The problems raised in this issue by Mr. Rosan in his paper "A Key to Comparative Philosophy" are important ones.

For the sake of better understanding, however, a few comments on behalf of the Second East-West Philosophers' Conference are in order, especially since my discussion note in this journal(1) appears to have given Mr. Rosan an incorrect impression of the work and conclusions of that Conference." (p. 76)

(...)

"In conclusion, may I say that there are surely many keys to the study of comparative philosophy. No one key will open all the doors. The important problem is not that of finding a key of universal applicability. The crucial task is, rather, that of constructing and applying various keys in the progressive investigation of the multiplicity of problems which inevitably arise in the study of comparative philosophy." (p. 78)

(1) "Some Problems of Comparative Philosophy," I, No. 1 (April, 1951), 67-70.

40. ———, ed. 1962. Philosophy and Culture: East and West. East-West Philosophy in Practical Perspective. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

East-West Philosophy in Practical Perspective. Proceedings of the conference, held at the University of Hawaii under its sponsorship during the summer of 1959.

"The title of this volume, Philosophy and Culture—East and West, reflects the purpose and the work of the conference which it reports, that is, the effort to achieve mutual understanding of the practical aspects of the lives of the peoples of Asia and the West by reference to their basic and underlying philosophies, in the sense that “culture is the manifestation of the human mind in human behavior.” This Preface deals exclusively with the text of the volume and not with the subject-matter or with the conference of which this is the official Report. The background of this volume, the conference itself, and its predecessors are dealt with in the Introduction.

This volume contains the proceedings of the Third East-West Philosophers’ Conference, held at the University of Hawaii during the summer of 1959. It contains all the formal papers, in the order in which they were presented at the conference. It is divided into six major Sections, following the agenda of the conference.

Some of the discussion which took place at the conference meetings is included as “Questions” and “Answers” at the end of some of the papers —in those cases where the authors wished to include such discussion.

In an Appendix are included the five Public Lectures presented to general audiences during the period of the conference by representatives of the major traditions considered at the conference. (The style of these lectures, and the editing, are less formal and academic than in the case of the technical papers.)" (Preface, p. V)

41. Mou, Bo, ed. 2001. Two Roads to Wisdom? Chinese and Analytic Philosophical Traditions. Chicago: Open Court.

Donald Davidson: Foreword IX; Acknowledgements XI; Note on Transcriptions XIII; Introduction XV;

Part One: Philosophy: Discipline and Methodology

1. Nicholas Rescher: Philosophical Methodology 3; 2. Robert Cummings Neville: Methodology, Practices and Discipline in Chinese and Western Philosophy 27; 3. Adam Morton: Philosophy as Engineering 45; 4. Lik Kuen Toug: The Art of Appropriation: Towards a Field-Being Conception of Philosophy 57;

Part Two: Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Analysis (I): Methodological Perspectives

5: Chung-ying Chen: Onto-Hermeneutical Vision and Analytical Discourse: Interpretation and Reconstruction in Chinese Philosophy 87; 6. Shu-hsien Liu: Philosophical Analysis and Hermeneutic: Reflections on Methodology via an Examination of the Evolution of My Understanding of Chinese Philosophy 131; 7. David L. Hall: The Import of Analysis in Classical China - A Pragmatic Appraisal 153; 8. You-zheng Li: Chinese Philosophy and Semiotics 169;

Part Three: Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Analysis (II): Test Cases

9. Chad Hansen: Metaphysical and Moral Transcendence in Chinese Thought 197; 10. Kwong-loi Shun: Self and Self-Cultivation in Early Confucian Thought 229; 11. Yin-ming Fung: Three Dogmas of New Confucianism: A Perspective of Analytic Philosophy 245;

Part Four: Methodological Issues in Comparative Philosophy

12. Robert E. Allinson: The Myth of Comparative Philosophy or the Comparative Philosophy Malgré Lui 269; 13. Ji-yuan Yu and Nicholas Bunin: Saving the Phenomema: An Aristotelian Method in Comparative Philosophy 293; 14. Bryan Van Norden: Mencius and Augustine on Evil: A Test Case for Comparative Philosophy 313; 15. Bo Mou: An Analysis of the Structure of Philosophical Methodology - In View of Comparative Philosophy 337;

Contributors 365; Index 371.

42. ———. 2002. "Three Orientations and Four ‘Sins’ in Comparative Studies." APA Newsletters no. 2:42-46.

"When comparative projects are critically evaluated, there seem to be four sorts of complaint. The alleged ‘sins’ are these: (1) over-simplification; 2) over-use of external resources; (3) exaggerated distinction; and (4) blurring assimilation. They, or some of them, are sometimes taken for granted in two senses: first, it is thought that any simplifying the object of study or using external resources to characterize it are doomed to be excessive and thus deserve to be charged with negative ‘over’-character; second, it is assumed that the four complaints may be made indiscriminately in evaluating any comparative project without regard to the orientation and methodological strategy of that study. A metaphilosophical examination of the four ‘sins’ will help to effectively identify the distinct character and objectives of a variety of orientations and their approaches." (p. 42)

43. ———, ed. 2003. Comparative Approaches to Chinese Philosophy. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Contents: Acknowledgments VII; Notes on Transcription VIII; C'ontributors IX; Editor's Introduction XV-XXII;

Part One Identity of Chinese Philosophy and Its Modern Studies

1 Antonio S. Cua: Emergence of the History of Chinese Philosophy 3;

Part Two Yi-Jing Philosophy

2 Channg-ying Cheng: Inquiring into the Primary Model: Yi-Jing and Chinese Ontological Hermeneutics 33; 3 Robert Elliott Allinson: Hegelian, Yi-Jing, and Buddhist Transformational Models for Comparative Philosophy 60; 4 Bo Mou: Becoming-Being Complementarity: An Account of lhe Yin-Yang Metaphysical Vision of the Yi-Jing 86;

Part Three Confucianism

5 Bryan W. Van Norden: Virtue Ethics and Confucianism 99; 6 Robin R. Wang: The Principled Benevolence: A Synthesis of Kantian and Conf'ucian Moral Judgment 122; 7 Ruiping Fan: Social Justice: Rawlsian or Confucian? 144; 8 You-zheng Li: Towards a Minimal Common Ground for Humanist Dialogue: A Comparative Analysis of Confucian Ethics and American Ethical Humanism 169;

9 Robert Cummings Neville: The Project of Boston Confucianism 183;

Part Four Philosophical Daoism

10 Chad Hansen: The Metaphysics of Dao 205; 11 Qingjie (James) Wong: "It-self-so-ing'' and "Other-ing" in Lao Zi's Concept of Zi Ran 225; 12 Bo Mou: Eternal Dao. Constant Name, and Language Engagement: On the Opening Message of the Dao-De-Jing 13 Chenyang Li: Zhuang Zi and Aristotle on What A Thing Is 263; 14 JeeLoo Liu: The Daoist Conception of Truth: Lao Zi's Metaphysical Realism vs. Zhuang Zi's lnternal Realism 278;

Part Five Logic-Related Concerns

15 Chuang Liu: Ming-Jia (the Logicians) and Zeno: A Comparative Study 297; 16 Yiu-ming Fung: The Thesis of Antilogic in Buddhism 307;

Index 323-332.

44. ———. 2010. "On Constructive-Engagement Strategy of Comparative Philosophy: A Journal Theme Introduction." Comparative Philosophy no. 1:1-32.

Abstract: "In this journal theme introduction, first, I explain how comparative philosophy as explored in the journal Comparative Philosophy is understood and how it is intrinsically related to the constructive engagement strategy. Second, to characterize more clearly and accurately some related methodological points of the constructive-engagement strategy, and also to explain how constructive engagement is possible, I introduce some needed conceptual and explanatory resources and a meta-methodological framework and endeavor to identify adequacy conditions for methodological guiding principles in comparative studies. Third, as a case analysis, I show how the constructive-engagement reflective practice bears on recent studies of Chinese and comparative Chinese-Western philosophy, especially in the past decade, for two purposes: to illustrate the foregoing theoretic characterization of the constructive engagement strategy, and to identify and explain some constructive morals that might have general significance for comparative studies."

45. ———. 2016. "How Constructive Engagement in Doing Philosophy Comparatively Is Possible." Synthesis Philosophica no. 62:265-277.

Abstract: "In this article I intend, on the basis of some previous relevant works on the issue, to further examine a range of conditions for maintaining adequate methodological guiding principles concerning how to look at the relation between distinct methodological perspectives in comparative-engagement exploration in philosophy. The purpose of this paper is to explore how, in the global context, distinct approaches in philosophy can be engaged in order to constructively talk to each other and make a joint contribution to the development of philosophy and society."

46. Mudimbe, V. Y. , and Kavwahirehi, Kasereka eds. 2021. Encyclopedia of African Religions and Philosophy. Dordrecht: Springer.

"This comprehensive encyclopedia presents African thinkers, concepts and traditions, with a focus on African religious and philosophical practices. It offers a dependable and significant synthesis of African studies that encompasses major trends in the field since the early 1980s. The encyclopedia considers all religious and philosophical systems of Africa, both indigenous and non-indigenous. It also recognizes the determining role of the Diaspora in understanding African traditions and African identity. The work has benefited immensely from commitments in advanced interdisciplinary exchanges in a number of domains, including comparative research in epistemology and from surveys in postcolonial studies and social sciences, along with religious and philosophical compendia. In brief, this is an encyclopedia made from the viewpoint of African studies and in dialogue with scientific traditions."

47. Nakamura, Hajime. 1964. Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples: India, China, Tibet, Japan. Honolulu: East-West Center Press.

Revised English translation edited by Philip P. Wiener (Original Japanese edition 1960).

"If we are to hazard any conclusions about Eastern peoples as a whole, it must be as a tentative hypothesis in a comparative study of the data. Generalized conclusions drawn before such individual preparatory studies have been made will perforce be hasty and dogmatic. Thus, in order to deal with the ways of thinking of Eastern peoples, it is first necessary to examine the ways of thinking of each of the peoples individually. However, such a study of all the peoples of the East is, from a practical point of view, impossible at this time. | intend to concentrate on India, China, Tibet, and Japan. My reason is that among these four peoples alone did there exist—however imperfectly—a study of traditional Buddhist logic, which came first from India to the other three areas, and then developed independently in each.

I believe that the various other peoples of the East have nearly the same ways of thinking as one or another of these four. Specifically, one may say that Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, and western Indo-China (Cambodia and Laos) are akin to India. Central Asia and Mongolia are akin to pre-Communist Tibet. Manchuria, Korea, and eastern Indo-China (Vietnam) are akin to China. T’hus, an examination of the ways of thinking of these four is, in effect, a study of the most influential peoples of the East. It is only after such a study, if at all, that a generalized view of the ways of thinking of Eastern peoples can emerge." (p. 4)

48. ———. 1975. Parallel Developments: A Comparative History of Ideas. New York: Harper & Row.

Second edition with the title: A Comparative History of Ideas, New Delhi: Kegan Paul International, 1986.

49. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. 1972. "Conditions for Meaningful Comparative Philosophy." Philosophy East and West no. 22:53-61.

"Finally, a comparative study in depth of Eastern doctrines and Western schools can help achieve an understanding between East and West based on immutable truths, whose attainment is made possible by the spiritual experience that is accessible to qualified men, Eastern or Western. It is only intellectual intuition and the spiritual experience, of which a metaphysical doctrine is in a sense the fruit, that can make possible the attainment of that Unity which in its transcendence comprehends both the East and the West. Today many men who have been exposed to the modern world, in a sense, carry both the Orientand the Occident as two poles and tendencies within themselves. A comparative study in depth can make possible, through the removal of those current errors which together comprise the modern world, the attainment of that "light that is neither of the East nor of the West,"(15) wherein alone the East and the West can be united. To seek this noble end, which would mean the rediscovery of the immutable nature of man generally forgotten in the modern world and which is the only way possible to correct the optical illusions to which the modern world is victim, must be the purpose of all serious comparative studies of Eastern and Western doctrines and philosophies. It is a goal whose achievement the truly contemplative and intellectual elite are urgently summoned to by the very situation of man in the contemporary world. (pp. 60-61)

(15) This is in reference to the light verse (ayat al-nur) in the Qur'an XXIV.35."

50. Needham, Joseph. 1969. Within the Four Seas. The Dialogue of East and West. London: George Allen & Unwin.

"Reprinted here are some of the most significant of his essays, lectures and broadcasts on these subjects, together with some more personal thoughts stimulated by his own travels and experiences in China, including a number of poems that he has on occasion felt moved to write there."

"For three thousand years a dialogue has been going on beween the two ends of the Old World. Greatly have they influenced each other, and very different are the cultures they have produced. We have now good reason to think that the problems of the world will never be solved so long as they are considered only from a European point of view. It is necessary to see Europe from the outside, to see European history, and European failure no less than European achievement, through the eyes of that larger part of humanity, the peoples of Asia (and indeed also of Africa)." (The Dialogue of East and West, p. 11)

51. Nelson, Eric S. 2017. Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought. New York: Bloomsbury.

"The chapters of this book consist of a series of philosophically oriented historical case studies, focusing primarily on the intersection between Chinese and German philosophy. They explore instances of the encounter, dialogue, and exchange—and lack and failure thereof—between “Eastern” Chinese and “Western” German thinkers and discourses. “Eastern” and “Western,” as Gihwa noted, are only relative situational concepts. The history of this already existing and ongoing communicative interaction and cultural exchange compels us to consider, more seriously than hitherto, whether a more nuanced and historically appropriate conception of philosophy can emerge through critically engaging and reflecting on the modern encounter between Western and non-Western philosophy, and articulating its intercultural and intertextual dynamics; if it proves impossible to transgress these borders, the old reductive myths of the exclusivity, exceptionality, and isolation of Western philosophy and civilization will continue to hold sway." (Introduction, p. 2)

52. ———. 2020. "Intercultural Philosophy and Intercultural Hermeneutics: A Response to Defoort, Wenning, and Marchal." Philosophy East and West no. 70:1-13.

"Carine Defoort, Mario Wenning, and Kai Marchal offer three ways of engaging with Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought and the philosophical, hermeneutical, and historical issues it attempted to articulate and address. This work is historical with a contemporary philosophical intent: to reexamine a tumultuous contested epoch of philosophy’s past in order to reconsider its existing limitations and alternative possibilities. One dimension of this book is the investigation of constellations and entanglements of historical forces and concepts for the sake of articulating critical models and alternatives for the present. In the book, I contested the modern self-image of philosophy as exclusively and intrinsically Occidental by genealogically tracing how philosophy is already intercultural through a series of case studies focusing primarily on early twentieth-century German philosophy in its broader historical context." (p. 1, notes omitted)

53. Netton, Ian Richard. 2006. Islam, Christianity and Tradition: A Comparative Exploration. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

"This is not an Introduction to Islam, nor is it a textbook. There are many excellent introductions and textbooks in the marketplace already.

(...)

This book is a research monograph which aims to do much more than that. It operates generally within the sphere of comparative religion and is, specifically, a comparative exploration of the role of tradition/Tradition within two distinct faiths, Islam and Christianity. Specific leitmotivs include the roles of authority, fundamentalism, the use of reason, ijtihād, and original comparisons between Islamic Salafism and Christian Lefebvrism. ‘Salafism’ refers to that strain in Islam which looks backwards to the thought, practices and traditions of the Salaf (pious ancestors); ‘Lefebvrism’ is a reference to the traditionalist thought and practices of the schismatic Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905–91) who rejected much of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) and what he perceived as that Council’s overthrow of tradition/Tradition. It is recognised in my text that the word ‘tradition/Tradition’ in both Islam and Christianity has a variety of senses and definitions." (p. VII)

54. Neville, Robert Cummings. 2001. "Two Forms of Comparative Philosophy." Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy no. 1:1-13.

"Two fundamental approaches to comparison now dominate the field. For convenience, and with the proviso that the names can be defined through the discussion below as terms of art, they can be called the objectivist and normative approaches, respectively. The objectivist approach treats the positions to be compared as finished objects, takes up a perspective of distance upon them, and measures its comparative judgments in empirical ways over against the evidence of the positions. The normative approach centers first on addressing contemporary philosophical problems and looks to the historical positions as resources for contemporary thinking, bringing them into comparative perspective against the contemporary background. The normative approach thus involves reconstructing the traditions, as any living tradition does in growing to meet new philosophical situations, and does so by bringing them into comparative interaction. Just as a contemporary European philosopher can learn from both Plato andAristode in constructing a response to an issue neither Plato nor Aristotle imagined, so a contemporary philosopher in a global public can learn all the world's traditions to contribute to a philosophy for our time." (p. 2)

55. ———. 2002. "Beyond Comparative to Integrative Philosophy." APA Newsletters no. 2:20-23.

"The thesis of this essay is that vital and creative philosophy today needs to operate within a public that integrates reflections from as many of the world’s philosophic traditions as possible. To support this thesis I shall first make some remarks about an appropriate philosophic public for vital philosophy. Then I shall comment on some of the kinds of comparative philosophy that are helpful for the integration of the world’s philosophic traditions into a public. Finally, I shall suggest a two-tiered agenda for integrative philosophy." (p. 20)

56. ———. 2017. "Response to Brian Bruya's "Ethnocentrism and Multiculturalism in Contemporary Philosophy"." Philosophy East and West no. 67:1019-1021.

"So I would extend Professor Bruya’s thesis in this way. He says that we should bring currently marginalized cultural approaches to philosophy into the center of the profession, both in our teaching and in our professional organizations. Right. Nevertheless, they might still be little balkanized in-groups within departments, curricula, and professional structures. This is not enough. I say that they need to be brought into conversation with one another, inventing new ways of carrying on that conversation.

The audience or public for our philosophical work should not be limited to those of our ethnocentric in-group. It should include considered address to anyone who might have an interest in the outcome of our work. If our work is not interesting to many different approaches to philosophy, once they get what it is about, chances are it is not interesting to any except those in our professional in-group — and there go the undergraduates, and with them go the jobs. To put the point less defensively, should we not make our work vulnerable to examination and correction by anyone from any tradition who might have something to contribute? Of course, none of us can do all that should be done in this regard. But we can build a global philosophical conversation into which each of us can enter and learn. To do so is to build the human beyond the evolutionary success, but humane limitations, of ethnocentrism." (pp. 1020-1021)

57. ———. 2022. "Reflections on Methods of Comparative Philosophy." In Comparative Philosophy and Method: Contemporary Practices and Future Possibilities, edited by Burik, Steven, Smid, Robert W. and Weber, Ralph, 17-30. New York: Bloomsbury.

Chapter summary: "Robert Neville asserts that "the critical problem for comparativephilosophy is Western bias" (18). While bias is a problem more generally for comparison, Western bias is a particular problem because of the current predominance of Western philosophical traditions across the globe-including in many historically non Western regions. Neville reviews and assesses several approaches to addressing bias, ultimately arguing in favor of what he calls "two-faced comparison," which attends to the development and ongoing correction of both comparisons and the categories that inform them. Comparative philosophy, he argues, has generally neglected the latter process, refusing to indicate explicitly the respects in which a comparison is made and rendering itself unable to assess whether the respect ofcomparison is appropriate to what is compared. As a result, it remains vulnerable to charges of excessive bias. However, if it attends adequately to the development and correction of those categories as well as how everything that is interpreted in terms of that category relates to each other, then it can move toward what he calls "objective comparison," the truth-value of which can be assessed by the broader academic community."

58. Ng, On-cho, ed. 2008. The Imperative of Understanding: Chinese Philosophy, Comparative Philosophy, and Onto-Hermeneutics—A Tribute Volume Dedicated to Professor Chung-ying Cheng. New York: Global Scholarly Publications.

Contents: On-cho Ng: Preface;

The imperatives of understanding and reading

Chung-ying Cheng: On entering the 21st century: my philosophical vision and my philosophical practice; Richard E. Palmer: Gadamer's late turn: from heideggerian ontology to an anthropology-based philosophical hermeneutics; Vincent Shen; Metaphors, narratives, and existence; Lauren Pfister: The tenets and morals of onto-hermeneutics. A philosophical-biographical profile of Chung-ying Cheng; Jesse Flemming: The onto-hermeneutics of Guan; Robert Cummings Neville: Cheng chung-Ying's constructive philosophy; Joseph Grange: A passion for unity: the philosophy of Chung-ying Cheng; Jay Goulding: Cheng chung-Ying's onto-cosmology: Chinese philosophy and hermeneutic phenomenology; Galia Patt-Shamir: From Li to Li : a pragmatist implication of Cheng chung-Ying's onto-hermeneutics;

The dialectics of interpretations and exegeses;

Nicholas Bunnin: Situating Xunzi; Yong Huang: The Cheng Brother's onto-theological articulation of Confucian values; John Berthrong: Re-investigating the way; Kwong-loi Shun: Wholeness in Confucian thought : Zhu Xi on Cheng, Zhong, Xin, and Jing; Richard J. Smith: Divination in late imperial China : new light on some old problems; John Allen Tucker: Confucianism and human rights in Meiji Japan.

59. Nisbett, Richard E. 2003. The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently . . . and Why. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

"I began a series of comparative studies, working with students at the University of Michigan and eventually with colleagues at Beijing University, Kyoto University, Seoul National University, and the Chinese Institute of Psychology. The research shows that there are indeed dramatic differences in the nature of Asian and European thought processes. The evidence lends support to the claims of nonpsychologist scholars and extends those claims to many surprising new mental phenomena.

In addition, surveys and observational research document differences in social practices that dovetail with the differences in habits of thought. The new research has provided us, as prior evidence could not, with enough information so that we can build a theory about the nature of these differences, including how they might have come about, what their implications are for perceiving and reasoning in everyday life, and how they affect relations between people from different cultures." (Introduction, p. XVIII)

60. Note, Nicole, Fornet-Betancout, Raúl, Estermann, Josef, and Aerts, Diederik, eds. 2009. Worldviews and Cultures: Philosophical Reflections from an Intercultural Perspective. Berlin: Springer.

Contents: Nicole Note, Raúl Fornet-Betancourt, Josef Estermann, and Diederik Aerts: Worldview and Cultures: Philosophical Reflections from an Intercultural Perspective. An Introduction 1; Jameleddine Ben Abdeljelil: Ways of the Intellect: Forms of Discourse and Rationalization Processes in the Arabic-Islamic Context 11; Ulrich Libbrecht: Comparative Philosophy: A Methodological Approach 31; Bo Mou: A Methodological Framework for Cross-Tradition Understanding and Constructive Engagement 69; Koen de Munter and Nicole Note: Cosmopraxis and Contextualising Among the Contemporary Aymara 87; Helen Lauer: A Worldly View of Worldview Metaphysics 103; Josef Estermann: Andean Philosophy as a Questioning Alterity: An Intercultural Criticism of Western Andro- and Ethnocentrism 129; Raúl Fornet-Betancourt: Intercultural Philosophy from a Latin American Perspective 149; Ricardo Salas: Hermeneutic Philosophy and Human Experience: An Intercultural Perspective of Worldviews and Life World in the Mapuche Culture 163; Dina V. Picotti C.: Towards an Intercultural Construction of Rationality 181; Rik Pinxten: Universalism and Relativism of Knowledge Dissipate. The Intercultural Perspective 181; Name Index 201; Subject Index 205-211.

61. Nylan, Michael, and Verhoeven, Martin. 2016. "Does Comparative Philosophy have a Fusion Future? Responses

Fusion, Comparative, "Constructive Engagement Comparative," Or What? Third Thoughts on Levine's Critique of Siderits." Journal of World Philosophies no. 1:119-127.

Invited responses to Michael Levine’s discussion paper ‘Does Comparative Philosophy Have a Fusion Future?’ Confluence: Online Journal of World Philosophies, 4 (2016): 208-37.

1. Michael Nylan, On Comparative, Constructivist, Fusion, and Diagnostic Philosophy; 2. MartinVerhoeven, Does Philosophy Have a Buddhist Future?

Abstract: "We have been invited to contribute a short assessment of Levine's response to Siderits' position in the emerging debate between ''fusion philosophy" and "comparative philosophy." Perhaps a brief word is in order regarding our backgrounds: Michael Nylan is a student of early China, with strong interdisciplinary training and interests, who has attempted work in both philosophy and translation. Martin Verhoeven is a historian by training, a translator by avocation, and a Buddhist practitioner. Both of us have committed ourselves for decades to past traditions that can only be accessed through classical Chinese language, and that surely colors our views. At the same time, those views are not identical but stereophonic."

62. Nzegwu, Nkiru. 2016. "Symposium: How (If at All) is Gender Relevant to Comparative Philosophy?" Journal of World Philosophies no. 1:75-118.

Abstract: "The symposium, “How (if at all) is gender relevant to comparative philosophy,” focuses on relevance of gender as an analytic and critical tool in comparative philosophical understanding and debate. Nkiru Nzegwu argues that gender as conceived by contemporary Euro-American feminism did not exist in pre-colonial Yorùbá as well as many Native American societies, and that therefore employing gender as a conceptual category in understanding the philosophies of pre-colonial Yorùbá and other non-gendered societies constitutes a profound mistake. What’s more, doing so amounts to a totalizing Euro-American colonial imposition that does violence to nongendered societies that reject gender as an ontological category. Hence, gender is ill-suited as a universal comparative philosophical tool. Nzegwu’s three co-symposiasts, Mary I. Bockover, Maitrayee Chaudhuri, and María Luisa Femenías enrich and complicate this question by bringing to bear both conceptual, ethical and empirical considerations drawn from the United States, India, and Latin America respectively."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography of Intercultural and Comparative Philosophy: O-S

Bibliography

1. Olberding, Amy. 2009. "Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies." APA Newsletters no. 9:3.

"In February of this year, the Committee on Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies hosted a panel at the APA’s Central Division meeting in Chicago. The focus of the panel concerned the intersections of Asian philosophies and feminism. While the essays and commentary delivered for the panel reflected the specific academic research foci of our participants, there are of course many ways to understand how Asian philosophies and feminism intersect, or fail to intersect. Consequently, this section of the Newsletter aspires to expand on the discussions of our panel, as well as to explore additional territory. For it, some of our panel participants and several other scholars working in Asian philosophy reflect on a variety of related subjects. These include, for example, the search for affinities between feminist concerns and the concerns found in Asian materials; the state of the field of Asian philosophy as it pertains to incorporating feminist consciousness; the personal experiences of feminist scholars who seek to enliven their work with both historical sensitivity and feminist commitments; and the capacity of feminist readings of Asian philosophies to foster scholarly development and political progress. As the work presented here illustrates, there are many ways to frame and understand the import of feminism for Asian philosophies."

2. Oldmeadow, Harry. 2007. "The Comparative Study of Eastern and Western Metaphysics: A Perennialist Perspective." Sophia no. 46:49-64.

Abstract: "The comparative study of Eastern and Western philosophy has been hindered and/or distorted by Eurocentric assumptions about “philosophy”, especially the overvaluation of rationality as an instrument of knowledge. The widespread discounting of Eastern thought derives, in large measure, from the modern Western failure to understand the nature of the traditional metaphysics of both the Occident and the East. This failure can be remedied by recourse to the work of a group of “traditionalist” or “perennialist” thinkers who expose the limitations of many approaches to the comparative study of philosophy in general and metaphysics in particular."

3. Ouyang, Min. 2012. "There is No Need for Zhongguo Zhexue to be Philosophy." Asian Philosophy no. 22:199-223.

Abstract: "In this paper, I shall argue that philosophy proper is a Western cultural practice and cannot refer to traditional Chinese thinking unless in an analogical or metaphorical sense. Likewise, the Chinese idiom ‘Zhongguo zhexue’ has evolved its independent cultural meaning and has no need to be considered as philosophy in the Western academic sense. For the purpose of elucidating the culturally autonomous status of Zhongguo zhexue, as well as the possible counterparts of Western philosophy in other cultures, I contend that Davidsonian anomalous monism may provide a proper explanatory framework for the intercultural relationships between different ‘sophias’ from various traditions. As for the equivocal English term ‘Chinese philosophy’, I suggest replacing it with a more precise new word: ‘sinosophy’."

4. Ouyang, Xiao. 2018. "Rethinking Comparative Philosophical Methodology: In Response to Weber's Criticism." Philosophy East and West no. 68:242-256.

"Ralph Weber’s (2013, pp. 593–602) illuminating study of the recent works on “(meta-)methodology in comparative philosophy” shows that this trend has persisted well into contemporary studies and enhances its influence in the community —“all [authors] seem to rely to some degree on the presumption that comparative philosophy is best understood as ‘intercultural philosophy’.”(4) Weber argues, however, that this “contemporary dominance of cultures in comparative philosophy,” namely the “rely[ing] on cultures as [a] philosophically relevant pre-comparative tertium,” has been an “unwarranted assumption” and has caused problems concerning “reification” and “the effect of inclusionary exclusion.”(5) He therefore calls for a “(self-)critical engagement with comparative philosophy” with the help of his “analytical tool” of comparison, which consists of five variables that are “distinguished in standard conceptualizations,” namely “the comparer, the comparata, the pre-comparative tertium, the tertium comparationis, the result of the comparison.”(6)" (p. 244)

(4) Weber’s use of the term “intercultural” and Moore’s preference “transcultural” are not essentially different. Both refer to interaction among multiple cultures.

Another synonym is “cross-culture.” Therefore, in my argument I am using the terms interchangeably.

(5) It can be understood as a kind of “two-edged sword.” Weber (2013, p. 601) thinks that “the same factors that allow scholars of these cultures to claim a niche for themselves within philosophy can be and are used by others to (dis)qualify that area of scholarship as being about something other than philosophy proper.”

(6) Weber (2014, p. 162) defines the “tertium comparationis as the respect in which determined comparata are compared” and the “‘pre-comparative’ tertium” as “which is at work in the setting up of the comparison.”

References

Weber, Ralph. 2013. “‘How to Compare?’ — On the Methodological State of Comparative Philosophy.” Philosophy Compass 8, no. 7 : 593 — 603.

———. 2014. “Comparative Philosophy and the Tertium: Comparing What with What, and in What Respect?” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 12, no. 2 : 151–171.

5. ———. 2018. "Rejoinder to Ralph Weber." Philosophy East and West no. 68:261-263.

"Ralph Weber’s reply to my comment, as we have come to expect from his writing, is both well articulated and instructive. His clarification has helped me to further grasp the consideration that underpins his methodological criticism. I am also encouraged to find agreement on the worth of a historical study of comparative philosophy as an established sub-discipline. In addition, Weber’s attitude toward “disagreement” is thought-provoking. However, I would like to suggest that disagreement is positive and meaningful if and only if (1) it is not based on misunderstanding, and moreover if (2) disagreement itself should not be regarded as the purpose. The ideal intellectual exchange should be able to encompass both (1) the aim and endeavor to achieve a potential agreement, and (2) the possibility for an ongoing dialogue and disputation.

In this spirit, I will now respond to some points raised by Weber in his reply to my comment." (p. 261)

6. Pang-White, Ann A. 2009. "Chinese Philosophy and Woman: Is Reconciliation Possible?" APA Newsletters no. 9:3-4.

"The choice of transcending the facticity of masculine discourse shouldn’t be limited to the Western canon but open to all, including Asian philosophy. One can dwell on the fact that most of what Confucius, Mencius, or Xunzi says has nothing to do with women’s liberation, or well-being per se, or one can choose to suspend that limitation and extract the relevance of the ideas of ren, reciprocity, and relationality to a more wholesome vision of human society where gender oppression is a historical past, not an ongoing struggle. Much of the prejudice against the incorporation of, or just a sheer neglect of, the relevance of Asian philosophy to feminism in the West has been centered on the explicit sexist references found in the tradition. But this facticity of masculine discourse is common to all traditions, be they East, West, North, or South, so my question would be this: Why selectively exclude non-Western canons in feminist discourse?" (p. 4)

7. Panikkar, Raimundo. 1988. "What Is Comparative Philosophy Comparing?" In Interpreting Across Boundaries. New Essays in Comparative Philosophy, edited by Larson, Gerald James and Deutsch, Eliot, 116-136. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

"Comparative studies are still fashionable today because they belong to the thrust toward universalization characteristic of western culture. The West not being able any longer to dominate other peoples politically, it tries to maintain—most of the time unconsciously—a certain control by striving toward a global picture of the world by means of comparative studies.

Yet, this very thrust toward homogenization and "global thinking" may boomerang into decentralization and pluralism once the wisdom of other cultures becomes better known.

Paradoxically enough, comparative philosophy, which has an inbuilt trend to overcome the plurality of cosmo-visions, may end by legitimizing mutually irreconcilable systems and becoming the stronghold of pluralism.

I shall offer a definition of comparative philosophy and argue that it is different from all other comparative studies by virtue of the subject matter under comparison. And this uniqueness finds its paradoxical expression in my thesis that, strictly speaking, comparative philosophy is an impossible independent discipline, which nevertheless thrives in the very recognition of its impossibility.(1)" (p. 116)

(1) This is the thesis of my paper "Aporias in the Comparative Philosophy of Religion," Man and World 3-4 (1980): 357-383.

8. Quintern, Detlev. 2017. "Beyond Cross-Cultural Philosophy: Towards a New Enlightenment." Philosophical Investigations (University of Tabriz-Iran) no. 11:191-204.

Abstract: "The acculturalization of humanities from the late 1980ies onwards led not only to imagined different worlds (e.g. West / Islam), postmodernity overshad-owed also common grounds of world`s philosophies. Christianity and Islam share far more than what might separate them, and we find Islam in „the West “ as Christianity „in the East“. The Logos of Life Philosophy as developed by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (1923-2014) strives towards deciphering the deep layers of philosophy and its common grounds. Tracing back to Gnostic, Platonic (neo-platonic) and Islamic shaped philosophies - Ikhwan as-Safa will serve as an example - the Logos of Life / Aql Al-Kulli (universal reason) will be historicized in the following while introducing approaches towards a New Enlightenment (A.-T. Tymieniecka) as an alternative to the current crisis in meta-sciences."

9. R'boul, Hamza. 2022. "Intercultural philosophy and internationalisation of higher education: epistemologies of the South, geopolitics of knowledge and epistemological polylogue." Journal of Further and Higher Education no. 46:1149-1160.

Abstract: "The enduring colonial-like relations among Northern and Southern spaces continue to influence knowledge production and dissemination. Critical scholarship on epistemic diversity in higher education has argued that knowledge circulation is often unilateral considering how global partnerships among universities and higher education models are still unidirectional. While Northern ways of knowing dominate what is taught and researched in higher education institutions, indigenous knowledges are

not always represented in their local universities due to skewed geopolitics of knowledges. That is why emerging forms of resistance such as the calls for decolonising the curriculum have emphasised the need to deconstruct the ideological systems of exclusion in contemporary higher education. This article discusses how the internationalisation of higher education may be running the risk of reproducing epistemic injustice and uneven geopolitics of knowledge. With the West-led internationalisation discourse and the ascendancy of neoliberal tendencies, universities in the Global South might be experiencing deeper epistemic dependency.

To undermine the dominance of western epistemologies, less popular ways of knowing are expected to assume a central position in the global geopolitics of knowledge. This article makes a case for embracing intercultural philosophy as an emancipating framework that offers the possibility of reconciling the world’s epistemologies by promoting interepistemic dialogue. The nuance of intercultural philosophy and its analysis of the epistemic relationships at play granted by epistemological polylogue can encourage pluri-epistemologies in higher education."

10. Radhakrisnan, Sarvepalli, and Raju, Poolla Tirupati, eds. 1960. Concept of Man: A Study in Comparative Philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin.

Contents: P. T. Raju: Prologue to the second edition 9; S. Radhakrishnan: Prefatory remarks 23; P. T. Raju; Introduction 29; I. John Wild: The Concept of Man in Greek Thought 56; II. A.J. Heschel: The Concept of Man in Jewish Thought 122; III. W. T. Chan: The Concept of Man in Chinese Thought 172; IV. P. T. Raju: The Concept of Man in Indian Thought 220; V. P. T. Raju: Comparisons and Reflections 320; VI. Ernst Benz: The Concept of Man in Christian Thought 394; VII. Ibrahim Madhour: The Concept of Man in Islamic Thought 452; VIII. M. B. Milin: The Concept of Man in Marxist Thought 476; IX. P. R. Raju; Epilogue 536; Index 540-546,

11. Raju, Poolla Tirupati. 1947. "The Western and the Indian Philosophical Traditions." Philosophical Review no. 56:127-155.

"Without entering further into the principles of comparative philosophy, we may adopt, as a modus operandi for the comparison of the two traditions, the comparisons of their origins, of their developments, and of their endings. Their origins are of the past and can no longer change.

The endings, so far as we are concerned, are what they are in the present. In the future, the two traditions may blend ; and the future historian of philosophy may trace two origins for the philosophy of his time, just as European culture of the present traces its birth to both Greece and Rome. Or possibly the two traditions may continue without regard for each other, which is certainly not to be desired. And as the endings for us are what they are now, the modes of their respective developments are also of the past. A careful understanding of the two traditions in these three aspects should enable us to determine the individuality of each with respect to the other." (pp. 128-129)

12. ———. 1955. "Idealisms: Eastern and Western." Philosophy East and West no. 5:211-234.

"Since World War II, humanity has become world-conscious. People have come to realize that every part of the world is now more closely knit with every other part than before. Events which previously would have been considered to be only of national importance are now of international impor- tance. Even countries which are self-sufficient in every respect no longer think they can cut themselves off from the rest of the world. Great and rich nations are worried about the poverty of small nations. Economically and politically, the parts of the world have come closer and closer. But should they not also come close psychologically and reflectively? Or should we conclude that we are coming dangerously closer? Dangerously or help- fully, we are coming closer, and we have to spread the feeling of common humanity. We want mutual understanding of cultures; but cultures attain reflectiveness in their philosophies. So mutual understanding of cultures will be mere dilettantism without mutual understanding of philosophies. And mutual understanding of philosophies is not possible unless it is accepted that, essentially and in truth, man and his reason are the same everywhere. Hence the need for comparative philosophy, which will naturally lead to philosophies with broader outlook. Our sense of what is important will become truer." (p. 212)

13. ———. 1957. "Being, Existence, Reality, and Truth." Philosophy East and West no. 17:291-315.

"For philosophy the concepts of Being, Existence, Reality and Truth are very important, if not central; but no other concepts are more vague than they, and no other terms are more loosely used than theirs. For a student of comparative philosophy, the difficulty becomes all the greater in understanding them, because each is used in different senses by different philosophers and sometimes by the same philosopher in different places. Again, in some languages separate words are not found to mean the different concepts. Further, as will be shown in this paper, some of these words do not naturally express the meanings they are sought to express, and our understanding becomes vague and confused. Now that English is one of the languages for the intercommunication of philosophies and cultures, it is important to find out not only the distinct meanings of these words but also how English expresses these meanings clearly and naturally. And these words and concepts are of primary importance for philosophy in general and for comparative philosophy in particular, the study of which is being taken up seriously. Much confusion will be prevented if the meanings they can naturally express are delimited." (p. 291)

14. ———. 1962. Introduction to Comparative Philosophy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Reprint: Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass 1977.

Contents: Preface V; General Introduction 3; 1. Western Philosophy and the Struggle for the Liberation of the Outward 13; 2. Chinese Philosophy and Human Mindfulness 93, 3. Indian Philosophy and Explication of Inwardness 169; 4. Comparisons and Reflections 249; Appendixes 337; Chronological Table 339; Glossary of Indian and Chinese Terms 352; Index 357.

15. ———. 1963. "Comparative Philosophy and Spiritual Values: East and West." Philosophy East and West no. 13:211-225.

"The tendency is strong to identify spiritual values with what we call intellectual, ethical, and aesthetic values, or Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

But, when the reality of spirit is rejected, these values must be considered as relevant only to the physical body or the biological principle. It is not realized that by denying the reality of spirit we destroy the very foundation of these values. For whom are these values meant and on what are they based? Our physico-chemical and biological nature is what it is, and there is no question of its becoming something different from what it is: it does not strive for the realization of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. The originator of these values has, then, to be conceded to be spirit. But how are we to identify and locate it?" (p. 212)

16. ———. 1970. Lectures in Comparative Philosophy. Poona: University of Poona.

"For the meaning of " comparative philosophy " one should not go merely to its etymology and philology. Etymologically, the term may mean '' any philosophical work that compares " or " any philosophy that is developed by comparing any other philosophies. " In either case, the philosophies compared may be any two philosophies of the same tradition or even of the same period of that tradition, as for instance the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. But such work is not called comparative philosophy, although it is comparison of two philosophies. Without restricting and defining the meaning of the term, we lose its true significance and importance.

Again, comparative philosophy is not a system of philosophy, just as comparative religion is not any established religion. But comparative philosophy may and ought to lead to a more comprehensive and adequate system of philosophy, just as comparative religion may and ought to produce a religious genius who can start a new and comprehensive and adequate religious outlook that meets the needs of modern man Comparative philosophy is a philosophical discipline and ought to be recognized as the most important philosophical activity of the present, in which the East and the West are both violently and non-violently merging with each other." (pp. 1-2)

17. Ramose, Mogobe B. 2015. "On the contested meaning of ‘philosophy’." South African Journal of Philosophy no. 34:551-558.

Abstract: "The thesis to be defended in this essay is that the meaning, and by implication the use, of philosophy continues to be contested. I will focus primarily on philosophy in South Africa in order to elucidate this thesis. In doing so, I will argue that the future of philosophy in South Africa lies precisely in the willingness to contest its meaning and use. Such a contestation must be in the form of a dialogue predicated on the principle of the equality of all human beings and the openness to learn from one another without precluding the possibility of change in oneself and the existential conditions that prevail. My starting point is that the present is the child of the past and the present in turn is the parent of the future. I will therefore look back with the view to arriving at the present that is the field of contestation."

18. Raphals, Lisa. 1992. Knowing Words: Wisdom and Cunning in the Classical Traditions of China and Greece. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Foreword by Gregory Nagy.

19. ———. 1994. "Skeptical Strategies in the "Zhuangzi" and "Theaetetus"." Philosophy East and West no. 44:501-526.

"Both the Qi wu lun[*] and Theaetetus engage in extended discussions of the nature of knowing, language, explanation, perception, and perceptual judgment. Paul Woodruff asks a question about Plato that can also be applied to Zhuangzi: "Which came first, the sceptic or the epistemologist?" The epistemologist asks what knowledge is and how it can be acquired; the skeptic tries to detach her from that project. Zhuangzi, like Plato, may be doing something different from either of these, though it smacks of both.6 The Qi wu lun is the major consideration of epistemology in Warring States writings; the Theaetetus is the only Platonic dialogue devoted to a discussion of episteme, knowing. Yet we may observe that Zhuangzi never offers his own theory of knowing, and Socrates never reaches a definition of episteme. In this essay I compare several ostensibly skeptical elements in the Qi wu lun chapter of the Zhuangzi and the Theaetetus of Plato. I argue that the Zhuangzi and the Theaetetus use remarkably similar skeptical methods to explore epistemological problems in ways that are unique within their respective traditions.

My purpose in making this case is twofold. One, I want to show that methods of argument in China and Greece may have more in common than we may be predisposed to suppose. Two, the comparison allows us to reexamine our own understanding of what skepticism is and does." (pp. 501-502)

[*] The second chaptet of Zhuangzi.

References

Burnyeat, M. F., 1990. The Theaetetus of Plato with a Translation of Plato's Theaetetus by M. J. Levett. revised by Myles Burnyeat. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.

Graham, Angus C. trans. 1986. Chuang-tzu: The Inner Chapters. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981. Reprint, Unwin Paperbacks.

20. ———. 2002. "Gender and Virtue in Greece and China." Journal of Chinese philosophy no. 29:415-436.

"This article concerns a particular aspect of gendered virtue, namely, the claim that women “think differently than men”—more specifically, the claim that men and women differ in intellectual and ethical capacities, including capacities for moral reasoning and political and ethical judgment. Claims of this kind are legion. They are the property of no one culture or tradition, and have been used—across cultures—to deny political and civil rights to women by the imposition of an epistemological and ethical double standard.

(...)

Even feminists engage in this debate: some hold that gender predisposes women toward certain virtues, and men toward certain vices; others attack that position with equal vehemence.

After a brief consideration of metaphorical and rhetorical uses of gender, I present two sets of gendered virtue controversies. The Greek arguments begin in Plato’s Republic and Laws, continue in Aristotle’s Politics, and resume in the European Enlightenment in the works of Rousseau and his critics. The Chinese arguments begin with the Analects of Confucius, reappear in Han dynastic histories, and continue in contemporary debates about Confucianism, feminism, and the status of women in contemporary Asian societies. These comparative controversies show that arguments about gendered virtue and debates about the relative ability of women and men to make intellectual and ethical judgments are not the property of any one “tradition,” Asian or Western, ancient or modern. In the final part of the article, I use these debates to consider some contemporary ramifications of the “Asian values” debate, including claims that Confucianism is “feminist,” or “more” or “differently” benign or feminist than Western philosophy." (pp. 415-416, notes omitted)

21. Raud, Rein. 2006. "Philosophies versus Philosophy: In Defense of a Flexible Definition." Philosophy East and West no. 56:618-625.

"It is strange that no one has taken up Carine Defoort’s clearly formulated and timely argument about the intercultural tensions in interpreting what philosophy is, although the issue deserves at least a roundtable, if not an international conference.(1)

I doubt that this is because there is a general consensus that the matter is now settled, and I would therefore like to develop the argument a bit further and offer a few additional factors to consider. It is also obvious that the problem is not limited to the subject of Chinese philosophy alone: all traditions of thought from all over the world, but most notably the Indian, Islamic, and Japanese heritages, are affected by the positions we adopt. As in most debates about the commensurability of cultural traditions, we can find differences when we look for them, and similarities if these are what we would like to see, so the ‘‘conflict of sensitivities’’(2) is also a matter of attitudes.

My own position is that regardless of what we prefer to call the practice of deeper thought (and ‘philosophy’ is a very good name), it would be extremely useful for all of its participants, whatever their origin and upbringing, to find a common denominator for them to be able to exchange ideas and mutually enrich each other on its basis. In what follows I shall try to sketch a perspective from which this could, in my opinion, be theoretically grounded." (p. 618)

(1) Carine Defoort, ‘‘Is There Such a Thing as Chinese Philosophy? Arguments of an Implicit Debate,’’ Philosophy East and West 51 (3) (July 2001): 393–413.

(2) Ibid., p. 406.

22. Reding, Jean-Paul. 2004. Comparative Essays in Early Greek and Chinese Rational Thinking. Aldershot: Ashgate.

"Comparing ancient Chinese to ancient Greek philosophical thinking is certainly a fascinating enterprise. But it is also a questionable one. What is the philosophical justification for such an undertaking? And why should we compare ancient Chinese to ancient Greek thought, rather than to Indian, Arabic or African ways of thinking? We might ask, further, if we have at our disposal a comparative method adaptable to a project of this scope.

Let me begin by trying to answer the last question first. The comparative method is firmly established in the natural sciences, where we have a number of comparative disciplines, such as comparative zoology and comparative anatomy. Historical linguistics, comparative law, religious studies and comparative mythology also deserve to be mentioned in this context. Comparative philosophy, however, is rather ill famed, and has never acquired the status of a unified and independent philosophical discipline. Even the very notion of comparative philosophy as a discipline distinct from pure philosophy is rejected sometimes.

Comparative philosophy is also seen very often as nothing more than a broader approach to the study of the history of philosophy, by including Indian, Chinese and African philosophies as appendices to standard histories of Western philosophy. The most common way of practising comparative philosophy, however, is to spot marked differences or similarities between specific doctrines or global attitudes of Western and Eastern philosophy. The goal I have set myself is to rehabilitate the comparative method as a more rigorous way of doing philosophy with a cross-cultural perspective." (Introduction, p. 1, notes omitted)

23. Rein'l, Robert L. 1953. "Comparative Philosophy and Intellectual Tolerance." Philosophy East and West no. 2:333-339.

"Comparative philosophy may be studied either for the purpose of determining the relations among the different systems, where the objects studied are the systems rather than the objects with which the systems profess to be concerned, or for the sake of obtaining wisdom. The second of these purposes implies the first, but only the second is philosophic inquiry in the fullest sense. In connection with the first, Mr. Kwee has indicated the necessity of approaching a philosophy through its historical and socio-cultural setting, and has suggested eight approaches to the problem of comparative philosophy in general.(1) To these an addition is suggested, not in the sense of another method, but as an attitude that is required by all these approaches. The attitude is tolerance, specifically a variety that might be called intellectual. One must be intellectually tolerant if one is to reach out beyond the boundaries of one's own culture, and even more tolerant if one is to pursue investigations of a comparative nature." (p. 333)

(19 J. Kwee Swan Liat, "Methods of Comparative Philosophy," Philosophy East and West, I, No. 1 (April, 1951), 10-15. The eight approaches are: the philological, the historical, the comparative, the formal-evaluative, the psychological, the phenomenological, the sociological andanthropological, and the total-integrative." (p. 333)

24. Rivera Berruz, Stephanie, and Kalmanson, Leah, eds. 2018. Comparative Studies in Asian and Latin American Philosophies: Cross-Cultural eories and Methodologies. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Contents: Acknowledgments VI; 1. Stephanie Rivera Berruz and Leah Kalmanson: Introduction 1;

Part I Coloniality and Orientalism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

2. Andrea J. Pitts: Occidentalism and Orientalism in the Late Writings of Antonio Caso 13; 3. Adriana Novoa: Indian Veil: Metaphysics of Racial Origins in the Americas 33; 4. Hernán G. H. Taboada (translated by Alba Lara Granero and Maria C. Vera): Search for the Orient in Creole America: Nineteenth Century and its Paths 71;

Part II New Directions in Asian-Latin American Comparative Philosophy

5. Allison B. Wolf: Breastfeeding in Between: A Lugonian Reading of Watsuji Tetsurō’s Rinrigaku 105; 6. Agustín Jacinto Zavala: Two Ideas of Education: Amano Teiyū and José Vasconcelos 129; 7. Sebastian Purcell: Confucius and the Aztecs on The Mean 155;

Part III Comparative Philosophy from the Anti-colonial Perspective

8. Susan E. Babbitt: Is Anarchy a False Hope? Latin American Revolutionaries Knew Dhamma and Saddha 175; 9. George Fourlas: The Ants and the Elephant: Martial Arts and Liberation Philosophy in the Americas 201; 10. Namrata Mitra: Legacies of Legitimacy and Resistance: Imperial and State Violence in South Asia and Latin America 217;

Index 239-248.

25. Rorty, Richard. 1991. "Philosophers, Novelists, and Intellectual Comparisons: Heidegger, Kundera, and Dickens." In Culture and Modernity: East-West Philosophics Perspectives, edited by Deutsch, Eliot, 3-20. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Also published in R. Rorty, Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2: Essays on Heidegger and Others, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991, pp. 66-82.

"When tolerance and comfortable togetherness become the watchwords of a society, one should no longer hope for world-historical greatness. If such greatness — radical difference from the past, a dazzlingly unimaginable future — is what one wants, ascetic priests like Plato, Heidegger, and SusIov will fill the bill. But if it is not, novelists like Cervantes, Dickens, and Kundera may suffice. The fact that philosophy as a genre is closely associated with the quest for such greatness — with the attempt to focus all one's thoughts into a single narrow beam and send them out beyond the bounds of all that has been previously thought — may help explain why it is among the philosophers of the West that contemporary Western self-hatred is most prevalent. It must be tempting for Africans and Asians — the principal victims of Western imperialism and racism — to see this self-hatred as about what the West deserves. But I would suggest that we take this self-hatred as just one more symptom of the old familiar quest for purity which runs through the annals of the ascetic priesthood in both East and West. If we set these annals to one side, we may have a better chance of finding something distinctive in the West which the East can use, and conversely." (p. 20)

26. ———. 1996. "The Ambiguity of 'Rationality'." Constellations no. 3:73-83.

Symposium on Critical Theory by David Hoy and Thomas McCarthy (Malden: Blackwell 1994).

"It is tempting to describe Critical Theory as an American version of the Habermas-vs.-Foucault debate, a debate which has agitated Europe in the ten years since the publication of Habermas’s The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. It is also tempting to read it as a contribution to the debate over postmodernism which is presently agitating the American academy.

But neither description is quite right." (p. 73)

(...)

"In his rejoinder to Hoy, Thomas McCarthy agrees that we need Foucauldian “critical histories of contingent regimes of rationality.” But he disagrees with Hoy on the question of “whether there is anything universal at all to say about reason, truth, objectivity, and the like, or rather anything that would not be too ‘thin’ to be of any use” (223). McCarthy thus lays out what I take to be the central issue of the book: namely, whether these traditional topics of philosophical debate are relevant to socio-political deliberation." (p. 73)

27. Rosán, Laurence J. 1952. "A Key to Comparative Philosophy." Philosophy East and West no. 2:56-65.

"The present writer therefore wishes to suggest that the key to comparative philosophy is not the contrast of cultures but rather the contrast of basic philosophical attitudes or types of philosophy. There are certain philosophical attitudes that appear again and again at widely separated points in space and in widely separated periods of time, each of which is logically consistent within itself but in fundamental conflict with each of the others. Much further study would be required to determine the exact number and nature of these attitudes. But for the purposes of this article and in order to demonstrate the significance and value of this conception, let me arbitrarily speak of three such fundamental attitudes, understanding that this number represents undoubtedly a great simplification, although not, I hope, a falsification. The following paragraphs, therefore, are not intended to convey any new factual knowledge but rather to clarify and integrate the field of comparative philosophy. The examples offered as illustrations of each particular philosophical attitude are not meant to be exhaustive but merely suggestive, so that the reader will be able to think of many others which could have been used. Perhaps in certain cases there may be some disagreement about the classification of a particular author, but this, I imagine, will not affect the general validity of my approach. Of course, many writers cannot be clearly classified inasmuch as they mingle elements of two or more attitudes within themselves; since this would imply real inconsistency, however, I believe that the greatest philosophers will be those most amenable to classification." (pp. 56-57)

28. ———. 1961. "Are Comparisons between the East and the West Fruitful for Comparative Philosophy?" Philosophy East and West no. 11:239-243.

"In an earlier issue there appeared an article entitled "A Key to Comparative Philosophy," by the present writer.(2)"

(...)

"This article evoked a comment, printed in the same issue, entitled "Keys to Comparative Philosophy," by the editor of this Journal, Charles A. Moore.(3) Moore made good criticisms of some particular aspects of the typology that I suggested, but he did not attack the conception itself."

(...)

"But the purpose of the present article is not polemical, though the foregoing paragraph may seem somewhat contentiously phrased. On the contrary, I take seriously Moore's conclusion that there are probably several very different interpretations of comparative philosophy. What I would like to examine now is the question: Why are there these different "keys" to comparative philosophy? And I would like to suggest-neither facetiously nor pedantically, however the words may seem to strike the reader-that the reason there are different approaches to the problem of comparative philosophy is simply that there are different philosophies to begin with, and that each type of philosophy will, very naturally, offer a solution to this particular problem that will be consistent with the rest of its metaphysical and ethical views. In other words, whereas in my previous article I attempted a "typology of philosophies" as the key to comparative philosophy, I am here accepting the fact that there are several such "keys," but suggesting that there is a necessary reason for the variety of these "keys" themselves. In short, there is a "typology of the solutions to the problem of comparative philosophy," and this typology may be similar or even parallel to the typology of the philosophies themselves." (pp. 239-240)

(2) Philosophy East and West, Ibid., II, No. 1 (April, 1952), 56-65.

(3) Ibid., pp. 76-78.

29. Rosemont, Henry Jr. 2014. "Symposium: Does the Concept of »Truth« Have Value in the Pursuit of Cross-Cultural Philosophy?" Confluence: Online Journal of World Philosophies no. 1:150-217.

Abstract: "The symposium »Does the Concept of >Truth< Have Value in the Pursuit of Cross-Cultural Philosophy?« hones on a methodological question which has deep implications on doing philosophy cross-culturally.

Drawing on early Confucian writers, the anchor, Henry Rosemont, Jr., attempts to explain why he is skeptical of pat, affirmative answers to this question. His co-symposiasts James Maffie, John Maraldo, and Sonam Thakchoe follow his trail in working out multi-faceted views on truth from Mexican, Japanese Confucian, and Tibetan Buddhist perspectives respectively. As these positions substantiate, the aforementioned non-Anglo-European traditions seem to draw on an integrated view of thinking, feeling, and living a human life. For their practitioners, truth is less of a correspondence with a given external reality.

In fact, it enables human beings to strike the right path in living good, social lives."

H. Rosemont Jr., Introductory Statement 151;

Responses;

J. Maffie: Reflections on Henry Rosemont’s »Introductory Statement« 161; J. Maraldo: Truth is Truthfulness: The Japanese Concept of Makoto 168; S. Thakchoe: Tibetan Reflections on the Value of Truth in Cross-Cultural Philosophy 186; H. Rosemont, Jr.: Reply: Truth as Truthfulness 205-217.

30. Rošker, Jana S. 2013. "Cross-Cultural Dialogues in Modernization Theory: the Impact of Western Philosophies Upon Modern Confucianism in East Asia." Dve domovini: razprave o izseljenstvu no. 37:85-91.

Abstract: "As a major source of social values, Modern Confucian theory has assumed great significance amidst the proliferation of instrumental rationalities in contemporary China. This neo-conservative current is distinguished by a multifaceted attempt to revitalize traditional thought by means of new influences borrowed or derived from Western systems. It is defined by a search for a synthesis between "Western" and traditional Chinese thought, aiming to elaborate a new system of ideas and values suitable for the modern, globalized society."

31. ———. 2015. "Two Models of Structural Epistemology: Russell and Zhang Dongsun." International Communication of Chinese Culture no. 2:109-121.

Abstract: "Zhang Dongsun (1886–1973) who belongs to the leading Chinese philosophers of the twentieth century, has developed his own system of thought, based upon the so-called pan-structural epistemology according to which the external cause of our sensation is not a substance, but the structural order of the external world. In his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), Russell had proposed a similar idea. The present article is based upon a comparative analysis of both structural epistemology models and aims to determine the specific and unique features of Zhang’s theory, focusing upon the elements deriving from traditional Chinese thought. Although in his pluralistic epistemology Zhang rejected ‘substance’, he namely still considered the dualistic theories of idealism and materialism to be completely wrong. While elements of both approaches can be found in Zhang Dongsun’s model, it cannot be identified with either one of them."

32. ———. 2015. "Intercultural Methodology in Researching Chinese Philosophy." Zhéxué yu wénhuà yuèkan no. 42:55-76.

"In Western research on Chinese philosophy, the non-reflected use of a theoretical analysis, which is a result of specific (Western) historical processes and the related, typical organizational structure of societies, may prove to be a dangerous and misleading mechanism.

Concepts and categories can namely not simply be transferred from one socio-cultural context into another.

Thus, in current intercultural discourses, the debate on the philosophical dimensions of Chinese texts and their role in the context of Chinese thought has been developed increasingly successfully under the aegis of rediscovering and applying specific traditional Chinese methodological approaches, concepts and categories. Based on the awareness of the importance of such revival of classical Chinese philosophical methodologies, the present paper aims to clarify the difference between external (外在超越性) and internal (or immanent) transcendence (內在 超越性) and the difference between Cartesian dualistic models and binary categories (对立范畴).

On this basis, the author provides a short evaluation of the application of analytical vs. hermeneutic methods in investigating classical Chinese texts and proposes an innovative mode of hermeneutics, which is based on the fusion of jingjies (境界融合), aiming to replace the controversial Western hermeneutical method, rooted in the concept of the fusion of horizons."

33. ———. 2016. "Modern Confucianism and the Intercultural Exchange between China and Central-Eastern Europe." Taiwan Jurnal of East Asian Studies no. 13:127-146.

Abstract: "The topical processes of modern identity-making within Central and Eastern Europe on the one hand, and China, on the other, are fundamentally results of different forms of cultural and economic transformation, conflict and harmonious social adjustments. The aim of the present paper is to expose the need to appreciate the role of culture not only as a background to, but also as a constitutive part of, economic dynamics. Thus, it assumes that any comparative analysis of the rise of transitional societies must deal with questions connected to respective value systems, i.e. of moral education, political authority, social solidarity, and religious beliefs.

It is not coincidental that the recent rapid development of the P.R. China owes much to such crucial traditional virtues as social hierarchy, self-discipline, social harmony, strong families and a respect for education. In this context, the present article examines the revival of Confucian tradition in China. According to previous research results, traditional East European values were in many aspects closer to such virtues than traditional Western values, which focused heavily on the idea of individual autonomy. This paper follows the presumption that the Central and Eastern Europe could function as a cultural and axiological bridge

between China and Western Europe."

34. ———. 2019. "A Philosophical Relation Between Taiwan and Japan: Models of Dialectical Thought in Mou Zongsan´s and Nishida Kitaro´s Theories." Asian Philosophy no. 29:333-350.

Abstract: "The article opens with a discussion of recent theoretical and methodological innovations in the field of comparative philosophy. In this regard, I propose and explain a new possible method of contrasting particular aspects of divergent philosophical texts or discourses and denote it as a ‘philosophy of sublation’. Then, the paper provides a concrete example for such a post-comparative method of reasoning, I will try to apply a ‘sublation philosophy’ approach for a reinterpretation of certain aspects of the complex philosophical intersections between modern Japanese and Chinese philosophies through the lens of a contrastive analysis of Nishida Kitarō’s and Mou Zongsan’s dialectical thought. In this way, I hope to shed some new light upon some general questions regarding different models of dialectics."

35. ———. 2019. "Li Zehou and his Rocky Relationship with Marx: Class Struggle as a form of Kantian Transcendental Illusion." Asian Studies no. 7:201-215.

Abstract: "The present paper deals with Li Zehou’s contributions to the discussions of Marxism in the second half of the 20th century. In Li’s philosophy, Marx’s theories were reshaped, modified, and upgraded in a theoretical framework that differed from the original. He agreed with Marx’s presumption that the making and using of tools was the basic material practice, which made human evolution possible. Nevertheless, he saw Marx’s further development of this theory as problematic, because he saw it as being one-sided: progress from the means of production to the relations of production, and then on to the superstructure, only concerned the external developments of the relation between the manufacture and use of tools. At this point, Li was more interested in their internal influences, i.e., in the ways in which the making and use of tools has reshaped the human mind. He was highly sceptical of Marxist economic theories and criticized the crucial concepts elaborated by Marx in his through the lens of Kantian “transcendental illusions.”

Proceeding from his combination of Marx and Kant, the present paper will critically analyse some crucial differences between the Marxian idea of the class struggle as a driving force of social progress, and Li’s own version of historical materialism."

36. ———. 2020. "Chinese Philosophy, ˝Postcomparative˝ Approaches and Transcultural Studies: A Reply to Vytis Silius." Asian Studies no. 8:305-316.

"In the previous issue of Asian Studies (May 2020), Vytis Silius published a paper entitled Diversifying Academic Philosophy: The Post-Comparative Turn and Transculturalism, in which he dealt with some basic, significant and hitherto still unsolved questions regarding the so-called “post-comparative shift” in Chinese and intercultural philosophy (see Silius 2020). The paper is well written, topical and very relevant. In spite (or all the more because) of the fact that it contains some controversial issues, it represents an important contribution to the present debates in the field. In this light, I would like to challenge the author (and his readers) by addressing the following issues, with which I aim to expose some of the minor problems contained in the paper on the one hand, but also propose some further general considerations of the delineated problems, on the other." (p. 305)

37. ———. 2020. "Modern New Confucianism and the Challenges of Chinese Modernity: Intercultural Dialogues in Chinese philosophy." Culture and Dialogue no. 8:196-219.

Abstract: "During the last decades of the previous century, the rebirth and the modernization of classical Confucianism gained increasing relevance. These tendencies have manifested themselves in a clearest and most influential way in the current of Modern New Confucianism. The representatives of this stream of thought aimed to elaborate upon a new ethical model of specifically Chinese modernity based upon traditional values that could in a renewed form meet the requirements of the new era. They aimed to

preserve Chinese cultural identity while at the same time making their own original contributions to the development of a philosophical and theoretical dialogue between Euro-American and Chinese cultures. In this context, it is important to ask the question

whether a model of modernization that is rooted in traditional Confucianism is truly capable of generating a non-individualistic version of modernity. Following this supposition, and focusing upon the works of the so-called “Second Generation” of Modern New Confucianism, this article aims to demonstrate that the alleged relation between modernity and individualism, which was almost exclusively seen as selfevident and undeniable by the Western modernization theories, is actually a result of Western historical paradigms."

38. ———. 2021. Interpreting Chinese Philosophy: A New Methodology. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

"Since this book is written mainly for Western readers, it automatically deals with its subject through the lens of cultural differences.

When reading Chinese philosophy, readers born, educated, and socialized in Western languages and social environments are confronted with different epistemologies, different perspectives, perceptions, and patterns of knowledge acquisition and transmission. To a certain extent, and especially when it comes to ancient and traditional philosophies, this problem also affects today’s Chinese readers who live in a globalized world where the standards of conception and understanding have been adopted from Western cultures.

Therefore, our approach to Chinese philosophy is intercultural in the sense of interaction and engagement of several cultures. Interculturality is a specific type of interaction or communication between discourses, where differences in cultures play a role in the formation of meaning." (p. 13)

(...)

"In this book, the concept of culture is understood to be based on a metaphysics of relations. In this sense, I continue to use the two terms, that is, both intercultural and transcultural: although it is impossible to draw firm and constant boundaries between them because they form a complex and often overlapping web of meaning, I use the former when referring to concrete interactions between different cultures(7) and their various elements, and the latter when referring to the goal and results of such interactions, that is, to see oneself in the other." (p. 14)

(7) Eric Nelson (2020, 249) even believes that concept of the “intercultural” is better described as the interaction of lifeworlds instead of cultures.

References

Nelson, Eric. 2020. “Intercultural Philosophy and Intercultural Hermeneutics: A Response to Defoort, Wenning, and Marchal.” Philosophy East & West 70(1): 247–59.

39. ———. 2021. "Intercultural Methodology in Sinology: Transculturality, Textual Criticism and Discursive Translations." Acta Universitatis Carolinae. Philologica no. 3:135-151.

Abstract: "For Western researchers, the understanding of Chinese culture is conditioned by differences in language, tradition, history and socialization.

The interpretation of various aspects and elements of different cultures is always connected to the geographic, political and economic positions of the interpreter as well as the object of interpretation. In Western research on China, the non-reflected use of theoretical analyses that are in themselves results of specific (Western) historical processes and the related structure of societies, often proves to be a dangerous and misleading mechanism. A fundamental premise of the present paper is that Western epistemology represents only one of many different models of human comprehension of reality. On this basis, it questions traditional intercultural methodologies hitherto applied in Sinology and Chinese studies.

The article presents the main methodological paradigms of a transculturally aware research that could improve the understanding of general principles underlying the particular research questions and objects under investigation."

40. ———. 2021. "Intercultural Dialogues in Times of Global Pandemics: The Confucian Ethics of Relations and Social Organization in Sinic Societies." Ethics & Bioethics no. 11:206-216.

Abstract: "Since COVID-19 is a global-scale pandemic, it can only be solved on the global level. In this context, intercultural dialogues are of utmost importance. Indeed, different models of traditional ethics might be of assistance in constructing a new, global ethics that could help us confront the present predicament and prepare for other possible global crises that might await us in the future. The explosive, pandemic spread of COVID-19 in 2020 clearly demonstrated that in general, one of the most effective tools for containment of the epidemics is precisely human and interpersonal solidarity, which must also be accompanied by a certain degree of autonomous self-discipline.

The present paper follows the presumption that these types of personal and interpersonal attitudes are—inter alia— culturally conditioned and hence influenced by different traditional models of social ethics. In light of the fact that East-Asian or Sinic societies were more successful and effective in the process of containing and eliminating the virus compared to the strategies of the Euro-American regions, I will first question the widespread assumption that this effectiveness is linked to the authoritarian political traditions of the Sinic East and Southeast Asian areas.

Then, I will critically introduce the Confucian ethics of relations, which in various ways has influenced the social structures of these regions, and clarify the question of whether and in which way the relics of this ethics had an actual effect on the crisis resolution measurements. The crucial aim of this paper is to contribute to the construction of theoretical groundworks for a new, transculturally grounded global ethics, which is more needed today than ever before."

41. ———. 2021. "Kant, Confucianism, and "Global Rooted Philosophy" in Taiwan: from Mou Zongsan to Lee Ming-huei." Synthesis philosophica no. 36:217-128.

"In Taiwan, the Confucian revival was always defined by the search for a synthesis between Western and traditional Confucian thought. Taiwanese Modern Confucians aimed to create a system of ideas and values capable of resolving modern, globalised societies’ social and political problems. Mou Zongsan, the best-known member of the second generation of Modern New Confucianism, aimed to revive the Chinese philosophical tradition through a dialogue with Modern European philosophy, especially with the works of Immanuel Kant. His follower Lee Ming-huei is arguably the most renowned expert on Kantian philosophy in the entire Sinitic region. The present paper aims to compare their respective approaches and evaluate them in a broader context of modern Chinese thought. I will first introduce Mou Zongsan’s elaborations on Kant. In the following, I will present the main aspects of Lee Ming-huei’s development of Mou’s theories and provide in later sections a critical assessment of Lee’s philosophical innovation, focusing upon the evaluation of his conceptualisation of immanent transcendence and Confucian deontology."

42. ———. 2021. "Modernization of Confucian Ontology in Taiwan and Mainland China." Asian Philosophy no. 29:160-176.

Abstract: "The present paper compares three models of modernized Confucian Ontology. The philosophers under debate belong to the most important, well-known and influential theoreticians in modern Taiwan and mainland China respectively. Through a contrastive analysis, the paper aims to critically introduce three alternative models of ontology, which have been developed from the Chinese philosophical tradition by the most well-known Taiwanese philosopher Mou Zongsan and by two most influential mainland Chinese theoreticians, Li Zehou and Chen Lai respectively. In this paper, I will analyze and critically introduce Li Zehou’s and Chen Lai’s respective critiques of Mou Zongsan’s basic assumptions that have been reflected in his methodological paradigms, while also exposing some major differences within their own lines of thought."

43. ———. 2022. "Chinese and Global Philosophy: Postcomparative Transcultural Approaches and the Method of Sublation." Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy no. 21:165-182.

Abstract: "The essay deals with problems encountered by Western researchers working in the field of Chinese philosophy. It begins with a discussion of intercultural and transcultural methodologies and illuminates some of the most common issues inherent in traditional intercultural comparisons in the field of philosophy. Taking into account the current state of the so-called postcomparative discourses in the field of transcultural philosophy and starting from the notion of culturally divergent frames of reference, it focuses upon semantic aspects of the Chinese philosophical tradition and exposes the need for discursive translations. On this basis, a new postcomparative approach in transcultural philosophical studies of Chinese philosophy is suggested. In this context, the author proposes the application of an innovative principle, based upon what can preliminary be denoted as the method of sublation."

44. ———. 2022. "Sublating Sinic Relationism: On A Winding Path from Transcultural to Global Ethics." Asian Studies no. 10:81-104.

Abstract: "This paper aims to bring into the global ethics debate concrete alternative models of specific relational ethics developed in the context of Sinic traditions that have not yet been widely introduced into Western scholarship or integrated into the framework of global discourses on ethics and morality. Although much research has been done on certain elements and aspects of such ethical models, there have been no concrete attempts to incorporate them into a global axiological framework that could have helped humanity develop strategies for solving the current global crises we face.

The paper first provides a critical overview of the conceptual history, specific characteristics, and social relevance of relationism. It then addresses the question of how relational ethical models could be integrated into the value system of contemporary global ethics without reproducing the still dominant normativity of Western epistemology and its corresponding axiology. After highlighting some problems related to the methodology and structure of traditional models of comparative philosophy and ethics, the author suggests that this integration of relationism into the general framework of global ethics could be done by applying a new method, which can be tentatively called the method of transcultural philosophical sublation. Starting from different frames of reference that define the basic tenets of modern Western and traditional Chinese axiology, the author demonstrates the application of this method on the example of different conceptions of the human self."

45. ———. 2022. "Comparing Logical Paradoxes through the Method of Sublation: Hui Shi, Zeno and the “Flying Arrow Problem"." Asian Studies no. 10:299-312.

Abstract: "This article addresses some basic methodological problems in the field of transcultural post-comparative studies of ancient logic by comparing the famous flying arrow paradox of Hui Shi (370–c. 310 BCE) with an apparently similar paradox attributed to Zeno of Elea (495–430 BCE). The article proceeds from a general introduction to the basic framework of semantically determined classical Chinese logic, to an illumination of Hui Shi’s specific contributions to the field, and finally to a preliminary explanation that emerges from a contrastive analysis of Zeno’s and Hui Shi’s respective views on the problem of motion and stasis as manifested in their corresponding paradoxes. The contrastive analysis, based on an exposition of some basic problems in the field of transcultural methodology and a description of the so-called sublation method, points to the importance of considering different paradigms and frames of reference in identifying differences between apparently similar theses."

46. Ross, Donald. 2019. Introduction to World Philosophy. London: Austin Macauley Publishers.

"About the Book: What would it be like to go back in time and converse with the great sages of China, of India, of classical Greece and Rome, of the Christian and Islamic worlds, of Europeans of the Enlightenment? This book, Introduction to World Philosophy, aims to communicate some of the excitement and “mind-stretchingness” that such an encounter would produce. It is intended to to engage interested laypersons while remaining faithful to the standards of professional scholarship. It is written in an informal style yet does not talk down to the reader. Representatives from each of the five aforementioned periods are presented in pairs—one philosopher a more “head-in-the-clouds” thinker and the other a more “feet-on-the-ground” one. Besides demonstrating how each tradition offers a range of perspectives rather than a single, dominant one, such an approach achieves an optimum balance between breadth and depth. Ideas found in these texts range from mind-bending metaphysical speculation and the theory of knowledge, to questions of ethics and politics, to points of elementary logic. The whole discussion is prefaced by an extended exploration of what philosophy is. The author feels that it is important to reach out to the general public, to feed a genuine hunger out there for an accessible guide to the subject, and also acknowledge the relevance of non-Western, as well as Western, cultures to an increasingly globalized world."

47. Scharfstein, Ben-Ami. 1998. A Comparative History of World Philosophy. From the Upanishads to Kant. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Contents: Preface XI; Acknowledgments XIII; Chapter 1. The three philosophical traditions 1; Chapter 2. The beginnings of metaphysical philosophy Uddalaka, Yajnavalkya, Heraclitus, Parmenides 55; Chapter 3. The beginnings of moral philosophy Confucius/Mencius, the Buddha, Socrates 79; Chapter 4. Early logical relativism, skepticism, and absolutism Mahavira, Chuang-tzu, Protagoras, Gorgias, Plato 113; Chapter 5. Early rational Synthesis Hsün-tzu, Aristotle 145; Chapter 6. Early varieties of atomism Democritus/Epicurus/Lucretius, "Gautama"' and Nameless Buddhists 171; Chapter 7. Hierarchical idealism Plotinus/Proclus, Bhartrhari 205; Chapter 8. Developed skepticism Sextus Empiricus, Nagarjuna, Jayarashi, Shriharsha 233; Chapter 9. Religio-philosophical synthesis Udayana, Chu Hsi, Avicenna, Mairnonides, Aquinas 275; Chapter 10. Logic-sensitized, methodological metaphysics Gangesha, Descartes, Leibniz 329; Chapter 11. Immanent-transcendent holism Shankara, Spinoza 367, Chapter 12. Perceptual analysis, realistic and idealistic Asanga/Vasuhandu, Locke, Berkeley, Hume 407; Chapter 13. Fideistic neo-skepticism Dignaga/Dhamakirti, Kant 467; Afterword 517; Notes 531; Bibliography 655; Note on the Author 659; Index 661.

From the Preface: "Because I hope that newcomers to the history of philosophy will be among the readers of this hook, I have taken care to explain whatever I think they need to know. The book begins with the reasons for studying philosophy comparatively and with the difficulties raised by such study, and it ends with a view of philosophy that is personal but that rests on all of the preceding discussion The philosophers dealt with represent certain attitudes. schools. and traditions, but they are remembered most interestingly and accurately as individuals. So even though I have had to omit a great deal and make schematic summaries, I have in each instance tried to suggest the philosopher's style, density, and order of thought. In its later chapters the book tends to grow more difficult and elaborate, like the philosophies it deals with; but the early chapters prepare for the later ones. and, whatever the difficulty, I have always wittiest as simply and clearly as I can.

To avoid making a long book forbiddingly longer, I have limited not only the number of philosophers dealt with but also the range of thought by which each of them is represented Plato. for example, is limited to his theory of Ideas and Kant (except in the later discussion) to his Critique of Pure Reason. In keeping with the needs of a particular comparison. I have sometimes drawn a broad sketch and sometimes entered into details. When it has seemed natural. I have shared my own views with the reader-there is no good reason to pretend that I am a neutral, disembodied voice. But however I judge each philosopher's thought, I have committed myself to expound it with a minimum of bias." (p. XI)

48. ———. 2001. "How important is truth to epistemology and knowledge? Some answers from comparative philosophy." Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge no. 15:275-283.

"What can I say in a few pages to persuade someone with philosophical interests but without prior experience in comparative philosophy that he or she is living an unreasonably restricted intellectual life? With respect to the present subject, I’m sure that the senses, implications and varieties of such an inescapable conception as that of the usefulness of truth will be grasped in a richer, more mature way if the field of inquiry is broadened beyond contemporary Western philosophy.

The so-called ‘primitives’ are the hardest to investigate for such a purpose because of their great variety, the uneven character of what evidence there is, and the fact that the presuppositions of their thought are of course not laid out and defended in treatises but remain for the most part implicit in their ways of life. I can do no better here than confine myself to a few hints, by way of examples that have for one reason or another interested me. I should add that I may refer to acts or attitudes in the present tense, though they may now be obsolete." (p. 276)

49. Schepen, Renate, and Graness, Anke. 2019. "Heinz Kimmerle’s intercultural philosophy and the quest for epistemic justice." The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa no. 15:1-7.

Abstract: "Since the 1990s epistemic (in)justice has been a central issue of post-colonial and feminist studies. But only during the last decade the term has become paradigmatic and new aspects of the issue have been addressed – particularly because of the works of De Sousa Santos (2012, 2014) and Fricker (2007). One of the pioneers of an intercultural approach to philosophy is the German philosopher Heinz Kimmerle (1930–2016), who in the 1980s began to focus his research on African philosophies. Intercultural philosophy aimed for more epistemic justice in the academy long before the term epistemic or cognitive injustice was coined and became a new paradigm in the social sciences and humanities. Kimmerle, for example, was one of the main proponents of a radical reform of the Eurocentric curricula in academic philosophy, and he called for the inclusion of philosophical traditions from various regions of the world. Similarities in the starting point of research and research questions in philosophy and post- or decolonial studies, and proposed solutions to epistemic injustice in these disciplines, give enough reason to combine the social sciences’ theories of epistemic justice with the methods of intercultural philosophy for a reciprocal cultural enrichment between these disciplines. This article shows that theories of ‘epistemic justice’ could benefit from Heinz Kimmerle’s method of dialogue and reflective listening. Similarly, insights derived from post-colonial, decolonial and feminist theory could strengthen an awareness of structural power inequalities in intercultural philosophy.

Therefore, we explore how theories of epistemic justice and intercultural philosophy can complement each other."

References

Fricker, M., 2007, Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

De Sousa Santos, B., 2012, ‘Public sphere and epistemologies of the south’, Africa Development 37(1), 43–67.

De Sousa Santos, B., 2014, Epistemologies of the south: Justice Against Epistemicide, Routledge, New York.

50. Schiltz, Elizabeth. 2014. "How to Teach Comparative Philosophy." Teaching Philosophy no. 37:215-231.

Abstract: "This article articulates a range of possible pedagogical goals for courses in comparative philosophy, and discusses a number of methods and strategies for teaching courses intended to achieve those ends. Ultimately, it argues that the assignment to teach comparative philosophy represents an opportunity to design a course with remarkable freedom and tremendous potential. Comparative philosophy courses can engage students in unique ways that not only increase their understanding of the fundamental assumptions and beliefs of non-Western traditions, but also facilitate the development of the skills and dispositions that enable them to become better philosophers."

51. Seaford, Richard. 2020. The Origins of Philosophy In Ancient Greece and Ancient India: A Historical Comparison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"This book is devoted to a unitary argument, but over such a wide range of material that I offer the reader preliminary guidance in this chapter, beginning with an overview.

The next chapter (concluding Part A) presents explanations of the similarity between the earliest philosophy in India and Greece.

Part B describes the polytheist reciprocity that, among an elite, was replaced in both cultures by monism. Part C centres on the main factors behind this replacement in India: the individual interiorisation of what I call the cosmic rite of passage, and monetisation. Part D describes the similar factors behind the similar development of ideas in Greece. The conclusion (Part E) summarises and explores the variety of factors behind the new imagining of universe and inner self." (from the Summary, p. 3)

52. Selusi, Ambrogio. 2021. Chinese and Indian Ways of Thinking in Early Modern European Philosophy: Th e Reception and the Exclusion. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

"Th e purpose of this work is to examine the European understanding of China and India within the histories of philosophy from 1600 to 1744. The year 1600 is the publication of Barbaricae philosophiae antiquitatum by Otto van Heurn and 1744 the year of release of the last book of the Historia critica by Jakob Brucker, which was entitled ‘De Philosophia Exotica’. Heurn’s book is our terminus post quem, since in this work it was introduced for the first time in a ‘history of philosophy’ a chapter about modern or contemporary Indians, together with a chapter about ancient Indians.

About Brucker, he provided a very long and detailed chapter on contemporary Asians in his widespread history of philosophy, while, after him, Asians were usually excluded from the histories of philosophy; that is the reason for choosing Brucker as our terminus ante quem. The two authors represent two opposite historiographical paradigms and the latter author openly rejected the method and the historical asset of the former. Therefore, we shall, on one side, investigate the description of these two Asian civilizations in a century and a half of ‘histories of philosophy’, on the other side, we shall try to understand the change of historiographical paradigms and appreciate the effects of these changes in the description of the two civilizations with which we are concerned" (p. 1)

53. Senghass, Dieter. 2002. The Clash within Civilizations: Coming to terms with cultural conflicts. New York: Routledge.

"Intercultural philosophy must face the realities of today’s world, particularly when in pursuit of politico-theoretical and socio-philosophical issues.

This world is, however, completely different from the one that existed at the time when classical philosophy came into being. This is why all contemporary philosophies, and especially philosophies from non-European, non-Western cultures, must turn to the political, socioeconomic and cultural complexities emerging in their own environment.

Such a confrontation will inevitably lead to differentiation processes which in the light of such historic changes it will be hard to confine to any form of cultural-essentialist straitjacket. It is this issue that creates such inner turmoil within cultures and their characteristic philosophical profiles; as a rule, it is hardly possible to reduce the many solutions put forward to a common denominator. Cultures, in the current, holistic sense of the word, and in the sense of civilizations, disintegrate, some earlier, some later; for some the process is slow, for others it is more accelerated; ultimately, however, this disintegration is irreversible.30" (p. 23, a note omitted)

54. Shaner, David Edward, Nagatomo, Shigenori, and Yasuo, Yuasa. 1989. Science and Comparative Philosophy: Introducing Yuasa Yasuo. Leiden: Brill.

"This book was written with a diverse group of readers in mind. We intended to serve the interests of both philosophers and scientists by introducing a broad conceptual framework in which different research methods can be shown to be mutually beneficial. An implicit theme running through the text is our belief that even an elementary understanding of complex patterns of human cognition and behavior requires that scholars employ several research strategies. Both scientific and phenomenological methods are constrained by their use of precisely defined—and therefore restrictive—sets of models, theories, laws, and patterns of explanation. Although these models, etc., constitute the pulars upon which sound research strategies are based, their employment requires embracing a _ diversity of assumptions. While these methodological assumptions give direction to different research programs, the exclusive use of any single research strategy can systematically distort and oversimplify the complex subject matter of studies focusing upon 'human nature'." (Preface, p. XVII)

55. Shankman, Steven, and Durrant, Stephen W., eds. 2002. Early China/Ancient Greece: Thinking through Comparisons. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Contents: Steven Shankman and Stephen W. Durrant: Introduction 1; 1. David L. Hall: What Has Athens to Do with Alexandria? or Why Sinologists Can’t Get Along with(out) Philosophers 15; 2. Haun Saussy: No Time Like the Present: The Category of Contemporaneity in Chinese Studies 35; 3. Michael Puett : Humans and Gods: The Theme of Self-Divinization in Early China and Early Greece 55; 4. Steven Shankman: “These Three Come Forth Together, But are Differently Named”: Laozi, Zhuangzi, Plato 75; 5. Roger T. Ames: Thinking through Comparisons: Analytical and Narrative Methods for Cultural Understanding 93; 6. C. H. Wang: Alluding to the Text, or the Context 111; 7. David N. Keightley: Epistemology in Cultural Context: Disguise and Deception in Early China and Early Greece 119; 8. David Schaberg: The Logic of Signs in Early Chinese Rhetoric 155; 9. Andrew Plaks: Means and Means: A Comparative Reading of Aristotle’s Ethics and the Zhongyong 187; 10. Lisa Raphals: Fatalism, Fate, and Stratagem in China and Greece 207; 11.Anthony C. Yu: Cratylus and Xunzi on Names 235; 12. Michael Nylan: Golden Spindles and Axes: Elite Women in the Archaemenid and Han Empires 251; 13. Stephen W. Durrant: Creating Tradition: Sima Qian Agonistes? 283; List of Contributors 299; Index 303-305.

56. Sheldon, Wilmon H. 1956. "What Can Western Philosophy Contribute to Eastern?" Philosophy East and West no. 5:291-304.

"Notice that we are here treating of philosophy as a distinct pursuit, not as a phase of cultural differences between East and West.

True, indeed, the culture of a region, nation, race and its philosophy are deeply interwoven. But we are asking only what the individual philosophers as independent truthseekers of the Western arena can offer to the individual truthseekers of the East, giving them, if possible, truths in addition to what they already have. And if in the following we seem to dwell overlong on the weaknesses of Western thought, remember the old counsel: Set your own house in order first, then go out to help your neighbors." (p. 291)

57. Shen, Vincent. 2003. "Some Thoughts on Intercultural Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy." Journal of Chinese Philosophy no. 30:357-372.

"But what is an intercultural philosophy? This should not be limited to only doing comparative philosophy, as is in the cases of comparative religion, comparative linguistics, etc., which are often limited to the studies of resemblance and difference between different religions or languages. Although doing comparative philosophy in this manner could lead to a kind of relativism in philosophy, it could not really help the self/mutual understanding and practice of philosophy itself.

For me, the real target of doing intercultural philosophy is therefore to put into contrast between, rather than sheer comparison of, different philosophical traditions. I understand “contrast” as the rhythmic and dialectical interplay between difference and complementarity, continuity and discontinuity, which leads eventually to the real mutual enrichment of different traditions in philosophy.(3)" (p. 358)

(3) I have worked out a philosophy of contrast in my works, especially in my Essays in Contemporary Philosophy, (Taipei: Li-ming Publishing Company, 1985) and Contrast, Strangification and Dialogue (Taipei:Wunan, 2002).

58. Shi'er, Ju. 2010. "The Cultural Relativity of Logic: From the Viewpoint of Ethnography and Historiography." Social Sciences in China no. 31:73-89.

Abstract: "The concept of general argumentation has expanded the family of logic so that it incorporates the logic of other cultures besides modern culture. Based on reports of fieldwork among the Azande and the fruits of research on ancient Chinese logic and the logic of Buddhism, this paper attempts to provide a factual foundation for the proposition “the cultural relativity of logic” from a descriptive perspective. Adopting deductive argument as a meta-method, this paper argues for the existence of the cultural relativity of logic in modern culture and of the translated version of the logic of other cultures in modern culture. With the aid of ethnography and the historical research findings, we show that the logic of other cultures also has its own cultural relativity. We also seek to show through the concepts of language games and life forms that deductive argumentation as a meta-method likewise possesses cultural relativity."

59. Siderits, Mark. 2017. "Comparison or Confluence In Philosophy?" In The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy, edited by Ganeri, Jonardon, 75-92. New York: Oxford University Press.

"Later chapters in this volume will focus on particular figures or texts important to the history of Indian philosophy, and explore their approach to a given philosophical issue. They thus convey important information about the Indian philosophical tradition. The present essay concerns one of the uses to which that information might be put. The question to be addressed here might be put in the following way. It is currently standard practice to include a component on the history of philosophy in the undergraduate philosophy curriculum. But what is included there is almost always exclusively Western. Suppose the history of the Indian philosophical tradition were studied at a degree of depth comparable to that given the Western tradition in the typical undergraduate curriculum. What would be the point? How might this be thought to contribute to the practice of philosophy?

We think we know how to answer the comparable question when we are asked to defend the study of earlier periods of the Western tradition. The student working on the ontological status of abstract objects might, we think, benefit from knowing about the views of Plato, Aristotle, and Ockham on universals; work in meta-ethics would seem to require some knowledge of the varieties of ethical theories that have been proposed and worked out in the past; and so on. This explains why we are not shocked when Spinoza’s name is casually dropped into a discussion of the grounding problem—a problem that only began to be discussed a few decades ago. When we see the practice of philosophy as chiefly concerned with trying to solve unresolved philosophical problems, we can see why it might prove useful to know the genealogy of the problem and how related issues were addressed in the past." (p. 75)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Bibliography of Intercultural and Comparative Philosophy: Sil-Z

Bibliography

1. Silius, Vytis. 2020. "Diversifying Academic Philosophy: The Post-Comparative Turn and Transculturalism." Asian Studies no. 8:257-280.

Abstract: "The article asks why, in Western universities, the success of the academic field of comparative philosophy has so far failed to significantly diversify the curricula of academic philosophy. It suggests that comparative philosophy has mainly relied on the same approaches that have made academic philosophy Eurocentric, namely, on the history of philosophy as the main mode of teaching and researching philosophy. Further, post-comparative philosophy and transcultural studies are presented as providing tools to address the foundations of the institutional parochialism of academic philosophy, while preserving one of the most fundamental tenets of philosophy—the quest for universal knowledge that transcends cultural particularities."

2. Sjödin, Anna-Pya. 2011. "Conceptualizing Philosophical Tradition: A Reading of Wilhelm Halbfass, Daya Krishna, and Jitendranath Mohanty." Philosophy East and West no. 61:534-546.

Abstract: "This article takes as its point of departure the question of how Wilhelm Halbfass, Daya Krishna, and Jitendranath Mohanty have conceptualized tradition in relation to "Indian" philosophy. They have all reacted to, and criticized, homogeneous and static conceptions of Indian philosophies, and by articulating different ways of apprehending tradition they have tried to come to terms with such limiting images. My reading of their texts has been informed by a questioning of how they, in turn, conceptualize tradition. Most of all this is related to the tendency, on the one hand, to stress that tradition is open-ended and dynamic but at the same time to speak of tradition as one singular and universalizable phenomenon, sometimes even as a reified phenomenon ("it"). This discussion is connected to a concern of mine regarding how to conceptualize a plurality and heterogeneity while avoiding a reifying, generalizing language. Toward the end I present a reading of the Nyayasutra and how the concept of siddhanta could be understood in the light of three of its commentaries. This reading is here framed as the practical and philosophical outcome of the reflections made in the analysis of Halbfass, Krishna, and Mohanty."

3. Skof, Lenart. 2008. "Thinking between Cultures. Pragmatism, Rorty and intercultural philosophy." Ideas y Valores no. 138:41-71.

Abstract: "The paper discusses Rorty’s critique and special relation to intercultural thinking.

It looks into the history of both pragmatism and intercultural philosophy, discusses some of their possible points of convergence, and finally follows the implications of this encounter for our intercultural understanding of Rorty’s version of pragmatism, especially in the context of a contemporary North-South intercultural dialogue."

4. Smart, Ninian. 2008. World Philosophies. New York: Routledge.

Revised second edition edited by Oliver Leaman (First edition 1999).

5. Smid, Robert W. 2009. Methodologies of Comparative Philosophy: the Pragmatist and Process Traditions. Albany: State University of New York Press.

"This text examines one small but important source of such contributions: namely, comparative philosophers. While cross-cultural influence is hardly unprecedented in the study of philosophy, twentieth-century philosophers experienced this influence on a scale far beyond that of any previous century: more cultures converged in a greater variety of venues and to a greater extent than had ever done so before. The rise of comparative philosophy in the twentieth century represents the attempt of many of these philosophers to understand these cross-cultural influences and consider their philosophical implications. Perhaps as a validation of their efforts, comparative philosophy has grown in both interest and infl uence and now represents a vibrant subfield in the discipline of philosophy." (p. 2)

6. ———. 2022. "On the Taming of Comparison: Methodological Myopathy, Plurality, and Creativity." In Comparative Philosophy and Method: Contemporary Practices and Future Possibilities, edited by Burik, Steven, Smid, Robert W. and Weber, Ralph, 181-202. New York: Bloomsbury.

"My argument proceeds in three steps. In the first section, I offer a definition of comparison that underscores the role of difference in the comparative encounter and links the negotiation of that encounter with interest.

(...)

Yet both concepts have roots that go much deeper than that, reaching as far back as the initial encounter with difference, and the interests that inform that encounter can continue to affect the comparative process in often unacknowledged ways. In the second section, then, I identify two seams in the comparative process that provide an indication of some of these interests: namely, the question of what makes a comparison "interesting" and the close relation between philosophical commitments and comparative method.

(...)

In the third section, then, I offer three recommendations for becoming more critically aware of the interests driving method, each of which seeks to provide critical distance between comparativists and their methodological choices. The end result is an embrace of a provisional methodological pluralism, which represents not an underlying philosophical commitment but rather a methodological stance. Embracing methodological pluralism in this way, I argue, amounts to the reintroduction of invention at the level of methodology. In the conclusion, I offer some observations regarding the role of creativity in comparison and its relation to the methodological interests highlighted in this chapter." (pp. 183-184)

7. Smith, Huston. 1980. "Western and Comparative Perspectives on Truth." Philosophy East and West no. 30:425-437.

Abstract: "My article consists of four parts. Beginning with the comparative side of our symposium theme, I divide this into a temporal, historical comparison (Part I) and a geographical, spatial comparison(Part II). In Part III, I turn expressly to our Western handling of the truth issue, reserving Part IV for pulling these various strands together."

8. Soldatenko, Gabriel. 2022. "Reflections for Comparative Method from a Latin American Philosophical Perspective." In Comparative Philosophy and Method: Contemporary Practices and Future Possibilities, edited by Burik, Steven, Smid, Robert W. and Weber, Ralph, 119-138. New York: Bloomsbury.

"This brief introduction through Nietzsche gives us a general frame through which to take up and look more closely at the conceptual points where comparative and Latin American philosophy intersect; more specifically, through the concept of culture and crosscultural method; secondly, by way of the related and corollary goal of pushing back against Western philosophic universality and creating philosophy anew; and thirdly, through the metaphilosophical question of the overarching goal and purpose of philosophy. To that end, this chapter is divided into three sections: the first two offering close readings of essays that were foundational to Latin American philosophy and how they relate and contribute to thinking about comparative thought; and the third offering a brief review of useful signposts that Latin American philosophy offers for further reflection on comparative method." (p. 122)

9. Solomon, Robert C., and Higgins, Kathleen M., eds. 1995. World Philosophy: A Text with Readings. New York: McGraw Hill.

Contents in Brief: Timeline XV; Syllabus for a world civilzation course XIX; Preface XXV; Introduction XXXI; 1. Graham Parkes: Japanese Philosophy 1; 2. Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall: Chinese Philosophy 30; 3. Steven H. Phillips: South Asian Philosophy 65; 4. Eric L. Ormsby: Arabic Philosophy 120; 5. Janet McCracken and Homayoon Sepasi-Tehrani: Persian Philosophy 145; 6. J. Baird Callicott and Thomas W. Overholt: American Indian Philosophy 188; 7. Jorge Valadez: Latin American Philosophy 219; 8. Jacqueline Trimier: African Philosophy 247; 9. Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins: Western Philosophy 292; A Note on the Contributors 342; Index 344-350.

10. ———, eds. 2003. From Africa to Zen: An Invitation to World Philosophy. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Second expanded edition (First edition 1993).

Contents: Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins: Introduction; David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames: Understanding Order: The Chinese Perspective; 2 Graham Parkes: Ways of Japanese Thinking; 3 J. Baird Callicott and Thomas W. Overholt: Traditional American Indian Attitudes toward Nature; 4 Jorge Valadez: Pre-Columbian and Modern Philosophical Perspectives in Latin America; 5 Eric Ormsby: Arabic Philosophy; 6 Oliver N. Leaman: Jewish Philosophy; 7 Homayoon Sepasi and Janet McCracken: Persian Philosophy; 8 Jacqueline Trimier: The Myth of Authenticity: Personhood, Traditional Culture, and African Philosophy; 9 Stephen H. Phillips: Indian Philosophies; 10 Peter D. Hershock: Buddhist Philosophy as a Buddhist Practice; 11 Roy W Perrett: Ngå Whakaaro Måori: Måori Philosophy; 12 Robert A. McDermott: Esoteric Philosophy; About the Contributors.

11. Soni, Jayandra. 1998. "Intercultural Relevance of Some Moments in the History of Indian Philosophy." Topoi no. 17:49-55.

"The history of Indian philosophy since ancient times has been characterized by its dialogic attitude. Discussion and debate, whether they were in a written form or actually conducted in public, were the hallmarks of any school of thought, because other views were first taken into account before presenting its own so-called established position. The history of the emergence of each of the different schools was generally based on a fundamental work which set forth its basic categories. Most of these basic works were compiled in a very cryptic and curt style, sometime in the four hundred years just before and after our common era. Commentators elaborated the basic philosophy from within their own tradition in order to make the basic views understandable to the uninitiated, whilst at the same time defending the tradition against attacks from opponents. This paper attempts to recall certain moments in the early development of Indian philosophy which directly or indirectly reflect an attitude to philosophizing relevant in an intercultural context. Two such interrelated moments will be mentioned here: 1. the significance of debate and the emergence of rules of debate which ultimately led to a discussion of logical issues when discussing an argument; 2. the significance of epistemology for the view of the world, the objects to be known, and the subject who knows. By way of an introduction and orientation to some of the issues in Indian philosophy a few presuppositions will be considered in order to show that the differences among the various schools are more important than certain generalities which in some cases may be drawn." (p. 49)

12. Sprung, Mervyn, ed. 1978. The Question of Being: East-West Perspectives. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Each chapter in this book (except the first) originated at a symposium arranged by the philosophy department of Brock University, St. Catherines, Ontario.

Contents: Mervyn Sprung: The Question of Being as comparative philosophy 1; Some Western Perspectives: Joseph Owens: Being in early Western tradition 17; Charles H. Kahn: Linguistic relativism and the Greek project of ontology 31; Hans Georg Gadamer: Plato and Heidegger 45; Zygmunt Adamczewski: Questions in Heidegger's thought about Being 55; Robert C. Schaff: Heidegger's path of thinking and the Way of Meditation in the early Upanisads 67; Some eastern perspectives: Wilhelm Halbfass: On Being and What There Is: Indian perspectives on the Question of Being 95; J. G. Arapura: Some special characteristics of Sat (Being) in Advaita Vedanta 111; Mervyn Sprung: Being and the Middle Way 127; Jindra Nath Mohanty: Some aspects of Indian thinking on Being 141; Index 159-161.

13. Steineck, Raji C., and Wber, Ralph, eds. 2018. Concepts of Philosophy in Asia and the Islamic World: Vol. 1: China and Japan. Leiden: Brill.

Contents: Robert H. Gassmann, Elena Louisa Lange, Angelika Malinar, Ulrich Rudolph, Raji C. Steineck, Ralph Weber: Preface IX; Notes on Contributors XI;

Robert H. Gassmann, Elena Louisa Lange, Angelika Malinar, Ulrich Rudolph, Raji C. Steineck, Ralph Weber: Introduction: The Concept of Philosophy in Asia and the Islamic World 1

Part 1: China

Ralph Weber and Robert H. Gassmann: Introduction: ‘What is Chinese Philosophy?’ 53

Section 1

Conceptual Histories of Philosophy/zhexue in China

Ori Sela: A Preliminary Overview of the Genealogy of zhexue in China, 1888-1930 69; Yvonne Schulz Zinda: On the Early Marxist Concept of Philosophy (1930s–1950s) 90; Lee Ming-huei: Reviewing the Crisis of the Study of Chinese Philosophy – Starting from the ‘Legitimacy of Chinese Philosophy’ Debates 128;

Section 2

Researching Philosophy in China before zhexue

Wolfgang Behr: ‘Self-Refutation’ (bèi) in Early Chinese Argumentative Prose: Sidelights on the Linguistic Prehistory of Incipient Philosophy 141; Robert H. Gassmann: Philosophy? (Re)appreciating Squire Mèng and the Mèngzǐ 188; Lisa Raphals: The Zhuangzi on ming: Perspectives and Implications 225; Nicolas Zufferey: Philosophy in the Clothes of History: The Case of the Book of the Later Han (Hou Hanshu) 255; Iso Kern: The ‘Wirkungsgeschichte’ of Wang Yangming’s ‘Teaching in Four Propositions’ up to Liu Zongzhou and Huang Zongxi 273;

Section 3

Researching Philosophy/zhexue in China

Viatcheslav Vetrov: Moving the Target to Catch an Arrow: Qian Zhongshu’s View of Analogies and Metaphors in Philosophical Reasoning 324; Rafael Suter: ‘New Confucianism’ and the Sinicization of Metaphysics and Transcendentalism: Conceptualizations of Philosophy in the Early Works of Xiong Shili and Mou Zongsan 348; Thomas Fröhlich: ‘Philosophy’ Reconsidered: The Theological Accentuation in Tang Junyi’s Modern Confucianism 394; Ralph Weber: Philosophy? – On Tu Weiming’s ‘The Continuity of Being’ (1984) 428;

Part 2: Japan

Raji C. Steineck and Elena Louisa Lange: Introduction: ‘What is Japanese Philosophy’? 459:

Gregor Paul: Kūkaiʼs Philosophy of Language: Reflections on the Usage of the Word ‘Philosophy’ 482; Paulus Kaufmann: Form and Content in Kūkai’s Shōjijissōgi 507; Ralf Müller: Philosophy and the Practice of Reflexivity. On Dōgen’s Discourse about Buddha-Nature 545; Raji C. Steineck: A Zen Philosopher? – Notes on the Philosophical Reading of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō 577; Paulus Kaufmann: Ogyū Sorai and the End of Philosophy 607; Fabian Schäfer: Towards a Critical Public Sphere: Tosaka Jun on Philosophical Journalism and Journalistic Philosophy 630; Yoko Arisaka: What is Philosophy? The Use and Abuse of Universalism in Modern Japanese Philosophy 659; Christian Uhl: What is Philosophy? On Globalizing Capitalism, the Modern Order of Knowledge, and the Spread of Philosophy to Japan 684;

Index 713-742.

14. Stenger, Georg. 1998. "Structures of World-Oriented Encounter: The World Concept and the Intercultural Basic Situation." Topoi no. 17:37-47.

"Interculturally motivated thinking is increasingly becoming the crucial test of the general endeavours of thought and their being comprehended as categories.

Amongst other aspects, this is revealed in the fact that almost all spectres of philosophy deal with the topic of interculturality."

(...)

"All these aspects contribute to a situation which is philosophically and politically precarious, yet also challenging and exciting.

A possible attempt to, first of all, become conscious of this new overall situation, which I want to call “intercultural basic situation” (interkulturelle Grundsituation), could be to set the theme of world-concept (Weltbegriff) which has always appeared in philosophical tradition, but now, due to the intercultural discussion, moves towards the centre of attention in a different way. The basic concept of “world” is probably that with the largest dimension, i.e. it is able to embrace universal structures as well as regional or individual ones, even the microstructures of environmental and physiologica lorganical conditions. Of course I do not want to give a description of the history of the world-concept. Instead, the topic is to be examined in terms of its relevance for intercultural thinking. I want to present some thoughts about what is really meant by “world’, how we can meet a world, and especially how its notion is to be seen in very different ways and circumstances. It is undergoing a change and transformation so that we can not start form a world-concept, but rather have to talk about a “World-liness” (Welthaftigkeit) or, even more accurate, a “world-phenomenon”. I want to suggest some steps, demonstrating the “structures of world-oriented encounter”. (pp. 37-38)

15. Stepaniants, Marietta Tigranovna. 2002. Introduction to Eastern Thought. Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press.

Edited by James Behuniak. Translated from the Russian by Rommela Kohanovskaya.

Contents: Foreword by Eliot Deutsch XI; Preface XIII;

Part 1. Interpretive essays.

1. The birth of philosophy 3; 2. The Universe: its origin and structure 11; 3. Human nature 35; 4. In search of the truth 63; 5. Tradition and modernity 87;

Part 2. Primary sources.

6. Indian tradition 107; 7. Chinese tradition 158; 8. Islamic tradition 233; Index 285; About the Author 293.

16. Struhl, Karsten J. 2010. "No (More) Philosophy Without Cross-Cultural Philosophy." Philosophy Compass no. 5:287-295.

Abstract: "Philosophy is a radical inquiry whose task is to interrogate the fundamental assumptions of some given activity, discipline, or set of beliefs. In doing so, philosophical inquiry must attempt to delineate a problem and to develop a method for resolving that problem. However, to be true to its intention, philosophy must be able to examine not only the object of its inquiry but also its own method of interrogation. To accomplish this task, philosophical inquiry must be able to create a distance not only from the assumptions under investigation but also from its own assumptions, which is to say, that it must be able to raise questions about its own method. This self-reflexivity requires that any given philosophical investigation must be examined from an alternative vantage point. Since the assumptions which inform the inquiry are deeply imbedded within a given culture, immanent critique is insufficient. The only way to step outside the boundaries of these cultural presuppositions is to reflect on the given problem from the vantage point of another culture’s philosophical tradition. Thus, I argue that philosophical inquiry is unable to go beyond certain limits without being cross-cultural philosophy. I illustrate the way in which cross-cultural philosophy does this with respect to the problem of the self by placing the Western philosophical approach to this problem in dialogue with the Indian Hindu-Buddhist narrative."

17. Sweet, William, ed. 2014. What is Intercultural Philosophy? Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy.

Contents: William Sweet: Introduction: The Project of Intercultural Philosophy 1; Chapter I. Jānis (John) T. Ozoliņš: What in the World is Intercultural Philosophy? A Reflection 19; Chapter II. Wolfgang Kaltenbacher: Beyond the Cultural Turn: Intercultural Philosophy in its Historical Context 39; Chapter III. Edwin George: Interculturality: Some Philosophical Musings 51; Chapter IV. Hsueh-i Chen: What is Intercultural Philosophy? 67; Chapter V. Flavia Monceri: Taking Diversity Seriously: On the Notion of Intercultural Philosophy 81; Chapter VI. Joseph C.A. Agbakoba: Intercultural Philosophy and the Question of African Identity: An ‘Afrocontructivist’ Perspective 95; Chapter VII. Dorothy Nwanyinma Ucheaga Olu-Jacob: Interculturality in the Context of Africa’s Colonial and Decolonization Experience 107; Chapter VIII. Helen Lauer: Global Economic Justice Defined Inter-Culturally: Alternatives that Emerge from the Neo-Colonial Cusp 121; Chapter IX. Gereon Kopf: Towards a Conception of Philosophy as Expression: Approaching Intercultural Philosophy from a Zen Buddhist paradigm 131; Chapter X. Yao Jiehou: Four Dimensions of Intercultural Philosophy 151; Chapter XI. Viktoria Lysenko: Comparative Philosophy or Intercultural Philosophy? The Case of the Russian Buddhologist Theodor Stcherbatsky 165; William Sweet: Afterword. The Prospect of Intercultural Philosophy 181; Contributors 195; Index 197-200.

18. ———. 2014. "Introduction: The Project of Intercultural Philosophy." In What is Intercultural Philosophy?, edited by Sweet, William, 1-18. Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy.

"One response to the contact of different cultures and traditions during the past century has been the proposal of a comparative or of an intercultural philosophy. Such a response is not without precedent; we see similar responses, for example, in literary, religious, and political studies. In intercultural philosophy, however, we find an attempt to have philosophers from different cultures or traditions actively engage one another – and to do so in a way that shows not only mutual respect, but also the recognition that one’s own philosophical views are not complete, that there are other, legitimate philosophical views, and that one’s own views may need a rearticulation or even revision." (p. 1)

19. Tanaka, Koji. 2016. "Ways of Doing Cross-Cultural Philosophy." In Learning from the Other - Australian and Chinese Perspectives on Philosophy, , edited by Makeham, John, 59-67. Canberra: Australian Academy of the Humanities.

"That said, some scholars have claimed that there is, strictly speaking, no tradition of studying logic in the East, or if there is, that it fails to match the sophistication achieved in the West.(5) That is, it is claimed that even though philosophers of the Eastern traditions have taken debates and argumentation as important to topics of philosophical inquiry, they have nevertheless failed to reflect on and examine the principles that underly argumentation and rational reasoning. According to these scholars, argumentation has been put to use in elaborating on the nature of language, knowledge, reality and ethics; yet, there are no investigations of the principles underlying these modes of argument apart from the particular arguments that employ them. It is claimed that Eastern philosophers have not abstracted principles of reasoning and argumentation from particular instances and they have not formalised those principles in order to examine the features and properties of the principles.

This is often unified in the idea that there is no development of formal logic in the East. As we will see, this has been taken to imply that there is no tradition of logic in the East.

In this paper, I will first show that there is, indeed, no development of formal logic in the East. However, I will argue that the lack of the development of formal logic does not entail the lack of the development of logic tout court . I will use this point to show how to undertake a cross-cultural dialogue between Eastern and Western logicians.

My examination of the possibility of cross-cultural dialogue about logic will serve as a case study of showing how to do cross-cultural philosophy and how to use non-Western materials as part of contemporary philosophy." (p. 60)

(5) See Jay L. Gar!eld, Engaging Buddhism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Chad Hansen, “Logic in China”, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1998); and Mark Siderits, “Deductive, Inductive, Both or Neither?”, Journal of Indian Philosophy 31 (2003), 303–21.

20. Tang, YIjie. 1983. "A Perspective on the Meaning of Comparative Philosophy and Comparative Religion Studies: The Case of the Introduction of Indian Buddhism into China." Chinese Studies in Philosophy no. 15:39-106.

Abstract: "In this essay I do not intend to analyze or study the entire history of the introduction of Indian Buddhism into China; rather, I wish simply to investigate a bit the relationships which existed between Buddhism, after it was introduced into China in the period of the Wei, the Jin, and the North and South dynasties, and the prior existing ideologies and cultures in China at the time, and use that to illustrate the meaning of studying comparative philosophy and comparative religions."

21. Tanner, Jeremy. 2009. "Ancient Greece, Early China: Sino-Hellenic Studies and Comparative Approaches to the Classical World: A Review Article." The Journal of Hellenic Studies no. 129:89-109.

"This review article offers an introduction to some of the major contributions and debates within Sino-Hellenic studies. It has two purposes. First, to demonstrate the intrinsic intellectual interest of Sino-Hellenic studies, and in particular to show how such studies enrich and deepen our understanding of the Classical world.

Second, to offer a critical overview of the highly varying styles of comparison which characterize the different sub-fields within Sino-Hellenic studies, and thus offer a model of some of the range of ways in which fruitful comparative Classical studies might be conducted. Correspondingly, my review is organized by fields: science and medicine; philosophy; comparative literature." (p. 90)

22. Tartaglia, James. 2014. "Rorty’s Thesis of the Cultural Specificity of Philosophy." Philosophy East and West no. 64:1018–1038.

"Given the central importance he placed on dialogue between independent discourses, then, it does seem frankly amazing that in his few explicit statements on dialogue with non-Western philosophy (Rorty 1989, Rorty 1991, Balslev 1991), Rorty’s attitude was almost entirely dismissive.

(...)

What brought Rorty around to this apparently anomalous view? The underlying reason, I shall be arguing, is that non-Western philosophy presents the most glaring counterexample possible to a thesis that is central to Rorty’s critique of philosophy, and hence to his thought as a whole, namely his thesis of the cultural specificity of philosophy. To defend this thesis required him to reject any extension of the philosophical “conversation” beyond the Western world, despite the fact that this rejection was at odds with many other aspects of his thinking. The cultural specificity thesis is false, however, which is one of the main overall problems with Rorty’s case for pragmatism.4 This essay will continue as follows. In the next two sections I consider and reject Rorty’s various reasons for disparaging dialogue with non-Western philosophy. Then, in section IV, I sketch an alternative to the cultural specificity thesis, according to which it is no more surprising that different cultures have independently developed philosophy than that they have independently developed mathematics or astronomy." (p. 102)

References

Balslev, Anindita Niyogi. 1991. Cultural Otherness: Correspondence with Richard Rorty . Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press.

Rorty, Richard. 1989. Review of Interpreting Across Boundaries: New Essays in Comparative Philosophy , edited by Gerald James Larson and Eliot Deutsch. Philosophy East and West 39 : 332–337.

———. 1991. “Heidegger, Kundera, and Dickens.” In his Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers , vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

23. Taylor, Charles 1995. "Comparison, History, Truth." In Philosophical Arguments , 146-164. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

"What seems to be emerging here is a hazy picture of history in which our understanding will be embedded. It rejects altogether the Hegelian single line of development, but it retains something like the notion of potentiality.

This structures at least local history into a before and after, and allows us to speak of advance. But because potentialities are diverse and frequently, at least by our present lights and capacities, incompatible, the gains will also involve losses, and the goods of different cultures will clash.

But this shouldn't frighten us into a relativization of goods, or into a disclaimer of the universal relevance of our own goods, about which we could never be sincere anyway.

It does point us to a future of humanity in which the kind of undistorted understanding of the other aimed at by "the comparativist enterprise'' will be increasingly valuable. Not only to avoid political and military conflict where possible, but also to give people of every culture some sense of the immense gamut of human potentialities. This will serve not only to enlighten our judgments where goods clash, but will help where imagination and insight are capable of mediating the clash, and bring two hitherto warring goods to some degree of common realization. We can hope to advance in this direction, to the extent that the community of comparativists will increasingly include representatives of different cultures, will in effect start from different home languages." (pp. 163-164)

24. Tuck, Andrew P. 1990. Comparative Philosophy and the Philosophy of Scholarship: On the Western Interpretation of Nāgārjuna . New York: Oxford University Press.

"Rather than contributing one more theoretical discussion of hermeneutics, or offering one more attempt at textual exegesis, this study examines the degree to which specific interpretations of a specific text have/been determined by factors often apparent only from the standpoint of another interpretive era or perspective. Furthermore, this study demonstrates the often stated principle that, rather than an ahistorical search for a preferred method or philosophy of interpretation, the enterprise of interpretation is inherently historical. Every reading of a text including, of course, the most carefully contextualized and historicised readings - will, in some ways, be unavoidably determined by some set of prejudgments. The choice is, therefore, not between good readings, undetermined by irrelevant considerations, and bad readings, rendered inaccurate by interpretive prejudice. The choice between one reading and an even better reading is a difference in degree and not in kind.

Within any set of rules for what counts as a desirable interpretation, choices between more and less preferable readings of texts can and will be made. And a study such as this suggests that our conventionally agreed - on rules of interpretation - the rules that tell us what is relevant, and what sorts of judgments are harmfully prejudiced - are anything but constant. Our preferences in regard to what constitutes a good interpretation are just as determined as our readings themselves." (Preface, pp. VI-VII)

25. Udoidem, Iniobong S. 1987. "Wiredu on How Not to Compare African Thought with Western Thought: A Commentary." African Studies Review no. 30:101-104.

"Kwasi Wiredu, a prominent African philosopher from Ghana, recently published an essay entitled "How Not To Compare African Thought to Western Thought" (1984) in which he criticized the prevalent method of comparing what is regarded as African philosophy with Western philosophy. Wiredu begins the essay with the assertion that all cultures are characterized by two levels of thought, namely, the traditional non-scientific and the theoretical or scientific thought (p. 149-50). He also notes, although without examples, that some contemporary philosophers both in Africa and the West are in the habit of comparing the traditional non-scientific thought of the African people with the highly theoretical and scientific thought of the Western world. He sees this type of comparison as improper and argues that since there is traditional folk thought in Africa as well as in the West, if there is to be any comparison at all, it must be with folk thought to folk thought and scientific thought to scientific thought (p. 157).

Wiredu's essay is an excellent academic treatise in its own right, but as an Africanwho is attempting to reflect philosophically and possibly attempting to provide leadership for the thrust of African philosophical search, there are some pitfalls in the essay which need to be pointed out. The purpose of this commentary is to highlight and hopefully clarify some of the misleading innuendoes in contemporary literature about African philosophy and the role of an African philosopher within the world of philosophy." (p. 101, anote omitted)

26. van Binsbergen, Wim. 1999. "'Cultures does not exist': Exploding self-evidences in the investigation of interculturality." Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy no. 13:37-114.

"The structure of my argument is as follows. To begin with, I shall indicate how the concept of ‘culture’ has taken root as a key concept in our contemporary social experience and in philosophy. Precisely because it has done so, it is of the greatest importance to subject to empirical and philosophical scrutiny such self-evidences as attach to ‘culture’.

(...)

As a next step, I shall explore the conditions under which my claim that ‘cultures do not exist’ may acquire meaningfulness. Since in this connection I put forth the social sciences as an example for philosophy, I am compelled to discuss the place of empirical knowledge within philosophy. I shall stress that intercultural philosophy ought to take into account such knowledge as the empirical sciences have gathered through explicit and well-tried methods; and here I am thinking particularly of the empirical discourse on African ethnicity, and of the neo-diffusionist arguments in favour of extensive cultural connections in space and time informing Africa’s cultural history and its place in the world as a whole. But as a next step I shall argue — by reference to my own complex itinerary through Africanist cultural anthropology — how this particular empirical science, despite its unmistakable relevance for intercultural philosophy, is yet so philosophically naïve, and so disposed towards a North Atlantic epistemological perspective from an epistemological point of view, that cultural anthropology can at best constitute a mere point of departure for our theoretical explorations of interculturality. Finally I posit that intercultural mediation ideally situates itself beyond any specific cultural orientation, which allows me to characterise intercultural philosophy as the search for a transgressive and innovative, metacultural medium for the production of knowledge. It is the quest itself which makes this a commendable undertaking, even though its metacultural goal is unlikely to be ever reached." (p. 38)

27. van Brakel, Jaap. 2006. "De-essentialising Across the Board: No Need to Speak the Same Language." Rechtstheorie & Rechtspraktijk no. 35:263-284.

"Let me repeat and stress that on my view there are no linguistic, cognitive, emotional, etc. universals. I admit that there may be a few cultural universals, but these universals are contingent (not genetically fixed for all times and places) and they are not sufficient to support communicative interaction for any length of time. And it remains the case that a rich or ‘thick’ interpretation and understanding of them is different in different lifeforms. Note, for example, that trading may take place, while both sides may have their own banking system and different reactions in case of undue performance." (p. 284, a note omitted)

28. ———. 2014. "Heidegger on Zhuangzi and Uselessness. Illustrating Preconditions of Comparative Philosophy." Journal of Chinese philosophy no. 41:387-406.

Abstract: "In this article, I look at those passages in the Zhuangzi usually associated with ‘‘uselessness.’’ I discuss in what way these passages may have been suggestive to Martin Heidegger to explain his ideas of the necessity of the other thinking and of the ‘‘waiting people’’ being entirely unusable to others. Then I make some brief comments concerning basic conditions of interpretation, using examples taken from the Zhuangzi passages discussed. These conditions include family resemblance across the board, a principle of agreement, and the issue of ‘‘planetarization’’ (Heidegger’s term)."

29. van Brakel, Jaap, and Ma, Lin. 2015. "Extension of Family Resemblance Concepts as a Necessary Condition of Interpretation across Traditions." Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy no. 14:475-497.

Abstract: "In this paper we extend Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance to translation, interpretation, and comparison across traditions. There is no need for universals. This holds for everyday concepts such as green and qing 青, philosophical concepts such as emotion(s) and qing 情, as well as philosophical categories such as form(s) of life and dao 道. These notions as well as all other concepts from whatever tradition are family resemblance concepts. We introduce the notion of quasi-universal, which connects family resemblance concepts from a limited number of traditions. The possibility and necessity of extending family resemblance concepts across traditions dissolves the false antinomy of universalism versus relativism."

30. ———. 2022. "Necessary Preconditions of the Practice of Comparative Philosophy." In Comparative Philosophy and Method: Contemporary Practices and Future Possibilities , edited by Burik, Steven, Smid, Robert W. and Weber, Ralph, 31-53. New York: Bloomsbury.

"In this contribution, we embrace a rather broad notion of comparative philosophy. We consider that it involves such a wide range of activities as translation, interpretation, exposition of the conceptual schemes of an "alien" philosophical tradition in terms of the conceptual schemes of the interpreter's "own" tradition, as well as comparison of these conceptual schemes in a learnable meta-language constructed by the interpreter. Our use of the word "interpretation" includes translations and any other form of interpretation of human actions, experiences, and utterances/inscriptions (including comparative philosophy). We ask: What are the necessary conditions and/ or unavoidable constraints of interpretation practice, in particular comparative interpretation of philosophical traditions? In clarifying more abstract considerations, we shall draw our examples from comparison of classical Chinese texts and their interpretations in modern languages (including modern Chinese)." (p. 31, notes omitted)

31. van der Wesfhuizen, Jacob. 2005. "One more time: Views on Aristotle's philosophy and Intercultural Philosophy." Phronimon no. 6:71-79.

Abstract: "In my view a philosopher is a person of wisdom who produces a guide to life, providing us with some tools for dealing with practical problems and survival issues on at least five adaptation domains. These are a) metaphysics: man's relationship to the cosmos; b) politics: man's relationship with others; c) ethics: man's relationship with himself and his behaviour toward others; d) epistemology: man's relationship with his mind and his method of thinking,. and e) aesthetics: man's relationship with and appreciation of beauty. This paper is destined to mainly present an unshackled response to the informed and well-versed papers by Anastasios Ladikos titled Revisiting the virtue of courage in Aristotle, . and Murray Hofmeyer: The Promise and Problems of Intercultural Philosophy ; (Phronimon - Journal of the South African Society for Greek Philosophy and the Humanities -Volume 5(2) 2004). My concern with Aristotle's ideas stems from the fact that his propositions are connected to ancient battlefield circumstances and conditions, as well as the Spartan Culture of his time. If juxtaposed with scenes of violence in our time we can draw many parallel behavioral patterns that can pass as valid and reliable characteristics of modern-day soldiers in mortal face-to-face combat or victims of crime in violent confrontation with rapists, murderers and assaulters."

32. van Hensbroek, Pieter Boele 2013. "Beyond Crossing Borders. Beyond Intercultural Philosophy." In Hegel’s Twilight: Liber Amicorum Discipulorumque Pro Heinz Kimmerle , edited by Ramose, Mogobe B., 31-41. Leiden: Brill.

"Heintz Kimmerle is the exemplary philosopher of crossing borders and of cross-border dialogues in

Philosophy.

(...)

What concerns us in this article is the mission of Kimmerle in relation to Philosophy and Intercultural Philosophy. In its broadest meaning this mission concerns reshaping the western tradition in Philosophy by making it move beyond its Eurocentric heritage. Kimmerle argues that the western tradition in philosophy is not equipped to face the new realities of a globalised world in which there is no hegemonic place for western culture. There is a real need for Philosophy to renew itself and to go intercultural. Such a move is not just a matter of adding a new branch of Intercultural Philosophy to mainstream Philosophy, but one of groping for an intercultural idea of Philosophy. In Kimmerle’s words, it involves a “Annäherung du einen interkulturellen philosophie Begriff"

(Kimmerle 1994, 15)." (p. 31)

(...)

"In sum, the idea that philosophy is basically western philosophy is not well substantiated.

This provides space for Intercultural Philosophy as an attempt at elaborating an ’intercultural dimension’ which can lead the discipline of Philosophy into the age of globalization. I will now proceed to a critical discussion of this argument." (p. 37)

33. Van Norden, Brian W. 2017. Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto . New York: Columbia University Press.

Foreword by Jay L. Garfield.

"Jay Garfield and I did not anticipate the storm of controversy that would result when we published “If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is” in The Stone column of the New York Times blog (May 11, 2016). Perhaps we should have: after all, we were calling upon ethnocentric philosophy departments to rename themselves “departments of Anglo-European philosophy” to reflect their intentional disregard of everything outside the mainstream philosophical canon.

However, it immediately became obvious that our challenge to the chauvinism of US philosophy departments had struck a nerve. This book is an effort to develop in detail the case for a multicultural approach to philosophy.

Like the original editorial, this book is polemical and intentionally provocative in the hope that it will incite discussion and raise awareness. This work is also intended to be interesting and accessible to general readers. Since the point is to get nonspecialists excited about the issues so they will want to read more and gain a deeper understanding, my argumentation is less guarded and less detailed than I would produce in a work intended solely for my fellow scholars." (Preface, p. XXIII)

(...)

"To assist those who want to learn more about philosophy outside the Anglo-European canon, I maintain a bibliography, “Readings on the Less Commonly Taught Philosophies,” at http: //bryanvannorden .com. I am grateful to James Maffie and Sean Robin for suggestions of some titles to include related to Native American thought, and to Travis W. Holloway for advice about readings in Continental thought." (Preface, p. XXIV)

34. Wang, Xinli. 2018. "Incommensurability and Comparative Philosophy." Philosophy East and West no. 68:564-582.

"My challenge to the viability of comparative philosophy between two disparate cultural traditions, such as the Western and Chinese philosophical traditions, concerns the two most prevailing forms of comparative philosophy: as cross-cultural philosophic understanding and as cross-cultural philosophic communication, which I will call the Gadamerian model of comparative philosophy (section 4). Based on my presuppositional interpretation of the thesis of incommensurability as cross-language communication breakdown (section 2), effective cross-cultural language communication between Chinese and Western cultural-language communities (section 3) is inevitably partial due to substantially distinct cultural schemes embedded within both cultural traditions. More precisely, there are two special forms of incommensurability faced by comparative philosophers: the failure of mutual understanding (the radical form of incommensurability) and effective communication breakdown (the modest form of incommensurability). Consequently, a comparative philosophy that predicates on mutual understanding and communication between the two cultural-language communities is severely compromised. Cultural relativism based on the incommensurability thesis continues to impede the effort of comparative philosophy (section 5). However, this does not mean that no meaningful semantic comparison is possible between two distinct cultural-philosophic traditions, as some radical relativists claim. A different kind of comparability, namely the presuppositional comparison at the cultural-schemes level, will be discussed as a promising

solution (section 6)." (pp. 564-565)

35. Wawrytko, Sandra A. 2009. "Feminism and/in Asian Philosophies." APA Newsletters no. 9:5.

"Feminism has much to gain from a close reading of Asian philosophies. Stereotypical views of Asian cultures as irretrievably misogynist obscure both the constructive and deconstructive contributions Asian philosophies can make to feminist discourse. I will briefly outline doctrines found in key schools that can support and further feminist aims: 1) Daoism’s radical reassessment of the “feminine” (Yin), 2) Confucianism’s advocacy of the universal potential for self-cultivation, and 3) Mahayana Buddhism’s deconstruction of sexism as one among many forms of discrimination. Since I have already discussed points two and three elsewhere, my main focus here will be Daoism." (p. 5)

36. Weber, Ralph. 2013. "“How to Compare?” – On the Methodological State of Comparative Philosophy." Philosophy Compass no. 8:593-603.

Abstract: "From early on, comparative philosophy has had on offer a high variety of goals, approaches and methodologies. Such high variety is still today a trademark of the discipline, and it is not uncommon of representatives of one camp in comparative philosophy to think of those in other camps as not really being about ‘comparative philosophy’. Much of the disagreement arguably has to do with methodological problems related to the concept of comparison and with the widely prevailing but unwarranted assumption that comparative philosophy should be about comparing ‘culturally different philosophies’.

This paper seeks to problematize this assumption by clarifying conceptually the notions of ‘comparative philosophy’ and of ‘comparison’, by showing the prevalence of the assumption in recent second-order discussions of methodology in comparative philosophy and its restraining implications in a randomly selected contribution of ‘Chinese philosophy’. At the end, a rallying call for a (self-)critical comparative philosophy is issued."

37. ———. 2013. "A Stick Which may be Grabbed on Either Side: Sino-Hellenic Studies in the Mirror of Comparative Philosophy." International Journal of the Classical Tradition no. 20:1-14.

Abstract: "Recently, Jeremy Tanner has published a highly informative review article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies , in which he introduces and advertises “Sino-Hellenic Studies” as a new and upcoming subfield in academic inquiry. Tanner particularly focuses on what he terms “Sino-Hellenic comparative philosophy,” while developing his perspective clearly from within contemporary Classicists’ academic parameters. In this paper, I approach the matter precisely from the other end, i.e. from within contemporary comparative philosophy, distinguishing four different approaches in comparative philosophy, pointing out some pitfalls in comparison and offering a perhaps provocative conclusion by provincializing and politicizing “Sino-Hellenic Studies”. The paper not only seeks to supplement Tanner’s review, but also and more importantly to introduce some fundamental methodological problems to be dealt with in any comparative inquiry."

38. ———. 2014. "Comparative Philosophy and the Tertium : Comparing What with What, and in What Respect?" Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy no. 13:151-171.

Abstract: "Comparison is fundamental to the practice and subject-matter of philosophy, but has received scant attention by philosophers. This is even so in “comparative philosophy,” which literally distinguishes itself from other philosophy by being “comparative.”

In this article, the need for a philosophy of comparison is suggested. What we compare with what, and in what respect it is done, poses a series of intriguing and intricate questions. In Part One, I offer a problematization of the tertium comparationis (the third of comparison) by examining conceptualizations of similarity, family resemblance, and analogy, which it is sometimes argued can do without a tertium comparationis. In Part Two, I argue that a third of comparison is already required to determine what is to be compared, and insofar as that determination precedes the comparison that tertium may be called “pre-comparative.” This leads me to argue against incomparability and to show how anything can indeed be compared to anything.

In Part Three, I relate my arguments to what is today commonly labelled “comparative philosophy.” Finally, I raise some questions of ontology and politics in order to demonstrate the relevance of a philosophy of comparison."

39. ———. 2018. "Reply to Xiao Ouyang." Philosophy East and West no. 68:256-261.

"I read Xiao Ouyang’s comments on “Rethinking Comparative Philosophical Methodology” as a contribution to these important discussions in methodology and particularly regarding the aims of comparative philosophy. That he has chosen my work on comparison and criticism of comparative philosophy as a springboard to articulate these larger issues honors me, and I shall of course take the opportunity to clarify some of my views and respond to some of the criticism from Ouyang’s side.

Nonetheless, I should also like to engage with some of the more encompassing thoughts offered by Ouyang. There is much that he writes that I can agree with, and I am especially thankful for his revisiting the early methodological debates published in the first few volumes of Philosophy East and West . These earlier contributions to comparative philosophy are important not only in terms of what they have to say, but also in terms of raising awareness that there is a history to the discipline. Critical reflections on the history of comparative philosophy, as well as other aspects, are in my view still fundamentally lacking. Further professionalization of the discipline would mean that we start writing local and global histories of the discipline, posing questions pertaining to the sociology of comparative philosophy and investigating the broader intellectual and political contexts that have influenced the formation and development of the discipline. Many key figures featured in the first volumes of Philosophy East and West and writing about methodology spoke out firmly in favor of a plurality of approaches, which is as sound an intellectual position as it is necessary for the flourishing of any discipline." (p. 257)

40. ———. 2021. "Comparative Philosophy and Comparison." In Comparative Methods in Law, Humanities and Social Sciences , edited by Adams, Maurice and Van Hoecke, Mark, 149-174. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

"This chapter discusses comparative philosophy and some of its theoretical insights into comparison. Like every academic discipline, comparative philosophy is a practice that has its own history, sociology, politics, economy, and so forth. This is why understanding the past and present practice is important to contextualize theoretical insights." (p. 149)

(...)

"This diversity in voices and approaches is why this chapter begins with an overview of the discussion around the subject of comparative philosophy.

It starts by introducing some of the dominant views that are currently being advocated in the discipline or sub-discipline. This will help readers new to the subject with starting points from which to read further, as well as orient them in the field. The chapter also deals with the present conceptualization of the logic of comparison and offers distinctions that may be useful in discussing comparing from the point of view of comparative philosophy and traverse other related disciplinary and interdisciplinary areas. Against this backdrop, the chapter concludes with some of the other theoretical issues being discussed in the field of comparative philosophy and comparative studies more generally at the present." (p. 153)

41. Weber, Ralph, and Kahteran, Nevad. 2021. "Towards Post-Comparative Philosophy: Interview with Ralph Weber." Asian Studies no. 9:211-221.

[Question:] "Comparative Philosophy without Borders (written together with Arindam Chakrabarti, currently at Stony Brook University in New York) speaks about four phases of Comparative Philosophy in a Pluralistic World. According to your best insights and knowledge, in which phase are we right now?"

[Answer:] "Now, in our book, Comparative Philosophy without Borders, Arindam Chakrabarti and I wanted to put a spin on the practice of comparative philosophy at the third, current stage, which eventually might lead us to a fourth stage. The spin would take us beyond comparative philosophy to what I prefer to call “post-comparative” philosophy, but others, who work towards similar ends like, for example, Jonardon Ganeri, call by various different names. It would amount to just doing philosophy as one thinks fit for getting to the truth about an issue or set of issues, by appropriating elements from all philosophical views and traditions one knows of but making no claim of “correct exposition”, and instead just addressing hitherto unsolved problems and possibly raising issues that have never been considered before, anywhere. The crucial point is one about epistemic authority. An argument is not persuasive because it is one made, say, from within Indian philosophy, but it is persuasive because it is a good argument." (pp. 214-215)

42. Wen, Haiming. 2010. "A Survey of Roger Ames's Methodology on Comparative Philosophy." Contemporary Chinese Thought no. 41:52-63.

"This article discusses Roger Ames’s methodology of comparative philosophy.

The crux of Ames’s philosophy is to correct Western thought, especially Western misinterpretations of Chinese philosophy. His academic career is based on two themes that surround this central problem. The first is traditional Western philosophy’s misunderstanding of Chinese philosophy, and the other is illustrating and advancing the profundity of Chinese philosophy. The thrust of his method is achieved through three academic fields of research: classical translations of Chinese philosophy, commentaries on Chinese philosophy and thought, and English and Chinese works on comparative philosophy. These three fields of research draw from four theoretical frameworks: neo-Confucian interpretations of Chinese philosophy, Western Sinological training, American pragmatism, and important theoretical questions in contemporary Chinese–Western comparative philosophy. This article discusses his methodology of comparative philosophy from these multiple angles." (p. 53)

43. Wenning, Mario. 2020. "Intercultural Encounter in the Age of Hybridity: A Response to Eric S. Nelson." Philosophy East and West no. 70:225-237.

Book discussion of: Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought . By Eric S. Nelson. London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi,Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.

"In short, the book is more ambitious than its historical theme and modest tone suggest. In broad agreement and sympathy with the hermeneutic vistas and normative pillars of this attempt at a rescuing critique that combines the best of immanent and external critique, this essay will suggest two dimensions to complement Nelson’s narrative: (1) the role of the imagination in the Sino-German philosophical encounter and (2) the need to self-critically question the extent to which the models of intercultural understanding developed a century ago can be relevant given the contemporary situation.2 In particular, the challenge of increasing forms of cultural hybridity for intercultural hermeneutics will be highlighted. The conclusion of this essay will briefly draw on Karl Löwith, who has anticipated the task of rethinking the challenge of the East-West entanglement of cultural traditions in his reflections on Japanese modernity." (P. 227)

(2) From a different perspective, Kai Marchal has formulated a related doubt concerning the applicability of the early twentieth-century reception of Asian traditions in Germany for current debates in East-West philosophy (see in this issue of Philosophy East and West).

44. White, David. 1956. "Translation and Oriental Philosophy: An Introductory Study." Philosophy East and West no. 6:247-255.

"It is the purpose of this introductory study to demonstrate briefly a method for reading Asian texts in translation. This method is not original with the writer; it has been well practiced by A. K. Coomaraswamy, Heinrich Zimmer, D. T. Suzuki, Arthur Waley, and many others. But its application to the problem at hand is perhaps sufficiently unfamiliar to warrant this effort." (p. 248)

(...)

"This completes the effort to show that a little general knowledge makes it possible to read Indian texts in translation with understanding. Of course, an Indian philosopher would find the explication incomplete. The positive content of the term "mokṣa" has not been developed, for example; and such important presuppositions as those provided by Atman (Self) and Brahman ("undifferentiated Absolute" or Godhead) have not been mentioned.

These and many other omissions are due to the limited purpose of the study. If the Western philosopher objects, however, that, though this exercise has demonstrated a method for reading in translation, it has scarcely shown much of philosophic import, it might similarly be pointed out that one does not get much of the detailed essence of Descartes' thought from a first acquaintance with a single short section of the Discourse on Method (in translation). What we have seen here is simply that it is possible to get accurate initial understanding of an Indian text in translation by employing that general knowledge of Indian thought and culture which is available to any Western reader who is interested in taking advantageof it." (p. 255)

45. Wimmer, Franz Martin. 1998. "Introduction." Topoi no. 17:1-13.

"Intercultural philosophy is dealing with the question of whether it is possible and necessary to develop new ways of philosophizing because of the present condition of humankind. We are living in a global world, while we are still thinking in frameworks conditioned by regionally bound cultural traditions. The answer to our question therefore shall be: problems of philosophy can and ought to be made clear by way of interculturally orientated polylogues. What that means and why it is the answer to the question can only be sketched here.

Recently the subject of interculturality has been discussed in growing intensity within several academic disciplines. Thereby it is not primarily concerned with problems of multicultural societies; i.e. not questions concerning the necessary and sufficient conditions to be fulfilled in a society in which the members are rooted in different and sometimes even incompatible traditions. Further, the question is not about a theory of the foundations and the origin of cultures, nor about their mutual relationships. The question is about nothing but philosophy itself." (p. 1)

46. ———. 1998. "Intercultural Philosophy – a New Orientation in Philosophy." In Philosophie et democratie en Europe, 165-182. Sofia: Commission nationale de la Bulgarie pour l'UNESCO.

Summary: "Probably every human culture has developed typical ways of philosophising in the sense that there were given explanations of the world, of what man is, and of the right relationships between human beings.

Some of the cultures of the past have invented systems of writing and documentation, thereby establishing long lasting traditions of thought. Amidst a period of globalisation of many aspects of human life, the problem now arises, whether there will be one single form or method of philosophy in the future. If so: what then will be the role of the different traditions in shaping this future thinking? If not: must we give up the idea that philosophy ever can argue for universally acceptable truths or insights?

This paper deals with some aspects of these questions by discussing the role of (Euro-) centrism in the historiography of philosophy, and by analysing the impact of the different languages of philosophy on thinking itself."

47. ———. 2002. Essays on Intercultural Philosophy. Chennai: Satya Nilayam Publications.

"I am quite sure about the necessity of intercultural dialogues and polylogues in a global society. And I am also sure about the inevitability for a global philosophy with such dialogues. Perhaps, this will happen beside academic philosophy. If they turn out to be fruitful, that would not be the first case in the history of philosophy when something necessary and fruitful was not primarily dealt with by institutionalised discourse.

Wherever such dialogues are initiated, we can ask what probably will be the topics and the possible outcomes of intercultural philosophy in the future. We can only guess from the past and present. It can be expected that encounters of philosophers from different regions will intensify in the future, that there will be discussions of values and norms as well as on logical and epistemological questions, where the different traditions may criticise each other. Of course, there can be a broader understanding of the varieties of human reasoning during the ages, together with increased knowledge about particularities and about possible universality. Hopefully, such encounters and discourses can contribute establishing peace and humanity. That can only be the case, if philosophical discourse is practised in the spirit of mutual interest and esteem, encountering one another on an equal footing in spite of differences." (p. 4)

48. ———. 2007. "Cultural Centrisms and Intercultural Polylogues in Philosophy." International Review of Information Ethics no. 7:1-8.

Abstract: "A "dilemma of culturality" for philosophy, tending to universality, is given with the fact that there is not one and the definitely adequate language or tradition of philosophy. There are many, each of them being cultural, not natural. The question is about the possibility of systematic philosophy with the presupposition that there are different cultural coinages in every philosophical thinking which can be influential on every level of reflection and argumentation. Intercultural philosophy is bound to reflect on this problem. In the following text, I propose to distinguish four different types of centrism being influential in intercultural encounters: expansive, integrative, separative, and tentative centrism. Then some examples are given for certain types of centrism in the fields of history and philosophy. Finally, I shall argue for dialogical or rather: polylogical interactions, in the field of philosophy."

49. ———. 2013. "Intercultural Philosophy - Problems and Perspectives." Cirpit Review no. 4:115-124.

Abstract: "This article aims to describe some basic questions and challenges of the project of an interculturally orientated philosophy. Firstly, the challenges of historiography of philosophy in a global perspective is discussed, which is not restricted to comparisons.

Further there are questions of a theory of culture, particularly with regard to the dilemmatic situation of philosophy between cultural conditionality and intended universality. Concepts of different types of centrism and polylogic interaction are discussed in view of extra-philosophically conditioned inequalities of philosophical discourses on a global scale."

50. ———. 2015. "Symposium: How Are Histories of Non-Western Philosophies Relevant to Intercultural Philosophizing?" Confluence: Online Journal of World Philosophies no. 3:125-161.

Abstract: "The view that philosophy is a uniquely and essentially European endeavor rooted in ancient Greece became dominant in Europe only in the late eighteenth century, eclipsing several centuries during which Europeans had denied this proposition. Advocates of intercultural philosophy aim to integrate Western and non-Western philosophical histories and traditions in hopes of better addressing the crucial questions facing global humankind. A Native American standpoint charges this project with being exploitative, and disrespectful."

F.-M. Wimmer: How Are Histories of Non-Western Philosophies Relevant to Intercultural Philosophizing? 125; R. Bernasconi: The Kantian Canon: Response to Wimmer 133; P. Hountondji: Franz Wimmer’s Statement: A Comment 139; T. Norton-Smith: A Shawnee Reflection on Franz Wimmer’s »How Are Histories of Non-Western Philosophies Relevant to Intercultural Philosophizing?« 145; F.-M. Wimmer: Reply 151-161.

51. Wiredu, J. E. [Kwasi]. 1997. "How Not to Compare African Traditional Thought with Western Thought." Transition: A Journal of the Arts, Culture and Society no. 75/76:320-327.

Reprinted in K. Wiredu, Philosophy and an African Culture , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1980 and in Albert G. Mosley, African Philosophy: Selected Readings , Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall 1995, pp. 159-171.

"Many Westerners have been puzzled by the virtual ubiquity of gods and spirits in traditional African explanations of things. Robin Horton, the Western anthropologist, has suggested that this failure of understanding is partly attributable to the fact that many Western anthropologists "have been unfamiliar with the theoretical thinking of their own culture."(1) I would like to suggest that a much more significant reason is that they have also been unfamiliar with the folk thought of their own culture. Western societies, too, have passed through a stage of addiction to spiritistic explanations of phenomena. What is more, significant residues of this tradition remain a basic part of the mental makeup of a large mass of the less sophisticated sections of Western populations. More importantly still, elements of the spiritistic outlook are, in fact, deeply embedded in the philosophical thought of many contemporary Westerners: philosophers and even scientists. Obviously, it is a matter of first-rate philosophical importance to distinguish between traditional, that is, prescientific, spiritistic thought and modern scientific thought by means of clearly articulated criteria. It is also of anthropological and psychological interest to try to understand how traditional modes of thought function in the total context of life in a traditional society. Since African societies are among the closest approximations in the modern world to societies in the pre-scientific stage of intellectual development, the interest anthropologists have shown in African thought is understandable." (p. 320)

(1) Robin Horton, "African Traditional Thought and Western Science," reprinted in Rationality , edited by Bryan Wilson (Oxford, Basil Blackwell) from Africa , vol. 3 7, nos. I-2 (1967).

52. Wiredu, Kwasi. 1998. "Can Philosophy Be Intercultural? An African Viewpoint." Diogenes no. 46:147-167.

"Actually, the question of whether philosophy can be intercultural must sound highly redundant to contemporary African academic philosophers, most obviously because their philosophical discourse is generally in the language of some foreign culture, either English, French, German, Spanish, or possibly Portuguese.

One direct implication of this is that the philosophies of our own cultures, as expounded in such languages must, in principle, be intelligible to the people who own the languages concerned." (p. 147)

(...)

"What do these considerations show? They show not only that philosophy can be, but also that it has sometimes been and sometimes still is, intercultural. This is obvious but sometimes denied by implication. Thus it is sometimes thought to be sufficient proof of error to comment that somebody is using Western intellectual canons to evaluate some African conception. No, that can never be sufficient. One must go further to show that there is something wrong with the specific canons in question or that they are inapplicable for specific reasons. This law of criticism would apply also to someone criticizing another for using some canons of reflection deriving from African thought in evaluating some doctrine in Western philosophy. The point now is that one can only go beyond such parochialism by a mode of reasoning intelligible to both the African and Western sides, in other words, by what I have called independent considerations." (p. 148)

53. Wong, David B. 2003. "Comparative Philosophy." In Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy , edited by Cua, Antonio S., 51-58. New York: Routledge.

"Doing comparative philosophy compels one to examine one’s deepest assumptions about value, knowledge, the structure of reality, and the proper way to do philosophy itself. The comparison of Chinese and western traditions has yielded fresh and illuminating perspectives on the basic assumptions of each tradition. Comparative philosophy, however, presents special pitfallsas well as special benefits. The desire to draw an interesting and dramatic contrast between traditions often leads to overgeneralization and oversimplification of each tradition, making both appear more different than they are. On the other hand, the desire to make another tradition speak to the problems of one’s own tradition often leads to a blurring of genuine differences." (p. 51)

54. Xiao-ming, Wu. 1998. "Philosophy, Philosophia, and Zhe-xue." Philosophy East and West no. 48:406-452.

"In other words, is it possible to treat philosophy not from philosophy's own point of view, but from another point of view, the point of view of the other? Indeed, one may want to separate oneself from philosophy, in order to describe and decry its law from "the absolute exteriority of another place," a place that might as well bear the name "China." Is China not one of the names synonymous with exteriority and alterity in (Western) philosophical discourse? "But," Derrida says, "exteriority and alterity are concepts which by themselves have never surprised philosophical discourse. Philosophy by itself has always been concerned with them" (M , p. xiii). Thinking that one can treat philosophy from outside philosophy is to ignore the logic of the philosophical logos and to be reappropriated by it. Setting oneself up in direct opposition to philosophy, one plays into the hand of philosophy and loses the game." (p. 407)

References

M = Derrida, Jacques. Margins of Philosophy . Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982

55. Xie, Ming. 2011. Conditions of Comparison: Reflections on Comparative Intercultural Inquiry . New York: Continuum.

"This book explores, and seeks to offer new ways of thinking about, the epistemological conditions of what I would like to call "comparative intercultural inquiry." It is a critical-comparative study of the epistemes, or presuppositional perspectives, of intercultural discourse. By focusing on how conceptual resources of cultures (such as underlying assumptions, implicit categories of thought and belief, and unconscious or semiconscious social imaginaries) may prefigure our perspectives and predetermine our habits of mind, the book argues for the cognitive, conceptual, and epistemological nature of comparative intercultural inquiry, alongside with and apart from its historical, social, political, and ethical dimensions. Cultural exchange or dialogue may sometimes seem to be merely an ideal or even an illusion, but it is real in the impact of encounters between cultures." (p. 1)

56. ———, ed. 2014. The Agon of Interpretations: Towards a Critical Intercultural Hermeneutics . Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments VII; Ming Xie: Introduction: Towards a Critical Intercultural Hermeneutics 3;

Part One: Resources of Phenomenology and Hermeneutics

Ian Angus: 1 The Intercultural Horizon of Contemporary Understanding 23; 2 Jean Grondin:: Do Gadamer and Ricoeur Have the Same Understanding of Hermeneutics? 43; 3 Suzi Adams: The Commonality of the World and the Intercultural Element: Meaning, Culture, and Chora 65; 4 Bernhard Waldenfels: Comparing the Incomparable: Crossing Intercultural Borders 83; 5 R. Radhakrishnan: World, Home, and Hermeneutic Phenomenology 99;

Part Two: Intercultural Complications and Problematics

6 Graham Harman: Objects and Orientalism 123; 7 Zhang Longxi: Understanding, Misunderstanding, and the Critical Function of Hermeneutics in Cross-Cultural Studies 140; 8 Hans-Georg Moeller: Universal Values or Cultural Relativity: A Pointless Question 156; 9 David B. Wong: Reconciling the Tension between Similarity and Difference in Critical Hermeneutics 165;

Part Three: Expanding Horizons: Empathy, Dialogue, Critique, Wisdom

10 Mihai I. Spariosu: Some Observations on the Prospects of Intercultural Hermeneutics in a Global Framework 187; 11 Lawrence K. Schmidt: Intercultural Understanding in Philosophical Hermeneutics 210; 12 Richard Shusterman and Wojciech Małecki: Making Sense of Critical Hermeneutics: Pragmatist Reflections 233; 13 Lorenzo C. Simpson: Critical Interventions: Towards a Hermeneutical Rejoinder 252; 14 Hans-Herbert Kögler: Empathy, Dialogue, Critique: How Should We Understand (Inter)Cultural Violence? 275; Ming Xie: Afterword: Contesting the Real 302; List of Contributors 309; Index 311-326.

57. Xu, Keqian. 2010. "Chinese “Dao” and Western “Truth”: A Comparative and Dynamic Perspective." Asian Social Science no. 6:42-49.

Abstract: In the Pre-Qin time, pursuing “Dao” was the main task in the scholarship of most of the ancient Chinese philosophers, while the Ancient Greek philosophers considered pursuing “Truth” as their ultimate goal. While the “Dao” in ancient Chinese texts and the “Truth” in ancient Greek philosophic literature do share or cross-cover certain connotations, there are subtle and important differences between the two comparable philosophic concepts. These differences have deep and profound impact on the later development of Chinese and Western philosophy and culture respectively. Interestingly, while the modern Chinese philosophy has gradually accepted and established the Western conception of “Truth” on its way towards modernization, the “post-modern” Western philosophy is just undergoing a process of deconstructing its traditional concept of “Truth”, thus, in a certain sense, going closer to the traditional Chinese “Dao”. From a comparative, relative and dynamic perspective, there could possibly be a fusion of horizon between the Chinese “Dao” and the Western “Truth”."

58. Yancy, George, ed. 2007. Philosophy in Multiple Voices . Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Contents: Acknowledgments IX; George Yancy: Introduction: No Philosophical Oracle Voices 1; 1 Nancy Tuana: What Is Feminist Philosophy? 21; 2 Sarah Lucia Hoagland: What Is Lesbian Philosophy? (A Misleading Question) 49; 3 Randall Halle: What Is Queer Philosophy? 81; 4 Lucius T. Outlaw Jr.: What Is Africana Philosophy? 109; 5 Lewis R. Gordon: What Is Afro-Caribbean Philosophy? 145; 6 Jorge J. E. Gracia: What Is Latin American Philosophy? 175; 7 Dale Turner: What Is American Indian Philosophy? Toward a Critical Indigenous Philosophy 197; 8 David Haekwon Kim: What Is Asian American Philosophy? 219; About the Contributors 273-276,

59. Yang, Guorong. 2005. "Knowing, Being, and Wisdom: A Comparative Study." Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 57-72.

"Knowing and being axe often regarded as the respective subject-matters of epistemology and ontology." (p. 57)

(...)

"In this article, drawing on the rich resources from both Chinese and Westem philosophical traditions, I attempt to make a general but concrete examination of the ontological dimension of knowing. I will first investigate the known with its metaphysical implication as the unity of things-in-themselves and things-for-us and their internal order that makes it possible for us to understand them. I then move to the knower to bring to light the significance of human existence in the process of knowing. I argue that, as the subject of knowing, the knower cannot be reduced to abstract reason; instead, the knower possesses various cognitive faculties; it is the union of cognition and evaluation and the union of reason, emotion, and will. Third, I turn to the ontological foundation of objective knowledge. In opposition to Kant and Locke, I argue that the relationship between the known and the knower is both intrinsic and extrinsic, which makes interaction between them possible and provides a concrete ontological tbundation for the objectivity of knowledge. Finally, by disclosing the interaction of knowledge and wisdom, I analyze the fusion of the horizon of epistemology and that of ontology, which will manifest, on a deeper level, the unity of being and knowing." (P. 58)

60. Yang, Xiaomei. 2011. "Do Differences in Grammatical Form between Languages Explain Differences in Ontology between Different Philosophical Traditions?: A Critique of the Mass-Noun Hypothesis." Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy no. 10:149-166.

Abstract: "It is an assumed view in Chinese philosophy that the grammatical differences between English or Indo-European languages and classical Chinese explain some of the differences between the Western and Chinese philosophical discourses. Although some philosophers have expressed doubts about the general link between classical Chinese philosophy and syntactic form of classical Chinese, I discuss a specific hypothesis, i.e., the mass-noun hypothesis, in this essay. The mass-noun hypothesis assumes that a linguistic distinction such as between the singular terms and the predicates is sufficient to justify or necessarily leads to a specific ontological distinction such as the distinction between the particular and the universal. I argue that one cannot read off semantic properties simply from syntactic ones and hence the syntactic differences do not automatically translate into the semantic differences between languages, that the syntactic features of Chinese nouns do not have explanatory significance in explaining why the particular-universal problem does not arise in the classical period of Chinese philosophy, and that the part-whole ontology allegedly informed by the mass-noun-like semantics does not provide a natural or intuitive picture of the language-world relation."

61. Zene, Cosimo. 2015. "World Philosophies in Dialogue: a Shared Wisdom?" Confluence: Online Journal of World Philosophies no. 2:11-32.

Abstract: "Martin Heidegger’s lecture in 1964 ›The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking ‹ signalled a crisis and the acknowledgement of substantial changes within Western philosophy. Reflecting upon the concept of critical dialogue among World Philosophies (WP) can be seen as a corrective of this crisis and a novel advancement. I aim to substantiate this by referring to the work of three authors: i) Jean-Luc Marion’s reflections on Heidegger will give us the chance to overcome a narrow understanding of ›philosophy‹ and the possibility of discovering »new horizons« for the discipline which are revealed as a »donation« towards »wisdom«; ii) Reyes Mate’s considerations on ›Thinking in Spanish ‹ will offer, aided by Walter Benjamin, a concrete example for renegotiating the space and the place for those »excluded from thinking«; and iii) Paul Ricoeur’s meditation On Translation puts forward the ethical element of »linguistic hospitality« and transformation of the self when encountering alterity. While it is impossible to do justice to these authors in a short article, I maintain that their work deserves close attention because it depicts the struggle within Western philosophy on its way towards maturity: still entangled with so many challenges derived from its troubled history, this maturity appears only faintly, on the horizon, precisely, in the form of ›traces‹. On these grounds, I believe that Anglo-European philosophy can no longer postpone opening up to an indispensable dialogue with other systems of thought wherein the presence of WP and the renewed effort of many philosophers committed to this endeavour is recognised."

62. Zhang, Ji. 2012. One and Many: A Comparative Study of Plato’s Philosophy and Daoism Represented by Ge Hong . Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

"Why does this book compare Ge Hong (AD 284–344?) with Plato (428–347 BC)? Reasons of personal intellectual history are involved. When I encountered Platonism in the field of Christian systematic theology, I admired its persistent search for inner coherence of truths and was deeply impressed by its transcendentalism and its unshakable influence on two streams of Western thought, philosophy and theology. Although I resonated with its idealism, over the years it became increasingly clear to me that this intellectual tradition imposed on me a demand that restricts the development of my own thought rooted in Chinese tradition. In contrast, Daoism has provided me with the free space that I was looking for in the formation of my intellectual identity. I first encountered Ge Hong when I attended a seminar at Harvard University in 1998. Since then I have felt that I was coming home to something that had unconsciously shaped my thought yet had not been properly named. Eagerness to come to terms with Daoism and Ge Hong’s religious philosophy in particular has become the inner drive for the current study." (introduction, p. XIII, anote omitted)(1)

63. Zhang, Longxi. 2007. Unexpected Affinities: Reading across Cultures . Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

"Since this book contains the first set of Alexander Lectures to discuss a wide range of texts from the perspective of East-West studies, the opening chapter tries to lay the ground for such broadly comparative work through a critique of cultural incommensurability, that is, the idea that East and West are mutually exclusive and have nothing in common. By showing the inherent difficulty of the incommensurability argument and the ironic commonality of this argument in both East and West, the first chapter makes the case that we need the broad cross-cultural perspective to understand and appreciate different literary and cultural traditions. The remaining three chapters build on that ground to show the validity and significance of cross-cultural understanding through a discussion of specific themes and textual details.

(...)

All these chapters are conceptually linked by images and ideas, and they all demonstrate the thematic patterns of textual encounters, the similarities in conception and expression, and the unexpected affinities between literatures and cultures East and West." (preface, pp. XIII-XIV)

64. ———. 2016. "Comparison and Correspondence: Revisiting an Old Idea for the Present Time." Comparative Literature Studies no. 53:766-785.

Abstract: "Analogical thinking that relates everything to everything else in a complicated system of correspondences was common in ancient Mesopotamia, ancient Greece, early modern Europe, as well as ancient China. Such premodern theories of knowledge about correspondences between the cosmos and the human world are discredited in modern scientific thinking, but by revisiting some of the old ideas, of which the value has not been sufficiently recognized in modern scholarship, we may find them helpful in rethinking the disciplinary compartmentalization of knowledge and the possibilities of dialogues between different disciplines in comparative studies."

65. ———. 2017. "East-West Comparative Studies: A Challenge and an Opportunity." Know: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge no. 1:45-65.

"There is always so much to learn and to know. Today we have a much better condition for East-West comparative studies as the world has become more connected as a “global village” and also as there is much more interest in the non-Western world and its literatures and cultures among Western scholars and students. At the same time, our world today is also suffering from much conflict and regional wars, humanitarian crises, massive numbers of displaced people as exiles and migrants, the rise of religious fundamentalism, the threat of terrorism, and many other disasters stemming from the lack of tolerance and understanding, especially understanding across cultures, histories, and traditions. In a real sense, East-West comparative studies is not just an academic pursuit of knowledge but has particular relevance to our world and the waywelive our lives.

It is my strong belief that when the world pays more attention to the value of cross-cultural understanding beyond the fundamental differences of East and West, we will have a world that is not just better in understanding, but better in every sense." (pp. 61-62)

66. Zhang, Xianglong. 2010. "Comparison Paradox, Comparative Situation and Inter-Paradigmaticity: A Methodological Reflection on Cross-Cultural Philosophical Comparison." Comparative Philosophy no. 1:90-105.

Abstract: "It is commonly believed that philosophical comparison depends on having some common measure or standard between and above the compared parts. The paper is to show that the foregoing common belief is incorrect and therewith to inquire into the possibility of cross-cultural philosophical comparison. First, the "comparison paradox" will be expounded.

It is a theoretical difficulty for the philosophical tendency represented by Plato's theory of Ideas to justify comparative activities. Further, the connection of the comparative paradox with the obstacles met by cross-cultural philosophical comparisons will be demonstrated. It will be shown that to attribute the difficulty of cross-cultural comparisons to incommensurability of traditions is irrelevant and misleading. It is to be argued that the original possibility of comparison depends on the "comparative situation", i.e., the mechanism of meaning-production that functions in a non-universalistic and anonymous way. A philosophical paradigm does facilitate the attendance of such a situation, but it is also possible for the situation to emerge between paradigms in a gamesome way. Accordingly, the genuine comparison at issue will not originate primarily and merely on the level of concepts and propositions, but can only be achieved through inter-paradigmatic conditions, where we have the sharp awareness of a paradigm"s boundary from which we can attempt to achieve situational communication with another paradigm. In light of this, the perspective of a philosophical comparison differs not only from the traditional or universalistic one, but also from Gadamer"s hermeneutics, such as the doctrine of "fusion of horizons". The new perspective finds an illustration in Heidegger"s relations with Daoism."

67. Zhu, Rui. 2018. "Comparative Philosophy: In Response to Rorty and MacIntyre." Philosophy East and West no. 68:264-266.

"In my view, comparative philosophy, done either through the comparison of life experiences or through the comparison of comparisons, in order to be genuinely philosophical, must cultivate irony, especially an insider’s irony. The point of comparison lies neither in the search for mutual understanding or a common ground, which may or may not be found, nor in the final adjudication of winners and losers, which, though happening all the time, shall never constitute a proper philosophical concern. Instead, comparative philosophy, conducted with a uniquely alert intercultural consciousness, not aimed at striking a dialogue or taking still shots of various comparable historical answers to satisfy curiosity, may represent an object-centered self-reflection.

(...)

In other words, comparative philosophy, as philosophy, is perhaps best conducted by a specialist of a foreign culture who not infrequently casts a backward glance at one’s own culture, as opposed to by a specialist of one’s own culture looking out into an exotic foreign culture for similarities and differences that may be used to confirm some preferred transcultural wisdoms or character types. In brief, what comparative philosophy ought to do to philosophy may resemble something like what Michael Taussig’s symbolic anthropology has done to anthropology — it teases and criticizes one’s own culture, aiming to unself one’s own deep-entrenched illusions, to expose the limit of one’s consciousness, as opposed to strengthening and expanding it at the expense of the rivals’." (pp. 265-266)

68. Zhu, Rui, and Beckford, Corey. 2018. "Reply to Steven Burik." Philosophy East and West no. 68:271-276.

"Important objections are raised by Steven Burik in his comment on Rui Zhu’s response to Rorty and MacIntyre. We will try to address them without proceeding in an eristic, point-by-point manner. In general, it seems that at least some of Burik’s objections are based on his misreading of Zhu’s response. Burik is not to blame, however.

Zhu’s response was short and many of the points made there were not sufficiently explained or developed. By way of his generous commentary Burik has provided us a much needed opportunity to offer some remedies.

A key distinction in Zhu’s response was its reference to comparative philosophy as a form of intercultural studies and as philosophy. The former compares philosophies and the latter does philosophy. It goes without saying that the two are difficult to separate. Nevertheless, the distinction is real and can be felt by any comparative philosopher through the tension between scholarly expositions and creative philosophizing. In this reply to Burik we will recalibrate the distinction in terms of that between understanding and thinking, even though the profile drawn here might be a bit too sharp for our comfort. But such is the risk we have to bear for the sake of heuristics." (p. 271)

References

Steven Burik, "Comment on "Comparative Philosophy: In Response to Rorty and Macintyre" by Rui Zhu", Philosophy East and West, 68, 2018, pp. 266-270.

69. Zong, Desheng. 2010. "A New Framework for Comparative Study of Philosophy." Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy no. 9:445-459.

Abstract: "The aim of this essay is to outline a conceptual framework for a type of philosophy (or approach to philosophy) to be herein called “non-sentential philosophy.”

Although I will primarily concern myself with the conceptual coherence of the framework in this essay, illustrations will be provided to show that the notion has rich implications for comparative studies. In particular, I believe this theoretical framework will be of interest to those looking for a way to capture the differences between certain non-Western philosophical traditions—such as Chinese philosophy—and Western philosophy, a tradition in which the sentential approach is dominant."

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

African Philosophy: A Survey of Contemporary Studies

Introduction: African and Western philosophy

"In the past three decades, philosophers -- especially African-born who are trained in Western philosophy -- have engaged in a metaphilosophical debate over whether there exists an African philosophy and, if so, what its nature is. This debate regarding the nature and existence of African philosophy has culminated in two camps, which I shall call the universalists and the particularists. Wiredu characterizes the latter as the anti-universalists or the nationalists.(1) The former camp, represented by the works of Bodunrin, Wiredu, Appiah, and Hountondji, among others, argues that the concept of 'philosophy', in terms of the methodology and subject matter of the discipline, should be the same in both the Western and African senses.(2) The latter camp, as seen in the works of Ayoade, Gyekye, Sodipo, and Onwuanibe, among others, argues that different cultures have different ways of explaining reality; hence Africans must have a philosophy that is essentially different from other philosophies. Perhaps it is along this line of trying to articulate the essential nature of 'African philosophy', Safro Kwame argues, that the metaphilosophical approach of the Western analytic tradition is not African, and as such, it is not and should not be a legitimate approach in African philosophy.(3) Some of the people in this camp have thus questioned the use of the been characterized by African philosophers as African philosophy, and three of these have been criticized by the universalists as unphilosophical. The universalists argue that, compared to their paradigm view of the nature of philosophy -- that is, the contemporary analytic tradition of Western philosophy -- African philosophy does not have the requisite features of a tradition of writing and a rigorous and critical analytical approach to debates over universal conceptual and abstract issues that are engaged in by individuals. However, it is my view that there are both universalist and particularist elements in African philosophy. In other words, although there are culturally determined philosophical ways of constructing meaning, these ways are not incommensurable. As such, we can use the 'known' universal (?) philosophical concepts and methods of one 'culture' to analyze and make understandable the philosophical beliefs and worldviews of another culture that may 'appear' arcane -and this, in my view, is what many of the particularists have tried to do with African worldviews. This does not imply, as the universalists have claimed, that the beliefs and worldviews of one culture (Western) are comparatively superior to another philosophically, to the extent of denigrating one (African) as unphilosophical or denying its existence as a philosophical system."

(1) Kwasi Wiredu, Philosophy and an African Culture (London: Cambridge University Press, 1980 ), p. 27.

(2) This stance can be found in the following works: P. O. Bodunrin, "The Question of African Philosophy", Philosophy 56 ( 1981 ), reprinted in Richard A. Wright, ed., African Philosophy: An Introduction (New York: University Press of America, 1984 ); Kwasi Wiredu, Philosophy and an African Culture; Paulin Hountondji, African Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983 ); and Anthony Appiah, Necessary Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1989 ). (3) Safro Kwame, "How Not to Teach African Philosophy", APA Newsletter 91 (1) ( Spring 1992 ): p. 29.

From: Polycarp Ikuenobe, "The Parochial Universalist Conception of 'Philosophy' and 'African Philosophy', Philosophy East and West, 47, 1997, pp. 189-190.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Selected Bibliography on African Philosophy

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"After a brief introduction to Yoruba cosmology, the author analyzes representations associated with the main components of the human person. Ara (the body) refers to the set of physical elements. The "spiritual" components the most important are: èmí, (the soul), orí (the inner head) and esé (the leg). Emí, imperishable element, is created by Olòdùmarè (the Supreme Being). That is, in every individual, a parcel of "divine breath". Orí (the inner head) is associated with personal destiny. Every human being chooses it freely before coming into the world. Esé (the leg) represents the activity and the power. This is the element that allows you to update the potentialities received with the orí. The analysis is based on poetic texts extracted of the oral literature relating to Ifa (Yoruba divinatory system)."

2. Abraham, Willie E. 1962. The Mind of Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Second edition: Leghon-Accra (Ghana) Sub-Saharan Pub & Traders 2015 with a new Preface by the Author.

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6. Ansell-Pearson, Keith J. 1987. "The question of African philosophy and Kwasi Wiredu's philosophy and an African culture." Journal of Humanities no. 1:75-90.

7. Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1992. In My Father's House. Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Revised and Expanded Edition.

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11. Asouzu, Innocent I. 2005. The Method and Principles of Complementary Reflection in and Beyond African Philosophy. Münster: LIT Verlag.

12. ———. 2007. Ibuanyidanda: New Complementary Ontology Beyond World-Immanentism, Ethnocentric Reduction and Impositions. Münster: LIT Verlag.

13. Bedu-Addo, Joseph T. 1985. "Wiredu on Truth as Opinion and the Akan Language." In Philosophy in Africa: Trends and Perspectives, edited by Bodunrin, Peter, 68-90. Ife: University of Ife Press.

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16. ———. 1991. Black Athena. The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Vol. II: The Archaeological and Documentary Evidence. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutger University Press.

17. ———. 2001. Black Athena Writes Back. Martin Bernal Responds to His Critics. Durham: Duke University Press.

18. ———. 2006. Black Athena. The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Vol. III: The Linguistic Evidence. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutger University Press.

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21. Bodunrin, Peter. 1981. "The Question of African Philosophy." Philosophy no. 56:161-179.

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24. Botz-Bornstein, Thorsten, and Asouzu, Innocent I. 2013. Ibuanyidanda: (Complementary Reflection) and Some Basic Philosophical Problems in Africa Today. Münster: LIT Verlag.

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27. ———, ed. 2015. Atuolu Omalu: Some Unanswered Questions in Contemporary African Philosophy. Lanham: University Press of America.

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31. Coetzee, Pieter Hendrik, and Roux, A.P.J., eds. 2003. The African Philosophy Reader. A Text with Readings. New York: Routledge.

Second expanded edition (first edition 1998).

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36. Edeh, Emmanuel M. P. 1985. Towards an Igbo Metaphysics. Chicago: Loyola University Press.

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39. Eze, Emmanuel Chukwudi, ed. 1997. Postcolonial African Philosophy: A Critical Reader. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

40. ———, ed. 1998. African Philosophy: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell.

41. ———. 2001. Achieving Our Humanity: The Idea of the Postracial Future. New York: Routledge.

42. ———. 2008. On Reason. Rationality in a World of Cultural Conflict and Racism. Durham: Duke University Press.

43. Fayemi, Ademola Kazeem. 2011. "A Critique of Cultural Unversals and Particulars in Kwasi Wiredu's Philosophy." Trames no. 15:259-276.

44. ———. 2017. "African philosophy in search of historiography." Nokoko no. 6:297-316.

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48. Gordon, Lewis R. 2000. Existentia Africana. Understanding Africana Existential Thought. New York: Routledge.

49. ———. 2008. An Introduction to Africana Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

50. Graness, Anke, and Kress, Kai, eds. 1997. Sagacious Reasoning: Henry Odera Oruka in memoriam. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

51. Grinker, Roy Richard, and Steiner, Christopher B., eds. 1997. Perspectives on Africa. A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation. Cambridge: Blackwell.

Second edition 2010.

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Second revised edition: Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1995.

53. ———. 1997. Tradition and Modernity: Philosophical Reflections on the African Experience. New York: Oxford University Press.

54. Hallen, Barry. 2000. The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Discourse about Values in Yoruba Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

55. ———. 2002. A Short History of African Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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58. Hallen, Barry, and Sodipo, J.Olubi. 1997. Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft: Analytic Experiments in African Philosophy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Foreword by Dorothy Emmett.

Second edition with a new foreword by Willard Van Orman Quine and a new afterword by Barry Hallen.

First edition London: Ethnographica 1986.

59. Hamminga, Bert, ed. 2005. Knowledge Cultures. Comparative Western and Africa Epistemology. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

60. Harris, Leonard, ed. 1989. The Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem Renaissance and Beyond. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

61. Headley, Clevis. 2017. "On the Historiography of Africana Philosophy: Overcoming Disciplinary Decadence through the Teleological Suspension of Philosophy." Critical Philosophy of Race no. 5:70-90.

62. Henry, Paget. 2000. Caliban's Reason. Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy. New York: Routledge.

63. Hord, Fred Lee (Mzee Lasana Okpara), and Lee, Jonathan Scott, eds. 2016. I Am Because W Are. Readings in Africana Philosophy. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

64. Hountondji, Paulin J. 1996. African Philosophy: Myth and Reality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Translation of: Sur la philosophie africaine. Critique de l'ethnophilosophie, Paris: Maspéro, 1976, by Henri Evans with the collaboration of Jonathan Rée.

Introduction by Abiola Irele, pp. 7-30.

Second edition with a new Preface, pp. VII-XXVIII; first edition: London: Hutchinson 1983.

65. ———. 2002. The Struggle for Meaning: Reflections on African Philosophy, Culture and Democracy in Africa. Athens: Ohio University Press.

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67. Imbo, Samuel Olouch. 1998. An Introduction to African Philosophy. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

68. ———. 2002. Oral Traditions as Philosophy: Okot p’Bitek’s Legacy for African Philosophy. Lanham: Rowman & Littlfield.

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Reprinted, with a new introduction by Calvin C. Hernton with the title: Muntu. African Culture and the Western World, New York: Grove Press, 1990.

70. ———. 2009. Philosophy in an African Place. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

71. Janz, Bruce B. 2008. "African Philosophy." In The Edinburgh Companion to Twentieth-Century Philosophies, edited by Boundas, Constantin V. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

72. Jeffers, Chike, and Thiong’o, Ngugi wa, eds. 2013. Listening to Ourselves: A Multilingual Anthology of African Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press,.

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77. Kigunga, Raphael. 1996. The Anthropology of Self - Person and Myth in Africa: A Philosophical Reflection on Man in South-East-Africa. New York: Peter Lang.

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79. Lefkowitz, Mary. 1996. Not Out of Africa. How Afrocentrism Became and Excuse to Teach Myth as History. New York: Basic Books.

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82. Love, Velma E. 2012. Divining the Self: A Study in Yoruba Myth and Human Consciousness. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

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Contents: Part I: 1. Philosophy and an African culture; 2. On an African orientation in philosophy; 3. How not to compare African traditional thought with Western thought; 4. What can philosophy do for Africa?; Part II: 5. Marxism, philosophy and ideology; 6. In praise of utopianism; Part III: 7. Philosophy, mysticism and rationality; 8. Truth as opinion; 9. To be is to be known; 10. What is philosophy?; 11. In defence of opinion; 12. Truth: a dialogue; Origins of the essays; Index.

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127. Wright, Richard A., ed. 1984. African Philosophy: An Introduction. Washington: University Press of America.

Third expanded edition (First edition 1977; second edition 1979).

Contents: Acknowledgments V; Preface to the third edition IX; Preface to the second edition XI; Preface to the first edition XIII; P. O. Bodunrin: The Question of African Philosophy 1; Henri Maurier: Do We Have an African Philosophy? 25; Richard A. Wright: Investigating African Philosophy 41; Lacinay Keita: The African Philosophical Tradition 57; Henry Olela: The African Foundations of Greek Philosophy 77; John A. A. Ayoade: Time in Yoruba Thought 93; Helaine K. Minkus: Causal Theory in Akwapim Akan Philosophy 113; J . E. [Kwame] Wiredu: How Not to Compare African Thought with Western Thought 149; Thomas J. Blakeley: The Categories of Mtu and The Categories of Aristotle 163; Richard C. Onwuanibe: The Human Person and Immortality in IBO Metaphysics 183; Kwame Gyekye: Akan Concept of a Person 199; Benjamin Eruku Oguah: African and Western Philosophy: A Comparative Study 213; Diana E. Axelsen: Philosophical Justifications for Contemporary African Social and Political Values and Strategies 227; Benyamin Neuberger: A Comparative Analysis of Pan-Africanism 245; Bibliography 265; Bibliography Index 307.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

L'Ontologia in Italia. Una Guida per gli Studenti di Filosofia

Introduzione

(Pagina in costruzione - sarà aggiornata nei prossimi mesi)

Negli ultimi anni anche in Italia si è manifestato un interesse crescente per l'ontologia, ma non esiste una pagina web che presenti agli studenti italiani le pubblicazioni disponibili nella nostra lingua ed i Centri di studio dedicati all'argomento; il mio obiettivo è di contribuire a colmare, almeno in parte, questa lacuna; chi desidera approfondire l'argomento con riferimenti agli studi in altre lingue troverà nelle altre pagine del sito informazioni sufficienti, che non saranno ripetute qui.

Negli ultimi anni in Italia sono stati organizzati alcuni importanti convegni sulla storia dell'ontologia:

- a Bolzano la Mitteleuropa Foundation diretta da Liliana Albertazzi e Roberto Poli ha organizzato diversi convegni dal 2002 ad oggi.

- a Torino a cura del Laboratorio di Ontologia diretto da Maurizio Ferraris nel dicembre 2002 (atti pubblicati nella Rivista di Estetica n. 1 del 2003).

- a Milano nel maggio 2003 dall'Astufilo - Associazione Studenti di Filosofia dell'Università Statale (atti pubblicati nel volume La Storia dell'ontologia, edito da E. Storace, 2005)

- all'Università di Bari nel maggio 2008 si è tenuto l'importante convegno internazionale Nascita e trasformazioni dell'ontologia: secoli XVI e XX i cui atti sono stati pubblicati sulla rivista Quaestio. Annuario di Storia della Metafisica nel numero 9 del 2010.

Questi ed altri avvenimenti e la pubblicazione di lavori sia di carattere introduttivo che di livello più avanzato, mi sembrano una ragione sufficiente per tentare un panorama delle pubblicazioni disponibili in lingua italiana; considerato il carattere informativo di questa pagina, come del resto di tutto il sito, saranno prese in considerazione opere di diverse tendenze (filosofia analitica, fenomenologia, ecc.): il criterio prevalente per l'inserimento nella pagina sarà la qualità dei lavori e per i testi più importanti saranno riportati gli indici e dei brevi estratti.

Particolare attenzione sarà riservata ai lavori disponibili in italiano sui maggiori ontologi dell'Ottocento e del Novecento, a cui sono dedicate alcune pagine monografiche.

Critiche, suggerimenti e segnalazioni di eventuali errori sono particolarmente gradite; il sito è aperto alla collaborazione di tutte le persone interessate all'argomento che abbiano un contributo originale da dare.

Libri recenti sull'ontologia: testi introduttivi

1. Bonino, Guido. 2008. Universali / Particolari. Bologna: Il Mulino.

2. Bottani, Andrea, and Davies, Richard, eds. 2006. L' Ontologia Della Proprietà Intellettuale. Aspetti E Problemi. Milano: Franco Angeli.

3. AA. VV. (a cura di). 2007. Ontologie Regionali. Milano: Mimesis.

4. Caputo, Stefano. 2006. Fattori Di Verità . Milano: AlboVersorio.

5. Carrara, Massimiliano, and Giaretta, Pierdaniele, eds. 2004. Filosofia E Logica. Cosenza: Rubbettino.

6. De Luca, Paolo, ed. 2008. Ontologia Sociale. Potere Deontico E Regole Costitutive. Macerata: Quodlibet.

7. De Monticelli, Roberta, and Conni, Paolo. 2008. Ontologia Del Nuovo. La Rivoluzione Fenomenologica E La Ricerca Oggi. Milano: Bruno Mondadori.

8. Di Lucia, Paolo. 2003. Ontologia Sociale: Potere Deontico E Regole Costitutive. Macerata: Quodlibet.

9. Ferraris, Maurizio. 2003. Ontologia. Napoli: Guida.

Indice: Introduzione 3; 1. Dalla metafisica alla ontologia 9; 2. Dalla ontologia all'epistemologia 21; 3. Apriori concettuale 31; 4. Apriori materiale 41; 5. Prescrivere e descrivere; 6. Il ritorno della ontologia 55; Riferimenti bibliografici 61; ANTOLOGIA. 67-159; Glossario 161-166.

"È nel 1613 (*) che si trovano le prime attestazioni del termine 'ontologia', nelle opere di due autori di enciclopedie filosofiche che operano indipendentemente l'uno dall'altro: Rudolph Göckel (o Rodolphus Goclenius, nella latinizzazione da lui stesso proposta; Corbach 1547-Marburgo 1628, Antologia, 5), che ne tratta di sfuggita nel Lessico filosofico e Jacob Lorhard - su cui non ho trovato ragguagli -, nel Teatro filosofico, e che credo codifichino - in qualità di lessicografi - un uso ormai invalso. Non è secondario che questo battesimo abbia luogo nell'epoca in cui si scatena la rivoluzione scientifica: i metafisici si concepivano come dei commentatori di Aristotele, gli ontologi ritengono - a torto o a ragione - di rompere con la tradizione aristotelica e scolastica, alla luce dello sforzo di risistemazione metodica delle conoscenze che caratterizza un periodo in cui assistiamo o alla radicale riforma di saperi tradizionali, come la logica, la fisica e la matematica, o all'invenzione di saperi nuovi, come la semiotica, l'estetica e, per l'appunto, l'ontologia." p. 14-15

"Le possibilità applicative che si aprono per l'ontologia riflettono le due anime, descrittiva e prescrittiva, che hanno attraversato la nostra storia, specie nel suo tratto terminale. Nell'approccio prescrittivo, l'opzione di fondo è quella per cui l'ontologia costituisce un elemento di un processo unificato sotto il profilo epistemologico. L'ontologia, qui, sarebbe una scienza assimilabile alla chimica o alla fisica, sottoposta a revisioni e a progressi determinati da scoperte empiriche. Se questo è il suo assetto metodologico, quanto alle finalità l'obiettivo è la costituzione di un linguaggio ontologico universale, che valga per ogni livello di realtà, dal fisico al sociale. Nell'approccio descrittivo, invece, l'ontologia applicata si configura come una riattivazione delle problematiche delle scienze dello spirito ma con un più marcato impianto oggettivistico.

La prima opzione è prevalente nei problemi su cui portano l'attenzione, nei brani antologizzati, Nicola Guarino (Messina 1954, Antologia, 27) e Barry Smith (Antologia, 28). Qui il problema è classificare, e l'idea di fondo è dimostrare l'applicabilità dei metodi e delle teorie ontologiche all'informatica, movendo dall'ipotesi di lavoro che l'ontologia tradizionale abbia tutti gli strumenti per risolvere una della difficoltà principali con cui l'informatica ha dovuto confrontarsi in questi anni, cioè la ricerca di una lingua franca che semplifichi la condivisione delle conoscenze e la loro comunicabilità, ossia che permetta l'integrazione sistematica dei database. Tuttavia, anche una buona classificazione e chiarificazione di oggetti ed eventi sociali costituisce un indispensabile campo di indagine, più vicino agli interessi di una metafisica descrittiva e di una fisica ingenua. Qui il problema è esplicitare l'ontologia soggiacente a entità e relazioni invisibili e immateriali (diritti, pretese, obblighi, status) che risultano tuttavia, come scriveva un allievo di Husserl, Adolf Reinach (Mainz 1883-Dixmuiden, Belgio 1917), solide 'come alberi e case', tali dunque da limitare e indirizzare il nostro rapporto con il mondo, che non apparirà più - come volevano i teorici delle scienze dello spirito - una pura creazione storica, pur rivelando una complessità bene attestata nel brano di John Searle (Denver 1932, Antologia, 29) con cui si chiude il nostro compendio." pp. 58-59.

Nota di Raul Corazzon: in realtà il termine "ontologia" compare per la prima volta nel 1606, nel sottotitolo di un libro di Jacob Lorhard (fl. 1597) Rettore dell'Università di S. Gallo in Svizzera, "Ogdoas Scholastica", ignorato finora dagli studiosi e da me scoperto il 16 maggio 2003.

10. Gnoli, Claudio, and Scognamiglio, Carlo. 2008. Ontologie E Organizzazione Della Conoscenza. Lecce: Pensa MultiMedia.

"Questo libro si propone come introduzione critica all'ontologia per la knowledge organization, in primo luogo per rispondere a un'esigenza editoriale, non essendo attualmente presenti nel panorama librario strumenti analoghi in lingua italiana. Secondariamente, per lo stile prospettico che lo caratterizza, il testo vuole accompagnare il proprio profilo introduttivo con una proposta di lavoro interdisciplinare e metterne in evidenza le potenzialità .

A partire da un'indagine sopra il rapporto tra la nozione filosofica di ontologia e le sue varianti "applicative" in ambito informatico e di organizzazione delle conoscenze, il volume presenta sistematicamente i modelli teorici e applicativi dell'indicizzazione semantica, illustrandone i limiti e le parzialità . Quale prospettiva di cambiamento e di riorganizzazione del paradigma scientifico, i due autori insistono sull'importanza dell'approccio ontologico nella risoluzione dei problemi di interoperabilità tra basi di dati e sistemi informativi. Il meta- modello dei livelli di realtà, rielaborato a partire dall'ontologia di Nicolai Hartmann e mediato da teorie più recenti, può costituire l'architettura di un sistema di organizzazione della conoscenza capace di presentare I'interconnessione di tutti gli aspetti della realtà e al contempo la loro irriducibile diversità ."

11. Marsonet, Michele. 1990. La Metafisica Negata. Logica, Ontologia, Filosofia Analitica. Milano: Franco Angeli.

12. Runggaldier, Edmund, and Kanzian, CHristian. 2002. Problemi Fondamentali Dell'ontologia Analitica. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.

A cura di Sergio Galvan

13. Spolaore, Giuseppe, and Giaretta, Pierdaniele. 2008. Esistenza E Identità . Temi Di Logica Filosofica. Milano: Mimesis.

14. Toccafondi, Fiorenza. 2000. L'essere E I Suoi Significati. Bologna: Il Mulino.

15. Valore, Paolo. 2008. L' Inventario Del Mondo. Guida Allo Studio Dell'ontologia. Torino: UTET.

16. Varzi, Achille. 2001. Parole, Oggetti, Eventi E Altri Argomenti Di Metafisica. Roma: Carocci Editore.

17. AA. VV. (a cura di). 2005. Ontologia. Roma-Bari: Editori Laterza.

Indice: Ringraziamenti V; Introduzione 3; 1. Che cos'è l'ontologia 7; 2. Come si fa ontologia 32; 3. Temi dir ricerca 51; Cos'altro leggere 139; Riferimenti bibliografici 145; L'autore 175.

"In quanto segue cercheremo di illustrare un po' meglio le ramificazioni di questo genere di considerazioni, intorno alle quali verte gran parte della discussione filosofica attualmente dedicata all'ontologia. In particolare, nella prima parte (capitoli 1 e 2) ci concentreremo su due ordini di questioni, e cioè (a) se l'ontologia si riduca davvero alla domanda «Che cosa esiste?», e (b) quali siano gli strumenti di cui ci si può servire per affrontare questa domanda (ed eventualmente altre che rientrano nel campo d'indagine dell'ontologia). Tanto (a) quanto (b) sono principalmente questioni di carattere metafilosofico, e fanno tutt'uno con il problema di demarcare il campo d'interesse dell'ontologia rispetto a quello della metafisica in senso lato. Nella seconda parte del testo (capitolo 3) cercheremo invece di fornire un quadro dei quesiti concreti di cui si occupano gli ontologi nel momento in cui procedono con l'esercizio effettivo della loro professione, quali che siano la visione di fondo e le metodologie a cui fanno riferimento. Sarà un quadro molto approssimativo, ma consentirà di identificare almeno alcune delle linee di ricerca attualmente più seguite. Del resto questo sarà anche il nostro limite: tanto nell'ultima parte quanto nei capitoli che la precedono ci limiteremo appunto al panorama attuale. La storia dell'ontologia meriterebbe un trattamento a parte e qui non verrà considerata se non in maniera tangenziale." pp. 4-5.

18. AA. VV. (a cura di). 2007. Metafisica. Classici Contemporanei. Bari: Laterza.

19. Velardi, Andrea. 2007. Verità E Realismo. Per Una Ontologia Dei Dati Della Conoscenza. Reggio Calabria: Falzea.

Testi avanzati

1. "Logica E Ontologia." 1989. Epistemologia no. 12.

2. "Oggetti Flat." 2002. Rivista di Estetica no. 20.

A cura di Luca Morena e Achille Varzi.

3. "Ontologie." 2003. Sistemi Intelligenti no. 15:401-569.

4. "Ontologia Dell'arte." 2003. Rivista di Estetica no. 23.

A cura di Pietro Kobau.

5. "Il Realismo Ontologico Di Gustav Bergmann." 2004. Rivista di Estetica no. 24.

6. "Ontologie Analitiche." 2004. Rivista di Estetica no. 26.

A cura di Massimiliano Carrara e Pierdaniele Giaretta.

7. "Il Pregiudizio a Favore Del Reale." 2005. Rivista di Estetica no. 30.

A cura di Luca Morena e Achille Varzi (sulla teoria dell'oggetto di Alexius Meinong).

8. "Semantica E Ontologia." 2006. Rivista di Estetica no. 32.

A cura di Luca Morena e Giuliano Torrengo.

9. Basti, Gianfranco, and Testi, Claudio A., eds. 2004. Analogia E Autoreferenza. Genova: Marietti 1820.

Indice: Presentazione 7; Franca D'Agostini: Autoriferimento e paradossi: una introduzione 9; Alberto cevolini: Analogia fisica, logica delle operazioni noetiche e autoreferenzialità: contributo al realismo riflessivo 75; Joseph M. Bochenski: Sulla analogia 131; Gianfranco Basti: Analogia, ontologia formale e problema dei fondamenti 159; Alberto Strumia: L'analogia e le scienze 237; Claudio A. Testi: Analogia, logica formale e paradossi 267; Sergio Parenti: L'analogia dei nomi: dai paradossi al linguaggio teologico 333; Bibliografia generale 365; Notizia sugli autori 389-392.

Dalla Presentazione: "Che l'autoreferenzialità sia una caratteristica discriminante della modernità, è oggi una affermazione quasi scontata. Ma chi la sostiene dovrebbe essere in grado di rispondere ad almeno due questioni preliminari: a che cosa si sostituisce, da che cosa è preceduta l'autoreferenzialità? E in secondo luogo: è davvero certo che l'autoreferenzialità sia una "scoperta" della modernità? Alla prima questione si può rispondere in modo inequivocabile: il mutamento di paradigma che sancisce l'inizio dell'epoca moderna concerne il passaggio dal primato della analogia al primato della autoreferenza. L'analogia rappresenta l'orizzonte speculativo all'interno del quale si muove per lo più la filosofia classica e medievale. In essa trova posto una concezione stratificata del reale il cui fondamento metafisico risiede nella dottrina della partecipazione. Solo quando questa concezione stratificata (dal particolare all'universale, dalla specie al genere e così via) viene messa in discussione, si può cominciare a parlare di modernità. D'altra parte è altrettanto legittimo dubitare della ricostruzione storica che attribuisce alla modernità il primato dell'autoreferenzialità. Nelle argomentazioni logiche e gnoseologiche sia classiche che medievali l'operazione autoreferenziale è già conosciuta e affrontata in modo rigoroso, sia nei suoi risvolti positivi (l'autocoscienza ad esempio), sia nei suoi risvolti negativi (i paradossi). Resta allora da capire in che cosa consista davvero la cesura che separa le strutture teoriche ed epistemologiche moderne da quelle premoderne e in quale misura la modernità sia del tutto scevra da problematiche di tipo analogico.

Colmando una lacuna notevole della cultura filosofica e scientifica contemporanea, questo libro si propone come primo passo verso una comprensione dei complessi e articolati rapporti che sussistono fra analogia e autoreferenza. Gli studi qui raccolti prediligono un livello di argomentazione teoretico piuttosto che storico-ricostruttivo, come mostrano del resto le nuove formalizzazioni della analogia presentate nei

saggi di Basti, Testi e Strumia, le quali si affiancano alla "classica" formalizzazione di Bochenski, qui per la prima volta tradotta in italiano. I contributi di Cevolini, Parenti e D'Agostini mirano d'altra parte a chiarire il nesso che lega fra loro autoreferenzialità, analogia e paradossalità, discutendo di volta in volta sia la possibilità di paradossi non autoreferenziali (D'Agostini), sia la possibilità di concepire l'analogia fisica come presupposto dell'autoreferenzialità moderna (Cevolini), sia infine la possibilità di usare l'analogia come strumento di soluzione dei paradossi linguistici (Parenti)."

10. Bianchi, Claudia, and Bottani, Andrea, eds. 2003. Significato E Ontologia. Milano: Franco Angeli.

11. Bottani, Andrea. 1996. Il Riferimento Imperscrutabile: Olismo, Ontologia E Teoria Del Significato. Milano: Franco Angeli.

12. Carrara, Massimiliano. 2001. Impegno Ontologico E Criteri D'identità. Un'analisi. Padova: CLEUP Editrice.

13. Ferretti, Giovanni, ed. 2003. Linguaggi Dell'ontologia. Atti Dell' Viii Colloquio Su Filosofia E Religione, Macerata, 13-15 Maggio 1999. Pisa - Roma: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali.

14. Galvan, Sergio. 2009. Ontologia Del Possibile. Milano: EduCatt.

15. Hartmann, Nicolai. 1972. Introduzione All'ontologia Critica. Napoli: Guida.

Traduzione italiana di: Der philosophische Gedanke und seine Geschichte, Systematische Selbstdarstellung, Neue Ontologie in Deutschland.

16. Lesce, Francesco. 2005. Un'ontologia Materialista. Gilles Deleuze E Il Xxi Secolo. Milano: Mimesis.

Indice: Prefazione di Toni Negri 5; Introduzione. Gilles Deleuze. L'anomalia materialista. 7; I. Dýnamis tôn pánton 13; II. Ontologia positiva: Sein ist Zeit 33; III. Materia-tempo 63; IV. Della potenza d'essere. "Gioia eterna del divenire" 87; Conclusioni. Del pensare e del creare. In nome di un "popolo a venire" 123-127.

"Un'«ontologia materialista» è il titolo di questo lavoro su Deleuze di Francesco Lesce. Un discorso singolarmente maturo che riesce infatti a percorrere, ad un tempo, l'itinerario filosofico di Gilles Deleuze e a costituirlo in una articolata ontologia materialista per il presente. Il confronto che Gilles Deleuze sviluppa con le filosofie del `900 è qui ricostruito in maniera piena. Con qualche passaggio che senz'altro arricchisce le letture che di Deleuze si sono fatte.

C'è in Deleuze una capacità di definizione e scavo dell'immanenza assoluta che strappa la fenomenologia del moderno alla caratterizzazione che ne avevano dato Heidegger e la fenomenologia. Successivamente, l'analisi della temporalità si confronta qui con lo «slancio vitale» di Bergson, anche in questo caso strappando il contesto ontologico ad ogni precostituzione ed ad ogni teleologia dell'essere. Il bergsonismo costituisce uno degli strati dell'indagine deleuziana, in nessun caso la soluzione del problema ontologico. In positivo: prima Hume, poi Spinoza, permettono a Deleuze la definizione della potenza d'essere; quanto la demistificazione empirista degli universali e dei processi di causazione sia importante e come questa si impianti sui presupposti dell'immanentismo moderno, Lesce comincia a mostrarlo con estrema chiarezza. Del legame Spinoza-Deleuze sappiamo ormai tutto, ma del processo costitutivo humiano, da Deleuze così profondamente letto, in realtà nella letteratura deleuziana si dice poco. Si preferiscono riferimenti generici a qualche corrente pragmatista o letteraria americana piuttosto che l'insistenza sulla critica humiana (Hume come alternativa di Kant). E a partire da questo inquadramento generale che - secondo Lesce - la dimensione della praxis diventa fondamentale in Deleuze e rappresenta la soluzione del suo pensiero. Una soluzione positiva, una politica che si fa immediatamente ontologia, che assume la critica e la dissoluzione del positivo come apertura all'avvenire, come avventura etica." p. 5.

17. Orilia, Francesco. 2002. Ulisse, Il Quadrato Rotondo E L'attuale Re Di Francia. Pisa: Edizioni ETS.

18. Pagani, Paolo. 1999. Contraddizione Performativa E Ontologia. Milano: Franco Angeli.

Presentazione di Carmelo Vigna.

19. Poli, Roberto. 1992. Ontologia Formale. Genova: Marietti.

"L'autore che con più attenzione ha cercato di delimitare il concetto di ontologia formale è stato Husserl. Dalla prima formulazione delle Ricerche logiche, alle analisi presenti nella successiva e variamente stratificata produzione teoretica husserliana, il concetto di ontologia formale, pur presentando raffinamenti e articolazioni, rimane sostanzialmente immutato nei suoi tratti fondamentali. Il fatto è degno di nota perché indica che la retrocessione genetica al fondamento costitutivo dell'esperienza esula dall'ambito pertinente alle questioni di ontologia formale. Le motivazioni che supportano questa osservazione rinviano al fatto che l'ontologia formale tratta l'oggetto come qualcosa che è già stato costituito e che in un qualche modo è dato, mentre non si cura del processo di costituzione dell'oggetto né dei suoi modi di datità soggettiva. Questo solo fatto è sufficiente a spiegare la ragione per cui si è finiti con il parlare di ontologia formale in due distinti sensi. Una accezione perfettamente congruente al main stream della filosofia contemporanea è quella che possiamo definire analitica: l'ontologia formale è quella sezione dell'ontologia che si ricomprende dal punto di vista della logica formale. Il principale esponente di tale posizione è certamente Nino Cocchiarella. A partire dal riconoscimento che ogni particolare scienza riguarda il suo specifico «modo di essere», egli afferma che «la metafisica..., o ciò che possiamo chiamare ontologia formale, riguarda lo studio e lo sviluppo di differenti formalizzazioni che concernono il sistematico coordinamento di tutti i 'modi' o categorie dell'essere sotto le più generali leggi. Usualmente... ogni 'modo di essere' all'interno di una particolare ontologia formale è rappresentato da un tipo di variabile vincolabile, il cui ruolo sintattico dovrebbe riflettere... il ruolo ontologico di tale "modo di essere"». In tale accezione l'ontologia formale studia in particolare le caratteristiche logiche della predicazione e delle varie teorie degli universali. L'altra accezione, che chiameremo fenomenologica, trova come detto i propri riferimenti primari nei lavori di Husserl, in particolare nelle Ricerche logiche, nelle Idee, in Logica formale e trascendentale e in Esperienza e giudizio. In prima istanza, di essa possiamo dire che è interessata in particolare ai problemi delle parti e dell'intero e della dipendenza. Nonostante le loro differenze, le due forme di ontologia formale presentano, per molti aspetti, rilevanti sovrapposizioni. In ogni caso a tutt'oggi manca sia uno studio sistematico delle categorie e degli strati che compongono la ontologia formale sia una analisi sistematica dei temi affrontabili da una ontologia formale. Una delle ragioni che può contribuire a spiegare tale mancanza risiede nel fatto che la distinzione fra le due accezioni di ontologia formale, per quanto apparentemente semplice e non problematica, nasconde in effetti sia le ragioni della loro sostanziale unità sia i reali motivi della loro effettiva differenza teoretica." pp. 51-52 (note omesse).

20. Scognamiglio, Carlo. 2003. La Teoria Ontologica Di Nicolai Hartmann E La Processualità Del Reale, 2003.

21. ———. 2007. "Il Problema Del Soggetto Nell'ontologia Critica Di Nicolai Hartmann." In Perspectives Sur Le Sujet / Prospettive Filosofiche Sul Soggetto, edited by Trincia, Francesco and Bancalari, Stefano, 126-145. Hildesheim: Georg Olms.

22. ———. 2010. La Persona. Etica E Ontologia in Nicolai Hartmann. Lecce: Pensa Multimedia.

23. Strumia, Alberto, ed. 2007. Il Problema Dei Fondamenti. Da Aristotele a Tommaso D'aquino All'ontologia Formale. Siena: Cantagalli.

24. Velardi, Andrea. 2007. Verità E Realismo. Per Una Ontologia Dei Dati Della Conoscenza. Reggio Calabria: Falzea.

25. Voltolini, Alberto. 1992. Riferimento E Intenzionalità: Per Un'ontologia Del Discorso. Pisa: ETS.

Prefazione di Michael Dummett.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Index of the bibliographies on philosophers

Philosophers (A - C)

A

Abelard Peter see Peter Abelard

Aertsen, Jan Adrianus (1938 - )

Selected Bibliography of Jan A. Aertsen. Writings in English

Selected Bibliography of Jan A. Aertsen. Writings in German

Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus) (ca. 1200 - 1280)

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Albertazzi Liliana (1947 -

Ontology and Psychology in Work of Liliana Albertazzi

Alexander of Aphrodisias (2nd century)

Aristotle's Metaphysics in Late Greek Philosophy: the Neoplatonic Commentators

Alsted Johann Heinrich (1588 - 1638)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: I. From Fonseca to Poinsot (1560 - 1644)

Ammonius Hermiae (son of Hermeias) (435/445 - 517/526)

Aristotle's Metaphysics in Late Greek Philosophy: the Neoplatonic Commentators

Anselm of Canterbury (1033 - 1109)

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Araujo Francisco (1580 - 1664)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: I. From Fonseca to Poinsot (1560 - 1644)

Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)

Aristotle: Bibliographical Resources on His Logical and Metaphysical Works

Aristotle's Definition of a Science of Being qua Being

Selected bibliography on Aristotle's Definition of a Science of Being qua Being

Aristotle's Theory of Categories

Aristotle's Categories. Annotated Bibliography of the studies in English:

First part: A - C

Second part: D - Het

Third part: Hin - N

Fourth part: O - Z

Bibliographie der deutschen Studien zur Aristoteles Kategorien

Bibliographie des études en français sur les Catégories d'Aristote

Bibliografia degli studi italiani sulle Categorie di Aristotele

Ancient Catalogues of Aristotle's Works:

Diogenes Laertius, Lives, V 22-27

Hesychius of Milet and Ptolemy al-Garib

Listes Anciennes des Ouvrages d'Aristote :

Diogène Laerce, Vies, V 22-27

Hesychius de Milet et Ptolémée el-Garib

The Rediscovery of the Corpus Aristotelicum and the Beginning of the Commentary Tradition

Bibliography on the Ancient Catalogues of Aristotle's Writings and the Origin of the Corpus Aristotelicum

Studies in English on the Corpus Aristotelicum

Armstrong David Malet (1926 - 2014)

D. M. (David Malet) Armstrong's Moderate Realism

Asclepius of Tralles ( ? - 560/570)

Aristotle's Metaphysics in Late Greek Philosophy: the Neoplatonic Commentators

Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430)

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (980 - 1037)

Avicenna (Ibn Sina) on the Subject and the Object of Metaphysics

Annotated Bibliography on Avicenna's Logic and Metaphysics: A - G

Annotated Bibliography on Avicenna's Logic and Metaphysics: H - Z

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

B

Barwise Jon (1942 - 2000)

Jon Barwise on Propositions and Attitudes

Baumgarten Alexander (1714 - 1762)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: II. From Scheibler to Lambert (1645 - 1777)

Bergmann Gustav (1906 - 1987)

The Ontological Realism of Gustav Bergmann

Bertalanffy Ludwig von (1901 - 1972)

Ludwig von Bertalanffy's General System Theory

Blasius of Parma (Blasius Pelacani de Parma) ( ? - 1416)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

The Problem of Universals in Antiquity and Middle Ages

Boethius Anicius Manlius Severinus (ca. 480 - 524/5)

Boethius' Metaphysics: His Influence on Medieval Philosophy

Boethius' Metaphysics. Studies in English: First Part: A - Gib

Boethius' Metaphysics. Studies in English: Second Part: Gra - Mez

Boethius' Metaphysics. Studies in English: Third Part: Mic - Z

Boèce: Bibliographie sélective des traductions et des études en français

Boezio: traduzioni italiane e Bibliografia degli studi sulla sua filosofia

Boethius: Übersetzungen und Studien in Deutsch

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

The Problem of Universals in Antiquity and Middle Ages

Boetius of Dacia (13th century)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Bolzano Bernard (1781 - 1848)

The Philosophy of Bernard Bolzano: Logic and Ontology

Bernard Bolzano: Selected Texts

Selected Bibliography on the Philosophical Work of Bernard Bolzano:

Studies in English (First Part: A - B)

Studies in English (Second Part: C - Geo)

Studies in English (Third Part: Gie - L)

Studies in English (Fourth Part: M - R)

Studies in English (Fifth Part: S - Z)

Bibliography of the English translations

Bernard Bolzano: Traductions et Essais en Français (A - L)

Bernard Bolzano: Études en Français (M - Z)

Traduzioni e Studi in Italiano

Ausgewälte Werke und Studien in Deutsch

Vollständige Liste der Bände der Reihe Beiträge zur Bolzano Forschung

Bonaventure of Bagnorea (1221 - 1274)

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Brentano Franz (1838 - 1917)

Franz Brentano's Ontological Development and his Immanent Realism

Franz Brentano: Editions and translations

Selected Bibliography on the Philosophical Work of Franz Brentano:

Brentano A - K

Brentano L - Z

Buchler Justus (1939 - 1991)

Justus Buchler and the Metaphysics of Natural Complexes

Budde (Buddeus) (1667 - 1729)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: II. From Scheibler to Lambert (1645 - 1777)

Bunge Mario (1919 - 2020

The Scientific Philosophy of Mario Bunge

Buridan Jean see John Buridan

Butchvarov Panayot (1933 -

The Ontological Realism of Panayot Butchvarov

C

Calov (Calovius) Abraham (1612 - 1686)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: II. From Scheibler to Lambert (1645 - 1777)

Caramuel y Lobkowitz Juan (1606 - 1682)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: II. From Scheibler to Lambert (1645 - 1777)

Carnap Rudolf (1891 - 1970)

Rudolf Carnap's Criticism of Ontology

Castañeda Hector-Neri (1924 - 1991)

Hector-Neri Castañeda's Guise Theory

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Clauberg Johannes (1622 - 1665)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: II. From Scheibler to Lambert (1645 - 1777)

Cocchiarella Nino (1933 - )

Annotated bibliography: Books

Annotated bibliography 1966-1977

Annotated bibliography 1978-1992

Annotated bibliography 1993-2019

Crusius Christian August (1715 - 1775)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: II. From Scheibler to Lambert (1645 - 1777)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Index of the Authors referred in this Site

Philosophers

D

Deely John (1942 -

Annotated Bibliography from 1965 to 1998

Annotated Bibliography from 1999 to 2010

Descartes René (1596 - 1650)

René Descartes. Bibliographie Chronologique et Annotée (Première Partie: 1616-1640)

René Descartes. Bibliographie Chronologique et Annotée (Deuxième Partie: 1641-1650)

Descartes: Biographies, Bibliographies, Dictionnaires, Lexiques

Descartes. Bibliographies, Concordances, Dictionaries, Lexica

Bibliographie des études en français sur les sources de la philosophie de Descartes

Bibliography of the studies in English on the sources of Descartes' philosophy

Plotinus: the One and the Hierarchy of Being (under construction)

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius: Selected bibliography of the studies in English (A-Lea)

Diogenes Laertius: Selected bibliography of the studies in English (Lew-Z)

Bibliografia degli studi in italiano su Diogene Laerzio

Bibliographie des études en Français sur Diogène Laërce

Bibliographie der deutschsprachigen Studien zu Diogenes Laertios

Diogenes Laertius: Selected bibliography of the editions and translations in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Latin

Ancient Catalogues of Aristotle's Works:

Diogenes Laertius, Lives, V 22-27

Listes Anciennes des Ouvrages d'Aristote :

Diogène Laërce, Vies, V 22-27

Doyle John Peter (1930 -

Annotated Bibliography from 1966 to 2011

Du Hamel Jean-Baptiste (1624 - 1706)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: II. From Scheibler to Lambert (1645 - 1777)

Duns Scotus John see John Duns Scotus

Durandus of St. Pourçain (1270/5 - 1334)

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

E

École Jean (1920 -

Annotated Bibliography from 1961 to 1983

Annotated Bibliography from 1984 to 2008

Englebretsen George

George Englebretsen's Contribution to the Rediscovery of Traditional Formal Logic

Eriugena John Scottus, see John Scottus Eriugena

F

Fine Kit (1946 -

Annotated bibliography 1970 - 1981

Annotated bibliography 1982 - 1998

Annotated bibliography 1999 - 2011

Annotated bibliography 2012 - 2022

Unpublished Papers (available on line)

Kit Fine. Annotated bibliography of the studies on His Philosophy

Fonseca Pedro da (1528 - 1599)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: I. From Fonseca to Poinsot (1560 - 1644)

Freedman Joseph (1946 -

Bibliography of His Studies on Philosophy in Central Europe (1500 - 1700)

Frege Gottlob (1949 - 1925)

Frege's Ontology: Being, Existence, and Truth

Selected Bibliography on Frege's Ontology

G

Gerardus Odonis ( ? - 1348)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Gerlandus of Besançon (XI century)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Gilbert of Poitiers (Gilbertus Porretanus) (1070 - 1154)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Giles of Rome (Aegidius Romanus) (c. 1243 - 1316)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Göckel (Goclenius) Rodolf (1547 - 1628)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: I. From Fonseca to Poinsot (1560 - 1644)

Gregory of Rimini (ca. 1300 - 1358)

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Grossmann Reinhardt (1931 - 2010)

Reinhardt Grossmann and the Ontology of Categories

Selected Bibliography of Reinhardt Grossmann

H

Hartmann Nicolai (1882 - 1950)

Levels of Reality in Nicolai Hartmann's Ontology

Selected Bibliography of Nicolai Hartmann

Heidegger Martin (1889 - 1976)

Martin Hedegger's Gesamtausgabe (Collected Edition)

Martin Heidegger on Truth (Alethéia) as Unconcealment

Heidegger on Truth (Aletheia) as Unconcealment. A Bibliography

Martin Heidegger on the History of Metaphysics as Ontotheology

Bibliography on the History of Metaphysics as Ontotheology

Henry of Ghent (ca. 1230 - 1292)

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Hervaeus Natalis (1250/60 - 1323)

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Hilary of Poitiers (ca 300 - ca. 368)

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Husserl Edmund (1859 - 1938)

Edmund Husserl: Formal Ontology and Transcendental Logic

Selected Bibliography A - J

Selected Bibliography K - Z

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Index of the Authors referred in this Site

Philosophers (I - O)

I

Ingarden Roman (1893 - 1970)

Roman Ingarden and the Realism/Idealism Debate

Roman Ingarden: Ontology and Metaphysics. Selected Bibliography

Isaac Israeli (ca. 855 - ca. 955)

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Izquierdo Sebastian (1601 - 1681)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: II. From Scheibler to Lambert (1645 - 1777)

J

Joannes a sancto Thoma see Poinsot, John

John Buridan (Johannes Buridanus) (ca 1300 - after 1358)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

John (Johannes) Duns Scotus (c. 1266 - 1308)

The Realist Ontology of John Duns Scotus

Annotated Bibliography on Duns Scotus

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

John (Johannes) Pagus (13th century)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

John Scottus (Johannes Scotus) Eriugena (c. 800 - c. 877)

Eriugena: Dialectic and Ontology in the Periphyseon

Eriugena, Periphyseon Book I: Aristotelian Logic and Categories

The Works of Eriugena: Editions and Translations

Bibliography on the Philosophical Work of Eriugena:

First Part: A - J

Second Part: K - Z

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

K

Keckermann Bartholomäus (1572 - 1609)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: I. From Fonseca to Poinsot (1560 - 1644)

Kotarbinski Tadeusz (1886 - 1981)

Tadeusz Kotarbinski from Ontological Reism to Semantical Concretism

Selected Bibliography

L

Lambert Johann Heinrich (1728 - 1777)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: II. From Scheibler to Lambert (1645 - 1777)

Lambert of Auxerre (13th century)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Le Clerc Jean (Johannes Clericus) (1657 - 1736)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: II. From Scheibler to Lambert (1645 - 1777)

Lesniewski Stanislaw (1886 - 1939)

Stanislaw Lesniewski's Logical Systems: Protothetic, Ontology, Mereology

Bibliography on the Logical Work of Stanislaw Lesniewski

Lorhard Jacob (1561 - 1609)

Jacob Lorhard (1561-1609): The Creator of the Term "Ontologia"

Los Cobos Cristóbal de (1553 -1613?)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: I. From Fonseca to Poinsot (1560 - 1644)

M

Marius Victorinus (4th century)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Marsilius of Inghen (c. 1340 -1396)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Martin of Dacia (Martinus de Dacia) (? - d. 1304)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Martini Cornelius (1568 - 1621)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: I. From Fonseca to Poinsot (1560 - 1644)

Mas Diego (1553 - 1608)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: I. From Fonseca to Poinsot (1560 - 1644)

Mastri Bartolomeo (Bartholomeus) (1602 - 1673)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: II. From Scheibler to Lambert (1645 - 1777)

Meinong Alexius (1853 - 1920)

Alexius Meinong's Theory of Objects

The Works of Meinong: Editions and Translations

Selected Bibliography A - L

Selected Bibliography M - Z

Micraelius Johannes (1597 - 1658)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: II. From Scheibler to Lambert (1645 - 1777)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Index of the Authors referred in this Site

Philosophers (P - R)

P

Parmenides of Elea (5th century BC)

Parmenides and the Question of Being in Greek Thought

Critical Notes on His Fragments (Diels Kranz fr. 1-3)

Critical Editions and Translations

Annotated Bibliography A - Cord

Annotated Bibliography Corn - G

Annotated Bibliography H - Mes

Annotated Bibliography Mil - R

Annotated Bibliography S - Z

Paul of Venice (Paulus Venetus) (1369-1428)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Peirce Charles Sanders (1839 - 1914)

C. S. Peirce's Semiotics. The Theory of Categories

Perera Benet (Pererius) (1535 - 1610)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: I. From Fonseca to Poinsot (1560 - 1644)

Perzanowski Jerzy (1943 - 2009)

Jerzy Perzanowski: Modal Logics, Ontology and Ontologics

Jerzy Perzanowski: A Bibliography of His Writings in English

Peter Abelard (1079 - 1142)

Abelard: Logic, Semantics, Ontology and Theories of the Copula

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Peter Auriol (ca. 1280 - 1322)

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Peter of Auvergne (? - 1304)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Peter of Spain (Petrus Hispanus) (13th century)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Philip the Chancellor (1165/86 - 1236)

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Plato (428/7 - 348/7 BC)

Plato: Bibliographical Resources on Selected Dialogues

Plato's Parmenides and the Dilemma of Participation

Annotated Bibliography

Plato's Sophist and the Being of Not-Being

Selected Bibliography on Plato's Sophist in English:

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (A - Buc)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Can - Fos)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Fra - Kah)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Kal - Mig)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Mil - Pec)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Pel - San)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Say - Zuc)

Bibliographies on Plato's Sophist in other languages:

Platon: Sophiste. Bibliographie des études en Français (A - L)

Platon: Sophiste. Bibliographie des études en Français (M - Z)

Platon: Sophistes. Ausgewählte Studien in Deutsch

Platone: Sofista. Bibliografia degli studi in Italiano

Platón: Sofista. Bibliografía de estudios en Español

Platão: Sofista. Bibliografía dos estudos em Portugués

Plotinus (205 -270)

Plotinus' Criticism of Aristotle's Categories (Enneads VI, 1-3)

Poinsot John (John of St. Thomas) (1589 - 1644)

John Deely and the Rediscovery of John Poinsot

Prior Arthur Norman (1914 - 1969)

Arthur Norman Prior and the Ontology of Time

Pseudo-Augustine (4th century)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Pseudo-Richard of Campsall (ca 1324 - 1334)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

R

Radulphus Brito (ca. 1270 - ca. 1320)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Reinach Adolf (1883 - 1 917)

Reinach on Negative Statements and State of Affairs

Selected Bibliography on the Philosophy of Reinach

Robert Grosseteste (1168 - 1253)

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Robert Kilwardby (ca. 1215 - 1279)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Roger Bacon (ca. 1214 - 1279)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Russell Bertrand (1872 - 1970)

Bertrand Russell's Ontological Development

Selected Bibliography on Russell's Ontological Development

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Index of the bibliographies on philosophers

Philosophers (S - Z)

S

Scheibler Christoph (Cristophoro) (1589 - 1653)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: II. From Scheibler to Lambert (1645 - 1777)

School of Megara (or Dialectical School)

Siger of Brabant (ca. 1240 - after 1372)

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Simon of Faversham (ca. 1260 - 1306)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Smith Brian Cantwell

Brian Cantwell Smith On the Origins of Objects

Sommers Fred (1923 -

Fred Sommers on the Logic of Natural Language

Selected Bibliography on Fred Sommers

Stoics (Ancient)

The Stoic Doctrine of Supreme Genera (Categories)

Annotated Bibliography on Stoic Philosophy:

Selected Bibliography on The Stoic Doctrine of Supreme Genera (Categories)

Selected Bibliography on the Stoic Ontology

Suárez Francisco (1548 - 1617)

Francisco Suárez on Metaphysics as the Science of Real Beings

Selected Bibliography on the Metaphysical Work of Francisco Suárez:

Editions and Translations of the Metaphysical Works of Francisco Suárez

Selected bibliography on the Disputationes Metaphysicae: A - G

Selected bibliography on the Disputationes Metaphysicae: H - Z

Suszko Roman (1919 - 1979)

Roman Suszko and the non-Fregean-Logics

Selected Bibliography on Roman Suszko

Sylvan Richard (born Routley) (1935 - 1996)

Richard Sylvan [ born Richard Routley ] on Nonexistent Objects

Selected Bibliography on Richard Sylvan

Syrianus (5th century)

Aristotle's Metaphysics in Late Greek Philosophy: the Neoplatonic Commentators

T

Themistius (317 - ca. 387)

Aristotle's Metaphysics in Late Greek Philosophy: the Neoplatonic Commentators

Theophrastus of Eresus

Theophrastus's Metaphysics: Debating with Aristotle

Selected Bibliography on Theophrastus' Metaphysics

Thomas Aquinas (1225/6 - 1274)

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

Thomas of Sutton (ca. 1250 - 1315)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Thomasius Jakob (1622 - 1684)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: II. From Scheibler to Lambert (1645 - 1777)

Timpler Clemens (1563/4 - 1624)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: I. From Fonseca to Poinsot (1560 - 1644)

Tonelli Giorgio (1928 - 1978)

Works in Italian - Scritti in Italiano

Works in English

Works in French - Écrits en Français

Works in German - Essays in deutscher Sprache

Twardowski Kazimierz (1886 - 1938)

Kazimierz Twardowski on the Content and Object of Presentations

Selected Bibliography on Twardowski

V

Vazquez (Vasquez) Gabriel (1549 - 1604)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: I. From Fonseca to Poinsot (1560 - 1644)

W

Walter Burley (Burleigh)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

William of Auvergne (1180/90 - 1249

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

William of Champeaux (ca. 1070 -1122)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

William of Heytesbury (before 1313 - 1372/3)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

William of Ockham (ca. 1287 - 1347)

The Nominalist Ontology of William of Ockham

Selected Bibliography on the Logic and Ontology of William of Ockham

Theories of Truth. Veritas from Augustine to Paul of Venice

William of Sherwood (1190 - 1249)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

William of Ware (fl. 1290 - 1305)

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Wittgenstein Ludwig (1889 - 1951)

The Ontology of Wittgenstein's Tractatus

Selected Bibliography on Wittgenstein's Tractatus

Wolff Christian (1679 - 1754)

Christian Wolff's Ontology: Existence as "Complement of Possibility"

Selected Bibliography on Wolff's Ontology

Wolniewicz Bogusław (1927 -

Bogusław Wolniewicz on the Formal Ontology of Situations

Selected Bibliography of Bogusław Wolniewicz

Y

Zuñiga Diego de (1536 - 1597)

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries: I. From Fonseca to Poinsot (1560 - 1644)

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Index of the bibliographies on philosophers

Authors in alphabetical order

Abelard, Peter (see: Peter Abelard)

Aertsen, Jan Adrianus (1938 - )

Selected Bibliography: Writings in English

Selected Bibliography: Writings in German

Albertazzi, Liliana

Aristotle:

Aristotle's Definition of a Science of Being qua Being

Aristotle's Categories. Annotated Bibliography of the studies in English:

First part: A - C

Second part: D - Het

Third part: Hin - N

Fourth part: O - Z

Bibliographie der deutschen Studien zur Aristoteles Kategorien

Bibliographie des études en français sur les Catégories d'Aristote

Bibliografia degli studi italiani sulle Categorie di Aristotele

Armstrong, David Malet

Avicenna:

Translations of the Logical and Metaphysical Works

Avicenna A - G

Avicenna H - Z

Bergmann, Gustav

Boethius:

Boethius' Metaphysics. An Annotated Bibliography: First Part: A - J

Boethius' Metaphysics. An Annotated Bibliography: Second Part: K - Z

Bolzano, Bernard:

Studies in English:

First Part: A - B

Second Part: C - Geo

Third Part: Gie - L

Fourth Part: M - R

Fifth Part: S - Z

Bibliography of the English translations

Bernard Bolzano: Traductions et Études en Français (a - L)

Bernard Bolzano: Études en Français (M - Z)

Traduzioni e Studi in Italiano

Bibliographie der deutschsprachigen Studien

Vollständige Liste der Bände der Reihe Beiträge zur Bolzano Forschung

Brentano, Franz:

Studies in English:

Editions and translations

First Part: A - Bar

Second Part: Bau - Chr

Third Part: Cos - Gau

Fourth Part: Gea - Kra

Fifth Part: Kri - Moh

Sixth Part: Mon - Rut

Seventh Part: San - Srz

Eigth Part: Tai - Z

Studien in German

Etudes en Français

Studi in Italiano

Buchler, Justus

Bunge, Mario

Buridan, John (Jean):

Butchvarov, Panayot

Cocchiarella, Nino:

Annotated bibliography: Books

Annotated bibliography 1966-1977

Annotated bibliography 1978-1992

Annotated bibliography 1993-2019

Deely, John:

Deely 1965 - 1998

Deely 1999 - 2009

Descartes, René:

René Descartes. Bibliographie Chronologique et Annotée (Premièrere Partie: 1616-1640)

René Descartes. Bibliographie Chronologique et Annotée (Deuxièreme Partie: 1641-1650)

Descartes: Biographies, Bibliographies, Dictionnaires, Lexiques

Descartes. Bibliographies, Concordances, Dictionaries, Lexica

Bibliographie des études en français sur les sources de la philosophie de Descartes

Bibliography of the studies in English on the sources of Descartes' philosophy

Bibliographie sur René Descartes et la recherche de la mathesis universalis

Plotinus: the One and the Hierarchy of Being (under construction)

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius: Selected bibliography of the studies in English (A-Lea)

Diogenes Laertius: Selected bibliography of the studies in English (Lew-Z)

Bibliografia degli studi in italiano su Diogene Laerzio

Bibliographie des études en Français sur Diogène Laërce

Bibliographie der deutschsprachigen Studien zu Diogenes Laertios

Diogenes Laertius: Selected bibliography of the editions and translations in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Latin

Doyle, John P.

Duns Scotus, John

Englebretsen, George

Eriugena, John Scottus (see: John Scottus Eriugena)

Fine, Kit:

Annotated bibliography 1970 - 1981

Annotated bibliography 1982 - 1998

Annotated bibliography 1999 - 2011

Annotated bibliography 2012 - 2022

Unpublished Papers (available on line)

Kit Fine. Annotated bibliography of the studies on His Philosophy

Freedman Joseph S.

Frege, Gottlob

Goodman, Nelson

Grossmann Reinhardt

Hartmann, Nicolai

Heidegger, Martin:

Heidegger Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works)

Heidegger on Alétheia (Truth)

Heidegger on Ontotheology

Husserl, Edmund:

Husserl A - J

Husserl K - Z

Ingarden, Roman

John of St. Thomas (see: Poinsot, John)

John Scottus Eriugena

The Works of Eriugena: Editions and Translations

Bibliography on the Philosophical Work of Eriugena:

Eriugena: A - J

Eriugena: K - Z

Kotarbinski, Tadeusz

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Index of the bibliographies on philosophers

Authors in alphabetical order (L - Z)

Lesniewski, Stanislaw

Meinong, Alexius:

German Edition, Translations and Bibliographical Resources

Meinong A - L

Meinong M - Z

Ockham. William of (see: William of Ockham)

Parmenides:

Selected and annotated Bibliography of studies on Parmenides in English:

A - B

C - De L

De R - Grae

Grah - Ion

Jac - Lou

Mac - Mou

Mou - Rav

Rei - Sor

Spa - Vol

Wac - Z

Bibliographies on Parmenides in other languages:

Bibliographie des études en Français A - E

Bibliographie des études en Français F - Z

Bibliografia degli studi in Italiano

Indici dei volumi della collana Eleatica

Bibliographie der Studien auf Deutsch

Bibliografía de estudios en Español

Bibliografía de estudos em Português

Critical Editions and Translations

Peirce, Charles S. (Theory of Categories)

Perzanowski, Jerzy

Plato:

Plato's Parmenides

Selected Bibliography on Plato's Sophist in English:

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (A - Buc)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Can - Fos)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Fra - Kah)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Kal - Mig)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Mil - Pec)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Pel - San)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Say - Zuc)

Bibliographies on Plato's Sophist in other languages:

Platon: Sophiste. Bibliographie des études en Français (A - L)

Platon: Sophiste. Bibliographie des études en Français (M - Z)

Platon: Sophistes. Ausgewählte Studien in Deutsch

Platone: Sofista. Bibliografia degli studi in Italiano

Platón: Sofista. Bibliografía de estudios en Español

Platão: Sofista. Bibliografía dos estudos em Portugués

Plotinus

Poinsot, John (John of St. Thomas)

Reinach, Adolf

Russell, Bertrand (Ontology)

Sommers, Fred

Francisco Suárez:

Editions and Translations of the Metaphysical Works of Francisco Suárez

Suárez A - F

Suárez G - Z

Suszko, Roman

Sylvan, Richard (born Routley, Richard)

Theophrastus of Eresus (Metaphysics)

Twardowski, Kasimierz

Whitehead, Alfred

William of Ockham

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

Wolff, Christian

Wolniewicz, Bogusław

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Index of the bibliographies on arguments

History of Ontology

Heraclitus and Parmenides

Heraclitus and the Question of the One and the Many (under construction)

Parmenides: Critical Editions and Translations

Selected and annotated Bibliography of studies on Parmenides in English:

A - B

C - De L

De R - Grae

Grah - Ion

Jac - Lou

Mac - Mou

Mou - Rav

Rei - Sor

Spa - Vol

Wac - Z

Bibliographies on Parmenides in other languages:

Bibliographie des études en Français A - Cor

Bibliographie des études en Français Cou - Luc

Bibliographie des études en Français Mal - Z

Bibliografia degli studi in Italiano

Indici dei volumi della collana Eleatica

Bibliographie der Studien auf Deutsch

Bibliografía de estudios en Español

Bibliografía de estudos em Português

The Philosophy of Plato

Plato: Bibliographical Resources on Selected Dialogues

Selected Bibliography on Plato's Parmenides

Selected and Annotated bibliography of studies on Plato's Sophist in English:

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (A - Buc)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Can - Fos)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Fra - Kah)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Kal - Mig)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Mil - Pec)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Pel - San)

Plato's Sophist. Annotated Bibliography (Say - Zuc)

Bibliographies on Plato's Sophist in other languages:

Platon: Sophiste. Bibliographie des études en Français (A - L)

Platon: Sophiste. Bibliographie des études en Français (M - Z)

Platon: Sophistes. Ausgewählte Studien in Deutsch

Platone: Sofista. Bibliografia degli studi in Italiano

Platón: Sofista. Bibliografía de estudios en Español

Platão: Sofista. Bibliografía dos estudos em Portugués

Plato's Cratylus and the Problem of the “Correctness of Names” (under construction)

The Philosophy of Aristotle

For Aristotle's "Categories" see the section on the History of the Categories

Selected Bibliography on Aristotle's Concept of Metaphysics

The Origins of Aristotelianism

Aristotle: Bibliographical Resources on His Logical and Metaphysical Works

Bibliography on the Recovery of Aristotle's Works

Bibliography on the origins of the Corpus Aristotelicum

Studies in English: A-Gra

Studies in English: Gut-Z

Studies in German, French, Italian and Latin

Hellenistic Philosophy

Theophrastus of Eresus

Selected Bibliography on the Philosophical Work of Theophrastus

Early Stoicism

Selected Bibliography on Stoic Ontology

Plotinus: the One and the Hierarchy of Being (under construction)

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius: Selected bibliography of the studies in English (A-Lea)

Diogenes Laertius: Selected bibliography of the studies in English (Lew-Z)

Bibliografia degli studi in italiano su Diogene Laerzio

Bibliographie des études en Français sur Diogène Laërce

Bibliographie der deutschsprachigen Studien zu Diogenes Laertios

Diogenes Laertius: Selected bibliography of the editions and translations in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Latin

Proceedings of the Symposia on Ancient Philosophy

Proceedings of the Symposium Platonicum

Proceedings of the Symposium Aristotelicum

Proceedings of the Symposium Hellenisticum

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

Boethius' Metaphysics. Studies in English: First Part: A - Gib

Boethius' Metaphysics. Studies in English: Second Part: Gra - Mez

Boethius' Metaphysics. Studies in English: Third Part: Mic - Z

Boèce: Bibliographie sélective des traductions et des études en français

Boezio: traduzioni italiane e Bibliografia degli studi sulla sua filosofia

Boethius: Übersetzungen und Studien in Deutsch

The Neoplatonic Commentators

General Bibliography on the Neoplatonic Commentators

Bibliography on the Neoplatonic Commentaries to Aristotle's Metaphysics

Eriugena and the Neoplatonic Metaphysics in the Early Middle Ages

The Works of Eriugena: Editions and Translations

Bibliography on the Philosophical Work of Eriugena:

Eriugena A - Mad

Eriugena Mai - McG

Eriugena McK - Z

The Arabic Rediscovery of Aristotle's Metaphysics

Translations of the Philosophical Works of Avicenna

Selected Bibliography on Avicenna' Logic and Metaphysics:

Avicenna A - G

Avicenna H - Z

The 'Second Beginning' of Metaphysics

Selected Bibliography on the Subject Matter of First Philosophy

Ontology in Modern and Contemporary philosophy

Selected Bibliography on the History of Continental Ontology from Suarez to Kant

Bibliography of Ontologists from 16th to 18th Centuries:

I. From Fonseca to Poinsot (1560 - 1644)

II. From Scheibler to Lambert (1645 - 1777)

Selected Bibliography on Suárez' Metaphysics:

Editions and Translations of the Metaphysical Works of Francisco Suárez

Suárez A - F

Suárez G - Z

The Philosophy of René Descartes

René Descartes. Bibliographie Chronologique et Annotée (Première Partie: 1616-1640)

René Descartes. Bibliographie Chronologique et Annotée (Deuxième Partie: 1641-1650)

Descartes: Biographies, Bibliographies, Dictionnaires, Lexiques

Descartes. Bibliographies, Concordances, Dictionaries, Lexica

Bibliographie des études en Français sur la philosophie de Descartes

Bibliography of the studies in English on Descartes' philosophy

Bibliographie des études sur les Regulae ad directionem ingenii et la recherche de la mathesis universalis

Ontology from Wolff to Kant

Selected Bibliography on the Metaphysics of Christian Wolff

Index of the Section Historians of Philosophy

Annotated Bibliographies of historians of Philosophy

Theory of Ontology

Key Terms in Ontology

Being (linguistic and philosophical perspectives)

Selected Bibliography on Existence in Philosophy

Selected bibliography on the history of the concept of Existence

Bibliography on the Problem of Nonexistent Objects

Bibliography on the History of Nonexistent Objects: Studies in English

Bibliography on the History of Nonexistent Objects: Studies in French, Italian, Spanish, German

Substance: ancient (the evolution of the concept from Ancient Greeks to Modern Times)

Substance: modern (the concept of Substance in contemporary analytic philosophy)

Metaphysical Explanation

Annotated bibliographies:

Metaphysical fundamentality: A-Gia

Metaphysical fundamentality: Gib-P

Metaphysical fundamentality: R-Z

Contemporary metaphysical grounding: A-Col

Contemporary metaphysical grounding: Cor-Fin

Contemporary metaphysical grounding: Fis-lan

Contemporary metaphysical grounding: Lar-Pic

Contemporary metaphysical grounding: Ple-Ski

Contemporary metaphysical grounding: Sko-Z

History of metaphysical grounding: A - M

History of metaphysical grounding: N - Z

Ontological dependence: A-K

Ontological dependence: L-Z

History of ontological dependence

Language and Ontology

Linguistic Relativism (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) vs. Universal Grammar

Universal Ontology vs. Ontological Relativity

Semiotics and Ontology

Selected bibliography on John Poinsot

John Deely. An Annotated bibliography:

1965 - 1998

1999 - 2010

Modern Theories of Predication

The Frege-Russell 'Is' Ambiguity Thesis

Language as Calculus vs. Language as Universal Medium (two traditions in 20th century philosophy)

The Problem of Universals

The Contemporary Debate

History of the Doctrine of Categories

First part: A - C

Second part: D - Het

Third part: Hin - N

Fourth part: O - Z

Bibliographie der deutschen Studien zur Aristoteles Kategorien

Bibliographie des études en français sur les Catégories d'Aristote

Bibliografia degli studi italiani sulle Categorie di Aristotele

The Stoic Doctrine of Supreme Genera (Categories)

Ancient Greek Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle's Categories

Latin Medieval Commentators of Aristotle's Categories

History of Truth in Western Philosophy

The Concept of Truth in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy

Truth in Ancient Greek Authors from Homer to the Hellenistic Period

Theories of Truth in Medieval Philosophy

Truth in Medieval Authors from Hilary of Poitiers to Paul of Venice

Intercultural and Comparative and Philosophy

Bibliography: A-Den

Bibliography: Deu-K

Bibliography: L-N

Bibliography: O-S

Bibliography: T-Z

African Philosophy. A Survey of Contemporary Studies

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Index of pages in languages other tha English

Pages en Français

L'être : bibliographie des études en Français

Parménide: Bibliographie des études en Français

Platon, Le Sophiste: Bibliographie des études en Français (A - L)

Platon, Le Sophiste: Bibliographie des études en Français (M - Z)

Listes Anciennes des Ouvrages d'Aristote : études en français

Diogène Laerce, Vies V, 22-27

Hésychius de Milet et Ptolémée el-Garib

Bibliographie des études en Français sur Diogène Laërce

Bibliographie annotée des études en français sur les Catégories d'Aristote

Boèce: Bibliographie sélective des traductions et des études en français

Descartes René (1596 - 1650)

René Descartes. Bibliographie Chronologique et Annotée (Premièrere Partie: 1616-1640)

René Descartes. Bibliographie Chronologique et Annotée (Deuxièreme Partie: 1641-1650)

Descartes: Biographies, Bibliographies, Dictionnaires, Lexiques

Bibliographie des études en français sur les sources de la philosophie de Descartes

Edouard Jeauneau sur la Philosophie Médiévale. Bibliographie Choisie

Bibliographie des écrits de Jean Ecole sur Christian Wolff:

1961 - 1983

1984 - 2008

Bernard Bolzano: Traductions et Études en Français (a - L)

Bernard Bolzano: Études en Français (M - Z)

Histoire de la Vérité dans la Philosophie Occidentale:

Aletheia dans la Pensée Grecque d'Homèrere à l'âge Hellénistique

Giorgio Tonelli: Bibliographie des écrits sur Kant e la Philosophie du XVIIIe Siècle

Pagine in Italiano

L'Ontologia in Italia

Parmenide: Bibliografia degli studi in Italiano

Platone, Sofista: Bibliografia degli studi in Italiano

Bibliografia degli studi in italiano su Diogene Laerzio

Bibliografia degli studi italiani sulle Categories di Aristotele

Boezio: traduzioni italiane e Bibliografia degli studi sulla sua filosofia

Bernard Bolzano: Traduzioni e Studi in Italiano

Giorgio Tonelli: Scritti in Italiano (1954-1987)

Giorgio Tonelli: Scritti in Italiano (1987-1995)

Seiten auf Deutsch

Parmenides: Bibliographie der Studien auf Deutsch

Platon, Sophistes. Bibliographie der Studien auf Deutsch

Bibliographie der deutschsprachigen Studien zu Diogenes Laertios

Aristoteles Kategorienlehre: Ausgewählte Studien in Deutsch

Boethius: Übersetzungen und Studien in Deutsch

Bernard Bolzano: Bibliographie der deutschsprachigen Studien

Vollständige Liste der Bände der Reihe Beiträge zur Bolzano Forschung

Giorgio Tonelli: Bibliographie der Schriften von Kant und die Philosophie des XVIII. Jahrhunderts

Kommentierte Bibliographie Jan Aertsen Beitrag zur Geschichte der Transzendentalen Etüden

Páginas en español

Parménide: Bibliografía de estudios en Español

Platón, Sophistes: Bibliografía de estudios en Español

Páginas em Português

Parmênides: Bibliografia de estudos em Português

Platão, Sofista: Bibliografia de estudos em Português

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Sitemap of the Website

Theory and History of Ontology

History of Ontology

Theory of Ontology

Ontologists of the 19th and 20th Centuries

History of Truth

Doctrine of Categories

Problem of Universals

Comparative Philosophy

History of Philosophy

History of Ancient Philosophy from the Presocratics to the Hellenistic Period

History of Medieval Philosophy from the Boethius to ca. 1400

History of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy

Annotated Bibliographies of Historians of Philosophy

Index of the Philosophers

A - C

D - H

I - O

P - R

S - Z

Index of the Bibliographies

Index of the Bibliographies on Selected Authors (A - K)

Index of the Bibliographies on Selected Authors (L - Z)

Index of the Bibliographies on Selected Arguments

Pages in Languages other than English

Pages in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

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Third-party domains:

None.

Data Controller and Owner

Raul Corazzon

Via Panfilo Castaldi, 18

20124 Milano

e-mail: rc@ontology.co

Legal information

Notice to European Users: this privacy statement has been prepared in fulfillment of the obligations under Art. 10 of EC Directive n. 95/46/EC, and under the provisions of Directive 2002/58/EC, as revised by Directive 2009/136/EC, on the subject of Cookies. This privacy policy relates solely to this Application.

Last update: June 29th 2022.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Informativa sulla Privacy

Norme sulla Privacy e Siti Web

Nel maggio 2011 il Parlamento Europeo ha emanato una nuova legge sulla privacy, la EU Cookie Law (legge europea sui cookies - testo in formato PDF) che obbliga i siti internet a richiedere il permesso degli utenti ad utilizzare i cookie relativi ai servizi offerti. La parte più rilevante per l'utilizzzo dei cookie si trova nell' art. 5, p. 20 di 26:

«3. Gli Stati membri assicurano che l’archiviazione di informazioni oppure l’accesso a informazioni già archiviate nell’apparecchiatura terminale di un abbonato o di un utente sia consentito unicamente a condizione che l’abbonato o l’utente in questione abbia espresso preliminarmente il proprio consenso, dopo essere stato informato in modo chiaro e completo, a norma della direttiva 95/46/CE, tra l’altro sugli scopi del trattamento. Ciò non vieta l’eventuale archiviazione tecnica o l’accesso al solo fine di effettuare la trasmissione di una comunicazione su una rete di comunicazione elettronica, o nella misura strettamente necessaria al fornitore di un servizio della società dell’informazione esplicitamente richiesto dall’abbonato o dall’utente a erogare tale servizio.»

Questa normativa è entrata in vigore in Italia il 3 giugno 2015.

Informativa sui Cookie

Che cos'è un cookie e a cosa serve? Un cookie è un file di dimensioni ridotte che un sito invia al browser e salva sul computer dell’utente che visita un sito Internet. I cookie vengono utilizzati per far funzionare il sito o per migliorarne le prestazioni, ma anche per fornire informazioni ai proprietari del sito.

Con la nota "Individuazione delle modalità semplificate per l'informativa e l'acquisizione del consenso per l'uso dei cookie" dell'8 maggio 2014 [doc web n. 3118884] il Garante della Privacy ha stabilito quanto segue:

(Le parti più rilevanti per l'uso di questo sito sono evidenziate in grassetto).

"Al riguardo, e ai fini del presente provvedimento, si individuano pertanto due macro-categorie: cookie "tecnici" e cookie "di profilazione".

a. Cookie tecnici.

I cookie tecnici sono quelli utilizzati al solo fine di "effettuare la trasmissione di una comunicazione su una rete di comunicazione elettronica, o nella misura strettamente necessaria al fornitore di un servizio della società dell'informazione esplicitamente richiesto dall'abbonato o dall'utente a erogare tale servizio" (cfr. art. 122, comma 1, del Codice).

Essi non vengono utilizzati per scopi ulteriori e sono normalmente installati direttamente dal titolare o gestore del sito web. Possono essere suddivisi in cookie di navigazione o di sessione, che garantiscono la normale navigazione e fruizione del sito web (permettendo, ad esempio, di realizzare un acquisto o autenticarsi per accedere ad aree riservate); cookie analytics, assimilati ai cookie tecnici laddove utilizzati direttamente dal gestore del sito per raccogliere informazioni, in forma aggregata, sul numero degli utenti e su come questi visitano il sito stesso; cookie di funzionalità, che permettono all'utente la navigazione in funzione di una serie di criteri selezionati (ad esempio, la lingua, i prodotti selezionati per l'acquisto) al fine di migliorare il servizio reso allo stesso.

Per l'installazione di tali cookie non è richiesto il preventivo consenso degli utenti, mentre resta fermo l'obbligo di dare l'informativa ai sensi dell'art. 13 del Codice, che il gestore del sito, qualora utilizzi soltanto tali dispositivi, potrà fornire con le modalità che ritiene più idonee.

b. Cookie di profilazione.

I cookie di profilazione sono volti a creare profili relativi all'utente e vengono utilizzati al fine di inviare messaggi pubblicitari in linea con le preferenze manifestate dallo stesso nell'ambito della navigazione in rete. In ragione della particolare invasività che tali dispositivi possono avere nell'ambito della sfera privata degli utenti, la normativa europea e Italiana prevede che l'utente debba essere adeguatamente informato sull'uso degli stessi ed esprimere così il proprio valido consenso.

Ad essi si riferisce l'art. 122 del Codice laddove prevede che "l'archiviazione delle informazioni nell'apparecchio terminale di un contraente o di un utente o l'accesso a informazioni già archiviate sono consentiti unicamente a condizione che il contraente o l'utente abbia espresso il proprio consenso dopo essere stato informato con le modalità semplificate di cui all'articolo 13, comma 3" (art. 122, comma 1, del Codice)."

Con la nota del 5 giugno 2015 Chiarimenti in merito all’attuazione della normativa in materia di cookie Il Garante della Privacy ha precisato quanto segue:

• I siti che non utilizzano cookie non sono soggetti ad alcun obbligo.

• Per l'utilizzo di cookie tecnici è richiesta la sola informativa (ad esempio nella privacy policy del sito). Non è necessario realizzare specifici banner.

• I cookie analitici sono assimilati a quelli tecnici solo quando realizzati e utilizzati direttamente dal sito prima parte per migliorarne la fruibilità.

• Se i cookie analitici sono messi a disposizione da terze parti i titolari non sono soggetti ad obblighi (notificazione al Garante in primis) qualora:

A) siano adottati strumenti che riducono il potere identificativo dei cookie (ad esempio tramite il mascheramento di porzioni significative dell'IP);

B) la terza parte si impegna a non incrociare le informazioni contenute nei cookie con altre di cui già dispone.

• Se sul sito ci sono link a siti terze parti (es. banner pubblicitari; collegamenti a social network) che non richiedono l'installazione di cookie di profilazione non c'è bisogno di informativa e consenso.

• Nell'informativa estesa il consenso all'uso di cookie di profilazione potrà essere richiesto per categorie (es. viaggi, sport).

• È possibile effettuare una sola notificazione per tutti i diversi siti web che vengono gestiti nell'ambito dello stesso dominio.

• Gli obblighi si applicano a tutti i siti che installano cookie sui terminali degli utenti, a prescindere dalla presenza di una sede in Italia."

Che tipo di cookie utilizza questo sito e a quale scopo?

Cookie Tecnici.

Si tratta di cookie utilizzati per migliorare la velocità di caricamento delle pagine. I Cookie Tecnici non necessitano di consenso.

Cookie Analitici.

Questi cookie sono utilizzati da Google Analytics per elaborare analisi statistiche sulle modalità di navigazione degli utenti sul sito, sul numero di pagine visitate o il numero di click effettuati su una pagina durante la navigazione.

Su questo sito l’indirizzo IP del visitatore è anonimizzato:

“Quando un cliente di Google Analytics richiede l'anonimizzazione dell'indirizzo IP, Google Analytics anonimizza l'indirizzo non appena ciò è tecnicamente possibile nel passaggio più a monte della rete in cui avviene la raccolta dei dati. La funzione di anonimizzazione IP in Google Analytics imposta l'ultimo ottetto di indirizzi IP dell'utente IPv4 e gli ultimi 80 bit degli indirizzi IPv6 su zero in memoria subito dopo l'invio alla rete di raccolta di Google Analytics. In questo caso l'indirizzo IP completo non è mai scritto su disco.”

Per maggiori dettagli consultare: Anonimizzazione IP in Google Analytics

Per disabilitare i cookie analitici e per impedire a Google Analytics di raccogliere dati sulla navigazione, è possibile installare il Componente aggiuntivo del browser per la Disattivazione di Google Analytics.

Che tipo di cookie NON utilizza il sito?

Cookie di profilazione.

Sono i cookie utilizzati per tracciare la navigazione dell'utente in rete e creare profili sui suoi gusti, abitudini, scelte, ecc. Con questi cookie possono essere trasmessi al terminale dell'utente messaggi pubblicitari in linea con le preferenze già manifestate dallo stesso utente nella navigazione online. Se si utilizzano cookie di profilazione è obbligatorio richiedere preventivamente il consenso dell’utente.

Come è possibile disabilitare i cookie?

La maggior parte dei browser (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari etc.) sono configurati per accettare i cookie, che possono essere disabilitati utilizzando le impostazioni del browser; per le istruzioni consultare, ad esempio, Cinque principali accorgimenti.

Sommario

Su questo sito non è richiesto l'utilizzo del banner con la richiesta del consenso da parte dell'utente perchè i cookie utilizzati sono solo quelli tecnici.

Richieste di terze parti:

Due da Google Analytics.

Cookie installati da terze parti:

Nessuno.

Log di sistema e manutenzione

Per necessità legate al funzionamento ed alla manutenzione, questa Applicazione e gli eventuali servizi terzi da essa utilizzati potrebbero raccogliere Log di sistema, ossia file che registrano le interazioni e che possono contenere anche Dati Personali, quali l’indirizzo IP Utente.

Proprietario del sito web e titolare del trattamento dei dati:

Raul Corazzon

Via Panfilo Castaldi, 18

20124 Milano

e-mail: rc@ontology.co

Nota legale

Questa informativa è stata predisposta in conformità agli obblighi dell’Art. 10 della Direttiva n. 95/46/EC della Comunità Europea, ed in base alle disposizioni della Direttiva 2002/58/EC, aggiornata dalla Direttiva 2009/136/EC, riguardo all’uso del Cookies.

Ultimo aggiornamento: 30 aprile 2024.

Theory and History of Ontology

Raul Corazzon || rc@ontology.co || Info

Main Site and Mirror Sites

About This Site

Theory and History of Ontology, created April 13, 2000 at the address www.formalontology.it, moved August 13th 2010 to a new address: ontology.co; a mobile version is available when the screen resolution is less than 480 x 500 pixels.

The site is best viewed with a recent version of one of the following browsers: Brave, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Maxthon, Opera, Safari, UC Browser.

Please note that Internet Explorer is no longer supported as of June 15, 2022.

Pages in Language other than English will contain bibliographical information and references to works published in these languages.

Note on the Fonts

These fonts are used:

For the text: Georgia (Windows, Apple Mac, Linux);

For the terms in Ancient Greek: Georgia (Windows, Apple Mac, Linux).

For the transliteration of Arabic terms: Arial MS Unicode (Windows, Apple Mac, Linux).

For the logical symbols: Lucida Sans Unicode (Windows); Lucida Grande (Apple Mac); Lucida Sans or DejaVu Sans Condensed (Linux);

How to Cite This Website

If you want to cite or link a page of my site please use the main address ontology.co because the mirror site will not be indexed by the Search Engines to avoid duplicated content.